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oscopelabs · 3 years ago

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Isn’t Everything Autobiographical?: Ethan Hawke In Nine Films And A Novel by Marya Gates

When asked during his first ever on-camera interview if he’d like to continue acting, a young Ethan Hawke replied, “I don’t know if it’s going to be there, but I’d like to do it.” He then gives a guileless shrug of relief as the interview ends, wiping imaginary sweat off his brow. The simultaneous fusion of his nervous energy and poised body language will be familiar to those who’ve seen later interviews with the actor. The practicality and wisdom he exudes at such a young age would prove to be a through-line of his nearly 40-year career. In an interview many decades later, he told Ideas Tap that many children get into acting because they’re seeking attention, but those who find their calling in the craft discover that a “desire to communicate and to share and to be a part of something bigger than yourself takes over, a certain craftsmanship—and that will bring you a lot of pleasure.”

Through Hawke’s dedication to his craft, we’ve also seen his maturation as a person unfold on screen. Though none of his roles are traditionally what we think of when we think of autobiography, many of Hawke’s roles, as well as his work as a writer, suggest a sort of fictional autobiographical lineage. While these highlights in his career are not strictly autofiction, one can trace Hawke’s Künstlerromanesque trajectory from his childhood ambitions to his life now as a man dedicated to art, not greatness.

Hawke’s first two films, Joe Dante’s sci-fi fantasy Explorers with River Phoenix and Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society with Robin Williams, set the tone for a diverse filmography filled with popcorn fare and indie cinema in equal measure, but they also served as touchstones in his development as person drawn to self-expression through art. In an interview with Rolling Stone’s David Fear, Hawke spoke about the impact of these two films on him as an actor. When River Phoenix, his friend and co-star in Explorers, had his life cut short by a drug overdose, it hit Hawke personally. He saw from the inside what Hollywood was capable of doing to young people with talent. Hawke never attempted to break out, to become a star. He did the work he loved and kept the wild Hollywood lifestyle mostly at arm’s length.

Like any good film of this genre, Dead Poets Society is not just a film about characters coming of age, but a film that guides the viewer as well, if they are open to its message. Hawke’s performance as repressed schoolboy Todd in the film is mostly internal, all reactions and penetrating glances, rather than grandiose movements or speeches. Through his nervy body language and searching gaze, you can feel both how closed off to the world Todd is, and yet how willing he is to let change in. Hawke has said working on this film taught him that art has a real power, that it can affect people deeply. This ethos permeates many of the characters Hawke has inhabited in his career.

In Dead Poets Society, Mr. Keating (Robin Williams) tells the boys that we read and write poetry because the human race is full of passion. He insists, “poetry, beauty, romance, love—these are what we stay alive for.” Hawke gave a 2020 TEDTalk entitled Give Yourself Permission To Be Creative, in which he explored what it means to be creative, pushing viewers to ask themselves if they think human creativity matters. In response to his own question, he said “Most people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about poetry, right? They have a life to live and they’re not really that concerned with Allen Ginsberg’s poems, or anybody’s poems, until their father dies, they go to a funeral, you lose a child, somebody breaks your heart, they don’t love you anymore, and all of the sudden you’re desperate for making sense out of this life and ‘has anyone ever felt this bad before? How did they come out of this cloud?’ Or the inverse, something great. You meet somebody and your heart explodes. You love them so much, you can’t even see straight, you know, you’re dizzy. ‘Did anybody feel like this before? What is happening to me?’ And that’s when art is not a luxury. It’s actually sustenance. We need it.”

Throughout many of his roles post-Dead Poets Society, Hawke explores the nature of creativity through his embodiment of writers and musicians. Often these characters are searching for a greater purpose through art, while ultimately finding that human connection is the key. Without that human connection, their art is nothing.

We see the first germ of this attraction to portray creative people on screen with his performance as Troy Dyer in Reality Bites. As Troy Dyer, a philosophy-spouting college dropout turned grunge-band frontman in Reality Bites, Hawke was posited as a Gen-X hero. His inability to keep a job and his musician lifestyle were held in stark contrast to Ben Stiller’s yuppie TV exec Michael Grates. However in true slacker spirit, he isn’t actually committed to the art of music, often missing rehearsals, as Lelaina points out. Troy even uses his music at one point to humiliate Lelaina, dedicating a rendition of “Add It Up” by Violent Femmes to her. The lyrics add insult to injury as earlier that day he snuck out of her room after the two had sex for the first time. Troy’s lack of commitment to his music matches his inability to commit to those relationships in his life that mean the most to him.

Reality Bites is also where he first positioned himself as one of the great orators of modern cinema.” Take this early monologue, in which he outlines his beliefs to Winona Ryder’s would-be documentarian Lelaina Pierce: “There’s no point to any of this. It’s all just a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and a series of near escapes. So I take pleasure in the details. You know, a quarter-pounder with cheese, those are good, the sky about ten minutes before it starts to rain, the moment where your laughter become a cackle, and I, I sit back and I smoke my Camel Straights and I ride my own melt.”

Hawke brings the same intense gaze to this performance as he did to Dead Poets Society, as if his eyes could swallow the world whole. But where Todd’s body language was walled-off, Troy’s is loud and boisterous. He’s quick to see the faults of those around him, but also the good things the world has to offer. It’s a pretty honest depiction of how self-centered your early-20s tend to be, where riding your own melt seems like the best option. As the film progresses, Troy lets others in, saying to Lelaina, “This is all we need. A couple of smokes, a cup of coffee, and a little bit of conversation. You, me and five bucks.”

Like the character, Hawke was in his early twenties and as he would continue to philosophize through other characters, they would age along with him and so would their takes on the world. If you only engage with anyone at one phase in their life, you do a disservice to the arc of human existence. We have the ability to grow and change as we learn who we are and become less self-centered. In Hawke’s career, there’s no better example of this than his multi-film turn as Jesse in the Before Trilogy. While the creation of Jesse and Celine are credited to writer-director Richard Linklater and his writing partner Kim Krizan, much of what made it to the screen even as early as the first film were filtered through the life experiences of Hawke and his co-star Julie Delpy.

In a Q&A with Jess Walter promoting his most recent novel A Bright Ray of Darkness, Hawke said that Jesse from the Before Trilogy is like an alt-universe version of himself, and through them we can see the self-awareness and curiosity present in the early ET interview grow into the the kind of man Keating from Dead Poets Society urged his students to become.

In Before Sunrise, Hawke’s Jesse is roughly the same age as Troy in Reality Bites, and as such is still in a narcissistic phase of his life. After spending several romantic hours with Celine in Vienna, the two share their thoughts about relationships. Celine says she wants to be her own person, but that she also desperately wants to love and be loved. Jesse shares this monologue, “Sometimes I dream about being a good father and a good husband. And sometimes it feels really close. But then other times it seems silly, like it would ruin my whole life. And it’s not just a fear of commitment or that I’m incapable of caring or loving because. . . I can. It’s just that, if I’m totally honest with myself, I think I’d rather die knowing that I was really good at something. That I had excelled in some way than that I’d just been in a nice, caring relationship.”

The film ends without the audience knowing if Jesse and Celine ever see each other again. That initial shock is unfortunately now not quite as impactful if you are aware of the sequels. But I think it is an astute look at two people who meet when they are still discovering who they are. Still growing. Jesse, at least, is definitely not ready for any kind of commitment. Then of course, we find out in Before Sunset that he’s fumbled his way into marriage and fatherhood, and while he’s excelling at the latter, he’s failing at the former.

As in Reality Bites, Hawke explores the dynamics of band life again in Before Sunset, when Jesse recalls to Celine how he was in a band, but they were too obsessed with getting a deal to truly enjoy the process of making music. He says to her, “You know, it's all we talked about, it was all we thought about, getting bigger shows, and everything was just...focused on the future, all the time. And now, the band doesn't even exist anymore, right? And looking back at the... at the shows we did play, even rehearsing... You know, it was just so much fun! Now I'd be able to enjoy every minute of it.”

The filming of Before Sunset happened to coincide with the dissolution of Hawke’s first marriage. And while these films are not autobiographical, everyone involved have stated that they’ve added personal elements to their characters. They even poke fun at it in the opening scene when a journalist asks how autobiographical Jesse’s novel is. True to form, he responds with a monologue, “Well, I mean, isn’t everything autobiographical? I mean, we all see the world through our own tiny keyhole, right? I mean, I always think of Thomas Wolfe, you know. Have you ever seen that little one page note to reader in the front of Look Homeward, Angel, right? You know what I'm talking about? Anyway, he says that we are the sum of all the moments of our lives, and that, anybody who sits down to write is gonna use the clay of their own life, that you can’t avoid that.”

While Before Sunset was shot in 2003, released in 2004 and this monologue refers to the fictional book within the trilogy entitled This Time, Hawke would take this same approach more than a decade later with his novel A Bright Ray of Darkness.

In the novel, Hawke crafts a quasi-autobiographical story, using his experience in theater to work through the perspective he now has on his failed marriage to Uma Thurman. Much like Jesse in Before Sunset, Hawke is reluctant to call the book autobiographical, but the parallels to his own divorce are evident. And as Jesse paraphrased Wolfe, isn’t everything we do autobiographical? In the book, movie star William Harding has blown up his seemingly picture-perfect marriage with a pop star by having an affair while filming on location in South Africa. The book, structured in scenes and acts like a play, follows the aftermath as he navigates his impending divorce, his relationship with his small children, and his performance as Hotspur in a production of Henry IV on Broadway.

Throughout much of the novel, William looks back at the mistakes he made that led to the breakup of his marriage. He’s now in his 30s and has the clarity to see how selfish he was in his 20s. Hawke, however, was in his forties while writing the book. Through the layers of hindsight, you can feel how Hawke has processed not just the painful emotional growth spurt of his 20s, but also the way he can now mine the wisdom that comes from true reflection. Still, as steeped as the novel is in self-reflection, it does not claim to have all the answers. In fact, it offers William, as well as the readers, more questions to contemplate than it does answers.

The wisdom to know that you will never quite understand everything is broached by Hawke early in the third film in the Before Trilogy, 2013’s Before Midnight. At this point in their love story, Jesse’s marriage has ended and he and Celine are parents to twin girls. Jesse has released two more books: That Time, which recounts the events of the previous film, and Temporary Cast Members of a Long-Running But Little Seen Production of a Play Called Fleeting. Before Midnight breaks the bewitching spell of the first two films by adding more cast members and showing the friction that comes with an attempt to grow old with someone. When discussing his three books, a young man says the title of his third is too long, Jesse says it wasn’t as well loved, and an older professor friend says it’s his best book because it’s more ambitious. It seems Linklater and company already knew how the departure of this third film might be regarded by fans. But it is this very departure that shows their commitment to honestly showing the passage of time and our relationship to it.

About halfway through the film Jesse and Celine depart the Greek villa where they have been spending the summer, and we finally get a one-on-one conversation like we’re used to with these films. In one exchange, I feel they summarize the point of the entire trilogy, and possibly Hawke’s entire ethos:

Jesse: Every year, I just seem to get a little bit more humbled and more overwhelmed about all the things I’m never going to know or understand.

Celine: That’s what I keep telling you. You know nothing!

Jesse: I know, I know! I'm coming around!

[Celine and Jesse laugh.]

Celine: But not knowing is not so bad. I mean, the point is to be looking, searching. To stay hungry, right?

Throughout the series, Linklater, Delpy, and Hawke explore what they call the “transient nature of everything.” Jesse says his books are less about time and more about perception. It’s the rare person who can assess themselves or the world around them acutely in the present. For most of us, it takes time and self-reflection to come to any sort of understanding about our own nature. Before Midnight asks us to look back at the first two films with honesty, to remove the romantic lens with which they first appeared to us. It asks us to reevaluate what romance even truly is.

Hawke explores this same concept again in the 2018 romantic comedy Juliet, Naked. In this adaptation of the 2009 Nick Hornby novel, Hawke plays a washed-up singer-songwriter named Tucker Crowe. He had a big hit album, Juliet, in the early ‘90s and then disappeared into obscurity. Rose Bryne plays a woman named Annie whose longtime boyfriend Duncan is obsessed with the singer and the album, stuck on the way the bummer songs about a bad breakup make him feel. As the film begins, Annie reveals that she thinks she’s wasted 15 years of her life with this schmuck. This being a rom-com, we know that Hawke and Byrne’s characters will eventually meet-cute. What’s so revelatory about the film is its raw depiction of how hard it is for many to reassess who they really are later in life.

Duncan is stuck as the self-obsessed, self-pitying person he likely was when Annie first met him, but she reveals he was so unlike anyone else in her remote town that she looked the other way for far too long. Now it’s almost too late. By chance, she connects with Crowe and finds a different kind of man.

See, when Crowe wrote Juliet, he also was a navel-gazing twentysomething whose emotional development had not yet reached the point of being able to see both sides in a romantic entanglement. He worked through his heartbreak through art, and though it spoke to other people, he didn’t think about the woman or her feelings on the subject. In a way, Crowe’s music sounds a bit like what Reality Bites’s Troy Dyer may have written, if he ever had the drive to actually work at his music. Eventually, it’s revealed that Crowe walked away from it all when Julie, the woman who broke his heart, confronted him with their child—something he was well aware of, but from which he had been running away. Faced with the harsh reality of his actions and the ramifications they had on the world beyond his own feelings, he ran even farther away from responsibility. In telling the story to Annie, he says, “I couldn’t play any of those songs anymore, you know? After that, I just... I couldn’t play these insipid, self-pitying songs about Julie breaking my heart. You know, they were a joke. And before I know it, a couple of decades have gone by and some doctor hands me... hands me Jackson. I hold him, you know, and I look at him. And I know that this boy. . . is my last chance.”

When we first meet Crowe, he’s now dedicated his life to raising his youngest son, having at this point messed up with four previous children. The many facets of parenthood is something that shows up in Hawke’s later body of work many times, in projects as wholly different as Brooklyn’s Finest, Before Midnight, Boyhood, Maggie’s Plan, First Reformed, and even his novel A Bright Ray of Darkness. In each of these projects, decisions made by Hawke’s characters have a big impact on their children’s lives. These films explore the financial pressures of parenthood, the quirks of blended families, the impact of absent fathers, and even the tragedy of a father’s wishes acquiesced without question. Hawke’s take on parenthood is that of flawed men always striving to overcome the worst of themselves for the betterment of the next generation, often with mixed results.

Where Juliet, Naked showed a potential arc of redemption for a father gone astray, First Reformed paints a bleaker portrait. Hawke plays Pastor Toller, a man of the cloth struggling with his own faith who attempts to counsel an environmental activist whose impending fatherhood has driven him to suicidal despair. Toller himself is struggling under the weight of fatherhood, believing he sent his own son to die a needless death in a morally bankrupt war. Sharing the story, he says “My father taught at VMI. I encouraged my son to enlist. It was the family tradition. Like his father, his grandfather. Patriotic tradition. My wife was very opposed. But he enlisted against her wishes. . . . Six months later he was killed in Iraq. There was no moral justification for this conflict. My wife could not live with me after that. Who could blame her? I left the military. Reverend Jeffers at Abundant Life Church heard about my situation. They offered me a position at First Reformed. And here I am.” How do we carry the weight of actions that affect lives that are not even our own?

If Peter Weir set the father figure template in Dead Poets Society, and Paul Schrader explored the consequences of direct parental influence on their children’s lives, director Richard Linklater subverts the idea of a mentor-guide in Boyhood, showing both parents are as lost as the kid himself. When young Mason (Ellar Coltrane) asks his dad (Hawke) what’s the point of everything, his reply is “I sure as shit don’t know. Nobody does. We’re all just winging it.” As the film ends, Mason sits atop a mountain with a new friend he’s made in the dorms discussing time. She says that everyone is always talking about seize the moment—carpe diem!—but she thinks it’s the other way around. That the moments seize us. In Reality Bites, Troy gets annoyed at Lelaina’s constant need to “memorex” everything with her camcorder, yet Boyhood is a film about capturing a life over a 12-year period. The Before Trilogy checks in on Jesse and Celine every nine years. Hawke’s entire career. in fact, has captured his growth from an awkward teen to a prolific artist and devoted father, a master of his craft and philosopher at heart.

#ethan hawke #boyhood #before trilogy #before midnight #before sunset #before sunrise #reality bites #first reformed #dead poets society #a bright ray of darkness #film writing #film essay #musings #oscilloscope laboratories

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totallytododeku · 4 years ago

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☁ studying together ( x reader hc's) ☁

characters: midoriya, bakugou, todoroki, kirishima, yaoyorozu, uraraka, + ashido

genre: fluff <33

☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁☁

I. Midoriya 🌳🍀🌻

this poor boy is so excited to be spending time with you

but he will not take his nose out of his textbook

he can't help it

he's so happy to be in the hero course he takes his schoolwork a little too seriously

however, you can use this to your advantage ;)

normally you're almost as invested in his journey to becoming the next Symbol of Peace and achieving his dream as he is

and you would never dream of doing anything that could jeopardize it

So you were silently bouncing off the walls with glee when you realized he was impervious to distractions when it came to studying

literally anything is fair game

which is why studying with him is your new favorite time of day

pet his hair

kiss his cheeks

climb into his lap

pat his head

hold his non-dominant hand

hug him from behind his chair

rest your head on his shoulder and take a nap

do whatever you want

you can basically do anything to him while he's studying without having to worry about distracting him

he will blush a little bit of you kiss him but but you think it's adorable

lol turn on whatever tv or music you want

but only if you're done with your work!!

hes very adamant that you keep up with your work as best you can do you can graduate side by side and be pro heroes together someday

K. Bakugou 💣💥 📢

he would totally be the one to invite you to study and he would probably want to study in his dorm

it's super quiet and nobody will bother you guys because they know it's that spiky gremlin's room

overall his room just has a really relaxing atmosphere

you love being near him as much as possible

and he's much more affectionate in the comfort of his dorm room

but that doesn't mean he's gonna go easy on u ;-;

he still has his gruff attitude and will make sure you're studying every day

or else he will call u baka and force you to sit down and study until you know all your material

he's actually a great tutor tho

he writes out all the work for each problem and explains them thoroughly

all while holding in you in his arms while you sit in his lap

sometimes you can convince him to play a game with you where every time you get an answer right he gives you a kiss

but you whine when you get one wrong and he won't kiss you

he huffs before giving you a kiss while still trying to look annoyed

stupid girl he mutters

but he pulls you a bit closer to him to hide his blush and moves on to the next problem despite your giggles

S. Todoroki ❄🔥🍜

he doesn't really need to study but he doesn't know how to just .. relax

like he doesn't know how to not do what his dad tells him to do

and his dad wants him to study

it's just easier for Todoroki to do what his dad wants than to rebel

that is, it was

Until he met you and the dekusquad

obviously everyone cares about their homework and wants to graduate well and go Plus Ultra!

but study sessions with Todoroki usually end up just being you guys trying to help him be less hard on himself while you have him as a captive audience

he doesn't really mind, though, especially when it's just you two

the intimacy of studying together in comfortable silence and just

enjoying each other's company

makes his heart go (*￣∇￣*)

like i said he doesn't really need to study so he'll just end up helping you review material

please just ... hold his hand :)

after you're done studying for the day just pull him into a hug and over to your bed

he needs a nap

you feel warm fuzzies inside from how caring he's been to sit with you while you finished your homework and bring you warm tea

you don't even think you just

Time for cuddles :3

it becomes your daily ritual to study together and then cuddle

he always falls asleep in your arms with a small smile

E. Kirishima 🗿🗿🗿

(HAHAHSHNSJ THE 🗿 EMOJI OMG I'M LITERALLY SO FUNNY LOL I'M CRYING)

"Okay, Y/N, let's study hard and do our homework like men!" *fist-pumping the air and grinning like an idiot*

"...what's so funny? "

he doesn't care if you're not a man it's his trademark

he likes to study at his desk because he says it's "important to stay focused and work diligently"

generally he is the least focused person, ever. besides kaminari.

however, he's so energetic and enthusiastic that once you sit down and start studying he'll be able to keep your motivation up until you've finished all your homework

GREAT at studying for tests and quizzes (in theory)

he will never give up

like I said he could keep studying for hours once he sets his mind to it

So you have to compromise and get him to study in short bursts throughout the day to help him have a better chance of remembering anything ;-;

his memory is not great but it's kinda cute

you, being the smart cookie that u are, realized the best way to help him memorize things was to study with flashcards frequently throughout the weekend while doing other activities

so you plan to hang out together and do something fun every week while having your study material on index cards in your back pockets

it's a literal study date.

a weekly date out to the mall or the park or a little coffee shop but with math trivia thrown in randomly throughout the afternoon!! :D

Of course he was ready to turn it into a game he's a literal puppy

he just wants to show you you can be proud of him

you giggle lightly when you hear him say that and let him know that you'll always be proud of him, no matter what

M. Yaoyorozu 👑🏆☕

studyblr wants what u have.

studying in momo's room makes you feel like a Victorian young lady studying moral philosophy, writing poetry about the mourning doves outside the garden window, and waiting for her husband to come home from sailing the seven seas

it's your Belle moment where she's in the royal library except it's every day

stacks of beautiful, old books

the smell of the crisp, white pages

soft classical music floating through the air

the window cracked open slightly

and you are the luckiest student in all of UA because you get to study with the smartest girl in the whole school

she's also gorgeous and sweet and perfect which def doesn't hurt

u know that joke that ur teacher can spend a year explaining something and u never understand but then a random indian guy on YouTube explains it in 2 minutes and you finally get it

she is that random indian guy

you will never struggle with a single concept after you start studying with her

And she's so proud of you for every little question you answer correctly

(even thought she's the one that explained it all so well in the first place)

it's the definition of comfortable silence

she insists that neither of you study too hard and that you take lots of breaks to stretch

she says its to help you stay concentrated but really she just wants to feel your gentle hands on her shoulders as you massage out the knots

you take turns kneading the tension out of each other's shoulders

you feel a pleasant tingle down your spine at the feeling of her soft breath on the back of your neck

She pulls away and you share awkward smiles, neither of you realizing the other one of blushing, too

(((*≧艸≦)ﾌﾟﾌﾟｯ

O. Uraraka 🌜🚀🙏

ur actually super productive study buddies

Like u started studying together and then all of a sudden you were almost at the top of your class

she's just so sweet that being with her gives you the energy you need to write that essay all in one sitting instead of procrastinating like a normal person

Shows up at your dorm with snacks and drinks to keep your energy up!! :D

even though she's still going to end up getting sleepy anyway later in the afternoon

You get most of your studying done at the beginning of your study date so it's not really a problem

you know she doesn't have a lot of money to be throwing around so you pay for dinner every night

It's usually takeout but sometimes you guys make your own dinner for fun!

it always turns out almost inedible and burned because neither of you were paying attention to the stove

don't let baku see it or he'll start screaming about how you need to try your best at everything so he can beat you fair and square and that includes cooking too

neither you nor uraraka can handle spicey food so you never eat what Bakugou cooks for the class

You grab a few bags of chips and some sushi and shut yourselves in your dorm to pull an all-nighter study session about once a month

it should make you tired but, again, studying with her is so enjoyable that you don't mind

u two enjoy each others company in studying so much that you sometimes read ahead in your textbooks just to be able to study more

overall, hanging out with her is just lighthearted and filled with giggles

and you just so happen to get all your homework done along the way

M. Ashido 👾👽🚿

"studying" with her is so much fun

Hanging out with Mina in general is so much fun

it's impossible not to smile when she's around so even if you have a huge exam tomorrow, all your worries fade away just from being with her

She is pretty distracting in cases where you actually wanted to get stuff done

But you don't care

Change of plans

you're doing mani pedi's with Mina

No more studying

it's not as bad as it sounds though

You're not slacking off or anything and you can still keep your grades up with help from your other friends like Momo and Iida

you guys are just goofing off in the privacy of your dorm room when you should be studying

"It's not a crime to be young, Y/ N ;)"

she's just so energetic and happy like a little pink ball of sunshine

you can't help but laugh at her silliness and cute antics after a long day of classes

she makes your heart beat faster like you're on a roller coaster but without the nerves

somehow you feel giddy and comfortable in her presence at the same time

it doesn't matter what you two are doing, you always have fun

make sure she goes to bed on time, though, or she might end up baking a seven-tier cake at 3 am and Bakugou will scream at you for waking him up

don't feed her after midnight lmao

i started writing this after i almost died of boredom in my online calc class. my senioritis is already kicking in and it's still September (｡-ω-)

#boku no hero academia x reader #bnha x reader fluff #bnha headcannons #bakugou katsuki x reader fluff #midoriya izuku x reader #todoroki shouto x reader #shoto todoroki #Uraraka ochako #uraraka ochako x reader #Mina ashido x reader #yaoyorozu momo x reader #yaomomo #Kirishima eijirou x reader #eijirou kirishima #mha x reader #my hero academia x reader fluff headcannons #study date #hc

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artzychic27 · 3 years ago

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I posted 326 times in 2021

245 posts created (75%)

81 posts reblogged (25%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 0.3 posts.

I added 872 tags in 2021

#miraculous ladybug - 243 posts

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Longest Tag: 43 characters

#you can pry this hc from my cold dead hands

My Top Posts in 2021

Y’all, I fucking love this anon! 🤣

Comment if your work has been visited by Sig.Ra Rossi or you’ve seen them in the comment section!

154 notes • Posted 2021-02-21 14:53:21 GMT

Akumatized Luka Idea!

Class salt (Spare a few (Juleka & Nathaniel)) After their daughter comes home in tears, Sabine and Tom call for Luka to comfort her. She tells him everything that happened. Lila pulls some shit and everyone (sans two) follow her words while Adrien does nothing to help her.

To make his Broadway Baby girlfriend feel better, Luka sings some of Marinette’s favorite songs from musicals. The one that calms her down is ‘Our Love is God’ He sings the song with more passion than the others, since he finds himself relating to JD in a way. He thinks about all the people who have hurt Marinette, becomes angry, and cue Hawkmoth.

He gets Akumatized into Musical Mayhem. His goal is to destroy all those who have hurt his Melody by using his guitar case that carries various musical-themed weapons (Mountain Dew Red Bomb/Gun Hamilton was shot with/Mormon tie whip/Evan’s cast gauntlet/Heather’s sledgehammer/SQUIPS that he can use to control people)

Musical Mayhem’s philosophy is similar to JD’s, which is “Kill all the assholes.” He’s constantly smothering his ‘Melody’, will kill anyone who dares to hurt her or make her cry, and he sometimes sings. Also, he tries to destroy the school so it’ll just be him and Marinette.

At one point, when Marinette tells him to stop his rampage, he sings Meant to Be Yours

185 notes • Posted 2021-03-11 12:32:28 GMT

If the Art Club was basically the Addams Family

They’re morbid, have a dark sense of humor, are never seen without black, and spiders hide in their hair

Nathaniel: Gomez Addams

Always has this sinister smirk that screams, ‘I will murder you in your sleep.’

Gets excited when his boyfriend speaks Spanish

Marc: Normal people. Tan extraño.

Nathaniel: Monochrome, you know how I get when you speak Spanish! *Kisses his arm*

Never seen without his black blazer

Sharpens the ends of his paintbrushes so they can be used as knives... No reason, just does it

Blood Red and Death Row Black are his favorite colors

A true romantic

Makes passionate love with Marc at least four times a day

Nathaniel: My monochromic nightmare. Stab my heart a thousand times and I will be yours until death do we part!

Marc: I’ll got get my dagger.

Nathaniel: Will it be painful?

Marc: So much.

Marc: Morticia Addams

Wears tight black outfits

Cuts the buds off of flowers

Marc: Ugh. *Cutting up roses* Who in their right mind would plant these?

Weirded out by normal people

Marc: Nathan. That child is smiling at me. Almost as if he were... Happy.

Nathaniel: Monochrome, look away. *Shields Marc’s eyes*

Writes morbid poetry and eulogies

When Mendelive asked him to a say a prayer for their dead class hamster, this is what he said-

Marc: Come, sorrow; we welcome thee. Let us join in grief, rejoice in despair, and honor the fortunate dead.

Cut to the students and teacher backed into a corner far away from him

Encourages his friends torturing people they despise

Marc: Alix, what are you doing with that bow and arrow?

Alix: I’m gonna shoot Kim when he’s not looking.

See the full post

214 notes • Posted 2021-03-26 22:11:48 GMT

Headcanon!

Nathaniel is not above using blackmail

—

Nathaniel: *Sighs* Lila, I wish it didn’t have to come to this. I really didn’t. But, if you continue to lie about Marinette, harass Adrien, and take advantage of my gullible friends, I will show everyone this photo of you grabbing an Akuma. *Shows Lila the very incriminating photo*

Lila: HOW’D YOU GET THAT?!

Nathaniel: Just one of the perks of being unnoticeable. Do we have a deal?

Lila: … No! Forget it! I’m calling your bluff.

Nathaniel: Ah. I see… Well, in that case- HEY EVERYONE! LOOK! A PHOTO OF LILA! AND SHE’S-

Lila: *Covers his mouth* Okay! Just shut up and give me that photo.

Nathaniel: Nope. I’m gonna hold onto this as… Let’s call it leverage. Step out of line, and everyone will know you’re working with a terrorist, Rossi.

*One day later!*

Lila: *Being handcuffed* YOU BASTARD! I DID WHAT YOU SAID!

Nathaniel: Yes, but here’s the thing. I don’t like you.

215 notes • Posted 2021-08-01 16:56:52 GMT

Anymore headcanons for the Artist Family? Are they rich and classy like the Addams?

They make a ton of money off of Marinette’s commissions, Marc/Nath’s VERY detailed gothic graphic novels, Juleka and Rose playing music at funerals, and Alix’s demolition business

The converted funeral home they live in is spacious and could be mistaken for a mansion

Rich people dining! Five chandeliers in the dining room, black as night table with thirteen candelabra made from ashes found in the embalming room, old caskets converted into cabinets, doilies spun by spiders, and a tigers head hanging on the wall

One of their Kwamis, I’m thinking Screech, takes a human form and drives them around in their car, a 1940 LaSalle Meteor Hearse

One of the teachers fainted when they came to school in that

Juleka: They’re clearly jealous.

Alix: Yeah! Not everyone gets to carry around the dead wherever they go!

There’s a ton of rooms in the house

The crematorium has been converted into a dungeon filled with vintage weapons they bought from museums

Marinette: How much for the battle axe?

Museum Director: Excuse me? I’m afraid these aren’t for sale.

Marinette: *Pulls out a massive wad of cash* Let’s try this again, shall we?

They gladly donate stacks of cash to local museums with torture and Black Plague exhibits. There’s even a couple of wings named after them

The embalming room stays, because who doesn’t enjoy a good embalming room?

Their closets are filled with 17/18th century gothic and modern gothic outfits

Marinette/Juleka/Rose/Marc/Nathaniel/Alix

Marc and Nathaniel rent out the catacombs once in a while when they’re on dates

Nathaniel: Look at you. Midnight, candle light, surrounded by death.

*An explosion cuts them off as they’re about to kiss*

Marc: One home, the six of us, and so many windows.

Rose and Juleka do the same but with cemeteries

Juleka: It’s shame we can’t watch the departed decompose above ground.

Rose: *Pulls out a shovel* Wanna watch now?

Learning about their wealth, Lila tries to kiss up to them by boasting about being related to H.P. Lovecraft. That didn’t end well

Nathaniel: The man is a notorious white supremacist. (Look it up)

She tried again

Lili: I-I meant I was related to Edgar Allen Poe! You see, he’s my great, great grandfather, and I actually dabble in a little poetry myself.

Marc: Poe had no children.

Marinette: But if you were his descendant, you would have an extra row of teeth or a tail, or you aren’t able to taste salt.

See the full post

236 notes • Posted 2021-04-15 22:49:07 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#my 2021 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #Spotify

8 notes · View notes

cloud9in · 4 years ago

Text

The Half of It

A Mc x Poppy fic inspired by the film

Summary: Bea, the town’s outcast is recruited by the school jock to win Poppy’s heart. But what happens when she starts falling for her as well?

Author’s Note: So this will be a multiple part series that includes scenes heavily inspired from the movie “The Half of It”. I certainly recommend watching it. My version will have different twists and a different ending, and definitely more angst. It will include mature themes as the story progresses.

Warnings for this chapter: Swearing. This is a good thing for now.

Chapter 1-

“Love is simply the name for desire and pursuit of the whole.”

- Plato, The Symposium

It is said that when one half finds its other, there’s an unspoken understanding. A unity. And each would know no greater joy....than this.

...Except this is highschool. And in my opinion, there is no other half. Maybe the other half is a paper on Greek God philosophy due at midnight. But make that four papers, including mine.

My name is Bea Hughes and let’s just say...this is not a very happy story. Well maybe some parts are, but you’ll have to read to find out. I come from a small town called Farmsville, and when I mean small, I mean really small. Except the highschool seems fucking huge, with never ending hallways and when you do somehow find the end, there’s usually two inbreds eating each others mouths off. Lucky for me I am the epitome of antisocial, reserved, an introvert, or whatever the inferior beings, aka every other senior, calls me when they think I can’t hear. But I hear everything, including that one time Bradley Denbrough, upcoming hotshot actor, or so he claims, found out about a crush a poor unsuspecting freshman had on him. Everybody knew what Bradley and his goons did to that boy, even the adults, but no charges were pressed. This town is as conservative as it gets, but no one knows of my secret. I carry this school on my back when it comes to having everyone graduate, but that’s all I am to them, a pawn. And that’s all I wanted to be, nothing more and nothing less. I preferred to be in the shadows.

***

...Except the mandatory Senior Talent Show forced Bea out of her hibernation hole. The thought haunted her as she sat in the dance studio, the last fucking place she wanted to be. Dance was so not a Bea kinda thing, but the blonde knew exactly why she granted herself the misery of picking the class. Poppy Min Sinclair, the golden girl of Farmsville High, the preacher’s daughter on a more serious note. She is...the most fascinating girl Bea ever laid her eyes on even if her boyfriend was a complete asshole who sermonized his duties as her future husband. Like seriously? Poppy has got to have some screws loose to date such a fake loser who plagiarizes all of his speeches at sunday church, and once literally begged Bea to write an apology letter to his father for him after completely upending their summer cabin. Except the blonde wrote the opposite of an apology, it went something like this…

Dear beloved donkey, I mean dad,

I am terribly sorry for inviting 20 hookers to the summer cabin. I have these strange impulses and you should at least be grateful I didn’t invite the big boss as well. His wife came though, in many, many ways. You should get the carpet changed.

Sincerely, your STD free son

It was safe to say that Mr. Denbrough had a near heart attack after reading it, and Bea did kinda feel bad, kinda. He never mentioned the letter to Bradley though, instead silently calling up the owner of Teopoli Catholic Summer Camp and essentially deporting the boy to Canada for the summer. No son of his would end up in hell was what the old man preached everyday from then on. It was the quietest summer Bea had ever experienced.

Being the towns outcast, Bea could have her fun when she so chooses to, but that didn’t pay the bills. In fact, the multiple essays that people paid her to write was her way of surviving and taking care of her mother. They weren’t very rich but Bea worked with what she had, helping her mother manage the farm, which included getting on her knees and wrestling the pigs. And that’s how she was gifted the name “pig girl”, stupid Bradley and his fake friends just had to wander too far and catch Bea in the act. She swore a remixed video of her hog calling surfaced the web at one point and that gave the blonde her five minutes of fame. Boy was it an awful time in her life.

Bea worked her mother’s previous job as station master or signalman for the trains that passed through, even if it barely paid her shit. The secluded feeling of sitting in that booth and having a moment with her thoughts was enough to give her purpose. Bea was fond of poetry and it usually helped her come up with song lyrics.

Song lyrics…

That she would have to sing at the talent show. A huge sigh escaped her lips as she slumped further into the ground, maybe hoping she could bury herself six feet under. It wasn’t that Bea hated singing, no she absolutely loved it. Playing her guitar at night and belting out lyrics that only resulted in her mother banging on the ceiling below in efforts to shut the blonde up. But the mere fact that she’d have to sing in front of the ruthless seniors rubbed her the wrong way. Something would go wrong, it always did. Bea was shaken out of her thoughts when Poppy crossed the center of the room, moving her hips slowly to the sound of Rihanna’s voice. The class chose a slow r&b song to choreograph today and of course all eyes were on Poppy.

If i’m your girl say my name boy

let me know i'm in control

Her silky blonde locks swayed as she danced to the beat, hands thrusting sensually along her sides. Bea stared in awe, almost like Poppy was the only one in the room and a spotlight illuminated every movement, every curve. Except she definitely wasn’t the only one picturing Poppy in that way. Carter, the school quarterback leaned against the railing, arms crossed and eyes trailing the rise and fall of her chest.

Got me wondering, I’m wondering if i'm on your mind

Bea sat up straighter but nearly lost her bodily functions when Poppy locked eyes with her before spinning away. It was simple eye contact Bea, don’t let it get to your head. You already have multiple lyrics inspired by Poppy offering the bare minimum in human interaction. She doesn’t actually like you. Poppy is popular and has the perfect life...and boyfriend, even if Bea heavily disagrees. Poppy was a bitch of course, but not a bitch bitch. Unlike the other wannabe mean girls, the blonde didn’t give Bea hell, well that was because the girl paid her zero attention. She seemed distant, off in her own world, or well in her parents world learning the strategies of business. Poppy was expected to follow in her parents footsteps and keep up with her reputation of being the richest in town, and of course a faithful future wife. So fun. But the blonde had other prosperous dreams of travelling and following her passion of music and dance. Highschool was her only outlet and she took advantage of it any chance she’d get. Bea knew this because she would ride her bike every friday night to the school and watch Poppy dance from outside the glass window. Maybe Bea realized it was kinda creepy, but she’s dumb enough to not realize her obvious growing attraction. I mean who pedals miles just to watch someone trip on their feet?

***

The sound of the bell caught everyone's attention and the teacher slowly lowered the music. Bea watched as Bradley approached Poppy and smothered her with kisses and praises. She rolled her eyes painfully, this kind of PDA definitely wasn’t it, she could have gone her whole life without seeing that. She walked silently through the crowd of kids in the hall, everyone was laughing and talking to their friends. All Bea could allow her mind to focus on was the very intimidating billboard of names a few feet across from her.

Winter Talent Show Sign-Ups (Mandatory For Seniors)

Bea glared at it quietly before signing her name on the sheet, sealing her inevitable fate. Through the hustle of students, Carter watched the blonde with a yearning look from afar. This should be great…

The next few classes were a blur and Bea eventually found herself getting up to hand Ms. Kingsley her paper. The older woman looked at her with a knowing glance as she took a generous sip of her coffee, which was 75% tequila.

“6 different interpretations on Plato? Colour me impressed Miss Hughes.”

Bea shrugs nonchalant, “yeah well would you rather read their actual essays?”

“Oh hell no.” Kingsley feigns shock as she looks at the stack of papers with a comical expression. She takes another sip, watching her younger, prodigy of a student carefully. “You know there are places outside of this godforsaken town where you can put your talents to use... Real use. I teach at Belvoire University occasionally.” Ina winks and slides Bea an application, studying her initial reaction. “It’s...in New York.”

“Damn right! The Big Apple.”

“Kingsley you know I have to stay here. It’ll be easier for me to manage the farm and be close to home”, Bea says confidently even though her body language displays otherwise. She predicted the big sigh filling her ears before it actually happened and it still managed to faze her. “Who ever said you had to do anything? What about what you want to do?” Bea doesn’t make eye contact with Ina, that woman could convince you to do just about anything with a certain look. “No we are not doing this. You can take your reverse psychology and shove it where the sun doesn’t shine. I’m outta here.” The blonde stomps out of the classroom, the sound of Ina’s chuckles still ringing in her ears.

“Hey! Everyone in this town fears God, but you know what God fears? My ability to hide a bottle of Don Julio in my left boot.” Ina pulls out the newly bought bottle and cradles it. “Come to mama.”

***

Bea rode her bike alongside the dirt road, Kingsley’s words on replay the entire ride. Maybe she did deserve to experience something more than what this town had to offer. But would her mother manage without her? Sacrifices, sacrifices. Bea was used to making those for her mother after her father’s death. What would her dad think of all of this?

“Hey!”

He’d surely smack Bea upside the head for the little antics she pulled occasionally. And then he’d buy her vanilla coconut ice cream and ask for every single detail of what happened as they sat and laughed together. That’s the kind of relationship Bea would have had with her father, she liked to assume so. She also liked to assume that she’d get home safely everyday without a scratch, but then there’s Carter.

“Hey wait up!”

The jock seemed to be running ridiculously fast and crashed right into the rear end of Bea’s bicycle, sending her face first into a mount of dirt. The initial impact was enough to boost the blonde straight back up like nothing happened and into a fighting stance, fists out and eyes wild. Very scary Bea. When she realized it was him...well it only pissed her off even more. “What the fuck Carter! You asshole!”

“I’m sorry Bea! Here let me help-”

“No! Move away! You- my bike- I…” Bea groans frustratingly, stepping away from the wreck as she tries to catch her breath. Carter watches her sheepishly, rubbing an envelope between his fingers awkwardly. After a few minutes of painfully uneasy silence he speaks up, “Okay...I didn’t want to ask you this way but I was wonder-”

“Oh, so you practically break my ass and now you want me to do you a favour? Real nice way of communication you have there Mr. Quarterback. What is with you and those freakishly large muscles anyways? Maybe it’s my fault I didn’t hear your avalanche built ass coming from behind.”

“Hey! They are not freakishly large!”

“I hate to break it to you Jackson but mine are significantly more appealing to look at.” Bea smirks widely, flexing her arm as best as she could. It’s a work in progress… just bare with her.

It didn’t take much effort for Carter to break out into a smile and look at her fondly. Maybe there was more to this girl than just being a human dictionary. Well that’s what people called her, and he maybe believed it at first.

Bea noticed the lack of response and shifted awkwardly, clearing her throat. “Listen, its $10 for three pages, $20 for three to ten, I'm not in the over-ten-page biz.”

“No..no I’m not here to cheat!” Carter blurts out. “But I’ll let you know if I do plan on- anyways. I uh..” He hesitates before handing her the envelope. “What’s this?

“Well you see it’s a letter..”

“Yeah but who writes letters these days?”

“I thought it seemed romantic..”

“And I thought women writing Jeffrey Dahmer letters in jail seemed romantic”, Bea says sarcastically, her smile dropping instantly after catching a glimpse of Poppy’s name at the top of the paper. It was like the blood stopped flowing through her body for a few seconds as her mouth went dry. This had to be the work of the so-called God everyone praised in this town, or it was one cruel coincidence. Bea wasn’t sure why seeing her name made her heart beat ten times harder, but it also wasn’t a necessarily uncomfortable feeling…

“I- I can’t help you.”

“But if you just add a few more words-”

“I’m not writing a letter to Poppy Min Sincla- to..to some girl for you. Letters are supposed to be authentic, from the heart, your own words, your...feelings.” Bea hurriedly turns to grab her bike, suddenly losing all interest in being social.

Carter was afraid this would happen. But he was stubborn. “But I can pay more for authentic!”

Too bad Bea was stubborn as well. “Just get a thesaurus...Good luck, Romeo.”

***

Bea sat in her room, strumming away softly at the strings of her guitar. Some of the keys were off but the old thing still worked, and that was good enough for her. She could hear the tv blasting downstairs, her mother most likely watching the news. There’s something about old people and news, were they secretly ogling the news anchors? Just like Bea ogled Poppy any chance she could. The blonde frowned to herself, her eyebrows crunching together in question. What so hard about writing a letter to Poppy? It’s not like it's coming from her. Well it technically is, but Carter is taking the credit and Bea never had a problem with people taking credit for her words. So why did this very thought prove to be such an inconvenience? Lucky for Bea, her mind drifted elsewhere when she heard a painful snap. Even if it wasn’t physically connected to her body, she felt a horrible ache. Slowly peering down at the guitar in her hand, Bea found that the neck of the guitar had miraculously split almost clean off, a splinter of wood just holding it intact. She wanted to scream but nothing really came out, except air of course. Much to her disapproval, this was definitely a result of her strength. Stupid muscles couldn’t contain themselves at the thought of Carter being with Poppy. Now how could that be?

But now she had no guitar. And no guitar means no strings to strum, and no lyrics to sing, and no talent to show at the talent show. Now she was in trouble. Probably because she knew that the only way to get the money to replace the guitar would be through sealing the deal with Carter. Oh fuck it!

***

“One letter. And enough money to buy a new guitar.”

“Deal!”

Bea turns away with a sigh, completely ignoring Carter’s high five. Now all she had to do was write this letter, and pray that Poppy wouldn’t completely consume every fiber of her being in the process.

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

End note: So how we feelin’? Carter and Bea Brotp??

Tags: @samanthadalton @somewillwin @clowneryme @baexpoppy @zigxryanz @uselesslesbianfr @aleiramacaii @thedaft1 @alexlabhont @iamsimpforpoppy

#queen b #poppy min sinclair #poppy x mc #mc x poppy #playchoices #I couldn't come up with a unique title #throw some ideas if you have #do share your opinion on this #it is valued #oblivious bea is a pain in the ass #but certainly fun to write

91 notes · View notes

luckcycler · 5 years ago

Note

hi! i know you have a info page (or whatever it's called) for your characters butt doesnt work on mobile? anyways i wanted ask if you could tell me what ultimate talents they have?

Huh…

Not sure how invested you are with how you phrased your question but I just copy-pasted all the info on this ask.

I’ll put it under read more because otherwise, it will be super long

Basic info:

Heartbreak is a story of 16 former students of Hope’s Peak Academy who have found themselves locked in the bizarre setting of a love hotel. And thus, a new exciting killing game takes place once again!

As the concepts of guilt and justification clash together inside the sickeningly pink walls of the hotel, one starts to wonder who exactly is the morally righteous one?

And to shake things up… a new rule has been added to the monopad.

The cast:

Aino Inoue

Former Ultimate Mermaid

Age: 20

Class:75-B

Blood type: O

Likes: Long Walks on the Beach, Astrology

Dislikes: Sand

It’s time for opinions! Meaning opinions from this woman! This is Aino Inoue, the ultimate mermaid! Or more precisely a professional underwater mermaid actress. It appears childhood career dreams do come true! She became a very known underwater actress for her infectious charm and her ability to stay underwater for 9 minutes without breathing.

Her attitude towards others is very straightforward but that doesn’t mean she is unfriendly, actually quite the opposite and especially if she is under the liquid courage. What’s personal space? She certainly doesn’t know.

Aino is a very nosy person and loves to give relationship advice to other people, even when these other people really don’t want it. It doesn’t help that quite a lot of these advices come from her obsession with astrology and blood type personality theory.

She can also be seen more often than not with a cocktail in hand to a point her constant state of tipsiness worries some of the others. In Aino’s opinion, it just makes her twice as fun!

Daisuke Okamoto

Former Ultimate Robot Combat Champion

Birthday: May 25th

Age: 19

Class: 76-B

Blood type: B

Likes: Logic Puzzles, Memes

Dislikes: Raisins in Bread, Academic writing

Here comes the local memester! Daisuke Okamoto is the current robot combat champion. But despite his promising career path in the art of mauling battle robots and much to everyone’s bafflement. After his time in Hope’s Peak, he went to study engineering at his local university. He refuses to tell why he had such a change of heart even when he still regularly competes.

Daisuke is a second-generation immigrant with his mother being American and father being Japanese. Because of this, his sense of humor is influenced a lot by western internet culture. He tends to joke around a lot giving him a carefree attitude. He loves to entertain, although in serious situations his joking nature can come off as insensitive.

But under all the jokes and terribly outdated meme’s, he is very intelligent and a hard realist who wants to know every detail of the rules and isn’t afraid to ask them from Monokuma.

Gina Higanbana

Former Ultimate Biochemist

Birthday: October 31st

Age: 23

Class: 72-A

Blood type: B

Likes: Poetry, Family

Dislikes: Frankenstein (Story), Sour Plums

Speaking of eccentric mad scientists! Gina Higanbana, the ultimate biochemist is the sort of person who definitely befriended every monster under her bed when she was young. Gina is a boisterous workaholic which has paid off since she is known most for her study of parabiosis. Unfortunately, not all of her fame is from positive feedback, as some of her testing methods have been found very unorthodox…

Gina presents herself as larger than life, after all, she is a woman of science! Though she delves with modern problems, her way of talking is very old fashioned, and even poetic, making her sound like she would fit right into a 19th-century romance novel.

While being a semi loud presence to the group, Gina tends to withdraw to her own space and has trouble talking about subjects outside of her interests. But when it comes to teaching neighbor kids how to turn a volcano eruption experiment into a baking soda canon, she is the right person to tag along.

Hotaka Muramaru

Former Ultimate Florist

Birthday: January 27th

Age: 22

Class: 73-B

Blood type: A

Likes: Frogs, Bellflowers

Dislikes: Kiwa Fukuda

Hotaka Muramaru, the former ultimate florist… Well, a former florist, really. He isn’t doing too hot in his life at this moment. These days he mainly does gardening work around his area. It is unfortunate as he was known for his striking floral arrangements and attention to small details before his family’s flower shop business went down.

Hotaka as a person is very forgiving by nature. He doesn’t like causing conflicts and it is very hard to get him angry. Despite these positive traits, he seems to be nice for the sake of being nice which makes it hard to get close to him in a way that matters outside of everyday small talk. It seems preserving what little image he has left is more important to him. This has also made him quite the perfectionist.

Kana Nakano

Former Ultimate Lifeguard

Birthday: May 2nd

Age: 25

Class: 70-A

Blood type: O

Likes: Children, Geocaching

Dislikes: Spontaneous Plans

Kana Nakano, the ultimate lifeguard is very passionate about her job. She is the mom friend of the group you know you can always rely on in any hardships, niche killing games included. She has become a very popular lifeguard at her local kids’ poolside as she has a knack for talking to children. Though because of this her way of talking can sound very condescending when speaking to other adults. She tends to simplify her words and soften the meaning much to some of the group’s irritation.

As a person, she can also be very stubborn until she meets her goal. If nothing else, she makes a great leader figure with a lot of survival abilities and experience in tough situations.

Katsurou Furusawa

Former Ultimate Hunter

Birthday: September 5th

Age: 23

Class: 72-A

Blood type: A

Likes: Sewing, Peace and Quiet

Dislikes: Wet Socks, Attention

This timid yet patient boy who looks like he just crawled out of a swamp is Katsurou Furusawa. Though he doesn’t like talking about his talent that much, he is known as the ultimate hunter. He got his title for his exceptional trap making skills and the ability to stay unmoving for hours to no end, blending to his environments seamlessly, and waiting for a pray to trigger his traps.

Personality-wise, Katsurou is bashful and likes to talk to himself rather than others. He has a tendency to be a people pleaser, disregarding his own beliefs and feelings on topics just to appease both sides of the argument. He was never a problem child, as he has always done what his parents told him to. Even accepting the invitation to Hope’s Peak was not his idea.

Katsurou is also a huge daydreamer. He seems to be more comfortable with the world inside his head than the real world, and it shows.

Kiwa Fukuda

Former Ultimate Scapegoat

Birthday: December 31st

Age: 23

Class: 72-B

Blood type: AB

Likes: Citrus Fruits, Tacky Decorations

Dislikes: Paper Cuts

Though she looks quite sporty, her talent is far from a healthy career. This awkward and accident-prone woman is Kiwa Fukuda, our protagonist. Unfortunately to some, she is known as the ultimate scapegoat, though this information is confidential especially in court. Her line of work is basically taking the fall for a singular person’s or even a whole company’s mistakes. If that’s not deemed realistic, she will direct the fault towards a more suitable candidate. The amount of guilt Kiwa’s work as a scapegoat leaves her with has made her desensitized and apathetic towards others.

Personality-wise, Kiwa is laidback and can come off as an airhead thanks to her apathetic demeanor towards their current situation. She tends to joke about terrible subjects that make people around her a bit uncomfortable to say the least.

Kiwa is also clumsy and tends to get involved in accidents without trying to. Be it an injury, a misunderstanding or a terrible accident, it’s easy to assume she always has something to do with it whether it was her fault or not. Kiwa now wears a bicycle helmet all the time to make sure she won’t get a third fracture on her skull.

Kohaku Iwatomi

Former Ultimate Gemologist

Birthday: June 4th

Age: 19

Class: 76-B

Blood type: O

Likes: Shiny Things, DIY

Dislikes: Loneliness

This is Kohaku Iwatomi and he is happily ready to talk your ears off! Kohaku is known as the ultimate gemologist, mainly because he changes his specialty in gemology quite often, always wanting to try out something new. He seems to excel in all the areas he has tried out so far through pure dedication and excitement towards his profession. Though, for some reason, he has been working as a gem appraiser in his local pawnshop for longer than his peers thought he would withstand to.

Kohaku is a very cheery young man who loves to mingle no matter the topic. If you know him, you probably know his whole life story. He doesn’t like silence, nor does he bode well if left alone for too long. He isn’t narcissistic though as he is very empathetic and wears his emotions on his sleeve, he just really likes company and he has so much information to share with everyone!

Kohaku also has a liking towards thrift shop clothes and DIY projects hence his striking and pretty mismatched appearance.

Masami Kiyokane

Former Ultimate Croupier

Birthday: July 17th

Age: 22

Class: 73-A

Blood type: O

Likes: Board Games, Philosophy of Ethics

Dislikes: Alcohol

As if there were not enough party poopers in this group… This is Masami Kiyokane and he is known as the ultimate croupier. He got his title through diligent croupier work at organized events and after coming of age, at established casinos. Masami also has gotten quite good at seeing who is cheating and he knows most card games by heart. He seems fascinated by game rules in general.

Masami’s personality is pretty uptight and passive-aggressive. His way of talking tends to be a colorful use of personification, especially when he is going on a tangent and complaining about something. Though he talks big, very rarely is his bite worse than his bark as he mutters under his breath before admitting he is in the wrong.

Masami has a very strong moral system he believes in. His rather judgmental attitude is unusual for someone who has a hobby of learning about ethical philosophy though and often he gets called a hypocrite for playing favorites. He is not very happy about that.

Mei Kaneko

Ultimate Phonologist

Birthday: March 21st

Age: 18

Class: 77-A

Blood type: B

Likes: Corvidae, Accents

Dislikes: Wasting Time

This young girl is Mei Kaneko. She is the youngest of the group as she is the only one still studying in Hope’s Peak. She should be set to graduate soon and she is more than excited to continue with her dreams towards a real working life as the ultimate Phonologist!

Personality-wise, Mei is very energetic and will give her all to any task at hand. She is also very loud and a bit of a daredevil. If you tell her to not push the red button, she will definitely push the red button.

Growing up, Mei’s neighborhood had always been surrounded by corvids. As she slowly got more familiar with them, she developed a fascination towards the crows that kept playing in her backyard. Mei had been studying dialects and languages since she was little thanks to her bilingual home and decided, quite abruptly, that her life work from then on would have to deal with establishing communication with corvids.

Nori Ikari

Former Ultimate Sailor

Birthday: December 8th

Age: 20 (?)

Class: 75-A

Blood type: AB

Likes: Folk Tales, Making Rope Knots

Dislikes: His Knee Brace

This theatrically boisterous man is Nori Ikari, the ultimate sailor. Believe it or not, he is as young as 20 years old, which has led some of the group to believe he is a vampire in disguise. Nori comes from a vast lineage of sailors of different ranks but all just as proud seafarers! Nori got his title as the ultimate sailor after recklessly making a week-long fishing trip alone in a trawler boat made for a crew of 10.

Nori tends to tell long tales of his ancestors which sound just bizarre enough that no one is quite sure if Nori is speaking the truth or not. To be honest, everything he says just sounds downright like a big fish story all the way down to his accent. Is this man real? No one has a good answer to that.

Personality-wise Nori can be pretty intense. He has a habit of making a bigger deal out of very normal things. Nori values honor and traditions and tends to get quite defensive if his integrity is challenged. And if needed, he might challenge you to a sword fight at a parking lot if he deems you need a fair ass kicking.

Okemia Momose

Former Ultimate Opera Singer

Birthday: March 10th

Age: 24

Class: 71-B

Blood type: A

Likes: Vintage Aesthetic, Home

Dislikes: Hope’s Peak, Luck

This nervous woman is Okemia Momose. It’s been a while since people have heard her sing, but she is still regarded as the ultimate opera singer. She got her title for her incredible range and her ability to hold a note for almost half a minute.

Nowadays though, her fame is shadowed by a traumatic event she went through in one of her performances. She was one of the performers at her local opera house which was run by a Yakuza family. However, there was a very strained turf war going on around the area that one day resulted in a shoot out at the opera house. Unfortunately to Okemia, she got caught in the crossfire and a bullet hit her temple. Though she survived, she got inflicted irredeemable damage to her brain which developed into a stutter.

Despite her towering over everyone with her height of a 6’5 feet, she is not very confident in herself. Okemia is a very high-strung person who tends to think the worst possible thing will definitely happen to her. Though she is nervous she has a lot of resentful opinions that are made from wise words

Shion Arai

Former Ultimate Figure Skater

Birthday: July 23rd

Age: 21

Class: 74-B

Blood type: B

Likes: Rhinestones, Straightforwardness

Dislikes: Cleaning, Bootlickers, Mornings

This person here is Shion Arai the ultimate figure skater! Under all the glitter, rhinestones, and an eccentric personality lies a somewhat kind-hearted individual who is willing to cooperate… as long as it doesn’t inconvenience them.

Shion got their title thanks to their impeccable ability to adapt and improve fast. They have won multiple competitions in their teen years despite starting the sport at age 12, which is considered quite late. After graduating Hope’s peak, Shion’s placement in the podiums has started to steadily drop. If asked about the slow decline of their career, Shion just shrugs nonchalantly, leaving it at that.

Shion identifies as nonbinary and they are very prideful towards their identity and their achievements. Despite this, they are also incredibly lazy and rarely bothers to do something they don’t want to. Their goal is to go where the bar is the lowest and if that’s not possible, they WILL complain.

Suzu Nagahashi

Former Ultimate Ballerina

Birthday: November 1st

Age: 21

Class: 74-A

Blood type: A

Likes: Rainy Days, Leather Jackets

Dislikes: Dancing

This cold and assertive young lady is Suzu Nagahashi, the ultimate ballerina and she is not here to get herself killed over some dumb motive. Suzu has been known for her skills all her life. Rumor has it her mother, a former ballerina, started teaching Suzu how to dance the moment she was able to take her first step. Absolutely no one was surprised when she got her invitation to Hope’s Peak, though she rarely showed up to school thanks to her harsh performance schedule.

Suzu is very stoic and she picks her words carefully. Though her tone of voice is very serious, her pink frilly dress makes her attempts to be taken seriously harder for her. Luckily Suzu is stubborn and will try her utmost best to keep the situation she has been thrown in solely under her control.

Tetsu Asukaze

Honorary Ultimate Taxi Driver

Birthday: October 1st

Age: 26

Class: N/A

Blood type: AB

Likes: Radio, Coffee, Extraterrestrials

Dislikes: N/A

This funky young man is Tetsu Asukaze and he is known as the ultimate taxi driver. Who would’ve thought that was a talent, huh? Tetsu’s situation as an ultimate is a bit different from others because he only discovered his talent after getting old enough to drive which meant his high school days were already over. Despite this, Hope’s Peak decided to give him an honorary title of an ultimate taxi driver. Whatever that means…

Even though Hope’s Peak had given a public acknowledgment of Tetsu’s talent, he doesn’t think much of it nor does he feel he really belongs with the other ultimates.

Personality-wise, Tetsu is your serene local cryptid whose life has no order and looking at his sleeping schedule it’ll stay like that. Despite his harmless chaos, he is a very sweet lad with a passion for the unknown and obscure theories.

Tsubaki Ito

Former Ultimate Mortician

Birthday: May 8th

Age: 24

Class: 71-A

Blood type: O

Likes: Medical History, Bad and Gory Horror Movies

Dislikes: Spirals

This unnerving and small woman is Tsubaki Ito, the ultimate mortician. She was born as a miracle child to an old couple that ran a mortician family business. In fact, everyone in her extended family is at least a generation older than her. As the years went by, her family slowly passing away from natural causes had become a regular occurrence.

Tsubaki is specialized in body restoration and desairology, as she tends to work with victims of causalities. She got her title by her ability to make even the worst of murder victims to look like they are merely sleeping in their caskets.

As the concept of death is an old friend in her family, Tsubaki has become desensitized towards the subject and can come off as insensitive towards the killing game. But what can you do when your daily routine occasionally includes pulling out a chainsaw from someone’s chest cavity due to a gruesome accident? Despite this, Tsubaki is very sweet and will address everyone with an endearing tone.

#Anonymous #drs heartbreak #fanganronpa

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the-end-of-art · 4 years ago

Text

Sewn into his jacket an incoherent note

How to Make Love, Write Poetry, & Believe in God by Nin Andrews

A few weeks ago, I was part of a Hamilton-Kirkland College alumnae poetry reading, and after the reading a woman asked a simple question: “How do you write a poem?” I didn’t have an answer so I suggested a few books by poets like John Hollander, Mary Oliver, and Billy Collins. The woman said she had read books like that, but they didn’t help. She wanted something else, like a genuine operating manual—a step by step explanation.

I, too, love instruction manuals, especially those manuals on how to perform magic: write a poem or know God or make love, if only love were something that could be made. Manuals offer such promise. Yes, you, too, can enter the bee-loud glade and the Promised Land and have an orgasm.

I love the idea that my mind could be programmed like a computer to spit out poems on demand—poems with just the right number of lines, syllables, metaphors, meanings, similes, images . . . And with no clichés, no matter how much I love those Tom, Dick and Harry’s with their lovely wives, as fresh as daisies. I can set them in any novel or town in America, and they will have sex twice a week, always before ten at night, never at the eleventh hour, and it will not take long,time being of the essence.

I love sex manuals, too: those books that suggest our bodies are like cars. If only we could learn to drive them properly, bliss would be a simple matter of inserting a key, mastering the steering wheel, signaling our next moves, knowing the difference between the brakes and the gas pedal, and of course, following the speed limit.

A depressive person by nature, I am also a fan of how-to books on God, faith, happiness, the soul, books that suggest a divine presence is always here. I just need to find it, or wake up to it, or turn off my doubting brain. That even now, my soul is like a bird in a cage. If I could sit still long enough and listen closely, it might rest on my open palm and sing me a song.

God, poetry, sex, they offer brief moments of bliss, glimpses of the ineffable, and occasional insights into that which does not translate easily into daily experience, or loses its magic when explained.

In college, I took classes in religion, philosophy and poetry, and I studied sex in my spare time—my first roommate and I staying up late, pondering the pages of The Joy of Sex. As a freshman, I auditioned my way into an advanced poetry writing class by composing the single decent poem I wrote in my college years. The poem, an ode to cottage cheese, came to me in a flash as a vision nestled on a crisp bed of iceberg lettuce. Does cottage cheese nestle? I don’t know, but the professor kept admiring that poem. He said all my other poems paled by comparison.

This was in the era of the sexual revolution,long before political correctness and the Me-Too movement. My roommate, obsessed with getting laid, said we women should have been given a compass to navigate the sexual landscape. She liked to complain that she’d had only one orgasm in her entire life, and she wanted another. “What if I am a one-orgasm wonder?” she worried. The subject of orgasms kept us awake, night after night.

In religion class, my professor told the famous story about Blaise Pascal who had a vision of God that was so profound, his life seemed dull and meaningless forever afterwards. He never had another vision. But he had sewn into his jacket an incoherent note to remind him of the singular luminous experience.

The next day in religion class, a student stood up and announced that the professor was wrong—about Pascal, God, everything. The student knew this because he was God’s friend. He even knew His first name, and what God was thinking. The professor smiled sadly, put his arm around the student, and led him out of the classroom, down the steps and into the counselor’s office. When the professor returned, he warned us that if we ever thought we knew God, we should check ourselves into a mental institution. Lots of insane people know God intimately.

But, I wondered, what would God (or the transcendent—or whatever word you might choose for it: the muse, love, the orgasm, the soul, the higher self) think of us? For example, what would a muse think of a writer trying, begging, praying to enter the creative flow? All writers know it—that moment when inspiration happens. The incredible high. And the opposite, when words cling to the wall of the mind like sticky notes but never make it onto your tongue or the page.

What would an orgasm think of all the people seeking it so fervently yet considering it dirty, embarrassing, unmentionable? And then lying about it. “Did you have one?” a man might ask. “Yes,” his lover nods. But every orgasm knows it cannot be had. Or possessed. Or sewn into the lining of a coat. No one “has” an orgasm. At least not for long.

What did God think of Martin Luther, calling out to him in terror when a lightning bolt struck near his horse, “Help! I’ll become a monk!” And later, when he sought relief from his chronic constipation and gave birth to the Protestant Reformation on the lavatory—a lavatory you can visit today in Wittenberg, Germany.

I don’t want to evaluate Luther’s source of inspiration. But I do want to ponder the question: How do you write a poem? Is there a way to begin?

I think John Ashbery gave away one secret in his poem, “The Instruction Manual:” that it begins with daydreaming. Imagination. And the revelation that the mind contains its own magical city, its own Guadalajara, complete with a public square and bands and parading couples that you can visit this enchanted town for a limited time before you must turn your gaze back to the humdrum world.

But a student of Ashbery’s might cringe at the suggestion that poetry is merely an act of the imagination. In order to master the dance, one must know the steps. And Ashbery was a master. So many of his poems follow a kind of Hegelian progression, traveling from the concrete to the abstract to the absolute. Or what Fichte described as a dialectical movement from thesis to antithesis to synthesis. Fichte also wrote that consciousness itself has no basis in reality. I wonder if Ashbery would have agreed.

In college I wrote an inane paper, comparing Ashbery’s poetry to a form of philosophical gardening in which the poet arranges the concrete, meaning the plants or words, in such an appealing order that they create the abstract, or the beauty, desired. Thus, the reader experiences the absolute, or a sense of wonder at the creation as the whole thing sways in the wind of her mind.

Is there a basis in reality for wonder? Or poetry? I asked. Or are we only admiring illusions, the beautiful illusions the poet has created? How I loved questions like that. I wanted to follow in the footsteps of Fichte and Hegel and Ashbery and write mystical and incomprehensible books. I complained to my mother that no matter how hard I tried, I could not compose an actual poem or philosophical treatise—I was trying to write treatises, too. “That’s good,” she said. “Poets and philosophers are too much in their heads, and not enough in the world.”

I didn’t argue with her and tell her that not all poets are like Emily Dickinson. Or say that Socrates was put to death for being too much in the world, for angering the public with his Socratic method of challenging social mores, and earning himself the title, “the gadfly of Athens.”

Instead, I thought, That’s it! If I want to be a poet, I just need to separate my head from the world. Or at least turn off the noise of the world. And seek solitude, as Wordsworth suggested, in order to recollect in tranquility. I imagined myself going on a retreat or living in a cave, studying the shadows on the wall. Letting them speak to me or seduce me or dance with me.

The shadows, I discovered, are not nice guests. Sometimes they kept me awake all night, talking loudly, making rude comments, using all the words I never said aloud. “Hush,” I told them. “No one wants to hear that.” Sometimes they took on the voices of the dead and complained I hadn’t told their stories yet or right. Sometimes they sulked and bossed me about like a maid, asking for a cup of tea, a biscuit, a little brandy, a nap. One nap was never enough. When I obeyed and closed my eyes, they recited the poems I wanted to write down. “You can’t open your eyes until we’re done,” they said, as if poetry were a game of memory, or hide and seek in the mind. Other times they wandered away and down the dirt road of my past, or lay down in the orchard and counted the peaches overhead. Whatever they did or said, I watched and listened.

That’s how I began writing my first real poems. I knew not to disobey the shadows. I knew not toturn my back on them and look towards the light as Plato suggested—Plato who wanted to banish the poets and poetry from his Republic.I knew to not answer the door if the man from Porlock came knocking.

To this day I am grateful for the darkness. For the shadows it creates in my mind. It is thanks to them I have written another book, The Last Orgasm, a book whose title might make people cringe. But isn’t that what shadows do? And much of poetry, too? Dwell on topics we are afraid to look at in the light?

(https://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2020/09/how-to-make-love-write-poetry-believe-in-god-by-nin-andrews.html)

Five prose poems by Nin Andrews (formatting better at http://newflashfiction.com/5-prose-poems-by-nin-andrews/)

Duplicity

after Henri Michaux “Simplicity”

When I was just a young thing, my life was as simple as a sunrise. And as predictable. Day after day I went about doing exactly as I pleased. If I saw a lovely man or women, or beauty in any of its shapes and forms and flavors, well, I simply had to have it. So I did. Just like that. Boom! I didn’t even need a room.

Slowly, I matured. I learned a bit of etiquette. Manners, I discovered can have promising side effects. I even began carrying a bottle of champagne wherever I went, and a bed. Not that the beds lasted long. I wasn’t the kind to go easy on the alcohol or the furnishings, nor was I interested in sleep. It never ceased to amaze me how quickly men drift off. Women, many of them, kept me going night after night. You know how inspiring women are.

But then, alas, I grew tired of them as well. I began to envy those folks who curl up into balls each night, their bodies as heavy as tombstones. I tried curling up with them, slowing my breath, entering into their dreams. What dreams! To think I had been missing out all along! That’s when I became a Zen master, at one with the night. Now I teach classes on peace, love, abstinence. At last I have found bliss, I tell my followers. The young, they don’t believe it. But really, I ask you. Would I lie?

The Broken Promise

after Heberto Padilla, “The Promise”

There was a time when I promised to write you a thousand love poems. When I said every day is a poem, and every poem is in love with you. But then the poems rebelled. They became a junta of angry women, impossible to calm or translate, each more vivid, sultry, seductive than the next. Some stayed inside and sulked for weeks, demanding chocolates, separate rooms, maid service. Others wanted to be carted around like queens. Still others took lovers and kept the neighbors up, moaning at all hours of the day and night. One skinny girl (remember her? the one with flame-colored hair?) moved away. She went back to that shack down the road where we first met. At night she lay down in the orchard behind the house and let the dark crawl over her arms and legs. In the end even her dreams turned to ash and blew away in a sudden gust of wind.

Little Big Man

after Russell Edson “Sleep”

There was once an orgasm that could not stop shrinking. Little big man, his friend called him, watching as he grew smaller and smaller with each passing night, first before making love, then before even the mention of making love, then before even the mention of the mention of making love. Oh, what a pathetic little thing he was.

One night he tried reading, Think and Grow Big, but it only caused him to shrink further inside himself. Oh, to grow large and tall as I once was, he sighed. What he needed, he knew, was a trainer with a whip and chains. Someone to teach him to jump through hoops and swing from a trapeze and swallow fire until he blazed ever higher into the night. Yes, he shuddered. Yes! as he imagined it. A tiny wisp of smoke escaped his lips.

Questions to Determine if You Are Washed Up

after Charles Baudelaire, “Get Drunk!”

Do you feel washed up lost, all alone? Do you fear that time is passing you by like a train for which you have no ticket, no seat? That you have lived too long in the solitude of your room and empty mind, that now you are but a slave of sorrow? Or is it regret? Do you no longer taste the wine of life on your lips, tongue, throat? Is there not even even a chance of intoxication? Bliss? No poetry or song above or below the hips? No love in the wind, the waves, in every or any fleeting and floating thing? No castles in your air? No pearls in your oysters? Are you wearing a pair of drawstring pants?

Remembering Her

after Herberto Padilla

This is the house where she first met you. This is the room where she first said your name as if it were a song. This is the table where she undressed you, stripping away your petals, leaves, your filmy white roots and sorrows. And there on the floor is the stone you picked up each morning, the stone you clung to night after night. Sometimes she kicked it aside. Sometimes she placed in on the sill and blew it out the window as her presence filled you like a glow, and you thought for an instant, I, too, can fly.

#Nin Andrews #poem #poet #poetry

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windmilltothestars · 4 years ago

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Another (less) short piece for @mynameisremyiamadumbass - who suggested the other day be “Grantaire Appreciation Day” - right before I had to my tutoring job. I thought of this idea WHILE I was tutoring, when I supposed to be thinking of eighth grade math!! Anyway, it ended up being more of ensemble piece, and (of course) longer than planned, but Grantaire does get appreciated! Enjoy a very ridiculous story, my friend!

Combeferre, Feuilly and Enjolras were all hunched over the table in the back room of the Café Musain, in serious consultation of the wording of their latest manifesto to be taken to the printers’. Enjolras was grinning faintly – out all of his friends, these two were the least likely to let women or booze or even artistic excitement or personal problems interfere with their focus on the cause, and today’s progress had been swift and efficient.

Suddenly, the thudding of urgent, ungainly footsteps approached, and they all tensed and raised their eyes to the door in anticipation. The sound had been so loud and forceful that they were all surprised when it was Jehan who appeared in the doorway, pale-faced, clinging to the doorframe, and gasping for breath.

“Jehan? What is it?” wondered Feuilly, approaching him in concern.

“I was – just – talking to –” Jehan panted, leaning over and bracing his hands on his knees.

“Catch your breath first,” Combeferre advised, laying a calming hand on his shoulder. Jehan nodded vaguely and held them all in suspense as he inhaled.

“To an inspector!” he said at last, straightening up. “He seemed – suspicious – heard some rumor! He was asking – questions – about our organization – ‘What is the aim and purpose of the Friends of the ABC?’ I told him – we teach poor children – teach them to read! ABCs, you know! Then he asked – where? Where we met – and did our teaching! And – I – I panicked, I thought – I’d better not say here – so I said – the Café Corinthe! And he’s going there – now! And I’m – I’m sorry,” his contrite eyes were more on Enjolras than the others, “I didn’t know what to say – I panicked.”

They all glanced at each other anxiously.

“Is anyone there now?” Combeferre wondered.

“It’s too late for breakfast –”

“They might all be in class –”

“Though it’s possible – Bahorel or Grantaire –”

“But if he questions the staff, poor old Mère Hucheloup – might not know what to say,” Feuilly concluded uneasily.

“I’m sorry,” Jehan repeated, ducking his eyes.

“It’s alright,” Enjolras told him firmly, “you did nothing wrong. We’ve just got to go there now – and pray God we can get him off the scent.”

This was all the incentive they needed to be on their way. They even sprung for a carriage ride just to get them there faster and stand a better chance of catching the inspector and minimizing the possible damage to their cause – not to mention their lives.

With terror hammering in each of their hearts to varying degrees, the four of them poured through the door and came upon a surprising sight.

Grantaire, fists raised in front of his face, was mock-sparring – the blows connecting but ever-so-lightly – with a scrawny, ragged young boy who sometimes delivered messages for them, whilst the inspector, tall, imposing, and in full uniform, stood to the side and watched the proceedings with a puzzled expression. There was a faint blush to Grantaire’s cheeks that someone who didn’t know him might have taken for exertion or embarrassment, but he seemed, on the whole, but minimally impaired; he had the presence of mind to subtly roll his hastily-hidden wine bottle further behind the counter with his foot as he passed. He allowed the boy to get a good mock-hit on face, before tumbling dramatically to the floor in response as the boy cheered his victory, and then straightening up and smiling pleasantly to the inspector.

“So you see,” he panted, “how he’s improving in his self-defense lessons! Now, I may be biased, Monsieur Inspector, but to my mind, self-defense is one of the most important skills for our students to learn! Though the others –” his eyes turned upon his four friends at last, and his grin widened – “are sure to correct me! Monsieur, might I introduce our afternoon teachers?”

The inspector turned to look at the four of them. Combeferre faintly raised a hand in greeting, and Grantaire therefore honed in on him as the calmest and most ready to convincingly play his part.

“This is Monsieur Combeferre,” he said, indicating him. “He teaches anatomy and other sciences. Fantastically gruesome stuff! Talking for hours about blood and bones!”

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” Combeferre greeted the inspector, shaking his hand. He turned pleasantly to the raggedy boy. “Can you tell the inspector what you call the bones in your fingers?”

“Knuckles!” the boy shot back.

“He prefers boxing to science,” Combeferre informed the inspector ruefully. “We’re working on it. Though it’s a testament to my honored colleague Monsieur Grantaire’s skill, I’m sure. He also teaches art.”

“Art and science?” the inspector wondered, tilting his head. “And self-defense? I was given to believe you were teaching them to read!”

“We here of the Friends of ABC believe in a balanced education,” Feuilly put in. He, too, held out his hand to shake the inspector’s. “In started with just literacy, but we’ve since expanded our aims. I’m Monsieur Feuilly; I teach woodworking and handicrafts. And here, you’ve met Monsieur Prouvaire. He helps our advanced readers to reach a higher understanding of literature and poetry; sometimes they write their own!”

“And he teaches the Bible in Hebrew and Greek! Quite a polymath, our Monsieur Prouvaire,” Grantaire added fondly, causing Jehan to hastily withdraw the hand he was extending to the inspector and use it to quickly hide his furiously-blushing face.

“And this,” Grantaire went on as his eyes fell with their regular glowing admiration on Enjolras, who had been standing like a statue watching the proceedings, “is the chief and foundation of our whole enterprise, Monsieur Enjolras!”

Enjolras gave him a slight nod and shook his hand mechanically, but said nothing.

“And – what do you teach, Monsieur Enjolras?” the inspector asked, his expression unreadable.

“History,” he replied swiftly. “French history – especially of the last century – is my specialty, and quite enough to fill a whole course, I daresay, but Monsieur Feuilly has persuaded me to expand the area of study across centuries and continents – to have a more whole and complete picture of the world.”

“The way he tells those stories,” Jehan put in shyly, “why, he puts you there, in the shoes one living in that moment! To listen to them is to be enthralled by some fey creature! His is the magic to transport one across time and space!”

“I can see why he teaches poetry,” the inspector muttered.

“Monsieur Prouvaire is right,” the boy added suddenly, dashing over to Enjolras and clinging to his leg. “Monsieur Enjolras’s stories are amazing! His class is my favorite – after boxing, of course!” Enjolras awkwardly patted the boy’s shoulder.

“It’s true,” added Mère Hucheloup, ducking her head out of the kitchen, “Even I get distracted in my serving by dear Monsieur Enjolras’s history lessons!”

The boy faced down the inspector and continued. “I was one of the first students to learn with the Friends the ABC! Back when it was just Monsiers Enjolras and Combeferre teaching reading! Monsieur Enjolras taught me my ABCs – right at that table over there!”

There was a silence as they all gazed intently at the inspector’s impassive face – even Mère Hucheloup had paused in laying out oysters – and collectively willed him to believe their elaborate castle of lies and half-truths. He gazed from face to face and seemed to be reading for nerves or lies in each of them. They each internally trembled for Jehan’s exceptionally timid manners and propensity for blushing. But his inner valor upheld him, and his face stayed pale, and he did not duck his eyes.

At last, the inspector completed his sweep, he gave a soft breath of satisfaction, and slightly smiled. Five pairs of tensed shoulders relaxed.

“Is there anything else, Inspector?” Combeferre said. “Only our afternoon students will be arriving in twenty minutes, and we really must prepare!”

“And the sort of children we teach,” Feuilly made bold to add, “are sometimes afraid of the police! They might not show up today if they see you here!”

“Er – yes, alright,” the inspector agreed awkwardly. “I’ll be going, and I’ll tell them at the precinct that we’ve nothing to fear from the Friends of the ABC, that they’re but a lot of harmless dreamers – who in my opinion,” he added, casting a dubious glance at the ragged boy now holding Enjolras’s hand, “are wasting considerable talent on this sort of riffraff!”

Enjolras’s outrage at this comment managed to confine itself to tightening his grip on the boy’s hand and clenching his fist; but Feuilly’s expression darkened dangerously.

“Now, see here, Inspector,” he said, stepping up two paces closer to the man. “To educate is to deliver a soul out of darkness, and to offer a chance at a life of use and light and joy and purpose! Do you say we should condemn every poor man’s child to darkness? Dismiss this whole class of people, as not worth consideration?”

“It is our philosophy,” Combeferre added, “that education – the illumination of all minds into greater truth and understanding – will bring light and progress to all the peoples of the world; thus, starting in childhood, and not excluding any class of child, is vital for the progress of the human race.”

The inspector gave a sort of snort, his mouth upturned in a somewhat derisive smile. “What did I say?” he shrugged, “Dreamers! Harmless dreamers!” And without another word, he turned on his heel and left the café.

Jehan immediately sunk down into a chair. The urchin ran to window and stuck his tongue out at the inspector’s departing back. Combeferre and Enjolras confined themselves to sighs of relief. Grantaire, also sitting, said, “I need a drink.”

“You and me both, brother,” Feuilly said fervently, clapping him on the back and going to pick up his hidden wine bottle. “I think perhaps we all do. Mère Hucheloup, some more cups, if you please!”

“Do you know,” Combeferre said softly to Enjolras as they watched Feuilly accepting the cups and pouring out the wine, “I rather liked the idea – all of us as teachers! Molding young minds! I had myself half-convinced!”

“In the new world – in the Republic,” Enjolras promised him, “that will be the way. When that day comes, I freely pass my torch to you – in your hands, the light of illumination!”

Jehan, during this exchange, had risen to his feet and gone to the window to join the boy. “You saved us,” he told him earnestly. “The Friends of the ABC will forever be in your debt! Here,” he added, reaching into his pocket and handing the boy an entire five-franc coin, “get yourself something nice!” The boy excitedly rushed to the counter to buy himself a pastry.

“And he’s not the only who saved us!” Feuilly added as he passed the cups into each of their hands. “Without Grantaire’s being here, his quick thinking and adaptability, we’d be lost!”

“Certainly, we would!” agreed Jehan, smiling warmly at him.

“Oh – oh, really,” Grantaire dismissed, ducking his own head and trying not to look too pleased by this praise, “it was nothing, my friends – nothing, really!”

“It was far from nothing,” Feuilly assured him heartily. “Gentlemen, let’s raise our glasses – to Grantaire!”

“To Grantaire!” they all echoed, smiling at him.

Grantaire’s face was rather blank as he observed his friends – it was, like the inspector’s scanning over each one as if to ascertain this was real. As they knew it would, it settled last of all on the fair countenance of Enjolras, a desperate question in his eyes. To reassure him, Enjolras raised his glass a fraction of an inch again, widened his smile gave him a little nod. At last, Grantaire’s face relaxed and reflected his smile, and they all drank deep.

Next second, Bahorel burst into the shop, greeting them with a shout of, “Afternoon, my friends! ARE WE ALL READY TO SMASH THE GOVERNMENT?!?”

Jehan choked on his wine, and fell out of his chair.

#mini fic #my fic #fan fic #les miserables #i am sorry #i am a people pleaser at the depths of my (canine-like) soul #so i hope you are pleased with this :')#i forgot how to spell feuilly's name every single time i typed it #and don't ever ask me to say it out loud #ignore me #it's 4am again here

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grapefruitsketches · 5 years ago

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Untamed Spring Fest 2020 - Day 3: Flush

Quick note: I’m currently setting up my AO3 page (GrapefruitSketches) where I will also be posting all of these little fics!

1,175 Words, Modern AU - University; Wei Wuxian-centric; Supportive Lan Xichen

Wei Wuxian had never been one to put too much stock, or effort, in getting good grades. He had always done very well up all the way through high school, though, to the great annoyance of his younger brother. Undergrad though, up until his fourth and final year, had been a different story. He had had to shrug off a more than occasional “I expect better from someone of your talents, B-“ or “Please come see me, D+.” He wasn’t afraid to take risks in his answers, and actively tried to avoid the textbook answer where he could help it. He wanted to figure out new ways to help people, to solve mysteries no one had even thought to investigate, and learn about secrets that few understood. It was just this kind of curiosity and out of the box thinking that drew him to a biology degree. So far, however, it hadn’t quite worked out as planned.

It wasn’t that he found his science classes particularly hard, just deeply unmotivating. Why should he bother memorizing the name of every muscle in the body? He was sure he would pick it up over time if he needed to know, and besides, didn’t it matter more to know how things worked than what they were called? His grades were disappointing, and there were a few times he felt lucky just to have passed, but he just had better things to do than review cue cards.

He liked being on campus otherwise: the chance to meet new people, to join new clubs and generally having the chance to learn from people and disciplines he had never been exposed to before. His friends didn’t quite seem to get the problem. Wen Qing tried to help him study, but got frustrated after he asked too many questions that were outside the scope of the syllabus. When Wei Wuxian moaned and complained that he might fail an upcoming organic chemistry exam, Jiang Cheng, who was a year below him and in a political sciences degree, just shrugged and asked whether he meant fail-fail or Wei Wuxian-fail? Wei Wuxian hadn’t had the heart to answer that not only was it the former, but that the difference between those two kinds of fails was quickly narrowing. Jiang Yanli, who was a year into her philosophy PhD, had simply given her brother a hug and assured him that grades weren’t everything.

Only one comment had even given him pause. He had run into his orientation leader, Xiao Xingchen, at the library café last term. Xingchen had asked if Wei Wuxian was happy in biology so far. Was he happy generally? Maybe. With his degree? Not currently. Was he going to say that to Xiao Xingchen who he barely knew but who seemed extremely happy in his Master’s biology program? Absolutely not. Wei Wuxian had reached his final year, and besides the bare minimum of two 4th year biology courses he needed to complete his major, Wei Wuxian had almost entirely invested in humanities courses that Nie Huaisang had told him he would enjoy, and more importantly, pass. He would be out of here after April, and that was all that mattered. What came next? Who knew, but he would get the piece of paper he came here for.

It was with a familiar sense of resigned dread that Wei Wuxian sat in his seat in his third-year level poetry seminar, spying the pile of graded papers in Lan Xichen’s, his TA’s, hands. Wei Wuxian had taken this section of the course specifically because Nie Huaisang had said that Lan Xichen never failed his students. He was a hard grader, to be sure. He only rarely gave As, if ever, but he also never gave Fs. Knowing that he basically couldn’t fail had been enough to draw Wei Wuxian’s attention and convince him to enroll.

He doodled aimlessly in his notebook, not even pausing to glance at the graded paper as it was placed, face down, on his desk. He didn’t really need to know what he had gotten, at least not while any reaction to it could be seen by anyone else in the room. It was only the lingering shadow of his TA, looming over his desk, which made him put his pencil down. That bad then? He had actually enjoyed reading the poems, but had only vaguely skimmed the various academic interpretations that had been assigned. He just didn’t find any of them all that compelling. He looked up and caught his TA’s eye. He was met by a patient, but surprisingly not disappointed, smile on Lan Xichen’s face. His TA glanced down at the paper and then back at Wei Wuxian encouragingly. Wei Wuxian frowned, confused, but sighed and turned the paper over.

“Not the way I would have read it, but very insightful! A+”

Not the way I would have read it, but very insightful! A+

Wei Wuxian looked up towards Lan Xichen, feeling a familiar rush of heat to his cheeks, for none of the familiar reasons. An A+? So it wasn’t shame in anticipation of sharing the grade with friends or family. Very insightful? Then it wasn’t frustration at well-intentioned hypotheses or questions being misunderstood. It wasn’t even exhilaration at a joke pulled off to perfection. He looked to his TA in disbelief, defaulting back to his most casual and teasing tone, “Ah, Xichen, I think you’re losing your touch, I was always told you were tough.”

“I’m sorry that you’re planning on leaving after this year, Wei Wuxian,” Lan Xichen smiled softly, “Based on this work, I’m sure my brother Wangji would have greatly enjoyed comparing notes with you next year as Master’s students. I still hope maybe I can change your mind. You have a unique way of looking at things, but you made me think, and that’s never a bad thing.”

Wei Wuxian laughed this off, “Thanks, but no one would want someone with my grades and study habits in a Master’s program.”

Lan Xichen’s expression softened, “I wouldn’t worry about that too much. If you keep this up, I would be more than willing to get my supervising professor to put in a good word for you, especially if you can fit some more English department courses in next term.”

Wei Wuxian felt the reddening of his cheeks deepen. This was…it was not pride exactly, that made his face burn, but a feeling, foreign to him so far in his university career, of not just acceptance but… but… appreciation?

It was a feeling Wei Wuxian had lost any reason to expect, but as he looked at the comment written neatly at the top of the page, even though it had taken until his last year to see such a thing, it brought just a touch of hope back to him. Perhaps there was more to this university thing after all.

Maybe, just maybe…

After class, Wei Wuxian approached his TA’s desk. Heart racing and acting on pure impulse, he asked “So, it’s not too late to apply for a Master’s?”

#untamed spring fest #the untamed #mdzs #wei wuxian #lan xichen #shout out to the genuinely amazing teachers and profs who I almost directly quote in the second half of this #Jyl is right as always but wwx wants some positive feedback from someone more impartial #Also shoutout to lxc who will find a way to get wwx and lwj together in any lifetime #reposting because the tags weren't working #my writing

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oddlyunadventurous · 4 years ago

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BOOK REPORT 2020

I’ve always been a sparse reader but 2018 and 19 had me accelerate my reading habits to the point that I think I’ve read the most books this year that I ever had. I suppose I’ll count them all here, just to make sure!! I said something or other about the Moomin books at the end of last year’s Inkt*b*r so, this being the month of traditions, let’s make a new one by tallying up my literary “yays” and “nays” at the end of the season.

Video game text boxes don’t count, online publication articles don’t count, psych/aesthetic papers and 1000 page biosemiotic textbooks don’t count, but they have sure pursued me in my sleep during the year as well. This list is really mostly for my benefit (and no I won’t get a Goodreads account tyvm), so under the cut you’ll find a list of titles in roughly the order I read them, along with short notes. I’ve done longer reviews of these books elsewhere and I need not bore you with them here.

K. Stanislavski - An Actor Prepares (1936) I started reading this book in 2012, then dropped it because I couldn’t understand it at the time. Kostya attends acting school and gets lessons from The Director. He learns to sleep like his cat.

K. Stanislavski - Building a Character (1949) Supposed to have been published along the first one in a single volume. Kostya continues his lessons. A lot of thoughts on walking, gaits, eloquent speech, phrasing, etc. Both these books are wonderful looks into the author’s artistic life. It’s very heartfelt and down to earth, considering it’s quasi-fiction made to edutain. Very inspiring.

M. Polanyi - The Tacit Dimension (1966) A book on the origin of knowledge, the integrated performance of skills, the emergence of life and other phenomena in the universe, marginal control between levels of reality, the moral death of the communist regime caused by the unbridled lucidity of the Enlightenment, the responsibilities of science, and thoughts about open societies of the future. This is one of the two shortest books I’ve read in the list, it covers all of this under 130 pages and manages to do it well.

B. Rainov - Eros and Thanatos (1971) A communist propaganda book attacking western mass media and escapist culture. It gets no points for being correct, as the author mostly swiped the truths from french philosophers. Very variable in its intellectual prowess, almost as if it picks its arguments in order to push an agenda. Informative but also infuriating. Also expectedly homophobic.

J. Hoffmeyer - Signs of Meaning in the Universe (1997) A somewhat pop-sciency book about biosemiotics. Forgettable but also humbly written and explicative.

A. Noë - Varieties of Presence (2012) An unimpressive book about sensory perception. Noë’s theory on sensorimotor action is worth considering but the book is poorly edited and mostly spent arguing with peers.

E. Fudge - Quick Cattle & Dying Wishes (2018) A look into a registry of last wills and testaments from the period 1630 - 1650 in Essex. The book is about early modern people’s relationship to their animals and what they meant to them in life, as well as in death. Fudge’s argumentation is sharp and her style is modern. Being a scholarly book it is really overwhelming with the footnotes sometimes, but otherwise satisfying. One gets beautiful glimpses of family relationships, thoughts and feelings that people now dead for 400 years once held.

G. Márquez - One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) The Buendia family get all their sons killed. The Banana Company sucks. People love each other. A lot happens, generally. It is a hundred years, after all. The upper class sucks.

K. Polanyi - The Great Transformation (1944) The Industrial Revolution sucked. England sucks. It reduced all its workers to subhuman wretches. Every single decision made after the empiricists made labour and land fictional commodities has been a band-aid to the essential contradiction that the market economy wants to annihilate its human host. Laissez-faire sucks. It caused WW1. Fuck everything. Fun book.

R. Coyne - Peirce of Architects (2019) Talks about architecture and the ideas of logician/father of pragmatism Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914). Informative about both. Brisk and not very in-depth, but to its benefit rather than its detriment.

R. Williams - Culture and Society (1958) A survey of the 18th and 19th century England, and the emergence of the concept of “culture” as defence against the horrors that the Industrial Revolution inflicted upon society. Consists of some two dozen outlines of contributors to the romanticist tradition, from Adam Smith, through Ruskin, to Orwell, their beliefs, contributions and literary works. Very eloquent and interesting.

E. Fudge - Brutal Reasoning (2006) A fantastic book about much: early modern views of the difference between a human and an animal, the Christian discourse of reason, the logical fallacies that lead to its implosion, the advantageous use of dehumanisation by imperialists in other to genocide natives, Montague and Shakespeare, and the ethical hell of animal murder that led Descartes to deem animals as machines so as to allow his buddies to perform live vivisections on dogs without feeling guilty about it (this is the real reason, don’t let anybody tell you otherwise). There is even space for an entire chapter about an intelligent horse who could tell a virgin from a whore and learned Latin at Oxford. This is my favorite book I read this year, so it gets an extra long review.

R. Williams - The Long Revolution (1961) A sequel to Culture and Society that’s worse. The start and end are brilliant but the middle sags. It contains some historical reviews of English cultural elements, like the newspaper industry, the Standard English vernacular and the realist novel of the 19th century, but honestly if the book was just about about the creative state (intro) and Marxism (outro) it would’ve been fine, if not better.

P. Klee - The Thinking Eye (1956 & 1964) Bauhaus boy in 1920s Germany! Love you Klee, xoxo. You really have to read his thoughts to understand his work imho. You can appreciate it just fine on the surface level, but his completely eccentric (though very self-consistently logical and sharp) views on art creation open a new outlook into his primitive approach.

F D.K. Ching - Architecture: Form, Space & Order (1979) A staple book for architecture students. Or so I hear. Steeped in gestalt psychology. Very good, though not necessarily stuff I don’t know already. Very nice looking pencil illustrations, Ching looks to be an accomplished technical draughtsman.

H. Wölfflin - Principles of Art History (1915) A strong contender for second place in the tier list. The book examines the transition between Classical to Baroque in Italy and Germany (and all the Germany clones, like the Netherlands). It is a systematic, precise aesthetic treatise that reveals much by conceptualizing and grouping characteristic art features in which the two styles differ, then explaining their bearing on their decorative content as well as the outlook on life that they embody. Lovely.

M. Porter - Windows of the Soul: The Art of Physiognomy in European Culture 1470-1780 (2005) A historiographical treatise about early modern views on physiognomy. The book deals mainly with the extant literature on the subject and tries to gleam what it could mean for the customs at the time - palmistry reading, occultism, persecution of the “gypsies” and the Christian scientific project of attaining meaning. Macro- and microcosms, as above so below, hermeticism, that sort of stuff. It’s an interesting read but it’s too long, the quality of writing varies greatly from chapter to chapter, and it is far too expensive. Wouldn’t recommend it.

S. C.Figueiredo - Inventing Comics: A New Translation of Rodolphe Töpffer's Reflections on Graphic Storytelling, Media Rhetorics, & Aesthetic Practice (2017) This is the shortest book I read, mainly translating Töpffer’s 1845 "Essay on Physiognomy" along with giving his biography and some other paraphernalia. It’s not worth the price for the content contained within, but Töpffer is the father of the modern comic book, so I thought I’d learn what his philosophy was. On that front, at least, very interesting! If only I knew French I’d save myself the trouble and read the original, which is now public domain.

D. Bayles - Art & Fear (1985) A useless self-help book. Not entirely bullshit but completely banal from all angles. Shouldn’t even be on this list but I did read it, so...

I. Allende - The House of the Spirits (1982) A child rapist gets a redemption arc. Well, kind of. All women are queens. Men are awful. The poor are wretches and it’s their fault. Oh no, the communists are going to take our land! Pinochet’s concentration camps sucked. Overall a better magical realism book than 100 Years of Solitude, to be honest. Very well written characters.

R. Arnheim -To the Rescue of Art: Twenty-Six Essays (1992) What it says on the tin. Wide range of subjects, from art appreciation, to schizophrenic and autistic child art, to gestalt psychology, to philosophy of science, to Picasso’s Guernica and the fate of abstract art, to reflections on the 20th century and the writer’s life in pre-nazi Germany and America. I love Arnheim, I’ve read many of his books and I’m glad I picked this one up.

R. Arnheim - Film as Art (1957) A book about cinematography, one of his earliest, actually, mostly a personal translation from an original German book he published in 1933. Somewhat outdated, but foundational. Not as informative to me but I don’t regret reading it.

G. E. Lessing - Laocoon; or, On the Limits of Painting and Poetry (1766) A book by a greekaboo about a fucking dumb poem and a statue of a naked dad and his two sons getting fucked by snakes. It’s misogynistic and authoritarian in several places, and altogether awfully full of itself. 100 pages of interesting observations stretched over 400 pages of boring Greco-Roman literary discourse.

L. Tolstoy - Childhood, Boyhood, Youth (1852, 1854, 1856) One story serialized in a magazine then later collated in three separate books. Aristocrat boy grows up in pre-revolution Russia. A very, very relatable coming-of-age story. Tolstoy is a lovely writer.

F. Dostoevsky - Poor Folk (1846) An epistolary novel consisting of letters between literally Dobby from Harry Potter and his maybe-niece, whom he wants to fuck. Starts bad, gets better by the end. A bit rough and tumble for Dostoevsky’s first, so I forgive him for wasting my time a little bit. A decent character study of the middle/lower classes, at least.

L. Tolstoy - Family Happiness (1859) An amazing romance novel for the skill employed in writing it. It is very short yet delivers so much emotion. Rather simple narrative at its core, but executed with such bravado one cannot help but be impressed.

F. Dostoevsky - The Double (1846) In which the Author starts swinging. A pathetic, neurodivergent old man gets used and abused by the people around him and nobody cares. Satirical and biting, better than his first.

A. Lindgren - Pippi Longstocking (1945) I last read this when I was 6 years old so I thought I’d refresh my memory. I remember disliking the book then and I can see why. Pippi’s kind of an asshole. Still very enjoyable to read. I know it’s meant for a younger audience’s reading level yet I cannot help comparing it with Tove Jansson’s books and how much better the prose in there is. Sorry.

***

I think that about rounds them up! That’s about 30 books, give or take. For next year I’m hoping to:

Finish Tolstoy’s and Dostoevsky’s bibliographies

Read more econ and marxist writing (low personal priority but i have to, in THIS economy *rolls eyes*)

Finish the Tintin and Moomin comics, as well as Jhonen Vasquez’s collection of edgy humor

Read more about botany and biology in general

Get started on Faulkner’s and William Golding’s bibliographies

Read more children’s books

Search for more Latin American fiction from the Boom

Read more psych/aesthetics/pedagogy literature, which seems to have become my main area of interest

Thanks for sticking till the end of the list, hope you’ve learned something and maybe you’ll pick one of these up if it took your interest. I don’t have to be a philistine just because I’m drawing video game fanart! Bye now!

#books #book report #reading #2020 #blogging #i'm busy reading i'll go back to drawing in a bit #not art

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baeddel · 5 years ago

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long post about the different educations that revolutionaries or leftist theoriests received, a little onanistic but I think quite fun

a lot of big Marxist names held degrees in Law, and in some cases were Lawyers or Barristers: Marx, Lenin (a barrister!), Leviné, Castro (in an admirable way: he worked as a defense lawyer for next to nothing for criminals who couldn’t afford a lawyer normally)... Mao entered and dropped out of at least seven schools, including a police academy and Law school, as well as for a brief period studying Economics where all lessons were in English, a language he did not speak. He eventually settled on not attending any classes of any type but self-studying works of western political philosophy in the university library. Similarly, Engels never went to university but attended lectures at the Berlin University while stationed there when he was in the Prussian military. How many universities now let you use their library or attend their lectures without being a student? You certainly cant do it here. Maybe they figured out everyone who did that went on to try to overthrow the government! Gramsci attempted to study lingustics (on a scholarship, as he came from a very poor peasant family) but had to drop out due to his disability (he also had attended very little secondary school because he had to work to support his family due to his father being imprisoned for embezzlement!). Rosa Luxemburg attended university and studied “philosophy, history, politics, economics, and mathematics” and received a doctorate in Law for her dissertation (despite not studying law!)

Most contemporary anarchists [or people anarchists care about] dont seem to have gone to university. Most of them were not intellectuals but bombers, bank robbers and assassins, after all - Duvail became a criminal after leaving the military, and Bonnot was a criminal from a young age, while Ravachol played the accordion for spare change. My big hero August Vaillant went to prison at a very young age for stealing food and worked odd jobs his whole (short) life, although he self-studied astronomy and philosophy. Renzo Novatore was never educated at all, not even primary school, but self-studied poetry and philosophy. Bakunin moved to Moscow with the intent to study philosophy at university but he uh didnt and he joined instead a philosophical society of university drop-outs who studied german idealism on their own, during which he produced translations of Fichte. Blanqui is an exception here: he studied both Law and Medicine. Stirner studied philology, philosophy and theology(!), of course being taught by Hegel. Perlman studied English literature!

I dont know how much you can really learn from this - the leftists who get recorded by history are such a very small subset of leftists as a whole that you cant say very much about the kind of education leftists tended to get. The vast majority of leftists, especially at that time, and in other parts of the world, and in other times, have been proletarians (or less) with no post-secondary education. Still, the diversity of levels of education from just those mentioned people is really interesting... its much the same for us, where we count PHDs and highschool drop-outs among our friends. Interestingly, no one that I looked up studied the hard sciences or any technical field, which is very different for us today, where, I would say the majority of our friends who do hold degrees have them in computer science or physics, not in letters. And have you ever even met anyone who studies Law?

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cloudy-coyote · 6 years ago

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Necessity

A/N: Welcome to chapter 1 of Necessity! This Supernatural fic is super plot twisty, I like keeping it chill in the beginning and then switching it up when you least expect it! If you love lots of drama, mystery and intense conflicts, here you go. There will def be some romance blossoming, slow build to smutty goodness, it's a good fic, I swear.

Chapter 1: The Last Day

April 5th, 2019

"Eva!" Her mother, Eleanor hollers.

Her eyes shoot open at the sound. It usually takes her a few minutes to actually get up. Whether it's scrolling through Instagram on her phone or stretching her body out, she takes her time. The sunlight was pouring in through the curtains; there was a gentle breeze from her ceiling fan. Then she begins to smell the sizzling bacon and her legs kick into gear.

During the fall semester she despised getting up early for classes, so this semester she got only afternoon and evening classes. Still reveling in the feeling of waking up later, Eva gracefully clothes herself in a pair of sweatpants, keeping her oversized sleep shirt on. She grabs her phone, leaves her room and heads on downstairs, passing all the glowing windows. She's not typically a morning person, but waking up at 11:30 is much nicer than 7:00 AM, not to mention that spring has always been her favorite season.

Spring is jam-packed with blooming flowers, singing birds and soaring butterflies. As soon as you walk outside you're met with beautiful colors and scents of greenery. It's amazing walking weather; you usually don't have to wear coats because it's never too hot or too cold. Everything is absolutely perfect, except-

"Rain," Her father sighs, "It's going to be pouring by the time your classes end."

She enters the kitchen, the smell of breakfast overwhelming her. She takes a seat next to her Dad, Augustus, also known as Gus.

"Well I can't pick her up, I have to go visit my Mother today," Eleanor says. She hands Eva a plate, as well one to her brother Charley.

"It's fine, Mom, I can just walk."

"You're going to have to bring an umbrella with you," Charley comments.

"I know Charley, that was pretty obvious," Eva rolls her eyes, 'such a simple-minded man,' she thinks to herself. She serves herself some bacon and eggs before filling up a glass of water.

She's the youngest of three, only 18. Her oldest brother is Charley, who is 24 years old, her second oldest is brother is Oliver, she calls him Oli for short, and he's 21.

Her mother finishes serving herself as well; Gus, Charley and Eva already diving into their meals. Just as she sits down she recognizes the empty seat.

"Where's your brother?"

To this Charley snorts, "Where do you think?"

"Stayed up all night again?" Gus asks.

This was a common occurrence. And I know what you're thinking, must be a hard partier, huh? No, that's not the case. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Her brother, Oliver, has a really hard time getting sleep. They're not sure exactly what it is. Perhaps he's a light sleeper, or maybe its nightmares, maybe anxiety—could be anything. If there's one thing Eva knows for sure, it's that his sleeping habits are a popular subject of gossip in her house. They always talk about him when he's not around, complaining about how concerned they are. Sometimes he'll even be in the same room and they'll still talk about him to each other as if he's not there. She'd be lying if she said it didn't make her feel guilty.

"At least he's asleep now," Eva comments.

Gus nods. He has bright blue eyes and jet-black hair. Well, used to be jet-black, now it's more like salt and pepper. Eva didn't get his eyes, or his hair, or his height, but she got his personality. There's something about her, that all of her older cousins and Aunts and Uncles comment on. It could be their face shapes, their smiles, nobody knows what it is about the two of them that is so strikingly similar, but it's there.

Her mother, on the other hand, she has big, chocolaty doe eyes, which is exactly what Eva inherited. She is also the same height as her Mom and almost same hair color. Eleanor has a light; hazel colored hair whereas Eva's is a much darker brown. She's sweet, she's caring but she's also incredibly timid. Charley and Oliver take a lot after their mother. They can be shy, can be sweet and could do with a little more assertiveness, exactly like Eleanor. But despite all of their passiveness, they are the most welcoming, warm people on the Earth.

It's funny because the whole family looks unrelated-- like a mismatched bunch. Charley has his mother's light feathery hair, her eye color, but Gus's eye shape and height. Oliver has the jet-black hair, just like his father, but his mother's height and his mother's eyes. And while Eleanor is more on the shy, dependent side, Gus is assertive and sovereign. He has the reputation of sometimes overstepping boundaries—maybe being a little too controlling. And unfortunately, in this family, most of them just go along with it due to their passive nature. That is until Eva came along.

Eva is a little firecracker and a straight copy of her dad. She's always been over-cautious like him, very honest, very assertive. They tend to have the same opinions, but on occasion when he's overstepping, she's the one to hash it out with him. They have a strong relationship.

"How's your modern poetry class going?" Gus asks Charley.

"It's..." He pauses, "Interesting."

"That bad?" Eva asks. Charley majors in Philosophy and Poetry. These are actually his last few classes before he graduates.

He rolls his eyes, "I didn't say it was bad."

"So you like it?" His mom asks. Instead of nodding, he shakes his head. Finding his words, his hand naturally finds his chin as he plays with the light stubble.

"It's just not my style of writing," He re-words, "Kind of weird to be honest."

They all fall silent, concluding the conversation. Eva finishes her food just as fast as Charley. Being both fast eaters, they scarf their meals down and usually leave the table before everyone else.

"So, how did you sleep?" Her mother asks her. Eva looks up from her empty dish to find her Mother's warm eyes.

"It was okay, how about you?"

Her mom sighs, "I stayed up watching tv until...what, like 3 in the morning?"

"Was Oli up too?" Eva asks.

"I think so, I saw the hall light on."

Eva only hums in acknowledgment, not really finding words. It's only a moment of silence before her Mother goes on to tell her about the movie she was watching. Reflecting on what she thought was such an inspiring story. It was a film about the world, it's culture and all the things we could do better.

"Did you know that in Finland, there's no college tuition?" Eleanor exclaims, "But of course in America, every single student is in debt,"

"Including me," Eva adds.

Both of them give a little laugh at the absurdity. 'It really is ridiculous,' Eva thinks to herself. Eventually, Eleanor goes back to finishing her breakfast and Eva silently listens to her brother ramble.

Once Charley finished he had quickly brought his notebook to the table. He pulled out a little packet full of poems and began making his last touches to his assignment. Once he finishes, he slides it back into his bag and grabs his dish.

"Analyzing the poetry is pretty awful, it's nothing like Emily Dickenson," Charley says as he starts cleaning up, "But I do like it when we have discussions about them in class."

"Why's that?" Their dad asks.

Charley continues to wash his dish over the sink before stacking it in the dishwasher, "I don't think anyone else can take the poems seriously either, so it's funny. Plus, all you have to do is raise your hand, say 'I interpreted this to be very self-deprecating', and then the Professor gives you a point, so easy."

"-Sorry for interrupting," Eleanor interjects, "I have to head out, bingo starts at 1:00. Can you wash the pans too?"

"No need to rush, you know your Mother's never ready on time anyway," Gus comments. Eleanor gives him a sarcastic dry laugh, 'always making jokes about Grandma,' Eva thinks to herself. Her Mom gives her Dad a quick peck on his cheek. She hugs Eva and hurries out the door.

Charley steadily grabs both pans, bringing them to the sink and loading them up with soap. He continues to talk with his dad. Charley muses about his Philosophy courses as usual, and Eva begins to drown them out. She picks up her phone, unlocking it. The first thing she notices is a bunch of texts from her friends she seemed to miss.

Sliding on the notifications, she reads, 'I hope she's ok'. This prompts her to scroll up; whom could they be talking about? She finally gets to the beginning,

'Did you guys hear about Amber?'

'No what happened?'

'it hasn't been 48 hours yet, but her parents think she's missing,'

'holy shit,'

'they said she didn't come home last night and nobody could get ahold of her this morning. Nobody's seen her either,'

"Oh my God," Eva whispers. Her brother and dad both pause their conversation, fixing their attention on her.

"What's wrong?" Her Dad asks.

"Amber Shirley is missing."

Her dad immediately jumps from his seat. As mentioned before, he's a very cautious person. He constantly watches the news, hearing about all the bad things that occur. It only feeds his anxieties but now-- now he has something to actually worry about.

"It's only been like, 20 hours," Eva continues, "But she's not home, nobody knows where she is,"

"Oh God," Her dad sighs, "I should call the Shirley's." He picks up the home phone to dial their number. As he talks to them, she goes back to her phone to anxiously read more texts.

'do you think it was a party?'

'nobody party's that hard on Wednesdays,'

'plus she was commuting'

'you guys I think she was doing drugs,'

'really?'

'why do you say that'

'yea did you hear that from somebody?'

'idk these past few weeks she'd been acting so weird'

'what do you mean?'

'she thought her house was haunted,'

'we all knew that, her house is a bit creepy tbh,'

'no, she legitimately was becoming paranoid. she thought something was trying to kill her,'

'like she even started skipping bio because she wasn't sleeping'

'did her parents know?'

'I think she tried to talk to them, im not sure'

'but she was like really scared you guys, she must've been on something really hard'

'shit'

'that's terrifying'

'I really hope it's not heroin,'

'I hope she's ok'

'me too' Eva sends the quick text.

Now Eva finally catches up, she's even more scared. It's very surreal to have something like a friend go missing. She's never dealt with crime in her life, so it all seemed so far away from her until now. The idea that Amber could be gone is frightening. For once in her life she was nervous to go to classes, and not because of exams.

From the moment she read that Amber was missing, an eerie shiver blew up her spine. Even after trying to hope that Amber was safe, that she was okay, praying she wasn't hurt-- that creepy feeling just won't shake off. Her mind won't stop frenzying over what could have possibly happened, what she could have done or even worse, what someone else could have done to her. The idea that someone dangerous could be walking around the streets of Willow only magnified her anxiety.

She checks the time, 12:25 pm. Her classes start soon, so she begrudgingly pushes herself up the steps to get ready.

"Eva, where are you going?" Her dad calls from the kitchen.

"To get ready for class."

"Ok, but you're not walking home tonight, not with Amber missing,"

She nods her head in agreement, "But who will pick me up?"

"Ask your friends, or take an Uber I guess," He says.

"Sounds good."

She makes her way up the stairs to her room; ridding herself of the saggy sweatpants and worn out black tee. She moves rather slowly. Her brain still in frenzy and her body seemingly rusted. It just didn't feel right today. Studying herself in the mirror, she slowly grazes a hand over her necklace. It's probably the most pretty and most precious thing she owns. It's a family 'hand me down', if you will. She got it as a baptismal gift from her Godmother and hasn't taken it off since. The dainty silver chain and tiny blue jewel can compliment almost all of her wardrobe.

She makes note of the extra windy and rainy weather today. Taking a nice pair of true denim overalls, she slides them over her legs. She finds a thick, cropped pullover that was a baby pink and dresses herself in the fleecy garment. She picks a nice pair of wooly socks, grabs her black rain boots. She twists her hair into a messy bun, before throwing on her matching black raincoat.

She sends a quick text to her friends, 'My dad is talking to the Shirley's rn. I still can't believe she's missing.'

'Same'

'My mom wants to bring them some muffins.'

'I think we should start a search party or something'

(Eva) 'That's a good idea. Also, can any of you give me a ride back home later?'

'Don't think so.'

'I can't!'

'Still don't have my license.'

'Maybe take an Uber?'

(Eva) 'Yeah, sounds like that's what I'm gonna do.'

She makes her way downstairs, seeing her Dad still on her phone and Charley at the dining room table studying. She looks to the kitchen to gratefully see Oliver groggily getting a bowl of Cheerios.

"Morning Oli," She greets while looking for an umbrella. He looks in her direction mumbling a gentle 'hello' back. She finally finds a large umbrella buried in her closet. It has a big wooden staff and a simple brown fabric. She sets it by the front door.

Oliver sits at the table watching YouTube on his IPad, while slowly but surely eating his Cheerios. It's the usual routine for him, he's either asleep when she's awake, or he's on his IPad. She grabs her glass from earlier this morning and refills it. She has a couple of minutes before she has to leave, so she decides to get extra hydrated. Walking to campus and all the way around it can be a little of a workout.

She plops down next to Oli, "So how'd you sleep?" He pauses the video, shifting his attention to her. His black hair is clearly disheveled from just being asleep, his eyes still heavy as well.

"It was fine," He shrugs. He's always been one to downplay his problems. Oliver hates being overwhelmed with everyone else's anxieties, so he tends to be vague, and always calm.

"Could've slept more?" She adds.

"Yeah," It's silent for a moment, "You know, I heard about, uh, Amber,"

Eva forces out a breath, her mind circling back to the fearful subject. It's as if all of a sudden her mouth is dry as a desert. She reaches for her water.

She doesn't really want to talk about Amber unless it's about her being found. She can't stand the nerve-wracking sensation of thinking about her—of where she is, of how bad it is, or if she's even still alive. Her mind just seems to go straight to that place, the extreme yet not so crazy idea that Amber could be in a life or death situation. Not to mention, all that they can do is rely on the police at this point. Talking about her—trying to unearth where she is just from guessing does nothing, like literally—nothing. It's helpless, she... Amber, could even be helpless. They're just frozen in a waiting period, can't do anything about it.

"It's just so scary," Is all she manages to say. She glances at her phone, at 12:43 pm.

"Oh, I need to head out," She gulps down the last of her water. Standing up from her seat, she gives Oli an awkward half-smile. Not really being able to conjure up enough energy to fully smile, or keep a conversation going. Throwing her backpack over her shoulder, she picks up the umbrella and as she's walking towards the door she sees a big, cardboard box just a few feet behind it.

"What's this box for?" Eva asks. She hears some shuffling from the dining room before Charley pops his head in the hallway to see.

"Oh, Dad's going to get the old family videos restored," He responds.

"Nice," Eva smiles at the thought. They definitely have some keepers in there, let me tell you. She recalls once when Oli had brought over a cute girl-- which was entirely rare due to his shyness. But of course, the night he brings her over, Eva, 12 at the time, decided to put on some of the old tapes. It plays, everyone excited to see what it is-- low and behold, a video from when Oli was 4 and was running around butt-naked with Pokemon cards. 'God', she cringes at the memory, she felt so bad about embarrassing him.

She unlocks the front door, stepping out before calling out, "Bye, love you guys,"

Eva hears a faint murmur of 'bye' and 'love you too' from the men of the house before the loud shut of the door. No longer in the warmth of her home; no longer with the sounds of Charley's pencil writing, Oli's slow Cheerio chewing, or Gus's sympathetic worries being spoken to the phone. She can hear the clear sound of birds chirping, a light patter of rain, and the barely audible sound of the wind in the trees.

She plugs her earbuds into her phone, unfolds her umbrella and begins to walk. The old peaceful streets of Willow generating natural, calm energy. She tries to focus on the music, the scenery, not daring to let her mind drift to the blood-curtling subject of Amber.

She commutes to Bartley University. The small neighborhood she and her family reside in is called Willow, and she's lived there her entire life. She only has to walk a few blocks before she enters the campus grounds. The street she lives on is interesting because while it's very close to a college, for some reason only half of the occupants are students. The other half of the houses are elderly people, mostly Italian in fact. But because of that, she has such friendly neighbors. Her parents got to be close enough with some that they'd the old Italian couples would bring them homemade wine and Pizelles.

One unfortunate thing she's learned with living in Willow is that most of the sidewalks have uneven foundations. You want to be careful not to drag your feet cause you can very easily trip...which she does all the time. 'Always been clumsy though,' She thinks to herself.

Once she reaches Ryter Street, she turns right into the other many traveling students. And before she knows it, she's passing by the big Lion shaped fountain and enters the History building. As she makes her way down the busy halls, she notices her friend Nora holding a thick stack of papers. And when she looks behind her, she sees a trail of 'Missing: Amber Shirley' posters pinned up on the walls. Right beneath the bold red letters, she sees the picture; Amber's face, plastered all around campus, but the real Amber not anywhere in sight.

Boy, today is going to be tough.

"Don't forget to send me your articles, they need to be peer-reviewed, full text, and strictly correlational!" The Professor calls out. Everyone had begun packing up their items, desperate to get out of here as fast as possible. From all the noise, his voice began to get drowned out. All the kids began to file out of the lecture, and before Eva knew it, she was one of the last few kids left. Normally she's right with the crowd, antsy to get home. Especially since her mother makes the warmest, yummiest food. Her friends tend to get jealous of it actually, since they live in dorms and basically only eat ramen and pizza.

She slowly stands up from her seat. Her mouth feels exceptionally dry again, which is ironic considering how heavily it's pouring outside. She can even hear the bash of thunder from inside the building. Checking her IPhone, 6:30 pm. A few months into this semester, and she's regretting putting all four classes back to back. Ancient Greek History is one hour, Bio 101 is a two-hour long lecture, then she has a Bio Lab, then finally her Psych 101 is only an hour and a half—but still, she's beat.

She opens the Uber app and orders a car. As she waits to see the approximate arrival time, she sits back down into her chair. A constant nervous habit of hers, she starts toying with the little gem on her neck, twisting it between her fingers, sometimes even spinning the chain around her finger.

Approximate Arrival: 6:45 pm.

Right as she's about to head out to the common area, she gets a text from her dad.

'The Police are finally conducting an investigation. They want to talk to you and your friends. What time will you be home?'

(Eva) 'Probably 7:00 pm.

'Okay. Love you. Be safe.'

She sends a quick 'love you too' text back before standing up. She zips up her coat, nice and snug. As she makes it into the halls, she can't help but stare at the floor. Not having the guts to look at Amber's face. It's weird, not being able to control what she's feeling. This new experience is entirely daunting. It's such an unfamiliar emotion to have someone gone from your life that isn't dead yet, nor found yet, just inconclusive of her existence.

She enters the main conversational area, to which she finds is vacant. Usually, it's filled with students due to its comfortable seating arrangements and its beautiful architecture. But here she sees only two students and one janitor. The emptiness she finds rather unsettling, so she plops down on a couch and immediately opens Instagram. As she scrolls through her feed she jumps at the occasional blast of thunder, followed by heavy pounding rain.

As the clock rounds 6:45, she gets a message from her Uber driver:

'Pulled in behind the apartments on 5th'

'I guess the rainfall was causing a lot of flooding down here', she thinks to herself, what other reason would he park over there? The apartments aren't that far, just a block or so. She just prays she doesn't have to walk through any puddles that are deeper than her boots. Extending her umbrella, she pushes open the heavy brass doors and is met with the chaotic weather. Because it's coming around 7:00 pm, the sky is getting pretty dark. She makes her way towards 5th, but once she gets to the building, she can't find a car in sight. There's a couple of parked cars, the occasional slow approaching vehicle, but she can't seem to find this 'grey sedan car'. She messages her driver about 5 times, but her phone says that her messages couldn't be delivered. She tries to call him, but it won't even ring.

That's when the panic kicks in. And oh boy, is it hitting her hard. With her only source of light being the street lamps and her phone screen, everything around her becomes eerie, vague. She's clicking the call button to her Dad, her Mom, her brothers, her friends, but the bars in the corner of her phone are completely empty. Through all the dense rain crashing from the night's sky, she could barely hear a thing. Her breath was becoming heavier as the thunder became deafening, the lack of light and lack of any safety sending her into pure, unadulterated terror. Her hands were shaking, her lips were freezing and the tips of her toes were going numb—she couldn't breathe a full breath and every time her heart beat faster- her lungs gave out more, her mouth was painfully dry and her eyes felt like they were being pried open to stare into the darkness, and the sky unforgivingly beat down upon her and the earth around her. Suddenly she hears a sharp clink. Her necklace drops to the wet, flooded ground, the moment she frantically bends down to grab it, her fingers barely graze the silver chain before she hears thundering footsteps spiriting toward her.

Next, her body feels as if it's being ripped to pieces, there were scratches; deep-cut, gushing wounds being gouged into her flesh, her skin was white-hot and her nerves were screaming, a loud, piercing pain pulsing into her head, before she could even feel the claws rip through her body, she saw gallons of blood paint the rainwater red, she fell to the concrete, doing the only thing she could instinctively do—scream, a blood-curdling scream, as loud as she can. The last image she sees is a loose paper, destroyed by the rushing water, her peripheral begins to go black, her ears ringing with high-pitched bells, she grasps the paper, her hand crunching directly over Amber's smearing face.

And she softly closes her shuddering eyes, the pain clogging up her body was too much to bear, and she begins to cry--hot tears disappearing into the red-stained rushing water, and she bids goodbye to what she thinks is her last day.

Hey, this is my first post ya’ll, tell me what you think? xoxox I NEED to know if this is intriguing?? Should I post the next few parts? Lemme know

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transstudiesarchive · 5 years ago

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“I Want to be Called...” Gender in a Preschool Setting

An Interview with a non-binary preschool teacher working at a child-led gender open preschool.

Tell us about yourself

My name is Charlie Lewis, my pronouns are she/him/hirs, I identify as bi-gender, under the non binary umbrella. I feel like both a man and a woman at the same time in equal parts, more or less. I definitely experience some gender fluidity.

What do you like to do for fun?

I like to make movies, and watch movies, go hiking. I like reading scifi and fantasy, I write poetry, listen to music.

How did you get involved with Tumbleweed [The Preschool Where you work]?

Well I actually just saw a craigslist ad for it while looking for jobs in childcare, while also teaching as a drama teacher. I saw that they had a part time position, so I applied, and interviewed; and it seemed like it was a really good fit. The center and myself have a lot of similar views when it comes to childcare practices and best child-rearing practices because I studied both theatre/film and child development in college as well as some anthropology and sociology, and some political science. So I got hired on as a sub, or a float; I spent the last two years doing that and then started working for them full time a few months ago.

Some of our shared philosophies are that of a whole community in child rearing, so having a good relationship with parents and primary caregivers; as well as child lead, play-based learning philosophies. Rather than forcing children to follow a curriculum or something that the teachers think is important for them to learn, but following interests and allowing them to learn from curiosity and self understanding. This is a big part of why I wanted to work there.

Charlie with hirs students, two of the children in this picture use they/them pronouns. Courtesy of Tumbleweed PH Instagram.

How do you talk to the kids about gender?

Well both myself and the center are very open about gender with kids. I actually started at this job before I was out as non-binary. When I did come out as non binary to both my boss and coworkers, there was mostly just celebration like “hey we see you, it’s great to have you here”. There definitely has been a little bit of a learning curve with using my pronouns, but I feel like everyone has been trying on a regular basis. When it comes to talking to the kids about gender; I kind of noticed a shift where at first they were sort of open about it while not really talking about it directly, but then about six months ago they started focusing more on letting the kids know that if there was a different name or pronouns that they wanted us to use, that we could use those for them. This was because one student in particular wanted to change their name a lot, and was generally gender non conforming. Now it’s just really opened up.

We have a book called “It’s Feels Good to Be Yourself” that I really appreciate. It very clearly, in a way that’s easy for them to understand, lays out what it means to be transgender, cisgender, nonbinary, genderfluid; the idea the that you might change your feelings about gender from one day to the next, and that’s okay; that you can feel different from what people thought you were when you were born, and that’s okay; and that it’s all very valid in that however you feel about your gender is how you feel best. Which I think really falls into the idea of a child lead learning philosophy, because we’re allowing the children to know that what they feel inside is important and that is what reality is, and that it helps shape reality for them. Which is the same way that they, for example, decide what is important to learn, and we give them the tools to then shape their reality to be that.

When I talk to the kids about my own gender, a lot of it is very much letting them know that I’m both a boy and a girl; that they can call me “she” and “he”, and that my name is Charlie. That’s very much reinforced when the other teachers call me by he/him pronouns as well as she/her. The kids see that, and it very much normalizes it for them. I am able to just straightforwardly say “I am a boy and a girl, that’s who I am, you can call me this”. As an adult to kids at this age range, I am really helping them to give words to their reality. It’s really opened up the doors for them to be able to talk about their gender by me modeling for them “this is what I like to be called”,”this is what I feel”,”this is who I am”, “this is how I talk about myself and you can talk about me too”.

Courtesy of Tumbleweed PH Instagram.

How do the kids talk about their gender?

The kids love to talk about their genders! Especially reading the books is a really good gateway for them, I feel like. One of my favorite examples [It Feels Good to be Yourself], we read this book a lot, the kids really want us to read this book. It's got great illustrations. Definitely something I would recommend anyone who has kids, or works with kids to check out. Or even people that aren’t getting this transgender thing, 2 year olds can understand it. So we read this book and at the end of it one of the kids shouts out “I’m a boy!”; and the kid sitting next to them shouted “I’m a they! They! They! They!”. All around the circle, one by one, they all started shouting their pronouns and gender at everyone else. It just shows that they have this clear understanding within themselves of who they are.

At least a third of our kids, now, identify as gender non-conforming, or wanting to use “they” pronouns, or asking occasionally if they can use “they” in addition to other pronouns. I have kids that say “I’m all, I’m everything”, “I’m a boy, girl, and a they”. I have kids who say they’re a boy and a girl. Some kids feel strongly that they’re just one or the other, that they’re a binary gender, or cisgender. They know, they are very clear with how they talk about it. With three and up, with the two-year-olds, it's still a little abstract to them, but the older kids are very very sure of themselves.

And it's really interesting, like I had the other day. I'm always telling the kids, when they misgender through friends, “oh, hey, like this person actually uses “they” and doesn't want to be called “he” anymore”. And I had one of my kids, who identifies as cisgender boy, say when I told him that his friend used they/them instead of he/him, he said, “does they/them mean girl?” And I was like, “well, they could identify as a girl, they might not; but “they” is what they want to be called, It just means them.” It's sort of still this understanding that they're coming to, but it's become very normal for them. They really are able to just say, “hey, like I want to be called ‘they’” or “I want to be called this” right in this very straightforward language about it, they're very clear.

Mx. Lewis with a “she/him” pronoun button.

Do you have any hopes for the future?

I mean, of course I have hopes for the future. I feel like doing this work now is a result of the hope that I have for the future. Obviously, right now in our world, it's really scary to be a trans person. And as much as working in this preschool has felt like this really ideal space for gender. I've also worked a lot with older trans kids and they are a lot more scared. They're not as open about it. They feel it just as strongly. It's just as clear, obviously to them and they're able to express it so eloquently. But they get bullied a lot. They get questioned by adults as well as children. And obviously, with this administration, it's becoming scarier and scarier to be an LGBTQ person, especially if you are also not privileged in other ways, such as being a person of color, or being poor, or being houseless, or being undocumented.0

I also feel like doing this work and like working with trans kids, they have a lot of hope because when they're able to be themselves, they're so much happier. Being able to help create spaces that are safe for that happiness to prosper, for gender euphoria to prosper, as opposed to just dysphoria, as opposed to just feeling like the world will not accept you as you are. Creating spaces where it feels good to be yourself is what's really important. And if we keep doing that, we can keep managing to do that in our communities, for our neighbors, for our children or for our neighbor’s children. Yeah, I have hope. I feel like we can create a space in the future where it is safe to be yourself, because if we can't, then there's not really much else to really feel like we can do if we're not creating spaces that are safe for people out of hope.

What is one thing you want people to know?

Just that people know themselves. Children know themselves, adults know themselves. Nobody's confused. If somebody feels a certain way, they are that way. Just because you think that they might not have a reason to feel a certain way, doesn't mean that they don’t. I mean, that's a big thing with our kids. We're never invalidating their feelings because their feelings are real and their feelings about their gender are real. No matter who you have in your life, if there's somebody who's experiencing feelings that their gender does not match/goes beyond what they were assigned at birth, that believing them is the best thing you can do. About any feelings, just believing someone when they tell you they feel a certain way. Also treating kids with the same degree of respect that you treat adults. They know the way, they know what’s going on, they can very clearly tell you when you ask them. We just need to listen to their voices.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/40864913-it-feels-good-to-be-yourself

-F.D.

#trangender #transgenderstudies #Transpreschool #genderstudies #preschool #ece #Itfeelsgoodtobeyourself #interview #transteacher #nonbinary #gender nonconforming #transchildren #transyouth

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changeling-fae · 5 years ago

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I didn’t get any asks but I really wanted to do this so here we go!

1. What’s their name? Is there a reason why they were named that?

Maris (mah-riss) is Melody and Talbott’s son and Lorelei (lora-lie) is their daughter. Since Melody’s line has merfolk in it, it was important to keep the sea ties to their lineage.

2. Who are their parents? What’s their relationship with them?

Melody Prince and Talbott Winger are their parents and they have a very close relationship. This is definitely due to Melody and Talbott’s family trauma and their desire to make sure their kids didn’t endure what they endured.

3. Which relative do they resemble the most? Why?

Maris is not only the son of Talbott but is also the son of a Prince and all the Prince men are reserved and aloof.

That being said he is more... mischievous? He’s too smart for his own good and thanks to being a legilimens he knows a lot of secrets. I’d say he’s a good blend of both parents.

Lorelei is also a good blend but her aloofness is more whimsical than serious. She’s also a legilimens but doesn’t use secrets as a weapon like her brother. She’s a poet like her father and writes her own songs.

4. How much did MC influence their growth?

Quite a bit, she grew up feeling abandoned by her family and never wanted her children to feel that. She and Talbott make sure that their kids know that they’re loved.

5. How much did Jacob influenced their growth?

Assuming he survives the game, he doesn’t have too much influence. He and Melody’s relationship was never able to fully heal.

He’s of course welcome to the family and he does visit occasionally but he felt guilt for what he put his sister through and thought he didn’t deserve his place in her life.

6. Describe their wand.

Maris’ wand is 11in Elm wood with a scale from his great-grandmother’s tail.

“The unfounded belief that only pure-bloods can produce magic from elm wands was undoubtedly started by some elm wand owner seeking to prove his own blood credentials, for I have known perfect matches of elm wands who are Muggle-borns. The truth is that elm wands prefer owners with presence, magical dexterity and a certain native dignity. Of all wand woods, elm, in my experience, produces the fewest accidents, the least foolish errors, and the most elegant charms and spells; these are sophisticated wands, capable of highly advanced magic in the right hands (which, again, makes it highly desirable to those who espouse the pure-blood philosophy).”

Lorelei’s wand is 12in Beech wood also with a scale from her great-grandmother.

“The true match for a beech wand will be, if young, wise beyond his or her years, and if full-grown, rich in understanding and experience. Beech wands perform very weakly for the narrow-minded and intolerant. Such wizards and witches, having obtained a beech wand without having been suitably matched (yet coveting this most desirable, richly hued and highly prized wand wood), have often presented themselves at the homes of learned wandmakers such as myself, demanding to know the reason for their handsome wand’s lack of power. When properly matched, the beech wand is capable of a subtlety and artistry rarely seen in any other wood, hence its lustrous reputation.”

7. Do they have any pets? If not, how do they feel towards animals in general?

Basically just as many pets that Melody had growing up. They’re animagi like their parents and are good with animals, especially aquatic ones and birds.

8. How much of the Magical World have they already experienced before they started attending Hogwarts?

They were born into it, with Melody being a healer for St Mungo’s (and later Hogwarts) and Talbott being an Auror. They grew up in Melody’s childhood home which is tied to a magical reserve for aquatic magical creatures.

9. Do they have any muggle based interests?

Maris finds psychology and science fascinating. He can often be found reading muggle doctors textbooks. He’s also a big fan of HP Lovecraft, mostly because he finds the concept of muggles finding fish people horrifying hilarious.

Lorelei loves muggle music and has gone to quite a few concerts. People might be surprised to find that her favorite is heavy metal.

10. In which house were they sorted? How much do they fit the Sorting Hat choice?

Maris gets sorted into Slytherin like his mother and definitely fits his house. He’s cunning, ambitious, and very resourceful. He’s also John Oliver level of trolling ability.

Lorelei was sorted into Ravenclaw like her father and she also very much fits her house, especially the creative and independent part. She’s very open minded like her mother too (who had been a hatstall with Ravenclaw).

11. Which is the general opinion about them?

Maris is a sparkly, hot (heart of gold) asshole and Lorelei is a mysterious, whimsical space cadet.

Maris is following his uncles footsteps in having a bit of a fan club. The only difference is he’s more into it and will absolutely use it to his advantage.

Lorelei is the only one who can easily knock him off his pedestal when she feels his head is getting too big.

Lorelei is incredibly intelligent like her family but she’s such a daydreamer that upon first meetings, many people think she’s just an airhead.

12. What do the professors and the other people working at the school think about them?

Kind of a combination “oh no” and “huh, they’re not too bad”.

Maris and Lorelei are good students even with their quirks and they will never be as bad as Melody in breaking the rules.

13. Is there a professor they highly respect? Is there instead a professor they can’t stand at all?

Flitwick is a favorite to both kids and they respect McGonagall as Headmistress.

(If Snape were alive they’d like him to, especially Lorelei).

There isn’t really a professor they dislike but Maris likes messing with Trelawney because he finds it fun, especially being a legilimens.

14. Talk about their favorite subjects.

Maris loves DADA, herbology, and flying the most. He’s also really into arithmancy and astronomy.

Lorelei loves potions, charms, and divination. She’s good at transfiguration too.

15. Talk about their least favorite subjects.

For Maris, HoM, he just gets so bored and isn’t really a history fan.

For Lorelei, DADA, she’s just not an aggressive person by nature and is more passive in how she views the world.

16. Do they possess a broom? If not, do they have another devices that allows them to fly?

They do but they prefer to fly in their animagi forms. Maris is a belted kingfisher and Lorelei is a diving petrel.

17. What do they think about Quidditch? Are they part of the Quidditch team? If yes, in which role do they play?

Maris actually becomes seeker for Slytherin and quite good at it but he’s weirdly enough not really a fan at watching other teams. He just likes the thrill and competition but only when he’s involved.

Lorelei doesn’t care about Quidditch at all but she does watch on the days her brother plays.

18. Do they attend other club activities at school?

Maris becomes a Prefect and is the leader of the Gobstones club. He’s just as bad as his mom in leaving no survivors in the game.

Lorelei is part of the Frog Choir and is also a member of the potions club.

19. Have they developed any peculiar skill, magical or not?

Both are legilimens like their mother and animagi like their parents.

Maris is good at strategy games and enjoys muggle poker.

Lorelei is good with her hands and is actually a pretty good masseuse.

20. List five things they like.

For Maris; Intellectual stimulus, trolling people, swimming, fishing, and flying.

For Lorelei; Singing, song writing/poetry, swimming, making wind chimes, muggle aquariums.

21. List five things they dislike.

For Maris; Ignorance, blood purists, incompetency, boredom, hypocrites.

For Lorelei; Close mindedness, cruelty, assumptions, blood purists, dishonesty.

22. Have they any interest in dating? Have they a crush on someone? How do you think this someone feel about them?

Maris is a serial flirt and Lorelei believes things will happen when they happen. Haven’t thought further than that.

23. Are they able to cast a Patronus? If yes, what animal does it represent?

Yep, Maris patronus is the same as his animagus form as a kingfisher (so his form and patronus match just like his father).

Lorelei’s patronus is a moon jellyfish (so differs just like her mother).

24. What’s their greatest fear? How does it translate into their boggart?

Probably losing their parents or each other, they have a very happy childhood and would be devastated if something suddenly happened.

Boggart would be a dead loved one.

25. What’s their greatest weakness? How do they deal with it?

For Maris, probably hubris. He’s very proud of his skills and actually does work hard to maintain them so if he suddenly couldn’t succeed at something he put effort into, it would damage his esteem.

He’d turn to his mother for advice after a lot of angst because he knows that he got his overachiever attitude from her.

Lorelei’s weakness is probably passivity, as in she’s not really proactive. She’s fine with things just happening to her instead of seeking it out.

It’s mostly her brother who gets her to be more proactive, usually through brotherly teasing.

26. Is there an objective they’re trying to accomplish?

For Maris, be the top of his class and for Lorelei just graduate.

27. How do they change throughout their school years?

Maris becomes more cocky midway through but he settles down by graduation.

Lorelei becomes less dependent on her family and more comfortable with her place in the world.

28. Talk about their relationship with the other Fankids.

If anyone wants to their fankids to be friends with mine, please let me know because that would be awesome! (please)

29. Are they the “bully”, the “victim” or the “hero” of the situation?

Maris isn’t a bully per se, he’s not cruel, he just likes to tease people, but he does troll people he thinks deserves it (like bigots).

Lorelei is very accepting of people no matter their quirks so if someone needs help she’s good at making people feel good.

30. Use a meme to describe them.

Maris

Lorelei

#hogwarts mystery #Melody Prince #talbott x mc #hm fankids

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gulgbtqplus · 6 years ago

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Meet the Committee 2019/20

We have 16 committee members who work together to run the society:

1. President: Maddy, She/her, [email protected]

Hi, my name's Maddy, I use she/her pronouns, and I'm the current president of gulgbtq+! I'm a third year medical student and I was the previous welfare officer. I spend most of my time hanging out with my rat, hiding in the library, and doing things with gulgbtq+. I'm a chatty gal and I love meeting new people, so feel free to scream with me about Troye Sivan/Hayley Kiyoko/Charli XCX anytime.

If you have any questions or ideas, hit me up! I'm very excited to be a part of the society this year and engage with all our members ❤

2. VP Secretary: Quinn, He/Him, [email protected]

Hi I'm Quinn and I am your secretary this year for GULGBTQ+. I am an economic and social history student who has been going to GULGBTQ+ events since my first moment in Glasgow. I enjoy poetry, comedy and films, and dogs, dogs are good. Can't wait to see you at events! If you ever want to message myself or the committee with any questions, suggestions or comments I can be reached at [email protected], see you soon!

3. Treasurer: Emily B, She/Her, [email protected]

Hi! I’m Emily, the new VP Treasurer! I’m 21, use she/her pronouns, and am proudly bisexual. I’m currently in 4th year, studying history (dissertation time, yikes!) I’ve been part of the society over the last year, and it’s been one of the best parts of my university experience. I’ve made new friends, increased my self-confidence, and had tons of good gay times! Outside of the society, I enjoy going to gigs, caring for my many houseplants, and taking too many naps. I’m excited for my role on committee this year, although you know what they say about gays and maths! I’m constantly on social media, so feel free to drop me a bell if you have any questions or queries! I’m on twitter @_emilybarton. Hope to see you at an event soon :-)

4. Welfare: Bianca, She/he, [email protected]

Hello! My name is Bianca and I'm the Welfare Officer of GULGBTQ+. I'm a small twenty-year-old Italian and I am a third year English Language & Linguistics and Theatre Studies student. I spend most of my free time reading, crying over Shakespeare, or bingeing the latest gay shows on Netflix, and the rare times I decide to go outside and try sports I enjoy horse riding and ice skating. I'm a gryffindor and I'm very excited to be back on committee this year, so feel free to drop me an e-mail for anything you might need!

5. Events: Emily T, She/Her, [email protected]

Hi everyone! My name's Emily (Tunstall) and this year I'm really excited to be the Events Coordinator for GULGBTQ+! I'm a second year Psychology Student and in my free time I like drawing, painting, making new friends, and spending time with this society. ❤

Please feel free to say hi to me online or in person, I will almost always be wearing my Docs and at least one badge, be it on my bag or my denim jacket, if you need help recognising me. I'm always open for a good chat, to offer some advice, or if you just need some directions around Uni! I would really love to see you at our events on a Wednesday, or at one of our coffees during the week. 🌈🌈🌈

6. Women’s: Claire, She/Her, [email protected]

Hi, I'm Claire, and I'm your women's officer! I'm a third year in Microbiology. Ask me about worms. Sometimes I think I'm not a stereotype but then I remember I have two cats, a Hozier-centric Spotify, and build furniture for a hobby.

I'm so excited for another great year! One of the things I love about this society is that it's an inclusive space for all women, and I want to make everyone feel welcome. If you have any comments, questions, or concerns (or just want to chat) feel free to shoot me a message!

8. Trans: Cassidy, They/Them, [email protected]

Hey, I'm Cassidy (they/them) the new Trans officer! I'm 20 and a third year studying Classics and History. I'm a nonbinary trans woman and I'm here to represent trans people and help people with gender related things generally 🙂

Aside from being gender, I am a roller skating gamer who makes stuffed toys and loves history more than life itself. I'm looking forward to running coffee and having a great year with everyone 🙂

9. Postgraduate and Mature Students: Kyle, He/Him, [email protected]

Hey, hi, hello! I’m Kyle, a postgraduate Astrophysics student who’ll be your first PostMat Officer for this year! Avid Karaoke Fan and Polo R&B Room Resident, I’ll usually be found out and about when I’m not studying (procrastinating). My aim for the time that I’m here is to try and get more LGBTQ+ Postgraduate and Mature students involved with GULGBTQ+.

I haven’t been in Glasgow for very long, so I’m excited to share the experience of things like Glasgow Pride with you all! I’m also hoping to run some smaller gatherings (like the current PostMat Coffees) over the summer for those of us who will need a break from our dissertations. If any PostMat students have ideas to share or any concerns to raise, please don’t be afraid to email.

10. Campaigns: Jo, They/He, [email protected]

Hi, I’m Jo and I’m your Campaigns Officer! I’m a postgraduate research student in English Language & Linguistics with a particular love for all things to do with LGBTQ+ linguistics. I’m a big fan of knitting, baking, indoor bouldering and playing D&D, and I’m also involved with the English Language & Linguistics Society. I was Campaigns Officer the year before last in 2017/2018, but I just couldn’t stay away, and now I’m back for some more campaigning!

As Campaigns Officer, my role is to raise awareness of LGBTQ+ issues in the society, on campus, and in the wider world. In the past, I’ve helped run campaigns to increase awareness of trans people on campus and to encourage local hairdressers and barbers to be inclusive of their LGBTQ+ customers. This year, I hope to revitalise these campaigns and work with our other officers and members of the society to create some exciting new ones!

Please feel free to contact me if you’d like to get involved in campaigning or have any ideas that you’d like to share with me!

11. Communications and Technology: Summer, They/Them, [email protected]

Hi, I’m Summer and I’m the Communications and Technology Officer for the year! I’m a 5th year computing science student (yes, that kind of transfem!) so you’ll frequently find me programming, tinkering with Linux or providing tech support for someone. When I’m not doing that I’ll probably be knitting, playing video games, running tabletop rpgs or watching martial arts movies (or talking about how I don't have time for any of the above)!

As the recently renamed Communications and Technology officer (formerly Publicity) I'm mostly here for you to tell me why the website or mailing list doesn't work, so feel free to get in touch with any complaints and/or constructive criticisms. I hope to have a great year with you all, hopefully with a better website!

12: First Year Ordinary Member: Jenny, She/Her, [email protected]

Hiya! I’m Jenny and I’m the interim first year representative on the GULGBTQ+ committee. I’m going into second year studying biomedical engineering and in my free time I enjoy drawing, making soup, and loving my gf. I met wonderful friends and made loads of good gay memories through the society in my first year and am excited to help as many freshers as possible join in on the fun this year! I’m passionate about creating a loving and accepting community for all LGBTQ+ students, especially new ones, since I know how hard it can be to settle in. If you’re a fresher and have any ideas, questions, or just want to make a new friend, please don’t hesitate to send me an email!

13: Bi/Pan: Valentine, They/ve, [email protected]

Hi I'm Niamh, you may recognise me as last year's nonbinary officer! I use they/them pronouns, I'm 20 and a 3rd year psychology student. This'll be my 3rd year in the society and I love it with my whole heart. If you have any issues feel free to email me or message me on Facebook (Niamh Conlan). My first and foremost want is for those coming to the society and bi events to feel comfortable and welcomed!

When I'm not being a disaster bisexual I'm dying my hair, applying clown makeup, dancing to new wave or doing kendo. I'm excited to meet you all and hope to have a great year with everyone!

14. International Students: Judith, She/they, [email protected]

Hi! I’m Judith, I’ve been described as “the lesbianest person I know” by my flatmate and if you ask me where I’m from, I’m likely to name three countries, so I guess it makes sense that I’d be your international officer. I’m a third year psychology and statistics student who likes to avoid studying by going swordfighting (yes, I own an actual sword, but don’t worry, I only use it against transphobes) or putting on facepaint before a metal gig. But don’t get the wrong impression, I’m actually a very quiet person who’s always there to listen or give you advice. Feel free to message me on Facebook (Judith AN), send me an email or just come talk to me during the international coffees I’ll be running!

15. Aromantic and Asexual: Lo, They/Them, [email protected]

Hello! I’m Leilo (they/them), 20, and happy to be the ace/aro officer! My job is to represent people who are (or are questioning if they are) on the spectrums of being aromantic or asexual, so feel free to email me! As ace/aro officer I host biweekly coffees so aros, aces, and those who are questioning, can come together.

I’m a second year Maths student but will probably add philosophy as my second main subject. Aside from sitting over Math problems for way longer than seems necessary, you will find me writing, working out, or philosophising about bdsm.

16: Non-binary: Robyn, They/Them, [email protected]

Salut! I’m Robyn and I’m the Non-Binary Officer. I’m a 2nd Year French/History student and I was born in Glasgow - I’m like a rare pokemon. I only resurrect during Eurovision season and have a hoard of sunglasses. And I’m a massive comic book nerd (yes I am Batman’s sidekick on the side).

I’m always down for a chat and feel free to DM me with anything from issues, to memes! I’m very excited to be your Non-Binary boi this year!!

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