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lovecanbesostrange · 3 years

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Okay, for the poor people on the Ruby Lucas Harem Discord suffering because of this ask (x) on konako’s tumblr that lead to things (including this fanart x), I have this wild scene out of context.

Mary Margaret was sitting at her desk, updating her chemistry flashcards. Ruby was sitting on her bed cross-legged staring at her laptop screen, waiting for this English essay to write itself.

“Ugh,” Ruby groaned and let herself fall backwards. Out of habit she put her hands to her face, but winced when her fingers touched the band aid over her eyebrow. It’s been five days.

A knock on the door made them both turn. They usually could tell who it was by the exact sound of the knock. Like Charming had one hard knock followed by two quick ones or Mulan knocked four times in a specific rhythm. So whoever this was, was more than unexpected. Ruby drew in a sharp breath. She had heard back from the police yesterday that there would be no criminal charges, but they both knew something else would arise from this.

Mary Margaret looked at her, then turned her chair to fully face the door and Ruby got back up again. “Come in.”

“Hallo. Good, you’re here.”

“Mom!” Mary Margaret was up in a second and gave her mother a hug. “I didn’t know you’d be coming.”

Eva hugged her back, but despite the smile on her face, her voice already made them realize this was not a fun surprise visit. “I didn’t know I would be here today either.” The hug ended and she stepped into the room, her gaze landing on Ruby. “I got some news last night and suddenly I was in my car this morning.”

Mary Margaret glanced at the clock. It was a twelve hours drive with good traffic, so Eva must’ve gotten behind the wheel around 4am.

“Hi…” Ruby busied herself closing her laptop and didn’t look up.

“Honey,” Eva stroked Mary Margaret’s hair, “would you mind giving us the room? I want to talk to Ruby.”

“Sure.” Mary Margaret glanced between the two and then grabbed her things from the desk. “I’m down the hall in the common area.” When she passed Eva she whispered: “Don’t be too harsh on her, please.”

That made Eva smile. Her daughter knew exactly why she was here, but she looked out for her friend. These girls always had each other’s back and knowing they were loyal like that, dragging each other out of trouble, was certainly a good thing.

Eva took the vacant chair and rolled herself over a bit towards Ruby’s bed. “So.”

Ruby slowly looked up. Eva took in the bandaid and she could see a faint red line indicating that her lip must have been busted. Trying to hide one hand with the other was a giveaway that her knuckles were bruised as well. Eva had to breathe slowly. A part of her wanted to grab Ruby by the shoulders and shake the whole story out of her. She wanted to yell about irresponsibilties, the futility of violence and all the consequences physical assault could come with. The bigger part of her wanted to cradle her like the 9 year old she sometimes still saw, who confessed to lying about her home address, as if not having loving parents was her personal failing.

“I was at dinner with friends last night and suddenly got asked if I heard about the ruckus on campus. I was really surprised when I was shown this tiny article about a football player beating up another student. And it took me two phone calls to find out it was you.”

“I’m sorry,” Ruby murmured towards the blanket she was sitting on, playing with the seam of her sweatpants.

“For what?” Eva tried to keep her voice as neutral as possible. She had felt every emotion during the long drive and had played out many versions of this conversation. But sitting in this room she realized none of those would work.

Ruby furrowed her brows and finally looked up. “Beating up that guy, of course?” It was a bit more of a question than a statement. The question had rattled her. There was so much to be sorry for though. The beating, losing her temper at all, making Regina worry that night already, not doing so great in classes lately, clinging to Snow, making her team suffer… oh, wait. “Also for not calling… I guess…”

The board said that her mother, Anita, would be notified of this by mail. That was her home address, her contact, but maybe this was why Eva was here. The Blanchards had always cared, but now she was in college, she wasn’t a kid anymore, she had to do these things by herself. But maybe, just maybe they should have called. “I shouldn’t have put this on Snow alone… she should’ve talked to you…”

“Ruby, no.” Eva got up and sat down on the bed, gesturing Ruby to scoot over next to her. “Sure, I’m disappointed-”

The word stung and Ruby interjected immediately. “I’m sorry. I messed up, but I promise Snow wasn’t even there and I won’t-”

“Stop!” Eva took Ruby’s hands, now seeing the bruises already turning yellow, showing the passage of time already. “I am disappointed you didn’t call. And I’m glad to hear Mary wasn’t involved, but I wanted to know anyway. Because of you. I care about you. And this is serious. I know…” She paused and slowed down, knowing the next thing would hurt, but after all these years, Eva needed to say it out loud. “I know your mom doesn’t take good care of you, I know you feel like she doesn’t care at all and I honestly don’t know if she does. But I do. I am not your mother, but I care.”

The dam broke and Ruby started to cry. Eva took her into her arms and immediately Ruby clung to her. It was weird that Eva had seen the aftermath of Ruby crying quite a few times over the years, but rarely had she shed tears in front of her. Maybe Eva should have made her before, pushed her a little bit towards that to hammer it home that she cared and that she would be there for her. Just the same she had hugged Mary Margaret after break-ups, over bruised knees, bad grades, and other bad news.

“I’m sorry for everything”, Ruby got out between sobs. Her tears stained Eva’s blouse already. “I didn’t mean to… I don’t want to hurt people… I swear I want to be good.”

There was more, but it was hard to decipher it all and Eva let her cry, rubbing circles on her back. Getting the full story would take time, that was for sure. All she could do now was to reassure Ruby. “I know you’re good, you just made a mistake. People make mistakes.”

Eva looked over Ruby’s shoulder and saw her pinboard. A few pictures were on it and she immediately recognized one taken the time she and Leopold had taken the girls to Six Flags. They had ridden all the rollercoasters until they were practically green in the face. It had also been the day she had seen Ruby at her most carefree. There was one photo of Ruby with her Grandmother, a woman Eva had met only once. Anita was nowhere to be found on the wall.

A group shot looked nice. Eva recognized David from the pictures Mary Margaret had sent her, but couldn’t even guess who the others were. It was a bit sad living too far away to meet all these people, because she had made it a point to know Mary Margaret’s friends in school by face and name. Mulan, Belle, August, Robin, Jasmin, Anna, Aurora… so many names. She smiled at the picture in the corner that showed Ruby in her team uniform, helmet in hand. A candid shot, her elbow resting on the shoulder of another girl. Or maybe it was young woman now.

Eva turned a bit to catch a glimpse of Mary Margaret’s pinboard. Cluttered with far more pictures, flyers and notes. They shared a room, they had shared the most parts of their lives for the past 11 years and yet there still was such a noticeable difference.

Ruby started to calm down and when she let go, Eva leaned forward to get tissues out of her bag. “Can you tell me your version of the story now? All I know is that you were provoked and sent a boy to the hospital. The article said something about questionable self-defense.”

“There are no criminal charges,” Ruby said after blowing her nose. “He said something to my friend. Insulted her. And he wouldn’t stop, calling her… the c-word… and when he touched me, I lost it.”

“He was in the hospital,” she prompted.

“For a broken arm.” A pause. “A broken nose.” Ruby looked at Eva again. “He lost a tooth. And has some more bruises than I do. He was on the ground fast…”

Eva put a hand on Ruby’s shoulder. “I have no problem believing you would defend any of your friends like that. But you must have hit him pretty hard.” Ruby nodded, the shame was visible. “Tell me the truth. Has this happened before? Because what I can’t believe is that you would pound someone when he’s already down. Something else is going on and I want to know if that will happen again.”

Ruby pressed her palms against the mattress and slid away a bit. Eva could hear - and even see - her breathing pick up. This was almost all the confirmation she needed.

“I’m sorry.”

“Has it happened before, yes or no?”

“Yes.”

Silence fell.

Eva closed her eyes. This was the thing she had feared. Because either Ruby had lost it very big time and the paper didn’t cover the big scoop behind it. Or something had been going on and she had been blind to it. And she needed to hear this from Ruby herself either way.

“When?”

“Back in high school… it was… at junior prom…”

Eva scrambled her brain. She remembered Mary Margaret having a date and giving her one more motherly talk about safe sex that had left her daughter bright red in the face. She also remembered that date bringing her home even before curfew and that Mary Margaret had been not very talkative that night. She had sworn nothing bad had happened with him and Eva only suspected that they’d had a stupid teen argument. There was nothing too remarkable about that. Had she seen Ruby the next day? She couldn’t recall.

While she was thinking, Ruby went on hesitantly. “This boy Peter had asked me out… from the hockey team… but it… it was all a prank… some of those guys wanted to like… set me up for a joke… and... “ She quickly glanced up and right back down again. “It wasn’t as bad, he had bruises and a swollen eye. Snow was there to stop me and we all agreed to not tell anyone. I apologized to him though. And it all… it was… like now… just more… it wasn’t just Whale being a dick to my friend, it’s… everything is so much sometimes and I explode.”

This was less surprising to hear than Eva cared to admit. “Have you ever hurt somebody with intention?”

Ruby shook her head. Her voice was broken. “One time… but only one time… I shoved Snow… I swear it was only once… I yelled at her and shoved her and the second I had done that… I apologized immediately and I never ever intended to hurt anybody.” She looked at Eva again. “Least of all her. I swear.” For this she held eye contact as long as she could.

Eva reached out touching her hand that was clenched around the edge of the mattress. “Thank you for being honest.”

There were a lot of details Eva wanted to know about, but this had been hard enough on Ruby. And now they had time to figure things out. But she had revealed a bright spot. “No criminal charges, you said?”

Ruby nodded. “The police seem very uninterested. And any civil things… well, I need to worry about what the board decides. My… friend said her family will keep things on the down-low.” She squirmed a bit.

“Who is this friend?”

“Regina Mills.”

“Mills? Oh.” Of all the people to get in a fight for, this was probably the luckiest choice. Although it didn’t sit right with Eva that there might be things going to circumvent what law dictated. But she also knew that worse people got away with far worse behavior and Ruby deserved to have one strike with minimal consequences. Even if this was technically her second. “I have looked up a few therapists in town already. I nee-”

“I’m seeing the campus therapist already. But I blew off a few appointments and I get that I shouldn’t.” Eva looked over at Mary Margaret’s bed at that. “Yes, Snow made me. She went with me the first time even.”

“What else are you girls keeping from me?” That came out more judgmental than she meant to. “I know you’re growing up, but you’re still kids to me. I always thought you knew you can come to me with problems.”

“Sorry.”

Eva scooted closer again and put her arm around Ruby’s shoulder. “Enough with the apologies. I know you’re a good kid. I remember you kept Mary from starting to smoke, so that’s something.”

“You know about that?” Ruby looked at her bewildered.

“I am a mom after all and some things I do pick up. You didn’t like it, because you’re an athlete, right?”

“Yeah, it’s super shitty for your lungs and I told her it was uncool.”

Eva laughed. “Wish that would work on Leo and his cigars. But thanks for that. I know you two look out for each other. But I will have to chew out my daughter for keeping a few too many secrets.” Ruby tensed up a bit. “What? Something else I need to know?”

“No…” She dragged the syllable out, dragging her toes over the floor.

“Ruby, I just said you can tell me. That is all I want from you, the truth. And we can work anything out from there.”

“But… what if…” She crossed her arms in front of chest, bracing herself. “What if… I’m not who you think I am?”

“You’re Ruby Lucas. You’re the best friend of my daughter, almost more like a sister. You worked your butt off to get here and you work hard to be the best version of you. I know you even send some of that money home you make at the gas station. Because you care so much about people you love, like your grandmother. I know you are a good person, even though you keep way too much inside. But we can work on that now.” She gave Ruby a kiss on the head, like she would with Mary Margaret. “What could be so bad about you?”

“I’m… I think… I’m gay.” Ruby breathed out that last word and was one tense muscle in Eva’s half embrace.

Eva looked at the pinboard again. The picture with Ruby smiling while leaning on the other girl. It clicked. On top of everything else, this secret had weighed Ruby down. She sure had enough reasons to be angry at the world already. This wasn’t something Eva had prepared for, so she just brought around her other arm to pull Ruby closer. “I want you to be happy and in love.” Finally she felt Ruby breathe in again.

((I just have to stop myself here. This could go on and on and on and on otherwise. Because I already know Eva is gonna take them out to dinner, insisting on meeting David. She gets a hotel room nearby. Of course Snow offers to let her sleep in the dorm but “Honey, that’s kind, but no. So much no to sleeping in a dorm bed.” And she freshens up a bit and passes a book store, where her eye is caught by a pride display and she gets a bracelet with a tiny rainbow flag, two actually, she wears one and gives the other to Ruby, because well, she doesn’t know exactly what to say, but this will definitely not make her think less of her!! Eva is the silent MVP of the story.))

#gender mix football AU #(where nobody gives a fuck about football)#Ruby Lucas #(sorry for spamming the tag - come to the server to yell at me about it)#this fic would be 100k words at this point already - sorry I don't have actual writing stamina for that #konako #somehow it's her fault - and the demons circling her inbox #lazylaziel #if only you knew what you started... even though it's so far removed by now... sorry #$!#RRCAU

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worryinglyinnocent · 4 years

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Fic: Literature Past and Present

AU-gust Day Two: College AU Fandom: Once Upon A Time Pairing: Rumbelle

Rated: G

Summary: Gold’s trepidation at returning to university to get his degree over two decades after he first dropped out is put to rest on meeting one of his professors, Belle French.

Note: This is set in the UK in my alma mater.

===

Literature Past and Present

Despite this being something that he had wanted to do for a long time, Gold couldn’t help but feel a distinct sense of fear as he made his way across the university campus towards his very first class of the term.

For a long time after he’d dropped out of university the first time, Gold had worked on the principle that he didn’t need a degree and his business ventures had worked perfectly fine without one for many years.

Now that Neal had graduated and had a family of his own, and now that his property ventures and the antique shop did not require as much of his personal input as they always used to, Gold had found his tune changing slightly. Hearing about everything that Neal had got up to during his own studying days had reignited Gold’s interest in learning.

He had no desire to participate in the usual student lifestyle, he was far too old for that now, but his desire to go back and actually finish his degree this time was becoming stronger and stronger, until he had bitten the bullet and applied to study English as a mature student at the local university.

He would be the oldest person in his class by quite a way; he held no compunctions about that. He was prepared for all the strange looks that he would receive, surrounded by people more than half his age, which was why he was arriving early. Hopefully, he would be able to find a seat at the back of the room, nice and unobtrusive. As long as he made it clear that he was here to learn and not get involved in anything else, then he’d be left alone.

He made it to the room where the first seminar of the semester was taking place and peered in through the glass panel in the door. He was the first student to arrive, but the professor was already there, tapping away on her laptop whilst the screen showed the first slide of a presentation.

Gold took a deep breath and entered the room. The door squeaked ominously as he closed it behind him and the professor looked up, giving him a smile.

“You’re keen. We’re not due to start for another fifteen minutes, you know.”

Gold nodded. “Yes. I, erm… Yes.”

He sank into a seat at the back of the room and the professor continued to type for a while. The slide on the screen showed her to be Dr Belle French, and it welcomed him to English Module 1001: Literature Past and Present (Part One).

Gold pulled his notebook and pens out of his bag. It was like being back at school again, just as nerve-wracking, although he was sure that this particular teacher wouldn’t be as strict or terrifying as the ones he had known in his childhood, and that would make for a better experience. He looked down at the reading list. He’d enjoyed going through all of the books over the summer, especially reading the ones that he had already read in a different, more critical light, thinking about the messages that the words conveyed, either intentionally or otherwise.

Presently, Dr French stopped typing and closed the laptop, coming round the desk and leaning back on it.

“So, can I know the name of my diligent student?”

It took Gold a moment to twig that she was speaking to him and not to any of the other currently non-existent people in the room.

“Raymond Gold,” he said eventually.

“Pleased to meet you, Raymond. I’m Belle. I don’t stand on ceremony in my classes; Dr French always sounds so stuffy and formal. So, are you taking English as a single honours course or a supplementary?”

“Single.”

“Great! In that case, I’ll be seeing you again – I take a lot of the analysis and writing skills lectures as well. And if you’re that way inclined, I teach all the feminist literature modules to the second and third years.” She laughed. “Sorry, I shouldn’t be so forward, but I’m all for pimping my courses on the first day. You never know what might stick in people’s heads. So, what made you decide to choose English?”

“Well, as you can probably see, I’m not taking a degree to help me on my future career path.” He paused. “I apologise, that sounds like I’m disparaging your field as not being useful.”

Belle shrugged. “I don’t mind, it’s a common argument. ‘What can you do with a BA in English?’ as the Avenue Q song puts it so well. I mean, I’m happy to have the argument with you, but we’ve only got seven minutes before the class starts and I can go on all day if I’ve a mind to. Anyway, go on.”

“What I mean is, when I decided to come back and get my degree after far too long since I dropped out, I was lucky to be in the privileged position of being able to study something that I wanted to study just because I enjoyed it, rather than having to think about what could be the most advantageous to me in the future.”

“I like that sentiment.” Belle smiled. “I wonder how many more people would follow their dreams if they had that same chance. And obviously, I’m biased, but I must say that I’m very glad that English is the subject that you enjoy and chose to study. I’m lucky really, I knew that all I ever wanted to do in my life was work with literature and write, so becoming an academic presented itself to me as a career path early.” She paused. “Do you mind if I ask what your career has turned out to be?”

“I’ve done all sorts of things and had all sorts of investments, but mainly antiques trading. I learned on the job and never looked back. Well, until my son graduated, and I realised that I wanted to have that learning experience again. He never let me hear the end of it, teasing me that I was trying to steal his thunder. I know he’s pleased deep down. Dropping out was one of my biggest regrets.” Gold laughed. “I did law the first time around. I think I’ve made a much better choice this time.”

“Well, naturally I think so, but I’ve got a vested interest in keeping you on this course.” Belle winked, and Gold had to look down at his pens with intense interest. He absolutely could not be developing a crush on the professor on his first day. Student-teacher liaisons were not a good idea. Although, that said, that was usually because the students were a lot younger than the teachers in the position of power, and he could safely say that was definitely not the case with him and Belle. All the same, it would be a bit strange. No, he could not and would not fancy Dr French.

At that point, their conversation had to break off as more students started to arrive and take their seats, and Belle started to talk to them as well. Although Gold received a few odd looks from his classmates, once the seminar began and people began to talk about the subject rather than themselves, things became much more relaxed. Gold kept his head down for the most part, not getting too involved in the lively debates, but he was content to listen and learn. Every so often, his eye caught Belle’s, and she always had a smile for him.

Gold sighed. This was not a very auspicious start to his degree.

Belle held her office hours on Wednesday afternoons, traditionally the time of the week with the least scheduled lectures and seminars. It was always hit and miss as to how many visitors she would get on any given week; sometimes they were queuing up outside her office before she even got there, and other times she could sit with the door open for the full two hours and not hear a peep from anyone.

They were about a quarter of the way through the semester, and this week was one of the quiet ones. The students had a paper due the next Friday, so she anticipated a last-minute rush the next week. Today was the calm before the storm, and she was sitting happily in the late autumn sunshine that streamed in through her window, reading a novel. There was plenty of academic work that she could have been doing instead, but she never liked to get stuck into anything during office hours in case she was interrupted and lost her thread.

A knock on the doorframe pulled her out of her thoughts and she spun around in her chair to see Raymond Gold standing there, looking nervous. It was the first time that he had come to her office hours. That wasn’t unusual – some students never came, and others were in practically every other week. Belle didn’t begrudge either type; everyone had their own ways of learning and studying.

“Hi Raymond, come on in. What can I do for you? Is it about the essay?”

He shook his head, coming in and sitting at the other chair in the room. Being a junior lecturer as she was and not yet a tenured professor, Belle shared her office with a colleague, Merida. They got on well and were almost never in the office at the same time, which was a blessing when it came to office hours as there was really not enough room for more than two people in the glorified broom cupboard that they shared.

“No, it’s not about the essay. Well, it is a bit, I suppose. I, erm, I read your book.”

“Oh.” Belle felt herself blushing. Publishing her book had been a strange point in her career; she was so proud of her achievement but at the same time she still felt ridiculously egoistic to be recommending her own work to her students as a study aid.

“I just wanted to talk to you about it,” Raymond continued. “I really enjoyed it. It was very insightful.”

“I’m glad you liked it. Not many people can sit through two hundred pages of contextual analysis of the Brontë sisters which basically boils down to ‘who’s worse, Rochester or Heathcliff?’”

“Heathcliff, by a mile,” Raymond said. “But I think there’s a lot more to it than that.”

They continued to talk, Belle checking that there was no one else hanging around the door wanting to speak to her every so often, but they were not interrupted. It was wonderful talking about her passion, and even more so finding that one of her students shared it.

She sighed inwardly. She had vowed when she had first discovered Raymond in her seminar that she would not treat him any differently to the rest of her students because of his age, but now she was having more and more trouble with that. Not with treating him any differently in class, that was never a problem. But with this moment now, with the moments when they spoke outside of the academic context. He was closer to her own age than every other student she’d met – he was actually older than her, which was rare in academia. Outside of the classroom, it was harder and harder to see him as a student and not as… something else.

She wondered what the etiquette was in these circumstances. Rules on student and teacher fraternisation were in place for a reason, but he was a very different student.

Belle waited until he had left before knocking her head against her desk with a groan. The last few minutes of their conversation had become stilted, as if they were both waiting for the other to make the first move. She couldn’t be imagining it that he was grappling with the same kind of feelings that she was. She could see it in his dark brown eyes, watching her whilst she talked animatedly about her pet projects.

“So, I take it that the head-desk has something to do with the handsome chap who I just walked past?” Merida came back into the office and took the now vacant chair, prodding Belle until she looked up and nodded.

“What do I do now, Merida?”

“Well, I suggest you run after him and ask him if he wants to go and get a cup of tea, but then that’s just what worked for me and Mulan.”

“He’s one of my students, Merida.”

“Really? Wow.” She looked over her shoulder out of the room and ducked back in. “Well, he’s not got to the stairwell yet. How long are the corridors in this building? It’s downright ridiculous.”

“He’s a student, Merida.”

“Belle…” Merida sighed. “Go with your gut, love. All things considered, is it really going to be as much of a problem as you think it might be? You’re both definitely grown-up, I’m sure you can be civil about the whole thing.”

Belle nodded. Merida was right. It might not be orthodox, but then, Raymond was not exactly an orthodox student.

She got up and left her office, following him down the corridor at a pace that was not quite a run but definitely not just a walk. She caught up to him in the entrance.

“Wait, Raymond.”

He turned back towards her.

“Belle?”

“I was just wondering… I don’t have anywhere to be until five. Did you want to get a cup of tea maybe?”

Raymond smiled. “That would be lovely. And my friends generally call me Rum.”

“Rum. I like that.”

Belle couldn’t stop smiling as they made their way to the small café outside the humanities department building. She was very happy to be considered a friend, and maybe, in time, more than a friend.

#rumbelle #rumbelle fic #Belle French #Mr Gold #college AU #AU-gust #Worry does AU-gust #Fic: Literature Past and Present

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sendnotes · 3 years

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books i read in april.

this is going to be my thing from now on. i'll compile a list of all the books i read in a month and share my thoughts on each one every end of the month.

just so you know, i'm a little forgetful, and i have a tendency to forget names, plots, and other details. i'm hoping that writing these will aid my memory in recalling how i felt about each novel.

you can also find me on goodreads

so, let’s begin, shall we?

101 essays that will change the way you think (wiest, brianna)

self-help book

this book got off to a good start! some of the essays written (or should i say a collection of articles originally published on the thoughtcatalog website) made me think and consider my outlook on life, love, and so on.

the title overstates the case though. when i think of an essay, i picture something more argumentative and philosophical. not to mention that the majority of the ideas in this book are redundant. it made it difficult to get through. nonetheless, i was able to get past it because there were so many fantastic concepts and topics discussed.

overall, it's an interesting & worthwhile read for those who enjoy thinking outside the box.i lost count of how many times this book gave me aha moments. i swear, most of the entries soothed my mind and provided a great pick-me-up when life seemed to be frustrating.

the midnight library (haig, matt)

science fiction, fantasy fiction, psychological fiction

regrets, self-remorse, what ifs, family approval, drugs, dreams, love, passion, hatred, death, afterlife, multiverses, quantum physics, and a plethora of possibilities packed into a 304-page book.

i'll be honest: this book is already on my list of favorites. i'm simply blown away by how well-crafted and diverse the entire story unfolded.

a sci-fi novel with a dash of fantasy and a smidgeon of philosophy. if that's your thing, you should give this book a shot.

the first few pages of the book gave me an impression and led me to surmise it was going to be a cheesy ass chick lit novel that i'd only read and find enjoyable in high school. i was completely off base. it proved to be very mature, full of lessons, but delivered in a fun and entertaining manner— exactly my cup of tea.

it reminded me of a disney pixar film called soul, in which the afterlife is depicted in vivid detail. they differ on so many levels, but they both imagine life after death for people who are unsure of their path, purpose, and passion.

every chapter served a significant concept, so this book is well-deserved of a 5-star rating!

norwegian wood (murakami, haruki)

fiction, romance novel, bildungsroman

as i read the book and neared the end, all i could think about was how this book became one of murakami's most popular and influential works.

murakami offers a sprawling glimpse into the lives of a group of severely damaged youths grappling with the realities of what emptiness entails. take what you will from it.

i know a lot of people like it, which is fine. but please keep in mind that this book hit me square in the gut. it alternated between making me angry, sad, annoyed, and disgusted almost constantly. there isn't much else.

this book should come with a warning: "this is not a good place to start if you're new to murakami's works. this is not a representative of murakami's brilliance."

fist and foremost, the characters in this book are all repulsive.

toru watanabe was a fuckboy and a softboy rolled into one. what could possibly be worse than that? he'd have as many casual sexual partners as he could while also buttering a girl up by appealing to her emotions and displaying a "sensitive" and "vulnerable" side.

this book was made even more depressing by the fact that each female character was needy, weak, dysfunctional, and dependent. since they're all the same, i'm not going to go over each of these female characters one by one. you already get the idea.

reiko ishida, imo, was one of the best rendered sections of the novel. most likely because she had a better grasp on her emotions and goals than the still seeking youths... until, *spoiler alert* she wanted to do it with toru as well. a big disappointment.

to summarize, this book is primarily concerned with two topics: sex and death.

hidden meanings are everywhere, but when you get to the core, that's all that remains.

the four agreements: a practical guide to personal freedom (ruiz, miguel)

self-help book

first agreement ⏤ be impeccable with your word

this essentially means that you should not spew gossip or use words to harm others. because words have tremendous power and can cause significant harm. you are not only negatively affecting others with your hateful and thoughtless words, but you are also hurting yourself. this is something with which i generally agree. how i see it, when people are unhappy with themselves, they turn to others to make themselves feel better. as a result, they gossip about others in order to divert attention away from themselves.

second agreement ⏤don't take anything personally

alright. sure. don't let what others say about you bother you. it has everything to do with them and nothing to do with you. well, i don't entirely agree, but i think it's a fantastic idea in general. however, achieving this goal will be extremely difficult. i believe it would take a lot of practice to reach this level of zen. plus, i honestly believe that other people's opinions still matter because they keep you in check. the best advice is to not be swayed by these opinions, but to consider why they were expressed in the first place. see what you can do to improve yourself from there. sure, it can be difficult to deal with; after all, no one likes being told they're wrong or whatnot. but it's not all bad news because you can sometimes use criticism and judgment to give you a competitive edge. i mean- don't you think hearing someone else's point of view is also an opportunity to learn and progress? ruiz should have stressed that it's not just about "not taking it personally because you know you're not that person," but also about not retaliating with an extreme knee-jerk reaction even if you believe you're being unfairly criticized.

third agreement ⏤ don't make assumptions

this is a real eye-opener for me. i've noticed that whenever i become enraged by someone's words, it's usually due to my tendency to assume. personally, i can't help but make assumptions. i don't know what other people's motivations are, and i can't help but draw conclusions based on the information i have. even if the other person had no intention of causing me harm, it's too late. the thought has become ingrained in my mind, and i never ask for clarification out of pride or fear of appearing overly sensitive.

fourth agreement ⏤ always do your best

this section did not seem particularly useful to me. i mean, aren't we all reminded of this all the time? this section is filled with sloppy writing, in my opinion. as if he badly wanted to finish the book and impulsively thought: "okay, fourth agreement: always do your best. that should suffice. lmao"

overall opinion: the third agreement was my favorite, but the rest were a no-go. don't get me wrong, i appreciated his ideas, but i've heard them all a hundred times before. basically, the book's sole takeaway is that we are all suffering in some way in our daily lives, and we are all dealing with different issues. regardless, we all need to be kinder and gentler to ourselves and others.

the song of achilles (miller, madeline)

romance novel, historical Fiction, war story

i'll keep it short and sweet:

i really wouldn't have had this book any other way. miller's writing is breathtaking, so rich and full of lovely detail. it's incredibly a unique concept to me that authors are rewriting such ancient history and stories to make them lgbt+!

some suggest it's tedious, but i disagree. it isn't slow; rather, it is just right.

'cause at the end of the day, it's not about war, tragedy, or heroes - it's a slow-burning, organic love tale between two young men and their inevitable connection.

it's sad, tender, and painful, but in the best way possible.

circe (miller, madeline)

novel, historical fiction, fantasy fiction

"greek mythology, but with a feminist twist"?! sign me the hell up! this piqued my interest... only to leave me feeling completely let down. seriously now. circe was described as a "badass empowered woman," which was the single most compelling selling point for me, and thus the most wrenching disappointment, i must say.

sure, it demonstrated the value of feminine power, but it also did represent how this power can be a force of good or evil.

not to mention the fact that circe fucked a married man or two in this book- i mean- how is that an ~empowered woman~?

let's be clear right off the bat: madeline miller's follow-up to the song of achilles is epic in scope but not necessarily in execution. to me, this read more like a tedious island tale. regardless of how many five-star reviews this book has received... i just don't think it's well-deserved. don't get me wrong here. miller is a fantastic author with a lush writing! istg- i'm blown away by how beautifully she wrote and carefully chose her words. even the most mundane phrases were written poetically. after-all, it’s greek mythology. but how did she manage to make circe seem so... bland?

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curewhimsy · 4 years

Text

Utane Uta x Soune Taya infodump (Shiro-Sora)

General Chemistry Uta is pretty sarcastic, blunt, and reserved, so it’s an interesting development to see her grow and interact with the pure and shy Taya as they both overcome their shortcomings together. Uta just lost her passion to depression, but that's touched on eventually/later. She's all like "I hate life" but that's because of depression. She also lost her interest in music to depression, but being with Taya and being in a musical school has her slowly regain it. Taya tries to help out Uta and make her smile but... he ends up upsetting her one time... When Taya finds out how depressed Uta really is he starts crying for her and saying "I'm sorry..." and Uta is like "Why are you crying? Nothing is your fault..." And Taya apologizes again and says it's a habit that he feels responsible for his friend's sadness. Uta hugs him. "I haven't been able to cry for years, so I'm a bit jealous..." She says. "But... I still don't want you to cry though... I like to see your smile, ok?" Taya is very polite, and selfless. He's always willing to do favors for people. He speaks in polite language. He bows at many occasions (Even in this universe that takes place in the USA, and not Japan.) He is humble as well. These may seem like quirks or obsessions as first, but it stems from his feeling of obligation to do things for people and "not be a burden," because he had friends and teachers who treated him like a burden before. When his anemia caused him to faint or miss classes, everyone treated him as a burden. When he starts hanging out with Uta, she comments on how he feels like a butler and tells him to loosen up, it's okay to be a bit more relaxed, and selfish even. Well I think the day Uta finally cries and lets out her emotions is when something bad happens to her (fighting with her father perhaps,) but Taya comes and helps and comforts her, then confesses his love for her. And then come the waterworks, from both of them! Other General Background Stuff (including their gender identities and such) Uta Utane is non-binary, and first discovers it at age 20 through Taya, after getting to know him and realizing she is non-binary as well. Uta eventually switches to identifying as demigirl and uses she/her and they/them pronouns. Taya Soune is non-binary (he/him, trans-masculine, lesbian) and discovered his identity at age 14. He is DFAB and had been raised as a girl until then. A lot of his gender identity is still a secret from his parents, even though they know he takes testosterone hormone therapy. (They assume he is a trans man.)

Uta’s mother died when she was 4 years old. This fanfic takes place in the USA, so she is Japanese-American. Uta’s mother loved music and singing, and named her daughter after the Japanese word for song. After Uta’s mother died, her father didn’t take it well. He abandoned all music and began to hate it, because it brought back painful memories of Uta’s mother. Taya is also Japanese-American. His parents named him “Taya” with the intent of giving him an easy name to pronounce and relate to for Americans. Since Taya was designated female at birth, he was also given a name that sounded female to Americans. He still decided to keep the name after transitioning, however.

Taya picked up his habit of politely bowing when he was 15 years old and took a summer trip to Japan for two months. For this trip, he studied Japanese extensively to be able to communicate with the local people. He can speak Japanese at an intermediate skill level because of this. While he was in Japan, he felt that bowing was an expression of utmost politeness and now continues to do it back in the USA out of both out of reflex and courtesy. Uta had never been to Japan. Her father, who abandoned music after Uta’s mother died, never taught Uta the meaning of her name. When Uta was 10 years old, she was mistaken as being named Utah by everyone and was teased for it. So she Googled her name. She learned that it meant “song” in Japanese. She began to learn about Japanese culture, especially pop culture and music, in secret from her father. Quirks and Funny Moments Uta’s catchphrase is “Yare yare...” (“Good grief...”) Taya’s catchphrase is “Is that sou, desu ne?” (“Sou desu ne” is basically “Is that so?” in Japanese. I combined the two. He also tends to mumble “Sou, ne” which means “oh, well,” and alludes to... his last name! Taya is smart and dignified but... very clumsy and naive as well. Uta is badass, but kind of “chaotic dumb” in certain ways. Sometimes she forgets to do her homework while doing her homework. Don’t ask. Taya loves sweets, and his favorite is strawberry shortcake. He is also a good pastry chef... Uta is horrible at cooking! She is so horrible, that she makes things mega-explode! She is so horrible, she needs Taya to cook for her just so she can get by! Taya gets completely drunk after just a few sips of alcohol. When his 21st birthday comes in the story, he has his first drink. He gets drunk almost instantly and becomes a lot less shy. He starts singing drunk karaoke along with an intoxicated Meiko. (The songs Ghost Rule and World is Mine come to mind.) Taya and Momo Momone once got into a rather heated argument over whether strawberries or peaches are better. Uta asked herself why she was surrounded by airheads. Uta buys Taya a strawberry Squishmallow for his birthday. In no time, Taya is able to think of a personality and an extensive backstory for his new plush friend. Uta is... impressed.

One time Taya tried playing Uta’s violin instead of his usual cello. He played an earsplitting tune and ended up breaking the violin. Not only does it just break, it comically explodes into little pieces! Taya wears fancy and posh menswear all the time. To every occasion. Even to sleep. Don’t judge him. Taya is 5’4” but wishes he were at least 5’8”. He has a slight Napoleonic complex, which is somewhat unexpected. It is eventually revealed that Taya started dressing in such an elegant way to make up for his lack of height. Uta reassures Taya that his height is fine. (Once before they started dating, she accidentally slipped out that she thinks Taya is “handsome the way he is” and became flustered. However, Taya didn’t take Uta’s compliment as having any romantic undertones.) Uta’s height is 5’0” and she is rather fine with it. Deep down, she doesn’t want Taya to be tall. She likes Taya just the way he is. “Why did you set me on fire, Uta? Why didn’t you just write your essay?” -Quote from Taya, when Uta didn’t write her essay and ended up setting Taya on fire instead. (Don’t ask.) Their Part-Time Jobs Uta works part time at a hat shop. This is because Uta loves hats. In fact, she is usually never seen without her favorite hat, a black beret. Even when she is wearing a different hat, such as a beanie, she still usually is carrying her beret with her somewhere. Uta’s hat shop is at the mall, in the dimly-lit corner where nobody really goes to. It is a small shop and she is the head of it. The sales at the shop are poor. The place is named “Defoko’s Hats,” after the nickname Miki gave Uta. The nickname Defoko came from now Miki thought Uta was such a “default” type of person the first time she met her, whatever that was supposed to mean. (The word default written in Japanese katakana is pronounced “deforuto.” The first part of “deforuto” was combined with “ko,” a common ending in Japanese girls’ names, to make the nickname Defoko.) Taya works part-time at Denny’s as a waiter. He started working there to pay back the funds it took to fix a window that he broke by crashing through said window like the Kool-Aid man while he was drunk after having only one drink on his 21st birthday. (Because he cannot hold his alcohol.) Taya over-achieves at his job at Denny’s and acts as if he is a waiter in a five-star restaurant. Along with always wearing his posh, elegant clothing to the job, he is very overly-polite and tactful when taking orders, even bowing at times... people have commented that he feels more like a butler than a waiter. Taya also tends to pour the drinks at the table. In fancy teacups. He pours from a fancy kettle into the cup from a high angle. In fact, he pours them from so high, he has to get a ladder. Everyone in the restaurant stares at him. Taya is quite odd, but he does get a lot of tips. And more people have been coming to the restaurant since he had started working there. He isn’t even going for a gimmick however. He is literally just being Taya. The Theatre Club Taya wanted Uta to join the musical theatre club with him. He felt unconfident in himself alone. Taya is somewhat experienced in singing, though he is a complete beginner in the acting aspect of musical theatre. Uta has no interest in theatre, though joins to help out Taya. The biggest reason Taya wanted this is because he had a play he dreamed of acting out with everyone. It’s a play he wrote himself, from his heart. Taya is alone a lot, but he hopes this play can bring him and his schoolmates closer together. This is all Taya asks for. Uta admires his sincerity. However, since Taya is a newcomer, and the other members of the club are well-established, nobody is thinking of considering Taya’s play as their acting source material, even though nobody else’s ideas are really clicking. Given his nature, Taya doesn’t speak up. They only pay attention to him when Uta tells everyone that he’d like to share an idea. The play is… short, and similar to the one in Clannad? Except with… more people… lol. Haven’t thought too hard about the plot yet. However, it has the line, “Take my hand, I’ll take you to a place where miracles happen.” Taya’s character will be the one to say this line. Note: Okay so I thought harder and brought in the lyrics to “Dolls” by Rozenkreuz-P. So it’s basically about a child who felt alone in the world, so he built a mechanical doll to have as a friend, though he had to leave the doll behind one day to depart to “a world beyond ours” AKA death. The doll was left all alone to age and weather. The doll comes to life and is able to move. It becomes able to speak, so it sets out on an adventure, meeting people in the world it was left behind in. The doll helps out many people with its magical power. The doll’s favorite saying is “Take my hand, I’ll take you to a place where miracles happen.” One day, the doll eventually breaks, and is unable to contain the spirit within it. The doll’s spirit is able to reunite with its beloved owner who created it. Also the doll is a genderless character, because well… Taya wrote this. The work is eventually given the name “Fantasia Story,” exactly like Nagisa’s play from Clannad. Taya is playing the role of the doll. In-universe, it is said to have an “otherworldly feel” to it, and even “Wow, did you write this, Taya? That’s incredible…” A few songs are composed and written by the music club for the play, and the only one mentioned by name in the fic will be the solo Taya sings. It’ll be an actual song as well, Dolls by Rozenkreuz-P (feat. Kagamine Rin). Since this fic takes place in the USA… pretend it’s been translated to English or something. I imagine that maybe IA was the one who composed the song in-universe. Friendship Interactions (From when they were still just friends) Taya felt platonic (friendship) love for Uta the moment he first met her. He was lost on the college campus during his first day, and Uta offered to help Taya find where he was going, even though she didn’t know much about the campus herself. Taya immediately sensed that Uta was a good person. Taya wanted Uta to stay longer and talk with him for a while. When Uta went on her way and left Taya after she couldn’t help him, he felt dejected, but he felt so happy and blessed when he met Uta again later in the day and got to become close friends with her. He states the memory of their meeting is enough to make him cry. Taya is very fond of Uta. He sees her as such a wonderful and special person. He cannot stand seeing her hurt or upset, it hurts him as well. Uta grows to be very fond of Taya. The kindness and pureness of Taya’s heart widens Uta’s perspective on life. She is inspired to be someone more like him, who doesn’t harbor harsh feelings in their heart. Uta grows very protective of Taya. In a sense, she becomes willing to do anything for the sake of him, even doing something embarrassing in front of everyone in physics class to take the attention away from Taya sleep-talking in class. As best friends, they open up about their problems to each other and are always willing to be each other’s shoulder to cry on. When their lives take a turn for the stressful, they have each other. Their bond deeps this way. Uta’s crush on Taya began when she saw how confident he became when acting in the play he wrote himself. Also through the story in the play, Uta felt she got to learn so much about what’s in Taya’s heart. Uta began to see Taya as a wonderful, sweet, humble, and charming person. Taya’s crush on Uta started out as a “platonic crush.” It gradually grew into a romantic one. Taya began seeing Uta in a different light when he realized she was not only kind, but very brave and willing to help anyone in need. Once when Taya wasn’t feeling good, he still felt obligated to work and to do Uta favors. Uta told Taya he needed to rest and to take it easy. She attempted to cook chicken and vegetable porridge for Taya but nearly made the kitchen explode... however, by a miracle of friendship (or love?) the actual porridge didn’t turn out so bad. However, that night Taya’s condition worsened and became severe. He needed to go to the emergency room for pneumonia and a blood transfusion (due to anemia.) Taya began to feel like a burden, but Uta reassured him he wasn’t and blamed herself. They then worked out that maybe it was nobody’s fault. This bout of illness happened shortly before Taya was to perform his musical theatre play. Therefore, Taya isn’t in top condition when he performs. However, he still does his best and gives a good performance. Shippy Details and Interactions (From after they became lovers) Taya is a very gentle and affectionate person. Right after he confesses his love to Uta, he is rather chaste about showing his affection out of shyness. But they grow to trust each other more about these feelings. Taya is a huge hugger and loves to cuddle. Uta is gray-romantic, meaning she rarely feels romantic attraction. She seldom felt romantic feelings in her life. She never felt them substantially before meeting Taya, who she considers her first, and really, only love. Uta never thought she would be big with hugging and cuddling, but physical affection with Taya gives her comfort. (DISCLAIMER: I’m not trying to state that people who lack romantic attraction are “broken” or need to be “repaired.” Other types of love, such as platonic or familial love can be just as, or even more meaningful and fulfilling than the romantic kind.) Taya likes singing Uta to sleep. He even recorded his voice softly singing lullabies for Uta to listen to while falling asleep for when he can’t be available to sing for her. Uta thinks this is very sweet of him. Taya likes holding/hugging or clinging to Uta gently as they fall asleep together. Sometimes when Taya is feeling down, Uta does this to Taya and it comforts him greatly. The Emotional Part TW: ABUSIVE PARENT

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Taya is practicing lines from the short play he wrote himself. He reaches his hand out and says “Take my hand... I’ll take you to a place where miracles happen.” This captures Uta’s heart.

Eventually in the story, something emotional happens. Uta gets in a fight with her father over her college major. Uta has learned to love music again and now truly wants to pursue it. However, Uta’s father still hates music, and hates that his daughter’s name is Uta (meaning “song”), and hates that the family’s name is Utane (“singing sound”.) Uta’s mother died when she was young. Her now single father is distant, abusive, and wants Uta to be a business major.

Things get emotional between them, and even a bit physical. Taya sees the whole thing, and steps in at a certain point as Uta’s father is about to hit his daughter. Uta tells Taya to stop for his own good, not wanting Taya to have to get hurt. Uta grabs Taya by the hand and runs off.

Once away from the scene, Uta then vents to Taya and tells him that life has been terrible because it lost all its meaning... Uta starts sobbing and letting out all her pent-up emotions. Taya hugs her, unable to handle seeing Uta cry, letting tears slide down his own face. After crying and comforting Uta for a bit, Taya says... “Uta, take my hand... I’ll take you to a place where miracles happen...” This time he’s for real. He‘s reaching his hand out to Uta. He‘s trying to comfort her. Both of them are misty-eyed. Uta takes his hand... and smiles at him. “Now, shall we go?” Taya smiles back. “Yes...” They take a walk to the place where they first met... And after a talk about their memories, Taya confesses his love to Uta at the top of the hill under the stars. Uta’s Life, Music, and Singing Uta Utane started out not being a singer. Until she went to Sonare Community College, the music-oriented college the story takes place in, and met Taya, she had never taken a singing lesson in her life. Uta’s late mother used to love singing. Uta herself was exclusively a violinist at first. She started playing the violin in childhood. When she lost her passion for music to depression, she still continued to play the violin simply because she felt she’d come too far to abandon it. Early in the story, Uta went to karaoke with Taya to help themselves come out of their shells a bit and become less shy in performing. Their new acquaintances Ritsu Namine and Ruko Yokune gave very powerful performances of -ERROR and The Lost One’s Weeping, and blew everyone away. Next, shy Taya gave a performance of From Y to Y, and Uta found out that he actually had a really beautiful singing voice. Uta went up on stage next and sang Jitter Doll rather horribly. Her voice was screechy, scratchy, and off-key. It was actually so bad that the microphone started making a weird feedback noise. She became so embarrassed that she stopped in the middle... and confessed with shame that she wasn’t a singer, and that she just came to help out Taya. Everyone cheered Uta on regardless. It was a great feeling, and pushed Uta to want to pursue singing. Uta becomes Taya’s singing partner, and Taya coaches Uta with what he knows about vocals. Within a year, the quality of Uta’s voice develops well. Eventually, Uta is outside with Taya. A mood strikes them and they start singing. Uta is singing a solo part, and suddenly her father comes up. “Uta?” He says. Uta is suddenly revolted by his presence and ready to take Taya’s hand and run away. She hates her dad and was ready for him to say something awful. But rather... “When did you learn to sing like that? You sounded just like your mother. It brought back memories...” Uta’s father is smiling sentimentally? Uta still doesn’t trust him, and neither does Taya, but Uta’s legs somehow just won’t move. “I...” Uta starts to speak. “You know, I realized something.” Uta’s father interrupts. “I should’ve stayed strong for you. I should have let you pursue music if it made you this happy. Your mother may have passed, but... music is where she lives on. How... how have I not realized that she lives on in you...?” Uta’s father suddenly begins sobbing. Uta doesn’t know how to react at first... but Taya pats him on the back. “Dad...” Uta eventually finds the words to say. “It’s okay now. I’m sorry I never realized you felt this way. I’d recommend not bottling these things up. Seek some professional help, okay? The first step to recovering is realizing these things. I promise, things will get better.” Uta’s father never fully redeems himself, but he lets go all his hatred caused by a traumatic past he cannot change and stops burdening his daughter with his harsh feelings. Two years after the beginning of the story, Uta goes back to the same karaoke place where she first sang Jitter Doll horribly. Little does she know, her performance became somewhat infamous there among the workers for being awful. All 46 Vocaloid and UTAU characters featured in the fic will be present in this scene. This will be a party scene, and perhaps nearing the series’ finale. “Hey, isn’t she that one who couldn’t sing?” The staff says upon seeing her. “Yes, and I’m back.” Uta says. “Now let’s turn up the volume in here. I’ll be requesting Jitter Doll.” This time, Uta totally slays every note of the song with great power and technique. She isn’t impeccably skilled yet, but she’s getting there. Applause booms from the group. Uta’s improvement is as clear as day. Not only did Uta’s singing improve within those two years, but so did her life and character. Her personality is now more cheerful and less closed-off, and she managed to overcome depression alongside Taya, becoming much more confident and buoyant in the process. Eventually... (After Story and Epilogue...) Taya plans an event on the hill where he and Uta first met. It’s a formal evening cookout with a lot of karaoke. In the place where they first met, Taya proposes marriage to Uta on a day in April. They are 24 years old. Their honeymoon is in Tokyo that June. Two months after the honeymoon, in August, they have their wedding and get married. Three years later at age 27, the two adopt their first child, a baby girl they name Sonata.

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surveys-at-your-service · 4 years

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Survey #242

“i don’t miss you, i miss the misery.”

How many pairs of converse shoes do you own? Hm... three or four? Any other names your parents planned to give you? The only one I *think* I remember is Katelyn. Thank fuck I dodged that bullet. Which is the most beautiful place you know? The mountains between NC and TN, if I remember correctly. I was very young. What do you work with? I don't work period & I hate it. Have you ever hit an animal with your car? Thank Christ no. Favorite ride at the amusement park? I guess ferris wheels. Favorite beauty essential in your bathroom cabinet? I don't have a "favorite" considering I don't use any regularly. Do you have many followers on your Tumblr? Nah. Do you tan easily? I burn like toast, man. Are you expecting something in the mail? No. Do you inspire others? Idk. What do you collect? Meerkat stuff and Silent Hill merch. Do you like cats? Hell yes!!! Are you healthy? If you excuse my weight and muscle atrophy, I'm actually pretty healthy, according to a billion tests I've gotten done when trying to discover *why* I had such awful pain in my legs. Have you ever been out of state? Yeah. Can you always blame your acts on that you were just too drunk? Fuck no. Three things you try to avoid as much as possible: Well dying lmao, getting hurt, public speaking. How many times have you been overseas? Zero. Do you use to have someone in mind when shopping for underwear? Wait what the fuck- What accent do you have? I don't really have one, although I do have a southern tone with some words sometimes I suppose. I also do say things like "y'all" or "fixing to (do something)," so I use some Southern terminology. Where would you like to live? The mountains of western NC. Sigh. Do you follow fashion? No. Do you have a big butt? Ever heard of Hank Hill Ass Syndrome? I have Hank Hill Ass Syndrome. Your worst job nightmare is: Customer service EVER again. Who’s the coolest rapper in the world? Idk and idc. Do you count how long you and your gf/bf have been together? I mean yeah, I think anniversaries are worth celebration. Healthy relationships aren't always easy to maintain; to remain in love takes forgiveness, loyalty, dedication... all that. It shouldn't be hard, but it takes effort. Have you graduated? High school, anyway. Rihanna or Lady Gaga? Lady Gaga, definitely. Do you use fake eyelashes? No. What’s your worst interior design nightmare: I dunno. Probably just being very crammed? What makeup brands do you use? I don't have any particular ones; I don't wear makeup enough. What’s the worst kind of rejection you could give someone? I genuinely feel it to be how Jason did so with me. Three and a half years in a very serious relationship, and he out of the blue breaks up with me over Facebook because my depression became "too much." Like by NOW I understand I can't shame him for wanting to be happy, but the way he did it was fucking cruel and tore me apart. Like especially when this person was your refuge from daily pain and pretty much your god and future (never make someone that, holy holy HOLY shit don't), that individual just suddenly having enough and breaking contact off like that was emotional murder. Do you have a crush on someone right now? Well yeah, but it's like... a "tamed" one? Is that an accurate word? Like I understand it just can't work right now, but it doesn't stop me from liking her. Is there anyone that many people think is hot, but you don’t? I'm sure there's someone. Do you sort and organize your clothes in some kind of way? Sorta. When somebody intimidates you, how do you usually act around them? Nervous, skittish, more awkward than usual. Is your favorite singer in a band or does he or she ride solo? Brendon Urie is in P!atD and Patrick Stump is in Fall Out Boy. Freddie Mercury was the vocalist of Queen. Did your parents ever hang your old artwork up on the walls? Yeah, Mom still has some up lmao. How often do you wear chapstick? Only when my lips are actually chapped. Do you walk around your house with your shoes on or do you take them off? Definitely off. What is the weirdest obsession you’ve ever had? Collecting stickers, maybe? How many of the seven deadly sins have you fulfilled today? Sloth is on the daily lmao, gluttony, and lust. Should guys always kiss the girl on a first date? Not always, of course not. It depends on the comfort level, and I would ALWAYS ask first. Which band has the corniest music videos? Corniest lyrics? I don't really watch music videos, and idk about lyrics. What subject is/was hardest for you in school? Math. Have any songs ever inspired you to play an instrument? No. Do you ever use Pandora? No. Are you better with creative writing or writing essays? I think I'm good at both, but I probably excel in creative writing. When was the last time you were rick rolled? No clue. What is the weirdest animal you’ve ever seen as a pet? Seen, I guess a chinchilla, though that's not really "weird." If you had to change one, would you rather change your hair or your eyes? Eyes. When was the last time you had a ‘she-mergency’? I had to look this up to be certain what that even was lmao. Probably some time I started my period at school and had to use folded toilet paper or something for a while. Which sounds creepier: sleeping in the attic or the basement? I'd say it depends on the make-up of each and its cleanliness. What was your favorite computer game as a kid? I think it was called The Amazon Trail 3? It was a damaged disc however, so it froze a lot. I think I only finished it once or twice; even knowing it would likely crash, I just liked playing it as far as I could. Have you ever tried on your mom’s wedding ring? No. Any shows on TV that you flat out refuse to start watching? 13 Reasons Why, to name perhaps the #1. What is your opinion on fruitcake? NO. Here’s a tough one. Would you rather marry your cousin or a dog? Oh fuck off, neither. Who did you last dream about? I can't remember what it was about, but I know Mark was in it lmao. Do you have trouble remembering important things? Sometimes. My memory is atrocious. Which animal can you imitate the best? Audibly? Probably a cat. Which is harder - walking in the snow or sand? Sand. I FUCKING hate walking through sand. It's one reason I don't like the beach. Do you like sour candy? oml YES. If anyone, who did you sit with at lunch today? N/A Have you gotten any injuries lately? If so, what and how? Not anything I can remember. Are you a clumsy person? You have no idea. How about disorganized? I'm oddly split down the middle. Last male you talked to in person? My dad. Have you ever had a sunburn? Oh boy, I've gotten past that. Try sun poisoning. Are you thinking about asking anyone out? No. Pink lemonade or regular lemonade? PINK! Chocolate or strawberry milk? Oh boy, chocolate. I tried strawberry as a child and absolutely loathed it beyond words known to man, and I will not be giving it a second chance. I remember it pristinely. Disgusting. What volume is the ringer on your phone? It's on vibrate. Have you ever won a contest on the radio? No. Do you often write on yourself? I never do, 'less we're talking about tattoos lol. Is there writing on the shirt you are currently wearing? No. Frosted flakes or frosted mini wheats? I hate the latter, so I guess frosted flakes, though I don't really remember how they taste. Do mushrooms really add flavor to food? I hate them, so they obviously have enough flavor for me to notice them... What about onions? Yes. Are you a fan of Thai food? I've actually never had Thai food. How about Indian food? Same as above. Have you ever tried sushi? No. In your opinion, who would be the best president? I don't know. What was the last thing you spent more than $20 on? I have no ide- oh wait I paid for Teddy's surgery with... money I don't know from whence it came? Was it financial aid money? Idr. Do you wear actual designated ‘pajamas’ to bed? Pj pants and a tank top. When was the last time you were tempted to do something you’d later regret? Probably take a nap late in the day, ending in me being unable to sleep well at night. Thankfully, I decided against it. Have you ever had feelings for your best friend’s significant other? Yes. Well, not current best friend, but a former one. How many times did you ride in a car today? Zero. Are you comfortable in your own skin? Fuck no. What's absolutely splendid is even when/if I lose the weight I aim to, I'm going to have loose skin that literally might make me hate my body more until I without argument muster up the money to get it surgically removed. Are you in a good mood right now? I'm alright. When was the last time you had an ice cream cone? Been quite a while. Did you eat breakfast this morning? Yeah, had some cereal. Have you ever been in a cemetery at midnight? No. Do you live on your own? No. I don't even think I could tolerate living alone because of my depression and how loneliness can severely trigger it. I'm realistically probably not moving out until it'll be with an s/o. If not, who do you live with? I live with my mom, my sister's dog, and my cat and snake. How old are your siblings, if you have any? I have a lot, and I don't know the ages of all of them, only my two immediate sisters: 26 and 21. Have you ever had a crush on a sibling’s friend? No. Have you donated blood in the last 2 years? No. What was the last free t-shirt you received from? School. Is there anything you are looking forward to at the moment? February 4th, baby. Tattoo gets fixed up by an artist I like far more. Him not having an open booking until then should say enough. Are you an atheist? No. Are you Asian? No. Are you fluent in another language? No. Are you in the military? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Are you an artist? Not professional, but I enjoy making art. Are you a musician? No. Are you an athlete? Oh, hunny- Do you have a favorite flower? I really like orchids. Where was the last place you went that was more than an hour away? Great question... The trip to my therapist is about an hour, but not over. Why were you going there? For therapy. Who was the last person to tell you you looked nice? Probably Mom, idk. Have you ever been to a nude beach? Hell no, I wouldn't even if I was in great shape. How many websites do you have an account for? WHEW I have no idea, A LOT over all the years. Have you ever paid for any kind of online membership? Well, WoW is an online game, so a subscription, though because I obviously don't have my own money, I'm sadly rich enough in the game to use monthly tokens. Do you try clothes on before you buy them? Not always. I try to avoid it because I just hate doing it. What would you do if you knew a robber was in your house? Well I obviously don't know how I'd react on impulse, but I'd imagine myself locking my door and then climbing out the window. Then run like a motherfucker up the road some to a neighbor's, or hide in the nearby woods and call Mom. What’s your favorite type of pizza? Meat lovers sobs in wannabe-vegetarian. Have you ever been afraid of falling in love? Yes, very. Who’d you last see in a tux? I don't know. Do you record any TV shows and watch them later? No. Do you have difficulty pronouncing any words? Yeah, particularly "breakfast." I tend to put a "t" after the "k." Do you have your own computer? Yeah. Out of everyone you know, who was the most heart? My mom. Who’s the bravest person you know? Oh man, that's hard. I know a lot of brave people. Who would you want to have your back if things got tough? More than anyone in the world, Mom. Have your friends ever given you answers to homework, last minute? Yeah. Have you ever dated someone who was real sportsy? No. Have you ever done something terrible, but took forever to feel bad? By this point in time, I consider how I spoke to Jason before going to the ER multiple times absolutely terrible, and yes, it did take a very long time for me to realize just how cruel it was. Now it's fucking HARD to accept I ever said what I did. Have you ever read Shakespeare? Yes. Can anyone really change anyone that doesn’t wanna change? Nope. Do you think that anyone currently has a crush on you? I would assume Sara still does, but again, we know a relationship between us just isn't wise right now. What profession do you admire the most? The most? Man, that's hard to decide. Probably those that risk their lives for others, like firefighters, cops (yes, I am aware some abuse their power, but good cops deserve all the respect in the world), etc. Have you ever made a fake profile, for any reason? I don't believe so, no. What’s the hardest lesson you’ve ever had to learn? Bad things happen to good people and no, the universe does not care. Have you ever questioned your sexuality? Well obviously.

#survey #questions #quiz #random #bored

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sung1yung1-blog · 5 years

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The Craziness of Writing College Essays

It is once again that time of the year where seniors stress out and rush to submit applications that will, in their minds, decide the outcomes of their life. This time period is when seniors in high school are starting to stress about the college application process. They are about done with taking standardized tests and trying to raise their GPA, even if it is only one hundredth more than before. They think about how much financial aid and scholarships they will get to get rid of that four-letter word: debt. However, seniors, including myself, see that the essay portion of this process is very important. We think that these essays will be driving the final point to show admissions that we belong in their schools. Seniors start writing endless drafts of essays that a person from a certain school will take five minutes to read, compared to the hours spent. Overall, it is just a time where seniors can think about nothing else besides how they can make themselves look like a star in the eyes of the admissions boards.

During the start of our essays, we can see the few prompts given to us, but we have no clue on how to approach those prompts. That is when the stress begins and students start to think of stories in their lives that make them look amazing in anybody’s eyes. This is because when we start to think about ways to write our essays, we “ imagine audiences [we] are writing to, and [we] are shaped by the audience [we’re] imagining.” (Melzer 11). Just thinking about that caused us, writers, to find ways to persuade the admissions board. They start thinking of ways to show the admissions board how they are so much better than any other applicants. I am personally guilty of doing something like this. Knowing that my essay is the only way of conveying my true personality to the admissions board caused me to try and think of ways to impress them. This sometimes, however, causes some students to go overboard.

To try to impress a group of people you have never met is a hard task, especially since this is the case when you are submitting an essay for a college. In order to do that, you write an essay that you think that nobody has thought about before, but that can cause you to go overboard with its uniqueness. Take the girl who decided to write about urinating on herself to show the point that learning something intellectually stimulating is more important than a bodily function. (Bruni 1). While it is very unique and peculiar to write about urinating on yourself, it goes overboard trying to show the audience how committed she is to learn something new. Some students’ parents will even try to get involved in the application process. They may make up stories, which seem to sound good in their ears, like the one applicant’s parent who decided to make a story up about their son having a hard birth. (Bruni 2). Having this type of thinking can cause the essay to be made up and fake. The admissions officers can just smell the amount of help a student got when reading made up essays. Overall, these types of essays will be highlighted by the admission board, but probably for the wrong reasons.

So, how can students write an essay that will not only be unique and not cliche but also covers the purpose of writing such an essay? To be honest, you need to be true to yourself and show the board how you can make an impact on a college by being you. However, in this process, make sure to not over-describe certain situations. This is because you are “trying to make an argument that [someone or something] impacted you.” (Warren 49). Also, try to get a clear understanding of who the audience is and considering how you can come across as knowledgeable and credible is important. (Warren 55). This will not only help you form an essay that is not too overboard but also make the process much easier. Lastly, according to Joie Jager- Hyman, a former admission officer, you should be a little vulnerable to give an insight into your character. (Bruni 3). By following these steps, you will not have to stress too much about if you did something wrong with your essay.

It seems to be about music but it could also be about my creative mind. This is due to the fact that music allows me to express who I am and how I may feel in certain situations. With music, I am able to deeply reflect on life or even get ready for a sports game. Overall, listening to music helps stimulate my mind to face any obstacles that may be in my way. Without music, I would not be able to cope with daily struggles or show people my creative mindset. This is because the words and beat of the song, when heard, helps people see what type of mood I may be in. When it comes to the creativity side, music making helps me express what I feel but in a melodic way.

#college #blog

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elclaytor427 · 5 years

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Writing Portfolio by Erica Claytor

November 18, 2018

Dear Reader,

I have always struggled with writing I didn’t have a good system for it, therefore, it would normally bring me huge amounts of stress; I just need to get something on the paper! There were too many factors involved that made it difficult as well as frustrating. I would get my computer out, open a word document and just start typing which only worked sometimes. Staring at a blank screen waiting for the ideas to appear into my head would give me anxiety which made the paper harder to write. I needed to break down the process so I can complete the essay step by step then after I complete a step I would feel accomplished and motivated to move on to the next.

I noticed not everyone is the same what works for one person might not work for me. I tried to use other people’s techniques until I realized I can use a combination of what I learn from others and create a system that works best for me. Among these different writing assignments, my writing has progressed for the better. I have established techniques to aid myself in the process. I noticed since the writing process is complicated it is necessary to complete it in steps and not all at once so I start by making an outline.

Looking back at my first portfolio piece I see great ideas and knowledge without direction and purpose. With my knowledge on how to write I know I could make my first piece better. I would start by making a quick outline and I would jump around from paragraph to paragraph inserting more information until the paper met the length necessary. Then I will go back throughout the paper fixing grammar and spelling. If it was necessary and there was enough time I would have the paper revised by a peer or a professional. I didn’t start making outlines until my more recent papers, I think my work reflects it.

My second portfolio piece Growing up was about my parents and my relationship with them, the topic was close to me making it easier to write. Picking a topic is the most important part of the assignment. Since I was given options on what I could write about it easiest to write about something if you are interested and passionate about it. In my experience, there is more information to pull from there for it’s easier to write about. Even if the topic may seem boring I always find a way to relate or get interested that’s my method of writing.

When I pulled up my third portfolio piece I noticed it was short and incomplete. I started the assignment the day before it was due not giving myself enough time to complete the assignment in advance. My stress-free writing progress that I have established involves starting assignments as soon as I am able to. Waiting until the day an assignment is due to start it doesn’t work and most often or not it’s not worth it. There can be unexpected problems that arise not to mention it is not going to be your best work.

After Portfolio piece 5 I had my writing breakthrough when I did pieces 6 and 7. I enjoy relating tv shows back to real life as well as reviewing them in portfolio piece 6 I got to do so. After using the method I created for myself, I notice myself getting better at writing and thinking of synonyms or other ways of saying the same thing, it is begging to come faster to me.

I am most proud of portfolio piece 8 when I continued A Wall of Fire Rising although the story was heartbreaking it made me appreciate what I have. The author had an easy writing style to follow I was able to use/copy the authors writing style which I wouldn’t have been capable of in the begging of the semester. I do well with stories and interesting topics that I have an opinion on.

In portfolio piece 9 I explain both sides to the minimum wage argument and show how both sides need to come together and focus on solving the real underline problem which is poverty. Portfolio piece 9 shows how I am able to establish the point of the essay in the introduction and keep the essay on the topic and flowing throughout.

I have always done well thinking outside the box and coming up with viewpoints others don’t think of. I struggled with getting assignments done under pressure, now I just try to give myself as much time as I can. I still need to improve transition sentences, grammar, and punctuation. Throughout the semester while completing these portfolio assignments I learned my weakness and strengths for writing and I will continue to make my weaknesses into strengths.

I learned in order to write a great essay I need to find either an interesting topic or a way to relate to the topic. The essays you are about to read shows how I progressed and learned the necessary steps I need to follow to produce beautiful essays. Over the course of the semester, I have improved my writing style immensely now I am able to tackle any essay thrown my way as long as I take my time and stick to the process.

Sincerely,

Erica Claytor

Growing Up

“The only people who I owe my loyalty to are the ones that never made me question theirs” (Joe Mehl). My nana has always been there for me: helping raise me, driving me places, giving me a place to live, feeding me, and helping me get my license. She made me feel like she was always going to be there for me, even if no one else would.

One time when I was little, and my parents were already separated, they had gotten into an argument, and it started to get physical. My mom started crying, and she wanted to call the police, but my dad demanded she didn't. I had the house phone in my hand, and my mom was reaching for it, but I froze. I didn’t know what to do in the situation. On the one hand, I didn’t want the police to come and my dad to go to jail, but on the other hand, I wanted to listen to my mom and prevent her from getting hurt.

My relationship with my parents has always been strained because they had children at a young age. My dad always felt like he had to support the family, and even my mom still after they got divorced. Being pulled back and forth between my parents put a strain on my relationship with them. It only got better once I moved out and I didn’t live under their roof anymore. I love and respect both my parents, but it is easier to have a relationship with them when I can distance myself from them when necessary.

When I turned 18, my mom kicked me out of my house, and my nana was willing to take me in. My nana has been one of the most significant figures in my family who helped raised me. She has been a great role model especially when it comes to her career and money management skills. I am grateful for everything she has done for me, but I also am still experiencing a struggle between my nana and pop pop.

My pop pop feels the need to do things he shouldn’t. He sits in the house all day because he’s older and can’t do a lot, although he tries to. My pop pop takes the trash out every Sunday morning. He put a box next out to the recycling bin, and it blew down the side of Telegraph road, and my nana came home and yelled at him about it being all over the yard. I looked, but I didn't see it. Right before I left, I finally saw it all over the street and picked up the boxes. A little down the road, I saw another box and picked it up as well. I felt terrible that she was yelling at him for only trying to help. She doesn’t understand his need to help to make him feel alive at his age.

Diaz also felt this same tug-of-war between his family and his desires. He had to choose between keeping the money or returning it to his mother. I also have experienced this internal conflict when selecting whose side I am on, whether it be my nana, my pop pop, my mom, or my dad. Sometimes you are stuck between a choice that feels like a right vs. right decision where “...you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't” (Eleanor Roosevelt).

This picture resembles the conflict between my dad and me versus my mom and my sister.

Works Cited

A Quote by Joe Mehl.” Goodreads, Goodreads, www.goodreads.com/quotes/976944-the-only-people-i-owe-my-loyalty-to-are-the.

Roosevelt, Eleanor. “Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes.” BrainyQuote, Xplore, www.brainyquote.com/quotes/eleanor_roosevelt_109473.

“Tug of War at Sunset - Buy This Stock Illustration and Explore Similar Illustrations at Adobe Stock.” Adobe Stock, stock.adobe.com/images/tug-of-war-at-sunset/97742236.

A Wall of Fire Rising continued

The boy is turning eight tomorrow his first birthday after the death of his father, Lili’s wants to make the day special for him, it’s been harder to quiet the hunger vermin since Guy died. Most of the neighborhood wanted to show compassion to after they saw what happed to Guy, they helped Lili find a fulltime job as a maid. Even Lili’s job is barely enough to keep the house and put food on the table every night without her working late most every night. The boy goes to a friend’s house every day after school for a few hours until Lili is home from work.

“Momm” yells the boy running inside looking for his mom. He finds her asleep in the living room chair. “MOM” he screams louder! He shakes her arm to wake her up. “Oh son I’m sorry for being so tired” Lili apologizes with sadness. Lili struggles she wants to be sad and miss her husband, she does but she frustrated with Guy for being selfish for leaving her a single mom but most importantly Little guy without a father. “Guess what happened at school today,” says the boy. “Give me good news” Lili worries. “I get free lunch tomorrow at school since it’s my birthday” the boy excitingly explained. “That’s great news honey, let's go eat dinner,” Lili says.

The next day Lili’s boss lets her leave early to buy the ingredients and go to bake a cake for the boys birthday before he gets home from school. The boy comes home from school with excitement. “How was school on your birthday son?” Lili asks. “It was ok,” the boy says looking at the kitchen floor. Lili helps him with his backpack and peaks inside she notices a thick book covered with brown paper.

Erica Claytor

Portfolio Piece #9

Minimum wage the question most often asked is should it be raised? The author of In the Minimum Wage Debate, Both Sides Make Valid Points discusses the main issue trying to be addressed is poverty (Huppke). I agree with Huppke that just raising minimum wage won’t solve poverty and it may even make it worse. People need to be educated on the effects raising minimum wage; most focus on the thought of more money and are sold to the idea. Before I read this article I didn’t know the serious negative effects raising minimum wage could have on many companies. Some companies might be able to afford the additional expenses which could lead to thousands of jobs lost that’s not the intention.

The misconception with this problem is it’s going to be a short and easy fix. Wrong! Raising the minimum wage is theoretically just putting a band-aid on the situation and saying all better. Yes, the idea of making more money is appealing so peoples first instinct is to say let’s raise it. Some may feel entitled to a raise and most often those aren’t the ones who deserve one. The article argues the money should be spent on educating and teaching so there are fewer people working minimum wage jobs in the first place. A quote that best describes this is “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” (Lao Tzu). Most people in poverty just need a chance a better way to go about it is helping people so they can help themselves. Giving money, raising minimum wage, and even hiring one for a low paying position are all temporary fixes.

Minimum wage jobs aren’t intended to support families, lavish live styles, even young teens like myself trying to move out and make it on my own that’s what careers are for.

Portfolio Piece # 7: Option C ( Before)

The standards of life most young adults expect to achieve can be unrealistic. This important social issue affects almost every young adult and should be taken more seriously in society, the proof behind this idea is supported in this essay through research and personal experiences. It is no longer possible for young teens to afford a one bedroom apartment in a decent area while making minimum wage. Inflation has made it harder over the years for young adults to support themselves. Everything has become more expensive while the minimum wage has more or less stayed the same. Although minim wage is gradually being raised to 15 dollars an hour the cost of living is becoming more expensive. The major problems with teens today are a result of the current minim wage; teens strive for independence and confidence which can be difficult. Young teens being able to support themselves would boost self-esteem.

Many teens struggle with their mental health, which may be caused by stress that is put on teens. Most teens are a part or full-time student so they might also have loans to pay back added onto trying to save up and move out. Young adults are given a lot of responsivity without the means to handle any serious problem that comes along the way.

Portfolio Piece # 7: Option C (After)

Although minim wage is gradually being raised to 15 dollars an hour the cost of living is becoming more expensive. The major problems with teens today are a result of the current minim wage; teens strive for independence and confidence which can be difficult. Young teens being able to support themselves would boost self-esteem. Many teens struggle with their mental health, which may be caused by stress that is put on teens. Once high school is over teens are kicked into the brutality of the world a vast majority without any help from family members. Most teens are a part or full-time student so they might also have loans to pay back added onto trying to save up and move out. It is easy to stay at a minimum wage job because the only way to make decent money is to work almost all of the time.

Young adults are given a lot of responsivity without the means to handle any serious problem that comes along the way. More should be done within high schools to prepare teens for the tremendous struggles the real world is forced to endure. Minimum wage being raised in not nearly the answer, teens need more opportunities in career type jobs.

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stretchjournalemerson · 3 years

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What a Teacher Can Do

By Daniella Lopez White

I don’t recall much from the night. There was a tiny rolling table with a white table cloth neatly laid over the surface which held oatmeal cookies, a silver pot, and a card from the nurses on the floor that read Our Condolences. From the silver pot, the scent of coffee brewed much too long wafted its way into my nose; and despite the burnt taste I knew it would have, I poured myself a serving into the hospital styrofoam cups anyways. My mother’s sobs could be heard from the tiny room, with my older brother gently placing his arm around her back. My half-sister stood by the side of our father’s bed, and I imagined all the things she could be thinking about with her nursing degree— did he finally drink himself to death? Is that it? Was his liver working too hard to flush out all the alcohol? Or was it another drunken fall? One that would cause yet another laceration in his skull that had bled too much by the time someone had found him?

Family members, ones I did not even remember, were crowded in the compact room. Though wretched in my eyes, he seemed to have quite a lot of people crying for him the night that he died. His ex-wife’s brothers and sisters, his first grandson, the wife to which he was currently separated from. It took most of my strength not to ask them what they were crying about. My father had held an addiction to alcohol and drug use for the last 18 years—my entire life—and I could not recall one good memory about him. But that was not an acceptable thing to say at the foot of his death bed. So instead, I used what was left of my strength to serve my coffee, and to dial a number on my phone and listen to it ring.

“Hello?”

I sucked in a hasty breath at the voice.

“Dani?”

“Hey, Mrs. M,” I choked out.

I don’t recall much from the night, but I do remember standing in the hallways of the hospital five minutes away from my house where my father died, which was full of people I have known all my life, and choosing to call my yearbook teacher instead of talking to anyone else.

“My dad’s dead,” I blurted out into the speaker of my phone. “Do you think I have to change the information on my FAFSA? Because I put that he was alive, but now he’s not, and I can’t lie to the government.”

I imagined that Mrs. M’s face lost all playfulness that it usually had. I could picture her soft brown eyes pooling with sympathy. Her voice seemed so gentle when she said, “I’m so sorry,” as though the breeze had carried it all the way from her house to the walls I stood between, breaking down the words with each gust of wind until it was nothing more than a whisper. I shrugged, even though I knew she couldn’t see me.

“It’s fine,” I replied. “I’m just really worried about my FAFSA because I need the aid and if they think I lied on it then I won’t get any. And I don’t know how to call them up and say, ‘hey, my dad’s dead!’ y’know?”

When I look back on this moment, I wonder if she had contemplated what to reply. I wonder if she had the ache to sympathize with me or ask if she could do anything about it. But she simply told me that we’d have to ask the college center tomorrow, to which I gave her a simple “thanks” and a “see you later,” and hung up. A year later, I know now that it was the best thing she could have said to me. She knew I was not one to publicly wallow on something like my father, and she knew that, despite the circumstances, I’d still be in her class tomorrow, just as I said. She was a woman who had seen me grow in the past four years of high school exponentially faster than expected, and she knew me better than anyone in that little hospital room ever could.

In all honesty, the majority of my teachers did. While I locked myself in my room at home and only ever communicated with yells bouncing off the stained walls, at school, I flew. It is amazing what a good teacher—a good adult—can do for a child who knows only the barren trees of a failing marriage. To go to school at a young age and be surrounded by people who knew how to show me that adults were more than arguments and objects being thrown across the room was to see a landscape of fruitful green for the first time. And, even as I changed from that naive young child, every year I received a teacher who showed me how to fly just a little bit higher.

When I walked into her classroom the next day, breathing in the comfortable scent of the old AC, feeling the dust blowing off of the yerd posters, Mrs. M tilted her head at me. I pressed my lips together in reply.

“How ya doing?” she asked with a quizzical eyebrow raise.

I flashed her a grin. “I’m in the dead dads club now.”

Mrs. M shook her head and gave me a hug. For the entire hour and a half of class, she let me make jokes about my father being dead that probably would have alarmed any other person who did not know me. But she did. And she knew that was what I needed and that, when I was ready to confront it, if I ever was ready, she’d be there if I needed her to. But, until that moment came, she would continue to let me crack inappropriate tales about child support and dead dads, and assigned me the work I needed to distract myself. And that was that.

Growing up in a problematic family made me appreciate my teachers in ways that are unexplainable. My mother— who had come from an entirely different country— married the man she loved and watched her “American dream” crumble in front of her as our family went bankrupt from my father’s addiction. She was often too busy for my brother and I while trying to make ends meet. I cannot blame her. As a Latina single mother with no child support and a very low pay, raising our family on an expensive island thousands of miles away from her motherland was a struggle. One that would eventually pay off. But my mother’s endless devotion to working and my father’s far-too-common alcohol induced comatose state made me cling to the support of my teachers.

At home, no matter how many times I lifted the couch cushions or the living room rugs, desperately searching for an ounce of recognition, I could never find what I needed. However, I didn’t need to search as hard at school. I quickly learned that teachers took pride in the students who participated in class, and although they were not supposed to, always showed a hint of favoritism to those specific kids. It was at the young age of five in my kindergarten class that I swore to myself to be an amazing learner, one that would make my teachers proud. The idea of an adult taking all this time to simply help me learn and grow flabbergasted me, and I clung to this as if my life depended on it. My brother often poked fun at me for crying about an A-, but I never understood how he couldn’t be miserably terrified of disappointing the only adults in our life that seemed to pay us any mind.

As a young adult myself now, I often feel pangs of guilt for the reliance I had on my teachers. Teachers are essential parts of society that give so much and gain so little. Especially in my home state of Hawai’i, teachers are paid far too small of an amount to keep a stable life. I can recall days of sitting in classrooms during lunch and hearing my teachers discuss enrichment activities for their classes that sounded like the most fun those kids would have all year, only to realize that they would have to pay for it out of pocket. My summers were often spent away from home, and while I benefited from the distance, I know that my teachers benefited from my presence at school in the middle of a vacation, as well. Making bulletin boards and decorating classrooms so that students are comfortable in their learning environment isn’t quite reflected in a Hawai’i teacher’s paycheck. Hand-me-down novels and interactive lesson plans that still include Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet don’t show up at school on their own, but teachers do a good job at bringing them there. On an island in Hawai’i where kids are already subjected to isolation from mainstream education, teachers are packed with responsibility and hardship that they certainly are not paid well enough for.

But still, I have never had a teacher turn me away in a time of need. To be in a position of teaching means to be in a position where you change hundreds of kids’ lives each year, sometimes without knowing. I can’t count on my own fingers how many times a teacher has saved my life with a simple “you did a really good job today,” or a raise of an eyebrow my way because they know I know what they’re thinking. My teachers have passed me off to one another each year, every single one of them raising me until I held what I needed in order to grow.

I don’t recall much from the night that my father died. Burnt coffee. A crowded room. Eyes asking me why I was not crying with them. But I remember, clear as day, the need to hear my favorite teacher’s voice. A reminder that, just like thousands of days before, once I showed up at school, everything would be fine. At least for six hours. I needed a reminder that tomorrow, I would have whatever support I needed to this reaction I did not know how to handle. But however I reacted, a support system would be there. First in history class. Then in english. Then in math. Then, of course, in yearbook. Each one with a teacher who has built up my body with reinforcement in the form of encouragement, like watering a seed with positivity until it is ready to stand alone.

Acknowledgments: This is a short memoir I was assigned to write in my WR-121 class. When told to write about something that was important to me, my mind immediately raced back to my home, Hawai’i, and the people that have had the greatest impact on me. As this essay expresses, my teachers have always held such an important imprint on who I am, and this specific memory that I have of my yearbook teacher stays present in my mind consistently. Even while I’m thousands of miles away, I use what she taught me about life every day, and I can never thank her enough.

#stretch2021 #memoir

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seosmagic · 4 years

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Website Traffic And Search Engine Optimization: Title, Tags And Content

Search engine optimization is ordinarily approximately getting your internet site tuned up to optimum effectiveness as some distance as such web sites are concerned. However, the intent is to get a great search engine placement so that more human beings might be exposed to the "opportunity" to go to your website. If executed properly, the steps you're taking to optimize your internet site for search engines can also regularly be used to optimize your site to get website visitors. After all, it accomplishes little to get a terrific ranking through a search engine and but be exceeded over with the aid of the human viewing the hunt engine consequences.

In another article, "Website Traffic And Search Engine Optimization: The Domain Name", I mentioned approaches wherein choosing the right domain name might be a step toward search engine optimization AND elevated website traffic prior to the registration of the domain name and web site design concerns. In this article, I would love to talk about four fundamental regions that should be considered in making plans and designing the internet site itself:

1. The Title Of The Website

2. The Meta Tags

a. The Description Meta Tag

b. The Keyword Meta Tag

c. The Revisit Meta Tag

three. The Content Of The Website

THE TITLE OF THE WEBSITE IS THE HEADLINE

If you think of your internet site as the high-quality advertisement you could design and construct approximately your enterprise or product, then the identify is the headline. The title is embedded in the head of the internet site. Most objects within the head are normally seen most effective to search engines. However, the title is visible to both search engines and visitors. In reality, the identify of the website is commonly the first clue a ability traveller has approximately your website, as it's miles typically displayed because the first figuring out text someone sees when they get a list of websites from a seek engine after coming into a search. The identify may also usually be seen inside the line on the pinnacle of the web page. Titles have to be five to 10 phrases lengthy, 70 to 80 characters.

As with the area call, the identify will be scrutinized by the hunt engine as to its relevance to the hunt topic. Part of the ranking offered with the aid of a site consisting of Google, this is, the location within the listing of returns, can be inspired via the wording, or words, of the name. In speaking of domain names, I defined that using key phrases or phrases, for this reason the term "keywords", in the area call itself could help improve the placement of the website. Continuing this use of keywords into the title can assist this as nicely. For instance, the domain bicycle-components.Com, may be more desirable via a identify that makes use of the words "bicycle components"; "Bob's bicycle parts and carrier." Thinking in phrases of a headline, perhaps Bob would need a name that reads, "Best bicycle components brought in your door."

THE META TAGS TALK TO THE SEARCH ENGINE

Meta tags are snippets of code that might be placed within the head. Normally, they handiest communicate to the quest engine, however now not having the proper ones ought to cost your website its rightful placement, and will create a poor impression with capability visitors. While there are numerous Meta tags which can be of importance, there are two that are extremely valuable, and I am going to suggest an extra that, whilst not essential, may be of value.

THE "DESCRIPTION" META TAG HAS MESSAGES FOR SEARCH ENGINES AND WEBSITE VISITORS ALIKE

The description will typically amplify at the short "headline" supplied by means of the identify. Not best will the data on this tag be of price in supporting a listing or search service determine placement of your website within seek outcomes, however the description contained in this tag is typically proven along with the name while the hunt engine suggests the returns for a seek.

Failure to offer a description won't most effective make it greater tough to reap precise placement within returns, but it's far possibly that inside the absence of a description, the search engine will clearly seize the primary few words it sees on your page, and that can be what the viewer reads as a description of your internet site.

It is a superb concept to copy your keywords inside the description, however don't beat it to loss of life. Also, most engines like google will only display the first 20 or so phrases of the description, so do not get too wordy up the front. Say what you've got to say and get it over with. The description ought to not exceed a hundred and fifty-200 characters.

THE "KEYWORDS" TAG IS FADING IN VALUE, BUT....

It used to be that engines like google desired YOU to listing the vital keywords to your website. These days, the applications used by the search engines like google generally extract the pertinent and relevant key phrases from the content material of the web page itself and ignore the key-word tag absolutely. Many internet site designers have gone so far as to drop this tag. I and others leave it in for three fundamental reasons; we are used to the usage of it, there may be a search engine someplace that still makes use of it and why leave out out, and in some cases where applicable keywords can't be picked up from context, the key-word tag may be the coin toss that makes a decision the problem. How legitimate those arguments are, I have no way of knowing, but it's miles just as easy to install a key-word tag as now not. Simply list your key phrases, separated through commas.

THE "REVISIT" TAG SAYS "YA'LL COME BACK, NOW, YA'LL HEAR?"

While no longer specially a seo item, the "revisit" tag might also help provide greater website traffic. The "revisit" tag tells a seek engine spider to return in so many days to reindex the website. This can be of outstanding importance with a site that updates data frequently, but might handiest get indexed via the serps at longer intervals.

I actually have heard and read that when a few serps revisit a site, the site tends to upward push in placement stage. I even have now not been capable of find a definitive assertion on this, but have noticed a upward thrust in visits to, and sales from, a number of my web sites that appears to observe the cycle of reindexing.

CONTENT IS KING!

This declaration has been around for some time. Though it might be debated and there are truly exceptions, typically having a website complete of precious content is one of the high-quality ways to make search engines like google and yahoo and people satisfied. The search engines have some thing to sink their enamel into, and might extract a lot more information from the content than you likely could inform them in the identify and tags. I very often locate search engines sending traffic to my websites who've searched on a time period I in no way even notion of as a keyword.

Many humans write the content material of their internet site after which try to see where to stuff in the keywords. While this will likely fool the search engine, odds are it's miles going to make the writing a bit bizarre, and may assist purpose the traveller to pick out to go to, and do commercial enterprise with, a greater expert searching website online. The most effective direction is to pick the website subject matter, title, description, and keywords after which write heartfelt copy primarily based on the ones items.

In truth, one very powerful technique in preparing internet site copy, particularly in case you are writing it yourself, is to deal in topics where you're informed and have a passionate interest. An honest appeal from a true believer can be loads extra effective in many instances than a professionally designed and polished piece of advertising reproduction. Writing heartfelt replica on a subject will also frequently let you use the key-word or phrases with out over the use of them or acting to stress.

ONE LAST NOTE:

Whether you're dealing with the name, the description, or the content, supply concept to options. For example; earlier I concentrated on bicycle elements, however a small institution of people would possibly clearly be trying to find bicycle "add-ons"! In reality, I simply checked and discovered that at the same time as over 9,000 searches had been carried out on one search engine for the term "bicycle elements" inside the month of October; over five,000 other searches were done for the time period "bicycle accessories" within the identical length. Simply including one time period to the combination should have helped "Bob's Bicycles" boom their goal market via 1/2!

This article isn't always the final phrase on seo. At great, it's far simply an outline of regions to be taken into consideration through the budding internet site clothier or net business entrepreneur. As in maximum things, the artwork of seo is an artwork, and sometimes appears to border on black magic. For self-optimization, never stop mastering about this and the alternative subjects associated with your goals and desires.

Donovan Baldwin is a Dallas vicinity author and Internet advertising professional. A graduate of the University Of West Florida (1973) with a BA in accounting, he's a member of Mensa and has held numerous managerial positions. http://seosmagic.com/ After retiring from the U. S. Army in 1995, he became interested in net advertising and marketing and evolved diverse on-line businesses. He has been writing poetry, articles, and essays for over 40 years, and now frequently publishes articles on his personal websites and for use by means of other site owners.

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huffletiika · 7 years

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home’s where the heart is (pt.2)

So well, this is the second part from Day 1 AU, and I know it have been a long ride since that day, but well... I needed to find the perfect prompt for this one.

This is going to be my last OS for Lutteo Ficweek, since tomorrow I will publish a new chapter from my Gastina AU, that I know has taken me a long time to update, but I’ve been very busy these days, traveling and stuff.

Thanks to Mandy @deliverychicafresa for proof reading this one, and for giving me ideas for this particular prompt, because it wouldn’t be the same without her comments and suggestions, even if some of them were made as a joke at first.

Day 7: “It’s very rude of you to make me fall in love with you. Inconsiderate, really.” || Word count: 4.5k

{read more fanfics}

He stared at the wall that divided their rooms as if in this way he could see her through it. Not in the creepy stalker way, though. He just needed to make sure she was alright. Because she had been acting weird lately, weirder than ever he meant. She avoided him all the time and replied with monosyllables or simple gestures to everything he said to her, even to the teasing. Especially to the teasing. It had him shook. Did he offend her in any way? His best friend said that he was sometimes a little too much to handle, and not in a good way, so maybe that’s what happened, maybe she got tired of him.

And that hurt, more than he thought something could hurt him. No girl had had that effect in him, no girl mattered him that much, so he couldn’t handle having her so close, and at the same time so out of his reach, anymore.

He swore under his breath, closing his laptop with a frustrated gasp. He couldn’t continue working on his essay for his minor grade in astrophysics when every time he read the word moon he couldn’t help but thinking about her. Maybe he said something that offended her, or was it about what had happened on the kitchen the other night? Maybe that was the thing that annoyed her. He had let his emotions control his actions, and almost crossed a boundary she might not want to cross, or at least, not that fast, as he sensed in her actions that she wanted that kiss as much as he did.

With resolution he stood up from his desk. He would go there, knock on her door, tell her they needed to talk, and then spill the biggest speech about how important she was for him and how sorry he was for making her feel mad or uncomfortable in any way, so things could back to normal between them, because her evasive maneuvers were killing him.

That resolution, however, faded away as soon as he stood in front of her door and raised his fist to knock. What would he say? He should have prepared his speech, something structured and yet sincere to let her know how important she was for him, how she had changed his life, and that he didn’t want her to stay away from him. Yeah, he had to rush back to his room and write something. Writing wasn’t hard for him, as he does that for his songs all the time.

But then he heard a loud noise, similar to a blow, coming from the other side of the door, which was followed by an exclamation of pain, so he opened it and rushed inside the room without hesitation, finding Luna sitting on the floor, wincing and rubbing her knee with both her hands.

“Luna, are you okay?” He asked, kneeling besides her. “What happened?” He took her hands away from her knee, to find out for himself if she was hurt, noticing that she shivered at his touch.

“I’m fine,” she replied. “I just slipped and fell on the floor, I do that all the time, but you already know that.” She tried to get up, but he stopped her with his firm hand on her leg.

“You’re hurt,” he stated, and her gaze went down to her knee, to find some bright red dots that started to sprout from her sore skin. “Come on, I'm going to help you sit on the bed, and then I'll bring something to clean the wound.” He moved closer to try help her stand, but she pulled away again.

“It’s just a scratch, don’t exag– Ouch!” She had tried to make her point by stretching her sore leg, but the pain ended her argument. He rolled his eyes.

“Can I help you now?” He asked, his voice sounding a bit annoyed, while getting up. “I don’t know what I did to make you so mad, but at least let me help you with this.” He held his hand in her direction, and she finally gave up, so he helped her to stand up.

He left the room to look for the first aid kit before she could say any word, but somehow he felt her stare on his back while walking away, and it was like a burning iron pressed against his nape.

It didn’t take him too long to find it, his mother was a very organized person, so it had been in the same place since he was a child. Luna looked like she hadn’t moved a single muscle since he left, and didn’t say a word as he sat next to her, opening the kit.

“I’m not mad at you,” she said, suddenly. He turned his gaze away from the wound he was cleaning, to her face, his gaze filled with surprise.

“Then, why are you avoiding me?” He asked.

“I just–” she hesitated. “I don’t know how to explain this.” She finally said, looking down at her own hands entwined in his lap.

“Just tell me what comes to your mind,” he suggested, leaving aside the implements with which he was healing her wound.

“Ok, but don’t freak out,” she turned around to face him, and he smiled to reassure her, as she looked nervous. She looked cute being nervous, though. “I just feel like we have this kind of chemistry, like we are physically attracted to each other, like what happened in the kitchen the other day, when we almost… you know.”

“When we almost kissed?” He finished her sentence.

“Yeah, that.” She sighed, trying to encourage herself. “What I’m trying to say is that I can’t help but feel this attraction towards you, I really like you… but that’s not right, I’m living in your house, you are part of my host family, and your parents! What would they think about me? They allowed me to stay and live in their house, and here I am, taking advantage of the situation, almost having made out sessions in their kitchen with their son. That’s why I’m avoiding you, because I tried to fight this and I can’t, so the only solution I found was to keep my distance.” She concludes, and a cocky smile appeared on his face.

“So, you can’t resist me.” He teased her, without being able to avoid it.

“Matteo, please. This is serious.” She wasn’t looking very pleased with his response, he realized. But he had spent so many days without being able to tease her, that it came out without even thinking.

“Sorry, so you seriously can’t resist me?” He continued teasing. She lost her patience, throwing a pillow to his face, making him giggle.

“Matteo!” She complained, and he finally decided to leave the jokes aside.

“Okay, I understand this is serious for you,” he explained. “But you’re telling me that I’ve been worried all these days, trying to figure out what I did wrong, when you were doing all this because you like me too much, and you’re afraid of what my parents would think if they knew about it, and that’s ridiculous. First of all, if my parents ever come to think that one of us is taking advantage of the situation that would be me, not you, Piccola. You need about twenty centimeters more of height to be threatening. Second, they would never kick you out of the house for something like that. They like you, even more than their own son, so surely they are planning to call your parents and trade me with you.”

She laughed, and he smiled triumphant.

“And third of all,” he added, leaning closer. “I like you too.” Matteo couldn't help but wonder if Luna's heart was beating as fast as his, or if she was feeling anything akin to the hot fire of desire that had settled in his chest, but was afraid of asking and spoiling the moment.

“Matteo, I–” he heard her whisper, and shook his head.

“Sh... it’s okay,” He asked, caressing her face. “You have no idea how much I wanted to do this.” No, she had no idea how hard it had been looking at her and remembering their moment in the kitchen, seeing her bit her lips and wishing those were his teeth, she didn’t know what a nightmare it was to leave his bedroom in the morning and smell the scent of her perfume in the hallway, bringing back memories about that short instant when he got to inhale it deeply from its owner’s skin. No, she wasn’t aware of the effect she had on him. She closed her eyes, heavily breathing.

“But your parents, they will–” she got to mumble, until he brushed her lips with his.

“I will talk to them, ok? Don’t worry about that,” he reassured her, rubbing their noises. “Now, could you please stop talking and let me properly kiss you?” he asked, and she laughed giving him her consent by softly nodding.

He yanked her to him with his hand on her nape, and covered her mouth with his in a hungry kiss. It felt like the 4th of July on his chest, like glory, like he had never known how it felt to kiss a girl before kissing Luna Valente. She responded immediately, with an equal effort to his, and that gave him the courage to deepen the kiss. She moaned against his lips and brought her whole body closer to him in response, and he took the opportunity to surround her waist with his arms and bring her against his chest, as if he could keep her there for the rest of their lives.

Eventually they slowly broke apart, their bodies still pressed against each other’s, and their eyes closed as if they were afraid of opening them and finding out it was just a dream.

“Wow…” she said. He smiled.

“Same,” he responded, and opened his eyes to get lost on the deep green of hers. He still felt the side effects of that kiss on his body, his fast heart rate, the difficulties for breathing, and inevitable dumbness, as if he had just woken up after the longest trance. And she was looking at him in a new way he couldn’t describe, her pupils were brighter than ever, there was a soft pink covering her cheeks, and her half-open lips were inviting him to kiss her again. And so he did.

He had fallen for her, he knew that long ago, even if he tried to convince himself that it was just something physical at first. His life had changed since the moment they bumped into each other in the airport, since she went to live in his house, and even if he knew that one day she was going to go back to her country, he just couldn’t help being attracted to her.

“It’s very rude of you to make me fall in love with you. Inconsiderate, really.” He murmured on her lips, when they parted away for the second time, trying to make a joke. She pulled her face away, and looked at him in confusion.

“Why?” She asked, and he shrugged.

“Because eventually you will leave, and that will break my heart,” he replied, with no remorse in his voice, because having her for a little of time was better than not having her at all. “Don’t worry, Piccola, I’ll be fine.” He would deal with his own broken heart later, now he just wanted to enjoy these moments with her, nothing else.

She looked at him with panic on her face, as if she had never thought about that before, when for him the deadline of her stay at his home has been present in his thoughts on most of his nights.

“Don– don’t fall in love with me,” she asked him with sadness, her eyes filling with tears, which he quickly wiped away with his thumbs.

“I think it’s a little too late for me, Piccola,” he put their faces close again, and smiled at her. “But it’s okay, I’m a big boy. I can handle a broken heart,” he caressed her cheeks with his hand. “And you still can save yourself if you want.” She put her hands on his, staring at his eyes.

“It’s too late for me as well,” she replied, and then leaned to kiss him again.

He had talked with his parents, and it was the most awkward thing he had ever done, because he never talked to them about girls and stuff like that, but he had promised Luna he would do it and so he did. His dad had been diplomatically calm about it. They weren’t really close, as his father had wanted him to follow his steps in diplomacy, and Matteo had decided to make his mayor in musical production, but they understood each other very well, so his father was able to see right away that he wasn’t just messing around, that he was serious about his feelings for her. His mother, on the other hand, was more worried about it. What would Luna’s parents think about it? She was a guest in their house, they spent a lot of time alone there, so the couple could think that he had taken advantage of her and the situation.

Matteo had to reassure her a couple of times that it hasn’t been what had happened, that they couldn’t avoid feeling that way about each other even if they tried, and she finally got to understand. But there had to be rules while they were inside the house, and he gladly accepted all of them, just to be able to be together with Luna.

They had broken all of them, but his mom didn’t have to know that.

In that moment they were in his bedroom, they had decided to hang out there, watch a movie together, but she had fallen asleep at some moment so he just turned off the movie and put his laptop on his lap to start working on a composition he had to present for his mayor, using the headphones to avoid making any noise and waking her up.

This was a song he had been working on for a while, almost since the beginning of the semester, but it had to be perfect as it was the one he was going to present for his final. At some point he had been blocked with it, around the time she was avoiding him to be exact, but as soon as they started to be together it was like if all his blocks had evaporated. He had never been so creative, like he had found his very own muse, as his best friend liked to point out every time he mentioned said phenomenon in front of him.

He spent what felt like hours going again and again over a piece of the song, listening it again and again, making some changes, until he felt her moving by his side and looked sideways just to find her staring at him with an amused expression. He took of his headphones and looked at her with curiosity.

“What’s so amusing?” He asked, and she smiled.

“You,” she answered, “I didn’t know you wore glasses. Finally I found another flaw of you, besides of being a snob, of course…” she teased, and he laughed.

“I only wear them so that my eyesight won’t tire when I have to work on the computer for a long time, Piccola, that’s not a flaw,” he shrugged. “And I take it from the way you are looking at me that I look even better with glasses.”

“How did I end up falling in love with such a snob?” She asked in feigned disbelief, with her cheeks turning pink.

“I’m just that irresistible, Luna,” he smirked.

She rolled her eyes, but he didn’t let her reply to his comment, as his lips found hers right away. She kissed him back immediately, forgetting about their previous conversation, and pulling him closer by the collar of his shirt.

After a while, she broke the kiss laughing, and playfully bit his lip. “You’re impossible, Chico Fresa,” she said, with her voice full of joy. “Now, let me put this away,” she then added, taking his laptop off from his lap and leaving it on his nightstand, taking its previous placement. There would be no way for him to complain about his current situation.

“Are you taking advantage of me, Piccola?” He teased, and she looked down to him with a bright smile, her hair falling both sides of her face. She looked happy, full of life, and that made him feel as if nothing bad could ever happen in the world.

She didn’t follow the game. “If there would be any possibility of me staying here in Italy, would you tell me to take it?” she asked from one moment to another, confusing him.

“Is there any?” he asked, and she rolled her eyes.

“Answer my question,” she insisted.

He sighed. “Only if that’s what you want to do,” he finally said, looking fondly into her eyes. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on? Why you are asking me that?” He insisted, and she shook her head.

“It’s nothing,” She bit her lip, and if that was a distraction maneuver, it worked very well. “Right now, I just want to have a made out session with my boyfriend before his parents arrive home, is that too much to ask?” she asked, suggestively. He smiled widely.

“Who are you, and what did you do with my Piccola?” He asked, and she just tilted her face in response. “Ok, let me take these off,” Matteo took his hand to his glasses to remove them, but she stopped him.

“No, they will stay right where they are,” she ordered.

He was going to do a really great comment about her having a fetish for glasses, he really was, but right in that moment her lips found his and he decided the joke was not worth spoiling the moment, so he just send it to the archive of good jokes to use in future occasions, and put his hands on her face to keep her closer, kissing her back with equal desire, to seize the time they had before his parents arrived.

There goes one broken rule.

He got home late that night. His best friend had invited him to go watch the game with him on his house, and he couldn’t say no, he had already done that dozens of times to spend his afternoons with Luna.

The first thing he noticed while opening the front door were the kitchen lights on, so he walked there thinking her mom had stayed up waiting for him to arrive, finding his girlfriend instead, looking for something to eat in the refrigerator. He leaned against the door frame and stared at her without her noticing.

“You didn’t have to wait for me awake,” he said. She jumped.

“Matteo, you scared me!” she said, resting her hand on her chest.

He laughed. “Sorry, I didn’t know I was so ugly,” he joked, and then walked into the kitchen. “What are you doing awake so late, anyway? I thought you would be already sleeping at this hour,” he added, leaning to leave a kiss on her forehead.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she confessed and shrugged when he asked why. “I– I have something to show you.” She said, and went to the counter, taking a manila folder he hadn’t noticed that was above it, handing it over to him. “Read this,” she asked, and so he did.

«Signorina Luna Valente» He read, calmly, taking a seat on one of the high chairs next to the counter. «Abbiamo il piacere di informarvi che avete i requisiti necessari per essere beneficiato con una borsa di studio per proseguire gli studi all'università…» He stopped reading, and read those words and those that followed again and again, before looking at her in disbelief, not sure about what he should say about these news, too shocked to think coherently.

“This– When did–?” For the first time ever Matteo Balsano was speechless. “This says that you applied for a scholarship to stay here studying in Italy, when did you–” He was still speechless.

“Do you remember the day when I asked you if you would tell me to take the opportunity to stay if it was offered to me? Well, it has been offered, and I applied.” She answered, with a soft smile, approaching his hand, and interlacing their fingers.

“And you got it.” He was still looking at the paper, not her.

“Yeah, I got it.” No response from him, he was still in shock. She did that because of him? What about her family and the amazing people she was always talking about? Her best friend who had a band and played on her favorite café all Saturdays? The shy girl she was good friends with and who talked with her about books and stuff she didn’t even understand? Was she going to leave all of that behind for him? He couldn’t let her do that, he wouldn’t forgive himself for doing so, for keeping her away from those she loved. “Aren’t you happy?” she asked, confused, when she didn’t get the response she was expecting.

“I am, but–” He sighed.

“Don’t you want me to stay?” Her voice sounded very sad, and he finally looked up to her, tightening the grip of their hands, reassuring her that’s not what he meant.

“You know I do,” he said.

“Then what’s wrong?” she asked, and he filled his lungs before putting his thoughts into words.

“I want you to stay more than anything in the world, but at the same time, I don’t want you to do this just because you want to be with me. It’s your future after all… and you already miss your family, and your friends, how could I keep you away from them? I would hate to be years away from my family and friends.” He rubbed his neck with his free hand. She bit her lip, and then smiled.

“That’s a very Chico Fresa thing to say.” She rolled her eyes. “Not everything is about you, snob.” Her smile let him know she was just teasing, so he smiled at her as well. “Yes, on the one hand there are my family, my friends, and I am not so fond of being so far away from them for so long. But, on the other hand, staying with you could be the best thing to ever happen to me,” she stopped him with a movement of her hand before he could say anything, so he would let her finish. “And not only that, the scholarship is something that I never thought that could happen to me, an unique opportunity I was afraid to apply for just because I hadn’t find anything here that made feel at home, but you do that, you make me feel at home.”

“Luna…” he whispered, moved by her words.

“I feel at home when I’m with you, Matteo,” she muttered. “Yes, I would like to go back to my country and spend time with my family and friends. I miss them a lot. But, is that really my home? Isn’t your home the place where your heart is?” she caressed his face with one of her hands. “My heart is here with you, so this place is home now. I’m at home.” He felt his heart speeding up. He was feeling so many things for her, he didn’t know how to express them, and so he just leaned for a soft kiss across the kitchen counter that she gladly responded to.

“Are you sure about this?” He asked with his lips over hers and she smiled.

“More than sure,” she gave him a small peck on his lips.

“What about your family and friends? Are they okay with your decision?” He rubbed their noses, and she smiled. “Have you talked with them?”

“Are you trying to make me change my mind?” she teased.

“No, I’m just making sure they are not hating me right now for keeping you away from them for more than three years,” he murmured, and she caressed his face.

“They will miss me, but they understand this is what I want, so they support me.” She looked at him with her green eyes filled with enthusiasm, and he couldn’t help but feel enthusiastic as well. “And they don’t hate you… but Simon, my best friend, asked me to tell you that if you break my heart he would take the first flight here and hunt you down,” she told him, and he laughed.

“I’m pretty sure those weren’t his words.”

She made a grimace. “No, those weren’t his exact words.” They both laughed. “I will also have to find a place to stay, I can’t stay with your parents…”

“My mom would let you.” He was sure about that.

“But I don’t want to be a load for your family for three whole years, and this scholarship has nothing to do with the Host Family program, it wouldn’t be fair to them if I stayed here. They would pay for the cost of a room, I just need to find someone who is looking for a roommate, and that’s it, we could still meet around.” He smiled widely.

“Well, I’m looking for a roommate,” he said, suggestively.

“Matteo, I’m serious. I can’t stay in this house for that long.”

“No, I’m not talking about here,” he shook his head. “I was considering moving into a place on my own at the beginning of the year, but I changed my mind because… well, I just decided to stay around for a while,” the real reason had a name and a beautiful pair of green eyes, and was staying at the room next to his on his parent’s place. The truth is, he had forgotten he wanted to move since the moment they bumped into each other at the airport. “But I’m pretty sure I will need a new place for the next semester, and a roommate would be much help to pay the rent,” he shrugged.

She bit her lip, “I will think about it,” she finally replied within a couple of minutes.

“Does that mean yes or no?” He had never been a patient person.

“It means I’m going to think about it,” Luna laughed and gave him a peck on his lips. “Now I have to sleep, see you tomorrow,” she added, taking her letter and making her way up the stairs, and he looked at her until she disappeared from his field of vision. He didn’t know what tomorrow would bring, but right there, in that exact moment, he couldn’t be happier.

#lutteoficweek #Soy Luna #Lutteo #Lutteo Fanfic #Soy Luna Fanfic #Luna Valente #Matteo Balsano #It has been a blast being part of the Lutteo Ficweek #I did it!#Written by Me #HostFamilyAU

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ethandoise-blog · 5 years

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Anybody Can Write an Essay!

" I'll figure that out ... when I obtain the time."

" I really do not know just how to begin!"

" I actually ought to create my essay!"

This typical predicament is revealed over as well as over once more by lots of people anywhere. The bright side is that anyone can compose an essay!

There are three primary reasons for essays:

1. To help you to cohesively create an argument and also safeguard it on paper.

2. To aid you develop excellent written and oral interaction abilities.

3. To assist you to figure out exactly how to locate details.

Not knowing just how to compose correctly can make your academic life messed up, demanding as well as disorderly. By enhancing your writing abilities, you can with confidence and also swiftly coating jobs and write properly throughout your expert profession.

Creating an essay can be extremely simple when you adhere to these fundamental steps: pick a topic, define the extent of your essay, create the rundown, compose the essay as well as-- proofread, check, proofread!

The Essay Topic

The very first step in creating an essay is to pick a topic (if one has actually not been appointed). In order to specify a subject, you should think of the goal of the essay. Is the purpose of the essay to convince, inform, or describe a topic-- or for another thing totally? It is usually helpful to brainstorm concepts by taking down favored topics or thinking of a topic that may be fascinating to you.

Define the Scope of the Essay

The following step is to specify the extent of your essay. Is the subject very broad, or will the essay cover a certain topic with detail-oriented instances? Considering the overall subject and scope will certainly help you to start the creating process.

Create an Outline

The following action is to create the outline. You may believe that a rundown is an unneeded, taxing task-- however this action will really assist in saving time! A rundown will assist keep you focused while creating your essay, and help keep you from roaming aimlessly in conducting your research. It must be composed of the main idea of the essay or thesis declaration, and the disagreements that sustain it. The synopsis is often numbered and also arranged by paragraph, but a lot more abstract outlines will likewise aid to organize as well as focus your concepts.

Composing the Essay

The subsequent action is creating the essay. The intro paragraph need to start with a focus grabber. This is a statement the attractions the reader right into wishing to review the remainder of the essay. The next couple of sentences need to be extremely broad in topic as well as needs to cause the narrow focus of the thesis declaration, which is normally the really last sentence of the introduction paragraph. There are normally 3 body paragraphs, as well as every one begins by tackling among the main ideas offered in the thesis statement. The adhering to sentences ought to define and also elaborate on the bottom line. Information of certain examples should be consisted of to enhance your main points. The final thought paragraph summarizes the essay as well as supplies a last perspective on the main subject. It frequently begins with a paraphrase of the initial thesis statement, as well as often includes a future forecast based upon the viewpoint provided in the essay.

Proofreading Your Essay

The last action in composing a thesis is proofreading. Proofreading is really the most fundamental part of writing the essay and is usually avoided. A couple of items to consider when checking your essay are the order of the paragraphs, the flow of the sentences, grammar, spelling and also the guidelines for the assignment. Concerns to ask on your own include:

• Does your essay make good sense?

• Does each sentence circulation to the next sentence well?

• Are there any kind of points that can be made more powerful or more clear?

• Are there words that are utilized often?

• Are there any kind of run-on sentences or fragments?

The proofreading process sometimes takes longer than the real writing procedure, but this is what makes the distinction in between a concise and well thought out essay, and also a poor essay.

When the process of creating an essay is burglarized items, the procedure appears more workable and less complicated to finish for the novice. The process contains believing concerning a subject, creating an overview, creating the essay as well as proofreading the essay. This makes essay creating an intriguing knowing experience and also aids the writer share his or her thoughts a lot more clearly, briefly and also with even more recognition.

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#Essay

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justanotherartsstudent · 7 years

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As part of my orientation for first year uni, I attended a session on how to make the most of lectures. Some of these tips and tricks are pretty straight forward, and can carry on from high school depending on the type of student you are/were. However, some of these also encourage you to become a more critical thinker, and help to better understand the content you’re learning in your lectures!

FIRSTLY, it is important to know WHY we go to lectures.

Lectures give us the essential and practical information we need to know about each subject we’re learning - Typically, lectures give you all the information you need to know for that week, and then you use that information in your tutorials later on.

Lectures provide an expert’s perspective of the content - Lecturers are usually well equipped with the knowledge surrounding your subject and provide useful perspectives, ideas and points of view regarding what you’re learning. This helps you to understand stuff more thoroughly, even if you don’t feel that way at first.

Following on from the previous point, lecture help to understand difficult concepts - Having someone talk through the information can help sort it out in your head rather than just reading a slab of text. Many lecturers will also use examples and anecdotes to substantiate the content, which not only helps you to understand, but can also be useful in assignments.

Lectures also encourage discipline specific styles of thinking - Different subjects require you to think differently eg. languages as compared to philosophy or a science. Going to lectures can expose us to these different thinking styles, which we also may adopt to other subjects should it suit.

PREPARING FOR LECTURES

Before your lectures, it’s important and helpful to have a general idea of what you’ll be expected to learn.

Review your lecture outline - This would usually be in your subject outline if you have one. It should specify what you’ll be learning each week. Try to determine what the aims of the lecture will be.

Consider how the topic fits in - Think about what you’ll be learning and how it’s connected to your subject. This causes you to think critically about what you will be learning.

READINGS - Make sure you read all the required readings before your lectures and tutorials so you can apply them to what you’re learning in class.

Make up questions - So while you don’t exactly know what you will be learning yet, you have a kind of general idea. Make up some questions of what you want answered in that lecture. If you have questions that follow the lecture or are during the lecture, write them down so you can ask them in your tutorial.

DURING LECTURES

Now that you’ve prepared for your lecture, what do you do? Let me tell you that it is not to use the free uni wifi to do some online shopping!

Make a written record - Write down what you hear, see, feel. Obviously you want to mostly be taking notes of what your lecturer is actually saying, but adding reflective commentary helps to make your notes more memorable of the moment in which you actually learnt the content.

Listen for main ideas and clues to details - Your lecturer will be emphasising certain parts of their spiel so keep an ear out for them because they’re important!

Copy/create graphic aids - If your lecturer has included them in their slides then it clearly is meant to be helpful. Creating your own also helps you to better learn and understand.

Write down examples - Your lecturer may often refer to examples which help back up and explain what they are trying to say. These are important to help you understand and can also be useful in your essays and papers.

Write down any questions - Keep these for your tutorials so clarify anything you’re unsure about.

ACTIVELY LISTENING

Actually listening in a lecture can be hard when there’s one person at the front of the room monotonously saying words that somehow sound like gibberish. So how do we make sure that we’re taking in everything we need to be?

Posture - Make sure you’re sitting up straight and not slouching in your chair! This engages your muscles, making you more alert and encourages blood to pump more efficiently through your body. Also try to sit in the first third of the theatre, closest to the lecturer to help you engage with the lecturer and reduce your likeliness to get distracted.

Look up from your notes and engage with your lecturer - Lecturers like this because it means you’re actually interested, and it can also force you to actually learn something instead of passively looking at your laptop or pen and paper.

Anticipate - Try to be at least one step ahead of the lecture. Not literally, but try to think about what they could be talking about next. This means you’re processing what they’re saying and grasping a better understanding.

QUESTIONS! - I’ll say it a million times, questions concerning anything you’re confused about are so important because it means you know what you don’t know and you have some intention of figuring it out.

Alternate listening, thinking and writing - You’ll have to be doing al three in your lecture so it’s important to master the rotation of them all.

BALANCING LISTENING AND NOTE TAKING

Sometimes note taking can affect our ability to listen to what the lecturer is actually saying, or sometimes we get so invested in what the lecturer is saying we forget to write it down. So where’s the happy medium?

Listen for clues - These may be any notes or graphics they put up on the screen, repetition, pauses or emphasis, their tone of voice, or the amount of time they spend on a particular topic. These are good to keep an ear out for as they can help you what to write down.

Listen for sign posts - These include words such as “this illustrates…”, “we know this because…”, or “scholars debate…” Lecturers are providing examples, evidence and issues within the topic here, which are important for you to have a better understanding and influence you to really reflect on it later on.

NOTE TAKING

All this stuff about note taking, but why do we actually do it???

Helps us concentrate

Identifying what is most important

Helps embed the content into our memory

Improves analytical skills

Helps in later assignments for that subject

So how do we effectively take notes?

Obvious one, but don’t write everything down! - only what appears to be useful and the key points

Examples are really useful to have so take note of those

Questions (again lol), thoughts and reflective comments

New terminology, references and readings - create a glossary with any new terms you’re unsure of and take note of what your lecturer refers to and recommends that you read because these can extend you in your assessments and exams

Determine if the information is available elsewhere - if you have access to lecture slides then copious notes are not as necessary because the information will be readily available. If you won’t be able to get access to the lecture again make sure you have everything you need to know!

If the purpose of the lecture is to provide background or context, listen more than you write. This information is not vital to your subject, but having a thorough understanding in your head rather than on a piece of paper is very important.

If you are listening to your lecturers point of view on an issue, take note of their arguments and how they structure them. Having an understanding of this can be useful in the formulation of your own perspective on the issue.

Formatting notes seems to be such an important issue in the studyblr community, but really, everyone is individual and we all learn in different ways. These are just some tips that I heard in the session:

Leave lots of space - Negative space in your notes can help declutter your mind. Also if you need to write something else down on that page then you have more space!

Be creative with your notes - You don’t need to make them pretty, but make them yours so you can understand them.

It’s a good idea to write down the title of the lecture and the lecturer on your notes just for future reference.

You can make your notes diagrammatic - Not everything needs to be written down in words!

Use your own abbreviations

At the end of the day, you want your notes to be exam ready so you’re just reviewing them in your SWOTVAC period!!

AFTER THE LECTURE

When the lecture ends, that doesn’t mean you should forget about everything you have just learnt. Reviewing the content is important so our brains don’t give into Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve!!

Engage with the material again - Change the format of your notes, or imagine different applications of the information. This helps to have a better and stronger understanding.

Compare and contrast different ideas within the content.

Ask and answer any of your own questions, or even questions within a study group.

Make flash cards or mind maps or whatever helps you learn.

Discuss the material with your classmates

Try to apply the content to real life or real world issues.

Try to review within 24 hours of the lecture and then regular daily reviews for at least 15 minutes.

I hope that these tips are helpful in your studies, obviously not all of them are for everyone, but be open to try something new!! Good luck and much love, Emmanuelle xx

#studyblr #studyspo #lectures #lecture tips #tips #study tips #OG post #university #making the most of lectures #notes #note taking #flashcards #mind maps #arts student

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circumswoop · 7 years

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Is the Interregnum a Grave?

Peaceful transfers of power are boring by definition. Unfortunately, we’ve never had another kind, until now. Inaugurals and counter-inaugurals always bypassed each other without incident, unless you consider the occasional riff of pepper spray incidental. As it’s usually one group of recidivists handing off to another, how could such a transfer ever be peaceless?

Presidents and their wives, always to the manner either born or raised, hang out with each other during inaugurals, incoming and outgoing. There will be four former presidents at the Trump ceremony, five if George HW Bush plans a surprise skydive. (He could drop in a wheelchair held softly aloft by baby blue balloons, and then be rolled jovially away by security.) This is the licensure of the always-in-power, the ability to feel camaraderie with your replacement, whether or not he (it is always he) humiliated you in public. It’s the most exclusive club in the world, with provided airspace both preferred and elite. There are no cucks in tuxes. Meanwhile, there are presidents-elect yet to be born, and it is not too late to abort them all.

Obviously, one of the five living ex-presidents, and one of the four to attend, will be Barack Obama, whose election eight years ago settled a lowkey war between MySpace and Facebook, or so we thought: look which one is still here, being awful. Obama’s ascent overlapping with the descent of Top 8 culture is probably just me, but I remember the two months between Election and Inauguration Days presenting as forever young, not instantly iconic but worse: instantly idyllic. I’m not gonna tell you how old I was then, but I had a Martine Rose haircut. I was always drunk on one of two things, cheap vodka or soft white power. Still in the running-around phase of my learned liberalism, I anticipated the Obama presidency with a kind of guileless nightvision, blowing out my spectral range. I knew he was already top five presidents, easy, let alone top 8.

Sooner than you can say “drone strike”, that presidency is over and I’m sitting here with a buzzcut that I fear is trendy, reading about the Xiang River Storm and the Red Army Faction, trying not to treat radicalization as merely a way to get through whatever this is, this diastema between waiting to die and waiting to be brought back to life. Maybe that one Netflix series that looks like either a deep FKA Twigs video or a vintage HBA show really did nail what’s going on in the country, this sense of loitering in an unmade bed while outside the air turns green with breathed disgust.

[Stent]

The word “interregnum”, in the aggregate, means pause, interval, suspension--or in one iteration, the distance between discovery and detailed understanding. In the original English version (always worth checking out!), that distance was 11 years between the execution of Charles I and the accession of his son Charles II. In U.S. presidential politics, it was about 70 days before this year, when a majority of everyone freaked out, flatlined, did some modern Movements to try to enter another dimension and then, failing, collapsed into circular contemplations of self-harm. 70 days? More like 70 times 7, which is either the number of times Jesus told his entourage to forgive up to, or the number of “counter-terrorism” strikes the Obama administration(s) authorized in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya. I forget which!

What even is a peaceful transfer of power when the best we probably ever had soothed us partially by making his murder softcore? (My friend made a joke once about Klaus Kinski sounding like a really good cotton candy flavor—it’s like that but in reverse.) Where is the virtue in a proportional scale of human rights? Is it a redundancy covered by the most perennial of all insurances? During downtime, where do our hearts beat? Where is the sound? Will we live? Is life even a quality worth having?

[Stent]

Sometimes, when I drink too much, I pass out but am aided back to consciousness, in little rivulets, by concussive symptoms of withdrawal. Half melodic/half thrash, I moan and writhe. It sounds pretty but it’s not, because all that’s happening is I’m waiting to throw up. I guess I feel like I’m about to throw up, only for four whole years. Don’t even talk to me about eight.

I believe Obama is not a good man but possesses goodness, and I guess I feel bad writing that out loud despite stanning for him the entire time in loyal opposition to his record. Now he’s being replaced by his absolute antithesis, in optics and in credentials, a man who may not be wholly evil but who possesses evil, who puts on its underthings late at night and capers ghoulishly in the mirror; who will sneak into your room and place his hand squarely in the middle of your pillow to see if it’s warm. I truly believe the evil Trump possesses is not despotic but the petty, flesh-crawling kind that smells of talc and sewer, the desperate grasp of the night sweat. For all his fame and millions legit or forged, he sure is resentful.

This principle of possession preoccupies me way more than any argument abt what he’ll do or won’t do. I don’t think even he knows, because his particular evil seeps and blocks alternately. The incredible contradictions of Obamawere his possessions, or weights if you will—he always seemed genuinely capable of empathy while slaughtering innocents all the livelong day. He neither delivered himself from the crypto-corporate Medici who made him nor ever once laid off the deport button, yet in his healthcare and LGBQT approvals he probably freed more slaves than anyone since FDR or Lincoln, the two socialist presidents. Obama always knew what he was doing, whether those acts were faithful or egregious. Trump’s maniacally nonlinear behavior cinches at least one truth about him: that he knows not what he does. His evil is tinnitus-like, and has too many mixed messages to adequately receive. All he hears, understands, and emits is noise.

[Stent]

So we are left with the vape trail of a president who was “good for a neoliberal”, an introspective, Marilynne Robinson-loving father figure, inspo for dreamers trying to turn into dream leaders, kids growing old with blogging histories and classroom allergies who consented to his sway and cadence as proof of love, even if it was denatured or abusive. Nobody ever sold the lie of liberalism better than Obama, bc the way being lied to feels spinily, spinnily good as long as everyone’s a little bit in on it never felt so good.

One of the great belletristic disputes of the 1990s, albeit a passive-aggressive one, was between Andrew Sullivan and Tony Kushner on purposes of politics: shd politics relieve anxiety (Sullivan) or misery and injustice (Kushner)? How you answer outs you as either a liberal or a leftist, but if your arrival at the right answer took eight years then maybe Obama is to blame. Maybe the center-left is an industry of death, of lullaby and stalling and overprescription.

[Stent]

Leo Bersani’s essay “Is the Rectum a Grave” is a model of sacred rage, as opposed to average anger. Published in October 1987 at the peak, or nadir, of the AIDS crisis, it quotes MacKinnon, Dworkin, and Foucault and documents a society “that at once celebrates and punishes pluralism”, one that has “no political need to save or protect any homosexuals at all” and that is given a finishing sadistic edge by the family in Arcadia, Florida who set fire to a house wherein three hemophiliac children were believed to be infected with HIV. Bersani argues that anti-loving and hatred are synchronous, but more often the latter hides its head in the former. He also begins the essay with the funniest lede ever, defiantly unburied: “There is a big secret about sex: most people don’t like it.”

I believe the Trump presidency is already the greatest moral crisis in America since AIDS. No reflection on the Cold War and spies slipping in and out of closets or consciousness would be complete without a contagion—one to which, in Bersani’s words, the only necessary response is rage (not anger). Wraiths of the Weimar working class would not provide a better remonstration for Trumpism than the bags of bones the Reagan administration(s) put out with the trash. Reagan and Trump are compared almost as often as Trump and Hitler, but not often enough—a new eighties is more likely than a new thirties simply because the eighties were the most American decade, and the thirties were conducted in a Europe that blew its own head off rather than look in the mirror ever again.

Trump tweeting a picture of his handshakes with Ronald and Nancy was way more of a message than his tweeting days later about Nazi Germany—the Trump family, for all their leopard-killing, vacuity-shilling horrors, are decadent directly from the Me Decade. Trump the paterfamilias has lived in the American imagination since at least Marla Maples went in the New York Post in 1990 and said sex with Trump was the best she ever had. Others reference the 1979 Wayne Barrett cover feature for the Voice as prequel to a decade.

Either way, by the time he gave Kevin McAllister directions to the lobby in his, Trump’s, own hotel in Home Alone 2 (1992) the deal was closed: Trump was the first name that came up when anyone talked about riches. America and its imagination will never get over the 1980s, and if there’s any shrewd or non-shriveled wisdom that can be gained from Trump’s senescent rise it should be that America has still never really gotten over AIDS. Fascism feared by anyone with a pulse, let alone one that’s only intelligible in their left wrist, is better detected in viral terms. It can only by stopped by a contagion mentality, by the kinds of education and mobilization the social agents of AIDS provided and to some extent pioneered. Bersani named, as its essential crisis of care, “the general tendency to think of AIDS as an epidemic of the future rather than a catastrophe of the present”. All you have to do to diagnose whatever age we’re in is find/replace AIDS with Fascism. There is a big secret abt power: everyone likes it.

#trump #aids #fascism #interregnum #inaguration

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kristablogs · 4 years

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Where does fear actually come from?

Convention thinking says that the root of all fear lies in our brains. But what comes before then? (The National Museum in Oslo/)

Excerpt from Nerve: Adventures in the Science of Fear by Eva Holland. Reprinted with permission of The Experiment.

Fear, it seems at first, should be easy to identify and define. To borrow from that old judicial decision about the definition of obscenity: we know it when we feel it.

Putting that feeling into words can be harder. G. Stanley Hall, the nineteenth-century founder of the American Journal of Psychology and the first president of the American Psychological Association, described fear as “the anticipation of pain,” and that seems like a pretty good general definition to me. Fear of violence? Anticipatory pain. Fear of a breakup, the loss of someone you love? Anticipatory pain. Fear of sharks, of plane crashes, of falling off a cliff? Check, check, and check.

But what we need, really, isn’t just a solid catch-all definition. What we need, to understand the role of fear in our lives, is to examine the layers and varieties of fears that can afflict us.

There’s the sharp jab of alarm when you sense a clear, imminent threat: That car is going to hit me. There’s the duller, more dispersed foreboding, the feeling of malaise whose source you can’t quite pinpoint: Something is wrong here. I don’t feel safe. There are spiraling, sprawling existential fears: I am going to flunk this exam, tank this interview, fail at life. And there are precise, even banal, ones: Pulling this Band-Aid off is going to hurt. How do they all fit together? Or, put differently, to what extent does each stand apart?

According to Greek mythology, Ares, the god of war, had two sons, who accompanied him into battle: Phobos, the god of fear, and Deimos, the god of dread. That seems like a useful distinction to start with—fear versus dread—and it’s one that’s echoed today by our distinction between fear and anxiety. Fear, generally speaking, is regarded as being prompted by a clear and present threat: you sense danger and you feel afraid. Anxiety, on the other hand, is born from less tangible concerns: it can feel like fear but without a clear cause. Simple enough, at least in theory.

In Fear: A Cultural History, author Joanna Bourke gamely attempts to parse the distinctions between fear and anxiety. “In one case a frightening person or dangerous object can be identified: the flames searing patterns on the ceiling, the hydrogen bomb, the terrorist,” she writes. Whereas “more often, anxiety overwhelms us from some source ‘within’: there is an irrational panic about venturing outside, a dread of failure, a premonition of doom ... Anxiety is described as a more generalized state, while fear is more specific and immediate. The ‘danger object’ seems to be in front of us in fear states, while in anxiety states the individual is not consciously aware of what endangers him or her.”

But as Bourke points out, that distinction has serious limitations. It’s entirely dependent on the ability of the fearful person to identify the threat. Is it legitimately, immediately dangerous? Or is the fear abstract, “irrational”? She offers the hydrogen bomb and the terrorist as examples of potentially clear and present threats, but both can also serve as anxiety-inducing spectres, ominous even when absent.

Nerve by Eva Holland. (Courtesy of The Experiment/)

The distinction between fear and anxiety, then, can be murky, even as it can also be a useful and even necessary line to draw. But setting the issue of a threat’s clear presence aside, there’s the matter of our “fear” response.

The scientists who study our emotional lives make distinctions between different categories of feelings. There are the primary emotions, our most basic and near-universal responses, found across cultures and even appearing, or at least seeming to us to appear, in other species: fear, anger, disgust, surprise, sadness, and happiness.

Think of them like primary colors, the foundational elements of a whole rainbow of emotion. Just as red and blue in combination can be used to create all the shades of purple, you can imagine some more precise feelings as being built by the primary emotions. Horror, for instance, is fear mixed with disgust—and, maybe, some shadings of anger and surprise. Delight could be happiness with a bit of surprise stirred in. And so on.

There are also the social emotions, the feelings that don’t stand alone like the primary emotions but are generated by our relationships to others: sympathy, embarrassment, shame, guilt, pride, jealousy, envy, gratitude, admiration, contempt, and more.

Of all these, fear is perhaps the most studied. But what does it really mean to study fear? What do we even mean, exactly, when we say “fear” in the context of scientific research? That’s a more complicated question than you might expect.

Traditionally, scientists have studied “fear” in animals by measuring their reactions to threatening or unpleasant stimuli—a rat’s freezing response when it is subjected to a small electric shock, for instance. In studying humans, scientists have more options and a broader array of tools. Most importantly, humans can self-report, verbally or in writing: Yes, I felt afraid.

The complicating factor is that those two responses—the freezing and the feeling—are separate and distinct. As the neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux, an expert on the brain circuitry of fear, emphasizes in his book Anxious, we know that the physical fear response and the emotional feeling of fear are produced by two different mechanisms in the body.

For a long time, the working theory held that the feeling came first, in response to the fear stimulus, and then the physical response followed from the feeling. This is what’s known as the commonsense, or Darwinian, school of thought. But that was more an assumption than a proven mechanism, and these days it has fallen out of favor.

Instead, as science has turned its attention to working out that elusive mechanism more concretely, the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio has come up with an answer that, while provocative, ultimately feels right to me. The feeling, he argues in a pair of funny and wise books, Descartes’ Error and Looking for Spinoza, is actually derived from that same menu of physical reactions that we would typically view as accessories of, or adjacent to, our emotions.

For the purposes of his argument, Damasio makes an unusual distinction between “emotions”—by which, in this context, he specifically means the physical, measurable reactions of the body in response to an emotional stimulus, the physical fear response—and “feelings,” the intangible expressions of emotion in our minds. That may seem odd, or even nonsensical, but it’s a key to his case, so keep it in mind.

“We tend to believe that the hidden is the source of the expressed,” he writes in Looking for Spinoza. But he argues, instead, for a counter-intuitive reversal of that order: “Emotions”—again, meaning the physical reactions here—“and related phenomena are the foundation for feelings, the mental events that form the bedrock of our minds.”

All organisms have varying abilities to react to stimuli, from a simple startle reflex or withdrawal movement all the way up to more complex multi-part responses, like the description of our physical fear processes above, which are Damasio’s “emotions.” Some of the more basic responses might sometimes look, to our eyes, like expressions of the feeling of fear, and in fact the machinery that governs them is also implicated in the more complex processes. (My startle reflex, one of our oldest and simplest reactions, has certainly come into play at times when I’ve also felt afraid. Hello, raptors in the kitchen in Jurassic Park!) But the “emotions” are at the top of the heap in terms of complexity, and as such not all organisms are capable of generating them.

Unlike some of the simpler “fear” reactions in simpler organisms (poke a “sensitive plant,” watch its leaves curl up), our emotions can be generated by stimuli both real, in the moment, and remembered—or even imagined. That’s the gift and the burden of the human mind.

But for now, let’s stick with an in-the-moment example, like a strange noise heard in the night. The fact of the noise is captured by the sensory nerves in the ear and is relayed to the brain structures involved in triggering and then executing a response. Now your body is reacting in all the ways described above.

So far, so good? The next step, in Damasio’s formulation, is the creation of the feeling itself. We know that our bodies are laced with neurons, and that they not only send out information from the brain, they also receive it.

So after the outgoing messages have gotten our hearts pumping, our sweat beading, and so on, a series of incoming messages returns to the brain, bearing all of that information about our physical state. Our brains, Damasio explains, maintain incredibly complex maps of the state of the body, from our guts to our fingertips, at all times.

And here’s the core of his argument: when the incoming messages bearing news of the body’s physical fear-state alter these maps, that’s when the feeling itself arises. Your brain learns from your body that your heart is pounding, your pupils are dilated, your goosebumps are standing at attention. Your brain does the math and says, Aha! I am afraid!

In his 1884 essay, “What is an emotion?” the philosopher and psychologist William James wrote,

If we fancy some strong emotion and then try to abstract from our consciousness of it all the feelings of its bodily symptoms, we find we have nothing left behind, no “mind-stuff” out of which the emotion can be constituted, and that a cold and neutral state of intellectual perception is all that remains. . . . What kind of an emotion of fear would be left if the feeling neither of quickened heart-beats nor of shallow breathing, neither of trembling lips nor of weakened limbs, neither of gooseflesh nor of visceral stirrings, were present, it is quite impossible for me to think.

Damasio picks up where James left off. But he doesn’t just draw on Victorian-era philosophizing to make his argument. He also works from case studies and his own research; for instance, the case of a Parkinson’s patient in Paris. The woman, who was sixty-five years old and had no history of depression or other mental illness, was undergoing an experimental treatment for her Parkinson’s symptoms. It involved the use of an electrical current to stimulate motor-control areas of the brain stem via tiny electrodes.

Nineteen other patients had undergone the treatment successfully. But when the current entered the woman’s brain, she stopped chatting with the doctors, lowered her eyes, and her face slumped.

Seconds later, she began to cry, and then to sob. “I’m fed up with life,” she said, through her tears. “I’ve had enough ... I don’t want to live anymore ... I feel worthless.” The team, alarmed, stopped the current, and within ninety seconds the woman had stopped crying. Her face perked up again, the sadness melting away. What had just happened? she asked.

It turned out, according to Damasio, that instead of stimulating the nuclei that controlled her tremors, the electrode, infinitesimally misplaced, had activated the parts of the brain stem that control a suite of actions by the facial muscles, mouth, larynx, and diaphragm—the actions that allow us to frown, pout, and cry. Her body, stimulated not by a sad movie or bad news, had acted out the motions of sadness, and her mind, in turn, had gone to a dark, dark place. The feeling arose from the physical; her mind followed her body.

This whole thing seemed counterintuitive to me at first, reversing as it does the “commonsense” view. But then I sat back and really thought about my experience of fear. How do I recall it in my memory? How do I try to explain it to other people? The fact is that I think of it mostly in physical terms: that sick feeling in my gut, the tightness in my chest, maybe some dizziness or shortness of breath.

Think about how you actually experience the feeling of happiness, of contentment, or ease. For me, it manifests in the loosening of the eternally tense muscles in my forehead and jaw, in my neck and shoulders. My eyes open wider, losing the worried squint. I breathe more deeply.

Or think about the sheer physicality of deep grief, how it wrecks your body as well as your mind. When I look back on the worst of my grief after my mom’s death, I remember it as headaches, exhaustion, a tight chest, a sense of heaviness, and lethargy. I felt sad, yes—sadder than I’ve ever been—and it was my body that told me how sad I was.

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