#they evicted all students from their dorms so that they could make place for the police during the olympics

[rlvaille]

just in case you're interested in french politics but nearly 2 weeks after the left coalition won the elections, the government still hasn't resigned and have even voted for the president of the parliament yesterday, which is a breach to the constitution, and now it's like the elections were for nothing bc we still don't have a leftist prime minister but the presidence of the assembly is still the same and macron is sending a big fuck you to all french people just before his olympic games so i beg of you, if you do care about us do not watch, do not even talk about the olympics, he has to understand that we want him out

[stephenjaymorrisblog]

From Peoples Park to Echo Park

(Post- Trump era, Part 3)

March 26th 2021

By Stephen Jay Morris

©Scientific Morality

It was Easter 1971 in Berkeley, California.  I was visiting the Bay Area and I wanted to see the place where the students had fought the police. The park was small, maybe an acre; it looked like any other city park.  A couldn’t-be-overlooked wooden sculpture of a giant clenched fist assaulted my view.   Other than that, it was very nice and banal.  Some kids with backpacks were attentively listening to a guitarist.   He played a song I’d never heard of, “18” it was called.  I really liked it.  I asked who did the song and the guitarist said, Alice Cooper.  I thought it was a chick.  Boy, was I wrong!

By this time, the New Left was dying a slow death.  Much has been written about the Peoples Park riot.  Click here for more information. I wont rehash the entire history here, however, it was the strangest trip I’d ever been on.  It’s recounted in my one of my manuscripts.

In the City of Berkeley, homeless encampments are protected by city ordinance.  However, 500 miles south of there is a different story. Echo Park is an area northeast of Los Angeles where my mother grew up.  She lived two blocks up the hill from the park itself.  At the time, my grandfather co-owned a grocery store called, “Pioneer Market,” located nearby on Sunset Boulevard.  Echo Park was a white neighborhood.  How white was it?  Well, my mom’s family consisted of the only Jews on her block.  My grandfather wanted his two daughters to marry Jewish guys, so he moved his family to the Fairfax District, about 20 miles west.  Success!  They both married Jews, although my aunt eventually divorced her husband and my mom suffered with my dad for 50 years!  But, hey—stick to your own tribe! (Sarcasm 101)

Now, Echo Park has a large Latino population and LGBTQ residents.  The park itself is right next to the Hollywood Freeway.  When I used to take the express bus home from work on that freeway, I would see that man-made lake to the left.  It looked similar to that of another park, MacArthur Park, on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, only smaller.  There were boats on the lake you could rent, just like at MacArthur Park.  There are many old growth shade trees, perfect for picnics and just relaxing.  There were grills for barbecuing, and bathrooms. The bathrooms were not very nice but, they were there should you really need them.  On the park’s south side, there was a public swimming pool.  In the distance southward, you can see LA’s downtown skyline.

Berkeley is a small university town.  When the college administration threatened to tear down Peoples Park to build college dorms, word got around and, within hours, protests emerged.  The protests soon became riots.  That was when conservatives ran the universities.   Today, conservatives still own the university, but liberals run it.  Finally after a few years, the college left the property alone.

Los Angeles is a huge city, now run by Democrats.  It used to be run by Republicans, until they got voted out of office because of mass corruption.  Back in the 40s and 50s, Los Angeles had a massive transportation system known as the “Red Car.” You could ride an electric train car all the way from Pasadena to Venice Beach on that system.   Then, the Republican city council acquiesced to the oil companies and auto manufacturers and destroyed the “Red Car.”

Now to the “homeless problem.” Because of Southern California’s mild climate, it is easier to be homeless in LA than, say, in Chicago. Most of the homeless are mentally ill, alcoholic, and/or drug addicted.  Enter the COVID 19 pandemic, followed by the economic depression and, like an avalanche, it quickly caused average citizens to lose their jobs and businesses.   Subsequently, their homes were foreclosed upon and/or they were evicted from their apartments when they could no longer make their mortgage and rent payments.  These average, working class citizens became homeless.

There are hundreds of homeless camps in LA, many of them under freeway overpasses.  There are homeless camps on Venice Beach and in public parks.  One park, Poinsettia Park, was where I used to hang out when I was a preteen.  East of that park, you could see the United Artists Studio movie sets stored behind their studio walls.  That park is now a homeless camp.  It looks like a Boy Scouts Jamboree.  

Echo Park became a homeless camp.  The city council representative for the area decided he wanted to clear out the park of encampments because of the many complaints he’d received.  Since LA  is a left-of-center government, they didn’t want to be seen as Fascists preparing to evict poor people into the streets, so, they found a loophole.  “We’ll tell the public that we will be clearing out the park to do needed repairs.   Having people there while the work was ongoing, would present a safety hazard.”  Thus, under false pretenses, the City evicted the homeless from the park and fenced it off for construction purposes.  

Millennial protesters showed up to protect the modern day itinerants from the heartless state.   Homeless residents joined them. They practiced non-violent resistance by standing, their arms locked together, in front of a line of an LAP.D riot squad.  They marched and chanted, but they were outnumbered.  The homeless became nomadic.

A Lumpen proletariat like me knows that, when the Middle Class becomes unemployed and homeless, they are not worried about the “Red menace.” Do you really think that if they utilize the Protestant work ethic, they will, by free enterprise magic, ascend from poverty like superhero's?   And, if they pray to Jesus, they will be saved?  Fuck, no!  What they will find out when they unite and become a revolutionary army is, that they will rise above property rights by targeting their true oppressors, the Ruling Class!

History, once again, is repeating itself.  We now have another Eisenhower mixed with Truman in the White House.  President Biden will be remembered, by history, as the savior of the USA.

It is a two party game.  I am so sick of it!  Republican bad cop and Democrat good cop.  The pendulum will swing from left to right again and again until America has a left wing revolution.  What is happening in Echo Park is happening globally.

[pilot-boi]

Shouting In Cafes: Chapter Nine

Dorm Days

The search begins, and despite its rough beginnings, it ends up with optimal results. Or sub-optimal, if you asked Neptune.

AO3 LINK

Where was Neptune supposed to find a wandering frat boy in this giant school?

As soon as Neptune started looking, he realized just how little he knew about Sun Wukong. He knew he was twenty, he knew he went to Beacon, he knew he was tall. He was pretty sure he knew he was in a fraternity. He didn’t know what he majored in, what he liked, what he hated, if he was in any clubs.

Which meant Neptune was getting practically nowhere in his search.

He was freezing cold, too. The temperature had suddenly dropped overnight, letting the grass freeze over and puffs of breath crystallize in front of students as they walked to class despite October barely reaching its final stretch. It also let Neptune’s pants glue themselves to the metal bench he’d foolishly decided to situate himself on.

“This is stupid,” Neptune said, unwrapping his arms from around his torso and pulling his scarf more snuggly around his face. “Why am I doing this?”

He was talking to himself.

Stop talking to yourself.

What would he even say? Hi, I was stalking you. Want to be friends? No. Plus he had already insulted Sun too many times to count.

This was really stupid. This wasn’t going to get Neptune anywhere, and it would probably only succeed in driving Sun away. He didn’t really care, anyway. Jaune had dragged him into this in the first place. The dude really could get him to do anything.

But not this, not forever anyway. He was leaving. This was pointless, and he had homework.

Light spiky hair in the corner of his eye, about to head into a building.

Neptune was up before he knew what he was doing.

“Hey, Sun?” he asked as his feet carried him towards the doorway. His arm stretched out, ready to tap him if need be.

He didn’t turn around.

“Sen!” he called again. His hand met his shoulder.

Sun turned around.

Not Sun.

His jaw was too square, his eyes dark grey, matching his hair. His expression was too sour. Definitely not Sun.

“Oh. Sorry,” Neptune muttered and recoiled his hand quickly.

Not-Sun scoffed and rolled his eyes, pushing through open the glass door to go inside.

“My mistake.”

Neptune kicked off his shoes and peeled off his bomber jacket, setting both near his dorm room’s door. Soft yellow light and pictures of home greeted him along with a mound of paper on his desk next to his computer.

He should take care of those papers. He should get to work. He should definitely stop worrying about the forced-friend Jaune was trying to give him.

Why was he worrying so damn much?

Neptune collapsed in his chair, pushed his glasses up, and rubbed at his eyes. It had been a long day. Making a fool of himself in front of a stranger, making a fool of himself in front of Jaune, making a fool of himself in front of himself…

He could make friends. Friends that weren’t a frat boy he chatted to over a counter at his workspace.

Was he a frat boy?

Work. He needed to do work.

Neptune scooped a pen into his fingers and tugged the first paper off the stack. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to what the header actually said. No. this was a final draft of a paper he already wrote.

He pushed it away.

Next paper. No. He had done that assignment already as well.

Next paper. Nope.

Next paper. Done.

Nope. This wasn’t happening.

He needed to use the bathroom.

Neptune pushed off from his seat and stood to his feet, a yawn bubbling out from him. It had been a weird day. He was in a weird mood. He needed to occupy himself with whatever he could to keep his mind busy.

His hand reached for the doorknob and pulled it open.

A hand was raised in front of him.

The hand quickly pushed its way to its owner’s neck, rubbing at the hair there. Straw yellow, and flaring in every direction.

Sun Wukong looked extremely surprised to see a very drained Neptune standing before him.

Sun was the first to speak. “Neptune! Bro!” he exclaimed loud enough for the entire hall to hear, arms spread wide and eyes creasing as his smile fought for room on his face.

“Ah-” Neptune began.

“Good to see you here!”

“Sun, wha-”

“It feels like it’s been ages!” Sun just kept plowing on with his over-enthusiastic greetings, not even letting Neptune get a word in edgewise to respond.

“What the fu-”

“What are you doing in this neck of the woods?”

“I need to pee.”

They both stopped. Neptune’s mouth wasn’t obeying him, apparently switched off by the shock of the moment and pushed to its limits by Sun butting in.

Nice reintroduction, jackass.

“I, um,” Neptune said quickly. “I live here. This is my dorm.” Nice save. Nailed it.

“Which you were leaving to go to the bathroom.”

Before Neptune could respond, Sun popped his head right into Neptune’s dorm room, taking a wide look around at the mess before him. Messy floor. Messy desk. Messy bed. Oh Lord save him.

“You keep a tight ship, don’t you?” Sun said, shooting Neptune a sly glance.

“What? Stop looking! What the fuck dude-”

Neptune pushed against Sun’s chest in a vain attempt to evict him from his dorm room, but Sun braced himself against the door frame. Why was he wearing short sleeves? It was fucking freezing out! Why were his biceps the size of small golden retrievers?!

“The fairy lights are a nice touch. That’s a lot of books, dude, have you actually read all of those or are you just trying to look smart?”

“Get out!”

Neptune finally managed to muscle Sun out of the doorway, and Sun returned to his regular posture with slightly more ruffled hair.

“You look different when you’re not behind a counter,” Sun said, his clear blue eyes giving Neptune a once over. He suddenly remembered he was wearing a stretched-out sweater and sweatpants with stains on the hem from where they dragged on the ground. A little too big on him. He looked disgusting. Who let him go out like this?

“And you look very much the same,” Neptune said, and tried to make the drunk English professor look work.

“Haven’t seen you around in a while,” Sun said. The smile didn’t leave his face. Neptune let himself wonder if it hurt to smile that much or if his face muscles had just gotten used to the insane amount of stress.

“Yeah. That was part of the bet. Deal. Arrangement.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“I honestly didn’t think you were going to keep your word.”

“What? Why?”

Neptune paused as he watched Sun’s eyes turn melty, starting to morph into the puppy face he liked to use. An ounce of compassion began to bleed into Neptune’s cold exhausted bones. He shook it off and tilted up his chin. “Because our first interaction was you screaming and threatening me. I didn’t believe you were the most rational person in the world.”

“Right! I forgot all about that,” Sun said, slipping out of the puppy-posture and instead letting out another laugh. “I thought you were an asshole, dude. Well, I mean…”

“Don’t try it, dude.”

“I’m just saying you’re kind of a tight ass,” Sun said and shrugged, crossing his arms. An mischievous smile spread across his face. “Except when you’re hungover.”

Neptune bristled in spite of himself. Why did he have to bring up their first meeting? Why? “That was an outlier. Doesn’t count.”

Sun stepped forward and pressed a finger against Neptune’s chest, not so much accusatory, more mocking. He literally knew nothing about personal space. Neptune could smell his cologne. “You totally said I was hot. Like, twice!” 

It would be easier if Sun didn’t have to sound so absolutely delighted about it. “My eyes were blurry.”

“Nonono, you said my pecs were nice.” He lowered his hand, but decided to trade that out for leaning closer to Neptune’s face and winking. “Honestly, I mean, they deserve to be complimented.”

Jesus Christ.

 God, Neptune wanted to wipe that fucking smile off his face. God, he was such a fucking idiot. Not even Neptune knew if he was referring to Sun or to himself when he said that. 

The hall that his dorm was in wasn’t known for having the best heating system, but he suddenly didn’t feel the chill anymore.

[somuchawkwerd]

i do genuinely feel bad for a lot of students that paid to go to college and live in dorms this semester because they got royally fucked out of their money.

That school, That university? Does not care about your health OR your education. They wanted your money and they got it. They did not plan on being open the whole semester, they KNEW they couldn't stop the spread of the virus and they put You and Every Teacher in danger for financial gain.

.........that being said.....

....like.... maybe I'm just ignorant but maybe.... while watching all these public k-12 schools fight about the safety of children for MONTHS did you actually think COLLEGE was exempt from the threat?

Did you think "oh, we're 18 now, we're all adults here we know how to social distance so we aren't hurting anybody by being here, nobody could possibly get sick and DIE for my education here"?

Like, K-12 are being forced into it because they don't have a choice...... but you do?? And you're literally choosing to stay in a crowded dorm and take in-person classes in Fall 2020 During A Pandemic??

Some kids are trying to escape bad situations; some people have controlling parents that are manipulating them into going, believe me I understand that, but its becoming more obvious that a LOT of these kids are just coming from places of privilege where they aren't used to hearing "No."

No, this is not the year.

I'm so sorry this happened to you but its happening to all of us.

Do Not give these places your money, they will take it, evict your covid having ass in two weeks, and keep your tuition. You are putting yourself, your family, and the staff of your choosen university at risk of Death by trying to force your education to happen according to your 5 year plan instead of just TAKING LIKE... MAYBE ONE YEAR OFF FOR THE SAKE OF HUMANITY?

Like Fuck. Think with your own brains. I know you're probably right out of highschool and you feel like you're on a countdown timer for success but I Promise you can wait. You can wait! Its ok! Those deadlines they give you aren't real! You won't die if you don't have yout bachelor's degree within four years of graduating highschool

Taking a year off college won't damage you nearly as much as bringing home covid that kills your mom/dad/grandparents will.

These colleges will never take personal responsibility for the damage they cause, its literally up to you, as students, to demand better for yourself and the people who staff the building.

Thats a massively unfair burden to put on students; and it should make you question whether or not the educational authority you're paying for is one with your best interests at heart or if its an authority who just wants to take advantage of your money, housing needs and desperation for human contact

[kpopisthereasonihavenolife]

Dandelion

BTS

Park Jimin/Reader [F]

Genre: College AU, Enemies->Friends->Lovers, Fluff

Warning(s?): Mentions of Drinking/Smoking, Jimin’s Tattoo

Words: 9.7k

Summary: Park Jimin was a hot topic name floating around campus on the daily.  Always seen with a girl at his hip with a different girl on his thigh just a few days later.  Rumor has it he’s never had a fling with one girl lasting longer than a week.  With your gossip-addicted best friend and his friendship with Jimin, Jimin comes to learn about you.  A week isn’t so hard sticking around one girl, the hardest part is when day 7 stars approaching. So, he decides he wants to make a wish instead. Wishing on a dandelion has to work. 

a/n: this is sloppy bc I did it all in one sitting and I apologize

“I heard Jimin broke up with his girlfriend!”  The first thing you were greeted with at lunchtime and it was your overly excited, sparkly-eyed best friend.  He was always the one to get any and all gossip he could just because he wanted to be part of the circle of gaudy gossip.  You could care less about half the bull that comes out of his mouth.

“And why would I care?  What, is it his longest lasting relationship or something.  Wow, 5 days with the same chick, whoop-dee-doo.”  You slid into a cafeteria, blue chair unloading the tray filled with two wrapped chicken sandwiches and a styrofoam bowl of strawberries.  

“Oh come on, you can’t deny that it’s odd.  There’s talk about him actually liking this one, maybe he’ll go back in for a double dip.”  

You gagged.  “Eugh, can’t you go and tatter off to your other friends?  I don’t wanna hear anything about Jimin’s sex life, Jackson.”

Jackson slumped over in the seat next to you as he sighed dramatically into the air. He would always act like you just kicked over a tower of legos he spent 4 hours building whenever you would blatantly refuse to care about his gossip. It was no surprise that Jackson knew all the haps of anything ever.  He was a people person, who knew everyone ever it seemed.

If you called some random number over in LA, you had no doubt if you mentioned Jackson, they would answer back ‘oh, yeah I know him!’.  He’s been everywhere and you were always curious as to why.  He wasn’t a homebody by any stretch.  

“I can’t talk to other people about his hips girl, all because they’ve all been with him before.  You- albeit- haven’t! So, I can talk to you about him with a clean slate honey.”

“That reasoning and your stupid use of pet names have no correlation of why I need to hear it and I’ve also revoked your drunk stay over privilege until next Monday.”

Jackson gapped at you.

“Your couch is my drunk home! Don’t evict me you, she-devil!” He whapped at your shoulder and swapped right back to the topic at hand.  “Besides, I’m his friend, why aren’t you?”

“Do you really have to ask?  He doesn’t know I exist for one and I’d like to keep it that way.  All he’s gonna do is try and wedge his half-dollar-coin-sized dick between my legs.”

“Sometimes, you really do need to get laid.”

“If you don't think I won’t knee him in the balls if he comes even within a 4-foot radius of me, you’re wrong.”

Sensing the conversation die, Jackson finally moved onto a different topic altogether.  Even if the topic shifted from Jimin, the conversation he yapped your off about how unsanitary the school campuses bathroom is, was still far from welcome.

Munching on your food, and nearly finished Jackson stopped his yammering when someone clapped his shoulder.  Looking over his shoulder, he busted out into laughter at the irony as you could see their figure in the corner of your eyes.  Only offering a small and short eyeroll.

Park Jimin stood behind Jackson, his hand on his hip with a pair of shades and a beanie on his blonde head. His leather jacket covered his yellow flannel that hid his white tee with his jeans that were ripped at the thigh.  His biker boots were worn and frankly needed some care to them.

You remain unbothered and silent as the two began to speak to another.

“I was told to pass along the message,” Jimin said as he held out a small scrap of folded paper.  Taking it with a pluck, Jackson flipped it open and scanned the words written along it.  

“Right on, right on. Whose place is this one at?”

“Jin’s setting us up.”  Jackson whistled with a smirk.

“Of course.  Mr. Connections, always pulling through.”

Jimin nodded, Seokjin always had connections.  Be it with a house to throw parties or what flower shop to go to when your little 3-year-old niece wants a bouquet of daisies for her birthday. He always had a go-to.  Perks of being a rich kid who knew any and everyone with the social skills to back you up.  You’ve even asked him once if he knew a place in town that sold old, used textbooks. He was cocky about it, but at least he gave you an answer and a promise to save some money.

“Friday at 8.  Don’t forget like last time and show up at 3 when everyone is already passed out or getting fucked in a room, yeah?” Jimin quipped with a smirk on his face.  Jackson only rolled his eyes as he swiveled around to you, shoving the paper in your face as you popped a strawberry in your mouth.

Reading the words in sloppy handwriting, it looked like a kindergartner wrote it.  It just showed a location, a time and date.  Probably all the for party that you assumed to two were fawning over.  You shifted your eyes to look over the paper into Jackson’s face.  A gleam in his eyes and a smile on his face.  Far too suspicious.

“Why am I looking at this?”

“You’ve gotta come with me!”  You rolled your eyes as slapped the top of his hand, making him retracted it and rub at the skin with a pout. “Rude,” he muttered.

“If you think I’d enjoy being in a loud, sweaty, drunken club with all your frat friends looking for a night less than 20$ and 5 shots, you really need to revoke your friendship with me. I’d rather stare directly into a high voltage flashlight for 2 hours and go blind, thanks.”

You popped another strawberry into your mouth as Jackson laid his head down on the table and looked at you.  Lips pouted and eyelashes fluttering like a damsel in distress.  

“Please?”

“Not happening.”

“Please?”

“No.”

“Please?”

“Jackson!”

“Okay okay,” he reasoned before he sat up and snapped his fingers.  A stupid plan forming in his head, you could feel it. “How about it’ll be a favor for me?  I’ll owe you one!” You sighed as you rubbed your forehead.  He was such a headache.  “Please, I won’t ask anything more for the rest of the month plus I’ll even owe you a favor.  Any favor, you know I'm down for anything.”

“So long as it doesn’t end up with you sitting in a holding cell?” You quipped with a smile as you remember back in high school he was running around town, causing all sorts of trouble with beer on his brain instead of logic.

“That was a long time ago! Let it die!” He whined.

As the two of you bickered, the both of you had failed to register Jimin still stood at the table.  Jimin knew a lot of the student body, even if the campus and college were diverse and huge.  Though, he hadn’t seen you before.  Arguing with Jackson about not wanting to come to a world-class frat party was amusing enough.  The fact that you seemed to know Jackson already, only made it better.  You probably had so much dirt on him it was laughable.

You seemed stubborn, probably annoyingly so.  He moved to rest his rear on the table top, lounging with one leg propped up as he watched you two.  He wasn’t needed here, he wasn’t required to stay and listen in on a conversation that had literally nothing to do with him.

Yet, he was intrigued all the same.  Then, you noticed him.

You peeked around Jackson as you threw the last strawberry from your bowl into your mouth, the red from the fruit staining your lips in a way he wanted to forget, but somehow knew he wouldn’t.  

“Can we help you?” You asked in a spiteful manner.  He lifted his hands in defense.

“Oh no, carry on.  This is fun,” he replied as you rolled your eyes.  “Besides,” he started again, “it’s just a party.  There’s nothing wrong with that.”  

“Some of us have other things to do believe it or not.  Maybe I’m not into alcohol, or maybe I’m just not a party person.  Ever think of that genius?”

He hissed in a playful manner, dramatically clutching his chest.  

“That stings.  And to think I was inviting you.”

“No, Jackson was inviting me.”

“But, I invited him.  So through correlation, I am the mastermind.”

“Oh my god,” you sighed as Jackson bit his lip in amusement. He knew Jimin had no idea who you were, yet he was chatting you up like you’ve been talking for a week.  “I don’t really want to take an invite from some rando guy who hops from girl to girl like frogs from lily pads.  Please shut up.”  

Before anything else, you looked at the watch face on your wrist and pushed out your chair.  Loading the tray with your trash and empty strawberry-stained bowl, you slung your bag over your shoulder. Jackson stood up as well, taking the tray from you as you huffed.  

“I’ll take your trash,” he kindly said.  It was suspicious once again, but you’d allow it.  “You’re going to work on your camera right?  Didn’t you get a new one?” You nodded.

“I did.  I was going to go back to the dorms and fiddle with it.  I don’t have another lecture until 4, so I can afford some practice photos.” He nodded.

“Make sure to take a photo of a dandelion and show it to me first!”

“What if I wanted to show my roommate?”

“You know she won’t be there.  She’s always out late.”

“You’re right,” you added with a playful smirk.  She worked late and after that, she always had something to do. It was a good night when she came sauntering into the dorm at 2 AM.  

“Go on, shoo you, little photographer, you.” You shook your head with a chuckle and began to walk off.  Swerving around chairs and people, you plugged your headphones into your phone and placed your sound muffling cuffs over your head and toned out the world.  Leaving the cafeteria, the school and then to the campus grounds.  

Jackson as he said, dealt with your trash as Jimin hopped up from his seat on the table top and meandered his way back through the cafeteria to his mob of friends.  All talking about one thing or another.  

All Jimin could think about as he drummed his fingers on his arms was how to convince you to come to the party on Friday. He had something he wanted to know about and, quite frankly, he felt like you inadvertently challenged him.  So, of course, he had to prove a point now.  

Having someone banging on your door Friday evening at 6 PM was something you surely didn’t want to deal with. Already cozy with one of your old hoodies and a pair of shorts with your hair a damp mess from your shower earlier on, you were lounging on your couch flipping through TV channels utterly bored.

Jackson had spammed you with text after text trying to convince you to come to the party.  He tried every bribe in the book, but you just would not yield.  You only assumed that Jackson was the one pounding down your dorm door, but when it didn’t stop and your phone never chimed with a text to let him in, you grew curious.  

Growing tired of the constant bangs that didn’t seem to stop anytime soon, you rolled off the couch and stomped to the door, swinging it open without even peeking through the peephole who is inside.  Ready to be met with your best friend's face, yet not so.

“What the hell?” You whispered to yourself.  There, in front of you and your dorm room who just shoved his way past your shoulder to saunter inside was Park Jimin himself. “Um, excuse me?”

He, with his hands shoved into the pockets of his mint green windbreaker, turned to you with his tousled blonde hair and dark eyes.  “Yes?”

“Get the hell out?” You questioned as you motioned to the door.  He untucked his hands as he cupped his chin and puckered his mouth and crinkled his chin in a false thought motion.  He was already trying your patience.

“I think I’m good. Thanks for the offer though!” You groaned as you begrudgingly shut your door, glad for once that your roommate never comes back until way later than 6PM.  When you waltzed back into your living room, Jimin had made himself comfortable on your couch with your TV remote like he lived here.  You were offended, obviously so.

You stood in the doorway of the room as Jimin waved you over as you took skeptic steps towards him and sat on the far end of the couch.  Clear away from his grabby fingers that probably need a sanitize or two.

“I don’t bite you know,” he chuckled as he dug his phone from his pocket.  He opened his messages and you watched his thumbs drum away on the screen.  Messaging, hitting send, opening a new conversation and repeat.  How many friends did he have?  “We’ll leave in an hour.”  He said without batting an eye.

“Excuse me?”

“Jin’s party? We’re going.” Who did this man think he is?!

“Says who?!  I’m not going, I’m pretty sure I made that obvious before. You were eavesdropping so you know this mind you.”

“I wasn’t eavesdropping, I was just listening.  It’s not like I was hiding behind a wall and listening in while you and Jackson bitch back and forth.  Which is funny, by the by.” He dropped his phone into his lap as he hiked his arm up on the back of the couch, looking at you, your knees pulled to your chest with your feet on the couch cushion.  “You’re actually quite cute.”

You quickly jumped up and sat perched on the arm of your couch, pointing a finger at him as you opened your mouth and furrowed your brows.

“Ah-ha! I knew it!”

“Knew what?”

“You’re just a sleazy, shady, horny college frat boy who is just following me around because you don’t know me!” Jimin offered an annoyed eye roll, his eyes sticking up to his eyelids before he looked back down with a snarky grin. “I’ve heard your resume from Jackson, and I know better than to throw myself at you.”

“Oh, so you know about me?  Well, that’s unfair as I know nothing about you.”

“In fact, come any closer and I’ll punch you in your stupid face.”  Jimin just shook his head as he huffed out through his slightly parted lips.  He watched as you sat perched on the arm of your couch like some sort of bird of prey, practically hissing at him. You had obviously heard all the rumors from Jackson, most of which are probably true.  Most.  Not all of them are true though, however, he won't deny that he couldn't count the numbers of girls he's 'dated' on his fingers and toes combined.

"You know, I'm not all that bad.  I'm not gonna just get you drunk and pull some cheap trick on you like some jock would." He slid his phone into his windbreaker pocket.  "How about we compromise."

"Sounds sketchy," you reply without missing a beat.

"Now, now, hear me out.  I can tell you don't like me much," you interrupted him with a sarcastic 'oh really' before he continued talking over you, "but I'm not so much as a horn dog as I am something willing to give someone something they want.  I'm not into sex if it's not consensual, so don't worry about me making any moves on you."  He spoke like he was being truthful, but you still weren't a hundred percent certain you could take his words at face value.  He sighed, "look, if you go with me, we don't have to stay the whole time," he tacked on.

"We? Makes it sound like you're expected me to tail you all night."

"Not exactly, I will be hanging around you though.  Jackson said parties aren't your scene, and I absolutely know that if you had the option, you'd be a wallflower all night." You squinted at him as you held your pinkie towards him.  He looked at it with ticked brows then back to you.  "And this is?"

"A pinkie finger," you answered.

"No shit genius, why are you sticking it in my face?"

"Oh please, it's like you don't know what a pinky promise is."  You rolled your eyes.  "I'll go to the stupid party if, and only if, you stick to your word and not abandon me to flounder on my own because I'm actually a big wimp and I will cry and I will cause a scene otherwise."

Jimin busted out laughing as he linked his pinky in yours.  Extending your thumb, you pressed it against the pad of his own and 'locked' in the promise.  Now he absolutely wasn't allowed to go back on his word.  Or else you'd probably throw a knife set at him.

Jimin shooed you off as you walked to your room, swaying and moaning the entire way before you shut it behind you.  So much for a boring, cozy night in.  For once, maybe you'd see your roommate if you weren't out all night.  You sighed as you sadly stripped out of your hoodie and shorts replacing them with skinny jeans with holey knees and a white shirt.  Fixing your messy hair and tying it back with a stretched out hair tie, you slipped on your worn out flats and grabbed your phone from the nightstand.

It was nothing glamorous, and you expected other girls to probably be dressed more... openly to put it nicely.  Though, you were only going because you were peer pressured into it, not to get laid and definitely not to get hit on.  If anyone even came close to you with a stupid, drunk pick up line, you're most likely to panic and flee the scene like you committed murder.

You sighed as you looked into your mirror.

"Why am I a pushover to some jerk who hardly knows me?"  Then, you gasped as you stomped your foot, finally registering that Jackson had blabbed to JImin about you. "That snake!!  I'm taking away his drunk couch privileges indefinitely!" All while Jimin sat on the couch in the living room, laughing to himself as you screamed at nothing and shot Jackson a text that you were coming with him to the party.

To say Jackson's reply back was overbearing was an understatement.  He acts like an idiot towards you, but the 'Don't you dare try anything with her, I swear to god,' text he received told him that the relationship you two have is more than just back and forth banter.

When Jimin's ears perked up at the sound of your door down the hall unlatching, he picked himself up off the couch and watched as you came back into the living room changed and much more party ready.  He let out a loud whistle as you adjusted your shirt, tucking it in and letting the boy see just the smallest sliver of your stomach and if he was being honest, it was more attractive than he thought it would be.

You were teasing him and you weren't even aware of it.  That was the most painful thing about you so far.  He cupped his chin as he looked at you.  Peeking up as you fumbled with getting your shirt just right, you caught him inspecting.

"What?" You bit.

"Something just seems, off?  Something is missing from this look."  He hummed as he walked around you.  The shirt was fine, the jeans were aesthetically pleasing and the small choker you hooked around your neck was a touch of college that worked wonderfully with the outfit in question.  He came back to your front as he scrunched his eyes and then shot them open with a snap and a small ah-ha moment. "I know! You need a jacket!"

"Why?"

"Because it's a staple in fashion to have a jacket with a look so simple.  Your shirt and jeans combo with a flare of the choker is appealing, but a jacket always seals the deal!  Or, if it's too hot than settle for a cardigan."

"What are you, a fashion guru?"

"No, but I do take a high deal of pride in my fashion sense."  You rolled your eyes as you crossed your arms.  Why white?  It was almost too transparent, your stupid yellow star printed bra was just barely visible in the bright lights of the living room.  Surely it'd be fine at the party, it'll be dark in the house, save for the random rave lights that Jin is bound to have.  He goes all out when it's his party.

"And I assume you'll want this jacket to be black?" He nodded, it would be just wrong to have a white jacket over a white shirt.  It would clash too much.  "Too bad, I don't have one.  I have a grey one?" He shook his head.

"Nope.  Monochromatic is good, but not with this look.  Black is the only option.  Ah, you know what, I have something at my house I could lend you.  It'd so perfect with you!"  He smiled as he grabbed your wrist.  "Come on, I live 10 minutes off campus.  We've no time to waste!"  He whined as he dragged you through the dorm and eventually out the door.

Soon, within the next hour, you found yourself climbing off of his motorcycle- that nearly frightened you to death with him as the driver- in his leather jacket outside a house too big to be real and almost envy-inducing.

The house was two stories and looked like a widened stock photo with how wide it was.  All the window shades were open and lights of blues, reds, purples flickered in uneven patterns through them.  The music was just bass boosted enough you could feel it in your feet when Jimin marched you both up the patio and through the door.  It was like walking into a speaker the way your body met with all the heat, lights and loud music.

You couldn't hear yourself think as you weaved through people, behind their backs and gasping when you nearly ran into a couple more than ready to take their lip lock elsewhere.  You shrunk in on yourself as you stumbled around before Jimin took your wrist again.

"Come on," he leaned closer to you and spoke loud enough you could hear him.  Letting him drag you off somewhere, he quite rudely pushed people away and maneuvered through the crowds of drunk college kids. He was definitely used to this- the way he moved through the masses was a clear indication of that.

Soon he had pulled you into the kitchen where it was much less crowded than you figured it would be.  You would think since all the liquid was stored here, it would be a madhouse, but only a few bodies stood around sipping from the typical red cup with rosey, drunken cheeks.  The music had dulled back in the kitchen, so a conversation wasn't totally out of the question.  You placed your hand on your chest and sighed at the room to actually breathe.

Jimin, beside you, chuckled as he rubbed your back between your shoulder blades.

"you really aren't cut out for tight spaces, doll."  You glared at him.

"Oh, so you just now realize that you moron?" He only chuckled as he whipped out his phone and sent a text to someone.  Just one text, as opposed to an hours earlier when he was texting anyone and everyone nonstop in sequence.

No soon was Jackson waltzing into the kitchen.  JImin watched as you seemed to lighten up at the face of someone so familiar to you.  Jackson sauntered out with a smile, nearly jogging at he bumped into your side with his own.  Wearing a snapback and some jersey with a pair of old, acid washed jeans, he looked like a jock ripped straight out of some gross teen-movie.

His breath stunk of booze, but he was still partially sober.  He could hold his alcohol better than you thought he could, to be honest. You pushed away his cheek that was far too close to your face to get the radiant smell of beer away from your nose.

"you're gross and smell, get away from me you sweaty-"

"Do not insult me when I know for a fact you're so ready to shit bricks."

You gaped at him as you smacked the back of his head, making him whine and wince as he rubbed it.  Sure you were nervous being here, but you weren't that nervous.  You crossed your arms as you pouted, Jimin once again finding a sense of adorableness between you and Jackson's interactions.

"I hate you," you muttered as Jackson feigned hurt.  He dropped his act as he playfully slapped your ass, making you squeak before he turned to Jimin.

"How'd you get Straight-Lace-Y/n out of her room on a Friday my man?  I gotta know, for future reference of course."

"You would never believe how easy she is to persuade if you say the right things."  Jackson gasped.

"You didn't make some sketchy deal did you?!"  You squawked as Jackson quickly pulled you against his chest, nearly knocking you over in his haste as he practically hissed as Jimin.  "Don't be touching my little Y/n! She's way too young!"  You whined.

"I'm only a few years younger than you!"  Jimin didn't know how old you were exactly, but if you were younger than Jackson, you were around his age then?  Jimin just shook his head as he slipped his thumbs through the front belt loops of his pants, leaning back just enough for it to almost be attractive.  Almost.

"I won't disclose our agreement with someone who didn't witness it.  Clients secrecy."

"Stop!" You grumbled.  "That makes it seem so bad!"  Jimin laughed as the three of you soon took to sticking in your little group and chatting.  Jimin had finally got you to loosen up enough to at least have one cup of something to drink.  Beer wasn't typically your thing, but after not being impressed with the rest of the liquor lineup, it wasn't so bad in comparison.

Eventually, you seemed to even start enjoying yourself.  Playfully quipping at anything Jackson or Jimin had to say and even smiling or laughing at some dumbass joke that came out of one of their mouths. Jimin laid off the alcohol for the most part, as he was your ride home and he may be wild, but drunk driving is definitely not his main game.

Soon, Jackson abandoned ship and Jimin had begun to wander around and meet of people he knew, all while you remain attached at his side with his hand over yours.  True to his word, he never once left you on your own the whole night and when Jimin finally suggested you go back to your dorm it was well past midnight.  You didn't want to stay out this late, but you weren't particularly fussed about it either.

Weaving back around passed out drunks, far too attached couples and still dancing troopers, Jimin and you ended up back outside and across the lawn to his motorcycle where it had sat parked all night.

As he placed his helmet on his head and climbed on, you followed he flipped up his visor to look at you.

"It wasn't so bad, now was it?" His muffled voice asked.  You rolled your eyes, hating to admit that anything Park Jimin did for you was actually enjoyable unlike you previously thought.

"It wasn't awful, but don't expect this to happen a second time, Park." After dropping you off and making sure you got into your room safe and sound at ten after 1AM, he drove back home.  He lived in an apartment off campus, well off enough to afford it before he needed to get back into the part-time job department of life.

Stripping free of his party clothes and swapping them out for sweats and a thin, stretched out grey shirt, he flopped onto his bed.  Realizing two things. One, you still had his leather jacket and two, he hadn't stopped smiling since you wrapped your arms around his waist on the way back to your home.

You were rudely awoken the next morning at 10AM with your phone that blared for the 4th time beside your head.  Groaning, you grabbed the stupid piece of screaming plastic that continued to ring and finally looked at the screen.  Though it was sunny outside, your blackout curtains in your room made sure to keep that pesky sunlight out, so the screen brightness did little to no good on your retinas.  

Unknown Calling…

You squinted at your screen.  Who was calling you? Sighing, as soon as the call dropped for the 4th time, you noticed that the same number had been the same one to call previously.  Rolling lazily onto your chest, your blankets tangling around your legs as your you felt your hair tangled around your neck and around your ears.  You stared at the black screen of your phone, as you were testing a hypothesis. True to your suspicious, the screen lit up as your ringtone blasted for the 5th time.  

Answering it seemed to be your only option at this point.  Five back to back calls was way too excessive to be some random coincidence. Swiping to answer it, you pushed your hair out of the way and placed your phone by your ear.

“Hello?” You answered the best you could with sleep still thick in your voice.  

“Your sleep schedule is awful.  It’s been like, what? Nine hours and your ass in still in bed?” You groaned as you flopped onto your back.

“How did you get my number, Jimin?”

“Take a wild guess?” He teased.  Obviously, it was Jackson.  You muttered a ‘snake’ under your breath as Jimin chuckled into the line.  “Get up, we’re going out.”  You blinked at your dark ceiling.  

“And if I said no?”

“Then I’ll come bang on your dorm door again. I’m already sitting outside the campus dorms.  It’s not too long of a trip up the stairs Y/n.”  You groaned again knowing full well that Jimin absolutely meant it.  “No?”

“Fine, give me like 15 minutes.”

“15?!”

“Don’t push me,” you cut as you hung up on him. Tossing your phone aside,  you crawled out of bed with a whine as you wobbled around your room, trying to wake up enough to wash your face before getting dressed.  

Jimin stood at the curb of the dormitory, leaning against a light pole.  He watched as you cut the call off and your number faded from his phone screen.  Shaking his head, he pocketed his phone as he took a breath out.  Part of him was wondering what he was doing?

He could’ve made other plans today, but he didn’t.  Rather, he didn’t want to.  He fell asleep with you on the brain and woke up the same exact way.  After texting Jackson all morning, trying to pry information out of him and successfully doing so with the promise of a week’s worth of lunch on him, he finally got your number out of him too.  So, the calling began.  

He was rather shocked it only took 5 calls to wake you up.  He laughed to himself as he plucked his phone from his pocket and sent you a text before you came down.  

Jimin: Bring my jacket back, I miss it. :((

He laughed out loud when you shot back nothing but the middle finger emoji.  What a highschooler move.  It was chilly out today.  The clouds kept hiding the sun as they rolled under the light, only letting brief spots of warmth out at a time.  A small breeze was in the air as Spring had just begun with the promise of rain in the afternoon no doubt.  

His blue jeans and hot pink hoodie stood out, yes, but he was proud of that fact. His hair free of a cap lifted with each small gust of wind.  It was exactly 17 minutes when he saw you walking out of the dormitory, a red flannel purse on your hip. His jacket on your shoulders with a black shirt with the picture of a cat on the breast pocket and a pair of blue shorts.  Your hair was down, without anything covering or added to it.  

Part of him didn’t want the jacket back now.

When you got to him, the first thing you did was greet him with a harsh stomp on his foot with your shoes.  He whined as his thin converses did nothing to guard his foot against your heel.

“What was that for?!”

“Calling me five times and then proceeding to force me out of my dorm on a Saturday!”  You argued as you huffed and crossed your arms. “As punishment for stealing my lazy day, I’m keeping your jacket until I return home.”  He grinned, he wasn’t totally against that.  

“Have it your way,” he was easy to give him.

“What did you want anyway?”  He stood back up and swayed to your side.

“A week.”

“Pardon?”

“A little birdie told me that you can’t believe I can go a week with one person.  So, I’d be honored if you took me up on the challenge to so spitefully requested of me.” You shivered in mock disgusted.  “Hey!”

“Calm down, Queenie,” you teased with a grin of your own.  “I actually meant that towards all your flings, but sure.  If you think you can handle a week of me arguing leaving my room, by all means, give it a whirl.” Jimin looked at you with questions in his eyes.  “What now?”

“You gave in waaay too easy, Y/n.”  

“Yeah, well if I declined, I have a suspicion you’d whine to Jackson, who in turn would whine to me and I’m not really up for any more of that than I have to deal with on the daily.” He smiled as he pushed playfully on your shoulder, making you smile again.

“Look at you! Already guessing and knowing my habits.  We’re basically best friends already!”

“Don’t let Jackson hear you.  That will also result in whining.”

“Duly noted.”

Soon, Jimin had started walking around in random locations towards the city.  Something about wanting to window shop and making you come along with him.  You watched when he pulled out a Zippo lighter with a small, nearly empty pack of cigarettes directly off campus.  You rose your brow when you asked him about it.  He was a smoker, but he was in the middle of trying to quit.  He had slowed down from a pack in two days to only a few smokes in that time.  He wanted to pace himself until he cut them off completely.  Ht told you once this pack was done, he would try not to buy any more.

You then started offering him solutions to cravings.  Candies or small habits were a good way to get the urge to smoke off the brain.  Or, if he absolutely found himself not able to quit, e-cigarettes surely weren’t so bad.  Expensive, but not an awful half solution. He took your suggestions to heart, not actually expecting you to take that topic and run with it.  

He had snuffed out the bud when you both got closer to the shopping strip of stores after stores with a cafe on nearly every corner.  It was always busy during the weekend, and Jimin had a feeling you didn’t get to shop often.  The way you seemed to light up and become more bouncy at the idea of maybe actually getting something for yourself today was proof of that.

You both went to store after store with enough coffee breaks to power an engine.  Eventually, Jimin had walked into some indie store, more than curious about the odd patterns he saw in the display window.  You trailed after him, winding through aisles and stopped when you saw a small charm necklace.

The necklace itself wasn’t the best and the chain was weak enough that if you pulled just a bit too hard or it snagged in anything it would surely break. But, it wasn’t that which intrigued you.  It was the pendant itself.

It was a small dandelion. It’s small, metal puffs pushing out in the circle as it if you blew just hard enough the puffs would scatter. Jimin stopped when he noticed you weren’t tailing him anymore, turning to see you bent over and looking at it.  He backtracked to stand at your side, hands in his pockets as he observed it with you.

“You like this?”

You nodded.  “I do.  Dandelions are my favorite flower.  I don’t really like when they bloom into the yellow ones, Jackson used to pluck those and smear it’s pollen all over my arms when we met.  I do like the wish ones those.”

“Wish ones?”

“Yeah, the ones you make a wish on.  If you find one like this,” you poked at the necklace, “and you make a wish, you have to blow as hard as you can.  If you manage to get all the seeds to blow off, then your wish is supposed to come true.” You chuckled at yourself.  “It’s all fairy tale sounding, but you can’t deny its got its romantic side.”

“Huh, who knew an everyday weed is so meaningful to other people.”  You stood up as you huffed.  

“I’ve seen moms get mad at their kids for pulling dandelions and giving them to them as gifts.  They’re not weeds, so just accept them!”  You pouted as Jimin laughed.  You spun on your heel as you trotted off, Jimin watching your back as you disappeared behind some racks of clothing. He rolled his eyes at your dramatic march off as he stood up and followed you, not before grabbing the necklace though. 5$ isn’t too much to spend.

After he secretly purchased the necklace, he placed the small pouch it was in promptly into your purse when the two of you were at yet another cafe while you were in the bathroom.  Apparently, this specific cafe stop was for you to pee, as you had decided that a whole soliloquy about how your bladder was about to burst was absolutely necessary.  It wasn’t. When you returned, all you did two was chat like old friends who knew each other since you were in diapers.

Jimin wasn’t nearly as awful as you thought, and part of you felt guilty for judging him so quickly.  Sure, his reputation was a bit black, but the boy himself was a sweetheart, and you made sure to offer him an apology and a chocolate chip muffin as compensation for your rotten attitude.

Day by day went on and as classes rolled on, Jimin would walk you to and from class, pick you up from your dorm and drop you off and even bring you lunchtime coffee just because you couldn’t say no to something he already paid for.

Eventually, the dawn of day 6 in the week broke and Jimin had called up Jackson.  Telling you that he had something planned to do and that he would see you tomorrow.  He had grown so used to hanging around you, a stab of pain hit him when you replied back to him with an ‘ok :(‘.  You were far too cute he reasoned as he put the back of his hand against his mouth as you added on a ‘you owe me, Park >:(‘ to your message.  

Jimin: I owe you? For what spoilt brat

You: For leaving me alone to drown in boredom.  How dare you??

Jimin: It was literally just last week you were biting my head off for dragging you out of your room. Now your complaining that I have something to do without you?  My my my, how they grow up so fast. Bless

You: Choke and die.  I’m going to take a nap

Jimin: It’s 8AM don’t sleep and mess up your schedule!

You: YOU CAN’T CONTROL ME PARK

Jimin: Y/N!

You: JIMIN!

Jimin: Stay. Awake.

You: …

You: Fine.  Guess I’ll play Overwatch by myself

Jimin: Ew, who plays Overwatch?

You: yOU-

H laughed when you stopped replying.  Whether or not you actually started playing or went back to sleep was a mystery to him as he walked out of his apartment to meet with Jackson.  Jimin wanted to ask him a few things before the end of the week came.  He also had a few woes to lay on your best friend's shoulders.

A game of basketball was what Jimin had planned for the day with Jackson.  Going to the public gym and meeting Jackson with sports gear and a basketball in hand, the man-to-man day would begin.  

Jimin, walking onto the courts with his sports shorts and tank top watched as Jackson lazily threw baskets in a jersey and sweats. Dribbling the ball, he passed it to the smaller man who met him on the court.  Jimin, dribbling it around and getting a feel for it watched as Jackson crossed his arm before he stretched.  

“Really, Jimin? Basketball?” Jimin rolled his eyes.  

“Listen, I have a friend who aces in basketball, so shut up.” It started with the boy just taking turns shooting before a small match of one on one began.  Squeaking shoes on the floor with heavy breaths filled the nearly empty Thursday noon-time gym.  Lay-ups were shot left and right, 3-pointers and of course, the ever dreaded airball followed by laughing at the lame excuse of a shot all came with the game.  Soon, the two men were sat on the far wall, sweat covered and drinking out of water bottles purchased from the vending machine outside the doors.

“Now that the exercise part of the day is done, what is it you wanted?” Jackson asked. Turning towards Jimin taking a drink of water as Jimin craned his head up at the dim lights that definitely were going to go out soon.

“I think I have a crush on Y/n,” Jimin yelped when Jackson spit out his water on Jimin’s lap.  “Thanks for the shower, jackass!” Jackson coughed as he wiped at his chin while Jimin shook his shorts and his arms disgusted.  

“I can totally help you confess!” Jimin looked at his friend. “I’ve got this whole scene I’ve been cooking up for her lucky future boyfriend since like freshman year.  I’d spent a lot of time on this, and you- my lucky man- are gonna be the one to do it!”

“You’re okay with it?” Jimin asked, his voice skyrocketing as he barely spoke in a whisper. Jackson only shrugged as he put his back against the wall again and took a more steady drink since his last attempt ended covering Jimin.

“Yeah, why not?  Sure, you were a sleazy a week ago-”

“Hey!”

“-But, it seems like you get along with Y/n. And she’s not just gonna snub you once the weekends because that’s what you said in the beginning.”

“She told you about that?” That was true, Jimin had only planned on staying with you a week, but now he wanted an extended date.  Permanently if he had the option.

“Of course she did dude.  Look, so long as she doesn’t call me up one day bawling because you did something to her, I have no reason to knock your lights out.”  Jimin shuttered.  He wasn’t unfamiliar with the strength Jackson possessed.  He didn’t fight often, normally pretty laid back and easy going, but he’s heard rumors.  All focus solely around you and how you were picked on freshman year of college.  He got suspended for 2 weeks, but you weren’t picked on anymore.

Jimin looked at his lap as he moved and stuck out his pinky.  He remembered the party night and how serious you were about a small pinky promise.  Then, that thought somehow shifted to how you seemed to take dandelions seriously.  Jimin sighed as he turned back to Jackson, sitting cross-legged and at the utmost attention.

“Alright, tell me what I’m gonna do about this.”  A grin broke out on Jackson’s face as he clapped Jimin on the shoulder.

“Buckle in, Park.  This is gonna be one romantic fuckin’ ride.”

It was Friday as you sat in the library, reading and rereading the same paragraph in your textbook.  It was like your brain wasn’t registering the words, no matter how many times to read them over and over again.  You’d get halfway through, realize you clocked out only to repeat the process. You sighed as you slammed your head into the books fold and someone slid into the seat next to you.  

They rubbed your neck as you whined at your lame attempt at actually studying.  Turning your head and blowing your hair out of your face just enough to see who sat next to you, you weren’t entirely shocked to see Jimin. In his comfortable college dressed glory and his leather jacket, you had finally returned to him. His arm propped on the table as his palm held his chin. He was smiling, probably laughing at your obvious lack of concentration.

“Howdy, bookworm.” You rolled your eyes at him as you planted your face back into the book that smelt far too old to be a 2018 edition of World History. He chuckled again at you. “You know, you can always ditch the books?”  

“I’m so close to almost not having a B in this class it’s laughable.  I’ve never gone below that!” You whined, quietly of course as the librarian was a soundhound when it came to any loud noise ever.  She’s search out the source of the sound like a dog and quickly take to eliminate it.  You’ve been kicked out more than once in your attempts to studying turned to whines.

Jimin rolled his eyes.  Ever the drama queen.  His hand moved from your neck to treading through your hair and massaging your scalp.

“Let me rephrase,” he stopped and started again. “How about you stop for the day, hang out with me and then maybe I’ll help you study later.”  You sat up briefly, his hand remaining on the back of your head as you looked at him like a puppy dog would when offered treats.

“Can we get snacks?” You pouted and Jimin smiled enough his eyes began to close.  Patting your head, he nodded.

“Yes, we can get snacks, you big baby.”  You smiled as you sprung up and slammed your book shut, wincing on how loud the action was before you shoved it in your bag.  Jimin stole your bag before you could pick it up yourself and you pouted when he refused to give it to you. “Let me be a gentleman, Y/n.”

“You? A gentleman? Like you? As in Park Jimin who smokes and drinks?”

“I’m trying to stop smoking, you know that.”  

You nodded, pointing a finger at him.  “Ah, yes, good point.  I revoke that accusation then.” He just pulled up on his lips as he grabbed your hand and dragged you out of the library, stopping by your locker to ditch your bag inside it and then dragged you to a small convenience store to stock up on the snacks of your choosing.

However, you felt a bit bad when Jimin snatched your wallet from you when you went to grab your card and handed the cashier his instead.  You stomped and whined, but he was adamant that the bill was his to foot. You guilt was short lived when he placed the plastic bag of snacks in your arms though so you could offer him one of your marshmallowy-goodness cereal bars.  His payment for footing the payment.

Jimin gladly accepted this.

He convinced you to come back to his home so he could get out his bike, as he had told you he wanted to take you somewhere.  Not sure where he was going, you were half sure he was gonna take you someone and murder you with how sappy he’s been all afternoon, but also half as sure that he wouldn’t.  With a laugh and a promise to not kill you from his mouth, you decided to trust him.

“If you do kill me though, I’m so haunting you so think wisely,” you warned as you climbed onto his bike, your bag of snacks in a holding compartment under the seat as you sat behind him and wrapped your arms around his waist.  

You always just held onto his shirt, to offer him as much space as you could as you literally clung to him not to fly off while he zooms down the road. Though, before he even kicked up the stand, he pulled your hands from his shirt and tucked you close to his back.  He made you clasp your hands together at his stomach, saying it was ‘safe’ though he’s never said that before.

Taking a breath to cool down your heated face, you could see his stupid smile in his eyes as he flicked down the visor on his helmet and kicked up the stand before revving away.  

He took you down some country roads before an hour passed and he stopped when he was at an open field with a small farmhouse not too far off in the distance.  The cattle were off in a group as you could see their small black and white bodies look like ants from how far they were from the two of you.

“Are you sure we can be here?” you questioned when Jimin took off his helmet and ran his hand through his hair.  You hated when he did that, how dare he do that multiple times over and not be aware of it or his attractiveness skyrocket when he does.  Damn frat boy.

“Yeah.  I got a friend of a friend’s permission to be here.  It’s all cool.  We’re not trespassing so come on.” You swung your leg back over the motorcycle before Jimin linked his arm with yours and began to walk off, setting his helmet on his bike seat and not forgetting to grab your snacks either.  

The two of you just walked around.  Treading through the grass and making sure not to step on any flowers of innocent bees doing their hard work of collecting pollen.  Though, Jimin did wave and scare off a wasp once or twice. Which was dumb because that only resulted in the bug buzzing angrily after the two of you before it gave up.

Eventually, you both came to a grove of trees.  They were tall and proud.  You had no doubt they had taken years upon years to grow up to this level of brilliance.  It was just the right time in spring in flowers flew from the treetops and the green returned to the leaves. The wind that knocked the flower petals around was like a cinematic effect.  

Jimin was quick to plonk himself down at the base of one of the trees, sitting cross-legged while unloading your snacks.  Bags of chips, plastic bins of cookies, small individual wraps of brownies and of course some soda to tied you two over while you feasted.  Definitely not healthy, but oh so worth it.

The two of you sat under the tree as ate while you talked more.  It was strange that Jimin and you never ran out of things to talk about.  Any quiet gap between the conversation was quickly filled because all you two were doing was chalking up more conversations to have.  It was comfortable and the air around it made it seem like Jimin enjoyed it more than you did.

“Oh! I forgot, Jackson told me that you have a tattoo!” Jimin ticked his brow up at two things.  Yes, he did, but how did Jackson know that?  Then he remembered just who Jackson Wang was: Gossip Farm Member No.1. “How dare keep secrets in this relationship.  I demand a refund of time and lies.” Jimin shoved at your shoulder as he shrugged off his leather jacket, leaving him in a navy shirt.

“How about I show you and we can forget all about that refund?”

“If you whip your dick out and show me some weird cockring tattoo, please forget it.”  He laughed, nearly falling onto your lap as you braced his back. “I’m serious!” You cried in your own laughter.  He shook his head, putting the back of his hand against his face and looking at the sky through the tree’s leaves.  

“I cannot believe you sometimes.”  He swung his jacket around your shoulders.  “It’s on my rib cage, so hold my jacket for me.  I don’t want to get it all grassy.” You’d complain, but you did have a soft spot for this jacket. So, you slipped your arms through the sleeves and huffed in peace as the jacket warmed you up from Jimin’s body previous being in it.

Jimin slipped one of his arms back through the short sleeve of his shirt as it appeared under the bottom of it and pushed it up to reveal his torso.  The sharp, black ink of NEVERMIND engraved on his ribs. You awed at it.  It was something you wouldn’t expect to be on Jimin, yet the idea and the look of it suited him so well it was almost painful.

“Honestly, if you keep springing these attractive attributes on me I’m going to cry.” Jimin rolled his eyes as he- instead of putting it back on- removed his shirt altogether.  Showing you his back where a spade tattooed lay between his shoulders.  “Another one?!” He chuckled.

“You said not to spring it on you,” he slyly remarked as he watched your face heat up.  “What, too attractive?  Come to think, did you back-handedly compliment me a moment ago?”

“No. Shut your trap you stupid college frat.”

“You’re very good at sending compliments like insults.”

“Ugh, fine!  You’re attractive- is your ego gloated enough now?” He smirked as he took his shirt and threw it around your neck, dragging you closer to him. Your breath caught when he bumped his nose against your, scanning your face like a computer would a test sheet to make sure a No. 2 leaded pencil was used.

“It’s can be inflated a bit more, truth be told.” He watched your eyes switch between his own. “Remember what you told me about dandelions? How they make wishes come true?” You nodded. “Good,” he breathed before he kissed you.  He eased his shirt from around your neck when you didn’t fight or push him away.  He pushed down on you, pushing you further against the trunk of the tree as the sun made the shadows of the leaves dance.  

It was like the shimmering of the sea on your skin as he cracked open his eyes when he pulled away from you just long enough for you to grip the back of his head, entangling your fingers in his hair and pull him straight back.  He wasn’t complaining, smiling as the kiss became fervent.

He didn’t know how long he spent hunched over you in an intense lip lock, and frankly, he didn’t really care either.  Though, there is one thing from the Park Jimin a week ago that wasn’t snuffed out.  The playboy heartbreaker surely died, as you killed him within less than a week.  However, his tolerance and patience when it came to things that looked to become more heated than not, was still at an all-time low.  

He whined as he forced himself away from you, watching as your kiss-swollen lips breathed harsh air out in gasps and your face was as red as the blood rushing to them.  He chuckled as he kissed the tip of your nose and from previous knowledge of seeing it earlier, moved back from you and plucked a dandelion that sat behind him at the base of the tree trunk.

Jimin turned to you and held it in front of your face before he smiled and blew on it.  All the seeds scattering onto your face and into your hair as it left the stem bare. You blew out your lips, trying to make sure no seeds were unsightly inhaled at his assault.  

He laughed again.  “Wanna know what I wished for?”

You plucked seed after white seed out of your hair before you looked up at him as he tossed the stem over his shoulder. “You can’t tell.  That’s literally rule number 1 of wish making.  Telling someone the wish makes it void and it can’t come true!” You pouted.  “Though, I am curious.”

He smiled as he moved and pinched your side.  He kept pinching you until you got to your knees before he grabbed your waist and dragged you over to him.  You walking clumsily on your knees found yourself sat forcefully on Jimin’s thighs as he intertwined his fingers behind your back.

He pouted cutely at you as his blond hair was like that of the sun.

“I wished you would kiss me again.”

“You’re awfully cocky,” you replied with that same crimson on your face.

“I didn’t hear a no?”

“You didn’t, because you know damn well I’m not gonna say no!”

“It’s not nice to yell at your boyfriend who bought you snacks and only wants a kiss or two.”

“You’re actually the worst.”

“Kiss me!”

“Why should I?” You teased as he pushed his knees up, making you fall closer to his chest.  

“The dandelion said so,” so he laughed and kissed you again for certainly not the last time.

-END-

[androidtwin]

5 11 20 Tony and _________

Ok anon, how about I give you Iron Family?

Tony + Guilty pleasures

{in a previous ask I went for food and music}

Cocktails! Tony LOVES cocktails, nowadays he’d make them more than drink them but he is weak for them; he avoids the ones attributed to hypermasculine characters but dive in headfirst into frilly and colorful because much like venomous creatures in the wild, they will fuck you up. Happy is also guilty of this, so when Tony was unrepentant with alcohol consumption he’d let Tony practice his cocktail making skills on him. Happy is a classy bitch and Tony puts spins of “manly” drinks to make them all colorful for him, they have a book and everything.

Tony + Bad or petty habits

Tony has learned a ton from his friendship with Rhodey, he stopped biting his nails and learned the art of petty revenge from one James Rupert Rhodes. Rhodey who had his future mapped out, meaning he couldn’t get into big trouble. The Art of Subterfuge, Rhodey proved with a few prodding questions that one of their professors had copied and plagiarized some students research, while the professor was presenting the book. He helped Tony to stand for himself and that flashy didn’t always have to be the way to go about things. Is how more than 20 years later nobody knows who filled the dorms with a substance that expanded until it was inhabitable. They also enjoy watching reality shows and reading everybody to filth. Later, Harley joins them and drags Peter into it too. 

Tony + What-ifs/Alternate Timelines

When he meets Harley, the kid is 5. Big Eyes, floppy hair and he is dirty and bruised. Tony takes one look at him and decides “You’re mine now.” He takes Harley Keener, an orphan whose widowed father is an abusive fuck and he becomes Harley Stark. Tony limits his drinking to 2 tumblers of whiskey while in business meetings and not much else. When Obadiah sees the change, he starts trying to manipulate Tony into giving Harley back, Tony sees through it cuts Obie off and that’s when Afghanistan happens. He has to get back to his boy.

While Maria loved Howard, she couldn’t stand one more day beside him; she packed up and took Tony with her. California was sun-soaked and as far as she could take her little Antonio. He was so excited for MIT and she couldn’t drag him away. Away from Howard’s toxic and controlling influence, Tony seemed more willing to have fun and relax and dream. He took the world by a storm and never failed to make it home for the holidays like a proper Italian son. Until the day he was taken from a lecture hall in Cambridge and Maria’s world came crashing down. Her little Antonio was brought back to her, three months later but he looked haunted and not even hearing her play would bring him out of his head.

Bucky couldn’t help but be horrified at the amount of paranormal in Rhodes’ best friends house. The place was filled with ghosts and other creatures invisible to the normal human eye. Anthony “call me Tony” was either oblivious or had a fucking deathwish. 

Turns out the answer was both, he was both. “you’re house is really freaking haunted”

“So what? It was cheap as hell. After my falling out with my father, this was my only option. Besides it’s not like I believe in ghosts.”

“They’re literally behind you, Tony!” 

“I’m the one keeping a roof over their heads, if something happens to me, my mother will probably come here and then where will they be? Evicted on their ectoplasmic asses because Maria might not practice but she’s Italian, an old school Priest will be called.”

Bucky decides to move in, and what if he has to buy sage in bulk? What about it?

[trinityinstitutehq]

character name: Charlotte "Charlie" Gage-Radcliffe character birthdate & age: 19 character fandom: DC Comics character pronouns/gender/sexuality etc:  She/Her/Hers, female, demisexual. character faceclaim: Sadie Sink student/professor/job title etc/whatever is relevant: Student; works at both a homeless shelter, a bakery, and a gym. if student, what do they study. if professor, what do they teach. strike if not relevant: Education & Social Work living situation:  Dorms when school is in session, Homeless otherwise. character biography: Charlie grew up with a single mom, with one lesson shining through all the others: No one is going to help you but yourself. Things were rough, they were living paycheck to paycheck. Her mother working in a small rundown clinic as secretary that saw more traffic than it could handle, so she worked long hours with very little pay to show for it.

Her mother didn't make a habit of making good decisions. Her slew of boyfriends were never the best, and Charlie rarely got along with them. She especially didn't like the one that produced Aidan, her baby brother. Charlie was 16 when her mother had gotten pregnant again. She actually thought the guy her mother was seeing was decent, that he'd stay... and like most men, he ended up being a disappointment.

It wasn't long after Aidan was born that Charlie started noticing something was ... off in their apartment building. She couldn't put her finger on what, but the landlord was shady and didn't like any of his tenants. At first, she chalked it up to capitalism, but when her favorite neighbor on the first floor got evicted for "not paying her rent" on time, Charlie knew something was wrong. Mrs. Jameson always paid her rent on time.

The police didn't listen to her. It was either "above their pay grade" or "had more important things to handle", so Charlie decided to find the evidence herself... And this proved to be a fatal mistake. Charlie got the evidence, but not without getting caught snooping. Feeling too smug and cocky, Charlie taunted the Landlord...

And so, a few days later, just after her 17th birthday, her Landlord set fire to their apartment building. He meant to both get rid of her and collect the insurance payout from the old broken down building that didn't have up to date firecodes. 17 people, including her mother and baby brother, died in the fire. Charlie, who should have been in her bed, had snuck out that night to go to a high school party her mother had told her not to go to. Her landlord served 6 months in jail, before he was released, time served.

Charlie is effectively homeless. She, somehow, managed to finish high school by the skin of her teeth, and applied for school as far away as possible... London was an accident. Charlie has never told anyone of her homeless status, instead working many, many jobs and trying her best at school so she can skate on by.

character's deep dark secret:

Charlie caused the fire in her apartment building. She was about to expose her Landlord for fraud and for taking advantage of his low income tenents, and he torched the place to keep her from doing so (meaning to kill her) and to get the insurance pay out. 17 people died. He did 6 months, time served. Charlie had snuck out, and gone to a high school party, leaving her mother and baby brother to burn.

- Her second secret is that she is currently homeless. She lives in the dorms during the semester, but during holidays and vacation, she sleeps in an abandoned warehouse and showers at one of her jobs.

mun info: 

mun name/alias: love timezone: est pronouns: she/her

[fogmongers]

                                       a  l  l  i  s  o  n     c  l  o  v  e  r                                   S  A  N  D  R  A     C  A  R  R  O  L  L .                    unenrolled.                                                                     dorm couch surfer.                        psychedlics dealer.      tramp.      freelance sugar baby.      dropped angel.

grew up in the underbelly of chicago, raised by a well-meaning but fatally over-protective single mother, who tried to shield her daughter from the grit and grime that covered every square inch of their community.

as a child, allison clover was kept busy at all costs, distracted by a wallpapering of catholicism from the influence of her peers and the sordid history of her mother. she was brought up in the church; socializing primarily within the church’s community, playing on the church’s softball team, participating in the church’s charity events and helping to organize the church’s fundraisers.

she and her mother ran an online business selling homemade incense, candles, and teabags from herbs and spices grown right in their apartment. it was just enough to help keep the lights on when her mother’s job at the plant nursery couldn’t cut it. this is to say: a young, naive allison wouldn’t have much in realm of inheritance when she would need it.

shortly after ally’s 18th birthday, her mother was killed in an assault. 

gang initiation. body mutilated. her teenage daughter had to identify the corpse. 

the tragedy shattered allison’s eden--- woke her up to the nihilistic nature of the world, in which good people can die for no rhyme or reason. and it showed her the true nature of contemporary christians and their shortcomings in practicing what they preach. in the wake of ms. clover, the church community offered ally their prayers and platitudes, but no one in their lower class community had a dime to spare or room on their couches when allison needed a place to stay, every conservative bystander assuming someone else would step up to take care of her. 

emotionally distraught and disappointed in her paper thin support system, allison stopped sticking around after mass and isolated herself from the community, eventually opting not to attend altogether. 

the scraps of inheritance she had left after paying for a catholic funeral would not help her afford the rent. her underwhelming resume would not be enough to get her a job to support herself. too overcome with grief to manage working two jobs; with her mother deeply estranged from the rest of their family; with her long history of being isolated from her neighbors; she had nowhere to turn when she was evicted.

her naivete and lack of alternative options paved allison’s way to falling in with a bad crowd. her first night at a local shelter, she was recognized outside by a raggedy boy from her graduating class. immediately trusting, she opened up to him about her situation and vulnerability, and he was all too quick to offer her a place to stay until she got back on her feet. she never stopped to question his character or intentions. 

she was fast to fall in with the boy and his band of delinquents, which she would later realize to be a gang deeply involved in several webs of drug trafficking in the city. her sheltered upbringing left her unprepared to notice red flags, and her gullibility made it easy for the kids to take advantage of her on the grounds of offering her bedrooms to stay in and spotting her meals in her hard time. when offerings of basic human necessities turned into talking her into smoking with them and bringing her along to parties, it wasn’t hard for them to pressure her into using her inexperienced body to pay her respect to their hospitality.

catholic guilt went head-to-head with disillusioned catholic angst, both raging inside her head with feelings of physical violation she didn’t have the understanding to place. in the midst of the chaos, (and as a fuel to it,) she developed a taste for the escapism. preferred to live in the haze of inebriation and work out her conflicts of spirituality with mushrooms than face her situation or her grief. but she didn’t realize she was running up a tab with her friends.

from a peer’s perspective, she picked up on their culture fast. learned the slang and the technique. gave off the impression of someone who knew what she was getting into when they started sending her to drop off and pick up, and when she was smoking herself into debts she’d never be able to repay. 

after ignoring the scarier and grittier aspects of the new friends she’d made for a year, and then upsetting them when she started avoiding sex--- depriving her friends of their payment--- things came to a head after a traumatically bad trip on DMT, sending her into a serious crisis of faith and fear that her sins were becoming unforgivable, which prompted her to decide to branch out to people other than the dealers she was wasting her youth with.

when the ghouls started getting insulted by her pulling away, one of them let her know that she still owed them for all of the drugs and safety they’d given her, and when she stood her ground and put a lock on what they wanted from her, he told her she owed them at least $3,000 for their troubles before they would let her “broke, needy ass” scurry away.

in a panic for finding that kind of money in the near future and feeling a serious threat for her physical safety at the mercy of a gang of intimidating men, she opted instead to commit one last sin in the form of stealing a suitcase and backpack of drugs from the trap house and taking a bus as far out of town as she could go.

she started going by the new name SANDRA CARROLL and planned to keep moving and sell the stash of psychedelics to keep her afloat until she could start using her legal name again and get a law-abiding job, but by the time she started running out of cash for motels, she still wasn’t emotionally prepared to start dealing. she tried to go to bars to find slightly less dangerous people who would pick her up as a sugar baby and give her shelter until she was far enough and emotionally stable enough to take care of herself. the panic attacks and paranoia made it hard for her to nail a trustworthy hookup.

in a final wave of desperation, she contacted her childhood friend nate to find any kind of guidance or assistance in her situation, and he arranged for her to make a break for rainier, knowing that genie would give her a place to lay low. 

genie has effective guardianship over her now, which is to say: she insists that sandy spends nights in her dorm rather than bouncing around campus, splits meals with her, loans her clothes and generally looks out for her while she’s trying to get back on her feet. but it’s genie, so she’s not exactly the most attentive mom friend, and has a tendency to enable sandy’s worst vices because she’s no hypocrite. can and will, however, absolutely wreck anyone who tries to manipulate sandy, if genie can just focus enough to notice it happening.

the generally low threat level and high libido of clients on a college campus makes it significantly easier to sandra to deal and hustle free food and beds to sleep in, which is good, because her general fear of being a burden and newfound fear of becoming indebted to people makes her try to spread herself out over the campus, rather than rely solely on genie. but the decadent nature of the students and assurances of safety on campus lead to her feeling too undistracted, too alone in her thoughts when she has time to breathe. and it’s hard for her to stay sober when everyone else is partying. at the rate she’s going, she may not have enough stock to sell to keep food in her stomach before the coast is clear and she feels she’s safe enough to be allison clover again.

(( TL;DR: sheltered church girl is ill-prepared and too naive to survive on her own when her mother dies unexpectedly; falls in with a bad crowd and loses control of her expenses and herself; steals an enormous stash of psychedelic drugs and flees chicago, going by a false name and dealing to stay just barely afloat. currently dorm surfing through mt. rainier university. ))

PERSONALITY: 

pleasant. demure. distracted. passive. calm. trustworthy, but unreliable.

very somber, but doesn’t have an easily detectable sadness. very dreamy, but not too in-your-face with her eccentricity; more introverted about it or even a little insecure. the kind of person who you might see sway-dancing like a twin peaks character, or sticking her hand out of a moving car’s window and surfing it in the breeze, or praying only when she thinks no one’s looking, and if you look close you might catch a tear streaming down her face. zones in and out in the middle of conversation and feels really guilty about it. still has a trace of purity to her that most people don’t pick up on until they outright find out about her upbringing. comes off as the chill wallflower of a druggie clique; not unfriendly but not the person to start the conversation; doesn’t instigate the orgy but she’s definitely down and certainly keeps up. might seem aloof or quiet because she’s never sure if she belongs there and doesn’t want to show it and get rejected. innocent but not inexperienced. very good at maintaining lucidity just long enough to escape any witnesses when she's having a bad trip. 

WANTED CONNECTIONS: 

hookups and clients (she deals assorted psychedelics; 90% dmt, acid, ecstasy, mushrooms). a very disinterested person for her to have a crush on even though they wouldn’t notice if she died. a kinder person with a crush on her that she’ll never pick up on. friends who smoke with her without expecting her to throw in. friends who invite her to hang out overnight without expecting anything. someone who will sleep with her for opportunistic reasons (consensual but still taking advantage of her credulity or rumors that she’ll sleep with anyone after they let her dorm with them for a little bit) or who sleeps with her without knowing that she’s effectively prostituting herself for shelter. someone who friends her twee or annoying. someone who’s suspicious of her and where she came from.

big plot: someone, either from or hired by the gang of dealers, who’s been sent to track her down and collect her debt  👀 :grim_reaper_emoji:

[kpopangst]

Best Friends Forever - Taehyung/V angst

“Tae, can I talk to you?” you asked from your position on the sofa crammed in the corner of the practise room. He didn’t hear you at first; he was too busy trying to perfect a step.

Jimin was flopped on the floor, looking up at the younger boy closely to make sure he didn’t go wrong anywhere or overbalance and hurt himself.

Taking a deep breath, you stood up and started again, taking a few steps closer.

“Tae,” you said, making his head move up to meet your gaze through the reflection of the mirror. “Can I talk to you for a sec?”

He shook his head immediately and you shrunk into yourself a bit. “Not right now, Y/N, I really have to get this bit down.”

“Oh, okay. Afterwards?”

“Probably not; I’m going straight to bed after this.”

“Ew, what? You gotta shower first.” Jimin interjected from the floor and Tae shrugged, taking up the starting position from the previous step.

“I’ll shower in the morning.”

“That’s gross - you’ll have sweaty bedsheets.”

As the two boys continued their arguing, you stepped backwards and turned to leave the studio.

“See you tomorrow.” you called after you as you left. Jimin waved in your direction.

“Bye, Y/N!” Tae yelled.

*

“So, did you tell him?” your best friend asked you and you sighed into your phone.

“No, I didn’t get a chance to. I don’t know what to do.”

“Oh. Well, how many days have you got left? Until the end of the week, right?”

“Yeah.” you answered, chewing your thumb nail. “You have plenty of time to tell him until then, don’t worry.”

“But what if I can’t tell him? He’s really, really busy lately and he doesn’t have the time to talk to me at all, let alone help me out. I’m really stressed out about this.”

“Don’t be. It’ll all fall into place, okay?”

“How do you know?” you sighed, falling backwards onto your bed and staring up at your dark bedroom ceiling.

“I’ll be honest, I don’t. How much more do you need until you can get your own place?”

“Not that much; it’ll take me only about two weeks to earn it from my job. I just don’t have anywhere to stay for that last week.”

“Agh, I wish I could do something. You’re being evicted for God’s sake! I feel so useless all the way over here.”

“Don’t, you’re being my moral support. It’s invaluable,” you yawned. “Well, I’m going to go to sleep. Goodnight!”

“Goodnight, Y/N. Don’t worry about a thing!”

*

“I don’t know, Y/N… He’s in a pretty rough mood…” Jungkook said at the front door, not meeting your eyes and rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly.

“What do you mean?” you questioned. “Listen, Jungkook, I really need to talk to him.”

“No, I mean it, Y/N. He’s not in the right frame of mind. You’d be better to come back tomorrow when he’s rested more and isn’t trying to kill everything that moves.”

“What the hell? What’s wrong with him?”

“We don’t know,” Namjoon walked up to front door and shifting Jungkook away, the youngest disappearing into the dorm. “But Jungkook is right; you probably shouldn’t be here right now.”

“Oppa, please, this is really serious. Can I just go in for five minutes to see hi-”

“No, Y/N,” he said sternly. “Go home now. I’m sorry.”

With that, he shut the door in your face.

What the hell was that?

*

The next day ended similarly and you were getting progressively more desperate. Even your best friend couldn’t say that everything would be okay; you were getting evicted tomorrow and you had no where to stay at all. Your mother was leaving the city for a few weeks to stay with her sister, as was your father, but you couldn’t leave because you had school. You had to find somewhere in less than twenty four hours and with no friends apart from classmates you didn’t really know and Taehyung, who was too busy for you, you were in serious trouble.

“I’m going to have to be homeless.” you cried, tears streaming down your face.

“No, no, don’t say that! You’ll find something, I know you will.” your best friend said confidently. “Is there a library nearby? You could try and hide in there overnight. It’ll be cold so wrap up warm. Or, is there a twenty-four hour coffee shop near? They’re used to students sleeping there overnight so they won’t be too bothered by you.”

“How the hell do you know all this?”

“It’s been rough. So, are you gonna try this?”

“I… There’s no harm in trying. I haven’t seen any twenty-four hour coffee shops so I’ll go to the campus library. There are toilets there too.”

*

You had been sleeping at the library for three days after you had finally been kicked out of your apartment. Tae and you hadn’t spoken at all and you had only caught glimpses of him rushing somewhere. Even though you knew he hadn’t had any part in it, and it wasn’t his fault for ignoring you, you couldn’t help but feel neglected. You expected him to at least try to text you to see how you were or if you were okay but you had gotten nothing. Except for the calls from your best friend to check in on you and the regular messages from each parent making sure you were alive, your phone was completely silent.

Fuck him, basically.

On the fourth day, you decided that you deserved a coffee and somewhere warm to sit whilst you did some work, so you made your way to the coffee shop that was just outside of campus.

Settling into your chair at your table of choice next to the window, you sipped on your hot beverage and flipped your notebook open, brows furrowing as your tried to discern the messy scribble of your notes.

You had been sitting there peacefully for the last ten minutes when the door was slammed open, sending a wave of cold air washing over you, catching your attention so you could glare irritably at the unwelcome newcomer.

However, just as your face formed a glare, it was gone as soon as your saw who it was and the strange mixture of relief and anger mixed on their face as they stormed towards you.

“T-Taehyung?” you stuttered as he grabbed your arm and heaved you out of your seat, frog-marching you towards the door. “What the fu- Let go of me!”

You struggled in his grip but his hands were holding onto you for dear life and you couldn’t get him off you, no matter how hard you tried to pry him off.

“Taehyung!” you cried, ignoring all of the stares from the other customers in the café.

However, he remained completely silent until you had left the building and even then, he walked a few paces from the entrance and gently pushed you against the wall of the café, barring your exit by resting his hands on the wall on either side of your head.

“Where have you been?” he asked and you were surprised at the softness and raw emotion in his voice; a stark contrast from his dark expression.

“Why do you care?” you snapped, your glare not wavering even as you stared deep into those eyes that you loved so much.

“What are you talking about? Of course I care, you’re my best friend!”

“Are you?”

“W-What?”

“Taehyung, I’ve been gone for over a week and you haven’t noticed until now? And you call yourself my best friend.” you scoffed, crossing your arms angrily over your chest.

“Do you know how scared I’ve been?” he whispered and you were caught off guard when his eyes began to fill up.

“Tae-”

“When you left the studio that day, I knew I should have gone after you but I didn’t think much of it. I just thought you’d come back the next day, but you didn’t. You didn’t come the day after that either and when I was given time to think, my thoughts were constantly on you; where were you? What were you doing? You were always around and I felt so lonely when you weren’t.”

“That doesn’t explain why you didn’t come and look for me, Taehyung.” You said, voice softer than it had been, but arms still crossed securely, defending yourself from him.

“I tried to! God, Y/N, I tried so hard, but they wouldn’t let me! It was practise, practise, practise! I’m supposed to be practising now but I said I had to go to the bathroom and I ran straight out of the building to your apartment but the woman next door said that you had moved out!”

He was beginning to get hysterical now, his cheeks colouring red and his eyes wide.

“You had moved out and I had no idea where you were! I was so scared, I thought you had left me completely and I was too busy to listen to you!”

Tears were beginning to stream down his face as his voice became distorted from his panic and sorrow. His hands left the wall on either side of your head and reached down to unfold your arms, clutching tightly onto both of your hands in his and bringing them to his chest.

“Where have you been, Y/N? Where did you go?” he asked, one hand leaving the bundle to rest on your cheek. You exhaled lightly, leaning into his touch, closing your eyes momentarily before opening them and looking up into his again. They were red-rimmed and slightly puffy as well as slightly glassy from the remaining moisture.

“I’ve been… I was… I was e-evicted.”

He didn’t move for a solid thirty seconds and you were beginning to get uncomfortable with the intensity of the gaze so you tried to move away but his grip tightened on your hands and face.

His eyes just stared into yours, a whole flurry of emotions flashing across his beautiful orbs at a pace you couldn’t keep up with. The two of you just stared at each other, desperately, until;

“Move in with me.”

What?

“What?” you gasped. His face held no hint of a lie, or a joke.

“Move in with me.” His voice was deadly serious and he showed no signs of changing his mind.

“W-What? Taehyung, be serious-”

“I am being serious. You’re my best friend, Y/N. You mean the world to me. If I have to fall out with management to ensure you won’t be living on the streets, so be it.” He let go of your face, reaching down to gather both of your hands and clasping them against his chest. “Move in with me.”

Was he insane? Did he actually put any thought into this at all? Like, any? Not only would his managers wholly disagree with the arrangement, you would have to share everything with seven boys. There was already no room as it was and you would be intruding. You would be alone a lot of the time as they had schedule’s and you would get hate and backlash off all the fans. It just didn’t make any sense. No way. You couldn’t.

“You act as if I give you a choice,” He muttered, turning away whilst keeping one hand firmly glued to yours, tugging you back inside the café. “Coffee’s on me. We have a lot to talk about.”

[pwjins]

just neighbor things

summary: your new apartment life starts out rather bad, but luckily, your odd friendship with your new neighbor helps keep both yours and his life just a little bit more manageable. member: seongwoo genre: fluff?? neighbor!au???  a/n: i literally have no idea what im doing i’m so sorry  insp. by these au prompts!!

congrats

You just got kicked out of your parents’ house

And now you’re trying to haul 50 pounds of stuff into your new and kind of shitty apartment

But as a 3rd year college student with a questionable major 

Who has no idea what the fuck they’re doing

This was a pretty good start for you

The rent for the apartment was pretty cheap considering it was small

But anything you could afford with your half assed part time job at the local supermarket was good enough for you

You finally lugged the last of your boxes into your apartment, letting out a heavy breath

Instead of throwing yourself on the floor and rewarding yourself with a nap

You figured you should be a good new neigbor in the apartment complex

So you showered and freshened up, making yourself look less sleep-deprived and somewhat presentable

You rushed out your door and knocked on the door of the apartment to the left of yours

You were hopeful to make some new friends in the complex and get along with your neighbors

Since you’d be living here for a while

However, your hopes went down the drain when you heard the sound multiple cats screeching behind the door

And angry footsteps moving forward and swinging the door open

Which probably would’ve hit you in the face if you didn’t step back

You were faced with an elderly woman, holding a chubby cat in her arms that looked as pissed as she was

Still, you decided to be confident and move on, greeting her with, “hi! my name’s Y/N! i just moved–”

Before you could even finish your introduction she glared at you with her angry old woman eyes and cut you off

“new neighbor? ANOTHER kid?”

You were unable to even respond to her as she kept annoyedly complaning about something like “noisy kids” and “don’t know what they’re doing” and “no decency”

The second she finished her thoughts, she shut the door 

Without even greeting you, leaving you alone in the hallway

“nice to meet you too i guess” you mumbled

Okay, so not a great start

But hey you still had your other neighbor to greet who hopefully wasn’t an ass

With new high hopes, you knocked on the door a couple times, waited for a minute or two

But there was no response

You decided to knock a few more times aaaaaand still no response

Giving up, you figured that your neighbor was either dead, asleep, or out of the house

You really hoped it wasn’t the first one

As you were about to turn and head back to your apartment

A voice a couple feet down the hall called out to you

“hey, what’re you in front of my apartment for?” they said, sounding slightly annoyed

You stiffly turned around, not wanting to make yet another bad first impression

You were expecting another angry person to be yelling at you

Boy oh boy you were SO wrong

The second you turned around and faced the person, you swear your heart probably stopped

Oh my god he’s hot

You were faced with a tall guy, subtle dark circles underneath his eyes and a family size bag of hot cheetos in his arms like it was his firstborn son

But oh man did he rock that sleep deprived look 

He was probably around the same age as you, college student you assumed

You struggled to get your words out, only managing to sputter, “uhh i’m y/n! i’m your new neighbor?”

He raised an eyebrow, looking at you up and down and completely iGNORED YOU

Before unlocking his apartment door and disappearing inside without saying another word to you

Good job, y/n, first day in and you’ve pissed off both neighbors

He might’ve been cute 

But that didn’t mean anything if he was as much of an asshole as the elderly cat woman next door

You sighed and decided to wave the white flag for the day, retreating back into your apartment to rest

Your place wasn’t exactly super well furnished

So at most right now, you had a crappy mattress, some blankets, and your best friend, the coffee maker

But you just had to deal with it until you unpacked everything else so you crashed on your mattress

And scrolled through your social media until you knocked out

As if your first day/night in your new place couldn’t get worse

You heard some loud and rapid knocking at your door, waking you up from your sleep

It was dark inside your apartment and outside the window too

So you pulled out your phone to see what time it was, squinting at your bright screen in the dark

3:17AM

Literally who the fuck was bothering you at 3am

You groaned and threw your blankets off the mattress and got up to head towards the incessant knocking

When you finally got to the door, you threw it open to see the dumbass trying to bother you

“i’m tired what do you wan–” you grumbled, unable to finish your sentence when you saw once again

Your undeniably good looking neighbor from earlier who didn’t look too sober at the moment

He looked pretty disheveled at the moment, but still damn

His brown hair looked slightly messy and he wore a plain t shirt over black jeans, and the three cute little moles on his cheek caught your attention

Before you could even ask if he was okay because he clearly did not look like it

He immediately fell against the doorframe, leaning and holding onto it as to not fall over

And he began rambling endlessly without even giving you a second to comprehend what he was trying to say

“hi i know it’s like 3am i’m so soryr but i’m just really tired and really drunk right now and i dont’ know WHERE my keys are and the old lady next door scares me with her gardening shears so please hav mercy on me and let me crash for the night plus you’re pretty and i know we just met but i think i like you so hi hey how’s it going”

And with that, he fell asleep against the doorframe

what the fuck

One part of you just wanted to leave him there and go back to sleep

But then another part of you didn’t want to be sued for abandoning a helplessly sleep deprived guy

So you tugged him forward so that his body fell over your shoulders and you dragged his RIDICULOUSLY HEAVY BODY into your apartment

jesus christ i just wanted to sleep

You didn’t have any couch or chair to lie him down in

Nor did you have the strength or patience to lug him all the way to your mattress

So you decided just to leave him on the floor by the kitchen and threw a blanket over him

You mentally pat yourself on the back for being a good citizen of the world and crawled back into bed

Right as you were about to fall asleep again, loud snoring began to echo through the apartment

You sighed in regret, contemplating if bringing him in was even a good idea

But you just ignored it and pulled your pillow over your ears and finally got to sleep

The next morning, you tiptoed into the kitchen pouring out some cereal into two bowls and making yourself a mug of black coffee

As you waited for the water to boil, you walked over to the sleeping body in your living room

You squatted down in front of him and nudged his shoulders lightly

He didn’t budge at all so you started nudging him harder, basically almost shaking his shoulders till he started moving

His eyes finally cracked open and he began stretching his arms a bit before sitting up and rubbing his eyes

He looked around your apartment which was stilled filled with boxes and tons of junk lying around

Poor guy looked so confused until he saw you sitting in front of him

“well this doesn’t look like my apartment”

“no shit it isn’t” you replied

“i think you’ve got things backwards, first you wake me up at 3am drunk as hell, crash in my living room, eat my cereal, and i don’t even know your name yet” you said

He struggled to stifle a laugh as you got up to hand him a good ol bowl of Fruit loops and a fork

He accepted the bowl but held up the fork with an eyebrow raised at you

“look i just moved in and i can’t find my spoons so you’re just gonna have to eat with a fork” you shrugged, shoving fruit loops down your throat

“funny because my apartment has all spoons but i can’t find my forks,” he laughed, “the name’s seongwoo, ong seongwoo, but you can just call me ong”

You smiled at his humorous personality– he was definitely growing on you

“y/n, but maybe you would’ve know that already if you didn’t oh so gracefull ignore me yesterday,” you chuckled

“Yeah, sorry about that, running on 2 hours of sleep and hot cheetos can make a guy moody sometimes” he responded

And so began your long morning of eating cereal and talking with your new neighbor, seongwoo

You learned that he was a year older than you and went to college about 15 minutes away from yours

He used to live on the on-campus dorms but got evicted by his roommates after his 2nd year for being too noisy

And apparently the person that used to live your apartment before you came was some middle-aged man that would steal his coupons from the mailbox

So he was relieved that that DEMON was finally gone

His other neighbor was yet another old lady who was overly obsessed with her plants and would try to cut him with her shears if he got too close

The two of you bonded over complaining about old cat lady and old plant lady, laughing over your encounters with them

After demolishing your box of fruit loops and talking all morning, you asked, “hey since i basically housed and fed you for the last 8 hours, can you like please help me unpack”

He happily agreed and you both spent the rest of that afternoon unpacking the boxes and uncluttering the apartment

While you would unload the rest of the plates and bowls into your lower cabinets

seongwoo would be putting away the cups and mugs onto the higher shelves that you couldn’t reach

Finally you had some chairs and other furniture to fill the space so that you weren’t eating on the floor or with forks all the time

You finished unpacking nearly all of the boxes, leaving some in the closet for another day to handle

After you guys finished, you exchanged numbers in case you guys needed something in the future

“if you need anything or need to drunk crash at my place whenever you lose your keys, just knock really loudly,” he laughed, heading out the door and back into his own apartment

Turned out his keys were under the mat the entire time

After that incident, you guys just started depending on each other for a lot of things

Because you guys were basically each other’s only friend in a building of angry elderly women

If you ever needed something from a tall shelf and couldn’t get it, you’d just knock violently on the wall for seongwoo to hear on the other side

If the landlord was inspecting rooms to make sure they weren’t being trashed

You’d help seongwoo hide all of his junk in the closet to make his apartment at least look clean

So that he wouldn’t get evicted from ANOTHER place

Whenever you’d forget to bring one of your textbooks to class, seongwoo had your spare key and was only one text away

Would drive all the way to your school just to drop it off so you didn’t fail chemistry

And of course there were nights where you’d both go out to drink together just for fun and it didn’t matter whose apartment you both crashed in

As long as you could at least get in to one of them

Yeah both of you tend to forget your keys a lot LOL

Studying for your midterms and having a mental breakdown?

No prob, seongwoo’s got you

He’d come over with a bag of hot cheetos, a 6-pack of dr. pepper, and popsicle he bought from some ghetto vendor down the street

“i heard you slamming your head against your textbook from across the wall so i thought i’d come help”

Whenever he was sick of his job at his college’s campus cafe and wanted to go home, you’d call his phone and act like you were his dying relative

So his boss would let him go home early

And MOVIE NIGHTS

Every friday you guys have a ritual where you alternate between crashing at each other’s place and watching a movie until you both fall asleep

To cool off from the stress of being poor, tired students

But sometimes you guys argue over what movies you want to watch

Or what you guys eat as a snack

“bitch you picked the movie last week now give me the remote before i feed your house keys to the neighbor’s cat”

BUT IN THE END YOU GUYS ALWAYS HELP EACH OTHER OUT

Like you could knock on his door at 2AM just to rant

And he would let you in and feed you stale poptarts until you calmed down

Or you guys will do face masks together and do some EXTREME pore cleansing while watching reality tv shows

The only thing you guys can’t depend on each other for though is food

One time you barged into seongwoo’s place and begged, “i’m out of food please help i really can’t adult today”

And he’d laugh at you and say, “you know the funny thing about this is that you ACTUALLY think i can cook,” as he pulls out ramen cups out of his cupboard

and oh boy y’all are just really cute n friendly neighbors that help each other out 

[techcrunchappcom]

New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/covid-19-live-updates-northeastern-university-dismisses-11-students-for-partying-but-keeps-their-tuition/

Covid-19 Live Updates: Northeastern University Dismisses 11 Students for Partying but Keeps Their Tuition

Northeastern ousts 11 students for violating safety protocols, and keeps their $36,500 tuition.

In one of the harshest punishments imposed to date against students for violations of coronavirus safety protocols, Northeastern University dismissed 11 first-year students this week and declined to refund their $36,500 tuition after they were discovered crowded into a room at a Boston hotel serving as a temporary dormitory.

About 800 students are staying in two-person rooms at the hotel, the Westin, which is less than a mile from Northeastern’s Boston campus.

Two university staff members making rounds on Wednesday evening discovered the gathering, which violated university rules against any “guests, visitors or additional occupants,” the university said in a news release.

In addition, the students were not wearing masks or practicing social distancing, in defiance of university requirements, a university spokeswoman, Renata Nyul, said.

Northeastern’s move comes as colleges across the country are struggling to figure out how to stop campus partying, which has already set off outbreaks at a number of schools and shut down some classes. The New York Times has counted at least 51,000 cases in universities and colleges around the country since the start of the pandemic, and many major college towns have become national hot spots.

Most colleges appear to be trying to sway students with warnings and pleas, and relying on peer pressure to moderate behavior, but some are taking a more punitive approach. Purdue University suspended 36 students after a cooperative house was caught partying less than 24 hours after the university president outlawed off-campus parties. At the University of Connecticut, several students were evicted from campus housing over a mask-free dorm bash.

The Northeastern students have the right to contest the action in an “expedited hearing,” the university said.

They were enrolled in a program that normally offers international experiences for first-year students, but some were placed in Boston this fall because of the pandemic.

The dismissed students will not be allowed to attend fall classes remotely, said the spokeswoman, Ms. Nyul, and they must start over as first-year enrollees if they come back.

They were notified on Friday that they would have to vacate the hotel within 24 hours, the university said, and before leaving, would have to be tested for the coronavirus at Northeastern. Anyone who tested positive would be moved into “wellness housing” at the university until they no longer had the virus.

Northeastern said that all students in the program had been forewarned of the obligation to practice social distancing and wear masks when among others. “Students who attend an unsafe gathering, social or party, either on or off-campus, can expect suspension,” Madeleine Estabrook, senior vice chancellor for student affairs, wrote in a letter to students.

Northeastern also sent an email warning certain incoming first-year students to follow social distancing guidelines. Those students had responded affirmatively to a social media poll asking if they were planning on partying once they were on campus, according to The Huntington News, Northeastern’s student newspaper.

The first famines of the coronavirus era are looming in four chronically food-deprived conflict areas — Yemen, South Sudan, northeast Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo — the top humanitarian official of the United Nations has warned.

In a letter to members of the U.N.’s Security Council, the official, Mark Lowcock, the under secretary general for humanitarian affairs, said the risk of famines in these areas had been intensified by “natural disasters, economic shocks and public-health crises, all compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic.” Together, he said, “these factors are endangering the lives of millions of women, men and children.”

The letter, which has not been made public, was conveyed by Mr. Lowcock’s office to the Security Council on Friday under its 2018 resolution requiring updates when there is a “risk of conflict-induced famine and widespread food insecurity.” A copy of the letter was seen by The New York Times.

United Nations officials have said before that all four areas are vulnerable to food deprivation because of chronic armed conflicts, and the inability of humanitarian relief providers to freely distribute aid. But the added complications created by the pandemic have now pushed them closer to famine conditions.

In April, David Beasley, the executive director of the World Food Program, the anti-hunger arm of the United Nations, warned the Security Council that, amid the coronavirus pandemic, “we are also on the brink of a hunger pandemic.” In July, his program identified 25 countries that were poised to face devastating levels of hunger because of the pandemic.

Mr. Lowcock’s new warning of impending famines effectively escalates those alerts. Under a monitoring system for assessing hunger emergencies, famine is Phase 5, the worst, marked by “starvation, death, destitution and extremely critical acute malnutrition levels.”

A Maine wedding reception seeded over 100 infections. The three people who died weren’t among the guests.

Three deaths from Covid-19 and 147 infections have been linked to an August indoor wedding reception in north-central Maine, the spokesperson for the state’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention said on Saturday. None of those who died had attended the wedding, according to the C.D.C. spokesperson.

From the wedding in Millinocket, about 70 miles north of Bangor, transmission passed into a prison and a long-term care facility — both of which are more than 100 miles from the wedding venue.

As of Thursday, there were 144 cases associated with the wedding, Nirav Shah, the director of Maine’s C.D.C., said. Of those cases, 56 were wedding guests and their second or tertiary contacts, Mr. Shah said at a briefing on Thursday.

A member of the York County jail staff who tested positive for the virus attended the wedding, Dr. Shah said. Now 18 additional staff members, 46 of the jail’s inmates and seven family members of staff have confirmed cases, Dr. Shah said.

The Maplecrest Rehabilitation and Living Center in Madison, about 100 miles away, has also been affected by cases linked to the wedding. A staff member at Maplecrest who is a secondary contact of one of the wedding guests tested positive, and as of Thursday there were 15 more infected individuals at the facility, Dr. Shah said. Eight of the cases are among residents, and seven among the staff.

The state C.D.C. said that about 65 people attended the indoor wedding. Maine has limited indoor gatherings to 50 people, according to the governor’s executive order.

“Outbreaks are not isolated events,” Dr. Shah said. “One outbreak can quickly lead to several more outbreaks, especially in a close geographic area.”

President Trump has pushed for a coronavirus vaccine to be available by October — just before the presidential election — and a growing number of scientists, regulators and public health experts have expressed concern over what they see as a pattern of political arm-twisting by the Trump administration.

In that environment, a handful of drug companies competing to be among the first to develop coronavirus vaccines are planning to release a joint pledge meant to reassure the public that they will not seek a premature approvals.

Their statement, which has not been finalized, is expected to say that the companies will not release any vaccines that do not follow rigorous efficacy and safety standards, according to representatives of three of the companies.

The joint statement was planned for early next week, but it may be released earlier since its existence was made public on Friday by The Wall Street Journal. The manufacturers that are said to have signed the letter include Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, GlaxoSmithKline and Sanofi.

Pfizer and Moderna, along with the British-based company AstraZeneca, are testing their candidates in late-stage clinical trials. Pfizer’s chief executive said this week that the company could see results as early as October, but the others have said only that they plan to release a vaccine by the end of the year.

The companies must navigate perilous terrain. If they are among the first to bring a successful vaccine to market, they could earn major profits and help rehabilitate the image of an industry battered by rising drug prices.

But if a vaccine turns out to have dangerous side effects for some people, the fallout could be catastrophic, damaging their corporate reputations, putting their broader portfolio of products at risk and broadly undermining trust in vaccines, one of the great public health advances in human history.

Contagion operates on a simple rule: The more infections there are in an open population, the more opportunities it has to spread until enough people are protected either by immunity or a vaccine.

So elected officials and public health experts worry that active coronavirus infections in the United States during the Labor Day weekend are roughly twice what they were at Memorial Day. Roughly a month after holiday gatherings at the end of May, the country’s seven-day average of new daily cases had shot up to the highest level so far, more than 60,000.

The country is now registering roughly 40,000 new cases a day, compared with roughly 22,000 a day at Memorial Day weekend, according to a New York Times database. Outbreaks at colleges and in college towns have proliferated as dorms fill and classes resume. “Many of the metro areas with the most cases per capita in recent days — including Auburn, Ala.; Ames, Iowa; and Statesboro, Ga. — have hundreds of cases at universities,” The Times’s data analysts wrote.

In a thread on Twitter, Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, reviewed the troubling trends, calling the current level of infections “a bit of a disaster” given that a fall surge is to be expected just as the flu season sets in.

Some states are still holding mass gatherings; several moved forward with state fairs held over the Labor Day weekend. Colorado and Maryland are both holding events, as is South Dakota, where cases have spiked over recent weeks.

The virus’s spread is broad, so few hospitals are overwhelmed the way many were in New York, New Jersey and other areas that were hit hard in the spring. And more treatments are available. Over all, fewer Americans are sick, hospitalized or dying from Covid-19 than in the spring or summer surges.

However, deaths are trending up in at least 12 states, according to a New York Times database: Arkansas, Alabama, West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Hawaii, Virginia, Montana, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland and Colorado. North Carolina appears to be joining that group, reporting 45 deaths — a record for the state — on Saturday. Almost all of those states also have caseloads that were already high or trending upward.

On Saturday, officials in West Virginia announced more than 250 new cases, its third-highest daily total. The state has now announced more cases over the last week than in any other seven-day period.

Every major country’s spy service around the globe is trying to find out what everyone else is up to in developing a vaccine.

China, Russia and Iran have all made attempts to steal research by some of the United States’ top companies and universities, according to U.S. intelligence agents. British intelligence has picked up signals of Russian spying on U.S., Canadian and British research. Washington and NATO have both redoubled efforts to protect the information garnered so far.

“It would be surprising if they were not trying to steal the most valuable biomedical research going on right now,” John C. Demers, a top Justice Department official, said of China last month during an event held by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Valuable from a financial point of view and invaluable from a geopolitical point of view.”

China’s push is complex, with intelligence officials focusing on universities in part because they view the institutions’ data protections as less robust than those of pharmaceutical companies. Its operatives have also surreptitiously used information from the World Health Organization to guide its vaccine hacking attempts, both in the United States and Europe, according to a current and a former official familiar with the intelligence.

To date, no corporation or university has announced any data breeches resulting from the publicly identified hacking efforts. But some of the operations succeeded in at least penetrating defenses to get inside computer networks, according to one American government official.

In more than four decades of coaching girls’ basketball at Lebanon Catholic High School in southeastern Pennsylvania, Patti Hower had led the team to three state championships and 20 district titles. This year, there were high hopes again.

But then in April, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg announced that the school was permanently closing, citing insurmountable financial stress, exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.

“We never thought, ‘Hey, we’re never going to get on that court together again as a team,’” said Ms. Hower, 68, who attended the school, like her father and granddaughters.

As schools around the country debate how to reopen safely, a growing number of Catholic schools — already facing declining enrollments and donations from before the pandemic — are shutting down for good.

About 150 Catholic schools have closed, said Kathy Mears, the director of the National Catholic Educational Association, equal to about 2 percent of the 6,183 schools that were up and running last year. The number of closures is at least 50 percent higher this year than in previous years, she said.

As parents and families lost their jobs during the pandemic, many could no longer pay tuition at Catholic schools. And when churches began shutting down to curb the spread of the virus, that also ended a major source for donations — some of which would normally be allotted for parish schools.

Among the best-known Catholic schools shutting its doors is the Institute of Notre Dame, an all-girls facility in Baltimore. Some alumni are fighting to keep the school open, upset that school leaders haven’t pushed harder to avoid closure.

Drena Fertetta, an alumnus who graduated from Notre Dame in 1983, began a group dedicated to reopening the school next year, perhaps at a different site.

“There is just a sisterhood that happens to the girls who go to that school,” Ms. Fertetta said. “It’s not something we’re willing to just walk away from.”

Protesters clashed with the police in Melbourne, Australia, at a “Freedom Day” rally on Saturday, calling for an end to tough lockdown restrictions. The police arrested 17 protesters and fined more than 160 others — nearly everyone who had flouted authorities’ instructions to stay home.

In all, about 200 protesters gathered at Victoria State’s war memorial, the Shrine of Remembrance, where they faced off against about 100 officers, some on horseback or in riot gear. At one point, groups of officers tackled several people to the ground before loading then into police vans. In another instance, the police put a mask on a protester after handcuffing him.

Many protesters accused the government of making up or overstating the effects of Covid-19.

“I’m personally here to say the lockdown needs to end,” said Dellacoma Rio, 38, who removed his shirt to show the word “Freedom” tattooed across his back.

Tensions have surged during the fifth week of Victoria’s six-week lockdown, which includes some of the strictest restrictions in the world. All nonessential businesses are closed. Melburnians are allowed to leave the house only for work, exercise or buying groceries, and travel is restricted to within about 3 miles of home. There is also a nightly curfew.

The state’s premier, Daniel Andrews, condemned the protest as “selfish, dangerous and unlawful.”

“Solidarity rallies” were also held in other capital cities across the country and gathered hundreds of attendees.

Some protesters wore masks and shirts alluding to the Illuminati, while others mentioned QAnon, the viral pro-Trump conspiracy theory.

Alem Dubael, 30, said he was protesting as part of a fight against “corruption in the new world order.”

“At the end of the day, the truth will come out,” he said. “And then everybody that was saying we’re idiots — when everything comes to light, they’ll find out they’re the actual idiots.”

Other coronavirus news from around the world:

Mexico’s coronavirus czar, Hugo Lopez-Gatell, told reporters on Friday that some states where the virus is surging, including Mexico and Baja California, had run out of death certificates last month. He said that more than a million new ones had been printed and were being distributed to health officials. The country had recorded coronavirus 66,329 deaths as of Friday, though a Times investigation in the spring found that the government was not reporting hundreds, possibly thousands, of such deaths in Mexico City, the capital.

A former prime minister of the Cook Islands, Joseph Williams, has died of Covid-19 in New Zealand, the country’s Health Ministry said on Saturday. He became the 24th person to die of Covid-19 in New Zealand, which has been under lockdown over the past few weeks to get a second small coronavirus outbreak under control. Mr. Williams, 85, was a well-known doctor in Auckland and served briefly as the Cook Islands’ prime minister in 1999.

Tech companies’ pandemic policies create a backlash against benefits aimed at parents.

At a recent companywide meeting, Facebook employees repeatedly argued that work policies created in response to Covid-19 “have primarily benefited parents.”

At Twitter, a fight erupted on an internal message board after a worker who didn’t have children at home accused another employee, who was taking a leave to care for a child, of not pulling his weight.

As companies wrestle with how to support their staff during the pandemic, some employees without children say they are being asked to shoulder a heavier workload. The divide is more pronounced at some technology companies, where workers tend to be younger and have come to expect generous perks and benefits in exchange for letting their jobs take over their lives.

Tech companies were among the first to ask employees to work from home in the pandemic, and to offer generous leave and additional time off once it became apparent that children would remain home from school.

The tension has been most vividly displayed at Facebook, which in March offered up to 10 weeks of paid time off for employees if they had to care for a child whose school or day-care facility had closed or for an older relative whose nursing home was not open.

When Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, hosted a companywide videoconference on Aug. 20, more than 2,000 employees voted to ask her what more Facebook could do to support nonparents.

An employee wrote in comments accompanying the video feed that it was “unfair” that nonparents could not take advantage of the same leave policy afforded parents. Another wrote that while the procedure for taking leave was usually difficult, it was “easy breezy” for parents.

A parent responded in a note on her corporate Facebook page, visible only inside the company, that the question was “harmful” because it made parents feel negatively judged and that a child care leave was hardly a mental or physical health break.

Not so long ago, before the coronavirus, India’s future looked entirely different.

It had a sizzling economy that was lifting millions out of poverty. It aimed to give its people a middle-class lifestyle, update its woefully vintage military and become a regional political and economic superpower that could rival China, Asia’s biggest success story.

But the economic devastation caused by the pandemic is imperiling many of India’s aspirations. The country’s economy has shrunk faster than any other major nation’s. As many as 200 million people could slip back into poverty, according to some estimates. Many of its normally vibrant streets are empty, with people too frightened of the outbreak to venture far.

Much of this damage was caused by a lockdown imposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi that experts now say was both too tight and too porous, both hurting the economy and spreading the virus. India now has the fastest growing coronavirus outbreak, with more than 80,000 new infections reported each day. The country has now topped four million confirmed cases.

A sense of malaise is creeping over the nation. Its economic growth was slowing even before the pandemic. Social divisions are widening. Anti-Muslim feelings are on the rise, partly because of a malicious social media campaign that falsely blamed Muslims for spreading the virus. China is increasingly muscling into Indian territory.

Scholars use many of the same words when contemplating India today: Lost. Listless. Wounded. Rudderless. Unjust.

“The engine has been smashed,” said Arundhati Roy, one of India’s pre-eminent writers. “The ability to survive has been smashed. And the pieces are all up in the air. You don’t know where they are going to fall or how they are going to fall.”

On the eve of the 146th Kentucky Derby, the United States’ most famous horse race, the host state reported a single-day record of more than 1,443 new coronavirus cases. The Derby had been postponed by four months because of the pandemic, and organizers recently gave up on a plan to allow a scaled-down audience at Churchill Downs, after a significant increase in cases emerged in and around Louisville, the track’s home.

When the race was finally run on Saturday, Authentic held off a charge by the favorite, Tiz the Law, to give his trainer, Bob Baffert, a record-tying sixth victory in the Derby. Tiz the Law, a New York-bred colt, had won the prestigious Travers Stakes and the Belmont Stakes, which is usually the final leg of horse racing’s Triple Crown. But in this year’s jumbled schedule, the Belmont was run first, and the Preakness — normally the second leg — will go last, on Oct. 3.

With the Derby running in the city where the police killed Breonna Taylor in her apartment in March, it has become a focus of the Black Lives Matter movement. A coalition of activist groups had called for a boycott of the race and its sponsors. They conducted a peaceful protest in a park near Churchill Downs on Saturday and marched toward the track.

The track’s leadership released a statement on Thursday to explain the decision to hold the race.

“We know there are some who disagree with our decision to run the Kentucky Derby this year,” it said. “We respect that point of view but made our decision in the belief that traditions can remind us of what binds us together as Americans, even as we seek to acknowledge and repair the terrible pain that rends us apart.”

In other sports news:

University of Michigan football players, their head coach, parents and other supporters protested the postponement of the season by marching through the streets of Ann Arbor on Saturday afternoon, when the team was supposed to play its first game. “Free the Big Ten,” Coach Jim Harbaugh told local reporters, referring to the conference in which Michigan plays. The Big Ten joined several other conferences in postponing fall sports because of the pandemic.

Reporting was contributed by Julian E. Barnes, Alan Blinder, Damien Cave, Christopher Clarey, Ron DePasquale, Joe Drape, Sheera Frenkel, Jeffrey Gettleman, Rick Gladstone, Emma Goldberg, Mike Ives, Andrea Kannapell, Sharon LaFraniere, Michael Venutolo-Mantovani, Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio, Zach Montague, Katie Thomas, Daisuke Wakabayashi, Noah Weiland, Will Wright and Yan Zhuang.

[tarrytcwn]

what i miss most is the spirit. there’s vitality - you hear it.

ichabod crane was born & raised in boston, massachusetts. 

he’s 27! 

he has a sister! older by two years. 

he’s jewish! 

he doesn’t drink alcohol. he appreciates the offer but will politely decline, thank you. 

he’s a grade a scaredy cat. ghosts are bad! monsters are bad! do not scare this man, he will have nightmares for days! he hates that he’s a fraidy cat but it’s just how he was built,, 

his family was rather well-off & he went to private school. he was a very good student, very smart. and he took up tutoring other students in his off time throughout high school. 

tutoring made him feel useful. turned him on to teaching as a career. it was something he was good at, after all.

ichabod realized he was gay in sophomore year. one tutoring session in the library lead to a rough kiss over a frustrating textbook question which lead to a very panicked and very confused ichabod bolting out of the library and back to his dorm with nothing more than a shakily murmured “i have to go.” 

ichabod’s never felt truly comfortable in his own skin and the realization just made it worse - it was a confusing time for him. scary, even. figuring yourself out isn’t always easy, especially when you didn’t know there was more of yourself to figure out. accepting himself was a slow process, but he got there with a little help (and perhaps a few more kisses. for experimental purposes, of course.) this is something he kept to himself, though. he wasn’t sure how his family would react and the thought of bringing it up terrified him.   

after high school, ichabod got accepted to berklee college! because if there was one thing he truly enjoyed, it was music. and if he was going to teaching something for the rest of his life, shouldn’t it be something he enjoyed? his family was just as thrilled as he was. 

college brought with it the freedom to experiment. people were far more open and accepting and, though it took him a little while to get out of his shell, so was ichabod. he worried less about keeping things hidden and even bought his first pride flag, hanging it up in his dorm. even attended his first pride. it was so Freeing, ichabod had never felt more himself than he did his first semester of college. 

coming home during breaks soon became a chore because of how different he had to act around his family. putting up a Straight Man Front and trying to laugh off questions about Girlfriends and Gettin’ Some (which he Was, just. not in the way they thought.) it was tiring. 

 so in his second year of college, he decided that he was going to tell his family over winter break. he was fucking Terrified. so much so that he was sick to his stomach just thinking about it but. he couldn’t keep hiding who he was, it felt Wrong. 

so one night over dinner, he announced very shakily that he had something he needed to tell everyone and then proceeded to come out at the dinner table, eyes never leaving his food and hands shaking. 

his sister took it very well! she even took one of his hands in hers and gave a reassuring squeeze to try to calm his nerves. 

his mother, however, was a different story entirely. she went off on him about “no son of mine-“ etc. etc. she was Pissed and ichabod was heartbroken. 

his sister reassured him later, quietly over his muffled sobs into her sweater, that their mother would come around. that she had to. she was their mom. ichabod wasn’t so sure about that. 

she didn’t. she cut him off & disowned him and ichabod was sure that her deafening silence the day that he left home for the last time hurt infinitely more than the sharp words she’d thrown at him at the dinner table. 

he hasn’t spoken to his mom in eight years & he’s fine with that. 

he still keeps in touch with his sister, they text almost daily. 

he couldn’t afford college without his mother’s help, so he dropped out. took the money he’d had saved up and moved to new york city for a change of scene. he needed it desperately. 

he landed himself a shitty office job with decent pay & a little apartment in manhattan & honestly? it felt good to be on his own for real. 

he fell in love with the city - the bustling streets and the nightlife were incredible. ichabod found himself falling into a routine in the best of ways. it was a bit of an adventure at first but it was worth it. 

he quickly realized, though, that making friends wasn’t easy outside of a classroom setting and loneliness crept in, as it so often does. 

ichabod started going out to bars in the hopes of finding company with a bit of liquid courage to ease his nerves. which is a good plan in theory but it went terribly awry when he went back to a handsome fellow’s place and proceeded to take drugs with him to loosen up. it felt incredible, getting high like that. his nervousness faded away in the haze and he didn’t have to worry about stumbling over his words, they just came to him. 

things just went downhill from there. one night of drug-induced fun turned into two and three and “just a few more”s. 

 it got to the point where he didn’t care what he took as long as he took something to keep the ache in his temples and the shake in his fingers from catching up with him. 

one too many callouts (he always felt like utter shit in the mornings, some days dragging himself out of bed just wasn’t worth it) lost him his job. he didn’t care much, more time to fool around and less time worrying about his supervisor bitching him out for calling out “again? really? that’s the third time this month, ichabod. not to mention the two times you forgot to call-“ christ. good riddance. 

the countless nights of blacked out memories & mornings waking up on grimy floors or in strange men’s beds should really have been the wake up call ichabod needed. unfortunately, it took getting evicted for everything to crash down on him. 

where was he going to stay? his first thought was Family but if his mother hated him for being an upstanding gay citizen, there’s no way she’d take him back when he was like this and he couldn’t bear the thought of his sister seeing him in such a state. he spent his first of many nights out on the streets with a duffle bag full of clothes and little else. 

he needed to get out of the city and he needed to get clean. he started to go to na meetings and spent days he was feeling Less Like Shit working odd jobs to save up for a one way ticket out of here. 

ichabod settled on tarrytown as his goal location, it was a small quiet town not too far from the city and there was a music teacher position available at the high school. if everything went well (and they didn’t ask for his credentials) ichabod figured he could find an apartment there and be away from all of the temptations the city brought with it. 

it was a perfect plan, really. start anew where nobody knew him. clean slate. he could be whatever he wanted to be in tarrytown… he could be sober and clean and happy and- hell, who knew! maybe he’d even fall in love… 

he’s always been a romantic at heart, but it felt like a little much to ask for someone to love him. he’s always loved daydreaming about what it’d like for someone to take his hand and kiss him softly and tell him things will be alright when things absolutely don’t seem like they will be. he’s always Wanted that, a dull ache in his chest in the background. but a nagging at the back of his brain has always reminded him that he’s a mess, he always will be, and loving him is a lot to ask of any man. 

ichabod was thrilled - more than thrilled! - when he got an interview and then a call telling him that the tarrytown high school wanted him for their music teacher position. this was it. this was his chance for a new life and a new home and friends… 

 with his duffel full of clothes, a pride flag, and toiletries, and the money he’d saved from odd jobs, ichabod boarded a bus to tarrytown. it was a nice little town, so close to the city and yet so different, and ichabod couldn’t help but feel like perhaps this would be where he belonged… 

he kept up with na meetings while living there and exploring the town kept him busy until school started a week later. 

 on his first day, he met katrina who quickly became ichabod’s best friend there in tarrytown. she was bubbly and sweet and talkative. vibrant. she made ichabod feel welcome and she invited him to dinner the day they met. having nothing to lose, ichabod accepted. it was nice to have someone who wanted him around, even if they hadn’t known each other very long at all. 

and that night he met katrina’s husband, brom. he wasn’t expecting brom but the man was a pleasant surprise and awfully easy on the eyes. 

it was very easy to see the relationship between katrina and brom was Strained, even just hanging around for ten minutes. katrina asking for help cooking and brom brushing her off for the football game that was on tv. “typical straight man, really.” thanks, ichabod. 

it was a lovely evening nonetheless and ichabod suggested they do it again sometime. it was nice to have friends… friends who liked him, who wanted him around, who made him feel included the way brom and katrina did when they asked him about the city. 

all good things come to an end sometime, though, from ichabod’s personal experience, and this was no exception. katrina left brom and moved in with ichabod and. ichabod felt partially responsible, really. he didn’t tell her to leave brom but he didn’t dissuade her from the idea, either. it wasn’t really his fault, was it? her choice was her own to make. 

brom wasn’t happy when he found out that ichabod had talked with katrina about leaving & ichabod, distressed over possibly losing his only other friend, tried convincing brom that it was ultimately katrina’s decision and he didn’t encourage her leaving him. it seemed to do the trick bc brom asked to stay friends, asked for ichabod to come over to watch football sometime to which ichabod ecstatically agreed. “just don’t tell katrina.” which seemed odd, but who was he to question it? 

the time he didn’t spend on classes or at na meetings, he spent with katrina or brom. the latter of the two seemed far more warm and welcoming and… tactile now. 

ichabod was hopeless when it came to football, no matter how many times brom tried to explain it to him, sports simply wasn’t his forte. but curled up on brom’s couch with brom’s arm around his shoulders, close enough to smell the heavy scent of brom’s cologne, close enough to- well. 

 brom asked about katrina every now and then but mostly it was lighthearted joking and, if ichabod wasn’t reading the situation wrong, some lighthearted flirting as well. which made his dumb gay heart pitter pat in the confines of his chest. he wondered, perhaps, if the attraction he felt was mutual. if perhaps brom presented straight because it was all he’d ever known and perhaps he was suppressing himself because he was afraid. ichabod knew that feeling all too well. 

it was enough to get ichabod Thinking about brom in the romantic sense. brom didn’t know the side of him he’d left behind in manhattan, brom just knew ichabod as the dorky music teacher from the city that his wife brought home one night. his football buddy. an upstanding fellow. brom knew ichabod only as ichabod wanted to be known and something about that made ichabod yearn for him all the more. maybe someone Could love him. maybe Brom could love him. 

but that was a lot of perhapses built high on false hopes and ichabod made a fool of himself one night, breaking his No Alcohol rule just once - it was only one beer, how much harm could it do? - and in the closeness of it all, in a lull in conversation, with a tipsy tongue, blurted that he loved brom. “even i can’t get over the shock that i love you– brom, i love you. i’m in love.” and god, he should’ve laughed it off as a joke when he saw the look on brom’s face- he looked almost disgusted and it shattered the tower of hopes and dreams and fantasies that he absolutely shouldn’t have gotten invested in. ichabod felt genuine fear course down his spine then, muttered a shaky “i’m so sorry, brom, i should go.” and hastily took his leave. 

 he managed to make it home before he broke down, katrina trying to get him to tell her what was wrong just made him cry harder before she pulled him close and assured him it didn’t matter, it was alright now. she had him. which just made him feel worse for falling for her husband. and he once he’d cried himself out, he fell asleep with her fingers carding through his hair. 

 the next morning he felt worse than he had since before moving to tarrytown and he made the executive decision to leave. he couldn’t stay here, not after he’d broken katrina’s trust and brom hated him. surely he hated him, the look on his face… brom was straight, ichabod had known that. it was nothing new. him holding out hope for anything else had been foolish and childish and- maybe the city was where he belonged. 

 so that night, after emailing the school about his departure - claiming it was a family emergency that was pulling him away. that he needed to live closer to family in these trying times - he said goodnight to katrina and packed a few bags and left without another word to either her or brom. 

he misses katrina dearly. sure, she was a little flighty and drank too much but she was sweet and it had been so long since he’d been someone’s best friend…. it had felt nice to be needed. he misses that feeling immensely. he hopes she’s happy, she deserves to be. 

he’ll be a year clean on august 13th and is 1 month & 13 days sober. 

 he’s hoping, someday, to go back to college and finish his degree but he’s sure he has enough musical knowledge to get him by. he did, after all, teach a stellar music class for a year. 

he really loved teaching music. he’s hoping to get another teaching job somewhere soon or he’ll have to settle for whatever he can make money at. 

right now, he’s staying at an airbnb until he can find a proper apartment that’s both in his price range and comfortable enough to live in. 

he has a nervous tic of scratching at his inner arm/elbow. 

he doesn’t like the spooky aspect of halloween but he loves the creative aspect of it. he carved pumpkins with brom and katrina on halloween last year and it was such a warm, fun, wholly autumn experience that he’d missed. 

he has a noticeable scar on his wrist from trying to cut a frozen bagel with a steak knife in college. the blood ruined his favorite white sweater. yes he was more upset about the sweater than the gash in his wrist. “my wrist will heal, my sweater won’t!!” 

 he can play piano, violin, guitar, and ukulele. 

he’s most comfortable in a buttondown or a sweater and a pair of slacks or really nice jeans, but he’s been known to be bold in his outfit choices on occasion. 

he’s still not really sure of himself when it comes to making friends/interacting with people he doesn’t know and it’s very difficult without the crutch of getting high to loosen up but. he’s trying. 

[ettaseverythingelse]

reblog for the new semester because my university is evicting me from my dorm to quarantine off campus for two days because I was exposed to a positive case over a week ago, and their isolation policy is completely inflexible even though I've tested negative twice in the past week. I was not in close contact with the case I was five degrees of separation from them and now the health center has sent out the quarantine notice a week late, after I went about all my activities as usual. They do not offer off-campus quarantine housing, so I'm forced to crash at my friend's place. My friend is still allowed to go to classes. I'm allowed to get take out from the dining hall but not sit alone in my room to do homework.

97% of our school population is vaccinated. They promised we could have our lives back once we complied. They still hang these stipulations over our heads, claiming its for safety, but the rules don't make any medical sense.

Obviously if it was a 10 day quarantine or I was a risk, I would isolate, no issue. I wear the masks, wash my hands, and social distance as much as possible. But there's no room for common-sense human oversight in this situation. If I go to class this morning I would endanger no one. I'm negative. They don't care. They blame students for spreading covid even though the administration is the one that sent out the quarantine order a week late. How are students supposed to behave responsibly when they don't know?

The statments “COVID is a dangerous disease and we need to take proper precautions to keep students and teachers safe” and “The government and school boards and university directors are on a power trip and none of this makes even an iota of logical sense” are statements that CAN and SHOULD coexist without being political. 

[rtscrndr53704]

The 7-Step Email List-Building Formula for Education Marketing

The 7-Step Email List-Building Formula for Education Marketing

It’s hard, time-consuming work. But there are few investments as worthy of your time and effort as building your college or university’s email list.

Do you remember the time you realized that renting an apartment wasn’t necessarily the best way to accumulate wealth? Or at the very least, it isn’t the most effective way to get your net worth out of the red.

While renting has its advantages—and can be beneficial at times to getting you closer to your goals in life—over the long-term, renting just isn’t usually the best financial practice.

This logic applies just as much to marketing as it does to personal finances.

In the digital world, there are only a few things that you own—everything else you rent.

Your social media profiles (like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and SnapChat) and all the information they hold are things you rent. They’re all owned by a tech company like Facebook or Microsoft. And they have the right to “evict” you and your higher education institution from their property by shutting down your profile.

Sounds a bit drastic—but it’s true.

More than likely, though, they will simply throttle your reach so as to force you to pay them to get your message out to more people in your friends list.

Sounds unfair? Not really. It’s good business.

They need to make money, and they’re going to make that money from the people who are “renting” their space: Marketers like you.

But let’s not get cynical here. You know that I’m a big fan of using social media marketing.

In fact, here are some articles I’ve written on it:

5 Proven Ways to Build Brand Authority on Social Media

You Can’t Manage What You Can’t Measure: 25 Social Media KPI’s

How I Save 5 Hours a Week on Social Media

But while I have a healthy appreciation for the power of social media marketing, you can’t “rent” your way to marketing success.

Thankfully, there are digital assets that you can own.

Your website, your content on your website, and your email list are all digital assets you own.

In this sense, they truly are assets. They generate value for your organization year after year, and no one can arbitrarily shut them down.

All three of these assets are essential for any digital marketing strategy. But so many higher education institutions stop after they’ve created their website and content. Why is that?

Because building an email marketing list is a long-term strategy.

Properly executing a higher education website takes months to conceptualize, draft copy, design, development, and deploy.

Creating exceptional content can take anywhere from days to several weeks to produce.

But building an email list with enough subscribers to generate results for your college or university takes years of consistently applying a list-building strategy.

The strategy isn’t complicated or difficult. It’s applying that strategy over and over again through the years that’s so darn hard—and frustrating!

But you can do it. And you must do it.

Over 3.6 billion people have an active email account.

The average person spends almost half of a their time on their mobile device checking email. Social media gets a paltry 10%.

Over 43.5 million people check their email daily.

Email is cheap.

Email is personal. No matter how many people are on your email list, each person receives the email as if it were straight from you to them personally.

Email is a dependable, proven channel. Sure, things go wrong every now and then, but comparatively speaking, email is “Old Faithful.”

For all of the above reasons, your email list is probably the greatest marketing asset you have.

You could lose your website, content, and social media profile today in a freak stroke of really bad luck. But if you kept the names on your email list safe, you could be back in business tomorrow!

Here’s the simple strategy that will build your higher education email list and bullet-proof your digital marketing strategy.

Decide how subscribers will opt-in to your email list. Creating an email list is not the same as asking the prospective students to request more information, nor is it the beginning of the application. Which means that you can’t just throw in the names and addresses of students you’re prospecting on to your email list unless they’ve given you permission to do so. Building an email list is one of the tools you use to build trust and earn the right to take the relationship to the next level. Even if you do ask some qualifying questions as part of the opt-in, be sure to only to ask for the information you need at that moment to add them to your list and no more.. Bob Johnson illustrates a great way of limiting web forms to the needs of your prospects.

Create email newsletter opt-in forms and place them strategically on your website. Place opt-in forms in such strategic places as sidebar widgets, landing pages, free download pages, at the end of blog posts, and in your header or footer.

Create email newsletter pop-up forms. These are opt-in forms that can appear however you design them to. They can appear when a visitor lands on your homepage, when they try to leave the page, or after having been on your page for a set amount of time.

Offer your visitor something of value in return for signing up for your email list. Create a piece of content your visitor would find helpful such as a college buyer’s guide, dorm life survival manual, or a financial aid reference to help them find the money they need for college.

Encourage subscribers to share your list. Use fun strategies such as contests to win a prize like an iPad, or you can give away a digital item such as an ebook to all subscribers who get their friends to sign up for your newsletter.

Continue creating and publishing great content. Don’t let your email list grow cold by neglecting to send them content that answers the questions that they’re looking to you to answer.

Don’t believe that purchasing a search list and adding it to your email list is the same thing. Your email list is a sacred list, and those individuals have chosen to give you permission to send them quality content. Remember that, and honor the trust.

This seven-step approach is simple, yet highly effective for building your college or university’s email list.

If you would like to know more about higher education digital marketing strategies, like email list building, contact us today for a free consultation!

This post was originally published at: http://ift.tt/2tMa4Tz

http://ift.tt/2thMIle

[bestwindow30901]

The 7-Step Email List-Building Formula for Education Marketing

The 7-Step Email List-Building Formula for Education Marketing

It’s hard, time-consuming work. But there are few investments as worthy of your time and effort as building your college or university’s email list.

Do you remember the time you realized that renting an apartment wasn’t necessarily the best way to accumulate wealth? Or at the very least, it isn’t the most effective way to get your net worth out of the red.

While renting has its advantages—and can be beneficial at times to getting you closer to your goals in life—over the long-term, renting just isn’t usually the best financial practice.

This logic applies just as much to marketing as it does to personal finances.

In the digital world, there are only a few things that you own—everything else you rent.

Your social media profiles (like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and SnapChat) and all the information they hold are things you rent. They’re all owned by a tech company like Facebook or Microsoft. And they have the right to “evict” you and your higher education institution from their property by shutting down your profile.

Sounds a bit drastic—but it’s true.

More than likely, though, they will simply throttle your reach so as to force you to pay them to get your message out to more people in your friends list.

Sounds unfair? Not really. It’s good business.

They need to make money, and they’re going to make that money from the people who are “renting” their space: Marketers like you.

But let’s not get cynical here. You know that I’m a big fan of using social media marketing.

In fact, here are some articles I’ve written on it:

5 Proven Ways to Build Brand Authority on Social Media

You Can’t Manage What You Can’t Measure: 25 Social Media KPI’s

How I Save 5 Hours a Week on Social Media

But while I have a healthy appreciation for the power of social media marketing, you can’t “rent” your way to marketing success.

Thankfully, there are digital assets that you can own.

Your website, your content on your website, and your email list are all digital assets you own.

In this sense, they truly are assets. They generate value for your organization year after year, and no one can arbitrarily shut them down.

All three of these assets are essential for any digital marketing strategy. But so many higher education institutions stop after they’ve created their website and content. Why is that?

Because building an email marketing list is a long-term strategy.

Properly executing a higher education website takes months to conceptualize, draft copy, design, development, and deploy.

Creating exceptional content can take anywhere from days to several weeks to produce.

But building an email list with enough subscribers to generate results for your college or university takes years of consistently applying a list-building strategy.

The strategy isn’t complicated or difficult. It’s applying that strategy over and over again through the years that’s so darn hard—and frustrating!

But you can do it. And you must do it.

Over 3.6 billion people have an active email account.

The average person spends almost half of a their time on their mobile device checking email. Social media gets a paltry 10%.

Over 43.5 million people check their email daily.

Email is cheap.

Email is personal. No matter how many people are on your email list, each person receives the email as if it were straight from you to them personally.

Email is a dependable, proven channel. Sure, things go wrong every now and then, but comparatively speaking, email is “Old Faithful.”

For all of the above reasons, your email list is probably the greatest marketing asset you have.

You could lose your website, content, and social media profile today in a freak stroke of really bad luck. But if you kept the names on your email list safe, you could be back in business tomorrow!

Here’s the simple strategy that will build your higher education email list and bullet-proof your digital marketing strategy.

Decide how subscribers will opt-in to your email list. Creating an email list is not the same as asking the prospective students to request more information, nor is it the beginning of the application. Which means that you can’t just throw in the names and addresses of students you’re prospecting on to your email list unless they’ve given you permission to do so. Building an email list is one of the tools you use to build trust and earn the right to take the relationship to the next level. Even if you do ask some qualifying questions as part of the opt-in, be sure to only to ask for the information you need at that moment to add them to your list and no more.. Bob Johnson illustrates a great way of limiting web forms to the needs of your prospects.

Create email newsletter opt-in forms and place them strategically on your website. Place opt-in forms in such strategic places as sidebar widgets, landing pages, free download pages, at the end of blog posts, and in your header or footer.

Create email newsletter pop-up forms. These are opt-in forms that can appear however you design them to. They can appear when a visitor lands on your homepage, when they try to leave the page, or after having been on your page for a set amount of time.

Offer your visitor something of value in return for signing up for your email list. Create a piece of content your visitor would find helpful such as a college buyer’s guide, dorm life survival manual, or a financial aid reference to help them find the money they need for college.

Encourage subscribers to share your list. Use fun strategies such as contests to win a prize like an iPad, or you can give away a digital item such as an ebook to all subscribers who get their friends to sign up for your newsletter.

Continue creating and publishing great content. Don’t let your email list grow cold by neglecting to send them content that answers the questions that they’re looking to you to answer.

Don’t believe that purchasing a search list and adding it to your email list is the same thing. Your email list is a sacred list, and those individuals have chosen to give you permission to send them quality content. Remember that, and honor the trust.

This seven-step approach is simple, yet highly effective for building your college or university’s email list.

If you would like to know more about higher education digital marketing strategies, like email list building, contact us today for a free consultation!

This post was originally published at: http://ift.tt/2tMa4Tz

http://ift.tt/2thMIle

[chipwin08109]

The 7-Step Email List-Building Formula for Education Marketing

The 7-Step Email List-Building Formula for Education Marketing

It’s hard, time-consuming work. But there are few investments as worthy of your time and effort as building your college or university’s email list.

Do you remember the time you realized that renting an apartment wasn’t necessarily the best way to accumulate wealth? Or at the very least, it isn’t the most effective way to get your net worth out of the red.

While renting has its advantages—and can be beneficial at times to getting you closer to your goals in life—over the long-term, renting just isn’t usually the best financial practice.

This logic applies just as much to marketing as it does to personal finances.

In the digital world, there are only a few things that you own—everything else you rent.

Your social media profiles (like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and SnapChat) and all the information they hold are things you rent. They’re all owned by a tech company like Facebook or Microsoft. And they have the right to “evict” you and your higher education institution from their property by shutting down your profile.

Sounds a bit drastic—but it’s true.

More than likely, though, they will simply throttle your reach so as to force you to pay them to get your message out to more people in your friends list.

Sounds unfair? Not really. It’s good business.

They need to make money, and they’re going to make that money from the people who are “renting” their space: Marketers like you.

But let’s not get cynical here. You know that I’m a big fan of using social media marketing.

In fact, here are some articles I’ve written on it:

5 Proven Ways to Build Brand Authority on Social Media

You Can’t Manage What You Can’t Measure: 25 Social Media KPI’s

How I Save 5 Hours a Week on Social Media

But while I have a healthy appreciation for the power of social media marketing, you can’t “rent” your way to marketing success.

Thankfully, there are digital assets that you can own.

Your website, your content on your website, and your email list are all digital assets you own.

In this sense, they truly are assets. They generate value for your organization year after year, and no one can arbitrarily shut them down.

All three of these assets are essential for any digital marketing strategy. But so many higher education institutions stop after they’ve created their website and content. Why is that?

Because building an email marketing list is a long-term strategy.

Properly executing a higher education website takes months to conceptualize, draft copy, design, development, and deploy.

Creating exceptional content can take anywhere from days to several weeks to produce.

But building an email list with enough subscribers to generate results for your college or university takes years of consistently applying a list-building strategy.

The strategy isn’t complicated or difficult. It’s applying that strategy over and over again through the years that’s so darn hard—and frustrating!

But you can do it. And you must do it.

Over 3.6 billion people have an active email account.

The average person spends almost half of a their time on their mobile device checking email. Social media gets a paltry 10%.

Over 43.5 million people check their email daily.

Email is cheap.

Email is personal. No matter how many people are on your email list, each person receives the email as if it were straight from you to them personally.

Email is a dependable, proven channel. Sure, things go wrong every now and then, but comparatively speaking, email is “Old Faithful.”

For all of the above reasons, your email list is probably the greatest marketing asset you have.

You could lose your website, content, and social media profile today in a freak stroke of really bad luck. But if you kept the names on your email list safe, you could be back in business tomorrow!

Here’s the simple strategy that will build your higher education email list and bullet-proof your digital marketing strategy.

Decide how subscribers will opt-in to your email list. Creating an email list is not the same as asking the prospective students to request more information, nor is it the beginning of the application. Which means that you can’t just throw in the names and addresses of students you’re prospecting on to your email list unless they’ve given you permission to do so. Building an email list is one of the tools you use to build trust and earn the right to take the relationship to the next level. Even if you do ask some qualifying questions as part of the opt-in, be sure to only to ask for the information you need at that moment to add them to your list and no more.. Bob Johnson illustrates a great way of limiting web forms to the needs of your prospects.

Create email newsletter opt-in forms and place them strategically on your website. Place opt-in forms in such strategic places as sidebar widgets, landing pages, free download pages, at the end of blog posts, and in your header or footer.

Create email newsletter pop-up forms. These are opt-in forms that can appear however you design them to. They can appear when a visitor lands on your homepage, when they try to leave the page, or after having been on your page for a set amount of time.

Offer your visitor something of value in return for signing up for your email list. Create a piece of content your visitor would find helpful such as a college buyer’s guide, dorm life survival manual, or a financial aid reference to help them find the money they need for college.

Encourage subscribers to share your list. Use fun strategies such as contests to win a prize like an iPad, or you can give away a digital item such as an ebook to all subscribers who get their friends to sign up for your newsletter.

Continue creating and publishing great content. Don’t let your email list grow cold by neglecting to send them content that answers the questions that they’re looking to you to answer.

Don’t believe that purchasing a search list and adding it to your email list is the same thing. Your email list is a sacred list, and those individuals have chosen to give you permission to send them quality content. Remember that, and honor the trust.

This seven-step approach is simple, yet highly effective for building your college or university’s email list.

If you would like to know more about higher education digital marketing strategies, like email list building, contact us today for a free consultation!

This post was originally published at: http://ift.tt/2tMa4Tz

http://ift.tt/2thMIle