#[ I had to google what 'reduced to clear' means and if that is what it means that is MEAN Anon ]

[spiderwarden]

A bouquet has been left for Minthara: orange lilies, white hollyhock, and poppies. Upon closer inspection, there is a small tag attached. It reads: "Reduced to clear! 4cp"

There is a blink while she lifts the bouquet up for inspection, curious to take a gander at the surface flowers that were left for her upon the small table next to the entry of her tent. She was not well practiced in the casual rituals of the surface but the act of giving a bouquet was not lost even on her. Minthara turns the collection of lowers in her hands, admiring the lovely colors and how they complimented one another and as she looks over it her fingers lift to touch the petals and small pieces of the assortment of floral. A smile finding it's way onto her lips while she pondered if she should try her hand at adding these to her garden. Perhaps she can extract seeds from these? Surface floral requires sunshine, surely, but water Is a common need, yes?

But then her eye catches a little note scribble off the tag to the side and she takes it gently in her hands with a curiosity abound, "Reduced to clear?" A speaks quietly, what in Lolth's name is this? Minthara tucks the bouquet against her chest and then eyes her surroundings, is that some sort of spell? If it was an incantation she would have felt it. She looks at the flowers again, then turns and walks inside of her tent.

[messylxve]

goddess | elle greenaway x famous!reader

content warning: unlabeled sexuality, SA, douchy men, self-deprecating thoughts, soft elle, google translate spanish, laufey

divider by @enchanthings

It always goes like this

Could have predicted it

I’m so naive to think you loved me for me

It was almost humiliating how many times you���d been in this position. Heels were abandoned at the door, makeup streaked down your face, and your heart felt too heavy to even make it to your own bedroom.

You threw yourself on your couch, dragging a blanket over yourself and taking your phone out apprehensively. Through your tears, you felt the hesitation of dialing that number.

The number you knew through and through.

You knew it by heart.

‘She doesn’t want to hear from you,’ that little devil whispered into your ear. ‘She’s so sick and tired of you and your bullshit.’

A whimper escaped your lips. You wanted to throw your phone and let it shatter on impact. But you never did.

Instead you clutched it tighter and shoved yourself deeper into the cushions of your couch, the memories of that night resurfacing.

Kissed as I ran off stage

Too old to play this game

Guess you’re still growing up at thirty

You met him on a quiet Sunday morning. You were at your favorite cafe and there he was, approaching you. Calling you beautiful, unlike any other girl you’ve met.

But most of all. He didn’t recognize you.

You detested dating fans. You already got your heart broken there before. You swore off of that.

He showered you with so much affection, you completely missed the signs.

Red flags always seemed normal under your rose-tinted view of the world.

Were you surprised by me

When you took me home?

When the glamour wore off

Reduced to skin and bone

You should have known it was all a lie.

You should have known he was just like all the other

You don’t know how long you sat there, wallowing in self-pity, but the sound of your phone ringing took you out of it for just a moment.

You pulled it away from where it was resting under the couch pillow and your eyes widened at the name.

Elle <3

Once again, you hesitated, your thumb hovering over the green button. You finally picked it up on the third ring.

“Ellie, hi!” You cringed at the way your voice nearly immediately cracked as you tried to feign your usual chipper mood.

“Hey lovely.” Her voice sounded so comforting. Even with just two words, you felt a twinge of warmth attempt to spread through your chest. “You okay?”

You cleared your throat. “Yeah, what makes you ask?”

“You sound like you’ve been crying. And it’s nearly midnight in LA, you aren’t usually this chipper this late unless you’re faking it.”

A sigh escaped you. You never could lie to her.

“You’ve always been so observant.” Your voice dropped the octave now that the facade faded.

“I hope so,” she chuckled lightly. “It’s kind of my job. Do you want to talk about it?”

‘She doesn’t mean it. She’s just being nice.’

“I don’t want to bore you with the details.”

She hummed in disapproval. “You know I always want the details from mi estrella.”

A sad smile slid on your face at the nickname given to you in your childhood; coined after you had gotten the solo in the choir concert.

‘Super star by day, best friend by night,’ 10-year-old Elle had quipped.

You huffed out a small laugh before it all fell away as you recounted your date that night.

“You remember Trevor right? Met him at that coffee shop on Melrose Avenue?”

You heard a pause on her end before she spoke again, her voice softer. “I do.”

“Well…I had a date with him tonight. Fourth one.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.”

His lips pressed harshly into yours and his hands skimmed over your body as you struggled to keep up.

“I invited him to see me at a concert. My final one on my tour.”

I can’t even tell

Who you want to know

“Trev,” you had tried to laugh. “Slow down.”

Your words fell upon deaf ears as he kissed down to your jaw and began attacking at your neck.

“I um…I thought it was a good idea to invite him backstage when it was over…talk to him for a bit before I had to go out again.”

Elle listened as your tone got darker and darker, reliving your own fresh memories. She heard every bout of emotion in your voice. The pain that shone through from a broken heart.

He began lifting your skirt. You grew dizzy with nausea the more he continued.

‘This isn’t right,’ a tiny voice screamed at you.

“Trev—Trevor, please stop.”

Your hands found his chest, steadying yourself on it before pushing him away. “I said stop!”

“y/n…” Elle’s voice was a whisper now.

“I-I told him I didn’t want that. That I didn’t think we were there yet. He didn’t really like that…”

I’m a goddess on stage

Human when we’re alone

“What do you mean we’re not there yet,” he scoffed. “I’ve been waiting for basically two months for you to be ready.”

He moved in close again, placing a hand on your waist. “I’m so tired of waiting. I’ve listened to your stories, your music. Hell I even talked to that she-devil of a friend of yours, Bella.”

You couldn’t decide whether or not to feel disgusted or betrayed. “It’s Elle…You mean you didn’t want any of that?”

“I wanted you, baby…isn’t that enough.”

You cried freely now into the phone and Elle listened quietly, her own heart breaking for you.

“You’d be proud of me Ellie,” you sniffed. “I stood my ground. Told him no.”

“Yeah?”

You nodded, regardless if she’d see it or not. “Yeah… He didn’t really like it though. I had to call security to escort him out.”

“Did he put his hands on you,” she asked.

You bit your lip, the line going quiet for just a moment before you spoke again. “Do you think I can visit you? Just for a week or so?”

She frowned at the sudden change in topic.

“Of course you can, lovely.”

That next day moved so painstakingly slow for Elle. It was a paperwork day which meant she got to sit around anxiously as she waited for another call from you.

You had already called twice. Once to tell her you were leaving your apartment, twice to tell her your plane was about to depart from LA.

Hours has passed and now she awaited your call telling her you were at the airport waiting.

“Alright,” Derek quipped, rocking back in his chair. “What’s up with you today?”

Elle looked over at the man, lifting an eyebrow at him. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve been staring at your phone all day,” Spencer claimed, not looking up from his paperwork.

Elle’s attention snapped between the two men before finally settling on Morgan. “So?”

Derek grinned. “So…? You hate the phone Elle, now you look like you’re waiting for it to come to life in front of your eyes.”

The girl scoffed out a laugh, shaking her head.

“You know what I think it it,” Derek continued. “I think you’ve got Mr. Mystery you’re waiting on.”

Her smile halted for just a second at his words. She twirling the pen in between her fingers once then twice. “You’re delusional Morgan.”

Almost right on cue, her phone rang and Derek let out a laugh seeing the usually preserved woman scramble for it.

“Agent Greenaway.”

“So professional,” you mused, a sly grin sliding on your lips.

A smile eased onto her expression as she turned away from Morgan’s prying eyes. “Hola amorcito. ¿Cómo estuvo tu vuelo?”

“It was good, I slept the whole way here.”

“Eso es bueno. Lo necesita.”

“Rude,” you fake gasped. “Are you calling me grouchy?”

“Sabes lo que quise decir y/n.”

Morgan and Reid looked at each other as they listened to Elle’s end of the conversation, completely clueless as to what you were saying.

“Estaré allí en veinte. Estar segura. Te amo.”

Reid furrowed his brows curiously. He might not have been a whiz in Spanish, but he definitely caught those last words.

“Alright boys, you better behave.”

Spencer frowned. “Where are you going?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

The two of you had spent the rest of the day together.

You didn’t want to go out, so she took you straight to your apartment and there you had the time of your life. You two binged movies, played board games, and now you were cooking together.

It was pure bliss and you couldn’t as for more.

“I missed this,” Elle mused.

You sat perched on the counter, your head laid comfortably on the cabinet behind you and you passed ingredients to the cooking woman.

“Cooking,” you asked with a giggle.

She looked over at you with a laugh. “Pass me the oregano would you. And no I don’t mean cooking. I mean being with you. Phone calls don’t feel like enough anymore.”

You twisted your body around as you shuffled through her spice cabinet. “Yeah,” you mused. “Hearing your voice is definitely what keeps me sane though.”

Elle’s heart stuttered at those words. The cooking spoon in her hand slowed it stirring and she looked up at you.

“I can’t find the oregano,” you mumbled, your attention now fully on the cabinet.

“…it’s on the second shelf,” she cleared her throat, pointing up to where it should be.

“I’m looking on the second shelf,” you whined playfully.

“Here,” she moved away from the hot stove and in front of you, leaving over your head to reach it. “It was right…there.”

She didn’t even realize what position she had put herself in until it was much too late. Either one of your thighs laid beside her hips. You looked down at her and you could feel her breath on you. You could smell her addicting perfume that you found yourself missing every time you two were apart.

It was like an invisible magnet between you two, beckoning the both of you closer and closer. So close that you felt her lips brush against yours.

It was like an epiphany to you. Everything clicked in your head.

The pauses over the phone.

The nicknames.

Hiding your phone calls from her team.

But just as the fireworks began to rise, they sizzled out before ever going off.

She pulled away, clearing her throat awkwardly.

‘You’re so delusional,’ that ugly voice hissed to you. ‘She’s seen the real you. The ugly you. Why would she want that?’

You swallowed hard and blinked away your tears. “Elle.”

She didn’t look over to you. Just focused on finishing the meal. “Yeah?”

You released a dying sigh. “Do you…do you think I’m unlovable?”

She had never looked up so fast. You would have thought the spoon burned her from how quickly she dropped it.

“What?”

You felt like the question was a plot for attention, but it wasn’t. It was probably one of the most genuine questions you asked in a long time.

“I- never mind. I’m sorry.”

Elle looked at you as if you grew a second head right in front of her. “y/n,” she moved back to that same position she had just run from. Except this time, her hands fell to your cheeks, caressing them oh-so gently. “How could you ask that question?”

You frowned. “How could I not?” It came out as a whisper. A moment of pure vulnerability. The first of its kind since that phone call last night.

“I’m not that impossibly perfect, beautiful super star they all expect me to be. I’m just…me. No one wants that.”

Elle shook her head, eyes scanning all over your face before finally settling on your eyes once more. “I want that.”

She felt you freeze under her grasp, but she continued on. “Every single failed date and false expectation was never your fault. You are…so incredibly talented, beautiful, and utterly amazing. In more ways than people give you credit for. If all these other people can’t love you the way I do, for you, then they don’t deserve you.”

Your breath stopped in your chest. Stuck. Unable to move in or out. “You love me? Or do you love me?”

You put that emphasis on your final words. There was no other way it could have been interpreted other than

“y/n, I am so utterly in love with you. I have been for a long time.”

Your hands found her wrists where you stabled yourself onto her. A smile broke free from your shocked expression. With a broken laugh, you surged forward, pressing your lips onto her’s in a kiss.

“I love you too.”

Translations:

“hi lovely how was your flight.”

“That’s good, you needed it”

“You know what I mean y/n”

“I’ll be there in twenty. Stay safe. I love you.”

@mackannkees

AN: I can’t believe I wrote that all in one night. It’s officially 3am as of posting, I’m not expecting this to get much attention, this was more self-indulgence if anything. I hope u guys like it tho

[pantwolf]

I went to my uni's library yesterday after class to study. I'm quite behind this week! My initial plan was "after class, go study." Easy. Simple. Right?

Nope! Get to the library and immediately shut down. I know the things that I need to do, but suddenly, I can't think of ANY of it. My body refuses to start, and I end up in a state of listlessness.

After some "debugging," I came to these observations:

1) I was probably dissociating from the stress of everything I had to do. I couldn't tell (I felt fine), but the lack of cooperation from my body suggests I was struggling to cope.

2) I had too much to do. Too much on the mind. Again, I knew what I had to do! But when it came to it, my working memory was full, the gears were clogged up, and I couldn't begin to untangle the web of choosing what to do first.

Here are a few solutions I came to:

1) If it isn't working, don't punish yourself by staying there in a stupor. Get up. Move. Do something else, but not something dissociative like social media, games, or drugs. Keep it cognitively relaxed, incorporate movement if you can.

2) talk to someone. My uni has "peer listening," which isn't therapy, but it's a walk-in service where you can talk to a peer about anything! I did this (terrifying, for the social anxious among us), and it helped quite a bit. We shared common struggles with academics, and we exchanged solutions, tips, and ideas. It was reassuring, and I found new strategies through them that I'm going to implement!

3) Planning. I've never been one to adhere to hard schedules. My Google calendar has old recurring events that haven't been relevant for years. I don't even bother anymore. BUT. It turns out that just saying "I'm gonna do X thing at Y time on Z day" isn't enough for me.

3 a) Planning doesn't just have to be "this is the time I will do studying." That's vague and leaves too much to interpretation, which can lead to overwhelm and paralysis. Break it down further. Don't schedule a vague "study" block, schedule blocks for "Biology Homework 3" and "Psychology paper: rough draft." Be specific with what that time is for to reduce ambiguity and eliminate the time spent untangling your thoughts!

3 b) Planning should also include preparation. Will you need notes? Do you need to watch a lecture video? Take a quiz? Gather all of the supplies you need and organize it in a folder. If it's digital work, even better! Put a folder on your desktop and fill it with notes and list any URLs you might need to visit in a word document so you can click and go. Preparation increases your ACCESSIBILITY; it is a powerful buff!

4) Focus on "I will work on" instead of "I will complete." An outcome-focused mindset is honestly really debilitating for me... It manifests as perfectionism and anxiety. Reframing can be difficult, but it's really important that, at least during planning, you just commit to working on it. If it can't be finished during that time, it's okay! You still worked on it, which means you completed your OBLIGATION. This means you still accomplished your goal, which means you won't be hit with a wave of shame of failure. Plus, cultivating a healthier mindset around work means you can clear space to be proactive.

[thessalian]

Thess vs the Pollen Count

Things I currently really hate:

Summer

Climate change

Fibromyalgia

The effects of the above on my immune system

Today is a particularly bad allergy day, and according to the pollen count on the weather predictions for the week, it's going to stay that way. The snuffling I can just about deal with, but the itchy and watery eye thing is really cramping my style on damn near anything I wanted to do today. And apparently all of the above bits and pieces are contributing to my allergies being so fucking bad at the moment.

See, after I checked things out and extrapolated that the pollen count is basically going to be a bitch to me all summer, I started Googling. First thing I checked was what antihistamines are best for the itchy and watery eye thing. I'll have to use what I've still got for the moment, but when I'm doing the big shop come payday, I'm probably going to have to shell out for the expensive shit. Yaaaaay comparison shopping? A lot of pharmacies do deals on antihistamines this time of year, so that's something, but finding the best deal is kind of on me. Great.

After that, I decided to check on exactly why my allergies are getting so much worse, starting with, "can allergies worsen with age?" Answer was a resounding yes, partly because your immune system changes as you get older, with a dash of "allergies can worsen because climate change".

Sooooooo ... they more or less figured out that fibromyalgia is at least autoimmune-adjacent, since some studies a few years back where they injected antibodies from fibro sufferers into mice and discovered that those mice had increased sensitivity to heat, cold, and pressure, as well as reduced movement grip strength. Those mice went back to normal when those antibodies cleared their system, so ... yeah, the antibodies those of us with fibro are producing are just ... nope. This gives hope for treatment at some point, possibly (and I will talk bout that a bit later), but in the meantime, it's entirely likely that whatever wrong antibodies I'm producing are why my allergies have been so much worse the past few years.

Of course, the fact that the pollen count has been getting more and more insane the last few years is also likely down to climate change, and obviously there are way worse effects of climate change on the planet as a whole, but I feel well within my rights to get all pissed off about how it is affecting me right now, even if it is an objectively lesser issue. I mean, I also react way worse to heat and cold than I used to, so either way, with the weather being the way it is, I'm just shit out of luck all the way around.

And yes, there is hope that the study proving that fibromyalgia is autoimmune-related might provide hope for a treatment for those of us with fibromyalgia, so we don't have to deal with this. But ... I know the pharmaceutical industry. I've seen what it does and how it operates, from the point of view of various nations, and from multiple sides of the equation (hospitals, government health departments, patients both here and abroad), and I have a bad feeling that it'll never materialise. And there are a few reasons for this, and they're all ugly as hell.

First, there's the fact that while fibromyalgia is debilitating for those of us who have it, it's an invisible disability. We all know how invisible disabilities are treated by most people. Even those with the best of intentions can kind of fumble with understanding the condition. One of my friends asked me at one point why I needed a cane; what it did for me. I guess I get curiosity, but ... it can still feel like an accusation. Like I have to be this disabled to need a cane for any distances outside my own home, and I don't look or act this disabled so... Seriously, I think part of the worst issues with a chronic pain condition is that no one takes you seriously because you don't look in pain, and not seeing the sheer effort it takes to push past that pain because we can't spend our lives curled up in a ball screaming. Anyway, far too many people don't really get why it's that important when it's something they can't see.

Then... *sigh* Then there's the fact that it mostly affects women. Apparently about 1 person in 40 has it, and 80% are women. I honestly want to know where that stands with trans people - like, do more trans men have fibro than trans women, or the other way around? A study of that would be a good idea just to see whether hormones play a part. I also want to know how many men just aren't admitting it because "it's unmanly to whine about pain" or some shit. And how many aren't included in the study because they've been self-medicating with drugs or alcohol without a diagnosis, because apparently my grandmother had it and I figure a lot of her alcoholism was self-medicating back when she didn't even have a name for the condition and just ... hurt all the time. But ... see, all of this is the point. Like, we've done the study on the antibodies, but we haven't done further studies to get a better look at the rest of it. It's just been more or less pigeonholed as "mostly women get this". Medical research on AFAB people is ... lacking. So is treatment for most anything that causes them pain. We have a hard enough time getting any kind of diagnosis in the first place, because our pain is diminished in the eyes of the medical community. So we're told it's not as bad as we're making it out and we should just lose weight or get therapy for anxiety or whatever.

And finally, there's the whole deal where the pharmaceutical industry is way more invested in palliation than cure. Palliative treatment, you're on it for the rest of your life, probably on regularly increasing dosages, but a cure would mean not needing as much palliation. Fewer analgaesics sold, less money in the pockets of Big Pharma. And if not enough people have a condition, even the single regular palliative that would alleviate all symptoms isn't profitable enough for Big Pharma to bring to market. Anyone who's seen Leverage knows - and they toned the shit the Leverage crew were dealing with down from what exists in reality. It's honestly in Big Pharma's interests to have me on a variety of analgaesics, a pill that's technically an antidepressant but is used in the treatment of neuropathic pain (which does fuck all for my fibro because it's not a neuropathic condition like people thought it was, but does wonders for my migraines), and antihistamines all summer, instead of a single pill that actually makes me feel better. They don't want us to feel better; they want money. Even in this country, where we aren't paying half as much for prescriptions (though the price keeps going up by scary increments every year).

So ... yeah. This is currently a very, very bad season for me. I have reminders everywhere of how different my life is now. Effectively having Dragon Age as a franchise taken away from me because EA Bioware have chosen "the ARPG trend" over accessibility, when that franchise has been so important to me for so long, is more depressing than I can even put into words right now. The weather and the pollen is just making me even more miserable than I am at my usual baseline of "everything hurts". I am tired of hurting all the time. I am tired of being tired all the time. I am tired of the limitations under which I exist. And if there ever is a cure, or a truly functional treatment, it probably won't be in my lifetime and it'll be fought against tooth and nail because some rich assholes would rather have as much of my money as possible with very little to show for it instead of having my fucking life back. I'm trying to be strong and solid, because some of my friends aren't doing well either and I want to be there for them, but I'm so much running out of spoons.

Right. I'mma find something to cheer myself up, somehow. I was going to get through the finale of the Horizon Forbidden West base game, maybe kick off Burning Shores, but I figure that's a bad idea when my eyes are itching and watering the way they are right now. And I can't just shut the windows because we're getting into the mid-20s temperature-wise and it'll get too damn hot in here. Blegh. Fuck summer right in the ear.

[bluebelly-sun-serpentine]

If I could give any advice to instructors not included above, as someone with a lot of experience in UX design (I got my BA in an unrelated field quite late as a result of long-term health issues), it would be this:

• if using Canvas or some other online platform to present class materials to students (even, say, Google Drive, or Box) do what you can to reduce friction and create a clear but simple structure for the class site with your syllabus in an easily accessible place (don't make them click through a bunch of stuff to find this). This means:

• class materials (files, attachments, links) students might frequently reference should be in an easily accessible place, not under several submenus/through several hyperlinks. This is the most important guiding principle, and should be how you design not just your canvas site but also each module. A lot of instructors have the tendency to copy their own byzantine file structure straight into Canvas/whatever, and that's bad for you and bad for your students, because you will constantly be fielding stupid questions from students who can't find that thing because you've put it in the place that makes sense for your brain, rather than in the place that requires the least thought and fewest clicks for the most people. I once had an anthro prof upload our class materials into google drive, with each photo for morph studies in its own separate folder, within a folder, within a folder, within a folder (this was some matryushka shit, it just kept going), so you had to click in and out for each one rather than being able to view the collection in totality or slide through the photos, and if you had to step away or you got signed out it would take you forever to find the right photo again. You cannot do this shit to your students. They will not look, they will email you. Just because I drove myself to insanity finding everything on my own doesn't mean a 19 year old with a tiktok addiction is going to have the same dogged patience.

• Do not upload a poorly scanned reading that students have to rotate because every third page or so is upside down or otherwise oriented incorrectly. Do not upload readings so poorly scanned they are illegible. Just because I reformatted your PDF doesn't mean a 19 year old who has no idea what a file system is will do it. Gen Z got very little computer training. It's not their fault, and it's probably not yours, and I am sorry, but you will have to adjust. Fortunately, adjusting will also make your work more accessible to disabled or chronically ill students who do not have time for your bullshit for genuine pain and exhaustion reasons. I know you are trying to reduce the cost of class materials for students, but don't be surprised when students struggle to get through readings they have to first manually reformat in, like, Acrobat or something.

• if you have some kind of overarching formal expectations for certain assignments (how you want them to take notes, what style guide you expect them to use, etc.) do not wait for them to ask you. Make this clear in the syllabus or a doc linked in the syllabus.

• please for the love of god, if you are writing documentation/rubrics for technical assignments (and this goes for GSIs/RAs/TAs, too) clearly state your goddamn deliverables. Don't say do this step and this step and this step and then forget to tell your students what they need to upload and then be shocked when they email you "hey, do you want us to turn in a screenshot, or do you need it in this format, or are you looking for the data in a spreadsheet." It's not going to be self-evident, because, in fact, your standards are not the same standard every other instructor has, so your students cannot assume you want the assignment submitted in a specific format if they haven't been told a) what they need to demonstrate they've learned/completed and b) in what format that needs to be uploaded. CLEARLY STATE YOUR DELIVERABLES AND DUE DATE. You know, like, you could even have a section at the beginning or end of your unnecessarily long-winded and poorly formatted doc headed DELIVERABLES and that alone would probably help a lot. I promise you, you will have less contempt for your students than you currently think they deserve.

I was not 18-23 while doing my undergrad, so I had some sense of what was stupid 18-23 year old bullshit and what was you guys doing your jobs really poorly. Your students are annoying most often because they are young people and young people are annoying to anyone not basking in the glow of great knees and new sex, not because they are dumber or even that much lazier than you were as a young person. I was concerned about their timidity and lack of engagement at times, but I was also not that surprised by it, because the quality of the education I received did not at all times inspire confidence.

A lot of "do better" tweaks to your pedagogy will save you time and heartache. Your students will take you more seriously. Your end of year reviews will go better. You'll have more time for research, or art, or cat pics (IN THE LONG RUN). Sometimes you may think you are saving yourself time by making a student do something you should have done yourself (like properly formatting your PDF or clarifying deliverables for an assignment). You are making, what, somewhere between twelve and 300 students complete a task that could have been completed once, by you? Every extra student that has to do that work for you is a student who can fuck it up or misunderstand and send you a pointless email as a result. Do the task once.

A lot of this stuff isn't, IMO, just a result of the "crisis of adjunction." Tenured and tenure-track professors couldn't even be bothered to properly plan their classes and provide syllabi in the the first week (let alone day) of classes at the "world class" institution I attended.

I think it absolutely does have a lot to do with apps like Canvas, which it seems like instructors aren't taught to use in effective and standardized ways (causing confusion for students on the front end, but also frustration for instructors on the backish-end) but honestly, I think it just has a lot to do with contempt for the student body and the amount of time most instructors are spending on discourse on twitter (or bluesky, or threads, or tumblr or whatever) vs, you know, actually planning your classes. I literally follow you all joking about how you're procrastinating on your syllabi and and class planning in favor of doomscrolling and cat pics. You cannot hide from me.

My favorite instructor was a boomer lecturer who had all his modules up day 1 of class, super clear syllabi (took several of his classes), and actual expectations for his students. He'd never completed his Phd but had been teaching most of his professional life and he really wanted to make sure his students internalized things – in stark contrast to a number of profs who used endless easy Canvas quizzes as a way to pass as many students as possible. He had frustrations with his students (I later read for him and he advised on an honors thesis, so we got close and I was privy to some of them) but never contempt. He cared about his subject area, cared what students thought about it, was interested in disagreement, and wanted to make sure we'd be set up to use newly acquired skills independently in the future.

My least favorite were a team of Gen X tenured professors co-teaching a class they'd clearly devised as a soap-box for some poorly explored ideas they hadn't bothered to properly workshop into an actual class. These dudes were full-on winging it the entire semester (they had no idea what the readings for a majority of the semester were going to be, and they had vaguely "planned" several intense multi-day field trips w/ van travel during a pandemic but didn't set anything up for them until days in advance). They clearly thought their students – who, while young and naive, approached the hastily scraped together readings and field days with a lot more critical thought than the profs clearly had – were beneath them. These two men were frequently dismissive, defensive, and blasé during discussion. They really thought they were going to blow our minds just bloviating without any prep. You cannot do this. I don't care if you have a PhD; you are not smart enough for this, and your students will know it. The class did not return in any subsequent semesters (they got nuked in their end-of-semester feedback forms), but I had other experiences like this with tenured profs, interestingly mostly with white Gen X men (although I'm not sure if that's indicative of a wider trend, it seemed notable to me at the time).

Sometimes college professors like to hop on my posts lamenting the sorry state of syllabi these days and joke about how they haven't thought that far ahead in the course themselves, or talk about how they struggle to complete a schedule for their students.

With all due respect, that's your job. If you can't do your job, you should have a different job. If you need help, ask your colleagues or your department chair or *someone* because I know that professors aren't given a hell of a lot of education on how to educate, so you probably *need* help.

But every single time I make one of those posts I get anywhere from ten to thirty messages, replies, reblogs, and asks say "oh man, that's exactly why I had to drop out of school; I couldn't keep up with the assignments because I didn't know when they were due until the week they were due."

I have been a college student in three separate decades, and "not having a schedule of assignments in the syllabus" is new to my experience. That shit didn't fly in the 2000s or 2010s and I think it likely has to do with professors being overly reliant on apps.

AT A MINIMUM your syllabus should have:

Contact information (including preferred method of contact) for the professor

Office Hours

Grading Policy

Assignment schedule.

Your assignment schedule doesn't necessarily need to have the exact page numbers of every reading or a full assignment sheet for each project, but it should have things like:

December 1st - Major Project 3 second draft due December 9th - Quiz 10 December 12th - Major Project 3 final draft due December 15th - Final Exam

If you end up presenting a more thorough schedule with readings and homework later, that is acceptable to present a week or two into the semester but it is absolutely insane to me that students these days don't know what homework they're going to have to get done over Thanksgiving break during the first couple weeks of class.

If I had three professors at once who didn't give me a schedule, how on earth would I know if I was going to have to read three chapters of a novel, take a midterm and turn in two stats homework assignments, and complete a history research paper the same week that I'm planning to travel to see family? If I'm aware of this from the beginning of the semester I can make sure not to pick up extra shifts, or I can plan to leave a day later to accommodate the midterm, or I can start working on the paper early to complete it before the due date but if I don't know what's going to be due when, I'm going to have a big problem.

If you don't give your students a schedule you are communicating that you don't care about their schedule, and that you think it's their responsibility to contort their life (and their job, and their other classes) around your class, and honestly my advice to students in that situation is "drop in the first week and pick up another class". That's actually part of why I recommend signing up for one more class than you can really manage - if you get a professor whose class looks like it's going to be a disaster because they don't have a schedule, you can bail before the withdrawal period and get a refund for the class.

I'm only in one class this semester but the professor's response has fully dropped me into "Fuck it, I guess I'll fail" mode and I don't even know if I can pull myself out of my current D grade because I don't know how many assignments we have left in the semester.

This is a shitty way to run a class. If you can't do better than this, you shouldn't be running a class.

[madqueenalanna]

sorry i'm actually not done making 0 note posts rambling pepe silvia style about history tonight. i just watched a video of two doctors looking at historical medical devices and guessing what they're for, reacting to them, etc and like. it's bad enough that imo the average person has zero idea how the body, medicine, the healthcare system, hospitals etc works NOW but like. pre-google? pre-encyclopedia? pre-presumed literacy?

i mean, we make fun of ancient medicine but. imaging living in the first century ad. you were born with asthma. sometimes, maybe in certain seasons, maybe if you exercise, maybe for no discernible reason, you just. can't breathe. you're in the market buying produce and now you can't breathe. you're wheezing, gasping. your vision goes dark at the corners. you think you're about to die. and eventually it clears, and you're okay. you don't know what that was, what triggered it, what stopped it. wouldn't you look to religion, or miracle cures? wouldn't you give anything to not be oxygen starved?

let's go back a little further, bc times. you are a wealthy, well-connected roman noblewoman. you live a life of extreme privilege, with the best access to anything resembling healthcare. you give birth to twelve children. only three survive until adulthood. of those three, two are boys and one is a girl. you are alive to watch both boys be murdered. so you gave birth twelve times, and die as a mother of one. there are no words

go back even further. since we were classified as humans, half of everyone who has EVER lived– dating back tens of thousands of years– has died of malaria. not just massive outbreaks, not like the black death killing 1/3 of europe in the 14th century, but one half of EVERY HUMAN BEING WHO EVER LIVED died of malaria. malaria has plagued us since we were still australopithecus, or older. today, still, a thousand children die EVERY DAY of malaria. we came out with a vaccine just last year that, in combination with anti-mosquito measures, might reduce the malaria death toll by 90%. the death toll is 750,000 per year, still. how many thousands or millions of years we've walked this earth and every generation has had mothers crying and praying over their babies' fevers. who wouldn't pray? who wouldn't try anything?

i've read medieval midwifery texts. hundreds of years after those were written, a doctor noticed that births attended by midwives, instead of doctors fresh from the morgue, had much better survival rates for both mother and child. he realized that handwashing saved lives. he was so soundly mocked for this theory that he committed himself to an asylum and died there. that was the state of medicine? even washing your hands was an insult?

no x-rays to notice broken bones or clouded lungs. no antibiotics to treat stds, tooth root abscesses, garden variety infected cuts. no birth control to soften the pain of agonizing menstrual cycles, or to prevent more agonizing pregnancies. no prenatal care, no cesareans unless mom is dead. no chemotherapy to treat cancer, letting tumors grow and metastasize and cut off organ function. no anesthesia!! no opioids!! of course many places had some form of herbal pain control but it's not the same. cataract surgery, trepanation, episiotomy, and here's some beer or a stick to bite for the pain

i don't mean all this in the sense of like, people in the past were barbaric who didn't understand medicine. how could they? they had no imaging, they didn't know what germs were. some stuff was clearly batshit but medicine was so rudimentary for so many years that many eras were better off NOT calling a doctor when someone was ill. leeching, etc. i don't blame people for doing anything that might work, for trying anything, for begging the gods for relief. they had no way to know how to do anything else. it's just sad, mostly. we should be so much grateful than we are for the medicine we have

[sanchezdaniel]

Preserving the Flow: A Water Conservation Crusade

Definitions

Story: A description, either true or imagined, of a connected series of events.

Tales: A usually imaginative narrative of an event

Science Fiction: Genre of speculative fiction, which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology

Story

In 2050, Guayaquil’s freshwater sources finally succumbed to the consequences of our ignorance, leaving the city flooded in chaos among citizens begging to satiate their thirst. I’ve come up with possible solutions to carry out, yet they’d only work if I had implemented them before the disaster. Fortunately, a scientist friend of mine named Chris Armstrong had managed to build the first Time machine and called upon the president’s help to fulfill this mission. I was called and we placed the machine in the president’s office to appear directly in front of the past timeline’s president. 

With a deep breath, I activated the time machine, propelling me back to the year 2023, where the roots of the problem lay. In the past, Guayaquil was undergoing rapid urbanization and pollution, so freshwater sources were severely depleted.

Upon arriving in the past, we ran into the president.

President (2023): What is this? Who are you?!

Me (Daniel): We've come from the future to talk about the impending water crisis in Guayaquil.

President (2023): The future? That sounds rather unconventional… but please, share your insights.

Chris: In 2050, the city is facing a severe water scarcity problem, and we've traveled back to 2023 to propose innovative solutions. 

After showing him clear evidence, he decided to join in. Even so, the city was still unaware of the crisis that awaited, and convincing authorities to act was a battle. Nevertheless, with the help of local scientists and engineers, we got the work done.

We set up advanced water purification facilities, employing cutting-edge nanotechnology to make seawater potable and recycling wastewater. Rainwater harvesting systems were integrated into every building, reducing the dependency on freshwater sources. Moreover, public awareness campaigns taught the population to save water and its importance.

Despite the initial resistance, as the years passed, our endeavors bore fruit. Guayaquil transformed into a city where water waste was minimized, and the once-depleting freshwater sources began to recover.

Ultimately, the city of Guayaquil embraced these solutions, and when we returned to our timeline, water scarcity had been picking up and became a distant memory. The crisis that had loomed in 2050 had been averted. As I looked upon the thriving city, I knew that our actions in the past had created a brighter, more sustainable future for all, one where water flows abundantly and doesn't run out.

I generated this image using AI in Canva

References

Science Fiction. (2019, March 9). Google Arts and Culture. Retrieved October 17, 2023, from https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/science-fiction/m06n90?categoryid=topic

STORY | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary. (n.d.). Cambridge Dictionary. Retrieved October 17, 2023, from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/story

Tale Definition & Meaning. (2023, October 9). Merriam-Webster. Retrieved October 17, 2023, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tale

Video

[paige-from-my-book]

Instead of working on ANY of my WIP, I wrote another scene for this. Because this scene involves some specifics on effectively stabbing someone I went ahead and censored the body parts. I might get arrested for my google search history now, but hey if you don't have a sketchy google search history are you even a writer? Anyways, enjoy:

This is pathetic, Lena thinks to herself as she draws her hood up. Mugging. She’s reduced to a mugging gone wrong. When was the last time she’d mugged someone? Probably when she’d been dared to back in college by Mercy. This is so. Fucking. Beneath me. 

This woman was messing with every aspect of her life. She can barely sleep. Every hour of every day has been spent pulling every trick out of the book. To hell with anything subtle. What does she have to do to kill this woman? Nuke National City? 

She gets her knife ready. Just one to the *****, one to the ******, one last twisting blow to the ****, and she’d be out of there. As she casually struts through the street, that blonde hair comes into view. Now Lena just has to trail her until she gets to the right spot. Finally, she turns a corner to a darker street that doesn’t have as much foot traffic.

Lena starts to close the space between them. Just five feet away now. A few more strides will put her within striking distance. She’s never been this close to the woman. Weeks of watching her from afar, and she never realized how tall she is. Or how she smells like a crisp fall apple and clean linen. 

She shakes her head. No matter. Soon she’ll smell like dea–

When the knife connects to what should be the journalist’s side, Lena feels like she’s stabbing a rock wall. At least that’s the last thought she has before she goes through an actual wall. 

The woman had swung around after Lena tried to stab her, like she was startled, and the next thing she knew, Lena was surrounded by dust and could feel several contusions. Coughing and sputtering, trying desperately to catch her breath, she gets up and bolts. 

What the fuck just happened? She’d had a clear shot to the *****. The woman had basically close-lined her into the building. How had she gone through the wall like that?

“Hey, I’m so sorry! Are you okay?” the blonde calls after Lena as she scampers away. 

Am I okay? How are you okay?!?! Lena thinks as she darts away from the brand new, Luthor-sized hole in the wall.

Once she’s blended into the crowd again, she breathes more easily. That had been close. Finally, she gets back to her motel room and closes her eyes as she leans on the door, groaning. So many bruised ribs. Every breath hurts. She’s pretty sure she tore something in her shoulder. A look down at her legs tells her everything is in place, even if it doesn’t feel like it.

That’s when she realizes she’s still holding the knife. The one that had failed her. She holds it up, ready to chew out anything she could, even an inanimate object, but her breath catches in her throat. 

The knife is completely bent and folded in on itself. The blade isn’t dusty, meaning that whatever happened to it, happened before she’d been forced to Kool-Aid man through the wall. She had hit the exact right spot on her mark, but her mark was tougher than steel. 

Lena drops the knife and lets her head fall back against the door. 

“I need a fucking drink,” she announces to no one in particular.

Your assassin Au would be great if kara was still supergirl so the bullet just flies off or similarly lena misses because kara is so clumsy she moves last second. Or like "oh a penny" and ducks down as lena shoots. Either way lena is angry & confused

omg i love it. even better if this is a universe where she’s Kryptonian but hasn’t come out as Supergirl so lena has no idea why this girl is bulletproof and she’s determined to kill her. Cue her trying to kill Kara with a bazooka

[funkymbtifiction]

hello again, I’m the INTP who talked about work and you typed as 9w1 sp/so. I have some clarifications and questions if you don’t mind answering! [...] I relate heavily to enneagram 5, I never considered 9 until recently but I wanna ask some questions in regards to it for me to either consider it further or eliminate the possibility.

If you are seriously considering 5 vs 9, you should do research on object relations (Google it in conjunction with the Enneagram) and the different triads in general (5s are competency focused, 9s are anger based, etc). 9s are gut types and make decisions from 'the gut' -- which is to say they internalize things and decide what to do without over-thinking it. 5s are from the fear/head center, so they avoid things out of fear of being overwhelmed by them (by life, people, situations, etc), but they also use analysis as a strategy to avoid emotional entanglements and thus think 'too much.'

Both of them are doing repressed, but they think differently about it -- the 5 thinks if they had just one more book on this subject, they might finally be able to talk about it in a way that isn't inadequate. 5s are myopic deep-divers. They don't flit from topic to topic like a 7, they get interested in one or two things and dig deep into them, becoming experts for their own intellectual pleasure rather than for "sharing" -- it doesn't often occur to them TO share what they know until prompted or coaxed. There's an excellent movie about a 5 I recommend to you -- Where Did You Go, Bernadette? The main character is reclusive, avoidant, fearful, and minimizing all of her connections in a funny way that should be relatable to another 5 -- at one point in the movie, she is anxious about them as a family potentially having to sit with strangers on a cruise, and says if there are only four chairs at the little tables, they can pile their coats on the fourth chair to avoid anyone sitting with them! This exemplifies the 5's need to reduce outside influences through throwing up strong boundaries -- 5s have to learn to let those boundaries down, that them telling themselves they lack the energy for people is a lie they use to avoid engaging fully with life.

The 9, by contrast, isn't afraid of life so much as caught up in inertia -- that it seems like too much work to clear the confusion of their minds and set a specific trajectory for their life. Making firm decisions is hard for them, because it's easier for them to coast along and live a life of adaptation and non-resistance. They can get carried along by other people's agendas by being too accommodating. But their strategy is also to block out the outside world and avoid anything unpleasant to them, which means living in a kind of inner sanctum whose walls are built of "I don't like this so I'm going to ignore it."

The crux of it comes down to this -- a 9 ITP is going to think twice about telling someone their argument is crap, because doing so might get them told off and that would make them anxious, and they don't want to be anxious; a 5 is more concerned with logic itself, and is going to assert that argument is crap, not really caring whether it causes someone else to get upset, because the important thing here is the logical argument. Logic, to head types, outweighs potential conflict, which is why head types are pretty feisty most of the time.

I trust you know what to do with this information, and may even identify yourself by it, but I will address what you wrote anyway.

I don’t relate to being a pushover or not understanding myself. I don’t relate to avoiding conflict because I don’t want to severe relationships or have people mad at me, I genuinely couldn’t care less. I never agree to things because I feel like I can’t say no, I make sure everyone knows to use me as the last possible resort, I don’t want them to rely on or bother me.

That is more 5 than 9, yes (although a 9w8 can be pretty "don't bother me, get out of my face, I don't want to deal with you, and this is my opinion -- take it or leave it"; they are the more assertive and quarrelsome 9).

I relate to feeling anger as the first emotion when someone yells at me and it feels unfair, I feel my insides boiling and I might show aggression then withdraw.

This could fit with 5's line to 8, or 9w8... either one. 5s can move to 8 to assert themselves, but that drains their energy and they retreat to lick their wounds; a 9w8 blows up at people to establish a boundary that they haven't been enforcing sufficiently until now.

I understand and relate to using distractions to avoid what I need to be facing (I assumed its a 5’s line to 7) and I often delay decision making not to commit, until I’ve come up with several solutions then make it based on a gut feeling at the last possible second.

This could be 5 or 9. 9s also use distractions to avoid doing things (because the thing they are contemplating doing is an obligation or seems unpleasant or they're not sure about it). Making decisions at the last minute is more a P behavior in general.

I also relate to not having a purpose, I feel like life just happens to me.

I know 9s can be this way; I'm not sure about 5s.

I only really care about my interests and indulging in them, I want to know everything there is to know about what I like.

This isn't really type-specific, since anyone of any type can want to deep-dive into the things they love -- the difference might be that 20 years down the line, the 5 is still studying earthworms and other types have moved on.

[donnerpartyofone]

Almost everyone in the ophthalmologist's office was extremely sarcastic with me for some reason, about the fact that I was masked up, and what I was wearing, and the way I determined that I needed to see an ophthalmologist. I don't know why. One thing I learned is that when I go to a new doctor, or maybe any doctor, I should dress respectably. It's not important for me to make a point about my right to my bullshit aesthetic or whatever with someone whose mind is not going to be changed in any case, and who is possibly going to treat me like an even bigger idiot than I already am if I just "be myself". It's more practical for me to manipulate the doctor into seeing me as a Normal Person so they are more likely to assume that I've done due diligence and I have a good reason for my appointment. When this guy smirked and snorted and said "Oh so you just googled all this," obviously assuming that's all that happened, I really wanted to say,

"OK so my GP prescribed an asthma medication that gave me terrible panic attacks and also an insane rosacea flareup that wouldn't stop. So I went to a dermatologist and they prescribed me doxycycline, among other things. I called my GP and explained all this, plus the fact that I reduced my own asthma med dosage to stop the psychiatric event it kept causing, and she was like OK cool. And then after a month I started having these fucked up symptoms of something, one of which (intracranial hypertension) can lead to Blindness and Death. I looked up all the detailed information on doxycycline and found that the new and never-before-experienced problems I was having were both Rare and Serious side effects of the doxy. I tried to get in touch with my dermatologist and I couldn't get a call returned (I eventually got an appointment but it was too late to be relevant). Then I called my GP and she wasn't available, but her office told me to go to urgent care. I went to urgent care and they said it was OK to stop the drug, but they didn't seem very clear or well-informed, they were just like 'Uh I dunno, see an eye doctor,' so I was still worried. I then called my optometrist and that office was like 'We don't know about this shit, you should see an ophthalmologist,' and I asked if they had one they recommended but they never got back to me. So I just looked up whatever ophthalmologist I could see the fastest, and that's what I'm doing in your office, you fucking asshole."

But I know from various other experiences that there are times when it genuinely does not pay to stand up for yourself and say "You're wrong about me" and make your case and argue and argue until the other person is theoretically forced to admit that they were wrong and you are right. I've almost never won an argument like that in my life, but more than that, sometimes it is more important to stay focused and get the thing you actually legitimately need effectively and efficiently, even if it means putting up with someone's delusions and shitty attitude, instead of wasting a huge amount of time and energy by making things personal (even if you truly deserve an apology).

Anyway I was in that office for about 2.5 hours dealing with people's bad attitudes just to eventually hear that I'm probably fine, which I suspected but I REALLY didn't want to be wrong. And even though he was rude to me at first, I wound up liking the imaging technician. "I'm a Russian Jew," he told me. "In Russia, they call me a Jew. Here, they call me a Russian!" While he was looking at my files he goes, "Cute name!" I took the last name of my husband just because I like it better than my maiden name; my husband is a bit of a mutt and I don't think any of his source material is Russian, but it was still fun when the guy said, "The name means 'baby wolf'!" I tried looking this up later and I didn't find anything satisfying, my husband's last name has a very unusual and highly anglicized spelling, and it didn't seem very similar to the google results I got. But I found out some interesting things in the process, and I may just choose to go on believing that our name means Baby Wolf because why the hell not.

Someone needs to tell this doctor that every time he retests my blood pressure, it goes up a little bit, and on the 7th retry I might just stroke out in his office.

[sigmaleph]

@serinemolecule asked me for hot takes on this 2006 article on Argentinian food, which I am now reorganising into a proper post for y'all's consumption. you're welcome.

First of all: the titular thesis that you should eat two steaks a day. I am forced to clarify that as 'should's go you should eat zero steaks a day, but this is ethical rather dietary advice and I don't follow it as well as I should, so, y'know. I would engage with this on the level it was stated, but I actually have no opinion on it. Moving on...

Argentine beef really is extraordinary. Almost all of this has to do with how the cows are raised. There are no factory feedlots in Argentina; the animals still eat pampas grass their whole lives, in open pasture, and not the chicken droppings and feathers mixed with corn that pass for animal feed in the United States.

This is, as it happens, completely false. There absolutely is plenty of feedlot beef being eaten in Argentina, and this was also the case back when this article was written. There's grass-fed beef too, and maybe the writer structured their life around only eating those, but the claim that there are no feedlots is just not true.

if you let them make the call, you get a two-inch thick of meat[...]The Argentine steak stands alone, towering three inches over the plate,[...]This gorgeous specimen is called a lomito; it's a standard lunchtime steak, clearly so thin that the Argentines are embarrassed to send it out into the world without a protective wrapping of ham and cheese

I have no idea what their obsession with steak thickness is; meat exists at various levels of thick and thin to suit various tastes. If you like yours thick that's fine but quit the projecting, y'know.

As you might expect, vegetarians will have a somewhat rough time here. For most people in Argentina, a vegetarian is something you eat. One's diet will accordingly lean heavily on pastas, gnocchi, salads, and (for the less squeamish ) fish. Vegans will not survive in Argentina.

This is, unfortunately, true (well, hyperbole, but). Rinna had a rather bad time trying to find vegan food when fae came over for visits. The situation is improving slowly, at least.

The homemade cookies bought in the minimarket downstairs taste of steak. [picture of alfajores de maicena[

Jesus. Find somewhere better to buy your snacks.

It should be no surprise that the land of beef also has excellent milk and butter. The milk comes in plastic bags that would give any American marketing department a heart attack. They proudly advertise "GUARANTEED 100% BRUCELLOSIS AND HOOF-AND-MOUTH FREE". One brand even brags that its bacteria count never exceeds 100,000 per mL, and prints daily statistics to prove it (only 82,000 bacteria/mL on Monday! mmm!).

Are you under the impression American milk doesn't contain bacteria and that when it spoils it's because of the molecules' sheer willpower? Or do you just object to the reminder that they exist?

This menu is delicious, but with rare exceptions it is all you are going to get. People coming for more than a few weeks are advised to bring a discreet bottle of Tabasco sauce.

Eat at better restaurants.

With any order from the master menu comes the Bread Basket, which should be treated as you would treat a basket of wax fruit, that is, as a purely decorative ornament. It is considered bad form to actually eat anything from Bread Basket

What are you talking about. Do all your dining companions just suck, eat some bread.

Dulce de leche is a culinary cry for help. It says "save us, we are baffled and alone in the kitchen, we don't know what to do for dessert and we're going to boil condensed milk and sugar together until help arrives". This cloying dessert tar is so impossibly sweet that you wish you were ten years old again, just so you could actually enjoy it. It is everywhere. There is a special dulce de leche shelf in the supermarket dairy case, and the containers go up to a liter in size. Even the churros are stuffed with it - the churros, Montresor!

It is rare that I feel insulted for the sake of my country, but this? How dare you.

Yes, of course we fill churros with dulce de leche; the real question is why anyone doesn't, short of dietary restrictions. Finding out that people do otherwise was like learning that in other countries, "sandwich" just means two slices of bread. Live a little. Eat a real godsdamned churro.

I spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out how meals work in Argentina, and they remain a mystery to me. Dinner is clear enough: people tend to go to restaurants beginning at ten o'clock (for those with small children), with the main rush around eleven, and dinner is pretty much over at one or so in the morning. And breakfast - or rather, its absence - follows as a logical consequence of eating a steak the size of a beagle at midnight. But I have yet to figure out whether people eat some kind of meal in the afternoon, and if so, when.

At... noon? Like. We eat lunch. Usually somewhere around 12:00. I am eating lunch right now, and I have done so essentially every day of my life. This is just baffling.

I've come to think the culprit in the missing Argentine lunch scene is yerba mate.

how.

Where the ignorant foreigner may see just another kind of herbal tea (yerba mate is a very unassuming shrub that grows in the northern parts of the country) the Argentine sees a taste treat of unimaginable subtlety, and a tonic for all his problems. The Wikipedia article on proper mate preparation should give you a warning of the level of obsessiveness attainable here (the Urugayans are even worse). To the virgin palate, mate tastes like green tea mixed with grass clippings. The beverage is traditionally drunk out of a little gourd, through a metal straw called a bombilla, with hot (but not boiling!!) water poured into it (without wetting the surface!! clockwise!!) from a thermos.

Yeah, this is accurate. Well, not the clockwise part, never heard anyone complain about that and I can't imagine it mattering.

What distinguishes mate from coffee and tea is the social context - two or more people share a gourd, with a designated pourer in charge of refilling it with hot water after each turn. The ritual is low-fuss but indispensible. You can buy mate gourds and thermoses in any grocery store, and get your thermos filled with hot water at any convenience store or gas station, but you will never see mate served in restaurants or sold in little disposable paper gourds, to go. it's not that people refuse to drink mate alone - anyone working a solitary shift will have a gourd in hand - but that the concept of being served mate by someone who does not share it with you seems impossible.

This is also true. Attempts have been made to sell to-go mate but it's never very popular, the social ritual is important. Also unfortunately a disease vector, I haven't had any mate in a year and a half.

Mate aficionados will tell you that mate contains a special compound, mateine, that serves as a tonic and mild stimulant, promoting alertness without making it hard to sleep, reducing fatigue and appetite, helping the digestion and serving as a mild diuretic. Scientists will tell you that mateine bears a suspicious resemblance to a chemical called caffeine. Mate aficionados will then grow indignant, explaining that mateine is really a stereoisomer (mirror image) of caffeine, with different effects, which will in turn irritate the scientists, who will snap that caffeine doesn't have a chiral center, so it can't have a distinguishable mirror image, and why don't the mate aficionados just put a sock in it.

The first part of this is true; some people definitely think "mateine" is different from caffeine and it absolutely isn't. Never heard the stereoisomer claim before but googling it does confirm some people say so.

still have no idea what any of this has to do with lunch, though. I promise you nobody skips lunch because mate is just too filling.

The wine here is very good (something has to stand up to that steak), but Argentina has no liquor to call its own, relying on whiskies like Old Smuggler and the low-maintenance Don Juan cognac to carry the flag.

There's a fundamental omission from this list and it's called fernet.

Beer is ubiquitous and comes in a bewildering variety of sizes, although there is a skittishness about the full-on liter. Things level off at 970 mL. In my case, it means I end up drinking 1940 mL of beer as a kind of personal protest, and all is well with the world. To make up for the abundance of sizes, beer comes in only one variety, Quilmes, which inevitably comes served with a tripartite platter of snacks - nuts, salty cylinders, and aged potato chips.

I never had trouble buying beer by the litre, but I confess I never tried to do so in 2006 on account of being under 18 at the time.

Anyway, beer comes in a lot more varieties today, thankfully, because Quilmes sucks. I'll never be a beer person, but at least these days there's options I tolerate.

[original post]

[wolf-queer-discourse]

Adventures in Aphobia #3

My last two Adventures in Aphobia both took on similar flavors of eye-rolling at shameless, obvious bigotry to anyone willing to look or care. But today, I found a different type of aphobia, and I’m actually eager to talk about this one. Have a read of this first.

Look, the bar of respect for ace people is so low it’s all the way in hell, but I mean, to many people, especially allosexual people, they may look at this post and think, “No, this isn’t aphobia. The poster wasn’t blatantly cruel.” But what some fail to realize is that politeness can be the thinnest of veils over the ugliest of takes. Polite bigotry gaslights the victims into thinking they can’t be upset about this.

So what’s the deal with this post?

PARAGRAPH #1 starts off innocently enough, saying ace discourse wouldn’t exist if people recognized complex relationships to sex and relationships. Even taken on its own, I do not agree with this. Ace discourse ranges all the way from outright denial of asexual existence to the strong hatred for and exclusion of aces from the queer community. Nearly everyone recognizes people have complex relationships to sex...that...that doesn’t mean ace people won’t be discriminated against. In fact, it’s an argument aphobes use constantly to try and gaslight ace people into erasing themselves. Ace discourse comes from a lot of places, but at the end of the day, it all stems from people’s refusal to acknowledge ace people and their unique experiences. This poster absolutely does not get to say “IT’s CoMpLicAteD”, and expect ace people to just disappear. Honestly, it’d be better and more honest if they said “Lol, ace people should go fuck themselves and hop to the back of the line with everyone else.”

PARAGRAPH #2 and #3 are not very objectionable on their own. Everything said is true. Society has very complicated views on sex, and life happens to all people. The ugly part of this is that the poster is setting up an argument here in which they will hand wave ace people into the “everyone else” crowd and pretend as if we’re all just too similar and no labels should even exist.

This is literally what enby-phobes do. They say “Well, gender is COMPLICATED”, which is true, but then they say “So like...aren’t we all really nonbinary when we think about it? Why should enby people label themselves?” I swear we’ve all seen this. The poster is agender. This argument could easily be whipped in their face. Different forms of bigotry can share very clear overlaps, and it’s very important to acknowledge where these arguments come from and why they exist. It exists as a way to shut people up. It happens to bi people too! Every day, people come out as bi and someone tells them “pff, everyone thinks girls are hot. I had a crush on my best friend once, that doesn’t mean I’m not straight! All people are like this!” Let’s call out this erasure where we see it. It’s not the same thing, and if anyone saying stuff like this truly believes what they’re saying, maybe they’re the ones who need to reevaluate their own identity.

PARAGRAPH #4 dips its ugly toes straight into blatant aphobia, having the gall to call ace and aro people “obsessed” with pretending their relationships with sex and romance are wholly unique and different. Nah, fuck right off with that bullshit. The poster even goes on to say ace people have created entire new social classes. Uh...WHAT? Is there some secret ace society with a caste system living in the shadows?? What is this person talking about?? I suppose you can’t be a true bigot unless you have some vague grievance to weakly hand-gesture at that you couldn’t prove given 20 years to do so. For the love of my sanity, just say you hate ace people! It’s okay! (I mean, not actually, but Jesus Christ does it save us all some time). They also say things like “somehow excluded from”. Replace asexual people with nonbinary people and take a joyride through this section, because the arguments are scarily similar. What would it take for this poster to acknowledge ace and aro people have their own experiences? Seriously, what? What holds you back from doing this?

It’s also funny to note the actual lack of substance to this argument. The poster is not giving any specific examples or even bringing up what being ace and aro mean. Yes, there is a pretty noticeable difference between feeling sexual attraction and not feeling sexual attraction. How many “allo” people do you know that say they’ve NEVER experienced this? Come on. The poster reduces asexuality and aromanticism down to allo people’s, in their own words, hyper-specific contexts where they don’t want sex or love. At least the poster admits any circumstance that allo people are comparable to ace people are extremely specific. But for real, are we hinging a whole argument on a few very specific examples of allo people having some similarity to ace people?

“Nothing about your relationship to sex or love makes you more or less LGBT. If you are gay and don’t want to have sex, ever, you are still gay. “

Mini strawman alert for the idea any ace person thinks you’re less gay if you’re also ace. And bonus points for an aphobe who refuses to use the definition of asexuality: not experiencing sexual attraction, and instead goes for “don’t want to have sex”. For the last. Fucking. Time. Not wanting to have sex and being asexual are NOT the same. Don’t make me pour gasoline in my eyes every time I see this.

After this, the poster goes on a tangent, which by the tone, seems to think it's very inspiring, and says no matter how you want to have sex (including only certain days of the week), you’re still straight! It’s so fucking condescending and gross to talk ace people out of their own identity like this.

“EVERY person who is heterosexual is different in how they perform or experience.”

Oh. My. GOD. THEY DIDN’T EVEN SAY STRAIGHT. THEY SAID HETEROSEXUAL. WUGGYUEGYUG. God help me. Can one be both bisexual and heterosexual? No…? Okay. So then. How is one both asexual AND heterosexual? What single brain cell in this poster’s head was responsible for this Chad of a sentence? I—

*deep breath* 

So. It’s interesting how the poster says “perform or experience it”. Asexuality is an identity. It is not a performance, and it is not defined by your actions. A straight person not having sex does not become asexual. And sure...people with the same label can experience their sexuality differently, but...to a point, guys. You can’t experience your sexuality out of the DEFINITION of the label. Heterosexual: Sexual attraction to the opposite gender. Asexual: Sexual attraction to no one. If a “heterosexual” isn’t sexually attracted to anyone, they are by definition, not heterosexual. It takes insane mental gymnastics to make this argument, so A for flexibility, I guess? 

“Gayness, straightness, and bisexuality are not defined by HOW you do or don’t want sex or HOW you do or don’t want to date, it’s just defined by WHO you want to be with.”

The first part of the sentence is correct, but it also defeats this person’s entire argument. Ace people AGREE with this. Being asexual is not the act of not having sex!! It’s not experiencing sexual attraction! You can google this! The second part of the sentence is mostly correct, depending on your interpretation. The issue is in part with the words the poster used: gayness, straightness and bisexuality. These words are not all equivalents. Gay could refer to sexual and or romantic orientation. Thus an ace gay person. Straightness is not actually an equal word to gayness. This is because straight is an exclusive term for a normative sexuality (in society’s eyes) in terms of sexual and romantic attraction. Some ace people DO call themselves straight, though it’s inaccurate. Ace people can be heteroromantic, but because being straight is so exclusive, you need to be both sexually AND romantically attracted to only the opposite gender.

The post basically ends telling ace people they’re all actually straight and were just confused the whole time. Lovely. And an erasure of gay aces too! Believe it or not, gay ace people do not like having their ace identities erased. Who’d have guessed?

Honestly, if anything this post is just kind of sad. A sad reflection of what people believe and how they truly do not see their own bigotry. They believe they’re freeing ace people from an incorrect label. They’re the heroes.

They’ll say “it’s okay, you’re not asexual” as if they've like...lifted a burden off of ace people. Like, “Oh, you think I’m not asexual? Cool, cool. Glad you cleared that up for me!” It’s sad how aphobes think, some very genuinely, that asexuality is just some high school party that went off the rails, and we’re all just coming out of the drunken haze, ready to go home. Ready to all laugh about it later, tease one another about how wild and silly it all was. 

Having your identity erased like this is fucking horrible, and I hope people like this can take a look in the mirror and see themselves clearly. All ace and aro people have a right to their identity, whether gay, bi, heteroromantic or anything else. End of story.

[financialtranslation]

The Art of Financial Translation Services

Working for a bustling translation organization, I have had the honor of working with a wide assortment of clients and clients, all with different necessities and prerequisites. Throughout a normal day, it would be reasonable to say that no two tasks are ever something similar. One region where we truly do get a lot of solicitations is in the field of financial translation. Financial translation alludes to the wide region involving the translation of financial archives. This can differ from the translation of financial reports, to specialized agreements tracked down within financial records through to succeed calculation sheets detailing an organization's benefit and misfortune information. It's a help that the two individuals and associations might require. Large associations that are looking to have portrayal in an unfamiliar market might have to have the financial reports of a potential obtaining deciphered; comparatively an individual might require their own financial subtleties deciphered assuming that they are looking to move or make a huge buy in a non-local country.

Like all fields of translation, precision of the Financial Translation in Dubai is extraordinarily upgraded by the utilization of a primary language linguist who has abilities, experience in the financial industry. Normally, a decent financial interpreter will hold some type of financial/business capability like a MBA, bookkeeping capabilities or consultancy capabilities. Prior to choosing your financial administrations translation supplier, as in all fields of translation, there are various variables to consider. This article takes a gander at the issues that can influence your decision of provider and things to think about before placing work with them.

Frequently, financial translations involve material that is of a private and classified nature. The material might be expected for distribution on a set date, however earlier delivery is prohibited. It is essentially significant then, while determining who to use as you translation provider, that the provider you pick can satisfy any prerequisites you have regarding classification and non-exposure. Using an organization instead of an individual interpreter might be of advantage here. Organizations commonly approach various providers and can deal with numerous archives. They are probably going to have secretly arrangements currently set up with every one of their providers that administer the divulgence of the work and thusly you would just have to give one privacy consent to the whole undertaking - among you and the organization. The other clear advantage of using is an organization is the capacity of the organization to deal with different reports into various dialects.

Assuming your records have a ton of rehashed text all through them or you have provisions (like in agreements) that you really want to have rehashed at explicit intervals within in your financial reports, it merits finding out assuming your proposed provider can deal with translation memory. Translation memory (TM) is a product application process that will search for duplication in your record and brief the interpreter to reuse this copy text when and where required. One of the enormous advantages of using TM is that it assists with the consistency of your report as well as possibly reducing the general expense of the undertaking.

As well as using translation memory it would likewise merit investigating in the event that your proposed providers approach pertinent financial dictionaries. The financial industry utilizes numerous intricate terms, erroneous date and expressions that are not broadly utilized external the industry. It is accordingly fundamentally vital that the interpreters undertaking your task are mindful of this terminology, however approach the assets that explain what they mean. Just Googling a particular terms is much of the time sufficiently not to get the necessary definition, and a decent interpreter will approach a great many dictionaries intended for their subject matters.

One more key thought previously outlined toward the beginning of this piece is the utilization of talented interpreters. Proficient interpreters will frequently spend significant time in one explicit region, and a gifted interpreter won't just have language capabilities, yet in addition a capability in their subject matter. As portrayed, a common capability for a financial interpreter can include a MBA or bookkeeping capability. Preceding choosing your translation supplier it would merit consulting with them to find out what average capabilities their financial interpreters hold.

As referenced above, in the event that your task is genuinely extensive it would merit considering the utilization of an organization in inclination to an individual interpreter. It is possible that your undertaking is expected in various dialects or the result is required in a particular document type, for example, print prepared or XML. Here an organization is probably going to enjoy the benefit with regards to its admittance to assets, normally being ready to deal with different dialects in numerous documents types. It would merit confirming that your chose language supplier can deal with explicit document types and has the assets in house to have the option to yield into the ideal arrangement.

For individuals who need to have financial documentation deciphered for legal/compliancy reasons, I generally suggest confirming the extent of the necessities with the body that have mentioned the translations. For instance on the off chance that you are looking to emigrate to an outside nation and a piece of the application cycle specifies you really want to have bank explanations interpreted, it merits confirming the amount of the assertions are required (e.g., all figures contained within the report or simply the text). It could be that as well as translation your archives require rekeying and certificate, all of which can add to the general expense of the task.

Financial translation is a wide region within the translation industry and when done well is performed by an expert financial language master. Finding the right provider who can satisfy your necessities is vital and as delineated above before sourcing a reasonable provider it merits confirming the extent of your prerequisites and the reasonableness of the proposed provider to match these necessities.

[kaylans-imagines]

trois: al dente

synopsis: Realising him, his daughter, and his housemates couldn’t live off fast food forever, Tom Holland joins a cooking class.

pairing: single dad! Tom Holland x single mum! reader

warnings: fluff, angst, no-no words, and absolute cuteness from one Miss Autumn Diana Holland and one Mister Lucas Peter Y/L/N.

an: I just want to thank you guys again for the love you have shown this series. it means the world to me. 

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al dente: cooked so it's still tough when bitten, often referring to pasta

meal: lasagne 

Tom had the best luck. He just had to run into Y/N when he looked ‘horrendous’ as Harry so kindly put it. He had been tasked with getting the groceries while his best mates did the cleaning, which was very much long overdue. Not wanting his young and impressionable daughter, with a knack for repeating words she overhead, Tom brought her along. She had asked him questions on the car ride to Tesco’s. He had given her the warning he always gave her to behave, not that he needed to, she was his perfect princess, and unstrapped her from her seat. 

He was given a list of things they needed for the house, most of it was nonsense, and he wouldn’t get them at all, but he figured he would humour them and get kid-friendly alternates. Setting Autumn into the trolley, he started his walk around the supermarket. Autumn hummed a tune from a show she was obsessed with and would often point out things that caught her attention. He was having a great time, listening to Autumn babble on about what happened at nursery and what Gretchen and Holly did to get in trouble, until he, quite literally, bumped into a familiar woman. Apologies spilt from his mouth before he saw who he bumped into. A familiar giggle stopped his rambling and caused him to look up, making eye contact with gorgeous glowing eyes. 

“Oh, God. Y/N, what are you doing here? That was a stupid question, you’re clearly shopping, I am so sorry,” he apologised before he smiled at her. She brushed him off and smiled, her eyes moving from his face towards the small little girl who sported a cheeky smile, her honey eyes wide and laced with amusement. She thrust her tiny hand towards her and motioned for the older woman to take it. 

“‘M Autumn, but daddy calls me Burrito. Who are you?” her bluntness caused a giggle to slip from Y/N’s lips and Tom to snap his head up to look at her in embarrassment. First, he bumps into her in the cereal aisle and now his three-year-old quite sassily asked her who she was. Sometimes he wished she didn’t know how to speak as well as she did. 

“It’s nice to meet you, Autumn, I’m Y/N. Is this your daddy?” She asked, pointing at Tom with her thumb. Tom was never going to be ashamed of Autumn; she was his pride and joy. The apple of his eyes, the reason he lives, etc., but he silently wished his daughter said no to her question. He hadn’t gathered up the courage to ask Y/N on a date, and he didn’t want to ruin any chances because she found out he had a daughter before he could tell her. He wanted at least one date with her before dropping the bomb that he was a single father and having her ghost him. 

Autumn nodded with a proud smile, her toothy smile wide as she smiled at her father. Tom’s heart swelled at the thought of his daughter being proud of him. Y/N chuckled and opened her mouth to respond before a small body barreled into her leg, holding a box of Jaffa cakes. Y/N nodded her head towards the little boy and laughed as she watched him run towards their trolley and place them in it ever so gently before he wandered the length of the aisle in search of the cereal he wanted. Y/N motioned for him to come back and grabbed ahold of his small hand. 

“Luca, this is Tom and his daughter Autumn, they’re mummy’s friends, can you say hi?” she said slowly while signing it out with her hands. The small boy, who couldn’t be older than six, nodded his head before turning to his mother’s friends. Using his fingers and talking lowly, he introduced himself to the older man and his wife. 

“Hi, my name is Lucas,” he signed with a smile. At that moment, Tom was thankful for briefly considering teaching his daughter sign language when she was a baby. Of course, he couldn’t do so, since he had a fish’s attention span, but he had googled phrases when he was researching it. He was able to catch the phrase and introduced himself with ease. The little boy’s eyes lit up; he wasn’t used to someone making an effort to communicate with him, except for his mother, family, and one school friend. Y/N’s heart swelled as she watched her cute student use his fingers to reply to her son. Every guy she had ever dated or considered dating had all but left when they found out she had son, and the ones who stayed, left when they found out he was deaf. 

“Daddy, why is he using his fingers?” Autumn whispered. Once again mortified at his daughter’s bluntness, her father sent Y/N an apologetic smile before he turned to his daughter. He explained it to her in terms she would understand, she nodded along and turned to her newfound friend with a smile. She threw up her fingers and waved them around, much to Lucas’ confusion and the amusement of his mother. Y/N explained to her son that she was merely trying to say hello but that she didn’t know his language. Autumn, getting frustrated at not interacting with her new friend, motioned for her father to take her out of the trolley and place her on the ground. Tom set her down and watched with pride as his daughter hugged the boy. 

“Uh, we should get going. It was nice to see you outside of class, Tom,” Y/N said shyly. She didn’t want to leave, but she figured that if she stayed any longer and watched Tom interact with her son, and make an effort to communicate with him with Lucas in his comfort zone, she would surely fall in love with him. And his daughter, she was so much like Tom. She was kind and welcoming; she would surely want to claim her as her own but figured that a handsome, made man like Tom, definitely had a wife he kept from the public. She knew he had a daughter, but his relationship status was never discussed on the internet. And she never spent too long on the internet unless it was to research ways to make Lucas’ life as comfortable as possible and the pros and cons of a cochlear implant as of recently. 

Tom was distraught knowing she had a son, not because it was a turn off, but because it likely meant she was in a relationship. And an established one too seeing as her son was no older than six. With a sigh, he agreed and bid his goodbye, quickly getting a box of cereal and leaving the aisle with his three year old happily babbling behind him. She cleared her throat and sent him a weary smile after he stopped and looked at her. 

“Sorry, it’s just, you took my trolley,” as if he couldn’t be more embarrassed. First, he shows up to the supermarket looking less than ideal with two different socks, and an old t-shirt with spit up on it from when Autumn was a baby, then he asks her what she’s doing at a grocery store like a knob, and now, he just has to take her groceries. He just couldn’t catch a break. Sheepishly, he apologised and handed her back her trolley, once again dashing away. Y/N chuckled from her spot before turning towards her son who stared at her with wide hazel eyes under his red glasses.

“Mummy, was that the cute man you told Auntie about?” Lucas signed prompting Y/N to blush, but nodded nonetheless. What kind of mother would be if she lied to her son about a small crush. She asked him what cereal he wanted, effectively changing the topic. He ran off towards the aisle and followed after the small boy, stopping when he held up a box of Frosties. She allowed him to put it in the trolley before they continued on with their shopping. 

Tom had to bribe his daughter pack of Smarties for her to stop laughing at his misfortune, and a box of chocolate biscuits in order for her not to tell her Uncles. He needed to reduce the time she spent with Tuwaine and Harry, they were corrupting his daughter. Autumn sat in her car seat happily munching on her smarties while Tom drove, still reeling at the way he behaved around her, and about how he was smitten with a woman who probably had a family. Autumn still giggled from her carseat from time to time when she remembered how her acted in front of the pretty chef. He would resort to sending her playful glares and threatening to cut her tea time with her nana. 

Calling for the boys to help them unload the groceries, he shuffled inside with Autumn hot on his heels. Helping out by carrying her bag of snacks, she ran towards her bedroom while calling for her uncles to help her dad. Tom rolled his eyes but chuckled. Harrison was the first one out followed by Tuwaine and Harry who all complained about helping, but did it nonetheless. Between the three man, they got the bags inside quickly and left Tom to unpack everything while they searched for Autumn, to undoubtedly wreak havoc in their home. 

Harry came into the kitchen when Tom restocked their fridge and looked at his older brother with giddiness. Tom sent him a questioning glance before turning back towards the fridge causing his younger brother to throw one of Autumn’s toys at him. Tom turned around with offence laced in his eyes and flicked his brother off simultaneously rubbing the sore spot on his head. 

“That was payback for hitting me on the head,” he deadpanned before walking towards him, phone open and ready, “and it was also to get your attention. She followed me back, I figured you might want to you know, do your research on her.” Tom stared at his brother incredoulsly and reached out for the phone only to stop himself. Did he really want to stalk someone, a woman at that, that he had no chance with anymore? Did he want to be as shameless as his younger brother? 

Shaking his head, he softly pushed his phone away from his face before turning back to his groceries; not wanting to be tempted with the offer. Harry snorted before sitting back down and started scrolling on his phone. Tom figured that was the end of his brother’s tampering until he cleared his throat dramatically and started describing his posts to him. 

“And in this one, she’s in France with a cute baby on her hip and they’re in front of the Eiffel Tower. Her caption says,” he proceeded to raise his voice a few octaves and mimicked her voice, even though they had never spoken before, “decided to spend my boy’s first birthday in the city of Love!” Tom rolled his eyes at his brothers exaggerated voice and failed to catch the way his eyes widened the more he scrolled on her page as he now placed groceries in the cupboard. 

“I didn’t know she had a kid,” Harry said, Tom only ignored him, “but I think she’s single, she posted a picture of them together on his recent birthday and said that he was the only love of her life.” 

Tom couldn’t help but feel better at this revelation but he couldn’t know for sure until he found someway to interject it in conversation, or until Harrison does it for him. He really needed to get his act together and talk to her without making himself look like a fool. Harry continued to scroll aimlessly before he cursed and mumbled on about how he liked a picture from two years ago. Tom laughed and left the kitchen, leaving his brother alone in his debacle. Maybe that would teach him to stop stalking people. 

The next class came quickly and once again, he dragged Harrison with him. The blond had no complaints this time around, seeing as his date with the raven haired girl went well and he was going to see her once again. He pulled into the car park and noticed the familiar red car pulling into a spot close to his. Tom watched as she struggled with the supplies in her hand and with her bags and quickly jumped out after turning off the engine. Forgetting about his friend, he locked the door and rushed to offer her his help. With a grateful smile, she allowed for him to carry some of her belongings into the class. They shared pleasantries and talked, both of them ignoring what happened at Tesco’s. They would remain friends even if they couldn’t be together. 

Tom settled down in his seat and pulled out his phone, his eyes widening when he saw Harrison’s very angry messages. He snorted before excusing himself and walking back towards his car, making eye contact with Harrison who flipped him off. He unlocked the door and braced himself for the inevitable hurt the blue eyed man was about to inflict on him. After a rather harsh punch and even harsher words, the two walked back into the classroom and took their spots, flushing under the weight of everyone’s eyes. 

Y/N started her class after the entered the room and walked around after she passed around the recipe papers to them. Harrison and Tom looked at the sheet in confusion, she had never taught this way, she always demonstrated. The two looked around the room and watched as everyone else had started following the recipe, moving about their areas and puting things together. Their eyes widened as they read over the instructions once again. Re-reading a recipe at home after having made the food was one thing, but making food without doing it once was another. They swallowed and pushed down the feeling of doom they were both feeling. 

After nearly smacking Harrison with one of the lasagne noodles and then almost getting sauce on his shoes, they worked on making the food together. Y/N had stopped by occasionally to help them out, and to put out a small grease fire, but left them to their own devices as she continued to walk around. Swallowing his pride, Harrison called for her and asked for her help which she happily gave. She demonstrated how to cut vegetables, how to grate the cheese, and even taught them a new phrase. 

“Al dente; it’s how we refer to pasta when it’s hard but still cooked, which is what we want to do with the lasagne noodles,” she explained softly. Harrison paid attention to her demonstration while Tom focused on her and the way her eyes danced in delight as she explained and her tone was light when she answered any questions they had. With her help, they placed the lasagne in the oven and high fived as they finished without starting a fire or getting into a fight. They thanked her to which she nodded and left them to their devices while they waited. She had instructed the class to get ahead of the cleaning process and do so while they waited so they could leave early. 

Part of Tom didn’t want to leave early, but he knew he would have to. So together, they cleaned up their area and waited for their food to finish cooking. They finished quickly and Harrison ditched him for Violet, the raven haired girl he went on a date with, leaving Tom to pass the time on his phone. A tap on his shoulder brought him out of his scrolling. He looked up and met soft eyes and a warm smile. Y/N.

“I saw Harrison leave you for Violet, figured I would keep you company,” she paused, a panicked look in her eyes, “only if that’s okay with you of course.” Tom nodded and placed his phone down, gesturing for her to take a seat beside him. She thanked him and settled down.

“Your daughter is adorable,” she commented as she watched his screen light up with a message from his mum, his phone screen on display. It was a picture of the three year old at one of his premiers, smiling her toothy smile at the photographers. Tom thanked her and agreed with a fond smile. Autumn was adorable.

“Your son is cute,” he said, causing her to smile, “you and your boyfriend must be happy.” 

“Oh, no boyfriend, just me and Luca,” she informed him, “what about you? You and your partner must be ecstatic to have such a charming little girl running around.” 

“If you’re referring to Harrison, I can assure you we are more than okay with seeing other people, preferably of the opposite gender,” he joked. She laughed and looked at him intently.

“So, there’s no Missus?” she inquired, Tom shook his head. She smiled at his response and opened her mouth to reply before the sound of alarms going off interrupted her. She stood up and instructed everyone to take their dishes out of the oven and check their food, making sure the noodles were soft and easy to cut into. She went around offering everyone the lid to the containers the lasagne was in and helped those who needed, close them. 

Tom handed their container and the keys to the car to Harrison rather roughly and pushed him out the door before walking towards Y/N and clearing his throat, fiddling with his fingers. She sent him a questioning look and rose an eyebrow, waiting for him to talk. 

“Uh, I just wanted to invite you and Lucas to Autumn’s birthday,” no he didn’t, he was fully intending on asking her on a date, “it’s on Saturday. It’s okay if you can’t or simply don’t want to but I think-” 

“We would love to come. Here, you can text me the address, and Luca and I will be there. How old is she turning?” She asked and handed him her phone. He typed in his phone number and smiled at the picture she had set her wallpaper as. It was of her and Lucas, smiling at the camera. Lucas had cake frosting smeared on his face and on his hands which he was placing on her cheek. 

“Four,” she didn’t turn four for another month. Now he had to throw together a quick birthday party and lie to his daughter. All because he couldn’t ask the pretty chef out on a date.

“We’ll be there,” she said, Tom nodded and walked out of the room slowly, until she called his name, “text me. It doesn’t have to be about the party.” She winked and Tom blushed. 

He walked towards the car with a spring in his step and his head in the clouds. He didn’t ask her on a date, but he got her number and she told him to text her. That was better than nothing. Now all he needed to do was throw an impromptu birthday party for his daughter. 

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[spaacegaays]

ghosts (bbc) // season 1 // sentence starters

episode 1: who do you think you are?

“Well, there are worse ways to go.” “What's going on? All I can see is shoes.” “I wouldn't want to live here either.” “Do you know what an owl sounds like?” “The garden view comes with the screaming woman.” “Oh, for heaven's sake. Throw yourself out of your own damned window.” “Maybe try jumping out of the window before bed, get it out of the way.” “Staying hush whilst falling from a height? Tush and flops.” “Look at her. She's exposing her knees and she's got a tattoo.” “Kill them.” “I'd rather kill them.” “I couldn't get any water in the kitchen and I couldn't find the other kitchen, so I ended up using the garden tap, and then there's no electric in the kitchen, so I found a plug that works in the library. I don't know if the water's drinkable, but I boiled it twice.” “Tis a most noxious stink.” “I found a guide on how to tame an eagle.” “She spoke to me! She spoke to me! She saw me! She spoke to me!”

episode 2: gorilla war

“Well, that seems pretty conclusive.” “What sort of heathen just barges in on a lady while she's sleeping?” “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” “Clearly this changes things.” “Well, conversing with the dead be witchcraft. People been burned at the stake for less.” “[Pronoun] may give ear to my overtures, but alas [pronoun] is yet to respond. “I don’t think that’s a word.” “What’s wrong with a nice ‘hello’?” “You couldn’t negotiate your way out of a corn maze.” “Looks like some idiot’s taken a hammer to it.” “If you were dead, I would thrash your bottom.” “A lady does not hold a carrot like that.” “I’m too bold, forgive me. Accurse my impetuous loins!” “I’ll wait for you, my comely nug.” “Well, there’s only one thing for it, isn’t there?” “Who you gonna call?” “I just wanted to say hello!” “So you just spent— You just spent the last three days hiding in every little tiny little dark corner in this entire house, scaring me out of my mind, for no reason?!” “Okay, so I’ve just googled ‘psychotic break’ and I’m not saying that this is one but this is an article that I think you should have a look at.”

episode 3: happy death day

“I'm panicking. Right.” “You don't want to see this in your dreams.” “Oh, yes, very good, ______. We'll just sigh at them.” “Oh, it’s far more complicated than that, damn your eyes.” “You don't know what I'm talking about, do you?” “We're burning through money quicker than actually burning money.” “Well, I mean, there's being nice, that's one thing, but that's just weird nice.” “I just wanted to lighten the mood, and it hasn't worked. Sorry.” “Anyone dead in here?” “Don’t worry, it’s only a matter of time.” “Stop sneaking up on me!” “You know nothing of poetry!” “Of course I'm not going to kill your wife, ______, that’s a terrible idea!” “Do you mock me, sir?” “That one be Lucifer's lackey for sure.” “I also saw a goose.”

episode 4: free pass

“They sounds like tiny people.” “Cornflakes were actually invented to stop people from touching themselves, apparently.” “I never did like cornflakes.” “Sorry! Got carried away!” “When I have control of the hands, I am going to punch you so hard.” “Is this meant to be 1820s? Those are Rococo chairs and tables. You can tell by the legs; they’re Rococo legs.” “A pox on all of them apart from ______.” “I have a lot of dreams, and most of them are about [women], apart from the one where I have the body of a crab and I cannot hold my pen.” “You are on a sinful path.” “Bigger boy made me do it.” “It’s back to boredom I suppose.”

episode 5: moonah ston

“Me speak good.” “I don’t want them thinking that we're the sort of that people that we are.” “I don't think it means what you think it means.” “What do posh people wear?” “Sorry, I just need to go and have a word with myself.” “Bright as thine eyes, round as thine eyes, yet too far apart, like thine— No, I don’t mean your eyes, I mean—” “I’m having a dinner party which should be clear from the fact that I’m having a dinner party.” “Well, he held his hand out. What was I supposed to do? Not shake it?” “If someone puts their hand out, I always shake it.” “Yeah, I’ve got to be honest, I don’t know what ‘reduced’ means.” “This place is weird.” “I mean, I didn't like that pigeon, but that is no way to go.” “Ugh! Could that BE any more vexing?” “Pray tell, how you doing?”

episode 6: getting out

“Bum.” “You’ve become worse and worse and I’ve had enough to be actually honest.” “This isn’t the army. Sir.” “It's perfectly absurd to dip individual pieces of bread when one can hold a full slice in one's hand!” “It's not about the cheese! It's about the fun!” “I don't suppose you could move me away from this large hole?” “We are having a little break from each other, actually.” “You're not there any more, are you?” “She’s a witch, and I should know.” “Why are you here?” “It might be a plague pit but it’s our plague pit.” “When you first came here, I thought you were a prostitute.” “This isn’t how normal people live.” “Actually, I don’t do anything wrong, do I?” “Come to gloat, have you?” “The question is, what do you care about more? Keeping ______ here, or letting [pronoun] be happy?” “I’d hug you if I could.” “I need to get out of here immediately.” “Hang on, you made me do something horrible.” “You are beautiful when you’re sad.”

[g3nosarchive]

i've noticed a bunch of people are still trying to argue w me over the aave links and stuff i had in the beginning of that post, and in general still confused when i, or others say, don't use aave if you aren't black.

before i start here are some links for y'all who ignore these type of posts

a tumblr post i found that does a great job of explaining

another list of aave

powerpoint on understanding what aave is

regarding that post i linked of a twitter thread with black users calling some aave words slurs - i know it's sarcasm/ satire. no those words are not slurs (w the way tiktok and twitter ran them through the mud they might as well be) but they are aave words. if the post isn't serious enough for you, there's a good 3 links w a lot of information that could help you instead right above it. stop dming me / sending me asks on it and check the original post where i even added an explanation. the rest is going under a cut

1. if you're a foreigner (to america) i'm not expecting you to know not to use aave because you weren't born over here and you might think it's just slang or an informal way of speaking. it is not. aave is more than a dialect - it's actually considered a language and has been around for centuries. thinking of it as merely informal language is erasing the history behind it and adding to the stereotype that black people who speak differently are dumb and uneducated (and that black people who speak "white" or formally are not black enough).

grammatically, aave is correct (there's many studies and articles on this), and like any other language it has it's own rules to follow. regardless of whether you can use aave correctly or not though, now that you do know you have to make an effort to reduce/ stop your use of it. ask yourself, why do you use aave? in what situations do you use aave? what message are you trying to give by using aave? how are you trying to portray yourself by using these words?

if you are using aave to come off as aggressive, cool, hyper-masculine, to apply pressure, when you are angry or have lost control of your emotion, or when you want to scare someone, that in itself is a micro-aggression and prejudice (a step away from racism tbh).

what you are saying is that you have some deep-seated stereotype/prejudicial thought in you - black people only come off as that aggressive, threatening type of people. your anger can only be expressed as 'angry enough' when you say it like a black person does. when you speak, act, or present yourself in a way that black people do, you are taken either as a serious threat, a source of fear, or somebody who seems so cool and different and special.

do you see the problem with that train of thought? thoughts like this contribute to police brutality, medical ignorance towards the issues of black people/ doctors and doctors-to-be thinking black people can't feel pain, the belief that black women are either apathetic or angry with no in-between, the demonization of black culture, the hyper-masculinity forced onto both black men and women (especially including trans women) and a lot more.

2. the difference between using a southern-american way of speaking vs aave. many make the mistake of thinking being from the south means you are automatically using aave. that is wrong; while it seems hard to differentiate between the two, they are not the same thing and have a noticeable difference. the two do share some words between each other, like 'y'all' or 'ain't' but what you have to remember is not all aave is part of 'speaking south'.

southern accents typically draw out their words so if you're from the south, just speak like you normally do and avoid picking up terms you hear solely from black friends/ online (especially twitter or tiktok). I'm not the best on explaining this particular issue so here's this tumblr post.

in addition to this, before you start asking your black friends or your random token smart black blog, go to google. so many things could be fixed with a simple search on the internet. if you can say that you went on google, you checked articles, you checked twitter threads and hell even tumblr posts and still don't understand, that's the only time you should be asking questions (asking a minority group to educate u on issues specific to them is a micro-aggression and you shouldn't be asking anyone who has made it clear they don't like being your personal wikipedia; black people are not your reusable resource.)

3. you were born in the hood or around black people... and? you still need to make an effort to reduce your use of aave. because people think it's okay for them to talk like black people, you get this ridiculous number of non-black poc thinking they have some pass to start saying our slurs. you have people thinking aave wasn't even created by black people, that hispanic groups and nb drag queens and nb gay men created these words (when in reality, non-black gay men are notorious for putting on a blaccent or acting like black women to solidify their break from socially acceptive masculinity but otherwise to keep a sassy, harsh way of speaking. black* LGBT used their rightful terms and had it stolen, butchered, and the history behind it nearly rewritten by non-blacks. while hispanic ethnic groups and black people have been forced into the same run-down communities as each other, we do not have the same struggle, and yet some think they can be us and not actually be us, own what is ours and not even know where it came from and etc, leading to cultural appropriation from hairstyles to our words).

4. when somebody calls you out for using aave as a non-black person please don't throw in some excuse in there. just apologize, thank them for letting you know and subsequently educate yourself on any other words you might be using that's considered aave. saying it's hard to correct is unnecessary; nobody needs to know all that. just show that you understand and change your actions.

if you are non black and reading this thinking 'i don't do any of that' read it over. there is a high chance you do but you wanna pick and choose which post applies to you or not because nobody's called you out yet, or you're different.

ok to reblog, nonblack people stay silent