#she reveals it was all hidden in the syllabus actually!!!!

[always-andromeda]

Hey gang, here’s the moodboard for this morning! 😀👍🏻

[fairyqueenofthedragons]

Not that Kendra

Kendra had just finished setting up her dorm for college.

She had been doing online school, thanks to Andromadus and Bracken working to make her a new identity.

She was still Kendra, just… new social security number. Otherwise it was exactly the same, well, they probably did some other stuff to confirm that she exists, but mostly everything was the same.

She was relieved that they had done it. She didn’t want to have to hide away forever.

But now she was starting college! A year early actually, doing all the work at home was a lot easier and faster than doing it at a school.

She was 17 and at college at last! She couldn’t wait to meet her roommate, and go to classes, and join clubs, and do so much stuff!

Her roommate was a year older than her (expected) but seemed nice enough.

Her side of the room had little fairy lights (ha) and a few plants, her bookshelf with the desk is neatly arranged, her clothes put up, dresser arranged, and her plugs all set up. Plus a few… discreet weapons. Just in case.

She might know how to use her power to fight now, but still, she can’t use that against normal humans without questions happening. Best to keep a few weapons with her, Vanessa helped her get them.

Her roommate had gone out with some friends, so Kendra had the room to herself. She ended up just calling Bracken on her earpiece (bracken had enchanted it like the stones and coins, it didn’t work for anything but talking to him) and wasting away the night talking to him.

+++++++++++++++

Kendra jolted up to her alarm blaring in the morning.

Ah right, time for classes.

She quickly got up and turned off her alarm. Then headed off to grab her toiletries and get ready for the day.

After pulling on her clothes, jeans and a t-shirt with a fairy on it with text saying “I’m Magical” (a joke gift from Seth that was extremely comfortable) she grabbed her bag and made sure she had her books, calculator, and computer.

First class of the day was English, a writing class. She thinks she’ll have fun in it.

Finding the class wasn’t hard, and she has a great teacher! His name was Mr. Shield, how fun! They spent the whole class on the syllabus, and only got through the first two points. Apparently it would take time to get to the actual content of the class.

She also couldn’t help but notice that one of the students in her class was actually not human, she wasn’t sure what kind of magical creature they were. They had flaming hair though. She decided to ignore it for now.

After that class she had an hour break where she grabbed some food from the Einstein bagels (she forgot breakfast) and went over the syllabus for English.

She arrived at her next class, biology, 15 minutes early and sat against the wall to wait, puling out her phone.

College so far seems fun! She can’t wait to find out what her bio teacher is like and English seemed like it wouldn’t be hard and she was really excited for-

“Kendra!?”

She blinked, turning to look.

Oh shit.

It was Alyssa, from her old school, one of her old friends, who think she’s dead.

Uh oh.

“Ken-“ Alyssa had tears in her eyes, “Is that you?”

Uh oh Uh oh Uh oh.

She can’t say yes.

“Um, my name is Kendra, yeah,” this is gonna hurt, “Who are you?”

Alyssa stared, “I-“

The door’s opened suddenly and students came out.

“Well, class is starting, nice to meet you Alyssa!”

Nailed it.

She bolted inside.

++++++++++++++++

Alyssa hadn’t been expecting to see her long dead friend in front of her when she went to Biology.

After Kendra died she’d really doubled down on her schoolwork, ended up skipping a grade. It had hurt a lot to lose Kendra.

She still kept in contact with her other friends, but she felt like she had to do good, if only to do it for Kendra too. They’d used to talk about skipping grades together, being top of their class. She’d done it to honor Kendra, in her memory she would be the best of the best.

And then, she arrived at class, and Kendra was just sitting there, scrolling through her phone, waiting for the doors to open.

And then she claimed to not know Alyssa, up until she bolted inside before Alyssa could answer, and called her by her name.

Kendra was alive somehow, and she was at Alyssa’s college (both of their dream school that they had talked about getting into together all the time). And she was pretending not to know Alyssa.

That wouldn’t stand.

++++++++++++++++++++

Kendra had managed to hide from Alyssa for the rest of class. But she wasn’t sure how long that could stand.

She saw Alyssa trying to follow her after class, but Kendra had lots of experience dogging pursuers, Alyssa would have to do better than that.

Kendra called Bracken though to freak out about it.

“It’s okay Kendra, she can’t be certain as long as you don’t slip up. I’m sorry this is happening though. I know it’s hard to hide from your friend.”

“Yeah, it is. I just want to hug her and cry, but… I can’t.” Kendra kept her head ducked while she talked to Bracken, mentally cause this was a private conversation.

“Well, if you want I can come by.”

“No, it’s fine Bracken, really, I’ll just… avoid her. I like my bio teacher, so I won’t drop the class, but I can sneak past her. It’ll… it’ll be fine.”

“Alright, stay safe Kendra.”

“I will.”

With that Kendra had to move on, she had to get to her next class, then complete the bio homework, and probably the homework for her calc class (oh she suffers).

And calc was hard, they jumped right in, barely an introduction before going into the first subject. She was gonna struggle here a bit, she would have to put extra work in here.

After that she went to the library before doing a quick turn around when she saw Alyssa standing at the entrance looking around.

Maybe there’s a back entrance?

Looking around, out of Alyssa’s sight, she managed to find another entrance, it was locked but banging on the door brought someone over to open it, even if she looked rude.

She ended up spending the rest of the evening there, only realizing when her stomach growled that she’d forgotten lunch.

Well, at least her homework was done, she’d even managed the next calc assignment early, she didn’t fully understand the concepts but she’d looked them up and managed well enough.

She snuck out again through the back entrance, she’d get some Wendy’s, there was one right by her dorm.

She snagged her food, and headed back to her dorm, standing to wait for the elevator, only to realize that Alyssa was there too. She quickly turned to the stairs before Alyssa could see her and started the hike to the 8th floor.

She’d keep in good shape for adventures this way!

The walk itself wasn’t hard, and she ended up going up with the flame haired girl from her English class.

They chatted on the way up and Kendra thinks she made a new friend. She didn’t comment on the fiery hair, and she was pretty sure her light was hidden enough that her new friend (Rachel) didn’t notice it.

Their rooms were on the same floor and comparing classes showed that they had the same teacher for bio, just different sections.

Kendra ended up helping Rachel learn the material from today (for Kendra, Rachel had Tuesday Thursday classes, longer but less often).  

After doing that, and eating food, Rachel split back to her room and Kendra dropped into bed, exhausted.

++++++++++++++++++++

Alyssa didn’t understand!

It had been two months since she’d found out Kendra was alive, and she somehow was avoiding her.

Alyssa had seen her around, but she was very good at avoiding Alyssa. And had somehow gained a few friends that were ready to fight Alyssa when they caught Alyssa following them. They threatened to call the police for stalking!?

It was infuriating. That was her Kendra! She wanted to find out how she was alive! She wanted to talk to her! What was going on?

Kendra was never in the library, though somehow bees kept getting in, and she somehow seemed to disappear in Bio, but Alyssa had talked to the teacher and Kendra had perfect attendance.

Trying to find out Kendra’s other classes were an effort in futility. She was excellent at slipping away from Alyssa the few times she saw her. And trying to find her dorm was straight up impossible.

She’d tried to talk to some other students in Bio about setting up a study group and recommended one of them invite Kendra since she was really good at Bio. But when they tried Kendra said she already had a study group!

Alyssa just needed five minutes with Kendra, but it looked like she’d need to call for help.

++++++++++++++++++++++

She really appreciated that the fairy queen had sent a few fairies to help her out. Two of them (very pretty bee fairies) kept an eye on Alyssa, warning Kendra when she got too close. The other three mostly hung around Kendra, just pretending to be normal butterflies. As Kendra was the fairy queen’s handmaiden, they considered it a great honor and took guarding her very seriously.

Though they were careful to seem normal around Kendra’s friends.

And wow her friends were something.

The fiery haired one was apparently a demon, according to Sholuna, one of her fairy guards. But Rachel was super nice and Kendra didn’t see a problem with her.

Another of her friends, Arya, was an elf. Like from Norse mythology. She was apparently a light elf, and was super nice and extremely good at calculus.

Her final friend, John, was a blix, a viviblix to be precise.

She’d found that out when he’d been talking about his home. He’d made a small slip that she was sure all three of them had caught, but none of them commented.

Somehow even at a normal human school, all her friends were magical beings.

She just accepted it. She hadn’t revealed her fairy kind status yet, but she suspected they had an idea of it. She was kinda famous amongst the magical community after all.

But now, it was family weekend, and while Kendra’s family couldn’t risk coming with Alyssa on the lookout, Bracken, Warren, and Vanessa were coming.

She was excited to introduce her friends, she’d told Bracken about them, and called with Warren and Vanessa about it so they knew too. But actually meeting with them was different.

None of them cared about the football game, Warren said he’d record it and they could just go out to eat and have fun.

Which was good, cause none of her friends liked big crowds. Which Kendra related too.

Nonetheless, it should be a fun weekend!

She huffed when one of the fairies, Veronica, tugged at her hair. They liked doing her hair, considered it part of their responsibilities. No matter how many times she explained they didn’t have to.

It was easiest to just let them, so she dropped her hands and let Veronica fix up her hair.

It was nice that it never took long to do her hair, and she always looked good with them around (the fairies often put flowers or sparkly hair pins in, they’d made her buy more than one pretty hair piece so they could do her hair).

She hurried out to meet with her family coming, her fairy guards drifting along with her, Milana sitting on her shoulder.

++++++++++++++++++++++

Another month and Alyssa finally got the backup she needed.

Trina and Brittany were here. They were seniors in high school still, but it was their break, and not the colleges. Which meant that the three of them together could find Kendra!

They’d only agreed to come help when Alyssa had managed to snag a picture of Kendra. Even if one of those stupid bees had gotten in the way a bit, it was still clearly Kendra.

She really hated those bees.

Now though, they were off to find Kendra! She would not escape them this time!

It took hours of scouring, but they finally found her at a café, with… some very cute guy?

+++++++++++++++++

Kendra was enjoying her date with Bracken. Both of them were free for the weekend and had decided to spend time together.

It was so fun! They’d gotten a really good lunch, gone to a movie, and now were sitting and snacking at a café, after they were going to go to the gardens!

It was the perfect date, and her guards were giving them privacy, since Bracken was more than capable of defending Kendra.

They had just received their drinks (hot chocolate for them both) when a hand landed on her shoulder.

Kendra jolted, twisting to see, oh no, Alyssa. And Trina, and Brittany.

Uh oh.

“Kendra!”

“Oh my god it is you!”

Trina lunged to hug her and she stiffened.

“Um, who are you?” Thank heavens for Bracken.

“Uh, I’m Trina? I’m Kendra’s friend. Anyways, Kendra! I can’t believe you’re alive! I thought you were dead!”

“We all did! We went to your funeral!”

Kendra shifted, pulling back, “Uh..”

“Sorry, but I think you have the wrong Kendra.”

Bracken was officially her favorite person.

“Wrong Kendra?” Brittany didn’t look happy.

Trina was the one to glare at him though. “Excuse you, I think I’d recognize my friend.”

“No, I’m sorry, this is a different Kendra. Not that Kendra that you’re talking about.”

“Yes it is! Kendra! She has a brother named Seth who’s 15, has parents Scott and Marla. Her name is literally Kendra Sorenson! It’s all exactly the same!”

“Well… they’re different.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Prove it.”

“Prove that the girl that you knew is dead and buried in a cemetery considering that you were apparently there for? And that this Kendra is not that Kendra come back to life? That they just happen to be similar?”

“… when you put it like that…” Brittany muttered.

“No! Kendra tell him! You know us!” Alyssa stared at her intently.

“I- I’m sorry… I don’t know you.”

Alyssa stared, “Kendra…”

Bracken coughed, “right, like I said, different Kendra.”

“But then why were you avoiding me!”

“Maybe cause you were stalking her?” Mumbled Bracken.

“And who even are you?!” Alyssa snapped, spinning to face Bracken.

“I am Kendra’s boyfriend, Bracken.” He wrapped his arm around Kendra.

She leaned into him.

“Did you kidnap her!?” Alyssa was ready to fight, Trina right there with her.

They were causing a scene.

“What!? Of course not!?”

“Kendra its okay, you can come with us, you don’t have to stay with this guy, did he fake your death?”

Kendra wanted to scream, they were so right and so wrong.

“He didn’t kidnap me, and I don’t know you!” Kendra hated lying to them. But it was necessary.

“URRGH” Alyssa looked angry and upset. Kendra felt really bad for this.

“But… you’re-“

“Look, I’m sorry that she’s not the Kendra you knew and loved, but you have to respect that. They might be similar but they’re not the same.”

“THEY’RE LITERALLY IDENTICAL IN EVERY WAY!!” Alyssa was very very upset.

“Well, the world works in strange ways.” He grabbed Kendra’s hand, “Time for us to go, nice meeting you.”

He quickly pulled her away, both grabbing their hot chocolates as they left.

“They really are determined huh?”

“Yeah.”

+++++++++++++++

“Okay girls, operation: save Kendra from the kidnapping pretty boy, is a go.”

[sterek]

Hey! So I’m new to the fandom I watched Teen wolf seasons 1-6 within 4 days lmao, but I was just wondering could you recommend the best sterek au fics? Your blog is amazing btw!

Sorry it took me a while, but here you go! These are my favorite AU fics in no particular order :) (and thank you boo

A Crooked Way to Fly by andavs��[14k G]

“We can’t just leave him here to die.”

“He’s an emissary, Scott.” Derek tried to make his tone empathetic, but Scott’s tendency to fight back on everything always grated on his nerves. “His pack is gone, he won’t survive more than a day or two either way.”

“Then we should stay with him.”

Derek sighed as he studied the man for a moment; he was too pale against the fur rim of his hood, almost grey from lying out in the snow, and his cloak was stained with dark dried blood around a protruding arrow shaft. It was unlikely he would even last the night. They would probably be able to carry on in the morning with little time lost, if any.

It wasn’t a horrible idea, Derek decided reluctantly. They hadn’t been able to set up a real camp for a few weeks in the open foothills, and they were all on edge from sleeping in exposed areas. A defensible place to sleep would be good for them, even if they were surrounded by death. They would be able to give the pack proper burials, at the very least.

“Fine. One night,” Derek relented, already moving away to check on Isaac. “He’s your responsibility.”

Put Down in Words by paintedrecs [203k, M]

“Oh,” Stiles said, his voice coming out low and breathy, “fuck me.”

“I don’t think that’s on the syllabus, but we can check to see if there’s a spot open in any of his classes,” Scott said, grinning.

“This isn’t an actual professor, though,” Stiles insisted, unable to resist brushing his thumb over the sharp line of the man’s bearded jaw. He was laughing at something off-camera, the shot taken in three-quarters view, his coat collar casually rumpled and opened to reveal a sliver of a simple grey t-shirt. The whole thing was deliberately calculated to lend him a more accessible feel, and god help him, Stiles was falling for it.

*

When Stiles signed up for Dr. Hale’s intro to history class, he had two goals: knock out the credits his advisor was bugging him to complete before he graduated, and spend a few hours a week daydreaming about his sexy professor’s salt and pepper beard.

Derek, a few months away from turning forty and not sure when his life had started feeling so damn lonely, had never encountered someone like Stiles before. Bright-eyed, sharp-tongued, determined to throw Derek’s carefully cultivated world into disarray…and absolutely the last person Derek should be falling in love with.

Cupboard Love by mklutz [32k, G]

He’s carefully balancing the sandwiches and the two biggest tupperware containers he could find that both had functioning lids when the front door opens and he almost drops everything right there in front of the stupid fountain.

If that’s Derek Hale, he’s definitely not a mountain man.

One life stand by Vendelin [84k, E]

Stiles is used to selling himself to make ends meet. But it's getting harder to keep those ends meeting, and there's only so much of Stiles to go around. Until a too-fancy car shows up in his neighborhood, and he meets Derek Hale.

All Derek wants is Stiles's time, someone to stay on his arm for events and smile for the cameras. It's the easiest job Stiles has ever had, the best-paying one he's ever had, and he's more than happy to sign up.

Derek is everything and nothing Stiles expects him to be, with his tailored suits, sharp mind and his quiet way of caring. But it's just a job and Stiles never meant to fall in love.

In Other Words, Baby, Kiss Me by primroseshows [61k, E]

Stiles has simple goals in life. To successfully complete his secret radar project without getting fired, to get a cottage on the Moon, and to untangle his mess of feelings for Moon Station 3 deputy, Derek Hale. Heck, he'll even settle for two of the three.

The Circus at the End of the World by mikkimouse [91k, E]

Three hundred years ago, the world ended not with a bang or a whimper, but with magic.

Since then, magic has been outlawed, and the world has clawed its way back to some kind of stability, with people and shifters alike divided between living within the walled safety of the Havens, or the small, less protected outposts dotting the frontier.

Derek Hale and his sisters, Laura and Cora, are the proprietors of Hale's Circus of Magic, Monsters, and Mystical Wonders, known colloquially as the Circus at the End of the World. They and their ragtag pack ride the rails between the outposts and the Havens, performing for those who can pay (and some who can't). Their circus is a small haven in and of itself, a place of safety for those who have nowhere else to go.

It's a quiet life...until Stiles Stilinski joins the crew.

The circus has something Stiles needs—a ticket into the Haven of Santa Francesca. His father has been abducted, and Stiles is determined to get him back no matter what he has to do.

But Stiles has another secret, one that puts him and every member of the circus in danger. And if he's not careful, it could get them all killed.

The Silent Fury by andavs, rosepetals42 [31k, M]

Derek is about to leave, content with the smell of blood as proof that the Fury is dead when he hears it.

A heartbeat.

It’s faint and uneven and even with its help, it takes Derek a full minute of scanning the clearing before he finally spots the small heap that must be the human. It’s down on the far side of the canyon, almost completely hidden by a tall oak tree and–Derek jumps down before he thinks about it.

He knows what he has to do. Furies are dangerous. Furies are fire and smoke and a funeral he barely remembers. He lands almost silently and makes sure his hands are fully shifted into claws and then slowly moves forward.

Or, a How to Train Your Dragon AU

Kindred Spirits by Stoney [104k, E]

Anne of Green Gables/Teen Wolf AU.Stiles is the adopted son of the Sheriff, brought to Beacon Hills to hopefully stay for good. A family, a best friend, school, Jackson as Josie Pye (because who else could he be?) and the mystery of a dark haired, green-eyed boy which leads Stiles to discovering a secret within himself.

Sell Your Body to the Night by Dira Sudis (dsudis) [121k, E]

"No," he repeated impatiently. "I'm not a cop. I'm someone who wants to exchange my money for your sexual services. I was told you were in that line of work."

"I, uh, yeah, sorry," Stiles said. He glanced around again and then up--the full moon was almost directly overhead. Just one of those nights, maybe. "Yeah, I am. I do that."

But Then What... by Stoney [24k, E]

Senior year is almost over, and all Stiles needs to do is keep his head down to survive. A teacher calls in a favor, leaving him stuck tutoring Derek Hale, one of the most popular jocks in school and a member of a group of douchecanoes who have bullied Stiles for years. He's someone Stiles totally hates. Totally. Like, doesn't like him even a little bit. DEFINITELY isn't attracted to him.

Except that is a total lie. Fuck his life, seriously.Senior year is almost over, and all Stiles needs to do is keep his head down to survive. A teacher calls in a favor, leaving him stuck tutoring Derek Hale, one of the most popular jocks in school and a member of a group of douchecanoes who have bullied Stiles for years. He's someone Stiles totally hates. Totally. Like, doesn't like him even a little bit. DEFINITELY isn't attracted to him.Except that is a total lie. Fuck his life, seriously.

Little Wild Animal by DiscontentedWinter [61k, E]

Derek Hale finds a feral human on his pack's property.Humans are supposed to be extinct.But then, Stiles is full of surprises.

(also read the other work in the series, it’s more original fic than sterek but i adore it!)

I Know Where Babies Come From, Derek by DiscontentedWinter [51k, M]

Stiles finds a baby on the porch.

It looks exactly like him.

Well, this is awkward.

Don't Speak by fatale [68k, T]

The Alpha pack has systematically attacked Stiles and his friends for months, testing their strengths and weaknesses. When one of the Alphas goes after Stiles, he awakens in the hospital and realizes that something's wrong. Very wrong. All sounds seem to hurt him, he can't understand what anyone is saying, and when he tries to speak, it's gibberish. How is he supposed to deal with the fact that he's lost the ability to communicate with his dad and his friends?

Without his ability to talk, his sarcasm, and his wit, what does Stiles even have left? Enter Derek, the only one who seems to make it better.

Occam's Razor by MissAnnThropic [49k, E] [and also read the sequel!!]

When Stiles goes to sleep, he’s a junior in high school. He wakes up in a world where he’s twenty-four and married to Derek Hale. Stiles just can’t seem to catch a break.

Specialized Technical Intelligence and Logistics for Earth and Space (S.T.I.L.E.S) by Yiichi [63k, NR]

“What the hell kind of a name is Stiles?” he asked.

“You know, a series of sounds spoken in a particular sequence that represent my identity, primarily, referring to me?“ the AI – Stiles – answered cheekily, crossing his own arms in front of his chest, mirroring Derek’s position.

“Ooh, this one’s feisty,” Peter smirked.

Tiny Houses by ohmyjetsabel ]77k, E]

"So this is what Stiles does. He lies in Scott’s bed and waits for Melissa to say she’s found someone to get it out of him, to cure him of the wrongness and the bad, and he dreams.

God, he dreams.

He dreams of fire and swollen bellies and that scene in Alien, of giving birth to jackals through his urethra, the whole horrific nine yards. His head is a terrible place to be, he can’t imagine his stomach is much better, why anyone would want to put a thing inside of it."

Stilinski's Home for Wayward Wolves by owlpostagain [35k, T]

“At least your puppies knock first,” Stiles snorts. “Here I thought their alpha raised them to be well-mannered.”

“There’s a sign,” Derek responds stiffly.

Stiles, whose curiosity outweighs even his hardest of grudges, abandons his chilly façade of nonchalance in a heartbeat. He jumps right up and all but pushes Derek out of the way in his effort to get to the window, and sure enough when he leans outside there’s a laminated strip of cardstock duct taped to the vinyl siding:

DON’T FORGET TO KNOCK Stiles gets cranky when we scare him

---

Or, in which Stiles Stilinski moves to Beacon Hills for his junior year of high school and accidentally adopts a pack of teenage werewolves.

The entire Bodice Ripper 'Verse byStoney!!!

Fly a Little Faster by mirrorkill [32k, T]

Everyone knows when you go back in time, you shouldn't step on an ant, just in case you accidentally kill your own grandparent or something. But what happens when you go back in time and, uh, accidentally interrupt the one event that apparently made the Grumpiest Alpha in Town into a ball of mindless manpain?

Well, if Marty McFly can do it, so can Stiles Stilinski. All he has to do is get Derek and Paige to fall in love before he gets pulled back to his own time. And before he makes anything worse. That's easy as pie, right? Right?

Enemy Lines by qhuinn (tekla) [149k, E]

This is the story of werewolf Derek Hale and human Stiles Stilinski: two people who grew up in the same town but completely different worlds, their realities split by the war between men and wolves.

Years later when Derek returns to Beacon Hills, he does it as Alpha of a military pack on a mission to capture those responsible for the region’s resistance. With his main objective, Sheriff Stilinski, out of sight, he settles for the next best thing: his son, Stiles.

Neither of them suspects they’ll need to trust each other if they want to make it out this alive.

an exaltation of larks by llassah [25k, E]

There are times when he feels as if they could fall into bed together, easy as breathing. If Stiles were not highborn, if he were an omega without connections, Derek would be sorely tempted. As it is, he resists. Derek wants, he yearns, but he resists. Still, the sight of Stiles in his cot is enough to test him, even now that it is familiar. At the end of each lambing season, he sleeps for a week, worn down by months of hard work, of relentless struggle. He doesn’t know how he’ll feel by the time Stiles leaves, how he’ll feel after long days and longer nights spent resisting the insistent tug of Stiles’s scent and the inclinations of his own foolish heart.

All Derek wants is to get through the lambing season with his body and spirit intact. He had thought that the blizzards would be the main danger, not a highborn omega with beautiful eyes and a stubborn streak.

Move A Mountain by ZainClaw [69k, E]

Stiles goes camping with his friends in New Mexico after graduation where they befriend a biker gang led by Derek: a guy whom Stiles can’t decide if he will be either relieved or devastated to never see again once their week is up.

The Importance of Turning Around Three Times Before Lying Down by otter [31k, M]

It’s like this dog has walked out of all of Stiles’ childhood dreams and into the real world just because Stiles wanted it hard enough. He is the most awesome dog ever, and he and Stiles have a bond. A deep, unbreakable bond because this animal is his soul mate, obviously. Now he just has to convince the dog of that. 

Stiles's Story Time by trilliath [125k, E]

Where Stiles is a librarian who is in charge of the kids' reading hour and such. And Derek is 6-year-old Scott's adoptive dad. And Stiles has his own take on Stories and Scott loves wolves and Derek tries not to admit that he likes the way Stiles's face looks in those glasses.Or something like that.

Not Your Disney Romance by Rawren (Zimothy) [42k, M]

After a long-forgotten agreement of an arranged marriage between Derek and the daughter of another pack's alpha resurfaces, Stiles takes it upon himself to become the most amazing fake fiancé that a clueless, desperate alpha werewolf could wish for.

There is a Brotherhood by minusoneday [21k, E]

So far, college has taught Stiles three things:

1) Eight am classes are cruel and unusual and should be avoided at all costs, even if it means having to enroll in something truly hideous instead, like Econ 101.

2) Dorm security is just as tight as Stiles’ orientation leader had promised it would be, and the dude guarding Scott’s dorm in particular does not respond well to bribes.

3) Mrs. McCall clearly had no clue what she was talking about when she’d insisted that Scott and Stiles needed to branch out and room with strangers, so it’s all her fault that Scott ended up with a total dick of a roommate and Stiles got stuck all the way across campus with some guy who has a girlfriend two towns over and is thus never around.

Or, the one where pledge brothers Stiles and Scott start a prank war with Derek Hale's fraternity.

Prince Among Wolves by Rawren (Zimothy) [101k, E]

Looking for full day/evening sitter. 2 twin boys age 4. Must have exp. w/werewolves. Must be human. No pedophiles. No teenage girls. Pay negotiable.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation by grimm [118k, E]

There's something weird about Beacon Hills that Stiles can't quite put his finger on. The way everyone in town knows his name the day he arrives. The way they insist the melancholic howling that echoes through the forest every night is just a dog. The way his dad denies getting a dog, even though Stiles comes home to find one sprawled across his bed, some big black thing whose eyes gleam red in the right light. The way that massive oak tree out in the woods vibrates under his touch, pulsing with sickly life.

There's something weird going on in this town, and Stiles is determined to get to the bottom of it.

Cornerstone by Vendelin [83k, E]

Suffering from PTSD, ex-Marine Derek Hale moves back to Beacon Hills to open a bookshop and find a calmer life. That’s where he meets Stiles, completely by accident. Stiles is talkative, charming and curious. Somehow, despite the fact that he’s blind, he’s able to read Derek like no one else. 

[Not!Fic] Random Craigslist Missed Connections Derek/Stiles Not!Fic of Doom by fire_juggler_writes (fire_juggler) [17k, T]

An AU in which Stiles is lonely and addicted to the Missed Connections page on Craigslist, Derek is a hermit with a persistant sister, Scott gives unexpectedly good relationship advice, and it all ends happily-ever-after.

Trust Fall by Stoney [144k, T]

Stiles is fairly certain that a case could be made for every bad thing in his life coming back to Peter Hale. This time it's pissing off a powerful witch, who retaliated by swapping Stiles and Derek a la Freaky Friday, because sure. That makes sense. Um, there are GPAs on the line, not to mention the whole thing where his dad wants to shoot Derek on sight. Except who he sees as Derek is actually Stiles, and Stiles did not sign up for filicide.

Great. Wait...does this mean he's the Alpha until they figure this out? Holy. Shit.****

Derek had stood in front of the bathroom mirror for a few minutes trying to control the panic as he saw himself as Stiles. As the loud mouthed human friend of the pack. He was going to kill Peter. He was going to kill the witch, then he was going to kill Peter. Maybe even resurrect him again just to kill him all over.

They were going to have to play this cool. They would have to stay calm and focused. Which is of course why the universe threw him into this situation with someone who physically couldn't be calm and focused.

Of course.

Stand Fast in Your Enchantments by DevilDoll, Rahciach [76k, E]

"Stiles knew damn well what a pissed-off wolf sounded like, and every hair on the back of his neck was telling him that somewhere in this room was a very pissed-off werewolf." An AU in which Derek is feral, Stiles is magical, and they eat a lot of fast food.

Safety in Silence by Survivah [66k, M]

It's perfectly understandable. Even Derek wouldn't want to be Derek's soulmate. 

Where The Inevitable Isn't by Survivah [41k, M]

Stiles has a magical thingamajig that's supposed to get him out of danger. Trouble is, it took him really, really far out of danger. Like, to the point where he isn't in the same universe anymore.

"A part of Stiles had been thinking that he’d come home, and just go, 'hey, Derek, are we mates and you just haven’t said anything about it?' and Derek would reply, 'now you mention it, we are indeed! Now come to my bedchamber, where we will have super hot sex and then cuddle after!'"

"Pretend this is our den, kay?" by Survivah [16k, M]

In which Stiles is raised by (were)wolves, and he and Derek are childhood sweethearts that never stopped. Also, Kate Argent is a homicidal maniac but a very helpful plot device.

The Boy and the Beast by Dira Sudis (dsudis) [116k, M]

In which events in Beacon Hills go rather differently from the start, and a Beauty and the Beast (ish) story ensues. (Scott is not a teacup and no one sings about their feelings.)

[caiuscassiuss]

Silver and Black (badboy au! NCT Jaemin)

Description: badboy! Jaemin and French transfer student! reader || He thought your accent was hot, but the leather jacket on his back and the motorcycle he rode warned you away from him. (for anon)

Genre: comedy | angst | fluff

WC: 4.2k

Warnings: profanity, so many tropes, underage drinking

masterlist | requests | updates

   School here was… different.    Wow, great observation, y/n. Full marks.    To be fair, it did look somewhat like the movies you always liked to watch back at home. There were mostly defined groups of peoples huddled by rows of lockers, what you assumed were the popular girls wearing bright and trendy clothing and the so-called “nerds” wearing graphic tees and ill-fitting jeans. Colorful flyers advertising various clubs like anime or technical society floated around, whether it be pinned on walls or stuffed unceremoniously in your face. Oh my, you could even the puffs of smoke produced by the stoners in the corner.    You were relieved to note that your skirt and long-sleeved top were appropriate, not underdressed nor too overdressed. You clutched your new backpack, a nice leather one your grandmére had given you on your move from France. It didn’t quite look like the neon or complicated ones your new classmates sported, but it was alright; it was refreshing to be unique, after all.    The rather loud bell rang as you settled into the hard plastic desk, placing your bookbag on the floor and books on your desk. The classroom was dingy and I looked like the ceiling tiles were about to rot and crash down upon unsuspecting students. It seemed like crappy classrooms transcended across all borders.    “Welcome, everyone, for another wonderful year in honors literature! It is nice to see all your beaming faces in my classroom this year!” Mrs. Johnson said to the unenthused, bored faces of the students in front of her. A rather awkward pause went through the classroom as no one responded, tired because of the early morning time or just not excited to be present. Mrs. Johnson, in her apparent jovial manner, took it all in stride and moved the conversation to another topic.    “In other news, we have a new student all the way from France! Hello Y/n!”    Heads turned towards you, and you blushed under the gazes of your curious classmates.    “Erm, nice to meet you, Mrs. Johnson,” you said.    “How is America? Nice? Boring? Fun?” Mrs. Johnson pressed on.    “It’s rather nice. Different, but very fun,” You cordially replied, a hesitant smile on your face.    “That’s good! Perhaps, in our European literature unit, you can give us another perspective” — she winked at you as if sharing a secret— “but anyways, please make her feel welcome!”    On the other side of the classroom, near the back, sat a boy lazily postured in his seat like the classroom was his living room. A leather jacket was slung over the back of his chair, revealing the boy’s toned arms in a white t-shirt, bracelets, and chains on his heavily veined forearms. Piercing eyes laid behind ruffled brown hair, the abyssal black pupils gleaming with interest. A smirk crept up his chiseled face as he heard the pretty new transfer student speak to Mrs. Johnson in accented English, the clear French accent stirring up some excitement in him.        “Oh, I’ll make her feel welcome alright.”

   “Come! You can eat with me and my friends during lunch!” your student guide, Aimee, exclaimed to you as she leads you through the crowded hallways.    She was rather nice, you thought. It seemed she had an endless supply of energy within her petite frame, ready to answer questions and initiate warm conversation. She was a junior, like you, and had said she was part of the Science and Math honor societies. While no Renee, your best friend from Paris, Aimee was someone you could see yourself hanging out with.    “Oh, thank you! I’d be delighted to,” you smiled at her while stuffing the chemistry syllabus in your bookbag.    You were suddenly overwhelmed by the boisterous and loud atmosphere of your high school’s cafeteria. Not much different from the canteen in your old school.    Aimee pushed you through the lunchline, chatting with you as you selected a nice Greek salad and a pressed juice. The “Chinese” noodles looked unappetizing, and so did the gravy and mashed potatoes option in the other line.    “Yeah, you’ll find that American high school food is terrible. My tip: don’t eat the pizza and whenever the lunch lady asks you if you want Yum Yum sauce, say no.” Aimee grimaced as she took a salad and water too.    “Will do,” you laughed.    Navigating between the mazes of the tables and students, you sat next to Aimee at a table outside in the pavilion. You greeted the friends she had introduced to you, all seemed very nice and just as exuberant as Aimee.    “So, you’ve got to tell us.” Jade, a gorgeous Chinese girl, leaned in conspiratorially towards you over her sandwich.    “Hm?” You paused mid-bite of your salad.    “How hot are the French guys?” The whole table exploded in giggles and laughter.

   “Where’s the next party, Haechan? Your house or my house?” Mark asked while taking a bite of his cheeseburger.    Haechan swallowed a bite of his hot dog before pointing at Chenle.    “Let’s hold it at Chenle's house. His house is hella big and I wanna convert his foyer into whipped cream slip and slide,” he snickered.    “What the fuck? Hell yeah to the party, hell no to the slip and slide. Last time you tried that we somehow got taffy stuck to the ceiling and one of your buddies broke a Ming dynasty base from my great-great mother.” Chinle frowned.    “Aw fuck.” Haechan pouted.    “We could just do it at the lake on Saturday. No repercussions, privacy, great spot to do whatever weird games Haechan comes up with.” Jaemin lazily says. He takes a sip of his water bottle filled with vodka and leans his arms onto the table.    “You know I’m the one that actually makes the party fun, right? If I weren’t here, all you motherfuckers would be left with a dry-ass party,” Haechan counters.    “Sorry, but I provide the booze. Then Y'all wouldn’t be able to have a party, period.” Renjun slips into next to Jaemin at the lunch table. He takes off his grey sweatshirt revealing a red tee underneath, drawing the gaze of many girls who gasped and whispered furiously.    “Damn, flexing for the chicks aren’t ya?” Marks crows as he offers his hand for a high five.    “For one, actually.” Renjun slaps Mark’s hand back and chugs his coke.    “Who attracted the illustrious Huang Renjun’s attention?” Chenle asks sarcastically.    Renjun points to you, who is walking with Aimee to their table. Your quick stride exposed your legs and your hair blew around in the wind.    “You see that girl? She’s the new transfer student from France. I think her name was Y/n or something like that. She’s pretty.” Renjun’s face contorts in a lascivious expression before everyone hums in agreement, transfixed by your pretty face and gorgeous features.    Jaemin caught sight of you, the girl whom he wanted to make-out within his literature class. His eyes narrowed.    “You can’t have that one Renjun. I saw her first in 1st period.” Jaemin says in a low tone, promises of retribution hidden in plain sight in his tone.    Renjun looks to him in surprise.    “Fuck, fine, fine. Goddamnit, she’s hella hot.” Renjun whined.

   “Hey!” A voice called out to you in the hallways.    You turned around to see an extremely handsome boy striding towards you. He reminded you of one of those boys you would see in the vogue magazines that your friends pored over endlessly, the boy that would be on phone backgrounds and editorials. However, your eyes caught sight of his leather jacket and ruffled hair and that was a message screaming DANGER.    “Hey, you’re that French transfer student right? Y/n?” the boy’s mouth pulled up into a mischievous grin, his lip piercing gleaming. He sidled next to you, his long legs slowing down to keep stride with your admittedly shorter ones. His gait was leisurely as if he had all the time in the world and was only more substantiated by his hands in his pockets.    “Yes,” you icily said, your tone clipped. You hoped that your demeanor would tell him to fuck off.    The boy rose an eyebrow curiously but kept going. Well, wasn’t he a determined one.    “The name’s Jaemin. I just thought I’d welcome you to the school, you know, to get you settled in and stuff.”    “I wasn’t aware you were part of the welcoming committee. You certainly don’t look like it,” you snarked, walking faster to get to your chemistry class.    “Woah, Woah, got some claws on you, don’t you, kitten?” the infuriating boy walked faster.    “Given I’m not a feline, nor do I have sharp nails, I don’t.” You were almost there.    “Mmm, well, we’ll see about that,” Jaemin smirked at you, his eyebrow piercing gleaming in the artificial hallway lights.    You caught sight of the door plate 8237 and nearly sobbed in relief (you could feel beads of sweat being to form at your hairline from the exertion). However, before you could make your escape from the boy that emanated trouble, the man in question gripped your elbow firmly and stopped you in your tracks.    He bent down until his lips were at your ear and you could feel his hair on your temple and his breath blowing across your sensitive neck.    “See you around, kitten.”

   “Bro, it’s literally been like your first day here and you’ve already attracted our resident bad boy! Tell me your secrets, oh goddess!” Jade exclaimed dramatically as you sat with her during the last period. The girl really reminded you of Renee; both were bold, brash, and unabashedly dramatic. Jade and Renee would’ve been best friends had they met each other.    “What?” you asked confusedly.    “Maybe it’s the French allure, you know?” Aimee joked as she sat down diagonally from the pair of you.    Jade set her hands down on the desk carefully like she was delivering the verdict of a court case, her face contorted in a determined expression. “Okay, so Ruby told Callie who told Sooyoung who then told—”    “Shut up, Jade, and get to the point.” Aimee cut her off.    Jade made a face but continued.    “TLDR, a lot of people saw Jaemin Na almost giving you a hickey in the hallway.”    The boy who has been on your mind all day was known as a “bad boy”?    God, you knew America was cliche, but not to this extent.    Wait, fuck. You processed what Jade had said slowly, but with growing horror, you understood the implications of her statement.    “Oh, je suis foutu (I am screwed),” you whispered fearfully and slammed your head into the desk. The other students already in your classroom looked towards you, but seeing nothing exciting was worth looking at, went back to their conversations. Aimee and Jade exchanged confused glances with each other.    “I don’t know what you just said, but that sounded hot. Probably the reason why Jaemin wants to push you up against a locker and make-out.” Jade said bluntly, with Aimee nodding primly in agreement.    Your only response was a muffled groan.

   Boy, had he just found a catch.    Pretty, different, and a challenge— it seems this school year wouldn’t be so monotonous after all.        Jaemin smirked as he leaned against a locker, and watched the French girl put her books in her locker. Students passed them by as the school bell rang signaling the end of the day, bustling and loud with endless activity. As focused as he was on you, it did not escape his peripheral vision that many girls were giving him side glances or suggestive winks. Usually, he would respond and even occasionally pursue a pair of battering eyelashes, but today, he had one goal and one goal only.    She slammed her locker shut and tightened the leather backpack over her shoulders. As soon as she passed by him and neared the exit doors he got up from his position and walked up by her.    “Hey kitten, how’s it going?” he slung an arm over her shoulders and he could feel her tense underneath his touch.    “Please, don’t touch me,” you looked him straight in the eyes and shoved his heavy arm off your shoulder.    He took it all in stride and hefted his muscled arm over your shoulders, now his hand wrapped around one of the straps of your bookbag so that if you tried to push him off, your book bag would go down with it. You were effectively trapped.    “Still didn’t answer my question though.”    “Maybe it’s because I don’t want to? You’re the type of guy that makes a mile out of an inch, so stop trying to flirt with me.”    Jaemin ignored your protests and turned the path in the sidewalk with you.    “I’m going to assume your day is not going well by your spicy attitude—”    “What!?”    “ — so I’m going to make it better.”    Jaemin with you in hand dragged you into the streets and kept walking with you on the sidewalk. He was leading you to the line of shops located near the school, which you had meant to explore on the weekend, but it looks like you’re going to get one now. At this point, you just give up on trying to resist stop tugging yourself away from him and just kind of… go with it. Jaemin tightens his hold on you a bit more and stops in front of Ann’s Ice Cream Shoppe.    “This is one of the best ice cream places and hang out spots in the town.  Thought this would be a great place to end your day.” Jaemin glances down at you with a half-smile. Oh? You are pleasantly surprised by how genuine he sounds, and you soften your resolve against him a little bit. Just a little bit.    The door opens with a ding and the air conditioning blasts you in the face like an explosion. The red and white themed shop smelled of sickeningly sweet waffle cones and chocolate.    “Welcome to Anne’s! What would you like to eat?” the cashier brightly asks as you come in. She looked like a lovely old lady. Jaemin glances at you. “You can go first.”    Your eyes scan over the many buckets of ice cream and ponder over which flavor of ice cream would be the best. The pink strawberry ice cream catches your eye, and you instantly decide to get that one.    “Em… strawberry, please?”    “Alright dear, what size and in a cup or a cone?”    “Just small, please, and… in a cup,” You certainly didn’t want Jaemin to get any ideas if you chose a waffle cone. From Tokyo to Rome, teenage boys were horny idiots that could turn any gesture into an innuendo.    Jaemin quickly orders his frozen treat (chocolate) and you both step up to the counter to pay. You get out your wallet to pay (why was American money all the same color? How weird) but Jaemin forks over some bills to the old lady before you could.    “Wha—”    “I wasn’t going to let a girl that I dragged here pay.”    Mr. Vogue Editorial had manners now, did he?    The old lady scoops yours up first and hands it up with a smile. Jaemin takes hold of it and passes it to you.    “A sweet treat for a sweet girl.” He smirks.    "Shut up." You blush but roll your eyes.    "You're such a cute pair. Oh, it reminds me of Jerry and I back in the days!" the old lady at the counter laughs.    Before you could protest, Jaemin smiles at her. "Thank you."    "Have a nice day,  you two!"    Jaemin drags you away from her and the pair of you settle down at a glossy red table near a window, and quickly dig into your frozen confectionaries.    The pair of you settle down at a glossy red table near a window, and quickly dig into your frozen confectionaries.    “So, tell me, why did you move across the good ole’ Atlantic to end up at American high school?” Jaemin asks casually while leaning back in his chair. The lip piercing gleams brightly from the window light.    You wipe your lips with a napkin delicately. “Uh, my father was transferred to the North American branch of his company and so I had to move here with him. Nothing exciting, really.”    “Where were you from?”    “Paris. On the outskirts, but still very much near the city center.”    “Paris, huh? Suburban America must seem very boring to Paris,” Jaemin laughs as he takes a bite of his cone.    “It’s good though. Very calm. Relaxing, I guess you could say.”    The two of you fall into a semi-awkward silence until 20 Dollar Nose Bleed comes over the speakers and you grin. You were one of those rarities among your group of friends that liked Fall Out Boy, while the rest liked One Direction or some UK solo artists. While you were astonished that such an old song would be playing, you hum along with the song nonetheless.    Your soft humming catches the attention of Jaemin, who was pleasantly surprised you knew such an old, hidden track from his favorite band and that you knew it quite well.    “You like Fall Out Boy?”    “Of course! I love them. I’ve been with them since I discovered Save Rock and Roll,” you grin at him.    “Seriously? They’re, like, my favorite band!”    Jaemin could feel his interest in you growing, a superficial attraction turning into something deeper. Not many girls that he liked to play around with liked the same music as he did, and if they did, only really basic songs.    You were turning out to be a bag full of surprises.

   The weeks went by and the leaves on the trees turned to red, orange, and yellow. School settled in until you were in a storm of tests and homework projects. The start of the school year seemed so long ago.    However, your friendship with Jaemin blossomed. Yes, he was still extremely flirty with you and was touchier than was acceptable, but Jaemin quickly became one of your closest friends. You often sat in lit class next to each other and hung out after school when you were both free. You loved arguing over trivial things and just listening to Fall Out Boy’s albums together.    You smiled slightly, thinking to when Renee had seen Jaemin’s Instagram and freaked out over facetime. Renee kept pestering you on whether he was your boyfriend, but you always denied her. She had been supremely jealous you had found such a boy, but bragged about it to the girls at your old school. However, you had gotten some DM’s from acquaintances to mention them to Jaemin. Ridiculous! As if they could ever have a viable relationship.    “What are you smiling about, y/n?” Jaemin asked as you were walking through the neighborhood park. It was such a nice day today, very sunny, yet Jaemin still wore his signature leather jacket and shiny Doc Martens looking like he was about to pop some wheelies on his bike down the street.    “Nothing,” you waved him off.    “You were thinking about me, weren’t you? I knew you couldn’t get my handsome face out of your mind—”    “Shut up!” you exclaim and push him roughly.    Him, being the well-built adolescent he is, did not budge nor break his stride, but the momentum transferred to you and you stumbled back. You hit a ledge and flailed back, but muscled arms wrapped around your waist and shoulders. Jaemin pulled you back but did not let you go, staring you in the eyes intensely.    “Careful,” he whispered softly.    You could only stare back in a daze, eyes wide, unable to look away from his chiseled visage. You snapped yourself out of it and out of his grasp,    “Um, yeah, thank you. That was a bit of a close call, eh?” you glanced back at the river water you could’ve been soaked in had Jaemin not been quick enough.    “Yeah.” Jaemin paused but opened his mouth hesitantly. “Uh, Y/n, I’ve been meaning to ask you about something for a while now.”    “What is it?” you asked with barely contained anticipation. You hoped you didn’t sound too desperate.    “D-Do you want to go with me to the party my friends are hosting on Friday at the lake? It’s alright if you don’t wanna go—”    “I’d love to,” you grinned at him.

   “Oh, mon dieu. No. Absolutely not,” you said, looking horrified at the sight before you.    A large motorbike stood, gleaming in the lights of your porch, like a death trap from hell.    “Oh come on, Y/n, you’ll be fine. Here, I’ve even brought an extra helmet for you.” Jaemin rolled his eyes and produced the aforementioned helmet. As usual, he looked dashing, a teen out of some 60’s bad boy flick. The elements of his outfit were all the same of course, but you noticed he had added more silver and gold accessories like a solid band around his wrist and an engraved ring around his pointer finger.    “Jaemin! I’m going to die!” you exclaimed hysterically.    He merely laughed and wrapped his arm around your shoulders.    “No, you’re not, sweetheart. You trust me, right?” He looked down at you beseechingly.    “...fine,” you pouted.    Minutes later, you were screaming in delight as Jaemin revved up his motorcycle on the highway. The wind blowing through your hair and the speed gave you a rush, exhilaration, and excitement flowing through your veins. It was so much fun.    Jaemin was just happy to feel you pressed up against his back, the warmth of your body giving him comfort. He could feel the stands of your hair whipping against his neck, and smell the sweet scent of your recent shower emanating from you. Riding around in the night with the girl he liked— it was a dream.    Finally, the two of you revved up into a parking lot in front of a park, some laughing teens walking on a path towards a brightly lit area. Looking closer, you could see there was a bonfire going on and trendy music being played on the speakers.    Jaemin helped you off the bike and walked with his hand on the small of your back towards the campfire. The dark trees of the forest led to a clearing with a magnificent view of the shimmering lake, waves glimmering with the light of the bright moon. In the clearing, however, there was a large mass of teens laughing and dancing, bass pumping on speakers. There were some tables filled with food and snacks, but most of them were occupied by alcohol in crates.    “Eyyyy look who it is!” yelled a person from your left. You turned to see Mark, clearly inebriated with Haechan snickering at his side, walking towards you with a beer bottle in his hand.    They met and the trio did a manly handshake while you stood at the side.    “Nice to see you, bro. See you’ve brought your girl with you, huh?”    “Sure did.” Jaemin grins. You notice how he doesn’t object to the label “your girl”.    “Well, enjoy the party. I think Renjun got some cherry vodka if you want it it’s over there.” Haechan gestures to a table with some teens around it.    “Will do.”    Surprisingly, Jaemin did not abandon you to the crowds as you expected. He guided you around the party and introduced you to various people, instead of going to get wasted with his friends. Well, he was currently nursing a beer bottle in his hand but did not go for the cherry-flavored vodka Renjun set out. Kudos to him.    After introducing you to a nice boy named Jungwoo, the pair of you fell silent and walked near the shore of the lake. You were still in view of the party but weren’t so much in the action.    “Hey… uh, I got something to tell you.” Jaemin blurted out suddenly.    “Hm?” you asked confusedly.    “I… I kinda like you.”    A stunned silence followed after.    “A-are you drunk?” you stumbled out, shocked by his confession.    “No! No, nothing like that. I guess it’s a bit sudden, yeah? Well, um… yeah, I like you. You’re… You’re not like the other girls in the school— and I swear I don’t say that to everybody! Just… you. You wanted to be my friend, not use me as arm-candy to brag about. You’re really sweet, kind, funny, and you like my favorite band. You’re… yeah.”    You smiled at him before grasping his shoulders and reaching up to kiss his cheek, leaving a bit of gloss on his cheek.    “I like you too.”    What made you really decide to accept his feelings is that nowhere did he say that you were pretty. Jaemin still might be a big bag of mysteries, but you were sure he was genuine and that made you overcome your doubt of his bad past with girls.    Jaemin smiled his crooked grin that made you melt and leaned down to connect your lips with his. It felt like you were suddenly near the bonfire because warm emanated from the kiss and the heat of his body. You tangled your hands in his ruffled hair and could feel the cold metal of his lip ring against your tongue. He pulled you closer and into the folds of his leather jacket, completely pressed against him. After a few seconds, you pull apart and just settle into each other’s embrace, looking at the beautiful lake.    “Also your accent’s really hot, kitten—”    You slapped him.    “Jaemin!”   Renee and Jade were totally going to freak.

(A/N: oh wow 2 jaemin fics in a row oh my god. not really my most technically advanced piece of writing, but it’s fun to just write your cheesy fantasies lol.  I hope you enjoy and pls like and reblog!)

[mrkwonandmrchoibabygirl]

NOW 2~G-Dragon Pt.26

Genre:Angst/SMUT

Rated:NSFW

Pairing: GD X Reader

wordcount:4,507

Masterlist

DISCLAIMER!:remember this is just an edit of an original book called after by anna todd i do not own this book

Jiyong parks as close to the coffeehouse as he can manage, but the campus is crowded since everyone has returned from Christmas break. He curses the entire time he circles each parking lot, and I try not to laugh at his annoyance. It’s quite adorable. “Give me your bag,” Jiyong says when I get out of the car. I hand it to him with a smile and thank him for the thoughtful gesture. It’s pretty heavy, manageable but heavy. It feels strange being back on campus; so much has changed and happened since I was last here. 

The cold wind whips against my skin, and Jiyong pulls a beanie over his head before zipping his jacket up all the way. We rush through the parking lot and down the street. I should have brought a thicker jacket, and gloves, and even a hat for myself. Jiyong was right when he said I shouldn’t wear the dress, but there is no way I am admitting that. Jiyong looks adorable with his hair hidden under the beanie, and his cheeks and nose are red from the cold. Only Jiyong would look even more attractive in this harsh weather. “There he is.” He points to Tae as we walk inside the coffee shop. The familiarity of the small space calms my nerves, and I smile as soon as I see my closest friend sitting at a small table waiting for me. tae smiles when he spots us, and when we get near he greets us. “Good morning.” “Morning,” I chirp back. “I’ll get in line,” Jiyong mumbles and heads to the counter. I didn’t expect him to stay, or get my coffee, but I’m glad he does. We don’t have any classes together this semester, and I’ll miss seeing him since I’ve gotten used to seeing him all day. “Ready for the new semester?” Taeasks when I take a seat across from him. The chair squeaks against the tile floor, drawing attention to us, and I smile apologetically before taking a good look at Tae. He’s tried a new hairstyle, pushing his hair up off his forehead—and it looks really good on him. As I look around the coffee shop, I begin to realize I probably should’ve just worn jeans and a sweatshirt. I’m the only person in the place who’s remotely dressed up save for Tae in his light blue buttondown shirt and khakis. “Yes, and no,” I tell him, and he agrees. “Same. How are things . . .”—he leans across the table to whisper—“you know, between you two?” I look over and see Jiyong has his back to us, but the barista’s face is in a deep scowl. She rolls her eyes as he hands her his debit card, and I wonder what he could have done to her to irritate her so much this early in the day. “Good, actually. How are things with Dakota? It feels much longer than a week since we’ve seen each other.” “Good, she’s preparing for New York.” “That is so amazing, I’d love to go to New York.” I can’t imagine what the city is like. “Me, too.” He smiles, and I want to tell him not to go, but I know that I can’t. “I haven’t made my mind up yet,” he says, answering my thoughts. “I want to go and be close to her—we’ve lived so far for so long. But I love WCU and don’t know if I want to be away from my mom and Ken to go to a huge city where I know absolutely no one, except her, of course.” I nod, and try to be encouraging despite myself. “You would do amazing there—you could go to NYU and the two of you could get an apartment,” I say. “Yeah, I just don’t know yet.” “Know what?” Jiyong interrupts, setting my coffee in front of me but not sitting down. “Never mind. I’ve got to go, my first class begins in five minutes on the opposite side of campus,” he says, and I cringe at the thought of running late on the first day of new classes. “Okay, I’ll see you after yoga. It’s my last class,” I tell him, and he surprises me by leaning down and planting a kiss on my lips, then my forehead. “I love you, be careful being bendy,” he says, and I get the feeling that if his cheeks weren’t red from the cold, they would be now; his eyes shift to the floor when he remembers Taeyang is sitting across from us. Public displays of affection are definitely not his thing. “I will. I love you,” I tell him, and he gives Taeyang an uncomfortable head nod before walking toward the door. “That was . . . weird.” Tae lifts his eyebrows and takes a drink of his coffee. “Yeah, it was.” I laugh and rest my chin on my hand and sigh happily. “We should get going to Religion,” Tae says, and I grab my bag from the floor and follow him outside. Luckily we don’t have a long walk to our first class. I’m excited about World Religion. It should be very interesting and thought provoking, and having Tae there is an added bonus. When we enter the room, we aren’t the first students to arrive, but the front row is completely empty. Tae and I sit down in the front center and take our books out. It feels good to be back in my element—academics has always been my thing, and I love that Tae feels the same. We wait patiently as the room fills with students, most of whom are obnoxiously loud. The compactness of the classroom doesn’t help with the noise, either. At last, a tall man who looks too young to be a professor strides in and immediately launches into his lesson. “Good morning, everyone. As most of you know by now, my name is Professor Soto. This is World Religion; you may get bored a few times, and I can promise you that you’ll learn a heap of facts that you’ll never actually use in the real world—but hey, what is college for?” He smiles and everyone laughs. Well, this is different. “So let’s get started. There is no syllabus for this course. We will not be following a strict outline—that isn’t my s Professor Soto takes a seat at the large desk in the front of the room and pulls a bottle of water from his bag. “You can talk amongst yourselves until the end of class, or you can go ahead and go for today and we’ll begin the real work tomorrow. Just sign the roster so I can see how many flakes we had that didn’t show for the first day,” he announces with a playful grin. The class howls and cheers before departing quickly, Tae shrugs at me, and we both stand up after the room is empty. We’re the last to sign the attendance roster. “Well, I guess this is cool. I can call Dakota for a little while between classes,” he says and packs his things. THE REST OF THE DAY goes by quickly, and I’m eager to see Jiyong. I’ve sent him a few text messages, but he has yet to respond. My feet are killing me as I make my way to the athletic building; I hadn’t realized how far of a walk it would be. The smell of sweat invades my nostrils as soon as I open the main door, and I hurry to the locker room labeled with a stick figure in a dress. The walls are lined with thin red lockers, the metal showing through the chipped paint job. “How do we know which locker to use?” I ask a short brunette wearing a bathing suit. “Just pick one and use the lock you brought,” she says. “Oh . . .” Of course, I didn’t think to bring a lock. Seeing my expression, she digs into her bag and hands me a small lock. “Here, I have an extra. The combination is on the back; I haven’t removed the sticker.” I thank her as she walks out of the room. After I’m changed into a new pair of black yoga pants and a white T-shirt, I head out. As I walk down the hall to the yoga room, a group of lacrosse players pass by, several of them making a vulgar remark that I choose to ignore. All of them except one keeps moving. “You trying out for cheer next year?” the boy asks, his deep brown, almost black eyes looking me up and down. “Me? No, I’m just on my way to yoga class,” I stammer. We are the only people in this hall. “Oh, that’s too bad. You would look phenomenal in a skirt.” “I have a boyfriend,” I announce and try to move around him. He blocks me. “I have a girlfriend . . . what does that matter?” He smiles and takes a step, cornering me. He doesn’t appear intimidating at all, but something about his cocky smile makes my skin crawl. “I need to get to class,” I say. “I can walk you . . . or you can skip and I could show you around.” He puts his arm up on the wall next to my head, and I step backward with nowhere to go. “Get the fuck away from her.” Jiyong ’s voice booms from behind me, and the creep turns his head to look at him. He looks more intimidating than ever in long basketball shorts and a black T-shirt with the sleeves cut off to reveal his tattooed arms. “I’m . . . sorry, man, I didn’t know she had a boyfriend,” he lies. “Did you not hear me? I said get the fuck away from her.” Jiyong walks toward us, and the lacrosse player backs away quickly, but Jiyong grabs hold of his shirt and slams him against the wall. I don’t stop him. “Come near her again and I’ll crack your skull against this wall. Do you understand me?” he growls. “Ye-yes . . .” the guy stutters and rushes down the hall. “Thank God,” I say and wrap my arm around his neck. “Why are you here? I thought you didn’t need any more PE classes?” I ask. “I decided to take one. And good thing.” He sighs and takes my hand into his. “Which one?” I ask. I can’t imagine Jiyong being athletic at all. “Yours.” I gasp. “You didn’t.” “Oh, yes I did.” His anger seems to be dissolved as he smiles at my horrified expression. 

Jiyong makes it a point to walk slightly behind me, and I suddenly want to go back to the tenth grade when I would tie a sweater around my waist to hide myself. His voice is quiet as he says, “You’re going to need to get more of these pants.” I remember the last time I wore yoga pants in front of Jiyong and the crude remarks he made, and those yoga pants weren’t as tight as these. I laugh lightly and grab his hand to force him to walk next to me instead of behind me. “You aren’t seriously taking yoga.” No matter how hard I try to picture Jiyong posing, the image just won’t come. “Yeah, I am.” “You do know what yoga is, don’t you?” I ask him as we walk into the room. “Yes, Y/N. I know what it is, and I’m taking it with you,” he huffs. “Why?” “It doesn’t matter why—I just want to spend more time with you.” “Oh.” I’m not convinced by his explanation, but I’m looking forward to seeing him try to do yoga, and the extra time with him doesn’t hurt either. In the center of the room, the instructor sits on a bright yellow mat. Her curly brown hair piled on top of her head and her flower-print shirt make a welcoming first impression. “Where is everyone?” Jiyong asks me as I grab a purple mat from the shelving unit on the wall. “We’re early.” I hand him a blue one, and he examines it before tucking it under his arm. “Of course we are.” He smiles sarcastically and follows me to the front of the room. I begin to lay my mat down directly in front of the instructor, but Jiyong grabs my arm to stop me. “No way, we’re sitting in the back,” he says, and I see the instructor’s face alight with a slight smile at his words. “What? Sitting in the back of the class for yoga? No, I always sit in the front.” “Exactly. We’re sitting in the back,” he repeats and takes my mat from my hands to head to the back of the room. “If you are going to be grumpy, you shouldn’t stay,” I whisper to him. “I’m not grumpy.” The instructor waves and introduces herself to us as Marla when we take a seat on our mats, and afterward Jiyong claims with certainty that she’s high, which makes me giggle. This is going to be a fun class. However, as the room fills with girls in tight yoga pants and tiny tank tops who all seem to glance or stare at Jiyong, I get steadily less Zen. Of course he’s the only male. Luckily, he doesn’t seem to notice the heaps of female attention he’s receiving. Either that, or he’s just very used to it—that has to be it. He gets attention like this all of the time. It’s not like I blame the girls, but he’s my boyfriend and they need to look elsewhere. I know some of the girls are looking at him because of his tattoos and piercings; they must be wondering why the heck he’s taking a yoga class. “Okay, everyone! Let’s get started!” the instructor calls through the room. She introduces herself as Marla to everyone else and gives a short speech about why and how she got into teaching yoga. “She’s never going to shut up, is she?” Jiyong groans after a few minutes. “Eager to pose, are you?” I raise my brow. “Pose what?” he asks. “First we’ll begin with a few stretches,” Marla says just then. Jiyong sits still on the floor while everyone else mimics her actions. I can feel his eyes on me the entire time. “You are supposed to be stretching,” I scold him, and he shrugs but doesn’t move. Then, in a singsong voice, Marla calls Jiyong out. “You in the back, join us.” “Erm . . . sure,” he mumbles and uncrosses his long legs and stretches them in front and attempts to reach his toes. I force myself to look toward the front of the room and away from Jiyong to prevent the laughter that is fighting to surface. “You’re supposed to touch your toes,” the blond girl next to Jiyong says. “Trying,” he says with an overly saccharine smile. Why did he even respond to her—and why am I so jealous? She giggles at him while the image of me slamming her head against the wall plays on repeat in my mind. I always lecture Jiyong about his temper, but here I am planning this whore’s murder . . . and calling her a whore even though I don’t know her. “I can’t really see clearly, I’m going to move up,” I tell Jiyong. He looks surprised as he speaks. “Why? I wasn’t—” “It’s nothing, I just want to be able to see and hear what’s going on,” I explain and drag my mat a few feet, stopping directly in front of Jiyong . I sit down and finish stretching with the group. I don’t have to turn around to see the look on Jiyong’s face. “Y/N,” he hisses, trying to get my attention, but I don’t turn around. “Y/N.” “Let’s begin with the downward-dog pose—it’s very simple and a basic one,” Marla says. I bend down, place my palms against the mat, and look at Jiyong through the space between my stomach and the floor. He’s standing still with his mouth open. Once more Marla notices Jiyong’s lack of movement. “Hey, man, you thinking of joining us in yoga?” she asks jokingly. If she does it again, I won’t be surprised if he curses her out in front of the entire class. I close my eyes and shift my hips so I’m bending over completely. “Y/N,” I hear him say again. “The-reeee-sa.” “What, Jiyong ? I’m trying to concentrate,” I say, looking at him again. He’s now leaning over, attempting to do the pose, but his long body is bent at an awkward angle and I can’t help but burst into laughter. “Shut up, would you!” he snaps, and I laugh louder. “You are terrible at this,” I tease. “You are distracting me,” he says through his teeth. “I am? How?” I love having the upper hand with Jiyong , because it doesn’t happen often. “You know how, minx,” he whispers. I know the girl next to him can hear us, but I don’t care, I hope she does. “Move your mat, then.” I purposely stand up to stretch and bend back down into the pose. “You move . . . you’re the one toying with me.” “Teasing,” I correct him, using his words from minutes ago against him. “Okay, let’s move into a halfway lift,” Marla says. I stand again then bend at my waist, putting my hands flat on my knees and making sure my back is at a ninety-degree angle. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Jiyong groans at the sight of my bottom practically right in front of his face. I turn around to look at him and see that he isn’t remotely doing the pose correctly; he has his hands on his knees but his back is almost straight. “Okay! Now for the forward fold,” our instructor calls, and I bend down, folding my body. “It’s really like she wants me to fuck you right in front of everyone,” he says, and I snap my head up to make sure no one heard him. “Shhh . . .” I plead and hear him chuckle. “Move your mat or I’ll say everything that I’m thinking right now,” he threatens, and I quickly stand up and move my mat back to its previous spot next to him. “Thought so.” He smirks. “You can tell me those things later,” I whisper, and he tilts his head to the side. “Trust me, I will,” Jiyong promises and my stomach flutters. He doesn’t participate in much of the remainder of class, and the blonde ends up changing her spot halfway through, probably because Jiyong won’t stop talking. “We’re supposed to be meditating,” I whisper back to him and close my eyes. The room is silent except for Jiyong’s quiet whispers. “This is so fucking lame,” he complains. “You’re the one who signed up for yoga.” “I didn’t know how lame it was. I’m literally about to fall asleep right here.” “Stop whining.” “I can’t. You had to go and get me all worked up, and now I’m stuck sitting cross-legged, meditating, with a hard-on in a room full of people.” “ Jiyong !” I hiss, louder than intended. “Shhh . . .” Multiple voices attempt to silence me. Jiyong laughs, and I stick my tongue out at him, earning a dirty look from the girl to my right. Jiyong and me taking yoga together is not going to work; I’m going to get kicked out or fail. “We’re dropping this class,” he says when the meditation is over. “You are, I’m not. I need a PE credit,” I inform him. “Great first day, everyone! I look forward to seeing you later this week. Namaste,” Marla says, dismissing us. I roll my mat up, but Jiyong doesn’t bother; he just shoves his onto the shelf

The girl who gave me her extra lock is nowhere to be found when I return to the locker room, so I just put the lock back on the handle, and if she doesn’t claim it back tomorrow, then I’ll continue to use it and pay her or something. When I finish collecting my things, I meet Jiyong back in the hall. He’s leaning against the wall with one foot perched on the wall behind him. “If you’d taken any longer, I’d have barged in there,” he threatens. “You should have. You wouldn’t have been the only guy in there,” I lie and watch as his features change. I turn away from him, taking a few steps before he grabs my arm and spins me back around to face him. “What did you just say?” he demands, eyes half closed and primal. “Teasing.” I smirk, and with a huff he lets go of my arm. “I think you’ve done enough of that today.” “Maybe.” I smile. He shakes his head. “You clearly enjoy tormenting me.” “The yoga relaxed me and cleansed my aura.” I laugh. “Not mine,” he reminds me as we walk outside. The first day of the new semester went very well, even yoga, which ended up being amusing. Amusing is not my usual preference when it comes to academics, but having Jiyong there was nice. My Religion class may be a problem because of the lack of structure, but I’m just going to try to go with the flow so I don’t drive myself insane. “I have some work to do for a few hours, but I’ll be finished by dinnertime,” Jiyong tells me. He’s been working a lot lately. “That hockey game is tomorrow, right?” he asks. “Yes; you’re still going, aren’t you?” “I don’t know . . .” “I need to know because if you flake then I’m going to go with him,” I respond. Tae would probably much rather I go with him, but the two of them could use some bonding time together. I know they’ll never be friends really, but it would help tremendously if they got along better. “Fine, fuck. I’ll go . . .” He sighs and climbs into the car. “Thank you.” I smile and he rolls his eyes. A half hour later, we pull into his usual spot in the parking lot of our apartment. “How are your classes?” I ask him. “Hate them all except yoga?” I try to lighten up the mood. “Yes, except yoga. Yoga was certainly . . . interesting.” He turns to look at me. “Really? How so?” I chew on my bottom lip in an attempt to appear innocent. “I think it has something to do with a blonde.” He smirks and I tense. “Excuse me?” “You didn’t see the hot blonde next to me? You’re really missing out, babe. You should see the way her ass looks in those yoga pants.” I scowl and open the car door. “Where are you going?” he asks. “Inside. It’s cold in this car.” “Aw . . . Y/N, are you jealous of the girl in yoga?” Jiyong teases. “No.” “Yes, you are,” he challenges me, and I roll my eyes while I climb out of the car. I’m a little surprised when I hear his boots clomping on the concrete behind me. Pulling the heavy glass door open, I go inside and am at the elevator before I remember that I forgot my bag in the car. “You’re an idiot.” He chuckles. “Excuse me?” I look up at him. “You think I’d be looking at some random blonde when you’re there . . . when I can look at you? Especially in these pants, I am not looking and literally cannot look at anyone else. I was referring to you.” He takes a long stride toward me, and I step back against the cold lobby wall. I practically pout. “Well, I saw her trying to flirt with you.” I don’t like the way jealousy feels; it is the most obnoxious emotion possible. “You silly girl.” He takes one more step to bring his body to mine and then leads us into the elevator. Cupping my cheek, he forces me to make eye contact. “How can you not comprehend what you do to me?” he asks, inches away from my mouth. “I don’t know,” I squeak when his free hand grabs mine and leads it down to his shorts. “This is what you do.” He shifts his hips so his erection fills my hand. “Oh.” My head is swimming. “You’ll be saying much more than ‘oh’—” he begins, but is interrupted when the elevator stops at the next floor. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he groans when a woman and her three children step into the elevator. I try to step away from him, but he wraps his arm around my waist, refusing to let me move. One of the children begins to cry, which makes Jiyong huff in annoyance. I begin to imagine how humorous it would be if the elevator stalled and we were trapped inside with the crying child. Fortunately for Jiyong , the doors open moments later and we step out into the hall. “I literally despise children,” he complains as we reach our apartment. When he unlocks the door, cold air flows out from the apartment. “Did you turn the heat off?” I ask him when we walk inside. “No, it was on this morning.” Jiyong walks over to the thermostat and curses under his breath. “It says it’s eighty degrees in here when it’s clearly not. I’ll call maintenance.” I nod and grab the blanket from the back of the couch and wrap it around myself before sitting down. “Yes . . . it isn’t working and it’s cold as fuck in here.” Jiyong speaks into the receiver. “Thirty minutes? No, that won’t work . . . I don’t give a shit, I pay a small fortune to live here, and I won’t have my girlfriend freezing to death,” he says, then corrects himself: “I won’t have it freezing in here.” He glances over at me, and I look away. “Fine. Fifteen minutes. No longer,” he barks into the phone and tosses it against the couch. “They’re sending someone up to fix it,” he tells me. “Thank you.” I smile at him, and he sits down next to me on the couch. I open the front of the blanket and reach for him. When he scoots closer, I climb onto his lap and thread my fingers through his hair and tug lightly. “What are you doing?” His hands rest on my hips. “You said we have fifteen minutes.” I brush my lips along his jaw and he shivers. I feel his jaw move into a smile. “Are you coming onto me, Y/N?” “ Jiyong. . .” I whine to prevent him from teasing me further. “I’m joking, now take your clothes off,” he demands, but his hands lift the bottom of my shirt, contradicting his own command.

[pussymagicuniverse]

Trusting After Trauma

Trigger Warning: Contains references to childhood sexual abuse 

When one experiences abuse, particularly as a child or adolescent, their growth into adulthood is layered with the emotional and psychological effects of trauma. As someone who experienced sexual abuse as a young girl, my instincts for survival developed coping mechanisms that protected me from the possibility of more pain. Lots of survivors attest to the startling revelation that later on in their lives, when abuse is no longer present, they still latch onto their previous methods of enduring hardship. And this attachment creates negative results.

I first confronted the reality of my childhood sexual abuse when I was 19 as a freshman in college. It was the first year I was living away from home, and this newfound independence helped me understand my adolescence from a different perspective. I’d write dark, heart-wrenching prose to express the layers of rage, sadness, and confusion the experience caused me. But it wasn’t enough to mediate the storm brewing inside. I finally broke down to my best friend and roommate and told her everything.

In retrospect, this moment is five years past. Yet the emotional intensity of that period can still be found in the moments I’m triggered. The expected triggers are obviously depictions and references to sexual assault, but I’ve recently discovered that moments of vulnerability with my girlfriend provokes similar feelings.

My response is always the same: I freeze up, becoming an immovable stone. I disassociate from my body and feelings, refusing to communicate any of my internal processes. This is what kept me safe as a child who sought an escape from the nightmare of abuse. But as an adult in a safe, supportive, and loving environment that I mutually created with my partner, my response to vulnerability is a reaction to the hellscape of my past.

How is this possible? Why do I have a negative association with revealing my truest thoughts, feelings, and desires to those I trust? 

The conflicts with my girlfriend were never arguments, but rather a one-sided conversation where she talked at me because I refused to engage. Refused to acknowledge my complacency by avoiding ill-feelings and problems. You let people who hurt you in the past haunt you, people who aren’t even here. She’d say to me. The stone would crack and I’d eventually break down, sobs shaking my body until I admitted she was right.

My cold response to moments of intimacy wasn’t a reflex, where the stimulus of love caused my walls to build distance between us. Was it instinct to protect myself from something I perceived as a threat to my stability? Or was it caused by my intuition, which had been conditioned to fear kindness and respect because of previous, negative experiences?  

Instinct is defined as an innate impulse or tendency, a natural pattern written in a species’ biology. Spiders know how to weave webs from the moment of their birth. A bear knows when and where to hibernate for the winter. Instincts are often understood to be animalistic, primitive behavioral patterns that humans distance themselves from. I am reminded of the many ways the Western man has tried to distance himself from the rebellion of the natural world: the creation of fences, borders, machines and inventions that make formerly hostile environments habitable.

It’s not to say that these material things and societal patterns disrupt instinct; but the purpose of modernity has always been to create distance between the present and human’s humble origins. What if this cultural attitude was linked to my perception of human vulnerability? It’s ability to expose and hold someone accountable reflects society’s distrust of open spaces. With no place to hide, how do we protect ourselves?  

Intuition can be synonymous with instinct, although it’s most commonly understood as a perception of truth or fact without any reasoning process to back it up. Patriarchal institutions over-value the importance of objectivity, or hard cold facts, which marginalizes intuition as an unreliable and “feminine” method of understanding. This pattern of distrusting innate capacities reveals our culture’s obsession with hiding, and conflating avoidance with protection.

I remember thinking when I was 19 and entering into my first serious relationship: how can I trust my intuition when it’s wrong? 

This question hasn’t left me, even as I lean into healing. The conditioning still exists, perhaps indefinitely. At least in this lifetime, in a world that’s structured to stop people from questioning its violence. Trauma is a fickle thing, gone in some moments only to reappear suddenly and unexpectedly.

In Sarah Schulman’s fantastic book Conflict Is Not Abuse, she writes: “We react constantly through life…Most reactions are not really observed because they are commensurate with their stimuli, but a triggered reaction stands out because it is out of sync with what is actually taking place. When we are triggered, we have unresolved pain from the past that is expressed in the present.”  

Reminders of trauma are like ghosts. Their invisible, ethereal forms make them impossible to prove. But the feelings are still felt, as if we are haunted by echoes of cruelty. Triggers are often avoided, and rightly so. Experiencing them can be incredibly difficult; why relive painful memories when you don’t have to? Yet if they’re indications of unresolved emotions, shouldn’t triggers be something we embrace rather than actively avoid?

I took a Multicultural Literature Class in college, excited to read about non-Western perspectives from people of color. My professor had an unconventional approach to this topic, however, and included work by the famous author Vladimir Nabokov. To my dismay, one of the books on the syllabus was Lolita, a novel I was obsessed with as a teenager because it reflected the sexual abuse I was experiencing. 

Seeing the word on the page made my heart flutter and my palms sweat. I felt dizzy, and longed to run out of the room and never come back. I could have dropped the class if I wanted to, but I didn’t. Both the inconvenience of it and the possibility to confront a triggering artifact anchored me in place. 

But at first, I objected to the book. I even spoke about it in class and wrote my professor a note. But it didn’t change the fact that I was required to write about it and sit through my weekly three-hour classes to discuss it. The whole experience was a nightmare, as it brought up countless memories I longed to forget. At night, when I’d come home after class, I was so on edge that I relied on smoking weed to calm my nerves.

I was face-to-face with reminders of my sexual abuse, forced to confront my tactic for survival as a child. Lolita simultaneously saved and trapped me. It articulated an experience that was my reality, but also caused me to idealize it. This wasn’t the fault of the book, but of my own lack of self-awareness and inability to grapple with my abuse.

This realization was more painful than having to reread the predatory and horrifying novel. I needed to accept that Lolita helped me navigate something that was messy and confusing. But it also hurt me, because it helped internalize that the abuse was my fault. Instead of a victim, Dolores Haze was a seductress. This fantasy was more appealing than accepting my powerlessness. I never heard Dolores’ perspective, but was forced to glean it through what she does and says in the eyes of her captor. I learned about my exploitation from the mouth of my abuser.  

It’s no wonder that I react with fear when a lover offers their support. Why should I trust anyone, when people closest to me were capable of immense cruelty? This struggle is not uniquely mine, and I’m sure all victims of abuse share similar sentiments. Our stories are not identical, but they overlap. 

I seem to spin round and round in circles trying to distinguish between instinct and intuition, reality and projection. Even in writing this, I wonder what my point is. Or how I can offer hope or insight about trusting after trauma when I’m still trying to figure it out myself.

This discourse is present in even the most minute and humorous formats. Remember a few years back when the Dark Kermit the Frog meme circulated the internet? There’s one that struck me as revelatory and sad about our culture’s tendency to be self-destructive. I was unable to find it but I’ll summarize the gist: when you realize your toxic impulses are only hurting yourself.

As a member of the generation who uses humor on social media to cope with the devastating reality of our fucked up world, indulging this mindset is often easier than confronting what causes it. But maybe there’s something powerful in revealing our demons. Is Dark Kermit not only a darker version of ourselves but also a reflection of our subconscious desires? Embracing the shadow self can be a healing experience, because allowing it to thrive in darkness only makes it more powerful.

Writing about Lolita was a cataclysmic experience for me. I was almost a decade older than the girl who first experienced sexual abuse. Where there was previously a void of silence and shame, suddenly I had language. My feminist studies helped me articulate the toxic elements of the novel and how they reaffirmed a misogynistic culture. In confronting Lolita, I confronted a part of myself hidden from sight. I spoke it into existence, and then released it.

Speaking out about abuse is cleansing. It doesn’t change what happened, but it’s a step forward in controlling how we deal with it. There’s something powerful in acknowledging the past; it allows us to see ourselves more clearly. Coming to terms with my sexual abuse blessed me with the knowledge that I was right in trying to protect myself. For I was a child with no armor, and I didn’t deserve to be exploited.

I think this is the moment survivors begin to distinguish between instinct and intuition; embracing truth grants us insight into realizing what is and isn’t a conditioned response. When we understand our triggers and how we respond to them, we can create modes of action to confront them. When we’re self-aware, our impulses to self-destruct have less power. There’s more room to honor the quiet knowing of intuition. We began to recognize our real selves, buried underneath the layers of experience, expectation, and the past.

Moving beyond the effects of trauma is not a uniform experience. Everyone copes in different ways, and some methods work better for others. But I think the key in allowing oneself to be open to love and vulnerability is the same across the board. If you trust yourself, you can rely on your intuition to guide you to trustworthy people.

Cassidy Scanlon is a Capricorn poet and witch who uses her artistic gifts as a channel for healing herself and others. She writes poetry and CNF about mental health, astrology, queer love, pop culture representation, and how social structures shape our perceptions of history and mythology. When she’s not writing, she can be found petting the local stray cats, exploring the swamps of Florida, reading 5 books at a time, and unwinding with her Leo girlfriend. 

You can visit her astrology blog Mercurial Musings and explore more of her publications on her website. 

[italicwatches]

[Legacy content] My Hero Academia - Episode 06

One of these days I will figure out how to stop taking on way too much. Today, is not that day. Anyways, it’s My Hero Academia, episode 06! Here we GO!

-We begin with Izuku’s display from last time, the fingertip SMASH that got him through…And Shota seeing that the kid’s got a long way to go, but there’s a sharp, quick brain in that fluffy head…And that’s the really important piece.

-Opening!

-And of course, people are watching, with their different opinions. opinions. Ochaco is super excited to see a result from Izuku. Tenya sees the way his finger is all fucked up, and is starting to see the way Izuku’s power is too much for the kid’s body to handle. And Katsuki…Katsuki is gobsmacked, because he KNOWS Izuku shouldn’t have that Quirk…But somehow, he does…And he races forward, wanting answers and willing to tear Izuku apart to get the—

-Which is when Shota, in full Eraser Head display, snatches Katsuki right up and holds him down, locking his Quirk long enough to get the kid to stop. And it works…But it can’t sap the rage, even as Izuku has his new friends all concerned about him…

-Then flash back, to simpler, more innocent times. When young Katsuki and Izuku were friends, not enemies…But even then, Katsuki held a belief in his superiority, a belief that has only been hardened and strengthened over the years…

-Episode 06! Rage, You Damn Nerd

-So Izuku fought against the pain of his nearly-broken finger for the rest of the day, and did his other tests…Of course, the pain weakened his results. But he got that one good result, so, as they look at the lineup…Down at the bottom…Is…Izuku’s name? Did he truly fail…?

-Nope. Shota fucked with y’all. Little stakes to put fire under your asses. (Alternatively, he saw there really is potential in Izuku and so rescinded) And everyone is relieved…Well, except for Katsuki, as Shota goes to get gone. You’ll find the syllabus and such back in the classroom…Oh and Izuku, here’s a note for the nurse, go get your finger fixed up. Everyone be ready for things to ramp up tomorrow.

-Izuku is left with the note, and knowing he’s starting at last place…But he can fix it…He can push things up…

-While All Might finds Shota, because he knows the guy really is willing to cut loose anyone who he feels lacks potential. So indeed, Shota sees potential in Izuku. If someone can’t push any higher, they get cut. The kid has the brains to push himself higher, and just needs raw time to get the control down. And of course, Shota notices how supportive of Izuku that All Might’s being…

-Later that day, Izuku is all healed up, but he’s also fuckin’ exhausted, because Recovery Girl’s power uses one’s own stamina to fuel the healing process. Which is great, but it means something as simple as undoing the one finger has Izuku feeling like he ran a marathon. On his way out after the schooldays is done, Tenya finds him, and the two end up talking, and then Ochaco finds them both! And she’s eager to make friends here, and these two are both good guys who seem like they’d be good friends…

-And she ends up calling Izuku ‘Deku’, and he has to admit it’s a mocking nickname Katsuki stuck on him…But then she mentions how it sounds a lot like a cheer, and Izuku is immediately willing to go by Deku forevermore if this cute nice girl likes it. Much to Tenya’s confusion, but he just doesn’t know what it is to be a kid so awkwardly caught up in a crush. And still, while Izuku has some difficulties, and he’s starting at the bottom…He’s got friends. He’s got people who have his back and care about him. That’s something, right, All Might?

-All Might, though, has his own concerns. He’s deeply, deeply worried that Izuku won’t be able to keep up when shit gets real the very next day…

-And then it’s the next day, where the real classes start. The thing is, the real classes also include, like, normal education. English, Math, shit like that. The cafeteria food is a solid meal, nutritious and calorie-dense for lunch, because after everybody chows down, it’s…

-Hero Basic Training. And in Class 1-A, in comes ALL MIGHT! With a classic, Silver Age style costume firmly on, as he makes a display of starting things off with combat training! And to go with it…Your first costumes, based on your Quirks and any specific requests in your applications! Get your suit, hit the dressing room, and then meet him at Combat Center Beta!

-And soon, the crowd begins to filter through into the battlegrounds, in the costumes they requested…In the identities they forged. They are not just students. Right here, in this, they, are, heroes. Heroes in training, but heroes all the same…!

-Commercial break!

-And we are back! We get a quick explanation of how the hero costume system works here. Basically, when you apply, you also include a full set of measurements, any ideas you had for your costume, any thematics you want, all that sort of stuff. This is then gone over by a full designer, who passes the final intended piece on to a manufacturer with an exclusive contract with the school.(Whether or not they’ll also handle redesigns, replacements and repairs for graduates, or if they have to go fend for themselves like all the other heroes, is unstated) It’s a good system, one that gets you feeling like the hero you want to be…

-And three weeks ago, Izuku too had to go figure his out…He was registered as “None” on his official forms with the city, but of course, it’s hardly uncommon for someone to learn their power actually works differently than they thought upon further experimentation…Hell, he wouldn’t even be the first person to think he had no Quirk, but found out he just hadn’t figured out how to kick it on…

-But his special clothes weren’t to be made by the city. Because his mother…His mother went and made a suit based on his designs she saw in his notebook. Because for years, she felt horrible guilt over what she said when Izuku was young. Over not supporting him enough, over not having his back when he chased this dream…But this, this simple jumpsuit, was the first thing she could do to try and change that. To try and show her support, for her amazing son…

-Which is why Izuku, catching up, isn’t wearing some flashy outfit made by the school’s best. He’s not clad in high-tech molecularly manipulated battle armor. He’s in simple cloth, sturdy boots, with hand-stitched designs down his sides, and a mask with tufts reminiscent of All Might’s hair. Because this outfit, simple and perhaps childish as it is…Holds more than the sum of its parts. It’s embodies his mother’s faith in him. It embodies everything he’s worked so hard to reach. It doesn’t need to be fancy, it doesn’t need to be stylish…It just needs to be him.

-And when he gets out, having taken longer to get dressed than the others, Ochaco spots him. And she likes his look! It’s really down-to-earth, you know? Like you’re one of the people, and that’s super cool! While she’s wishing she’d gone more specific with hers, because she got stuck with this skintight bodysuit…

-Much to the amazement of shorty over there. Fuck you shorty, you ain’t in this ship. While All Might can see how blatantly Izuku’s mask mimics his features. The mouthpiece looking like a cartoonish version of his broad grin, the antenna like his blonde tufts…Oh Izuku you adorable, absurd little fanboy.

-And then Tenya, in his full battle armor, would like to know if they’re doing mock battles like the entrance exam. Nope! Instead, he’s got some numbers to drop on you kids. So most well-documented villain fights take place outside…But most conflicts, and most villainous actions, start indoors. The entrance exam proved you can fight out in the open. But you need to be ready to fight in close quarters. Which is why they’ll be doing 2-on-2 mock battles, dealing with other humans!

-The questions come hot and fast, as EVERYONE QUIET UNTIL HE IS DONE EXPLAINING PLEASE. So. Here’s your scenario. Each duo assigned the Villain role will be tasked with hiding a timer, representing a nuclear bomb, somewhere in the building as their hideout. The Hero duo going after them, then, will be tasked with finding and disposing of it. If the villains can stop them from finding it, or disposing it, before the timer runs out…Well, there you go.

-And because you can never be sure just who you’ll have to face, or what other hero might show up, you’ll be getting your assignments by drawing lots! Get your ticket and find the person with the matching ticket! So teams start forming…Notably, Izuku and Ochaco are teamed up, and shorty got paired with the only girl wearing even more revealing clothes than Ochaco. Tenya got stuck with Katsuki, also…

-And with teams assigned…It’s Team A and Team D! Izuku’s and Katsuki’s! They’re first up, as Katsuki is at full fury…But Izuku steels his will, and looks Katsuki right back in the fucking eye, before our villains are sent in to set up…

-And Tenya is soon looking at the placed “bomb”, a humongous thing…And Katsuki demands to know how that fucking shit’s powers work…He’s going to tear Deku apart!

-While Ochaco and Izuku are outside, reading, and Ochaco has ditched her ridiculous helmet…But Izuku is in a bad spot, all kinda freaking out. Katsuki’s been a thorn in his side since he was a kid…But as he locks his facemark in place…He’s not going to lose here. He’s not going to let that brute push him around any more…!

-And Ochaco is kinda fired up, because yeah she is totally down for seeing a fated battle between men being manly men. (head canon, I think she just wants to see Izuku get all sweaty and shiny. She’s got the look of someone with hidden thirst.)

-And Izuku tries to play it down, but she’s at full jam, ready to have his back! And then it’s go time, as All Might sends them in…Everyone else is left to watch the display in the monitor room, as Izuku and Ochaco slip in through a window…Izuku knows he doesn’t have full control over One For All. He can’t dial it back to a safe level. If he punched Katsuki with that, he’d kill the guy. Which means he needs to just rely on his wits, his basics, and his teammate’s Zero Gravity…

-But Izuku’s also been analytical from the start. He’s always been thinking. Always been watching, learning, analyzing other heroes. So even now, he knows to be careful, to watch his blind spots, and slice the pi—

-KATSUKI ALL UP IN

-Izuku hauls Ochaco to one side with him as they both dive down, barely avoiding the massive explosion Katsuki kicks out! Half of Izuku’s mask is shredded, as Izuku’s not surprised the fucker came right at him from the start…But as everyone else watches, Katsuki’s already planning to take this right up to the limit! You better get ready, Deku, you’re gonna fucking need that nu—

-Izuku just moves right into Katsuki’s guard, grapples him up, and flips the sumbitch overhead in a single blow, using only his core body’s strength…You ALWAYS start with that big right hook, Katsuki…You don’t think he’s been watching, this whole time? You don’t think he’s been paying attention…? That name you gave him, that name Deku…It’s not going to mean ‘useless’ anymore, Katsuki! It’s going to be a cheer! And Ochaco realizes that’s what she told him just the other day…

-While Katsuki forces his way back to his feet, seeing the fear in Izuku’s eyes…The fear that’s always pushed him to a rage, as what little self restraint he had goes bye-bye…!

-Credits!

Come on, Izuku. You can take him. He’s broad, he’s not thinking. That’s not a thinking man you’re fighting, but a raging beast. Use that head of yours, and take him down…!

Well, we’ll have to see if he can pull it off next time, in episode SEVEN of My Hero Academia! Wait for it!

[berndwhitt62846-blog]

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Fiona Connor & Amy Howden-Chapman • Outline for a Syllabus: Art, Ethics & Climate Change

Edited by Dylan Taylor & Ralph Chapman

This conversation took place in late March 2014 at Fiona Connor’s apartment in Los Angeles. While talking, we repainted her apartment. She had decided to see what it would be like if the inside of her living room was the same grayish blue as the building’s exterior. A few days later, she painted the room back to white.

FIONA CONNOR: When you think ethics, what do you think of?

AMY HOWDEN-CHAPMAN: I think morality, and a system that exists in order to analyze the value of other systems. To ask ‘Is something ethical?’ is important—it’s a philosophical test. 

FC: So ethics is a practice?

AHC: There is a field of philosophy constantly engaged with questions concerning ethics. Is ethics assigned by society, is it outside of everyone? Or is it something we innately understand?

FC: Oh my god, thinking about it just made me make a terrible mess with this paint.

[laughs]

AHC: A shorthand for ethics is asking ‘What is right?’ Being ethical is doing the right thing. It’s unethical to kill someone, it’s not just illegal. It’s beyond law; it’s something more innate we as humans can understand. Or that is at least what the debate is over.

Ethics comes up in terms of climate change a lot because we can agree it’s unethical to kill someone; but then, is it unethical to indirectly be limiting the lifespan of people in the future? Yes, we agree it’s unethical to kill someone at any point, but we are in fact killing people—or at least diminishing the life spans of people in the future by emitting carbon dioxide. Who should be responsible for that? And this is the point where the field of philosophical ethics joins the climate change debate.[1]

And that type of discussion acknowledges that climate change is not a political issue in the narrow institutional sense of that term. It’s an ethical issue, which is a way of saying it should be dealt with outside of any short-term political cycle. It should be an issue everyone’s dealing with. Which may or may not be useful, because who wants to be accused of being unethical?

FC: And how do you think that crosses over into art making? Or maybe we should pull the focus out a little, take a broader view of the discussion and ask if we can attach ethics to art? Does Nonsensical have a stance on whether we can attach an ethics to art?

AHC: I’m not sure if it does; though in asking the contributors to this issue to consider the relationship between ethics and art, it might.

FC: As a way to talk about the relationship, let’s plan a hypothetical course investigating ethics and art, so we can imagine a group of people discussing it.

AHC: So what would the introductory class be?

FC: I’d probably show artists who use ethics as a material.

AHC: So, ethical subject matter.

FC: Yeah, but I’d also show artists who promote the discussion of particular ethical issues they’re interested in. Do you think there is a difference between the two?

AHC: Yeah, I think that one would be straight up political art, and the other would be more like an institutional critique.

FC: Why do you say ‘institutional critique’?

AHC: Was it Michael Asher who put the gallery office in the gallery space?

FC: Yeah.

AHC: There is certainly something with ethics in play with that work—with analyzing the system in which information is delivered. As through that analysis, you’re asking ‘Is this a good system? Is this system right? Should people be allowed to act like this behind closed doors, or is it important that those who are affected by that system have knowledge about the way it functions?’

FC: So you are saying, rather than being like ‘all dealer gallery offices must be exposed,’ his work questioned more generally what is revealed and what is hidden in that convention of presentation. Is there another example of an artist who you think talks about ethics in that way?

AHC: I mean, Hans Haacke and his work about the sources of money and power that fund The Metropolitan Museum of Art is an example. But I don’t know if that’s the same, it is the next category of just political art.

FC: Yeah, because he’s directly exposing the specific vested interests behind the museum.

AHC: But in some ways, it is a more loaded, pointed version of the Michael Asher. Asher is asking a meta-question by standing back and prompting thought, but not being direct.

FC: But I think the actual contents of the piece were really interesting. In the Claire Copley example you brought up, that was about exposing the office—

AHC: Claire Copley?

FC: That’s the name of the gallery where Michael Asher exposed the office through redisplaying it in the exhibition space.

AHC: I think in the very first class of our hypothetical course, we need to begin with a dictionary definition of what ethics is.

FC: That’s a great idea. Get the dictionary, look it up.

AHC: ‘Ethics: [noun] moral principles that govern a group or people’s behavior; synonyms: moral code, moral, morality, values, rights and wrongs, principles, ideas, standards of behavior, value system, and virtue. Ethics is sometimes known as philosophical ethics, ethical theory, moral theory, and moral philosophy.’

So, ethics could be the exact same thing as moral philosophy. It is a branch of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending and recommending concepts of right and wrong conduct—one that often addresses disputes concerning moral diversity.

FC: Ahhh, so, it’s the practice of figuring it out. It’s not just good ethics verses bad ethics.

AHC: Ethics can be defined as a set of concepts and principles that guide us in determining what behavior helps or harms sentient creatures.

FC: It’s about social norms?

AHC: Yeah, it’s about if you have an ethical code. But norms can just be social habits, like doing what everyone else does. And ethics is more than that.

FC: But even within, say, this country [United States], we haven’t come to a conclusion on what is morally right. Gay marriage, abortion—it’s all still shifting.

AHC: The word ‘ethics’ in english can mean several things. It can refer to philosophical ethics—a project that attempts to use reason in order to answer various kinds of ethical questions. It can also be used to describe a particular person’s own idiosyncratic principles or habits. For example, ‘Joe has good ethics.’ It may also be used to characterize the questions of right-conduct in some specific sphere, even when such right-conduct is not examined philosophically. ‘Business ethics,’ or ‘the ethics of child-rearing’ may refer, but need not refer, to a philosophical examination of such issues.

FC: I took from that that ethics is a practice, it’s a verb. It’s a noun, but it’s also a verb.

AHC: It’s a shared thing. It evolves, and it has to be recognized by other people. If there are business ethics, I think we can argue that there’s an art world ethics. When you think about the ethics of conceptual art, what do you think about?

FC: I think that there was a particular set of ethics that conceptual art was in conversation with, in alliance with, that have now been disassociated from the work, and now the strategies are often replicated without these.

AHC: Didn’t we kind of decide the other night at dinner that rather than ethics, it was more a particular set of political views that were attached to that initial era of conceptual art?

FC: Yeah, yeah, that’s right, that rather than it being attached to a particular set of ethics, it was part of a belief that progress could be made through counter-culture. There was a shared attitude at the time that art could make a difference.

AHC: I think that’s interesting because conceptual art came at a specific time in the ‘60s, when many things were reconsidered causing certain ethics or norms to be radically readjusted in response to cultural movements like civil rights and feminism. What had been normal, like, say, a woman looking after the children and men going to work and making money, was being fundamentally reconsidered.

FC: I think we will need to have a whole class that asks the question, ‘What art doesn’t consider ethics?’

AHC: I think any art that considers its audience in a new way is involved with issues concerning ethics. But I think in a painting, the relationship between audience and viewer is pretty defined. There is an agreed set of conditions. But if you’re presenting an audience with an artwork, and they don’t understand how they are supposed to understand it, you have to define the relationship between the artwork and the person. And then, it becomes a question of whether or not the viewer is a guinea pig, or being asked to think… Or, is the viewer being abused by the artwork?

FC: But a painting can still do that.

AHC: Yeah, but maybe it’s not the primary concern of a painting to do that. Whereas, other forms of work put those concerns at the forefront. Maybe we should have a whole class dedicated to Relational Aesthetics?

FC: I hear what you’re saying. Some art foregrounds ethics as content—whether it be a particular ethical question.

At this point, we felt we needed a little more perspective on the issue, so we listened to a podcast, a talk that Professor John Broome gave in October 2011, titled ‘The Ethics of Climate Change,’ in which he discusses the moral and ethical issues that coincide with the whole topic of climate change and challenges us as to how we should be acting:

“As citizens, of course, they need to know what their government should be doing—the large scale questions— because it’s our job to try and get our movement to do the right thing. But they are also interested in what they, as individuals, should be doing in their private lives about climate change. People are already taking actions. They’re changing their habits, they’re eating less meat, they’re traveling less, they’re insulating their houses, they’re buying green energy, and so on; and these are acts that are clearly being done with a moral purpose—nearly always. So what principles of morality determine how we should act in our private lives? I [approached] that question, and when I did I got a surprise. When I thought about it, I came to the conclusion that the principles that underlie the private morality of climate change are quite different than those that underlie the public morality that I’ve been thinking about. […]

Public morality can be treated as a kind of cost-benefit analysis. We weigh up the cost and benefits, and the aim of that sort of morality is to try to promote good in the world, to try make the world a better place, we aim to make things as good as we can. What underlies public morality is beneficence, as philosophers put it in a rather technical way—doing good. What about private individuals though? Suppose you, as a private individual, have the aim of beneficence—you want to improve the world. You might ask first of all, do you help to achieve that aim by reducing your own emission of greenhouse gas? I want to emphasise that the answer to that question is yes, you do. That answer needs emphasis because the scale of the problem of climate change induces a sort of despair in quite a lot of people. They think, ‘This problem is vast, and nothing can be done about it except by means of cooperation between governments on the very biggest scale.’ So, they think that they as individual can’t possibly do anything about it, can’t do any good by their own individual acts. That’s the sort of despair I’m thinking of. Now, I think they’re right, to the extent that solving the problem of climate change cannot be achieved by anything except international cooperation on a very large scale, but it doesn’t follow that if you reduce your own emissions of carbon, you don’t do any good. In fact, you do do good by reducing your emissions. It’s straightforward. Your emissions harm people. So if you emit less, then you correspondingly do some good.

I can give you some idea of how much harm your emissions do. I think it’s good to have some notion of the scale of these things. If you flew both ways across the Atlantic, say, that according to the calculations will cause the emissions of 1.5 tons of carbon dioxide. So, that’s the quantity of gas emitted. And various economists have put a figure on the harm that sort of quantity does. They have given a monetary estimate to the amount of harm a ton and a half of carbon dioxide does. There are huge differences of opinions about this. The range of estimates differs enormously from 5 dollars to 500 dollars. But if you take the figure that comes from the Stern review, if you take the top end of their figure, it’s 85 dollars a ton. That means that the harm of you crossing the Atlantic and back is around and about 130 dollars worth of harm done to people around the world; and if you decide not to do that trip, […] there is a real benefit. You can look at this quantity in another way. Remember I said that climate change is going to kill people. That may well be the very worst harm that it does, and with the help of Dave Frame, a physicist here in Oxford, I figured out a very, very—let me say—very, very, very, very rough estimate of how much we each shorten people’s lives by our emissions of greenhouse gas, by contributing to the climate change which kills people.

The lifetime emissions of someone like me—born around the time I was born, the late 40’s, living in a rich country like the UK—someone like me, on average, shortens peoples lives by somewhere between six months and one year. Now, of course, we don’t do it to any particular person. […] This is the total reduction in the lengths of lives that we bring about. And I’m sure none of us want to be responsible for destroying that much human life; and if you reduce your emissions, you will destroy less. You’ll do significant good by reducing emissions. And I think we should reduce emissions, but actually I think that not because I think it will do good, but for a different reason. Not because it will do good because actually we have lot of more effective ways to do good than that. Reducing emissions costs you something in some way. You have to spend money on insulating your house and so on, […] and I’ve given you some idea of the amount of good you can do by doing that. Doing it absolutely completely for a whole lifetime will save between to six months to a year of human life. But you can use your resources to save lives much much more effectively than that. Giving to a medical charity, which treats tuberculosis, […] you cansave a whole life for a few hundred dollars. So if what you want to do is to promote good—do the best amount of good in the world—what you should do is not reduce your emissions of greenhouse gas. Instead, you should use [your resources] instead in these other ways, which are altogether effective. Beneficence, the aim of doing the most good, does not tell you to reduce your emissions.

Nevertheless, I think you should reduce your emissions, and that’s for a moral reason of a different sort. Within morality, we recognize different values and different virtues. One of them is beneficence. […] But a different aim of morality is what we call justice, and justice sometimes conflicts with beneficence. […] I’m not doing anything more than talking common sense. Common sense tells you that sometimes it’s wrong to do things even if they’re the best way of doing good. A classic case that moral philosophers use is to imagine a transplant surgeon in a hospital who has five patients. They each need a different organ to save their lives. One needs a liver, one needs a heart, and so on. So, the surgeon takes one the innocent visitors that comes to the hospital, kills her, takes out her organs, uses one for each of the people, thereby saving five lives at the cost of one life. That’s beneficial. You’ve made a gain in goodness by doing that, but obviously, the surgeon acted wrongly. She acted against justice. There is a rule of justice that says you may not infringe people’s rights for the sake of doing the greater good, in many cases.

We recognize that there is a principle of justice that sometimes overrules beneficence.”

AHC: This is giving us something to think about, but what I want to do is analyze how, as artists, we might take that information and incorporate it into our practices.

FC: Can you say that one more time, please?

AHC: This is giving us lots of information right, but I think information doesn’t necessarily create change.[2] So what I want to do is use that information and discuss how as artists we might change things or absorb this information into our practices. Or at least discuss how that information is going to affect our practices.

FC: Right, so you want to create a discursive context with this as subject matter.

AHC: Yep.

FC: But I mean something that you’ve done in the past is made... well, your practice seems to flip flop between delivering really straightforward information, like factual information, and dealing with how this same information is delivered or understood in a wider context—linguistics and things. Does that satisfy different parts of you? Why does that happen? Why not just deliver information in a really straight way?

AHC: I think because this information already exists—right—and it exists in quite a good form, listening to a podcast is quite a good way to absorb information.

FC: This guy, John Broome, is someone everyone already knows about?

AHC: Yeah, I would say so. He’s well known among university types, philosophers, and environmentalists.

But I think one of the interesting things about climate change is that there is a gap between information and action. People know that climate change exists, but their behavior doesn’t necessarily change, and that includes me too.

FC: But that’s not—I find that not true.

AHC: Have you changed anything about the way you live because of your knowledge of climate change?

FC: Constantly.

AHC: Really?

FC: It’s not maybe as black and white but—

AHC: I don’t know if I have, I still fly. I have not chosen to stop flying, or to minimize the number of flights I take because of climate change. Although I feel much more guilty about them!

FC: I know this is awfully oblique, and potentially optimistic, but all the knowledge that I’m constantly coming to terms with changes who I am. It influences my work and it affects my mission, my sense of family, my idea of progress, my sense of being in the world. And that’s a complete picture, and that in effect changes my actions. But yeah maybe I still drive to the east side sometimes when I don’t have to—

AHC: But you mean overall—I mean, changing your ambitions is an interesting one.

FC: Totally, I just think it’s more of a holistic thing. I really think it’s got to be a big picture thing you know, but maybe that’s kind of beside the point.

AHC: No, I mean that’s definitely the point. Which in an art context would ultimately come down to changing what people perceive as good art, right? (And for others, might be changing the way they get to work everyday…)

FC: Right!

AHC: If you’re making what you think is good art, and your opinion is shaped by your knowledge of climate change…

FC: Exactly, exactly, which is what I find fascinating. This happens all the time. It’s scary when it becomes a fashion and then subject to being out of fashion. Climate change is obviously a big topic in the ‘60s & ‘70s.

AHC: Woah woah woah…

FC: Well, like in the ‘70s, people were making eco—It was a different movement?

AHC: It was the environmental movement, rather than, say, the current environmental justice movement. It had nothing to do with climate change back then.

FC: Totally different movement, but I still think there is a hangover from that attached to a particular group of people, and it became uncool.

AHC: And now it’s cool again?

FC: Well, now let’s just divorce climate change from that group of people and go, ‘This is a global issue that takes no prisoners.’

AHC: Takes no prisoners!

FC: Yeah, I mean that the weird thing that art could do is aestheticize it and turn it into a fashion.

AHC: So, you think that art could make climate change fashionable?

FC: Um, yeah.

AHC: In the same way that art made feminism fashionable, or rather helped to keep it fashionable for a while?

FC: Yeah.

AHC: What else did art make fashionable?

FC: The internet? No, the internet was fashionable before art.

AHC: I’m being the worst painter right now.

FC: It’s cool, it’s matte paint. It’s so forgiving.

AHC: I think your thing about changing your values as an artist is key.

FC: I mean that.

AHC: I know.

FC: I mean, it changes my comfort zone and my focus. It’s also a question of empathy: empathy for a cause. And maybe art can be a way of attaching imagery and something really corporal—something really seductive.

AHC: Back to ethics—

[laughter]

FC: So, becoming more aware of the ethics of climate change will change art both in its production and meaning. And for our final class?

    [1] Dylan Taylor: It would seem the question of ‘intention’ is important here. Imagine your car had a fault you were unaware of, and could not be expected to be aware of, that led you to lose control and kill a pedestrian. I would argue you were not acting unethically at the time, even though your actions (driving a car) led to the death of another person. So the ethical dilemma, in relation to climate change, seems to be tied to the question of ‘intent’ and, by extension, of ‘knowledge.’ Once you know that your actions, in relation to carbon emissions, limit the lifespan of people in the future, then you are faced with an ethical dilemma–a dilemma that calls for you to modify your behaviour. Someone who has no knowledge of these issues, on the other hand, has not yet been posed the ethical question of ‘what is right?’ Perhaps the important conversation to be had here, then, concerns consciousness raising around the long-term effects of carbon emissions–society as a whole needs to be prompted, through the diffusion of relevant knowledge, to face the ethical questions relating to climate change.

[2] Ralph Chapman: Information, and by this I mean all sorts of information such as scientific knowledge, can only help so much. Gathering more relevant information is sometimes persuasive in bringing more people into the fold, for example providing more information about the effects of your own actions on other people. But it’s remarkable actually how providing more information doesn’t dent some people’s perceptions. There’s a theory in psychology called information deficit theory: It’s the (apparently obvious) proposition that if you give people the right information, that information will change their behaviour. But the insight of work around information deficit theory is that while information works to some extent, in practice it doesn’t work to a large extent for many people, so essentially, and this pervades economics too: if you just give people information it won’t solve the problem. So if you provide information about climate change, many people will essentially shrug it off. You can provide all the information you want, but if that information is not consistent with the sort of daily experience people have, or their personal predilections, or mental frames, they will rationalize away that information: they either won’t hear that information or they will distort it in some way, and that’s closely connected with denial of course. That’s one problem with information.