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myherowritings · 4 years

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hearts intertwined | t.s.

— You and Todoroki have been roommates for months now but have barely had more than a two minute conversation. When quarantine hits and everyone is on lockdown, you find yourself forced to spend more time with him and actually end up...enjoying it?

pairing: todoroki shouto x reader word count: 3,055 genre: roommate au, pro hero!shouto, fluff warnings: suggestive content, 16+, mc and todo are both mid-20s

a/n: this is written as part of the crackhead sanctuary’s server collab! (pls excuse my server name lmfdkgfdg i have terrible naming skillz) i hope y’all enjoy and pls lmk what u think!! xx sof

In many ways, Todoroki Shouto was the perfect roommate.

He cleaned up after himself, always made an extra serving of food and set it aside for you (though it may only have been because he sucked at measuring out ingredients rather than him intentionally planning on leaving you leftovers), and generally kept his volume to a minimum when entering the apartment at ungodly hours of the night.

There was also the fact that he was the most attractive person you had ever shared a living space with in your life, and seeing him shirtless on his way to his bedroom from the bathroom was a definite bonus.

But despite all that, he was never someone you considered yourself close to.

You needed help paying for rent and expenses and he happened to be a friend of a friend of a friend who was looking for a place in the city to stay. Call it a divine intervention, a gift from the gods, or even fate… But you still wouldn’t consider yourself his friend.

It wasn’t as if you didn’t want to befriend him--Todoroki seemed like a sweet person. It was more along the lines of neither of you having the time. While you spent most of your day in the lab studying and doing research, Todoroki was always working in his office or out in the field to fulfill his new hero duties.

This quarantine was probably the first opportunity either of you had to be in the same building for more than thirty minutes at a time. Which was why, as the two of you sat side-by-side on the living room sofa, no one knew exactly what to say.

“So, the weather--”

“Looks warm out--”

Both of you opened your mouths and shut them at the same time.

“Sorry,” Todoroki said with a small smile. “You first.”

“I-- Oh… It was nothing,” you managed, clearing your throat in an attempt to compose yourself. “Just trying to make some small talk.”

With a tight-lipped smile and wide eyes, you slowly craned your head away from his view. Who admits they’re trying to make small talk? That breaks all the rules of how to properly talk to someone.

The faint sound of the television playing old infomercials buzzed in the background while you and your roommate sat in silence. You never struggled to talk to him during those brief moments of passing, so why now?

Looking at the screen to pass time, you noticed an outdated commercial of an older Tamagotchi game playing and felt yourself breaking out into a grin.

“Aw, I miss that game!” you cried as you turned to Todoroki with an excited glint in your eye. “Don’t tell anyone, but in elementary school I used to play it in class and since I was such a goody two-shoes, the teacher never suspected a thing.”

He raised an eyebrow in response. “I see we have ourselves a rebel in disguise here.”

“It’s our little secret, though. To everyone else, I am the epitome of innocence.”

You couldn’t help but notice the way his gaze travelled down your body and lingered on where the fabric of your oversized pajama shirt stopped and the expanse of your thigh started.

“Sure. I believe you,” he said in what was almost a teasing tone.

You felt your face growing hot but you paid it no mind.

“As you should,” you sniffed, crossing one leg over the other haughtily. When he chuckled, you turned back to him. “How about you? Are you a secret bad boy who played with his Tamagotchi in the back of class?”

Todoroki shook his head. “I never had one. I actually never even knew what it was until high school, I think.”

“Really?” Your eyes widened. Sure, the hand-held game was marketed to girls, but to never have heard about it through your whole childhood? You weren’t sure how that was possible. “Not even your older sister had one?”

Now, you didn’t know much about his personal life (whether or not he was dating someone, if he slept on the left or the right side of the bed, which leg he put in his pants first, et cetera), but you did pick up on a few things about his siblings from the previous interactions you’ve had with him.

“Not to my knowledge,” he said, looking away thoughtfully. “My father never afforded us such luxuries.”

You frowned. “What about toys like Pokemon? Oh! Or Yu-Gi-Oh cards?”

“Yu-Gi-Oh cards?” repeated Todoroki slowly, as if he was unsure what you were talking about.

Your jaw dropped in disbelief. “You never played--? Oh, never mind. How about family games like Twister or Just Dance?”

As far as you were aware, Todoroki Shouto came from a rather affluent family. So it was a wonder why he never participated in at least one of these experiences that characterized a whole generation’s childhood.

Again, he shook his head. “Never did those either. I wasn’t exactly allowed to play with my siblings, let alone other kids my age. My father always made me prioritize my training.”

“That’s not right of him.”

You winced. Of course he never had the opportunity to have a “normal” childhood. How could you be so insensitive? It was no secret Endeavor had a troubled relationship with his family, but you weren’t exactly sure to what extent. You didn’t focus much on the whimsical world of heroes and, ever since you were a child, you know you wanted to pursue the field of research rather than use your quirk. The lives of heroes--even top ranking ones--was something you never paid much attention to. Still, even you have heard some gossip about the estranged Endeavor.

“Sorry for pressing you,” you said, toying with the hem of your shirt. “I didn’t mean to be so insensitive.”

He gave you a nonchalant shrug and a small smile to let you know it was okay.

“Don’t worry about it, Y/L/N. You didn’t mean to,” he comforted. “Besides, it’s been a long time. It would be useless to hold a grudge against my father for this long.”

You tilted your head to the side. “Forgiveness, huh? That’s very mature of you, Todoroki. I think I admire you.”

His shoulders moved upward in silent laughter. “Thank you. I admire you, too.”

Ignoring the faint heat you felt in your cheeks, you beamed. “Thanks. Anyway-- You know what I just realized?”

“What?”

“You did not have a childhood.”

While his face remained passive, you could have sworn you saw his eye crinkle in amusement.

“I suppose I can’t argue with that,” he said in agreement. “My youth was spent quite differently than most.”

You nodded profusely. “Right. And while I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with that, per se, it could be beneficial to do these things you haven’t had the chance to!”

He examined you curiously as you bounced up from your seat on the sofa with an excited grin. After a few moments of silence, he craned his neck, prompting you for clarification.

“You’re bored on lockdown, I’m bored on lockdown,” you stated matter-of-factly. “What better time to reclaim your childhood than now?”

Todoroki didn’t bother to hide the small smile making its way across his face at your determined words. “Okay, then. Count me in.”

- - - - -

When you decided you wanted to help your new friend Todoroki reclaim his childhood, you expected your days to be full of cute Beanie Babies and Webkinz, as well as the presumed amounts of chaos that followed edible bubbles and candy kits. And while the first few days of the week consisted of that, the tone changed rather drastically when a certain game was introduced. Of all things, what you expected least was to be practically panting on top of Shouto as you braced your muscles and tried not to collapse onto him.

“Left hand, blue,” he called after flicking the spinner.

How he managed to turn the spinner with one hand and keep his body balanced with the other on a Twister mat without toppling over was a mystery to you.

Stupid heroes with their stupid, bulging muscles, you thought crossly as you relived your many previous losses. You tried to ignore the bead of sweat dripping down your face as you struggled to stay up.

Somehow, you turned your head just enough that you had the perfect view of Todoroki’s flexed triceps as he held himself in a modified pushup position of sorts. There was a look of concentration on his face and, while you found his furrowed brows to be rather cute, you still couldn’t help but focus your attention on his arms. He had a lean type of muscle that you thought would feel especially comfortable wrapped around your waist--

“Y/L/N, do you forfeit?”

You blinked, feeling lightheaded both from this game which you lacked the stamina for and from the lack of oxygen that travelled to your brain as you held your breath while staring at Todoroki.

Once your mind processed his words, you huffed. “Forfeit! Me? Never! Why would you think that?”

“Because I called ‘left hand, blue,’ minutes ago and you still haven’t moved.”

Blood rushed to your face and you were thankful you had the exertion to blame it on. It wasn’t your fault Todoroki’s arms were so toned and strong and...distracting.

“No,” you said, unsure if there was even a question asked for you to reply to. “I don’t quit!”

Your eyes scanned the mat feverishly, looking for a blue circle to place your left hand on that would cause the least amount of strain. Shouto had already won the first two rounds and you’d be damned if you were to let him win again. (As much as you loved witnessing him succeed, your pride would simply be too hurt if you lost a third time in a row.)

“Find a spot yet?” he asked in amusement. “I’m not sure how much longer my arms can hold.”

Of course, just the mention of his arms drew your attention from finding the optimal Twister position to staring stupidly at his triceps again.

As you attempted to tear your gaze away from him, you spotted hints of a smirk lingering on Todoroki’s face.

Did he notice your staring? There was no way…

You looked at him, wide-eyed and dubious, and almost choked when you saw his shoulders start to shake as he tried to hide his laughter.

His laugh was muffled by his shirt in an attempt to keep his volume down, but it still rang rich and deep in the air. It was the first time you heard him laugh like that and you wanted to do anything to hear it again.

With a shake of his head, he removed his hands from their spot on the Twister board and sat upright beside you.

“I concede,” he said when he saw you eyeing him with curiosity. “You win this round. My arms were getting too sore.”

After hearing the sweet sound of Todoroki saying, “You win,” you let yourself collapse on the floor, rolling onto your back to get a clear view of your cream-colored ceiling.

“For some reason, I sincerely doubt that your arms were getting sore,” you said, stretching your own--genuinely sore--arms out in front of you. “But seeing as I was about to fall flat on my face if I waited any longer… Thank you for conceding.”

“Doubt I’d be sore?” he repeated, craning his neck to peer down at your face. He placed his left hand on his right bicep and gently massaged it with his thumb and forefinger. “What for?”

By then, whatever rational thought was left in your brain had been fully replaced by Shouto’s arms and Shouto’s arms only, and you couldn’t even complain.

“Mmm, what did you say again?” You blinked, clearing your throat. You suddenly had the desire to chug a cool glass of water.

Todoroki’s only reply was another small--almost imperceptible--smirk. It would have been easy for someone to miss, but to you, someone who was perhaps being more attentive to their roommate and newfound friend than they’d care to admit, it was clear as day.

“You’re totally messing with me!” you groaned, covering your face with your hands as you continued to lie with your back on the floor. “Aren’t you?”

He let out a breathy laugh and shrugged, the corners of his lips quirking upwards. “Sorry. It’s just cute seeing your reactions. I didn’t know you liked my arms so much.”

You could’ve sworn he flexed once more for dramatic effect and an indignant squeak escaped your mouth.

“I-I don’t!” you protested, making sure to look anywhere but his arms. “I just never noticed how...proportionate they were before! Just thinking about how da Vinci would admire them. For scientific purposes, of course.”

“Sure.”

You gaped at the knowing look on his face. “How did you even notice? Aren’t you a bit of the oblivious type?” With wide eyes, you slapped your hand over your mouth. “Wait-- I’m sorry. That was rude to say.”

Todoroki waved it off with a smile to show he wasn’t offended in the slightest. “I guess I was rather oblivious in the beginning of high school. But as I grew up I became more accustomed to picking up on such things.”

You hummed in silent contemplation. Of course he had to have grown used to people making moon eyes over him. He probably got it all the time.

“I usually pay it no mind,” he continued as he stood up, peering down at you sprawled out on the floor. “But when you do it, I find it sort of cute.”

As if he didn’t just say something that caused your heart to skip a beat, Todoroki extended a hand out to help you up.

Ignoring the heat rushing to your cheeks, you gently placed your hand in his.

“Thanks,” you murmured as Shouto pulled you off the mat and towards his body, a feeling of lightheadedness overcoming you at the sudden motion.

One hand held yours while his other was placed firmly above your elbow to help you steady yourself.

“You okay, Y/L/N?” he asked, a hint of concern in his voice as he watched you regain your balance.

“Oh, yeah! No worries. This happens all the time, to be honest,” you admitted, vaguely taking note of how your chest was almost fully pressed against his. “Whenever I move my head too fast I get a bit dizzy. And whenever I stand too fast my knees sort of just crack.”

Your words did nothing to soothe the worried furrow between his brows.

“Is...Is that not normal?”

He blinked.

You grimaced. “Okay. Guess not. Maybe I need to work out more.”

“You can work out indoors with me,” Todoroki suggested with a small smile. He looked so sincere you were just about to agree until he opened his mouth for a second time-- “As long as you don’t spend the whole workout gawking at my arms.”

With an indignant cry, you pulled yourself away from his loose grip, face burning with such intensity you wouldn’t be surprised if he were able to sense the rise in temperature. “I never gawked at your arms.”

He hummed.

“Well, okay, maybe I did,” you relented with a huff, bending down to fold up the game mat in front of you. “They look very strong. Being a hero must be hard work.”

Todoroki shrugged, helping you clean up. “It’s worth the toll it takes. I can imagine your research requires hard work too.”

You tried to hide the look of surprise on your face. You briefly talked to him about what you did during the roommate-finding process, but you didn’t think it was anything interesting enough for him to recall. It brought an odd warmth to your stomach knowing he cared enough to remember.

“I guess. But I’d say it’s nowhere near as difficult as hero work,” you brushed off. “Not everyone has what it takes to be a good hero.”

A faint blush colored his cheeks as he followed you into the kitchen for a glass of water.

“There are lots of great heroes,” he stated, filling up two cups and handing one to you.

“Yeah, there are. And greatness is one thing, but you’re a good one-- In the heart.” Your gaze flitted to his, unsure why you were filled with the sudden urge to have such an intimate conversation after a game of Twister. Still, you rolled with it. “I know we haven’t talked much prior to this lockdown...but even I can tell how caring you are. And I’m looking forward to getting to know you more.”

A comfortable silence filled the air as he took a seat beside you. If Shouto was taken aback by your sudden compliment, he did a good job at hiding it, simply giving you a small smile as he let his shoulder rest against yours. You glanced over at the point of contact and bubbled with elation.

“Todoroki?” you called quietly, the edge of your pinky brushing against his.

He looked down at the gentle touch of your hand and didn’t move away. Instead, he took the initiative and placed his fingers on top of yours, his hand surprisingly soft despite the calluses on his fingertips. The back of your neck heated at the sudden movement, but you decided you rather liked how his hands felt on yours.

“Hmm?”

“Thanks for letting me drag you along to play these childhood games,” you said, letting out a sigh of contentment. “It’s a nice change of pace while we’re stuck indoors.”

Shouto shook his head. “I should be the one thanking you. These are much better childhood memories than the ones from my actual childhood,” he admitted with a light laugh. “I’m glad we had the opportunity to spend more time together, Y/L/N.”

By now your fingers were intertwined with his, his thumb lightly stroking the peak of your knuckle.

He continued, “I hope this continues even when quarantine is over.”

“I hope it does, too.” You couldn’t stop the grin from spreading wide across your face as you nuzzled your head on his shoulder. “Let’s keep making memories together, okay, Todoroki?”

“Happily.”

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cicissketchbook · 3 years

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Y’all wanna read my Apritello story?

So sometimes when my artistic drive is down, the writing bug will come bite me. I’ve been working on an Apritello story for awhile that currently has three chapters that are up on my Patreon. Eventually I’ll post it publicly, but I want my patrons to have early access. Anyway here’s an excerpt from the first chapter.

It’s kind of angsty.

The summary is, April invites Donnie to join her for a long weekend at the farmhouse, which sounds romantic until you consider that she’s been plagued with visions of his accidental death and is desperate to stop it from happening.

To say there was tension in the air was a drastic understatement. Truthfully, things had been tense for a while. Blame it on cabin fever, or perhaps they were outgrowing their sewer lair, but the brothers had been quick to jump down each other’s throats.

Leo was especially on edge, and not unlike how it had been since they were kids, his mood had set the tone for everyone else. One thing that differed from childhood though, was that he had been butting heads with Donnie, while Raph remained a mostly neutral third party.

There was the knowledge that they were getting older and they all had desires to get out there and live their own lives, and then the realization that doing so wasn’t really possible for them in the world they lived in. They wanted what any young adults would want, but they were mutants. The world still saw them as freaks. They couldn’t lead normal lives the way they wanted to. They knew this, they had known this all their lives. They had all been on the same page about it. They realized that living their lives in the sewer, at least most of it, was probably in the cards. April had always contested this idea, believing that the world would accept them in time. It’s not like people didn’t know mutants existed, but the turtles weren’t willing to take the risk. It’s not like they couldn’t go out and do things like they always had, but leaving the nest for good just wasn’t feasible. And they were content with this. The sewer was all they’d ever known. They’d always been together and they were happy to always be together.

But like all families, arguments were inevitable. Familiarity breeds contempt, after all. And they were accustom to bickering. But… it was different now. Leo seemed ready to explode at the drop of a pen, Raph never seemed to be able to find enough alone time, Donnie felt like he brought more to the table than the other three combined, and Mikey… sweet Mikey was such an incurable optimist that he sought to find the positive in every situation, but they knew he did this to mask his depression.

If asked what they were arguing about today, the simple answer would be that they were all just getting on each other’s nerves. Donnie couldn’t even remember how the argument started because they fought about trivial things so frequently, but he remembered the thing that Leo said that set him off.

“God, why is it so hard for you to just do your part? Why do we have to pick up your slack?”

Donnie was silent for a moment, almost unsure he’d heard correctly. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me, you never fucking help out with anything!” Leo’s tone implied that there was something else he was upset about that he wasn’t speaking of.

Donnie, by his best effort, kept his voice calm and composed. “I’m sorry, are you referring to three days ago when I didn’t help clean up the disaster in the kitchen because I was literally putting the microwave back together? Or perhaps last week when you left a mess for me to clean up that you all made while I wasn’t even here? And then you got mad when I didn’t?”

Leo seemed to get more aggravated at the mention of Donnie not being there, but continued on. “C’mon man, there are four of us that live here, it’s really not asking too much for everyone to help clean up around here.”

“Dude, I clean up after myself more than anyone. The difference is, when I make a mess, it’s in my lab rather than communal space and-“

“Oh, right, I forgot. The huge space you have that’s your’s. That none of us have.” Leo turned to their other brothers who sat near by. “Hey Raph, other than your tiny bedroom, do you have your own creative space that you can do whatever you want in? Mikey, how about you?”

Raph hadn’t spoken, but seemed invested in the exchange his brothers were having. It was impossible to tell who’s side he was on. Before Mikey could speak, Raph stopped him and said firmly, “Leave us out of this, man.”

“So now your mad at me… because of my lab?”

Leo paused, not making eye contact, before he huffed. “No.” He admitted quietly.

Normally, Donnie was used to these arguments making little or no sense, but Leo seemed genuinely angry and he couldn’t understand why.

“Bro, what is up?” He demanded. “Why are you actually so upset?”

“I just…” Leo started. Donnie could tell there was something he didn’t want to say. Leo crossed his arms and turned away from his brother. “I just want to know… where your priorities are.”

“My priorities?” Donnie was trying not to lose his patience. He had no idea where this was coming from nor where it was going. Which meant one of two things. Either there was something his brother wasn’t telling him, or this was in fact going no where. Like, this had started out a fight about cleaning duties, and now he’s talking about priorities. If Leo did have a point, he wanted him to hurry up and make it because this argument seemed like a waste of time.

“It just…” Leo blew another huff through his nose. “It just seems like… you are… distancing yourself from us, Donnie.”

This statement completely threw Don for a loop. He hadn’t expected that at all. “What in the world are you talking about?” He asked, truly bewildered by the turn in conversation. “Because I don’t want to clean up messes that aren’t mine? Like what the hell-?”

“No, obviously it’s not that. It’s alot of things.” Leo spoke quieter now, not as impassioned.

“Well, I would love to know what those things are, because I am completely lost here.”

“You never want to hang out with us anymore, and when you do, you act like you’d rather be doing anything else-“

Donnie cut him off with a humorless chuckle. “We’re brothers, we all get on each other’s nerves.”

“And I get that, but we do all still live together and we all need to contribute to the household chores, and you’ve just been acting like you are so far above doing any type of housework that doesn’t directly effect you.”

“Well, excuse me Leo, sorry if when it rains and the power get knocked out and I have to go topside by myself in the cold pouring rain to fix the power line, I don’t also want to have to mop up the leak in the kitchen when none of you did anything to help!”

“Okay, you keep bring up specific instances, but I’m talking about in general-“

“No, you’re talking alot of nonsense is what you’re doing!” Donnie’s lack of patience was starting to show. “First you’re mad that you think I don’t clean enough, then you’re mad that I have a lab and you don’t? Then you say I’m distancing myself from you all…?” Donnie stood and made a move like he was going to walk away. “If you have something to say, Leo, you better just say it because this whole conversation seems like a waste of time to me. It’s late and I’m tired, so make your point, or I’m going to bed.”

“Are you distancing yourself from us because of April?”

Donnie had already started walking away, as he didn’t expect Leo to actually have a point, so he was halted to a standstill at his words. “What does she have to do with anything?”

Leo looked away again, like he didn’t actually want to have this conversation. After a moment, he sighed and continued without making eye contact. “It just seems like… I mean… I thought we were all on the same page here. We’ve had this discussion, a long time ago. We aren’t…. Human. We’re getting older and it makes sense that we’d want to start living our own lives, but… we can’t. Not really. The world doesn’t accept us, so staying down here is just how it has to be. I thought we had agreed on that. That no matter what the world thought of us, no matter that we can’t lead normal lives, at least we all had each other. But… now it seems like you have other plans, Donnie.”

He finally looked at his brother and Donnie could see the emotions in his eyes. Nothing of what he said had been new information, of course. Donnie knew, painfully well, that the world saw them as freaks and being “normal” was not a luxury they’d ever be able to have. Alot of their friends were at the point where they were starting to branch off, which didn’t help. Karai and Shinigami were currently back in Japan. It was just a visit, but the kind of visit that lasted for a month or two. Casey had gotten a hockey scholarship for a different school than the one April attended. He was trying to go pro, so he poured all his time and attention into practicing. He still came around, but not like he used to. Mona Lisa had left Earth awhile ago, also with promise to return, but they hadn’t heard from her in a few weeks. They were sure it was just a new mission she had, but that didn’t make Raph feel any better. April was the only one who still came around all the time. With most of their enemies gone, everyone was moving on and it felt like the world didn’t need them anymore.

The pain in Leo’s voice would’ve normal made Donnie want to hug him, but it was the accusation that he couldn’t get over.

“Leo…” He gestured non threateningly with his hands. “Why are you acting like I’m not literally living down here in the sewers right along with you? And I still don’t see what April has to do with anything-”

“Okay, I’m going to jump in here.” Raph said unexpectedly. “Look, Dude, I know we don’t… we don’t say it enough but… we would be up schitts creek without a paddle without you.” He crossed the room to give Leo a lighthearted punch in the arm. “Wouldn’t we, Leo?”

“…Yeah.”

“So because of that, the idea of you leaving is…. It’s scary.” Raph admitted. He was going to say something else, but Donnie interrupted.

“I’m not going anywhere! What in the actually hell are you guys talking about?!”

Leo rolled his eyes, apparently getting annoyed again. “Don, can we please stop pretending like you’re not going to marry April and then move in with her?”

Donnie froze. To say they touched a nerve was an understatement. April was his best friend, but truthfully, it was very painful to be her friend sometimes. His feelings for her were still just as intense as ever, but for different reason now. In his youth, he’d maintained a kind of innocent hopefulness that they would someday be together, and he never even really thought of the details of how. He knew, even back then, that it wasn’t that simple and when he really thought about it, nothing about it made sense. Which is why he didn’t think about it. Now though, after some soul searching and dropping into a deep depression which he was starting to get better from, he’d resigned himself to the reality that she would never be with him. He’d accepted it, and told himself that it was enough to just be her friend. But the truth was, that pain never went away. They had such a close friendship, they had developed such a level of comfort with each other, but he knew it would never be enough. The idea of never seeing her again was unbearable, but to be so close to her, knowing that it was as close as he would ever get… it was torture. He didn’t care though, he just couldn’t let her go.

What really hurt was when she would talk about the next stage in her life. She was in school now, but with her grades and what she was studying, she could go anywhere. She wanted to travel, she spoke of it often. She never made any committal remarks about moving away, other than when she talked about the farmhouse and saying how expensive it is to live in the city. Her dad had signed the property over to her for tax reasons, and she would’ve inherited it anyway. She wanted to renovate it.

He was only vaguely aware that Raph and Leo were still talking.

“It’s not like we’re mad at you for finding love, that’s not it at all!” Raph was saying, obviously more concerned than Leo about ruffling his brother’s feathers. “It’s just, we need to be realistic about what would happen if you weren’t here.”

“Yeah, and the reality is, frankly, I think we all feel left behind by our friends, but we didn’t think our clan would be breaking up as well!” Leo threw his hands up, finally letting his true feelings out. “I mean, all we have is each other, we’re the last of the Hamato clan! I can’t let this clan die, I just can’t.”

“Why do you guys feel the need to do that?”

They stopped, taken aback by how low and serious Donnie’s voice was. He was done barking, he looked ready to bite.

“Do what?”

Donnie’s chest felt tight and he had to taken in a sharp breath through his nose to keep his cool. “Why do you guys feel the need to not only remind me of my unrequited feelings for my… our best friend… but now, you’re holding it against me?”

Raph looked concerned at first, but then sighed. “Donnie, c’mon, don’t act like you wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to get out of here. April isn’t going to stay in New York forever.”

The statement, while probably true, hurt to hear. “What does that have to do with me?” He said, quieter this time. “I can’t help what April does.”

“Dude, she is literally planning her future with you in it. Have you not noticed that?” Leo nearly screamed. “You have the opportunity to get out of here and do something with your life, and we’ll be-“

“No she’s not!” Donnie shouted back. “Are you guys smoking crack or something? Don’t say that shit to me! April doesn’t…” He paused, his words getting caught in his throat. “April doesn’t want me. I thought we’d been over this.”

Mikey, who hadn’t yet spoke, immediately picked up on how much pain Donnie was in. “Hey guys, let’s just drop it, yeah?”

Leo pressed on as if his youngest brother hadn’t spoken. “Maybe she didn’t five years ago, but she sure as shit does now.” He didn’t seem bothered by Donnie visible cringe. “I mean, dude, you’ve spent the night, alone at her house.”

“So has Mikey. And Raph once, I think.” Donnie said quietly, and Raph nodded in confirmation. “And she’s spent the night here a billion times, that doesn’t mean anything.”

“Mikey and Raph didn’t sleep in her bed.” Leo said accusingly.

“I did.”

They all paused and turned to the youngest brother. Raph spoke. “You did?”

“Every time I go over there, I sleep in her bed.” Mikey said matter-o-factly. “Whenever… whenever I’m sad, she let’s me come over and… she’ll listen. She doesn’t try to offer solutions, she doesn’t try and tell me things to make me feel better, she just… listens. And that’s what helps me the most. Then we watch funny videos.”

None of them commented at first. They all knew Mikey struggled with depression, but he rarely, if ever, talked about it. They all had told him at some point that they were there if he needed to talk, but he never came to any of them. One might of thought that hearing that his brother shared a bed with April might make Donnie jealous, but quite the opposite, it made him very happy and appreciative to hear about it. It made sense that Mikey would be more comfortable talking to April than to any of them, and to know that she had been there for him was comforting. Donnie wanted that for his brother.

“See?” He said finally, more to Leo than anyone else. “April… she’s there for all of us. She cares about all of us… I’m not special.”

“Donnie, don’t say that.” Mikey offered and rose from his seat to place a hand on his brother’s shoulder. Donnie placed his own hand over Mikey’s and squeezed it, staring at the floor. “She cares about you the most. More than you know.”

“Mikey, please, please don’t.” He said through his teeth. “I can’t… I can’t even believe we’re having this conversation right now. You know how long it took me to accept the fact that I was kidding myself by thinking there could ever be something between us? Of course you guys know, which is why it is so baffling to me that you feel the need to do this.”

“So if April wanted you to move away with her, you wouldn’t do it?”

Raph punched Leo in the arm again. It was a strange thing, to see Raph scold Leo for being insensitive. Donnie had had enough though.

“I’m out of here.” He turned on his heel and heading towards the turnstiles.

...............

Yes, it’s NSFW, of course it is.

#TMNT 2012 #apritello #donatello #leonardo #raphael #michelangelo #mikey #raph #leo #donnie #apriltello #tmnt #fanfiction

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lindstromm · 3 years

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Simplified Bookbinding: Font and Text Ornaments

In the first post in this series, How to Make a Cheap First Book, I set out the four steps of bookbinding:

1. Format the text and print it. (This post is all about this step.)

2. Create the text block.

3. Create the case.

4. Attach the case to the text block.

In this post, I’ll give some pointers to get your story from a word processor, or an AO3 story, to a printed page. There are two main formatting sections: (1) the intro pages like the title page and the “about this book” page:

And (2) the text of the book, which may include specialized chapter title font and text separators:

Formatting tips and pics under the cut.

I use Microsoft Word for formatting and printing. I know one method and I stick to that, and I use basically the same formatting process on every story. I get overwhelmed if I have to do something specialized every time or have too many choices. So look at this tutorial as your starter pack, and once you get comfortable, branch out and get as fancy and specialized as you want.

In the Simplified Bookbinding method, we print on A5 pages, which makes the pagination a whole lot easier than printing signature booklets. I have two separate files per book - the intro pages are one file; the text is a second file. This way I don’t have to figure out how to suppress page numbers on part of a file. The intro pages file does not have page numbers; the text file has page numbers.

Page Setup in Word

1. Open a new document.

2. Click “Layout” then “Size.” You need to tell Word that you’re printing on A5 size paper. If the dropdown menu doesn’t include A5, then click on “More Paper Sizes” at the bottom of the menu and fill in the A5 size manually. It’s 5.83 wide by 8.27 high:

Click ‘OK’ and let’s get started putting text on the page.

The Intro Pages

Go pull a professionally published book off your shelf and look at the title page. You’re going to format your title page basically the same way. It’s going to have the title, the author and maybe a text ornament. Center it on the page.

I googled the name of the fandom to get a text block that says “The Old Guard.” A recognizable symbol for that movie is the main character’s labrys, so I googled “labrys line drawing” and snipped it. I titled my story “The Next Job” because I lack the fanfiction ability to select beautiful lines of poetry for story titles. Not as lovely, I’ll grant you, but it fits better on the spine of a book. Anyway, play around with your formatting until you like how it looks. Print a test page.

This is a good time to find out how to print on A5 paper. My printer has a paper size option in the menu, in which I could select “A5″ and then just push the paper holder in the tray for the smaller paper. If you don’t have a printer or can’t connect it, then . . . um, problem. Some bookbinders send print jobs to Staples or other office supply shops. You would have to ask them about printing on custom sized paper and see what they charge. (If you’re going to have it printed at a shop, don’t use easily identifiable text ornaments unless you want to explain to the print shop employee why you aren’t violating copyright laws.)

Depending on your fandom, you may be able to find a fun text ornament that identifies your fandom, like the Avenger’s symbol, a Star Trek symbol, Star Wars, whatever fandom you’re in, I’m sure there’s a graphic you can use. Things like these:

Now we’re going to format the “about this book” page. Look at a professionally published book. This is where you have the copyright information and publisher information. I put in basic information in a list format. In most of my books, I put in a word count and which font I used, just so I can keep track of about how many pages a word count will be. You can put in different info.

On a third page, you can format the author summary and any author notes you want to include. I keep author notes that talk about what the story means to the author. I don’t keep author notes that are basically apologies for not updating often enough. That’s entirely up to you.

So those are your intro pages. It’s 2-4 sheets of paper. I always set 4 blank pages in front of the title page. You’ll notice that professionally published books have a few blank pages before the title page as well. I also put 4 blank pages at the end of the book.

Story Text Pages

Now we’re going to format the actual story. There is a page limit to how much you can bind into one book when using this Simplified Method. You’re limited by the size of the binder clips used in perfect binding. Yep, true, binder clips are your limiting factor. The most I can usually get into big binder clips is about 225 sheets of paper. It varies depending on your paper weight. Take out about 12 sheets for intro and end pages, and that leaves me about 210 printed pages, which double-sided is 420 pages of text. The max word count I’ve bound in one book is 140,000 words. You can bind lengthy works but you will have to play around with margins and font size to keep the number of pages to something that fits into the binder clips.

1. Open a new Word document.

2. Set the paper size to A5 the same way you did for the intro pages document.

3. I always set all four margins to 0.7 just to get more words on a page. I wouldn’t go much smaller than that. You can keep your margins at 1 inch if you want, and I would recommend it if you’re printing less than 50,000 words.

4. Insert page numbers.

5. Go to the story on AO3. Make sure you’re in the “Entire Work” view because it’s a pain to cut and paste chapter by chapter. Press Ctrl-A to “Select All.”

6. Navigate back to your document. Press Ctrl-V to paste the entire mess into your document.

7. Save the file. Save often. You don’t want to lose your formatting.

8. Delete all the stuff that isn’t story text. The “Select All” will have picked up all the buttons and the kudos list and comment box and everything. Just delete it all until you only have text left. The text will have spacing between paragraphs, no indents, chapter headings in the middle of pages, and so forth.

9. When you’ve got nothing but text, press Ctrl-A again to select all the text and we’re going to do some basic formatting. With all the text selected, make these changes:

a. Change the font to Gentium Book Basic 12 pt. (There are hundreds of fonts to choose from. I stick to Gentium Book Basic 12 pt or Book Antiqua 12 pt for the text of the story.)

b. Get into the paragraph format menu. Change the spacing Before and After to 0, and add a first line indent of 0.3. On an A5 page, the standard indent of 0.5 is too deep.

Click out and your page count should change drastically to something pretty close to what your finished page count will be.

10. Now we’re going to format the chapter headings. If you’re in a highly merchandised fandom, you’ll be able to find custom fonts that you can use for chapter headings. Some are free to download. I’ve got the font for Frozen and another one for Star Trek.

Fun, right? If you don’t have a fandom-specific font, I recommend using Narkisim or Baskerville Old Face for chapter heading text. Both are included with Word.

a. If you have more than a couple chapters, it’s easier to set a Heading to auto-format your chapter titles than it is to select text, change font, and center for every single chapter. To do that, format Chapter One the way you want it. Select font, font size, center it on the page (you’ll have to turn off that 0.3 first line indent for just the chapter heading text). While you have your chapter heading text formatted and selected, go to the Home menu and right-click on Heading 2, then select the top option: “Update Heading 2 to Match Selection”. I couldn’t get a snip with the right-click, but this is what you want to right-click on:

Then for your next paragraph, just select the text of chapter number and title, click Heading 2, and it automatically applies all the formatting for you. Yay!

b. With the copy and paste we did to get the text from AO3 into Word, the chapters may start in the middle of a page. Make sure you press Ctrl-Enter at the end of a chapter to start the next chapter on a new page.

c. If you want to insert a text ornament at each chapter heading, that can be fun. If that’s too much right now, don’t worry about. I didn’t start using text ornaments until I had done about 15 books. You’ll have to work to get the text ornament the right size and positioned under the chapter heading text.

Are you done with chapter headings? Moving on!

11. Scene breaks. You know those places inside a chapter where there’s a scene break? Go look at a professionally published book. Many will just have a double space between paragraphs to mark a scene break. That’s probably the easiest way to mark a scene break. Go right ahead and do it that way.

12. Text separators at scene breaks. If you want, you can put in a text ornament to mark a scene break. There are full line text ornaments, or tiny text ornaments:

I found all my text separators by googling ‘images text ornaments’ or ‘text dividers’ and then snipping from the screen. Here are a few I haven’t used yet, which aren’t quite as blurry as everything I take a photo of (sucky camera phone):

To get a text ornament on the page of a Word doc, you go to “Insert” and click on “Pictures” and then select your image file. Then you have to resize it and position it, plus curse because it knocked all your text out of alignment, wonder what the purpose of image anchors are, drag, accidentally drop it in the middle of the paragraph, discover that Word has green guidelines that appear at random. I tell you what, text ornaments are a real treat. I just like them, okay? I like the way they look, I mean, they are annoying to work with. I did discover that once I have it resized, I copy that image, and then paste it into the next scene break rather than inserting the image from file again. That way I know all the text ornaments are the same size.

All done? Got it all formatted? Looks so great, doesn’t it?

Take a deep breath. Take a few days off. The hardest part is yet to come.

Printing

You’ll have to figure out how to print double-sided on A5 paper. I have very little advice here. It’s going to be you figuring out how to get your printer to cooperate. I’ve discovered that auto-double sided printing does not work on A5 paper. The print rollers just aren’t designed for little pieces of paper. My inkjet printer would auto-double-side on A5 paper, but it would offset the text on the front and back by a centimeter. My laser printer won’t auto-double-side at all on A5 paper. I manually double-side the pages. I can do it in batches of 20 pages at a time, so it’s not so bad.

If you are manually double-siding, make sure you know how to orient the pages when you stick them back in the printer. Instead of practicing on your actual book, just print pages that are blank other than the page number. Print pages 1-10 double-sided and see if you have to rotate the pages 180 degrees, or flip them over before putting them back in the paper tray.

Printing is a pain in the butt. Especially if you run out of toner partway through, or your printer starts printing a black line down the middle of every page. WHY??? It just does. It takes me about an hour to print about 80,000 words. I hope you will someday be more efficient than I am, but that’s how long it takes me.

Phew. Okay. Formatting and printing are done. Yay!! I’m very proud of you. That’s a huge job.

#simplified bookbinding #bookbinding #bookbinding for beginners #renegade publishers #renegade bookbinders #font and text ornaments #lindstrom2020 #op

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lov3nerdstuff · 4 years

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Voluptas Noctis Aeternae {Part 1.2}

*Severus Snape x OC*

Summary: It is the year 1983 when the ordinary life of Robin Mitchell takes a drastic turn: she is accepted into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Despite the struggles of being a muggle-born in Slytherin, she soon discovers her passion for Potions, and even manages the impossible: gaining the favor of Severus Snape. Throughout the years, Robin finds that the not quite so ordinary Potions Professor goes from being a brooding stranger to being more than she had ever deemed possible. An ally, a mentor, a friend... and eventually, the person she loves the most. Through adventure, prophecies and the little struggles of daily life in a castle full of mysteries, Robin chooses a path for herself, an unlikely friendship blossoms into something more, and two people abandoned by the world can finally find a home.

General warnings: professor x student (however no underage romance), blood, violence, trauma, neglectful families, bullying, cursing

Words: 5.2k

Read Part 1.1 here! All Parts can be found on the Masterlist!

______________________________

Despite all her efforts to mentally prepare for this, Robin didn't feel the least bit ready to find her essay resting on her desk the next time she stepped into the potions classroom. Chewing nervous on her bottom lip, she placed her leather bag down next to the table in the second row and took a seat reluctantly, almost as if expecting the parchment to jump at her any second now.

Frowning, Robin gave the rolled up thing a lingering look, while the seat next to her was abruptly taken in a haste that seemed rather uncanny for a slow Friday morning. A quick glance out of the corners of her eyes told Robin that her bench neighbor had arrived in the same awkwardly insecure manner as she had the weeks before. For a short moment, Robin wondered if the chubby girl whose name Robin admittedly hadn't managed to make herself ask for yet, was feeling this scared because she had to sit next to someone like her. Robin's frown deepened upon that thought, before she turned her eyes back to the parchment on her desk at last.

Just as she was about to finally give it a look and inspect the damage it had done to her grade, the door flew open with a start and a black river of fabric rushed past her through the aisle between the desks. Robin's heart skipped a beat in surprise, and she cursed herself under her breath for STILL being started by Professor Snape's mode of entrance. He made an entrance like that every week, and every week Robin found herself startled by it yet again. She briefly wondered if he did it on purpose, to mess with the students. To get their attention, perhaps.

"Open your textbooks on page fifty seven." Came the monotonously determined command from the front, interrupting Robin's internal monologue, while every audible chatter around the room had long died out. This was the only class that ever happened in… the students falling silent and paying attention the very moment the professor entered the room. Robin couldn't say that she minded much, she had always rather dreaded the minutes wasted with the teacher trying to get everyone's attention.

With a quiet sigh, Robin took out her textbook, notebooks and the quill Marleen had charmed for her to never run out of ink, and instead placed the bloody essay into her bag, leaving it uninspected for now. She would have to wait until after class to look at her grade, since focusing on anything but potions class in potions class was nigh impossible.

Next to her, the Hufflepuff girl let out a tiny noise of despair, and Robin glanced her way while opening her book on the requested page. For a moment, she silently watched how the girl vainly roamed through her bag with trembling hands, only to sit back up empty handed and with a flustered face.

"We can share my book." Robin heard herself say before she could stop herself. Darn, she really didn't need any more problems, nor to be made fun of… again. But she also couldn't keep her mouth shut. Ever.

The girl's eyebrows shot up in surprise, before she gave Robin a timid but overwhelmingly thankful smile. "That- uh, that's very kind of you." She whispered back, and Robin pushed the book to the middle of the desk silently before turning her head back to her professor at the front.

He was watching them intently, with one eyebrow risen, but with no comment. Robin had to force herself to hold his gaze instead of looking away like her bench neighbor did, and for but a second, Snape's eyebrow lifted just a little bit higher in an expression Robin couldn't put a name to. Then he turned back towards the entire class.

"Today we will be brewing a simple antidote to common poisons. If you did your assigned reading before class, I shouldn't have to say any more." Professor Snape spoke sternly while he sat down behind his desk, letting a piercing glance wander around the room. Seeing as none of the students made a move to react in any way, he added with a scowl, "Instructions are on page fifty seven. Collect your ingredients at the front." With that he averted his eyes from the students and instead focused on the stack of parchment on his desk.So much for the insightful lecture Robin had hoped for.

While most students started shuffling and talking quietly in small groups then, Robin's eyes remained fixed on Professor Snape for a moment of irritation, a deep frown on her face. Usually, Snape would at least give a scolding comment about the previous week's assignment at the beginning of class, saying how yet again they had failed to bring forth even one single 'outstanding', or he'd even make remarks about the sheer inability of his students to be any more than just complete dunderheads. Today however, he seemed quite unwilling to do either. Robin wondered if it had anything to do with last week's essays that he was even more dismissive than usual. Or maybe he was simply having a bad day? Professors surely had bad days as well, everyone did...

"Now, Miss Mitchell." Snape's sternly taunting words were uttered without him even looking up from whatever he was reading, and Robin's eyes snapped away in an instant, followed by the burning embarrassment of getting caught while staring. Even if unintentionally, she HAD, in fact, stared at him for quite some time while so deep in thought. Darn, first the probably failed essay and now this…

To cover up for her lack of confidence, she quickly rose to her feet and set out to collect her ingredients like she had been told to, while trying to shake off any thoughts about her professor. Whatever was up with him today, it wasn't for her to dwell on. She did wonder however if anyone else had noticed this minor change in his demeanor at all, the slightly deeper frown on his face or the even more cutting edge to his tone… But she honestly had no intention to find out. He had a bad day, so what? She did, too.

Thus she focused on the things she knew, and that was following the instructions in the textbook. Obviously she had done her assigned reading beforehand –potions was currently the only subject she actually did her readings for– and thus she was quite certain that she would get this antidote right. With an almost unshakable determination to do her best, she started with step one.

… … …

It was only half an hour later –Robin was currently cutting up dittany into perfect little pieces– that her focus was broken by one of her fellow Slytherin students.

"How's the potion coming along, jay?" Alexander Downing, a particularly dense individual and proud pure blood, sneered at Robin. Oh how much he must love to call her 'jay' at every possible and impossible opportunity… in fact, he had done it so often that some other not-quite favourable Slytherins had started adopting the same moniker for Robin as well. "Doesn't look right, don't you think?... Your 'potion'?" He drawled the word out in an overly mocking tone as he leaned over his third row table to gawk into Robin's cauldron with a disgusted look on his face. "Can't expect much more than failure from a filthy mudblood anyway."

As he leaned back into his own space with a self-satisfied smirk on his face, getting a few appraising laughs from his friends, Robin had to forcefully bite down the white hot rage that poisoned her blood and made it difficult to breathe. She shot Alexander an angry glare and turned back towards her cauldron without a word, but she wasn't done with him by far. No, he had called her jay often enough to forge himself an enemy, but calling her a mudblood was what had sealed his fate just now. Robin would have her revenge… and it surely would send a signal to his friends just the same.

"You're muggle born?" The quiet voice of the Hufflepuff girl next to her suddenly brought Robin's mind back to the classroom.

Her surprise at getting caught while living in her head once more took her ability to react for a moment, but the Hufflepuff didn't seem to mind and simply kept staring at Robin both in surprise and wonder. And since Robin saw no judgement in the girl's eyes whatsoever, only heard the quiet snorting coming from the row of boys behind her, she decided that she would try to make a friend one more time before finally giving up on her classmates once and for all.

"Yeah…" She finally sighed, in resignation almost at her own decision. "Nothing is short of ordinary in my family. The muggle kind of ordinary, I mean."

For but a short moment, the Hufflepuff's eyes lit up in pleasant surprise, then she blushed a deep crimson. "I… I didn't think there were any muggle borns in Slytherin at all."

"There won't be when I'm done with jay!" Alexander roared out rather loudly from behind the girls, laughing along with his friends at his own comment, and he thereby earned himself a dangerous glare from Professor Snape.

Robin for her part merely rolled her eyes at the stupid idiots behind her and ignored them like she usually tried to. Instead she focused back on the Hufflepuff girl by her side. "I wouldn't know if there was another one besides me. But since I'm most definitely in Slytherin and also definitely muggle born, you could say that you thought wrong." That, Robin realized, came out a bit more defensively than she would've liked, but she also couldn't bring herself to take it back. The girl bit her bottom lip and quickly looked back towards her slimy, brown potion that truly looked nothing like it was supposed to. Robin almost felt sorry for her own harshness, as well as the girl's obvious lack of talent for potion making.

"Why, uh, why does everyone call you jay?" The girl finally asked, and Robin was almost glad to find that she hadn't scared her away with her admittedly hostile attitude. She should make an effort be kinder to her bench neighbor, the girl had as of yet been nothing but nice, after all.

"I think they call me jay because my name is Robin." She shrugged. "Robin Mitchell. I guess the bird analogy is just funny to them for some reason."

"Oh… I'm sorry they keep doing that. It can't be nice to be an outsider in your own house." The girl looked truly remorseful as she spoke, while awkwardly stirring her failed potion in an attempt to somehow save it by stirring alone.

"No, it's not."

"If it helps anything, my parents are muggles as well."

"Oh?"

"Yeah… but in my house that's no big deal really. Some idiots make a fuss about it, but it's truly the minority."

"Sounds nice. I'm starting to think I was simply placed in the wrong house." Robin finally admitted a bit jokingly, even though she neither felt confident in her statement nor in her use of humor. She liked Slytherin… she just didn't like the Slytherins she had met as of yet.

"Couldn't agree more!" Alexander added in from behind them.

"Shut up, idiot!" The Hufflepuff snapped at him immediately, and Robin's eyebrows rose in surprise. She surely hadn't seen that coming, especially not after what was being said about Hufflepuffs and their inherently harmonious nature. Another reason to stop listening to the gossip and prejudice between houses, if the rumors about Professor Snape weren't enough indication of that.

"Don't speak to me like that, you worthless daft cow!" Alexander shot right back, and Robin watched how the girl's face fell in immediate shame inflicted by the crude insult. Obviously she wasn't the only one who had fallen victim to his bullying.

"What's your name? I'm sorry I never got around to asking before…" Robin questioned her then, both to actively ignore Alexander and to distract the girl from his vile words.

"Ah, well, I didn't know your name either, so I cannot really blame you for that." She gave Robin a small and crooked smile. "I'm Theresa."

For once, Robin smiled at the girl in return. Theresa… she surely was nice enough for a stranger, and fierce enough for a first year. Robin could actually see herself being friends with her. Maybe, if they got to know each other better from here on. "Nice to finally meet you, Theresa. After sitting next to you for five weeks now."

Upon Robin's words Theresa chuckled in amusement at last, and Robin had to smirk as well, in relief that Alexander's words hadn't caused a lasting damage to her potential friend. A moment passed, and both girls finally focused back on their brewing in comfortable silence. Enough chatter for now… Robin still had a potion to make and a revenge to conduct.

… … …

After the dittany was slowly stirred into the steaming liquid, she continued to hand-pick the valerian sprigs and all the while she debated about how to put Alexander back into his place with the least effort and the most effect. Most things that came to her mind were so incredibly dim witted that they could very well come right from Alexander himself, and Robin dismissed those ideas in the sheer refusal to sink quite as low as him. Only once she added the final ingredient, a chopped bezoar, to her cauldron way ahead of time and even further ahead of everyone else, Robin found herself graced with the sudden memory of something she had read about in Jessica's fourth year potions textbook a few days ago. It surely was nothing short of risky, but both brilliant and stupid enough that she absolutely had to try now that the idea had struck her. Besides, she was good at this, at potions. She knew what she was doing! Nobody bullied Robin without receiving a serious payback. And nobody bullied the people she even remotely cared about without a full blown revenge.

Thus, as soon as she had added the bezoar, she decided that her potion was about as done as it could be. Her ingenious plan however was just beginning. Taking out a piece of parchment, she wrote 'Please play along and it'll be worth it. I'm gonna say something now, and you'll tell me it was part of the assigned reading. I want Alexander to hear it.' and passed the note to Theresa next to her. The girl frowned at Robin for just a moment, making her think that maybe it hadn't been a good idea to include her in the plan after all, but then she subtly nodded with a small smile, and all of Robin's precautions vanished into thin air. Alexander Downing would get what he deserved at last, after being the main cause for five weeks of Robin's continued suffering. Enough was enough.

"Oh no, I believe I've made a mistake!" Robin sighed dramatically, quietly enough that only Alexander and his idiot friends would hear. No need to alert any other students of the ongoings between them now. "I totally mixed the ingredients up! But this is just such a difficult subject, how was I supposed to know that we should add aconite instead of a bezoar?!"

"Well, it was mentioned in the reading we had to do for today that bezoars are almost as outdated as our textbooks themselves!" Theresa lied so easily that Robin was actually impressed with her. "Maybe you should've read it before coming to class."

"Yeah… I really should have. Now I'll certainly be in a lot of trouble." She was quick to reply, adding just a hint of feigned despair to her tone.

"Serves you right..." Alexander snorted, before grinning triumphantly. "Obviously we have to exchange the bezoar for… the other thing. It's common knowledge among REAL wizards that bezoars are outdated… but how would you know about that, right?" He scoffed arrogantly, and not quite so subtly went to retrieve the aconite instead of the usual bezoar.

Robin turned back to her own cauldron with an exaggerated eye rolling, and only in the safety of her own space allowed herself to grin in utter mischief. She had only guessed that Alexander hadn't done his reading, but it had been a more or less educated guess based upon the information gathered in the previous five weeks, and thank goodness had she been correct. Bezoars being outdated? Only someone who had paid absolutely zero attention to anything Professor Snape had explained would've bought that nonsense. And Alexander luckily was such a someone. A prime example of a dumbass, even. Well, and Robin had a brain, but Alexander's lack thereof was nothing she should take pride in.

While Alexander indeed passed on the news of the supposedly outdated instructions to his friends, Robin smiled reassuringly at a nervous looking Theresa for a moment, and then turned towards her cauldron once more. The antidote really had turned out quite as perfect as she had expected, especially considering that her mind had definitely been elsewhere today. Hopefully Professor Snape would be just as content with her work as she was… maybe he would even forget about her flunked essay and her short moment of stepping out of line in the beginning of class.

Only then it crossed Robin's mind that the little inside joke she had just had with herself in the form of her revenge on Alexander might actually be interpreted as stepping out of line, and most definitely would be in this context! Her heart skipped a beat at the realization, and she could already feel her hands getting clammy. Oh no… no no no. She had made such an effort up to this point to make a good impression on her professor, to do well in this class and get good grades, and now it would all be ruined by her own blind seek for vengeance. Gods, she was an idiot! So much for trying to be mature about her emotional impulses… Obviously she didn't regret doing it either, Alexander really had it coming after all, but she definitely regretted doing it here. Right in front of Professor Snape's eyes. Not a smart move, Robin…

While she anxiously awaited the end of class, when he would make his way through the rows of students to carefully inspect the outcomes of today's brewing session, she couldn't quite keep the worried frown off her face. How did other kids do it? Acting up, getting into trouble, pulling pranks even on their professors? Robin didn't have the slightest idea; this was the first time she had ever done anything so stupid and she already was determined that the momentary satisfaction she'd gotten out of it wasn't worth the anxiety of possibly getting caught. Maybe she just would have to grow a thicker skin against the bullying indeed. It's what her father already had so coldly told her to do in elementary school, when she had come home crying because the other kids had laughed at her for being… well, her.

But that was years ago. In Robin's mind, she was a different person now. No more crying, or rather no more letting others see her cry, and no more blindly trusting other people. All that, she had left behind even before she had stepped onto the train to Hogwarts. Now all she had was herself and her smarts, and she was determined that she wouldn't need anything else to succeed around here.

Her mental pep talk came to a sudden halt when the room around her fell oddly silent at once, leaving only the quiet bubbling of the potions to be heard. Robin looked up from her book that she had been staring at without actually taking the words in, only to see that her professor had gotten up from his desk and was now indeed making his way along the many rows of desks. How he moved absolutely soundlessly was a riddle to her, but she made a mental note to keep that talent of his in mind. Who knows, one day it might save her from being startled by him suddenly appearing behind her back.

For a few minutes, Robin subtly watched (and also eavesdropped) on Professor Snape giving various students his feedback, or rather a good scolding. Not one positive word left the man's lips, and not one student got spared his commentary. Seeing as it was only three more students before he would come peering into her own cauldron now, Robin nervously rearranged her notebooks into a perfect stack, placed her quill in a straight parallel line next to them, and quickly cleared her table of every and any leftover supplies and utensils before giving the desk a final (rather improvised) swipe with the sleeve of her robe. Maybe she should look up a spell for swipe-cleaning one of these days…

Then Professor Snape stepped around to Theresa's side of the desk, and Robin could already hear very little but the beating of her own heart at that point.

"Forgetting our textbook and then having the audacity to mess up now, did we?" He commented in a threatening nonchalance, as his gaze lifted from Theresa's admittedly failed attempt at the antidote to her poor, blushing face.

"I-I really tried to, uh, to get it right…" She stuttered, averting her eyes from her professor's. In the dim light of the torches and candles alone, they almost looked entirely black as they gazed down at Theresa without any visible emotion while he waited for her to speak on. "Maybe I didn't measure the ingredients carefully enough… I think…"

"Obviously you didn't…" He simply voiced, with the same indifferent and slightly condescending expression he always wore.

"Measure correctly?" Theresa inquired insecurely, and Robin bit her bottom lip in nervousness.

"Think." Was his only reply for a moment, but after a moment he gave Theresa a stern look and added, "Maybe less talking and more focus would be advisable next time, Miss Franklin. Consider the measurements a suggestion, not a fixed mark. Reevaluate based upon the reality in front of you."

"Yes, sir…"

Robin's eyes stayed fixed on her professor as he took the two steps to stand right in front of her desk now, looking at the clean tabletop (the only one in the room), then at her with an eyebrow risen in that particular manner yet again, and finally down at the antidote simmering in her cauldron. She held her breath as his brows furrowed for a short moment, then his face went right back into its stoic solemnity. With his head still turned down towards her potion, his eyes shot up to hers for no more than three long seconds, before he straightened up even taller than he had been standing before and walked on to the next student without a single word.

Robin let out a shivery breath in utter confusion. If she was being honest with herself, she hadn't really expected any praise coming from him. He never praised anyone, she'd already discovered that much. But at least a little acknowledgement, was that too much to ask for? Or at least a comment on what to improve? How was she supposed to learn like that?! A quiet huff of frustration pressed past her lips… was this a 'say nothing if you've got nothing nice to say' kind of thing? Hell no… he was brutal in his comments, he surely wouldn't just keep his scolding words to himself now. Then what was it? Had she disappointed him beyond words? Didn't he deem her worthy of feedback? Because she was a-... No. She had to stop thinking in Alexander's terms. And her wish for a change of topic was granted, even if more than likely to her disadvantage rather than her saving.

"Mister Downing… Care to explain?" Professor Snape hissed at Alexander, and all color drained from Robin's face as she slowly turned in her seat to witness the disaster unfold. The impending doom she had brought upon herself as much as upon him.

"But sir, I didn't do anything wrong!" Alexander defended himself, and a few indignant snorts were heard from the back of the room. Snape ignored them.

"You clearly have no idea what situation you find yourself in, Mister Downing. Obviously it has escaped your notice that you were supposed to brew an antidote? Or haven't you learned to read prior to your arrival at Hogwarts?"

"No, sir! I followed all the instructions, and I did the reading on the outdatedness of bezoars, and…"

"Pray tell, do you have an urgent desire for detention or are you truly this dense?"

Now Robin finally couldn't suppress her own snort anymore, and she found herself forgiving Professor Snape for not giving her a proper feedback. Him mocking Alexander right now more than made up for it. Unfortunately, that was when Alexander caught on to her scheming as well, and his face turned beet red.

"SHE!" He yelled out, and Robin's smirk dropped immediately as he almost stabbed a stubby finger into her face. "That filthy mudblood told me that we were to exchange the bezoar for anco… acro…"

"Aconite..." Robin groaned out under her breath, in utter annoyance and with a roll of her eyes, before she could remind herself to keep her stupid mouth shut. Bloody hell… that was as good a confession as she could've given. Well done, stupid.

Professor Snape's menacing eyes were on her in an instant, and Robin winced, then shuddered. Oh no… For a second he stared at her like he wanted to suck her soul out with his eyes alone, but then (to everyone's surprise) he turned back to Alexander.

"As it appears to me, Mister Downing, that despite this tragic joke made at your expense, you have failed to do your assigned reading prior to today's class. Also it would seem like you have made an enormous effort to keep everything I have been explaining to you dunderheads over the course of term from getting into the way of your astonishing ignorance." Professor Snape's voice was neutral, collected, yet sharp and dark as it got… but none of that could cover up the ever present sense of danger radiating off him in palpable waves. "I expect a ten page essay on bezoars and their many uses in potion making on my desk by Monday night." With that, he turned away from Alexander and scolded the next student for their poor attempt at the antidote, leaving Alexander to angrily pout to himself.

Robin for her part couldn't believe that professor Snape still had not wasted a single comment on her, nor that he had simply disregarded Alexander's constant bullying of other students. Didn't that matter at all? Or was it some bullshit pure blood privilege? Her heart was again beating furiously, almost jumping out of her chest at this pace, while her thoughts seemed to spin in circles. All things considered, she should feel lucky. She had stupidly enough admitted to doing what she'd been accused of, but there had been no consequences whatsoever. At least not for her. Alexander however…

"See, not even Snape denies that you're a filthy mudblood…" He muttered from behind her, in unmistakable hatred. "One of these days I'll kill you, jay, and he will even give me bloody house points for it."

"I'd like to see you try." Robin spat back, at last engaging in the pettiness of a vocal argument. But her capacity for taking bullshit surely was used up for today, as was her patience. "You, the great pure blood wizard who doesn't even know a single thing about bloody bezoars! Or about potions for that matter…"

"Oh, and YOU know all about potions, huh?" He sneered. "Don't be so bloody pretentious, you're nothing, and I'll make sure that everyone knows that."

Before Robin could say any more to defend herself or her wounded pride, Professor Snape made his way back to the front of the classroom to make some final announcements before the end of class, robes billowing behind him theatrically as ever. With an annoyed sigh and a rapidly forming headache, Robin noted down her assignments in a notebook that had served her as a commonplace journal ever since the first week, before stowing away her supplies in her bag as soon as the class was dismissed.

However once she rose to her feet to head out, the unmistakable deep voice of her professor cut right through the bristling noise of the other students. "Where do you think you are going, Miss Mitchell?"

"...Sir?"

"My office, now." With this statement that desperately screamed 'punishment', he turned on his heels, and with strides that were so long that Robin wouldn't have been able to keep up even if she'd tried, he disappeared through a door at the very back of the room.

"Serves you right…" Alexander spoke up yet again, with another nasty grin. "I hope he kicks you out. And even if he doesn't, being alone in a room with Snape is definitely worse than writing a stupid ten page essay…"

"Oh shut up, will you? At least come up with some good insults before you open your mouth." Robin growled back with a feigned angry frown, while still she nervously picked at the hem of her sleeves behind her back. A moment later Alexander made his way out of the classroom with his friends, muttering under his breath how much he hoped that Snape would just turn Robin into a heap of vermin, and for some reason she didn't rule that out of the wide range of possibilities for what was to happen to her soon. Once more her nerves got the better of her, and she bit her bottom lip as she frowned at the door in the front of the room. Before today, she hadn't taken notice of anyone being called into her professor's office, and that realization deeply concerned her. Could she truly be expelled for this one stupid practical joke?!

"I'm sure he won't be all too harsh on you…" Theresa finally spoke up in a quiet voice that proved just how uncertain she was about her own statement. "And even if he is, just remember that… that… he's just…"

"Thanks for trying." Robin gave her a forced half smile. "I won't drag you into this, don't worry. As far as anyone knows, you never helped me do this."

"I wasn't concerned about that." She replied sympathetically and shouldered her backpack. "I just wanted to wish you look. I'll see you in transfiguration on Monday, yes?"

"Yeah…" Robin replied quietly, all the while not taking her eyes off the door to his office that he'd left ajar. "Have a-... uh, a nice weekend."

With a small nod Theresa left, and the very last students filed out soon after her, which left Robin standing alone in the middle of the silent classroom. And for the second time she asked herself: what had she done?!

______________________________

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queenlokibeth · 3 years

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I wanted to mention a couple of things about mental health that I think are important.

I'm doing relatively well at the moment. I've managed to go to bed before 2am most days, usually at midnight, and I've gotten 6-7 hours of sleep every night. I've eaten at least 2 full proper meals at reasonable times every day. I haven't turned in any homework late. I have to consciously fight off executive dysfunction but I do manage to win. I'm doing relatively well, which is how I notice just how badly I was doing just a month and a half ago.

What I want to say is that, when you're going through a rough mental health patch (especially if that patch is like a year or more) you might be aware that "sure, yeah, I'm not doing well" but it can also sort of feel like that's just... the way it is.

In December I consciously knew that I was having an awful time, quite probably the deepest hole in terms of mental health in my life, but I had also already been living like that for almost a year, and I transitioned into this hole more or less slowly. So last December I knew that I wasn't feeling or behaving the way that I did a year before that, but it wasn't a drastic change, I eased into that pit. Think about that metaphor about dropping a frog into boiling water and it will jump out, but slowly boil it and it won't notice and die.

I was conscious about the big things: for some reason I physically couldn't get myself to start tasks. I was distracted all the time. My sleeping schedule was something like 4am-10am when I wasn't pulling an all-nighter. I was showering once a week, did laundry every 6 weeks, and lost a lot of weight. I didn't want to do anything and I had no will to go outside. I wanted to read a book but not out of real pursuit of fun, but because I felt like I desperstely needed to catch a break and force myself to do something nice for myself. What I was obviously not conscious of was what was causing all of this.

Being in a pit of terrible mental health feels somehow even worse when you are fully aware that you're completely unhealthy, and you can pinpoint all the things that aren't working right, and you try to do all the correct things to "go back to normal", but you can't, and after a year you don't really remembers what your normal feelings or reactions to things were. In this awful state I was trying to manifest a version of myself who got her shit together and showered regularly and turned homework in on time and did laundry without it taking the same effort as hiking up a mountain, but this version of myself still had the same mental state, numbness, and mental fog, since that's all I knew at the time and I couldn't remember or understand that that's not my default state as a human being. And under that cloud of malfunctioning mental connections and chemicals I was NEVER going to manage to start functioning like a healthy person again.

Why am I pointing out all of this? Because it can be hard to realise how different things can be when you start getting healthier. There are factors of my personality that I hadn't even identified as altered in December.

I'm noticing this now because I did somehow transitioned into recovering extremely quickly. While it took me a few months to fall into a shit state of mental health, and then stayed there for like a year, now in about 3 weeks to a month I flipped my life around and everything is so much... brighter.

I don't mean for this to sound like an ad a la "you can, too, flip your life around!" But as reassurance that getting better is an option, and even a "quick" one, but obviously not without help, and not without PHYSICAL aspecrs. During that month I spent time in warmer weather, seeing sun semi regularly (I had not been outside for longer than 15 minutes at a time every few days in extremely cloudy weather for a few months at that point), I didn't have school so I didn't have to stress about a destroying amount of deadlines, I "recovered" sleep (the first day I slept for 14 hours, then 10 for a few days, and then dropped to 8 consistently), I ate healthy and hearty food, and I had conversations daily with my parents, after having been completely alone for about 7 months of not talking to anyone. During the first 2 weeks I still felt like a mess, the third week was better, and by the end of the month I felt vaguely functional.

By now I'm in no way fully better but Everything Is So Different. Now I'm realising and coming back to the way I always used to behave and feel about things. I find real joy in things and I hadn't even noticed that for a year I had NOT felt joy about ANYTHING I was merely using things to cope! And I hadn't noticed because I could no longer remember that a different feeling beyond "neutral" existed!

I'm excited about going outside now even if it's so so cold, I realised the other day that I needed something from the store and I just... put on my coat and went to the door? And i surprised myself mid step that it was just... that easy. I wanted to go somewhere and I could just... go. I didn't have to psych myself up for 3 days and then end up delaying my departure by 2 hours because that's how long it took me to find the will to put my shoes on.

Anyways I saw a candle and it was only $2 and it smelled really good and I just bought it because I deserve things that make me happy and then I bought some cinnamon flavoured coffee because I WANTED to try it and I also bought this coffee creamer that I saw because suddenly it was easy to just reach into the grocery store fridge and pull it out instead of planning it a week in advance and then overthinking it because do I really need it do I have space in the fridge am I going to finish it or will it expire first only to get overwhelmed and leave the store without it only to immediately regret it and get sad about not getting it once I arrived back to my room. I enjoy drinking my coffee now, I'm not just doing it to stay awake. I can actually get out of bed at the right time even if I'm still a bit tired because the sun is coming up and it looks pretty outside. It snowed yesterday and everyone was out at night playing with it and a stray snowball reached me while I was on my way to get dinner. This poor guy that I'd never seen apologised profusely and it was so funny! There was something about everyone in masks and standing 6 feet apart taking advantage of snowball fights as a way to interact with each other that felt straight out of a Hallmark movie.

Bottomline: at your worst there isn't anything that looks tangibly better, but there is, and you start to realise it afterwards. While you should definitely go to therapy if you can/need to, and that meds can be necessary, there is so much that you can start slowly fixing (with a lot of effort, I know) that will seriously, seeiously help. I know that it might sound like bullshit or like an oversimplification, but it's true and it's stuff that you'll never truly believe will work until you're doing better and you're like "oh shit damn".

Please sleep. Please sleep at night time and have a semi regular sleeping schedule. I know that it sounds like it won't be enough (and true, by itself it probably won't heal you completely but it will sure help a lot). I would always "understand" that sleep was important and "yes mom i know that I need to sleep better" but I never interiorised how DRAMATICALLY sleep affects your entire life. Regular, good, nighttime sleep helps regulate all the hormones and chemicals that we need. If your fucked up sleeping schedule shut down production of serotonin, congratulations now you have all the awful symptoms that come along with lacking an essential component of your functioning. And I know that it's often a terrible vicious cycle of not being able to sleep properly or procrastinating sleep or being unable to just go to bed causing mental health problems which continue to prevent you from being able to fix youe sleep pattern. Please take it from me, someone who a month ago felt like she'd genuinely never be able to function semi properly again, that forcing yourself to fix your sleep is a HUGE MEGA STEP towards fully recovering. I know it now because I can see the contrast, but a month ago I didn't understand it because I was like "well yeah I need to sleep better but what's the point I'm fine it won't change much" yeah well my brain is an asshole and I was not in fact fine but rather completely empty inside and just going the fuck to sleep semi regularly has made me feel like a real person instead of a weird cryptid for the first time in months. Just go the fuck to sleep, PLEASE.

#long post #im sorry i had to share all of this i know it's long #im just genuinely so shocked by how fully different i feel now in a way i nevee ever anticipated #mine #gpoy

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imjustawerido · 3 years

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Just read it i u want to

The change it is in oneself

Hi, I'm basically no one or someone that can tell you what's going in the world right now... Well I can tho, violence, lack of education, pollution and climate crisis, mistreat to all and all of us, and the list goes and goes further. I mean I just did it, I just mention some of the issues of our society and I’m just a common person, I can't go deeper in this problems cause I don't know much of them but some people do and they are pretty common too, and they blame a lot of people and say a principal cause of what they society is "fucked" (that sounds kind of rude, doesn't it?) some people say the internet is the major factor others that "God" is not in their lives and also others that society is on a rapid downfall or even freefall event, other some that society have lost it sanity or it faith or it intelligence (I mean if society have lost it intelligence you wouldn't make that kind of comments, would you?). Sounds like disaster, people blaming on everything and everyone from everything and everyone also blaming them cause if you blame society your blaming you cause you are part of it and blaming literally everyone, cause everyone is part of our society, so the scenario it's people blaming the entire society for problems or things that some groups of people might haven't met or think about those things. Beside you are religious or if you use Internet or not despite you have any impediment or just if you haven't seen those things. Such a messy world.

An example to make clearer the situation. Imagine that you are a villager around somewhere, you have a family, you have friends who live a couple of kilometers from where you live, you have some ways to communicate worldwide not all of them (pretty much news) you don’t have social media, but you're happy. On a day like any other you are going to hunt an animal to have food but you meet some activist who fight against animal mistreat and they ask you and beg you not to do it because for people like you animals have lost rights and died in a horrible way, you say that you have to feed your family and they tell you that are options in the supermarket a company in where animals die without any kind of violence, abuse or mistreat, you say “ok I'm going to give a chance, to change”, you take a portion of your time to travel far away but the closest supermarket around your area, you get inside, get the exact brand, paid, walk out from the supermarket while an activist of climate change stop you and gives you an information, the company that manufacture that meat does it without any violence or abuse but the animals can only be within a certain area doing irreparable damage to the ground in addition to the fact that the level of greenhouse gases emissions is enormous and she asks you try to do something else because for people like you who still choosing these kinds of products, the environment it's not gonna change, but being vegetarian it's not an option, some vegetables and meat substitutes are pretty expensive in your region. So you are confuse, you feel bad, you don't have as good information as you could get. What would you do? Which is the bad option here? Where is the evil option here? It is buying the meat you need and directly promoted pollution, or just killing the dear without mercy, or just buying expensive alternatives until your money runs out, or just stop eating???

Being unaware it's not being ignorant, like the example I just said, there are lot more of them, like something recent from years now, let's mention the climate crisis debate. The information is real. right now China is the biggest greenhouse gases emitter with 16.2 percent of global methane emissions (around 1.6 billion tons), 14.5 of N2O emissions (around 410 million tons) in 2018 and right now China must be producing around 30% of global C2O emissions, having and counting information of 2017 in which China produced 9.8 billion metric tons of C2O. so having that in count blame should go on China despite the US being in second place India in third Russia in fourth, etc. and of course being much more less emissions than China, but we are not seeing the whole picture, historically the U.S is on the top with more than 400 billion tons of C2O and is responsible for 25% historical emissions and right behind is the European union with 22% is about double China's historically gases emissions and digging more deeper the emissions of the U.S were more drastically in the XX century along with the European Union and this made them very rich and develop countries, so within they can cost the expensive alternatives and stop burning fossil fuel and stop emitting other gases, and the other countries don't have another way to avoid poverty but burn fossil fuel and start more emission, like the case of China, China's emissions rise drastically in this few years but it poverty levels also drastically decrease in a shocking way and for some countries their emissions could be just lifestyle emissions like going to hang in a car and for other life important emissions. Of course covid 19 effects reduce this emission, but covid wasn’t threatening us years ago, So knowing these facts is worth to find someone to blame? Is China bad? Is the U.S bad? is worth to blame someone about it in this big society?

Blaming can be discussing and obviously discuss it worth too, but in this big society with a lot of epistemic groups along with it, it is? Let me gather this topic, when we talk about epistemic communities we are referring to communities, of course I’m not referring to the large international scale ones, is a group of people, can be large, small, very large, very small, that thinks, search or aim some ideas of home and some other related topics, and gets information in the same relative way, for example, this example is more about internal relationships and authority but it can let you get the idea in your mind better. a mother tells her child that there is some eggs in the fridge the child may (must) believe it but an uncle or aunt may be more difficult, now imagine a cousin and know even a stranger, levels of confidence differ by epistemic group, another examples, some tourist come to your countries and talks about your Independence Day, or some religious people knocking your door and give some talk, the level of testimony must be more higher than someone from your epistemic community because the level of testimony from someone from your epistemic community is relative as the same way that you get information so it's easier for someone from your epistemic group transmit knowledge than someone from outside. And also that means that all epistemic groups don't have the same evidence they always are goanna lack in some facts for example non-religious people or people unaware of an Ebola outbreak and it's ok there is nothing bad with it and that's why blaming all society for an issue or another is stupid.

So how can we help, I mean is that the right word? Does really everyone want to help the whole society. You know, I think society works as a clock, with along 8 billion engines, some engines being in the opposite direction, some others need some oil, etc. and when you ask, request, a society change the difficult part it's that i can't check 8 billion engines to see which one might need oil and I can't just replace it, unless you can tell me where I can buy a freaking 8 billion engines clock. It would be easier if every single engine could have conscious and correct itself, like a person, and for that I'm glad that society is made out people and no freaking engines because people have the ability to adapt and that is awesome, make a change for the goal to make things better. The change it is in oneself, a lot, but I really mean a lot people said that is incorrect, congrats, you are wrong, the phrase is correct I think is not really working cause is bad formulated.

To make things spicier from here, remember if you don't take that phrase seriously you aren't a better person, congrats your part of the problem about everyone is blaming on everything and everyone requesting a whole change. Whole change, it is really correct? the basis is "let’s do some change together as a society" yeah not gonna work, an 8 billion group session therapy for change is not goanna make the trick, all the society can't make the same change for the same good lead by the simple fact that all people are completely different from another In uncountable ways, everyone needs different goods different changes and that's ok, that's why you have to change depending on what you could do better. And right you might begin defending yourself "nooo but I'm being good" and you know I can trust, but I don't care, the one who cares should be you, ask yourself if you are lying to yourself because the smallest action like ignoring a red light (and you know there are other much more common and much more worst) and then careering about the phrase “the change it is in oneself, wow that is like the biggest example of double moral is ever gonna be. It not worth it for being a good person, but for being a person.

You might be thinking this is utopia, I'm not trying to achieve that, utopia is perfect and humans are not, there is phrase that says, “humans are perfectly imperfect, like the phrase itself��. Actually there is an experiment "mice utopia" which tries to achieve this, a utopia for mice, unlimited resources but limited space, even though in real life we don't have unlimited resources, in the end the experiment went pretty bad and yes obviously I can't compare humans with mice but what I'm trying to say is that if with mice went to basically through hell imagine it with so complex humans’ beings, mice are basic, you can't have denied that. What I’m trying achieve is not utopia but awareness, conscious.

So, change for make things better, why? Why would you do that, I can leave a reason, do it for you, love yourself, for your world, and that is the things you love, your planet, your pets, whatever, the ones you love, your friends, your lovers, just you, make your world better without harming anyone, is possible.

So the change it is in oneself, yes... If you stop hugging a victim role... If you stop doing the less... If you stop thinking that you can't do anything by yourself. I hope you do so. Thanks.

(if u wanna find me somewhere else here's my ig: @juan0_rr)

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getalittleclosey · 4 years

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under 25k larry fic rec

hi! i’m becca and i read...so much fic. these rec lists are an accumulation of fic that i’ve read or reread and extra loved from 2016-now. there’s a wide range of stuff here and i think there’s definitely something for everyone!! i divided them up by length so you can check out all those categories below!

please make sure to read tags and warnings on all these fics!! the only things i think i can guarantee is that these are all larry, there’s no non-con, no age play, no eating disorders, no mentions of bg, they end happy, and they’re mostly aus. oh and they’re all on ao3 and some are locked so you’ll need an account! anyway i hope y’all enjoy!!!

under 5k

under 10k

under 50k

under 100k

100k+

☆ watching the world fall by whoknows 12k

This segment has been going on long enough that Louis knows what’s coming before James starts in on it, trying to sell him on something he knows that Louis wouldn’t normally be buying. But there’s four cameras surrounding him, and an audience watching him expectantly, so if Louis wants to continue convincing people that he’s doing just fine, he’s going to have to go along with it.

“We have a whole host of single men backstage waiting to meet you, Louis,” James tells him. “We want to help you find love tonight, on Late Late Live Tinder. Is this okay? Do you want to play?”

It actually kind of makes sense that his first date after the break-up is going to be just as public as said break-up. Something like coming full circle.

“Alright, James,” Louis agrees, hopping down off his stool.

“Okay, come down to the stage,” James says. Louis can’t even tell whether the excitement in his voice is genuine or not. “Right now, come on down!”

☆ enjoy the ride by 2tiedships2 11k

“Stop sulking and get up. I have a proposition to make.”

“Niall?” Louis questioned. “Do you think I should put glow in the dark stars on my ceiling?”

He looked over and found Niall giving him an unimpressed look.

“So, no?” Louis asked. “No stars?”

“We’re going on a road trip,” Niall stated.

Louis looked back at his starless ceiling and waved farewell to Niall. “Cool. Have fun!”

“No, you idiot.” Niall let out a frustrated sigh. “You, me, Liam, and Harry.”

Louis glanced over to Niall and back to the ceiling. “Who’s Harry?”

Or the one where Louis, an omega more than tired of being treated as lesser than alphas, is forced on a road trip by his beta besties only to meet Harry who might just be the alpha he never knew he wanted.

☆ like to keep you laughing by kikikryslee 13k

Louis gasped. “Are you straight? Oh, I'm sorry, man. You should’ve just told me; I would’ve left you alone.” “No, no, that’s not it," Harry said. "I like guys. I definitely like guys.” “OK…” “Louis, I’m ace.” Louis snorted. “Kind of full of yourself, aren’t you?” --- Or, the one where Louis is a frat boy who likes to hook up and Harry is someone who doesn't hook up ever.

note: ace and aro rep bless

☆ say that you can see me (i’ll speak up i swear) by coffeelouis (streamtpwk) 20k

“Well, it’s not like anyone really RSVPs,” Liam defends when Harry turns back to him, “No one takes Facebook events seriously.” Harry rolls his eyes, still finding it within himself to get annoyed in his moment of panic. Liam has been complaining about the lack of accountability Facebook events have bred in their generation since their freshman year. Harry glances back to the gallery entrance. Yep, still there and moving closer.

“But aren’t you guys friends?” Harry asks, trying to convey the urgency in his tone.

“Well, I mean, I talk to him when he stops by the office for supplies sometimes,” Liam reasons, “But I wouldn’t say we’re friends, exactly. Maybe more like, friendly acquaintances?”

Harry groans. “You’re the fucking worst.”

[or, the liberal arts COLLEGE AU where Harry knows Louis as the best friend of the boy he has been hopelessly in love with for years now and Louis knows Harry as the boy he wished would look away from Zayn long enough to notice him.]

☆ a fire in us by hereforlou 12k

Louis had always thought it wouldn’t catch him off-guard. If he ever got his Time, he would be ready, and he would be calm, and he would make his way to wherever his soulmate waited for him and blow them away with how ready and calm he was.

When he got his Time on that Monday, years after he had stopped fantasizing about meeting his soulmate, Louis was not ready, and he was not calm. What he was was late.

(Or, the one where Harry waits and Louis worries.)

☆ just like the wolf before he bites by whoknows 11k

He’s loud, Louis is, and that’s far from unusual for him, but the volume of it still has Harry pulling back the curtain. There’s a half-formed thought in the back of his brain about telling Louis off, because it’s fucking half three in the morning, but then.

But then Harry’s eyes get stuck on the soft glint of Louis’ stubble in the light, and he’s making his way across the room before he even realizes it.

Louis, for his part, just tips his chin up to give Harry space and keeps talking, waving the joint in his hand around for emphasis. He doesn’t even bother to greet Harry, going on with his story to his semi-rapt audience, just settles a hand in between Harry’s shoulder blades and pushes him down firmly.

Harry just. Relaxes. His eyes slip closed, pushing his entire face into that spot underneath Louis’ chin, where his hair is still growing, neat and prickly. The scent of Louis’ cologne drifts into Harry’s nose, light and fresh, and it’s calming. Comforting. His breathing syncs up with Louis’ quickly, and Harry feels so much better than he had five minutes ago he almost wants to cry.

note: i’m rewatching teen wolf so this hits different

☆ wine not? by multiple authors 21k

Louis’ Wine Dive is a bar run by the people for the people. Wine Styles is a boutique tasting room that caters to a more highbrow clientele. When their worlds clash on a beautiful Charleston street, one of these owners may find that an ounce of pretension doesn’t stand a chance against a pound of perseverance.

☆ ain’t that a kick in the head by multiple authors 22k

“Well.” Niall unlocks his phone. “It wasn’t getting the traction I wanted on Snapchat. So…I tweeted it.”

What.

“You tweeted it,” Harry states, nearing a state of brain dead. “To your ten thousand followers.”

Niall nods, handing Harry the phone. “You’re a meme, Harry.”

“I’m a what?”

“A meme. It’s like an internet—”

“I know what a fucking meme is, Niall! Why did you make me into one?”

Niall has the fucking balls to cackle at that while Harry looks at the mess his former friend created. Videos of him screaming at Tomlinson about Tide Pods and his ass are being quoted and combined with memes to a create a level of memeception Harry has never seen before. That isn’t even including the thousands of tweets of him falling up the stairs remixed with random Top 40 songs.

In which Harry’s a disaster gay who doesn’t know shit about soccer, Liam drinks too many blue raspberry Coolattas, Niall knows everyone, Zayn looks dead, and Louis is Not Happy about sharing his breakout moment with “Drunk Hawaiian Guy.”

☆ tyger! tyger! burning bright by ryanreynolds 12k

They put on the Great British Bake Off, in a house in Donny, in England, that’s maybe inhabited by two ghosts, two lovers, stuck in the house where they used to have a life, so far away from the time they were born in. // A Buzzfeed Unsolved AU in which Harry and Louis died in a fire in the late 1800's, but death isn't the end.

☆ for the first time by mixedfandomfics 22k

The first Harry that Louis met was at his third school in as many years, and had shoved Louis’ head into the toilet when he walked into the mens restroom. Some slurs had been used, but the whole incident was kind of blurry thanks to the concussion he got when his head hit the tile floor.

The second Harry was a TSA agent when Louis was sixteen, returning from a trip abroad. The agent had smirked at Louis passport. “Layla, huh? Should think about dressing a little more feminine, no guy is gonna want you looking like that.”

Louis doesn’t want to see if “third time’s the charm” applies here. He’s finally secure in his life and happy, and he doesn’t want the heartbreak if his soulmate is just another bigot that wanted Layla and not Louis. Sue him for avoiding the pain.

☆ all i need is oxygen (and you) by lululawrence 12k

There are only two ways to navigate Bloomfield High School: become popular or make yourself invisible.

With the help of his best mate Niall, Harry’s introduction to high school hadn’t been half bad. Despite being a “bandie” – the lowest of the low in the ancient hierarchy of high school –Harry had somehow managed to survive freshman year relatively unscathed. So naturally, Harry would have been perfectly happy to resume his position of invisible trombone player number four for the remainder of high school. But one day something drastic happened, something that would change the course of Harry’s entire existence (probably).

It was the last football game of his freshman year, and the band was back in the stands after performing a rousing rendition of Bloomfield’s alma mater during half time. Harry was gracelessly wiping the slobber from the mouthpiece of his trombone when he saw him.

Louis Tomlinson.

Or...a High School AU where Harry is a bandie and Louis is the epitome of cool, so naturally, Harry must find a way to get his attention and win his affections.

☆ come together by bottomlinsons 11k

Harry and Louis slept together three weeks ago, and haven't talked.

Their coming group project is gonna change that.

☆ honey at seven by louiesunshine 11k

He’s in head to toe in khaki, from the oversized shorts showing off his thin and tanned legs to the buttoned-up shirt which is hiding his true form underneath. If his muscular arms have any indication, Louis easily assumes he’s fit and toned. A dark brown leather belt ties around his slim waist. And to top it all off, the man proudly wore a safari hat on his dark wavy hair.

Unfortunately from where Louis is at, he can’t get a clear view of the man’s eyes. But he’s able to see a strong jawline and a simple dimple curving his cheek. God.

Being the impatient guy that he is, he not so kindly pushes both Niall and Liam forward to speed them up.

“Welcome, guys, gals, and non-binary pals! Hop on in and watch your head. If you happen to miss your step and hit your head, then lower your voice and watch your language. This is a family attraction and we’d like to keep it that way.”

Or, where Louis goes to Disneyland for his birthday and finds himself a cute Jungle Cruise skipper.

☆ the switch (love is blind) by writeroffictions 13k

A Model Behavior/Princess Switch AU: Harry Styles is a doppelganger for the new face of Gucci, runway model, Dean Rose. Harry is asked to pose as him one night for an event, because the actual Dean Rose is violently ill. This leads Harry to meeting his celeb crush, Global Superstar Louis Tomlinson. Sparks fly. But are any of them real?

☆ fiction romance by orphan_account 18k

Harry has a type.

He likes older, sophisticated, mature men. Well-educated men. Men with life experience and passion for arts and social causes. Men who are established in their careers, who've sorted their lives out.

Niall knows this.

And so Harry can't understand why he's sat here opposite Louis Tomlinson.

A punk Louis/uni Harry blind date AU.

☆ under me, you by hazzafrazza (colberry) 12k

You Won’t Believe Who Was Spotted Leaving Harry Styles’ Primrose Hill Pad! If Harry was being completely honest, it probably wasn’t the best idea to be a world-renowned popstar and an infamous vigilante.

(Especially when all the comic books said never reveal your secret identity to keep your loved ones safe – which was all well and good, until Louis.)

Or: Harry wants a lot of things – fame, glory, Louis – but that last one is particularly hard to get when everyone thinks you’re dating your secret superhero alter-ego and suddenly you’ve become your own worst cockblock.

☆ superhuman tonight by rearviewdreamer 23k

A group of young offenders doing community service get struck by lightning during a storm, and begin to develop superpowers.

☆ sing you butterflies by objectlesson 23k

Louis stares for a moment before some primal sympathetic force in him activates. He has to help this boy. He can hardly walk, and he seems so young (yet ageless, beyond age, like a sea turtle or a parrot or a tree or something else odd and magical), and on top of all that, he has body glitter clinging to his skin, like that roll-on stuff his sisters used to use as preteens, only pink-gold and twice as thick. It’s, like, professional grade. He’s also wearing grass- and dirt-stained pink silk women’s underwear, so maybe he’s from London. Maybe he’s a drag queen who crawled all the way from a nightclub in Soho just to save Louis from his horribly mundane and woefully heterosexual neighbours out here in the middle of nowhere.

---

or, Harry’s a clumsy unicorn who accidentally stomps on a witch’s garden and is turned into a human as punishment, so he wanders into a nearby village covered in glitter, still figuring out how to walk on two feet, and meets the fairy-tale-fine Louis, who has to teach him how to live as a human and stop him from eating soap.

☆ i’ll be your love tonight by dinosaursmate 20k

“I don’t know how I’m ever going to walk away from you.” “So don’t.” Harry ran a fingertip over Louis’ thigh. “Stay with me.” - It's the summer of 1999 and Louis Tomlinson has been abandoned at a house party. A dispute over Smirnoff Ice and several night buses later, Louis is unsure how he'll ever walk away from this lovely, curly-haired boy.

☆ carried away like butterflies by dinosaursmate 17k

“Actually…” Liam said, scratching his chin absently. “I have a friend who is moving to London soon.” “Without anywhere to live? Who is it? Do I want them living in my home?!” “You met him at my birthday party. Harry, from Cheshire. Remember? Really tight jeans, curly hair down to here?” Realisation dawned on Louis, staring at Liam who was gesturing round about his nipples. Did he remember Harry? Did he remember Harry? He remembered Harry’s square front teeth biting into his collarbone, and he remembered Harry moaning, loud and obscene with no provocation. He remembered Harry dropping to his knees at the edge of the bed and roughly pulling Louis closer. He remembered, vividly, Harry’s lovely plump lips wrapping around his- “Lou?” “Uh- what?” Louis said, startled. “Oh, yeah. Um, I think I remember him.” - It was probably a huge mistake for Louis to let his former One Night Stand move into his spare room, especially when said One Night Stand doesn't seem to remember him.

☆ head head heart by turnyourankle 12k

After Dunkirk has wrapped filming, Harry struggles with his inability to reach subspace. He tries taking the matter in his own hands before Louis intervenes with a plan of his own.

☆ i got my eyes on you (you’re everything that i see) by balanceds 11k

“It’s not a secret, right, Harry? All of his friends seem to know--”

Harry slumps down and starts methodically banging his head against his newsroom desk. “Niall, it is a secret from him because I have spoken a total of ten fucking words to Louis Tomlinson and also he is incredibly out of my league and probably fucking straight as well!”

Or: Harry's a first-year on the school newspaper, assigned to cover the terrible men's first football team. Louis Tomlinson is the team's star defender. Harry pays significantly more attention to Louis's arse than to writing real columns. Pretty soon, everyone notices. It takes Louis the longest.

☆ then we kiss (all i wanna do is have a good time) by orphan_account 24k

Harry shuffles further into the room, timidly taking a seat on one of the chairs set in front of Louis’ table. He keeps his eyes on the floor, fumbling for words. “Sorry, I’m just—it’s just that I’m a bit nervous. And, uh, I wasn’t really expecting for you to look so—” he cuts himself off, just in time to keep himself from saying beautiful.

“Young?” Louis guesses, and Harry just nods, going along with it. “Yeah, don’t worry. I get that a lot, mate. People don’t really expect you to be head writer at twenty-nine. They think to get the job you have to be in your forties, or something.”

So a five-year age gap. Cool.

(harry is a potential new writer for a comedy show. louis is his kind-of boss. they flirt. stuff happens.)

☆ other habits (make your pleasure your pains) by jtsbbsps_dk 19k

Freaky Friday High School AU.

Wherein Harry just wanted to have lunch with his older sister, Cal sells ice cream, Gemma has a test, Anne thinks she knows (she really doesn’t) and Fate plays match maker, because no one puts her ship off course. Louis just tries to help out his best friend's little brother while dealing with a metaphorical butterfly invasion.

☆ the boy in the pikachu pants by mrsstylinson 20k

Louis stars as the bumbling idiot who's only a bumbling idiot around Harry. Harry stars as the charming bastard who steals his heart completely. They meet in the middle of a hallway with Louis in a state of considerable undress, singing Destiny's Child at the top of his lungs. Somehow that seals it for Harry. This is the boy he was always meant to fall in love with. Louis feels the same, only slightly more defeatist. It takes them a while to figure things out.

☆ all the small things by kitundercover 20k

AU. Harry is five inches tall and can't remember how he got that way, but maybe with Louis' help they can work it out. ---

Louis stares. “You’re five inches tall,” he says finally.

“I am about that.” The tiny man agrees.

“You’ve been making strange noises and scaring the shit out of me.”

“I’m sorry.” The tiny man winces.

“You’ve been breaking my things.”

“Not on purpose.”

That voice is disconcertingly deep, and Louis keeps wanting to look up and find the fully grown person that it must surely be coming from. He takes a deep breath and moves onto the next impossible point.

“You’ve been riding my rabbit,” he says.

☆ like two softened shoes by marie24 14k

He sets his laptop on the bed, backing away and running his hands repeatedly through his curls. Okay. This is okay. This is fine. This is not real.

Will peeks his head around the door frame.

“Uh, everything okay in here?”

Harry tries to keep his breathing under control. “Yeah!” he says. “It’s, um, everything’s fine!” He can hear himself talking really loudly. Will looks doubtful.

“Are you sure? Because it really seems like -”

Harry barks out a laugh, cutting him off. “Okay! So this is going to sound really strange. But.” He looks at Will, with the same shiny fringe, blue, blue eyes, and sharp cheekbones he’d been writing about the whole last week. He worries his lip frantically between his teeth. “Um. I think I… I think I… wrote you?”

Or, Harry is a writer who gets through his writer’s block by pouring his feelings for his best friend Louis into a character. A few days later, the character lands in his bed, three dimensional and with no idea how to get back where he came from. He turns out to be very inconvenient for keeping Harry’s feelings to himself.

☆ ready to fall by whoknows 21k

“Ninety and rising,” Nick says triumphantly, as though making Harry’s heartbeat pick up by thrusting an obscenely attractive person in front of his face is any kind of success. “Louis Tomlinson has just walked into our control room and suddenly our dear Harry Styles has lost all ability to speak. Could this be some kind of strange coincidence?”

“I hate you,” Harry hisses, forcing his eyes back into Nick’s direction, uncaring that the mic must have picked it up. “I thought we agreed that you were going to play fair.”

“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Nick denies, except he’s holding up a picture of Louis’ face now, sharp cheekbones prominent, soft lashes nearly sweeping against his cheeks as he looks down, and his fucking mouth –

“A hundred and two!” Nick crows, all but clapping his hands together in glee. “The highest it’s ever been!”

“To be fair, I did bend over the desk on purpose,” Louis’ voice comes crackling in the headphones. Harry practically breaks his neck whipping his head around at the sound of it, gaping at him through the glass panel. “You can’t really blame him for getting a little excited about that, can you?”

☆ gnossienne by pukeandcry 11k

Louis sets a challenge for himself; it gets a bit out of hand.

☆ tonight’s not over (come over and stay) by louistomlinsons 17k

Zayn doesn’t say anything for a moment, pausing and worrying at his bottom lip. Finally, he asks, “Have you heard that Cox guy is coming out with a new song?” Louis freezes, fingers hovering over his keyboard where they had been typing his password. “No, I hadn’t,” Louis says truthfully. “Where did you hear that?” “Tell anyone this and I’ll kill you, but I’d consider myself a big fan,” Zayn says. His face doesn’t change in expression, completely serious as he admits this to Louis. “Big fan? Like run a blog and everything?” or, harry is a famous singer and louis is a student who just wants to write his novel

☆ a love that feels this right by dontlethimgo 14k

As always, the classic high-school rumour mill is never completely reliable. Sure, there are those stories that fly around that turn out to be true—like the one about Niall getting with a model at a party a few months ago (which Louis still struggles to believe)—but this ‘rumour’ has so many versions, and none of them are actually right.

The Sixth Form AU where Louis is the footie team captain, Harry is head boy, and no one at school has any idea that the two of them are in love.

☆ put your head on my shoulder by wayfared 18k

Niall gives Harry until the end of marching season to either a) make a move on Louis Tomlinson or b) get the fuck over him. Either is easier said than done. Basically, your High School AU with a drum beat.

☆ some nights i’m scared you’ll forget me by pukeandcry 15k

Zayn stifles a groan. He’s not terribly surprised -- Harry’d been mooning over Louis since the day they met three years ago when Zayn had moved into the house next to him -- but he’d been hoping that Harry would eventually get over it and redirect his attention to someone else. This development does not bode well for that turn of events, though. (High School AU)

note: this is zayn’s pov and has a decent amount of ziall and a lot of zarry friendship if i remember!

☆ oh how i hate this red string of fate by calamityk 14k

Harry thought being able to see people’s strings die would be the worst thing about his gift, until at twenty-two he finally met the other end of his own. --------- Or that soulmate AU where Harry can see the red strings of fate that tie everyone together.

☆ smoke dreams from smoke rings by objectlesson 18k

“When I get a craving?” Louis says, “You have to help me chase it away. Distract me”

Oh. Harry can think of about one hundred different ways to distract Louis Tomlinson. One hundred better uses for his mouth, for example. “Erm,” he squeaks, well aware of the fact that he's grinning and dimpling and blushing all at once, his whole face a suddenly mortifying warzone of transparent emotion. “How?”

“By hitting my arm as hard as you can,” Louis announces, holding out the arm in question. It bridges the gap between them, stiff and expectant, and Harry stares, not entirely sure if Louis’s being serious, if this is some prank that he isn’t clever enough to understand, or if the promise of touching Louis under any circumstances is so titillating that he just can’t process it. Louis rolls up the sleeve of his hoodie then, revealing his pale inner arm in maddening increments, pushing Harry somewhere between drooling and vomiting, he isn’t sure which. He just knows that his mouth is flooded, and the barely-there ghost of Louis’s veins through his skin is the prettiest thing that he’s ever seen. “Go on, hit me,” Louis orders. “Don’t be shy,”

--- or, Louis enlists Harry to help him with his bad habit.

☆ milkshake by speechless 13k

He's been saying it for years. He doesn't care that it makes Liam roll his eyes and Zayn sigh and Niall crack up. Lots of things he does get that kind of reaction from the boys anyway. Louis won't stop saying it, 'cause it's true. His milkshake does bring all the boys to the yard. It's a fact.

So the day he decides to get into Harry Styles' pants he says it again, when all three of his roommates are there to witness it. "I'll fuck him by the end of the month. You'll see."

☆ you drive me crazy (i just can’t sleep) by objectlesson 19k

The first time Louis ends up in Harry’s bed is a total accident.

☆ happily ever after by theneverending 19k

"It’s the Peter Pan that I work with most days. Harry got placed with us today and it’s really quite funny to watch him make starry eyes at Peter Pan from behind his camera. As if that would hide anything,” Niall claims with an eye roll, causing Harry to blush even harder.

“I didn’t think you’d notice,” Harry responds lamely, suddenly becoming interested in his food again.

“Harry, when you like someone, it’s written all over your face. You just kept staring at him.”

“That’s my job, I have to stare at him to make sure the photos come out nice.”

“You wouldn’t be getting defensive if I wasn’t right,” Niall rebukes, and Harry really can’t argue with that, so he lets Niall have the last word.

or, the one where louis and harry work at walt disney world, louis is a character performer for peter pan, and harry's the photographer that sometimes gets to work with him.

☆ like the stars that shined by butliamwhy 12k

Louis has stars in his eyes. Harry has known it since they were kids. They have their own tree, their own café booth, and so many years to fall in love. Perhaps a lifetime.

☆ green in the morning and blue afternoon by wildestdreams 14k

“Harry,” Louis whispered beside him.

Harry hummed, his hand coming up to stroke Louis’ back. Louis was still on top of him, his body sagging against Harry’s, heavy and warm, and Harry loved it.

“I don’t think it was a one off.”

“Me either, Lou.”

a Friends AU.

#fic rec #one direction #larry stylinson #mine #i feel like theres quite a bit of pwp in this one hahhahaha #40 of these oh lord #fic masterpost

11 notes · View notes

harusha · 4 years

Note

What are your top pokemon games??

Official or fangame? I’ll just list both. I will say Pokemon Reborn is my top-rated overall if we combine both lists (with HGSS and Collesseum/XD following as 2 and 3 respectively.)

On Official, it’s

1. Heartgold/Soulsilver (My favorite region is Johto, and Ethan is my favorite Pokemon protagonist so…unsurprising. The games are still genuinely good though imo because of the massive amount of content and post-game and QoL stuff like following Pokemon, auto-run, etc.) I also love the nostalgic feeling of the region. Lance is also here, and I like him and his design a lot, not as much as Volkner though. Also Proton is here, and I love the dude so. Pedometer is included here.

2. Pokemon Colosseum/Pokemon XD; I include this together since they’re a duo set in terms of story. XD is the better one gameplay-wise because of the new additions of Shadow moves, more Pokemon choices, QoL changes like saving, etc. but Colosseum is the harder of the two games imo b/c of the sparsity of Pokemon–if you can play it on laptop, mod XD with Pokemon XG for massive QoL changes (Fairy Type, more shadow Pokemon, upped difficulty, etc.)

I like how this set tries new stuff and it honestly showcases how if you the Pokemon IP to a third-party, you end up with something that tries to be different and actually plays pretty well.

3. Pokemon BWBW2; included as a set because of joint story line. Honestly, I feel like BWBW2 are objectively the last great mainline series additions. Even if you didn’t care for the story, they at least tried with it and the rivals. You had the nice rival in Bianca and the “focused/ruder” rival in Cheren, and both encompassed the themes of the game (Truth with Bianca as she realizes her ineptness as a trainer and Ideals with Cheren who strives to overcome his boundaries and the player even if he never can). N is pretty awesome, and I think Ghetsis is a better Lusamine (sorry, idc for how Lusamine’s actions are brushed over and blamed on the space jellyfish). There’s a lot to enjoy in Unova imo.

Also massive post-game stuff like Join Avenue (which encourages one of the main tenets of Pokemon, interacting with others and trading; ex. “Magnemite Coil”), half the region opening up for Post-game (White Treehollow, Kyurem’s abode, etc.). The Legendaries also have home locations for the most part, and their items aren’t just given to you by random people. A lot of stuff to do that isn’t just breeding mindlessly for shinies (I mean I love doing that, but options ya know?) or online battle.

4. Pokemon Conquest; Fire Emblem (or more accurately, Nobunaga’s ambition) meets Pokemon. I like turn-based grid tactic games, and this one’s actually pretty fun. You’re encouraged to roam around and give people different Pokemon to see which ones they’re compatible with. Also another example of what can be done if Pokemon is given to a another developer.

5. Pokemon Explores of Sky (and to a lesser extent since it’s the base, Time/Darkness); you can swap this with Colloseum/XD, BWBW2 or Pokemon Conquest depending on if you prefer Pokemon’s style of play, tactics games, or dungeon crawlers. I like this one since the story’s actually pretty good, the difficulty’s nice, and especially the post-game dungeons and content.

6. Pokemon Platinum and Diamond+Pearl to a lesser extent– the region that actually has a reasonably difficult Elite Four and champion. I love the additions they have like distortion world, the melancholic feel you get at times in the Chateau area and snowfields, and the post-game Battle Frontier. However, the games run so slow without Drayano’s mods. In terms of husbandos, Volkner’s pretty nice as well, and he’s pretty high-tier for me. Cynthia’s here as well, so I guess she counts since she’s a feature every time she shows up.

7. Pokemon FRLG-The definite version of Kanto for me. Sevii Islands, callbacks (callforwards?) to the Johto games with the Rocket Admins, decent difficulty and ability to sequence break somewhat, etc. It gives new experiences for those who’ve played the OG versions, but doesn’t change them drastically. The “you can’t evolve anything outside of the OG 151 before post-game” is stupid though. Lance is here as well, but his half Dragonite/Dragonair team annoys me b/c of how repetitive it is, but product of the time as well and the HGSS first battle had that as well but at least they’re all evolved.

8. Pokemon Red/Blue Rescue Team-I like this one since the story’s still good and incorporates the idea of a human being transported to a Pokemon world, but I just feel like Sky’s gameplay improvements and portraits for everyone trumps this one. I like Gengar a lot and his team. I also think the difficulty on this one (depending on starter and partner) is fairly good at times (The Moltres fight is actually pretty difficult if you don’t have Pikachu or a water type partner).

9. Pokemon Emerald and to a lesser extent Ruby/Sapphire–Battle Frontier, Scott and Smeargle cave (ie. post-game content), beautiful promotional artwork (including ORAS’s), fairly difficult battles at time if you aren’t prepared/going in blind with no excessive grinding (2nd May battle, Flannery, etc.), hidden secrets like Regis and Secret Bases. However, the latter half is so boring with the excessive surfing and lackluster variety. Steven’s here, and he’s a dreamboat even with the sprite graphics.

10. Pokemon Channel and Hey you, Pikachu!-Weird I know. This would be higher if I didn’t think this was a niche pick. It’s just really relaxing, and I want another one, especially if you can get more Pokemon to raise. It’s a lot more fun once you play it. I like exploring with Pikachu and it offers a look into the world of Pokemon as a non-trainer. I really want another one tbh.

11. Pokemon Rangers series (Ranked from favorite to lowest; Shadows of Almia–>OG–>Guardian Signs; all are good but that’s my preference) The gameplay is actually pretty fun, and I wish we got another one. They could use Joycons as a styler. Spencer, Sven, and Lunick are also pretty cute

12. Pokken Tournament- What battles should feel like in mainline if they injected millions of dollars into the mainline, so unrealistic expectation. I think Pokken is a decent fighting game. The moves are nice, and the music is good. This can go lower if you don’t care for fighting games.

13. Pokemon Battle Revolution and Stadium games-They’re mostly battle simulators with some mini-games. The animations are actually pretty lively and fun compared to SWSH’s. I would like to rank this higher, but there is no story mode sadly. It’s great if you want to see what Pokemon would look like in-scale.

14. Pokemon X/Y-I think these are actually pretty nice if only for the fact there isn’t excessive handholding; it’s there but it doesn’t force me to put down the game out of boredom. The outfits are genuinely pretty cute. However, the rivals are ridiculously terrible, difficulty is either too low or unbalanced if you use/turn off exp. share. Let’s put ORAS here as well b/c I think the lack of Battle Frontier and mediocre post-game, getting Lati@s early, etc. drops it down from Emerald. The PSS system is amazing though.

15. Pokemon Trozei and Pokemon Pinball series-Yeah, I’ve played these. Trozei’s actually pretty cool as a match-3 game, and pinball is pinball. You also get slightly more lore into the Pokemon world with Lucy Fleetfoot. I like match-3 and pinball so very much a YMMV. Pop Gates to Infinity and Super Mystery Dungeon here as well. Idk, they just lack the magic of the first two entries.

16. Pokemon Snap, Pokemon Dash, all the other spin-offs I didn’t talk about-they all offer something fun, but I just wish it was either updated for modern times and not released again (like with Snap) or a bit more (in the case of Detective Pikachu and Pokepark series). Pop Puzzle League games here as well. I like them, but they aren’t much besides Tetris games. Same goes for the Pokemon Trading Card games; they’re nice, but not super great imo.

???. Pokemon Box/Ranch/all the other storage games and stuff like Dream Radar-Idk what you’d want me to say since they’re storage space or gimmick games to catch HA Pokemon. You do get Extremespeed Zigzagoon which I love since the little buggers are very adorable.

Bottom Tier. Pokemon SM and USUM. I hate these games. They’re cash grabs (more so than usual) with being $40 a piece and the updated versions being barely changed (and actually feeling like what should have been released first). Incredibly handholding, areas feel half-baked, lacks areas to explore for the most part, Lillie is kinda annoying for me tbh (which hurts because you’re supposed to feel for her and the game’s story hinges on that), and the player is an actual detriment to what they’re trying to achieve story-wise. A big shame b/c Alola is a pretty region and Team Skull is great in concept, but execution is awful. Stated as someone who has bought all 4 versions to keep, and 2 extras for gifting.

Absolute Bottom Tier- Pokemon Masters, incredibly terrible mobage game coming from someone who plays FGO, FEH, etc. lack of meaningful content, grinding but meaningless b/c of said lack of content (ex. FGO gates you with mats but it makes you feel like you’re growing with your servants and offers a story and events to compensate; basically, a sense of achievement). CO-OP is pretty bad when you can just hop over to GBF or something if you want guilds and group content. I’m still gonna wait for Ethan and Volkner to appear though.

Unrated-OG RBGY and OG GSC (the remakes are superior outside of nostalgia factor imo so I think it’d be unfair for them to take a spot), LGPE (didn’t buy them b/c pricing but the colors are vibrant and I love that), SWSH (didn’t buy them because I have opinions on the cuts and stuff and price point doesn’t look appealing for what’s offered), Pokemon Mini (these were included with Pokemon Channel), Magikarp Jump+Duel (Duel was a cash grab and Magikarp Jump is cute but no real opinion on it), Pokemon Go (weird spot where I like it, but I don’t live in an area with safe walking areas so very much area-dependent), Arcade games (I don’t live in Japan for that), Perdue Farm games (they’re flash games made to promote so…), Pokemon Rumble (enjoyable but not memorable for me imo) etc.

Fangames-

1. Pokemon Reborn-150+ hours of content, visible themes that permeate the story and characters, beautiful spritework for some of the areas, intuitive usage of TMs/HMs and some logic (ex. Field Effects that emulate anime battling in turn-based rpg such as Corrosive Field; using Rock Smash to break the glass in some areas to solve puzzles, etc.), actual difficulty that hinges on how much you understand Pokemon (ex. IVs, stats, EVs, etc.) that’s fair but still difficult, puzzles and rewards for exploring and coming back to areas, etc. Fantastic game that I wish Gamefreak had attempted to emulate (perhaps not the darker themes but the ambition basically). Has some kinks with the revolving door of characters and such but still fantastic. Also offers custom shiny sprites, custom egg sprites, and online play like Wonder Trade and battling.

2. Pokemon Rocket Edition-Not done but I think this is a fantastic hack so far story-wise and how it implements its mechanics. You’re a Rocket Grunt, but you aren’t OP. It deals with the politics behind Kanto and Team Rocket. Still being worked on.

3. Pokemon Viridian Version-Another “play as a Rocket” game. Funny yet still can be serious; it takes the tone of the anime and understands when to be serious and when to not be. It feels like it would fit into the canon tone-wise, and deconstructs the “it’s cool to be a Rocket!” thing.

4. Pokemon Gaia-Excellent and a huge callback to classic Pokemon in story. It’s an OG region and offers a lot to do.

5. Drayano hacks- QoL updates but his work actually adds a lot to the games+new events.

Anyways, that’s my list. There’s a lot of Pokemon content, but this is how I feel for the most part.

#long post #i will say Piers is high tier husbando though

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commentaryvorg · 4 years

Text

Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 6.1

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

Last time…

…Kaito went to space. That’s all. He was in space, and he was happy.

Now to start chapter 6, which I am not quite as excited to get into – can’t possibly imagine why. There’s still definitely a lot I want to talk about, though.

We open the chapter with… Makoto. Not the Makoto we knew (he doesn’t exist), but a kid who’s called Makoto nonetheless. That’s almost certainly the most popular thing to name your kid in this universe, even probably for cultures that aren’t Japanese.

We also have some bizarrely cheerful music. Originally my feelings about this was just that it gave a very weird mood whiplash from everything else that had been going on. But now all it makes me think of is this game’s bonus board game/RPG mode that this music is actually taken from, which I may have got rather addicted to played an inordinate amount of one point. Hearing this now just makes me want to roll some dice and optimise my characters’ stat spreads, dammit! (And by “my characters”, obviously I mean Kaede, Shuichi, Kaito and Maki, who else.)

Makoto: “I don’t have any talents or anything. I’m just a regular teenager…”

…

Makoto: “Getting into an elite school like this was just the start of my bad luck.”

The writers (entirely out-universe here, of course) really just wanted to drop all these similarities to Makoto Naegi here just to mess with us and make us wonder if this kid really is him despite looking different, didn’t they.

Makoto: “I want to run away from my daily life… I want to run away and just forget all this…”

This is considerably less like Makoto Naegi, though. He may have been ordinary, and a little daunted at getting into an elite school, but he was ultimately pretty chill with it and didn’t really want anything to change.

Makoto: “But I’m okay! I have a reason to live!”

Remember the Monokuma Theater last chapter where Monokuma said he’d be thrilled if Danganronpa was people’s reason to live? Apparently it really is, for probably way more people than just Makoto here.

Makoto: “I’ve got something to look forward to! That’s why I’m gonna be okay! Thanks for the courage! Thanks for giving me something to get totally obsessed with! Thanks for the strength to keep going!”

This is extremely relatable to me! This is what genuinely loving and caring about a work of fiction looks like! I can’t tell you how many times in my own life I’ve felt like things are going great for me almost entirely because there’s a work of fiction that I absolutely love that makes me happy just to think about.

Makoto: “I’ll keep on rooting for you, so please keep trying your best!”

And look, he cares about the characters! Obviously, somewhere inside him he is hoping to see bad things happen to them, but that’s because he wants to see them overcome those trials! On the level on which he is actually engaging with the characters as if they’re people, by cheering them on like this, he just wants them to succeed.

It’s kind of like the way I’ve been doing this commentary. On the one hand I’ve been very unabashedly appreciating all the horrible suffering everyone’s gone through and the ways in which it’s been emphasised because that’s what makes this fiction so enjoyable. But when I talk about that, I take the more detached, third-person-pronouns approach, like they’re elements in a well-crafted work of art. Whenever I use second-person pronouns as if I’m engaging with the characters myself, imaging that they’re real people I could talk to, I almost never say anything about how I appreciate their suffering. I’m not engaging with them because I want them to suffer. I want them to suffer so that I’ll end up caring about them even more and therefore will want to engage with them more. Which would all still be thoroughly fucked-up if they really were real, but this is how engaging with fiction works.

(I am making a big point to stress all of this about Makoto here because, oh boy, the next time we see the in-universe audience, things are not going to be remotely this way and that is my biggest issue with this chapter.)

Makoto: “And—! One day, I’ll also—!”

…audition for Danganronpa and hopefully probably get myself killed in one, is what he’s about to say.

No, Makoto. You were doing great at being a healthy, wholesome appreciater of fiction (aside from the part where it’s not really fiction and you’re watching real people die) until now. Genuinely wanting to be a part of your favourite works of fiction is usually quite an understandable sentiment… but not when it’s Danganronpa, what the actual hell.

We have suddenly jumped from Makoto being a reasonable example of someone enjoying a work of “fiction”, into him being an example of how utterly fucked-up this outside world actually is. People – specifically, teenagers – will apparently willingly throw their lives away to be on Danganronpa if they don’t think their life has much else going for them. That’s why this Makoto hates his life, to make him someone who’d want to do this. If Danganronpa really is his only reason to live, then it does make some kind of twisted sense that it’d also give him a reason to die.

Something important to note about this scene is simply the fact that we’re seeing it. This is in a context entirely removed from anything happening right now in the Academy and is for our eyes, the out-universe audience, only. So there is no reason to doubt that what we’re seeing here is the truth. This Makoto kid really is watching “Danganronpa V3” unfold like it’s basically a work of fiction and having a great time.

I’ve seen some people propose the idea that sure, the killing game was put on as a “fiction” for people’s entertainment, but only for a shady illegal underground audience of people who should know they’re being shitty, probably hidden away somewhere in the deepest darkest corners of the internet. On some level, I might like to believe that, because it’s nicer and easier to buy than thinking the entire world is this obliviously twisted. But Makoto here is a completely ordinary teenager who would be very unlikely to have any idea how to access something like that, and he doesn’t seem to have any conception of the fact that what he’s watching and enjoying so much is illegal and frowned upon and he needs to keep it secret. So I don’t think that can reasonably be the truth here.

Anyway, back at the Academy, Keebo is busy destroying everything. He’d better leave the training spot alone, though – that place contains precious memories of Kaito and deserves to remain undamaged.

Also bear in mind that this is still the same evening after Kaito’s trial. They are not getting any time to rest here.

Keebo: “Did you call for me? Please keep it brief. I have other matters I must attend to.”

Geez, Keebo. “Keep it brief, because I’m busy getting all of us killed”? Yeah, maybe that’s why they won’t want to keep this brief.

Maki: “What’s with that weapon and the jet pack?”

Keebo: “I obtained this equipment from my lab.”

Maki: “You had equipment like that… in your lab?”

Implicit in Maki’s words here is the sentiment of: then why the fuck didn’t you use it *sooner*? Which, yes. Very much.

Keebo: “I made some modifications to drastically improve their power output and functionality.”

Tsumugi: “Since when have you been able to do that? You didn’t level up or anything, right? Did… something happen?”

The fact that it’s Tsumugi asking him this suggests that he really wasn’t supposed to be able to do that at all. It would be pretty stupid of Team Danganronpa to have someone that potentially dangerous here. Obviously they figured he’d never do anything drastic because his inner voice had him on a leash, but the suggestion from Tsumugi’s words here is that he shouldn’t even have been able to make those modifications, inner voice or not, and he just figured it out himself somehow by being a smarter person than she’d written him to be. Maybe he learned a thing or two from his time with Miu?

Keebo: “I wanted to be treated like a real human. A creature of flesh and blood like you all. But I no longer have the luxury of clinging to that wish anymore!”

You never had that luxury, not while abandoning that wish (and only temporarily, mind you) would have saved your friends’ lives!

The writing is trying to present this like it’s some kind of character development, but there’s been absolutely no build-up to Keebo realising something like this. And there’s no reason that the seven people who’d died before his lab opened up wouldn’t have been enough, such that he somehow needed to see four more deaths before finally making this decision. The only actual change now is the lack of his inner voice – but that never had anything to do with the part of his character that felt awkward about not being human and shouldn’t be making a difference to this supposed character development.

Tsumugi: “If you do something like that… we’ll all die too, y’know!? There’s no oxygen in the outside world… There are no living things…”

Tsumugi would like to remind us all that there is definitely 100% not anyone alive out there, even though Kaito's efforts just proved that there almost certainly somehow is.

Shuichi: “Our hope is… everyone here. Our friends who are still alive.”

Shuichi is good. He’s not going to forget the last thing Kaito said to him!

Keebo: “We simply do not have the power to change the outside world on our own.”

Well that’s very foreshadowy of you, Keebo. He’s only talking about making it less uninhabitable, but.

Keebo: “All we can do now is refuse to submit to despair!”

Shuichi: “And you would be willing to let all of us die to accomplish that?”

Yeah, doesn’t sound very not-despairing, does it, Shuichi? Keebo’s just gunning for a different type of despair right now.

Keebo: “Kaito and Kokichi gave their lives to end this killing game… We should follow their example! We should be willing to give our lives to end this killing game!”

Okay, so to be fair, this might sort of count as following Kokichi’s example, since he wanted to ruin the audience’s experience (even though he went about it in literally the worst way possible by giving them two incredibly entertaining trials). Killing ourselves to give them a boring ending is actually along the lines of what Kokichi at least should have been trying to do, and is in fact what everyone will attempt in the end once they realise what’s going on.

But fuck off with your implication that Kaito would have wanted this, Keebo. Kaito gave his life so that everyone else could survive and escape, not so that they’d all do the same as him! Kaito’s sacrifice was only ever about “ending” the killing game so long as doing so would save everyone!

Maki: “…Is that what your inner voice is telling you to do?”

It’s interesting that Maki considers this possibility. I wonder what she thinks his inner voice is, since she’s pragmatic enough to not believe in hearing voices, especially not for a robot.

Keebo: “We can never submit to despair! Because we are students of Hope’s Peak Academy!”

Keebo may have lost his inner voice, but he’s clearly still very much a thrall to the other kind of brainwashing that’s been going on here.

Shuichi: “Because there might still be hope. There might still be a place to call home.”

Keebo: “And what are you basing that claim on?”

Shuichi: “…Nothing. I just have a feeling.”

Shuichi just has a hunch! He’s doing a Kaito and he knows it and it’s so lovely that he’s able to say that with a smile!

Maki: “Just a feeling…? You sound like that idiot right now.”

Maki knows it just as well, of course. She’s smiling, too! I love how her calling him an idiot has become a thing of affection now. They really are his sidekicks.

(I am going to bring up and be delighted by every single moment in this chapter of them fondly remembering Kaito like this and you can’t stop me.)

Shuichi: “…Kaito said so. […] There can be no killing game without an audience.”

…So actually, Shuichi was basing his claim on something after all and just wanted to act very Kaito about it anyway, and that is adorable. Well, maybe he felt like it was appropriate because this still isn’t very concrete evidence, but.

Look at him being really sure of this argument, though! Kaito gave everything to prove that and he succeeded, and Shuichi is not going to let his efforts go to waste.

Shuichi: “There’s still a possibility!”

Keebo: “True, we cannot say there is absolutely no possibility. But even a mere possibility—”

Shuichi: “That possibility is our hope!”

Finally, someone gets it! The actual meaning of the damn word! They don’t know for sure that it’s true, but so long as they can keep believing that it’s possible there’s a home for them out there, that is hope.

Monokuma finally shows up with his Exisals in tow. (I wonder what Monotaro makes of the small mountain of screwed-up bloodstained toilet paper in the recesses of his cockpit.)

Monokuma: “Huh? Is the robot malfunctioning? He must be – why else would he try to defy me?”

Haha, yeah, Keebo is very much meant to be part of the workings of this killing game and not someone who should try and fight against that, isn’t he?

Goodbye Danganronpa

Wow, geez, that was late for a title card. I forgot we hadn’t even had that yet. Of course, this title is pretty straightforward, yet a lot more literal than anyone would be expecting it to be on their first time through.

Maki: “But why did Monokuma leave a weapon like that in the research lab? He’s… pretty careless, isn’t he?”

Good question! The way Maki’s actively asking this suggests it’s something that actually has an answer, but I’m still not convinced it’s anything but lazy writing.

Maki: “If the outside world is destroyed, then the mastermind must be in this school, right?”

Makiii, Kaito proved to you guys that the outside world probably isn’t as destroyed as it seems! Don’t you believe that too? (I mean, yes, the mastermind is in fact in this school, but there’s no reason to necessarily think that right now.)

…Actually, Maki still buying the lie about the outside world despite Kaito’s efforts to discredit it might be down to her in particular being very subsceptible to the Flashback Light’s manipulation. There’ll be some more indications of that in this chapter.

Tsumugi: “Someone… You mean a Remnant of Despair, right?”

Tsumugi is very quick to keep things on-script and remind everyone that this is definitely about Remnants of Despair.

Maki: “If we can find them and kill them, then this killing game should end.”

Shuichi: “Ah, I don’t know about *killing* them…”

Yes, Maki, listen to Shuichi! Remember that the last time you tried to kill the “mastermind”, you nearly got Kaito killed instead! Kaito risked his life because he didn’t want you to kill anyone else, even if it was the mastermind!

Maki: “…Hope?”

Shuichi: “Our home. Where we’re going to live after this killing game ends. I know there is hope out there. We have to find it before we leave.”

This is what Kaito was talking about when he said Shuichi could find “something beyond the truth” – something beyond that destroyed world they saw at the end of the tunnel. Kaito sacrificed everything for the plan to give them this hope!

(And again since I must nitpick: they wouldn’t be finding the “hope”. The fact that they’re even looking means they already have hope, thanks to Kaito.)

Himiko: “This isn’t some fictional story, so I don’t think things’ll work out that well…”

Hoo boy. We’re in chapter 6 now, all gloves are off, hints are being dropped left and right and they do not care about being subtle.

Shuichi: “But if we look for it, we just might find it. If we don’t try… we’ll never find anything.”

This is also quite Kaito of him! Kaito never specifically said anything with this wording, but he was always advocating the idea that you’ve got to put in the effort to be able to get anywhere.

Maki: “No matter how impossible it seems, we’ll accomplish it.”

Speaking of Kaito! This… is awkward localisation. Maki’s phrasing here is a close match to the Japanese phrasing of Kaito’s “The impossible is possible, all you gotta do is make it so” catchphrase. Evidently, Maki’s localiser is a different one to Kaito’s, and they never got the memo about what Kaito’s catchphrase was changed to in English and just translated this directly.

This is still clearly reminiscent enough of Kaito to get across the point that she’s thinking of him anyway, but Maki is meant to have straight-up said that the impossible is possible, and, awwww! That’s adorable.

Shuichi: (Maki…) “…Yes… that’s right!”

Shuichi agrees! He’s happy for the reminder! They are such good sidekicks.

Hope Searching time, again! This is still an appropriate title, because, like Shuichi just said, they are searching for proof that they have somewhere to return to, and that is hope.

A sudden tremor causes part of the entrance hall’s floor to collapse and reveal a staircase downwards that leads to Kokichi’s lab. Shuichi guesses that this was meant to open with a mysterious item, presumably if things had been proceeding as normal and Monokuma had happily given them their “presents” like at the beginning of any other chapter. But, awkwardly, there was never any mysterious object around here that looked like something that could have opened this. Yet again, anything which is not directly meant for the player to interact with simply doesn’t exist in the game world, even if it’s something that should exist as part of the story.

“Now it is time to test your bonds with your friends!”

DID YOU KNOW THIS DANGANRONPA GAME IS ABOUT FRIENDSHIP.

…Okay, this whole Friendship Power mechanic for this investigation is actually a very thinly-veiled way to force you to investigate places in a completely linear order by restricting where you have access to until you’ve reached a certain point in the story. But since they were going to have to do that one way or another, I love that they flavoured it to be about this.

“So work hard to end this killing game before dawn breaks!”

Oh, boy, this, though. This whole time limit mechanic is really badly-implemented.

The first thing is that it’s not a real-time time limit at all. I’m leaving my game running as I type this and it’s not going to make a difference. The timer just ticks forwards a small amount every time you examine something or talk to someone, as is appropriate for what is after all a visual novel and not an action game. I’ve seen several blind LPers assume it was a real-time time limit (because the game is very vague about it) and get instilled with a sense of urgency because of that, so I guess that was meant to be the point.

What the real, ahem, “challenge” of this time limit is is that you’re supposed to try not to examine anything nonessential. Which is really not an okay way for a mystery visual novel to be! Half the fun of these sorts of games is seeing what kind of silly bonus dialogue you get for checking things that don’t matter, to the point that many people’s approach when investigating a room is to figure out what object will progress the plot when they examine it and then examine that one last. But here, the developers are telling us we’re “failing” at playing the game properly… when we’re trying to play the game as much as possible. That’s quite frankly rude. They went to the trouble of writing a bunch of bonus dialogue for this investigation, and yet they apparently don’t want anyone to see it.

There’s also the fact that, from my experiments, there is extremely little leeway. You can examine at most two or three nonessential things while still remaining within the time limit, and anything more than that causes you to run out of time before the end. Even if someone is actually trying to examine only the essential objects, on a first run through they’re not going to know exactly what’s important, because sometimes the relevant thing is not that intuitive, and they’re almost certainly going to make more than just a few “mistakes”!

And the punishment for “failing”? I’m sure literally everybody has already seen this themselves, but all you get is Shuichi briefly going “Oh no, I took too long!”, a brief cutscene of the Academy exploding… and then it puts you back at the beginning of whatever room you were in with the timer wound back far enough that you can hypothetically finish from here. It’s the most petty of slaps on the wrist, but of course it shouldn’t be any more than that, because having to replay the entire chapter for the crime of not knowing exactly what was important, or, gasp, wanting to see more dialogue, would be incredibly obnoxious. So what’s the point in even having it be possible to fail in the first place?

What they should really do is have the timer tick forward only when you examine something plot-relevant. That way you’d get the illusion of being in a hurry to anyone who’s on a first time and hasn’t realised how it works, but none of the annoyance of meaninglessly “failing” or of it being incredibly inconvenient to actively go looking for bonus dialogue.

…Also. Uh. Turns out I was partially wrong about it not being a real time limit. I assumed that because the timer doesn’t seem to visibly move when you’re standing around, yet you can notice it tick forwards a small chunk whenever you finish examining something. Buuuut, as I left it running while typing this, with Shuichi just standing in the hallway, the timer has progressed a bunch. Some quick science, namely staring at the screen for a while, confirms that it does actually move in incredibly small pixel-by-pixel increments that are hard to notice unless you’re looking for it. So I guess also don’t go leaving your game running during this part either! Geez. …And, turns out it also ticks forward outside of dialogue if you’ve had the Monopad open for a while. It doesn’t even let you pause the game to pause the timer! Rude.

The timer does however completely vanish during actual dialogue, meaning that it is presumably actually paused then. …Yes; I did some more science to confirm this, this time sitting on a dialogue box for probably something like half an hour and seeing the timer still only tick forwards a little bit once I finally clicked through the dialogue. Talking (or thinking) is a free action, apparently, even though standing around without talking or thinking isn’t.

Anyway, here’s the method I used last time I played this chapter to be able to see all optional dialogue anyway while still technically not “failing” because fuck you too, game: Save as soon as you enter a new place. Go nuts examining everything you want to, while noting which ones seem to be necessary to progress and which ones aren’t. Before leaving for the next place, reset back to your save and this time go through the room while only examining the correct things (fastforwarding the dialogue if you want, not that it matters), so that the game thinks you did so in the minimum amount of “time”. Then head to the next place (as quickly as you can, apparently), save as soon as you enter it, and repeat. Doing this last time I played was how I learned that there was so ridiculously little leeway for “mistakes”, because even then I only just barely made it.

And of course I’m going to be doing that again on this playthrough to get all the optional dialogue, because that’s what this commentary is here for, dammit.

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#danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #drv3 #ndrv3 #chapter 6 #deadly life #commentary

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askanonbinary · 6 years

Text

I have a very specific question. Hopefully I can be clear. I have Dissociative Identity Disorder, which has a symptom of multiple personalities. I have eight personalities in total. They have a separate inner voice, emotions, perception of our physical state, memories, opinions, hobbies, and names. But there’s a sense that they are all me, just subconsciously. For example, I can’t remember a lot about high school, and when I do remember it I remember it from a third person perspective (weird right? I see myself doing things!). Those memories are held by another personality, and working with her can help me remember the facts. Becoming her would help me feel that ‘I’ experienced it.

See, that’s the thing. I have depression as well, and to beat depression I am encouraged to deny abusive inner voices. My therapist tells me, “Depression lies.” And it’s true. Curing my depression meant separating myself from those inner feelings, recognizing that my depression is not me.

But with D.I.D., it’s the opposite. Denying these inner voices, even when they’re being abusive, makes my disorder worse. I am encouraged to understand my other parts, not matter how different they are. To work together. Someday, to realize they do not lie, and that they are me. If, for most disorders, the survival method is to have a strong shield, for me it’s to hold hands with my disorder? Kind of?

Anyway, I have been accomplishing it with one personality, named Conan (1 of 7, still a long way to go!). We work together. We collaborate, covering each other’s weaknesses with our own strengths. It’s a two-way communication – even though it’s just me! I can tell it’s working, because I’m starting to realize that he feels more like me. Like it’s more seamless. I’m more like him now (hahaha, I swear WAY more now) and he’s more like me (he admits he likes Disney movies). Like more than 90% of patients with D.I.D., he almost never ‘takes control’ of our body. No one does anymore – it’s a big improvement! But…

Well, I never expected to feel gender dysphoria. But I did, and severely. Two years ago, I finally finished a total gender expression change – clothes, hair, makeup, shaving etc. Because it was unbearable without it. I still only pass about 40% of the time because I have a large chest (mostly from the back). I have trouble with binding, (back problems, weight, panic attacks), but I still did sometimes. I would really like chest surgery. It was great to look in the mirror with a drastically more masculine presentation, but I still feel like I am not myself when I look at my chest – but see, there I go! Talking about seeing ‘myself’, of feeling like I’m finally ‘me’…what does that mean for someone like me?!

I feel like my experiences can’t belong in the context of trans or non-binary narratives. It’s just…I’m not who those labels are for? And, when people see me and ask, “Oh, you’re trans?”, even positively, it’s just a far more complicated question then they know.

Maybe I’m not, because Conan isn’t trans; he’s a man. My personalities are young and old, man and woman. One is actually nonbinary? But what am I? I am me, but I know that my perception of me isn’t reality…or is it?

I identified as a cis woman until Conan and I started…blending, for lack of a better word. I was comfortable presenting as feminine. I think? But I also know that I started doing things like binding my chest all the way back in high school, though I’m still not sure why. Sometimes I had different clothes, that were specially for wandering the town. I liked to go where no one knew me; I liked to be someone else. Is that the same as having a fluid identity? Because in the end I realized it was actually a set of identities: 7, like I said. Yet…

There used to be 6. The new personality, emerged recently, is the person I was about three years ago. Before the dysphoria hit. The woman. Not just the woman but the idealist, the artist…her name is Willow now. She makes me think I’m not sure if I’m actually ‘blending’ anymore, or am I just becoming Conan? And does being Conan mean being trans?

I don’t talk about this usually, because so often people dismiss me as crazy. Lol, not that I’m not – I literally technically am! But I’m just not sure…what to call myself. I’m not fluid – that would be offensive, man, because this whole process of curing my disorder treats having fluid identities as the disorder! And it has many other symptoms for me, it’s true. I want to feel like I’m ‘me’.

Non-binary is an excellent descriptor for me, I am literally more than two lol, but that’s not what that label means.

Many assume I’m trans, and I have a lot in common with the experiences of trans people I think, but being trans assumes one self. I think? Where I’m coming from is totally different.

And, in the end, my other selves are not really real. But they are really me. It makes for a double experience: I feel like I’m losing myself, and finally gaining it.

In short, if I don’t know who I am, can I be something?

Thank you for reading, I know it was long, and I would really appreciate some advice about how to identify, to feel secure and supported, but also be respectful of movements and terms that are larger than myself. And I understand if it’s confusing or you don’t know what to say, in the end. It’s okay. I feel the same. I actually think all of psychiatry feels the same, hahaha. Regardless, thanks for listening.

- @quiteamazedandthankyouforasking

Your existence and identity is not harmful to people’s perceptions of being nonbinary. If they’re gonna take problem with you, they’re gonna take problem with me because they hold harmful and ignorant beliefs. You shouldn’t have to hide yourself away in the closet for “the community’s” sake.

Nonbinary isn’t a term just for neurotypical people. I think you’ll find most of us here on this blog are neurodivergent ourselves, and while not all of us may consider our gender wrapped up in our neurodivergency, for many people, it really is. There’s even a whole category of nonbinary identities about this called neurogenders: https://nonbinary.wiki/wiki/Neurogender & http://gender.wikia.com/wiki/Neurogender

Gender can be impacted by any host of ‘outside’ factors: culture, religion, neurodivergency, trauma… I myself have grabbled over my gender identity being tied up to my past trauma. My romantic orientation certainly is, and my gender probably is as well, but working out if that’s how it feels is… difficult to navigate.

To say that being nonbinary can NEVER intersect with these factors is to do ourselves and our community a disservice. It is to gatekeep and police people’s identity, to tell them there is a certain way they must identify. It is to box them into a corner and not allow themselves to express themselves as they are.

The problem is when people think things like “being nonbinary in and of itself is a mental disorder and therefore something to be fixed because you’re wrong and broken”. But you can totally be nonbinary as a result of mental illness or a personality disorder or whatever. That’s 100% valid and anybody who tells you that you’re not welcome is being bigoted themselves.

It’s also okay if how you feel in regards to your mental health and your gender(s) changes later! It’s okay if your relationship to gender changes as you make progress with your mental health. It’s okay to grow and change as a person. This sometimes means our understanding of ourselves changing, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

You can’t help who you are or if your identity is all wrapped up and confusing. You just being you isn’t harmful to our community. People who paint us all with one brush are harmful to our community. People who would encourage eugenics or erasure for the “sake” of our community are harmful to our community. People who try to dictate how others experience their own identity are harmful to our community.

So you’re nonbinary and depressed with DID? (Since I’m also ace and these are big ace issues…) There are ace people who’s ace identity is wrapped up in them being autistic, or is wrapped up with medications they take, or is wrapped up as a part of mental illnesses they have, or is wrapped up in past trauma. Exact same thing goes for gender. That doesn’t make them any less valid and this doesn’t make you any less valid. We need to accept that there are many ways to be. Even if you were harming someone, that wouldn’t make your identity invalid - although it would mean you’d be less welcome in safe spaces.

So I say you’re welcome. <3

And more than that, if these different personalities have different genders… well, it certainly sounds like that is something to explore.

But however you identify, whatever label you choose… that alone is your choice and your choice alone. While you may not understand or know yourself that well, you are still the one who best knows how you feel and is best equipped to explore labels and decide what is right for you. If identifying as nonbinary feels right, then identify as nonbinary! Be nonbinary. If you relate to a lot of trans experiences, then that sounds like something to seriously consider!

You do not have to be totally neurotypical or mentally healthy or physically healthy or completely absolutely understand yourself (honest truth: no one does) to be nonbinary. It’s okay if your identity and relationship to your identity is messy and complicated and confusing and even weird. Honestly? That’s some of what being nonbinary is about, really. The fact that we have messy, confusing, complicated, hard to understand relationships to our gender. No matter our mental status.

~ Mod Sock

#questioning #self doubt #ableism #neurodivergent #neurodivergency #neurogenders #identity #mod sock #submission #quiteamazedandthankyouforasking #gatekeeping #ableist language #validation #long post

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artificialqueens · 6 years

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we break but we're not broken (craquaria) - dis_connected

AN: Aquaria cares far too much for her friends.

Inspired by this prompt from happylilprompts on tumblr: Person A has had a crush on Person B, literal sunshine that gets top grades, for years. Recently B smiles and studies less, and is even skipping class. A’s the only one who pays close enough attention to see something is seriously wrong au

Read on ao3

Aquaria has given up with school. Well, she gave up with school not long after she started school. But, still, officially now, all she’s doing is focusing on trying to get into the Fashion Institute of Technology, which has been her only dream since she tried on her first pair of her mom’s heels as a kid, and now she’s just trying to keep all her grades at a C so she can successfully scrape by high school and leave it all behind for good.

Meanwhile, a friend of hers, Brianna, is a model pupil. Aquaria has sat behind her in both History and French since freshman year, watching the way she flicks her blonde hair over her shoulder, how her head tilts back when she’s laughing and her confidence when talking in class in comparison to Aquaria’s stumbling awkwardness. Not that it’s a big deal that she watches her. She’s just hard to miss, with her big personality and even bigger hair, and you know, she’s right there, what else is she supposed to look at?

Brianna is popular amongst the students, like Aquaria, but, drastically opposite to Aquaria, she’s also loved by all of her teachers, thanks to her general friendliness and attitude to study hard in all her subjects. Brianna has truly excelled in high school. As their four years come to a close, she’s on track to go to a great college and have a great future, whereas Aquaria can hardly wait to get out of this hellhole and finally make a name for herself in fashion.

But, leaving behind high school means leaving her friends, and, unfortunately, that includes leaving behind Brianna. And the back of her head. Which is nice. The big, curly hair that the blonde does when she has a bit more time is Aquaria’s favourite, by far. She remembers vividly the day that she did it for the first time.

It’s a Monday. Aquaria spent the weekend in isolation from the outside world, trying to put together some looks for her portfolio, which she has changed and altered a million times, at least. Just last night, she redrew and redesigned a whole outfit she was obsessed with the week before, meaning she was up until the early hours of the morning furiously scribbling, sketching and sewing until her fingers were red raw.

Now, she’s sitting in her assigned seat at the back of Madame Dupont’s class as it starts, her pen tapping on her desk and her eyelids starting to droop already. Concentrating on the boring lectures on the imperfect subjunctive is hard enough as it is, without the added bonus of just two hours sleep. Aquaria is so tired that she hasn’t noticed that Brianna isn’t already sitting in front of her until she walks in, five minutes late, shooting an apologetic smile to the teacher and the usual grin to Aquaria, and hurriedly making her way to seat, the second row from the back.

“Bonne matin, mademoiselle, et qu’est-ce que la raison que vous êtes si tard?” Madame Dupont demands before she has the chance to sit down, even though the lesson has barely begun.

“Je suis desolée, Madame,” Brianna mumbles, her flawless accent still clear as she sits down and starts to pull out her things.

Aquaria is shocked. Brianna has never been late to class before, especially not French. Normally, she has to drag Aquaria by the arm so they’re on time, or she’s already there by the time the other girl decides to finally trudge into the room at the last possible, looking eager for whatever boring grammar shit they’ll be looking at.

“Et pouvez-vous conjuguer le verbe faire au conditionnel pour la classe?” The teacher continues. Brianna does so, perfectly of course, but she seems tired to Aquaria, who stares at the back of her friend’s head with worry.

Obviously, she’s just looking out for her friend, as she would any of them. Aquaria knows that Monét threw a party that she had to decline thanks to her portfolio work, and Brianna most likely went to it, or slept through her alarm, or would rather not be here, which is fair enough, but she still can’t help but worry.

Aquaria almost has to slap herself, as Madame Dupont starts to drone on about when to use the imperfect subjunctive (which is never in real life. Seriously who needs this?). She tells herself that she’s just looking for something to think about in this dull, dull class, and Brianna being late and tired has literally zero significance. People are allowed to be late sometimes, even Brianna. So, she just watches her as she twirls her hair round her finger, hair that she’s just shoved up in a ponytail without even brushing it. Not that she doesn’t look nice, still, annoyingly.

The class manages to end with no incident, and thankfully Aquaria is one of the few not called on for Madame Dupont’s never ending questions, because she wouldn’t have had a single clue what the hell to answer. She never really does.

She’s packing up to go at the end, grumbling to herself, when Brianna turns around, like she normally does to catch up with her friend after class, but today a frown is furrowing her features, as she looks right at the other girl, who does a slight double take at her unusually sad demeanour.

“Hey, Aqua,” Brianna says, slinging her bag over her shoulder and leaning forward on her friend’s desk.

“Hi, Bri, how was Monét’s?” Aquaria asks casually, trying to pretend that she isn’t worried as she shoves her notebook in her own bag carelessly, too tired to give a shit about the state of it.

“Oh, I dunno, I didn’t go,” Brianna seems uninterested. “Do we have history today?”

“Um, no, not until third tomorrow,” Aquaria replies, a little shocked at the unusual bluntness from her friend.

Okay, something’s definitely wrong. Brianna knows her timetable off by heart, she always has done. Aquaria tries not to think too much of it, but it stays on her mind the whole day. She’s ferociously munching her salad at lunch, sat with her friends on their regular table and staring into space as they talk about what happened at the party she didn’t go to.

Brianna is strangely absent; usually she’s the heart of the table, always cracking the jokes and puns and causing their table to be the nosiest in the cafeteria, but today, though the noise of the girls screaming about the party is extremely prominent, one voice is missing. Well, two, but Aquaria’s quietness is never that unusual. Nobody else has commented on the lack of Brianna, which annoys Aquaria slightly, but also makes her think she’s kind of making a big deal out of nothing.

She notices after a while a drop in chatter and a shift in atmosphere and looks up at everyone.

They’re all looking at their friend aggressively stabbing a poor lettuce leaf with her fork like she has a personal vendetta against it, concern and amusement etched across their faces.

“Um, Q, are you planning on eating you salad, or murdering it?” Blair, Aquaria’s best friend, asks her, laughing slightly.

“Sorry,” she mumbles in reply simply, rolling her eyes as the focus remains on her.

“What’s eating you, bitch? Your portfolio?” Vixen, the most blunt and unabashed of the group, asks. Everyone knows the stress that Aquaria has put herself under; her whole life has basically boiled down to this portfolio that is supposed to showcase who she is as a person, and, more importantly, a designer. To say there has been tears shed would be saying the least.

Aquaria puts down her fork and pushes her salad away, no longer hungry. “I’m bored. You’re all boring,” she jokes, rolling her eyes again.

“Well, sorry you’re too focused on your career to come to the best party of senior year,” Monet cheers.

“Actually, bitch,” argues Asia. “The best party of senior year was definitely my pool party right before school started!”

“Hah, that was before school started so it was technically it was a summerparty and not in senior year, so I win!” Monét laughs back loudly.

Aquaria stops listening. This argument is a regular occurrence between Asia and Monét, who constantly keep a friendly competition with each other. Their group has a specific dynamic, especially as they happen to be the most popular girls in the school, not that Aquaria really cares that much. She’s definitely not a people person.

Each girl in the group seems to have a specific, unspoken role and dynamic, and somehow they all create a powerful sort of clique. There’s no room for anyone else, not that Vixen would let them in anyway, unless they proved themselves to her, a task which few have ever succeeded at.

Which is why Aquaria notices so much when someone is missing, it doesn’t matter who. Just because it’s Brianna now that she’s worrying about, doesn’t mean that if, say, Kameron was acting differently next week she wouldn’t be just as worried about her. Aquaria cares about her friends, so what?

So what?

The week continues in pretty much the same way as Monday. Aquaria picks up on the subtle differences in Brianna, including her lateness to most of her classes, and her lack of makeup. To most people, it’s not a big deal at all, and she could blame it on the stress of nearing the end of the year. In fact, that’s what it would look like to any other person but Aquaria, especially the rest of their friendship group which have failed to notice the shift in Brianna’s behaviour.

God, she is going insane. She starts to drive herself crazy, overanalysing Brianna’s every move, from the back of her head in class, which is unusually slumped and bent over, to her weak attempts at jokes and uncharacteristic quietness at lunchtime, to the bluntness of their normally flowing conversation. It’s ridiculous, and distracting. Especially because none of their other friends have mentioned anything, at least not to Aquaria, and she really doesn’t want to bring anything up for fear of looking like a total idiot.

The worry is crippling to Aquaria, as though somebody is repeatedly whacking her over the head with a huge stick. Every time she tries to forget about it, bam and it’s back. She knows it’s ridiculous, and she blames her own stress. Her mind is clearly looking for something to do, bored to death of her sewing, sketching and designing the same pieces over and over again. It’s insanity. Complete and utter insanity.

But on Thursday, her insanity is justified, just slightly; after the class get a test back in History and Aquaria peers over to see she did better than Brianna, she can tell it’s with due reason. Brianna studies hard. Brianna puts school before everything. Brianna never gets below a B. In anything. And here she is with a C-, not even looking that fazed by it.

It’s like she’s given up. It’s eating away at Aquaria’s brain, so much so that she starts to design a new garment inspired by melting flesh and a revealed skull, and then hates it and screws it all up again. She wants to know why, without having to ask her. Confrontation is not her strong suit, especially when she could be completely wrong.

She’s hanging out at Blair’s house on Thursday night, an excuse to use her mom’s sewing machine, which is a million times better than her own, to test out some material she found that she wants to work with, but it keeps going wrong.

Aquaria is a good seamstress. She prides herself on it, in fact. It’s her thing. But after she fucks up the hem for the millionth time, she screams and rips apart her fabric, throwing it in the air in the most dramatic fashion ever.

Blair looks up from her laptop, where she’s trying to complete some homework, concern and worry etched onto her face as she witnesses her best friend’s outburst.

“Um, are you okay?” she asks, knowing that Aquaria is someone that tends to bottle up her emotions, not scream and throw things.

“I’m just stressed about this whole portfolio shit, I need it to be perfect,” Aquaria lies, rubbing her forehead aggressively.

“Lie,” says Blair nonchalantly, closing her laptop lid and moving to sit beside her best friend, who is trying desperately to stop her eyes from watering.

“Excuse me?” Aquaria says timidly, not looking her friend as she blinks furiously down at the sewing machine.

“You’ve been stressed about this for months. And when you’re stressed you turn it out, not fuck it up. Something else is on your mind and you’re telling me what it is right now,” Blair demands.

“You’ll think I’m stupid.”

“If it’s got you this worked up, it can’t be stupid. Spill! Spill!” Blair starts chanting and it almost puts a smile on Aquaria’s face, who pushes her friend playfully to get her to shut up.

“Okay, fine, Jesus. I’m just worried about a friend of ours who I think there’s something wrong with. She’s just acting really weird and I’m wondering if she’s okay,” she mumbles, trying to play it off as no big deal, which it probably isn’t.

“Who is this?” There’s a long pause whilst Aquaria stares down at her manicured nails in shame. “Aquaria, who?”

“Brianna.”

“Oh for god’s – you can’t let her ruin this for you. I know you’re obsessed with her-”

“Woah, woah, wait a minute, I am not obsessed with her. She got a C- today, B,” Aquaria says dramatically, like that’s supposed to clear everything up. Blair seems unbothered.

“So what?”

“So what?” Aquaria repeats in disbelief, annoyed at the lack of reaction. “This is Brianna. She always gets A’s.”

“Q, I love you, but I don’t think that Brianna getting a C- on one test should be the focus of you little brain right now,” Blair says, gesturing to Aquaria’s sketches that are now littering her room, along with the torn bit of fabric. “Have you even talked to her about it?”

“Well, no, but she’s not really given me much of a chance. We’re not exactly super close anymore, are we?” Aquaria feels her throat close up a little, before shaking her head, her friend giving her a pitying look.

“If it stops you worrying, just grab her after class and ask her if she’s okay. It’s really not hard, babe, it’s just being a good friend, and I’ll bet she’ll be happy to know you’re thinking of her.”

“Okay, I’ll talk to her,” Aquaria mumbles, choosing to ignore the last statement, knowing it probably won’t help, especially as she’s the fucking worst at giving advice.

“Okay?” Blair asks, receiving a reluctant nod in reply from her friend, who picks up her material from the floor in shame.

Aquaria knows how she feels about Brianna isn’t just friendly. She does. Blair might be her best friend, and Monét might be Brianna’s, but they’ve known each other a long time, longer than any of the other girls in their friendship group.

Aquaria recalls the day they met, almost ten years ago. She was always left out and picked on by the other kids; they thought she was way too weird and stupid, always laughing at the things she said and how she acted, which is a huge deal when you’re eight. Aquaria hated them all, and hated school. And then, a new girl moved to Aquaria’s town, and started at the school.

She had the biggest, kindest brown eyes that Aquaria had ever seen, and made it her mission to befriend the quirky girl who preferred to be alone. She sat down next to her whilst all the other kids went out to play, and handed her half her sandwich without a second word.

And that was that.

And then they grew back apart again, after a night which left Aquaria in tears, and unable to look her former best friend in the eye for months. They remained friends, tied together by mutual friends and mutual classes, but it’s nothing like it used to be.

So they’re not the closest of friends, not anymore, but conversation still comes naturally and easily, they can laugh together without it being awkward, and pick up wherever they left off. Aquaria’s quite an awkward person, but Brianna feels like someone who will never judge or ridicule her, who she can always come to for any sort of advice.

Feelings have been brewing under the surface for Aquaria for years now, of course she knows that, she’s just been pretending they’re not there, because a harmless crush is pointless when Brianna has no interest in her in the slightest. Her act of indifference has most people convinced, everyone except for Blair, who can see right through the paper-thin charade and has been teasing her best friend about it ever since.

Aquaria tries not to care. She can admire Brianna in class and be her friend the rest of the time. It’s not that hard, really. It’s not.

Aquaria has French the period before lunch on Friday, so she plans on grabbing Brianna after the class so they can have some time to talk. Her plan, however, is foiled when the blonde doesn’t even show up.

Aquaria spends the whole class sick with worry, unable to concentrate on her work, her nails tapping the surface of the desk rapidly, staring at the door and expecting her friend’s face to poke round it at any second, an apologetic smile pulling at her plump lips. Her mind is in overdrive, and it feels like everything is going off track.

As soon as class is over, she starts to walk to lunch slowly, pulling out her phone and calling her friend once, twice, three times with no reply. Aquaria rakes her hand through her black hair, almost clawing at her scalp.

She needs to calm down. Brianna is probably sick, and that’s why she’s off school, and sleeping, and that’s why her phone is left unanswered. Something in the back of Aquaria’s mind is still buzzing, however, drowning out her attempts to reassure herself and filling her mind with anxiety, like the sea pulling her under on a stormy day.

So, she bypasses the cafeteria and heads instead straight to her locker. Aquaria takes a second to linger over the polaroids decorating the inside of the door, adorned with stickers and hearts drawn sloppily in black sharpie. They’re mostly of herself and Blair, though it’s closely followed by some of her favourites of her and Brianna throughout their ten years of up-and-down friendship, as well as the other girls that Aquaria is friends with, group selfies and candid shots from parties and movie nights. Her eyes stop on a picture the summer before she started high school, of her and Brianna lounging by a pool, goofy grins on their faces, their bodies clad in bikinis. They had been so excited, buzzing with nervous energy about the adventures of high school that were to come.

Aquaria shakes her head and grabs her gym bag, slamming her locker shut and cutting off her thoughts of a simpler time, before she realised what a hellhole this place actually is, and what the hell it did to her friendship.

She storms through school like a lady on a mission. No matter what, Aquaria can always calm herself down through a vigorous dance session, pushing her body to the limit until she’s drenched in sweat and her only thought is of a shower.

She has a free period next, so she changes quickly, shooting a quick text to the group chat to let them know what she’s up to, planning to use all the time she can get to try to push the ridiculous thoughts of Brianna from her mind, at least for a little bit.

The high school is attached to a leisure centre, which the students use themselves in classes, but is open to the general public also, therefore the students have access to private rooms they can use to practise sports, as the public do, considering they pay.

Aquaria makes use of this any time she can, choosing the smaller rooms any time she can to practise her dance in peace.

Aside from a class playing volleyball in the gym, the area is empty as Aquaria walks back to the changing rooms, every single muscle on her whole body screaming out in pain. She loves to push herself or she feels like there’s no point, but today she obliterated the limit, only stopping when her throat screamed for water.

It worked, as well, as she soaks herself in the scolding water of the shower, her mind is taken up by the success of her session and not a certain blonde. As the heat from the water cascades over her body, she lets her mind empty of all thoughts, closing her eyes against the surprisingly decent stream of water and takes her time washing her body, allowing herself to be at peace for a while.

Finally, Aquaria steps out the shower, grabbing a towel to wrap around her glistening body. The changing rooms are empty, therefore she is free to take her time to dry herself with the scratchy material of the towel from her gym bag, not quite ready to face the outside world yet.

She still has half of the period left before the next class starts, so, after redressing and pulling her damp hair into a careless messy bun, she decides to head to the library. Not to do school work, of course, just to flip through the latest issue of Vogue in search for inspiration.

Aquaria is happily walking up to her locker through the deserted hallways of the school, feeling surprisingly refreshed, her usually busy mind feeling almost new again, before it will be undoubtedly hit with a new tidal wave of thoughts. Her locker is up in the music block, as that’s where she has homeroom, and she’s just walking past one of the sound proof practise rooms when she happens to glance inside, through the glass panel in the door, and spots a familiar face, distorted by the glass, but familiar all the same.

Brianna.

She’s sitting at the far end of the tiny room, with her feet propped up on a chair, her head bent over a guitar, and she appears to be singing something. Aquaria inches carefully closer to the door, watching her friend who is oblivious to her presence. She looks so sad.

Brianna has always loved music, Aquaria knows that. She taught herself how to play guitar at a young age, and constantly came up with little melodies and songs that went with them, getting her best friend to chip in on the harmonies once in a while. But, to Aquaria’s knowledge, she hasn’t played in a while. And here she is, when she should probably be in class, strumming her old guitar, distinguishable by the old band stickers that faded a long time ago, and the dent from the time Aquaria dropped in on her wooden floor, by accident

And then Brianna looks up, and spots Aquaria standing in the doorway holding a gym bag and a concerned gaze, and lifts her hand up in a sort of half-hearted wave, getting up and placing the battered guitar down. She goes over to the door where Aquaria is frozen in a sort of silent embarrassment at being caught, and opens it.

“Hi,” Brianna says simply, before walking back into the room and retaking her seat.

Aquaria supposes that this as an invitation, and cautiously enters the room, shutting the door softly behind her, before perching on the piano stool close to where her friend is sitting. She studies her face for a second, all the worry and anxiety that she just worked so hard to get rid of flooding back and smacking her across the head again.

“What are you doing? Are you okay, Bri?”

At least she can finally talk to Brianna, again, and settle the matter for good, but the response from her friend is not at all what she’s expecting, her sad brown eyes lifting up to gaze into her own, her mind clearly occupied by something that has been pressing down on her for a while.

“What happened to me and you?”

It feels like a slap across the face, a cold, hard slap with a wet fish. That’s not even dead. And covered in slime.

“What do you mean?” Aquaria’s mouth feels dry, so she runs her tongue across her lower lip, which helps very little. She knows exactly what she means.

“We used to be best friends, Aqua. We were inseparable. Don’t you remember us sharing everything? I stayed at your house, like, every other night. What the fuck went wrong?” Brianna is angry now, and it takes Aquaria by surprise – it’s a rare emotion in the usually laid back, easy going and happy girl that she used to know so well.

“We’re still friends,” Aquaria mumbles, though it’s a poor attempt at reassurance. Is this what’s been weighing down on Brianna the last week? Surely it can’t be? And yet, a small part of Aquaria’s heart, dedicated to Brianna, lights up in hope that it could be.

“Yeah, great. I can’t remember the last time I was alone with you. When did we last hang out that wasn’t at fucking lunchtime?”

It hurts. It really fucking hurts. Aquaria’s chest feels like it’s closing in on her. Brianna doesn’t remember. She doesn’t remember the fatal night that caused Aquaria to distance herself from Brianna, gradually, slowly, because the more time she spent with her, the more it hurt, like a dagger twisted into her chest, plunging deeper as the days, weeks, months passed. She had to get it out, even if that meant the end of their friendship, which it almost did.

She sure as hell isn’t going to bring it up.

“I know,” she says instead, shaking her head, hoping that the hurt she feels hasn’t seeped into her voice. “You know I still care about you. Which is why I want to know what’s been going on with you?”

“Don’t change the subject!” Brianna groans, clearly uncomfortable at what she knows Aquaria is about to bring up.

“Bri, you got a C and didn’t even care. You missed French, and you’re in here in a free period! I’m not crazy, something is the matter,” Aquaria says, mostly to reassure herself. There’s a long pause, as Brianna appears to be thinking something over, painfully slowly. Aquaria chews at the inside of her cheek anxiously, enough so that the metallic taste of her own blood seeps into her mouth

“Well, okay,” Brianna says, at last, looking up at Aquaria with a small, sad smile on her face. “Maybe you can help me. I could use your advice.”

“You know I’m shit at advice. You do know I’m shit at advice?” Aquaria says. If Brianna remembered who she was at all she would know that, but the girl just shakes her head, looking at Aquaria as if she holds a cure for all her troubles.

“I think you’re my best bet, right now.”

There’s something about this statement that makes Aquaria extremely nervous, the worry now pounding through her mind, amplified to a million times to what it was before, but how the hell can she refuse now?

“Um, okay, I’ll try my best.”

“I’ve been, sort of, realising some things about myself recently.”

“Things?”

There’s a long, painful, drawn out pause. Brianna can’t even look at Aquaria, who’s staring at her so intensely she might possibly be about to burn a hole through her skull.

“Like, maybe I’m not actually straight?”

Oh. That was not what Aquaria was expecting, at all. She almost chokes on air, trying her best to maintain a neutral disposition as she nods encouragingly, willing Brianna to continue as her mind starts whirring at a million miles an hour. Is this about her? Can she possibly dare to hope that it is?

“You’re… gay?”

“Maybe, god, I don’t know. I haven’t talked to a single person about this yet.”

God, that feels like old times. A bittersweet wave of nostalgia washes over Aquaria. Sitting up for hours and blurting any random thing that they could ever possibly think of. No secrets, no lies. Come to think of it, Brianna did once say that she had an unexplainable crush on the groovy chick girl that adorned her bedding as a kid.

“I just feel so lost, all of a sudden. I’m eighteen years old and I’m only just figuring out that I like girls?”

“Hey, that’s not that old. People don’t figure it out until college normally.”

Brianna laughs, though it’s painfully bitter, shaking her head in amusement, causing her friend to smile, just slightly.

“See, bad advice! What did I tell you?”

“I just can’t stop thinking about it, like, it’s keeping me up at night. And I have to avoid her, which is where you come in.”

“What?”

“Well, she made me realise I like girls at all. I have a huge, ridiculous crush on her.”

“Who, Bri?”

“Blair.”

And, just like that, the world comes crumbling down.

#miz cracker #aquaria #craquaria #angst #pining #rpdr fanfiction #lesbian au #dis connected #blair x cracker #we break #high school au #rare pair #s10

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spvg · 6 years

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Games Literacy (this is hard)

I’ve been thinking about how to best introduce games to people that have never played them, or see no real appeal in them, and this has led me to dive a bit more into the notion of games literacy.

And if you’ve ever tried to get a friend or relative that never plays games, to play something you really like, only to watch them struggle with tasks you take for granted, then you have been exposed to the lack of game literacy that concerns me.

How do we share our beloved medium with people that are not used to it? And what games are best to introduce people to? What game should you pick to introduce basic game literacy to someone who never played games?

First let’s see games literacy and what it is, as the name suggests, is the ability of an individual to interact with any given game at a novice level, Just like literacy is an individual’s ability to read and understand the words on any given book, at a surface level at least.

But games are so diverse that a player that is amazing at Sports games, like say, Fifa, might be completely lost when playing a real time strategy games like Starcraft.

This makes it very hard for us to decide what the line for games literacy is generally, but for argument’s sake let’s say that our goal is to teach someone between their 20’s and 30’s to become game literate and they’ll be so when they have the “ability to play any given game at a novice level” so our hypothetical literate to be players will all play everything but they’re not exactly high on the leader boards for anything.

We also have to understand that children tend to learn faster, not only for their all consuming brains, hungry for information, but because usually they do not have as much distractions as a full grown adult that might very well see no point in “wasting time” with a game, but games tend to be engaging so that might be a good innate way to counteract that feeling, children have another advantage though and that is usually the games are so engaging that they’ll go beyond any frustration with mechanics and will try until they learn, an adult usually will stop after a few tries when they start feeling overwhelmed with a game, even the simplest ones.

For instance I once tried to get my mom to play Little Big planet, run and jump right? like a Mario game but more handcrafted looking, No, for some reason, something I thought so obvious as pressing jump while moving forward, to, you know, jump forward, for her was extremely hard, so hard I was able to have her play SKYRIM better than little big planet! (still an extremely comedic and ludicrous Skyrim play through but she did it mostly alone) I still get surprised when I think abou this, how could some one have more trouble playing through the first little big planet level, than Skyrim?!

how could it be that a 3D world first person simulation was easier to understand than a 2D sidescroller? surely the sidescroller would have a lot less information to worry about right?

So here’s what I think happened with little big planet, it has too much information for a newcomer, the music the different textures, the quirky characters, it’s great to attract the attention of kids, it is not so great for an older person to keep track of what is going on, unless of course you are game literate, the physics based interactions with objects and characters also don’t help much.

Ok but why was my mother’s time easier with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim?

I believe the 3D environment was easier for her to understand, since it’s the one that resembles our actual way of moving around the most, walking from point A to B was simple for her, controlling the camera on the other side had it’s ups and downs, and I noticed that she had a hard time separating body movement form camera movement, and frequently when in panic she would move both joysticks forward causing her to look straight down and face the ground instead of her foes, but still, she managed to use swords to attack (even if she was afraid of monsters) and perform basic tasks such as speak to non playable characters, or open doors, chests and so on, even if it did took a long time, she had to look to the controller and remember over and over again what button did what, even though effectively she was more literate in open world RPGs than side scrolling platformers. And this still is hard for me to fully comprehend.

it’s not like Skyrim had a tutorial so it made no real difference the way mechanics were taught, and she did play the first tutorial level of little big planet and had trouble all the same, So I had to keep asking myself, what other differences were there between the two games, and what game should be the perfect fit to teach someone basic game literacy.

And so I did, I sat my mom down again this time to play the first level of Super Mario world on the Snes, and then the first level of super Mario odyssey on the nintendo switch,

I wanted to see the difference in behavior from one to another, considering that the first is a course clear game and the second a sort of sandbox explorer,

It took her a few tries (about 6 actually) but eventually she did manage to beat both first levels all on her own, so the mechanics were indeed learned, they just need to be fine tuned, and I assume the more she’d play the better she’d get at it. So as far as Super Mario World went I’d say it was a major improvement over little big planet, and the simplicity of the game did make it easier to learn I believe (I still would have preferred to try this with an earlier Mario game though)

there was something interesting I noticed while my mother played super Mario odyssey though, as opposed to Skyrim, the other open world 3d game she played, in this one she had a harder time placing Mario around the map, the third person camera seemed to make it harder for her to position herself as opposed to the first person view of the elder scrolls games. I believe this has to do with a lack of experience with the controller, and how using the joysticks translates to movement and control this is something most of us are used to do since early, if we play games often, but to suddenly come in grab a controller and play it’s a drastically steeper climb.

so i’m still trying to figure my head around how this learning curve should go, but clearly a good way to start is with simpler easier games, probably, I’d say, something simple along the lines of Super Mario Bros mainly the world 1-1, that first level is a landmark in game design it has a great safe space to try mechanics of the game and most of all it’s clean, Mario is clearly visible against the background, there’s plenty of room ahead for players to get used to what’s coming and it is not overwhelming with information, it seems to be a good fit to new older players, probably something along those lines, with easy mechanics and understandable tutorials is a good choice. (please if you have any idea of games that might fit this description let me know). I thought of other types of games such as narrative driven games, or puzzle games as good gateways into the video game world since they don’t require as much dexterity with controllers, maybe some easier role playing games could then bridge the gap to more action focused games, and since rpg’s tend to have so much information packed in them, they could be a good starting point to strategy games or vice versa.

Now how can developers make their game easier to learn or at least to get a basic notion of how their game works? For that I think we should start with an Idea Zach Gage shares on his GDC talk on how to build easy to understand games, that is the three reeds rule, this is a graphic design rule that can be altered to work pretty well on a games design, it works like this:

1 what pulls you in - the core of your game

2 the key details - big unintuitive rules

3 contextual information - contextual rules

So the ideia here is to design the look of your game in a way that it is easy to read by anyone, and I’d go beyond just the look of menu and user interface and apply it to the game mechanics as well, since I’m focusing on console/pc gaming and your way of interacting or the controller is actually a very important part of how you learn/perceive a game

So in a Mario game the first reed would be Mario against the big blue sky, the question blocks and the ground you stand on, the second reed would be the question mark blocks and action enemies take towards you allowing the player to understand where interaction is possible, this isn’t exactly visible but it is well explained since you only have two buttons that work, and finally the third reed is the score the world you’re in, number of coins and the time you have left.

By making the game easy to understand for anyone, or at least easy enough to visually read, developers are able to make for an easier introduction to their game world mechanics and ideas.

But there is a long way from being able to play a game, and properly understanding any meaning one might have, this is where advanced game literacy comes into play, of course not all games have meanings or thought provoking ideas behind them, Duck Game isn’t interested in make you think about the inner workings of a sadistic duck universe where ducks fight for sport, it’s interested in being a fun crazy game for friends to play and laugh together.

But Night in the Woods for instance is interested in sharing ideas about finding meaning in yourself, in your life, in growing as individuals and even in the real life effects that a growing economical state has upon entire ways of living, and its sustainability. But imagine you never played a game in your life, I think the experience of trying to learn simple mechanics if you never tried them before, may very well get in the way of properly engage with a game’s ideas, that is why it’s important to make the learning a smooth curve for newer players, and if we can it’s up to us people that have been playing for a long time, to help our new friends to get the best experience they can, we can be curators for the great work developers put out there, and at the same time keep them away from the sea of terrible content that is out there.

I know that this article is setting up more questions than answers, but I’m so intrigued by this situation that I felt like sharing and hopefully get some feedback and some deeper notions handed back to me.

Have different ideas? something that I clearly missed, suggestions? Write them to me, and we’ll be Speaking of Video Games!

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elliacm · 3 years

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Mr.Ma’s Delivery Service

Prologue - Truth Be Told

'Hardwell Special Academy locations are everywhere! From America, South America, Europe, East Asia, and Africa! The exact locations? That's only disclosed to our future attending students and staff! This is to ensure the privacy and safety of our students'

______

"How lovely, and if they die that means no one can find them, verrry well thought out." A sharp sarcastic tone rolled off the tongue of this lonesome thirty-four-year-old man. Busy indulging in a brochure that held confusing cryptic details about Hardwell Academy, It wasn't exactly surprising, the school housed child spies, it was best to keep the details made out of exaggerated anagrams.

Puffs of smoke escaped his mouth, the strong whiff of cigarette smell carried throughout the space he dwelled in. The frustrations that occupied his mind began to be soothed by the 'oh so addicting' nicotine. He was sitting in an empty classroom, the layout was odd. Of course, it fit him perfectly as a teacher since he was quite the peculiar fellow. He was a thirty-four-year-old without a license or degree, authorized to teach children. Questions should be directed towards who hired him. The only perks his resume had were the skills of a top assassin and the deaths of the people he legally murdered, kind of...

The classroom was built like an Auditoria Lecture room, the walls were painted a cream white, draped with fake vines and flowers.

Surely one would say that it didn't represent this sarcastic judgmental smoker, once again if any have forgotten, he was indeed a teacher.

His hand reached over to smush the cigarette in his fancy ashtray, clean as well as new.

"Mr.Ma, already breaking school policy I see.."

A tall fair-skinned man in a sharp blue suit stood near the open doorway, leaning against it casually. For a moment subtle silence encapsulated their space awkwardly. The man had a fierce glare that was locked on Mr.Ma, who then forced a bright smile. "If it isn't my best employer! Me? Breaking school policy? Nooooo, you must be mistaken" Mr.ma's hand swiftly knocked the ashtray into the trashcan, it was located on the right side of his desk.

'Clink!'

"You must be confused with someone else.." His jaw moved fairly slow to make a sly crooked smile. Mr.Ma knew it was obvious that he had been smoking, the smell, the dust particles, and once again, the smell.

The man in the sharp blue suit scoffed, "Indeed, I must be, but I would hope that you wouldn't make the same mistake correct?" Of course, the man wouldn't back down. He happened to be in charge of this whole institution and having no backbone would have stripped away his authority. Mr.Ma's smile disappeared with haste, his expression held a dull lifeless stare, he rolled his eyes and spun in the rolling chair he occupied.

"Ahh...You're no fun...What are u here for anyway Brooklyn" Mr.Ma's pupils followed the painting while he continued spinning, he had it placed in the back of his classroom, it was an abstract painting meshed with mostly dark tones and hues.

"Evans betrayed the association"

Mr.Ma's coffee brown loafer was pressed against the end of his desk which made the spinning stagnant. It wasn't exactly shocking to him as many would expect. Evans was what some would call a 'close friend' to Mr.Ma. It was only considered that way because they were constantly placed on the same missions.

He then pushed his foot against the desk more, propelling him back against the whiteboard behind him. "And? That's nothing new, I'm sure they're having trouble killing the fella" His voice wasn't playful as it was before. "Seems that's why they sent me here, afraid I might be in cahoots, just great, I hate being surrounded by you guys" It was adherently obvious about this whole placement that the organization was keeping a very tight leash on Mr.Ma's freedom.

Brooklyn's hazel eyes just watched Mr.Ma's movements while the man got out of his seat quite annoyed "I don't care, but I expect you to teach your students while you work here, oh right, they might call you in for a lie detector test, and taking truth serum"

Mr.Ma's face scrunched with disgust, "Truth serum...they are trying to torture me"

...

"Brynn I feel like we wasted our GAP year, maybe we should've saved it for Year Three.." These words escaped the mouth of a solemn teenage girl, her head was laying on a plush watermelon pink pillow staring at her Blonde haired friend fold clothes and place them into a suitcase. Technically you can't necessarily take a GAP year for high school, but since both of their parents were spies and they had aced the experience exam, attending regular high school another year was a gift.

"Jack it wouldn't have worked anyway, we should be more excited and optimistic! We're finally becoming spies!" Brynn's lemonade pink eyes landed on Jack who still pouted like a baby.

Excited? Who in the world would be excited to attend a school that trained you to spend your life being extra careful of what you know? This was a reoccurring thought that lingered on Jacks's mind for the past year. As a child being a real spy always seemed to be so exciting to her. Although after actually gaining common sense and knowledge, her opinion switched drastically.

"Haha..yeah" The left side of Jacks' face was smooshed against the pillow as her arm reached out to grab a picture of her and Brynn off the bedside table.

The two of them were the age of seven when the photo was taken. It was at a park in North Carolina, the weather was cool and warm, but awfully humid. Jack's hair was dark brown and extremely short, it was cut into a pixie cut, while Brynn's hair was in two long pigtails. They smiled happily in the photo not showing a care in the world.

Brynn snatched the photo out of Jack's hand, her fuchsia eyes widened and she looked up at the Blonde. "You are thinking way too much about school, we haven't even gotten there yet...Calm your nerves Jack"

Brynn was right, and Jack hated that. A whole year passed by so quickly and all that lingered on her mind was 'becoming a spy'. It wasn't like she didn't expect her life to turn out this way, I mean for goodness sakes her mother and father were top espionage, it's in her blood. The real question was what would she become besides a spy? She hadn't thought of any other career, even further she hadn't thought about what TYPE of spy she would become, there were so many majors and options. At this point, Jack was super stressed.

Jack sat up on Brynn's bed still holding the plush pillow close, Brynn placed the picture in her suitcase as it was the final item she needed to complete her packing.

"Finally donneee..." Brynn fell back onto the dusty light brown carpet, her eyes focused on the white ceiling as she relaxed. "Do you think Kei is excited?" Brynn's eyes shifted back over to Jack who was now sitting up dazed.

"Of course he is..all he does is talk about 'I'm gonna be better than Shiro!' All that nonsense" She yawned covering her mouth.

Kei was another childhood friend of the two, they formed a trio and practically spent their whole life together. Which was something Jack cherished deeply. Kei always liked to fight with his brother over everything since he was lacking in areas that couldn't ever compare to Shiro.

Shiro was already a third-year attending Hardwell academy, rumors traveled across each institution that Shiro was one of the top students across ranks. So of course, Kei wanted to outrank his brother and reach the top just as quickly.

Knock Knock!

"Is it safe?"

Jack's lips cracked into a smile after hearing the voice from the other side of the door. Brynn sat up quickly bubbling with happiness. "Come in! We were just talking about you"

Opening the door promptly after hearing reassurance, Kei scratched the back of his head nervously.

"I haven't been in here in ages, it's all so yucky now" Kei teased as he ogled at the different shades of pink. Brynn's face full of happiness shaped into a frown.

They did see each other all the time, but the time spent together was either in Jack's downstairs lounge, Brynn's living room, or Kei's bedroom since he had the largest one out of the three. The last time Kei even entered Brynn's room was roughly two years ago, even then it was just to alert her to come downstairs.

"Shut up! It's cute.."

Jack hopped off of the bed still gazing in Kei's direction.

"So are you ready to head out? I'm sure Shiro is eager to see you"

Kei's ocean eyes narrowed whilst his expression became pouty after the mentioning of his brother. His arms folded over one another "He's just gonna smother me in love, I want to ignore him as much as possible, he'll tarnish the image I'm going for"

Brynn's eyebrow raised, her elbow was resting on her knee as she looked up at the two. "And that is..?" Brynn inquired genuinely interested in what her friend was going for now.

"Independent and Mysterious"

Jack turned away quickly attempting to hide the sour look on her face that came from trying not to burst into laughter.

Brynn cleared her throat also denying the urge to laugh.

"What's wrong with that?" Kei's brows wrinkled taking glances between the two. Jack coughed turning back towards the fellow.

"I mean really? Mysterious? That's so cliche, Shiro is going to ruin that so quickly you know" Jack's finger poked into Kei's cheek as he stood there concealing the anger that was boiling. Brynn got up chuckling at the sight.

"She's right you know, Shiro isn't as laid back as you, you know he'll make fun of you just as much as we're doing"

Kei smacked Jack's finger away from his face as he sighed in defeat.

They weren't lying, it was most definitely true that his loving older brother would tease him non-stop for the whole semester, better yet, the whole year.

"I just won't mention that then.." Kei scratched behind his head again, aiming his gaze at the ceiling to hide his light pink cheeks. He couldn't admit out loud that he was embarrassed, or the fact that he expected Jack and Brynn to agree with him.

"Now that's more like it, logical thinking is critical, we're attending Hardwell Mr.Mysterious," Jack said with a sly smile, her feet guided her towards the entrance and exit of Brynn's bedroom.

Brynn snorted covering her mouth with her hand attempting to hide the wide grin on her face.

"Mr.Mysterious.." Brynn repeated the nickname Jack came up with to tease Kei, he glared at Brynn rolling his eyes.

"You two are just as bad as my brother" Kei turned around to face Jack as she stood out in the long open hallway. Her finger waved in the air back and forth as if it was disagreeing with Kei's statement, which she was.

"Be lucky we only torment you lightly, compared to Shiro, he's an ace"

The light happy words that slipped out of Jack's mouth regarding Hardwell earlier only seemed to register in Brynn's mind just now. Her eyebrow raised as her hand landed on one hip as she gazed at Jack from inside of her room.

"I'm glad you're suddenly feeling better about attending Hardwell"

Kei's eyes widened with a gentle tad of surprise on the side, whilst Jack's nose scrunched in annoyance.

"Just because..well..whatever Brynn"

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Round 1 - Jack 0 - Brynn 1

Jack couldn't dare to make up some whiny excuse now, Brynn completely had her in the palms of her hands. What made Jack slightly bit more frustrated was the fact she had to say it in front of Mr. Passionate future spy.

"Were you thinking about not doing it Jack?" Kei's tone of voice was serious as ever, it was the tone that Jack didn't like when he talked to her, the one that always ended up making her feel down.

"Not exactly that, just-,"

"Jack was thinking about not doing what?" The rhythm of her voice ripples through all of their ears like a crushing destructive wave. The pressure it ensued sent shivers down all of their spines, mostly Jack, since the one who was asking the question, was her mother.

Brynn nervously hurried out into the hallway to clear up the big misunderstanding she seemed to have caused by revealing information regarding Jack's feelings.

"Not doing the Operations Major!" Brynn's voice cracked, even the aura radiating off of Jack's mother made her want to shrink back into a corner.

Hallie Sun, code name 'Sun' was Jack's mother. Regarded as most possibly the best spy in the field, engrossing at least five hundred thousand per job she was offered. Even small little jobs like getting bits of info from someone, she was still paid that full amount. As a mom she wasn't a bad one, she was emotionally available, loving, and fair. Although when it regarded the topic of being a spy, it was something she'd never let up on, and that's when the loving mother Jack cherished, slipped away into a void.

Jack felt a slight bit of relaxation enter her heart after Brynn's quick effort to deter the conversation.

"Yeah, Kei was talking about Majors, and for a while, I thought about doing Operations but now I'm not interested" Jack didn't even attempt to shift her eyes in the direction of Kei, her mother would catch on immediately unless, she already did.

Kei's urge to scratch the back of his head became strong, it was a dead giveaway that he was anxious or contemplating something, rare occasions when he did, it showed that he might be lying.

Hallie shifted her direction toward Kei, her glare sharp as a rose thorn. His palms began to sweat feeling the heavy tension of the conversation on his body. He quickly shoved his hands into his pocket disregarding the itchy feeling to scratch his head.

"Yep, I told the two that I would join whatever Major they decided to join, and I got comfortable with the id-"

The Fuchsia eyes located in Hallie's sockets rolled disappointed, she took in a deep breath and released scratching her left cheek

'Eh?'

It was a thought that resided in all three teens as the suddenly intensified heaviness dispersed in an instant.

"If you're going to lie as a group, do it right you three, being able to counterfeit information for your benefit is a key job as a spy and you all did terribly"

Brynn chuckled nervously looking everywhere but in the direction of Hallie, Jack frowned slightly placing her hands on her hips.

Of course, she was testing them, which made Jack quite irritated, the mentioning of anything spy-related just made her emotions fluctuate like the temperature in spring.

"Well, would you do us the courtesy of telling us what exactly we did wrong?"

Hallie smirked boastfully as if she was waiting on permission to correct them.

"The rush Brynn made out of the room and the fluctuation in her voice was clue one, the shakiness in her hands and eyes signified that she was nervous and most definitely hiding something. Jack, you were clenching your fist quite tightly before Brynn said something regarding her efforts to cover up what you all were talking about and as soon as she had a ruse your hands loosened and you became relaxed. Now finally Kei, the fact that you pushed your hands into your pockets just sealed the deal for me, it's obvious you wanted to suppress the urge of scratching your fluffy hair"

The three of them stood there, not amazed, shocked, or embarrassed.

It was the feeling of frustration that was coddling their mind.

"Now, be a doll and tell me what they were talking about Jack?"

Jack flinched as her eyes met with her mother's. She turned away not being able to face the sharpness of them.

"I just...I just had been having hard feelings about attending Hardwell"

Hallie strung in closer invading Jack's space, she gently took ahold of Jack's chin making her look directly at her.

"And you're thinking about not doing it..?"

Brynn and Kei watched nervously from the sidelines not even taking one breath, the tension that left swiftly came back just as fast.

"No, I was just worried that's all.."

Hallie released her chin and backed away with a light smile. "Well then! Just came to say there is pizza downstairs so come eat" She walked backward as she eyed the three soon turning forward to strut down the hallway that leads to the stairs.

Brynn and Kei let out their breaths as if they'd been underwater for a long period. Jack shifted her gaze to the two ignoring her trembling hand.

"Why is your mom so scary.." Brynn made sure to whisper afraid there was a possibility that Jack's mom had super hearing too. Kei went in and drew Jack in close for a hug.

"You should've told us sooner that you had those thoughts"

Jack pushed her head into his chest hiding every inch of her face, right now she could feel the heat rising from her cheeks but the painful expression she had with it wouldn't do her any good. She was already aware that the hug she was receiving was nothing more than a brother-friend like gesture.

"It wouldn't have done anything, I still had no choice but to attend" Jack's voice was muffled as she attempted to speak as loudly as she could.

Brynn swooped in and joined the two holding them tightly.

"Let's do our best guys...after all..this is our future"

___________

#novice writer #writers #writing #action #original story #prologue

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bishalsapkotaseo · 3 years

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4 Top Signs Your Business Needs a New Software Development Partner

80% admit they spend at least half their time .

78% feel the business is generally or always out of sync with project requirements and business stakeholders need to become more involved and engaged in the requirements process.

Only 55% believe that the business aims of the projects are clear to them.

Greater than 20% explain the requirements process as the articulation of business demand.

Only 23% say they're constantly in agreement when a project is actually done.

75% of IT executives consider their projects have been"doomed from the beginning." (Source: Capterra)

Sounds like the entire industry on the best way to confusion and neglected applications shipping.

Be the huge collapse of Australian custom service which cost the Australian government around 250 million dollars or the #12 billion giant collapse of U.K. National Health Service system, one thing is common in virtually all the software failures: they are costly! Not just in terms of cash but also concerning enterprises' reputation, trust and customer experience.

Thus, we attempted to find out exactly what are the most common reasons behind the unsuccessful software delivery. And it turns out that a lack of confidence, or rather faith in the job, is among the elements which leads software development projects to fail on a daily basis.

1. Unclear requirements Lead to a failed software delivery

Unclear requirement results in various end product

Gathering requirements is the very first step of the entire process of software development and, at precisely the same time, the first moment where failure becomes a real possibility for both parties. The vendor must conduct a thorough business analysis in order to ascertain what you actually need, but also you, as the client, are the ones who must specify those needs and express them clearly. At the beginning of the job, customers are generally so focused on the outcome that they dismiss little details that, as becomes obvious later on, are crucial for the whole item. Poorly communicating the issue your business is dealing with and what you think the solution might be will influence the development.

Solution

Write down your specific needs and prepare relevant documents upfront so as to improve the practice of business analysis. Do not leave any space for assumptions or interpretation. The need that you set should be about the end-function it should function rather than what you want or how it should look.

If you need any assistance then you can download our FREE condition bundle. It has all the necessary documents and templates that will help you ACE this measure.

2. Unrealistic expectations when it comes to software delivery

Customers may not always know exactly what the procedure for software development looks like and, more importantly, how long it could last, which explains why they usually request their project or software delivery to be as soon as possible, at the lowest price and maximum quality. No matter how unrealistic those expectations are, a few businesses tend to agree to such requirements as long as they win the project. After all, money and time play a vital role in the eventual success or failure of a project, which is why committing to bad budgeting and scheduling before all the requirements are gathered and analyzed always ends in failure.

In 2012, only 39 percent of all projects contained in Standish Group's 2012 Chaos report triumphed by providing timely software delivery within budget with the essential characteristics and functions. This demonstrates how important establishing a healthful anticipation out of a project is, especially concerning time and money necessary for completion. Yet, it is unfortunate how many businesses still push for it.

Solution

If you'd like your upcoming software to be of good quality, be sensible about the budget and timing. Complex jobs take some time. In case you have a limited budget or simply are in a hurry, choose a payment method that suits you.

3. Poor communication hampers applications Shipping

When we talk about smooth and effective communication, we concentrate on communicating externally with customers, but inner communication between the sections is equally significant, especially when they work on the same project. Not with a healthy work environment is another thing which may lead the project to collapse because whenever the staff handles to share knowledge and exchange advice and ideas openly and voluntarily, they're more likely to create strong business relationships with their customers. But, instead of assuming things you should ask as many questions as you need in order to fully comprehend the circumstance.

Option

Every mistake may result in software project failure. You may not have any impact on how a software development company communicates internally, but you also do however play an active role in establishing a business relationship. At any time you feel confused, feel free to ask.

4. The absence of a good project manager

Employ a good project manager

Image credit: Imgur

Every staff, no matter how skillful, demands a fantastic project manager. Without one, work gets chaotic and team members become confused. Not having strong management directing the team leads eventually to a mediocre product and overdue applications delivery. Research shows that 33% of projects fail because of a lack of participation from senior administration.

A good PM must track, control, quote and plan all from start to end but it takes more than that to be successful.

Option

Employ a good Project Manager that will bring your team and client together and keeps them on the exact same page. Having said that, it's not always true that getting more individuals will guarantee timely software delivery.

5. No end-user involvement

Your job might seem to be a fantastic idea. The development process may go smoothly and the result still won't be a success when the end-user involvement wasn't taken under account. If you aim to use the software within your company, it's simple to specify what your employees want. But if the software is to be employed by a third party, don't forget never to assume anything. The achievement of your project depends not on the functionalities, or their complexity, but rather on how simple it is to use the software.

Option

Try to think like a user in order to make certain the remedy is user friendly. In addition to this, engaging the right users in the creation process might be equally helpful as it allows you to combine your knowledge of this industry and its peculiarities with what users find comfortable and distinctive about your product.

(Reserve our FREE software consultation to come up with a user friendly site and application.)

6. Deficiency of flexibility

IT is among the fastest growing businesses, and the number of methodologies and tools that aim to improve the software development process are getting bigger and bigger every day. But some businesses refuse to modify and also to, quite literally, go with the flow. This approach is understandable when a specified firm has already developed its own workflow. But this resistance may satisfactorily slow the team down and consequently cause project failure. This is particularly true when we take into consideration the fact that just a few applications delivery happen so to primary requirements. Change is inevitable and often advisable to make sure the achievement of a product.

Option

Based on how clear your requirements are, it is possible to get a seller whose workflow suits your job. If you're still struggling to ascertain your requirements, a company using Agile software development practices should be your choice.

7. Poor testing

Quality testing to decrease the risk of failed software delivery.

Image Credit: Memes Occur

When a provider struggles for timely applications delivery, it is always the testing which endures. Tests are conducted in a rush and thus inaccurately, which results in a product filled with bugs that are not necessarily detected right away. Among the best practices which ensure customer satisfaction would be to allow customer experience testing. This way, a software development firm knows not only the end product is bugless, but more importantly the customer is comfortable with the software. Additionally, it cuts the time you most probably will have to spend on learning how to use it.

Option

If you know your product is complex, go Agile. This methodology assures testing is carried out regularly throughout the development lifecycle rather than at its end. If there is a possibility of taking part in testing yourself, take it.

8. Adding excess personnel

How can project managers cope with an overly optimistic program? 1 common response would be to staff up the undertaking. This often adds way more people than required for timely software delivery. Not only does this drastically increase the expense of a project, but in addition, it decreases the quality. Having more people involved with the project increases opportunities for miscommunications and makes it more difficult to integrate different segments of code together. The individuals must come from someplace, often from other projects. This places another jobs further behind schedule and demands time for the new staff to become caught up by veteran staff. This further reduces productivity throughout the board.

Option

Thorough preparation and decent staffing is the key to successful projects. Overstaffing can actually backfire if you least expected it.

Related article: How To Create All-Star Tech Dream Team

9. Getting Sidetracked

We mentioned previously that embracing change is great. Well, not all modifications have been created equal.

Altering the project's objectives and specifications too frequently can cause your group a lot of fatigue and frustration. Sometimes it could possibly derail the project altogether.

A client asking you to make major adjustments to the core functionality of a commodity one week before launching is generally a recipe for failure.

50 percent of the respondents of KPMG study indicated that their large software projects failed to always attain the objectives they had set out in the beginning.

Solution

Don't panic. Understand the petition and its implications. Talk with your customer and your team. Assess the plausibility and explain the reasons behind the changes. If anything, you definitely don't wish to either lose a client or get your team members frustrated and confused.

In the company world, now customer experience has become the Key Brand Differentiator. That makes it as important as, if not more than, cost and product. Research shows that 74% of customers have spent with a brand as a result of positive customer service experiences. 68% say they're eager to spend more with a company which offers excellent customer service. So touching bases with them will always pay off.

Are you Looking for Best Mobile App development Company who can handle all your technical work inside your company then Wolfmatrix is here to give you best Work at Affordable Price!

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babcockdylan95 · 4 years

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