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mayfay · 5 months ago

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Not a biologist myself (though I’ve wanted to be one since elementary school) so no stories there, but I do know a bit about old school biology and theories on Dungeon Meshi’s tech level to have an idea on how biologists (or their equivalent) might work. Also a disclaimer that most of my knowledge is either stuff I’ve picked up over time or quickly googled, so there going to be some inconsistencies.

Now first off it’s Very important to mention that “biologists” are inherently tied to “biology”, which has only technically existed since the 19th century, but more realistically the study of life has probably been around since our earliest days.

Biology as a field has had Major advances since its formation, especially in the last couple decades/century with our tech advancements, with modern biology studying a wide array of organisms habits, biology, and responses (though this is a massive field so there’s a pretty wide array of studies). Old school biology meanwhile was very limited in tools and previous knowledge to build off of, the number of people that could be spared for such a job, a difficulty in preserving information for very long periods of time (books are burnable and expensive and oral traditions that likely held some knowledge are very rarely credited even now, much less in the early days), and the scattered nature of most research before global connectivity. All of these things are still limiting today, but they weren’t nearly as crippling as they used to be. Because of all this (but especially because of the lack of tools and the domination of European imperialism and the exoticism of “the wild”) a lot of early European biology (which is the only one I really know of) was focused on writing observations and descriptions into notebooks and taxidermy’s (or pins in the case of smaller species, especially insects).

Not any point in releasing a specimen back into the wild if you can’t track it for later study, as opposed to stuffing it and taking it home for further study and potentially sell depending on the nature of the expedition. Not to mention so little was known/acknowledged about environmental destruction and threatened populations that killing a couple plants/animals wasn’t seen as a big deal for the most part.

Enter Dungeon Meshi

It’s 100% a different world with its own cultures and history, but we do get a couple bits and pieces throughout the story. Perhaps most notably the early chapters has Laios bring up his monster food book and his knowledge on even basic plant monsters behavior, hunting tactics, and diet. That’s pretty in depth, especially for someone that grew up in a farming town and likely had to get his knowledge from books and personal study. (Though Fallin may have learned far more in college and taught him some of that).

Now there are a number of factors that influence Dungeon Meshis hypothetical biology field and its potential accessibility to Laios.

Starting with the good this is a world of magic, meaning farming is likely far easier or feeds more people, opening up the possibility for far more people to take on other jobs (food has been the limiting factor for the vast majority of human history, so even small increases in abundance have long massive consequences) (depending on the type of paper used this could also apply to some forms of industry, like paper making, which would influence how accessible books and knowledge are) or more leisure for substance farming that allows for personal activities that then lead to extra advancement in technology and science. The next major factor is the variety of species, namely the long lived races. Cause these suckers hang around for Ages, meaning even just one half decent biologist or scientist can do the work of dozens of shorter lived species in a single lifetime. For smaller positive influences we also have the general existence of magic making the subjugation for later study of monsters far easier than in our world, and live samples are Far more useful than a standard taxidermy. And that’s assuming they don’t have magic that can study monsters in ways mimicking or surpassing ours. Since Laios focuses on monsters specifically the dungeons unique properties help support the idea they’re disproportionately studied, being unique, interesting, dangerous yet unlikely to permanently kill, and having major incentive to learn about it to reach deeper for treasure. We also know that while the dungeon may have unique creatures within it (as evidenced by far later chapters I won’t go over cause spoilers) it’s pretty unknown how many monsters are unique and how many are stock monsters found in most dungeons, which could have been extensively studied for who knows how long compared to the ones only found on the island in the last ten years.

For the more negative side we have the danger the dungeon represents. Historically large dangerous animals have trouble coexisting with humans for long without at least one major ecological collapse (we see this in North America and Europe, though I don’t know enough about other continents histories to make any claims there). And the dungeon is actively aggressive to humans, a fact established in the early chapters/episodes. Not great, especially when they’re seen as at best a resource, at worst a threat. Laios and Senshi are some of the only characters we see who voice their opinions on the dungeon’s ecosystem as a positive thing, and they’re both considered weirdos (for a variety of reasons to be fair). Adding to that is the restrictions on dungeon information, with the vast majority of known dungeons being held by long lived races with limited access to information about them. Meanwhile the island dungeon has only been around for about 10 years, and may not be able to house the expected adventurer and researcher population due to the islands size, severely limiting what knowledge is available from it. There’s also no guarantee that magic could support crop yields, and in fact they may hurt it as they might have evolved to utilize the passive magic in the air long before people managed to, making them reliant on magic in the same way they are to temperature, altitude, humidity, etc. While we don’t see much evidence for it we don’t really know how much scientific pursuit is supported in the dominating cultures of the known world around the island, which leaves us with a wide range of potential history and knowledge dependent on how beneficial it’s seen as a practice.

Overall I lean towards Dungeon Meshi having a much more advanced field of biology than you would expect from a seemingly midevil-esk time period, which means Laios might Not have to kill monsters to study them, but it’s still a definite possibility for larger ones.

If Laios was a monsterfucker the succubus would have had a much easier time with him

#not exactly positive where I was going with this #saw a chance to info dump about ideas history and knowledge #and blacked out before waking up to this #even if biologists don’t have to kill their specimens Laios might still anyways to taste them #and for spoiler reasons in the epilogue #dungeon meshi spoilers #kinda #I avoid them and try to just put SPOILERS #but if you know you know

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cmyknoise · 3 years ago

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i am almost 19, i live in the united states, and i can not emphasize how much i wish there was a ‘highschool 2′

i dont want to go to college just yet but i still want to learn things. and going to college wouldnt fix my yearn to learn, because truly i dont think i’d be learning in the way i’m talking about.

because, at least all the colleges i’m familiar with and stuff, you go to college to learn how to apply knowledge for a career. you major in a field that can be applied to a job. but i dont want to learn that.

i want to have a highschool 2 where i can chose the subjects. i can choose history or english or geography and instead of focusing on necessities like math or english, i get to focus on the subjects i like.

i take a semester long course in history not for a job, but because i want to learn more about a country’s history or the world’s history or history about a certain era.

i take a semester long course in biology, not because i want to go into a field to study it scientifically or medically, but because i just want to know how things work simply because it’s cool.

i don’t want to go to school to take tests and exams and finals just to pass with something that would help me in a job. and like, i get that’s what college is for. but i really wish there was something like, as i called it, highschool too.

where you can sit in classes like you do in highschool and just learn shit, except you get to chose what classes you want to take.

i would love to learn about astronomy, herbology, human & animal biology, history, geology, literature, etc etc without it having the catch of ‘you will use this information to get a job or to teach other people this information’.

i just want to know to know, and i try really hard to learn stuff by just researching fun topics because i like doing that! but i learned things so much better when i was being taught by people who were passionate about a subject.

i would pay to go to a college-esk place where you can just learn to learn without being pressured into taking tests and exams and using what you learn to get a job.

i plan to go to college eventually, either when i’m more financially stable to do so or when i move to a place where it’s not a lifetime loan level cost to do 4 years of school. i want to do something job wise with art of course but.

i would still love to just, learn other things, simply because i can, and i love doing it, and i genuinely feel like that is something that just isn’t available or a thing anymore. when you go to school after highschool it’s expected to be used for a job. major in something you want to do for the rest of your life.

but i want to learn about planets and the earth and history from all over the world and literature from all over the world and i’d like to learn various sciences and i’d like to learn how to do things like sewing or cooking or how to take care of animals or plants or basic medical stuff or just know about the human body because its cool or how evolution in animals and plants work. i just want to know things to know them but simply reading wikipedia articles and looking at various articles isn’t enough. i miss highschool because i miss learning in that setting and i wish it was an option to continue doing without the expectation to get a job.

#school #college #university #lemon's stuff #i have no fucking idea what to tag this as #rant

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code-chaos · 2 years ago

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How I Got into Coding:

I am a first Gen college student.

I had no idea how college worked.

I could take anything and focus on something and graduate, eventually. Degree plans were for engineering majors or something really specific.

(Genuinely, I had no idea, I would have never graduated if I hadn’t changed my entire life)

In one semester I took these 4 courses:

English II, Arabic I, German I, and Chinese I

That was all.

On top of all of that, I intended on becoming a doctor. Did I have the slightest fucking clue what that all actually meant? Of course not. My family didn’t go to college, or even know any doctors. I only knew my family doctor. But I knew there was amazing work being done by doctors all around the world and I wanted that responsibility.

Until I couldn’t wake up early enough to go to my 8:50 AM class. Until I was hoping to get hit my the campus shuttle so I wouldn’t have to deal with my depression. Until I napped every day and missed hours of my on campus job in a ✨ prestigious ✨ office.

So I did what several other members of my family did: I joined the Navy! And boy my life became an adventure! I dated a married man 4 years older than me! I got pregnant at 22 and subsequently abandoned by this man! While living overseas!

Whew after years of stress and manipulation from him, it felt horrible to be free from him. Now I had to raise a baby and become an adult and live in the world as the Head of Household?

Nevertheless, armed with my GI Bill and my also single mother, I pressed on. I moved back to my original university, solely because I had grades that wouldn’t transfer to other universities nearby and I didn’t want to retake classes.

Until I learned the first thing about premed and I had to retake a handful of classes. I was going strong but I was getting burnt out. I knew I couldn’t keep up this level of academic commitment and continue to ramp it up as I would eventually have to go to medical school. I was taking care of me and my baby. I was financing this time. I couldn’t do it anymore.

So I went back to the drawing board. I got on the university catalog and looked over the list. Anything that would help me support my son and I financially that I was remotely interested was added to another list. I didn’t really see anything.

Growing up though, my grandfather (a Navy man and an electrician) and I loved toying with computers. I ended up being the Family Help Desk Technician. My mom said, “Why not something with computers? You’re so good at them!” I would roll my eyes and say, “Mom, I just Google stuff.” (Ironic, you know)

I eventually settled on Computer Information Systems with a focus on Programming. It seems like a cop out from going from Computer Science but would also give me options, like actual help desk, networking, etc etc. Entry level jobs were all available to me.

Coding was hard. I have ADHD but while I was in the Reserves, I learned I wasn’t allowed to take my medication for it. My 3.6 GPA from my Biology major dropped and sitting in dark basement classrooms surrounded by the hum of desktop PCs was awful. I couldn’t focus. I didn’t turn in a single assignment. I did OK on tests because the professors graded on the curve and gave study guides.

When I tell you I tried to learn, believe me. I was surrounded by kids (I was 6 years older than my cohort) who had taken AP Comp Sci the year prior, made their own apps and websites, or even attended full time coding boot camps at night. I was literally scraping by academically. I graduated with a 3.131 GPA lol which isn’t bad but coming from my pre-med mania, that was a crushing realization: I wasn’t good enough. (This isn’t the truth, but just what I believed at the time)

I took a job at a place that was very hard on me, despite having the reputation of being “fun.” I changed from being a SWE to a Test Automation Engineer. That was March 2020. My manager was rude. Need I say more?

With tears in my eyes, I quit. I thought, “Well I tried, I knew I wasn’t good enough.” I told my mentor, “I just don’t have the engineering mindset.” He disagreed and sadly we parted ways.

I began teaching kids to code part time. It was cool seeing this place grow. It’s like the after school activity for the kids who might not play sports, you know what I mean? Some kids did play sports. More than one. Some were involved in several activities, and I felt bad for them. Their parents had them doing something every night of the week!

But for the tiny computer nerds, they came and they conquered. It was beautiful. I felt inspired by them.

I decided to apply to a developer position and I had a few interviews. The position I currently hold is fantastic. My team is so incredibly helpful, cool, kind, all the things you want when you feel crippled by past failure and impostor syndrome.

They gave me new projects and tools to learn and had loose time frames for completion. They checked in on me. I have paired for hours with my team - and they taught me things in a non assuming way. I began to feel euphoric about work and what I was learning.

Then I saw the job posting. You know, the One. I applied and it all worked out. I have fears about success but they’re realistic and limited. Not limiting, though, they aren’t the same thing. I know I have what it takes to learn and succeed and thrive.

And that’s how I got into coding. Also if you read that, you know me pretty well. Please say hello. Share your story!

#codeblr #lady dev #coding #women in computer science

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carnegiemuseumnaturalhistory · 4 years ago

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How I Became an Archaeologist

If you had told me when I was 15 that I would spend my life as an archaeologist, I probably would have been pretty surprised. I didn’t grow up knowing a great deal about archaeology or even being fascinated by arrowheads. At that time, I might well have asked what an archaeologist really is and what one actually does. I did get to visit the Parthenon and other ruins while on a trip with my aunt when I was sixteen. Even then, I don’t remember having more than a casual interest in what could be learned from these places. I was more interested in the living people and the new food dishes I encountered on that trip, which was my first trip outside the United States.

From talking to other archaeologists, I’ve learned that there are a lot of paths to deciding archaeology is going to be your life’s work. In my case, what led me to archaeology was anthropology, and specifically an elective course I took in the Fall of my senior year in high school that was taught by a Ph.D. student at the University of Massachusetts. Until then I had not been a serious student, although I did well enough in school. Perhaps I was slightly bored by most of my courses, but anthropology was anything but boring! It looked at people elsewhere in the world and over great periods of time. Many of these people lived different lives than my friends and I did, and they sometimes thought very differently about what was important in life than people here in the United States. I was fascinated, and, honestly, I particularly liked the fact that the conventions of American society, which to my teenage self were sometimes a little confining, weren’t after all the only sensible way to approach life. That year, as I chose a college to attend, I specifically looked for anthropology programs. I chose Beloit College in Wisconsin, which to this day has an excellent anthropology program.

Initially, I thought that I was most interested in cultural anthropology, but like most anthropology departments in the United States, Beloit required its anthropology majors to take courses in biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and archaeology as well as cultural anthropology. These are what are known as the four fields of American anthropology and together, they give us a more complete picture of humans in both the past and the present. Most people focus their careers in one subfield or another, though we recognize the importance of each one for understanding humans, and in most cases in North America our degrees are in anthropology not one of the subfields. In college, I found all these courses more fascinating than anything I had studied before, and I actually became a good student as I explored anthropology. I was learning so much neat stuff! I also did volunteer work in the Logan Museum at Beloit, which was founded at the end of the nineteenth century and holds some pretty amazing ethnographic and archaeological collections. It was there I first became interested in artifacts and learned to clean and care for them. After a college internship in cultural anthropology convinced me that cultural anthropology was not the most interesting part of anthropology after all, I began to focus on archaeology. I was most intrigued by my courses in Mesoamerican archaeology and North American archaeology, which before college had been completely unknown to me.

When I graduated from college, I still wasn’t sure what I would do with my life. I worked for about two years both in social work and as a tax auditor for the IRS, but decided in 1974 to try graduate school in archaeology because I still found what archaeology had taught me about past people compelling. I lived in Chicago, so I enrolled in the Ph.D. program in North American archaeology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.

My graduate self in the late 1970s. Photo credit: Phillip Neusius

The biggest shock of graduate school was my professors’ almost immediate insistence that I pick what research I wanted to do. They pushed me to develop an expertise or skill within North American archaeology through my research. It sounds obvious to me now, but I think many beginning graduate students are like I was, lovers of the discipline’s knowledge, but a bit daunted by becoming an independent researcher. Developing an area of focus and specialty skills is part of becoming a professional archaeologist. One reason for this is because contemporary archaeological undertakings rely on teams of researchers, each contributing special skills and knowledge to accomplish the many aspects of excavation, analysis, and interpretation. If you envision archaeology as the solitary pursuit of an elusive artifact or site, you don’t have the picture quite right. Think instead of archaeological fieldwork involving groups of scientists working together to discover and carefully record many different bits of evidence about what the world used to be like and what people did in it. Also think about the many hours these scientists and others will spend not only in the field, but in the laboratory after an excavation is completed cleaning finds, describing artifacts, and analyzing data in order to make meaningful interpretations.

For someone like myself, who loved all aspects of anthropology, not to mention archaeology, and who had only gradually settled on North America as my geographic focus, picking a focus on entering graduate school was a hard task. There was so much that would be interesting to study! However, I did remember especially enjoying a research paper I had done in college on the relatively new interdisciplinary field of zooarchaeology, so under pressure, I told my professors I wanted to pursue this subfield in graduate school. Amazingly, this turned out to be a good choice of specialization for me. I found that I really love to work with collections of animal bone. For me, opening a bag of bone refuse from a site still is exciting. Bone identification work is a little like doing a jigsaw puzzle without all the pieces. It is challenging, and it takes concentration and careful observation to piece together what you can. There is so much to figure out about any single piece of bone! What animal is it? How healthy was the animal? What part of the animal’s body is it? Has it been burned or cut? How was the bone buried and changed after the humans were done with it? Then you have to record this information so it can be combined with other observations on the assemblage of bone you are looking at. After identification, making sense of what a collection of the bones means and correlating these kinds of data with other information from a site and region requires careful analysis, but also insight and creativity. To me it is endlessly fascinating.

Besides finding that I liked the work, choosing zooarchaeology was also serendipitous since my professors were looking for a student to work with them on this aspect of a big project they were undertaking in west-central Illinois centered on the Koster site, which was first inhabited more than 9000 years ago and then reinhabited by people right up into modern times. Most importantly the poorly known Archaic Period levels were numerous, well-preserved, and distinct from each other so we could add a lot of new information through our work. For my dissertation I was able to look at the animal remains from levels of this site dated between approximately 8500 and 6000 years ago, which represent how people used animals at that time.

Koster site strata. All those dark layers are from Archaic period camps at the site. Photo credit: Del Bastian, Center for American Archaeology.

Graduate school was intense, but I continued to be fascinated by archaeology’s ability to tell the story of people lost to standard Western history. In those days I was excited to be part of this science that could do so much more than describe and take care of cool artifacts. It was a heady thing to learn that I could contribute to what was known about people who lived thousands of years ago. In later years, I’ve had to think more critically than I did then about what a privilege it is for an archaeologist to learn about the history and lives of other ethnicities. Today’s archaeologists recognize their responsibility to present information about past people for both scholarly and public use in ways that are sensitive to what is considered sacred and private by the descendants of those people. I think this is an important change in perspective, but in the 1970s most archaeologists just wanted to show that people’s stories from the past could be told using the techniques of archaeology. I certainly was happy, if a little naively so, to have found a way to contribute to telling the human story.

If I consider entering graduate school as the start of my professional career as an archaeologist, I have been pursuing this career for more than 45 years! Over the years I have done zooarchaeological and archaeological work in the American Midwest, Southwest, Southeast, and Northeast working on telling the story of people who lived as long as 9000 years ago and as recently as the Sixteenth century. I’ve worked at several universities, in a small museum, and on small and large archaeological projects in the field of Cultural Resource Management (CRM) doing archaeological survey, site excavation, and zooarchaeological identification and analysis. I’ve written scholarly papers and articles as well as a textbook on North American archaeology. However, beginning in the late 1980s, I spent more than 31 years doing research and teaching anthropology and archaeology here in Pennsylvania at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. In this job I taught both undergraduates and graduate students, but, as is typical of university professors, I also spent time doing fieldwork and analysis as part of my research while at IUP. Fortunately, because archaeology is a team undertaking, I’ve been able to involve many students in my research. Working with students in research as they discover what fascinates them has been a highlight of being an archaeologist for me. I’ve now retired from teaching but not archaeology. I’m still working with both physical and digital archaeological collections both through CMNH and elsewhere and writing about archaeology. Who knows what this career still will bring me!

Drawing a profile at the Johnston site with one of my students in 2008. Photo credit: Erica Ausel, IUP Archaeology.

Tracking down a bone identification with one of my students in the Zooarchaeology Lab at IUP. Photo credit: Beverly Chiarulli.

If you are reading this blog because you are thinking about archaeology as either a career or a hobby, I hope you realize that mine is just one story among the many that could be told. Because there are so many aspects of archaeology, people come into it from all sorts of backgrounds and because of all sorts of interests. I think that it is important to remember though that it really is about understanding people and telling their stories through the artifacts and other evidence we find. This is what interested me in archaeology in the first place. Discovering the details of the human story is a giant undertaking. There is no shortage of research problems or work to do, but solving the puzzles presented by sites and collections is both challenging and fun. I’m certainly glad I decided to become an archaeologist and zooarchaeologist so many years ago!

Sarah W. Neusius is a Research Associate in the Section of Anthropology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History and Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology, Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Museum employees are encouraged to blog about their unique experiences and knowledge gained from working at the museum.

Definitions of Bolded Terms

anthropology -the study of humans including the physical, cultural and social aspects in the past and present.

cultural anthropology - the study of the cultural aspects of humans especially recent and contemporary social, technological, and ideological behavior observed among living people.

biological anthropology – the study of the biological or physical aspects of humans, including human biological evolution and past and present biological diversity.

linguistic anthropology - the study of the structure , history, and diversity of human languages as well as of the relationship between language and other aspects of culture.

archaeology - the study of past human behavior and culture through the analysis of material remains.

ethnographic – relating to the scientific description of people and cultures especially customs and beliefs.

Mesoamerican archaeology - the archaeology of the area from central Mexico southward through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica.

North American archaeology - the archaeology of the area from central Mexico northward throughout the United States and Canada.

zooarchaeology – a subarea of archaeology involves the identification of animal remains from archaeological sites and investigates the ecology and cultural uses of the animals represented.

assemblage - a collection of artifacts from the same archaeological context.

Archaic Period - a time period from approximately 10,000 BP to 3000 BP that is recognized in most of North America.

Cultural Resource Management (CRM) – an applied form of archaeology undertaken in response to laws that require archaeological investigations.

archaeological survey – the systematic process archaeologists use to locate, identify, and record archaeological site distribution on the landscape.

#Carnegie Museum of Natural History #Archaeology #Zooarchaeology #Archaeologist

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lightphieric · 3 years ago

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Fluffuary Prompt #2: Long Conversations

AO3

Fandom: Zero Escape

Ship: Light/Junpei

CWs: Uh, cryptocurrency

“There’s a reason I date geniuses, you know? I like to learn shit.”

“Hmm.” Light cleared his throat, bristling at being called a genius. Junpei wasn’t incorrect, per se; he was more well-read than most, and the breadth of his knowledge was triple that of most people his age. But Light heard the word wielded derisively as often as complimentarily. “And what is it you think you can learn from me?”

“All kinds of stuff,” said Junpei. “Art, science… Man, I remember when we were in the library, you had something to say about almost every book we found. It left an impression.”

“Ah.” Light tilted his head. He brought his coffee to his lips, hoping it didn’t come off as him covering his face with embarrassment. “I’m afraid what you were so impressed with was overcompensation. You took such courageous charge of solving the room, and I didn’t want to appear to you as useless. I was afraid it came off as rather obnoxious. I promise, I am not typically like that.”

Junpei chuckled in confusion. Even when soft and not fully sincere, his laughter was infectiously full and hearty. “Like what?”

“Like an arrogant bastard. Truthfully, I find monologuing about my interests distasteful. Why would one exposit on their knowledge unsolicited if not to make others feel inadequate?” Clover did it all the time with philosophy, to disarm those who made assumptions about her intelligence. Don’t you love the look on their faces when they realize a waitress with pink hair is smarter than them? As far as Light knew, she was eavesdropping as she waited tables, laughing to herself over his humility.

“Who said anything about monologuing?” said Junpei. “I ask questions. I have tons of questions.”

Naturally, Junpei was the type of student who preferred to take an active role in his education, rather than simply listening and absorbing information. Light quite liked a man of initiative. “Consider me curious then, Junpei. What questions do you have?”

“So many. Like, uh…” Junpei clicked his tongue in thought. “Well, here’s a simple one. What’s your passion? What did you study in college?”

“Those are two very different questions, you realize.” And Junpei certainly hadn’t needed to flatter him so to preface such a basic first date question, but Light supposed he shouldn’t complain. “I studied biorobotics in school. I’d been fascinated by the field ever since I received this –” He waved his left hand. “- advanced and experimental model of prosthetic. I wished to better understand how my own body worked, and I got that wish. But after four years it was apparent that a career in the sciences was not my calling.

“My passion is the act of creation, to speak generally. I’ve been performing music since we moved to America, but I was never content with it until I began composing my own pieces. The same goes for literature – I have always loved reading, but something seemed missing from my life until I began work on my novel.”

“You’re writing a novel?” Light could practically hear Junpei’s jaw drop. “That’s next level. What’s it about?”

No. No no no. Light was cringing over how pretentious he sounded already; the last thing he wanted to be was the man who droned on and on about his experimental post-post-modernist novel. “Ah-ah, my turn to ask questions now!” he said, panicked. “We want this to be a dialogue, don’t we?”

“Uh… okay, sure. Shoot.”

“What were you studying in college?”

“Oh!” Junpei’s voice cracked as he interjected. Light worried he’d committed a faux pas, asking a drop-out about college, but Junpei seemed to have other concerns. “I, uh, designed my own major, but it was p-pretty niche… not that interesting, either, so, uh…”

Junpei was quite bad at remaining mysterious, and his embarrassment immediately narrowed down Light’s predictions to a limited number. His first guess would be Gender Studies, although why an openly bisexual man would be ashamed of that was unclear. “You intrigue me, Junpei. If you would rather not tell me, would you at least satisfy my curiosity about your major’s general field?”

“E-economics…”

Ah. Cryptocurrency. Not something Light had pegged as particularly likely, but Junpei’s shame over that phase of his life was appropriate in that case. Light knew they weren’t quite at the stage of the relationship where teasing was acceptable, but he couldn’t help himself. “I admit, economic theory is a gap in my knowledge. If you wouldn’t mind explaining some basic concepts for me…”

“I don’t know, dude.”

Light grinned. “Come, edify me. Do it and you can help me set up the harp. I’ll tell you how it works – every string, every curve.” His word choice was intentionally suggestive, and he suspected it wasn’t Junpei’s thirst to learn that made him hesitantly agree. It was charming to hear Junpei sound a pretentious fool explaining blockchain technology. Perhaps it wasn’t such a bad thing to act foolish in front of a potential romantic partner. Light decided he might someday give it a more honest try.

#fluffuary 2022 #zero escape #light field #snake 999 #junpei tenmyouji #zero escape 999 #999 spoilers #fanfiction #my writing #fluff #i don't usually post my fic directly to tumblr but hey #it's a tumblr event and these are short

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woozisnoots · 4 years ago

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modest jeon wonwoo

° pairing: wonwoo x reader ° genre: university!au, host club!au, fluff ° word count: ~1.7k ° warnings: none! ° a/n: this had no business being this long and idek if i like it lol but I want to specifically dedicate this piece to @wonwoosimp bc she’s literally the sweetest, best bean in the world [insert uwu meme here] thank you for gifting me my very first photocard, I literally cried opening it! I love you so much, I hope you enjoy!

welcome to the svt host club!

masterlist!

you entered university with a certain goal, a purpose. eventually, you were going to be the pediatric surgeon that the 13 year old you ushered you to be.

…let's just hope the knowledge of your brain was enough to get you through the first four years of pre-med. with your 3.7 high school GPA, you were lucky to get into your first choice college, let alone your current major

from the start of the semester, you dedicated yourself to studying the anatomy and physiology of the body until you knew every nook and cranny there was to know. and the library was the perfect sanctuary to get your shit together

as much as you loved your roommates, their constant fights over closet space and boy toys gave you no peace of mind what-so-ever

bless the library for being opened 24/7. If your roommates found you sleeping on their only working desk, you would find yourself waking up to the sound of tripping freshmen trying to get to their first 8am class right in the middle of the hallway

but the lone table in the corner of the library just on the third floor did you good at staying focused. even provided some good naps in between every now and then

the day before your first anatomy test, you LOCKED yourself in the library. no one was going in OR OUT of the premise just to sit across from you on YOUR table until you fully memorized the different layers of epithelial tissue >:(

gosh, you even scattered all your notes across the table just so people got the memo that this seat was: [OFF LIMITS]

yes, off limits to everyone except a certain jeon wonwoo.

the way you met was abrupt to say the least

besides your table, you had a pretty good view of the entire campus — from the main health science building all the way to the student parking lot

and just below you, an astonishing sight of a mob of screaming girls chasing after a mouse guy in glasses. not to be inconsiderate and heartless, but unless you heard someone scream bloody murder, diving back into your flashcard you go

tissue after tissue, you start to get delusional because at this point, everything is starting to look the same

slumping down into your chair, you take a second to mentally recharge, drinking the water you’ve neglected for the past three hours

you time yourself for a five minute break, going through the notifications on your phone

before you could read your roommate’s ongoing ramble on the latest update of the “crazy good looking, god-like, elite host club that the university has to offer”

a ‘club’ that you didn’t even know anything about nor cared for

you hear a loud ‘thud’ coming from the bookcase in front of you

from the side the tall, lean guy with glasses that you saw earlier emerged with his hands gripping his tricep

you try not to draw too much attention to him. half the reason being you didn’t want to embarrass him by laughing at the fact he ran into a 10 feet tall bookcase

and you did not need this man distracting you. it’s your eight week streak being this productive, a new record for anything you’ve done in your entire life and your pride wouldn’t let you have it if you lost it just because you saw an attractive man on sight

you scribble down a decent guess to the tissue identification question that you’ve been stuck on for the past few minutes, not bothering to look up

“that’s actually dense connective tissue, not smooth”

jolting up from your seat, you look up realizing the guy 5 feet away is now right in front of your face looking down at all your papers

“you can tell because they’re striated”

you stare at him in disbelief wondering how he could have gotten so fast with just looking at it for a few seconds. eyeing him up and down, he definitely looked around the same age as you but he wasn’t someone you’ve seen around the science buildings. and you would know since you took the liberty of familiarizing almost everyone within the department

“do you mind if i sit here?” his hands already on the edge of the chair ready to pull it out from underneath him

“...yeah sure”

“oh i’m wonwoo by the way,” he says as you both exchange awkward stares and knowledgeable nods

okay well since he’s proven that he might be of help to you, you might as let him stay. from what you’ve gathered, he didn’t have any stuff on him aside from his phone that you watch him get out of his front pocket, getting ready to play pacman

forget how attractive he is, this guy has some brains.

for the rest of the day, as you guys sat across from each other, wonwoo would occasionally bounce back and forth between giving you study tips and playing whatever game he decides to play at that moment in time

he was surprisingly really good at this? he knew more things about the subject than your professors did, and that’s saying a lot. like you’ve been looking at cells for WEEKS and you were lucky to get at least half of them. which begs the question:

“how do you magically know all this?”

the blank expression on his face tells you he wasn’t expecting that question but he quickly shrugs it off. “i just know a few things from my parents that’s all”

you would have questioned him further but the time on your phone read “22:57” and you already broke your number rule about sleeping early before a big test

as you pack up all your stuff, wonwoo pushes his chair in, bidding you farewell

“good luck on your test tomorrow!”

you appreciate the gesture, mentally thanking him for his help and proceed to go back to your dorms, preparing yourself to tell your roommate all about the exciting? day you had

“YOU MORON. JEON WONWOO?”

laying flat on your back on your bed, you cover the bottom half of your face, quivering under your sheets as you stare at your roommate’s outrageous outburst

you explain what happened and who you met today at the library. when your roommate asked to describe him in more detail, all you said was that he was pretty smart for someone who wasn’t particularly in your major

your roommate lets out a loud scream into their pillow, gripping the bed sheets before giving you the earful of the century

“he’s just being modest. he’s a korean lit major but he’s one of the uni’s top students since both his parents are the head of the science department.

…AND he’s one of the most requested host club members. so you caught yourself one big fish today bud.”

top student? science department? HOST CLUB? none of that was processing in your brain. the one club that you wanted nothing to do with and you just happened to meet their top money maker

grand.

the thought didn’t keep you up at night only because you thought that today’s encounter was just coincidence and you probably would never have to see him again.

(sad though, your roommate was right. he is rather good looking.)

the time that it took for you to take your test the next day flew by so fast that you questioned if it even happened. the first step you took out the classroom, you start to second guess all your answers, regretting that you didn’t check a third or even fourth time before submitting

your train of thought halts when you see jeon wonwoo standing in the empty hallway

“i’m sure you aced it”

and just like in a netflix original romance movie, he reveals a bouquet of pink begonias from behind his back while shyly adjusting his glasses

“these are for you. to congratulate you”

weird way to phrase it but you were still gonna take the flowers. “host club tendencies?”

“so you found out?”

from a distance, you can hear the rushing footsteps from downstairs followed by a sense of purpose. “i think i was bound to” :/

you didn’t know how you felt about the current situation. you had no idea what host club was until you got here and you still don’t know what they even do. for all you knew, this could just be a gesture to get them more clients

but if his actions were genuine… you wouldn’t mind seeing him again

“i have to start learning muscles for our next exam. heard it was one of the hardest ones. i’m not sure if you have more studying tricks up your sleeve?”

“i might.” a cocking little grin now appearing on his face

“good. same place at the library tomorrow then. and this time? try not to bring your dedicated fans wherever you go”

so these study sessions continued. you guys occasionally had to change spots - from cafe to an empty bio lab - if the mob ever saw a single hair follicle that might be his

but each time, wonwoo brought something more just himself. one day it would be coffee, others days it would be food. things to keep you motivated.

for a korean lit major, he was taking a lot of time out of his day to help you, being attentive to all the strategies that help you study and such

possibly making your assumption from months back, true.

by the time finals rolled around, aside from the spursts of review here and there, study sessions became more casual. you didn’t feel the need to overwork our brain since you already knew all the information (something you actually learned from wonwoo himself)

possibly the last meeting you’d have with him was similar to your first: just you two together but him playing on his phone. and yet before the night ended

“i have a proposal.”

“i’m not giving you money for your dumb club.” bold of him to assume you would-

“no but i really appreciate the thought :)

why don’t we turn these study sessions into… study dates instead?”

your assumption after 6 months later: finally confirmed

“but that’s only IF you ace your finals.”

well let’s just say at the very end, you had a successful first semester and are now one step closer towards being the surgeon of your dreams.

plus, you even landed yourself a pretty cool boyfriend in the process

let’s hope his parents put in a good word for you when you apply to med school!

#seventeen #wonwoo #caratwritersclub #seventeen imagine #wonwoo imagine #seventeen scenario #wonwoo scenario #seventeen au #wonwoo au #seventeen fanfic #wonwoo fanfic #seventeen series #jeon wonwoo #wonwoo x reader

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btsficsforthehumble · 3 years ago

Text

adj.: 1. Modern, unfamiliar, or different

2. Not based on or conforming to what is generally done or believed

pairing: reader x ot7

genre: college au; angst, fluff, smut, poly, ot7

Summary: You begin your first year at a prestigious university, set out on achieving your academic goals when a series of men step into your life that change the way you view the definition of love.

Part Seven

Warnings: sexual insinuations, slight sexual harassment (catcalling)

Word count: 2.7k

You hear Hoseok’s cheery voice call out your name almost immediately after you step into the quaint coffee shop. You send him a smile and a wave. Spotting Taehyung across Hoseok at the table, you send him a slightly more hesitant smile. The one he returns is one you have grown used to, now --- cheeky.

You order your coffee and walk over to the table after you get it from the barista. As you walk over, Taehyung sees you, and quickly clears away his stuff so you can take the seat next to him, and not Hoseok. At the sight, you hold back the urge to frown. It seemed like the pain in the ass Taehyung was back.

You sit, and Hoseok looks up from the textbook in front of him. “Hey y/n! How are you?” he says, his classic sunny smile on his face.

“I’m good! And you?”

“I’m great! I was just beginning to practice some problems for the first chapter, do you want to do them together?” he asks.

“Yeah! Let me just take out my book,” you answer, already reaching in your bag.

“Here, just use mine.” Taehyung slides his book across the tabletop, leaving it directly in front of you.

“Don’t you need yours?” You ask, furrowing your brows in confusion.

“Nah, I already did chapter one,” he explains with a shrug.

“Oh, okay, if you’re sure…”

“Yeah, go for it.”

At that, you and Hoseok begin to tear through the problem sets, moving rapidly as you had secretly studied prior to coming. As you finish the first chapter, he looks up at you and gives a noise of surprise. “You didn’t need any help at all! You weren’t giving yourself enough credit, y/n!” he teases.

You divert your eyes, feeling a blush climb to your cheeks from his praise. When you look back up, it’s Taehyung that catches your gaze. He was giving you a knowing smirk, seemingly having picked up on your little crush on Hoseok.

Your eyes dart back to Hoseok as you respond. “Let’s see how the next chapter goes, it might not be so easy…”

He makes a noise of agreement, flipping his textbook to the next chapter. “Yeah, it does get a bit harder. I’m sure you are already a pro though, based off of chapter one!” He gives you a toothy grin, causing your blush to return. “Taehyung, you didn’t do chapter two, right?”

----

An hour later, the three of you had managed to get through all of the practice problems together. All of you feeling tired, you were fast to slip into conversation about anything other than the math in front of you.

You learn that Hoseok is an environmental science major, and a third year. He also shares that he was in your school’s dance club, but shyly declines to bust a move at your and Taehyung’s insistence. His bubbly personality only grows when talking about his passions.

Having learnt Taehyung’s major earlier today, the only new information you got out of him was that he is a second year student, and is taking calculus as a general math requirement. He doesn’t care for it, personally, he says. Despite that, he also seemed to do just fine when the three of you trudged through the problems.

Before you depart for the night, Taehyung catches both of you, and invites you both to a party, hosted by his roommate on Saturday.

“I was told to invite everyone, so feel free to bring anyone you want. It’s supposed to be a back to school thing,” he explains.

Hoseok frowns. “I already was invited to something on Saturday, actually. Maybe next time!”

Their eyes both move to you, waiting for your response. “Uhm, yeah, I’ll come,” you answer. You didn’t have plans and honestly, you imagine you’ll want to relieve some stress after this week anyway.

Taehyung looks like a cat that got the canary after you speak, and Hoseok looks happy you were able to accept the offer, as he’s smiling at both of you.

“Yay! That’ll be fun, y/n! I’m sure Tae here will make sure you have a good time!” he beams, completely oblivious to the subtext of his own words.

Unfortunately, Taehyung wasn’t. He didn’t seem to care about the casual nickname Hoseok had used, but more so about the dirty interpretation of his words. “Of course, it’s always a good time with me,” he says with a grin.

You felt yourself grow slightly restless at the dual conversation being had. You wanted to tell Taehyung to stop being annoying but didn’t want to draw Hoseok’s attention to the dirtiness of what was being said. Taehyung must have noticed your shiftiness, because he places one of his large hands on your knee.

“I wish I could come! You two have fun without me,” Hoseok pouts.

“Oh, we will! Next time, sunbae,” Taehyung answers, giving your knee a light squeeze.

The thoughts that filter through your mind at Taehyung's words are far from innocent. It was one thing to insinuate that you and Taehyung would be having sex, but to suggest that the time after Hoseok would also be involved? Combined with the thoughts and Taehyung’s hand on your knee, you felt yourself get slightly turned on. Trying to calm down, you squirm a little in your chair, which tips Taehyung off to the fact that you were affected by the situation. His grin turns downright wolfish, at your chagrin.

Hoseok appears oblivious, as he begins packing up his stuff preparing to go home. After a second, you hurry to follow suit. Taehyung removes his hand as you do, allowing you to gather your things peacefully while he gathers his own.

You all stand, ready to depart for the night. Slightly uncomfortable with your partially aroused status, you clutch onto your bag and bounce lightly on your feet. Taehyung’s obnoxious smile fails to leave his face as he watches you.

Eager to escape, you bid them both goodbye, and tell them both you’ll see them in class tomorrow before you hightail it out of the cafe. Before you get more than two steps out of the door however, you hear a voice call after you. You stop in your tracks, and Hoseok speeds out of the cafe to catch up to you.

“Do you want one of us to walk you home? It’s dark out, and neither of us mind, right Tae?” He turns over his shoulder to confirm this with Taehyung who had emerged from the cafe right after Hoseok had.

“No, of course not. I wouldn’t want anything to happen,” Taehyung replies, now leaning against the glass of the storefront.

You shift on your feet slightly, torn. They had a point, it would be safer to have one of them walk you, but you were already a little jittery from the suggestive conversation that was just had.

Seeing your indecisive state, Hoseok reasons, “I live over by Munsu Street, if you live over there it wouldn’t even be out of my way.”

You couldn’t figure out if you were disappointed or not that he lived in the complete opposite direction. “Actually, I’m on Bongdeog… don’t worry about it, I’m pretty far from you.”

Taehyung raises his eyebrows once he hears your street. “I’m only a street over from you. I’ll walk you home, it’s no problem,” he says while pushing off of the building.

You glance at Hoseok, who was smiling at Taehyung. “Great! All right guys, have a good night!” he says, already backing up to go the opposite direction of the one in which you and Taehyung were about to go.

“You too!” you call out to him as you start walking away, back facing his receding form.

Now you and Taehyung were alone. You feel safe, but are on edge --- but only because of how he riled you up only a number of minutes before. Taehyung, on the hand, seemed perfectly at ease. Hands in his pockets, he started walking --- no, more like strolling --- towards your street. You both fell into a silence. Tense on your part, but easy on his, it seems.

After a few minutes, you felt the tension in your shoulders start to fade. Taehyung probably didn’t want to do anything that would make you uncomfortable while you were alone, you thought. Which, honestly, was really thoughtful and sweet… it wouldn’t even occur to most guys to do that.

After another minute of walking, you see him tense up slightly and glance over to an alley that you were approaching. You look up at his face, with his heavy brows furrowed in concentration. He looks down at you, widens his eyes, seeming to ask for consent for something.

Confused, you nod. He quickly wraps his arm around your side to pull you into him, leaving you hip to hip, his hand still resting in the dip of your waist. You look up, startled at the action, but are interrupted before you can ask him what the hell he thought he was doing.

“Is that your girl? She’s mighty pretty.” A man's voice called, seeming to come from the alley that Taehyung had looked at with concern moments before.

You see a man step out, wearing what looked like baggy clothes with some mysterious stains on them. His hair looked unkempt and greasy all the way from where you were standing.

Now you understand why Taehyung had pulled you in. He must have known that alley held some shady figures.

“Just keep walking and ignore him. He won’t do anything with me here,” Taehyung leaned down to whisper in your ear. You nod in response, not wanting to draw any more attention to yourself from the man, who now was only several meters away.

“Hey, I’m talking to you pretty boy. You want me to take her off your hands?” In response to the man's provocation, you felt Taehyung’s fingers tighten slightly on your waist. You could tell now that the man was visibly drunk, barely able to stand on his own, and seemed to be a poor soul that was down on his luck. You felt a pang of sympathy for the man.

You look again up to examine Taehyung’s face. He had his lips pressed into a flat line, and still had his eyebrows furrowed. The contortion of his normally open and playful features only emphasized his beauty. He looked so handsome, you think to yourself.

The thought passes quickly as you are brought back to reality. You were both now getting closer to the stranger, trying to pass by. You become more stiff with nerves, and Taehyung gives you a light squeeze of reassurance in response.

To your surprise, Taehyung reaches into his back pocket and produces a few bills from his wallet as you get closer to standing in front of the man. As you pass, he hands his money to the drunkard.

“Stay safe,” he tells the man, who was now looking at him with the same wide eyes you were giving him.

Taehyung ignores your wide stares, and continues walking as if nothing had occurred, completely unbothered. His hand still rested around your waist, however.

Realizing his luck, the man quickly scurries back down the alley from which he emerged, probably in fear that Taehyung would demand his money back.

Still surprised at what had happened, you were processing quietly to yourself for a minute. Once you both were out range of the man, Taehyung respectfully dropped his arm and gave you space.

You weren’t sure you were as relieved about it as you should be at his release. Your mind returns to the act he had done a moment ago, and couldn’t resist asking him about it now that you felt safe with the man gone.

“What was that about?” you ask bluntly, looking up at him to read his expression.

He just shrugged. After a second, he says, “That man is there all the time. Pretty sure he’s homeless. Drinks to cope, I think.”

Your eyes soften at his words. You had seen a serious side to him this morning; and now you were seeing him show his thoughtfulness and kindness, even for a stranger. Taehyung was proving to be a deeper person than what you had originally pegged him to be.

“You really didn’t have to do that, you know,” you say, wanting to get more out of him.

“I know.” He maintains his nonchalance. Seems like you wouldn’t be digging any deeper.

You both keep walking, again in silence. This time though, it is a completely comfortable one. The boy next to seemed like a different person than the one who touched your leg in secret and made innuendos about threesomes earlier. He seemed more mature, mellow even.

Before you even noticed, you and Taehyung had walked all the way to your street, both lost in your own thoughts. Moments later, you arrive at the front of your apartment building.

You stop at the entrance, and look up at Taehyung to say goodbye.

“This is me,” you offer.

He leans against the building, hands in his pockets. “Do you want me to join you up there?” He gives you one of his cheeky smirks.

“I think I can handle it.”

He wiggles his eyebrows. “You sure?”

You sigh, and roll your eyes. “Try again next time, buddy.”

“You’ll want me soon? Wow, and here I was thinking you were a woman of virtue,” he grins.

“It doesn’t take virtue to turn you down, I’m afraid.”

He fakes a gasp, and covers his heart with his hand. “You wound me, y/n. And here I was thinking we were friends.”

“Ah, yes, because good friends keep trying to get in the pants of the other, I forgot.” You stretch your arms above your head, the textbook in your backpack beginning to weigh on your shoulders. You watched his eyes travel down your body and back up, becoming slightly hooded. You’ll admit stretching may have also been a way to tease Taehyung.

“You can’t blame me too much… you’re quite captivating, sweetheart,” he admits, but holds his teasing tone.

“Sure, if you find all random college girls captivating. Which, I guess if you’re a fuckboy, you might,” you say with a shrug.

He raises his eyebrows, and pulls his head back slightly at your accusation. “Don’t write yourself off so easily, y/n.” He tilts his head to the side. “Have you seen me pursue any other girls? Flirt with anyone else at all?”

You look down at your feet at his questioning. The truth was, you really hadn’t. He only ever seemed to focus on you, which you had previously found annoying, but were coming to enjoy secretly.

“I suppose not, but I’ve only known you for a few days. Who’s to say the list of girls you have isn't long?”

“Who’s to say that it is?”

You narrow your eyes and regard him carefully. You wanted to determine if he was just bullshitting you or was being genuine; his eyes were open and honest, and nothing about his body language told you he was lying.

“You’re a strange one, Kim Taehyung. Goodnight,” you say with finality while you turn around to head inside your building. You don’t know if you can deal with any more of him tonight. It feels like he turns your head upside down. You can never seem to get an accurate read on the guy.

“Sleep well, y/n.” You hear his deep voice call out as the door shuts behind you, and it sends shivers up your spine. You hated the fact that he had that power over you, but he was undeniably attractive. And the more you uncover about him, the more you feel his pull.

Just thinking about it made you realize how exhausted you were from today. Today felt insanely long, so much so that the Jimin/Yoongi fiasco felt like it happened ages ago. You could practically hear your bed calling your name, so with sleep in mind you rush to get some rest. Tomorrow, you’d deal with Taehyung in Calculus --- tomorrow.

#btsgoldnet #bangtanarmynet #houseofddaeng #ficscafe #bts #bts x reader #bts fanfic

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womenfrommars · 3 years ago

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Wait you got whole classes dedicated to other countries?? That’s great but yeah if ur wondering Americans usually do not get that. We sometimes have foreign language classes but it depends on the school and it’s often only counted as an elective and being in the class doesn’t mean that the teacher will actually do anything. And it’s just learning the language and absolutely nothing else, if you’re lucky enough to even have that offered. We don’t even learn about other North American countries. Honestly most schools don’t even teach about how the USA government works. Civics got taken out of most curriculums along with home economics. Even if you are able to get certain classes there’s not really anything keeping teachers from giving students inaccurate or biased information because “muh freedom and state’s rights” or something. Schools will pass students even if they didn’t learn anything because of some laws that got passed in like the 90s. It depends a lot on where in the US you live, if you went to public school or if your family could afford private school, etc. There’s also weird zoning laws that effect where you’re allowed to go to school, so if you live in a neighborhood with a “bad school” ur pretty much stuck there unless ur parents are able to sort it out. And then there’s big differences with rural vs urban vs suburban schools. Most states have their standards for education posted online but no one follows them and it’s practically incoherent anyway. American schools basically just teach simple math and English (those are the best taught subjects here, there’s other stuff though) and have students memorize whatever is on the standardized tests that week. Schools here tend to function more like combo daycares/prisons and less like places for learning, especially high schools. Like there’s the internet but independent study with no structure or direction doesn’t always have the best outcomes. I think that’s why young people are so insane here, but it’s whatever I guess… None of this applies to colleges theres different problems there. (Sorry for rambling in ur inbox ❤️ I couldn’t tell if that was a serious question or not)

No honey I was obliged to learn English, French, and German and in those language classes they also teach you a little bit about those countries' culture and history. It doesn't go the other way around. Nobody else in Europe really has mandatory Dutch classes because my country isn't relevant enough lol. I think everyone in Europe learns English as a second language and maybe also a third and/or fourth language depending on their geographical location and school system. My school also offered Latin and Ancient Greec but that was fully optional. Some schools also offer Mandarin Chinese or European Spanish but that's rare since they are not obliged to. I kind of assumed all Americans had to learn Mexican Spanish as well but apparantly that's just optional rip

We do learn how the country is governed. You kind of already learn by reading the news but it is also discussed in a social sciences class that focuses on socio-political issues. I don't know what that is even called in English but I had it for just one year and my teacher was a major clown lol. We also have a class that teaches you the basics of all major religions and we followed that up with a little bit of philosophy. We also followed another class for just one year that focused on teaching how to conduct scientific research. The religion class was very biased and my teacher kept simping for Islam even when acknowledging one of Muhammed's brides was underaged. We also learned about the Kaaba going by the Islamic story when that's not historically accurate. In general all my teachers for that class were Christian so we mostly focused on Christianity. It also brought out the edgy Reddit atheist in some of us.

In general everyone follows a different curriculum because there are different levels of education depending on how gifted you are. For the level I followed I had to go to high school for 6 years (counting "middle school" as well). After the age of 15 we had some more freedom in which subjects we wanted to keep following but it's very limited choice so not exactly pick and choose. My dumbass chose the two most difficult math classes rip

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collegecoward · 4 years ago

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Hey, so I graduated this past May and since then I've just been working 40 hours a week. I feel like I need to go to college to do something with my life but I feel like theres so much in my way and I havent done anything to even start and I dont have a clue what I'd want to do. I'm so unsure on how to do anything regarding financial aid or even applying to colleges. I'm also worried that it wouldn't work with my schedule for my job. I work 5 days with 2 off days and I'm on evenings so I feel like I wouldn't be able to balance work and school, but I would have to bc I'm my only financial support. Sorry for the dumping my problems, but any advice?

How To Do College 101

Congratulations on your graduation! Working a full-time job after graduation (during a freaking pandemic, no less) is no small feat either, and I applaud you for that, too. Once upon a time, I was like you: I didn’t know anything about college except that I wanted to go, and now I run a blog telling people how to go to college. College might be strange and unfamiliar now, but in time, you will learn how to do it!

This might be my longest post, so strap in for a fun ride!! My answer comes to you in three parts:

How To Do Community College

How To Do University

How To Do Financial Aid

P.S. I’m going to say this only once, but feel free to ask why: Do not attend a for-profit college. Okay, now onto the basics!

How To Do Community College

I encourage you to read my Ode to Community College. Community colleges are real colleges designed for people who are low on funds, are working or have other responsibilities, don’t know what they want to study yet, and/or don’t know how college works yet.

Step 1: Applying

Community colleges accept anyone who applies, and the application is usually just like filling out a job application, but you will also need to send in your high school transcript, and I recommend sending any test scores. Your college may have you take a placement test to see if you’re ready for college. If you’re not quite ready, they may have you take some pre-college courses in English or math before you officially start a degree program.

Step 2: Choosing a Degree Program

Among other things, community colleges award associate’s degrees, which are essentially the first two years of a bachelor’s degree at a four-year college or university. You’ll take introductory classes like English, math, science, and social sciences, as well as electives (i.e. fun classes). Here’s a list of programs that might be offered at your community college.

Step 3: Taking the Right Classes

Make sure you stick to your college’s degree plan so that you take classes that 1) count toward your associate’s degree and 2) will transfer to a university. Most classes you take for an associate’s degree (AA, AS, or AFA) should transfer to a bachelor’s degree (BA, BS, or BFA) easily enough, but sometimes universities aren’t very transfer-friendly. The best option is to transfer to a university that has a partnership with your community college, which is information you should be able to find on your community college’s website. If your community college doesn’t have any partners, you’ll want to research the transfer policies at the universities you’re interested in and follow their guidelines on what classes to take.

Step 4: Transferring

In your last year of community college, you will apply to a four-year college or university for your bachelor’s degree. You’ll need to pick a major when you apply because for the next two years, that’s what you will be studying. Make sure you tour the university before you attend and get acclimated before your first day!

How To Do University

Whether or not you attend community college for the first two years or enroll directly into a four-year college or university, you’ll want to understand how to navigate the basics as early as possible.

Step 1: Exploring Your Options

Use my Self-Reflection Toolkit and this quiz from Marquette University to explore potential majors. These are just meant to get you thinking and guide you as you learn more about yourself and your interests. This process will take time to research and figure out, and if you enroll directly into a four-year college you can change your major after you apply. As I mentioned, the first two years are mostly basics and figuring stuff out, so either way you have time.

I was very bad at choosing colleges to apply to and applied almost at random. I learned a lot from those mistakes, and on my FAQ page you’ll see me trying to impart that wisdom on others. I recommend doing your research, going on virtual tours, and getting used to just looking at college websites, even if you don’t know what you want yet. Start by window shopping for colleges in your state and see what they have to offer you. College Board also has tools for finding a college that fits your needs. It’s worth starting as early as possible, and I know that you can do it. Like I said, I was really bad at it and I still made it through.

Step 2: Applying

Applying to a four-year college will take more steps than a community college application. Many colleges require letters of recommendation, essays, and application fees (look on their websites for fee waivers). More information is on my FAQ page, of course, but be prepared to complete these steps before application deadlines. Each college sets its own deadline, but if you want to go next year, you’ll likely need to apply by January or February. Applying can be daunting, but you will need to do it at some point, even if you go to community college first.

Step 3: Finding Resources

Access any and all resources your university offers, which will include advising, counseling, career services, and more. The same is true at a community college, but I would argue it’s even more true at a university. You might find out about internships, research opportunities, fun events, and all that stuff that excited you when you saw it on your university’s website! Even if you don’t feel like you need resources, you’re paying for them, so you might as well use them! Often people won’t know how to help you unless you tell them you’re struggling, like how you told me what you’re going through and I wrote a post that’s turning into a short novel! (I’ll be done soon, I promise.)

Step 4: Taking The Right Classes

Just like at a community college, you want to make sure you’re taking classes that count toward your degree and interest you. Make sure you’re following the prescribed degree plan on your university’s website and communicated by your advisor. If you find that you’ve chosen a major that doesn’t fit your interests, make sure you speak with your professors, your advisor, and anyone else whose opinion you trust.

How To Do Financial Aid

Step 1: Understanding The Basics

There are three major types of financial aid: loans (money you have to pay back after you graduate), grants (government money you’re awarded based on your financial need that you don’t have to pay back), and scholarships (money from a college or other source that is awarded for any reason that you don’t have to pay back). Loans might come from the government, your college, or a bank. I recommend borrowing from the federal government because the interest is so low (basically, it’s cheaper to pay off than a bank loan).

Step 2: Filling Out FAFSA

If you want to go to college next fall, or if you just want to do a practice round, fill out FAFSA now. I’m assuming you’re under 24, so you will need your parents’ tax information even if they’re not going to help you pay for college. Filling out FAFSA will never, not ever ever ever require you or your parents to take out any loans. Rather, FAFSA gives you access to any need-based financial aid you might be eligible for, whether that aid comes from the government or not. Loans agreements are a totally separate form, and you can take some loans without your parents’ help. If you’re not eligible for FAFSA, check whether your state or college has its own FAFSA alternative.

Step 3: Reading Your Award Letter

After a college sends an acceptance letter, they will also send a financial aid award letter. The letter will show you how much you’ve been awarded in scholarships and grants and how much you can take out in loans from the federal government or the college itself. You should compare your financial aid amount to the total cost of attendance, will you can find on the college’s financial aid webpage. The total cost of attendance is how much it costs to pay for tuition, fees, housing, and a rough estimate of your other living expenses. Basically, it’s how much it costs to be a student for one year.

As you said, I wouldn’t expect you to be able to work 40 hours while maintaining good grades, so may need to be frugal and creative to fill in any gaps financial aid didn’t cover. Private colleges tend to have a really big “sticker price,” but may offer generous scholarships as discounts, whereas public colleges tend to be cheaper and may have (large and small) scholarships to help you pay.

Step 4: Applying

In addition to the scholarships that you may be automatically awarded if you meet certain criteria, your colleges may also have scholarships that you have to apply for by yourself. This information will be located on a college’s financial aid webpage. There are also scholarships from nonprofit organizations and businesses. Visit my resources page for info, ask people you know if they’re aware of any scholarships, ask your boss and coworkers, and ask Google for “scholarships in [your town].”

Okay, I threw a lot at you, but those are the basics as I see them! You can totally do this. It’s going to be a big learning curve, but the payoffs will be big. And you can always come back here for more advice and reassurance. I’m proud of you already for thinking of your future and doing what you can to support yourself and your learning.

#application #apply #appblr #major #community college #transfer #financial aid #student loans #scholarships

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july-19th-club · 3 years ago

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i’m a curious/terrified sophomore in college contemplating the future, and i was wondering how you became a librarian? which area, what did you do in undergrad, how did you decide on that career—the cliche stuff. i’m looking into archival and information studies mostly bc i think libraries and museums are cool af places academically and socially, and the evolving media landscape does interesting things to them but like… is that motivation gonna cut it?? how does one Go About figuring this out lol

weeellll im gonna tell you first off that i did not major in anything library related, and the main reason i have my job rn is luck - so i dont know if i can really answer your questions. i majored in creative writing and english, and was/am intending to publish novels. after college i managed to get a part time (like, VERY part-time, like 15 hours a week part time) at a small-town public library (like VERY small; it was two rooms and i was one of two employees). but i learned the computer system and the basics of shelving and patron interaction there and when a position opened up at a nearby slightly larger library (like, three floors and thirty staff members at the time) i was able to apply and i got the job on the basis of the fact that i was the only one of the candidates who already was familiar with the computer system. then i worked part-time there for a year or two, got laid off during the early pandemic, got brought back after a couple months and offered a full-time position because we had a number of elderly employees who were retiring, and got put in charge of donations and memorials with no prior experience in either and spent the last year and a half in a constant state of flying by the seat of my pants. because we now only have about 12 employees, it's a very everyone-does-everything all-hands-on-deck situation and the only thing i don't regularly do around the library is story hour or the children's floor.

so in some ways what you do in college doesn't have as much bearing as you'd think on what you do later in life. if i want to advance any further at work and head a department or order books, i would need a MLS, and at least at my library the board pays for any online classes you take to round out your degree. but i feel like i'm busy enough already that i don't want to try to fit in college work again if i'm not physically at college. most of the people i currently work with did not go to school for library sciences - the people i work with at the circ desk were a newspaper photographer and a fine arts student, respectively, and downstairs in children's we have a former architecture professor and a woman who mostly did childcare before becoming a children's librarian. everyone where i work who has their MLS degree got it online while already working at the library.

SO i don't know if that's encouraging or the opposite...i think whatever it is that you're aiming to do, focus on the practical aspects of the job. if there's a local library or museum that has open part-time positions near where you go to school, see if you can apply. or see if your school does work-study at the college library. what you learn just working there can act like an apprenticeship of sorts, and you can use it when you do get your degree to say "I have experience with X cataloging system" or "I know both Dewey and Library of Congress filing systems" or what-have-you. and since you're interested in archival stuff, know that's gonna be very different from what i do, and the college library might be a better place to find practical experience in it. but i do think that a degree can only take you so far, and having concrete "i worked here for x many months, i know how to do x specific thing or use x specific tool" will be way more valuable when you look for a job in your field. then any future libraries/museums/etc that you apply at will see not just that you're *interested* in the work but that you know *how* it works, and you could jump into a position with minimal training.

i...hope this helps? i realize it's not exactly the answer you were looking for, but it's the information i have. and it's a fun field to work in, even at the local public level where it's mostly confused patrons trying to figure out how their wifi hotspot works and very little poring over old texts for obscure references. and having phrases like *evolving media landscape* ready to go never hurts.

#yeah but i just kinda fell into this job #and now i have no time to write! but if you didnt want time to write and you just wanted to work in a library #it's good work if you can get it

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andrewmoocow · 3 years ago

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Steven Universe Alternate Future chapter 17: Together Forever (originally posted on July 5, 2021)

AN: Welcome back my loyal readers! Sorry to keep you all waiting these past few months, but I know the wait will really be worth it. The final two parts of Alternate Future might be some of my greatest writings yet, and I'm more than excited to share it all with you starting today. Now without further ado….

Synopsis: Steven tries to become Connie's official boyfriend.

Cast:

Zach Callison as Steven

Estelle as Garnet

Charlyne Yi as Ruby

Erica Luttrell as Sapphire

Deedee Magno-Hall as Pearl

Grace Rolek as Connie

Dee Bradley Baker as Lion

Kimberly Brooks as Cherry Quartz

Noël Wells as Black Rutile

Featuring Ray Chase as George Ikari

Pearl stood in line at the Buddwick Public Library alongside many other parents and parental figures like her, waiting as a bearded, glasses-wearing Japanese-American man signed books at a table.

"Hey, you wouldn't happen to not be from around here, right?" a single dad standing behind Pearl asked her.

"Well, technically yes," Pearl informed the father. "I come from a planet of beings similar to myself who are all based around gemstones, which explains my appearance. Also, just last week I helped save your world from a sociopathic revolutionary, so you're welcome."

"You foreigners say the craziest things!" the father giggled in disbelief of Pearl, who just groaned flatly as the line began to pick up.

Eventually, Pearl was at the front of the line and now face to face with childcare author George Ikari, who had his fingers clasped together as he gazed at Pearl.

"Let me guess, you are here because of your own son, daughter, or whatever pronouns your child prefers to be dubbed?" George asked Pearl while he took out another copy of his book, titled "When Your Child Wants Time Apart", to sign for the Gem.

"Well, he's not really my son, but Steven is the closest thing my team, the Crystal Gems, have to one after his mother died giving birth to him." Pearl explained as George got to signing. "And that's not even getting into the fact that his mother was a former despotic alien conqueror who grew tired of her life and the constant neglect from her fellow despots, so she faked her death because of how much she valued your planet as part of a big war, then thousands of years later she met a rock star and fell in love with him before they consummated their relationship and she gave up her physical form to give birth to Steven."

George just stared in shock at Pearl's tale before she tried to continue. "And just last week, there was this other Gem with a vendetta against Steven's mother who tried to destroy the planet and kill us a-"

"Stop." George commanded Pearl with a raise of his hand before handing over the signed book. "Just take the book and leave. Your tales are holding up the line."

"What did I tell ya, foreigners say the craziest things!" the single father from before laughed.

"I'm deeply sorry Mr. Ikari, it's just that Steven has been going through some rough times lately." Pearl apologized to the author.

"I completely understand miss." George said while pulling out his phone to show Pearl a picture of his own son, a young man with scruffy brown hair, a white dress shirt, and a nervous expression on his face. "My son Shane has had his fair share of troubles ever since his mother died, troubles that he insisted on running away from rather than facing them maturely."

"Just like Steven." Pearl compared the two boys sympathetically. "I am deeply sorry for your loss sir."

"Thank you for your kindness." George smiled, putting away his phone. "The best thing I feel could work for a situation like this is to let things play out and discuss his problems when the time is right."

"Thank you very much George." Pearl thanked the author as she finally began to leave the library with her new book in hand. "Though I doubt that'll be of any use to Steven."

Not too far away from the library, Steven was sitting in his room talking to Connie on the phone while she was on her study break.

"Wow Connie, looks like you got all this college stuff figured out." Steven laughed with his dear human friend over his phone.

"I've got a whole plan figured out for early admission into the University of Jayhawk, but I'm still not sure about my major," Connie explained to Steven. "Maybe I should major in political science and minor in sociology, or perhaps the other way around."

"Did all our galactic adventures together get you interested in politics?" Steven asked.

"Maybe." Connie chuckled. "But I'm thinking more down to earth, as far as long-term careers go." As the two laughed at Connie's pun, the timer on her phone began to go off. "Wow, fifteen minutes went by pretty fast."

"Aw man, these study breaks are too short." Steven complained before he realized something. "Hey wait, you left a brochure at my place last time." He stated, pulling out a brochure for Connie's college of choice to show her. "You want it back?"

"It's alright Steven, I still have two more, and the Internet too." Connie answered smiling.

"Oh, right." Steven realized. "Well, call me when you still wanna hang out, okay?"

"You know I will, silly!" Connie beamed. "Okay, for real now, bye!"

After Connie ended the call, Steven turned over on his back and gazed at the brochure in his hands. "The University of Jayhawk, huh?" he muttered to himself. "And how far is that from here?" Steven then opened up the brochure to learn how far the distance between Beach City and the university's location in Kansas was. "Oh, that far."

Once again, Steven began to glow pink as he sadly sank into his bed, fretting over how little often he'd be able to see Connie regularly. Gazing at his rose-colored hand, he then started pondering on whether he should do something about this new condition, as he had been thinking about since the titanic battle with Black Rutile.

Soon, Steven had decided to get up off his bed and walk downstairs, to which he found Garnet standing in the living room dressed in a hat and kerchief. "Oh Garnet, you're still here?"

"Steven." Garnet greeted Steven tersely.

"I could really use your advice right now." Steven declared racing over to the fusion. "It's about-"

"Not right now Steven, I gotta split." Garnet cut Steven off before un-fusing into Ruby and Sapphire.

"I'm terribly sorry Steven, but I'm running late for my lecture on alternate timelines." Sapphire apologized while taking off the scoutmaster's hat and giving it to Ruby, along with a kiss on the cheek, before racing off to her lecture. "See you soon!"

"Sapphire might be going, but you still got good ol' Ruby to talk to." Ruby said to Steven as she went to fetch a backpack. "Let's walk and talk scout, I got things to do."

"Oh, okay." Steven agreed as he followed Ruby to the Warp Pad, and the two set off.

Later that day, Steven had joined Ruby's class, consisting of Onion, Zebra Jasper, and Little Larimar, as they strolled through the woods on a gorgeous afternoon. When the class got to a good stopping point near a stump, Ruby hopped up on the stump to speak. "Okay everyone, you remember what we learned last week, right?" she asked her students. "Well, today is the day! Brace yourselves, 'cause today we're sketching nature and the animals around us!"

Onion and his Gem classmates excitedly took out their notepads to draw on as Ruby continued. "Draw to your heart's content scouts!" Ruby declared. "Feel the beauty of everything around you, and you'll have the honor of receiving this Nature Sketching Badge!" She then presented a patch depicting a paint palette and brush in front of depictions of a wolf and a bird. "Got that? Now get to drawing!"

As soon as the three pupils left to go draw the beauty of nature around them, Ruby took it as her cue to jump down from the stump to talk with Steven. "So, what did you need Garnet for?"

"It's about Connie." Steven admitted to the small red Gem. "Every time I talk with her, I feel like she knows exactly what to do with her life, mostly thanks to her parents, and I don't. When we're together as Stevonnie, I feel so ready for anything, but on my own, I feel so lost. Just, what do I want with life?"

"That's tough Steven." Ruby declared sympathetically.

"Exactly!" Steven replied. "Connie is gonna go super far away for college, and I'm gonna be stuck here in Beach City where barely anything can go right for me nowadays and I don't know what to do about them! I want to be with Connie forever, like how you and Sapphire are basically together forever as Garnet!" That was when he came to a conclusion. "Wait, if I want to be together with Connie, then she's my future!"

Steven's revelation made Ruby super excited, and she began scuttling in place with stars in her eyes, her rapid footsteps creating a small fire beneath her feet. "STEVEN STEVEN STEVEN STEVEN STEVEN!" she cheered, but stopped short once she noticed the fire she created. "Oh my gosh, one sec!" Ruby quickly ran off and came back with a towel that she used to put it out. "Anyways, STEVEN, YOU GOTTA PROPOSE!"

"Wait, propose?!" Steven exclaimed in shock. "But, we're only teenagers, we can't get married yet! But then again…"

"Don't say you haven't thought of it!" Ruby added cheerfully. "Besides, aren't there couples in this country that get married at 18 or something?"

"Y-yeah, I thought of it." Steven began blushing, which he tried to hide within his jacket. "I mean, we just had this discussion."

"Well, what are you waiting for?!" Ruby yelled happily while jumping up and grabbing onto his head. "DO IT, DO IT, DO IT! DO IT LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT!"

"Are you still really sure?" Steven asked the overly eager Gem. "As I said, Connie and I are still only teenagers."

"C'mon, we told you about how it worked for Sapphire and I." Ruby responded. "And if you're successful, you'll have the honor of receiving this!" She presented Steven with a badge depicting one figure popping the question to another. "The Proposal Badge! And if you're not so sure, well, seeing the future would be really helpful here."

Steven gasped, knowing just who Ruby was implying.

Far away from Ruby, Sapphire sat down with her class, made up of the Watermelon Tourmaline fusion, two of the Nephrites, Orange Spodumene, Cherry Quartz, and Angel Aura Quartz, while drawing lines in the sand with a stick.

"Okay class, let's begin our lesson." Sapphire announced to her students when she spotted Steven racing towards her with a big smile on his face. "Ah, Steven. I've been expecting you."

"Hi, Sapphire." Steven greeted Sapphire. "I'm sorry to interrupt your class, but I got big news! I've been thinking about my future with Connie lately, and a chat with Ruby convinced me that I should propose!"

"Wait, don't you have to wait until you're a grown-up to do that?" Cherry Quartz inquired with a raise of her hand.

"Let me guess, you're here because of my future vision?" Sapphire asked. "Let's run the numbers then." She then let Steven stand next to her before beginning to speak to her class. "Okay class, let's review what we've learned today." She began while drawing complex math equations in the sand. "Using the concepts we discussed so far, let us calculate the probability of Steven succeeding in asking Connie to marry him. Let's begin with the probability that she'll want to spend her life with someone, and then we'll multiply that by the differential factor in sociocultural marriage acceptance. Next, we multiply that by a possibly happy cohabitation, the factor of fear of engagement, the intensity of the love you share, and finally the robustness of your goals in life." As Sapphire finished her equation, she finally turned back to Steven. "Are you following so far, Steven?"

"Uh, maybe?" Steven answered as he stared at the equation Sapphire had jotted down for him in the sand, but it wasn't long before the ocean tides began to wash them away. "Oh no, your work!"

"And there we have it." Sapphire declared with a chuckle. "Don't you get it, Steven? My marriage to Ruby, our fusion as Garnet, it eluded my future vision for so long, defied the odds, and perhaps even changed the course of time itself!" she declared encouragingly. "We could just write equations in the sand all day, but then a wave of chance can come crashing in and wash everything away! Love is truly unquantifiable! Even with my gift of clairvoyance, I know far better than anyone that love can make the impossible possible! And that is why I say do it! Do it, Steven, just do it!"

"Yeah, you're right!" Steven began getting pumped up before turning to Sapphire's class. "Get one last good look at me, everyone, because after today you're gonna be calling me Steven Quartz Cutie Pie DeMayo Diamond Universe-Maheswaran!"

The class began cheering vibrantly, bringing a big smile to Steven's face as he finally realized what his future now held.

As the afternoon slowly began to give way to evening, Ruby and Sapphire reunited by rushing towards each other on the sand, excited about the big proposal.

"Steven told me first, and I led him to you!" Ruby cheered, spinning her little blue wife around by the waist.

"I told him to go for it!" Sapphire laughed. "Oh, it's going to be so wonderful!"

As the two fused back into Garnet, she stood still for a few moments, contemplating her components' decisions before coming to one of her own. "I take full responsibility for their actions." Just then, Garnet heard footsteps and found Pearl walking behind her, her pointy nose stuck in a book. "Pearl, I'm guessing you want to see me about the book you're reading."

"I was just thinking about calling up you and Amethyst," Pearl announced as her gaze turned from the pages to her leader. "Where's Steven?"

"Oh, nothing much," Garnet answered. "Just going to make a rash decision that'll emotionally damage him in the long run."

"Oh, that's ni-" Pearl began before she did a double-take. "WAIT, WHAT?!"

As for Steven, he was too busy getting ready for an evening with Connie without a care in the world, picking up a cake from Spacetries that said 'Together forever!' on it, buying some flowers from Crazy Lace Agate, lighting up the glow bracelet that brought him & Connie together to begin with and dressing up in some nice clothes. If all goes well, he would soon become Steven Quartz Cutie Pie DeMayo Diamond Universe-Maheswaran.

Meanwhile, at Connie's house, Connie kept on studying for the University of Jayhawk when she heard a roar coming from outside her window. Walking over to the window, she discovered Steven parked outside her home with Lion by his side.

"Evening Connie, how are you doing?" Steven asked his ladylove.

"Steven?" Connie replied. "What are you doing here, and why are you all dressed up like that?"

"You got a fifteen-minute study break in two minutes, right?" Steven inquired, gazing at his watch to check if his timing is correct.

"Whoa, spot-on!" Connie exclaimed, gazing at her phone to learn that he was indeed right. "So, what did you come here for?"

"You want to go for a walk with me?" Steven offered. "I'm sure you could use some fresh air."

"That's very sweet Steven." Connie smiled. "I'd really love to, but I-"

"Don't worry, we can take Lion, and then I'll bring you home in fifteen!" Steven declared with a thumbs up.

"Okay, let's do this!" Connie accepted the offer and left her room to meet Steven outside, taking a moment to tell her parents along the way. "Bye Mom and Dad, I'm spending my study break with Steven!"

Once Connie was out the door, she and Steven mounted on Lion's back and he ran away from the Maheswaran residence.

"Remember when we first met here?" Steven asked Connie as they dismounted from Lion and began walking down the beach.

"You mean when you tried riding a bike in the sand and then started running away screaming?" Connie replied with a chuckle.

"Yeah, I was trying to get your attention." Steven added.

"Last I remember, I was more focused on my book than your silly antics." Connie stated.

"Well, that all happened right here." Steven declared, gesturing to a picnic at the very spot where he and Connie first met all those years ago. "You like what I have here?"

"Steven!" Connie exclaimed in awe at the picnic set before them. "I don't know what to say! I also can't believe you still remember this exact spot!"

"I just remember it like it was yesterday!" Steven exclaimed just as eagerly before running over to a nearby rock to sit on.

"This is too cute." Connie squealed while blushing.

"And without further ado," Steven announced as he picked up a guitar to play while Connie sat down. "There's something very important that I'd like to tell you today." With that, he started strumming the guitar and began to sing. "I'd rather be tall, I'd rather be smart, I'd rather be sure you know I care." He sang for Connie. "Wherever you go, wherever you start, I'd rather be sure you know I'm there. I'd rather I always be a part of whatever you do. I'd rather be me, with you."

Although Connie was a little turned off by the deeper meaning of Steven's song, she chose to just keep those feelings hidden to not hurt Steven's while he continued singing. "Wherever we go, I already trust, I'd know what to do if it were us. I'd know what to say, I'd know how to be, I'd know your entire syllabus." Steven continued as the song reached its climax. "I can't think of any other thing in the world that I would rather do. If I could be, I'd rather be me with you."

"Oh Steven, that's so beautiful!" Connie applauded the love song. "If a little unsettling, but I'd rather not say it out loud because-" Steven then got down on one knee and presented him her old glow bracelet. "Huh?"

"Connie, will you marry me?" Steven popped the question at last.

"Come again?" Connie asked, completely taken off guard by such a proposal.

"Let's get married and live together as Stevonnie, just like Garnet!" Steven reiterated for his possible wife.

"Are you serious?" Connie chuckled at the marriage proposal. "I think we should talk about this first."

"You might think I'm being sentimental, but this makes sense!" Steven exclaimed. "I don't know what you'll be studying, but I'm sure Stevonnie will! We can go to Jayhawk together!"

"I really appreciate this little date, but come on! You're still young!" Connie said as she stood up. "And acting a little clingy, I might add." She added under her breath.

"What was that?" Steven asked Connie.

"Nothing!" Connie lied. "Like I said, we're still young. And even if some couples get married at like, eighteen, I don't think we're fit to be one of those."

"So, you don't want to be Stevonnie with me?" Steven asked despondently, but Connie was there to comfort him.

"Of course I'd want to be Stevonnie, but I'd like to be my own person too," Connie answered reassuringly. "You get that, right?"

"Yeah, but," Steven began while putting the bracelet away as Connie hugged him. "Is it a no?"

"I'd say it's not right now." Connie answered.

"But if we're going to spend our lives together, why didn't you say it now?" Steven kept on inquiring fretfully.

"We got plenty of time." Connie declared, moving on from hugging Steven to holding his hands. "Don't you worry."

"I'm not worried, honest." Steven tried correcting his best friend. "I'm just happy when I'm with you."

"I'm happy around you too." Connie replied. "It's just that-" Before Connie could finish, the alarm on her phone went off. "Oh snap, my alarm!" she yelped in realization while pulling her phone out. "Forget studying right now, I don't think it matters."

"But it does matter to you!" Steven yelled.

"And you're just as important!" Connie responded, beginning to notice Steven getting more stressed out.

"I'm fine, we can talk about it later." Steven began rapidly panting. "Look, Lion's still right there, you can go now."

"Are you sure Steven?" Connie wondered sympathetically. "You're looking a little on edge. Maybe I can hook you up with a good therapist. She's a good friend of my mom named Dr. Rebe-"

"I'm sure I'm fine." Steven cut Connie off. "Now go."

"Okay." Connie obliged before giving Steven a goodbye hug. "I'll call you again tomorrow at noon." She said before walking towards Lion to have him take her home.

"Have fun studying!" Steven continued putting up a happy front as he bid Connie farewell. But as soon as she was out of sight, that front completely fell. "Nobody I love ever wants to stay."

With that, Steven fell back-first to the sand and turned pink, the resulting impact ruining the nice picnic around him as he wallowed in a crater of his sadness, and stayed there for the rest of the day.

Many hours later, Steven kept on lying in the crater long into the night with tears in his eyes, and when he finally decided to get up, Garnet was there waiting for him with the picnic basket containing the cake still intact.

"I assume it didn't go well." Garnet theorized as she helped Steven up from the crater and began walking him home.

"I don't get it," Steven muttered cynically. "Ruby and Sapphire said I should go for it, and I did, but everything went wrong."

"I apologize on their behalf," Garnet stated. "You just can't trust love advice from hopeless romantics like those two."

"Then why didn't you stop me?" Steven asked the fusion.

"I couldn't see a future where you didn't try proposing to Connie," Garnet answered. "However, there were quite a few where after she said no, you forced her to fuse with you and subsequently went insane."

"Of course." Steven moaned. "Even in alternate timelines, nothing can ever go right for me."

"Don't be so hard on yourself." Garnet comforted her half-human ward with a hug to the side. "Your soulmate should be your complement, not a missing piece. Ruby and Sapphire may deeply love each other, but they still have their own thoughts, feelings, and lives." The pair soon reached the beach house and sat down on the steps together. "Whatever hole you have in your life Steven, I want you to know that Connie or Stevonnie might not fill it."

"It's just that you guys make it so easy!" Steven revealed as he took the basket from Garnet. "Can't believe I'm saying this, but it's kinda your fault for being so dang perfect!"

"I know you're upset Steven, and I take responsibility for your plight," Garnet apologized to Steven. "but blaming others as much as you blame yourself won't help."

"Then maybe shoving this adorable cake in my face will!" Steven declared as he opened the picnic basket to reveal that the cake was in pieces.

"It probably won't." Garnet deadpanned, but Steven didn't listen and started eating the broken cake anyways.

"Well, I'm still gonna do it!" Steven exclaimed, his mouth now full of cake.

"I know," Garnet added as she gazed up at the sky. However, what she didn't catch was a fly buzzing around her and Steven, and its green eyes started blinking.

"Ah, romance. So utterly futile." Black Rutile grimaced as she watched the live footage of Steven drowning his sorrows in cake through a hard light welding mask. "Still, all that trauma could be useful in the future."

As Black Rutile was spectating on Steven's pain, she was hard at work on her plans for revenge, using a blowtorch to put together the final touches on a special wrist-mounted device. Once she was done, the villainous Rutile aimed the device at a rock carved into the exact shape of White Diamond's gem and fired. The resulting blast destroyed the rock and left a massive cloud of ash where it once was, but she wasn't satisfied with the smattering of pebbles that once made up the rock.

"Hm, need to work on the disintegration aspect a bit more." Black Rutile pondered while retracting the welding mask into her visor and began going back to the drawing board.

Guess who's back? Back again? Black Rutile's back, she's no friend! And on that rather sad turned ominous note, we conclude the first chapter of Part 3. Now that we have Steven's romance issues out of the way, expect to see the following in the coming chapters, in no particular order.

Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl re-enact Ace Attorney while Steven becomes even more scarred for life.

Viva Los Diego! Lapis & Amethyst get involved with a James Bond parody, Garnet & Bismuth solve mysteries together with a police officer who's basically the Plumber from Ratchet and Clank, Pearl matches wits with a snooty film director who's like Michael Bay, David Cage, Neil Druckmann & Zack Snyder in one, and Peridot tries promoting her CPH reboot.

Steven hangs out with Spinel and plays basketball with Wolverine.

Peridot finally gets her own song.

Jasper finally gets her own song.

A certain Stevonnie-chasing jerk dares Steven to reform him.

And finally, Black Rutile plays a role in a certain event in Fragments, the final chapter of this part.

Have I gotten your interest yet? Good, cause strap in everyone, it's gonna be nuts.

#steven universe #steven universe future #fanfiction #steven universe alternate future #steven quartz universe #connie maheswaran #garnet #ruby #sapphire #pearl #lion steven universe #black rutile

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imagine-organization-xiii · 4 years ago

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Heyo! How about Organization XIII as college students? What courses would they take? What kind of students would they be? owo

If you’re in college, leave a comment with your major and your favorite courses!

Most of you already know that I majored in history, and my favorite courses at my university were the ‘Psychology of History’ and ‘Founding Fathers and Mothers’

Also, shoutout to Matthew for helping me with a few of these when I needed some inspiration!

oOoOo

Xemnas

Pursuing: Double Major for Master’s Degrees in Business Administration and Public Administration, in a PhD program for Government Studies

Their Favorite Course (link): ‘Philosophy,’ ‘Anthropology,’ Business Management’

Type of Student: a student that all other students wish they could be and a student that all of the teachers like but are slightly afraid of. He’s a no-nonsense type of guy who prefers to study alone and keep to himself. Probably Student Body President but he has absolutely no idea how he was elected to that position.

Xigbar

Pursuing (link): Master of Arts in History with a Concentration in Military History

Their Favorite Courses (link): ‘History of Women, Gender, and Sexuality,’ ‘History of Modern Warfare,’ ‘African Americans Since the Civil War,’ ‘History of Rock: Rhythm & Blues, and Rock and Roll to Indie Rock and Hip Hop’

Type of Student: An infuriating bastard to literally everyone that comes into contact with him. He’s so freaking smart that sometimes it takes the teachers and students by surprise, but he’s lazy and sometimes just doesn’t want to force himself to do the work. But sometimes he doesn’t have to! He manages to scrape by with an above average grade without studying.

Xaldin

Pursuing (link): Master’s of Sports Psychology and Counseling

Their Favorite Course (link): ‘Counseling Student Athletes,’ ‘Multicultural Issues in Counseling’

Type of Student: More focused on other activities that don’t have to do with school, but he does fairly well for himself in his classes. He does just enough to pass with average grades even though he would do better if he took the time and effort to apply himself.

Vexen

Pursuing (link): PhD in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Their Favorite Courses (link): ‘Polymer Physics,’ ‘Protein Engineering,’ and ‘Thermodynamics for Chemical Product and Process Design’

Type of Student: So SMART. So damn smart but he’s SUCH an annoying little shit and all of the professors dislike him because he’s obviously more intelligent than they are, and HE knows it, too. He’s a genius and is going to go on to do great things, but most think he needs a steady, guiding hand to lead him in the right direction.

Lexaeus

Pursuing (link): Bachelor of Science in Nursing - Pediatric Care

Their Favorite Courses (link): ‘Infant, Child, and Adolescent Health,’ ‘Pharmacotherapeutics,’ ‘Procedures and Skills for Pediatric Care’

Type of Student: He’s never been book-smart, but when it comes to hands-on learning? There’s no one better to have on your team. Lexaeus has always learned better when he can actually see information in front of him instead of listening to lectures, so he spends a lot of time teaching himself the information in his textbooks - even if it might take him a while to get through the material.

Zexion

Pursuing: Master’s in Library Science

Their Favorite Courses (link): ‘Archival Management,’ ‘Knowledge Management,’ ‘Librarian Special Collections and History of the Book’

Type of Student: The dream student that every teacher wants. He’s quiet, studious, asks really intelligent and thought-provoking questions, always does his assignments and turns them in on time, etc.

Saix

Pursuing (link): Master’s in Law and Business

Their Favorite Course (link): ‘Business Evaluation and Analysis,’ ‘Game Theory and Strategic Decisions’

Type of Student: Quiet, studious, and knows that he’s smarter than you. Has a lot of activities outside of class because he knows that they look good on a job applications, but his heart is truly just into his classes because he enjoys learning new information.

Axel

Pursuing: Bachelor’s in Paramedic Technology

Their Favorite Courses (link): ‘Physics for Poets,’ ‘Immunology,’ and ‘Genetics’

Type of Student: Doesn’t study at ALL and it infuriates literally everyone to no end how he manages to do so well with so little effort involved. The class clown, but also knows when to keep his mouth shut. Defends female classmates whenever they get mansplained by teachers or other students.

Demyx

Pursuing: Double Major Bachelor’s Degrees in Music Composition and Sound Design

Their Favorite Courses (link 1, link 2): ‘Film Scoring,’ ‘Producing Music with Logic’

Type of Student: Demyx is both a good and a bad student. When it comes to topics that he enjoys, he is the most dedicated, task-oriented person you’ll ever meet. When it comes to the boring stuff - basic classes that he’s required to take, like math or science, his mind wanders and he gets distracted way too easily.

Luxord

Pursuing: Bachelor’s in Hospitality Business Management

Their Favorite Courses (link): ‘Introduction to the Casino Industry,’ ‘Introduction to Wine and Hospitality Beverages,’ ‘Hospitality Marketing,’ and ‘Hospitality Business Law’

Type of Student: No one understands how he can possibly have such amazing grades when he sometimes doesn’t even bother to go to class, but they’re impressed, especially when he does manage to go to class without a sign of a hangover when most of them know he spent the night before drinking.

Marluxia

Pursuing: Bachelor’s in Horticultural Science

Their Favorite Courses (link): ‘Plant Breeding,’ ‘Agricultural Law,’ ‘Greenhouse Management’

Type of Student: Knows a lot, sometimes more than the teachers, but is happy to let them all think that he’s dim and oblivious. Aces all of his tests and assignments, keeps himself to the back of the room and watches, silently observing.

Larxene

Pursuing (link): Master’s of Science in Engineering with a Concentration in Electrical Engineering

Their Favorite Courses (link): ‘Engineering Electronics,’ ‘Circuits Laboratory’

Type of Student: Sly and sometimes gets other people to do the heavy work on some of the more tedious projects she’s assigned. She’s too smart for her own good, but she hates the majority of her classes and teachers, so she skips class more often than not.

Roxas

Pursuing (link): Bachelor of Arts in Animation

Their Favorite Courses (link): ‘Storytelling for the Screen,’ ‘Interactive Animation,’ ‘Figure Drawing’

Type of Student: He tries. He tries so hard, really. But sometimes the words dance across the pages of his textbooks and he just can’t concentrate on something that’s so boring, so it’s difficult for him to focus when he studies. He passes all of his courses and is an absolute sweetheart to all of his teachers, but he definitely puts in a few extra hours of studying than most people do just to keep up with the rest of his peers.

Xion

Pursuing (link): A Bachelor’s in Elementary Education

Their Favorite Courses (link): ‘Assessing Impact on Student Learning,’ ‘The School as a Community of Care’

Type of Student: A sweet bean who is a gift to everyone who manages to get her in a group project. She’s studious, sweet, and always willing to help those who need it. She’s also not afraid to ask questions and stay after class if she needs it, especially in math and science courses, which aren’t her strongest subjects.

#organization xiii headcanon #kingdom hearts headcanon

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