#the poll is up until I finish uni

[starsstuddedsky]

Tangled in Love

vernon x reader

summary: there's nothing in the world that vernon loves more than cats. at least, that's what you think

genre: fluff, tiny bit of angst, non-idol!au, uni au, f2L, idiots to lovers, fake dating if you squint, technically university au

warnings: none!

wc: 3.8k

a/n: started this a WHILE ago and finished it like a month ago but i wanted to let it sit lol,,, may or may not have been the other option for the poll i put out and then i may or may not have forgotten to post.... anyways i am working for literally the whole summer until school starts again so i can't promise i'll be writing a whole bunch </3 so basically: enjoy bc idk when anything else will come lol (not going on official hiatus though!! just like... limbo) pls pls feel free to drop in anytime and chat!! also requests are open but again,, i'll write when i write lol

tldr: adulting sucks, i love you all, none of this has to do with the actual story lol

Vernon’s car sits in your driveway. The sight of his little red sedan evokes a strong sense of familiarity, almost as if it’s yours. It’s survived high school and his first three years of college, up till now, though the engine sometimes shakes the car a little too much and the air conditioning chooses to work less often than you would prefer. Still, the one time Vernon mentioned getting a new car, you nearly cried, so you don’t let yourself complain too much. 

He waits for you, keys in hand, as you tug on your shoes and sprint out the door with a shout of goodbye to your parents. Your shoes nearly slip off because you didn’t put them on all the way and they’re still untied when you make it to the front seat, slamming the door shut behind you and pulling on your seatbelt. 

“You didn’t have to rush,” Vernon says, barely sparing a glance at you. You do a supreme job pretending it doesn’t bother you. 

“Yeah, but my dad is watching hockey,” you say. Though it’s been years since Vernon has been to your house for a “play date,” you know the memory of your father yelling at the television as if the players can hear him isn’t one that Vernon (or anyone for that matter) can forget easily. 

“You know if you move out, you don’t have to hear them,” he says, finally glancing at you before turning his head to watch the road as he backs down the driveway. 

“If I move out, I also have to pay my bills on my own,” you say. 

“You have three job offers and you haven’t even graduated yet,” Vernon says. “Of all our friends, you are the most financially stable, so don’t you dare try that argument on me.” This debate has been going on ever since Vernon announced he was moving out; two years in the dorms on campus proved more than enough for him. 

You don’t understand why he’s so insistent about you moving out. Sure you complain about your parents occasionally but not enough to really matter, and he knows how grateful you are that they’ve let you stay in your childhood room and rarely let you pay for anything. 

So why? You set your eyes on him, with his annoyingly perfect features that you’ve known most of your life. He studies the road, indifferent to your glare and undistracted. 

That’s the Vernon you know: focused on the moment, and never noticing you. You know how pitiful you sound, pining for someone for so long who has never once spared you a second look. Still, before everything else, he’s your friend, your best friend. You won’t ruin that just because you caught feelings. 

“Why are we going an hour away again?” You ask, resting your back against the cushioned seats and turning your head to the window to watch the scenery pass by. It’s easier to avoid thinking about those feelings when you aren’t staring at him. 

“Because the people running the rescue needed a volunteer to pick up the kittens.” 

“And why am I here?” 

“So I don’t get kidnapped or murdered,” Vernon says nonchalantly. 

“How am I going to prevent you from getting kidnapped or murdered?” 

“Strength in numbers?” He takes his eyes off the road for half a second to flash a smile at you. 

You rolled your eyes, plugging your phone into the aux. “You should have asked Jihoon. Between his gym obsession and unbridled rage, the nonexistent potential kidnappers-murderers would never stand a chance.” 

“And he has good taste in music. Bump,” he says, bracing his arm in front of you as he hit a particularly large pothole. He drops his arm as soon as the car stops shaking and you ignore the urge to catch his hand in yours. 

“He does not, and you better not be implying I have bad taste!” You dig through your playlists, trying to find the Vernon-approved one. 

“I was implying but now I’ll outright say it.” 

“His playlist is just Bruno Mars and Harry Styles and one random Ariana Grande song.” You hold up the shared playlist for good measure. Vernon ignores you, refusing to take his eyes off the road. 

“Okay, not good taste, but better than yours.” 

“What is wrong with my taste in music?” 

“No comment.” 

“How have we been friends this long?” You ask. You can’t quite say it with a straight face; the idea of not having Vernon in your life is an absurdity you can’t imagine. 

“By the way, you need to give directions,” Vernon says. “I sent you the address last week.” 

You shake your head but dig through the messages to find the address, putting Jihoon’s playlist on to prove your point. Vernon pretends not to care, singing along to “Leave the Door Open,” as if he didn’t make fun of Jihoon a week ago because he played the song on repeat during his four hour shift at the cafe. 

When you’re being honest with yourself, you know you want more than riding in Vernon’s front seat and making pointless jokes. More than once, you’ve imagined what it’s like to go home with him and stay there, to wake up in his bed because you share it with him, instead of the times you drank too much and he slept on the couch (because of course Vernon is the type of person to give up his bed for his friend). Moments like that make it harder to remember that he doesn’t feel the same way. 

You were doing a great job of paying attention until the second half hour, when you got stuck in standstill traffic. In your mind, only a few minutes pass, but suddenly Vernon shakes your shoulder and your heart shoots bolts of adrenaline into your veins to wake you up. 

“We’re here,” he says softly. He holds your phone with the directions still open. The engine shakes the car; he must have literally just stopped. It takes a couple moments to remember that he drove you into the middle of nowhere to pick up some kittens to foster them (another bullet point in the ever growing list of why you love Vernon: he does absolutely insane things for what he loves. What would it be like to be the person he loves?). He stares at you for a moment and for some godforsaken reason, you think he’s going to kiss you. 

He points to the corner of your lips. “You drooled.” He laughs at your groan, turning in his seat and cutting the engine, tossing your phone into your lap. 

The door creaks when you pull on the handle but it swings open. You are extra careful when you swing it shut, being as gentle as possible. Vernon raises his eyebrows but doesn’t comment on it. You stretch until your back finally pops, jogging to catch up with Vernon who didn’t wait for you, striding up the smooth driveway. 

Warm pastel yellow greets you, a cute door that matches the array of flowers on the front porch perfectly. Vernon sneezes and presses the doorbell, stepping back to wait, shoulder pressing against yours. Even though his jean jacket and your cotton t-shirt separate you from really touching him, you feel a different sort of warm, a tingly feeling that spreads from your insides and makes you feel giddy. 

After a couple minutes, the door opens, revealing a smiling woman and a child that can’t be more than five clinging to her leg. “You must be the fosters! Sorry, it’s a little hectic today, but come on in!” She ushers you in, picking up the child. 

Some psychopath. You glance at Vernon but he turns his back on you, following the woman down the hall to a closed door. Whatever, it’s not like he needs to see you to know the jokes you make. 

“We’ve been keeping them away from the rest of the house since it gets so chaotic,” she says. “I’d love to keep them but we’ve got two toddlers and a hyperactive dog.” She sounds genuinely regretful, which you understand as soon as you step over the baby gate and into the room. It looks like it was a spare bedroom (you can’t help but think it’s for the children when they get too big to share a room), but the bed has been stripped and there isn’t any other furniture. In the middle of the room, in a nest of blankets, a grown cat sits and licks tiny balls of fur that mewl softly in protest. The black cat pauses in her grooming, studying you and Vernon while the woman and her child watch from the door. 

“Do you want to tell the lovely couple what we named them?” She asks the child. 

You freeze. Did she just call you a couple? “We’re not–” Vernon stops you with a hand on your arm, sitting cross legged on the ground and facing the woman and her child. 

“The momma is Pinky,” the child mumbles, barely audible. “‘Cause she has really pink feet.” 

You smile at her, though you’re still reeling from Vernon’s hand, which slips from your arm to interlace his fingers with yours. “Did you name her?” 

The child grins. “Yeah! But my brother named the babies.” She pouts. 

“I think Pinky is a great name,” you say. Vernon grunts in agreement. Pinky stands and wanders slowly toward Vernon’s hand (the one not holding yours), which he holds outstretched while looking away. Looking at you. You get to see the exact moment Pinky brushes her head against his fingers, watch the corners of his mouth creep up in satisfaction, watch his eyes slip away from yours as he strokes her head. She lets off a low rumble as she purrs, brushing her whole body against his foot before leaving him to study you. 

You’ve never thought of yourself as a cat-person or a dog-person (you love them all the same), but a life-time as Vernon’s best friend (and an abundance of cat cafes) have trained you in how to get cat’s to befriend you. You let Pinky move however she wants, hyper aware of Vernon’s hand squeezing yours once before letting go. 

He shifts to look at the kittens, earning a wary glance from Pinky. She watches him for a moment before turning back to you, brushing against your hand and eventually turning her back on you, purring like the engine of Vernon’s car the entire time. 

“What’s this one called?” Vernon asks, pointing to the orange colored kitten. 

“That’s Muffin, Momma named her,” the child explains. She stands at the baby gate alone, her mother off somewhere getting all of their supplies so that you and Vernon can leave with them. Her little fingers curl around the metal. “The black one is Fried and the white one is Egg. That’s what my brother named them.” 

Vernon nods, smiling over the tiny kittens. Pinky finally decides she doesn’t want him quite so close, leaving your side to place herself between him and the kittens. He laughs, sliding back to sit next to you. 

“There’s no way you don’t end up adopting at least one of them,” you whisper. 

“I have self-control.” 

“Wanna bet?” 

Vernon turns to look at you except he’s much too close, nose just barely brushing against yours. It takes all of your willpower not to glance at his lips, infinitely harder when you realize you can feel his breath on your lips. Would he kiss you back? You push that fantasy away immediately: it’s Vernon. He’d push you away and call you weird, or do that judgy-eyebrow-wiggle-thing that he reserves only for special occasions (most recently used when Soonyoung was talking about a hookup gone wrong). You’ve always been the one he looks at when someone does something weird; what would he do if it was you being weird? Your stomach turns, the butterflies eating each other alive. You can’t do that to him, no matter how perfect his lips are. 

You jump at the sound of someone clearing their throat. You turn back to the door to see the woman holding a cat carrier doing her best not to smile. 

“Not trying to rush you two, but the sooner they settle into a nice loving home, the better,” she says, winking at ‘loving.’ You really should correct her. Actually, Vernon should correct her. He always does, the very few times that you have been mistaken as a couple. He never hesitates, so why isn’t he doing it now? Does he really not realize what she’s implying? 

He stands up, turning to face you and extending his hands to pull you up. You roll your eyes but take them anyway, ignoring the way your heart sinks when he lets go this time. He takes the carrier and gently picks up the kittens, blankets and all, and tucks them inside. Pinky follows immediately after, as if she couldn’t bear to be away from her children for more than a second. 

“I have a box ready by the door with their food, and toys, and other supplies, and I know you said you have a litter box and you’re ready, but I just wanted to make sure that they settle in nice, and I added a blanket in case they’re homesick, and–” She pauses, peering at the dark holes of the carrier as if she can see the little kittens inside. She takes a deep breath, picking up her child again, stepping to the side so that you and Vernon can leave the room. “I know you two will take good care of them, I do, I just– I’m going to miss them.” 

“Me too,” her child says, clinging to her mother’s neck. 

The woman smiles. “But we said our goodbyes already, and they’re going to be so happy with these two, right?” 

“Of course,” you say when Vernon doesn’t answer. “He’s been obsessed with cats since he was smaller than you!” You wink at the child, who giggles. 

You pick up the box at the door, grunting at the heaviness. 

“We can switch,” Vernon says softly but you shake your head. 

“It’s just to the car, it’s fine.” Vernon looks like he’s going to argue more, but finally he steps onto the front porch, moving as gently as possible, trying to disturb the precious cargo as little as possible. 

“Thank you so much again,” the woman says, setting her child down. “We really do wish we could keep them, but it makes me happy knowing that someone capable will be taking care of them, especially an adorable couple like the two of you. Do keep me updated on their adoptions.” 

You force a smile and choke out a “thank you,” following Vernon mindlessly down the driveway after she closes the door.

Adorable couple, were her exact words and Vernon said nothing. Why? The word hangs on your tongue, threatening to spill out if you so much as open your mouth. You watch as Vernon sets the carrier in the backseat, then takes the box out of your arms and places it on the floor. You force yourself to move to the passenger side when he raises his eyebrows at you, but once you’re sitting down and the seatbelt is across your chest, you’re frozen again. 

Vernon takes your phone when you don’t move, putting in your passcode (the sum of his birthday and yours). He pulls up his own playlist, a collection of hyperpop and indie artists that you normally enjoy listening to. Today it takes all your concentration not to burst. 

You almost make it the whole drive, all the way to his block, the apartment building he’s spent the last year and a half in that’s become far too familiar to you. How much time have you wasted away on the floor of his living room, drinking, doing classwork, listening to him talk about the future, rambling to him about the midnight thoughts that threaten your heart? He knows everything about you, except what you need him to know the most. 

When the question begins to burn in your heart, you can’t hold it anymore. Vernon pulls into his parking spot and it falls from your lips before you realize it. “Why?” 

He has the audacity to feign ignorance, blinking at you before finally asking, “Why what?” 

“Why did you let her think we are a couple?” 

One of the kittens mewls in the silence, a soft cry for help, sounding pitifully like your own heart. 

Vernon stares ahead of him at the concrete wall, the fading red number 19 that designates this spot as his. Just say something, your heart begs him. Stop giving me hope where there is none. His shoulders rise in the tiniest shrug. “I guess I was just curious.” 

“Of what?” 

He swallows, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. He glances at you, just once. “What it would be like.” He sighs. “This really isn’t the time for this conversation.” 

Your grip on the door handle is so tight your knuckles are white. So desperately, you want to believe he’s trying to say what you think he’s saying but you refuse to give yourself hope unless it’s real. “What conversation?” 

“Okay, for the record, I did think this through,” he says, “a lot. Like, for months. This isn’t coming out of nowhere, I really did try to figure out if it’s just a passing thing because the last thing I want is for things between us to be weird because you’re my best friend and I tried to imagine my life without you and that was worse than anything, so I decided I wouldn’t ruin anything except I can’t stop thinking about–”

“Vernon.” 

He pauses, turning to face you again and this time he doesn’t look away. You’ve never felt self-conscious under his gaze, not when he’s seen every awkward stage of your life and stuck with you anyways. His eyes have always been familiar to you, an oasis of comfort that you always find yourself drifting toward. But the longer he stares at you, the more you want to run away, hide from the heartbreak you see in his eyes. 

“I think I like you,” he says. “No. I do. Like, as in more than a friend. God, none of these words are working.” 

You stare at him. He’s saying everything you want him to say. He’s saying he likes you. Why can’t you move? 

Vernon runs a hand through his hair, and sighs. “Like I said, I don’t want to ruin things between us, you're still my best friend first. But I’m also sure about how I feel and I don’t want to keep it from you any longer. I can’t stay in this limbo of holding onto something that doesn’t exist, so, I’m really sorry.” 

“Sorry?” You repeat, frowning. “Why are you sorry?” 

“Because… I like you. And that ruins… this.” He gestures between you and him and that’s when you finally realize that he doesn’t know. 

“You dumbass,” you say, “I like you, too.” 

Vernon frowns, mouth hanging open a little, and you have to wonder if you looked this goofy when he was talking. Your heart swells when you realize you’re the reason for it. “You do?” 

“Yes,” you say, grabbing his hand. Your cheeks ache a little, and you realize that you’re smiling wider than you ever have before. You’ve never been this happy, not when you graduated high school, not when you and Vernon found out you got into the same college, not when you got a perfect score on that notoriously impossible chemistry final. “Vernon, I am an idiot that always thought you didn’t feel the way I did so I did everything I could to hide it. But I like you, I really, really do, and I’m sorry I never let it show.” There’s another word for how you feel, but you aren’t quite brave enough to use it yet, even if it’s what you really mean to say. 

Vernon leans closer, pressing his forehead against yours. “We really are dumb, huh?” 

“I can already hear Jihoon’s gloating.”

“He’s been nagging you too?” Vernon groans softly but the smile never leaves his lips. “He’s going to be insufferable.” 

You’ve grown used to silences with Vernon. Sometimes they are painful, like when he tells a joke and only you laugh. Usually they’re peaceful, comfortable silences that can only exist between two people that have nothing left to say but stay together anyways. But this silence is heavy, a weight on your shoulders pushing you to do something, move closer. You’ve known him your whole life but this is foreign territory. 

His breath kisses your lips again and this time you have the bravery to lean forward, just a little. His lips are soft, bottom lip chapped a little more than the top but it is warm and it feels like a first and thousandth at the same time, like unlocking the door to a house you know you’ll spend the rest of your life in. Your mind floats farther and farther away, in some place of impossible happiness that can’t quite believe that this is real. 

A soft cry from somewhere to your left brings you back to earth. You pull away at the same time he does, glancing at the backseat. Right. The kittens. You glance at Vernon, whose mouth is still a little open, eyes wide and flustered. It makes you want to kiss him all over again but you settle for laughing. 

“I guess we should go inside,” he says, leaning away from you though he doesn’t turn his back yet. 

“We should get them settled,” you say, glancing at the carrier again. 

Vernon nods, opening his door and grabbing the heavy box, pausing by the entrance to the building to wait for you to grab the carrier. Silence falls again as you ride the elevator up but you’re more than familiar with it. 

It doesn’t take long to settle Pinky and the kittens, not when Vernon already had a room set up for them. He figures there’s been enough stress for the day and they should get some peace and space to relax, so you stretch out on the couch, taking your usual corner. Vernon sits next to you, the inch of space separating you feeling like a mile. 

Vernon glances at you, chewing on his lip before asking, “You’ll stay?” 

“Always.” 

The grin that splits his face has you swooning all over again, so when he throws an arm over your shoulder, leaning into your side, your brain fully stops functioning. You have to will thoughts into existence, which is silly because it’s Vernon and he’s done this a million times. But when you tuck your head onto his shoulder and he kisses the top of this head, you know everything is different. And exactly how you want it. 

“You’re definitely going to adopt Fried,” you say. 

His laughter bounces you. “No way.” 

“It’s Fried or Muffin. You can’t handle their cuteness, I saw you baby talking at them.” 

“I'll stay strong.” 

“What if I want a kitten?” 

Vernon doesn’t hesitate. “Egg is pretty cute.” 

“Sucker.” 

“Only for you.” 

thank you for reading <3

[radaverse]

When is Tower of mistakes gonna be done, I CAN'T WAIT! :3

Huh, looks like it's time for a

VERY IMPORTANT™ TOWER OF MISTAKES UPDATE

And I'm pleased to announce that

THE HIATUS IS OVER!!! (mostly)

So, it's been kind of long since we got the last update, hasn't it? Well, you don't have to continue waiting so much anymore! I've got ideas, motivation and a remake release date!

First, lemme tell you what I've been doing meanwhile.

As many of you know there's a Samurai Jack AU comic on the works as well (Paws of Magic), I've been cooking with my 2 teammates and we're making sure to cook something great! ✨ Then, I heard about this "artfight" thing around tumblr, I checked it out and decided to join! It surely helped me improve my style and my ways of organizing works and schedules.

Now that I'm "free" (back at uni lol. no big deal tho), I can work on things like paws of magic and ofc, the tower of mistakes remake.

I've got some ToM updates:

The hiatus is gonna be over in less of a month. That is

September 6, 2024!

This way the remake's release date matches the original's and the fact that it matches my birthday (I had a feeling ToM could get important so decided to start it on my bday lol, I was kinda right wasn't it? omggg)

The art style gets some REAL changes!

I'm no longer going to use a sketchbook to draw the lineart and then color it digitally. The comic will now be 100% digital! Which means the page formatting and style will get an improvement boost!

Schedule. Schedule...

I used to upload the pages every time I finished one, which led to rushing, hiatus and burnout. I'm not doing that anymore. I'll be working on a bunch of pages/a full chapter beforehand, then batch upload them from each chapter's release date to the last of its pages, 1 page a day. This way you guys don't get extremely long waits and I don't get extreme burnout 😭

So, these are the updates for Tower of Mistakes!

As for the rest of blog, I'll be drawing the ToM pages, doodling random stuff and working on Paws of Magic as well!

And if you realllyyyy can't wait until that day to check ToM stuff, then join the Discord Server! ✨

There you can get new friends (like me ofc vjdfd), get comic emojis, have fun and you might or might not get some comic wips hmmm

This is gonna get wild :)

now a random poll xd

[alacants]

tennisblr exchange/fest: follow-up poll and questions

thanks to everyone who showed enthusiasm for a potential tennisblr fic/art/fanworks event!!

about 75% of respondents who expressed interest in participating indicated that it would depend on timing and format, so here are some questions about timing and format.

important note: if you too are mainly on tumblr, you should know that there is ALSO a fic exchange happening via the tennis rpf discord!

my Vision was for a multimedia event—currently thinking fic, art, and edits/fanvids tho see below on that—so planning to move forward in some form but when/how is up in the air. open questions about format below the cut—namely, exchange vs fest. thoughts welcome in replies or via dm/ask if you prefer!

i was initially envisioning a classic secret gift exchange via the ao3 platform. (you are matched with a recipient -> you create a gift for them -> you post your gift to the anon exchange collection on ao3 -> the exchange collection goes live -> creator names are revealed.) a few cons here: everyone has to get an ao3 account, ao3 isn't the ideal platform for graphics and video. also depending on how unique your artistic style is, posting anon might be sort of besides the point. lmao.

having said that, the one major advantage ao3 has is great admin tools—particularly, mods/admins can see who has finished and posted their gift. this is important because the worst-case scenario for a gift exchange is that someone ghosts their recipient, and if it's up to each participant to post their work to their own tumblr, this becomes exponentially more likely. no matter how many check-ins there are.

so if it's an exchange ao3 is the way to go. however the other option is NOT an exchange but an open prompt fest, which could also be fun!! i'm personally fond of the exchange format (when you're creating for someone i think you're a little more motivated to think about people/ships/ideas that might not have otherwise occured to you) but maybe we don't need two??? an open fest would also allow for more people to participate on the fly, as irl allows, and potentially for people to create a wider variety of work like moodboards, playlists, etc.

eta: what i mean by open prompt fest: everyone submits prompts (as general or specific as you want, e.g. "anything focused on zhang zhizhen", "sincaraz uni au", "naomi osaka edit to number one fan") -> the mod/admin blog posts all the prompts anonymously -> you create based on whatever prompts inspire you -> you post during the posting period!

this is possibly too deep in the weeds for most people to care lol but if you have thoughts i'd be happy to hear them!

(and yes once timing format etc is decided on there will be a dedicated blog... just waiting to roll that out until further decisions are made. @oof-ouch-yikes-stripes is going to help out with admin and ideally we'll get one more person on board!!)

[nyaitsu-writes]

✧ (future) comeback !

it sounds like i became an idol group but i didn't know how to put it any better oops so hi! nya here! for those who don't know i'm about to graduate from university this year in less than a month! so i am, have been and will probably be swamped in work until i'm finished with it... by the end of july. you don't know just how excited i am to be finally done with uni (´▽`ʃ♡ƪ)

so i'm just annoucing i will (probably) (hopefully) be making a comeback as soon as i'm done with all the official stuff because i miss writing so much. i have a couple of wips that are almost there but i need to revise. as a bit of a roadmap:

i want to revamp the blog or at least the post layout to make it a bit cuter but graphic design is not. my passion. i actually suck at it a lot. i am also insanely attached to my current pfp... leooo

i will be changing the rules a bit! nothing extreme, just to make it easier for me and everyone who wants to request. i think i should mention the looong waiting times, right? yeah ;;

i will prooobably grow a bit more picky with requests. i've been lucky enough not to get any mean messages about my characterization but i find it really lacking sometimes. and it gets more obvious when it comes to characters i don't know as much,,

ideally, i want to make a little enstars writers rec list to try and promo some other writers in the fandom, whether active or not. i will make another post or a gform so keep an eye for that ^^

i also want to grow a bit more self-indulgent in this blog (but nya, you are self-indulgent enough look at your masterlist— i know. i know) and make more posts about things i like that aren't necessarily requests. there's a couple of aus based on old e! cards that are running around my head like crazy and i should do something about that!

also! last thing! i will probably run a few polls to ask about blog management things so i would really really appreciate if you could answer those! it'll help making the blog a bit more active <3

thank you for listening to the writer wannabe who never shuts up!! ♪(´▽｀)

—ᓚᘏᗢ

[snowddeong]

I'm not feeling much better and my irl situation keeps getting worse so I think for now I won't be writing drabbles on tumblr. For a bit anyway. I love writing lil dumbass stories A LOT but the mental strain of having to fist fight my self esteem is getting a bit much. I need to keep writing to improve but I think as things are upstairs it's better to divert the little energy I have left to eventually finishing Jacket and starting on one of the multichap projects I've been wanting to write.

I'm not sure how many people care lmao but I did get most of my followers off stuff like yamo part 1 and the secretary au so ig this is just a heads up to anyone waiting for more that there might not be more for a WHILE. At the very least not until I finish Jacket and who knows when that'll be. Not to mention uni and finding a job cause I have those to deal with too.

As for the ryeji day drabble I'll still work on it, though it might be posted as a whole fic not just the one moment that was voted for. I'd like to do another poll some day but that'll be when I feel okay I think. Not being able to deliver on something I promised also doesn't help my self esteem very much.

Lastly the Yeji day fic oof. Trying to write it still. It might not be out in time (as always) but I'm trying.

My mental health is kinda bad rn so I don't think I'll be able to post that ryeji day drabble tomorrow. Some miracle might happen and help me find the energy to write but even then I doubt it'll be ready in time for the 5th. Since I want to introduce some consistency to my writing schedule I'll still try and write it this month and post it on the 5th of June as well as a poll for anyone who's interested to vote for the next ryeji day drabble.

There might be a drabble/fic for Yeji's birthday but I don't want to promise anything that might make me super anxious or give anyone expectations that I'll eventually fall short of. For now I think Imma focus my writing attention to Jacket cause that's easier to write when I'm not feeling too great upstairs

[writingsfromhome]

Bad Timing I(.5)

A/N: This is the sort of backstory to Harry and you, I think it can be read on its own if you want, or before you read the first part too. It’s angsty af, but it has some death and sensitive topics jsyk. I tried to keep it concise but it got a little wordy as angst does. xx

Part 1

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

About 12 Years Ago:

“So are you coming to that party or not?” My roommate asks. She was one of the first people I’d met last year when we started uni and even though we came from different backgrounds we remained friends over the last year, even choosing to room together again. She got me to open up and find the extroverted part of me that was able to enjoy uni outside of academics.

“Ugh, I’m volunteering for the voting booths for the rest of the week. Maybe if I can make it?”

“You’re actually doing that?” She scrunches her nose. “I don’t get it. You’re just way too nerdy to be my friend.”

“And yet you loove me,” I squeeze her against me and she laughs. “It’s my mom, she said I had to do at least one extracurricular so I could meet friends this year.”

“You already have friends,” she points to herself, and with her came her group of friends that’d quickly taken me in last year.

And my mom doesn’t like that I hang out with you, I think. She thought we partied too much even though my grades stayed decent. “She wants me to have nerdy friends too, I dunno. They’re helping me pay my tuition until I get a job so I kinda have to play nice.”

“Parents suck,” my roommate flicks through her closet. I agreed, this was just something I would get through to get through. Then they would leave me alone for the rest of the year.

Little did I know the person they’d partner me with at my polling station was someone who would be in my life for the next decade.

“I’m Harry by the way,” he’d said after we received our orientation and assigned the building we were going to babysit the votes in. “Second year.”

“Me too! I’m Y/N. What’s your major? I’ve never seen you around.”

“Law--well I haven’t decided if it’s law but that’s what I’m in right now.”

“Really? Law?” I was openly judging, he just didn’t seem the law type.

“Well what are you in?” He demands.

“Business,” I cringe.

“Really? Business?” He has a cheeky smile on, one that would become familiar to me.

“Well, you just don’t seem like the law type. They’re usually more uptight, dress way too smart for me.”

“I know, it’s like, we’re not even in the courtroom yet,” he joins in and it makes me laugh--how he could poke fun at his own people. That’s when I knew we would get along fine, and I actually looked forward to the next few days getting to know him better.

“I’m definitely telling my mum about you, she’s been begging me to make friends outside of my circle. I’ll tell her I’m friends with a law student.”

“So we’re friends already?” We’d reached our booth and began setting up the partitions. He takes over when I set it up wrong.

“Obviously,” I say. “I actually like you which means you’ll have a hard time getting rid of me.”

“I’m alright with that,” he grins and I notice the laugh lines that are brought to life as he does. It somehow made him seem more genuinely.

We spend the rest of the time swapping stories, classes, rants. We check student IDs and hand out voting cards in between but it doesn’t feel like a drag anymore. At the end of the day, I invite him to the party my roommate was going to with our friends. If he was going, maybe I would too. He seemed like he might be fun at a party.

“Er,” he suddenly seems nervous. “I’ll have to ask my girlfriend, she wanted to hang out tonight.”

“Well bring her too!” I say excitedly. “Is she law as well?”

“No, she’s in the arts.”

“I like her already,” I push. “Bring her, my friends are fun you’ll learn how to have a good time.”

“I know how to have a good time,” there was the flash of his dimples again. “Text me the address.”

And thus began a friendship for the next four years, partying together, studying together (trying to), and hanging out in each other’s rooms. We would set each other up with other friends, double dated, went out for sunrise-hikes, and took long drives at night when we had to blow some steam off from being over-stressed, over-studied uni students. Our friend circles overlapped, the fabric of our lives eventually bleeding together. We were made of the same fibers, sticking together even after uni, when our friends got more serious about their careers. When they moved out of the country or to another city, we made sure to rent places close enough that we could still see each other often. And somehow, in the new chapter of our lives, without the partying and our other friends to buffer, we became closer than before.

We cared for each other--we didn’t deny that ever. And somehow that platonic love turned romantic as we depended on each other while we navigated adulthood. I can’t exactly pinpoint where things changed, but one evening our relationship was changed forever.

7 years ago:

“She literally wants me to stay until 7, and she was offended when I said no! I’m not even getting paid for that!” I was bitching to Harry about my shitty job.

“That’s bollocks” Harry shrugs. “Just say you’ve got family obligations or something.”

“I said that the one time she wanted us to come in on a weekend and she gave me shite work the following week! I just...I can’t afford to lose this job Harry.”

“That’s shitty, I’m sorry.” He takes the last swig of his beer. “Want another one?”

“I haven’t even finished this one,” I moan at my now warm beer that I’d been nursing for the last hour, too busy ranting to drink it. “It’s getting late though I should head home before it’s dark. Don’t want that nutter that hangs around my building to harass me again.”

“I’ll walk you home,” Harry suggests. He lived a 15 minute walk from me.

“No no,” I get up and take our dirty dishes to the sink. “I didn’t even ask about you, how was your day?”

“Same old,” he sighs against the counter. “I feel like I don’t fit in, everyone my age is finishing their law degree but I don’t think I want to.”

“I knew from the day I met you, you weren’t destined for the courtroom.” I pull him into a comforting hug. “Do what makes you happy, or what doesn’t make you want to say fuck it and quit your job to hibernate.”

“You really know the perfect thing to say,” Harry chuckles but he pulls me tighter against him. I stroke his back, reassuring him he’d be alright in the end.

“Y/N-” he pulls away to say something but freezes mid sentence. I raise an eyebrow but he’s still, staring at my face.

“Harry?” I ask, but he continues staring. “Hello? You alright?”

“Yeah,” he breaks into a sudden smile. That was weird--I make sure he’s okay before letting go.

Before I leave, I kiss Harry’s cheek goodbye--I was never shy in the affection I gave my friends and Harry’s bummed mood needed extra affection tonight. But what I don’t expect is for him to catch me before I pull away, staring intently into my eyes. The lighthearted energy between us disappears instantly as it dawns on me, how close we were, the unspoken feelings in his eyes, the hesitation before he presses his lips to mine.

I kissed him back then, barely understanding what was happening, before pulling away. I give him a smile but that’s just what he sees at the tip of the iceberg, underneath my mixed feelings churn away. My best friend just kissed me, and I wasn’t totally mad about it.

“It’s getting dark I-” I say as Harry says, “Sorry was that okay?”

We laugh awkwardly, neither of us sure what to do at this point. We decide to ignore it instead.

“I’ll talk to you later,” Harry lets me go and opens the door for me. “Watch out for the neighbourhood nutter yea?”

I stand in place, feeling the fibers of our friendship unraveling but feeling hopeless in mending the tear. “Take care Harry.”

I high tail it out, my thoughts going at an impossible rate as I sort out what happened. And we try to ignore it the next couple weeks,

We hadn’t made it official then, too nervous to face what this meant about our friendships. It was only at my sister’s wedding, that I realised what was wrong between us. I’d been mourning our old friendship, and avoiding him in the weeks since the kiss. But what I didn’t realise was that our friendship had been changing over the last year anyway, and getting drunk on champagne and dancing with Harry, while my sister celebrated the happiest day of her life, made me realise there was a cause for celebration here: a new chapter in our lives.

A couple days later, after a stressful day at work, I’d taken the tube to his flat and waited for him outside. He was surprised to see me there, not saying much except to open the door and let me in. As soon as he’d closed it, my lips were attached to his and we’d let our bags drop, coats, and any piece of clothing between us. After that night, we didn’t even try to deny how we felt about each other.

“I didn’t think I could ever be this happy,” he’s whispered to me after. I thought he’d fallen asleep but his whisper in the dark made me grin to myself. “Are you awake.”

“I am. Awake and happy.” I turn to face him, giggling. “Who knew this could feel so right.”

“Our first kiss was quite wrong though wasn’t it?” Harry says and it makes me laugh.

“That’s why I needed to do a redo,” I tease. “Can’t leave you to plan anything.”

“It wasn’t planned I swear, I was trying to be spontaneous.”

“Let’s not try ‘spontaneous’ again then,” I kiss him in the dark. He pulls me snug against him, I never knew how safe it felt. The safest I would ever feel, wrapped in the warmth with my best friend and now something else.

It was a good few months, testing the waters as our relationship underwent a transformation. All of our friends were supportive, but we never missed the glances between them. Apparently, they were waiting for this to happen. But as sweet as those first few months had been, finding out my mum was sick with a timeline was devastating. I came apart at the seams but Harry stayed through it all, holding me together. He’d proposed then, wanting my mum to be part of the ceremony. We had a small wedding, intimate but still magical. It was bittersweet, the amount of love and happiness I felt towards Harry and our loved ones around us as he said I do and as he took my arm and swept me across the dancefloor. But the amount of sadness crushing my chest kept me from being the weightless bride I always thought I would be.

Through it all, Harry stayed by my side. While we were hopeful, the day our hopes were dashed, the days and weeks I mourned. When my sister and her husband came to stay with their crazy toddlers and Harry kept them entertained giving my sister and I time together. I thought he was perfect, that I’d lucked out.

That lasted a few years, 3 and a half to be exact. There were months leading up to our split and we could point to a bunch of things that could’ve led to it. a) him wanting kids, and me wanting to wait or b) long hours we worked as we changed careers and tried to make our way up or c) how hard getting pregnant actually was. Maybe I pushed him away, or he didn’t love me enough to try and make it work.

I think I lied to myself, avoiding the tension creeping into the relationship. The tired excuses and time spent apart, the lack of usual affection, or casual conversations. I was an idiot, I realise every time I think about the end in retrospect. Maybe if I caught on earlier I could have fixed us before we fell apart. Maybe I could have saved us.

“There’s someone coming in Tuesday morning to fix the broken washer, will you be home?” I ask, still in bed and scrolling through my phone. I hadn’t meant to be up this early but Harry woke me as he got up and I couldn’t fall back asleep.

“No,” Harry responds, his back to me as he ruffles through the dresser. “I’ve got a thing that morning.”

“Well I’ve got to go in early Tuesday-I thought you might be home.” I say. I hear an edge to Harry’s voice but I try not to focus on it. He’d been a little cold all weekend and I was scared to think what it meant.

“You couldn’t be bothered to check in when you confirmed the date?” Harry asks harshly.

“I...guess not.” I put my phone down and wait for Harry to turn, maybe I could read his expression. Maybe he was stressed. “Harry?”

“What?” He turns, but he looks at me with no emotion. No stress, no frustration, not even anger. It’s the lack of emotion in his face that cause my eyes to prick with tears. Harry raises his eyebrows and I shake my head, untangling myself from the sheets so he doesn’t see any tears. I rush to the bathroom but forget to close the door out of habit.

“Y/N,” a kinder Harry appears by the doorway. His face has smoothed out the harsh lines, his eyes hesitant and cautious.

“What’s happened with us?” I blurt out. “Why are you so cold all the time? Am I doing something wrong?”

Harry’s face falls and he walks towards me but doesn’t touch me. “It’s nothing like that. It’s...I don’t know. We should talk.”

He reaches his hand out but I flinch away. “Did you meet somebody new or something? What are we talking about?”

“Let’s not do this here. Right now.”

“Why not!” I finally had enough. “I’ve been walking on eggshells for months Harry! I don’t know what’s wrong and I keep waiting for you to bloody tell me!”

“This isn’t working!” Harry raises his voice to compensate for mine. I’m immediately silenced by the volume, and then the words sink in.

“Is there someone else?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer, his gaze on the hanging vines by the window. My heart drops into my stomach like a boulder, and I find it hard to breathe. I clutch the porcelain sink and ask in a surprisingly even tone, “Harry. Answer me.”

“What we have, Y/N...it’s dysfunctional.” He says quietly, meeting my eyes. “It doesn’t matter if there’s someone else, we’ve been fighting for months. Things aren’t the same between us-”

“Who is she?” I ask. I needed to know.

“That’s not relevant,” he shuts my question down quickly. “I’m sorry Y/N, I...I don’t want to hurt you. I care about you, I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Then don’t,” I’d pleaded. “We can go to counseling, talk it through-”

“I can’t Y/N.”

“Because of her.”

“No, because this isn’t good for either of us.” He’d walked up to me, cradled my face. “We’re not good for each other, not like this.”

“Who is she?” I yank his hands away.

“She’s...it doesn’t matter, I swear nothing happened between us Y/N. Knowing who she is isn’t going to help this situation--”

“It is! If it weren’t for her, you’d be willing to work on us--to see a future. You...Harry how could you do this to me? To us?” The tears come with no control. “You’re moving on before we’re even over. How are you giving up on us like that?”

“I’m not!” his voice booms in the tiled bathroom. “I’m not bloody giving up on us! I tried Y/N, so many times. I tried! You just keep pushing at me to be someone I’m not and-”

“I can say the same thing about you!” I throw the brush in my hands into the sink. “We were good! And you got it in your head you wanted a baby even though we’re young, oh my god Harry you kept pestering me to change my mind even though I told you I needed time!”

“It’s not like we could have a fucking baby anyway,” Harry says bitterly before realising what he’d said. “Shit-”

“There you go,” I mock. “I knew it. I knew you were holding that against me. And that,” I jab my finger into his chest. “Is what’s made you so moody, so mean and why we’re always fighting. You held it against me.”.

There was absolute truth to what I said. Last year, Harry had brought the baby topic up. I’d told him we were only in our mid-20s, we had a lot of time, and we still had a career to establish. But he would bring up the topic often enough that I’d given in.To make him happy. And months went by, trying for a baby. Went we finally went to our doctor, she’d told us why it was so hard, it could take us years she’d said.

Harry came home that day dejected, and left me feeling like a failure. I think it tore us up.

“You wanted a baby so fucking bad and when I couldn’t, it made me feel like a complete failure. And I told you that! And you did absolutely nothing to make me feel better. You held it against me, Harry! You didn’t even try to tell me it was okay.”

“It’s not so fucking simple,” he says, his cheeks flushed pink. Maybe it was anger, or maybe it was embarrassment from being confronted with an ugly truth.

“It is. And now you’ve upgraded to a newer model, maybe her version comes with a fertile womb.” I take the cheap shot.

He doesn’t say anything though. And I don’t know why that hurts more than knowing he’d fallen for another woman while he was still married to me. My best friend in the whole world had just broken my heart into a million irrevocable pieces.

“It’s a bunch of things Y/N,” he finally says. “That’s just part of it. We’re not...we’re just not working!”

“Did you even try to make it work?” I ask, swiping my sleeve across my face. “Did you ever think how I felt? How you made me feel Harry? You’ve been slipping away from me without talking to me-” I break off. I couldn’t speak through the heartbreak, the thunderstorm of grief threatens to consume me and my sobs are the only thing that manages to come out.

“I never wanted to hurt you,” Harry tries to place a hand on my shoulder but I jerk away, moving to sit on the edge of the bathtub. “Y/N...”

“Just go,” I say through the tears.

“We can talk more about this later-”

"Just go,” I say louder.

Harry’s phone rings again from the bedroom and he sighs. But he leaves me, crying on the bathroom floor. The sadness that was always in my peripheral consumes me. I’d carried this sadness for a long time--ever since I found out my mum was sick, the sadness plagued me. I’d neatly packed it up once I decided to move forward with my life like my mum would want me to, but now it comes back tenfold, marrying the grief of losing Harry like this. And I stay on the floor crying my grief away for hours, eventually crawling into bed and sleeping the daylight away.

When I wake, it’s 6 and Harry isn’t home. I take that as a sign and get up to pack up a few things. I call my sister who still lived in London then, and crash on her couch, staying there for a few weeks and ignoring any call or text from Harry. When I need to go back, for my things, I find him sleeping on the couch with the TV on, something I always found endearing. But I can’t afford to dwell on how much it hurt seeing him like that.

He must have woken from the noise because when he finds me, he tries to stop me and tell me that we still needed to talk.

“About what?” I ask, just tired now. Too many tears shed and too many hours laying awake thinking about the exact moment we went wrong.

“Us,” Harry looked tired too. He was probably throwing himself into his work with nothing like me to hold him back, I think bitterly. His girlfriend had probably already been to our house--his house.

“What about us?” I barely look at him as I begin folding away all my clothes.

“I don’t know,” Harry sits on the bed. “Don’t you want to talk?”

“I’ve got nothing to say, do you?”

Harry sighs, “I don’t know.”

“Nice talk then,” I say, shoving the rest of my things in just so I could get out.

“I just want you to know I care about you Y/N, I don’t want to hurt you.” He says as I pack.

“It doesn’t matter anymore. If you cared about me, and you didn’t want to hurt me you wouldn’t have done this to us.”

“I wasn’t trying to--I didn’t mean to go and fall for someone else-”

“Just stop,” I cut him off. I couldn’t hear it, how the man I loved fell for someone else. I couldn’t break down here. Again.

He said he cared but it didn’t feel that way. It hurt more than I wished to admit. He knew what I’d been through and he still betrayed me, tossed my heart like it was replaceable. The cut he left in me ran deep.

As I leave he tries to talk to me, but I barrel past him. He still reaches for me and pulls me into a hug, I struggle against him but he’s too strong. He wraps me in his arms until I go still but it’s too much. A sob escapes me, and this time he lets me push him off and leave, my bag banging into my hips every time I take a step. As soon as I got into my Uber, I can’t stop crying. There was an infinite pool of tears where Harry was involved.

3 years ago:

My trust and my heart had been been lost in the war between Harry and I. It only took him a month to mail my divorce papers which sat collecting dust on my dining table until he showed up at work one day and demanded I sign them by the end of that week. I’d taken the day off the day I mailed those in, mourning the end of something that was once so safe and beautiful.

When a close friend calls me on a warm July afternoon, I don’t consider her warning that I shouldn’t check Instagram. That I still had Harry’s friends on my list. I open Instagram before she can tell me why, and see it. Harry was getting married, again. To the woman he gave up on us for. I try to zoom in on a picture without liking it, she was pretty...and blonde. She looked familiar--probably from his office. It didn’t take him long.

It was like someone had taken a retractor to the wound I thought had finally scabbed over. The physical proof that Harry had moved on is just the salt on the wound.

I cry myself to sleep that night.

2 Years ago;

The guy in front of me drones on about his job, mansplaining to me how a mortgage worked as if I wasn’t in finance myself. I excuse myself to use the restroom, checking my phone to see a text from my sister. She’d moved to Scotland this year, to where her husband was from, and I’d missed her terribly in the last year.

A little birdie told me your demon-ex just got divorced 🥂

I stare at the screen, chest feeling tight. I felt vindicated somehow, but I also felt a small bit of sadness. What a fuck-up.

Good for him I had texted back. A part of me wanted him to hurt the way he hurt me.

I went back to my date with a renewed enthusiasm. I’d ordered more wine and got so drunk he was actually interesting enough to take home.

About 1 year ago

“Y/N,” a voice from my past says, one that haunted me some nights. I turn as I exit the shop I was just in. I blink at the sight before me, Harry in a vest and hat. He realises what I’m staring at and laughs awkwardly. “I’m in uniform.”

“You’re...police?” I look up to his face finally. He hadn’t aged a day, although the hat he wears makes him look a little silly.

“Yeah I joined the force uhm...almost 4 years ago now...law didn’t really suit me.”

I know what he was doing, trying to find a baseline to have a conversation. But he was dead to me, and I didn’t want to invite him back in when I was finally forgetting about him.

"Seems like you dropped a lot of dead-weight four years ago.”

I watch his face fall as he realises I wasn’t going to pretend to be friendly.

“Seems that way to you,” he says cautiously. “But that’s not how it happened.”

I shrug. “So. I heard about the divorce. Must’ve been hard being put through that.”

I knew I was being petty, obviously I never got the closure I want (according to my therapist) and I wasn’t over him hurting me the way he did (also according to my therapist). This was how I got my peace, and it wasn’t the best version of me but it was the only one I knew how to be right now.

“Yep,” he crosses his arms over his chest. “So, are you seeing anyone?”

He knew I wasn’t, I don’t know how but the way he stoops to my level I know he knows I hadn’t had a long term relationship since him.

“Not at the moment,” I say awkwardly. “Just focusing on my job...trying to get this promotion.”

“Sorry,” he seems to shake off whatever had come over him. “That was...nosy, I shouldn’t have asked.”

Having him be the bigger person sets something off in me, like there was an anger-bomb inside my mind where he lived and knowing that he was doing okay enough to be able to be the bigger person disrupts this calm I was trying to keep.

“Maybe you shoudn’t have stopped me to ask anything at all. We don’t have anything to talk about anyway.”

I turn around and start to walk away but he catches up, “I wasn’t trying to upset you-”

“Well you have a way of doing that. Please just leave me alone Harry.”

He huffs beside me, “After all this time, can’t we just bloody talk like two adults?”

I freeze and turn to him slowly. He seems to sense this was the wrong thing to say because he takes a step back. “After all this time? Are you serious? I was the one you left behind Harry when you went off to lives your best lift Harry. We’re not living the same life, and we’re not coming from the same bloody place. Don’t fucking patronize me and ask me to talk to you like an adult when you bring out the worst part of me. I meant what I said: I want you to leave me alone. And you know what, if we ever run into each other again, just don’t even talk to me. Pretend you don’t know me. I want nothing to do with you.”

He opens his mouth but his partner calls him from the shop’s entrance. He stays silent, letting me go. As soon as I turn the street corner I rush the rest of the way to the tube, collapsing into a seat and trying to sort out my breathing. It was a shitty feeling, knowing someone was going to be in your life forever because you shared so much history that even when that part of your life ended they were still there. There was so much apart of me, around me, that reminded me of him. And it felt so lonely carrying that around. I wanted to be done with him, I wanted my heart to purge him out. But it couldn’t stop carrying him around everywhere I go.

[jonsastan]

Jonsa: A Dream of Spring @jonsadreamofspring

Day 6:  Parallels / King and Queen / Memories Aka: Jonsa Homecoming King and Queen Au

If you looked up the term ‘golden child’ in the dictionary you would probably find a picture of Sansa Stark. She was a straight A student, she was considerate of others, she was responsible, she volunteered, and started the school’s composting initiative. She was clever and kind and beautiful. So it really didn’t surprise anyone when she was nominated for Homecoming Queen.

Jon Snow on the other hand wasn’t exactly your typical Homecoming King but he got nominated anyway. 

“It’s probably just some stupid underclassmen that think he has dreamy eyes.” Jeyne said as Sansa stood at her locker pulling out books for her next lesson. “He’s not going to win or anything.” Sansa made a non-committal sound. 

She didn’t really care who won Homecoming King. She didn’t really care if she won Homecoming Queen. It might look good on her applications to university, but it wasn’t like it was her only achievement at school. Jon was in some of her classes and was her brother’s best mate so they knew each other, but they weren’t really friends. Sansa seemed to be involved in every aspect of school life, volunteering, organising, studying, tutoring; but whenever she saw Jon he was either with Robb, Theon, or walking his dog. He wasn’t exactly typical Homecoming King stuff. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Did you see that you and Jon are in the lead for Homecoming King and Queen?” Robb asked, sitting on the bench next to where Sansa was cooking dinner. Both their parents were working tonight, so Sansa was on cooking duty and Robb on cleaning duty. Arya was on bedtime duty, which never ended well. She told scary stories and then Rickon couldn’t sleep unless he was curled up in Sansa’s bed. 

“Yeah I saw the poll.” She chopped carrots for a moment. “Did you nominate Jon?” She asked, trying to sound nonchalant. 

“Nope, I think it was Theon.” Robb stole a carrot slice from the chopping board. “As a joke. You know Jon, he’s the most awkward introvert in the whole North, so Theon probably thought it would be a laugh to nominate him.”

“That’s kinda mean.”

“That’s Theon.” Robb shrugged and stole another carrot. “I don’t think he realised how much Jon helps people behind the scenes, didn’t realise how popular Jon was, in a quiet kind of way.” Sansa stopped chopping and looked at her twin brother. 

“What do you mean?” 

“Well, he tutors underclassmen pretty much every afternoon-”

“He’s not at the tuition program.” Sansa objected, her head tilted slightly. 

“He doesn’t like the program, says it’s too focused on ‘improving grades and not actual understanding of the subject’.” Robb made air quotes. “He also helps out at the vet, you know Davos’ vet?” Sansa nodded. “And the animal shelter. He’ll bring extra lunch to school because some kids don’t have any.” Robb shrugged. “And he’s got pretty okay grades.” 

“I didn’t know.” Sansa muttered. 

“Jon doesn’t brag about it.” Robb hopped off the bench and walked over to the fridge, opening it and perusing the contents. “How long ‘til dinner’s ready?” 

“About 20 minutes.” Sansa replied, finishing chopping the carrots. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sansa petted Lady as she waited in the small room of the vet. Lady needed her shots and Sansa had organised to walk her around alone so her mum and dad could watch Rickon’s lacrosse game. Of course being a lacrosse game for the under 7’s it mostly ended up in one kid hitting the other with the stick. 

Sansa heard the gentle tap at the door and held onto Lady’s leash as the vet nurse entered, even though Lady would never bolt for the door, or jump on someone. She did begin to wag her tail excessively and that’s when Sansa realised it was Jon Snow who seemed to be reading over Lady’s history.

“Hello Lady.” He said, kneeling down and ruffling the dog’s ears. “Hi Sansa.” She couldn’t help but smile slightly at Jon’s priorities. Dogs first, then people.  

“Hey Jon, how are you?” 

“Not bad. Working here a lot. How are you?” He asked, taking the lead from her hand and moving Lady to the fancy table that lowered to the floor then rose to be right height for the vet.

“I’m okay. Trying to get my dress sorted for Homecoming.” 

“Oh right. That’s soon, yeah?” 

“Two weeks.” There was an awkward pause as Jon examined Lady’s teeth and made notes for Davos, the vet. “You have a date?” She asked for want of something to ask. 

“Nope, flying solo. You?” He chuckled before lowering his pen. “Of course you have a date.” He shook his head and smiled slightly. 

“Actually, I don’t. I was thinking about just tagging along with Robb, but he’s got an actual date.” She said feeling a little annoyed at the way he’d said the last comment.

“Yeah, he told me.” 

“He didn’t tell me who!” Sansa exclaimed feeling slightly betrayed by her brother. Probably thought I’d tease him.

“Fryd.” 

“Football Fred or Lacrosse Fryd?” She asked. Jon turned to her. 

“Wynafryd Manderly.”  

“Lacrosse Fryd.” Sansa muttered, nodding her head. 

“She doesn’t play lacrosse.” 

“She’s Rickon’s coach. It’s why Robb has been attending the games with an almost religious fervor.” 

“What about football Fred?” 

“Robb’s been hanging out around the football team more often than usual and Fred Flint is fit.” 

“Makes sense.” Jon nodded and they lapsed into silence for a moment. “So do you maybe wanna go to Homecoming alone together?” He asked, running his hand through hair that was just long enough to tie into a half up style, avoiding looking at her. 

Sansa moved toward Jon and Lady, patting her dog. 

“Yeah. I’d like that.” She smiled at him. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“What colour dress are you wearing to Homecoming?” Robb shouted making Sansa jump and her hand jerk causing a harsh black line across her, otherwise perfect, notes. 

“Pink!” She shouted back without much thought. It wasn’t until later, when she was getting ready for bed she wondered by Robb wanted to know. She crossed the hall and tapped on his door. 

“Oi! Why did you want to know what colour dress I’m wearing to Homecoming?” She lent against the doorframe, watching as Robb stuffed books into his school bag. 

“Theon, Jon, and I went to buy corsages and he asked me to stealthily find out your dress colour so he could match the corsage.”

“And shouting it at me is stealthy?” She raised a bemused eyebrow at him. He shrugged. 

“At least your corsage wont clash terribly with your dress.” She nodded in agreement before returning to her room. 

The was sweet of Jon.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sansa check the contents of her tiny clutch purse for the fourth time in the space of about 5 minutes. 

Phone? Check. Money, just in case? Check. Lipstick? Check. Keys? No! Wait, Jon is driving, you don’t need keys.

She let out a sigh and glanced at the clock. Jon should be arriving any moment. She lifted a leg and examined her sparkly pink shoe, smiling. She liked these shoes, they were bright, and girly, and thoroughly impractical. 

“You look lovely.” She turned and saw Jon standing in the doorway, an awed smile on his face. He wore an all black suit with a pink pocket square, the shade matching her dress exactly. She smiled. 

“Not too shabby yourself.” He reached out a hand to help her stand and she took it, enjoying the warmth of his palm. 

“My dad let me borrow his car for the night so we don’t have to ride in my shit box.” He said, walking her down to the fancy black car. She knew Jon’s dad was rich, he’d have to be to attend Winterfell Prep, but she also knew Jon wasn’t close to him. 

“That was kind.” She offered, not wanting to spark anything negative. 

He opened the passenger door for her. “It was nice.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Your Homecoming King, Jon Snow and your Homecoming Queen, Sansa Stark will now take the floor!”  The over excited MC announced. 

It was corny, and old fashioned, but a part of Sansa loved the fact that the King and Queen would have a dance as the rest of the class joined in. 

Jon lead her to the middle of the floor. He placed a hand gently on her waist and there was a moment of complete stillness and Sansa was sure Jon could hear the beating of her heart. Then the music began and Jon guided her around the dance floor. 

“You dance surprisingly well.” She commented after a while, noticing Fryd wince slightly as Robb trod on her toes. 

“Thanks.” He smiled gently at her. 

The song ended and was followed by energetic music, more suited to groups than couples. 

“Would you like some punch?” Jon said into her ear, his lips brushing her earlobe. She nodded. He took her hand and led her over to the punch stand, procured two glasses, and gestured to a quiet little alcove not far from them. 

“So how does it feel to be royalty?” She asked, sipping the overly sugary drink. Jon chuckled. “A privilege I neither sought nor wanted. What about you, your grace?” He said with a small bow. Sansa laughed. 

“It’ll look good when I apply for uni I suppose.”

“You didn’t want to be queen?” He asked looking surprised.

“No, it wasn’t exactly the ambition of my high school career.” She shrugged. “But my mother did say I have the perfect shaped head for a tiara.” Jon laughed at this before taking a sip of his own drink. She noticed a droplet of punch clinging to his lip and had an impulse to kiss it off. 

Jon was sweeter than she’d realised, kinder too. He thought of others first and was considerate of those around him. And he looked great in a suit. 

“So do you think people understand our whole ‘going alone together’ thing?” She asked as a means of distracting herself from Jon’s lips. He looked at his shoes before answering her. 

“I kinda think the whole matching corsage and pocket square might have suggested friends going together, at least.”

“At least?” She asked, taking a half a step toward him. 

“Some people, maybe some people who are here with a really clever and funny and beautiful girl, people who have trouble talking with other people, people who think said girl has a really cute dog and a nice brother but not as nice as her, might think that this was a date.” He suggested, staring at his shoes again. Sansa half smiled.

“Would these people also happen to have stupid plastic crowns on their heads?” He looked at her and smiled. 

“Yeah.” She moved closer again, reaching her free hand out to tangle her fingers with his. 

“I kinda think it’s a date too.” She whispered.

And then Jon was kissing her or maybe she was kissing Jon. Either way it was only a matter of moments before Theon wolf whistled loudly at them.

[nikatyler]

When I finished my exam today, I was really excited and full of energy but now all of that is gone and I’m starting to see how stressful this day has actually been. I’m so incredibly tired! I went to bed at 11 pm yesterday, fell asleep quite quickly, woke up again at midnight. I slept until 4 am and then I kept waking up and falling asleep in what I believe were really short intervals. I don’t know which of these nightmare scenarios I had were actual nightmares and which ones I came up with thanks to overthinking. It was some crazy shit - one of them, probably the craziest one, I actually shared on twitter yesterday. For a little bit, I was worried that I would wake up without the ability to read or write. And even though I know that’s impossible, I was so worried and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Thing is, my anxious perfectionist brain always jumps to “either you do well on this or you die” mindset. Which then leads to me being stressed out days before and doing crazy things because of that. Just to name a few: I unfollowed a lot of blogs because following so many was driving me insane. I muted a bunch of people on twitter and called it self care even though it was probably just petty. Last but not least, I’m generally more mean and insensitive than I usually am these days and I hate that but also, I just can’t help it. (hey please if I was mean to you, don’t give up on me, it’ll get better again I swear) So yeah, fun times. Can’t wait for it to be finally June so all of this is over. 

To quote my favourite musical: hold your breath and count the days, we’re graduating soon, college will be paradise if I’m not dead by June.

Onto those replies now.

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your photoset “So…I was just casually setting up another scene, posing the sims and...”

This is DESTINY of this generation - trying to die (hard)

Just wait for when I focus on Regan. That girl is...going in her parents’ footsteps. I swear it’s not my fault. Seriously. I would never want for any of my important legacy sims to die.

Okay well, I might have planned to kill off Tyler at one point like year and a half ago but we don’t talk about that. Ever. Not since that dumb “one year with Rose triplets” thing. Don’t worry about it.

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your photoset “Unfortunately, it didn’t help. Again, sims logic. Don’t question it....”

NO MIRACLE NO

Miracles shouldn't die!

How dare you!

When I said "don't return to aliens" I didn't mean "die instead"

pxelblobs replied to your photoset “Unfortunately, it didn’t help. Again, sims logic. Don’t question it....”

Noooo Miracle!

I knew that sims could burn to death if the weather is too hot and everything, but it has never happened to me and I certainly didn’t expect it to happen now. I was freaking out. That was not how I wanted her story to end.

Then I went to twitter and asked people what they want me to do, but before the poll ended, I actually decided that nope, I can’t do this, she has to stay alive. By the way, if I remember correctly, people voted for leaving her dead. Sooo...yeah.

harmoniouspixels replied to your post “WAIT HOLD UP IS MIRACLE LIKE DEAD DEAD”

I guess I wasn't paying too much attention until this ask BUT MIRACLE'S DEAD WTF

Lmao I can see this happening to me. In fact, it has definitely happened to me before - just casually scrolling down my dash, not paying attention to anything (which is why I never go to my dash anymore) at all and then suddenly I realize - wait a minute, when did that sim die?! What did I miss?

alfalfalegacy replied to your photoset “Yeah well, Adam, maybe you could’ve done something when you still had...”

Will Smith voice: It's rewind time

I laughed so hard at this because I literally made the same joke a few posts later. Great minds think alike! *let’s pretend I’m a great mind ok, at least for a few seconds*

treason-and-plot replied to your post “WAIT HOLD UP IS MIRACLE LIKE DEAD DEAD”

This game is so cruel

Yup. 

It couldn’t have happened to like...I don’t know. Esme during the uni storyline. Or Fred during James’s storyline. Guys, do you remember Fred the mustache guy? Good old times.

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your photoset “Adam: “Hmmm, I wonder what I should do?”

I just thought... IT'S A BEACH THERE IS PLENTY OF WATER AROUND

I KNOW

THAT’S WHAT BOTHERED ME THE MOST IT LITERALLY DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE

*slow clap for sims logic*

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your photoset “At least she gets a nice gravestone…I guess. Aaand the dog is useless...”

:(

simlovinggirl replied to your photoset “At least she gets a nice gravestone…I guess. Aaand the dog is useless...”

I can't believe she died this way! :'(

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your photoset “Miracle baby oh my god I’m so sorry I didn’t want this to happen I’m...”

:( :( :(

alfalfalegacy replied to your photoset “Miracle baby oh my god I’m so sorry I didn’t want this to happen I’m...”

������ poor miracle

The only thing I really enjoyed about this is that these posts fell on the weekend before April 1st. I know this isn’t something to be laughed at...but the timing was so perfect. If I had planned this, it wouldn’t have worked.

Then again, let’s be real, I wouldn’t have planned this. This is just cruel.

alfalfalegacy replied to your photoset “Worry not, Adam. The Grim Reaper might be cruel but I’m the one who’s...”

Whew I'm glad she's still alive

simlovinggirl replied to your photoset “Worry not, Adam. The Grim Reaper might be cruel but I’m the one who’s...”

PHEW!!!!!

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your photoset “Worry not, Adam. The Grim Reaper might be cruel but I’m the one who’s...”

Yay!

I’ve never been more excited to quit without saving

whysimstho replied to your photoset “Lydia: “Sorry I’m late! I didn’t mean to, I promise. Siblings got in...”

"Oh yeah and my mom died in an alternate reality but it's cool, it's cool."

I mean, she’s definitely heard about all the crazy shit that has happened to her family over the years, so maybe it doesn’t seem as a big deal to her anymore.

It’s been a while since I last said Roses are a mess but they really are a huge mess lmao

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your photoset “cloudberry-sims: ???: Sorry but you can’t read that book yet! Stone:...”

Zillah will most likely appear after I finish Strangerville!

Yay! You don’t have to rush though, as long as she appears one day, it’s cool. It’s just a little sad when I spend a lot of time working on a sim and then the person who requested them never uses them.

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your photoset “This girl is no longer on fiyah, fiyaaaaah”

Next time you try to die don't do it, okay?

Oh trust me I’ll keep an eye on her from now on

It’s what Caleb would have wanted

wait did I just make myself cry thinking about this

dreamsongsims replied to your photoset “I’m still not sure why she’s doing martial arts. Like yeah, I wanted...”

That moment when you just can't remember what your plans were for your sim! I have that a lot. LOL

I guess I do kinda remember the purpose for the story, the problem is...I don’t actually understand why I did it that way?

create-a-sim replied to your photo “someday i’ll be famous and you’ll have to admit you were wrong.”

Wow, this looks super cool!

Thank you! I really enjoyed working on this. It’s just one of the many outcomes of my “Tyler gets famous” headcanons, which by the way are one of my favourite things to think about these days.

onemoreordinarysimblr replied to your photo “Am I late to the party?”

Very cute!

alfalfalegacy replied to your photo “I had to do another one.”

This is a nice looking room!!

berrysweetboutique replied to your photo “I had to do another one.”

They're too fun and this is way cute ♥

Thank you guys! I really enjoy the idea of this. I’m definitely not done with this trend yet! ♥

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your photo “please don’t ever become a stranger whose laugh i could recognize...”

Oh it sucks that that person isn't around anymore(( losing friends is always hard

Btw, the edit is really cute!

Yeah...I was going through my old posts yesterday, saw some asks and got sad about this again. I miss talking daily to a person who was so much like me in so many ways. I don’t want to go into details but yeah...never thought I could miss a person I’ve never actually met and here I am.

desira-sims replied to your post “�� ��?”

I feel ya on the bands. My music tastes seems to go from one extreme to the next.

It’s so hard to limit yourself to just one genre! I don’t understand how some people can do this. Well, I don’t actually believe such people exist...everyone has their “guilty pleasure” and no one will change my mind.

desira-sims replied to your post “I associate you with Ross and Caleb :D (i really need to catch up on...”

This is 100% me.

It’s clear, if a sim wants to be the mascot of my blog, they have to be a bisexual disaster.

I mean, when I look at myself, that makes sense. I myself am one big bisexual disaster.

mellowaliens replied to your post “Tomorrow, I’m taking my first graduation exam. It’s a writing one, so...”

Good luck hon!

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your post “Tomorrow, I’m taking my first graduation exam. It’s a writing one, so...”

Good luck! ❤️ You can do it!

desira-sims replied to your post “Tomorrow, I’m taking my first graduation exam. It’s a writing one, so...”

Good luck!!! Sending positive vibes your way.

whysimstho replied to your post “Tomorrow, I’m taking my first graduation exam. It’s a writing one, so...”

Good Luck!

audrey-rosewadsworth replied to your post “Tomorrow, I’m taking my first graduation exam. It’s a writing one, so...”

GOOD LUCK

audrey-rosewadsworth replied to your post “Tomorrow, I’m taking my first graduation exam. It’s a writing one, so...”

I BELIEVE IN YOUUUU

poisonfireleafs replied to your post “Hey hi hello guess who survived the exam? It went better than I...”

Good luck tomorrow :)

*hugs* Thank you so much guys. ♥

desira-sims replied to your post “Good morning guys, I'm still freaking out about the exam. I'm taking...”

Just take deep breath and don’t stress too much. You’ll do great on the exam.   Congrats on your milestone!

I started feeling so much better when I left home. I went out and I was like okay, I can’t do much about this anymore, can I? And then I met up with my friend at the bus stop and we just talked and suddenly I wasn’t scared anymore because I realized we’re all in this together - the two of us, the rest of our class and all the other 80 000 (or something) students in our country who were taking the exam as well.

My biggest problem was that the exam started at 12.30 and ended at like 2.30 pm. If it had been in the morning, I wouldn’t have had so much time to worry about it. Thank the lord that’s the case with the English exam tomorrow, it starts at 8 am which is an okay school time for me - on a normal day, classes start at 7.50.

Also, thank you! ♥

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your post “Hey hi hello guess who survived the exam? It went better than I...”

Yay, congrats!

desira-sims replied to your post “Hey hi hello guess who survived the exam? It went better than I...”

Woot woot!

mellowaliens replied to your post “Hey hi hello guess who survived the exam? It went better than I...”

Good luck and congrats!

Now I’ll have to wait for the results...that’s gonna be fuuuuuun.

By the way, people are already making memes based on the topics and I enjoy that. People who didn’t take the exam can’t understand, but it’s really funny, I swear.

simlovinggirl replied to your photoset

awwwwww! ♥ ♥ ♥

They’re definitely among the cutest couples I have in my game right now! ♥

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your photoset “Courtney: “Uhh…” Regan: “Wait. You…you guys? You’re like…” Felix: “Not...”

Well I kinda shipped themXD

I must admit that I didn’t at first, but then I noticed it could work. Whenever Regan said something bad about Felix, Courtney defended him, and so I thought...what if they went to uni together? Could they fall in love? Turns out they could :D

[aniszulyka]

College Daily Routine &.. life there???

disclaimer: this daily routine down there only happens in semester one cs... i joined sport in semester two so the routine there terabur alrdy????? yea....

hello there! and Assalamualaikum everyone! HAPPY NATIONAL DAY, MALAYSIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ah i’m so happy today. and that is why i have a mood to update this for y’all. well, actually, this post should be updated last year bcs lots of y’all wanted me to update about my daily routine in college (i made a poll on twitter) but i lambat update bcs.... malas. and lupa...... huhu.

some of u may not know, i studied accounting at Kolej Matrikulasi Kedah in Changlun, Kedah. it was the most tiring one year in my entire life. but i created banyak memories there eventho i didn’t enjoy my life as a student of matriculation programme. (this is what u should do despite... u know, things happen sometimes but try to creat a lot of memories ok!!) 

so, let’s start!!!!! i don’t know where should i start.

kita mula dgn pagi lah then hahahahahahahaha....

weekdays we all have classes and lectures from 8am to 4pm. that is for my college, ada college yang ada classes til 5pm. mmg penat cs dia straight til evening. lucky for me, i’m an accounting student so i have a lot of free time. so, from 8am to 4pm, if i tkda class, i’ll spend my time in the library, finishing my homework or doing my assignment. if dah masuk waktu zohor, i’ll be at hostel la. i was a total loner back then in college, so it was so easy to find me  if i’m on my free time. masuk je library dkt study carrel, confirm ada ahahah. this one i still did in semester two.

after habis class at 4pm, i’ll straight to library to continue finishing my homework. but before that, i’ll buy snacks at coop first. sometimes, i bought ice cream only so that i won’t ngantuk la. at this hour, normally, i’ll do calculation ONLY. such as, math, account or let say, econs question yg ada calculation sahaja. i’ll siapkan half... or everything sampai library tutup. library tutup around 5:30pm. i will manage my time there earlier.

next, after i balik from library (nak balik hostel la ni), i’ll straight to cafe c to buy my dinner. cafe c je petang petang ada nasi berlauk ni. then terus naik bilik. at eve like this, i’ll eat my dinner, pray, checking out my socmed, basuh baju & shower. p/s: i washed my clothes pakai tangan so it took time and i spent my time a lot in the toilet. after azan maghrib, then baru i masuk bilik to pray and continue my homeworks and assignments. 

at this hour, i mean at night i’ll do yang banyak tulis. for example, econs essay questions. if takda, i’ll continue with any calculation questions or assignments. sometimes, kalau i feel really rajin that night, i’ll walk to library to sambung buat my kerja bcs i don’t like staying in my room. (by the way, saya sebenarnya someone yang tak boleh study dalam bilik. sebab ada katil. rasa nak baring nanti. sebab tu saya suka spend or buang masa dekat library. mana mana library pun boleh, as long as it calls LIBRARY.) sometimes la ok sometimes. 

after that, i pray for isya’ then nak tak nak, i’ll force myself to sleep at 10pm. if kerja banyak, i’ll extend my time til 11pm. then, kena tidur. i’ll make sure i bangun tidur around 4:30am to 5am. mesti ada yang wonder tak takut ke bangun awal sgt, nah because whenever i bangun at that hour, automatic my roommate, athirah, bangun sekali. we will go to bathroom together (or just by myself la), mandi all. 

while waiting for subuh, i’ll continue back with calculation qs or maybe, i’ll read for quiz. because pagi pagi mcm tu only, everything i baca masuk and igt. then, solat subuh, touch up muka sikit and i’m ready for classes! kalau i awal and takda kerja sgt, i’ll take my breakfast first then baru pergi kelas. (sebab saya kena makan awal pagi. lps tu, sakit perut HAHAHA)

so, that is all for my daily routine on weekdays! hahaha 

weekends on weekends (kedah cuti on friday and saturday), i won’t say that i spent my time study 24/7, that is so not anis la hahaha. sometimes, i study, buat hw, outing or watch movies. but that happens only when i tak banyak kerja. this is my weekends rountine;

so, our beloved roommate, nazira akan kejut semua for subuh. she memang senang bangun pagi, we all tak sebab dah mindset esok cuti so susah bangun. after subuh. i............................................ tidur balik.

hahahahaha, it’s true. but then, i’ll wake up again at 9am or 10am. terus mandi, kalau rajin, after that i’ll make nescafe. because, u know, me.... i can’t live without drinking a mug or a can of coffee. (ya, saya ketagih dan saya tahu tu). i will continue studying while drinking until 11am, then i will siap siap turun beli lunch (yes i used to buy lunch earlier because i really love cafe b’s punya lauk rather than cafe c’s, sebab tu cafe b punya foods cepat je habis) as soon as habis je makan, i akan basuh baju til zohor. sis suka kumpul baju gak kadang kadang. dah la basuh tgn uolls. by the way, before lunch, i’ll do any writing questions. 

after zohor, i’ll do calculation.. sampai habis. then again continue writing sampai malam. in between tu, i akan take a break, main ml or tgk movie sejam before i continue siapkan hw/asg. i can’t study under pressure. malam akan continue study mcm biasa, like normal days. i don’t know why or maybe u guys pun sama, on weekends, i can’t study siang, bila malam baru mcm semangat study dia mai.

after 12, kalau tak boleh tidur lagi, i akan tgk movie or main ml se-round dua then baru tidur. hehehehehe

well, that is all for weekends!

—

oh and... not to mention that i’ll take a break, which means tak akan buka buku langsung on thursday night. yela kan, after byk hari tidur tk cukup or tk dpt tgk movie, main ml etc, that night will be the night for me to have a break from studying. u shouldn’t stress urself too much bcs ur body and mind need a rest too. hehehehehehe, okay so, that is all from me; my daily routine in college. yang baik, boleh ambik. yang buruk, jangan ambik. okay? <333

(this photo was taken at my college, from my hostel to be exact. the sunset view there was spectacular)

so, this is an additional thoughts or questions that juniors must be tertanya tanya. like “betul ke matrik susah?”, “susah sgt ke matrik?”, “how’s exactly life in there?” etc.

hahahaha, ok, i don’t know if i should give answers for these because i’m not one of the deans. but i’ll try okay.

to be very honest, matriculation is not that hard. maybe la maybe, it feels difficult and hard because u have to learn so much in a year. two semesters, ten months to be exact. not to forget, u only have to focus for four subjects. only. 

my advice is u just have to change ur attitude. that is all. u have to be hardworking, tinggalkan benda benda tak perlu, u perlu struggle for ten months je. then, u dah cuti balik tau, rasa mcm baru je habis spm. matrik ni sekolah pun tak, uni pun tak. but i would say dia mcm sekolah je. learning way je mcm uni. serious. u can’t be lazy, can’t tangguh kerja. if u someone mcm tu time sekolah, change. actually, mmg la u akan ada thought mcm “ala aku bukan boleh belajar under pressure  pun, aku kena belajar rilek rilek.” so do i. and i survived. til the end. u see, i had thoughts like that before. ytjt, how pemalas i was back then in school and in matric juga. but i change myself slowly bila masuk matric tau. at least i ada perubahan sikit bila masuk matrik rather than takda langsung right? plus, bila u tgk kawan kawan semua study, u automatic nak study. believe me. pieka once told me this before. guess, she’s right ;)

sebenarnya, matrik tak susah. ubah perangai, ubah cara study. insyaAllah, boleh. don’t be like me, i focus benda tak perlu and alhamdulillah, i realised earlier and study hard last minute. i was very last minute and i regret things. but i’m good now, i finished my matriculation, i alrdy entered uni last sunday. the most important thing is, i survived.

so, that is all from me today. thank you to those who made it til the end. y’all r the best! hahahaha hmu if u have anything to ask.

til next time, Anis.

[junker-town]

The 5 most exciting and least exciting conference tournaments in college hoops

Timothy T. Ludwig-USA TODAY Sports

Who the heck is going to win the MAC? We have no idea.

Heavy favorites are typically the norm on Championship Week, but this isn’t an across the board deal. There are a number of leagues this season where the regular-season champ appears vulnerable, and a few where parity reigns so supreme that it’s not hard to see a scenario where a team that finished near the bottom of the league standings could reel off three or four wins in a row.

Here are the five leagues that may prove to have the wackiest of wacky postseasons.

1. Mid-American

I have no idea what the hell is going on in the MAC.

Only five of the 12 teams in the conference have league records above .500. No team has fewer than four losses. Akron looked like world-beaters for a month and then lost to Bowling Green by 18. Bowling Green — which has pieced together back-to-back 20 win seasons for the first time since the 1940s — followed that performance up with an 18-point loss to East Division cellar dweller Miami. Two-time reigning champion Buffalo won in bunches and lost in bunches.

A team seeded fifth or worse has won this thing four times in the last 12 years. That’s the same number of times the top seed has cut down the nets over the same span.

This tournament has the potential to go off the rails in a hurry.

2. Conference USA

The jury is still out on C-USA’s new “pod scheduling” system, which is designed to have the league’s best teams play more games later in the season against one another with the hope of giving the conference the best chance possible to send multiple teams to the NCAA tournament. When it’s apparent by early January that your league is going to be a 1-bid league, well, then it just creates a few interesting matchups for the regular season title race and a whole bunch of really bad games.

With one game still to play in the regular season for most of its teams, C-USA has an established tier one of North Texas (14-3), Western Kentucky (12-5) and Louisiana Tech (11-5). Behind that trio there is a sandwich of seven teams that have records between 9-7 and 7-9.

It feels right that this conference tournament will once again feature multiple games being played at the same time right next to one another, and that a handful of those games will only be viewable on Facebook.

Best sport in the world.

3. Big Sky

The Big Sky used to be one of those conferences that only allowed a little over half of its teams to qualify for the conference tournament. Thank goodness it saw the error of its ways, because the league is incredibly competitive this season.

Eastern Washington and Montana are currently tied atop the league standings with matching 14-4 records, but there are three teams immediately behind them — Northern Colorado, Portland State and Northern Arizona — that also have double-digit league wins. The ninth-place team in the conference right now is perennial power Weber State, which has the league’s most dynamic scorer in Jerrick Harding. Hell, the last place team in the conference, 3-15 Idaho, won at league-leading Eastern Washington less than a month ago.

You’ve got a week to figure out what the hell Pluto TV is because that’s where the first two rounds of this tournament are going to be, and they’re going to be sensational.

4. Southern

This one doesn’t make the list because of the parity or depth of the conference. It makes the list because the SoCon has three teams that are all good enough to win at least one game in the NCAA tournament, if they can make it there.

Regular season champ East Tennessee State seems like a safe bet to be in the field of 68 regardless, but they certainly don’t want to leave anything to chance. Furman (25-6, 15-3) and UNC Greensboro (23-8, 13-5) are terrific basketball teams loaded with mid-major star power as well.

Carve some time out for the SoCon semifinals and title game. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

5. Missouri Valley

Arch Madness is always the bell cow of the postseason’s opening week, and 2020 should be no different.

Northern Iowa is an NCAA tournament lock that could be a single-digit seed in the Big Dance, but the Panthers aren’t going to waltz through this thing. Loyola Chicago (remember those guys?) finished just a game behind UNI in the final league standings and beat the Panthers by nine on Feb. 15.

Bradley and Indiana State both finished with 11 conference wins, and Southern Illinois notched 10. In all, seven of the 10 teams in this conference are heading to St. Louis with league records of .500 or better.

We also can’t wrap this up without giving a special shoutout to Evansville, which became the first team in college basketball history to beat the No. 1 ranked team in the AP poll (at Kentucky on Nov. 12) and go winless in conference play in the same season. The Purple Aces, who fired head coach Walter McCarty in the middle of the season due to reports of alleged sexual misconduct, went 0-18 in the Valley and haven’t won a game of any sort since an overtime win over Murray State on Dec. 21.

Bring this thing home, Aces.

Five Less Exciting Conference Tournaments

1. Northeast

Let me preface this entire spiel with the following: None of this is the fault of the Northeast Conference. There was nothing you could do about this. This is not on you.

With that out of the way, it is an absolute goddamn travesty that Merrimack doesn’t get to play in this tournament. The Warriors should be one of the best and most fun stories of March, but instead, we’re not going to hear anything else about them until the CBI or the CIT starts ... which means we’re not going to hear anything else about them for the rest of the year because I’m still not entirely convinced those tournaments are real.

For those unfamiliar, Merrimack went 20-11 this season, became the first team ever to win 20 games in its first season as a member of Division-I, and then won the Northeast Conference regular season title outright with a 14-4 record, making them also the first program in NCAA history to win an outright conference regular season title in its first season of Division I reclassification.

Classic underdog college basketball story for the American public to grab onto in March, right? Nope.

Because the NCAA bans transitioning schools from postseason play for four years (unless the conference in question has a limited number of teams, but even then, the transitioning school is ineligible to play in the NCAA tournament or the NIT), the Warriors will not be participating in this week’s NEC tournament. They also won’t be playing in the event in any of the next THREE years. The reason for the rule, of course, is that ... I don’t know ... stories like these might be too fun and awesome? The NCAA power structure is loaded down with Robert Morris grads? Who knows.

Anyway, none of this has slowed the roll of Merrimack head coach Joe Gallo, who has been hurling himself around like a lunatic for a week straight.

THE CHAMPS ARE HERE!!!!!#GoMack // #NECMBB pic.twitter.com/bjQ1ZjzFpX

— Merrimack Men’s Basketball (@MerrimackMBB) February 28, 2020

✈ FROM THE TOP RUNG ✈#AirGallo #AirGallo #AirGallo #AirGallo #AirGallo #AirGallo pic.twitter.com/bPQxbhWv0V

— Merrimack Men’s Basketball (@MerrimackMBB) February 28, 2020

Nope, definitely don’t want more of that over the next couple of weeks. No fun to be found there.

And one more thing before we move on: Every year I fill out my NEC bracket, and every year I forget that after the quarterfinals, the league has the lowest remaining seed play at the highest remaining seed instead of having the tournament play out in traditional fashion.

Is this the most fair way to have a tournament like this where the host is always a campus site? No question. Does it leave me feeling like an idiot with multiple scratched out names after the quarterfinals? Every year.

I’ve got a lot of problems with everything happening in the NEC right now. Lotta problems.

2. Sun Belt

Not only has the Sun Belt made the move to the cowardly more equitable step ladder bracket where the top two seeds get a bye all the way to the semifinals, but they’re only allowing 10 of the 12 teams to participate in the tournament. This is a FIVE-DAY tournament. You couldn’t figure out a way to throw poor Troy and Louisiana-Monroe a bone?

If you’re curious about what a five-day tournament where the top two seeds don’t play until day four looks like, here you go:

If you have that many consecutive days with no more than two games being played, you’re probably doing something wrong. More games, more daytime basketball, more opportunities for glory; That’s what march is all about.

What are we doing here, Sun Belt?

3. Ivy League

You know what? I’m starting to think that we’ve been overestimating the value of an Ivy League education for decades now. I’m basing this entirely off the fact that the conference holds a four-team tournament at a pre-determined on-campus location.

None of this works.

If you’re capping the field at four, you may as well go back to the old 14-game tournament days. And if you’re going to have play the games on a campus site, at least have the advantage for the host school be an earned one. Also, at least make sure the host school is actually going to be a participant in the tournament.

You people baffle me. You spend all your money on these fancy conference tournaments, you surround yourself with ‘em, and they’re the wrong fuckin’ conference tournaments.

That’s two Good Will Hunting references in one extremely niche college basketball feature. So, yeah, we’re doing pretty well here.

4. West Coast

For five years, the West Coast Conference went away from the step ladder bracket and made Gonzaga and Saint Mary’s play more than two games to win a conference tournament championship. It was cool. Last year, they went back.

Here’s the thing: Gonzaga won every single one of those tournaments and played either Saint Mary’s or BYU in the title game each time. So it’s not like compressing the tournament hurt the league when it came to the likelihood of it sending its top dog(s) onto the NCAA tournament.

You’re depriving us of the over-saturation we crave, and you’re doing it for no reason.

5. Big Sky

Yeah I’m calling the Big Sky out for being boring just one section after praising it for being exciting. Things change quickly. This is March. Try and keep up.

Here’s the reason: On paper it looks like it’s going to be “crazy competitive,” but this is the only conference tournament in America where the No. 1 seed has cut down the nets in each of the last four seasons. It doesn’t stop there. The No. 1 seed has actually won the Big Sky tournament in eight of the last nine years, and the one year the top seed didn’t win, it was the No. 2 seed that took home the title. Great news for Eastern Washington/Montana. Not so great for the rest of us.

Consider this a warning shot, Big Sky. We’re gonna need to see some fireworks in the very near future.