#but will be sad once certain profs retire

[colourfullanguages]

do you know how nice it is when your professor recognises you and knows you by name?

[makomaragi]

Title/Prompt: The Moon

Pairing: Prof Aurea Juniper/Fennel (Scientificshipping), though they aren’t actually together yet here. 

Rating: PG maybe? Nothing graphic at all but a lotta shit with ptsd related things. 

Fandom: Pokemon

kind of based on an idea @crazychooklady had sent me, but then I fucked up and made it sad. 

The professor had been at home for nearly an hour before the time she realized she hadn’t eaten all day. She only realized it because the sun had disappeared from the sky, the moon’s light doing a poor job of lighting the room now.

It was easy to forget to eat when she stayed so busy all day, feeling as through she made fifty laps around the entire lab by the time the day was over. Trainers arrived to pick out starter pokemon, back to her office to fill in their information, more paces in the other direction to switch out and receive pokemon from trainers farther along in their badge quests. It seemed as though the work never stopped, not that she was annoyed by it, just that there never seemed to be a moment to gather herself in the midst of it all. If the lab didn’t have set hours of operation for trainers, she was sure she’d never find time to do anything else. Keeping in touch with them in her off time was one thing, but she was certain she’d never get any sleep at all if trainers arrived at all hours to pick out starters. All of this on top of her own research.

Peering in her fridge, there weren’t many choices. Some frozen dinners, some fruits and vegetables she felt obligated to buy that she was pretty sure had been in there for a while, some hard boiled eggs and...not much else.

It felt like she always ordered delivery from the same three or four places, not that there were many to choose from in Nuvema. The microwave dinners didn’t seem all that bad.

Grabbing two of them at random, she uncovered the contents and put them in the microwave one at a time, throwing them both on plates and retiring to her bedroom.

“Here, I made you some dinner. Please eat something.”

Fennel pulled the covers off over her head, pushing herself upright. She looked over the plate Aurea had put on the nightstand, back at the professor, then back at the plate. Macaroni and cheese, something that resembled mashed potatoes, and breaded chicken. “I’m not really hungry right now. Thanks, though.”

Her Munna nudged her shoulder, letting out a soft cry. The Pokemon rarely left her side these days, either hovering over her or snug against her side as she was now.

“When was the last time you ate?”

Fennel gave her whimpering pokemon a pat, “Yesterday? The day before? I don’t know, I had some water while you were gone.”

Aurea chose to ignore this for now, settling next to the other woman in the bed and helping herself to dinner.

“Your appointment is tomorrow at 4. You’re not skipping it this time, I’m leaving work to take you.”

Fennel made some sort of dismissing grunt, sliding back down in to the bed. “I really don’t want to, but if you’re making me.”

“Your Munna has been sick for weeks, Fennel. Please, do it for her, at least.”

The dream scientist wasn’t about to argue with Aurea on her Pokemon’s welfare, especially because she was right on this one, and it was something that could be helped. The nightmares she was having constantly, while she didn’t remember vividly, were all the same. No wonder Munna had getting sick from eating them when it was all she could provide for her. She couldn’t even take care of her dearest Pokemon anymore without fucking it up even subconsciously.

“I said I would, Aurie.” Munna nuzzled against her again in clear concern of her master.

The professor accepted this answer, returning to shoving food in her mouth. If Fennel wasn’t going to eat, she easily could of finished her plate as well. But this was no time to be selfish. She held up the fork in front of Fennel, who stared at it for a few long seconds before hesitantly taking a bite.

“That’s not too bad,” she admitted as she pushed herself more upright.

“Well, yours is right there, help yourself. Before it gets cold.”

The scientist finally placed the plate on her lap, stirring the noodles around and taking a few lazy nibbles, but mostly moving the food around on the plate.

Such was how Professor Juniper spent her free time lately, eyeing the other woman like a Pidgeot, ensuring she was getting some type of nourishment. She couldn’t recall how long Fennel had been there now. Three months? Four? Six?

There was no point in asking Fennel of her long term plans anymore, because she didn’t have any.

Fennel outright refused to return home to Kanto, even though they both knew it was probably for the best that she did. She wouldn’t go back home until she proved her point of her studies in Unova, and even Professor Juniper hadn’t the slightest clue what that was anymore. Hadn’t the Dream Yard been her end game?

Fennel had remained in her apartment in Striaton for about two weeks after the explosion at the Dream Yard. Technically one week, spending a few days in the hospital as a precaution despite her repeating that she was fine. Until one day she had called the professor, sobbing that she couldn’t take it in that city anymore, and without a second thought, was whisked away to the apartment above the Juniper Pokemon Lab.

But the thoughts and the nightmares didn’t stop.

Aurea caught her talking to her mom on the phone a few times. She wasn’t lying, but she wasn’t telling the entire truth, either. Fennel had told her that she was staying with her friend until she figured out what she was going to do, which was partly true, but she wasn’t actively trying to do anything, either. The explosion at the Dream Yard had made international headlines, she couldn’t have hidden it from her family even if she wanted to. They had made the trip to Unova to visit her in the hospital and stayed with her for a few days, but Fennel wanted them gone. They had went as far to book her a flight home, which she refused.

The professor felt like she was intruding if she had been there while Fennel’s family was. She had never met them, either, though Fennel always spoke fondly of them in the past. It just didn’t seem like an appropriate time to meet her best friend’s parents and sister.

She managed to visit her twice in the hospital, even admitting to Fennel that she wasn’t sure why she was there besides more than a wellness check. Fennel had made it out of the building with nothing more than a few cuts and bruises, while she knew others on her team weren’t as lucky.

The only thing Fennel cared about initially was finding her beloved Musharna – that was, until, she realized how lucky she was to of made it out. Or maybe she knew it all along and it was using it as a distraction to her guilt. Either she had given up or her waking life became as hellish as her nightmares, because it was shortly after that she found herself where she was now, crashing in her best friend’s bed.

It was coaxing from both Aurea and her own mother that drove her to finally see the doctor about her uncharacteristic insomnia and nightmares. She wasn’t sleeping, she wasn’t eating, she wore the same pajamas for days at a time. Then she complained that the medicine prescribed to her only made her want to sleep, which only resulted in the panic attacks and nightmares that seemed more frequently than not lately.

The pair had been sitting in silence for a while – Fennel still barely picking at her food, the professor tossing her own empty plate aside.

“Have, um...you talked to your family lately?”

“My sister is thinking about moving here, to Unova. She developed a new PC system that the League took interest in,” eyes still on her plate in disinterest.

“I heard something about that.”

“So stupid. It’s like she’s coming here just to show me up, that she’s successful here, and I’m not.”

“She wanted to bring it to Unova to come help you, Fennel.”

“Then why here? Of the tons of other regions, she happened to pick the one that I moved to, to get from far away from home as I could? She’s doing it to shove it in my face, how is that going to help me?”

“Because she cares about you, and so do I.”

“I don’t know why,” Fennel placed the still mostly full plate back on the night stand.

Aurea never knew what to say when Fennel made such statements about herself, only deciding that her actions would speak louder than words eventually. She knew agreeing with her sister moving to the region would only make her more hostile, and despite Amanita having the best intentions, Fennel had only seen it as a ploy to humiliate her for some reason.

Aurea must have shifted her weight unintentionally, probably in the discomfort of the conversation, which caused Fennel to latch on to her arm, pulling it against her chest and holding it between her arms.

“Please stay with me,” Fennel pleaded with her in the same tone as she had just about every night she was there. Affection was never something that came naturally to the brunette, but she never seemed to mind when Fennel did this, despite her feeling extremely stiff at the initial gesture. Nor did she understand why Fennel always seemed terrified that she was going to leave at any given point. Once she was in the bedroom with her, it was usually where she needed to stay until the next morning if only to quell both of their worries. The full size bed was an upgrade from the twin mattress on the floor that they shared in their old apartment, but it probably wasn’t meant for two people. Aurea had become accustomed to sleeping alone in the larger bed with room to spare, but anymore it didn’t make a difference to her if Fennel shared it with her or not.

“I don’t care if you get your laptop or phone or whatever and do work, but please just stay here. Wake me up if you think I’m having another nightmare, if Munna starts acting funny...or just wake me up in general, so I don’t sleep deep enough to have a nightmare.”  

The professor had lost her share of sleep just as well over the last few months, even if it wasn’t for the same reason Fennel had. She lost count of the nights she had purposefully kept herself awake to keep an eye on her if she was having a particularly bad night, thankful both in the moment and in the morning that coffee existed. “Hopefully they’ll give you some different medication tomorrow, or something, I’m sorry that I don’t know how this works.”

“They keep telling me it takes a while to get in to my system to do whatever it’s supposed to do...but I know what it’s doing, and how I’m feeling, why do I need to wait?”

“That’s why you need to go to your appointments and tell them.”

“I’m so, so, sick of this. I just don’t want to feel like this anymore. I’ve been such a burden to you.” Fennel tightened her grip on Aurea’s arm for half a second before letting go entirely, if only to push her hair out of her eyes. “You know...I always used to look forward to dreaming...good dreams, bad dreams, whatever. I know for a fact it makes different types of dream mist, and it was something I wanted to study for a while, but not anymore.”

“I think that you should try to sleep, but if you don’t want to, I’ll stay up and watch some movies with you, or whatever you want to do.”

Fennel gave a shrug at the suggestion, not caring one way or the other. “I’m okay with us just sitting here, especially if you have stuff to do. You can sleep if you need to.”

Aurea removed the remote from the night stand, hitting a few buttons and scrolling through various streaming services until she found something that would keep the other woman distracted. For some reason, Fennel always liked the cartoon Ponytas. She never appeared to react to anything happening on the show, but it seemed to calm her down. It wasn’t that the professor was annoyed with her, let alone mad or even upset, it just felt as if she repeated herself every single day since she had been there with no improving results. Every conversation seemed to put Fennel on the defense when there was no reason for her to be, or the opposite to which she became confrontational over nothing and never an in between.

She’d stay up all night watching silly cartoons if it meant a few hours of peace for the dream scientist.

[thisdaynews]

Biafra:Of victors and vanquished: Biafra, 50 years after

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/biafraof-victors-and-vanquished-biafra-50-years-after/

Biafra:Of victors and vanquished: Biafra, 50 years after

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January 15 marks the 50th anniversary of the end of the Nigerian Civil War and the official end of the short-lived Republic of Biafra. It is unlikely there will be any national event to mark the occasion other than the annual Remembrance Day ritual which has become nothing but a cash cow for those involved in organising the ceremony. But the civil war was not only a defining moment for Nigeria, it has also continued to define the country. As Prof. Yakubu Ochefu notes in the introduction to the 2013 book, Nigeria is Negotiable, “The corporate existence of the country has been tested twice. It was formally broken once (1967-70) and pronounced broken once (April 1990). It took a horrible civil war to restore the entity when it was broken and an equally brutal attempted coup when it was pronounced.”

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Fifty years after the end of the civil war, what lessons have we learnt as a nation? It appears not much. At the end of the war in January 1970, when the remnants of the Biafra high command signed the article of surrender, the victors, the “Federal forces” under the headship of General Yakubu Gowon, proclaimed, “No victor, No vanquished.” Unfortunately, 50 years after, it has become evident that the cheque of “No victor, No vanquished” issued in 1970 is not cashable. The debate is still raging whether the war was necessary and if the region that became known as Biafra had a moral right to secede.

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Answers vary depending on who is responding. But one thing is certain. That war was preventable if only the government of the day led by Gowon was intent on presiding over a country built on justice and equity. Here is Gowon—quoted in The Man Died, the prison notes of Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka —not only appeasing the génocidaires but proclaiming a divine right to rule —a right that has become the refrain of the relics of the born-to-rule ideologues: “Fellow Northerners, Today, I want to direct this appeal specifically to you all…You all know that since the end of July, God, in his power, has entrusted the responsibility of this great country of ours, Nigeria, to the hands of another Northerner…Since January this year, when some soldiers put our country into confusion by killing our leaders, both political and military, the country has not recovered fully from that confusion. The sadness caused in people’s minds by the January event has led to troubles by civilians in the North in May, causing loss of lives. I receive complaints daily that up to now, Easterners living in the North are being killed and molested, their property looted. I am very unhappy about this. We would put a stop to these. It appears that it is going beyond reason to the point of recklessness and irresponsibility…” That was Gowon as head of state in October 1966, nine months before the civil war began in July 1967.

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Fifty years after, those who still live with the victors’ mentality that because a people were “defeated” in a civil war, they should perpetually stay under have remained in control of the country. Looking back, it appears the vanquished have not paid the full price —whatever that is— for daring to test the supposedly divinely ordained and non-negotiable corporate existence of the country. A little example will suffice. On Sunday, September 29, 2019, I arrived the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport wearing a T-shirt with the inscription, “We Are All Biafrans,” the title of my book first published in May 2016, later updated, and republished in November 2018. I was arrested by officers of the State Security Service and detained for more than six hours, first at their office at the airport and later at their headquarters in the Aso Drive area of Abuja. The first question I was asked at the airport was, “You are a Biafran, how come you have a Nigerian passport?” I am not aware there is a sovereign nation called Biafra and I made that known to my interrogators.

That question was not altogether surprising but coming from what is supposed to be the nation’s elite intelligence agency, it struck me that we were in a deeper mess than I had imagined. We can play the ostrich as much as we want, but the truth is that the division that precipitated and characterised the civil war looms large. We will be deluding ourselves to think for once that the civil war is over. Everywhere you turn in Nigeria, the angst, fear and loathing that were the hallmark of the civil war impose themselves. Fifty years after the end of the civil war, we have expanded the scope of the vanquished. Our country is as divided, if not more divided, as it was at the beginning of the war in 1967.

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Today, the chickens of impunity and injustice have come home to roost. Yesterday’s men who supervised this tragedy in its infancy are today looking for an easy way out. In 1996, exactly three decades after he became head of state, Yakubu Gowon, with the permission of then murderous dictator, Sani Abacha, set up “Nigeria Prays” “to put an end to the various problems plaguing Nigeria.” I am not averse to prayers, but we cannot pray our way out of the current mess whose origin goes back to more than five decades. In what looked like a bitter homecoming, the other retired general, the billionaire businessman, General Theophilus Danjuma (retd.), who was front and centre in Ibadan in July 1966 when Nigeria’s second coup took place, was in the ancient city again in December 2019. This time, in a sombre mood, he told a bewildered audience: “If I tell you what I know that is happening in Nigeria today, you will no longer sleep.” This is catharsis which ought to be a mea culpacame on the heels of his earlier statement describing the Nigerian Army as an army of occupation. All I can say is, speak, general, speak! Say what you know. The country needs to reconcile its past with the present.

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As part of the healing, on Monday, January 13, there will be a “Never Again” conference in Lagos to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of the civil war. Organised by Nzuko Umunna, a pan-Igbo socio-cultural group, comprising Igbo professionals both at home and in the Diaspora and Ndigbo Lagos in collaboration with civil society organisations, the aim of the conference is to address the “seeming lack of political will towards a robust and focused interrogation of the civil war, its causes, and hard lessons.”

The January 13 conference is aptly named “Never Again.” It is going to be a tall order because remembrance entails an appreciation of history, that is, where it exists. Today, there is no official history of the Nigerian Civil War, not even from the “victors.” Last year, I attended the public presentation of the book, Elections in Nigeria: The Long Road to Democracy, by Prof Shehu Abdullahi Y. Shehu. Both retired generals, Olusegun Obasanjo, a civil war commander, and Yakubu Gowon were at the event. Obasanjo joked about how his boss, Gowon, set up a high-powered committee at the end of the civil war in 1970 to write the history of the war. By the time Gowon was overthrown by Murtala Muhammed and his cohorts, which incidentally included the selfsame Obasanjo, on July 29, 1975, not a single line had been written. The audience erupted in laughter. That is the tragedy of Nigeria!

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Nigeria can still redeem itself. It has been 50 years since we proclaimed, “No Victor, No Vanquished.” It is time to truly end the war; and it is not just the war against Biafra, as Soyinka noted, but that against the millions of duped and dispossessed citizens. That is the only way we can avert another war!

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Onumah is author of We Are All Biafrans: A Participant-Observer’s Interventions in a Country Sleepwalking to Disaster.

[canaryatlaw]

So today was chill. I was super lazy and just slept till like 2:30 just because I can, lol, so that was an awesome feeling. Got up and ate some breakfast, then hit my reading pretty soon after. Finished my trial ad, another 35 pages, so not bad. After that I had to do the "problems" for that class, which at this point means a fact pattern about a case, and we then have to write a direct or cross for a witness, except our profs decided we should all have to write the direct and cross for each witness, and we were assigned 4 problems, so I basically had to write 4 directs and 4 crosses. It really wasn't as bad as I thought it would be though, although that probably has something to do with the fact that from my various mock trial experiences I've written several directs and crosses already so I at least had some idea what I was doing. So not bad. After that I jumped over to crim pro, which was just 25 pages, and finished right at 8 where I closed my books for the night. I got all my reading for the week done, I just have to get the bluebook exercise done at some point before larc on Friday, but I can probably do that Wednesday, so it's all good. The only show I had to watch was Conviction, because I forgot it got moved to Sundays and neglected to watch it yesterday (not that it matters that much though, being that next week will be the last episode). Interesting story, for the last two weeks they haven't actually looked into a conviction for exoneration purposes but another stage of a case, and this one was a suspected Muslim terrorist being held for 6 years without trial, because the govt classified him as an enemy of the state and thus could keep him detained indefinitely without a trial. Interestingly enough, the crim pro reading I just did was all about pre-trial detention, so I had an interesting perspective from which to view the case. It was a fascinating look into the different levels of the government and how they can clash, and just what power the higher ups have over just about everything that happens in the country. Of course he ends up being innocent and they manage to track down the real guy who was gonna attempt the terrorist attack (even though the FBI had been trying to do so for 6 years and totally failed) who *gasp* isn't Muslim but was instead a disgruntled occupy Wall Street protector. What do you think the chances are that he'll get designated an enemy of the state? Probably not likely. But it does bring up some interesting and complex questions about substantive due process and just when certain rights can be denied to certain people. Here the person was a citizen, so that doesn't bring in the much bigger issue of if the constitution and it's rights applies to all citizens, but is instead done in a smaller context which was probably a good call. It's definitely jarring to see that the government can absolutely do that and for it to be legal, and for it to go on for that long with seemingly nobody paying attention. It's just frightening, really. Anyway. I'm again sad this show is ending so soon, because it really had the potential to be something great, but will never be given the chance to find out. Sigh. After I finished that I once again had to find something to watch, so on a whim I started a series of unfortunate events because I've seen everyone going crazy over them recently so why not? I got through the first episode and a half, and it's.....interesting so far. I'm not quite sure what I really think of it at this point. The kid actors are good (yay for little Kara!) and Neil Patrick Harris is of course completely and totally unlikeable which I'm sure was the goal. It's still early obviously but there hasn't been a whole lot of actual story, it's mostly just been exposition at this point. Also, I think I'm a little miffed that they're somewhat making light of child abuse, particularly with Olaf hitting Klaus. I mean that's obviously an issue near and dear to my heart and I spend a lot of time involved in it, and I guess I'm just not sure it's appropriate for this kind of show. Like, yes I get that he's being totally awful to them because he's a villain and that's what he does, and abuse of course can take other forms than physical. I just think it might be taking things one step too far for a show that is largely still a comedy, you know? Because of the nature of the show it probably won't be dealt with with the sincerity it deserves and that can have a harmful normalizing effect on people who watch it and subconsciously get the impression it's not that serious. Idk, I'll still probably watch the show for another few episodes at least, but that kind of miffed me. I think I read one of the books once, I don't think it was really on my parent's list of approved reading (on the outs along with Harry Potter) but sometime when I was older I got my hands on a copy and read it in like an afternoon. But yeah, we'll see where it goes from here. And yeah, that's about it! I start back up at the office of the public guardian tomorrow, which I'm excited about if not a little nervous, just because my job will actually be different this semester and I'm probably gonna end up with a lot more responsibility. I was informed I've been assigned to calendar 10, which is one of the ones I did work for at DCFS so that could be interesting. And I think I'm going to be working under this cool guy that I like a lot, so I'm happy for that. We'll see how t it goes! Until then, sleep will be needed so I'll retire to that now. Goodnight babes. Sleep tight.