#aka her PhD advisor

[greypetrel]

HI I saw your art come up in my feed through mutuals and can you please tell me about?! Dragon Age X Tolkien?! My top special interests…

Hello there!

I'm glad you asked, of course I can tell you more!

So, it all started on Instagram when I posted this illustration I did. She's my Inquisitor, I did her an official portrait. On Instagram, where people don't mainly follow me for DA, one person asked me if she was a villainess, because she "got the eye of Sauron vibe going on".

And as a fellow person with the same top special interests, you can see how and why my mind exploded.

You see, my Lavellan, Aisling is a VERY Neutral Good character. She's a cinnamon roll, a huge horse-girl, and honestly she'll use sparkly pen ink if it was already invented. She and Dorian are besties, likes to experiment with magic in the silliest experiments ever (add a Solas who runs behind them trying to contain them before they make something explode. They did, in fact, made things explode. Namely, an Arcane Horror and the corpse pit in the Exalted Planes, they… Redirected on of the flame-throwers and BOOM. It was disgusting, BUT it got the job done AND set the pit on fire. Also, the Bog Unicorn? They brought him back, it was Dorian's PhD dissertation in Necromancy and Aisling helped. Go on like this for the whole inquisition).

So you can see that seeing her as Sauron was particularly ridiculous. And of course I jumped on the train right away and created probably the silliest AU ever. More LOTR than Dragon Age, but I'm still planning things. A long rant and a plotline under the cut!

Aisling is, in fact, Sauron. Or well, call her Maira or Annatar, she hates the nickname "Sauron". She sided with Melkor because he told her she could experiment to her heart's desire, he understood her view of Orcs, Wargs, Balrogs, Dragons and so on as "Still Eru's children"… And yes, he totally used her, but she was dissatisfied with Aule keeping her on constant check and leashing her out and to everyone laughing when she suggested that dragons could be tamed. She wasn't exactly ok with Melkor's conquest plans… But couldn't quit because 1) She didn't know where to go if she did, elves would have killed (tried to) on sight, she didn't like humans much (they live too little to be significant, to her, Luthien and her had a lenghty conversation after the first kicked her ass badly). 2) She didn't want to abandon the Orcs, Melkor didn't treat them particularly well (he would have cut out the minimum wage can you believe it).

She made a new life in Nùmenor, she didn't lie to them to deceive anyone… But just to have anonimity and start anew. But she did lie nonetheless, and even if she had years and years and years as Annatar, brilliant orephicer first and wise advisor later, when it was revealed who she really was she had to fled.

Which was good because she found the Orcs in Middle Earth totally in disarray and with no guide. So she started her new pet project: Mordor. Aka a Kingdom where Orcs could thrive. The Ephel Duath protects them, volcanic earth is very fertile! She evoked so many dark clouds to provide rain and water, found Adar all over again (they're besties), tried to build a net of relationships. It never worked with Gondor because they never got past her fame, but elsewhere…

About the Rings: That was another silly experiment, she told Celebrimbor that those rings shouldn't have been given to anyone, the power thei wielded was too big. Maybe some of the remaining Noldor could be ok with it, but regular humans? She had her doubts. Because you see, the Rings aren't evil per se. It's just like having on your finger a ring made of Uranium. It will hurt you not because the ring is evil, but because your body isn't build to be in contact with the material. In this case, magic. Fleeing from Nùmenor, she managed to take the Nine with her, and spent a lot of time thinking about what to do with them, exactly.

In the end, she forged the One Ring as a catalyst for the Nine, to keep their magic stable and wieldable. She gifted them to the people she befriended and allied with (those who agreed), making them immortal and granting them some powers. Basically, the Nine Nazgul are the DA inner circle. Their immortality depends on the One Ring, she never poured her life essence in it ("Who would be so stupid to do that? With a Ring you wear in battle???" cit). But it's important for her to have it because she doesn't want her friend to die or be corrupted by their rings.

The inscription is evil, you say? "One Ring to rule them all"? Oh no, my dear, it was just severely mistranslated. Gondor scholars never cared for the Black Speech and are terrible with it. "Them all", you see, is a reflexive form of not the plural but the DUAL. It should be "one another"/"each other", and rule? More like "Belong". :)

Back to LOTR… She didn't attack Gondor first. She started back her project to reforestate Mordor, sent a contingent of Orcs to Osgiliath, hoping to commerce… But the meanies attacked her Orcs on sight and took it as a war declaration. Which never was but it's difficult to go the Diplomacy way if your people and ambassadors are attacked on sight…

Her fault with it all was not acting when Saruman started to get crazy and suggest her plans of conquest. She just rolled her eyes, told the "old geezer" that she wasn't interested at all, thank you very much and let him do his own things. Corrupting more orcs and well.

Meanwhile Mordor is a really nice place if you don't mind the stormy clouds looming over! Frodo and Sam entered it through the Black Gate, got a welcome bag of goodies with some typical snacks, a travel guide, a map, a brochure informing them of basic Orc culture tips and tricks ("Grinning is considered very rude, please don't show too much teeth when you do"), an enamel pin with "I <3 Mordor". They had a very pleasant stay travelling to the volcano, all the Orcs kept inviting them for dinner, insisted they should have slept in their hut, feed them to bursting. Add a very distressed Dorian the Witch-King flying overhead and not finding them because they keep being sidetracked. By the time they reach Mount Doom, the Hobbits have gained 3kg each, are very well fed and rested, and are extremely confused about what to do. All the Orcs have explained to them that the Lady wants them polite, and she's so kind, they don't want to disappoint her! She… Is not that evil, isn't she?

Oh the giant evil spider you say? Eh, yes, it's a problem because it's eating the orcs, poor Shagrat up in Cirith Ungol doesn't know what to do… But Shelob is still a living creature, so they're discussing long and hard on how to move her. Because the Dark Lady feels bad in killing her.

The Dark Lady who was taking cuttings in Ithilien to plant back in Mordor and was found by this strapping Gondor Lieutenant, born in Rohan, who instantly decided she was a Lady and needed protection in these dangerous lands. She tried to tell him that she was in no danger, the Orcs wouldn't have attacked her… But he insisted! Scorted her around! As if she needed help! She!! She felt very amused and kept on going there just to meet with him and chat. They got along you see… Even if he's thoroughly convinced, somehow, that she comes from Rivendell and is stranded. Add an enemies to lovers sub-plot when, finally, Cullen will realise whom exactly she is when a particularly out of patience Dorian will come to collect her and bring her back to work.

I need to add Solas somewhere there, they worked together for a long time and it still ended in him betraying her and making it so that she can't grow her left arm back.

Oh and the real villain here is Saruman, yes.

Can you feel the migraine that Gandalf will have in all this, because I can.

[doingthedirtydishes]

Using your Covid-19 time wisely; Hey everyone, look at me: The incessant need to be affirmed on social media.

In the Covid-19 world we currently find ourselves, there has never been a greater need for inter-personal communication. Today’s generation, born into the digital age, lack the ability to communicate with others person-to-person. The fact that social media plays such a big part in so many peoples’ lives only exacerbates the issue on a larger level. As a result of the current international health and economic crisis, social distancing and other counter measures, we find ourselves exceedingly separated from friends and loved ones, increasing isolation and anxiety.

With schedules in disarray, resulting in more time off, the amount of hours per day spent online has increased many-fold. Rather than take that spare time to read a book, take a walk in nature or spend time improving oneself through contemplation, it is wasted on frivolous empty activities, providing no value to our brains and souls. One of the gifts of this international crisis is solitude: time alone to explore within for direction; and to look without, through close friends and family, for answers. The need to fill our schedules with “busy” time pervades our thoughts, however.

Those who are whole and complete, who have done their work AKA “stuff” in life, fought their demons by embarking on a profound journey into the furthest annals of their being, only to find light, are handling this turning point with empathy and compassion. They understand the world is not fair, that they cannot control what happens in life, as that is out of their control, but they can be in control of their emotions – their reaction and attitude to life’s trials and tribulations. They understand the underpinning inter-connected essential elements of community, and the need to protect fellow mankind, regardless the level of their [professed and misguided] patriotism.

For those who are not complete, those who have not embarked on the intolerable voyage to better understand themselves, those still lacking inner content and resolve, they are pining for life to return to yesteryear. Aside from being separated from daily socialization with others, through measures implemented by governments worldwide, by banning people from social events and functions that would otherwise provide much obliged human communication, interaction and touch, whilst others suffer in silence, unable to access social services, there are no outlets for citizens to vent, they do not exist. It is left up to you to explore new ways to find well-being.

What issues and concerns existed prior to the catastrophe have only multiplied exponentially. Social media, normally an outlet for most to keep in touch with family and friends or post about their lives, has turned into the biggest self-psychology self-help platform in the world. Anytime anyone goes on social media they are bombarded with unreliable, poorly sourced information or fake news. Kind of like believing you are Frank Sinatra in your own shower – well, everyone on Facebook, newfound PhDs abound, are experts in everything from epidemiology to financial market fluctuations to political history to quantum physics. Geez, how did I ever go amiss?!

My favorites are the alleged ‘spiritual advisors’ of the Internet. They are in a stratosphere all their own, figuratively and literally. These ass-hats are as in need of therapy as much themselves as those they [attempt to] help, and certainly should not be doling out advice on life to anyone in want.  The Internet is replete with countless throngs of blind sheep searching for their shepherd. And there are no lack of shepherds to boot. Their specialty need of assurance is of an elite class, where few are chosen but many are self-ordained. In other words, the blind leading the blind!

There is nothing better than when one of these self-proclaimed ‘spiritual advisors’ openly advertises her sexuality to sell her message – the antithesis of being spiritual, by placing utter emphasis and excessive value on beauty, the shallow, vain and superficial. Somehow the “message” gets lost in the infinite inappropriate ogling of comments of pathetic men – probably the same group who randomly send gross dick-pics to unsuspecting [and shocked] women. If they were advertising VIP lounge champagne lap dances or comfort-bunny cuddle-services it would make sense. But they are not.

Good luck seeing your way through the labyrinth of personal hypocrisy and self-contradiction.

These same vapid types will also immediately and constantly reply to any comment you make on their narcissistic post, never missing an opportunity to “tag” someone, thus providing the ‘click-whirl,’ immediate gratification and confirmation modern society has come to reward. Whereas, if these ‘spiritual advisors’ had anything “spiritual” to offer, aforementioned notwithstanding, they would not be advertising their bodies and cheapening their message, a byproduct of the ‘hedonic treadmill,’ to solicit “likes” and comments – thus fueling the social media algorithms to the point of manipulating the news feed to keep their post reappearing – so long as they feed the machine.

And for those on the other side of the narcissism coin, those with an insatiable appetite, enough to fill a black hole, in a world where discipline and rigor are foreign, where the cheap and the shallow are de rigueur, whose use of social media as modern self-therapy, with an never-ending thirst for non-self-effacing daily attestation – everything from their new car, who by accident include the [luxury] make, to their kid’s every poop (we all defecate, by the way), to the ever-so-lovely forever updated profile photo, with every self-beautifying angle and trick straight from the photographer’s handbook – you are just as guilty in being abundantly devoid of self-awareness.

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

— Aristotle

Let me suggest some other more constructive uses of your ever precious time: Perhaps you could better utilize this donation of newfound wonder, a gift in disguise, rather than spending your days filled with endless social media, by taking some time for silence – a moment to look deep within your inner-being, quiet the busyness of your day, eliminate the time thieves, and explore the cavernous vicissitudes of your soul – discovering who you are, why you are here, and what is your purpose in life. We are here on this earth to find meaning, and it is best found by listening to your heart. Satisfaction and happiness are two sure roads built on the backs of helping others.

Learn to take back control of your life; learn to appreciate the value of silence and introspection; learn the practicality and immense fathomless benefits of inward contemplative reflection.

There is good news: Your feelings of not being whole, not having walked your innermost journey – where your ‘stuff’ is identified and worked through – your emotional state of unease and unhappiness, and your quest to fill a vast bottomless depression has a solution: That time spent on social media, entreating to be affirmed and liked by others, is better spent by directing that same energy inward, by completing the pursuit in life slaying your dragon(s), commencing unraveling the onion called you, gaining a better understanding of the [inner] route to happiness.

We currently live in a culture of personality, where the superficial is elevated to emperor status, where we have replaced virtue with vice and integrity with sub-moral character, where we have elevated actors to hero status – no longer valuing the true heroes in our society: those who look deep within for answers, those who face insurmountable odds, those who play with the cards they are dealt (and do it well), and those who often fall down but get back up, even through affliction, struggle, suffering and disease. These are the heroes we need to reinstate in society.

The burning desire that others find interest in our lives, instead of discovering that same interest in and of ourselves on our own, creates a Jungian self-reflective mirror effect of our own self inadequacies unplumbed in the chasmic cleavage we call our self, perpetuating the inexhaustible cycle of unhappiness. No one can be sure what the results of this worldwide economic and health catastrophe ultimately will be, but rest assured we are experiencing drastic change never seen the likes of history. Change is uncomfortable; it does not come easily.  There is no way around Doing The Dirty Dishes of life; anything of value worth having takes hard work and sacrifice.

Buddhist proverb: No mud; no lotus. (Without dirt and fight there is no flower and beauty.)

You will not find such satisfaction on social media, nor will you find happiness through the need for incessant affirmation. Algorithmic social media feeds – specifically programmed, with psychology and addiction in mind, to show us more of what we want – guaranteeing we continually reinforce our ideas of the world, no matter how skewed or misinformed, always playing out to our own heartfelt capacious self-made and self-fulfilling narrative. Through their continuous psychological manipulation, you are drinking the cool-aid, questioning nothing, and allowing conspiracy theories to take root and gain credibility when false and unsubstantiated.

The irony of it is that these humbugs are going onto social media to tell others how to be whole and complete. Ladies and gentleman and clowns, it is like what is said of being a guru: If one calls oneself a guru, simply be definition they cannot be one. Same goes for those who purport to be self-assured on social media, and can show you how to do so too – they are incapable. A fruit tree that is not healthy cannot bear fruit. Therefore, how can a person who has not walked that path in life inform others how to proceed downward? They cannot. Only you can. And for free.

It is a dichotomous paradox so few can find their way out of yet. And this interminable self-contradiction is only worsened and compounded by those feeding their never contented egos under the guise of spiritual guidance. Time is the only commodity you can never recover, though often we find ourselves unceasingly wasting it, to our own detriment. Only once we face our traumas and make peace with our past can we begin to hope to find happiness and realize it is ours to gain or lose. It certainly will not come through social media affirmation. Look within – where you will find, abound with untold cosmic wanderlust –all that you seek is seeking you.

Quote of the day: “A man has as many social selves as there are distinctive groups of persons about whose opinion he cares. He generally shows a different side of himself to each of these different groups.” — William James

Travel Blog: Click here.

Spiritual Blog: Click here.

Book: Unbreakable Mind. (Print, Kindle, Audio)

Doing The Dirty Dishes Podcast: Watch or listen to episodes and subscribe: Spotify, Apple Podcast, Buzzsprout.  Also available on Google Podcast, iHeart, Tunein, Amazon Alexa and Stitcher. 

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Travel Blog links: Covid-19 stranded in NYC JFK and Maine��– also travel stories on Ireland, Spain, Sweden,  Belgium, Iceland, Colombia (Espanol version), Amsterdam, Germany, New Hampshire, TN and NYC.

Personal Website link where you can also find my book, photos of my travels and updates on current projects.  

Thank you for your love and support.

[mswyrr]

I'd suspect so. I wrote my post about dv and romance precisely because I've noticed there's an almost religious kind of intensity of belief around this issue, that somehow abuse is primarily caused by people (esp women) enjoying romance narratives. It's unsupported by reality, and it distracts from material things we could do to improve peoples' lives when, in the US, we have actively created policies that trap people in abusive relationships. And people don't think the same way about other major social problems that have connections to fiction.

A lot of people writing gay romance seem to have particularly deeply held beliefs around this stuff. Though I've accidentally read m/f that is similarly preachy recently and been very confused and dissatisfied by the author treating me, not as a reader they respect, but as a little fool they are instructing on how to live my life.

I don't know what to do about it. As a survivor and a fan of all kinds of love stories--and of the idea of love stories as art that can and should be used to say multiple things and explore different things, including darker sides of human experience--I've seen people in fandom verbally and emotionally abuse people, especially women, using this ideology. It is toxic and dangerous.

And the art people are making working off the assumption that this one type of story, because it is overwhelmingly loved and created and enjoyed by women, must be a moral lecture, isn't worth my time or money. It's not trying to be art anymore and I'm a grown adult who isn't interesting in paying to be told how to live my life by authors who look down on me and make assumptions about my ignorance and helplessness because I'm a woman who enjoys love stories.

But so many people are convinced that controlling and censoring art overwhelmingly created and enjoyed by women, and then victim blaming women as deserving abuse because many of us enjoy a particular kind of story, is somehow "feminist." I believe the intellectual origins of this kind of "feminism" connect to radical feminism and its purity obsession and essentializing of gender and simplification of power and how it plays out in abuse (which is at the heart of anti-trans radical feminist ideology - aka what is meant by "TERF"). Radfem ideology (especially when it isn't marked as such and just is passed off as generic feminism) seems to have a lot of uptake in fandom.

Radfem ideology and the controlling assumptions about women's purity together in relationships definitely seems to influence how particularly controlling and policing people are about f/f romance. The thinking reminds me of "political lesbianism" and the idea that to not be very "pure" and vanilla in one's love for women is to be "like a man" (connecting to radfem gender essentialism). For example, kinky queer women were harassed and abused in the '80s and '90s for being "like men." "Political lesbians" were often straight women who "chose" to be "lesbian" (they outright said this, I'm not accusing them of it - it was their stated intent) so - you'd have actual queer women who were kinky being driven out of communities and hurt by cosplaying straight women. Ugly stuff.

Radfem, anti-kink and anti-porn feminism, all of it connects to shame around sexual desire and pleasure and women being "pure." Some of the 1980s anti-porn feminists even aligned themselves with rightwing Christians in order to achieve their censorship goals... disgusting. It's a whole mess.

All of it has fallen out of fashion in academia in a big way. One of my advisors in my PhD program had stories to tell about her and other women being harassed at the infamous 1982 Barnard Conference by radical feminists/anti-porn and anti-kink feminists. They destroyed women's careers and caused a friend of hers to have a breakdown due to the intensity of the harassment and the idea radfems pushed that supporting sexual freedom and expression meant you were for the abuse of women. But these bs ideas have a lot of uptake in fandom spaces, including among people who claim to be against TERFs while pushing similar thinking to every other part of radical feminism.

Edit: It's important to note that Pamela Regis was writing her book in the 1990s and the book by Janice Radway she's critiquing in that quote I posted was published in 1984, so it was written and published at the very height of the "feminist sex wars," when the interrogation of sexual material and women's sexual behavior in politically controlling ways was more acceptable in academia.

@mswyrr I really would have to read the rest of the Pamela Regis book and do more research but I’m starting to wonder if there’s a connection to the way romance novels have been criticized to the trend of modern romance novels (especially queer ones) having a tendency to lecture the readers

[sarasa-cat]

Doing the big organization for Monsters (finally... don’t ask why it took so long to get to this point... life....).

Reviewing one arc at a time while engaging in copypasta mania, organizing a super-clean, super-organized, super-awesome Scrivener file with everything I’d ever possibly need in it and NO MESS. (hahahahah, just wait a few months).

Starting with the Lu arc because that is the best, easiest, least messy place to start.Realized that I needed to make some minor additions to the structure of the conflict (<--- in progress today and tomorrow as top To Do item).

Needed to refresh my memory on a very close read of all the times Lu says “I’m sorry” in canon.  Copypasta’ed all of it into one short file and ... oooooooohhhhhhhh I REMEMBER THESE IMPLICATIONS INCLUDING THE VERY SLY IMPLICATIONS IN THE VIDEO/TIMING AND HOW “I’m sorry” is a freaking horror story. As in, this is literally a horror story. 

And I am remembering how when I first realized this, the whole damn idea for Monsters fell out of the sky and hit me over the head and ..... right. This is the core of it all.

oh god. oh god. this. 

(I mean, there are a few ways you could read the implications of this text, all supported by the script/canon, but the particular reading I’ve selected is full of such deliciously WRONGNESS and it just feels so good and so bad and so awful and so HORRRRRRRORRRR and EWEWEWEWEWEWEWEWEW. EW. EW. EW. YES. ewewewew.)

Right. I remember all the meta I wrote about this on dream width back in early 2017. *shudders at the horror of it*

[ptersparkers]

everything has its place (peter parker) part 1/?

summary: the last thing you want to do is sit through a class you need to take in order to graduate but have no interest in. in comes peter parker.

notes: this is MUCH shorter than i’m used to writing but i have this lil idea in my head that isn’t fully fleshed out...anyway this is my mini project now so stay tuned for updates! 

warnings: typos, probably. 

listen to: everything has its place (aka the song that got me thinking about this)

Your friends always swore up and down that you always had a camera on you. 

It started in high school, when your friend-turned-frenemy had convinced you to take a photography class as an elective during your sophomore year. Your hobby, your expensive hobby, gave you a reason to leave the small town you’d grown up in. 

But it was worth it. The hours you spend on your projects meant hours spent away from the blinding lights and loud noises of New York City. It became a keepsake, a moment to excuse yourself from your friends to hide away with some peace and quiet. 

You’re on the up and up when your academic advisor tells you that you need one more upper division credit outside of your visual arts major to graduate. It’s the kind of news you aren’t thrilled to hear because it means you’ll have to forfeit taking Advanced Photoshop until the next semester. You’re particularly bummed because you know this class is meant to help you work on your capstone project—an attempt to assuage your guilt whenever you neglect your project for personal time—and you know you’ll need to make time in your schedule to work on it.

Particularly, you need to fulfill a remaining STEM credit. 

It hurts to admit to your parents—adoptive parents since you were eight years old—who are both in the medical profession, that you wanted to pursue photography as a career. Initially, they had been less than willing to accept it and asked you to think about career options during your first year of college. But you returned home on summer break with no intention to pursue being a STEM major, like they had hoped, and reluctantly allowed you to pursue photography full-time. 

It didn’t help your case that you were good with biology. Like, really good. The kind of good where you knew you had it in you to pursue a PhD because learning about cell and molecular biology felt like another Tuesday to you. The problem wasn’t your lack of intelligence, it was your lack of interest.

You find yourself sitting in BIOL UN3320: Regulation of Behaviors for Survival on Mondays and Wednesdays from 8:00am to 9:50am. You hate the way this class sounds so formal and you hate the way that you’re forced to wake up every morning at six o’clock to make sure you’re able to get to class on time. You particularly hate that there is no free version or an uploaded copy of the required reading. You wince every time you recall paying one hundred and fifty dollars for a discounted textbook. Still, you think it’s too much. 

You sit in your seat—you know it’s not your seat but it may as well be for the rest of the semester—five minutes before your professor arrives. The class is nearly full and you’re guessing the reason is because it’s the second week of the semester. Nobody has felt the immense stress and pressure of the school year and you savor this moment before you truly hate waking up before the sun rises. 

Syllabus week passes by with flying colors. The semester began on a Wednesday, the second day of BIOL UN3320, and Dr. Fonseca graced her presence with the promise that she won’t assign any rigorous work until the week after next. It’s now two Monday’s from then and you’re starting to wonder what the coursework is going to be like when Peter Parker sits next to you. 

Peter Parker. That tall, lanky boy who wears way too much brown for your liking. His hair is unruly and he always seems to be exhausted. More exhausted than the average college student with an internship on the side. Every time you see him, he looks like he was trampled over by a street car and lived to tell the tale. 

And yet, Peter always has a smile on his face. 

He sat next to you on the first day of class because it was the only seat towards the back middle of the class that was available. The first few rows were scattered with students and you had taken a course in this class to know where your favorite seat was. Close enough to tell what the writing on the board was and far enough as to not draw any attention to yourself. 

He didn’t talk to you until the second time you saw him. Peter’s first words to you were, “Do you have a pen I could borrow?” 

You looked at him with reluctance, begrudgingly reaching into your backpack for a spare pen that you knew you would never see again. Nobody returns borrowed pens. You’re irritated for the first ten minutes of class because a stranger asked for your pen and you’re annoyed because you’re particular about what you write with. You watched as he scribbled his messy handwriting on white lined paper but became distracted once Dr. Fonseca began her lecture. 

He gave the writing utensil back after Dr. Fonseca excused the class and thanked you for it.

Peter’s particularly chatty. You can’t tell if it’s his nature or if it’s his awkwardness that forces him to make conversation to cope with how awkward he feels, sitting next to someone he doesn’t know in a class full of people he’s never met before. He’s talkative in the few minutes between arrival and the beginning of class, introducing himself and his major before you can start to think about the class. 

You notice that he bites his lip a lot. Every time he says something to you, he bites his bottom lip when he’s expecting a response. You chalk it up to a nervous tick. He seems like he’s nervous to hear you reply to his comments and it seems like Peter can’t sit still. He fidgets in his seat and maneuvers his pen between his fingers during class, and you try not to let the sound of the pen falling on his desk distract you from Dr. Fonseca’s words. 

You’ve known him for all of three weeks and you’re thinking about him more than you care to admit. This is the hardest anyone has ever tried to be your friend, and you aren’t sure if you appreciate the attention or not. Peter never shied away from your attempts to box him out. You were always met with comedic wit and smart alec comebacks to incredulous answers from students in the class who clearly didn’t read the assigned text.

He’s cute, you’ll give him that. But he acts like he’s been your best friend since the seventh grade. You aren’t even sure you gave him your own name. 

“Do you like coffee?” 

You lift your head up from your desk to see that Peter has gracefully slid into the seat next to yours when you blink twice to adjust to the bright light of the room. Peter’s sporting white Nike’s and a sweater that doesn’t look like it belongs in his closet. He looks different than he does on other days, but you can’t quite understand why.

“I like soy lattes,” you reply, fixing your posture. “Why do you ask?”

“You always look tired when I see you,” he says. “Maybe you should get some coffee before class.”

He says it in a way that sounds genuinely sincere. But because he doesn't know you like he thinks he does, it annoys you to no end. You gather that he doesn’t know you always get a medium soy latte from the cafe down the street when you leave this class so you don’t have to divert your commute when you have your eight A.M. 

“You know, Peter,” you begin, “you shouldn’t comment on a girl’s appearance.  

Peter looks alarmed.

“I just mean that I think you should try to get more sleep or more caffeine so you stay alert,” he says quickly. “So you don’t fall asleep in class and miss notes. I didn’t mean to make a joke about your appearance.” 

You’re barely able to process his words because you’re still trying to wake up.

“You have got to be the only person I know who’s chipper at eight in the morning.”

When you take a good look at Peter’s face, you see a red gash on the side of his left eyebrow. It looks nearly healed, but you know for a fact that it wasn’t there the last time you saw him. You almost ask where he got it from before chiding yourself into keeping quiet. You’re here to fulfill a credit, not to make friends. 

“There’s no use in being negative about it, I guess.” 

There it is, Peter’s smug response that he doesn’t realize is smug but you do. You gather that Peter’s like that. He’s smart without having to think about it and far too honest for your liking. Peter knows when to shut up from time to time but his smart alec comments almost seem like they’re made to make you roll your eyes. 

“I’m not waking up earlier to fit getting a coffee into my schedule,” you retort. “If you feel so inclined to buy me a soy latte before class, by all means.” 

Peter doesn’t get the chance to reply because Dr. Fonseca walks into the room with her bag slung on her shoulders and the sound of her heels clicking against the hardwood floor apparent. She’s wearing pressed black pants with an emerald green blouse, fitted with sheer green sleeves whose ends are popping out of her black leather blazer. You’d like to think that if you had chosen to pursue a career in STEM, you’d be the kind of person who dressed like Dr. Fonseca. 

“I heard we’re starting a project soon,” says Peter. “I looked at the syllabus this morning.”

“Of course you did,” you mutter. Peter smiles at you despite it. 

“It’s so early in the semester, though.” 

You can tell he’s trying to make conversation but you don’t think about that. 

Internally, you start panicking at the idea of starting a project in a class you’re unfamiliar with. You hate that you were coached to feel this way ever since taking AP classes—the initial fear and dread of tackling a project that you aren’t confident in until you actually start working on it. You don’t let Peter see, however, and keep your eyes of Dr. Fonseca as she takes her blazer off and sets it nicely on the back of the chair. 

Class begins and you do your best to keep track of her words while you fish out your laptop from your backpack and open it to Microsoft OneNote. BIOL UN3320 sits at the top of the tab and you tune back in to what she’s saying when you hear the mention of a project. 

You aren’t sure whether to be happy or concerned when Dr. Fonseca explains that your first project will be dissecting different scientific articles to discuss with the class that following Monday. You aren’t particularly thrilled to know that each article is fairly long but you’re happy when she announces this will be a partnered project because of the dense text. 

Dr. Fonseca subsequently announces that each partnership will be chosen at random and it will last until the end of the semester. 

You try to take note of the assignment and pull up the PDF on the class page, where you read over the instructions and quell your nervousness about the first project of the semester. Dr. Fonseca begins to call out names and you anxiously wait to hear your partner’s name. You hope that your partner will be competent enough to follow along and you pray for someone who’s good with time management and discipline like you are. 

You hear your name being called after Peter’s. He looks at you and grins. 

Oh boy.

*✧･ﾟ───────────── *✧･ﾟ

please leave a comment/reblog if you liked this story! i don’t think i’ll be tagging anyone bc my taglist used to be looooong and it got stressful to tag everyone lol 

[evalinkatrineberg]

Harald

A/N: A quick fic about Evalin’s father, aka a compilation of ideas that came to me during long workouts when I let my mind wander. Read if you want to find out what’s in the attic. 

A boy of nine years leaned over the railing of the ship deck, the breeze blowing his short-cropped blonde hair every which way as he watched the horizon with wide eyes. He was raised around these boats. They were just as much a part of his family as his parents were, and as his cousins and their parents as well. The ships were his father’s pride and joy, secondary only to the boy himself.

It was his father that approached him now, placing a large, calloused hand on the boy’s shoulder as he, too, scanned the horizon. Turning to the boy, he asked, “Harald, ka du se?” Harald, what do you see? His father had always spoken a very strange dialect of Swendish, with an accent thicker than the butter cookies the boy’s grandmother always made around Jul. The boy kind of enjoyed listening to his father speak, though. It was a nice reminder that while the once separate countries his father and mother had been born in were now united as one nation, the unique quirks of each region remained in tact so long as the people held on to them.

“Eg se havet.” I see the ocean. It was true. The ocean expanded onwards, seemingly endless as the sun reached the lowest point on the horizon it would touch for the next twenty-four hours. It didn’t set in the summer up here, in the town of his father’s birth, where they always spent their summers in the little cabin that felt more like home than the well-kept house in Stockholm ever did. The boy’s mother loved their home in the southern part of their country - it was where she was born, after all - but the boy much preferred his father’s hometown, and he had a sneaking suspicion that his mother’s preference lied there too, though she was far too stubborn to ever admit it.

The boy’s father shook his head. “Du se ikkje hardt nokka, Harald. Ka vi se på e fremtida.”

You’re not looking hard enough, Harald. What we’re looking at is the future.

The words had stuck with the boy ever since they had first been said to him that windy summer night.

--

The boy was now fourteen years old, watching his parents pace circles around each other from their living room to their kitchen and back again. Their house in Stockholm with the garden his mother tended to in the front yard and miniature models of old ships in glass bottles inside every room had never felt so small to him. He knew he should be asleep, and yet, there was no way he could let sleep take him with his parents being so loud. So he sat in the stairwell, just above the curve in the staircase, behind the wall, so that his parents wouldn't see him. Not that they seemed to be paying that much attention to anything besides themselves anyway, but the boy figured he was better safe than sorry.

“I won’t stand for it!” His father’s voice boomed through the house, his words echoing off the portraits on the walls and rattling the fancy wine glasses that sat atop the cabinets in the kitchen. Why he was yelling in English, the boy didn’t know. He knew for a fact that his father detested the English language, in part due to the strong northern Swendish accent that lingered in his father’s voice whenever he spoke it, and in part because his father blamed a lot of his work troubles on the actions of English-speaking countries. Maybe he was speaking English so the boy wouldn’t understand what he was saying, in case he was in an ear shot. That was a foolish decision, though. The boy had started learning English in school at the age of six, and in all honesty, spoke it better than both of his parents.

“What’s your plan then, Edvard?” His mother spoke in English as well, her voice tinged with worry and frustration. Her English was less accented than the boy’s father’s, but it was still clear she was not a native speaker. That was fine, though. They rarely needed to use English outside of work, and as long as they could get their point across, that was good enough.

“You’re not going to like it.” His father shook his head, averting his gaze downwards, unable to meet the boy’s mother’s eyes.

“Edvard?” The boy’s father’s name sounded more like a warning on his mother’s lips than anything else.

“We have to leave, Amalia.”

Whatever his mother had been holding, she dropped. The boy only knew because he heard the object shatter as it made contact with the ground, which prompted the boy to jerk backwards, bracing his arms on the carpeted step behind him.

“Fetta!” The boy winced as his mother’s Swendish curse reached his ears. There was a noise that sounded kind of like a cabinet being opened, followed by something scraping against the floor. His mother must have been cleaning up whatever she had dropped. The boy hoped it wasn’t something important to her. “What happened today?”

“I spoke to him, finally, about the issues I have with the way he is using the ships and technologies I invented and helped build,” his father began to explain. The boy was pretty sure the “him” that his father referred to was either a royal advisor, or the King of Swendway himself. His father was the head engineer of the Swendish Royal Navy, after all - a fact that made the boy’s chest swell with pride as he walked down the streets besides his father.

“I said my piece,” his father continued, “and was told my opinion was irrelevant.”

The boy could hear his mother take one heavy breath. “So they won’t stop, then.”

He was pretty sure his father was shaking his head, probably still looking down, but the boy was too afraid to lean forwards and check. “No, they won’t. So I told them that if I’m so irrelevant, then they can do this without me.”

Another sharp inhale from his mother. “You quit?”

“I took all of my plans and drawings from my office. When they arrive tomorrow, the only thing they will find on my desk is my note of resignation.”

“Oh, Edvard.” The despair in his mother’s voice prompted the boy to lean forwards, watching as his mother hung her head, her eyes scrunched close as if she could force her tears to stay inside. “What are we going to do now?”

“We move. We sell this house - we can keep the cabin in Tromsø, to visit over the summers, maybe - and move to another country. Maybe Illéa, maybe France - wherever you want to go, kjæreste.”

“I don’t want to go anywhere,” his mother managed to get out, her voice strangled. The boy began to sneak down from his hiding spot, the need to comfort his mother overwhelming any common sense that had held him rooted in his spot before. “Our family and friends are here. Harald’s school is here, his friends and cousins -”

“Don’t worry about me,” the boy reassured her. Both of his parents’ heads whipped around towards him then, their eyes wide. “I can finish my schooling anywhere. I can go to university in whichever country we move to. I’ll be okay.”

His father nodded once at the boy before turning to face the boy’s mother again. “I have enough money saved to retire, and we’ll have more once we sell the house. We can settle down somewhere - you can still teach chemistry there. It will all be okay.”

The boy turned his attention to his mother, who was nodding, clasping his father’s hands so tightly her knuckles were white. She looked up and took a shaky breath as she blinked a few times, and then responded, “Yeah, okay.” She still didn’t sound very convinced. “Illéa. We shall go to Illéa. I know somebody there who can help me get a job.”

A small smile found its place on his father’s face as he looked at the boy’s mother, his eyes shining with an emotion the boy didn’t quite recognize. “See? It will all work out.”

--

The boy was now a man of twenty-eight years old, conducting research for his PhD dissertation in a town called Winston-Salem in the province of Carolina. He had decided to determine if different genres of music stimulated human brain activity in different manners. Why he had chosen this, he wasn’t sure, but something in his gut had tugged him in this direction, and he had learned over the years to listen to that instinct. It hadn’t failed him yet, so why should it fail him now?

The door to the small room Harald had found himself in creaked open, and in walked a petite blonde girl. She didn’t look to be more than fifteen, but Harald knew there was no way someone so young would have been let into this building to begin with. He also couldn’t deny that the girl was quite pretty, despite or perhaps because of her young appearance. The fact that he was even thinking about how pleasing her appearance was concerned him, and he decided it was something he would have to reflect upon as soon as he got the chance. These thoughts of his were simply unacceptable. The problem was clear-cut and dry, with an obvious solution, just as he liked it.

The girl’s cheeks were red as she set the case she carried down next to the doorway, looking up at Harald as soon as the black, rectangular case made contact with the floor. “I’m so sorry I’m late,” she began. She had the typical Carolina accent that Harald had become so accustomed to the past thirteen years that he had lived there, her words leaving her mouth in the breathless rush of someone who had run a few blocks to make it to her destination as quickly as possible.

Harald frowned. This girl shouldn’t be here to begin with, if she was as young as she looked. “No, I’m sorry, miss,” he replied, shaking his head. “Participants in this experiment must be at least eighteen years of age.”

Now it was the girl’s turn to frown, her eyebrows furrowing as she narrowed her eyes at Harald. It wasn’t quite a look that could kill, but a look that could seriously injure, certainly. “I think one of us must be mistaken.” She shook her head, a small smile forming on her face then. Her tone was light, like a breeze on a warm summer evening. “For strarters, I’m twenty-two years old, and I’m not here to participate in your experiment. I’m Holly Piper, the violinist you hired.” She extended her hand towards him then, which Harald stiffly shook as he looked into the girl’s - no, the woman’s - wide, brown eyes. “Pleased to meet you.”

It would make sense that she was the violinist, now that he thought about it. Her violin was probably what was in the box on the floor, then. “Ah, sorry for the confusion, ma’am.”

“No worries,” she responded with a laugh, waving her right hand through the air dismissively. “I’m flattered you thought I was so young, honestly!”

Over the next few days Harald had come to the conclusion that it was a damn good thing that Holly was in fact twenty-two, because he found himself becoming quite fond of the young woman. He began taking his lunch breaks with her, listening intently to her stories about her family, her life, how she had come to hear about his experiment, reveling in how she threw her head back whenever she laughed - the picture of carefree, youthful beauty. What most amazed him, however, was her music. Holly had a magical way of making her violin emit beautiful notes and chords that Harald had not previously known existed. He was infatuated with her. There was no denying it.

The last day of his trials, the rain was coming down in buckets, drenching everything that was brave enough to be outside for more than one second. It was typical of it to rain almost daily during the spring and summer in Carolina, as Harald had learned over the course of the past thirteen years, but this storm was different. Usually, the storms started late in the afternoon, and lasted only about an hour or so, before pittering out and dissipating before sunset. This storm, however, had started early in the morning, the first crack of thunder cutting through the humid air just as Holly entered the testing room one last time. By the time the two of them were leaving in the evening, the rain had not stopped, or even slowed.

Holly let out a shuddering breath as she took in the sight of the outdoors, squaring her shoulders as she came to a stop in the lobby. Turning to Harald, she plastered the fakest smile he had ever seen on her face, and said, “Can’t wait to walk home in this!”

He frowned. “You can’t walk home in this. It’s not safe.” His eyes darted towards the door, then to the car keys in his hand, and then back to her. “Let me drive you home?”

She shook her head, her cheeks turning red in the dim lighting of the lobby. “I couldn’t possibly accept,” she stammered out, “I-I live on the outskirts of town, and my parents -”

“It’s no bother,” he reassured her, cutting her off. “I can’t in good conscience let you walk home in this, so I’ll either wait it out here with you, or drive you home. Whichever you’re more comfortable with.” Perhaps he was a little too straightforward, or a little too blunt. Perhaps he was both. He had heard as much before. It was a cultural difference between Illéa and Swendway, for sure, and one of the things he missed the most about the country he had grown up in.

“Are you sure?” Holly’s gaze softened, and she bit the corner of her lip as she looked up at Harald.

He offered her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Yes.”

The drive to her house was quite short, actually. She really didn’t live that far from where Harald himself lived at that point in time. Once he had made the decision to go to grad school in Winston-Salem, he had signed a lease on a small house on the edges of the town, along with some of his friends in his PhD program. They had chosen it based on price, rather than for its location, though that fact had never bothered Harald in the slightest. It was a house, sure, but it wasn’t his home.

He hadn’t felt at home in many years.

“This is it,” Holly said quietly as Harald’s car approached a small, white, one-story house with a driveway that contained no cars. He pulled into the empty driveway, frowning over at Holly as she began to unbuckle her seatbelt and reach for the door handle.

“Wait,” he began, his hesitation and reservations evident in his voice.

“Hmm?” Holly leaned back in her seat a bit, dropping her hand from the door handle as she turned to look at Harald over her shoulder.

It was now or never, he decided, feeling the same instinct in his gut that hadn’t failed him yet. “Will you go on a date with me?”

At that, she let out a wry laugh, slumping back in her seat entirely, her head rolling up towards the ceiling. “You know, I was really hoping you were more than just another Three with a savior complex.”

“Pardon?” Harald furrowed his brows as he narrowed his eyes at Holly. The numbers, and the Caste System of Illéa as a whole still confused him, if he was being honest. It all seemed so arbitrary to him. He had only really began to ponder its existence when he had been applying to colleges, and his guidance counselor had told him a list of programs he could apply to as a Three. The concept of his career options being limited by a number seemed rather outlandish, in his opinion. His parents never referred to themselves as Threes, even though their entire family was, apparently, so Harald had never adopted the label, either. Holly was a Five, if he remembered correctly. That was the caste of artists and musicians, so that would make sense. “I’m not super familiar with how the Caste System works, I’m afraid,” he explained. “Am I not allowed to ask you on a date?”

Holly looked back at him then, inclining her head slightly to the right. “I thought you had a hint of an accent.” Of course her ears - tuned for music, for the slightest shift in tone or register - had picked that up. “German?”

“Swendish,” he corrected.

She hummed thoughtfully, a small, close-lipped smile forming on her face. Maybe that was a good sign. All he hoped was that he hadn’t offended her too much. “That makes sense,” she admitted, looking him up and down once before grabbing the car door handle once again. “I’m free this Tuesday, if you want to pick me up around six o’clock.”

Without even waiting to hear his response, she hopped out of the car, closing the door softly behind her.

He picked her up at six o’clock that Tuesday.

A year later, they were married.

--

Harald was forty-seven years old now, and the father of five beautiful children. “Happy accidents,” is what Holly had started calling them. They hadn’t been trying for children, but they hadn’t exactly been taking preventative measures either. So, some kids had happened. It wasn’t that unexpected, at least not to him, and certainly not unwelcome, but after their youngest, he and Holly had agreed that enough was enough. There were only so many beds they could fit into their two-story home in Knoxville, where they now lived and worked.

Their oldest was a girl named Lydia, now twelve years old. She was the spitting image of Holly, both in looks and in personality. She had taken after her mother’s love of music - the only one of their kids to do so, thus far - and was entirely sweet smiles with a hint of mischief. Staying out of trouble wasn’t necessarily one of her talents, but all she did, even if it could grow irritating, was mildly endearing, in the way that everything a child does is kind of cute. Her carefree nature never failed to surprise Harald, who had been led to believe that the oldest child was supposed to be the most mature, and the most responsible. Lydia must have missed that memo.

Second was Gabriel, a rebel in and of his own right. At eleven years old, it was becoming clear that he was interested in the sciences, and yet every time Harald attempted to sit down with him and talk to him about what he was studying in school, the boy made a point to mention how whatever topic he was studying was superior to Harald’s own field of study. It was kind of entertaining, if he was being honest. Gabriel would go places in life, there was no doubt about that. With his strong will and sharp mind, he could be successful in anything he decided to study, which was a relief to Harald. As long as Gabriel - as all of his children - were happy, he was content.

Third was Sam, now nine years old, eighteen days away from turning ten. He liked to work with his hands. Harald often caught the boy tying twigs together with twine, or setting up obstacle courses for ping pong balls inside the house on snowy days when school was cancelled. He always offered to help Sam out, giving him guidance whenever needed, though the boy’s need for assistance was declining with each passing day. Sam was clearly an engineer like his grandfather, a fact that never failed to make Harald proud. He knew it made his own father proud as well, though the man would never admit that he played favorites with his grandchildren.

Similarly, Harald would never admit that he played favorites with his own children, but his fourth child, Evalin, did hold a special place in his heart. The girl was nothing short of a miracle in his eyes. Born very prematurely, the midwife at the hospital had informed Harald and Holly that the girl only had about a fifty percent chance of surviving. The sound that had left Holly’s mouth when that was said nearly broke Harald. Evalin had pulled through, somehow, and suffered very few of the potential developmental complications the hospital staff had warned them about. The only big one Harald had noticed thus far was that the girl’s eyesight was terrible. The glasses she already wore at the age of eight were some of the thickest he’d ever seen. She’d also taken an interest in Harald’s own field of study - biology - which he supposed could be part of the reason he might favor her, as well. She was a very bright girl with a thirst for knowledge, and already a hard worker. Plus, she absorbed information like a sponge. He very rarely had to tell her anything twice.

The couple’s last child was a boy named Randall, who was now four years old. After Evalin having been born so early, Holly’s pregnancy with Randall had been the most nerve wracking nine months of Harald’s life, but luckily both mother and child had made it through without any complications. Randall was a sweet boy, and very curious about the world around him, but also certainly the quietest of all of the children. Harald had to admit he had a soft spot for Randall as well. He wasn’t sure what the boy was going to be like when he got older, but Harald sure hoped Randall managed to remain just as sweet and innocent as he was right at that moment.

Even though the world around them wasn’t innocent.

That fact was the reason that Harald was holed up in his study on New Years Eve with his father. Harald’s parents had recently retired to the province of Sota, notorious for its large Swendish population, insisting that they felt more at home there than they had ever felt in Carolina. They still went back to Tromsø every summer, now bringing their grandchildren along with them. Harald’s father insisted that any grandkid of his would know how to sail and how to swim, and his mother simply wanted her grandkids to be exposed to cultures outside of the one they were growing up in, in order to expand their worldview. Both were valid points, in Harald’s opinion. His parents still came to Carolina for the winter holidays, though. He suspected it was in part to avoid the heavy snows common in Sota this time of the year, but it had come to his attention now that they might have ulterior motives in visiting this year.

Harald’s father slammed a large box down on Harald’s desk, the thump rattling everything else that sat atop the hardwood surface.

Harald simply raised his eyes at his father, looking up from the papers that were now covered by the box. “Ka e ho?” What is that?

“Prosjektene mine.” He cleared his throat. “Heimefra.” My projects. From home.

Harald had a gut feeling that his father didn’t mean Sota. Pushing his chair back, he rose to his feet and began examining the box, feeling around the edges. If these were his father’s designs from all those years ago, then they were invaluable, especially if they fell into the hands of influential people. “Korfor?” Why?

“They are safer with you,” his father explained, switching to English, speaking in a low voice. “Less likely to be looked for here, less likely to be found here.”

Harald could only nod, eyeing the box warily as the wheels in his mind began turning in an attempt to figure out where to best keep the box. His study wasn’t ideal - the kids barged in too often, especially in the winter, when snowy weather sometimes kept them home from school. The bedroom he shared with Holly wouldn’t work either. Knowing Holly, she’d likely stay awake the whole night every night that that box was in their room, which wouldn’t end happily for any parties involved. That left him with only a few options.

“Loftet,” he decided finally, pointing one finger upwards towards the ceiling of his house. The attic. It was an almost perfect spot. Sure, the box wouldn’t exactly be hidden, but nobody could get into the attic unnoticed. It was only accessible by a door in the ceiling of the upstairs hallway that had to be pulled down. Attached to the other side of the door was a ladder, that also had to be pulled down, in order for someone to climb into the attic. The entire system was made of wood that creaked like mad, which would give away any intruders or snooping children before they even got close to the box itself.

Harald’s father nodded as another voice floated up the stairs. Lydia, calling for them to come down, lest they miss the  countdown into the new year. With a quick gesture towards the door, and a mental note to put the box in the attic as soon as the countdown was over, Harald and his father exited the study, making their way towards the stairs. A momentary glance over the banister revealed all five of his children looking up at him expectantly, little Randall situated on his mother’s hip, Lydia and Evalin holding hands and practically bouncing with excitement, Gabriel flicking Sam’s head whenever he thought their mother wasn’t looking. For them, Harald would do anything, no matter whether or not keeping this box in his attic sat right with him.

Clutching the banister reminded him of a different railing he had once held, the wind ruffling his hair, the small of the sea filling the air around him.

What we’re looking at is the future.

What a bright future that was.

--

“Proctor knows what’s in the attic.”

Those were the last words Evalin had said to him before she had left, whisked off to live out her childhood dream of meeting and falling in love with the prince. Harald would never describe his daughter as silly, but the entire situation was kind of fantastical, he had to admit. Yet, he had spent the majority of his life succeeding in part due to an inexplicable gut instinct that never failed to tug him down the right path, and he was willing to bet that was the same feeling Evalin had felt when Lydia had read out the application to her when it had arrived in the mail.

Of all the events Harald had predicted in the weeks leading up to Evalin’s departure, one of his colleagues threatening him or his family had not been on the list. Then again, it was Janine Proctor. The woman was ruthless, even by Harald’s standards, which was noted by other students. Their reviews of her almost made him pity her, and he had read the RateMyProfessor reviews about himself. So maybe he should have seen this coming. That didn’t change the fact that Proctor shouldn’t have involved his children in any problem she herself had with him.

Thus he found himself walking into her laboratory the next morning, not having even put his bag down in his own office yet. “Janine,” he said by way of greeting, staring at his colleague’s back as she herself stared at the screen of her computer.

She spun around, a smile dripping in a sickly sweet combination of poison and honey filling her face as she realized who was in her lab. “Harald!” The woman leaned back in her chair, crossing her legs and clasping her hands on her lap. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Evalin told me what you said to her.” There was no point in wasting time with niceties. He had come here to do one thing, and one thing only, and that was to say his piece.

“Ah, I see.” Her smile deepened as she pushed her chair over towards her desk, leaning her elbows on it once she reached it. Placing her head in her hands, she continued, “I don’t suppose you’ve come to me to confess the truth of your father’s complicated past, then.”

Who did this woman think she was? It had mystified him how Evalin had always spoken so highly of her, but then again, the younger of his two daughters could befriend a brick wall if she tried hard enough. He clenched his jaw, staring down at the woman in front of him. Janine Proctor. Renowned researcher, tenured professor, and well respected by any biologist worth their weight in pennies. He had other words he could use to describe her, but he decided it was best to refrain from doing so.

“I came to tell you that if you ever attempt to bring my family into the middle of any of your schemes again, I will not rest until you are brought to justice.” Having made his point, he turned on his heel, walking towards the door.

His hand had barely gripped the door handle when he heard a laugh float through the air behind him. “I look forward to seeing your restless spirit wander these halls in the future then, Harald.”

--

“She looks absolutely radiant,” Holly sighed as a picture of Evalin crossed the screen.

She did, Harald had to admit. Her hair was shining, the gold tones catching in the light, reminding him of how the waves of the ocean used to shimmer in the sunset. There was a broad smile on her face, as if she was laughing at something. She had to be happy then. That was good. That was all Harald could ask for - had hoped for - for any of his children.

“She’d make a beautiful queen,” Holly continued, a dreamy expression on her face as she stared at the television.

“She would,” Lydia agreed, pointing a finger at the prince as his picture floated across the screen. “It’s too bad he’s a dick.”

“Lydia!” Holly admonished, turning to glare at her.

Harald had heard the story of his daughter’s first date with the prince from Lydia, secondhand. He really hoped his older daughter had embellished some of the details she had shared, as she was prone to do, but he had to admit, he didn’t have high hopes for the quality of this prince’s personality. Something about him had always looked empty, or off, to Harald. Then again, he had never actually met the man, so who was he to make a snap judgement like that? It was nothing more than a gut reaction.

“It’s true, mother,” Lydia retorted, rolling her eyes and grabbing a few pieces of popcorn before fixing Holly with another glare.

Holly just shook her head. “Your sister still shouldn’t have been so short with him. The man likely leads a high-stress life. She has to understand that.”

“Oh, come on!” At Lydia’s outburst, Harald’s three sons squirmed on the couch, looking between the two women in the house. Harald was inclined to follow suit in their reaction. He loved his wife and oldest daughter dearly, but it was kind of ironic that they were arguing about Evalin’s supposedly short temper, to say the least. “You cannot tell me that if Father had said the same things to you that Arin said to Evalin, that you wouldn’t have gotten snippy with him!”

“She has a point there,” Harald had to admit, trying to break the staring contest now occurring between his daughter and his wife. “You got snippy with me when all I did was ask you out.”

Lydia’s eyebrows shot up so quickly that Harald almost thought they would fly right off her face. Both she and Holly turned to look at him now, Lydia triumphant, head held high, and Holly angry, eyes narrowed. “I would hardly say I was snippy,” the latter argued.

“You told me I had a savior complex,” Harald recalled, chuckling at the memory. That spunk was one of his favorite things about his wife. He was of the opinion that she should be proud that their daughters had inherited it.

Holly only sighed while Lydia laughed, both turning back to the television. Even with them done bickering, it still felt like there was something fundamental missing from their home. The now empty spot where Evalin usually sat on the couch was impossible not to notice, eating up the light that usually surrounded it like a black hole. Harald constantly had to remind himself that his younger daughter was doing great things, doing what she felt she had to, and that she was tough. She’d be okay. She was looking at the future.

Or perhaps she was the future.

What a beautiful future that would be.

[yinzhengs]

timeline of zhai tianlin drama

—aka, why OS s2 is in peril: the tl;dr is that people are casting suspicion on zhai tianlin’s phd thesis’ validity + it’s blown up. this is taken from this weibo post here that tried to give a summary / timeline of events (note that as far as i can tell, OP is biased against ztl...) 

note that a lot of (if not all) of these claims are unsubstantiated / based on questionable “evidence.” my heart goes out to ztl for having to deal with the massive influx of hate — tags abt this have been trending all week, and this drama’s even made the news. (link to english article, south china morning post)

avenuex also made a video about it here (which i haven’t watched yet bc frankly i don’t have the emotional energy, but i’ve heard it’s good)

throughout the post they refer to ztl as “翟博士” which is lit. doctor/phd zhai. whether or not it’s snarky... well... i’ll leave it to you to decide. all my additions in the form of links or supplementary info are in square brackets.

一个翟博士引发的惨案 / lit. a massacre that dr. zhai started

背景：翟博士微博晒出北大光华学院博士后站录取通知书，自勉“加油，小翟”。

background: dr. zhai shared on weibo his acceptance letter to the brilliant beijing university, encouraging himself with the caption “加油 [jiayou], xiao zhai” (approx. keep up the good work, little zhai) 第一波：翟博士不知知网。网友问他能否在知网看见他的博士论文，他一头雾水问“知网是什么” 翟博士：自我挽尊“我说不知道1+1=2都有人信”。 the first wave: dr. zhai didn’t know about 知网 [zhiwang] / China National Knowledge Infrastructure (wiki link provided, but it’s a research database similar to jstor in the west). netizens asked if they would be able to read his phd thesis on CNKI. completely confused, he asked: “what’s CNKI?”

dr zhai [later], trying to save his own dignity: “people would believe me even if i said i didn’t know 1+1=2.” 

[ie. he commented this to note that he meant it sarcastically. ppl on the net didn’t believe him, sparking the next events...]  第二波：翟博士无c刊论文。网友通过知网查询，发现翟博士没有c刊论文，正规大学毕业一般都需要发论文。 翟博士轧戏无时间上学。网友分析翟博士博士期间的工作量，基本都在拍戏和活动，完全不符合全日制学生的在校时间。 翟博士工作室挽尊：“博士论文将由学校统一上传”，“通过函授、导师进组指导学习”。

the second wave: dr. zhai doesn’t have a paper in the CSSCI (a rather unhelpful wiki link provided, essentially the largest social science publication citation index in china + a measure by which a publication’s authenticity/accredibility is measured). netizens searched across CNKI and found that dr. zhai didn’t have any papers [cited] in the CSSCI, though according to usual university graduation standards, theses must be published [into the system].

dr. zhai had no time to attend class while filming. netizens analyzed dr. zhai’s workload during his phd program [2014-2018] and found that he was always either filming or doing promotional activities — there was no way he could have had time to attend full-time schooling during the semester.

his studio’s damage control: “[ztl’s] doctoral thesis will be organized and uploaded by his university,” “through correspondence [long-distance teaching], his advisor oversaw his studies”

第三波： 网友继续质疑没有c刊论文如何答辩。 粉丝拿翟博士唯一发表在《广电时评》文章挽尊，但被嘲笑不是c刊，又挽尊北电不一定用c刊。

the third wave: netizens continue to question — without a published thesis, how could he defend his dissertation?

fans tried to defend him with an essay he published in “广电时评” [a film-related magazine], but were mocked because that wasn’t a CSSCI publication. fans also tried to defend him saying that beijing film academy [where ztl got his phd] didn’t necessarily use CSSCI. 第四波：于妈下场。于妈发出对话截图，证明翟博士有十万字论文，且高达645k，赞他写的好。 网友质疑十万字论文怎么只有600多k，引用文献和开头学校图标都没有吗。 the fourth wave: mama yu [nickname for director yu zheng, notable for shows like story of yanxi palace + yin zheng’s upcoming winter begonia] appears. yu posts a screenshot of their chat history [with picture of attachments sent], proving that dr. zhai had a thesis w/ over 100,000 words, and a file size of over 645 kilobytes, praising that he wrote it well.

netizens call into question why a 100,000 word thesis is only ~600 kilobytes — was there no bibliography, or even a icon [ie. picture file which would increase file size dramatically] of his school[’s logo]?

[unfortunately... this didn’t really help his case, considering yu zheng has also been involved in controversy regarding plagiarism allegations many times]

第五波：同学被拖下水扒皮。与翟博士一起毕业的其他学生名单被翻出，网友挨个知网查询，均有3-5篇论文，有人非c刊。  电博士不用发c刊论文，含金量受质疑。

the fifth wave: classmates are pulled into the controversy + not spared. the list of the other classmates that graduated w/ dr. zhai was dug up. netizens searched each of them one by one on CNKI: they all had 3-5 papers, some didn’t have CSSCI publications.

beijing film academy’s phd students don’t need to publish CSSCI-level papers — beijing film academy’s academic standards are called into question.  第六波：翟博士抄袭。翟博士发表在《广电时评》的普通文章知网查重高达40%，抄袭十几年前的文章。 文章被抄袭的黄教授朋友圈回应“春晚饰演打假警察的人要我来打假”。 打脸工作室声明没有学术不端行为。

the sixth wave: dr. zhai’s plagiarism. the essay [mentioned earlier], published in 广电时评 was ran through CNKI and [supposedly] had a similarity rating of over 40%, with passages plagiarized from papers over ten years old.

professor huang li hua posted on his wechat: “the one who acted on 春晚 [lunar new year broadcast show] as someone exposing cops as fake has to be exposed by me as a fake.”

[ztl’s] studio officially announced that no academic dishonesty had taken place.

[huang later continued, translation from the south china morning post: “The celebrity’s management company claimed Zhai had no academic misconduct issues, but my essays a decade ago were copied paragraph by paragraph. The truth trumps his argument,” Huang wrote on the Chinese social media app WeChat.] 第七波：学术不端列撤。四川大学将翟博士事件列为学术不端案例，几日后又删除。

the seventh wave: removal from “academic dishonesty” list. sichuan university listed dr. zhai’s case as an example of academic dishonesty, but deleted it after a few days. [link to the world’s worst screenshot] 第八波：导师被拖下水扒皮。翟博士导师被扒出，身为博导却是本科毕业！导师另一位弟子也无c刊论文。

the eighth case: [ztl’s] academic advisor is dragged into the controversy. dr. zhai’s advisor was dug up — he was appointed phd advisor, but had only an undergraduate degree! another one of this advisor’s students also didn’t have a CSSCI-level publication. 第九波：官媒发声。人民日报、共青团微博、紫光阁等官媒发表对翟博士的质疑。 北电回应：自查自纠小组成立。 北大回应：看北电查的怎么样根据规则处理。

the ninth wave: official state media starts reporting: people’s daily [newspaper], the communist youth league’s weibo, tower of purple light [magazine], etc. publish articles regarding the suspicion surrounding dr. zhai

beijing film academy’s response: an internal investigation committee has been established.

beijing university’s response: we will wait on beijing film academy’s investigation results, and then follow standard regulations to deal with this matter.

[ according to smcp: around this time, essay is also reported to have been taken down from CKNI ] 第十波：院长被拖下水扒皮。翟博士毕业答辩导师、北电表演系张院长被网友扒出五十多岁娶了自己的九零后学生刘��，也是杨紫同学，北电下制片厂投资两人演男女主角，找杨紫张一山关晓彤当配角，只获得75万票房。 the tenth wave: a university dean is pulled into the controversy. [one of the] advisors dr. zhai had to defend his dissertation against to graduate, dean zhang of beijing film academy’s acting school, is revealed to have married a student (surname liu) of his born in the 90′s(?), despite being over fifty himself. she was also a classmate of yang zi [this is very irrelevant but she’s a very famous post-90′s actress who graduated from beijing film academy. you might know her for being in ashes of love.] 

a movie production studio under beijing film academy invested in producing a movie where dean zhang + his wife liu were the male/female leads, getting yang zi, zhang yishan, and guan xiaotong [all v v v v famous] to play supporting roles, though it only made 750,000 at the box office.

[so i did some digging and it appears that this is the movie they’re talking about. again it’s mostly irrelevant if you ask me, but maybe you wanted to know. mostly the controversy is for like, taking a really young wife and then making beijing film academy pay for his romantic fantasy movie lol. 

what does this have to do with zhai tianlin? pretty much nothing tbh] 第十一波：北电侯亮平、阿廖沙再次被提起……北电的水有多深? 豆瓣赐翟博士新绰号：靖北侯。

the eleventh wave: previous allegations of professors’ sexual assault cases / misconduct brought back into question ... how much is beijing film academy hiding?

[ the specific cases they reference are 阿廖沙 and 侯亮平, both web names that anonymous posters used on weibo to report/investigate sexual assault allegations at beijing film academy. (the second name is a reference to a character in a tv show who’s a anti-corruption prosecutor); i can talk about those cases but it’d take a whole separate post — tl;dr anonymous poster shares account of sexual assault and ensuing ostracization from faculty/classmates when they tried to bring it to light and ultimately turned to weibo. it was a rly big trending topic for a while back in 2017. ]

douban confers on dr. zhai a new nickname: 靖北侯 

[the meaning, v. approx “peaceful north marquis” is a reference back to “平西王,” “peaceful west king/prince,” the nickname for 薄熙来 (bo xilai), a PRC politician sentenced to life imprisonment for corruption — obviously, the 北/bei also refers to beijing film/uni + 候 is a convenient callback to the previous anon investigator into beijing film sexual assault cases]

that was very very long. i hope this was somewhat helpful ;-; chinese social media has been blowing up about this, this is an attempt to capture some of the context. (this has been stressing me and my friends out as well — fingers crossed for ztl to get out of this unscathed.)

[yaachtynoboat711]

At First Glance Ch. 4: The Commencement 👩🏽‍🎓

A/N: It’s finally here! The end of At First Glance has arrived and I have to say, I’m a bit emotional about ending my first series 😭. Thank you guys for supporting At First Glance these past few months. I have another series in development and then hopefully I’ll actually think about the wedding series. But for now, enjoy our fave couple in this series finale!

Word Count: ~3.2k

Warning(s): Black Excellence, Black Love, Smut (FINALLY!)

Saturday, December 7, 2013. 11:06 a.m.

Woolsey Hall, Yale University

At just 23, Yaa was the youngest recipient of a doctorate in African Studies. She was also a joint PhD-JD student that became the valedictorian of both classes (she earned her JD in May), which as you imagine, is almost unheard of, ESPECIALLY at a prestigious institution such as Yale.

Of all the people proud of her accomplishments, Winston was undoubtedly the happiest. She was the smartest person he’d ever met by a long shot. Not only was she smart as hell, but she was also gorgeous and had enough personality for seven people. Bonus points for Winston. As a fellow Yale grad, Winston enjoyed the return to New Haven. Amid all the celebration, Yaa and her family were meeting Winston’s mom and sister today. Whew chile, the celebrations. Winston and his family found Yaa’s family, Tanisha, Kimya, and Daveon (AKA the Yalemigos, or the Migos) all sitting in the same area.

“Mr. Duke great to see you again.”, Mustapha said hugging Winston.

“Likewise, sir! Great to be seen. Get to see my little lady graduate.”, he laughed. His laugh turned into a full smile as the reality of his girlfriend’s accomplishments set in. He looked down at the program and chuckled as Yaa’s name led the list of her 16 other cohorts. My little genius.

The fanfare startled Winston out of his thoughts. The guests looked down to watch the faculty and graduates proceed into Woolsey’s main seating. Proud friends and family cheered, hollered, and whistles as they saw their respective graduate. Winston scanned the incoming crowd for his short scholar, but to no avail. What took Winston 3 minutes took the Migos only 0.2 seconds to spot their 4th companion.

“HOODIE WHOOOOOOOO!”, the friends yelled as they spotted their best friend. Yaa’s neck snapped in the direction she heard the squad call. Can’t take niggas anywhere. She shook her head and examined the friends and family in attendance. Everyone stood up and took pictures and acknowledging their graduate. Winston saw his girlfriend and stared in amazement before he mouthed “Love you” to her. She mouthed “Love you, too” to him before taking her seat.

Yaa walked in with all confidence in her stride. She was glowing and there was nothing better that could happen today than this present moment. Her tam sat on top of her curly locs. Her round tortoise shell frames added an intellectual and sophisticated touch to her look. Her signature bright red lips seldom separated as her white smile remained plastered on her face. She bore her gold valedictorian medal below her blue hood along with her blue and gold ΣΓΡ and black Class of 2013 Kente stoles. The Black graduates wore black leather gloves on their right hands in solidarity and in reverence to their ancestors. Except for being around Winston, she’d never looked happier.

The ceremony went as any other large commencement: the speaker, the President and Provost gave words of encouragement to all the graduates on their future endeavors. Each college presented their graduates with their Yale degree. Finally, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences conferred degrees. Ironically, the Africana and African-American Studies Department elected to go last due the small number of graduates. When the department was announced, Yaa’s family prepared to get up. They shared mutual expressions of joy and bliss as “Doctor Khalida Yaa Denae Abdullah, Magna Cum Laude.”, echoed throughout Woolsey Hall. She raised her right fist high in the air as she walked across the stage. She hugged her advisor and committee chair before receiving her degree. She walked off the stage doing a quick praise break. The least she could do.

The grads recessed out of Woolsey and immediately searched for their parties and took pictures. Yaa was in the middle of her search when she felt two sturdy taps on her shoulder. It was him. “Hey, Doc.”, he greeted. Yaa scoffed as her billion dollar smile grew from a smirk. She playfully rolled her eyes and shook her head before reaching up for a kiss. “Hey, Duke. A girl can get used to hearing ‘Doc’. ”, she hummed into his lips. He finally broke the kiss and handed her a bouquet of her favorite roses: white, yellow, and pink. She gasped at the sight. “Baby! They’re beautiful.”, she squealed. She jumped right back into his embrace. “More where that came from, Denae.”, he whispered.

He never called her Denae, nor did his voice ever get that deep whenever he talked to her. She shot him a look before kissing him once more and walking towards the Migos, who were all Snapchatting and gassing her up.

“BEST FRIEND DONE GOT A WHOLE FOURTH DEGREE, Y’ALL!”, Daveon yelled. Yaa’s shoulders shook as she laughed at her foolish ass friends.

“Yaaaaaasssss ma’am! You better be Black Excellence. C’mon, Lil’ Angela!”, Kimya called.

“Bitch, I’m just tryna see the outfit. The people deserve to see what you’re wearing.”, Tanisha bluntly stated. The other two egged Yaa on to unzip the massive black gown. The only thing everyone could see were her black velvet smoking loafers. She unzipped the gown, unveiling a black pencil skirt and a white shirt with “PheD the Hell Up” written in blue. She would always get the laugh in somewhere.

She insisted that the family take pictures at her rental house because it was still December in New Haven, Connecticut. Chatter, laughter, and faint sounds of Black Christmas music filled the house as both families meshed as one. Carrie and Momma Cora held conversation most of the afternoon; Cindy and Khadijah exchanged medical stories; and Mustapha and Rainey discussed everything under the sun with Avery, Jahlil, and Winston. All four of the Migos were upstairs taking naps to prepare for dinner. Yaa especially deserved that nap. She hadn’t a decent amount of sleep since returning from Thanksgiving in Louisiana.

“Where’s Khalida? I think it’s time we all split.”, Khadijah asked Winston.

“She’s up there with her friends taking a nap. Gal deserves it. That means we need to leave and take naps of our own before dinner tonight.”, Carrie replied. “Winston, you staying here or something?”

“Yes ma’am. I might as well join the Snooze Crew upstairs.”, he said walking towards the front door. He finally went upstairs to Yaa’s room where he was greeted to a room full of snoring. Yaa’s petite figure was curled up in the middle of the messy bed. Her locs were scattered across her silk pillows and her Breakfast at Tiffany‘s eye mask covered her eyes. Her mouth was open as she snored loudly.She was dead to the world. Winston chuckled to himself as he watched his beautiful scholar catch up on Z’s. He sat on the unoccupied side of the bed and watched her sleep. He cleared her face of her wild locs and stopped when she stirred. Eventually, she unmasked herself and gasped when she saw Winston.

“Shit! Don’t scare me like th... was I snoring? Oh fuck, how long have you been watching me?”, she asked. He shook his head before kissing her forehead.

“Yes, you were snoring. Don’t worry about that. I still love you. I’ve been here long enough.”, Winston admitted.

“Well, since you love me so much, let’s try to find brunch. I’ll wake up the crew.”, she announced as she crawled out of bed, “That way, we won’t be as hungry going to this bougie ass Mediterranean spot my folks selected for tonight’s dinner.”

He rolled his eyes, “You better be glad you graduated today, Pumpkin.”

-------------------

Olea Restaurant, New Haven, Connecticut, 8:15 p.m.

The graduation dinner was running smoothly. The private dining area was tastefully accented with gifts and Yaa’s graduation pictures. Nearly twenty minutes after the family arrived, Yaa and Tanisha walked in side by side. Everyone stood and applauded the woman of the hour. Winston stared in awe at Yaa who, as always, strutted into the room with such grace and power.

Khalida chose the more adult outfit option for dinner. She wore her locs in a low bun and kept her glasses, tam, hood, stoles, and medal on. Her royal blue dress fit snug. Though Khalida often wore form-fitting dresses, none were as form-fitting as this one. Her rather well-endowed chest and wide hips were brought to the forefront; her fupa was somewhat concealed by the side peplum panels. The nude pumps she wore were accented by her anklets. Truly a work of art.

“My goodness, sweetheart. This dress is absolutely divine on you.”, Khadijah commented as she examined her first born’s outfit.

“Ibby, you look refreshed. That nap did you some good,I see ”, Mustapha teased.

“Thanks, Umi and Baba.”, Yaa said. “Thank all of y’all for coming and supporting the kid. I can’t believe this is all happening. I’m like...finished! Yale really gave me a doctorate.” The realization of her journey’s culmination brought tears of joy to the “hard-nosed” Yaa. She finally sat the far end of the table next to Winston.

“Pumpkin, you look divine.”, Winston whispered in Yaa’s ear during their hug and kiss. He twirled her around to get a better look of her outfit. She’s going to be the death of me.

“Why, thank you. Gotta show school spirit, y’know.”, Yaa joked. Winston pushed his girlfriend’s chair up to the table.

“I’d like to make a toast...”, Winston stood and began, “...to the woman of the hour, Doctor Abdullah. I know we’ve been in each other’s lives for not even two months, but watching you work and grind towards your goals has given me the initiative to better myself not only as an up and coming actor, but as a person. Khalida, you give me more reasons to be the luckiest man alive and today is the pinnacle. I love you so so much, Khalida, you have no idea. So here’s to our Khalida and her many successes now and forever. Ase.”

The table echoed scattered “Asé’s” and “aww’s” as they clinked their glasses. Yaa cheesed to keep tears forming as she looked into Winston’s eyes as he sat down. “I love you more,Winston.”, she declared as she kissed him. He placed his hand at the hem of her dress and rubbed her thigh. She cut her eyes to his hands and then directly to him; he replied with a smirk. Buzz buzz. Yaa wasn’t the only one who peeped Winston’s unusual behavior.

———————

Winston walked into the bathroom to see Yaa freedom her locs from its bun. He enjoyed seeing her hair down. She noticed him in the mirror studying her.

“May I help you,sir?”, Yaa questioned. Winston walked behind her and nuzzled her neck.

"I love you." he said, wrapping his arms around her.

"What has gotten into you, today? You haven't kept your hands off me all day." she said, giggling.

"I just want to show you that I love you. I think I may have just realized how much I want you." he said. She looked at him, taken aback.

"Want me? You are just now figuring that out?" ,she said, pulling away from him and crossing her arms over her chest.

"That's not what I mean." he said, in a low gruff voice. Yaa jumped slightly as she felt his hands grip her ample waist and pull her into him. As if it were instinct, she wrapped her arms around his neck. "Seeing you in that dress...having you this close to me."

She closed the last bit of space between her, biting her lip as he craned in. "You are the most gorgeous woman I've ever seen. You're smart, accomplished, hilarious. You are phenomenal. But there is a part of each other we haven't experienced.” He picked her up and sat her on the vanity. “And if it's okay with you, Denae, I'm tired of waiting."

She began unbuttoning his shirt. “I thought you’d never ask, baby.”, she whispered. Their lips met and the intoxicating kiss consumed them. Like a drug, their favorite drug. The slow tongue war continued as Yaa finally took Winston’s shirt off. Nothing was breaking this kiss. His hand traveled up her leg.

“Move your arm, baby.”, Yaa said between kisses. He looked at her with hooded eyes and chuckled deeply.

“That’s not my arm,love.”, he replied sensually. She stopped, mouth agape. She cut her eyes between his erect third arm resting against her inner thigh and the cocky smile and lip bite plastered on his face. This nigga finna split me open.

His hand continued its journey to her inner thighs, where he got down to nibble and kiss them with such intent and passion. He picked her up and traveled to the bed. While on the journey, Yaa bumped her head in the doorway of the bathroom. She giggled as he placed her gently on the bed. “Oh my God, Pumpkin, are you okay?! Do you need ice? Please say something.”, Winston rambled nervously. He swiftly placed her on the bed and turned on the lights to examine her head. She finally opened her mouth and laughed...hard. It could’ve been from the bump or just the fact that she was a bona fide clown. Her laugh turned into an all out cackle, prompting Winston to laugh with her.

“I’m fine, love.”, she began saying in between cackles and breaths, “I just bumped my head.If I pass out, just take me to the hospital. No questions.” The passive tone she used made it difficult for Winston to decide if she was joking or being dead serious. Either way, he appreciated how she broke the thick tension between them. The perfect icebreaker. They finally got themselves together and turned off the lights.

“I hate for such a nice dress to come off, but I wanna see what masterpiece is underneath.”, he commented. Lord, that voice. He lifted the dress over her head, where he was met with her ample cleavage being confined by a red lace bra. She freed herself of her bra and he began caressing her breasts.

“I’ve been trying to get to these since we met.”, he commented. She laughed.

“I know. You looked at them like they were water in the desert.”, she answered laughing. As if on cue, he took one in his mouth, swirling his tongue around her nipple and sucking on it. His tongue traveled up to her sweet spot on her neck. Chills. Her sweet moans served as motivation for his assault of her neck.

Satisfied, he came down and began slowly peppering wet kisses on her feet and leveling up to the inside of her thighs. Shit, spot #2. He looked up to see his girlfriend’s face consumed with pleasure. She bit her lip as she looked down at him with hooded eyes. She cursed under her breath with every kiss he placed. Finally, he kissed her opening, eliciting a back arch and a drawn out “Shiiit!” from Yaa. His mouth became friends with her opening as he sucked on her bud and his tongue explore. He added two fingers as he latched onto her clit. He began pumping his fingers inside of her with a moderate pace. He alternated his sucking with kissing and licking,prompting more hushed cursing from his lover. She was unraveling. He stopped but kept his fingers inside of her. “Fuck you for teasing me like this.”, she moaned. He chuckled. She’s a mess.

“I want you around me, Denae.”, he commented as his fingers brushed up against her opening and examining her nectar. He slid his body between her legs and slid his member inside of her. Her head flew back as his girthy member went deeper inside her tight opening. He noticed her twitch as he lowered himself into her.

“Are you ok,Denae?”, he said examining her face.

“I’m not used to you yet. I’m just tight. I’ll be fine.”, she reassured. Carrie and Khalida ain’t raise no bitch. They both moaned as they began grinding in sync.

“Shit, you fit around me like a glove.”, he moaned, his voice saturated with lust. She kissed him in response.

Winston peppered wet,sloppy kisses on her neck as he rolled his hips, hitting her g-spot deep with every stroke. His pace was slow but unyielding. Her sweet moans and gasps mingled with his low grunts and occasional higher moans. The room was clouded in lust. Besides the sounds of wet skin slapping, moans, and pants, Maxwell’s “Whenever Wherever Whatever” played softly in the background.

Now straddling his lap, Yaa found herself holding back tears as her sexual appetite was being satisfied to her liking. She balanced herself with one hand rested on Winston’s bare chest and the other on the bed. She bounced on his dick as he held on tightly to her love handles. He watched with hooded lust-filled eyes as his girlfriend’s breasts bounced freely against her pace. Her bounce slowly devolved to a twerk and then a gyration as she neared her peak. She was sending him into a tizzy as she clenched tightly onto his dick. If they weren’t already in love, this moment would be when they’d fall in love. Their moans echoed in response as feedback for the other. They were both coming undone. Their rhythm became disonant as they neared the end. Winston sat up and sloppily kissed his girlfriend’s neck. Her breath hitched as they stared into each other’s eyes, both pairs stinging with tears.

“Winston,baby, you feel so good.”, Khalida uttered between her teeth and tears. Her tears and desperate moans served as Winston’s motivation to cum.

“Cum for me, baby.”, he whispered into her ear. He released a low growl; that did it for the both of them. She roared into his shoulder as the sensation of their simultaneous release overwhelmed her core. She collapsed from the sensation.

————————

Yaa and Winston found themselves physically exhausted from their lovemaking. They laid in bed in silence, reflecting on what just occurred. She laid her head on his chest as he tried detangling her locs with his fingers. He gently kissed her locs. “That was...wow. That was uh.”, Winston attempted to strike up conversation.

“Intense? I think that’s the word you’re looking for: intense.”, Yaa suggested. She looked into his eyes and kissed him.

“Yeah, intense. Literally the word I was looking for. My mind is going 25 miles a second. I can’t believe we finally did it.”

“Yours too?! This is...wild.”

“How?”

“Everything we do together feels so organic. I’m really not one to openly be a sap, but you’re so right for me. Being around you makes sense and what we just did is a feeling I’ll never get over...ever.” She interlocked her small fingers into his larger ones and kissed his knuckles. He chuckled as his free trailed between the valley of her breasts.

“I guess your cousin Daniel was right…”, Winston said lifting her chin up to meet his eyes.

“The fuck is he right about?”, she shot up staring him dead in the face. He kissed her lips.

“...I guess I am responsible for making a hard G soft.”, he flinched in anticipation of whatever assault was coming as consequence of his statement. One tickle and pillow fight later, the two found themselves out of breath once more.

“You know, Chris, to be a health nut, you in worse shape than me.”, she giggled.

“Oh, shut up and go to bed.”

OH THIS THE TAG LIST TAG LIST!

@muse-of-mbaku @kumkaniudaku @eriknutinthispoosy @whoramilaje @mbakusthrone @mbakuwife @great-neckpectations @inlovewithmakeupcomicsanimelove @jackburtonsays @randomwordprompts @bartierbakarimobisson @wakandan-flowerz @blackpantherreblogs @babygirlofwakanda @eerythingisshaka @washyourlinens @wakandas-vibranium @dramaqueenamby @destinio1 @sonofnjobu @teheeboo @sarahboseman @iamrheaspeaks @texasbama @chaneajoyyy @lovelynervouschaos @cay-cah @coonflix @katasstrophey @mareethequeen @jozigrrl @jellybean531 @yofavcocoa @storibambino @maya-leche @blackgirloneshots @royallyprincesslilly @niquelafleur @certifiednatural @supersizemeplz

[lumateranlibrarian]

Don’t you just hate it when people screw you over, and when you confront them about it, they profusely apologize but don’t bother explain themselves?

Like, I’m willing to give people the benefit of the doubt. But if you know you’re in the wrong, or don’t have a way to justify the bullshit you’re pulling... then why the hell are you trying to bullshit in the first place?

I don’t really care about apologies. I’ll easily admit I’m not the best at giving them. I care more about results, though, and when it’s both of our asses on the line, if you can’t pull your weight as a grown-ass adult, you shouldn’t be so surprised when I say I’m going on without you.

For context: we’re both graduate students with almost two years worth of classes and research under our belts. I should not have to be responsible for my partner’s motivation and contributions when she hasn’t done shit for three weeks. It’s only now, when I tell her I’m done waiting for her to contribute and I’m taking charge of this project with a week left before we have to present it, that she decides to post everything on a shared document and powerpoint that I made for us to work off of weeks ago.

And here’s the thing. I gave her the absolute easiest tasks. Mostly because I didn’t know her or have ever worked with before. I asked her to write the methodology portion of our paper. Literally one page of text to talk about how the data was gathered, where it came from, and what the basic distribution of the data was (aka missingness, simple differences between groups, etc).

She texted me a picture of two (2) graphs.

I was the one who talked with the professor about getting the dataset. I was the one who asked the professor for help formatting properly (because SAS is a hell program, sorry I’m an R girl through and through). I’m the one who made the shared documents for us to work off of, came up with not one but two possible research questions, looked at our variables and decided which ones were reliable and interesting enough to use.

She only started putting things on our powerpoint tonight, after I told her I was done waiting around for her to contribute. When I asked why she hadn’t done anything yet, she said she was “busy”. Busy? Really? I was busy too. I was extremely busy, having missed class from having shingles, having midterms and finals and papers and presentations and meetings, all to organize and prepare. But somehow I managed to open up the freaking SAS document without needed to be reminded that it existed.

And here’s the thing. I have it from THREE DIFFERENT SOURCES that this isn’t the first time she’s pulled this shit.

One is a fellow student whose partner for the same project was partnered with her last semester on a different project. He says that his partner was approached by This Girl for the current project, and advised him not to accept the partnership because she’d flaked on a project they’d worked on “together” in a previous class.

One is my own faculty mentor, my research advisor and lab PI. Last week, I was in his office trying not to burst into tears because I was losing my grip on all the papers, projects, and finals I had to complete within a span of about five weeks (a homework assignment, a paper, a final presentation, and a midterm each for two different classes, a manuscript for my first first-author publication, and preparing for a committee meeting that will directly feed into my dissertation work, while attending regular classes and seminars). And when I mentioned my frustration with This Girl’s ability to contribute or even conceptualize the very simple problems I was talking about, he admitted that she had taken his basic epidemiology class and that she was one of his worst students. I didn’t ask for specifics, but his words were, “yeah, I was worried about her when she took my class.”

AND THEN. IF MY GODDAMN RESEARCH MENTOR SAYING SHE WAS A CRAPPY PARTNER WASN’T ENOUGH.

One of my best friends had a bridal shower yesterday (super fun, met a lot of lovely folks, got to make toilet paper wedding dresses on people), I mentioned I was having trouble with This Girl as a project partner, and when I named This Girl to my friend, she revealed that This Girl used to work in the same lab as her, but got fired because she never showed up to work and never completed anything.

So I’m just like.

Okay. 

And I’m supposed to rely on this person?

Of course not. It’s laughable.

It doesn’t make any difference that she’s a masters student and I’m on the PhD track. We’ve both had at least an undergraduate education, which is pretty strenuous on its own, so we both should have some understanding of what it means to pull one’s own weight on a substantial class project. But it’s not just that, it’s being an adult who doesn’t need their hand held and their ass wiped to contribute on a project. I’m sorry, This Girl, but I have standards and I have a grade I need to make to pass this class.

You’re worried I’m going to finish this project without you? At this point, it’s really not my problem.

[proofsaretalk]

rapidly barreling toward that 1k mark

The title is not what this post is about. (cw: five pages of boring navelgazing)

------

Sometimes, when I get really close to going to bed after staying up for far too long, I will say things like “What are you doing?” And I normally think about that as just my not-quite-totally-mentally-healthy ass’s way of saying “go to bed bro”

But somehow when I said it tonight the question sounded a lot more urgent. A lot more confused. A lot more like a question, in other words.

And I think best in writing.

So here are the basic facts:

I am very tired right now (4am)

I was (less) very tired about four hours ago

I intentionally chose to not go to bed four hours ago, 

After watching a really good SGDQ run.

I actually very much enjoy SGDQ runs.

But I did not spend the intervening four hours watching SGDQ runs.

Primarily because I knew I would not stay awake by doing so.

I more or less knew, when I made that decision, that I would be awake at 4am.

See 3.4.

I have been going to bed around 2-3am for the last couple days.

This schedule initiated by me staying up way too late on Sunday of last week, for reasons that were equally unreasonable but at least more familiar.

I need to be awake in 3 hours, or, at most 4 hours.

I have known for several days that I would need to be awake at 7am on Monday morning.

Less basic facts, with notably more reporting bias, probably:

The reason that I need to be awake at 7am on Monday morning is because I am going on a road trip with my dad and my roommate.

I am mostly going on this road trip because I want to spend more time with my dad.

And also because I want to signal to him that I want to spend more time with him.

Which I definitely feel like I have not, although I have had dinner with him for three nights this week; in no small part because I was in Montreal when he arrived and have not done a lick of work to help care for my grandmother while he was in town. 

In particular I don’t really care about where we’re going or what we’ll do there.

I intended to drive both ways— which I never told anyone that I was intending to do, which I suppose was good because I will certainly not do that now.

Maybe we’re approaching the actual reason I am doing this obviously stupid thing, Part I:

My main goals this summer are, in priority order

to get a fucking advisor, 

a.k.a. to work hard enough and deep enough on commutative algebra to determine whether it is a good idea to be Christine’s student, and

if so, to then decide whether I should work with Vic anyway.

to reach the 1k posts in 1k days goal with OTAM, 

which requires essentially exactly two posts per day every day for the remainder of the summer

which is, to an unbelievably strong level of consistency (like literally I do not believe it), four hours +/- 40 minutes of work.

that’s it

i fucking hate it when my family asks me “what have you been doing lately” because it’s like

I’M READING

I’M BLOGGING

THAT’S IT

Anything I do beyond this is— though it be, to some extent, necessary for keeping my sanity— something I perceive as an annoyance and do with a fair bit of guilt (which I do try to put off until after doing the thing, usually pretty successfully).

and you know what, yes, if I’m being honest, that includes spending time with my family

even though this is 110% my own damn problem and if I had locked myself in my room this week, my dad (in particular) would totally have understood

although he lives 1600 miles away, and is only here for two weeks, and his birthday is tomorrow, and I missed out on seeing him the first week because Montreal, because my dad is a pure cinnamon roll lol no but is (in particular) genuinely understanding about this stuff; the whole midwesterner guilt trip passive-aggressive thing is very much not his aesthetic

and also I really haven’t spent that much time with my family besides this week so. [ At most 3hrs/week previously ]

I have two blog posts scheduled for tomorrow and another one besides; that is, enough that I can go on the trip and wake up late on Tuesday and I won’t experience any interruptions

I was highly embarrassed that I had to miss the second Friday post this week

I spent a lot of time on Saturday working with the specific intention of having a large enough buffer to make sure that this did not happen again on Tuesday.

aka 4 blog posts

aka 12 hours of blogging, because the rate of 2hr/post only applies to the first two posts in a day, after which the evidence suggests (more on that below) that it’s a complete shitshow.

aka nothing else got done, which is relevant because

For the first time on our regularly scheduled Thursday meeting time, Christine actually gave me something to do — previously it was mostly entirely me being like “I’m reading the book, here are my questions”.

I have done essentially no work toward doing that thing.

See 3.4

See also 2.2 from the previous section.

I have never felt happy about the amount of time that I’ve been devoting to the algebra 

See 1.3.5 oh god this is becoming a labrynth isn’t it

Christine seems oblivious to this, or perhaps thinks that, since I bring it up every week, I am just trying to preempt any criticism she might make

which to be honest isn’t wrong but

I have experience with being advised by someone with fairly low expectations of me and yeah it drives me right up the fucking wall

and I am definitely keeping my eye on her essential silence w.r.t. progress

In particular, I don’t feel happy about the fact that I have been spending so much more time on the blog than on the algebra because the latter is clearly infinitely more important for my continued ability to support myself by doing the thing that makes me incredibly happy.

There are good reasons I have made this choice but I definitely expected that these would disappear after returning from Montreal

which they have, and hence my continued inability to spend time doing algebra is even more disappointing to me

despite the fact that new reasons obviously exist that are also obviously temporary since dad will leave on the 4th.

and that I also do strongly value my familial relationships and am extremely bad at showing this; and I understand that what I have chosen to do for the past week is a very shrewd calculation to maximize the number of people who have firsthand experience with my show of commitment (however obviously performative it may be)

to be clear, I do not know if it is obvious that it is performative

I do not even know if it is performative

The fact that my algebra assignment for the week came from Christine, and not from a vague sense of “you should probably finish this book”, adds a particular urgency to the task... 

...and what seems to be my inevitable failure to complete it, since I have only Tuesday and Wednesday; and Tuesday is the 4th of July so that might as well not exist, productivity-wise; and I still have to write the usual two blogposts for Wednesday so it’s not like I can cram a 14-hour session (which I have done before).

I do not know whether I am more concerned about potentially disappointing Christine or myself

(even though the former is so unlikely that it is almost certainly anxiety)

Okay that’s nice exposition but doesn’t actually explain why you’re awake at 4am (hint it’s 5am now), Part II:

When I walked out of Christine’s office on Thursday, I definitely did not think that I would be spending all of Monday, and essentially all of Friday, and a good half of Sunday, to be spent with family. (Of course, I still expected Tuesday to be shot.)

However, all of that was clarified by Friday afternoon, so I’ve had a couple days to mull on this.

I certainly did not make the decision to stay awake in hopes that I would get any work done.

In fact, if I am being honest, this was an intentional part of my thought process and I made the decision in spite of this fact.

What I did not consider is that, if I have to cancel the plans for today because I did this stupid thing, I certainly will not be able to fucking do anything tomorrow since I will have to sleep through everything. 

Dear God, the sun is rising through my window

I closed the blinds, whew

What I did end up doing over this four-hour period is mostly read career posts on math blogs, and reading PhD, with a little bit of SGDQ and a pinch of assorted internet clicking thrown in.

It is perhaps not obvious to anyone else that this has the feel of a self-care session to me.

The only thing that I could possibly have been consciously self-caring for, though, was the expenditure of energy at my dad’s birthday party today.

(Anxieties about the Christine reading only started appearing in the later phases of this period.)

And surely sleeping would have been equally good dramatically better self-care.

I definitely have a sometimes-useful tendency to want to do a single thing for as long of an uninterrupted period as possible, up to and including completely destroying my sleeping rhythm (which accounts for much of the ‘sometimes’ in ‘sometimes-useful’).

The part of me that likes to make needlessly grandiose statements and read into shit too much, is squawking about how I probably feel like I had expectations for how I would be spending my time (I did), and feel like I’ve been forced into a time-consuming alternate direction (which, again: no), and therefore making this stupid decision is a juvenile way of exercising control by breaking from what would probably be “expected” of me (i.e. fucking going to sleep before a day-long road trip)

I am currently convinced of this but also

I am even more tired than when I started writing this post and

I don’t trust my tired brain to be right about anything of this scope (based on extensive experience with incorrect sleeping decisions).

That’s all I got.

No alternate theories.

So, shit, that’s gotta mean it’s right, huh?

Lambda

Actually, continuing on the sleeping-as-control riff, I am quite experienced with (and, if I may say so, fairly good at) managing an awful sleeping cycle. Perhaps the stupid decision was not about controlling how I spend my time but rather more direct: demonstrating control in my life via crisis management w.r.t. sleeping.

This is actually a testable theory, at least in the sense that if I have something similar come up soon, I could replace “not sleeping” with “playing Starcraft”

[ it’s not perfect because I would also not be sleeping in that setting, but then the not-sleeping is a side effect rather than the actual display of control; and I think that I could (after the fact) actually distinguish between those two. ]

(and arguably, this has already been played out in prior incidents, but I am way too tired to examine whether similar issues were at play in those cases.)

And finally

I am equally concerned with the fact that this post has cost me two hours of sleeping as it has cost me two hour of algebra work,

which is to say, not at all, in either case

although I do perceive very little of value was gained by my writing it

which is a very confusing triplet of true statements, to me, at this moment.

I may have to cancel the road trip.

Perhaps this was my subconscious goal all along.

But I’ll go to sleep take a power nap and we’ll see.

If your sorry ass thinks that I’ve been writing this shit for two hours without theorizing how I could sanitize it into an OTAM post then frankly you don’t know me at all.

[calilili]

PRESS RELEASE : For Immediate Release : Venice Beach – January 24, 2019 First-time director ActressAuteur™ Cali Lili’s LGBTQ interracial love story and climate-action-based gender debate “eVe N’god this female is not yet rated ™” opens Feb 1, 2019 for a one week run through Feb 7, 2019 playing three shows a day, at the Downtown Independent Cinema : 251 S. Main Street, Los Angeles California, 90012 ph. (213) 617- 1033

January 24, 2019

Cali Lili™ Cali Lili Indies™ Pictures Words Music In Motion™ feMt0™studi0*surFLoft*H20™VenusBeach™CuttingEdgeOfThePacific™

BEGIN PRESS RELEASE  

From Cali Lili Indies™ Pictures Words Music In Motion™ feMt0™ studi0 :

VENICE BEACH, CA. – For Immediate Release :   January  24, 2019  –

First-time director ActressAuteur™ Cali Lili’s LGBTQ interracial love story and climate-action-based gender debate “eVe N’god this female is not yet rated ™” opens Feb 1, 2019 for a one week run through Feb 7, 2019 playing three shows a day, at the Downtown Independent Cinema :  251 S. Main Street, Los Angeles California, 90012  ph. (213) 617- 1033

http://www.downtownindependent.com/events/eve-n-god-this-female-is-not-yet-rated

The allegorical, avant-garde fairytale is described as  “1 day in the epiphany of a 21st century girl, who kissed a girl ™ A lost and found, edenic virginity fantasy bordering on polyamory, a bittersweet climate-change romance in the key of Rock N’ Soul and an immersive, sea-life sci-fi dream as the Global Girl awakens to the Legacy of Herself.”

The all-female crew production from actress/director Cali Lili and her sustainable, up-cycled, movie and music studio in the gentrification-torn Venice Beach Canals was shot throughout Venice with ocean-conservancy footage that includes a local octopus named “Octavia” and other sea-life, appearing unprompted for the lens during principal photography.  Costumes and sets were designed by Cali and manufactured  from at least 90% Upcycled materials including fruits, vegetables and flowers supplied by farmers at the local farmers markets to help create “the garden of eVe.”

Movie co-stars the legendary Indie Spirits Award nominee, iconic actor/musician Wings Hauser in the lead male role, Doctor Godard / aka “god,” with Cali Lili as “eVe,” and Candace Burney as “Lila.” Certified on IMDB as “Triple F – rated,” meaning that it was written, directed and produced by a woman, making it one of the first (if not the first) narrative motion pictures made primarily by women. The project originated, in part, as a response to Cali Lili’s own “MeToo” experiences and promotion of it’s “all female on-the-set crew” status, began during pre-production as far back as 2011 likely setting the current trend and weathering early discriminatory push-backs from various directions. This theatrical release is considered a milestone attained by such a small team, against all odds.

Description of the film as “breaking the sound barrier,” is reference to the lead female  “speaking over 51% of the film,” and “shattering narrative structures along with glass ceilings”  in a poetic, fluid, dream-like style in which music and sound play a role. The story’s narrative is based on true-life events including a semi-autobiographical “coming out” story. Dedicated on-screen to victims of violence against women, LGBTQ persons, indigenous communities

and the environment – dialogue centers on a surfer studying for her PHD in science, but who must work as a stripper to pay tuition and evolves into a debate involving the love-hate triangle between “eVe” as “everywoman,” Doctor Godard as University thesis advisor / white male authority figure, and “Lila” / aka “Lilith” as eVe’s black lesbian lover and spiritual “twin.” The “Global Girl”  is described as a “greek chorus” in this modern-day re-telling of “ancient secrets.”  Born organically from a graphic novel, the project is equal parts cinematic exploration, love song, declaration of independence, and political protest on behalf of all vulnerable lives in the balance.    

Songs on the soundtrack are described as ” sexy-smart protest-love-songs, thick with lyrics and percussion, ‘Rock N’Soul recorded with a diverse, inclusive group of professional live musicians, minimal synth. Cali’s Singer-Songwriter Style ranges from Feminist Rap / Soul Hip Hop to Anthemic guitar heavy Psychedelic Folk-Rock, to Femme-Punk and World-Beat Grooves.

The 13 song debut-album / soundtrack recently dropped, encouraging audiences to know the songs before seeing the movie, or get to know them afterwards, and is available on Apple iTunes and all other music platforms

:  

https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/cali-lili/1402310156 Movie Trailer on Youtube :   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybFeysEAHtk&list=PLOo3oJVjWZYRiDartBwKLpqSUBJECTS :Movies, Music, LGBTQ, MeToo, Female Director :Theatrical Movie Release Categories :First Time Female Director

LGBTQ

Civil Rights / Black Lives Matter

Climate Change / Ocean Conservancy  

Original Soundtrack Rock / Urban / Folk

Sci Fi  Romance

END PRESS RELEASE

[dancemacabre]

The PHD Movie 2 (2015)

The PHD Movie 2 (2015)

The Nameless Grad Student and his group must travel to an important academic conference and square off against a rival group as they compete for results and grant money. Meanwhile, Cecilia's advisor is going on sabbatical, which means she has to finish writing her thesis or be stuck in grad school another year.

Try four more:

Wobble: The Weight of the Truth (2008)

Frank and I (aka Lady Libertine) (1984)

The New Spirit (1942)

Song of Paris (1952)