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northstar-academy · 1 year ago

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CMA USA Beginner Guide : 7 Golden Rules For Passing Exam

First And First, The Student Must Recognize That The CMA USA Is A Professional Exam That Must Be Treated With Seriousness And Importance In Order To Pass As A CMA USA Beginner. It�S A Professional Exam With Stringent Qualification Requirements. According To Recent Trends, The Global Passing Rate Is Only 45 Percent.

This Percentage Will Decrease With Time. The Passing Percentage Was Above 75% In Early 2004-2005, And To Maintain Demand For The Qualification, This Percentage Of Passing Was Managed, Just As Any Other Professional Body Like The ICAI, AICPA, And Others.

1. Make Sure YouRe Using The Proper USA CMA Course Materials

Education Is A Long-Term Investment Rather Than A One-Time Expense. The Money You Spend On Education Will Be Repaid To You Over Time As You Advance In Your Job.

Many Times, IVe Seen Students As CMA USA Beginners Take Shortcuts Such As Using A FriendS CMA USA Coaching Materials, Pirated Copies With Outdated Syllabuses, And So Forth.

All Of These Things Will Not Help You Pass The Exam. When Compared To An Organized Student Or Someone Who Has Spent Time In CMA USA Coaching In India, The Percentage Of Pupils Passing Using Such Shortcuts Is Relatively Low.

IVe Seen Students Using Four To Five Years Old Materials Without Recognizing That The Syllabus Has Changed Twice In The Last Four Years. Remember The Importance Of CMA USA Course Details In Your Preparation.

2.Make A Well-Thought-Out Strategy (A Decent Strategy Has A 50% Chance Of Succeeding)

Three Months Of Systematic Preparation Is Sufficient To Pass The Exam. Along With Your CMA USA Online Classes, You Should Set Aside Two To Three Hours Per Day For Tests, Plus A Little More Effort On Weekends.

I Usually Advise Students To Develop A Schedule Of Topics And Software To Study. Make An Elaborate Chart, For Example, To See At A Glance How Many Questions You Need To Cover From The Textbook And Software, Which Will Help You Identify The Volume To Cover And Arrange Your Daily Activities Accordingly.

DonT Worry If You Skip A Few Days Of Studying; Our CMA USA Guidance Will Help You Maintain The Necessary Momentum. Remember The Significance Of CMA USA Course Details In Creating A Successful Strategy.

3. Exam Preparation In A Step-By-Step Manner

While Preparing, The Following Steps Are Recommended.

I) Complete Topic-By-Topic Concepts From A Textbook/With The Help Of CMA USA Online Programs

Ii) Answer The Software Questions That Pertain To That Issue.

Iii) Once All Of The Concepts For A Given Segment Have Been Covered, Begin Conducting Condensed Mock Examinations (5 To 10 Mock Exams Are Preferred)

Iv) In India, The Majority Of CMA USA Coaching Replicates The Examinations A Few Days Before The Exams.

For Example, You Might Write Four-Hour Tests From Your Home Or University In The Same Time Zone As The Exam. One Or Two Simulated Exams Should Be Completed One Week Before The Actual Exam Date. Properly Understanding CMA USA Course Details Will Help You Navigate The Step-By-Step Exam Preparation Process.

4. Register For The Exam Ahead Of Time

It Is Usually A Good Idea To Register For Exams Ahead Of Time. This Is Beneficial In Two Ways.

I) You Will Be Given The Exam Dates Of Your Choice; Some Students Prefer To Take The Exam At The End Of The Window, And Registering Ahead Of Time Will Assist You In Doing So. If You Register Late, Prometric Exam Slots May Become Unavailable. Students Frequently Go To Various Cities Because They Are Unable To Secure Convenient Dates In Their Home City, Which May Have Been Prevented With Forward Planning.

Ii) Having A Firm Deadline Offers You The CMA USA Tutoring Pressure You Need To Prepare For The Exam And Helps You Stay On Track.

USA CMA Course: Explore The Path To Success When Considering The USA CMA Course, Gathering Comprehensive CMA USA Course Details Is Important To Make Informed Decisions About Your Journey.

5. Double-Check For Exam Readiness

Compared To The Exam Application Form, Students Frequently Have Issues With Changes In ID, Such As First Name, Last Name, And So On. Unfortunately, This Occurs Half An Hour Before The Exam, Causing Them To Become Extremely Worried.

Students Must Double-Check The Names On The Exam Application Via ID Card, And If Necessary, Reach Out To The Prometric Call Center A Few Days Before The Exam To Cross-Check So That There Are No Last-Minute Misunderstandings.

6. Precautions To Take During Exams As A CMA USA Beginner

I) Keep In Mind That You Only Have 180 Minutes For Multiple-Choice Questions, Which Equates To 1.8 Minutes For Each Question (Total 100 MCQs). This Implies You Should Not Devote Too Much Time To Any Question.

Ii) Make Sure You Start With Questions That Are In Your Area Of Expertise. For Example, You Can Mark The Question And Move On To The Next One, So If You Encounter A Question That You Are Uncomfortable With, Mark It And Go On. NorthStar Academy, A Premier Provider For CMA USA Coaching In India, Recommends That You Answer Questions From Your Strong Areas First, As This Will Boost Your Confidence And Help You Solve The Tougher And Time-Consuming Questions Later On.

7. Exam Success Requires A Healthy Mind

This Is A Critical Issue; You Must Understand That Every CMA USA Beginner Who Takes An Exam Is Under Pressure, And The Better You Handle The Strain, The More Likely You Are To Pass The Exam. Coaching For CMA USA Might Assist You In Dealing With Such Stress. A Pleasant And Tranquil Mindset Will Help You Do Better On The Exam.

Keep The Following In Mind CMA USA Beginner :

I) Make Sure You Get Adequate Sleep The Night Before The Exam.

Ii) What You Eat (Not Too Heavy), And What You Wear (Comfortable Not Very Tight) All Of This Should Be Considered During Your Exam Preparation And On The Day Of The Exam.

Conclusion

To Summarize, All It Needs Is Commitment To Properly Manage Your Employment And Studies At The Same Time. Once You've Done That, You'll Be Able To Take Advantage Of All 24 Hours Of Each Day And Reap The Rewards In The Short And Long Term.

NorthStar Academy Offers Various Certification Courses, Including For Those Who Are Interested In Pursuing The Certified Management Accountant Designation. Earn Your CMA Certification Online With NorthStar Academy.

#cma course #cma usa #certified management accountant #northstar academy

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fmohamed · 1 year ago

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#cma course #Certified Management Accountant #cma #cma part 1 #finance courses #HPA #High Performance Academy

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mostlysignssomeportents · 9 months ago

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Conspiratorialism and the epistemological crisis

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me next weekend (Mar 30/31) in ANAHEIM at WONDERCON, then in Boston with Randall "XKCD" Munroe! (Apr 11), then Providence (Apr 12), and beyond!

Last year, Ed Pierson was supposed to fly from Seattle to New Jersey on Alaska Airlines. He boarded his flight, but then he had an urgent discussion with the flight attendant, explaining that as a former senior Boeing engineer, he'd specifically requested that flight because the aircraft wasn't a 737 Max:

https://www.cnn.com/travel/boeing-737-max-passenger-boycott/index.html

But for operational reasons, Alaska had switched out the equipment on the flight and there he was on a 737 Max, about to travel cross-continent, and he didn't feel safe doing so. He demanded to be let off the flight. His bags were offloaded and he walked back up the jetbridge after telling the spooked flight attendant, "I can’t go into detail right now, but I wasn’t planning on flying the Max, and I want to get off the plane."

Boeing, of course, is a flying disaster that was years in the making. Its planes have been falling out of the sky since 2019. Floods of whistleblowers have come forward to say its aircraft are unsafe. Pierson's not the only Boeing employee to state – both on and off the record – that he wouldn't fly on a specific model of Boeing aircraft, or, in some cases any recent Boeing aircraft:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/22/anything-that-cant-go-on-forever/#will-eventually-stop

And yet, for years, Boeing's regulators have allowed the company to keep turning out planes that keep turning out lemons. This is a pretty frightening situation, to say the least. I'm not an aerospace engineer, I'm not an aircraft safety inspector, but every time I book a flight, I have to make a decision about whether to trust Boeing's assurances that I can safely board one of its planes without dying.

In an ideal world, I wouldn't even have to think about this. I'd be able to trust that publicly accountable regulators were on the job, making sure that airplanes were airworthy. "Caveat emptor" is no way to run a civilian aviation system.

But even though I don't have the specialized expertise needed to assess the airworthiness of Boeing planes, I do have the much more general expertise needed to assess the trustworthiness of Boeing's regulator. The FAA has spent years deferring to Boeing, allowing it to self-certify that its aircraft were safe. Even when these assurances led to the death of hundreds of people, the FAA continued to allow Boeing to mark its own homework:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8oCilY4szc

What's more, the FAA boss who presided over those hundreds of deaths was an ex-Boeing lobbyist, whom Trump subsequently appointed to run Boeing's oversight. He's not the only ex-insider who ended up a regulator, and there's plenty of ex-regulators now on Boeing's payroll:

https://therevolvingdoorproject.org/boeing-debacle-shows-need-to-investigate-trump-era-corruption/

You don't have to be an aviation expert to understand that companies have conflicts of interest when it comes to certifying their own products. "Market forces" aren't going to keep Boeing from shipping defective products, because the company's top brass are more worried about cashing out with this quarter's massive stock buybacks than they are about their successors' ability to manage the PR storm or Congressional hearings after their greed kills hundreds and hundreds of people.

You also don't have to be an aviation expert to understand that these conflicts persist even when a Boeing insider leaves the company to work for its regulators, or vice-versa. A regulator who anticipates a giant signing bonus from Boeing after their term in office, or a an ex-Boeing exec who holds millions in Boeing stock has an irreconcilable conflict of interest that will make it very hard – perhaps impossible – for them to hold the company to account when it trades safety for profit.

It's not just Boeing customers who feel justifiably anxious about trusting a system with such obvious conflicts of interest: Boeing's own executives, lobbyists and lawyers also refuse to participate in similarly flawed systems of oversight and conflict resolution. If Boeing was sued by its shareholders and the judge was also a pissed off Boeing shareholder, they would demand a recusal. If Boeing was looking for outside counsel to represent it in a liability suit brought by the family of one of its murder victims, they wouldn't hire the firm that was suing them – not even if that firm promised to be fair. If a Boeing executive's spouse sued for divorce, that exec wouldn't use the same lawyer as their soon-to-be-ex.

Sure, it takes specialized knowledge and training to be a lawyer, a judge, or an aircraft safety inspector. But anyone can look at the system those experts work in and spot its glaring defects. In other words, while acquiring expertise is hard, it's much easier to spot weaknesses in the process by which that expertise affects the world around us.

And therein lies the problem: aviation isn't the only technically complex, potentially lethal, and utterly, obviously untrustworthy system we all have to navigate. How about the building safety codes that governed the structure you're in right now? Plenty of people have blithely assumed that structural engineers carefully designed those standards, and that these standards were diligently upheld, only to discover in tragic, ghastly ways that this was wrong:

https://www.bbc.com/news/64568826

There are dozens – hundreds! – of life-or-death, highly technical questions you have to resolve every day just to survive. Should you trust the antilock braking firmware in your car? How about the food hygiene rules in the factories that produced the food in your shopping cart? Or the kitchen that made the pizza that was just delivered? Is your kid's school teaching them well, or will they grow up to be ignoramuses and thus economic roadkill?

Hell, even if I never get into another Boeing aircraft, I live in the approach path for Burbank airport, where Southwest lands 50+ Boeing flights every day. How can I be sure that the next Boeing 737 Max that falls out of the sky won't land on my roof?

This is the epistemological crisis we're living through today. Epistemology is the process by which we know things. The whole point of a transparent, democratically accountable process for expert technical deliberation is to resolve the epistemological challenge of making good choices about all of these life-or-death questions. Even the smartest person among us can't learn to evaluate all those questions, but we can all look at the process by which these questions are answered and draw conclusions about its soundness.

Is the process public? Are the people in charge of it forthright? Do they have conflicts of interest, and, if so, do they sit out any decision that gives even the appearance of impropriety? If new evidence comes to light – like, say, a horrific disaster – is there a way to re-open the process and change the rules?

The actual technical details might be a black box for us, opaque and indecipherable. But the box itself can be easily observed: is it made of sturdy material? Does it have sharp corners and clean lines? Or is it flimsy, irregular and torn? We don't have to know anything about the box's contents to conclude that we don't trust the box.

For example: we may not be experts in chemical engineering or water safety, but we can tell when a regulator is on the ball on these issues. Back in 2019, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection sought comment on its water safety regs. Dow Chemical – the largest corporation in the state's largest industry – filed comments arguing that WV should have lower standards for chemical contamination in its drinking water.

Now, I'm perfectly prepared to believe that there are safe levels of chemical runoff in the water supply. There's a lot of water in the water supply, after all, and "the dose makes the poison." What's more, I use the products whose manufacture results in that chemical waste. I want them to be made safely, but I do want them to be made – for one thing, the next time I have surgery, I want the anesthesiologist to start an IV with fresh, sterile plastic tubing.

And I'm not a chemist, let alone a water chemist. Neither am I a toxicologist. There are aspects of this debate I am totally unqualified to assess. Nevertheless, I think the WV process was a bad one, and here's why:

https://www.wvma.com/press/wvma-news/4244-wvma-statement-on-human-health-criteria-development

That's Dow's comment to the regulator (as proffered by its mouthpiece, the WV Manufacturers' Association, which it dominates). In that comment, Dow argues that West Virginians safely can absorb more poison than other Americans, because the people of West Virginia are fatter than other Americans, and so they have more tissue and thus a better ratio of poison to person than the typical American. But they don't stop there! They also say that West Virginians don't drink as much water as their out-of-state cousins, preferring to drink beer instead, so even if their water is more toxic, they'll be drinking less of it:

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/03/14/the-real-elitists-looking-down-on-trump-voters/

Even without any expertise in toxicology or water chemistry, I can tell that these are bullshit answers. The fact that the WV regulator accepted these comments tells me that they're not a good regulator. I was in WV last year to give a talk, and I didn't drink the tap water.

It's totally reasonable for non-experts to reject the conclusions of experts when the process by which those experts resolve their disagreements is obviously corrupt and irredeemably flawed. But some refusals carry higher costs – both for the refuseniks and the people around them – than my switching to bottled water when I was in Charleston.

Take vaccine denial (or "hesitancy"). Many people greeted the advent of an extremely rapid, high-tech covid vaccine with dread and mistrust. They argued that the pharma industry was dominated by corrupt, greedy corporations that routinely put their profits ahead of the public's safety, and that regulators, in Big Pharma's pocket, let them get away with mass murder.

The thing is, all that is true. Look, I've had five covid vaccinations, but not because I trust the pharma industry. I've had direct experience of how pharma sacrifices safety on greed's altar, and narrowly avoided harm myself. I have had chronic pain problems my whole life, and they've gotten worse every year. When my daughter was on the way, I decided this was going to get in the way of my ability to parent – I wanted to be able to carry her for long stretches! – and so I started aggressively pursuing the pain treatments I'd given up on many years before.

My journey led me to many specialists – physios, dieticians, rehab specialists, neurologists, surgeons – and I tried many, many therapies. Luckily, my wife had private insurance – we were in the UK then – and I could go to just about any doctor that seemed promising. That's how I found myself in the offices of a Harley Street quack, a prominent pain specialist, who had great news for me: it turned out that opioids were way safer than had previously been thought, and I could just take opioids every day and night for the rest of my life without any serious risk of addiction. It would be fine.

This sounded wrong to me. I'd lost several friends to overdoses, and watched others spiral into miserable lives as they struggled with addiction. So I "did my own research." Despite not having a background in chemistry, biology, neurology or pharmacology, I struggled through papers and read commentary and came to the conclusion that opioids weren't safe at all. Rather, corrupt billionaire pharma owners like the Sackler family had colluded with their regulators to risk the lives of millions by pushing falsified research that was finding publication in some of the most respected, peer-reviewed journals in the world.

I became an opioid denier, in other words.

I decided, based on my own research, that the experts were wrong, and that they were wrong for corrupt reasons, and that I couldn't trust their advice.

When anti-vaxxers decried the covid vaccines, they said things that were – in form at least – indistinguishable from the things I'd been saying 15 years earlier, when I decided to ignore my doctor's advice and throw away my medication on the grounds that it would probably harm me.

For me, faith in vaccines didn't come from a broad, newfound trust in the pharmaceutical system: rather, I judged that there was so much scrutiny on these new medications that it would overwhelm even pharma's ability to corruptly continue to sell a medication that they secretly knew to be harmful, as they'd done so many times before:

https://www.npr.org/2007/11/10/5470430/timeline-the-rise-and-fall-of-vioxx

But many of my peers had a different take on anti-vaxxers: for these friends and colleagues, anti-vaxxers were being foolish. Surprisingly, these people I'd long felt myself in broad agreement with began to defend the pharmaceutical system and its regulators. Once they saw that anti-vaxx was a wedge issue championed by right-wing culture war shitheads, they became not just pro-vaccine, but pro-pharma.

There's a name for this phenomenon: "schismogenesis." That's when you decide how you feel about an issue based on who supports it. Think of self-described "progressives" who became cheerleaders for the America's cruel, ruthless and lawless "intelligence community" when it seemed that US spooks were bent on Trump's ouster:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/18/schizmogenesis/

The fact that the FBI didn't like Trump didn't make them allies of progressive causes. This was and is the same entity that (among other things) tried to blackmail Martin Luther King, Jr into killing himself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter

But schismogenesis isn't merely a reactionary way of flip-flopping on issues based on reflexive enmity. It's actually a reasonable epistemological tactic: in a world where there are more issues you need to be clear on than you can possibly inform yourself about, you need some shortcuts. One shortcut – a shortcut that's failing – is to say, "Well, I'll provisionally believe whatever the expert system tells me is true." Another shortcut is, "I will provisionally disbelieve in whatever the people I know to act in bad faith are saying is true." That is, "schismogenesis."

Schismogenesis isn't a great tactic. It would be far better if we had a set of institutions we could all largely trust – if the black boxes where expert debate took place were sturdy, rectilinear and sharp-cornered.

But they're not. They're just not. Our regulatory process sucks. Corporate concentration makes it trivial for cartels to capture their regulators and steer them to conclusions that benefit corporate shareholders even if that means visiting enormous harm – even mass death – on the public:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

No one hates Big Tech more than I do, but many of my co-belligerents in the war on Big Tech believe that the rise of conspiratorialism can be laid at tech platforms' feet. They say that Big Tech boasts of how good they are at algorithmically manipulating our beliefs, and attribute Qanons, flat earthers, and other outlandish conspiratorial cults to the misuse off those algorithms.

"We built a Big Data mind-control ray" is one of those extraordinary claims that requires extraordinary evidence. But the evidence for Big Tech's persuasion machines is very poor: mostly, it consists of tech platforms' own boasts to potential investors and customers for their advertising products. "We can change peoples' minds" has long been the boast of advertising companies, and it's clear that they can change the minds of customers for advertising.

Think of department store mogul John Wanamaker, who famously said "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." Today – thanks to commercial surveillance – we know that the true proportion of wasted advertising spending is more like 99.9%. Advertising agencies may be really good at convincing John Wanamaker and his successors, through prolonged, personal, intense selling – but that doesn't mean they're able to sell so efficiently to the rest of us with mass banner ads or spambots:

http://pluralistic.net/HowToDestroySurveillanceCapitalism

In other words, the fact that Facebook claims it is really good at persuasion doesn't mean that it's true. Just like the AI companies who claim their chatbots can do your job: they are much better at convincing your boss (who is insatiably horny for firing workers) than they are at actually producing an algorithm that can replace you. What's more, their profitability relies far more on convincing a rich, credulous business executive that their product works than it does on actually delivering a working product.

Now, I do think that Facebook and other tech giants play an important role in the rise of conspiratorial beliefs. However, that role isn't using algorithms to persuade people to mistrust our institutions. Rather Big Tech – like other corporate cartels – has so corrupted our regulatory system that they make trusting our institutions irrational.

Think of federal privacy law. The last time the US got a new federal consumer privacy law was in 1988, when Congress passed the Video Privacy Protection Act, a law that prohibits video store clerks from leaking your VHS rental history:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/07/why-vppa-protects-youtube-and-viacom-employees

It's been a minute. There are very obvious privacy concerns haunting Americans, related to those tech giants, and yet the closest Congress can come to doing something about it is to attempt the forced sale of the sole Chinese tech giant with a US footprint to a US company, to ensure that its rampant privacy violations are conducted by our fellow Americans, and to force Chinese spies to buy their surveillance data on millions of Americans in the lawless, reckless swamp of US data-brokerages:

https://www.npr.org/2024/03/14/1238435508/tiktok-ban-bill-congress-china

For millions of Americans – especially younger Americans – the failure to pass (or even introduce!) a federal privacy law proves that our institutions can't be trusted. They're right:

https://www.tiktok.com/@pearlmania500/video/7345961470548512043

Occam's Razor cautions us to seek the simplest explanation for the phenomena we see in the world around us. There's a much simpler explanation for why people believe conspiracy theories they encounter online than the idea that the one time Facebook is telling the truth is when they're boasting about how well their products work – especially given the undeniable fact that everyone else who ever claimed to have perfected mind-control was a fantasist or a liar, from Rasputin to MK-ULTRA to pick-up artists.

Maybe people believe in conspiracy theories because they have hundreds of life-or-death decisions to make every day, and the institutions that are supposed to make that possible keep proving that they can't be trusted. Nevertheless, those decisions have to be made, and so something needs to fill the epistemological void left by the manifest unsoundness of the black box where the decisions get made.

For many people – millions – the thing that fills the black box is conspiracy fantasies. It's true that tech makes finding these conspiracy fantasies easier than ever, and it's true that tech makes forming communities of conspiratorial belief easier, too. But the vulnerability to conspiratorialism that algorithms identify and target people based on isn't a function of Big Data. It's a function of corruption – of life in a world in which real conspiracies (to steal your wages, or let rich people escape the consequences of their crimes, or sacrifice your safety to protect large firms' profits) are everywhere.

Progressives – which is to say, the coalition of liberals and leftists, in which liberals are the senior partners and spokespeople who control the Overton Window – used to identify and decry these conspiracies. But as right wing "populists" declared their opposition to these conspiracies – when Trump damned free trade and the mainstream media as tools of the ruling class – progressives leaned into schismogenesis and declared their vocal support for these old enemies of progress.

This is the crux of Naomi Klein's brilliant 2023 book Doppelganger: that as the progressive coalition started supporting these unworthy and broken institutions, the right spun up "mirror world" versions of their critique, distorted versions that focus on scapegoating vulnerable groups rather than fighting unworthy institutions:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

This is a long tradition in politics: hundreds of years ago, some leftists branded antisemitism "the socialism of fools." Rather than condemning the system's embrace of the finance sector and its wealthy beneficiaries, anti-semites blame a disfavored group of people – people who are just as likely as anyone to suffer under the system:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_is_the_socialism_of_fools

It's an ugly, shallow, cartoon version of socialism's measured and comprehensive analysis of how the class system actually works and why it's so harmful to everyone except a tiny elite. Literally cartoonish: the shadow-world version of socialism co-opts and simplifies the iconography of class struggle. And schismogenesis – "if the right likes this, I don't" – sends "progressive" scolds after anyone who dares to criticize finance as the crux of our world's problems as popularizing "antisemetic dog-whistles."

This is the problem with "horseshoe theory" – the idea that the far right and the far left bend all the way around to meet each other:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/26/horsehoe-crab/#substantive-disagreement

When the right criticizes pharma companies, they tell us to "do our own research" (e.g. ignore the systemic problems of people being forced to work under dangerous conditions during a pandemic while individually assessing conflicting claims about vaccine safety, ideally landing on buying "supplements" from a grifter). When the left criticizes pharma, it's to argue for universal access to medicine and vigorous public oversight of pharma companies. These aren't the same thing:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/25/the-other-shoe-drops/#quid-pro-quo

Long before opportunistic right wing politicians realized they could get mileage out of pointing at the terrifying epistemological crisis of trying to make good choices in an age of institutions that can't be trusted, the left was sounding the alarm. Conspiratorialism – the fracturing of our shared reality – is a serious problem, weakening our ability to respond effectively to endless disasters of the polycrisis.

But by blaming the problem of conspiratorialism on the credulity of believers (rather than the deserved disrepute of the institutions they have lost faith in) we adopt the logic of the right: "conspiratorialism is a problem of individuals believing wrong things," rather than "a system that makes wrong explanations credible – and a schismogenic insistence that these institutions are sound and trustworthy."

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/25/black-boxes/#when-you-know-you-know

Image: Nuclear Regulatory Commission (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/nrcgov/15993154185/

meanwell-packaging.co.uk https://www.flickr.com/photos/195311218@N08/52159853896

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

#pluralistic #conspiratorialism #epistemology #epistemological crisis #mind control rays #opioid denial #vaccine denial #regulatory capture #boeing #corruption #inequality #monopoly #apple #dma #eu

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halfwayunder · 1 year ago

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𝐒𝐡𝐚𝐦𝐞

Summary: Some old tweets come out and it puts you between a rock and a hard place.

Warning: Internalized Homophobia

Word Count: 2.6k

Arsenal Training Centre, St. Albans

///

You could sense the tension in the air before you'd even stepped through the doors.

...

The past few days had made you a bit of a nervous wreck. The result of some Sam Kerr fan account on Instagram posting a collection of old tweets you'd made nine years ago, back when you were 13.

Old, profoundly homophobic tweets.

And while some fans, mostly those already partial to you, had taken that substantial amount of time and your youth into account, many others had not. Instead, they hurled abuse alongside calls for the club to drop you at the earliest possible opportunity. You'd even tried disabling comments on your most recent social media posts before quickly realizing that the comments would simply move to older ones. Despite how bad some of them had become, you still found yourself not quite willing to disable the comments on every post you had ever made.

It was your own fault anyway. You had been signed by Arsenal a few months ago, having spent the years before that going from one mediocre team to the next until your international performance in Australia had seemingly caught the attention of several larger clubs, the Gunners included. You'd been positively over the moon when your management agency had called to give you the good news. It should have been your big break, and for a period of time, it was, but a position in such a prestigious club came with a level of increased publicity that you hadn't been fully prepared for.

You knew that you should have purged your Twitter before the contract had even been made public, but you'd long forgotten about those posts, those awful comments, and bigoted 'jokes' that your massively insecure thirteen-year-old self had felt the need to put out into the world to try and convince everyone that you were certifiably straight. To convince yourself in some deluded way that you did not frequently lose sleep over the increasingly intrusive and borderline distressing thoughts that plagued you every time you were around some of your friends at school and the teammates at your youth football academy.

Those thoughts just hadn't been you, of course. Because you were straight.

Or, at least that's what thirteen-year-old you had wanted to think at the time.

In the teenage years that followed those tweets, you had eventually been able to come to terms with your sexuality. It had been a slow, long, and painfully drawn-out process, but while the influence of your conservative family had worked to reinforce the close-minded worldview you had been raised with, being around so many openly gay women in your football career had ultimately proven to be a much stronger force in your life. To see that contrary to what you had been told, these supposedly evil and degenerate people were in fact perfectly ordinary and typically far kinder than the 'just' and 'moral' types you had been surrounded by in your childhood.

But, while you had gradually been deprogrammed from the more outwardly hostile and bigoted elements of how you'd been brought up, you had never quite gotten around to being proud of who you were, to being able to let yourself embrace what you felt and to let yourself be happy. Even today, all these years later, you still struggled to imagine yourself feeling the warmth of another woman, a woman you could love as more than just a friend, and a woman who you could feel comfortable telling the world about.

So, you had simply tried to ignore your feelings. Even as you went from teenager to adult and semi-professional to professional, you resigned yourself to a world in which love was an impossibility, where every teasing question from a friend about your romantic endeavors was expertly deflected with a non-committal answer and a change of topic.

You had learned to be happy for the women in your life who were openly gay and celebrated their relationships sincerely like a good friend would, but you could never deny yourself the reality that every time a close friend announced their new partner, you would feel a twinge of remorse, pain that was sourced from fleeting, quickly suppressed thoughts of a life not lived, an opportunity not taken, and a romance denied its potential. It was a sad way to live, but as sad as it was, the thought of telling the world that you were gay was even worse. It had always been worse.

...

And so now, as the sliding doors of the training centre's lobby parted, you found it a difficult task to keep your nerves from becoming overwhelming.

Management had already spoken to you about the tweets and the response on social media to them. Fortunately, no proper news outlet had put out an article on the 'situation' yet, but the club's PR people had seemed pretty nervous that eventually, one of them would. You'd told them that you hadchanged since you were thirteen and that you'd be more than willing to put out an apology. But, ultimately, their advice had been for you to simply stay quiet and hope it all went away on its own. Something that you had been less than thrilled to hear, as if you were ever confronted by a scenario in which it didn't just go away on its own, and eventually you were told to put out an apology, it would likely be too late by the time that you did.

"Morning, Y/N." you were taken away from your thoughts by the young woman at the front desk, Catherine. She was smiling, but you could tell it was a bit of a sympathetic smile, like the woman was trying to show that she was on your side. You appreciated the sentiment, of course, but being treated differently at all because of this was only making your nerves worse.

"Heya." you tried to greet back casually with a smile of your own, and despite your best efforts, it came across as an 'I know' type of smile, a visual confirmation that you acknowledged what had been happening on the Internet these past few days, and her small attempt to make you feel better.

You had almost passed her, ready to head deeper into the large facility when you abruptly stopped and asked, "Any of the other girls here before me?" To which the shorter woman behind the desk nodded, her demeanour steady in its sympathy towards you, knowing why you would be asking. After all, you were on a team with two gay relationships within it, let alone the number of players who just swung that way in general. And aside from the occasional joke or tease (the latter of which often hurt you to an extent that none of your new friends could possibly know), you were pretty certain that none of them actually thought you were a part of that category.

None of the girls had messaged you in the past twenty-four hours, which, while a little uncommon, wasn't an immediate tell that you had been made a pariah. The last message you'd gotten had been from Steph asking if you were available for a coffee date on Saturday, and that had been just over a day ago. Late enough to have been after that stupid account had posted those screenshots, but early enough to have been before many people knew about it.

Fuck, this was really getting to you.

You continued your way down the corridors of the training centre, each heartbeat feeling a little heavier than the last as you drew closer to the locker room. Knowing that at least a few of the girls would be there this early in the morning, getting changed or having a shower or just socializing as they waited for others to arrive. You wondered if they were talking about you, and if they were, what they were saying. You were wondering if they had already agreed to shun you, or even speak to Jonas about getting rid of you. Fuck, this was fucking getting to you.

You gripped the handle of the bag slung over your shoulder a little tighter as you approached the locker room and took a breath before opening the door, a hundred different scenarios having crossed your mind from the time you'd left the lobby to now.

Stepping into the locker room, the atmosphere was a stark contrast to what you had braced yourself for. It was business as usual—some of the girls were chatting casually, others were prepping their gear. For a fleeting moment, you allowed yourself the hope that perhaps they hadn't seen those tweets or had chosen to ignore them.

But as you made your way to your locker, you could feel eyes on you. Some were quick glances, laced with uncertainty or curiosity, while others held longer, more contemplative stares. No one said anything directly, but the air was thick with unspoken questions and possible conclusions. It was hard to tell.

You kept your head down, focusing on getting ready. The sound of your locker door clanging shut seemed to echo louder than usual, and as you changed into your training gear, you pondered over your next steps. Ignoring the issue didn't feel right, but neither did addressing it without a plan.

"Hey," just then, your attention was taken by the sound of a voice that you quickly recognized as Katie's, her Dublin twang thick as always. The defender's expression was hard to read as she approached, and she sat down next to you, continuing after you replied, "Morning." Your voice was small, and your throat tightened a little, Katie was one of the closer friends you'd made in your somewhat limited time at the club, and her opinion mattered to you.

"Listen, I heard about the tweets," she started, and while you braced yourself for what might come next, you couldn't help but notice her tone being somewhat gentler than you'd expected, but still straightforward. "And, I wanted to say..." she continued, and you felt your heart beat a little bit faster. But, then she stopped, if only for a few seconds, and frowned slightly, though seemingly more to herself than to you. She looked like she was thinking about something, something about you, perhaps.

"Well, I don't know what I wanted to say exactly... but I'm here if you want to talk, or if you need anything, really."

Wait.

What?

You must have had a look on your face because the Irishwoman spoke up again. "Like, if you have anything you wanna get off your chest. I'm here for you, all of the girls are." She remained gentle, but you could tell that heart-to-hearts weren't exactly Katie's style (not that this surprised you) from the way she looked a little awkward, but her sincerity remained all the same.

Breathing just the slightest bit faster, it took you another second or two before you replied, "A lot of the girls?" One of your brows lifting curiously. Was... she implying what you were beginning to think she was implying?

Did Katie know think you were gay?

"Yeah. We care about ya, dummy. And unless you really are some horrible bigot, nothing you say is gonna change that." Katie smiled at that remark and you couldn't help but reflect her, shaking your head lightly in response. "I'm not," you confirmed, your eyes connecting with Katie's. "I was just... different then... I was—" You went to continue, but cut yourself off, your breath almost hitching as you caught yourself at the last moment from finishing that sentence.

I was afraid.

You could virtually see the defender's gaze softening on you in real time and you couldn't bear the sight of it anymore, glancing away and turning your attention to your shoes. The locker room around the pair of you was beginning to fade into the backdrop, although you got the feeling that it hadn't just been Katie's eyes on you. Even as you observed the details of your trainers, you could practically feel the woman next to you's gaze wandering off every few moments to the others in the room, maybe looking for assistance, or trying to convey her unspoken suspicion.

"You were what?" You heard, and this time it wasn't Katie who spoke. It was Beth, who was standing a short distance away by her own cubby. Immediately proving that your heart-to-heart with Arsenal's number 15 hadn't been quite so exclusive, and the locker room's sudden silence ironically brought it right back to the forefront of your attention. Everyone was listening, and many of them staring as well. Was this what they had been talking about before you'd shown up? Had they been in here putting together dots you hadn't known existed? A longing gaze you hadn't suppressed or one too many comments about the eyes or legs of another woman that you'd thought would simply slip under the radar as casual observation? Were those tweets the final confirmation they needed?

Was this the supposed 'gaydar' you had heard about?

"Nothing." you retorted swiftly, shaking your head again as you reached into your locker to resume getting dressed. You hadn't really paid attention to the fact you'd stopped when Katie had come over to talk to you, but the girls didn't seem intent on letting this moment slip away, and you could see Beth approach from your peripheral vision even as you tried to focus on getting changed. You were beginning to almost feel trapped, though you were certain that the culprit behind that particular feeling was more likely to be yourself than your teammates.

"Y/N, we're your friends." Beth said, kneeling down to eye level, while Katie still sat beside you, staring into the side of your head with an expression that was unusually gentle and almost unnervingly so. You still couldn't look at her without feeling your throat close up.

"Trust me... none of us are going to react like how that silly little brain of yours thinks we might." she continued softly and with a warm smile, and now you knew. You knew that they knew.

Your head tilted slightly up to look at Beth, who was now squatted a small distance from you, hands clasped together and blue eyes looking right into your own. You could still sense the looks of the other girls on you too, only now you didn't feel that they were judging, far from it actually. Your leg bounced up and down nervously, and you didn't even have it in you to try to stop it. You felt like you wanted to cry. Why was this so hard? Even now, when it was clear that everyone in the room knew. You just couldn't say it.

Your eyes started to glisten as the first tears threatened to push their way out, and you gave Beth a small, sad smile. Your throat began to hurt in the way that only a sob—or an imminent one—could provoke.

"I think you know already." you finally managed to get out, your voice as small as your presence in that room, and Beth only nodded. You could see some of the other girls nod too, but you were distracted by the feeling of Katie's hand taking your own and clutching it safely. A breath escaped you and it was shaky, uncertain, afraid.

"Yeah, I think we do, pet." the forward replied, closing the gap between you and pulling you in for a hug, her arms finding themselves at home wrapped around your torso. It was as if she'd given you permission to cry, the tears finally beginning to flow, as you buried your head into the other woman's shoulder, quietly sobbing into the fabric of her Arsenal jacket. Katie's hand tightened around your own, and you heard the sound of cleats and shoes closing in around you. You weren't sure how you were going to deal with this new reality moving forward, this world in which people other than yourself knew of your sexuality, but at least you wouldn't be alone.

///

End Notes: Hope you liked this one, guys! I promise not all of my fics will be angsty! I'm also in the process of writing an OC for a self-contained multi-part storyline. But, with how busy I've been with uni, who knows whether I'll actually finish it or not. Thanks for reading!

#woso #awfc #woso community #woso x reader #woso imagine #woso fanfics #arsenal women #arsenal wfc #katie mccabe #beth mead #arsenal wfc x reader

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ducktoo · 3 months ago

Text

Syncing Dream [Aespa x M!Reader]

9. Reveluv

Note: hold on, you’re reading the right series. Just enjoy lol

Masterlist here

The buzz of excitement had been building for weeks. Aespa’s highly anticipated collaboration with Red Velvet was finally here, and it seemed like the entire company was on edge with excitement. But none more so than Y/n, who was—by all accounts—a certified Reveluv. He had tried to keep his enthusiasm under wraps, of course, but anyone who worked closely with him knew that his particular bias for Seulgi was impossible to hide.

As Aespa prepared for their big day, Y/n could feel the familiar nerves creeping in. Not because of the responsibility of organising such a large-scale collaboration, but because he knew he’d be in close proximity to Red Velvet’s Seulgi—the one and only.

“Y/n, you’re looking unusually peppy today,” Giselle teased, noticing his attempt to hide his excitement as they got ready in the studio.

“What? No, this is just my normal face,” Y/n mumbled, fidgeting with a clipboard.

“Uh-huh,” Ningning drawled, smirking. “Your ‘normal’ face that happens to glow whenever we mention Seulgi-unnie?”

Y/n’s ears turned red, but he didn’t have a comeback ready. He was too busy mentally preparing himself for what was about to happen: hours of rehearsals, and meetings, and potentially humiliating fanboy moments. Great.

Despite trained there at the same time as Winter, he actually never meet Red Velvet. He only became a fan when he left for a while.

So for today, he is both a manager and a Reveluv.

As the door opened and Red Velvet stepped into the studio, Y/n’s heart leaped into his throat. He could feel the energy shift as Aespa greeted their seniors with deep bows and warm smiles. Karina and Winter exchanged polite words with Irene and Joy, while Ningning and Giselle bonded instantly with Wendy and Yeri.

"Oh, Y/n-ah!" Minji, their manager, greeted him excitedly. "Finally, my first junior is working with me."

"Hi, noona. I'm excited as well." Y/n bowed. Suddenly, Minji scooted both of them into the side.

"Have fun gawking over our Seul." Minji smirked. "The girls bailed out on you for comedic relief."

"Of course they do…" Y/n muttered.

"Anyway…have fun!" Minji exclaimed before turning over to the girls. "Seulgi-ya! Can you come here please?"

"Ok!"

And then, there she was—Seulgi.

Y/n had met idols before. He had spent countless hours with Aespa and other artists, coordinating schedules, handling logistics, and ensuring everything ran smoothly. But this was different. Seulgi was, well... Seulgi.

"Seulgi, this is-"

“Y/n, right?” Seulgi smiled as she approached him, her voice as warm and friendly as he’d always imagined. "I heard from Minjeong about her hardworking best friend."

Y/n blinked, his brain short-circuiting. “Y-Yeah! I mean, yes, that’s me. I’m Y/n. Manager of Aespa. Yep, that’s who I am.”

The girls of Aespa exchanged knowing looks, barely suppressing their giggles at Y/n’s obvious awkwardness. He tried to keep his cool, reminding himself that he had a job to do. But internally, he was screaming.

Seulgi just smiled wider, clearly amused by his reaction. “Well, it’s nice to meet you officially. We’re really excited about this collaboration with our junior.”

“I-I’m excited too! Really, really excited,” Y/n blurted out before clearing his throat, hoping to regain some semblance of professionalism. “I mean, on behalf of Aespa, we’re all really looking forward to this.”

Seulgi chuckled softly before heading over to join her members, leaving Y/n standing there, frozen in place.

Trying to focus on logistics when Seulgi was right there was proving to be difficult. Every time Y/n glanced in her direction, his heart would skip a beat, and it didn’t help that Aespa, particularly Ningning and Giselle, seemed to be enjoying his internal struggle way too much.

“Idiot, are you okay?” Winter asked, feigning concern as she watched him fumble with the equipment setup.

“I’m fine, Jeong” Y/n muttered, clearly not fine. “Just, uh, making sure everything’s perfect for... you know... the performance.”

Karina smirked. “For the performance? Or for Seulgi-unnie?”

Y/n shot her a withering look, but the effect was lost when he nearly dropped his clipboard. Giselle and Ningning couldn’t hold back their laughter anymore, while Winter just shook her head, clearly enjoying his suffering.

"Stuff you all."

As the rehearsals went on, things only got worse. At one point, Y/n found himself standing too close to Seulgi during a break, and he nearly knocked over a mic stand trying to back away gracefully. Seulgi just laughed it off, but Y/n could feel his face burning.

At the end of the day, though, everything came together beautifully. The chemistry between Aespa and Red Velvet was electric, and the joint practice was nothing short of magical. Y/n had been so focused on keeping everything running smoothly that he had barely processed how incredible it all looked until he saw it from backstage. Watching both groups in perfect harmony, dancing and singing together, was a dream come true—not just for fans, but for him personally.

As the performance ended, Y/n stood in awe, his heart swelling with pride. Both groups had nailed it, and the crowd’s reaction was proof of that.

The after-dinner was a blur of get together and shared excitement. Both Aespa and Red Velvet were in high spirits, celebrating their bonds with food and laughter. Y/n, still riding the high from the practice, was doing his best to keep his cool, but the occasional glance at Seulgi kept his fanboy tendencies in check.

Ningning, however, wasn’t about to let him off that easily. “So, Y/n,” she started with a sly grin, “I saw Seulgi-unnie looking your way during practice. You should totally ask for a picture.”

Y/n blinked, caught off guard. “What? No, I can’t just... I mean… Ya Ning, it's mean to give me high hopes.”

“She’s right,” Karina chimed in, her eyes twinkling with mischief. “It’s your chance. You’ve been a fan for years, right?”

“Yeah, and we can all tell,” Giselle teased. “You’ve been holding it together pretty well today, but come on—don’t miss this.”

Before Y/n could protest, he found himself being nudged forward by the girls, his feet carrying him toward Seulgi before his brain could catch up. His heart pounded in his chest as he approached her, still unsure of what he was going to say.

“Seulgi-sunbaenim,” he started, his voice a little shaky.

She turned to him with that same warm smile, and Y/n felt his nerves melt away—just a little. “Yes, Y/n?”

“I-I was wondering,” he stammered, “if it’d be okay to take a picture with you. Just... you know, for the memories.”

Seulgi’s smile widened, and without hesitation, she agreed. “Of course! Let’s take one.”

Y/n could hardly believe it as they stood together, smiling for the camera. The girls, watching from the sidelines, couldn’t contain their giggles, knowing how much this moment meant to him.

Afterward, Y/n stared at the picture on his phone, barely able to process what had just happened. It wasn’t just a photo—it was a treasured memory, one that he knew he’d look back on for years.

The night continued with more laughter and celebration. Red Velvet and Aespa were mingling, the two groups bonding over their shared experience and the success of their collaboration.

At some point, Y/n found himself sitting with both groups, listening to the girls talk about their favourite moments from practice. The atmosphere was relaxed, the tension of rehearsals and preparation long gone.

Seulgi, sitting nearby, caught his eye and gave him a knowing smile. “You did great today, Y/n. It’s not easy organising something like this, but everything turned out perfect.”

Y/n, still reeling from his fanboy moment, could only nod. “Thank you, Seulgi-sunbaenim. It was... an honour.”

"Ayy, call me Seulgi-noona, now. We're way past acquaintance at this point."

"Ah ok…Seulgi-noona.."

"…Ya Seulgi, you broke him." Minji joked.

"Unnie, you're so mean." Winter followed suit.

As the evening came to a close, Y/n found himself quietly reflecting on the day (after finally coming into his sense). It had been a whirlwind of excitement and nerves, but in the end, everything had come together in ways he never expected.

He smiled to himself, the photo of him and Seulgi saved on his phone like a cherished trophy. Today had been a dream come true—and he knew that, no matter how many more events he organised in the future, this collaboration would always hold a special place in his heart.

…Of course, it doesn’t top the first picture of him and Winter smiling together when they first joined SM.

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magics-neptunes-things · 11 months ago

Text

I wish I was here

Hi guys!

This is a new Luna's story. I got the idea during the awards evening by seeing the different comments under the photos posted by the official accounts. It tires me to see people shouting at the separation as soon as Lucy is less than a meter from Keira so I dare not imagine what can think Lucy and Ona x)

Also I don't know if Coco is a boy or a girl, sorry if I misgender this poor dog?

Enjoy!

TW : Angst

______________________________________________________________

Staying in Barcelona while her girlfriend participates in one of the most prestigious ceremonies for women’s football is no doubt a bit frustrating, but Ona try to look not upset when it was time to say goodbye to Lucy before she leaves for the airport. With their relationship still not officially confirmed by anyone, it was in Lucy’s apartment that the two young women said goodbye. As Keira is also on the trip, Ona must guard Narla, the dog that Keira and Lucy took together, in addition to her own dog Coco. Fortunately, the two dogs get along wonderfully and had the time of their lives during their trip to Andorra.

After getting the two dogs out, Ona returned to Lucy’s apartment. Coco having already come several times in Lucy's apartment, he knows it better than what Narla knows Ona's. And even if Ona also knows this apartment very well, she can’t help but feel a little alone tonight. Without the presence of her girlfriend, everything seems a little more sad and less interesting.

Sitting on the sofa much too big, even for a person accompanied by two dogs, Ona turns on the television and takes her phone to scroll on the various social networks. She responds to some messages and takes the opportunity to order food. If she likes to cook for or with Lucy, when she’s alone it’s a little different. But her diet is supposed to stay wise and followed, so she opts for sushi.

A few minutes later, her face glows with a big smile when she sees Lucy’s picture on her phone screen. The fullback asks her for a FaceTime and Ona doesn't hesitate a fraction of seconds before answering. Lucy’s face appears, already ready for the ceremony.

"Holà bonita!" says the happy English.

"Hello. How’s it going?" asks Ona while sitting cross-legged on the couch.

"Good! I’m a little late to be honest but I wanted to show you my outfit before you see it on social networks"

"Oh, a sneak peak just for me? I appreciate it" smiled Ona.

Lucy smirk at her answer and backs up the screen so that the youngest can see her entire outfit. And Ona feels her jaw fall. Of course, she’s the first to know how stunning her girlfriend is. But she honestly didn’t expect that.

"Oh fuck me" whispers Ona, her eyes sweeping Lucy’s outfit and body.

"Do you like it?" smiled Lucy as she carried the phone up her face, so that she could look at Ona.

"When are you coming home again?" asks Ona, the mind a little elsewhere.

"During the night" Lucy chuckles as she rolls her eyes, then turns around. "By the way, my parents and brother are here."

Lucy’s laughter extends to seeing that Ona blushed violently when hearing that her in-laws and her brother-in-law are also present. Had she known, perhaps she would have chosen other words to express her admiration.

"Hello Ona!" made Jorge with an amused smile, sticking his head to his sister to appear on the screen.

Despite her embarrassment, Ona managed to exchange a few words with Jorge and her in-laws, before the Bronze had to hang up to get to the party. If a smile remains on Ona’s face after the call, it fades little by little by seeing the different comments on the videos and photos circulating on the evening. Again, Lucy’s name is attached to Keira's, despite the many clues that the four (with Laura) left on social networks.

Seeing the hate that Laura received during her last post of the year, Keira even had to delete the comments section. This is largely what caused Lucy to post nothing at all on her side. But reading comments certifying that the former couple formed by Lucy and Keira is still current is harder to bear tonight. Probably because Lucy’s not with her.

Ona has never complained about this to Lucy, the Spanish knows perfectly well that her girlfriend has nothing to do with it and that she is far from asking for this situation. Ona also knows that this situation is burdensome for everyone and doesn't want to add difficulties by taking things too seriously.

Aitana being also at the party, Ona finally decides to call Salma to change her mind. The young attacker is also a close friend of Ona, despite their age difference. If Salma realizes that Ona doesn't seem particularly on a great mood, she doesn't make comments and is content to talk to her constantly, about everything and nothing. And Ona is extremely grateful.

After the phone call and her sushis, Ona takes the dogs out one last time before going to the bathroom to change. She follows the ceremony with her phone and if she realized that Lucy tried not to position herself next to Keira for the official photos, they were sitted next to eachother. That, too, should not bother her. But in truth, the Catalan would have liked to be able to accompany Lucy. Even if she is far from comfortable in this kind of ceremony, to which she has never been invited. (We will talk about the fact that Ona is cruelly underrated by everyone another time)

After a quick shower and brushing her teeth, Ona returns to the couch to launch Netflix. She sent two messages to Lucy to inform her of the progress of her evening and a photo of Narla and Coco sleeping on top of each other, but nothing more, not wanting to look too needy either.

It's late when Lucy calls Ona, but she doesn't sleep yet, waiting for news of her girlfriend.

"I wondered if you would answer" state Lucy.

"Why wouldn’t I?" Ona asks, frowning. "It’s late, I thought you might sleep" "I wanted to hear your voice" Ona confesses in a timid tone. Lucy thinks that it probably shouldn’t make her so happy, but it does. The rest of the conversation goes through Lucy who explains that they are already on their way to the airport and back to Barcelona. With Fifa having awarded them a private jet, they will be in Barcelona in a few hours and at home just as quickly. But as the conversation progresses, Lucy realizes that something is off with the Catalan. Her answers are brief, her tone evasive and she has a hard time giving her some laughs. "What’s going on, Bonita?" ended up asking Lucy "Nothing... I’m just tired" mumbles Ona, her fingers playing with her dog’s hair. "Are you sure?" "Mhm" replies distractedly the brunette "That’s not how I feel" Lucy distinctly hears Ona sigh softly, making her frown. Ona doesn't hesitate to talk to her about what she usually feels, both having discussed at the beginning of their relationship about the importance of communication in a couple. "It’s nothing Luce, it’s really stupid" "If it bothers you, it’s not stupid Onita" Lucy points out. Despite the fact that the discussion between the two young women isn't made out loud, Lucy is in the car with Aitana, Keira and Cata. It's therefore almost impossible that they don't hear it, despite the fact that they are all three discussing together. But Lucy’s worry drives her to keep trying to find out more. "There are comments that I saw on social media that bothered me a little, that’s all" ended up answering Ona. "Comments about what?" Lucy already knows the answer, but she nevertheless prefers to ask the question rather than assume things.

"You. And Keira. Your relationship, all that. There are those who say that if you were sitting next to Keira it’s because you’re together and if you stood away from her in the photos it’s to not attract attention. Those kind of things."

Lucy remains silent for a few moments, not really knowing what to answer. What she does know, however, is that she doesn't particularly like the turn this discussion is taking.

"Maybe you were right after all, it’s a bit stupid"

Lucy’s answer may be a little too abrupt, drawing Aitana’s curious gaze on her at the same time. Ona, meanwhile, answers nothing.

"You know very well that it's not true, Ona. I thought you were a little more mature and able to ignore these comments"

"I’m sorry" mumbles the Spanish woman rubbing her forehead, thinking that she shouldn't have talked about it and kept these confessions to herself.

A new silence is born between the two young women, however very different from those, comfortable, that they share while cuddling in front of the television or when they are in the car for the training.

"We are at the airport. I’ll write you when we take off" Lucy says.

"Ok. Have a safe flight" mumbles Ona, before hanging up.

Lucy remains silent after the phone call, not realizing that her three teammates exchange looks and communicate in this way. Unlike their arrival, their return isn't filmed and the different photographers or representatives aren't with them. There are only a few security guards in the van, but they are installed in front of and behind them. Jona and others members from the staff are in their own conversation behind them.

The Englishwoman still hasn’t said a word when she settles in the jet, with Aitana sitting beside her, Keira and Cata facing them.

"Everything's okay?" ended up asking Aitana.

"Yeah" Lucy groans as she looks out the window.

Deciding not to beat around the bush and waste their time in this conversation, Aitana decides to go straight to the point.

"I heard your conversation with Ona" begins the Ballon d'Or winner, attracting a new grunt from Lucy. "Did you argue?"

"Not really" ended up sighing Lucy leaving the window with her eyes to shift her attention to Aitana. "She mentioned comments from stupid fans"

When Aitana nods and the other two remain silent, it catches Lucy’s attention again. If she looks at the other two with a suspicious look, it's to Aitana that Lucy talks when she resumes speaking.

"What? Did she talk to you about it?"

"No" sincerely answers Aitana shaking her head. "But I know if she told you about it, it’s because it’s been working on her for a while, Lucy. I’ve known this girl since we started kicking a ball. She’s neither jealous nor possessive. If she told you, it must have been really hard for her at the time."

"You know how she is" adds Cata, sitting in front of Aitana. "She’s the kind of person who wants to deal with things on her own. She even tried to end a match with a concussion a few years ago."

Lucy makes a grimace, remembering the reflections she saw at the time. This dates back to a few years ago, when Ona played with Manchester United.

"I know" Lucy replies, not necessarily a fan of friends knowing more about her girlfriend than she does. "It’s just frustrating. These people don’t stop with these comments and I don’t know what to do to do well. If you post, there are hate comments. If you don’t post either."

With a compassionate smile, Aitana gently taps her on the knee, secretly happy not to be in this kind of situation.

"Weren’t you supposed to send her a message?" asks Cata

"Shit"

Lucy quickly grabs her phone to unlock it and write to Ona, while the flight crew seems to make the final preparations. The plane is already launched on the runway when she finishes.

"You know" said Keira after they took off "I don’t know if I could handle that, if I were in Ona’s place."

Interrupted again in her thoughts, Lucy reports a surprised look on her ex-girlfriend.

"What do you mean?"

"Every day she sees her girlfriend, you, talking to her ex, me. She herself has to bond with this ex, always me, and she does it very well. She has truly never been anything but adorable to me. She sees us talking everyday, because we still friends. And she must be constantly subjected to the headless theories of people who continue to hope for some reason that you and I are still together."

Lucy remains silent for a few seconds. She is obviously clear with all of this, but hearing it out loud and added side by side is different. Her eyebrows are frowned when Aitana speaks one last time.

"Would you see yourself playing on the same team as her ex? Watching her chat and laugh with Ona almost every day?"

"No" Lucy immediately says.

"You half murdered Feli when we played her and her team, and your relationship with Ona wasn’t even a few months old yet" smile Cata.

Lucy rolls with her eyes as she hears Cata’s amused tone, but her gaze shifts to the window once again. Cata is right, all she was able to think at this time is that Feli had Ona at one point in their life. Before her eyes there is only dark, the lights of London having disappeared long ago. She doesn't need more to realize that the other three are right and an intense sense of guilt seizes her. She should never have spoken to Ona the way she did. And her throat gets a little knotted thinking of the Catalan, alone in her apartment.

A few hours later, Lucy delicately opens the door of her apartment. Ona responded to her message saying that they were taking off, but didn't respond when she told her that they had landed. Lucy’s rational side makes her say that the Catalan is just asleep, but her brain hasn’t stopped working for three seconds since her conversation with her teammates and she can’t help but wonder if Ona is just mad at her.

After dropping off her things at the entrance, Lucy goes into the living room and feels her heart melt in front of the scene that takes place in front of her. Ona is lying on her tummy under a blanket on the couch, deeply asleep. Her long hair obscures part of her face and a very slight snoring escapes from her lips with each breath. Her face is illuminated by the lights of the television screen. Coco is tightly hugged, Ona’s face buried in the dog’s hair. Narla is lying on Ona’s legs.

Lucy laughs softly when she sees that new stones are on the coffee table, adding to the great collection of her dog. The sound wakes up Narla who stretches on Ona’s legs before rolling and changing sides to fall asleep again. The movement makes Ona moan gently in her sleep and pushes her to bury her face even more in Coco’s hair.

Delicately freeing Coco from Ona’s embrace, Lucy rests him on the couch alongside Narla before passing her two arms under Ona’s body to lift her from the couch.

"What’s going on?" mumbles the Spanish in a sleepy voice when Lucy puts her on her bed.

"Nothing Princesa, everything's fine" Lucy replies in return, kissing her forehead before gently covering her.

But when Lucy gets up to go to the bathroom, Ona gently grabs her arm.

"Can I have a hug please?"

Sleepy or tired Ona is particularly cuddly, which Lucy has always found adorable. But tonight, the English girl has the impression that there is a little more than that. The guilt at the memory of the tone she talked to her coming back in her mind, she hurries to lie beside Ona and wrap her arms around her.

She lays kisses on the head and the sleeping face of Ona, who smiles softly at this surge of affection. Ona closes her eyes and start to fall asleep again.

"I am so sorry" whispers Lucy, her lips pressed against Ona's temple after having observed the young woman for a long time.

Surprised in her phase of falling asleep, Ona opens her eyes again and slightly turns her head in Lucy's direction to observe her. She doesn't move an inch, keeping her face as close as possible to Ona’s.

"What are you talking about?"

A slight worry is audible in Ona’s tone and Lucy prefers not to wonder where the younger’s mind is running away. Instead, she responds directly, the things she wishes to tell her prepared for tens of minutes in her head.

"About what I told you on the phone and especially the way I told you"

"Oh" just mumbles Ona before shrugging her shoulders "It doesn’t matter. You’re right anyway"

"No Ona, I’m serious"

Lucy takes off from the Latin, causing her to pout and frown. Passing a finger between her eyebrows, Lucy applies herself to relax her skin before resuming speech.

"I shouldn’t have said that"

"It doesn’t matter, Luce, I swear-"

But Lucy interrupts her, putting a finger on her lips. Ona rolls on her back, still frowning.

"Let me speak" says the English woman "I should never have said that to you and told you like that. You have the right to have insecurities and even more need to talk about them. And if you need to talk about it, I want you to do it with me because I want to be there for you. I’m sorry I was so hard to you when you brought it up"

Still driven to silence by Lucy’s index finger on her lips, Ona listens wisely to what her girlfriend is saying to her. Yes, the dry tone that Lucy replied to her briefly squeezed her heart, before she tried to become rational again. Ona thought Lucy might be tired from her evening.

"I’m annoyed by these kinds of comments, and I think I reacted that way because I liked the idea that it doesn’t affect you. You’re important to me, Ona, you’re the most important. And I hate the idea that someone or something might hurt you."

Ona remains silent, always, eyes plunged into those of Lucy. She still remembers perfectly the first time their looks crossed, at the wedding of their common friend.

"But I thought a lot about what Keira and the girls told me on the way back and…"

"You talked about our relationship with Keira?"

The emotions on Ona’s face are hard to decipher, but the fact that she reacts about that before everything else catches Lucy’s attention.

"They more or less heard the conversation we had, I was in the car with them"

Ona groan softly, not really appreciating the idea that their couple problems can be discussed among other people. Even though she knows she can trust their discretion at least from Cata and Aitana. She wouldn't say that she's close to Keira, but she gets along well with her and has always managed to talk to her without any prejudice.

"The three of them defended you" Lucy quickly informs her, pressing her head on her hand, now that she is on her side while Ona is lying on her back. "And they were right. You seem to be living through this situation so well that I sometimes forget that it must not be easy every day for you. If there was one stupid thing tonight it was my behavior."

Rolling on her side, Ona thoughtfully bites her lip before answering her.

"I just want everything to be as easy as possible for everyone."

"I understand. But you must not forget yourself in the process"

Ona makes a famous pout of her composition for simple answer. And Lucy knows perfectly well what the brunette who faces her thinks. Sighing softly, she begins to draw the freckles on Ona’s face with her finger.

"This tendency to sacrifice yourself for others can be worrying, you know?"

"Only for those who deserve it" Ona replies, closing her eyes under Lucy’s caresses on her face. "The ones I love"

Her closed eyes prevent her from seeing Lucy break the existing centimeters between their faces to put her lips on hers, but this doesn't prevent her from smiling against her lips. A sigh of well-being escapes her and her hands attach to the fabric of the clothes that Lucy still wears, the same ones she wore for the ceremony.

"You’re the strongest person I know" Lucy whispers a few minutes later, her forehead leaning against her girlfriend’s.

"Let’s not exaggerate" laughs Ona gently, mixing her legs with Lucy’s.

"I’m serious. Do you know many people who would play on the same team as their girlfriend and ex at the same time? I wouldn’t be able to."

Surprised by this statement, the question can now be read in the chocolate eyes of Ona.

"If you kept talking to your ex, I’d have a hard time, but just imagine that you have to live next to her and talk to her every day… I think I would want to kill her, honestly."

"Are you jealous, Lucy Bronze?"

The surprise gradually gave way to the fun on Ona’s face and voice. This makes Lucy roll her eyes, even if she cannot retain a smile.

"Maybe" simply answers the English.

This seems to suit Ona, since she gets even closer to Lucy, sticking her entire body against the English’s. A silence passes, during which Ona takes the opportunity to soak up the smell and sensation of Lucy’s skin against hers.

"It’s easy because I trust you" Ona says. "You make me feel safe and cared. Tonight was a little more difficult because you were far from me. And I wish I had been with you"

"I wish you was here too" mumble Lucy before adding "At least you can admire me in my outfit anyway"

Ona laughs softly, running her hands over the fabric, soft and light under her fingers. She would have liked to see her put on these clothes, but to have her lying in front of her is not so bad.

"It’s even better in real life"

Lucy smiles again before pressing her lips against Ona's, holding her against her during the kiss that extends a little. Then, she gets up from the bed, causing the surprise of the youngest.

"Where are you going?" Ona asks while sitting on the bed.

"Undress and shower. Want to come help me?"

"We’re supposed to get up in four hours for training" Ona replies, looking at the time on her phone

"Your choice"

Shrugging, Lucy turns her heels to go to the bathroom. It doesn't take more to Ona to throw herself out of bed and almost run after her girlfriend.

"Coming!"

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