#bit long

;w; aw.. I'm really happy you think so!!

also i need you to know i just read the comm part out to diego and they verbally keyspammed irl so-- gkjfdhg they only got commissioned like MAYBE twice before and it was both by close friends so if you are thinking abt commissioning them we'd both appreciate it a lot <3 (esp since we've been struggling financially since covid started ;u;)

BUT YES NO YOUR TED TALK WAS AMAZING. 10/10. I'm throwing roses at you as we speak. i also make you a massive cup of hot coco and give you a v gentle kiss on the forehead goodnight. (im your dad now, sorry not sorry)

He felt a hand upon his own, pulling him up, laughing brightly. Despite himself, Scott found himself laughing. Suddenly, a happy, folksy tune began and the laughter grew happier. Scott couldn’t hear any words, but he knew what his new companion was saying. “I love this song!”

Invisible hands wrapped themselves around his waist, guiding him into a vibrant, energetic dance. He couldn’t see his partner, but Scott felt safer in those hands than he had in years.

Finally, the song came to an end, and Scott caught a glimpse of bright golden hair and gentle brown eyes. They lifted his hand, and Scott felt a small flower pressed into his hand.

He glanced down and saw that it was a bright red poppy. He smiled, and reached for the invisible figure, wanting nothing more than to feel those hands on his own once again. But then, dark thick blood began dripping from the poppy.

@dxvesofcalamity​

“Aball, Village of Longing.” Marie repeats, seeing the sign outside a large village gate. “Some welcoming, nobody’s here.” she said dryly. “Guess I’ll just let myself in...” Opening the gate was surprisingly easy. She felt the gate to be quite sturdy, but also, not as durable as it should be. Age perhaps? “...Wow.”

“This place is emptier than Bear’s body. What gives?” She frowns “I didn’t see a warning sign outside...” the only sound Marie can hear is the calm wind blowing on the autumn trees. She checked every store and house around, but nothing. If people lived here, they sure abandoned the place for whatever reason a long time ago. “Cobwebs and a lot of dust. Weird...to get this much, it must have been a few years at least. 3? maybe 5...?” Marie scratches her head, trying to think of why would such a peaceful village just be abandoned. 

“This world isn’t making any sense at all.” Marie pondered. “I landed in that forest outside, and found this place. Come to think of it, I didn’t see anyone in the woods either...is this place cursed or something?” Marie briefly wonders, and decides to keep looking. She spots a slightly larger than village house to the east. Compared to the others however, this one has a gravestone and flowers. 

I decided to make this post because a lot of people struggled with  languages in my year - they were getting 7/8/9s across all their subjects, and 4s in their chosen language (not bad for this point in the year  but it’s a stark contrast to grades in all the other subjects, and there’s ALWAYS room for improvement). Now languages don’t come naturally to many people, but hard work can get you very far. SO here are just some tips that might help you since mocks are coming up as well - if you need any more info/help pop me an ask/message and I’d be happy to help. 

1) TAKE IT SERIOUSLY

Might be common sense, but people around you may place emphasis on Maths and Science, and you may shrug it off and say it’s just French; it’s not that important; you’ll learn all the vocab last minute, - but that won’t work, unless you’ve got a REALLY good memory but even then, the test won’t ask you what “chaleureux” or “pampelmousse” mean, it’ll ask you why Anais likes the town of Nice so much or where Claude, who lives in Paris, goes to buy grapefruit, and how he gets there. 

Also, LANGUAGES ARE IMPRESSIVE AND WILL HELP YOU THROUGHOUT LIFE! Start to pay attention in class now, ask questions for things you don’t get, attend help sessions if you need them, write down new words, print off the spec or have it at your disposal - you don’t have to come home and bang out notes for hours, and repeat French words to yourself over and over again to get it in your head (hell, don’t do that for anything, please!). Just don’t brush it off as irrelevant, or not try because even a little bit of work can get you SO far. I have a friend who got a 2 in their Year 10 EoY and then a 5 in their mocks, and ended up with an 8 in their final exam. It’s all possible! 

2) KNOW WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO BE TESTED ON

Know the types of questions that will come up, and what you’ll have to do for them. 

SPEAKING: You got to choose a topic (at least for AQA, tell me if this isn’t the case for the other exam boards?), so PREPARE THE HECK OUT OF THAT TOPIC! If you guys want the sheet I made to try and predict what questions I’d get asked, message me, and I’ll post it online - it saved my life! Have a few questions planned out that you can just spout the answers off by heart while you think of ways to extend. I can still remember the sentences I replied with. ALSO! Prepare for the question you’ll have to ask your teacher during the general conversation beforehand - you have to do it, and it can be as simple as you want it to. Try and ask this question before prompted, that way the conversation seems more natural, and you can just focus on getting out a good answer without that hanging around the back of your mind. 

What I did, that surprisingly helped me, was nearer to the speaking exam, I just replied to everything my family said in French, and tried to work on it from there. Spontaneity is needed, because you can’t always predict the questions that will come up. Ask friends to test you, record yourself and listen to it on the train/bus/car/walk to school. ALSO, if you get people to ask you predicted questions, you’ll know how you’ll automatically want to react in English - rather than learning something unnatural that you won’t remember, just translate what you’d say in English to French - more likely to remember it that way. 

Some questions in the writing exam only require you to write 90 words, while others want 150, and then there’s always those positive/negative/not mentioned in the reading one - careful with those - always read the question carefully. 

3) THE SPEC IS YOUR NEW HOLY BOOK

This is the case for most subjects! The exam board won’t give you any words that aren’t on the specification  - it’s a pre-made cheat sheet! This will help especially for your reading and listening exams (and the other two as well). I don’t know about the other boards, but AQA especially has a good spec, with all the vocab organised by topic. If you know these words, you’ll be set. 

This helps particularly with Step 2. Also for translation, it is literally just matching the vocab from the spec to English, so knowing the words helps considerably. 

4) WATCH FRENCH FILMS/YOUTUBERS/TV SHOWS

If you can’t go to France, bring France to you! Immerse yourself in the fillers they use (the bah, in the place of um) and the intonation of their sentences. I don’t know how to describe this, but I always see French as very up-down like this dash: ⁓. You know the whole thing about French being a cursive language? Integrate some of these expressions into your speaking, when the teacher asks you spontaneously during your speaking exam: Tu t’endends bien avec ta famille? Say: BIEN SUR.... (and the rest of your sentence) - SAY IT WITH THE PASSION OF A FRENCH PERSON WHO LOVES THEIR FAMILY!!!

Knowing how French people speak will help you greatly for listening and writing, and you’ll reach a point where it becomes kinda natural to understand what they’re saying? ALSO, for the Listening exam (for AQA at least), the people on the recording speak a lot slower than the youtubers and actors in the videos you watch - so if you do this early on - you’re set! 

Some youtubers I’d reccommend: Norman fait des videos,  Cyprien, Dirty Biology 

TV SHOWS: I watched the Santa Clarita diet dubbed in French (because I’m a lazy lass who couldn’t resist the pull of Netflix, but used it for GOOD!), Versailles, The Returned, and HERE is a great post about how to sound more French by @frenchaise (this isn’t a must, but it helps with fluency points). 

5) LEARN A FEW COMPLEX PHRASES 

SO many people in my class tried to memorise the entire paragraphs they’d write in their writing exam - this doesn’t work!! Considering the number of topics and combinations of questions that could come up, that’s more than 20 paragraphs you’d have to memorise on top of the 10+ other subjects you’d have to revise for - don’t do that. Just have a select few phrases that are considered to be “complex” or A* and personalise them for your topic. They could be something as simple as: Dans le salon, il y a toujours des gens en train de regarder la tele. Bitesize has loads of these phrases, as well as the Zut website. 

6) KNOW YOUR TENSES

Using a variety of tenses gets you very far. Present, Near Future, Future, Imperfect, Conditional etc. You have to know the 5 basic ones for present, past and future, as well as conditional, it helps if you have a few phrases in the subjunctive tense. Even one line can make the difference between the 8 and the 9 - for writing especially a range of tenses is very important - use them ALL, somehow - be creative - this only gets you more marks from an examiner sick of reading about how Mark played football in the park. 

The one phrase I used for subjunctive when asked about my town was: Bien que ma ville soit jolie... - very easy to do  - slip it in to your speaking as well. 

7) EXTEND, EXTEND, EXTEND!

My teacher had this 10 finger rule for ways to extend. So you did something - that’s the ‘what’ done. Now for the: who did you do it with? Where did you do it? Why did you do it? When did you do it? Have you done it in the past/will you do it again in the future?  Did you enjoy it? Did the person you were with enjoy it? How would you improve it? What was the weather like? 

Only thing is, make sure you stay relevant with the extensions you use. Don’t go off on a tangent about your family, when the question asked was about your town. 

ALSO - answer all the bullet points in the writing that you get given, if you skip one, even if your answer is on par with the works of Proust, you could go down a whole grade. 

8) ACCURACY IS A BIG DEAL

Check over your spellings, your grammar and all those sneaky little phrases you may have forgotten to conjugate - a few mistakes won’t do too much harm, but too many and you could drop a whole grade. If you can’t remember how to spell it, try to substitute another synonym in for it. 

9) STAY CALM - YOU CAN DO IT

Don’t panic. Remember what you’ve revised. All the work you’ve put in. Take a deep breath, sit down, clear your mind, and just do the exam - because in the end, that’s all it is. An exam. And if you think you didn’t do well, it isn’t the end of the world - you’re more than that. But also, you probably did fine, we just all have a tendency to think we’re worse than we actually are. Grades aren’t the be all and end all, and sometimes, they aren’t even a good measure of the work you put in. But if you put the work in, then be proud, because this is about getting the grade that YOU want! Je suis fier de toi! 

In the end, just enjoy the subject - it might be the last time you get to learn a language formally for free! Hehe. Bon courage mes amis! 

Captain Caustic, of the former Athern Dominion Star Ship Fire-Line .Originally a member of the Athern Military, the Incendiary Infantry Division, Gamma-00733 to be precise.

Born to the name Terox Arhas, this pirate shapeshifter commandeered the Fire-line, a modified carrier and ODST deployment vessel original put into service by the Phragin Order during the Cataclysm, a war in which the trade regulations and treaties of two galaxies broke down after the (staged, it turns out) thermonuclear bombardment of multiple planets mid-colonization on both sides, and rechristened it the Swarm.

Caustic originally earned his nickname for a unique trait to his familial line: acid production. The highly flammable and terrifyingly powerful fluid served him well in his position of an Incendiary Trooper, providing near limitless fuel for the Fullbore and Decibel Weapons' 9-128 Flamethrower, standard issue to Athern serving as I.I, and commonly referred to as a 'Stinger' by both the soldiers using it and the initial designer. Like many of his compatriots, Caustic modified the weapon in his own time, replacing the gauges and valves with more compact systems and adding weak force-field emitters to the weapons sides in their place. The blades serving as a makeshift bayonet were added after his desertion, as many of both the Bounty Hunters, authorized or not, and Inquisitory agents sent after him took full advantage of the weapons relatively tight spray to get in close and attempt to disarm him, though the limited success of such tactics with his claws and acidic secretions has not left him blind to his weapons weaknesses.

Eventually dropping the standardized default form of the Athern Ground Infantry Divisions, a six wheeled craft designed more for speed, mobility and precision than defensive capabilities, Caustic payed a 'visit' to a collector of rare insects and seeking out a species of giant Bombardier Beetle, an accidental mutation due to early human terraforming, and adapted it's biology to his own.

‘You teach me now how cruel you’ve been—cruel and false…’  

‘Why did you despise me?  Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy?  I have not one word of comfort.  You deserve this.  You have killed yourself…’  

‘Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they’ll blight you—they’ll damn you.  You loved me—then what right had you to leave me?  What right—answer me—for the poor fancy you felt for Linton?…’

The words of Heathcliff were always torn, broken…grief-stricken even. That was the way she entailed him to be. He was a brooding man, one who had long lost his heart when he failed in his endeavour of having the woman he loved at his side. Despite that, he still carried powerful feelings for Catherine. He carried out vengeance in her name. He was the tragic hero of Emily’s novel; calculating, alluring and mesmerising. The enigma of a man that women often pined after, unknowing and oblivious to the cruelty that laid beneath the hard exterior.  

He was a man powered by adoration but also, intense hatred; he became a devil of sorts.  Men who carried those feelings in their hearts, were often the most complicated.

Emily enjoyed creating his character the most. He was by far the most compelling. She mulled over Heathcliff’s complexity as she browsed the selection of new arrivals in her favoured bookshop. She always paid a visit to it at least three times per week. Emily enjoyed purchasing anything new in stock that caught her eye; it was important to read the novels of potential competitors, and to gain inspiration from said authors.