#realistically i will probably be safer as a result but also more stresses on all sorts of different points

[zeroakun27]

Jimmy is an egotistical, delusional, and narcissistic person who wasn't capable to be a leader and a manipulative person as well. He r-word anya, literally make Curly not being able to do anything and literally the reason why Daisuke and Swansea died

Sunny is a child, he pushed Mari out of stress and fear, he suffered a lot due to the traumatic incident he had to witness plus the grief and guilty due to the consequences of his actions

Honestly, I am baffled as to how you think this two characters are the same, you probably need to seek a brain specialist and check your neurons, I'm sure God gave you a wrong patterns recognition. And hey maybe you can test your IQ in there and have some advice to get smarter.

Also, a friend of mine decided to come up with rebuttal

First of all, his murder of his sister was not an impulsive decision. The game doesn't indicate that Mari physically restrained him to stop him from running away. This means that instead of reacting like a realistic 12 yo child and running away to someplace safer - either his bedroom or the bathroom, which both were on the same floor they were having their argument on - Sunny consciously employed physical force.

Yes, but as we are both entitled to using non canon materials (the album captions are considered non-canon), I shall use mine:

This video: timestamp 0:35 Mari screams “Where do you think you’re going?”

Anyone with reasonable deductive skills can see what she means by this. The timeline was as follows:

Pre 0:35: Sunny attempts to get away. There would be no reason for him to pull his sister as he’s getting away, so there’s no contact, 0:35: Mari screams “Where do you think you’re going”, 0:37: Mari falls down the stairs.

Now in those 2 seconds, who is more likely to make first contact? The angry one or the one getting away.

Bingo.

Mari grabbed Sunny, closing the distance between them, and Sunny having a flight or fight response (normal for a human being, by the way) and shoving her off him, thus down the stairs.

Voila.

consistent pattern of being an ass.

Let me address each argument for you.

(Apparently) was aware of Aubrey's troubled situation at home, wasn't shown doing anything of note to help and/or support her

What can a ten to twelve year old do other than talk to their friend and make sure they’re okay? (Which Sunny did do a lot with Aubrey by the way, shown through the video montage of “Duet”).

Whined about having to help his friends build their treehouse

What twelve year old wouldn’t complain MENTALLY? It’s not being an ass, if he was, he would’ve outwardly said all those things. It’s just that mentally he doesn’t want to do it. But he does because he knows it's only fair to the others. That’s called respecting other people and compromising for them.

Threw a tantrum that resulted in the death of his sister because he couldn't watch cartoons for as long as he'd have liked

Once again, I am allowed to point at non canon as you have.

0:04: Sunny says “Gosh, you-”

0:05-0:014: Unintelligible

0:15: The violin crashes

Firstly, no one screams “Gosh, you-” without the other having not done anything.

Secondly: Do you really think Mari stayed silent for those 9 seconds of unintelligible noise?

Was throwing the violin down the stairs the best option? No. Do I think it was just caused because he didn’t get to watch cartoons? No. Mari obviously said something to provoke it.

Blamed Mari for the argument as if she forced him to practice even though he himself begged her to let him join her

Something tells me you don’t have younger siblings tbh. It’s very normal for kids to want something at first, but change their minds later after they realise the work that has to be put in. (E.g: Wanting to go to school when they’re younger but hating it as soon as they start) Also, you’re disregarding Sunny’s motive: He never wanted to do violin because he loved the violin. He just wanted to spend more time with Mari.

Also to address “ as if she forced him to practice “

You think a 15 year old whose parents booked a venue for their recital wouldn’t be pressured and in turn pressure their younger sibling into making it PERFECT? Just food for thought.

Chose to resolve his argument with Mari by violence even though he had the option to run away instead

Already addressed this :) 

Was relieved that he got away with accidentally killing his sister

For someone who has a brain and must scream, it sure seems otherwise. Do read what it says. “For a moment, you feel at peace. You hate yourself for feeling this way.” He was relieved, sure. But he hated himself for that. Because he didn’t want to feel relief.

Chose to lie to his friends by omission and let them believe they had somehow failed Mari due of the assumed nature of her death as a suicide, irreversibly scarring them

Chose to let Basil take the fall for blacking out Mari's photos in the photo album, which entailed Basil becoming the target of Aubrey's bullying and wore Basil's mental health down to near-psychosis by the time of the game's events*

Half of the game is just showing the consequences to Sunny doing that though. It's portrayed as a bad thing. It’s also realistic to those experiencing PTSD or shock. I don’t want to make this too long (it’s already 800 ish words) so just read it here https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/post-traumatic-stress-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-2035596

Walked out on Basil - his best friend - when the latter had a mental breakdown despite Basil begging him to stay

Considered leaving Basil to his death as a legitimate option, twice

Seems to have been content with thinking of doing nice things for Basil (e.g. watering Basil's plants in his dream world) as opposed to actually trying to support him in the real world

Walked out on Hero after seeing him crying over the piano

Again, just read up on the link I sent earlier. Specifically avoidance. It’s not morally correct but that doesn’t mean it’s in his control either.

Wasn't shown to feel any guilt or shame from having a picnic with the people he lied to near his dead sister's grave

I don’t know if you’ve played the game, but you like to bring up “Sunny and the player aren’t separate” so… Have you ever thought that maybe, just maybe the reason Sunny doesn’t show any guilt in-game is because he’s discovering the truth as much as we, the player are? Just food for thought

Twisted the supportive words of the people he lied to to alleviate his own self-loathing over committing manslaughter

This is just a wrong interpretation entirely lmfao. The battle against OMORI isn’t a battle against self loathing. It’s a battle against the denial that kept him from telling the truth to begin with. Sunny doesn’t kill himself in the bad ending because he hates himself. He kills himself in the bad ending because he wants to hide the truth and knows he can’t do it for much longer. Why do you think he doesn’t end up killing himself in a majority of the hikikomori routes even though OMORI has taken over?

Told his friends the truth shortly before having to move town, thus avoiding the direct consequences of his confession and leaving Basil behind again to face them alone

Not exactly his choice as I’ve said earlier.

Is only concerned with how his friends' pain affects himself at the end of the day

Can’t say much about it (I’m a little stupid  and can’t be bothered to spend over an hour doing this) other than I wanna see an analysis of My Time next. Sure it's not made for the game, but it was chosen for a reason.

What Sunny did was the fault of an irrational mindset

What Sunny did was the fault of him being a child witnessing a traumatic incident being led by another child who witnessed the same incident and then the rest are just the effects of PTSD. A majority of the reason the incident took place the way it did can be explained by: Sunny’s in worse shock than Basil due to him having to process that he was the one who killed his sister, and Basil just wants to protect him. If anything, Basil's at fault.

”Lol I just got off the hook”

Lol I explained this already. You used the same point twice.

Sunny is forgivable because he was a child who was not in a good rational mindset and made an impulsive decision with much more dire consequences than anticipated

Jimmy is not forgivable because he was an adult who had to make several conscious decisions to do what he did and does nothing but repeat his horrible behaviour

Both games are about forgiveness but two completely different ends of that spectrum. Omori is about how forgiveness can be healing and help those recover, and mouthwashing is about how sometimes forgiveness does nothing but enable horrible people to continue their abusive behaviour

[gallavictorious]

concerning the ask about Ian bein the eldest child - I wonder how his relationship with Micky would even play out, when he'd have less free time and maybe a more realistic (less romanticized) view on life in general? Like, do you think he would chase after him like he did in the earlier seasons? I don't know, the whole "Ian is the eldest child" is facinating to me

Oh, this is an interesting one! I think there’s two different aspects to consider here: 1, would Ian and Mickey even be interested in one another if Ian were the eldest, and 2, if so, would pursuing a relationship be feasible under these circumstances?

I'll deal with the first issue briefly, and then with the second one at some length. Lots of different parameters to take into account here... This is obviously going to be speculative as hell, and I’m teasing the whole thing out as I type, but let’s see–

As was mentioned in the discussion that promted this ask, it’s difficult to know to what degree Ian’s personality would have been different, had he been born the eldest child – and even harder to know how that would have affected his compatibility with Mickey. He’d probably still would have been tough as well as compassionate, two qualities I believe are key to him being attractive to Mickey, but I’m less certain that Ian would have found Mickey quite as charming if he was already saddled with the responsibility for five younger siblings and a drunken father… ? And maybe Mickey embodying the South Side male in ways that mirror both Terry and Frank (look at their similar choices in clothing) would have been more of a turn off for firstborn!Ian, since he’d be the one who primarily had to deal with consequences of Frank’s many failings? Ian being a bit of a chameleon himself has him being more appreciative of Mickey being so extremely unconcerned about the opinions of others, but he might have been less amused with Mickey’s crudeness if he was dealing with a lot of other shit already? Then again, maybe none of this would have mattered! Maybe Mickey’s directness might be especially refreshing if your life’s generally a huge fucking tangle and you have slippery fuckers Monica and Frank to contend with on a daily basis. And although I think that the fact that canon!Ian often feels a bit invisible and like he's living in Lip's shadow might contribute to him fighting so hard for that connection he feels with Mickey – chasing after him, as you say – it might well be that even if he'd been the eldest, he'd still be seeking that out, because so much of his life and time is dedicated to his siblings and he yearns for something that is only his, only for him.

No easy or immediate answer to this question, though I suspect most of us prefer to think that they’d have liked each other anyway. Heaven knows there are plenty of AU:s built on this assumption.

Oh, and then there’s the whole question of pheromones. Now, obviously that’s not the be-all and end-all on sexual attraction, but given how very quickly Ian and Mickey go from trying beat the creap out of each other to eagerly fucking, and how Ian is very clear about liking the way Mickey smells, I think it’s fair to say that chemical compatibility is a pretty big factor in them first getting together. (It sure as hell isn’t the only one, but still.) With that in mind, I may or may not have had my partner, who’s a clinical research biologist, look into the epigenetic properties of pheromones (i.e. to find out if how you grow up might affect your natural body musk to the point where you’d be chemically attractive to other people than you are now). It’s not entirely clear and – predictably – the research done on what part pheromones play in sexual attraction among humans has been primarily focused on attraction in heterosexual people, but it seems that conditions in the womb and external factors in childhood (as well as changes later in life, such going on the pill, being stressed or having a disease) would affect your smell. However, we can’t readily know if and to what degree just being born first and having to take on the responsibilities of being the oldest sibling would affect Ian’s musk, and if it would decrease how attractive he is to Mickey (that it would increase it seems an impossibility because these two are already so insanely, stupidly horny for one another).

Okay. Having tentatively concluded that we can’t know for sure whether or not Ian and Mickey would still be into each other had Ian been born first (and hence not been quite the same person), let’s recklessly assume that they would, and turn to far more intriguing discussion of how their relationship would actually play out.

Do we imagine that Ian is a few years older than Mickey then, the same age as Fiona would have been at the start of canon? Maybe it doesn't matter much – it's not a huge difference, but to be honest I feel a little ickey about it since Ian would be an adult and Mickey still a teenager (and not a particularly well-adjusted and healthy one at that). Hmm. Either way, I can see them getting together in much the same way, with Ian doing something nice for Mandy – intervening when she's harassed at the local store, maybe, sparking a little hero crush on her part – and that whole thing going down more or less as it does in canon. But if it does, and Mickey and his goons beats up Ian's younger brother Lip in Ian's stead, I think eldest child!Ian might be really, really pissed and out for blood? Which gives him a nice incentive to go look for Mickey, even if Kash is not part of this picture (and I think that he's probably not). So far, so good... but if Ian's this much older than Mickey – four years? – Ian will already have started to fill out, right, turning all tall and buff, and Mickey might not have such an easy time overwhelming him. Then again, that might not necessarily serve as a deterrent to Mickey at all, so the end result is probably still the same, surprise sex fuelled by adrenaline, pheromones and general compatibility.

But... then what? To be honest, I think it'd be very difficult to make it work under these circumstances. If Ian is older than Mickey, Mickey might well have a much harder time feeling safe with him, just because he might feel like he doesn't have the upper hand in the relationship – and in the beginning I think it was VERY important for Mickey to feel like he had control and was calling the shots on when and how they met up. Four or five years is not a big difference at all later in life, but if you're 16 and your lover is 21 (or thereabouts, I'm still not super clear on the timeline, but ballpark) and they're also used to running an entire household and therefore accustomed to being in charge... I don't see this working for Mickey, not enough so that he dares let his guard down to the point required for their relationship to develop.

As for Ian, I think he'd have far less patience with Mickey's standoffishness and unwillingness to committ or even admit that they have anything beyond sex. Ian wouldn't have the time or energy or disposition to deal with that, not on top of everything else, and furthermore, it seems like it'd be very hard to keep his clandestine meeetings with Mickey secret when he's the lynchpin of the family, always taking calls and dealing with sudden emergencies. To make it properly work with Fiona, JimmySteve has to more or less move in more or less immediately and adjust his life to fit with her chaos; it'd arguably be the same for Ian, yeah? Don't really see the still very much closeted (and terrified) Mickey actually doing that – moving in, helping out with the kids and what-not. (One could also hope that Ian realizes that pursuing a relationship with a still underage Mickey would be inappropriate and calls it off for those reasons.)

So, realistically, if there's an age difference and they meet at the same time as they do in canon, I think there might be a few hook-ups, but it would fall apart rather soon, in spite of their very strong attraction. But! Maybe in a few years, when Mickey's older and the age difference less meaningful, and Mickey's had the chance to become a little more accepting of himself and his orientation, and Ian's siblings are just a little bit older so that Ian can take some more time for himself... maybe then they could run into each other again and that old spark roar back into life and they take it from there? It'd still be an uphill struggle, of course, but they've dealt with those before and always – eventually – come out on top. The whole Svetlana thing never happened, Mickey is fully on his way to coming into his own at the king of the South Side, Ian is trying to figure out who he is outside of the Big Brother, maybe Mickey is out, maybe he's not, maybe Terry is gone, maybe he's not... If one is so inclined, I think there's some fun to be had with this idea. I am, however, more partial to another:

Say that Ian's still born when he was born, so still a couple of years (according to the forms they fill out when applying for a marriage license) younger than Mickey. Maybe then, even in spite of his added burdens and responsibilities, he'd still be naive and soft enough to have a bit more patience for bad boy Mickey? It'd be before Monica ran out on them, so maybe there are still times (few and far between) when Ian doesn't have to take full responsibility for his siblings; times when he can pursue what he wants instead. And Mickey would feel more in control and safer dealing with babyface!Ian, so maybe he'd dare a bit more?

Maybe he starts hanging out at the Gallagher house after that first fuck, for a chance to be near Ian. The rest of the siblings would be young enough that he feels confident (although perhaps mistakenly) that they'll not pick up on what's going on, so as long as Frank and Monica are out (or out of it), Mickey's happy to come around. Hang out, fuck whenever they can, maybe even help out a tiny little bit when Ian makes him, and in spite of his best efforts and intentions he gets more and more pulled into Ian's life. This, I think, could potentially work, although I expect the same sort of up and downs as we get in canon. Mickey probaby won't get shot by Kash (because I think eldest child!Ian would be a little less susceptible to his ”charms”), but Frank could still – very easily – walk in on them. It would get overwhelming at times and Mickey would push Ian away and flee; Ian would get impatient with Mickey's insistence on distance and NO EMOTIONS ONLY SEX (more so than he is in canon, I think) and tell him to shape up or fuck off. It'd be volatile for sure, but in the end I think they'd always return to each other, adapt and try a little bit harder to make it work. Pull's just to strong, you know? Maybe it'd even happen faster than in canon, if Mickey isn't sent to juvie that first time, and if they have more opportunities to spend time together doing stuff other than fucking (ie just hanging out at the Gallagher house under the pretext that Mickey's just a friend, which Mickey would allow, thinking the younger siblings clueless). Really wouldn't mind reading this fic, you know, though I'd mourn Ian's relationship with Lip in this alternative reality. (Like, there’s SO MUCH potential! Maybe Mickey lures Frank and Monica away on a drug weekend just so he can stay at the house with Ian, even if it does mean having the help out with the little ones! I can see angry teenage Mickey being made to help Debbie with her math homework! Feed baby Liam! Supposed to stop tiny Carl from doing horrible stuff but ending up helping him instead! Ian is not amused! I want it!)

So, uh. That's my speculative take on this, for now. Very open to being swayed by other people's opinions, though, so I'd love to hear them, or whatever additional thoughs you might have.

Thank you so much for the ask: I had a lot of fun thinking about this, and hope that you found somet sort of satisfaction in my long-winded ramblings. <3 Also, I'm sorry it took so long to get back to you! As I've noted before, I'm unreliable (and sometimes busy).

[sukigirl17]

The Bump SukixSokka Oneshot

Word Count: 3,958

The first thing he saw in the morning was his wife examining herself in the full body mirror in their bedroom. And by the expression on her face, she didn't like what she saw. She was only 8 1/2 months along, but to the both of them, it felt like an eternity.

 He always thought of pregnancy as a bright, happy experience, for there would soon be a little person pitter-pattering across the floor of their home. Everyone in the South Pole rejoiced at the news of one of their members starting a family. They even had a feast in the baby’s honor, but things seemed a lot more realistic now.

 Sokka had never truly seen what exactly the woman of his tribe had to go through during their pregnancy, but now he was humbled to be experiencing it firsthand. It was completely different from what he's imagined it'd be like.  

In the middle of her first trimester, she had noticed during her chi blocking lessons with The Cranefish Police Force, she was having a hard time concentrating. It was getting more and more difficult for her to work or practice with her warriors, and when she asked their local healer, she said it was partially the preoccupation of the baby that caused the forgetfulness and inability to concentrate. So, Suki allowed for Ty Lee to come in and take over her instruction for a few months until she felt better.

 It hurt her pride to have to step down, but she knew it was for the best of her pupils and of the baby if she started acting more well, pregnant. She couldn’t maintain the same level of physical activity forever.

 ..

 The kicks were probably Sokka's favorite part. He would gently place his hands on his wife's belly any chance he got. Sometimes, he would even lay his head down on the top of her stomach and listen to the baby moving inside of her, eventually falling asleep to the sounds and the feeling of her stroking his hair as his eyelids became heavy and eventually closed.

 "I love you," He faintly recalled her whispering, thinking she was talking about him. Sokka would smile softly, half asleep.

 She giggled. "And you," She cooed, placing a kiss on his forehead, letting him know who she was really talking to before.

 Another one of the lighter aspects of the pregnancy is every woman is said to possess that pregnancy glow, but Suki shined. Her skin would light up a room immediately and she looked breathtakingly radiant to him. He never once forgot to tell her how beautiful she looked, even if she didn't believe him. It was moments like those that Sokka wished everything about the pregnancy could be that easy and stress-free.

 But of course, the universe would never let something go that well for him.

 ..

 The next obstacle they faced were her migraines. They pained Suki so much that some days she couldn't even get out of bed. Even the slightest bit of noise would send her into a world of misery. They didn't even bother to call the healer anymore, because they knew what she would say. It was said every visit Suki had with her.

 “A soon-to-be-mother should reduce as much stress as possible,” They were told yet again. “Because growing another person is already stressful enough! Let yourself relax, dear. It’s only going to get rougher from here. You don’t just have yourself to think about anymore when you’re running around with heavy armor and sharp swords.”

 Both Suki and Sokka reluctantly agreed that Suki needed to start taking it easier on her body the further along she got in the pregnancy. So after much deliberation, they came to the agreement that it wasn’t a good idea for her to return to her position as Zuko’s security until after the baby came.

 They also decided to take some time away from the gAang and all the excitement that followed them and went to spend some time on Kyoshi Island until the delivery. The conflict between benders and nonbenders didn’t seem to be simmering down anytime soon, and they thought it would be safer for them to wait out the pregnancy somewhere more stable.

 It was where Suki was going to feel the most relaxed, just as the healer said she should prioritize, and it would only be for a few months, they figured.

 Suki loved spending time with more of her warriors, Sokka fished and relaxed in Suki’s house most of their days. It felt like a mini vacation at first, with no pressures or commitments hanging over their heads. It was the first time in a long time they could just relax.

 Suki tried.

 She really did, but she couldn’t resist spending time in the dojo with her warriors. It just started out as visits and she’d observe their training.

 But their questions resulted in her suggestions.

 Verbal corrections turned into physical adjustments.

 Explanations became demonstrations.

 And before she could even catch herself, Sokka caught her first.

 She spotted her running drills with the other girls one day when he was walking by the dojo, and as Sokka does, he panicked immediately at the sight of his wife doing something he thought to be reckless.

 “What are you doing? Did you not listen to literally anything our old healer said?!” He yelled later that night in their home.

 “Sokka, I’m fine! I was just going through a few exercises with them.” She rolled her eyes as he lost his temper. “I was practically stretching.”

 “Suki, the whole point of why we came here was for you to take it easy! And to just relax! Training for war is not relaxing, it’s training for war!”

 “Stop being so dramatic!”

 “I’m not being dramatic!”

 “Then stop being so overprotective!” Suki glared at him as she started to raise her voice to match his. His hysteria was starting to get on her nerves, and she felt a headache coming on, so she shook her head as a sigh fell from her lips. “Sokka, I’m not going to do anything dangerous. You can relax your way, and this just happens to be mine. Just trust me and let me have this. It’s really important to me.”

 Sokka stared at her for a long moment before letting out a sigh of his own. He made his war across the room and pulled her into his arms for a tight hug. “What’s important to you is important to me,” He mumbled into her hair. “Just be careful.”

 And she was.

 But nothing could’ve prepared either of them for the next joy of pregnancy.

 The tight joints started. The weight of the baby made her feel unbalanced and she would have sudden pains piercing through her body at unexpected times. It was a common occurrence and something the couple hadn't given much thought to until one day during her training, Suki was teaching some of her younger warriors a new, simple routine. The girls were having fun and she decided to keep their momentum going and kicked the intensity up a notch.

 Literally.

 She went to raise her leg in order to perform a kick to finish off the drill. But when she let out a pained cry and hit the ground clutching her stomach, the young girls stood in shock for a moment, watching their beloved leader fall before rushing to her side and calling for help.

 The memory is a bit of blur for Suki. She thinks she remembers muttering how proud she was of her girls and how they were handling this so maturely in between grunts and gasps of pain the escaped her lips. Her vision started blurring because the pain became so intense, she almost blacked out by the time the healer had gotten to the dojo. Somehow the girls had managed to get her into a wheelchair, because the next thing she remembered was being pushed up the path to her house. By then, she had grown slightly more accustomed to the pain and her vision came back into focus.

 The sight of their local healer pushing his wife up to their doorstep was one Sokka was horrified to see from their kitchen window. He then dropped the dishes he was washing in the sink before sprinting out the front door to meet them. He tried to get out as many questions as possible, a series of why's and how's and what's, but the healer hushed his inquiries in favor of getting Suki inside so she could do a proper inspection.

 “I brought some freshly picked lavender from my garden. Would you mind brewing us some tea for our patient here?” She suggested, offering him a knowing smile as a clear signal for him to leave them for the moment.

 Sokka knew it was just a ploy to get him out of the way, and that was something he should've been grateful for in hindsight, because he does not help anyone when he's panicking.

 Just as he was entering their bedroom with a tray of teacups in his hands, he heard the healer make mention of something neither of them could’ve ever expected. “You have a split pelvic bone,” She said gently, her eyebrows furrowed in concern. “This could take months to heal with the baby's weight constantly pushing on it, maybe not even until after the birth.”

 Sokka's heart cracked when he saw the look on Suki's face when she was told it was imperative that she didn't train with her warriors again until after the baby came. He could see the tears she tried to blink away, and the heartbreak was evident through her expression.

 He normally would’ve rejoiced and rubbed it in when he was right, but not after seeing her face fall the way it did before she forced herself to replace it with a look of feigned composure.

 Sokka put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed. Suki put her hand on top his and squeezed back.

 And then she agreed without argument.

 ..

 After that incident, Sokka was sincerely worried about Suki and her behavior. She didn't act like herself anymore, and it terrified him. It was as if he was living with a stranger all the sudden. He felt completely unprepared and helpless as he watched her suffer, something he always feared.

 She didn't have odd cravings, she didn't have drastic mood swings, and she didn't even complain.

 In fact, she hardly talked at all.

 Suki had stayed almost completely silent the last trimester before the baby was born, but when she did speak, it was an even and monotone droning noise that always made Sokka anxious upon hearing it. However, the one thing that scared him more than anything was Suki's lack of reaction to her symptoms, circumstances, or their life in general. She lived in a state of complete apathy.

 Meaning Suki never cried.

 Or complained.

 Or got angry.

 Or smiled.

 Sokka knew she could handle herself, he knew it, and he was also certain it'd make her feel even less in control of her life if he tried to impose his fears on her. So, he tried to stay quiet. He tried to show support in the most basic ways, like taking her down the stairs when she needed help or sitting out on the porch with her for hours as they watched the day go by. He let her do whatever she wanted to do, but the issue was she never wanted to do much.

 Because she couldn't do much, if anything at all.

 But now he was laying in his bed, watching with sad eyes as his wife examined her growing belly with a critical look in the mirror. She inhaled deeply as she turned to the side slowly, wincing in pain to look at her reflection from a side view. He let her stand up and walk by herself whenever she wanted and only helped her when she asked, when the pain of her split pelvic bone overwhelmed her, despite the spike in his anxiety every time she moved without him.

  "It's getting bigger," She said, referencing to her round belly. "Gigantic, actually."

 "Is not," He snorted, trying to distract her. "It's barely bigger. You can't even tell you have a person growing inside you! That's what people call impressive."

 "That's what people call a lie." Suki sighed again and a frown made its way across her face for the billionth time in the past six months. "...But you're sweet."

 Sokka then threw off the covers and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He joined his wife in the mirror and hugged her shoulders, resting his chin on her head. "I love you," He murmured into her hair. "And this little fetus of ours."

 "Do not call my son or daughter a fetus."

 "Opposed to what, an it?" He asked in disgust before letting out a laugh. "I bet it's a girl."

 "Do you want a girl?"

 "Yes and no. I just want one. Don't you?"

 She let out a sigh. “I just want to meet them as soon as possible."

 Sokka chuckled and kissed her on the cheek. "I think this is the most I've heard you talk in months." He immediately regretted saying those words when he saw her eyebrows furrow. Sokka felt his heart drop when she pulled away from him and turned her back.

 She stood silently for a moment, fiddling with her betrothal necklace before quietly mumbling, "I know."

 "Do you..." Sokka hesitated for a moment and fixed his gaze on their feet. "...maybe think we should see the healer?"

 She turned to look at him, a confused look on her face. "Why would we do that?"

 "Well...it’s just...been weeks since we've seen her and I think it might be good to get her opinion on a few of your symptoms...That's all."

  Suki cocked an eyebrow at him. "Meaning?"

 Sokka scratched the back of his head, his nerves rising. "Well... You've been...different... lately. You've been so sad and so not you, and I think something might be wrong-"

 "There's nothing wrong with me, Sokka. I'm not sick." She retorted sharply, as if to dismiss him.

 "Maybe not in the way we're used to. But this isn't normal, Suki. This—this depression—shouldn't be normal. It's hurting you, and that matters to me.”

 She stayed silent for a long moment, turning her back to him. "And you didn't think to bring this up to me until now?"

 Sokka let out a sigh and shook his head. "I didn’t know if it would upset you or not."

 "So, what if it did?" She turned to him, her expression stern. "Why would that have mattered? You didn't think I could handle it?"

 His eyes widened in panic. "Okay, I know where this is going, and no, it's not because I didn’t think you could handle it!" He tried to reason with her. "Clearly you can handle anything, because you're carrying a person inside of you." Sokka sighed, sitting on the edge of their bed and slumping his shoulders. "I just think you need a little more help with this one. Maybe there's something else we can take off your plate-"

 "What else can I possibly sacrifice, Sokka?" She asked honestly, sullenly staring down at the ground. He stopped his train of thought immediately, his breath hitching in the back of his throat when he saw her eyes well up with tears for the first time in months. She took a shaky breath in and tried to silence her soft sob by bringing her hand to her mouth.

 "Suki..." He murmured in shock, not knowing what else to do. Finally, after months of being an emotionless shell of the woman he loved, she was letting herself feel again. And for that he was grateful, but it still broke his heart to see her in pain. Sokka stood from his position on their bed and gently took her arms and guided her to sit down next to him.

  "What else could I possibly be doing better?” She cried, shaking her head and her chest rising and falling as she heaved. "I just don't understand...what else I can give..."

 "I...I'm not sure," He put his arms around her shoulders and tried to hold her as she cried in an attempt to calm her down, but he felt his anxiety start to bubble up as he racked his brain for another way to bring her comfort. "I know you're doing the best you can, and I wish I knew what I could do to help you. I'm sorry I've been useless, but I promise I'm going to do the best I can to take care of my-"

 Sokka could've sworn his heart stopped beating when he heard a very clear sploosh and felt drops of something hit his ankles.

 His eyes shot open and they both stayed completely still.

 Not even moving a muscle.

 ".... Sokka?"

 ".... Suki?"

 "I think...my water just...broke."

 He inhaled sharply, neither one of them moving still. "A-Are you sure?" He squeaked.

 "Well, considering there's a huge puddle on our floor and I'm soaking wet, yeah. I'd say I'm pretty sure."

 ...

 "Are you sure you can handle this?"

 Suki smiled nervously as she watched her husband take in panicked deep breaths and push them back out in a rapid speed, and if she wasn't in so much pain right now, she would've laughed at him. He was more nervous than she was, and all he'd done so far was sit in a chair and hold her hand. It's not like she was even squeezing that hard, or anything. "Because the last time you were around a woman giving birth, you didn't exactly have a positive reaction."

  No, he was just squeamish. Or a wimp. Or both, she really couldn't decide.

 "I'm good, great, awesome, fantastic." He whispered in a rushed fashion, and she wondered if he needed a paper bag or something because honestly, was he even breathing right now? "So good."

 Suki rolled her eyes.

 He sure was lucky he was cute.

 "It's time to start pushing, dear." The healer told her, and Suki took a deep breath before her eyes shifted over to her husband.

 "Try and stay awake this time.” She patted his arm lightly.

 ..

 "So, I get passing out's not on the table, but what about throwing up?" He pretended to gag.

 "Sokka!"

 "Okay, okay, kill a guy for trying to make a joke, why don't ya!"

 "Shut up!" He heard his wife growl, but he only smirked in response because HA! She was giving birth right now.

 Which meant she was too busy bringing their child into the world to punch him-

 "Ow!" He gasped before shooting her a quick glare. "Hey!"

 "I'm really going to need you to focus on your breathing, dear," The healer tried to tell them, and it was clear she was getting irritated with their banter. "We're almost there and you need the least amount of distractions as possible-"

 "Yeah, you focus on your breathing!"

 She squeezed his fingers so tight he thought she was going to crush it into dust and blow it out the window. Then he stopped talking, and all that could be heard from his lips were his squeals and whines of pain.

 He wife was strong.

 ..

  "The baby's crowning!" The healer exclaimed with a wide smile.

 "Hooray! Our kid's a king!" Sokka proclaimed, his right fist pumping into the air as his left stayed intertwined with his wife's.

 Suki groaned. He was making dad jokes and he wasn’t even a dad yet. " That’s the stupdist joke you’ve ever told me and I'm so going to kill you after this." But he could've sworn he saw a trace of a smile on her lips as sweat beaded down her forehead.

 He merely shrugged, a sly grin making its way across his cheeks, and teased, "Raise them by yourself then."

 "Anything would be better than our children growing up telling your awful jokes."

 His laugh was loud and hearty enough to echo throughout the entire healing hut, and Sokka thought he saw he watched the healer's eye twitch in annoyance.

 ...

  Sokka always knew he married a warrior, but this was some girl.

 He thought labor was quick.

 But they were in the delivery room for thirteen hours.

  Sokka was absolutely exhausted, he didn't even do anything, and he couldn't even imagine how draining it felt to have the energy sucked out of his wife by the time she gave her last push.

 He grasped her hand tightly as he heard her give out an ultimate sigh of relief and her cries were soon replaced with a smaller, less painful, voice.

 Sokka looked up at the healer with tears welling up in his eyes, his whole world coming to an abrupt halt and he couldn't focus on anything else other than the little bundle she wrapped in a blanket.

 "It's a boy," She whispered hoarsely. Sokka smiled and felt the tears start streaming down his cheeks.

 "It's a boy."

 ...

 "Well I for one think we should name our son Squishy."

 After months of questioning what his place was while his wife endured this pregnancy, he finally realized the best way to support her; making her laugh.

 And boy, was he a natural at that.

 He was great a comic relief.

 Sokka beamed down at his wife, lovingly stroking her hair, still damp with sweat. She looked up at him, exhaustion glazing over her eyes, but smiled warmly and chuckled. "You can call him that." He told him. "But I still want to go with the name we picked out."

 "Dad will be happy," He claimed, tracing his finger along his son’s cheek. "Koda suits you, Squish."  He bent down to kiss his forehead softly, then kissed his wife. "I love you. So much." He felt her smile against his lips.

  "And I love our son."

[floraone]

Hi, I ADORE your smut! I just binged through all of it this long weekend! I really think it stands out in the way you stress importance on consent in particular! Usually I'm actually more into dub-con (I don't know why, but I just find it really sexy? probably not good??) but YOU manage to write consent extremely sexily? I'm sorry if this sounds totally weird, but I wanted to say that. And I also wanted to ask you why consent plays such a big role in your writing? I find it really striking!

Hello my dear anon!!! Thank you so much for this ask AND for reading my smut, and I am SO happy that you enjoy it!

Now, warning ahead. You asked why consent is important to me, and even told me I managed to show you some sexy in it, even though you usually don’t go for it, which is SO FRIGGING GREAT TO ME, but so my answer will be both personal, and science-y, and LENGTHY, so… at your own risk, lol? You asked a psychologist sex researcher this question. And so this is the answer you are getting.

So, to answer your question, let me start a little broader:

Sexual desires are pretty damn diverse. And what you desire can be immensely specific. And that’s a good thing – just like you wouldn’t want everyone to be into wearing the same sparkly hoodie and nothing else but that, you wouldn’t want them to only desire gals with red nail polish. So, here, as with anything else, diversity is something that makes us richer.

Among the diversity in sexual desires are factors we can distinguish, though. Where we can group them specifically. Gender and bodytype are among those. Many people desire one specific gender in the gender spectrum, some don’t, you know this one. But sexual desires and orientations really don’t stop at one gender. Just because you’re into guys doesn’t mean you’re into every man that ever walked this earth. Your desires are more specific than that. So, there are other factors than just gender. One example that I already named is bodytype. And it is also a factor on which I can illustrate the following very well: Variance and diversity is good. But bodytype preference specifically shows us that we are not as diverse as we should be in this regard. If this were a normal distribution, we should have way more variance in what bodytypes people desire. And in fact, statistically seen, we do see that desired bodytypes vary slightly more between both hetero- and homosexual women than they do in men; but in no gender they still vary as much as they “should”. One possible and plausable explanation for this (tho not exclusive! Looking at you, evolutional psychology) is: We are influenced in our preference. By media, by zeitgeist, by the judgemental comments of those around you, by mere exposure even (i.e.: what you’re used to seeing more often!). Heterosexual cis-men might so overwhelmlingly prefer smaller, slender, tight, overtly youthful bodytypes in part  because so many accumulating influences have taught them to. And, because once preference is formed (during and around puberty) it’s highly fucking stable and can not be nudged (see those harmful streams of psychology and pseudo-psychology that have tried to “convert” homosexuality in the much-too-recent past!), these influences are a very powerful and lasting influencial thing! Because we don’t CHOOSE what we desire. It forms without our will, and stays like that (though obviously you can discover sides to it later on that you never even knew were there! Especially because in most cases, we are not exclusive in our desires, and there are more sides to it we have yet to discover!)

So. Anyway.All this I said to make the following point:

Another factor (just like bodytype or gender) in which we statistically distinguish sexual desires in the scientific literature about it, is if people sexually desire consenting sex vs. non-consenting sex. As we saw with bodytypes, what we see and what we’re used to seeing has an effect on what we end up desiring once puberty has finished forming our from-then-on stable desires. Now, please remember we tend to live in what we commonly name a “rape culture” almost everywhere around the world, some places more overwhelmingly “heavy” on it than others. And we do tend to see the correlation that in countries where pornographic material contains exponentially more depictions of rape and non-consenting sex and coercion, where the overcoming of a “no” and the exploitation of helpless sexual partners gets romanticized a lot (looking at you, Japanese porn), more people desire non-consensual sex over consentual sex than in countries where more explicitly non-consentual content is banned. And while way more motivation is needed to commit a sex crime than just sexual arousal towards an individually desired stimulus, it is certainly a risk factor (one that goes both ways, mind you: if you’re into the idea of non-consexual sex, for whatever reason, you’re both more likely to become a perpetrator OR a victim!)

So, what I’m saying here very lenghtily (sorry!): With my fics I write sexual media. From my own experience I can very much attest to the fact that pubescent kids read smutty fanfiction. I did back then. It was my first introduction into sexual media as a kid. And lots of sexual media, especially mainstream pornography but not exclusively, contains non-consenting sex which seems to be one factor among many that has the power to influence kids in their puberty to develop sexual desires for those depicted stimuli.

This is of course not to say that it’s bad to be into a little “dub-con”, as you say. I myself enjoy consentual powerplay A LOT. You know, depictions of sex where one of the partners gets restrained by the wrists, or frantic sex that can turn a little rough (even when, for me, it’s important that this is ok by both partners very much explicitly!), or quickies without much foreplay and a lot of frenzy that are incredibly arousing to me if the emotions are all laid out for me to read! But I also know I had no choice in desiring this, this is the result of the cocktail of influences both internal and external that I was exposed to until my sexuality fully formed. And I can’t tell you if depictions of dominance and powerplays however consensual might not absolutely turn me off if I’d not grown up in an environment that romanticizes this as I grew up! I might have learned this, in part, through sexual media that I consumed during the onset of my puberty.

And this is one of the many reasons why depictions of consent in the sexual media that I put out is so important to me. I play a teeny tiny part in this grand picture. My fics might be what two, three, ten kids during their puberty consume. And I feel a responsibility towards these two, three, maybe 10 kids that read my content, to put out something where I have the power to not contribute to this rape culture, and instead depict a sexuality that can be communicative, consensual, mostly realistic and still arousing. At least I strive towards that goal, and find some meaning in it!

ESPECIALLY because of my field of work in sexual aggression research, AND because in mainstream media, outside of porn, sex either gets censored completely, or it gets only depicted if it’s problematic! We tend to see a lot of rape in media. In books, in shows, in films. It always tells a narrative. But we rarely get shown explicit, healthy, empowered sexual content where both partners are into exploring every last kink they share!

So yes, there are many people who find a little dub-con, or even non-con, very stimulating. And there is nothing at all wrong with that! (You know, as long as you don’t harm anyone, this goes without saying!) Nobody chooses what floats their boat and it should be completely judgement-free as long as no one is harmed by it. And some people suffer a lot by what they like, too, even if they had no hand in deciting what got them going, which is a whole different topic in and on itself.

It doesn’t mean people aren’t valid in their desires whatever way they are formed sexually.

But I choose to contribute in this teensy-tiny way that I can, that someone who gets exposed to sexual media by me first, might find some kink in consent and communicating their needs to each other. I believe the world would be a safer place if more people were to get turned on by consent. So that is one reason why I always address it, and try to work it into even the most problematic of tropes, because I believe it can be done and I believe it can be done in very arousing ways!

(And yeah, sorry for the length… I was very happy about getting this ask?)

[secret-eggent]

Lady Bird!AU pt2

Only one person kinda asked, (probably since I'm still new here, and it's Kagami), but it's not like that was actually gonna stop me from writing a 24+ bullet list for this AU. ᕕ( ՞ ᗜ ՞ )ᕗ

🐞Thanks to some convenient time alterations; Kagami got the earrings after the first incident with Stoneheart. Marinette saw her taking tryouts for that year's fencing lessons, and made the decision based on her interpretation of Kagami's personality, that she would make a better heroine.

(So basically another What-Would've-Happened-if-Mari-Had-Given-Up-the-Earrings-After-Stoneheart?plot, but to someone other than Alya.)

🐾She IS a great hero. Chat Noir still falls for her courage, righteousness, and intelligence. The only problem: Lady Bird's too serious. She believes that so much responsibility should be handled as a job, not a joyrun.

🐞She despises how aloof Chat acts, treating him like he's a child, sidekick, or just inferior, for not treating Hawkmoth's threat as something as dangerous as it is.

🐾Adrien goes to the same school as Kagami, since nO OVERBEARING PARENT WOULD ACTUALLY LET THEIR CHILD ATTEND A SCHOOL THAT WAS THE FIRST TARGET OF THE LATEST SUPERVILLAIN?!?!? ((speaking as someone who HAS an overprotective control freak of a parent!)))

🐞Though, that was only after D'Argencourt (the fencing teacher) convinced Gabriel that group classes were a good idea for Adrien's skill development, where he met Kagami, and later convinced his father to let him attend her school.

🐾Chat Noir still has the habit of throwing himself in front of/sacrificing himself for Lady Bird, still resulting in the akuma controlling him.

🐞Lady Bird snaps after one too many times trying to fight him and the akuma; feeling like she's done all the heavy lifting, and been the only one taking it seriously, and she's just so stressed.

She told him that he and the first Ladybug were the wrong choices for heroes.

🐾Adrien is depressed because sh*t, with his life, it's pretty obvious no one wants him for him. His mom is gone (for all he knows she left, probably without saying goodbye,) his dad is a cold dou**e and completely discourages Adrien being himself, his first 'partner' ALSO left without a word, and now his new partner completely despises him when he was just trying to help.

🐞The people of Paris actually are NOT fans of Chat Noir, either.

🐾They follow Lady Bird's projected opinion; that he's a goof-off sidekick. And not to mention he can literally destroy anything. It's actually kinda scary, to think a power like that is in the hands of an irresponsible kid.

🐞Marinette has issues because she realizes what an opportunity she passed up, and how she feels unfulfilled, now, without the miraculous. It doesn't really tear her up inside, until she has the run-in with Chat Noir, on the night of Glaciator.

🐾Lo and behold, she realized that Chat isn't quite as much of an insufferable dunce as everyone believes, and is really pretty mad that people have thought that for so long, because he was her partner, and he is a good person.

🐞THAT'S the reason Marinette and Kagami become rivals. Because Mari decides to put the blame for all that on Kagami. (She knows it was her own fault giving up Tikki— But she still feels like she wasn't meant to be a hero; But it's still not justifying Lady Bird taking it out on Chat.)

🐾Kagami doesn't actually understand why Marinette is so snarky to her all of a sudden during any run-ins, since she doesn't know that she was Ladybug, but honestly she doesn't really care. (She makes accidental enemies all the time, if people don't like to be buttered up, they don't have to talk to her.)

🐞Marinette ends up becoming Chat Noir's main supporter, showing up to the battles with Alya for the Ladyblog and basically being the only one cheering him on, and Adrien does what he can to help her with her fashion career and overall happiness, too.

🐾She's his first choice when Master Fu gives him a miraculous for an extra hand.

🐞Right— since Adrien is going to school with Kagami, when he finds the book and brings it to school, Kagami is the one who sees it while they're studying. But since she can't justifiably take it, Tikki tells Plagg that Adrien has to bring it to Master Fu, so he's now the one with the majority of intel.

🐾Kagami, however, found it suspicious that some fairly random guy would have something pertaining to the Miraculous. Especially since they seemed to be such a well-kept secret. She decided to investigate by herself. Skip Volpina, straight to The Collector.

🐞It's written off to her as Gabriel was just a collector of rare items, and she and Adrien dismiss him as a suspect for Hawkmoth.

🐾Kagami does have a crush on Adrien, but he sees her as another really good friend. Unlike our cannon Marinette, however, she doesn't ultimately get outwardly jealous or disappointed when he says he doesn't have feelings for her, because she has some decency and respect for him a different personality, like every realistic human is respectably varied in that department.

🐞Chat Noir secretly adopts himself into the Dupain-Cheng family, they don't object because they like having him around, and Tom insists it's safer.

🐾I feel I should mention Tom was already Chat Noir's biggest fan, and got super excited the first time they met.

🐞Yes, a lot of the romance is MariChat, for a multitude of reasons that I'll go into if asked, but for now, would just deviate into a tangent right here. So I'll just say, while LadyNoir is my OTP, I believe MariChat is just,,, critically important to a healthier relationship with each other? (;-;)

🐾I also saw someone point out that it would be interesting to see what would've happened if Adrien and Marinette had met Kagami and Luka first, and how it could have affected their implicated 'soulmate' status quo. I second this, and I like to see where/how it does fit in this AU.

(There was much more to that post that I also support, but this is what's relevant here.)

🐞This started dragging on about four bullets ago, so— while I'm still super gun-ho about this— I'll give you all a break anyways. ;D

[hushedhands]

Challenge 64

 @insilentscreams-swift​, @cecilia02, @readingbetweenworlds

* Mayland find out that May’s pregnant. 

Nine months.

May didn’t want to get her hopes up because she and Ryland had officially been trying to conceive a baby for nine months, and if they’d been lucky the first time, they’d have one by now. She’d been dreading this month a little more every single time she had to break the news to Ry that she wasn’t pregnant. Again.

A year ago now, they’d attended a fundraising event on Ames’ behalf, a luncheon that was raising money for a local women’s clinic. May and Ry had gotten to hold several babies, the beneficiaries of donated baby clothes and supplies, whose mothers had gotten inexpensive or free prenatal care which had allowed those chubby, perfect little gurglers to be born in an uncomplicated way, healthy and strong. Listening to the doctors and nurses thank the donors that night, and go on and on about the advances in medical technology that were helping lower maternal and infant mortality rates, planted the seed of a wild idea in May’s head. It hadn’t been safe twenty years before. Was it safer now?

She’d been afraid to bring it up for a few days, but the idea had hooked into her brain and wouldn’t let her go. To try to get rid of the nagging thought, she’d reminded herself of the least pleasant babysitting experiences she’d ever had: babysitting Leo and Rogan as toddlers, heathens who liked to climb furniture and turn the knobs on the stove if you turned your back for too long, and cranky newborn Lief who could puke and pee all at the same time, all while May was trying to change his already soiled diaper.

Maybe it had just been too many years since her nieces and nephews had been babies, maybe the trauma was fading. Something reckless inside of her made her want to try despite the bad memories. She didn’t think she could be a better mom than her older sisters, but maybe she’d learned enough from them not to be a total disaster?

She gathered up the courage to mention it to Ryland in the most casual way she could, on a hike through a secluded section of the Angeles national park. She’d been expecting resistance, even annoyance; they’d always known they’d never have children and they’d lived a pretty great life built around the freedom that being childless allowed them. But when she offhandedly asked, “Do you ever wish that we had our own children?” the look on his face was pure relief.

He’d been thinking the same persistent, crazy thoughts she had for days, but he would never have suggested she risk her health for such a thing.

Over the following week they began discussing options in the most general way possible. Neither of them wanted to get too specific yet, they were trying to keep themselves from wanting this too much, and it was too early to know if it was even realistic.

They could adopt a child at any age, an attractive choice that could always be revisited later because it did not depend on the performance of May’s heart or uterus. They could use a surrogate, someone they knew and loved and trusted, someone who would be in the baby’s life forever. At that point, a few days into their discussion, May began looking for advice from America on the condition of absolute secrecy. She wanted to know if America had any bright ideas for a surrogate, and she did. Ames immediately volunteered to have the baby.

This toyed with May’s hopes enough to make her cry right then and there. On the one hand, America had had five beautiful, perfect babies, and was completely capable of making more. The fact that this wasn’t just something Ames was willing to do, but something that she seemed excited to do, was more than May could stand. But on the other hand, America was the Queen of Illéa, and the laws surrounding her uterus were fairly specific, though totally archaic. There would have to be a major legislative push to allow the Queen to give birth to a baby that wasn’t the King’s, and though Ames was a capable legislator, May didn’t think she could reasonably ask that of her sister. Not to mention, it could take years at this point and the amendment or repeal could still fail.

America and May also knew that Kenna would be more than happy to help out, but the condition of her heart wasn’t really all that better than May’s these days. It wouldn’t make sense to ask Kenna before trying for herself.  

So in the end, May ended up with Ryland in the hospital wing of the Palace, discussing her options with the brightest minds in several fields of medicine. There was a fertility expert, a cardiac expert, and an obstetrician, all talking very quickly, using enormous words that May wished Gerad was there to decode for her. By the end of her checkup, the doctors had presented her with a plan to safely, healthily have her own baby. It involved changing some of the medications she took for her heart, and adding a new mix of medications to aid her circulatory system, but each individual doctor agreed that it was a great plan and, barring any unforeseen complications, would result in a healthy baby.

From then on, it was up to May and Ryland to decide that they were ready to go through with this, and then to make it happen.

She’d stopped taking her birth control tablets 10 months ago, which meant that nine months ago would have been the first time she possibly could have conceived. The doctors had offered her the same fertility medicines that America and Kenna had once used to conceive Addy, Leo, and Rogan. May didn’t trust her body to bring twins to term without serious complications though, so she and Ry both agreed to stay away from those. If they were going to have a baby, they’d make it on their own.

Except, they hadn’t. Over and over again, they hadn’t. She’d begun to wonder how long she could do this to herself, how much disappointment she could bear before she broke down.

So this month when her period hadn’t come for a full week after it was due, she’d reluctantly scheduled an appointment with the obstetrician from her panel of experts. She knew it was probably stress-related, or maybe some other hormones in her body were out of balance, or any other of the myriad of reasons this kind of thing could happen. She didn’t want to think that, exactly 9 months after they’d hoped for a baby, she and Ryland might finally be getting one.

Ry kept her company while she waited for blood test results. As they bided their time, they planned their next overseas trip, wanting to squeeze Italy onto their itineraries before swinging through England to visit friends. Ry kept May calm, though her stomach was a tangle of electric eels. She just wanted this over with. She was tired, she wanted to think about something else. Maybe it was time to consider artificial implantation? Or maybe revisit the surrogate option again, and this time see if anyone outside of the family was interested?

But when the obstetrician returned, she didn’t leave them in suspense for a second longer. She closed the door so that they had privacy and immediately said, “It’s a positive test, Duchess.”

May didn’t want to believe it. “Does that mean… what are the chances it’s wrong?”

“Slim to none, but let’s take a look and see what we’ve got.” she said seriously, and with the press of a button the doctor awakened the ultrasound machine May had only ever seen used on her sisters.

Ry’s hand was shanking in hers when she met his eyes. She licked her dry lips nervously as she leaned back on the examination table. She had to stop herself from apologizing for the excited, borderline-panicked expression on his face. He had his hopes up, exactly what she’d wanted to avoid.

The jelly on her stomach was cold enough to make her squirm, and it sat atop her skin rather than sinking in, a slippery barrier. It took a moment after the doctor gently pressed the wand to May’s lower stomach before she found what she was looking for. She moved the stick around a little this way or that way until she was seeing what she wanted to see. She turned the screen around so that May and Ry could see, too.

It all looked like inscrutable grey and black blobs to her. She’d seen all of her nieces and nephews except Astra in this way, but she still couldn’t decipher what the grainy, fuzzy images were supposed to be.

“The uterine lining is thickened in exactly the way we’d expect it to be for a healthy pregnancy, and if you look right there,” she pointed at the lower section of the small black oval in the middle of the screen, “That’s the baby.”

May’s jaw dropped. It looked like a splotch of gray paint on a black palette, not a baby. “Are you sure?”

The doctor finally smiled, “Absolutely positive.”

It didn’t have arms or legs or discernible features of any kind yet, it was just a little blob of paint. May knew from experience, however, what kind of amazing art could come from a simple blob of paint.

Ry traced his thumb on her cheek and it came away wet. May sniffled heavily, realizing she’d started crying at some point. He pressed a kiss to her lips, far, far beyond the words to express how happy he was.

The doctor said, “You’ve still got a lot of milestones to hit before this baby is a sure-thing, but from everything I’ve seen, I’d say you’re off to a promising start. I’m going to send copies of your blood test results and this ultrasound to the other doctors on your team. Congratulations, May. You’re pregnant.”

What happened next was a blur. At some point the doctor cleaned off May’s stomach and left the room, handing Ryland a printed photograph of the ultrasound image of their baby.

Ry wrapped May in the warmest, sweetest hug she’d ever had and kissed her temple dozens of times.

May dug in and found her words first, “I’ve never been this happy in my entire life.”

Ry laughed, though he clearly agreed, and said, “What about our wedding?”

“Fine, yes, our wedding.” May rolled her eyes. “I just meant… I wanted this more than I thought I did. I had no idea how much it was slowly killing me not to be pregnant after trying for as long as we have… and now that anvil is off my shoulders and I just… I can’t—“ she lost the words again, but he understood. This ranked as one of the best days of their lives.

Ry sank to one knee and let his hands fall from her back around to her hips. He used his thumbs to brush her tiny navel, and met her eyes with pure delight. “All that matters in the whole wide world to me anymore is keeping you and this baby safe. I think I used to care about other things too, but I can’t remember what they are for the life of me.”

May giggled, and then she placed a hand on his cheek in a gentle caress. “We’re still going to Italy and England though, right?”

Ry didn’t miss a beat, “If the doctors say it’s safe, then we’ll go. If the doctors say it isn’t safe, then who cares about Italy and England? Our friends can come visit us for a change, they’ll understand.”

“Yeah,” May gloated, “It’s only until November. Let them suffer the jet lag for a while.”

“That’s right.” Ry stood back up and kissed her again, leaving his lips on hers for several seconds longer than usual. Then he leant back and chuckled at a thought that had just flitted through his mind. “Your family is going to spontaneously combust when they find out about this. They didn’t even know we were really trying!”

May giggled, imagining the shrieks her sisters would emit, the way Maxon and James would blatantly grow misty-eyed at the news that they’d have another baby niece or nephew to spoil in just a few short months. “Hey, I want to tell Ames and Kenna tonight.” May said. “I know there’s still a high chance of miscarriage, but I wouldn’t want to suffer through a miscarriage without their support.”

“Okay.” Ry didn’t argue; it was entirely her choice.

“But after them, let’s not tell anyone for a long time.”

“Who, like your mother?”

“I’ll tell her eventually, but I was really talking about the public.”

“You don’t want to have a huge baby announcement?” Ry clarified. He was surprised but not dismayed.

“I want this time to be ours, just for us and the people closest to us. I’ll tell mom in a couple of months, but do you think… How long do you think we can avoid telling the public?”

Ry shrugged, “I guess it depends. I mean, they’ll figure it out when they see you at the Halloween, just a few weeks shy of full-term, won’t they? Or Rosie’s birthday? Or Maxon’s birthday? Maybe even the Grateful Feast Parade?”  

“Yeah.” May sighed. Baby rumors haunted Ryland and her all the time, the tabloids would figure this out pretty quickly. “Unless… maybe I don’t go this year… Maybe I just… relax in private? Stay away from cameras?”

This shocked Ry. His wife was a media starlet, she loved using her fame to help Ames and Maxon stay in the people’s favor. She’d never taken a break from public appearances before, not once, not even when she was sick or exhausted. “May, are you sure?”

“I don’t even know if it would work, but I think it might be nice to try.” May shrugged. “I’ve given the public a lot of myself over the years, but this—“ She placed her right wrist on her left hip so that her arm hugged her stomach, “I want this to be ours.”

“It’s ambitious,” Ryland admitted with admiration in his voice, “but if anyone can do it, you can.”

May grinned up at him. “Ry?”

“Yes, May?”

“We’re having a baby.” she beamed.

“I know.” he laughed, pulling her in for a tight hug.  

[collegeessayguy]

What does your study schedule usually look like? If your answer is “procrastinate for a week, panic-eat a bag of pizza rolls, chug seven cups of coffee, and then stay up all night studying while quietly hating myself” you’re in the right place! We have a more sustainable study plan for you.

While creating a study schedule will never rank up there with The World’s Most Fun Activities, the ultimate study schedule will dramatically reduce your stress levels and likely improve your grades. Most importantly, it will  free up time for you to explore what you love outside of the classroom.

And that’s just as important as getting good grades or taking rigorous classes.

If you’re ready to overcome procrastination and create a smart study plan that’s right for you, your schedule, and your classes, read on.

5 TIPS TO CREATE THE STUDY PLAN THAT’S RIGHT FOR YOU

1. EXPLORE WHAT KIND OF LEARNER YOU ARE.

We all learn differently; not all of us retain information by reading books and taking notes. In fact, there are four different learning styles: visual, auditory, reading/writing, and kinesthetic or tactile. If you’re not sure how you learn best, this quiz can help. Most of us have a primary learning style but incorporating different elements of each learning style into your studying can help you retain more information.

Examples of how to use different learning styles in your study plan for a History final:

Reading/writing learning style: Re-read your textbook, taking notes on the most important points from each section, and then pre-write answers to some of the questions you might be asked

Verbal learning style: Set up a weekly study group with classmates and take turns discussing different historical periods and their major figures

Audio/visual learning style: Listen to the audio version of your textbook if it’s available, or hop on YouTube or Khan Academy and watch a few videos about your topic

Kinesthetic learning style: Map diagrams of information or create flashcards and group the flashcards into different topics and place them in different parts of the room, so you have to walk to different parts of the room to quiz yourself on different topics.

Not sure which approach works best for you? Experiment and see which study style results in the most enjoyable study sessions and the best academic results. Once you know, you can use those methods more regularly.

2. WORK AT TIMES OF DAY WHEN YOU FEEL MOST PRODUCTIVE AND FOCUSED.

You’ve probably read all those lifehacking articles about how to become an early bird, right? The truth is: Some people simply aren’t their best in the morning and no amount of coffee is going to change that!

We’ve all got different rhythms and we each excel at different times of day—the key is to figure out when your personal golden hours are. Are you more productive when you’re up before the sun? Do you do your best work post-lunch, pre-dinner? Or maybe you’re a true night owl and your brain doesn’t really turn on till 10 pm.

Not sure how to figure out when you’re most productive? This quiz will help.

3. BREAKS: THE HIDDEN SECRET OF STUDYING

Good news: taking breaks actually makes you more productive. But how many study breaks should you take? And what ‘qualifies’ as a study break?

If you haven’t tried The Pomodoro Technique, your studying schedule is about to dramatically change. Essentially, The Pomodoro Technique is a way of structuring your work time: one 25-minute session of uninterrupted work, followed by one five-minute break. Then another 25-minute monotasking work session and another five-minute break, latherrinserepeat.

It’s particularly important that what you choose to do during your five-minute breaks is completely different than what you do during your 25-minute work sessions. If you’re writing a paper during your 25-minute session, you wouldn’t spend your break checking email or doing research. You’d spend your break loading the dishwasher, doing a few yoga stretches, or making yourself a fresh cup of coffee.

The Pomodoro Technique works for two reasons. First, 25 minutes is not an intimidating amount of time. No matter how onerous the task, you can commit to doing it for 25 minutes. And honestly? Getting started is usually the hardest part! Once you dig in, you’ll usually find that the thing you were avoiding is much easier than you thought.

Second, these short, totally-different-from-what-you-were-doing breaks prevent burnout, overwhelm, dry eyes, and those achy shoulders you get from hunching over your computer for five hours straight.

Pro-tip: You can download a Pomodoro technique timer Chrome extension for your desktop here that sets 25 and 5-minute timers. You can also block certain websites (Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube), that might otherwise distract you when you’re in the zone. Here are some for your phone.

4. GIVE YOURSELF A REALISTIC AMOUNT OF TIME TO STUDY.

Humans are notoriously bad at estimating how long things will take. In fact, we’re so bad, psychologists have studied this phenomenon and given it a name—The Planning Fallacy.  

So I guess what I’m saying is: You’re probably wildly underestimating how much time you need to prepare for that test and you’re not alone in that under-estimation.

If you find yourself staying up all night and cramming before a test because you underestimated how long you need to prepare, here’s a better approach:

Estimate how much time you think you’ll need to study

Now double that number

Break that number down into smaller, manageable chunks

Schedule short study sessions every day leading up to the test

So let’s say you think you’ll need four hours to prepare for your history final. It’s probably a safer guess that you’ll need eight hours. Break those eight hours up into four, two-hour study sessions in the days leading up to the test. Really, actually schedule these two-hour study sessions into your calendar. Like this:

And if you don’t need the extra time you’ve allotted to studying? What luck! Use it to do something fun and totally unrelated to test prep. Better to overestimate how much time you need to study than underestimate and create unnecessary panic for yourself.

5. UNDERSTAND THAT LAST-MINUTE-CRAMMING IS BAD FOR LONG-TERM RETENTION (AND SUPER STRESSFUL, TOO).

Studies confirm what most of us have always suspected: cramming for tests doesn’t work. A study out of UCLA proved that regardless of how much a student generally studies each day, if that student sacrifices sleep time in order to study more than usual, they’re likely to have more academic problems, not less, on the following day.

Not only does late-night cramming undermine previous study efforts, cramming is terrible for long-term retention. Studies show that you lose 80% (eighty percent!) of what you ‘learn’ when you cram. So, if you cram for a test early in the semester, it’s very likely you’ll forget most of what was on that test by the time you get to the final … and then you’ll have to study that same information all over again!

Ultimately, the best study plan is the one that works for you. If you need your study schedule to include five-minute dance breaks, discussions about course content over lattes and donuts, or 15 different half-hour study sessions, that’s totally fine! Create a study plan that’s right for you and you might be surprised by how much it changes the way you approach projects, work, and life in general!

Website | Twitter | YouTube | Instagram | Facebook | Pinterest

[collegeessayguy]

What does your study schedule usually look like? If your answer is “procrastinate for a week, panic-eat a bag of pizza rolls, chug seven cups of coffee, and then stay up all night studying while quietly hating myself” you’re in the right place! We have a more sustainable study plan for you.

While creating a study schedule will never rank up there with The World’s Most Fun Activities, the ultimate study schedule will dramatically reduce your stress levels and likely improve your grades. Most importantly, it will  free up time for you to explore what you love outside of the classroom.

And that’s just as important as getting good grades or taking rigorous classes.

If you’re ready to overcome procrastination and create a smart study plan that’s right for you, your schedule, and your classes, read on.

5️⃣ TIPS TO CREATE THE STUDY PLAN THAT’S RIGHT FOR YOU

1. EXPLORE WHAT KIND OF LEARNER YOU ARE.

We all learn differently; not all of us retain information by reading books and taking notes. In fact, there are four different learning styles: visual, auditory, reading/writing, and kinesthetic or tactile. If you’re not sure how you learn best, this quiz can help. Most of us have a primary learning style but incorporating different elements of each learning style into your studying can help you retain more information.

Examples of how to use different learning styles in your study plan for a History final:

Reading/writing learning style: Re-read your textbook, taking notes on the most important points from each section, and then pre-write answers to some of the questions you might be asked

Verbal learning style: Set up a weekly study group with classmates and take turns discussing different historical periods and their major figures

Audio/visual learning style: Listen to the audio version of your textbook if it’s available, or hop on YouTube or Khan Academy and watch a few videos about your topic

Kinesthetic learning style: Map diagrams of information or create flashcards and group the flashcards into different topics and place them in different parts of the room, so you have to walk to different parts of the room to quiz yourself on different topics.

Not sure which approach works best for you? Experiment and see which study style results in the most enjoyable study sessions and the best academic results. Once you know, you can use those methods more regularly.

2. WORK AT TIMES OF DAY WHEN YOU FEEL MOST PRODUCTIVE AND FOCUSED.

You’ve probably read all those lifehacking articles about how to become an early bird, right? The truth is: Some people simply aren’t their best in the morning and no amount of coffee is going to change that!

We’ve all got different rhythms and we each excel at different times of day—the key is to figure out when your personal golden hours are. Are you more productive when you’re up before the sun? Do you do your best work post-lunch, pre-dinner? Or maybe you’re a true night owl and your brain doesn’t really turn on till 10 pm.

Not sure how to figure out when you’re most productive? This quiz will help.

3. BREAKS: THE HIDDEN SECRET OF STUDYING

Good news: taking breaks actually makes you more productive. But how many study breaks should you take? And what ‘qualifies’ as a study break?

If you haven’t tried The Pomodoro Technique, your studying schedule is about to dramatically change. Essentially, The Pomodoro Technique is a way of structuring your work time: one 25-minute session of uninterrupted work, followed by one five-minute break. Then another 25-minute monotasking work session and another five-minute break, latherrinserepeat.

It’s particularly important that what you choose to do during your five-minute breaks is completely different than what you do during your 25-minute work sessions. If you’re writing a paper during your 25-minute session, you wouldn’t spend your break checking email or doing research. You’d spend your break loading the dishwasher, doing a few yoga stretches, or making yourself a fresh cup of coffee.

The Pomodoro Technique works for two reasons. First, 25 minutes is not an intimidating amount of time. No matter how onerous the task, you can commit to doing it for 25 minutes. And honestly? Getting started is usually the hardest part! Once you dig in, you’ll usually find that the thing you were avoiding is much easier than you thought.

Second, these short, totally-different-from-what-you-were-doing breaks prevent burnout, overwhelm, dry eyes, and those achy shoulders you get from hunching over your computer for five hours straight.

Pro-tip: You can download a Pomodoro technique timer Chrome extension for your desktop here that sets 25 and 5-minute timers. You can also block certain websites (Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube), that might otherwise distract you when you’re in the zone. Here are some for your phone.

4. GIVE YOURSELF A REALISTIC AMOUNT OF TIME TO STUDY.

Humans are notoriously bad at estimating how long things will take. In fact, we’re so bad, psychologists have studied this phenomenon and given it a name—The Planning Fallacy.  

So I guess what I’m saying is: You’re probably wildly underestimating how much time you need to prepare for that test and you’re not alone in that under-estimation.

If you find yourself staying up all night and cramming before a test because you underestimated how long you need to prepare, here’s a better approach:

Estimate how much time you think you’ll need to study

Now double that number

Break that number down into smaller, manageable chunks

Schedule short study sessions every day leading up to the test

So let’s say you think you’ll need four hours to prepare for your history final. It’s probably a safer guess that you’ll need eight hours. Break those eight hours up into four, two-hour study sessions in the days leading up to the test. Really, actually schedule these two-hour study sessions into your calendar. Like this:

And if you don’t need the extra time you’ve allotted to studying? What luck! Use it to do something fun and totally unrelated to test prep. Better to overestimate how much time you need to study than underestimate and create unnecessary panic for yourself.

5. UNDERSTAND THAT LAST-MINUTE-CRAMMING IS BAD FOR LONG-TERM RETENTION (AND SUPER STRESSFUL, TOO).

Studies confirm what most of us have always suspected: cramming for tests doesn’t work. A study out of UCLA proved that regardless of how much a student generally studies each day, if that student sacrifices sleep time in order to study more than usual, they’re likely to have more academic problems, not less, on the following day.

Not only does late-night cramming undermine previous study efforts, cramming is terrible for long-term retention. Studies show that you lose 80% (eighty percent!) of what you ‘learn’ when you cram. So, if you cram for a test early in the semester, it’s very likely you’ll forget most of what was on that test by the time you get to the final … and then you’ll have to study that same information all over again!

Ultimately, the best study plan is the one that works for you. If you need your study schedule to include five-minute dance breaks, discussions about course content over lattes and donuts, or  15 different half-hour study sessions, that’s totally fine! Create a study plan that’s right for you and you might be surprised by how much it changes the way you approach projects, work, and life in general!

Website | Twitter | YouTube | Instagram | Facebook | Pinterest

[scripttorture]

Just something I'm curious about - in your torture in fiction posts that deal with sci-fi settings, particularly Star Wars, you list a lot of the torture devices as unrealistic because they're high-tech compared to real life equipment. Is this because you're trying to really stress how how real life torture is carried out? I admittedly haven't studied the topic as in-depth as you, but a lot of the devices used in Star Wars torture scenes seem fancy and space-age to us but in-universe (1/2)

(2/2) things like the droid used to torture Leia in A New Hope are very common and viewed as everyday devices. I guess I’m also asking if a character’s perception of what a common/“low tech” device is would factor into how they select torture methods, or if you think the general technology level of the story doesn’t matter much?

I guess it’s primarily about trying to get people to understand whattorture is.

We are surrounded by stories that, one way or another, suggest torturecan be ‘ok’.

We’re also surrounded by stories that, knowingly or not, get their imageof torture from taking what torturers sayat face value.

And the idea of using high-tech devices, complicated devices, in tortureis doing just that. It is believing these ignorant, pathetic brutes when theysay that what they do is actually ‘scientific’, that it can be ‘improved’, thatthey personally are ‘really good at it’ and that they personally are the specialexception flying against every piece of scientific evidence we have.

The idea of torture being high-tech is heavily linked to the ideatorture can be ‘improved’. It’s a cop out that says ‘well this time didn’t workI guess we need to build a better droid’.

It’s also heavily linked tothe idea that ‘clean’ non-scarring tortures are somehow ‘safer’, that you cancause someone massive amounts of pain and trauma but it’s ok it won’t damagethem. Because it’s ‘scientific’.

Please understand that this anger is not directed at you. This is thememory of sifting through eloquent, newspaper published arguments ‘for’waterboarding and too many conversations where I am asked to ‘prove’ torturecould never work under increasingly ludicrously sci-fi circumstances.

It’s the way so many people seem to automatically turn a discussionabout stopping torture towards ‘wellperhaps if we just tortured people in the ‘right’ way-’

It isn’t about what sort oftechnology is common in the setting.

Almost everyone has a mobile phone where I live. I think it’s safe toassume that the prisons and police stations where a lot of torture takes place have mobile phones, televisions,computers, microwaves.

There has never been a singlereported incident I can find of them being used to torture.

It’s not just expense, it’s practicality. The more complicated and hightech something is the easier it is to break and the harder it is to use withouttraining.

From the torturer’s perspective torture is all about using the least amount of effort.

Anything that takes longer, anything that breaks in use, anything eventhe slightest bit more inconvenient will lose out compared to ‘why don’t wejust borrow the garden hose and hit them with it?’

The torture devices of the past were nothigh tech, even for the times they were created. (Take a look at a rack, thentake a look at the types of ships Europeans were using at the same time forlong distance navigation). Using the vast majority of them boils down toturning a screw.

There’s also the question of the effort,time and money¸ that goes into creating high tech devices.

How big would the group of people behind that one droid have to be? You’dneed designers, mechanics and a way totest it just to get a prototype. The first attempt would probably go wrong,because it’s a complicated, high tech piece of equipment. All of the peopleinvolved in it’s creation need to be paid, housed and have access to thecorrect materials for the decades it would take to get one working model. Thenyou’d need to source materials in bulk, you’d need to assemble them correctlyand you’d need to persuade people that this thing is better than just using a bucket of water. That’s worth the moneybeing asked for it.

The only high tech torturedevice that’s really taken off is the Taser. According to Rejali it took about8 attempts and a lot of time andmoney on someone’s part to get it off the ground. It was initially rejected bypolice departments as too difficult to use and too easy to break.

It’s not that police departments weren’tusing electrical torture, they just found that hand cranked magnetos, carbatteries and cow prods were a lot easier to use. Because they’re less complicated.

So no- I don’t think thatcharacter’s perception of what tech is ‘normal’ factors into what gets used intorture at all. Becausewhat we see in real life is that everyday technology doesn’t tend to get used in torture. It’s more effort for thetorturer, it’s more difficult to use, it’s more likely to break and in somecases probably more likely to get the torturer caught.

That last point may not be a factor in all stories but the rest of thosepoints definitely are.

There’s a difference between showing an evil organisation building abigger, ‘better’ bomb and showing them using high tech torture. In the formerthey’re investing in killing people more efficiently; they know they might notget the result they want first time but they also know it will eventually be ‘worth’the money. In the latter example they’re pouring money into a project that won’t‘work’ any better and (from their view more importantly) that their torturerswon’t want to use.

So yes it’s about realism but beyond that it’s what unrealistic tropesmean in these stories.

I run this blog because I want to change the narrative: because I wantto live in a world where pop culture doesn’tencourage or glorify torture.

And if you want to kill an idea you need to go for the joints.

Torture isn’t sophisticated.It isn’t complicated. And most importantly it not only fails, it cannot be improved. Brutality doesn’tbecome more acceptable just because it’s delivered via a shiny new package, itdoesn’t become less harmful just because the damage is hard to see.

I know some of the things I talk about probably seem odd or harmless toa lot of readers but this is about…tracking what those ideas prop up.

I hope that answers your question. :)

Edit: So there’s a counter argument in the comments which I’m going to respond to very briefly.

1) Torture ‘for’ information does not work.(See O’Mara and Rejali)

2) Scaring people you’re trying to interrogate has been shown to be a less effective strategy. (See E and L Alison)

3) Torturers are self selecting. (See Rejali)

4) Lie detectors do not work. (See O’Mara)

5) All the Star Wars movies I’ve reviewed so far have actually handled torture pretty well. The bad guys assume it ‘works’ sure, but the first three movies show torture failing consistently and they show it failing in realistic ways.

Disclaimer

[leonorakidd93]

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[collegeessayguy]

What does your study schedule usually look like? If your answer is “procrastinate for a week, panic-eat a bag of pizza rolls, chug seven cups of coffee, and then stay up all night studying while quietly hating myself” you’re in the right place! We have a more sustainable study plan for you.

While creating a study schedule will never rank up there with The World’s Most Fun Activities, the ultimate study schedule will dramatically reduce your stress levels and likely improve your grades. Most importantly, it will  free up time for you to explore what you love outside of the classroom.

And that’s just as important as getting good grades or taking rigorous classes.

If you’re ready to overcome procrastination and create a smart study plan that’s right for you, your schedule, and your classes, read on.

5 TIPS TO CREATE THE STUDY PLAN THAT’S RIGHT FOR YOU

1. EXPLORE WHAT KIND OF LEARNER YOU ARE.

We all learn differently; not all of us retain information by reading books and taking notes. In fact, there are four different learning styles: visual, auditory, reading/writing, and kinesthetic or tactile. If you’re not sure how you learn best, this quiz can help. Most of us have a primary learning style but incorporating different elements of each learning style into your studying can help you retain more information.

Examples of how to use different learning styles in your study plan for a History final:

Reading/writing learning style: Re-read your textbook, taking notes on the most important points from each section, and then pre-write answers to some of the questions you might be asked

Verbal learning style: Set up a weekly study group with classmates and take turns discussing different historical periods and their major figures

Audio/visual learning style: Listen to the audio version of your textbook if it’s available, or hop on YouTube or Khan Academy and watch a few videos about your topic

Kinesthetic learning style: Map diagrams of information or create flashcards and group the flashcards into different topics and place them in different parts of the room, so you have to walk to different parts of the room to quiz yourself on different topics.

Not sure which approach works best for you? Experiment and see which study style results in the most enjoyable study sessions and the best academic results. Once you know, you can use those methods more regularly.

2. WORK AT TIMES OF DAY WHEN YOU FEEL MOST PRODUCTIVE AND FOCUSED.

You’ve probably read all those lifehacking articles about how to become an early bird, right? The truth is: Some people simply aren’t their best in the morning and no amount of coffee is going to change that!

We’ve all got different rhythms and we each excel at different times of day—the key is to figure out when your personal golden hours are. Are you more productive when you’re up before the sun? Do you do your best work post-lunch, pre-dinner? Or maybe you’re a true night owl and your brain doesn’t really turn on till 10 pm.

Not sure how to figure out when you’re most productive? This quiz will help.

3. BREAKS: THE HIDDEN SECRET OF STUDYING

Good news: taking breaks actually makes you more productive. But how many study breaks should you take? And what ‘qualifies’ as a study break?

If you haven’t tried The Pomodoro Technique, your studying schedule is about to dramatically change. Essentially, The Pomodoro Technique is a way of structuring your work time: one 25-minute session of uninterrupted work, followed by one five-minute break. Then another 25-minute monotasking work session and another five-minute break, latherrinserepeat.

It’s particularly important that what you choose to do during your five-minute breaks is completely different than what you do during your 25-minute work sessions. If you’re writing a paper during your 25-minute session, you wouldn’t spend your break checking email or doing research. You’d spend your break loading the dishwasher, doing a few yoga stretches, or making yourself a fresh cup of coffee.

The Pomodoro Technique works for two reasons. First, 25 minutes is not an intimidating amount of time. No matter how onerous the task, you can commit to doing it for 25 minutes. And honestly? Getting started is usually the hardest part! Once you dig in, you’ll usually find that the thing you were avoiding is much easier than you thought.

Second, these short, totally-different-from-what-you-were-doing breaks prevent burnout, overwhelm, dry eyes, and those achy shoulders you get from hunching over your computer for five hours straight.

Pro-tip: You can download a Pomodoro technique timer Chrome extension for your desktop here that sets 25 and 5-minute timers. You can also block certain websites (Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube), that might otherwise distract you when you’re in the zone. Here are some for your phone.

4. GIVE YOURSELF A REALISTIC AMOUNT OF TIME TO STUDY.

Humans are notoriously bad at estimating how long things will take. In fact, we’re so bad, psychologists have studied this phenomenon and given it a name—The Planning Fallacy.  

So I guess what I’m saying is: You’re probably wildly underestimating how much time you need to prepare for that test and you’re not alone in that under-estimation.

If you find yourself staying up all night and cramming before a test because you underestimated how long you need to prepare, here’s a better approach:

Estimate how much time you think you’ll need to study

Now double that number

Break that number down into smaller, manageable chunks

Schedule short study sessions every day leading up to the test

So let’s say you think you’ll need four hours to prepare for your history final. It’s probably a safer guess that you’ll need eight hours. Break those eight hours up into four, two-hour study sessions in the days leading up to the test. Really, actually schedule these two-hour study sessions into your calendar. Like this:

And if you don’t need the extra time you’ve allotted to studying? What luck! Use it to do something fun and totally unrelated to test prep. Better to overestimate how much time you need to study than underestimate and create unnecessary panic for yourself.

5. UNDERSTAND THAT LAST-MINUTE-CRAMMING IS BAD FOR LONG-TERM RETENTION (AND SUPER STRESSFUL, TOO).

Studies confirm what most of us have always suspected: cramming for tests doesn’t work. A study out of UCLA proved that regardless of how much a student generally studies each day, if that student sacrifices sleep time in order to study more than usual, they’re likely to have more academic problems, not less, on the following day.

Not only does late-night cramming undermine previous study efforts, cramming is terrible for long-term retention. Studies show that you lose 80% (eighty percent!) of what you ‘learn’ when you cram. So, if you cram for a test early in the semester, it’s very likely you’ll forget most of what was on that test by the time you get to the final … and then you’ll have to study that same information all over again!

Ultimately, the best study plan is the one that works for you. If you need your study schedule to include five-minute dance breaks, discussions about course content over lattes and donuts, or 15 different half-hour study sessions, that’s totally fine! Create a study plan that’s right for you and you might be surprised by how much it changes the way you approach projects, work, and life in general!

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