#this is just a 5 minute doodle but i Am doing it this year its gonna happen

[svnflowermoon]

why can i literally not function at school like i swear i'm trying i just can't focus????

[kylesplayhouse]

So since my South Park fixation is back in full swing, I figured it was time to properly introduce my New Kid oc, Flava!

This little guy means everything to me, I know that sounds really cheesy to say, but this goofball has genuinely changed my life for the better.

Unfortunately I had never really delved into what all my OC is about until now, so strap in y’all because I have a LOT so say & share about this guy!

Preamble

Flava was created waaaay back in 2018 by my old friend @shin-holly after they whipped up a design in TFBW’s character creation, he looked MUCH different than he does now, as was his lore (which is a whole different thing entirely)

Throughout the years Flava underwent many different design changes as I got better with my art when I transitioned to using MediBang Paint around late 2020. His main idea however stayed relatively the same; A kid who had an interest for Outer Space and the unknown.

Since then i’ve been workshopping what his relationships are with the canon cast as well as his personality, which to be honest I hadn’t even BEGUN to think about thoroughly until 2022.

I’m happy to announce that now, I am fully confident in what this guy’s character is like and what kind of friendships he has with everybody!

Some Info about The Boy™️

10-11 years old

He’s transgender, primarily using He/Him (he also uses they/them occasionally). As a younger kid Flava had always known he was a bit…different from the other kids, and strangely felt unhappy about himself for reasons he couldn’t figure out. Then one day, during a library trip, Flava stumbled into the health section and discovered a book about Transgender youth, then everything made sense to him. Flava wouldn’t tell his mom about how he felt until he had just turned 10 years old

Has an older brother named Niiko. He’s 18 and still in his sophomore year of high school, having been held back due to doing really stupid shit, he loves Flava to death & tries to get him involved in his schemes. He loves grunge culture and frequently binges nu-metal and rock music, his favorite bands are Primus and Nine Inch Nails.

Flava’s friend circle is nerdy at best, with his best friend being Clyde. The duo end up goofing around often, Clyde being the prime instigator 99% of the time. Some other notable pals of his are Kevin, Scott, Kyle(?), Red, Pip, and Gregory. (Last two are important)

Personality is varied, at best Flava can be described as soft due to having such a calm nature to him. Growing up, Flava never had any friends so he is largely an outsider, most people who do talk to him leave after 5 minutes of him infodumping. Other than that, Flava is a very chill person to be around and is more than willing to talk to anyone he deems friendly enough.

He has two pets: Shadow🚺 and Sparky🚹 (Not to be confused with THE Sparky). Shadow is a two year old leucistic Reticulated Python who originally belonged to Niiko, but was moved to Flava’s room due to its bigger size, while Sparky is a 4 month old mixed breed (border collie/husky/german shepherd?). He was given to Flava as a Christmas present by Niiko, he’s extremely playful & loves belly rubs.

Interests

Space

As implied by his alternate costume, Flava loves outer space and all of its planets, his favorites are Neptune and Saturn. It’s probably the one thing everyone knows him for, as Flava talks about it almost every day, he can and will infodump about all the facts he knows about it and the latest news from NASA as he follows their website closely. You might even catch this guy stargazing late at night with his telescope, looking at the sky for hours.

Herpetology (Study of Reptiles and Amphibians)

Flava’s also engaged in learning about reptiles, this stemmed from falling down a rabbit hole while trying to read about snake care when Shadow was moved to his room, lately he’s into dragons, having now read all of Wings of Fire MULTIPLE times.

Art

Flava is a pretty doodle-y guy, he’s especially crafty with scrapbooks and notes. He’ll draw whatever comes to mind really, sometimes its his friends doing epic stunts (Clyde sometimes pays Flava 3 dollars to draw him.), other time its abstract shapes, Flava’s favorite thing to draw though is what the surface of planets look like up close. He considers himself a professional artist, and hopes to one day get his art featured in a museum.

As for hobbies outside of stargazing, Flava takes an interest in hockey, he often trains with Niiko at home, although Niiko is a bit aggressive with his techniques as he’s more experienced with it, Flava actually does use this aggressive himself in full games, this leads to his team getting shockingly good scoring and sometimes even winning.

If it sounds like Flava is absolutely perfect and is a “Mary Sue”, don’t worry because this fella has a few issues, most notably is his anger problem. If you push him enough, Flava will snap and punch you with as much force as a 10 year old boy possibly can. He tends to lash out at people who piss him off or think know better, Kyle being a prime example of this, as the two squabble a lot and appear to have a rivalry of sorts.

Flava also has a tendency to be pretty bad at reading the room, not understanding the context of the situation at hand.

Alter Egos

Kid Dragon

Our kickass “Warrior of the Skies”, Kid Dragon! (Also called KD by his friends)

He’s a brutalist class fighter who uses close proximity attacks with his fists and teeth, in his Ultimate Attack “Dragon Lord Flame Fist” KD is possessed with the full power of The Lord of Dragons and is able to completely K.O one enemy at the cost of losing a lot of health, surrounding enemies are slowed down for 2 turns.

KD is a loner, meaning he doesn’t belong to the Freedom Pals or Coon & Friends, in his words he “doesn’t want to deal with squabbling.” He does team up missions with Mosquito though.

Finnizaar of the 7 Forests

Finnizaar is a hulder/snow elf hybrid, a species of his own creation. Considered the last of his kind, Finnizaar wanders the woods as he awaits to find his true calling.

He’s a fighter that primarily uses animals to attack as he claims to communicate with them, one such being his trusty “heavenly snake familiar.” In one of his attacks Finnizaar reveals his back, a hole filled with gems (which is definitely not a shitty tattoo Niiko gave him that may or may not have been put there permanently…oops), the sight of such hypnotizes enemies and causes them to hurt themselves.

He seems rather fond of Princess Kenny for some reason..

Relationships

Now we’re getting to my favorite part of this post, the relationships!!!

As mentioned previously, Flava had no friends before his family moved to South Park as he’d been homeschooled for 3 grades before starting public at South Park Elementary in 3rd grade. He’s a very isolated kid in his first few months there as he doesn’t know anybody & also is trying to come off as more masculine as a boy so if he slips something up there’s a chance he might be made fun of.

He slowly but surely finds his friends, though he also ends up finding enemies there too.

Clyde

Flava’s first and probably closest friend, they met on the playground at school one day and kind of clicked from there. They build off each other due to their general awkwardness to others and inability to look cooler than they actually are. Clyde tends to gossip to Flava a lot and since he can’t keep quiet on things he kinda spills it to the people Clyde’s talking about, never really ends well for either of them.

Scott

Same reason as Clyde for why they became friends, they just kinda met each other and eventually hit things off. Scott often invites him for sleepovers, which Flava immediately accepts every time because he knows Scott has the best snacks at his house.

Red

These two weren’t actually friends originally, they met in Drama Club and were always partnered up as stagehands, Red was always mildly annoyed with Flava but she never said anything, much like Clyde she eventually came around to gossiping to Flava about girl drama & such. Flava would get closer since he liked her apparent edginesses and not a complete “girly girl.”

Kevin

It’s kind of obvious as to why these guys are friends. Kevin has infodumped all of Star Wars lore to Flava a lot, he doesn’t want him to watch the newer movies though. They also tend to argue about whether Pluto is a planet or not.

Kyle

This one’s a little complicated so here we go.

Flava shares the same classroom as Kyle as well as his other friends, and it seems like he and Kyle would be friends too, and they are…kind of.

Flava is actually extremely jealous of Kyle, as he represents all of the things Flava wants to be but feels he can’t: Smart, reliable, and cohesive, all things that Flava can’t 100% do because of things out of his control. It’s frustrating for him to see Kyle or even hear him out because it feels as though Kyle is just saying words and wonders if he means what he actually says. They argue a lot due to conflicting differences of opinions and Kyle’s tendency to think better of himself.

Despite this, Flava does respect Kyle in a lot of ways and will stand up for him, if just because he knows at the end of the day Kyle is right about a lot of things, even if those things do hurt.

Pip & Gregory (AKA the part I know some of you might be here for.)

Long ramble so here we go.

Pip (or Philly as Flava calls him) met Flava shortly after a pretty bad bullying incident, having been actually shoved in Flava’s locker of all places. Flava was very sympathetic to Pip and spent the rest of the school day talking to him, including eating lunch with him, he was one of the few kids to not actually mind Pip’s voice or his proper grammar. They’re besties now, about the same as Clyde, who begrudgingly accepts Pip as not to destroy the friendship he has with Flava, its a point of contention for the two.

Gregory is complicated, but in a much different way than Kyle is.

Flava cannot help but feel..weirdly enamored by Gregory? He’s got this charm to him that Flava hasn’t ever felt with anyone else before, not even his Mom. He feels really close to Gregory in a way he can’t describe except for just…love. The two are also best friends, though Gregory is completely unaware of Flava’s true feelings for him. Flava wants to do something to make Gregory notice him, but he hasn’t exactly figured out what to do yet.

Fun facts!!

Flava’s mother, Freya, is part Scandanavian since her grandparents grew up in Europe. She’s a pharmacist and works at a drug store part time, her main job is selling herbal remedies online, she makes bank doing so. She’s declined Randy’s offer to collaborate on selling weed infusion medicine multiple times.

It’s actually kind of rare to see Flava without his big fluffy hat on his head, he uses it primarily to hide his hair which he feels extremely self conscious about, he doesn’t want to cut it but he worries people will make fun of him for how long it is, the hat does a good job at hiding it.

Flava’s nickname doesn’t mean anything, its just a goofy word he thought fit his real name Finnegan pretty well. (It’s pronounced Flah-Vuh, not Flay-Vah if anyone was curious)

He’s a very tactile dude, he often stims with his hands and likes feeling soft & silky textures. Things like Gregory’s button up when he holds his arm help Flava focus.

They actually designed their costumes themselves!

He can memorize the entire script of his favorite movie ever: 2001 A Space Odyssey

His original full name was “Flava Lavalamp Fluff”

Flava was also originally shipped with Connor, a very minor character from the episode “South Park is Gay.” I have no idea why i got so attached to him 😭

Although some elements of Flava are based on me, he is NOT a self insert!

Hey!! If you made it this far, thanks so so so so soooooo much for reading this! I had a blast explaining this guy out & drawing him some new references, this is probably the most definitive description you’ll see of Flava so I doubt much will change for him in the future.

And i already said it but I’ll say it again: This guy literally changed my life for the better.

Doing everything that i’ve done with Flava thus far has taught me one thing: Cringe Culture, or being “Mary Sue” or having “overpowered” characters don’t really matter because at the end of the day, they are YOURS and yours alone. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks, its your world and you get to make your little guys and do whatever the hell you want with them

Basically, do what you want and don’t let anyone try to tell you what’s right or wrong with making an OC, you’ll feel much better when you just do what you want, regardless of what fandom you’re in.

[elecmon]

ODAIBA DAY SHITTY DOODLE DAY YEAR TWO!

ABOUT:

Shitty doodle hour is a event I often run, where each request gets a shitty/fun/ dumb 3-5 minute doodle done out of it. All requests are open for about an hour, closed soon after, and posted 3ish requests at a time.

here's a handful that I've done over the years! (have absolutely done more than these, just don't have the time to pull together more images)

BUT, for the fourth year in a row, I'll be working ON Odaiba day, so I won't get to post and do day of. SO, WE'RE DOING WHAT WE DID LAST YEAR!!

Requests WILL be open for 24 hours, (it is currently 12:00 PM PST on my end) This time tomorrow they will be CLOSED, so I can spend all day Sun/Mon drawing, and requests will be posted ON August first!!

RULES:

SEND YOUR REQUESTS TO MY INBOX AND MY INBOX ONLY, REQUESTS IN THE REPLIES/ REBLOGS WILL BE SKIPPED OVER THIS TIME you can send at max two requests

PLEASE NOTHING INAPPROPRIATE

Nothing overly complicated, the whole point of these is to spend 3-5 minutes MAX on each doodle, if its more complicated, the less I'll have time to spend on it/others.

OCs/Self inserts/Tamersonas/ Digifakes ARE ALLOWED, but please provide a reference IN THE ASK, if you do not I will be skipping your request!!!

Please don't get upset if some drawings have more details than others, it really depends on the request itself! I'm faster at drawing digimon I usually draw (like gomamon Imao) than I am at the ones I struggle with

(why do you guys always request dorumon😭, LIKE YOU STILL CAN, THIS ISNT A DISCOURAGEMENT BUT-)

DOES HAVE TO BE DIGIMON RELATED! (If you send me a character from another fandom I WILL give them a digimon to interact with LMAO)

Again! These wont be posted until TUESDAY AUGUST 1ST

[hyuckieslove]

nct ot23 as unhinged things my friends have said pt.2

author's note - this is me reappearing after my 65686848th hiatus so thank yall for dealing with me <33 plus credits to @inthekpopland for the header!

taeil: is it wrong to want to be asphyxiated in a sexual and morbid manner????

johnny: yee haw gay people

taeyong: i may or may not piss you off so you later choke me and to then tell you im into that and piss you off further but at that point i just watch you struggle, because thats what best friends do <3

yuta: the only reason i feel like shit is because i am the shit. and maybe the antidepressants.

doyoung: "DONT SEXUALIZE HIM" WTF HE WAS BORN FROM A PENIS DOODLE

kun: no, we are not going to tie soggy oreos to a stick and make xiaojun give us piggyback rides as he hopelessly chases the oreo.

ten: I AM CUPID BITCH I CAN AND WILL GET YOU MARRIED TO THAT HOT GAY DUDE BECAUSE HE IS DEFINITELY HOT AND GAY AND YOU ARE HOT AND GAY AND 2 + 2 IS 1 ARE YOU QUESTIONING MY MATCHMAKING CAPABILITIES???

jaehyun: *unironically* C'mere you omega tiny UwU baby gorl, u lokkin submissive and breedable, scrumpdidallyumptious, delectable, moist, baby UwU Werwolf

winwin: scare the children janice

jungwoo: guys i learned a new english word!! e r e c t i l e d y s f u n c t i o n. johnny said it's a type of dinosaur!

mark: what happens when an asexual gets a boner? do they just start crying?? i need answers people.

xiaojun: *asked a question but doyoung and ten started arguing* the lesbian council is conferring

lucas: OLAF WAS STARING AT MY FUCKIN TITS AND I BLINDFOLEDE HIM AND HE TOOK IT OFF AND IT WAS 2 AM AND-

hendery: like once i had a stuffed animal from build a bear and neutered it at home and took out its hear and then put another stuffed animal inside it and pretended it was pregnant and made it have an emergency c section but the mom dies and then the father resented the child for killing his wife. on a totally unrelated not, my parents desperately needed to put safety controls on my i-pad.

renjun: *to yangyang* YOU SAID YOU WOULD SUCK OFF A TESLA (THE FUCKING CAR FOR FUCKS SAKES) AND "NOM NOM MY CAT" IN THE SPAN OF 20 MINUTES. MY MOTHER WAS RIGHT THERE YOU DENSE MORON

jeno: *banana was thrown at him in a questionable alley* this is the way i die :) but its ok because we are surrounded by feral (?) cat, cats nonetheless

haechan: *makes typo and is being flamed for it in the gc* english isnt my first language you fucking racists *is a native english speaker*

jaemin:*encounters slight inconvenience* its gay people month. go to jail. meanies.

yangyang: CAN WE TIE SOGGY OREOS TO A STICK AND MAKE XIAOJUN GIVE US PIGGY BACK RIDES AS HE HOPELESSY CHASES THE OREO

shotaro: yall why is chatgpt being so nice to me :( i am getting emotionally attached help me 😭

sungchan: im raviolonely :(

chenle: AND WHOS TO SAY IM NOT AN INSANELY SMART YET DUMB 5 YEAR OLD *seconds later* ha embezzlement haha

jisung: *in a card to old people* have a nice day! dont get lice

[aeori-o]

Happy New Year! 2/3 (Tumblr Why)

So apparently tumblr won't let me do a lot of images in one post and instead of reducing the amount of images I'll be using like a sane person I am making multiple posts. Cheers!

Part 1 || Part 3

Back to video games!

I love the steam recaps, both mine and looking at all my friends’ but I’ll just post mine here.

I don’t even remember playing Dishonored this year. I still have the weird desire to 100% it even though I only have the challenge-mode stuff left and of those I only have four left. I’m so freaking close. But I also haven’t touched the game in close to a year. Argh.

That spider-graph underestimates my ability to turn any game into a stealth game. I’m not sure what the game from this year was that’s counting as 3% I think Plate Up! was released last year and I’m doubting Destiny 2 counts even if it is an ongoing game so I assume that must be for the Touchstarved Demo. I do kind of wonder if I’ll ever have a high percentage for new releases just because it takes me forever to get to anything. Releases from the last 1-7 years was 11%, and releases from longer ago was 86% but that will be because I played a lot of short games from the 90’s and 00’s.

Just like my reading my gaming dropped off during the summer. It’s so hard to make time for things how do people do it. I find a physical hobby to do and it just consumes all of my time and energy and brain power.

There’s all the games. I didn’t count anything I spent a very small amount of time on in my personal count. Things like the HE activity packs or mini-games where I played for 5, maybe 10, minutes and stopped. Shockingly mini-games meant to entertain six year olds in the 90’s are not very compelling to a 30 year old in 2023 (though some were very graphically/artistically impressive which was more fascinating and engaging than the mini-games themselves). The actual point-and-click games all hold up surprisingly well. There’s some things that are a little aggravating like Freddi fish’s friend, Luther, makes just the worst jokes. I think so far I’ve been liking Pajama Sam and Putt-Putt the best. We’re done Spy Fox now and I think we still have a few Putt-Putt games left and one or two Freddi Fish games and Pajama Sam games.

I had the farm Buzzy game growing up (which is so strange seeing as I lived on a farm, why did my parents get me that) but not any others and the airport one is wild, genuinely very educational and it’s impressive how much stuff they crammed in there. We haven’t played any recently, though. Also all of Steam’s tags are liars, I did not first play these games in 2023, I first played all these HE games in like, 1998 or something, on an old machine I can still picture in my mind but have no way to look up. I don’t even remember what make it was.

(I asked my dad, because he used to take pictures of everything growing up, but shockingly he appears to have primarily taken photos of me and my sister doing things and not just pictures of random objects around the house. Strange. He did say it was probably a custom computer that had been built for his company so we even went through old company photos but, again, no photos of just people at their desks or their desk set-ups. Through this process I realized the computer I’m currently using is my third desktop, ever. Maybe that’s not that wild but for a device I use almost every day of my life it feels weird for it to “only” be the third one. In my lifetime there’s, so far, been 5 generations of playstations so I feel like I’m doing pretty good on the turnover rate for desktop computers. Here’s a doodle of what I think my first desktop computer looked like:

I can remember the overall shape of it but the details are foggy now. Its name was PC 11, though, because that’s what it was called at his workplace. The real kicker is I probably used to have a photo of it, but I lost all my old photos when my back-up drive gave out on me and I, foolishly, only had my photos on my back-up drive because my computer didn’t have room for them. I’m going to see if my sister, who is younger than me, somehow, magically, has any photos of this thing. Anyway back to video games.)

Donut County was an absolute delight. I think that’s the only other game on there I haven’t talked about at all and it was just a really good time. Cute story and very satisfying gameplay, I had a great time playing it.

We also revisited a series Steph and I played in or just after Highschool which was really fun to revisit with friends.

The Chzo series stands up surprisingly well. I don’t think I’d recommend them for a newcomer but for something I played forever ago (I don’t think I ever beat the series but I know I played the first two) I’m surprised at how well it held up and it was fun to re-experience with friends. There’s some very questionable plot elements and some unfortunate word choices which is why I won’t recommend them but it’s super impressive that one guy just… made these. It’s genuinely very cool and impressive.

Sony is apparently also doing a year in review or “wrap up” this year for the first time ever, I was kind of hoping it would include PS3 data somehow. It didn’t. So this is all I get:

I do really like the graphics they have on everything, too bad my poor PS4 was basically neglected so those graphics are wasted on my dismal play-stats.

They just look really nice. I do think it’s interesting that Sony’s approach to this outright feels a little more cynical and like it rolled out of the marketing department than other wrap-ups. They throw in a little “look at all these cool games you could be playing with playstation plus” and then of course…

Did you know?? You can buy a PS5?? Did you know?? Come buy one. :)

Anyway.

That’s about all I played this year, so I can move on.

To my other hobbies, of which I have about seventeen billion. As I mentioned last year: I was really into reshelling stuff until I ran out of stuff to reshell. So I did reshell one controller this year. One of my Switch procontrollers I wasn’t super happy with, so I changed it to look like the joycons I did for my step-brother and I’m much happier with it:

I also got a bunch of cute thumbgrips for all my modern Nintendo controllers. I’ve never liked add-on thumb grips much but for whatever reason I don’t find the current generation of Nintendo controllers to have comfortable analogue sticks so having cute pads is elevating my Nintendo experience both aesthetically and physically.

And then I realized people sell shells for Gameboys so decided to do the GBAs from my childhood (I don’t know how I wound up with two, and one was my sister’s):

The hinges were so hard to get back in right, different guides said to do different things and they were all wrong. Luckily I had six hinges to get there on so by the time I got to the one with the nicest screen I had it figured out but the Pikachu one has squishy unsatisfying hinges now (and the hinges are so hard to get back out I’m not going to bother fixing it). And some of the batteries were getting puffy so I replaced them (which was maybe silly since these aren’t going to be played often but oh well).

I really love the aesthetics of a clear-case on a GBA. There is just SO much crammed in there it really tickles my brain. Any motherboard looks pretty dense but these are particularly dense in a way that looks visually distinct than even something like the 3DS (picture further down) because there’s so little real estate for them to get everything in there. I know people really like clear cases in general (and I am also a fan) but it hits extra good on something like this where there is just so much to see.

I have continued repairing people’s Nintendo Switches from fans to joycon drift. I still like fixing things whenever I can (I just fixed a kettle a few days ago which I fully did not expect to be able to fix) and one of the major things that needed fixing this year was CurseBreaker, the computer I built at the end of 2020.

My poor computer. Toward the end of 2022 I wanted to try a liquid cooler (which they call an AIO) instead of the stock fan, there was literally no reason to do this except for the thrill of it (AMD’s stock coolers are very good, or at least mine was) and CPUs were on major sale at the time so I figured if I’m messing around I might as well update my CPU, too. About a month later my computer started crashing randomly. Completely randomly, and it wouldn’t fully crash it would kind of “hang” in a really strange way. I could sometimes open programs but task manager would boot but not operate properly, internet connectivity vanished, random programs would freeze, trying to shut down or restart the computer would just have it pinwheel on the shutdown screen forever. Usually I could save whatever I was working on before restarting and sometimes whatever I saved would corrupt. (It also refused to load the windows colour profile on boot, but it still won’t do that, so that is unrelated but I thought it was something at the time.)

I eventually got to the point where I could usually make it crash by watching twitch (specifically twitch did it) while using photoshop. But it wouldn’t trigger right away, and sometimes it wouldn’t trigger at all, but it did it much more often with the twitch and photoshop combo than with anything else. I started writing every time it messed up on a notepad and everything I tried to do to troubleshoot. I was in Reliability History every day (a feature of Windows I did not previously know existed), I was in Event Viewer (a very stressful place to go looking in, Windows can and will consider everything an ‘error’: it considers firefox being my default browser an error and I am not kidding). My computer could Not tell me what the heck was up. The crashing started earlier but by the time I realized it was an ongoing problem and not a few weird crashes it was mid-January so I used Reliability History to see the previous two weeks and started writing my notes, I made a timeline, I even tracked the time between crashes in case it was some bizarre clock thing or ticking time bomb (it wasn’t).

My headphone ear pads broke during this and I had to sew them back together because my headphones are weird and suck and don’t have replacements available to buy. Obviously that wasn’t directly related to my computer’s problems but it didn’t help me feel any less cursed since I use those headphones exclusively with my computer. I also expanded my storage during this time which maybe wasn’t the best idea but someone wanted me to try Destiny 2 and I didn’t have space to spare (the storage installed fine, but almost immediately after I had a bunch of crashes/hangs). And then one of my computer case’s USB ports broke???

How??? How!! I am SO careful. I do not understand how or why this happened and I have been around computers my entire life—this is the only time I have EVER seen a USB port break like this. None of the computers in my highschool had broken USB ports! And people jammed USBs in and out of those! This USB port is still broken, I just have a dust plug in it but I might put a sticker over it. It’s technically usable if you bend that pin back out but it gets crammed back in very easily.

Finally, after four months of this, after partially re-installing Windows, and then fully re-installing Windows, after downloading and updating every driver I could find, after trying to unplug various devices to see if a USB device was causing issues, after fighting with Task Scheduler to get the Windows Color System to work, after uninstalling and reinstalling everything I could or straight up uninstalling things I didn’t need that Windows quietly downloads when you’re not looking (Skype just will not leave my machine Windows keeps dragging it back)… I decided to update the BIOS/UEFI on my machine. My CPU was supposed to be compatible with the BIOS version my motherboard was running but I guess it wasn’t actually.

The thing with updating your BIOS is that if your computer has been running for a while it’s generally recommended you don’t update it. Every page you go to, even the page with the motherboard update versions, will tell you to turn back, to not frivolously update your motherboard, you should only update it if you absolutely have to!

They are not clear on what “absolutely having to” means, though. I was having major computer issues, my CPU was supposed to be compatible, but that was the only other thing I could think of that would be causing the issue. I had tried everything else because all the BIOS stuff warns you away from it and there is no list of “if your computer is doing this it might be the motherboard” or at least I couldn’t find one that isn’t vague. So.

On April 24th I updated my BIOS. It was really easy. I have not had a problem since. There is probably a lesson to be learned here about doing the hard, risky-seeming thing earlier in the process—except that they really warn you off of updating the BIOS. I had four months of very stressful and insanity-making troubleshooting, five-and-a-bit months of a computer that would just randomly give up. It sucked. And all because my motherboard company lied, my CPU was definitely not as compatible as they said it was. Despite how much this process sucked I am very pleased that I fixed it. CurseBreaker got CurseBroken. I still put a sticker on her that says she’s cursed, though.

Anyway.

I also learned how to bind books this year! I haven’t done the big-book bindings where you need to sew pages together (and I would like to learn how to do that and how to make hard covers) but I’ve done this simple kind and I really like it. I have ideas for other things I’d like to make into little personal books. I guess I’ll see where it takes me but I made the little yellow book there as a companion piece to a book my sister had me read and it looked so official that when she opened the present she didn’t understand what she was looking at. Graphic design is my passion. Surprisingly easy to do and very fun! I need a better paper slicer, though. I borrowed one for this and it did more ripping than cutting. Most of the hobbies I take on are very satisfying in a tangible way but this is extra satisfying and I’d like to do more of it.

Through the power of friendship I made two booknooks this year (Vin and Steph helped me). The one on the right was more like a puzzle or ikea furniture where it was all clearly labelled and told you where to put what and when. It took the better part of an afternoon but got done in one day. The one on the left was more like building a diorama with little to no real instruction, just a lot of material.

It took several days to assemble and required busting out the hot glue gun. Somehow the makers of this kit expected you to be able to glue plastic pieces and mirrors with white glue. (It definitely worked better than expected on some things but was a mess and meant having to sit there holding pieces together while they cured because if you let go it’d fall apart. The hot glue was necessary to not go insane.) It even makes you put together the wiring yourself, and then has the audacity to not make it clear anywhere what kind of batteries it takes. Overall super happy with how this one came together, I think it looks super cute, but I was not prepared for how hard it would be after the first one.

But now I have two cute little booknooks! I’ve wanted one for years and now I have two and because we built them I also have good memories directly associated with them.

I also finally have a paper koi lantern! I’ve been following the artist, yuumei, since I was a kid—like I followed her when I still used deviantart which was forever ago. I signed up for the mailing list for these who-knows-when and at some point I assumed this project would never reach completion despite how cool it is. People get busy, it is how it is. But then she launched a kickstarter! I backed! And then a kit showed up in the mail!

There’s a really great tutorial video to go with it for assembly. It was really hard at first but once you kind of figure it out it gets a lot easier. The paper is the most gorgeous paper I’ve seen in my life and she looks beautiful when she’s all lit up.

This one feels so weird to finally have. I think I was following the project for at least a decade so it feels surreal for it to be a real thing now. This thing I wanted as a kid/teen that didn’t exist and now does and I still wanted it. It’s also really nice to see that this fully came together for the artist, as well. If you’re interested she has pricing and product photos on her website here (click): Yuumei Art: Koi Lanterns.

And Tumblr is cross with me with the amount of images I want to put in these so I will be making part 3 presently. I'll set up links when I'm done.

<< Previous || Next >>

[icedmetaltea]

When I was in elementary school my teacher said that I wouldn’t make it to high school let alone graduate and that I would most likely end up homeless under a bridge somewhere.

I was told that art would get me nowhere in life cause I don’t live in an area that likes art.

I’ve seen my art get ripped to shreds by another person when I was a little kid.

It was a purple dinosaur I was proud of 🌲 🦕 🌲

Last time I tried writing a story in a form that could be made into a comic or tv show I was told that’s not how you write a book so the story stopped and was never completed nor edited and sits in a binder most likely to never be seen by anyone again.

I’m scared of creating things I like and showing them off now. Nothing is ever perfect enough.

It’s still tough to show my hobbies at times but it’s not as bad since I’ve been working on it.

That's absolutely horrible anon, I'm so, so sorry :(( Nobody, let alone a kid deserves that.

People that bring you down usually only know that as the only way to bring themselves up. It's wrong ofc, but that's how I rationalize such cruel behavior.

The best way to get back at them? Love yourself. Love what you create, regardless of how "good" or "bad" it is. Create and don't stop (I mean ofc take breaks as long as you need, just like, don't fully give up)

Learn to love the shitty doodles you make in like 5 minutes, learn to enjoy the awkward angles and see beauty in the disappointing color palettes, keep creating and you WILL improve. That's not the goal tho, not to be "good" but to grow in your own way. Create things you want to see, even if it looks nothing like it does in your head. Bring something into the world that otherwise never would've existed.

Make stupid writing rough drafts and keep them regardless of how many misspells there are. Take as much time as you need, but come back to them someday. Every piece of writing is filled with little ideas and inspirations you can weave into something beautiful in its own way.

When you feel overwhelmed and disappointed and talentless, remember everyone on earth, no matter how "skilled" or "good" has felt the exact same way. Art or writing pieces you see are the result of people who also feel talentless and terrible at what they do, or at least have in the past. I know I sure have, and often do, but I continually work through it and am getting better at recognizing when my perception is just blurred via my depression or negative view of myself over all.

Self-criticism can be an amazing teacher, but often too much of it is marred by the shitty insults other people have told us through the years or by our society's constantly reinforcement that perfectionism is the goal to any craft... no. Creation is inherently beautiful. Actual "beauty" is entirely optional. It is enough just to create and enjoy what you make.

SORrrryyy long rant aside, pls don't give up. Take as much time as you need, take long walks outside, watch movies/shows/read books you enjoy, talk to loved ones, look at the stuff other ppl make and don't compare it to your own works and the inspiration will come again. It will grip you and move your hand. One day you will be proud of that purple dinosaur again.

[id0ntkn0w0101]

How to Plan a Book for Spontaneous Overthinkers - Planning/Writing Tools

Heads-up: This post is a long boi. So I'll start by saying that I am not a published author. However, I have been writing for as long as I can remember and in the past 5 years or so have started taking it much more seriously. After 3 failed Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month Challenge) attempts and countless others on my own time, I think I have figured out the best way for me to plan my stories in a way that gives me a set plan without causing me to overthink about planning so writing isn't boring. This first post is literally just on tools I like to use.

Planning Tools

Seeing as how writing is a creative art, a lot of it is left to opinion. So here are my tastes, opinions, and suggestions for writing tools.

Find a Writing Tool You Enjoy: For me this has historically been a typewriter, a fountain pen and a nice sturdy hardcover notebook, or a dip glass pen and ink with a faux weathered journal I got on amazon. For some you may just prefer typing it out on a computer or using a ballpoint pen and a notebook.

If you like typing stuff out on a computer... Google Docs and LibreOffice are my go-tos if you just want a standard writing experience. Google Docs is one you most likely know and lets you store everything in the cloud, but I've noticed it makes my computer run a little slowly and I've had saving issues on multiple occasions since it doesn't have a manual save feature. LibreOffice, on the other hand, is an open-source dupe for Microsoft Office that is completely free, has more features than Google Docs, and lets you manually save. Plus, you'll never have any issues with your Wi-Fi going out and not being able to access your files. If you like being able to do a mix of typing and handwriting, I recommend using OneNote. Despite it being a Microsoft app, it's free and cross-compatible with mobile devices and computers (you do have to manually sync your notebooks sometimes). However, if you use an art tablet with your computer or just a standard touch-screen tablet and a stylus, you can sketch, handwrite, and type all in the same document easily. I use OneNote for most of my planning.

If you like unique or old-fashioned writing tools... Glass or metal dip pens are a fun choice. You do have to do some personal research though based on how you want to write though. For example, I bought a glass dip pen because it had a little bit of a scratchier vibe that I enjoyed and was also better suited for writing in cursive and drawing little doodles when my brain needed a writing break. I got mine on amazon and the brand is called "Freedom of the Starry Sky" It came with a beautiful ink, a carrying case, and a little glass stand to rest the pen on. I don't have any specific recommendations for metal dip pens however. If you want an ink recommendation, however, I use and love the Windsor & Newton Black India Ink, which I got on amazon for about $7. It's great, and its water based so all you have to do to clean the residue off your pen is let it sit in some warm water for a minute and wipe it off.

If you want a typewriter... I am very autistic and typewriters are a special interest of mine so I'll try to keep this brief (spoiler alert, I failed). This isn't the cheapest option by a long shot but I love my typewriter with all my heart so I figured it should be included. Here's my tips: look on Ebay, Mercari, and Facebook Marketplace and try to find one in your budget that is at least mostly functional (my old girl is from the 40s and ribbon doesn't advance but I love her anyway). If you're going to be working at a desk, get a desktop model, but if you're like me and have no clue where you want to type, find one that is portable WITH CASE INCLUDED. Trust me you do not want to be looking for a typewriter case for a vintage typewriter online. Next, determine if you want/need a quieter model. Typewriters will never be silent, but some are made to muffle more noise than others. There is a YouTube channel called Jot and Tittle and they make demos of vintage typewriters where you can hear how loud they are and see how they are to work with. So if you find a specific model you're considering buying, make sure to check there to see if the keys are the right amount of clicky and the write amount of clacky for your needs. You'll also need to find ink ribbon, which you can easily find on ebay. If you have any questions or need to do/have a repair done, I recommend r/typewriters on reddit or finding a typewriter repair shop or other forum online.

Other Things I Recommend:

Random Generators: Whether it be for writing prompts, opening lines, names of any kind you can possibly think of, settings and locations, or really anything, I promise there is a random generator for you. For all things names (locations or people), I use Fantasy Name Generators, but anything you can think of has a generator online if you look.

Baby Name Websites: Sometimes you want a unique but realistic character name and you want to include the meaning or have the meaning of the name be an integral part of the story. If that's you, go to baby name websites. Most of them let you search by meaning or even pick a name you like (for example, a character whose name you like) and find similar names easily.

AI Story Generators: For the love of all that is holy, unholy, or right in the middle, do not publish or post anything written by AI and call it your own. However, if you can't decide how to write a scene or if you need a way to start the next chapter, or anything like that, use an AI generator and EDIT it afterwards. Most of these programs are subscription based or have a free trial or have a limited amount of generations per month, just so you know.

So that's all I have to say on this specific topic, but as soon as I finish this post I will be working on writing the next post on genres and genre expectations using the genres of my own current novel I'm planning as examples, so be sure to check that out if interested. Have a great day and please comment if you have any questions or if you're not going to be an ass. Thanks!

[stevestonbike]

Bit by Bit.

The whole idea of keeping track of numbers is to tell you if a thing is working. I have many years of numbers. Hell the only reason to buy all these GPS and power doodles is to give you numbers. Gotta do something with them.

On the weekend I did a 54km ride and last night did another HIIT session. I have passed last years February and may yet get more in. There is snow forecast for later this week so that does limit it.

My HIIT session last night and the one from 5 days before were exactly the same time to the second. 38 minutes and 2 seconds both times. My average power on those were 176 and 179 Watts respectively call it dead even within the precision of the devices or if you prefer a tiny bit more power. BUT my average heart rate was down by 6%. That is what its about. A bit more power a bit less heart rate. The old pump is working more efficiently.

I felt a bit better during the session. So the numbers back up the feeling. I have also had numbers show I am getting better when I feel bad about a session or a ride. I have the advantage as when I talk about being in a hole it aint that deep compared to other people. I am one fit ole bugger. Hell my dentist who plays soccer for fun just had heart surgery and I have what 20 ish years on him. He should buy a bicycle.

I have new bike shoes. My old ones had a latch break. The new ones are the same North Wave brand, but have those BOA closures which are pretty trick. These fit snug and are stupid light. I got a very small blister on top of my foot on one side. It is healing and I am fiddling the edge of the shoe that caused it.

So more of the same. March is approaching.

[eeveearoace]

copy-pasting @eeveearoace-creative's year in review so it doesn't clutter it up XD (not that i've posted on that blog in a while but. still lol)

[pretend the year in review gif is here]

I posted 51 times in 2022

42 posts created (82%)

9 posts reblogged (18%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@marcylore

@gayfrogcoven

@bardicspiration

@obvslybatgrl

@kaseyskat

I tagged 51 of my posts in 2022

#my writing - 43 posts

#writing - 43 posts

#amphibia - 41 posts

#my fanfic - 41 posts

#fanfic - 41 posts

#amphibia fanfic - 34 posts

#sashannarcy - 13 posts

#amphibia spoilers - 12 posts

#inspired by other work(s) - 11 posts

#sashannarcy week - 10 posts

Longest Tag: 93 characters

#it isn't the best thing i've written. and it took me a while considering it's length/ quality

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

sleepy-time marshmallow

girlfriend has a terrible sleep schedule? just send in a puppy!

some (very short) domestic sashannarcy fluff <3

summoning the eevee simps: @arcadiii, @goodartitude, @karamelys, @peachpaws0

[if you want to be added/ removed from the tag list, just let me know!!]

also pspspspsps @hey-its-puddlesock c'mere puddles its the boi :-3

it was late. 

not that sasha was unaccustomed to late nights, often filling out paperwork long into the night – but it was the weekend, and she was tired, and she just wanted to go to sleep. 

sasha checked the time on her phone. 

2:47 am. 

sasha groaned. 

of course. 

anne was only half-awake beside her. domino four purred softly, tangled within anne’s curls – sasha couldn’t remember a day since they had gotten the tuxedo cat that she hadn’t slept like that, attached to anne’s hair. 

at sasha’s feet, two dogs were pressed together – toast, a golden retriever with long, shaggy fur, and his sister, cinnamon sugar – aka cinna – a golden doodle with pale, curly, white-gold fur. 

the only thing missing from sasha��s nearly perfect setup was the one thing keeping her awake – marcy. 

that girl has the worst sleep schedule i’ve ever seen. 

“alright, toast,” sasha announced, her voice groggy from exhaustion, “sleepy-time marshmallow.” 

toast sat up immediately, disturbing his sister, who raised her head for just a moment before sleepily lowering it back onto the bed, apparently deciding she’d rather just go back to sleep. 

toast, however, jumped off the bed with all the energy in the world, his tail wagging wildly as he thundered out of the room and down the halls. 

a surprised squeak alerted sasha that her trick had worked. 

despite her exhaustion, sasha grinned. in another room, which marcy had dubbed her main workspace, toast was pressing against marcy, gently squishing her until she stopped struggling, turned off her computer, and followed him to bed. 

“greetings, princess,” sasha teased as marcy stepped into the bedroom. “finally decided to join us?” 

“you need to stop doing that,” marcy protested, yawning and rubbing her bleary eyes. “i was just about to finish my panel.” 

“sure,” sasha deadpanned. “and you totally would’ve stopped after that, right?” 

marcy didn’t respond. 

“you can finish it in the morning,” sasha continued. “but it’s late. c’mon.” she held out her arms, staring at marcy expectantly. 

“sleep,” anne groaned, eyes still closed as she patted the space between her and sasha. 

“fine,” marcy sighed, settling into the space between them. within seconds, sasha and anne were curled up against her – and within minutes, marcy was softly snoring. 

she must’ve been even more tired than i’d thought. sasha smiled as she buried her nose in her girlfriend’s shoulder. she needs to stop working so late. 

that was an issue they could work on in the morning. for now, sasha was just happy to be with her girls. 

50 notes - Posted June 19, 2022

#4

4:30am sashannarcy angst, why not XD

cws: brainwashing, possession, kissing, violence, puking

Marcy released a sleepy murmur as she finally opened her eyes. 

“Hey, love, sleep well?” Anne whispered quietly, brushing a lock of hair behind Marcy’s ear. 

“Mm, yeah,” Marcy hummed, snuggling closer to Anne. “But you’re so warm – I don’t wanna get up.” 

“Then don’t,” Sasha laughed softly, burying her nose in Marcy’s hair. “Just stay here.” 

“I have to get up eventually,” Marcy pointed out, despite not making any attempt to move. “I can’t just lay around here all day.” 

“Why not?” Anne’s lips brushed against Marcy’s cheek. “Just stay with us.” 

Heaviness weighed on Marcy’s eyelids, forcing her eyes to flutter shut. Sleepiness threatened to take hold of her as she yawned, and a wave of security and comfort washed over her. Fingers slowly combed through her hair, peacefully lulling Marcy back to tantalizing sleep. 

Unconsciousness had all but claimed her when Marcy forced her eyes to open again, tiredly pushing herself into a sitting position. Sasha and Anne frowned, confusion crossing their faces. 

“Where are you going, Mar-Mar?” Sasha asked, reaching for Marcy’s wrist. “Come back here.” 

Marcy paused. 

“Just stay here,” Anne breathed, pressing against Marcy’s shoulder. “Forever and ever.” 

Forever and ever. 

Wait, why did that sound- 

Sasha ripped her hands free, her eyes burning with disgust and fury. Anne backed away, pain and sorrow sparkling in her eyes. 

Marcy stumbled. 

She couldn’t fix this, but maybe she could at least keep everybody safe. 

Her hope died the moment a burning sensation ripped through her chest. 

With the last of her strength, she forced out an apology that could never be enough. 

Marcy couldn’t breathe. 

“Dear, are you okay?” Sasha worried, tugging Marcy towards her. “Talk to me.” 

The chair. The helmet. Screaming. 

“Darling, say something,” Anne begged, kissing Marcy’s forehead. 

“You’re not – you’re not real,” Marcy managed, backing away from her friends – well, not her friends, both because they surely hated her now, and because that wasn’t really them. 

“Marshmallow?” Fake-Anne’s lips pressed against Marcy’s. Marcy hated the part of her racing mind that desperately wanted to indulge in the fantasy. “What do you mean?” 

“You – you’re-” 

“You’re not feeling well, are you?” Fake-Sasha sighed, holding Marcy’s hands – she couldn’t yank them free. “That’s okay. We’ll just keep rewriting this moment until you’re happy.” 

“What do you mean-” 

Marcy broke off as unbearable agony surged through her body, orange electricity burning her skin. 

See the full post

52 notes - Posted July 14, 2022

#3

@marcylore haha i made marcy not okay again </3

cw: ableism, "former gifted kid" stuff

You don’t understand how people make friends. 

Not that you don’t have friends – in fact, you have the two most amazing friends in the whole universe – but you still don’t understand how. 

They’re your friends, but why? What bonds you? By all accounts, it doesn’t make sense – you’re all so different, and don’t people make friends over similar interests? 

That’s what you’ve been told when you ask how people make friends, anyway. And, of course, to “put yourself out there” – but out where, exactly? (They meant you have to talk to people. But what if you annoy them, or they don’t like you? What if you say or do something wrong?) 

You have the best two friends in all the universe, but you don’t really have any other friends. Maybe that doesn’t matter, as long as you’re all together – but what about when you’re not? The two of them seem to make friends like it’s the easiest thing in the world, and you just don’t understand how they do it. 

When it comes to making friends, it’s like everyone is playing one big game – everyone knows the rules, except for you, and you never got given a rulebook. 

Maybe everyone else is just better at people than you are. 

You think you could be okay at that. Not everyone is good at everything, right? And you’re smart – that could be your strength. 

You know you shouldn’t brag, but you also know you’re smart. The work your teachers give you is always so easy, and you just understand it. School makes sense, and the compliments your parents give you reinforce that your smarts are your strength. 

Your brain is where you find your worth. 

You don’t understand why your friends complain about school or why they say it’s “hard”. School is easy – it’s people that are difficult! Don’t they understand that? 

It takes you longer than it probably should have for you to realize that school is harder for them than making friends. 

But that’s okay, as long as you prove your worth through academic achievement. 





You remember the first time you got a bad grade. 

You were upset – this wasn’t supposed to happen. This was your strength! If you weren’t good at this, what good were you? 

Your parents were disappointed. 

Or, at least, you think they are – you still don’t understand people, despite all your efforts. (Can you really call it “effort” when you kinda stopped trying so that you could focus on the things you were actually good at?) 

But you can fix this – you know you can. You’re told over and over that you have so much potential, and that you just need to “apply yourself” – you just need to try harder, and you’ll prove your worth again. 





You’re slipping. 

You’re not trying enough – or, at least, you assume that must be what’s going on, because you’re smart, full of potential, and just need to apply yourself – so, if you’re getting bad grades, you just need to try harder. 

If you fail now, then all those nice things people said about you – that you’re so smart – would mean nothing. If you’re not the “smart kid”, then who are you? No, you have to try harder. You have so much potential, after all. 

You don’t understand why this line of thinking makes you panic. You don’t understand why you’re suddenly short of breath, or why you feel like you’re about to start crying – if you can do amazing things, isn’t it your responsibility to do them? 

People are counting on you, after all. 



See the full post

63 notes - Posted June 28, 2022

#2

i'm not gonna tag anyone since this isn't what i usually post, but... :3

have you ever tricked your art teacher into letting you do fanart for an assignment? well, i for one did :)

this probably took me a cumulative forty hours or so, and i'm honestly really proud of how it turned out <3

98 notes - Posted March 1, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

I am beyond thrilled to finally reveal a painting I’ve been working on for a month or two at this point - I’m honestly so proud of how it came out, and I hope y’all like it, too! <3



cw: eyes, bright colors, hand, binary code, moths, trypophobia





“METAMORPHOSIS”



See the full post

114 notes - Posted April 20, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[gaoootic]

Today marks one year of when I started learning jp sorta just because. Well I think it was on the 8th but the 365 days are up so whatever!!!

This isn't actually a jp learning blog but I guess I'll frame the post for someone who's tryna get into it for ease of writing. (no silly mspaint doodles this time around for lack of time sadly)

Things I learned: ☼ shit like basic grammar, apparently I'm up in the N3 trenches fighting for my life right now, but I still feel like I don't have a good enough solid foundation. This will likely fill itself out in time with actual use. ☼ Roughly between 2500-3000 words (though I'd say most are barely at 'seen' level rather than learned) ☼ Around 600 isolated kanji (though again mostly just recognition, in reality I'm basing most of my so-called knowledge on whether I could stare at it for 5 minutes and go "OH ITS THAT... FUCKIN THING, MAYBE" off the top of my head) ☼ I am way more stubborn than I thought I was and I already thought it was plenty. ☼ You don't actually have to be organized and keep everything nice and pretty to be studying, if you get it done you get it done and that's that. ☼ YOU CAN DO FUN STUFF WITH YOUR IME LOOK AT THIS ※↓↗☞☆彡 it's so good they made a bunch of unique little unicode characters or whatever they are and decided to gate them all behind esoteric weeb knowledge ｙｏｕ　ｃａｎ　ｅｖｅｎ　ｔｙｐｅ　ｗｉｄｅ

Things I liked: ☼これはペンです ☼ I've been reading nichijou with a lot of lookups and all, and though I do feel confused most of the time still sometimes I look at stuff and just straight up understand it which often warrants the good old 'huh cool.' reaction. ☼ Calling it a routine may be a bit much but checking "doing the jp stuff" off my mental to-do list for the day feels nice ☼ Watching number go up in terms of stats is fun ☼ A bunch of nerds made so many tools and books and videos and more to learn this thing I'm like a thief scurrying about taking all their knowledge they just left out by the window to cool down what fools. ☼ Seriously, even when I'm making the most sluggish of advances through hordes and hordes of sentences and textboxes, playing a game in its original language or reading a volume of manga is really cool. At the moment of doing it I don't really think about how strange it is to be able to do so, but reading something while abiding by rules you don't fully grasp and still coming out with an adequate understanding of what was going on is oddly entertaining. ☼ I managed to get through a full playthrough of Tokimeki memorial 1 which, although I believe it has an english fan translation, is a JP only game with relatively simple writing. I recommend it if you don't vomit at the sight of dating sims if only as a way to test whether you understand like 80% of stuff and get some new vocab in. Careful with the text scrolling speed tho ☼ It is nice to have something to be a little ambitious about ☼ anki and kanji

Things I didn't like: ☼ Grammar. hell. ☼ Typing ん still, fucker ☼ By the gods if you ever decide to take this chungus ass hobby up consider VERY, VERY CAREFULLY if you want to interact with the surrounding community. Everywhere I look it's people meticulously calculating the single best possible way to study down to the microsecond. It is insane to me that people are playing ranked on this language and aiming for world record holy fuck. On the surface I understand the sentiment of wanting to be efficient and productive about it, but some seem to take it so far. You cannot learn a language in a month. Hell, not even in a year, probably not in two either. I think so, at least. ☼ Your yt recommended videos won't stop giving you jp learning related stuff which is a difficult hole to claw out of. Not actual jp stuff, jp adjacent content. I had to make a second account for actual jp stuff and change location to japan every time I use it otherwise I'm almost certain it would further mess everything up. This isn't necessarily the fault of the japanese language itself, but it has bothered me for so long. It's all like... beginner blackhole too. Which makes sense due to the nature of bigger number of people = bigger number of profit, but nevertheless it is rather irritating. ☼ The overabundance of tools there are for learning gets a bit overwhelming at first because you don't know wtf to pick and stick to and people will always debate "no this is good" "no this is bad" "dude you literally cannot learn grammar off of the back of a cereal box you are delusional" ☼ I forgot languages, specifically in casual speech, tend to just omit like half the rules because you're assumed to already know how it works. In jp alone you see things like particle omission, conjugation abbreviations, the usage of stuff like pronouns, etc etc. And like, sure it's fun once you actually GET what is going on but when you think about it it's a little funny how languages just make up a bunch of rules and then go "yea they take too long whatever lets skip these unless we need to look fancy" ☼ I also forgot words have very specific nuances that you can't easily grasp when you first get started ☼ anki and kanji again

Things I want to try to do in the future: ☼ First contact already was sort of a disaster (Word by word I believe I was told ビジネスっぽい in good nature but I couldn't help getting flashbacks at when I got told I sounded or used an archaic expression in english class and thus I got utterly obliterated instantly (not even ashes left behind)) but it'd be nice if In the future when I'm not as absolute dogwater at actual production I could find jp speakers to once in a blue moon write a message to for 8 hours and then have them go ???何これｗ because I wrote it in ultra keigo (DO NOT USE THE KANJI FOR YOROSHIKU DO NOT DO IT) with broken grammar. If I pluck up enough courage for it, that is. Or enough stupidity, either works. May whatever deity help whoever I end up crossing. ☼ I'd like to venture more into watching actual youtube videos in japanese. However, for that, I sorta need to think pretty deliberately on what type of video I want to watch. Not only because I'm sure it'll range widely from level to level in just about any topic, but also because thinking about what to watch is a bit of a hassle. More rewarding, though. ☼ I'll keep reading manga first because it's what I'm more comfortable with, but I'd also like to get started on listening comprehension because man do I absolutely suck ass at that. ☼ Reach the level of a 2-year-old kid's proficiency ☼ 上手になりますよ‼️‼️MAYBE ペラペラ that one's still up in the air

Some advice if someone stumbles upon this post: ☼ Take stuff one day at a time. And I seriously do mean this. Do not focus on your goals or objectives and get discouraged unless you feel like you really have to, I found just going "HELL YEAH +5 WORDS TODAY" to be more rewarding (even when I wasn't feeling all that accomplished) compared to busting my own balls over whether I fully grasped each and every delicate grammar point in a sentence. Believe me it doesn't feel like it at all when you're in the middle of it but the thing about learning a language is that every little footprint you make ends up mattering more than you'd initially think. ☼ Not everything will have furigana, hell I doubt most things will, so get some sort of OCR thing to take screenshots for kanji lookups on yomitan or whatever, you will go absolutely batshit insane if you use jisho.org's radical lookup tool or try to draw them by hand. HOW are you meant to use that if you do not even know stroke order, the recognition in those things is godawful. ☼ Anki word reviews hit 100 times harder than new words, if you're studying other stuff at the same time seriously be mindful of your limit and lower how much you do in a day or you will go mad ☼ Streaks ARE helpful but ultimately don't let them define your behaviour ☼ If people tell you this is easy they are either lying to you because they want your money for some course they're selling or they aren't expressing themselves very well. Learning jp is "easy" in the sense that the activities you do to attain that goal aren't exactly overly strenuous, but it is a time sink and a braincell sink also. or idk they're doing that thing where they go "HMPH.... WHAT A PEASANT......... HOW DAREST THEE NOT BE COGNISANT IN THE WAYS OF THE BLADE.... FOR ME IT WAS QUITE SHRIMPLE, REALLY. 🦐" just to flex that some people enjoy doing. I think it's entertaining personally maybe a little endearing ☼ Whenever possible be more pragmatic than idealistic or rigid as regards usage. Sounding like a textbook is fine its what you learnt probably, doing the wrong pitch accent I'm sure is whatever in 99% of cases, stringing together an entire sentence with only words and 0 grammar linking them is probably worth doing provided you can be understood. If it works it works. ☼ Golden rule is halfass it then go back sometime later once you're more advanced and fullass it. As long as you sorta understand and get the gist of it, move on and keep going. Otherwise, you will get stuck. For the longest time I struggled to remember stuff like い adj and な adj "conjugations" but you do this thing where you're forced to revisit concepts anyways later on so you can just do lookups then. ☼ Actual golden rule is just do whatever works best for you ☼ but don't use chatgpt lmao

And now for some stats.

no clue what any of this shit means.

whoaaa look at this cool graphics I hit 40k reviews whoaa

Wonder how accurate some of these are because 9.53s per card does not sound right and considering the usage of other tools 106 hours is nowhere near right

shoutout to those 1 am reviews I did once Random thoughts and other tidbits ☼ N5 AND EVEN N4 TO AN EXTENT CONTENT IS SO BORING!!! I swear if I have to read about that one chihuahua again bro oh my god. Most of the time you'll end up reading something that's a bit too hard for you because it uses grammar found deep within the mariana trench cuz that's the only stuff I seemingly find fun. I've been rereading my alltime favorite manga again this time in jp and I swear even if it has furigana this shit is throwing hands. Still, I don't mind reading something a little more out of my level if it means not dying of boredom. Maybe I just didn't find anything particularly engaging and it was a skill issue on my part though. ☼ ヰ looks so cool why did they get rid of it canonizing it now Avvino's name in jp would be アッヸノ regardless of whether its some sort of aberration of the language whatever I get to play with it because you threw it away EXCEPT FOR THE WORD WHISKEY SOMETIMES LIKE- ☼ Ateji and rendaku will haunt my nightmares. Sometimes the language feels like a slot machine but its fine because gambling keeps me on my toes i guess ☼ I was such a little fool back then. What an innocent man. Thinking "wow why don't they just use their phonetic alphabets and spaces for writing?" You absolute cretin. I tried so hard to play the old pokemon games but I am too weak to face full hiragana writing. god. the sorrow. ☼ I wonder how long it'll take for someone to go "OMG WOW YOU'RE LEARNING JAPANESE??? SAY SOMETHING :O" but I guess for that to happen I kinda need to meet people first. I haven't even been told うおおお日本語上手ですね yet why do i even bother ☼ IMAGINE ALL THE REVENUE I COULD'VE GOTTEN IF I MADE MY OWN SHITTY CLICKBAIT SERIES.... GOD......... ☼ Physically restraining myself from using kenjougo internally in my brain every time I try to come up with a sentence even if it would be broken and not even remotely correct has proven difficult but i WILL sound like a normal human being. eventually. with some luck. I hope. please

☼ Talking to yourself like some sort of little creature in a terrarium works again! It is a wonderful method and it even makes you look absolutely insane. what's not to love? ☼ 2k6k deck is... wtf.... I mean its whatever ultimately since you just want a baseline of words to then be able to read most of what you actually want to end up reading but the more I do of it the more......... wtf......... guess it goes with me being a salaryman (100% factual btw) ☼ I wonder if there are actual learners who do handwriting like... legit. Like they learn the stroke order and practice each and every single kanji they come across. I would die. I can't even write kana as evident from the mirrored の half a year ago on that post I did from memory. ☼ JP is a really fun language to play around with actually. Like yea sure you WILL have people staring at you with dread because of your creations but so what? a little horror has never hurt anyone ☼ Why do people even like duolingo I cannot use that thing for shit I find it so annoying ☼ the amount of little quirks japanese has is so vast there must be like an iceberg for this. Things like は sounding like わ as a particle at the top and then stuff such as forbidden kanji version of words a little below. Best way to jumpscare me would be with a random 此処 encounter, look at that beastie. ferocious Im sure of it ☼ everywhere i look people treat jp and jp stuff so weirdly lol not me though Im different and one of the good ones and built different so its fine (true and real) ☼ oh I should check out if I can read Ib in jp I fucking love that game ☼ one time I used the word dust but not the word dust itself rather the word dust that meant garbage in japanese and then someone pointed it out because it was a silly self deprecating joke I think and I will never live that down I erased whatever it was I wrote and never showed my face around that discord server ever again in my life this is what exile felt like in the middle ages. I haven't even read what was said I bet it wasn't even that bad. ☼ typing in japanese in minecraft is such a pain in the ass for some reason ☼ One year isn't that much time even when you're crawling day after day ☼ I learned to play riichi mahjong btw not well but I guess I thought "sure I mean I guess might as well" not in like real life but online game rules and it's decently fun enough honestly, I thought it was way more complicated than it really was but it helps when you can see what number kanji shit is. why is 5 different though

Closing thoughts.

So, congratulations shitass. You made it to one year. I'll be generous and grant myself full credit this time. Even if time goes on regardless, it is no small task to accomplish to do this each and every day, however easy it may technically be. 上出来でしたぜ。

Final verdict was this a waste of my time? are my results up to this point disappointing? am I gonna give up anytime soon?

fuck if i know but for tomorrow i'll keep doing it, and then after that day I'll ask myself if I wanna continue again, and so on. It's just a hobby at the end of the day, it is what you make of it.

[spacerockband]

here’s something fun, the inktober i started today (and that goes with the theme i am following) did not get finished. why, you may ask? consider: i got sidetracked. To put it simply, I have recently dyed my hair silver, and my purple shampoo, was not.. purple.. Toner.. shampoo.. this has been an update on my life

[dragonshoard]

Shdhf here’s most of the other drawins! M gonna be workin on sm digital ones tmrw probably but these are the traditional ones i did in my free times :>

(Btw these were all done yesterday morning/afternoon, so more visible/harsh scarring than i’d now draw with the new info u gave me)

Honestly, since u havent posted a ref/in depth description i jus went with whatever i thought might be likely(shoeless because grew out of them+couldnt get any in the pits, tho im guessing she likely has shoes in the au shfg- also scarring on the chin cause i thought ‘damn what if she smacked her face into the floor while trying to get away’) tho obv i’d draw it differently with any new info. The ‘Jinx’ carving into the collar was also jus me being like ‘damn dont they smtms do that to dogs in fighting rings?? Thatd be fucked up lol’ so like,, feel free to ignore it shdhf

Anyway! Away from the doodles! I am jus,, fuckin burstin with questions mate- ur au’s so cool!! U dont have to answer any of em tho dw sjdjf

So does vi show up well post!pits or do her n cait investigate the pits n see jinx? Im assuming its post based on ur comment of them takin a while to show up since things happen differently, but i felt like askin anyway :p

Does fighter!jinx still tinker/build stuff?? Ik u said she would never touch bombs n such(which, understandable. That sounds like jus askin to be triggered tbh)- but if/when she meets up with ekko does she maybe help with buildin them stuff? Makin/repairin hoverboards, makin guns- or maybe knives n such? Idk what skills u’re givin her dhdgdb

Oh, and with ur first post on this au, im assuming jinx escapes at 15? Can i ask how old she was when silco first gets her? Does she spend a lot of time after escaping just hiding out and ekko happens upon her by accident? Does she gain any injuries while escaping? Does she stay with the firelights when she meets them or does she only visit so as to not draw silco towards them too much? Does silco have specific people hunting jinx down(say, her handlers from the pits, or sevika?) or is it jus like,, everyone in his empire is on high alert for her n everyones to go after her if they see her?

And speaking of sevika- whats her opinion of all this? I mean, obv im guessing shes in favor of whatever silco wants, but do u think she ever felt guilt/regret over tossing vander n his kids to the wolves(literally, in powders case) or does she jus,, not care??

And a final thought(im so sorry i jus realized how many questions this is dhdhdhv)- with jinx’s seeming penchant/willingness to bite anyone n everyone(jus based off the mention of biting the animal-turned-shimmer!monster she fought + her desire to bite silcos hand) does she ever get muzzled?? Or nah??

kjnkdjfnkj i love the pics!! Nah any creative liberties you took are cool to see! I’m still having a hard time drawing Jinx so I was practicing before I could actually post any art refs. 

“Jinx” would be inscribed in the collar if Silco was a pure asshole, but as cruel as he seems in this AU, he doesn’t actually see her as a dog or a pet despite what everyone thinks. He wants her by his side eventually and sees everything that he’s done (towards the last year or two) as a means of “freeing” her. Oh and she does have shoes. They’re falling apart, but they exist xD Not the best idea to fight barefoot on metal. 

And I can totally see the logic behind the scarring. It doesn’t help that she is malnourished, especially in those first few years, so her healing wasn’t very efficient. But, surprisingly, her face is not as marked up as you think it would be after 5-6 years. It’s the rest of her body that’s got an impressive collection. 

(He visits her pretty often towards the end, talking to her and braiding her hair, and it sucks because Jinx naturally wants to not be alone, but also hates the bastard with everything in her. She’d have Stockholm syndrome in this au if it wasn’t for the voices)

Vi is gonna have a straight up heart attack the minute she’s close enough to see the scarring. It’s pretty extensive on her upper body, despite how most of it is pretty faint (barring a few bigger scars) and it’s enough to tell Vi that Jinx has had a rough couple of years. 

I’ll be honest, when I first posted about this AU I thought Powder was 10 in Act 1 and 16 in Act 2-3. Apparently she was 11-12 and 17-18, respectively, so that ruins things a bit xD 

So for sake of keeping it mostly canon, she is roughly 11 when she’s captured by Silco and 17 when she gets free. It won’t be Vi and/or Cait who comes to save her though (I’m actually writing her escape right now so I think I’ll keep quiet on the ‘how’. It’s gonna be appropriately tragic xD). But she does get about a year of freedom before Vi and Cait go into to the undercity. And they show up because she’s messing with Silco’s stuff and leaving a very noticeable trail of destruction behind her. The firelights may or may not be getting caught in the crossfires of her crusade. Ekko is desperately trying to find her (take her in), but for a long while she is absolutely convinced that he’s working with Silco so avoids him like the plague (but doesn’t seriously hurt him or his out of respect for who he used to be to her). 

Speaking of Silco, he absolutely is having multiple people hunting her down. Everyone in his circle has a “report if found, do not engage” order while a select few lead capture attempts. He’s very aware that, as her target, she will eventually come at him so he fortifies himself the best he can. He’s ALSO very aware that she is much stronger than most of his lackies, so knows not to attempt a “capture on sight” order.

As for Sevika... I’ll be honest, I don’t think she gives a damn what happens to the girls. She was perfectly fine with a bunch of kids dying for the undercity, so I don’t see why she would care about Powder being put into the Pits.  Personally, I think Sevika is in favor of getting rid of her and makes her opinion to Silco very known. Jinx was a danger to them if she ever escaped and Sevika was well aware. She also knew that Silco was soft enough for the kid that he would give her leniencies that might lead to said escape (she’s not wrong). 

On another note, Jinx does eventually learn to love building things again. She’ll start building at first out of necessity (her guns aren’t gonna come from thin air, ya know), then because she remembers her passion for it. She is going to be very scared for a while, but eventually learns to get that part of her back. No explosives, but there are plenty of other things to make. In the future, she does spend a lot of time with Heimerdinger once he comes to the undercity/Zaun and he sort of takes both her and Ekko under his wing. He understands she’s been hurt for a very long time and there used to be a part of her that loved to invent, so he does his best to support her interest and catch her up on what she’s missed over the years. 

Personally, I think he’ll encourage her to go back to the basics and start her off on small things like those butterflies/animals before moving onto bigger things, but Jinx would probably try to jump right into the deep end (she would be building guns at this point, it couldn’t be that difficult - said Jinx). Not sure if that works out for her yet. This post is a bit long, so I’ll talk about her skill a bit later (but it does change over time). 

Ekko... I’m on the fence with him. There’s going to be so much guilt and anger there for a long time. Once she realizes he’s not with Silco, Jinx just wants him to forget about everything that’s happened and go back to the way they used to be (desperate to re-claim the very few good things she has left in this world), but that just can’t happen. 

I’m a timebomb shipper. I want them to be together if Jinx is shipped with anyone in this AU, but I don’t know if I’ll actually put her with anyone. She’s got a lot to work on personally (not even looking at her mental health issues) and I’m not sure if pairing her with Ekko is what’s best for the both of them. 

-- oh no you’re giving me ideas with the muzzle ahh. But really, I could see it happening the first year or two before she’s permanently fitted with a shock collar. By that point, I think she’s learned when to bite and when to punch or kick. 

[neverdoingmuch]

Wait cql lawyer/law school AU

i got you my pal dont worry!!

law school, im gonna be honest and say i know like nothing about law or law school so pls ignore any inconsistencies or inaccuracies

lwj goes to law school and he is definitely the top student in his class. they’ve been there for like a month and everyone already knows he’s gonna be the best

his one and only competition is this dude called wei wuxian but lwj isn’t particularly worried about him

so far they’re still in the stage of the course where they do the fun things to sucker people into doing the class for the semester so there’s been some practise debates and arguments and stuff in their tutorial classes

wei wuxian has that Charisma and like yeah all of his arguments are perfect but also he has an amazing smile and people are like yes i can trust him 

(he’s definitely the sort to be like hm, the easy way to argue this case would be to quote some laws and use precedence to justify this but that’s boring)

lwj is also good at that sort of stuff because his arguments are perfect and everything is so perfectly researched that there should be no ground at all for someone to lodge a counterargument

(wei wuxian manages somehow and it makes lwj so mad)

but that’s whatever lwj thinks,, a lot of people join law thinking it’s gonna be like the tv shows and books and then get completely blindsided when it comes to the rote learning part or like the actual laws 

and for all of wwx’s confidence, lwj hasn’t actually seen wwx so much as touch the textbook/s and he always studies in the law library so he knows that wwx has probably never even been there bc he hasn’t seen him even once (why’s he looking? bc he needs to see which books wwx uses to study,, bc there has to be something going on there,, obviously)

then they do their first like proper written assignment and lwj and wwx tie for the highest scores and now lwj has a Rival and he refuses to lose to someone who thinks that putting a ‘-us’ sound at the end of a word makes it latin (did wwx say habeas corpus and then point at a soft drink and go  sprite-us can-us,,, maybe,,,,)

anyway! lwj and wwx are kinda rivals for the top spot and it’s one of those situations where one test lwj wins by a point but then the next test wwx gets full marks and they just keep exchanging the top spot in class

and this whole time wwx is like The Worst to have in class. he’s always interrupting to ask questions or just straight up not listening and spends the class doodling pictures of rabbits (they’re cute but wwx is terrible and he’s not allowed to make cute drawings)

so after a few months the most horrible thing happens.... they get put together in a project and lwj is like ugh. internally of course but his face is also saying ugh

the first time wwx and lwj get together to work on the project, lwj is prepared with a proper list of tasks to do all nicely split up between the two of them and a schedule for when they should get certain parts done by. 

needless to say, lwj does not expect wwx to be ready, but wwx is definitely on top of things

he rocks up and is like yeah let’s do this, this and this and have them done by this time - basically proposing to do everything that lwj has already written down

and lwj is pleasantly surprised and is like hm maybe i misjudged wwx and decides to like re-evaluate his opinion on him

in doing so he realises that when he’d never seen wwx studying, it wasn’t an exaggeration at all. he’s never seen wwx so much as touch a textbook or spend more than a minute on a laptop doing something that wasn’t minesweeper or solitaire

but wwx is also making all of their deadlines and even adds extra information and resources to their document that could be useful elsewhere and sometimes he shows up to their study sessions and he looks absolutely exhausted

eventually lwj manages to get the truth out and wwx is just like yeah it’s easier to get worse grades than a genius but if you both study and you still get lower grades, it’s not easy,, for jc or for me

so wwx usually studies at night when his brother is asleep and lwj is like that’s bad, you can’t keep that up and just when wwx is about to go off at him lwj is like you can come study at my place

and thus begins the wonderful time where everything is alright and lwj falls in love with wwx

they work really well together and wwx is strangely considerate and nice? when he finds out lwj likes rabbits, he goes out and buys bunny post-it notes for lwj and starts to always bring him a doodle of bunnies every time he comes over. he always gets his work done on time, early even, and his work is always so brilliant and every time wwx smiles at him, lwj feels warm inside etc etc

for a long while lwj is like yes (: this is friendship (: bc he’s never had a crush before but then on the day they submit their project wwx is like hey,, the two of us make a great team,, we should always work together,, now and next year and even when we graduate,, i want to help the innocent people who need our help and i think i’d like it a lot if you joined me and lwj has his oh moment

they get a perfect score on the project of course and even after it finishes, wwx keeps coming over to lwj’s place to study or just hang out and lwj is just falling more and more for wwx each day

they’re best friends now and everyone gets used to seeing them work together on projects and then turn around to try and decimate each other when they’re working one on one and lwj thinks that he might just be the happiest he’s ever been

but then one day wwx doesn’t show up to class. it shouldn’t be strange but wwx has never missed class even once and he ends up hearing from lxc who heard from jgy that wwx was caught sabotaging some other student’s work (the other student was jzxun, who had a fondness for playing devil’s advocate and other than wwx once telling him that his argument was shit, wwx never spoke to him or seemed to know who he was but lwj is a bit too angry to remember that)

he manages to find wwx outside of his dorms as he’s moving out and he’s just like why did you do that? and wwx is like oh y’know,, bc he’s not really sure what’s happening himself,, one second he was at the top of his class and the next he was being brought before a board and being told that he was being expelled but he’s not going to tell lwj that bc lwj would definitely try and stand up for him and then they’d both get expelled

but lwj is furious and just spits out well if our dreams meant so little to you then maybe it’s a good thing you failed now,, bc his mother was a lawyer who took all these little jobs that helped people who actually needed the help and lwj was looking forward to doing that with wwx and he doesn’t even seem to care that now they can’t do that 

wwx flinches and then smiles at him and just cheerily says, that’s me and leaves. he doesn’t look back and lwj doesn’t chase after him.

lwj doesn’t see him again for years (you can do 13 or 5 or however long you feel like)

lwj is a fully licensed lawyer and he’s working for the family company and he spends half of his time working on cases and uses the rest of his time to do like outreach programs where he goes and visits schools and runs sessions on what it’s like to be a lawyer, how to apply, and to provide assistance to any students who decide to study law at uni

and then at one of these programs he meets this kid, wen yuan, who is ridiculously bright and enthusiastic and has a smile that seems oddly familiar

at the end of the second session he comes up to lwj and is like mr. lan, is your name lan wangji? and lwj just says yes, expecting the kid to be a fan of one of his cases or something but then wen yuan is like oh wow! i thought i recognised you from my dad’s photo!

and lwj isn’t expecting much but he asks what the photo looks like and wen yuan pulls out this photo from his pocket and lwj immediately recognises it,, it’s the only photo he has of him and wwx

your father is wei ying? lwj asks him and wen yuan is like yes, hesitates, and then asks, would you like to see him?

and that’s how lwj finds himself following wen yuan to some dinky little office that has a plaque outside that reads wen and wei

(wen ning is the nicest and sweetest person ever and lots of people underestimate him but then he’s an absolute monster on court. he gets up and completely decimates the opponent and then at the end is like (: it was so nice to meet you!! i am baby!! and all that,, you know our boy)

anyway they walk in and wwx turns to greet wen yuan but then he sees lwj and is like woah! you! and he’s not sure whether to hide or go and hug lwj so he just gives him a fist bump,, like a bro,, and immediately wants to shrivel up and die

anyway they get the reunion stuff out of the way, swelling music, tender wrist holding, lots of staring, lwj silently declaring his wholehearted love for wwx and refusing to believe rumours about him again even though he doesn’t actually know what happened, you know how it goes

from wwx’s side of things,, after he got kicked out he went to some small uni. good in its own right but not known for their law program and ended up specialising in family law

the first case he ever won was for the wens to have the right to keep custody of a-yuan and the first case wen ning ever won was to let wwx adopt a-yuan bc i’m soft like that

so wwx has just been kinda vibing,, being a single dad, living with the wens and helping to make that difference he always promised he would

now this isn’t gonna be some au where lwj goes oh my! i must give up my high salary job and work with wwx! bc lwj has been doing good stuff at his current job and for all of his family’s stuffiness, they run a fair and just company 

but! he does end up helping wwx when wwx gets a letter with a bunch of information about the jins and how they’re actually super corrupt and evil (big surprise,,) and how wwx was maybe definitely framed bc he was doing some casual work on the side and stumbled across some bad shit on the jins back in uni

lwj ends up being the one to take the case officially but wwx is definitely the guy leading it and so lwj ends up spending most of his time at the wen-wei office

lwj definitely bonds with wen yuan, who also wants to go into law, and writes him recommendation letters and helps him edit his applications and stuff

(and one day wen yuan is like leaving you was the hardest thing dad ever did and i dont think you appreciated how much he cared about you. he really did think that he annoyed you ‘til the end and lwj is like no! he didn’t! and wen yuan is like yeah i know but you gotta tell him and lwj really does mean to but the time is never right or something like that but also wen yuan is all but calling lwj dad at this point)

anyway they end up going to court, side by side, working as a team just as they promised to do and just as they finish their final day on the case, ended with the jury ruling jgy guilty and wwx’s reputation all but saved, wwx turns around and flings himself at lwj

is he crying? is he laughing? a bit of both tbh but wwx ends up confessing right then and there, still on record and everything (is that how that works??? idk! let’s say it does)

and what can lwj do but make out with him?

did a news crew come in to film the results of this massive court case just to end up with five minutes of wangxian kissing?? maybe! but when it played on tv it meant wwx and lwj didnt have to actually tell anyone they got together

(and does lwj eventually pop the question using wwx’s bad latinification? yes and wwx is too busy laughing to accept at first but he does and they end up being the worst possible tutors for wen yuan as he goes through law school bc they keep being all gross and lovey-dovey and acting like law school is the most romantic place in the world)

[paladin-of-nerd-fandom65]

Little Robin and Momma Bird

 In honor of First Day of Spring 2021 which for comic fans is the birth date of Richard John-Grayson Wayne, Member of the Flying Graysons, Bruce Wayne’s Adopted Son, Barbara Gordon’s classmate, Wally West and Roy Harper’s best friend, Princess Koriand’r’s true love, the first Robin, The Boy Wonder, Leader and founding member of the Teen Titans, Nightwing, Protector of the City of Bludhaven, Renegade, Ex Apprentice of Slade Wilson, Agent 37, Big Brother to Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Cassandra Cain, Duke Thomas, and Damian Wayne, in varying times and places Father of Mar’i ‘Nightstar’ and Jacob ‘Jake’ Grayson and above all else and beyond all those titles, son of John Grayson and Mary Elizabeth Lloyd Grayson; here’s what I hope is something short and sweet. 

 Now with long intro out of the way, the following is dedicated to @mothnem @lightdusk96 @hood-ex @thattimdrakeguy @tarisilmarwen @fireflyxrebel-writes @nightglider124 @nyxqueen97 @wisegirlandseaweedbrainforever @arabian-batboy @meara-eldestofthemall @robxstar @bluerene and so many others for being my friends in light of this occasion. Please like, comment and especially reblog for any corrections and constructive criticisms. It’ll be very appreciated. 

  Please Enjoy....  

 The sun gleaming and bright rays shone through the small trailer window, lighting the small bedroom with many bright colors of its own decorated throughout. The beige carpet, still an ever bit of simple yet practical use of being the floor, was littered with small shapes of varying sizes, almost all being made of plastic. In particular, these spread out toys were action figures, representing the recent phenomena of spandex clad and awe inspiring individuals that are the ‘Superman’ from Metropolis and the rest being merely the few robotic and unnatural opponents he faces in protecting the oppressed and those in need. The resident of this small bedroom was for all accounts a fan of Superman, something not too unprecedented given the caped champion’s crusades in correcting the wrongs and dangers Metropolis and the larger world face the best he can ever since his first day to the public. 

   And given these are action figures of Superman, it shall be of no surprise said resident was indeed very young; a small acrobat of the famous Haly’s Circus currently asleep and softly snoring away in this room’s bed, blankets draped and covering almost every part of him, even his face. It’s his 7th birthday as of today, this wonderful first day of Spring. Now if only something or someone can get him awake to enjoy such a day. That’s where a certain Mrs. Mary Grayson enters our picture. 

  As she gently pries open her son’s bedroom door as to not awaken him, clad only in a grey t-shirt and black pants as used for pajamas last night, Mary carefully trudges across the beige carpet towards the bed being occupied by said son. Sure, both her and him have slept in until nearly 9:30 am as of now since their family group, the Flying Graysons, have a day off from practice for today, but frankly had Dick remembered that today’s his birthday from earlier, he would been by now sneaking into his parents’ neighboring room, awaking them both his father John and her up about said day, probably  the best he can think of for a gentle reminder. But due to recent influx of performances across the West Coast, Dick lost count so now it was Mary’s turn to gently remind him and in the best way she knows how. 

  As Mary’s bare feet carefully skirt around the action figures spread across the floor, even picking some up along the way (maybe reminding Dick to next time pick up his toys before bed will come in later tonight), she eventually reaches her son’s twin sized bed and the red, green and yellow pattern blanket that draped over the little guy overnight. In her right hand was a blue fine point marker pen with washable ink while her left gently leans to one end of the blanket where a small tuff of black hair sticks out. Gently caressing her left hand the black mass, Mary can hear a content giggle coming from under the blanket, no doubt her son feeling the familiar, loving motion John and her regularly do as parents can. On normal moments this happens, Dick would playfully push the hand ruffling his black hair away. This time, he just simply lightly giggles in his sleep. Mary was sort of banking the hair ruffling being enough to awaken her son to this bright and beautiful first day of Spring. As soon as her hand though stops with the affectionate ruffling and once more snores are heard coming from Dick, her lips turn into a soft yet mischievous smile; it was time for Plan B. Sure Enough, when looking over to the other end of the blanket and seeing her son’s own two feet, so far socked but with her there not for too long. That marker in her hand has its cap screw off. 

  On some occasions when she was basically passed out from a long night on the trapeze, Mary wold wake to find the soles of her feet with scribbles and doodles all across, most of them featuring the Flying Graysons logo prominently. She almost immediately knew the culprit behind such drawing but often times just leaves it be and even walks on her two feet with drawing and all since the marker ink easily comes off so it was overall no big deal. Besides, her son was just having some harmless fun so why would she dare try ruining that; sure she was strict on some parts of his behavior but this ain’t one of the them. Now though, as she lightly tugs the two socks off her sleeping son as to not awake him, revealing two velvet soles and the ten toes and with her marker in hand, it was time for payback if you may. 

  Starting with lightly drawing smiley faces on his big toes, Dick’s reaction was almost immediate as a slightly louder giggle comes from the blankets and his toes clench. Mary briefly backs off the marker until the toes relaxing and using her free hand, she lightly grabs unto the big ones, leaving his feet still. With that, she can proceed with the rest as sure enough, various other faces across his other toes are drawn along with flowers and even an elephant on the arch of his right foot. As for that last one, the giggling had reached its loudest and looking upward, Mary couldn’t help but smile at the results. Plan B was a success, Dick was awake and laughing his head off due to the scribbling.

   “Momma!” he yells between hearty giggles, “That tickles!” 

   Mary grins a bit, “Oh really?” 

  She continues with that elephant on Dick’s right foot, now holding him still with arm entrapping his ankles tightly, making sure he can’t pull his feet back from that blue marker as it continued its path. Though Mary notes that even then, Dick wouldn’t want to. He had not once told her to stop, indicating that he was enjoying this instead. Frankly, after a long time doing this to her, she couldn’t blame him. All Dick does on his part is lay his head on the pillows, the blankets off of him, allowing Mary to see him clad in a similar style of PJs to hers only with the coloring being a blue t shirt and grey sweat pants instead. To the left of him was his precious stuffed elephant Peanut; ever since being first given that on his 4th birthday, he keeps it close to him whenever going to bed. All this time afterwards, Mary still hasn’t been able in getting her son a second stuffed toy like Peanut much to her disappointment but hey that’s a thought for another time, she has one more spot to draw before she can move on for the rest of the day, the arch on Dick’s left foot.

  At first, Mary thought of drawing the Flying Graysons logo for the finishing touch but instead opts for a more casually yet fitting wording. With that in mind, her blue marker makes contact with the velvet of her son’s arch and starts its ink dripped path. By now, the 7 year old was still in full hysterics over his Momma’s drawings but he will admit, at least it was better waking up from his trapeze swinging dreams like this rather than the sun’s rays shining on him as it usually happens. Finally though, he feels the marker stop and opening his ocean blue eyes, sees his mother put the cap back on. Putting the marker away in her pocket, Mary places a soft kiss on her son’s forehead while giving him another hair ruffle. This time, now fully awake, Dick gently pushes her hand away. 

  His blue eyes meet his mother’s own blue eyes and a wide smile stretches on his face. 

  “Thanks Momma” he chirps happily in Romani Chib. 

  Another motherly kiss, this time his cheek, “You’re welcome, Just wanted to make sure you didn’t forget about your special day today, My Little Robin” 

  As Mary stands and makes her way back to the door, Dick stretches his arms, letting out a yawn from his mouth doing so. 

  “Breakfast will be ready in 5 minutes” Mary states with a warm smile on her face.

  “Cereal, Momma?”

  “Any type you like that we have of course” 

  “I’ll be there soon” Dick says, a wide grin on his face. 

 Mary has a humming giggle of her own before making her own to the kitchen to no doubt prepare her son and her’s bowls for the day. Though of course, they were just getting started. 

  Dick swings his feet to step off his bed and begin trudging to his breakfast, he briefly wonders on what his mother drew on him before putting the marker away. As such, flexing his leg to where he can see the soles and toes of his two feet, Dick smiles of all nice stuff Momma left. Indeed, there were flowers on the balls of his arches, goofy faces on each of his ten toes, what looks like a circus ball on his right heel, a trapeze bar on his left heel, a short yet cute elephant on right foot’s arch and at least the words on his left arch. 

‘Happy 7th B-Day Little Robin, Love Momma’ 

  Now that was love from a mother alright. Dick certainly will never forget this. Now to get the table without stepping on his toys on the floor. 

[vcg73]

FIC: Kurt Birthday Drabbles

Earlier this week @elledelajoie left a comment on something I wrote all the way back in 2014.  I had genuinely forgotten I ever started it, but the original idea was to write 21 Kurt Hummel birthday drabbles. I had written just 7 of them, but after we chatted about it, I decided to go ahead and finish.  

If you’re not familiar, a drabble is a scene of exactly 100 words, not counting title headers. Since Chris Colfer and Kurt Hummel’s co-birthday (May 27) is coming up this Thursday, here they are. This goes definite AU at Birthday #19. Because you know I would never sentence my beloved Kurt to a life of being a doormat to people who did not appreciate and value him.

Never underestimate the power of feedback!

~*~*~*~*~

Birthday #1

Kurt’s blue eyes went wide as a frosted cupcake was set upon his high-chair tray, a single candle ablaze on its surface.  

When Mommy, Daddy, Uncle Andy, Grandpa Curtis and Grandma Eileen started singing to him, he smiled and clapped both hands hard around the tempting pile of frosting.

Kurt laughed when the sugary topping went flying and a big splatter of white abruptly decorated Daddy’s surprised face.

Everyone else started laughed too, including the startled father, who retaliated by giving his birthday boy a sticky peck on the cheek and then helped him to blow out a new candle.

Birthday #2

Kurt looked between his presents, confused.

Mommy had given him the pretty dolly he had begged for at the store. Daddy had given him a truck, not big enough to ride but too big to live with the little cars Daddy gave him at Christmas.

His parents seemed to be mad at each other.

Kurt looked at the doll, then at the truck. He smiled and placed Dolly inside the truck and began to drive her around the carpet.

Mommy and Daddy seemed surprised by his actions, but then they laughed, and Kurt knew he had figured out the puzzle.

 Birthday #3

His shoes were black and shiny, buckles on the sides and 1-inch heels on the base. He clomped over the hardwood floors, listening to the click-tap-click-tap in delight. They went perfectly with his dove gray coveralls with “Kurt” sewn on the pocket in black sequins. Mommy had made the outfit for him.

Spotting Daddy watching him, Kurt threw himself into waiting arms. Daddy’s smile looked like he had an owie but was trying to be a big boy and not cry.

Kurt hugged him. “It’s okay, Daddy.”

Burt looked surprised but hugged him back. “Yeah, buddy. I think it is.”

 Birthday #4

Ballet girls were nice. When they heard it was his birthday today, they threw him a party. Kurt puffed up with pleasure when presented with cookies, a sparkly wand and a tiara that read ‘Happy Birthday’ in shiny letters. He was not as fond of the kisses they gave, but four was very grown up, so he screwed up his face and allowed it. The teacher even let him wear the special puffy pink tutu over his little black leotard! 

 He saw Mommy and Daddy up in the gallery taking pictures, so he waved.

Kurt hoped today would last forever.

  Birthday #5

“Can I have cupcakes?”

Kurt’s mother looked up from her book. “I don’t think we have any, sweetheart.”

“Can we have some Thursday?  My birthday is the last day of preschool.”

“It is?” she said, looking surprised. “Is it your birthday already?”

He nodded seriously. “Don’t you remember, Mommy? You were there.”

She laughed. “Well, you have me there.  What kind of cupcakes would you like, sweetie? And don’t say cheesecake. Those are two completely different kinds of dessert.”

Kurt’s hopeful expression fell. “Oh,” he said, clearly disappointed. Then his face brightened again. “Chocolate?”

She nodded. “That we can do.”

   Birthday #6

“Daddy!”

Burt sat up just in time to catch the little body that launched at him. “What’s wrong, slugger?”

“It’s my birthday!”

Grinning despite the way his heart was hammering at the abrupt awakening, Burt asked, “Yeah? I like birthdays. Do I get a present?”

“No,” the boy scoffed. “I get presents!”

 Burt squinted at the clock. 3:15am. “Not until morning, you don’t.”

Kurt pouted and tried, “It’s almost morning.”

“Not close enough, kid. C’mere,” Burt pulled him into the warm bed between himself and his wife.

Kurt snuggled down and went right back to sleep.  

Burt was less lucky.

 Birthday #7

Kids had started treating him funny this year. He was too fancy, too girly, holding hands was weird.

Nobody was coming.

“I’m sorry, sweetie.”

“Am I too late?”

They jumped as a little black girl with pom-pom hair popped out of nowhere.

“I’m Mercedes,” she greeted. “We just moved here. Mom said you would have invited me if you’d known.”

“I’m Kurt.” He smiled. “Do you like tea parties?”

“Is there cake?”

Mrs. Hummel beamed. “Cake, ice cream, and Kool-Aid.”

Kurt shrugged. “Nobody else came.”

She grabbed his hand like she’d known him forever. “More for us!  Happy Birthday, Kurt.”

 Birthday #8

Kurt took a deep breath, thought for a moment, and carefully blew out the candles. All but the extra one that his parents always put on his cake.

“Aren’t you gonna finish, bud?”

He looked from Daddy over to his mother, home again, but so frail he was sometimes afraid to hug her, worried she might pop like a fragile soap bubble. He offered her the candle. “Here, Mommy. Blow it out. Maybe you’ll get another year to grow on.”

The eyes of the two adults met, then Mommy nodded. The three of them blew out the final candle together.

 Birthday #9

Barely daring to hope, Kurt came down the stairs.  Birthday cakes and presents had been Mommy’s specialty.  Daddy had forgotten his own birthday and had nearly forgotten Christmas.

Kurt gasped when he saw it, waiting, shining and spectacular against the front door.

“A bike!”

Bright green, sissy bars with foil streamers, and a banana seat. Perfect!

Burt smiled. He had scoffed a such a “girly” bike when Kurt spotted it at the toy store. But now, looking at the all-too-rare joy in his son’s eyes and feeling the approving smile his wife would have given, he nodded. It was perfect.

 Birthday #10

Buying gifts was tough when your kid always clammed up on you. A dad had to be observant.

Ten years old. A landmark like that needed something special, but the only thing Kurt seemed into was clothes. He had enough of those for ten kids.  

He’d probably like a Barbie he could change in and out of different outfits, but Burt cringed at the thought.

He did doodle pretty good though. Sure, it was mostly pictures of clothes, but that was a start.

A fancy sketchpad with a case and a hundred different colored pencils. Yeah, that was the ticket.

 Birthday #11

“Dad, where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

Kurt sighed with exaggerated impatience. He had come home from school to find Dad waiting at the truck, ordering him to get in, then not saying another word. The suspense was killing him.

“Ta-Dahhhh!”

They had pulled up in front of a nondescript brick building. “Columbus Culinary Arts?”

“You like to cook right?  Well, we’re gonna fix your birthday dinner this year with the help of a real chef. Lessons are once a week for the next couple months.”

Gourmet cooking lessons!

“Oh wow. Dad, this is amazing!”

Burt grinned. “Happy Birthday, kid.”

 Birthday #12

Last year’s surprise had gone so well that Burt had decided on a repeat. But when he saw the excitement on Kurt’s face at finding a pair of tickets inside his birthday card turn to disappointment and horror, quickly masked with a fake smile, he knew he’d goofed.

“I know baseball isn’t your thing,” he said, almost pleading. “But you’ve never seen a live game before. It’s a whole different experience. It’s a home game. We can yell and scream, and cheer our team on with thousands of other fans.”

The stiff not-smile never wavered. “Sounds . . . fun.”

 Birthday #13

Dad had bought out one of the partners at the garage this spring and now owned a majority share of the renamed “Hummel Tires & Lube”. Kurt wanted to snicker at that name, but he was proud too.

His birthday this year coincided with Friday Night Dinner. Dad had invited all the mechanics over for a potluck. They’d had Mary’s special fried chicken, Cassius’s homemade cornbread, and Davy’s mac’n’cheese. Now Dad brought out the cake.

Kurt laughed. A sheet-cake with a tow-truck and two little plastic mechanics for decoration.

“You and me kid. Partners.”

The mechanics cheered and everybody dug in.

  Birthday #14

Kurt froze when he saw tickets peeping out of his card. Not again. Noise, sunburn, unhealthy food, tacky uniforms, and Dad trying so hard to make a boring sport seem like fun.

He sighed and pasted on a smile, which quickly transformed into shock.

“Wicked?” he squeaked, staring hard at the little papers as if the printing might change if he dared to look away.

“Embassy Theater is giving regional business owners a discount this year,” Burt said apologetically. “It’s just a traveling production, not real Broadway, but I …”

His apology was cut off by a joyful teenaged hug.

 Birthday #15

“Don’t worry, son, you got this.  Just remember everything I taught you.  You got a whole year to get ready for the practical test.”

“I know.”

“And it’s okay if you don’t get it right the first time. Not everybody does.”

“I’m fine, Dad.”

“I’ll be right here waiting for you when you’re through.”

“I know that, Dad. I’ll be okay, really.”

At that moment, Kurt’s name was called and he sprang from his hard green plastic chair. His dad’s repeated reassurances were making him jumpy.

Twenty minutes later, a brightly grinning Kurt was waving his freshly minted driver’s permit.

 Birthday #16

Burt patted the giant blue bow the dealership had provided over the hood of the shining black Lincoln Navigator.  

Kurt was gonna flip! He’d passed his DMV test with flying colors and was no doubt showing off his shiny new license to all his friends at school.  

He paused. Did Kurt have any friends to share this accomplishment with? He always seemed so alone.

Maybe that’s why he had decided to spoil his son with a huge birthday gift.

It wasn’t right for such a good kid to be all alone. Maybe having his own ride would help change that.

  Birthday #17

A dozen teens gathered in Kurt’s basement to celebrate the end-of-school, non-disbanding of Glee, and Kurt’s birthday, all in one.

“Not like ten years ago,” Mercedes said to Kurt, as they watched Mike and Brittany dance.

“Ten years?”

“Your seventh? It was just you, me, your mom, and lots of chocolate cake.”

Kurt was astounded. “That was you?”

“You forgot?”

“I remember a little girl who showed up and invited herself to my party.”

“And I remember a little boy who needed a friend as much as I did.”

He squeezed her hand. “Thanks for coming.”

She squeezed back. “Always.”

 Birthday #18

Kurt stared at his birthday cake, unable to think of anything to wish for.

He was 18-years-old today, a legal adult. He had new family in Carole and Finn, his dad was on the mend, he would be back at McKinley for senior year, he had made his first visit to New York City, and he had a boyfriend! One who had just told Kurt that he loved him for the very first time.

‘I wish for next year to be as good as this,” he thought, taking a deep breath and blowing.

The flames flickered out, all except one.

 Birthday #19

Senior year had been a disaster, and now he had not gotten into NYADA, despite his well-praised audition.

“Blaine wants me to spend another year here,” he whispered. “I just can’t.”

Burt’s callused hand squeezed his neck. “Then don’t. You’re 19 now, a man. You got talents galore, work experience from the garage, enough drive for ten kids, and your mom’s life insurance money to give you a start.”

“But…”

“No buts,” Burt said firmly. “You go on to New York and grab life by the balls.”

Kurt felt his optimism rise. “Help me look for apartments?”

“You got it.”

 Birthday #20

What a difference a year made.

He’d dumped Blaine after being cheated on less than a month after leaving Lima.  He was enrolled at FIT and sharing a shoebox apartment with a fellow design student and a Broadway hopeful, but both were young gay men from small towns, and they had a lot in common.

“Happy Birthday!” Elliott shouted, tossing a handful of glittery sequins at him.

Adam came in playing the birthday song on a kazoo he had gotten from who-knows-where. “Ready for Callbacks? $20 on who gets the first hot guy’s number!”

“I already have yours. I win!”

 Birthday #21

“I have the honor of presenting your first official grown-up drink,” Adam said, smiling lovingly at his grinning boyfriend of nearly a year. He set down a martini glass with a cherry floating on top. “A Manhattan seemed appropriate.”

Kurt beamed and gave him a kiss, then took an experimental sip. “I’ve had alcohol before,” he admitted. “Mostly wine, though.  Mm, this is good!”

“I thought you’d like it. Happy Birthday, my love.  May the future bring every good thing you wish for, and never more heartache than you can handle.”

Kurt could not have asked for a better sentiment.

THE END

[ur-favorite-queer-queen]

...I Need Help With My Math Test

Master List 

Little seven year old Luka was stressed beyond belief. He only had forty minutes left before he had to turn in his math test and he wasn’t even done with the first page. He knew his test anxiety was bad but he didn’t think it was this bad. It seemed he wasn’t quiet enough with his panicking because his soulmate heard him. 

‘Couffaine, I can’t concentrate with you being a nervous wreck. What has got you so wound up?’ His soulmate asked. 

‘It’s my math test Damian. I can’t remember anything.’ He mentally answered. 

‘Why is that?’ 

‘My test anxiety!’

Damian filed that bit of information away for later, ‘What is your math test about?’

‘Multiplication.’ 

‘Tell me a question.’ 

‘Uhhh, five times five.’ 

‘Twenty-five.’

‘Wait you can’t give me the answers Dami!’

‘Why not?’ 

‘That’s cheating! And cheating is bad!’

‘Do you want to fail?’ 

‘...no.’ 

‘Then write down twenty-five.’

Luka mentally grumbled about it, but still wrote down the answer. 

‘Now what are the other questions?’ Damian demanded. 

‘Okay what is nine times eight?’ Luka responded. 

‘Seventy-two, next question.’ 

And that was how the two of them spent the rest of those forty minutes. Bickering about math questions until Luka had finally finished the test with five minutes to spare. 

He flipped his test so that his answers were faced down while the blank side of the packet was faced up. He spared a glance around and saw that the rest of his classmates were either reading a book, doodling on the blank side of their math test, or had their face down on their desk and were using their arms as pillows. 

He decided to put his head down since he didn’t want to doodle or read. That would take too much concentration and he wanted to talk to Damian. Damian beat him to it.

‘I don’t understand why they put such absurd questions on that test. Johnny has 3 apples, his mother gave him 5 times that amount, how many apples does he have now? What kind of question is that?’ Damian ranted. 

‘Those are test questions. They’re always weird.’ 

‘Tt, I apologize that you must deal with that stupidity for the rest of your life.’ 

‘Not the rest of my life. Just the rest of the time I’m in school.’

‘That is what I meant. What are you doing now?’ 

‘Talking to you.’ 

Luka didn’t have to see it to know Damian was rolling his eyes. He could feel the eye roll despite him being many miles away. 

‘Besides that Couffaine, you know exactly what I meant.’ 

‘Just waiting for the bell to ring so I can go home. It should be ringing any second now.’ As he said those words to Damian the bell rang and he got up to go home. 

‘Do you not see what you got on your test yet?’ Damian questioned as Luka would usually tell him what grades he got as soon as he received them. 

Luka continued to talk to Damian as he walked to his sister's school. 'She hasn't graded them yet, I should be able to see what I got tomorrow.'

Both soulmates stayed silent for a moment. Luka because he was making sure he had the correct destination and Damian because he was thinking. Finally Damian spoke up.

'Didn't I review the multiplication with you two days ago, or yesterday?'

‘Yeah, yesterday.’ 

‘Then why were you so nervous that you forgot everything? And what does this test anxiety have to do with it.’ 

‘You don’t know what test anxiety is?’ 

‘No, now what is it?’

‘Test anxiety.’ Luka paused for a moment to think about how to explain it to him, ‘It’s where you get super nervous, anxious when taking a test. People have different types of test anxiety, mine is that I forget everything.’ 

Damian nodded to himself as Luka waved down his sister. The Couffaine siblings started walking home together when Damian started talking again. 

‘Well that doesn’t sound very pleasant.’

‘It’s not.’ 

‘Does this happen often?’

‘Often enough that I’m surprised if it doesn’t happen.’ 

‘If that happens again ask me to help you.’ He stated it more than asked if he was allowed to help.

‘Wait really?’ 

‘Yes. It is quite distracting to not only hear but feel your nervousness and if I can prevent that then I will.’ 

‘Oh, thanks Dami.’

‘Tt, there is no need to thank me. I am simply doing what is best for me which, in turn, is helping you.’ 

Luka knew that Damian was just trying to keep a little bit of his pride in not admitting that he was helping him, so he let him be. He had learned the hard way that when Damian got moody like this it was best not to tease him. 

‘Okay, well I’m almost home and I’ll have to work on homework. So talk to you when I’m done?’ 

‘Of course, I’ll be here.’ 

Luka helped his little sister walk the plank onto their houseboat and yelled to wherever their mom was that school was over and they were home. 

“LU!” The usually quiet voice of Juleka shouted at him once they got to their shared room. She took the short time where he was about to answer to jump onto her bed.

“Yes Jules?” He responded as he put his backpack down and started pulling his homework out.

“How’d the test go?” Her head was hanging upside down and all her hair almost touched the floor. He could clearly see the blood rushing to her head and he went over to get her to stop. Once she was upright he answered. 

“The test went fine.” 

“What grade did you get?” 

“Not sure yet.” 

“You think you did well?” 

A small smile, could be called a smirk, accidentally made its way onto his face. “I think I did pretty well.” 

“Really? You didn’t forget everything?”

“I mean I forgot some stuff but then I remembered.” 

“You sure?” 

“Yep.” 

Juleka was quiet for a moment as she studied him, her brown eyes staring into his soul. 

“You’re hiding something.” She finally stated. 

“What! Why would you think that?”

“Your way calmer than you usually are after a test. You didn’t say anything on the walk home and you seemed really startled when I said you’re hiding something.” Juleka listed off, brown eyes narrowed at him, “So tell me dear brother what are you hiding?”

"Nothing Juleka." Before Juleka could protest he continued, "Now if I remember correctly you have math homework you need to finish right?" 

"...right."

"Better get on that then." 

"Hmph. We're finishing this conversation later!" 

"Math homework!" 

Juleka pouted at him before grabbing her work from out of her backpack. She opened her math book and started to get to work. Luka started reading over the questions on his homework. It was silent as the two siblings worked.

That all but lasted two minutes before the siblings went back to their bickering. Damian listened from afar, feeling everything his soulmate felt and basically hearing his side of the playful argument. Luka, no matter how hard he tried, could not stop his talking from reaching his thoughts, which in turn reached Damian. 

And if during that day’s training he smiled a little too much it never left that room. And if he helped his soulmate’s argument with his sister, no one was the wiser. The only thing the people around them knew was that Luka miraculously did good on his latest math test and Damian spent a little longer training than usual. And that was how everyone’s memory of that day would stay. Some secrets don’t need to be shared, just yet.