#i think the essay thing is like. the universe balancing things out bc i wrote what feels like the best essay I've ever written yesterday | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

inkofamethyst · 1 year

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January 4, 2023

AFKDJFKSDLFJKSLJGLS UM HELLO I JUST WOKE UP TO AN INTERVIEW OFFER FROM MY CHOICE 4 [Choice F]

I WAS SO EXCITED I THREW MY PHONE (then subsequently called my parents, of course)

REMEMBER, THIS IS THE ONE THAT I SUBMITTED FIRST AND

did not include a transfer transcript from that summer program because the service was being stupid

wrote a really crappy 1000-word research proposal for (actually two crappy research proposals bc I had to split between straightup morphology and evodevo)

used the phrase “since middle school” instead of “for nearly a decade” (I switched out that phrasing in my diversity statement when I applied to my choice 2 lol) and this has been haunting me because I think it shows how young I am which is a bad think for PhD apps I think because it means I could change my mind really easily

it had seven essays most of which were fine, but I’m not really looking forward to reading them over when I prepare for the visit

one of my recs was submitted late

LUCKILY I can choose my date of visitation, so there won’t be overlap between this one and my Choice 2 [Choice D] (I would like to restate for the court that having a numerical list of these feels wrong because a) I haven’t visited any of these schools so I don’t even know if I vibe with the environment and b) each of them have different strengths, and it would be really easy for me to switch around some of their placements, I think (except Choice 7 [Choice A])).

Really, truly, all I’m waiting for is to see if I got the diversity fellowship from my Choice 3 [Choice G] (the one where I know the lady I want to work with). She said they usually send out that information in January, and if I hear about it before the fifteenth, then I will officially have an option, and I won’t apply to my Choice 7 [Choice A] (and I’ll save $75). Then I wouldn’t have to worry about the possibility of making the decision between attending grad school somewhere I don’t want to go and taking a year off then reapplying (currently leaning toward the year off option if it came to it). These interview invitations are lovely, but they are not concrete acceptances.

BUT. I can still bask in the glory of interview offers because they are investing in me. Choice 4 [Choice F] is also paying for the visit, but their budget is clearly smaller than Choice 2 [Choice D]. That doesn’t necessarily bother me. My Choice 2 is up there with the Ivies in terms of prestige, but my Choice 4 [Choice F] does have an awesome department (one thing about Choice 4 [Choice F] though is that it’s fully an Anthropology Department, so I would be required to take anth courses outside of my concentration which is fine because I like learning in general and that could prepare me for teaching more general anth courses as a budding prof in the future, but some of the other departments are fully bioanth, so I can finally start learning more about the topics I fell in love with (oh wait not to mention the literal problem with racism that my Choice 4 is having rn,,,,,,, (I’d really like it if an unproblematic school offered me an interview, actually, that would be lovely [edit 2: this is so funny because three students died at my current uni over the two years before I decided to apply... I don’t know if there really are unproblematic schools]))).

Today is gonna be pretty chill otherwise, so I’m thankful for another interview offer, this is dope.

It does mean that I’m going to have to braid my hair this weekend :/ But it does also mean that I can just put my hair into a puff for the rest of this week, and I was really not looking forward to twisting for six hours today so that’s nice.

It’s so beautiful outside, I’m going to just chill out there today and read, I think (after I wash my dishes and do my hair).

I need to stop qualifying every positive thing with something negative. This is not bringing balance to the universe or whatever, it’s me actively stealing my own joy.

[edit: it rained on me -_-]

[edit 2.5: the rain didn’t last long, and I went to go get some work done outside, and then I saw a lovely sunset and had a nice walk for my mental health]

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loverscrossmp3 · 2 years

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1, 3, 12, 25 <33 (also please add station to station link for everyone else because this damned tab won't allow me to link anything for hype as is necessary because i am 1/3rd through it and properly obsessed)

1. favorite fic you wrote this year

oh man. i’m back in the phase where i cower in embarrassment at the fact i’ve actually uploaded the stories i have, sooo this is difficult. ok after much thought i’ll have to say this side of the universe (bare & brief) and unpopular opinion? glitter and glow despite it being unbearably pretentious. like there’s things i’d change about both but these two i can usually bear reading back

3. favorite line/scene you wrote this year

one liners come to me so much easier than actual plot ideas so i’m usually quite proud of them? i’ll add a few from stand in your storm?

They’re walking down the street and she’s balancing on the yellow lines in the middle like they wouldn’t catch her fall if she only asked them to.

idek why i like this one !! it’s just… so james of him to think that tho, don’t you think?

You smile and roses grow in my rib cage, twisting until I can’t breathe.

fun fact i actually wrote this months ago in a folder in my notes titled ‘pretentious poetry’ and then when i was writing siys i was going through it and was like this is… so james. like she’s wonderful and lovely all around but even her smile makes him feel like the good kind of death. is that even a thing? (for james, yes it is)

He’s laughing behind her, keeping up to her pace and she is breathless and so full of air all at once.

man this scene was so much fun to make. like i could see it all so it made it that much easier to put onto paper.

She thrives at night when the moon is paler than her skin and the stars light her path. What she does not know is that the sun is also a star and she is more radiant than both.

so. pretentious. who gave me the right

12. favorite character to write about this year

ok like even tho lily in most of my stories is mega oc considering they’re all muggle au’s, i still have to say her bc she’s just !! everything i want to be !!!! idk the fun part of au’s is you can do a few switch-a-roos and no one can really complain cause like?? EYE never said this was canon. anyway, i just love kinda angry, kinda cold women !!! don’t know why !!! i’m rambling so long story short: lily.

25. a fic you read this year you would recommend everyone read

you think i’d make a rec list and it WOULDN’T include station to station?!!?? think again!

alright here’s a list of fics i’ve loved endlessly this past year to make this already long post even longer because i simply cannot choose just ONE! is that a joke!

anything by my baby ridi. god i love her so. but especially! station to station and of witness testimony. i kindly, respectfully, hate you for writing those because they make me feel like death (but the good kind - HA see what i did there) but also love you all the more cause fuck.

warm front by @jiilys and quite literally any of her other works. you’d believe me if i said i didn’t binge everything on her blog in the past year if i said so, right?

theogony and bond and free and [insert rambling essay about all of @clare-with-no-i ‘s stories bc i’m anything if not insane]

the last enemy series by @chdarling bc fuck jk rowling no one could make anything more canon than ch

football, calculus, and cappuccinos by @moonawrites i could write essays about this one. the cackles i’ve let out while reading? the tears? so fucking good

question list is: here pls ask me something so i can forget about the load of schoolwork i need to finish

#so many more wonderful fics i’ve read this past year i wish i could talk about them all #check my bookmarks tho! the good stuff’s there too!#MWAH thank u for the ask bby (and anyone else who actually read this whole thing god i’m so sorry)#crimson-snitch #writer asks #liv recs

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bloodbenderz · 3 years

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humaniterations (dot) net/2014/10/13/an-anarchist-perspective-on-the-red-lotus/ this article from oct 2014 is very dense — truly, a lot to unpack here, but I feel like you would find this piece interesting. I would love it if you shared your thoughts on the points that stood out to you, whether you agree or disagree. you obv don’t have to respond to it tho, but I’m sending it as an ask jic you feel like penning (and sharing) a magnificent essay, as is your wont 💕

article

i know this took me forever 2 answer SORRY but i just checked off all the things on my to do list for the first time in days today so. Essay incoming ladies!

ok im SO glad u sent me this bc it’s so so good. it’s a genuinely thoughtful criticism of the politics in legend of korra (altho i think its sometimes a little mean to korra unnecessarily like there’s no reason to call her a “petulant brat” or say that she throws tantrums but i do understand their point about her being an immature and reactionary hero, which i’ll get back to) and i think the author has a good balance between acknowledging like Yeah the lok writers were american liberals and wrote their show accordingly and Also writing a thorough analysis of lok’s politics that felt relevant and interesting without throwing their hands up and saying this is all useless liberal bullshit (which i will admit that i tend to do).

this article essentially argues that the red lotus antagonists of s3 were right. And that’s not an uncommon opinion i think but this gives it serious weight. Like, everything that zaheer’s gang did was, in context, fully understandable. of course the red lotus would be invested in making sure that the physically and spiritually and politically most powerful person in the world ISNT raised by world leaders and a secret society of elites that’s completely unaccountable to the people! of course the red lotus wants to bring down tyrannical governments and allow communities to form and self govern organically! and the writers dismiss all of that out of hand by 1. consistently framing the red lotus as insane and murderous (korra never actually gives zaheer’s ideas a chance or truly considers integrating them into her own approach) 2. representing the death of the earth queen as not just something that’s not necessarily popular (what was with mako’s bootlicker grandma, i’d love to know) but as something that causes unbelievable violence and chaos in ba sing se (which, like, a lot of history and research will tell you that people in disasters tend towards prosocial behaviors). so the way the story frames each of these characters and ideologies is fascinating because like. if you wanted to write season 3 of legend of korra with zaheer as the protagonist and korra as the antagonist, you wouldn’t actually have to change the sequence of events at all, really. these writers in particular and liberal writers in general LOVE writing morally-gray-but-ultimately-sympathetic characters (like, almost EVERY SINGLE fire nation character in the first series, who were full on violent colonizers but all to a degree were rehabilitated in the eyes of the viewer) but instead of framing the red lotus as good people who are devoted to justice and freedom and sometimes behave cruelly to get where theyre trying to go, they frame them as psychopaths and murderers who have good intentions don’t really understand how to make the world a better place.

and the interesting thing about all this, about the fact that the red lotus acted in most cases exactly as it should have in context and the only reason its relegated to villain status is bc the show is written by liberals, is that the red lotus actually points out really glaring sociopolitical issues in universe! like, watching the show, u think well why the fuck HASN’T korra done anything about the earth queen oppressing her subjects? why DOESN’T korra do anything about the worse than useless republic president? why the hell are so many people living in poverty while our mains live cushy well fed lives? how come earth kingdom land only seems to belong to various monarchs and settler colonists, instead of the people who are actually indigenous to it? the show does not want to answer these questions, because american liberal capitalism literally survives on the reality of oppressive governments and worse than useless presidents and people living in poverty while the middle/upper class eats and indigenous land being stolen. if the show were to answer these questions honestly, the answer would be that the status quo in real life (and the one on the show that mirrors real life) Has To Change.

So they avoid answering these questions honestly in order for the thesis statement to be that the status quo is good. and the only way for the show to escape answering these questions is for them to individualize all these broad social problems down into Good people and Bad people. so while we have obvious bad ones like the earth queen we also have all these capitalists and monarchs and politicians who are actually very nice and lovely people who would never hurt anyone! which is just such an absurd take and it’s liberal propaganda at its best. holding a position of incredible political/economic power in an unjust society is inherently unethical and maintaining that position of power requires violence against the people you have power over. which is literally social justice 101. but there’s literally no normal, average, not-politically-powerful person on the show. so when leftist anarchism is presented and says that destroying systems that enforce extreme power differentials is the only way to bring peace and freedom to all, the show has already set us up to think, hey, fuck you, top cop lin beifong and ford motor ceo asami sato are good people and good people like them exist! and all we have to do to move forward and progress as a society is to make sure we have enough good individuals in enough powerful positions (like zuko as the fire lord ending the war, or wu as the earth king ending the monarchy)! which is of course complete fiction. liberal reform doesn’t work. but by pretending that it could work by saying that the SYSTEM isnt rotten it’s just that the people running it suck and we just need to replace those people, it automatically delegitimizes any radical movements that actually seek to change things.

and that’s the most interesting thing about this article to me is that it posits that the avatar...might actually be a negative presence in the world. the avatar is the exact same thing: it’s a position of immense political and physical power bestowed completely randomly, and depending on the moral character and various actions of who fills that position at any given time, millions of people will or won’t suffer. like kyoshi, who created the fascist dai li, like roku, who refused to remove a genocidal dictator from power, like aang, who facilitated the establishment of a settler colonial state on earth kingdom land. like korra! she’s an incredibly immature avatar and a generally reactionary lead. i’ve talked about this at length before but she never actually gets in touch with the needs of the people. she’s constantly running in elite circles, exposed only to the needs and squabbles of the upper class! how the hell is she supposed to understand the complexities of oppression and privilege when she was raised by a chess club with inordinate amounts of power and associates almost exclusively with politicians and billionaires?? from day 1 we see that she tends to see things in very black and white ways which is FINE if you’re a privileged 17 yr old girl seeing the world for the first time but NOT FINE if you’re the single most powerful person in the world! Yeah, korra thinks the world is probably mostly fine and just needs a little whipping into shape every couple years, because all she has ever known is a mostly fine world! in s1 when mako mentions that he as a homeless impoverished teenager worked for a gang (which is. Not weird. Impoverished people of every background are ALWAYS more likely to resort to socially unacceptable ways of making money) korra is like “you guys are criminals?????!!!!!” she was raised in perfect luxury by a conservative institution and just never developed beyond that. So sure, if the red lotus raised her anarchist, probably a lot would’ve been different/better, but....they didn’t. and korra ended up being a reactionary and conservative avatar who protected monarchs and colonialist politicians. The avatar as a position is completely subject to the whims of whoever is currently the avatar. and not only does that suck for everyone who is not the avatar, not only is it totally unfair to whatever kid who grows up knowing the fate of the world is squarely on their shoulders, but it as a concept is a highly individualist product of the authors’ own western liberal ideas of progress! the idea that one good leader can fix the world (or should even try) based on their own inherent superiority to everyone else is unbelievably flawed and ignores the fact that all real progress is brought about as a result of COMMUNITY work, as a result of normal people working for themselves and their neighbors!

the broader analysis of bending was really interesting to me too, but im honestly not sure i Totally agree with it. the article pretty much accepts the show’s assertion that bending is a privilege (and frankly backs it up much better than the original show did, but whatever), and i don’t think that’s NECESSARILY untrue since it is, like, a physical advantage (the author compares it to, for example, the fact that some people are born athletically gifted and others are born with extreme physical limitations), but i DO think that it discounts the in universe racialization of bending. in any sequel to atla that made sense, bending as a race making fact would have been explored ALONGSIDE the physical advantages it bestows on people. colonialism and its aftermath is generally ignored in this article which is its major weakness i think, especially in conjunction with bending. you can bring up the ideas the author did about individual vs community oriented progress in the avatar universe while safely ignoring the colonialism, but you can’t not bring up race and colonialism when you discuss bending. especially once you get to thinking about how water/earth/airbenders were imprisoned and killed specifically because bending was a physical advantage, and that physical advantage was something that would have given colonized populations a means of resistance and that the fire nation wanted to keep to itself.

i think that’s the best lens thru which to analyze bending tbh! like in the avatar universe bending is a tool that different ethnic groups tend to use in different ways. at its best, bending actually doesn’t represent social power differences (despite representing a physical power difference) because it’s used to represent/maintain community solidarity. like, take the water tribe. katara being the last waterbender, in some way, makes her the last of a part of swt CULTURE. the implication is that when there were a lot of waterbenders in the south, they dedicated their talents to building community and helping their neighbors, because this was something incredibly culturally important and important to the water tribe as a community. the swt as a COLLECTIVE values bending for what it can do for the entire tribe, which counts for basically every other talent a person can have (strength, creativity, etc). the fire nation, by contrast, distorts the community value of bending by racializing it: anyone who bends an element that isn’t fire is inherently NOT fire nation (and therefore inherently inferior) and, because of the physical power that bending confers, anyone who bends an element that isn’t fire is a threat to fire nation hegemony. and in THAT framework of bending, it’s something that intrinsically assigns worth and reifies race in a way that’s conveniently beneficial to the oppressor.

it IS worth talking about how using Element as a way to categorize people reifies nations, borders, and race in a way that is VERY characteristic of white american liberals. i tried to be conscious of that (and the way that elements/bending can act in DIFFERENT ways, depending on cultural context) but i think it’s pretty clear that the writers did intend for element to unequivocally signify nation (and, by extension, race), which is part of why they screwed up mixed families so bad in lok. when they’ve locked themselves into this idea that element=nation=race, they end up with sets of siblings like mako and bolin or kya tenzin and bumi, who all “take” after only one parent based on the element that they bend. which is just completely stupid but very indicative of how the writers actually INTENDED element/bending to be a race making process. and its both fucked up and interesting that the writers display the same framework of race analysis that the canonical antagonists of atla do.

anyway that’s a few thoughts! thank u again for sending the article i really loved it and i had a lot of fun writing this <3

#this is 2.1k words LMFAOO #asks #analysis #do i have an analysis tag?#crit #lok crit

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meikuree · 3 years

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fic writer interview

tagged by @lightdescending -- tysm, this was really fun and i enjoy elaborating on things about writing/the writing process!

putting this under a read more because of my trademark verbosity (AGAIN)

name: meikuree

fandoms: actively writing for snk, tempted to write for the locked tomb

two-shot: oh i've not intentionally done these! twenty years of snow accidentally fits the bill, but only because it's on an indefinite hiatus

most popular multi-chapter: of aubades, my pieck-centric ficlet series, by some metrics

actual worst part of writing: when I get stuck in a loop of perfectionism and excessive self-scrutiny and rewrite… and rewrite… and rewrite again. my solution to this is to send it to a friend and ask for them to tell me just one (1) nice thing about it and put me out of my misery, or do freewriting where the point is to write whatever immediately pops into my head. usually then I’ll bump into an epiphany in the middle about how to Make It Work.

alternatively: fic writing is at times such a solitary, obsessively recursive activity and that’s one tension I dislike/have to negotiate with, because part of why I like art is to share it with people or at the very least engage in some kind of reciprocal conversation about it. community in art is very important to me in general, and I try to cultivate it in my online presence in small ways!

how you choose your titles: i'm a fan of grabbing titles from poems and songs/song lyrics (like you!) -- and drawing them from regina spektor songs in particular, bc she’s by some metrics my all-time favourite musician and i’m very familiar with her discography

do you outline: usually, yes. i don’t confine myself to it, but at minimum I outline pivotal moments and turning points. my process tends to start with a compelling scene or character interaction popping into my head and then goes on with me thinking about how i can use it as a vehicle for communicating a certain concept/philosophical idea/insight about XYZ characters' relationships somehow. that becomes the core idea/endpoint I want to reach by the end in a fic, so then i'll outline the main emotional or introspective beats i want to carry across in service of that

ideas I probably won’t get around to but wouldn’t it be nice: wow, um... /gestures vaguely at my unending list of wips/ that said, one idea i'm tickled by is an obnoxious, utterly random M-rated pieck/lady tybur fic involving painplay and knifeplay, the plot for which is literally just… lara tybur stabs pieck with a knife, but make it sexy somehow… with a dash of political intrigue and a complicated ambiguous relationship where two women use each other in a decidedly callous but also self-aware and self-indulgent way. the idea for this just came from me going "ah yes... the inherent homoeroticism of being stabbed by another woman..." and wondering about ~scenarios enabled by being a titan shifter, when you can regenerate your wounds and such! (partial inspiration also came, I will admit, from the locked tomb fandom and its lesbian body horror influences)

callouts @ me: sensory details are one of my biggest weak points. i've been ironing it out through concerted practice, but when i first started out writing fic i tended to be more comfortable dealing with metaphor, introspection, and mental states than... writing about actual, corporeal things happening in corporeal textspace. it can create the impression while reading, I suspect, that the characters are stuck a lot in their own heads. one of my earliest and favourite ao3 comments i've gotten said in passing that i used "very little dialogue and description" and i'm still tickled by... how true it is as an MO. it also amuses me because it seems to parallel the same issue i had with essays i wrote at university, i think (!) -- my professors would tell me, “you have a great grasp on the theory but you need to include more concrete examples." and i'd go "what? i was supposed to use examples?? ?__? isn’t the point self-evident from the theory?” for me, shifts in relationship dynamics and the negotiation of one's worldview underlying an event ARE the plot! -- and everything else tends to become subservient to that when i write

the other thing, which is somewhat related to the above, is just... self-confidence! i can be very insecure about my writing style, as my partner and poor friends I’ve whinged to can attest. mainly because i always fear that reading it feels like wading through a thick, unappealing swampy bog of someone's thoughts. but i think the solution is to just take a grounded, balanced view, like: there are some things i do well, and some things i do not-as-well in writing, and that's fine! that's normal! and in the moment i can be very hard on myself, and wring my hands thinking OH MY GOD THE UTTER CRINGE OF ME WRITING ANY OF THIS but i find that somehow, i always end up enjoying rereading what i write.

best writing traits: the most consistent comment i get, i think, is that my writing is beautiful and poetic (and one time: "this is one of the most poetic things i've ever read." which -- ?!?!). I’ve also been told that i characterise people well or with nuance, and write about them sensitively and with depth. i'm grateful, always, to hear these bc these things constitute the one niche i CAN do, imo!

spicy tangential opinion: hm… from what I’ve observed, many fandoms have a tendency to flatten character motives and complexities into easy, tidy and dare i say, sometimes bizarre, labels and categories. it’s not surprising it happens, but sometimes there’s space for people (a big, vague, nonspecific ‘people’) to go beyond simplistic assumptions about characters and one-dimensional portrayals (and to give writers who achieve it their due! I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen an incredibly well-written fic that was relatively undernoticed and gone, “why, fandom???”) sometimes you write to fix canon, and sometimes you write because it’s fanon that needs fixing instead.

tagging (no pressure): @ebbet @noxcounterspell @leksaa90 @minoan-ophidian @frumpkinspocketdimension @acerinky @rose-gardens @chocochipbiscuit @whiteasy @ochen @kallistoi anyone else who wants to join in!

#side note your answer about writing insecurity was so relatable #ask game #meikuree talks #writing

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collegecoward · 4 years

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Hey, so I graduated this past May and since then I've just been working 40 hours a week. I feel like I need to go to college to do something with my life but I feel like theres so much in my way and I havent done anything to even start and I dont have a clue what I'd want to do. I'm so unsure on how to do anything regarding financial aid or even applying to colleges. I'm also worried that it wouldn't work with my schedule for my job. I work 5 days with 2 off days and I'm on evenings so I feel like I wouldn't be able to balance work and school, but I would have to bc I'm my only financial support. Sorry for the dumping my problems, but any advice?

How To Do College 101

Congratulations on your graduation! Working a full-time job after graduation (during a freaking pandemic, no less) is no small feat either, and I applaud you for that, too. Once upon a time, I was like you: I didn’t know anything about college except that I wanted to go, and now I run a blog telling people how to go to college. College might be strange and unfamiliar now, but in time, you will learn how to do it!

This might be my longest post, so strap in for a fun ride!! My answer comes to you in three parts:

How To Do Community College

How To Do University

How To Do Financial Aid

P.S. I’m going to say this only once, but feel free to ask why: Do not attend a for-profit college. Okay, now onto the basics!

How To Do Community College

I encourage you to read my Ode to Community College. Community colleges are real colleges designed for people who are low on funds, are working or have other responsibilities, don’t know what they want to study yet, and/or don’t know how college works yet.

Step 1: Applying

Community colleges accept anyone who applies, and the application is usually just like filling out a job application, but you will also need to send in your high school transcript, and I recommend sending any test scores. Your college may have you take a placement test to see if you’re ready for college. If you’re not quite ready, they may have you take some pre-college courses in English or math before you officially start a degree program.

Step 2: Choosing a Degree Program

Among other things, community colleges award associate’s degrees, which are essentially the first two years of a bachelor’s degree at a four-year college or university. You’ll take introductory classes like English, math, science, and social sciences, as well as electives (i.e. fun classes). Here’s a list of programs that might be offered at your community college.

Step 3: Taking the Right Classes

Make sure you stick to your college’s degree plan so that you take classes that 1) count toward your associate’s degree and 2) will transfer to a university. Most classes you take for an associate’s degree (AA, AS, or AFA) should transfer to a bachelor’s degree (BA, BS, or BFA) easily enough, but sometimes universities aren’t very transfer-friendly. The best option is to transfer to a university that has a partnership with your community college, which is information you should be able to find on your community college’s website. If your community college doesn’t have any partners, you’ll want to research the transfer policies at the universities you’re interested in and follow their guidelines on what classes to take.

Step 4: Transferring

In your last year of community college, you will apply to a four-year college or university for your bachelor’s degree. You’ll need to pick a major when you apply because for the next two years, that’s what you will be studying. Make sure you tour the university before you attend and get acclimated before your first day!

How To Do University

Whether or not you attend community college for the first two years or enroll directly into a four-year college or university, you’ll want to understand how to navigate the basics as early as possible.

Step 1: Exploring Your Options

Use my Self-Reflection Toolkit and this quiz from Marquette University to explore potential majors. These are just meant to get you thinking and guide you as you learn more about yourself and your interests. This process will take time to research and figure out, and if you enroll directly into a four-year college you can change your major after you apply. As I mentioned, the first two years are mostly basics and figuring stuff out, so either way you have time.

I was very bad at choosing colleges to apply to and applied almost at random. I learned a lot from those mistakes, and on my FAQ page you’ll see me trying to impart that wisdom on others. I recommend doing your research, going on virtual tours, and getting used to just looking at college websites, even if you don’t know what you want yet. Start by window shopping for colleges in your state and see what they have to offer you. College Board also has tools for finding a college that fits your needs. It’s worth starting as early as possible, and I know that you can do it. Like I said, I was really bad at it and I still made it through.

Step 2: Applying

Applying to a four-year college will take more steps than a community college application. Many colleges require letters of recommendation, essays, and application fees (look on their websites for fee waivers). More information is on my FAQ page, of course, but be prepared to complete these steps before application deadlines. Each college sets its own deadline, but if you want to go next year, you’ll likely need to apply by January or February. Applying can be daunting, but you will need to do it at some point, even if you go to community college first.

Step 3: Finding Resources

Access any and all resources your university offers, which will include advising, counseling, career services, and more. The same is true at a community college, but I would argue it’s even more true at a university. You might find out about internships, research opportunities, fun events, and all that stuff that excited you when you saw it on your university’s website! Even if you don’t feel like you need resources, you’re paying for them, so you might as well use them! Often people won’t know how to help you unless you tell them you’re struggling, like how you told me what you’re going through and I wrote a post that’s turning into a short novel! (I’ll be done soon, I promise.)

Step 4: Taking The Right Classes

Just like at a community college, you want to make sure you’re taking classes that count toward your degree and interest you. Make sure you’re following the prescribed degree plan on your university’s website and communicated by your advisor. If you find that you’ve chosen a major that doesn’t fit your interests, make sure you speak with your professors, your advisor, and anyone else whose opinion you trust.

How To Do Financial Aid

Step 1: Understanding The Basics

There are three major types of financial aid: loans (money you have to pay back after you graduate), grants (government money you’re awarded based on your financial need that you don’t have to pay back), and scholarships (money from a college or other source that is awarded for any reason that you don’t have to pay back). Loans might come from the government, your college, or a bank. I recommend borrowing from the federal government because the interest is so low (basically, it’s cheaper to pay off than a bank loan).

Step 2: Filling Out FAFSA

If you want to go to college next fall, or if you just want to do a practice round, fill out FAFSA now. I’m assuming you’re under 24, so you will need your parents’ tax information even if they’re not going to help you pay for college. Filling out FAFSA will never, not ever ever ever require you or your parents to take out any loans. Rather, FAFSA gives you access to any need-based financial aid you might be eligible for, whether that aid comes from the government or not. Loans agreements are a totally separate form, and you can take some loans without your parents’ help. If you’re not eligible for FAFSA, check whether your state or college has its own FAFSA alternative.

Step 3: Reading Your Award Letter

After a college sends an acceptance letter, they will also send a financial aid award letter. The letter will show you how much you’ve been awarded in scholarships and grants and how much you can take out in loans from the federal government or the college itself. You should compare your financial aid amount to the total cost of attendance, will you can find on the college’s financial aid webpage. The total cost of attendance is how much it costs to pay for tuition, fees, housing, and a rough estimate of your other living expenses. Basically, it’s how much it costs to be a student for one year.

As you said, I wouldn’t expect you to be able to work 40 hours while maintaining good grades, so may need to be frugal and creative to fill in any gaps financial aid didn’t cover. Private colleges tend to have a really big “sticker price,” but may offer generous scholarships as discounts, whereas public colleges tend to be cheaper and may have (large and small) scholarships to help you pay.

Step 4: Applying

In addition to the scholarships that you may be automatically awarded if you meet certain criteria, your colleges may also have scholarships that you have to apply for by yourself. This information will be located on a college’s financial aid webpage. There are also scholarships from nonprofit organizations and businesses. Visit my resources page for info, ask people you know if they’re aware of any scholarships, ask your boss and coworkers, and ask Google for “scholarships in [your town].”

Okay, I threw a lot at you, but those are the basics as I see them! You can totally do this. It’s going to be a big learning curve, but the payoffs will be big. And you can always come back here for more advice and reassurance. I’m proud of you already for thinking of your future and doing what you can to support yourself and your learning.

#application #apply #appblr #major #community college #transfer #financial aid #student loans #scholarships

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dreamsafterhours · 4 years

Text

college boyfriend!markhyuk au series: III (donghyuk's pathway)

a universe in which roommates!markhyuk meet each other's s/o in class

markhyuk are roommates, my/n and dy/n are roommates, mark and dy/n take classes together and so do donghyuk and my/n — how will their fates intertwine?

genre: fluff pairings: mark+my/n (fem), donghyuk+dy/n (fem), platonic!mark+dy/n, platonic!donghyuk+my/n format: dotpoint AU universe: non idol, college bf warning: some swearing

masterlist

or click here to meet your soulmate, eng lit!mark!

II ⇤ | III | ⇥ IV

III: 별빛이 내린다 샤라랄라랄라라 (2+2=4)

the meeting of two souls: donghyuk & dy/n

welcome! back and to the next part

in which things actually happen! yay

so. up until this point

it’s been quite obvious i hope

that this is the one where The Soulmates Meet™

and this one right here is the one where donghyuk meets his future wifenew best (not) friend

dammit this is a set plot with SET relationships

yeah

major spoilers for future parts but hey :) y’all know it i know it let’s just.

let’s get to it!!

that day you accidentally sleep in after a late night and walk into your lecture looking pretty trashier than you would normally a few weeks into the first sem and you’re already tired it’s okay bby aww

and mark suggests skipping the next lecture and going for coffee instead

you’re like ok lmfao free coffee for me yay thanks marcus i owe you one

and to make up for the lecture he suggests he join you and your roommate with his own roommate in the library later that day to study the material you’d missed out on

so you’re like sweet study group hell yeah and apparently his roommate is also in biomed like your roommate? hey they might get along pretty well it’d be nice to have roommates in the same faculty hey

little do you know you little cutie you uwu

mark takes you to a cafe to buy you your favourite drink and a croissant bc you skipped breakfast again and he cares about his friends ok plus he was eyeing that donut next to the savoury menu in the glass cabinet and he would have felt bad if he got something to eat and you didn’t

you sit down, sipping your drink at the window seats and wishing your fatigue away

laughing with mark about what you slept so late for

my/n had been ranting about her love life again or perhaps lack thereof,,

don’t worry tho

after you’d gotten her to sleep, you’d gotten major feels for an essay question that you’d been tasked with due in a week but you hadn’t touched it until last night

staring at the prompt for at least half an hour trying to get your head around it and wondering what the hell you’d write about

but like they say

starting is half of it

so when you start spinning your words and getting into the writing mood

you accidentally wrote an entire draft without realising

albeit being full of loose ends and points you need to refine, etc., it was a decent body of work that you’d tackle for a few more nights before turning in

a skeleton, you’d called it

“a skeleton?”

“yeah. next thing i need to do is.. flesh it out”

“.. literally”

cue mark’s small pause

/inhale/

/MANIACAL LAUGHTER/

you know how mark’s laugh is very how do i put this into words hm dictated

you can HEAR each HA and they’re separate syllables yet sometimes they can vary in tone and length right it’s usually the more consistent HAs before he kinda loses it and starts throwing himself around

it was that laugh

honestly man finds everything funny his laughing threshold seems so low

and no matter how unfunny you are he WILL laugh at anything you say

and you’ve been doing it a lot lately

you could say literally any random thing and he’d already be ready to laugh (see Figure 1.1)

Figure 1.1

you: /snort/

mark, already giggling: “what”

you, still sniggering: /touches his elbow/ “arm knee”

mark: /inhale/ gotta live and breathe that oxygen

mark: HAHAHAHAhahAhaHAHAhahAhHa (decrescendo.. cRESCENDO)

^ that but looped, with intermittent slaps to your arm

anyways you never fail to make him fall out of his chair in laughter

but enough of that. dy/n is donghyuk’s y/n for a REASON ahEM

so after you finish up your breakfast at the cafe you go back to your dorm to take a power nap and recharge before your library session you were going to stay awake but mark forces you to take a nap and you’re like bro you just fed me caffeine now you want me to sleep??

then he tells you he ordered your drink decaf

you turn to him real slow

“.. you sick traitor. how dare you besmirch my name so. you scorn my forefathers and our dependence on the holy bean’s juices. betrayal runs rampant in your soul and mine stands at the mercy of your choices, them informed by the devil himself”

mark: /shrug/ “placebo effect yeet. hey, it worked for a bit. now you should really go home and get your sleep”

and he drags you back to your dorm and waves you off before going to his next class

you’re lowkey grateful for it tho when you take a shower and collapse onto your bed, falling asleep in what you think could be half the time you usually take

dreaming about losing your airpods and mark yelling at you to be more careful and then you two fighting bc you’d just lost your $300 bean sprouts but you could have sworn he took them

then police sirens went off out of nowhere and both of you were being arrested for assault and thievery

why you were the one being arrested, you had no idea but it’s a dream nothing follows the guidelines of hard reality anyway

just as you’re about to be handcuffed, you think to yourself, nope. i have a library session to attend. ain’t nobody got time for this shit

and you just

wake up

but the sirens are still continuing?? so you’re like ? is my building surrounded

they’ve come for me

even though you haven’t exactly broken any laws or have you

and you realise it was the alarm you’d set in time to get ready for your library session

so you grab your stuff and leave for the library, double checking with your roommate over text to make sure she was on her way

her lab class was taking longer than usual so she tells you she’ll be 10 or so minutes late

so you tell her you’ll be saving a seat for her and call mark to let him know you’re on your way to the library

“oh i’m already here lol. alright, i’m waiting for you outside”

and sure enough, you see him leaning on the wall of the entrance, eyes on his phone

you consider calling out to him but before you actually do, he glances up and spots you walking over tf do you have psychic spatial awareness mark

smiles and takes his corded earphones out

“you seriously need to upgrade those”

“they work fine”

“nop i’m getting you airpods for your birthday”

“dUdE thEy’RE tOo ExPEnSiVe. nO dUDE NoO”

“nOP. i’m GOING to buy you EXPENSIVE BEAN SPROUTS for your LIFE DEBUT ANNIVERSARY and you CAN’T STOP ME”

at this point i should just put /MANIACAL LAUGHTER/ and you should know what laugh i’m referring to

/MARK LEE’S MANIACAL LAUGHTER/

/MLML/ for short

nvm it’s fine it’s kinda fun to type /MANIACAL LAUGHTER/

literally mark laughs in bolded italics i’m just sad i can’t underline it on tumblr unless it’s a link lmfao

n e ways

i digress

you shush him because you’re about to walk into the library

“qUIET DOWN marcus” turn that sh down for quiet new dawn

the library is almost full for the day but after a minute or two scouring the building you find an empty four seater in the middle of nowhere it’s CRAZY you can NEVER find a MIRACLE like this life couldn’t get better

i’m sorry

you speed walk to claim it even though there was no one else in your vicinity to threaten your territory

mark laughs at you trying to get to the table as fast as you could without all out running

getting out your things, you send a photo of your seat to your roommate and tell mark to send it to his roommate as well so they know where to find you

you start watching the lecture online while taking notes and since you’re not in the lecture theatre you can talk more audibly with mark not that you don’t talk in the actual lecture too,,

maybe you do text a lot,,, during class

mark usually says things like “.. implications of what now?? interpretation of huh?” to which you reply “i want cheese when i get home”

and he has to stifle his laughter while you keep your straight face and continue writing your notes he admires this ability ngl

and so while you’re watching it on your computer

you can say things like “fuck. i want pickles”

and mark will /throw himself back/ and cackle and probably say some shit like “DIDN’T YOU HATE PICKLES??” between his giggles

and you’re like “yeah. fuck pickles but like. fuck. pickles”

he almost falls off his chair at this point

but when he balances himself again he spots someone down the corridor and wave them over

“oii! over here dude”

you turn to glance at them to expect his roommate, but you see your own roommate talking to someone and wave her over as well

“heYY my/n”

you see the other person turn to your roommate and tell her something, , then she says something back

which is apparently shocking to them, because he glances over at mark and then at you

and then he looks again when your roommate points straight at you

to which you’re like ?? hi? y u look me

and then they both start laughing

you wonder if they were laughing at you or smth until mark’s like “tf is that idiot doing”

and u look at him like ? what idiot

“that idiot. the idiot roommate i told u about. the one who called u a homewrecker”

and you’re like

wait

[info clog]

wait

[error]

“wait”

“what”

“that’s your roommate?” u point at the boy next to my/n, who r both still laughing at something going all “wOW r u KIDDING” he has a loud voice

and mark’s like “? yeah”

and you go

“.. the girl next to him is my roommate”

mark: “wait what”

that’s what she said

at that point they’ve made their way over to the table, still trying to hold in their laughter

you start to introduce your roommate to mark, who’s still confused by the situation

you: “mark, this is my/n, my/n this is mark”

my/n: “nice to see you again mark”

you: “wait. again?”

mark: “yeah we’ve met. hi my/n”

you: “what”

mark: “yeah”

my/n: “yeah”

his roommate: “yeah”

you:

you: “i feeling like i’m missing something here”

turns out

surprise surprise

that one friend that my/n had made in her biology class was mark’s roommate oh my god they were roommates

whose name, you are told, is lee donghyuk

magical moment

us watching: heh 🤤

u can’t help but do a lil body scan from head to toe bc he a fine piece of cake we all know that

honey skin, oversized white t shirt, black pants, sneakers and lighter brown hair that looks fluffy the type of fluffy that makes u wanna touch it

yes he’s good looking. yes

yaaaaas

then mark tells him your name

“she’s the one i said reminded me of you”

“r u talking abt me behind my back marcus??”

donghyuk laughs and holds out a hand for you to shake

“what kinda coincidence is this?? i adopt your roommate, you’re dealing with mine”

“oh you’re gonna have to get in line to adopt her, i’m her legal guardian, sorry donghyuk”

to which he goes

“lmfao then we’ll both be her parents”

“k but i’ll keep her on the weekends. you see her on the weekdays”

then he wipes his smile off his face and he’s like “who said we’re split”

mark and my/n are doing the /MANIACAL LAUGHTER/ at this point

mark: “so ,, seriously what are the chances”

you: “this quartet,, it’s fate guys it’s fate there’s no way about it”

yes it is. yes. it is

even that four seater table was free because of fate

donghyuk: “this calls for drinks later. we all free? no 9am classes tmr?”

my/n: “we have a physics prac at 8:30 dingus”

donghyuk: “ah shit”

you barely got any notes for that lecture for at least an hour because you end up talking altogether throughout the session but once you remember you’re in a library to study you request a ceasefire and agree to study for a bit which,, you gotta admit ,, isn’t really productive because you’re so excited to meet someone new

but the best part about the day was when you notice how many times mark is glancing at your roommate while she’s reviewing her notes, completely oblivious

donghyuk complains that he’s hungry after another hour or two and you suggest you all have dinner together

donghyuk leans back in his chair in a stretch, his jumper lifting up a little over his jeans and showing a bit of his belly “ah i’m craving chinese”

you perk up, “mE TOO”

so you all go to your favourite chinese place just outside campus where you find out that mark and my/n have the same taste and so do you and donghyuk

he points and u and goes “oH?”

“jjAMPPONG? U TOO?”

“the ONLY DISH EVER”

mark and my/n: jjajang is fine : )

you and donghyuk: “JJAMPPONG IS SUPERIOR”

give him a bro five with the shoulder bump and everything

the boys walk you and my/n back to your dorm afterwards

donghyuk and my/n end up walking in a pair and mark walks alongside you

mark mentions how it’d be fun if you made a group chat together

you: “do it”

“i don’t have your roommate’s number tho”

you’re smiling wickedly at his reaction “?? ASK HER FOR IT”

“dude what?? no u make one and i’ll add donghyuk to it”

“bRO JUST ASK”

“wHAT NO U DO IT THEN”

so u go

bet

and you call out the two biomed kids walking in front of you

“hey donghyuk! give me your number i’ll make a group chat”

“sure lol” and you open up a new contact to let him type his number into your phone

he saves his name as hot boi hyuk ✌🏻

which you just leave bc you’re busy making the group chat

mark is still astounded that you asked donghyuk for his number so easily

you: hi hello good day

my/n 🌸: yeetus meetus

hot boi hyuk ✌🏻: bow before me

you: here before me lie the beginnings of a new era

you: one born from blood and stone

my/n 🌸: tf is she saying

hot boi hyuk ✌🏻: idk but lets go with it

you: together we rise from the rubble and sort through the debris

hot boi hyuk ✌🏻: yas queen

my/n 🌸: i hate this gc already

you: and we WILL REBUILD THIS EMPIRE

read by marcus the fool 🤡 at 8:21 pm

safe to say you stay up for a good while talking on that group chat while mark just sits idle,,

you honestly don’t know if he’s consciously reading or not maybe he just left his phone on the chat

and thus our quartet is complete,,

and they all lived

happily ever after

but this isn’t the ending tho is it

wink wonk /waggles eyebrows/

this is but the epilogue to the prologue

that doesn’t make sense but n e ways

our quartet has not yet become two pairings

y’all just don’t know what the future has in store for you :)

click here to meet your soulmate, eng lit!mark!

II ⇤ | III | ⇥ IV

taglist: @lavellanfriendliness

shoot me an ask if you’d like to be tagged in future parts!

#dreamwritersnet #kwritersworldnet #neowriters #nct au #nct 127 au #nct dream au #markhyuck #markhyuck au #markhyuck x reader #mark x reader #haechan x reader #donghyuck x reader #mark au #haechan au #donghyuck au #nct college #nct college au #eng lit mark #paediatrics haechan

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imagineelrios · 7 years

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What would be everyone's Classpect titles?

((anon i want you to know that I spent a day and a half playing mix-and-match with this ask and honestly I feel so accomplished bc I also wrote half an essay on the role of the Page in the process. The actual powers of each class are a bit vague so my definition might be a little different from yours, and I’d like to apologize if that’s the case.))

((also i’m going to assume this is a Homestuck ask))

Elsword is the Page of Blood. Defined in some terms, it can be expressed as one who allows others to fight with Blood. This doesn’t necessarily mean with actual blood, though-usually it’s more symbolic, like blood brothers. The Blood aspect is associated with relationships as well. This also ties into Elesis’ title, but we’ll burn that bridge when we get there.

Aisha is the Witch of Space-one who manipulates Space for their own needs. As we see in her teleportation, Aisha uses space to her own advantage, this trait becoming even more prevalent as Dimension Witch. The Space aspect is one of the two crucial to a SBURB session, as to survive SBURB you need to be able to create a new universe to escape to.

Rena is the Sylph of life-one who manipulates Life to help others. From her side story, we see that even as a child, Rena was always ready to help other people, and could commune with spirits. This is further accentuated with her motherly personality as a grown elf, as she uses her life to help others.

Raven is the Knight of Rage-one who fights Rage or fights with Rage. As a Blade Master, Raven fights his Rage, suppressing it so that he can go on without it. As a Reckless Fist, he fights with Rage, using it as a powerful weapon. And as Veteran Commander, he’s kinda both, isn’t he?

Eve is(and I know I’m going to get chewed out for this) the Rogue of Doom-one who steals Doom for the benefit of others. Let’s think back to Eve waking up after the fall of Altera, putting the weight on her own shoulders to restore the Nasod race. In a sense, she’s taking the Doom away from her race to save them all. In doing so, she also reflects the opposite aspect: Life. By taking away the Doom, she’s giving the Nasod race life.

Chung is the Prince of Breath-One who destroys Breath or destroys with Breath. This is kinda a play on his war cries, not going to lie. Breath is also an aspect symbolic of freedom and flight. Chung’s Freiturnier gives him freedom, kinda like Tavros’ rocket chair. He could also possibly have power over the Windy Thing, reflecting on his Destroyer(pun was definitely intentional)

Ara is the Maid of Mind-one who protects others with Mind. The aspect of Mind really encompasses the fate of decisions, which lie in a certain balance of justice. Ara uses her sense of justice to protect the innocents, ie. by killing demons. Mind players are also easily conflicted in their thoughts, though, eg. Terezi’s conflicts with Vriska and Gamzee, Ara’s conflict with her brother.

Elesis is the Muse of Blood-one who inspires with Blood. The Muse and Lord classes are like Ultimate Boss classes in HS. The Muse class is the most passive class, and the Lord class, its antithesis, is the most active. Again, the Blood aspect is not literal blood(though if we’re going Crimson Avenger it is) but rather relationships, such as friendships and allegiances. Both Elesis and Elsword are Blood players because they are leaders in their own rights, by empowering others in their own way. It’s no small feat to be a Red Knight as a teenager, and Elesis is definitely awe-inspiring from what we see of her in the cutscenes.

Add is the Bard of Time-one who invites the destruction of Time or invites destruction through Time. Time is the other aspect crucial to a session of SBURB, and for Add to be wielding it is quite the wildcard. Bards can be the cause of a session’s success, destruction, or both. Also the idea of Add’s costume having a codpiece amuses me

Lu is the Thief of Heart-one who steals Heart for themselves. She is the active to Eve’s passive-both queens ripped from their thrones, but while one is set to restore her kingdom, the other is out for revenge. The Heart aspect reflects upon the soul. Lu figuratively steals part of Ciel’s soul to keep him alive, but also to aid herself by making him her butler ally. Her job paths also feature soul-stealing skills.

Ciel is the Heir of Void-one who protects themselves with Void. Void represents nothingness-the antithesis of Light. Void players can become invisible, like Ciel’s position as an invisible hitman. In addition, Void players are somewhat associated with a certain squash that certainly doesn’t exist, which ties in with Ciel’s abilities to cook, although you can’t cook what’s not there, right?

Rose is the Mage of Light-one who understands Light. The Light aspect represents literal light, but also luck and possibility. Unlike the other characters, Rose has four possible job paths. She’s also incredibly lucky to have landed a powerful friend in Princess Ezre. For all her spying, she’s also pretty obvious, alluding to how Light players can’t really not be seen. no i didn’t do this as an unironic tribute to Rose Lalonde what are you talking about

Ain is the Seer of Hope-one who spreads understanding of Hope. Hope players represent belief, eg. Jake’s ability to apparently summon Dirk through the sheer power of his belief. To Ain, Hope is the belief in Ishmael’s grace, and that the El will be saved. Through his intervening, Ain spreads this Hope within the Elgang, guiding them on a subconscious level to his Hope.

#Ceae is a Rogue of Mind btw!#elboy #aisha #ren #araven #eve #chung #ara #elesis #add #lu #ciel #rose #ain #crossover #homestuck #mod ceae #anon #ask #elsword #elsword imagines

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funtubeweb · 6 years

Text

Film Forward: Five to Watch in ’18

Inventive auteur animation, a compelling feature debut from Laura Marie Wayne, and a timely documentary essay on that great unfinished project we call democracy are among productions currently in the works at Canada’s public producer. Here are five titles to watch in the coming twelve months.

Love, Scott

Nova Scotian musician Scott Jones was on his way home from a night with friends when an act of homophobic violence changed his life forever, leaving him paralysed from the waist down. With Love, Scott, his close friend Laura Marie Wayne, an alumna of EICTV, Cuba’s famed International School of Film and Television, tells his story in a nuanced and finely crafted feature doc.

Juxtaposing poignant testimony from Scott and his family with impressionistic verité footage, Wayne fashions a beautifully textured portrait of resilience, accompanying Scott over three years as he embarks on a fragile journey of healing.

The film features concert footage of Jones himself directing VOX, a community choir he founded as part of the Don’t Be Afraid Campaign, along with a spacious original score by experimental Icelandic ensemble Sigur Rós, active players in the global struggle for LGBTQ rights.

“I’ve become deeply connected to and part of the LGBTQ community,” says Wayne. “I identify as an ally, and I’m using documentary film as a medium to present an insider story of queer experience to a mainstream audience.”

Producer Annette Clarke has championed the project from the onset. “I was immediately drawn to Laura’s sensibility,” she says, “the way she holds up a mirror to Scott and his soul, and to the whole complex human condition. Together they’ve done something remarkable. They’ve given us beautiful film that questions the progress we’ve made in protecting the LGBTQ community.”

Wayne shot the film herself and shares the editing credit with Marcos Caraballo – also a graduate of EICTV. Love, Scott is produced and executive produced by Annette Clarke at the Quebec-Atlantic Studio.

What is Democracy?

Framed as an open-ended question, Astra Taylor’s latest project takes on the oft-cited but little analysed concept known as democracy. The idea first occurred to her back in 2012 as she was coming off her time with Occupy Wall Street — but the planet-wide rise of demagogic nationalism has thrown the project into sharp new relief.

“I was totally onside with Occupy and its critique of income inequality. There was a sense that liberal democracy — with its checks-and-balances, its focus on individual rights and free markets, all that — was letting us down, and direct democracy didn’t seem to offer a realistic way forward either. I felt a need to return to fundamentals, to go back to Plato’s Republic. And recent history shows just how fragile democracy is. Plato actually wrote about the rise of a demagogue — and here we are. There’s a sense of crisis about democracy now, and what the hell it actually means.”

In a big-hearted and wonderfully free-wheeling conversation that moves from Athens to Atlanta, scholars like Cornel West, Silvia Federici and Wendy Brown share screen time with the demos itself — health workers and school kids, refugees and activists, regular people wrestling with the practical and philosophical challenges posed by the democratic idea. Pictured above: Silvia Federici with Astra Taylor in the former city state of Siena.

The project reunites Taylor with Lea Marin, the NFB producer on the acclaimed NFB/Sphinx co-production Examined Life (2008), a philosophical road movie hailed by Variety as “a playful riposte to the notion that movies are for turning one’s mind off.”

“Astra likes to think big,” says Marin. “She’s not afraid of making intellectual films. But this is a very accessible project. It invites people from all walks of life to join a conversation on how we can rebuild democracy, how we can work together to bring about global change…Astra is less interested in pronouncing than in asking the right questions, and those questions matter now more than ever.”

Taylor is the author of The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age (2014); the editor of Examined Life: Excursions with Contemporary Thinkers (2009); and co-editor of Occupy!: Scenes From Occupied America (2012). Her film credits include Zizek! (2005), a feature-length profile of contemporary philosopher Slavoj Žižek. Below: producer Lea Marin with Cornel West and Taylor.

The chief DOP on Democracy is Maya Bankovic whose credits include The Prison in Twelve Landscapes and My Prairie Home, which was also produced by Lea Marin at the NFB’s Ontario Studio. What is Democracy? is directed by Astra Taylor, edited by Robert Kennedy, and produced by Lea Marin at the NFB’s Ontario Studio. Executive producer is Anita Lee.

The Zoo: Remembrance of Things Past

The fate of an aging polar bear, living out his final days in the decommissioned Stanley Park Zoo, is entwined with that of an elderly resident of Chinatown in The Zoo, bittersweet and sparsely elegant animation from acclaimed Vancouver director Julia Kwan.

“I loved visiting that zoo when I was a kid,” says Kwan. “I returned to the site years later, after it had closed, and all the animals had been relocated — except that bear. It was so sad, to see it pacing around its pen, old and alone, and the image has stayed with me. I want to draw parallels to how we treat our elderly, people seen as no longer useful, and to reflect on what’s happening in Chinatown — where old ways are quickly disappearing.”

Kwan’s first feature drama Eve and the Fire Horse (2005) won a Special Jury Prize at Sundance as well as the Claude Jutra Award for best Canadian feature by a first-time director. She went on to direct a pair of shorts for the NFB: Surfacing, an homage to musician Sarah McLachlan produced in co-operation with the National Arts Centre and the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards Foundation; and the live action/animation hybrid Blossom, an impressionistic account of immigration produced for Vancouver’s 2010 Cultural Olympiad. The Zoo, Kwan’s first fully animated film, sees her collaborating with the team at Jester Coyote Animation, the Vancouver-based studio that worked with the BC & Yukon Studio on Window Horses and Shop Class.

“Julia has crafted a wonderfully multi-layered script,” says producer Shirley Vercruysse. “It’s anchored in a very specific place yet it addresses universal themes relating to loss, change and abandonment. She’s done such great work with drama and documentary, and we’re delighted to be collaborating with her on her first animation.”

Kwan is the daughter of Chinese immigrants and The Zoo mines the same cultural terrain that informs much of her work. With Everything Will Be, an NFB-produced vérité doc that premiered at Hot Docs in 2014, she captures the texture of daily life in Vancouver’s Chinatown, a distinct urban universe under attack from aggressive real estate development and gentrification. Here’s the trailer:

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The Zoo is co-produced by the NFB (Shirley Vercruysse, producer) and Fire Horse Productions (Ruth Vincent, producer). Executive producers are Shirley Vercruysse for the BC & Yukon Studio and Michael Fukushima for the English Program Animation Studio.

John Ware Reclaimed Honours Alberta’s Black Pioneers

John Ware, born into slavery in the Antebellum American South, was already on his way to becoming a legend by the time he arrived in Canada in 1882. “The horse is not running on the prairie which John cannot ride,” declared the MacLeod Gazette in 1885. But his remarkable achievements, along with the larger story of Alberta’s African-American homesteaders, have been largely effaced from official histories of the Canadian west. Pictured above: John Ware, his wife Mildred, with son Bob and daughter Nettie.

That’s a situation that Cheryl Foggo has resolved to remedy with John Ware Reclaimed, a feature documentary that continues a project she began with John Ware Reimagined, a play that premiered in 2014.

Foggo’s own ancestors came to Alberta western Canada in 1910, fleeing a resurgence of racist policies in the newly formed state of Oklahoma, and as a kid growing up in Calgary, she was a fan of the Stampede, enamoured of all things Western.

“But there was no Black presence in the popular culture expressions of that Western narrative, and as I grew up I began to feel under-represented, unwelcome in a story that contained no reflection of my own people,” she says. “Canadians generally know very little about the long rich history of people of African descent in this country,”

With John Ware Reclaimed, she aims to thrill as well as to educate. “That’s the beauty of John Ware’s story. It’s so powerful and compelling. He was an amazing person who chose to make Canada his home, to work everyday to have a positive impact on the lives of people around him. Canadians have been deprived of this great story piece of our history… So it’s a double gift. I get to educate and entertain.”

Filmed partly on land where Ware himself once operated a ranch, the film features Black rodeo champion Fred Whitfield as a stand-in for Ware, along with stylized narration by writer Lawrence Hill, musician Corb Lund and others cultural commentators. A stirring score includes music and song that would have been present in Ware’s world. Pictured above: Cheryl Foggo and Fred Whitfield, photo by Shaun Robinson.

“Working with Cheryl is an absolute pleasure,” says producer Bonnie Thomson. “What she is doing with this film is so thoughtful. She’s celebrating this amazing figure, this charismatic Black cowboy. But she is also investigating his life and times in a completely new critical light, fearlessly examining what it means to be a Black person in Western Canada.”

John Ware Reclaimed is being shot by Douglas Munro, edited by Margot McMaster, and written and directed by Cheryl Foggo, whose previous film credits include the NFB release The Journey of Lesra Martin. It’s produced by Bonnie Thompson at the North West Studio. Executive producer is David Christensen.

Museum of Symmetry: Paloma Throws a VR Party

Paloma Dawkins first rode into the NFB Animation Studio as a successful Hothouse applicant, propelled by self-acquired tech savvy and a lively visual imagination. With Museum of Symmetry she’s hitched her inimitable gifts to the rapidly evolving world of VR to fashion a kaleidoscopic interactive joyride.

“I love clubs and celebratory environments where people come together to dance and have fun,” she said in this 2016 interview. “I want to bring that culture into my creation process.” A proud ‘hacker artist,’ the largely self-taught Dawkins is part of a growing gang of young women who are carving out their own pleasure-positive space within the male-dominated worlds of video gaming and VR.

“There are no rules here. Just enjoy.” Part invitation, part dare, an impish game mistress urges us to enter Paloma’s universe, a delightfully disorienting pleasure dome inspired by her fascination with geometry and nature — and wired with infectious dance beats. Hold on tight for a full mind-and-body immersive VR journey.

“Paloma’s a firecracker, exploding with crazy positive energy,” says producer Maral Mohammadian. “Her work is all about empowerment. She loves taking risks, and she’s not being afraid to be feminine in her own unique way.”

The project was created in collaboration with Casa Rara, the Montreal-based VR studio co-founded by Tali Goldstein and Ruben Farrus under the credo The Everyday Made Wonderful. Joining Paloma on the creative team were Charlène Boutin, resident designer at Casa Rara, and Alt Lit writer Ashley Obscura. The effervescent score is the work of Caila Thompson-Hannant (aka Mozart’s Sister) whose latest recording is described by Pitchfork as “daring, aggressively bubbly, and sharp”.

Museum of Symmetry, the first project from the NFB English Animation to be fully conceived and created as VR animation, is produced by Maral Mohammadian and executive produced by Michael Fukushima. Designed for HTC Vive headset, it will be hitting the festival circuit this year, and will also be exhibited at selected museums, and gaming & music events.

NFB Hothouse, a twelve-week paid apprenticeship in animation filmmaking, was established in 2004. Here is the film that Paloma created during Hothouse in 2013:

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Check out her personal website for a sampling of her work in various graphic genres.

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