#so I need to go out and get a laptop that's NOT a chrome book
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well this sucks
#my chrome book is reaching the end of its natural lifespan#Ive gotten it to last like more than a couple years at this point#but chrome books are pretty much awful devices#so I need to go out and get a laptop that's NOT a chrome book#but for one thing I've literally never owned a laptop that's not a chrome book#I saved up and bought my current chrome book for like freshman year of highschool#I waited for a memorial day sale and special pricing so I could get it on like three discounts#so aside from the cost I have *no* idea where to go about buying a new laptop#I need one that's pretty sturdy at least and preferably similar size to a chrome book#I like the way I can charge things by attaching them to my Chromebook I like the way the keyboard is set out and I like that the touch-#screen and keypad aren't that sensitive#so I need to a) find a new laptop b) have the money to buy that laptop and c) learn how to use that laptop#none of which are things that I'll be particularly good at#I just want my 130 dollar old enough to be in elementary school hunk of plastic to work forever is that to much to ask#I've actually gotten it to live much longer than normal lmfao#really hoping it'll stay functional for at least another month or two#I hate getting new tech#I’ve still got an iPhone 8 for heavens sake#You can pry it out of my cold dead hands#I should probably get a new one but like. This one works pretty much.#Nothings cracked it charges fine all the buttons work#Honestly I’d prefer a phone a shade older than this one with a seperate headphone Jack#Basically the whole design of new phones is anti-me#Wide flat smooth super thin light and easily breakable#Plus I don’t have confidence that everything on this phone would transfer over. And this is literally the only phone I’ve ever owned#This thing is a treasure trove
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How to have a productive study session.
When your finals are in 2 days, and you've definitely NOT studied enough, it's normal to panic. You sit down to study and get a solid 30 minutes of calculus done, then jump down the rabbit hole called YouTube. Soon enough the dread creeps up because you're still not done.
As a girl who doesn't attend school regularly due to coaching classes I go to (I'll expand on this later), it's pretty easy to forget to study for exams and projects.
But there's nothing better than getting 98% on that exam. So I'm writing this as someone who's been scoring straight As all my life. Here's how to have a productive study session:
Note: This isn't a guide for romanticising studies. This is meant for a serious, productive session. I will, however, be making a guide to help romanticise studies because I've found it helps a lot.
Before you study
Identify what your distractions are: Let's be real, almost everyone has their phone on hand during study sessions. Put your phone on Do Not Disturb and keep it in a corner of the room. Add a few selected contacts that can reach you while your phone is on DND. If you can turn off notifications entirely, do that.
Taking measures: After I keep my phone away, my brain turns to the next thing it could be distracted by. My laptop and tablet. Put those devices in focus mode, so you won't be tempted to use any other apps and use a Chrome extension like StayFocused or WasteNoTime to not get sidetracked.
Resources: Make sure you have all your material on hand. Video lectures, notes, guides, your formula sheet, and flash cards. Keep everything on hand so you won't have to rifle through papers to find that reference sheet.
Your space: Clean your desk. Keep only the things you need. Your pens and pencils, chargers, annotation material and water bottle. If you want, light a candle. Do not clutter it unnecessarily. Your desk is a sacred space. Treat it that way.
When you sit down
The checklist: Do you have all the material required? Electronics, chargers, a snack and a drink? Water bottle? Extra pen? If you have everything beforehand, you'll be less likely to lose focus because you forgot to charge your headphones.
Make a plan: I cannot stress this enough. You'll sit down and just start studying, and next thing you know, it's 7pm and all you've done is watch videos on celebrity drama. Make a goddamn plan. Write down a realistic number of chapters you can complete and then STICK TO IT.
Begin: Reread and review your notes. I usually like to rewrite my notes in neater handwriting, because my handwriting in class is appalling. To really solidify information, I recommend the 'Blurting' method. Read a paragraph, then close the book and say what you understood out loud. Reread to see what you missed and take note. I did this for my history exam and got a 100%. This shit works for a reason. Use the Pomodoro technique to maximise productivity. Set an alarm for 25 minutes, and do intensive study. Once that's done, take a 5-minute break. Return and repeat.
IMPORTANT
Take a break: Ah yes, if you don't get up every 40 minutes or so for a break, eventually whatever you're studying will start looking like garbage and you'll be back to square one. GET UP. Walk around. STRETCH. You've been looking like a croissant🥐. Eat something. Rehydrate.
Forgive yourself: If you couldn't hit your target, don't be harsh on yourself. Find out the cause: Were you distracted? Did something unavoidable come up? Then try to make sure it doesn't happen again.
Study buddy: This is a double-edged sword. Studying with a friend can either increase your productivity by a massive amount, or it can help you get absolutely zero work done. When revising with a friend, make sure you study with someone who has the same goals as you and won't get distracted by things.
It's 2023, procrastination is cancelled. Go drink some water, eat a granola bar and finish that assignment you've been delaying. Be the person who finishes all their work, on time and perfectly. You can do it.
<3
#studyblr#hotgirlsarenerds#straight a student#college advice#ivy league#school advice#university advice#busy life#student life#student#studyspo#study tips#studyspiration#study aesthetic#study motivation#study blog#college#leveling up#that girl#school life#elle woods#tips#tips and tricks#resources
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i hope the entire internet collapses and we can finally be free I'm so serious I loathe the internet I need it gone I hate ai I hate chat gpt I hate google docs I hate using the computer for everyone of my godforsaken assignments 300 to 400 word reading response make a video or a podcast or a paper if you want to write a paper you need to jump through 100 little hoops to find peer reviewed sources that are actually reviewed and accessable I hate paywalls I had the commercialization of the internet I hate capitalism I hate that I could never go to school without a computer I hate that all my data is being collected and stolen I hate that I have to use google I hate blackboard I hate canva I hate google I hate Microsoft I hate the money I hate how much money the internet produces for the greedy freaks that run our godforsaken planet I hate it I'm so so tired and I wish that I had options I wish I could just get an assignment, write it up and submit it the next day I hate you 11:59 pm deadlines I hate schoology I hate zoom I hate you zoom classes I hate that I spend so so so much money to attend college and half of it is already online why am I here I hate growing up in the transition period I hate knowing what classrooms where like before chromebooks I hate you chrome books I hate you google I'm so tired guys I want to throw the whole thing out and start over I hate you deregulation I hate you extractive industries I hate you lithuium ion mining I hate you planned obsolescence I hate phones I hate computers I hate all of it I want it gone I hate screens I hate bluelight I hate you bluelight glasses no I should not have to buy a product to fix the problem created from another product get rid of all of it I hate checking and double checking my spelling because I've been conditioned to always doubt my knowledge and why wouldn't I check its so easy the information is right there I hate that I've gotten lazy and complacent with technology I hate you Grammarly I hate you grub hub I hate you uber eats I hate you temu i hate you shein i hate you blackboard i hate you college board i hate you online standardized testing i hate you digital sat i hate you software updates i hate you censorships i hate that in the past few years the internet is so enmeshed into american culture that we dont even use money anymore i hate our dependence i hate our consumption i hate technology in places where we dont need it i hate typing i hate arthritis i hate back pain i hate migranes i hate the fact that i know it was never like this before and i hate the fact that im expected to accept it as normal now i need to throw my laptop into a volcano i need to eat my entire phone and spit it back out and smash it with a hammer and eat it again and then shit it into a volcano i hate the internet release me
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Ok hear me out I think I’ll get the laptop because it is really good for programming and everyday use. It will also (should) leave me enough money to get the necessary school supplies I can always get better supplies in 2 weeks anyways
Also I get payed on the first day of school so yeah! I think I should be good cuz then I can get all my supplies for art class then too
Ahh I’m scared it’s so much money but I really need this laptop if I’m going to learn and it won’t just be a old chrome book that can’t do anything
Sorry for the long post I’m gonna buy it
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maybe it's because i had to get a new computer for school in the last few months (and also being back in University post-pandemic when they figured out they can offload a lot of costly labour to provide university services by offloading the responsibilities to the students by making things "virtual/online/digital")
but it feels like a very steep curve of acceleration in just how mediated by online/digital/computer accounts and processes my life is ... everything i need to do or need to acquire I have to find some online platform that I need an account for and then have to go through all these extra identity verification methods to get into and then invariably some part of that process goes wrong, or i DO get into them and then something I'm trying to use them for and there's no accessible way to find support from a fellow human. just the coldly serene text of the FAQ pages spinning me in circles where the thing I need that should be so attainable I get error after error that I can't contact anyone to help me resolve... it's kind of grim and terrifying what the future is going to become with such an accelerated push into more and more computer automated technology.
i truly do feel like a ghost trapped in a machine ... it feels totally alienating. like I'm just floating in this vacuum of metal and 2020s website design unable to enter anywhere, just doing 2 step verifications and creating and entering account information and account synchronizations that go nowhere and i can never move beyond this place...
even my fucking university exams. all of them this semester are "remotely proctored", for courses required for the degree we have to provide our own space to do an exam (when there are reports every night on the news of the complete crisis of housing in this country) on our own computer, download a chrome plug-in that seems to be spyware that will monitor you through your webcam and microphone and record your screen, and if AI notices any flag behaviours notify your prof who will watch your video to see if you were cheating... the amount of logistical work I had to do to get set up for this exam, when I have enough to do with studying for the exam, it makes me so angry how much of University services are being eroded away and the work is being pushed off on students to do for free, actually we're PAYING THEM to do this. I even have a disability and asked the disability office for accommodations for the exam, because when I was at a University before I had always been told part of my accommodations were to do the exam in a separate space to help with distractions and anxiety... so if that's the case for an exam where the University handles all the logistical considerations, I would think it certainly should be where I have to do the exam in my home where I have no control over the noise around my apartment or find some public place to do it, and all the work I need to do setting up my computer for this ... and the disability services basically said "nice try" and gave me some canned bureaucratic "please fuck off" response. the last exam I did I booked a study room at the library and took out one of the laptops the library loans and the webcam was not working and I missed the first 35 minutes of the hour time limit trying to figure it out. I contacted my professor and the exam support (thankfully at least this is ONE case one of these online platforms allows access to a human support person) and they started the hour from the time I got into the exam, but it was so stressful. the next day my professor emailed me to get the details because they wanted to make a complaint about the library for it and I'm like ... these librarians are the ONLY things keeping me from totally losing my mind and just being a human presence talking to me and helping me out in the faceless void digitally automated hellscape...
i had kind of been safe for a while with my ancient macbook that just couldn't access certain websites and apps, that was slowly having more and more apps and websites just refuse to support my OS anymore ... now that i can access them I have to say this is much worse.
#THIS IS A RANT#computers#i wish you a very die#ARGH#fuck google#fuck AI#give me back human beings#'dark academia' for real#dystopic academia#technology
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using calmly writer again. i used it way back when it was just a chrome extension and now they do have the online version available but they've also moved to a downloadable software. decided to try it out for this one oneshot i am working on bc i wanted more font options (only three on the online version but Much More in the download which is nice, especially since i can use lucida grande, ao3's font, that was a very nice find)
it also has different background presets and there's this one...
sort of. curious. i mean. old school. from where. i was so surprised when i clicked it and then everything changed this... very bright bright LOL. or not bright. but. idk. it Stands Out
ETA: it also has this awesome typewriter sound for when you type! do really like that too
otherwise. pretty solid program. you do need a license to keep using the program and its... $12 USD i think? but you can also download it without putting in payment info and it'll give you an unknown amount of time for the trial, which is what i am on. $12 is pretty good, i think, but i like formatting my writing in..... classic book format? (no idea what it should be called but like. no spaces between paragraphs and indents/tabs at the start of each one, you know) and when pasting over from docs, it does get rid of that/other formatting like italics.
you can indent in the software (but not online, also another reason i decided to give the download a try) but it's kind of. well. gestures to the picture. it doesn't do it automatically, either, you have to do it each time. also don't even know if those indents will hold when i export it which might Stink but i'm saving that problem for my future self (so, like, later tonight). also for a proper em dash, you have to hit '-' three times; two makes it Very Small and again. don't know how it holds when its being exported so i just want to be safe/stay consistent with how long the em dashes were originally when typed in docs
that's really the main thing with it. i like my indents. and i also always copy and paste stuff back into google docs when i'm done working on my laptop (where i might ordinarily use scrivener to write, which doesn't give me any problems with any of these things and with copying back to docs), that way i can keep writing on my phone if i'm going to bed or something. of course now i'm using calmly as like... new program. new inspo. i love environmental changes As We All Know. so i'm overlooking it for the grind (the writing)
#here's the program review no one asked for#and probably too much information about the things i am finicky about when it comes to writing#😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎#its really just because i know this wip is a oneshot that im like#okay lets suffer through some potential issues when it comes to exporting back to docs#because it's one thing. so. yeah#might keep using it too since you can use the trial for an undetermined amount of time#seriously theres no set limit LOL#not complaining tho#at the end of the day i love scrivener and i will always be loyal to her#but i can never say no to a new program#LMAO
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How to use computer
a guide from someone good at using computers
TikTok or Instagram or something would probably be a better place to spread this kinda knowledge, but that’s too much effort right now.
This will mostly be windows focused.
Basic computer maintenance:
Keep dust out of the fans, and try to clean them from time to time if you can. This helps prevent overheating. Using your laptop on top of your blankets in bed is a great way to suck up lots of dust and overheat it all at once. Put a book under it or something.
Turn your computer off when not using it. Do so by shutting it down, not with the power button.
Leave automatic updates on. These are usually security updates, and they help keep you safe from viruses and such. Windows 10 is still receiving security updates last I checked.
Shortcuts
(most of these have a Mac equivalent with command instead of control)
Many of these can also be done by right clicking the relevant object or place on the screen, but shortcuts are faster in the long run.
ctrl+c: copy the selected text or object to the clipboard (invisible space for holding copied stuff. Only holds one thing at a time, so be careful!)
ctrl+x: copies the selected thing, and deletes it at the same time. Good for moving things around.
ctrl+v: pastes whatever was copied into whatever area was last clicked.
ctrl+z: undo.
ctrl+y: the lesser-known and lesser-used redo. Not every program will have this command, or will have this as the redo command, but a lot do.
ctrl+alt+delete: On Windows, opens Task Manager. Task manager can be used to see which program is making your computer run slow, and close misbehaving programs.
alt+f4: close the current window. Sometimes works for frozen programs, but Task Manager is more reliable.
alt+shift+tab: on Chrome and Firefox and probably some other browsers, reopens whatever tab was just closed. Can be used multiple times in a row.
ctrl+b: Makes the selected text bold in most text editors.
ctrl+i: Italicizes the selected text in most text editors.
There are lots of different shortcuts in lots of different programs. I recommend looking up “[program name] shortcuts list” for whatever programs you use most! “[program name] cheat sheet” is also usually a great thing to look up.
Stuff to know for school and work
First: learn touch typing. There are lots of different typing games available for free online.
It’s a good idea to try to use a map like this to guide which fingers go to which buttons:
You might not end up following this guide exactly, but this is a good place to start to make sure you don’t end up like Mumbo Jumbo, who presses shift with his thumb or something.
You may think you type fast enough now, but you’ll be able to type so much faster once you can look at the screen instead of the keyboard, and writing essays will hopefully go faster.
For programs, it’s good to have a word processor, a presentation maker, and a spreadsheet maker. You can go with Microsoft Office (often free through your school), Google docs/slides/sheets, or Libre Office.
I don’t know much about Libre Office, but it looks like a good free alternative to Microsoft Office and I may switch to it in the future.
Google’s programs have the advantage of being available on any device, easily transferred, and easy to collaborate on.
Microsoft’s programs typically have much more features, and I would assume the same of LibreOffice.
For anything that needs complex formatting, go with Word or the LibreOffice equivalent. Getting formatting just right in Word is a pain, but with Google Docs it’s worse. Otherwise, Google Docs works fine.
Most people will probably never need all of PowerPoint’s fancy presentation features, so Google Slides should be fine for almost everyone.
Google Sheets is fine if you just want to calculate some grades or sum up some numbers, but it lacks a lot in comparison to Excel. If you plan to take statistics classes, want to do any fancy calculations or formatting, or want to learn to use spreadsheets for fun or profit, I would go with Excel or the LibreOffice equivalent.
Grammarly is a grammar and spelling checker that typically works better than the default systems. It can be installed as a browser extension or Word extension, or you can paste text into the website.
Another way to check your grammar, spelling, and wording is to run text-to-speech on whatever you wrote. Text-to-speech is built into Word, and might be built into Google Docs as well. Text-to-speech is a great way to review what you’ve written and check for errors at the same time.
When submitting written documents, either assignments, resumes, or anything else, it’s usually best to export the document as a PDF and submit that rather than the document file. Document files are for editing, PDFs are for finished products.
Using the Internet
First: your web browser. Microsoft Edge sucks. Most people replace it with Chrome, but Firefox has just about everything Chrome has without letting Google’s grimy fingers get into your data (not as much, anyway).
An adblocker will make websites load faster, prevent you from seeing disturbing or annoying images, and protect you from the many ads that pose a security risk. UBlockOrigin is great. Look up “UBlockOrigin [your browser name]” to find out where you can download it.
Finding information
There’s some kind of post with a bunch of special search engines floating around. I don’t have it on hand though, so here are the typical contenders:
Google: getting worse all the time, but usually I find it gets me the best results. Tracks your search habits and sometimes censors results when governments say to.
Bing: the results often aren’t as good as Google. I’m sure it also tracks you, but at least I haven’t heard about it censoring results.
DuckDuckGo: I usually try this one first, then google if I don’t find what I want. DuckDuckGo is a tracking free search engine. It’s also good for finding piracy websites.
Once you have your search engine, what do you search?
Putting a word or phrase in quotes: “like this”
Only return results that contain that exact word or phrase. Can be helpful when trying to find a very specific source, or when the search engine keeps deciding that a very important word is actually unnecessary.
Only getting results from a specific website or domain: like this site:.edu or like this site:tumblr.com
There are usually often dropdowns and settings that allow the search to be customized further, but I’ve noticed that there tend to be less options available when searching from mobile devices compared to computers.
When the search results are clogged up with meaningless articles and other stuff that seems designed to generate views for ads or to promote products, then it’s time for
site:reddit.com
Results from reddit are hardly the most reliable, but at least they come from real humans! Never use Reddit’s built-in search though, it’s as bad as Tumblr’s.
🏴☠️
Use Firefox as your browser and have UBlock origin installed.
When downloading popular movies, tv shows, and games, I recommend using a VPN to prevent your internet service provider from tracing these downloads back to you. I use NordVPN. I haven’t been able to find a good free VPN that properly masks internet traffic when I’ve looked in the past, but other people might know of one.
Look up “r/piracy masterlist”.
You should find a Reddit post with just about everything you would ever want to download, and links to relevant websites.
Direct downloads are available for lots of things, and are the easy way to go. However, many things will only be available via torrenting.
I wouldn’t recommend torrenting without a good VPN.
To torrent, you just need a torrenting program. I use qBittorrent. Look up a quick tutorial on using it— it’s very straightforward— and have fun.
Diagnosing problems
First: restart the program, restart the computer, whatever applies to the situation. Some programs don’t actually stop running when you close them, such as discord. Task Manager can be used to take care of stragglers.
If that doesn’t apply or doesn’t work, here’s how to look up a computer problem:
Something is wrong with my program:
[best description of problem you can manage][name and version of the program][(optional) Operating System Version ex. Windows 10]
Something is wrong with my computer:
[best description of problem you can manage] [Operating System Version ex. Windows 10][(optional) Model of computer ex. Acer, Lenovo etc.]
When describing the problem, think about what things are working as expected and what things aren’t. Omit extra phrases like “why won’t” and “how come”, though sometimes adding “how to fix” can be helpful.
For old programs or operating systems that have new versions with similar names, it can sometimes be beneficial to use the search engine tools to restrict the results to before a certain date, like 2015. This will keep irrelevant discussions about modern versions from clogging up your results.
Some examples of searches using these formats:
microphone detected but no audio windows 10 Lenovo laptop
Webcam working but camera black discord
Minecraft Java Edition low framerate
Icons invisible desktop windows 10
You might need to look at quite a few search results before finding a solution to your problem, perhaps tweaking the phrasing along the way. You might also not find a solution at all. In that case, you could try contacting customer support, or see if someone with more computer experience can help you.
Anyway, I’m just about out of ideas, so I’ll end the post here.
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The Shadow Thief (part 3)
Summary: What happens when Peter has to work with the girl he hates to possibly save the world.
Word Count: 2.8k
Warnings: Swearing, Blood, Violence.
A/n: Sorry it took me so long to post again! I’ve wrote like 3 different versions of this chapter because I didn’t know what direction to go in just yet.
_
"Woah, dude. Did you see this?" Y/n held out Peter's phone shoving it in his face.
Y/n had gone over to Peters house early that morning to get the last finishing touches on their project done. So they both reluctantly decided to walk together to school.
Peter snatched his phone out of Y/n's hands as they crossed the street. "How did you even get my phone? It was in my hands." She shrugged and pointed back at the article.
Peter scrolled down the page. Incoming reports say Avengers went on a mission and since gone MIA. How didn't he know about this? And why didn't the Avengers at least tell him they were going to be gone. Peter was confused, to say the least. Were they in trouble? No, they couldn't be they are the earth's mightiest heroes. Right?
"They probably just had to extend their mission and forgot to report back in." Or at least he hoped. He didn't want to think of the latter. He decided after school he would go to the compound and make sure everything was alright.
"If you say so." They walked up the stairs to the second floor of the school. Peter opened the door and they both walked into English. Y/n took her seat next to Mj and Peter next to Ned.
The thought of the Avengers missing did worry Y/n a bit. She wasn't a big fan of superheroes but she also was not, not a fan. It was complicated. Sure she liked the security of having someone to save the day. But she hated that they pretended to be better than everyone else. They judge criminals as they themselves have never done anything wrong. They tend to blame everything on everyone else and never take responsibility.
Y/n felt a nudge to her arm. She turned her head to face Mj. "Penny for your thoughts?"
"No, no it's alright I'm just thinking," Y/n said. She pulled out her laptop and opened her and Peter's presentation to have it ready just in case they had to go first.
Their opening slide was a picture of Anne Frank surrounded by a pretty border and Anne Frank’s name in cursive in the middle. Peter insisted their project had to look nice and not like some shitty last-minute one like she had originally done. Y/n had teased Peter relentlessly about it saying maybe he should be a graphic designer instead of Spider-Man. And he of course huffed and pretended to ignore her.
"Well, you just looked worried. Anyways tell me if you need any help." Y/n gave Mj a grateful smile. Y/n knew Mj could have this cold, hard exterior but she knew she secretly cared.
The bell rang signaling the first period started. The teacher stood up from her desk and walked to the front of the room clasping her hands together. "Good morning class. Today is the first official day for our presentations. We'll be picking who goes first by random. Any questions?"
One girl toward the front of the classroom stuck up her hand "Yes, Betty."
"Did you see the news? About the avengers?" The class erupted within hushed conversation everyone stating their theories of what happened and their worries.
"Alright, class settle down. I did see but we will continue like normal." She said. It kind of seemed like to Y/n she didn't care at all but she didn't really think anything of it.
The phone rang and the teacher quickly excused herself. Y/n picked at her fingers mindlessly. The teacher muttered a few words into the phone and hung up "Y/n, Peter." Her eyes snapped up at the sound of her name "They want you down in the office. And bring your things."
Y/n furrowed her brows. Her eyes met Peters "What did you do?" He mouthed just as confused as her.
What did she do? What the hell did he do. She hasn't done anything wrong. Well, at least nothing she gotten caught for. "Dude if anyone did anything it was you! I've only been here for like 3 weeks." She whispered-yelled back.
He put his hands up defensively. Y/n shoved all of her things in her bag and zipped it up. Mj raised an eyebrow at her and Y/n just shrugged with a clueless look on her face.
Y/n walked over to the door opening it with her free hand while her chrome book was in the other. Peter followed not too far behind. They step out and began to walk down the hallway shoulder to shoulder not a word muttered between them.
The hall was empty. No teacher, no janitor, no late students, not even the common lost freshman. It was strange to Y/n. She turned to Peter "This is weird. It's almost like it's too."
"Quiet." He finished for her. Peter felt off. His spidey sense wasn't alarming him with anything but it was almost like a gut feeling you'd get when some strange guy came up to you at a party being a little too friendly.
"Yeah." Exactly. They continued down the hall both on high alert. When they passed a window Y/n could see two men dressed in suits around the corner through the reflection.
"I think they're following us." She whispered to Peter. Y/n has picked up a thing or two of trying not to be noticed but the men behind them didn't seem like they cared much for subtlety. They had their eyes set on Y/n and Peter taking wide quick steps.
This time his spidey sense went off. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. Peter reached for his web-shooters "We need to get out of here."
"You think?" Y/n back said in an aggravated tone. The next time they passed by a window she could see them screw something together slowly by their side.
Y/n glanced down to get a better look, it was a gun. All she could hear was the beating of her heart thumping loudly in her ears. Thinking quickly Y/n shoved Peter into a locker. A bullet whizzed past where his head once was and made a tiny thump when it hit the wall.
His eyes went wide momentarily stunned before he sprung into action. He shot out a web, grabbed the gun out of the man's hand, and flung it across the hall, making sure he couldn't get to it.
The men paused for a minute before muttering something to each other end breaking into a spring toward them. Well mostly at Peter luckily for her but still in her direction. Peter began to fight the one whose gun he had stolen hand to hand. The man got in a punch to Peter's face. Peter tripped him and tied him up with his webs.
The second man was coming toward her. Before she could second guess herself Y/n took her chrome book and slapped the man across the face with it. The man was momentarily shocked and Y/n opened an unlocked locker hitting him in the face. She watched him slide down the lockers unconscious.
More men turned the corner and came down the hallway. Y/n kicked a waist-length garbage can with wheels toward them as a small distraction. Peter grabbed Y/n pulling her into an empty classroom.
Y/n locked the door before she grabbed Peter and dragged him further into the classroom into a supply closet. They both crouched behind a mop bucket leaving the door cracked for a tiny bit of light.
"Would you like to tell me why there's someone outside this classroom trying to blow my brain out!" She huffed.
"Don't ask me. For all, we know they could be after you!" They both flinched as they heard the door handle shake.
"They were attacking you. Shooting at you. And you'd have a bullet in the back of your head if I didn't push you out of the way if I might add." She poked him in the chest.
The men began to start kicking at the door trying to break it down "Maybe if we figure out who they are we can get out of this."
"You know what I have an idea." Y/n reached back and grabbed the gun out of the waistband of her pants. Y/n started not to care much for introductions when they tried to assassinate her. Her motto was to shoot first ask questions later because she was not going down without a fight.
"What the hell Y/n! Where did you even get a gun?" Peter tried to put some distance between them but failed and ended up bumping into a shelf.
"Calm down bug boy I'm not going to shoot you." She rolled her eyes "I grabbed it off the guy while I smashed my laptop over his head."
"You are not shooting anyone!" He exclaimed. He was going to die with a psychopath. A literal psychopath. What would his uncle Ben say if he could see him right now?
"Fine whatever. How many webs do you have left?"
"Only one." He muttered.
"Only one! How the hell do you only have only one web left?" Oh lord. She was going to die in a janitor's closet with an idiot.
"Oh well, I'm sorry I didn't know I would have someone trying to paint the walls with my organs. I must have forgotten to mark it on my calendar!"
"Oh god, Okay." Y/n rubbed her forehead with her free hand.
She took the clip out of her gun and counted the bullets she had. Two. Okay, she could work with that, Somehow. She just had to live long enough to beat Peter up for almost getting them killed.
She turned back to Peter "Alright here's the plan so we are going to jump out of the window and see just how far that web can exactly get us." She could hear the pounds on the door getting more frequent and if she was being honest she was surprised it held this long.
"Are you crazy! You going to get us both killed." He didn't need the answer because he already knew she was. He swore he could see the shadows swirl around her for a moment but as quickly as it was there it was gone.
"Do you have any better ideas because I'm all ears, Parker?" He didn't say anything and just ran a hand through his hair letting out a frustrated sigh.
"That's what I thought." Y/n knew there was a good chance that they get hit by incoming traffic like a bug on a windshield but it was either that or the SWAT team outside.
"Let's get this over with." Said Y/n. They both stepped outside of the closet. The men outside the room gave the door one last kick and it broke off of the hinges. "Go." That was all Peter said.
Y/n shot the window with the two bullets she had. Peter ran over to Y/n and grabbed onto her tightly. They jumped through the window shattering it. Peter shoots out his last web hooking onto a nearby tree. At the peak of the swing, Peter let go of the web. They flew over the traffic narrowly avoiding the cars.
When they finally reached the ground they hit it hard. Peter took most of the impact but Y/n still hit her head. They continued to hold tightly onto each other as they rolled through the grass from the momentum of the swing.
They came to a slow stop and Y/n landed on top of Peter. She slumped off to the side of him and sat up. Peter did the same but with a groan feeling all of the bones in his body.
He noticed blood began to trickle out of Y/n's nose. "You got something." He pointed to her nose.
She wiped under her nostrils with her fingers and then again with the bottom of her shirt without a second thought "Oh, Thanks."
Peter rested his head on his knees. What was he going to do? As much as he didn't like Y/n he felt bad for dragging her into this. "We need to get going they are going to come looking for us soon."
"Where are we going to go?" The light was starting to become too much so Y/n put her hand over her eyes to shield her from the sun. She was starting to get a headache and just wanted to lay down. Peter stood up and dusted off his shirt and pants.
"Avengers compound." He held out a hand to her. She took it and he pulls her up onto her feet. They began to walk toward the street.
"I just don't know how we are going to get there." He added. They made it onto the sidewalk. Y/n was stumbling around so Peter kept his pace slow so she could keep up with him.
Y/n stopped walking "What do you think of this car?" She nodded to a 1997 Honda Accord.
"It's cool I guess." He said confused the car was a little old but he didn't say anything.
"Alright good. Now hand me your web-shooters." She held out her hand toward him.
"Okay?" He didn't really know what she was trying to get at. Peter just assumed she hit her head too hard but he complied anyway.
Y/n crouched down facing the car. She broke his web-shooters over her knee taking out two long curved metal pieces. She handed him back the rest of his broken web-shooters. Peter stared at her wide-eyed as she stuck the two metal pieces into the lock of the car.
"What are you doing." He hissed. Peter walked closer to Y/n trying to cover her as she picked the lock to the car.
"I just gave our problem a solution." She said without looking. She continued to twist the pieces around until she heard a little click. She gave a little cheer and opened the door.
"Yeah by stealing someone's car. Need I remind you is illegal."
" I like to think of it as borrowing. Besides I will happily leave you if you wish." She rolled her eyes. God, her head was throbbing.
Y/n took the plastic cover off of the steering column. There were three sets of wires and she grabbed the middle one. Y/n cut the red and blue wire. She touched the wires together until she heard the car start. She smiled to herself and lastly twisted the wires together.
She turned to Peter "Are you getting in or what?"
Peter looked around and then sighed "Fine, but I'm driving."
"What? No way, you don't even look old enough to drive." She crossed her arms.
"You have a concussion so I'm our best bet at not dying." He gave Y/n a sarcastic smile.
"Whatever." She rolled her eyes but got out of the driver's seat.
"You know if you keep rolling your eyes they are going to get stuck like that." She flicked him off and he laughed.
Y/n basically collapsed into the passengers seat. Peter closed his door and started the car. He pulled into the street and Y/n rested her head against the window. The cool glass felt nice against her forehead. She notice a bruise on Peter's pale cheek from when he got hit earlier.
Every now and again he would glance at Y/n to see how she was doing. He figured she must not feel the best because she hasn't said one witty remark since they got into the car.
He hoped by now the Avengers were back at the compound and could Tell them what's going on and who was following them.
He looked over to her again and she had her eyes close. He jabbed her with his elbow "Hey, don't fall sleep. You might not wake back up."
"Hmm Okay." She said but didn't budge.
"I'm serious Y/n, open your eyes." Peter was starting to get worried. It wasn't that he cared about her. But he didn't know what to do with a dead body. Or at least that's what he told himself.
"Don't get your panties into a bunch, my eyes are open."
They pulled into the road of the compound. When it came into view Y/n suddenly sat up wide eyed "Holy shit."
"What?" Peter took his eyes off of Y/n and followed her line of sight.
"What the fu-"
Part 4
Taglist
@fandom-strumpet • @ginger-swag-rapunzel • @libraries-and-coffee
#peter x reader#peter paker#peter parker x fem!reader#peter parker x you#peter parker x y/n#peter parker x reader#spiderman x reader#spiderman#the avengers
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Human Relations Snippet: Tim teaches Jon the internet and odious goats are sacrificed to the cult of Bezos
There’s no reason for this to exist. I was rereading a bit of HR and I saw a throwaway joke about Jon wanting to buy Martin a Portal Gun. I started wondering about how that would even work. The answer is, obviously, a 200 year old man squinting at a computer screen wondering why there’s so many horny singles in his area. I get possessed by demons easily, so I took three hours out of writing my daemon au and wrote this instead. Bon Appetit.
(Edit, quick clarification: I think that Jon would refuse to use the name for the Beholding that Smirke made up, and although all of this exists in my head and you guys don’t know this, there was a lot of tension between Jon and Jonah’s ‘circle’. So Jon hated Smirke and thought he was a hack. He uses Smirke’s terms to others sometimes for ease of understanding or in deference to Jonah (:/) but I think that mentally he mainly calls the Beholding his own name, The Witness. It rings of that personal and intimate connection Jon and the Beholding has. Anyway, onto the story.)
After one hour in anguished uncertainty, fifty popups that advised Jon of very many ‘hot singles in his area’, six separate sites that Jon’s God had to inform him were covers for thieves that stole money from you, and a very confusing retreat to Jon’s favorite internet page ‘Wikipedia’ as to what an Amazon was, Jon had given up.
Normally this was where he asked one of his personal assistants for help. Normally, he wouldn’t even be trying, and he would have just told one of them to do it. This was how Jon had cunningly mostly avoided using computers for the past twenty years. Some endeavors were unavoidable, and Jon was proud to say that he mastered email in 2010. Or was it 2008? He liked to think it was 2006, but it was possible...never mind. If it was important, the Witness would tell him.
After one hour in anguished uncertainty, fifty popups that advised Jon of very many ‘hot singles in his area’, six separate sites that Jon’s God had to inform him were covers for thieves that stole money from you, and a very confusing retreat to Jon’s favorite internet page ‘Wikipedia’ as to what an Amazon was, Jon had given up.
Normally this was where he asked one of his personal assistants for help. Normally, he wouldn’t even be trying, and he would have just told one of them to do it. This was how Jon had cunningly mostly avoided using computers for the past twenty years. Some endeavors were unavoidable, and Jon was proud to say that he mastered email in 2010. Or was it 2008? He liked to think it was 2006, but it was possible...never mind. If it was important, the Witness would tell him.
Peter Lukas was right on almost nothing, Jon thought disgruntledly as he slammed his laptop shut - including in his taste of men, company, philosophies, men, patron deities, professions, and men - but he was right in his proclamation that the internet was the degradation of society. Not that he hadn’t sacrificed his morality and sold out, feeding his patron through something called “incel forums” and “Reddit”. Between him, Jonah’s “Excel spreadsheets” and “TurboTax”, and Annabelle Cane’s ridiculous “MMO guilds”, the Society was filling with computer geeks. Jon could always read the wind: he had to keep up, and quickly.
Besides, Martin had kindly educated him on how it was almost unheard of for a young man like Jon to not understand how to work that Goggle thing. Giggle? Martin was very streetwise and was one of the most insightful people Jon had ever known, he was definitely right.
Which is why he had to buy him this “Portal Gun” that he wanted. He had even shown Jon the website! And if Jon was in desperate times trying to navigate these confusing webpages entirely with URLs he memorized, then he would take desperate measures!
“I’m going down to the Archives,” Jon said, slithering off the couch and clutching his laptop to chest. Jonah had bought it for him. He appeared surprised that Jon was using it. “I may not be back for a while. I need...a book.”
Jonah didn’t look away from his own infernal machine. It seemed he was on that ‘Excel’ program again. Was it one of those ‘video games’ he kept hearing about? “Do I want to know what you were doing on that laptop.”
“Reading Wikipedia,” Jon said immediately, and somewhat defensively. Jon had discovered Wikipedia in 2001 before promptly funding it and throwing his weight behind its development. He had spent a solid five years convinced a computer was a kind of electronic screen that let you read digital Encyclopedia pages, like in Star Trek. He’d seen Star Trek. Georgie made him. “Did you know that -”
“Yes, yes, have fun. Haven’t you read that entire site already?”
“Not even,” Jon said defensively. “I can’t just sit and read through entire Encyclopedias anymore, Jonah. We know more things now.”
“What a way to describe the last two hundred years,” Jonah said, not even looking away from his computer. “We know more things. Never change, Jon.”
“You’re the one who never changes,” Jon grumbled. But it was a weak comeback, and considering his brand new delightfully short stature somewhat untrue, so Jon breezed out of Jonah’s office with full knowledge that he’d think of a better comeback halfway down the steps to the Archives.
In fact, it wasn’t until he was at the door, and by then he felt stupid for losing a point against Jonah anyway. He easily opened the door, stepping inside and quickly bee-lining for Sasha’s office. Her burgeoning powers were wonderfully flowing in the shape of access to and understanding of technology. He had never seen such gratuitous breeches of privacy as she casually committed. Every day Jon was validated in his decision to save her from the Stranger. A balance, an equal yet opposite Archivist from Jon, would be invaluable. Not that Jonah and Jon weren’t their own yin and yang, but Jonah’s powers were paltry and out-of-date. Mind reading and spying through iconography was so 1960. They needed fresh blood.
Sasha had been a wonderful choice, and Jon didn’t regret choosing her to act as saviour. Most of the time. Some of the time she -
“She’s not in.”
Jon’s fist halted in front of the door, about to sharply rap on her office door. He turned around to actually look through the bullpen, only to see that Timothy was sitting in his chair chewing a sandwich. Somehow angrily. Definitely suspiciously.
“Are you sure?” Jon asked dubiously. “Because you’ve lied about this before.”
“Because you should stop coming down here and bothering her.” Timothy balled the saran wrap in his hand and dunked it in the trash can, somehow undoubtedly giving the impression that he wished it was Jon’s head. “Just bugger off.”
Someone was in a snit. Normally Timothy wasn’t this hostile. Jon had thought that learning his name might make him less mean, but it did little to help. But when Jon looked around he didn’t see Martin, and a quick check assured him that both Sasha and Martin were having lunch at their favorite deli and engaging in that plotting hobby they both enjoyed. Timothy had elected to stay behind, stewing in his own angry and paranoid juices.
He would have to do this with Martin out of the Archives...and he really wanted to take care of this now so Martin would get it before the weekend...and it wasn’t as if Jon was scared of this boy he was one hundred and seventy years older than…
“Uh,” Jon said intelligently, “can you help me with...something…”
Timothy’s face twisted in a novel combination of surprise and disgust. “What,” he sneered, “your evil fear god or whatever can’t figure it out for you?”
“I don’t need others to think for me,” Jon said stiffly. It was something he’d had to say far too many times. “The Witness is less helpful with...troubleshooting...look, do you know how to work a computer?”
Timothy stared at him blankly. “Like, at all?”
“I’m trying to buy Martin this toy he desires,” Jon said desperately. Fuck it all, he walked over and sat down in the chair next to Tim’s desk. He pulled a little bit closer, placing his laptop on Tim’s desk, and ignored the way the other man leaned away. “But whenever I try I keep on seeing alerts about hot singles. I’m not interested in young women, I just need to buy a ‘Portal Gun’. Do you know what a Portal Gun is?”
Timothy continued staring at him, eyebrows raised. Clearly involuntarily, so quick that he may not even have noticed, one corner of his lips was ticking upwards into a smile.
“How many credit card scams have you fallen for?”
“Absolutely none,” Jon said, very quickly. He pulled out his credit card, placing it on the table. He knew a credit card was involved, although he didn’t know how. “What do I do? Do I swipe it? Is there a port?” He picked up the laptop and squinted at its sides, looking for a port. “I wanted to ask Sasha for help, since she’s the expert in hacking, but surely you know the basics?”
“I mean...I can’t, like, code, but yeah, I can work Amazon.” Timothy carefully opened the laptop, watching the display light up. He effortlessly navigated to an icon on the screen, clicking it open.
“That’s not right,” Jon said urgently. “You’re supposed to press the E.”
“I do not want to know how many toolbars you have,” Timothy said bluntly. “We’re using Chrome. That’s another way to look at the Internet.” He rubbed his hands together. “Yeah, I got a grandmother, we can do this.”
Jon perked up. “So you’ll help?”
Went unsaid: even though you hate me?
“Whatever,” Timothy grumbled. Jon decided not to press his luck.
Jon decided that he liked the Chrome better than the Internet Explorer, because it was simpler and Google was on the first page. Tim rapidly typed on ‘Amazon.com’ into the search bar and easily scrolled through the very busy and picture filled page that immediately popped up. Why was everything so fast? Maybe this was why the young people had no attention span: these pages just came up immediately. No flipping for indices for finding anything in phone books.
“Right. What was it, a Portal Gun? Like from the game?”
“A board game?”
“Video game.”
“Like on a VHS…?”
“Right.” Tim pinched the bridge of his nose. “You know, Sasha said that you’re one of the most famous sociologists and anthropologists in British history.”
“I am extremely intelligent, Timothy, and I won’t abide any insinuation otherwise,” Jon said curtly. “I cannot be expected to keep constant track every time there’s another - iPhone or whatever. You have teenagers in your family, correct? Do you always know what they’re talking about? That’s, what, a twenty year age gap? Multiply that by ten.”
That shut him up. Timothy sighed again, much more aggressively, but he clicked the white bar and typed in ‘portal gun’ anyway. “Right. Not fucking apologizing, but right. I still don’t fucking know what ‘Twitch’ is.”
“It’s a brief spasmodic contraction of the muscle fibers,” Jon said helpfully. “Fascinatingly, this phenomenon was first observed in frog’s legs before I was even born in 1780, by Luigi Galvani. Erudite man, by the way, but he couldn’t hold his liquor. It was the birth of the study of bioelectricity, although the exact mechanism of muscle contraction eluded scientists for years.”
“Never mind.” Timothy sighed again, the perfect mix of aggravated and long-suffering. It seemed to be the man’s two favorite emotions. “My grandmother has a PhD and she still can’t figure out her cell, either. We had to get her a Jitterbug.”
Amazon, as Timothy explained, was a kind of shopping mall, except you could pick out what you wanted by its picture and have the shopping mall pack it up and send it to you. Jon didn’t quite understand why people preferred this to just going to a shop yourself, seeing as you could get it immediately instead of with a three or four day turnaround, but Tim explained that Amazon was cheaper, had a wider selection, and didn’t make you get off the couch.
“Oh,” Jon said, finally getting it, “this follows the economic model of large scale businesses underpricing their products to undercut smaller businesses in the area, driving them out of business until they hold monopoly over the market and can raise their prices without worrying about staying competitive.”
Timothy stared at him.
“I mean,” he said, “I guess?”
“This explains why my Alexa project was successful so quickly,” Jon mused. “With a lack of competition or alternatives, consumers are more likely to accept the dramatic invasions of privacy as normal. Normalizing intrusions into privacy took ages, but my early efforts paid off very well. The Ring doorbell was even better, along with the line of security and home protection systems. We’re now working on live streamed 24/7 surveillance to social media platforms.”
Timothy stared at him further.
Finally, he said, “Alexa was...you?”
“Of course,” Jon said, baffled. Who else would it be? “I gave Jeff the idea and convinced him it would be profitable. I didn’t understand the whole mechanics of it, but once I gave Jeff a vision from the Witness he was eager to implement the divinely inspired spyware.”
Timothy continued to stare.
“The evil fear god controls Jeff Bezos.”
“He thinks I’m a prophet, actually,” Jon said helpfully. “I let him become Cardinal of the imaginary cult in exchange for funding some of my more esoteric programs. Had him sacrifice a goat and everything, it was great.” At Timothy’s alarmed look, Jon was quick to elaborate, “It was the most evil goat you’ve met in your life. Morally odious.”
“...for my sanity I’m going to pretend that you said none of that.”
In retrospect, although Timothy had worked at the Institute for a few years, it did take quite a bit of time to acclimate to the fact that the Avatars permanently shaped the shape of human existence in order to better feed their gods. Jon knew better than anyone: when humanity made gods, and gods made man, and man made gods...the feedback loop could self-perpetuate for years. Eternity, if needed.
But they had no luck on ‘Amazon’. With Jon’s eidetic memory he was able to easily pick out the one that looked most similar to the one that Martin had showed him, but all of the little toy guns were for someone named ‘Rick’. Then Timothy took twenty laborious minutes explaining the entire plot of ‘Rick & Morty’ to him, which Jon patiently sat through.
“I think young people today deeply enjoy explaining media,” Jon said, once Timothy finished telling him the funny jokes. “I’m very interested in your interests, Timothy.”
“You are so fucking condescending. And please call me Tim, you’re sounding even more like my grandmother.” When Jon brightened, Tim - Tim! - quickly said, “This does not mean we are friends.”
Granted, Jon had never once in his life gave a shit about making friends, but he felt as if he should be making more of an effort with Tim. He was a sort of supernatural brother in law, wasn’t he? Although Sasha perhaps Sasha was more of a favored niece. At least, he would be, if today’s generation found some morality and stopped living in sin.
Good lord. Now he was sounding like Jonah. Georgie used to joke that he was born in the wrong generation - he should have been born a 17th century Puritan instead. Jon found it a very funny joke. Jonah did not.
“Are there any other shopping websites?” Jon asked finally, after Amazon failed them. He’d have to call up Jeff later and complain. “Or is this the only one?”
Tim sighed. “Let’s check Google.”
Quickly and efficiently, yet with many lightning fast detours, Tim found another site called ‘eBay’ - pronounced ‘e-Bay’, not ‘ehbay’ - that listed off exactly what they needed. They weren’t under the toy section, instead listed as something called ‘cosplay’, but Tim seemed highly resistant to explaining that one, so he dropped it.
They picked a likely looking white toy gun that looked the most similar to the one that Martin had liked and Tim talked Jon through punching in the numbers on his card into the website and sorting through the billing and shipping information. Tim helpfully took down the numbers on his card to file later.
“And...done!” Tim said, pressing a button and leaning back. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“It was ten times as complicated as I thought it would be,” Jon assured him, “but also much more fun. What else can you buy online?”
“Oh, god. What can’t you buy.”
Jon brightened. “Can you buy books?”
“Old Gertrude used to buy Leitners on eBay,” Tim said dully, “so yeah, sure, why not.”
Jon stared at his computer. He carefully navigated the mouse to the big red x and clicked out of the internet browser. “That’s enough of eBay, then, I think.”
Guess he would have to stick to buying Leitners in person. It was no good buying fucked up books from sketchy sources. Always stick to people you trusted, or at least trusted to be themselves. Mikaele was Jon’s favorite supplier since the kid Leitner disappeared, and they had a pleasant working relationship. Mikaele shared his grandfather’s stories about the history and culture of the Maori, and Jon told him which of his haunted artifacts would be the most helpful in the imminent apocalypse.
“Well,” Tim said finally, gently pushing Jon’s laptop away, “that was...something, great bonding session with my local supervillain, please run back to Elias and bother him instead.”
“You were very helpful, Mr. Stoker,” Jon said, as professionally yet paternally as possible. Tim was six years older than his body, so he’s not sure how it came off, but the touch of grey at his temples helped with the dignified air. “And as soon as you start acting like a man and propose to my Archivist, you’ll make an excellent brother in law -”
“Uh, excuse me?”
Jon spun around in his chair to see Sasha and Martin standing at the door, holding doggy bags and looking somewhat flummoxed. Probably confused at the sight of him and Tim having a civil conversation, which admittedly had never happened before. Possibly also confused at how completely mortified Tim looked.
“Who said anything about proposing?” Sasha asked incredulously. “Tim, are you -”
“No! No, god no!” Tim stood up quickly, holding his hands out as if he was placating a raging bull. “Nobody’s been saying anything - I would never do that to you -”
“Oh,” Sasha said frostily, crossing her arms and letting the bags swing, “would you.”
That was a domestic Jon should stay out of, even though he definitely caused it. He and Martin sidled away in tandem, huddling near the back of the Archives as Tim frantically pled for his life.
Sneakily, Jon glanced at Martin out of the corner of his eye. He looked happy. Happy, and just as stressed as he always looked - Jon had never known Martin when he wasn’t constantly stressed out, and he was more than aware that it was his fault.
He looked good, too. Really nice, broad jawline that gave his face a friendly round shape. Just friendly and round in general, it was really handsome. His hair was as nicely short and ruffles as ever. The big glasses were super stylish, and really framed his face well. Really big, broad hands. Jon, who had always been so poky and tall and thin and gaunt, like some kind of haunted scarecrow that lurked through the corners of time, was envious. He wanted some of that softness and gentleness. Really, he wanted some of Martin’s -
“So what were you and Tim doing?” Martin asked. “I didn’t know you knew he existed.”
“You told me his name,” Jon said anxiously. “I don’t forget the things you tell me, you know.”
Martin smiled shyly and him, and Jon found himself smiling back. “It’s pretty good for my ego to hear that I have something to teach the immortal genius.”
“I don’t know,” Jon said, as Sasha yelled in the background, “I’ve been learning a lot lately.”
“Really?” Martin teased. “Anything interesting?”
“Oh,” Jon said, watching the yellow fluorescent light cast Martin’s dim smile in soft relief, “I can think of a few things.”
#my writing#jonathan sims#tim stoker#archivist!sasha#martin blackwood#sasha james#mild homosexual activity and massive old man activity inbound#tma#the magnus archives#tma fanfic#the magnus archives fanfic#im posting this at an awkward time so prep for a lot of self rbs
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Donnie x Bookworm!Reader
Author’s Note: Wow, I am on a roll with these, huh?
I headcanon that Donatello is sapioromantic, someone who is attracted to another person based on their intelligence.
Most would believe that he would go with a tech-head like himself, which isn’t un-welcomed in the slightest. Although, dating a person that is intelligent in fields that both is outside of his scientific preferences and yet still pique interest in Donnie’s mind makes the relationship both refreshing and intriguing.
You caught the violet-claded turtle’s attention with just your attire and flare.
Glasses. Pen/pencil behind the ear. Well dressed in a long-sleeved sweater vest that looked a size or two bigger than your form. Hot drink steaming in one hand and a book in another.
You were clearly the bookworm aesthetic.
You closed the book within your hands in a dissatisfied manner before maneuvering your way toward the bookshelf behind your seat. Placing the book back in it’s proper place, you opted for another on a higher shelf. One you couldn’t reach.
Donatello didn’t wait for you to jump from your tiptoes to offer you his assistance. It didn’t take long for the two of you to get comfortable with one another after he retrieved the book for you with the aid of his taller stature (assuming he is taller than you, otherwise he used his spider-limb extension.)
Donnie is skilled in technology, chemistry, and mathematics.
And let’s say, for an example, that you are knowledgeable in literature, language, and history.
Adores calling you the Yin to his Yang.
You both can learn from each other practically endlessly and he loves that.
Pulling geeky pickup lines on each other doesn’t escape your minds either.
Donnie had the nerve to study and recite Shakespeare to you. The classic ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ verse from Romeo and Juliet.
You wrote the 128 e980 math joke that, when erasing the top half, spells ‘I love you’. (The long division symbol is needed to make the ‘v’, but I can’t freaking figure out how to do that on a Chrome laptop keyboard. >:( )
Neither one fails to make you blush like maniacs.
You prefer fiction over nonfiction? That is perfectly fine.
Get him hooked on reading fiction novels. I dare you.
I willing to bet that he prefers reading nonfiction books than fiction novels, but if you suggest a sci-fi/realistic fiction story for him, it’s all over.
You are his go-to source for recommendations and reviews on novels he has interest in from now on.
You read it before? He wants your opinion.
You haven’t read it before? The both of you are reading it together as an unofficial Book Club requirement.
He would love ranting and nitpicking stories with you.
Donnie will become one of those “The Book is Better” people. That is a fact. He will make it a habit of researching if a movie of interest was based on a written work before going to go see it.
Two words: BOOK. DATES.
Bookstores, both new and retro. Public libraries. Enriched museums. The book sections in thrift stores. Nowhere is safe from you two.
Each trip usually ends with a stop to a nearby coffee shop or back at the lair for an at-home warm drink with the new books.
Donnie took you to the Mystic Library once and you were in heaven. You couldn’t love your turtle boyfriend more. He had to cover your mouth quickly before you made any loud noises with your excited squeals.
The bat librarian issued the two of you with the standard rules of keeping quiet or the hush bats will take you away, but not before glaring at Donnie. As much as she does recall his last visit with his brothers, she does remember that Donnie was the one that caused the least trouble and actually meant well in regards to library protocol, so all she was willing to give him mercy wise was a warning glare that he understood fully with a nervous grin.
He created your own small, little space in the corner of his lab. A lamp for your reading material, some beanbags, a blanket, and an outlet (extension) for your laptop.
It’s a perfect working environment for the both of you to watch over one another without necessarily disrupting each other.
However, Donatello has caught you once in a while dozing off and falling asleep at your station. Usually he would pick you up and carry you to the living room couch before hitting the hay himself.
Some nights when he is low on energy himself, he would just pop his battle shell off and place it and the rest of his gear on a clear table before settling next to you on the bean bags.
He’ll make sure you spot is saved with your bookmark before nestling up to you for warmth. It didn’t take long for him to fall into slumber himself, seeing as your scent of fresh paper pages and sweet coffee never fails to hypnotize him.
#donnie x reader#rottmnt donnie x reader#donatello x reader#rottmnt donatello x reader#rottmnt imagine#donnie imagine#donatello imagine#rottmnt x reader#rottmnt headcanons#rise of the tmnt x reader#rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles x reader#rise of the tmnt headcanons#donnie headcanons#donatello headcanons#tmnt x reader
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i remember when i had to use a chrome book for school stuff, it really is annoying that it doesnt have a caps lock especially when you wanna speak in all caps. atleast you love it though but google needs to add a caps lock onto it. it really is! I like knowing what happened in the past and how things got to where they are today.
I'm slowly getting used to it, I mostly only use my laptop when I have to work downstairs or when I'm going to start trying to go out into my garden alone. It's super fast though so I'm enjoying it a lot!! YESSSSSS! I LOVE IT!! I really want to go to some museums ect this summer with my family haha
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Hi! I think I remember you posting about "making" your own computer? I'm sorry to bother you with something like this, but was it difficult? Would you say you have to know a lot about how computers work to do it? Thanks!
Heck yeah!!! Oh man!! Gosh guys can I talk to you about building computers and how EVERYONE willing to do some basic googling is almost certainly capable of this I promise?
Welcome to:
Okay okay okay so let me spin you a li’l yarn: I was in optometry school in 2010-2011ish and I had been living up to now on prebuilts, mostly laptops, but DA2 was recently out and gosh darn it I wanted something I could play a proper game on. A friend of mine had a 10yo daughter who wanted to build a computer herself, and he told me if I’d buy the parts, he’d walk both of us through how to do it (what really happened was the 10yo built my first computer and I watched and brought drinks, so–no, I wouldn’t say you have to know a lot about how computers work to do it!).
The physical requirements are some basic manual dexterity & arm strength (you gotta be able to manipulate some tiny things and put some pressure on some connections) and you will most likely need to lift up to 15 pounds, although you can limit that if you go for smaller components. The ability to bend forward and twist and reach will also probably be necessary, although some careful planning can also likely mitigate that.
I think I have pictures of the actual build process somewhere, but regardless, it resulted in this bad boy that served me well for about nine years. I was shocked to see how easy it was to put together, honestly; if you can follow a Lego assembly book, you can put a computer together. With tools like PCPartPicker that have built-in compatibility checks to make sure all your pieces fit, it’s a piece of cake to put together a parts list that you can feel really good about. You just pick whether you want your motherboard to come with fancy lights or not (hint: rgb is unironically cool & i’ll fight anyone who says otherwise).
In the end, you’ll need a set of basic components. You’ll need:
A case to put all the pieces in
A motherboard, the circuit board of the computer that connects everything, basically the heart of the computer
A CPU, the brain of the computer that determines processing power, or basically how fast it can do math and direct traffic
a CPU cooling system, which can be either mechanical fans or liquid cooling, gotta keep that baby chill; may or may not come packaged with the CPU depending on what you get
A graphics card (aka GPU), the thing that makes video games look pretty (and what will probably be the single most expensive item in the build depending on how good you go)
RAM, a short-term memory processing component that comes in different amounts (4gb, 8gb, 16gb, 32gb, 64gb if you’re a madman) depending on how fast you need your short-term memory to work. Good RAM allows you to do things like open a bunch of Chrome tabs at once, run Photoshop at the same time you’re listening to youtube videos, or process the demand of loading up a host of enemies in Mass Effect. Most everyone these days can get by just fine with 16gb of RAM, which is what I have.
a hard drive (or the new, faster, more expensive version, a solid state drive) which functions as your long-term storage bins. This is where you save documents, images, and install your programs. These come in tons of sizes–the larger your files are, the more storage space you’ll want. I always put at least a terabyte of storage in my builds.
a power supply unit or PSU, which gives the electrical juice for everything to run
a monitor (the more hertz, the smoother the video will be - you’ll want either 60hz or 144hz depending on how much your number of frames-per-second matter to you)
a keyboard and mouse
speakers or headphones or both!
Optional addons:
RGB lighting for everything :O
an optical drive (aka something to put DVDs, Blurays, or other physical CD disks into)
fancy liquid cooling pipes
additional case fans; most cases come with adequate fans, but if you are using the computer in a room with poor ventilation or you find that certain components are running hot, you can install additional fans
coincidentally you can also get fans with RGB lighting too
cable extenders when you are going for a specific color scheme
So it can definitely all look overwhelming at first, but when you start to look at how everything is laid out, you’ll notice some trends. Look at these motherboards, for example.
These are just four random motherboards I pulled off Newegg, a commonly used computer parts purchasing site. Sure, the colors are a bit different, but the layout between them…is all basically the same! Here, I’ll draw it out.
In just about every modern motherboard you buy, this will be the rough layout. Everything else is window dressing–what kind of GPU you get, what kind of CPU you get, whether your RAM lights up cool colors or not. Your motherboard will ALWAYS include a map that has extensive descriptions of what each connection does.
Much, much, much more under the jump!
Most of these you won’t even need!
There are always some compatibility things to consider–as I mentioned, PCPartPicker can help you figure out a lot of these–but the biggest one to care about is the CPU. There are two major companies that make CPUs, AMD and Intel. They both have pros and cons on the chips they make, but right now, AMD makes a family of CPUs called Ryzen that both outperform and are cheaper than Intel’s current leading brands, the i7 and i9 lines. Intel was king of the hill for a long time, though, and their CPUs are still really good quality, so some people still go with them over the cheaper alternatives for now. (There are some reports of black screens with the new Ryzen lines, but as I’ve never owned one, I can’t personally speak to how common that is.)
Regardless, once you pick which family of CPUs you want to go with, AMD or Intel, you just have to pick an Intel-friendly or AMD-friendly motherboard. This is always specified in the description of the motherboard. I own the Asus z370 motherboard, so here’s what it says in the description for CPU:
Anyway, once you’ve picked all your parts and had everything shipped to you, it’s literally just a plug-n-play, step by step until everything’s plugged in. Your motherboard manual will also include recommended order of installations, too, and often how to install them.
It helps to remember that the manufacturers of all these parts understand that they are expensive, and they really DON’T want to make them hard to install! Broken or difficult pieces during installation means that the customer is upset, and upset customers ask for refunds and lose brand loyalty.
It also helps to understand that a lot of these connections are based on certain standards–I didn’t realize until I was rebuilding my current machine that these holes set for screws really do work with just about everything you get, as long as it’s the same generation, because motherboard manufactures WANT you to have the flexibility to go any attachment brand you like and still be able to use their board to mount them.
So, you pick your case and open it up, and you put the motherboard down on top of all the little screw holes until they match, and then you screw all the screws down firmly.
Old rig, partially disassembled:
New, in approximately same state:
(One of the reasons I went with this larger white case than a smaller, slim case like my old one, is because this nicer case has what’s called “cable management;” that means there’s a built-in back area behind the motherboard where all my cables can be jammed without messing up the “aesthetic” of the glass window. My first build obviously did not have that, as seen in that first picture at the top of this post, so I had to just jam my cables wherever I could fit them so that the sides would close, haha.)
Anyway, you can see that the motherboard is just screwed in where it should be, and my CPU is already installed where it should be. I haven’t mounted the cooler for it yet because I needed to clean off the old thermal paste and install new thermal paste before doing so. My two sticks of RAM are also mounted in the top right in the motherboard’s recommended configuration & locations for two sticks (vs. one, vs. four).
Then, with the cooler in place, it looked like this:
So the cooler I have is liquid cooling in a closed system (the thick black tubes running right to left) which is attached to a fan that mounts in place of the white fan on the left from the previous picture. It was as simple as unscrewing the old fan and putting the new one in its place. I think I even used the same screws. The fan is powered by that thin cable running along the top of the case that plugs into a little socket on the motherboard labeled “CPU Fan.” It was as simple as just finding the right plug; it doesn’t even have directionality, just a three-pin socket, so it doesn’t even matter which way you plug.
Already it’s looking like a proper computer! And because this case has cable management, I took a picture of what it currently looked like from the backside.
This case is cool because it has a neat set of connectors mounted on the back of this little hideaway to connect the case fans. I could have run the white fan cables through to the front of the motherboard for them to get power/marching orders, but it was cleaner aesthetically to attach them here in the back. Nothing wrong with connecting them on the front, though–that’s what I did in my original build!
You also might have noticed I’ve mounted the PSU in that white case by now as well. It’s the large black and red box in the bottom corner, seen best from behind. The white case comes with what’s called a PSU shroud, which just means there’s a fancy white cover over it to keep the ~aesthetic~ when viewed from the front side.
The next step is to mount the graphics card!
There’s instructions in your manual as to exactly how these mount, but it really and truly is just removing the dust cover brackets where you need to, and then a delicate plug & play, pushing that big guy in until you hear the click! (Click good, snap bad. Haha. I’ve changed out these cards several dozen times and never broken one, though!)
You can also see the ugly red-tipped cables plugged into the GPU and the motherboard, both on the right side. These come from the Power Supply Unit (they are all permanently connected in most brands, and look basically like a squid’s tentacles–once you have your items mounted onto the motherboard, you just look for the connector from the PSU with the right number of pins and plug it in!)
This guy is the worst. He is fat and hard to maneuver and always requires SO MUCH FORCE to click into this delicate bendy board and your heart will ALWAYS be in your throat as your fingers shake from how hard you’re having to push to sink it, and it will ALWAYS eventually go in but you’ll hate every second of the doing. I hate you, 24-pin EATX. I hate you so much.)
The next thing I did was mount my optical drive (because yes, I still own one), my hard drive, and my solid state drive.
The hard drive and SSD both serve the same purpose (long-term data storage), but the SSD is much faster and uses newer technology. It’s also more expensive for the amount of storage you get, so I have a 256gb SSD that holds my operating system, my heavily-used programs like Firefox and Photoshop & Premiere, and one or two video games I play the most that I would like to load as fast as possible. This is the drive that can allow me to restart my whole system in less than five seconds.
The hard drive is 1.75 terabytes and holds everything else: fics, pictures, videos, music, other games, etc.They mount onto the racks with pre-drilled screws. The optical drive just slides into the socket snugly until it hits the back of the rack.
All of these use a standard connector called a SATA cable which runs between the back of the drive to a SATA socket on the motherboard. Most motherboards come with at LEAST six or seven of these connector slots, and some come with more. They look like this:
and are pretty universal. Any kind of extra storage or drive you want to add to your computer will probably connect with a SATA cable. I think my motherboard, my SSD & HD, and my case purchases all came with a pack of loose SATA cables of different lengths to be used for whatever I wanted.
The rack each drive is mounted to came installed with the case and pre-drilled with screw holes (and provided screws) for attaching either the HD or SSD in every slot. Because this case is all about aesthetic, it also comes with two vertical SSD mounts on the back of the case if you wanted to remove the right-side rack altogether, but as I mentioned, I have the optical drive, so I couldn’t go with that option.
So now we have all the major pieces mounted! The last set of connections are a collection of small fiddly pieces that all plug in roughly the same area and do things like light up the case’s LED, provide that startup beep, connect the USB sockets on the case’s front to power, etc. This is by far the section that takes me the longest because I guarantee I will ALWAYS plug at least two into the wrong socket and not have a beep, or my audio won’t work or something until I go back and reconnect them.
The next thing was to plug in my monitors and…see what happened when we hit the power button! (Monitor connections just plug directly into your graphics card in the back of the case.) And here’s what happened!
youtube
So it turned out when I was connecting my SSD (which has my OS on it), I was pushing on the little connector while sitting on the back side of the case. I thought I had the thing in the socket, but what I’d actually done was jam the connector just under the lip of the motherboard (that is, not connected to anything at all, just hanging in open space). Once I realized, though, it was an easy fix!
The last thing I wanted to do to complete the clean white look I wanted was to replace those UGHLY red PSU cables with what are called “cable extenders.” I bought some white ones on Amazon; because most PSUs’ cables are permanently attached at the box, you plug your cable extenders into the other end and then feed them through the case, so that’s the only portion visible. The ugly PSU cables are still there at the other end of the white cables, just hidden in the cable management area behind the motherboard.
I spent some time fixing up the cables to curve exactly how I wanted them to, then picked my LED RGB colors and closed up the open side with the glass wall. All that was left was to plug in my mouse/keyboard/speakers/headphones/mic/webcam, etc., and we were done!
Ta-daaaa!
The first build I did, the one in the blue & black case, took us about two days due to some unexpected problems. First, we were trying to salvage an old CPU from my HP prebuilt to save a little money. Unfortunately, they used basically no thermal paste to connect it to its fan, and when we were trying to get the fan off, it actually tore the CPU out of its socket and bent a bunch of its pins. I ended up going to Best Buy or something and getting a replacement off the shelf.
The other issue I had was that I foolishly didn’t back up my files, and lost a bunch of them in the rebuild (including my Hawke’s original run through the DA2 game :( :( :( ) Always back up your files before ever going in and messing with your case!
Over the years I replaced a bunch of components in it, which is why it lasted me so long, but the transfer into the new case only took me about three hours, and that was with a bunch of breaks throughout. I probably could have done it faster if I hadn’t wanted to savor it, haha. The cable management for the backless desk took a lot longer, though! (…and a LOT of zip ties.)
I do set my new build on a small glass stand (again, from Amazon) because Hamlet’s pretty sheddy and I wanted to keep airflow as good as possible. I’m limited on how many case fans I can install since I have the optical drive rack taking up a lot of space on the right, but I could install new fans on top if I wanted. My temperatures are great, though (I monitor with CoreTemp & GPUTemp, as well as my motherboard’s built-in temp monitoring software), so I don’t need to unless I decide I need more RGB.
Anything I might want to add, I run through PCPartPicker to make sure it’ll fit what I already have. For example, my parts list looks like this (full view and complete parts list available at this link):
ANYWAY.
If you are patient, if you can fit small Lego-like pieces in labeled sockets, and you are a decent googler, you can build your own PC. It’s really, really hard to do serious damage to components nowadays, even if you plug something in wrong. There’s a bunch of resources, though, and I’d recommend the following places to start:
newegg.com - parts for sale, getcher parts here
pcpartpicker.com - put your list of components together, and it’ll flag any compatibility issues or known problems
https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/ - great starting point for new builders, tons of advice and how-to’s for every step of the process, and a decently responsive community to help troubleshoot any issues you might have
And I obviously love doing this kind of thing, so if there’s anything I can help with, I’m more than happy to try! Just let me know, and I hope this was helpful!
#anonymous#quark replies#quark's pc tag#long post for ts#very long post for ts#lots o videos and pictures for ts#a quest for fps
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Why Did It Have to be Him? pt. 4 (Aizawa x Reader)
a/n: sorry this got delayed :( this was supposed to be uploaded a lot earlier but then my laptop is basically dead at this point huhuhu legit waited for 30mins just for the chrome to stop lagging T.T welp... thank quirks for company laptops XD
that being said... here is part 4 for our Daddyzawa! <3
ps. i had to put an age for this fic :3 so you are 17 as the rest are 16 xD
Warnings: Student-Teacher relationship, Age-gap, Cursing, Not so subtle flirting
Link: Part 1, Part 2, part 3, part 5
Materlist for my other fics :) here
All aboard the Aizawa-train!: @yukiimanic @leeeah-loooser
A few days have passed and you were now fully settled in your dorm. There wasn’t much to it but Aizawa managed to persuade you to buy new sheets and curtains to match. You weren’t exactly sure why but you complied nonetheless.
Monochromatic that’s how you liked things. Since he gave you full control as to what colors you could choose, you simply went for black.Of course, you made sure that a pop of color would add life to your room. A few trinkets here and there, your room looked good to go. Simplicity is key, that’s what you kept reminding yourself.
But it was rather ironic how your “love life” wasn’t as simple. It was much easier to see him back in your house. Now that you were living only a mere block away from the teacher’s dorm, it only made things much harder. Though, you understood, it was still frustrating not being able to see him as much as you wanted.
While doing your assignments, your phone rang. Not bothering to see who the caller was, you picked it up. Slowly, the corners of your mouth turned upwards. Right on schedule.
“Not disturbing anything, am I?” He asked. In the background, you could hear the keyboard’s soft tapping.
“Nope. I’m just about finished here.” Gathering your books and papers, you neatly stacked and put them away. Looking at the time, there was still 45 minutes before curfew starts. “I am hungry though, so I might have to run to the nearest convenient store~”
“Isn’t the fridge stacked with snacks, though?” The typing sounds had stopped and you heard a soft grunt.
“It is but they don’t have those juice packs I like.” There was some risk to this but you wanted to see him. It was hard enough that all you could do inside the classroom was to sit and stare at him. “Of course, I’m not implying anything. I do plan on leaving in about 5 minutes or so.”
“Do as you please, (Y/N).” He let out a soft chuckle before hanging up the call.
Grabbing your sweatshirt and wallet, you silently exited your room. Thankfully, the majority of rooms had their lights on. And, technically, it wasn’t curfew so you could still manage to buy a few snacks the dorm’s fridge had to offer. Shaking your head, you knew you couldn’t fool yourself.
Ever since the kiss, he became even more intoxicating. His musky scent and how you felt his arms wrapping around your small stature (compared to his at least) was addicting. It was a picture hard to forget, him straddling you in the comforts of your bed. The strands of his soft hair caging you from the outside world. Or maybe it was how his hot breath brushed your cheeks that made things even more irresistible? Closing the doors to the building, you were met with the row of streetlights. Each of them casting enough light to ensure safety to those who would walk the streets at this time of night. Of course, everyone knew this area was safe, afterall, only an idiot villain would dare attack near UA.
A little further and you could see the neon sign of the convenience store. Near the entrance, a man caught your eye. He was wearing an all black ensemble and his grayish pale skin made him look unreal. Yet, the all too familiar bun caused your heart to race.
Upon seeing your figure approaching his, he could feel the smirk forming on his mouth. It had only been a few hours since he last saw you but it was inside classroom settings. The secret glances you two would give each other was fun but he somehow wanted more. When you passed by him, he could make out the faint smell of your lingering body lotion. Very stimulating to the senses.
Trailing behind you, his eyes began to linger all over your back. Sure, you had a sweatshirt on but in his eyes you looked too good not to hug. When you turned towards the small aisle for chips, he glanced at the ceiling. The cameras were on the other side of the store. As you were choosing what junk to munch on, he leaned forward and rested his head on your shoulder.
Jumping at the sudden sensation of his warmth radiating on your cheek, all the heat travelled upwards as your eyes met his. The dullness to them now replaced with a hint of playfulness. His calloused hand began to brush yours. Slowly making their way up before he let go to grab a bag for himself.
Once again, your stomach felt all the butterflies going crazy with his touch. Chewing on your lower lip, you let out a shaky sigh as he lifted his head. Slowly walking away without looking back.
Such a tease.
Two can play that little game, you thought.
Aizawa made his way towards the refreshments. Searching for the perfect drink to pair with his chips, he settled for a can of beer. It wasn’t allowed but he could easily sneak it in knowing it was almost curfew. In his peripheral version, he could see you choosing as well. Following your hands, he saw how you had just chosen a can of soda.
“Got everything you need?” He asked.
“Not yet. I need some chocolate.” Pulling him towards the aisle with chocolates, you saw your target. The one you had been craving for a week now. Scanning the area, you saw how the coast was clear and it was your turn to make your move. “Hey, can you hold these for a sec?”
Handing him your stuff, you turned around and began to tug on the hems of your sweatshirt. His eyebrows jumped at your small actions. When you began to strip off your sweatshirt. The heavy material lifted your undershirt quite a bit. A bit of your skin got exposed to the coldness the store had to offer.
The coldness had no effect on Aizawa. Instead, he felt heat growing in his system. His mouth suddenly felt dry. His finger twitched and his jaw clenched. The hold he had on the goods tightened. Upon seeing you bend down to grab a bar of chocolate, the neckline of your shirt was big enough to expose the black strap of your bra.
‘Behave, Shota.’ His mind scolded him. ‘This is the only line you should NOT cross. At least not yet.’
Through your peripheral vision, you could see just how much your plan had worked. His squinted eyes only gave away his deposition. Flicking your hair just as you faced him, you caught a hold of his stare and blinked innocently.
“What’s wrong,” You took a step forward as you got a hold of your things. “Shota?”
His eyebrow jerked and his mouth was now a desert. Not wanting for things to get out of hand, he walked past you and made his way to the counter. Every ounce of his concentration focused on not pinning you against the wall and giving the cashier a show. Biting the corner of his tongue he paid for his purchase and waited outside as you paid for yours.
“You okay, sensei?” The last word was rather breathy, just as you intended it to be. Seeing him controlling himself was rather fun. He was struggling and the signs were very subtle. The only thing giving him away were his twitching eyes and furrowed brows.
Grabbing the bag of food from you, he led the way back to campus grounds. His eyes scanning the area and taking note of the small cameras set up on the street lights. The both of you were now approaching a blind spot. Letting out a rather long sigh, he held on to your wrist and pulled you into the dimly lit area.
“Be quiet.” Aizawa instructed.
Your eyes widened as you began to realize what he was planning on doing. The cameras would surely pick all of that up but then again, if he knew the area well then it should be fine. Heart now racing, you chewed on your inner cheek as the both of you were now approaching the blind spot. The small alcove one of the buildings had.
Things were now a blur.
The small squeak that escaped your mouth as your back hit the wall was immediately muted when his lips crashed into yours. Literally taking your breath away, you eased into the kiss. Wrapping your arms around his neck, you pulled the elastic band from his hair. On your tiptoes, you leaned on to his torso for support. Your knees were now barely functioning.
Knowing what was running through your thoughts, he bent down a little. His hands held tracing whatever curves your body had to offer. When you began to nibble on his lip, his hand grabbed your knee pit and lifted you. More than happy that you instantly clung your legs around his waist.
Tugging on his hair, he accidentally let out a small groan. Feeling your soft lips making their way towards his neck sent was enough for him to tighten his hold on you. The sucking sensation that followed made his member twitch and his pants tighten. A chill ran down his spine when your tongue trailed its way up to his jaw.
“Fuck...” He growled once your noses were touching once more. Running his tongue across your lip, you parted your mouth to give him entry. Tugging on your lower lip, he went back in with a much more long and thorough kiss. When he parted his lips from yours, his hot citrusy breath brushed your face. “Don’t tease me unless you know what you want, kitten.”
“Oops.” You brushed your nose against his. Your heavy lidded eyes hazy with need. The way he gave you a pet name hit differently. “My bad~”
The tips of his lips began to travel down your neck. Using his nose to move the neckline of your shirt, he licked a patch of your skin before biting on to it. The small moan echoing in his ears made curious. What other sounds could he make you do if he were given the chance?
‘This isn’t the right place, Shota.’ Once again his thoughts managed to save him from moving any further.
Pecking your lips once more, he put you down and patted your head. Despite the dimness, he could still see how flushed you were. Fixing himself, he looked at his watch and gestured that it was time to head back.
“Just in time for curfew~” You teased. “I won’t get in trouble now, right?”
“(Y/N).” He brushed his fingers with yours. The short contact the both of you shared was something his body still yearned for. “You are aware that you're still 17 right?”
“Yes.” Your step still had a certain hop to them. “And I’m aware that my birthday is coming up.”
“I’m not implying anything.” He handed your bag of food. Now giving a safe distance between you two. “I just want us to be careful. You’re still young.”
“Are you doubting?” The slight sadness in your voice was something you couldn’t hold back. “If it clears things up, I really am serious about you. I was shocked but elated that you were more than willing to try if things would work out. But, if you really don’t want to do this then I’ll back out. At least it’s still early and won’t hurt as much.”
“I never said I didn’t want to do it.” He stated. “What happened back there, I almost got carried away. I wouldn’t want you to regret this or… us.”
“Us?” The smile on your face was rather adorable for him. You felt your cheeks heating up at the confirmation that there really is something between you two and that it wasn’t just you carrying the feelings.
Lifting the corners of his mouth, he patted your head once more before picking his pace up. Ready to head back to the teacher’s dorms.
“Wait for my call later,” He glanced at you over his shoulder. A smirk on his face. “Kitten.”
“That I will, Aizawa-sensei.” You replied with a huge smile on your face.
Running back to the dorms, you carefully opened the doors. Making sure that no one was around, you snuck across the hall and took the stairs. The dimly lit hallway towards your room made things easier.
Moments later, you were now munching on chips. Your phone rang and for the rest of the night, till one of you finally caved in to slumber, Aizawa and you spent it on talking about whatever topics came to your mind.
At the end of call, both of you agreed that convenience stores would now be a recurring thing.
- - - - -
if you want to be tagged in part 5 :) feel free to leave a comment :)
#aizawa x reader#mha aizawa#bnha aizawa#aizawa shouta#shouta x reader#shota aizawa x reader#eraserhead
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best friends or more (part-2)
Pairing: peter parker x reader
Warnings: fluff, angst👀, oblivious people, swearing. I think that is all...
Word count: 2454
Italics — flashback/thoughts
Sorry for being so late! I hope you guys liked the first part, I think my tags didn't work🤷🏻♀️. Tumblr is a disaster, even more so when you're on your phone... I hope you like this part!❤ Also, I can't divide the text under the cut because I don't have a laptop and it didn't work on chrome. I try to not extend it too much!
Series Masterlist | Prologue | Part 1
“What the fuck are you doing on the ceiling?!”
Peter jumped down to the floor, already putting his hands up to try to stop you from freaking out. You were already at the verge of screaming out loud. Your breath hitched and you couldn’t think straight.
“(Y/n), I can explain.” He said. One could wonder how he was being so calm and composed, like it was totally normal for people to walk on the ceiling of their houses.
Peter’s hands were on your shoulders in an instant, rubbing soft, soothing circles through the thin fabric of your shirt, concerned eyes making sure you calmed down before he started rambling about what had happened.
“H-how were you, what were you—?” You tried but even after all efforts, you couldn’t get yourself to utter a single coherent sentence out of your mouth. It was like your brain stopped working. Peter was on the lookout, in case you fainted.
“I know it’s crazy. Just calm down and I’ll tell you everything.” He said. You took your time, breathing and trying to relax. Finally letting go of the door handle you stood up straight, but he could still see your shaking hands, still hear your heart’s palpitations, still sense the weirdness in the air.
“You were on the ceiling.” Your voice came out shakey, but you were taking regular breaths. Peter nodded.
“I-I was.” He started. You waited for him to continue with an expectant yet incredulous look on your face. You wanted him to tell you that it was due to some crazy anti-gravity belt that he accidentally ‘created’ due to some error, or something alien he got from the storage of the apartment building, “I know it’s weird but I have a good reason. Just- let’s sit down first?” He asked hesitantly. You just nodded, still confused about everything.
You both walked over to his bunk bed, which was occasionally used by the both of you for sleepovers and Star Wars movie marathon nights, and sat beside each other “How are you now?” You asked suddenly, making Peter raise an eyebrow at you, “You had a fever.” You stated.
“Oh, that? Yeah, I’m way better now.” He nodded, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly before a wince passed his lips. You became cautious and concerned at the action.
“What is it?” You asked as you craned your neck to look at the cause of the pained voice.
“A spider bit me.”
———
You were pulled back to reality by Liz when she nudged your side. Your head perked up from your lap where your chemistry book was lying carelessly, not that you were actually reading it. You pushed your glasses up your nose. No you weren’t a nerd, not even close. Albeit the chemistry book lying in your lap, you were focused on the events from last night. Your mind replayed the way Peter’s sweet, familiar scent filled your nose when you leaned down to check on his injuries, what if you had kissed him, would he have kissed you back?
Peter’s thoughts didn't vary much than yours. All day he kept dozing off thinking about you, about how you smelled of honey, about how your soft lips would’ve felt over his.
He watched you at lunch as you sat with Betty and her friends like you usually did on Fridays just because they were your friends too and you didn’t want to upset them. He saw you turn back to look over at his table and the moment your eyes met, you mouthed a humorous ‘save me’ as you laughed silently, making him smile and look away as he blushed.
His eyes quickly shifted from you and adjusted to somewhere behind you, indicating you as well as convincing himself that he was blushing because of the girl who was behind you, hanging a banner for homecoming, and apparently the girl turned out to be Liz. You turned away from him to hide the frown on your face as you felt a pang in your chest.
You didn’t mean to feel bad. Peter, your best friend, had a crush on a girl who actually deserved him. She was way too nice, smart and beautiful as compared to you. She was the perfect match for him. Or so you thought.
Peter’s eyes fixated back on you as soon as you focused your attention on Betty, he observed your movements, the way you waved your hands in the air to illustrate things better, the way you pushed the same strand of hair —that he was much grateful of— behind your ear again and again and yet again. All things including Ned’s voice was background and the only desired thing was you.
“Earth to (y/n)?” Liz snapped a finger in front of you, waking you up again, “Were you even listening?” She chuckled as you passed her a sheepish look.
You were sitting in the gym bleachers, now in your midtown high sweatshirt, with the group as Peter did his crunches with the help of Ned.
“Sorry, I was thinking about... something.” You replied, settling yourself on the bleachers so that you were comfortable.
“Anyway…” Betty started, “We were playing F, marry, kill, for the avengers! Let’s continue.” She clapped a hand in front of her chest. Sometimes you didn’t like how excited the blonde girl could get. You rolled your eyes playfully muttering a ‘sure.’
“So what would it be for you (y/n)?” Liz asked from your side. You wanted to run away from there as all eyes fell on you but the group was sitting all around and you were in the middle. You knew the whole gym was listening to the conversation of the ‘popular’ kids.
“Um,” You gulped, “F thor, marry Captain America and kill hulk?” you offered. Peter's eyebrows furrowed, what was he thinking, of course you wouldn’t take his alter ego’s name. He was not expecting you to say you would marry Spider-man, no.
Your friends all seemed satisfied with your answer and nodded, except Liz.
“What about Spider-man?” She asked. Peter's ears perked up at that.
“What– What about him?” You asked her. You could feel Peter’s —and everyone else’s— eyes lingering over your group.
“Didn’t you see the big security cam on YouTube?!” She bragged, “He fought off four guys!”
Everyone rolled their eyes like they already knew what was happening, “Oh god, she’s crushing on Spider-man.” Some girl announced nonchalantly.
Your eyes widened dramatically, “What?” You asked.
She shrugged, trying to seem uninterested but the smile on her face gave her facade away, “Well, maybe.”
“But what if he’s like, seriously burned, or eighty?” You asked suddenly. Peter squinted his eyes on you as he tried to hold in his laughter. You looked so cute when you tried so hard to hide the fact that you actually knew Spider-man or how that one strand on hair fell on your face which you adjusted behind your ear. You were blushing slightly and Peter could just grab your face and kiss all over — Stop!
The group thundered, “Okay, first of all, he’s not eighty.” Liz laughed, making you blush in embarrassment, “And second of all, I wouldn’t care. I would still love him for the person he is on the inside.” Peter was full on staring at the black haired girl as you could see from the corner of your eyes. You felt a strong feeling tugging at your heart as it dropped to the pit of your stomach. Were you jealous of Liz? No! But again, why was Peter staring at her in the hallway?!
Before you could interject or even think of anything to say back to her you heard a voice which made the whole gym fall into silence, “Peter knows Spider-man!” Now all the eyes were on Peter as he turned to Ned with an unbelievable look. He scrambled off the ground, “No, I don’t.” He tried, waving his hands in dismissal, “I-I’ve met him, yeah, t-through the Stark Internship.”
“They’re friends.” Ned quipped. You stared at the boys with a questioning look, what was going on in their head? Peter passed you a tight lipped smile.
“Oh yeah, like coach Wilson and Captain America are friends.” Flash laughed, “You know what, why don’t you invite your ‘friend’ Spider-man to Liz’s house party?”
“You’re having a party?” You whispered to Liz, only for Peter to repeat it out loud.
“Yeah, I’m having people over tonight.” She said, giving you an apologetic grin. You shook your head.
“You should totally invite your pal, Spider-man.” Flash said as the bell rang and students started emptying the gym. Peter turned to Ned with an angry look and you rushed towards the both as your group also dissipated.
“What’re you doing?!” He asked, frustrated as you slipped beside them and started walking out of the room, behind the crowd. You slipped your hand in Peter’s since no one was watching, and why not. You knew it calmed him down when you rubbed soft circles on the back of his hand.
“Okay, did you not hear her? Liz has a crush on you.” He explained and you could feel your heart drop to your feet, and Peter was about to step over it.
“On Spider-man, not him.” You butted as Peter opened his mouth to say something.
“Come on (y/n), be serious.” He chuckled. Only if he knew, you were dead serious, “You’re an avenger man! If anyone has a chance with a senior girl, it’s you! Stop pining after her and just make a move.” Ned announced before walking ahead, leaving you and Peter with your thoughts.
So he liked Liz? And he told Ned but not you?
Peter didn’t seem to notice your face drop, “We need to go to that party.” He smiled, swinging your hands as you moved to your locker.
———
“Peter, I think you need to see a doctor.” You told him as your eyebrows furrowed.
“And tell him what (y/n)? A spider bit me and I got powers, my vision is better and my senses got developed? That sounds terrible.” He shook his head. Now that he mentioned, you noticed that he wasn't wearing his glasses and his shirt did look two sizes smaller for him, “Wanna take a picture? It’ll last longer.” He chuckled. Suddenly, heat rushed to your cheeks and you felt embarrassed under his stare. You felt intimidated by him, you felt different with him, a good different of course. He was much more confident and snarky than the Peter you knew.
“What if it’s something serious?” You tried diverting the topic, thankfully he didn’t question you anymore.
“Don't worry so much (y/n). Anyway, I don’t think our family doctor could tell what it is.” He said and you nodded along. A silence fell over the room for a few moments. Peter could hear your, now calm, heartbeat and he wanted to get close to you, incredibly close, like he’s never been before. You were in your most casual clothes and without any makeup but he still found you enchanting. He was feeling different with you than before, a good different of course.
“So can you do anything cool?” You asked, eyes shining with adoration.
He laughed, “Name it.”
———
You could sense nervous and scared vibes radiating off Peter as he sat in the passenger seat of May’s old, dingy car. You were sitting beside Ned. May was really happy that his nephew was finally being social and normal like other teenagers and not being stuck with a billionaire in his office and arranging paperwork for him. She was already very proud of Peter, everyone was, and the internship has got him in his head all the time, so busy that he had no time to spend with friends or her.
May pulled up in front of Liz’s house and bent down a little to get a look at the venue. She nodded her head in approval before looking back to you and Ned and complimenting him on his hat. You giggled, trying to ignore the way Peter looked uncomfortable.
“This is a mistake.” He said, looking out the window, at the number of people rushing into the house, “Hey, let’s just go home.” He looked between you and May with pleading eyes.
“Come on Pete, we’re here already, you can do this!” You encouraged. May nodded before starting about how his body was going through changes. You could barely hold your laughter in as Peter chuckled, “Okay, I think we should go.” He said, opening the door and getting out immediately.
You lagged behind as both the boys moved in through the door only to be met with teenagers dancing and mingling with each other over the loud music. Flash was the DJ tonight, you rolled your eyes at him. You watched Peter with worried eyes as you moved next to him, slipping your hand in his and squeezing it gently. The gesture was so simple yet it calmed his nerves down and he gave you a grateful smile before Ned started explaining his plan about how Spider-man would enter the party.
You were again drowning in your thoughts, focusing on rubbing soft circles on the back of Peter’s hand when a high pitched voice brought you back to reality, “Oh my gosh, hey guys! Cool hat Ned!” Liz complimented, “(Y/n), you look so stunning!”
You passed her a genuine smile, after all the girl was really, very sweet, “You look very beautiful yourself Liz!” You complimented back.
“Hi Liz.” Ned greeted and Peter followed with a squeaky voice. Poor boy, didn’t know how to converse with a girl, well except you. That or he didn’t think of you as a girl.
“So glad you guys are here.” She said, being the great host she is. Her gaze went down to your and Peter’s still interwoven fingers, “Hey, are you guys finally together? Can’t believe I won the bet-” She stopped herself before she could speak any further and pointed towards your hands.
Both of you looked down at your hands. Peter was the first one to immediately retract his hand from yours. You felt unwanted as he frantically started explaining to Liz that ‘It’s not what it looks like!’
“We’re just friends, nothing more.” He rubbed the back of his neck, the slightest rocking back and forth visible in his body. Your chest tightened, a mere few words and actions making your heart sink to the pit of your stomach.
You wish you could be something more with Peter, but it was no use when he saw you as ‘just friends.’
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Traditional Writing Advice & RP
I see a lot of people reblogging writing advice posts, and while it pleases me to see people trying to appreciate RP as writing, those pieces of advice don’t always translate from traditional writing to RP writing.
Following the advice for writing a traditional book manuscript you want to have published, you are going to run into some issues if you follow every point of it faithfully in an RP setting.
For one thing, this isn’t just your story, you’re telling it with another writer. In RP, our reading audience and our writing partners are the same. We have to create well-written, engaging stories that are also meant to be picked up by someone else and furthered. For another, even among the most writing proficient RPers, this is a more relaxed style of writing for a reason; we’re writing neither a paper to be graded nor a work to be published, we’re expressing creativity with other people. It can fall flat quickly, to your writing partners and to yourself, if you are writing in an extremely formal manner in RP.
Writing is one of the creative pursuits that has lent itself heavily to what I’m going to politely call snobbery, and that is part of the problem here. The RPC is rather filled with muns who are self-concious, devalue themselves and their work, and can be desperate for the approval of being A Real Writer. If you love writing and you do write, you’re a writer. No, that definitely doesn’t make you a good writer, but following rules not meant for you isn’t going to make you one either.
There is a wrong way to write, actually, there are hundreds of wrong ways to write that make me want to rip my own face off on the regular. The thing is, there is no one-size-fits-all correct way to write any more than there is such a standard in visual art. There are principles that one should know and follow, but your style might be neoclassical or modern or impressionist. Saying that, in my personal opinion, things falling under the heading of modern-style art is horrid, thus inherently wrong and not art, I’d be imposing my personal aesthetics instead of encouraging people to follow appropriate principles, run with their passion and skill, and make art that moves people who are not me. That’s important, in general, but it’s even more important when we’re talking about creative art as a hobby-as a legitimate passion project one isn’t obliged to devote themselves to.
That’s the way we need to be looking at writing as well. Not as an academic and absolute Right Way, but as an art form that has principles, and indeed, literal form. By insisting otherwise, we’ve damaged writing as a hobby and a profession, and it really shows in the RPC where you have a rather stark division of muns who, on the one side, are so ate up with bizarre concepts their professor threw out about never using “said,” forcing the ideology of their personal academic experience on others, and using traditional writing advice as Word of God to shame others and elevate themselves. On the other side, you have a ton of muns who just won’t even bother anymore, and why should they? They’re genuinely not up to par, but working on it means both a process of shaming and killing their own creative experience.
In saying all this, I want to be really clear here: I am in no way saying that shitty writing, an inability to follow basic grammatical principles, being unwilling to use the damn spellcheck that is standard everywhere, and having no concept of things like storytelling, characterization, and word flow is excusable or ideal.
It isn’t. It’s a terribly destructive force in the RPC, and I’m not in the camp of excusing disinterest in learning, improving, and perfecting one’s hobby because it is an unpaid hobby. In my opinion, it’s part of the blight of the current RPC. However, the snobbery and inability to recognize that there is nuance to learning and writing situations has done nothing but worsen this issue.
So, that being said, some items that are 100% good to use traditionally and in RP include:
Grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
We’re not all native English speakers, and grammar is difficult anyway. It can also turn a story bland with expedience when too properly adhered to. Know the basic principles, but also, be asking yourself about both popular works of fiction and your own favorite works. Chances are, they do not strictly adhere to the rules. Experienced, naturally gifted, and learned writers all manipulate those rules to work for their stories, characters, world-building, and so on. It becomes a personalized writing style, and it’s alright if it takes you some practice to find yours.
Just remember, grammar exists for a reason. Removing or mutating too much will leave you with a difficult to read and understand mess that isn’t a style, just a fucking mess.
If you struggle with grammar, the best way to help yourself is to practice. Additionally, seeing what errors you are making can be quite helpful; Grammarly offers a free add on for both Google Chrome and FireFox that will show you spelling and grammar mistakes. It also explains the mistake, while offering you a suggested fix. This way, you can see the mistakes you’re making in action. {Presumably, there are other such resources, but since I have no experience with them, I’m not the one to recommend them.}
As I said above, spellcheckers are standard now, in fucking 2021. This has been standard on devices and browsers for so long that I highly doubt most people on tumblr even remember a time when you had to use additional software to have them.
You make a mistake or misspell, and if it isn’t corrected for you, it’s underlined very obviously for you to tap/click/float over to correct. If the word is so terribly misspelled that no suggestion comes up {not all spellcheckers are created equality; some do not recognize slang or relaxed spellings, archaic word use, myriad, particularly specialized jargon-legal, medical, technical-and so on}, we also live in a time period where we can highlight the word, right-click that bitch, and select from the menu the option to search for the word. If the word was so weirdly misspelled that your checker couldn’t figure it out, it is incredibly rare that Google doesn’t throw out the correct spelling when you search it. If the spelling was correct, but the word-use is slang, jargon, or archaic, Google is also going to tell you that-you’ve confirmed it is correct, and can now decide if you want to use it or pick a possible synonym for it instead.
There is no fucking excuse for egregiously misspelled words anymore. None. I mean...listen, I spell quite terribly myself, but no one reading my RP replies is ever going to know that fact. Having difficulty with spelling is not, and has not been for a very long time now, an impediment to writing.
Furthermore, we all miss a typo here and there, especially if we write lengthy novella. Those aren’t always going to be caught by spellcheck, and we might edit the reply five times without seeing it. That happens, it’s alright when it’s minimal! Anything other than that, though, it’s just a combination of rushing and laziness. You really couldn’t be assed to take your time with that reply, read it over at least once before posting, and/or to click the underlined word.
There. Is. No. Excuse.
Again, not all spellcheckers are the same. If you feel like yours is lacking, try an extension for your browser. Since I said it above, I obviously have Grammarly on my mine. My replies effectively go through three different checkers, actually. I write all drafts outside of my browser where it is initially checked by Pages, then, when I paste it into tumblr, it’s being checked natively and by Grammarly. It wasn’t my intention, I just wanted to be positive I was never losing a draft or cooking my ancient laptop with Google Docs. However, it’s been nice as hell to get the perspective of multiple checkers, and as such, I definitely recommend it. It isn’t like I’m putting any extra effort into this, and I’m not paying for Grammarly, either.
When you refuse to behoove yourselves of the spellchecker natively available to you, at least, you’re seriously telling your writing partners that they were not important enough for you to click a fucking word. It’s inexcusable.
Punctuation being nonexistent isn’t a writing style or aesthetic, neither is a refusal to capitalize anything. If never using a comma is part of your Aesthetic™, please, rethink your fucking life and the hobby you’ve chosen.
Punctuation is a part of grammar, and I understand that there can be complexities present that might be confusing. That is one of the reasons why you should bother to know the basics as regards when and how to use punctuation. It’s also another way in which telling people that they should adhere to advice meant for traditional and academic writing can be a shit idea. Especially in an RPC known to misunderstand shit and go overboard.
When you tell the RPC that writers use too many commas, the RPC stops using them all around. Especially, when you also attach this to the idea of evil “wordiness.” That’s something that the RPC is desperate to avoid anyway, as the majority of people here are allergic to reading and writing; anything you advise that lessens the word count for them is going to be grabbed and erroneously applied. Someone implies that wordiness and commas equals run-on sentences, and the RPC gets not only believes it, it gets this message, “if I take out the commas, it isn’t a run-on sentence.”
You have all fundamentally misunderstood what a god damned run-on sentence is. It’s not a long sentence, it isn’t a proliferation of commas. A run-on sentence is when two, or more, sentences that should be individual are conjoined without proper punctuation {a fucking comma, for example} or a coordinating conjunction.
Run-ons can be surprisingly short, in fact. As in the example I lifted from here, “I love to write papers I would write one every day if I had the time.“
That should be written with a comma, separated into two sentences, or broken with a comma and the conjunction “and.” It’s also what I see incessantly on my dash from this bizarre idea that we shouldn’t be using commas. That a run-on sentence is a very long one separated only by commas. That is literally not what a run-on sentence is.
You absolutely can use too many commas {if you want to read some examples of how to use commas, go here}, but I rarely see anyone doing so to such an extreme. The extreme being that a sentence becomes a nonsensical string of conjoined thoughts, ideas, and descriptions that could have been written better broken up into fully formed sentences. I sometimes see muns who go a little nuts with commas by putting them in wildly incorrect places in this way.
What I see constantly is either muns berating themselves for perfectly normal, readable sentence structure or muns reactively using no punctuation at all.
It is all legitimate run-on sentences or those made so short and blunt that they become nonsensical, change the tone of the writing, or have no flow together.
Which brings me to...
Sentence flow is a thing, and you should be doing it.
Unfortunately, this good writing advice tends to throw people. We’re not talking about the flow that needs to be present in academic sentence structure, or exactly the flow that is present in poetry. Though it may require practice to understand and apply well, it’s an incredibly simple concept.
You want to balance out shorter, blunter sentences with those that are longer and more flowing. It gives the text a pleasant, natural rhythm. However, it isn’t just about length, a thing that the RPC is weirdly fixated on. Rather, it’s about word use within those sentences as well.
It’s always important to write with a tone that works with your scene and, overall, with your muse. For example, in a tense, aggressive scene, or with a muse who is generally this way, it gets the message across to use short sentences and clipped words. We can feel the tension, annoyance, and threat.
Furthermore, the way your muse thinks about and uses words is relevant. A well-educated muse from the 1800′s isn’t going to have the same approach to words that a modern-day high school student does. You should be making that clear in the way they speak, but also, in the way you express their thoughts and actions. If you are only writing your muse’s personality and emotional tone when your muse is speaking, you’re not giving me the tone all the way through. It can feel like a marked delineation in flow.
However, you should be considering the overall flow of your writing as well. Did you just lay down back-to-back eloquently verbose sentences? If so, you may want to either follow them up or space them with a shorter sentence comprised of simpler words.
This is legitimately good writing advice for any manner of writing.
So is...
Show, don’t tell.
Which is another piece of advice that throws people when they try to make it more complex than necessary. That, and it grates up against the RPC’s need for short, quick writing. The idea that anything a mun gives you that your muse cannot react to verbally or with action is filler to be avoided. That idea comes from some principle advice that translates badly to RP; essentially, don’t wax poetic for three pages when it has nothing to do with the plot, characters, scene-setting elements, action, and so on. Don’t be Tolkien describing every tree and rock in excruciating detail on the way to destroy the One Ring, basically.
That isn’t fully appropriate advice in RP, where we’re having to write tiny chapters to each other to add onto. While it still has some merit, the RPC definitely has taken it to mean that you shouldn’t show anything. My muse’s private thoughts, emotions expressed and unexpressed, stirred-up memories, things they planned to say/do, but that were naturally interrupted by the flow of the thread all become Unnecessary. With...no mind to what they are showing and creating.
This particularly erodes writing muses as legitimate feeling people. As in the last example of what my muse intended to say or do that was interrupted. That’s a normal, human experience. It would be difficult and not enjoyable to read every instance of a muse’s broken thoughts and impulses or intentions, but giving one every so many replies in a natural feeling way keeps my muse presenting as a real person having a real person’s experience. Simple things like this go a long way toward your muse being “believable,” and by ignoring them or refusing to do them, you’re not making your muse very realistic. So much of the human experience is private, unknowable to outside parties.
Look...if you only knew me based upon a sterilized version of what I was saying to you or doing purely within the context of single interaction at a time, you wouldn’t know me at all. You’d have no idea what sort of nuance there is in my words, how I am expressing or withholding an opinion or emotion. I may not have any opinions, emotions, or other experiences that you are not contributing to. That’s very unrealistic, I’m not actually a person anymore. I haven’t any personality, I didn’t exist before you interacted with me.
That is the way it is with muses too. By stripping them of their internal experiences, we’re stripping them of more realistic feeling characterization. {It becomes, or adds to, a disastrous domino-effect of projected, cardboard stand-in style muses that are in no way a joy to interact with.} This is bad writing, makes for bad reading and interacting.
No one seems to understand show, don’t tell. Let me put it in a simple example: don’t tell me your muse is a good person, show me. Don’t tell me your muse is upset right now, show me.
Your muse has character traits you feel makes them A Good Person. They are compassionate, selfless, and genuinely interested in others. Don’t just leave that in the muse’s bio, or relegate it to statement-style lines like, “she cared deeply about others.” Show me these traits in action and thought. You don’t require anything dramatic to it, either. A muse like this should be a good listener, proceed with their love language in a way reflects personal involvement and a desire to comfort, be willing to sacrifice time and personal interests {don’t keep it to dramatic and literal self-sacrifice to show “selfless”}, legitimately doesn’t think of themselves first and foremost and may need reminding to care for themselves, and will be troubled by unfairness and cruelty in the world.
Your muse has been in a disagreement with a loved one, they’re not just “upset,” they are sad, angry, disappointed, and maybe even confused or surprised. While those are more descriptive and defining of the type of complex “upset” going on here, don’t leave it at these words. Don’t tell me that she said, angrily. Show me that she is having thoughts based on these emotions, actual emotional turmoil at her expectations of a loved one being devastated. Paint me a picture of the sadness in her features, the anger in her walk, how her words come out unpolished and jumbled in her surprise and turmoil.
This is what it means to show me, not tell me.
It also extends to scenes and recollections.
If your muse is happy sitting in her garden, don’t just tell me this. Show me why she is happy there, and define the sort of happiness in her thoughts, body language, voice, and expressions. Describe the aspects of the garden in tones of the happiness they bring, draw comparisons between this and her outward expression of joy with similar word use. It ties together both seamlessly in a way that we can relate to and feel, even if we hate the outdoors.
If this muse had a traumatic incident in her past, this is going to inconveniently come up, even if only in her mind. Don’t play coy about it and drop shit on your partners like, “she was thinking of things and stuff that was bad again.” No. Even if you are alluding or otherwise keeping the actual event secretive, you need to be describing how the muse is feeling, how she is experiencing the world around her through an overlay of upsetting reminders. Show me how she is having a visceral reaction to triggering stimuli while having to keep working or talking.
Additionally, even when your muse isn’t experiencing the scene you have set directly, you should show me instead of telling me about it.
Since my actual least favorite PSA on how it’s better to just tell people because no one wants to read “all that” deals with rain, we’re going to as well. Because it doesn’t have to be excessively descriptive to fucking show me it’s raining or has rained instead of just stating the fact.
Not, “it was raining.” Not, “it was wet outside.”
“In between her words, the distant, wall-dampened splash of cars driving through puddles.”
“He passed by windows beaded with moisture on his way to the kitchen.”
Wow, that was so complex, really a lot to read to get the idea that it is, or has been, raining outside without me directly telling you this!
There isn’t anything wrong with being more descriptive than this {nor is there anything wrong with using the word “rain,” so long as you’re backing it up with a description}, some of us do like to read and write about things like oil-slicked puddles in the street if our muse is seeing them or it is otherwise relevant. It’s just that you don’t have to do this, or have to do it at all times, to show instead of tell. This is yet another serious misunderstanding.
It isn’t that the description is often really that excessive, it’s more often that it is irrelevant to the extreme of sticking out weirdly. In the puddle thing, if my muse isn’t seeing it and/or I am not using that description to further experience, their mindset, personality, or tying it to an analogy later in the reply, it feels weird.
Some superfluous shit isn’t bad either, and superfluous can be purely subjective. It is, again, when it is to such an extreme as to leave your writing partner feeling oddly about a point in the text that seemed to ring with importance, but then held none. That isn’t an act of showing or telling, and neither is it your partner trying to show off as a gifted writer. For whatever reason, they just saw or felt that moment with such passionate clarity they had to include it immediately instead of waiting until a better moment for it. That’s literally it, there’s no need to project your insecurity in weird ass ways.
There are definitely other pieces of traditional-based writing advice that are great and either do transfer to RP perfectly or can with small amendments, but these are the most basic, commonly seen, and important combinations. They are also easy to better understand and apply!
When reading writing advice posts, please, ask yourself how they fit into RP. If they do at all. Many times, when it comes to the absolute basics of writing coherently and enjoyably, or developing characters, they’re great. It’s when they get into topics of some nuance that they don’t cross over so well and are outright damaging.
These pieces of advice are often being misunderstood or misapplied already, then are being passed around to a community notorious for its lacking application of critical thinking. Severe misunderstanding will happen, and terrible writing “rules” within the RPC develop from them.
Do be interested in writing, don’t separate traditional writing and RP writing into categories like “real writing and RP,” be invested in learning and improving. Just ask yourself how it applies to cooperative storytelling that is often thematic in nature, and proceed with caution and the mindset that writing is an art.
If you have the principles down and both yourself and others are enjoying your writing, you’re not doing it in an inherently wrong way because it wouldn’t be published. You’re not writing RP to have it published, and that’s not a bad thing. It’s just a difference to keep in mind when reading PSA’s about the Rules of Writing Whatever.
#tumblr rp#rp help#rp advice#rph#tumblr rpc#rpbetter#rpb#roleplay better#tumblr rp advice#traditional writing advice and rp#queue
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1044
survey by a7xbabii
Do you use e-mail often? I use it for eight hours, five days a week for work, so yes.
Do you hear any animals right now? I’m in a Starbucks inside a mall situated in the middle of a busy highway. It would be very unlikely to hear any animals right now.
Are you in a well-lit room? Sure, I’d say this establishment has good lighting. There’s no light directly above me unlike the other seats, but it’s okay in this case as I don’t want other people seeing me take surveys.
Is your trashcan full? The main one we use at home just got full, so the last time I checked this morning my mom was airing it out.
What was the last crunchy thing you consumed? My chicken barbecue sandwich from last night.
Did you view anything disturbing today? Hmm, I guess so? I wanted to entirely redo one part of my embroidery piece since I wasn’t happy with how I did it, so I had to remove the threads and stuff. When they were all gone the template was filled with holes and it looked like one of those trypophobia photos. I’m not personally disturbed by that phenomenon, but I know a lot of people are.
Are there any holiday decorations in your house? Yeah, we’ve had our Christmas tree up since the beginning of November. We also usually put a wreath up our door but idk why my mom didn’t this year.
When was the last time you had a terrible headache? Last night, because I had not eaten all day.
Have you recently put lotion on your hands? No. I don’t like the feeling of lotion, so I don’t apply it on me a lot, if at all.
Are you hungry? Not so much, actually. I don’t feel too hungry today; I didn’t even finish my breakfast and that’s the only meal I’ve had so far today, and it’s already 4 PM.
Is it rainy where you're at right now? No, it’s quite fair. The sun’s not too strong anymore because of the time, but it’s still very much bright out.
Do you carry a purse? If so, describe what it looks like. I take a wallet with me. It’s pink, made of fake leather, has three main slots inside, and it also has some tiny bite marks on the outer edges from when Cooper was a lot younger.
Is your cell phone on vibrate? For certain notifications only, like texts and Viber.
Is your dishwasher full? We don’t use a dishwasher.
When is the last time you saw someone you like/love. Around a week and a half ago.
Do you like to wear gloves? No, I find them too itchy and I don’t need to wear them anyway.
Is there a body of water near where you live? There’s a creek that passes through my village near the clubhouse area, if that counts.
What are your thoughts on Avenged Sevenfold? No opinion. I never listened to them; though I am reminded of this one mutual I used to have on Tumblr/Twitter. She used to be a wrestling fan and was a part of our main circle, but she gradually shifted her main fandom to Avenged Sevenfold. By the time she cemented her new interest she then went on a huge unfollowing spree of wrestling fans on her feed and she apparently PM’d each person she intended to unfollow, including me. I remember her explaining that she was now in a different fandom and was gonna have to stop following me which I found...kinda extra to be honest lmao because nobody does that, but I appreciate the effort to approach each one of us, I guess.
Are you wearing anything pink right now? Nope, but my wallet is pink and so is my keyboard cover.
Do you like to swim in the ocean? I prefer beaches, but sure.
What is the creepiest bug you've ever saw? Cockroaches.
Do you currently have split ends? I don’t think so.
When is the last time you used the bathroom? Around five hours ago when I took a shower before heading out.
Do you chew on your lip? Almost never.
Are you afraid of needles? For the most part yeah, especially syringes. I’m not afraid of them when I do my embroidery, but that’s the only time I feel comfortable with a needle.
What is the last thing you lost? A pen, I think.
When is the last time you saw a bald person? Five hours ago, when I said bye to my dad.
What car were you last in? [continued from two days ago] My own. I was driving home from the mall.
Do you like Batman? I tried to get into Batman and the whole shebang of comic books when I was a teenager, but I just couldn’t.
Have you ever played tennis? Never have, actually. I’ve always wanted to try.
Can you see a star shape in the room you are in? Probably not in my bedroom.
What are you sitting on? A pillow I’ve placed on my work chair so that it’s more comfortable. My parents got me a basic chair initially meant just for my internship, so it’s not the comfiest of chairs haha. But now that I have a job, a more suitable work chair is probably one of things I’ll have to invest on.
What is the last warm thing you touched? My chest felt itchy just a few seconds ago, so I was able to feel my skin scratching it.
Do you use hand sanitizer? That’s kind of a necessity now, so...
Where do you want to go in life? [continued from...I don’t even remember anymore] I don’t know if I even plan to make it past 30 at this point. I can’t answer this right now.
Are you sweating? No, I’ve been in air-conditioned rooms all day and it feels so damn good.
When is the last time you had to scratch an itch? A few minutes ago when my neck itched.
Are you in any kind of club or group that is trying to save animals? No, but I very much support the cause.
Who is the last blonde you saw? At work today I saw someone who had her hair dyed blonde.
Where were you two hours after you got up, and what were you doing there? I needed to go to the office today because my team and I needed to pack some stuff to seed to certain media. It was the first time I got to visit the place and it was sooooooo homey and pretty :) I wish we can be allowed to work in the office soon; it would be best for my mental health at this point.
Do you wish for world peace? Um, of course.
Have you ever played fetch with a dog? We were able to teach Cooper how to pick up items that we throw but he’s still slowly learning that he actually has to give it back to us, haha.
What is the nearest object that is wood? The table I am typing on is made of wood.
Do you use Netflix? Yes, we have a family subscription.
Does your house have a fireplace? No, we don’t. And I can confidently tell you all other houses in this entire country, and probably the whole of Southeast Asia, don’t.
Do you wake yourself up in the morning, or does someone else? I wake myself up. On important days, I’ll put an alarm on.
What kind of hoodie did you last wear? It was a white hoodie with a UP seal on the left side.
Do you play games on your computer? No, my laptop isn’t equipped for games. I tried downloading Sims 4 when they made it free for a few weeks back in 2018, but my laptop’s fan started whirring like crazy and the battery got drained super fast. The entire period of me booting it up and then deleting it took like, a literal 15 minutes.
What is the last video game that you played? Mario Kart 8 on the Switch. I want to get myself Switch games as gifts, but I’m just so stingy towards myself hahaha.
Have you ever pet a stingray? I’m 50% would like to at least once and 50% I know of what it did to Steve Irwin, and I’m not messing with them.
If you were on vacation, would you ever go to Ireland? It’s not a big item on my bucket list, honestly. I’d love to go to Ireland, but it would probably be a part of a bigger itinerary, like if I decided to take a trip to that part of Europe.
Are you logged into Myspace right now? I haven’t been on there for more than a decade.
Did you have anything bad happen to you today? Yeah, but they’re stuff that happened at work that are a little hard to explain.
Have you ever been to New York? Nope. I’d love to take a trip there.
Do you use the term "lol" if you don't have anything to say? Not really. I use it in the end of my messages more so that I don’t sound mean.
Should you be sleeping right now instead of taking this survey? Hell no. It’s a Friday night so the last thing I want to be doing is sleeping.
Can you truly say you hate anyone? I don’t think so. I greatly dislike my brother, but I guess I don’t hate him. I find it too strong a word.
Have you ever disected a baby pig in a class at school? Not a piglet, no. We dissected an earthworm, a fish, and eventually a frog.
What brand of dish liquid do you use? A local brand you wouldn’t recognize.
When is the last time you ate a Hershey Kiss? It’s probably been more than a year. It’s not my favorite candy.
Do you ever feel unappreciated? Yes.
Do you currently have any blemishes on your face? No. My pimple finally went away, hallelujah.
Who is the last baby you held? My cousin who is now 13 years old. I’m too anxious to hold babies; I always feel like I’d drop them so I find myself declining even when I have the chance to hold one.
Are you a lover? I guess.
Do you use smileys often in text convos? Yes. Not a lot of people like them but it’s better to sound friendly and approachable than stoic.
Do you have the Google toolbar on your computer? Like...Chrome? I have the program, yeah. It’s my default browser as well.
Do you like Sunkist? I’ve never had it.
Would you ever consider being a cannibal? I mean...I guess only if I was in a life-and-death situation, like if a plane I was in crashed on an island and I was starting to get hungry. I certainly don’t fantasize about cannibalism on any regular day.
Did you forget something important in the past week? I made a few mistakes at work due to me forgetting things, yeah.
Do you like learning new things? Sure.
What color is your toothpaste? White.
Are the floors in your house creaky? Nopes. I don’t think our doors are creaky-level just yet as well.
Do you fear death? I hate the uncertainty of what happens while it’s taking place, and what happens after. But I’ve been wishing for it for a while as well. There’s a difference.
Is your mouth dry? Not right now, no.
Do yoou have any scars from an animal? Yeah I’ve got a few marks and scratches from Cooper. I never run out of them, really.
Did you have fun with this survey? It was okay.
Was it random enough? Sure.
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