#the first time I realized I do this was in middle school

[coca-colas-truck-driver]

john didnt notice at first, and dean doesnt remember if that encouraged him to continue or not. sams pacifier had been lost in the fire, the baby scared and crying in dean’s arms as he held him while his father tried to explain what he saw to the firefighters. john had sounded like a blubbering mess of a man, sounded mad as he told them about how his wife had been pinned to the ceiling, her white night dress stained with her blood and guts. while dean craddled sam in his small arms, watched his baby brother’s face go from being wrinkled up in anguish to a soft and sweet expression of contentment at being offered dean’s own small thumb. dean had giggled, cooing at his younger brother like he’d done when tucking him in bed with mom.

itd continued after that night, john being too preoccupied, for the short time they still lived in that house, with staying up and doing rounds around the house. checking the salt lines around the doors and windows, and drawing symbols on the walls and floors to ward away whatever he could find a deterrent for.

dean doesnt remember those days well, remembers a few nights of staying up with his father while sammy slept cradled in his lap, stirring every time dean tried to take his thumb away.

by the time john realized, it was only a year or so later, muttering something about how its good he’s taking care of sam. it had made dean smile to himself, smoothing the chestnut hair.

but by the time sam was four, it wasnt as cute. john was starting to make comments about how sam wouldnt of even had a pacifier this long, furrowed eyebrows and narrowed eyes looking down at his eldest son as he told him to quit that “sissy” shit.

dean had stopped doing it where john could see, retreating to the dark shadows of the backseat of the impala, sam in the middle seat next to him with his head on dean’s shoulder. sam wouldnt be able to sleep even though he’d just been out like a light forty five minutes ago before john woke them up to leave, whispering under the loud rattle of music shaking from the speakers sam would tell dean “just till i fall asleep?”

dean would oblige, sneaking his hand around sam’s shoulders and nudging his thumb against his little brother’s mouth. sam would open, sucking softly at the rough pad of dean’s thumb. sam would be out in less than a minute, rocked to sleep by john speeding down an empty highway. dean would smile, wiping sam’s spit off on sam’s pajama shirt as his nose wrinkled up.

it continued well after sam started school, his baby brother nudging his chin against dean’s palm once they’ve laid down for the night in scratchy, stained sheets on top of a lumpy mattress. dean would make any kind noise that wouldn’t disturb their dad in the bed beside their’s, and sam would take it as affirmation. pink lips would wrap around the base of his thumb before sammy’s eyelids would flutter shut. he continued the practice of pulling his thumb away after sam fell asleep. the kid was getting older, and they should of quit it years ago. john already hadnt approved of the habit when sam’s mouth wasnt the only thing making puberty extra hard for dean.

by the time dean was sixteen, he was still letting sam suck on his thumb to go sleep. only now, sam would lay down on his stomach, cheek pressed against dean’s knee as the boy blinked up at him.

it was dean’s own fault, he’d offered sam his thumb when they were watching some cartoon and instead of taking a nap like dean thought he would have, sam had let dean practically hold his head up with his palm while he suckled on the calloused thumb.

dean offered sam the remote, carding his fingers through sam’s hair as his little brother propped himself up on his elbows to scroll through the channels. he picked some action movie, and dean chuckled as he took the remote back from sam when offered, setting it on the side table behind his head.

dean readjusted before sam settled back in, the back of his neck dug into the armrest of the couch, but he barely noticed as sam laid back between his legs, lips parting around a silent, contended sigh as dean slid his middle and ring finger in. sam wrapped his lips around the second knuckles, his tongue subconsciously tracing the seam between the two digits as his half-lidded eyes looked over to the television.

dean didnt pay attention to the explosions and repetitive sound of guns firing, focused on the way sam would occasionally readjust the way his mouth was sucking. he could see it as much as he could feel it, his soft pink tongue taking up too much room as he swallowed the spit that had collected in his mouth when he was in a daze before he’d blush a little more. dean would pet his hair occasionally, barely having to focus on not letting his blood rush south. it was like muscle memory at this point around his little brother.

sam would gnaw softly, barely paying attention, and dean would hiss every time his teeth dug in a little too much. sam would run his tongue over the base of his fingers, eyebrows drawn together in a silent apology. it made dean feel dirty, pulling his fingers out of his baby brother’s mouth as he wiped his fingers off on the shoulder of sam’s shirt. “lunch time, kiddo?”

[joudama]

And that’s that for Veilguard. Got all the achievements and got the four main possible endings (didn’t bother with the bad ending where you do none of the side quests, everyone dies, and you end up trapped in the Fade forever with Solas).

My four Rooks:

Female Shadow Dragon elf mage - saved Minrathous - romanced Harding - punched Solas in the face

Female Antivan Crow human rogue - saved Treviso - romanced Lucanis - tricked Solas into using the fake dagger

Male Grey Warden dwarf warrior (this was originally going be a Qunari, but I couldn’t get over the yassified look of all the qunari I tried to make and I gave up) - saved Treviso - romanced Davrin (meant to romance Bellara and lol welp, that didn’t happen) - big softie who sent Solas into the Fade with the Inquisitor

Male Mourn Watch elf mage - saved Minrathous - romanced Emmrich (meant to romance Bellara or Neve and lol welp, that didn’t happen) - told the Inquisitor she could do better and made Solas go off into the Fade alone.

My Mourn Watch one is probably going to be my “canon” run, since I liked it the best (that’s not saying much) of my runs. I went with a life leeching run for him, including using the unique items that made health potions/companion heals not work, and beefed up leeching. Literally the only time I died was when my controller ran out of juice in the middle of a dragon fight. The Elgar’nan fight was over so fast I was like, “Wait, is that it?” It was like the curb stomp fight in Inquisition with Corypheus before they let you have enemies scale up with you.

And now for my thoughts. And oh boy, do I have a lot of them. Hoo.

I have…so many issues with this game. It is a very good…whatever the gaming equivalent of a popcorn flick is. It’s great if you go in with your brain turned off and enjoy all the shiny. But that’s not what I want in a Dragon Age game. I’ve been replaying DA2 - the game that DATV is basically trying to channel - while playing these, and the difference in writing quality and intricacy of plot and world building could not be more sharp. The first time I played DATV, I thought it was fine. Almost aggressively fine. I had fun with streaming the game and seeing where it went. I loved the reveals with the wolf statues. I had some major issues with the writing being as subtle as a brick to the face at times (more on my thoughts about the dialogue LATER, because oh boy), but it was serviceable. And I genuinely thought Veilguard had been robbed by not being nominated for Art Direction at the Game Awards, because say what you will, the areas are fucking gorgeous. But, even then, I was like, “Yeah, this would not have deserved a GOTY nomination had it gotten one,” and placed it at a 7 or 8 out of 10. A good enough, enjoyable game that ran well, but was not by any means GOTY material.

Then I made the mistake of playing it again, and the cracks began to show. By the time I hit the middle of Act 2 of my third run, I was just so done. I hated every time certain companions had anything to say at all. I hated that you couldn’t call people out for being a jerk but had to be the supportive nursery school teacher at all times to them. And for the first time playing any BioWare game at all, I found myself wishing I could either not recruit certain people or kick them out of camp. The cracks were beyond showing at that point, and I no longer thought the writing was even “serviceable.” Things that hadn’t seemed so bad on that first popcorn flick run suddenly became a problem - not being able to actually talk to your companions to get to know them went from “it feels more natural to have them saying this stuff while out in the field” to “what is even the point of going around the Lighthouse if all it gets me is a line spoken at me or overhearing bits of them having ACTUAL conversations?” It legitimately hurt replayability. I missed being able to actually talk to my companions, and I realized I cared more about Manfred and Assan than most of my companions because Manfred and Assan actually seemed to like interacting with me. I will take Manfred’s rock-paper-scissors game over a “hey Rook” and dead-eyed stare.

By the time I hit late act 2, I couldn’t wait for it to be over so I could delete the damn game off my hard drive…only for the last achievement I had yet to get to NOT pop when I finished the game. I looked it up and discovered it wasn’t set by triggering a certain end state, but was tied to picking some flowers in Act 2, and wanted to cry. I don’t usually 100% games, especially if I feel like some of the achievements are bullshit I don’t want to do (‘sup, MELE needing you to do some Armax Arena Spectre-level fight - I would sooner chew off my own arm than do that, as anyone who watched me stream Veilguard would have guessed watching me kvetching the whole time I was doing that Hall of Valor shit), but that was just frustrating. I decided to try to get it on a fresh run as a Mourn Watcher, since I’d heard that was one of the surprisingly good faction backgrounds, and that was a good choice. Mourn Watch became my favorite faction, when it had been Shadow Dragons until then. It added so much to a lot more conversations than I would have thought, and made it so I actually enjoyed the sadly few times you get to actually have conversations instead of eavesdropping/being talked at. I’m glad I decided to slog through one more time for that achievement, because if I’d ended it on that third run, I know I would have never played it again. It turned back into a popcorn movie again, aided by me knowing when to put on a YouTube video and watch or scroll through Bluesky instead of listening to a certain character be the fucking worst. If I ever play again, it’ll be a Mourn Watcher (I already know the Veil Jumpers and Lords of Fortune are considered, shall we say, lackluster background factions.)

Which brings me to some of the big, fundamental problems this game had.

This is not a CRPG. It’s just not. It’s an action RPG now, with the focus on “action” not “RPG.” It’s part of the whole Mass Effect-ification of Dragon Age. And I say this as a huge Mass Effect fan:

Dragon Age should not be like Mass Effect. And vice versa.

When Andromeda came out, they decided to ditch the Paragon/Renegade system, and instead went for DAI-style emotion-based options. Which seems great! More speech choices to make a more nuanced Ryder instead of picking up or down! Great! Only no! A lot of people hated it because it didn’t feel like Mass Effect. They had taken away something that had seemed like a major part of how you roll played in the series, and replaced it something very different. It was the first time they took a mechanic from one game and ported it into another, and it didn’t really go over well with a lot of ME fans because it didn’t feel like a Mass Effect mechanic.

And now with Veilguard, they basically made a Mass Effect game with a Dragon Age skin on it. And it just doesn’t work.

Combat: They copied the combat wheel from Mass Effect, but did it kind of badly. I honestly hated it because I tried to play like I do in Mass Effect - pull it up, use it to look around and get a handle on my environment, then pick an enemy or a safe space to bolt to - and the camera snapping the enemies meant I couldn’t. It drove me crazy because it was like the Mass Effect wheel but fundamentally not, and the camera drove me mad because I’d pull it up trying to find where the nearest blight boil was, and it would snap on enemies instead of just letting me look. It’s like they wanted to get rid of every little bit of tactical game play and replace with smashy smashy bang bang instead. Don’t think, don’t plan, just attack…which fits in with the popcorn flick-ness of DATV. Don’t think, just do. Turn your brain off and look at the particle effects.

Another Mass Effect-ification with regards to combat is dropping from taking 3 companions to 2. Which you need to do to have that Mass Effect style combat wheel, and the Mass Effect 3/Andromeda style primer/detonation style interaction of companion powers. It was very satisfying, but not very Dragon Age-y, and requires throwing out some of that DA lore to make it work, because now everyone uses magic-based abilities even if they aren’t mages. Assan attacks deal fire damage. You can spec a warrior who calls up a giant lightning hammer to twirl around, and…how? That’s not enchantment, that’s plain ol’ magic, and how?! Warriors didn’t deal magic-based attacks uncles their weapons where enchanted before, but now, everyone is just tossing magic attacks at everything. That’s not how the world of Thedas has worked until now, but you can’t have those flashy explosions or particle effects otherwise, so shhh, turn off your brain and don’t think, shhh. Look at the screen light up and the pretty lights. It worked in Mass Effect because they had already set up tech and biotic attacks, but there’s no way to make hitting something hard with a sword cause it to blow up and damage all the other baddies around them, so now everyone has magic. OK.

As an aside, it was also a really bad idea of get rid of how aggro worked. Dragon Age had always worked by warriors drawing aggro because they had the heavier armor (or could use taunt on enemies targeting squishy mages or rogues). Rogues had lower aggro because they had lighter armor, and could sneak. Mages had even lower aggro because they had the lightest armor and were distance fighters. DATV threw that out the window, and Rook draws all aggro because they are the only ones with a health bar. Your squad is immortal in fights, which means there’s no reason for enemies to ever target them. Which means god help you early game when mages and rogues have no real skills yet. Enjoy dodging while your companions hit the enemies with what seems like attacks as powerful as spitballs. It also means that there are times what the game tells you and the fight you just seem are completely at odds. Remember that fight with the Wrath of the Stone in Harding’s companion quest? That thing is on your ass the entire time, but then at the end of it, Rook says something along the lines of “It really hates Harding,” and…are you gaslighting me, game? That thing ignored Harding the whole damn time in favor of trying to stomp me like a cockroach. Harding did not exist to it during my fight. It had a hate boner for Rook and Rook alone, no matter what the game tried to insist on after.

Now, imagine how that would have felt if Harding actually could have been killed/knocked out during the fight, and it was only going after her? What if you couldn’t damage it if it took her down, so you had to make sure she stayed alive? Imagine how different that fight would have hit then? But no, that would mean the devs have to think about how to rez characters and how healing would work, and would mean players have to be tactical, and shh, no, no more of that, no thinking, just dodge and hit things and look at the particle effects. Shh. Have some more popcorn.

Story: DATV wants so badly to be ME2. It wants to recall the big suicide mission where you have to have everyone ready or you’ll all die. But you can’t copy what you did before and get the same flowers and results. You just can’t. You can try, and all you’ll get is diminishing returns. They tried to do the big cosmic horror of ME1, complete with a Virmire choice, then have the big final stakes of ME2, and no. You can’t follow a template and get the same greatness. That’s not how it works.

And speaking of following templates…

Romances: The romances in Veilguard are just dismal. And I think it’s because they decided to follow the Mass Effect pacing formula instead of the Dragon Age one.

Dragon Age: You start flirting in Act 1. You usually flirt with everyone because hey, why not? Some time in Act 2, things start getting serious, and you have to settle on who you want to go for. Things start to get serious, you get together, and then you get happy fun adult time with your new LI. You get the option to break it off or commit to them fully. By Act 3, you’re in a committed relationship. People comment about it. You can go to them and spend time with them - nothing major, maybe just a kiss. There might also be a special scene that’s just with them and unique to the romance. And by the end, after the lengthy amount of time that’s passed, you are Together.

Mass Effect: You start flirting in Act 1. You usually flirt with everyone because hey, why not? In Act 2, you keep on flirting with everyone. By the end, you might have to make a choice if you’re flirting too hard with everyone and the two LI options tell you to pick someone already, but you’re just picking who you’re interested in. Early in Act 3, there might be an almost kiss, but it’s mostly just the occasional anticipation of eventually boning and nothing really happens until right before the final big fight, when your LI shows up to your cabin for “oh shit, we might die in a few hours, so let’s go out with a high note” happy fun adult time. The only time you get that “committed relationship” vibes is in ME3 if you’re romanced the same character for at least one other game, and you choose to continue the relationship.

The Mass Effect pacing works in the Mass Effect trilogy because each game is only 20-40 hours long. Veilguard is a good 80 hours long. That means using that same amount of romance you use in ME is going to mean you’ve got too little butter to spread over too much bread. It’s why you have a good start for the romances in Act 1, then act 2 is a such a desert of nothing after you commit that I genuinely wondered if I’d hit the wrong option at said no at several points during the very long third act. There’s not just enough content for that long of an Act 2. Near the end everyone starts commenting on you being with them, but it’s not actually happening in the game. There’s no flirting, there are no extra scenes, and even the scene when you commit to them is based on a scene that happens with everyone, just with a romance option tacked on. The only person (of the ones I romanced, so I can’t speak to the others) who really get unique scenes was Emmerich. He actually takes you out on a unique date. It helped a lot to make Emmerich’s romance feel more fleshed out than the others. And Davrin had so many little jaunts out in the woods that those turned into romantic trips out, which added a lot to his. But Lucanis’ and Hardings? With both of them, like I said before, I genuinely wondered if I had accidentally opted out. Their romances most used the Mass Effect format, and it just doesn’t work for a game this long. BioWare knew that once, long ago, because Andromeda did not use the ME trilogy format for romances and was closer to one they used in DA. But DATV is trying to be ME2, so they used ME2’s very thin romances as a guide.

And we can all see how well that turned out.

The Executors: Fuck me, they feel like Cerberus reskinned, and I absolutely hated when Mass Effect shifted from sci-fi/Lovecraftian horror to space opera with Cerberus as the main bad guys you have to fight with the Reapers functionally falling to the background. The Executors are a secret, shadowy organization pulling strings from behind the scenes like the Shadow Broker codexes in ME2 retconned Cerberus into having been doing in ME. Ugh.

The Andromeda-ification of dialogue: Remember Peebee? Remember how she talked? Give her long hair and pointy ears, and she’s Bellara. Down even to the techno-babble. It’s like they’re trying to change magic to just “sufficiently advanced technology.” Everyone speaks in that modern, quippy style that was annoying in a game set hundreds of years in the future because it felt dated by the time the game came out (Ryder makes a Frozen joke, y’all). And it feels completely out of place in a game set in an early modern setting (I don’t think DA is medieval, honestly - it’s more a pre-industrialization/early scientific revoltution setting, so more 1500-1700s, and I’m gonna stop now). It was jarring. You can only let one quirky character break the rules about how people talk (Alistair in DAO, Varric in DA2, Cole in DAI) but when everyone does, it’s jarring. You can be anachronistic, but you have to know what you’re doing and how to do it when you do, and I’m sorry, but the current crop of BioWare writers don’t. They wrote the dialogue like it was a modern day YA novel, not a Dragon Age game. It would have been fine for a modern day urban fantasy game. It was not fine for a DA game set in the same time period as people using the four humours for “modern” medicine (remember the surgeon in DAI? Talked about the four humours? Yeah.)

OK, I did not intend to go on for this long, and I haven’t even gotten to what the game did to how religion is handled or the sociopolitical aspects of Thedas, and how they threw out so much that made Dragon Age unique in their urge to do a soft reboot, so I’m just going to end it here. I wanted to love this game, and I can only do that if I turn my brain off, and that’s not what Dragon Age should be.

[fbfh]

Could I request a drabble with Dave Lizewski and his best friend who has a major crush on Kick Ass and tells Dave all the dirty details?

OOOOOH SCRUMDIDDLYUMPTIOUS. aged up to 18+ obvs, give me a hoot or holler in the notes or my ask box if you want a fluffier version lol

Dave always wondered why girls never noticed him. he figured it was cause he's a quiet geeky nerd who likes comic books and superheroes. nope. it's because of you. when you first met Dave - however old you were, freshman, middle schoolers, kindergarteners - you latched the fuck onto this boy so fast. you've always been protective over him, always had that vibe that says you fuck with him, I'll fuck you up. besides, having a best friend as hot as you immediately made everyone assume he's totally off the market. like, it should be obvious. being "best friends" with someone as hot as you, spending all your time together - you have sleepovers for god's sake. EVERYONE at school fully believes you're fucking. the only ones unaware of this are Dave and Todd and Marty and possibly yourself.

it's at one of these infamous sleepovers that you finally spilled the beans. you've been obsessing over kickass for weeks, constantly talking about him and his exploits to Dave. you just got your hands on another grainy, horribly low quality picture of kickass stopping a purse snatching from someone's video doorbell. you're sitting at Dave's desk while he's flopped on his bed, finishing some homework.

"fuck I want him in my mouth so fucking bad..."

it just slips out, but Dave is instantly hard. he startles, sputtering and desperate to know who his best friend is practically moaning for.

"y-you want who?!" he demands in confusion at your sudden outburst, causing both of you to laugh. you turn the monitor towards him, and Dave sees himself looking back. his stomach does the thing, that flippy jerky oh shit thing from both anxiety and horniness. he is really, really hard now.

"k-kickass?" he asks, his voice getting all whiny and cracking in that way you've always found so cute.

"yes!" you exclaim with a laugh, looking at him incredulously. "come on Dave, you told me about a sex dream you had about our math teacher two days ago. he groans half heartedly at you bringing up.

"I already regret telling you about that." he protests playfully, his voice muffled into his duvet.

"just look at him," you sigh, already looking at the pictures of kickass. "look at his arms... I'd probably cum just from him putting me in a headlock."

Dave nearly chokes on his spit. He's really glad he's laying on his stomach so you can't see the way he's kind of rubbing against his mattress. it's not on purpose or anything, it's not like he's trying to get off to his best friend (even though he has before. like a lot. like he has to clear his porn search history because it's all descriptors of people who look like you) but when you're going on and on about how wet you'd get from being choked by a guy without realizing he's actually inches away from you... well, what is he supposed to do??

"christ, you can see his whole bulge in this one," you murmur, biting you lip. "I have never wanted to suck someone off so bad."

Dave lets out a choked noise, which you interpret as more playful disgust over your thirsting.

"I'm serious!" you exclaim. "I swear to god, he could keep me barefoot and pregnant and I'd thank him."

Dave's hips have started moving faster on their own as he grinds against his mattress. he knows he shouldn't prod for more details of what you'd do to kickass - to him - he knows you're his best friend and that you'd probably think he was some sick freak if you knew the truth, that he's kickass and he's getting off to you listening to you talk about him like that. Dave loves you, he respects you and admires you and cherishes your friendship so much, so why is feeling guilty and conflicted about about listening to you unintentionally dirty talk like this making it feel so good??

"literally, I would make sure his balls were always empty. like, always." you state.

each word that tumbles out of your mouth makes his blood burn with lust.

"U-uh huh," he chokes out, fighting for his LIFE not to moan in front of you right now.

"just one chance," you sigh, "I just know he's majorly packing. Bet he cums a lot too." you murmur.

you're pouting now. pouting over not being able to taste his cock. the same cock Dave is trying to discreetly jerk off just a few feet away from you. he whines softly, praying you won't notice as you continue to look through photos of him as kickass.

"I don't think I've ever been so down for someone," you whine, throwing your head back and sighing. "okay, you can't tell anyone about this-"

you start seriously.

"but I literally got off thinking about him last night, and I came so hard-"

and if that's not the straw that breaks the camel's back. Dave lets out a strangled, stifled whining moan as his hips rut and stutter against his mattress. his head swims as he cums in his pants, blinded by a raw, pure pleasure.

"O-oh god!" he pants, head spinning as he comes down from his high. his cheeks are flushed, and he can't fucking believe he just did that in front of you. he swallows thickly, terrified - and for some reason, a little thrilled by how you'll react.

you look over at him, eyes locked on him for a moment. it only takes you a second to realize what just happened - your horndog best friend got so turned on from listening to you thirst over kickass that he actually creamed his pants.

"You're so gross," you laugh playfully, throwing a pen at him. "I hope you know how lucky you are that I'm great at keeping secrets." you finish, an unspoken promise that tonight will stay between the two of you.

you turn back to what you're doing, unperturbed by the fact that your best friend just came in his pants from hearing you talk like that, chalking it up to Dave being Dave. this isn't the first time he's gotten hard at an awkward time, but usually he just sneaks off to the bathroom or something to take care of it himself. you had a hunch he might resort to something like this eventually, so you're not too surprised.

"Anyway, what do you think his type is?" you ask, swiveling around Dave's desk chair to look at him. your arms are crossed on the back of the chair, and you lean down on them as you look at him.

"Like, from an objective, guy perspective?"

"U-uh," Dave starts with a soft, nervous laugh, still unable to believe that just happened. "I- I don't know..." he shrugs.

he thinks that's the first time he's lied to you. he knows exactly what kickass's type is, because he's looking right at you.

[oobbbear]

I subconsciously bite my hand n’ arm

[dusty-pistol]

What does a fella do when you wanna talk with your moots, but you don't know HOW or WHAT to say? I wanna SOCIALIZE I wanna MAKE FRIENDS, but I also have a really big issue with not knowin what to say, so I accidentally leave people on read, and then I feel guilty. I swear I'm cool and fun to be around!! I just need to talk more

[greyslates]

rewatching black butler for the nostalgia in 2023

[aiscapades]

i'm just traumatized by being given like the most popular name of the early 2000s and having 8 other Ashleys in every class growing up

[chickenbyday]

So I was supposed to be asleep three hours ago so take this with a grain of salt but. I think bdsm could have fixed Tyler durden.

[heartual]

reading easier level books with the open dyslexic font is actually making reading fun again 2 me

[echoesofadream]

Actually what do I study if I am kind of a little bit a stem-girlie but also really definitely not. And I like psychology, religion, languages and linguistics, cultural anthropology/ethnography. Like maths (algebraic, bad at numbers), abhor statistics, like physics (but really bad at a lot of it), dislike chemistry, is okay with biology but not extremely passionate about it quite lukewarm really though medicine is my favorite aspect of it and i kind of like it. Well?

[fatelcved]

i’ll have y’all know that i was ready to pass out before i saw this silly lil video which made me wanna make a silly lil guy and now we got a backstory and personality and brain rot over a new oc 💜

[rosicheeks]

🎶

[dweebstatus4ages]

💜😊

[britneyshakespeare]

So I was back to subbing at the elementary school today, which as I've mentioned is my favorite place to work. In some ways it's just the most comfortable to me; this is now my fourth year in a row I've had some kind of job associated with kids of that age group who attend that school, so I know a lot of the students and faculty. Actually, a lot of the faculty who work there today have been working there since I was a student.

Most of them recognized me immediately when I started showing my face there, like I didn't graduate from there over a decade ago, age 11. There was one para, who now works as a library assistant, but who used to monitor lunch and recess. I didn't remember her name but I knew her face. The first time she saw me subbing she was just like "oh, hi Diana."

I was talking to her this morning before school started because a first grade teacher unexpectedly called out, so I filled in for her for the first hour of the day before I started the job I clocked in for and a replacement could be found. But this library assistant usually leads the morning meetings with this first grade class and would help me with attendance and all those other beginning-of-the-day responsibilities.

She was saying to me "You know, why don't you work here full time? You're good with kids. You'd be good at it." In other small talk we'd had last year she had asked me similar things, like if I'd ever consider taking up a steady job at the elementary school, how my school was going, etc. I'm in between college right now but currently not taking classes. And I mentioned how I'm trying to take more sub jobs at the middle and high school so I get more well-rounded—that actually is the age group my education major is in. I've been working with the preschool-to-fifth-grade age range but my plan has always been middle-to-high school English.

And I was telling her about that, and I was like "You know what? When I tell people I want to teach older kids, some say to me stuff like 'oh you never know, you might change your mind'—and only recently I've been wondering if I really would. But I hate it when they're right!"

And that made her laugh. But it's true! I do really love working with the littles, as it turns out. Been doing it several years now. But in terms of anyone who's ever mentioned that to me unprompted, I wanna be like... hey, what do you know?!?!

[astrxealis]

fun story i got the dlc of 'a date with death' at school LMFAO ..... i have cash but not gcash (it's a filipino thing) so i was talking w my friend in class who also played the game (and she calls me a nerd /pos a lot lol) and i was like i want the dlc but i have no gcash... and she was like ok i'll give you gcash..... enabler ....... but also she wants me to tell her abt it so. ^_^ ecks dee

[absolutelygorkedmydude]

Uh. Got a little carried away in the tags. But this is very interesting!

little joel on youtube got me wondering what the percentage is actually like. please reblog so i can get more responses and thus a more representative data pool for my demographic of "people who use tumblr in 2023"