#i liked this passage so much so i wanted to share it in english too

[sadprose-auroras]

hiiii i was wondering if i could make a request for a hazel x reader where reader is beaten up by someone not from fight club and hazel gets really protective and rounds up the rest of the club to retaliate

Hey, thank you for your request! Sorry it took a hot min, this one took on a life of its own. Not sure how I feel about it tbh, but please let me know what you think! xx

Content warning: targeted violence, themes of bullying, cursing

Word count: 3.7k

You were well aware that Jeff, star quarterback, most popular guy in school, widely celebrated asshole, completely had it in him to take his bullying way too far. You couldn’t ever forget the first time you saw him beat somebody to a pulp.

It was eighth grade, and you were an awkward, shy thing, just trying to navigate schoolwork and friendships. To put it simply, you were figuring out who you were and your place in the world. There were so many questions swirling around in your head. Why did you feel an immense swirling sensation in your tummy when your classmate, Hazel Callahan, would sit next to you in class when nobody else would? Was it normal to be so deeply enamoured by the clothes she wore, her hairstyle, her school supplies, so much so that you would try and emulate an outfit she’d worn, to beg your mom for a haircut like hers, to buy the same pencil case she had, just because she was the coolest person you knew? Reflecting back, of course, you had a crush on her, and didn’t know how to express it. But at the time, you thought you just really wanted to be her best friend and not leave her side for a moment.

At this awkward pre-pubescent stage, Jeff and all his football buddies seemed to be way older, more mature, and you were terrified of them. Jeff, especially. He had always been a bully, shoving kids out of his way in the school halls and calling people derogatory names. But he only seemed to be getting worse. And every time you passed him in the hallway, your heart was in your throat as you kept your head down and walked faster. Was this the time he was going to target you?

One day, you were in the schoolyard, sitting on a bench with Hazel chatting about a book that Hazel had lent to you. One that, to your surprise and deep excitement, included two of the girl characters sharing a kiss on the lips. Vampires, at that. You thought that was the coolest thing ever. You’d read that same passage over and over, enthralled at that even being a possibility. It had crossed your mind that you really wanted to kiss Hazel like that.

“So… did you like it?” she asked with an expectant smile. You nodded incessantly.

“Oh my god, it was AMAZING! The vampires were SO cool, Kali and Anna were my favourite characters by far! I wanna be a vampire,” you gushed, flushing a deep shade of red when Hazel giggled.

“Dude, I knew you’d say that!” she said. “You so don’t wish you were a vampire, you love the sun!” You laughed and shrugged. She was completely right.

“You know me well, Haze,” you laughed.

“Hey?” Hazel asked, chewing on the end of the straw on her juice box. She looked nervous.

“Hm?”

“I have to tell you something.” Your heart started going a million miles an hour.

“What is it?”

“Well-“ before she could finish, a commotion out of the corner of your eye caught both of your attentions. You whipped your head around to see a large group gathered around two people on the floor. It was Jeff, holding down a kid and punching him. Over. And over. And over. You quickly realised it was a boy in your English class, Thomas, who you’d never really talked to but was a shy nerd like you. He seemed nice; he had lent you a pencil once. To your horror, he didn’t even seem to be moving. And Jeff was cackling. Maniacally.

“Oh god, what do we do?” you asked frantically. “We should get a teacher, right?” Although there were a bunch of kids cheering him on, it didn’t feel right.

“Yeah, come on!” Hazel said, grabbing your hand and dragging you behind her as you rushed off together to find a teacher. You couldn’t tell if it was the handholding, or the life and death situation, that was giving you more adrenaline.

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Now that you were all seniors, you were only more terrified of Jeff. He had never targeted you, luckily, but you had witnessed his increasing violent nature towards many of your other classmates. As for Hazel, the vampire book situation all those years ago had been somewhat of an awakening for you; you were totally, completely in love with your best friend. You never, ever told her though, your fear of rejection outweighing anything else. The closest you got was telling her you liked girls when you were having a sleepover for your sixteenth birthday. There was something about sleepovers that made you feel like you could talk about things you usually weren’t brave enough to. To your delight, she told you the exact same thing moments later.

Shockingly, you and Hazel had finally branched out and spoke to people besides each other. Your other friends, PJ and Josie, made you a perfect little foursome. You had bonded over your respective codependent friendships. You first heard about the fight club when PJ and Josie told you and Hazel over lunch that they had created a self-defence club to sleep with cheerleaders.

“We’re teaching them how to defend themselves, next thing we know, Isabel and Brittany are kissing us on the mouths!” PJ addressed Josie, flailing her arms around.

“Can we join?” you asked, then realised how that sounded, laughing. “I mean-“

Hazel squinted at you from the sun, furrowing her brows in confusion. Your heart skipped a beat; her eyes particularly sparkled in the sunshine.  

“You want both of us” – she pointed back and forth between herself and you – “to join those two” – she gestured at PJ and Josie – “in kissing Brittany and Isabel!?”

“No, no,” you say quickly. “The club. Can we join the club?”

“Yeah, sure!” Josie said.

“I mean, I guess, except we don’t want the losers to outweigh everyone else. No offense,” PJ says, and you shrug, entirely not offended.

“You’re not wrong,” you chuckle. “We are decidedly losers.”

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Despite the murky intentions PJ and Josie had for starting the club, it began to take on a life of its own. The mismatched groups of girls really began to bond, and you found yourself emotionally fulfilled in a new way that you hadn’t really experienced before. Being able to talk about deep things with a group of girls you knew had your back, and vice versa, was life changing. You noticed a significant difference in how you felt at school. Before, you were on edge most of the time and relatively lonely in a lot of your classes. Now, you had people to sit with, to say ‘hi’ to in the hallways. It was like a weight had been lifted off your shoulders that you didn’t know existed.

One evening after a particularly long club meeting, you were the last one to leave, packing up after everybody else had left. You were humming to yourself as you worked, the warm feeling you had inside from hanging out with your friends still lingering. It was ironic how beating each other up brought you so close. Once you finished, you left the gym, backpack slung over your shoulder and keys in hand as you walked into the carpark. You noticed a figure moving in your general direction out of the corner of your eye but didn’t think much of it; there were lots of people still around school, coming out of their extracurriculars. Just as you had unlocked your car, the footsteps neared, and you whipped around to be met with Jeff standing over you threateningly. You gulped.

“May I help you?” you asked, trying to keep your voice even as not to show how terrified you were of him.

“Yeah, actually,” he said, crossing his arms. “I’ve had enough of your little girls group taking attention away from football. You’re all over the school, and it’s done. You’re all done.”

“I don’t know what you expect us to do,” you said, voice barely above a whisper. “Now if you’ll excuse me.” You shoved him away, going to get into your car. Before you could, he reached out and pushed the door closed.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said, and your heart sank.

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The first place you thought to go after Jeff beating you up was Hazel’s house. You practically sped to get there, unable to stop the sobs wracking your body. As you pulled into her driveway, you let out a sigh of relief noticing that her mum’s car wasn’t in the driveway. Barely stopping to take off your seatbelt before rushing out of the car, you ran up to the door and rang the doorbell twice in a row. It didn’t take long for you to hear footsteps, and the door swung open to Hazel dressed in sweatpants and a cozy jumper. She murmured your name, eyes scanning your face with concern.

“What happened?”

Without speaking, you practically fell into her arms in a hug, only crying harder. She engulfed you with her arms, stroking your hair comfortingly.

“I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” she whispered, rubbing a hand up and down your back. You hiccupped, pulled away from the hug and wiped some tears from your eyes with your sleeve.

“Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.” You wordlessly took Hazel’s outstretched hand, following her to the bathroom. You hoisted yourself up onto the sink, swinging your legs. Hazel started collecting supplies: damp cloths, antiseptic, band aids, bruise ointment. As you watched her, face deep in concentration as she murmured to herself about what she needed, you felt a surge of love for her.

“Thank you,” you whispered, voice dripping with sincerity. She looked at you funnily as if to say, you don’t need to thank me, don’t be ridiculous.

“Okay, I’m just going to-“ she said gently, stepping between your legs and beginning to gently dab the blood off your face. As she worked, you watched her, suppressing tears at the realisation that you couldn’t feel any safer and protected with her by your side. God, you loved her. As she applied antiseptic, she shook her head in disbelief.

“Who did this to you?” she asked, visibly seething.

“Jeff,” you said quietly, lip quivering. Steam practically blew out of Hazel’s ears. Her movements ceased for a moment, and she pressed her lips tightly together.

“He deserves to die,” she said matter of factly.

“I don’t disagree,” you murmur.

“Hey?” you ask, making eye contact with her. You realise how truly close your faces are, and your heart rate increases rapidly. You let out a shuddering breath, trying to keep your composure.

“Can I stay here tonight, please?” you ask, desperately trying to suppress the urge to be embarrassed. You just really didn’t want to be alone.

“Of course. You don’t even have to ask, you know that.” Her voice was so gentle, you practically melted.

“Thanks, Haze,” you said, as she finished cleaning you up.

“All done,” she said, beginning to pack away everything. You hop off the bench, taking the painkillers and water she hands you gratefully.

“Thank you,” you say as you pop the tablets into your mouth and swallow them with a big gulp of water.

“Stop thanking me,” Hazel chuckled lightly. “Come on, let’s go to bed.” You followed her to her bedroom, suddenly feeling unusually nervous. It wasn’t as if you hadn’t slept in each other’s beds before. Sleepovers were a major part of your friendship when you were younger, and more recently were particularly convenient when you got a little too drunk to get home. Perhaps there was something about the added layer of vulnerability to your state that was making you feel shyer with your best friend. As you contemplated this, shuffling back and forth on your feet, Hazel retrieved a soft t-shirt and shorts for you to wear to bed. She threw them at you, and you caught them with a soft smile.

“Thanks, dude.” You moved into an alcove in the corner of her room, turning to face the wall as you heard Hazel shuffling around, presumably getting changed as well. You desperately fought the urge to turn around, unsure if the tension in the room you could feel just at the thought of you both getting changed at the same time was in your head. But you swore, you could feel it. You pulled Hazel’s shorts up, tying them at the waist and trying to ignore the fact that the t-shirt she had lent you smelt like her. Although it was difficult not to. You folded your clothes, placing them on a chair, then turned around to find Hazel in a pair of plaid pyjama bottoms and a white tank top, sitting on her bed scrolling on her phone.

“You look cute,” she remarked in an indecipherable tone, and you couldn’t entirely tell if she was joking or not. Since eighth grade, you’d definitely developed your own style apart from Hazel’s, and her clothes on you were not your style at all. You poked you tongue out at her, as you walked over and got under the covers, snuggling down. It was easier to fall back into your friendship as it had always been in those moments, where you were unsure if she was feeling the same way. Otherwise, you might have to actually confess your own feelings, which was completely terrifying.

Hazel followed your lead, placing her phone down on the nightstand and pushing the covers back so she could get in, pulling them up to her chin and turning over to face you. Your heart skipped a beat.

“Thank you for everything, Haze,” you said, shutting your eyes. If you looked into hers for a second longer you might actually explode.

“I’d do anything for you,” she whispered, so softly you could barely hear it. Before you knew it, you were drifting off.

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The next morning you awoke to sun pouring in the curtains, and you slowly opened your eyes, stretching your back and yawning. Despite the events of last night, you actually slept better than you had in weeks. The pain in your face had subsided a lot already. You rolled over to face Hazel’s side of the bed, heart sinking when you found it empty. Confused, you rolled back over and reached for your phone, touching the screen. Realisation flooded in. It was 9:00am on a Thursday. A text from Hazel was waiting for you, which she had sent half an hour earlier.

morning! i let you sleep, hope that’s okay. wasn’t sure if u were gonna go to school today. text me if you need anything <3

You smiled softly to yourself, eyes focused on the heart she sent a little longer than necessary. You quickly replied.

Thank youuuu, needed that sleep in. I think I will come to school, I’ll see you for second period probs xx

After hitting send, you got out of bed, making sure to make it neatly before deciding to go and quickly take a shower. After you stripped out of your clothes and waited for the water to warm up, you took a moment to examine your face in the mirror. It felt significantly better than last night, as if Hazel’s touch was magic. The bruising around your eyes was starting to come out, you had a small cut on your cheekbone, and the eye that you could barely open last night was much less swollen. You stepped into the shower, allowing the warm water to relax your muscles with a sigh.

Little did you know, as you were sleeping that morning, Hazel had called an emergency meeting of the fight club. She was on a mission, and absolutely nothing was going to stop her. All she kept seeing in her mind’s eye was your face when you showed up on her doorstep, beaten and bloody, sniffling, eyes brimming with tears. To see you like that, the person she loved more than anyone in the world, shattered her heart. She had to get revenge, and she needed some help.

“Are we all clear on the plan?” Hazel asked, looking around at the group. It felt strange for the whole club to be there with you missing; she certainly noticed your absent presence. Normally, you’d be next to her, sitting cross-legged, and tapping your fingers on your leg like you do, exchanging glances with Hazel when something funny happened. She basically ached at the thought.

“Let’s fucking do it!” PJ yelled, banging the handle of a broom on the ground. Everyone else cheered and clapped in agreement.

“Let’s kill him,” Isabel said, narrowing her eyes with determination. She had her own reasons to want to do this.

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By the time you pulled into the carpark at school, the bell was just ringing, indicating the end of the first period. You weren’t going to lie, you were nervous about running into Jeff, but you prayed that there were enough people around during the actual school day that he couldn’t get you again. Just as you stepped out of your car, you heard a commotion coming from behind you. You frowned, swinging your backpack over your shoulder to follow the noise of people shouting.  Rounding the corner to the other side of the carpark, your hand flew to your mouth. You couldn’t believe your eyes.

Hazel, along with all your friends from fight club, were stood over a football-uniform clad guy on the ground, who you couldn’t see from your angle. As other students had gathered around to watch, whooping and cheering, your friends were taking turns to punch, kick, stomp on, and slap the guy on the ground.

“THAT’S FOR CHEATING ON ME WITH MY SISTER!” Isabel cried out, kicking hard. That’s when it dawned on you; the guy on the ground, who was barely moving, unable to get out of the girls’ grips, was Jeff.

“THAT’S FOR Y/N!” Hazel yelled, in a voice you had never heard her use before, swinging both of her fists down hard on Jeff’s face multiple times. You approached the group, pushing past the onlooking crowd. You couldn’t believe how many people were supporting this. The way Jeff was thoroughly worshipped in school was obscene. Perhaps everybody was just waiting for someone to get back at him first. You approached your friends, taking a deep breath to yourself. They all turned to look at you as Josie was kicking Jeff in the head blood dripping from his mouth. Isabel was watching on proudly. You placed your hand on Hazel’s shoulder, and she spun around.

“Hey,” you murmured, smiling softly.

“I-uh-“ she began, as if she was about to explain herself, then you shook your head.

“Can I get in on this?” you asked, and she visibly relaxed, grinning.

“You’re not mad?”

“Fuck, no! You’re so brave for doing this, to be the first to give him what he deserves.” With that, you turned your attention to the guy lying on the ground, smiling at the sight of him groaning, bleeding, looking like absolute death.

“Hey, remember me?” you asked, before bringing your fist down on his face. Hard. And then again. And then again. And once more. Your friends, as well as the crowd watching on, cheered you on. The last punch you threw caused Jeff’s head to fall to the side as he passed out. You stood up proudly, looking around at your friends.

“I love you guys,” you grinned, and you all engulfed each other in a big group hug, all congratulating each other and saying how much you all loved each other. Amidst the chaos, you could feel Hazel’s hand resting on the small of your back. You all pulled away, and as everybody fell into chatter you grabbed Hazel’s hand and pulled her with you away from the crowd.

“Where are we going?” she asked with a laugh, awkwardly trailing behind you in a half jog, half walk.

“Here,” you said breathlessly, stopping when you rounded a corner to a quiet spot.

“Thank you for protecting me.” Your voice was still breathless, your head spinning with anticipation. It was now or never. Before Hazel could respond, you leant against the brick wall of the building behind you, pulling her toward you by her waist. She cupped your face, and your lips met. Desire pooled in your stomach as your lips slotted together perfectly, moving together in sync. Her lips were way softer than they looked, and you had spent a lot of time looking at them.

Hazel pulled away slightly, and you instinctively chased her lips. She smirked, eyes scanning your face. You flushed deeply.

“Oh my god,” she said in that voice that made you want to melt into the floor, and you laughed in disbelief.

“I know,” you whispered before kissing the corner of her mouth. She smiled at this, pushing a strand of your hair out of your eyes. If it was anybody else, you would feel insecure about your swollen eye and bruised face, you would worry that you weren’t attractive, but it didn’t cross your mind once with Hazel. She made you feel like the most beautiful person in the world.

“I didn’t know-“ you both started to say at the same time, then giggled. You were literally giddy.

“You go,” you said.

“I didn’t know you liked me.”

“I didn’t know you liked me,” you replied, laughing.

“Do you remember-“ Hazel started, then cleared her throat. “Do you remember that book I lent you in eighth grade about those gay vampires?”

“That was literally my gay awakening,” you said with a laugh, unable to believe that she remembered that. “Wait, what does that-“

“I’ve been in love with you since then,” Hazel suddenly said, and your heart caught in your throat. You pulled Hazel even closer to you by her belt loops, and she gasped. You kissed her more passionately this time, your head spinning.

“I’m in love with you too,” you murmured when you pulled away, foreheads resting together.

#hazel callahan #hazel callahan x reader #hazel callahan x you #bottoms 2023 #bottoms movie #hazel callahan imagine #bottoms fanfic #hazel callahan smut

[earhartsplane]

Since we're all talking about plagiarism now, I'd like to share this video which came out last year about a paper accepted at the CVPR 2022:

For the people not in the know, the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference is the biggest conference in computer science. Last year, in 2022, the paper featured in the video got accepted. A few days later, this video was posted. The first author, a PhD student, apologized and the paper was retracted and removed from the proceedings. Hilariously, the first reaction of the co-authors, including a professor at the Seoul National University, was to say that they had nothing to do with it.

My point here is that scientific papers are not rigorously checked for plagiarism, and a background in academia tells you absolutely nothing about whether or not someone will be diligent in avoiding plagiarism. The biggest difference is that there are consequences if you're caught.

I also don't want people to be too harsh on the first author of this paper, or to think the situation is equivalent to the whole Somerton debacle. For starters, you don't get paid for publishing papers, you (or more commonly your university) pay the publishers. But the phrase publish or perish exists for a reason, and everyone in the field wants to get published in the CVPR, because it's supposed to show that you're great at research. Additionally, the number of papers and the prestige of the venues they're published in criteria on which you will be evaluated as a researcher and a university employee.

The way I see it, there are basically two kinds of plagiarism that are shown in the video. The first one concerns sentences that are lifted completely unchanged from other papers. This is bad, and it is plagiarism, but I can see how this would happen. Most instances of this appear in the introduction and on background information, so if you're insecure about your mastery of English and it's not about your contribution anyway, I can understand how you would take the shortcut of copy-pasting and tell yourself that it's just so that the rest of the paper makes sense, and why waste time on phrasing things differently if others have done it already, and it's not like there are a million way to write these equations anyways.

Let me be clear. I don't approve, or condone. It's still erasing the work of the people who took the time and pain to phrase these things. It's still plagiarism. But I understand how you could get to that point.

The second kind of plagiarism is a way bigger deal in my opinion. At 0:37 , we can see that one of the contributions of the paper is also lifted from another paper. Egregiously, the passage includes "To the best of our knowledge, this is the first [...]" , which is a hell of a thing to copy-paste. So this is not only lazily passing other people's words as your own, it's also pretending that you're making a contribution you damn well know other people have already done. I also wasn't able to find a version of the plagiarized article that had been published in a peer-reviewed venue, which might mean that the authors submitted it, got rejected, and published it on arXiv (an website on which authors can put their papers so that they're accessible to the public, but doesn't "count" as a publication because it's not peer-reviewed. You can also put papers that are under review or have been published on there as long as you're careful with the copyrights and double-blind process). And then parts of it were published in the CVPR under someone else's name.

I think there's also a third kind of plagiarism going on here, one that is incredibly common in academia, but that is not shown in the video. That's the FIVE other authors, including a professor, who were apparently happy to add their name to the paper but obviously didn't do anything meaningful since they didn't notice how much plagiarism was going on.

#Youtube #plagiarism #hbomberguy #james somerton #CVPR #computer science #Academia

[suratan-zir]

rambling about language, rats and dreams..?

Recently, for the first time in two years, I had to speak Russian. I had to remember how to speak Russian, or rather how to write in Russian. The things I do for love for my rats...

explanation for those who doesn't know me too well: I was born and raised in the eastern Ukraine (the so-called Donbas), in a Russian-speaking environment. Studied in the "Russian" school, which means that all subjects, except for Ukrainian language and literature, are taught in Russian. Everyone around me spoke Russian. People there can understand and speak Ukrainian, obviously, as everyone in Ukraine does. But it's not used in everyday life, due to the years of russification.

Then, as soon as we moved from Russian-occupied Donetsk, a few months before the invasion, we (my husband and I) completely switched to Ukrainian. We didn't want to have anything in common with those people. (and after the invasion, many Ukrainians also made this choice)

Anyway, one of my rats, Krobus, has a disease unknown to mankind. In all the years of keeping rats, I have never been in such a situation. Something makes it difficult for him to breathe through his nose, yet it is not a respiratory infection. His lungs are fine, he doesn't sneeze too much, doesn't have a runny nose etc. No antibiotics, nebulizer inhalations and even corticosteroids have any effect whatsoever. Vets specializing in rodents don't know what to do. Most likely, it's some kind of growths in the nasal passages.

After a lot of trial and error, incompetent and idiotic advices, I decided to contact our old and trusted vet in Donetsk. But I didn't want to explain to her why I switched languages, I didn't want to have any political discussions, especially with Krobus' health being at stake. So I had to write all the messages to her in Russian. And it was HARD. I don't mean like morally hard. No, plainly hard. I kept mixing up prepositions, word endings, etc., and generally had a tough time finding the right words.

You don't understand how huge this is. I don't know how to explain… Russian wasn't just a simple tool for me. I used to write poems and prose, long letters and essays. My favorite author was Russian. (Nabokov, probably the least Russian Russian but still). In my school years I was that one annoying girl whom the Russian teacher used as an example for others or selected for language competitions to represent the school/town. I know you can't tell that from my shitty English, because the teaching of English in Ukraine and Russia is generally at a terrible level, to the point that English teachers often barely speak English themselves.

Losing it, a giant part of my identity, one of my very few skills…it should feel terrible. But it's fucking amazing! Trying to speak Russian and sounding weird? Wonderful! Trying to write in Russian and forgetting the correct spelling? Fantastic!

In the modern world, learning new languages is a very common practice. But trying to forget a certain language? Now that's a somewhat unique experience that is now shared by so many Ukrainians. Not all of us give up the Russian language for moral or ethical reasons, although many do. And not only in order to correct injustice and the consequences of years of colonization. For some of us, the Russian language is simply a trigger for our trauma. It's a reminder of the pain Russia is subjecting us to. When Russian missiles fly over our heads, at least in they can't penetrate our minds. Eh, it wasn't supposed to sound this pretentious. Ew.

This whole language-switching thing confused my brain a little bit and now I dream mostly in English. So that's a fun side-effect? I don't know why not in Ukrainian though.

In case you're wondering, no medication is helping Krobus still. He feels and acts fine, it's not getting significantly worse for many months, but nothing makes him better. We'll keep trying.

#personal #ramble

[lostfirefly]

Life Must Have It's Mysteries (Ch.10)

Honestly, I thought this chapter would be the last, but in order not to make it too long, I divided it into two parts. Chapter 11 will be the final, I promise :) And when I came up with the idea about the scepter, I didn’t know that there was a legend that would be mentioned in this part. Everything worked out well, hah!

English is not my native language, errors may occur. As always, feel free to share your thoughts :) Masterlist is here.

Description: Buggy saved Catherine. What will happen next? Will they find what they are looking for? Let's find out!

Warnings: Fun, fluff, arguing, adventure, inappropriate jokes, swearing (as always). Shitty shit again:)

Words: 4488

Taglist: @gingernut1314, @operationroots, @hey-august, @rorywritesjunk, @yujo-nishimura (I hope you still like it!)

The title is taken from “Life Must Have It's Mysteries” by Hans Zimmer (OST Inferno).

✎﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9

✎﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏

“Cotton candy, you knocked me down.” 

Catherine clung to Buggy with her arms wrapped around his neck, lying on him, resting the top of her head under his chin. 

“Cathie-pie…” He stroked her back. 

“Shut up for a minute. I was just sitting in a cage preparing to die. I thought I'd never hug you again.” Catherine grunted with her eyes closed. “Also, let me come to my senses after the flood of your Buggy-love.” She tickled his neck with a finger. 

“What? What are you talking about? It wasn't Buggy-love. It was a dramatic moment. I'm a gentleman. I thought you were about to die, so I thought I'd cheer you up.” Buggy answered nervously, giggling. 

“Liar!” She inhaled heavily. “When you're nervous, you smell like nutmeg.” 

“Are you seriously comparing me to a fucking nut just now? Why can't you tell me something else? Oh, Buggy, you saved me. You're such a sexy man. I want you right here.” He tried to guffaw to hide his worries. 

“You're such a fool. See, you love me so much, even though you'll never admit that you saved me even from the evil gods.” Catherine raised her body and stayed sitting on him. “Okay. We need to fi~. Why are you smiling, clown?”

“You're on top of me." Buggy giggled idiotically and put his hands on her tailbone. "I have to admit, I like the position in which you are sitting now. Perfect!”

“You're disgusting, you know that?” Catherine slapped his hands. “Focus, please. We need to figure out where to go next.” 

“I saw a narrow passage there. Behind that game thing.” Buggy nodded his head towards the corner and started stroking her back.

“Really? Okay! Let's check!” Catherine, put his hands away, ruffled Buggy’s hair and sat on the floor, crossing her legs in front of her. She pulled out a map and a notebook and started to review the route. Catherine felt Buggy take her hand, rested his head on her back first, then buried his face in her hair, and then placed his chin on her shoulder.

“What happened, my blue-haired love?” She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. 

Buggy shifted his gaze to her.  “I just.. I almost lo~... Ah, never mind.” 

Catherine ran a hand through his hair. “It's okay. I'm okay thanks to you.” She gently moved her fingertips along his cheek. “See? I'm here.” Catherine turned her head slightly and looked into his sad eyes. “Your makeup is smudging. When we go home, you'll need to touch it up.”

Buggy kept his eyes on her. “Cotton candy,” he cleared his throat, “What if.. If I.. never mind.”

Catherine put her hand on his forehead. “Someone got too nervous, right?” She laughed and ducked into her notebook. Buggy fell silent and watched her run her fingers over the sheets, muttering something to herself and stroking her pencil through the air. “See also. We were supposed to turn with you here - the north house. If I understand correctly.” 

“Uh-huh.” He closed his eyes and hugged her with his other arm tighter.  

“I don't know what's going through your head right now, clown, but stop thinking about it. I’m sure it's something embarrassing, right?” Catherine blushed. “Anyway, if there's a narrow passage at the north end of this room, we should go out through it, and we'll be in the north house. Shall we? In any case, we need to somehow get out of here.”

“Uh-huh.” Buggy exhaled heavily, opened his eyes and stood up, offering Catherine his hand. 

“Thanks!” She arched her back and heard a crunch. “God, I'd kill for a hot bath and a nice glass of wine right now.”

Catherine put everything in her bag and pulled out a flashlight. Buggy pulled her towards the passage. She ran her flashlight around the room where they were, saw the game and the scattered sticks on the floor, and glanced at him. Catherine took a second to imagine what it was like for him to be here alone and squeezed his hand.

“Over there!” Buggy pointed with his hand. “When I was playing this damn game, I saw some kind of light, maybe we should go there?” 

“Judging by the map and notes, yes. See! You did great!” Catherine stroked his head. She shined a flashlight into the passage. “It’s quite narrow, but we have to get through. You’re luckier, you can split into parts and safely fly to the other side.” She laughed. 

“No way, cotton candy. I won’t leave you, otherwise you will remember this to me forever.” Buggy groaned and rolled his eyes. 

Catherine exhaled heavily and climbed into the passage. She carefully examined the walls, looking for additional clues, periodically looking back at Buggy, checking if everything was okay.

“Oh, look, look!” She stopped abruptly, sharply swinging her hand back, and heard a honk. “What was it?” She looked down at her feet.

“Fuck, Catherine! Are you out of your mind?!” She heard Buggy grumbling behind her.

“What's happened?” Catherine turned to him.

“Fuck! You elbowed me in the nose! Who does this?” 

“Oh my god! Are you okay?” She started examining his face. “I heard a honk. Where did the sound come from?” Catherine looked at the walls and floor. And she froze and slowly turned the flashlight on Buggy. “Is it you? Is it your nose made that sound?” She looked at him in amazement.

"Wow, that's funny, right? Haha, his nose honks. You can laught at me." Buggy made a face.

“What? What are you talking about? I never make fun of you in that way. Why didn't you tell me this?” She saw him blush with embarrassment. “Oh, my silly clown. I think it's cute. Don’t worry, okay?” 

Catherine took a couple steps forward and felt a vibration under her feet. “What's that sound? Is that you too?” 

“What? No! I don’t know. It’s like something is…” Buggy looked around.

“...shaking.” Catherine looked behind him and saw a crumbling wall. “You must be kidding me! The wall, Buggy! The fucking wall! What are we gonna do?”

“Damn! The main lesson I can give you is to run. Believe me, this advice works every time.” He started pushing her in the back, watching as the passage gradually became covered with sand. “Run! Run!”

Catherine threw her bag over her shoulder and ran forward, looking back at the crumbling wall and Buggy. They turned down the paths several times until they finally ran out into a poorly lit room. 

“What was that?” Buggy, bent over with his hands on his knees, tried to catch his breath. 

“I don't know.” Catherine pulled out a flashlight and shined it on the passageway. “Fuck, it's been fucked up!” 

“Fuck it!” He raised his head to her. 

“Are you o~?” Catherine took two steps toward it and felt the floor vibrate lightly again. “What was that?” 

“I have no idea.” Buggy straightened up. 

Sand began to fall from the walls. 

“What the fuck is that?” Catherine yelled in panic. “Are we walking into some kind of Egyptian trap?” 

“Are you asking me?” Buggy tried to shout over the noise of the sand, which began to fall off the walls and cover the floor at an increasing rate. “What are we gonna do? Is there some kind of riddle or phrase to stop all this fucking shit?” 

“Am I a wizard to you? Sorry, I don't have any phrases “please, don’t kill us fucking sand” for stopping this shit. Fuck! The sand is almost ankle-deep. The room is filling up too quickly. A little more and the sand would be up to our knees.” Catherine shined her flashlight on everything, trying to find a way out. “We have to g~... Oh god, what else is it?” 

A cracking sound began to erupt beneath Catherine's feet. The floor started vibrating and splitting, failing beneath the sand piece by piece. They tried to cling to the pieces of the floor that had not fallen, but their hands slipped and they both flew down. As soon as the sand has settled a little, Catherine opened her eyes, lying belly down on pieces of the floor with a dash of sand. 

“Thank God, the fucking sand seems to have cushioned the fall. Fuck! My ears popped.” She coughed, squinting, brushing dust off her face and hair. “Are you alive?” She waved her head in different directions and slapped her ears a couple of times. 

There was silence in response.

“Buggy?” Catherine sat up on her knees and looked around. “Buggy?!” She shook her head again and looked ahead. “Water? Where in the pyramid did the water come from?” 

She looked up from where the floor had fallen and then looked down. The trail of the collapsed floor led to a body of water. Fear gripped her heart.

“Fuck!” Catherine threw off her bag and sneakers and ran forward. She looked closely into the water and saw a drowning Buggy. 

“Fucking devil fruit!” She jumped into the water and started swimming with all her might towards Buggy, who was going deeper and deeper to the bottom. Catherine felt short of breath and had to dive back out. “Fuck! Focus, Catherine!” She took in more air and dove into the water again. She squinted in the water, trying to find him. The air began to run out again. She had to surface. 

“Where is he?” Catherine turned her head around and put her hand under the water. “The current. The current is weak, but it goes to the... To the right.” 

Catherine held her breath once more and dived and swam a little to the right. She saw Buggy and with all her might she buried herself up to his body. The air started to run out, but Catherine made two more wide paddles and managed to grab him by the collar of his sweatshirt and pull him to her. She paddled with one hand and helped herself with her legs with the last of her strength, and finally managed to pull herself out of the water. Catherine took a deep breath, lay on her back, put Buggy on her chest and swam to shore. She pulled him to shore, rolled him over onto his side, and he coughed immediately.

“You're alive! Thank God!” She jabbed at his shoulder. 

“Was it cool?” Buggy asked in a hoarse voice, clearing his throat and rolling over onto his back. 

“What?” Catherine looked up at him with wet eyes, not realizing whether it was tears or water dripping from her hair. 

“Did I sink cool?” He tried to laugh and coughed once more. 

“Idiot!!” Catherine flopped onto her back next to Buggy, bending her legs, and took his hand. “Are you okay?” 

“Yes. Thank you. You saved me, my Cathie-pie. You?” Buggy glanced at her. 

“I'm okay. 1:1, huh?” She smiled and squeezed his hand. “I thought this adventure would be easier. Sometimes it feels like we're in some stupid author's book. Oh, let's tear down the walls and let it all fall apart. Oh, let's let the floor fall under them. Couldn't come up with any more clichés, huh?” Catherine shouted loudly and coughed.

“Where are we?” He looked at the ceiling, then at her. 

“I don't know.” Catherine sat down on her knees and looked around. “I think it's some kind of... Why are you smiling, clown?”  

“Sorry, but you're just all wet and your clothes… your body...” Buggy giggled idiotically. 

“Oh my god! You're disgusting!” She rolled her eyes. “Where do you get the strength to think like that? You were practically dead!”

“But I'm not dead!” Buggy sat down on his buttocks and wrung his ponytail from the water. 

Catherine looked up at him, sitting there with wet clothes and water running down his face. She exhaled and narrowed her eyes. “I hate you!” 

“Geeez! What did I do?!” He looked at her with a blank look. 

“Oh, you know yourself.” She muttered. “Where does the water come from here? There are opinions that rivers used to run near the pyramids, but a lot of time has passed since then. We're in some unknown part, apparently.” Catherine got to her feet and looked around. “I have no idea where we are. We're definitely not where the map was pointing. W-Wait! What's in there?” She narrowed her eyes, jumped up from her seat and ran forward. 

“Fuck, Catherine!” Buggy yelled, standing up abruptly and sent his hand after her that tried to grab her by the scruff of the neck.

A hand yanked her and Catherine fell to the ground. “What the fuck, Buggy! Don't do that again!” 

Buggy came closer to her, reattaching his hand. “First of all, Catherine Mitchell, I've told you repeatedly not to run headlong into the middle of nowhere. Why did you do this again? Second, you forgot something.” He held out her bag and sneakers.

“Go to hell! See? There's a passageway over there!” She pointed her finger at the wall, putting on her shoes. “I'm not sure, but I think we should follow that way. There's not much of an option, either.” 

“Well, let's go check it out.” He said dryly, giving her a hand and helping her up. 

“Thanks!” Catherine stood on her tiptoes and took a quick look at his face, head, and shoulders. 

“What?” He replied gruffly, glancing at her with a look of incomprehension. 

“Nothing. Just wanted to see if you were okay. Why are you so mad?” She slowly removed her hands from his shoulders. 

“I'm not mad.” Buggy took the flashlight from her bag and mumbled. “It's good that the spare one didn't break.”

“Yes, you are mad. You call me by my last name on two occasions. When we in our bed-- You know. And you're too-- You know. When you're really-- You know.” Catherine blushed. “And when you're really, really mad at me. And since the first option is out, you're angry.” Catherine crossed her arms. 

“You did.. You.. Fuck it. I should have left you in that damn cage.” Buggy yelled and walked towards the narrow. 

“What? Fucking clown, wait! What's wrong again?” Catherine barked, ran after him and grabbed his hand. 

“Hey, don't yell at me!” 

“You're the one who's yelling. Are you mad that I forgot my fucking sneakers? Lord, I would buy new ones later. I’m sorry, okay?” She lightly pushed him on the chest with her palms. 

Buggy looked at Catherine’s round eyes and suddenly laughed. He put his arm around her shoulders and held her close to him for a second. “Sneakers. Forget it. Just be careful, okay?” 

“I didn’t understand the reason for your anger, but okay.” Catherine mumbled into his chest. “By the way, you're so hot when you're angry.” She watched as he broke into a satisfied smile. “Oh, god. I knew you'd be attracted to this, pervert!” She narrowed her eyes. “Well, let's go?” 

“Let's go, my little shit.” 

They reached the passage and turned on their flashlights. Catherine shined the light down the passage and looked around the walls. “Granite blocks? Granite and limestone. I've never seen anything like that. But it looks solid, I hope nothing collapses. I wouldn't want to end up buried here.” 

They walked slowly along the narrow passage, Catherine carefully examined the walls with drawings. They went out into a large room, which was poorly illuminated by rays of light. Various birds and hieroglyphs were painted on the walls, the ceiling was decorated with stars. In the center of the hall stood a huge black granite sarcophagus, near which stood two statues of two jackals with large ears. 

“Fuck me! Cotton candy, tell me we found something interesting.” Buggy examined the walls and shined his flashlight on Catherine. She stood there with her eyes wide open and her jaw dropped, barely holding back a smile. “Judging by the look on your face, I'm right. So where are we?” 

“I have no idea, but this is super cool!” She squealed quietly, clenched her hands into fists, and rushed towards the sarcophagus. Catherine shone on every inch of the walls. 

“Cathie-pie, there’s something painted on the walls here. Again, hieroglyphs and your favorite men with fucking bird heads.” Buggy stood against the wall and squinted at the drawings. 

“Where? Where?” Catherine jumped up, ran to the wall and, pushing Buggy aside, began to look at the drawings. “How strange! These drawings contain year by year records of the height of the annual flood, details of festivals held that year, and other important annual events such as wars and constructions.”  

“Hey! And here are some other people drawn, and some kind of flat fish with a spear.” Buggy squatted and pointed at the drawing with a flashlight. 

“Where? Where?” Catherine happily ran up to Buggy and climbed onto his back, poking her head over his shoulder. “It's not a flatfish with a spear, idiot. It's a catfish with a spear.” 

“Sorry, I somehow skipped fish science class.” He chuckled. 

“Quiet!” She covered his mouth with her hand and began to mumble something, periodically kicking her legs. “Can't be!” She jumped off his back and ran to the sarcophagus. “You must be joking! Quickly, come here. Shine a light on this sarcophagus!”

Buggy approached Catherine and began to shine a flashlight on the sarcophagus while she was running around.

“Oh my God! Come here!” She called him with her hand. She stood bent over the sarcophagus and moved her hand over the drawing. He walked up to her and stared at the drawing. “Look! Do you see this drawing? A man in a crown.” 

“Yeah.” Buggy shrugged. "Is this some famous dead dude again?"

“My blue-haired love, this is Narmer.” Catherine looked at him, breaking into a smile. 

“I have no idea who is that, but you're smiling so much that it's clearly someone cool, right?” He pointed the flashlight at the sarcophagus, and at her satisfied face. 

“He is considered the first pharaoh of Egypt, but his body was never found. Oh my God! Oh my God!” She grabbed her head. “Do you see these drawings? This's his palette. It was partially found and is now kept in one of the museums. But the second half was never found. This palette depicts the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt into the “Kingdom of the Two Lands” under the divine king. This is thing was used in the ritual of mixing and applying the King's eye makeup. Like yours. And it was arranged in three easily read registers on the back and four on the front. See? Two images of Hathor, benevolently looking down on the scene, showing the status of Narmer as an equal, his central placement in this image, his size relative to other figures in this image, his mace, his crown, the servant behind him holding his sandals, Horus, the hawk god, presenting Narmer with a representation of Lower Egypt.” 

Buggy looked at her, blinking. “Cotton candy, you say a lot of strange words. What does this even mean?”

“I think we're where we need to be. Wait!” She stared at the ceiling, squinting and took out the scepter. “Look! Do you see? The outline of the scepter matches the pattern on the ceiling.”

“How do you do this, woman? You know, you definitely should have gotten out of your library more often.”

“Fuck you! I just loved hanging out in the library a lot while you were having fun in the bars.” She stroked his back. “We need to look for the same features on the sarcophagus. Come on, help me! I can't cope without you!”

They began to study the sarcophagus from both sides, examining every millimeter. Buggy leaned over the lid and squinted. 

“Cathie-pie, there's something here.” He looked at the ceiling and the lid of the sarcophagus. “Is this what we're looking for?” 

“Where? Where?” Catherine ran up to him, looked at the ceiling carefully, and then again at the lid. “Yes! Do you see? You’re smart!! I always knew it.” She smiled, noticing how he blushed. She ran the flashlight over the lid. “Look! Here is a path of stars drawn somewhere towards the wall of the sarcophagus.” 

They both ran their lanterns along the path and sat down on their knees. 

“See?! There are stars in the form of the Ursa Major and small holes.” Catherine leaned the scepter against the drawings. “The thickness doesn't fit.” She held the scepter in her hands. 

“Let me see.” Buggy took the scepter in his hands and began to turn it in different directions, examining it carefully. He turned it part of the scepter, heard a click and a blue tip protruded from the end of it. “What kind of crap is this?” He asked loudly, his eyes widened. 

“What did you do?!” Catherine looked at him with round eyes. 

“How do I know? I turned something, and it clicked, and this fucking blue thing came out.” Buggy shrugged.

Catherine whispered. “The scepter belonged to the one who could cut mountains... Oh, God! Oh, God!” She grabbed her heart and fell on her buttocks. “Can’t be!”

“Catherine! What's wrong?” Buggy grabbed her hand and looked into her eyes with worry. “Are you okay?”

She silently looked at him and blinked her eyes.

“My little pie, say something!” He shook her shoulder.

“It's not just a fucking scepter. It's a spear. The Spear of Amset.” Catherine carefully took the scepter from his hands. “Don’t take me for crazy, okay? Amset was considered one of the most forgotten gods. The Spear of Heaven was one of the items of the first pharaohs, given by the lord of the stars Amset. It was believed that the spear could only be given out by the council of priests in the temple, but no one knew where this temple was located. And Narmer made a deal with Amset to hide his untold wealth underground.” 

“Apparently, something went wrong in their deal and this god Am.. whatever his name is.. killed this.. Nar.. whatever his name is.” 

Catherine laughed. “No, actually, Narmer was just trampled by hippos.” She looked at the tip of the spear. “Look! Its thickness fits these holes. Remember what you did last time? Folded the constellations. Try to do the same now, only poking into these holes in the order in which the stars appear.” 

Buggy took the spear from her hands. “But I warn you, it’s quite possible that I won’t be able to handle it.” 

Catherine knelt down next to him and placed her hand on his back, slowly beginning to stroke him. Buggy reddened again and began poking the tip of his spear into the holes in the right order. They heard a loud bang and looked around.

“This is the lid of the sarcophagus! Open it! Open it!” Сatherine happily jumped on the spot.

Buggy began to push the lid back with force. “Damn. Heavy!” He paused for a few seconds to catch his breath. Sweat and water dripped from his bandana, face, and hands. “Ok. I’m ready.” He pushed the lid again. “A little more. A little more. There!”

He pulled back the lid of the sarcophagus and Catherine quickly looked into it. “There is no body! How is this possible? There are some fucking rags here!” She lay down on the edge, her body hanging inside the sarcophagus, while her legs dangled above. “Look! There's some kind of wooden box there! Or something like that. Get it, please!”

Buggy separated his hand, sent it for the box and brought it back. “Do you think this is what we are looking for?” He looked at her and smiled slightly. 

“Oh, my blue-haired love, I’m more than sure! And if we find it, I promise you a hot night tonight!” She happily jumped around him, rubbing her hands. “Open up! Open up!”

“Alright! Make us rich, fucking pharaoh!” Buggy opened the lid and his smile immediately disappeared from his face. “It's empty here!” 

“What?” Catherine stopped abruptly. “How? Why?”

“Empty.” He turned the box towards her. “See? Apparently, someone got ahead of us.”

“Can't be!” Catherine jumped into the sarcophagus and began rummaging around. 

“Cathie-pie! What are you doing? Get out!”

“No! But how? Why? No! I was sure…” She threw rags in different directions.

“Maybe we’re not in the right place? Don't forget, we fell from another level.” Buggy leaned his elbows on the sarcophagus.

“If we weren't in the right place, the spear wouldn't have worked. I need to look at this fucking scepter. Wh.. Where is it?” She fell over the wall of the sarcophagus. “Are you kidding me? It’s gone! Did you take it? Did it crumble or what?”

“Fuck it!” Buggy waved his hand and helped Catherine out.

“Nothing! That's all I found. It's some stupid thing with letters.” Catherine twirled a small box in her hands. 

“Forget it, little pie.” He walked to the wall and sat down on the floor.

“But it shouldn’t be like this!” She stomped her foot. “We couldn’t find anything the first time. So what? Nothing again?”

“Welcome to my world, cotton candy!” Buggy showed two thumbs up. “Just accept the fact that you're in a relationship with the biggest pathetic loser in the world and apparently my bad luck karma has rubbed off on you. Sorry.” He laughed. “Fuck! To come this way so far and for what? For the sake of some fucking empty box and rags in the sargophagus!” He leaned his head on the wall and closed his eyes.

Catherine looked at the sadly sitting Buggy, who was clearly counting on a different outcome, walked up to him and plopped down on his lap. She wrapped one arm around his neck and stroked his head with the other. “You're not a loser. Stop saying such terrible things about yourself.”

Buggy laid his head on her shoulder and wrapped his hand around her waist. Catherine immediately kissed him on the top of his head.

“Well, we had fun, didn't we? I liked our adventure more than the first. Just you and me. I wouldn't change anything about our trip.” She was twirling a small metal container with rings in her hands and started stroking his head. “Okay, let’s think about how we can get out of here. And I wonder, can this thing b~” She looked closely at the wall behind Buggy, then looked at the box. “Behind your back…” She gently patted him on the head. “Behind your back, Buggy!” 

“What?” He opened his eyes and glanced at the wall. 

“Pictures on the slabs behind you! These are riddles!” She pointed at the wall and then looked at the box in her hands. "Fuck! It's not a box. It's a cryptex.”

#one piece #buggy the clown #buggy x oc #oc fanfiction #oc character #buggy the clown x oc #buggy live action #one piece live action #buggy one piece #opla buggy the clown #buggy fanfiction #buggy fic #buggy x catherine #opla buggy the clown x reader #buggy the clown x reader #opla buggy the clown x you #buggy x female reader #buggy the clown x you #opla buggy x reader #buggy x you #buggy x reader

[creature-wizard]

Are you sure Christianity isn't the same as Judaism? In both religions, any entity that isn't celestial is evil, and foreign gods are reffered to as Shedim in Judaism, which are also a race of demonic beings with bird feet and vampyric qualities (similar to Lamashtu and Inanna, and Shedu is a bird like deity too from Mesopotamia that was ressurected in the Burney relief, it is also hinted that Lilith is a demonization of the first two) Shedim in English also translates to demon as well. Also, they both share the same scriptures anyway, and are still homophobic in teachings. Homophobic Jews exist just as much as homophobic Christians. Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I just don't know much about the Abrahamic faiths to make a good conclusion here.

It's understandable that you would have this impression if your understanding of Judaism is shaped primarily by Christian perspectives, because Christianity generally tries to cultivate the impression that Judaism is functionally just Christianity without Jesus. The reason they do this is to make Judaism appear incomplete, thereby making supersessionism appear justified; or to make it seem as if Jews can just add Jesus to their beliefs without disrupting their current religion/culture too much. (This isn't true.)

So unlike Christianity, Judaism is more concerned with practice than belief. And where Christians tend to assume that there is one true interpretation of any given Biblical passage, and that knowing and believing in the one true interpretation is vitally important, this really isn't the case in Judaism. You can see what I mean by searching up Christian explanations of Bible passages, and then comparing them to Jewish explanations of the same passages. You'll notice that the Christians will typically try to convince you that what they're telling you is the true and correct way to interpret this passage, whereas the Jewish one will probably list a few notable opinions (some of which will probably contradict each other), without telling you which one you have to believe in.

You say that "foreign gods are referred to as Shedim in Judaism," and I have to ask you: referred to as shedim by which Jews? Judaism doesn't actually have a unified opinion on foreign gods. It's also worth noting that some of the most hostile opinions of them were formed during times when Jews were under foreign oppression. Also, I'm pretty sure that's not even what shedim are; or at least, not all of them. Like, I'm far from an expert here, but I'm pretty sure there's a lot more variety.

And yes, it's true that some Jews are homophobic - just as some atheists and some pagans are homophobic. Like, if you're going to damn an entire religion or non-religion based on some of its followers being homophobic, you're going to have to damn the entire human species. The idea that Judaism absolutely mandates homophobia is based in Christian perspectives of how scriptures are to be interpreted and followed.

But you don't have to take my (gentile) word for it! You can visit My Jewish Learning to begin learning more how Judaism works from a Jewish perspective.

Also, if any of my Jewish followers want to chime in, I'd appreciate it!

#answered #judaism #christianity #religion

[squarebracket-trickster]

OC Recipe Tag

Thank you, @touloserlautrec for tagging me way back in November shhhh

In my defense, I was waiting to do this tag until I got to a particular scene in draft 3 and was forced to research medieval English/French recipes.

Rules: Share a recipe your OC would make, either one passed down to them or one they found all by themselves. Bonus if you have an actual recipe to link! Some OCs can't cook to save their lives, but let's talk about the ones who can! :D

I think I am actually going to share a passage from my WIP instead of just a recipe. I don't think just sharing a recipe alone does justice to explaining how these foods were eaten, why these particular foods on a given day, as well as Isolde's relationship with these dishes.

A few other things to note about this passage:

At the time this particular scene takes place Isolde does not know how to cook a few of these dishes but she will learn later in her life, after the events of the story end.

In this particular scene Isolde did not cook the meal. However, much earlier in the novel it is mentioned that she "is not very familiar with cooking meat" but she manages to do it anyway. We can assume from this that she can cook if she has to, albeit very poorly. She is at least familiar with how cooking works.

Isolde is a princess, raised from birth to marry a king. She will not have done a lot of cooking in her life but she will have a very good understanding of what ingredients are needed for what dish, approximately how long a dish takes to prepare, and she will be familiar with enough the materials required for some processes like marination and fermentation.

Lastly, this passage needs trimming. But that's a draft 4 problem. I should shorten some of these ingredient lists but I really don't want to ahhh

Without further ado:

It’s a fast day so our meal is light and without meat. There are few lakes as high in the hills as Aubemote and though the sea is near enough by horse it is still too far for fish. We fill up instead on rique-menger, a Diac recipe of apples and eggs parboiled in butter, and on pickles of white cabbage, parsley root, carrot, radish, turnip, pears, and currants soaked in a juice of honey, vinegar, mustard, and white wine slopped on a bread trencher. Saffron, cinnamon, ginger, black pepper, anise, fennel, white sugar, and salt garnish our foods – the lord and lady of Aubemote spare no expense on food, just as on their tapestries it seems, even on fast days. After our meal a pageboy brings a plate of breney to our table– hard, unleavened bread dipped in a fruit compote of currants, dates, and pine nuts steeped in red wine, vinegar, mace, and sandalwood. Another refills our cups with clarrey – white wine spiced with cinnamon, galingale, and white pepper. We share the brass cups, two ladies to each, though Lord Aubemote’s wife, of course, has her own. I am not sure which part of the meal takes more courage to eat. The rique-menger and pickles are new to me, as lovely as they are, and leave my tongue with a sour, homesick flavour. These are the dishes I should have to grow accustomed to should I have decided to go through with my marriage. I don’t know if I could ever get used to eating apples and eggs like this. But the breney and clarrey are foods like home, and their taste is all the more bitter for it.

I love when the people I tag @ me and/or link back to my post. I love it when you reblog my post with questions, compliments, words of encouragement, about my WIP, or even no comment at all. But please make your own post to complete this tag. Please do not turn my post into a reblog chain.

Ever so delicately tagging: @fayeiswriting, @sleepywriter00, @boundedsea, @writernopal, @scribbling-stardust, @winterandwords

#tag game #wipvii

[invisibleraven]

Yellow Wood

Reggie Peters doesn't know where he's going in life or what he wants from it. He unfortunately has to confront it when assigned to write an essay for English class about where he wants to be in ten years. Reggie is stuck at a crossroads in life, and has no idea which way to go. Which road will he go down, and what lies down the other path?

Prologue <-AO3 link here!

IT'S HERE!

Gosh guys, this idea has been percolating in my brain all year, so I finally took NaNoWriMo as a chance to bang it out. It was a definite labour of love, and I am super stoked to finally share it with you. The story proper is finished, and it will update every Wednesday.

The story is gonna get a bit twisty, as we hop between timelines, but hopefully not too confusing.

A million thank yous, hugs, boxes of chocolates, and my eternal devotion to my editor/beta/dearest friend Ash @daintyduck99 for helping me tackle this beast and leaving me all the best squee filled comments as she went. She also made me the gorgeous moodboard you can see above, I am beside myself by how much I love it and her for making it.

Also, this work marks my 100'th fic on AO3, and my 60'th JatP fic, which is frankly, INSANE. I love you all, thanks for always reading my stuff, and I really hope you like this one!

You can check out the playlist for this fic here, and each song has lyrics that made up the chapter titles to represent the passage of time or change in circumstances, so spoiler warning and all that.

#my stuff #fanfic #writing #julie and the phantoms #rulie #peterpatter #peterpatterlina

[bonefall]

hi!! long ask incoming bc uh.

i was bored, so tried to translate an entire prophecy i wrote like three years ago into clanmew!

very sure that i made mistakes (i mean it starts with me constructing complicated sentences when there’s only been a guide on simple ones-) but i still wanted to share what i came up with and am hoping for some corrections if that isn’t too much work.

original english prophecy: ‘‘Six cats and their followers will come, with blood of every clan rank. When the reed with its leaves will echo over the moor through the wings of fog, a gathering will come true. The newly reformed clans will be destroyed and quiet will be brought when the shadows leave.’’

my attempt at the literal clanmew to english translation: ‘‘StarClan-says in-service-of entire ranks five-and-one cats and many clanmateness-contains cats they-rogue-walked. What-if stalk it-powerful-object-owns leaf under small cloud it-powerful-object-owns feathered-wing over territory they-powerful-object-fly? StarClan-says bad-battle entire cats they-rogue-fight. What-if shadow they-powerful/dangerous-object-leaves? StarClan-says no bad-battles and no good-battles.’’

clanmew: ‘‘Ssoen pos ul gorrl rarra om owar rriu om pabparra urriuwang-gryyr rriu mwrrspappap. Hassayyr kaskir ssaswrah russ wowareh eeb hai ssaswrah beof wowa upanna pyrrsfbafbab? Ssoen nyyryakorrl ul gorrl mwrrsarrlkatchyam. Hassayyr washa ssasyorru? Ssoen nyar nyyryakorrl om nyar shemyakorrl.’’

gonna give you part of my thought process behind this,, well i don’t know how to construct complicated sentences in clanmew (a shame fr) so i just. guessed on the placing of stuff? e.g. the ‘in-service-of entire rank’ bit. generally i mostly struggled with that first damn sentence bc it’s very hard to make it simple. i hope it’s clear that ‘clanmateness-contains cat’ is described like that in relation to the six other cats, those many cats are followers of the six cats, not the pre-existing clancats. also, i chose the pronouns for rogues and the like because in my story the medic who receives the prophecy frames the prophecy cats as bad/evil on purpose, so it’d only make sense to insult them. then i struggled with fog... because there’s no word for that now. decided to substitude with small cloud. thought about big cloud = storm cloud, (average) cloud = normal cloud, small cloud = fog or something. anyways i purposefully chose the pronouns for powerful objects because those words are describing the cats the prophecies are about, and the prophecy cats are obviously very important. I had to change so much about the last sentence to capture what it means but i believe i did a good job at that. ‘There will be a bad battle between all cats. What if the shadows are defeated? There won’t be any bad battles nor will there be any good ones.’ since there were no words for peace/quiet/anything of the like. again, shadow has the powerful/dangerous pronoun because it’s a metaphor for something bad. i think that’s everything worth noting down? i hope?

well. i spent two hours on translating this prophecy, but it was very fun. i just hope there aren’t too many mistakes, tho to be fair i went for something that’s pretty hard to translate asghjfhf

This is incredibly in-depth and I'm absolutely blown away, @troutfur wrote up a line-by-line commentary on the whole thing, and I made a bunch more conjunctions because of your work.

So here's what he has to say:

"I’m just blown away! Holly cow, it’s such a huge compliment that anyone took the time to translate a passage like that into our conlang! You’re very resourceful with what little information you had to work with. I’m definitely going to be taking notes from here because I think your translation was a nice stress test of the system and it reveals plenty of areas for expansion.

SO! Let’s go line by line!

"Ssoen pos ul gorrl rarra om owar rriu om pabparra urriuwang-gryyr rriu mwrrspappap."

Instead of “pos ul gorrl” I would’ve gone with “ul-gorrl urrwrah nyams” (entire-rank they-clanmate-own kin). “Pos ul gorrl” to me would mean that it’s an action directed towards every rank.

I also am curious as to why you chose to use the past form of “pappap” instead of the future form which is “papp”. I’m assuming it’s because it’s the form in the lexicon.

Bonefall: "We also haven't covered tense yet, which will be coming up in Clanmew 102. Basically though there's a past, present, and future stem for verbs! Generally, a verb is longest in past-tense."

Taking into account the fact you pointed out the meddie giving this prophecy uses mwrrs to express their disdain of these cats I’m curious as to whether StarClan themselves used this pronoun or another. By using “ssoen” they are implying they are quoting directly from StarClan so if they’re tampering with their pronouns this could be a big deal like religiously.

"Hassayyr kaskir ssaswrah russ wowareh eeb hai ssaswrah beof wowa upanna pyrrsfbafbab?"

Grammatically the main thing I’d do here is transpose “wowa upanna” to right after “hassayyr” in order to get the subject and verb closer together. Very creative on adapting the phrase with the limited vocabulary on hand particularly!

While I would go for an if x then y statement to really get the meaning of the English phrase, using hassayyr like you did is a damn good approximation based on what we gave you.

"Ssoen nyyryakorrl ul gorrl mwrrsarrlkatchyam."

Pretty good! Only note would be the tense again but I will explain that in Clanmew 102.

"Hassayyr washa ssasyorru?"

Good good! No notes.

"Ssoen nyar nyyryakorrl om nyar shemyakorrl."

I would tack on a “sarr” at the end to clarify that StarClan isn’t talking about themselves. Or otherwise maybe use the same verb as teh previous answer. “Ssoen nyar nyyryakorrl om nyar shemyakorrl urrsarrlkatch”: No good nor bad battles will be fought.

-----AND BACK TO BONEFALL

Here are some more conjunctions to play with;

So = Irr

Now = Mwah

If = Nyyeb

Then = Pon

Because = Curr

Ergo = Ewa

When = Niferr

Before = Yeferr

As Soon As = Ssirru

After = Yyirru

Until = Nokeyy

As = Koko

Your work was amazing and inspiring and we love it!

#Clanmew #Clanmew submissions

[zyrafowe-sny]

Thanks for the tag, @grey-automa!

EDIT: I think @violet-prism-creatively also tagged me in this a very long time ago (had to do some digging in my Tumblr notifications).

were you named/named yourself after anyone?

My middle name is my maternal grandmother's first name. All of her children (my uncle included) had her first name as their middle name, and a good chunk of her grandkids do too.

when was the last time you cried?

A few months back when I was visiting a place I knew I wouldn't return to again in a while - I was a combination of extremely overheated, hormonal, frustrated with people with me, nostalgic, and overcome by the passage of time. I don't think I cry all that often, but enough happened to stack at once that it came out as tears.

do you have kids?

I have roommates who are significantly shorter and younger than me.

do you use sarcasm a lot?

Never ever

what's the first thing you notice about people?

This feels like a question Spencer Tracy asked Katharine Hepburn in Desk Set.

Uhh... rough relative height/age? whether they are trying to actively engage with me or are just going about their day?

what's your eye colour?

dark brown

any special talents?

I can read non-technical English with solid comprehension faster than most people I've encountered (back in high school, I could read the same short story twice in the time we were given in class to read it once, and I always need to wait for my partner to catch up when we're reading the same thing).

scary movies or happy endings?

Happy endings, I guess? Not a big fan of scary movies.

where were you born?

about an hour from where my parents lived because they were paranoid and wanted a bigger hospital (my mom was considered old for a first-time mom at *gasp* 30 and they had trouble getting pregnant)

what are your hobbies?

I got back into writing fanfic after a long hiatus (thanks to Thanks to Them). I also sing in a community choir. There was a stretch when I was a little more outdoorsy (though never hardcore), but that's scaled back substantially.

have any pets?

Don't feel up for the responsibility right now. Maybe someday - my living situation is more pet friendly than it used to be - but I'm already drowning in home stuff and don't think a pet would help.

I did have a dog as a kid, but he passed away fairly young when I was in middle school.

what sport do you play/have you played?

I did marching band all through high school, if that counts. I like to ski but it's expensive and a 3-5 hour drive in reasonable weather. I don't ice skate nearly as much as I probably could/should (not sure where my skates are). My partner and I took some sea kayaking lessons once upon a time and I'd like to try that again, but it's not cheap and would be hard to fit in our schedules.

how tall are you?

5'7"

favourite subject at school?

That all depends so much on the teacher and exact class. I really enjoyed my high school physics/AP Physics teacher and even considered a major in physics/astro along with a social science major (am a hopeless generalist), but really didn't like my professors or classmates in college. (I have any regrets that I didn't push through because I like the notion of more women in STEM, but oh well.)

My favorite class as an undergrad was probably anthro of food - it had interesting readings and I got to interview people for a research paper (probably my favorite college assignment).

In grad school, I took a great class on human rights that's colored how I see many policy issues.

dream job?

I wish I knew.

I like: being useful, asking questions, figuring out answers to questions/analyzing things, figuring out how to best communicate answers to things, switching between more quantitative and qualitative work, being able to be just the right amount of stimulated between the work itself and/or any background media, being able to body double (I do well with cubicles/shared offices and less well when I'm in a room by myself), working more on deliverables than project/people management and presenting, and getting several-hour blocks when I'm allowed to just focus and only be interrupted by the most urgent fires.

I might have burned out badly in a past job when also going through some other personal stuff.

I'll be job hunting for the first time in a while probably inside the next year, and am dreading it.

no pressure tagging: @abstract-moth @thegrimshapeofyoursmile @enigma-the-mysterious/@sir-ballister-boldheart @childlikegoblinqueen @sercezgazety

And of course anyone else who wants to.

I turned off reblogs because some of this information approaches personally identifying, but feel free to copy-paste the questions into your own post!

#thanks for the tag!

[mirageindex]

Conlang Year Catching Up

I just found out a few days ago that @quothalinguist is doing a set of daily prompts to build a conlang over the course of this year. I'm so excited! I've been toying with drafts of a conlang for ages and this structure seems like just what I need to get it finished. I want to catch up as quickly as I can and follow along. So here goes

DAY 1: Set Intentions for your language I’m making the conlang I’ve always wanted but could never find. I wanted a language made like a toy or a game, simple enough to pick up and play with but large and surprising. Something not quite like any language I might learn in school. And I wanted to be able to make weird art with it. I want to write stories and songs and jokes to share with my friends. I’ve tried this with Quenya, Klingon, Esperanto, LFN, and toki pona. But none of them have all the attributes I’m looking for. So I’ve gotta make it myself.

The language I want is:

Simple to pick up and play with, though not necessarily the simplest possible. Any eccentricities should be interesting enough to justify the extra trouble of learning them. To accomplish this the language will be isolating and analytic, much like Mandarin or various creoles or a lingua franca. The phonology will also be minimal, with a small number of sounds and syllable shapes. The romanization should be as intuitive as possible for a reader only familiar with English. I want to be able to tell somebody “say it in an Italian accent and you’re most of the way there.”

Naturalistic, or as naturalistic as can be without getting too complex to start playing with. I’m thinking of it as an “impressionistic” conlang. It aims to capture something of nature with heightened contrast and color in a few bold strokes. To accomplish this I’ll include etymologies and historical sound changes that a learner can ignore if they’re not interested. I’ll put most of the detail into the vocabulary and leave the grammar minimal.

A priori and not directly resembling any familiar language. Even though my fictional speakers are human, I want this language to be distinctly its own and not invite obvious comparisons to other languages, either natural or imagined. One problem with using a small number of sounds and mostly open syllables is that it immediately reminds people of Hawaiian and Japanese. To get around this my standard romanization will use the letters “c” and “v” rather than “k” and “w”. Spelling with “c” also gives me an opportunity to add an extra wrinkle to the constructed script while keeping things intuitive for a learner with no linguistic background.

Most of all, this language should be fun. I want to keep a light tone throughout. I want every passage to be charming to read. I want to write lessons that are a joy to browse through and play with.

#conlang #conlang year #conlangyear

[checkoutmybookshelf]

Yes, I Sat Up All Night to Finish This One

Very occasionally, something wild happens and you end up sitting up all night reading a book. In my case, my sister literally messaged me on August 8 with a screencap of the Red, White & Royal Blue Amazon release date (August 11) and was like "Want to do a watch party when this comes out?" And so, dear reader, once I was off work at 10pm, I grabbed this book off my physical TBR pile and dived in. I had expected to take a couple of days to just barely get it read before we do the watch party. Reader, I sat up all night and inhaled this book in one sitting. Let's talk Red, White & Royal Blue.

*SPOILERS BELOW THE BREAK ON THIS ONE*

I'd be lying if I said I picked this book up for any reason other than a cute premise expecting it to be kind of kitchsy. I was pleasantly sursprised by this book! It has some weight to it, it has real stakes to it, it has fun, it has heart, and holy cow I am in AWE of how well Casey McQuiston differentitated their character voices in emails and text messages. That is challenging for writers, and they knocked it out the park.

Alex and Henry are quite literally the most adorable couple, and in the spirit of this book, I want to share the text messages I was sending one of my dear friends as I was reading. Yes, it's unhinged. Yes, it's all caps. Yes, you can skip to the rest of the review if you want, I won't take it personally. For those of you sticking around, here we go:

1:31 am

HOW IS THIS BOOK SO FUCKING ADDORABLE!?!?!?!

2:03 am

AT ONE POINT HE THREW OUT JONATHAN SWIFT TO WATCH HIS PRESS TEAM HAVE A CORONARY!?!? I AM IN THIS BOOK AS A HOT GAY PRINCE AND SOMEHOW THAT FEELS APPROPRIATE!?!?!?!?!?!?

2:22 am

HIS MOTHER MADE A POWERPOINT TITLED INTERNATIONAL ETHICS AND SEXUAL IDENTITY DEBREIF *SEE ATTACHED BIBLIOGRAPHY* IN A GODDAMN LOVE EMAIL I AM DYING

2:48 am

HE HAS A KEY TO THE V & A

3:18 am

ZAHRA AND SHAAN ARE YOU KIDDING ME OMFG!!!!!!!!!!!!

4:02 am

THE YELLOW ROSE OF TEXAS ON HIS GODDAMN TIE SERIOUSLY!?!?!?!?! Oh my god that book was too darling for freaking words

Unhinged, all caps reactions are not usually my thing for books, but uhhh...it was extremely warranted for this one.

Romance novels get a lot of crap, even the ones that end up as NYT Bestsellers and film adaptations, but honestly as someone who dabbles in writing, I am blown away by how well this book was done on every level. The writing was great. The character work was phenomenal. The plotting was tight and well paced. The premise 100% did it's job of getting me in the door.

And it was GENUINELY SMART and genuinely well researched. There is gay history, there is a solid and nuanced understanding of English literature, and when Alex and Henry get to the point of exchanging passages from historical love letters, it was absolutely incredible.

Oh, and DID I MENTION THE STAR WARS ALLUSIONS??? Because the star wars allusions are there, they're wonderful, and honestly I need fanart of the Alex and Henry and Han and Leia mural.

In addition, the book has significant weight to it, because you have two young adults--one who is, in his own words, "very, very gay" and the other who is just discovering his bisexuality--who are struggling with the realities of being public figures trying to overcome the collective conservative prejudice against LGBTQIA+ people in two countries while also being immediate family members to heads of two different states. That is given exactly as much weight as it warrants, and poor Henry just needs a hug and a safe space, because JFC that poor guy is being smothered to death by English conservatism.

There is also Alex and Henry's desire to do good in the world and to actually do something with the places in history they have been handed, and wrestling with what that means when expectations and reality absolutely do not match up. Navigating that as an early twenty-something is never easy, and most of us don't have to do it in the public eye.

Overall, this book was amazing, I loved it, I inhaled it, and I cannot wait to watch the Amazon adaptation. I seriously recommend picking it up, because it's DARLING.

#casey mcquiston #red white & royal blue #red white and royal blue #romance novel #lgbtq representation #bi representation #gay representation #lgbtq romance #books & libraries #books and reading #books and novels #books #book recommendations

[grandhotelabyss]

Advice/hard truths for writers?

The best piece of practical advice I know is a classic from Hemingway (qtd. here):

The most important thing I’ve learned about writing is never write too much at a time… Never pump yourself dry. Leave a little for the next day. The main thing is to know when to stop. Don’t wait till you’ve written yourself out. When you’re still going good and you come to an interesting place and you know what’s going to happen next, that’s the time to stop. Then leave it alone and don’t think about it; let your subconscious mind do the work.

Also, especially if you're young, you should read more than you write. If you're serious about writing, you'll want to write more than you read when you get old; you need, then, to lay the important books as your foundation early. I like this passage from Samuel R. Delany's "Some Advice for the Intermediate and Advanced Creative Writing Student" (collected in both Shorter Views and About Writing):

You need to read Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, and Zola; you need to read Austen, Thackeray, the Brontes, Dickens, George Eliot, and Hardy; you need to read Hawthorne, Melville, James, Woolf, Joyce, and Faulkner; you need to read Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, Goncherov, Gogol, Bely, Khlebnikov, and Flaubert; you need to read Stephen Crane, Mark Twain, Edward Dahlberg, John Steinbeck, Jean Rhys, Glenway Wescott, John O'Hara, James Gould Cozzens, Angus Wilson, Patrick White, Alexander Trocchi, Iris Murdoch, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, Anthony Powell, Vladimir Nabokov; you need to read Nella Larsen, Knut Hamsun, Edwin Demby, Saul Bellow, Lawrence Durrell, John Updike, John Barth, Philip Roth, Coleman Dowell, William Gaddis, William Gass, Marguerite Young, Thomas Pynchon, Paul West, Bertha Harris, Melvin Dixon, Daryll Pinckney, Darryl Ponicsan, and John Keene, Jr.; you need to read Thomas M. Disch, Joanna Russ, Richard Powers, Carroll Maso, Edmund White, Jayne Ann Phillips, Robert Gluck, and Julian Barnes—you need to read them and a whole lot more; you need to read them not so that you will know what they have written about, but so that you can begin to absorb some of the more ambitious models for what the novel can be.

Note: I haven't read every single writer on that list; there are even three I've literally never heard of; I can think of others I'd recommend in place of some he's cited; but still, his general point—that you need to read the major and minor classics—is correct.

The best piece of general advice I know, and not only about writing, comes from Dr. Johnson, The Rambler #63:

The traveller that resolutely follows a rough and winding path, will sooner reach the end of his journey, than he that is always changing his direction, and wastes the hours of day-light in looking for smoother ground and shorter passages.

I've known too many young writers over the years who sabotaged themselves by overthinking and therefore never finishing or sharing their projects; this stems, I assume, from a lack of self-trust or, more grandly, trust in the universe (the Muses, God, etc.). But what professors always tell Ph.D. students about dissertations is also true of novels, stories, poems, plays, comic books, screenplays, etc: There are only two kinds of dissertations—finished and unfinished. Relatedly, this is the age of online—an age when 20th-century institutions are collapsing, and 21st-century ones have not yet been invented. Unless you have serious connections in New York or Iowa, publish your work yourself and don't bother with the gatekeepers.

Other than the above, I find most writing advice useless because over-generalized or else stemming from arbitrary culture-specific or field-specific biases, e.g., Orwell's extremely English and extremely journalistic strictures, not necessarily germane to the non-English or non-journalistic writer. "Don't use adverbs," they always say. Why the hell shouldn't I? It's absurd. "Show, don't tell," they insist. Fine for the aforementioned Orwell and Hemingway, but irrelevant to Edith Wharton and Thomas Mann. Freytag's Pyramid? Spare me. Every new book is a leap in the dark. Your project may be singular; you may need to make your own map as your traverse the unexplored territory.

Hard truths? There's one. I know it's a hard truth because I hesitate even to type it. It will insult our faith in egalitarianism and the rewards of earnest labor. And yet, I suspect the hard truth is this: ineffables like inspiration and genius count for a lot. If they didn't, if application were all it took, then everybody would write works of genius all day long. But even the greatest geniuses usually only got the gift of one or two all-time great work. This doesn't have to be a counsel of despair, though: you can always try to place yourself wherever you think lightning is likeliest to strike. That's what I do, anyway. Good luck!

#creative writing #literature

[light-lanterne]

so, i got an ask on my other account about my spanish teacher from middle school, who i briefly mentioned in a little post about how her daughter is now living in my building.

in the (now deleted for aesthetic reasons) post i'd made, i mentioned how this teacher used to bully me and this person now wants to know a bit more and i know i don't owe it to anyone, but i don't have anyone to talk about this with and i want to vent so why not ?

tw for bullying and ableism

anyway, i'm not going to share everything this teacher did (we'll be here all day), but allow me to explain the crux of the problem she had with me:

ever since i was a kid, i've always struggled with anxiety related conditions and one of them is selective mutism. it started at a very young age and my mom worked really hard to get me through it and, while i still fell back into it every once in a while, i was mostly over it by the time i entered middle school.

enter this teacher. she was strict and way too demanding in some aspects, but i've always been good at adapting to such personalities so my grades and schoolwork weren't the problem.

the problem was the way i talk.

you see, i have a condition called rhotacism. it basically means that the little ligament under my tongue is shorter than average and, as a result, i can't really articulate the letter "r". i've always had this problem, but other than some bullying in primary school, it's never been much of an issue for me.

until this teacher took an issue with it. almost from the start of my first year of middle school, she started poking fun at me for it: she would always correct me when i "said something wrong", she would make me read passages with a lot of r sounds, and she would claim that the reason i couldn't pronounce it was not something physical (which it is), but something neurological.

she claimed something was wrong with my brain and would call me all the common slurs. at least once a day, she would make sure to humiliate me in front of all my classmates (who naturally followed her lead so yay for that).

it sucked. and it made me very self-conscious and anxious. but it didn't stop there.

i think it was one or two months into my second year of middle school that she tried to get me expelled. her reasoning was that i was clearly in need of special-needs education and that she couldn't properly give class with me in there. moreover, she claimed my classmates couldn't understand me (they could), so i was actively affecting their education and that wasn't fair to them.

so she made a big fuss about it and it didn't really go too far, the principal was smart enough to know that it was all bull and it could get bad for them if she were allowed to continue, but it did take a toll on my 13-year-old self.

so i stopped talking. i'd only do it when needed to keep my grades up, but other than that i wouldn't talk to anyone ever,,, even if this obviously added fuel to the fire.

she got nastier with her insults. she moved me to the back of the classroom even if i couldn't read the whiteboard. she would pretend i was breaking random rules like "not drawing in class" so she could send me to detention (i actually really liked drawing back then,,, so maybe i was an artist at one point but she took that away from me x.x ), and she would complain about how i was good at english when i "couldn't even speak" my own language

(english has softer r sounds than spanish, especially if i use a british accent,,, also, my english teacher was not a meanie >.< )

it got really bad, so bad i eventually managed to get the principal on her case (we had a nativity play thingy and she wanted to make me a piggy, when all my other classmates got to be human :\ i ended up as a background shepherd in the end) and by my last year of middle school, she finally toned it down,,,

,,,via not speaking to me in the slightest, and encouraging my classmates to do the same. i think they even stopped using my name all year, which raised concerns from the most random teachers (who i thought didn't care) but there was little they could do about it :[

alas, it beat the bullying and i've never had a problem with being alone, so i got a bittersweet break and i managed to be top of my class despite everything. so i guess i won in the end.

nevertheless, i never knew why she had a problem with me. i think she didn't like my brother all that much either (he's two years older than me, so he was on his way out by the time the bullying started), but i don't really know. all i know is that this teacher was very mean and left me with a lot of problems (including the selective mutism, which is now here to stay woo) so, by all means, i think i am righteous to say that she was a bully,,, abuser, i'd even say,,, and that i hope she never sees me when she comes visit her daughter.

(all because i can't pronounce some words properly and have trouble hearing,,,)

#⚰️ #🧸

[allalrightagain]

Thanks for the tag @lunapwrites <3 <3

Hardcover or Paperback? ebook 😅 it’s handier, has search and bookmark functions, and I can adjust the size and brightness as needed. but paperback if you make me choose.

Bookstore or Library? Libraries! Get free book access and someplace to chill. Your tax dollars at work. (Plus, they usually have other services like a makers space and classes!)

Bookmark or Receipt? … tissue? I always have tissues on me lol and I almost never get or keep receipts. and a bookmark? in this economy?

Standalone or Series? Series! Standalone books are nice, but you can really dive into the world and the characters with a series because there’s just so much time to get to know them.

Nonfiction or Fiction? Fiction. I have TRIED to like NF, but I just. don’t. My preferred research method is doing a wikipedia/webmd spiral and reading 2-3 paragraphs from any one article, not a whole book on the same subject.

Thriller or Fantasy? Fantasy! Thrillers can be really interesting, and they’re fun to pull into your writing style, but at the end of the day I want an urban or high fantasy to escape to.

Under 300 Pages or Over? My preference is smaller books in a bigger series, but if you’re telling a good story in a way that my brain is vibing with, I’ll read as long of a book as your willing to write. (my big issue is that I have no sense of self restraint so the longer the book, the more likely I’m neglecting something like sleep or food to keep reading lol)

Children’s or YA? YA, probably. There’s definitely good books in both genres, but I just love angsty teenagers doing dumb things in bad situations.

Friends to Lovers or Enemies to Lovers? Friends. Enemies can be fun too, but I love the layers when you get into friends to lovers. Enemies to friends to lovers or friends to enemies to lovers or other permutations of Messy can be even better.

Read in Bed or Read on the Couch? Right now? Bed. Due to [blah blah blah health shit] I’m spending more time lying down than I’d really like, and beds are just more comfortable for that. But a couch right by a window? perfect.

Read at Night or Read in the Morning? If I read in the morning literally nothing will get done ever again 😂 I like reading in the middle of the day when my brain needs a break from thinking and I can jump into someone else’s world for a bit.

Keep Pristine or Markup? Markup. It’s part of the reason I like ebooks bc I do feel bad marking up a physical copy (and you’ll NEVER see me do it to a library book) but like. I have thoughts!!! I need to share!!!! Fandom and an English degree both definitely made this habit worse lol.

Cracked Spine or Dogear? I have a copy of DH that has cracked so badly you can’t read it (it’s the one I got when it came out) I do try to baby my books but when I really like a book, the spines just always seem to end up cracking, probably bc I reread the same passages and leave them open to those pages.

Tagging: @felixantares @billsfangearring @mkaugust @twentysevensummers

#tag games #reading

[i-want-my-iwtv]

Are there references for the castle Lestat used to live in? I think it should have the air of Lestat's gloomy childhood and also his optimistic future with Louis.

I'm not sure if you mean specific castles AR based Lestat's castle on, or lines in canon... to my knowledge, we don't have a specific castle, and I don't know passages/line refs about Lestat's castles and I confess that I don't have time to compile them here 😅

As I remember, there were a lot of vague things about the castle earlier on, something about how cold it was, and the old armory room. Gabrielle had a room that I imagined was part of a tower, or other place not just down the hall, but I may have headcanoned that. Later in canon Lestat talks about the renovations and how it's all being updated with modern amenities while still preserving the anachronistic charm as much as possible, so that walking around, you're not confronted by light switches and other things that would betray the prior time period (except of course for all the flat screen TVs pffft).

Maybe someone can add some lines here?

I think it should have the air of Lestat's gloomy childhood and also his optimistic future with Louis.

^I like this, very poetic! 🏰🌹

You might also like this post by @duendology, @takemetocoffin-or-losemeforever, and @annabellioncourt re: cité des Arvernes: can’t you just see little baby mortal Lestat, hunting and galavanting around this place!

Here are 2 castles I envision as Lestat's, and I have a few more in my #castle tag. BUT, these are kind of small for his current standards, I just like the aesthetic of these. With all the remodeling he’d probably have one more like Kylemore Abbey, Pollacappul, Co. Galway, Ireland.

Anjony Castle/Château d'Anjony, Auvergne, France

^X Massif Central//Auvergne//France, @vampchronfic shared this one in 2014

I like this one bc it's IN the Auvergne! And I love the idea of there being sprawling fields around it, and woodland within walkable/horse-ridable distance. It also has at least one tower, and I imagine Gabrielle had a special tower room.

Dunluce Castle Medieval Irish Castle on the Antrim Coast

Yes 6 pictures from mostly the same angle bc I liked them ALL.

Not in France. Oh well. 

Maybe it’s too far ruined, but I love the majesty of it being on a cliff, and the sprawl of it. Also there is a spot that a bunch of ppl use for wedding/engagement photos and it’s cheesy and now I want fanart of Louis/Lestat doing one of these... with fireworks in the background... #fanart request...

Relevantly: https://www.caraghislaphoto.com/dunluce-castle-elopements/ 

Kylemore Castle & Abbey, Pollacappul, Co. Galway, Ireland.

I think in modern times Lestat’s castle would have to be huge to accomodate all the vampires gathering there, so this would be better, and I like it on the water like this, nestled into verdant forest.

“This 40,000 ft2 castle took 100 men four years to complete. Originally built for English Parliament member Mitchell Henry and his family in 1867, the castle initially had more than 70 rooms and has a granite facade that’s 142 feet wide. Also on the property are a Gothic cathedral, the family mausoleum, Kylemore Abbey (a Benedictine monastery), and Ireland’s largest walled garden.” [X]

#vampire chronicles #the vampire lestat #lestat de lioncourt #lestat #castle #France #location #annabellioncourt #duendology #takemetocoffin-or-losemeforever #long post #references #fanart request

[elysium-eternal]

White Clover

My thoughts on the gorgeous song "Clover" by Toru Itoga, from MMZ2.

I've seen many translations of the lyrics, and they're all more or less the same. I'll use this one because it's convenient:

(Memories of pain so soft...that's poetic, isn't it?)

Some people think the mention of this "flower" refers to Iris. Maybe so, maybe so. She was important to him. He may have shared his fears with her about becoming a Maverick, or his dreams of his creator. I've always thought that perhaps he kept those things from X because he knew it would worry him unnecessarily; when you have to fight as your job, worrying that your best friend might be feeling constant anguish and fear, and even possibly be worrying he might become a Maverick, would be a huge distraction. Perhaps Zero was unwilling to place that burden on X's shoulders, so instead he told Iris. In the end, X was worrying about the same thing of himself. I think that may have played into Zero's long pause during X's cutscene at the end of X4 -- he realized that he could have talked to X about it all along. Or perhaps it confirmed that he couldn't -- because X was burdened by the same fears.

"White Clover is symbolic of the universal struggle for freedom."

That's interesting to me, because what Zero is talking about -- struggling to remember who he was and who he was "supposed to be", as well as vaguely remembering pain -- those are all psychological chains that weigh him down. Even though he has forgotten most of his memories, he is still aware that he has those ties to his former life, and feels they are still tying him to things he might otherwise be happy to get away from.

Zero's life during the X series was turbulent. I can imagine he might have taken a chance to start over.

Thus, struggling for freedom from his past.

And the rest of the song. He has resolved to walk this path that has been laid out before him, even though he does not remember anything that would have helped it all make sense.

It's beautiful, haunting, and special to me.

But why is it about clover? Let's get back to that. I found some interesting facts!

"Protection and male energy"

Perhaps X gave him that clover flower that he has in his pocket? Perhaps we can think of X as a protective figure for Zero right now, given his role as the "mentor" figure in the Zero series!

Or perhaps the songwriter is alluding to Zero as a protective figure, and the clover suits him!

Clover helps the soil! I can't think of a more needy, sun-baked wasteland than the Earth after the Elf Wars! With this, the clover flower might represent the healing of the planet as the characters go about their quests.

Clover is said to be a healing herb, after all.

Bees are super important for a healthy world!

"Clovers symbolize 'promise' and 'think of me'."

Again, it could be something about Iris, but I didn't find that relationship to be anything super special, deep, or sacred. Not all relationships HAVE to be super special or deep...but if you believe in soul mates, or just like the idea of soul mates, you kinda want more to point to than just "here is a boy, here is a girl, they like each other".

Or is it just me? XD

Most of us go through several relationships in our lives. Some of us have multiple relationships at the same time. Whether we remember those relationships fondly or not comes down to us as individuals. In real life, things are MUCH more complicated than they are in fiction, where things are often reduced down to only the main points the creators want us to observe and know.

So PROBABLY, they definitely want us to think Zero/Iris is or was an important thing.

However, I think there are people who worked on these games that are quietly nudging us ZeroX fans, too. ;3 I've heard people say "they only do it to sell merch and games", but I think that's a bit cynical for my liking. If they're okay with saying "Serges = Wily? The Player may decide what is the truth!", then they are going to HAVE to be okay with some of us Players deciding that ZeroX is the best pairing. v_v

WHICH BRINGS ME TO....

I see a way this clover thing could be about X, too. If ANYONE made promises to Zero, with Zero, or about Zero, it was X. And he would want Zero to remember him. Heck, X is the only one Zero DOES remember!

And that makes my heart all warm and fuzzy.

And now, my last, MOST IMPORTANT addition to this post:

"If someone carried a four-leaf clover, they would have the ability to see fairies".

CYBER ELVES ARE FAIRIESSSSSSSSSSS

xD It is done, mystery solved! The song "Clover" is about Zero's ability to see fairies.

Thanks for reading. Don't take anything I said too seriously. x3 It's just me rambling about my brainworms.

#drabble #about the song “Clover” #mega man zero #rockman zero