#wrote this for a class last week

[biandanxious18]

When I was a kid, I had really long, hip-long hair, I remember. Then when I was 6 I decided I wanted it cut really short - boy-short -, not for any specific reason other than I thought it was pretty, I think I had seen it on women at the time, on TV too, and I thought it looked cute. It wasn’t about being rebellious or gender-non-conforming. I was 6. I thought it was cute. The length that in english you’d call pixie-cut, I guess, but in Brasil we call it “joãozinho”, which means “little john”.

My parents got me and all of my friends together on my birthday, we took a trip to my grandparents’ at the beach. My mom tied my hair in a braid and cut it for me. I went to the mirror and said I wanted it shorter. She cut it shorter. My mom always cut my hair when I was a kid. She cut and dyed her own hair too.

Anyways, in retrospect I think that was pretty badass of me. Little 6yo going “shorter”. I liked pink. I liked princesses. I had a phase where I refused to wear anything that wasn’t a dress. I just thought it’d be cute, I think. Or no, actually I just wanted to do it. I have no idea how my dad felt about it. He didn’t like to let my brother do overly feminine things, but I think he was mostly scared he’d be bullied for it. I don’t know. My dad is a feminist. He cries. He’s a bit sexist and a bit homophobic at times but he doesn’t want to be. He’s trying.

My mom is also a feminist, even though she says she enjoyed the attention of being cat-called by creepy, old men in the street. “It’s a compliment”. She says she misses it, made her feel young, pretty and thin, I guess. My mom is beautiful. I don’t know why I felt the need to say that.

She always cut my hair when I was a kid, but around my pre-teens I started to go to hairdressers. I’d always go through a somewhat yearly cycle of letting my hair grow, wanting it long, getting tired of it, wanting it short, getting it cut, loving it, wanting it long. Except when I didn’t love it, of course. I remember back in 2018 I got a haircut and it looked awful. I went home, crawled in bed with my mom and cried, I hated it so much. In retrospect, I don’t know why I didn’t do anything about it, didn’t re-cut it or something, I just grew it out.

I started dying my hair red in 2016. First time I did it at the hairdresser too. Expensive as shit. I didn’t like it. I said I did. To the lady, and whoever asked, and even myself. But I didn’t, it didn’t look how I wanted it to. Next time I did it at home. My mom dyed it for me because she knew how to. To get the roots and the back and all. I really liked it. I loved it. I never dyed my hair at the hairdresser again.

After that terrible 2018 cut I grew it out. Didn’t feel the urge to cut it the following year - or fought it off, I don’t know. When 2020 came around, my hair was the longest and most beautiful it had been in I don’t even know how long. The red really suited me too. People - my friends - couldn’t even imagine me without it, and when I would think of shaving the side of my head, for instance, I actually imagined it growing back red. It was part of me, even though it was fake.

Anyways, a month into the pandemic I shaved it all off. Clean zero, no mercy, didn’t spare a centimetre. Shaved it off. To be fair, it felt like it had been way more than a month by that point. It felt like it had been forever. I think I wanted something fresh, something new, something different and bold and radical and mine. And if it looked awful nobody would see it anyways. Once in a lifetime opportunity - hopefully.

I loved shaving my head. I had my friends on a video call. My mom helped with the back that time too. I have the whole thing recorded, took about 10 minutes. I loved it. It was cold in my scalp though. It was fun.

I wonder what my grandma thought of it. Or my grandpa. My dad liked it. Said I looked like an orthodox jewish woman a bit. I could see that.

But I remember this one time. Not too many months later, a couple maybe, we went to visit my grandparents at the beach. And by that point I wasn’t going outside much, but the beach was such a wide, open space, we could social distance to a safe measure. So I went. And at some point I decided to take a walk along the shore and I just remember having the oddest feeling. Just feeling like… Feeling the absence of the male gaze on me, really. And I had never realised it was there before in the first place. But now it was gone. Like without my long, beautiful hair I wasn’t as attractive - as desirable - as before. And it felt… bad.

And it was weird, but I had never realised the validation I felt from being gazed at. How affirming it was. I guess this is what my mom was talking about. Maybe she was just more honest about it than me.

And don’t get me wrong because I don’t want to submit to gender conformity and whatever that feeling was about. And I had so many different hairs during the pandemic, just having shaved it really gave me some freedom to do whatever, because if all went to shit and it looked terrible I’d just shave it again. And I explored gender and gender-non-conformity and I look at the pictures from when I had really short hair a couple years ago and I think it looks so... I miss it.

I’m kind of growing it out now, though. I don’t know, I just wasn’t really doing anything about it and it was just growing, then last year I cut it but I didn’t really love how it turned out. Made me think longer hair suits me more. I look prettier, I guess. I hate how gender conforming I am nowadays. I don’t know if it’s because I moved countries and it made me feel more secure. Sometimes I’m not, though. [Gender conforming, I mean]. I’ve been thinking about it. I feel like when I was an antisocial kid I cared much less about how others perceive me. I remember once working on a group scene where everyone was sharing hurdles they went through to try and achieve beauty standards. I didn’t really have much to share. I didn’t diet, I didn’t put myself through things that hurt. It’s different now. I often think the more social I became along the years, the more I fell into that.

I liked a boy in my class when I was 6. A few years later - and I had changed schools at this point - one of my friends from that class told me he had liked me too, but not anymore after I cut my hair. I don’t know if that’s true.

[jade-of-mourning]

j-fashion girls!

my approximation (i didn't use a single real piece of clothing as far as i'm aware but i'm sure jirou's fishnets are real somewhere out there):

jirou - visual kei ashido - kuro gyaru yaoyorozu - jirai kei hagakure - pink decora asui - mori kei uraraka - jojifuku

[questionable-doctor]

i'm crazy,,,

[ravenwraithe]

Helo ji thoda chaipunk milega?

Plij.

-apka naya pankha

Two hearts in a chest, it's ours

Pav stared at the clock, its second hand seemingly ticking slower and slower every dragging second, trying to keep his heavy eyes open.

There wasn't any villain out last night, no, nor did Hobie crash his precious beauty sleep, but this teacher was not making any sense with his stupid fucking chemical formulae for finding the mass percentage of whatever new substance he was talking about this time and Pav was wishing the fan over his head into falling on him.

His eyes drooped, as he sat with head balanced on his hand, in the semblance of a posture of utmost attention. Maybe he should just sleep, it wasn't like the teacher was going to notice anyway-

THUNK! came from the window on his left. He startled out of his seat, nearly tripping on the strap on his school bag, cursing under his breath and turned to see the offender.

There was nothing on the window sill. But Pav knew better than that. He stood up, pretending to look for his pen, and glanced over. Sure enough, the dark wicks of a certain spider punk was visible just below the sill.

"Excuse me sir, may I use the washroom?" Pav raised his hand. The teacher didn't even look at him as he nodded his yes, busy writing down measurements of fuck-if-he-knew, and Pav booked it out of there.

He turned left to the stairwell instead of right to the washrooms and descended down where the faulty surveillance cam overlooked the landing and the tiny window between the second floor and third floor. That cam worked in fits and starts; a red light indicated if it was working. To Pav's rare luck with it, there was no red light to be seen and he quickly vaulted out of the window, coming almost nose-to-nose with Hobie.

"What the fuck Hobie, why are you lurking like that?" Pav whisper-screamed, heart thudding mile a minute from the proximity. He could see Hobie's individual eyelashes from there. Pav's face heated up and he was thankful for the fact that a blush wasn't easily visible with his skin colour.

"'m not lurkin', mate, you're jus' distracted," Hobie replied with an easy smile, making Pav's stomach do funny somersaults. It was a common occurrence, and Pav tried his best to not let it get the best of him. With questionable success, because he frequently found himself daydreaming about Hobie, how his hair would feel through his fingers, the way his lips moved when he talked in that stupidly cute accent of his, the feelings he got with Hobie's arm around him. This was accompanied by doodling hearts around their names at the back of his notebooks, like he was not scared of the consequences of his teachers discovering the said artwork and calling home.

"Shut up," Pav said, his face still warmer than normal, because they hadn't moved apart for the entire duration of Pav's inner train of thought, much to his secret delight. "Why are you here at my school? Someone could have seen you!"

"I wan'ed to see my favourite li'l swot, so I came," He leant in closer, his voice deeper, "Can't I do tha'?"

Pav swallowed unconsciously. "You definitely can, but I have to get back to class, we're starting a new chapter."

"C'mon, love, you looked like you were moments away from conkin' out."

"I wasn't, I would never sleep in class."

"Mmhm, and 'm the next prime minister o' the Great Britain," Hobie sniggered and Pav punched him in the arm.

"I wasn't going to sleep, the class is just so boring!"

"All the more reason to skive off, I promise to not drone on and on to bore you to sleep," Hobie side-eyed him, the corner of his mouth turned up in a grin and Pav was gone. "What say?"

As if Pav could ever say no to Hobie, as if he could ever bore him, like Pav didn't feel like a live wire, humming with electricity when they were close, very close, and he could swear something was gonna happen-

TRRRRNNGG! The discordant bell rang out though the corridors of the school building and the miniscule space they had between them, widening until they were centimetres apart. Too much apart. The distance between them felt like a chasm of longing but. He could fix it. He could skip the rest of the school day, even though Nandan would ask him where he disappeared off to.

Hobie looked at him, eyes filled with an emotion Pav dared not to name and a hope that he'd say yes. Pav was glad to not disappoint.

"Let's go."

___

this isn't very long but i wanted to get it out of my brain before i got too busy to post again

i might continue this later but hope you like it, ravi✨✨

title (translated) from itni si baat hai by arijit singh

(goldenpunk playlist i made)

[sailforvalinor]

Val Is Pretty Sure She Might Be Losing Her Mind, more at 11

[chilapis]

Last post before I crash and no-one hears from me until I return from my first final the morrow’s eve (a changed man no doubt) but there’ll never be anything funnier to me than consistently being viewed as a composed and calm saviour by peers while I’m, actively and uncontrollably losing it.

[that-was-anticlimactic]

no one asked bUT imma go off (affectionate) anyways. ahem:

edse (practicum): portfolio is completed, did portfolio presentation this morning, blog is updated, have all the rubrics... DONE

347: major identity essay? done. final “essay”? done. just gotta go to class tomorrow so we can meet for the final exam time slot and we are going to. talk about books. no more assignments, yay!

395: edtpa? DONE. reflection? DONE. self-evaluation for edtpa? DONE. now, all i have to do is edit edtpa and then submit it for like Official grading and not class grading

405: presentation? made and presented. revision portfolio and reflection? DONE (finished it like fifteen minutes ago lol)

444: giant research paper? DONE. reflection? done. presentation? DONE. just gotta go to the final exam period thursday to watch the rest of the presentations, but no more work for meeeeeeee

and then finally... 305... the only final i actually have left...

[kohakhearts]

cons of going to a “good schoolTM”: insane workload, unbearable classmates, next to no support when you have any kind of extenuating circumstances Including literal hospitalization, etc

pros of going to a “good schoolTM”: the 9-5 lifestyle is genuinely a major improvement

[waterloggedtomorrow]

It is Staggering how quickly I have gone from always being mildly paralyzed by fatigue + overwhelm to always being mildly paralyzed from listlessness + lack of sun.

[fanfiction-artist-prototype]

I truly cannot explain how much I hate that I struggle to take criticism of my writing (probably because I tend to write very self indulgently and have had many a 'dissertation on why you and you fanfic are shit' comments back in my wattpad days) but let me tell you there's nothing more VINDICATING than sitting there stewing in angst only to hear the writer who takes criticism like he's going for an olympic gold in it, turning around and saying that the criticer is only trying to make you change your piece to fit THEIR individual likes and dislikes.

[captainofthenautilus]

i was typing in the tags for a different post and noticed something. new tag game: reblog with the tags that come up when you type “i also”

[sparkles-oflight]

how I'll sleep today knowing I just wrote a bad review of my sociology teacher to the university higher-ups

[boomerang109]

I don’t want to go home and that makes me so sad

[raksh-writes]

Feeling so weirdly out of sorts today. I hoped that I can continue writing the second part of my AU I started on yesterday (got a nice 1,6k in Macau's POV!) or if not that, then maybe finish up editing part 1 so I can post but... I dunno, Ive fallen into a dip of depression and I only feel like crying and diddling around doing nothing (beside All the things I need to take care of for the next two days of classes of course, ugh), so... yeah. I don’t know what to do with myself. Wasting the little bit of free time I still have doesn’t make me feel better, but then Im not even sure Im capable of anything creative rn...

[galariangengar]

My professor for my pathophysiology class just put in grades from our final exam and I got a 91% overall for my final grade :)

[fappellmoan]

anyway. i am going to be SO incredibly livid and angry and throwing an absolute tantrum on thursday if i dont get good feedback on my script.