#like you’d have to Learn old english to actually read that… it’s basically a whole diff language

[alsjeblieft-zeg]

125 of 2023

Created by artisticdreamers

Basics You are a lad You were born in the UK You have dual-nationalities You are twenty You are gay

Appearance You're sort of short You have dark hair And blue eyes You're very pale and never tan or burn You're thin, but not too skinny You think you are attractive, but don't feel you're vain You have piercings

Music You are eclectic You especially love electronic music You don't consider American R&B dance stuff real club You love the classics, like Safri and Darude You also love the '60s and '80s You don't really like much '70s You hate grindcore When stoned you love minimal, ambient, folk and the '60s '4' by Aphex Twin is your favourite song to listen to stoned You want to learn piano, because it's so beautiful You've only been to two concerts Music always calms you down no matter how upset You listen to music while cooking, walking, chilling, partying, even studyi But not when you're reading (for leisure)

More Random You hated Toby McGuire as Spiderman But love Andrew Garfield, because he's more like the old comics You're outgoing Your thoughts sometimes feel too big for your head You smoke weed and take E on occasion You actually think alcohol is worse, and sometimes wonder why it's legal You sometimes get really depressed when you drink So you tend not to get very drunk when you go out clubbing You prefer the north of England to down south, because people are nicer Even though you're from the south You think Liverpool accents sound really beautiful You speak four languages You study English in college (tried) And you study sociology & politics You'd like to be a writer or a lobbyist You get really good grades very easily But you don't get why everyone else makes such a big deal Because you feel like you're just lucky to be smart, not accomplished And if you weren't so lucky, you'd be fucked because you are lazy You sometimes wonder if you'll be as happy after college Because, you often feel like you're better at school than life You skipped a lot of school You went out all weekend before your Leaving Cert/A-Levels You're Church of England, and believe in God But you're not all that religious Sometimes trying to think about infinity makes you feel panicked You also don't like numbers, because they make you think about infinity You feel like you portray only half of yourself Because you're so extroverted, and always partying But that's not false, you are really like that You just also have all these really intense thoughts that scare you You don't talk about these thoughts because they upset you You have been depressed You have a dog and a cat, who you love You have two older sisters They were teenagers when you were born You wanted to be just like them They're your favourite people in the whole world You are very close with your family You identify with a lot of fictional characters Who often aren't all that alike You also identify with almost everybody you talk to You hate social constructivism, and wish people could think You don't understand how something can be 'wrong' for no reason You question literally every social norm And ignore taboos you feel are irrelevant to society Which sometimes makes people think you're weird Yet most people still seem to really like you Although, sometimes you upset them by being honest But you still feel that's better than lying You love anything creative and expressionate Your favourite book/movie is usually the last one you read/saw You prefer to be around people than by yourself You live with two friends You are not prejudiced, but really like offensive humour Except when the comedian seems to actually believe what he's saying Because offensive humour is meant to be ironic, not sincere You hate American-English spellings, but don't know why You wish Harry could be the next King, even though you like William You don't understand the stereotype Americans have for the British Because you find England less classist and conservative than the US You want to study abroad for a year in Boston in the US You love to listen to your dad's old stories Because his life was really interesting But you're glad you have a different life Sometimes you feel guilty for feeling down, because others have it worse Blues music makes you cheerful, not sad You really love food, especially good cheese You would only eat Kosher meat in America because you're concerned about BGH You come from a really rough area You smoke You smoke rollies because they're cheaper Also you prefer them Some of your friends have really low self-esteem You prefer money to go somewhere as a present Because you're not that materialistic You've been to seven different countries But only in Europe and north Africa :/ You want to go travelling after college You're thinking of being a barman on a cruise ship for a while Last year, a lot of your friends were international students You feel sad that they all left to go home Your best friend from school goes to a different college Your best friend from college has met your other best friend And they got along really well You have considered taking up DJing But you don't know how to operate a turn table But you have good ear for music You moved to another country when you were little You're originally from a big city and moved to a small town You miss the city Manchester is your favourite city in the whole world You don't understand the hyperbole about Paris You hated it there And think there are so many more beautiful cities in Europe alone You think Rome is far more beautiful, and people are nicer You love animals But you don't understand vegetarianism (circle of life) You love Christmas And Halloween You're kind of indifferent about Easter But you love St Patrick's Day And despise Valentine's Day because it makes love very materialistic And makes single people feel lonely And makes coupling sound superior to independence You hate how women are called 'whores' just for doing what men do You also hate feminists who try to control other women You think they missed the point just a tad You hate imagist poetry, it's pretentious Describing a wheelbarrow in verse doesn't make it deep You also hate post-modernist literature because it's so pretentious You like to look best all the time You don't have a lot of money And college life is hard on both you and your parents You feel guilty because you can't get a job But you manage and still have a great time You'd rather love your job than earn loads of money You do most of your papers after 2 am You're always up late You actually don't sleep much Your dreams are always very bizarre Where your parents have, there's a pub where you know all the bar staff Because you were always in there when you were in school You always go there when you're at your parents' house You think this survey is probably weirder than intended But you're okay with that, because it's only the internet And you don't really know those people And even if actua friends saw it, it would be okay Because they know you're secretly weird, and love you all the same You sometimes think really depressing stuff is beautiful You're going to go make tea now and read now

#survey #bolding survey #categorised survey

[damibara]

in english class we finished hamlet. tbh i think the ending was kinda boring. shakespeare DID NOT put his whole pussy into it IMO. i have to write an essay abt it monday & tuesday next week. dunno what prompt i’m gonna choose yet

#hamlet by shakespeare was WAY less boring than beowulf & the canterbury tales (which is the stuff we covered in the 1st quarter #) #but it’s still not that interesting IMO #like Hamlet Spoilers i guess #but all the main characters die at the end #except for horario #beowulf was soooo fucking boring though #and the old english stuff in general is almost unintelligible to me #like that’s a whole different language #i can vaguely understand some of the words the same way i can for spanish #we read a revised modern english version #and it was way better and entertaining and i could actually Read it #like you’d have to Learn old english to actually read that… it’s basically a whole diff language #anyways #i like my english teacher she’s nice but i wish the stuff we read was more interesting #likeeee what abt the dude who hid a heart in a floorboard or whatever #that guy was interesting from what i remember from middle school #edgar allen pee or whatever #dami txt

[amazingphilza]

study buddies :: cc!multiple x reader

fluff , platonic , gender neutral ! some headcanons if the mcyts were trying to help you do hw :D

cc’s included in order: tommyinnit , tubbo , ranboo , wilbur soot , philza , technoblade

tommyinnit

i feel like he’s the type to be in a long discord call with you whilst you both try to finish your work

mans uses the screensharing feature like there’s no tomorrow

“y/n watch my stream on discord and help me guess the answers”

“tommy no! i haven’t even taken a film class before”

“your guess is good as mine”

“just cheat and google the answers!!!”

“fuck you”

he actually just wants your attention because he’s bored out of his mind doing homework

five minutes later of asking you to help him guess questions he’s like

“hey y/n”

“what now?”

“let’s play bedwars”

“oh my god shut up!!!”

if tommy has to speedrun something before a deadline, it is a whole different story tho; he will be so focused on completing that he won’t hear what you’re saying

if you’re struggling in math, you’re on your own

“math is shit, only numbers i need is my primes and youtube analytics” says tommy any time you complain about math

besides the fact he isn’t good at solving math problems, you can’t even read his handwriting if he did try showing you how to do a problem

“okay, y/n, it’s simple, just look” he says in his kareninnit voice and everything

you’d be like “is the variable a G or a 9??”

“fuck you that’s a 4!!!”

tubbo

i don’t know if tubbo ever talked about school before but something about him makes me think he’s actually pretty good at math

like he can explain a few things when it comes to math / algebra

CODING GO BRRRR

no geometry or calculus though, anything past algebra will go bad

if tubbo is doing homework with you, he will definitely tune you out

“hey tubbo can you help me on this question?”

you don’t get a response until like 20 minutes later

“oh yeah, what was it y/n?”

like now you answer? i just got the answer myself after so long, forget you smh

“oh nothing tubbo, nevermind!”

but you’re still grumbling in your head because if he answered just a bit earlier you wouldn’t have gone through the work of finding the answer online

i can also imagine if you’re taking chemistry tubbo is like ;

“oh you’re taking chemistry? let’s make some bombs!” /lh

tubbo would definitely pull an all-nighter with you to finish your projects together

if you had a group project, he would make you do the writing part while he does the drawing part

“we definitely aced this project”

“of course we did, if i made you draw we would’ve ended up with stick figure diagrams”

“TUBBO. THE FUCK?”

ranboo

okay i know ranboo said he isn’t a theatre or band kid (unless im wrong and forgetful) but i feel like he’d be somewhat educated in the topics nonetheless

half the time he’s great moral support, helping you stay motivated !

the other half is him making fun of you

“i cant believe you’re failing, that is so sad, can’t be me”

“it’s literally an honors class, ranboo! it’s supposed to be hard!!”

“taking an honors class willingly? also cant be me AHAHA”

i honestly can’t see ranboo going to school like i know he’s a minor and said he had zoom calls before and plays volleyball but like did i miss something? has he dropped out yet? like something about ranboo does not scream “student” /lh

besides that, i’m not sure what subject he would actually be good in,,, but something about nutrition/health sciences,, he knows a few things

don’t get me wrong, i don’t think he actually likes the subject but somehow remembers what he learned from the class

also gives me the type of energy of the type of person to take a first aid class to be a certified person to do cpr on someone just to kill time during his lunch breaks for a while or something

“i am a certified cpr person”

“my life in ranboo’s hands? oh god please no”

you two would probably joke about the ‘bad’ people in your classes or talk shit about your schools than actually doing anything homework related ngl AHAHAH

“you think your school is down bad? mine went back to campus full time after like 6 months into quarantine because they were running out of money”

“what the hell y/n? your school is a scam, drop out”

“arghhhh i knowww”

“i bet i make more money than your teachers combined AHAHAH”

wilbur soot

he doesn’t seem like the best person to ask for help for homework but can info dump you on very specific historical events + a bit of geography

i kinda see him as the person you can ask to proof read an essay for you and would help it improve immensely

who needs a thesaurus when you have vocabulary boy wilbur?

i dunno if it’s an american thing only or at all, but if/when you get to studying hamilton in your english class, he will get so fucking excited

“no wilbur it isn’t fun! imagine listening to lin-manuel miranda rap ‘alexander hamilton’ at the white house from like 2009 on repeat for over an hour whilst trying to write an analysis about it!! it was so distracting”

“well clearly someone has a personal problem with mr lin-manuel. if i were you, i’d be singing the whole thing”

is this last bit personal and complete spite from my freshman year english class? yes. i do not care? no. /hj

unrelated but i actually scribbled nice guy ballad lyrics and other songs on my english scratch papers in freshman year but anyway

probably isn’t the best person to be in a call to do homework with but wilbur doesn’t mind you ringing him occasionally sometimes

i dunno i can just see him easily get bored of the silence or something but also doesn’t want to bother you too much

but he is genuinely proud of you whenever you tell him you aced a big test you were studying for :D

philza

this man’s bad advice is as bad as him trying to help you on any subject

he’s an old man so /hj

but like honestly, he hasn’t been at school for so long, phil can probably only help with the most basic things when it comes to school

if you have a wack teacher that makes you collect data through surveying people, phil would be one of the best people to ask! straightforward and won’t take too much of your time compared to other people ahem,,

statistics things ! sobs

if you ever complain a lot about your classes and contemplating dropping out and stuff, he will def scold you hard

“ugh phillllllllll can i just like,, never go to school again?”

“do not drop out”

“argh fine, i won’t just ‘cause philza minecraft said so”

honestly if you get a high score in a big test like your sats/gcse’s (whatever you’re taking from wherever you are) he’d probably order you a small meal or something to celebrate :D

like how phil bought ranboo bought him food to his house, it would start as a joke but when you get your test scores back he’s like “YOOO GOOD JOB Y/N”

expect a left meat pizza coming to your house .

technoblade

like wilbur, techno is also helpful when it comes to history!

def knows a decent bit of literature too

besides that i don’t really see him being that helpful

even if he was supposed to be an english major

he will just get mad at the school system for teaching you useless things

“being in school is good but why do you need to know how to know if something is a triangle or not? i can obviously see with my eyes that it’s a triangle”

“i dunno! ask the person that made up geometry”

“just look at a kaleidoscope and be over with it, it isn’t that hard”

“that isn’t how it works—”

“bruhhh”

if you’re looking for the person to call while doing homework, he is not the person /lh

it’s either like 0 or 100 with techno

he can just completely not say anything and ignore you or go on a full rant about whatever class or homework you have

if you have an essay you need written, it will take a lot of bribing but he might take the opportunity if you are rich

“techno i’ll paypal you $10 please help me”

“no. i can make 10 times that amount in 5 minutes if i just started streaming right now”

“techno i don’t have that kind of money! pleaseee”

“no. instead of complaining, you can use that time to actually start you work”

“you’re the worst”

then you speedrun the essay and get an A just to spite him

#dream smp imagines #dream smp x reader #dream smp x y/n #dream smp headcanons #sbi imagine #sbi x reader #sbi headcanons #mcyt imagine #mcyt x reader #mcyt x y/n #mcyt x you #mcyt headcanons

[autogynocrat]

You asked yesterday “do u think its too late for an adult to learn a complex language like chinese i read somewhere that when ur brain is done developing u no longer have the plasticity to become fluent in new languages” and it’s an interesting question

First of all the stuff about plasticity is true, the human mouth can make a million sounds and you can’t just process all of them all the time. When you’re born your brain starts to basically process these sounds down based on what it hears. This is why feral children like Genie never learn to speak, they didn’t hear any talking, their brain can’t really process it as anything but noise. There’s a really interesting youtube video on brain plasticity called “you cannot develop perfect pitch.” It’s by a guy named Rick Beato and until I saw it I never wanted to develop perfect pitch hahaha. Basically he shows how you develop perfect pitch by hearing a ton of musical sounds as a child, and you can’t get it later in life by training

There are sounds in Chinese not used in English, and if you hear a lot of spoken Chinese as a child you’ll be able to easily make those sounds and distinguish them from each other in your mind. I never heard a word of Mandarin Chinese until I was a teenager, and there are still sounds I can’t quite tell the difference between, like zh and ch and q in pinyin, they’re the same to me. ü and u too. Here’s another great example: tribal click languages. Have you ever seen The Gods Must Be Crazy? I cannot distinguish between someone clicking their tongue one way vs another way, but there are tribes who mainly communicate through different vocal clicks. By hearing these clicks at a young age, their brain is trained to distinguish all the different intonations

That being said, it’s not even close to impossible. It means it will be harder. A 60 year old woman wanted to read War and Peace in Russian, so she learned Russian. She’s now got a job as a Russian translator. She’s way past the age of brain plasticity and all that, but she had patience and endurance and wanted it. Her name is Mary Hobson. So how bad do you want it? She’s not even unique in this. She’s unique in the fact that she was as old as 60, but plenty of people learn languages in adulthood. There’s a whole youtube genre of “white guy wows Chinese restaurant owners by ordering in perfect Mandarin.”

My guess is if you studied Chinese with real diligence and practiced with Chinese-speaking people, starting at the age of 27, within a few short years you would be able to speak it well. I think you’d have an accent for the rest of your life, but Chinese immigrants speak English with accents, so it’s only fair

Here’s an interesting aspect of the Chinese language: written and spoken Chinese aren’t really connected. There are the characters, each character has a meaning, and each character has a sound in Mandarin Chinese. Each character also has a meaning in Cantonese. A Cantonese-speaker and a Mandarin-speaker could read the same text and understand it perfectly, but they wouldn’t understand each other when speaking. This is why the Chinese government made Mandarin mandatory for all citizens, for unity/conformity. Anyway, the reason this is all relevant is cause of the phoneme thing. Yes, you’d have trouble pronouncing certain words in Chinese, but reading it would be no problem (once you cross the initial hurdle, you’re used to the alphabet, I know. But once you get in the zone it’ll be like decoding encrypted messages).

Chinese grammar is actually really easy. It’s similar to English, but with certain features the make it simpler. For instance, the question word 吗 (ma)，in English I would say “you are thivus,” and if I wanted to ask if you were thivus I would change the word order to be “are you thivus?” In Chinese you say “you are thivus,” and to make it a question you add the question word at the end, like “you are thivus 吗?” Much simpler. Or for quantity they have a question word 几 (ji). So if I wanted to ask “how much soda did you drink” I’d say “you drank 几 bottles of soda?”

Another interesting thing in Chinese is how possessives work. The bigger thing always goes first. So for example, the first line in the Gospel of Mark is “the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” In Chinese, that passage is rendered “God’s Son, Jesus Christ’s Gospel’s beginning” (神 的 兒 子 ， 耶 穌 基 督 福 音 的 起 頭). I know you’re not Catholic but that’s the only phrase example I know with so many possessives clustered together

In short, you do not have the plasticity to distinguish all the phonemes in Mandarin Chinese, you missed the boat on that. You do have the ability to become fluent at any age, it’s a matter of will. Written Chinese is especially doable.

spoken chinese was more what i was thinking abt because there are a couple songs i like that are in chinese that sound cool and the language just sounds cool to me like theres something aesthetically pleasing abt some of the sounds to me its hard to explain

[chocolate-parfait]

can I suggest a headcanon for arthur, theo and comte ( or dazai ) reacting to their selectively mute s/o speaking for the first time? ( maybe even singing? ) you can decide if you want a scenario for one of them and what mc sounds like, wether shes soft spoken or has a mature voice~ whatever you feel comfortable with >:0 👌 — have a nice day ! ♡

I made some research to write this but tell me if anything's inaccurate or wrong! I'll fix it right away

Selectively mute MC - ikevamp headcanons (Arthur, Theo & Comte)

Arthur

Arthur's a bit suspicious when he sees how uncomfortable you seem to be on your first night. No normal person would feel completely at ease, that's for sure, and yet the way your gaze flickers around the room, the way you fidget with your own hands, the look of pure anxiety on your pretty features, they're all blatant red flags for him, though he decides to let you be. It's your first night, after all, for all he knows you could just be terribly shy, right?

He started piecing the signs together after a couple days when your voice was yet to be heard. The only thing they knew was your name, which you wrote on a piece of paper after Vincent's many soft encouragements.

The English writer had tried flirting with you a couple times, but after being met with the same indicators of discomfort as night one, he decided to step back and watch from the sidelines, occasionally helping others translate whatever you were trying to tell them with your body language.

Selective mutism had been diagnosed around 1870 for the first time, and although it was still a relatively new medical condition, he still was a couple decades more experienced when it came to medicine. After realizing that was your case, he moved to inform everyone in the mansion so that they could adjust their behaviors and avoid causing you too much distress.

Eventually Arthur becomes the person you spend most time with in the whole house; you can feel he genuinely cares and, despite the voices you had heard about his incorrigible attitudes and questionable habits, you start appreciating all the efforts he puts into making sure you're always comfortable and understood (his efforts were very much succeeding, by the way).

On one particular night, you decided to bring some coffee to his room, a silent gesture of support in his regards, but once you entered the bedroom, he turned to look you in the eyes and you saw his beautiful blue orbs, usually alight with mischief, now dark and wavering, surrounded by puffy, red skin. He had been crying. Despite all his best efforts to hide it, everyone knew the writer had his own ghosts from the past haunting him, but seeing him so wretched and broken made your heart squeeze in sympathy and pity.

Seeing your worried expression Arthur immediately turned the other way, letting out a self deprecating laugh as he thought this was probably not helping with your case at all. "Ah- D-don't worry about me! I just got some dust in my eyes. Clumsy old me-!" You set down the tray on his desk and put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

"A-arthur, you can tell me. I'm here for you."

His heart almost flew out of his chest as his wide eyes stared at you in disbelief. He abruptly stood up and had to stop himself from hugging you and twirling you around, grabbing your shoulders instead. "MC, you just spoke right now, didn't you?!". He was so shocked he completely forgot about his troubles and spent minutes fawning over you. He didn't realize he was coming off as too strong until he noticed your voice getting quieter and quieter. He then apologized and took a moment to cool himself off.

From then on, your relationship goes through revolutionary changes as he finally gets to learn more about your past, tastes and personality. Each little detail makes him more and more interested in what had been a complete mystery to everyone for days. As the writer of Sherlock Holmes he certainly couldn't let this one chance fly out of the window now, could he?

If his brain malfunctioned when he heard your voice for the first time, it is pretty accurate to say that he almost passed away for the second time when he heard your laugh! It's the best and most effective antidepressant he's tried in a long time, and the more open you become, the more the look in your eyes starts to brighten up, a worthy rival to the breathtaking smile that graces your lips every now and then.

Your voice is sweet, calm and soft, and Arthur feels as if he's floating on a cloud whenever he hears it. It isn't loud, either, making everything you say seem like the most intimate secret one could whisper to a close friend. On the other hand, your laugh is like the clear and light tinkling of a bell. Each time you let out even the smallest of chuckles his cheeks flush with a rosy blush, earning him stares and teasing remarks from the closest fellow vampire in the room.

Slowly, he starts to see his reactions for what they are: sprouts of a new love. As time passes by, he realizes he wants to hear more and more of your voice. He wants to hear you whimper his name lost in overwhelming pleasure, he wants to hear all the sweet nothings and declarations of love you can offer him, comforting words, even gibberish and dark secrets. Everything that comes out of your mouth is like molten gold to him, and he wants it all to himself.

He starts bragging to others, though it does not take long before you're comfortable enough to grace them with the sound of what Arthur has come to love so much. On one side he's jealous because you've denied him the privilege of being the only one to hear your voice, but at the same time he's also extremely proud of you! You're finally happy and there's no more traces of anxiety and worry in your eyes whenever you're surrounded by the other vampires, and that's one of the most important milestones he's honored have witnessed by your side.

Theo

Let's just say that you and theo start off on the wrong foot. To say that you're frightened of him at first is an understatement, and you very much avoid him for as much as you can. He feels guilt strangling his throat whenever he sees your quivering form running away from him, and after noting that you behaved similarly with everyone and still hadn't uttered a word in days made him worry even more.

Arthur's the one who comes up with a diagnosis, and with that everyone changes their manners and speech to make you feel more at ease. Theo, just like his blue haired friend, is actually pretty good at reading body language so he has no particular struggles when it comes to your needs. Unfortunately, he's not so smooth in regulating his tone and words, which often come out a little to harsh. Vincent often reprimands him for it, and he can't help but feel even worse when he realizes he's probably ruining your whole stay.

He starts distancing himself, and you gradually start sticking by the local angel's side, never leaving him for even a second; his vibes are so pure and soothing that they help you out with your anxiety and symptoms. Needless to say, he's also very understanding and is not at all bothered to speak in your stead. This leads to Vincent being the first one to hear your voice, and he's without doubt elated, but he also wishes for you to be able to socialize with the others, too. Theo in particular.

After days and days of the artist's endless rants on how good his little brother actually is, your image of the gruff man has been replaced by that of a soft hearted puppy. Too bad that this soft puppy looks like a hungry hunt dog more than a small, soft cloud of love.

Ironically enough, what brings you and Theo to a new stage of your basically nonexistent relationship is King. In the dog's presence he lets his guards down and turns into a loving owner of a very good and friendly golden nugget, subsequently becoming more approachable. Besides, everyone knows how helpful animals are in fighting anxiety and social disorders! And on the advice of Arthur, he invites you to his daily walk with his dog, hoping your fear will melt away with time.

He's a stubborn man, and even when such delicate issues come his way, he has no intention of giving up. No matter how much time it'll take him, he believes he's going to convince you he's not that bad as you first thought. Why is he trying so hard though? Well, not only it's something that stems from Vincent's care for you, but it's also something for your own good. If you were to avoid him for a whole month, you'd get nothing out of it, and a constant lingering sense of panic would follow you pretty much anywhere; but living for a whole month in those conditions is a no-no for Theo. He has no intention of uselessly make you suffer like that, and as he reminds himself of that, his willpower strengthens his determination to search for a common ground between you two.

Albeit slowly, you start getting less tense around him, and the fright fades away bit by bit with each walk in the woods with the Dutch art dealer and the excited bundle of golden hair. It's a lengthy process that takes many days, but Theo finally knows his efforts aren't vain when he hears you coo at the golden retriever. "King... you're such a good boy.." You say with with the warmest smile he had ever seen painted on someone's face as you patted his canine friend's head lovingly. In that moment he wished he could frame the scene and hang it up in his room next to his brother's paintings.

He didn't know whether it was the emotion of hearing your voice for the first time or the implications that told him you weren't that scared of him anymore, but he became hyper aware that his wasn't a normal heartbeat. Unsteady and crazy like that of a lovestruck fool. Was this all it took him to fall head over heels for someone? Or was this a process that had started way before?

It still takes you some time to be fully able to speak complete sentences in his presence, but once you do, he's overcome with one of the greatest feelings of satisfaction he had ever felt in his two lives, and he can definitely agree that everything was worth the wait and the labour.

Just like Arthur, your laugh almost makes him fly through the roof, but what turns him into a formless puddle of mushy feelings and amazement is your singing voice. The first time he hears you intone a medley to him he turns to stone and just stays there, unmoving. He has an eye for finding hidden talents, but oh God was your singing unexpected. His feeling may be out of place here, but he's so, so glad to have your singing all to himself. He finds the act extremely intimate, and for how much he may believe he doesn't deserve it, he cannot deny the positive effects it has on him

Sometimes, when you're talking to him, you can see him turn his face away and smile to himself like an idiot. In those times, he's thinking about how far you two came, and how glad he is to have persisted as much as he did.

Comte

Comte emanates a slightly threatening and imposing aura but it can also be calm and placid, like his voice. First and foremost he's a gentleman, but he sometimes comes off as very intimidating to those who are not used being around such strong presences like his. Luckily, he's a very patient man, and you can feel no judgement nor malice coming from him. He's lived a long, long life, and he knows better than overstepping people's boundaries and making fun of their insecurities.

When with him, you can do things at your own pace! If you don't feel like talking then he's totally okay with it; take your time to find your own way and pace of doing things, he'll gladly help if you ever ask him (with gestures or, once you're closer, with words).

The panic you feel in his presence dissolves gradually; there are no particular events that cause a turning point in your relationship, it just happens. Despite living in such a big mansion, avoiding all life forms is pretty much impossible, so you happen to share some interactions every now and then. Sometimes it's an afternoon tea, others it's just him making small talk as you clean his room (he's either talking to himself or asks answers you can nod to if you feel more comfortable). He immediately makes it clear that he doesn't expect nor want to pressure you in delivering any answer, and if you ever happen to feel too overwhelmed he excuses himself and leaves the room.

One day as you were dusting the shelves in his office, he casually says:"The weather's really nice today." But your head doesn't move in assent, instead he receives a shocking reply despite the ordinariness of the topic. "It really is... T-there's not a cloud in the sky, either." A shocked expression momentarily appears on his features, soon replaced by a wide smile as he hums back in agreement.

He doesn't let it show but he's utterly in love with your voice. It's an addiction but he still wants to give you enough space and time to get comfortable with the idea of speaking around him, so he tries to keep himself in check all the time.

It's when he hears you singing that he can't help but feel greedy, and the rare sight of Comte's blushing cheeks greets you for the first time ever. It's his weak point, use it as you may deem ;)

(okay but jokes aside WHY would you ever want to use it against him, he'd build a pyramid with a butter knife while doing a backflip if you asked him to tbh,, the man is Whipped.)

Everything you do has a meaning and a significance, so he's always taking in even the smallest piece of information you may subconsciously slip his way. Seeing how you trust him enough to lower your guards about him makes him all the more appreciative of the bond you two share. For this reason, if you ever want to try and get over your anxiety, he'll be there to walk with you from the first to the last step of your journey.

His favorite thing is when he's holding you in his arms, nuzzled against his chest while he dozes off to your heavenly humming. It makes him feel like a prince living his happy ever after in a fairytale and he couldn't be more grateful.

#my writing #ikemen vampire #ikevamp scenarios #ikevamp headcanons #ikevamp imagines #ikevamp comte #ikevamp arthur #ikevamp theo #arthur conan doyle #theodorus van gogh #comte de saint germain #answered

[buckys-black-dress]

campus - bucky barnes x fem!reader (college au)

a/n: hey y’all! so. this is my first ever fic being posted here! i’m super excited to be sharing my work on here :) that being said, thank you for reading! please feel free to share/reblog/leave comments, but please do not repost my work! this lil one shot was inspired by the song campus by vampire weekend. enjoy! - ali

wc: 3.4k

You worked in the evenings at your coffee shop on campus during the week. Being that you went to school in a major metropolitan city, there were endless amounts of students bustling in and out of the shop daily. Day in and day out, it was pretty repetitive. The same kids, stressed, ordering a coffee and snack, and then sitting at a desk or in the upstairs attached library for hours on end, cramming or stressing about some test that was probably the following day. 

But there was one part that always made your day brighter, no matter how horrible your day had been thus far. 

Him.

His dark, long brown hair that looked soft to the touch, his large physique that had you melting in seconds, and his voice. 

He was always kind when he spoke to you, never short or rude. He always took his time to ask you how your day was going, took the time to learn your name, and even sat with you in between customers at the counter. 

Today, it was him sitting through the lunch rush, and while you whirled around the coffee machines and mugs, he watched you and made conversation while you steamed milk for the next latte that was ordered. 

“So, what are your plans for the winter break? Seeing any family?” He questioned, looking down into his own mug of dark brew. 

“Yeah, usually I go up to Canada to see my family there. I miss them a lot around this time of year, can’t wait to see them.” You shrugged your shoulders with a smile. “How about you, Bucky?”

Bucky hummed, wrapping a large hand around the body of the mug and pulled it up to his lips. 

“Yeah, not as far as you, though. Can’t wait to see my ma and sister. Miss ‘em to death.” He matched your grin. 

“Aw, how is she? Doing better now?” 

You recalled one day where Bucky came into the cafe, head hung low. You immediately poured him a cup and sat with him as he talked.

“She’s doing great now, thank God. Would’ve had to take off from school to stay with her if she didn’t, and she’s still so young. No one deserves to be bound to a hospital bed when they’re a kid.” He spoke brightly, glad he could say Rebecca was out of the hospital.

“That’s amazing, Buck! Glad to hear it.” You grinned even brighter than you had before, and Bucky couldn’t help but to stare at the sparkle in your eyes. 

You were a shy girl, and Bucky had initially first seen you in your sophomore art class. For you, it was a core requirement, but Bucky was taking courses aimlessly, trying to figure out what he wanted to do. He was at school on a football scholarship, and almost everyone knew him and his teammates. But as soon as he spotted you in that class, he knew he had to get to know you. It was hard at first, he’ll admit. You weren’t quite as responsive to him as he’d hoped, but over time when he would see you more often, he would make more conversation and you eventually warmed up to him.

You never knew what to do with Bucky. At first, you thought he was pranking you when he tried to talk to you. But over time, you let your guard down. You often fantasize about him and what it would be like to be with him. You fell for the side of him that was kind and caring, the soft side. Others saw the big, brawny football player, but that couldn’t be further from who he actually was. 

“You know, you should come to our party tonight.”

You scoffed at that. 

“And why, Bucky, would I do that?” Your tone was incredulous.

“Because, sweetheart, I want you to meet my friends?” The nickname made your heart flutter, beating wildly against your chest.

“I’ve already met Steve and Sam, and as far as I know, no one else is relevant.” You countered.

“I- Well, you’re right, but I want to have fun with you! I never see you outside of work or school.” Bucky’s eyes shone with pleading, basically begging you.

“I… Fine, maybe I’ll drop by after work…” You compromised, but Bucky’s smirk grew. 

“Yes! I’ll see ya at eight, doll, but I gotta head out and help set up.” He tapped the counter and stood up from his stool, flashing you one last smile before heading out the door, the bell ringing above it.

And fuck, you couldn’t wipe that damn smile off your face. 

-

Eight o’clock couldn’t roll around fast enough, and as soon you clocked out of work you practically ran to your apartment. Your roommates were out, so you picked out the best outfit you could put together in half an hour. 

The walk to Bucky’s fraternity house was jittery, your hands shaking uncontrollably, and it wasn’t just because of the frigid November air. 

It was exactly eight. Music was booming, you could literally feel it from the front porch. Not a minute late or early, and you were wondering why you were so nervous. Of course, it was because of Bucky, but also about the prospect of a party. You don’t go to many at all, and to go to a college party was more or less social suicide. You didn’t want to embarrass yourself, let alone in front of Bucky.

You lifted your hand to knock and after a minute or so, the door pulled open. 

And that was definitely not Bucky. 

“You here for the party?” The guy said, a brunet just a bit taller than you, but you could tell he was older than you.

“Uh- yeah-” You barely got out before he pulled you in by the arm. 

“Great, uh, I don’t have too much time for formalities or anything, but drinks are there,” he said, pointing to the kitchen, “and if ya gotta yak, please, for the love of God, do it in a toilet.” He said, leaving you in the middle of the hallway with people stumbling around you, mumbling apologies as you bumped into countless people. 

You felt like looking for Bucky was hopeless, so you stayed by the drinks for a bit, seeing if he’d come by, and after a few minutes, he turned up.

But of course, not alone.

“Y/N! You made it, I was wondering if you bailed on me!” He was basically yelling over the music.

“Oh! Yeah, I made it, I guess.” You tightly smiled, giving a fake laugh.

“Where are my manners! This is Nat, ot Natasha. We’re in the same Human Sexuality course. ‘ve known her since freshman year, can always count on her.” Bucky announced, pulling the interest of the redhead that he walked in with. 

She extended her hand with a smile as you shook her hand.

She’s fucking gorgeous. Of course Bucky’s here with her. Fuck. Why did you think he would hang out with you tonight? 

“So, Y/N, what’s your major?” Natasha asked you, her soft voice pulling you out of your intrusive thoughts.

“I uh, I’m an English Lit major with a minor in Cognitive Psych.” You responded, wanting to be done with this conversation. Done with this whole party, actually, at this point. 

“Oh shit, that’s so cool! I’m just a boring Criminal Justice major,” she answered, taking a sip from her drink.

Suddenly, her eyes lit up, looking at you in shock.

“Buck! Get this girl a drink! She’s just been standing here empty handed!” She slapped his arm, causing him to curse.

“Fuck, Y/N, let me get you something. Any preferences?” Bucky asked, already turning to the counter. 

“Uhm, not really, just no beer. Tastes like shit.” You huffed out a laugh, looking down at your hands until Bucky handed you a cup that was almost full.

“Vodka lemonade, doll, sweet enough where all you taste is the burn.” He smiled a wide smile that made you realize something. Bucky was drunk. 

“Thanks, Bucky.” You smiled and took a sip. He was right, it wasn’t strong at all, but by the time you looked up, Natasha was pulling him back to the dance floor, throwing her arms around his neck and swaying to the beat. His hands almost immediately found her hips, moving at the same pace.

Somewhere deep in your chest, you felt a pang. You knew that of course, you had no claim over Bucky. But you thought that after really getting to know him that there was something between you two.

But seeing his gaze never waver from Natasha, you guess you’d thought wrong. 

Setting your cup down on the counter, you felt a hand land on top of yours, and he spoke before you could.

“Hey, another rule I forgot to mention. Never leave your cup unattended. We try to keep a clean act here, but some assholes always slip through.” It was the same brunet from earlier.

“Oh… I was actually just about to go…” You mumbled.

“Leaving so early? You make me feel like a horrible host!” He yelled dramatically, placing a hand on his chest. “Oh God, you don’t even know me, do you?” He questioned.

“I… I’m sorry, I don’t.” You responded, fiddling with the hem of your shirt.

“Well, nice to meet you. I’m Tony, but I prefer ‘Greek God’ or ‘Ruler of the Universe,’ up to ya.” He smirked.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Tony. I’m Y/N.” You shook his hand, looking around. You just wanted to go home at this point.

“So why do you look like someone just killed your cat, Y/N?” He asked, leaning back onto the counter.

“I just… don’t really think this is my scene, I guess.” You shrugged. It was the truth, this wasn’t where you wanted to be on a Friday night. But you came for Bucky, and right now he’s dancing with a gorgeous redhead on the dance floor, while you stand in the kitchen talking to a stranger. 

“I see… have you come to one of our parties before?” He asks, scanning the crowd.

“Uh, just a few with my old roommates, but not too many, but Bucky invited me…” Your words trailed off, spotting him in the crowd, head thrown back laughing at something Steve or Natasha had said. 

“Ah, I see. Bucky.” Tony smirked. “You like him, don’t you?” He questioned.

“What?” You paled, “No! He’s just a friend, we’ve had a few classes together, that’s all.” Your face turned beet red as you looked down at your feet. 

“Listen, Y/N, I don’t know you very well, but I can tell you’re not dumb. If you like him, tell him that. I almost waited too long to tell Pep, but now we’ve been together a whole year and I can’t imagine my life without her. What’s the worst that could happen?” Tony proclaimed, bounding away and pulling a strawberry blonde girl, who you’re assuming is ‘Pep.’

And although Tony’s word instilled an unusual wave of confidence in you, what you were met with when you turned your head towards Bucky made it disappear into thin air.

There he was, in all his long-haired, muscly glory, kissing Natasha. 

Oh.

Alright.

Your mind was blank, and before you knew it you were out of the house and running back to your apartment, ignoring your roommates calling you from the couch as you held back tears. 

Of course Bucky would never go for someone like you. 

-

Waking up and having to go to class on Monday was a feat on its own. But going to work?

Impossible.

You had been avoiding going on campus all weekend, although you had to go in for a studio hour. But all in all, you managed to avoid Bucky. Thank God you didn’t have to work on weekends. 

But alas, Monday came, and Monday meant work. 

And work meant Bucky.

You took your time clocking in and pulling on your apron in the back and as you emerged, you were met with tons of customers waiting in line.

No Bucky yet. 

Hm. 

An hour into your shift, you’re whirling around behind the counter, completing orders, when he walked in. Bucky quietly sat himself down at the countertop and waited for you to greet him with a mug of hot coffee and a smile.

All you could manage was a tight, rushed smile while placing the mug in front of him haphazardly. 

Bucky’s brows furrowed as you kept up your work, not even stopping to speak a word to him. He waited and waited, but you kept to yourself and served the countless students that walked into the cafe. 

Needless to say, Bucky was confused. 

“Hey, Y/N?” He finally piped up after almost two hours of watching you. 

“Oh, yeah, need something James?” You asked, focused on pouring the right amount of milk into a cup. 

James.

You never called him James.

“Uh, no. Just wanted to ask you if everything was alright?” Bucky inquired, hoping you’d give him something. 

“Yeah, just working.” You replied shortly. 

“Oh. Alright, doll.” Bucky took the hint, you thought. 

But he still sat there until you got off your shift, which is exactly what you did not want. 

While walking out of the cafe, you didn’t even look in Bucky’s direction. You walked right out, and by the time he saw you leaving he was sprinting out of his seat, but you had disappeared into the crowd of people walking about. 

The next day was more of the same. Bucky sitting and waiting, and you sneaking out to avoid him.

On Thursday night after work, you waited for the elevator in your apartment building, and just as the doors were about to close, a tall, burly blond slid his way in.

“Oh, hey Y/N.” He nodded down at you.

“Hi, Steve.” You muttered, looking down at your shoes.

“How ya been? Haven’t seen you around that much lately.” He asks.

“Oh, just busy with work and school, finals and stuff are coming up.” You answered, pursing your lips. 

“Yeah, Bucky’s been mentioning that he hasn’t spent time with you in a while. You should talk to him.” He looked at you. 

“Steve, are you here on behalf of Bucky?” You asked, anger raising inside you.

“Well, no, not really. My girlfriend Peggy lives on the 13th floor, so I gotta head out, but just… talk to him, Y/N? He misses you, I think.” Steve punctuates his sentence with the elevator doors sliding shut and leaving you with your thoughts.

-

Of course, you didn’t follow Steve’s advice. You didn’t know how to really act around him now, but you didn’t want to completely cut him off. 

So the following week had been a bit of the same, but Wednesday came, and that’s when it all blew up in your face. 

After work, you snuck out from the back, but the alleyway that was usually empty had one single person there, waiting for you.

“Hey doll, can we talk?” 

Fuck.

“Uh, yeah, sure what’s up?” You asked, standing a mere distance from him. 

“It’s just… why have you been avoiding me?” Bucky sounded unsure, like he was crazy.

“Bucky, I’ve just been busy, I’m sorry-” You started, but he wasn’t having any of it.

“Y/N, please. It’s been almost two weeks and you haven’t said more than five words to me. Did something happen? Did I upset you somehow?” He sounded desperate, like he was really trying. 

But all your mind could think of is him that night. His arms around Natasha, his lips attached to hers. 

And then it went to all of the moments you two shared. Hours of conversations, pet names, talking about everything under the sun.

“Bucky, I just… I don’t understand.”

“What, what don’t you understand, doll?” He was pleading with you here. 

“That party… why did you invite me?” You carefully asked.

Bucky looked confused now. “Because I wanted to hang out with you and have fun?”

You shuffled your feet against the gravel, scoffing at yourself.

“So why did you spend the whole night making out with Natasha?” You asked, pretty boldly if you would admit it to yourself. You were never one for confrontation, but Bucky had put you in a corner. 

“I… doll… I’m sorry, ya gotta believe, it was never my intention to make you feel unimportant,” Bucky’s eyes flashed with realization at what he’d done, “I was drunk out of my damn mind because Tony was pregaming and… I’m sorry, Y/N.” Bucky bowed his head in shame. 

“Just… was I all a game to you? Someone who was just there to comfort you when you needed it? Did I… ever mean anything more to you?” Your voice was meek.

“Y/N, please, look at me.” Bucky’s hand found your cheek, tilting your head up. “You are the sweetest, kindest, most intelligent person I’ve met in my entire life. There is no one else like you.” He spoke passionately. 

“Then… why can’t I be enough?” Tears pooled in your eyes. “Why can’t I be the one you hold when you dance?” Why can’t I be the one who gets the guy?

“You have to believe me, I was drunk, Y/N. I know that’s no excuse, but I’m so, so, so sorry. I was just afraid. You’re always so quiet, I never know how you’re feeling, so I just assumed you weren’t interested in me the way I was interested in you. I thought I was chasing a dead end.” He confessed.

By now, fat tears were running down your face, being gently wiped away by Bucky's large thumbs. 

“I just- I know I don’t talk much, but I always talk to you. It was so hard for me to open up to you and when I saw you with Natasha I just… I thought I had driven you away. I thought you’d found someone better because I wasn’t enough for you.”  You barely choked out the words.

“Sweetheart, you are more than enough for me. I come and sit with you at work for hours just to hear you talk. I just didn’t know how to tell you without freaking you out.”

By now, the both of you were crying, trying to understand how you got here.

“I’m sorry, Buck. You’re just so different. I never thought someone like you could like someone like me.” 

“Doll, please. I wouldn’t shut up about you to Steve, he was going insane.” Bucky cracked a smile, thumbing at your cheek still.

You giggled at that, sniffling. 

“Look at us. Two big idiots, huh?” You laughed.

“The biggest idiots. But I think I’ll be an even bigger idiot if i don't do this.” He  mumbled.

“Do what?”

Before the question could leave your lips, his mouth was on yours, capturing it in a sweet kiss that you didn’t even know you were longing for. 

After coming out of your daze, your eyes fluttered open when Bucky pulled away.

“What was that for?” You breathily asked, bringing your fingers up to your lips. 

“It was to show you how sorry I am. I wanna take you out and show you off, Y/N. I wanna make you my girl. Whaddaya say?” Bucky was smiling, but you could tell he was nervous.

“Sure, Buck. I’ll be your girl. But you gotta take me out for dinner first.” You smirked, clutching Bucky’s face in your hands. 

“I’ll take ya wherever ya wanna go, sweetheart. I’d take you to the moon if you wanted.” 

#bucky x reader #bucky imagine #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes one shot #bucky barnes fanfiction #college au #college!bucky #college!bucky x reader #frat!bucky

[ad1thi]

begin again

for @rhodeslabs‘ prompt: "OK I HAD AN IDEA A FEW DAYS AGO FOR SAMTONY THAT I THOUGHT YOU'D LOVE. Ok so teacher!Sam with single parent!Tony AU where Sam is the best teacher for Tony kid of your choice :)". major shout-out to @omg-just-peachy for the beta and @warmachinesocks for sensitivity reading!!

i’m super proud of this fic, i put a lot into it, so please consider reblogging, and leaving a comment if you liked it!!

//

There isn’t a specific rule against having opinions on your kid’s parents, but Sam knows that it’s not the done thing.

As a teacher, he may know a lot about his kids, but he learns next to nothing about the people raising them. He doesn’t know their work schedules, or what goes on in their private lives, hell - sometimes he doesn’t even know their names until he meets them at a PTA meeting. It’s bad form to judge people you don’t know, and it’s even worse to judge them through the very biased lens of their kids.

There’s exceptions of course, like the kinds of folks who leave bruises on their kids - but for the most part, passing judgement on parents isn’t standard procedure.

That doesn’t stop Sam from fiercely hating Lila Rhodes’ old man with every fiber of his being.

//

Sam never imagined himself as an elementary school teacher.

His father was Air Force right up until the day he died, just like his father before him, and there was never any question about whether Sam would follow in the family tradition. He enlisted right before college, because if he was going to give away the rest of his life to the military, the least they could do is pay for the next four years of his life. He picks an English degree, because it’s easy enough that he’ll actually be able to enjoy college and not find himself holed up in a library - but not too obscure that he can’t do anything with it after.

Not that Sam ever plans on using his degree, but his Ma mentioned that it was good to have a back-up plan. Just in case.

He graduates Summa Cum Laude on a Friday morning, and catches the evening train to Texas for Basic Military Training. There’s no break, no pause, no hesitation about who he’s going to be or what he’s going to do. He has his orders by the end of the year, and only has time to make a quick phone call to his sister to let her know where he’s gonna go and make her promise that she’ll tell the family before he’s on the first flight out.

In truth, Sam enlisted because it was the thing to do. There was never a time in his life when he considered another path, when he was allowed to consider another path. But now that he’s here, he finds that he loves it. All that bullshit they say about the military giving you a sense of purpose? It’s true.

Still, there’s an itch under his skin, something that keeps tugging at him that’s telling him he can do more, be more - so when it trickles down the pipeline that the Brass is looking for two flyboys to test out the experimental EXO flight-suits, Sam jumps at the chance.

It takes about six months for him to retrain as a paramedic, which is more than enough time for him to get to know his new partner, Riley Evans - but when Sam puts on the EXO-1 FALCON and kicks off the ground; everything in him settles.

It’s a stupid way to describe the feeling - but it feels like everything in his life has been leading up to this very moment, Sam in the sky with honest to god wings, Riley on his left, and nothing but the open sky around them.

There’s others in their unit - in total, there’s about 8 members of the 58th Squadron, but Sam knows that he and Riley are the best. The others are good, there’s no doubt about it, but they don’t come close to the kind of stats that Sam and Riley have.

It’s exhilarating work, saving people instead of killing them, and it makes the blood in Sam’s veins thrum. He can’t write home about it, because the 58th is shrouded under all sorts of covert operations and need-to-know missions, but he tries his best to let his family know that he’s happy.

That he's more than happy, that he’s found his purpose, he’s found himself a brother, that he finally gets what his father meant when he said there’s nothing like a life in the service, son.

It’s the best three years of his life, and then everything goes to shit.

It’s a routine training session, not even an operation, and Riley’s doing loop-de-loops around Sam and generally being a dumbass. The wings have been upgraded recently, more manoeuvrability and decreased weight, and Riley’s making sure he gets his promised full range of motion.

He shoots up, yelling something that gets lost in the wind, and Sam watches as he goes up, and up and up - and then just as abruptly, he goes down.

It takes a couple of seconds for Sam to realise that Riley isn’t slowing down, that he isn’t flying down - he’s falling down; and those precious seconds cost Riley his life.

Later, he’ll hear people say that it wasn’t his fault. That there was some sort of malfunction in the wings, that Riley went too high too fast and the shift in altitude caused something to break.

Sam knows the truth though.

He catches Riley’s arm just as Riley hits the ground, his head lolled back and body limp, and rushes him to the med-camp, screaming so loud his voice goes hoarse. They rush him inside, a large burly man stopping Sam from following, and Sam stands there for five hours, in the blazing sun, catching glimpses of the doctors working as the wind moves the tent.

He stands there, un-moving, until someone steps out of the tent, caked in blood, and solemnly tells Sam that they’re very sorry, and they did everything they could.

Sam files his discharge papers the very next day.

Sarah picks him up at the airport.

//

She’s waiting for him outside, leaning against her car and furiously texting someone, so Sam sees her before she sees him. He’s split between being grateful that he doesn’t have to hail a cab, because those are next to impossible to catch from Louis Armstrong Intl Airport to Delacroix and he does not feel like renting a car - and being annoyed because he thought he had a couple of hours before someone was going to start asking him questions.

“You didn’t have to do this y’know,” Sam says when he’s close enough, and Sarah looks up with wide eyes, expression softening into a smile when she sees him, “I could’ve caught myself a cab.”

“That’s what I told Mama, but you think she listened?” Sam steps into his sister’s arms to accept the proffered hug, “Her baby boy coming home on his own? Like the fully grown man he is? Perish the thought.”

“You know I’m her favourite,” Sam wiggles his eyebrows, throwing his bags into the trunk of the car and making his way over to the passenger side, “I don’t get why you gotta be so mad about it.”

“Trust me, everybody and their mother in Delacroix knows you’re our mother’s favourite. There’s a little shrine for you next to the cash register. Any day now she’s gonna start leaving out candles next to your photo like you’re the second Jesus.”

Sam rubs at his chin, “You know - there’s been a couple of girls, and guys who’ve made that mistake before.”

The only reason Sarah doesn’t reach out and slap him upside on his head is because she’s driving, and Sam’s never been more thankful for his sister’s hyper-focus on road safety. She packs a mean punch.

They fall into a companionable silence, the kind cultivated by knowing each other for their whole lives, but Sam knows she’s biting back her questions.

“It’s okay,” he says finally, because you have to rip the band-aid off fast to lessen the pain and all that jazz, “You can ask.”

“I don’t got nothing to ask,” Sarah says immediately, like it’s a rehearsed answer, “but Mama thinks you’ve been hiding some major injury from us. Like a missing leg or something.”

Sam huffs at the non-question, “I got all my limbs Sarah. All ten fingers and toes I promise.”

There’s a beat and then - “My partner died on my watch. Fell out of the sky during a training exercise. I couldn’t stay there after that.”

Sarah hums, “You know what you’re going to do now you’re back home?”

Sam shakes his head, even though Sarah isn’t looking at him, “I have no idea.”

read the rest on ao3!!

#my writing #ironfalcon #samtony #sam wilson/tony stark #sam wilson x tony stark #sam x tony #sam/tony #begin again #teacher sam wilson #parent tony stark #genius lila rhodes #alternate universe

[fukurodaze]

if i ever get lost

pairing/s: third year!haiba lev x gn!reader genre: fluff, romantic tension aka best and softest tension word count: 3.2k warnings: like, one curse word this was also requested by anon! “3rd year Lev w a reader who’s struggling to pass all their homeworks, projects and quizzes (bc they piled up their works ;;) while thinking of how should they study for college/uni entrance exams?”

special thanks to nat @natszoo​ and ellie @lcnelyinthesky​ for beta reading and helping me w this!! 

LISTEN TO: somebody loves you - jeremy zucker; glitter - benee

lowercase intended!

you throw your head back when you forget the term written on the flip side of the flash card haiba lev is holding. it’s a friday night, far past anyone’s bedtimes, but final exams for the first semester start on monday and you’re not sure where to start. haiba lev, being the person who has nothing better to do, agreed to come over and flip cards with random kanji, english, and biology terms on it.

lev might also be here because it’s an open secret that he’s liked you since first year, and you’ve never answered to his feelings, but you’re thinking friends for now - until you memorise all of this semester’s kanji, english vocabulary, and biology terms, that is.

“the phospholipid bilayer is made up of...”

lev gives you time to think, his wide eyes going between the answer on the card and your thinking face.

“shit, uh, the phospholipid bilayer is made up of two layers of phospholipids?”

“makes sense, but no.” lev answers, flipping the card to show you.

“the phospholipid bilayer is made up of a polar, hydrophilic area containing a phosphate group bound to glycerol, and a non-polar, lipophilic area containing fatty acids...” you read aloud, trying to memorise what’s currently going out your mouth, in one ear, and out again through another ear.

“you know, your flash cards are pretty comprehensive.”

you raise an eyebrow, “is that... a good thing?”

“i mean, yes and no,” he takes another sip of the tea your mom had insisted to bring to guests, “it’s harder to memorise, but it’s better for details. but-”

“but?” you watch as he takes another sip. 

“i think if you really don’t know where to go, just understand the basic concept of everything. for one - what is the function of the bilayer?”

“why do you sound smart?” you question, tilting your head jokingly.

“hey! i am smart! most times! with tests like these that have essay questions, you just gotta learn the basic concept of each term and connect them.” lev advices, recounting his former volleyball captain and nekoma high school alumni, kuroo tetsuro’s, words when lev himself was barely scraping past his first semester finals when he’d just transferred.

“easier said than done in two nights,” you slouch your head on your desk, “plus! it’s not just biology. or exams.”

if memorising all these terms in the span of two days sounds bad enough, you’re still crushed with the supplementary course work and projects due next week as well. 

you let out a deep groan. you’re so tired. it’s like biology information only comes up when you’re studying for english, biology only coming up for modern literature, and mathematics somehow being inserted into the little unknown kanji in modern literature. it’s all too much at once.

“it’s all too much at once, huh?” lev places his head on your desk, only a few inches away from your face. normally, you’d push him away, pull your head back up, or maybe even give him a light slap on a bad day, but today you welcome him. 

you nod, quiet. you haven’t been able to get a breather. it’s essay this, quiz that, lab report here, test there. your mind is blank.

now, lev sits back up on the extra chair from your dining room, “have you eaten dinner?”

“why are you asking... it’s like, midnight.”

“the question still stands.”

you sigh, “nope.”

lev hums. he takes a pen, then twirls it, like his fingers possessed polar magnets that somehow let the pens never fall from his hands. but it does eventually, and when it falls with a plastic click on your wooden desk, lev visibly takes a big breath and says, “do you want to get ramen?”

you exhale through your nose and smile. “are you asking me out, haiba?”

“is it inappropriate to ask you out now?”

damn this tall dork. come to think of it, he’s never actually asked you out despite the obvious ways he’d vouch for your attention in the past. you’re quite surprised, frankly, as he’s always been so loud in the ways he’s wanted to be with you but never really made it seem like anything was going to happen. 

but, hey, it’s late enough for you to put down your doubts about him away. after all, he’s been in your room for four hours, just helping you study. he wasn’t even studying himself - he just sat there, doing almost nothing. and for a guy like him, you wonder how he’s managed to keep there for so long.

“sure.”

lev’s eyes widen. “wait, really?”

“yeah,” you begin to set aside all your study materials, “we can go to a twenty-four hour place in the city, too.”

“alright! let me get you your coat!”

“my coat?” you raise an eyebrow when he hands you the coat you wear the most, feeling both flattered and slightly surprised that he recognises it straight away from your messy room. the boy comes to retreat his coat as well from one of the hangers in your room, and he even offers to get you your socks and boots.

“alright, alright, you don’t have to be that ready to go,” you joke. 

he makes sure there is no noise when you two walk out of your house, through the suburbs of tokyo and to the nearest train to the city. 

“aren’t you two a bit young to be here so late?” the shopkeeper, an old lady, mutters under her breath. you catch it through her croaky voice when you and lev enter the place together, but you pay no attention because all you care to focus on is the smell of broth and your empty stomach.

“for two, please,” lev says, undoubtedly hearing the woman’s remark, but answering with a smile. she smiles too, and so do you, and it makes you remember all the times he’s smiled and you’ve wanted to either punch him or hold his hand. 

today just happens to be one of those days where you want to hold his hand. you shake the thought off.

when you two are seated at the ramen bar, your head falls onto your palm, tilting back to face lev, his chin covered partly by his usual maroon scarf. you had whispered to him earlier on the train what you wanted to order, and lev quickly speaks to the waiter as your tired gaze rises from from the squiggly wooden patterns embedded in the polished wooden table to the boy that’s sitting right next to you. 

at first glance, you remember haiba lev’s face to be satisfying to look at. you remember when he had just transferred to your class in the first year, and you developed the annoying habit of looking forty-five degrees to the right every time you were bored in class, as you thought his face was much easier on the eyes than complex quadratic equations or japanese history. 

for a while you wondered if it was because he certainly looked different - not only was he practically a giant, but he had eurocentric features that stood out from the majority of the student body as well (it also didn’t help that he quite literally and figuratively filled any room he was in). though, maybe, after a while, when everyone got used to the sight of a new face, you kept your line of sight at a forty-five degree angle, just peering above his cheekbones. the same way you’re looking at him right now.

and really, the only word for it is handsome. dashing. good-looking. you’ve always known that, but now that you put it into words in your head, you notice the chiseled jaw, pointed nose and emerald green eyes feel a bit more-

“what you staring at?” his baritone voice cuts through your thoughts cleanly.

you don’t like where this conversation will go. “haiba, are you doing any college entrance exams?”

lev cocks his head to one side, thinking, before nodding, “i think i am. why?”

“how are you studying for them?”

lev clicks his tongue, and it brings you to surprise, “get your mind away from studying! we’re not here in the city at, like, one in the morning to talk about college entrance exams!”

you sigh, “okay, fine. but, still, answer my question?”

“i just do practice problems for twenty minutes every day,” lev shrugs, “okay, now, can we move away from studying?”

you hum lazily, watching as two bowls of ramen arrive at the bar. he had ordered what you told him you wanted to order, both bowls almost identical in smell, shape, size, and content. almost, because lev didn’t have any spring onions in his bowl.

“haiba,” you call, earning a quick call of your name in response, “do you not like spring onions?”

lev nods so obviously that he seems proud. his chopsticks mix the entire bowl together before picking up the half-boiled egg and eating the slice whole. when he swallows it down, he asks you, “you noticed.”

“i mean, yeah,” you reply, “why do you not like them? they’re like, essential.”

lev takes a slurp of his noodles, and then a spoonful of the broth, “i just never liked their texture - which is funny, since my entire family loves adding spring onions.”

now it’s your turn to slurp into your ramen, one bite turning into two, and two turning into the entire content of the bowl. lev seems to eat twice as fast, seemingly having a strategy to cooling down the hot noodles on his spoon while simultaneously folding a piece of pork charsiu in between the loops of each spoonful of noodles, making sure that the little wrap is bathed in a little bit of broth. you find yourself smiling at his act, almost like he has a system of his own when it came to eating ramen - well, he usually had a system of his own when doing just about anything.

the meal is quiet for the most part, with little mumbles of how your tea needs a refill and the ruffling sounds between sheets of tissue to wipe off the broth around your lips. it’s fulfilling, and the look on lev’s face says he’s happy too.

when you two make it out of the ramen bar, 1am feels the same as 9pm. somehow, you’re no longer the kind of sleepy you were when you were flipping through flashcards on your desk, and instead, you’re almost dreading to go home. you think it might also be the neon lights, but there’s some kind of electricity you’re not yet willing to let rest for the night.

luckily, lev doesn’t feel the need to rush. although his steps are big and his voice is loud, he takes his time when you two make the silent agreement to make the walk to the train station as long-winded as possible. his voice is lower, and softer, this time, and when he speaks to you about his friends from his old school, you convince yourself it’s the most interesting topic in the world - because it is. because it’s lev.

when he stops in his tracks, you stop too, watching him go into a small trinket shop you’ve always seen but never had the means to afford to go in. you reckon you might own something from this store, though.

“haiba, you like little trinkets?” your eyes scroll through the shelves of delicate and virtually useless items, eyes landing on a small lion cub made of clear resin with a small blob of gold floating in the middle of its clear body. you’re not usually drawn to any animal trinkets, as you’ve gotten used to decorative objects like bows or feathers or lace, but today you think about the lion cub. despite it looking severely overpriced, you take it in your hand anyway, not noticing lev’s figure coming right behind you.

“do you want that one?” you yelp in surprise when he says that, turning around to find yourself so close to him you could smell the dried raindrops on his padded coat.

“i’m pretty sure it’s overpriced. trinkets are usually overpriced anyways.”

“wait, let me check it,” you hand lev the trinket, “how much is your keychain?”

you furrow your eyebrows, “what?”

“you know, the keychain on the bag you bring to school.”

“oh,” you try to remember the time you had saved up for that keychain, “i think it was about three thousand yen? it’s overpriced. definitely.”

“well, this one’s only two thousand and five hundred. i’ll get it for you.”

“wha- lev!” you whine, “you’re going to make me feel bad- wait what’s wrong?” you see the boy freeze up in front of you, a big smile creeping onto his cheeky face.

he doesn’t reply for a bit, and you’re faced with raised cheekbones and a wide mouth. you try again, “was it something i did? or said?”

“you called me lev,” oh, you did. 

now his smile spreads from ear to ear, and it’s spreading to you. “you never call me lev.”

“huh, well.” you bite the inside of your mouth, “i guess now i do.”

it’s enough for you to let him spend over two thousand yen on a single trinket. you watch as he waits for the trinket to be wrapped neatly in pretty paper and put in a pink cardboard bag, its motif pretty enough to be its own product in the store. 

you stand by the doorframe of the store, mouth ready to open with the words ‘i’ll pay you back’. but it seems like lev had heard you from the future, and before you could do anything, he tells you, “don’t pay me back. this is my gift to you.”

“for exams?”

he grins. “you know, lev means lion in russian.”

the bell of the store rings as you two make your way out, this time really going back to the station. you answer with a ‘really?’ at his fun fact but you keep it to yourself that you’ve known ever since he first transferred and everyone had asked him about it. 

“yeah, and the thing’s a lion cub, so, it’s like you have me all the time!” 

you giggle, walking up the steps to the train platform. “you’re really something, lev.”

lev stretches his arms out, with long limbs you swear ghost your shoulder. you get that feeling again, in your hands, where you just can’t seem to understand why you want to take his hand in yours so bad, so you ask the boy if you can hold onto the bag with your trinket. lev passes it to you, and you hate how you would’ve liked for your thumb to graze over his thumb for longer. you hate it even more when he motions you onto the train, and in a blur, you take his arm, leading him to corner seats on the train. you feel your face heat up. 

ah, so that’s how it is.

now you’re conflicted. not that lev had ever made you feel uncomfortable - no, never - but you had never known how to return his obvious feelings. he would act on them, as always, and one day, as you fell asleep one day after final semester exams in the second year, leaning back into the plastic seat of a suburban tokyo metro rail (which lev thought was very dangerous), lev had muttered in the quietest and most subtle manner, ‘what do i do with my feelings?’

then, in a haze, with eyes barely open, you had moved your head from your seat to his shoulder, painting his cheeks red - dumbstruck. he thought you forgot about it the next morning, and you barely remember, so nothing happened afterwards. yet, when you think of him, you think of hues of orange peeling the sky into purple; of freshly washed school uniforms; of heads leaning on shoulders and fingers intertwined. you don’t know how to answer him.

with lev, there is chatter and laughter and blunt remarks that almost get him slapped in the face. still, there is a box, bigger than the bag your trinket is in, that contains words that you don’t think you or lev have ever said in pure daylight and wake. 

“hey, lev?”

you want to open that box.

“yeah?”

but you don’t know how to do it yet.

“the phospholipid bilayer is made up of a polar, hydrophilic area containing a phosphate group bound to glycerol, and a non-polar, lipophilic area containing fatty acids.”

lev exclaims a series of ‘oooh!’s in delight. 

“was that correct?”

“um,” lev gulps, “i think so? i mean- i think so.”

but you will open it, sooner or later, and it rings in your head when you step off the train and walk into the neighbourhood. right now, nothing is different - the air is not heavier, his eyes do not sparkle like love interests do in the movies, and you do not look through a rose-coloured lens. monday is finals, and the weekend is studying. you tell yourself this.

lev stops at your doorstep, and you almost feel a sear in your chest at the thought of him leaving for the night. 

“so, good luck with next week, y/n.”

you nod, trinket bag in your hands, “you too, lev.”

you find that your arms are opening up, a small pout on your face as lev comes to wrap his arms around you, coats shuffling against each other as you hold each other at three in the morning. 

when you pull away from the hug, you start to ramble a bit, scrambling for new topics to bring up in hopes of just a few more seconds with him - that, and trying to stop yourself from your newfound want to cup this boy’s face in your hands and kiss him square on the lips. you wonder if he would be good at kissing, and you wonder how much you’ll regret having these thoughts tomorrow. 

but even conversation dies when you know it’s getting too cold, so you bid your sweet goodbyes and promise him not to overwork; he reminds you that it’s better to do short but frequent study sessions than fewer and highly intensive ones. you nod, your boots heavy on your doorstep, the hushed sound of keys in doors slowly becoming the only sound you hear as you assume lev’s left already.

until he calls your name.

your head spins fast towards the boy, watching as he makes long strides to stand at your doorway once again, scarf prodding the tip of his nose, so close to your face. he’s red.

“during exams, or tomorrow, or studying for entrance exams- if you ever get lost-” he pants, and unties his scarf from his neck.

“you’ll find me, okay?” the scarf comfortably hangs around your neck now, covering your mouth. he pats your head twice. it’s warm - literally. 

you barely get the chance to say anything before he darts out of your house with a quick goodbye. you’re left confused, flustered, and excited at once, and this time, you think you might have the words as to why. 

you like to imagine you taste sweetness, see eyes that sparkle, and feel butterflies in your stomach. 

“it might not be so bad,” you whisper, looking down at the pretty little bag containing one unnecessarily expensive item lev had bought you.

right; you have feelings for him too. 

then you make up your mind: you’ll tell him next friday. and if your finals stand between tonight and next friday, then, all the more motivation to get through them, right?

you make sure to set an alarm for seven in the morning, kanji textbooks lined up for tomorrow. 

#haikyuu x reader #lev haiba #lev x reader #haiba x reader #haiba lev imagine #hq x reader #haikyuu!! x reader #haikyuu fluff #haikyuu scenarios #lev scenarios #haiba scenarios #lev fluff #haiba lev #haiba lev x reader #lev haiba x reader #hq fluff #nekoma x reader #nekoma fluff

[itsclydebitches]

I got witcher!Ciri too! I kind wonder wha would happen if she died tho, dont wanna put geralt or her through that but I love angst lmfaoo. The game got really confusing at point cause I you have to learn a bunch of politics and how this world works and I didnt pay that much attention so I'm sure I'll get those moments in my second playthrough too I'm playing something in the hearts of stone thnig, it was lower level so I'm assuming you should play that first? a main quest with the asshole ghost in the wedding and wow I fucking hate it, it's so umcomfortable to watch geralt be this gross n weird lol, I'm not too familar when Shani either so watching her get mad when I get geralt to say he wouldnt do what the ghost is doing is so annoying lol, OH AND the ghost is a creepy fuck! shani babe you can do much much better than an asshole who talks about his dick and fucking "maidens" every other sentence!! Geralt really does get thrown into so much shit huh I'm tempted to read the books cause I do rly like the world and most- some characters but yeah reading about yen being yen wold be one of the things to stop me, what are some of the plot points that put you off? if you don't mind sharing And yeah I'd so be up for more content esp with ciri, would be cool to see them work together, even with how combat works in this game with npcs lmao

Woo witcher Ciri ending! :D If you enjoy putting yourself through pain I recommend looking up that other ending on YouTube because there are definitely some nice angst shots in the cut scenes. I watched and then promptly went, “I don’t need to play that for myself” lol. But yeah, hard agree on things getting confusing, especially towards the end. I completely missed stuff like the fact that my actions would actually impact this war, rather than the war simply being backdrop, or that Ciri’s powers were more than just the ability to teleport short distances. So by the time I was getting called on to murder kings and Avallach was taking us to totally different worlds, I had a very John Mulaney approach of, “This might as well happen. Things are already so goddamn weird.” Which, you know, really isn't the game's fault. It's what I get for jumping into the third game first and while I don't regret that at all, the story has absolutely deserved a second playthrough where I actually understand all the basic stuff I should have known going in.

Yeah, Hearts of Stone comes first. You can do any of the side quests you’d like from either DLC, but I’d recommend keeping Blood & Wine’s main storyline for the final push. But yeah, that ghost dude is, uh… something. I quite like the wedding on the whole—I really enjoy Shani, dancing is fun, O’Dimm is being a wonderfully evil dude—but yeah, dead dude is definitely a creep. Which is partly one of the things that turned me off from the books. It has the same ‘Guy trying to write women’ energy of the games but… worse. I’ve read a lot of excerpts over the years and so many of them turn me off. There are a ton of small things, like Triss importantly informing the witchers (who are all like 100+ years old??) about periods and that Ciri can’t train today because of hers (a moment that much of the fandom celebrates as... progressive?), or Triss and Yen getting super catty with one another over Geralt, to much bigger things like Ciri nearly getting raped/being involved in intimate acts with really questionable consent. A lot of the Witcher has a “This didn’t age well” vibe to it which, to be fair, isn’t entirely the fault of the author. The story is the product of 90’s Polish culture and, again, a man trying to write some pretty complex subjects from an arguably ignorant place, which makes much of the work eye-rolling for me at best, outright uncomfortable at worst. (Which I think is why I enjoy the games far more. I have agency in this questionable world, the ability to tailor it somewhat to my own beliefs and desires, which makes moments when that's taken away, like Geralt automatically commenting on how good Yen looks at a funeral, all the more frustrating). I obviously am not a Geralt/Yen fan, which sours a great deal of the plot. From what I got through the pacing felt like a slog and, more importantly, much seems to have been lost in the translation from Polish to English. (I continually hear about how amazing the dialogue is, but sadly that hasn’t come across in translation for me. Much of it is... awkward.) The parts I’ve heard about/read excerpts of that I’m most interested in—Geralt’s hanza—ends tragically and I’m… just not here for that right now. Which isn’t to say it’s badly written or anything, just that it’s not my personal cup of tea, especially nowadays with a pandemic and what all going on lol. I look at what I know of the series as a whole and go, “Do I really want to read five books filled with outdated representation for women, that old-school fantasy violence that turned me off GoT, with a super depressing ending, all wrapped up in an iffy translation and a style I don’t think does well in long-form storytelling? … Not really.”

Still loved most of the short stories and I’ve heard that many people liked the audio book versions when they couldn't get into the text, so I might give that a go someday. I’d prefer to actually have read all the source material for a fandom I’m spending so much time in, but I sadly just haven't had the urge yet. If you do read them, anon, you’ll have to tell me what you think. It’s becoming quite the divisive topic, especially as Netflix fans turn to the books, and—putting aside that everyone’s tastes will always differ—it’s interesting to hear not just whether someone had fallen in love with the books or not, but if they haven’t what about them prevented that. It's very much a case of one person's "That was awful" being another's "Are you kidding me? That's the best part!"

#witcher #mymetas

[stvpidinlove]

[ JESSICA VU, SHE/HER, CIS WOMAN ]  —  [ PRIMROSE “PRIM” TRAN ]  is a child of  [ MELINOE ]  with the power of  [ MEDIUMSHIP ] .  they were born in  [ 2000 ]  and have been in nemean lion since  [ 2015 ] .  with the change, they  [ ARE TRAINING IN ]  the  [ HERO ]  role which makes sense since they’re usually  [ DRAWING PORTRAITS & MAKING CANDLES ] .  if you’d like to meet them try the  [ SUN ]  building .

yes...here i am again...!

BASICS

hometown: evanston, il

eye color: hazel

hair color: brown

height: 5′5

sexuality: bisexual

birthday: september 5, 2000 ( virgo )

BIO

prim’s parents met in college, at georgetown university. it was a long and arduous journey for both of them, though in very different ways. her father came from money in vietnam, but he moved to the states for college and didn’t speak much english, he only read it well enough to meet the requirements for foreign admittance (plus, he was exceptionally intelligent). meanwhile, prim’s mother was the daughter of immigrants who had always wanted more for their daughter. they were thrilled when she managed to get all the grants and scholarships necessary to attend, since they never could have afforded to send her to such a prestigious school otherwise.

naturally, prim’s mother was granted work study and she got a job in the main office, which is how the two met. they first bonded over a shared language and she was often tasked with helping him, and eventually she offered to help him with his college transition outside of the office.

and when i say prim’s parents...i mean the people who raised her. these two would fall in love in college, but neither admitted it aloud, out of fear of ruining the close friendship they’d forged.

after graduation, they both stayed in the dc area, but they didn’t talk as regularly. at some point, prim’s father met a darkly enchanting woman at the opera, of all places. in the grand theater of the kennedy center, their eyes met from across the expansive room, and prim’s father would go on to explain it to his daughter as “spellbound at first sight.” because it wasn’t love, it never became love, something he knew even before she became pregnant with his firstborn child. it felt nothing like the safety and warmth he’d felt with his college love who he’d never properly dated.

once melinoe was gone, prim’s father became a single parent in his late-twenties, a responsibility which he took on with care and composure. after his own experiences in the united states, he wanted to give his daughter a name that would be unique and beautiful but familiar to americans, so he chose primrose after the plant common to the dc area. his own parents back home were horrified by their single son fathering a child, though when they finally met their granddaughter face to face, they couldn’t help falling in love with her innocent face.

he reconnected with prim’s eventual stepmother when his daughter was five years old, and they got the second chance that few people ever do. they were married less than a year later, which was still a long time coming.

soon thereafter, prim’s stepmother got pregnant, and prim became a big sister to three rambunctious triplet boys. she remembers when it was just her and her father, but she can’t imagine life without her mom and brothers, who she’s particularly close to.

the only thing that stood in the way was the fact that she’s always felt different, and her father was somewhat secretive when she was a child, but by the time her powers manifested at the age of twelve, she knew why she was seeing people that others weren’t. it’s impossible to describe the feeling of playing alone in her room with polly pockets and suddenly having another girl join in. in this way, prim was rarely alone, but often felt isolated. it was like having imaginary friends with real stories and families and a whole history.

it was difficult and scary at first, but prim learned to take it in stride. she really liked hearing their stories, looking at obituaries that featured black and white photos of ghosts she knew from when they were bearing much younger faces she hardly recognized. she tried not to think too hard about the ghosts her own age, she just did her best to be there for them, because if she was seeing them, it must be for a reason, right?

her power was never something she wanted to control better, she liked acting as a conduit for those who happen to pass through her life, but she wasn’t much good at fighting off monsters and needed to come to nl for her own safety. despite her lack of fighting skills, she so deeply wanted to help people, so when the time came she decided to pursue the hero track.

RANDOM FACTS

prim totally can summon ghosts of her own volition...mostly. it takes a lot of effort and full on seance vibes right now, but she’s still learning! she prefers it when the spirits reach out to her, because that’s a whole lot easier and more exciting.

she actually kind of loves her powers, even when it gets heavy. most of the time ghosts just want the company or they don’t even know they’re dead, so she tries to be their friend and listen to their stories.

she often draws portraits of the ghosts she meets, particularly the ones she can’t get out of her head, who linger for days or weeks or months on end.

because ghosts are temporary, she tries not to get too attached, and it’s also a good thing because not all ghosts are that pleasant to be around and she doesn’t have a lot of luck with getting them to go away.

prim does have a decent collection of crystals and some tarot cards (and a crystal ball that is purely decorative). one of the only ways she’s learned to summon spirits is by using crystals to set her intentions, though it’s still pretty hit or miss.

super open and honest, esp about her powers! def doesn’t believe in using them for ~evil (like pranks or similar things lolol)

POSSIBLE CONNECTIONS

someone desperately longing to speak to a dead loved one (or a not-so-loved one?) 

someone who feels guilty about the death of another and the deceased reaches out to prim to help them convince the living person that the death wasn’t their fault???!

a flirtationship that prim doesn’t take too seriously because she’s friendly and can never tell when someone actually likes her. whether your char is on the same page or not is up to you!

someone Intrigued by her because she’s so upbeat and cheerful even though she’s constantly seeing dead people

ur char is convinced a ghost is haunting them and prim is like i promise u are not being haunted <3

someone who IS being haunted and doesn’t know it hehe

#as always i wrote this in the dead of night so if u see typos no u don't <3 #nlintro #𝙵𝙸𝙻𝙴𝙳 𝚄𝙽𝙳𝙴𝚁 ( 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒓𝒐 ) * prim #i just want to have more chars than vee

[fishoutofcamelot]

I saw your r recent contribution to the post about hard vs soft magic systems and I agree wholeheartedly. You also mentioned having a bunch of worldbuilding and stuff about the magic system, and I was wondering if you'd be willing to share some?

(For reference, this is the post in question)

Certainly! While the worldbuilding/magicbuilding hellscape i was describing in the notes is actually in regards to an original-content wip I've been working on, i also have a LOT of headcanons regarding the BBCM magic system too! (Do not ask about my wip's magic system, because i won't be able to shut up about it)

WARNING: long post ahead and mobile won't let me include a cutoff/read-more line. If you're not interested, get ready to scroll down like your life depends on it (and it does).

So! First things first. Here's what we know about the BBCM magic system:

Magic requires spells, most of the time. This seems like a no-brainer, but still an important distinction. There are a lot of magic systems that don't require vocalized spells - Avatar: the Last Airbender, Fullmetal Alchemist, and Ninjago, to name a few. Spells are rather common for wizard/witch/medieval fantasies, and are typically used to control and channel the intent of the magic. This suggests that the magic of BBCM is some kind of force or energy that needs spoken commands to control.

Spells are repurposed words from Old English, aka the language of the Old Religion. (Let's ignore the obvious anachronistic nightmare of the fact that Old English is exactly the same language they would've been speaking in this time period.)

The use of a spell causes someone's eyes to flare gold, plus that fancy wooshing sound effect that Arthur miraculously never hears. This suggests that magic somehow changes your physiology, although it could be also just be a side effect of channeling.

However, magic doesn't always require a spell. Though never fully explained, it appears to be something only innate magic users are capable of - Merlin, Morgana, Mordred. It is something less controllable than spellwork, typically governed by moments of strong emotion rather than logical intent.

The show consistently flip-flops between the idea that magic is something you're born with, and that Merlin is rare for being born with magic. It's never clarified just how someone acquires magic. Gaius asks Merlin where he studied, suggesting that it's something you can learn, while Balinor claims that you either have it or you don't. Though not confirmed fact, i suspect it's similar to how it works in the show Supernatural. There, some witches are natural-born, while others are taught (and some get their powers from spooky demon deals).

It has a life-for-a-life policy. Basically like the Law of Equivalent Exchange from Fullmetal Alchemist, a life cannot be created without another one being sacrificed first. This rule only canonically applies to creating life/the Cup of Life, and any other possible applications aren't addressed.

This rule apparently doesn't apply to animals, as Merlin brought a dog statue to life without killing anyone (that we know of), and Valiant's shield had three live snakes in it. However, it's possible that lives were taken as payment in the process of animation without Merlin's knowledge, but it never happens on screen so we don't know. So either a) animals don't have souls to exchange in the life-for-a-life policy, b) they do but it happens off-screen, or c) those animated animals aren't actually alive.

The Cup of Life infuriates me from a magicbuilding perspective. Ignoring the obvious question of how it came into the druids' possession, its existence isn't clearly defined. Does it require the fancy rain ritual that Nimueh gave it, or was she just extra? Why does drinking from it give you life, while bleeding into it makes you undead and also mindlessly obedient to the sorcerer who made you as such? Were there life-for-a-life consequences for creating an immortal army? Wtf happened on the Isle of the Blessed to allow Merlin to "master life and death", and what does that even mean? All valid questions that never get answered.

Spells sometimes need need a 'source'. Think the staff from "The Tears of Uther Pendragon" and Morgana from "The Fires of Idirsholas." It is unclear what makes these spells different/special.

There is a power hierarchy. Some spells are too powerful for some practitioners to cast, although the reason for this is unclear. Does it drain you of energy/life force? Do you exhaust/overwork your magic muscles? Do you get a little pop-up that says 404 Magic Not Found? Unclear.

Magic is something that can be trained and improved. For example, Morgana gradually became more powerful over time. Merlin naturally had a lot of power straight off the jump and just had to discipline it, but he's a ~special~ case so he doesn't count.

There are some subsets of magic that are definitively born traits. Morgana is a Seer, possessing this capability even before her magic manifested. Likewise, Merlin is a dragonlord, which he inherited from Balinor. Although Balinor did mention that it wasn't a sure thing he would have the ability until he faced a dragon, so there may be some variation in whether or not someone lucks out in the Magic Gene Pool. This may suggest that natural-born magic is hereditary, as both Morgana and her sister Morgause had it. Vivienne and Gorlois both probably didn't have it, otherwise you'd hear Uther bellyaching about it, which raises the question of where they got it? A grandparent, perhaps? Maybe they both carried a recessive magic gene or something...

Unless you're Merlin, magic can be taken away by the Gean Canagh. It's not explained how this is possible, though, as it's never explained how you acquire magic in the first place. But Merlin never lost his magic because he's "magic itself" which if you ask me is just a deus ex machina wrapped inside a headache wrapped inside a heaping load of chosen one bullcrap. But it's canonical lore, so we have to consider it.

Despite my previous complaints, i actually find the idea of Merlin being "magic itself" rather intriguing. Is he a creature of magic, like a dragon or a questing beast? Is his body made of magic, like how a statue might be made of clay? Does it run through his veins like blood? If this is the case, then why didn't he suffer more severe ramifications for losing his magic? Why didn't it kill him? How did it restrict his magic in the first place? Placebo effect? The fanon explanation is that he's "the living embodiment of magic" but that makes my bullcrap richter scale shoot off the charts because that makes NO sense whatsoever. "Son of the earth, sea, and sky?" What does that MEAN?

There is a vivid link between magic and the Old Religion, which has its own beliefs and rituals and deities. Primarily, the Triple Goddess. The Triple Goddess is actually an existing deity in Neopaganism and Wicca. This also suggests the existence of the Horned God, another entity from neopagan lore and her masculine consort/counterpart, but that is never confirmed.

WHO. OR. WHAT. IS. THE. FREAKING. DOCHRAID. She's described as a creature of magic, which suggests that humans/humanoids can be creatures of magic, fueling my theory that 'Emrys' isn't human.

Destiny exists. It is unclear who creates/writes destiny, who controls it, who or what is privy to knowing about it, and what that means for the concept of free will.

The crystal cave is a thing, i guess. It's the heart of magic, is haunted by Taliesin, and is filled with prophetic crystals. I actually skipped the episodes that involve this stuff because i disliked them, so i don't know much about the Crystal Cave. Apparently ghosts can manifest there tho???

The veil is a thing too. It is unclear how some spirits can retain their human figure and mentality, like Balinor and Uther, but others become dorocha. I imagine its also like Supernatural - being a ghost for long enough will drive you insane, and though it takes a while all spirits eventually turn into dorocha.

Creatures of magic exist. These are normal creatures who have magic imbued into them somehow.

Okay, i think that's everything we know. It seems like a lot, but keep in mind that all of those rules are VERY nebulous. But that at least gives us a jumping-off point!

So here's my working theory/headcanon.

Magic comes from a connection to the spiritual energies of the Triple Goddess. Kinda like a third eye, and for the sake of simplicity that's what we'll call it. The druids have adapted a way of life that revolves around faith and magic, likely in an attempt to cultivate and one day attain this Third Eye. Like Gaius, who trained with the High Priestesses, you can study and practice and discipline yourself into acquiring it.

Magic is a cosmic force owned by the Triple Goddess, accessible to anyone with the Third Eye link. Imagine the Triple Goddess as a milkshake and the so-called Third Eye as a straw. The studying and training that people dedicate their whole lives to is basically just looking for/building a straw.

However, some people are just naturally born with a straw in hand, but require practice and study to be able to properly use it. Or like Morgana, it takes a few years for them to even find it/activate it.

Spellcasting is essentially just sucking through the straw, and the vocalized spells gives that Magic Milkshake some purpose/intent/shape.

The bigger the spell, the more Magic Milkshake is required. Some people have bigger/wider straws than others, so magic comes easier for them. But with enough training and practice anyone can widen their straw/strengthen their straw-sucking muscles to cast with the big leagues.

The Gean Canagh devours your straw/Third Eye. Perhaps you have to rebuild a new spiritual connection from scratch, or perhaps it permanently severs any and all connection to the Triple Goddess. Like getting excommunicated from the Church, only worse.

The Crystal Cave was/is the Triple Goddess's home, but she's out of town on a business trip atm so she left the spirit of her most loyal follower, Taliesin, to look after the place. It's super powerful and has all those cool crystals because it's hella steeped in her magic juices.

While most magic users get a standard-issue straw, others get Fancy Premium Membership Straws. Normal joe shmoes like Gilli have plastic straws, while a Seer like Morgana has a metal one or something (can you tell this metaphor is starting to get out of hand?). Those Premium Straws are only hereditary in nature. So there's a Seer Straw, or a Dragonlord Straw, or a Disir Straw, but it's also not a sure thing you'll even inherit it at all. It's all luck of the straw draw.

Creatures of magic aren't just animals that possess straws, though. They've been made/produced using magic rituals and processes and spells. Like Nimueh's afanc, nathairs, wraiths, shades, etc. So probably like a thousand years ago, some especially powerful shmuck came by and invented dragons. Which leads me to an important question: WHO THE HELL THOUGHT THE DOCHRAID WAS A GOOD IDEA.

Im reluctant to say these creatures were invented by the Triple Goddess, though, for reasons I'll get to in a moment.

So this still leaves the whole Cup of Life, life-for-a-life policy thing to be explained. I do believe that the policy is universally applicable to the creation of souls, and i do believe that animals have souls too. But individuals get their souls exchanged for those of equal value. So every soul has a certain weight to it, and you need to exchange souls of equal weight to create one. So when Merlin brought the dog to life, some random dog somewhere dropped dead against his knowledge.

Creating undead armies involves killing them and then resurrecting them. That's what 'undead' means. Zombies. So yes, to raise an immortal zombie army, Morgause's spell probably caused a bunch of people around the world to mysteriously drop dead.

Which leaves two last things to explain: destiny and Merlin.

Destiny is, i think, a combined effort between human choice and supernatural predeterminism. That is, for the most part humans make their own choices, but there are occasions where the Triple Goddess has to step in and do some course correction. Uther starting the Purge was free will, but Arthur and Merlin's destiny was an act of divine damage control. The Triple Goddess sets destiny into motion and informs a chosen few about it.

Okay SO. That leaves Merlin. And this is the bit im kinda excited about.

The Triple Goddess is a reservoir of power, a cosmic force of spiritual energy intrinsicallu linked to the fabric of the universe. People can spiritually reach out and tune into/channel her supernatural frequencies. But as a milkshake cannot suck itself through a straw, the Triple Goddess likewise cannot cast a spell. She can influence destiny, but she can't physically cast any magic on her own. That's why she didn't create the creatures of magic.

So a few years ago, Uther hecked up big time. And people of magic, the Triple Goddess's followers and acolytes and straw connections, were dying in droves. I can imagine that all those Third Eye tethers snapping en masse was painful for her to go through. She relies on the tethers to remain connected to the real world, and if all the tethers snap then she will be cut off from Earth altogether. And Earth requires magic to continue existing/thriving, so that's kind of a no-no.

So, the Triple Goddess knew that the only way to save the world was through divine intervention. Thus began the destiny of the Once and Future King and Emrys. She knew humanity is bigoted so there was bound to eventually be a repeat of Uther, so she made OaFK resurrectable, so they could keep him on the bench in case anyone ever needs him again.

Where does Merlin/Emrys fall into things?

Well. The Triple Goddess knew that saving her people and the world would require an immense magical undertaking, something no ordinary magic user would be able to pull off. But she has the power, if only she could use it. But a human can. So the Triple Goddess decided to be reborn into the body of a dragonlord's son. Merlin. Emrys. Magic itself.

Of course, this whole Being Born As A Human Thing is tricky, and as anyone familiar with reincarnation knows, you don't usually recall your past lives. So she became Merlin, unaware that he was ever the Triple Goddess. (Although she did add a clause saying she'd be destined to remember her past life eventually, which got hecked up for reasons ill explain later)

That's why so many creatures of magic/magic users recognize Merlin by his presence, why thr druids carry such reverence for him. Whereas the sidhe and other individuals don't recognize him, because they are blinded by heresy. They may have a spiritual connection to the Triple Goddess, but do not use her magic as she intended, and she's too busy wearing jaunty scarves to excommunicate them herself.

Why get the Once and Future King involved when she could just save everyone herself? Well, the Triple Goddess prefers to let the humans keep their agency and save themselves, and would rather remain in the role of protector/helper. Its just her nature.

But if that's the case, then why did Arthur's destiny fail? It's simple: Kilgharrah.

Remember what i said about the Horned God, counterpart to the Triple Goddess? Yeah, that's Kilgharrah. Like the Triple Goddess, he's another power reservoir, but he's jealous because people worship her and not him. He is against everything she does and actively seeks the destruction of the Triple Goddess's magic/influence for Jealous Evil Reasons. To stop him, the Triple Goddess enlisted some of her followers to bind him into the body of a dragon (perhaps this is how dragons were created) so he would never be able to do that. Years later, the Purge happened and "Kilgharrah" got locked away, further cut off from his power.

When Merlin walked in, unaware that he used to be the Triple Goddess, Kilgharrah seized his chance at revenge and manipulated Merlin into setting him free. Then, once free, he decided to lay claim to the power vacuum left by the Triple Goddess's quasi-absence. He began controlling destiny in whatever limited capacities he could, using magic of his own to permanently bury Merlin's knowledge of his past life. Then he ensured that Arthur would die and the Triple Goddess's magic would never return. But since he doesn't have FULL control over destiny (his powers are still limited by his dragon form, after all), he couldn't rewrite the bit where Arthur gets benched in Avalon. He's probably conspiring with the sidhe to ensure Arthur stays trapped there forever, or else he would've come back a long time ago.

As for how the Gean Canagh took Merlin's magic...well, yes, it devoured his Third Eye straw, but those are created by a strong spiritual connection to the Triple Goddess. And since he's literally the big TG himself, all he had to do was find himself again (by returning to his old home, the Crystal Cave) to recreate a new one.

Over the last 1500 years, Kilgharrah/the Horned God has been steadily accruing followers and worshippers in the hopes that one will become strong enough to release TG's bonds on him. Then he can kill her once and for all and claim full dominion over the universe, with the sidhe to support him.

I imagine that's how Arthur's resurrection would happen - Arthur and the rest of the dead Round Table are in Avalon when they learn about the treachery and plot to kill Merlin/take over the world, and spend the next few hundred years fighting their way out of Avalon.

Okay, I think that just about covers it. God, that was long. Any questions?

#i should probably write a fic for this huh #bbc merlin #merlin bbc #merlin #bbcm #ask #magicbuilding #fish post

[magic-and-moonlit-wings]

Chapter 53: Identity

Becoming The Mask

Barbara was at work when her phone buzzed. She didn't have time to check it – she was busy with a toddler who had swallowed a paperclip.

If it had gone into the kid's stomach, things might have been okay. There was some risk of the sharp point doing damage, or the wire catching and tangling in the intestines, but the rounded ends of the paperclip meant there was also a chance it would simply be passed through.

Unfortunately, instead of ingesting the paperclip, the child had aspirated it, so it needed to be removed from her right lung.

Immediately after Barbara got out of surgery, she had to work up the x-rays of a teenager who'd crashed his Vespa into a tree. Nothing was obviously broken and he didn't have a concussion, but there was a risk of hairline fractures.

And then, (because why not,) there were three successive cases of people who had stuck odd things up their butts and gotten those things stuck.

By the time she was able to sit down for two minutes and gulp some coffee, she had forgotten about her buzzing phone.

She didn't even look at her phone until she was leaving for the night. Barbara got it out to turn the ringer off, since she wasn't supposed to be on call that night, which never stopped anyone when they were short-staffed, which was often, and she was tired enough it would probably be dangerous for her to be treating patients again until she'd had some sleep.

(Also, she was probably tired enough that she shouldn't be driving, but Barbara never let herself think about that.)

After finding out she'd missed something as big as her kid sneaking around to fight a secret magical war, Barbara was trying to reassert some boundaries between her time at work and the rest of her life.

Her phone announced that she'd missed a notification.

It was just an exclamation point. What had that been supposed to mean?

Barbara turned her phone off and drove home.

"I'm back, kiddo!"

"We're in the kitchen!"

'We' meant Jim and Toby. Jim was pulling a shepherd's pie out of the oven. Toby and Barbara both inhaled appreciatively.

"You said it's lean ground beef, right?" asked Toby. Jim smiled and rolled his eyes.

"Yes, Tobes. You know if you cut all the fat out of your diet you'd get protein poisoning, right? Mom, back me up."

Barbara took a moment to remember this. She wasn't a nutritionist – she'd encountered this concept in a novel a few years ago and looked it up to see if it was true.

"He's right," she said. "It's the rarest kind of food poisoning. Not much risk of it happening here and now." Not in a city in the United States, haven of processed and instant foods.

Jim portioned out the steaming vegetables and meat and mashed potatoes. Barbara added some sour cream to hers.

"Is Nana out tonight?" she asked Toby.

"Yeah, she and some of her chess buddies are doing a tournament. Informal, I think, but maybe a prize? Like, a gift certificate or something."

"We should see if we can get her and Mr Strickler to play a match sometime," said Jim. "I think I heard once that he's a grandmaster, but I don't know how often he plays anymore."

That combination, Nancy and Walt, made Barbara's brain click and remember the significance of that exclamation point she'd sent herself.

"So … it's been a month. Have you made any progress on telling your friends' families about trolls?"

Both boys froze.

"We gave Vendel a bunch of family stories," said Toby. "Once he's done reading it, we'll find out if we have permission or we're going behind everybody's backs."

"Guess I should warn him the clock's ticking again," said Jim.

"We could maybe tell people now and say we're LARPing, and tell the whole truth later?" Toby suggested. "That's what my therapist thinks is going on."

"You told your therapist?" asked Barbara and Jim together, in very different tones.

Jim's eyes were huge. He had a white-knuckled grip on his silverware. "Tell me you didn't use the word 'Trollhunter' in front of her."

"… No?" said Toby in confusion. "I just said your character was a magic knight on a quest to fight an evil troll."

Jim sighed. "Okay, that's generic enough it's probably safe. Don't use any specific names or terms, though."

"Dude, you seriously think someone is spying on a random high schooler's therapy appointments?"

"Someone is spying on a random high school's entire history class," Jim pointed out.

The rest of the meal was tense. After they were done eating and cleaning up, Toby went back home, and Jim went upstairs to do homework.

Jim's yearbook from the previous year was on one of the shelves in the living room. Barbara brought it over to the couch.

She could use this to get an idea of who Jim and Toby's classmates were, at least.

Jim didn't have many signatures in the book. There was Toby's, of course. The rest all had generic messages – "Have a great summer" from Eli Pepperjack, "Have fun this summer!" from Shannon Longhannon, "See you in September" and a doodled smiley face from Claire Nuñez, and "Enjoy summer break" from Seamus Johnson.

People Jim knew? Or random classmates he approached so he wouldn't look 'weird' for not caring about yearbook autographs?

Barbara made note of all the names. She felt like Jim had let slip that the other children who knew about trolls were girls, early on, but she couldn't quite remember for sure and didn't want to rule anyone out. She flipped to the class photos to match names to faces, so she could keep watch for the signatories hanging around her house or across the street.

+=+

Enrique carefully printed the English alphabet. It hadn't been that hard to mimic from a reference image, but this was his first time writing it independently. He haltingly hummed the song to keep track of his place.

"Pretty good," said Claire, reading over his shoulder. He fought the urge to turn and strike. He was (supposed to be) safe. Claire wasn't purposefully lurking in his blind spot to attack him. "Definitely way better than my first scribbles. I guess next you should learn to write your name."

On another piece of paper, she printed it for him to copy.

The first letter was N. Sensible enough. Except wasn't that one pronounced 'nuh' instead of 'en' when it was in a word and not the alphabet? He shrugged. Claire knew this writing system better than he did – if she said Enrique started with N, he'd go with it until he had some evidence otherwise.

The second letter was O. He frowned. That … didn't feel right. Shouldn't it be an R?

The third letter was T. He stopped.

"Read it," he said to Claire, trying not to growl.

"Not Enrique," she said, without shame. "You only copied the 'Not' part so far."

Angrily, Enrique scribbled out the letters he'd written so far and the bit he'd copied from. In fast, shaky letters he copied out the rest of it and underlined it.

"No," said Claire, getting angry in turn, "you don't get to use that name. That's my brother's name, not yours."

"The kid can share. It's mine now."

"Oh, come on," Claire scoffed. "You're, like, hundreds of years old. I get that Jim's used to being called 'Jim' after sixteen years in deep cover or whatever, but you can't possibly have gotten that attached to 'Enrique' in just a few months."

… Did she really not know?

"It's the only name I've got."

"Bullshit. Other trolls had to call you something when you were in the Darklands."

Now he growled for real. "That wasn't a name."

"What, some kind of codename system? Then I'd think you'd welcome the chance to start using your real name again."

"I don't know what it used to be!" he snapped. "No one exactly kept track of who they were grabbing. And if we lived, it was 'Changeling' this and 'Impure' that if it wasn't just 'hey you'! Enrique's the first name I can remember having and you don't get to take it away from me!"

He stood there breathing hard for maybe a full minute. He'd cracked the pen. There was gloppy ink on his clenched fist. He licked it off before ink could drip on the floor, and popped the plastic into his mouth.

Claire's voice, when she spoke again, was a lot softer.

"How did anyone tell the Changelings apart, if … if you didn't have names?"

Enrique snorted. "You think they bothered? One Changeling's as good or as bad as any other. S'probably part of why Jim and the big Boss Man were so quick to change sides when they had the chance."

"Even the other Changelings?"

"The rule about not getting attached starts early."

Claire looked like she was about to cry. That … that wasn't fair, she didn't get to make him feel bad for her when they were in the middle of a fight …

"We give each other nicknames, sometimes," he admitted. Imp had been a popular one, if nothing else about a Changeling stood out. "Us or the goblins. But then when we get up top, it's like a rite of passage, you know? We get a name then. Using the old nickname's … like an insult. Saying you weren't worth making a surface agent."

Claire blinked rapidly a few times, then hugged him. He almost clawed her before realizing it wasn't an attack.

"Oi, easy!"

"You can't have my brother's name," she said stubbornly. "But we'll figure something else out."

"Not exactly your call to make," Enrique retorted.

"Don't ruin the moment."

"What moment–?!"

+=+

Previous Chapter (Troll Dads become official!)

Table of Contents

Next Chapter (Angor Rot’s debut!)

Not featured in the above chapter: Jim's internal panic, as he frantically tries to figure out how much Toby has already told Dr Archenn and how to warn Toby off telling her anything else, without exposing yet another Changeling's identity to humans.

Featured in the above chapter: my headcanon that Otto addressing Not Enrique as 'Imp' in early Season 2 was a deliberate insult. I've actually got a different nickname in mind for Not Enrique, it just didn't feel natural to bring it up in this scene. Imp, short for Impure, is basically a 'starter nickname' that all Changelings have in the Darklands, until and unless something about them stands out enough that the other Changelings start calling them something else.

#Becoming The Mask chapters #Trollhunters #Tales of Arcadia #Changeling Jim #My Fanfiction #Monday is fanfic day! #Dr Barbara Lake #Tobias Domzalski #Claire Nuñez #Not Enrique #Changelings #backstory #names

[emerald-studies]

Diverse Perspectives | Discussion 2

I talked with @a-sucker-for-rosalie for her perspective as an Indian-American, Muslim woman and who is also the daughter of immigrants.

*Tumblr deleted this post AGAIN when I tired to post this, so again sorry for the mistakes*

[ It is required to participate and watch/read these discussions, in order to follow me. Participate or get tf out. We aren’t performative in my lil’ area on Tumblr.

This discussion isn’t representative of an entire population or meant to be super professional. It’s to share different perspectives and also is an opportunity for me to practice what I preach: intersectionality. If you’d like to participate in this series please send me a pm or an ask and I’ll get back to you ASAP. We can do a written, audio, or video interview.]

Faith: Ok, now...

A /@a-sucker-for-rosalie : Hi, my blog is @a-sucker-for-rosalie and my main blog is @theawkwardmuslimgirl, I’m a 24 yo Muslim woman from the United States and this is my story.

F: *laughs* Good job!

Have you felt an urge to assimilate by anyone in your life, or society in general?

A: Yeah absolutely, I think one of the biggest things for me has been my name I have an Arabic name, it’s something that’s been difficult for people to pronounce over the years, even my coworkers and some people in my family don’t say it properly and I’ve gone back and forth between absolutely hating my name and trying to whitewash it. Telling people to call me AJ or give me a nickname whatever they can think of or shortening it somehow. And then at some point when I reached college, and I kind of started to understand myself a lot better, I was like “Wait a minute, no...I love my name. My Grandmother who I’m so close to, or was before she passed away, she named me.” and it just became this big thing for me where my name was important to me and it was representative of my culture and my religion and yeah I’ve gone back and forth on that but I’ve kinda settled into, I like my name I’m not going to do nicknames anymore, ya know...if someone at least tries to make an effort to pronounce it properly, that's good enough for me right now. But I'm done hating that part of myself.

F: Right. And I think it's a kind of on other people to, just not make a big deal about it. If it's a cool, it's a cool name like then just say it's a cool name. You don't have to, like, drag out that whole conversation about “Oh, how do you pronounce it syllable by syllable by syllable?” Like, I mean, unless you (A ) want to, but like, I know, I've had friends that like I've encountered other people and they, they like kind of pick it apart and be like, “Oh, that sounds weird”. And it's just like,

A: Mm hmm.

F: So like, what? yourself yours sounds really basic, Claire. That also reminds me of Hasan Minhaj on Ellen, when Ellen pronounced his name wrong. And that was a whole thing, but it was like it just really makes you think like you can pronounce Timothée Chalamet Why can't you make an effort to pronounce someone else's name accurately?

A: Yeah, exactly. And my whole thing for a while, it's just like, I'm saying my name for you before you even see it spelled--

F:*laughs*

A: --you should be able to say it back to me, like you're purposely--You've never heard it before, and you're purposely making it harder for yourself.

F: That’s so accurate, you do Introduce yourself. So, yeah, that’s ridiculous. 

As a child of immigrants, how is the anti immigrant talking point affected your mental health?

A: Um, I mean, I'm pretty white passing. And as a Muslim, I don't wear hijab at the moment. So on a personal level, like out in every day, I don't feel that. But then, you know, when Trump was running for president, and things like that, and there is all this, people were half joking that he was going to put Muslim people in concentration camps or something. And then the Muslim ban happen with travel. I think that was very painful to experience. I mean, it's definitely come and gone. It's not a constant thing. Like, I don't feel oppressed or as targeted as say, like, Black people or even like, Mexican immigrants or anything like that. But it definitely has. When it's come up again, it's difficult to deal with and it's hurtful and then you do go through all those emotions of questioning. “Okay, so like people are cool to my face, but when it comes down to it, who's gonna protect me or who secretly doesn't like my people?” You know,

F: Right. Yeah. Because all that has shifted, you know, like, people are hiding their ignorance. Trying to rationalize it now, so you never really know, is on your side. I think it's just like so scary.

A: And there’s people are like, “Oh, you're cool, but you know, the other people.” It's like, ummmm

F: I've heard someone say “You're like a good Black.”. Like,

A: Yeah, that's not cool.

F: Would you say like, do you just....I don't know, like, everyone is good in some way, I believe, like, deep down somewhere or they were good, and then they were just corrupted. So,

A: Yeah, I mean, I know people probably don't mean harm by saying that. And like, it’s just like, dude, educate yourself.

F:  I mean, personally, I do think them by not meaning any harm, but saying it anyways makes it harmful.  

A: Yeah, sure.

F: I mean, them kind of knowing that they're talking about something that they don't really know about. I think that's me. That's just me.

A: But no, you're right. I think there's a weird thing. I mean, when, when the whole protests started, and this Black lives matter thing, just in the past couple months got really big. There were all these white people on social media posting about, “I had no idea that Black people go through this!” and like, “I'm starting to really look at my privilege as a white person”. And I was like, okay, so many people really don't know what's going on. And on the one hand, I don't think they're bad people. And I know they don't mean it the way it comes across. So I do try to give people the benefit of the doubt. Like a lot of times it is just the lack of education on their part. Yeah, like I try. I try not to hate on people or like, call them out on that stuff. It's just like, Okay, here’s how you should actually approach this....

F: It's funny the way you put that

A: Like, like white women checking their privilege on Instagram was like, blowing my mind.

F: Oh, yeah. Not No. Yeah, Emma Emma Watson like, posting those black squares but cropping them so they fit her aesthetic.

A: Ah, God.

F: Yeah. And like, I have seen stuff like that, like, “Oh, I know about this” or, um, and it's, but, you know, the first wave really wasn't like 2014/2015 (of BLM)

A: Yeah.

F: And I remember because I was 14 or 15. So like if I was 14, and like, all these older people are like, “Oh, I know....” I'm like, Well, if I know Yeah,

A: What were you doing this whole time?

F: those women crack me up. 

A: They crack me up too

F: Yeah, they're just discovering this like new like, essential oil.

A: Yeah, it's exactly like that.

You've lived in India for a year--Did you experience a culture shock or did you feel a sense of belonging?

A: Oh, absolutely. I don't think I've ever felt like such an outcast before. A lot of it was I didn't speak the language. My mom's parents when she was a year old, they moved to Canada and they didn't teach her our mother tongue either. Because they were kind of hell bent on their kids assimilating into Canadian culture, and fitting in with the white people. They didn't want them to be outcasts there either. I remember my mom telling me she was the only kid in her school and Black parents. Yeah, it was very, very white. And then, you know, I was the only kid in my Indian School who didn't speak the language. They spoke English at the school. So it wasn't that bad, but I think I definitely did stand out. As an American person. I was just talking to my sister last night. She's like, yeah, yeah. I told them. We live in California. And they're like, Oh, do you know Jennifer Lopez? I don't know.

F: You that's so fair, though. We give like Yeah, you do that to each other. Like, if you hear someone lives in____, like you're like, oh, have you seen a _____ out and about?

A: Yeah, I don't know. I think definitely It was early 2000s. Two. So there was sort of it was a different time. You can say stuff like that. Like we didn't, there was no social media or anything. So you don't really understand how other people live. Just what you see on TV.

F: I do you really regret not being taught your...[mother tounge]?

A: Yeah, I do wish I learned it. Um, I do want to try to pick it up. I know, in adulthood, that's a lot harder. But my cousins have picked it back up again. So I feel like I definitely could. It's not like I don't want to turn it into a “whoa is me” kind of thing because all my grandparents spoke fluent English. It was never a problem.

F: Mm hmm.

A: I think it's more of a retaining culture thing, but I don't think I would ever go back to India at this point, just because of the political climate there. There is a lot happening between Hindus and Muslims and just, it's not safe. And I don't know if I would ever make that journey again. As a non-tourist.

There have been many terrorist attacks against your community, how do you manage the pain of people viewing terrorism against your culture versus, like viewing it differently than 9/11? or other terrorist attacks against white people? Or largely white populations?

A: Also, good question. Um, I don't know, I feel like growing up as a Muslim, you've always kind of had this thing in your head that you are the other. And you're different from people. And I was think I was four or five when 9/11 happened. So I grew up with that feeling. It's not, I don't know any different. So it is this kind of thing of like, okay, I do understand that a large group of people hate us and we are targeted sometimes. But I think just like reaching back to my community and like looking back at my religion and like spiritual stuff kind of helps me like that.

F: Have you experienced your friends viewing it differently? Like holding other terrorist attacks in like a grander I don't know how to phrase this--

A: I think I get what you're saying. Like, like they think it's worse when it happens to white people. 

F: Yeah cuz I've had friends that did stuff like that that would say like, you know like even America in general just like we paused in my online school one time for like five years minutes for 9/11 I'm like, Okay. Um, that's, that's great. Um, are we going to do that with like, I would have, I mean, not to say “all terrorist actions matter”, Yeah. It's such a huge thing. And then I'm like, okay, but are we going to tie that to what America has done in the Middle East? Like, I mean,

A: I'm very lucky that my friend group has always been very diverse. And they open and likes to talk about the news and keep up with those kind of stuff. I mean, my best friends are like an Indian Hindu and like a Catholic, Korean. Like, we're all over the place of that stuff, to kind of understand each other in that sense. So I've never had that problem for I feel other defy my friends in that way. And also As an ethnic person, I do tend to look for friends who are also in some sort of minority, just like as a comfort thing.

F: Mm hmm.

A: So I'm very blessed that I haven't had to, like unfriend people over things like that.

F: That's amazing. I'm glad you have that support. And your discussions must be very interesting.

A: Oh they’re great, we have great discussions.

How do you see yourself in your country?

A: I know it's like, trendy to be like, “I hate America. This place sucks”. Especially like as a woman as an immigrant as a minority. Like I, I, I recognize how blessed I am to be here and have the opportunities that I've had because my parents immigrated, and because this country does allow us so much freedom. I do think sometimes I question my place here. But for the most part, like, I don't want to say it's great, but like, I, I know what I have and I value it. I don't take it for granted.

F: Yeah, that's a good way to put it.

Do you think that public figures are afraid to voice their support for the Muslim community?

A: Some of them Yes. I can't think of off the top of my head who said what about what but I do, just like with influencers and stuff, like the Christchurch mosque shooting, a lot of people were silent about that. And that was very painful to see. But I don't know I feel like it's just it's something I expect at this point. Like, I never expect anybody to stick up for us. But when I see it, it definitely is nice. Like, I remember Kylie Jenner's but something when that happen, and I was like, “Oh, God bless you, thank God”. Someone said something. I think Kim Kardashian and I think Kourtney or Khloe might not have said something. And I was like, “Huh.” Like, I don't know, it's just like, you have to wonder where everybody's loyalty lies and like, do you have something against Muslims? 50 people just died for no reason while they were peacefully praying, like, is that not something? But then, like, I don't know. It's the whole thing of like, influencers saying they don't want to be “political”, which I used to understand. And at this point, you cannot not be political because it's just it's such a big part of Life at this point, and if you're not political, I don't know if you're aligned with Trump, or like your low key racist or what..so you saying nothing says something, you know?

F: Yeah, I totally agree. I think that says so much when you look at a person and what they talk about, but it says so much more what they don't talk about, ] I think--and like there are a lot of things to talk about To be fair, but when you look at current events, and tying what they're not talking about, to the present day, like in this moment, then that says so much and I'm sorry that more people didn't say anything about shooting that was just atrocious. Like, I mean, I didn't have social media than I would’ve said something.---

A: So I got up that morning and cried so hard. Just I was like, I mean, I don't need influencers to like, be pseudo activists or anything, but once in a while just remind your audience what you're aligned with. I feel like that's very important.

F: Yeah, yeah. I think that's so yeah, that's so fair because you may like have someone who is racist or like anti-Semitic or like any...homophobic in your follows and, like, if you don't talk about something, if you don't say, “Oh, we support blank here, get out if you don't”, or if you don't talk about frequently enough. I feel like those types of people can like, I don't know, hide themselves. I think, that's scary. Um, And I'm so sorry that you had to go through that type of feeling where you don't feel that enough people were talking about that tragic, tragic event. And I hope it never happens again, it should have happened in the first place.

Do you feel that you were the face of your religion and race when you lived in a very white area?

A: Um, like I said, I'm white passing. So no. And when I when I lived in those areas, I was very, very young. So it wasn't even an opportunity for me to even fully understand that my place as a Indian person or a Muslim person, but I definitely did not connect or relate to the white people. They're like it when you're young. You know, you're different. You just can't figure out how yet.

F: Hmm, that's a good way to put it. Yeah.

Is there a bigger divide between the young population and the older population in your culture versus the young white population? And the older white population?

A: Yeah, I think there is. That's a great question. Um, I think it just in that move from India, or any you know, you see this with most immigrants, no matter where they're from, but coming from your the motherland to the west. It's just the culture shock. I mean, with young people, so they want to assimilate. I see that with my peers a lot. They're just very desperate to fit in. They want the American culture they want to behave like white people. Go smoking and drinking and dating and whatever, things that aren't necessarily a part of our culture. But yeah, there's there's a lot of people trying to blend in. And I see a lot of brown people who were Indian when it's convenient, like on Instagram. It's like, “Ooooh, I'm Ethnic”, and then the other six days a week, and they're white. You know?

F: *laughs* Yes, I do. Like, that reminds me of like Halsey who brings out the fact that she's Black(?) when necessary.

A: I mean, like, I get it. There is a struggle there being white passing and still trying to be like, “Hey, I'm here.” Part of this culture and experience in some way or another in like you do feel like you have to prove that. And also, like, as a white passing person, I do feel like I haven't had a lot of experience that feels like a universal experience for other brown people. Like I don't get targeted like that I wasn't bullied for being brown or my skin or my hair or whatever, or my accent. So there is kind of this weird lack of camaraderie because you're not visibly part of your community sometimes. So I kind of understand where she's coming from. But when she uses it as a tool, it's like--

F: Yeah, like, Yeah, exactly. Like if you are using your platform to share voices that have had that experience. Like that's a totally other thing. Yeah, when you pull it out to complain about shampoo at a hotel Yeah, no, it doesn't suit curly hair of shampoo.

A: Who doesn’t bring shampoo?

*laughs*

What do you think about the hard working immigrant stereotype?

A: Um, because, like coming from an Asian background, you do have the people who did were the parents and grandparents who pull themselves up by the bootstraps and actually did work very, very hard to get their kids and grandkids where they are. But at the same time, I think both my parents came from like a generally privileged or like, middle class background. Like, my parents have degrees and my dad always had a job and he had his own apartment and cars stuff there wasn't that sort of struggle with us. I don't think it's not necessarily a universal experience. I do think Asian people need to check their privilege on that one like a lot of us, and we did not have that struggle.

F: Interesting. And this is a final question:

You've lived in diverse areas and very white areas, which area has affected you more?

F: ...although you said that you were in the white areas when you were younger.

A: So I think that definitely did have an effect on me. I think less so in terms of my culture, but more so just as a human being and how I tend to treat myself or treat other people as an adult, and even in school, like I know how it feels to be the outcast, and I know what it feels like to not fit in. So I think in that sense, it's just really shaped my worldview, like being kind to other people and them how I want to treat other people and identifying in other minority groups. How they feel other-ed.

F: Hmm, yeah, using that for good. Mm hmm. Yeah. 

A: Really shaping my own understanding. 

F: Yeah. That's amazing. Um, thank you for doing this.

A: Absolutely. Thank you for interviewing me. I appreciate it.

F: Anytime. If you want to come back anytime I can make more questions. I will stop the recording so we can talk a little bit privately. And thank you again.

Let’s have a discussion! Did you learn anything new from this conversation?

Let me know here.

-

To close out each post, I’d like to write a lil’ paragraph about the person I talk with:

Even though our talk was shorter than others I’ve had in this series, I could tell just how sweet A is. Her voice made me smile constantly throughout our chat. I’m appalled that she, and her community as a whole, have been subjected to the horrors of mankind that often are brushed off or ignored. Her strength and positivity are inspirational for me. I’m once again blessed that she took the time to chat with me. A was also another person who was there for me (sending love to the egg gang, again) and I’m so lucky to have such marvelous people as friends/supporters. A, if you ever need anything I’m sooo here for you.

You’re a sensational person.

-Faithxx

#twilight #muslim #india #immigrants #discussionswithfaith

[lickingyellowpaint]

Alright, because at least one anon was curious, here are some thoughts based on, admittedly, a very brief foray into the world of sales. I'll speak only to what made my gut instinct do a confused puppy head-tilt, and obviously this is opinion, from someone on tumblr, and therefore not the end-all, be-all of advice on this...

Red Flags of Possible Scam Employers and/or Services

1) The first red flag was that the company threw me into the internal chats - chock full of pep and others' successes - before I was actually physically at work and able to understand their utility. Perhaps it’s easier from a tech perspective to fling new employees into every digital system at once. And sure, there was useful information and good insight into how the company uses those chats - lots of newbies asking questions and getting relevant good answers whilst on the floor, which IS nice - and if you're like me and unfamiliar with the tech or apps being used, it's great practice.

For the most part, though, two of the main chats were just hyping up their salespeople as they met their goals. I suspect they want you to see how much money everyone's making, how they're meeting their goals, and make you want to succeed similarly. There was already a little too much constant enthusiasm bouncing around the place for my goth ass, but hey, can't say the culture was negative! Still somewhat a nefarious psychological move, though, imho. The intent is likely to boast, dazzle, entice, overwhelm and make you envious enough to be competitive, as much as it is to inspire and inform. Just a guess.

2) The second red flag was similar in nature. In a lot of the e-meeting training sessions, there was a LOT of time spent on praising the success of those present in video meetings, a LOT of time spent on explaining the tier system of salespeople, the incentives, the commission system, cool trips you can earn... and I get that, to a degree, okay, you have a job, you wanna know how much money you can really make. Fine!

But if as much or more time is spent on those types of things than the actual training on what you need to learn to do the job... hm. Hm! I suspect more headgaming. (And no, this wasn't an MLM targeting suburban moms to employ and get all their friends onboard. This is a big company with good stock and trusted affiliates.) Anyway, this is about when my gut started to do that quiet hrrrr-uff dogs do when they wanna bark but aren't sure about it yet.

3) Language and words are key. Obviously, most people are sharp enough to know that phrases like "no out-of-pocket upfront cost" is a codeword for We Can't Legally Say It's Free But Want You To Feel Like It Is, and means there'll be payment involved at some point. It's one thing to know that, and quite another to parrot the phrase at an elderly potential customer, or one whose grasp of English isn't quite perfect. Could you, in good conscience, do that for a commission and feel good about it? Turns out I couldn't.

And that's not necessarily indicative of a scam company altogether - sales is sales, and sales language has probably been a little deceptive by nature for as long as it's been around. But could you do that for a paycheck, while being new to the job, thus not being entirely sure what it's gonna cost that little old lady or that immigrant family down the line? Could you? You may not really know for sure until you hear yourself say it, and your gut starts barking in earnest, because you don't know what their next step - that you just convinced them to take - will be.

4) I didn't know, so I tried to find out. While my followers here know I was pretty diligent with my required training stuff, you can see from points 1 and 2 that those materials weren't really meaty and informative enough for me. I tried to seek further clarification not just on my tasks, but the next steps - could someone explain them to me better, in a way that assured me I wasn't pitching a scam? Could someone send me videos or content relevant to the next step in the process, just so I understand it better for my own edification and peace of mind?

Well... maybe they tried to. I was sent a link to a video of one of the next-step-in-the-process sales guys at work... only to be denied access to that video, and though I requested access, nothing in the system ever granted it to me. A glitch? Perhaps. But when I mentioned wanting access, wanting a few more questions answered until I felt right with things, most of what I heard was:

"Oh, you don't have to worry about that."

"Don't overcomplicate things for yourself."

"That's a little above your role. Keep things simple, say you don't know, and it'll add value to the expertise of the next-step sales guy!"

"We tend to save that for more advanced training, since not all of our new people have your emotional intelligence, and might not have as good a brain-to-mouth filter, and say more to the customer than they need to."

Well... I wasn't asking in order to answer a customer's questions, I was asking to answer mine. I won't speak to what I don't know to be true, and I won't sell what I'm not sure is legit, no matter how much I'm paid to do so. And that gut-dog? Now it's a pack of dogs, and at least one of them is starting to howl.

5) It's howling kind of loudly, actually, and my (delightful, friendly, funny) managers aren't helping me quiet it down. So if they can't answer my questions to my satisfaction, I have to seek answers elsewhere.

Arguably, obviously, I should have done this from the start, but - that's when I sought out customer reviews.

And I don't mean clicking Google Reviews and just reading those.

I mean spending most of an afternoon on a deep dive into the following search terms:

"[Company Name] reviews" "[CN] scam" "[CN] Better Business Bureau reviews" "[CN] reddit" "[CN] class action/lawsuit" "[CN] Yelp/any other well-known review site you can think of”/Twitter tag/FB search

You get the idea.

Now, of course some bad actors (rival companies, annoyed ex-employees) can write bad reviews to make the company look bad. Equally, anyone who felt like it could write good reviews to make the company look good. (I wasn't about to search every good reviewer's name in our email database to see if any matched up. But a couple did include words or phrases that might be included in customer-facing marketing and mission statements and thus parroted naturally, but were definitely included in internal training vids. Just a very slight few, but they popped out at me.) Another thing to keep in mind when wanting to take all reviews into account equally is that when people are happy with a product, they don't always remember to leave reviews, so most reviews are written by the vaguely-to-deeply dissatisfied to begin with, and may not be an accurate representation of what's really going on.

Let's be fair here. As a thought experiment, look up the reviews for a company/service/product you truly love, and see if the bad ones reflect a concern you can understand, or one you'd brush off, or one that just doesn't reflect your experience at all. What works for one person/locale/reason for another, might not for someone else, and that’s understandable.

Also ponder:

Out of, let's say, 200 reviews, how many would need to be positive to get you to buy something, especially if it was something you wanted? Would a lot of negative ones make you second-guess the product or service?

How would you gauge the seriousness of the problems presented in the negative ones?

Would a company responding to the bad reviews with apologies and customer service numbers, on that same forum where all could read their empathy and solutions, be enough to convince you that the company had handled the issue by the time you're reading them?

Ponder, ponder, ponder...

aaaand, moving on.

Let's say that out of 200 reviews from a plethora of sources, 40-50 are five-star happy with the company.

Another, eh, 30 or so are two- or three-star, because something went wrong, wrong enough to leave an iffy or downright bad taste in the reviewers' mouths.

The last 110-120? One-star reviews. With at least 10-20 of those saying they'd have left zero stars if the review forum allowed it.

Some of those one-stars may be several years old. Some may have since had their issue truly resolved, and never bothered to update their review or add to it. Some have issues that boil down to, "Okay, the customer clearly didn't understand the terms", or, "That's a crazy problem but I can't relate to caring about it because [insert personal preference/reason] here."

But if a whole load of those one-star reviews tend to speak up about the same types of problems, serious ones, ones you'd find bothersome or downright tragic, ones that would cost you money in some way or another, ones that make you further doubt the integrity of the company altogether, and many of them are as recent as the last few months...

Do I need to finish that sentence?

Hold up, BRB, I have to let the gut-dogs out, they're going absolutely batshit crazy. Must be a full moon!

Or just a disorganized, neglectful, or possibly purposely deceitful company.

The old saying says there’s a sucker born every minute.

Would your conscience be cool with being paid to be one, or to prey on them?

Advice:

My advice is pretty basic: before joining, signing, buying important things, do your diligent research and trust. your. gut.

I hope the above list of experiences helps guide you in doing both.

#if you wanna play it super-safe just ignore salespeople and don't go into sales to begin with lol

[alecmagnuslwb]

Young Fools

Writer’s Month 2020 Day Twenty-Nine

Read on AO3

“And lastly with the Salem witch trials, Zatara and Constantine,” the teacher says just before the bell rings. John startles from where he’d definitely been napping through most of class.

Oh fuck, he thinks first, because group projects are absolutely not his thing. And double oh fuck, he thinks when he realizes who his partner is.  

John Constantine is unaffected. He walks through the halls of school head held high, beat up trench coat with a bi pride flag pin on it not giving a fuck. Ever since his mother moved them to the states to get away from his father the English transfer has made a name for himself as the school’s resident bad boy. Late to classes, always getting caught smoking and telling off anyone who looked at him sideways.

He’s perfectly content with everyone thinking he doesn’t give a damn about them and that he’s an asshole.

Except her.

Zatanna Zatara is the genius goth princess of his dreams and the only thing that’s left him truly feeling something other than annoyance or anger since they moved.

He darts out of the classroom as soon as he can though, just because he likes the girl doesn’t mean he’s going to happily do a group project or worse yet make a fool of himself in front of her.

“Hey Constantine wait up!” she shouts running after him in the hall. He doesn’t know how she manages it in the chunky boots she’s wearing, but she catches up to him in seconds. She trips a little when she reaches him grabbing his arm for stability. It’s in that moment he realizes this is the closest they’ve been in the year they’ve been attending school together and this is most definitely the first time they’ve touched.

John looks at her the uninterested demeanor he’s maintained on full display.

“Hi,” she says smiling at him and John feels his steely demeanor slipping away already. “You ran off on me there, partner.” Her arm drops and John misses the contact immediately.

“Uh, yeah,” he says scratching at the back of his neck. “Sorry, ‘bout that. I’m just not the best at teamwork.”

Zatanna nods her lips twisting up in thought.

“Well I can work around that,” she says with a confident pat to his arm. “Meet me after school in the parking lot, you’re coming over and we’re working on this project.”

She walks away leaving him no room for argument strutting off to catch up with her friends. John watches her go in interest and in confusion. No one, save for Boston who forced his friendship upon John and who he’s fairly certain just talks so much he misses all social cues, has ever ignored his standoffish behavior before. No one’s ever really fought back against it before until now.

There’s no way he’s getting out of this project without breaking his don’t give a fuck attitude around her and he just knows it.

For some reason even though he could very easily just skip the rest of his classes and not show up in the parking lot, he sticks around until the final bell rings, attending all of his classes and everything.

Zatanna walks out with her little pack of friends she’s often with and smiles when she spots him. She turns to them throwing a wave and then makes her way over to John.

“Hey,” she says once she gets to him. “Not gonna lie I thought the chances of you not showing were 80 to 20 not in my favor.”

John huffs a laugh. “More like 70/40.”

Zatanna laughs at that a genuine thing that lights up her dark blue eyes even more.

“Come on, my cars this way,” she says tugging on his sleeve. Across the lot a series of wolf whistles sound from Zatanna’s friends as they all pile into another car. Zatanna stops and rolls her eyes.

“Ignore triple a,” she says gesturing to the end of the lot.

“Triple a?”

“Abby, Alec and Andrew. They’re my best friends and it’s just easier to call them that than list them off,” she shrugs then nods at a black vehicle once they’re in front of it. “This is me.”

John looks at the car that previously he could only see the front end of and realizes starkly that it’s a hearse.

“Um, do you drive a hearse?” he asks walking to the passenger side.

They both get in and Zatanna chuckles.

“Yup,” she says starting the engine. “My family’s in the funeral business.”

“I thought your dad was a magician?” John says recalling some conversation he overheard when a couple of jocks were mocking her for her style. They’d ended up with live fireworks in their lockers the next day courtesy of him, not that she or they know that.

“He is on the side, funeral directing is the main source of income though,” she explains a little hesitantly. It’s clear some people have judged her families work. John is the son of a full time alcoholic and a grocery clerk so he’s not about to be one to judge.

“Creepy, and kinda cool,” he says with a smirk. She tilts her head to look at him briefly biting her lip holding in a smile. The rest of the ride is spent mostly talking about their project and John finds himself actively caring about something from school for the first time ever.

“You sure know a lot about witches being burned at the stake for a seventeen-year-old,” he says after they park in the driveway outside of her house which also serves as funeral home.

She chuckles opening the large double doors.

“Grow up around dead bodies and you find yourself into all sorts of spooky stuff,” she says gesturing for him to follow her upstairs. They walk past two large halls where he assumes funerals are held and a casket display room. John wonders how inappropriate it would be to ask her if they can go down to the mortuary before he leaves.

She comes to a stop at the top of the stairs pulling John into the first door on the right and just like that he finds himself in her bedroom. In the past year they’ve said maybe a three dozen words to one another, John always just noticing her from afar, and now he’s alone with her in her bedroom.

She pulls a wheelie chair from her desk gesturing for him to sit down as she crosses her legs and sits on her bed.

She dives right in basically planning out their entire project on her own, but asking for his input anyways. He listens closely while she talks, but surveys her room as well. The room is at least seventy percent books ranging from classics like Frankenstein to specific movie themed cookbooks. Her wall space that isn’t bookshelves is scattered with an array of indie band posters and photos of her with her friends. The thing that catches John’s attention most is the top hat and wand sitting on the desk on top of an old book he can’t read the title of. He wonders if maybe there’s a little more to her love of witches and her father’s side gig.

It doesn’t take long before they have a game plan, that shockingly he plans to actually follow if for no other reason than to not let her down, and John learns that she may or may not already own painted mini figurines of Salem witches for their diorama. They migrate downstairs after that both seemingly prolonging their time together with conversation swerving away from school.

Draped across a row of fancy folding chairs with an empty casket at the front of the room John finds himself telling Zatanna little bits and pieces of himself he hasn’t told anyone since coming to the states. In turn she tells him about her family and incredibly specific music tastes.

“Thank for not being weird about all this,” she says gesturing to the room at large after a while. “Or asking to see a dead body.”

John coughs at that bit glad he refrained from asking earlier.

“Most people don’t get it or think it’s too creepy,” she goes on picking at her fishnets lightly. He’s constantly in awe that she gets away with wearing them at school surprised he’s never seen her in detention for dress code violations with him.

John just shrugs. “So you live in a funeral home, I live in a shitty trailer park where my kitchen, living room and bathroom are basically all one room. Everybody’s got different lives, no point in judging someone else’s.”

She stops picking at her fishnets and looks up at him from under her choppy bangs with a smile. Her eyes catch on the clock behind him.

“Oh, shit you should go before my dad gets back. He’ll absolutely kill us both if he finds out I was alone unattended with a boy who willingly wears a trench coat,” she says after seeing the time. It’s already almost eight and John has no idea where the time has gone.

He turns down her offer of a ride, even though he’d kill for a few more minutes alone, opting to walk home instead. She walks with him to the front door pausing and tugging on his coat once he’s stepped outside.

“We should have lunch tomorrow, John,” she says leaning against the doorframe and calling him by his first name for the first time.

“Oh, I wouldn’t want to impose. You and your friends got your thing,” he says. Part of him would also admittedly feel a little bad abandoning Boston, would he just sit there and talk to himself for forty-five minutes if John wasn’t there?

“Well you and your talkative friend can absolutely join us sometime if you’d like, but I was thinking more just you and me tomorrow,” she says reaching out and fixing the lapel of his jacket quickly. “I bring my lunch most days since I’m a vegetarian and I’m sure you know all the good spots where a teacher can’t find a couple students for a whole period.”

He smiles at her shoving his hands in his pockets so he doesn’t do something stupid like reach out and kiss her, especially if he’s reading this wrong.

“So we can work on the project?” he asks wanting to be certain.

Zatanna purses her lips in thought for a second and then morphs into a smile.

“Nope.”

John chuckles, “Well in that case I know all the secret spots.”

Her smile just gets brighter at that. She pushes off the doorframe and leans in to kiss him on the cheek lightly.

“Great,” she says pulling back and slowly closing the door. “See you tomorrow.”

And then all because of a kiss on the cheek resident bad boy John Constantine can’t stop smiling the entire walk home.

#my fic #writersmonth2020 #johnzee #john constantine #zatanna zatara

[glenrocklibraryteens]

BOOK REVIEW: NORMAL PEOPLE

Normal People by Sally Rooney Fiction - Romance Number of pages: 266 Rating: 4 - Great - better than most books I’ve read Spotify Playlist, curated by reviewer, inspired by this book Reviewed by: AP

Normal People by Sally Rooney is a 266 page romance and drama novel. The story takes place mainly in Ireland, and follows main characters Marianne and Connell throughout their on-again-off-again romance. Marianne Sheridan is a reserved, standoffish girl from a well-off but abusive family, and Connell Waldron is the popular and sociable son of the Sheridan’s housekeeper. Their relationship starts and ends in their final year of high school, and picks back up again when they meet again at University, where Marianne’s social skills have blossomed and Connell’s have regressed. Throughout the novel, Marianne and Connell grapple with socio-economic stress, intimacy issues, depression and abuse.

I came across Marianne and Connell’s story on Hulu first, in the form of a screen adapted miniseries. Before watching I decided to read the novel. If I had never seen the show promotions, I would have been equally drawn to the story because of the novel’s beautiful green and blue cover with simple silhouettes of Marianne and Connell.

I feel that this novel perfectly captures the struggle most young adults have with mental health, specifically anxiety and depression that feels invalid because of all else occurring in the world. Rooney’s description of the thought processes inside the young adult psyche has the potential to help teens learn the right way to navigate romance while dealing with such pain, through showing the mistakes that Connell and Marianne make.

The story is heart wrenching, but not unsatisfying. I found myself not rooting for their romance to proceed, but for them to heal and find peace. Upon finishing the book, I realized it was less about a romantic relationship, which is portrayed as fragile and bipolar in this novel and more about the power of deep connection and friendship, which is a constant factor between the two main characters. Normal People also teaches the value of empathy and patience within relationships as well as the importance of just being there for loved ones as much as possible.

One thing readers should be aware of to spare confusion is that there are no quotation marks in dialogue. Dialogue is indicated with a phrase along the lines of “he said” or “she confessed” at the end of a sentence. I would recommend this book to people ages 16+ due to the heavy topics and sexual content.

More about the playlist:

Cardigan by Taylor Swift Cardigan explores feelings of invalidation due to young age and presumed naivetes. “And when I felt like I was an old cardigan under someone's bed, you put me on and said I was your favorite” is a lyric that perfectly describes how Connell tries his best to help Marianne navigate her abusive home and relationships. Another way this song relates back to Normal People is through the recurring lyric “I knew you’d come back to me”, as whenever Connell and Marianne part ways they are confident it is not a goodbye, but a see you later.

The Adults Are Talking by The Strokes By singing “They've been sayin' you're sophisticated. They're complainin', overeducated”, the writer of this song Julian Casablancas is talking about his fight against nepotism and the hate he gets for it, as he comes from a connected family. Like Casablancas, Marianne struggles with not feeling as though she has truly made it in an academic sense, because of her family, which has a long relationship with the university she attends. Pleaser by Wallows Pleaser is about anxiety and struggles opening up to a girlfriend. “Back in your room remain the words I wanna say to you, but couldn't leave my mouth” is a lyric that sums up Connell's thoughts almost every time he is with Marianne. He tries his best to let her know how he feels, but always works himself up way too much to actually say anything. “Quite the people pleaser, if only I could please her” is another lyric Connell would relate to. He is a popular and charming young man, but that wall crumbles when he is with Marianne and he becomes a whole new person. Run by Joji Run is about confusion over breakups. When Marianne and Connell break up, Marianne moves on quickly while Connell dwells on the split. “Guess I’m not the one, like you used to think” describes his thought process when Marianne gets a new boyfriend. He always thinks that their breakups are his fault and never considers that space could have been something Marianne just needed at that moment. Liability by Lorde Liability tells a story of feeling worthless and without value. Marianne’s agreeance with the lyric “The truth is I am a toy that people enjoy, till all of the tricks don't work anymore and then they are bored of me” is seen through her involvement in abusive friendships and sexual relationships because she doesn’t think she's worth the time of someone loving. I Wanna Be Yours by Arctic Monkeys This song is another that represents Connell’s struggles to open up. The song repeatedly mentions repressed feelings fighting their way out, and the hunger for one specific relationship. Save Your Tears by The Weeknd “I saw you dancing in a crowded room, you look so happy when I'm not with you” is an observation made by both The Weeknd and Connell after breakups. Marianne is extremely good at giving the appearance of being flippant and uncaring, moving on quickly. This confuses Connell, because he feels so horrible after their fights. I Can’t Handle Change by Roar Though he appears to fit in wherever he goes, Connell feels alone everywhere he goes. He also struggles with self confidence, waving off compliments on his intellect even though he was officially ranked top English student in his university. This song mirrors Connell’s lack of confidence, even down to his confusion about it.

Cigarette Daydreams by Cage the Elephant I visualize this whole song as a description of Marianne through Connell’s lens. Connell observes Marianne’s constant attempts to find herself, as does the writer of this song with his loved one. “You were only seventeen, so sweet with a mean streak” describes the two’s first encounters well, as Marianne has a tough and standoffish exterior but is loving and thoughtful when comfortable. Can’t Get Over You by Joji This song has the basic theme of “I love whatever you love” and this is symbolic of the two’s relationship, as they want to try new things because of the other person. “I don't have no social cues, I'm all for you “ also describes Connell’s attachment to Marianne in university, when he is reliant on her guidance during social situations.

#normal people #sally rooney #romance #mental health #depression #anxiety #teen book review #book review #fiction #glen rock teens #glen rock nj #glen rock library