#set up my whole work space with my notebook and markers and pens

[125storejuice]

.

[btswishes]

Love me for who I am now

Bucky x Reader ( Chapter 2 )

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Summary: You apply for the Stark internship and end up getting it, so now you have 5 months to make a good impression to continue working with the Avengers.

A/N: Continuing my little experiment here with chapter2, a bit more filler for the story. Sorry for any mistakes made, hope you enjoy it even a tiny bit.

Word count:  2,903

Warmings: fights, harsh language, not part of the original MCU

Y/N- Your name 

Y/L/N- Your Last Name

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

   The suitcase made a slight thumping sound, when you laid it down on the floor next to your desk. Wasting no time books found their new home on the empty shelves, notebooks fell asleep in the dark drawers. Pens, pencils, markers and all your stationary soon followed suit and found their own little space to rest.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y.” the silence in the room finally got overthrown by the voice of its new owner, asking for some help in the matters unfolding 

Yes Miss Y/N

“Would you put a timer for 5min from now please?” still focused onto your stuff, finding them a visible but safe from damage storage. Nothing could destroy as well as time and dust did.

Timer set for 5 minutes from now.

“Thank you.” The only thing left to do now was to get the clothes in the closet and move the tech to the lab. Hopefully Dr. Banner wouldn’t mind waiting a bit more, not like he seemed to but who knows, Hulk lived inside him after all. You didn’t want to take a chance and play with his limits. The closet was hidden inside the wall, stealthy I must say. Toothpaste and toothbrush, essentials and cosmetics. All was done, now.

      Ding Ding Ding.  

Timer is going off  Miss. Shall I turn it off or restart it?

“Thank you F.R.I.D.A.Y. You can turn it off. “

  Your laptop and small bag were safely nestled under your arm, making your way outside the room.  For a moment you thought you got lost, but the orange tint of the sun’s rays soon pulled your attention in the right direction. Around the corner your nose caught the smell of caramel. Your head hesitantly protruded behind the pillar, as you called out to the man holding 2 cups in his hands firmly.

“Oh.” He jumped a bit, reaching out offering one of the mugs “ I hope you like it, we don’t have much selection when it comes to tea here. Coffee addicts you know.” he laughed out

“It is ok. Thank you very much.” Your leg levered and you swung onto the bar chair like it was nothing, taking a sip from the hot drink. You felt it warm you up slowly as it went down, melting away a bit of your anxiety. Once again your sight was captivated by the view. No one knows how much time passed since you got lost in the sunset, but it was nice. You could barely hear the bustling city from the 134th floor. It was only you, the sun and the room. Quiet almost like a safe serene space.

“Beautiful isn’t it.” Bruce shook you out of your little mind palace

“Mm? Ah, yes. Very much so. “ you puffed out some air with your smile, eyes forming little crescent moons “I feel like a cat, my attention keeps drifting to the glass unintentionally.”

“I understand you. I keep doing that myself and I have lived in the compound for quite some time now. “ the conversation was lighthearted, easily drifting over the main reason for your arrival “One would think I would be used to it by now.”

“Mr Stark made this place so calm. Big yet homey.” Your head scanned the area, words intriguing the doctor “ In a way it contrasts the inner state of most of the Avengers.” realized what just came out of your lips, your body stiffened. Oh man, way to ruin it - you thought to yourself “I am so sorry.” The mug clanked under the table, sending a vibration to his palm, as you bowed “I spoke out of place.”

“I think you might be on to something.” Your neck pulled your head up, a few strands of hair falling down next to your soft cheek. Bruce was still looking at the setting sun with a soft smile, his jaw exposing the beard to the light, coloring it a deep fiery yellow hue. There was something nostalgic in his dark eyes. “Most of us here have some sort of troubled past- lets sugar coat it a bit. This whole building, on the levels we use., is like a constant Zen state. It calms us down unintentionally. How do I say this...” He turned towards his coffee, laughing out almost silently.

“Maybe it offers you the peace you couldn’t have on the inside, masking the pain from past trauma. A way to indirectly cope with all that had happened, offering a haven to heal the past.” Bruce was listening to you, taking in your way of thinking and how right you were about something that had always been in front of his eyes ,but he had never noticed it before. Such a young girl, so much pain in her manner. He couldn’t bring himself to ask you about the weight inside your voice. It felt too close for him to do so. He had just met you after all, it is not like he could just straight up ask you about all your deepest and darkest secrets, that you might be hiding underneath your mature façade.

“Well, enough about our depressing past.” He pushed off the table “Lets get you situated in your new place.”Dr. Banner began walking in the direction of the lab, turning towards you from time to time. He was make sure you were close by and not lost somewhere in this maze of halls, corridors and who knows what else Tony could have hidden in these walls, for some unsuspecting person to stumble upon.

“I am sadly not familiar with your work like Tony is. He told me about you literally a few hours before you arrived, so you would have to excuse me for that.” You nodded with a smile, accepting the apology he didn’t even need to speak of 

“The lab is pretty big.” He unlocked the door and turned the lights on. It was exactly as he said and nothing like you had expected. The color pattern was the same tints, maybe a bit of blue mixed in as well, a dash of red. The tables and tech inside were state-of-the-art, high-quality and very well kept. Some weren’t even yet released or known to the public. Talking year 3054 up in here.

“This will be your desk, right next to me.”Bruce plopped onto his chair and waved at you “Hi, Hi.”

  He gestured for you to get yourself as comfortable as possible, which you almost couldn’t wait to do. Your fingers gently ran over the material getting familiar with it. Just with one look you already knew where everything was going to go, like it knew it’s own home. You had a tech bay, where you could check how systems worked, if they didn’t and building anything. It was amazing, just an arm’s length distance was possibility and creation itself. Excitement boiled inside you, eyes wide. Reaching inside the bag, you pulled out your work computer, your project tablet and made sure they were all connected to the internet and matched the Stark system interface. As soon as you saw the company logo you were all set up.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y.” the silence danced hand in hand with your voice

Yes Miss. Would you like a run down on the desk functions?

“Yes please.” In a matter of minutes you realized that this wasn’t just some random fancy desk ,but a whole machine of its own. Interactive hologram functions, building station and program 3D design. It had it all. Bruce was shocked how easy you worked with F.R.I.D.A.Y. , naturally taking a lead and informing yourself at 100% capacity about what you will be working with. For a second Tony flashed before his eyes.

“What made you apply here?” he cut your investigation “I don’t mean to be rude but I saw some of your pre-university work.”

“No problem. I was mostly out of the country for a very long time, maybe most of my life. When I came back the Avengers were something I loved watching on the news.” The praise went over Bruce’s head unnoticed “ There was something nostalgic when I looked at you guys. Mr. Stark’s tech, the way everyone fought with ease, I don’t know how to explain it. I craved that in my life, almost like a forgotten world I was striving to immerse myself back into. “ a gentle crook of the neck and a smile eased Bruce from the question

“Well you made it here, so congratulations.” loud joyous clapping followed his words” I think I am talking for all of us, we will love having you around. So-” His face became serious, glasses finding the bridge of his nose onto his face, eyes sharp “Would you like to start with your job here miss intern?” he winked playfully waiting to see your reaction. Like a mirror ,you pulled your hair away from your face, rolled up your sleeves and flashed back the same look of determination. “Introduce me to your train of thought and your projects.”

“I work mainly with the structure and characteristics of vibranium. At first, I was focused on making prosthetics that pack a punch the same way the Iron Man suits worked and Sergeant Barnes’s arm- of course on a smaller scale. But then my mind started drifting towards the process before amputation, which was for a certain percent of people the healing factor. Maybe inside strength as well. ”

“As in incorporating it into medical technology?” this sounded too simple of an idea coming for someone Tony chose, yet Bruce kept listening. He was judging the book by its cover way too soon.

“Not exactly. Vibranium has a metal crystal structure that possesses ‘memory’ the same way other metals remember being indented even after getting fixed or straightened eventually. My theory has a few parts before I reach the main plan. Going on an atomic level, even deeper to its base structure, I change the connections between the atoms. They have the same functions as in keeping the shape, but missing that molding memory.”

“You are saying you can mold the bonds, selecting freely what function to remove?” Bruce pushed back off his chair, letting the idea enter his ear and stay there, feeding the interest on his face.

“I am not saying I can.” he was listening more and more with each passing minute “I am saying I did it. I am in the final stages of my project.” Your hands pulled out a flat disk of vibranium  “F.R.I.D.A.Y. would you do a double scan before and after I bend this?”

Affirmatively Miss. Scan done. Shall I offer a hologram?

“Please do.” Right between your two bodies you could now see the basics of the metal “ See how the bonds are thicker? I noticed, metal bonds just have to keep  the shape of the crystal structure. Not only did I make vibranium stronger than it originally was, but now if I bend-it.” Your voice strained in pair with your muscles, as you folded and unfolded the sheet. The second scan showed no memory intake not even deformed the shapes “I call this metal healing.”

“That...that is amazing, not even a crease to be noticed! But where are you going with this?” Bruce rubbed his face, still shook from what you just showed him

“It might sound stupid, but this isn’t even my main idea. You see, if we look at matter as one and the same, things start to add up. Everything on a molecular level has no difference. Bonds, and atom-placement dictate what the object will be, look like and how it works- properties if you wish. I looked at vibranium and human flesh as different parts of one thing, which lead me to believe enhancing people could be done without super soldier serums.”

“That is… truly amazing, but won’t the testing period be a sadistic thing. We are not HYDRA thankfully.” As great as this was Bruce had a point here “Human experiments are not a politic the Avengers will ever lean upon. As fellow humans nonetheless.”

“I am not planning to make another Winter Soldier. I already have control over vibranium on levels outside and inside hyperspace.” You pulled out a bottle of metallic looking dust. The top unscrewed easy and you spilled the contents like heavy silvery snow all over the floor. “If I take quarks from the human body and use them to make 1 proton from the atomic nucleus, I can theoretically program it to answer to the human body using the unbroken rule of our system.”

  Bruce blinked a few times understanding exactly where you were reaching “All work in favor of the body.” He said out loud, glasses sliding off his skin

“Exactly. If they get programmed correctly the metal will work for the body, under the command of the main system- the nerves and brain. Post that success I would be able to inject them with a liquid medium directly into the bloodstream. As they make their way to all parts of the body, they will get acquainted with the cells. I want to change them so they will be susceptible to hormones as well. Basically I want to make a metal compound that reacts like organic matter. It would be able, upon will, to pile around bones, create fibers, strengthening muscles ecc. Some could even carry other substances with them, or isolate toxic ones. Now their size and ability for diapedesis is still questionable. So far I can move them at a certain extend.” You swung your hand and the dust lifted off the floor cleanly in one swoop 

“That is amazing!” Bruce pitched his voice after seeing the floating cloud “Are you using some kind of device ?”

“No, this dust was modeled after me, I am the only guinea pig so no one was harmed in the making. I have to say though, it was quite painful till I got it right.” You laughed out uneasy, scratching your arm  

“ I could only imagine, taking your own tissue for this. What else could it do?”

“Well. I know that Mr. Stark isn’t into weapons anymore, so I pitched him the enhancing technique only. The dust’s only function right now sadly is shaping.” Your fingers danced as the vibranium cloud formed Captain America’s shield, before turning into a sword. “As long as I have enough information of structure, function and the way the object works I can make it.” Your footsteps were confidant and strong.

“F.R.I.D.A.Y. the window if you please.”

Certainly Miss

   The clicking sound of the metal around the glass flung the object open. Your hand reached outside and pointed towards the sky. “My uncle had a deep interest in weapons so naturally I learned as well by listening to him.” The dust wrapped around your hand and formed a Heckler Koch pistols. With the pull of the trigger you shot into the air, making Bruce jump from the sound.

“I am sorry about that, I should have warned you.” You giggled stepping in

“That is a completely functional firearm. His breath normalized as his body took him right up to you, running his hands over the gun “ This is, something I can’t even imagine.” Eyes scanning every inch of it looking like a perfect mold “How does it look so solid? Smooth, no trace of it even being made from any smaller particle. ”

“Oh that, intra-atomic pressure. Kind of like gravity times 100 or more. If I pitched this to Mr.Stark I think the selling point would have been…”your fingers gently pulled the weapon out of Dr.Banner’s hand as the vibranium flew from the outside to the magazine “ It doesn’t run out of ammo since I call it back at anytime AND once in the body I can infest it.”

“It could travel through the blood stream and form clumps in certain organs!” he gasped

“I could have gone a bit more sadistic with this one, but I will stop talking now.” You laughed out sending your project back to its jar, securely tightened up. 

“How far is your limit? I mean is there a distance at which you can’t sense the partials, any mental fatigue or physical? You are amazing! This is something out of this world truly, no wonder Tony accepted your application. I wouldn’t be able to come up with anything closely resembling…wow.” He kept praising you each time his mouth opened

“Banner.” Light and confident footsteps accompanied the familiar playboy voice inside the lab

Welcome back Sir

“F.R.I.D.A.Y. medical bay on standby please.”

As you wish Sir

“I would appreciate it if you stepped back from my new intern and helped out a bit. We have injured coming in stat.” Tony waved his hand and Bruce pulled away from you, cleaning the couch on his side “You too miss intern. No slacking off just because it’s your first day. Treat it as orientation.”

“Yes Mr. Stark.” Panic rose up inside you again as you tried to follow what Dr. Banner was doing. Injured? Were the rest of the Avengers on a mission this whole time? It didn’t matter, you were mobilized as well and for a second it felt kind of cool, like you were also an agent fighting crime. The grunts and groans pulled you back to Earth as Captain America’s large frame stepped inside.  

[skarsgard-daydreams]

Marie’s Writing Workshop

Part One: Just Keep Writing

We’re going to call this little series Marie’s Writing Workshop, not because I have all the answers, but because I want to collect a bunch of writers in one place so we can talk about what to do when writing isn’t easy. Everyone is invited to comment with their own tips, tricks, struggles, or questions, and my hope is that another writer (maybe me, or maybe someone else) will be able to offer some help and support if needed, or even just say, “Me too.” If you’ve ever been in a workshop before, you know that having a community of writers around you who are experiencing the same struggles helps immensely with the isolation and self-doubt that go hand in hand with our hobby. If you’ve never been in a workshop before, well, you’re welcome to join the conversation.

The first thing I want to talk about is something that is useful whether you’re knee-deep in a multi-chaptered story or you just don’t know how to get started. There comes a moment in every writer’s life when they ask: how do I get the pen flowing? Or how do I get the pen flowing again? You might feel like you’re uninspired or have the dreaded ailment that plagues all writers at some point: writer’s block. It’s something that happens to writers all the time, even the professionals. A lot of ink has been spilled on how to combat writer’s block. At the end of the day, I think the advice boils down to this: write through it.

But how the hell do you write through it? Here are some practical tips. Take what works for you, leave the rest, and share your own if you want.

1. Give yourself permission to write complete and utter shit.

Embrace the fact that whatever you’re about to type into your word processor or scribble on your notebook is going to be terrible. It’s going to be cliché, it’s going to have poor grammar, it’s going to have bad characterization. It’s going to have plot holes and awful sex and purple prose and you’re going to use the words “just” and “seemed” 800 times in ten pages. And that’s fine, because the first step is simply to bang it out. Ernest Hemingway famously said, “The first draft of anything is shit.” Every other writer on the planet who is honest has said a variation on the theme. So, hurl the words onto the page like you’re flinging cooked spaghetti at the wall. When you reach the end of the story, it might look like a dumpster fire. That’s fine. Because reaching the end of the story isn’t the end of writing.

2. Stop editing your work as you write.

This tip goes hand in hand with the first one, really, because part of giving yourself permission to write something horrible is that you shouldn’t try to make it better as you’re working on a first draft. But I think a lot of people, myself included, have the tendency to reread the last few sentences and make a few changes here or there and eventually find ourselves staring at the same page three hours later with only two paragraphs written. I find that I can get away with this at times. However, when I’m not feeling inspired, my inner editor can derail the whole process and prevent me from getting anything done at all. If you see a typo as you’re banging out that first draft, ignore it. If you can’t remember the word for something, or haven’t named something, put in a placeholder. I do this by using brackets. For example, once I was writing a fantasy story and I forgot the word “sheath,” so I literally wrote [sword holder thingy] and kept going. Do this with anything that you’re uncertain about as a marker for yourself. Future you can correct it in revision. 

3. First draft does not equal final draft.

You probably could have guessed this based on my last two tips, but I feel it’s necessary to reiterate. Writing is revision. Yes, there are good days when angels sing as your first draft magically comes together, and you can get away with publishing that baby right away. But every novelist, every short story writer, every screenwriter, every playwright, and every poet will tell you that revision is where the real work gets done. And it’s a vital part of the process if you’re allowing yourself to write shitty first drafts. I like to think of it this way. Writing is like cooking a meal. The first draft is the part where you take all of the ingredients out of the fridge and throw them onto the counter. But revision is the part where you refine those ingredients, taking a whole onion and dicing it into bite-sized pieces, then sautéing it in a pan. It’s the part where you start to combine ingredients and let them meld together. Sometimes you sample a taste of the dish while it’s being cooked and determine it needs a little more salt or a little more time in the oven. Or sometimes you call over your roommate to take a peek in the oven and tell you if they think it’s done yet. So, take the time to revise, going through as many revisions as you feel are necessary for your story to become “cooked.”

4. Give the muse a time and place to meet you.

We all know the rush of getting struck with inspiration. Something clicks in your head and you start chasing a thread and suddenly you’ve written more in a day than you did last week. At other times, it feels like the muse is nowhere to be found. I often feel like I need that flash of inspiration to get my pen rolling, but the truth is that most authors write even when they’re uninspired. One of my favorite writing teachers taught me that showing up to do the work is more important than feeling inspired. For her, that meant sitting down at her desk at the same time every day with a notebook and pen in hand and setting a timer for something like an hour or 90 minutes. That was her writing time, and she could either sit there and stare blankly at the notebook or attempt to write, but she could not get up. She often found that, even though she would begin the session uninspired, an idea would eventually come. One of my shortcomings as a writer is that I don’t keep a schedule like this most of the time. But the times when I am most prolific are the times when I have the house to myself and I go sit in my little corner with a cup of coffee and force myself to focus on nothing but my writing. The muse might take her time and wait to show up until the second or third page, but she usually does show up to these appointments.

5. Shake things up.

This last tip is really a collection of a few more ideas that aren’t big enough for their own paragraph. If you’ve been working on a piece for a while and you’re losing steam, it’s okay to put that on the shelf and work on something else. Sometimes the change of pace will help you return to the previous piece with fresh eyes. In the same vein, I have found that I gravitate toward different mediums for different purposes. For example, I write most of my first drafts of long pieces by hand, in pen. This forces me to reduce the amount of editing I do since it’s limited by the space on the page and what I have already written. I do my revision while I’m transcribing it into a Word document, and often revise several times over again. But I have also found that I like to write drabbles, like the majority of “Sound and Color,” on my cell phone. If I get stuck on one medium, sometimes I will try switching to another to see if the ideas flow better. I don’t know why it works, but it works. Finally, there is a tool that I found in the days of trying to complete National Novel Writing Month that I like to use when I need to break through the wall of over-thinking about every word I put on the page: an app that deletes your progress if you stop writing. I wouldn’t write a story that I cared about within one of these apps, but I have used it as an exercise when I can’t seem to write more than two words at a time. There is an old, clunky app called Write or Die that makes the screen turn red and blares an alarm when you stop writing. If you turn on Kamikaze mode, it will delete one word at a time. There is also a modern, minimalist app that operates on the same principal, except that it will delete everything you’ve written if you stop. That one is The Most Dangerous Writing App. Both are great tools to keep in your writing toolbox.

Now it’s your turn:

What works for you when you’re stuck in your writing? What doesn’t?

What’s your biggest hurdle right now? What’s your next step to try to overcome it?

What questions do you have for me or other writers?

@hausofobsession @stevesharrlngtons @scxrsgxrd @dreamtherapy @grandpa-sweaters @amandalynngraves @dragsraksllib​ @loomiz​

[god-fucking-dammit-mizutani]

it must be exhausting running all these circles around your mind

Word count: ~7500 | Rating: G | Chapter: 1/2 (part 3 of the overall series) Tags: Miraculous Ladybug AU, Superheroes AU, vague references to violence and trauma Summary: Taichi struggles with the right thing to do. Ladybug fights an akuma who has the upper hand. Or, well, eight of them.

Read on Ao3 or Below

Taichi wonders if his mother had ever gotten sick of reminding him all the time when he was younger, "If you've done something wrong, you need to apologize."

Back in elementary school, Taichi spent most of his afternoons with Sora, following her home directly after soccer let out. She had been napping on the couch one of those early evenings, exhausted from their last practice match, and Taichi could only be entertained by glue and construction paper for so long.

Her bangs had been overgrown back then. He had remembered her brushing them out of the way during practice, clipping them to the side to keep from bothering her when she'd lean over worksheets in class. Taichi didn't know she'd been working on growing them out. Honestly, he didn't even know what that meant.

He was pretty sure he was natural with the safety scissors Sora's mother had left him with. The jagged lines, he had concluded, were an artistic choice. Really, he didn't think he'd done too shabby of a job. Not at the time.

Sora hadn't appreciated his thoughtfulness, nor his artistry, and so Taichi had apologized. Several times and over days. Sora had been resolute in giving him the cold shoulder, but the reality of his grievance hadn't really set in until their next practice, when she wouldn't even so much as kick him the ball even if he was the only person open.

Sora had never missed kicking to him before.

"I know," his mother had cooed, kneeling on the linoleum floor in front of him where she had found Taichi in the team's locker room, nearly inconsolable. "I know you mean it," she had said, pulling a crumpled tissue from somewhere inside her purse and wiping the tears right off his face. It had been in vain as more swiftly took their place. "It's okay, Taichi," she had told him softly until he had finally settled long enough to look his mother in the eyes. For the first time she had taught him, "But just because you mean it a whole, whole lot, that doesn't always mean you'll be forgiven."

Across from him, under the shade of the tall oak tree, Sora pushes her bangs out from in front of her eyes, tucking them just behind the shell of her left ear. She had seen it in her heart to forgive him, eventually, when she no longer had to wear hats to hide his magnum opus. Taichi taps his notebook with the capped end of his pen, feeling the well of guilt pooling in his chest again. He wonders if she still thinks of it, if she regrets ever letting him back into her life.

Sora peers up from where she's been highlighting notes. Her eyes hesitate where the tempo of his tapping has become its own drum set before looking him fully in the eyes. Her smile looks sincere when she graces him with it and Taichi thinks, maybe, she doesn't.

A part of him is too afraid to ask.

"Bored?" She asks him, capping the highlighter in her hand and dropping it in the open space between them. It rolls down the table, the only indication of the slight incline the bench had been situated upon, and stops against his notebook. There's a rainbow of them gathering all over the table and Sora plucks another color from the pouch beside her— lime green this time—before returning to her work.

"No," Taichi says. "Just thinking."

A breeze passes by overhead, warm and comfortable, shifting the leaves until they chatter with the promise of spring. The sun feels nice where it leans against his right side.

An absolutely lovely day.

He should be enjoying it, in the company of one of his closest friends. Sora hums as another breeze passes by them, sounding content. It had been her idea to stow away for their shared free period at the end of the day, to get their homework done outside where the sun was inviting. "It'll make the work feel more pleasant," she had reasoned. Maybe it should, but when Taichi breathes in he wishes all that would greet him is the smell of fresh cut grass, the feeling of new life and rebirth and everything he associates with spring and soccer. But all he finds is what feels like a stone, lodged in the pit of his stomach and unmoving.

The bell chimes to mark the end of classes. Taichi can hear it just barely where they're sitting right outside the school building.

A flood of students runs down the main staircase. He's got a great vantage of it just over Sora's head. Several loiter under the roof, taking up residence on the benches as they wait for their rides. A few cross the road to catch the city bus, hesitating to wait for the students as they cross by in front of it. Others start heading in the opposite direction from him and Sora, towards the school fields.

"We should probably start heading to our clubs," Sora suggests, but she makes no immediate move to pack her things, still invested in highlighting her notes. She reaches for a bright pink marker next and Taichi collects the lime green one, tilting his notebook vaguely to catch it before it can roll past him.

"Did you hear about the other day?" Someone asks on their way past their bench. "We got ourselves a local superhero."

"You mean that insect man?"

"Ladybug," someone else corrects them. Taichi whips his head in the direction of the conversation. He watches the small group of students, intent, but their conversation is swallowed by the distance as they continue on their way into town.

Sora's pink highlighter thumps heavily against the bench seat beside him before plopping onto the grass. Taichi stares at it where it lays still.

"He's the buzz of the town," he hears Sora saying.

"Yeah, Hikari's a fan." Taichi leans down and grabs for the marker, dropping it on the table between them with his growing collection.

She's got a blue one now, tapping it against her cheek pensively. "I'm surprised the media hasn't been swarming this place since that attack last week."

"There wasn't anything to report since all the damage got cleared away," Taichi mentions.

"It did seem," Sora pauses, pressing her lips together. "Far-fetched to someone who wasn't there. I saw the first explosion knock out half the roof from the tennis court and it still feels hard to believe."

"I rode a magic bull," Taichi says with a long grin. "And I still find it hard to believe."

Sora doesn't seem to find the reminder to be as entertaining as he does and so Taichi let's his grin drop.

He turns back around for a moment, but the group he had been eavesdropping on has since vanished from earshot.

"There's been two more attacks since then. That's three in seven days, isn't it?" When he turns back, Sora's eyes are on her notebooks again, but she doesn't seem as invested in their contents. "How long do you think this is going to keep up for?"

He isn't sure if she wants an answer. Taichi knows he doesn't really have one that she'll want to hear. Instead he offers, "We just have to believe in Ladybug."

Maybe it's the right thing to say after all. Sora's smile returns in full bloom, relief spreading through her bright brown eyes. "He does seem to have it handled," she agrees.

Taichi smiles back, but his answer doesn't sit quite as comfortably with him. He's caught Ladybug's last two skirmishes on the news, watching with bated breath every time the situation turned sour just before the hero found a way to change the tides. Ladybug has gotten better, more practiced. At least from the outside, at the distance between the reporter and the screen and Taichi's couch. But he remembers what Ladybug had looked like up close, the set of his jaw contradicted by the shake in his hands, the fear in his eyes when he wasn't trying to pretend to be in control of their situation. Taichi’s chest feels heavy at the memories.

They're not friends. Taichi doesn't even know if they count as acquaintances, but every time he sees the superhero on his screen, he can't help but wonder, who will be there to save him ?

Only someone with a certain gift, Taichi remembers. His teeth clench at the thought. He'd done well enough without one, hadn't he? Maybe he could—

He meets Sora's gaze. This time concern creases her brow, worry evident in her eyes. He hopes it's not becoming a permanent fixture now. "Taichi?"

"Sorry," he answers sheepishly. "Just had... things on my mind."

"What things?" She asks gently, but there's a pressure to her voice that Taichi finds familiar.

He's not sure she wants to hear it, though. Guilt tugs at the back of his mind because he had, not that long ago, promised he wouldn't do anything stupid. It isn't fair that he should be here with her now, practically wishing for it.

But like a miracle of its own, another source of his anxieties comes careening down the staircase behind Sora's back, almost nothing more than a blur of red. "Koushirou."

"Koushirou?" Sora repeats, sitting up straighter in her shock. "I thought you two made up?"

"So did I," Taichi mutters. His eyes follow the path of the other boy as he crosses the campus. He hadn't really suspected Koushirou as someone who could hold a run quite that long, but Sora had implied he was once on the soccer team. Even if it was just mostly as a bench warmer. He disappears down the farther street. Taichi frowns. He wonders where Koushirou is heading. It's not the way he had seen him going home last week. He's pretty sure his home is on the other side of the city, just behind where he and Sora are sitting. Which reminds him, "Remember I asked you about the bakery?"

"Uh-huh," she hums. "The one Koushirou's family runs."

Taichi narrows his eyes, leaning forward across the table with his elbow. "A detail you forgot to mention."

"A detail I didn't think was important to mention," she corrects him.

"Yeah, well," he grumbles, "I went there on Saturday." Sora's eyes stay trained on him. "He barely said anything to me, then just ran off."

"Ran off?"

"And he's barely talked to me the whole week. We actually got assigned partners on a project and he emailed me to say he'd just do it on his own."

Sora's eyebrows shoot up.

"Here," he says, pulling his phone out of the side pouch of his backpack. He thumbs through several windows before pulling up the email in question and handing his cell phone over to her awaiting hands.

There's a short while of silence as Sora reads over it's contents, her eyes scanning back and forth and mouth forming some of the words unconsciously. Taichi waits, oddly nervous. Laughter cuts through the crisp air somewhere from the other end of the campus. Sora gives the phone a smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes as she hands it back to Taichi. "It's written very politely."

"Yeah," Taichi says. He looks back over the message again with fresh eyes, hoping it will change his opinion. All the words read the same to him and he drops his phone into the abyss of his backpack. "It's the nicest get lost I've ever gotten."

Sora says nothing. Taichi stares at the latest ruined page in his notebook. There's nothing of substance there. Just doodles of lines converging along the margins, hapless patterns that seem to go nowhere. There's something like the sun at the top of the page, opposite a giant tear where he’d attempted to erase some lines. Taichi bites his lip at the image. He'd forgotten about it this last week, but the little box has been sitting in his backpack, waiting for the chance to be reunited with its owner.

Ladybug.

Taichi groans, thumping his head against his notebook. His thoughts keep leading back there no matter how much he tries to chase them away, to those dark eyes, to that stubborn determination and—

"Is it really bothering you?" Sora asks tentatively. He can feel her fingers gently tap over his fist on the table. When he looks up she's sending him her most sympathetic smile. "I can try talking to him like I promised?" She offers.

Right. The Koushirou Problem Redux.

He almost says yes again, wants to just let Sora work the magic that comes to her so easily and patch the whole thing up but, "Nah." She sends him an imploring look, one that asks if he's sure and Taichi tells her, "I should do it myself."

This time when Sora smiles, her lips turn up to the left in the way they often do, tinged now with a hint of pride and Taichi feels his heart swell to know he's the source of it.

Somewhere nearby the first notes to a shrill melody filters in, oddly muffled.

"Shoot," he says, jumping to his feet. Sora pulls back immediately, her eyes widened with concern once more. Taichi gathers everything he's certain is his own from off the bench and haphazardly drops them back into his bag, textbooks and looseleaf paper sticking up at different heights. "I have to pick up Hikari," he explains.

Taichi decides there's little risk of getting caught in a downpour on his way home without a cloud in the sky and doesn't bother struggling with the zipper after it only pulls up part of the way.

"Again?" Sora asks, her eyes following him as he squeezes out from under the table. She's capping her newest highlighter. "What about soccer?"

"I'll talk to you later," he says quickly, pulling his bag over one shoulder. Taichi makes sure it isn't the exposed side, not wanting to lose anything on his way. He gives Sora a hearty wave before jogging off in the direction of the local elementary school.

"That wasn't an answer!" She calls back to him.

Taichi sends her another wave over his shoulder without turning back. The notes of his alarm are singing again and he darts past the two sections of the pick up driveway without barely sparring a glance one way or the other as he crosses over to the main road towards the city.

Taichi feels out of breath by the time the first tower of the elementary school comes into view over the shop buildings. Running isn't normally an issue for him, but after a week of easing up on his usual conditioning, well, it’s to be expected.

He recognizes the teacher on duty today, sitting on the stone wall bordering the school, closest to his side of the street. She looks up from her lap full of papers, dark red ink visibly scattered throughout each page. Taichi assumes she must be taking advantage of her stolen time by grading test papers or homework.

He gives her a winded, "Sorry," but doesn't quite know why. She nods him in the right direction towards his sister before burying herself back into work.

Hikari is easy to find, being one of the last kids still lingering outside of the school. Only earlier this week she used to wait for him somewhere by the teacher, staring at the brick walkway as if it were the most interesting piece of architecture in the whole city.

Today, however, is different.

She's sitting on the wall adjacent, just on the other side of where it opens up to the main entrance. Taichi hears her talking long before he actually sees her, hair and legs bobbing in and out of view behind the large pillar she's tucked behind. He stops for a minute, flabbergasted as her laughter breaks over the sound of the other children in the park nearby, whose guardians had long come by to pick them up.

"They've been talking about Ladybug all day," the teacher tells him, with an amused smile.

Taichi looks back at her, offering a short, nervous laugh. "Talk of the town, huh?" A short hum is the only sign she even heard him. So much for small talk.

"Taichi?" His sister's soft voice calls for him. It's the only warning he gets before a heavy force knocks the wind right out of him. He pats a hand instinctively atop the head of the person hugging him and is bewildered when he spots Hikari still standing over by the wall several feet away, head tilted in a silent question.

He stares down into a pair of bright blue eyes. "Takeru?"

At the sound of his name, Takeru beams. His chin pokes into Taichi's stomach uncomfortably. "Boy am I glad to see you're all right!"

"Uh," Taichi starts. Distantly he thinks that should be his line. He had been looking down at Takeru the last time he had seen him, too. Back then he had looked scared, eyes wet with ready to shed tears. A reasonable response given that an entire building had just collapsed over them. Taichi swallows. Phantom debris fills up his lungs, a great pressure settling over his back, choking—

"How do you know my brother?"

Takeru pulls away. "I was just telling you about the guy who helped Ladybug!" He presents Taichi to his own sister with a sweep of his hand and a smile that could rival the warmest sun. The difference between then and now is startling to Taichi. "This is him! Taichi!"

Hikari stares up at him with her bright brown eyes, suddenly transfixed. It's as if she's looking at a completely new person and not the brother who's been late picking her up for the last week.

Taichi feels the weight settle heavier over his shoulders. "I wouldn't really say I helped—" he tries. Laughter bubbles up from his chest. It's anything but humorous. "It was more like —"

"A hindrance?" Someone suggests. Even though spring has already begun to settle, Taichi feels a sudden nip in the air. He catches Hikari's worried eyes.

"Yamato," Takeru says. In contrast he sounds so bright, leaning around the bend of Taichi's waist to greet the person behind them. Taichi follows his lead, turning on his heels to meet the new stranger.

Yamato looks to be Taichi's age, and even with the space between them he estimates they're probably about the same height, as well. His eyes are about as bright as Takeru's, but not nearly as warm. In fact as he looks between them, Taichi can't help but think the resemblance is striking. Given the circumstances, he probably isn't off in assuming they're related.

"You're late," Takeru chirps.

"Sorry." Yamato offers the younger boy a strained smile. "Go get your bag and wait for me."

"Okay!" Takeru dashes off back behind him, calling out to Hikari.

Without any warning, Yamato swiftly closes the distance, back straight and eyes narrowed directly onto Taichi. Instinctively, he takes a step back, his bag almost slipping all the way down his shoulder.

"You!" Yamato addresses him accusingly, jutting his pointer finger right into Taichi’s chest, voice dangerously low. His eyes remind Taichi of ice, finely pointed at him like daggers. He can hear Takeru and Hikari talking animatedly not too far behind them. "My brother could have died because you wanted to play superhero."

"I—" Taichi can't seem to get his volume down as low as Yamato's, but the timbre of his voice is almost as heated. "I wasn't—"

But it's not meant to be a conversation. Yamato doesn't wait for him to finish, mouth pulled back in a thinly veiled sneer. His finger digs in deeper, but it's not nearly as intrusive as his words. "You can't just be careless with other people's lives!"

Silence.

Several reactions vy for Taichi's attention at once: hurt, anger, defensiveness, guilt. He meets the teacher's imploring gaze over Yamato's shoulder where she's still stationed further down the wall and holds up his hand to tell her it's alright. She doesn't push the subject, returning to her work without a second glance. Taichi looks back to the other boy.

Yamato has since averted his own gaze, fists balled at either of his sides. Taichi drops his own gaze to the concrete, frustrated.

"Yamato!" Takeru calls out tentatively. "Are we going?"

"Just a minute, Takeru!" He raises his voice to call out to him. To Taichi he murmurs a quick, "Stay away from my brother," as he pushes past him. The satchel bag at his side thumps into Taichi's hip, but he somehow manages to swallow an affronted hey .

Taichi turns again, planting his feet heavy on the asphalt. His mouth opens, but Taichi doesn't really know what to say. It just simmers in the back of his throat, burning. Yamato never even looks back. Taichi can practically still feel the anger radiating off of him, shoulders taut and head resolutely high. Takeru tilts his head back to meet Taichi's stare, his bright blue eyes apologetic. He sends a short wave before picking up his pace to keep up with Yamato’s longer strides.

Hikari tugs on his shirt, startling Taichi back to attention.

"Who was that guy?" He asks, shaking his head.

He doesn't really expect an answer, but Hikari offers him one anyway. "I think it's his brother."

It wasn't exactly what he'd been asking.

"So I gathered."

First Koushirou, now this Yamato guy. Taichi seems to be building a rather terrible rapport. He flinches, wondering if Ladybug would count himself amongst them and they'll all start a club with matching jackets.

"We should go home,” Hikari suggests.

On the further wall the teacher is already packing her papers away in a hurry, relieved now of her extracurricular obligations.

Taichi lets out a long winded breath. "You're right."

"Already making friends, huh?" Taichi prompts his sister as they turn onto the main road. It's more crowded here. He holds out his hand and squeezes when Hikari takes hold of it easily.

She keeps her eyes glued to the pavement, her face pensive when Taichi peers down at her. "Maybe," she decides, carefully stepping over the next crack in the concrete. "He kept telling everyone about how he already met Ladybug, but there's nothing like it on the news. Everyone thinks he's making it up for attention."

"I see." Even kids have it rough. "And you believe him?"

Hikari shrugs her shoulders with great exaggeration. She hops over the next line and lands in the center of where the concrete has fractured into the shape of a small triangle, balancing herself on one foot, then hopping over it with the other like a personal game of hopscotch. Taichi's mezmorized.

"He didn't seem like he was lying." She stops for a moment, her large eyes staring up at him. "Was he?"

Taichi feels his cheeks heat in shame, breaking eye contact to watch where they're still walking. Narrowly, he misses trampling a dandelion that's made it's home between two slabs of concrete in the middle of the sidewalk. "Depends on what he said."

"So you really did meet ladybug?" Her voice is filled with awe, her hand squeezing his more tightly.

"Yeah," Taichi admits. "I met Ladybug."

Hikari looks away then herself, eyes focused ahead of them. She's no longer playing her little leaping game, but Taichi catches a glimpse of a long smile curling up her lips. He can't help but feel his own following.

"Hey, uhm, maybe don't tell dad," he thinks to ask her after they’ve walked several more blocks in silence. "About the whole, you know . Actually," he thinks better on it, "don't even mention it around mom, either."

"Okay," Hikari sings, swinging Taichi's arm with the force of her own. "It'll be our secret, then."

"Yeah. Our secret."

When he turns to smile down at her his eyes catch the storefront just over Hikari’s head. Plastered on the window in large, vinyl letters is the name Bakeology , almost perfectly transposed except for the crooked tilt of the ‘e’. Taichi doesn't notice he's stopped walking until Hikari tugs on his arm, having gone forward several paces without him.

"What's wrong?"

Taichi frowns. Baked goods sit visibly on little racks in the front displays, the easiest thing to see without pressing his forehead to the glass. Taichi isn't hungry for once, but he considers going inside anyway with the excuse of buying Hikari an after school snack. Just to test the waters. See if Koushirou's mom throws him out on sight or if she'll be as warm as she was the last time. And then, maybe, Taichi can rustle up the courage to ask her as casually as possible, "Has your son mentioned that he still hates me?"

Instead he says, "Nothing."

Several beeps set off in their general vicinity. Beside him Hikari reaches into her pocket and pulls out her own cell phone.

"It's an emergency," she relays, looking up at him with her honey-bright eyes. "There's another akuma attack."

Around them other people have already started scurrying about, ducking into stores, sprinting on their way to—Taichi assumes—their homes.

"Stay away from the harbor," Hikari reads further.

Taichi swallows. His backpack feels heavier, a reminder of the trinket still sitting inside. He has little doubt Ladybug will be there. It would be the best opportunity to meet him again. Taichi wonders if Ladybug would even recognize him, or if his face would blend in among the thousand others living in the city, just a blurry memory of the guy who almost got them all killed.

"Taichi?" Hikari asks, her hand tugging gently on his own.

He looks down at her, eyes large and worried. Taichi swallows again.

Yamato's voice comes back to him, the anger now sounding scared, shaky. "You can't just be careless with other people's lives!"

Hikari still watches him, and in the back of his mind he can see Takeru's bright eyes, dewey with tears, darkened with fear.

"Let's go home, Hikari," he tells her. The noise of the city seems to filter back in, a hum of panic still running through the streets. It startles Taichi's heart, but he does all he can to keep the fear out of his voice, the shake out of his hands as he squeezes hers tightly. "We'll be safe together, okay?"

She nods, looking as if she actually believes him.

Taichi keeps his eyes forward on his every step, letting new laid memories lead him on the route back home. He can feel his pulse quickening, a smarting of frustrated tears building behind his eyes, but he keeps them back, presses his lips together and just thinks about getting his sister home.

Hikari wastes little time shucking her shoes off in the foyer when they make it back inside. Taichi toes them towards the shoe rack at the door before stepping out of his own.

"I'm home, mom," she calls out. Taichi strains his ears to listen, but the only sound that greets him back is the creaking of a door and Hikari adding a quick, "I'm going to do my homework!"

She spares a quick glance back down the hallway at Taichi, smiling lightly. Hikari doesn't bother shutting the door as she heads into the living room with her backpack still over her shoulders.

"I'm home," Taichi says as he passes the bedroom door. He stands there for a moment, his hand hesitating over the knob, waiting.

"Can I put on the news?" He hears Hikari calling back from around the corner. Taichi feels his heart rabbit for a moment, wondering if someone else will answer.

No one else does.

Taichi closes the door gently as he joins his little sister in the living room, draping himself over the back of the couch. He tosses his backpack onto one of the empty cushions, just missing their cat, Miko, curled up by the arm. Hikari looks back at him inquisitively where she's set herself up on the floor in front of the coffee table, school worksheets neatly stacked on the table beside her. In front of her is a small notebook opened to a clean page.

"If you can still get your work done."

In answer she reaches for the remote. Taichi can see the barely contained excitement in her movements as the television clicks on. It's still set to the local news station where their dad had left it on last night before he'd fallen asleep in the reclining chair.

"—has been fighting off an akuma—"

Hikari grabs out a pencil case from her backpack and chooses one without ever taking her eyes off the screen. He doesn't think it's school work when she starts filling up some of the lines in her notebook, exchanging her time between it and the screen. Taichi opens his mouth to say something when the anchorwoman on the live feed lets out a sharp yell.

"We're alright!" The anchorwoman assures them. Takaishi Natsuko flashes in the lower corner of the feed as she offers up a long smile to the camera. "As you can see, Ladybug has pushed the akuma further into the harbor behind me here."

Taichi releases a long breath. The camera isn't close enough to see anything too well, but he can make out eight, long, spindly tentacles reaching out from beneath the waves. It must be some sort of sea creature—like a squid. He's not sure what the criteria is. Koushirou would probably know. But whatever it is looks huge. Comparatively, Ladybug looks like nothing more than a dot. Taichi squints. He might not actually be looking at Ladybug at all. It could be lint glued to the screen by static.

"What was it like?" Hikari wonders. Her voice is hushed, likely to keep it between the two of them. “Fighting with Ladybug, I mean.”

Exhilarating , comes to mind first and Taichi swallows it down. Unbelievable follows. He can still hear the crackling of lightning from The Minotaurus' horns, her yowls as Taichi held onto her nosering for dear life. "Terrifying," is too far down on the list to be comfortable.

On the screen the little dot, which is decidedly not lint, falls back. Natsuko reports, "He's still had no luck breaking through the akuma's defences."

Taichi has to hand it to her. He'd probably have gone stock still at this point, but if she's feeling any sort of fear, it doesn't come through.

"Unfair. It's like eight against one," Hikari comments as if she were talking about a schoolyard fight and not the forces of good versus... well, whatever they are. She scribbles something into her notebook.

"Someone should tell the monster to play nice," Taichi jokes. No one laughs. Taichi stares back at the scene, his heart pounding in his ears. He worries this time might be it. This time, maybe, Ladybug has met his match. Like, the worst sort of match. His hands feel clammy where Taichi balls them into fists, frustrated and helpless. He wishes —

"It would be nice if he didn't have to always be alone," Hikari says. She turns to look back up at him. As the afternoon sun dims outside, the light from the television looks brighter where it reflects in her eyes. "I'm sure even superheroes need support. That's why they're usually in teams, right?"

Taichi leans back until he's standing again, never breaking eye contact. It feels almost like, for a moment, she'd read his mind. "I guess," he manages to say.

Hikari hums, satisfied with his answer. Somewhere in his bag Taichi hears his phone chime again. He'll get it out, eventually.

The akuma on screen smashes through a row of boats lined up along a stretch of docks, sending splinters of wood and brightly colored flags rushing through the air on nothing but inertia from the one swing. Taichi swallows thickly as both Natsuko and the camera person shout once more.

"Takeru said Ladybug put everything back the way it was after he defeated the akuma." She adds, "Like magic."

"Just like magic," he agrees. Hikari writes that down, too.

Sensing she won't get much work done with him around, Taichi excuses himself to his room, swinging his backpack over the couch again to take with him. Miko makes a soft sound of startlement, blinking up at him before settling back into her ten hour nap. Lucky, Taichi thinks.

"Would you do it again?" Hikari asks him, her stare heavy on the back of his head.

Taichi hesitates near the door of his room. When he says, "No," he wishes he wasn't lying. "Finish your homework."

"I will!"

Taichi hangs his bag on the back of his chair, unzipping it in full this time to pull some of his notes and planner and textbooks out. He hopes they're the right ones. He finds his cellphone lodged in the center of one of his notebooks, dog earring the still clean pages in half. When he clicks it on there's about a half a dozen texts from Sora and a single one from his dad asking if they made it home safe. Taichi answers that one first before thumbing through all of Sora's.

Did you make it home? Is Hikari with you?

It's dangerous out there. I just want to know you made it somewhere safe.

Taichi please let me know you made it home alright.

I still haven't heard anything back.

You didn't go to the harbor did you? Taichi please tell me you didn't go.

Should I come over?

He sends her a quick, We just got home. Stay safe, Sora.

Instantly a little relieved smiley face answers him. Taichi smiles down at it. At least someone in town probably won't be investing in a club jacket any time soon.

He docks his phone on the charger stand at the back of his desk. It blinks onto the image of his now clear lockscreen and Taichi stares at it for as long as the image stays. His old soccer team grins at him, standing in two imperfect lines with their arms thrown over each other's backs in camaraderie. It's blurry, off-center, and clipping some of his former teammates half out of the photo. Hikari had taken it, shortly after a stint in the hospital, declaring she wanted to be a photographer that winter. Everyone had made sure to come out for the impromptu team photoshoot.

Taichi buries his face in his crossed arms. His family had moved away not too long after that, leaving his teammates behind.

After a moment Taichi sits himself back up, gently smacking both of his cheeks. "Moping is best paired with chores," his mother always said before handing him off something like a load of laundry or some latex gloves. Really, she had just wanted some help around the house, but it did usually take his mind off whatever was bothering him, so Taichi grabs for his school planner and gets to work on the first subject for tomorrow.

He's bored of it halfway through.

Bored, maybe, isn't the right word. Taichi taps his pen on the page of his notebook, then against his desk, his bare foot thumping along to the beat. It almost matches the tempo of his heart right now.

Just outside his room the muffled news report is streaming in, but he has no idea what's being said. A part of him thinks about holding his ear up to the door, or pulling up his own stream to watch on his phone. Indecision weighs him to the spot. Listening won't help him get any work done. Not listening also isn't helping any. For all he knows the akuma could have been neutralized by now, but he'll only be more restless if he finds out Ladybug is still in trouble.

Restless. That's it. Taichi is feeling restless. It's odd to consider that not too far from here a monster is ripping up part of their home, harming people. And here Taichi is, doing his homework like it's any other school night.

But what else can he do?

Believe in Ladybug , Taichi reminds himself. He taps the pen harder, frowning. He does believe in Ladybug. Really, he does. It's just—

He remembers what Ladybug looked like that first time; terror barely concealed on his face, his voice trembling around the edges. Mere stubbornness had probably been all that was keeping him together. Taichi's sure that's at least true of himself.

Taichi groans in the back of his throat, frustrated. He leans back in his chair, resting his knees up on the desk until the front legs tilt off the floor, letting it rock ever so slightly.

If he really wanted to help, Taichi needed one of those doo-hickeys . What had the old man called them? A—

His chair suddenly loses out to gravity, and Taichi tumbles down with it, heels over head.

"Ow," he complains to no one, rubbing at the sore spot on the back of his head. He's absolutely determined to give himself a lasting concussion, Taichi thinks grimly.

Half the contents of his backpack have slipped out across his already cluttered floor. Taichi swears, pushing breakfast bars and folders with all their unfiled papers back inside. He frowns at his soccer Jersey crumpled up on the floor where it, too, has tumbled out. Taichi debates whether or not he should shove it back in with everything else or toss it in the garbage.

Hamper , he decides, is the middle ground. Taichi grabs it as he stands up and is surprised to hear another thunk as something heavier rolls out from the bundle of fabric.

A small, cherry-wood box.

Oh. Taichi reaches for it. His fingers run through the intricate grooves, tracing over the abstract sun pattern he had noticed when he first found the box in the grass beside him, right after Ladybug had departed. He remembers the last time he had seen the other boy's eyes, dark and on the verge of tears. For him . The memory makes his heart simultaneously swell and ache.

In his hands, the wood feels warm suddenly, electric— awake— and it burns—

"Gah!"

Taichi drops it to the floor again. It clatters and tumbles along the hardwood, falling several steps away. When it settles, Taichi notices the sliding lid is now askew, a dark colored band leaning over the exposed lip.

He kneels down to inspect the contents closely, carefully. A voice in the back of his head tells him to leave it, maybe grab a fire extinguisher in case it starts to burn a hole in his floor, which he knows his dad will hate because they won't get the security deposit back again. But even knowing it might be dangerous, Taichi finds himself reaching out to touch it. Under the pads of his fingertips the wood feels cool again. He slides the lid the rest of the way down revealing a set of, "Goggles?"

Taichi used to own a pair a couple of years back, but he'd passed it down to a fellow teammate. These look more expensive, the strap a fine, navy blue and as his fingers pass over the glass eyewear they leave no smudges. The connecting end of each strap bears the same sun-like pattern engraved on the box. Taichi runs his fingers over this as well, feeling the small grooves so finely cut into the metal. Sun from outside bounces off the bright surface and for a moment Taichi is certain the little sun pattern is actually—

His eyes widen. It is glowing.

Like a fireball the light bursts out from the goggles and rockets across the room. He shields his face for a moment, ready to see his curtains go up in flames and have to evacuate the whole apartment, with an akuma attack in progress no less. But what he finds is much, much worse.

Taichi screams.

A small, orange creature stands atop his math textbook. "Taichi!" It greets him in a deep, scratchy voice with a long, sharp-toothed smile.

Great, Taichi thinks. It knows his name. It—

"Taichi?" A softer voice calls his attention to the door, complimented by a light thrumming that can barely be called knocking against the wood. "Is everything okay?"

Hikari . Taichi slowly turns his gaze back to the creature on his desk. It's bright, curious green eyes have also latched onto the door, head tilted to listen. Fear grips his heart like ice. The creature knows about Hikari now.

Taichi fumbles blindly for something around him to use as a weapon, but all that meets his grip are dirty socks and the goggles he's still got tightly clutched in his other hand. Nothing. Absolutely nothing useful. Taichi swallows. If he survives this, he's investing in a baseball bat. Or twelve, just to have on hand.

Taichi looks around the room, eyes darting from one more useless thing to the next until— aha !

Taichi slides himself along the floor, a little closer to the creature, leaning his way over to grab for the little box the goggles had been in. Those bright green eyes are back on him. Taichi refuses to break eye contact.

"She shouldn't know I'm here," the creature tells him. Taichi stares, bewildered. "No one can know I'm here."

"Taichi?" Hikari calls again, her voice soaked in concern.

Something makes him call back, "I'm fine!"

Hikari doesn't sound convinced. Taichi can't blame her. He doesn't sound convincing. "Why did you scream?"

"Just—" he notices the still fallen over chair and says, "fell off my chair!"

"Again?"

"Yeah. Everything's fine. Go back to the living room, okay?"

"Oh," she says back, still unsure. "Okay."

He listens for her footsteps creaking along the floorboards. Once he's satisfied she's far enough away he addresses the little creature, gripping the box tighter in his hand where he's hidden it behind his back. "Are you an, uhm," the word escapes him briefly. The creature still watches him indulgently as Taichi moves as slowly as he can forward. To him, they look just like a miniscule dinosaur. He'd heard once that they can't see someone if they're not moving, but Taichi doesn't remember from where. He knows even less if it's true. "An, uh..."

Lightening crackles in the back of his mind, dark red eyes staring down at him filled with rage and, maybe, the smallest glimpses of anguish.

"Akuma," he finishes. He rises to his knees not too far from the desk. Taichi hesitates, waiting for the perfect time to strike, like calculating when and where to kick the ball to get past the opposing team’s goalie in soccer.

The creature seems undeterred by his proximity, completely unaware of Taichi's intentions. He holds a long, clawed finger up to, what Taichi suspects is, his chin. "I'm Agumon. I'm a kwami."

Taichi stares. His grip almost loosens before he tightens it once more. He's so close now— "And that's different?"

"That's right!" The self-proclaimed kwami nods his head, sharp teeth poking out again from beneath his grin. Taichi jeers back as the same clawed finger points down at him this time, bracing for an attack that never comes. "A kwami gives the power to fight akumas to whoever holds a miraculous."

"Miraculous," Taichi parrots. The box clatters to the ground behind him as the familiar word eases something inside him. He follows the line of Agumon's finger down to his other hand where the goggles lay loosely in his grasp, against his thigh. "This is that thing? A miraculous gift?"

Agumon nods again. "You were chosen."

"Chosen." Taichi stares at the innocuous item in his hand. Sunlight glints off the glassware. A miraculous . His whole body shudders. With fear, relief, awe, gratefulness. But—

Maybe it wasn't really meant for him. He hadn't really done anything to deserve it.

" Don't ever do that again ," runs through his head. Taichi knows that he shouldn't. Last time he had tried to help he’d been much more of a, well, " A hindrance ."

Perhaps Ladybug had simply misplaced it.

"Can," Taichi stares at the goggles, his fingers slowly loosening from around it. "Can you give it to someone else?"

Agumon makes a short, deep noise above him while shaking his head. Even for such a small creature, the shadow he leaves towers over Taichi as he taps along the edge of his desk. "You were the one who was chosen. It has to be you."

“Oh…” Taichi looks back down at the miraculous. It feels like, no matter what action he takes, he's going to let someone down.

Muffled through the door, Taichi hears another shriek followed by Hikari's own stuttering gasp of, "Ladybug!"

No. No, no, no.

"Even superheroes need support."

Taichi looks back to the little kwami. Those bright green eyes are trained on him still, head tilted to the side imploringly. Taichi’s resolve thickens.

"What do I have to do?"

[currywaifu]

𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐥𝐞: should we rest for a little longer? 𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩: minagi tsuzuru/reader 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠: sfw 𝐰𝐜: 2.7k words

𝐚𝐧: i just want to take care of this tired boy

He was asleep again.

“And you’re being a creep again,” Your friend nudges you, and you nudge him back with a vengeance. You peel your eyes away from the sleeping brunet to frown at the boy beside you.

“I’m not being a creep. I’m just… concerned, I guess.” As soon as the words leave your lips you find yourself cringing a bit. It sounded off, almost like you pitied him. If anything, the right way to phrase it probably would have been-

“I kid, I kid,” your friend raises both of his hands, almost defensive, “it’s because you’re a fan of his, right?”

Your lips purse at the suggestion, neither offended nor angry but not very pleased either.

“I suppose,” you say, eyeing the professor that entered the room.

Fan. That sounded wrong too, despite being the truth. You have watched all of Mankai Company’s plays, ever since your little sister dragged you to one since the boy she liked was playing one of the leads.

“Ahh, so cute!” Your sister was shaking you for what might have been the nth time that night, but you weren’t so focused on Romeo as you were Mercutio.

When you saw a familiar face standing on stage beside the pink-haired boy, you were rather surprised. You couldn’t pretend you knew him, but you did see him here and there on campus. You might have even shared a class together and you just never noticed.

You didn’t peg him for an actor.

Curiouser and curiouser.

You checked the website where you booked your tickets again.

Minagi Tsuzuru, Scriptwriter

Interesting.

Somehow, even though he wasn’t in the next play, you found yourself watching more and more. You’d swear up and down that as a theatre fan, you wanted to support deserving local productions; while not exactly false, it was hard to deny your admiration for Tsuzuru’s scriptwriting.

An almost inaudible yawn breaks your reverie and your eyes settle on the familiar green of his jacket. Did the professor just not care? Well, perhaps it was for the better. He probably needed a nap, more than a nap if you were honest.

“Lend me a highlighter real quick,” your friend whispers.

When you pass him the marker, its bright turquoise hue brings you back to your original thoughts.

Were you really just worried because you were a fan of his?

The next time you see Tsuzuru is at a cafe that had ‘the best hot chocolate ever!’, or so your little sister proclaimed.

“Eh? You’re Mercutio, right?”

Specifically, at a cafe where Tsuzuru was currently working at.

Do you let your sister do the talking? You don’t wanna disturb him at work or anything. Besides, it’s not as if you’ve ever talked to him, so other than telling him your order there really wasn’t much else to say.

“… really likes your scripts!”

“Ah, really? Please keep supporting us, I’ll make sure to keep improving!”

The corners of Tsuzuru’s eyes were crinkling as the corners of his mouth slid upwards.

Eh? Why was this boy suddenly giving you an angelic smile? What happened when you spaced out? Wait, didn’t your little brat of a sister mention something about scripts?

“Ah, yes, I’ll keep watching your plays!” You smiled quickly, lightly kicking the younger girl’s feet from beneath the table. Did you say anything to her about your admiration for Tsuzuru or something, or did she suddenly get observant?

She was lucky you weren’t so petty or you would have outed her crush on Sakuya to his troupe mate then and there.

“Oh, by the way,” you begin to lower your volume to be sure, “is the hot chocolate really that good?”

A small chuckle barely escaped his lips before he shrugged, positioning his clipboard to take down your orders. “You have to try it to find out.”

“Then two hot chocolates, and a strawberry creme crepe for me.”

“Chocolate covered banana pancakes, please!”

As he took down your orders, you caught a glimpse of the dark circles under his eyes. He seemed to be fine when he was talking to the two of you, but a part-time job along with university and theatre probably took a lot out of his energy.

“Eh, isn’t this-“

“Don’t say anything.”

So when you ended up with a chocolate-drizzled banana creme crepe and your sister got strawberry topped chocolate pancakes, you let it slide. The hot chocolate was actually pretty good.

You were only supposed to borrow a reference book for one of your classes, take down some notes, and then scramble home.

So what were you doing?

You wanted to sit somewhere further down the library where it was quieter when you stumbled upon Minagi Tsuzuru, fast asleep with several papers scattered haphazardly on the desk.

The two of you weren’t close or anything, but you wanted to encourage him somehow. Sometimes sleepless nights were really necessary, you’d be a hypocrite to vouch against them, but you wanted to tell him to persevere somehow.

You set your bag down on an empty chair, bringing out a green sticky note pad and a ballpoint pen.

...

When Tsuzuru wakes up it’s from Juza lightly, well as lightly as Juza could, nudging him awake. He waits for his eyes to adjust to his surroundings, wondering how long he’s been asleep. The first thing he spots is Juza’s purple tupperware, wildly contrasting the off-whites and blacks and browns his things usually were.

The second thing he notices is a green sticky note stuck on one of his notebooks.

Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise!

Les Miserables, a line from the finale song if he remembered right.

No name or hint from who could have given it.

He found himself humming the song on the way home.

“This presentation will be a paired work activity… and as usual, I’ll be pairing you up.” Several people groaned audibly, while two girls whispered excitedly behind you.

“I wonder if she’ll couple me up with someone?”

“Ahh, I hope I get coupled up with…”

Seriously, coupled up? Since when were you all Love Island contestants?

You knew this professor was highly acclaimed to be some kind of “yosei of love” or matchmaker or whatever, but weren’t they expecting too much out of her?

“This is a class, not a mixer,” your friend began to say, “is probably what you’re thinking right now. Am I wrong?” He looked awfully smug and you couldn’t resist rolling your eyes.

“More along the lines of ‘this isn’t a reality tv show’, but that works too.”

“Prude.”

“Should you really be insulting me? Prof is probably gonna pair us up again and I’d be stuck with you for a whole week.”

“What’s wrong with that? We became friends precisely because she thought we’d look good together. Of course, it didn’t work out, unless?” He started wiggling his eyebrows and you smacked his arm.

“Dumbass. Well, she’s probably hoping we’re some kind of slow-burn pair and keep us partners,” you predicted. Somehow his smugness increased tenfold, looking as sly as a fox.

When the professor calls your name you perk up, head-turning to her. Even seated three rows away from her you could see her eyes sparkling with mirth.

“Please pair up with Minagi Tsuzuru.”

Your eyes immediately sought for the familiar figure in front of you, until you felt a soft tap on your shoulder from behind you.

He greeted you by your surname, a small smile on settled on his face. “Looks like we’re partners. I didn’t know we had a class together.”

“Ah, yeah, it’s nice seeing you again.” You reply, discretely reaching over to your ears as if to hide them.

“Right!” The two of you looked over to your friend as he clapped his hands together, “Looks like I just got called! Take care of my babe, Tsuzuru!” You were so, so close to slamming your face on the wooden desk, instead deciding to shoo him away with the motion of your hand.

Turning back to Tsuzuru, you give him an awkward laugh. “Don’t mind him, Minagi-san. He acts dumb, but at least he’s consistent.”

He stands up, shuffling his things and for a moment you forget that he’s actually pretty tall. Transferring to the seat beside you, he shakes his head. “If you think that’s bad, wait until you see what I have to deal with.”

“7 younger brothers, and 2 honorary younger brothers that I had and have to deal with on the daily.” Despite his visible tiredness, his tone suggested that he didn’t mind having to look over them so much.

“I only have my little sister, but she’s as much of a pain as she is cute.” Your eyes lock with turquoise, and both of you simultaneously release a sound between a sigh and a laugh.

“Older sibling night hours?” You offer.

He lets out an appreciative hum, “More like older sibling noon hours, really.”

It’s been two hours since you’ve gotten up from your chair. It’s not that you don’t like Tsuzuru’s company, far from it actually, but your back was starting to hurt and you were getting real fidgety. You needed a walk.

“Minagi-san, do you mind if I get something to drink?”

“Not at all, we’ve been at this for a while.” At his signal, you stood up from your chair and fished through your bag for your wallet.

Pausing, you turn back to look at him for a couple of seconds. He was typing furiously fast, but his eyes were droopy and lidded. If you asked him if he wanted anything he’d probably say no, but that didn’t mean you weren’t gonna try giving him something. He mentioned not having a least favourite food, so coffee milk would probably do, right?

Tsuzuru’s eyes tear away from his laptop, catching you staring at him. Before he could ask if something was wrong, your body suddenly tensed before dashing off.

He sighed, letting his eyes rest for a bit while you were still out. He barely got any sleep last night, and the light emitted by the screen was starting to make his retinas burn. Despite his drowsiness, he manages to let out a small huff to mask his growing smile.

Your ears were red again.

...

Discretely hiding the milk cartons as you re-entered the library, you jokingly wondered if Mankai Company’s playwright would be asleep on a library table again.

“No way,” you murmured in disbelief, setting the cartons on the desk the two of you occupied. There was neither the click-clack of his keyboard nor swift ASMR scribbling on his notebook. Hadn’t you only been gone for 5 minutes?

You debated waking him up for a moment, maybe even teasing him for immediately falling asleep as soon as you left. Maybe you’d press the cold drink next to his cheek to shock him.

You do none of those, and let him sleep for as long as possible. He said he didn’t have any work for the evening so no harm, no foul right?

Unzipping your pencil case, you spot your trademark green sticky notes. You had thought about giving him another note again but never found the opportunity to until today. Of course, if you wrote one now he’d definitely know it was you.

It was sorta embarrassing, but you didn’t mind him knowing.

Ah, but you didn’t really want him to see it while you were in front of him?

“Let me just,” muttering to yourself, you hid the sticky note in one his jacket’s pockets. He shifted slightly, causing your heart to stop for a moment.

Don’t wake up, don’t wake up…

When his eyes don’t flutter open, you let out an audible sigh. Well, whether the brunet was asleep or not you still had work to do.

30 minutes pass when the actor finally woke up. He’s still a little dazed and thoughts still a little muddled when he sees you out like a light in front of him.

Maybe, as he’s walking back home, the humiliation and shame of falling asleep while waiting for you would hit him;

but right now he’s focused on the golden rays of the setting sun hitting your gentle, sleeping features and he’s absolutely entranced. Tiny sighs, soft breathing, a picture of peacefulness.

Seriously, Tsuzuru? Just because you like his scripts. Just because you had your similarities. Just because you had a serene sleeping face. Just because your ears turned red around him and was he allowed to hope?

Did you even see him for more than just Tsuzuru the Mankai Company Playwright? Tsuzuru the actor? Tsuzuru who’s in a class with you?

Last month, he thought of you as a sincere fan. Last week, he thought of you as his cute partner.

And what about now? His mind couldn’t supply him an answer right away, but that was okay. There was time for that tomorrow, and the days and weeks after.

His hand extends forward to pet your head when your eyes blink open and lock with his own.

“Minagi-san?”

He thaws himself out of his frozen stupor and quickly moves to take his hand back. Unexpectedly, you reach your own out to keep it in place.

What were you doing?

“Were you going to…” You trailed off, and by the way your eyes averted from his gaze he could tell you were too embarrassed to finish the question.

“Yeah,” he replied quietly, “Sorry.”

For a few beats, only silence was exchanged between the two of you; then you spoke up again.

“I don’t mind,” some more beats, “you can, you know.”

There are questions left unsaid, but instead, he lowers his palm down slowly, hovering with a bit of hesitance left.

“If it’s you,” you start, “it’s okay.”

“Okay.”

His fingers glide over the soft strands and begin caressing the top of your head.

The concept of time itself didn’t seem to exist as both of you soaked in each other’s quietude. When was the last time he felt all his worries didn’t exist? That he wasn’t constantly worrying about his family, or finances, or university, or scripts.

“Minagi-san,” you began, tone still soft as though not to ruin the atmosphere they created. “It’s important to get some rest too, okay? I worry… I don’t want your health to suffer, so please take care of yourself.”

A rush of endearment overcomes him and if you paid an ounce of attention to his fingertips brushing against your cheeks as he played with your hair, you don’t mention it. He whispers your first name and watches as his index paints a peach across your skin. Your lips part and the palpitations in his heart increase at a pace that can’t be normal.

“I can’t pretend to know, offer to carry your burdens,” you pause, placing your hands atop of his free one, “but if for a while I could relieve you of your stresses, I’d like to stay by your side.”

Oh.

He moved his hand from beneath yours and interlocked your digits together. “Then take care of yourself too.”

When you looked like you were about to protest in confusion he squeezed the palm of your hand lightly, drawing circles on them with his thumb.

“Alright, I promise,” you whispered.

A dozen or so seconds of nothing but tranquility passes when Tsuzuru breaks the silence. “Should we rest for a little longer?”

His eyes have a teasing glint to them, a look rare on the brunet, and something else you can’t describe other than it makes your heart skip a beat.

“We should be heading home now,” you said, almost regretfully, “but our project still isn’t done, so…”

An oath of next time.

It really wasn’t any of Masumi’s business, but wasn’t Tsuzuru in a particularly good mood tonight? The younger boy had no plans to be nosy, but it was getting weird. What if he was planning something with the director? He had to make sure he wouldn’t get in the way.

Quietly, he peered over Tsuzuru’s shoulder to look at the green paper the college student has been staring at for the past five minutes.

I’ve heard it said that people come into our lives for a reason, bringing something we must learn, and we are led to those who help us most to grow.

Oh, wasn’t this from one of the musicals the director liked? The dark-haired boy didn’t know how to interpret it, but if it meant he wouldn’t have to share the director as much that was fine by him.

want to order again?

[sophocused]

mindset update | first week into 2021

recently I've been bullet journaling again, but mostly spread of the self-help tips I've compiled from different podcasts and media.

seven beliefs of an emotionally healthy person from savvy psychologist on Spotify helped a lot to write down

especially, "I can do things I don't feel like doing," which taught me about a skill I can practice called mood-independent behaviour. it's a practice where you do the thing even if you don't feel like it, and observe yourself as your mood catches up. Your mood picks up because you start getting into the rhythm and thinking "oh hey I'm doing it! and I'm liking it, because I like feeling like I'm getting things done, therefore I will keep doing it now, and follow through."

It also helped to know that even if the mood doesn't pick up everytime, at least the thing that needed to be done got done.

This has been me for my room, I used the konmari/marie kondo method before the year ended as usual, for my dresser (makeup, lotions, perfumes, jewellry, skincare, etc), my closet (as someone who hates folding laundry oh my goodness have I shifted things for myself and my mood lately by finally getting that done), my desk (notebooks, stationery, washi tape which I gave a lot up to my sister), and finally under my bed.

I have had a CLEAN room for a whole week, the cleanest it has been in almost a year.

There is finally not a basket waiting in the corner to be folded that I would pick my work clothes out of as the weekdays go by.

There is less junk under my bed of old sentimental who-knows in shoe boxes.

The bookshelf has all my new books so I can finally reach for them instead of them kinda just being there.

The dresser has so much clear space now 😭 just the 5 daily things I use for skin care and makeup are out and closest to me.

My desk has my huion kamvas 16 pro tablet, a laptop stand/2019 dell XPS 15, and all the wires sorted and held together, complete with usb dock.

My desk shelves only have what I need in reach daily, the pilot juice pens, some brush pens, Crayola markers, sketchbooks and bujos.

I can finally just see my carpet floor and not be bumping into it, or seeing some clothing item I shed like a snake.

Overall, while I was mindful not the let the new year stress get to me (like the feeling down on myself for not accomplishing much in 2020) and also to not just set unrealistic new year's resolutions, I have still taken the opportunity to begin new habits with the sole goal of wanting to make my mind a softer place to exist in.

A practice as simple as pressing my tongue to the roof of my mouth actively to make sure I don't zone out and subconsciously clench my teeth or jaw has helped me ease my daily anxiety and stresses too.

I'm focused on living and existing purposefully, actively being more present, no more spacing out, but being aware of what I am doing and taking note of the positive things about it.

For example, I could hate riding the bus as it gives me anxiety being in an enclosed space in the pandemic, I dissipate it by saying "I'm calmed that everyone is wearing a mask and the bus never gets too full, and also I have my music to keep me from getting a headache from the bus noise."

Another time from the past week since going back to work, "The students I supervise can be terrible listeners and I feel most of my day is spent saying the same things over and over, and I'm wasting energy and getting cranky." Once again, my after thought is, "yeah they make me cranky but talking to them and making jokes helps lighten the mood and builds their rapport with me, and thus they can listen to my instruction better. Their laughter makes me happy because it makes me feel that I'm doing something right. I like being called by my last name, it makes me feel like my future career as a teacher is closer than I think."

Just today, I had to go to the extended term in-person lab, and it was my first time being in a lab since February 2020. I was anxious and nervous, and I had to bus for 1.5 hours to get to campus. The TA was being incredibly snarky and condescending when we were just starting, and at first I kept thinking of my criqitue in his poor job as a TA to be talking to us like we were idiots. I took a mental step back, realized that I have never done anything personally to offend him, so he was just having a day. With that, I could release myself from the burden of taking his crankiness to heart. I said thank you with every instruction even if he was being rude about it, and just laughed when he tried to be mean. Within the first 20 min of that three hour lab, he became much nicer towards me, and made personal small talk about work and how we dealt with the pandemic, and he helped me do three things at once. He was still being ruthless but I think he recognized that I was not going to let it ruin my day and I'm still going to perform this lab to the best of my ability and have fun.

I started off this week with a lot of dread, but I find myself actively trying to make things happen for myself, doing things with the thought of "I need to be able to name at least one thing that made me smile today and that will be enough". And I find myself being able to lift my mood up with less resistance.

My sleep cycle is next up, I have woken up at 11:30am, then 10:30am, then today 9:30am, I am almost to my back of my mind goal, to just start waking up early again, to have ample time for a routine before my winter term of uni whisks me away. When I am whisked away I want to be sturdy, I want to ride the wave. I don't want to feel like I'm fighting the current or spiraling down the rapids. I want to make myself sane and that's about it. That's the crucks of it all.

(I am aware what is happening in the US, and as someone extremely sensitive to others' misfortune with the susceptibility to fall into a rage about how the world feels like it'll keep taking steps back into our demise, I am being careful not to consume too much of the news, as I need to keep the momentum first of keeping myself in the right mindset)

[katieurah]

Screening Hearts - Part 3

So, I figured on 3 or 4 parts to this originally. Now, it’s maybe 5? Who knows. These two just keep being ridiculous, so I keep writing. We’ll see and cross our fingers I can make this hot mess into something. 

Also, I apologize for the number of times “check” appears in this one. Quarantine has me making lists of all the things, so I think Elide must make all the lists, too.

Let me know if you want tagged!

...................................................

Elide very carefully swiped her marker over the dry erase calendar above her desk. This is what it feels like to have finally lost it, she thought as she perfected the month and dates in the little black squares. She’d spent all last night rearranging her home office space, expanding the area to house more notebooks, a new-to-this-space jar of pens (which all work after extensively scribble-testing them), her laptop along with the desktop setup that was already there, a wall space for sticky notes, the newly mounted HD webcam, and her favorite chair. Check that off the list.

She was going stir-crazy.

It was bound to happen eventually, right? Her small apartment in a suburb of Orynth was 20 minutes from the office in a downtown business district of the city. Which she hadn’t been to in a week. She hadn’t been outside of her suburb for 5 days. She hadn’t been out of the apartment for 3. Stupid mayor. Stupid politicians. Stupid city limit rules. Stupid apartment in the crap-side of town.

Elide would feel so much better if her boss would actually contact her and give her feedback. She’d feel so much better if she were actually working with her team and not just video conferencing. She’d feel so much better if she could go blow off steam at her favorite pub. She’d feel so much better if Lorcan wasn’t the only consistent contact she’d had.

Aelin and Rowan had Elspeth and were on an extended holiday they’d planned before the merger and were now stuck due to travel restrictions. A cabin in the Staghorn mountains seemed great until you were stuck with limited internet.

Lysandra and Aedion were all the way in Rifthold where he was stationed and she was in between jobs. There were only so many video calls they could do.

Manon and The Thirteen were coordinating relief efforts in the Wastes where travel restrictions hit hardest. Dorian, of course, was there, up Manon’s butt and around the corner. She got sassy when she was stressed and anxious. And maybe a little immature, too.

She’d been organizing and creating checklists for almost two days. She kept going through her mental list of her people, adding Yrene and Chaol, Fenrys and Connall, Gavriel, Vaughn...Check, Check, Check. More people she’d had contact with, but no one to talk to. At least she knew where they were. Another thing to check off the list.

Elide hung the calendar up above her work area and booted her computer system up. She wanted to triple check that it all would work seamlessly whether she added her laptop in or not.

“Cable there...check… settings….check...audio detect...check…check, chickity-check…. check yo self before you wreck yo self….Chickity-check yo self before you wreck yo self….Yeah, come on and check yo self before you wreck yo self!”

Head bobbing and hands scratching imaginary DJ setups while she waited, Elide was so lost in her thoughts that when the video chat tones went off and startled her, she tipped over in her chair as she reached over to answer the call without thinking.

“Uh, Elide? You okay?”

Shit! Of course, she actually would have answered the dadgummed thing. As she fell over. On a chat with Lorcan. …

Lorcan watched with amusement as Elide closed her eyes and took a deep breath, righting herself in her seat and glaring at him.

“What do you want, Salvaterre?”

He struggled to keep his face straight, biting the inside of his cheek before answering. He honestly had no real reason for video calling her on Sunday evening. They weren’t even supposed to talk until after lunch tomorrow, but he found himself making up excuses anyway.

“I was just testing a new set up and wanted to make sure everything worked right. Just lucky I guess that you were available to be my guinea pig,” he teased. She regarded him suspiciously, like she didn’t quite believe his story.

“Well, you tried it. So, bye,” she quipped and began to reach to end the chat. She still looked flustered. She probably didn’t want to admit she’d been doing the same thing to her system and that’s why she could answer. And that he’d seen her wipe out at the beginning of the call.

“Hold on there, sweetheart. I have to make sure the audio is calibrated just right and that we don’t get dropped.” He adopted an arrogant tone, knowing it’d irk her and keep her on longer.

“Don’t call me that,” she hissed.

He chuckled, reading her face just fine over the screen, noting her little tells of irritation, how her nostrils flared when he got under her skin.

“First,” she continued, gritting her teeth, “you can run diagnostics with the system, you don’t need me. Second, you’re a morning guy. Why are you on here at 6 on Sunday night? Heck, we could even be doing this tomorrow before we dive in.”

“Oh, come on, El. You know as well as I do that testing systems works better with another person. And what else is there to do since we’re all kind of stuck? Perranth officially cut off travel on Friday until the tox results come back on that dinner.”

“I know… it’ll be another week before we know if we can even go back to the office,” she whined. Then she looked caught off guard “Wait… you’re in Perranth? I thought you’d be in Doranelle at headquarters?”

Damn. She didn’t know he was back in the country, then. “Rowan wanted some security updates done at the branch office here, so I stopped off on my way to the summit. Then the shit hit the fan, so I’m here until they ease up.”

“Oh. Well, that stinks...Wait, if you’re only in for that, are you seriously set up in a hotel right now?”

“Gods, no! That’d be the worst. I’m at the cottage,” he replied, referring to the second home Rowan and Aelin had purchased. Since everyone traveled so much, Rowan had set up an office for the security firm in that house. It was also a frequent place for layover flights, pit stops, and long weekends, making it a nice retreat while he was stuck.

“You didn’t seriously pack your coffee, the grinder, and the whole system with you…” She said, staring at him flatly.

“Damn straight. I wouldn’t be able to live on that cheap single-serve crap Aelin keeps here. Must be why she’s always so bitchy…”

“Hey! That’s my sister-cousin you’re talking about! And I doubt it’s the coffee’s fault...” Elide jumped to defend Aelin, even while chuckling and agreeing. She knew A could be a real piece of work.

Lorcan smiled, eager to keep up their banter. He was relaxing and it felt nice to be back to how they were. “El, I-”

“Well, it’s late and I’ve gotta get a few more things done before tomorrow. Bye, Salvaterre.” Elide rushed as though trying to stop him from speaking any more and ended the chat abruptly.

Lorcan stared at the screen, trying to catch up. He hadn’t even said anything. Had he? Even she was laughing at his rather mild jab at Aelin. Sure, A got on his nerves sometimes and their history wasn’t always good, but she was family.

He dropped his head back, rubbing his face with his hands. He let out a frustrated growl before stalking to the kitchen. Maybe there was some whisky somewhere. ....

Elide slumped over the desk, banging her head as she whined. She had to stop. Their banter was nice. She wouldn’t admit to craving it yet, though. She wasn’t so stir-crazy to go that deep into navel gazing… yet anyways. She needed distance. She had to remember that Lorcan was a self-absorbed, arrogant, dill hole. She had to remind herself of that. She brought back memories of That Night to reinforce those thoughts as her heart tried to betray her again.

She’d been upset and angry at another jerk who’d tried to get in her pants and wasn’t mature enough to handle no. Sure, he’d been a fun date and was attractive, but she just didn’t feel that urge with him yet. So she said no, he’d ghosted for a week, and then sent a text saying he thought they should see other people.

Aelin had handed her a glass of wine and cheered her up a bit, making her laugh over horror stories from past dates. Dating was hard. Elide was a catch. Guys were dumb. Then they started talking about Lorcan. “El… have you thought maybe you and Lor should try it?”

Elide had stared open-mouthed, trying to formulate a response coherent enough. Was she that obvious? She thought she hid her feelings pretty well, but… And Aelin recommending it?

“Come on, E, you two are great together. And I know you. I’ve seen you staring at him several times. Just, think about it? And that you’ve got options. This loser isn’t worth any more tears.”

“True,” Elide had agreed. “Maybe I’ll ask Lorcan for coffee or something later. But tonight I just want to finish this wine and snuggle Ellie.”

Just then, Lorcan walked in and ruined it all.

Right. He ruined it. No going back.

Elide left her mental checklist behind in favor of repeating bad things about Lorcan to herself. Even as she pointedly ignored the realization that talking to him helped she felt more grounded than she had earlier. She also ignored the realization that she’d probably fall asleep convincing herself that his laugh earlier was grating and not the best sound she’d ever heard.

.................................................................................

@nalgenewhore

[bigdblogger]

Top 12 Ways to Improve your Handwriting

Hello ! In this article I have posted about the top ways or methods to improve one's individual handwriting. As even though we all have our smart devices used for typing instead of writing to save our time, at some point of time we all are in situation were we are required to write instead of typing. So for those who want to develop their handwriting kindly ensure that you study the whole article. If you do like this article kindly like and comment. If you do want to know my previous article do visit my website please bigdeepblogger.blogspot.com. Thank you !

1.Our handwriting is the reflection of our character 1/12 :

The beginning of computers and laptops may have revolutionized the world and completely overthrown the ‘handwritten’ documentation in the professional pitch, yet, there is no doubt about the fact that our handwriting is the reflection of our character. People with good handwriting are able to project self-confidence, diligence and dexterity onto the paper. We cannot replace the beauty of a handwritten letter with the printed alphabet and so, for anyone who has always wanted to have that beautiful and legible scribble, here are ten, simple yet powerful ways to equip you with a legible hand

2.Keep it comfortable2/12 :

The first step is to be comfortable. Do not put a lot of force on the paper while writing. A beautiful letter and a smooth writing should come with ease. Let smoothness flow through the ink otherwise either the pencil tip will break too often or sheet will be full of ink smudges. Hold the pen/pencil where it feels comfortable. Ideally, it should not be held too close to the tip or too far from it either. Don’t move your hand too much or you will soon be tired. Position your hand on the paper and then let your arm move ,you don’t have to craft and draw every alphabet, you just need to form them. That would need much of a wrist or hand movement but basically an arm’s motion.

3.Try out a different mantra3/12 :

We have all heard that ‘the pen is mightier than sword’, so find that right weapon for yourself! Try out first with a pencil since it brings out the grace in a better way. You could even equip yourself with colored pens, sketch pens, bold markers or even calligraphy pens to add diversity and colors to your notes. After sufficient practice you may even go for an artistic brush and paints!! Don’t use gaudy, fancy bejeweled or decorative pens. They would only add to the work by making you put unnecessary extra effort, and you would end up putting more time on a piece of work.

4.Sit right and set it right4/12 :

Try not to tire yourself; in any case the wizardry of your hand will wear off. Sit in an agreeable, yet ideally, upstanding stance. Sit on a seat and utilize a table. It's anything but a savvy or prudent plan to start by putting a notebook on your lap and allowing the pen to move across the paper's surface. This would get considerably more chaotic than previously! Utilize one hand (regardless of whether left or option) to compose and put the other one to help the piece of paper. Attempt to be mindful. Your eyes should follow the development of your pen. This will give you a superior fixation power.

5.Lines are your best friend5/12 :

At first it is prudent to utilize an administered sheet. This would help you structure equi-relative letter sets and characters. Compose on the line, not above it. This will leave your letters in order alone more uniform rather that sporadic. It is likewise prudent to work on composition on a diagram paper to keep the letters in order more adjusted. Later you may attempt your 'hand' on a plain sheet. Past that, you are free for investigating welcoming cards and that's only the tip of the iceberg!!

6.Give them a break6/12 :

Offer your words a reprieve! This may appear to be too little to be in any way perceptible, yet this is something vital to be remembered while focusing on an ideal penmanship. On the off chance that your words will in general stay together excessively, they may get unrecognizable to add to the burdens! Give abundant space between two words to make every one discernable from another. At first one could give 'a couple of fingers' space between each word. Afterward, it would get self-consolidated in your penmanship, and you will not need to stress over it by any stretch of the imagination !

7.Try not to let it lean7/12 :

In spite of the fact that you are allowed to pick how you need to compose however by and large words ought not inclination a lot forward (to one side) or in reverse (to one side). They will in general be hard to be perused. One may need to shift their heads to comprehend the word! An instructor would just discover it excessively irritating! To have a decent effect the penmanship needs to look adjusted. Take a stab at rehearsing on giving just a slight or next to no tendency to your letter sets, in the event that you need (and that too ideally a tendency to one side!). There is no predisposition except for words inclining to the privilege ordinarily are preferable unmistakable over words scheduling to one side.

8.Practice makes you perfect8/12 :

This is anything but an occasion's home undertaking or significant semester task. So keep it cool! Attempt to compose little sections every day at whatever point you go ahead and do as such. There are not a viable replacement for a decent practice and no way out from difficult work. It would be surprisingly better to compose a unique piece, say, how your day went or about your timetable for the following day or even designs for an exceptional day! This will keep you in a positive perspective. In the wake of completing it, generally return to audit what you composed. Look at on that sentence structure and spellings as well. Not exclusively will you have an excellent composition yet in addition delightful and syntactically right language !

9.Be patient9/12 :

The disposition consistently courses through your work. If you understand it, the others typically do. The penmanship mirrors your disposition and surprisingly your perspective. Anyway awful your penmanship might be, a cheerful mind-set consistently improves it than previously while a disappointed one leaves it in a more regrettable state! So don't get eager after a couple of pages of scrawl. Give yourself time. You know it's certainly feasible. In any case, it will require practice and steadiness, after all even Rome wasn't implicit a day!

10.Be inventive be cursive10/12 :

You don't need to duplicate content and duplicate styles, simply attempt to be YOU. Make various letter sets and see which one you find simple to make and fast to embrace. Attempt to draw cursive letter sets rather than disjoint ones. Cursive penmanship, however educated in nursery, is the way to compose words rapidly and flawlessly without lifting your pen excessively! In spite of the fact that it is turning into an evaporating workmanship yet it stays perhaps the most ideal approaches to have a clear and slick penmanship.

11.Compose 'palaces' in the air11/12 :

This one isn't care for dreaming ceaselessly however takes you nearer to your fantasy! Albeit the majority of us might be unconscious of this stunt yet lo and observe, it has been deductively contemplated, tested and demonstrated that writing noticeable all around fortifies the muscles of the arm, shoulder and hand. Start by composing large noticeable all around and progress to composing little. Attempt to move less of your wrist and a greater amount of your arm. You don't need to look senseless by doing this in everybody's essence, except another way could be utilizing a chalk and board or a marker pen and white board! At last, the point is to oversee your developments and accomplish that impeccable progression of words.

12.All the Best!12/12 :

Recollect , great penmanship is an expertise and it stays with you even after you leave the assessment lobby … so investing the additional exertion to compose a decipherable piece easily is something little to request a valued belonging. Keep in mind, that it is an obtained ability, anyone can thus can you!

[ohwereusingourmadeupnames]

all of who does what for Thunderstruck Starker

Wah, nonnie - this made my day! Thunderstruck is one of my favorite verses. If you haven’t read it, head over to AO3 to catch up with the entire series. 

For those of us that are lazy, the general gist is this: they are mechanics in a soulmate verse where pairs can hear the music their other half is listening to in their head. Peter is deaf, so it takes an alternate listening method for them to find each other. Life together ensues. 

Send me a ship & a prompt/au situation/idea and I’ll tell you who does what - 

Who accidentally pushes a door instead of pulling/vice versa: Tony is perpetually distracted. There are always designs in his head, or the song lyrics to the last song he heard on the radio. Since he’s so used to being in his own shop where everything does exactly what he wants it to, he doesn’t bother looking at a door when he comes to an unfamiliar one. It takes him walking into several before he thinks that maybe he should take his head out of his ass and be present. The fact that Peter doesn’t tell him before he walks into said doors is a sore spot for the two of them - though, it’s easy for Tony to laugh when he sees the sheer delight on Peter’s face. Both of them are very familiar with the sign for jackass for a reason. 

Who doodles little hearts all over the desk with their initials inside them: It starts to happen unconsciously. Peter is so distracted in class one day, he lets his mind focus on the music he can hear there, Tony obviously in the shop working, the AC/DC blaring a sure fire sign of that. He’s missing half the lecture, but that never seems to matter - his note taker is thorough and they haven’t touched a topic he doesn’t know thoroughly, yet. When everyone starts to get up at the end of class, he sees the hearts and they’re initials all locked together - the doodles mixing in with the song lyrics he hears over the course of the hour. At the end of the semester, his notebook is filled more with doodles and the many ways he figures out how to put Mr. Peter Stark down on paper - bubble letters and all. 

Who starts the tickle fights: A lot of times, neither of them plan to start the tickle wars that have been known to go on for days. There is a lot of finger spelling going on in bed, neither man willing to break away long enough to get a sign out, so the tangibility of the letters and symbols on skin becomes the easiest way for either of them to get their point across. Sometimes, when Tony is lounging on the couch with Peter’s head in his lap, it’s easy to get lost tracing long planes of smooth skin - his fingertips now pretty familiar with the territory. The touches that bring out the sounds Peter is so sparing with are repeated until a hand is batting his away and his soulmate is starting to retaliate. One time, they spent three days getting each other into situations where they could tickle the hell out of the other. When it’s Peter that starts it, Tony tries to ignore the tingling sensation racing across his skin - but he can’t, he’ll never be able to. By the time Peter is finding all of the good spots, Tony is on his knees - Peter’s cock usually filling him while fingers wonder. 

Who starts the pillow fights: Tony is a ninja when it comes to his pillow throwing skill. The longer he’s with Peter, the more creative he has to become to get the man’s attention. Sometimes, he just doesn’t want to get up off his chair, so he’ll chuck a pillow or throw the nearest soft thing he can reach. Peter always looks over at him with the slightest bit of irritation in his eye - like he’s worth more than the toss of a pillow. Which is exactly right. Tony usually gets up and gives him a kiss, the intended interaction sitting on hold until they come up for air. Peter is stealth with his attacks and usually uses Tony’s never ending need to never have the other mad at him to his advantage. He’ll slam the pillow against Tony’s face when he comes in for a ‘I’m sorry’ hug and then it’s all out war. Tony is never one to back down from a challenge - even if he’s the one dropping the initial gauntlet. 

Who falls asleep last, watching the other with a small affectionate smile: Peter’s never been the best sleeper. It’s a little better now that Tony is around, but he’s still not that great at it. There are times when he can get right to sleep, usually when he’s spent and coming down from the fifth orgasm - and there are other times when he startles himself awake, or sits just at the edge of consciousness, his brain never quite hurtling over the peak of true rest. After realizing just how cute Tony looks when he’s slowly drifting off to sleep, Peter lets the sleeplessness aid him in watching Tony in the most unguarded moments the man will ever have. The older man does a really good job of taking care of him - but, it’s nice to see the softer side, too. 

Who lets the microwave play the loud beeping sound at 1am in the morning: In their new home in Cambridge, Tony installs a microwave that doesn’t beep - because Peter can’t hear it, anyway. Instead, the lights attached to it flash. Tony is free to make whatever noises he likes, but he respects Peter’s needs, too. He comes to find that the flash of light is much nicer, more peaceful. 

Who comes up with cheesy pick up lines: Always Tony. There’s like an innate feature within him that makes him feel the need to always be making lame jokes. It’s not with everyone, either. He’s stonewall with Steve and Bucky and the slightest bit affectionate with Happy - but he’s not out to impress them. No, he wants Peter’s attention on him, anything that will earn him that beaming smile. So, he makes puns and silly jokes - especially overtly lame and outlandish pick up lines. Literally anything Tony can do to get Peter to whole heartedly laugh, he’s is going to do it. 

Who rearranges the bookshelf in alphabetical order: Tony’s office space is meticulous, but there aren’t a lot of text books to speak of. The technologically brained man likes to keep all of his needed information on the tablet he keeps with him. Peter, on the other hand, is all about the tangibility of turning pages and taking notes - he catches grief about it from the older man constantly. The bookcase they built together houses all of Peter’s books, including the fantasy novels that he’s so very fond of. The books are sorted not only by alphabetical name, but by genre and subject matter, too. He likes to be organized, it helps. 

Who licks the spoon when they’re baking brownies: Peter’s not shy about his appetite, no matter how much he’s consumed in the small window of time he’s been eating. There are times when Tony has to limit his time in the kitchen when they’re baking - more of the stuff in the bowl makes it into Peter’s mouth than into the pan. There’s no chiding about raw eggs or sickness - Tony likes the fact that Peter is all over the brownie batter. When he kisses him later, Peter tastes sweet, the slightest hint of chocolate there and steadily present the entire time they press their lips together.

Who buys candles for dinners even though there’s no special occasion: Every time they eat food is a special occasion - though, they don’t always mark it as such. Aunt May is pretty consistent about the little care packages she sends him and the one he receives right before Christmas is stuffed to the gils with decorations and silly trinkets - long red candles included. For the three weeks it takes them to burn down to nothing, Peter and Tony eat their meals by candle light. Peter mentions how much they enjoyed them to May, so there’s a new set of them in every single package she sends his way from then on out. 

Who draws little tattoos on the other with a pen: Tony is terribly needy right around the time Peter starts to study for something. It’s like a sixth sense - he’s not seeing dead people, but he sure as hell is being distracting, his need for attention never ceasing. That is, of course, until he discovers just how good Peter’s skin looks with blue pen on it. Study sessions get a little easier after that, though Peter sacrifices his right arm for the sake of furthering his knowledge. The cuter ones, he doesn’t wash off right away - he lets the blue ink stick around until it fades naturally. 

Who comes home with a new souvenir magnet every time they go on vacation: Peter usually brings back postcards. What do you buy a man that could have anything he pleased in an airport gift shop? He decides that a marker of where he was traveling would be the best idea, so he sticks to it. The one time the Atlanta airport is out of postcards, he grabs a magnet instead. It becomes a thing to see where Tony proudly displays them after that. 

Who convinces the other to fill out those couple surveys in the back of magazines: Neither of them - they don’t need any further proof about how perfectly meant to be they are. 

[somethingpoeticiguess]

Ohshc Au Idea

- Ohshc Au where they all go to art school (both performing and drawing and stuff y’know (is it called visual??))

- Sort of like the same vibe as that show on Netflix called Backstage

- The school would be one of those super prestigious art schools like the Juilliard of their universe

- Tamaki would obviously be there to study piano

- he’d spend hours in the practice rooms and all of the other pianists hate him because he’s got some sort of superhuman power when it comes to booking practice rooms before anyone else

- Kyoya would be vocal performance with a minor in Broadway type acting (help I don’t know the actual terms)

- here I go again rambling about my Kyoya can sing headcanon that I will go down with 

-Babey boy would probably be known as one of those people who can sing anything throughout the school

- Everyone from school can tell his voice apart from everyone else’s

- like if they walk past a practice room and hear him singing inside they can tell instantly that it’s him

- like picture this: a senior is giving a freshman a tour of the college and they walk past the practice rooms and inside practice room 3 the Freshman can hear someone singing in the best voice that they have ever heard. The freshman says to the senior with starstruck eyes “Who’s that??” “Ahh” the senior says “That’s Kyoya Ootori, he’s kind of a legend around here”

- Hikaru would be a Shakespearean type actor

- Like he has whole ass monologues on the tip of his tongue at any given moment

- He’s a super good actor however he can’t sing for shit so he could never be in a musical

- He’s secretly jealous because Kyoya can sing so well

- They’re secretly jealous of each other

-Kyoya wishes he could act as well as Hikaru and Hikaru wishes he could sing as well as Kyoya

- Kaoru would be the one to take over their mother’s business and would study fashion and clothing design 

- Even though Hikaru is the eldest he had no interest in the family business and decided to pursue acting instead 

- Luckily for the Hitachiin family Kaoru took to clothing design from a very early age

- He makes clothes for the rest of the hosts on a regular basis

-He makes all of the clothes that the hosts wear for their performances and art galleries and whatnot

- The drama department loves him because he makes all of their costumes

- Mori would be a sketch artist, a painter, and a sculptor

- He’d basically do everything in the art department from drawing to welding metal figures

- he doesn’t talk much so he communicates through his art as cheesy as that sounds

- He constantly has either paint on his clothes, clay under his nails, or both at the same time

- People in the general public are slightly concerned when he opens his bag and they see a blowtorch inside

- His metal sculptures are littered all across campus

- Some of these sculptures include but are not limited to: A giant replica of Mary Poppins, Patti Lupone (Kyoya legit cried when he saw this one), and a giant metal spider that the students have so aptly named Kenneth

- Kenneth lives on top of the Art building 

- Despite the fact that he’s an art student he really loves showtunes and gets really excited to see/hear Kyoya sing them

- Honey is a culinary arts student

- His specialty is (obviously) desserts

- He makes the prettiest cakes and the most delicious meals

- He has to stand on a step ladder to make those giant wedding type cakes

- He constantly smells like a bakery... like constantly

- Haruhi is a violinist

- she treats her violin like a baby. She even keeps it in the child seat part of the cart when she goes to the grocery store

- She goes to the school on a violin scholarship 

- She plays a cheap violin she got from a small music store when she was ten with her birthday/Christmas money that she had been saving for years 

- The way she plays that cheap little violin you’d think it was a super nice expensive one 

- She’s mostly self taught

- When she was young she couldn’t afford lessons so she taught herself to play

- She only began to take lessons when she got to high school

- I imagine when she isn’t playing classical for school her playing sounds a lot like Ada Pasternak

- Ada Pasternak Video: https://youtu.be/YQSzk44hBmk

- when they don’t live in the dorms they rent a fairly large house that they all live in together (like that house that Sam Golbach, Colby Brock, Corey Scherer, Aaron Doh, Devyn Lundy, Jake Webber, and Elton Castee lived in together) 

- Tamaki has a whole ass grand piano in his room 

- Nobody’s really sure how he got it in there

- He also has a keyboard that he brings around the house for jam sessions with the other hosts

- They have jam sessions in the living room

- Tamaki brings down his keyboard or he plays the little theatre piano that sits in their living room

- Haruhi brings down her little violin that she loves with all of her heart Kyoya would sing with them

- They’d do stuff like that Ada Pasternak video I put earlier in this post except instead of Haruhi singing it would be Kyoya

- Mori’s room legitimately would not be a bedroom

- It would be an art studio with a Mori sized bed in the corner and a theatre style clothing rack next to it

- he has like four easels all around the room and a desk covered in drawing pads, pencils, ink markers, colored pencils, oil paint, and random multicolored stains

- In the middle of the room he has a raised platform with whatever sculpture he’s currently working on sitting on top of it

- He has a shelf with all sorts of supplies in it

- He has like three different blowtorches, a huge array of paint brushes, different sharp things for his clay sculptures, hammers, a bunch of books on the history of art, and a dirty paint and clay covered apron with random burn holes in it

- Kyoya has like a whole arsenal of throat coat teas and herbal things in his room as well as a kettle and a hot plate

- In the corner he built a small room that only has room for one average sized person to go inside and coated the inside with sound proof padding and that’s where he practices belting and other different vocal techniques 

- Kyoya absolutely loves their giant bathroom

- The acoustic qualities make him really excited he loves to sing in there 

- Kyoya, Tamaki, and Haruhi sometimes jam in their fantastically acoustic bathroom because they are attracted to good acoustics the same way a moth is attracted to a bright light

- Hikaru has a whole library of scripts in his room

- like his bookshelves are just overflowing with scripts from all the plays he’s been in 

- Some books on Shakespeare and the ins and outs of acting are scattered around the bookshelf too but it’s mostly scripts

- On his desk he keeps the script from the show that he’s currently in right in the middle of his desk with a pencil cup in the corner full of pens and highlighters 

- He has a huge bulletin board in his room filled with pictures from different shows and different print outs of his favorite monologues and whatnot

- Kaoru’s room is similar to Mori’s in the sense that it’s barely a bedroom at all

- He has a small bed and a small dresser and the rest of the space is filled with his work

- He has a huge desk that is covered in scraps of fabric, scissors, and measuring tape

- He has a HUGE pin cushion in the corner that would be an absolute hazard if it fell to the ground

- Above his desk is a giant bulletin board similar to Hikaru’s except his is less of a collage and more of an idea board

- It’s full of sketches for new designs and has the occasional magazine clipping or inspirational quote

- Honey basically lives in the kitchen 

- His room only has a bed and a dresser and a few ginormous bookshelves

- on these bookshelves are countless numbers of cookbooks

- 90% of what’s on these bookshelves is actually just regular notebooks and journal type things full of recipes that Honey has come up with himself 

- The kitchen is HIS domain none of the other hosts ever use it other than to get the occasional glass of water or snack here and there

- They basically eat gourmet every night

- He cooks all of their meals and uses them as his guinea pigs 

- Luckily for them 99% of the time his food is absolutely delicious

- Their house is full of just bits and pieces of what they do

- Mori’s artwork decorates the entire place

- The centerpiece for their table is a bouquet of metal flowers that Mori made

- His paintings decorate the walls and some of his sculptures sit as decorations in some of the different rooms

- There is sheet music literally all over the house

- nobody bats an eye when hey find the crescendo piece of a classical violin song on the kitchen table

- or when they find the lyrics to a classical opera song jammed in between the couch cushions

- Kaoru will often use Haruhi as his model for his dresses 

- he’ll have her put on a tank top and bike shorts and literally build a dress onto her body and by the end she’s walking around the house in a whole ass Victorian style ballgown

- God help their house if Kyoya gets sick before a performance

- The amount of throat coat tea he consumes is absolutely unreal

- He has a little table with shelves behind it in his room with a tea kettle and a hot plate on it

- on the shelves behind it are boxes upon boxes of throat coat and herbal tea and a whole arsenal of mugs

- The house always smells like cooking food because Honey lives in the kitchen and is always cooking something or other

-When it doesn’t smell like food it smells like burning metal because Mori is always working on some sort of metal sculpture with one of his countless blowtorches 

- This boy legit keeps a fire extinguisher in his bedroom in case he sets something on fire with said blowtorch

- Christmas season is absolutely wonderful in their house

- Tamaki and Haruhi are playing Christmas songs

- Kyoya is singing them

- Honey is making all sorts of festive dishes (You should see him on Thanksgiving he goes absolutely ham (pun intended))

- Kaoru is making festive outfits

- Mori makes each and every one of their Christmas decorations

- and Hikaru is practicing his lines for the production of A Christmas Carol that he’s in every year (This is his fourth time playing Scrooge!)

- But all in all this is a house where creativity flourishes and they all boost each other’s creativity to the max

- and of course they all graduate and become extremely successful and stay close knit forever

BONUS:

- Renge is also a vocalist she performs with Kyoya very often

- Kasanoda is a ballet student

- People are surprised he does something so graceful and elegant because he looks scary but when you really think about it it fits his personality 

- Nekozawa is a poet (Edgar Allan Poe 2.0)

[staticsandstationery]

Okay, so you want to start a bullet journal? But you don’t have the right notebook or the right pens or the right washi tape or the right ruler or the right vibe?

SO WHAT??

Don’t let a fear of your bullet journal not being able to compete with the bullet journals you see on Instagram keep you from jumping in. The trick to being successful by using your bullet journal is to just get started!

So I’m going to walk you through how I set up my bullet journal in about 45 minutes. There are plenty of ways to get a brand new bullet journal set up in anywhere from 10 minutes (trust me, it can be done to an extent) to upwards of a handful of hours. 

It all just depends on how much work you want to do up front and how much of a project you want your bullet journal to be each week and each month when it’s time for a new spread.

I, for one, used to fall into the category of people who spend way too damn long on setting up a bullet journal. When I first got started, I used about 12 different pen colors, I used to paint the covers of a new journal, and I used to try to do all these random things to decorate the pages (if you don’t believe me, just watch this pen pile grow).

This time, I wanted to take a different approach. I’ve been using either a Passion Planner or an Erin Condren Life Planner for close to two years now, but neither has every feature I need. Also, long story short, I wasn’t using my planner effectively anymore. Grad school is a little less...intense I guess? My to-do lists are shorter and my days aren’t as packed, but things carry more weight. Does that make sense? So my planner has a lot of wasted space at this point in my life, and last semester I didn’t use a planner at all because all I had was my team design project. I fought with myself for almost this entire semester about what to do to be a better student, keep myself more organized, and keep myself on top of my assignments and deadlines. 

The answer? Get back into bullet journaling.

I set my bullet journal up in about 45 minutes this morning before I sat down to study for my upcoming statistics exam, so let’s walk through how I did that.

1. Gather Supplies

First, I got together my existing Erin Condren Life Planner (which, let’s be honest, I will always love), an empty notebook I had lying around (I am the type of person that people gift notebooks to and I’m definitely not complaining), some highlighters (I only ended up using the gray one), and some black pens. I happen to have Faber Castell pens laying around because I like to sketch and they don’t bleed when I go over them with watercolors, but seriously, any black pen is totally fine. I promise.

2. Make your Index

Fortunately, the Leuchtturm1917 notebook I have comes with an index in the front already. However, if your notebook does not have one, you’ll want to go ahead and add that at the very beginning of your notebook.

I’m going to be honest, I don’t love that it’s called an index in the bullet journal community because to me it’s a table of contents if it’s a the front, but whatever.

3. Create a Future Log

Skipping the index and one blank page, I dove right in. I will say, I had a bit of a plan going in. I knew I wanted to have 6 columns, one for each month, so I spaced those out using a mechanical pencil. Using a brush pen I had laying around (you can also use a crayola marker or a plain pen/marker if you’re not feeling script fonts), I wrote out the first 6 months and gave my page a title.

I then did the exact same thing for the next 6 months.

Next up, I went over those pencil lines with a black pen. Pencil can be skipped, or going over with a black pen can be skipped - it depends on how confident you are in your spacing and what you want your bullet journal to look like (in the end, that’s what your bullet journal is all about, right?). Once I had my six columns, I went in and put mini calendars in for the first 6 months. I’ll go back and do May - October later.

Once I had my columns, I went in and started added some dates to my future log. If you’re on a time crunch and just want your bullet journal started so you can add in your first list, then by all means, power on through and skip this part!

4. Make your Monthly Spread

Okay, so this is 100% where my pencil and my eraser saw the most action. I had no idea what I wanted my spread to look like, just that I wanted a teeny calendar and a place for goals.

I started by sketching out some boxes, writing in what I wanted those boxes to be, debating whether I actually wanted any of those boxes, etc.

Eventually, I decided it’s what I wanted and I went over everything with some black pens.

I included a section for monthly goals, some important dates, and an overview of budget benchmarks. 

5. Add a Habit Tracker

100% optional, but I decided that on the page facing my monthly spread would be the perfect place to track some of the habits I want to get better about staying on top of. Since it’s a tracker for the month, it made sense to keep it with the whole month.

This is without a doubt the part that took the longest when I was setting up my bullet journal this morning. Not only did I have to figure out what exactly I wanted to track, but I also had to go through and ink in all the lines because once I started, I was committed.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it turned out great and I’m really excited to use it, but I wish I had left it until a few days from now, just because it did take almost 20 minutes for this one page (ridiculous, right?).

6. Make Your Weekly Spread

I decided to keep my weekly spread relatively simple, especially compared to what my bullet journal used to look like, and stuck to just black pen and gray highlighter.

I kept things as simple as possible. I’m hoping that with a simpler layout, I can maybe get a new weekly spread going in under 5 minutes as my weeks progress.

Along the lefthand side, I have my work and class schedule. Then the rest of the two page spread is dedicated to to-do lists. Can you spot the mistake I made on Monday? Who cares?? Make mistakes in your bullet journal!! This is JUST FOR YOU!

I may switch to more of a horizontal situation in the upcoming weeks, but for right now I’m on board with this one and we’ll see how it goes!

7. Finally, Make Sure You Have a Key

I forgot until the very end to set up my key, and honestly, it wasn’t the end of the world. I stuck it up on the page just before my index starts and called it a day.

I did my best to keep it simple. My keys in the past have had a habit of taking up an entire page. 

All in all, I’m really happy with the more minimalist direction this bullet journal is heading. I’m excited to only need to carry like two or three writing utensils to be able to use it, I’m excited to not stress about messing up, and I’m excited to be excited about school again.

I plan on adding a few more pages, like a cleaning schedule and a workout tracker or something similar, but that’ll come after I finished getting ready for my Stat exam!

What do your bullet journals look like? How long does it take you to set yours up?

[unholyhelbiglinked]

Arachnid | 001

READ IT ON AO3 | CHECK IT OUT FROM THE START

Dead men tell no tales. That’s the first thing Michelle Jones’s father taught her when she was younger. Secrets never spilled from cold blue lips. Drowning souls could only breathe water. All the good stuff that a man should instill in his daughter when she was sitting cross-legged in a sandbox with a plastic shovel in hand.

He wiped the hair from her face and gave her his dazzling Jones smile that could get him so far in this world. It was crooked, yet devilish at the same time, warm like the sun and hot like the fire that pushed into a starless sky.

Then a passing El Dorado with its windows tinted and its front bumper dragging opened fire. A small park on the corner of seventh and Waldon got four smoking bullet holes through its brand new swing set donated by the city- and two in Phillip Jones ’s chest.

MJ didn’t remember much of that day, but she had heard the tales; they had morphed over the years. The make and model of the car had changed. The sandbox had shifted to a bench on the far end of the park, and the bullets had multiplied in numbers, but never lowered, because it should take more than two shots to put one of the most powerful men in Queen’s in the ground.

She does remember the blood. The way stained his smile orange and two slowly growing spots of crimson quickly wetted his chest before he fell forward and someone grabbed her while the car did it’s best to speed off, sputtering toxic smog through the city like a carbon trail.

“Earth to MJ,” The words startled her, and she glanced up from the blank notebook page that was in front of her. Gayle was holding up two sundresses that looked the same in length and style. One pattern was red and the other was a seafoam green. Both, MJ was sure, would look fine. “You spaced out on me for a second, everything okay?”

Gayle Jones was a sophomore in college that still came back to their small place in the Bronx to leech of whatever their Aunt Anna decided to cook for the night and to do laundry. Not that any of them minded, but it made their tearful farewells at the college dorms seem a little less meaningful if she slithered her way into her old room every other weekend.

She carried the greenest eyes Michelle Jones had ever seen, the unripe color popped against brown skin and curly hair that flowed around her shoulders. She had the same smile her father had. She remembered that clearly compared to what her sister did. Warm, yet burning.

“Yeah, yes. I’m fine. I like the green one.”

“You’re going to have to work on your lying before you get accepted to MIT.” Gayle let out a long sigh and threw both dresses on the end of MJ’s bed. The hangers clanked loudly before the younger girl tapped her pen twice against the blank notebook page and slammed it shut. “Maybe I’ll just go naked.”

“Oh, I’m sure he would love that.”

Gayle squinted her sharp eyes before grasping at the closest fabric to her before holding it flush against her chest and staring intently in the mirror tacked to the inside of the door. “Green it is then. What are you trying to write?”

“A thing for class.” She responded in a beat. “It’s about the escalating violence in Queen’s. You know, the backstage stuff.”

She froze, and Michelle Jones made stilled eye contact with her through the very same cracked glass that had been in her room since she was carted in with a suitcase and the feeling of blood still on her lips. Her Aunt Anna told her that was the only safe space for her to color with markers in the whole room to keep her away from the vintage wallpaper. It worked for the most part.

“You think that’s a good idea?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?”

“It’s a little close to home, don’t you think?” Gayle turned around before she stripped off her t-shirt and shivered from the cold. “Still is if you ask me. They keep that shit from you, from me even, so both of us can graduate and get out of here. But just because it’s hidden doesn’t’ mean it’s not there.”

“Poetic.”

“I’m serious, Jonesy.” Gayle took that tone that she hated. The motherly one that seemed to fall into place naturally. It leaked of desperation and concern and MJ couldn’t fault her older sister for that too much- for growing up early. For worrying the way that she did. “You can trip some wires you didn’t’ even know were set up. It’s your junior project, right?”

MJ frowned, but nodded. It was half her grade; study hall had been dedicated to picking a researching topic related to the city that they called home and pushing as far as they could before it scathed the judges completely. The topic was easy for her to find. The writing was gnawing at the inside of her mind like a saw’s teeth on wood.

“Easy then, do it on cell phone radiation. That’s what I did.” She shrugged. “Really knock’s their socks off, you know. Makes em’ think.”

She let out an uneasy sigh and closed the notebook before setting it aside completely. Her junior project could wait. It wouldn’t’ be the end of the world- maybe the start of a few all-nighters fueled by hate and red bull. But it would be enough to keep her buzzing. Instead, she stood from her bed and walked over the window.

It wasn’t a glamorous view, and it never had been. A small alley that was separated down the middle with a chain-link fence and a few metal trashcans that her cat, Scratches, would always lounge around on until she shooed him away. The house next door was overrun with weeds and a clothesline that swung when the wind picked up. It sat vacant until two days ago- a giant moving van carried in most of the furniture and a small pick-up kept tarp-covered boxes in its bay.

“Did you get a look at the new neighbors?” Gayle shimmied out of her jeans and threw her dress over her head while MJ leaned heavily against the side of the window. She squinted, trying to see a figure in the window directly across from hers. Blinds were drawn but a darkened shape moved with ease.

“No, not at all.” She said.

“Real shame. You could use some friends.”

Michelle Jones let out a snort of epic proportions and tossed the closest throw pillow her sister’s way.

Their forks scraped against their plates loudly. Maybe it was the silence that amplified the sound altogether. Michelle Jones pushed three lone peas into a sea of gravy, watching the struggle against the current as she frowned down at the mess of food that her Aunt had prepared. Good, hearty food.

The china was rimmed in gold and Aunt Anna insisted on using it for every meal even if it was frozen pizza thrown in the oven- the pepperoni moved to one side of the cheesy dish before it was cut. She found it overbearing but still filled the metal sink with soapy water every night to wipe away the dirt with a cloth.

Her aunt was a stoic woman that had given away to the grey in her hair over the past few years. It curled evenly against chocolate skin and made her looked aged in the best way possible. No ounce of exhaustion dominated her despite being thrown into raising two young kids at a child’s age herself. She scratched at the back of her neck now, testing the water. It was cold.

Then there was a knock at the door- loud and startling in the silence of yet another Sunday night dinner. MJ glanced towards the foyer and set her fork down on the side of her plate. Her fingers reached instinctively for the butter knife that matched the china in its gold finish. Her grasp tightened as her aunt stood from the table.

No one bothered them on a Sunday.

MJ stood, following her aunt as she leaned against the banister in the foyer. The walls were painted a honeycomb yellow and their muddied shoes lay by the door. A little plaque for keys held a red lanyard that swung back and forth the second the door was opened. She clenched the knife in her fingertips, mouth dry.

It wasn’t a brute. It wasn’t her cousin with a bag of groceries that he insisted on bringing by even though both of them were capable of traveling to the small bodega on the corner themselves. Instead- it was a dusty looking man with a badge strapped to his leather belt. This was worse.

He wore a kind smile that wrinkled at the sides and a distressed brown suit. His hair was salt and pepper and almost long enough to fall into his slate eyes if he didn’t have it slicked back. This was unprecedented. The NYPD had an understanding with the Jones family- they left the most high-profile mafia clan to run the city. To keep death off their doorsteps even if it meant in sighting some through closed doors.

But that was Chief Wicker. He had been the head of the department for more than 50 years. MJ had slid into a nice black dress and clinked glasses with the rest of the department at his retirement party. They knew a new face would show up in her part of the city- just not at the front door with what looked to be a store-bought bunt cake slid onto a plate that still had the price tag plastered to the bottom.

Aunt Anna’s eyes drifted to the badge before coldly moving to the gaze of the man.

“I told you the badge was a bad idea.” A new voice shined through, clean and muffled as she whispered something into the man’s ear.

MJ skillfully shoved the butter knife up her sleeve as she cocked her head to the side and looked at the girl that stood at almost the same height of what had to be her father. They had the same nose. Her eyes were a deep chocolate brown and equally as dark hair fell over her shoulders. She had a slender frame and straight cut bangs cut across her forehead. She had a kind smile- wearing a black t-shirt for a band that MJ had never head of and acid-washed jeans. She didn’t offer up a smile as willingly. In fact, she squared up MJ just the same.

He let the side of his suit jacket fall to cover the offending object before he cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to bother you so late, we just… I’m George Stacy. My daughter Gwen and I just moved in next door and I wanted to introduce ourselves.”

Gwen looked like he was biting her tongue, but she shoved her hands into her pockets and didn’t’ say a word. Anna Jones seemed to soften at that, her shoulders losing some pent-up tension. MJ moved quickly, bouncing back from the intrusion.

“Oh, you brought cake!” She said, smiling forcefully as she took the plate from George Stacy’s hands. He looked relieved and Gwen’s lip turned up in somewhat of a smirk. It bothered MJ. Rubbed her the wrong way but she was too focused on keeping the butter knife from falling out of her sweatshirt. “Thank you.”

“It was nothing, really.”

“Why don’t you both come in for a slice?” Aunt Anna finally gained her confidence back as she pulled the door a few more inches open. “We can get to know each other, seeing as we’ll be neighbors and all.”

George seemed to relax into things now. He nodded in acceptance and followed the Jones women into their family room. He commented on the art that decorated the walls and even nudged his daughter a few times to get her to say something, anything.

They sat awkwardly on an olive-colored sectional while Anna dished out some of the cinnamon-flavored cake. Gwen scanned her golden stare over MJ once more- this time she raised her eyebrow- pierced my two little silver balls like a snake bite- a vampire bat, maybe. She was close, sitting on the couch next to MJ who found the cake more desirable than the meal before. She took a generous bite.

Aunt Anna launched into asking the standard questions: “Where are you from? What made you move to Brooklyn? Oh, I’m sorry to hear about your wife… my brother he-“  

MJ glared down at the cake and Gwen seemed to be more interested in the pictures on the mantel than the conversation in front of them. She felt like a child at the kiddy table during thanksgiving. The grownups are talking now, she reminded herself.

“Are you going to Midtown?” MJ whispered, low enough for the two of them to hear.

Gwen nodded and shoveled another forkful of pastry past her lips. “I start on Monday. Is it stereotypical?”

“I… don’t know what that means.”

“You know, the jocks, the cheerleaders that sleep with them. The introvert that barely speaks.” She nudged MJ’s shoulder, and the girl tried not to take offense to that.

“I’m not an introvert.” MJ placed the plate on the coffee table and turned slightly towards Gwen. Her bangs were shading her eyes. They looked black. “I just don’t like people, alright? They’re shitty. They assume things too quickly- like a fight or flight method.”

“Right,” Gwen drew out the word “That’s textbook definition of an introvert. Not a bad thing to be just… obvious.”

MJ let out a long sigh and became painfully aware of the butter knife up her sleeve. Her family had taught her six different ways to use it- and she wouldn’t mind testing one of those methods out on her neighbor right about now. But something told her Aunt Anna would be upset about the upholstery.

“Let me guess, you’re the editor of the school paper? Or maybe just the photographer. Oh!” Gwen said a little louder, but not to alert her father “Maybe you’re the recorder for whatever sports team takes president over the others.”

MJ scoffed and reached forward for her glass of milk, she hovered it over her lips. “You’ve got me all figured out then, huh? Labeled just like that. I bet you’re the rebel without a cause. There must be a few tattoos under those sleeves of yours. Stick and poke I’m guessing.”

It was Gwen’s turn to smile- her teeth pointed and dangerous as she shook her head. “You have no idea.”

“Yeah, well. Neither do you.”

[howtosucceedinschool]

How and Why to Establish a Study Space

Having an established place where you go to study is important because it helps you get in the “zone,” increases concentration and focus, and saves you time hunting for necessary supplies. Ideally, most people will be most efficient and effective if they minimize the number of different settings and locations where they study. Having just one place where you study is ideal but unrealistic for many. If you split time between different houses, you need a study space at each parent’s house. If you are a college student, you might need space in both your dorm room/apartment and on campus, perhaps in a library. I personally have two primary study spaces when I am at school: my desk in my apartment and a private, reserved study carrell at my library. I also have a secondary study space, a desk at my parents’ house which I mostly just utilize during breaks and vacations.

Tip 1: Set-Up With the Basics

Any study space you are using needs (at minimum): a surface to write on, a chair to sit on/in, and the basic supplies and stationery you use and need to be successful. What supplies you should include, changes from person to person, but a few good basics are pens, highlighters, notebooks or looseleaf, and pencils. Many people may also need paperclips,  stapeler, binder punch, calculator, and ruler. Keeping all these materials centralized at your study location is important. If you use multiple study locations, you should take time to unpack and set up your study spot before you get started. 

Tip 2: Don’t Study in Bed

Guilty as charged. I spent a lot of time in school studying in bed, or on my floor. While the floor is ok (not great), I do not recommend the bed. Studying in bed makes you less focused, more tired, and interferes with your sleep routine, in which your brain recognizes that lying in bed means its time to go to sleep. It also can lead to greater messiness, and I for one, have had multiple pens and markers explode on my bed, some of which have left permanent ink stains. Lastly, your bed and floor don’t give the right amount of back support.

Tip 3: Keep Your Study Space Tidy

It's a lot more distracting to work in a messy space, make sure that at the very least you are keeping your desk organized and tidy. It's even more ideal to have the whole room be neat, but if not, just the desk is fine. In addition to making the area less distracting, it will also make all of your supplies easier to find.

Tip 4: Consider What “Extras” You Needs for Success

We already talked about the basics, but there are probably a few extra things you need to help you study and stay motivated and focused. Many people like to snack either while they are studying, or during study breaks. Some people (like me) need caffeine and might want to keep a cup of coffee, tea, or a can of their favorite energy drink nearby. If you are planning on studying for a while, you also ought to keep water close by so you can stay hydrated. If you study in a room that is really hot or really cold, you might want a blanket or a fan. Some people have back problems and might need extra lower back support. Many students with ADD or ADHD need medications to help them focus. Maybe you like to light a candle or diffuse essential oils? The point is, get to know yourself, and what motivates you and makes you successful, and include these things in your study space.

Tip 5: Use a Backpack as a “mobile” study space

As I mentioned, some people are not able to have one set study space, and might instead move between spaces. Many college students, especially those who don’t live on campus, need to be able to study somewhere on campus. Some people travel a lot for work or have long commutes on public transportation. Some students go home for a weekend, or home for Thanksgiving, winter, or spring break, and find that they still have work which must get done. Having a well-stocked backpack is the key to being able to take your essentials on the go. I highly recommend a traditional backpack over a purse or shoulder bag especially if you have a lot of stuff. Once again, I recommend establishing a routine, by heading for the same locations, but for some people, this might not be possible. Other people also might benefit from changes in scenery, and from studying in a variety of different places.

I hope all my tips helped you set up a study space conducive to your own needs. Stay focused and productive!

[rivkahstudies]

requested by @niviasthoughts - thank you for approaching me!! I hope this post can help!

The IB Program is hectic enough without having to worry about where your stuff is, when you need it, and how you’re doing. Keeping track of things is pretty much essential for success, because once you get behind it’s difficult to catch up.

I graduated in 2018 with an IB score of 37 out of 45. I started the two years organized and ended even more organized than I thought possible. It’s definitely a program that tests your limits and forces you to surpass or reinvent them.

This is gonna be a pretty long post, so I'm going to put it under the cut.

part one: starting out

It's important that, before you follow through with any of the systems I suggest/inventing your own, you check that your teacher doesn't already have a system set up. In my experience, my teachers' systems have never worked as well as ones that I have determined for myself, because they haven't spent ages and ages developing it just for MY benefit like I have. However, just as life often does to us, you may not have a choice.

Some teachers (and in my experience, the ones I like the least) have a system that they don't just suggest but enforce, and will often take off points in grades such as notebook checks if you don't use their suggested materials/system. There's no way around this, so make absolutely sure you can use your own system on a class-by-class basis to ensure you're getting the best grade you can. Those points add up.

part two: materials

You do not need anything fancy or expensive. All of my stationery is pretty affordable and there are only a couple products I use that I saved for/splurged on. You. do. not. need. fancy. stationery. to. succeed. or! be! a! real! studyblr! say it with me y'all.

I'm not even going to bother to list specific brands because it'll just discourage you from others. I'm going to be as vague as possible. For a reason. Decide for yourself what you like best.

rivkah's very basic IB shopping list

black/blue pens

(trust me, you'll need multiple. I went through a whole pack of 12 THE FIRST SEMESTER of my senior year because I was writing so much.)

a binder and loose leaf paper OR notebook, one for each class

this is entirely up to your personal preference. I prefer to have loose leaf paper because I can rearrange things as I wish (I'm so indecisive and often reorganize). I typically choose 1 inch binders and 4-8 tab dividers. It really depends on the class how I organize these dividers, but they're usually something like classwork/homework/projects/tests/etc.

a colored set of some kind of writing implement

markers, pens, highlighters, it REALLY DOESN'T MATTER as long as you have AT LEAST five colors. I prefer 7-10, because annotating history/english documents requires that you look for a lot of different things. pick whatever works best for you and figure out what your color systems are. it's best to have multiple, especially cross-subject, because your needs may differ depending on the document.

a pencil pouch/supplies organizer

again, whatever fits your preference. I like backpacks with pockets that have little built-in organizers or a pencil pouch that, likewise, has different compartments. I'm one of those people where I like to know EXACTLY where my materials are. I don't like wasting time rifling through a general pouch. if that doesn't bother you, go ahead and get one!

post-it notes

these are so versatile. annotations, reminders, misc notes, anything. I always have multiple colors and sizes on me because I use post-it notes for almost everything, including writing down ideas and reminding myself of deadlines.

planner/bullet journal

digital or paper, doesn't matter. but YOU NEED TO WRITE THINGS DOWN IN IB. don't rely on your memory, because it'll start failing you as soon as you get stressed and busy. also don't worry about spending too much money. I like my bullet journal because if I feel artsy, I can be. If I'm in a hurry, I can keep it minimal. plus I never need to worry about not having enough space to plan. whatever you pick, if it works, stick to it. don't try to have 5 planners because I guarantee you'll just confuse yourself.

misc materials like scissors, glue, white-out, tape, etc

I like to have these on hand just because you never know when you or someone else might need them.

part three: how to integrate these materials/systems

general tips

if something can be done in less than 15 minutes, do it as soon as you can--whether it's at lunch, in extra time at the end of class, or when you first get home.

if it's a large project/assignment, get something down the first day it's assigned. write up a schedule to work on it, or an outline/draft skeleton, or do a little research into what you'd be interested in covering if it's open-ended. something, anything. at the very least, if you don't make progress, it'll cement the assignment in your mind and you won't forget at easily.

do not leave readings to the last minute. they often seem small in comparison to presentations or essays, but they're important.

whenever possible, try to link projects or topics back to your interests. it makes things like the IAs or EE so much easier to write... because the only thing worse than having to write 2000 or 4000 words is having to write 2000 or 4000 words on a topic that puts you to sleep.

utilize your connections with your teachers. in most cases, they want to help and see you succeed. if you have any teachers you're close with, confide in them.

at the very least, if you can't be friendly with them, communicate with them. and suck up a little. because if you're in their good graces, they'll be more understanding when you have your 9th consecutive breakdown or run out of time and can't hand something in. And if they know you're having problems (mentally, socially, in your family, whatever) they can extend their hand to help more. even if it's just one or two teachers, it makes a difference.

set reminders in your phone/calendar for the end of the school day if you have to take a textbook home and you keep it in a locker (hopefully you do, it's bad for your back. IB is bad for your back lmao.) it'll save your life when you start on your way home, exhausted, not remembering. funny how stress makes you totally memory-less.

is a desktop and phone app that has saved my life on numerous occasions. it's more suited for college, but it's really nice because you can track your PROGRESS on assignments, not just on whether you've completed them or not.

obvious, but get sleep and eat good foods. it'll improve your concentration and memory.

it's really tempting when you walk into your room to just dump your stuff somewhere, maybe in a pile. try to make a bin/tray/spot that is specifically for "stuff to be done/sorted/taken care of" and then take care of it nightly.

I know it's often tempting to relax until dinner (at least, if you're like me) and then do your homework after dinner, but please. start your homework as soon as possible once you're home, or before then if you can. you don't have to study every second, but I know I got really tired of seeing 2:30 AM blinking back at me every night.

set your own deadlines and, for the love of all, hold yourself accountable for them.

schedule in at least a half-hour of you time, hopefully in the middle of your homework. you'll forget to have it otherwise and you'll be a zombie. I've been there.

English

stay ahead on readings. see above. if possible/time allowing, read/skim the first time and THEN go back to annotate once you understand what you're looking at. when you notice things the first time, you can start connecting the dots the second.

always know where your books are. have a specific place in your backpack/locker/desk/room. nothing's worse than losing a book you're halfway through and have a paper due.

keep detailed notes for your EA/IOP/IOC. my teacher made us do this thing called "grids" which dissected key symbols/motifs/themes to DEATH, and it was hell, but it helped a lot.

History

again, detailed notes. include not just what happened but why? what were the causes, the events, the effects, and the historical interpretations? this is a fancy little buzz word for "quotes others have on the subject." if you throw even one of these into each of your final papers during senior exams, it boosts your score. my history of the americas teacher never let us forget it. and boy, did I have it in my head by May 2018.

you don't *need* a book for your IA or History EE, but let me tell you, it's hard as hell to get a good score without one. get that deep, deep knowledge bb.

keep things in whatever order works best for you. for my purposes, I always did it chronologically, because I didn't want to jump around too much in an essay. but there's other ways to structure an essay and you need to find what your strong points are.

Spanish/French/etc language

I personally took Spanish. Got a 7 in it, too, so I know how to organize best for this class.

It's INCREDIBLY important that you stay organized in this class, particularly with vocabulary. It's up to you how you want to study and structure your notebook, but leave ample room to write words over and over and over.

You will most likely (assuming your teacher is doing their job) have readings. Devise your own color system, but I typically had three colors for Spanish readings: 1) words I don't know (and later define), 2) vocabulary we learned in class/need to memorize, if applicable, and 3) words I know/need more practice with. You can add/subtract depending on your strength and weakness in the language.

Math

The only class I kept a notebook for, not a binder.

You won't pass just by studying rules. You need to be able to apply them, too, so please keep a section of your notebook/binder for practicing problems. As many as it takes/you have time for.

Keep. All. Your. Tests. I do this for all my classes, but it is VITAL for Math that you're aware of your weaknesses. When it comes down to it, you need to study what you DON'T know, not what you know.

Science

I took Biology. My brother is currently taking Physics.

There will be math in both, just much more in Physics. Follow the rules above for Math when applicable.

Biology was so difficult for me that I rewrote my notes three times. First for studying for the upcoming test, then for the Year 1 "final" my teacher gave, then again for the IB Exams. It's incredibly time-consuming, and might not work for you like it did me. Whatever you do, organize your notes in a way that let you understand difficult concepts in a step-by-step order. IB Bio and Physics are super step-by-step and if you go out of order, you lose points.

Art

I took art, not psychology, so I'm sorry I can't help for psych. But I was basically on my own for art because my teacher was not up-to-date NOR ORGANIZED AT ALL. I had to do all the research myself for the rules before I could even start my work. And I had to do it all senior year, because she wouldn't let me start as a junior.

honestly, I could write a whole separate post just on this subject.

make sure your stuff is neat and in black pen. especially for your process portfolio, that's the only way they'll grade it. I did my Comparative Study on the computer.

TOK Presentation/TOK Essay/IAs/EE

I didn't mention this in the material list, but I was so paranoid about losing materials necessary for my History IA and EE that I literally had 2 folders, one for each of them, JUST devoted to all of the papers that were thrown at me for them.

I was instructed to keep one for my EA by my English teacher, AND I had another kept my grids (used to study for the EA) in a separate folder too.

This is completely optional, but I found it really helpful in making sure I knew where I was with all of my assignments. You could easily substitute all these folders for an accordian binder, it whatever works best for you.

Okay, I've covered all of the subjects I took and major assignments, as well as the general organizational tips. There's still so much more, but this is the bulk of what I did and what I remember. If any of you want to see anything on one of these subjects specifically, please reach out to me! And as always: IB is scary and confusing, as well as incredibly fast-paced, but it isn't impossible and you're not alone. My messages and inbox are always open if you need anything.

[coffstudying]

To concentrate on studies, the most important thing is our surroundings. If our surroundings are good and soothing, it makes concentration on studies easier. Well, I had heard from someone :

Bed is meant for 3 S - Sleep, Sickness and Sex.

Not for work. So just ditch that comfy bed of yours, and get working by a proper and organised desk.

And let's jump into desk organisation tips!!!

1. Remove everything

To organise your desk, remove everything which is present on the desk. Put down your books, stationary and all other things which are present while categorising them.

2. Clean your desk

Get a moist towel or any moist soft cloth and wipe your desk. This would help in removing excess dust from the desk. My desk is a bright white colour and I do not want it to be filled with pen ink, scratches, colour etc. So I prefer covering my table with a table cloth. You can make one yourself or buy it in a store.

3. Keep what is needed

You may have different subjects to study for. But you cannot and you should not study more than one subject at once. It only makes you feel overwhelmed and you could concentrate on nothing. So only keep the things you need the most - your textbook, a notebook, your class notes, some pens, highlighters.

4. Keep a plant

If you have enough space on your desk, you can keep a small plant. No need of buying a brand new bouquet of flowers. It just takes up more space. But if you can invest in such space and money, you are welcome to keep it. If you do not have a plant of your own, this is the best way to start one. The plannt gives you an extra dash oxygen which keeps you activated for your whole study session.

5. Sit in front of a window

If possible, try setting up your desk in front of a window. But if your desk is situated in a place like this,

open the window(s) present in that room. This enables the entry of fresh air and bright light and you do not have to switch on unnecessary light which in turn saves electricity and you have to pay less bills.

6. Storage of tit - bits

Keep your sticky notes, flash cards, paper clips and other random number things in a box like this.

and put it somewhere else if you do not have space on your desk else put this on your desk if it had enough space.

Put your extra pens, pencils, highlighters, markers in a pen stand like this one and put it wherever you like.

7. Dashboard

If you have space, or a wall in front of your desk, try setting up a dashboard or a vision board. Like this.

This gives a sudden boost of energy and confidence when you feel demotivated. There are a lot of videos out there on YouTube as to how you could set up a vision board.

8. Other essentials

I recommend you to keep a lamp on your desk (if possible) like this.

So, when you are doing your midnight study sessions, your room light would not disturb others and also that person with whom you are sharing your room (if at all).

You can also keep an alarm clock.

9. Lastly....

Before going back to sleep, clean your desk and put away all your books on a shelf so that the next day when you plan on having a productive study session, you do not have to put away the things and lower down your motivation.

That's all for today. I hope my first post would be of some help to you guys. Have a productive day!!! Bye👋👋👋

None of the pictures used in this post belong to me !

[angeltriestoblog]

Bullet Journaling 101: My Story, Flipthrough, Tips and Resources

A bullet journal is a system of organization created by Ryder Carroll that “aims to track the past, organize the present and plan for the future”. It’s a diary, journal and planner all in one: an amalgamation of all the facets of a person’s life in a series of different bullet points. Several YouTubers and bloggers have attributed their newfound sense of productivity and success to this and attested that it has helped tremendously in reordering their priorities.

And just like everyone else who seemed tempted by the idea, I’ve been wanting to join the whole movement. In fact, I’ve been watching flipthrough videos since last year, with my “bujo inspo” YouTube playlist amassing a grand total of 109 videos as of press time. I’ve followed a lot of Instagram accounts who’ve made a living out of this practice, and even put a short-lived Pinterest account (for the third time since the ninth grade – I don’t know why it can’t stick with me) in the hopes of gaining inspiration to get started. But, none of those worked in helping my intimidation die down.

I have been exposed to a great number of bullet journal spreads that are so aesthetically pleasing and color-coordinated that they seem almost unrealistic. I lacked the skills and resources required to start. Not enough Tombow brush pens or collaging skills in my arsenal, I thought, which would just lead to a decline in my journal’s appeal. At this juncture, I would like to point out that a bullet journal’s main priority must be functionality. Yes, it can also serve as a great medium for artistic expression but this must not hinder it from serving its true purpose: to get its owner’s life together.

Anyway, dumaldal na naman si Angel. Wala talagang kupas.

If it’s of any interest to you, I use a Leuchtturm 1917 ruled notebook in the color purple, which I got for half its original price at my local National Bookstore. I was initially supposed to go for the dotted version, as it is more popular in the bujo community. Turns out I forgot to check the label before paying for it, and only found out I had bought the wrong version when I had got home. I don’t have any regrets though: I find it easier to write on lined pages, and they don’t really change its effectivity.

I have a black Pilot G-Tec in 0.4mm thickness for writing, as I feel my handwriting looks best when I use this pen. Alongside these are my Dong-A fineliners—which are a great alternative to the much pricier Steadtlers—and my pride and joy, my Stabilo pastel highlighters. I have a black Artline Stix brush pen, which I use for my headings, and a normal pencil for making rough drafts of spreads. I also keep a thin pad of Post-it notes that I replenish weekly on the front page, where I write down any ideas that pop in my head that I’d later on put in its respective spread. I’m trying to keep my set-up as minimal and low-maintenance as possible, but with a pop of color here and there so it won’t end up being too bland and boring.

But contrary to popular belief, there is no fixed set of materials that one must purchase to start a bullet journal. In fact, there doesn’t even need to be any purchasing at all: you can start with something as simple as an old notebook lying around your bedroom floor, and the regular pen that you use for school. Colored markers and washi tapes and any other art supplies are purely optional.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, here’s a peek into what’s actually inside my bullet journal:

Key: Consists of a series of symbols that mean to organize entries into different categories. I have tasks—which can be subdivided into those that are complete, have been migrated or scheduled on another date—events and notes, which can be further emphasized by an asterisk that means they are a priority.

About Me: A short page on the side complete with my basic information. I don’t intend on sharing this with anyone else after this post, but I like keeping this as it feels like a standard way of starting a journal.

Index: Serves as a table of contents. It’s incredibly helpful when it comes to locating spreads, but it cannot fulfill its purpose if one is not consistent in supplying the information it needs. I like to jot the page number and a short description of what’s written on it in the index immediately after I fill out another spread so I don’t forget.

Future Log: My next six months at a glance. This is where I write all major activities and events. I’ve considered putting in birthdays of people who are important to me as well, but I feel like they’d take way too much space so I’ll work on assembling a separate spread to keep track of them.

Collections: Just a few pages to jot down some books I need to read, movies to see, posts to write for this blog and places to go. If ever you have any recommendations, you can shoot me a message here on Tumblr or any of my social media accounts.

(Half) Year in Pixels + Habit Tracker: Admittedly my favorite spread so far. Although I did have to make the grids manually because I’m using a lined notebook, I am very satisfied with how this came out. On the far left side, I’ll be tracking my mood by coloring in squares according to how I felt during the day: purple if great, red if good, orange if it was smack dab in the middle, blue if it was an off day and green if terrible.

For the remainder of the spread, I’ll be monitoring my progress in developing five habits of my choice and checking the corresponding box if I was able to do it on that specific day. The ones I’ve chosen to focus on are drinking eight glasses of water a day, eating only one cup of rice for lunch and dinner, not lurking on anyone’s accounts during my free time to avoid counterproductivity, saying only kind words towards others and using social media for only an hour a day.

Monthly Spreads: Pretty self-explanatory. This is the one I’ve made for November 2017, and I feel like this is the layout I’ll be sticking to. On the left-hand page, I have all the days of the month written vertically with an important task or event beside it. You might have noticed that these are the exact same items under my Future Log, and think that the whole practice of bullet journaling can get quite repetitive but I find it better to write the same things over and over again so they stick to my head.

To the right, I have an expenses tracker, where I write everything I’ve bought for the month. I was supposed to add a box to indicate my savings goal, but I’ll get around to that eventually. I also have a sleep tracker, which I will be doing in the form of a line graph, and my five main goals to give me a sense of direction.

Grades Tracker – 3rd Quarter: Where I write down all the marks I’ve gotten in all my subjects. I write down HW for homework, PT for performance task, Q for quiz and SW for seatwork, then my score but I haven’t been able to do the latter yet since none of our class activities have been graded yet. I’m aiming to become at least a Merit Card Awardee by the end of the school year, so this tool will be extremely helpful in ensuring that everything I do is a step in the right direction.

I have a page that shows my class schedule for this semester and two weekly spreads but the former is too private to divulge and the latter is still under construction, so I decided not to include any pictures of them. Besides, I don’t think any of them would be of much interest to you. Do note that this serves mainly as a source of inspiration. Your bullet journal does not have to follow this format. Since it’s highly flexible and customizable, revolves around you, you wants and your needs, you call the shots at the end of the day and are given full authority to change things up to your liking.

If, by any chance, this post has made you consider converting to this system, congratulations. You’re making a great decision, and I can’t wait for you to see your life get whipped back into shape. I’ve only been bullet journaling for two weeks tops, but I can honestly say that I’m never looking back. As mentioned in my previous blog post, it has given me a newfound sense of order in and control over my life, and keeps motivated to do the tasks required of me. Literally my favorite feeling in the world right now is getting to cross out everything I needed to do for the day.

Below are some resources that I found could be helpful for any bullet journal beginner. There’s honestly much more where that came from, and you can always message me for them:

Ryder Carroll’s (the creator of the bullet journaling system) video

The official Bullet Journal website

Boho Berry on YouTube

AmandaRachLee on YouTube

Caitlin’s Corner on YouTube

planningwithkay on YouTube

Mistral Spirit