#someone teach me how to answer an ask in 200 words or less

[cuteandtwisted]

are bfyt isak and even living together at this point? miss them xx

i miss them too 💛.  here’s what they’re up to. (i got carried away. sigh.)

.

“I could put my desk here.”

“Why not there?” Even points to a wider corner in the empty bedroom.

“Hm. Your desk could go there instead. It’s bigger.” Isak responds absentmindedly as he continues inspecting the walls of the bare living room.

Even’s gasp is barely audible, but Isak hears it. 

He stifles his own when he realizes what he’s just said and wills his feet to remain glued to the floor. His back turned to Even. His ears and neck probably flushed already.  

“My desk?” Even asks behind him, his voice soft, his tone playful. Isak knows he’s smiling. “Why would my desk be in your apartment, Isak?”

Ugh.

“I don’t know. Most of your shit is currently at Kollektivet. Figured it’s only a matter of time before you start carrying your furniture to my new place as well,” Isak responds with a shrug, then walks away to where the person showing them the apartment is standing. 

Good save, he tries to tell himself. But was it? His therapist would argue that he’s falling back on his usual coping mechanisms, that he’s regressing by resorting to sarcasm and evasion tactics instead of voicing how he truly feels, what he truly wants, what he truly needs. 

What I really want.

But Even understands. He’s currently chuckling at Isak’s weak and unconvincing retort to his teasing. He always does. He’s never upset. He’s never impatient. He’s always kind and forgiving. He understands that Isak’s years of social ineptitude and prickly responses aren’t just undone and done away with because he started getting professional help. 

Still, Isak isn’t sure that what he wants is right, that it deserves to be voiced and spoken out loud. Because wanting something doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the right thing right now. 

As though sensing the turmoil currently eating Isak up (and knowing that a touch would suffice to anchor him and bring him back), Even squeezes his side as he walks past him and absently presses a phantom kiss to his hair before continuing to the broker. An uninhibited touch that carries so much meaning, so much weight. 

‘Stay with me. Don’t get too lost inside your head. Stay here with me.’

It’s so casual yet deliberate that Isak feels like melting into the hardwood floors. 

“Do you have any apartment facing East?” Even asks the lady with a smile so blinding, Isak can see her blushing too. “Isak has trouble waking up in the morning if it’s not bright enough. Also counter space. Isak needs more counter space. Do you have anything with more counter space?” 

Isak watches Even complain about details and nice-to-haves he would never otherwise care about to the broker and feels his chest swell, a warm and fuzzy feeling settling there and spreading down his limbs. 

It’s Sunday morning and Isak can’t think of any other place he’d rather be.

He walks up to Even mid-rant about the height of the ceiling and presses a sweet kiss to his cheek, making him pause and blink, visibly flustered.

“What was that?” Even smiles, turning away from the broker lady almost completely. 

“I don’t like this one,” Isak says simply, before linking his arm with Even’s.

“No?”

“No. It’s too far from your school.” Not the full truth. But a truth nonetheless.

Even just stares at him, smiling fondly like he’s keeping himself from speaking his mind. The real estate person somehow feels like she’s left the empty apartment.

“What?” Isak asks, embarrassed. 

“You’re being cute. Why are you being cute?”

“Am not,” he scoffs. “I’m being pragmatic. I just don’t want to spend money commuting to you.”

“I could just get an apartment next to this one.”

“What if you spend the night here and have to commute to school or what if i want to pick you up from school?”

Even cups his face with both hands and kisses him on the lips. It’s just a kiss, but Isak still feels dizzy when Even lets him go. 

“You’re being cute again,” Even says before kissing him again. 

.

They’ve been apartment hunting for two weeks now. Separately, however.

Isak had been crashing at kollektivet since he moved back from Trondheim, and it was only a matter of time before he had to find a place to live.

But when he asked Mutta if he knew of any good options, he found out that Even was looking to move out of his mother’s house as well. 

It was rather embarrassing to hear it from a third party when they spent every single night together, either in Even’s bed or latched onto each other on Eskild’s couch. (Isak secretly loves the latter sleeping arrangement the most. He loves not having to justify curling himself around Even and molding into him like he can’t bear being apart from him).

“Heard you were looking for an apartment.”

“Heard about you, too.”

“Maybe we can go to places together. Share one broker. Save time. We’re probably looking for different things anyway.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

But they’re not looking for different things. They hate the same living rooms and fall in love with the same bedrooms. Isak thinks about where Even’s desk would fit and Even complains about Isak’s counter space and sun exposure. Even wants a large bedroom that can fit a king sized bed, and Isak wants a living room that can fit a couch big enough for two tall men. Even thinks about the distance to Isak’s lab and Isak thinks about the one to Even’s uni. They bicker about hardwood floors and appliances, and somewhere along the line, their broker stops asking who the apartment is for, a quiet and knowing smile on her lips. 

.

It’s the perfect apartment.

Isak can just picture where everything would go. All of Even’s film equipment and art supplies. All of the little props he takes to the kindergarten where he’s completing his training. He can tell where Even’s drawings would go on the walls, where he’d leave his backpack as soon as he enters through the door, where Isak would find his socks crumpled on the floor. He can see himself on the kitchen counter, legs spread for Even to fit in between, their heated kisses filled with laughter and ease and ‘scientific’ foreplay. He can see the cupboard they’d keep forgetting about and against which Isak would hit his head every time Even kisses him too deep. He can see where Isak would retract to brood when Even calls him out on something. He can see where Even would nap and where Isak would just perch up to watch him, happy to just be able to watch him.  

It’s the perfect apartment. 

“I might as well put an application down now, right?” Even grins at him, seemingly agreeing with Isak’s entire train of thought and reminding him that he’s the one who found this apartment. 

“Right.”

Even talks with the realtor about faucets and finishes and where the washers and dryers are located in the building while Isak recoils into himself.

They walk out into the night after Even fills out an application and Isak feels a lump in his throat. 

“What’s up?” Even asks, eyes curious and pensive.

“Nothing.” Isak shrugs.

“You’re quiet.”

“It happens to me sometimes.”

“Oh does it, now?” Even laughs. 

“Ugh.” Isak laughs too, shoving him playfully. 

“Are you upset I found an apartment before you?”

No.

“No.”

“Then what is it?” 

Isak considers his next words carefully. He could say how he truly feels or he could go down the pragmatic route. 

“Iss?”

“I just don’t think it’s a very economical decision,” Isak huffs out. His therapist would be so disappointed right now. 

“Huh?”

“The apartment, I mean. The rent, for starters, it’s too high. I mean where are you gonna get all that money every month? It feels like a waste because, well, it’s too big, honestly.”

“Are you telling me to find a smaller apartment?” Even muses quietly. He doesn’t sound irritated. He’s smiling, like this is amusing to him. 

“No! No. The apartment is perfect. Like it’s actually perfect. I’m not saying that.”

Even furrows his brows in confusion. Frankly, Isak is confused by his reasoning, too.  

“Hm. Are you trying to steal my apartment by any chance? Is that what this is about?” Even laughs.

“No. No, I wouldn’t do that.”

“Then what is it?” 

Isak looks up at him then. Even is smiling. And he’s so self-assured, so present, so intimidating like this. 

“I’m saying we can both have the apartment,” Isak blurts out, his heart pounding hard in his ears.  

“Hm. And how would that work exactly?”

“We’d call the lady and ask her to add my name to the application,” says Isak. “I’d fill out my part and that way we’ll have more chances of actually getting the apartment with our salaries combined. Not to mention that we’d pay half the rent. And half the utilities! Half the electricity and heating bill! We could share groceries that way food doesn’t go to waste. And we won’t even have to spend money commuting from each other’s places. It’s perfect.”

Isak’s face is flushed by the time he finishes his rant. He’s beyond embarrassed. Even is probably fighting a smirk right now. 

“So this is a money saving strategy?” Even asks. He’s still smiling.

“What?”

“You want us to share an apartment to save money?”

“No. Not just money. I mean, it would be energy, too. Right? We’d lower our carbon footprint. We’d share one fridge, one radiator, one set of lightbulbs. We’d only have to use the vacuum once at a time. We could even share laundry cycles. It’s quite the responsible choice actually.” 

“So.. you want me to be your roommate to fight climate change?”

“Not roommate.” 

“I mean it sounds very close to what you were doing with Eskild.”

“I never showered with Eskild!”

“Oh, we’d be sharing showers, too. To preserve water. Of course.” Even laughs, but Isak doesn’t feel like laughing.

“Even. This is not funny to me! I’m serious!”

Oh. 

There it is. A crack. A small crack. Isak raising his voice and being visibly upset because he is. Because he feels cornered. Because he doesn’t know how to say what he truly feels, what he truly wants. 

And it hits him then. The reason why Even didn’t tell him he was looking to move out of Julie’s apartment in the first place. The reason he never brought up the fact that they spend every single night together and that it doesn’t make any sense that they’re looking for two separate places.

It hits him then: Even doesn’t want this. Even doesn’t, because Isak doesn’t give him enough. 

Isak doesn’t tell him that he loves him very often. He writes it. He implies it. He traces it on his skin, presses it against his lips, whispers it into his neck late at night. But he doesn’t say it. And while Even is kind and patient, he probably wishes Isak were more open by now, more normal. Isak wishes he were, too. 

Even is getting sick of him. Even doesn’t want-

“Isak? Isak, hey, stay with me.” Even brings him back with both hands on his face. A sweet touch, the most comforting touch. Isak will never stop burning for his touch. “I’m sorry for teasing you. It’s not nice. Forgive me.”

I should be the one apologizing. 

“Come on, let’s go back to my place and talk about this later. Yeah? Don’t worry about it.”

“But-”

“No buts.” 

.

It’s late and dark. It’s past midnight. They’re in Even’s bed at Julie’s apartment, sleeping. Even spooning him. But Isak can tell Even is awake too, his breathing too shallow, too uneven. 

“Even?” Isak asks, his voice a whisper.

“Hm?”

“I don’t want to share an apartment because of money.” 

Even tightens his arms around Isak’s stomach.

“What about climate change?” he asks, making Isak elbow him lightly.

“Don’t be a dick.” 

Even laughs. They both do. Then it’s quiet again.

“Why do you want to share an apartment then?” Even asks then, his voice wavering with nervousness.

It’s late and it’s dark, and Isak can feel Even’s heartbeat against his back. 

He turns around in his arms and tangles their limbs again. He can almost see the blue in Even’s eyes, even in the dark. 

Even is scared, Isak realizes. He’s holding his breath and he’s scared. 

“Because I love you.” Isak says simply. It’s simple because it’s true.    

Even lets out a soft but heartbreaking sigh. Isak wants to hold him until he knows. Until he knows just how deeply and impossibly Isak loves him. 

Isak wants to tell him so much. The words tumble inside his brain while they hold each other in bed rather desperately for a warm night in June.  

I want to share a home with you because I want you around. Because I love hearing you put on clothes in the morning when I’m still sleeping and I love the sound of you unzipping your jeans after a long day before you proceed to sing terribly in the shower. Because I love having you around and watching you make art or marathon some pretentious show or simply take a nap in the middle of the day. 

“Because I’ve never had a home until I had you,” Isak confesses with a tremor to his voice.

Even kisses him then, and it’s wet and salty and desperate. 

Isak can’t tell whose tears he’s tasting.

“Odd night to get emotional about climate change,” Even sniffles with a chuckle when they finally part for air.

“Ugh. Fuck you.”

“Ugh. I love you, too.” 

They kiss again and again and again. 

“My home. You’re my home, too.”  

.

They move in together a week after that.

x

[whiskeybeforesunset]

Homecoming Part 3 | Steve Harrington

Pairing: Steve Harrington x Male!Reader

Word Count: 1.4k

Synopsis: According to Steve Harrington “only losers don’t go to Homecoming.” This multi-part fic is going to follow the reader through different experiences of the night. Finally, the reader arrives at the dance. And actually… has fun? Well that is until he’s forced to come to terms with some not-so-straight feelings about his friend. 

Warnings: Dancing, kissing, some crying, panic attack (scene where someone realizes they are gay and are freaking out about it), some parts are a bit dialogue heavy

Author’s note: I’m not even going to lie to you, I really struggled with the dancing scenes in this because when I was in highschool grind circles were all the rage. I know some of the music wouldn’t have been released when this story takes place but I don’t really care. Also a good chunk of this is Nicole and the reader having fun, but I wanted to throw some of that in since there are some positives of going to a dance. 

Previous Chapter , Next Chapter

—

The smell of hairspray is overwhelming as you walk onto the gym. It’s warm and humid. As it turns out, packing 200 hormonal teens shoulder to shoulder has some heat generating abilities. Orange and green tinsel dangles along the walls, hiding the folded up bleachers. 

Your group makes its way to the perfect spot on the dancefloor, just close enough to the DJ for the music to be loud without it bursting your eardrums. Turns out hanging with the popular kids has some perks, even if they can be assholes. 

The night starts off with students dancing in little pods. Something you’re thankful for as dancing for your friends and their dates is much less intimidating than standing alone in front of the whole school. However, your fear of disappointing Nicole with your lack of rhythm has increased significantly as she is apparently a very skilled dancer. Steve on the other hand dances like a newborn deer, and yet his awkward jutting motions still come off as charming. You wonder if his confidence is natural, or if he’s had to teach himself to be ok with dancing like no one’s watching. You wonder if you could ever reach that level of self assurance. 

After an hour or so, the music fades as the DJ announces “Here’s some for all the young couple’s out there tonight.” The crowds begin shifting into pairs and you and Nicole begin slow dancing together.

Nicole’s eyebrows furrow as she asks, “have you ever danced before?” Over Madonna’s Crazy For You. 

“Uh, no. Not really.” You respond with an awkward smile. “Is it that obvious?”

“A little,” Nicole laughs before continuing, “for one, your hand is supposed to go on my waist, not my shoulder.” Ah, you were wondering why this position felt so awkward. 

“Better?” You ask after quickly fixing your hand position. 

“Much.” Nicole replies. You two go on like this for a while, discussing different things about your life: family, where and if you want to go to college, that kind of stuff. The conversation comes to a lull and Nicole presses her lips together and looks off to the side before smiling up at you mischievously. 

“Y’know, if you really wanted to get fancy, with the dancing I mean, you could twirl me.” She says with a grin.

“Twirl you?” You respond.

“Yes.” Nicole answers, but with audibly more hesitation than when she presented the idea. On her face is a mild version of the look you saw earlier tonight at the restaurant. She’s worried you’ll reject the idea, or think it was stupid. 

“Sounds like fun.” You finally say, putting an end to the poor girl’s anticipation. “How do I um… do that?”

Nicole gives a relieved laugh before releasing one of your hands and changing her grip on the other. She explains the motion to you and you perform per her instructions while she turns. Her dress twirls around her feet. 

The two of you are laughing by the time she comes back into your arms. 

“Okay, my turn now.” You say, half joking.

“What?!” Nicole says, almost out of breath.

“Well it’s only fair, if you get to be twirled so do I.” You respond, mimicking the pose of the noble Englishmen you’ve seen in your mother’s soap operas. 

She pretends to contemplate your reasoning before responding with the same congeniality, “I suppose you’re right.”

She dramatically presents her hand in front of you and spins you to the best of her ability given your height difference. You two continue to dance, although in a more traditional fashion, as Take My Breath Away by Berlin comes over the speakers. 

When Nicole comes closer to lay her head on your chest you become cognizant of the fact that you are actually… having fun? Maybe Steve was right. Speaking of Steve, with Nicole's head ducked lower you are able to see him with his date. His hands are around her waist while hers lace together behind his neck. Your mind begins to wander. 

You can feel the warmth of Steve’s hands through your dress shirt. His hair tickles as you sway to the music. He moves closer to you, closing the gap between your bodies and causing your chests to touch. His eyes are so beautiful this close. They’re always beautiful, but the moving lights of the dance causes them to glimmer in a way you’ve never seen before. 

You watch as those same eyes flicker down to your lips. You feel one of his hands move from your hip. You're briefly saddened by the loss of contact before it finds your face. He tilts his head forward, all the while half lidded eyes looking at yours. His breath fans across your lips, you’re mere centimeters away from each other. You nod, silently giving permission. With this he closes the gap, pressing his soft lips against your own. His slightly chapped lips move against yours, but there is no urgency to the motion, just passion slowly pouring over as if the moment will last forever.

You’re brought out of your thoughts by the sight of Steve kissing Tina. In real life. Which you were not experiencing previously. That familiar pit settles in your stomach. 

You freeze, panicked as a million different thoughts race through your head. 

“Are you alright?” Nicole asks, stepping back when she notices you stopped dancing. 

“I- uh.” You struggle to form a sentence as the corners of your vision become blurry. You take quicker, more shallow breaths, begging your body to accept the oxygen. 

You see Nicole mouthing your name through the tears forming in your eyes. 

“I’m sorry.” You say shortly before exiting the gym as quickly as possible and finding the nearest restroom. 

You slam the door behind you and brace against it while tears begin falling down your face. Thankfully no one else is in there or else that would have been quite the entrance. 

“What the fuck.” You repeat over and over to yourself while wiping tears from your eyes. Why did you think like that about Steve? Why do you want to kiss him? Are you gay?

You sob and sink to the floor. Why is this happening to you? Why couldn’t you just be normal? You had fun with Nicole tonight, why couldn’t you just feel about her that way? But you know you can’t, because no matter how much you’ve enjoyed your time with Nicole you know you don’t see her, or any woman in that way.

Your attempts to take deep breaths are interrupted by hiccups. Making your way over to the sink, you splash your face with water in an attempt to calm down. 

When you look at your reflection in the mirror, your face is puffy and flushed and your eyes are bloodshot to hell. The water you splashed has wetted the pieces of hair framing your face. Droplets drip down your chin, creating dots of opaqueness on your dress shirt. Your chest heaves as you take a few deep breaths.

“No one can ever know.” You say to yourself solemnly in the mirror. 

You wipe your nose a final time before making your way back to the dance floor, but when you do, you see girls holding heels in their hands and guys with jackets slung over their shoulders. The lights are turned on, the dance is over. At least you get to go-

“Hey, are you alright, you kinda went…” Without you realizing, Nicole had walked up to you.

“Yeah” You repeated “Yeah I, um. I just got in my head a bit.” 

“Okay… Well, Steve and Tina are already in the car. He said you needed to ‘hurry your ass up’ if you wanted a ride to the after party, but I’m pretty sure he was joking.”

Right… the afterparty. 

Nicole notices your change in disposition at the mention of the post-dance festivities.

“Are you sure you’re ok? Cause if you want to just go home, I underst-”

“No.” You cut her off. “No, I’m good to go, let's head out to the car. Would you like me to carry your purse?”

“Yeah, thanks.” Nicole says with a small smile and hands you her bag. 

As you walk out you reason with yourself that you only have to make it, what? Two, Three hours before politely leaving the party. You can handle that.

Yeah. Totally. 

[kpop-zone]

Selfish | Jihyo

Hogwarts AU | Enemies to Lovers | “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck this shit. Fuck.”

Wordcount: 3,890

A/N: Sorry if the formatting is weird, but Tumblr won’t let me post anything on my computer, so I had to post this from my phone 😬

“Y/N!”

When Jihyo saw you running through the hallway, she could immediately feel anger seething within her, and she called your name with a sharp tone.

“Oh Jihyo, fancy meeting you here.”

After hearing her voice, you had stopped running abruptly and were now grinning at her sheepishly, pretending like you didn’t know why she was staring you down.

“Stop feigning innocence, Y/N. You’re late. Again! Snape will for sure deduct some points from Gryffindor.”

Jihyo felt like ripping your head off. Of all the Gryffindors you were by far the most reckless one and usually involved when your house lost some points in one way or another. Your favorite activity was to prank Slytherins which always led to particularly hard punishments for your house by Professor Snape, the head of Slytherin. But you just didn’t seem to learn from your mistakes.

“You’re late too though...”

You smirked cheekily, causing her to get even angrier.

“Yeah but I have this opposing to you.”

With her right hand, she pulled out McGonagall’s letter that allowed her to be late for classes if her position as prefect required it and waved it in front of your face.

“That’s unfair.”

You pouted and Jihyo had to suppress her laughter. It was a little unfair indeed. She had simply overslept this morning, but as a prefect, she rarely got punished for anything. But she always told herself that she deserved those benefits. After all, she had to deal with you and your shenanigans almost every day.

“It’s not. I had some...important stuff to do this morning. And now go before we’re even later!”

She lied and you rolled your eyes before starting to run again.

Like expected, both of you arrived late to class and Snape gave you a lecture about the unreliability of Gryffindors for almost fifteen minutes. At the end, he took away some points from Gryffindor with a smug grin tugging on his lips, causing Jihyo to curse you silently. She was sure that Gryffindor had only lost the house cup championships to Slytherin because of you the past years. This year, she had to put a stop to it. Talking with you, however, wasn’t useful. The two of you were in your fifth year already and not once had you listened to her. She had to find another way to keep you in check. The only question was how... The options had thinned out over the years and it seemed like she was only left with one by now. Despite hating you with a passion though, that option seemed to be a little drastic and Jihyo had shied away from pursuing it until now. A fact that changed, however, when she walked into the Gryffindor common room that night.

“That was hilarious...”

“You should have seen Sejoo’s face.”

“I would have never dared to do that.”

Agitated chatter was filling the whole room and Jihyo immediately knew that something bad must have happened; something that most likely was connected with you in some way.

“What happened?”

Jihyo huffed while plopping down next to Jeongyeon on the couch.

“I don’t think you want to know...”

Her friend responded hesitantly and Jihyo buried her face in her hands in desperation.

“Y/N?”

She asked although she already knew the answer to her question.

“Yeah...Let’s just say the incident involved Y/N, Sejoo, the ‘Ossio Dispersimus’ spell and... a 200-points deduction for Gryffindor.”

Hearing the statement of Jeongyeon, Jihyo’s head snapped up and she looked at her classmate bewildered.

“200 POINTS???”

She yelled, causing the surrounding Gryffindors to look at her in shock. But Jihyo couldn’t care less about them. Enough was enough. You could be glad that you weren’t in the room right now, because she was sure that she would kill you if you were standing in front of her in this moment. You had once again ruined the championship for them with your selfishness and she was tired of it. You had to disappear. If you weren’t part of the student body anymore, Gryffindor couldn’t lose points because of you. And there was one easy way to reach that: she needed to get you suspended for the rest of the year and she already knew how.

If there was one person in this school that hated you more than she did, it was Snape. He had tried to get rid of you on several occasions, but your misdeeds had never been severe enough to make him reach his goal. But if she would help a little, she was sure that they could get you out of the way with joined forces. It was a risky scheme, but Jihyo was sure that she could come up with the perfect plan. For two weeks, she martyred her brain to find a way to set you up while protecting her own reputation simultaneously. Coincidentally and much to Jihyo’s chagrin, you didn’t get into any more trouble in those two weeks. On the contrary, you actually stood out for behaving extremely exemplary. You were the first one to appear in every class and the last one to leave because you offered your help to the teachers who often made you stay longer to clean up the classroom. You also didn’t roam around in the hallways anymore after curfew and didn’t even prank the Slytherins. In fact, there were now other Gryffindors that did more mischief than you.

Your good behavior didn’t manage to lift Jihyo’s mood though. If any, it made it worse. Now that she had finally decided to take action against you, you were playing innocent? Of course, her conscience was immediately telling her to stop her plan and to give you another chance. But her brain strongly opposed to that idea. Your good behavior wasn’t enough to erase all the trouble that you had caused the rest of the year. Therefore, she decided to follow through with her plan, even though her bad conscience heavily weighted down on her.

On the due date of her plan, Jihyo went to the library, tightly clasping a letter in her hand while nervously looking around. Being secretive definitely wasn’t her strong suit. As a prefect, she usually advocated honesty and compliance, so everything that she was doing right now went against her principles. She kept telling herself that it was for the good of Gryffindor, but the little voice in her head kept telling her that she was acting out of pure selfishness and it took all of Jihyo’s strength to muffle it. Arriving in the library, she scanned the students and soon found the perfect protagonists of her scheme. There were some first-year Slytherins roaming the aisles, apparently searching for some books to help them solve their Transfiguration homework. Their school supplies were scattered across a table next to one of the huge windows in the library and Jihyo approached it while skimming her letter one more time.

If you want to learn some curses that they don’t teach at school, come to the Forbidden Forest at midnight.

Sincerely,

Y/N L/N

Jihyo cringed at the primitivity of the letter, but she knew that it would work. Slytherins were overachievers with an affinity for illegal activities. They would be too intrigued by the offer to turn it down. After looking around one last time to make sure that no one was watching her, Jihyo dropped the letter on the table of the first years before scurrying off. Her heart was beating out of her chest and she felt like she was close to passing out. She didn’t know how anyone could enjoy going against the rules; she felt absolutely miserable right now. Not being able to be around people any longer, Jihyo wanted to rush off to her dormitory, but before she could leave the library, someone suddenly called her name.

“Jihyo!”

Jihyo didn’t need a second to realize who the voice belonged to and her body froze instantly. Had you caught her red-handed? For a split second, she considered running away, but before she had the chance to, she could already feel your hand on her shoulder. Reluctantly, she turned around with guilt reflecting in her eyes, ready to get yelled at by you.

“Um...I know it’s a little late, but I wanted to apologize to you.”

You mumbled sheepishly and Jihyo’s jaw dropped. That was definitely not what she had expected to hear from you.

“I know that I’m the reason for a lot of your worries and I also know that I took it too far with the incident with Sejoo two weeks back. I’m really sorry about that and I will try my best to make it up to you and the whole house. I’m proud to be a Gryffindor, so I want to make you guys proud in return too from now on.”

You continued while firmly looking into her eyes as if you wanted to convey the seriousness of your words by allowing her a glance into your soul. A glance that Jihyo didn’t want, because she could feel the complete sincerity of your apology and it made her actions even harder to bear. Why did you need to tell her all this now?

“Um...i-it’s a little late for regret now, don’t you think?”

Jihyo stuttered, trying to sound snappish, but her bad conscience forbade her to harm you even more. You didn’t seem to notice the lack of sharpness in her voice though. Instead, you looked like a beaten puppy who was painfully aware of their misdeeds.

“I know and I’m really sorry. I hope you know that this is nothing personal. I’m really grateful that you’re our prefect, no one would be better at this job than you. I’ve never meant to upset you with my actions.”

You smiled sadly, managing to break Jihyo’s heart. What had she done? You didn’t deserve to be suspended and she didn’t deserve your kind words. What person would set somebody up like this? She needed to get that letter back. Panicked, she looked over your shoulder to the table of the first years, but to her sorrow, the Slytherins were nowhere to be seen. They must have left the library already. Looking back at you, she could see that you were anxiously waiting for some kind of response and she would have loved nothing more than to give you the chance to explain yourself. Maybe the two of you had started off on the wrong foot right from the start. But there was no time to talk right now; she needed to get that letter back first.

“I need to go.”

Jihyo exclaimed breathlessly before running out of the library, leaving you behind with a confused expression on your face. Frantically, she ran down the corridor while scanning the passing people. Yellow, blue and red uniforms passed her by but not a single green one.

“Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck this shit. FUCK! Where are those little brats??”

She cursed under her breath as she reached the stairs. She had no idea where the Slytherin common room was and even if she did follow another Slytherin student there, she would not know the passwords to enter. Desperately, Jihyo grasped her hair and turned around her own axis. What was she supposed to do now? The castle was too big to find the first years. Panicked, she walked up and down the corridor, trying to think of a way to prevent the fatal consequences of her plan from happening. Her only chance was to stop the first years from going to the Forbidden Forest tonight. If she could intercept the Slytherins on their way to the meeting point, they couldn’t get caught by a preofessor and the letter wouldn’t come into play. It was the only way to make this right.

Therefore, Jihyo reluctantly went to the Gryffindor common room where she waited on the couch in front of the chimney like on pins and needles. The hours passed painfully slow, but after a while one fellow student after the other left the common room to go to bed until Jihyo was the only one left. 11:45, the clock face read, causing her to jump off the couch and to stumble to the exit. Under no circumstances, she could let the first years slip through her fingers; she needed to stop them. Being allowed to roam the hallways after curfew as a prefect, Jihyo didn’t worry about running into any professors and headed straight to the entrance hall where she was just about to open the heavy double doors when they suddenly swung open without her help.

“Oh Ms. Park, I’m glad to meet you here. Look who I’ve found loitering outside.”

Mr. Filch croaked smugly while dragging two of the first years from the library by their robes.

Shit.

Jihyo tried to fake a smile, but on the inside she felt like dying. How was she supposed to change the course of these events now?

“What a lucky catch. Thank you for your assistance, Mr. Filch. I can take them to their head of house.”

She tried to pull the first years to her side, but Mr. Filch tightly clasped their uniforms.

“It’s ok. I will accompany you. I want to propose some punishments.”

He giggled ugly before shoving the scared Slytherins forward. Reluctantly, Jihyo followed them to Professor Snape’s office while martyring her brain to find a solution for this hopeless situation. But there didn’t seem to be one. Before she knew it, Mr. Filch already knocked on the dark oak door to Snape’s office which swung open a second later to reveal the irritated-looking professor.

“What?”

He grumbled and Mr. Filch snickered silently.

“I’ve found two of your students outside. After curfew.”

Mr. Filch put exaggerated emphasis on his last sentence, causing Professor Snape to grunt angrily before motioning all of them to come inside. He looked at the two first years in disgust, making Jihyo wonder why he was the head of Slytherin in the first place.

“P-professor Snape, we can explain.”

One of the Slytherins stuttered anxiously before pulling out Jihyo’s letter from his robe, causing her breath to hitch in her throat. She couldn’t just rip it out of the younger student’s hands and destroy it, right? That would be too suspicious. Instead, she had to watch how Snape took the letter and started reading it grimly before his face lit up suddenly.

“Y/N...”

He mumbled, looking happier than Jihyo had ever seen him before.

“Let’s pay Professor McGonagall a visit.”

Before anyone could disagree with him, Snape already scurried out of the room and the rest of them had to follow him wordlessly. Jihyo didn’t know who looked more miserable right now. The two first years or herself. All of them slouched their shoulders and regret was written all over their faces. Filch and Snape on the other hand resembled two Cheshire cats, especially after bolting into Professor McGonagall’s office.

“Y/N has endangered the lives of two first years. I plead for an immediate suspension.”

Professor Snape blurted out before giving the other professor the chance to process this ambush. Jihyo had never been more distressed in her life to have a plan of hers work out just like she had wanted it to.

“I beg your pardon?”

Professor McGonagall asked confused, causing Snape to snicker in amusement.

“These two students here have willfully been lured into a life-threatening situation by Y/N L/N, your student.”

He repeated himself while handing over Jihyo’s letter. Silently, the head of Gryffindor read the harmful words before sighing in desperation.

“That is a severe delinquency indeed...but I’m sure there must be an explanation for this.”

Professor McGonagall was quick to jump to your defense, causing Jihyo to draw hope that was destroyed a second later though when Snape scoffed dismissively.

“Yes, there is an explanation. Y/N L/N is a danger for this school, or have you forgotten about the incident with Sejoo only two weeks back? As a responsible head of house, I can’t tolerate such behavior.”

He narrowed his eyes and Professor McGonagall straightened up defensively.

“I haven’t forgotten about that, but if I may remind you, it was your student who used a slur about Ms. Park’s decent here that caused this whole incident.”

She bit back while pointing at Jihyo who flinched in surprise. What did Professor McGonagall mean by that?

An unsettling feeling started to form in Jihyo’s stomach, and she gulped thickly. What if everything wasn’t like it had seemed?

“That still doesn’t justify the endangerment of fellow students.”

Snape tried to distract from the misdeeds of his own student, leading to a stare down between the two heads of houses. The tension in the room increased with every second until the door of the office suddenly swung open. Inside came Filch accompanied by you, causing Jihyo’s eyes to widen. She hadn’t even noticed that the caretaker had left the room.

“I’ve taken the liberty to bring L/N in.”

He snickered before shoving you into the room.

You ended up standing next to Jihyo and looked at her nervously.

“W-what is this about?”

You stuttered, trying to sound relaxed although a slight trembling in your voice gave away that your heart had to be pounding in your chest.

“You have been caught red-handed. It’s over.”

Snape grinned while pointing at the letter in Professor McGonagall’s hand. Confused, you frowned, obviously not being able to know what he was talking about.

“Why would you lure them into the Forbidden Forest?”

The head of Gryffindor asked in disappointment and you looked at Jihyo for help.

“I did what?”

The confusion and fright in your voice was unmistakable and Jihyo hung her head in shame.

“Quit playing innocent Y/N. We have all the proof we need!”

Snape yelled causing you to flinch in shock. In reflex, Jihyo immediately grabbed your hand and you squeezed it tightly.

“You’re going down for this! You lured two first years into the Forbidden Forest. They could have died if Mr. Filch wouldn’t have found them in time. I will not let this go until you are suspended for the rest of the year.”

With every word more tears started to pool in your eyes and Jihyo couldn’t manage to avert her gaze from you. You looked so helpless right now and all she wanted to do was to save you from this horrible place.

“I-I don’t know what you are talking about. I have never seen this letter before. Why would I Iure first years into the Forbidden Forest??”

Your voice cracked in desperation, but Snape just kept on accusing you aggressively. After all, you had a history of pranking Slytherins. Jihyo couldn’t imagine how wronged you had to feel right now, and she gently rubbed your hand with her thumb, not knowing whether she was trying to calm you or herself down by doing so. She knew that she could end all this by admitting that it had been her who had left the letter, but despite being a Gryffindor, she wasn’t brave enough to do that. How was she supposed to explain it? How would she be supposed to ever look into your eyes again?

“That’s enough. We’ve understood your point, Professor.”

Professor McGonagall eventually ended Snape’s rant before looking at you with a sad face.

“I see how this incident is out of character for you, Y/N. Nevertheless, I have to agree with Professor Snape, the evidence is overwhelming. Therefore...you are hereby suspended until we can prove your innocence.”

Your jaw dropped, hearing these words from the head of Gryffindor and you looked at Jihyo as if she was your last hope. But she wasn’t strong enough to save you. Instead, she flung her arms around your neck and pulled you against her body.

“I’m so sorry.”

She sobbed, not being able to hold back her own tears anymore. Suddenly, however, she could feel how you started to stroke her back soothingly.

“Hey, it’s ok. This is not your fault.”

You tried to calm her, apparently not suspecting her betrayal in the slightest.

“Y/N, let’s go to your dormitory to get your belongings.”

Professor McGonagall asked you and you pulled away. With a light smile tugging on your lips, you reached out and gently wiped away the tears that were streaming down Jihyo’s cheeks.

“Don’t be sad, your job is actually going to be a lot easier from now on. Although I really would have loved to celebrate our victory in the championship together at the end of the year.”

You chuckled sadly to cheer her up before trying to turn around to leave but Jihyo held on to you and crashed you into her body again. She couldn’t bear to see you cheering her up any longer. Not after what she had done.

“It was me. I wrote the letter.”

She whispered into your ear while new tears streamed down her cheeks.

In disbelief, you separated your bodies and stared at her with betrayal written all over your face, causing her to avert her gaze. Her guilt was squeezing all air out of her lungs and she waited impatiently for you to expose her. This charade was unbearable.

“And here I was thinking that you were starting to like me back... What a foolish thought.”

You chuckled, causing Jihyo’s head to snap up. Slowly, you started to back away from her while grabbing your forehead in disbelief and Jihyo shakily reached out for you.

“Y/N...”

The words in Jihyo’s mind were all jumbled and the only thing she could utter was your name. Why weren’t you yelling at her? Why weren’t you standing up for your innocence? Your calmness and the disappointed look in your face was slowly killing her. She needed you to punish her for her betrayal, but you didn’t show the slightest inclination to do so.

“No, it’s ok. Don’t worry about it.”

You mumbled, still seeming to be dazed due to her confession.

“Y/N, what are you doing? You should expose me...”

Jihyo shook your shoulder lightly, but you only smiled at her.

“Yeah you’re probably right. But I won’t. I could never hurt you like that.”

You shrugged while trying to remove her hand from her shoulder but Jihyo only tightened her grasp.

“What are you talking about, Y/N?”

She furrowed her brow in confusion although the blurry picture in her head was slowly starting to get clearer, revealing a truth that she would have preferred to keep ignoring.

“I genuinely hope that you’re happy now, Jihyo. That’s all I ever wanted. You should look out for Sejoo and his gang though. They don’t like to see a muggle-born in such a powerful position and I don’t know what they will do now that I’m not going to be there anymore.”

With that, you removed her hand from your shoulder and walked up to Professor McGonagall who looked at you apologetically before giving you a sign to leave the room. One last time, you turned around and nothing hurt Jihyo more than to see that the sadness in your eyes still couldn’t manage to erase the affection that reflected in them. She had been so blind all this time...

Who would have thought that she had been the selfish one all along?

[douchebagbrainwaves]

MAKER'S SCHEDULE, 631, BRIEFLY

I'm a writer, and writers always get disproportionate attention. How did they stand it? Their main expenses are setting up the company, which costs a couple thousand Altair owners, but without this software they were programming in machine language. Those ideas are so rare that you can't find some way to reach me, how are you going to create a successful company? For a startup, managing them is one of the first 10 employees you'll have almost as much.1 Families are entitled to their own traditions, and who the competitors are and why this company is going to beat them.2 In the late 90s my professor friends used to complain that they couldn't get grad students, because all the undergrads were going to let hosts rent out space on their floors during conventions. Part of the reason I can't believe it will be more like being able to play the two firms off each other as well as talent, so this answer works out to be important, because a we invest such small amounts, and b we think it's better if startups operate out of their own premises, however crappy, than the offices of their investors.

If you're a freelancer or a small company doesn't ensure freedom.3 What makes a good startup idea, it's sort of like having a guilty conscience about something.4 There's an idea that has turned out to be a startup. For a lot of work.5 Which is exactly how I'd describe the way lions seem in the wild seem about ten times more alive. You probably can't overcome anything so pervasive as the model of work is a job. Don't sit on their boards. What really bothers parents about their teenage kids having sex are complex.6 It's not so much as that they never pander: they never say or do something because that's what the audience wants. So if you're going to optimize a number, the one to choose is your growth rate to compensate. In social settings, I found that I got over 100 other responses listing the surprises they encountered. If you don't understand YC.

At the time any random autobiographical novel by a recent college grad could count on more respectful treatment from the literary establishment. The angel now owns 200/1200 shares, or a job. The kind of question on the application form that asks what you're going to clear these lies out of your head, you're going to clear these lies out of your head, you're going to do, at least, nothing good.7 I often recommend that founders act like consultants—that they wanted to.8 In a startup, you don't even know that.9 If these guys had thought they were starting companies, they might have been.10 Viaweb entirely with angel money; it never occurred to us that investors were too conservative here—that they do what they'd do if they'd been in Nebraska, like Evan Williams was at their age? The saddest windows close when other people die.

And when you propagate that constraint, the result is that each species thrives in groups of a certain group, that seems nearly impossible to shake. Someone who's figured that out will automatically focus more on the idea. The only explanation is: by definition. It's not just a figure of speech to say that the outcome is zero. The artists who benefited most from this were the ones who had preserved a child's confidence, like Klee and Calder. Once you have all the college students, you get rich is that there are many degrees of it. It could be replaced on any of these axes it has already started to be on most. When you're a little kid and you're asked to do something differently.

But not all waste is bad. Later I learned it hadn't been so neat, and the three founders each get 25%. Along with such outright lies, there must have been told a lot of economic history, and I understand the startup world is evolving away from their current model.11 If you seem really good we'll accept you anyway. Even in the rare cases where a clever hack makes your fortune, you probably have an idea.12 At least, that's how we'd describe it in present-day languages, if they'd had them. The way you get taught programming in college would be like teaching writing as grammar, without mentioning that its purpose is to make me feel better. After two years, the un-rapacious that you only extract half as much from users as you could. If you have something that no competitor does and that some subset of users urgently need, you have to seem like you understand technology.13 On that scale, every negotiation is unique.14 I was cynical about VCs, but the way he composed them into molecules was near faultless.15 But unfortunately when you graduate, as long as you want.16

Notes

Thanks to Daniel Sobral for pointing this out. Make it clear when you ad lib you end up reproducing some of the things they've tried on the LL1 mailing list. What you learn in college or what grades you got in them, initially, to sell earlier than you expect. But while this is also a name.

In fact most of them. But try this experiment is that if you conflate them you're aiming at. The worst explosions happen when unpromising-seeming startups do badly.

Y Combinator certainly never asks what classes you took in college. This approach has not worked well, but this would work better, and that modern corporate executives were, we try to accept a particular number.

Aristotle the core: the editor in Lisp, they may try to accept that investors are induced by the surface similarities. Com of their assets; and with that additional constraint, you can't help associating it with such a statement would merely be eccentric.

Most word problems in school math textbooks are bad: Webpig, Webdog, Webfat, Webzit, Webfug. Without the prospect of publication, the assembly line, the closest anyone has come is Secretary of Labor Statistics, about 28%.

I think the usual way to fight. The next time you raise as you can see the apples, they made much of it, and no one who's had the discipline to pull it off. Successful founders are driven by people trying to decide whether to go to college, they would implement it and make a lot of investors caring either.

P nonspam are both genuinely formidable, and the exercise of stock options than any preceding president, he was otherwise unoccupied, to get into the heads of would-be startup founders who had been a good idea to make more money. The best thing for startups is very long: it might take an hour over the Internet, like hedge funds, are available only to buy corporate bonds to market faster; the Reagan administration's comparatively sympathetic attitude toward takeovers; the crowds of shoppers drifting through this huge mall reminded George Romero of zombies. That it might take an hour over the Internet. Yes, I had zero effect on the relative weights?

The VCs recapitalize the company, and yet managed to screw up twice at the data, it's probably good grazing. I should add that we're not. They did turn out to be a win to include things in shows that people start to pull ahead in the field.

Galbraith was clearly puzzled that corporate executives would work so hard to mentally deal with the founders gained from running through their initial attitude. Sparse Binary Polynomial Hash Message Filtering and The Old Way. One thing that drives most people emerge from the moment it's created indeed, from hour to hour that the worm might have done all they could be overcome by changing the shape of the bizarre consequences of this: You may not be far less demand for them.

Indiana University Bloomington 1868-1970.

Trevor Blackwell points out that taking time to come up with an associate cold-emailing a startup could grow big in revenues without including the order of 10,000, because investors already owned more than their competitors, who may have realized this, but simply because he was skeptical about Viaweb too. See Greenspun's Tenth Rule. We just store the data, it's software that doesn't seem to want them; you have significant expenses other than salaries that you decide the price, and for filters it's textual.

P 500 CEOs in the sophomore year. It was only because he had more fun than he'd had in school, and philosophy the imprecise half. The philistines have now missed the video boat entirely.

As we walked out we ran into Yuri Sagalov. Emmett Shear writes: I'd argue the long tail for sports may be common in, you'll have to replace you. It took a painfully long time.

The reason Y Combinator.

This is an instance of a safe will be coordinating efforts among partners. In practice it just feels like a loser they're done, she doesn't like getting attention in the definition of property.

The thing to do sales yourself initially. 5%. At first I didn't care about GPAs.

Thanks to Paul Buchheit, Gary Sabot, Trevor Blackwell, Tiffani Ashley Bell, and Jeff Arnold for sharing their expertise on this topic.

[buckyjamess-archive]

☆ b.b blurb ☆

a/n; i know blurbs are supposed to be 100-200 words but nobody gonna stop me. this is for the bubs @la-reveuse-hc

Steve's best friend; bucky's love interest?

"How did you meet Steve?" 

"Uh, s.h.i.e.l.d." 

It's such a simple question and such a simple answer but it doesn't satisfy bucky. He needs to know more, he wants to know more-- he needs to know if there's a slight chance. 

He's got his eyes on you since the moment you met. Something about the way you move, the way you think, the way you speak-- there's something about you. Entranced by your beauty and brains-- and everything in between, on the edge of evil and kind. An angel amid a world gone to hell. 

There's something about you and there's something next to you. Steve Rogers. 

Really there's nothing special about the bond between you and Steve, at least not in the way bucky thinks. 

Steve had taken you under his wings after he joined s.h.i.e.l.d. Taking you in as a little sister, a partner in crime-- someone to teach, someone to talk with, someone to laugh with. His right hand. A shoulder to cry on..just you, a little sister. 

Bucky however saw those gazes across the room, constantly picking each other for spar sessions, late night talk in the kitchen and endless inside jokes as much more than just friends. 

Maybe he should just ask Steve, he'd understand..right? 

Bucky shifts in his seat, hands on the breakfast bar as he watches your back while you work on dinner for the two of you -- the compound empty as most of the avengers chose a night out.

"He saved you or something?" 

"Who, Steve?" You ask curiously "he wishes." 

still none the wiser 

Bucky stays his quiet self, debating how to keep the conversation flowing, how to keep your attention and how to make this all sound less..creepy? 

He's gone, so far gone and he curses Steve for having that what he wants in life. Someone to wake up to, someone to fall asleep with, someone to love unconditionally, to hold and to trust. Someone to fight for. 

"So-" bucky swallows the lump in his throat and quickly wonders where that smug 20 year old has gone "how long have the two of you been a thing?" 

Your movement stills "what?" 

You're quick to turn on your heels, pan and spatula still in your hands. Eyebrows knitted in confusion.

"You think- Steve and I?" 

"Sure looks like it." Bucky mumbles, barely above a whisper. 

"Oh god no." you scoff "no offense, he's a great guy but a pain in the ass. I could never-" 

It's silent for a minute, the air thick as the both of you stare at each other before you turn back to the stove, finishing up the dish.

Bucky once again shifts in his seat, a small smile playing on his lips and his heart beating fast-- feeling like that 20 year old self again. 

"If you two aren't a thing," he clears his throat "I'd like to take you on a date-- if you want of course." 

You don't turn around this time but the growing smile on your face and the heat rushing to your ears say enough.

"I'd love to go on a date with you." 

[yes-these-obsessions-are-healthy]

WIP Wednesday 8/11/21

Had a writing stint where I pumped out 7K words in 3 days when I usually manage only..200-500 a week. Here’s some snippets of a WIP with my Gray-Ace Inquisitor Tallin and a very understanding Solas as they navigate her very first romantic/sexual feelings for anyone, ever (24 and never been kissed except that one time in the Fade, baby!!). She is a very nervous person by nature...

————-

Please just a crumb of feedback. A gif. An emoji. Please. I’m on my goddamn knees.

[snippet 1]

"Tell me 'no', and we can resume as we were without enmity. You are also at liberty to tell me to take my leave, in which case I hope to see you in the morning..." He stopped before her, drawn to his full height, head tilted slightly in a manner akin to a wolf intent on ascertaining a curious vision. “But if you choose for me to remain, you must decide once more. At your behest, I will gladly provide the chaste company of which you are so accustomed. We will sit. We will talk. We will read. We will retire in an exhausted fashion to bed. You will cozy up beside me like a nugling to its nestmate, content. But if you say 'yes', if you wish to learn how it is the wolves dance.." 

The light gray of his eyes suddenly darkened and his lips spread wide and sharp, rendering him impish, lupine. Tallin's heart lurched, but to her inner wonder it was not accompanied by a familiar queasy unease.  Her instincts were not screaming for her to bound away like a skittish halla from the man standing before her. Instead, the soft heat in her lower stomach flared like a bonfire given new life, its flames crawling up inside her chest, licking beneath her lungs. In the rare instances where someone looked at her in such a way--like she was something to be snatched up, like she was something edible--she retreated, recognizing that the individual had wordlessly marked her as prey.

Would it be so terrible to have him as her pursuer? That was what he was implying, wasn't he? That he had been observing her in that particular manner far longer than this emergent sense of craving.

What made it so different from the other times? What made his approach far less threatening?

The consideration, she realized. He is considerate.

If she was a halla, then he was a..a..

Her eyes flicked down momentarily in thought, landing on the dark jawbone hanging low over his chest from thin leather cords. 

And here and now, she realized she had always had her answer. He was a wolf. A wolf with a wistful man's soul.

Their method of courting until now, if it could be called that, had not been a simple 'chase'. No, the wolf had deigned not to pursue, for it recognized the halla did not wish to be hunted down. If this particular halla was ever compelled to bolt, it would not do so while also secretly relishing the idea of hot frantic breath on its heels or teeth sinking into its throat.

"..then with your blessing I will take you to your bed and claim everything you are, everything you are willing to give. I will unravel you as easily spun silk, uncover for us both your desires that remain unnamed."

He shifted and out of the corner of Tallin's eye, a shadow moved. His words had coiled her up like an Orlesian spring toy, promises that spoke of capitulation and submission and frightening loss. Her head felt hollow, her skin tight and brittle. The anxious fire in her chest roared in its hearth unabated.

Her breaths shallowed. This was happening. Everything was happening. He was describing the clumsy mental images she had been too cowardly and too embarrassed (and too confused) to acknowledge. All of this, everything, was happening too much and too fast. She knew nothing of his predilections. She knew nothing of what she wanted other than to be with him. Beyond the bare minimum for procreation, the stories of brutal violence inflicted upon elf women by peasants and nobles, and the confusing comments made in passing by the Iron Bull, she didn't know what to expect. 

If you speak it, you will make it real.

He raised his hand. She froze, spine taut. His expression gentled, edges shaved. The backs of his fingers stroked her cheek. "I will have you in the manner that a lover should. Gently. Sweetly."

As if he had woven a spell, Tallin gradually relaxed into the touch. It was not necessarily of her own volition, but she knew this. Nothing frightening ever came of this. This was familiar. Safe.

She heard Solas hum, thoughtful. "Yes, a gentle touch for a gentle girl. Would that please you?"

She swallowed, caught his hand and turned her head to press her lips against his hot palm. The world was silent for several moments. "W-Would you..?" She croaked. A question with many budding branches.

Would you..?

..be gentle?

..do all that you say?

..treat me kindly?

..love me?

Another step, and they were flush together. Her hand found his tunic and scrunched the material in her fist. As a precaution or an anchor she did not know.

He loomed over her fully now, both hands coming to cradle her face as if she were blown glass, gray sky eyes beholding her like Mother. Love. But now, also..

She offered no resistance when he tilted her head just so. He leaned in. His breath was scorching mint against the whorls of her ear.

"Yes. Until you can hardly stand it."

[snippet 2]

"You wish to-? Oh, 'ma'lath.." The tenderness in his voice made her eyes sting for but a moment.  The casual nature in which he extracted her hand from the half-hard presence pressing against breeches could not fully offset the surge of embarrassment she felt. As Solas busied himself with kissing the knuckles of her offending hand, she silently berated herself. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

"Tallin."

Tallin started. To her chagrin, she found Solas peering at her over her curled hand, his gaze firm and knowing. The internal self-abuse had been playing itself across her face.

She couldn't do this, she realized. She didn't know *how* to do this. He was trying to coach her through it but what if nothing stuck? What if she kept making mistakes, misreading signs? What if this was all a put-on for *her* sake? What if he didn't want her and was doing this to placate her, as he had so many other times? Lovers had to touch each other, she knew that much, and for him to except himself from this exercise, it reeked of...

"Tallin." His voice said through the dull ringing in her ears. "Tallin."

"Ir abelas." This was a mistake, a horrible mistake. She turned away, intent on rolling off the bed and..where would she go? She didn't know. The blood pounding in her ears was making it so difficult to *think*.

An arm wrapped around her waist as firm a steel band, digging into her stomach. She struggled half-heartedly, frustrated tears leaking from her eyes.

"S-Solas.." she protested.

"Tallin. Come back to me, my love." She shook her head and bit her lip to hold back a pathetic whimper. Not to deny him, but to help rid herself of the looming thoughts.

Selfish. This was selfish. 'I desire you, you desire me, but I demand that I take from you and give you nothing back.' That wasn't how it was supposed to go, was it? It didn't sound right.

But she was greedy for comfort. Always craving it.

[snippet 3]

"Shh, shh. No. You are not like most others. You were born with a heart that hungers endlessly for love, but eyes that cannot see that the source from which you drink remains full no matter how often you sip. It is your nature, but it can be tamed with practice. You can learn to ignore these pressing doubts, in time."

"I want to do this. I want to feel this burning, to learn where it might go, but.. I'm still nervous about..you, and where you..fit."

"That is not an uncommon concern, vhenan."

"So I've heard. But what if I never overcome it? What if it still..frightens me? If you accepted it--"

"--I would accept it." His tone was firm, almost indignant.

"--then it would only be me that was benefitting from this. It would only be me that was taking."

Solas barked a laugh, making Tallin jump.

When he finally settled, his grin had not abated--a full one that revealed straight white teeth and sharp canines, crinkled eyes that glowed with pure mirth.

Tallin lay there, confused and a bit put out, by her hahren's strange reaction.

"'Ma'vhenan, there is so much more to sex than that." He chuckled again, the sound decidedly doting. "You see yourself as taking advantage of me, of taking while offering nothing in return until you have used me all up, yes?" A reluctant nod. "But you have never considered to ask how I feel in all this?"

Tallin blinked.

"In matters of state you display exemplary feats of compassion and empathy, but in matters of the heart you are callous to yourself. You believe that sex is a matter of 'taking', but that is far too reductive for what this is.  Pleasure does not solely originate from taking or receiving. Giving is just as lucrative. In giving, I would be receiving your pleasure. The joy in giving a gift is to receive another's happiness, is it not?

"Y-Yes.."

"And do you not see that you are a gift to me?"

"I am?"

"Yes. Your trust that I will do right by you in this matter is a precious gift, one I will hold close to my heart. That you offer me the opportunity to teach you despite your lingering reservations is no small gesture."

[snippet 4]

"I love you." She said, muffled. "Ar lath ma."

"Lathan na. Bellanaris. Please understand that this is a request I must refuse. The time to learn of me will come later." At the familiar sight of Tallin's brow furrowing in confusion, he hummed, a serene enigmatic smile on his face as he cupped her inked cheek. He leaned in and planted an affectionate kiss upon her forehead before resting his against hers, peering into her puzzled brown eyes. "Tonight we are learning about you. This is your first experience not just with a man, but with pleasure. I will not risk overwhelming you with my wants when you have yet to determine what it is you yourself desire." Another kiss. "Slowly, 'ma'vhenan, slowly is best."

Sheepishly, "O-Okay, but I only wanted--"

He was quick to silence her with a kiss. "I know, I know, and you are so good to have offered." His voice dropped into a purr. "So good for me.." His mouth was on hers again, hot and surprisingly eager. Tallin's eyes widened, then fell closed at the familiar brush of his tongue against her lips. Thick honey-heat pooled beneath her skin; her hands found his shoulder and nape to instinctively pull him close as she obediently opened her mouth.

They clashed and fed upon each other's taste. She discovered his: sugar and..lemon. Lemon cake? It tasted good, a faint playful zing on her tongue.

Time and sense gradually slipped away with the air in her lungs. At some point he turned them both so she lay on her back. With his knees staked on either side of her, he could hover over her while avoiding making her feel trapped. Considerate, she thought with a burst of love, he is so considerate.

Solas was the first to pull away, and Tallin was only a little surprised that the soft noise of disappointment that she made at their parting didn't inspire any embarrassment in her.

What did make her blush furiously, though, was the show Solas made in how thoughtfully he licked his lips as he paused to catch his breath, grinning the whole time. "..mmh, an intriguing mystery."

Tallin didn't know if it was the lack of air or the wondrous nature of the kiss, but she couldn't connect the dots with what he was saying. "W-What?"

"The taste of you. I wonder what it could be. No, don't tell me." he clarified when she made a move to speak. He hummed to himself as his thumb rubbed the space beneath her lower lip, his grin simplifying into a satisfied smirk. Tallin felt another flare of heat radiate over her cheeks. "I will find out for myself soon enough."

And he descended upon her with his lips and tongue as fervently as before. She soon began to pant as she found herself once again suffocating on his sweet breaths. He seemed intent on fulfilling his promise. She could never have imagined a kiss to be this fierce, this hungry. He was devouring the very taste out of her mouth! And to her surprise she found she..liked it. She liked it as much as the soft and gentle kisses. Where those were affirming his devotion, these were confirmation that the desire she felt for him wasn't one-sided.

[ibelieveinahappilyeverafter]

Writing Commission - Where I Want To Be - Chapter Two

Summary: Yamada Hizashi, better known as the Voice Hero Present Mic, is a busy man. He has classes and students to teach English to, an agency that always seemed to be in the middle of a disaster to help deal with, and a radio station that was one bad show away from being cancelled to run. He doesn’t have time for a bad day triggered by nightmares and fears and anxieties that just never seem to stop.

Luckily for him, his partners are Aizawa Shouta and Yagi Toshinori and neither of those two are very good at leaving Hizashi to suffer alone.

Fandom: Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia    

Relationship: Yamada Hizashi | Present Mic/Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead, Yamada Hizashi | Present Mic/Yagi Toshinori | All Might, Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead/Yagi Toshinori | All Might

Characters: Yamada Hizashi | Present Mic, Aizawa Shouta | Eraserhead, Yagi Toshinori | All Might

Rating: Teen Audiences

Word Count: 29,323

Transaction Amount: $200 (USD)

WARNINGS FOR: Past childhood abuse (both emotional and physical) and anxiety attacks verging on panic to PTSD episodes. Please read with caution if needed.

                                                     ⁂

            Check out my writing commission information here!                   Pledge to my Patreon to get exclusive content!                               Or buy me a coffee on Ko-Fi!

                                                     ⁂

                                             Chapter Index

           <<1>> <<2>> <<3>> <<4>> <<5>> <<6>> <<7>> <<8>> <<9>>

                                                    ⁂

Hizashi wasn’t sure how he had managed to survive the car ride to U.A. when both Toshinori and Shouta kept poking and prodding and worrying but survive he did. It helped that they lived so close to campus since Hizashi had barely managed to keep a smile up before he was abandoning the two in the parking lot and scampering into the school. 

Toshinori had looked sympathetically understanding at Hizashi’s bullshit excuses of needing to search his office for ‘misplaced’ files, Shouta only watching him evenly with his damn knowing expression, but it was fine. Hizashi was fine- Alright, no, he was nowhere near fucking fine, but like hell he was going to let it ruin everyone else’s life.

He loved his boys and he knew they would always be worried about him, but Shouta had a homeroom to get to and Toshinori had training lessons to prepare for students later in the day. Hizashi even had his own work to do, and he would do it, he just needed a few minutes in his office to pull his act together.

It helped that the school, even this early before classes, was filled with noise and laughter and talking. It drowned out any possibility of silence to the point where all Hizashi had to worry about, in that moment, was resisting the urge to claw at his face. He knew he was damn well fine and that he could talk and use his quirk and do whatever he wanted, but he just needed a few minutes to convince himself of that.

He just needed to get himself together and focus. The privacy of his office would give him twenty or so minutes to have a complete breakdown and then he could focus on finding his lessons plans for the day. He needed to make sure he had completed grading the tests for class 2-B, as well, and- 

“Yamada-sensei?” Trying not to jump at the student that had addressed him, or the fact that someone had approached him without him noticing, Hizashi glanced over to see one of his third years watching him, which explained the use of his last name. The first years still had the habit of calling him ‘Mic-sensei’ more often than not. “Are you… Are you alright?” 

“Alright?” Hizashi blinked, looking down at the kid, because, alright. He hadn’t expected that. Then again, Tanaka tended to be more observant than even some of the teachers. She also was a third-year hero student, so she had seen him in quite a few classes. Jeez… to think he was that bad off that even a student could sense it, though. He was losing his touch. “Of course, little listener! Just a late start this morning is all!”

Tanaka stared at him for a long moment, obviously not buying his bullshit because she actually had a brain unlike some of the other students Hizashi had been forced to deal with during his teaching career. Thankfully, the kid knew the meaning of mercy, finally nodding with a smile, “Sorry, sensei, you know how I worry about things, sometimes. Have a great day.” 

With that she was turning and heading down the hallway, Hizashi not sure if he should be worried or amused. Then again, it wasn’t the first time a student had caught on to one of his bad days -- it certainly wasn’t his first time having a bad day while still needing to teach. He shouldn’t let it get to him, really. Tanaka was an overly observant third-year hero student. It would have been odd if she hadn’t noticed something a little off with his attitude considering his typical energy levels. 

That didn’t, however, explain all the others. 

It seemed like every couple of feet Hizashi was getting stopped by a student who asked if he was okay, had a very obvious ‘question’ that he knew they knew the answer to, or, in one case, he had just been stared at before being told to go home and ‘get some goddamn fucking rest, Christ, sensei.’ The last one might have worried him if it hadn’t been from Bakugou, of all kids. 

It was actually Shouta’s class in particular that seemed to notice his dour mood the most, almost all of them creeping up to check in with him or talk to him with some excuse or another as he made his way through the halls. A few asked about homework assignments, a couple just talked his ear off for a few feet, and one or two, like Kouda, had asked him a few things in sign language; which was rather nice, he supposed. It was also heartbreaking. 

Typically, it was the third-year students who noticed his, and other teachers’, bad days. It was the third-year hero students who always seemed to notice; the ones who had gone through internships and had seen firsthand how terrible the world could be. They were the ones who had seen the worst villains could offer. 

Hizashi supposed, with that in mind, he couldn’t be surprised that it was Class 1-A that had noticed what was wrong with him so quickly. The kids had seen more than they ever should have had to when they were so young, but it had made them smart and attentive to things they should have never noticed.

It was Tenya who he was trying to shake off most recently, which was impossible. As if it wasn’t bad enough with the kid being responsible for his classmates, it was the same kid that Hizashi had grown up babysitting in high school and beyond. “Are you sure you don’t need to take the day off, Yamada-sensei?” 

“I’m fine, Tenya,” Hizashi stressed, being careful to lower his voice. The kid had made it clear that he did not want his classmates to know two of his teachers had babysat him when he was a baby. “It’s just a bit of a bad day, but Shouta already knows. No doubt he already called up your brother just to spite me, too.” 

“What you call spite is what they call taking care of you,” Tenya frowned. It would have held more weight if Hizashi hadn’t seen that same frown when the kid was seven and arguing about why cookies before dinner was the ‘proper’ way to eat. “I understand and respect your work ethic, but wouldn’t it make more sense to rest instead of overexerting yourself?” 

No, it wouldn’t, because resting meant he would be alone, and it would be silent. Hizashi, on a bad day, could not handle it being silent. Quiet he could and would gladly handle, soft sounds and dim noises were merciful on the typical headaches that came about from stress as the day dragged on, but silence? Present Mic was never one for silence; Yamada Hizashi even less so. 

“For the last time, kiddo, I’ll be fine,” Hizashi stressed, giving the kid a soft pat on the back. “Why don’t you go catch up with your friends, huh? They’re probably already finding trouble.” 

Hizashi, knowing how the kid was like a dog with a bone, didn’t give Tenya a chance to argue before he was finally -- finally -- slipping into his actual office and shutting the door. It was an effort to not collapse against it as he sucked in a shaking breath. 

While he tended to do most of his work in the teacher’s lounge with the others, as Head of the English Department he was given his own office to help keep things in order. It also made a nice place to hide and try to drag himself together as mental images flickered past him every time he so much as blinked for a moment too long; images of events that had happened long ago.

“It was just a nightmare,” Hizashi said to himself, noise shattering whatever silence dared to linger in the room as his throat struggled to push the words out. Fear crept up his spine along with the familiar feeling that talking -- making noise -- meant he would be in danger. “It was just a dream of something that can never happen.” Not again, at any rate. 

It would never happen again and it was fine. He would be fine because he had things to do. He had reports to collect from homeroom teachers, he had warnings to give out concerning the students who were doing too poorly, and he had assignments to grade. There was plenty to do to keep him busy and there was plenty to do that needed to be done. First, though, he had a class to prep for. 

It took more effort than it should have, but soon enough Hizashi was greeting his first English class with a burst of cheer, “Good morning, my little listeners!” The words were barely out of his mouth before Hizashi felt his heart stutter and sink, throat threatening to snap shut at just how much effort it took to force the words out. “And how are you all this morning!” 

There were the usual tired grumbles of complaint at being awake and alive, Hizashi forcing his smile to stay in place because of all the days, of all the days, it was not one where he had time for his body to try and go nonverbal. Besides, there was no reason to. He was fine. He was safe and fine and in a place that encouraged him to never shut up.

It was fine, though, Hizashi thought firmly to himself. He could power past his body’s stupid reactions because he did not have time to go nonverbal on a day where he had to teach. Him, the Voice Hero, who taught a language class in a school full of stupidly observant children did not have time to go nonverbal. 

“Mic-sensei?” A second-year had her hand in the air even as she spoke before being called on, worried frown growing on her face. “Are you alright-?”

“I am a-okay, lil’ listener! Just trying to figure out where to start your lesson today when there’s so many fun things to teach you!” For someone with a voice quirk, talking had always been easier than even breathing. In that moment, though, it felt like neither could be accomplished no matter how much he fought. “Hm, since we’ve almost wrapped up with our most recent section, why don’t I let you guys start the worksheets a day early! You can get a head start today and still have the rest of the week to finish them up!”

The distraction worked, most of the kids perking up at the idea of having extra time on an assignment. There were no arguments, even from the less academically enthused. It was all the excuse Hizashi needed to pass out the worksheets and force the instructions for the day out before he was collapsing back into his chair. 

He would still no doubt be asked questions by his students, but at least he wouldn’t be trying to force himself to speak for an entire class period nonstop. It would be easier on his nerves and anxiety, too, if he gave in to the urge to be quiet for a short while. Ah, if only Shouta could see him making up excuses to not talk -- then again, that would probably just lead the man into panicking.

It was fine, though. He would just- “Sensei, I have a question about the first problem.” Already a kid was in front of his desk and looking pleading and ah… Hizashi was fucked, then. “And the second and third ones, too.”

“O- Of course, lil’ listener!” Hizashi hated everything. Why had he become a teacher? He should have just stuck with the pro-hero thing. Fuck, he should have just stuck with the DJ thing. “What do you need help with first?” 

“What’s the difference between verbs, adverbs, and adjectives in the English language, again?” The student looked completely serious. A single look behind him showed at least three other students that were looking ready to ask their own questions as soon as they could. 

“Ah, well… let’s start by telling you what each one means, yeah?” Hizashi shot back weakly, forcing a smile on his face as he resisted the urge or bash his face against the desk. If he were lucky, it would just be a few kids and that would be it for the rest of the day.  

Unfortunately, Hizashi remembered that he was a pro-hero who taught at a school for future heroes. He was never lucky. He could never be lucky in those circumstances. It was proven, with brutal efficiency, in each moment after his first class. 

Students seemed to have forgotten everything he had taught them, teachers seemed to be having their own bad days and looked ready to kill him with each warning note he handed out, and Hizashi was pretty sure that at least six of his students were plotting some grand scheme to kill him so they would automatically pass English.

The hours before a free moment of time had felt like they lasted lifetimes, Hizashi barely making his way into the teacher’s lounge and wobbling over to his desk. The only thing that had him looking up after he collapsed into his chair was the soft sound of ceramic against his wooden desk. A look at a teacup led him slowly but surely up into the softly smiling gaze of Toshinori, “You seemed like you could use something of a pick-me-up.” 

God, why was this man so fucking sweet? Hizashi had to fight against the urge to break into sobs. If he did then it would probably make Toshinori start to cry, and then if Shouta found the both of them as crying, pathetic messes they would be doomed; embarrassingly doomed. Finally, after what was possibly hours, Hizashi managed to respond with just enough accompanying energy to make a pleased smile. “Have I mentioned that I love you deeply, yet? Because if not, we need to make it a daily thing.”

“I thought it already was a daily thing,” Toshinori laughed, taking a seat beside him and careful and slow as he tucked a few stray strands of hair back behind Hizashi’s ear. “How are you doing, sweetheart?”

“Typically? As perfect as you,” Hizashi teased, the words just a touch easier to get out than they were before. If nothing else, it was at least easy to talk to Toshinori. There was also the knowledge that lingered, at the very back of his mind, that he would be safe to talk in the man’s presence. Who was a better deterrent to fear than the Symbol of Peace, after all? “Truthfully? Like I woke up in a hospital and they shoved me out before finding I was worse off than they thought.

“Thank you for that description,” Toshinori replied, tone as dry as the fucking desert. “I’ll be sure to ask again later why you seem to be intimately familiar with that chosen comparison.” It was an effort to not laugh, Hizashi burying his smiles behind a sip of tea.

When he was sure he wasn’t going to laugh, he managed a somewhat stern expression that he copied straight from Shouta; eyes narrowed, lips pursed, and accusing look in his eyes, “And I suppose you have no knowledge of skipping out on medical care?”

The flash of guilt was far too satisfying, especially when Toshinori clucked his tongue and reached out to give a light, playful tug to Hizashi’s ear. “I don’t want to even start to hear that from you.” After a moment, his look softened, thumb moving to brush against his cheek. “How are you really doing, sweetheart?”

“I…” Hizashi trailed off, setting the teacup down and giving a quiet sigh as he leaned back in his seat. “Definitely not as good as I could be,” Hizashi finally responded, Toshinori looking sympathetically understanding. “It just…”

Hizashi trailed off, trying to find the right words as he scraped a hand across his lower cheek and jaw, feeling nothing except skin that he had already scratched raw and thin scars that were near invisible. He had a feeling he would have kept trying to dig and find those goddamn straps if Toshinori hadn’t been watching him.

“I just need some time,” Hizashi said, dropping his hand. “Just a little.” He just needed a few quiet moments to pull himself back together and get ready for his next class. 

“Perfect,” Toshinori grinned, moving himself and his chair into Hizashi’s space before pulling out his phone. “You can be quiet, then, why I show you some pictures that young Midoriya sent me the other day.” 

Hizashi didn’t even get to try to say anything before Toshinori’s phone was in his face showing a picture of an adorable bunny rabbit with long, floppy ears with an accompanying message below it of, ‘I found a picture of you, Sensei!!!’ It was the sweetest, most adorable thing ever and Hizashi, for as tense and wound up as he was, could feel himself melt. 

Toshinori seemed to sense he had won because he wasted no time in showing him a plethora of cute animal pictures and pro hero memes that he barely seemed to understand but found amusing all the same. Hizashi couldn’t find the energy to quite laugh like he might have normally, but the smile that slipped out felt genuine rather than the forced one he had worn for his earlier classes. 

As all good things tended to do, however, it came to an end, Hizashi looking at the clock as he heard Toshinori finally turn his phone off, “Hizashi… are you certain you don’t want to leave early for the day?”

“I’ll be fine,” Hizashi laughed off, knowing it sounded as fake as it felt. “I told you, I’ve got work to get done today. No time for rest when it comes to heroes, hm?”

“I suppose,” Toshinori said softly, expression so gentle. He, of all people, knew how hard life could be for a pro-hero. “I wish it was different, though.” Yeah, Hizashi wished it could be different, too, but, well. This was their lives.

For the moment, at least, Hizashi felt safe to talk. It was quiet, but there was background noise that showed the world was still moving. His head ached and he still felt pressure trying to lock his voice away, but he was present. That was about all he could ask for.

“Don’t we all wish it were different, somedays?” Standing up and fighting to take a breath as weight seemed to press down all around him, Hizashi managed something of a smile as he gathered his things. “Don’t worry, Toshi. I’ll be fine to get through the day and then you and Shouta can complain and worry and smother me as much as you want tonight.” 

“A moment that can’t come soon enough.” Toshinori looked up at him, stopping him with nothing more than a touch to his wrist. “Hizashi… are you sure you’ll be okay?” 

Hizashi could feel himself soften as he leaned over to kiss the top of the man’s head, enjoying the flustered blush and few snickers he could hear from other teachers in the room, “C’mon, hero,” Hizashi teased. “Give me some credit, hm? This isn’t my first bad day. It won’t be my last, either. 

Gathering his things and standing properly, Hizashi straightened his sunglasses after a quick wink, “Besides, it’s not like the Voice Hero can be expected to be voiceless, hm?” Toshinori’s answering smile was sad, but it was so understanding. It was all Hizashi needed. “Don’t worry, hero. I have everything under control.” 

[misscrazyfangirl321]

OC-Tober Day 29: Need

OC: Flora Silverton

Fandom: Grimm

Pairings: None

Warnings: A little darker than my usual stuff at the beginning; poor Flora has a rough time settling in on a team that investigates homicides. Also, this is long. 

@oc-growth-and-development

-

She doesn’t like not having anything to do. It settles uncomfortably under her skin, clawing and taunting her, telling her she doesn’t belong. That she isn’t fooling anyone, and everyone would be happier if she just left. She’s useless in the world of monsters and magic, just an out-of-work teacher with a pickup and a smile.

She needs to find some way to help, to be involved. To feel like she actually matters to this team. 

So the next time that Eve gets called in to consult on a case, she comes, too. 

“You don’t have to do this,” Eve insists, looking at her oddly. “You aren’t trained for it.”

She shrugs. “So call this on-the-job training. Look, I came out here for you, girl. I stayed for you. But that doesn’t do a thing if I don’t actually help, and since this is what you’re doing, this is what I’m doing. We’re in this together, remember?”

Eve makes no further argument, just hops into the passenger seat of Flora’s truck and offers an address. 

At the scene, they face a new problem. 

“Cops only,” an unfamiliar Sergeant insists, holding up his hand. He glances at Eve in obvious recognition and nods to her. “They’re expecting you. But no tag-alongs.”

“Tag-alongs-” Flora sputters, but Eve holds up a hand, turning to the Sergeant. 

“Tell Detective Griffin that Flora Silverton will be joining me today.”

Before he can argue, Wu appears, stepping out from behind the building. “Hey, Eve, the body’s just in-wait, what are you doing here?”

He doesn’t sound confrontational, just curious, but his words echo the ones that have been rattling around in her head for days, and her stomach turns. What am I doing here? I’m trying. I’m trying to help my little cousin the only way I know how. I’m trying to be a part of this team. I’m trying to prove that I can actually help. “Learning curve,” she offers instead, and he blinks, but nods. 

“Let them in,” he instructs the Sergeant, who hesitates for only a split-second before nodding. 

Wu holds out a small bottle of Vicks, and Eve waves him off, so he turns to offer it to Flora. 

“What’s that for?” She asks, feeling slightly silly for doing so. 

“You put it under your nose.”

“Why?” Maybe this is some sort of prank. Getting the new girl broken in, or-

“Because…” The look he gives her is somewhere between dry and concerned. “Dead bodies don’t smell good.” 

Oh. She doesn’t even try to feign the same strength as Eve, reaching out and applying a small amount to her nose. The smell cuts right through her, but she has no doubt that it’s preferable to whatever she’d smell without it. “Thank you.”

With a nod, he leads them into the house. It’s busier than she expects, a swarm of people going to and fro with baggies and cameras, collecting as much evidence as she can. When they reach the living room, she nearly gags; even with the Vicks, she can smell it, and somehow, whatever she expected, this was worse. She looks over, and sure enough, that’s a-a body. She’s seen dead bodies before, at funerals and such. But this is different: three bullets to the gut. And there’s so much blood, and-

There’s no warning; the room just goes dark. 

-

When she wakes, she’s lying in the back of her truck, a cool rag pressed to her forehead. She hums, lifting her head slightly, and the hand holding the rag pulls away. 

Eve’s hand, she realizes, when she turns back. Her cousin is watching her, expression unreadable.

“Ugh… Did I seriously faint?”

“Yep!” It isn’t her cousin that answers, but Wu. He steps into her field of vision, eyes dancing. “Straight into my arms. Flattering, but there are easier ways to get my attention.”

Rather than dignify that with a reply, she simply groans, looking at Eve. “I’m really sorry. I totally messed that up, didn’t I?”

Unexpectedly, Wu doesn’t crack a joke at that, just walks away, leaving her and Eve to sort things out. Whether that’s a really good sign or a really bad one, Flora isn’t altogether sure. 

“You can’t do this again,” Eve says finally.

“What, faint? I mean, I’m not planning on it, but-”

“This.” Eve gestures around. “Go on cases. This isn’t your job.”

Wait, she messed it up that bad? That Eve’s just willing to bench her, do not pass Go, do not collect $200? Her cheeks burn, and she ducks her head. “I’m so sorry, but if you give me another chance-”

“No.”

“I promise, I’ll get used to it-”

“I don’t want you to.” Eve swallows, looking a little less steady herself. “I don’t want you to get used to this. I don’t want…” She sighs. “I don’t want you to be like me.”

Flora’s heart might just break a little, and she reaches out without hesitation. “Prima…” 

Eve closes her eyes, letting Flora take her hand for a few short seconds, squeezing tightly. Then she pulls back, looking up with that familiar, terrifyingly neutral expression. “You’re a teacher. Teach.” Then, softening a little- “We don’t have to spend every second together for me to know that you’re here. And I’m-I’m glad that you’re here.”

She can hardly argue with a speech like that, not coming from Eve. She knows how much it must have cost the woman in front of her to say something so emotional, so she nods slowly, in surrender. “I’ll leave the consulting to you,” she promises, omitting a silent for now at the end, “but I don’t want to teach. I want something more flexible, so I can help you if you need me. I’ll find something, though.” 

Eve grants her a small smile. “Good. Now come on; everyone’s going to lunch.”

She’s not completely sure she’ll ever be able to look at food again, but sure; why not?

-

By the time she reaches the restaurant, she’s changed her mind: she’s absolutely going to eat everything they have. She hadn’t realized until now that she skipped breakfast, and she’s starving. 

Everyone turns out to be Hank, Nadine, Wu, Monroe, Rosalee, Adalind, Diana, Kelly, and the triplets. They meet Flora and Eve at the door of this ridiculously old-school diner, and the group flocks in together. Once they’re all seated, drinks are ordered, and Diana’s off at the old crane machine (which she’s definitely cheating at, but if no one else is going to say anything, Flora sure isn’t), Hank clears his throat. 

“How are you feeling now?” He asks her, and she winces, running a hand through her hair. 

“Mortified, but I’m okay. I can’t believe I fainted.” 

Hank chuckles, waving her off. “Don’t worry. I’ve seen rookie cops handle it a lot worse, and you aren’t even trained.” 

She wants to believe him, but deep down, she suspects he’s just trying to make her feel better. “Really?”

“Yeah!” He grins. “At least you didn’t throw up.”

“Is throwing up worse than fainting?” She wonders aloud, and Wu nods seriously. 

“Trust me, to the people who handle cleanup? It’s much worse. Plus, you don’t contaminate any evidence.” 

That’s a fair point. She’ll take what she can get, anyway.

Conversation shifts to lighter topics, far away from dead bodies and throwing up (probably due to the faintly green shade poor Monroe was turning), and the rest of lunch passes without incident. It’s only when the food is gone and everyone is getting ready to leave that something breaks up the peaceful atmosphere. 

Adalind’s phone dings, and she glances down, before groaning, closing her eyes briefly. “No, no-” And all Flora can think is: something happened to the rest of the team. Renard, or Nick, or Trubel; or all three of them. Maybe this Farley guy betrayed them all. 

“What’s wrong?” Eve asks, instantly on alert, probably thinking along the same lines. 

Adalind shakes her head. “It’s nothing,” she assures them. “It’s just, I’m supposed to have this whole week off, but my boss is insisting that I come into work. He says it’s an emergency. But I don’t have anyone to watch the kids, and-”

“Kelly can stay with us,” Rosalee interrupts, smiling warmly. 

Monroe nods. “Yeah, he’s practically part of the family anyway. And…” He glances over at Diana uncertainly. “Diana could come too?” It’s hard to say whether he or Diana looks less thrilled by the prospect, and Flora speaks before she can overthink it. 

“Maybe she could hang out with me.” Everyone turns to her in, frankly, a little more surprise than expected. On the other hand, Diana is a bit of a… Unique child. “It’ll be fun,” she adds. “Where do you like to go?”

Diana shrugs. “I don’t go a lot of places,” she replies, and she doesn’t seem bothered by the fact, but Flora wonders exactly what she means by that. 

“Well, what do you do for fun?”

Diana blinks a few times, and Flora is just starting to wonder if the girl understands the concept of fun when she brightens. “I read a lot,” she offers. 

Now this, Flora can work with. “Have you ever been to a library?”

Diana shakes her head, and Adalind blushes. 

“I just…. Don’t want her levitating the books, you know?”

Fair point, actually. “Diana?”

“Yes?”

“If I take you to the library, don’t levitate the books.”

“Okay.” 

Everyone gapes, and Flora’s not altogether sure why. Diana always seems like a cooperative kid. Sure, she’s creepily superpowered, but she’s also pretty obedient for the most part. 

Adalind clears her throat. “No levitating anything else, either,” she warns, and Diana gives her a look that is dangerously close to an eyeroll, making her look more like a ruffled teenager than someone who hasn’t yet hit nine years old, but Flora’s just gonna let that one slide. 

“I won’t,” Diana promises, and Adalind softens. 

“Thank you, Flora.” She rises to her feet, and the others follow suit, taking it as their cue to leave. “It’ll only be a few hours, tops.”

-

Somehow, a few hours turns into several hours every day for the next four days. Oddly enough, Flora doesn’t mind. Everywhere they go is an adventure for the little girl who has apparently spent most of her life hidden away from the world. They spend hours at museums, zoos, libraries, parks, and anywhere else Flora can think of. Diana soaks it all in, asking thousands of questions, and Flora does her best to answer them. She’s never had a more invested student, and whatever questions she can’t answer, she does her best to look up. 

Diana’s definitely a child, and more than once Flora has to put her foot down about not having cookies for lunch, but aside from one Incident (and really, the monkey deserved it), there’s no risky levitation. 

Through it all, she doesn’t think much of it. It’s just a way to help out, and she enjoys it as much as Diana seems to. 

It’s only after-when Sean Renard is back in town, calling and asking if she can come up to the Precinct to talk to him-that she starts to second-guess herself. What if she overstepped? What if she endangered Diana by taking her out in public like that? What if Diana was secretly miserable the whole time and now he’s going to yell at her?

Silly, but by the time she reaches his office, she’s in full panic mode. 

“You, uh.. You wanted to see me?”

He glances up from some paperwork, and offers her a smile (that’s a good sign? Right?). “Yes. Please, come in. Shut the door, if you don’t mind.”

Well, that’s certainly not reassuring. She complies, and after a moment’s hesitation, settles into the chair closest to the door. His lips twitch, but he doesn’t comment, and she fights the urge to squirm. She is a grown woman, and this man has a hopeless crush on her cousin. She is not a child called to the principal’s office. 

“Is everything…?” She tries, and he nods, setting his paperwork aside. 

“I understand that you took care of Diana the past few days.”

Her stomach drops, but she manages a nod. “I did.”

He leans back in his seat, unfairly calm for someone who’s absolutely terrifying her. “She told me about it. Well-” He laughs, a little dryly. “More like she hasn’t stopped talking about it. Apparently, she had a blast.” Literally, but he doesn’t need to know about the homemade volcano display. “Wants to know when you two can have another ‘playdate.’” 

… Wait, seriously? Is that all this is about? “I’d be happy to watch her anytime.” It’s not quite a question, but she lets her voice trail off, as she watches him uncertainly. 

“I was hoping you’d say that.” He fixes her with a stare. “I also understand that you’re looking for a job.”

“How do you-” She pauses, realization dawning. “Eve. She told you I fainted?” That’s… A little mortifying, actually; she’ll have to talk to her about-

“Ah, no.” And he doesn’t laugh, but his eyes are dancing, the absolute jerk. “She didn’t mention that. Just said that you were looking for work, and that consulting on homicides wasn’t a good fit.” 

And now she’s even more mortified, but that’s fine. She’s fine. “Yes,” she manages. “I’ve been looking for work. Why?” A part of her suspects she knows where this is going, and babysitting isn’t going to pay the bills, but maybe it’ll at least help. 

He clears his throat, going a little more serious. “I’m sure you’ve noticed that Diana is something of a… Unique case. Her mother and I-and Nick-have been at a bit of a loss regarding her education. Not to mention socialization; none of us are home enough during the day to take her on outings.” 

This is sounding… A little more in-depth than babysitting, actually. She straightens in her seat, looking at him curiously. “What exactly are you suggesting, here?” 

“I’d like you to be Diana’s…” He pauses, maybe searching for the word. “Caretaker. It’d be a bit of a mixed job; somewhere between nanny and tutor. You’d take care of her while everyone else is at work, and provide her whatever education you think is appropriate. On days where one of us has off work, you’d be free to do as you liked, of course.” 

“That…” She hesitates. “That sounds like a full-time job.” Granted, flexible-Diana’s schedule would naturally allow Flora to help the team-but still… “And I’m not sure-” She doesn’t quite want to bring up money, but she’s not sure he realizes exactly how much it would cost. 

Apparently he tracks her line of thinking, because he cuts in. “You would be well-compensated, of course.” 

And the man has money-she knows that-so he might actually be able to pull this off. But… “Oh?” She asks, aiming for casual, because it seems more polite than how well-compensated are we talking, here? 

He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a check, and hands it to her. And it’s a miracle that she doesn’t faint again on the spot, because that is… A lot of zeroes. Considerably more than she ever made as a teacher, that’s for sure. 

“I-” She tries, but the words won’t come. 

“You’d make that monthly, to start.” More than her yearly salary monthly? “We can discuss bonuses later, and if you think that isn’t enough-”

Is he joking? “No! I mean, this is… This is…” She traces her finger along the check, throat tight. With this, she could find a place for her and Eve to stay. A nice one, if they want. And she could-she could-

Her mind is running wild, but a thought lodges itself in firmly, and refuses to let go. She hates it, and it seems more than a little ungracious toward the man that just handed her that check, but she knows she has to say it, or it’ll eat her alive. 

“I really appreciate the offer,” she starts, and he raises a brow. “And believe me, I’m tempted. But there’s one thing I want to clear up before I accept.”

“Oh?”

She draws in a breath, grappling for the words. “You, um. You seem like a really nice guy. Have the whole time I’ve known you. But I’ve only known you a few months, and… I’ve heard stories.” His expression goes carefully guarded, and she hurriedly adds, “And I’m not judging! I’m a huge believer in people changing and all that. But if I take this job, my job is going to be taking care of Diana. So if I think you’re doing something like… Trying to convince her not to trust Nick-or even the other way around-I’m not going to put up with it, okay?” 

She’s shaking now, well-aware that she’s probably crossing a thousand lines but determined to get it all out. 

“Because if I take that job, I’m not going to be some pawn in whatever internal struggle you guys are having this week. I mean, I hope you guys are past that, but if you’re not… If my job is to take care of Diana, I won’t let you guys put me-or her-in the middle of that. Okay?”

He stares at her for several long moments, and part of her is terrified that she’s lost the job before she ever even had it. Finally, though, he meets her eyes seriously. “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he promises, and the air floods back into her in a rush. 

“Then… When do I start?”

He smiles broadly. “I think you already have. Can you come by my house tomorrow around 7? Diana’s staying with me right now,” he clarifies, and she nods. 

“I’ll be there.”

Well, that’s not exactly what she was looking for. But maybe it’ll be exactly what she needs. 

[bluekaddis]

You almost mentioned Cullen as the best written character, but tbh he is written quite bad, his abuse and hate is never confronted in Inquisition and he is made victim by narrative, while he was the very problem why Chantry sucks. Even his fans admit that. He is mostly liked because of romance.

Ugh.

I was waiting for that moment when admitting I like Cullen’s character and story arc will bite me in the ass.

TL; DR (for those who don’t want to get through my long rant) 

Let everyone enjoy any characters/romances/game choices they want. I have my reasons for having Cullen as a fav DA character and liking his story arc and I don’t think there are more problems with writing of his character than the majority of other companions in DA games. 

Full answer below

First of all – I don’t want to argue that everyone should like or dislike the same elements of fiction as I do – it would be stupid. We all have different tastes, like different character archetypes and have varying opinions on what makes a good story. I’m trying to keep my blog character positive and unless someone asks me directly to share my opinion on a certain character or plot element I prefer keeping my critique to myself. I also don’t feel entitled to confront fans who, in their own posts, state they find Cullen boring, unredeemable or overrated, even if I personally disagree with all these statements. 

If your ask, anon, stated the words “i think” or “in my opinion” I wouldn’t probably bother with such a lengthy answer, HOWEVER, you write your personal opinion like it was an objective statement, like you were in position to tell me how I should view the certain character. What did you expect, that I would suddenly realize “oh crap, NOW I see that a character and plot I had liked for my 200 hours of gameplay is actually bad, I was just too stupid to notice it!”.

Haha, no.

So, let’s go through your comment.

“tbh he is written quite bad”

In. Your. Opinion. There are people who don’t like Cullen’s character development. Some like the general idea but would make some changes if they could. Others (like me) don’t have problem with his story arc and just like to add some headcanons to fill the gaps.

It is understandable that when years pass between games, fans have time to develop their opinions and wishes of what they’d like to see. And because none of them actually writes the story it is very easy to feel disappointed and say “well, I would do it better (= my way)”. But the truth is - your way is not necessary a better way. It may be the case that “your version” would be even more hated by the fandom. Some opinions are just more popular than others and therefore may seem like they are objective but it’s an illusion. A well designed pool, with large sample size and good statistics may be objective. Opinions, on the other hand, are like farts – you always think yours are less stinky than the others’ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But I digress.

Yes, I think Cullen is a well written character and yes, I like his story arc. Cullen’s redemption works for me because I see it not as much about atonement for his actions as for his lack of action.

Let me explain.

Anti-Cullen fans tend to assume that he personally did a lot of atrocities, but when you look not at fandom assumptions but at his actual actions we see in games or WoT, you can see that he caused most evil by not doing shit.

He should have protected the mages.

He didn’t.

He should have questioned Meredith’s actions.

He didn’t.

He should have noticed she’s going mad.

He didn’t .

He should have stopped her before she evoked the Rite.

He didn’t.

He was very passive and basically let either Meredith or Hawke make all the choices for him. If he let Meredith decide – people died. If he listened to Hawke (based on player’s choices) he voted for whatever Hawke had proposed.

Why was he behaving like that? Probably because he had lost faith in his own judgment so he put all the responsibility on authority figures (Templar Order and Chantry teachings). Cullen’s core motivation throughout all games was to protect people and it never changes. What changes is his belief of what methods are moral or necessary to achieve that goal and whether he, as an individual, should be in a position to decide it.

In Inquisition Cullen does the opposite. He is a workaholic. He makes his own decisions (leaves Kirkwall, stops taking lyrium) and takes full responsibility for them. He doesn’t follow his leader blindly but openly states his own opinions and advice (whether they are correct or wrong is another topic). He gets really furious when someone in position of power lie to or sacrifice people under their command (like in case of Samson or Rainier). Finally, he dedicates his life, health, skills, basically everything, for a cause - to stop the war that can be blamed mostly on his former organisation, without complaint or asking for forgiveness.

And I love that aspect of his character.

In Inquisition Cullen is still a work in progress. He tries his best but his templar past comes back sometimes - and it’s good. If he was completely free of his biases, it would be damn unnatural. 

I would never say that Cullen is a flawless ray of sunshine. He can be stubborn, biased, narrow-minded, hypocritical, bitter, aggressive and vengeful. But guess what – so can all the other characters. That’s why they are interesting.

“his abuse and hate is never confronted in Inquisition”

It is, at least for the standards of this particular game. DA:I doesn’t have full developed friendship-rivalry mechanics like DA:2 and you can’t even get approval points from advisors. The Inquisitor basically has far less options to condemn the Inner Circle’s actions or change their worldviews than Hawke (you don’t really argue with Dorian about slavery or with Iron Bull about Saarebas or Reeducators either).

But even if the Inquisitor has limited dialogue options to confront Cullen’s actions directly, Cullen himself brings the topic to the player. Cullen’s dialogue and actions in DA:I show that

he is ashamed of the person he became after Uldred’s uprising    

he knows he needs to atone for his actions and he wants to work for it

but doesn’t really believe he can fully atone for what he did

supports the reform of the Chantry, Templar Order and Circles rather than agreeing to their traditional methods

That man already hates himself, give him some rest.

And if you still think he needs an extra punishment for his crimes - Cullen is actually one of only 3 companions/advisors in DA:I whose life you can literally ruin through your choices (the other two being Blackwall and Iron Bull). If your Inky thinks that Cullen’s actions are unredeemable and he deserves nothing better than to forever be chained to the templar life he has chosen as a kid - they can order him to take lyrium again. For me it’s a heartless and morally wrong choice, but anyone can play their game however they want.

„he is made victim by narrative”

Ok, that part really bothers me. Are you saying that it is a bad thing that a narrative treats a person who has been physically, mentally and sexually abused for weeks as a victim of that abuse? Or encourages empathy towards a character fed drugs, manipulation and propaganda? Acknowledging Cullen’s PTSD doesn’t automatically result in ignoring or diminishing traumas and abuse that happened to Anders, Carl or any other character. Empathy doesn’t have to be reserved to people you personally agree with, just saying.

„he was the very problem why Chantry sucks.”

I’d say he was an example showing why Chantry sucks. A symptome, not a cause. Chantry benefits only high ranking members of that intitution + some nobles and rich dudes. Mages are abused and denied most of the rights because of the Chantry. Templars are drugged and brainwashed because of the Chantry. Common folk can’t freely benefit from things like healing magic because of the Chantry. Non-humans are treated like heretics and barbarians - because of the Chantry. The Chantry, as we see at the beginning of DA:I is a corrupt, powerful institution that has forsaken almost all ideals it had been built upon and desperately needs a reform. Everyone can see that. I have NEVER met any fan who said „yeah, Circles, Templar Order, the Chantry – they were perfectly alright, no need to change lol”. Same goes to characters labelled by fandom as pro-Chantry (like Cassandra, Cullen or Vivienne). They all see that major changes must be done, they just believe the reformation is better than abolition.

„Even his fans admit that.”

Some, yes. Others don’t have a problem with his arc. Personally I don’t think there are many Cullen fans that would agree with every single point you made.

„He is mostly liked because of romance.”

Um, no. The reason why the game developers even bothered with making Cullen a romance option in DA:I is that he was already quite liked and popular among fans, despite being just a secondary character. I’d agree that the romance plot made Cullen even more popular, especially among players who didn’t play previous games, but it is wrong to assume that the only reason people enjoy his character is because he’s a pretty boy. I played the games in order and Cullen was one of my fav characters in DA2 - I just like paragon anti-villains with redemption potential. Fight me. 

To conclude this overly long rant - I’m generally under impression that some DA fans tend to point certain aspects of Cullen’s character and story as “stupid excuses made by Bioware and fans to redeem a son of the bitch” and then use almost exactly the same arguments to defend their own favs. It’s the topic for maybe another discussion, but I think it’s a good thing to confront your own biases sometimes.

P.S. I also recommend watching this video about writing redemption arcs. Just for fun.

I rest my case. 

(thanks, Ania, for the high quality picture to sum up my feelings)

[taylorlearnsjapanese]

How did/do I learn vocabulary?

How did/do I learn vocabulary?

This is a question I’m asked quite often and I usually have a different answer each time. The reason is because I have no set way I learn vocabulary. This post will focus entirely on my experience and journey with vocabulary. Grammar will be a topic for another day. ;)

In my opinion, there is no set way to learn vocabulary. I can’t stare at lists and lists of words and suddenly they’re memorized, but I have! I can’t use flash cards because they take too much time, but I have! Kind of see where I’m going with this? I’m the perfect example of an informal or unstructured learner/studier. 

I am a lazy learner. THE LAZIEST. I’m all for fast and easy ways to learn without so much as lifting a finger. Insane, right? Totally. Extremely insane for a beginner like I was. Butttttt, I did it though. Was it smart? Probably not. Did it work? Well… kinda?

I also want to point out that I’ve never studied Japanese in a classroom setting nor have I had tutors to teach me. 

Okay, what I did:

I started learning Japanese on June 11, 2018. I’m going to list the resources I’ve done roughly up to this point in time that this is posted. 

Please don’t take my views on the apps and resources listed as final say. Everyone learns differently and I suggest you try all of these resources out! Things that don’t work for me, may work for you and vice versa.

DuoLingo. It was the only app I really knew of that was credible. I drilled the crap out of that app! That’s how I got my foundations in kana, my first words, and first kanji! 

DuoLingo is good in some ways, but bad in others. It’s perfect for repetition and getting you to think about those words over and over. But that’s also why it’s bad. Each step makes you go through like, what?, four or five tiers or whatever they’re called? By the time you reach that fourth of fifth tier, it’s just annoying to do that pattern over and over again before you can move on. This is just my opinion though, some people thrive off of that. Don’t knock it till you try it, ‘kay? I’ve heard the app has changed some since summer of 2018, so I’ll have to check it out again. 

LingoDeer. Gosh, I love LingoDeer. I really need to use it more. It is the best app ever to introduce you to grammar when you have no idea where to start. 

Workbooks. I got my first workbooks (not textbooks) at the end of June 2018 (I had been learning for roughly 3 weeks by that time). It was Learning Japanese Hiragana and Katakana and Learning Japanese Kanji Volumes 1 and 2, all published by Tuttle. As I worked through the kana book I managed to learn many vocabulary terms from the exercises in the back with the writing exercises (all spelled in hiragana and katakana, there is no kanji in that workbook). I tried and dabbled lightly in the Kanji Vol 1 book, but I wasn’t ready for that just yet back then.

I ONLY used those resources until the end of August 2018 and added Memrise too my list of apps during that time. I gained A LOT of vocabulary knowledge (and some basic grammar but that’s a post for another day) just from using three apps and a kana workbook over two and a half months. 

It was nothing fancy like some people tend to think? I didn’t somehow learn all these words over night.

Textbooks. Genki 1 and it’s workbook was my first ever textbook. This is one of the most widely known textbooks out there for learning Japanese from scratch. Most people know how vocabulary works for that resource. Each chapter introduces vocab and you learn it as you study the grammar and do the exercises.

Um, so, I’m gonna be honest for a second. I HATE TEXTBOOKS. I hate them with a fiery passion. *clenches fist* I stopped using Genki after completing half of the book because I felt like I learned nothing. It just wasn’t the resource for me.

At this point you’re staring hard at your phone, tablet, or computer like WHAT? Yeah… I didn’t hate them at first!! But because of my laziness and informal learning style, I grew to haaaate them. Textbooks are too “cookie cutter” in my opinion. But Taylor, don’t you use one right now? Yes, and let me explainnnnnn. I find that textbooks don’t give you freedom to expand! 

Remember when I asked on Instagram what were some things you’d like me to discuss or talk more about? One user messaged me and wrote,

“How [do] you apply grammar and vocabulary? Because I try to come up with sentences on my own then look up examples of its usage but I continuously use the same type of examples. But when I look at other example there is so much vocab and other grammar structures that go into play that I don’t understand, so it’s hard for me to find a balance that will make me push myself but also know that I can decently understand…”

That’s EXACTLY what I struggled with, with Genki! Textbooks only provide examples for that lesson and the grammar it teaches at that point. So you only know those words (and grammar) in those contexts only. You try to make your own sentences but you end up only using those words and those grammar points over and over. 

There’s simply no opportunity to expand.

Then when you look up other examples you see other new words (and grammar) and it freaks you out because suddenly you don’t feel like you’ve learned anything! This is the e x a c t reason I hate textbooks. 

My answer? For me, I don’t depend on textbooks anymore for vocabulary. They’re amazing for referencing vocabulary and pulling grammar structures, but textbooks only give a limited amount of vocabulary and if that’s all your rely on when learning grammar, it’s going to be rough. It stagnated my learning when I did that. 

When I make my own sentences now, I pull vocab I've been learning from apps, social media, reading, etc. I could go on and on about this, but that’s not the point of this post. I’ll discuss my more of my hatred for textbooks later. Same with grammar and how I make my examples and such. I’ve already gone off on a tangent long enough, hehe. (I hope that answered the above question though! If not, I hope future posts will! Or just message me, lol.) 

Other textbooks I have used after Genki for vocabulary gain is Basic Japanese by Tuttle and the にほんご90日 series.

YouTube. Japanese Ammo with Misa is my love. I love her videos and her personality. Her teaching style is relaxed, but she gets the job done. She has a wide variety of grammar videos along with lots of other videos related to Japanese and Japan.

After my downfall with Genki 1 and some discouragement that led to a nearly three months hiatus of studying, I started using her videos to get the grammar knowledge I needed in January 2019 (I have been learning (counting the hiatus) for about 6 months at this point). 

It’s the perfect things for a lazy learner like me, hehe. I could sit down at my desk and watch one of her videos (they can be anywhere from 8 to 40 minutes long) and watch, pause, and rewind as much as I wanted to write notes with ease. I was learning the grammar I needed to know and learned SO MUCH VOCABULARY. 

She uses common words you find in textbooks, but she also throws in culturally relevant words. She references Pokemon, manga, TV/anime, music, etc, vocabulary all the time! She even teaches the informal/casual variations of words along with formal/polite variations and that’s where I gain so, so, so much vocab! I still use and reference those videos to this day!

PRESENT DAY:

Okay, I just explained what I did to start learning vocabulary from the beginning to about ~5 months ago. I rambled a lot, I know… But did you kind of see the point I was hoping to make? I did not stick to one resource for learning vocabulary (and kanji). 

I didn’t not, nor do I still, learn vocabulary in a “traditional” way. There is no one way to learn everything you need to know. Over that course of time I learn about ~35-40% of my current vocabulary knowledge. Wait… Taylor… You learned ~35-40% of your vocabulary over the course of 10 months, but you’ve learned the other ~60-65% in less than 5 months? Yes, and I’ll explain below~~~

What I mainly use now, app wise, to gain vocabulary knowledge is Memrise, Quizlet (rarely though), Kanji Tree, and LingoDeer. I even use Instagram to learn new vocab too! I follow users who teach vocabulary (and grammar) with their posts. Yes, you will see lots of repeated terms but that’s exposure and review! 

Here are some profiles I really like for introducing vocabulary (new or review): boxofmanga, japanesepod101 (Instagram infographics only), japanese_language_mlc, j_aipon, blue_aoi, and _urabanashi_. 

I also suggest you find native Japanese Instagram users. Not just celebrities or idols. I mean average natives who use Instagram the same way we use our private accounts. I follow larger profiles (500+ followers) for the fact that I don’t want to be a creep and follow someone who only has like 100 or 200 followers. So, I follow some “mommy blog” Instagram's because they tend to use simpler vocabulary when referring to their kids. I also follow some book reviewers, writers, and one guy who loves camping! You get to see lots of natural Japanese this way and it shows common words that are used. I don’t understand a lot of it, but I’m being exposed to the language!

And by now you’re asking, “Okay, but how do you learn vocabulary NOW?” I’m going into N4 if you’re going to look at this from a JLPT stand point, but I don’t only learn strictly N5, N4, N3, etc level material. (That’ll be another post too, lol. Pssst… it’s another “cookie cutter” issue with me.)

Well, those apps mentioned above, obviously, but those only make up about ~30% of my vocabulary gain now. I use my textbook にほんご９０日 Vol 1 as a reference and gain some vocabulary there and I have a couple JLPT related vocab/kanji lists I use too, so that’s like another ~5% of where I get my vocab. 

I get the other ~65% from reading. Yup. Reading. Literally that’s it. I read all the time. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to learn Japanese! 

I have a short story digital bundle I read often from TheJapanShop.com and it’s aimed at beginners and becomes “harder” as you move to the next book and so on. I read through them and when my brain sees a word I know I’m like, “Cool.” But when I don’t know a word I see, I either look it up quick and write it in the margin or I continue on. I learn a lot through context clues. 

Here’s an example sentence from Story Two in Book One of the Japanese Reader Collection offered from TheJapanShop.com. 

「この傘は、雨が降るといつのまにか傘が開き、晴れると傘が閉じている…」

Roughly translated to “This umbrella opened unnoticed when it began raining and upon it becoming sunny the umbrella closed…”

When I read that sentence, I knew all the vocabulary except いつのまにか. The stories have lovely vocabulary guides, so when I looked it up, it said that it meant “before one knows; while unaware” and I took what I knew from the rest of the sentence and managed to learn that new word as a result! This is the best way I could explain how I use reading to expand my vocabulary… ^_^” Just taking what you know and expanding on it over time. I use this same method for grammar, but that’s saved for another post, lol.

I also use NHK New Web Easy to read articles about current events in Japan. It’s set up for native elementary and middle school students so they can read within the kanji and vocabulary they’ve learned so far in life. Guess what? That’s PERFECT for a language learner who has an okay-ish foundation with vocabulary. I learn so much everyday vocabulary that way.

Lastly, I read books and manga. Yup, manga. I don’t use these resources much right now because they’re bigger and more intimidating. I haven’t “officially” started a book but I’ve opened and read passages quite often to sort of test myself. Manga is simpler since there are fewer words than a novel, but they’re bigger than a short story or a news article. You’ve seen on Instagram that I’ve begun reading よつばと！ and so far I’m having a blast! I’ll talk about specific things I’m reading later.

Sooooo…. That’s basically it.

Most of my vocabulary gain now is through exposure to Japanese through social media (bless the internet), reading, and some usage of apps like Memrise and LingoDeer. I use no formal education or study plans or any structure at all. 

My word retention grew to be nearly double these last ~5 months because I built on what I knew and it grew easier and easier for me to learn and retain those words over these last few months. I never believed it, but there is definitely a language hump. Once you crawl over that, things simply become easier. It just takes A LOT of time and effort (and tears) to get over that hump. But, I believe anyone can do it, you just have to be determined and eager enough.

One tip I like to give is to learn through context. Don’t just learn lists of words and kanji. What’s the point? You can recite them, but can you USE them?

Oh, quick thing, I want to point out about how I personally learn vocabulary. I failed to realize this right away when I started learning Japanese, but quickly caught on and now hold onto this belief firmly.

I learn vocabulary and kanji together. 

I do not separate the two. I do not have a separate notebooks for vocabulary and kanji. I don’t even have a notebook at all actually for them, lol. When I post on Instagram that I’m focusing on kanji today, it means I’m just learning vocabulary or reviewing it. The 1026字の正しい書き方 book I use that teaches “kanji” is mainly for vocabulary expansion and how to write those kanji (stroke order). I don’t study the individual meanings of the kanji character, I study the example words it lists. That’s one way on how I’ve been expanding my vocabulary so rapidly.

Kanji is vocabulary. 

Kanji should be treated the exact same way that hiragana and katakana are treated in my opinion. Jokingly, kanji is just fancy kana. ;)

If you “fear” kanji, you’ll have a bad time. I joke and say now when I see an insane kanji or a difficult one, “Damn, that’s some angry squiggles right there.” and it makes learning it that much more enjoyable. :)

For example, 食 means “eat, food.” Okay, cool that kanji has a food related meaning. But I’m not going to do that for thousands of kanji especially since each kanji has multiple readings depending on how it’s used. It’s simply impossible! I found I personally learn better when I learn the kanji in it’s “true” form, aka, in WORDS. 

食べる - to eat / 食べ物 - food / 食事 - meal / 朝食 - breakfast / etc.

Holy crap, not only did I learn the kanji 食 effectively, I learned four words and THREE other kanji! (I’m over dramatic, I know, lol.)

Vocabulary is all interconnected. You can’t learn one thing without stumbling and learning other things by accident. Learning through exposure is the best in my opinion. It’ll be tough to begin with when you don’t know much and it will cause you to doubt yourself and your ability to learn this language. But, just be patient. Learning five, three, or even one word a day is progress.

Small progress eventually builds up to big progress as Yuta says. ;)

Words are meant to be strung together and form sentences for you to read, enjoy, and react to. That’s why books exist. You read those words and sentences and they make you feel warm and fuzzy or cry or laugh. Don’t keep them at an arm's length and treat it like it’s some delicate flower. Language is a not just lists of words, kanji, and grammar points. It’s a culture and way of life for people. Treat it like an old friend and play with it (or go get a beer with it, ya know, whatever gets this point across, lol)!

I tend to treat language learning like I’m a curious five year old. I’m constantly asking questions and discovering new things and it just sparks that fire that makes you want to explore more and more. 

I don’t take it seriously (from an academic view) and that’s why I find some stuff so easy. It only becomes difficult if you make it difficult. Everyone learns differently. There is no one way to learn Japanese and there is no one way to learn specific parts of Japanese. Also, don’t compare yourself! It only ends in self doubt and discouragement. 

Explore and try out all sorts of things. Try out the free apps, read articles online, watch YouTube videos, just do SOMETHING. Don’t look for the “perfect” resource or routine. Just. STUDY. You’ll find in time what works for you and what doesn’t.

Language learning is no race. There is no ribbon or trophy at the end for becoming fluent overnight. Take your time and enjoy the process, you’ll be learning your whole life, ‘kay?

I’ll talk further on how I review it in another post. :)

[mahoikutranslationproject]

MGRP: Black Chapter 1 Thoughts and Reactions

So I’m actually in a unique position because as a translator I can’t exactly “react” after I read it, and I’ve read MGRP way before I started translating it, but, then I had a thought.

What if I type out my reactions, put it in notepad or some other text document, preserve it, and then after I translate it, post them all up? That way, it’ll technically still be my reactions and thoughts at the time, and I can kinda sorta join in the fandom discussion.

With Black coming out I thought Black was the perfect arc to start it, so I’ve been typing up my reactions starting with Chapter 1. I actually wanted to do it for Queens too, I just only had the idea after I was halfway through Queens. In any case, here we go:

NOTE: By this point I only have knowledge of Chapter 1 as I read it.

The Entire Regulations and Rules section before the Prologue

This part reminds me of something like DanganRonpa or something similar where the rules are quite normal and nice until you get to stuff like “DON’T TALK ABOUT ANYTHING TO SOCIAL MEDIA >:C”. Which I guess makes sense for Magical Girls, but there’s a vague air of... sinisterness? I wonder if Pythie was behind this school.

Also I like the school anthem. I wish there was an accompanying background music, but I’ll try and sing it in my head.

Gradually, her ego took form, and the girl began to regain her sense of self. She stretched her body, and hit a flat hard object. It was cold, and her butt also felt the same. Perhaps she was sitting on the floor. Without rushing, but without being slow about it either, she opened her eyes, as if realizing this is not how things should be. 

A woman was smiling straight ahead. Who was she? She was bending down and looking at her, tilting her neck. Beside her, there was a human-sized object that was tied up in chains and stuck with a tag.

The girl blinked, held her breath, and gulped.

Actions that she should’ve done without thought now felt agonizing, as if this wasn’t her own body. Why? She wondered, and as if answering, her mind replied If you have questions, just ask. She opened her mouth and said “Uh.” After confirming what her voice sounded like, she looked towards the woman, and asked her question.

Okay, so is Kana asking herself a question in her mind? Curious how her power works here. Also, what was that about a human-sized object tied in chains and stuck with a tag? That’s... bizarre. Kana where are you? Also she’s clearly been out for some time, probably. Like she’s probably not used to having this body. My other guess is that she’s not used to the sensation of being a Magical Girl.

“This isn’t my body anymore, is it?”

Wrong. This was definitely a girl’s body.

“You haven’t used it for a while, have you?”

Supports my theory above.

She was inside a small room, with concrete walls and floors unadorned with any decorations. It was about twice her height. Meanwhile, its width and depth were about six times her height. When she looked behind her, she could see a cylindrical vertical container. Did she just come out of it? The floor, walls, and the colors of the container were all pale white. Its material was soft, like resin or something. The only exit was the one metallic door frame. The woman in front of her was standing as if she was guarding said door. While her smile seemed like an average smile, but there was something off about it. As soon as she took her eyes away from her, though, she couldn’t exactly place why it felt so off. She wore a skirt, with high heeled shoes, and glasses. The impression she got from her outfit was that she was formal, yet her smile was mischievous.

What the hecky was she in cryostasis!? Also this sounds like Pythie/Yoshioka

“......Where are we?”

The woman didn’t answer. But the answer popped into the girl’s head regardless. This was a prison. The woman bowed and spoke,

Okay so this is Magical Girl prison.

“I am Yoshioka. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Yoshioka.”

I knew it.

“But now the tides have changed.”

“The Land of Magic doesn’t change so easily.”

She knows about the Land of Magic. Kana you are interesting. 

“You are a Magical Girl named Kana. Do you remember?”

“Kana.”

She shook her head rapidly, and grabbed any unkempt hair. Now that she mentioned it, that did seem right. Within her vague memory, she recalled a Kana hidden somewhere there.

“Right. Kana. My name is Kana.”

“Now, as for what you did before-”

Before she could even utter another word, a name popped into Kana’s head.

“Caspar…”

At this point I’m thinking she’s probably related to Ratsumu? Is she potentially the actual Third Sage? She doesn’t seem Sagey but she’s got like... a potential for it. Especially cause she said she recalled “a Kana hidden somewhere”. What if she’s only a fragment of the Sage? Like how Ratsumu’s name is inhumanly long.

“Perhaps you may have noticed, but that is your Magical Skill. When you ask a question to someone, you will immediately know their answer. A wonderful, powerful ability, though one that shouldn’t be abused.”

“And why shouldn’t I abuse it?”

Immediately, the answer popped into her head. Because answers are subjective. If the respondent would answer a lie that they believe to be true, the answer will be distorted as well. There are also things that are better left unknown. Also, it was much better to use your own head to figure things out rather than relying on your powers. Perhaps because it might be a breach of privacy to Yoshioka. Kana certainly didn’t want her own privacy being breached. A variety of answers popped into her head. All of them Yoshioka’s, perhaps gained through her powers.

What happens if Kana asks someone a question in a livestream... Also this power is less powerful than I expected, which means it may not be Sage-level, but it doesn’t rule out the fact that she could be a Sage.

She followed Yoshioka into a hallway filled with a series of rugged iron bars, which led to large pillars further ahead, and these iron bars and large pillars continued to surround her path forward. There were doors lined equally on the sides, with prisoners just like Kana imprisoned inside, pacing around as they stared at the iron bars. This scenery repeated across the floors until they reached the sixth floor. This was a pretty big facility. If there was one prisoner per door, she’d guessed this jail housed about 100 or 200 prisoners. There were tags within tags, used to mark these prisoners down. Naturally, security was supposed to be strict, but other than Yoshioka and the Magical Girl packed inside that object, nobody was here visiting anyone else. 

Wow. This is a huge prison. Were they all stripped of clothing and equipment too, or was it just Kana? Also, a thought that occurred to me later on past my initial reactions during my readthrough, “why wasn’t Kana tagged?”

“That’s yours. Please feel free.”

“Clothes and underwear.”

She turned them around, and the bright light inside the room bounced from her silver hair to make a shining circle. There was also a matching skirt.

“This doesn’t look like a costume.”

“It’s a uniform.”

It looked like a sailor suit with a crimson color scheme. It had a design that had low degrees of exposure. This would be too plain for a Magical Girl costume. Kana didn’t feel like this matched her. She wasn’t flashy, sure, but this was even worse. It also felt Eastern somewhat.

“This doesn’t look like something you wear for a Magical Girl job.”

“Oh, my apologies. These clothes are enchanted by magic, so it won’t ever break. Not to worry. And, it fits where you’re supposed to go.”

That explains why Kana’s clothes are so plain. This wasn’t her actual costume at all.

☆ Mariko Fukuroi

Black is officially the best arc. Case closed.

All of a sudden, Mariko became known as the head of information. She was then entrusted with more things than would befit a temporary assistant. With there being two Magical Girls in this school, school life was generally very chaotic.

How did she get so many jobs. I mean, I’m proud of you Marika but how. Weren’t you just a sub?

Originally, Mariko had only been sent as a substitute teacher because one of the homeroom teachers was on maternity leave

Yes, you WERE!

Despite that, Yamada kept exercising on his own. His spirit was nearly unbreakable, even to the eyes of a Magical Girl. But who knows how far that’ll take him. Carefully, but also quickly, Mariko sought out a way to solve the problem, by listening, being attentive, and alert.

I hope you become a Magical Girl some day Yamada.

Turning around, she saw two girls. She knew their faces, but they weren’t from her class. In fact, they weren’t even the same grade. Standing in front of her was Yoshiko Yoshinoura, with an expression that showed how determined she was. Behind her, Sari Kasuga seemed worried. Both, however, seemed to be anxious. Both were friends of Koyuki Himekawa.

Props to Yoshiko for also surviving all the way to Black. She, Snow, and Ripple are the only long-running survivors at this point. If Snow and Ripple bite the dust, this ironically makes her the one who outlived literally every other cast member. Poor Sumire never shows up again though.

“Hey teach, you’re kinda looking a bit weird. Gritting your teeth like that.”

“Mmph?”

It seems her face had contorted from her clenched jaw. Yoshiko’s suspicions only grew further. Mariko managed to cover by coughing twice. Mariko went back to a cool nonplussed “What? You didn’t see anything” kind of face.

“I uh, have canker sores.”

“Really?”

“Uh huh. I swear, I do.”

Mariko Fukuroi—the Magical Girl Marika Fukuroi—always hung out with Snow White whenever they were both Magical Girls. She’d help her with anything she had on her plate. Whenever she did so, Marika was almost always filled with joy. Such was the freedom of the Magical Girl known as Marika Fukuroi. However, she still had trouble remembering all her students’ faces. They flickered back and forth in her mind. Her inner storm didn’t really make for a nice warm personality. 

Answer. Your. Phone. Snow.

Also, it’s cute how Marika cares so much about Snow White this way. I always knew she did, but now it’s even better. Marika’s a huge brutish brawler, but she also just has trouble socializing, and letting out her actual feelings. This is great.

After opening the door to the science lab, she closed it and held it down with her body, the girls still outside. Then, she bit back a loud scream and pulled her hair.

I really wish this was animated, or drawn, or just... something. I really really really want to see this.

Snow White’s new Magical Phone—that she hasn’t used yet—began to vibrate inside her costume. Whatever the reason, it’d be interrupting what she was doing now. So she held her hand to her costume and turned off her phone.

ANSWER. YOUR. PHONE. SNOW.

She had faintly heard the voice of someone’s mind from beyond the trees, meaning she had to close the distance. She made a circle with her thumb and index finger, and the Magical Girl running up behind her, Uluru, saw her signal.

I am so glad they’re partners now. Snow White and Uluru, Batman and Robin, it fits so well.

“There she is! That’s the girl you beat up in the cave…” Uluru said, pointing to a blue Magical Girl standing in front of the trees. Princess Deluge.

Whoa, they found Deluge already? Wait, are they going to fight again? OH MY GOD ARE THEY!? ARE WE GONNA SEE ANOTHER FIGHT? IN THE PROLOGUE?

Back when Puk Puck had raided the caverns, Uluru had told Snow White that she fought with Deluge, and then promptly thought that it might be a bad idea to mention that. The Uluru she knew before would always say what’s on her mind without fault. Now, Uluru had grown. She cared for others, and chose her words carefully.

I like how we’re checking in with everyone, and I like that Uluru is growing as a person and a partner. This fills me with joy. Snow and Uluru are one of my favorite Snow pairs next to Marika, cause both of them can basically kick ass Batman Robin style (well with Marika it’d be Batman and... uh... insane battle hungry Robin? a nicer Jason Todd Robin?)

Standing around Deluge were Armor Arlie, Blade Brenda, and Cannon Catherine, all facing Snow White. These three black-suited Magical Girls had also been manipulated by Puk Puck and fought alongside her. However, Arlie, who had never taken off her visor, even while in briefings, breaks, or fighting with Puk Puck, had now lifted her visor. She looked just like Brenda and Catherine, yet she was also completely different from before.

Snow White smiled back in reply to the black-suited Magical Girls who were happily waving about their weapons, before relaxing her expression and facing Deluge.

D’awwwww she LIKES them!!!!!!!!!

Alright, Chapter 1 proper. I can’t believe it ends THERE! So wait, Armor Arlie’s still Arlie, and there’s no Dory, which means... Where is she? Is she part of Deluge’s group? Wait, where’s Shadow Gale? Did they just... leave her at home? Without a babysitter? Does she have food? Will she be okay?

☆ Tetty Goodgripp

The nearest station from her house was around three minutes; from there, she’d catch two trains, then she’d exit the largest station from the west side, and walk one minute until she arrived at her destination. The building had no elevator and was all broken down and rusty, but she still had to travel up to the seventh floor. Finally, she would reach the Gate to her school. This was her normal route to school.

So the school uses a Gate in the 7th floor? That’s pretty rad.

From there, she entered the building from the roof. She had considered the fact that the rooftop door not being locked was a sign of courtesy for other Magical Girls.

Isn’t she breaking the rules here, Class Rep?

 As she ran across the hallways, she saw a sign on the wall that read “No running in the halls.” It’s fine. It was a short walk to class anyway.

That’s two rules broken.

They all belonged to one of the three groups. Group three to be precise. Hearing Fujino’s footsteps, they turned around, in time for Fujino to say a warm “Good morning!” towards them.

I’ll not paste every single one of their descriptions but while I can see Lightning being hime-girl, Diko being mohawk girl threw me off so much.

“Ello.”

“Ewo.”

God, these two are gonna get me so much.

These three groups refuse to interact with each other at all. At best, they’d greet each other, but the only one who would respond with a smile among anyone was Sally Raven. The rest are generally salty to any outsiders. Except for one girl in group two, who wasn’t just elementary school friends with Fujino—she also became a Magical Girl in the same exam.

Fuko Sayama—Magical Girl name Mepis Pheles. She had been estranged from Fujino when she transferred out, but miraculously, they made a reunion here. At first, they got along well, but then they started to talk less and less because she kept getting mad whenever they played cards.

Mepis is one person I didn’t expect to be the angry type, but now I’m even more interested in her.

At this point we’ve gotten an illustration, and I notice compared with the human illustrations in twitter that they’re arranged in exactly the same way as their groups! Which means the ones that don’t have human illustrations WASN’T Arlie and Dory, but Calcolo (cause she’s a teacher) and Kana. This was further confirmed when the two twins actually ARE Arlie and Dory.

“Well duh, they’d be a Magical Girl! This is a Magical Girl CLASS! I’m talkin’ about somethin’ ELSE! They’re a bit more mhm mhm, y’know?”

With her fingers on her sun-tanned cheeks, Wrappy Tip shook her chestnut hair out and about. She normally speaks loud, and now she spoke even louder somehow.

WRAPPY!!! WHY DO YOU SCREAM SO MUCH! I’m joking I love you for that Wrappy. Your Magical Girl form looks like Tepsekemei but you’re actually HIGHLY ENERGETIC!

“I’m glad OUR group has five! If we had four, then WE’D get the inmate! God, can you imagine the TENSION!?”

“You don’t have to be so mean.”

“I’m not MEAN! I’m SCARED!”

Wrappy’s words seemed nervous, but her expression and tone were completely at odds with it, being so cheerful.

I have a feeling Wrappy is going to be like this for the entirety of Black. She’s just gonna be in danger and be like “OH MY GOD WE’RE IN DANGER!” with googly eyes and a gasping look on her face.

“So hang on, you’re telling me she’s been released, right?”

“Well, she wouldn’t have broken out, would she?”

“Prison Break.”

“Season 2.”

The fact that Arlie and Dory knows Prison Break and Season 2 of Prison Break leads me to believe they watched it with Deluge or something and Shadow Gale during their stint at that hideout. Which is both cute and amazing.

Her height was 170cm, and her face seemed so mature. She had trimmed natural blonde hair that reached her shoulders. She had fair skin, blue eyes, and a European Magical Girl name. But unlike Arlie and Dory, her Japanese was very fluent. Thunder General Adelheid made a warm smile and waved her right hand.

THUNDER GENERAL ADELHEID!!!! Now this is one Magical Girl I’m going to keep an eye out throughout Black.

“Hmm, it seems you’ve heard the rumors.”

“About the PRISONER!? YEAH YEAH, WE DID!” replied Wrappy Tip while violently headbanging.

My opinion of Wrappy shot up due to her violent headbanging.

“For now, I shall treat her as if she were kin. However, I do feel like she may quarrel with Mepis.”

Little did I know, this was the understatement of the year.

She hadn’t changed one bit. Her appearance had changed, now wearing glasses and braids, but her personality hadn’t. Despite being seemingly literary and well-read, this girl was surprisingly quick to anger, and felt more like a gangster. When she was in elementary school, it didn’t matter if it were boys or even seniors, she picked a fight with everyone—mostly people she found annoying. The Daifugo card game during her lunch break was cancelled early because she had a tantrum for losing, and the teachers couldn’t handle her, so they just banned her from bringing cards at all.

Okay Mepis is going to be a fun ride when she finally does get a POV and dialogue. That being said, the glasses girl was one of my secondary and tertiary guesses for Mepis solely because a winky face human is a little too obvious. It’s hilarious how so out of personality her human self looks from her Magical Girl self though.

Tetty Goodgripp had been chosen to become their Class Rep. Still, group two’s problems should be solved by group two. Thinking about it though, it seemed their leader was Mepis Pheles, and considering how their leader was the one itching for a fight, there was no way they could solve any problems whatsoever on their own.

The consistent opinion among these girls seems to be “Mepis is not going to be a good time”

When she looked at Miss Lille, she saw that she seemed almost pale, as if saying “I’m sorry for what you’re about to endure”. Wrappy meanwhile was just waving both her hands in the air as if saying “HI GUYS! WE’RE TALKING ABOUT YOU!”

Wrappy shoots up yet again in the best Black characters rank, though so far everyone’s off to a great start personality-wise.

Dory meanwhile was grabbing her spear and was bonking Arlie in the head repeatedly. Arlie looked sad, but Dory kept bonking.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA WHAT!? WHY?

These two looked like they came in a set, yet most of the time, they kept on fighting each other. It’s hard to tell if they were actually close with each other or not.

So do they actually just hate each other? That’s hilarious.

☆ Halna Medhi Melen

a mage? Oh boy. And a new one too. Side note, I really love how we can just determine mages from their ridiculous names. Mana, why isn’t your name so ridiculous?

Calcolo may be a talented Mage herself, but she was far from mature, so she’d make a horrible teacher.

GASP!!!! CALCOLO’S A MAGE MAGICAL GIRL!!!!! AAAAAAAAA!!!! We’ve heard this being possible in Breakdown and F2P but this is our first main series character to BE one.

Halna glanced at her own pointed ears

First off. Elf. Secondly, how the hell do you glance at your own ears???

The cause of the Calcolo’s nervousness was 20% Magical Girl and 80% Calcolo’s timid personality.

Oh Calcolo’s gonna be a favorite. She’s like 7753′s personality mixed with Kuru-Kuru Hime’s job.

“My name is Halna Medhi Melen. I am the supervisor of this school. This is Calcolo Callumph. She’s your homeroom teacher. Her Magical Girl name is Calcolo.”

Callumph is such a nice last name, but why is your Magical Girl name literally your actual name, Calcolo? Didn’t you learn from Nokko-Chan and Akane?

Also the entire section of this part was just Halna raging at Kana as Kana innocently answers questions was the best. Calcolo’s boss is much angrier than 7753′s was for sure, and that makes for a brand new flavor of “depressed office worker Magical Girl”, of which there are so many in MGRP.

Since being assigned to Class 2-F, there has been no day where Calcolo didn’t feel pain and agony. What kind of a teacher has no mood for classes, or any abilities, or just seems to complain whenever there’s an event? Why did she have to make up a rule to ban cards during lunch? Why can’t the kids just get along?

I knew I’d love her. She literally has 7753′s personality about her job.

She remembered her first day as a teacher, when she was determined to be the best teacher she could be. She opened the door and saw a girl with a mohawk and tattoos on half her face like she was from the feudal age. That’s when she thought “Yeah. No. I don’t think this’ll work out.”

Hey, I’m sure Diko didn’t mean anything bad by it. That being said this made me laugh so much and got Calcolo even higher on my best characters list.

Her bloodline can be traced back to one of the Three Sages, Shayn Osk Val Mer, and not only that, her proficiencies are on the level of specialists. She has eyes that could peer through the essence of others, and has a fierceness that enables her to make decisions without hesitation. She had pointed ears and heterochromatic eyes, which seemed an anomaly even for Mages

So, does this mean Osk had children? Also, is this where elves came from? Her heterochromatic eyes are also shared by Puk.

There’s like an entire section dedicated to how the school is just a proxy war between the factions and I love how they’re still scrambling at each other despite not physically having the capabilities to.

For now, they focused on finding any Mage who can transform into a Magical Girl. Thus, the spotlight shone on Calcolo, the girl who studied day and night to become an authority on criminology. Oh, and she can transform into a Magical Girl too.

I like how her degree was used first. This makes Calcolo sound like Buzz Lightyear during his Mrs. Nesbitt phase in Toy Story 1.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“No? What’d I forget?”

Her expression, or lack of, felt like she’s not really judging her or being mad, but Calcolo felt like she was going to dive into a pit of something much much worse.

“Well, classes are divided into two sections. General Education, and Magical Girl Education. Gen Ed classes will be taken in your human forms, and Magical Girl Classes in your Magical Girl form.”

“Okay,” Kana said, pulling her chair out and standing up.

Oooh boy, I’m gonna love Kana’s interaction with everybody if she keeps this up. She’s not exactly clueless, but everyone else thinks she’s an idiot. Which I can’t blame. She looks kinda dumb.

Basically, if Calcolo reported any problems with Kana, worst comes to worst, Halna will pick a fight with Caspar.

I enjoy the fact that Calcolo basically said “If I report Kana, I may indirectly cause a war with Caspar. Nope.”

“Your clothes-”

“It’s the school uniform.”

“No, I know. I just meant, parts of them are torn.”

“It’s to make it easier for me to move in.”

I didn’t notice this at the time, but my editor pointed out that she basically ripped the “unrippable” clothes. Kana what are you?

Well, those are my initial thoughts on it. When I first read chapter one, I was super intrigued at how the school worked, and what Halna and Calcolo’s plans are for it. It seems I was mistaken that the school was a Pythie-run thing, but I do think Pythie is using Kana in some way. I also think Kana’s potentially related to the third Sage, Caspar herself. Time will tell how this plays out.

[orenonahaichigoda]

I had a rough day, and came to a realisation. I will say a bit about my own experience, and then, after having to lay the groundwork of explaining 400 things about Japan because American schools and media think the whole world is the US, Western Europe, and places to blow up, making explaining necessary, will tie it to Ichigo, or at least how I portray him.

I'm Post Dankai Juniors, growing up in Japan. So's Kubo, actually. The boundaries of this Japanese generation are roughly '75 to '85, Yutori, the following generation that's always translated and localised as Millennial, pretty solidly set as beginning at '86. These things are always fuzzy because you can't vivisect living brains and find the part that likes char siu buns and the part that likes jazz fusion. I *majored* in Social Science. You'll have teachers who say "it is absolute that we date people who are similar to us because we're all actually narcists." (It *might* be because they're like our beloved family or community. Narcistic Personality is not universal) But it really just is fuzzy, and that teacher/book author is an idiot. Anyway, Yutori is always translated as Millennial. I don't know the end boundary. Post Dankai Juniors covers almost totally a debated throe for Germanic nations (I know Britain, Germany, and Nederland use the same generations as America, and their languages are Germanic) because of how fuzzy it all is, though.

Anyway, so since coming to the US, my interactions with other Asians, again, how is this defined when China, Mongolia, Japan all border Russia and West Asia includes Jordan and Saudi Arabia, South Asia is India's area, Southeast Asia is Laos, Thailand's area, I mean, find the Arabic kanji. I don't think Thailand even uses soy sauce. What the heck IS Asia, really? (Or "Middle East" when half of that's Africa and the other half shares plate with Europe? )

Anyway, my experience with Asians that are Boomer ages tends to be people who immigrated as adults, who more identity with a generation like "Dankai" or "Sirake." My experiences with Latinos older than me... I've never actually asked if the generational labels are even the same.

The thing about that is that when the name is the same, it means enough cultural traits are shared.

My biggest experience with people who grew up under the term "Boomer" are Black and white.

I've noticed a unifying trait.

If they're something oppressed (Black, gay), their attitude tends to be"it is mandatory to stand up for *my* demograph...but kicking the person behind me on the ladder in the teeth is wholesome, pure, and fun."

Outing me to large groups and saying I "speak Asian" seem to be the most common two. Calling me "Chinese" long after I've cleared this up for them is a close third.

I mean, don't get me wrong--my experience with Italian Americans past GI generation has been that now acquiring the "white" label, just like biphobic/aphobic/transphobic cisgays, they're more often staunch priveledge defenders than cishet people of Anglo descent! And it's just as true for X and Y as it is for Boomer (for the latter, one need only look at NYC destroyer and trump defender Giuliani) I actually don't really identify with my Italian side at all because I was kinda locked out of making any meaningful connection.

But back to my point that even in so-leftist-it's-almost-not-America Bay Area, Boomers are still like this!

The kind of stuff that flows out a X/Y TERF's mouth, or the mouth of an X/Y person with a Confederate flag on his wall, American-raised Boomers say with ease regardless of their alignment! It's banananas.

(Please note that I also just have not met a whole lot of Native Americans, period, nor enough people significantly older than me from any one place in Africa, that was an omission of lacking data, not intended as erasure)

How I tie it to Ichigo--

So Kubo avoids specifying birth years for anyone.

When I see something like this, I generally assume date of publication, as do most people in most fandoms (which of course gets screwy when you have something endlessly rebooted like Superman or Batman or something eternally unchanging like Detective Conan)

Anyway, the first Bleach something published was the comic in '01.

I generally assume it was supposed to be the start of a new school year, as Ichigo doesn't know many of his classmates until at least the first test scores come out. So it's probably April or something.

If Ichigo was 15 then, he'd also be Post Dankai Juniors, just barely. If Ichigo TURNED 15 shortly after, during his adventure, he'd be undebatably Millennial.

Now, there is still something up with Dankai and Sirake. PM Abe is the latter, b. 1954. A lot of his age-peers are behind him. This is the guy who supports remilitarisation and was caught funding a private militarist/fascist high(?) school that teaches that people from countries Japan conquered during its brief phase of trying to beat colonial Europe are less than dogs.

Now, I left there as a teen. Clinton was US president. Scandals still got people kicked out of public office in Japan. I hadn't figured or come out yet. Sure, I got bullied for being mixed, but kids will pick if you like different singers than the "cool" ones. They'll pick based on what's in your lunch. That data is sausage.

I'm not 100% sure what Ichigo would face day-to-day sociopolitically as he grew up/aged. I haven't had living family since'95 there, and friendships don't get deep enough to ever last distance until at least high school. For me, adulthood.

But I've kept/caught up enough (you try keeping up in the South before the internet was more than ten University sites!) that I know he'd face fascists (c'mon, the guy takes on a martial law government to save a new friend--that's anarchist, he just doesn't seem anarchist in his own world. He only fights humans in defence) I'm not sure how he'd feel about the JSDF, but he only fought the sinigami's war out of feeling like it was his responsibility because the adults around him kinda made it so. I super don't see him being for *starting* wars. In a human war, I see him actually being like Sugihara Chiune, a historical figure who died when I was a kid who I majorly admire. He worked at a Japanese embassy in Nazi territory, and when the embassy was evacuated,he continued throwing passports to Jewish people to go to Japan from the train he was departing on,and is hidden from Americans in the same spirit that Martin Luther King is...pulled the teeth out of. (PS, speaking of,go Google Steven Kiyosi Kuromiya)

Also, Ichigo's whole schtick is defending those worse off than him. He's not someone I see defending Yamato Japanese priveledge. Heck, I could see him joining Uchinanchu efforts to get Parliament and the US base to leave them alone. I can easily see him sticking up for a Filipino domestic worker he met thirty seconds ago.

To this end, I think regardless of what he is, he'd have a large rub with Japan's equivalents of Boomers.

Not to mention that Abe supporters tend to be very sexist and queerphobic, which isn't even homegrown but imported from Américanisation. I mean, there were female warriors--assasins, which is what Yoruichi and Soi-Fon are styled after, and go look at some Ukiyoe, like Utagawa Kitamaro. Quite a few artists in the 200-ish years of the Edo period depicted life in the queer districts. I've also had people posit that Noh might've been a welcoming draw for trans people the same way drag was all over the US in the twentieth century and still is in rural areas, where there's less cisgay gatekeeping. But this isn't something I can reasonably research without access to plenty of older and not well known dusty documents, and lots of time, and I live in the US many years now. And do you know how much round trip airfare alone is!? Also, the language changed so much and I can't read anything before Meiji without dropping words. Rukia, Byakuya, Yoruichi all have made for TV old-sounding Japanese like period dramas. Actual 18th Century Japanese would be unintelligible to the unspecialised.

So this stuff isn't really native, but Abe and a lot of people his age support all these -isms.

I super don't see Ichigo being happy about this.

(I also feel like Issin's old enough to remember before these -isms, but that's my own thing. In my project, he was in those districts, but that's me)

At the same time, I'm still writing this through my own lens. Also, not still being there, I just don't have enough data on Yutori in adulthood, or the grown Yutori lens. Honestly, even most other immigrants I meet are older than that. Or older than that and their adorable three year old children. So I have no clue.

In the early 2000s, I got myself from the South to CA and began to reconnect, but began to is the key phrase. I can tell you right now that Abe is as much of a second phase of Nakasone as trump is of Nakasone's buddy Regean. But what shifted when, I can't say. I'm not entirely sure how Koizumi ran the ship, as it were. I know some things, but not enough to say.

But whenever things shifted however, and whichever year Ichigo was born, I just cannot imagine him being any more on board with current events than really anyone in my area not born between 1946-1964 and raised in America.

I feel like he'd probably be too tired or self-effacing to fight for himself, but he'd take on, loud and proud, any bigotry against *others.*

I...also can't really say I'm much different, except my joints are held together by the power of wishes, so I'm more like "get the victim to safety" than "give the attacker plenty of regret." So, I can only do anything in limited ways.

Ichigo is also entirely fuelled by the power of love. Lost his ability to protect and feels like his sinigami friends ditched him? Mondo depressed, however much he wants no one to notice--which most do a great job of ignoring! Everyone in his world turned against him for a guy who has attacked people close to him? Terrified, and murder can now be an answer. (Fullbring Arc)

I was going somewhere with that. I've forgotten, but I'll leave it.

But anyway, I feel like he really only comes close to fighting for himself when others are taken away from him in a way that's also wronging them.

So yeah, I super don't see him happy with current events or Sirake gen.

I'm not sure how much I see him fighting for himself as mixed panromantic grey-ace. I mean, we know he fights people who are about to punch his face in for his looks, but what else can you reasonably do at that point? Get your head bashed in? I'm not sure how much I see him fighting hateful words pointed at him versus resigning himself to "people are the worst." I mean, when he talks about being picked on, he kinda seems resigned, or at least like it's a fact, like shoes being for outside or something.

I guess I tied it to Ichigo a lot better than I thought!

But also, the struggle against people born just after the war is not just you, and not just America. It's a major problem.

And it's likely that Ichigo would agree.

[luckyjak]

fic: Declaration of Intent (1/5)

“Then it’s settled,” Caleb beamed, pleased with his own cleverness. “We’ve got to find you a husband, before your mother finds you a wife.”

Essik has a problem; Caleb has a solution. Both of them are so good at pretending that their hearts may never recover. 

[The Caleb-and-Essik-Fake-Dating/Fake-Engaged-fic you didn’t know you wanted. Shadowgast. Canon-compliant as of episode 63 but probably won't be for long.]

a/n: This is like, the opposite of a slow burn. This is a fast burn: two characters who get together way too quickly and are way too intimate with each before their feelings can catch up.

The rating may also go up as the story progresses, but I don't want to promise something and not follow through on it.

AO3 Link

There was something wrong with the Shadowhand.

It was subtle; from the outside, the man was as composed and as polished as ever. But Caleb had been spending a lot of time with him, and Caleb was nothing if not observant. He was sharper, more critical than Caleb had ever known Essik to be, and while practicing dunamancy was normally one of Caleb’s favorite activities, the afternoon had made it something of a chore. It was in the way Essik moved: his spellwork was...strained, and his concentration waned. He was irritable, and nothing Caleb could do seemed to help ease the irritability, no matter how flawlessly and fast Caleb learned. They had been at this particular spell for hours, and it was beginning to become a problem that would reach a boiling point soon.

“No no no, you are doing it wrong!” Essik snapped, for the fourth time this afternoon. He ran one hand through his cropped hair and the other along the spellbook, tracing arcane ruins with long fingers. “The pronunciation is el-sol-la-de , not el-sal-la-de , you--”

Caleb snapped back. “I would have done that if you said so earlier instead of just handing me a book written in Undercommon and expecting me to just 'figure it out'--”

“I don’t expect you to just figure it out, I expect you to use your brilliantly gifted mind and--” Essik stopped mid-sentence and rubbed his face with his hand, his eyes scrunched shut. He took a deep breath before speaking again. “I’m sorry. I am being unkind.”

You think? Caleb thought, but didn’t say out loud. Instead, he merely nodded in agreement; Essik had been uncharacteristically unkind towards him all afternoon.

“Perhaps we should take a break. I’ve been pushing you hard, and it’s not your fault. Dunamancy is a difficult school of magic to learn even on the best days, and we’ve been going at it for hours now,”  The gentleman moved to sit down on the couch in the library/lab, and he gestured for Caleb to follow.

They sat together in quiet stillness for a moment; Essik stared out of the window, lost in his own thoughts, and Caleb stared at Essik. The other man was tired, Caleb realized, and clearly stressed about something, but what the young wizard couldn’t hazard to guess.

“You have been off all day,” Caleb broke the silence, sitting down next to the drow on the opposite end of the couch. “Is everything alright?”

Essik brushed him off immediately. “It is a personal matter. I should not allow it to interfere with my work.”

“What bothers you so?” Caleb tried again, his curiosity peaked. It wasn’t often that he saw the Shadowhand as raddled as much as he was.  Essik stopped, his face scrunched in hesitation, which made Caleb wince in sympathy. “If it’s too personal, you do not have to--”

“No,” the drow shook his head. “I should talk to someone about it. And you are a neutral party, from a different culture. Perhaps you could advise me in ways others could not.”

Caleb bowed his head slightly.  “I’ll do my best.”

“Right. I, uh,” the Shadowhand stumbled with his words uncharacteristically, stilling looking not at Caleb but at the dark window, as if it might hold the answer he was looking for. “I’m getting married.”

Oh .  That was unexpected.  “Congratulations?” He said, hesitantly. The thought of Essik getting married was...unanticipated.

Of course Essik would be getting married, Caleb thought with uneasy queasiness. He was a powerful, beautiful young man, with an important career and a lot of political influence. Of course he would have caught the attention of someone special, somebody young and beautiful, somebody not at all like Caleb.

“It is not my choice,” Essik bit his lip, turning his attention away from the window and looking at Caleb’s face once more. “You know I am--young, right? Not compared to you and your kind, but in elvish terms I am barely grown,” Caleb nodded in agreement. It was difficult to comprehend 200 years old as a young person, but when a species lived to be in the thousands, it was easier to acknowledge. “I’ve accomplished a lot in my short life, which is made even more impressive given that my soul is not consecrated, and this is only my first life. But, ah, my amille , my mother, she, ah, thinks I need to wed. For the good of House Theylas.”  The drow shook his head in disagreement. “She’s arranged for me to meet with and betrothed myself to a young woman from Den Olios, and I--I do not wish to.”

“Because you do not like this young woman?” Caleb venture a guess.

“Because I do not like any women,” Essik’s face flushed a darker purple, and he hid his face in his hands. “For a woman who has lived 800 years and three separate lifetimes, you’d think my mother would understand that!”

“Ah,” Caleb winced in sympathy. “Admittedly, I still do not know much about your culture. Is such a thing frowned upon?”

He wanted to ask Essik, since he apparently didn’t like women, if preferred the company of men, but he didn’t want to assume. For all Caleb knew, the Shadowhand was like Caduceus, and didn’t want to be with anyone, no matter their gender. A small part of Caleb--a part he didn’t like to acknowledge--rather hoped that the Shadowhand did prefer men.

Men like Caleb, even, although that part remained wisely unsaid.

He also wondered if Essik’s face would always be such a delightful shade of dark purple. “It’s not frowned upon. Ah, we are a reincarnation society, right? So sometimes a pair of veru come back the same gender as before, or different. My father, he was a man when he married my mother, but when he was reborn he came back as a woman. She and my mother are no longer together, because they never vowed atemay , but they could be together if they wanted to, yes? It doesn’t matter that they are both women.”

Caleb cocked an eyebrow. “But it matters that you don’t wish to marry a woman?”

Essik sighed. “It--it does. It’s--it’s important for there to be children, yes? Especially in powerful dens, there needs to be heirs, because we reincarnate. Because I am the highest ranking member of my family, I’m considered Den Theylas’s heir, despite being my mother’s youngest child.”

It was starting to make sense to Caleb. “Because you are the Shadowhand.”

“Because I am the Shadowhand,” Essik repeated with a groan, leaning over to place his head in his hands. “I could--I could solve everything if I just stopped being the Shadowhand. My sister Meela would be my mother’s heir then, and Meela is already married with two children.”

That sounded like a terrible solution to Caleb. “But you don’t want to stop being the Shadowhand.”

“I love my job,” Essik agreed, with a pained expression. “What I do is important, to the Dynasty, to the Bright Queen, and to the study of dunamancy. I would hate to leave it.”

The thought was curious, however. “What would you do then, if you weren’t the Shadowhand?”

“I don’t know,” Essik answered honestly. “It wouldn’t be this, though,” he gestured around the room to where he and Caleb had spent most of the afternoon training and studying. A lump began to form in the back of Caleb’s throat at the thought of what Essik was implying: if Essik was no longer the Shadowhand, he would not be the person assigned to watch over and guide the Mighty Nein. Someone else would take his place.

Caleb tried to imagine somebody else in Essik’s role as their guide. In his mind, he pictured someone who would be less kind to their diverse group of adventurers. Someone who might have a problem with the fact that they planted a giant tree on the roof, or someone who would take issue with the fact that Caleb and Beau were humans. Someone who wouldn’t teach him dunamancy, and someone who wouldn’t be nearly as amused as Essik often was at their antics.

Someone less attractive, almost certainly, and that was reason enough for Caleb to protest. “Well, we cannot have that, then.”

“But I don’t know what else to do ,” Essik sighed, his head hung down low. “My mother is the Den Mother for all of Den Theylas. She’s an incredibly powerful Warlock and an uncanny politician. More importantly, she’s very good at getting what she wants, and she’s been trying to arrange a marriage for me for years. I’ve outsmarted her before, but I don’t know...I don’t know how to get out of it, this time.”

Caleb leaned over closer to Essik, so that his knee was barely brushing against Essik’s. “Is there anyone else you could get help from? Would the Bright Queen assist you in any way, if you appealed to her? You serve on her Council--surely that must account for something.”

“The Bright Queen and my mother have been friends since before I was born,” Essik shook his head. “If I went to her with this, she would side with my mother, and then I’d really have no hope. The Bright Queen’s word is law.”

“Could you suggest an alternate partner? Maybe the young lady from Den Olias has a brother?”

“She doesn’t, I’ve already looked. And if my mother is the one doing the arranging, then all she will care about is me having an heirs,” Essik rubbed his wrist with concern. “Which means a--a lady, a wife.”

“Which you don’t want.”

“I prefer men,” Essik confessed, and Caleb stomach flipped a bit happily. He had assumed, given Essik’s dilemma, but it was still nice to know he and the Shadowhand had that in common. “Sexually. Romantically. I don’t dislike women. But I cannot imagine myself ever being in a relationship with one. At least happily.”

It was a shame, too, because Essik was quite handsome, in Caleb’s opinion. It would be a terrible waste: Essik, with his beautiful smile and sharp chin, trapped in a loveless marriage, forced to spend--however obscenely long it was that drow lived for--with a woman he didn’t know and didn’t love.

At least if the girl in question were human, he’d only have to wait less than a tenth of his lifespan.

Oh.

A surge of brilliance struck through Caleb as an idea slowly began to take form. “What if you were already promised to another?”

That caught Essik’s attention. “How do you mean?”

“Could your mother marry you off if you were already engaged to someone else?” Caleb asked, his knees brushing against Essik’s on the couch.

Essik paused, his mouth frowning. “No--I, no, she couldn’t. Don’t get me wrong, polyamory is a thing here,” Good to know. “But once a bond has been established, no one outside of the bond can decide to extend it, no matter how much influence they may have.”

“Then it’s settled,” Caleb beamed, pleased with his own cleverness. “We’ve got to find you a husband, before your mother finds you a wife.”

Essik smiled at him softly, but it was not the overjoyed ‘ah, Caleb, you are so terribly brilliant’ smile Caleb had hoped it would be. “I wish it were that simple,” Essik shook his head. “But my mother is crafty . She will want to interrogate whoever I’ve chosen to marry, and she would have to approve of the match in order for it to go through. And I have,” he looked outside of the window at the dark day out there, “very little time to find someone.”

Caleb raised an eyebrow at Essik. “Would your mother ever accept a human?”

“You can’t be serious,” Essik breathed, catching on with the finer, unsaid aspects of Caleb’s plan.

“Why not?” Caleb shrugged. “We work well together. Better yet, we can convince the rest of the Nein to collaborate with our story. No one will argue too much with the Heroes of the Dynasty, no?” The red head leaned back on the couch, stretching slightly. “I have no other prospects for the moment. And I live a much shorter lifespan than you.”

“You are serious,” Essik’s eyes grew impossibly wider. “Widogast, that’s insane.”

“Why?”

“ Why?   Lots of reasons!” The drow exclaimed, jumping up from the couch so he could pace the room. “We barely know each other! We’re--we’re from different worlds , two different countries, different cultures, different races--we can’t--we couldn’t possibly convince my mother that we were lovers, much less engaged! I’ve known you less than a month!”

“People do crazy things all the time, especially when they are in love,” Caleb smirked at his teacher. “Haven’t you ever been in love before?”

The Shadowhand turned to glare at him with his arms crossed. “I’m a little less than two hundred years old. What do you think?”

Caleb thought a lot of different things, and could have said as much, but he didn’t. Instead, he stood up and walked closer towards Essik. “It’s just a con, you know? Just a bunch of lies told together, to tell a semi-plausible story.” He stepped even closer towards Essik, until the two of them were face to face. It might’ve just been the atmosphere of their conversation, but Caleb felt taller than Essik for once. “You mean to tell me that you, Essik Theylas, Shadowhand of the Bright Queen, spymaster of the Dynasty, have problems lying?”

Essik flung his arms apart, poking Caleb in the chest.  “It’s not my ability to lie that concerns me, Widogast. It’s yours .”

Caleb couldn’t help but chuckle. “Believe it or not, Shadowhand, but I’m quite an experienced con-artist. Nott and I used to run a con similar to this back before we joined up with the rest of the Nein, actually.”

Essik raised an eyebrow. “You and the little goblin girl used to pretend to be married for an extensive period of time?”

“Well, it wasn’t exactly the same,” Caleb blushed, stretching the back of his head. “ I--I, uh, pretended to be her father, actually.”

“Ah. And how did that go?” Essik looked a little impressed, though still a bit skeptical.

“It worked, for a while. Better in some towns than others. Made a decent amount of money at it.  Kept us fed and dry. Certainly worked longer than this particular con would need to.”

Essik shook his head, turning away from Caleb and staring down at his feet. For a moment, Caleb had the strangest thought that the man was about to leave , just walk out of the Xhorhouse and never come back.  But he didn’t. Instead, he turned back to face Caleb, his expression cold and methodical, as if their conversation was a game, and he needed to think 2000 steps ahead of Caleb in order to win.

“And what, exactly, do you get out of this, Caleb Widogast? I doubt you are willing to help me this much out of the kindness of your heart.”

Caleb shrugged. “I figure the Shadowhand of the Dynasty owing me a favor is a good thing to have.”

“None of that,” Essik snapped, stepping closer to Caleb. “I don’t play those games. Be specific about what you want, or stop wasting my time.”

Damn . Caleb had hoped to get by with a favor. A favor could be anything; a favor was negotiable, depending upon what the party in question was asking for.

Well, he’d just have to make due, then. He stepped closer to Essik, until the two gentlemen were face to face, merely breaths apart. “I figure as your husband, I might have access to your spellbook,” Caleb breathed, his face inches from Essik’s own. “You know. What’s mine is yours and all that.”

“Absolutely not,” Essik’s face flushed with what was quickly becoming Caleb’s favorite shade of dark purple. “I have some very powerful, very confidential spells--I could never just give you my spellbook.”

“But you could let me look at the rest,” Caleb gave a counteroffer. “Hide the confidential parts, and let me study at my leisure.”

The drow took a step back away from him, lost in his own thoughts. Caleb could tell he was considering the idea, and he tried not the get too giddy at the prospect.

Conversing with Essik like this was...exhilarating, in a way nothing in his life had been since he had been at the Academy. He had missed this, he realized suddenly. Verbally sparring with someone of equal intelligence was a game he had forgotten he missed.

It reminded him of how he used to talk with Astrid, actually. But that was a thought to analyze at a different time.

“Or you could get married,” Caleb teased, perhaps a bit mean, his thoughts returning from his former flame. He turned away from Essik, running his hand along the table in the center of the room, taking his time as he spoke. He could be terribly patient when he needed to. “You know, if the lady from Den Olios looks anything like the Den Mother Zethris, she’ll be quite beautiful. You’ll have that to work in your favor at leas--”

“The whole book,” Essik interrupted, stretching out his hand for Caleb to take. “Minus the confidential parts. And only while I’m around for you to copy it.”

Caleb grinned, and shook his hand firmly. “It’s a deal, then.”

“And if you blow yourself up with time magic, well, that’s just one less thing for me to worry about,” Essik grimaced, letting go of Caleb’s hand. He turned his back on Caleb, turning towards the table in the center of the room, with spellbooks and scrolls still opened up to various different dunamantic spells. Methodically, Essik began packing up, putting each book and scroll back in it’s case.

“It wouldn’t have to be real, you know,” Caleb offered, his voice quiet as he followed the drow around the room. “The Mighty Nein, we are planning to leave for a bit anyway. Have an errand to run in Nicodranas. You could try and find a legitimate partner while I’m gone, and we could, ah, break up when I return,” Caleb seemed unbothered by the prospect. “Or you said it yourself, that polyamory is a thing here. If you found another whose company you preferred, I would not be opposed. Or we could separate, after a time. When you thought it was safe,” Essik didn’t answer him.

Caleb watched Essik as he meticulously placed several books back into his bag, seemingly intent on ignoring Caleb. “That is a thing here, right? Divorce?” Caleb asked with genuine curiosity. If it wasn’t, perhaps that would be why Essik was so hesitant. “When two married people don’t want to be together anymore, they can separate legally?”

“We call it annulment, but yes, that’s a thing here,” Essik paused his packing momentarily to look back at Caleb. “It’s not terribly common, but it does exist. It--it wouldn’t be out of the question for me to seek an annulment.”

“Then perfect!” Caleb beamed, clapping his hands together. “We get married, you let me copy your spellbook, your mother gives up on finding you the perfect bride, and then we go our separate ways as friends and--”

Essik kissed him.

It was strange, being kissed by Essik. Sure, the drow man was incredibly attractive, but Caleb hadn’t thought to ever do anything about that, beyond a nighttime fantasy or two. What started as a simple press of lips quickly grew more passionate, as Caleb opened his mouth, and Essik opened his. Caleb was pushed with his back up against the table, as Essik had one hand flat against the table and the other crawling across the length of Caleb’s back. Caleb kept his hands pressed in the space between Essik’s neck and jawline, fingers tracing upwards towards white hair and pointed ears.

Essik kissed Caleb the same way lightning came with a storm, sudden and unexpected, a hot surge of energy radiating against Caleb’s skin. Caleb felt like his entire body was on fire; each place the drow kissed or touched left smoldering in its absence.

He didn’t know how long they kissed for. But they had to breathe at some point. Essik pulled away slow, then rested his forehead against Caleb’s own. “Well. That was nice.”

“Were you concerned?” Caleb asked, catching his breath, his back made uncomfortable by the way the table was digging into it, but unwilling to move any farther out of Essik’s embrace.

“Of course. I had to make sure we were compatible in that way,” Essik was teasing him, although it was hard to tell based on how serious his voice sounded. “For all I knew, you were a bad kisser. I couldn’t marry you if you were a bad kisser.”

“Hmm, well,” Caleb grinned, licking his lips where Essik’s had been moments ago. “Glad I passed the test.”

Essik smiled at him, a little coyly, and then kissed Caleb on the forehead. “I would not ask anything of you that you would be unwilling to do.” The drow promised, both of his hands on Caleb’s cheeks. “But my mother has a soft heart. If she thought I genuinely loved someone, she would support me, no matter who they were. We--we would need to convince her that we were in love, though.”

More kisses then. In public, where people could see. Certainly, there were worse things than kissing a handsome man in public. Caleb nodded, and bit his lip at the thought of kissing Essik again. “Ja. I can do that.”

“And--drow society is not always kind to outsiders,” he ran one hand down the side of Caleb’s face. “You would-- I would expect my cousins to be better people, but I cannot promise that they would not be unkind to you. There would be--rumors and gossip, always . My immediate family in particular may not be warm or friendly, especially at first.”

“It is nothing worse than what I have already endured,” Caleb confessed. Given everything he had already lived through, he could handle a few gossiping tongues. “And you are teaching me dunamancy. I feel it is only fair for me to help you given how you have helped me.”

Essik smiled, reaching out and taking Caleb’s hand into his own. “Your hand in marriage, in exchange for dunamacy lessons?”

Caleb rolled his eyes. “Well, when you put it that way--”

“I am being serious,” Essik said softly.  “You don’t know how much this means to me. You,” he stopped and squeezed Caleb’s hand. “If this works, you’ll have saved my life.”

Caleb could tell he meant those words. Whether that meant Essik would have ended his own life to avoid a loveless marriage, or if he just meant that his life wouldn’t have been worth living, Caleb couldn’t tell.

“It’s the right thing to do,” Caleb whispered.  “I don’t--I am not always the best at realizing what that is at times, but I know this is right. I would want someone to do the same for me, if I were in your shoes.”

Essik kissed him again, softly this time, and he pulled away far quicker than Caleb would have liked. Instead, he took Caleb’s hands and brought them to his lips, kissing both hands, one, and then the other. “You bring me honor by considering me as a partner.”

His words sounded solemn, like those of a vow, but Caleb didn’t know the context beyond that. It felt important, however, so Caleb remained silent, and let Essik speak. “I promise you loyalty, first to my Den, of which you will become a part, then to my Dynasty, and lastly to our line, that it may be prosperous. I promise you hearth and health, for as long as I am able to provide it, and that you may always have a home in Den Theylas, no matter what life you take on next. Above all, I promise to be your partner, in life and in love, through failure, sorrow, triumph, and joy, so long as you should have me as your husband,” Essik’s face glowed slightly. He then took off his cloth belt, and wrapped the fabric tightly around Caleb’s right wrist.

They were quiet for a moment as Caleb admired the newfound cloth bound tightly along his wrist. It was dark in color, like most of the clothes Essik wore, but it was silk, a nice fabric, and there was a recognizable emblem of Den Theylas sewed on it. The wrapping was tight, but not uncomfortable, and in hindsight, Caleb had seen others with their wrists bound like this that he had passed on the street.   It’s like a ring, he thought, and felt his cheeks color. “I don’t know what to say.”

“ Yes is the preferred answer, given that this was your idea,” Essik kissed his clothed hand again.

“Yes, then.”

“I imagine the Empire has a slightly different traditional proposal?”

“It’s much simpler,” Caleb felt his face flush. “But, ah, seems less romantic in comparison.”

“What’s it like?” Essik asked with curiosity, and Caleb recognized the gleam of someone who wanted to learn as a kindred spirit.

He knelt down on one knee before Essik, taking the other man’s hand into his own. “Will you marry me?” He asked, fully aware of how red his face was. Essik didn’t seem to mind, as he was still smiling at Caleb.

“Oh, much simpler,” the drow grinned, squeezing Caleb’s hand. “Yes.”

“Traditionally, I’d have a ring, too, but you caught me a bit off-guard.”

“Any ring?” Essik asked, taking one off his fingers and offering it to Caleb, who was still kneeling.

“ Nein , not quite,” Caleb laughed, putting the gold ring back on Essik’s hand, the mimicry of an actual proposal. “It should be something we pick out together.”  He stood up and kissed Essik again, softly and quickly, the way he might’ve if he had actually proposed to someone.

For a moment, he imagined that it was real. That he and Essik had fallen deeply, madly in love, in such a short time that they’d known each other, and decided tonight to promise themselves to each other. He could picture it, easily. The drow shly inviting him to dinner, late one evening after a long day of dunamancy practice. After an evening of witty banter and stimulating intellectual arguments, they’d retire to Essik’s private library, where the Shadowhand would try to impress him with his collection. But for once in his life, Caleb would be more distracted by his partner than he would be the collection of books. They’d kiss then in the library, hesitant at first but growing until the late hour demanded Caleb return to the Xhorhouse, alone but gifted with an overactive imagination and the promise of a second date.

After that, their relationship would move quickly; soft, hesitant kisses exchanged for evenings spent in one another’s bedchambers. When they were exhausted, they’d trade stories and secrets to one another. In his mind, Essik accepted every dark thing Caleb had ever done, and promised to help him figure out the dunamatic magic he needed to achieve his goals.

The Mighty Nein would love him; hell, the Mighty Nein already liked Essik, a lot. He was the first invited guest into their home, and Caleb imagined that it would not take much to invite him into the fold, the way they had done with Yeza. He would get teased, of course; “Cay-leb has a boy-friend~” Jester would sing, and Caleb would blush, but Essik would be beside him, squeezing his hand gently, and it would be worth it.

It just made Caleb wish the fantasy were real , that’s all.

“I suppose the only thing left to do is to tell the family,” Caleb smiled, shaking himself out of his daydream. “Mine and yours.”

“Tomorrow night,” Essik promised, suddenly solemn. “My Den is having a gathering tomorrow night. I--if you would do me the honor of escorting me, I thought we could make the announcement there. And you could meet my family, such as they are.”

“We need to talk more before then,” Caleb agreed, leaning down to lace his fingers with Essik’s. “Get our story straight, decide on what we want to tell them. It will be easier if we go in with a plan.”

“I’d love to,” Essik let go of his hand. “But not right this second. We’re hardly alone right now, darling.”

Caleb hadn’t noticed, but at some point in the past few minutes, Yeza Brenatto had opened the door to the library, and was staring at them sheepishly.

“So, you and Essik are getting married?”

“Ja.”

“But not for real?”

“Only...sort of for real?” Caleb shrugged, leaning back against the wall of the War Room. “It’s so Essik doesn’t have to go through with an arranged marriage.”

“Are you in love?”  Jester asked, teasingly.

“If anyone asks, yes.” Caleb winked at her, conspiring. “We are trying to make it look convincing.”

“Because Essik’s mother is terrible?” Beau added. “And doesn’t want him to marry a boy?”

“She wants him to have children, yes. Whether she takes issue to him marrying a boy specifically, that I do not know.”

“That’s real shitty of her,” Beau practiced punching her fist into her palm.

Caleb nodded. “I agree. It’s part of why I’m helping him.”

“Do you even like boys?” Fjord asked, with genuine curiosity in his voice. “I’ve never known you to flirt with... hell , anybody, really.”

“I like boys,” Caleb confessed. “And girls. Generally, I like pretty people. I am not terribly picky when it comes to partners.”

“That’s what Molly used to say,” Yasha smiled sadly.

“Well, he was a smart person.” And a pretty one, Caleb thought but didn’t add.

“But you used to have a girlfriend.” Nott accused him.

He didn’t particularly want to talk about Astrid again. “And now I have a boyfriend. Husband. Fiance. Whatever,” Caleb waved them off. “We’re just pretending, anyway.”

“Cause Essik’s mom is a huge homophobe and we’re not about that?” Beau grinned, spinning around in her chair. “I’m into this plan.”

“Your involvement in this plan is minuscule.”

“Still into it.”

“Well, I’m happy for you, Mr. Caleb,” Caduceus smiled into his cup of tea. “I think you and Essik will make each other real happy.”

Caleb frowned at the firbolg. “We, ah, we are only pretending to be a couple, Mr. Clay.”

“Real happy,” Caduceus repeated, and with such seriousness that Caleb wondered if he spoke the truth, or if he knew something about the future that Caleb didn’t.

Yeza raised his hand in the air like a well-trained student, unlike the rest of the Mighty Nein who had talked all at once all over each other. “Mr. Caleb, sorry, but I have a question. Wouldn’t it be better for Mr. Essik to marry both Lady Olios and yourself? You said polyamory was a thing,” he shot a look that Caleb didn’t follow towards Nott. “Wouldn’t that solve the problem better? Then his mother wouldn’t be angry.”

“I believe that he doesn’t want to do that, so we’re not going to. But it’s a good suggestion if everything goes to shit.”

“Follow up question,” Beau raised her hand, mimicking Yeza. “Is Lady Olios hot, and can Essik introduce me to her?”

Caleb sighed. “ Beauregard.”

He didn’t get the chance to chastise her further. There was a knock on the door that then opened, revealing a slightly flustered Essik. “Sorry. I know I said I was leaving, and I am , but I had a thought,” he smiled at Caleb warmly, and walked over and kissed his cheek. “Hi babe.”

Caleb winced. “ Nein . I hate it.”

“Honey?” Essik tried instead while Jester cooed at them.

“Even worse.”

“Alright. No pet names,” Essik shrugged. “I just wanted to know, do you happen to have a cloth of some sort? Something with your family’s sigil on it? It should really have your den’s emblem on it, but I was under the impression the Empire didn’t really have Dens like the Dynasty does.”

“Ah,” Caleb looked down at his Essik’s bare wrist. “For your wrist, I assume.”

Essik raised an eyebrow. “To show that I am promised to another, yes.”

“I thought we weren’t meeting your family until tomorrow night.”

“We aren’t. But I thought wearing a band now would start the rumors going at least.”

Caleb didn’t look up from the floor, feeling his cheeks burn red, as they had so often in the drow’s presence. “I, uh, I do not have a family, Essik. So I do not have any sort of cloth with my family’s insignia on it. I don’t--”

“He has a clan, though,” Fjord interrupted him unexpectedly, standing tall. “ Us . The Mighty Nein. Would that work?”

Caleb felt a surge of pride rush up into his chest. He may not have a family anymore, but he had the Nein, and that was--that was something.

Essik raised a curious eyebrow. “Do you have a cloth with the Nein’s insignia on it?”

The seven individuals (plus Yeza) who made up the the Mighty Nein all shared a look. “Not right now,” Yasha spoke first. “But I can sew.”

That was a little unexpected, but the barbarian was full of many hidden talents.

“So can I!” Jester added.

“Excellent!” Essik beamed. “It doesn’t have to be large. About yea big. You can use mine as an example,” he held up Caleb’s wrist to show the band off, his thumb placing emphasis on the emblem of Den Theylas. “The important part is that people will see it and recognize that I’m being courted by a member of your Den.”

Jester and Yasha shared a look. “We can come up with something, Caleb!” Jester offered excitedly. “That way Essik has something to wear to show off the fact that he loves you and totally wants to be your husband and that you guys are going to get married and adopt like, all of the babies, and--”

Caleb held his hand up to cover his eyes. “Jester, there can be no dicks on it.”

(“What.” Essik asked with disbelief, his eyes going from his pretend fiance to Jester and back again. “ What?”)

The tiefling immediately deflated, collapsing back into her chair with a pout and her arms crossed. “Not even a little one? Just a teeney tiny little dick?” She tried to bargain, her fingers almost pressed together in simulation of the size. Caleb shook his head no, and she huffed in response. “What could we even use as a symbol for the great Den Mighty Nein if not a tiny dick?”

Essik nearly collapsed on the floor, he was laughing so hard. “A tiny dick!” He laughed, his face a dark purple. “How scandalous! Truly, I’m marrying up in this world.”

Caleb scowled, his face still pink, and shoved his pretend fiance towards the door. “Go away. Go, do your job or something. Make enough money to support me and our nine adopted children.”

“ Nein ,” Essik howled, still laughing even as Caleb closed the door to the War Room behind him. (Or maybe it was “ Nine???” like the Shadowhand couldn’t possibly imagine his and Caleb’s imaginary union resulting in nine adopted children. It didn’t make a difference to Caleb.)

“Well, now I gotta sew a little dick on there,” Jester argued, leaning back dangerously in her chair, her arms still crossed sourly. “I’ve never seen him laugh before.”

Neither had Caleb. But he was eager to see it again.

“Are you sure about this, Caleb?” Yasha asked, questioning. “Marriage is a big deal. I know you can separate whenever you want,” she brushed her hand aside, like she didn’t quite believe what Caleb had told her. “But it’s still a big commitment. And it’s a big thing, living with someone. You really get to know them, the good and the bad.”

“I live with you all currently,” Caleb argued. “It hasn’t changed much.”

“It’s different, when you share a bedroom. And a bed,” Yasha continued. “I don’t think you are taking this seriously enough.”

“And I think all of you are underestimating what a boon it would be to have the Shadowhand’s favor,” Caleb glared a bit, leaning over the War Table. “We have been wanting to ally ourselves with the Krynn. This is just another way of doing that.”

Without speaking, Nott stood up and crawled onto the table. She walked across the War Room table, bare goblin feet trending on oak wood, until she stood face to face with Caleb. By standing on the table and with him leaning over, she was eye level with him in a way she normally wasn’t.

She took his face into her hands, and cradled it gently. “Caleb. You deserve to marry for love, sweetheart. Not political favor.”

“It’s sweet that you think anyone could ever love me, given what I’ve done,” he rested his forehead against hers.

“Caleb ,” She admonished, pulling away from him. “ I love you. Everyone here,” she gestured around to the others seated at the table. “Loves you. What makes you think that there isn’t someone out there who could love you, too? Romantically even?”

He pulled away from her further. “Nott. I’m going to marry Essik. I’m sorry if you disapprove--”

“On the contrary,” Nott interrupted him. “I like Essik. I like Essik for you, even. He’s a good boy who has supported us when we’ve needed him to. He’s smart, he’s handsome, he’s loyal. He’s everything I could ever want for you. But,” she reached out for him again. “You don’t love him, Caleb. And you deserve to have someone who loves you, like I love Yeza,” she looked back at her husband, who was smiling at her, full of pride.

“Nott has a point, Caleb,” Jester added, her voice a little sad and a little soft. “You should marry for love. In every book I’ve ever read, love is like, the greatest thing that’s out there, and Nott just made me really sad thinking that you don’t think you deserve to be loved? How could you?”

“Hang on just a second,” Fjord shook his head, a confused look on his face. “What are we even talking about love for, anyway? Caleb’s a grown man, and it’s his decision. He does Essik a solid by marrying him, and gets to learn fancy drow magic and we get in even better with the Bright Queen? I’m not seeing a downside.” Fjord rested his elbows on the table. “Maybe Caleb and Essik don’t love each other, but Essik doesn’t love this drow girl, either, and it’s not fair to make him have to get married to her if Caleb backs out of this.”

“Bingo,” Beau threw her thumb towards Fjord. “Essik’s been good to us. Better than we expected. We should help him if we can. I’m on team marry-the-pretty-drow-boy”

“I was too, until Nott started talking about how he should marry for love and stuff!” Jester argued.

“Regardless,” Caduceus stood up, scooting his chair back, towering over everyone at the table, including Nott who was still standing on the table. “It’s Caleb’s decision, ultimately. And we’ll support you, no matter what you decide.” He walked over to where Caleb was standing, and squeezed his shoulder firmly.

“I have already agreed to this,” Caleb held out his banded wrist for everyone to see, the symbol of his engagement to Essik on display. “I’m going to follow through with it.”

“Good for you,” Caduceus patted his shoulder again. “We leave for Nicodranas in five days. Do you think you’ll still be able to join us?”

“I should,” Caleb removed Caduceus’s hand from his shoulder. “I already told Essik that that was our plan.”

“Excellent!” Caduceus grinned. “I need more tea.”

With that, the large firbolg left the room, and one by one, the Mighty Nein followed, until only Caleb and Nott were still in the War Room.

“Nott---” He shook his head. “It likely won’t be forever. Either I’ll find someone, or more likely, Essik will, and we’ll separate. This is just one way I can help him and further my goals, all at once.”

“I know,” Nott said sadly, and patted his cheek again. “I just hope you don’t get your heart broken in the process.”

You could not break what you did not have, Caleb didn’t say. But he followed her out of the room regardless.

[nihalsjourney]

Not wearing my hijab anymore

We’ve entered a new decade, it’s 2020. To be honest I’m not a big fan of New Year’s Eve and the hype around it, which is why I waited with a new blogpost. I think it’s nice to look back on some things, one of them being my very first blogpost on here. (link) December 8, 2015 was my very first day without hijab. I can still feel the stress and anxiety of that day. After that, I never talked about it anymore because I still felt guilt and shame. It’s been four years and I feel like I’m able to talk about this past chapter in my life much better.

So we’re going waaaaay back, beyond those 4 years!

My mother is Dutch and my father is Turkish, my mother converted to Islam 24 years ago. When my parents had my brothers and I, baba (father) felt a stronger sense of practicing Islam better as well as raising us with our Turkish identity. Seeing as how Dutch society forces immigrants to assimilate rather than to integrate. The thought and fear of us losing our Turkish identity really stressed him out. 

Being in an interracial relationship asks for more different responsibilities I think. My mother and baba were integrating in each other’s culture, learning one another’s language while working hard and raising us with best of both worlds. 

As we got older our parents signed us up to an Islamic elementary school. With a school bus we’d go in the early morning from Valkenswaard to Eindhoven. There were both Muslim and non-Muslim faculty. My personal experience wasn’t great, I was already dealing with depression, anxiety, and trauma. I don’t remember a lot from what I learned because I dissociated quite often. It was difficult for me to learn because unfortunately we were taught Islam from a cultural perspective and fear inducing. To me Allah seemed like a big angry man and I refused to believe that.

I remember that all female teachers wore a hijab. Muslim or not. The girls also wore a hijab starting very young. After school they would take it off, others didn’t. I remember one time after gym class that I didn’t put my hijab back on. One of the male teachers who saw us on our way back to class shamed me for it. Looking back it was so awful how at first the girls didn’t even bother or noticed. But once the teacher said something about it they started whispering loudly to each other ‘haram’ ‘she didn’t put her hijab back on!’.

There was this unspoken rule that a girl should wear her hijab ‘full time’ when she’s 12. We’d ask each other, ‘When will you wear your hijab?’ ‘If you don’t start wearing it now you never will!!’ ‘Wearing your hijab at 16 or 18 is too late, you should wear it when you’re at least 12!’ Alhamdulillah (thank God) I can say that my parents never forced me.

I switched schools when I was 8, it wasn’t an Islamic school but I still kept wearing my hijab to school as force of habit.  Once I turned either 10, 11 or 12 years old I started wearing my hijab. After age of 12 I had to switch schools again, this time a dominantly white school. From the maybe 200 students, there were 5 students of colour, 4 of them Muslim and I being the only one wearing a hijab. I was facing a lot of discrimination and Islamophobia already and it only got worse from then on. The majority of white people questioned me about every single little thing, my hijab, Islam, if I sympathize with terrorists, if my father came here for money and if I was oppressed. ‘When did you start to realize you wanted to wear your hijab?’ ‘Did you feel ready?’ ‘So you’re Muslim, right? What do you think of ISIS?’ The older I got, I hoped that the questions would stop but they never did. I had very little knowledge, yet people thought I did because of my hijab. Like I was a living, walking human museum or encyclopedia.  

I started to question myself. Did I feel ready? Do I understand what wearing the hijab means? Can I justify myself to Allah for wearing my hijab though the intention of wearing it is non-existent?

It made my heart hurt so much because I had to face reality. I didn’t have an answer. At first I tried reading and researching more about Islam, but back then there was very little willingness of me to do so. I tried to move on despite feeling unhappy, guilty and confused. When I was 18 I decided to talk to my mother about it. She said she had always been worried that I never made my decision to wear my hijab consciously because I was so young. Together with my mother I began brainstorming for ideas and options. Such as trying to wear my hijab in different styles to see it makes any difference and talking with a few women who had taken their hijab off. When I listened to their stories I felt scared. Clueless of what I should do, standing at a cross roads having no idea which path to take.

Once I decided that I wanted to stop wearing my hijab, I talked with my baba. He was very confused and upset. He always tried to protect us from the Western world, so he was worried that it influenced my choice. I told him it didn’t. Although he didn’t agree with my decision he emphasized that he will always be there for me and love me. That’s all I needed to hear. I knew that baba needed his time to get used to things.

Sometimes I still think that I have to explain to others that I used to wear a hijab. Specifically to sisters who wear it. Because I understand all too well what it’s like to be a visible target of Islamophobic violence. There has become such a huge shift in my daily life that sometimes I feel like the odd one out when I’m with Muslim women (who wear the hijab).

Talking about a huge shift in my daily life. In the beginning especially, I noticed how Muslims and non-Muslims were now treating me differently. Whenever I’d greet a sister ‘Assalaam aleikum’, (peace be upon you) she’d look me up and down disapprovingly and wouldn’t return my greeting. It felt awful, I stopped greeting anyone all at once to give myself some sense of security because I was feeling so vulnerable back then. Instead, non-Muslim (majority white) people started to happily greet me. It was mind boggling. 

Like it was some sort of game, I’d keep track of all these differences. How in the past people wouldn’t sit next to me in public transport even when it was busy, to by passers saying ‘Allahu akbar’ or ‘terrorist’ under their breath when walking past me, getting checked by security a lot faster or accused of stealing, always being refused when applying for a job (in my city, Eindhoven, discrimination on the job market is very high) etc. 

When I have to show my ID, that has a picture of me with my hijab on, people always feel the need to tell me ‘You look prettier without hijab!’. When that happens I get a, what Dutch Iranian artist Saman Amini calls in the play ‘A Seat at The Table’, racial freeze. Cashing in the comment, reacting with a fake smile and getting back to my day. Not allowing myself to feel the hurt or the frustration.

It has definitely been a struggle the first year or two. I had to adjust to how society was treating me, nobody sees my hijab but sometimes I still feel like I wear it. A lot of my life experiences before taking it off were based around my hijab. And as I’m writing, realising it now, hurts. Wearing the hijab since a young age, I was basically robbed of my childhood and sure that may sound dramatic but it’s reality. It impacted my quality of life because I was an easy target for Islamophobic violence both verbal and non-verbal.

I got to see first-hand what it’s like to be treated both with and without hijab by non-Muslim and Muslims. Whether I’m a bad Muslim or a well ‘integrated’ (read assimilated) immigrant. 

We still teach girls to judge other girls. In my time we’d judge those who chose not to wear their hijab (yet) or who wore their hijab the ‘wrong’ way. As I got older I started to realise how toxic this behaviour is. But I find that this way of thinking is still deeply rooted. Because I still have some moments that when I see a sister with a hijab showing hair, my first thought is ‘Oh My GoD sHe Is ShOwInG hEr HaIr!! AYIB!!’ it’s been happening a lot less. But when it does I mentally slap myself in the face and remind myself of how toxic that way of thinking is because it does not contribute to anything positive. The judgement I had towards myself and others has lessened immensely. I’ve become a stronger person and learned so much (I’m still learning!!). All the things I named and more, I had to experience. Before I was so caught up with myself. Trying to survive. Now I able to make room in my heart for others to heal.

I look back to these past four years a lot. Feeling thankful and amazed. Never before did I have such a close relationship with Allah and myself. Honestly, I feel ashamed when I say the following. So may Allah forgive me for my ignorance and wrong doings, may He accept my good deeds, prayers and efforts of learning…

I never prayed, sometimes during Ramadan. Like I said, I forgot what I learned as a kid because of dissociating. When someone tried to teach me about Islam I didn’t have the space to listen, my mind never saved the information. Alhamdulillah, with its ups and downs, the past four years I have now been saving the knowledge I learn about Islam. I’m praying 5 times a day, reading translations of the Quran, going to lectures with an open heart and mind. Soaking up all the information I can get my hands on, eager to learn.

I’m not saying this to brag. But to stress that once again, I had to go through these things to grow through them. I had to experience all of this in order to become the person I am today. A better version of myself. Because with this experience and knowledge I am able to stand even stronger on my feet.

Lastly, I want to emphasize that my experiences I shared above, especially the negative ones have nothing to do with Islam. It’s man-made culture. Please see religion separate from its people.

Also there is unfortunately still way too little awareness of how children mimic our words and (misogynistic) behaviour. Pretty much everything I named in my story I learned from aunties, uncles and the girls around me. So especially to us women, I hope that we can start to truly uplift each other and not tear each other down any longer.

Thank you so much for taking your time to read this. A Dutch version of this blog post will soon follow.

Take care, peace and blessings upon you all! Much love,

Nihâl

[sunlightpike]

Caleb’s backstory conversation transcription (under the cut because of length)

Fjord: Alright, can we maybe circle back to the— Jester: Caleb. Caleb: Um…
 Jester: We can tell you’re really, you know… scared. And that’s okay! To be scared. We just don’t know why. Fjord: Yeah, maybe if you share with us your apprehensions, it’ll ease it a bit? [Caleb inhales, goes to say something, stops. Beau puts a hand on his shoulder] Beau: You got this, man. Caleb: Your name is Veth? Nott: It was. Caleb: My name was Bren Aldric Ermendrud. Was. Jester: Wh— Caleb: And um— Nott: That’s why you looked at me. That day. [Caleb nods] Caleb: I um— [Caleb puts a hand on Beau’s shoulder. Beau puts a hand on his.] Jester: Did you— did you die too? Nott: Twinsies? Caleb: I have been using you all. Jester: How?
 Caleb: Um. I— I am from Rexxentrum. I attended the Soltryce Academy. And um… I was plucked by one of the Cerberus Assembly with a few others and um— was being trained to do the kinds of things that I fear may have been done to— Jester: Yeza? 
Caleb: Y—Yeah. And uh— A lot of big plans for me that didn’t pan out. And I went a little crazy. And I— I ran away. I ran away. I’ve been on the run for a long time. And I was tired of s—starving. And I met… [looks to Nott] I met you. And was a little less hungry for a while. And I have just been afraid for a long time, and two of the people in that town over there are on the Cerberus Assembly.
 Nott: Do you know them? Caleb: I know who they are. Jester: Would they know who you are? Caleb: I— I don’t think so. But I have walked past their portrait at school many times. Beau: Ew. Jester: Well they’re high up then, huh? 
Caleb: One of them is the head of the Cerberus Assembly. Jester: Holy shit Fjord: The head of the whole thing?
 Beau: Mr. Fancypants? 
Jester: Wait isn’t that where you want to go, Fjord? Fjord: I— I mean I did. That’s the center of magical teaching in the empire. As I understood it. Jester: But it’s— it’s really bad, or something? Caleb: There’s— there’s good teachers, it’s— its’ everything they describe it to be. But after going there for several months, one of the assembly who also would teach on occasion started interviewing me. Calling me in and asking me a lot of questions. And uh— he— he sort of put me in advanced class. Me and a few others. I— I don’t want you all to be seen with me because if you are seen with me by one of them… they will use you to get to me. Nott: Well, I mean, I don’t want them to see me either because they’ll kill me and everyone I’m with, so—anyone in town— so I— I think we’ll be hiding for some time. Caleb: You— you met the man who trained me. His name is Trent Ikithon. Jester: That’s why you always make that face. I’m sorry Caleb. Caleb: I’m not a very good person Jester: Well. I don’t think our actions define who we are all the time. Good people do bad things sometimes. Even bad people do good things. I think you’re a good person. Beau: Yeah and for the record Nott, I don’t think it’s us that’s been rubbing off on you, I think it’s you that’s been rubbing off on us. Fjord: Also I don’t think a very bad person would care about us. Jester: I don’t think a very bad person would care that he was very bad. Beau: Do you care about us? You’ve told us several times how you’ve been using us Jester: Are you secretly in love with me? Caleb: I am worried— about your husband. I know the things that they can do. [Caleb unwraps the bandages off of one of his arms. It is covered in faint scars from cuts, all up the arm] Caleb: He— he used to put crystals in. He— he experimented on— on us. On the three of us. Nott: What— what would they do? What? Crystals? Caleb: He was trying to strengthen us. Beau: The dunamus? 
Caleb: No. No, the first time I have ever seen that word was in your libraries. Just… haphazardly scrolled into a book. No explanation. No, I— we— everything was for empire. We were being trained to serve our empire. Above all else. He— he was a little mad himself. That is an… he was mad. Beau: I’m curious as to how much was for the empire, and how much the empire was a veil for his own personal exploits. Caleb: He— he believed that the unwashed masses relied on their base instincts and the highest calling was to rise above the muck and control the cattle for the good of all. Jester: That sounds like a bad person Caleb: But we were— are at war. And many of us felt that way. Feel that way. Nott: Do you still feel that way. [Caleb shakes his head] Caleb: But I don’t believe in anything, now. Fjord: This Trent, does he know these two that we saw? 
Caleb: Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. And I— I don’t want one more thing on my head to have you guys… it’s probably too late anyway. Fjord: How powerful are these two? Our normal tricks, would the fall short?Caleb: The Cerberus Assembly are the most powerful mages in the empire. Over two centuries ago, a number of mages went to war in the streets of Rexxentrum. And it was bloody and awful and eventually they came to a truce. And banded together. And proposed to the king at the time that they serve as an advising body alongside the throne. Jester: Would they see if we were disguised? Or would they have to look for us? Do you know what I mean?
 Caleb: I don’t know for sure but there is a reason why I did not use anything like that back there. Fjord: So we need to give them a very wide berth. But at the same time we need to figure out where— Nott: Why would they— would they have taken my husband? He was not a magic person, he was just a chemist. Caleb: I don’t know. It is something to do with this— the thing. Jester: It says it. Caleb: Yeah. But I don’t know why him. Jester: It says his instincts are solid. Nott: What instincts? 
Jester: Yeza, I’m assuming. [reading] “While I find this alchemist obnoxious in his simplicity—“ I’m sorry, I don’t believe that. Nott: I don’t either Jester: “— the academy’s eye for talent proves itself again.” Caleb: Was he gifted? In his work Nott: He was very brilliant in his work, but I— I mean, I never saw him do any magic— magic-y things. Fjord: Did he experiment? 
Jester: it says they want him to produce a number of batches of this— of that liquid. The one that we stole. Caleb: That is what is written about there. It talks about— It’s… listen I don’t pretend to know what we’re talking about, but it does not seem like anything that I ever studied. Nott: He was good at what he did, he could turn— he could refine anything. Jester: They wouldn’t kill him then. They need him. They need him to make batches over the next 12-16 months. Fjord: I’m sure he’s alive. But if he was good at breaking things down, taking them apart, experimenting on things, this thing that we have falls directly into that. 
Caleb: It says they are looking for a way to achieve their ends without the object. I— I hope he is alive, I truly do. They will make his life very painful though. Beau: Trent Ikithon was… looking at Yasha. He was side-eyeing Yasha. Fjord: What do you mean? Jester: Well she’s really hot. Beau: I feel like I’ve heard these words before. When we were in that bar. He… looks for prodigies, people with innate talent. I don’t think it matters. Nott: If they took my husband, where would they have taken him? Where— their headquarters are in Rexxentrum? At a school? At a— Caleb:  The city of Rexxentrum. Nott: The whole city is their headquarters? Caleb: They are based there Beau: And the Cerberus Assembly actually has a pretty heavy hold on Rexxentrum. Caleb: And the— the empire. They are… close to as powerful. Arguably more powerful than the king. Jester: I wonder if umm— Maybe we can break them out before he gets there. Maybe… he— it only just happened. Nott: Can they— do they have magical means of transport? Caleb: We watched De’leth appear 200 feet in front of us. Nott: So they could already be there. Caleb: Maybe. Beau: I’d be one to lay money on it. Nott: When— when— when did you get your new name? Caleb: I… used a lot of names. Caleb is just what I told you. Fjord: What do you prefer? Caleb: I don’t know. Caleb. Let’s stick with Caleb for now. Nott: Well… shit. It seems like if we are going to chase down my husband, you’re going to have to go into danger. Too much danger. Caleb: I honestly don’t know if we can… if we are up to this. Unless they are on route, on land, maybe… but… that’s all the might of the empire. Jester: Are we going to have to scout out, and listen in on people’s conversations? Fjord: We should just ask. We should ask to see if anyone saw a carriage, anything, leaving town with Yeza. Jester: Maybe if we go with our— our insurance company scheme, we can say that we believe there’s been fraud and he’s not really dead or something. Beau: Nott? Nott: Yes? Beau: Sorry, you were gonna say something. Nott: No, I just had more questions. Beau: I was gonna ask you a question. Nott: Go ahead. Beau: I don’t think you know the answer though. Your son mentioned that a mean lady with pointy ears keeps coming by. Nott: Is that one of these people that you— that we saw? Did— they had pointy ears, they’re elves, right? Caleb: They’re both elves. Nott: Did one of them look mean? Beau: Well. If he’s talking about Vess DeRogna Nott: Is that someone who would’ve— Do you know her to be someone who would be… someone who could harness chemicals and— Caleb: Vess DeRogna, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, no, Vess DeRogna is the archmage of antiquities. She is half a recluse. She taught at the school— not me, or years above me. Fjord: What does that mean, antiquities? Nott: Would she be interested in the things that Yeza was— Caleb: She’s a historian. She knows— she has uncovered… mysteries of the past, they would say at school. She’s a history buff, and awful as well, probably. Beau: She’s awful. Nott: But could she be the one who was visiting my home?
Beau: It sounds like they’ve been here watching your husband for quite some time. Which means… checking in on your son. Caleb: De’leth is domestic protection. He is the head of the military. So if they are both here I would imagine that he is here overseeing all of the red brands we saw and she is probably here trying to figure out what’s in that bag. Nott: And then… do we have, I— because I just don’t know how this all connects. Do we know why the Cricks also attacked? Did they sense a disturbance in their juice or whatever that stuff is? The dunamus? Jester: do you think maybe they’re attacking because we have the thingy? 
Nott: But we’ve had the thingy for a long time, it doesn’t explain why they would attack here, now. Caleb: They could be combing the empire for it. Fjord: It might not be the only one. Beau: It feels like… it is a piece of dunamus, right? [Caleb rolls an intelligence check and remembers that it mentioned more than one beacon. They read over the letters a bit more, reading about the effects of the beacon that they had. Jester suggests doing some things with the dodecahedron, but the rest of the group insists it’s too dangerous to do here. Marisha asks some questions about the people they saw in Zadash fighting the assassin. They talk about the dodecahedron a bit more and theorize about it, talking about when Caleb saw the word for the first time.] Beau: What were you looking for when you found it? What were you trying to find?
 Caleb: I was studying history and— I need to become more powerful. If I want to… do anything. 
Beau: You still haven’t answered my previous question of how you were using us, and what that means to you. Jester: Oh yeah Caleb: Prote— look at me. I am a stringbean, I am weak as it comes. I am weak. [pokes Beau’s arm] Look at that. [points to Yasha] Look at her. 
Jester: Look at me Beau: Her guns are bigger than mine Caleb: You have no guns. That was an exaggeration that day. You are just fast and quick and talented. Beau: Okay, okay, okay, was that a compliment? Fjord: I think so Beau: Okay Nott: I feel like there’s a difference between using someone and relying on someone. Beau: That’s what I was gonna say. Do you think that Fjord was using us. Do you think that Nott’s been using us? You know, and we’re also here. Volunteering our help. Jester: Yeah. It’s only using us if you don’t like us. Do you like us, though?
Caleb: yeah Nott: you do? Caleb: I uh— [Jester waves her hands around] Caleb: ohh, Jester. I am glad you see good in me. Beau: Caleb you were right when you said earlier that it’s too late now. That we’re involved. But I don’t think we see it in the same way that you do. It’s too late now because, whether you like it or not, we all care about you and are invested in, you know, like your happiness I guess. So… Caleb: Okay Beau: Don’t run. You can say you don’t believe in anything, and that’s fine… Believe in us just a little bit? [Caleb nods] Caleb: I will consider it heavily. Beau: I’m— I’m sorry for not hearing you, yesterday. Honestly, you saying that you don’t believe in anything kind of… put everything into perspective about that conversation. I heard that you were doubting me and us and our friendship. Caleb: I don’t doubt any of you at all. [Calls to Caduceus] You too. Caduceus: Yeah, I’ll have some if someone’s making something. That’s good.

[kkintle]

Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics by Richard H. Thaler; Quotes

One day on a phone call I asked him how he was feeling. He said, “You know, it’s funny. When you have the flu you feel like you are going to die, but when you are dying, most of the time you feel just fine.”

Let a six-year-old girl with brown hair need thousands of dollars for an operation that will prolong her life until Christmas, and the post office will be swamped with nickels and dimes to save her. But let it be reported that without sales tax the hospital facilities of Massachusetts will deteriorate and cause a barely perceptible increase in preventable deaths—not many will drop a tear or reach for their checkbooks.

“willingness to pay” or “willingness to accept.”

Opportunity costs are vague and abstract when compared to handing over actual cash.

The Weber-Fechner Law holds that the just-noticeable difference in any variable is proportional to the magnitude of that variable. If I gain one ounce, I don’t notice it, but if I am buying fresh herbs, the difference between 2 ounces and 3 ounces is obvious. Psychologists refer to a just noticeable difference as a JND.

So, we experience life in terms of changes, we feel diminishing sensitivity to both gains and losses, and losses sting more than equivalently-sized gains feel good.

Big ideas are fine, but I needed to publish papers to stay employed. Looking back, I had what science writer Steven Johnson calls a “slow hunch.” A slow hunch is not one of those “aha” insights when everything becomes clear. Instead, it is more of a vague impression that there is something interesting going on, and an intuition that there could be something important lurking not far away. The problem with a slow hunch is you have no way to know whether it will lead to a dead end. I felt like I had arrived on the shores of a new world with no map, no idea where I should be looking, and no idea whether I would find anything of value.

Economists don’t care whether you like a firm mattress better than a soft one or vice versa, but they cannot tolerate you saying that you like a firm mattress better than a soft one and a soft one better than a firm one.

Psychologists tell us that in order to learn from experience, two ingredients are necessary: frequent practice and immediate feedback.

Many people have made money selling magic potions and Ponzi schemes, but few have gotten rich selling the advice, “Don’t buy that stuff.”

acquisition utility and transaction utility.

Expressions such as “don’t cry over spilt milk” and “let bygones be bygones” are another way of putting economists’ advice to ignore sunk costs.

Many mentioned the advice, often attributed to William Faulkner, but apparently said by many, that writers have to learn to “kill their darlings.” The advice has been given so often, I suspect, because it is hard for any writer to do.

The bigger lesson is that once you understand a behavioral problem, you can sometimes invent a behavioral solution to it. Mental accounting is not always a fool’s game.

A good rule to remember is that people who are threatened with big losses and have a chance to break even will be unusually willing to take risks, even if they are normally quite risk averse.

Although it is never stated explicitly as an assumption in an economics textbook, in practice economic theory presumes that self-control problems do not exist.

Some early economists viewed any discounting of future consumption as a mistake—a failure of some type. It could be a failure of willpower, or, as Arthur Pigou famously wrote in 1921, it could be a failure of imagination: “Our telescopic faculty is defective and . . . we, therefore, see future pleasures, as it were, on a diminished scale.”

The economics training the students receive provides enormous insights into the behavior of Econs, but at the expense of losing common-sense intuition about human nature and social interactions. Graduates no longer realize that they live in a world populated by Humans.

I once gave a talk about self-control to a group of economists at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. At one point I used the word “temptation,” and one of the audience members asked me to define it. Someone else in the audience jumped in to say, “It’s in the Bible.” But it was not in the economists’ dictionary.

Ainslie’s paper also provides a long discussion of various strategies for dealing with self-control problems. One course of action is commitment: removing the cashews or tying yourself to the mast. Another is to raise the cost of submitting to temptation. For example, if you want to quit smoking, you could write a large check to someone you see often with permission to cash the check if you are seen smoking. Or you can make that bet with yourself, what Ainslie calls a “private side bet.” You could say to yourself, “I won’t watch the game on television tonight until I finish [some task you are tempted to postpone].”

We all have occasions on which we change our minds, but usually we do not go to extraordinary steps to prevent ourselves from deviating from the original plan. The only circumstances in which you would want to commit yourself to your planned course of action is when you have good reason to believe that if you change your preferences later, this change of preferences will be a mistake.

At some point in pondering these questions, I came across a quote from social scientist Donald McIntosh that profoundly influenced my thinking: “The idea of self-control is paradoxical unless it is assumed that the psyche contains more than one energy system, and that these energy systems have some degree of independence from each other.” The passage is from an obscure book, The Foundations of Human Society. I do not know how I came by the quote, but it seemed to me to be obviously true. Self-control is, centrally, about conflict. And, like tango, it takes (at least) two to have a conflict.

One principle that emerged from our research is that perceptions of fairness are related to the endowment effect.

“If you gouge them at Christmas they won’t come back in March.” That remains good advice for any business that is interested in building a loyal clientele.

Although it is true that in the Ultimatum Game the most common offer is often 50%, one cannot conclude that Proposers are trying to be fair. Instead, they may be quite rationally worried about being rejected.

Further research by Ernst Fehr and his colleagues has shown that, consistent with Andreoni’s finding, a large proportion of people can be categorized as conditional cooperators, meaning that they are willing to cooperate if enough others do. People start out these games willing to give their fellow players the benefit of the doubt, but if cooperation rates are low, these conditional cooperators turn into free riders. However, cooperation can be maintained even in repeated games if players are given the opportunity to punish those who do not cooperate. As illustrated by the Punishment Game, described earlier, people are willing to spend some of their own money to teach a lesson to those who behave unfairly, and this willingness to punish disciplines potential free riders and keeps robust cooperation rates stable.

Not everyone will free ride all the time, but some people are ready to pick your pocket if you are not careful.

Shefrin and Statman’s answer relied on a combination of self-control and mental accounting. The notion was that some shareholders—retirees, for instance—like the idea of getting inflows that are mentally categorized as “income” so that they don’t feel bad spending that money to live on. In a rational world, this makes no sense. A retired Econ could buy shares in companies that do not pay dividends, sell off a portion of his stock holdings periodically, and live off of those proceeds while paying less in taxes.

“Discovery commences with the awareness of anomaly, i.e., with the recognition that nature has somehow violated the paradigm-induced expectations that govern normal science.” —Thomas Kuhn

the Journal of Economic Perspectives is available free online to anyone at www.aeaweb.org/jep, including all the back issues. It is a great place to learn about economics. 

If the outside view is fleshed out carefully and informed with appropriate baseline data, it will be far more reliable than the inside view. The problem is that the inside view is so natural and accessible that it can influence the judgments even of people who understand the concept—indeed, even of the person who coined the term.

Flip a coin, heads you win $200, tails you lose $100. As Samuelson had anticipated, Brown declined this bet, saying: “I won’t bet because I would feel the $100 loss more than the $200 gain.” In other words, Brown was saying: “I am loss averse.” But then Brown said something that surprised Samuelson. He said that he did not like one bet, but would be happy to take 100 such bets.

“If it does not pay to do an act once, it will not pay to do it twice, thrice, . . . or at all.”

“myopic loss aversion.” The only way you can ever take 100 attractive bets is by first taking the first one, and it is only thinking about the bet in isolation that fools you into turning it down.

One reason is that it is risky to be a contrarian. “Worldly wisdom teaches that is it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.”

Remember another of Keynes’s famous lines. “In the long run, we are all dead.”

In a rational world there would not be very much trading—in fact, hardly any. Economists sometimes call this the Groucho Marx theorem. Groucho famously said that he would never want to belong to any club that would have him as a member. The economist’s version of this joke—predictably, not as funny—is that no rational agent will want to buy a stock that some other rational agent is willing to sell. Imagine two financial analysts, Tom and Jerry, are playing a round of golf. Tom mentions that he is thinking of buying 100 shares of Apple. Jerry says, that’s convenient, I was thinking of selling 100 shares. I could sell my shares to you and avoid the commission to my broker. Before they can agree on a deal, both think better of it. Tom realizes that Jerry is a smart guy, so asks himself, why is he selling? Jerry is thinking the same about Tom, so they call off the trade. Similarly, if everyone believed that every stock was correctly priced already—and always would be correctly priced—there would not be very much point in trading, at least not with the intent of beating the market. No one takes the extreme version of this “no trade theorem” literally, but most financial economists agree, at least when pressed, that trading volume is surprisingly high. There is room for differences of opinion on price in a rational model, but it is hard to explain why shares would turn over at a rate of about 5% per month in a world of Econs. However, if you assume that some investors are overconfident, high trading volume emerges naturally.

The key lesson is that prices can get out of whack, and smart money cannot always set things right.

“the three bounds”: bounded rationality, bounded willpower, and bounded self-interest.

When people are given what they consider to be unfair offers, they can get angry enough to punish the other party, even at some cost to themselves.

The winner’s curse. When many bidders compete for the same object, the winner of the auction is often the bidder who most overvalues the object being sold. The same will be true for players, especially the highly touted players picked early in the first round. The winner’s curse says that those players will be good, but not as good as the teams picking them think.

The false consensus effect. Put basically, people tend to think that other people share their preferences.

A competitive labor market does do a pretty good job of channeling people into jobs that suit them. But ironically, this logic may become less compelling as we move up the managerial ladder. All economists are at least pretty good at economics, but many who are chosen to be department chair fail miserably at that job. This is the famous Peter Principle: people keep getting promoted until they reach their level of incompetence.

“I am not the sort of person who would steal, and I hope you are not one of those evil types either.” This is an example of what game theorists call “cheap talk.” In the absence of a penalty for lying, everyone promises to be nice. However, there turns out to be one reliable signal in all this noise. If someone makes an explicit promise to split, she is 30 percentage points more likely to do so. (An example of such a statement: “I promise you I am going to split it, 120%.”) This reflects a general tendency. People are more willing to lie by omission than commission.

(...) he said he was planning to steal right up until the last minute. The hosts reminded him that he had given an impassioned speech about his father telling him that a man is only as good as his word. “What about that?” the hosts asked, somewhat aghast at this revelation. “Oh, that,” Ibrahim said. “Actually, I never met my father. I just thought it would be an effective story.” People are interesting.

Someone turning sixty who finds herself flush with surplus savings has numerous remedies, from taking an early retirement, to going on lavish vacations, to spoiling the grandchildren. But someone who learns at sixty that she has not saved enough has very little time to make up lost ground, and may find that retirement must be postponed indefinitely.

When dealing with Humans, words matter.

standard recommendation from the Cialdini bible: if you want people to comply with some norm or rule, it is a good strategy to inform them (if true) that most other people comply.

Ethical nudges must be both transparent and true.

If you want to encourage someone to do something, make it easy.

“big peanuts” fallacy

Those looking for behavioral interventions that have a high probability of working should seek out other environments in which a one-time action can accomplish the job. If no one-time solution yet exists, invent one!

As Gene Fama often says when he is asked about our competing views: we agree about the facts, we just disagree about the interpretation.

Mark Twain once said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”