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magicalforcesau · 3 years

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Letters (part 1)

The written correspondence between Obi-Wan and Satine throughout their Hogwarts career. In this part, we see the early stages of their friendship leading up to where we find ourselves in the beginning of “Dancing with Ghosts in Your Garden”.

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First Year- Winter

Dear Obi-Wan,

I distinctly recall requesting that we continue correspondence over the course of our winter holiday and yet, here we are nearing the halfway point without any trace of a letter. It is to my understanding that you are intrinsically hardwired to automate politeness, but such pleasantries are meaningless if you do not intend on following through. Here I was thinking that despite our many differences, that we were becoming acquaintances.

Before you go off developing delusions of grandeur thinking I am lonely or desperate for your reciprocated communication, I am quite well off either way. I am just miffed that I was not afforded the opportunity to practice writing in Mando’a more this break and my owl, Copikla, needed the exercise.

Should this letter find you well, I must emphasize that I am not crying out for a response. Your silence will be loud enough on your intentions regarding any pursuit of a potential friendship. Do not write back out of pity, either, because that would be as insulting as it would be foolish.

Sincerely,

Satine Kryze

Dear Satine,

Please understand that I am deeply apologetic for not writing sooner. It was not out of intentional callousness nor more damningly, indifference. Cody had written to me as well asking in regard to my whereabouts. Though it is not an excuse for my silence, I’ve mentioned before that my parents are very specific in what they expect of me, and unfortunately, I did not meet their hopes for the term. As a result, I've resolved to cleaning every square inch of the house. While this might seem like a simple set of chores, I promise you my house has many inches to clean.

Even in writing this letter I had to perform with haste. Mother has, of course, enlisted my assistance for the New Year’s party as she had for the Christmas party. I beg of you to ignore the fact that this is written on a napkin. All of my parchment is upstairs.

My semester at Hogwarts could have been completely dreadful had it not been for Cody and your combined efforts in preventing me from wallowing in my own self-pity. I am beginning to see the positives in starting fresh in Ravenclaw house and hope that one day, I will be capable of showing my parents the potential as well. Only time will tell, but I cannot wait to return to Hogwarts and that is because of the both of you.

I truly hope I can return some of the happiness you’ve given me and I say that not out of obligation, but from the depths of my heart.

Sincerely,

Obi-Wan Kenobi

Second Year- Summer

Dear Obi-Wan,

I know we just parted not but a few hours ago (don’t let it go to your head), but I couldn't help but look up what we were discussing earlier on the train. The International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy was formed due to the many witch and wizard (mostly witch- sexism and all that) burnings that were taking place all across the globe. Witches and wizards did not feel safe especially for their young, who could not control their magic as easily. However, as I suspected, there was opposition to maintaining secrecy and it was from none other than the pureblood sectors of magic.

That’s interesting, right? Especially when you consider our present political climate where it is the opposite. The purebloods preferred the melding of the two worlds, because they enjoyed coming and going as they pleased as well as associating with the upper class muggles of the time.

I hope you are not chained to your bedpost for the entire summer considering Ravenclaw claimed the House Cup in part to your miraculous save at the end of the match. You certainly deserve to see a little sunlight and that’s coming from someone as pale as myself.

Do actually write back this time if you’re allotted a quill and parchment. You’ll be insulted to know I am using a mechanical pen as we speak. There are some aspects of the wizarding culture that I will never understand, and the lack of simple innovation is one of them.

Sincerely,

Satine

Dear Satine,

What is truly a wonder is that someone is tackling the summer reading assignments even before I’ve managed to touch them! If you aren’t careful, everyone is going to start calling you the nerd behind your back. They’d be utterly daft to say it to your face, of course. I do not want to hear any nonsense about you finishing your homework before me, because simply using a standard pen is giving you a significant advantage to your arsenal. Before you retaliate with some droll rebuttal about how I’ve had countless advantages in being bred with wizarding history all around me, I think you need to reconsider my sources and how often I have to sift through half-truths to find reality.

For instance, the very piece of history you’re speaking of is told entirely differently in our textbooks than it has been my whole life. My family has always given off the impression that purebloods wanted to spare the less fortunate wizards from the muggle world and that it was those of lower status who did not understand the dangers of the world and got themselves twisted with dangerous muggles. It’s a little frightening how perspective changes the course of history.

The witch burnings were truly a terrible incident altogether, which is something all sources seem to agree upon. I do wonder though if they were more like martyrs for the ISS to begin. I’m sure muggle history has its ugly spots as well in regards to this era. When you finish your assignments and inevitably grow bored enough to write to me again, I’d be interested to hear the muggle perspective on historical incidents such as these. I’m sure as someone who has gone to muggle primary school, you were afforded a different and more rounded perspective on the matter.

Sincerely,

Obi-Wan

Third Year- Summer

Dear Ben,

I don’t understand how you can even REMOTELY believe that an institute that enslaves LIVING BEINGS of any kind is anywhere near acceptable. How do you go a full two years of knowing a person and never come across that key factoid? While I do often find myself trying to be considerate of the environment you grew up in, this is a basic core belief that is incredibly black and white. Either you believe that slavery is a reasonable option, or you do not. It is not a subject in which someone can have no opinion, because in doing so would only support those that believe in its merit. It’s how oppression thrives, not in its believers, but in those unwilling to say anything at all.

House Elves were not enslaved because it was the very reason they were created, but they were enslaved and then brainwashed into believing that their life’s purpose was to serve. The very ideal of their desires being infringed upon with the abolitionist movement was a narrative that was bred by slaveowners. A while back, when we spoke of witch burnings and of skewed narratives, you mentioned that you have been raised under the belief that historical moments happened a certain way. You then had to question your beliefs because your textbook said differently.

Allow me to be your textbook: wizards are not entitled to house elves. The institution that thrives off of the economic convenience of house elves was built on the backs of slavery. Cruelty. So, pardon me for feeling no remorse in the economic lapse taken when your ancestors were forced by wizarding statute to relinquish their slaves. In fact, I am doubling down on that apathy in how your family treats their paid servants.

Sincerely,

Satine

Dear Satine,

I never said owning a house elf was okay nor did I say I agreed with it. For Pete’s sake, do you always have to dig into controversy the moment we enter the borders of London? I swear you get pleasure out of catching me with my foot in my mouth with the excuse to go on some form of a tirade. How silly of me to ever dare to assume that I had the last word on the train.

House Elves were slaves and it was and always will be wrong. You’ll have no arguments from me in that regard and I’ve always believed that, with or without your infinite wisdom. I wish it was never a facet of our society, but it was. I’ve been honest with you in reference to how poorly my parents treat their servants and that they are not paid a typical wage, but out of indentured servitude. I was merely stating before that I have no pull nor say in ending this “contract”, not that I agree with its existence. While I’ll be honest, I never truly considered the injustice of it all until more recently, I never envied him and always showed compassion. I’ve been compassionate not to lessen my burden of guilt, but because it’s the right way to be.

I do not appreciate your comments in reference to my upbringing, as though that somehow makes me a lesser person simply because I come from bias. Everyone has bias and everyone must learn to differentiate from them.

My primary argument was from an economic standpoint only and in trying to raise the important question of how to repair that without relying on servitude. To this day, former elves struggle as some of the very elves who participated in the revolution are still alive and without a set purpose in this economy. Though they deserved to be free, the manner at which is was done was nearly as horrible as keeping them chained forever. Most fall back into stride of serving former masters. It raises the question of if they were ever really free and if we require such practices in order to thrive, are we really free? That doesn’t say much about us, now does it?

Now that I had more than exactly three seconds to articulate my point, does that satisfy you? Or would you rather return to your soapbox?

Sincerely,

Obi-Wan

P.S.: I hope your newfound abhorrence to my character does not prevent you from continuing to write this summer.

Third Year- Winter

Dear Satine,

Perhaps it’s near damnation for me to be physically documenting this moment, but I simply had to tell somebody. That impulse alone is a very frightening character change that I did not see coming. I’ve always thought I liked keeping to myself, but now I wonder if that was mere acceptance rather than preference. Regardless, I need you to know that I released Jar Jar, our humble and bumbling servant, from his contract this evening.

They were going to hurt him.

It wasn’t my parents’ decision, by my grandfather’s, who if you ever believed my parents were strict and traditional, you’ve never seen him in action. Practically senile, my grandfather loathes not only muggles and muggleborns, but halfbloods and low-ranking purebloods as well. My mother swears he was not as blunt and fiery in his youth, but I cannot be so sure.

Jar Jar has gotten a bit clumsier in his growing age as well. We have a whole lot of ‘loyal’ butlers and maids, of course, but Jar Jar has been with my family the longest, dating back shortly after the house elf revolution. He made the unfortunate mistake of spilling a glass of milk on my grandfather’s lap and his punishment was decided. It was to be done later that night in the backyard like he was a rabid animal.

I did not realize such practices even existed, nor that it was impossible for Jar Jar to simply run, since he still owes a significant monetary debt to my family on behalf of his ancestors. He would have died if he’d done so, because unbeknownst to myself, an unbreakable vow had been committed.

My Father was quite upset too, saying he’d grown to care for him and all the work he’s done since he was a child. It was the closest my father and I have ever come to sharing an emotional moment. Of course, now I can’t seem to hear anything they say regarding the matter without your words ringing through my head, so it was a bit muddled by the fact that he was more focused on losing out on Jar Jar’s service than on Jar Jar. He was also quite sloshed.

I could stand it no longer and I could simply not allow this sort of act to occur. They could have killed him if I’d heard correctly the sort of punishment method they were going to implement. I’ll spare you the details, but they were quite gruesome.

So, I crept upstairs, grabbed the savings I’d been holding onto beneath my bed, and I handed it over through a door that was merely cracked open enough to fit my hand through. I’m not even sure if Jar Jar knew it was me. All I knew was that Jar Jar was gone when they opened it later to retrieve him and we were all surprised.

Again, writing this down and admitting to it might be foolish, but while I might have committed a grand piece of treason from the shadows, I have never felt more relieved.

Best,

Obi-Wan

Dear Ben,

Yes, recording the very stunt you are trying to maintain a secret is not the most logical way to keep it under wraps, but I am ever elated to hear that you did it anyway. I’m sorry to hear that Jar Jar was to be harmed at all- let alone for something so mundane and that he didn’t get to achieve freedom until late in life. Who’s to say if he’s truly free right now anyway, as you have pointed out before. However, I will say, he is certainly better off being far away from your grandfather, who cannot harm him anymore.

That does not, of course, take away from the bravery of your actions. I find myself apologizing not once, but twice in this letter, because I do owe you one for ever insinuating that you would be actively in support of cruelty. It is not your way and I should know that by now. Sometimes, I’m a bit too rigid for my own good and I’ll admit to that firsthand. I worry that your need to confirm this with me was simply because you feel as though I think ill of you.

This is not the case. I know I was brash and reactive the first time we discussed this, but while I try to empathize, you must do the same to me. I grew up in a world where this sort of nonsense only existed in history books rather than being an ongoing debate. What concerns me most about the wizarding world is that it refuses to evolve. Not only technologically speaking, but on a humanitarian level.

As always, please keep me updated. I fear not only for the safety of this recently liberated indentured servant, but for you, because I understand you stuck your neck out for him and I admire you for it.

Best regards,

Satine

Fourth Year- Summer

Dear Satine,

I can already tell that summer is going to be brutal around here. While the climate has been tolerable, my father insists on around the clock quidditch practice. It seems my ‘lucky’ catch in second year was not enough to fully establish their faith in me. I can’t say I blame them. I’m indisputably the worst player on the team. Ever since Ventress caught the snitch for Slytherin and took the cup this year, it’s just about all they can talk about.

I actually don’t mind playing quidditch with my father. He’s very passionate about the sport or moreover, being the best at it. My father was captains of the Slytherin team his 6th and 7th year at Hogwarts. Evidently, he was an unstoppable force. I know they’ve always wished that for me, for that feeling of pure satisfaction at one’s job well done, but I am not the athlete he used to be.

Speaking of Ventress, they keep bringing her around more often than not. She’s still as pleasant as ever, if you’re wondering, and actually mentioned you the other day. She’s still cross about your beating her in wizard’s chess. She hasn’t said as much, but I can tell. I’ve got plenty of practice with deciphering young women that project their annoyance onto me. I can thank you for honing that special skill of mine.

How is your family? It’s to my understanding that your sister is not participating in summer camp this year. I know you saw her at Christmas, but you mentioned that you hadn’t truly spoken due to being so distracted from festivities. I know that you do not enjoy talking about it so if you do not want to, please do not feel obligated. I understand better than many the complications of the families we have to love. It makes us question our sanity sometimes.

Best,

Obi-Wan

Dear Ben,

You must truly be miserable to be writing to me first this summer. Usually, I have to pry letters from your hands if I want to hear about the whereabouts of your family. Now that you’ve turned the tables on me, I can understand why you are less than forthcoming.

Bo being around certainly is odd when it never used to be. I’ve only been at Hogwarts for almost four years. Why does that feel like a millennium? She’s taken great care to be away every summer in its entirety for camp, but this year the camp had been closed. My mother says she’s furious, but I suspect that’s because she doesn’t have an entirely different setting to run off to. I suppose I can’t judge too heavily, but I usually do enjoy my time at home. Seeing my mother and my brother is always refreshing and warm. I don’t want to set the impression that I don’t love my sister, because I do. She’s just… difficult. She doesn’t understand or like the concept of magic. Where my mum and my brother see an amazing new opportunity for me, Bo sees absurdity and refuses to open her mind.

If I can be honest with you, and you’ve certainly proved thus far that I can, I suspect she may be a little jealous. It would not be out of character for her to project her own disdain towards me.

Explaining any more deeply than that would be migraine-inducing for the both of us. I assure you my familial drama does not run as deep as yours, try as you might to downplay your situation. Before you object, I know you care for your family and wish for them to be happy. Of course I respect that. Maybe because I would give just about anything for Bo to be happy too. Within reason. She’s a bit fixated on these violent video games and I assure you I would not be leaning into that lifestyle for the happiness of a twelve year old.

As for your playdates with Ventress, do try and put some distance between yourselves. I wouldn’t want you to catch anything contagious. You tend to sit awful close to Cody and I at lunch.

Best of Luck,

Satine

Fourth Year- Winter

Dear Ben,

I can’t believe we are officially halfway through our time at Hogwarts. It’s silly to think about when we’ve got so much ahead of us, but for some reason this evening, shortly after I got off the train, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Now, here I am, losing sleep like an imbecile despite the fact that I’ve got plenty of time to consider the future. It doesn’t help that they’re already priming us for OWLS and eventually NEWTS shortly thereafter. It feels like just yesterday I’d held a wand for the first time. I’ve never been the same since, of course, but I also don’t feel all that different at the very core.

Well, I certainly don’t despise you anymore and that’s a difference. You’re going to tease me for being soft, but it’s 2 in the morning and the only part of me that is working to quell my anxieties is the realization that the passing of time has only strengthened my knowledge, resolve, and friendships. Not to mention my overall strength in general. At the end of this year, they’ll be announcing who the incoming prefects will be. Naturally, you’ll be amongst them by status and grades alone. I hope to be among that lot. You can’t possibly run the careful ecosystem of law enforcement without me. You’re far too nice.

Maybe you won’t be teasing me for going soft then…

I kid. You’re brilliant and Hogwarts would be lucky to have you. Your family is lucky to have you. I’m (And Cody, of course) very lucky as well. Do not make me say it again, but I will if I must. Sometimes, you need to be reminded of your positive light in people’s lives more than once and I suppose that's what friends are for.

I wish I had a more intellectual debate to pick your brain for at this moment, but in reality, I just wanted you to know that as we stand at the halfway point of our Hogwarts careers, I wouldn’t change a second of it.

Yours,

Satine

Dear Satine,

I’m missing the part where I was supposed to be making fun of you. I do wonder what brought this on, but then again, I find myself in a panic over the passage of time more often than not lately. I truly need to start learning to live rather than survive, because otherwise, I’m going to miss a lot of valuable moments. That’s what Professor Qui-Gon says anyway. I will not miss this one, though, because I am going to save and highlight the portion where you called me brilliant. Just for reference.

I would tac it to the wall, but that might draw some unwanted questioning.

I simultaneously can and cannot believe we are at the midway point of being in school. Look at how far we’ve come! I mean this in the most gracious way possible, but I feel as though I’ve known you all of my life. I don't even want to imagine what I would have been like if you hadn’t shoved all that dessert in my face during first year. Most likely a lot skinnier, which yes, I know that’s still saying a whole lot considering Tarkin refuses to call me anything other than “broomstick”. I’d be more insulted if he wasn’t going gray at 16. It’s quite a pity.

But truly, you’re the reason I didn’t starve and I’ll never forget that.

Ease your thoughts, my friend, because the future for you is bright and limitless. You’ll rise beyond Hogwarts in whichever world you so choose- muggle, magic or both. I believe I speak for Cody as well when I say we have great faith in you.

Truly,

Obi-Wan

#obitine #Obi-Wan Kenobi #satine kryze #The Clone Wars #star wars #magical forces au #fragments of the garden #dwgiyg #tcw

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a-stitch-in-time-and-space · 4 years

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Cardassians aren’t Nazis (and also not quite the USSR, but I see where you’re coming from)

TW: for much discussions of Nazism, fascism, persecution, no details

So tottering around as a lover of DS9 and (disclaimer) as a major fan of the Cardassians as a not-yer-generic-villain type villain that then become less of a villain, because you can’t assign villainy to a whole species + also being German and hearing/watching/reading a lot of analyses that compare them to Nazis is inspiring me to write this (gasps for breath at the end of that sentence).

@tinsnip , @handsome-anne

1. Who were the Nazis that the Cardassians are specifically being compared to (versus neo-nazis/alt-rights, etc. that they’re not being compared to)

Short version: Post WWI the Versailles Treaty fucked over Germany in a way that left it wide open to the sort of megalomaniacal little bastard on a powertrip that fed on people’s fear and pushed them into a far-right disaster. The Nazi party itself didn’t have a ton of members, but it basically eroded any kind of democracy the country had and decided it would scapegoat Jews, Romani, communists, queer people, and other “intelligent elite”/political dissident and then spread those ideals across the world like a demented wannabe roman Caesar state. This didn’t last too long in the grand scale of world history, but left a body count of 6 million+ dead, mainly Jewish.

2. Germany and its relationship to this history

So Germany tries pretty hard to teach people this history in schools, through memorials, in film, etc. It’s not perfect by any means, there’re still discussions on how to make reparations, as well as neo-nazis and other far-right people around still, sadly just like in the rest of the world.

But it’s not covering up these atrocities, because there’s a belief that the way to make sure it doesn’t happen again is to be honest. Sadly, not everyone around the world gets as detailed a history surrounding its origins, happenings, and aftermaths, nor does every country engage with its own past like that.

3. Let’s get fictional (Cardassians, first impressions)

The Cardassians are a species that we mainly meet first through their subjugation of the Bajoran people, and then on DS9 following the immediate aftermath of the occupation on Bajor and everything that follows on from there. Throughout the story we discover various bits about what they had done - labour camps, mass executions, forced prostitution, and in that one Voyager episode I’m not a fan of because it didn’t have the range, experimentation.

On the surface, pretty comparable to the nazis, I get it. Hell, often that’s definitely “the source” of where the writers are getting their ideas.

4. So they’re... Nazis?

The problem comes when using one fascist regime as a go-to for these atrocities. It ignores the reality of fascism beyond this particular point in history and also it’s just not that simple.

When looking at Nazi Germany we also have to look at the source of its making, the climate around it (countries like the UK having a nazi party, Italy and Spain having fascist dictators, hell, the list of dictators that were/are not German is disgustingly long, the worldwide anti-semitism making surrounding countries apathetic or even sympathetic to the Nazis, etcetc.) and the aftermaths of WWII.

The Cardassians are not Nazis. (As an aside the Federation are not the brave allies, but that’s another post for another day.) I’ve seen them compared to the USSR - both by official writers and fandom - which I won’t comment on seeing as I am not from anywhere that was affected by that (I’m not East German, but I do have East German friends), but at least this points out that one cannot compare Cardassians to a specific atrocity that happened at a specific time with specific connotations surrounding it.

Is the Obsidian Order the Gestapo or another secret police? Which secret police? Is Garak “the good Nazi” trope - but then how does that align with Cardassians living under a repressive regime for centuries, not a few years, and therefore take into account an indoctrination and climate of fear created over several generations? No child “born” into the nazi regime became an adult while it was still lasting, unlike the Cardassians (and many other real life dictatorships and fascist states - as well as "democratic” states that have similar kinds of surveillance, oppression, mass-imprisonment and disappearances, and camps).

Is every Cardassian soldier a “nazi”? How does one compare that to polish and french prisoners (see Pierre Seel for a particular harrowing account, all the trigger warnings apply) who were forced to fight for the Germans and put on the front lines?

Eugenics, labour camps, and every other atrocity has been practised by numerous regimes, both in history and now, can we shrug off every country that’s participated in them for the sake of making the metaphor “easier”?

How does the aftermath of the Cardassian Union - when they’re attacked by the Klingons and themselves occupied by the Dominion and then have their main planet bombed to the point of millions dead - align with Nazi Germany?

5. It doesn’t.

It doesn’t. It doesn’t neatly align with any other fascist or military dictator-led regime either. This is not saying that there aren’t aspects obviously borrowed from history (and can easily apply to now). This is saying that in trying to bend the Cardassians into Nazis specifically, people are ignoring every other aspect about them and in my opinion doing a disservice to those who suffered under the actual regime. This is a fictional world, with fictional people that is based on an oppressive society template. It is also a fictional world in which the people themselves are oppressed (especially if you align with what’s written in Andy Robinson’s book) - I’ll be getting back to that point in a bit.

I would argue that making it “about Nazis” is too easy. This isn’t about “us” this is about “them” those evil bastards from wwii. It strips the Cardassian story of any current-day relevance. One can look no further than one’s own society to see people struggling against acknowledging histories, being treated as second-class citizens, etc. No need to go back in time to do so.

It also strips the Cardassians of any three-dimensionality. If they’re just villains then why are we rooting for their uprising to succeed at the end of season 7? Why do we want their society to flourish, their people to no longer have a broken court system, and their secret police to stop training and recruiting children if they’re Nazis, the convenient shorthand for über-evil?

Cardassia isn’t about a past society, it’s about our society. If we empathise with the Cardassians and don’t cast them as villains, then it’s a discussion about our own oppression and privilege. And it’s a damned good scifi allegory (even if I sometimes don’t think the writers and showrunners quite understand it themselves - death of the author and all that).

6. To conclude

I didn’t mention Bajor as much in this, because I was very focused on Cardassians, but I would argue that while there is value in casting them as “space Jews” (as I’ve seen here and there) because I understand the value of representation and I am not taking that away from anyone (I hope), similarly if one reads this take as the only valid one it ignores the reality of religious oppression on a wider scale and also that the Bajorans’ oppression at the hands of the Cardassians didn’t happen for the same reasons as the Jewish genocide at the hands of the Nazis - I would also argue that in making Cardassians = Nazis / Bajor = Jews, we similarly ignore that the Nazis were and are not alone in perpetuating anti-semitism, which kinda again leans into the “Good Federation (the Allies) Versus Evil Cardassians (Nazis) - because none of the Good Allied Countries have ever/are currently involved in persecution or dehumanisation *stares into the void*

And lastly - bringing back a point I made earlier about Cardassians themselves being oppressed by their own government - something that is often forgotten when people talk “Nazi tropes in genre fiction” is that the first country the Nazis occupied was Germany. I’m mentioning this, because it’s interesting in the metaphor, but it’s also conspicuously is absent in the simplification of how these reads are applied. It’s easy to cast the Cardassians as a whole as Bad People, but it makes for worse story-telling and has uncomfortable undertones of how the world reads Germany’s people as being at fault as a whole as well, without taking into account the specific events that we were globally complicit in - and once again the metaphor falls apart, because allegory doesn’t work so easily, and it shouldn’t.

TL; DR In general I am uncomfortable by “Nazi’s used as tropes” in any fictional world. One shouldn’t sacrifice analysis nor simplify history for the sake of making it easier to make a quick point about “bad guys” and forcing allegories into one shape makes them lose their power.

Also watch German films on Nazism and European ones on WWII if you’re looking for some better takes (also Cabaret, one of the best movies ever made).

#ds9 #st: ds9 #star trek #cardassia #bajor #cardassians #bajorans #ds9 meta #star trek meta #tw: nazi mention #tw: discussions about genocide #this is a looong breakdown basically summed up as *stop simplifying allegories*#but I've seen *nazi tropes' thrown around so casually not just here but in so much fiction that I kinda *nope*#so it feels like a post that I needed to get off my chest

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abaverov · 3 years

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Women in Stem- Reflection

Throughout this course, there was many themes and messages that were being portrayed in different formats. Majority of these themes consists of one shared idea and this idea was about women. As a class, we annotated readings from Perusall and from two additional books. While reading, I quickly connected with the topic “Women in Stem”. I initially thought of this topic because of the literature that we were discussing. In this literature I saw a common theme about women’s stories, and how they used their story to advocate for change and equity. In these written pieces, the women talked about their struggles and hardships and then eventually discussed how they overcame and used it for the good.

Now that we first got insight where my mind was at, lets dive into my why for Women in Stem and how I connected the two. Why Women in Stem you might ask? For me specifically this started in elementary school when it was time for recess. Recess? Yes, recess because I was the girl who played sports with the boys during recess. Even before my foot touched the soccer ball, fellow classmates who were boys oftentimes used the phrase “you will play like a girl”. Before I even begun to play, they had stereotypes about my performance because of society’s standards. In society it was often looked that girls were considered “weak” or “not strong enough to outperform guys”. Fun Fact, I turned a lot of heads during recess. I was just as aggressive as they were, and I even scored some goals along the way. There were a lot of jaw drops and my little elementary school self-loved every minute of that. I loved every minute of that because I felt like I can do anything and that I was an outlier to society’s standards. In other words, I proved them wrong. Fast forward to first grade. This was a very interesting year because we were all learning to read and write. This was also an exciting time for many but in the eyes of individuals who first experience their learning disability it can have the opposite effect. For me, it all started during reading groups. Everyone else in my group started to pick up on reading and for some reason I was not. All the words on the pages were just symbols to me with no meaning behind it. This was a really difficult time because I did not know what was going on. Unfortunately, this feeling followed me during my time in school. Yes, it did improve at times but other times it was like starting from scratch. This may vary from every activity because certain classes or work may require rethinking of the plan of attack. For example, I may have to start an assignment at a different angle or put in more work like taking detailed notes. Fast forward again to high school. Along the way, I have experienced a somewhat discouraging path. In the school setting, society harps on grades and if you are not under a certain percentile then you are considered “dumb” or a “bad student”. I am a very hardworking student and unfortunately my grades didn’t always match that. Many leaders in education often made me feel less of myself for that reason. Even though I was not quite the “model student”, I still loved learning and science despite what others thought. In school, I would get asked what I wanted to be when I grow up and I responded with “athletic trainer and physical therapist”. After I said this, they would look at me with three heads. They said, “this path might be too difficult for you maybe try something else…and do you realize that there will be big exams and you have to label the anatomy of the whole body”. In that moment, I felt upset and discouraged but I remembered my neighbor who experiences the same thing I did. She also had auditory processing disorder and she also received a master’s degree in nursing. She defeated the odds. I am going to do the same thing. I’m determined to prove them wrong as well and create a platform for other girls who want to follow in my footsteps. While this was going on I had experienced several injuries that made me retire from sports sooner than I wanted. This was not quite a bad thing. In fact, if it was not for all my injuries than I would not have found my calling. I was introduced to rehabilitation at such a young age that I started to fall in love with it. It is neat how all of this happened. While at the orthopedists’ offices, physical therapy clinics, and radiology offices I learned that the whole process from start to finish is so interesting. In other words, it starts when an athlete gets injured, and the fairytale ending is seeing those athletes return to play. My message is this, if you love something that much never settle because at the end of the day the opinions of others are not as important as what you think of yourself. When it seems tough, think of the next

generation who might want to follow in your footsteps. This right here “stems” motivation and this is what we are looking for. It starts with a why and that is why I believe in the organization “Women in Stem”. This organization encourages and empowers young girls to follow their dreams even if there are hardships along the way. This was also the message that I received from the Perusall readings and the additional two books. Each piece of literature embodies this message. Overall, the purpose of these readings was to share stories, advocate for change while educating individuals about women’s past experiences to promote improvement in our society.

Now that we squared away the reasoning behind why I chose the Women in Stem theme for my Tumblr posts, it is time to evaluate my Tumblr posts in conjunction to the literature from class. My first post was an introduction about me to understand my passion for science while including a pep talk to keep my audiences interested and encouraged. In that post I said something like, “Hi, welcome to my first post! Personally, I’m big into science and the Women in Stem initiative is important to me. I find it so amazing that we are educating and inspiring the next generation of girls to follow their dreams and do what they love! No matter what anyone says, you are smart, and you are capable of doing amazing things!” This was also a quote that the authors from the Perusall readings would probably enjoy because it is personable and provides young girls with empowerment to change the society’s standards for women. My next post was about the trending topic of college athletes getting paid through NCAA. In this Tumblr post, I wondered if equality would be considered or if women must start from “scratch” and advocate for equal pay. I thought in this way because one of two reasons. The first reason was the common standard that was raised for women regarding pay. My other reason came from a quote that was written in the story called “Girl” by Jamaica Kincaid. The quote writes, “I know you are so bent on becoming; this is how you iron your father’s khaki shirt so that it doesn’t have a crease; this is how you grow okra-far from the house, because okra tree harbors red ants; when you are growing dasheen, make sure it gets plenty of water or else it makes your throat itch when you are eating it; this is how you sweep a corner; this is how you sweep a whole house; this is how you sweep a yard; this is how you smile to someone you don’t like very much; this is how you…” This quote illustrates the stereotype that women had to live by, and this is what was expected of them. In my post, I wondered equal pay because of how new this rule is and if the standard for women still applies even in the year 2021. This next Tumblr post had to be my favorite because it screams Women in Stem. In this post, I featured a quote that was from Mia Hamm, and she says, “Somewhere behind the athlete you’ve become and the hours of practice and the coaches who have pushed you is a little girl who fell in love with the game and never looked back...play for her.” Mia Hamm is not necessarily in the Women in Stem community, but her message can easily overlap. This quote is the whole idea behind Women in Stem. Women in Stem is a platform that encourages girls to go after their dreams even if there are hardships along the way and Mia Hamm is doing the exact same thing regarding soccer. This quote can mean many different things and it can also be related to everyday things. In my Tumblr feed, I featured several other posts but the last one I’m going to discuss is the post that was about Dr. Rebecca Cole. I featured her in my feed because she was one of many important leaders in the Women in Stem world and her purpose was like the author’s purpose in the story, “Politics of Fiction” by Shafak.

In conclusion, the themes that you encountered in our class’ literature has a very symbolic meaning behind them that generate the need of growth and innovation within the female gender. I hope you learned some things and are ready to change the standard that society holds women.

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bagilgulhaze · 4 years

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God sometimes I feel like a dnd character with 20 charisma and 0 int and that's how I'll get by in life. I'm third year law school and I'm completely failing like all and every exam, dont attend single class etc, hadn't been functioning through the end of last year really. And yet I just..... meet people that are relevant and they keep getting so charmed by me they give me phone numbers with connections. It's insane.

I already had a chat with a lawyer I met late at night in a cafe as I was studying for exam who works closely with the committee against torture, my ideal internship place that rarely have any intern spots at all. He was so impressed by me, my legal understanding and opinions, that hes been fighting for me to intern there personally vouching for me making all connections for me from one conversaction.

Now I was sitting in cafe to study, and people walk in with cameras clearly following a man and a woman who are conversing. I hear they're discussing law cases, but I mind my business continue writing my assignment and let the camera people know: I can easily move if you need me to be out of frame! They assure me not to worry etc they're fine as long as they dont bother me I say not at all. After few minutes they change their mind, apologize and say can we please ask for you to move. I say of course, and casually ask what they're filming. They point at the people and say those two lovely people our prosecutors/attorneys and they've agreed for them to film them sitting for dinner after work. I say oh, I'm a law student haha. The man looks at me and say really? You should consider us, or something along those lines...... I make a comment about how ideologically would not work in the public sector especially not for the prosecution (obvious anarchist + prison abolitionist + no.1 hater of the criminal "justice" jstem and the legal system in general reasons lol no need to explain ) and this developed into a 20 minute conversation with me because they enjoyed talking to me so much, all filmed ?! And at the end they gave me their number they were like, you wouldn't want to intern with us, but we'd still like you to see us closer, and there is someone you should meet because she is lovely - it's an organization of ( accompanying? Escorting? Like the legal term) Victims which is something I'm super into..... so I mat have a job lol.... and maybe even internship idk....... what's on the table. They told me they hope I speak in class because I'll be making it more interesting and enriching to everyone for sure bc I speak so well (lol I truly can in hebrew when I want to when I'm in the zone sounds fake right but I can be EXTREMLY coherenentnt5) and I said like I dont speak in class much (DIDNT WANNA SAY I NEVER ATTEND CLASS LOLLLL) the conversation was mainly about change from within/from outside like they're prosecutors but you could see they're good people I'm glad if anyones doing that job in our fucked up system jts people like then despite not agreeing . Like you see they fare about their job and have some sort of nuance etc so like . It really was interesting talking to them and they were extremely understanding and respectful to my opinions which were a polite way of saying your work is shit, so that was nice of them.

Anyway. I just left the cafe and the prosecutors were like. But CALL us we weren't joking! Dont forget. And well connect you with (x woman who escorts victims of crime) and I said I will dont worry tyvm and the crew was like. Can we use the content you appear in and I said..Haha yeah sure ofcourse if you want and said kinda like thank you? Sont know why also bc I forgot my umbrella and they gave it to me and they said . No thank you the entire crew here is lawyers and you gave us hell of a content you dont understand what you just did this is so excellent for us. And I was like I'm glad 😁 and then the prosecutors were like, you will change your mind yet abt us ;) and I was like well see! And the woman was like. You should come visit us once and well take you on a court, you should go with him for one of his cases. And the man said with what looked complete seriousness "I'd let you speak at court even I have a feeling you'll do a wonderful job".

Zjkkdkwmfkazkmwmdmwmrkekdjwmekckxkwjdkekfkemkfd hello!? Hello I'm a failing student I got now officially half of my internship chances through like. Meeting people who are incredibly impressed by me lolll

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alicepink-me · 4 years

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The New Guardian

Story Summary: Marinette Dupain-Cheng is an adult in the real world, guarding the Miracle Box in Master Fu's place. She's in love with Chat Noir, but refuses to tell him her feelings. New holders appear to fight the duo and shake up their lives. Marinette makes a tough decision about her future as Ladybug.

Chapter 9: History

Marinette's alarm went off, waking her. She rolled over and hit her clock, looking over at April. April laid in her bed with a book and reading light. She was wearing round purple glasses and more comfy clothes like yesterday. Marinette rubbed her eyes.

"You know, it's not polite to stare." April said, turning a page.

"Why are you awake?" Marinette blinked, breathing in. "It's five in the morning."

"I'm reading." She answered. "What's your excuse?"

Marinette threw her covers over and hopped off her bed. "I have a 6 a.m. class."

"Oh, say hi to the munchkins for me." April laughed.

Marinette rummaged through her dresser. "What does that mean?"

"Nothing." April turned a page.

Marinette rolled her eyes before grabbing her clothes and a small bag. She opened the door but stopped to see a blonde standing right there, smiling.

"Good morning, Marinette." The woman greeted, holding her hand out. "My name is Rebekah and I will be your tour guide for your first week."

"Uh . . . nice to meet you." Marinette shook her hand, awkwardly. "But my first class isn't until six."

"I know. I'm just waiting for you." Rebekah cheered. "I'll give you a tour at anytime and I'll be ready to take you to your class in . . . " She checked her watch. "Exactly fifty-eight minutes."

"Okay . . . sounds great, but I'm gonna get ready first." Marinette carried her stuff past her.

April rolled off her bed and moved to the door.

"Hi April!" Rebekah squealed

April gave a fake smile. "Hey Rebekah."

"I haven't seen you since last year. How are your classes?"

"Great." April slammed the door in her face.

. . .

"Alright, Marinette, first things first . . . I need all of your completed paperwork." Rebekah turned around in her tracks.

Marinette handed over the giant stack of papers before grabbing her bag. "Anything else?"

Rebekah flipped through them. "No . . . I think you're all set. I'll drop these off by Master Mantis later, but I'll show you to your first class now." She started walking.

Marinette followed. "Yeah what exactly is the first one and . . . basically all of my other classes?" Marinette asked. "My schedule was two pages, labeled day 1 and day 2, and they just included times and locations. There wasn't any other information."

"That's because we have one day of school/studying classes and one day of action/fighting classes. Neither are easy to begin with, but if we had both in the same day, students would only focus or excel in one." She admitted. "The study days are mostly history based while action days focus entirely on sparring and the miraculous." Rebekah explained, rounding a corner of the building. "You have four history classes today, all two hours each plus one one hour math class at the end of the day. Tomorrow you will have two two hour fighting and action sessions with your assigned group. I will look into your files tomorrow to give you more information on that." She turned left.

"Why would I need eight hours of history today?" Marinette asked, trying to keep up with her tour guide.

"Because you're here for a shorter time than the rest of us. You will only receive a crash course, yet a sample of each." Rebekah stopped by a door that a bunch of kids were going through. "And we're here."

"We are?" Marinette panted. They were walking really fast. Marinette watched the crowds of kids walk by. They couldn't be any older than thirteen. "These are my classmates?" She raised her eyebrows. "Why aren't they . . . more . . . my age?"

"Most people start training at the academy when they are eleven or twelve years old. You obviously have been here for like ten hours, so you don't even have the beginners level of information." She said. "Which is why you have four. You have one class for each age group."

"I didn't think I drew enough attention to myself already." Marinette said sarcastically. "This should be fun."

"I'll leave it to you then." Rebekah grinned before prancing away on her high horse.

Marinette inhaled. She walked inside and looked around the classroom. It might be best for her to sit in the back, away from everyone, and luckily there were still some empty seats. Marinette slid into a desk, waiting for class to start. There was probably one hundred twelve year olds in the room with her. Either they'll think she's the same age because of her height or Marinette's gonna get made fun of by a bunch of prepubescents. Luckily they hadn't noticed her yet.

"Alright class." The professor walked in and set his briefcase on the counter. The class immediately silenced. "Today's lesson is about the most important event to ever occur at this temple. A temporarily fatal day that permanently changed our lives and futures." The class stared at their teacher with curiosity. "Does anyone know what this time was?" No one answered. "It may be mid-semester, but I think now is the right time to introduce this unit." His eyes locked with Marinette before picking up a piece of chalk. He wrote on the board. "This event was known as The Great Massacre by Wang Fu or The Temple Buried in Time." He turned back to the class. "And since all of you are our newest pupils, none of you were born yet. It's recent yet decades old." He breathed in, pondering. "This Massacre lasted 166 long years . . . and was only cured six years ago."

The class began to murmur. One kid raised his hand "Why haven't we heard about it before?" He asked. "166 years is a long time, but it wasn't even mentioned back in my hometown."

"I'll answer that only because you all are beginners." The professor sighed. "No one, unless they have attended this academy, knows about the existence of us, so our history is hidden as well. News stations will report on heroes, but no information about their origins or identities will be released. If we allowed our secrets to be known, our safety as well as this temple would be in peril. There would be no order and all power could be stolen."

"Actually." Another girl started. "I heard about a story whenever I was seven. The news mentioned a mysterious temple reappearing."

"Yes, that is correct." The professor continued. "But once the story was released, we used some of our miraculous holders to convince every news station that discovered the incident, that nothing unusual or interesting was here. After all, they already had two heroes in their city to focus on. We made the reporters believe that there was no need to ever come back. After that, there weren't anymore stories reported and the general public completely forgot as if it never happened."

Marinette adjusted in her seat, recrossing her legs. Every ambitious child in the room whipped out their notebooks and aggressively took notes on the astonishing information. Marinette didn't really need to since Master Fu had already taught her about his past years ago and she was present for the temple's reappearance. This class seemed more like a refresher course than a complicated history class.

"So this is where the problem started." The professor began, turning back to the chalkboard. "A young guardian in training named Wang Fu made a horrible mistake that cost us dearly. He was assigned the regular training assignment that required guarding the Miracle Box for a measly 24 hours, but . . . the man's hunger got the better of him and he misused this task by stealing the peacock miraculous. Fu then used the miraculous to conjure up a creature that would bring him food, but because of his lack of training with that power the monster turned on his creator. That monster devoured every other miraculous and later the people here as well, including me." The class gasped. "The temple burned and all was lost, but Wang Fu never looked back. He grabbed the Miracle Box that he misused and ran, leaving his mess behind and that monster raging. It wasn't until 166 years later that two of his own uneducated students defeated the monstrosity." The professor turned around. "That man left everything to ruins and never bothered to finish his mess. It required two unqualified tweenagers to do it instead, bringing such shame to our group." The professor sighed. "And to top off his crimes, he lost two miraculouses after that fateful day, the peacock and butterfly. Both were found and used for evil purposes, which we will discuss in tomorrows lesson about Paris."

These kids shouldn't be brainwashed like this. Master Fu wasn't a criminal. Marinette raised her hand, even if it meant outing herself.

The professor glared at her. "Yes, Ms. Dupain-Cheng?"

Oh, he knew her name. "I'm sorry, but . . . some of your facts are wrong." Marinette said.

He squinted. "How so?"

"Well . . . one of the council members actually told Master Fu to run. He didn't leave without looking back. He tried to fix it, but before he could, everything was desiccated in destruction." Marinette continued. "And Master Fu did not leave the monster. He had believed it was destroyed in the fire, but it was later discovered in a rock formation by Mayura. Mayura was a villain, which I'm sure you already know, and she brought the creature back to life. Master Fu's pupils took down the monster that was believed to be indestructible and the temple was restored." Marinette paused, smiling. "You'd never know how happy Master Fu was when he found out that everything had returned. He wasn't some sort of villain who prayed for death and destruction."

"Hmm." The professor's eye twitched. "I suppose your view is slightly distorted since you were taught by him rather than at the temple. Maybe it's only opinion rather than factual."

"I guess the same goes for you." Marinette suggested. "The lesson would be a little biased if it's taught by a survivor of the incident."

"Seems fair." The professor nodded, turning back to the board. "Now, class, your assignment for the week is to think of your argument." He wrote as he spoke. "How guilty or innocent is the man? What are your thoughts and if Wang Fu was still alive . . . how should the matter be dealt with?" He turned back to the class and looked at Marinette. "I'll be interested to hear your thoughts."

The rest of class was boring and frustrating for Marinette. She had heard everything before and lived part of it, yet every detail was distorted. That professor taught from his point of view, which clearly despised Master Fu. And she can almost guarantee that all the other professors are sharing from their point of views as well. Now, every child that trains at the temple will grow up believing them. They have no reason not to.

. . .

Lunch:

The temple's café was set up like a buffet with several different lines leading to different types of cuisine. Ninety percent of the food was healthy and the only weird thing here was the entire corner for protein bars and drinks. There was a huge crowd around that section. It was probably included since there's so much training at the temple. Marinette did overhear something about a wellness class, so everyone else is apparently trained for that specifically. They're specifically in tune with their diets and understand exactly what they need for their own bodies to maintain their powers at a maximum.

Marinette entered a smoothie line. She figured it might be best to start out with something simple for her first day. She didn't want to spend too much time looking at all the options, seeming like a lost puppy. Marinette might be new, but she didn't want to look like a sad freshman. It was hard to see around the hoards of students anyway.

She stepped up in the smoothie line. There was a tablet to design your smoothie and order it off of. Marinette reached for the tablet after the next girl, typing in her name and picking out ingredients. She put the tablet down as the girl behind her squinted.

"Marinette Dupain-Cheng?" She questioned. Something about her tone was off.

"That's me." Marinette turned to her.

The girl picked up the tablet to punch in her order. "I heard about you. You're that girl." Her tude was ripe. " The one who just walked right in, demanding special treating."

Marinette's eyebrows furrowed. "I didn't-"

"I heard enough." She interrupted. "I know what you are, I know all about your past, and I won't let you believe you're better. You don't deserve to be here in the first place."

"I know." Marinette nodded, taking a step down in the line.

The girl's eye twitched as she set the tablet down. "I'm Priya, last name not assigned yet, and I have been here for eight years. You have been here for eight seconds, yet you have an enormous amount of power over me. And did you train for it? No. Did you earn that right? No. And why are you here? To make up for the fact that you cheated the entire system that has been in place for centuries and don't want the guilt to eat away at your soul anymore. Please, don't plead innocence."

Marinette's mouth hung open. "I'm just trying these classes out. I can leave anytime with my miraculous, but I've chosen to stay here for now to understand the history better and to receive partial training. I'm sorry that I wasn't raised with the same lifestyle as you."

"And that's the problem." Priya moved down the line. "You can leave." She glared at Marinette. "I have worked day and night for eight years . . . and I don't have a miraculous. So I don't want to hear your self-centered sob story about how you've changed your path and you want to fit in with the world that never picked you just because you feel destined to be a part of all the magic. It's kind of sad really. If you really felt bad, you would've given up that power and left it behind because you shouldn't have it and there is no way you can start over from the beginning to earn it."

Marinette scooted down the line, standing in front of the barista. "I guess we're just going to live with it. I can't change my past, but I can alter my future here."

"Oh I'll live with it." Priya smiled. "We're in the same class tomorrow after all. There's no way you'll win against us. Once you step into that classroom, you're just prey to the wolves."

Marinette smiled. "We'll see."

"Marinette?" The barista asked.

Marinette took her large smoothie and sipped it. "Class should be fun and you can crush my experience all you want, but even if I get my butt beat . . . I can't feel anything worse than I already have this week."

Priya watched her strut away, Marinette slurping her smoothie with a grin.

. . .

Later that Night:

Marinette reached her dorm room and unlocked the door. She walked in and saw April sitting on her bed, reading. Marinette stopped and stared at the book, her eyes widened.

"My diary . . . " She mumbled. "You're reading my diary?!"

April sprung off the bed and held it behind her back. "To be fair, you are pretty sketchy." She admitted.

"I'm sketchy?!" Marinette threw her bag on her bed.

"You are a cheater, whether you accept it or not." April shrugged. "What am I supposed to believe?"

Marinette took a deep breath. "Just give it back." She held out her hand.

"I won't be so harsh anymore." April handed it over. "I think I understand you a little better now."

"Really? I wouldn't have guessed. I only publicized my entire life inside that journal." Marinette said sarcastically. "But I can forgive a fraction of it if you aren't so bitter all the time."

"Oh please, everyone here is bitter." April snorted. "It's survival of the fittest. Any kindness can be taken advantage of. It's how we are." She leaned against the bed. "And people don't lie in their diaries because they don't plan to show people, so I've learned the real you by reading your secrets."

"Well that's great." Marinette hopped on her bed. "I'm glad my life story and miserable love life brings you reassurance."

"It's not that bad." April walked to her closet. "At least I don't have to kill you in your sleep because of my debilitating trust issues."

"Would you actually do that?" Marinette shoved her diary under her pillow.

April smiled. "Why do you think I didn't already have a roommate when you got here?"

#miraculous ladybug #MIRACULOUS: TALES OF LADYBUG AND CHAT NOIR #marinette dupain cheng #adrien agreste #emotions #conflict #romance #chat noir #ladybug #ladynoir #alice pink #alicepink-me #the new guardian #fanfiction #feelings

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skoog150-blog · 4 years

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My Social Media Campaign and Experience in SW150!

I have used all of the tools I learned in my Social Media in Social Change class to create a social media campaign centered around mental health awareness and services provided at the University at Buffalo. I used Instagram as the platform and posted pictures regarding information about the services offered on campus, information about mental health statistics and stigmas, and how the mental health services and awareness can be improved at UB! My account is @mental.health.ub on Instagram and has the picture I made above as the profile picture, go check it out and use your voice to make a positive change!

When I was thinking about my goals for this Instagram page, I used the SMART goal layout to determine what could come out of the movement. SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time, which all pertain to making goals. My main target was the students at the University at Buffalo and I wanted to mainly inform them of mental health awareness and all of the mental health services UB has to offer. I wanted everyone to see how serious mental health is, to make people feel less alone, and to inform people of the free services at the University at Buffalo. Although my overall biggest goal was to make more students feel more comfortable talking about and spreading awareness for mental health. I also want more students to become more knowledgable about all of the mental health services UB has to offer. Hopefully, through educating the students on these matters, mental health awareness will become more of a priority for them. I hope it can make them see mental health in a different, more positive light. I set my goals fairly low, I wanted to get at least ten followers and at least five likes per post. I ended up with eighteen followers and an average of six likes per post, therefore I exceeded my goals! But there is always room for growing my account and gaining more interactions. I gave myself a week to completely finish the assignment, which was plenty of time for me!

In my posts, I mainly discussed mental health awareness and the mental health services that are provided at the University at Buffalo. I provided information about the free counseling that is available on both North and South campus in case students wanted somebody to talk to. I also posted about the various types of counseling they do, which are one-on-one, couples, international, and group therapy. I made sure to provide access to the Student Wellness Events Calendar so students can keep up to date with certain stress-relief events that are going on around campus. For example, therapy dogs! Our school has a dog named Lily who comes in every Monday to hang out with the students. I posted a picture of her and the information regarding it so students could go check it out if they wanted to. I also interviewed two UB students to get their input about the mental health services here at UB. They told me that the mental health services here should be more widely talked about and promoted throughout and around campus, that way everyone knows where to go if they need help. I also think UB needs to work on their promotion of these services and make it very easy to access, therefore there is no trouble for someone who may already be unsure or scared to go to counseling. I also think Buffalo should talk about mental health in a positive way and make it more normalized throughout campus. This would help students feel less alone and make them more likely to go out and seek help. The content I posted helped me articulate my goal to my audience. I also used the technique of trying to make my posts more aesthetically pleasing in order to attract more people, which is something we learned in Social Media in Social Change. It was also fun to do! There are also some other methods I used to better my movement.

Over the course of the week I used multiple tools I learned in class to better promote my Instagram account and make my movement more effective. As previously mentioned, I used the SMART goal layout to determine what my main objectives were, which helped me formulate my Instagram account. I then used a lot of hashtags such as “#mentalhealth, #mentalhealthawareness, #mentalhealthub” to try and promote my posts as much as possible. Using these hashtags helped me gather an audience of people who are also passionate about mental health, which helped me get out the word more effectively. I also followed UB’s main Instagram page to try and reach more students at UB. Doing this resulted in the University at Buffalo’s social work department to follow my account! This opened a lot of possible doors for me to further promote my movement and reach more students at the university. When it comes to social media movements, I have learned through this class that it is extremely important to promote your social media as much as possible. I did this by using hashtags and following people who are passionate about mental health as well.

Overall, the learning experience I have gained by being in this class has really helped me grasp a true understanding of what advocacy and social work is really all about. It’s not just retweeting a tweet about a current issue or posting a picture and using a hashtag to show support for a movement. It is way more than that. It’s about having passion, dedication, and loving what you’re doing. The key is you must love what you’re doing, or else it’s a waste of time. Loving what you’re advocating for will help you reach your goals and as many people as you possibly can. Advocacy is also about connecting with other people who are passionate about the same things as you. This way you can maximize your influence and work together to get the word out and build connections with people as you go. Doing this may also lead to getting in touch with people who have a lot of recognition in the certain movement you are advocating for, resulting in even more interactions and recognition, then you can get the word out more! One of the things this class has taught me is connecting with people is an imperative key when it comes to advocacy and social work.

I definitely plan to use everything I learned in this class and apply it to my future, no matter what I end up doing. Especially in today’s world, I think it’s extremely important to be able to use social media and technology in general. A lot of jobs may check to see if you’re proficient in technology and social media. Being able to promote yourself and your own brand while also being good at it can take you a long way! I have always loved advocacy and being involved with politics, especially the campaign aspect of it. In the future, I plan to hopefully work on a campaign, even if it’s just a local one. During my senior year of high school I worked on our local congressman’s campaign for state senate and I just really loved promoting him and getting the word out about his campaign. I felt useful! I also promoted him a lot on social media by providing his social media accounts and educating people about what he stood for. I can definitely see myself using what I have learned in this class about social media and advocacy to make a greater change in this world and reach a lot more people.

I also learned something from this class that really changed my perspective on the world: Not everyone has access to the internet. We learned that some countries ban the internet or limit access to certain information on the internet. I have learned to be more grateful and appreciative of the fact that Americans can freely use the internet to express their opinions about the world, or just anything in general. The internet helps us gather people with the same interests in order to fight for justice or voice our opinion if we don’t like something. The internet allows us to be heard, and I will forever be grateful and appreciative of that.

Everything considered, I have learned a lot more about social media through this class and my wonderful professor! Stephanie has helped me see a very different side to social media, and once you dive into the world of social media and try to understand what it is all about, it becomes a lot more complicated yet compelling. I am very happy that I decided to take this class, and I’m extremely excited to make the most of myself and try to make the world a much better place through the art of social media! Thank you so much to Stephanie and all of my fellow classmates, I will miss you guys. :(

#University at Buffalo #UB #Mental health #mental health awareness #mentalhealthservices #mentalhealthub #social media #social media movement #college

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carmenlire · 5 years

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Off the Record Ch. II

read chapter one

read on ao3

Alec types copy on his laptop just as the overhead announcement comes on that they’ll be landing soon. He’s needs to get this piece to The Times by the end of the day and he’s always preferred writing during flights instead of anything else.

A journalist’s work is never done, not even when they’re thirty thousand feet in the air.

A flight attendant walks passed with a pointed look at his laptop, though she doesn’t say anything. Alec knows from experience that he has five minutes until she’ll be making another round and then he really will need to pack away his computer and prepare for landing.

Taking those five minutes, Alec finishes his draft by the seat of his pants, furiously typing his conclusion just as he sees the flight attendant enter his section of the plane. Hastily shutting his computer and sliding it into his bag, he relaxes back in his seat as he turns his head to look out the window.

He’s only been gone for a few weeks but every time he comes back to The States, something settles in him. It’s home, after all, and fuck knows that Alec is out of the country as often as he’s here.

The landing is unremarkable and thankfully, his is one of the first rows that exits the plane. Perks of being in first class, he thinks wryly, and stands whenever there’s room, reaching for his bag in the overhead compartment.

Hailing a cab doesn’t take more than a few minutes and Alec barely has to think about it before he’s rattling off the address to CNN’s office. While he’d love nothing more than going directly home and crashing for the next twelve hours, he needs to swing by headquarters and get caught up on what he’s missed since he was last in the city.

It takes a grueling forty five minutes to get there as they’re stuck in rush hour traffic and Alec climbs out of the cab thankful to escape, his bag in hand. He’s immediately hit with the sun’s warmth, a little brazen for so early in spring.

Readjusting the grip on his bag, Alec strides towards the glass doors of the building, nodding at the doorman who’s worked there since before Alec was even born.

He passes a few people who welcome him back and he ends up talking shop with a research assistant for almost twenty minutes before finally making it to the bank of elevators. He’s with a handful of people, most of whom look to be interns and he gives them an easy smile whenever they catch his eye with unsubtle once-overs.

They leave on the floor before his and as Alec strides out onto one of the office floors, he’s struck with homecoming. While he loves his unit in Midtown, he’s been part of CNN for almost five years now and this building is just as much home as anywhere else.

He doesn’t run into anyone in the hallway and as he enters his office, he sets his bag down on the coffee table he passes on his way to his desk.

Collapsing into the chair, Alec boots up his computer. The sun’s all but disappeared over the horizon by the time he surfaces, having gone through the emails he’d put off until he was back in New York. While he’d worked his ass off in Norway covering the president’s summit, things always seemed to pile up if he didn’t tend to them every hour.

His stomach rumbles but he’s only vaguely aware of it. He’s much more interested in finishing the opinion piece whose deadline is fast approaching. Thankfully, the flight had been productive as hell and he’d finished the content-- now it was just time to revise.

It’s a couple of hours before he’s satisfied with the article. It’s only about a thousand words concerning the potential ramifications of the meeting overseas and the effect the president’s behavior might have on foreign alliances and while it’s a good piece, that doesn’t mean that Alec isn’t annoyed as he reads over it.

Goddamn but he missed the previous administration.

Hitting send on the email to the EIC at the New York Times, Alec stretches, cracking his neck and muttering a curse at the tension he feels bleeding into his shoulders.

Standing with a groan, Alec leaves his office, heading to the mailroom. There’s a bundle waiting for him along with a handful of ARCs that he’s been sent. He regularly receives manuscripts so that he can review them-- a line from him on the cover of a book is well sought-after, though Alec will never understand why everyone cares so damn much about his own opinion on someone else's work.

Hands full, Alec drops the shit off back at his office before taking the elevator up a few floors to the newsroom. Looking at his watch, he sees that he can catch the ten o’clock news hour and so he slips into the area, watching the night news co-hosts catch the country up on what’s new.

Lydia and Underhill are an unexpected team. They work well together, sharing little jokes that somehow make the viewer feel included. They’re two of TV’s top news personalities and thankfully, they’re also good people when they’re not in front of a camera.

Alec watches quietly, a spot of stillness behind the scenes while everyone else is working to keep things running smoothly. He ends up watching the entire hour. Jet lag is quickly catching up to him and there’s something in the familiar routine of it all that has Alec half-asleep on his feet.

He comes to attention, however, as he hears his name.

“Luckily for us, it looks like Alec Lightwood just landed today. Hopefully, he’ll be making a few guest appearances as our political analyst before he’s off to the next headline.”

Lydia chuckles as she briefly looks away from the camera, meeting Alec’s eyes with laughter in her own. “Who knows, Steve, maybe we’ll even get him to co-host the news with us sometime soon. Goodness knows our ratings always increase when he’s on air.”

Chuckling a little, Alec just shakes his head while glaring half-assed at the two of them.

They wrap up a moment later and as they push away from the table, Alec comes over to their desk.

Smiling at them both, Alec just says, “Really?”

“We couldn’t resist,” is all Underhill says back, laughing as he they shake hands.

“Yeah,” Lydia agrees. “Plus, it’s the truth. Every time your face graces our camera, we gets a ratings boost. Everyone wants their news delivered by someone who looks like he’d much rather be writing his memoir on a Parisian sidewalk than galavanting all over the world reporting on Asshole McGee, etc.”

“Whatever puts bread on the table,” Alec replies easily, even as he grimaces. While he knew covering the president was important and an honor, this particular president made that honor dubious at best and a punishment from hell on some days.

“So, what brings you here, Lightwood? I figured you’d be holed up in your apartment sleeping off your assignment.”

Alec shrugs. “I wanted to come in and catch up on work. Plus, I was on deadline for something.”

“Ah deadline,” Lydia and Underhill say at the same time. They all know how that goes.

“It’s almost midnight,” Lydia admonishes, standing and gathering up her paper. “Go home, Alec.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m on my way out now. I just wanted to see how you two were doing and catch a few segments from New York’s best.”

Scoffing, Underhill follows the two of them toward the elevator. “Flattery will get you everywhere but I won’t forget that you owe me fifty bucks.”

Alec barks out a laugh as he pushes the button for the office floor. “You’re really going to hold me to that?”

“You bet your ass, Lightwood. You bet me fifty dollars that I wouldn’t make a move on Declan before the month was out and we just had our second date last night.”

Reaching for his wallet, Alec grumbles good naturedly. “Good to know that all it took was money for you to finally get up the courage to ask the PA out. You’ve only been pining from afar for a decade.”

Underhill rolls his eyes. “He’s only been with us eight months. To a tortoise, that’s a blink of an eye.”

Lydia laughs as she leans against the wall. “I lost that bet, too,” she says ruefully. “I thought it would take another eight months for you to even ask him for coffee sometime.”

Underhill just grins smugly at them both and when the elevator doors open a second later, he strides out ahead of Lydia and Alec, throwing out a goodnight over his shoulder.

Lydia doesn’t say anything as she follows Alec to his office. He’d left the lights on and from his vantage point, he sees the New York skyline through his windows.

He loves this city and on the thirtieth floor, the lights make everything seem like a picture, the epitome of New York elegance.

Going over to his computer, Alec skims through the half dozen emails that have accumulated in his inbox in the couple of hours he was aware and decides that everything can wait until tomorrow.

Lydia shuts the door behind her and Alec ignores it in favor of turning his computer off, reaching for his phone and checking his notifications, frowning a little as he sees a missed call from his sister.

“Everything alright?”

“Yeah,” he replies distractedly. “Izzy just called a few hours ago.”

“Maybe you should call her back,” lydia offers innocuously and Alec looks up as he locks his phone and shoves it in his pocket.

“I will when I get home.”

Rounding his desk, Alec walks toward his sitting area. It was nothing unduly fancy, just a few chairs with a long sofa behind a glass topped coffee table. It was hideously modern-- too clean for Alec’s taste-- but it was what everyone expected him to favor and he was too busy most days to remember that the couches were uncomfortable and that glass showed dust much too easily with his travel schedule.

“Alec.”

Alec pauses from where he’d been reaching for his bag, hand hanging mid air for a moment before it drops to his side.

“What.” His voice is curt, a little cool, but Alec can’t bring himself to care. He’d known when Lydia started following him what she’d wanted to discuss and just the thought of broaching this particular topic makes his teeth grind.

It’s part frustration, part anger, part a dozen other emotions that he does his best to shove down every minute of every day.

Settling into one corner of the couch, Lydia shifts a little, crossing one leg over another in a move that Alec recognizes as her power position. Lydia’s serious and she’s trying to project a calm, capable image.

“We can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep doing this.”

Alec doesn’t say anything for a moment. Instead, he sighs before running a hand through his hair. Going over to the drink cart he’d installed a few years ago, Alec turns over two tumblers and pours a splash of whiskey in each of them.

Turning back to Lydia, he hands one over on his way to a chair that sits facing one of his oldest friends.

He sits down and feels the weight he seems to constantly carry shift. It’s a blanket that grows just a bit more oppressive each day and Alec doesn’t have the time or wherewithal to do much about it except let the bitterness grow until it lingers, until it coats his throat in a layer that feels as suffocating as oil.

They stare at each other for a beat before Lydia’s the one who’s sighing and taking a sip of her drink. She hums a little, turning the glass over in her hands, preoccupied. Alec lets her have the silence, even as it stretches his nerves taut.

Finally, Lydia looks up again. She’s wearing a smile that’s apologetic but Alec sees the happiness lurking underneath.

“I met someone,” Lydia says, breaking the quiet that’s draped the room. “His name is John and I think there’s really something there.”

“That’s great, Lydia.” Alec doesn’t have to pretend to be happy for Lydia-- his friend deserves all the happiness in the world and it’s wonderful to watch as she flushes, to see the way she looks so over the moon barely mentioning the man.

“Yeah, I’m really happy.” Lydia’s voice quiets a little, smile dimming as she studies Alec. “I want to take things public, though. I don’t want to hide my relationship and Christ, I really don’t want people coming out of the woodwork to accuse me of cheating. I can just imagine those headlines-- and the slant that would make you the sympathetic cuckold and me the bitchy villain.”

Alec waves that away. “Of course. We both knew this would end some day. I can’t wait to meet the guy who makes you look like that.”

“Like what,” Lydia asks, glaring as if she already knows what Alec’s going to say. With the longevity of their friendship, she probably does.

“Like you’re a cow-eyed teenager waxing poetic about Nick Carter.”

“Well,” Lydia says primly. “He was the hottest Backstreet Boy.”

Sighing, Alec agrees. “Tell me about it.”

There’s a beat of quiet before Lydia’s uncrossing her legs, leaning over the coffee table and laying a hand on Alec’s knee.

“Are you really okay,” she asks, eyes probing.

“Of course,” Alec says softly. “How couldn’t I be when my oldest friend is head over heels for some guy?”

Lydia doesn’t say anything right away, instead squinting at Alec in a move that’s horribly familiar. Finally though, she settles back in her seat and drains the rest of her glass.

“It’s okay if you’re not, you know. We’ve been doing this so long that it almost seems sacrilege to call things off now.”

Laughing a little, Alec nods. “It’s been a convenient arrangement.”

“I don’t have to worry about any assholes coming onto me when everyone knows we’re dating and you get to keep your secret-- or at least have plausible deniability.”

“Win-win,” Alec agrees. “And let’s not forget that it was handy having a date to all those boring ass events. It’s hard as hell attending dinners and shows and whatever the fuck else we need to with company that doesn’t make one want to gouge their eyes out with the soup spoon.”

“Who knows? Maybe this is the jump start you need to find someone on your own.”

“I’m sure,” Alec says sardonically, “That while you go off on your domestic way, I’ll become a confirmed bachelor.”

Lydia frowns as though she’s upset. “Don’t act like that, Alec.”

Alec just raises a brow, sending her an arch look. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do,” Lydia exclaims, exasperated. Alec’s eyes widen at the outburst. “Don’t deflect,” she demands, pointing an accusatory finger in his directions.

“You always do this. You’re thirty two, Alec, and I hate the thought of you waking up one day steeped in regret and loneliness.”

“Where are you planning on going,” he says mechanically. He winces before the words have even left his mouth, waving off Lydia’s impending tirade.

“Ignore that. So you want me to-- what? Just because you’ve found someone, that means I need to throw my career away for the first man who looks in my direction?”

“That’s not what I’m saying and you know it. Don’t twist my words.”

Alec’s voice is cool as he replies, “No, I think that’s exactly what you’re suggesting. We’ve been over this a hundred times, Lydia. Our arrangement worked perfectly because both of us were too focused on our careers to mess with dating. However, you appear to have met someone and while I’m thrilled for you, both of us know that’s just not in the cards for me.”

“It’s 2019, Alec. Surely you don’t think everything would come crashing down if you came out.”

“Maybe not,” Alec allows. “I don’t think CNN would cast me out on the streets. I don’t think I’d become a destitute has-been. I could still work in this field. But we both know that the career I’ve pursued for the past decade necessitates that I travel a good part of the year. I’m out of New York as often as I’m here and a lot of the time I’m going on dangerous assignments where my journalist credentials are the only thing standing between me and death or imprisonment.

“If it got out I was gay? I’d be lucky to go out in the field anymore and I’d be even luckier if I wasn’t thrown in jail-- or worse-- the minute I landed in some of those countries. That’s the reality, Lydia. I’d be relegated to a desk job, writing about the news instead of living it. I need to be on the front lines. I’m not willing to sacrifice my career just for the possibility that I might meet a man someday who I want to settle down with. Actually, I think it’s brazen and a little unrealistic that there’s even someone like that out there for me.”

“That’s what I thought too, you know. But John is wonderful and while I don’t have to choose between him and my career, he means a lot. I just want you to find someone one day who will make you feel like that, too. Like they're the most important person in the world.”

“I have my work and that’s enough motivation for me, don’t worry.” Alec’s voice is brisk as he smiles encouragingly.

“Whatever you say, Alec. I just don’t want you to focus so much on your career that you forget that there are other things worth living for. The job isn’t everything, no matter how much you love it or how prestigious it becomes.”

“Wise words from a fellow workaholic,” Alec notes with a sardonic look, taking a sip of his whiskey.

Lydia just shrugs. “Maybe I’m just speaking from personal experience, then. I didn’t know until I met someone.”

“Never say never. Got it,” Alec replies and the two of them laugh before Lydia sighs and stands up, laying her glass on the coffee table with a light thud.

“Speak of the devil, I have plans with my boyfriend tonight. I should get going.”

“It’s almost midnight,” Alec remarks. “What could your plans possibly be,” he asks with a raised brow.

“Get your mind out of the gutter,” she chastises. “He’s a doctor and just got off shift. We’re meeting for dinner a few blocks from the hospital.”

Standing as well, Alec swallows the last of his whiskey, wincing. “Enjoy your date, then, and I guess I’ll see you soon enough-- though not in public it seems."

“Not for awhile,” Lydia agrees. “No one needs rumours of that. We had a good run, Alec, but I’m dumping you.”

Alec throws back his head, letting his laughter ring throughout the room. He wipes an imaginary tear from his eye. “And here I thought we were going to go the distance. Just leave me and my broken heart to wallow.”

Lydia laughs softly as she takes a step toward him. Wrapping her arms around his middle, Lydia’s voice is muffled as she says, “Thanks for being so understanding. I would’ve hated it if this would’ve come between us.”

Returning the hug, Alec tightens his arms a little as he lets his chin rest on top of Lydia’s chin. “Nah,” he says easily. “We’ve been friends too long for anything to affect us. So, you’re falling for someone. It was bound to happen sometime and I’m not enough of a bastard to want anything to stand in the way of you and your happiness.”

“You’re a good friend, Alec.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, standing back. “Don’t let it get around that I’m not actually an asshole. I have a reputation to maintain.”

“Whatever,” Lydia replies. “You’re a giant softie and I’m not the only one who thinks so.”

Alec gasps dramatically, raising a hand to his chest in dismay. “Whatever do you mean.”

Poking him in the shoulder, his friend just offers, “People might think you’re a little cold around the edges, but everyone knows you’re a good guy deep down. The sheer amount of charity work you do speaks to that, no matter the fan accounts of running into you all over the city.”

“Lies,” Alec says, dismissive. “Lies and hearsay.”

Lydia snorts. “You’re such a dork.”

Alec grins waving Lydia off as she heads toward the door. “You know you love it.”

He hears her mutter, “God knows why,” underneath her breath before she’s striding toward her own office to call it a day.

Left alone, Alec’s office feels unnaturally quiet after the last half hour. He stands for a minute, unmoving before shaking his head and grabbing his shit.

He throws his jacket on and sweeps up his bag. Making sure that he isn’t leaving anything he’ll need until tomorrow, Alec shuts the lights off and locks his office.

At this hour, there’s just a skeleton crew in the building and Alec nods to a few people he recognizes as he makes his way downstairs.

The cab ride to his apartment is uneventful and now that things have calmed down a little, he feels exhaustion riding him hard. Unfortunately, he’s just crossed the threshold of his bedroom when he remembers that Izzy called him earlier in the evening.

With a groan, Alec takes the time to shower and change into fresh clothes before he plucks his phone from his discarded jeans and dials a number he knows from heart. Thankfully, his sister is a night owl and the phone has just started it’s second ring when he hears it pick up.

“Good evening, hermano. How are you?”

“Hey, Iz,” Alec greets warmly. “I’m doing okay, just got back to my place actually. How about you?”

“Oh, same old, same old,” she returns. “Work is fun as always even if it makes me want to tear my hair out on a regular basis. I’m sure I’ll have my first gray hair before I’m thirty at this rate.”

“But you can’t even fathom doing anything else,” Alec says knowingly.

“You’re right, of course,” Izzy sighs. “Even if I’ve taken on more of an administrative role, I still love working in the lab whenever I get the chance. But, that’s not why I’m calling.”

“No,” Alec says, tone insouciant even over the phone. “I didn’t think you’d call me just to wax rhapsodic about science. You usually keep those calls to the daytime.”

“Whatever,” his sister laughs and the sound makes something settle in Alec as he wanders out of his bedroom toward the foyer where he’d dropped his mail off earlier. He didn’t see Isabelle as often as he might like even if they did meet up at least once a week when he was in town. It was nice to talk to her, even if she was talking about things Alec didn’t really have an interest in. It was important to Izzy and that meant Alec would-- and definitely had-- listen to her talk about chemistry and whatever the shit until she was blue in the face.

“Do you have plans for tomorrow? Specifically the morning.”

“Uh, no. Not that I can think of.” Alec thinks over his schedule and while he knew that he’d be in New York for a couple of weeks at least, there was nothing pressing for the foreseeable future. Honestly, tomorrow he’d just figured that he’d have a rest day, catching up on his sleep and the latest season of a Netflix Original that he hadn’t seen yet.

“Well, you do now. We’re getting you a suit for that thing you have next week.”

Flipping through bills, bills, and a packet of coupons to Burger King, Alec just raises a brow at the stack of mail in his hand. “Oh we are, are we? Since when?”

He can almost hear Isabelle roll her eyes on the other end of the line. “Since you told me that you had that press dinner at the end of the month and you were planning on going to Brooks Brothers for an outfit.”

“I also mentioned Armani,” Alec says absently. “They’re usually my go to for important events.”

“Armani, shmarmani,” Isabelle says impatiently. “I got us a consult with a different designer.”

Intrigued Alec merely prompts, “Oh?”

“He’s only the biggest name in fashion and I’m sure he can take you from your steady eight into the twelve range at least.”

“Hey,” Alec protests mildly. “I feel like I should be insulted by that.”

“Don’t be,” Izzy says dryly. “I’m a ten and even if you do clean up well, you’re no match for me.”

Alec huffs out a laugh. “If you say so, then.”

“Anyway,” she continues lightly. “I called him up and he agreed to meet with you tomorrow at ten. So bad news if you were planning on sleeping in but I wanted to make sure that he had enough time to make your suit.”

“You’ve got me on tenterhooks. Who is this designer I’m meeting?”

“Magnus Bane,” Izzy says excitedly, like she just announced that the Prince of Sheba was going to be outfitting him.

“Who,” Alec asks, squinting into nothing as he tries to put a face to the name.

“Really, Alec?” Isabelle’s voice is exasperated, though Alec really thinks that she has no one to blame but herself if she expected Alec to have a Rolodex of designers in his head. He knew half a dozen and most of them were because they’d met. Alec knew what he liked and once he found a designer that could cater his image, he rarely strayed.

“Yes, Isabelle. Really. You know that I mainly stick to Armani or Gucci whenever I need something more formal. Who’s this Magnus Bane?”

“Only the most talented designer of our generation, hermano. He’s the youngest designer on Forbes Fortune 500 and a true visionary. He’s phenomenally talented. His runways are always exclusive as hell and people have been known to bribe other attendees to put in a good word with him so that they can receive an invitation.”

“And does that work?”

“Not really,” Isabelle admits. “Magnus is pretty strict on who he wants at his shows. He usually thinks flattery is meaningless.”

“Good for him then,” Alec says, his estimation of this Magnus raising a level or two.

“Yeah, he’s a really good guy. Very down to earth even if he does own one of the top fashion empires in the world. I’ve worked with him a few times and we’ve become friends over the years.” She takes a breath. “All of that to say that he’s been kind enough to squeeze us into his very busy schedule.”

“Why go to all the trouble? I’m perfectly fine with what I have.”

“I’m sure you are,” his sister retorts breezily. “You’re stuck in a rut, though. I think you two could be good for each other.”

Padding his way into the kitchen, Alec reaches for a glass in the cupboard before filling it with water. “What do you mean? Even if I like his design, it’s a business transaction, nothing more. I hardly think I’ll talk to Bane after I get the suit.”

“You never know,” is all Isabelle says and while her tone is cryptic as fuck, Alec just attributes it to her usual behaviour.

“Well, what time is this meeting?”

“Ten o’clock sharp.”

“Great,” he mutters. “It’s not like I haven’t slept in thirty hours or anything.”

“Great,” Izzy echoes, tone much brighter.

“Whatever you’re planning, get it out of your head,” Alec mutters.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Whatever.” Looking at the clock, he curses as he sees it's officially after midnight. He's still running on Norway time, though, and it's early morning for him.

He's so tired his eyes burn. Jesus Christ, he thinks.

“Text me the address and I’ll meet you there in the morning. Anything else I should know?”

He hears Izzy hum over the line before she says, “No, that’s about it. Try not to look like you rolled out of bed if at all possible and be on time. Magnus hates when people are late.”

“Lucky we have that in common, then.”

“I’ll see you in the morning. If you don’t have anything after, we could get lunch?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Alec confirms. “Bye, Iz.”

“Bye, Alec.”

With that, he hangs up and drains the glass of water he’d been staring at for the past five minutes.

He all but collapses into bed. He’s almost asleep before he remembers that he needs to set an alarm and the brightness of his phone sears his retinas in the dark room. He’s sleepy and cranky for it. He needs to pass out for eight hours and has high hopes that will make him feel like a human again.

It’s like the past week has caught up with him in a rush and Alec feels like jello as he sinks into the bed. A thought keeps niggling at him, though.

With a sigh, he shifts onto his side, pulling his pillow closer until he’s half-hugging it. He’s been dating Lydia for years now. She’d been his cover since they’d graduated college and she’s been a close friend since middle school.

When they’d first been starting out, neither of them had wanted to take their eye off the prize. So, they’d made a pact to be each other’s plus ones. They were already close enough that most people who didn’t know them thought they were dating. It was nothing to ask Lydia to be his date to a dinner or accompany him to a charity gala. He's done the same for her on dozens of occasions. It was a system that worked for them.

They let other people draw their own conclusions. It suited their purposes.

Especially his.

While Alec might have discreet affairs, everything is always kept hushed. Like he’d told Lydia tonight, he’s not willing to let anything come between him and his career. He likes travelling and he’s worked damned hard to gain the clearance and clout that he’s accumulated.

It might bust his balls that he can’t be open, that he has to have plausible deniability and shut down any rumours that he might not be straight swiftly and uncategorically, but it’s his life and he long ago accepted that some things could never be meant for him.

More’s the pity.

As his breathing grows deep and his thoughts become hazy, Alec’s secure in the knowledge that he’s doing what’s best. He can’t imagine a man ever meaning as much as his career-- let alone more, what the fuck-- and he’s content with the life he’s built.

He’s one of the most famous journalists in the world and everything’s looking up with no sign of stopping.

And with that, he switches gears.

His last thought before he drifts off is about this Magnus Bane. Alec may never have heard of him but if Izzy’s singing his praises then he must be good. He only hopes that Bane will listen to him and not try to thrust his style onto Alec.

He’s humoring this designer for Izzy and because he figures why the hell not. However, wants someone who will listen to him, who won’t just take his measurements and do whatever the hell he wants.

Alec supposes everything will shake out in the morning and with that he falls asleep, ending another day that’s like any other.

#can yall believe I'm actually updating this #dlsfjghdjlfg it's been so long i wouldn't blame everyone if they forgot about this lmao #anywho #otr #off the record #my writing #malec fic #malec wip

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pickwickboysclub · 5 years

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A vindication of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right

A number of scholars have critiqued Hegel’s Philosophy of Right for its alleged rationalisation of despotism (see for e.g. Popper, 2013, among others). Similar views have surfaced during our class discussions, some of which have cast Hegel as a mere lackey of the Prussian monarchy. In this essay, I argue against a ‘conventionalist’ reading of the Philosophy of Right, with a focus on its Preface, which portrays Hegel’s political philosophy not only as a conservative defence of the reactionary Prussian state but as an endorsement of totalitarianism. I will begin by engaging with conventionalist interpretations of the Philosophy of Right to surface key issues that have problematically underpinned Hegel’s notoriety. Thereafter, I will show that Hegel’s understanding of the relationship between philosophy and the actual, as well as his conception of the state vis-à-vis the individual, does not in fact translate into a vindication of totalitarianism. Instead, I posit that Hegel’s Philosophy of Right embodies tenets that correspond more to moderate liberalist principles than conservative ones, and in doing so enshrines the fulfilment of individual subjective freedom in its very scheme.

One could argue that a cursory reading of the Preface to Hegel’s Philosophy of Right yields the strongest case for the conventionalist interpretation. Early on in the Preface, Hegel remarks:

To apprehend what is is the task of philosophy, because what is is reason. As for the individual, everyone is a son of his time; so philosophy also is its time apprehended in thoughts. It is just as foolish to fancy that any philosophy can transcend its present world, as that an individual could leap out of his time or jump over Rhodes. If a theory transgresses its time and builds up a world as it ought to be, it has an existence merely in the unstable element of opinion, which gives room to every wandering fancy (1821, p. 11).

Hegel’s claim that “what is is reason” could be construed as an argument that the criteria for practical reasoning are found in what currently exists, i.e. existing institutions and practices. Other passages appear to lend additional support to this interpretation. The Preface, for instance, closes with Hegel’s assertion that philosophy must be retrospective in character, drawing on the metaphor of the owl of Minerva to reinforce the importance of philosophy’s ‘appropriate time’. That philosophy “is its [own] time apprehended in thought” could then be read as assigning a purely interpretative role to philosophical inquiry, relegating it to the discernment of meanings supposedly embedded in extant practices and institutions. In addition, Hegel’s strictures against transcending or transgressing one’s time and constructing “a world as it ought to be” seem to cement these interpretations. If the criteria for practical reasoning are irrefutably rooted in existing institutions and phenomena, any attempt to argue rationally in abstraction from the present world would be senseless and incoherent. This also raises concurrent concerns that Hegel presupposes that modern social institutions are legitimate, or at the very least they are not illegitimate or unjust, which runs against more liberal sentiments. Even if the reader recognises Hegel’s distinction between the actual and what exists and avoids reading his (in)famous dictum, “What is rational is real; and what is real is rational”, as an unqualified endorsement of the status quo, the text still seems to support the idea that the criteria for practical reasoning lies latent in the actual modern institutions of a community and thus emulates a strong conservative bias. Elsewhere in the Philosophy of Right, Hegel asserts that philosophy should not be “practiced as a private art […] but has a public place, and should therefore be employed only in the service of the state” (1821, p. 7) and claims that individuals achieve true freedom only in fulfilling their duties as members of the state (1821, §258), controversial statements that have reinforced the association of Hegel’s name with Prussian reactionism and totalitarianism.

While it is certainly true that Hegel repeatedly attempts to link his philosophical argument to existing institutions and arrangements, this in no way implies that these extant institutions and arrangements constitute the very measure or criterion of truth or actuality. Hegel, on the one hand, holds that philosophy must be anchored in the actual world; to view philosophy as divorced from or opposed to political-historical actuality is to condemn it to the arbitrary, unstable whims of subjectivism. On the other hand, philosophy does not simply acquiesce to the actual world or uncritically attribute rationality to whatever exists. The actual is rational, but Hegel is careful to highlight that much of what exists is contingent and arbitrary—that is to say, neither rational nor actual in his sense of the term. Alan Patten has intimated a different explanation, which is that Hegel—rather than referring to the criteria for practical reasoning—is making an assertion about the subject matter of philosophical inquiry (Patten, 2002, p. 13). Philosophers, as interpreted by Patten, should focus their energies on rationally comprehending the present rather than imagining a world as it ought to be. If Hegel’s claim was about the subject matter of philosophy, it leaves open the question of the criteria of philosophical reflection, or what counts as an adequate understanding of the present.

It is also with Hegel’s conception of the state vis-à-vis individual freedom that it becomes clear that Hegel does not have totalitarian leanings. First, it is critical to differentiate Hegel’s esoteric use of ‘the state’ from the concept we commonly hold today. The state, according to Hegel, is an omnipresent sovereign ethical community or realm (a “spiritual individual”) that is distinguished from civil society. In civil society, individuals enjoy only particular or subjective freedom, whereas in the state they are positively or substantially free. In later passages of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel goes on to define the state as “the ethical whole”; “the actuality of the substantial will which it possesses in the particular self-consciousness once that consciousness has been raised to consciousness of its universality.” (1821, §258). The state is the actualisation of freedom, though this freedom that Hegel refers to is not characterised by the particular or arbitrary will of the individual, but by the individual’s substantial or rational will. Importantly, Hegel stresses that such substantial freedom must result from the “complete development” of particular freedom in there sphere of the family and civil society, which then has to “pass over of their own accord into the interest of the universal” (1821, §260). This underscores that individuals recognise and actively pursue their substantial freedom of their own compulsion. To this effect, the state represents the rational essence of human beings; a realisation of substantial freedom that is not divorced from the subjective awareness of individuals. It is on this basis that Hegel asserts that the substantial end of the state “has supreme right against the individual, whose supreme duty is to be a member of the state” (1821, §258).

By surfacing the intimate link between the state and the actualisation of modern freedom, Hegelian logic departs from the contractual model of the state and instead mirrors Aristotelean understanding of humans as by nature political animals. Although it may be easy to misread Hegel’s assertion that the individual’s “supreme duty is to be a member of the state” as a sanction for the subordination of subjective, individual freedom under the power of the state, Hegel makes clear that this is not the intention of his political organisation. A constitutional monarchy, according to Hegel, represents the apotheosis of constitutional development because it appears to be the only mode of governance which is able to reflect and to accommodate the modern principle of subjective freedom. The correlativity of constitutional monarchy and modern subjective freedom is likewise surfaced in Hegel’s lectures of 1817-18: “For a people that has developed to civil society, or in general to consciousness of the infinitude of the free ego in its determinate existence, in its needs, its freedom of choice, and its conscience, constitutional monarchy alone is possible” (2012).

A quick sketch of the constitutional monarchy that Hegel puts forth further clarifies his position against authoritarian or autocratic rule. Provisionally defined, a constitutional monarchy refers to a state in which the powers of the legislative, the executive, and the Crown are distinguished but ultimately united under a monarch who rules in accordance with the constitution and the decisions of his ministers (1821, §273, 277). Hegel holds that in a well-organised state, the monarch is bound by the laws and the constitution, as well as the objective advice of his ministers. On the role of the monarch in his constitutional scheme, Hegel states:

In a completely organised state, it is only a question of the culminating point of formal decision (and a natural bulwark against passion. It is wrong therefore to demand objective qualities in a monarch); he has only to say ‘yes’ and dot the ‘i’, because the throne should be such that the significant thing in its holder is not his particular make-up (1821, §280).

Although the function of the monarch is not entirely ceremonial, the actual powers granted to the monarch are so circumscribed that his “particular make-up” or character is practically of little consequence. By contrast, the ministers that advise the monarch on all matters of state and legislative initiatives gain considerable prominence in Hegel’s constitutional monarchy. In his Lectures, Hegel regards the accountability of the ministers to parliament as the most important check on their power, as this would “best guarantee […] ministers who are competent and whose attitude are governed by right” (2012, §149). Hegel in this respect keeps with the fundamental aspirations of reformers of his time, such as the Prussian statesman Stein who sought to “replace the arbitrary and irresponsible rule of royal cronies with orderly and responsible ministerial government” (Sheehan & Sheehan, 1993, p. 298). The act of making the ministers accountable would be integral in transforming, as German historian Otto Hintze would famously remark, the absolute monarchy into a bureaucratic monarchy. It was Hegel’s support for constitutionalism, a strong civil service, and public parliamentary debates that was regarded with suspicion by the Prussian monarchy, which perceived it as a form of moderate fulfilment of the principles espoused by the French Revolution.

In this context, one could argue that Hegel—instead of being a conservative reformist—appears to be a moderate liberal. He rejects the two traditional solutions to the problem of sovereignty: to Hegel, sovereignty belonged neither to the ruler (radical conservative) nor to the people (radical liberal); it instead belonged to the state from which both derived their existence. At the same time, while Hegel acknowledged Romantic critique of the Enlightenment’s ahistorical, asocial, and individualist account of reason, he continued to hold strong Enlightenment ideals concerning human rationality. For Hegel, as for Kant, human rationality is the key to autonomy and self-determination. Hegel regarded the demand for rational understanding and justification of norms and institutions as the hallmark of modern times, and he sought an account of society and government that met that demand. Even more tellingly, Hegel posits that it is the task of practical philosophy to supply a conceptual presentation of the various legal, moral, and political phenomena in a way that captures human beings’ practical orientation towards happiness and welfare, or subjective desires. Although he conceives of substantial freedom as the ultimate aim for humanity, happiness and welfare consistently play prominent roles in his political philosophy. This is undoubtedly a modern and a more liberal position that Hegel holds.

In sum, I have shown how, in lieu of the conventionalist interpretation, Hegel’s Philosophy of Right may be more accurately read to preserve the integrity of Hegel’s political philosophy. To simply label Hegel as a lackey of the Prussian monarchy or a staunch conservative fails to appreciate the explicitly modern and more liberal elements of his work, most notably his strong emphasis on the fulfilment of subjective or particular freedom. Hegel’s ideal political organisation of a constitutional monarchy also suggests that he intended to guard the political community against the very despotism that people accused him of endorsing. A familiarity with Hegel’s esoteric frames of reference and historical context is thus key to this mode of interpretation. At the same time, the aim of this essay is not to vindicate Hegel’s philosophy of any political opportunism or discernment; indeed, it can still be said that Hegel exemplified prudence in constructing his political philosophy to better suit the political headwinds of his time.

Bibliography

Hegel, G. W. F. (1821). Philosophy of Right. In S. T. M. Knox (Ed.), Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (pp. 1–368; By G. W. F. Hegel).

Patten, A. (2002). Hegel’s Idea of Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Popper, K. R. (2013). The Open Society and Its Enemies: New One-Volume Edition. Princeton University Press.

Sheehan, J. J., & Sheehan, J. J. (1993). German History, 1770-1866. Clarendon Press.

Stewart, J. M., Stewart, J. M., Hodgson, P. C., & Pöggeler, O. (2012). Hegel: Lectures on Natural Right and Political Science: The First Philosophy of Right. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.

#Hegel #Political Philosophy #Political Theory #Philosophy #essay

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witchofleviathan-blog · 5 years

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Witchcraft Servers Master List Pt.1

Full Moon Coven Welcome to Full Moon Coven! Great for learning witchcraft! For Baby Witches and Elders! Anyone can come and learn!

-Birthday Bot

-self roles

-many channels A just starting server! Join and watch this community grow! https://discordapp.com/invite/73TymR8 The Coven of Evergreen Join our coven! We've got... ✧ Cute colors and 70+ self roles! ✧ 30+ magick based channels! ✧ Mentorships, Events, daily questions, and more! ✧ Friendly community! ✧ Safespace! https://discordapp.com/invite/fZ4FUFm Pestle & Mortar We are the Pestle and Mortar, an inclusive server for ANYONE of any religion to learn more about Paganism/Wicca, as well as for Pagans, Wiccans, Witches and others to come and be part of a community and discuss their craft. Anyone is welcome here, so long as they are respectful. Disagreement is fine, but openly saying that you think witches should burn in hell, for example, won't be tolerated. We offer: -Active staff! -Reaction roles! -Respectful debate! -Teaching and student roles!

https://discordapp.com/invite/Wsn72HM Tranquil Springs Here at Tranquil Springs, we try to provide a safe learning environment for those who delve into the more veiled side of life! We are a small group at the moment hoping to grow into an amazing community! Energy work, spirit work, witchcraft, and more are widely accepted and the main topics of discussion! https://discordapp.com/invite/kJeEJxk cottagecore kids our age range is currently anywhere from 13 to 18, with the average member being about 15 to 17 years old. So far we have 14 members, and as we promo we hope to grow to a large community! Of these 14 members, we have two admins (including me) and are open to submissions to be a helper! we have a blacklist where you can have the server mod add your triggers to the list. We always try to have everyone tag for everything on the blacklist or put them in a specified channel that you don’t have to look at. We're trying our very best to make this a happy space for everyone. our server is LGBT friendly! we have channels for LGBT, for age regression (optional), witchy stuff (optional), nsfw (optional, and specific to age), and more~ please do not apply if -you are over 20 or under 13 -you are not willing to respect the rules that have been laid out -you are homophobic/transphobic/misogynist/racist/ a bigot of any kind https://discordapp.com/invite/hpj5Xfw 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒸𝒽 𝒸𝑜𝓉𝓉𝒶𝑔𝑒 - A server heavily focused on paganism, witchcraft, and Wicca. This is a safe place for practitioners of witchcraft, Pagans, and Wiccans alike, no matter how new to the craft they are. Non-witches are allowed too! However, they must equally abide by the rules and be respectful! | what we offer | fun roles and role-exclusive channels! plenty of witchcraft resources. a safe, LGBTQ+ community anti-gatekeeping server and rules to reinforce this mentality. Open to practitioners of both the left-hand and right-hand path. https://discordapp.com/invite/mcKPfZZ Witchcraft and Wicca We are a small Discord server dedicated to the practice of Paganism, Wicca, and Witchcraft! This is NOT an RP server, this place is filled with real people with real practices and beliefs! Join and make friends, learn through our evergrowing library of Online PDF's, and have fun! :D https://discordapp.com/invite/xQQW6be The Snowlight Coven Welcome to The Snowlight Coven! We are a new forming coven/server for people of all Religion/Blief systems. If you practice witchcraft, you found your place! Here we offer: - Self Assignable Roles - Leveling System with Role Rewards - A friendly Moderator team - No @everone/here pings! - Bots (few now but more to come) - Teachers to help you with the craft - A Coming Online BoS - And More Come down to join us! https://discordapp.com/invite/AJRR7nT The Raven's Perch The Raven's Perch is a discord server specifically designed to help people on their journey to practising Witchcraft. If you also want to learn about it but not practice it then this is the place for you. In The Raven's Perch, we have many features such as: ● Self Assignable Roles ● Suggestion System ● Happy Thoughts channel where you can share happy thoughts to spread positive energies ● A Venting channel where you can vent about everyday issues ● Weekly discussions for all users to participate in ● Classes on different magickal topics every month ● No anti-curse policy https://discordapp.com/invite/7kqnuhW Witch's Hollow We are a small but close knit community of witches from all paths. We strive to maintain and create relationships among our members so that we may grow together. https://discordapp.com/invite/QWczaxA The Witchy Academy The Witchy Academy is a tiny, hope to be grown soon discord group for learners and practitioners of Wicca and Witchcraft! We aspire to teach new comers and to provide a safe and friendly environment for chatting, meeting new people, learning about the craft, and helping others on their journey! The chat is just a baby right now, so be prepared for things to need some work! :p we hope to see you soon! https://discordapp.com/invite/QmFgn9W Ouroboros Ouroboros is a brand spankin' new witchcraft server for all races, peoples, genders, sexualities, and magickal practices and/or religions! We want to create a tight knit community of open minded people and a space for practice, interaction, and learning! -Suggestions are welcome! -Swear to your heart's content if you wish! -Discussion/debate, writing prompts, media sharing, and even memes! -Classes & Teachers to come soon! -Automatic role assignment! -Many more things to come with YOUR HELP! https://discordapp.com/invite/NxXSbam Witch Coven Welcome to Witch Coven ! A server coven welcome to all who seek knowledge in the world of magic,wicca,witchcraft,paganism, spells, herbalism,crystals or how you name it! We have it all, and we are going to expand all your consciousness together! All ages, races, sexualities, genders, and level of knowledge are welcome here,nobody is excluded We're all learners so why not learn this together and improve all that we practice and walk in this direction all together? We are a coven,we will help each other when we need,we will be like a second family: we will be united as one thing. I hope that somebody that know more will join in our group too for giving us some advice sometimes :-) So,what do you waiting for? Come on,join in my group and enjoy Love you all <3 https://discordapp.com/invite/a3aqsvx Wonderful Witchcraft Dear lovelies, Over a month has been spent working on Wonderful Witchcraft. It’s safe to say the members are silly and magical and our coven is witchy, making me find work magical. Come join, and get access to a commissions channel, book of shadows channel, witch books channel, resource channels, bot channels, movie and book channels,everything from green magick to meditation magick, 18+ chat, free readings and free sigils roles, and plenty of types of witches! - Mod Clara https://discordapp.com/invite/MEVSJvc Come and Be Welcome This is a server for fellow witches to share experiences and ideas with each other! If you're new to the craft, no problem! There are many experienced practitioners in the community to help you along the way! https://discordapp.com/invite/mjVkRa8 Educational Witches

https://discordapp.com/invite/TYRpxEd RiverGreen

This is a pretty small server that is focused upon the community aspect of wicca and witchcraft. Come join and enjoy your stay! Blessed be! https://discordapp.com/invite/UYzXNux Of Death Witches and Dark Deities This is a discord open to all, but with a focus on death witchcraft, sprit work, and the darker aspects of the craft. It also has a focus on dark deities and spirits, either but popular opinion or by society. This includes cthonic deities (underworld deities), deities associated with death in any way, psychopomps, war, strife and slaughter deities, that sort of thing. https://discordapp.com/invite/gG34QHD Artis Alchemia Artis Alchemia is a witchcraft network dedicated to connecting and helping other witches in the community. You must be 15 years or older to join. https://discordapp.com/invite/Pe3xtDV The Nightshade Circle If your looking for a chill, fun, and relaxing place to meet new witches and to learn more about your craft then do I have the place for you. Join The Nightshade Circle’s Discord. The Nightshade Circle is a fun Discord server of all paths. We accept anyone from any path, as long as you bring good intentions and good vibrations. We are here to make friends and share our knowledge. Come join our 400+ members! https://discordapp.com/invite/rwSAm8T Witches and Sandwiches ��Hey, what's up! This is a server dedicated to talking about Witchcraft, Wicca, tea, earth based spirituality, and just about anything related, really. Yes, there are a bunch of rules, but they're pretty common sense and boil down to don't be a jerk. This might be the only Witch server on Discord that doesn't resemble 1984 with regards to political correctness and censorship. Recommended for people who are 15+, and especially for newcomers to Witchcraft. Come hang out if you want. https://discordapp.com/invite/xDdGw4B witch's cove not an rp server this is a server for all paths of witchcraft! 15+ https://discordapp.com/invite/y3avt4e Tribe of Male Witches This server is dedicated to celebrating males in witchcraft, paganism, and general occultism. We work on strengthening our divine masculinity and erasing toxic masculinity. This server is also just to mingle with others and make friends. We pride ourselves in maintaining a positive and respectful space. Here you will find many people, resources, bots and more to help you grow your craft! We hope to see you there! https://discordapp.com/invite/bMkYjMU witch squad Are you a witch or interested in practicing? This is the place for you! This is a new server, so it's still small, but growing! PERKS ~classes taught by other members ~server book of shadows, located on google drive (email needed for full access) https://discordapp.com/invite/q5wqShd Coven of witches Welcome to the Coven of Witches A group of servers welcome all those seeking knowledge in the world of magic, wicca, witchcraft, paganism, spells, herbal medicine, crystals or how they are named! We have everything, and we're about to expand your whole consciousness together! Here all ages, races, sexuality, genres and level of knowledge are welcome, no one is excluded! We are all students so why not learn it together and improve everything we practice and walk in this direction all together? We are a coven, we will help each other when we need it, we will be like a second family: we will be united as one. I hope someone who knows more will also join our group to give us some advice sometimes So, what are you waiting for? Let's start this adventure together! Join our group <3 https://discordapp.com/invite/686A9Jc The Witches Guidebook A Fun witchcraft discord! Keep in mind that this is a new server so things will be added! https://discordapp.com/invite/qtFMTke Urban Coven Cafe Welcome to Urban Coven Cafe, a digital coven for spell casters, star readers, crystal collectors, and tree huggers! We are looking for more members to build up our magical community, whether you're new to all things spiritual and strange, or if you are well versed in magick, you are welcome here in our little occult cafe! We cover all sorts of topics from herbalism to tarot to ancient mythology, and magical memes, of course. We'd like to build a close knit group of witches and warlocks to have discussion with, learn from, provide support to, and grow together. We welcome all ages, sexualities, genders, races, and levels of experience here. There are a few fun bots including Helios, the cat familiar bot for the occult to make things more interesting. As of posting this we have just a handful of members and buds, and we are seeking real contributors for the server to become more lively and interactive. So come and join us today if you want to make some new witchy friends :3 https://discordapp.com/invite/AfK36t6 Cottage Witch Coven I created this server with the sense of community and learning in mind. We focus more on cottage witches but we definitely welcome all kinds of magic! Please join us on our journey and help one another learn the craft and make new friends of like minded interests~! Once we get more members we'd love to do more game and movie nights and potentionally do contests around the holidays. https://discordapp.com/invite/mEdvmH9 The Eclectic Coven }:{The Eclectic Coven}:{ Come join us for inclusive magic discussions, new friends and more! Our server is fairly new... so come help us forge it to a finale! https://discordapp.com/invite/96A2n4f Bondage and Broomsticks Welcome to Bondage and Broomsticks!! We are a server dedicated to creating a safe space for all kinks and witchiness. This server can serve to function as a place to discuss your kinks, share kink resources, and even discuss your craft! In order to join B&B, you must be over the age of 18 and provide proof of this. We're constantly expanding our channels and the like as well! https://discordapp.com/invite/BFDfw68 Witch Sanctuary This is a brand new server welcoming witches of every age and experience level! This is a server where witches and wiccans can share their knowledge with each other to help each other learn. https://discordapp.com/invite/sravUvB Children of Mother Earth This is a friendly server where we like to have discussions whether it's about otherworldly entities or what your cat ate for dinner. https://discordapp.com/invite/XQgkw6k coven this is a server for all witches! blessed be https://discordapp.com/invite/rHhyB42

#witchcraft #beginner witch #witchblr

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i-choose-liam · 6 years

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TRR Chapter Tie-Ins

A/N: Here’s the second chapter to my TRR Tie-in series, which I had previously titled The Crown and the Apron on my old account. But now that’s the name for my Liam x MC one shots on ao3. I would urge you to check out the previous chapter before reading this one, since it’s a series (though incomplete).

If you would like to be tagged for my future works, please let me know. And if you don’t want to be tagged anymore, don’t hesitate to tell me! I’m considering retiring the whole tag list thing altogether because I am really forgetful in general and then I get anxious, thinking I must have missed someone who asked to be tagged and now they are offended. Or worse – tagged someone who doesn’t want to read it. Yeah, things get really busy in this noggin.

Thanks in advance for reading!

Chapter 1: Once Upon A Time

Chapter 2: Welcome to Cordonia

They welcomed him home. Everyone was in great spirits. His father made some jokes about bachelor-hood and freedom. His stepmother couldn’t stop talking about the upcoming Masquerade ball.

"Your Highness?", Bastien cleared his throat, "Forgive me if I overstep but, you seem preoccupied. Are you all right?"

Of course. His bodyguard would notice he wasn't himself, not his family.

"You have every right to ask about my well-being, Bastien", Liam smiled, "I assure you, I am fine"

Who in this godforsaken place would understand what storms raged in his heart? Who could he tell that while they discussed, laughed, formed plans about choosing his bride, he kept thinking about the girl he had left behind?

The girl with starlight in her eyes, who had touched his face when she kissed him. The girl who wanted to know his soul, who made him feel alive and... breathing.

Across the ocean, she was going on about her life, and he knew he would have to go on about his.

'You can't fight fate', Liam reminded himself.

"Is this him?"

Dani showed her sister the phone screen.

It was a google image of Prince Liam of Cordonia. Riley stared at it in admiration, then regained her composure enough to roll eyes at her sister.

"Of course it's him, Dani. Liam is not the kind of guy who lies"

"Okay, lovestruck. Just checking", Dani typed in another name, "What's Maxwell's last name again?"

"I really don't know. Go ask him"

Dani walked to the bedroom door and poked her head out. Maxwell was sitting on the couch, looking at his surroundings.

"Hey", Dani called to him, "What's your last name?"

He was a bit startled at first, but replied,

"Uh, Beaumont"

"Okay"

She stepped back in again and sat on the bed, next to Riley's luggage bag.

"Help me", Riley sighed, "How many books?"

Dani didn't look up from her phone.

"Zero, you nerd. You're going over there to seduce a Prince, not compete in a math olympiad"

"What am I supposed to do there in my free time? I mean, I'm going to be studying Cordonian politics and history in depth, of course. I should also probably check out their library for books on the culture. Oh, I should take my laptop along to take notes. Maybe my Mac..."

Dani growled and put her phone down. She stood up and grabbed her sister by the arms.

"Riles... this is exactly why the school suspended you"

"Put me on sabbatical", Riley corrected her.

"Whatever. You were on the verge of a burn-out. Stop thinking so much! I know you can't just turn it off but try? You keep looking at this wonderful, fairytale opportunity as a research assignment. You're already sucking half the fun out of it", Dani begged her, "For once in your life, listen to your heart, not your brain"

"Bu..."

"Ssh"

Dani pointed to her sister's chest, raising her eyebrows.

"Listen. Can you hear that?"

"Dani..."

"Ssh! It's saying...", she tapped her sister's chest, "Li-am. Li-am. Li-am"

"Get off me", Riley laughed and shoved her a little.

Dani grinned and got back to her phone. She nodded,

"Okay. Maxwell checks out too. But his insta has a picture of him pointing a sword at a champagne bottle. Huh"

"I'll be fine", Riley put in five of her favourite books while Dani wasn't looking, "If anything turns out to be sketchy, I will just... karate-chop my way out of there. I memorised the number of the American embassy in the Cordonian capital. I have mace, my tazer..."

"Jesus Christ"

"...and my Wonder Woman pendant", Riley stopped to ask, "Do you think I'm making a mistake?"

Dani had to rip her attention away from Maxwell's skinny dipping pictures. Her sister stood before her with that guarded look she knew too well.

"No, of course not", Dani assured her.

"What if Liam doesn't even remember me? Or what if he does? And we fall in love and get married and I have to become a princess? And then Queen?"

"Hey, hey", Dani said, "One step at a time. Don't do this to yourself. Leap, Riley. This is an opportunity. You owe it to yourself after 23 years of relentless hard work. There's a super loaded guy outside who is going to buy you fancy dresses and shoes, just so you can impress a bunch of Europeans. Remember - you're doing this for Liam as well as for yourself. You deserve this, okay?"

It scared Dani to see her sister tear up. Riley had always been the strongest of the two.

"I am not used to this”, Riley bit her lip, “I can't socialise with strangers and woo a Prince. This is your kind of stuff"

"Well, I'm not the one Liam kissed on our doorstep, you know?", Dani grinned, wanting a reaction from Riley, "But if you want me to, I could pretend to be you and marry him. I could wear a low-cut blouse for when I see him, flash him the girls a little and..."

"Shut up"

Giggling, Dani watched her sister grumble and lock her bag. Riley stood up straight and took a deep breath.

"This is it", she mumbled, "No backing out now. I told Maxwell I would come. I'm a woman of my word. Yes, I am"

She checked her wristwatch,

"All right. It's time. Please take care of the bills. If someone from my school calls, tell them I've gone to India for a "spiritual break". Or make it Bali. And please don't let Mr. Burns bully... where is Mr. Burns?"

The twins emerged out of their room with the luggage, looking around for a particular someone.

"Mr. Burns?", Riley called, "Smithers?"

A happy yelp was the answer to Riley's voice. Their dog came bounding into the drawing room at the sound of her voice. He jumped on her, drooling all over her waist.

"Who's my sweet, sweet boy?", Riley cooed and got on her knees to hug him, "You're my sweet boy. My good little Smithers"

Maxwell approached them,

"Aw! He's so friendly"

"That's Smithers for ya", Dani said.

Their attention was then drawn to the sound of a weak meow, coming from a sluggish grandpa cat. He ambled into the drawing room and deposited himself at Riley's feet.

"And this is?", Maxwell asked.

"Mr. Burns", Riley let go off Smithers to cuddle her cat, "He and Smithers have a toxic relationship. But no matter what we do, Smithers won't stop licking and loving Mr. Burns. Don't be a jerk while I'm gone, okay Mr. Burns? Be nice to Dani and Smithers. I love you so much! Muah!"

Smithers began licking Mr. Burns' head affectionately. The old cat endured it with a sour face.

"Okay. I have to go now. Bye", Riley kissed her pets again.

She stood up and hugged her sister.

"Take care of yourself. If you need me for anything - anything at all - just give me a call. I'll be back on the first flight"

Dani smiled and wiped a tear. She tightened the hug,

"Same"

They let go and smiled awkwardly at each other. Riley picked up her bag and marched towards the door. Smithers woof'd and followed her. He stood looking up at her, wagging his tail. Behind, Mr. Burns slowly began to make his way to them.

"Oh no, boy. Sorry. I'm going alone. I'll be back before you know it", Riley's voice broke, "I promise"

Smithers and Mr. Burns stood looking at her with hope. Maxwell sniffed.

"Come on, boys", Dani heaved Mr. Burns in her arms, and tugged on Smithers' collar, "She is going to be fine"

Riley sure hoped so.

Liam held his head with both hands. He had smiled at and indulged them as best as he could. The opening of the social season was upon him and here he sat, thinking about Riley.

Why? Why should he think of her and make himself miserable?

He tried his best to fight it. There wasn't anything special about Riley, was there? A working class American, brave and opinionated. It was kind of silly how she had blushed when she told him she wanted to find love. And her constant asking him whether he was enjoying himself had bordered on nagging. And that... that stupid dimple in her cheek when she smiled.

Trivial! Ordinary! Unwanted!

Liam released a hopeless sigh.

He was lying to himself. He admired Riley’s courage, shared her opinions. That blush on her face had made his breath hitch. Her concern for his happiness had made him want to throw himself into her arms. And her dimple was adorable! He should have kissed it over and over again while he had the chance.

This wouldn't do. He had responsibilities. He needed to think beyond his own interests at every point. Cordonia deserved a prince who put them first. And his future wife deserved a clean slate from his end. It wasn't her fault that her husband-to-be was hung up on a girl who could never be his.

But he could dream of her, couldn't he? That wouldn’t hurt anyone. Only himself. And he was fine with it. Yeah. They couldn't rob him of his dreams.

Could they?

"Hey, Dan. It's me. You're probably asleep but I just wanted to let you know I got here safe and sound", Riley spoke into the phone, "Maxwell is sweet. Found the asshole of the group though. It's that Drake guy. Anyway, I'm getting ready for the Masquerade ball. I had to pay for the dress myself. But Maxwell will probably reimburse me for it. He's my sponsor after all. Hah. Sponsor"

Taking a deep breath, she sat down on a boutique chair.

"You would love the dress. It's red and a little sheer in places. I feel like a femme fatale, hehe... I wonder if Liam will realise it's me in this fancy dress and mask. Yes, I'm wearing a mask"

Maxwell beckoned to her from the boutique's door. Riley held up a finger to him, smiling.

"I gotta go. Don't go out without having breakfast. And don't spend all your money on pizza. Cook. Kiss Smithers and Mr. Burns for me. Gosh, this still feels like a dream, sis. I wasn't even this nervous for my first moot court. Anyway... take care. I lov..."

The voicemail cut her off before she could finish. Riley slipped the phone into her handbag. She rose, straightened her mask, and walked to Maxwell.

She smiled at him and whispered to herself,

"Showtime"

Royal Readers: @thatspicegirlssong @bowful @zaffrenotes @pixieferry @femmeshep @hopefulmoonobject @indescribablechoices @angelicfangirl @cordonianredruby @brightpinkpeppercorn @princesaakl @romanticatheart-posts @cordoniaqueensworld @cordoniantrash @blznbaby @museofbooks @smalltalk88 @stopforamoment @jyreusser85 @cordonianredruby @custaroonie @mynameiskaylabella @lizzybeth1986

#riley & dani #trr #fanfiction #liam x mc #trr liam #king liam #prince liam #the royalr omance #king liam x mc #trr liam x mc #playchoices

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5hfanfiction · 6 years

Text

you're somebody else

“I tried to tell myself, maybe you’re right. That maybe you didn’t change, but the way I see you. I thought about your words over and over again, hoping I’d figure out why you said that, but I couldn’t, because you’re wrong, Lauren. You did change so please stop lying to yourself. That’s not you, that’s not the Lauren I met in the coffee shop years ago”

(trigger warning: mention of drugs and violence)

She was still awake, laying in her bed with opened eyes when she heard the lock of their old apartment. She didn’t know what time it was, but it was too late for Lauren to come home. According to the noise the older girl was making outside of their apartment she wasn’t sober enough to actually find the lock with her keys, so Camila stood up with an annoyed sigh. While the other girl still struggled with opening the door Camila took her time and looked at her phone first, Lauren always let Camila wait before she came home so now Camila could let her wait a little before she opened the door. It had already been 2:41am but it wasn’t surprising, it got worse every day. Surprising was only the fact, that Lauren still came home at all. The reality was, Camila waited for the night where Lauren would go. It wasn’t that she didn’t love the other girl because she did. Admittedly, she loved Lauren more than herself, but maybe that wasn’t enough anymore. Lauren rather spent all her nights outside god knows where, while Camila was busy all day with work so that at least one of them could pay the bills.

Of course, it wasn’t always like that. When Camila met Lauren in college she wasn’t a lost girl. No, quite the opposite, she helped Camila to find herself. It didn’t take her long to realize that Lauren was a glib person, the way she talked with so much passion behind it made it easy for Camila to listen to Lauren ranting about politics and laws all day. Back in high school, Camila hated talking with her classmates about these things, but with Lauren it was something else. Lauren knew what she was talking about. Moreover, she had no problem with speaking out loud and Camila was glad she didn’t, because that was one of the things why Camila fell so deeply in love with her. Lauren was the kind of girl that just caught your attention, so no one can blame Camila for falling.

Camila just entered a small cafe uptown when she got a phone call from the friend she was supposed to meet. “What do you mean, you can’t come?” She asked a little too loud after her friend, Normani, explained why she was calling. “How am I supposed to write an essay about the political view of a person that isn’t here?”

“I’m so sorry, Camila” Normani spoke. “It’s an emergency. But hey you know me long enough, you don’t need me there,” She continued convinced.

“Yes, okay. I’ll come up with something.” She said, more to herself than to her friend and ended the call. The truth was, she didn’t know enough about politics for her own assignment, what was kind of sad.

She looked around and immediately noticed that this place was full and her first instinct told her to turn around, and go but she couldn’t go back to her dorm, because her annoying roommate was there with her jerk of a boyfriend, probably doing things Camila didn’t want to know about.

Her eyes scanned the room and the girl found a seat that hadn’t been taken yet, so she made her way over and smiled at the girl that was already sitting across. “Hey, is it okay if I take this seat?” She asked kindly, but the other girl didn’t even look up from the book in front of her and just nodded slowly.

Camila rolled her eyes but took it as a yes. She laid her stuff down and ordered a black coffee before she went back and took her laptop out of her bag. She opened a new document and easily wrote an introduction to her project, and tried to write the rest without Normani but failed after a few boring sentences. She deleted them again and took a sip of her coffee. “Stupid law students” She cursed under her breath and this seemed to catch the attention of the girl sitting across from her. She looked up from her book, with a raised eyebrow and Camila didn’t know she was being watched until the girl spoke.

“We haven’t talked yet, and you’re already insulting me?” She asked with a slight grin.

Camila looked up from her laptop and only now saw that, the book the other girl was reading, was the same book Normani used for some of her classes. Her cheeks turned red and she nervously bit her bottom lip. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry” She quickly said. “I wasn’t talking about you, I mean, I didn’t know you were a law student. How would I, you know, we just-”

The girl cut her off and Camila was thankful because knowing herself this rambling wouldn’t have stopped anytime soon, she was a very talented rambler, in awkward situations. “It’s fine, I’m just teasing, I know that we don’t know each other, so I’m trying not to take this personally.”

Camila looked at the girl in front of her. She didn’t seem like a law student, it was not that she really believed in stereotypes, especially not in college but the girl just seemed more like someone who went to an art school or did something with music, something creative. Camila had never been good at guessing those things anyway so she banished this thought of her mind and rather thought about the fact that there was a gorgeous girl sitting across from her.

She had green eyes that were piercing through Camila’s, long black hair and skin like a porcelain doll, with red full lips.

“Cat got your tongue?” The other girl cut her off of her trance.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?” Camila asked embarrassed, she totally got caught staring.

“What’s your name?”

“Camila” She responded, trying everything to hide that her cheeks were turning red.

“Okay Camila, so what do you have against us law students?” The green-eyed girl wanted to know, she still smiled so Camila hoped that this was just an attempt to make a small talk and not a start for a heated discussion.

“I have nothing against you,” She lied a little, she wasn’t a fan of lawyers but this was more about her parents. “Someone just canceled our plans and now I’m praying that she goes to hell, because she was supposed to help me with my project.”

The girl laughed and it was a sound that made Camila’s heartbeat fasten, she just hadn’t noticed this yet. “Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh.”

“It’s fine.” Camila smiled, hoping this wouldn’t be the last time she heard that laugh. “So what’s your name? Or should I keep calling you ‘stupid law student’ because it seems to get your attention?”

There was another laugh. “Oh, so you wanna get my attention, huh?” Camila nodded without thinking, she wasn’t a confident person, but something told her if she didn’t take this chance, she wouldn’t get another one. “I’m Lauren,” She introduced herself. “So what is that project you can’t do without someone as important as me?”

This time it was Camila’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Important as you, wow. Law student and cocky, what a cliché” She chuckled. “It’s just a simple interview about your opinion to some of our 'special’ laws,” She said while forming quotation marks with her fingers. “Interested in helping me out?”

“Why one of us though? I’m pretty sure everyone can tell you that a special law like a person isn’t allowed to cross the state lines of Minnesota with a duck atop of their head is a stupid law.” She stated.

Camila rolled her eyes playfully, with a smile on her face. “Really? That’s a thing?” Lauren nodded. “I guess on my next vacation I’ll go to Minnesota so that I can break this law,” She joked.

“But seriously, I wasn’t talking about these kind of laws,” She answered Lauren’s questions. “And I’m asking one of you because you belong to the people who represent our laws.”

“I see, you’re a criminal. But please don’t get caught until I get my license, it feels like you’d be an interesting first case.” She winked. “Coming back to your question, I’d like to help you out”

They hadn’t even worked on this project for 15 minutes, before they switched the topic and talked about more important things, that were actually relevant. Lauren had more to say than Camila, but she didn’t mind though, she liked to hear what the other girl had to say. She listened closely, watching every time she was gesticulating with her hands because she started talking about something that really passionated her. They stayed there for hours even though it felt like only short minutes. For Camila, a few hours were enough to get drawn by Lauren, so she didn’t wanna leave when the time came.

“I’m sorry,” Camila smiled sadly, when she looked at the time and saw that she had to go and meet her parents, they didn’t like unreliability and she wasn’t at a point where she could disappoint them. “I gotta go.”

“No, I’m sorry! It seems like I wasn’t a great help for your project,” Lauren replied, eyes looking at the laptop Camila had closed, a long time ago.

“You helped me more than you think, Lauren,” She stood up and packed her things. “I really enjoyed listening to you,” She said honestly. “And believe me, I’d stay if I could. But-”

“You can’t.” The green-eyed girl finished her sentence. “It’s probably better, I have to catch up a little since someone thought it’s a good idea to distract me” She smiled, holding up her book.

“Shit, I’m sorry!” Camila apologized.

“I’m just teasing,” Lauren told her, with a grin. It was this moment where Camila knew she wouldn’t forget about Lauren, so before she left, she slipped her number under Lauren’s book, hoping that Lauren felt the same as she did.

Lauren answered that same day and Camila couldn’t have been happier. She wouldn’t say it was love at first sight, because she didn’t believe in those things, but she would say that Lauren made it easy for her to fall quickly. Camila was one of those people, who couldn’t tell when someone was flirting with them or just being friendly so she assumed Lauren was being the second. She believed this until Lauren kissed her for the first time, of course, she didn’t expect this move, but it didn’t stop her from kissing Lauren back. It wasn’t a fairytale kiss, but it was perfect with every second that passed by. Camila remembered this kiss like it was her first, and theoretically it was her first kiss, at least the first kiss where she felt like she thought she had to feel when she met the right person. They dated only for a few weeks, before Camila couldn’t hold back the urge to ask Lauren if she wanted to be her girlfriend. It was cheesy when Camila asked her and she was scared that she ruined the moment with one of her corny jokes, but when Lauren kissed her and said yes with a laugh she knew she did everything right. A little time passed by until Lauren wanted to introduce Camila to her parents and although Camila had never been good with parents Lauren’s parents loved her right from the start. Their first problems began only then, when Lauren started asking questions about Camila’s parents. The only things Lauren knew about them is that they lived in New York and the obvious fact that Camila didn’t visit them a lot. Camila had her reasons not to tell Lauren about them, because she knew it wouldn’t change anything and she knew she could never tell them about Lauren, not as long as she depended on them. They weren’t happy when they heard that she didn’t study what they wanted her to, but after a lot of arguing they gave in under some conditions because they knew their daughter was talented and could be successful with everything, as long as she put an effort in it. So Camila had to go Harvard, because of the family’s tradition and she wasn’t even allowed to think about a relationship unless it could be useful for their company in some kind of way, it wouldn’t be the first time but Camila did everything as long as they didn’t hold her back from doing what she loved, writing. Camila hated that her parents were able to cause her and Lauren’s first fight, but she realized it was her own fault when Lauren accused her that she wasn’t serious about them.

“I am serious about us,” She told Lauren, searching for her eyes but Lauren kept looking at the floor. “Please, Lauren,” She begged the other girl. “Look at me!”

Lauren just shook her head. “Camila,” She slowly started. “I’m not forcing you to introduce me to them. I know it’s not easy for everyone to just go up to their parents and say hey that’s my girlfriend. But do I not deserve a reason why? Just something like 'they don’t know I’m gay’ or 'I’m not ready yet’, it’s fine when you’re not ready, okay, but you never said you aren’t and everytime I’m trying to talk with you about them, you just shut me out.”

Camila took a deep breath and sat down on the couch while she played nervously with her hands. “It’s not that I’m not ready, because I am, but they aren’t. Look, my parents are very strict and if they knew I’m in a relationship they’d tell me to end it, but if they knew I was in a relationship with a girl it would end up much more complicated. They’d probably force me to see a doctor because they think I’m sick or even worse, stop paying my bills. I can’t risk that.” She explained everything to Lauren and that was all Lauren needed. She sat down next to Camila and took her hand.

“I’m sorry, Camila.” She apologized and kissed her cheek softly.

They dropped this sensitive topic and Lauren accepted that she wouldn’t meet Camila’s parents anytime soon, but it was okay after Camila explained everything to her, she wasn’t even sure anymore if she really wanted to meet them. It wasn’t until one year later that Camila brought them up on her own. She wanted that they finally get to know Lauren, what they couldn’t know was just the simple fact that Lauren wasn’t a friend, but her girlfriend and that for almost two years now.

They once again wanted Camila to attend a charity gala with them and when Camila asked them whether she could use the opportunity to introduce them to Lauren, of course, they didn’t mind after she mentioned she was a law student in Harvard, Lauren was like the daughter they wanted to have but didn’t get. But the fact that Lauren didn’t know anything about her parent’s remanded so it was time that Camila told her they were very successful lawyers in New York. Not just any lawyers but her mother was the co-founder of Estrabao Pearson, one of the most known law offices there.

Lauren was a nervous wreck when the night came and Camila couldn’t calm her down. Camila thought it was cute, but she knew it wasn’t the right time. It took them both four hours to get ready and two of them were just to make sure that Lauren wouldn’t have another breakdown. Camila’s nerves were only then going crazy when they entered the building where the event took place. She could feel her heartbeat fasten with every step she took, but one look to her left side was enough to ease her. Lauren looked stunning in her black dress and her parents would be impressed once they talked to her and realized that she not just looked good but was smart as well. The main reason why Camila wanted to take Lauren with her was that she wanted her parents to meet her, because Lauren was important to her, the other reason was that she wanted to help Lauren’s career. It wasn’t any of her business, but she wanted to give Lauren an opportunity, it was only Lauren’s decision, whether she took it or not.

They were running late but Camila would take the blame for that. The room was full of people and it took her a little until she could recognize her parents in the crowd. She hated those things when she was younger and sometimes it still felt like all these strange people would trigger her anxiety, and she’d get a panic attack any moment. But she had to get used to it, because her parents simply didn’t care what she had to accept, whether she wanted to or not.

When she finally found them she grabbed Lauren’s hand and went up to them. They were talking to some man in an expensive tuxedo that seemed important, so Camila silently waited behind the man. Her father already noticed them and when his gaze went down to Lauren and Camila’s intertwined hands the smile he wore disappeared until Camila automatically let go and hid her hands behind her back. Her father looked away again and she turned with an apologetical smile to Lauren, who smiled and nodded as a silent “I understand”.

When they were finally done talking and the man disappeared they kissed her daughter’s cheek as a greeting. “Karla, I’m glad you’re here, we already thought you couldn’t make it,” Her mother said with a stern voice.

“I’m sorry we are late, I had a little problem with my dress,” She lied easily and her parents seemed to buy it.

“What did I tell you, dear,” Her mother scowled. “Don’t eat so much. I know you feel like your stomach is like a black hole but if you aren’t careful you’ll look like that too and then of course you’ll get these problems.”

“I’m sorry, ” She said again, holding back an eye-roll. Years ago these words would’ve made her insecure about herself, but by now she was used to it and could ignore it, because she knew her mother was wrong. “Anyway. This is the friend I told you about, Lauren Jauregui.”

She turned to the other girl who looked a little taken aback but brushed it off quickly.

“Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Cabello Estrabao,” She greeted them politely and shook their hands. “It’s nice to meet you!”

“'It’s nice to meet you as well!” Camila’s father spoke. “Please call me Alejandro, and my wife Sinuhe,” He smiled friendly and continued without wasting any time. “Camila told us a few things about you.”

“She did?” Lauren asked, confused.

“Yes, she told us a little about your school and things you stood up for in the past,”

For a moment Camila could see how it made click for Lauren and she swore she could see the other girl being hurt, but the look on her face disappeared as quickly as it came. “Well, there are not many ways to change things as just a law student, but everyone has a voice they can and should use,” She told them. “I wanna be a lawyer so I can use my voice to help the guiltless, when their own voice isn’t enough anymore. When people do other people wrong they tend to believe that they did something wrong subconsciously. So they get weaker, they stop offering opposition, they acknowledge defeat and I’ve never been someone who could watch that from the sideline.”

“You have a plan. You know what you do and you know why. I like that.” Sinuhe spoke for the first time. “Why don’t we talk a little more about what will happen after?” The woman offered and Lauren nodded.

Camila knew that look on Lauren’s face, she smiled but it wasn’t sincerely. Lauren didn’t want this evening to go like this and Camila knew it was all her fault but now it was too late and the only thing she could do was standing by Lauren’s side until it was over.

Lauren talked with her parents for what felt like centuries and they only stopped because her father could see an important business partner entering the room.

Camila excused herself and Lauren to the bathroom, and led their way without looking back. “Your friend? You didn’t tell them about us, did you?” Lauren asked when the bathroom door was closed and they made sure no one else was in there.

“Lauren, I’m so sorry. I wanted to, really. But I knew I couldn’t tell them, so I had to find a way how they would want to meet you anyway.”

“It’s fine.” Lauren smiled at her and Camila was surprised that Lauren didn’t seem to mind.

“You aren’t upset?”

Lauren shook her head. “No, you already told me about your parents, so I understand. I appreciate that you wanted to introduce me to them, but you know that you don’t have to right? It felt more like a job interview and I doubt that it was what you wanted.”

“I know.” Camila confirmed. “But I wanted to.” She grabbed Lauren’s face and stroked her cheek. “I love you, Lauren. And I want the whole world to know, believe me. But if I tell my parents now, I’d be a dead girl.” She half-joked. “And it wouldn’t help you. That doesn’t mean that I don’t want them to meet the amazing person you are though. I know you, Lauren, I know they’ll love you as long as they don’t know you are dating their daughter.”

“But what if I don’t want them to love me without the most important part of me, you. I don’t care who your parents are and whether they can help me or not. What I care about is you, so if you feel ready for telling them, don’t let me stop you. You come first, not my career. I’m not stupid,” She grinned. “I know, you wanted to help me, but that’s not the kind of help I need.” She said, her voice getting softer before she connected their lips.

“Karla!” Her mother called her and ruined their moment when she opened the bathroom’s door. They quickly separated before they could get caught by Camila’s mother and when she saw them they acted like nothing happened.

“Yes, mother?” Camila answered.

“You remember Mr. Bale’s son?” Camila nodded and her mother continued. “He asked about you, don’t you think it would be nice if you danced with him?” Camila knew it was a demand but she couldn’t leave Lauren here by herself while her mother forced her to dance with some guy she barely knew.

“Yes, but I can’t. I-I mean,” She started stuttering after she saw her mother’s face turn dark. “Lauren is my guest and I can’t let her here all-”

“It’s okay,” Lauren cut her off. “I don’t mind it. Maybe your parents and I could use the time to talk about the internship your father mentioned earlier?” Camila’s mother nodded with a satisfied smile and now Camila was sure Lauren could get everything she needed from them when she wanted to.

“Okay, I’ll look for him,” She eventually said, not being happy with what Lauren did, after what Lauren said she knew Lauren wasn’t interested to talk about this with her parents, but she did it for her.

Camila was already on her way to leave the bathroom with her mother when Lauren pulled her back again. She kissed her on the lips, her cheek and her jaw before she whispered. “I don’t care if you dance with some guy, as long as you don’t look at him the way you look at me.” And gave her a last kiss behind her ear, which sent a shiver down her spine. She craved Lauren’s touch the second she lost it, but they couldn’t risk getting caught, so Camila blew her a kiss and left to find Isaac Bale.

When Lauren watched them both getting everyone’s attention because 'they look so good together’ like she heard Sinuhe say. She wasn’t jealous, it wasn’t jealousy, it was envy. Envy, because he could dance with her in front of everyone, something she couldn’t. The only thing that kept her from leaving were Camila’s eyes, that didn’t leave her for a second. She was so in love with this girl, that she didn’t mind getting hurt a little.

The rest of the night wasn’t easy for both of them but at least Lauren got to know Camila’s parents a little. They weren’t too bad, they were passionate about their work but they stood up for the wrong people and last but not least, they didn’t treat Camila like she deserved to.

“Are you okay?” Camila asked when she saw that Lauren was deep in thought.

Lauren turned to her and nodded. “Yes, I am.”

“What did you talk about while I was dancing?” She asked curiously. They didn’t get another chance like they did in the bathroom, so they had to wait until they were sitting in the cab on their way back to their hotel.

“They offered me an internship next summer.”

“And…?” Camila asked with a raised eyebrow.

“I said no,” She told her. “I don’t wanna become a lawyer to save rich peoples’ asses, but to help the people that really need it,” She explained and Camila smiled, she was proud to have someone like Lauren by her side. “Moreover, how can I respect them when they don’t respect something as precious as you?” She added, kissing the back of Camila’s hand.

“Lauren,” Camila whined sheepishly. “Stop!”

Nothing changed for Lauren that night, but for Camila, everything. She realized she could never let Lauren go, she realized Lauren was the one, the one she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. So when she was finally done with school she gathered all her bravery and told her parents. When she felt her cheek throbbing after the first slap, she thought she made a mistake. When she fell crying to the ground after the fifth, she knew it was the right thing. They didn’t accept the way she was, but Lauren did, Camila knew she’d always be there for her and that was all she needed to be happy.

They were the kind of couple everyone adored and, of course, they had their fights but never anything big. They moved together and things went even better than before, they were a perfect team and for the first time in her life, Camila felt at home. She found a job in Boston and Lauren still went to Uni for another year, but together it wasn’t a problem.

When Lauren graduated summa cum laude she didn’t have a problem finding the job she wanted to. Everything went near to perfect, until Lauren got a case that changed her. She put all her time in it and Camila thought it was crazy that they gave her such a case, considering that she was still inexperienced, but she didn’t say anything because she knew it would only cause a fight. Camila barely knew anything, just that it was about a still 16 years old teenager and Lauren did everything to keep them away from prison. Camila could observe how Lauren got more tense with every passing day and she started getting nervous as well because it became obvious, how important this was for Lauren. When Lauren lost the case Camila wasn’t surprised that she changed, what surprised her was the way she changed. It didn’t suit Lauren to throw everything away because of one defeat. She got quieter and started avoiding Camila, she skipped work until a point where her boss could only fire her and she started going out at night, getting drunk out of her mind until she couldn’t remember her name anymore. It was hard for Camila but she tried to stay strong, for both of them. She believed in Lauren, she knew this was just temporary. But time went on and things just got worse, sometimes Lauren stayed away for the night, sometimes for two and Camila would never know where she was, or what she was doing. Camila tried everything for her possible, but she wasn’t able to help Lauren, and Lauren wouldn’t help herself anytime soon so she could only tell herself she had to be strong for both of them. She hid the pain Lauren caused in her and acted like the tough girl, she actually wasn’t. It went so far that she even asked, or better said begged, her parents to help her, she would’ve done everything for Lauren, but as she already expected they didn’t want to help their daughter’s girlfriend out and she was on her own.

“You’ll find a way to be yourself again, Lauren. I know you will.” She whispered every night and she never lost hope.

Camila laid her phone away when she was done riding down the memory lane and went to the door. It was already quiet again, so she guessed Lauren gave up. She locked open the door and Lauren stumbled in, almost falling to the floor. “Thanks,” She slurred and supported herself against the wall next to the door. She avoided Camila’s eyes once again but Camila didn’t even try to change that, it was hopeless.

“Where have you been?” She asked with sadness in her voice, but Lauren didn’t bother to answer and when she got enough strength she tried to make her way to the bedroom. “Lauren, please!” She begged, her voice showing how desperate she was.

“What Camila?” She answered, stopping in her tracks but not turning around.

“Can you not even answer my question?” She wanted to know.

Lauren gulped and closed her eyes. “I was out,” She said as if it wasn’t obvious for Camila.

The other girl sighed and shook her head. “Alright. If that’s what we have become.”

Lauren felt bad, but her pride told her to just leave her alone for now. She knew when Camila figured out what she did, she would leave her and that scared her, alone the thought of Camila leaving her hurt. “I’m so sorry.” She whispered quietly but Camila heard what she said.

“You aren’t!” She laughed bitterly. “Stop, Lauren. Be at least honest with me, that’s all I’m asking for, or is that already too much?”

“No.” Lauren took a deep breath and tried to go on with her plan until Camila grabbed her wrist, pulling her back. She turned around, ready to listen what the other girl wanted to say.

Instead of saying anything Camila just gave her a soft kiss, of course, she tasted the alcohol on the green-eyed girls’ lips, but she couldn’t help herself, she just missed those lips too much. The way they felt on hers and what they made her feel. It felt always like the first time, even when everything seemed dark.

Camila released Lauren’s lips again and Lauren had no choice but opening her eyes. When their eyes met for the first time in weeks the only thing Camila could do was to slap her and she hoped it was hard enough so that Lauren would never forget it, not even when she woke up with a hangover tomorrow. Camila had seen her in many situations but never like this, eyes red from whatever she took. Camila didn’t even want to know, it had already hurt enough to know that Lauren would do something like that. It was against anything she stood up for and Camila couldn’t understand how she could live like that. “I’m not a fool, Lauren,” She whispered after the other girl looked at her in shock. “You can let me down, you can hurt me but don’t take me for a fool, don’t act like you didn’t know I’d notice that you’re high on whatever.” She hissed.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Lauren denied pointlessly.

“I asked you to be honest and you’re trying to lie to me, while I can see it in your eyes,” Camila spoke, tears welling in her eyes. “What happened to the girl I met years ago? I adored the person you were and now… you just changed.”

“I didn’t change.”

“Yes, you did!” Camila wasn’t able to hold her emotions back, it became too much after all this time but she couldn’t break down in front of Lauren, she had to stay strong.

“What if I didn’t change? What if you just never noticed that this is how I really am, that this is the real me?” The older girl yelled back and Camila couldn’t believe that she was lying to herself like that.

“Goddammit, wake up Lauren!” She yelled back, with tears in her eyes. “Doing drugs is how you really are? That’s all you’ve got to say? You’re a free person. You aren’t in prison, he is. You can live, you can breathe, you can do what your heart wants, why don’t you do it?” She wanted to know. “You didn’t take this job because you knew you’re gonna be a hero who can save everyone, who isn’t guilty, you took it because you wanted to try your best to help as many people as possible. And you swore you wouldn’t give up without giving everything, so why are you giving up now?”

She looked at Camila with an angry look and opened her mouth, ready to say something, but nothing came out, she just stood there speechless until she couldn’t bear the silence anymore and stormed off to their bedroom. She locked the door behind her and leaned against it after, slowly sliding down to the ground. It was so quiet, that Lauren could hear how Camila did the same on the other side and the reality hit her. She was breaking the other girl’s heart. Something she swore she would never do, Lauren forgot who she was and Camila had to pay for it. It wasn’t the first time she came to the conclusion, but she couldn’t change how she felt, her self-hate became stronger than her love for Camila and it was just a question of time when it would break both of them completely. Lauren never wanted things to go like this, she wanted to fight against it. She loved Camila so much, she was ready to ask her, whether she wanted to marry her because she knew Camila was the love of her life and she wanted to prove her this in every way possible, but now she was just a wreck, ready to give up. Ironically, how she was breaking the only thing that kept her on the ground. Camila was right, she did change and not just a little.

It took Lauren a while until she got enough strength to get up again and open the door, and when she opened it Camila wasn’t sitting in front of it. The girl could feel her heartbeat quicken when she couldn’t see Camila and only relaxed when she saw her laying on the couch, with closed eyes. She must’ve fallen asleep, Lauren thought when she got closer and didn’t see any reaction.

She sat down on the ground and leaned against the couch, she hadn’t been so close to Camila since everything went down. She turned a little so that she could hold Camila’s wrist and check her pulse, just to feel it beat. It was a weird habit but it had never failed to calm her down. Knowing Camila’s heart was beating next to hers was all she ever needed and she hated that she forgot such a thing. When she was done she slid her hand in Camila’s and stroked the back of her hand while closing her eyes, it wasn’t the most comfortable position to fall asleep, but the moment felt so good that she couldn’t help herself.

When Lauren woke up the following morning she wasn’t holding Camila’s hand anymore, what immediately made her panic and she startled up. “Camz?” She called for the other girl.

“I’m here.” She heard her say on her way back to the living room. “I’m right here,” She said a little quieter this time.

She took a seat on the couch and Lauren sat next to her. No one said anything but Lauren was scared she knew what was coming, she had this bad feeling and this feeling was never wrong.

“I tried to tell myself, maybe you’re right,” The younger girl spoke after a few minutes of silence. “That maybe you didn’t change, but the way I see you. I thought about your words over and over again, hoping I’d figure out why you’d say that, but I couldn’t, because you’re wrong, Lauren. You did change so please stop lying to yourself. That’s not you, that’s not the Lauren I met in the coffee shop years ago” She stood up and cleaned her eyes from the last tears she had left from last night.

“Please don’t!” Lauren whispered not brave enough to look up and see how Camila shook her head.

She made a decision and even though it hurt like hell, she knew it was the right thing to do. She loved Lauren more than herself and that’s why she had to let go, they couldn’t break each other. Maybe someday they would have a chance but this wasn’t their someday. “Goodbye, my love,” She whispered into Lauren’s ear and kissed her cheek one last time.

Hey guys I hope you enjoyed reading this (: You can find this and my other works on Wattpad as well @Wuskripa

#UPDATE #one shot #AU #trigger warning #camren #angst drama #romance fluff #submission #youre somebody else

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mister-tom-a-dildo-lover · 7 years

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Strive Pt. 13

{PART 1} {PART 2} {PART 3} {PART 4} {PART 5} {PART 6} {PART 7} {PART 8} {PART 9} {PART 10} {PART 11} {PART 12}

Pair: Tomarry

Rating: M-E(depends)

Tags: Mild Language, Homosexuality, Sexism, Obsessed Tom, Time-Travel/Dimension-Travel, Teacher/Student, Eventual Romance, Teacher-Harry, Grey!Harry, MoD(sort of), Death!being,

On the train ride back to Hogwarts, Tom Riddle found himself inside a compartment with his Slytherin contemporaries. They spoke calmly and quietly about the drama that had occurred at Malfoy Manor over the course of the holidays. Abraxas was being as dramatic as possible to make the story even worse than it actually was. Tom had managed to remove himself from the situation well enough, until Abraxas mentioned that the Aurors tried to unlawfully search his person.

The others immediately turned their eyes upon his form, looking mildly horrified and curious. There was no choice but to join the conversation by then, and Tom nodded regally.

“It was amusing when Lord Malfoy pointed out that they needed a warrant to check individual people on the premises. I believe I have also lost all hope in the Auror forces if they plan to listen to the hearsay of random wizards with no actual proof. Something else that will eventually need to change, I assure you all.”

A moment of silence met his words and he made sure to eye each of them considerably, before returning to his tome about potions and their potency.

The peace was disturbed when the compartment door slid open to reveal the Trolley Witch, who was looking expectant. “Anything off the trolley?” she inquired, waving a hand toward her wares.

Tom’s eyes noticed the large amount of Daily Prophet rolls. The woman glanced over and smiled. “We were given a massive amount to sell on the train, dear. Some drama in politics as usual.”

Abraxas immediately bought a paper as well as several Chocolate Frogs.

After several moments, the blond’s jaw dropped. “Dumbledore is currently being investigated!” he announced loudly.

Tom hissed, waving a hand to lock the door to the compartment and silence the entire room before the fool could make an even bigger spectacle than he already was.

The paper was passed into Tom’s hands immediately, who folded it carefully, eyes trailing over the words that proceeded to condemn Albus Dumbledore for foul action against the Lord of an Noble House, as well as call into question, his behaviour at school.

MALFOY FAMILY UNDER ATTACK FROM AN OUTSIDE SOURCE?

During the Yule holidays, the Auror Force headed a raid on Malfoy Manor in search of what is being termed, ‘Dark Artifacts’. An inside tip had alerted the Aurors of devious actions taken by the Malfoy Lord and an expressed concern for the visiting Hogwarts student, Tom Marvolo Riddle, Head Boy and Slytherin’s star pupil.

The Head Auror was among the group who searched the Malfoy’s home and found absolutely no trace of anything Dark. One of the Aurors on the team, who shall remain anonymous as requested, admitted to the group attempting to search the people inside the building without having a warrant to do such. Lord Malfoy has done as he had promised and filed a complaint with the Minister himself.

An inside source admitted to this reporter that the warning the Aurors received came from a golden and red Phoenix and was written in fanficul script. As there is only one wizard within our Magical community who has a Phoenix familiar, we have come to believe that the anonymous tip to the Auror Office was from Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Deputy Headmaster and Transfiguration Professor of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Many would question why Professor Dumbledore would even involve himself in such matters when he is but a school teacher, but it turns out that Mr. Dumbledore is also working to become Chief Warlock of the British Wizengamot. Such a thing is not something a passive school teacher would do. It is also very interesting when we consider what some individuals have divulged to us in concern.

“I have known Albus for many years. He was a bright pupil and always ready to learn what was available. However I have noticed that he has always been a bit too superstitious and tends to believe the worst of everyone upon first glance if their immediate impression isn’t positive. His attitude has changed quite drastically over the course of these past seven years, though I cannot for the life of me understand why,” said Armando Dippet, current Headmaster of Hogwarts. “If he was truly behind such a thing, I wouldn’t be able to give you a reason.”

“Albus has always been a delightful mind to pick and prod!” Potions Master Horace Slughorn stated enthusiastically. Unfortunately, that seemed to be the only pleasant thing he had to say about Hogwarts’ Deputy Headmaster. “Albus has a tendency to be rather biased. He is quick to jump on a Slytherin should they appear to be doing anything even remotely questionable. I have noticed that he neglects to pay Slytherin students the attention they deserve while lavishing his Gryffindors often and unnecessarily. He doesn’t even acknowledge the Slytherins unless something unpleasant happens, in which Albus will be the first to accuse a Slytherin. It is concerning behaviour.”

Finally, we spoke with Hogwarts’ new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor, Harry Potter. Professor Potter has been seen by many students and staff, in heated discussions with Mr. Dumbledore. This has lead many to believe that the two do not in fact, get along.

“Professor Dumbledore becomes visibly irate whenever he spots a Slytherin so much as looking at students from another House. He gives detention to Slytherins without proof of them doing wrong, and often times, Professor Slughorn must intervene upon his student’s behalves. A Gryffindor student was caught bullying a Hufflepuff student and Professor Dumbledore did nothing but waive the detention I assigned. He proceeded to give detention to a Slytherin Prefect for being out after hours, despite the fact that it was said Slytherin’s duty to patrol on the First Floor for an hour after curfew.

“I have witnessed him refuse to acknowledge the efforts of students who are not Gryffindors, yet raise his Gryffindors far above a level they deserve. He was displeased with my teaching style, claiming that ‘the good and just students of his House deserved better grades’. The fact is, a good percentage of his students did in fact, not do well in my class, and I have steep grading expectations.

“In addition to his questionable behaviour toward Slytherins and Gryffindors alike, he also has controlling tendencies, having attempted to coerce me into believing particularly terrible things about certain Slytherin students that he does not like. I am in no way shocked that he would try to put the Malfoy family under fire, seeing as he constantly puts the Slytherin students under similar stress and undeserved punishment.

“Sometimes I worry for the students with him here, which is why I did not take a holiday like many of my fellows. I was concerned for the Slytherin students who remained behind without their Head of House to be there to defend them.”

With the statements from these three individuals, plus many lingering comments from many Hogwarts students and other members of the staff, it has lead us at the Daily Prophet, to question whether or not our children are safe among the influence of a man who lacks any respect for his peers, nor any caring for some of the students under his purview.

An investigation by the DMLE is underway. We will keep you updated.

Garrison Bespoke, Special Correspondent to the Daily Prophet.

A dark grin that felt well deserved in his opinion, spread across his face. This was the perfect way to destroy Dumbledore’s reputation. To shed light on his internal bias that he was incredibly poor at hiding. And then soon everyone who adored him, would see the type of person he really was.

“Professors Slughorn and Potter weren’t merciful in their comments. Even Headmaster Dippet spoke out against his attitude.”

If there was any more of a reason for Tom to like Professor Potter, he had it now.

Looking up at the Head Table and seeing Professor Potter sitting there calmly while the seat Dumbledore usually sat it, remained vacant, made Tom incredibly please. Enough to smirk openly. How he despised Dumbeldore’s very existence.

However, this would not distract him from his mission. he needed to find out why the professor knew about about Tom’s blood family.

He knocked thrice and waited a few seconds.

“Enter.”

When Tom stepped into the man’s office, he found Professor Potter sitting with his... friend Mortimer.

“Hello, Tom.”

Mortimer glanced between them, before standing. “I will take my leave now. Remember what we discussed.”

Professor Potter gave a firm nod as Mortimer strode out the door without even giving Tom another thought.

“Come and sit, Tom. What is on your mind?”

Tom closed the door behind himself and waited until he was seated before placing the ‘anonymous’ letter on the other man’s desk. Seeing no reason to extend the awkward feeling he was experiencing, Tom asked, “How do you know who my mother was, professor?”

Potter’s eyes grew wide and for the first time since meeting the man, Tom saw him without any self-control or his aloof demeanor he’d become known for.

The following muttered curse, was enough to make him feel good.

Too good.

#fanfiction #Tomarry #Tom Riddle #Watermelonsmellinfellon #HP

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popgoesthenowfc · 5 years

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Week 6 - 12

The Project

Initial Ideas

We started the project initially getting into our set groups. We sat together and started talking about some ideas.

Originally when we were learning the module and coming up with our own examples, we had an idea to create a service for musicians where they could busk from anywhere in the world, and have this projected into any major train station, public road or music venue with a contactless payment method for any tips or donations. We developed this further and had the idea that this technology could work with mainstream artists to allow fans to get intimate live sets for low cost, and to raise an artists profile around the world.

We realised after a week or so that this concept wouldn’t easily have a palimpsest, and there weren’t as many extreme possibilities and ‘upgrades’ that could happen to that idea, and we wanted to come up with a piece that had clear layers and was easily readable to the audience, and for us to get a better understanding of the unit.

A new idea

A few of us had thought about the idea of human interaction so we decided to explore this some more and started looking down the idea of 21st centre dating using apps and websites to find your future partner. Where could this lead too and where do the possibilities end? We were fascinated to learn about how in Japan many guys will have AI girlfriends who are robots that can respond and interact with them, just as a human would. If this is happening now imagine what will be possible in 700 years!

The main thing we needed to work out was how our Palimpsest would work in the idea, and then develop it from there. We tried to imagine some of the craziest ways that people could take AI dating or long distance dating, or even finding ways to completely remove having the other partner, it’s safe to say our brains thought well outside of the box here!

The idea of not having to have a physical partner was something that interested me a lot. Could you marry an animal? An object? Im not sure what made us get to that point but it was something we all pondered on for a good while - what if you could have relations with an object with no life, and still get everything you desired out of your life?

The Final Project

After gathering ideas, looking into dating apps such as Tinder and Bumble, and discussing how we imagine the future of dating to look like, we came up with a concept and a way of showing our project in a devised drama style piece.

We set-up a clinic / surgery style room with different points - a reception, a waiting room, a consultation room and an operating room. The idea was that people could come in and get surgery to merge themselves with an object of their choice that could make their life easier. We put out top-trump style cards where the participants could choose an object to form themselves with. My character in the piece was a man who had been formed with a tent show how the surgery would work.

Here is the structure we came up with of how it would flow:

As they come out of the elevator of the 7th floor A block, Nicole will pick them up and walk them through the corridor with posters dotted around from ‘Alpha and Omega Corp.’.

Reaching A701 we will rearrange the tables inside into three groups.

1. Reception. Nicole takes seat, prompts each tutor to sit and wait. Voice over of Alpha and Omega Corp. is on continuous loop. Nicole calls up Adrian for operation and explains that our consultant will see him now.

2. Group two of tables will be laid out options of different inanimate objects in the form of print-out fact files that Adrian can pick from. Paolo will be assisting him through this explaining each benefit of the reverse-anthropomorphic outcome. Adrian picks one and then Paolo ushers him into the operation segment.

3. Group three of tables will be arranged into a big operation table. Alex, Polly, Fin talks through with Adrian what they’re going to do to him. Mark him up say what’s going to go where etc. Fin then comes out as the ‘Test Subject’ being half man half tent and says how much he enjoys it and how’s it changed his life.

The piece was meant to show a walkthrough of the procedure, using Adrian as the subject to get the ‘surgery’ done. We showed each stage with the hallway outside explaining the history showing the palimpsest in full. We described how each layer changed and how it differed from the previous version in poster form. Below is our Palimpsest we created. Each level is supposed to show a new, updated version of the current dating concept that we have in 2019. The project showed the top layer which we have put as 700 years from now.

Palimpsest

50 years from now:

Individuals can design and purchase their ideal partner. Only the elite have access to the best designs. Reproduction commonly done through surrogates and test tubes, and the elite children are parented by one human and that human’s Ideal Partner Robot. Parenting robots are seen as part of the ideal upbringing so much so that people who can’t afford one might choose not to have children unless they can afford one. Robots are not free thinking. Government supports Ideal Robot production and now, in retrospect, we know that the robots were subtly brainwashing partners and children. More of lab babies are genetically modified (small things like knocking out a disease trait or making the child more fit and attractive) as time goes on, which eventually leads to a homogenous population because people generally want the same things for their children.

Cultural- Striving for perfection in everything. Perfect partner, perfect baby, perfect life with less stress of parenting and dating and more time to have fun.

Commercial- Upper middle class and wealthy can afford robots, lower classes still strive for the elite way of life because it is almost seen as the only acceptable way.

Political- Socialist democracy. Government using lots of propaganda similar to current day

Social- Human interaction goes down. People begin to look and behave more similarly do to mild brainwashing and genetic modification.

500 years out:

Extremely controlling government that decides everything you can and can’t do (think 1985 and Brave New World) in order to survive the effects of global warming and overpopulation. Gender and race are somewhat obsolete as a result of evolution and people are not allowed to strive to be different because this would mean consuming more and inequality. People are allowed to date and see eachother but people are mostly uninterested because everyone is so similar. If you are a model citizen and a good worker, then at age 30-35 you may be selected to start an assigned family. This is seen as a privilege. Counter culture studies history and science and lives outside of cities. They strive to find a more fair way to survive earth’s harsh conditions. After some trial and error the counter culture’s popularity grows and because of the genetic modifications they are strong enough to overthrow the government- this leads to our next level.

Cultural- race and gender in dominant culture are obsolete. Subcultures form to try and differentiate themselves from a dominant homogeneous culture by altering their genome. This is illegal.

Commercial- Communism in dominant culture. Genome altering is not widespread or safe, it is a ‘basement’ procedure. Many people die or unable to reproduce.

Political- Communism in dominant culture. Chaos. Counterculture in anarchy altering their genomes in hopes of overthrowing the current regime.

Social- Counter cultures popularity grows and a revolution seems inevitable.

700 years out:

Return to grotesque and extreme capitalism. Previous counter culture participants have died off and the social elite have adopted the trendy aspects of the previous counter culture. Now the gene splicing is for the elite and trendy and is performed by real doctors causing less harm to the body and making people more

Cultural- A huge pressure to modify themselves, with the fear of falling behind and becoming obsolete.

Commercial- The more able you are to modify yourself further from human, the more elite and desirable you are. Some modifications are limited edition and very expensive (supply/demand) whereas other modifications are seen as more standard (similar to the way we currently view smartphones) although still somewhat expensive.

Political- Grotesque and extreme capitalism. Elite and “normal” categories.

Social- Physical attraction is based on functionality and personal benefits to the individual.

Evaluation

This project taught me a lot about how alterations and changes aren’t always a bad thing and that having different layers to a piece can really emphasise the process and the journey to the end product.

Specifically I thought we presented our piece in a thorough manner, with a clear explanation of what was going on and how the ‘performance’ would flow. I felt like the written posters were descriptive and informative and explained each layer of our Palimpsest in great detail.

I felt like the room could have been laid out in a slightly better way, and we could have worked more to ensure it looked like a surgery room / clinic. I also wasn’t too sure on what we were wearing as this may not have been clear to the audience what roles we were playing.

All in all I am happy with how we worked as a group, we were able to bring our ideas together and come up with something we were all happy with. We were able to share ideas and listen to one another which meant the planning process was very easy to get through as we would all respect each others opinions.

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me-mindfulexistence · 7 years

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Awkward

Awkward. One word that can easily define the “reason” for so much mental discomfort, social anxiety, body dysmorphia and emotional stress that people including myself struggle with only a daily basis.

This weekend one of my children made a very poor decision in a social situation and it was brought to my attention by another parent. Now, if I blogged every time one of my 5 children I parent made a bad choice I’d be flooding the internet with blog posts.....but this really got to me. It was the answer as to ‘why’ that started me thinking. We discussed the situation,what happened and then we attempted to get an answer of ‘why’ he/she chose to make the decision they did. The answer was “well...if I didn’t do it I would’ve felt awkward”. I was dumbfounded. Not at the situation or even the poor choice in the situation....but the fact they made a poor choice b/c of the fear of feeling awkward? In my mind I’m thinking- “How could any one of my children not be mentally strong enough to be comfortable feeling awkward...how can they fear something we strive so hard to overcome on a regular basis?” I say this b/c it defines the person I am today. It’s the parenting style I’ve adopted with my husband. We will say and do things that can and will generally make our children (or even other people) “uncomfortable” or feel “awkward”....We will not be politically correct or avoid certain topics. If it’s on our mind or a pertinent topic...it’s an open forum for discussion.... so they can feel free to be themselves. So they know they can come to us with whatever comes up and we don’t flinch about the subject....They know that it’s okay to swim against the current when they don’t agree with other peoples opinions and they shouldn’t just sit ‘idly by or silent’ if someone is doing something wrong or something they disagree with.....

I’m writing this b/c as I pondered the ‘why’....I realized in retrospect so much of my life has centered around feeling awkward .....that any confidence I have now to make ‘good decisions’ has been learned over a significant amount of time...and learning to live with or ‘manage’ the awkward is a constant ongoing practice. Some people define themselves and their ‘views’ with groups....whether it’s religious or political they’re assigning you predetermined thoughts and decisions for whatever topic might arise. They’re even telling you to some extent how to cast judgment on others. If you follow the well formatted guidelines of the ‘group’....the task of ‘living’ can almost be without individual thought at all.....It takes much more time, energy and mental fortitude to forge your own road....and there is NOTHING easy about that.

As a young child I was always extremely skinny and tall (like I looked like I had a disease kind of skinny). I was harassed and made fun of continuously...and I didn’t do anything or go anywhere without feeling “awkward”. Just the idea of gym class gave me anxiety. Ugh. Having to wear shorts gave me anxiety. Why? b/c I wasn’t like everyone else. As I got older I would create “vices” to try and overcome the awkward. I became almost aggressive by high school. I was tired of being picked on and if someone wanted to start a fight I was like a Jack Russell Terrier chasing a rabbit. I never backed down. Needless to say being a female it rarely led to anything physical b/c females are all talk...when push came to shove (literally)....they didn’t want any part of anything other than running their mouths.....I would date guys who were interested in anything but me as an actual ‘person’.....and by college the behaviors really didn’t improve but instead escalated. Now adding to an aggressive personality an abundance of partying, poor self esteem, plenty of people trying to coax me in the wrong direction, with a giant glass of awkward, it was the remedy for what could have been a bad ending to a really bad story.

Fast forward....I barely made it through my first year of college in West Virginia. Going from an honor roll high school student to barely passing my college classes my parents said ‘you’re done and you aren’t going back’. There was no way they were going to let me waste money when they knew I wasn’t even trying. Fortunately that summer I was home and I was called by a local college about an opening in their Physical Therapist Assistant program. With some begging and overall parental forgiveness I was given the opportunity to attend college again with the stipulation I could NOT get less than a “B”. This gave me a big dose of ‘this was my last chance’ and I did what I had to do and made it through....with the ‘awkward’ still fully controlling my life.

After leaving college...it was adulthood. I couldn’t get my own apartment quick enough. I think I lived at home for maybe a month or two.... I wasn’t out of school long before I had my first full-time job and full-time boyfriend. Up until this point there was no healthy way to manage the anxiety and the awkward. That’s when I quickly learned exercise was medicinal for me physically and mentally. I was not just working in physical therapy but I was also a personal trainer and basically a ‘gym rat’. By 22 years old I was pregnant and planning and wedding.....By 23 I was married and a mother. Life turned full circle and we decided as ‘parents’ that we’d raise our children in a home where NO topic was off limits.

Awkward. So much of being awkward stems from the feeling that we aren’t “good” enough....pretty enough...smart enough....strong enough....etc. The more awkward you are, the more anxiety you have.... and vice versa. So the key is really becoming ‘comfortable’ with it....get comfortable (or at least be able to muster through) with the uncomfortable feeling we get when those thoughts are going through our heads......bc I’m not cured (and I can’t always make those crazy thoughts go away). I still struggle with this everyday. I’m a 43 year old- wife, full time working mom, “black belt” in jiu-jitsu....but I have a very high anxiety level. I constantly doubt myself. I force myself to say things, go places and do things that I don’t want to do.....to manage my awkward.

When people hear/see/inquire about me doing jiu-jitsu I sometimes feel embarrassed to explain what it is b/c many people feel it’s not ‘what normal middle age females do’....but you know what? It was awkward at first....and now it’s not (most of the time anyway). Jiu-jitsu helps me manage it. Physical training can change our mentality about awkward. It can improve your confidence an improve your self esteem. I encourage anyone who is second guessing themself...mentally, physically.....to come in and try some training. You might be surprised at how therapeutic it is. www.Graciepa.com

#rosendodiaz #graciepa #graciepa.com #sherihockman #jiujitsufemales #bjjunderdog #3rdgenerationjiujitsu #bjj #grappling

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brinazzle · 4 years

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Most of us go through life unaware of how our environment shapes our behavior. When we experience “road rage” on a crowded freeway, it’s not because we’re sociopathic monsters. It’s because the temporary condition of being behind the wheel in a car, surrounded by rude impatient drivers, triggers a change in our otherwise placid demeanor. We’ve unwittingly placed ourselves in an environment of impatience, competitiveness, and hostility—and it alters us. When we take highly vocal umbrage at disappointing food in a restaurant by abusing a friendly waiter and making nasty comments to the maître d’—neither of whom cooked the food—it’s not because we regularly display the noblesse oblige of Louis XIV. Our behavior is an aberration, triggered by a restaurant environment where we believe that paying handsomely for a meal entitles us to royal treatment. In an environment of entitlement, we behave accordingly. Outside the restaurant we resume our lives as model citizens—patient, polite, not entitled. Even when we’re aware of our environment and welcome being in it, we become victims of its ruthless power. Three decades ago, when I started spending half my days on airplanes, I regarded being on a plane as the ideal environment for reading and writing. No phones, no screens, no interruptions. The constant travel wasn’t an annoyance—because it allowed me to be hyperproductive. But as the airlines’ in-flight entertainment offerings gradually expanded from one film on a single screen to universal Wi-Fi and fifty on-demand channels at my seat, my productivity dropped. What had been apocket of monastic serenity had become a glittering arcade of distraction. And I was tempted and easily distracted. Instead of getting work done or catching up on much-needed sleep while crossing several time zones, I’d watch two or three pointless movies in a row. Each time as I walked off the plane, instead of being happy to arrive safely on the ground, ready to charge into my next assignment, I berated myself over the time I’d wasted in flight. I felt that I had dropped the ball on being disciplined. I also noticed that where in the past I’d leave the airport feeling relaxed and rested, I was now more tired and enervated. It took me a couple of years to realize that the onboard environment had changed—and I had changed with it. But not for the better. If there is one “disease” that I’m trying to cure in this book, it revolves around our total misapprehension of our environment. We think we are in sync with our environment, but actually it’s at war with us. We think we control our environment but in fact it controls us. We think our external environment is conspiring in our favor—that is, helping us when actually it is taxing and draining us. It is not interested in what it can give us. It’s only interested in what it can take from us. If it sounds like I’m treating our environment as a hostile character in our life dramas, that’s intentional. I want us to think of our environment as if it were a person—as imminent and real as an archrival sitting across the table. Our environment is not merely the amorphous space just beyond our fingertips and skin, our corporeal being. It’s not a given like the air around us, something we inhale and exhale but otherwise ignore as we go about our routines. Our environment is a nonstop triggering mechanism whose impact on our behavior is too significant to be ignored. Regarding it as a flesh-and blood character is not just fanciful metaphor. It’s a strategy that lets us finally see what we’re up against. (In some cases, I advise giving our environment a name.) It’s not all bad. Our environment can be the angel on our shoulder, making us a better person—like when we find ourselves at a wedding or class reunion or awards dinner and the joyous spark of fellow feeling in the room overwhelms people. Everyone is hugging and promising to stay in touch and get together real soon. (Of course, that feeling often fades the moment we return to our regular lives—in other words, find ourselves in a different environment. We are altered by the change. We forget our promises. We don’t follow up. We don’t stay in touch. The contrast couldn’t be more stark. One environment elevates us, the other erases the good vibes as if they never happened.) Much of the time, however, our environment is the devil. That’s the part that eludes us: entering a new environment changes our behavior in sly ways, whether we’re sitting in a conference room with colleagues or visiting friends for dinner or enduring our weekly phone call with an aging parent. For example, my wife, Lyda, and I are not cynical people. Although it’s my job to point out people’s personal challenges during the workweek, in my “civilian” life I try to be a nonjudgmental guy. I make a conscious effort to accept people’s foibles and “let it go.” Lyda doesn’t have to work as hard as I do at tolerance; she’s always the kindest person in the room. Yet we become different people whenever we have dinner with our neighbors Terry and John. They are a droll, amusing couple, but their humor stems from a sour worldview. Nearly everything that comes out of their mouths—about mutual friends or political figures or the neighbors’ pets—is cynical and snarky, almost cruel, as if they were auditioning for a celebrity roast. As Lyda and I debriefed after one particularly mean-spirited dinner, we marveled at the sarcastic comments we made. It wasn’t like us. We searched for reasons for our unusual behavior, concluding that the only variable was the people we were with and the setting we found ourselves in. In other words, the environment. In the same way that people talk more softly with a soft-spoken person, more quickly with a fast talker, our opinions were fundamentally altered inside the dark conversational bubble created by Terry and John. Sometimes altering one factor can turn an ideal environment into a disaster. It doesn’t change us. It changes everyone else in the room and how they react to us. Many years ago I was speaking at an off-site gathering of partners from a consulting firm. Although my previous work with this firm had gone well, this time something wasn’t working. No give-and take, no lively laughter, just a group of very smart people sitting on their hands. I finally realized that the room was too hot. Amazingly, by merely turning down the temperature in the room, the session got back on track. Like a rock star demanding red M&Ms in the dressing room, I’m now a bit of a diva about insisting on a cool environment for my presentations. I’ve learned how one tweak in the environment changes everything. * The most pernicious environments are the ones that compel us to compromise our sense of right and wrong. In the ultracompetitive environment of the workplace, it can happen to the most solid citizens. I remember working at a European conglomerate with a top-performing executive named Karl. He had a dictatorial management style—obsessive, strict, and punitive. He was openly gunning for the CEO job, and he drove his staff mercilessly to further his career. His mantra was “Make your number.” He’d write off anyone who contradicted his “number” or said it was unrealistic. To those who remained loyal, he’d scream, “Do whatever it takes!” Not surprisingly, his team started taking shortcuts to make their numbers. Some went from borderline unethical to clearly unethical behavior. In the environment Karl created, they didn’t see it as moral erosion. They saw it as the only option on the table. Eventually, the truth came out. The scandal cost the company tens of millions of euros and even more in reputational damage. Karl’s defense was, “I never asked my people to do anything immoral or illegal.” He didn’t need to ask. The environment he created did the work for him. Our environment changes us even when we’re dealing one-on-one with people to whom we’d ordinarily show kindness. Weturn friends into strangers, behaving as if we’ll never have to face them again. I was conducting a 360-degree feedback survey with a woman named Jackie about her company’s chief operating officer some years ago when she and I got sidetracked into a discussion about the emotional toll of her job. Jackie sounded like she wanted to unload some deep issues, so I listened. She was an in-house lawyer at a sales organization, specializing in employment matters. One of her duties was to negotiate separation agreements with departing sales executives, whether they were leaving of their own volition or not. “It’s not my favorite part of the job,” she said. “I’m dealing with people at a fragile moment in their careers. Most of them have no immediate prospects. And I represent the company’s interests, not theirs.” Jackie specifically wanted to talk about an executive who’d been let go. She’d gone to college with the man, reconnected with him after they began working at the same company. They talked on a regular basis, occasionally socialized. It was Jackie’s job to hash out the terms of his departure. The severance package was contractual and generous. The negotiable part was determining how much of the ongoing revenue stream from the man’s sales accounts would go to him and how much to the company. For reasons she couldn’t articulate, Jackie took a hard position with the man. Over several weeks of back-and-forth emails and phone calls, she used all her negotiating wiles and leverage to ensure that the company got the lion’s share of sales commissions from the man’s accounts. At first, I didn’t see why she was telling me this. “You were doing your job, being a professional,” I said. But she was clearly troubled by the memory of her behavior. “That’s what I tell myself,” said Jackie. “But this man was my friend. He deserved some compassion. Instead, I argued with him over a grand total of twenty thousand dollars, a sum of money that wouldn’t have made a dent on the company’s bottom line but would be significant to a jobless friend. Who was I trying to impress? The company didn’t care. It’s the most painful regret of my career.” I’d like to report that I had wise and consoling words for her that day. But this happened about ten years ago and the environment’s malign power wasn’t obvious to me at the time. I see it now, of course. As a lawyer, Jackie was trained to be adversarial. She was accustomed to arguing and negotiating over minor deal points. In a sales environment where everyone’s measuring who’s up, who’s down, who’s squeezing the last dime out of a deal, Jackie wanted to show she was doing her part. It demonstrated her value to the company. Unfortunately, that same ruthless bottom-line environment fostered the aggressive behavior that blurred right and wrong for Jackie. In her zeal to be a professional negotiator, she behaved like an amateur human being. Some environments are designed precisely to lure us into acting against our interest. That’s what happens when we overspend at the high-end mall. Blame it on a retail experience specifically engineered—from the lighting to the color schemes to the width of the aisles—to maximize our desire and liberate cash from our wallets. What’s really strange is that the mall environment doesn’t jump out at us like a thief in a dark alley. We have chosen to place ourselves in an environment that, based on past experience, will trigger the urge to buy something we neither need nor want. (This is even more predictable if we go without a specific shopping list—and put ourselves at the mercy of random, undisciplined consumption and a vague feeling that we can’t leave the mall empty-handed.) In overspending we fall into a trap that we have set for ourselves. The environments of a casino or an online shopping site are even less safe. Very smart people have spent their waking hours with one goal in mind: designing each detail so it triggers a customer to stay and spend. Other environments are not as manipulative and predatory as a luxury store. But they’re still not working for us. Consider the perennial goal of getting a good night’s sleep. Insufficient sleep is practically a national epidemic, afflicting one-third of American adults (it’s twice as bad for teenagers). Sleep should be easy to achieve. We have the motivation to sleep well. Who doesn’t want to wake up alert rather than foggy, refreshed rather than sluggish? We understand how much sleep we need. It’s basic arithmetic. If we have work or class early the next morning and need six to eight hours of sleep, we should work backward and plan on going to bed around 11 p.m. And we have control: Sleep is a self-regulated activity that happens in an environment totally governed by us—our home. We decide when to tuck in for the night. We choose our environment, from the room, to the bed, to the sheets and pillows. So why don’t we do what we know is good for us? Why do we stay up later than is good for us—and in turn not get enough sleep and wake up tired rather than refreshed? I blame it on a fundamental misunderstanding of how our environment shapes our behavior. It leads to a phenomenon that Dutch sleep researchers at Utrecht University call “bedtime procrastination.” We put off going to bed at the intended time because we prefer to remain in our current environment—watching a late-night movie or playing video games or cleaning the kitchen—rather than move to the relative calm and comfort of our bedroom. It’s a choice between competing environments. But because we don’t appreciate how our environment influences our choice, we fail to make the right choice (that is, go tobed). We continue doing what we’re doing, victims of inertia, unaware that getting a good night’s sleep is not something we deserve because we’re tired but rather something we must earn by developing better habits. If we understood how our environment can sabotage our sleep habits, we’d change our behavior. We’d stop what we’re doing, turn off our cell phones and iPads and laptops, banish the TV from the bedroom, and turn in for the night—as if we planned it. How we learn to change our behavior from bad habits to good ones, through discipline rather than occasional good fortune, is the subject matter—and promise—of this book’s remaining pages. But first, I have one more piece of disturbing news. Our environment isn’t static. It alters throughout our day. It’s a moving target, easy to miss. If we think about our environment at all, we probably regard it as an expansive macrosphere that is defined by the major influences on our behavior—our family, our job, our schooling, our friends and colleagues, the neighborhood we live in, the physical space we work in. It’s like a borderless nation-state bearing our name that reminds us who we are but has no influence on our decisions or actions. If only that were true. The environment that I’m most concerned with is actually smaller, more particular than that. It’s situational, and it’s a hyperactive shape-shifter. Every time we enter a new situation, with its mutating who-what-when-where-and-why specifics, we are surrendering ourselves to a new environment—and putting our goals, our plans, our behavioral integrity at risk. It’s a simple dynamic: a changing environment changes us. The mother who, in the environment of her home, leisurely makes breakfast for herself and her kids before sending them off to school and transporting herself to work is not the same person who, immediately upon arriving at the office, walks into a major budget meeting headed by her company’s founder. There’s no way she could be. At home she is more or less chief of her domain—and exhibits the behavior of an ultraresponsible leader, caring for her family, expecting obedience, assuming respect. It’s a different environment at the office. She may still be the same confident and competent person she was at home. But, wittingly or not, she fine-tunes her behavior in the meeting. She’s deferential to authority. She pays close attention to the statements and body language of her colleagues. And so it goes through her workday, from situation to situation. As the environment changes, so does she. There’s nothing inauthentic about the woman’s behavior. It’s a necessary survival strategy in a professional environment, especially if you’re no longer in total command of your situation. It wouldn’t be any different if this same woman were the head of the company. Leaders alter their behavior to suit the environment, too. The head of a major construction firm once told me that as an active defense contractor, with differing levels of security clearances for different government contracts, she had to be incredibly scrupulous about the information she shared across parts of her company. She was required by the federal government to compartmentalize what she said. She could share sensitive information over here but not over there, and vice versa. As a result, she was hyperalert to the link between her environment and behavior (failure to do so could not only hurt her company but land her in prison). As an exercise, I asked her to track her environment and how many behavioral personas she adopted as she went through a typical day. Nine, she reported back. She behaved like a CEO among her office staff, a public speaker at a PR event, an engineer among her design wizards, a salesman with a potential customer, a diplomat with a visiting trade group, and so on. Few of us are legally mandated to be so aware. This situational aspect of our environment is what I’ve been working on with my one-on-one coaching clients. It’s not that these very smart executives don’t know that circumstances change from moment to moment as they go through their day. They know. But at the level these people operate in—where nine out of ten times they are the most powerful person in the room—they can easily start believing they’re immune to the environment’s ill will. In a frenzy of delusion, they actually believe they control their environment, not the other way around. Given all the deference and fawning these C-level executives experience throughout the day, such misguided belief is understandable. Not acceptable, but understandable. For example, in 2008 I was hired to coach an executive named Nadeem in London. A Pakistani by birth, Nadeem had emigrated to the United Kingdom as a child, graduated from the London School of Economics, and had risen to one of the top five positions at a leading consumer goods company. Nadeem had all the virtues of a rising star being groomed for CEO. He was smart, personable, hardworking, respected (even “loved”) by his direct reports. But some chinks in his nice guy reputation had appeared. I was asked by the CEO to smooth them out. We all know people who get on our nerves and induce us to behave badly. Around such people, we’re edgy, nasty, combative, rude, and constantly apologizing for our uncharacteristic behavior—though we rarely attribute the cause of our errant behavior to such people. It was the same for Nadeem. When I interviewed his colleagues, a recurring theme came up. Nadeem was a great guy, but he lost his cool whenever he was in a public forum with Simon the chief marketing officer. I asked Nadeem what his issues were with Simon. “He is a racist,” he said. “Is that your opinion, or can you back it up with proof?” I asked. “My opinion,” he said. “But if I feel it, isn’t it a fact, too?” My feedback had said that Simon loved to bait Nadeem in meetings. It wasn’t racial. Simon was a self-entitled “toff,” a product of Britain’s privileged class and elite schools. He had a penchant for pomposity and biting remarks. The sarcasmwas his way of reminding people of his background, elevating himself while diminishing others. He wasn’t a fun guy to be with, but he was not a bigot. Nadeem overreacted to Simon. When Simon challenged him in a meeting, Nadeem felt that, given the decades of racial resentment and tension between Brits and Pakistanis, he couldn’t be seen as backing down. “If I take his crap, it makes me look weak,” said Nadeem. So he fought back. In Nadeem’s mind it was a racial issue, but he was the only one who interpreted it that way. Nadeem’s colleagues saw him as a vocal proponent of teamwork who wasn’t modeling what he was preaching. It was branding Nadeem as a phony. My task was to make Nadeem see that • his behavior wasn’t serving him well; • it was isolated to the time he spent in Simon’s presence; • it was triggered whenever Simon challenged him, and • he had to change because he couldn’t count on Simon to change. The big insight for Nadeem was that his behavior was situational, triggered solely by Simon. Every time Nadeem found himself in the “Simon environment” (that’s what he named it), he would go on high alert. It was a new level of mindfulness for him—and a critical (though not the only) factor in his swift change for the better. We’ll come back to Nadeem in Chapter 20 to learn precisely how he changed his behavior and, in turn, won back the respect of his colleagues and his nemesis, Simon. It’s an uplifting story with a shocking admission from Nadeem—and (spoiler alert) it neatly encapsulates the most important benefit of adult behavioral change. But for now let’s absorb and wallow in Nadeem’s hard-won appreciation that our environment is a relentless triggering machine. If we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us. And the result turns us into someone we do not recognize.   * I’ve since learned that David Letterman lowered his Late Show studio temperature to a chilly 55 degrees before going onstage. He experimented with room temperatures in the 1980s and discovered that his jokes worked best at 55 degrees, which makes the sound crisper and the audience more alert.

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