#also for the record this is the most i'm willing to speculate about what happens post- novel

[queenlucythevaliant]

A Liturgy of Surviving

Scarlett always wanted to be like her mother, and maybe in another world she could have been. If the war never happened, she could have grown softer instead of sharper. She could have curbed her temper, married well, and been received in respectable homes all her days. Maybe, if it hadn’t been for the war, Scarlett O’Hara could have lived out her days in genteel artifice, just like Ellen before her.

Maybe. Maybe not. If you asked her, Scarlett would say that the question was irrelevant. “God’s nightgown!” she would exclaim. “Don’t ask me what could have been. The war happened and that’s that.”

          I won’t think about that now.  

The day after Scarlett’s world ended, she swore an oath that she would never be hungry again. 

She woke in pain. Her muscles ached and her joints creaked. She was nineteen, but she felt like she had a hundred years weighing her body down. Morning light slanted through the window and her head ached with the moonshine liquor that she’d downed the night before. From another room, she heard an infant crying. 

She passed through the dining room without eating, pausing only briefly beside her grief-ravaged father. She found Pork on the porch shelling nuts. The sun was up. Scarlett O'Hara drew herself tall and began to marshal her troops. 

Melly and her sisters were still infirm, so they were useless for now. Mammy could tend them, and Pork and Prissy were to round up the livestock. Dilcey to Macintosh, herself to Twelve Oaks; perhaps they’d find food. Yes, I know. I’ll worry about that tomorrow. Now get going. 

Those days as the war staggered to its end were some of the longest of her life. In between them, Scarlett would collapse into bed and rub the welts on her feet with clumsy fingers. Sometimes she’d picture Ellen and all her gentle admonitions to kindness and refinement, and she’d say aloud to the walls, “What happened to me? What am I doing?”

She didn’t dwell on the question, but somehow, she always knew the answer. “I’m doing what I must,” she would answer herself. “I’m surviving.”

People didn’t talk back to Scarlett anymore. They were all afraid of her sharp tongue, of the new person who walked in her body. This Scarlett bullied and cajoled until everyone obeyed her, and inevitably her orders were to work. She was all edges; any softness that she’d once possessed had been sanded away splitting rails and picking cotton. Good, she thought. Let them fear me, if it keeps us all standing. 

          I’ll think about it tomorrow. 

Scarlett was sixteen when the war began: sixteen in green muslin, fearless and unencumbered. She had her mother’s slim waist and her father’s square jaw, but her clear green eyes were her own.

She was sixteen when she married Charles Hamilton and lost him, seventeen when she bore his child and draped herself in black crepe. She got Melly and Wade in the bargain, but she didn’t want either of them. She wanted Ashley. She wanted to dance! She wanted, she wanted. She wanted Scarlett O’Hara back. 

At nineteen years old, Scarlett survived the destruction of her whole world. She could have cried for the loss of her girlhood, for her old self long gone with the soft hands and dancing slippers, but what good would it have done? Curled up in her childhood bed at Tara, Scarlett didn’t cry. Instead, she folded in on herself, knees tucked up to her chest, and tried not to feel her muscles aching. She would have to get up again tomorrow, no matter how badly her shoulders still hurt.

She had strong shoulders, Scarlett O’Hara. That was maybe the most important thing about her. At any time, at any age, her shoulders could bear whatever they were given. “I’m surviving,” she would say each morning when she rose. A stranger’s freckled face greeted her in the mirror, but Scarlett only squared her small thin shoulders, breathed in, took one step and then another.

          Tomorrow, when I can stand it.

Calluses form like this: repeated pressure or friction is applied to the skin, most often of the hand or the foot. The outer layer, which is made of dead cells, begins to be retained rather than flaking off normally. The dead cells accumulate, forming hard layers sometimes hundreds of cells thick. 

They form like this: you use your skin. The shell of hardness around it slowly thickens. 

          I can stand anything now. 

The day after Rhett left, Scarlett packed up Wade and Ella and she once again drove the long road home to Tara. She pushed her way past Suellen at the threshold, exchanged brief pleasantries with Will, and then fell into her old bed as she’d done so many times before.

The next morning found Scarlett basking in the slanting yellow light that struck the porch from the east. Her eyes were fixed on the fields beyond and there was a devilish look on her face. 

When Rhett came back—and he would come back, he had promised he would—he would find her here at Tara, where she was strongest. “He liked when I was strong,” Scarlett said to herself. That was something she’d always known, for all that she’d been blind to the true dimensions of it.

Day after day, Scarlett rose and moved through Tara’s halls. She ate her breakfasts in the place where she’d faced down the Yankee army, sorted through figures where she’d once debated with Melanie over whether they ought to risk sending Pork out on the horse to look for food. Twenty times a day, she walked past the place at the base of the stairs where she’d shot her deserter dead. Here, in these halls, she had made her greatest stands.

She’d stood more rigidly then, threadbare and starving and uncertain. She’d come to the end of herself, only to find that she had wells of strength hidden deeper than she knew. Her hands were calloused and dirty. What else could she do?

          I’ll never be hungry again.

It’s easy to view Scarlett as hard and amoral. Even those closest to her would not have contested that characterization. Perhaps Melly would have argued, but then, Melly always saw the good in everyone. Scarlett killed and she stole and she schemed and she cheated, and she did it all in cold blood. What a selfish, conniving bitch, you might say.

It’s easy to forget Scarlett’s compassion. When she beat that poor horse to keep it trudging the long road home to Tara, she regretted hurting a tired animal. Her concern for Melanie, her friendship for Will Benteen, her joy when Rhett made her laugh: these were all true and genuine.

Didn’t Scarlett love her father and mother? Didn’t she grieve to see her friends and neighbors ruined by war? Scarlett O’Hara risked her life to save Charlie’s sword for Wade to inherit, and she built her mills for him and Ella both.

None of this negates the ruthless things she did in the name of survival, but it does begin to explain them. Scarlett made herself hard when hard was what she needed to be. She determined to live without reservation, without softness and with little kindness. Rhett called her cruel, and maybe he was right. But Melly also called her sacrificial and devoted, and maybe she was right too. 

          No, nor any of my kin.

On that road home to Tara, Scarlett once said, “If the horse is dead, I will curse God and die too.” Someone in the Bible had done just that—cursed God and died. Scarlett remembered feeling like that person, a despair of Biblical magnitude.

But the horse was alive, and so Scarlett did not die. Later, she thanked God that her knees still had the strength to support her, that her neck was still strong enough to hold her head high. Scarlett was not Job’s wife, nor even Job himself. She was Rahab, who escaped the destruction of Jericho, who saved her whole household and survived.

“What a fast trick,” said the Old Guard when she stole Frank Kennedy away from Suellen. No, Scarlett could never be Job. She was Jacob, the trickster and supplanter.

          Just a few more days for to tote the weary load.

Scarlett was easily provoked into courage; that was one of the first things that Rhett learned about her. A few insults, a pointed comment, and Scarlett lifted her chin and flounced off to prove just how brave she could be. She shed her crepe years early, and to Halifax with anyone who objected.

Rhett did that same thing to her on the awful day that Atlanta burned. He insulted her and laughed at her, and when Scarlett spat, “I’m not afraid,” it was true. Her hands, which had moments ago been shaking too badly to hold anything, were steady now, and anger had crowded all the fear out of her voice.

Rhett kept needling her all the way out of the city, until they reached the Rough and Ready where he left her. The banter kept her sharp. As long as her eyes were flashing in indignation, she hardly noticed the fire.

Even after Rhett left, his jabs stayed with her. “What would Rhett say if he knew I couldn’t do this?” spurred her back into action more times than she would ever admit. It was a petty kind of courage, and it felt smaller than the great, soaring motivation that came with thoughts of Tara, of the O’Hara name and Irish pride and red earth, but sometimes petty courage was enough to bridge the gap between strength and exhaustion.

He gave her something to hold onto, something to ground her, and even Rhett only halfway understood what that meant. I want you at your best, he never told her, but he pulled her into it by taffeta ribbons and witticisms. As the years rolled by, she rose to meet him. They swapped sharp words and insults, him always claiming to know her and her shouting, “You don’t know half!”

One day on the jostling ride out to her mills, Scarlett told Rhett about the fire that the Yankees set in Tara’s kitchen. “I’m not afraid of fire anymore,” she declared with something like pride, and Rhett remembered goading her past the flames the night Atlanta burned. “I beat it out with my skirts, and then Melly had to beat me out when my back caught,” she went on. “Now I’m not afraid of anything but hunger.”

I don’t want you to fear anything in all the world, Rhett didn’t say. Once they were married, he laughed at her appetite and teased her, “Don’t scrape the plate, Scarlett. I’m sure there’s more in the kitchen.”

           No matter, ‘twill never be light.  

After the war, Rhett had his millions. Ashley had his honor. Melly had the Association for the Beatification of the Graves of Our Glorious Dead. Scarlett held a ball of red clay in her fist and whispered, “I have this.”

Her father built Tara from nothing and he loved those acres like they could love him back. He had come to Georgia a poor immigrant boy and he had won that red earth. Whatever Gerald could do, his daughter could do too: of this she was certain. This land, this firm red clay on which she stood, was both her battlefield and her prize; her birthright and her hallowed ground. She gripped it tight with all the passion of a lover. She longed for its rolling fields on cold nights in Atlanta, sleeping beside Frank Kennedy.

“Yes, I have this,” and she let the dirt run between her fingers and lodge beneath her nails. Melly had Ashley and Ashley his senseless honor. Scarlett had Tara.

          I’ve still got this.

When she rode out in her buggy with her lap robe pulled up to her bosom, Scarlett heard how people whispered. She felt indignant about it the first time, and the second time she worried what Ellen would have thought. The third time, she decided not to care.

She still complained to Rhett about the whispering as he was holding the reins one afternoon. He didn’t laugh at her, just looked sideways from the road with his dark eyes and nodded like he understood. “Be different and be damned!” Rhett said, and his tone was like a soldier who’d heard the bugle. It was so strange, how Scarlett could tell him all the worst things about her and he would always answer back like they were medals instead of secret shames. 

Most of the city was in mourning, but Scarlett wore colors. She pilfered the store’s inventory in search of bright green, washed and mended her curtain dress as many times as it would stand, and when the money came she wore gowns of emerald, blush, indigo, and scarlet. Let them stare, she thought. See if I care.

At twenty-two, Scarlett rode up to Pittypat’s in the evenings, long after Frank had come home from the store, and she felt condemned. To the well-bred folks of Atlanta, she was as bad as a Scallawag. But sometimes, when she was alone, Scarlett ran her hands beneath the lap robe and hoped that Rhett was wrong about children and grandchildren, that the child she was carrying would understand one day. I hope you’re nothing like Frank, she thought. I hope you have shoulders like mine.

           I’ll never be hungry again.

“It’s no use, Scarlett. You can’t scrub out the past,” said Rhett when at last he came to Tara. “You can’t take back the last ten years, no matter how you’ve come — to appreciate my charms.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Scarlett snapped. “There’s never any going back. Not ever. But Rhett—” she reached for his hand. “I love you, and at last we understand each other. We can build something out of that.”

They argued about it until Rhett left again, fuming and bitter, his Panama hat pulled low over his face. Scarlett made an unannounced visit to Charleston the next month. “I was thinking,” she suggested, “That we might sell the Peachtree Street house.”

Scarlett knew all the words for making men love her, so long as she understood what it was that they wanted. The Tarleton twins had wanted merry excitement; Charles had wanted to feel important and Frank had wanted to feel like a strong, successful man. Ashley had wanted someone braver and better than he was, and he’d found it in Melanie without having to risk himself on Scarlett. Scarlett had never understood what it was Rhett wanted, but she did now. Why, it’s always been my love he wants! So Scarlett spoke the right words, and this time she meant them.

“You were right when you said that we’re alike. Only—you’ve always known about me, whereas I’m just starting to know you. Will you tell me about that knife fight in California again? About the sail boat you won at cards?”

“You know those stories,” clipped Rhett. “You don’t need to hear them again.” So Scarlett went downstairs and pried the stories out of his mother instead.

The house on Peachtree Street sold within the month, snatched up by some Carpetbagger who wanted it for a hotel. Rhett traveled to Mexico, and returned to find Scarlett back at Tara preparing for spring planting.

“What do the women wear in Mexico?” she asked him, leaning on the porch railing in the slanting light. “What is your favorite place you’ve ever traveled?”

Rhett indulged her in brief, but then abruptly he chuckled and shook his head. “I know what you’re doing, you little minx.”

“Yes,” said Scarlett. “Of course you do.”

           Tomorrow, oh tomorrow!

The clay soil of Georgia is red from iron oxides. It’s red the way rust is red, the way blood is red. If a blister splits open and your blood falls on the ground, that iron-red soil will just swallow it up. You can bleed and bleed, and the stuff in your blood will always be one with the stuff of the soil.

When cotton and vegetables sprout from the ground, it’s easy to believe they grew from your very own blood, and that your own sweat and tears watered them.

           Never look back.  

“We women were soldiers too,” Melanie said once. Scarlett didn’t respect her yet—at least, not consistently—but this might have been one of the moments where she first looked at Melly and thought not that her heart was soft and timid, but that it was a sword.

“We never expected to be – or at least I didn’t.” She looked around the circle of ladies, at India and Fanny, until her eyes came to rest on Scarlett at last. “We were children then. We all imagined the world far simpler than it was.”

Melly, India, Fanny, Scarlett. These women had all been girls together. They knew one another at seven, twelve, fifteen, swaddled in silks and trying to seem more grown-up than their playmates. They’d competed for beaus and Scarlett had mostly won, except where Ashley Wilkes was concerned. They had lived through the war together. Now, Scarlett sat among them on Melly’s front porch and tried to remember if she’d ever in her life felt like one of them.

For Christmas, Melanie gave Scarlett a small book of poetry. Scarlett never read it, except for the one verse which Melly had marked with a green ribbon. She bit back the urge to sigh when she undid the wrapping, but Melly pointed out the bookmark and said, “This one made me think of you, dear.”

Scarlett didn’t like to think of it now, but once she’d been sixteen in green muslin, confident that dimples and a clear complexion were the only weapons she’d ever need. She had been a child, but that child had not died when Atlanta burned. The belle of Clayton County was not in the grave with all the boys who’d never come riding home from war. Scarlett was alive. She was right here.

“What is a dead girl but a shadowy ghost/ Or a dead man's voice but a distant and vain affirmation/Like dream words most? / Therefore I will not speak of the undying glory of women. / I will say you were young and straight and your skin fair/ And you stood in the door and the sun was a shadow of leaves on your shoulders/ And a leaf on your hair—"

Scarlett came home from her mills in the gray evening and she made her way back to the Wilkes’s ramshackle front porch. She left her buggy feeling condemned and she sat with the other ladies feeling alienated, but all the same she couldn’t bring herself not to go. The war was over, and these were the survivors. They were through fighting, hung up on glory, but Scarlett still hadn’t holstered her guns. 

“We were soldiers,” said Melanie, and in her heart Scarlett added, “Some of us still are.”

           I won’t let them lick me.

Supposing that Ashley had married her. Perhaps the sight of her in green makes him brave enough to shed his veneer of honor and say, “Yes, you’re right, I can’t live without you.” It’s a minor scandal when he casts Melanie off in her favor, but not for long. The war is beginning and besides, good men have made themselves fools for Scarlett O’Hara before. By the time the soldiers march away, the scandal is all but forgotten in favor of the fine figure they cut as they embrace at the depot: Ashley so brave in his uniform, his young wife radiant as she clutches him.

Ashley sends her long, meandering letters full of philosophical musings. Scarlett reads them uncomprehending and sends back missives full of I love yous. She kisses them when she mails them, sometimes with a Hail Mary for her husband’s safety.

Rhett doesn’t notice this Scarlett at Twelve Oaks, and so he’s caught off guard when he hears the young Mrs. Wilkes say something blunt and scathing at the Bazaar. He chuckles to himself in delight and later he asks her to dance, and of course Scarlett simpers and agrees, and it’s a merry night. But Rhett doesn’t come back to Atlanta for the rest of the war.

This Scarlett leaves for Macon with the rest of the women when the Yankees come to Atlanta; after all, she has no Melly to keep her in the city during the siege. She takes Ashley’s child with her, and it’s in Macon that he finds her after the war. He waxes poetic about the Old Days, the Horrors of War and Götterdämmerungs and the like. He looks at her with sad, tired eyes and Scarlett says yes, I heard you the first time. But what are we going to do?

Twelve Oaks is razed. They go to Tara. Ashley tries his hand at farming, but it’s Scarlett who manages to pick and plant and organize while Ashley’s fumbling attempts at working with his hands yield scant success. His heart isn’t in it, which infuriates Scarlett. C’mon, get up and fight! She looks into the tired face of the man she loved so ruinously at sixteen and wonders what she ever thought was so noble about him.

When taxes come due there’s no way to pay. What’s more, Ashley doesn’t even try. It’s here that Scarlett breaks with her husband. Between Ashley and Tara, it’s Tara every time.

So Scarlett bullies her husband into calling old debts in from a few impoverished friends and when that isn’t enough, she goes to see the tax assessor dressed in green velvet and makes some very personal insinuations about Mr. Jonas Wilkerson. From there, Scarlett bullies her one-time-beloved and does as she pleases, and Ashley has to live with the fact that it’s his wife who provides for the family. In every world, it is Scarlett O’Hara who keeps Ashley Wilkes alive after the war.

His pride lays down in the dirt and dies. Scarlett Wilkes shakes her head bitterly and plants more seed in her red, red earth.   

Supposing Scarlett could have imagined all this. What do you think she would say? Perhaps in her youth she would have cherished the idea, but the hard-eyed Scarlett who emerged after the war would have only leveled her small shoulders and said, “What does it matter what would have happened? I’ll think about it later.”

           There but for a lot of gumption am I.

The day after Bonnie died, Scarlett called for the buggy and went to her store. Rhett took this as proof that Scarlett had never really loved the little girl, that she was devoid of maternal affection as he’d always suspected, but Scarlett was grieving in her own way. She threw out two uncut bolts of blue velvet: expensive fabric over which she’d have upbraided a clerk to hell and back if he’d wasted even a few inches. 

It was true that Scarlett had never wanted any of her children when she’d carried them. She had not felt joy or love or any of the feelings that other women described when first she saw them. What she did feel, in the moments after Dr. Meade placed each child in her arms, was a fierce surge of protectiveness. She was certain that she would work and sacrifice and even die for her children, if need be. They were her blood, her flesh, her kin.

Scarlett had hated pregnancy each time it happened to her. She hated feeling large and lumbering, hated the way that her tiny waist bloated and grew until even her modified dresses didn’t fit right. She hated the inconvenience of morning sickness, the limitations on what she could do, the necessity of seclusion as delivery drew near. It was nine months of hardship and frustration capped off with many long minutes of excruciating pain. 

Bonnie had died in an instant. She’d been flying towards the hurdle and then, half a breath later, she’d been gone. Standing in the back of the store with two bolts of blue velvet before her, Scarlett swallowed back tears that Rhett would never see. It wasn’t right that a child who’d taken her so much time and effort to bring into the world could be gone from it so quickly. 

When she returned to the house a few hours later, Rhett had locked himself in the bedroom with Bonnie’s tiny body. Scarlett paused for a moment outside the door, but then she squared her shoulders and kept walking. 

          Just a few more days for to tote the weary load. 

Scarlett had a habit of humming “My Old Kentucky Home” while she worked. Splitting wood, planting and picking cotton, driving between her mills, keeping the books—even sewing. The song was a thoughtless thing, an instinctual thing. She hummed it the same way a person might worry lips between teeth or tear at nails. 

She repeated the words again and again until her heart pulsed to their rhythm. Just a few more days for to tote the weary load. I’ll think about it tomorrow, when I can stand it. Tomorrow, tomorrow. No matter, ‘twill never be light. I’ll never be hungry again. No, nor any of my kin. I’ll never be hungry again. They were a mantra: something to hold onto when the whole breadth of her world had narrowed to a single point. A refrain. A liturgy of surviving.

          Just a few more steps

Rhett loved Scarlett and it was terrifying. He feared that she would treat him like one of her country beaus: a lovely toy to play with and to tear to ribbons when she was done. He was afraid, so he hid his heart behind his impressive poker face and said “I want you” instead of “I love you.” He called her “pet” instead of “sweetheart.”

Scarlett loved Rhett and it was slow. He brought her bonnets and bonbons and Scarlett thought, “Why, it’s almost like I was in love with him!” He came to help her the day Atlanta burned, and Scarlett thought that she’d like to stay in his arms forever. When he chauffeured her to the mills, she thought that he was the only person in the world to whom she could tell the truth.

"You never told me you loved me, you know," Scarlett said the next time she visited Charleston. "I never knew. That's not to say you were wrong about me - about what I would have done if you had said something. But you should have been brave enough to risk it all the same."

Rhett closed his eyes for a moment and his mask slipped away. It was doing that more and more these days.

"But I did tell you — once."

"I think I would have remembered that," said Scarlett, pursing her lips.

"Ah. ‘It is far off; and rather like a dream than an assurance that my remembrance warrants.’ I suppose my humble confession was the least of your worries that day."

Scarlett wrinkled her nose. "What?"

"The day Atlanta burned, my dear."

After a long moment, Scarlett gave a little gasp which turned into a sigh as it ended. "Oh. That's right, you did then, didn't you?" She shook her head. "Rhett, I do believe you have the worst timing of any person I know."

          As God is my witness

The day she married Charles, she wore Ellen’s cream-colored silk gown, aired out in a hurry from the chest where it had been sitting since the O’Haras married back in 1846. She couldn’t breathe for how tight her laces were —sixteen inches, like Ellen’s waist was when the dress was purchased— and perhaps that was a good thing. Scarlett was light-headed throughout the ceremony and she scarcely remembered it afterwards. 

The day she decided to have Frank, it was raining hard. Scarlett left the jail in sodden velvet and was grateful for the drops falling on her cheeks to disguise the tears. It was sunny the day of the wedding, but she scarcely noticed that. Afterwards, when she thought of marrying Frank, Scarlett would always remember the rain. 

There was a fine mist over everything the day she got Rhett back for good. Scarlett was wearing her work clothes when he came riding up to Tara; she’d been walking the cotton fields that day, overseeing the progress of the crop. They were both a little damp when he kissed her.

           I’ll never be hungry again.

O’Haras and Robillards had always known how to dig their nails in, and by God, Scarlett was both. Her namesakes had long ago fought for their own plots of Irish earth; had survived and died and been hanged fighting to hold onto it. All Scarlett’s forebears, her folk, had left crescent-moon imprints on all that was theirs when it was finally pried from her hands. Scarlett gripped her little ball of clay and felt her nails dig into the heels of her hands.

She was her father’s hot-tempered daughter, but she had her mother’s steel-hewn spine. All the years of her life, she never saw Ellen Robillard O’Hara rest her back against a chair.  When Scarlett’s own time came, she held herself every bit as straight as her mother: she didn’t rest or lean, just stood and stood.

Maybe this is what she was always made for. Her green eyes weren’t for charming young men, they were for seeing dresses in curtains. Her hands were never supposed to be soft; they were meant for digging in the red dirt. Even her lips—Rhett was wrong, they weren’t meant for kissing. Scarlett’s lips were as sharp as the words that she spoke when she wasn’t afraid what anyone thought. They were meant to draw blood.

She had been sharp all her life, even when her edges were carefully concealed in layers of satin. Scarlett was not made to be soft; her core held no gentleness. She could not pretend otherwise. All she could do was stand straight, and hold up her tired old shoulders like they were the strongest thing in the world.

           I’ll think about it tomorrow. 

One day, at the Butler home in Charleston, Rhett taught Scarlett how to play poker, and subsequently how to cheat. They were still playing hours later, counting cards and hiding them in sleeves and making all kinds of ridiculous bets on losing hands. Just as she was taking off her right earbob to call, the thought rose to Scarlett’s mind unbidden: “What on earth are we doing here?” And just as quickly, there was the answer. “We’re living.”

At the end of this most recent road home, weary and damp from running through the fog, Scarlett found her way back into Rhett’s arms. In the evenings she listened to his stories and witticisms, and late at night she listened to the sound of his breathing. I will not speak of undying glory, she thought. Rhett was still here, and so was she. They were both still here.

Scarlett took off her left earbob too, for good measure. “I’ll raise you,” she said. “I have a good feeling about this hand.” There was still an ace hidden up her sleeve, but if Rhett noticed it he didn’t say anything. 

They survived together. They built something new. There is always profit to be made in building things, and these two were nothing if not industrious.

           After all, tomorrow is another day.

#i am fully aware that none of you followed me for gone with the wind lol #that said- it's one of my all time favorite books #like. in a dead heat with narnia #i've wanted to write some sort of character study-ish thing for gwtw for just about as long as i've had this blog #and having just reread it last week i decided it was time #had a lot of fun messing around with style here #is the prose a little self indlugent? absolutely #but it was fun #if lucy pevensie is half of my heart scarlett o'hara is the other #they absolutely would not get along #but that's beside the point #(actually you know who actually might mesh pretty well with scarlett? eowyn. probably not great friends or anything #but at least a nod of respect) #to tote the weary load #leah stories #literature makes us more human #pontifications and creations #also for the record this is the most i'm willing to speculate about what happens post- novel #the sequels are all trash and unlike with say Susan i'm very much content to say #'I believe in Scarlett's ability to succeed. she'd gonna be fine' #and apart from that let the ending be bittersweet and hopeful #trying to fill it in much beyond really broad strokes is a totally futile endeavor #and i have no idea why people bother trying #'tomorrow is another day' deserves to be the last word in scarlett's story #that is all

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Something has been bugging me since the end of the Playful land event: How does the world not notice that these people are never seen again after going to this park. Even if its stated that only the positive magicam posts are the only things that leave the park, surely those guest's families/friends/employers/neighbors that didn't attend the park wouldn't eventually notice their absence. Moreover, how does no one still on land notice that the moving park leaves whilst everyone is still on it, and it never comes back to drop them off.

Makes me wonder if Twst has some sort of United Nations that would be alerted of this and set a worldwide lock down, so when the park needs to connect to a mainland again the country's military can apprehended them.

One of the biiig question marks of both Glorious Masquerade and Stage in Playful Land are all of the potential repercussions of Rollo/Fellow's schemes coming into fruition. The stakes of these two events are notably much higher than your typical TWST event, and that opens their stories up to further scrutiny. I'll talk about GloMasq first, then Playful Land, since I feel the former is also relevant to the points the asker mentioned.

This is going to be kind of a long post, so I'll slap everything below a cut! ^^

I don't know how frequently this is brought up, but I've heard some say it's unrealistic how Rollo was able to find the seeds for a supposedly wiped out plant and cultivate a ton in secret for his master plan. Now, I'm willing to suspend my disbelief in this instance because:

Spite can make a person do insane things (and what is Rollo is not spiteful as heck)

Rollo has lore which paints him as a diligent person who has a talent for gardening, so it feels in line for his character; he also seems to have an interest in history and is extremely neurotic so I could buy that he obsessively researched until he came across records or some trail to the flowers

The Bell of Salvation's ringing twice in a row is what triggers the flowers to bloom, and this has not happened prior to GloMasq because Rollo is the one who is consistently tending to the bell + the bell normally has a preset schedule; anyone that passes by the flowers would do so when they are inactive, and they are such an old phenomenon to begin with that no one in modern day would really recognize it or the danger the flowers pose

The narrative of GloMasq never calls attention to HOW Rollo was able to get the seeds, so it's not something that comes to mind unless you as the fan speculate about it; this doesn't come across as a plot hole, but it would be one if the narrative had pointed it out because then it would practically be obligated to fill the details in

The other major logical fallacy of GloMasq is that Rollo's machinations would have inevitably led to chaos once the flowers reached the rest of Twisted Wonderland, as some sections of society are reliant on magic. Now, I disagree with the notion that mages could band together and fight back against the flowers; we've seen from how the NRC students handle it that this would be a pretty useless effort since only the super powerful (which are few and far between) would be able to muster up enough magic to overpower the flowers. The majority of people are non-mages though, so the argument could be made that these people could help the mages by weeding or something similar. The question is, could this truly outpace the growth and attack of the flowers, especially when the average mage has far lower magical reserves than the average NRC student??? Remember how long it took the NRC kids (who are mostly healthy, youthful, and strong) to weed just the flowers in the waterways? My money's on the crimson flowers just overrunning the entire world long before they can be plucked out.

I actually think most societies would still be intact and able to operate without magic, seeing as 90% of the human population (which is implied to be the predominant race) are non-mages. Only very select industries and professions require magic to operate, and these are overrepresented to us (the players) since we are seeing the perspectives of mainly students who attend an elite magic school. These magical sectors, as well as societies which run primarily on everyday magic use (like Briar Valley) are the ones that would be the most in danger. This most likely explains why Malleus in particular was so panicked about Rollo's plans: if fully realized, his people would be in grave danger. This is not outright stated, but can be inferred. The main story also retroactively affirms Malleus's fears of being powerless. He was always told by his grandmother that the Draconias have great power so they can defend their people's smiles. What happens if that magic is stripped away? Then he is no longer able to protect his people nor his loved ones. In this way, GloMasq works well as both a standalone event as well as supplements TWST' grander story. It does not challenge what we already know but does support it.

Altogether, most details in GloMasq make sense and the event doesn't go out of its way to create more questions than answers. This... isn't the case for Playful Land. In fact, I would say that Playful Land does the opposite (in trying to explain plot holes, it creates a LOT more questions) and tries to hand wave everything away with one thing: money.

Firstly, Playful Land is kidnapping and trafficking innocent people (even if the park is said to be a more recent phenomena). Would their friends and family not notice they went missing and report this to the local authorities? My guess is yes, it's just not elaborated on in the event itself since the perspective through which the story is told is limited (Yuu doesn't know this world that well + the NRC kids, who are the people Yuu gets a lot of the lore from, are mostly privileged and don't need to worry about crimes of this magnitude). I believe the "people go missing, why aren't the police doing anything about it" can maybe allude to real world crimes that occur but aren't reported or resolved, which is very scary to think about. I don't know if this was the intention of the devs, but the comparison is certainly there and can be made. Or maybe it’s just that law enforcement hasn’t caught up yet?

It’s also odd to me that so many people were able to be taken by this huge, very showy moving park. I think that Fellow lures people out under the cover of night (which was the case with the NRC students, I will assume this is the case for the other victims too), but???? Even so, there are night owls and cities that don’t sleep. You mean to imply there were zero witnesses whatsoever??? Even though Playful Land is so big and bright, especially at night… Maybe this part plays into the idea that crimes may be reported but aren’t necessarily resolved…? That’s the only way I can rationalize it in my head.

Where the bulk of the issues start to come in is in alllllll the surrounding details. For example, a lot of the NRC students Fellow is kidnapping are connected to wealthy and influential families. How the heck are Fellow and his benefactors going to keep Vil’s fans, the Kingscholars, the Shrouds, the Asims, the hypothetical Leech mob family, and maybe even Maleficia herself and Malleus, from coming after their asses???? AND FELLOW SPECIFICALLY FUCKED UP BY ENCOURAGING THEM TO “INVITE THEIR FRIENDS” FROM SCHOOL… because guess who will be spilling the beans to the headmaster about students going missing the day after inviting everyone to go to this supposedly “free” amusement park?? All the students Fellow told them to blab to just so he could catch more of them 😭 Then from there it would definitely escalate and governments might get involved since Leona is a prince and Kalim has royal relatives. I could see Playful Land having to go on the run (as in, have supplies delivered to them rather then docking for them, knowing that police or military would be there to arrest them at ports). But they can’t do that forever, especially since not being able to dock effectively prevents them from picking up new prey.

With the combined powers of the NRC victims’ families, they would surely be able to challenge the people behind Playful Land, no?? Unless you mean to tell me these mysterious people somehow have more power than literal royalty AND the Asims combined??? And we’ve never heard of them until just now??? Okay, you’re starting to lose me here because this is adding on top of the lore we already have but in a way that comes off as difficult to believe since the amount of wealth and power some of the NRC kids have is already ridiculous.

Playful Land is also supposedly constructed by very powerful mages which makes me wonder why they got together to create such a thing???? Did they literally all get bribed with enough money to agree to this project? Were they deceived about the true nature of it?? Are the other 4 of the top 5 strongest mages involved in any way??? How was this not publicized that it was a project that very strong mages were working on given how few mages there actually are and how much Playful Land is talked about in online rumors??

Speaking of online rumors, that’s another thing. How are the people behind Playful Land able to monitor any and all talk about their park to this degree?? This is the internet we’re talking about here, surely stuff will fall through the cracks or come to light eventually. Someone would leak insider info, someone would say something.

The easy explanation given for everything is that there are very rich and very powerful people running these operations. They would be able to silence people who speak out against them or bribe the corrupt into complying or looking the other way. Maybe that’s just a sad truth I don’t want to acknowledge (because this stuff for sure happens irl 😞) but that all sounds WAY too convenient for fiction (where the devs have total control over the circumstances) especially when we’re given so little lore for who these benefactors actually are.

There’s still way too many questions and even turning on suspension of disbelief couldn’t stop those questions from arising in my head. At best, I think we could give the devs the benefit of the doubt and say this was intentional to keep up the idea of a “shadowy” underbelly to Twisted Wonderland society. Even so, that doesn’t account for every little thing and the event’s attempts to explain it all only makes more things to explain.

I tried to explain my perspective as best I can here! However, I admit that there may be bias in my judgment because I’ve made it no secret that GloMasq is my favorite TWST story event. Please let me know if you have any other issues with GloMasq’s narrative or if you have explanations for the issues I pointed out for Playful Land; I would love to hear your takes too ^^

#twst #twisted wonderland #Rollo Flamme #Fellow Honest #Gidel #disney twisted wonderland #disney twst #spoilers #notes from the writing raven #question

[rpgsandbox]

5th-level Banish Rumour (Abjuration). Casting time: 1 Action. Components: Verbal, Material (A single public statement).

Dungeons & Dragons is in a bizarre place right now—it's on the verge of the totally-not-a-new-edition ruleset revamp and an in-development virtual tabletop project, riding high off the back of Baldur's Gate 3. But Wizards of the Coast (WotC) has also suffered from a massive round of layoffs, and the bruises of the catastrophic OGL fiasco a year ago are still smarting.   This has laid the groundwork for a swarm of rumours regarding a potential sale to Tencent—a massive conglomerate and holding company with its fingers in dozens of different pies including Remedy Entertainment, Paradox Interactive, FromSoftware, Epic Games and (most importantly to the matter at hand) Larian Studios. Said whispers began when the Chinese news outlet Speed Daily (as translated by Pan Daily) reported that WotC parent company Hasbro was "seeking to sell its well-known IP 'Dungeons & Dragons'", citing Hasbro's "financial crisis" as a reason for the speculation. That's despite D&D being a huge earner for Hasbro, achieving record years (as per a financial report last October) for the company. 

Shucking D&D as a property entirely would be like throwing a crate of diamonds overboard to stop your ship from sinking—not something you'd do unless you were definitely about to drown. Which isn't completely out of the question. That same report noted Hasbro's total revenue was down "13-15%", and repeatedly cites a difficult situation for toys across the board. Still, I'm not sure if things are dire enough for a spontaneous bout of violin-playing. That's been confirmed in a comment provided to Dicebreaker, where Wizards of the Coast writes the following: "We regularly talk to Tencent and enjoy multiple partnerships with them across a number of our IPs. We don’t make a habit of commenting on internet rumours, but to be clear: we are not looking to sell our D&D IP. We will keep talking to partners about how we bring the best digital experiences to our fans. We won't comment any further on speculation or rumours about potential [mergers and acquisitions] or licensing deals." So there you have it: D&D isn't being sold to anyone. What's more likely is that Tencent—which owns a 30% stake in Larian Studios—might be thinking about pouring money into another D&D game. That should surprise nobody, considering the meteoric success of Baldur's Gate 3. Another licensing deal isn't just 'not out of the question', it's a plain good idea. Under any other circumstances I'm not sure any of this would've made waves in forums and headlines. But the environment surrounding D&D at the moment is, understandably, one of fear. Hasbro's layoffs included several senior members of staff. Game designers, art directors, and Liz Schuch—the company's former Head of Publishing and Licensing, who was with Wizards of the Coast for 28 whole years.  There's a bordering-on-zero percent chance something like this would actually happen, but the background radiation of 'strange times' has a lot of TTRPG fans without a fuller scope of the situation willing to buy into speculative panic, and I can't say I necessarily blame them.

#RPG #Dungeons and Dragons #Wizards of the Coast #gaming news

[valleyfthdolls]

Quick FNAF analysis: Why and how I think Cassie's dad died

Content warning: This is very long (TLDR at the end) Trigger warning: Death

Why I think Cassie's dad died

I'll be the first to admit that a small part of me mostly hopes that Cassie's dad is dead because Cassie is only one of two female protagonists we've ever gotten and I'd hate to see the progression of the story from here be that Cassie was fridged and overshadowed for her dad's development. However, I also think that it's likely that he is in fact dead.

Everyone who's brought this up- and I do mean everyone- has talked about the item descriptions and Cassie referring to her dad in the past tense, and the common rebuttal for this is that he could simply be absent from her life.

However, this is unlikely for one main reason: look at the other missing character who was absent in her life. Gregory.

We know Gregory probably wasn't present in her life for long before disappearing. Less than a year, most likely, since they met at her birthday party and she went looking for him before the next birthday. I'm willing to bet based on his total lack of legal records and Vanessa not recognizing him as a missing child that he's been gone long enough for the case to have gone cold, more or less. That would at least be a couple of months. If you consider GGY canon, Cassie is not present at school and is never mentioned, which could take off another few months. (Funnily enough, at one point, the Spanish version of the FNAF wiki asserted that the two were likely school friends.) Likely, Gregory was missing for just as long as if not longer than Cassie was friends with him, and yet:

"Freddy is Gregory's favorite."

Not was, is.

This could be because she thinks she's talking to Gregory, so she has reason to believe he's alive, but to me, it feels intentional. It's the exact same quote as "Bonnie was my dad's favorite", but in the present tense. It makes me think that at the very least, Cassie has no reason to believe her father is alive.

Also, this note that I can't believe no one talks about.

This note appears in the AR world, as found by me and my friend Kani. If my memory serves me correctly (might not), it was found in the raceway. It's akin, to me, to the cutouts of Gregory. It represents something she's lost. But unlike with Gregory, where it's easy for her to believe he's been alive this whole time, Cassie makes no indication she believes or even hopes that her dad is alive. I think she's likely accepted that he died, but subconsciously, it may still weigh on her. See:

Monty very obviously destroyed Bonnie. Associating Bonnie with her father as she seems to, it's hard for her to look at Monty. Maybe in her eyes, he destroyed her dad, in a sense, and also:

Speaking of associating him with Bonnie.

I think Cassie is likely projecting all of these unanswered questions onto the mystery of Gregory under the building, because there's an answer coming to that, and she isn't going to be getting an answer for what happened to her dad. If this is true- and this part is mere speculation- the case of her father's death could be closed, ruled an inexplicable freak accident. If it was still a mystery, or if he was still missing, there would still be a case and a reason to search for him, but there's not. There's no hope of closure and reunion to hold onto. So all hope is funneled into seeing Gregory again.

But if her father's death is confirmed, if the case has been closed without the truth coming out, then what actually happened?

How I think Cassie's dad died (and it was not the staff meeting)

I think, simple as all things, that the ending of Help Wanted 2 represents the death of Cassie's father. He could be the protagonist, but that raises some questions about the Princess Quest ending- in all honesty, HW2 is a game I don't really understand the significance of, and given all the wildly varying and painfully unfounded theories, I have a hard time believing anyone really does. Regardless, I do think that HW2 showed us his fate. And I don't think it's what fans think.

A lot of people chalk Cassie's dad's death up to the staff meeting referenced in Security Breach. The leading theory goes that with the heavy emphasis put on going, it was definitely something sinister.

Attendance is mandatory, despite how late it is. There's a risk of being laid off if you don't go. And then, not too far away, a message saying that they no longer need a lot of their staff due to the success of the STAFF Bot project. What most fans believe is that staff meeting was a way for Vanny to congregate staff members and use the endoskeletons (who she had trained not to not react violently to the presence of cake, and one of whom has a model in the files where it is covered in cake)-

I don't know who the guy in the top right is-

-And that the fifteen victims' deaths were covered up with a "staff retreat" mentioned in Special Delivery, but the kitchen it happened in was left in a state of total disarray.

However, I doubt this. First of all, Karen Soto is on there twice, which isn't relevant to this but I needed to point it out. Second of all, I doubt that the massacre actually even happened, third, Special Delivery took place in the early days of the Pizzaplex's creation, before they would've been able to replace people with STAFF Bots (which we know was done around the same time), and fourth, if Cassie's dad died at the end of HW2- which I have no idea why else they'd show us that if it wasn't relevant to Cassie and I'll explain that in a second- it doesn't align with the details of the supposed staff meeting massacre.

Let me explain.

I doubt that the massacre actually even happened: The evidence is few and far between, and flimsy at that. A mandatory meeting, the endoskeletons being violent in response to quite literally everything, not just cake, a staff retreat that might not have even happened at the right time to be related, and a single endoskeleton with cake on it that isn't actually in the game. Also, if that was the cause of the mess in the kitchen, A) why was the meeting in the kitchen? B) wouldn't the company want to cover it up by cleaning up the kitchen before going with faking a company retreat from which apparently no one questioned that fifteen people never returned?

Cassie's dad's potential death doesn't align with the details: If we put my skepticism about the massacre ever happening at all aside and assume it did, if Cassie's dad died at the end of HW2- and again, I don't think that they would show this to us if it wasn't relevant to her- it couldn't have possibly been in the massacre.

First and foremost, that scene is immediately followed by watching Cassie take the VANNI mask, meaning that what we just saw not only predates Ruin, but is also important to it. Therefore it has to be relevant to Cassie, to Ruin as a whole. I think it makes the most sense, then, that we're not just following any random ass technician but rather Cassie's own father.

Beyond that, though, looking at the scene, Cassie's dad is not in the kitchen. He's underground in the old pizzeria. And there, Cassie's dad is attacked by Vanny's weird nightmare STAFF Bots. These weren't the tools she used in the massacre- that was the endoskeletons. No other people appear where Cassie's dad died. There is no cake. This is not the staff meeting.

Plus, if I'm right about Cassie knowing that her dad is dead, then that negates the cover-up part of the massacre.

But why would he individually have been targeted?

Look back at the note.

"Gone for a while" is ominous. You'd think if it was the staff meeting, it'd be "gone for the night", but it's "gone for a while." That suggests something odd. He didn't think that it was something innocuous. He was expecting to be gone for a while.

Cassie's dad was a technician. The technicians were the ones who caught onto P46 hacking into the system and were trying to keep [her] out and fix things. As described later, the glitch was "broadcasting a very dangerous message."

Attempts to remove the glitch did nothing. It was certainly obvious to these techs that whatever was happening was sinister in nature. So maybe Cassie's dad was trying to put a stop to it. To keep P46 out of the system and fix the damage [she] had caused in a way that would cause meaningful change. And in this way, he ended up in [her] line of fire.

As the fourth therapist points out, the previous therapist's body was "mangled by machinery". Knowing of The Mimic and what it does in Tales from the Pizzaplex- decapitating and dismembering its victims- that sounds like it could be described as them being "mangled by machinery." And it happens when they become suspicious of Patient 46's behaviors.

The STAFF Bots are trained on the same program as the Mimic. They're taught by watching. Showing them what actions to replicate. That's at least what HW2 suggests. So if the Mimic program is corrupted, then Vanny or P46 could use the STAFF Bots trained on it to do the kind of damage described to the therapists, and the kind of damage done to Vanny herself in the disassembled ending. (Now, that ending might not have happened, but I imagine it must have been within the realm of possibility at least in Gregory's mind, and they could dismember Freddy, who is much larger than a human.)

Cassie's dad was a technician, the group that became suspicious of Patient 46's behaviors. Others who became suspicious were brutally murdered, potentially dismembered, "by machinery". The STAFF Bots in particular would be easy to get to do such a thing because they're programmed just like the already-prone-to-dismembering-people Mimic, and we know that it is absolutely in their power to dismember people.

And what was he attacked by?

STAFF Bots.

TLDR; Cassie refers to her dad consistently in the past tense even though she refers to Gregory (also missing) in the present tense, and doesn't seem to think or hope that she can see her dad again. She seems to have accepted that her dad is dead even though she doesn't know how. As for how, he wasn't at the staff meeting where people were supposedly attacked and killed in the kitchen by endoskeletons; he was a technician who got suspicious of Patient 46, or Vanny, or The Mimic, or whoever, and the STAFF Bots, trained by the same program as the Mimic and corrupted by it, physically tore him apart just like the Mimic does to its victims.

#fnaf #story interpretation #<- my fnaf lore tag #fnaf ruin #fnaf theory #five nights at freddy's #fnaf cassie #security breach ruin #fnaf sb dlc

[yellowloid]

Re: the cheating asks -- complete speculation here, but I've always wondered if Alex has been doing some kind of open relationship since the Alexa days? Like I'm not saying he was doing it in a well thought out or "ethical" way, just like "what happens on tour stays on tour" or "snogging and blow jobs don't count" or whatever. Cheating and jealousy is such a big theme on Humbug, and I could imagine both of them feeling all grown up and cosmopolitan for figuring out a way of dealing with that but still struggling with a lot of guilt and insecurity and lack of communication, overstepping boundaries etc. I can see Alexa being like, I'm a cool girl, I'm down with that, and also having lots of opportunities to get with hot band guys and models herself so it would have been benefitting both of them, but idk if that holds up for Arielle and Taylor, so it's not the best theory lol!

i could definitely see that, but like you said not in an actual 'sane and consensual open relationship' way but rather a 'it's not cheating if we both know the other is doing it' while also like. still not actively talking about their adventures sjhshfhs

and on the one hand i could see alexa acting as you described her, but on the other hand... idk. are we really sure her scorpio ass would have allowed that dkfjdhgh and alex too.......being a "serial monogamist" i don't know if i can really see him having a deal like that. in the sense that i think he'd be more inclined to keep just one official relationship and limit himself to cheating the old traditional way lmao no progressive open relationship deal involved. the same themes of guilt and lies that you mention could very well refer to the fact that he was, indeed, simply cheating (or had been cheating prior to humbug - also the timing here is...........very interesting when you bring the recording of taotu into the timeline)

idk if i can see him doing something like that with taylor, because she definitely didn't seem like she was willing to share him. but one thing's for sure, i definitely don't see him doing that with arielle not because they were exclusive, but because they had the most 'besties only never even seen each other naked' kinda vibe lmao

#answered

[vro0m]

I agree with your speculation that it was their original plan to put Daniel back into the Red Bull seat. Honestly, I wouldn't even have been shocked if they had made some excuse about performance and actually replaced Checo at the end of this year if Daniel didn't injure himself and his performances were at least matching or better than Yuki's. The hand injury really did come at the worst possible time for him since there'll (rightfully) always be skepticism about his performance after his mclaren stint and he has less time to prove the naysayers wrong now. Liam performing so well as Daniel's replacement also complicates things too.

I'm curious about why you think it's not a good move for him? Is it because of Max? idk I'm not a fan of red bull but I am a fan of Daniel and I can't think of another place for him that would give him what he needs or wants as a driver. What do you think would be another option for him (besides retirement lol 😭)?

I'm also anticipating the 2024 silly season. I looked it up and there are at least 10 drivers that have expiring contracts next year, so I feel like surely there has to be at least one big or exciting move that happens.. Especially with some big seats opening up like Ferrari, Red Bull and Mclaren. Hopefully I didn't just jinx it lol

Lemme preface this by saying this is only my opinion, I'm not always right, and I can't see the future.

(long post)

First of all as I said, it is the best option for him. In reality it's his only option. Because of his difficult past few years, the teams willing to sign him were backmarkers (namely Haas) and it's very difficult to come back in F1 once you're out of a seat, especially when it's not out of your own free will (understand : retiring then coming back). It's honestly kinda unhoped-for that they're giving him another shot. I'm not sure he'd have had half a chance if Nyck had done better.

The problem is Max indeed. Say he does get the RBR seat in 2025 : he's not gonna beat Max. Then what? As we've touched on before on this blog, you always always have to do better than your teammate (nice essay, go read it!). Doesn't matter if they're still top of the standings, doesn't matter if he manages to finish 2nd himself, he'll be the new Perez sooner or later. All second drivers become Perezes sooner or later. And! That's imagining he's gonna manage to keep up with Max better than Perez, which we don't actually know at this point. Might be worse than being second behind Max. Might be third or fourth or fifth etc. In any case, he's most probably not gonna get a real shot at the title at RBR, except if he suddenly exceeds all expectations which, again, all due respect, but his track record isn't convincing at this point. I truly don't see him – but tbf I don't really see any of them – beating Max in the RB. Maybe if they get it awfully wrong Merc-style in 2026 but like. They have Newey so there's no way it's gonna happen. So?

Say he got the seat. He probably doesn't want to be a second driver to the end of his career right? He wants to win. Otherwise he could have just taken Gunther Steiner's offer, cashed in the check, and done. But he doesn't have a shot at RBR. So he needs another seat. But who's gonna sign him? Again, he's 34. He'll be 36 in 2025 if he gets the RBR seat, so he probably wouldn't be looking for a seat elsewhere before, at best, 2026, at 37. He's getting old, he's running out of time. Ferrari have their own plans for the future with Charles. Mercedes have their own plans for the future with George. Depending on his form then, he might or might not have a better chance to beat another first driver in another car than Max in the RB, but he'll always be considered as a second driver for the team signing him. And, once again, that's if he performs well enough that other teams might want to sign him, whatever his age.

Or maybe there's a sudden unicorn event happening and an unexpected team suddenly makes it to the top and he's conveniently signed there when it happens, but I mean if we're gonna speculate that far-off why not imagine Max retiring at the end of 2024 and actually it's his seat Daniel gets?

When I'm saying I'm not sure it's the best move for him I mean for him. It's the best – it's the only – move for his career in F1. But the way I see it, best case scenario he gets a few more years as a second driver here or there, maybe he even wins a few times with RedBull, then he can retire on his own terms. Hopefully he's okay with it, hopefully he's not beating himself up for not living up to unrealistically high expectations. Hopefully Marko doesn't start bullying him like he did the others.

Worst case scenario, he doesn't fare much better than he has this past couple of years and it's another painful failure.

I understand he wanted more, I understand he can't really realistically be like "okay you're right I'm not worth a seat I'll retire", but I'm not sure it's gonna be the comeback he's wishing for and I hope he's prepared to deal with whatever comes mentally if it's not.

Or maybe I'm completely wrong and he beats Max out of nowhere ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

#don't start sending me hate if you disagree I'm really not all that invested #f1 #2023 #essay #vro0m's asks

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

I’m wondering what you think about Harry’s public image right now. The way he is seen by the fandom, especially non-het Harries (larries or harries who don’t think he’s straight) and the non-fandom is so strikingly different. I’ve been reading comments on different sites, primarily Reddit and some Twitter/tiktok right now about Harry, and so many are saying he’s queerbaiting. I’ve seen comments that say the only thing interesting about him is the speculation around his sexuality and that’s why he ‘queerbaits’, I’ve seen comments that say without the speculation he would be boring like Shawn Mendes, I’ve seen comments that literally say his outfits are queerbaiting, that he’s straight and playing up the “LGBT” angle for promo. I’ve seen people say that “the straights” eat up Harry’s public image of ambiguity but gay people are tired of it. To me these comments just seem preposterous and almost homophobic. I’m not going to get into a discussion of whether or not real people can queerbait in this ask, but it’s just glaringly obvious to me that Harry isn’t straight but for whatever combination of reasons is not going to fully come out anytime soon, that most likely he enjoys wearing more feminine or out-there outfits and if they also help his promo, that adds to it, and that his public image is carefully crafted to help him maintain a sense of privacy. But that’s how I see it as someone in the fandom. I feel like some people outside of the fandom are getting fed up with him; they’re essentially calling him fake and super calculated. I’m wondering if you think his team should take any steps to mitigate people thinking this way, and what they should do.

So a couple of things - I don't think very on-line queer people discoursing about Harry is his public image. I think it's worth thinking and talking about, but shouldn't be blown out of proportion. I suspect that this group is numerically as small as hard core fans, if not smaller.

I do think the fact that Harry is so vehemently seen as straight by a particular subset of queer people is really interesting. And there are lots of different things you could say (and I was making some of those points earlier).

But generally to me it shows the power of compulsory heterosexuality - the aura that Harry has sex with women is very powerful.

***********

But the question about what Harry and his team should do is a really interesting one. I think it's impossible to answer - because we don't know what the restrictions are (and I think in general 1D fandom is very willing to speculate about what should happen, without thinking about what the restrictions might be).

To me the big question is what is Harry prepared to do, and what is the record label prepared for Harry to do.

It'd be very reasonable if Harry didn't want to talk about his sexuality at all, or only wanted to do it in certain terms. And the record label has invested a lot of money and probably has a very conservative idea of what's needed to protect the fantasy boyfriend audience.

The obvious answer of what Harry could do is to make it just one notch more specific that he was attracted to men. He could have said 'I'm asked about my sexuality more than I should be and I don't want to talk about it directly.' And then covered Charlie XCX's boys (perhaps that would be too many notches, but you get the idea). Or he could have done carpool karaoke with James Corden and James could have said that he was attracted to men and then asked if Harry had ever thought of hooking up with James. There would be options to be explicit that he's attracted to men, without ruffling the fantasy boyfriend audience, and not giving any space for follow up (or even requiring Harry to use words).

But that approach may well be vetoed either by Harry, or people he's working with.

For me the question then becomes - whose advice is Harry taking on this. Because Harry Lambert could give him good advice about how he was seen in queer scenes and how to avoid being seen as queerbaiting. But I don't know if he's in those meetings, or if his influence is restricted to clothes. I'd be worried if Harry was only getting straight people's advice about how to navigate all this.

And one reason I think that might have happened is that we haven't seen the Late Night Talking video yet. Now there are lots of reasons for that (particularly the success of As It Was) so I'm not leaping to conclusions. But one possibility I'm considering at the moment is that the backlash to Harry's comments in Better Home and Gardens took them by surprise, and that there's an attempt to figure out how to mitigate the response in a reactionary sort of way. And that the way they respond to the criticism will be to be less queer. Rather than to be explicit enough in a way that people will understand.

I think it'd be a real shame if that happened (although obviously it's all speculation at this point). And I do think that sort of reactionary response would come from the advice of straight people. But I think it's worth saying that Harry's decision making team does seem to be full of straight people, and that's very much a decision he's made. If he makes decisions based on bad advice because of it, that's ultimately on him.

#Super interesting #like I've said before #I don't feel likewe can know much #until we know if the rumours about the video are true #and if it's going to be released #and we may only know one of those things

[peekbackstage]

I for one very much appreciate the information you provide, given without rose colored lenses. It's just my opinion, but I sense that some of the people who have been combative probably haven't entered the workforce and/or Really had to look at things from a corporate, money is the bottom line, perspective that certain jobs can require. (Hell, I work in the museum industry and even we have to shape narratives, entice visitors with good PR, and persuade wealthy individuals/companies w deep pockets to support us.) Entertainment looked at in-depth as a job and business can be quite jarring a switch to turn on. More so when it's people who are the commodity.

Again, I'm very appreciative of the information you provide. I am a big fan of facts and your knowledge lends credence to and helps us flesh out or disqualify certain CP rumors. Even if you have thick skin, I'm saddened to see that you have gotten such combative anons and responses to your posts when you are really doing us all a service in educating us primarily about the east asian music industry. Many thanks 😊

Thanks for this message and for the encouragement! I’m glad the content I create is illuminating. 

I imagine that in some ways, the museum industry is actually part of the live entertainment industry, seeing as it provides live entertainment for its visitors. So, in that very well sense, there are quite a lot of similar overlaps! (Museums try to entice visitors with new exhibits, live music entices fans to come to concerts with the artist. Museums court patrons, live music court corporate sponsors.) 

Regarding the combative Anons, I’m not going to lie - I am a little disappointed that there has been quite a lot of negative Anons in my inbox the past few days; but, I can’t say I didn’t expect it. I knew that this was bound to happen. 

As I said in a previous post, I don’t feel comfortable speculating on what kind of work or life experience anyone has - that’s really not for me to make assumptions. But what I have observed is that often, people who have a hard time accepting that everything is about money/the bottom line in entertainment tend to have bright dreams and brighter ideals, especially when it comes to the artist they love the most. It’s very easy to want to believe that entertainment stakeholders might actually want to support the artist out of the goodness of their hearts or because they “believe” in them. But the reality is, no one ever does anything in the music industry for absolutely nothing in return. And unless there is financial gain to be had, people don’t ever really lift a finger. If someone does you a favor, they expect you’ll pay them back one day in kind.

If a big name tour manager is willing to take a pay cut to run a new artist’s tour it isn’t because they believe in the artist as a human being or want to help them out of some act of altruism. It’s because they want to have stake in that artist before that artist takes off, to have a cut of the pie before it’s out of the oven. It’s a financial investment. Not an act of kindness. (This example isn’t one I made up off the top of my head. This is something that actually happened about four years ago, when a big name TM took a massive pay cut and told me, verbatim: “You want to get in on the ground level before they take off, to reap the best rewards in the future.”) 

I used to manage a producer who broke a few artists whose albums sold so well, that they received diamond certification. This producer told me that when he finds artists, if he believes that the artist can become a really big hit, he will go out on a limb for them and do everything he can to get them the best possible record deal. He also will go out of his way to produce every song on their debut album to get as many points as possible on the record. He doesn’t do this because he actually wants to help the artist - he does it because there is a massive paycheck waiting for him at the end of all that sweat investment. 

Because that’s what it really is in the end - an investment. 

#music industry #the way things work #stuffedwithsawdust #ask #peek answers

[icharchivist]

I was rewatching DGM hallow and I remembered that Lavi and Bookman occasionally engage in telepathic conversations. How come I've never seen this talked about more in all the years I've been in this fandom? This is really weird. Even most of the Noahs think it's weird/creepy when someone reads their thoughts/talks in their head. The more I think about the Bookman the creepier they get. I'm not implying they're evil. Just really weird. 1) Telepathic w/each other. 2) Not only against attachments-

2 but against having a heart (not even the past Jedi at their most radical taught padawans to not feel anything). 3) If Bookman and Lavi are the standard then they either think they're above humanity or hate humans or or just indifferent. 4) they have SO many secrets that they keep to themselves no matter what. 5) they will never feel loyalty for anyone/thing that doesn't further their own ambition and even then they can easily drop you like you mean nothing to them. 5) They routinely erase-

3 each other's minds and none of them remember their birth names. 6) they swap identities so many times their own growth as individuals is trivial. 7) Ever single (possible) bookman we have met has either exhibited creepy or hostile behaviour. 8) they take to neutrality so strongly you can question if they even think to care what will happen to them if the Earl's plans succeed. 9) Are they even self aware? I'm not expecting a complete disaster. But I am expecting the bookman to weird me out.

Okay so for the telepathy i will have to come back to it when i will re-read it bc i don’t really remember it in Hallow and I think the scene I think should be that one??? Is the fact that ii’m almost certain i remember it being confirmed that Lavi and Bookman talk a whole other language. Apparently the Bookmen would have had their own language and I think i remember that in the manga it was translated by having weird bubbles to specify they were talking in that language (and it is possible that, due to the fact the anime couldn’t just pull a new language that was a work around to still have one of their Bookmen conversation being visible using telepathy).

But i really don’t remember the scene in question in details so i will have to check that out again but I THINK it is Bookman Language related more than telepathy and that the telepathy was a way for the anime to translate it

THAT SAID if the idea of Telepathy is a thing (which tbh could still be??? Bookmen already messes with minds a lot with the whole deleting memories thing who knows the hell they can do) it could explain also a lot of much more silent looks that we kinda justified so far by “they know something we don’t”. It might have been conversations we missed. 

Still unsure though i’ll get back to that when i will properly have re-read those parts bc this is really intruiguing me now

I know the fandom had talked about the Bookman’s language though but i’ve never heard of telepathy before now?? Idk 

And yeah like you say this is very weird bc putting them on the same level as Wisely is... very weird. Besides considering how much Lavi still struggles to get people around him i am fairly certain that if telepathy there are it i between the Bookmen only, not all knowing as Wisely.

But yeah aside from that, mood. The Bookmen are seriously a creepy brunch. Not in a bad way, but in a “this is extremely shady and I get you’re doing that to be neutral but i’m not sure those means are actually legally or morally applicable”

I agree with all your points. 

and i’ll elaborate under cut bc i might have gone carried away,

well 1) i just discussed it there, either Telepathy which would be a whole new can of worm, or a whole other language that would still applies that they have a special language to keep secrets in. And tbh it would also make sense that they would write down records in a secret language since they don’t actually let people Read their reccordings: Bookman specify that it comes with the part to “chat a lot”, they won’t share the written reccords (which they MUST HAVE for the the survival of the clan), so “Secret Language no one else in the world know” rings as shady to me.

4) NOT TO MENTION we know that Bookman also keeps secrets from Lavi (when meeting Cross’s altered akuma, Bookman specifies it was only something he (and Cross) knew about.). And it’s not to mention secrets that the Bookman in charge keeps from the rest of the Clan (see again, how Lavi’s eye is only known by Bookman Sr, not anyone else in the clan seems aware of that)

6) Apparently about their switching identities, something very creepy that came out of the latest Komui corner too is that the name they have during a war is the name that the recording will officially get. Meaning it’s not even that “Lavi” calls himself like that for the people around him, it’s that even after Jr would have moved on or died or anything, the Records of the Holy War would still be called “Lavi”. And we know that the names picked seems to have meaning that applies to each wars (as Wisely smugly smile realizing Lavi’s name’s meaning, but doesn’t tell people). So even more of a disconnect with their sense of humanity since they have to be distanced from their own names, as their names become history as it goes. Which makes Jr’s identity crisis over how “Lavi” is “him” even more creepy tbh, bc it extends that “Lavi” isn’t just a reccord name anymore, it is not just the Holy War anymore, it is part of Jr as a BEING. And to me that’s even creepier that it’s even something Lavi has to worry about.

8) this is honestly one of my biggest questions. If the Earl’s plans work, all humanity will die. Or at least there had been no mention so far of any “saved people that would go through the Ark”. (there had been speculations about the real purpose of the Akuma and how its evolution process would be perhaps a part in creating supperior beings to salvage during the Flood like the original Ark did, and i’ll need to get back to the chapters tha thints that there are more secrets to the Dark Matter than it just reversing the innocence, BUT personally I have issues with this theory because of how easily the Noah do torture and kill the Akuma at times and seem to look down on them. But I would agree there seems to be a bigger purpose to the Akuma and the Dark Matter that we cannot even imagine.)Regardless, I don’t see anyway for the Bookmen Clan to survive, else the Noah would have found way to keep them on their sides and not torture them like they do now and exclude them. Yet we know at some points the Bookmen were “on the Noah’s side”. So what the hell do the Bookmen expect to happen with the Flood? Is their neutrality so important that they are ready to litteraly go down with this ship when the end of the world come? Yet we know they have some self preservating instinct it seems, so why? It just enerves me so much!

9) Yeah same, basically.

One last thing i will add: How the HELL did Bookman manage to find himself and Lavi innocences he knew they would be accomodator to when they decided to join the Order? Bc the Corner mentions that Bookman decided to set them into the Order to watch BEFORE they even got in contact with the innocences, and Lavi mentions that “Gramps just knew we’ll find innocences we would be compatible with” and how????? How the hell??? You can’t just make it that easy for the two of them to randomly connect with two random innocences (and we know they’re the one who have shown the least actual connection with the innocence) after arcs and arcs proving that the innocence is picky and sentient, that its own personality affects who they end up picking, that even the synch can change depending of how the innocence feel to their acomodator, and Especially, that the Order had DECADES of experimentations that were basic human rights violation due to how desperate they were to not be able to have enough people synchronizing with the innocence.

You  cannot have a full arc of telling us the Order did an entiere experiment about bringing fallen exorcists’s brains back in new bodies in hope the innocence would synch with said bodies, while letting those bodies decay under the pain of the innocence, for the sLIGHT CHANCE an innocence could be compatible again, only to then tell us “oh yeah we wanted to join the order so we ended up finding two innocences that we could connect to.”

For exemple: Take the Crows. it’s obvious the Crows want to help the holy war, as the Third Exorcist project proved a whole brunch of people were ready to put Dark Matter in their body to fight back the Akuma. And from all those Crows, from all the experiments we know the Order have carried on, somehow, as long as we don’t know of a “Former Crow Exorcist”, it means it’s not that easy. Not when you have a whole military branch who would be willing to be God’s apostles. And it’s not even counting how others Orders’s soldiers like the Finders would or not jump on the occasion.

So how the hell did they do that? How the hell did Bookman find those? bc even if they don’t connect to their innocence on an emotional level, they seem like proper innocence. Else Allen would have commented about how the souls don’t disappear like planned, like when he saw how the Third Exorcists killed the Akuma. Besides, we also know Bookman fears Lavi’s innocence could turn into a crystal type, so it confirms this is legit innocence, and that Bookman doesn’t have full controle over it.

How could Bookman be so sure they will become accomodator BEFORE finding any innocences? It raises seriously worrying implications considering all we know about the innocence and how hard it is to find accomodators for it this far in the saga. 

*take s a deep breath* anyway that said,

tbh part of me understand the feeling of “wanting to disconnect your feelings” when you watch history happens, because history is goddamn overwhelming. For having studied history for a few years i’ve personally had a few breakdown just over thinking about the amounts of horrors you read about one year after the other, so to have to remember all those horrors AND reccord current horrors, I understand in principle the thought that shutting those emotions down is the easiest way to record it. 

In principle.

Because in practice this is (a lot like you compared) nearly impossible witout losing their humanity and even losing perhaps an important part of how to understand and translate human experiences through emotional lenses. That’s the major issue with this logic.

had they done that for so long they don’t even question it? Or are they perfectly aware that it’s exactly why they cannot afford emotions? what are their view on the world and it coming to an end? How far are they willing to go in order to keep their own secrecy and status squo? Do they even realize the possible irony of them “not meedling with history” while the only fact that they are meddling by taking the dispositions they do to remain hidden/uninvolved? Not to mention that wanting it or not, Bookman and Lavi had meddled in the Holy War. Would they remain fully neutral, Bookman wouldn’t have had to tell everything he knew about the Noah to Komui in his first appearance for exemple. 

Lately it seems like they seem more interested in the Noah losing (self preservation kicking in) but that does raise the question of how far they are willing to share the secret history and how much is considered “medding with history”? Because this “secret knowledge no one should have” IS changing the course of history by being shared.

Do they even realize or do they really see themselves as walking books who can deliver information if pressed a the condition it doesn’t require to dig in their secrets? Where do they draw the lines?

I have HUNDREDS of questions about the Bookmen and it drives me insane. I won’t exclude that i might be overthinking it bc man, gotta wait between chapters huh, and that perhaps it won’t be that complicated or deep, but the more you get to see how shady the Bookmen are the more you wonder how and why?

Anyway that fascinates me. Bookmen pls unlock your secrets,,

#ichafantalks dgm #bookmenstuff #Anonymous #ichareply

[welllpthisishappening]

Happy Valetine's Day. Hope Justin got you chocolate and a ginormous stuffed bear with an NYR logo on it. ANYWAY, because I'm a dick, any idea what Blue Line!Emma and Killian are doing for International Commercialism and Chocolate Day?

Oh babe you ask the best questions. And I got like…a shit ton of roses. That’s definitely the most romantic description of that, right? But honestly they’re insanely gorgeous and our apartment smells fantastic and, uh…here’s this. 

So imagine the timeline in The PyeongChang Triple times up a bit more with real pool-play games because that’s what’s happening in the real world now and Emma and Killian weren’t talking on Valentine’s Day in Blue Line. 

Under the cut because of who I am as a person.

They made signs. 

Or, rather, they made one sign because Ruby somehow found posterboard somewhere in the entire country of South Korea and Emma, finally, didn’t feel like she was the actual, physical representation of death on two legs. 

So they made a sign – sitting cross-legged in the media room of the hockey arena with Roland and Henry shouting instructions and trying to grab markers out of her hand and Ruby had resolutely refused to let any one else draw the letters. 

“They have to be evenly spaced,” she said, for what might have been the eight-hundredth time and they were all taking this far too seriously. Henry rolled his eyes, making some kind of teenage noise he should probably have patented at that point, but Ruby didn’t waver. 

She widened her eyes and started tracing out the block letters she’d sketched out earlier – SKATE FAST ROOK emblazoned in perfectly spaced letters. 

“It needs to be blue,” Roland shouted and that wasn’t the first time he’d informed them of that particular point either. 

Emma laughed, tugging him back against her side when he threatened to actually step on the posterboard and she could only imagine what kind of fit both Ruby and Henry would pitch if there were sneaker marks on their well-crafted letters. 

“It can’t be blue, Rol, those are not the national colors of Lithuania,” Emma said. “We’ve got to stick to our red and white color scheme here.” She eyed the sign speculatively, twisting her mouth and wondering if she was willing to take her life into her hands. Ah, what the hell. “And,” she added. “Were we planning on coloring all those letters with markers because then we’re going to get marker streaks and the internet will make fun of our sign.”

“The internet can shut up,” Ruby mumbled, not taking her eyes off the sign. 

“And,” Henry added. “Rubes bought crayons too because she was also concerned about marker streaks.”

Emma nodded, humming softly under her breath. “Of course she did. You’re just prepared for everything aren’t you?”

Ruby didn’t answer, just arched a vaguely judgmental eyebrow and Emma was almost excited to sit in the stands and watch a pool play game that didn’t really mean much because it also meant that they would be sitting down and she didn’t have to actively SnapChat anything. 

Will would probably Instagram it. She was fairly positive he’d stolen Phillip’s phone at some point anyway.

And, well, technically it was Valentine’s Day. 

The red color scheme made double sense. 

“Alright, Rol,” Ruby said, twisting to glance at the eight-year-old in question who, it seemed, was determined to set some kind of record for wearing the same Team USA jersey over consecutive days. “Come here and you can help me color in some of these names.”

He practically leapt at her, grabbing the crayon out of her hand and attacking the posterboard with an artistic enthusiasm that was almost impressive. Emma briefly considered taking pictures and sending them to Killian, but they were still at practice and she had no idea where her phone was and –

“Hey,” he muttered, resting his hand on her shoulder and she hadn’t even heard the door open. 

She nearly had a heart attack. She was not entirely convinced she wasn’t having a heart attack. She didn’t know the symptoms of a heart attack. 

“Jesus fuck,” Emma hissed, groaning when Ruby clicked her tongue in reproach. “Sorry Rol, sorry Henry. Do not mention that to Regina.”

Henry flashed her a knowing smile, Roland far too preoccupied with the task at hand to care about curse words or medical emergencies and Emma twisted to glare at Killian, hair still damp from his post-practice shower and wearing a questionable amount of Team USA merch. 

“What are you doing here?” she asked. “You guys aren’t supposed to be off the ice for another twenty minutes. There was a schedule.”

“I’m painfully aware of the schedule, Swan,” Killian said, crouching next to her and that couldn’t have been good for his knees. “But the ‘Hawks guy let us go early, which is…I don’t know if I’ve been let out of practice early since Liam and I played at the Piers.”

“You think that’s a commentary on you or…”

He rolled his eyes, something that almost resembled a smirk settling on his face and she hadn’t noticed the small, cardboard box in his hand. Goddamn potato dumplings. “Figured you hadn’t eaten,” Killian said and the smirk was a smile and Emma’s stomach was in her throat. 

“You’re a soothsayer, Cap,” Ruby mumbled. 

Emma sighed, taking the box and the plastic fork and they needed to figure out some kind of recipe for whatever those things were actually called. “Thanks,” she mumbled. “And ignore her.”

“That was the plan.”

Ruby stuck her tongue out.

“You want to help us with the color scheme, Hook?” Roland asked, jumping towards Killian and his hand slipped on the posterboard. Emma wasn’t sure who sighed louder – Ruby or Henry. 

Killian didn’t flinch, catching Roland as much as it was possible to catch a flying kid and Emma ignored whatever feeling she was feeling. Something close to joy. Maybe. 

“Of course, mate,” he said. “Your dad’s on his way here too. What do we have to do?”

Roland doled out instructions and Henry corrected those instructions and they had to use several different shades of red so everyone could get a crayon at the same time, but it might have been the most painfully adorable thing Emma had ever done and her entire soul did something stupid when Robin did show up, sitting down next to them and grabbing his own shade of red. 

And she was right, Will had stolen Phillip’s phone – using it to upload a questionable number of photos all night, including a detailed study of the sign and its power to spark Team Lithuania to a 3-1 victory over Germany in pool play. 

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Swan,” Killian muttered, hours later, voice barely audible over the final buzzer and Roland shouting and Henry cheering. 

#cs ff #blue line one shots #wellllllll that spiraled #distant-rose #laura rambles #blue line rambles

[jennielim]

[daveliuz]

[saraseo]

[asoenews]

[news-lisaar]

[copperbadge]

If you don't want to open this jar of annelids, I won't blame you at all, but... As a professional fundraiser, do you have any opinions about Jane Sanders' legal troubles? Particularly, I'm thinking about the concerns about how donor funds and bequests were handled. That was a big deal in the local media around the time that she originally resigned, but got swallowed up later in squabbles about personality clashes and the relative value of real estate.

Well, just a reminder, I am not technically a professional fundraiser – I don’t meet donors or deal directly with solicitations, so I’m less knowledgeable about this kind of thing than, say, a gift officer (who meets with high-net-worth prospective donors and helps structure large gifts). I work with gift officers to target and triage possible new donors. 

That said, I do know a few things about large structured gifts and how they are stored as data, so I have, if not opinions, then at the very least information.

And some opinions, I guess. I’m only human. :D 

(There is a readmore below, read more!)

It’s tough to know without seeing the school’s actual facts financials – which normally might not be that difficult, schools do make that kind of thing public in a limited way. But with Burlington closed and the records in the hands of law enforcement and financial institutions, that’s a no go. From following the story, without being a local or actually involved, it certainly looks like at the very least Jane Sanders mismanaged the school’s existing finances and made some poor decisions. Criminally negligently poor? Harder to say. 

I will say that the poor decisions she made are extremely common poor decisions in higher education. A lot of schools turn to what’s called a “capital campaign” when they want to raise a lot of money fast: they start building on campus, or buying new land for campus extensions, either during the fundraising for the buildings using a line of credit or shortly after raising the funds. In the case of Burlington this was a hugely risky step to take because Burlington had no endowment (basically a savings account earning interest, with the interest as spendable income) on which to rely if things went south, as they obviously did. At a guess I’d say she wanted to start attracting a much wealthier class of student, and the way she went about it was by trying to make Burlington seem much more Ivy League and much less Hippie Haven. 

If I had been in her place, my number one priority would have been an aggressive campaign to build an endowment – though possibly Burlington was the sort of place that aggressively did not want an endowment, it was a very unusual school and endowments come with a lot of issues. A lot of schools currently are under pressure from students, in my opinion rightly so, to divest their endowments from funds that support companies involved or implicated in genocide, ecologically unfriendly activities, weapons manufacture, etc. School administration tends to push back hard because unfortunately those are often the most lucrative investments.

Capitalism. Yum. 

Despite knowing that Burlington’s kind of weird, I would be willing to bet that the board that brought her on hoped she would create an endowment; with her connections and an aggressive team and a little luck, she probably could have built a $100M endowment (respectable for a small college) within ten years. Though, reading some of the articles, they were talking in the $6M range for a campaign, which even for a small university with a minimal fundraising shop seems like a very low bar to set themselves. So it looks like she may have sought the easier road there. I think the board’s hopes for an endowment and her refusal to work on creating one is borne out by the fact that the board claims she wasn’t “attending to fundraising”, but that’s just speculation.  

There’s a lot of talk of how she may have misrepresented pledges made by donors who did give. I don’t know what to make of those, because the wording surrounding those misrepresentations in the news is pretty vague. The problem is that fundraising bodies keep their books in such a way that it often looks to outsiders like they’re misrepresenting income or saying they raised more than they did. This is both for tax purposes on the part of the donor and also for certain methods of tracking that the organization employs. 

For example, a donor pledges $1M, structured to pay out over five years, with perhaps twice-yearly payments of $100K. So the school is, in fact, only getting $100K every January and July. But the pledge was put into a contract and notarized, so it’s a legally binding document (technically, we don’t generally sue people who don’t pay, we just revoke their gift and wish them luck). So the donor can claim the $1M all at once, can get credit in the news by us for the $1M, and we say in our records that they gave $1M “with X outstanding” (X being a number that drops every time they give us $100K). We also get to claim we have that $1M even when we don’t. 

This does occasionally lead to “ghost gifts” – I found one the other day where a guy pledged $10M and then never gave us a dime. In 1982. It even had a note attached to it from 1992, “We think this may be a ghost gift. The paperwork has gone missing sometime in the last ten years.” Presumably that $10M has been wiped off our books. I certainly hope so, anyway.  

We also have what’s called “gift expectations” where we can record what we expect to get from the donor the next time we solicit. That’s not legally our money, naturally, but it is a field in the database, and at a small school like Burlington it’s entirely possible that a gift expectation just…went into the wrong data field. So they said “we expect this person will give us a million dollars next time we ask” and somehow that million got put in the “definitely they said they’d give us this” field instead. I mean it looks like the damn thing was kept on a spreadsheet, so it’s not like it would even be hard for that screwup to happen – our databases generally have failsafes that prevent this kind of error. 

It is entirely possible that Sanders falsified information about giving, or that the information was mistaken, but it’s also possible that what we see as falsification of pledges is really just counting chickens before they’re hatched, and that may have been how the bank read it (and that may also have been how Sanders intended the bank to read it, which circles back around to whether this was intentional). Donors say that they didn’t pledge the amounts that Sanders says they pledged, but donors have been known to abandon sinking ships before now, especially since if a donor said they’d give the school a million and then never gave it, they could be on the hook with the bank for that $700K the bank says Burlington still owes, I’m not sure of the legal situation there. That also depends on whether or not they signed the paperwork and, if so, for what amount (which again, all this is either in the hands of the feds or the bank at this point). 

To be clear, I’m not defending her. I’m just saying, for context, that fundraising book-keeping is fucking weird.

It doesn’t seem as though the land deal itself benefited Sanders personally (I may not have all the info) so while obviously she was well paid in her time at Burlington, I don’t think she threw the college to the wolves to get hers. So it doesn’t appear to be malicious. 

I think in the end it’s evident that Burlington College was in trouble before Sanders got there. She was hired in the hopes it could get out of trouble. It failed because Sanders made spectacularly poor decisions and was backed by a board that was either too weak to protest, too inexperienced to understand what was happening, or too uninvested to care – these things don’t happen in a vacuum and the board should also have put a stop to what she was doing long before it did. 

But I think, most of all, this highlights the plight of small, weird schools like Burlington. With no endowment, with a lowered ability to fundraise because of it, without an elite reputation to attract wealthy students and with a weird student body who probably aren’t making the kind of bank a big school with a business school attached to it is, Burlington was primed for failure in this century. And with universities becoming more monolithic as college degrees become more and more requisite, we will probably see more small schools fail – especially small schools with no endowments or small endowments. It’s like trying to climb out of poverty in a minimum wage job. There’s just no way to get a foothold, and one bad move can close it down for good. 

So I guess uh the moral of the story is, everyone needs an endowment, and if someone tells you they have a Catholic orphanage to sell you, make sure you can cover your debts before you buy it. 

#Anonymous