#Also the university's website broke down

[breadly-art]

I came to a lecture about a non-core fucking useless subject

I was late, limping along the subway with my bad leg, but I came

It turned out that the lecturer decided not to come

Why we stilll here?..

[1d1195]

Traditional I

Inspiration is funny, ya know?

Definitely multiple parts. Hope you like the idea, wasn't part of my list, but appeared in my brain without warning. Couldn't ignore it. Enjoy!

Main Character messages/Harry messages

Do you not want...a traditional relationship? If you’re paying me, how do you know I’d be a real companionship?

Because only the sweetest person on earth would send a profile out to a bunch of multi-millionaires to pay her a measly 1500 a month AND turn down a higher offer all because it’s more than she wanted.

There was a prominent frown on her face. She could sort of make out the sad, nearly disgusted face of the reflection in the back of half her computer screen. She looked over her profile again and again making sure it wasn’t too desperate but wasn’t overselling something she couldn’t produce. “Ahh...” she felt herself wincing at that reflection and bit her lip nervously as her cursor hovered over the submit button. “Ugh,” she sighed.

When Louis suggested it, she thought he was joking.

“Babe, someone would pay good money for your ass,” he told her.

“What is wrong with you?” She deadpanned.

But here she was. Making the profile to find someone willing to pay for her companionship. That’s what all the websites said. But it was a Sugar Daddy. That’s what it was called. It wasn’t ugly or distasteful. She didn’t care what people did with their lives at all. It wasn’t something that she thought she would have to do for herself until it was her last resort. That didn’t mean it wasn’t something to look at with disdain. She was all for women getting paid to be themselves simply for being lovely.

She didn’t want to do it because she didn’t think she would be good at it. She wasn’t sexy or wild, she didn’t feel beautiful, and obviously her ex didn’t think she was much fun if he was looking elsewhere for quite some time for entertainment both in and out of the bedroom. A stranger with a lot of money probably wouldn’t find her exciting like the other profiles she perused before completing a questionnaire of her own.

In all honesty, it seemed like it would be a second full-time job trying to convince a man that she deserved the money she was asking for and she wasn’t sure she could do that on top of all the other tasks she had to deal with these days. She told herself she wouldn’t let Louis convince her. But she needed the money—a good chunk of money at that. Best case scenario, there would be no takers to supply her with money. She would remain in her needy financial state and would find some other low paying job and try to manage the seemingly endless pile of obligations.

Louis was kind enough to let her stay with him and Eleanor until she figured out her shit. It wasn’t her fault that the guy she was dating cheated on her, broke her heart, and kicked her out of their shared house all in one swoop. She was living for free because they had been together for so long and it was his aunt’s old house near university. She had money and scholarships to pay for classes, so she didn’t need to manage a job while also getting an internship.

It was her final year before she would be awarded her master’s degree. Nothing could go wrong.

Except she returned early from visiting her mom and didn’t tell him.

So, there he was, moaning into another woman’s mouth on their bed.

She would have kicked herself out if he hadn’t done it first. “You could use a better dick in you too, love,” Louis had joked.

With a deep breath, like she was about to jump into a pool, she held her finger over her track pad. One last bout of reasoning ran through her mind. Her full-time internship would pay crumbs. Not enough to afford rent or a place of her own. She needed to get out of Louis and Eleanor’s hair. It was just one year.

Submit.

Blowing out a breath she smacked her laptop shut and headed to Eleanor’s kitchen—she would have said Louis and Eleanor’s kitchen, but Eleanor had a strict “no Louis near the oven” rule. One hand on her box of cereal and another on the silverware drawer to grab a spoon, she was shocked to hear her phone pinged with a message after two minutes. “Shut up,” she muttered to herself. She could almost hear Louis saying I told you so.

She ignored it. The first taker was probably not the way to go—too eager. She wasn’t a prude but the idea of having sex for money wasn’t really what she wanted to sign up for this last year of her program. But then there was another ping. And another.

“What the fuck?” She whispered.

“What is that dating app?” Louis called from the door. The pinging was incessant. “I’ve never heard that one,” he said as he meandered into the kitchen. She turned the volume down and Louis snagged it from her hands.

“Lou—”

“YOU DID IT,” he gasped, practically cheering as he unlocked her phone without her permission. “HOLY SHIT! You’ve got like fifteen takers already, babe. I told you that ass was worth it.”

“Louis, please give—”

He gasped. “Love, are you that dumb?” He asked gazing at her screen.

“What do you—”

“You can’t ask for a crummy fifteen hundred dollars a month,” he rolled his eyes. “You’re going to get all kinds of creeps and people that will make you do despicable things.”

“But I don’t—”

“A fifteen hundred dollars a week would be a lot better, don’t you think?”

“Louis, I just need a little bit of help. I don’t want to take someone’s money if I’m going to be bad at—”

The pinging stopped. “See?” He rolled his eyes placing her phone back in her hands. “Much more selective clientele...and you won’t be bad at it. I’m telling you that ass is going to pay for anything you want.”

“Louis,” she groaned and rubbed her hand over her face.

“Eleanor thinks so too, don’t you love?” He called down the hall.

“You’re home?” She called to her friend supposedly down the hall.

“Is it your profile that you've been whining about all this time? I would have helped you,” she said. “He’s right; your ass is going to be a great selling point,” Eleanor didn’t leave her room.

“I don’t want a ton of money. I just need to get by...” she explained to Louis.

“Yeah, but if you’re going to get paid for sexual activities you need to be compensated appropriately,” he said seriously.

“Why do you know so much about this?” She rolled his eyes. “Eleanor, you know he doesn’t have money, right?”

“Unfortunately!”

Flicking her cheek, he finished pouring the cereal for her (he was only allowed to touch kitchen items that didn’t involve cooking. He only recently upgraded to having microwave privileges again—especially after the baked potato incident). “I just know some girls from my dorm a few years ago talked about it a lot,” he rolled his eyes.

She was quiet while Louis slid the bowl in front of her and she took a few bites. She was still mad and upset about her ex. But she had bills to pay and quick. She frowned. “This is not what I wanted,” she mumbled.

Louis frowned grabbing a second bowl to join her cereal party. “I know, babe, but it’s okay. You’ll do great. Let’s see what your serious options are now.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to look right now. I’m too nervous.”

Louis chuckled around a bite of his food. “You don’t have to do sexual favors y’know.”

“Based on my research, I think I have to if I want this kind of money.”

He smirked. “Then we better find you a guy with big hands.”

“Jesus Christ.”

*

She didn’t look the next day or even the day after that either. It was too much to think about all at once. Submitting the profile and having her best friend talk about her ass and sexual favors was a bit much. Eleanor eventually came out from the other room and gave her gentle encouragement that Louis often lacked.

There was a bunch of remote training she needed to do before she started her internship on Monday. A company she had never really heard of; it was a good company. Not one that was plastered everywhere, but the research she did on it seemed to show it was a good place that made a good amount of money. She was emailing her supervisor, Niall, who had interviewed her for the position at the time. He was extremely nice, and she was grateful it was one less thing she had to worry about when the rest of her life seemed to be falling apart. She would be Niall’s assistant and learn the ropes of his job that entailed, “really two jobs in one. I just know the owner, so I often get stuck in two roles,” he joked to her.

Good morning Mr. Horan,

              You’ll see that I’ve completed the training required. I’ve attached all the certificates and approvals and sent them to HR as well. This was just for your record. Please let me know if there’s anything else I need to do. I’m very excited to start, is there anything I need to do specifically when I get there to make your life easier? Please let me know.

              Have a great weekend!

Her phone pinged yet again with an alert that someone was interested in giving her money for companionship. She frowned slightly, almost wishing that it wouldn’t ping anymore. She didn’t want Louis knowing and she was really wishing that it didn’t have to be like this. She didn’t want to do this. She wanted to be with her ex and live happily ever after the way she had planned for so many years.

For all the shit to hit the fan in the last, busiest year of her life, she was incredibly sad.

Hello!

              I’m glad you’re excited. You don’t have to do anything special. I’ll show you around on Monday. Don’t stress, you’re going to do great.

              Have a lovely, relaxing weekend as well.

              Best,

(Please call me) Niall

She smirked at his response. This seemed like the least of her worries, but she had heard others didn’t typically last long at this company. Niall probably knew that as well as she did. He probably had to be polite to the rotation of interns coming through his office when his boss didn’t like them.

Another ping.

She sighed and figured it was now or never.

She deleted the creepy pick-up lines and anything that had a picture attachment noted on the message threads. That narrowed her choices down to four. She read through each of the opening messages and only one particularly stood out.

I’d like to give you five thousand dollars a month.

The only reason it stood out was because it was the only thing that was said. The other messages, while kinder than the ones she deleted, talked a lot about themselves and said they liked her profile. You seem cheap, lol wasn’t exactly what she wanted to hear. But there wasn’t a lot to go off of the one negotiating for triple the amount she was asking for.

She looked at the username for a moment trying to make heads or tails of his name. Coming up short she sighed quietly. “Louis? Eleanor?” She called.

With no response she decided she was on her own and clicked on his message thread again.

Thank you, that’s very kind, but I really don’t need all that much. I’m just...a little down on my luck and need enough to afford a place and whatnot. I couldn’t possibly use all that every month.

Hmm... The reply was almost instantaneous. Been waiting for you to reply, love. Can’t say I expected you to say that. You must be new to this whole arrangement.

She frowned. Appearing inept made her feel grumpier than she already was.

I am but I’m not greedy. That’s all. I just want what I need.

I appreciate that. But then you’re on the wrong app love. I want to give you five thousand a month AND pay for your place.

She was really glad Louis wasn’t around. She was blushing madly and there was no way he wouldn’t make fun of her nor take her phone from her himself and send messages she didn’t want to send. Taking a deep breath, she pursed her lips and nodded. I think you’re right...I don’t know. I really need the money. I just...I don’t want to take what I don’t EARN...and I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this arrangement, after all.

You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, love. I make a lot of money. More than I know what to do with. I give to a lot of charities, and I’d just like to have a bona fide companionship that wasn’t about my money.

She snickered. Maybe you’re on the wrong app.

:(

Sorry, I guess I am new to this. Do you not want...a traditional relationship? If you’re paying me, how do you know I’d be a real companionship?

Because only the sweetest person on earth would send a profile out to a bunch of multi-millionaires to pay her a measly 1500 a month AND turn down a higher offer all because it’s more than she wanted.

She didn’t respond for a while. A few minutes turned into half an hour. Then before she knew it two hours had passed, and she felt like she hadn’t done anything in that time yet somehow no time had passed and the man at the other end had enough of waiting for her reply.

I didn’t mean to scare you. I spend a lot of time scouring these profiles. I want someone GOOD for my money. You hardly want anything. I could pay you what I want and any apartment you wanted before breakfast for a whole year because my company already has that money transferred into its account. I could pay your student loans if you wanted. I just want someone real, and you have the most real and lovely profile I’ve ever seen.

Sucking her lip into her mouth she kind of wanted to share this text with Louis but maybe it was too private. Maybe it was too ridiculous to believe that on her first attempt, her first profile and site she found someone so sweet.

If you don’t want to, I understand. But please be careful. If you’re not interested in traditional relationships this isn’t the site for you.

Then why are you on this site?

To find someone like you.

She frowned. Seems a little predatory :)

He sent an eye rolling emoji. Just trying to help you out, love.

She waited only a few moments this time before replying. You don’t want a traditional relationship?

It’s not a make or break it for this deal. I’m willing to work up to it if needed. I think you’re lovely and would like to spoil you however you see fit.

If she wasn’t careful, she was going to fall in love with his messages. That definitely couldn’t be part of the deal. Pacing in front of Eleanor’s refrigerator, she looked over the message that caused a flutter in her heart. Even her ex didn’t talk like that about her.

I think I’m interested. She messaged. What’s your name?

Harry. Harry Styles, love.

[canisvesperus]

DRoP is such a fantastic example of how a massive fandom can fade into obscurity due to censorship and creator hostility towards the fandom. A lot of the young people on this website do not know how big Pern was. It was huge, about as old as Star Trek, and yet everyone knows Star Trek and its influence but few even recognize the name Pern anymore. I’m not going to write a whole essay here, there are tons of great articles on Fanlore about it, plus all of this was a little before my time too. But I am mutuals with one of the most prolific figures in the Pern fandom during the 90s and early 2000s who was threatened with a six figure lawsuit for using some of her OC art to advertise commissions. Any fan who created fanworks that so much as depicted a character/setting/time period from canon, NSFW content, broke the in-universe rules of canon including rules regarding gender and sexuality, depicted lesbian or bisexual OCs, displayed your work outside of author-approved communities, or sold art that so much as resembled Pern dragons (note: they’re just dragons, any dragon artist associating with the fandom could be a target). Literal children roleplaying online with their friends were being bullied by the author. This is the tip of the iceberg as it pertains to the issues of old fandom and I think a lot of you take for granted the freedom we have today. The Powers That Be is hardly even a relevant concept anymore. However, some people seem to have taken it upon themselves to fill this ecological niche. This is also why I’ve honestly been anxious about pushes for stronger copyright protections in light of the AI situation. I fear that TPTB would increasingly take advantage of what any new law entails and what it neglects to specify— with easy and vulnerable targets, human fanartists (and I’m looking at y’all who sell commissions, merch, organize funded projects outside of IP holder permissions), being affected the most. If anything it might be a new opportunity to crack down on infringement as a whole, especially if financial losses associated with derivative works created using AI becomes a wider issue than it currently is. I also hate to see modern fandom reverse engineering the same attitudes and atmosphere of the 20th century, eg. bullying on the basis of canon sanctity, except this time it’s a mob instead of lawyers. Learn your history people.

[amaliazeichnerin]

Not separating the art from the artist

July 29, 2024

When the news about the allegations against Neil Gaiman broke at the beginning of July, I was shocked. In this text, I’ll write some thoughts about this. I’ll put links down below, in the footnotes.

I listened to the podcast that broke the news (1), all four episodes. I later read a bit about it on Reddit (2) and listened to an extensive video (YouTube channel Council of Geeks, footnote 3).

Then I read that another woman had come forward, talking about her experiences with Gaiman ten years ago, in another podcast (4). I also read about rumours how questionable behaviour of Gaiman towards young female fans has been a thing for decades.

And he has admitted to some of what one of these women, Scarlett, has said – having a consensual relationship with her.

Well, even if the relationship (and other similar ones) has been completely consensual - which I doubt after listening to Scarlett’s experiences and what the other two women said - there still is a strange power dynamic at play: A wealthy, privileged older man and at least three young, inexperienced women, two of them fans who likely were to some extend starstruck by the attention he gave them. And Scarlett was employed as the nanny of his child.

In my eyes, this kind of power dynamic in a relationship is unethical, especially given all the details in those podcast episodes.

Why am I writing about this here? I have a hard time with „separating the art from the artist“. Some time ago, I have written a blog in German why. (5) I used to be a fan of the Sandman series and the Good Omens series. I also like the Dead Boy Detectives series and I watched and read American Gods.

I think the connection between the Dead Boy Detectives Netflix series and Neil Gaiman is not that strong, because while he has written a part of one episode as far as I heard and has created the characters for the Comic books, he wasn’t that much involved in the creation of the Netflix series. They also changed the two main characters quite a bit, as far as I know, for instance making them older.

When it comes to Good Omes, Gaiman was heavily involved in creating the series. I used to love it. I wrote an alternative universe fanfiction about it, I created some fan artworks and two cosplays. I also bought some fan artwork and hung it on my wall. I also love how Michael Sheen and David Tennant portray the main characters. However, after these news about Gaiman, „Good Omens“ feels … tainted to me. I lost my enthusiasm about the show. I have to admit about season three that I was mainly interested in a happy ending for Aziraphale and Crowley, preferably a romantic one. At this point, I do not much care for the rest of the plot. So far, there haven’t been any news that season three gets cancelled because of this controversy. So we’ll have to wait how that goes on.

But there is more, and here is where it sort of gets a bit more personal. „Good Omens“ inspired an urban fantasy novel I wrote last year and want to publish next year. I even wrote an acknowledgment in the book thanking Neil Gaiman for the inspiration, but I have deleted that now. I have written that acknowledgment also this June in a question to Neil Gaiman here on Tumblr, but I now hope that he never sees or answers it.

As for Sandman, I am not sure anymore if I want to watch the second season which is said to come out some time in 2025.

I have never bought books or comics of Neil Gaiman, except for an e-book of „American Gods“ and a print copy of "Good Omens" which I both bought last year. But I have deleted the e-book some days ago. I used to read some of his books from our local library, back in the early 2000s.

I am going to keep my copy of „Good Omens“, because at least half of it was written by Terry Pratchett. And so far, I haven’t heard about any controversies about that author.

I would like to close this blog with a German article from a SFF website why we shouldn’t put famous popular authors on pedestals: https://www.tor-online.de/magazin/mehr-phantastik/neil-gaiman-und-co-wir-muessen-aufhoeren-menschen-auf-ein-podest-zu-stellen

Addendum August 2, 2024 Two more women have come forward with allegations, in a new podcast episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/master-the-allegations-against-neil-gaiman/id1756088562?i=1000663998586

Btw, if after all you are still a Neil Gaiman fan and enjoy his works – you do you. But please do not reblog this to come to his defense, do not comment, do not message me. Just scroll on. I am not going to discuss this any further.

Footnotes: (1) „Master: The Allegations against Neil Gaiman“ by The Slow Newscast Episode 1 of 4: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1NxQdD9F1vb4YxtAPEiI5J

(2) https://www.reddit.com/r/neilgaimanuncovered/

(3) "About those Neil Gaiman allegations (and the outlet that broke the story)" by Council of Geeks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xmeEXDFM8I

(4) Podcast „Am I Broken: Survivor Stories“ by Papillon DeBoer Season 4, Episode 2 https://open.spotify.com/episode/47enk8V96GGkJtXEgwpXbs (5) Blog: „Muss man die Kunstschaffenden von ihrer Kunst trennen?“ https://amalia-zeichnerin.net/muss-man-die-kunstschaffenden-von-ihrer-kunst-trennen/

This is also interesting: „Manufacturing consent“ by Annabel Ross https://politicsdancingxyz.substack.com/p/manufacturing-consent

Rollingstone Article: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/neil-gaiman-denies-sexual-assault-allegations-two-women-1235053131/

A round-up with a time line of everything going on with the allegations, reactions and more: https://muccamukk.dreamwidth.org/1678972.html Transcripts of the Tortoise Media podcast as PDFs for free download (TW: graphic descriptions of SA) https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1CuFVjs06gtQcPhhUEeR4GMORY37iMfz3

Addendum August 31, 2024 Two more episodes of "Master: The Allegations against Neil Gaiman" have come out, with more women coming foward with allegations.

Vera from "Council of Geeks" has done a second video on the topic.

[cowboyellies]

august e.w. (1)

summary/ author’s note: hello! this is my first tumblr fanfic (also my first post because I’m not really sure yet how this website functions lol) I decided since it’s august to write an ellie fic inspired by the taylor swift song! (and the folklore love triangle in general) for those already aware of the story, ellie is supposed to be james, dina is betty, and the reader is augustine.  the characters are all supposed to be in the summer before they start college (18) so a slight difference from taylors lyrics. other than that the story is pretty much the same (aka angsty with a sad ending for poor reader </3) this is gonna be a multiple part fic so buckle up!

for those not knowledgeable in the folklore cinematic universe: after an awful fight with dina right before the start of summer (and dina’s three month long summer trip) ellie is left with unanswered questions about her and dina’s relationship and their future. ellie then meets you and pretty soon you begin a summer fling, leaving you questioning whether she was ever yours to lose?

warnings/themes: angst!!lots of it, cheating (womp womp), ellie is stupid and kind of a dick, reader is delusional and a little pathetic (me core), alcohol and weed use, eventual sexual themes (prob not in great detail because i suck at writing smut) talk of non consensual groping, homophobia (fun!)

word count: 2.1k

---

you decided to leave the prom an hour and a half early. the music was lame, the tacky decorations didn’t do nearly enough to mask your public school’s moldy gym, and your date, who you had made sure to inform multiple times that you were just going as friends, tried to stick his tongue down your throat in the middle of the dance floor. you said goodbye to your small group of friends who were still partying with their dates, and made it to the exit of the sweaty gym, making sure to toss the lame corsage you had been given in the trash on the way out. since your debt ridden public school had cheapened out at the last minute and moved the prom’s venue from a nice event hall two towns over to the gymnasium, your friends decided to skip the whole overly expensive limo thing and just take your cars. you made your way to your old but lovable station wagon and began driving the opposite way from your house. you knew if you came home this early your mom would bother you with questions so you figured you’d stop and get a slurpee to pass the time.

and that’s when you saw her, the girl you had seen earlier in the night awkwardly standing near the punch bowl fiddling with her thumbs while her date danced energetically with her friends. you had seen ellie williams before but never paid much attention to her. she had a famously close friendship with dina woodward, probably the most beloved girl in your small town yet she herself kind of flew under the radar. It wasn’t until tonight when you saw ellie in her black suit, arms linked with dina as they entered the dance that you realized they were definitely together. given your small town’s outdated views and ridiculously rampant gossip mill they could obviously never label themselves as together publicly, but you could tell. you knew the small town closeted lesbian look all too well. 

you noticed now as you approached the reddened stop light where you both would be waiting for the next minute that she looked really sad. her posture crumpled as she trudged along the broken cobblestone, a look one could only describe as heart broken across her face. Impulsively you felt your fingers moving to roll down the car window. you weren’t the type of person to involve yourself in anyone’s personal problems, but the mixture of your own shitty night and ellie's grim expression moved something in you to open up that window. 

“hey!” you called out to her across the sidewalk. her saddened daze broke and she looked up at you surprised, so lost in thought she forgot anyone else in the world existed. “get in!” you yelled, shocking yourself in the process. you watched as her face changed from confusion to wariness. you watched as she mulled the proposition over in head, registering your prom dress as a sign you had come from the same place as her and therefore most likely were not trying to murder her, only give her a ride home. she hurried over to your car before the light could turn green, shutting the door with intense force behind her making the both of you slightly jump. soon after the light turned green and you began driving to the 7-11 which was only a couple of minutes away, a 90s song quietly played in the background as you nervously tapped your fingers on the wheel, starting to regret your decision as you weren’t sure what to say. 

Ellie opened up her mouth a few times to talk, but realized she wasn’t sure what to say either. This night had worn her down to exhaustion and for the first time in hours sitting silently in your car provided her with a surprising sense of calm. as your car finally pulled into the neon lit 7-11 parking lot you finally turned to look at her. her expression while still sad had lightened a little and you noticed now under the intense lighting how pretty her freckles were. 

“do you want a slurpee?” 

—

you and ellie sat on the hood of your car quietly sipping your slurpees, yours a mixture of cherry and coke, her’s blue raspberry. the parking lot where you sat was vacant, the only other car there was likely the worker of the 7-11 behind you. 

“so…” you began to speak, putting an end to the comfortable silence. “prom was pretty great huh” you joked. she shook her head and smiled lightly, turning to look at you the first time that night. she noticed quickly that you were very beautiful, a fact that hadn’t crossed her mind in the midst of her heartache. she wondered suddenly why you had left the prom as early as her, another thought that hadn’t crossed her mind. 

“so um, dina, was she your date?” you asked, trying to keep your voice as nonchalant as possible, already knowing the weight behind your words. you noticed her body stiffen and soon regretted bringing it up. 

“sort of yeah,” she replied, her voice harsh. an awkward silence rested between you two until she began to speak again. “what about you, no date?”

“I wish, I had a date, jamie dawson. I thought we were just going as friends until he tried to grope me during the cha cha slide,” you cringed, taking another slip of your slurpee.

“gross. he’s a dick.” she replied. he was a dick, ellie had thought so ever since she caught him looking at dina’s ass while she cheered at last year’s fall pep rally. she wanted so badly in that moment to yell at him, inform him she was taken. but of course she couldn’t.

a similar situation is what led to her current shitty mood. she showed up to dina’s that night, crumpled corsage in hand as she nervously knocked on her door. she was greeted by dina’s dad. mr. woodward had always scared ellie since the first time she had met him in eighth grade. he made his disdain for ellie clear to his daughter, as he disapproved dina having such a close relationship with a girl like her, a girl who skateboarded around town in her dirty converse and boyish clothes. he hated how close they were and even though they had always done their best to hide the real nature of their relationship, he always suspected something was going on between them. when mr. woodward saw her at the door standing in her thrifted suit, his face crumpled in contempt, the first hindering in ellie’s confidence that night. 

she brushed past that as she made her way into the woodward’s foyer where dina and her friends resided. ellie knew most of the girls due to cheer performances and all the time’s dina had dragged her along to events like this, but she was never really close with any of them. along with dina’s friends stood their dates, most of them douchey football players who were among the bunch of boys who found pleasure in shouting homophobic insults at her in the school halls. the one nice one among them she recognized was jesse. ellie knew him from her astronomy class and had always liked partnering up with him for group projects, his sense of humor was similar to hers and they always found themselves being scolded by the teacher for laughing during lectures. 

she creeped inside awkwardly waving as the crowd eyed her entrance. dina wasn’t in the room and she quickly began to panic until jesse snapped her out of it by dapping her up. 

“ELLIE!!!” he shouted as he wrapped her in a bro hug. she found herself being thankful to whichever cheer girl brought him as her date. 

soon after dina descended from the stairs, scanning the room to see if ellie arrived yet. when her eyes landed on the auburn haired girl she broke out into one of her signature bright smiles. when she reached ellie she quickly wrapped ellie in a hug, making sure not to let the gesture linger considering her parents were in the corner setting up their fancy digital camera. “took you long enough,” she teased

“sorry I forgot your corsage and had to go ba-” 

“I’m just teasing you, I don't care,” she replied gently, reaching down to grab the plastic corsage container. ellie blushed, noticing since she’d arrived all of dina’s friends sporting much fancier corsages. “I love it!” dina beamed. opening the box for ellie to put it on her. dina’s parents eyed them from the side of the room, suspicious of the intimate gesture. The only reason they allowed dina to go as ellie’s “date” was because dina told them no one had asked her. that was a blatant lie, there was a day the week before prom where three boys had asked her in one lunch period. 

the group lined up for group pictures and ellie stood nervously, trying to look as platonic as possible posing next to her girlfriend of almost two years. soon when people began branching off to do couples pics, dina’s parents beckoned her over. ellie stood in her original position but could clearly hear the whole conversation. 

“we noticed that nice boy jesse is going stag, why don’t you two pose for some pictures together?” dina’s mom prodded, stroking dina’s hair. ellie tensed. 

“mom n-” 

“come on sweetie, when you're older don’t you want to show your kids pictures of your date from your senior prom? not pictures of you and your friend,” her voice hardening on the word friend. dina began protesting more but suddenly mrs. woodward was calling jesse over to them. ellie watched in the corner as the woodward’s began posing the two of them together. dina sported a tense smile while jesse, confused by the situation but happy he got to be in that close of a vicinity to a hot girl smiled brightly. 

after the pictures the group made their way into the big limo dina’s parents had rented. dina linked arms with ellie and quickly noticed her tense nature. “hey, i'm sorry about that,” she whispered softly. 

“s’ okay” ellie replied, forcing a small smile. she knew dina wasn’t at fault for her parents' insane actions, but that didn’t stop her from hurting whenever they pulled stuff like that. 

the rest of the night continued on regularly. ellie still felt awkward amongst dina’s friends but tried her best to put on a front for her. as she and her friends danced energetically to early 2000s hits, ellie stayed to the side, letting her girlfriend enjoy the night without having to subject her to her awkward dancing. she figured she would pop in during the slow songs, the light swaying they required being the only move she could handle. that’s why when the ridiculously corny ed sheeran song that for some reason dina loved came on, ellie began making her way to the dance floor. she stopped suddenly at the edge of the floor when she saw dina smiling as she swayed with jesse. ellie’s heart dropped when she saw their joyful expressions, jesse spinning dina at a completely different tempo than what the song called for, both of them laughing hysterically

in retrospect ellie should have known this supposed act of intimacy she had walked in on was just jesse dicking around and trying to ruin the slow song for the rest of the couples on the dance floor, but seeing her laughing and holding onto his hands made ellie want to hurl. so much so, she quickly exited the gym. trudging alone in the dark scraping her doc martens on the rundown cobblestone street until you came along, offering her a ride.

you watched as ellie finished her slurpee, her face bitter as she recalled the night's events. you didn’t press her on it any further, knowing by her expression whatever had happened was bad. 

“where do you live? I’ll give you a ride. I have to kill time before I get home anyway,” you said as you slid off your car's hood and began unlocking it.

“thanks,” she replied, mimicking your actions. after she got in the car she began thinking back to your last sentence. “why can’t you go home?”

“don’t want my mom asking annoying questions. you know, worrying about me and shit,” 

“I get that,” she thought of what joel would say when she returned home, all bleary eyed and disheveled looking. she realized she should probably wait to go home until she knew he was asleep. “actually, um if you don’t have anywhere to be… could we just drive around for a bit?” 

you smiled softly and placed your hand on the ignition, “sure.”

—

authors note: sorry not much happens in this chapter I promise it will get good in the next one I just wanted to introduce the story a little and try to explain ellie and dina’s relationship before I got into writing more about the reader and ellie🫶

[justforbooks]

Craig Jordan

Pharmacologist whose research into tamoxifen helped many women with breast cancer to live longer

In the 1970s only 40% of women diagnosed with breast cancer could expect to survive for 10 years or more. Today that figure is over 75%. Screening and early diagnosis have played a part, but one of the key reasons for the improvement is the drug tamoxifen, which massively reduces the risk of cancer recurring after surgery.

The British-American pharmacologist Craig Jordan, who has died aged 76, was the first to show that tamoxifen could stop tumours growing by blocking the female hormone oestrogen from locking on to cells in the breast at specific sites called oestrogen receptors.

Breast cancer is the commonest cancer in women across the world and 80% of women with the disease have receptors that make them sensitive to oestrogen, which can stimulate cells in the breast to reproduce uncontrollably and form tumours.

Jordan’s lifelong study of tamoxifen led to the discovery of a range of other effective treatments for breast cancer that either blocked oestrogen receptors or reduced the amount of the hormone the body produces. His studies have also improved women’s health by shedding light on other conditions including endometrial cancer, osteoporosis and menopausal symptoms.

He made his discoveries in the face of huge scepticism from the medical community. He was not a medical doctor but a laboratory scientist who conducted his research on rats and mice. Tamoxifen does not kill cancer cells, it simply stops them from growing. The received wisdom in the 70s when he began his work was that the only way to deal with cancer was to cut it out, or blast it with radiation or powerful chemicals to destroy every trace of the tumour. Such treatments, though they can be effective, are distressing for patients and have many side effects.

“There was an obsession with the idea that that combination chemotherapies were going to cure all cancers,” Jordan told the website Oncology Central in 2019. “It felt like we were trying to swim upstream as we were saying no, target the [o]estrogen receptor and give tamoxifen forever and people will stay alive.”

It took decades before the evidence for tamoxifen’s effectiveness became undeniable. A number of clinical research groups, encouraged by Jordan’s laboratory results, had tested tamoxifen in patients, but the results, though encouraging, were too marginal to change practice.

In 1998 the Early Breast Cancer Triallists Collaborative Group, based in Oxford, combined the data from studies of 37,000 women to show that those with oestrogen-sensitive tumours who took tamoxifen for five years after surgery experienced a 47% reduction in the risk of the cancer returning and a 26% reduction in the risk of dying within 10 years.

Tamoxifen and other selective oestrogen receptor modulators are now part of the standard treatment for women who have had surgery for oestrogen-sensitive breast cancers.

Jordan’s mother, Cynthia Mottram, was a GI bride who met his father, Virgil Johnson, when he was in service as a soldier with the US army in Britain during the second world war. They returned to New Braunfels in Texas, where Jordan was born, but the marriage broke down and she brought her son back to her home in Cheshire when he was a toddler.

He attended Moseley Hall grammar school in Cheadle, where he took to chemistry with such enthusiasm that his mother let him set up a laboratory at home (leading to the kinds of near-disaster that punctuate the early lives of many successful scientists). After his mother remarried, Craig was adopted by his stepfather, Geoffrey Jordan, and took his name.

At first his ambition did not reach beyond working as a technician at the nearby ICI laboratories, but he successfully obtained a place at the University of Leeds to study pharmacology. Taking a summer job with ICI, he met the endocrinologist Arthur Walpole, who had been part of the team that developed tamoxifen, then known as ICI 46,474.

It was supposed to be a contraceptive, but early trials led to more pregnancies, rather than fewer. During his PhD at Leeds, Jordan developed strong links with the ICI scientists, who funded the early stages of his work on oestrogen receptors.

In 1972 Jordan went to the Worcester Foundation for Experimental Biology in Massachusetts. The lab focused on contraception, but as ICI 46,474 had failed as a contraceptive Jordan began to examine its effects on breast cancer in rats. Meanwhile, in 1973, ICI had given the drug a name, tamoxifen, and launched it as a not particularly effective treatment for late-stage breast cancer.

The following year Jordan returned to Leeds as a lecturer, where he continued to collaborate with ICI. His key discoveries in this period were that given over a period of years, tamoxifen could be used to prevent cancer coming back after surgery; and that it could prevent cancer developing in women whose biology put them at particularly high risk. He also discovered a very effective breakdown product of tamoxifen that went on to form the basis of other drugs that prevent postmenopausal women from losing bone density.

In 1980 he moved permanently to the US, where he held senior positions at a succession of leading research universities, setting up a “tamoxifen team” at each, before finally settling in 2014 as a professor and chair of cancer research at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. His further discoveries included a small increased risk of endometrial cancer with tamoxifen, so that doctors now screen their patients before prescribing the drug.

For much of his life, Jordan had an unusual parallel career as an adviser on biological and chemical weapons – and illicit drug use – to the British and US armies.

His family had a strong military heritage and he had joined the Officers’ Training Corps while a student at Leeds, combining his PhD research with stints with the army in Germany during the cold war. He went on to be recruited into the intelligence corps with the rank of captain, and subsequently became a member of the SAS reserve. He was an avid collector of antique weapons, and described himself as an “outstanding shot”.

He received many honours in the course of his career, and was appointed CMG in the Queen’s birthday honours in 2019 for services to women’s health. In turn he funded prizes, scholarships and special lectures at the universities of Leeds and Oxford, conscious of the debt he owed to British society for his early education and research opportunities. He was open about his diagnosis with kidney cancer in 2018 and continued working until shortly before his death.

Craig Jordan was married three times, each marriage ending in divorce. He is survived by Alexandra and Helen, his daughters from his first marriage, to Marion Williams, and five grandchildren.

🔔 Virgil Craig Jordan, pharmacologist, born 25 July 1947; died 9 June 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[beardedmrbean]

FORT MYERS, Fla. - A Florida Gulf Coast University student was nabbed after he allegedly tampered with a building's sprinkler system and broke into a pump room by crawling through a vent, university police said.

Nathan Eggleston, 28, was arrested and charged with damaging property, burglary of an unoccupied structure and interfering with firefighter equipment after the incident that unfolded on Dec. 13, according to an arrest affidavit from the FGCU University Police Department (UPD).

A witness told officers that she saw a man, later identified as Eggleston, do something to the fire sprinkler system in the West Lake Village Community Center Building, the affidavit said. The fire alarm went off, and then she said she saw Eggleston allegedly using several bricks to break into a vent on the bottom of the door before crawling in and gaining access to the pump room in the building.

According to FGCU's website, this is a student housing building reserved for upper-class students.

Officers responded to the building and ordered Eggleston to exit the pump room, but no response was received, the affidavit said. An officer used a flashlight through a broken vent on the bottom of the door, which revealed Eggleston in the corner of the room. He was ordered once again to exit the room, and he finally complied. He was placed in handcuffs pending an investigation.

Eggleston agreed to speak with officers post-Miranda, and he admitted to pulling the first flush system and crawling into the pump room space, according to the affidavit.

When asked why he would be in an interview with a detectives, he responded, "I f----- up and hit the first flush system. I had no right. I thought I would do it before or after I graduate." He also told officers that one of the maintenance workers showed him how to use the lever.

"If you turn it half way (sic) down, it blast (sic) like 5 gallons of water a second and if you turn all the way down it blast (sic) like 15 gallons a second and it floods out West Lake," Eggleston told officers, per the affidavit.

He added that he "freaked out" because the fire alarm went off and just "laid there" when he heard officers yelling at him to come out, the affidavit said.

During his arrest, he also reportedly told officers that he's a "maintenance assistant" and then "my friend is a maintenance assistant."

Eggleston has since been released from custody after posting $10,750 bond.

FOX 35 reached out to Florida Gulf Coast University about the incident, but they declined to comment.

[prototypesteve]

We might be living in the branch-timeline where Steve Jobs broke the world on January 9th, 2007.

I find reading difficult. I live with ADHD, and I’m dyslexic. That doesn’t mean I don’t read, it just means reading is a bit of a workout, but a rewarding workout, like a long bike ride, a long walk, or an afternoon weeding a garden. There’s an investment of work, but there’s also a payoff that makes the work worth doing.

That’s why The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books, by Rose Horowitch, is pretty disturbing. The deeper I dove into what the author heard from 33 professors, the more I was left with the feeling that phones like the one I’m typing this post into may have accidentally deflected our future.

I’ve learned to manage distractions and stick with a good, long read. So have you. You’re this far into this post. But we’re not everyone. We’re becoming the outliers:

No comprehensive data exist on this trend, but the majority of the 33 professors I spoke with relayed similar experiences. Many had discussed the change at faculty meetings and in conversations with fellow instructors. Anthony Grafton, a Princeton historian, said his students arrive on campus with a narrower vocabulary and less understanding of language than they used to have. There are always students who “read insightfully and easily and write beautifully,” he said, “but they are now more exceptions.” Jack Chen, a Chinese-literature professor at the University of Virginia, finds his students “shutting down” when confronted with ideas they don’t understand; they’re less able to persist through a challenging text than they used to be. Daniel Shore, the chair of Georgetown’s English department, told me that his students have trouble staying focused on even a sonnet.

Anyway, even if you can’t get to Horowitch’s article (there are two links below, and it’s in the November 2024 issue of the Atlantic, which might be at a library), do yourself a favour: keep reading. Books, audiobooks, plays, essays, anything. Be an outlier.

Full copy that’s included with Apple News+ (or part of an Apple One bundle):

Paywalled copy on the Atlantic’s Website:

[sirsagrell]

So I literally created this account just to read people yelling about Veilguard on this website, and I'm predictably getting sucked into participating.

Disclaimer: I've always been the "it's good enough to hook me hard, but now I have to mentally rewrite the story in my head to really enjoy it" BioWare fan. I'm self-aware enough to realize, that when I think something should have been done a certain way to do justice to the story told so far, that story told so far may not have been there in the games that BioWare actually made.

I will, as such, try to stick to the Dragon Age that exists and not the one in my head, when writing about Veilguard. Will I succeed? No idea.

With that out of the way:

There is a lot of valid criticism going around about the sanitized/whitewashed/shallowly inoffensive writing. I agree with a large portion of it, and don't have much to add. A lot of the writing fell flat in a lot of the ways it never did in BioWare games before. Not all of it, though. There were moments of brilliance here and there.

But I think my actual main problem with this game boils down to something that isn't talked about much in the critiques that I read.

Specifically, that Veilguard should have been the ending of this series.

But instead, they tried to make Dragon Age yet another one of those fictional universes that they wouldn't fucking let go of.

I think it is very important to let stories end. It is very important to let go of entire settings, especially the most beloved ones. Because if you don't, they fossilize under the requirements of nostalgia and the need to stay recognizable and quickly turn into this hopeless cycle of increasingly warped self-repetition where everything always comes back to the status quo and engaging with the setting in any way leaves a taste of existential dread in your mouth.

(I'm looking at you, Star Wars. I will insist that KOTOR II was the best thing ever written in that setting because it broke the fourth wall, pointed a finger at this exact phenomenon, and said "look what you're doing to us")

(Or maybe that's just how I remember it, because that's how I overwrote it in my head)

(I think there's a profound point about possessive love to be made here somewhere, but it's late and I'm too tired to look for the right words)

Anyways.

If Veilguard was the ending of the series, it would have at least set itself and all of us free from that.

It could also have attempted to say something more meaningful than world is good and always worthy of being saved. Like, people complain that Veilguard couldn't handle variable world states going in, and I get that, but I think the even bigger missed opportunity is that, having to account for more games in the setting, BioWare couldn't afford having varied world states coming out of it.

We save the world from mad tyrants, and a blind broken man, and that's it.

But there was setup for so much more here. I'm sure I didn't hallucinate it.

We're never asked what it actually means to save this world, and if it means the same thing for everyone.

We never have to wonder if it could possibly be us who are the blind and broken ones here, unable to turn from a dead-end path, because it is the only one familiar to us.

We never discuss what specifically it means for the Veil to go. It just defaults to DEMONS, BAD, and all the interesting foreshadowing for the Veil maybe coming down that we previously had goes completely out of the window.

And so we're never given the choice of what to do with this world. And we can't stop to really contemplate how fucked up it actually is for flawed individuals such as us, or Solas, or the Evanuris or whomever, to have the power to make decisions for a whole world to begin with, no matter how good we think our intentions are.

Just now realized how apt Veilguard is as a name for this game. Makes me wonder what it was, before it got that name.

It will be ironic if, despite all the work they did to make sure there is room for more sequels, and all they had to throw out to get a clean simple world state, this will actually become the last one in the series.

[accuratepicuresofanthropologists]

Edmund Leach

Edmund Leach age 21. Via the deliciously indiscreet Love, Loyalty, and Deceit.

Edmund Leach was born in 1910. He came from Lancashire, England, and was descended from the families of that region who had grown wealthy running textile mills to make cloth. He was the youngest in the family and was his mother's favorite. As a result she constantly pressured him to excel and told him he was special -- as a result Leach spent much of his life as an intellectual maverick, coming up with unexpected ideas, criticizing others, and generally being unconventional.

Like everyone in his family, Leach attended Marlborough, a prestigious English public school (what Americans call a 'private school') and then went to Cambridge. The son of an industrialist, he studied engineering and mathematics, and excelled in school. He also fell deeply in love with a lady named Rosemary Upcott, but decided against getting married and settled down. Instead, he signed up with a British company for a four year stint in China managing their business affairs. Leach fell in love with China and Asia more generally. He enjoyed exploring areas that were new to him. At the end of his four years he returned to England intent on studying Asia as an anthropologist.

Edmund Leach in China in 1934. Source.

Leach began studying anthropology at the LSE, where he joined Malinowski's seminar. At this time, Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown had different sets of students. Radcliffe-Brown's school was associated with E.E. Evans-Pritchard, Darryl Fforde and others. Malinowski's students included Edmund Leach and Raymond Firth. Leach's criticisms of social anthropology are thus usually aimed at R-B and his students.

By the late 1930s Leach married (not Rosemary, but a painter named Celia Joyce) and headed off to Highland Burma (now, Myanmar) to do fieldwork for his Ph.D.

Leach doing fieldwork in the Kachin Foothills. Via the Tabaiah biography

Unfortunately for Leach, World War II broke right after he arrived in Burma. Since he was a white man who had gone to Cambridge, he was made an officer in the army. He was familiar with the culture and language, and had engineering experience. So he "got shunted into a crazy cloak-and-dagger outfit" where he was put in charge of a group of Kachin fighters, went behind Japanese lines, hid in the forest, and conducted sabotage operations like dynamiting bridges. Leach hated it, and called his service "a strange mixture of the absurd and horrible". Worn out from living in the forest and ground down by dysentery, he returned to England. [quotes from Kuper interview]

After the war, Raymond Firth became the professor of anthropology at LSE, replacing his teacher Malinowski. He became Leach's advisor, which was slightly awkward because Firth had married Leach's first love, Rosemary. Throughout their lives Rosemary, Edmund, and Raymond would manage this slightly awkward love triangle, Edmund and Rosemary were only occasionally unfaithful to Celia and Raymond.

A rare short of Leach without his glasses, via the BBC. You can listen to Leach's prestigious Reith lectures on their website.

Leach got a position teaching anthropology at his alma mater, Cambridge. The professor there was Meyer Fortes, who Leach deeply disliked. They shared an office suite -- one of them had to walk through the office of the other to reach their own office in the back of the suite. Over time, Leach grew more and more prominent at Cambridge. In addition to receiving a professorship, he also served as the Provost of King's College for thirteen years. In essence, this made him the chief executive officer of perhaps the most prestigious college in the university. As a result, Leach had tremendous power and influence at Cambridge. Among other things, he used it to integrate King's, allowing women to study there for the first time.

While Leach was an insider in the university hierarchy, he was a bit of a bad boy intellectually. His groundbreaking 1954 volume Political Systems of Highland Burma took aim at nearly every aspect of structure-functional anthropology. In 1961 he wrote Pul Eliya, which is both an incredibly detailed study of the irrigation systems of a small village in Ceylon and also an unsparing criticism of many of his colleagues (including Meyer Fortes).

Today for Edmund Leach Week: The classic Edmund Leach look. Via his British Academy obituary by Stanley Tambaiah.

Leach was more interested in pointing out the shortcomings of others than he was with building his own system or school. However, he was constantly proposing new things. Leach was interested in using concepts of 'symbolism', 'communication' and 'structure' to rethink anthropology. He was a specialist on kinship, but also looked for patterns in biblical texts and myth. He had a characteristic approach to ethnographic materials, but rarely produced any sort of credo or coherent doctrine about his beliefs.

Edmund Leach (left) and Stanley Tambiah at Harvard in 1978, via Tambiah’s biography Edmund Leach.

Despite the fact that Leach did not train disciples, he did train a tremendous number of students. Many people passed through Cambridge, and even the ones who were not direct students of Leach were influenced by his unique style of anthropology. He reached the heights of the British academy and received many awards, inclusion a knighthood in 1975 (which he later made the subject of a lecture entitled "once a knight is quite enough").

Leach passed away in 1989.

Sources: Tambiah's biography of Edmund Leach as well as his obituary for Leach. The published letters of Rosemary Firth, Kuper's interview with Leach in Current Anthropology, and Leach's article "Glimpses of the Unmentionable".

[the-missann]

It's been a minute and for once, it's not just because I was swiming in the dumpster after being down in a trash bin ☺

No, this time I was gone because I wanted to do something more with my writing and get it seen by more people. While Tumblr has helped my self-esteem (somewhat), it's obviously harder to be seen on here.

Then, it was like the universe heard me and it dropped this post to me.

So after some convincing myself to try, I attempted learning html and......... It was actually pretty fun.

All things considered, I'm no tech person, I dislike math, and cannot stand things that are too technical; but their resources broke it down in a way I could understand and I built my first website from the ground up 🕺

So, if your curious about what it looks like, you can check it out here!

And maybe don't look at it on mobile 😅

Also, obviously, I'm still new to codding so the site looks as basic as basic can be. I'm also waiting to learn javascript, so there's nothing too advanced on there either.

Regardless, I'm extremely proud of myself for sticking with this and trying it out. Physically, I haven't been so well so this is a good distraction while I get better.

But, let me tell you what you can expect to see!

More info about my stories (like how they came to be)

Personal goals for my stories

Excerpts of what I've written

Self-made covers

Character concepts

Funny tidbits about the development of my stories

I'm not finished with everything I wanna do, and some things I'll have to learn how to make, but I eventually plan to have more pages including:

An about me page

Pages for my ideas that are either dead, half-made, or ideas that are nothing more than that.

Some of my fanfictions

A hobbies and interests page

And pages for my 250k word collection of short stories: Quiet Girl

I'm excited for everything I have planned, so if you like what you see here, stop by my page and see if you like anything else!

That's all from me, thanks for reading and I hope things are okay now and they stay okay with you 🍂

[odinsblog]

The criticism of Angel Reese is an old but consistent story in sports. When white athletes are demonstrative, they’re playing with passion and showing their love of the game. When Black athletes reveal their feelings, they’re disgraceful and “classless.”

Black women receive especially harsh scrutiny when they show confidence, cockiness, or any other strong emotion. Serena Williams dealt with this throughout her entire career. Remember the pearl-clutching that occurred when the tennis legend did the “C-Walk”—on the grass court at Wimbledon, no less—after beating Maria Sharapova at the 2012 Olympics? Also known as the “Crip Walk,” the dance originated with the Los Angeles Crips gang in the 1970s before crossing over into popular culture. A lot of non-gang-affiliated Angelenos—including Williams, who grew up in Compton—do this dance as a tribute to the L.A. area. When the NBA player Brent Barry, who is white, did the C-Walk during the 2003 NBA All-Star Weekend’s three-point shooting contest, nobody accused him of irresponsibly promoting gang culture.

Reese has dealt with these double standards and hypocrisies throughout her career, even back in high school, when she was one of the top-rated players in the nation. On a website that covers women’s basketball, an opposing high-school coach questioned “celebrating a player (w god given height and talent) and zero humility or impulse control. As a female coach of female high school ballers, I find this behavior repulsive, unacceptable, unflattering and unnecessary. You can have swag while not acting like a punk. Highlight some other girls in the conference who aren’t as genetically gifted.”

In January, during LSU’s narrow 79–76 victory over Arkansas, Reese received a technical foul after blocking a shot with one hand while holding her shoe, which had come off, in the other. After the block, Reese stared down Arkansas’ Samara Spencer. The two exchanged words and Reese was given the penalty.

The spectacular play went viral, but an intense debate broke out among fans about Reese’s behavior—even though male players are often celebrated when they make similar moves and jeer their opponent. Despite the significant advancements women have made in sports, they are still sometimes told that it’s unseemly for them to be as aggressive and in-your-face as men.

Reese’s bold play and her appearance—she wears long hair and long lashes and carries herself unapologetically—has made her a target. “All year I was critiqued about who I was,” Reese told reporters after LSU’s championship victory. “I’m too hood, I’m too ghetto—y’all told me that all year. When other people do it, y’all don’t say nothing. This was for the girls that look like me.”

Black women are constantly stereotyped as overly aggressive and confrontational. A couple of days before the controversy with Reese unfolded, the University of South Carolina coach Dawn Staley, who is Black, scolded reporters for characterizing her team, most of whose members are Black, as bullies. It was as if she was forecasting what Reese was about to face. “We’re not bar fighters,” Staley said. “We’re not thugs. We’re not monkeys. We’re not street fighters. This team exemplifies how you need to approach basketball on the court and off the court … Some of the people in the media, when you’re gathering in public, you’re saying things about our team and you’re being heard.”

(continue reading)

[wutheringmights]

The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins is an overall disappointing read. Do I think it’s clever and humorous? Yes. Is it also drowning in squandered potential? Double yes. (And will I be using this review as an opportunity to procrastinate on my writing? Triple yes.)

I first heard of this book through a booktuber, who pitched it as “Nona the Ninth, but better.” I haven’t read Nona the Ninth, but I was markedly disappointed by my reading of Gideon the Ninth a few months ago. I thought a book that had similar ideas but better execution would be a perfect fit for me. 

I never actually wrote a full ramble about Gideon the Ninth, and I really am regretting it now. I really wish I could just post a link to that review for context and then move on. But I didn’t, so here’s a brief summary of the relevant stuff. 

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir has a really fascinating world and the hints of an intriguing plot that is bogged down by poor execution. The plot never gained real momentum or stakes, and every instance of humor broke my suspension of disbelief. The book is also extremely opaque, to the point where it’s actively hostile to new readers. There’s a difference between throwing readers into the middle of the world and telling them to figure it out, and making it so confusing on purpose that you have to reread the book. Some readers can like or excuse that; I can’t. 

To some extent, The Library at Mount Char has better execution, if only because it is not determined to be indecipherable to the casual reader. Not every question it raises gets answered, but it knows how to meter out information effectively so that you’re never truly lost. It also has a better sense of humor (to an extent). All of its jokes are rooted in making fun of pop-culture, but because the story takes place in America, it never takes me out of the moment. It also never relies on referential humor. I will spare you my full-length rant. Just know that jokes that I have beef with humor that boils down to just making references to other jokes. 

Despite all that, Gideon the Ninth is still the better novel, if only because it takes full advantage of its conceit. On one hand, The Library at Mount Char has a fascinating idea at its core. The man our main character calls god has a library filled with all knowledge, which is broken up into twelve catalogs. Each catalog is mastered by one of his twelve apprentices. When god disappears, the apprentices now have to fight for who has control of the library, and therefore the universe. 

Cool stuff, right?

The story’s not really about that. None of the apprentices fight each other, and our main character, Carolyn, isn’t really our main character. Most of the apprentices are barely mentioned by name and they (spoiler) mostly die two-thirds of the way through. Our real main character is Steve, who is just Some Guy being dragged along by an extraordinary woman. It’s so standard, and none of the weird set-dressings can disguise it. We’ve read this story before (much in the same way Gideon the Ninth is a stock-standard vaguely-important-people-compete-in-deadly-game-for-more-power plotline, a la Lightlark). 

Gideon the Ninth isn’t really the best comparison to make. Muir and Hawkins may have crept onto similar ideas here and there, but their inspiration comes from elsewhere. Muir was obviously inspired by Homestuck and anime. Hawkins so obviously admires the works of Neil Gaimen. 

Fun fact: I am a long time Neil Gaimen hater. I have never mentioned this before, as up until very recently this was the Neil Gaimen loving website. But I am well-known in real life for not liking his novels. Gaimen is an author who has really cool ideas, and no ability to effectively execute on them. American Gods, Good Omens, Caroline, Stardust: all of them have deeply disappointed me in numerous ways. Despite giving him four tries, I always get harassed about how I’m just reading the wrong work. I won’t get Gaimen until I read the Sandman comics, Graveyard Boys, or that one with the London subway system. To that, I say no. I’m not doing it. I’ve given him enough chances. I’m not going to waste my time any longer. 

A lot of my least favorite Gaimen-isms creep their way into The Library at Mount Char, such as the clunky way he handles writing women. Women are cool and competent, but he never finds them to be as compelling as men. His concern for women’s issues always circle back to sexual assault. Carolyn should be a fantastic character, but the narrative is never concerned about her. She’s a machination for the plot, and nothing more. 

Hawkins also follows Gaimen’s path of having a weird hang-up on some sex thing, but instead of being overtly dedicated to informing the reader how much and what kind of sex every woman in the story wants, Hawkins is very concerned with anal sex. There are constant jokes about men putting things up their butt, and none of them are particularly original or in good taste. A prison rape joke stands out in my mind. Another is how the backstory of a character’s estranged relationship with her son being boiled down to her seeing him, verbatim, take something up his ass (this is part of a trend I find in male writers where their attempts to include topics not about straight men becomes weirdly othering; see aforementioned sexual assault). 

Then, after a hundred pages of this joke, Just Some Guy Steve has to shove some medicine up his butt, and bam. Joke over. We never hear about it again. What a weird set-up and pay off. 

I’ve spent so long talking about Gaimen and Muir’s works because, by itself, The Library at Mount Char doesn’t leave much to talk about. If I disengage from what I thought the plot was going to be about and only focus on what it is there, it’s fine. Underwhelming, but fine. I really like the dialogue. There are multi-page streaks of characters just dialogue that never feels stale or sparse because the dialogue is that vivid. 

Besides that? Eh. It’s truly just okay. It’s not as weird as what the reviews will tell you, nor as gruesome. It’s a middling fantasy story in the style of American Gods. The novel ends on a note that heavily implies a possible sequel. If it happens, I’ll have to pass. One was enough for me. 

--

The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins

Rating: 3/5 ⭐⭐⭐

[meraki-yao]

An exchange student from Canada saw me crying and gave me a tissue. We talked. He's really nice. I'm sane now.

This is going to be a full vent. This is my full story on this situation. Only read if you want to and if you're okay with it. Also warning, this is long as fuck, I really trauma dumped here.

tw: suicidal thoughts, self-harm

Backstory: High School

I was labelled as a jack of all trades, master of none. I'm naturally a more art/social science/emotion/humanities person, but I took STEM subjects in high school (Physics, Chemistry, Information & Technology/ Computer, and Calculus & Algebra), partly because these subjects had objective, standard answers, which supposedly makes getting marks in exams easier, partly because I felt like I had to as my parents are both PhD in engineering, and at that point I still thought I had to be "my parents' daughter".

So throughout high school, all my external achievements were humanities/arts related while my studies were STEM orientated. But I struggled a lot with my STEM subjects (except for Computer because a lot of that is just stuff you would know if you use one a lot), and I mean, a lot. As in failing quizzes, fucking up assignments. Thank God I had really kind teachers who cared more about my mental health than my grades and were willing to help and accommodate my needs. But there were many times when I straight up broke down during a lesson and ran off to the social worker's. I skipped several lessons because I just couldn't go to class and try to listen when voices in my head were all yelling at how much of a useless piece of shit I was. I would spend three hours on a single question, and still get it wrong. It always felt like no matter what I did, I would go nowhere. And it didn't help that when I asked for help from my parents, their response would always first be "How can you not know something so simple". By senior year I gave up and started asking my friends and the internet.

On the contrary, I thrived in my language classes and liberal studies class. Even if I initially sucked due to the change in the system, I asked, I studied, I worked and I improved. I got somewhere. Effort paid off in a fair ratio. I never needed to ask my parents anything about that. I never needed to ask anyone other than my teacher. I loved doing my homework in those subjects. My writings were printed out as examples for the whole class. It was great.

Backstory: College Selection

By the time college choices rolled around I had no idea what to choose. At the same time, my mother was also suggesting I go to mainland Chinese universities for my undergrad, and I didn't want that. Going to the States or the UK wasn't affordable for my family, so I opted to stay local, to the dismay of my whole extended family.

So in the mess of all of this and no parental support because they are Chinese stereotypes who think the only courses worth studying are doctor and lawyer, my school's career counsellor suggested Bachelor of Arts and Studies to me (here's their website) a new personalized interdisciplinary degree in HKU. And I was so happy. It felt right. It felt like putting a on tailored dress. And despite my parents' protest, I put that as my first choice.

College entrance exams came and went. Overall I did pretty well. Got top scores in Chinese, English, Liberal Studies, and Computer. Got average for Chemistry, Math and Physic despite spending most of my study leave on these subjects. Just passed Calculus.

So the way the local system works (it's called JUPAS if you wanna look it up) is that by the end of November, you need to submit your 20 university programme choices, but after the public exam result is released, you're assigned 24 hours to change your choices.

And this is where everything started going to hell for me.

My parents, who in the first round of selection, compromised and let me put what I wanted, looked at my marks, and my choices, and vetoed everything. They said I'm not gonna get a job with an interdisciplinary degree, there's no career path for psychology, that the arts and science degree was created because the art, social science and science faculty didn't have that many people.

A different advisor, one who didn't know me personally suggested my current programme: biomedical engineering, which basically combines medicine with engineering. They said it's a lucrative career since health service is in demand, and with my basis in STEM subject I would do well, and that it's easier to go from a science subject to humanities if I want to do something different in post-grad than vice versa. By this time I had 2 hours left before confirmation.

If we were to completely ignore me as an individual, they're right. This would be the logical choice.

But at that point, I already knew it felt wrong. But unfortunately for me, all I could say is it felt wrong, which isn't a strong rebuttal.

With no "logical" rebuttal, two yelling parents and a fucked up head, sobbing, I changed my first choice to this programme. I cut my arm with a cutter over the myriad of scars I gave myself over the years. I told my best friend who was asking if I was ok, that I'll give it a go, and if it doesn't work I'll find a way out. I told the rest of my close friends that my undergrad will be me paying a debt to my parents, and I'd figure out my own dream in the future.

I shouldn't have caved in.

Back Story: University

University started. Immediately it felt wrong. Save for my elective (HKU has this really cool thing called Common Core, look it up if you're interested but essentially it's compulsory electives) I felt so detached from my engineering courses. I couldn't explain, just an inherent feeling that I don't belong here.

It didn't help that it was at this time that I realized I straight-up don't like biology.

Managed through year 1 first semester with average grades. Semester 2 I didn't have any courses directly related to the programme save for a probability & stats course that I fucked my way through. The rest of my grades were pretty good, even got two A- s. The feeling that I didn't belong persisted but popped up a little less.

Now: Breaking

Year 2 came, and from the moment in August when I had to sign up for courses, the feeling of wrongness came back in full force, amplified, even. It felt all-consuming.

This is from my diary:

"I don't wanna be here. I don't want this degree. I don't want this career God I don't want it. It's doesn't fit. I don't fit in this space. This isn't mind. It feels like dysmorphia. It feels like tar, black and toxic and vicious, sticking to my skin, trying to mould my body into something I'm not, to seep into my skin and dye my blood a dull shade of grey. I wanna fucking run away. I wanna fucking die. I don't fucking know what to do."

You guys kind of know the rest, because that's when I met you guys and started feeling safer here than anywhere else, and vented here. But for reference

September

October

November

December

January, January, Fuck you January

I skipped class. I got antidepressants. I binge ate and became overweight. Failed three classes. Parents didn't find out anything until the grades came out. Then they lost their mind.

Now: Not Enough

They blamed me for not trying hard enough.

They said oh failures happen, you have to learn from your mistakes and try again.

I have to set up a proper routine. Dedicate all my time and energy to staying physically healthy and studying. Spent my "free time" thinking. I even got berated for listening to music with headphones on.

Dad asked me why did I fail biochemistry. I said it was hard, the pace was fast, and I don't like the subject. He said there's no point in not liking it.

Mom said I needed to get rid of the idea that this degree is against me and accept it, that I shouldn't dwell on what-ifs from the past, and all the reasons they convinced me to choose this still stands, that learning is a fun and interesting thing that I should take joy in, that I won't be able to handle being a psychiatrist, that I used to be such a star student what the fuck happened to me, that each path has their own difficulties and I'm already on this road so why won't I just keeping going for the next two years, that if I quit and start over I'll be older than my cohort and my friends will all graduate before me and why won't I just follow the normal path dammit

SO EVERYTHING IS MY FUCKING FAULT HUH??

I don't fucking know anymore.

Now: The present

The reason I was crying earlier, was that I went to have a meeting with an academic advisor to ask about the possibility of transferring to a different programme.

There are two ways.

One, apply for an internal transfer by June. But that requires exceptional grades, and I don't have that.

Two, quit university and re-apply with my college entrance exam results. But then none of the credits I earned in the past two years will be transferred. All will expire. I went through shit for nothing except to confirm my mistake is a mistake.

I might figure something out when I'm not crying my brains out but right now neither option sounds like an option to me.

I could barely ask anything intelligent afterwards because I was trying so hard to stop myself from breaking down immediately.

Now: How I feel

I'm not supposed to feel like this. This is not normal. This is not how my university life is supposed to go. It cannot be normal to want to die every day.

The moment I realised this was fundamentally wrong was when I looked at my high school friends' social media, and saw them living their best lives: dating, joining the committee of societies, getting awards and scholarships, jobs and internships, travelling, going to parties, everything a young person should be doing. My best friend is chasing her dreams to became an actress at NYU TISHC, already getting paids acting jobs at year 1, going to prominent events, maintaining a 3.9 GPA, goes out partying all while maintaining a long distance relationship with her athletes boyfriend who is the best of the best in Asian youth, handsome, and just a great guy in general.

I'm supposed to be on the same level as them.

I'm from an elite class of an elite school in an elite city. I've been on city radio four times and city-wide broadcast television once. I was on four department/society committees, two of which I was chairlady. I wrote and directed my own play. My name was followed by seven internal awards when it was my turn to get my diploma during the graduation ceremony. I aced my classes. My drawing and writing had been in my school's anthology and yearbook. I genuinely enjoyed learning.

I'm not supposed to be this.

I'm not supposed to be this depressed, overweight person who can't get out of bed and skips classes and fails courses. I'm not supposed to be this stagnant, I was always moving. I was always giving it my 100%. I'm not supposed to not make any friends and want to stay in my bed all the time. I'm not supposed to be insomniac, or sick, or depressed, or overweight.

I was always fighting.

I don't have any energy in me anymore to fight.

I'm not supposed to turn out like this. This isn't who I want to be/ I hate whoever I am now. This isn't right.

But I'm fucking stuck, I don't know what's the truth, I don't know how valid "I don't like this" is.

A lot of people tell me to just ignore what my parents say but it's really not that simple. I only realized they can hurt me despite loving me and it's not my fault last year. And even then it's hard to stay firm on this belief. Because truthfully, I don't know what's right, I only know what feels wrong.

Fuck this. I want to fast forward until the day I figure shit out. I want to live here on Tumblr.

Fuck everything.

[bumblebeeappletree]

We meet a biologist who has spent his life observing the littlest living things; from pollen in the air to the moss under our feet.

Dr Andrew Thornhill is a research botanist at the State Herbarium of South Australia curating the bryophyte collection, including mosses, liverworts and hornworts. He also teaches plant identification at the University of Adelaide which is within walking distance via the botanic gardens.

Early in life, Dr Andrew knew he wanted to study living things and enrolled in university straight out of high school. Unfortunately, one week before studies began, Andrew discovered he had a rare form of cancer in his knee and was met with an option to amputate or go through a world-first surgery. He opted for the surgery, which was successful, though “it meant that I couldn’t run anymore, and I had to take care of my leg. It didn’t help that I was in a car accident five years after chemo. I broke both my legs and every bone in my foot, so I had to recover again.”

Despite having to defer his studies, Dr Andrew continued with a focus on plants instead of zoology, admitting that “it might be too hard to chase animals.” With moss being so close to the ground Andrew makes light of the ironies and compensations of his work. “When they made me the moss curator, it was kind of ironic because you have to get down on your knees. I don’t have one of the knees to get down on, so I get a camera or magnifying glass... and just lay on my stomach to look really closely.”

The collection holds 30,000 dry specimens which are being digitised into a database. Assisting Dr Andrew is environmental biology student Bonnie Newman who discovered four migrated species of bryophytes previously unseen in Adelaide via the iNaturalist app. Bonnie has volunteered with the herbarium collection for over two years and says, “Andrew has a really relaxed way of doing things, you know, cracking jokes and making people feel comfortable.” As well as the current collection, they also collect new specimens from the field which are pressed in tissue to extract moisture, frozen to get rid of pests then labelled and stored in the herbarium.

The First Creek wetland in Adelaide botanic gardens is a popular place to find moss, hornwort and liverwort. Andrew says it’s the combination of shade and consistent moisture that allows the mosses to survive even through dry Adelaide summers. “When they do (dry out), they sit there, and they don’t completely die. When it rains, they can pop up quickly and show themselves again.” Andrew points out a leafy liverwort which grows on rocks and logs, slowly decomposing them into soil, and performing a vital role in the ecosystem. “Mosses are doing a job, extracting nutrients, holding the soil together, slowly breaking something down. Without them, we wouldn’t have the soil that other plants can use.”

Moss outreach is also an important part of Andrew’s work, with trivia nights whimsically titled Mosstermind, art exhibitions and Moss Appreciation Society pages on social media all aiming to encourage more young scientists to the field of these mini but mighty plants.

Dr Andrew says, “Mosses and their close relatives, liverworts and hornworts, are what we think are the earliest of land-plant groups. They're the plants that came out of the water and started colonising land and forming oxygen. Mosses form part of the ecosystem. You might not see them, but they're sitting there underneath the soil holding it together in many places. It's only when it rains... they unfurl their leaves, put their little chlorophyll out, turn green and then you’ll spot them everywhere.”

You can contribute to science by uploading photos of your local bryophytes to the iNaturalist website.

Featured Plants:

SPARSE FERN MOSS - Thuidiopsis sparsa

MARBLE SCREW MOSS - Syntrichia papillosa

LEAFY LIVERWORT - Chiloscyphus sp.

Filmed on Kaurna Country | Adelaide, SA

[the-irrelevant-trumpeter]

could you say what happens in the time machine? i really want to watch it but im flat broke rn.

also only just saw this sorry! this is gonna be a summary of the entire show, so if you don't want spoilers then don't keep reading.

so basically it's about three people who are trying to put on a new groundbreaking version of the time machine. one of these people is dave wells, the great great grandson of h.g wells. his production of the show is not just supposed to be a straight production, but also provide evidence that h.g wells actually did figure out how to time travel. he and his two coworkers, amy and michael, create a piece that is a mismatch of scenes from the novel, evidence of h.g wells's time travelling experiences, lessons on how time travel works, and recreations of how they created the show itself (and also cher songs). at the end of act 1, dave realises that their prop time machine, which was actually h.g wells's lecturing chair, actually IS the time machine, as he tries to use it for the scene where the time traveler goes into the future, but keeps accidentally travelling back to the beginning of the scene. after repeating the scene many times, with amy and michael unaware of the time travelling happening and dave trying to figure out what's going on with the chair, michael accidentally gets stabbed with the knife they believed to be a prop, but he had forgotten to switch out. as michael dies, dave has the idea to go back in time and fix it so that he never does.

in act 2, amy and michael are doing the beginning of act 1 again, seemingly unaware of the fact that the audience have already seen this. dave appears and interrupts, not in costume, and the audience finds out that he's been time traveling for a while now, constantly repeating the play in an effort to save michael to the point where he knows exactly what amy and michael will say. he explains to amy and michael no matter what he does, michael always dies, even if not in the exact same way, because the laws of time mean that you cannot go back in time to save or destroy a persons existence. amy, in an effort to prove him wrong, sarcastically goes to try out the machine, and time travels and sees all of the possibilities of michael's death. amy comes up with the idea to contact the future, as they will have the technology to better understand the space-time continuum and may have a way to save michael. they get an audience member to write a letter to their university to put in a time capsule, with the phone number of a different audience member's phone (which they keep on stage), so that the scientists from the future can use their fancy technology to call them during the show. to pass the time while they wait for the phone call from the future, they do a variety of activities, including but not limited to michael going on a date with an audience member, quickly running some scenes from the time machine, and an 'importance of being earnest' hip hip dance mashup. with two minutes remaining until michael's death and the phone still not having rung, michael gets angry with his situation and destroys the time machine to save the rest of humanity, but this means that dave and amy will be unable to go back in time and try and save him again, meaning this will be the last time they ever see him. as the seconds count down, they brace themselves, but as the time passes and michael doesn't die, they finally receive the phone call. the scientist explains that destroying the time machine bought them a few minutes, and after some confusion over an instruction, they manage to save michael from being crushed by the falling set. the end!

it's a very fun show in my opinion, it's not an overly high quality piece of theatre or anything, but if you're willing to embrace the silliness, i highly recommend it! you can buy or rent it from the original theatre website (or if you dm me i do have the recordings of it). hope that made at least a smidgen of sense, it's a hard show to summarise ahaha.