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actualbird · 2 years

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assorted hc rambles that one way or another have something to do with the academia in tot's canon

wc: 1k

cuz even if i know this is a game of romance and wits and murder mystery law, hyv cant just drop the cast like the nxx team (aka vyn and artem have doctorate degrees, mc is a graduate attorney, luke has a master's in bioengineering, and marius is working on his master's in oil painting) and not expect me to want to know more about how theyre interacting with their specific spheres of academia

stellis university's biology department is begging "Pearce, L." to please consider giving a guest lecture for their students, pretty please

i think it's very entertaining to remember that several departments at stellis university have a bunch of Celebrity Poster Students/Alumni/Profs.

psychology dept obviously has the graceful intelligent dr vyn richter and hoo boy, that incident back in his personal story 3 where for a hot sec the university believed a SKETCHY CALLOUT POST accusing him to be a TOXIC MANIPULATOR....okay thats pretty on par for the course of how social media works HAHA. but my point here is that vyn is beautiful and a great teacher and theres a fanclub for him and he was momentarily involved in juicy drama. hes the perfect poster prof, he brings in a lot of attention and, in turn, interested students.

the law dept obviously has artem wing, and theyve also got rising attorney mc too!! im not sure if ingrid rosworth is canonically also a graduate of stellis uni, but if she is, im sure the law dept can drop some spicy rumors about ingrid and artem's Bitter Rivalry or something

aaaand the fine arts department has The marius von hagen as a grad student, and that in itself is already a big draw and a bunch of publicity.

but what about the STEM nation?

luke pearce is the only person on the team that is in no way affiliated with stellis university. he got his master's degree at national central university, which (and i know i mentioned this before but i want to mention it again) is noted in the Big Data Lab to be a canonical rival school of stellis university

National Central University has been competing with Stellis University for the top-ranked college domestically for years, and each has its own strengths and weaknesses. [from the Big Data Lab entry on NCU]

which is already so hilarious to think about. can you imagine national central university and stellis university's sports teams go against each other for a big game and suddenly the nxx investigation team is divided due to school loyalties? luke's gonna be the lone ranger rooting for national central and everybodys gonna affectionately call him a traitor

but i digress.

while luke is the most lowkey of the team in terms of publicity/popularity he gets from the media, surely, surely this canonical genius' bioengineering contributions during his studies garnered attention from the nerds at stellis uni.

the master's thesis written by Pearce, L. is something many students and faculty have been fangirling/fanboying over the moment they read it, and it becomes known that Pearce, L. is currently residing in south stellis, and thus the dept keeps sending luke emails inviting him to do a guest lecture sometime

and he always just replies with a concise and friendly "No thank you! :D" because 1) hes got enough on his plate to do right now and 2) cuz of stupid school loyalties jhvJHVKSJHFS, hes not teaching on enemy territory

"MY DISCIPLINE'S citation style is better than YOURS!!!"

luke (biology/engineering) and vyn (psychology/pedagogy) use APA. mc and artem (law) use The Bluebook Style. and marius, our sole trooper in the fine arts, uses MLA.

if ever the team have to collaborate with somebody else in the team who is outside of their respective discipline's citation style to co-author some research, blood will be shed. the chaos would be immense. everybody assumed they were using the same citation (i.e. whatever citation each of them were respectively used to) and then when they realize the formatting discrepancies, the ACADEMIC RIFTS IN MANUALS OF STYLE, everybody gets extremely defensive and comically overdramatic over their preferred format of choice

vyn, luke, and marius: //squinting at the bluebook format

vyn: this is...

marius: youre gonna be way too passive aggressive with your thoughts, what we need is blunt aggressive. this format sucks balls

artem: it does not suck balls

vyn: no, he's right, it does

marius, muttering to himself: oh that was a weird feeling, vyn saying im right

artem, louder: it doesnt!!

luke, looking at mc with the biggest saddest puppy eyes: w-when did you change so much...i...i thought i knew you, i trusted you 🥺🥺🥺

mc: STOP MAKING THAT FACE AT ME, I HAD TO ADAPT IN LAW SCHOOL. WHY ARENT WE BULLYING MARIUS??

marius: uh, cuz marius is right and holy and all of you are wrong?

vyn, immediately switching sides cuz he loves the drama: MLA is ridiculous. why on earth is the only number present in the in text citation the page number?

marius: cuz it's simpler and doesnt take for-fuckin-ever to read past?????

luke, grumbling: least MLA could do is have the year in the in text citation...

marius: thats what the works cited portion is for, bitch!

artem: so you want us to flip all the way to the works cited portion to see the year? that seems like it would take much longer to do, like it would take forever---

and this argument would go on for far too long.

moving on

one day vyn is sick and has to postpone a class and...

if vyn comes down with the ails, he'll of course have to update his students about how he wont be coming in on that day.

now, he wanted to start off his email saying. "I am afraid I will have to postpone classes [...]" and whatnot, but vyn is Very Sick. he starts writing the email, passes out like a few words in, and when he wakes up he sees the email he had accidentally sent to all his students:

Good day, I am afraid

(based on this hilarious tumblr post)

#tears of themis #luke pearce #marius von hagen #vyn richter #artem wing

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electromignion · 11 months

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Bridgewater fanart! (Who is surprised? /lh /j)

This fanart has been inspired by Lauren Shippen herself, from the # she put on the reblog she did of my Jeremy Bradshaw sleeping fanart “also: new headcanon I now have vipin started TAing for Jeremy when he was still in undergrad soJeremy also has one photo of the two of them at Vipin's graduation in his office”. So I had to draw it of course, I’m so thankful for Lauren’s support, feeling truly so honoured so this is the least I can do 🤧

This is to me, what Vipin asked to do to Jeremy, and so he did because he has always appreciated Vipin (a beginning of friendship there?? They both cherish that pic for sure and yes I plan on drawing Jeremy’s office, and yeah I only drew this to put it in a small frame in Jeremy’s office, that’s my dedication 😭🤌 I’m putting a read more for a further explanation of my headcanon and also the outfit (regalia, cords, medallions wise) because yeah there is a whole day of research behind this and also finger cramps because my Apple Pencil decided to slowly d word on me as I was trying to finish this fanart so I used my fingers jejdjd)

So: please know that I’m French, so it was very hard to find information about graduation ceremonies: we do not have that in France, so I’m sorry if something is off!

First of all, professors and whole faculty members must wear their regalia at graduation ceremonies hence Jeremy having his academic regalia. And it made me learn that the velvet colour on some parts of it + the hood colour differ depending on the field they had their phd in, Jeremy’s is white because to me he has his phd in history (at least from what I understood, as even in S1 EP01 he talks in his lecture room about getting credits in history) which counts in the “art, social and humanities” section because history counts as humanities which is white. (Which also explains why Vipin’s tassel on his cap is white because to me he also went in that field) Jeremy’s hat is a velvet tam with a gold tassel which is the formal hat for the doctorate level.

Then… come Vipin’s cords and medallions. I headcanon Vipin as a really high achieving student, I might be wrong though, but he is too great of a TA to not be. So as a disclaimer: all the information I gathered there come from things linked to the Bridgewater State University because I really wanted to be accurate as much as I possibly could (Yes I truly spent a day for that and I might have drunk one or two Monsters).

For the medallions: the one with the black neck ribbon is “the Diversity Champion medallion recognizes and honors those students who have worked tirelessly for the advancement of diversity and inclusion during their time at Bridgewater College.” I really see Vipin trying to really be actively trying to make it go for the best in clubs and such at BSU and the second one with the blue/green neck ribbon is “The Alpha Chi medallion symbolizes the honor and distinction of being a member of the national academic honor society.

The supporting neck ribbon is in the colors of Alpha Chi.”

Which brings us to the cords he has on his regalia: the green and blue cords represent Alpha Chi as well.

The gold cord represent his level of achievement it’s for “summa cum laude” (“meaning "with highest praise", typically awarded to graduates in the top 1%, 2%, or 5% of their class, depending on the institution.” Which is the highest distinction one can have when you get a diploma at uni in the US).

Then the red and blue cords “Graduates wearing blue and red cords with mixed tassels are members of the national history honor society, Phi Alpha Theta.” (Which for me also was a good idea as Vipin is truly going through so many documents linked to history for Jeremy, our guy is that interested into academic stuff)

Then for the purple rainbow scarf… it’s a real thing I’ve seen on graduating pictures from BSU!! And I gotta admit… I’m quite fond of the idea of Vipin being pan 🫣 (just my own hc always)

I’m sorry for the extra lengthy explanation but I feel like it was needed (maybe it is to flex my research /j) as I think it was really interesting in the development of the hcs around Vipin and even Jeremy!

And to me needless to say but Jeremy has been greatly moved that Vipin asked him to do a picture together where they throw the cap in the air because to Jeremy, Vipin could’ve done it with his fellow classmates. And Jeremy is fully aware of how much it was important for Vipin. (And maybe own little headcanon: I’m sure Jeremy doesn’t even have much pics from his own graduations)

I truly imagine that during the whole graduation ceremony Jeremy was feeling uncomfy in his academic faculty regalia because it’s way too formal (although it’s quite mandatory to wear it) so he is just 🧍🏻 standing being no thoughts head full of folklore only (he is of course very proud of his students nonetheless) therefore, Vipin asking him to do that picture must have been THE highlight he had during the ceremony (even counting all the ceremonies he ever had to attend to)

And to finish in case you missed it, here’s the fanart Lauren reblogged and where she talked about her new headcanon (saying this like that sounds surreal to me, I’m so honoured once again 🥹): https://www.tumblr.com/electromignion/716771521320878080/i-finally-finished-my-bridgewater-fanart-this

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katyobsesses · 3 years

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Katy my darling <3 I have a very fun ask for you!! What method of arts do each glee characters prefer and what is their favorite thing to create?

oooooo this is a fun ask!

I'm gonna do S2 New Directions for now, but may add S3-6 ND or other characters later 💛 (warning... this is LONG)

Artie: Film. 100% film. He loves using visual media to tell a story, he also really gets into the sound design side too when he learns it in College. He loves making music videos and after Uni that's mostly what he does. He also directs a lot of movie musicals and musical TV shows. Basically he loves making visual media for songs.

Blaine: Performing - mostly singing. He also love writing songs, which we never see in the show but I can imagine him learning about songwriting in NYU and loving it as a way to express his feelings. it's like a step up from using someone else's words to express them.

Brittany: Obviously dancing! I like to think that after marrying Santana she either goes to college for Dance, or maybe owns a dance studio/goes on tour with Mercedes a lot (with Santana as a guest singer) She really loves teaching little kids how to dance, she knows how to interact with them on their level and the kids love her.

Finn: Singing? I honestly can't think about what he likes. Like singing is the closest thing. He sings in the shower a lot and obviously he loves singing on stage. But he's not that much of an art person outside of that. He likes consuming it but not making it.

Kurt: Sewing, obviously, as well as sketching clothes. He loves making accessories for friends - scrunchies for the girls, bow ties for Blaine, a dog bandana for Sam's golden retriver (because you know he gets one) etc. - but he also loves designing and making costumes for small productions. Maybe he volunteers/works with a small theatre troop and makes & designs all of the costumes while also performing.

Mercedes: Mercedes likes making cards for everyone for Christmas and Birthdays. It started because she'd forgotten to buy a card for someone but had some card and pretty pens on hand and it spiralled from there. She now owns a fancy die pressing kit and lots of card toppers and pretty glitter pens and washi tape and all of that. She has a small kit she brings on all of her tours, it helps relax her after a show - making cards for the crew as a thank you/maybe selling some for charity because she makes so much? When she finally gets back together with Sam they both work together to make Christmas cards from them with cute pictures of themselves in terrible christmas jumpers and their golden retriver in a Kurt made bandana and later their kids in matching outfits.

Mike: Like Brittany he's a dancer first and formost. That's his art. He later goes on to be a professional on Dancing With The Stars where he reconnects with Matt on set (maybe they even get together in the end and the DWTS fans love their relationship and their jokingly competative instagram stories) He loves creating a story with only movement and music. Mike also really likes doodling.

Puck: Photography. I don't know why but I see Puck loving to take pictures of places he visits in his travels. He also scrapbooks but only Quinn knows that - he has a whole scrapbook of pictures of Beth that Shelby sends them and later makes them for all of his other kids too, and he has, like, travel journals and scrapbooks of roadtrips he's been on. Basically he's a Bullet Journal guy. He really likes washi tape and pretty papers and stickers and what-not. He will never admit this.

Quinn: Quinn's a writer. In my head she goes on to write a book that's losely based on her high-school years and it becomes a best seller and is later adapted into a Netflix series directed by Artie. I just like the idea! Maybe Rachel plays, like, the Miss Pillsbury character... or Terri! Or maybe Shelby? I dunno one of the adult characters.

Rachel: Obviously her art of choice is performing. It's singing and acting and standing on a stage or a set and making the words in her script her own. Also scrapbooking/moodboard making.

Santana: Santana likes knitting. She won't admit it but she likes knitting little plushies for Brittany, her favourite is a little bi flag coloured bunny. She makes knitted plushies and blankets for all of her friends when they have kids but she never tells them she made them - everyone knows though, they're too perfect for the couple/person (a cat in a scarf or a toy poodle in a bow tie for Klaine, a teddy adorned with gold stars for St. Berry etc. etc.)

Sam: This could be an essay for me (and kinda is opps). Sam is the Art nerd of the group and tries every type of art he possibly can. Macaroni art, illustration, digital art, traditional art, crafts, pumpkin carving, glass blowing, handlettering, graphic design, knitting, crochet, rag rugs, sewing, card making, pyrography, etc. He will try everything he can in terms of visual art. He doesn't, however, write because dyslexia, and he can't wrap him mind around, like editing and film stuff - he does try though because why not. He also really likes songwriting and music arranging.

All of this i'm trying to do as close to canon as i can but going off of canon let's say Sam goes to Parsons for illustration because he's so good at art, he stays with Mercedes in her brownstone and they never break up, after graduating he becomes a comic book illustrator (which i believe is literally a minor at Parsons, so let's say he does a Major in Fine Art/Illustration with a Minor in Comic illustration) and illustrates a run of Young Avengers comics and becomes a fan favourite artist.

In canon, however, he loves teaching the new generation of New Directions but he misses art because he doesn't have that much time anymore (because being the teacher of the new directions is a full time job, apparently, judging by the lack of adult friends or hobbies Will has lol) he loves loves loves arranging music, however, and that becomes the type of art he does the most. He does doodle a lot during faculty meeting (also he does a music teaching certification during his first few years of coaching the nNDs) and goes all out with pumpkin carving at Halloween, and loves decorating his apartment and the choir room at Christmas. He loves doing sets for the musical (and has a lot of fun staging it too) and helps out with the decorations for Prom.

Basically Sam loves to be creative in any way he can. He loves making things, whatever they may be.

Tina: Tina writes fanfiction and draws fanart. She's a nerd 100%, she watched Supernatural, she was a SuperWhoLockian, she loves Merlin, she's loves Twilight but more ironically than, say, Mercedes, and prefers books like Morganville Vampires or PC Cast's series that I've forgotten the name of. She loves the Hunger Games and Firefly and Star Trek and Star Wars. She definately has a tumblr. She mostly writes all sorts of fanfiction and is a huge name in the Supernatural fandom. Only Sam and Blaine know about all of this becuase they found one of her Star Wars fanfictions and in an authors note she said something that they recognised - idk she ranted about Santana or Rachel or something.

This was so much fun omg, thank you for the ask Myle 💛

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iampikachuhearmeroar · 4 years

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tl;dr political rant post:

it had been my goal from 12 years old to do an arts degree in philosophy (yes what a nerd- thanks to my dad playing a Great Courses philosophy dvd one morning in 2007 and my dad always taking me to the botanic gardens/the uni some weekends).

i graduated from my arts degree in 2018, with a major in english and a minor in philosophy. i was so, so lucky to even get into my communications & media degree (at first i was originally going to do marketing communications, advertising & PR)... but i realised that i was not made for business subjects- despite my mark101 tutor telling me she thought i had knack for marketing- something under this policy that i wouldn’t undertake due to the price hike for commerce/business degrees. nor was i made for a media degree. so i changed to arts & humanities.

although under this atrocious policy, english subjects are made “cheaper”- why on fucking should the rest of someone’s arts/humanities degree be so much more expensive, all depending on the fields they choose???? so you’re telling me, if i was instead to enter undergrad this year to do my english degree... that my english major would be subsidised, but my philosophy minor would be at double the cost (along with the few first year business and communications&media subjects i did), unless i forced myself to pick maths or science subjects that i would most definitely fail, no matter how much work i’d put into them??? or there’s languages- but much like maths/science- there’s the problem with my handwriting that stopped me trying french and even japanese (ironically, since it’s know for its ~painstakingly neat and orderly~ script- but my handwriting is still messy, disorderly and confusing asf).

*please note that most of this next section is just me being highly spurious and cynical. it’d probably work out fine*

but you’re also telling me that under this policy that i’d also probably have to forego my reasonable adjustments in those subjects (yes i still have trouble with my handwriting to this day) mostly because a lot of software still won’t let you write out maths problems properly or i’d have to spend twice as long trying to get a graph to work in excel or idek matlab (please teach me maths nerds)???? and most maths working out is probably better handwritten or whatever??? and that’s besides the point that i still can’t use excel at all 😂.

so with these classes then, would i be battling from day one of first year with professors to let me use a computer during exam periods (unless of course they use online/take home exam methods like philosophy)???? probably (im being very suspicious here because i don’t know how science/maths etc faculties work).

although i did get this once with one particular english professor; who used the excuse that he didn’t know how to set a computer up for exams because he had been on “sabatical for 4 years” or whatever and so “didn’t know the policies anymore”.... so then according to him it was apparently “the students job to do it.... especially since you’re in third year, miss williams”..... however, i was promptly then told by EVERY uni offical that i approached for help to do it for me.... and my other professors across my course that had done it for me, that it was in fact the PROFESSORS job/responsibility to set it up, and not the student’s??? like. help your students fuckwit professor grant??? honestly. anyway. aside from my personal struggles in the english department: let’s proceed. (this was a real incident btw).

would i be at a significant disadvantage to other students by not being able to use a computer during maths exams or science exams because of the drawing of diagrams and graphs and “showing your working”???? hell yes. would i want the professors in that department to probably condescendingly telling me all the time to “present my work neater and more precisely”? FUCK NO. it’s exactly why i avoided every maths and science subject in undergrad- even including the astronomy subject that i wanted to do- because it also meant that fellow students had to read my handwriting for practicals etc as well, that i wasn’t entirely keen on either. but i did not need the harsh reminders of “be more precise and infallible in your work presentation” that i’d had at school constantly for 11 years of maths lessons; affecting my mental health and performance in a subject during a uni semester.

moreover, that’s besides the fact that i’d flat out fail the “year 12 band 4 maths” requirements- unless they want to waive those- for first year maths/science subjects (at least basing it on my local uni).... considering that i actually skipped out on maths completely in year 12 by doing a TVET/tafe/technical college course in live theatre, production and events (which no surprises here, actually included maths anyway 😅).

because, fuck. is ANYONE seeing a trend in my study choices here? hell, i almost did a commerce/business dual degree with a tafe diploma in event management for crying out fucking loud. and you’re telling me that’s also doubled in price?? it’s obvious that i was interested in the arts & humanities and business subjects from the get-go. but under this policy- i’d be charged double for having my interest in event management, instead of say, biology (which is a subject that if it weren’t for mark scaling in my final hsc exam- i would have failed completely)??? utterly ridiculous.

i even contemplated doing a double degree with law at one point (or doing a legal studies major/minor- which is now a course at my local uni, but was not while i was there). however, law course fees have also doubled under this new policy. leaving that out of reach for me, despite that a double degree with law was out of reach for me anyway..... since my mark average was 65% and not at least 75% lol. but as if those marks averages will actually matter under this new policy.

under this bullshit policy, i’d be forced to take science/maths or even teaching (another field i had to avoid, since people can’t read my writing on a whiteboard from a distance half the time either.... besides the fact that i’m not really the ~teacher type~) subjects- all so that my degree price overall will be ”reduced”..... meaning that i would have to trade out my philosophy minor for something in maths/teaching/science (or maybe creative arts- since those fees stayed the same roughly)... instead of sticking to what i was good at: philosophy and other humanities/social science fields like sociology and history????

i understand that many people will snub me with saying “oh why did you even BOTHER going to uni if you were THAT indecisive about what you wanted to do?” which is something i’ve seen many older people saying on posts about this policy. but hell, i was 19 FUCKING YEARS OLD WHEN I STARTED UNI, FOR GODS SAKE. OF COURSE I WAS GOING TO BE FUCKING INDECISIVE ABOUT MY DIRECTION IN LIFE! because, newsflash fuckwits: not everyone has a defined career goal at 19. hell, i still don’t have one at almost 25..... since i’ll admit here, that i flunked out of my postgrad library course.... because i realised that i simply couldn’t cope with learning simple HTML, CSS and javascript coding for website design & user experience design 😂 (again help me computer wiz friends). yes, believe it or not, librarians have to know that today. and most people think that it’s just all about books (okay that was me, but i was wrong). also, if you’re wondering: postgrad library courses aren’t affected, thank god. but my point is, aren’t we meant to fuck up and pick the wrong things in life sometimes??? aren’t we meant to be indecisive about our choices in our late teens up until our mid 20s???

but now you’re telling students that their very first year of uni is practically set out for them, even for arts/humanities degrees (im not counting properly prescribed degrees such as engineering/science/communications & media (they had prescribed majors and prescribed first year subjects, which is why i left it. because i felt trapped in the prescribed marketing et al major etc); all because the government is telling them that “oh to make your first year cheaper: (A.) get good marks.... so that we don’t cancel your HECS place and (B.) pick subjects outside of the arts/humanities like science/maths/tech related subjects so that you don’t pay a whopping $14,500 for your first year of uni and will be more likely to be “job ready”. whatever the actual fuck “job ready” really means. and this all as if there ISN’T enough pressure for a 18/19 year old to succeed in their first year of uni already.

although, the one thing i’ll say is that my one year advanced diploma in marketing that i did in 2014, was $16,500. i still haven’t made any moves to pay it off. but it was constantly in the back of my mind during uni, both undergrad and postgrad. it was there as a reminder to pick cheaper subjects, so as to not greatly increase my combined hecs debt and vet-fee help debt; which is now sitting at $42,500. which under this new policy is the new price of ONE arts & humanities undergrad degree. i’d hate to be going into uni next year at 19 years old (or any age really) with that price tag on my degree.

anyway. that’s the end of my non-sensical rant. morrison and the rest of the libs etc can go fuck themselves.

#life #about me #shut up ilona #auspol

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ettaseverythingelse · 4 years

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August Goals Recap

Hello! If you’ve been around this blog for a while, you know I set monthly goals and post about them here and if you’re new then, welcome! An Intro post for how my monthly goals work can be found here. This month I was really productive - not only did I go from 24 to 28 goals, I still won by a margin of 5 points which is crazy. Details and commentary are below the cut. If you’re doing monthly goals (or goal setting in general) feel free to tag me with your lists so we can encourage each other :)

Pay for fall semester - this turned out to be a lot cheaper than I expected since I’m not living on campus and paying for room/board, but the uni still cheated me out of a 10% tuition decrease and I’m still salty

Tell gym staff how lifeguarding and work study is going to work

Email faculty advisor and ask how work study and research are going to work

Do one club event if allowed

Make budget for the month

Update bujo intro pages - I straight up forgot I had a bujo tbh. I’m changing it to more of a diary than a to do list keeper, since I got a new calendar planner for school

Make character for space DnD campaign - This has become AI-Lia Anatres! You can find her wip intro here!

Talk with my best friend once a week

Talk to Grandparents once a week

Read the books Ms. T had given me - ok I have a stack like 8 books high about the byzantine Catholic church and I’ve just been busy ok? They all look fascinating

Fix computer battery issues/Get new computer battery

Start a new book - I read A Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue, AND the sequel, A Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy and they’re both excellent

Finish TCoMC - This is my new favorite classic and it should be required reading instead of the nonsense my English teacher gave me in 11th grade

Work out at least once a week

Draw one life/reference study - a few life drawing renderings like we did in art class with dramatically lit poses - I did a ton of these actually! they’re kind of boring but I might share them later

Learn how to make edits for my book to put on aforementioned Instagram

Make authors instagram, set up a profile, get contact info of all my writer friends, post a few things - follow me @ettagraceauthor!!

Teach myself some more advanced Excel functions that might come in handy - I did learn a lot of Excel functions at the internship but this is a vague goal so it doesn’t get marked

Make an authors website - Check it out here!

Start teaching myself Physics E&M

Teach myself orgo chem on Khan academy

Teach myself some accounting basics online

Figure out what the plan is for fall semester and start semester without missing any assignments

Stay one week ahead of publishing LAFA

Outline chapters 1-10 of Laoche

Make character outline for Madelyn and Seth

Write first half of AI-Lia Antares - I made good progress but not halfway

Create list of editing things I need to do for Storge

#monthly goals #monthly goals list #august goals #august goals recap #goal update #update #etta rambles

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artificialqueens · 5 years

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The Silent Land (multi-ship) - Grey Darling

a/n: So it turns out that leaving this community behind was rather an impulsive decision that I am currently regretting. This is such a lovely community to be a part of and I missed you guys!!! So here I am, back back back again, ready to write some fic and have a good time with it. Anyway, this is just a sneaky wee paranormal au I thought up last night and got really enthusiastic about, hope you all enjoy <3 <3

Fic under the cut!

There was something very strange about that lonesome figure on the sand, sitting in her white day dress staring at the roaring sea, the expression in her eyes hidden by shadow. No quirk of her lips revealed her thoughts, her statue stillness an aid in her ambiguity. Her features rendered her a creature of beauty - silvery hair shining in the dull sunset light, milky white skin bathed in its tangerine glow. And yet it felt as though she wasn’t quite real, like if one was to rest their hand on her shoulder, she’d simply fall away into dust or smoke or sand.

She didn’t notice her observer approaching, the crunch of her bare feet in the sand falling on deaf ears. Not so much as a glance of recognition when her observer sat beside her, and for a moment her faculties of sight and sound were called into question. Speech was a remedy to that, however.

“Who are you?”

The woman neither smiled not frowned, merely batted her long eyelashes over arctic eyes. “You should know. You dreamed me up.”

“This is a dream?”

“Yes. Didn’t you realise?”

“No.”

“When was the last time you saw a beach this empty in summer?”

The observer glanced around - they were alone, and the beach ran on for miles.

“I… I don’t think I have.”

“Would you call that reality, then?”

“You’re not making much sense…”

“Dreams seldom do.”

“Right.”

“Do you think you’ll wake up soon?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“It would be a shame if you woke up. I’d miss you. But then again, we wouldn’t be parted forever.”

“Wouldn’t we?”

“You’ll fall asleep again, won’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Then we’ll meet again.”

She fell into a song, humming the mournful tune, so sweet and uncomplicated and quiet. The observer listened in silence, the slow tune weighing her eyelids down and down and down until she couldn’t keep them open any longer.

And, like dust or smoke or sand, the singer vanished.

***

“Pearl? Pearl! Wake up, you lazy ass!”

No, waking up to a pillow bashed into her face was not the ideal way to start her morning, but Violet was giving her no choice. Groaning, Pearl pushed the pillow away and scrubbed her hand over her face, groaning. “Would it kill you to do that nicely…?”

“Yes, it would, now get up.”

“Why are you in such a rush, anyway?”

“Because it’s eight-thirty! We’ve got class at nine!”

“Oh, Jesus Christ…”

Pearl scrambled out of bed, almost falling to the wooden floor in her haste. Violet rolled her eyes at her - her usual response to just about anything Pearl did - and resumed applying her mascara with precision. Bloody Violet, always getting her makeup perfect… Why couldn’t she be like everyone else and go into class looking like she just got dragged through a bush? It worked for Pearl all through high school. But she supposed university actually had standards, and besides - there were boys to impress. Since when had Pearl ever cared about impressing boys?

Clearly, she wasn’t about to start today. Throwing on yesterday’s jeans, a bra that she’d worn a record five days in a row, and the first band t-shirt she happened to grab from her dresser, Pearl considered that good enough for a day on campus. But given Violet’s icy stare as she laced up her battered sneakers, it wasn’t.

“You’re seriously going out like that?” Violet asked, eyebrow cocked.

“What’s wrong with this? I’m not naked, right?”

“Yeah, but you look like you just got out of bed.”

“Because I did!”

Violet scoffed. She looked as though she’d been up since five am putting together her outfit - a short-sleeved blouse, plaid mini skirt, cute cardigan, the whole preppy she-bang. But the thing was, there was no wrinkle in her blouse, no sign of her knee-high socks falling down any time soon even without anything to hold them up, and her black pumps were so shiny Pearl could just about see her face in them. Not to mention her dark hair, which was sleek and shiny and pulled into an immaculate ponytail. How Violet managed to look so well put together so soon after getting out of bed was a mystery to Pearl - perhaps it was witchcraft.

But then again, basically everything about Violet was a mystery to Pearl. They barely knew each other, having only moved into their shared flat last Monday, a week before the first semester of the year started. The only thing she knew about Violet was her university timetable, but that was only because it was identical to her own. For all she knew, Violet was a serial killer or a drug lord - that’d teach her to flat with strangers - but so far the only dangerous thing she knew about Violet was how hot she liked her hair straighteners.

“Whatever… We can’t all be goddesses like you.”

“Yeah, and don’t forget it.”

As Violet started applying her lip liner (Seriously? Lip liner on a Monday morning?) Pearl let out an unladylike yawn and checked her phone, frowning at the sight of Instagram feed as it was flooded with photos of her old high school friends starting their first day at college. Pearl could’ve been one of those girls, doing a BA or a BCom or some other normal person degree. But no, she had to be the weirdo who not only applied to the one performing arts school in the country but got accepted too. So it was goodbye spending time with normal people, hello wasting hours on end with theatre kids. She could only blame herself (and her high school drama teacher, but that was beside the point).

“Get off your damn phone! We’re gonna miss the bus!” Violet, who had somehow finished doing her lipstick in the short time it took for Pearl to check her phone, was already dragging her out the door.

“Jesus, let me get my shit together first!” Pearl protested, not exactly sure what she meant by ‘getting her shit together’ but knowing it was very important that she did so and not get forcefully removed from her flat by Violet Chachki.

She’d forgotten about her dream by the time she was out the door.

***

“I am literally going to kill you.”

“What? My timetable said it was a nine o’clock start, I swear!”

“I could’ve slept in for a whole. Other. Hour.”

Violet scoffed. “Or you could’ve spent that time making yourself look, y’know, actually presentable.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Pearl grumbled, folding her arms and scuffing her already destroyed sneakers along the concrete. Ok, maybe she could do with some new sneakers. “Don’t make me look like the bad one here, you’re the one who got our timetable wrong.”

“I didn’t have to wake you up, y’know. I could’ve just let you sleep in and miss class - I’m your flatmate, not your friend.”

Scrubbing her hand over her face, Pearl let out a sigh. She was not awake enough for this. “Whatever, I’m gonna go get a coffee.”

Violet waved a dismissive goodbye before reaching a manicured hand into the pocket of her blazer and drawing out her cellphone, wandering off in the opposite direction to god knows where. At the very least, Pearl knew where she was going - the only thing she remembered from the uni’s orientation week last year was the damn good cup of coffee she’d got from a hole in the wall cafe in the hub. She could only hope the quality hadn’t dipped since then.

The hub was a place for congregation, for students to meet and chat before, between, and after classes, to make new friends and get acquainted with the people they’d be finishing their performing arts education with. The students, however, hadn’t got the memo, for if they weren’t mingling with their tight group of pre-made friends, they were on their phones or waiting for whatever they’d ordered from the cafe, not interacting with a soul. Pearl figured that her own experience would mimic that - she’d get her coffee and silently kill time before her first class.

It seemed that wasn’t to be the case at all.

After ordering her long black, Pearl stared at her receipt, obsessively memorising her order number until it was called out, wanting to get her coffee and go as quickly as possible. But then her dreams of a quick exit were dashed when someone with a voice that could only be described as goose-like felt that now was the right time to sidle up to her and strike up a conversation.

“Gee, your receipt must be way more interesting than mine.”

Pearl looked up and did her best to smile at the large-nosed, chipped tooth redhead who had just started talking to her. “Yeah. It’s fascinating.”

“I’m Jinkx, Jinkx Monsoon,” they said, their shirt sleeves riding up and revealing the single tattoo on their wrist as they extended their hand. The last time Pearl had shaken someone’s hand in a casual conversation she’d been meeting her uptight, stiff-upper-lipped, homophobic uncle Remus for the first time. Jinkx, with their wild red hair and ragged thrift-store wardrobe, was the very antithesis of that detestable uncle.

A little weirded out, but not wanting to be rude, Pearl took the extended hand and shook it. “Pearl.”

“You doing the acting program?” Jinkx asked, tipping their head in curiosity.

“Uh, yeah. Guessing you are too?”

“Yeah! Got my next class in an hour.”

So this was another classmate. Well, Jinkx certainly looked like a theatre kid, that was for sure - no other breed could wear a sweater that large or a skirt that long without shame. “Same, actually.”

“Oh, that’s fantastic! I’m kind of excited, y’know? Meeting a whole new bunch of people, learning new skills… It’ll be fun, right?”

You sound like a promotional brochure. “Yeah, it’s gonna be great.”

“And this is, like, a really small school, so it’ll be super easy to meet people.”

Jinkx carried on waxing lyrical about the greatest qualities of the Ginsberg University of Performing Arts for the entire duration of their short acquaintance. By the time Pearl got her coffee, it was like she’d just been through orientation week again - listening to someone promote the school while she waited for a long black from the hole in the wall cafe wasn’t an event she’d expected to repeat.

“Listen, it was nice meeting you, but I gotta go-”

“Class doesn’t start for ages! You could come hang out with me and my friends if you wanted?”

Pearl took a moment to picture Jinkx’s friends in her head - hippies, weirdos, and nutjobs. No thanks. “I, uh, got somewhere to be. Uh, course adviser.”

Dashing off before Jinkx could enquire any further, Pearl strolled back out into the open air, hot coffee in hand, and peace of mind restored. Course adviser her ass.

***

Ginsberg campus wasn’t exactly huge - there was the hub, two big theatres, a few workshops and sewing rooms, and… that was about it. There was the hall of residence too, where the kids who were too rich to live at home but too poor to flat went to stay, but Pearl wasn’t sure if that counted as part of campus. It’s not like it mattered, anyway.

Killing time for an hour in such a small place was not exactly easy, as Pearl soon discovered. Long blacks didn’t last forever, and neither did one’s Instagram feed, so Pearl soon found herself with half an hour to spare and nothing to do. Three options presented themselves to her - one: sit around where she was and do nothing, two: go back to the hub and dare to interact with Jinkx again, and three: just go to class ridiculously early.

Option number three sounded like her best bet, especially since she didn’t actually know which theatre she had to go to for class. She’d hoped it’d take her at least twenty minutes to find the right building, but alas, it was not to be, for the first door she poked her head through lead to an empty theatre with none other than Violet Chachki sitting in the middle of the dusty floor.

Looks like she’d found the right theatre.

“Oh, Pearl. Hi.”

“You got bored too?”

“What do you think?”

“Whatever.”

Pearl made her way over to the tiered seats overlooking the flat black floor known as a stage, the material it was made out of so non-descript that Pearl couldn’t name it even if there was a gun to her head. Good thing there wasn’t one, because otherwise there’d be brains all over the place.

“The other theatre has a proper stage, y’know.”

“Huh?”

“The other theatre, there’s two of them.” Violet looked up at her through heavy makeup, still seated in the middle of the stage. Pearl would’ve thought she’d want to sit in the seats to save her skirt - that floor looked like it hadn’t been cleaned since last semester. “We got the shit one.”

“A shitty theatre for shitty actors. Sounds great,” Pearl remarked, lifting her legs and resting her feet on the chair in front of her. Violet gave a little huff of response before returning to her phone. Did the damn thing ever turn off? But then again, who was Pearl to talk?

About twenty minutes later, the rest of the class started to arrive, and Pearl had never felt more underdressed in her life. Everybody seemed to have their own unique, individual style, so well put together in a so quirky it was cool kind of way. Even Violet, in her black and white tribute to Cher Horowitz, didn’t look out of place - at least her outfit showcased her identity. Did a band t-shirt and jeans really count as a personality?

Jinkx was there, of course, followed by two goons who couldn’t be more different in height, and their face lit up like a… a… a thing that lights up, at the sight of their new acquaintance.

“Oh hey, Pearl!” they said with a smile, before jogging up the stairs either side of the seats and plonking down beside her, their two friends following behind them. One was tall, blonde, skinny and gawky as hell, wearing denim dungarees with trousers that were way too short, odd, colourful socks, and platform sneakers that lit up whenever she took a step. The other was her polar opposite - short, dark-skinned, black hair in tiny little braids, and an outfit reminiscent of Violet’s but a tad more… yellow. Did everyone in California just worship the fashions of Clueless or something? “I thought I’d see you here.”

“That’s because I told you we’re in the same class,” Pearl replied, her solemn monotone a stark contrast to Jinkx’s goose honk of a voice.

“Well, duh! Anyway, this is Jaidynn-” the short one gave a cheery wave “-and this is Milk.”

“…Milk?”

The aforementioned dairy product could only grin, a wonky expression that matched her overall presentation. “Don’t wear it out.”

“Wasn’t planning on it…”

“So, you from here?” Jaidynn asked, her tone as friendly as her smile. She seemed the most normal out of the bunch, which Pearl could only thank her lucky stars for. If everyone was going to show up looking like Jinkx and… Milk… then Pearl needed at least someone to hold onto. She would’ve gone for Violet in any other situation, but given that Violet, was, well, Violet, there was very little chance of that happening.

“Uh, no. I just moved here. From New York.”

Jaidynn nodded, her braids bouncing with her. “Damn, girl, that’s a big move! Think it was worth it?”

Debatable. “Yeah, totally worth it.”

“It’s really great here. I mean, LA does take a bit of getting used to, but hey, we all managed it!”

Milk shot her a sideways glance. “We were all born here.”

“Still got used to it, didn’t we?” Jaidynn asked, glancing up at her (much) taller friend. “We were just babies when we did, that’s all!”

“You’re such a dingus.”

‘Dingus’… Who the hell said ‘dingus’ in earnest anymore? Still, coming from someone with a name like Milk, Pearl couldn’t be surprised. The three stooges went about trying to engage Pearl in conversation, but she just couldn’t bring herself to be invested in anything they were saying. Did that make her a bitch? Probably, but that hardly came as a shock.

Maybe going to a performing arts college hadn’t been such a good idea after all… Oh well. It was too late now. She’d already paid for it, may as well get her money’s worth.

Eventually, the three stooges got the message and just went to chatting amongst themselves, and, with nothing but droning static buzzing through her vacant mind, she found herself listening in on what they were saying. Funny - when they wanted her to listen, she didn’t, and when they didn’t want her to listen, she did.

“You’d think Max would be here by now,” Jinkx remarked, fiddling with one of the many feathers hanging from the end of their pendant. “She left the hall at the same time we did.”

Jaidynn shrugged. “Let the girl live a little. She’s never been late to anything before in her life, this is a big step for her.”

Pearl couldn’t tell if they were being jokey friendship mean, or just regular, nasty mean. Milk only made it more ambiguous. “Jaidynn, she’s taller than me. I don’t think she can take bigger steps.”

It took another group of students entering the sparse theatre to draw Pearl’s attention away from the possible bullying. Yet another giantess, this one so skinny you could snap her like a twig, and the massive pile of straggly blonde hair atop her head only accentuated her height. Next came what looked like the winner of the annual Dolly Parton lookalike contest, all decked out in pink plaid and denim, with another blonde hanging onto her arm who was all red lipstick, taxidermy hats, and horrendously dated patterned maxi dresses. Following them was a shorter, rounder woman, with big red hair pulled into an updo and an outfit that would better suit a pastors wife than a youthful performing arts student.

Judging by the fact that there was no cry of recognition from the three stooges, the mysterious Max was yet to make her appearance.

Last to enter was an older woman, marked immediately as a teacher by the pile of papers she carried in her skinny, cardigan clad arms. A mess of obviously dyed red curls sat on her head, and her makeup made her look just a little bit crazy - razor-thin eyebrows, big eyelashes, lipstick that made her top lip look just that little bit too wide. At the sight of Violet on the floor, the woman greeted her with a peculiar smile.

“Now, what’re you doing on the floor there, missy?”

Violet looked at her with an incredulous stare before hopping to her feet and walking back to the seats with the rest of the students. All eight of them, nine in total, plus Violet. Was this a really small class, or was everyone else just late?

All eyes were on their assumed teacher. “Well, welcome to our acting course everybody, one of the finest in the state.” Her voice had a strange lilt to it, southern but Spanish at the same time. “I think we’ve got everyone here…”

Pearl glanced around the tiny class as the woman tried to navigate her pile of documents, struggling with the one-handed job. Taxidermy-maxi dress caught Pearl’s eye and grinned at her, and she couldn’t help but notice how her arm was lovingly slung around Dolly Parton’s shoulder.

“Looks like we’re just missing one…”

Blonde Amy Winehouse’s eyes went wide - surely this couldn’t be everyone? Pearl had to mirror that thought - ten students was not many, even for a class of this nature. Pearl had joined high school clubs with more numbers.

“Alright, ladies and… uh, ladies, my name’s Miss Brown, but you can call me Tammie.” There went that peculiar smile again. Pearl supposed it was meant to be comforting, but it had quite the opposite effect. “Now, we can get into the fun stuff in a quick tick, but I just gotta call the roll first, alright? Violet Chachki?”

“Here.” (Said with characteristic enthusiasm.)

“Jaidynn Diore?”

“Yup!” (Much too happy to be here.)

“Daniel Donnigan?”

“It’s, uh, Milk, thanks.” (Trans? NB? More like none of Pearl’s business.)

“Oopsie! Just mark that down… Ginger Eads?”

“Present.” (Southern, no doubt about it.)

“Alaska Honard?”

“Hiiiieee!” (Nails down a chalkboard.)

“Pearl Liaison?”

“Sup.” (Did that make her sound lame?)

“Maxine Malanaphy?”

“…”

“Maxine? Have we got a Maxine in here?”

“…”

“Alright, guess we’ll move on then. Trix-”

Just as the name was called, the door burst open, cutting off poor Miss Brown with a bang. All eyes went to the giantess standing in the door (was there just something in the Californian water that made everyone taller?), looking like a new-born deer caught in the headlights, her wide, watery eyes glancing around the room, and her alabaster cheeks flushed like a cherry and only getting redder.

“I’m guessing you’re our missing Maxine?”

“Yes… I’m so, so sorry…” She’d clearly ran here, because she could barely get her words out for how puffed she was, chest heaving as she panted.

Everybody was staring Maxine down for her lateness, for arriving so conspicuously, or maybe just because she looked like a character plucked straight out of a Tim Burton movie. But she’d caught Pearl’s attention for a completely different reason, a reason that, quite frankly, shocked her more than almost anything else in her uneventful life.

She knew that voice. She knew that face. She knew this girl.

“It would be a shame if you woke up. I’d miss you. But then again, we wouldn’t be parted forever.”

“Wouldn’t we?”

“You’ll fall asleep again, won’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Then we’ll meet again.”

Maxine was literally the girl of her dreams.

20 notes · View notes

ac-ars · 6 years

Text

drunk talking

ayy she is there she is done, its ta au which is always sin, more sin than normally, plus the prompt is sin so here you have it i hope you have fun

day 5 - “I called one of the telephone numbers written in the toilet stall and now I want to fuck your voice”

🌙

drunk talking

Luna Valente lucked out today despite the fact she very, very overslept. It’s the worst day possible to be late, since today is supposed to be some test on chemistry and she was studying probably too long, because this very chapter has been such a bitch. Longer than others and mentioning more difficult shit and in general Luna just never liked this part of chemistry. They will never be friends and she guesses that it’s okay. Anyway, she was running around her apartment like a tornado, starting one thing and then another, without finishing the first one. She ended up washing her teeth and brushing her hair while wearing her underwear, one sock and a skirt. And when she was buttoning up her flowy, short sleeve shirt, she was also eating her cereal. That’s called multitasking and no one but Luna Valente in hurry can master it to this level.

She managed to catch subway, the one before the last possible she could take to be on time, she finished her tea on the go, and then ran a little towards the building in the campus, so now she is heading to the toilet, to gather herself together and look less like messy mess.

Those dark circles under her eyes really need to disappear under the concealer and her face would love to use a little blush, and those brown hairs that are sticking in every side probably will be happy to be hang out with a brush.

In the middle of miracle makeover Luna gets a text from Pedro, asking her where she is. She hums and rolls her eyes at this impatient asshole and answers that she will be there soon soon. Her thoughts kinda run away in some weird directions to what else should she do, maybe buy a bottle of water, but now or later? Does she have time for that? Will she go for lunch with Pedro later or will he be drama queen about how she cheated from his test? This eats definitely too much time of Luna’s while she is trying to untangle this messy ball of her hair under right ear, she looks around the ugly mirror until she spots some writing with permanent marker right below the corner of said mirror.

This part of the campus, more like this very specific building is waiting for some renovations out and inside, this means the toilets aren’t in the best state here. Not that they are stinky and disgusting, but there are weird writings around, some doodles and curses, many, many phone numbers. Luna isn’t a fan of ruining something, writing over something, because there are usually people who will have to work and clean it later or fix, and she is just a good person, trying to get them as little of unneeded trouble, as possible.

But! She leans her head to the left, to make sure all her hair where the tangle ball used to be, are fine and there is nothing to brush else. Her eyes follow all the writings on the tiles on the wall, wondering why are people like this, covering almost every small tile with some drawing. There is, though, this one number, written with bold, bold font, the digits seem to be a creation of someone writing the same number over and over again in the very same place, just making it more visible and bolder. She hums, because what could be so important, or who, to be left like this for future in ladies’ toilet. Luna, completely not sure what she is going to do with it, just saves it on her contacts and runs towards the class, because boy, chemistry is watching for her.

🌙

“What do we have tomorrow?” she asks lazily while playing with her empty glass after wine. Pedro looks at her with raised eyebrows and shrugs. “I don’t know. No test, that’s for sure, but I think we have physics.”

“Oh my, I don’t wanna,” Luna mumbles, cursing under her breath and he kicks her ankle softly. “Don’t pretend you don’t wanna go. You are dying to see that guy every damn week, Luna Valente.” He looks super smug right now and she opens her mouth wide, very offended.

“I very don’t are if it’s Matteo or not, the break is this weekend and everyone cancelled classes tomorrow except this asshole. I really don’t wanna see him.”

Her Spanish friend looks at her very skeptical and totally not believing her. “I can’t even imagine you looking or thinking about him anything but hungry, and it’s totally okay. We all have issues when it comes to hot people. For example I still can’t not stare at my English prof from the old times when I tried to study English.”

Luna rolls her eyes and crosses her legs. “I’m totally not staring at him any hungry.” The wine in her head isn’t really helping now when it gives her images of said Matteo Balsano, who looked incredibly attractive when she last time saw him. So attractive, that she actually missed what he was talking about at the end of the class, and missed why the whole group is so mad at him. Then Pedro told her, and now Luna and her brain have quiet days without imagining her ta before she goes to sleep.

“Yes, of course,” he says getting up and putting his empty glass on the coffee table and kissing top of the brunette’s head. “I’m gonna be going home since tomorrow we are seeing each other on physics. Please don’t waste yourself so I gotta come here and put you together.”

She pouts at this but sends him a kiss and he leaves, and she empties her own glass quickly, not sure what to do now. It’s gonna be probably boring, so she takes her phone and looks through all insta stories to check what’s going on around the world.

Ambar is hanging out with some weird goths again, but she seems happy or at least not annoyed so it’s a good thing already. Simon and his Roller bros are playing some concert in this small famous club on the other end of Buenos Aires and it’s like third Thursday in a row, so they told her she didn’t need to attend. Gastón is posting on his story some aesthetic pictures of student life in Oxford, selfies with some girl and generally pretty shit, while Nina is travelling around museums today, writing and writing. Not once has she said that art inspires her to make more art.

There is nothing much happening when it comes to people from uni, so Luna just opens her recently used apps, because why not really? She finds that she used contacts today, which is unusual; they don’t really call or text each other since she mostly uses whatsapp or messenger, or anything that requires only internet.

In her contacts she finds some new one, added today, and in a moment she remembers it’s the number from her uni toilet, which sounds all kinds of ridiculous, but also very appealing to her drunk, wasted and tired brain.

She clicks on it, her phone asks her if she wants to call or text, and first thing she does is pouring some more whine to her glass. It’s gonna be very interesting here and Luna giggles at herself, as she presses the call square on her screen. When she hears like fifth signal, she remembers what the fuck time it is, and calling anyone at this hour is super, super rude, but in the same moment she takes her phone away from her face to hang up, someone picks up.

“Hello?” some male, deep and raspy voice asks, and Luna’s first thought is oh fuck and second is oh fuck I woke this guy up. Before she manages to say anything, he adds impatient. “Is anyone there? If it’s nothing important, I’m ending this call, because I would really love to sleep-”

“Hi,” Luna jumps and he shuts up for a few super short seconds. “Um, I’m sorry, it’s a mistake.”

“A mistake?” he asks, “I don’t think calling anyone at this ungodly hour can be described as a mistake, little lady.”

She takes a deep breath and a sip of wine from her glass. “I, um, shouldn’t have called, but I am drunk and I was bored, and it just kinda happened. I’m sorry.”

The guy on the other side of the phone sighs heavily, even this sound is somehow hot, and at this point Luna can’t really care if he can be some disgusting creep, she will just block this number tomorrow plus she won’t really tell him any details. Bless her drunk brain always keeping her safe no matter what.

“Okay, tell me, should I have your number saved? Where did you even get mine?” he asks, his voice changes and maybe he is more awake now, which is bad and bad at the same time.

“No, no, I’m, it’s gonna be dumb as hell, but I found your number written on wall in the toilet in my faculty.”

The guy laughs quietly and sighs again. “Dear stars, why have I done this to myself? So you are a student?”

“Yeah, but that’s all I’m telling you. I don’t know who you are and I won’t tell you anything.”

Luna hears him humming longly. “You don’t know who I am then?”

“I just told you that!” She rolls her eyes and he laughs again, and she is kinda annoyed at this point. The guy seems amused, but then he clears his throat. He speaks, and his voice sounds kinda different. She is focusing on his voice too much. “I have few questions for you, actually, but they aren’t about any private shit, you don’t have to worry I will try to stalk you anywhere.” He stops for a moment and continues, Luna completely focused drinks her wine slowly, just to find her glass is empty and it’s a moment to fill it again, because she is oh so curious. “I’m just lowkey lost, it’s been years since I got this kinda call.”

“I get it, you know you can just hang up, though?” she asks, playing with a strand of her hair and makes herself more comfy on the couch. It’s dark, and quiet, and Luna wants him to talk to her endlessly.

“Nah, it’s okay, I wasn’t really sleeping anyway, so tell me, little lady I don’t know name of, why are you awake at this hour?”

Luna shrugs to herself, remembering just after a moment that he can’t see her. “I guess I’m not sleepy yet. Plus I still have wine to drink.”

She can’t see him either, but she is sure that he is smiling right now. And it feels weirdly good. “Perfect, I’m going to help you with falling asleep today, because I think it’s unfair to leave you alone, not being able to sleep, even if, as you said, you called by mistake.”

This is getting weirder, and weirder, and Luna Valente doesn’t mind at all. “How would you help me from there, wherever you are?”

“Oh don’t worry about that. Will you do what I tell you, though?”

She bites on her lower lip, thinking, and wine answers for her. “Sure.”

🌙

Damn, damn, damn. Damn everything, because here she is, late again, and it’s probably Pedro ringing her door bell. It’s a disaster, she went to sleep definitely too late for it to be any accepted and her friend is gonna kick her ass in a minute. Wanting or not, Luna needs to open him, he looks at her super angry, but as soon as he sees her, he laughs so loudly.

She pouts, but honestly she can’t be stressed at all after last night’s letting all tension out. She isn’t even feeling any disgust with herself as she is planning to block the number to this guy, in case he calls her or something. Pedro seems to be very smug, but she ignores that.

“How late are we?” The brunette asks, running around as he just goes to the kitchen and makes himself a coffee.

“We are on perfect time to manage. I decided to scare you a little so you hurry up your little butt faster around.”

As soon as she sees that, she growls and huffs and goes to her bedroom to get dressed, and bless this bastard for driving her today, because she isn’t in a mood for subway today. She will be paranoid and think that every hot guy is the guy. His voice and his ideas were hot as fuck, so it’s obvious her brain will just go towards the attractive men.

“What is wrong with you, little one? You seem absent today. Tell me, what time did you go to sleep?”

She just rolls her eyes and pushes him out of her apartment, despite the fact that he is still holding one of her cat mugs.

Pedro is driving very weirdly, or at least Luna thinks that. He is a mess, but she feels with him always safe, right now safe enough to focus on her thoughts as she is wondering what the fuck is wrong with her that she called this guy last night. What the fuck is wrong with her at all? She has no idea, but this was so weird and so hot, and the wine didn’t help her to chill. Her eyes are set on the road in front of them, and before she can wake up, they are on uni’s parking lot and Pedro is poking her on the cheek to leave the car.

“Okay, I know,” he says and Luna throws him a weird look. “You know what?”

“Drugs. I’m sure it’s this, because you haven’t trashed me one single time during the way here, and usually you keep telling me how to drive, even if you don’t own a car.”

She rolls her eyes. “I have just other stuff on my head. I will tell you later, but now I gotta go to bathroom, because you idiot didn’t let me brush my hair.”

“You look pretty, maybe Balsano will think your bed head is hot.” Pedro hums, but she just shakes her head and walks quickly to the closest bathroom, since she hates being late.

Her eyes are focused on the phone as she is checking the hour, until she bumps into someone violently; the other person steadies her with their hands on her shoulders. The brunette looks up and blinks surprised, seeing no one else, but her physics ta, leaving toilet for women, which is weird, but his eyes sparkling with amusement, and this smirk don’t really let her think longer about how unusual this is.

“Watch out, Luna, please. We don’t want you to end up on the floor, do we?” he asks with small smirk and she needs to calm her hormones, and this is going to be a problem, since all tension that left her last night is all back, twice as strong, because so close to Matteo she has never been.

The brunette manages to speak, though. “Yes, yes, I’m sorry about that. I hope nothing happened to you.”

He sends her a smile. “Oh, don’t worry about that.”

With this, he caresses her shoulders last time, and leaves, probably to his small office and then to class, which means she doesn’t have much time. She still needs to brush her hair, even if he already seen her. Pedro is gonna pay for saying it and messing with her (bad) luck.

She enters the bathroom and without anything just searches for her brush in the back. Her eyes automatically swim towards the bolded number on the wall.

It’s not there anymore.

🌙

Sitting on her seat in physics class, next to her best friend who knows fucking nothing, is the most difficult thing. She has no idea what people around her are speaking, but now her mind is busy with the fact, how something written who knows when, could go off so easily, when just the very day before it was there visible and healthy.

She has really no idea, this is so, so confusing and she can’t tell Pedro, because this asshole is going to make fun of her and say that she seriously needs to drink less and get laid properly, not by herself on the phone, but he is ridiculous jerk with issues, so maybe it won’t be that bad.

For now, Matteo is talking something to them, she doesn’t understand, her mind keeps repeating how he said oh, don’t worry about that and with each and every time she is less calm. He eventually lies his eyes on her, there is something in his look that messes with her every thought.

He winks.

She gasps.

#soy luna #lutteo #lutteoficweek #my writing

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namilafraise · 6 years

Text

Thank you again for tagging me @moonaster !

1st rule: tag 9 you want to know better!

2nd rule: bold the statements that are the truth.

APPEARANCE: - I am 5'7 or taller - I wear glasses - I have at least one tattoo (but I plan to get one)- I have at least one piercing(If ear piercings count, I have one in each ear) - I have blonde hair- I have(dark) brown hair - I have short hair - My abs are at least somewhat defined - I have or had braces (in high school at that, but they were pretty discreet).

PERSONALITY: I love meeting new people (but I’m too shy to go to them…) - people tell me that I am funny(well, they don’t, but I’m make them laugh with my shitty puns))- Helping others with their problems is a big priority to me (I can’t stand when my friends don’t feel well and I will listen to them and try to find solutions. But I will call them out if their BS is the cause of the problem ! And people in the street tend to go to me when they’re lost or need help.) - I enjoy physical challenges - I enjoy mental challenges - I am playfully rude to the people I know(I have a short friend and a clumsy friend *insert trollface*) - I started saying something ironically and now I can’t stop saying that(the old french version of god dammit ‘vindieu’… Help me !) - there is something I would change about my personality (I wish my motivation would be stronger than my laziness).

ABILITIES: - I can sing well - I can play an instrument - I can do over 30 pushups without stopping (and I did as a challenge during my uni’s integration weekend. The guy was : “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 10, 9….”) - I am fast runner - I can draw well - I have good memory - I am good at doing math in my head - I can hold my breath under water for over a minute(only if I don’t move ^^) - I have beaten up at least two people at arm wrestling - I can make at least 3 recipes from scratch(chocolate fondant FTW !) - I know how to throw a proper punch

HOBBIES: - I enjoy sports(but I’m too lazy to do one) - I am on sports team on my school or somewhere else - I am at choir or orchestra on my school or somewhere else - I have learned a new song in past month(the new Gintama’s opening) - I exercise at least once a week - I have gone for runs at least once a week in warmer months - I have drawn something in past month - I enjoy writing(But I haven’t written anything in years, and everything is incomplete and needs improvement) - Fandoms are my #1 priority - I do some form of martial arts

EXPERIENCES: - I have had my first kiss - I have had alcohol - I have scored winning point in the sport(I was part of my high school’s handball team, I was an attacker. But I also tried being the guardian… My belly remembers… And I did judo for 8 years and went to competitions) - I have watched entire TV series in one sitting (once you start you can’t stop<– ditto) - I have been at an overnight event -I have been in the taxi- I have been in the hospital or ER in the past year - I have beaten a video game in one day(It was portal 1, it took me 3 hours) - I have visited another country(I went to Spain thanks to my middle school!) - I have been to one of my favorite band’s concerts (and there is a concert in my uni’s town, but it’s at the same time as my faculty’s gala T-T)

MY LIFE: I have one person I consider my best friend (why stop at one ? I have three) - I live close to my work/school (10 minutes trip by foot to my uni) - My parents are still together - I live in the United States - There is snow there I live now - I have hung out with a friend in past month - I have a smart phone - I own at least 15 CDs - I share my room with someone

RELATIONSHIPS: I am in relationship - I have a crush on celebrity - I have a crush on someone I know - I’ve been in at least three relationships - I have never been in a relationship - I have admitted my feelings to a crush (but too late, we both had moved on (he had a crush on me too…*epic fail*)) - I get crushes easily - I have had a crush over a year - I have been in a relationship for over a year - I have had feelings for a friend

RANDOM: - I have break danced - I know a person named Jamie - I have had a teacher that has a name hard to pronounce - I have dyed my hair(but I’m planning to do it soon, even though I know my parents will disapprove (but I’m 21 for pete’s sake! I do what I want with my hair!))- I am listening a song on a repeat right now - I have punched someone in a last week - I know someone who has gone to jail- I have a broken bone - I have eaten a waffle today - I speak at least two languages - I have made a new friend in the past year.

And I’m tagging you @lohaku-side-blog

(I don’t tag anyone else because I never DM them and I’m afraid it will be unwelcomed ^^’)

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zotte · 7 years

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I just saw your reply to someone's ask abt art and... How come you never studied art in uni? What made you choose a different major? I hope i'm not bothering you, I'm just really curious bc your art is just so good!

Oh no no you're not bothering.The thing is, art was always looked down in my country and there was a myth that if you're going to study art and become an artist, you won't be able to succeed and have a future. My parents' generation grew up with that ideology and they were telling me the same. They weren't able to see all the opportunities outside the country. Even when i was a kid and asked my mom to let me attend painting lessons, she refused and later when i grew up, she told me the reason, it was because she knew i would follow that path. It is good to trust your parents, but sometimes you gotta follow your inner thought. I struggled a lot in medical university. I was studying dentistry at first but it literally sucked the life out of me. I hated everything because i didn't want to be there. Later i found the faculty I'm studying now, ecology and public health care, which made me more interested than dentistry so i changed my faculty few months ago. I will always regret that i didn't trust myself and didn't choose art. Now you might think, "but it's never late!". My parents pay my tuition and i really don't want to bother them anymore. But i have a goal! When I'm done with uni and will start working, having my own money, i plan to learn drawing seriously ^^ If you want to know anything else, be free to ask *3*

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tendingthearchive · 5 years

Text

Having opinions in digital preservation

A talk for Australasia Preserves, the digital preservation community-of-practice.

Thank you for the invite to talk to you today.

My 9 year old asked me as we hiked down the far south coast last weekend, what is digital preservation. I said to him it’s about keeping digital stuff like things on the internet forever. I don’t think it had ever occurred to him that what’s on the internet might be temporary.

So what’s difficult about keeping digital stuff forever then?

For me there are two factors:

1) that the digital needs an ecology. My background is archives both in the professional sense and in the humanities-metaphorical sense. When people ask me what is an archivist-they rarely do, most people have an opinion about what an archivist is. But my answer is that we are experts at putting information in context.

2) that boundaries in the digital are not clear cut and decisions must be made. Here I mean how deep do you go into the website, how much of that digital ecology do you need to keep to keep it alive.

And my solutions in short are:

1) we must get used to having, showing and justifying our opinions about the decisions we make in digital preservation.

2) we need both people and things if we want to keep such fragile things as digital resources alive. we need to charge people with caring for them so that all the knowledge that must go with them stays alive. We still need the traditional things of preservation but we and we need to keep them circulating.

So that foreshadows my points for you.

Now I must give you my credentials before I flesh out why I can make these quite massive claims.

Today I am talking to you from my desk in PhD study room in the arts faculty at the Uni of CBR. I am a member of the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research.

I worked from 2002 until just a month ago at National Archives, initially in film preservation, then in information management, most recently Australian government information policy.

I broke up my time at the Archives with a stint at the Maritime Museum as a records manager.

My life in archives began in local government in Sydney.

My creative life in audiovisual media began back in 1990 in New Zealand and has continued throughout.

And now I am going to turn to the data set that has pointed me to to these massive claims.

My PhD uses a case study of a perfect storm of ephemeral media–a film performance from 1976 that involves super 8 film. Some of you may know it, so I will name it ‘Man With Mirror’ by British artist Guy Sherwin. My field work consisted of testing a ‘manual’ for the artwork that my colleague and I made some years earlier. I focused my research on testing the manual to try to understand if instructions/‘the archive’ are enough to keep live things like Man With Mirror alive. I commissioned an artist to work with me and the manual coproducer to try out the instructions. As a control experiment, I commissioned some artists to work on their own with only the manual.

In my sentence ‘understand if the instructions are enough to keep live things alive’, we can substitute language more familiar in digital preservation: ‘I wanted to understand if instructions can keep performance-dependent things alive’.

I want to make that link to digital preservation explicit. My work on Man With Mirror usefully flushes out some of the problems and issues that beset digital preservation.

Why? Because Man With Mirror is old school analogue made on super 8, it involves performance, and it’s quite old, made in 1976.

Here is footage of Guy performing. It’s quite hard to understand what’s going on in this video–that’s part of my point, a recording of it doesn’t do it justice.

Let me decode it for you–Guy filmed himself in a London park in 1976 performing a fairly fixed choreography with a mirror. He repeats that performance live with the film projected onto himself and the mirror. The performance becomes this surprisingly disconcerting experience–even though you can clearly see that it’s an interplay between ‘film Guy’ and ‘live Guy’ because you can see the projector, there are no tricks, nothing’s hidden. It creates a poetic and satisfying confusion where you can’t quite tell film Guy from real Guy.

So it’s like an early kind of VR or immersive media experience, the mirror image gets projected out around the audience, there is this uncanny doubling going on. Guy has performed this work a lot since 2000.

So here are the problems Man With Mirror shares with digital preservation:

1) it has to perform, both the technology and its content just like the Word document itself and the Word program or equivalent.

2) If it’s shelved on its own without any context or metadata, it will be completely unintelligible.

3) And because of its particular content, it can’t just be straight copied, that will lose one of its main ‘reasons for being’. It’s DNA has to be ‘kept alive’.

Part of my creative audiovisual media practice looks at underground film history. About a decade ago, an artist friend and I started ‘re-enacting’ some of the live or expanded cinema from the underground. Some of you may know our work–we are Teaching and Learning Cinema. We learnt from our early re-enactments and for Man With Mirror, we recorded our experience of the process in a ‘manual’ as a set of instructions. Our reasons included encouraging others to try staging Man With Mirror themselves and also preserving Man With Mirror.

So to return to my two key points:

1) we must get used to having, showing and justifying our opinions about the decisions we make in digital preservation.

- the manual is a ‘tale of experience’. It includes background info about Guy and Expanded Cinema but its call to future attention is that its subjective.

Sub points:

made as part of our art practice

a creative practice

no manual by Guy

not just that we made it up or riffed on it, we also wanted to attend to the rules and rigours, our creative contribution was to try to ascertain what was irrefutably different because we did it instead of Guy and the next person’s experience would be different.

instructions as creative product have a history - Fluxus is one of them - Maclow spirit of collab. tact etc.

2) we need both people and things if we want to keep such fragile things as digital resources alive. Sometimes we need to charge people with caring for them so that all the knowledge that must go with them stays alive. We still need the traditional things of preservation but/and we need to keep them circulating.

Let’s work through each of these points with my data from Man With Mirror.

We need people and things:

I commissioned Laura to work with Lucas and I to test the user’s manual. She surfaced that the embodied knowledge involved in the work wasn’t captured in the manual. She wasn’t quite sure where to put her hands. TLC had never specifically discussed this nor identified it as essential information until we worked with Laura. We did know the answer but we didn’t know it was important, it never occurred to us to pass that info on. And yet it’s really important for Laura.

There are two things to note here connected to why we need people and things:

TACIT Knowledge can be buried – it’s very difficult to record all the important information. Tacit knowledge can be hidden and it’s not until you experience it that you find things that need to be made explicit.

–the second one is that testing your collection and its records is critical. Most of us know this. Certainly in the archives world, the first rule of description as I learnt it was that you must test how you describe things to see if it actually takes the user where you want them to go and where they need and want to go. So with our user’s manual, the testing came after the manual but the manual will end up with an insert in the form of Laura’s tale of use.

I am taking this idea a step further at the moment in my current project with Guy’s partner Lynn to make instructions for a 16mm performance work of hers. We will make and test the instructions in five cycles of testing with different users. We are doing this in an exhibition in CBR called The Stand in Project.

UNDERSTANDING WHERE THE EMPHASIS SHOULD GO CAN BE DIFFICULT

Recently, after Laura’s use some students tried out using the manual unaided to set up for TLC. They had trouble working out the relative importance of things. Did the puffer brush to clean the film projector play a major part? They really couldn’t work it out and of course, the puffer brush is a completely incidental tool. This is much like TLC’s early experience in staging other people’s artworks. We showed a seminal experimental film experience Line Describing a Cone. It involves haze. Our room was so dense with haze you couldn’t see from one side to the other. after discussion with the film maker, we realised the haze was a stand in for the cigarette smoke that would have been in the room in 1969 when it was first made, far less than we created. And we were deeply worried by the film print. Did the imperfections in the print ruin the idea? Over time we learnt that these considerations which had seemed so important were minor and the real ‘site’ of the work was robust, little we could do to derail the wonderful 3D sculpture that Line Describing a Cone creates.

Laura describes this in her ‘tale of use’ that she added to the WWM user’s manual.

In the Stand in Project, I have asked Lynn to write a letter of ‘invitation’ to a future user to tell them in her own words what’s important to her about it, to try to impart some of her wisdom to that user.

So these are problems of emphasis. Or they are knowing what’s essential about the work. Or they are identifying the DNA.

Sometimes we need to charge people with caring for them

Some of you will have heard me talk before about Rebecca Schneider. She is a scholar of performance studies, the field that blossomed in the 70s drawing together ideas from anthropology and progressive theatre. Schneider wrote a book on re-enactment so she has been mandatory reading for me. One of her ideas that’s a useful challenge to heritage keepers is that a performance can be a record. Our usual thinking is that the problem with performance is that records of it are never the same as being there. There’s a whole line of scholarship that digs into this. But Schneider’s idea that a performance can be a record then puts our emphasis on keeping the structure that produces that record alive. Her example is the religious liturgy. Each performance is actually evidence that cultural knowledge persists. Keeping the individual liturgy has less urgency for those that value it than ensuring that the performance of the algorithm of the liturgy can continue. This is similar to our ideas in producing a manual for Man With Mirror. We wanted to keep the experience of Guy’s work alive. And as you can see from my description, just keeping Guy’s film components won’t allow an experience of the work when Guy’s not around because essential to the work is a relationship between the performer and the person in the film.

And Lucas and I as TLC explored this idea of getting users partly because we wanted to see if we could establish a ‘mini ritual’ around Man With Mirror. And this goes to the idea I talked about in my iPres 2016 offering, that in this model of ‘preservation as/of doing’, a small community of ‘carers’ is brought into existence. We have no evidence yet that the small community will persist over time but that concept, of forming a ‘circle of support’ for variable media objects that we really care about seems promising.

Some other points if they come up: my idea about a circle of support for media is a massive claim. Can we scale it across things like the National Archives? If we want the records of the Wheat Exports Board, if we want to actually understand those emails are we going to be able to do that. My ambitions for the National Archives are more modest - we want to include tales of use - when people use these records, their use fleshes them out in a particular way.

Man With Mirror is in the collection of the EYE Film museum in Amsterdam, but what’s in the collection is limited to the film components. A film archives scholar proposed using choreographic notation to record the movements that are carried out in Man With Mirror. My conservator husband suggested you would in the future cast a ‘look alike’ to perform the work.

What kind of use or ‘contact’ might a future visitor/user want from the variable object.

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