#fun fact: this is from an assignment I did last semester

[nocturnebite]

False Reflection

Jungwon x Fem!Reader | Perfect Illusion

THE PRELUDE── He's perfect. Perfect grades. Perfect smile. Perfect control. His world is flawless—except for you.

Caution: slight NSFW MDNI · dark romance · obsessive perfectionism · controlling behavior · possessive love · emotional power imbalance · slowburn tension · unhealthy relationship dynamics wc: 8.6k ⤷ Dark Romance Series

The bell hadn’t even rung yet, but the classroom was already full of noise. Shuffling sneakers. The low thrum of whispered gossip. A girl two rows behind you was loudly unwrapping a granola bar. The overhead lights buzzed faintly, and the smell of lemon disinfectant still lingered in the air—probably freshly mopped to impress the district evaluators or whoever it was that made teachers dress nicer on Fridays.

You pulled your hoodie tighter over your shoulders and stared down at the paper in your lap. The syllabus for AP Literature was too crisp. Too hopeful. Like it hadn’t yet accepted the doom of second period burnout.

Then came the voice.

“Hey. You’re in my seat.”

You looked up, startled.

It was him.

Yang Jungwon.

Perfect hair. Perfect uniform. Perfect posture. Every rumor about him seemed believable the second you made eye contact. His tone wasn’t rude—it was gentle. Polite, even. But there was something so naturally commanding in the way he stood there, hand lightly resting on the desk like he already owned it.

You blinked once, then twice. “Oh—uh, sorry. I didn’t know we had assigned seating.”

“It’s alphabetical,” he said. Then, a pause. “You must be new.”

“Kind of.” You scratched your neck awkwardly. “I transferred last semester but… never had a class with you.”

Lucky me, you didn’t say.

He stepped aside so you could slide into the seat next to his. 3C. You didn’t know whether to feel lucky or doomed.

“Yang Jungwon,” he said, offering a hand.

You shook it. His skin was warm, soft, steady. Unlike your own, probably clammy from nerves and the fact that his eyes never seemed to flinch from yours.

You mutter your name. He smiles lightly, you smile back before speaking.

“I think we were in the same gym period last year. You ran like… eight miles for fun?”

He chuckled. Not a loud one—just enough for his lips to tilt up at the corners.

“My older sister ran track. Guess it rubbed off.”

You turned slightly in your seat as he sat beside you, setting down his notebook, his pen, a stainless steel water bottle, and then—pulling out actual annotated tabs from a classic lit guide like he was born in a Barnes & Noble.

Your friend slid into the desk behind you and leaned forward immediately, whispering low in your ear. “You’re sitting next to the Jungwon. God plays favorites.”

“Shut up,” you hissed back, cheeks warming.

“Oh my gosh, he smells like fresh pine and moral superiority.”

You choked on a laugh just as the teacher walked in.

“Phones away, everyone. Let’s begin.”

Ten minutes in, Jungwon raised his hand.

Of course he did.

“Just a quick clarification,” he said. “On page three, when Faulkner uses ‘the weight of silence’—is it foreshadowing the tension between the brothers or more about the emotional repression typical in Southern gothic literature?”

You couldn’t tell what was worse: the perfect question or the way the teacher lit up like she’d just been handed a scholarship.

“Excellent point, Jungwon.”

Of course.

Your friend kicked your chair softly. “He’s unreal.”

By the time class ended, your notebook had three lines of notes, and none of them were helpful. One just said:

“The weight of silence” = Jungwon’s eyelashes??

As the bell rang and chairs scraped back, you packed your things slower than usual. Not on purpose. At least not consciously.

But Jungwon noticed.

“You did okay for a first day,” he said, sliding his pens back into a tidy pouch. “If you ever need help catching up, I tutor.”

Your friend’s eyes went wide behind you.

“Oh. Uh, thanks. I might actually take you up on that.”

He smiled again—soft. Patient. Like a kindergarten teacher. Or a saint.

“I don’t mean to sound arrogant. I just… like helping people. And you seemed a little lost with the seating chart, so.”

So?

So you’re either the nicest boy alive or the most dangerous kind: the one who knows he’s perfect and still acts humble about it.

Before you could answer, your friend chimed in with mock innocence, “Do you tutor in cafés or libraries—or do you only take students you're secretly in love with?”

You nearly dropped your phone.

Jungwon didn’t even blink.

He tilted his head thoughtfully, then smiled again. “Libraries. Always. Less distractions.”

You could feel your ears burning.

“And what about love?” your friend added cheekily.

He should’ve been embarrassed. He should’ve looked away. But instead, he locked eyes with you.

“Love is a serious thing,” he said. Calm. Measured. Perfect. “It deserves timing. Not teasing.”

And just like that—he turned, slung his bag over his shoulder, and walked off like he hadn’t just dismantled your entire nervous system in three sentences.

Your friend leaned back in their chair, breathless.

“Oh. You’re screwed.”

—

You told yourself not to look for him.

That was rule number one. Don’t wait in the hallway longer than necessary. Don’t slow your steps when you round the corner near his homeroom. Don’t scan the lunch tables just to see if he’s there.

But your eyes kept doing it anyway.

And when you saw him again—three days later, by the side exit after eighth period—it was as if the rest of the school blurred.

He was alone. Sorting through his bag like he had all the time in the world, even as the warning bell shrieked and students shoved past. Calm in the chaos. Like always.

You hesitated. Your friends had already gone ahead.

But something made you pause—heart drumming—and step closer.

“Hey,” you said, clutching your books too tightly.

He looked up. Recognition softened his features immediately.

“Hey. Y/N, right?”

You nodded, feeling the stupidest flutter in your chest just from hearing him say your name like he hadn’t forgotten it.

“I—uh. I wasn’t sure if you were serious about the tutoring thing,” you blurted before your nerves could talk you out of it. “Because if not, that’s totally fine. I know people say that kind of stuff sometimes to be polite, but—”

“I meant it.”

Just like that. No hesitation.

Your throat dried.

He zipped his bag closed, then adjusted it over one shoulder. “I don’t offer unless I mean it. I know time matters.”

You tried to laugh, lighthearted. “Well, I might need a lot of your time, then. Lit’s kicking my ass already.”

His mouth quirked—not quite a smirk, but close.

“I’ve got time.”

Pause. His eyes met yours.

And then, softly: “If you don’t mind mine.”

The moment stretched between you like something unspoken. Taut. Careful.

You felt your voice catch a little. “No—I don’t. I mean. I don’t mind.”

The door behind him creaked open as another student pushed past. He stepped aside, but his gaze never left you.

“I usually stay after school on Thursdays to study in the music room. It’s pretty quiet there.” Another pause. “You’re welcome to join. If you want something low-pressure.”

Low-pressure.

Sure.

Totally normal.

Totally not the kind of phrasing that makes your brain light up like a flipped switch.

“I’d like that,” you managed.

He nodded once. Precise. “Cool.”

He turned to go, but then—

“Oh—and Y/N?”

You looked up too fast. “Yeah?”

That same unreadable smile. “Bring the Faulkner book. I want to hear what you think about the silence.”

Then he was gone again—just like that. Folding into the hallway, footsteps soft and unbothered, leaving you behind with a breath you didn’t realize you were holding.

—

The hallway was almost empty by the time you found the right door.

Muted daylight spilled in from the windows, painting the scuffed floors gold. A soft hum of distant chatter floated from the lockers downstairs, but up here? Everything felt suspended.

You hesitated with your hand on the handle.

Then pushed.

The music room was exactly like you remembered from last semester’s elective—dusty risers, forgotten stands, that faint, lingering scent of wood polish and sheet music.

But he was the first thing you saw.

Sitting at the upright piano with his back to you, sleeves rolled up to his forearms, knuckles curved gently over the keys—not playing, just… poised. Waiting.

And somehow, he already knew it was you.

“Hey,” he said, glancing over his shoulder. “You came.”

You stepped in, tucking the Faulkner book tighter against your chest. “Of course. You invited me.”

He smiled at that. Real, soft. The kind of smile that made you forget whatever you were about to say.

“I wasn’t sure,” he said, standing now. He gestured to the chair he’d pulled up beside the piano bench. “Some people don’t follow through.”

You moved toward him slowly, each step swallowed by the thick sound-dampened walls. “Well… I guess I’m not some people.”

“Clearly.”

That word again. Quiet, unreadable praise. He always said things that way—as if they meant nothing and everything at once.

You sat down, balancing your book in your lap. He sat beside you, close enough that your knees almost brushed.

“I figured we’d start with chapter three,” he said. “The dinner scene. Most people skim it, but there’s something in the way the silence fills that table—it’s loaded.”

You nodded, flipping through your annotated copy, even though your thoughts were a mess.

He’d taken out a pen. Not just any pen—his pen. You recognized the way he tapped it twice against the page before underlining. Methodical. Thoughtful. Exact.

“You don’t have to agree with me,” he added after a beat. “Actually, I’d rather you didn’t.”

Your brow furrowed, caught off guard. “Why?”

“Because then we’re not studying. We’re just echoing.”

You blinked. “You sound like a teacher.”

He huffed a quiet laugh. “Give me a few more years.”

The light hit his face differently in this room. Gentler. His usual polished sharpness softened—cheekbones kissed with gold, lashes catching just enough shadow to look unreal. It made you forget the cold pressure of the plastic chair beneath you.

You forced yourself to look down at your book.

“I liked that scene,” you murmured. “I think the silence says more than they do.”

He glanced at you. “Go on.”

Your throat tightened. “Like… they’re pretending everything’s fine. But it’s too quiet. And the quiet kind of starts feeling like its own character. Like a ghost watching them.”

He was still watching you.

You shifted. “That probably sounds dumb.”

“No,” he said, and his voice was lower now. “Not dumb. That’s actually… really good.”

You didn’t know what to do with that. Praise from him felt weighted. Like a gift you weren’t supposed to unwrap too quickly.

Your fingers fidgeted with the corner of your page. “It’s just a thought.”

“It’s an insight.” A pause. “That’s different.”

Silence pooled between you again. Not uncomfortable, exactly. Just full.

He leaned forward then—only slightly—to rest his elbow on the piano lid, gaze flicking to the keys. “You ever play?”

You shook your head. “Not really. I took lessons when I was little. Quit after a year.”

“Hm.” His fingers touched the ivory, just barely. “Shame.”

He pressed a single note.

A low, humming A.

It echoed softly in the space. Then faded.

“The silence between notes,” he said suddenly, almost to himself, “is where you decide how much you felt the last one.”

You looked at him. “What does that mean?”

He smiled faintly. “You’ll get it.”

You weren’t sure if he meant music… or something else.

But he straightened after that, opened his own book beside yours, and the spell gently broke. Back to Faulkner. Back to notes and symbols and ink.

Still—something had shifted. You didn’t know how to name it yet.

All you knew was this: He was close. He listened. And he remembered what you said.

—

You didn’t remember when tutoring turned into this.

Late afternoons blurred into evenings. Sometimes the lights in the school would flicker off around you, janitors trailing down the halls, and he’d stay like he always did—perfect posture, shirt sleeves rolled, voice soft and precise, explaining even the most convoluted metaphors like they were puzzle pieces only he could click into place.

You got used to the sound of his pen. You got used to the feeling of being seen.

One day, you dropped your notes and mumbled, “Ugh, I’m so stupid,” and without missing a beat, he said—

“Don’t say that.”

It wasn’t cruel. Not even sharp. Just… final. Like truth.

You blinked. “What?”

“You’re not stupid,” he said. Then, quieter: “Not even close.”

Another time, you were fifteen minutes late—rushing in out of breath and apologizing, panicked and flustered—and he wasn’t mad, but something about his eyes didn’t match the warm tone in his voice.

“I thought maybe you forgot,” he said simply, looking down at his watch. “I didn’t think you were the kind of person who says they’ll be somewhere and then just... isn’t.”

You laughed it off. Called him dramatic. But the silence afterward felt heavier than usual.

Still, he softened too easily. “You’re here now,” he said, already sliding your book toward you. “Let’s start.”

You did. Every time.

Somewhere between October and January, everything fell into a rhythm.

You never officially sat with him at lunch, but his table was always just a few feet from yours. Close enough that his friends would call things out to you sometimes—little teasing jabs that made you squirm.

“Damn, how much time you guys spend together?” one of them asked once, grinning.

“Tutoring,” you muttered.

“Oh yeah?” he smirked. “That what they call it now?”

You shot him a look, embarrassed. But Jake, as always, didn’t flinch.

“We’re studying,” he said calmly, with that perfect little lilt in his voice. “You should try it sometime.”

Laughter. Teasing groans. But no one pushed further.

And you noticed how easily he brushed it off. How careful he was with his image. Friendly, but never too friendly. Brilliant, but never arrogant. Polished, but never robotic. He was the kind of guy who’d return your pencil and thank you for letting him borrow it. The kind who smiled when others weren’t looking, like he was practicing.

Still, you liked the way he looked at you.

Like you were the only unpredictable thing in his life. And he needed that. Just a little.

Then when finals season hit, everything turned upside down.

You’d meet up in coffee shops now, not just at school. He always showed up early. Always took the seat facing the door. Always ordered exactly what you liked for you before you arrived—even when you told him not to.

“It’s fine,” he’d say. “You’ll focus better if you’re comfortable.”

Once, you made a joke about bombing the physics test.

His expression didn’t budge. “You’re not going to bomb it,” he said flatly. “You know this. You’re just scared of not living up to what you could be.”

You stared at him. “Jesus, okay, chill.”

He blinked. Then nodded slowly. “Sorry. I just don’t like hearing you underestimate yourself.”

It should’ve been a green flag.

But something about the way he said it made you feel like failure wasn’t allowed. Like the version of you he believed in was better than you could ever be.

Still, you pushed through. You both did.

Till finally.. college acceptance day.

He found you outside after school, practically glowing.

You knew what he was going to say before he said it.

“We got in,” he beamed, eyes brighter than you’d ever seen. “Same school. Early decision. Both of us.”

You laughed out loud, letting the relief wash over you.

He pulled you into a hug—tight, brief—and when he pulled back, his hands lingered on your shoulders for half a second too long.

“I knew you’d do it,” he said. “You just needed someone to help you see it.”

There it was again. That quiet conviction. That certainty.

You should’ve felt proud. Empowered.

But the thought hit you then— He didn’t love you for who you were. He loved you for who you became around him.

—

Summer started with a heatwave and a thousand plans you couldn’t keep track of.

Group chats overflowed with half-baked party invites, bonfires, and beach days. Everything felt golden and endless. The air smelled like sunscreen and backseat secrets. For the first time in what felt like forever, you weren’t thinking about test scores or assignments or scholarships.

But Jungwon still was.

At graduation, he looked immaculate—tie perfect, hair clean-cut, cap straight. You caught him fixing someone else’s sash, brushing invisible lint off a classmate’s sleeve. The kind of guy everyone thanked in their speeches. The one who never let anyone down.

You didn’t even realize you were staring until he looked back at you.

“You ready?” he asked, smiling.

You shrugged. “Barely.”

“You’ll be fine,” he said gently. “You always are.”

You started to say not without you, but the words caught in your throat. Because sometimes it did feel like you were only fine when he was there—steady and unshaken. And that realization? Terrifying.

The first party of the summer was at someone’s lake house.

It wasn’t your scene. Too many people, too much alcohol, too many eyes. But your friends begged you to go, and you needed a break from the routine you and Jungwon had fallen into: late-night study reviews for next semester, SAT-level breakdowns of casual articles, habit-tracking apps he swore would “maximize your transition to college.”

You wanted music. You wanted mistakes.

He offered to drive you.

You almost said no. But then he said, “I’ll make sure you get home safe,” and your chest fluttered like it always did.

He stayed for a bit, leaning against the kitchen counter while you drifted around the house.

He didn’t drink. He never did. He didn’t dance. He didn’t need to. People came to him.

He was kind to everyone, of course. He laughed at the right jokes. He let people pull him into photos. But you noticed how his gaze always drifted back to you—measuring, calculating. Watching you without looking like he was watching.

At some point, a guy you vaguely knew—Mark? Max?—started talking to you in the backyard. He was cute. Not brilliant like Jungwon, but sweet, and a little awkward, which felt like a breath of fresh air.

When he asked if you wanted to go swimming, you hesitated.

Jungwon had just stepped out onto the deck with a water bottle in hand. You locked eyes across the yard.

“I’ll go grab a towel,” Mark/Max, whatever his name was, said with a grin. “Meet you at the dock?”

You nodded, distracted.

Jungwon didn’t approach. Just stood there, watching quietly.

You made your way over. “What?” you asked, half-laughing. “You don’t think I should?”

He shrugged. “You can do whatever you want.”

But his voice was too even. Too light. And the smile on his face didn’t match the tension in his jaw.

You tilted your head. “What?”

“Nothing.” He looked away. “He just doesn’t seem like your type.”

You narrowed your eyes. “And what is my type?”

His gaze returned to you—sharp, unreadable. “Someone who sees how rare you are.”

Your breath caught. Just for a second.

He said it like it was nothing. Like a fact. And then turned away before you could say anything.

You didn’t go swimming.

A week later, Max-or-Mark stopped texting. No warning, no explanation.

When your friends asked why it fizzled, you said, “I guess he lost interest.” But deep down, you couldn’t shake the thought: Did Jungwon say something?

You wanted to ask.

But you didn’t. Because if he had… what would that mean?

Mid-July. The night everything cracked a little.

You were at his place, helping pack for college. He was folding his sweaters like a machine—color-coded, perfectly creased.

“You’re gonna make everyone else look like a slob,” you teased.

He smiled faintly. “I’m just excited.”

You sat cross-legged on his bed, watching him move.

“Do you ever get tired of being... perfect?” you asked, half-joking.

He paused. Just for a second.

“I’m not perfect,” he said. “I just don’t like giving people reasons to doubt me.”

Your smile faded.

“You think that’s what people do?” you said quietly. “Wait around to doubt you?”

He looked up. Something behind his eyes flickered.

“Not you,” he said.

The air between you thickened.

You leaned back, heart skipping. “You know, if you ever just let go a little… I think people would still love you.”

He didn’t answer right away.

Then he smiled. But it wasn’t the warm, sunlit one you were used to. This one was tighter. A little sad.

“I can’t afford to let go,” he said. “Some of us don’t get second chances.”

—

Even though you were excited to still be close to Jungwon in college, you were slightly worried about what that meant. After all, you barely scraped your entrance exam scores by a thread, but you made it — and that made all the difference.

It meant he was still in your orbit. Still reachable. Still real. No matter how much harder you’d have to study to keep up.

Move-in day, he helps you with your boxes, even though his dorm is across campus. Even though his parents are waiting downstairs, car idling, perfectly timed schedule in place. Jungwon lifts the heaviest one with ease, careful not to dent the frame of your door with the corner of it.

“I told you not to overpack,” he murmurs under his breath, lips twitching into a knowing smile. “You never listen.”

“Yeah, well,” you mumble, hiding your breathlessness behind a laugh, “you never say no to helping.”

That earns you a raised brow. He’s sweating lightly — no shirt, just a fitted black tank top clinging to his chest, and it’s doing absolutely nothing for your willpower. He adjusts the box in his arms and glances at you, serious for a second. Too serious.

“You needed me.”

A simple statement. Not dramatic. Not romantic, exactly. But it sinks into your chest like an anchor.

You needed me.

And maybe that’s how it always is with him — never too much, never too little. Just enough.

That night, your friends tease you again. You’re all gathered in the common area with plastic cups for the semester kick-off party. Someone’s cheap bluetooth speaker buzzing in the corner. A girl from your building — Minji, maybe? — sways closer to Jungwon and says it outright this time.

“So, like, are you two dating or what?”

Your heart jumps so fast you nearly miss his response.

“No,” he says. Calm. Gentle. Not flustered in the slightest. “We’re just… close.”

Your stomach twists. But then he looks at you — really looks at you — and adds, “She’s important to me.”

And maybe it’s not a confession. Maybe it’s not even anything. But the way your friends blink between the two of you tells you they see something there. And the way you can’t stop replaying it tells you.. you do too.

You shouldn’t have had that last drink.

You know it even as you tip your head back, the cheap vodka burning down your throat. Someone laughs in the background — maybe Minji, maybe someone you’ve never met — and the room tilts just slightly, like the floor’s trying to test you.

You’re not drunk enough to lose yourself, but you’re hurt enough not to care. And that’s a dangerous line to teeter on.

Because all night long, you kept hearing his voice on a loop. We’re just close.Close. Like you’re something that can be filed under “friendly but not that important.” Like you didn’t fall asleep on the phone all summer. Like you didn’t let him see you cry that one night when the nerves of moving away crept in early.

You find him just outside the building, sitting alone on the ledge behind the hedges, away from the music. Always so composed. Always so put together. Hoodie zipped to his throat, one foot resting against the brick, his phone loosely in his hand like he was just about to text you.

He looks up when you approach, and something flickers behind his eyes.

“Hey,” you breathe, words slightly slurred.

He sits straighter. “You okay?”

“No,” you say plainly. Then blink. “I mean—sorry. I don’t know. Not really.”

You sit beside him, not as gracefully as you’d like, and exhale too loudly.

For a second, neither of you speaks.

Then: “You shouldn’t be out here alone like this,” he murmurs, tone clipped. Not harsh — just cautious.

You laugh under your breath. “Why? Embarrassing for you?”

His brow furrows. “What?”

“You know,” you say, voice catching a little, “people seeing you with a mess.”

He looks at you hard.

You shake your head, eyes stinging. “You didn’t say we were anything. Earlier. You said we were just close.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Well, how did you mean it?” you snap, a little too loud. “Because I’m tired, Jungwon. I’m tired of not knowing what we are. And if I’m just some girl you take care of because you like feeling needed—”

“Stop.” He cuts you off, quietly but firmly. His eyes are sharp now. “You’re drunk.”

“I’m not that drunk.”

“You’re upset. And we’ll talk when you’re sober.”

That stings. Not because he’s wrong, but because he’s already pulling away — physically, emotionally — like it’s too messy for him. Like he can’t deal with you unless you’re polished and perfect and easy to hold.

You stare at him for a long moment. “Fine,” you mutter, standing up too fast. “Forget I said anything.”

He watches you go. But he doesn’t chase you.

The next morning you wake up with a mild headache and a twist in your stomach that has nothing to do with alcohol.

You barely remember how the night ended — flashes of the party, the cold air outside, a sharp voice (his?), and the blur of walking away.

You sit up in bed, rubbing your eyes, and jump a little when there’s a knock at the door.

You open it in a hoodie and sleep shorts, hair a mess, expecting a roommate or maybe an RA doing rounds.

But it’s Jungwon. Holding flowers.

He’s in a gray crewneck and black jeans, eyes unreadable, jaw tense like he’s been rehearsing something.

Your heart thumps painfully. “Hey.”

“Hi,” he says. Then glances down at the bouquet like it’s a shield. “Can I come in?”

You nod, stepping aside. He walks in slowly, sets the flowers on your desk, and turns to face you.

“Do you… remember anything from last night?” he asks gently.

You chew your lip. “Not really. Just that we talked. And I said stuff.”

He nods. “You were upset.”

You nod too, throat dry.

“I didn’t handle it well,” he admits. “I didn’t want to say the wrong thing. I thought waiting until it was… cleaner would be better. I wanted a perfect moment.”

You look at him carefully. “You always want things to be perfect.”

He huffs softly, guilty. “Yeah.”

“But that’s not real,” you say.

“I know.” He steps closer. “I kept telling myself there would be a better time. A more romantic one, or planned, or… not when you were hurting. But the truth is, I’ve been sure about you for a long time.”

Your breath catches.

“And I hated that I let you walk away thinking I didn’t care.”

Silence falls, soft and thick between you.

Then he lifts his eyes to yours.

“So… will you go out with me?” he says. “Like officially. No more waiting. No more hiding it.”

You stare at him for a second too long.

Then nod. Once. Slowly. Like your body knows before your mouth does.

“Yeah,” you whisper. “Yes.”

And he smiles — that real one. The rare kind that crinkles his eyes and softens everything.

“I brought flowers,” he says again, a little bashfully.

You glance at them, then at him. “That was smart.”

“I try.”

Then you both laugh — tired, relieved, a little broken open — and he leans forward to rest his forehead against yours.

This time, there’s no perfect moment.

But it’s real.

And that’s enough.

—

Things are good. Too good. Jungwon is literally the epitome of a perfect boyfriend.

He texts you “good morning” before you’re even awake. Fixes your crooked backpack strap in the hallway. Knows your schedule better than his own. Remembers the almond syrup in your coffee and the way you twist your hair when you’re tired.

He always walks you home. Always pays. Always looks calm — neat, tidy, composed — even when he’s exhausted.

At first, it’s comforting. He’s careful with you. Like you’re precious.

But after a few weeks, the edges sharpen.

He never lets you see his dorm unless everything’s put away — the bed smooth, desk cleared, not a single sock in sight. If you catch him off guard, he stiffens. Smiles, but too quickly. Offers to meet at your place instead.

When you mention you’ve had a bad day, he brings your favorite snacks, sits beside you, listens — but never talks about his. Never has bad days. Or if he does, he wraps them up in a sentence and changes the subject.

You start to notice how tightly wound he is.

How he always needs to “fix” things when you’re upset.

How he double-checks texts he sends you. How he apologizes for small things — being late by two minutes, forgetting you said you had a quiz.

How he won’t let you take a single unflattering photo of him. How he always asks, “You’re okay, right?” even when you’re smiling.

And then one day — you snap.

Not because you’re mad. Because you’re scared.

You’re sitting on the steps outside the library, the sun bleeding through the clouds, your fingers tangled in the sleeve of your hoodie. You’d been quiet the whole walk, thinking. Weighing.

He notices immediately. “Hey,” he says softly. “What’s going on?”

You hesitate. Then: “Do you ever just… relax anymore? With me?”

He blinks. “What do you mean?”

“You’re always so on, Jungwon. So perfect. Like you’re scared I’ll disappear if you slip up.”

He goes still.

You look down at your hands. “I don’t want to be an extension of your image. I want to be your person.”

Silence.

When you glance up again, his jaw is clenched, and his eyes are glassy. Not teary — just raw. Like you found the one door he keeps padlocked.

“I don’t mean to be like that,” he says eventually. Voice low. “It’s just… when I was younger, everything felt out of my control. The only way I knew how to stay safe was to be good. To be perfect.”

Your chest tightens.

“And now you’re the most important thing in my life,” he says, voice cracking slightly. “So I’ve been trying even harder. I thought if I could make it perfect, I wouldn’t lose you.”

You move closer, heart aching. “You’re allowed to be real with me.”

He nods slowly. Swallows. Then, finally, lets his shoulders drop.

And for the first time — really — you see him exhale.

The mask slips, just for a moment.

Not the leader. Not the perfect student. Not the boy everyone looks up to.

Just Jungwon. Scared and trying almost twenty years old with a heart he’s terrified to hand over.

You take it gently.

And for the first time, that feels perfect.

—

After that, things seem to go well for a while. He tries to be a lot “less perfect” around you. But you see the way his jaw tenses when you run late for a group date. When you turn in your group project a minute before the deadline. And especially when you're anywhere in public and you laugh too loudly, get a little too drunk, or do anything that “isn’t perfect”. 

One day you’re walking across campus together — late September — and it’s hotter than expected, the sun beating down. You’re sweating, your hair sticking to the back of your neck, and you reach for your water bottle.

Your fingers fumble, and it falls.

Loud. It bounces against the cement. The lid snaps open, water sloshing out like a wave across the path. You groan and squat to pick it up.

He’s already there. Hand on your wrist. Calm voice.

“Careful,” he says quietly, checking the bottle, the spout, the trail of water. “That could’ve splashed on someone. It’s just… messy.”

You blink at him. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“I know,” he says quickly, offering a smile yet his jaw is tensed. “You just need to be more mindful.”

It’s not cruel. It’s not even sharp.

But it sticks with you.

And it happens again. Little things — small messes, wrinkled clothes, laughing too loud, forgetting your library card. Each time he’s calm. Gentle. The perfect boyfriend correcting you with a sweet smile and a soft voice, and yet somehow, each time… you feel smaller.

He notices things no one else does. Things about you. He notices when your voice trembles during presentations. He notices when you forget to capitalize titles in your essays. He offers to fix them. Helps you organize your calendar. Proofreads your texts before you send them to professors.

“It’s just to make things easier for you,” he says, leaning over your shoulder, highlighting phrases on your screen. “You’re smart. You just need… polish.”

Polish. Like you’re a project. A piece he’s refining.

But then he kisses your forehead before leaving. Buys your favorite drink. Keeps his hand in yours when you walk across campus, and everyone sees you — perfect couple, perfect pair, matching sweaters and study dates and subtle little laughs.

And no one sees how tight your throat feels when you mess up. How you apologize before he can even say anything now. How you start watching yourself the way he does.

He never yells. Never raises a hand. Never even gets angry.

But you know when you’ve disappointed him.

—

One night after another party you managed to drag him to, you wake up to flowers on your desk. Not store-bought — freshly cut, dew still clinging to the stems, like he picked them himself just before sunrise. There’s a note taped to the vase. Just four words:

“Do you remember anything?”

Your stomach drops.

You barely do.

Just fragments — the way the music buzzed through your teeth, the sweat clinging to your neck, the warmth of his palm as he led you outside. The taste of vodka on your tongue. The way you laughed too loud. Cried too easily.

And the look on his face.

Tight-lipped. Cold.

Not like him.

You answer his text with a tentative: not really. was i bad?

The response is immediate. No. just not yourself. I’ll come over.

You don’t even have time to pull your hair into a bun before he’s knocking. When you open the door, he’s already smoothing his shirt down, like he rehearsed this moment. Like it has to go a certain way.

He steps inside, kisses your temple, and says, “Sit down. I brought you breakfast.”

You blink. “I’m not really hungry—”

He kisses your temple again, firmer. “Sit down.”

You obey.

He lays everything out. Napkin folded. Straw unwrapped. Your favorite jam placed just so beside the toast. It’s meticulous. Too meticulous.

He doesn’t sit. Just watches you with that unreadable expression. Like he’s studying you for flaws.

“You scared me last night,” he says finally. “I’ve never seen you like that.”

You open your mouth, but he cuts you off.

“I don’t blame you,” he says. “You didn’t know better. I should’ve protected you from that kind of scene.”

That kind of scene.

The party. The alcohol. The noise.

“I should’ve said no when you asked me to go,” he murmurs, half to himself. “I knew it’d be messy. Unpredictable.”

You stare at him. “I just wanted to have fun.”

“Fun doesn’t have to mean chaos,” he snaps — and immediately softens. “Sorry. I’m not mad. I just…” He exhales. “You’re mine now. I should’ve known better.”

That word again.

Mine.

And suddenly, you feel it.

The edges closing in.

You nod slowly, unsure.

He kneels beside you. Takes your hand.

“Promise me you won’t do that again? I just want what’s best for you,” he pauses. “What’s best for us.”

You stare at him. At the food. The flowers. The gleam in his eyes.

You should feel happy. This is what you wanted — right? Him?

So why does your chest feel so tight?

Why does it feel like you just got caged?

But you nod. Slowly. Carefully.

“Okay,” you whisper. “Yeah. I want that.”

His smile widens. But his grip on your hand doesn’t loosen.

From then on, he knows everything.

Where you go. What you wear. Who you talk to.

He doesn’t yell. Doesn’t curse. Never lays a hand on you.

Just corrects.

Subtly. Constantly. Suffocatingly.

“That top rides up too high, baby — it’s not you.”

“You shouldn’t hang with them. They don’t respect your time.”

“Don’t post that. People will get the wrong idea.”

He edits your world in real time. Smooths out the parts of you that don’t match his vision.

And when you start to pull back — even just a little — he tightens.

“It’s okay,” he whispers against your neck one night. “I get it. You’re scared. But I won’t let anything happen to us. Ever.”

You want to tell him it’s not you you’re scared of.

It’s him.

But you don’t.

Because he’s watching.

And because somewhere deep inside, part of you likes being kept. Being curated. Being someone perfect in his eyes.

Even if it means you can’t leave.

Even if it means he’ll never let you.

—

You don’t even realize what sets him off this time.

It’s just a joke. A harmless, throwaway laugh at a party. Someone teased you for being “the campus princess” and you shrugged it off with a smile.

“I guess Jungwon trained me well,” you said, playful.

And everyone laughed. But later, in his car, he doesn't. The silence wraps around you both like a noose.

You fiddle with the sleeve of your cardigan, glancing sideways. “You okay?”

His hands are white-knuckled on the steering wheel. “That’s what you think?” he says finally.

“What?”

“That I trained you.”

You blink. “I was joking—”

“That’s what they think now, too,” he cuts in. His jaw flexes. “That you’re just some project I polished. Something I control.”

Your stomach tightens.

He’s projecting. You know that. You know that. But it still hurts. “You do control me sometimes,” you mutter.

He laughs under his breath. Not funny. Bitter. “You think this is control?”

And when you don’t answer, he slams the brakes a little too hard, pulling into your apartment’s lot in silence.

The car stops.

And you don’t move.

Neither does he.

“You’re perfect,” he says, softly. “But you don’t even want it.”

That—somehow—is worse than yelling.

“Jungwon…”

“You wear what I pick. You study the way I taught you. You smile at the right times. Everyone sees you and says she’s flawless. And you want to throw it away for what? For a joke?”

Your throat is tight. “I never asked you to fix me.”

He looks at you. Sharp. Pinning.

“No,” he says. “You just asked me to love you.”

You flinch. Because it’s not wrong.

And he leans in slightly, voice low.

“And I do. I love you so much it makes me sick. I gave you a world with no bruises. No bad decisions. Nothing that stains.”

You swallow, barely breathing.

“And you still want to dirty it up.”

There’s a long, echoing silence.

You get out of the car without saying a word.

And he doesn’t follow.

But a little after one thirty in the morning, there’s a soft knock on your door. 

You know Jungwon. You knew he’d come fixing things. So why’d you leave the door unlocked. 

It’s quiet for a moment. Then the handle of the door twists and he steps inside. He pauses for a moment staring at you curled on the couch while he locks the door behind him.

It’s quiet.. Not just in the room — in you too. Like something stills when he’s near, like the noise of everything else dies down to nothing. You don’t even know what to say. And it looks like he doesn’t either. 

He’s holding flowers. Sets them down softly. White roses this time. Perfect. Always perfect.

“I knew you’d be waiting,” he says softly. “We had a conversation to finish.”

You nod, unsure of what you’re supposed to say. The room smells like his cologne and clean linen, and your heart is beating way too loud in your chest. You’re still in his old hoodie — the one you swore you’d give back last week — but neither of you mention it.

“I guess I was just drunk,” you finally murmur, rolling your eyes like you’ve memorized the way this conversation is supposed to go.

“You were upset,” he corrects gently, stepping closer. “And I didn’t want to argue with you while you were… like that. You know I wouldn’t let anyone see you fall apart.”

That makes you look up.

“Because it would make you look bad,” you say, sharper than you intend.

His jaw tightens. Just for a second. He exhales through his nose.

“No. Because you’re mine.”

That silences you again.

It’s not possessive, the way he says it. It’s reverent. Like he’s laying down a law — not just to you, but to the universe. You’re mine. An unshakable truth.

You swallow. “Why does it feel like I can never mess up around you?”

“That’s not true,” he replies immediately. “You can. You have. You will.”

“Yeah?” Your voice rises, trembling. “Then why does it always feel like I’m failing some test? Like every wrong move is another thing I’m ruining?”

Jungwon just looks at you. Calm. Still. Like your chaos doesn’t touch him — or maybe like it does, and he just hides it better than you.

“Because I want us to be perfect,” he says simply. “Because I’ve spent my whole life making sure every part of me was perfect, and now… you’re part of me. Do you get that? Do you understand how much that means?”

You don’t respond. You can’t. Your chest is too tight. But your eyes burn and your fists curl in the sleeves of his hoodie.

“So I try,” he continues, quieter now. “To control everything. To plan the perfect moment. The perfect confession. The perfect us. But it’s never enough for you, is it?”

Your breath catches. “I never asked you to be perfect.”

“No,” he says, voice low but cutting through the air like a blade. “But you expect it.”

He steps closer, closing the last inch between you, and you can feel the weight of his gaze—calculated, intense, like he’s already claimed you without saying a word.

“And the worst part?” His voice drops to a whisper, thick with something dangerous and urgent. “I want you to. I want you to look at me like I’m the best thing that ever happened to you. I need it. I need you to believe it. Because if you don’t—”

His voice breaks, just for a flicker, jaw clenched tight enough to see the strain beneath the surface—the first real crack in his perfect facade.

You don’t flinch. Instead, your breath catches, and you take a slow step back, meeting him eye to eye.

“Maybe I don’t,” you say, voice low and steady, eyes sharp. “Maybe I don’t want to think you’re perfect. Maybe I like knowing you’re just as fucked up as me.”

His brows draw together, a flicker of something almost like frustration crossing his face. But he recovers quickly, voice cool as ice.

“Fucked up isn’t the same as imperfect.”

You scoff softly, a bitter laugh escaping your lips. “What, so you’re flawless?”

He moves again, deliberate and sure, his hand brushing your arm like a tether. “I’m perfect because I control every piece of this—every moment, every word, every breath between us.”

You shake your head, the corner of your mouth twitching. “Sounds exhausting.”

“It is,” he admits, voice dropping low. “But you—you’re part of that perfection now. You don’t get to be messy or careless anymore.”

“Who says I want to be part of your perfect world?”

His grip tightens just a little on your arm, not enough to hurt but enough to remind you who’s holding on.

“I make it your world,” he says. “Because losing you would be worse than any mistake.”

The honesty in his voice, the obsession barely contained—it hits you like a punch to the chest.

You look away, swallowing hard.

“Then why does it feel like I’m suffocating?”

He steps so close you can feel the heat radiating off him.

“Because perfection isn’t easy,” he whispers. “But I’ll force it. I’ll make it right. And if it means controlling every second until it feels perfect? Then I’ll do that too.”

You stare up at him, breath hitching as his hand slides from your arm to cup your jaw.

“You’re mine,” he says, voice fierce but tender all at once.

You search his eyes—dark, desperate, flawless.

And you finally nod, barely a whisper. “And I’m yours.”

He leans down then, lips brushing yours with a slow, demanding pressure. Your breath hitches — part anticipation, part something darker, deeper. The kiss deepens, no longer gentle but precise, claiming. It’s like he’s staking his claim on you with every inch, every second, and you don’t pull away.

Your back hits the wall, heart hammering so loudly you’re sure he can hear it. His fingers tremble slightly on your hips before tightening, pulling you flush against him. The warmth of him—his scent, the weight of his body—feels like coming home and stepping into a storm all at once. His hands roam your body slowly, reverently, mapping every curve like a man who’s memorized you in pieces but craves the whole. You tug at the hem of his shirt, peeling it off with deliberate slowness, as if marking territory, as if making the moment undeniably yours.

He shivers, lips tracing down your collarbone, each kiss igniting a slow fire beneath your skin that promises both heat and control.

“I’ve waited for this,” he breathes, voice rough and uneven. “For you. For everything.”

You arch into him, a sharp inhale catching in your throat as his fingers grip your waist like he’s anchoring himself to the only thing that’s real. You. It’s possessive, grounding. The kind of touch that says mine before he even speaks it aloud.

You feel it in your chest — the pressure, the heat, the way the room warps around the two of you, like the world shrinks to nothing but his breath on your skin, the soft groan he doesn’t mean to let slip as your body presses flush to his.

“You don’t have to be perfect,” you whisper, fingertips brushing through his hair, clinging to the only softness left in him.

But his eyes squeeze shut, his forehead pressed tight against yours, and when he speaks again, his voice cracks open like something wounded and raw.

“I know,” he says. “But I still want to be.”

The weight of it hits you harder than his touch — this brutal honesty, this unraveling. The way he’s trying to craft a flawless world and tuck you into the center of it like a crown jewel. You’re not blind to it. You’ve seen the cracks forming for months. The pressure he puts on himself, the way he watches your every move like your existence reflects directly on him. Like if you fall apart, he does too.

It should scare you.

But instead, now it just burns something inside you alive.

He gently backs you to your room, And when he finally moves — it’s slow, controlled, like he’s memorized every part of you in theory and now he’s tracing it in real time — it’s not hesitant. It’s reverent. You let him guide you, breath stolen from your lungs as his hands slide under the hem of your shirt, pulling it up and over your head like it’s a ribbon he’s finally unwrapping. There’s no fumbling, no rush. Just his mouth on your collarbone, down your sternum, leaving kisses that feel like marks. Like proof.

It’s the first time.

You’ve done everything else. You’ve danced at the edge, teased the line, made each other lose sleep from kisses that lingered too long. But this is new. And you feel it — in the way he pauses once your body is bare beneath him, just stares, just breathes. His pupils blown wide with awe, hunger, obsession.

You don’t know why you said it, but the words slip out before you can stop them.

“You know this is the first time we’ve ever gone this far.” Your voice is barely audible, almost a confession. You can feel the pulse in your throat, uneven and raw.

His lips trail to the sensitive skin of your neck, teeth grazing softly, sending shivers through you.

“I know,” he murmurs, voice thick with something like promise — or maybe possession.

“You’ve always stopped it before,” you say quietly, lips brushing his ear. “You said you wanted it to be perfect.”

His throat bobs. “I did.” Then his breath catches. “I was waiting for the perfect time.”

You meet his gaze, the intensity pinning you in place. “And now?”

His eyes darken, sharp and unwavering. “Maybe this is the perfect time. And if it’s not—”

He pauses, breath shaking with something almost desperate, hungry.

“Then I’ll make it be.” His eyes lift to meet yours — dark, aching, a storm barely held back. “I know nothing will ever be perfect except this. You. Us.”

Then he’s kissing you again, rougher this time, mouth bruising yours with the kind of need that’s been suppressed for far too long. His hands trail lower, gripping your thighs, pulling you closer, until there’s no space left between your bodies. Until all that’s left is heat and breath and the sound of his name falling from your lips in a trembling whisper.

He fills you slowly, reverently — and you shatter around it, not from pain but from the sheer meaning of it.

It’s not just sex. It’s a claiming.

You feel it in the way his arms wrap around you like he’ll never let go. The way he says your name like a prayer he’s been reciting in silence. He moves with you like he’s spent years crafting this moment in his mind — and maybe he has. Each motion precise, consuming, deliberate.

Controlled chaos.

“I’m yours,” you whisper again, voice small and breathless as he buries his face in the curve of your neck.

His breath stutters. “You’ve always been.”

And maybe you should say no. Maybe you should run. But this is home — in all its madness, in all its pressure. The suffocation of it, the illusion of perfection, the way he worships you like you’re the only thing in the world that could ever ruin him.

You know it’s dangerous. But you also know this:

It’s beautiful. And it’s yours.

Afterward, when the quiet settles like a second skin around your bare bodies, he holds you so tight you think you might dissolve.

He tucks a stray lock of hair behind your ear — a small ritual, a sacred gesture, the kind of tender control that both comforts and terrifies.

“I– I really don’t need the world to.. love me,” he whispers, voice barely audible in the dark. “Just you.”

You say nothing, letting the silence stretch between your bare skin and his measured breaths.

And he pulls you even closer.

Because he knows—

You’re the only beautiful chaos that could ever shatter his perfect world.

And you’re already doing it.

Thanks for reading! Reblogs + notes always mean a lot 💌 other works

tl: @yazmike

(read rules before asking to be added to any list ᥫ᭡. )

[noodles-and-tea]

i’ve just finished reading Saving Sherlock Holmes, do you have any teen johnlock art?

Sure :)

[purinfelix]

more joao felix pleasee 😔😔💞💞 ur girl is desperate

study buddy ｡˚✐~ joao felix

pairing: joao felix x reader summary: in which joao has to balance being both your boyfriend and study buddy warnings: none! w/c: 883

a/n: a little ironic that i'm procrastinating my final assignments by writing this but its motivaiton for myself okay!!! anyways hope you like this thank u sm for ur request <333

“Joao,”

“Hm?”

“Stop staring at me and focus, you have an exam to study for.”

You watched your boyfriend straighten up at your words, but not without a sly smirk spreading across his face at having been caught in the act of admiring you. Admittedly, it wasn’t something you weren’t used to by now - but it just wasn’t the time. Maybe if you were less stressed about the mountain of work and studying you had to do you might’ve even entertained him, but even so, your university library was no place for such things.

“I can’t help it, you’re distracting me,” he mumbled, turning back to the several open textbooks he had laid out in front of him - likely in an attempt to look like he was doing work. This elicited a small, shy chuckle from you, even though you were trying your best to maintain your firm demeanour.

“Well, you’re lucky anyways,” you hummed, “you’ll ace your exams no matter what. I, on the other hand, am practically screwed for this final.”

Now it was his turn to laugh, “You can’t be serious baby.” You turned to give him a look that made it clear you were as serious as you could get.

“You’ll be fine, you worry too much,” he sighed, scooting his chair a little closer.

“Easy for you to say,” you grumbled, gripping the pen in your hand even tighter as you worked on your notes.

It had become sort of a routine for the two of you ever since the semester started, these study dates. Whoever’s class finished first would rush off to secure a seat, your favourite being a pair of desks tucked away in some far corner of the massive library, in between tall shelves of books that hadn’t been touched in decades. Sure, you would muck around a little bit before hand - Joao always insisted on being your personal escort once your class finished, and somehow the two of you always ended up in a cafe on your way for a little ‘sweet treat’.

But it was convenient for the two of you, you got to see each other and spend time in each other’s company in a way that slotted neatly into both of your busy student schedules - plus, you could never figure out why but you seemed to work much better in your boyfriend’s company than you did alone. Even if you found yourself having to put up with his protests against studying multiple times throughout the session.

However what had been a fun little meet up in the earlier weeks of the semester had now become tense, with the onset of finals and end-of-semester assignments. Your boyfriend never seemed to have as much a sense of urgency as you did about these things, and still didn’t understand why you got so worked up about academics. In a weird way, you appreciated it though, for moments like this.

You felt the warmth of his touch on the back of your hand - gentle, soothing.

“Baby,” he murmured, just loud enough for you to hear him through the haze of stress that had seemed to follow you around for the last week. You paused, turning to look up at him and his soft gaze.

“What,” you said, trying not to sound too mad at him interrupting what could’ve been a very thorough revision session - never mind it being your third for the day.

“You’ll be fine for this exam, trust me,” his tone was different from before, the air of humour completely lost and replaced by a sense of earnestness.

“No, but-” you began to protest before he interrupted you.

”You work hard, harder than me and probably harder than most of the people in your class, I know that. You’ll be okay,” you felt your heart soften, accompanied by a pang of annoyance at the fact he always seemed to know what to say to you when you got worked up. You let out a soft sigh to let him know you appreciated his words.

“Now, I think you’ve done enough for today. Why don’t we pack up, grab some dinner, and head home so you can get a good night’s sleep.” A part of you wanted to protest so badly, to shove him away and ask him who the hell he thought he was for talking to you like you were some sort of child. But the rest of you was too tired to do anything but nod, and the better part understood that he wasn’t doing this out of anything but pure love and care for you - as your boyfriend.

You watched as he moved quickly to pack away your things, being gentle with your notes and laptop, before slinging both his and your bag over your shoulder. He reached out a hand to you, which you took, standing up slowly to prevent your legs from cramping up as you were only just realising how long you’d been sitting still for. You looked up as he smiled lovingly, sweeping your hair back to plant a soft kiss on your forehead and drag you out of the library.

[nicherayyy]

La squadra hc when they were in school (highschool) like their attitude, were they like academic achiever, delinquent, did they date anyone?? (They’re in the same school btw)🙏🙏🙏🙏 PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE AND THANKYOU!!

OMG YASSS! I have so many hcs with highschool la squadra tbh😭

La Squadra Highschool hcs

Okay so first of all

I'm pretty sure they won't become one big friend group at least for a few months

Mostly because of personality differences

For example Prosciutto prays to all the gods imaginable not to have classes with Formaggio

It's not like he hates him, but he definitely finds him pretty annoying

Poor Pros just came here to study some math while there's Formaggio trying to show a lightbulb into his mouth out of boredom

And I definitely see him annoy Pros in a classic class clown way

-Pros... PROS

-WHAT?

-*giggles* nothin'

And if the teacher notices he'd blame Prosciutto too😭

So yeah.. nobody really likes having classes with Formaggio

I'm pretty sure everyone sees him like a type of guy who constantly needs to date someone, although he only got a girlfriend once (in 5th grade and it lasted for two weeks)

Thinks that drinking energy drinks is cool, so he drinks them CONSTANTLY

If you look closely you might see his hands shaking from all the caffeine he consumed

He's like a big ball of energy

And maybe a ball of stomach and kidney issues, he's not sure, visiting a doctor is not his style

And since he needs to spend this energy somewhere the only class he never skipped is PE

Tries to show cool tricks with a basketball ball, but just ends up looking stupid

Well.. at least Illuso is amused

In the mean way

I swear he's like a school diva

A mean girl

Nobody really likes him for that, but he kinda has frienemy dynamic with Formaggio

I swear, one minute they're laughing together and the other they're trying to drown each other in a water fountain

Illuso would have a school gossip instagram account

(Mostly he just comes up with tea himself)

Somebody held hands? Yeah, they're getting a whole article about their dating life.

"Name three songs of the band on your shirt" type of guy

So yeah, he just goes to school to get some tea

But I KNOW that at the end of the semester he tries to hand in all his skipped assignments like nothing happened

-Hey teacher, I've got this essay you assigned us

-...It was due two months ago

-...Well I still did it, didn't I?

Risotto is a quiet type of guy

Not in a cool mysterious way, he's just mostly in his own world

But if you want to do a project with him, or sit with him during lunch he's totally fine with that

Has his own collection of band shirts

(Uh-huh he's the one who Iluso asks to name three band songs)

-Metallica shirt? Hah, name at least three of their songs

-"Enter Sandman", "Ride The Lightning", "Fade To Black"

-..Okay you're no fun

Randomly mastered piercing so now he has both of his brows pierced

Not really an academic weapon, he just does what he's asked to do

Literally, if you ask him to write an essay for 2000 words he'll write EXACTLY 2000 words. No more no less

I don't see him dating at all, cause he sees no point in it

Sometimes hangs out with Prosciutto

He just complimented his jacket once

Cause I literally see Pros being the most fashionable guy in school

So he likes his outfits/pieces of closing being complimented

He's the one big perfectionist

Has everything organised

School locker, notebooks, pencil cases you name it

Tried to become school president once

But wasn't so popular among voters for being "too serious"

He was, in fact, too serious

I don't think he ever skipped a class

(He'll feel bad if he does)

Besides, school is for studying so what's the poing of going there if he would just skip classes?

Took Pesci, as he calls it, "under his wing"

Mostly because Pesci thinks that Pros's really cool

Okay so Pesci is like the shyest but the nicest guy in school

Pros told him to be less nice cause some students take advantage of that

Yeah, some people are really mean to him

Gets so upset if he gets a bad mark

He's an average students, but tries to do better

I see Prosciutto using aggressive motivation on him

-We're graduating in two years and you're planning to apply to college with those results???

And Pesci gets a major scare from that

Also tried to be in school sports team, such as swim team, soccer team etc

Found out that that's not his cup of tea the hardest way possible.

Melone's a straight A student without even trying

He doesn't care that much, but somehow he's magically one of the best students at school

-Did you study for the test?

-What? No, I didn't even open the book *Gets an A+*

Teachers always ask him to help if they have some sort of computer problems

Still, some students think he's a creep

And well.. he is to some extent

Just don't tell him your zodiac sign and you'll be okay

I see him being in some kind of computer club

Or generally something related to electronics

You know, even if he's a good student, he still got suspended for dress code violation once or twice

But I know he's still teachers favourite because he knows how to make Excel Tables

And I also know for a fact that the same teachers don't like Ghiaccio

Especially literature teacher.

Ghiaccio is weirdly educated in literature, and he thinks that only his point of view is right

You don't agree with his view of some characters? Oh well, obviously your opinion is the wrong one

So the poor literature teacher spends like 45 minutes only to make Ghia stop try to argue with him

Also constantly tries to find loopholes in the school rules

And there's no reason to it, he just does that

School office secretary hates to see him coming.

Ghia is another perfectionist so instead of using eraser to correct a misspell, he just throws away an entire sheet of paper and starts again

(It's his 5th sheet of paper)

[ragnarokhound]

Ooh what about...Teacher au, actor au, and pokémon au. Ships open to whatever but jason in them preferred 👀

For the AU ask game!

THESE ARE ALL SO GOOD, YOU ARE CRACKING ME OPEN LIKE AN EGG (like with a previous ask i might answer one and then maybe circle back with a reblog or smth to answer the others fjdlsaja WE'LL SEE IF I HAVE TIME TODAY) and I'm jaytim til i die so that's what i'll be speculating on for the most part lmao

Teacher au... oh the hot gossip that would fly in that staff lounge...

Five fun facts about a teacher au I'd write:

Jason teaches either english or drama. Or maybe he would teach drama IF admin hadn't fucking cut the drama program last year and left them to organize a club instead. "there's no funding" they say, and yet the basketball team is getting all new equipment, all new buses (not even district-assigned! their OWN BUS), a whole new fucking facility--

Tim is the basketball coach. (He teaches math/comp sci/engineering). Drama ensues.

(The basketball team went to state last year Mr. Todd, sorry if success means getting more interest and therefore funding from the community, but maybe there's a lesson to be learned here) (>:0 he did NOT)

Principal Wayne doesn't play favorites (except he totally does, Principal Grayson at their sister school in Blüdhaven applied for that job specifically to get away from the bullshit. He wishes he could have sniped Babs as his office manager, but she's too entrenched. RIP) but Tim is obviously Bruce's newest, shiniest hire and after Jason came back from medical leave (motorcycle accidents suuuuuuck) he's extremely miffed to see what's been changed in his absence

Real conflict would take place when one of Tim's star players tries out for the school play and gets the lead role because Jason can see that this kid has talent AND THEY NEED THAT. (Drake is, unfortunately, correct; if they can take their production of Chicago to the National Drama Festival, then maybe they'll get the support they need to reinstate the drama program. Or whatever. UGH) Tim is pissed because this kid has a shot at playing professionally and this could fuck his chances if he's not giving his A-game during championships this year. Cue no longer passive but rather outright aggressive arguments between Mr. Todd and Mr. Drake BOILING with sexual tension while, idk who, Jon Kent probably Does His Best to be a teenager lmao

(BONUS FUN FACT: they 100% fuck in their hotel at Dramafest, because of course the drama club made it, and of course Mr. Drake came along. To support his student, obviously. And not at all because Tim saw the play that winter to support Jon and saw how good he was and Jason got in his face about it after the show and all the tension from the whole semester boiled over and they made out backstage like they were teens themselves again. Not at all. That would be unprofessional and irresponsible.)

[superlinguo]

Barb Kelly

This time last year came the sudden, unexpected news of the death of Barbara F. Kelly's. Barb Kelly was one of my undergraduate lecturers, my principle PhD supervisor, and eventually a collaborator and friend. I have mentioned Barb in passing on the blog over the years, but now we've muddled through a year without her, I finally feel like I have some space to reflect on the fact she has been one of the most important influences the course of my life.

Barb was many things to many people. She managed to do this by being deeply curious about people, and had a devastatingly compelling ability to give you her full attention when you were talking with her. She was interesting because she was interested; her friendships, hobbies and tastes were eclectic and wide-ranging. There's a really beautiful obituary from our colleague Nick Evans that captures the story of Barb's life. This is my story of how Barb shaped me as a linguist, a researcher and a person.

I first encountered Barb when she was teaching in my final year of a Bachelor of Arts. The third year subject Language and Culture was a romp through kin terms, colour theory, names, primates, spatial systems, social intelligence, politeness, and so much more. Barb was an enthusiastic lecturer, with anecdotes, contextualisation and rich examples every week.

One week she introduced us to the topic of gesture. I was intrigued! How had I made it through a whole degree without encountering this work! (now that I write courses, I know how hard it is to find space in the curriculum for every topic worthy of attention, and gesture rarely features at all in undergraduate coursework). At the end of the lecture Barb said "this is one of my favourite topics. You're not allowed to do you're final assignment on this unless you see me first, because I don't want to read a bad assignment on this topic."

I still remember when I went to talk to her about it, and experienced the full intensity of the undivided attention of Barb Kelly for the first time. At some point, mildly bewildered by all this new reading, I wondered how we even knew that people paid attention to different types of gesture. "I always thought that would be a good topic for an honours thesis," Barb mentioned, before walking me back to something more manageable for a class paper.

[A brief time jump: The last time Barb and I caught up, it was getting to the end of the year and we were trying to avoid editing a paper. Somehow we got talking about the first time we met. Barb's main recollection was: "You were so weird." Barb thought it was very funny, but I also think that being interesting to Barb Kelly was a delightful compliment.]

A couple of weeks later, I went back and asked "could... I be the person who did that paper you mentioned?" At the very end of the final semester of my degree, I threw in my plans for a fourth year of Art History. I'm not usually one to change big plans so dramatically, but I decided that I wanted to do linguistics if I got to do the kind of linguistics Barb did. Of course, many years later when we were talking about it she laughed "I wouldn't have suggested it if I didn't want you to do it!"

That's how we got working on a small honours project to see what kinds of gestures and other movement people report that they pay attention to. It was an in-the-spirit replication of an old task Adam Kendon set up in the 1970s with a projector and silent film, but we used a computer and software that let people mark what they thought a gesture was (this became, many years later, Gawne & Kelly 2014). Just as I was finishing up data collection Barb disappeared. She had colorectal cancer and (although I didn't know this at the time) the prognosis was terrible.

At the end of that year I felt quite lost. I had finished the project, but didn't really know what to do next. I managed to get an office job for a while; it was fun to have a steady income after years of student life, but I got bored pretty quickly. I had planned a long nonsense holiday in Europe to distract myself. Barb had returned to work and I emailed her about catching up for coffee. I even fact-checked this in my email archive, and apparently I asked to "pick [her] brain about post-grad courses". It's easy to forget, with the benefit of hindsight, just how little idea I had of what I could do, what I should do or how I should go about making any of it happen. The only people I knew who had PhDs were the ones who taught me. I do remember we talked about where there was good work being done, the difference between Australian/UK and North American PhD programs and what kind of topics I might do. Barb then mentioned that she had a project she was working on and they were looking for someone do contribute by doing a PhD on evidential systems of a Tibeto-Burman language from Nepal. How was I meant to come up with a better idea than that? She promised me that her oncologist gave her at least the four years I needed to finish a PhD, because I am excessively practical and Barb had a very good sense of humour. I mailed my application to do a PhD at The University of Melbourne from a post office in Malta while on my holiday. I only mention this because it sounds very nonsense and like something form the 1930s.

[A disclaimer here: I usually strongly discourage students from staying at their undergaduate institution for graduate study. But I also point out I'm a giant hypocrite and staying at UoM to work with Barb was a good decision for me. Please take into account the survivor bias. Barb believed in me and that was more useful than anything another institution could have provided]

The week before I started my PhD with Barb, we caught up off campus with Sara, another PhD student who was about to start working with Barb. Barb used it as an opportunity to explain to us that even though a PhD would be big and demanding and important, it was also important that we didn't let it stop us living the rest of our lives, "if you need to, take a break to tour with a band or have a kid, that's important too" I was worried she was maybe expecting I had time to start a band as well as do a PhD? but it also left a lasting impression on me. She was so good at talking through the linguistic content of what I was doing, but also socialising me into the expectations of academia, while being realistic about life also happening. With Rachel Nordlinger as co-supervisor and Jill Wigglesworth as chair, they were an amazing, sometimes slightly terrifying, dream team who took their roles as supervisors, teachers and mentors seriously.

After my PhD, Barb joined me in the work with Andrea Berez-Kroker on data management. We also tinkered away on other things; including getting my honours thesis published. She helped me plan job applications, and even loaned me her office when I had video interviews. When I left Melbourne for post-docs we'd meet in different corners of the world. She was supportive and practical during many of my less optimistic moments while I was precariously employed. I enjoyed that my postdoc work allowed me to return to gesture, and spend more time doing lingcomm stuff, while still continuing to do work on evidentials and language documentation. Having Barb as a role-model mean that I normalised having a range of interests as a strength. I still spend a lost of time at a desk, but it's as far away as possible from the monotonous office job I left to come back to do a PhD.

In late 2020 Barb had a cardiac arrest. When La Trobe offered me an ongoing job in that same week, I apologised to her for texting her while she was in ICU. Obviously this is important because I'm the protagonist of my own story, even though it's a story about Barb, but I also wanted to mention it because a recurring theme in conversations over the last year has been "but, even when she technically *died* she still came back", which hasn't really helped things sink in.

I am pretty much the age Barb was when we first met. And, a couple of years into a tenured teaching/research role, I'm in a similar place professionally. And that's very much thanks to Barb. Without Barb I would not have done honours in linguistics, and I would not have come back to do a PhD. I wouldn't have been ready to face the grueling academic job market, and I wouldn't have normalised the importance of having more in life to define you than your job.

I miss talking with Barb all the time. There have been moments in the last year when I've been introducing someone to the bouba/kiki test, writing about my favourite gesture papers or talking through a problem a grad student is having with their writing, and I get to continue Barb's passion and enthusiasm. I am so grateful for the influence she has had on me as a linguist, teacher, supervisor and human, and I'm grateful I get to pass that on.

Co-authored papers This is a list of all the published papers for which we were co-authors. I'm proud that they represent a good range of our shared interests across gesture studies, language documentation, and data management. We have one more forthcoming paper, a handbook chapter on discourse in Tibeto-Burman languages, which is the other major area of shared interest that carried through my PhD work and beyond.

Gawne, Lauren, Chelsea Krajcik, Helene N. Andreassen, Andrea L. Berez-Kroeker & Barbara F. Kelly. 2019. Data Transparency and Citation in the Journal Gesture. Gesture 18(1): 83–109. https://doi.org/10.26181/5f57fddc85ebb [Superlinguo blog post]

Berez-Kroeker, A.L., L. Gawne, S. Kung, B.F. Kelly, T. Heston, G. Holton, P. Pulsifer, D. Beaver, S. Chelliah, S. Dubinsky, R. Meier, N. Thieberger, K. Rice & A. Woodbury. 2018. Reproducible Research in linguistics: A position statement on data citation and attribution in our field. Linguistics 56(1): 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2017-0032 [Superlinguo blog post]

Gawne, L., B.F. Kelly, A.L. Berez- Kroeker & T. Heston. 2017. Putting practice into words: The state of data and methods transparency in grammatical descriptions. Language Documentation & Conservation 11: 157-189. [OA PDF] [Superlinguo blog post]

Gawne, L. & B.F. Kelly. 2014. Revisiting ‘significant action and gesture categorisation. Australian Journal of Linguistics 34 (2): 216-233. https://doi.org/10.26181/5e4b684d8f1e9

Gawne, L., B.F. Kelly & A. Unger . 2010. Gesture categorisation and understanding speaker attention to gesture. In Y. Treis & R. De Busser (Eds), Selected papers from the 2009 conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. Melbourne: La Trobe University. [PDF]

[b4rkwoofwrites]

In Pursuit of Science and Studies

CHAPTER I

I never knew who I wanted to be, or what I wanted to do. As a matter of fact, I knew nothing more than do well and be successful. My life didn’t seem to have direction until word about Jinx started to spread. The attacks were horrific and flashy, and even though it was horrible, I found inspiration in it. In her determination, and in her engineering. I’d visit places she’d been to look for old scraps of her bombs and other inventions, and I’d analyze them. It was the only thing that brought me real joy, it meant a lot to me.

However, studying didn’t mean a lot to me. When my parents pitched the idea of going to Piltover Academy, I was livid. That was until they told me the classes they offered. There was a good variety, but I wanted to take Science and Engineering. For a year I’d been infatuated with Jinx’s mechanisms, now I could finally learn to create my own. Needless to say I ran at the opportunity.

Walking into the Academy was strange, this huge building I’d seen my entire life growing up was going to be my home for the next few years. The architecture was inspiring. It took a day or two to settle and I was thankful for the extra time they offer for students to move in and prepare before the semester starts. My roommates weren’t note-worthy to me, nothing about them really stuck out. I didn’t care to learn much about them, I had more important things to do. t took a day or two to settle and I was thankful for the extra time they offer for students to move in and prepare before the semester starts. My roommates weren’t note-worthy to me, nothing about them really stuck out. I didn’t care to learn much about them, I had more important things to do.

Through the last night I sat awake at my desk, going over the last of the syllabus for my Science and Engineering class. I’d taken notes of the books I’d need to borrow and the test dates. Based on the spacing, I’d have enough time to work on my own creations. When I had no more to read, I laid in my bed, holding the stuffed animal I brought from home. It was the only item I had any sentimental attachment to, other than my blueprints and personal Jinx study journal.

The next morning, the sun poured in through the large windows. I woke before my peers to get ready for class. After brushing my teeth and doing my hair, I slipped on my uniform. I’d only ever worn it once before, and it was surprisingly comfortably considering the restrictions. The reddish-brown color went well together, and I was enjoying the visual appeal of the Academy already.

It took me a few minutes to find my class, but I arrived on time. Each and every student was different, having something that made them special visually. Still, nobody stood out to me. The lecture began soon after and I listened intently. An assignment to learn about each other had been decided on. A debate; each student would form a thesis on the limits of ethical science in the eyes of plain curiosity, simply put, what’s morally okay to do for fun. It was an easy project, and I already knew what I was going to write my thesis on.

The professor mentioned how he planned to pair us up based on votes after thesis’ had been finished, and he shared that the thesis must be finished by tomorrow. Some of the class exclaimed or groaned, but I just smiled. Fast paced work was my preference, anyway.

My other classes were boring and I didn’t care to much to commit anything to memory; however, I do remember going to the library after once the afternoon had settled in. I wanted to skim over some books on the topic of ethics and morals just to understand a little bit better. While I was searching the library for a book that met my requirements, my eyes fell upon someone. I didn’t know his name, but I knew he was in one of my classes. I racked my brain for the memory. I’d heard his voice, he asked a question. Viktor was his name, I thought.

I didn’t mean to look at him as long as I did, I only meant to observe how he was. His looks, his demeanor, but he caught my glare and I flinched as I turned away. I hadn’t expected him to notice me analyzing him. Worse things have happened and the world would keep turning, so I want on to keep searching for a book. Eventually I found one and sat down at one of the many desks in the library. I opened my small bag and set down my materials. A quick study session wouldn’t hurt.

I jotted down notes for about an hour, yawning and playing soft music in my headphones. I hadn’t noticed when Viktor walked past me, or when he silently leaned over my shoulder to see my notes. Not until he was walking away already. I wondered what exactly he wanted. Was he going to copy me? I hadn’t written my thesis yet. It’d be better to do it alone where people couldn’t try and steal my ideas.

It was almost evening, so I went up to my dorm to start my work and shower. The thesis was relatively easy and fun to make. In my opinion, explosives are generally ethical, especially since they’re used for celebrations and such. They’re in most cases, used as weapons, but who truly cares as long as they don’t hurt anybody, right?

I liked the way it was written and I didn’t mind the small imperfections that riddled through the page occasionally. Generally, a thesis for a project like this would end up an essay, and I wanted to get it done. I wasn’t sure how many pages or words would be required, so I just started writing since I could always add more or change things. I ignored the feeling of sleep pulling me from my work, and I didn’t realize how tempting it was until I woke up, drooling on my desk.

I grumbled, how had I fallen asleep? I didn’t even have the chance to shower. I sighed, groggily walking to the bathroom to get ready. I wore our second uniform, it was mostly the same, but it had a few differences. I noticed the corset laced back immediately because it took me forever to lace it back. It was a little annoying, but it looked good on me. I wondered if the male students had the corsets too, but I didn’t have time to let the thought linger.

The walk to class was nice, easy to navigate and fun to observe. The halls were long and well decorated, set with paintings and small futuristic elements. I sat in my seat, close to the front. I wanted to present as one of the first few, that way I could get a feel for a few people’s writing styles and morals. While I was waiting, setting up my materials, that guy came in. And sat next to me. Why?

He didn’t make small talk, or even say anything to me. All he did was grunt what was his excuse of a greeting. It bothered me that he sat so close. He was snooping around yesterday, and I wasn’t sure why he was doing it. I scooted a bit away from him and moved my arm over my notepad.

The lecture began and we started expressing our thesis’ to the class. I didn’t care much for long works about animal experiments or other things I really don’t remember.

However, one of my classmates, Jayce Talis? I think that’s his name. His thesis was a big drawn out and my classmates yawned. I was intrigued, listening intently. Magic. I knew it was forbidden, and his willingness to share so much about what he’d already learned was quite brave. It was fascinating to hear of his studies and theories. I moved to change my position when I caught a glimpse of Viktor. He looked most enchanted than I was. It wasn’t obvious, but you could tell in his eyes he found it interesting.

When it was my turn, I presented my opinion. Quick and simple, straight to the point. I took a look around the class every so often as I spoke to gauge people’s reactions. I knew bomb and explosives were a big deal considering recent events in Piltover. A few confused faces, a few surprised. Viktor’s stood out to me. He seemed to be deep in thought, and with each word I said, he seemed to ponder more. Hiding beneath is interest I could see disappointment. Maybe he didn’t like the thesis. Good. He wouldn’t have a reason to steal from me then.

I sat back down and listened to the rest of my peers. I was mostly bored, counting down the minutes before class would be over. And when it finally was, I went straight to my dorm to get a snack.

The next morning, our professor paired us up. Me and Viktor’s thesis’ were most popular, even though I really don’t remember what it was about. I didn’t want to work with him, but I wasn’t sure about his character yet. We had to work on our essays after class and write counterarguments for our partner.

“I already finished my essay, so when you finish yours we do the other arguments.” I didn’t really expect him to respond, considering his quiet demeanor. As soon as I heard his voice, I was captivated.

“I can finish it by tonight.”

Barely even a full sentence, and my head was spinning. I knew why, it was his accent. I had a knack for finding fictional characters to stick to and characters with accents made me weak. But this? I had to keep my cool, he wasn’t some TV show character, he was my work partner.

“Alright, do you want to meet in the library tomorrow to work on it? I can give you my number so we can plan a time.” I fidgeted with my sleeve, it was to work. Not to admire him.

“Sure, I dont think I’m doing anything tomorrow.” He handed over his phone and I punched my number in.

“See you tomorrow.” I said quietly. He grunted in acknowledgment.

I sightly waved goodbye as I went to my dorm. The whole walk there my brain filled with the sound of his voice. I cursed myself for being so attracted to it. “It’s only his voice.” I repeated the sentence into my pillow fifty times. “I can’t even trust him yet.” I sighed softly, grabbing my stuffed animal and looking at it. I smiled a little and got comfortable. The next few days should’ve been easy. I already finished my homework for my other classes since they were pretty easy, and this was the last thing I had left to do.

All I had left to do was go to the library tomorrow.

next chapter...

[azucarmorena97]

BTS as Cliched School Tropes || (Maknae Line)

High school's over and now, the real world is at their fingertips. Let's see how the boys fair at University!

Hyung line here

1.) Jimin: Theatre Kid

Highly respected in the arts department

is actually a huge nerd

guys call him gay all the time

he sleeps with their gf's not gay

only dates casually, has huge commitment issues

cocky

Curious about you... You stare at the cast list, mind whirring with so many different thoughts and emotions: panic, joy, fear, reluctance- you never imagined they'd actually pick you. There'd been so many girls auditioning for the role of Juliet, actress with even more experience than you. Could they have made a mistake? Could they really meant YOU for the part? "It's not a mistake, you know." You're startled by a familiar voice behind you. "Jimin," You say, turning around to face him. His expression is soft and warm; a stark contrast to the usual cold and calculative one he tends to wear. You motion to the list, "This is a lot for me to take in." He nods, "It always is when you're cast in your first big show." "I can't help but think they might've picked the wrong person." "The wrong person?" He furrows his brows, stepping forward so that he's only 3 feet or so away from you and the cast list, "You insult our judgment?" Immediately, you go into a mini panic, "I- no, that's not- that's not what I meant!" He instantly breaks into a laugh, "I'm kidding." You let out a deep sigh and give a small laugh, "Oh." "You know abouut 97 other girls auditioned right?" He asks, turning his back to the wall and leaning up against it. "Yeah..." Hearing just how many actresses it was makes you feel worse. "Yeah, so if we chose you out of 97 other girls, what do you think that means?" He raises and eye brow at you, expecting for you to catch on, though when you don't, he rolls his eyes, "It means you were that damn good!" Exasperatedly, he grabs your shoulders and shakes you, though nowhere near enough to hurt you. You blush, trying really hard not to focus on the fact that Jimin, your crush since last semester, was not only touching you, but also revealing that he was part of the group of people that chose YOU to be a part of their show. "Thank you..." You say, cheeks still on fire. He shakes his head, "No, don't thank me- thank yourself. You're the one who put in the effort; we were just smart enough to see it." You smile, eyes lowered to the ground. "Hey," He say, bringing his hand up to your chin and lifting it gently so that you were looking back up at him, "Stars should always have their heads held high." With a wink, he lets go and gets off of the wall, "I'll see you tomorrow at rehearsals, yeah?" "Definitely," you say simply, unable to think of any words at all beyond that. 2.) Taehyung: Geek

always has his nose in a book/manga/in front of a screen

virgin never had a gf

thinks he's ugly

oblivious to how many girls actually find him attractive

really dorky/socially awkward

really sweet and shy with girls "I'm really bad at this kind of stuff but if you tell me what to do, I'll try my best," You say, scanning the instruction sheet for the powerpoint you were assigned. There's a moment of silence before Taehyung clears his throat, "If-if you want, I can do the whole thing myself." You look at him and furrow your brows, "Don't be ridiculous. That's not fair to you." He shrugs, "It's not really a problem for me, I kinda like doing this stuff." You stare at him for a minute, contemplating whether or not to let him. "I don't know...I don't want you to do all that and get nothing in return. It wouldn't be right." Another pause, though this time, it looks like he wants to say something and just can't get it out. "Did...you have something in mind..?" You prompt. He picks up his pencil and begins lightly doodling, "Well, I...tomorrow night there's this Studio Ghibli marathon at the X-Theatre in the next town over and...maybe it could be fun to go...together?" It looks like the words are painful for him to get out and when he does, he doesn't dare meet your eyes. You're surprised by his request, especially since this was the first time he'd ever talked to you about anything that wasn't school-related. Your slow response causes for him to get anxious and he violently shakes his head, "I-nevermind. It's kinda lame isn't it? Just forget I asked. I'll still do the project, no worries-" He rambles, but just as he's about to continue, you firmly rest your hand on his wrist to get his attention, "Hey." He immediately stops talking and his eyes are fixed on where your hand connects with him, "I'd love to go." You see his cheeks turn red, even spreading to his ears, and a small smile tugs at the corners of his mouth, "Oh- Okay. I- thank you." You laugh, "Don't thank me. And I'm still not letting you do the project alone." He finally laughs with you, shoulders relaxing slowly but surely, "Fine. Together then."

3.) Jungkook: Art Kid

quiet/pensive

kind of a loner

introverted

fiercely loyal to the few he lets in

doesn't take compliments well- he doesn't believe them

You sit closely to the wheel, pressing gently down on the pedal as you get a steady spin for the bowl you're making. You bite your bottom lip, concentrating on smoothing the sides as you go. You've been at this for hours, having messed up the first three bowl almost at the very point of completion. If you mess this one up, you will be throwing yourself off a bridge. You near the phase where the other bowls were destroyed, so you decide to take your foot off and straighten out your back; gathering yourself emotionally for the next step. "Okay, Y/n, you've got this," You whisper, trying to hype yourself up. Right when you're about the put your foot back on the pedal, the door opens to the studio, giving you pause. Immediately, your heart skips a beat when you see who it is. Jungkook walks in wordlessly, black backpack slung over his broad shoulder, locks of black hair falling into his eyes and longer ones down the back of his neck. His short sleeved shirt showing off the intricate tattoos covering his entire right arm. When you snap back into reality, you immediately avert your eyes, shyness taking you over completely. You'd been in the room alone up until that point, and now that it's just you two, you feel you might explode. He doesn't seem to notice you very much; he just rolls up his sleeves and goes straight to the rack with unfinished, covered pieces. You don't think you've heard him say a word all semester- not that it stops people from trying to talk to him; especially not the girls in class. You try to get back to what you were doing but you're hyper aware of his presence in the room. You don't really know whether to put it away until you can come back later or to just stand your ground and continue working. You decide on the latter, bracing yourself for the pedal- but you end up putting way to much pressure and, to your incredibly dismay and embarrassment, the entire bowl comes flying off of the wheel and drops to the floor about five feet away. Immediately, you look at him and For a moment, time stands still; neither you nor Jungkook move, though his eyes are fixed on the sad, squashed little bowl on the floor. "Sorry," You say, though you're not even really sure why. Sorry for embarrassing yourself, you suppose. Suddenly, he looks up at you and you're shocked to see that he is not only smiling, but even seems to be holding back a laugh. You hardly know how to react, though admittedly, his laugh is absolute music to your ears. Without saying anything, you quickly pick up the bowl and then walk over to the slip bucket to dump it in. You decide you're done, not being able to take anymore embarrassment, but as you begin to untie your apron, Jungkook gets out of his seat, carrying the glob of clay he'd gotten earlier, and he walks over to you. You find yourself having to crane your neck up to look at him, and the way he's looking down at you- you can hardly stand it. "Try again," He says, a soft smile tugging at his lips. When you don't react right away, he reaches down and grabs your hand, fixing it so that your palm is facing upward, and he puts the clay in your hand; his eye contact doesn't break even once. "O-Okay," You say quietly. Slowly, he turns around and makes his way back to his stool, though this time, his eyes remain fixed on you as he waits for you to begin.

[remimibanana]

OZ Comic Con Adelaide 2024 Report!

I had the wonderful opportunity of attending OZ Comic Con in Adelaide for the whole weekend with my good friend Pie (@piedivide!)!

It was a very fun weekend filled with so many things across both days that I have to write down before I forget!

I cosplayed Herta and Pie cosplayed Welt Yang, both from Honkai: Star Rail! These are our first cosplays for the year and we put in a lot of work into our wig styling, makeup and more!

All under the cut!

Day 1: Saturday

I woke up at 7am, ready to start preparing for the convention! I wanted to get there by 11am!

Admittedly, I struggled a lot more than I should have while doing so, which caused me to come around 12pm instead...

I was really busy throughout the whole week prior to the con trying to finish my assignments since it’s the end of the semester and uh…I didn’t have a chance to practice putting on the cosplay or my makeup before Day 1.

Not good, I know.

To make matters worse, a safety pin holding up the chain decided to break randomly behind the lock. I had to fix that somehow while trying to get everything to look right…

I managed at the end!

My mum helped me out with my makeup and putting on things! I couldn't have done it all without her.

Herta’s shoes were not comfortable at all to walk in since they have heels, but I decided to wear them until I arrived at the convention since it was a part of the cosplay! I wanted to show off the whole look to all!

(I paid a lot of money for them as well aha)

I slightly regretted that decision, since I wore the sneakers I brought with me for the whole entire con and the fact that my feet were hurting after walking for less than ten minutes. I think shoes are great for photos but some aren't practical to wear around all day....

Anyway!

I got to the station first and waited around for Pie to arrive once I gave them the signal...after I fixed my hat that fell off randomly that may or may not have taken 15 minutes….

Don’t ask. I’m sorry ;;

We decided that I would wait for him to come to the station since last time, they arrived at the same time as me. We also decided to wait until the con to see each other’s cosplays for the first time!

I remember seeing from afar the outline of Welt Yang on top of the escalators coming down towards me and immediately, I was filled with a sense of excitement! They kept coming closer and closer to me and I kept smiling like an absolute idiot.

Pie’s cosplay was so good, as I proceeded to say multiple times to his face! I especially loved the wig, they put a lot of effort into making it look amazing!

He totally blew my mind, in a good way! They were slaying Welt Yang and I hope he knows that!

To my surprise, Pie had not one but TWO things for me which made me very happy! I didn’t expect anything from them!

A Dan Heng headband and a Herta pin?! Thank you once again, Pie!!!

We headed to the convention via a train that takes us to the Adelaide Showgrounds directly! We didn’t see any cosplayers on the train, but we did see some as soon as we arrived!

In fact, a car stopped in the middle of driving as we were walking to the entrance and the people inside complimented our cosplays! It was the first time that sort of situation ever happened to us!

It felt so cool.

There were these Goddess Madoka and Demon Homura cosplayers that made me freak out so much upon seeing them in the distance since I'm a huge fan of PMMM.

Pie and I originally bought only Saturday passes since we initially were going to only attend Day 1 and then use Sunday as the day we took pictures and videos together. This changed when we saw that there was a Star Rail cosplay meetup at 11am on Day 2.

Of course, it was on the Sunday that we weren’t going to at an early time…I informed Pie of this as soon as I mentioned that the schedule was out for the convention.

If we knew beforehand, we would have bought a weekend pass in the first place. Unfortunately, the schedule came out with about a week until the con.

We were also worried we wouldn’t be able to buy tickets at the early bird prices if we waited. Perhaps, buying early isn’t a good idea at times...

After some quick deliberation on our parts, we decided to upgrade to Weekend passes! We couldn’t miss this chance to meet other cosplayers who also like HSR! We read online that we could do so at the front desk upon arriving at the convention on the FAQ.

That was our plan upon getting there, but it didn’t go as smoothly as we thought. The Help Desk was where we were directed to when we asked about upgrading them, but none of the people at the desk were able to help us.

We had to wait until another person came from their lunch break who knew how to do it. We wandered around for a little bit, coming back a few times to see the same people still at the desk. The person we needed came eventually and helped us both out without any trouble!

With our Weekend passes and the bands on us nice and secure, we could finally start our Day 1…once I went to the bathroom.

I had to take off my large black coat my mum kindly gave me and pack things away. I wanted a mirror so I could see how my wig was fairing and remove those Herta shoes.

It was a lovely thought from my mum, but I shouldn’t have brought it with me. It was so thick that it took all the space in my Fuwamoco tote bag I had with me despite how warm it was.

I also regretted bringing my backpack, especially with Herta’s long hair. It was such a hassle pulling it off and putting it on….I didn't even start the day and I already had so many regrets slowly piling up behind me.

We could NOW start our day!

We walked around mostly for Day 1, seeing what the convention had and admiring cosplays!

There were a lot of people everywhere!

There were scribble walls you could draw on freely and people truly did draw some amazing things….Dio Brando face Peppa wasn’t what I expected at all.

People complemented our cosplays and asked for photos! It made me so happy, it meant we were doing something right with them! We were going to buy prints for each other and take professional photos, but we decided to leave that for Day 2.

I saw this Void Drifter Kiana Kaslana figure and immediately freaked out since it was the first Honkai Impact 3rd related thing I ever saw!

It cost like $300 bucks, which I so would have bought if I didn't have to buy my next cosplay. The first photos I took of it were so shaky because I was too excited lol

I just was happy to see anything HI3.

Time to showcase all the amazing cosplayers I got photos with for Day 1! Thank you for taking a photo with me!

Wriothesley (@cypher_cosplay on Instagram) and Neuvillette (@edenzcosplay on Instagram)!!!!

Me looking like some kind of NPC because I didn’t know what pose to do 🧍‍♂️

Both of their cosplays look amazing! I was the first to notice Neuvillette, and then Pie noticed Wriothesley! Pie sort of walked straight up to them wanting a photo and I just followed along like a lost puppy haha

They were both very kind!

Kafka (@s.jn_jack on Instagram)!!!

It was them who came up to us first, saying how he liked our cosplay! Pie and I saw their cosplay while walking around and I remember being really happy seeing a Kafka cosplayer!

This was his first cosplay as they told us and they did amazing for their first time!!

Sparkle (@_.emmet._t on Instagram)!!!

I remember seeing her while walking and being happy that there was a Sparkle cosplayer here! There were many HSR cosplayers on Day 1 including us, much to my surprise!

Such a pretty cosplay, I absolutely love it! I feel like they captured the personality and idea of Sparkle so well!

Madoka and Homura (@sonickyx on Instagram)!!!!

These are the ones I saw when I got to the convention!

I wanted to take a photo with them but I was such a sissy that it took me forever to do so. I’ve never been good at asking for any photos since I'm a little shy, but I wanted to try!

Every time I attempted to, they seemed busy and I’d hate to interrupt anyone if they're doing something. It took way longer than it should have, but I did it at the end!

Their cosplays are so pretty!

...

If you can tell throughout these pictures…my wig was slowly falling off throughout the day. I didn’t even notice until I realised when we took some of the photos together with the cosplayers and I uh...couldn't really do anything about it then.

I was stupid and didn’t properly secure the wig cap or my wig, even though I was going to with bobby pins in the first place. Don’t be like me.

I thought it was going to stay in place ;;

It was one of the reasons why we left certain things like the photography to Day 2, although I felt bad because Pie seemed to really want to take photos, despite them reassuring me that it was okay.

Another was that I was a little unsatisfied with my makeup because I was too afraid of using my eyeliner I bought. I’ve never used it before that point and didn’t want to poke my eyes out before the convention. I wanted to take nice professional photos I could be proud of, you know?

Don't worry, I learnt my lesson for Day 2. Day 1 was like a trial day for me, which I wished wasn't the case but you live and learn! I was still happy with my cosplay overall!

After some more walking around, we felt like we did everything we could do and see for Day 1! We left at around 3:30pm and headed back to the city since we planned to do Karaoke at 6pm for two hours!

There was this little place I mentioned to Pie that I saw on Friday where they sold Katsudon that we could go to for food if they were open! It was in the station, in the underground pass that I always have walked through since I was a kid.

Pie and I went to check it out, but it was closed…Google said it would open at 5pm, so we wandered around Rundle Mall to pass the time in our wonderful cosplays. Walking around in cosplay while not at a convention is a scary experience.

People always stare at you no matter what and are probably silently judging you from afar. It wasn’t as daunting as I thought it would be though, but that’s because I had the Welt Yang by my side. It's always better when you have a friend!

On the way to Rundle Mall, we got stopped by these two people who complemented our cosplays! It was sort of out of the blue, but it was very welcomed! Pie was the one who mostly talked to the both of them, I was sort of just there smiling and nodding.

We came back at 5pm….only to realise that Google is a liar and the restaurant is only open late on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We missed one of the signs literally in front of us that told us this fact….

At this point, everything was pretty much closed or about to close as well since it was the weekend. Why didn't they update Google with this vital piece of information?!

I blame Google for this mishap.

We headed back to Rundle Mall in defeat, and decided upon a place that sold sushi and various other foods! It was one of the places that were still open. I got Takoyaki, a Karrage Chicken Skewer and a Prawn Katsu Skewer! It was pretty good, although I wish there was more of it.

Pie got the same, but instead of the prawn he got a salt and pepper skewer. The person who served us was very kind and complemented our cosplays in fact!

So many complements, and it was only Day 1!

Once we ate, we had to wait around until the Karaoke place was open in the cold for a while. I was freezing since I didn’t put on my coat and Herta's outfit isn't that warm. I know I should have, but it would have been such a pain taking it out of the tote bag.

The Karaoke place opened earlier than expected actually once we started heading down there, so we went right in! We sang many songs, and it was loads of fun!

I had a whole list of songs that I prepared for this day, but I still struggled to choose what to sing....

If you ever sing karaoke with me, it will always take me forever to actually choose something as a warning. I feel like I don't know too many songs fully that well, so I always mess up aha

I think my favourite song I sang was Cyberangel! I love Bronya a lot and the song is an absolute banger!

I took off my wig and my wig cap in the middle of it all because it was about to fall off completely and I couldn’t handle it anymore. Once 8pm hit, that was it!

The whole time, I was holding a wig in my hands as I headed back home on the train. I took everything immediately off without even batting an eye as soon as I came home, brushing out my wig that became super messy.

I didn’t go to sleep until after midnight.

Day 2: Sunday

I woke up at 5:30am because of the meetup….the things we do for cosplay.

This time around, I knew what I was doing and was able to be ready by 9am!

Unlike Day 1, I did my makeup all by myself!

I managed to put on the eyeliner without getting any into my eye somehow and look decent! For someone who’s never done it before…it’s kind of incredible.

The whole time I was doing it, I called myself a tensai (genius) for being able to do this lmao

My mum told me how she managed to get eyeliner in her eye when she first started but it really wasn’t that hard…I think she tried to scare me off from doing this my whole life. Actually….my right eye is thicker than my left eye, but you can’t tell with my glasses for the most part.

For my wig, I pinned the absolute crap out of the wig cap and the wig itself. It may have been a bit overkill using every single bobby pin I had, but it’s better to be safe than sorry! It worked pretty well, if I do say so myself. It didn’t move at all, not once during the entire day even while I was outside.

Instead of packing my backpack like Day 1, I just packed everything into my tote bag! It was much easier to manage! I also wore a thinner jacket and put on my sneakers first! This whole setup worked way better for me.

This time around, Pie came to the station right away since we had to take a train that was about 10 minutes after when I would arrive in order to get to the convention by the time the meetup started. For the whole time, I was convinced that the train was coming at 10:27am and I wasn’t going to make it, but I was looking at the wrong schedule….

And then we were at the wrong platform too once I got there…

Point is, we found where we were meant to go and got onto the train when it came!

The train had some cosplayers this time around, so we felt right at home! It seemed like Sunday was the more popular day for the convention, which makes sense with more people being potentially free on this day.

Getting into the convention was easy since we had our weekend passes, one simple flash of our bands and we could waltz right in without any trouble!

We headed straight for the meetup area! It was at the very back of the convention area, near the bathrooms and food area filled with loads of tables and chairs.

To our surprise and confusion, there was no one really there for what was meant to be the HSR meetup. It was oddly empty, spare for a few random cosplayers. I saw a Silver Wolf cosplayer nearby, but that was the only other HSR cosplayer around. We definitely didn’t go to the wrong place since there was a whole sign there with the schedule…

We took a seat at a table, deciding to wait for more people to show up hopefully. I took off my jacket and Pie kindly put it in their tote bag since I had no space in mine…thank you again, Pie!

The Silver Wolf cosplayer ran straight up to us and asked for a photo right after we finished with all that!

I was so surprised, I didn’t expect for them to come to us so quickly wanting a photo!

They were so nice and kind! Their wig was amazing, it looked so accurate from the back!

And then an Aventurine cosplayer (@myki.cosplay on Instagram) came up to us as well, and we all took photos together! He looked amazing as well!

Me again with my NPC pose 🧍‍♂️

One of the staff members informed us that there was no meetup in fact, there were some others here earlier but they left for some reason. It was a bit disappointing to hear.

They then asked if they could take a photo of all of us for the convention, and we obliged of course! I think I stood like an NPC again because I had no pose ideas…I have no clue how it came out.

I suppose we shall find out!

Pie and I waited for a bit longer after that, to see if anyone else would appear. It sucked because we were excited for the meetup and the idea of meeting new people!

Alas…there was no more HSR cosplayers.

People kept coming and going, but we knew that it was all done. It felt like we got up early and came all this way for nothing. It was the only reason we came on Day 2…but we didn’t let that dampen anything!

After a while, we decided to continue our journey around the convention. Our main agenda was getting some food since we both skipped breakfast in favor of getting ready.

We passed by the Just Dance area, and I literally stopped in place at the sight in front of me. It took me less than a second to see them.

THERE WAS BRONYA AND SEELE COSPLAYERS RIGHT THERE. HONKAI IMPACT 3RD COSPLAYERS AT MY CONVENTION HUH??????????

ESPECIALLY TWO OF MY FAVOURITE OUTFITS FOR THEM????????

BRONSEELE?????

I didn’t expect to see any HI3 cosplayers since it isn’t as popular as Genshin or HSR unfortunately, so I freaked the heck out!

Pie freaked out too, more so for the Johnny and Gyro cosplayers from JoJo Part 7! They looked very cool, even though I only recognize them vaguely since I’ve seen them before online. They were waiting in line to do Just Dance, while the two of us just stared in awe while trying to process these sheer facts.

We decided to wait for them to finish, and then ask for a photo!

I know I’m not good at asking for them, but there was no way I could miss this chance. It was very fun watching Seele dance! Bronya was recording it all!

Seele (@vinfartsanji on Instagram) and Bronya (@s7kun4 on Instagram)!!!!

Johnny and Gyro (@sonickyx on Instagram) were the same cosplayers who did Madoka and Homura on Day 1!!!!

Pie was the one who asked for a photo of them all together first, then I asked for a picture with Bronya and Seele while Pie asked for Johnny and Gyro! I never felt so confident in my life, although I did stutter a bit.

I mentioned how I loved their Bronya and Seele cosplays and they were happy that I was a HI3 fan and that we needed more HI3 recognition and cosplays at conventions!

I absolutely agree with them! I’m going to cosplay HI3 at some point in the near future! If you can’t tell, I’m a bit of a HI3 fanatic who likes the game a little too much.

They were all very lovely and kind! I’m so glad they were here, and that we were able to see them!

I was over the moon, completely all because of their presence! Day 2 became my favourite day. And it kept only getting better!

We continued our walk around the convention, until we looped back around to the back where the meetup area was once more. There was a scribble wall nearby, where there were many people drawing whatever they wanted.

I saw a very familiar behind at the wall drawing, and I literally blurted out of nowhere:

“Is that…Elysia????”

She turned towards us a bit and I freaked out so much, it really was a Elysia cosplayer in her Flamechaser outfit! I already was so happy with Bronya and Seele, so I could have died there and then for real. I was winning so hard!!!

ELYSIA COSPLAYER AS WELL????? WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS TREAT???????

ELYSIA AT MY ANIME CONVENTION RIGHT HERE????

My freaking out was cut a little short when a staff member, a lovely older lady, came up to us informing that we can take a marker and draw something as well. I took a purple one since I was Herta and purple is sort of her colour.

I continued my freaking out after she left, still in utter disbelief that there were THREE HI3 cosplayers here in this convention on this one day. I had to get a photo. It’s Elysia after all! One of my absolute favourites!

We waited until she finished her drawing, trying not to stare directly at her too weirdly. There was a short moment when we were just staring at each other after she finished, and I went up to her bravely since I had her attention.

I asked for a photo, and I told them her how much I Ioved her Elysia cosplay. That’s when she ran to her friend in utter happiness, so glad that someone recognized her!

I found it very adorable. I think it must feel amazing for someone to recognize who you are, especially if you're cosplaying from a fandom that isn't as popular (but it should be!!!).

Elysia (@_lumistar.cos on Instagram)!!!

I got a photo with her, copying the classic Elysia pose because I had no ideas for myself. Pie also got a photo as well! After that, I was so giddy that I couldn't stop thinking about it all! I felt like my life was complete, you know?

We went up to the scribble wall since we had those markers still in hand, and left a little doodle! I didn’t take any pictures of it, but I drew a small Herta!

Pie then found the lovely older lady who gave us the markers to return them, and we had a lovely conversation about how her daughter loves HSR and how even she was interested in playing the game!

She even asked for photos of us for her daughter when we told her who we were cosplaying! I remember she wanted just Pie at first since he was talking mostly with her but when I told her who I was cosplaying, she wanted a photo of me too!

Such a nice person, I hope her daughter likes the picture! I love kind people like this, it's always so nice to talk to them!

Finally, we went to get some food after a few little detours that were very welcomed.

We bought Chips on a Stick!

I’ve never actually had it before, someone let me try a little one time back in 2016 I think…?

It was very tasty, but very filling and it took a while to eat on my part because I'm a slow eater. Pie and I sat down in a little corner and talked while we ate about many things. We had a wonderful discussion about Welt Yang himself and how Pie was the reason I like Welt so much!

I think the way they liked Welt made me starting liking him too, especially since I had him in HSR from the Departure Warp back when I first played!

I think I liked him even more once I started diving into his HI3 lore while playing the game and the fact that he's the Herrscher of Reason! The Second Eruption and Alien Space manga are my favourite ones that HI3 has made because Welt is such a focus in both of them!

Welt is just...so cool.

We were near one of the entrances in fact, which gave us the chance to admire all the cosplayers that came by! Everyone looked amazing, it's impressive how much effort everyone goes to!

(Photography: @steamkittens)

Pie and I went for our professional photoshoot when I finished eating! There was a very long wait as there were many before us who were all in groups and all had to have individual shoots as well…

The cosplayers who did Wriothesley and Neuvillette on Day 1 came up to us during our time waiting and talked to us! I was so happy to see them again!

I put on my Herta shoes for this immediately, but my feet hurt by the time I finally got my photos after 30+ minutes of waiting…

Pain.

One of the main issues I had was that I simply had no clue about the poses or expressions I would do for the shoot. We had to do three of them as I learnt rather quickly, and I couldn’t even think of one real pose!

I’ve never been very good when other people take my photos I’ve noticed, I feel like I look so stupid sometimes aha…

NPC style….🧍‍♂️

It was a cool experience regardless! I’m glad I did try it out! It’s so cool how instant the photos are, they give you a QR code to scan to see all your photos!

I only liked two of the photographs at the end once I scanned the code after. I’ll definitely practice my poses and expressions for my next cosplay so I don’t run into this issue again!

(Photography: @steamkittens)

Pie’s photos came out amazing though! Their poses and expressions are so good, I don’t know how he does it.

Teach me, please.

We then went to buy prints for each other at the Artist Alley! It’s a tradition we always do for every convention! Pie went to the very back, while I started from the front of the alley. I walked through it all and stared at all the pretty art in an attempt to see which print I would buy them.

I knew I wanted something either from the Legend of Zelda, Persona or Welt Yang himself since he likes all of those! Fun fact, I literally was right next to Pie at one point, I saw them and immediately tried to lean in and blend in with the crowd lmao

I actually ran into the Aventurine cosplayer from earlier at one of the stands! I thought they were selling, but in fact they were helping out and there was a lot of cool art there! We had a little chat before I awkwardly walked away like I always do in these situations, I'm no good at these sorts of things aha

I saw a perfect Welt Yang print, but it didn’t come in A3 unfortunately……..I was even waiting around for the artist to come back from their break…….

We usually get A3 prints for one another, so I didn’t know if Pie would be okay with it or not. I probably should have asked but I didn’t think I’d run into such a situation….

But I did find a really pretty Link print! That's what I bought for them at the end! Pie really liked it, so I’m really happy!!!

They bought me a Pearlina print with their Final Fest outfits and I absolutely love it, you have no idea! Thank you again, Pie!!!!

I already put it up on my wall, hehe.

The only issue with all this was that none of us had a bag for our posters, the stands we went to ran out of them.

Pie was able to roll it up and put it in his tote bag, but I didn’t have that luxury without bending the print. I was going to carry it around and hope for the best, but they said we should try asking for a bag from another stand.

We waited around at one, but I decided to buy myself a print so I could get a bag. It was easier than waiting around, and there was always the possibility that any artist wouldn’t want to give one away since it was theirs.

I got a Gawr Gura print! It’s so cute!!

I was going to do Just Dance, but I didn’t feel like doing it by the end, nor was I as thrilled about the fact that there would be so many people watching you dance and that they don’t even give you a Joy-Con so you can actually play the game properly.

How will anyone see the 5 stars I can get easily because I’ve played too much Just Dance in my lifetime?

I decided that I’d dance next time!

With that, we decided that it was time to leave. We did everything we wanted at the convention for Day 2, but it wasn’t over just yet! As we were about to leave through the gate, a cosplayer rushed after us wanting a photo. We could hear footsteps behind us, and we turned back to see them!

Pie managed to convince this old guy to go to the convention actually as we were walking back to the station lol

Heading back to the city, we went to Rundle Mall once again! This time around, we didn't even care that we were in cosplay. We became totally desensitized to it all.

We entered the Adelaide Arcade since we were looking for some food to eat, but we actually took some photos from one of the bridges on the second floor! It was Pie’s idea, and it was pretty fun! I don’t usually go up there so it’s a fun excuse to.

We also went to the Million-Life Arcade and took some pictures there!

Once again, curtesy of Pie. I like their picture because it looks like Welt is really going through it for this one plushie lol

At the end, we decided to have some Hungry Jacks (Burger King as others may know it as) to eat since we wanted something on the cheaper side. We wrote our character names for the order since we were in cosplay, but I forgot to take a photo of mine...

Seeing Joachim and Herta on the order screen was such an amazing sight, although no one probably knew who were were. They actually called out Herta's name, which was so cool. I wonder if any of the employees knew who we were.

I got a Whopper, it was so worth the $11 in my opinion (although it is a lot).

We headed to the Botanic Gardens to take some photos and videos!

It’s a huge garden that has so many places you can walk to and get lost in all the nature! Pie thought it would be the best place since we couldn't bother anyone there with our pictures. I don't get to go there very often, so I was happy we were!

That was the issue, however.

We wanted to find a secluded place with some solid ground where we could set up my tripod and record some short videos, which was way easier said than done aha

There were always people or something that ruined perfect spots for us, which only caused us to waste precious time since the Botanic Gardens were closing in about an hour and a half-ish....?

We actually entered a building that was apparently closed but we were able to enter regardless because someone else entered before us and we assumed we could go in as well...there was this lady who told us something in regards to leaving as we walked but we didn’t really hear her aha

We're breaking the rules in cosplay. Hell yeah.

Eventually, we settled on a place right in front of this greenhouse and we recorded some fun videos! We had a whole list, but we weren't able to get through them all unfortunately. I got to hit Pie with the Star of Eden actually, that was pretty fun! I was afraid of hitting him too hard but they said it was fine.

I also kept messing up this one sound that it was unfunny, I think we did it about four times before we got a decent one aha

Next time, we are taking way more videos! I guarantee we will for our next cosplays!

Pie and I packed up the tripod once we were told the Botanic Gardens were about to close by one of the workers and headed back to where the karaoke place was, since we were going to do karaoke again! We were debating if we should or not, but ultimately decided to!

There was a photo studio we were thinking of going to before karaoke, but it was closed when we got there…they weren't open on Sundays...

Once again, we didn’t read the sign in front of us. How did we manage to do this twice?!

Straight to Karaoke it was! It was harder this time around to choose a song since we did all the songs we wanted on Day 1. We even had to settle on doing anime openings at one point which was fun!

Especially for my case. It took me an embarrassingly long time to decide my final song…Sorry, Pie!

We wore the Dan Heng headbands and I set up my tripod once again to record some of the songs we sang for the memories! Pie told me that they didn't want to see the videos after, but one day in the far future I shall show them for fun muhahaha.

I think my favourite song that I did was Moon Halo for this day! I accidently spoilt an animation for Pie though in doing so...the video I used showed the full Everlasting Flames animation aha

I need to learn some more Japanese songs fully. I vow to learn at least two songs before the next convention! I want to impress Pie with my awesome Japanese hehe

Once 8pm hit...that was it! Our two hours were up and the wonderful weekend was over.

I headed back home, recording some TikTok’s for myself before ripping off my wig with adequate pain from all those bobby pins and taking off my cosplay.

I had so much fun this weekend! I won’t ever forget the experiences I had!

I saw so many amazing cosplayers! I was able to take photos with them and even talk to them! It makes me very happy that I was confident enough do this!

Thank you for coming with me, Pie! Once again, you slayed Welt Yang! I can’t wait until AVCon!

- Miku

[palatablepain]

Hi, everybody! I was just selecting one piece this year that shows my writing experimentation best for my friend who hasn't read any since last December. I thought I'd share on tumblr, too! It's below, and also here: Confessions of a Star Reader - Chapter 8 - informedimagining - Original Work [Archive of Our Own]

Sometimes, when I sleep, the stars talk to one another, and their whispers ruffle through my dreams.

The curtains by my bed block out all the light from our window, but when I wake at 2 AM on a rare inspiration, I need to hear the light, so I cuddle up on the window-seat. Serene, black silence lies on the farmland and the silhouettes of svelte trees. Here and there, a sturdy cupola of praying tree-tops graces the landscape like a solemn, Eastern-rite church.

Carefully, I keep the light from reaching Regina, and I listen for what the stars are saying to me.

One calls down to me, Be True to Your Heart.

Another says, Whatever That Means.

A third says, You Will Know.

It’s nice to hear, but the voices I heard in sleep were more like my family's.

Dad, next to a bookshelf in his home office, would be saying, “So, Stella, to answer your question, iconoclasm is the belief that images should not be made of God or of other holy things.”

Mom would sail in from the kitchen, breathing, “It doesn’t make any sense, and I don’t want to understand why people would think such a thing! Stella, I need you to watch LilyBeth while I finish this pasta sauce.”

While I gave a backwards glance at Dad, he’d smile, small and defeated, and, slump-shouldered, sink into his cushy, rolling desk-chair.

As soon as I see LilyBeth, she crawls in the opposite direction. “Ooshy, gooshy-gooshy, I’m gonna getchu!” I croon, waggling my fingers at her. Giggling wildly, she infects me with laughter, and Mom has to yell at us to tone it down.

Because I feel deflated, I start to believe that my life is a series of ups-and-downs, all consisting of emotions, fueled by the air I breathe. If I start to laugh, spirits rising, then Mom stops me mid-breath. Even if I’m subdued, she seems to need to borrow air from me, blow her own sails with my wind, stoke her fires with it. It’s as if her babies were made to be eaten alive, and I try to excuse it because it can’t be helped and Dad excuses it, too. It makes me wonder if Dad eats us alive by proxy, but that’s too scary, and I rush after LilyBeth again, heading downstairs, where perhaps they won’t hear us when our inevitable giggles escape.

It’s at moments like this, when I’m having my first fun of the day, ten hours after I get up, that Regina has to ask me, “Did you do your religion today?” I take the book that she’s waving airily in front of my face and say, as ebulliently as I can muster, “Of course! I just did it with Dad.”

“Then what’s this?”

Breathless from twirling around with LilyBeth, I stare at the notebook-paper assignment two inches from my nose. Marked in red, it reads, “You did Chapter 22 instead of 19, 20, and 21. Please turn them in by Friday night.”

“Oh. I missed them,” I say, as if it is nothing. In fact, it is nothing, metaphysically, because in the grand scheme of things, nobody should care. I certainly don’t.

“I hate keeping track of things for you!” Regina exclaims in my face.

“Uh, LilyBeth!” I wave the baby in her face. “Remember? I’m watching her. Don’t worry: I’ll do it tonight.”

“You’re just making things harder for me.”

“Look, Regina,” I say. “Which household sophomore has all As this semester? Well, except for math. And chemistry. And music.“

Regina squashes a smile on her face, “You are . . .”

Wordless, she leaves, and I’m happy with the interaction because she just admitted that I’m too ineffable to interact with – at least, that’s how I choose to interpret it.

Because I love Regina so much, it would really hurt to believe that she doesn’t like being around me, so I think that her words don’t really express what she thinks and feels about me. Maybe, up on the surface, where she interacts with people, she conforms to the stereotype of my being her annoying little sister whom she can’t stand, but deep down, she must like me – even if she doesn’t know it – because at the bottom of everything is love, a molten, beating heart. That’s where I live.

Once I reach the bottom of all abysses, where the earth is red-hot, I’m the closest to what makes the stars – again, heat. I wish that Regina, Mom, and Dad were real stars, ones that would hold my hand and sing across the spaces between us. Then, I could say that truly they were bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, raw earth of my dust.

On the sixth day, God breathed dust into life. All of a sudden, the dry specks were running together, hot, the way Galien's farmland looks in the blending colors of the sunset. In Hebrew, the word for that human was genderless – it was a representative of all humanity. Far, far away, stardust is just like our earth dust, except more intense. In one of them lives a Mother, and she is the ideal mother, who overlooks her household with justice and tenderness. In another, holding hands with it, lives a Father, and he protects his children. And in another is a Sister, who trusts me.

At least down here, I have a sister who trusts me – LilyBeth. It’s the infants who are closest to stardust and earth-dust. Sometimes, I think LilyBeth hears the stars talking better than I do. When Mom and Dad are near-arguing at the other end of the house (our walls are paper-thin), she smiles. If only I could hear them that way.

Instead, I’ll pretend, and then I’ll feel more like a star myself.

She crawls to the piano near the double-doors that lead out of the half-basement and begins to depress the golden pedals, mostly to hear the boom they make when they rebound. I laugh loudly because of her elementary pleasure, and she looks confused. Grown-ups usually can’t laugh like that, and it almost scares her.

Touching her squishy baby-hands, I gently say, “It’s all right. I’m sorry.”

As I repeat the words in the glass- and silk- cool of the window-panes and seat-cushions, the stars tell me that they have been talking about my fate since the beginning of the universe. Nothing will change just because I can hear them. In fact, it would be better to sleep so that I can dream more, and I obey.

#noelle writes#stella reid#confessions of a star reader#original fiction

[engineering-anthology]

30 days of productivity

(because 100 is scary)

03/30

There's a joke somewhere along the lines of being "in the weeds" with my many assignments, but instead of weeds, it's ocean weeds, i.e. algae (given the algae focus of both of my big projects this semester!). However I don't have the time to workshop this joke to completion right now :_(. Maybe later when I have more time to think.

My paper and data analysis are still overdue. Ouch. But I have to submit whatever I have done tonight regardless of whether I'm happy with it so I don't hold up the grading schedule. Feels bad, but it'll probably feel really good to let go of it--it's just supposed to be a draft after all. I intended to turn it in last night, but my body forced me to sleep, I woke up with a nasty headache and promptly gave up on everything, so I missed most of the morning and only got a little bit of work in this evening. I needed the rest though, so I'm going to choose to not feel guilty about it. Or at least I'll do my best to not feel guilty :P

What I did today:

more data wrangling. made progress, spent < 2 hours on it though.

wrote most of an abstract, introduction, and some background

Upcoming tasks:

extract some kind of numbers from my data and calculate their uncertainties. this one is imminent if it doesn't happen in the next hour, it won't happen at all!

write the rest of my background section

fix bibliography, my numbering got a little confused between my previous versions of the intro and background and this version

email electronics professor about rescheduling exam

crank out the implementation of my computational bioconvection project this weekend! I have a draft report due tuesday! eeeek!

Musings: I have a new favorite album to study to! (it changes often though, so get used to this sentence) In the age of AI lofi drowning the bgm scene, having actual human producers whose tunes you vibe with is sooo lovely. City Girl has always been the kind of producer I can turn back to when my brain needs music that's both interesting (as far as lofi beats go) and familiar (but only because I've looped it so many times). Also, isn't the album art gorgeous???? All of her albums are so aesthetically lovely and I want them framed on my walls.

Do you think it would be bad to out what university I attend? I feel like my school and its stupid big ego are important props for explaining my woes. I've been pretty good about online hygiene so far, so I don't have that spooky problem some people have where due to the *magic of web scraping* their entire lives can be pulled up via ChatGPT. I don't want to ruin it, but I want to talk freely about the stupid and hilarious and horrifying things that happen at this big-ego-institution.

As a little aside, one of the reasons I had the confidence to apply to said big-ego-institute is that a blog that I followed in high school was open about the fact that she attended big-ego, answered my questions and encouraged me! She still floats through my mind sometimes and I'm so grateful for her kindness. I kinda want to be that person.

okie dokie, back to the grind! I'm partially saying this because I need to hear it, but don't feel guilty for the time you take to rest this weekend. If you have to crank out assignments that take a lot of brainpower to put together, that resting time is crucial for building thoughtful connections between ideas. (just make sure that the rest is intentional and not scrolling through tumblr or youtube, look at some trees or flowers or rocks or something)

Good luck and have fun! I believe in you <3

[feste-thejester]

🃏 ⤷ Jan25 Reading Log:

Table of Contents:

Introduction

January Stats

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll

The Black Album by Hanif Kureishi

Closing Thoughts

Up Next Month!

Links

Introduction:

Apologies for this being up so late! I’m well aware we are now in the middle of February, but I’m prepping my Feb25 Reading Log as we move through the month, so hopefully that will be on time, haha.

Truth be told, I didn’t actually start any reading until the middle of the month (which is perhaps why there are fewer books on the January list than I had hoped I'd get through - queue me looking at my Goodreads in great disappointment). After rushing through three 400-page novels in one week in early December in time for my seminars, completing assignments, and then diving straight into Christmas and New Year, I spent a lot of the first half of January sitting and anxiously looking at my books, a little nervous about beginning the task of tackling this semester’s reading list. But I made it over that hurdle, haha!

It was nice to begin with some classic, what some would call “children’s”, books: it definitely got me back into the swing of things nicely! Thanks, Mr Carroll. Also a big thank you to the beloved LibriVox free audiobooks, who have and will continue to get me through this degree with much less pain. Your work is greatly appreciated!

Onwards, then, to some strange ramblings about random books! Feel free to skip to the ones you wanna read about, as well - I do have a tendency to go on a bit. Enjoy!

January Stats:

Books Read: 3 (what a horribly sad number) Pages Read: 626

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll [re-read]

[14-01-2025]

Book cover from the Scholastics Classics edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Review: ★★★☆☆

When I read this a few years ago, I wasn’t too taken by it, mainly because of the lack of an overall story, if that makes sense? It felt like a mash of Carroll just bombarding the reader with a LOT of characters, all bouncing around in mini-stories with little meaning, and him just showing off his poetry skills (which are extraordinary, by the way, no doubt about it).

And it still felt like that this time around, but I appreciate it more because I understand that, especially from a young child’s point of view, this is a truly magical story because of these traits. It's literally called, 'Alice's *Adventures* in Wonderland' (in the plural), so of course it's going to be wildly erratic and unpredictable. I think that's the charm of it; the fact that it doesn't take itself seriously. All of the eccentricity and randomness that you find in the actual text itself is manifested in its structure, so we, as the reader, are as actively engaged with Wonderland as Alice is. Neither we, nor Alice, know where we'll be going next, and that's very fun indeed :)

Follow-Up Thoughts:

It’s a story that’s fun, inventive, lyrical and absorbing. Though, if I were the age of the target audience, I know for certain that I wouldn’t have a clue what on earth was going on. I’m on the fence about thinking that Carroll’s use of wordplay and complex double-meanings makes it almost too incomprehensible for a child, though I am talking about this in a modern context, where the contemporary children’s shelf is full of books like Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid and visual picture books. I’m not sure, but I probably need to look into this more, haha. But certainly, his linguistic skills didn’t go unnoticed by me at an older age. I found them just as bizarre, of course, but they often made me laugh out of pure bewilderment.

The last time I read this was a good few years ago, and I have little memory of the experience, so any of my prior knowledge of the story regrettably comes from the live-action Disney film. But, needless to say, I did enjoy the text more than I thought I would. I had to read several examples of children’s literature from throughout the late nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth century last semester for a module I was taking, and I would say Carroll’s book definitely falls into the top five out of those. Though, if I’m being honest, I’m not sure if it’s something I would read again (which is ironic, considering this was a re-read in itself).

Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll

[15-01-2025 -> 17-01-2025]

Book cover from the Scholastics Classics edition of Through the Looking Glass.

Review: ★★★☆☆

Sorry, I think I accidentally smoked the pages of this book instead of reading them, because I do not understand what I just listened to in the last three hours of my life. And I think that’s the fun of it. (someone actually get this child to rehab I don’t think she’s doing okay).

Follow-Up Thoughts:

Well, that was a terribly short review I wrote a month ago. Whoops. I don’t even think I posted that one on Goodreads because I genuinely didn’t know what else to write, haha. But, since then, I have attended a class on it, and made some *very* muddled notes on it, so let’s see if I can better review it now…

Firstly, I just wanna note my appreciation for Humpty Dumpty. What a GUY. Y’know how I was talking about word-play and double-meanings in the last book? Well, what do you know, this guy takes it to the complete next level. Not only that, he confronts it head-on (or, egg-on? whatever). The entirety of Chapter Six is just him interrogating Alice about language and how it should be used, even insulting her own name to get his point across. Dude, I love this guy.

But this scene alone acknowledges and challenges the actual concept of language, which I find really fascinating - and frankly quite odd, it being in a children’s book. But it’s alright, give kids an existential crisis not even five years into their life.

It demonstrates that language depends on mutual agreement. If different words meant different things to different people, it would complicate things to such a degree that everything would be virtually unintelligible. And that is deliberately shown in that conversation between Humpty Dumpty and Alice - a comedic headache of an interaction between the two. Another aspect that I think is super interesting about the second instalment of the Alice books which wasn’t really a thing in the first is the active role of Alice’s developing maturity throughout it. She spends the novel wanting to become a Queen in the game of chess, though once she achieves this, she is thrust, unready, into a position of maturity and adult responsibility, which ultimately causes her dream to end. I think it tells a somewhat fascinating narrative on growing up and not rushing into it, y’know, avoiding that child-like desire to be bigger than you are actually ready to be.

The Black Album by Hanif Kureishi

[15-01-2025 -> 30-01-2025]

Book cover from the Scribner edition of The Black Album. CW - This novel includes: racism and racist slurs, homophobia and homophobic slurs, strong language, drug use, alcohol use, explicit sexual content, and violence.

Review: ★★★☆☆

(oh god, my reviews get worse, I didn’t even leave one for this book o-o)

Follow-Up Thoughts:

I best say something, then, considering I left it at three stars and nothing else.

Now, to preface this, this isn’t the first time I’ve encountered Kureishi’s work. I got the awesome opportunity to go and see a stage adaptation of The Buddha of Suburbia directed by Emma Rice at the RSC last year, and I really enjoyed it. So I came to The Black Album with some expectation of what Kureishi’s story might be like, but no expectations about what his actual writing would be like.

It’s exceptional. His text is riddled with dark and dry humour, but not so much so that it erases the underlying messages and themes of the text itself. These continued to stand out and move the story along a very important narrative path whilst remaining engaging in other ways as well.

In a similar way to how we might describe the idea of ‘the American dream’ (whatever standing that has nowadays), Shahid finds himself moving to study in London during the ‘90s. It’s a text that draws attention to the move from youth to adulthood, and by setting this in London, it suggests the narrative of ‘finding oneself’. Kureishi does a very good job at illustrating British, but especially London, culture in this way: the '90s saw British culture, or the ‘Cool Britannia’ campaign, being dominated and steered by young people, given the welcoming of New Labour after Thatcherism and the introduction of Tony Blair as Prime Minister.

Through characters like Deedee and Brownlow, and their attempts to be active in the rave scene and drug culture, Kureishi shows youth being something that is desperately chased after. But through the protagonist, Shahid, we get to see the experience of the British youth, particularly marginalised British youth, first-hand. Shahid really plays with his identity before different people, exploring the idea of fluidity and being able to embrace several cultural identities at once without having to conform to one at the will of others.

But all in all, Kureishi is definitely an author I’d read again. I still need to get around to actually reading The Buddha of Suburbia since I enjoyed the stage adaption so much.

Closing Thoughts

Favourite Text:

It’s gotta be The Black Album. It really got me thinking critically about identity and how such a thing functions in a place like London, which is often deemed as a place where anyone is free to be anybody. It was a genuinely enjoyable read, and Kureishi’s characters are complex and wonderfully written and I would love to meet more of them.

Favourite Quote:

“Chili’s basic understanding was that people were weak and lazy. He didn’t think they were stupid; he wasn’t going to make that mistake. He saw, though, that people resisted change, even if it would improve their lives; they were afraid, complacent, lacking courage. This gave the advantage to someone of initiative and will.” [The Black Album, Chapter 5]

Up Next Month!

There’s another, probably too ambitious, bucket-load of novels on the way, including:

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

Lara by Bernadine Evaristo

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

Under Enemy Colours by Sean Thomas Russell (depending on whether I finish it in time o-o)

Mrs Warren’s Profession by George Bernard Shaw (if I get around to it, haha)

As well as a few short stories and poems:

“The Garden Party” by Katherine Mansfield

“A Letter to a Young Lady in Paris” by Julio Cortázar

“Super Frog Saves Tokyo” by Haruki Murakami

“The Lady of Shalott” by Alfred Tennyson

Links

📖 My Goodreads 📚 My Storygraph 📸 My Instagram 🎶 My Spotify

Copies of the Discussed Books:

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll In the public domain, and therefore free to read or download from Project Gutenberg.

Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll In the public domain, and therefore free to read or download from Project Gutenberg.

The Black Album by Hanif Kureishi Can be purchased second-hand here.

[elifkaragoz]

Hello everyone!

We have officially reached the end of the fall semester, and I would like to talk about a course I took this term, "Current Issues in Teaching.

I can sincerely say that I have learned a lot from this course. I can say that it showed me how to use technology, especially emerging technologies like "AR, VR, and AI," in my teaching. I think the greatest strength of the course was that it taught us how to adapt to technological innovations in our teaching profession.

I don’t think this course had obvious weaknesses that i can point out. In fact, it was one of my favorite courses. Perhaps its biggest weakness was that it was only 2 hours a week. I think, a course that combines two broad topics like technology and education could have been allocated more hours.

I didn’t find any part of the course content particularly difficult, but the multi-step nature of our assignments challenged me time to time.

I think my least favorite task was the last one we did, the "AI Integrated Material." Compared to the other tasks, I found it less enjoyable to prepare. It was definitely not a bad task, but I didn’t have as much fun during the preparation process as I did with the others. My favorite task was the "Flipped Video." I had so much fun both doing the narration and editing the video. I am sure that I will use “flipped teaching videos” in my future teaching.

The multi-step nature of the tasks is, of course, very beneficial, but it can also be tiring. I think if the content of the task is challenging, having fewer steps could make the assignments more "enjoyable."

Here’s what I would say to students who will take this course next year: This course involves very valuable information that will be very useful in your profession, so you should prioritize it and dedicate a good amount of time to the assignments.

I know that my future profession (teaching) is about adapting to the innovations of the era, and this course has greatly contributed to that understanding. It helped me notice how technology and English education are interconnected. I can definitely say that it greatly helped my professional development.

Take care everyone, love you💕

[kanpeki-bekki]

Actually you know what I'm going to come back to this and continue my own tags

...like, one thing I remember being a struggle as a language teacher would be kids trying to answer with the "correct" answer... Not just as in "grammatically correct and using relevant vocab", which is what I want out of them as a teacher, but with the answer that is based in their own personal truth.

Which is great! Fantastic! Kids really relate to learning a language when it is based in real conversation between real people, and they can share their real opinions.

But sometimes the lesson would be "What did you eat for dinner?" or "What do you want to be when you grow up?" and the answer they have based on their own personal truth is ultimately "I don't know" or "I don't remember."

Which is fine, cool, whatever, but I need to give you a checkmark on whether you were able to make a list of different foods, and whether you used "want to be" correctly. And the kids freak out because they are looking for the answer that is Their Truth(TM), but there is no answer, so they waste their lesson time stressing about it and--worst case--may not even submit their assignment as a result.

But as a language teacher, I am not interested in truth or facts! You can lie to me!! Make up your own story! "I ate the last Dodo's egg with a side of dinosaur gravy." Wow, look at that use of past tense! And I'm so proud of you looking up the word Dodo! "I want to be Sailor Moon when I grow up. In the name of the moon, I'll punish you! Excellent! Go you, using that contraction!!

So I wonder if maybe using a language class name like that would help turn language classes into a game of pretend, especially for young kids, so they can escape the pressure of "truth" and instead focus on learning fun words and phrases. Because they aren't answering as [Redacted] anymore... From this semester forth, they are "Estelle." Or "Usagi." Or "George."

did you have an in-class name within the language you took in school? (i.e. a French name)

[kinardsevan]

tumblr wrapped, 2024

I was tagged days ago by @actuallyitsellie, but y'know, life.

So. Since I really just repurposed this blog when I came back to tumblr this year, my ACTUAL join date is sometime in Nov./Dec. 2009. I purged some stuff last week, so the earliest date I have is Dec. 7th, 2009.

But let's be more reasonable and accurate to 2024. My re-join date was: May 15th, 2024. I apparently did like 4 posts in February, but we're not counting those. This would make sense, given that spring semester would've been over and it was my birthday weekend.

i.e.:

join date: ~May 15, 2024 total notes: 26,530 original posts: 729 average notes per original post: 15.61 best month: July

How this blog compares to other blogs (number of notes):

top original posts:

top ten posts:

931 notes - May 24, 2024 "What's there to talk about? Tommy's good people. He's good for you." "How do you know that?" "Because we haven't had to talk..." Arguably the post I saw do the most numbers from very early on. For quite some time actually towards the end of the year, it sat between 750 and 800 and I kinda figured it had lost its momentum, but clearly people still love this one. Definitely the first time I felt like I "fit" in a fandom, too.

535 notes - June 14, 2024 Buck/TK text exchange I really just loved all the fake texts we created as a community and had so much fun with this. Also the fact that the Mr July lore was just kinda accepted into the community made me giggle.

529 notes - November 13, 2024 pretty baby, i'm running back home to you This was like, version three of my fix-it make up minis, back when I wanted to believe we'd get a fix in 807. As it is, I'm still over here holding out faith hope that we get them back in 8b, but this was a fun one to write.

428 notes - November 12, 2024 I wrote a whole ass psychology breakdown for the... I mean we all know I live for the jokes that I'm using my psychology for free on the internet to interpret character choices. But honestly, this was so well received, and as time-consuming as the gif making was (and how rusty I am at it 😕), I'm still generally satisfied with how this turned out.

389 notes - September 7, 2024 I was watching some gabriel iglesias jokes and he was discussing the correlation between men and wine, and it made me need to... I was honestly sad to miss out on bucktommy positivity week basically both times around because I spent all of 2024 in classes, but this was one of the ones I got to do for outsider perspective, and was such a fun character study. I still giggle when I think about this joke too.

378 notes - May 30, 2024 the rhythm of your heartbeat I think I'm more fascinated by the fact that I was apparently back to fic writing before I was back on tumblr. I wish I could go back and know what drew me to writing (other than how I wanted 709/10 to pan out, given your arson's match, but obviously I fell in easily because two weeks after my first post back on her, I was writing minis.

327 notes - November 27, 2024 what's your on Tommy coming back or not? And in they case we see them again, do ou think it'll be just for closure (ex: Abby in season 3), or maybe a BuckTommy second chance? Ahhhh.... the anon ask heard 'round the world (or at least the group chat). I got this when I had a homework assignment due at 11 PM and literally had to think about what I wanted to say WHILE doing that assignment 😂😂😂😂. Still, I feel pretty solid with what I said here. I always own the fact that I have no idea if I'll end up being right, but I feel like 2 decades of writing has given me a solid understanding of storytelling...... so if I'm wrong, I may just not watch the show anymore 😂

326 notes - September 19, 2024 i can see the sun Another day, another mini. My attempt at bringing Tommy into 2x18. I think if I was going to rewrite this again, I'd maybe flesh it out a little more, put his character in more with the entirety of the episode? There's still so much opportunity the writers have in this position, to work Tommy into previous stories, especially when we still haven't had their first meeting.

300 notes - September 10, 2024 “God, he’s just so-… ugh, I don’t even know,” Evan grumbles, screwing the cap off of his water bottle. the mini in which Tommy calls Evan a pet name. I truly don't understand how we got this deep into this relationship, saw it end, and didn't ever get any kind of pet name, even in passing. If the inevitable helicopter crash happens and we still don't get at least ONE "baby" or "honey".... I will riot.

299 notes - July 3, 2024 Buck finds out that Tommy talks in his sleep, and it's all just cute and/or sweet things about Buck. A prompt fic. This one was fun to write. I don't have much to add beyond the fact that this was before I realized that word skipping is a serious problem with dyslexia and that I probably have some form of it 😂😂 Anyhoo!

[yooglefics]

The casual type: 02 . The guys are annoying

Pairing: Min Yoongi x fem!reader  Wordcount: 3,252 words Genre ( for the whole series ): AU. College!verse. Strangers to friends with benefits to ?????. Eventual smut. Hurt / comfort at times. And fluff for cute friends.  Summary:  ( Series ) • Hobi and his girlfriend set you up with a friend of hers to help with whatever happened months back. However, no one really expected things to end the way they did. ( Ep. 02 ) • Deciding to move on from the blind date, you go to a party with your friends expecting to have some fun, but things take a turn after a confession is made. More warnings under read more.

Warnings ( for this chapter ): People drinking. People fighting, don't worry, no one gets hurt physically, just some feelings. So I guess also: some angst and comfort. Author's note: Last chapter hit 100 notes yesterday, so I thought I’d drop this as a thank you to all who commented, liked and reblogged, it means a lot <3 Let me know what you think about this one and as always, thank you for reading!

Hearing Ms. Han talk about the syllabus and grading system is particularly boring today. Not only have you heard and read pretty much the same information numerous times just the first week of your second year at university, but friday night's events keep replaying in your head and provide much better entertainment.

Until you get to the part where Yoongi rejects you and walks you back into the bar, of course.

Frustrated scribbles appear on your notebook once again and you add little question marks around it for good measure. An accurate representation of your emotion, perhaps you can turn it in as one of your assignments this semester.

At lunch, you make your way to the cafeteria, joining Jimin and Taehyung at your usual table in the corner right by the big windows. They acknowledge your presence with a smile in your direction and you return it sitting down.

“How was your date last friday?” Jimin is the first to ask, but you know both want to know.

“As good as blind dates go,” keeping details out is your strategy.

But Taehyung isn’t having it. “What did you guys talk about? Did you dance?”

Thankfully Hoseok and Jungkook arrive to your rescue, the youngest one leaving a food tray in front of you before taking a seat to your right. Neither of you remembers exactly when it started, but sometime in highschool you agreed that whoever arrived first would get lunch for the both of you.

“Mai wants to know if you guys want to go to a party on friday.”

“If you guys go, I’ll go,” is always Tae’s answer.

“Whose party? The sports guys are throwing one too and not to be biased b–”

“You’re biased, but we forgive you,” Jimin interjects Jungkook and everyone laughs because is true.

“Well, it's the first party of the semester so it’ll be epic. I think we should go.”

Parties organized by a bunch of athletes wouldn’t be your thing if only for the fact that your best friend is a member of the soccer team and the group pretty much gets a special invite by association.

“She says that’s fine if she is allowed to come,” Hobi says, eyes still on his phone. “And if she can bring someone, a student here.”

Jungkok nods, “Just give me their names to put them on the list for nice drinks.”

“She has a friend that goes here? Why haven’t we been introduced?” Jimin asks before you can.

“Yeah, Yoongi. He just transferred.”

Your head picks up at the name. Looking at Hobi to ask why he didn’t let you on that information when they set up the date. Before you kissed him and got rejected making a fool of yourself.

“Wait, wasn’t that your—” 

“I have to go check something about my room assignment,” you stand up before Tae can finish his question. Or starts an interrogation, per se. “See you later.”

There are things you actually have to do, so you don’t feel completely bad about running away from the conversation. And maybe this school year you should add making a female friend to your vision board because having to deal with a bunch of guys keeps proving to be difficult at times.

Quicker than you would like, friday rolls around and so does the afternoon and the party. Jungkook reminds in the group chat that someone has to drive you since he’s busy helping with setting up and Hobi replies with a time you should be ready at, so he can pick you up after going to Mai’s.

You sit cross-legged on the bed your roommate is supposed to occupy doing your make-up, different products set around you trying to decide what, and even if, you should add something else. With a dramatic sight, you declare that as another reason why having a roommate (and hopefully a friend) to share the place with, would be nice. For now, Jimin is the best help you can get and your phone buzzes with his answer to the pic you just sent, telling you to add the sparkly eye shadow he helped you choose last time at the mall. You thank him and do as told.

While putting everything away, wasting time while waiting for Hobi, the red translucent tub of cherry lip gloss caughts your eyes and before you can start another indecisive spiral that would need Jimin's help, you apply it to your lips and throw it into your bag just in case. Telling yourself that you’ve decided to be open to whatever life gave you even before the kiss with Yoongi happened, and a university party is the first place you should be prepared for anything.

Relief washes over you when Yoongi isn’t in the car with Mai and Hobi, glad you don’t have to spend time with him around the cavity-induced couple. And Mai calms your curiosity about her friend’s whereabouts even when you don’t wonder out loud, saying he is already there.

You hang out with your friends for a couple of hours, but getting nasty looks from the ones who are trying their luck with them turns from funny to annoying rather quickly tonight, and you wonder if it is going to get worse as the semesters go on. Or maybe is you who is becoming less immune to it all.

“Can I get you a refill, sweetie?” recognizing the voice is the only reason you aren’t mad at the pet name straight away. Instead, the corners of your mouth turn up into a smile.

“If you would be so kind, please.”

And he is. Bogum always is. You met him last year, and even after turning down a date invitation because you thought he was making fun of you, he didn’t push, nor stop talking to you or being nice, like others of his teammates have done after rejection. Bo is kind, and sometimes you wish he would invite you out again.

While Bogum reaches the fridge’s door and takes a bottle of beer, you take the rest of the one in your hand and leave the empty bottle on the counter the basketball player was just leaning in.

He opens the beer with the help of his keyring before handing it to you. “Here you go.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem, sweetie,” he smiles, dimple flashing. “Oh, your eyes sparkle!”

You giggle at the surprise in his voice. “Yeah, is the eyeshadow. Isn’t it cute?”

“Yes. They are.”

Is your turn to be surprised, turning away in an attempt to hide your blush, and mentally thanking Jimin for his advice. Maybe tonight would end with—

Yoongi?

Brown eyes look your way from the other side of the kitchen island. Closing the alcohol bottle, he nods when they catch yours. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Oh, hey,” Bo’s attention is finally taken away from you, “Yoongi’s new, he is trying for the team. This is—”

“Y/n” Yoongi finishes.

“You know each other?”

“Something like that. His friend is Hobi’s girlfriend,” you explain before Yoongi can say anything else.

“Mai?” You nod, and the next question is directed at Yoongi. “So, are you like… close with Hoseok and the guys?”

“Mostly Hobi, but yes, I would say we are friends.”

“O-okay,” Bo nods twice in understanding, before excusing himself to check on the drinks supply outside and leaving you two alone in the kitchen. Is not even his team’s party, so you find it a little odd at first before blaming it on his kind personality, and assuming he is probably just helping.

Sipping your beer, your eyes lose Bogum in the crowd and go back to Yoongi and his grin behind the red cup.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he dismissed, but the feeling of you missing out on something is even bigger now.

“Why do you look like the Cheshire cat, then?”

“Of all the cats you had to compare me to him?” he makes a face, as if that is the most important thing now. “He is creepy.”

“Spill it out. You clearly know something.”

“Oh… you don’t?”

Eyes narrowed, can’t tell if he is making fun of you or not. Is frustrating. Not only him but the feeling of being out of the loop. That’s the only thing you hate sometimes about hanging just with the guys, when they get all secretly about their hookups and what not, changing the topic when you are in the room. You get it, they get nervous and respect you, even overprotect you with those things, but it doesn't matter how hard they try, or maybe you just got really good at it, you still catch their silent communication. The looks thrown that mean an inside joke.

“Boys are annoying,” you murmur, frustrated.

“So you do know? He just cares about you.”

“Who?”

“Hobi…?”

“What?” confusion lasts a few seconds, washed away when the conversation with Bogum plays back in your head. The mention of Hobi before he excused himself. And…

Oh.

Oh, no.

Heck no.

Feet move before you realize, Yoongi’s voice feeding out as you push past people who don’t seem to even notice and just a couple who throw you an annoyed look when you walk between them. You don’t care, the only thing on your mind is finding your friend.

And there he is, in the middle of the improvised dance floor that is normally a living room. “Come with me,” you request pulling on his arm.

“Did something happen? Are you okay?”

You don't answer, reserving explanations until you're in the hallway away from the music.

“Y/n, what happened?”

“What did you say to him?”

“To whom?”

“Bogum. What did you tell him?”

“I-I don't know,” Hoseok is avoiding your eyes now, a clear indication of being caught on something. “What did he say?”

“Well,” trying to calm down, you take a breath before continuing, “he said my eyes are pretty and then—” 

“What happened?” Asks Jimin, appearing at the hallway’s entrance followed by Taehyung.

“Are you fighting? Why are you fighting?”

“Hoseok did something and doesn't want to tell me,” perhaps having the others on your side to put pressure on the dancer would be a good strategy.

“What did you do?” Taehyung asks and not even three seconds of silence go by before he continues, “oh… she found out.”

“You knew?!” To heck being calm. “You were all on it? What's wrong with you guys?!”

“It's all on me, don't blame them.” Hobi defenses, his voice much softer than yours.

“No, no. Even if we found out after, we agreed it was a good idea, babe. I'm sorry.” Jimin corrects, and an apology by Tae follows.

“What did you say to him?” You insist.

“Listen, after that night,” Hoseok begins, referring to that spring night you cried in his living room until your head hurt and then some more because of the headache. Just the memory makes you squirm a little. “I knew something went on with one of them, and I knew you wouldn't tell me but also that I couldn't let it happen again. That I wasn't going to let it happen. So…” he pauses, looking at the others before coming back to you, “I told them to better not get close to you.”

Your mouth opens and closes a few times in shock, “To the whole team?!” Is your first question because, well, is he insane?

“I guess? It was at practice so most of them were there.”

“And the ones who weren't found out later. Word travels fast and even faster if it's about someone threatening to break their noses for messing with a girl.” Taehyung adds, taking your attention away from Hobi.

“Is that what this is about? Me being a girl?” You argue, “because that's bullshit! And misogynistic. Why can you go to parties and kiss whoever without me making a big deal? Why do you get to tell people to not talk to me, and they actually listen, but I have to sit in class hearing about my hot friends? Or even give advice on how to talk with you guys?” Glancing around at them, your arms fall to your sides, defeated, “Do you have any idea how many people have tried to befriend me just so they could be close to you?”

Three pairs of eyes are on you, making you incredibly aware of the volume of your voice over the music playing through the walls, being a few rooms over making it softer than in the living room, and you can't tell if it's the alcohol or the anger making you go on that rant, the only thing that you're sure about is the pain on your chest and the tears threatening to fall.

Ever the proudest, you refuse to cry in front of them. Not this time.

“Whatever. Go back to shove your tongue down someone's throat and then don't tell me about it.” Pushing between Jimin and Taehyung you leave your friends in the hallway, holding your beer in a fist to prepare to cross the sea of sweaty people once more.

The breeze of cold air is interrupted, and you complain out loud, sure that the probably drunk student isn't going to pay attention anyway.

You're sitting on the sidewalk in front of the soccer house, hands on your knees and head on top of them, thinking about calling Jungkook and asking him to take you home. Good thing you didn't freak out on him. 

But maybe you should. He probably knew too.

You groan again, lifting your head ready to ask whoever to move so you can keep enjoying the night's breeze and calm down, but your complaint stays in your throat when Yoongi and his leather jacket welcome you to reality.

“For a second I thought you were sleeping,” left corner of his mouth curves up slightly.

“It would be a nightmare.”

“Are you saying that because is me or because of whatever happened inside?” You don't answer, and he continues, “Hobi is looking for you.”

“Yeah? And he sent you over? Apparently you're best friends now.” The annoyance in your voice is even surprising to you, so when his smile fades you don't blame him.

“He just told me to keep an eye out for you, tell him if I saw you.”

“You did?” You gesture to the phone in his hand.

“Not yet. I wanted to apologize first.”

Another pause, and you don't move while he sits down by your side.

After Hobi’s confession and the fact that Yoongi appeared to know back in the kitchen, you wonder if your friend also said something to him, if that's the reason he pushed you away last week.

“I don't need an apology, I just want people to be honest,” you look at him, “can you do that?” 

“I want to give you one, though. So, I'm sorry,”  he offers, sincerely “and yes, I promise to be honest.”

“Thank you.” The wind blows your hair, and you tuck it back behind your ear before questioning, “Did he threaten you too? Is that what the apology is about? why you said you couldn't do casual with me?”

“Kind of. I mean, he didn't ask me to stay away, he and Mai planned the date, after all,” is true so you nod. “But he told me about what he did and why he did it, and I… I couldn't bring myself to have something like that with you and it turning out bad.”

“Because you are scared of Hobi?” You scoff. Stupid boys.

“No. Because I didn't want you to get hurt.” He looks at you, “I don't know the details, but for Hobi to act like that it sounded like it was bad, whatever happened. And I'm just a guy, but I've had my heart broken too and don't want to cause that pain to anyone.”

“I'm not gonna get my heart broken because you don't want something serious, Yoongi.” Yes, you were upset he cut you off that day, but he told you he didn't want a relationship since the beginning so you knew not to take it seriously. To take responsibility if you did.

“Still. You can't really be mad if people try to look out for you, can you?”

“Is… is not that. Is about people not even letting me make my own choices,” you correct. “Is authoritarian and patronizing. And coming from my friends? It feels like they don't even know me.”

“I see…” Yoongi gives you a small smile that makes you realize the tiny pout on your lips. “But as someone who has been on bad nights with his best friend crying over stupid boys, sometimes it feels impotent and we want to make it all better. Even if that means threatening the whole university.”

“Are you on their side, then?”

“I'm just saying that I understand both sides. And that guys can be erratic and dumb when it comes to protecting the people we care about. But, if you ask me, you have the right to call us out. Because again, we are dumb,” that gets a smile from you.

“I think I got too far, though,” you admit, feeling bad now. Yoongi is right, even if it was dumb, your friends had good intentions. They just need a better way of protecting you.

“I heard you guys fought.”

“More like I screamed at them and ran off.”

“Was that on purpose? So they would be worried?”

“What? No. Of course not.” You're quick to deny, the simple idea of it is absurd to you.

“Well, then maybe you should answer their calls and tell them you're okay. They are worried about you.”

And that seems to be the night's theme, but you're confused because your phone hasn't been ringing all this time. Wondering if perhaps you accidentally put it on silent, you take it out of your bag only to realize the battery is dead.

“Damn it.”

“Here,” Yoongi offers you his, Hobi’s contact information on the screen.

“Thanks,” you smile, calling and putting the phone against your ear, covering the other one so you can hear over the noises around the garden.

“Hey, did you see her? Can you stay–”

“Hey,” you cut him off, “is me.”

“Oh, is her!” Mai's content voice after he announced is barely audible and you're glad she was by his side. But also feel bad about worrying her too. “Where are you? Are you okay?”

“I'm fine. I'm outside. I wasn't going to go anywhere else in the middle of the night by myself, I'm not dumb,” oh, you're still angry.

“I know. I know you aren't. I was just worried.”

“I know, I'm sorry.”

“No, no. I'm sorry, it's my fault. I'm so sorry.”

He sounds genuine and the worry in his voice gets to you, incapable of being as mad as before.

“I… think we should talk about it. Like, the whole thing.” You hope he knows you mean including the night months back, “but not here and not tonight.”

“Of course, whenever you want.” He pauses, “Want me to take you home? Or talk with Bogum and come back?”

You smile at the last suggestion, “Thanks, but no. I'll ask Yoongi to take me.” You look at him, still sitting at your side, and he nods.

“Will do. And I'll text him when we arrive.”

“You heard that?”

“Yes. Tell him I say thank you.”

Author's note: I'm accepting theories on what you think happened with Reader and about anything, to be honest, just would like to know what you think, so hop to the askbox asdf <3 ♡ Tag list: @n33mesis , @mggv97 , @wobblewobble822 , @bbou-doir , @m00njinnie , @nariee02 , @sexytholland , @itsmina29 , @ktownshizzle .

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