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allthecanadianpolitics · 2 years ago

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Hi!

I hope that you had a great week and that the long weekend is going great!

Sorry I’m sending you an anon ask, I don’t like doing it because I would rather have a debate around this, but as often with unpopular (one might say controversial in some space) opinion, I know I may be branded as someone I don’t feel I am.

My question will be about the laïcité in Quebec. To sum it up, so you can have a good idea of what my position is before asking you my questions, I don’t not support the full laïcité, French-style, like I don’t support it in hospitals, public administration, like if you want to display your religion as a doctor, I think that you should be able to, as long as it doesn’t interfere with your job (i.e. refusing to practice an abortion because of your religion is not ok, in my opinion).

But for the schools, to be transparent, I am a teacher near Montréal, I teach in secondary, and I’d be inclined to agree with the laïcité of the public school. All of it. I feel like the school system should be a safe space for all kids, and by letting religion, and religious practices inside a public school, we are failing at this mission. I don’t care if you are religious, the job of a school and a teacher is to teach you, regardless of your personal beliefs. Like if you’re a Christian and you don’t want to believe in evolution, well that’s your choice, but you’re still gonna learn about it because this is the reality of our world, and your beliefs system shouldn’t interfere with that. And I don’t want, as a teacher to have to put disclaimer in front of all my classes.

So my question is: why are people (especially left leaning people) so against it? Because education is usually one of the center piece of the fight for tolerance and acceptance but I feel like we’re failing at providing a safe space for kids that grow up in extremely religious household and that would like to get out of it but don’t because of family and peer pressure.

I am not stupid, so if the answer is : because it disproportionately target people from specific faiths that may have to wear visible clothing (i.e. Muslim and Jewish), I guess you are right, but I think it is more important to provide a safe space for kids that want to escape religions.

I may have a bias, as I grew up in a very religious household (evangelical Christians) and my dad was a pastor so I never really had a say in it. I got out of it in the university, but I really wish the public school system would have helped me get out of it sooner.

If you read all of it, I hope I didn’t bother you too much with what could basically be my life story at this point. Thank you!

PS: as you can guess my first language is French, and I really am not an English teacher so sorry if my broken English is awful to read.

"Just as a preface, I'm not the usual person who answers the asks, I'm one of the two people helping the usual admin run the blog while they recover from injury. This is important because I'll be addressing some of my experiences growing up Muslim in Quebec, experiences that the admin is not trying to speak to and is leaving for me to address. First off, I do want to note you're speaking from the perspective of the privileged group causing religious oppression as opposed to the receiving end. As someone who was growing up 'Christian' trying to escape religious impositions from your father, you're not in a situation where your religion is being oppressed and suppressed systematically, nor are you suffering under presumption your religion is inherently violent. This is why your comment on your opinion being "unpopular" makes no sense. Your opinion is not unpopular, it is in fact supported by the CAQ and their adherents. Second, the left does not support this because the interests of the right in making such laïcité laws was never to protect children from religious imposition. When I went to private school, where those rules were strictly enforced only onto Jewish and Muslim students but not to Christians wearing cross necklaces (although ostensibly those rules applied to them too), the result wasn't anyone's religious beliefs being protected nor was anyone tolerated, as I was bombarded by homophobic harassment and bullying from our Christian peers and accepted by my Muslim peers. The result was alienation of the Muslim and Jewish students. You should remember that is the original intent of this legislation is not to protect anyone's rights but to remove them. They are telling Muslims "Leave your religion at the door, or you're not a part of society." This is the practical impact of this legislation, and nothing else. You are harming more students than you are 'saving''. Additionally, your worry that Muslims having a prayer room somewhere in the building is a religious imposition on other students, in your imaginary likely atheist ones, is based in islamophobia. The idea that parents can somehow enforce their children to practice at school just because there is a room that allows them to literally makes no sense either. Your concerns are misplaced." "Removing Muslims' ability to have a room to pray in at their school does not remove any mechanism by which parents can use to force their child to perform religious duties they do not want to do. But what it does is continue the operation of an increasingly hostile and alienating system in Quebec that wants Muslims to know they're not welcome in their own country. Would you seek the outlawing of abortion because many men force their partners to undergo them when they don't want to? No? Why? Because it's a basic human right to have access to that service. And just because people impose it on people in their family as part of their abuse doesn't mean it should be removed as an option for everybody, the majority of whom want to use it for legitimate and sincere reasons."

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void-galaxy-shenanigans · 2 years ago

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Yet another “I'm more non-speaking/nonverbal than I thought” post.

Hi. This is Nico. Our body is autistic. When I first found that out I thought we were “high functioning”, because we weren't as disabled as others seemed to be. But we were just very high masking at the time, & the mask is peeling off in painful layers.

I perfected my ability to write from 5 years old till now (we're 23), in part because speaking aloud is difficult. (But I thought everyone struggled to speak words & that I just....wasn't dealing with it well.) Because of that, this will be written in much better grammar & clearer words than I am capable of aloud right now. That does not mean I can speak aloud, nor that autistics who can't write like this don't exist or aren't super valid. That also doesn't mean I won't use wrong words sometimes, because I do still mix up words or have an inability to find the word I mean.

That disclaimer aside....

I thought I was hyperverbal. Because we also have ADHD & C-PTSD, the tism didn't seem to affect our speaking much.

The hyperverbal speech was part autism mask, part ADHD hyperactivity (or, externalized symptoms to be more accurate), & part PTSD (got abused & punished for not speaking).

I am currently medicating my ADHD with a balance of sugar & caffeine that works short-term. (I will eventually seek actual meds but there's a shortage right now & I am a tired bitch who doesn't wanna deal with doctors right now.)

I was trying to sing along to my music playlist. That's typically one of my most reliable self-soothing tactics. Even as we've started unmasking the tism, I didn't notice much difference in my singing—as long as I'm singing with backup music, I can still sing when words otherwise don't wanna work/translate/etc.

It came out in soft babbles, “bah bah bah” (lip taps with air), “bleh bleh bleh” (basically just tongue taps with air), & faint humming. I could follow the general beat/tune of the song, but couldn't make any of the lyrics come out.

This followed a session of flirting with my autistic girlfriend, & her making me laugh nonstop for a solid 20mins, until my brain decided “I'm safe right now” & words failed me. My mouth wouldn't do it.

I can still make noise in my head. Some of my thoughts are words (in a jumbled mix of the languages I know (Spanish & French, & bits n pieces of Norwegian/German/Italian/Irish Gaelic/Russian/Greek)). But most are pictures, feelings, vague concepts that I couldn't translate if I tried. None of the thoughts, even the ones that are words, will come out of my mouth. I can't make them come out.

That said, after around 20mins of incoherent noise I was able to sing along again not by understanding the meaning of the words or by saying the words, but by mimicking just the sounds. Ignore that it's a word, let the meaning float in nonexistence, & I can repeat the sound. But I don't know what the fuck I'm saying when I do that, because I can't think the meaning or process the words at the same time as I mimic it.

And that's the same reason that I sing almost exactly the same notes, accent, tone, etc. when I sing, 99% of the time. I'm just mimicking—I'm not actively singing. In order to actually sing, I have to wait for my brain to have enough processing power to spare to not mask, not mimic, process the words, process everything around me (lights, sounds, etc.), associate the words with something or someone, preferably a memory (usually it's my girlfriend who comes to mind right now, but sometimes it's family or friends), AND still make the words come out like they actually mean something. And that takes...so much out of me.

I can't make meaningful words happen right now. Just meaning-detached sounds.

So...yeah.

I thought I had no problems with speech. I thought words were just “a little difficult sometimes”. But I can only word so much in a day before I run out now, & I mean hard stop, ‘can't even mask to save my life’, can't talk to my loved ones, ✨run out✨. My girlfriend pointed out I'm unable to word speech more often than I'm able to now, & suggested I might be more non-speaking than I realized. Because I can usually word inside my head, for most of a day (especially if I take a nap), but I cannot word aloud for more than 2 or 3 hours if I'm not masking, & my mask starts glitching & breaking (stutters, wrong scripts, etc.) after about 5 hours at work now.

So I was never high functioning. I was destroying my brain to mask, & now I'm so burnt out & destroyed from what I did mask through that I can't even mask most of the time. I am now “high support needs” (incorrectly dubbed “low functioning”) autistic, because of how masking destroyed me.

Once I graduate college with a degree that lets me get a job where I can be myself (preferably my own boss), I will never be masking ever again. I can't. It's so taxing.

Speaking isn't supposed to be hard. It's also not supposed to be an act of mimicry 24/7 (sometimes it is mimicry, but not this much). And this is news to me, and I am devastated for child me who thought he was just not trying hard enough or was broken or was just missing a tool.

He was always disabled. We were always disabled. I will honour that disability now, to the best of my ability. Because I love him, because we're worth it, because I shouldn't have to pretend to be neurotypical & able-bodied when I'm not, because that little kid deserved better.

I will learn other ways to communicate. I will learn other languages, but also non-word ways. I don't always have to speak.

And that's okay. I'm allowed to be disabled.

So into the future we grow.

~Nico

#actually autistic #semi verbal #minimally verbal #semi non speaking

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dramatisperscnae · 1 year ago

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HEADCANON - DICK

Age and Appearance

Dick is in his early to mid-20s; he can and will lie about his age at random to anyone.

He's 5'10" and doesn't actually look like he should weigh 175lbs. It's all muscle.

He keeps his black hair just long enough to have a little flair, but definitely short enough to be otherwise low-maintenance and hassle-free.

Dick generally wears dark or cool colors, both for sake of convenience and because cool colors make his blue eyes look even better.

He is not without his fair share of scars. Some are older and faded, some aren't; given what he does, it's probably more impressive he doesn't have more of the things.

Personality

Dick is a smartass. He's always been one to run his mouth, with very little care as to just who he's speaking to. That said, he's developed more of a filter as he's gotten older. Which is to say he's developed a filter.

He can be incredibly sneaky and conniving when it suits him.

He is fiercely protective of his found family; there isn't much he wouldn't do for them, and even then he might be convinced.

He hides his true self from just about everyone, even his own family at times. Part of this is simply ingrained habit from a life of maintaining a secret identity; part of it is just because he enjoys seeing how long it takes someone to actually figure out he's not really the dumb golden retriever boy most people think he is.

Dick loves puns and makes them at any opportunity. Especially when there's a chance of annoying someone else with them. The true beauty of a pun is in the 'oy' of the beholder.

He is a bit a peacock and takes extreme pride in his appearance. For one thing it helps to maintain his 'sweet dumb himbo' persona for the public eye, and for another he just enjoys looking good. This extends beyond simply clothing and hygiene into maintaining fitness and build; that ass doesn't shape itself, after all.

Dick is stubborn enough to give even Bruce a run for his money; when he sets his mind to a thing it is very difficult to stop him. Even if it means he's going on patrol already injured.

Miscellaneous

Dick's birthday is March 20.

Dick is, perhaps surprisingly, rather superstitious. He doesn't advertise it much, but he does believe in ghosts and good luck charms and other such things. Being raised in a circus, such things are simply a part of life for him; few people are as superstitious as performers of any type.

Dick is also half Romani, and while he does not practice all the aspects of his father's culture he is aware of them and many have shaped him into the man he is today. Disclaimer: I myself am not Romani, nor do I make any pretense of being so. I will do my best to represent this part of Dick's character with as much respect as I can, and I beg your kindness and patience.

He doesn't much like absolute silence. As a child there were always the sounds of the circus, and then living in Gotham, Dick is too used to having background noise. Silence unsettles him.

Dick is fluent in several languages aside from English and Romanes[his twinned native languages]. These include: French, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Tamaranean, ASL, Spanish, Farsi, German, and Russian. He knows bits and pieces of several others.

#dickcanon #well it's not much #but it's a start #i barely go to the DC fandom at all #but this jackass has been living rent-free in my head for a while and I'm not sure how #so here we are #outofinspiration

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completelyordinarycat · 2 years ago

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Compiling my TFTR end notes so they clog up the fic less but tbh it's mostly for sentimental reasons. Fun Facts:

Chapter 3:

Harry rambling about the Pale as a way to talk about wanting to disappear is based on a real conversation I've had.

Chapter 4:

I used Korean as a Seol language because it's the Asian language I'm most familiar with. I speak neither Korean nor French fluently (I don't speak French at all) so please correct me.

For reference, I switch between sounding out, anglicised, and characters to indicate the way characters are hearing language and tonal differences.

I am a white person, so I'm not in any way the person to be talking about experiencing racism but it felt wrong to ignore the place that has in DE and Kim's story especially and it's role in cop work especially. I work a lot with people who speak English as an Additional language, so I've tried to respect the bravery it takes to speak a language like English when you aren't fluent, and base that conversation on actual ones I've had. While I've tried to be actively anti-racist from a narrative standpoint, I won't do that perfectly.

The fire, and its cause, is based on one where I've lived that I won't go into for obvious reasons.

Eomma is based on my Italian great-grandmothers.

Chapter 5:

if you see me misspelling characters names: no you don't. I learned via this fic that they aren't columbinimus clouds, which is the best spelling I can offer for what I spent my life reading and pronouncing. Plus side: every spell check I'd laugh because I'd get to remind myself it's spelled with CUM not COL.

I find it really, really hard to keep real life geography straight let alone in-game stuff. I'm taking Messina to be an Italy stand in because it's literally a city in Sicily, which is where my family is from, so when I saw it in the game I was like bwuh??? If that's wrong let me know and I'll change it.

The reference to culturally insensitive ads is a reference to a real pizza place where I live, as well as various chain Asian food places with actually completely racist ads.

Chapter 6:

Had Harry been not caught up in his own stuff, Katya's song choice would have been more illuminating to him than any other piece of information thus far. But there was a reason Judit said that sometimes we get caught up in the little internal things that drive us (b/c its foreshadowing) which is what Harry and Katya do. Idk if you’ve ever had a fight with someone that, while it has valid points, you think back on later and are like oh. That wasn’t really about that at all, was it? They’re both still learning about how to do healthy relationships.

Having a character whose entire character trait up until this point is being secretive meant I had to do so much exposition I would have rather included earlier ughhhh.

The entirety of the case discussed is plotted out in full despite being only mentioned briefly.

I never name male perpetrators because in reality they always get the headlines when their victims don't and it pisses me right off.

I am ACAB and continue to be (and yes, ACAB includes all these characters and the RCM) but what Katya and Liza are implied to be doing is a form of the PEACE method including focusing on establishing known factual events.

Some of the city's reflections of love are inspired by me re-reading this answer at the time of writing. I think "If you found love right now, you would run it straight into the ground in seconds," applies to Harry though he's not at a place where he's ready to understand what that would mean in this fic, imo.

I had to remind myself how to do medical notes for this and they may or may not be accurate, idk. They're meant to obscure information, though, so non-accuracy works in this regard. I'm a suicide attempt survivor so I tried to be sensitive about this. For a disclaimer, I’m not a medical professional and my work lies in health advocacy, hence how I know a lot of this. You can tell, because I abbreviated a medication which is one of the first things they tell you not to do but hey, it was on purpose. Here is a translation:

TW for domestic violence, attempted suicide (with potential context as to a method), abortion and miscarriage:

“02:00 5mg/h AC bolus pushed via NGT. 10ml/h IV saline bag replaced.

03:40 PT semi-conscious but non-responsive, pulling at NGT. IV sedative admin.

5:30 RR 27, HR 114, BP 160/110, other VS normal. ECG shows sinus pause reduced but bradyarrhythmia remains.”

This is basically not that important really lmao. I could have skipped it, in retrospect, but I think it gives some nice context to say that Katya is okay, health wise, in that moment. In summary: she’s being given activated charcoal via a naso-gastric tube which is a common treatment for some kinds of overdoses (and why you shouldn’t use activated charcoal tablets/toothpaste if you’re on prescription medicine!). She’s sick and her heart is being a bit funky, but she’s okay. You can say this is why Katya refers to this as a “heart attack” rather than what it is.

“Emergency Department (ED) admission 23:39 by neighbour for suspected overdose (OD), no known next of kin. Blood alcohol level .32, suspected drug use. Became physically aggressive when asked if deliberate OD, requiring intramuscular sedative. Transferred mental health ward 00:48. History: childhood Pale Related Acquired Brain Injury. 3xED presentation for gun shot wounds and stab wounds relating to RCM work. 2x presentation for injury relating to suspected assault and battery, patient denied intimate partner violence and left against medical advice both times. 3 pregnancies and 0 live births: ED presentation following miscarriage after fall; ED presentation for miscarriage after suspected assault and battery; ED presentation relating to suspected termination of pregnancy haemorrhage requiring blood transfusion and overnight observation.”

Again, I’m hoping no one is learning how to take case notes from this. I re-wrote this a million times, no lie, and if I saw this on someone’s records I would probably be like UM WTF. But for storytelling purposes, it got the job done lmao. I hope the original gets across what I wanted to get across: that something really significantly bad happened in Katya’s past that explains her motives and behaviour. I wrote it with the intention that Harry has just gotten enough information to want to push, but not to know that he shouldn’t. Having said that, you could make the argument that he should have known at the very least what the abbreviation for Assault and Battery is, so if he knew, would he have pushed anyway? Canonically, I think the answer is yes because even a high-empathy Harry can be remarkably tactless on a fail. Which is why I think this interaction is fun(? Oh wow I’m a freak) because it’s pushing (fanfic) Harry’s assumptions of himself and his goals. His stated goal is to do good, but he actively doesn’t do that in this scenario (though, neither was Katya, tbf).

In his defence, he’s right but he’s also kind of wrong. Yes, Katya’s background makes her empathise with this case a lot more, but the other implication that Harry misses is that she was actually involved with the case to some capacity while it was ongoing, and therefore she feels responsible

If you care about the OCs at all: Katya, as a mirror to Harry, has been going through a parallel to Harry's plot and she's really going through it. At the end of this chapter she is off-screen having her own "I don't want to be this kind of animal anymore" moment. We only just get to glimpse it.

Chapter 7:

Mee's Kitchen is a reference to a beloved take out place where I live, and again I'm sticking with Korean stuff because I'm most familiar with it.

Harry feeling like he has no control and slapping himself and being terrified of that is based off of my entire life lmao but particularly a few years ago when I started to slap myself without consciously deciding to do it. Then I 1. started dealing with some of my mental health stuff, and 2. started being treated for ADHD, and, surprise, it happens less now and when it does I don't freak out about it. Harry is very flippant about it, which I was too for a long time. I have a lot of body-focused repetitive behaviours and repetitive behaviours in general and no one has ever formally told me if that counted as one of those or not. I don't like to call out specific things as me obviously projecting but I also wanted to be clear that if you also have those kinds of behaviours, there's nothing wrong with you and don't listen to a guy in a fanfic. Talk to someone about it if you're worried. <3 I tagged it as self-harm because it seemed to cover all bases.

Chapter 8:

This was a hard chapter to walk the line on and if I wasn't doing the poetry chapter title thing, it would be titled "What if Rigorous Self-Critique Was More Helpful and Less An Opportunity to Hate Yourself into Self-Destruction, and Therefore Allowing Your Shitty Behaviour to Continue." And I never want to demonise addiction or mental health struggles and I hope I don’t. In my own experience to do better you do need to face up to things you've done that you’re not proud of. No joke, a lot of this fic is me exploring the idea of restorative justice and how and when we can forgive someone, especially when that person is a victim too. But I also don't want to woobify Harry and I recognise that I could have gone harder on this and that's a flaw in this work. Very few things destroyed me in DE like Rigorous Self-Critique. My reaction to reading it was physical horror and I still remember how it felt. And I just couldn't play that out to its extreme in this. It would be too much of a tone shift, for one. And for personal reasons, I just couldn't. Also, In editing this chapter, I removed a bit of context I didn’t fix. Specifically, there is no doubt in my mind that Harry is abusive towards Dora and I realise I may have presented it as if to imply he wasn’t. Harry was specifically asking about sexual violence, and that is what Jean investigated. I may fix this in the future, when I’m in a better headspace.

I love to write bi-Jean being no-homo, I don't know why. Jean constructs intricate rituals to allow himself to hear that he is loved.

Other fun facts, grabbed from my notes:

MoralIntern/Coalition politicians declaring that homo-sexuality no longer existed in Revachol is based on a comment from a politician where I live who said that there were no gay people in his state. It’s also very inspired by real life anti-homosexuality laws stemming from racism and colonialism and eugenics.

This fic works from the assumption that Dora ended that cycle of untreated mental illness and abuse by leaving as soon as she realised what was happening, by virtue of having a better education and resource access through being middle class. She is my idealised version of myself here haha. So the question becomes less, is Harry a bad guy? But what can Harry do to make sure he doesn’t continue a cycle of violence that probably pre-dates him by centuries?

I also can-opened myself writing this fic because I was like, why do I write stories about people being at their worst and still being loved? And my brain was like, because it’s the kind of story you needed to hear when you were at your worst, that it’s still possible to be loved, and never heard. And then I had a little cry :)

If you think that Harry is a bad and an irredeemable man, you’re totally valid! Maybe I will write a fic about that at some point.

I love Jean now :)

I was like haha what if I make the chapter titles a poem from the city to Harry and immediately regretted it because I'm bad at poetry :)

#tftr #my writing

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frenchtoastie · 3 years ago

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Wouldn’t a Frenchie fleshlight be a Frenchlight™️

Oui~

#disclaimer I am not French nor do I know french nor am I a piece of toast

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iravaid · 3 years ago

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Hey I was curious. What are some of your favorite headcanons about Lacroix?

Aw man i have too many thoughts and hcs about that little man akdhdkks

i don't know if i can pick definitive Favourites, so here are some short and fun headcanons I have, the longer ones are below the cut.

Also disclaimer these aren't set in stone lmao, I have a very scattered train of thought, and also i am Not declaring these canon nor the only interpretation of his character, I’d love to hear other people’s headcanons for that ratman

He's 5'5" 😌

He had brown eyes before his Embrace

His blood preference is amputee veterans

Bisexual with a preference for men

Has comorbid BPD and PTSD from his experiences in the Napoleonic Wars. The symptoms seemed to have been 'numbed' over time by lowered humanity and growing older, but they can flare up during times of high stress (the sarcophagus etc)

Was an unwilling Embrace, unusual for his clan. Sire was a piece of shit and sowed the seeds for about half his issues, exacerbating previously mentioned mental illnesses

When he was alive, he was one of those people whose hair changes colour with age and the season (and are insufferable because of it) - it was a bright, ruddy blond as a kid and darkened to that dirty blond/strawberry colour we see in the game, becoming lighter and more blond in the summer and then darker and closer to red/brown in the winter

Learned to swim in the English Channel and is a very good swimmer. Misses it; the Pacific isn’t the Atlantic, and his corpse isn’t very buoyant.

Hands are calloused and he has a couple scars from his time as a soldier - people who shake his hand for the first time often note that his hands are rougher that they thought they'd be.

Took up clay-pigeon shooting in New York as a hobby and a way to socialise. I've found there are regional variants, so he's most familiar the one with shotguns and clay disks (because that's the clay pigeon i used to use lmao).

Was Infanterie Légère - light infantry. Has some extra points in stealth, survival, brawl, and marksmanship because of it.

Was born in 1791. Went to Saint-Cyr from ages 18-21. Served in the Patriotic War of 1812, War of the Sixth Coalition, 1813-1814, and the Hundred Days War of 1815. He's a little bit older than what the wiki says in my hc, 24 instead of 21. I read that the academy admits students around the age of 21, so we'll say both money and LaCroix ability got him in early. And there isn't much on the ages of admission in the 1800s, so who knows.

Took up smoking during the French invasion of Russia, for the nicotine and the distraction. Keeps it up through his unlife as it’s still a pretty social thing inthe 1900s etc; smoked from a pipe and then moved on to rolled cigarettes as the years progressed. Smokes clove cigarettes in 2003 with the fancy black paper annol, like a TWAT.

Slowly became dependant on Dominate to get what he wanted done, because so few people respect him for one reason or another. So he’ll force compliance from them because he Deserves their respect and he Needs things to be done the way he wants them done, of course.

Has a 4 or a 5 in Dominate, a 3 in Presence, and a 2 in Fortitude. The reliance on forcing people to do what he wants them to do has caused the other two to decay and his own combat abilities to get rusty. He is Devolving As A Person <3

The last time he himself was probably actively involving in combat was the Battle of New York, and even then I imagine the Sheriff did most of the heavy lifting.

But I do feel that if push came to shove, he’d be pretty fucking dangerous with a knife. The guy is small and fast, and those kinds of fighters are NASTY. Has already stabbed you between the ribs, he is also probably screaming because this is the sexy sexy fun mental breakdown where he finally Snaps 😔

ngl would love to see/read a redemption arc for him where he’s given some modicum of respect and help from the Anarchs or an independent group, and eventually manages to grow as a person while processing his hashtag-trauma. Of course there is a lot of Suffering that goes between, as well as a lot of back tracking, but it takes a long time to unlearn ideas and beliefs drilled into you for hundreds of years.

Okay here's a couple involving him and the Sheriff. Because it’s not really stated in canon what their relationship is, I can run wild with it.

Their relationship is fairly ambiguous and while it could be implied that the reason the Sheriff is the only person in Los Angeles who stands by LaCroix is because a blood bond has made him a thrall. I'm not a fan of that interpretation; I don't really want to headcanon my favourite character as a slave master, esp with the Sheriff being Laibon, traditionally from Africa, and LaCroix being European. (It's still obviously a very valid interpretation of the source material, it's just not something I think i can explore in a nuanced way).

It's probably a bit silly and away from WoD's usual grittiness, but I like to think their dynamic is like Han and Chewbacca's; where that weird little man somehow saved the Sheriff's life and the Sheriff has nothing better to do, so may as well make sure this guy he owes a life debt to doesn't manage to get himself killed. And the Sheriff just enjoys the drama that that wretched twink accrues, it's very fun.

The Sheriff doesn't like to speak, so if he wants to communicate, it's usually through ASL, or he uses Auspex to communicate telepathically when sign doesn't really cut it for him. So LaCroix may sound like he's talking to himself, when in fact it's the Big Guy that's conversing with him on the finer points of human anatomy.

Also the Sheriff listens to audiobooks and is better read than LaCroix.

Hell yeah, that’s what I’ve got so far. Thank you for the ask, anon! this was v fun, love talking about lacroix and other vtmb characters

#*marge voice* i just think he's neat #sebastian lacroix #lacroix vtm #vtm #vtmb #vampire the masquerade #vampire the masquerade bloodlines #ask #anon #headcanons #he's a piece of shit but he's so interesting and charismatic in a way andy milder really managed to pull of in his voice acting

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ljf613 · 4 years ago

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Colonization & Imperialism in ATLA

One of the things I’ve noticed in fandom complaints about the ATLA comics-- namely, “The Promise”-- and subsequently, LOK’s worldbuilding, is the way the narrative handles colonization.

I see a lot about how what the Earth Kingdom chose to do with the former colonies is “none of Zuko’s (or Aang’s) business.” (I also see people talking about how Katara would never support colonialism, in any shape or form, no matter the circumstances.)

And I just.... don’t vibe with those ideas? At all?

Like, I definitely have problems with the comics-- especially “The Promise,” where all the drama centers around Miscommunications of Epic Proportions and could have been resolved in Part One if all the characters just sat down and listened to each other (not to mention that Aang would never have agreed to make that promise, nor would Zuko have asked it of him (Sokka would be a more obvious choice, but that’s a different discussion))-- but I never had any issues with their worldbuilding.

I love the idea of Yu Dao, and the fact that the narrative acknowledges that a new kind of world has new kinds of problems. It makes sense to me that we can’t always just “give back the land we took.” And I found the idea of the end solution being “give the people who live there their own country” really cool and empowering.

So I want to talk about why I feel this way. About what kind of real-world parallels can be made here. About some little-known bits of world-history that compare.

(Please note that for this meta I am only going to be discussing the relationship between Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom. As far as I am aware-- and I could be wrong-- there is no real-world genocide quite comparible to what Sozin did to the Air Nomads, and most of the people alive in ATLA were not actually around for or involved in that. And the relationship the Fire Nation has with the Water Tribes-- and that the North and South have with each other-- is worth a whole separate analysis, and doesn’t deserve to just be shoved into this one.)

(Disclaimer: While this is in response to some of the interpretations I’ve seen on this site, it is not meant to discount or invalidate those fans’ views-- I’m just trying to show my take on it. I am a firm believer in the power of active discourse, and the value of looking at the same scenes through different lenses, rather than just getting one opinion and accepting it as Absolute Truth.)

The main thing I notice in general ATLA discourse-- and not just on this topic, but in any sort of meta about the Fire Nation, colonization, and global impact-- is that the fandom mostly compares the war and its after-affects to real-world Imperialism, the Age of Imperialism, New Imperialism, and Colonization.

And I understand why that is. In the grand scheme of world history, that era is still fairly recent, and we are still dealing with the afteraffects from it. It has shaped the Western World’s worldview on every level. (Not to mention that the Euro-centric way we’re taught history means that this piece of world history is the one we’re most exposed to, and so have the most understanding of and room to analyze/criticize.)

However, there are a few issues with sticking only to this perspective.

First off, the Age of Imperialism was a direct response to the Age of Exploration. This was the period of time when white Europeans sailed around the world acting as though they were discovering new places and pretending that there weren’t already existing civilizations there.

[ID: Two dots meme, edited so that Guy A says “i’ve discovered a NEW WORLD,” Guy B replies “you didn’t discover ****,” and Guy A insists “i’ve discovered it” / End ID.]

Now, I’ve mentioned this in passing, but the world of ATLA doesn’t appear to have had an Age of Exploration. There’s no vast “undiscovered” land masses, the four nations have always known about each other, and they all have a shared language.

The whole foundation for the Age of Imperialism was “oh, look, there are all these ‘unexplored’ lands with resources ripe for the picking (who cares about the indigenous people, they’re just simplistic savages who don’t know what’s best for them), let’s see which European country can grab the most land first.”

This was a race. This was sudden. This was Europeans coming in and taking over while viewing the natives as bothersome pests. This was about multiple major world powers competing over resources.

This was not 100 years of active warfare between a single conquering country and the very people they were trying to conquer.

The parallels don’t hold up.

Secondly, by focussing only on this one kind of historical narrative, we ignore any others.

I will admit that I have used the word “imperialism” in reference to the Fire Nation a time or two. However, upon further reflection, I realize I didn’t really mean imperialism, which is actually a fairly modern concept. What I feel the Fire Nation is really an example of is centralism and expansionism-- two ideaologies that have been a way of life for conquering empires throughout history.

(I am in no way qualified to explain the differences between these concepts-- I recommend doing your own research if you’re curious.)

The Persian Empire. The Greek Empire. The Roman Empire. The Byzantine Empire. The Mongolian Empire. The Russian Empire. The First French Empire.

You could take any of these (or numerous others) and make an interesting analysis between the similarities and differences between their behaviors and that of the Fire Nation. And maybe I’ll do that someday.

However, I started this to talk about Yu Dao and all of the other so-called colonies (I really feel like territories would be a better word, but, again, that’s a whole ’nother discussion), and I’d like to focus on that.

FYI, here’s a basic history refresher: If two countries are at war, and then they decide to end the war, neither country is required to return captured territories. They can make a treaty and agree to do so, but there is no obligation to. The Fire Nation didn’t just march in and say, “this is our land now”-- they fought for it. They captured that land. Just because the war is over doesn’t mean they need to just give it back.

Like it or not, that is the way the world operated for thousands of years, and so that is the interpretation I’m working with here.

In any case, “The Promise” actually presents this as a three-way conversation. There’s Zuko (and, by default, the Fire Nation), Kuei (and, by default, Ba Sing Se and the Earth Kingdom), and the people of Yu Dao themselves.

(My understanding of the Earth Kingdom’s style of government is that it’s made up of a large collection of different ethno-cultural regions who all answer to Ba Sing Se.)

I’ll let Sokka explain it:

[ID: Comic panel from Part Three of “The Promise.” Sokka and Katara are talking, both in obvious states of agitation, while Suki and Toph are looking at something in the background. Sokka is saying, “Let me see if I got this. The protestors and the Earth Kingdom Army want the colonials to go, the Fire Nation Army wants the colonials to stay, and the Yu Dao Resistance just want their city to be left alone?” Katara responds, “Yes!” / End ID.]

The people of Yu Dao don’t care about the war. They don’t even really care who’s in charge. They just want to be left alone.

This speaks to me on a very personal level, so I’m going to make another real-world comparison here:

My ancestors first came to America to escape from the poverty and opression they were experiencing in a place known as “White Russia”-- that is, Belarus. To be clear, I am not talking about the country “Belarus,” but the region, which includes the modern-day countries of Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia and Moldova, as well as parts of Poland and Russia.

I looked up White Russia, trying to find out how much information someone who didn’t grow up hearing stories about what it was like (that is, most of the people reading this,) might have. I didn’t find much. Most of what I found talked about political ideologies and such-- things that your average poor peasant, struggling just eke out a living, didn’t have much energy to care about. So let me paint a(n oversimplified) picture for you.

Imagine you’re a poor shoemaker in a small town on the Russian border. You spend your days hard at work, trying to earn a living to support your wife and nine children. You’ve never left the town you were born in. One day you get the news: Russia and Poland are fighting again. Your two oldest sons (ages 15 and 17) are forcibly drafted off to fight in the Russian army; you never see them again and have no way of knowing if they’re dead or alive (they’re probably dead). Poland wins-- this time. Congratulations, your town is now part of Poland.

Does suddenly being Polish make a difference to your life? Not in the slightest. Two or three years down the line, you’ll go back to being part of Russia again. This is the third or fourth time you’ve seen your town switch hands, and you can’t say you prefer one government over the other. It doesn’t really matter who’s in charge-- you’re still faced with crippling taxes, forced drafts, and various other forms of oppression. (It doesn’t help that you happen to be part of a persecuted minority.)

(This is why I have many ancestors who may never have left the town they were born in, and yet records show that they were born in one country, got married in another, and died in a third.)

This is the kind of worldview through which I am looking at Yu Dao. (Obviously, it’s not an exact parallel, but neither is the standard “colonizers vs oppressed natives” lens.)

My ancestors eventually got fed up with the treatment they were receiving from their respective governments, and left to build a new life, in a new place. But the citizens of Yu Dao don’t have anywhere to go. The only two real world powers in this story are the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom, neither of which has ever before expressed any true interest or concern in the actual people of Yu Dao.

The Earth Kingdom didn’t really care about the city before the war-- they were just another poor, struggling town, whose citizens were barely able to make ends meet. And while the Fire Nation may have helped the place grow into a bustling town, they also established a hierarchy that did not serve in the citizens’ best interests.

And so, in “The Promise,” these citizens’ frustrations come to a head. “Enough,” they say, “we don’t want to be used as a pawn in your games anymore.”

And Zuko and Kuei (and Aang) actually listen. They say “we need to start thinking about these people as people, not as symbols of one side or the other. It’s time to give them a say in their future.”

And a new country-- a new way of life-- is born.

(Is it perfect? Absolutely not. But it is constantly evolving and changing, trying to do better, be better. And that’s more than you can say about most of the other countries in this world.)

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the-voltage-diaries · 4 years ago

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Embrasse-Moi (Part 2) - Eisuke Ichinomiya x Soryu Oh

For, @kbtbbposts. Hi. It’s been a while. (Lmfao utter lies, it’s been over a month). I’m sorry for the delay <3

‘Embrasse moi’: French for ‘Kiss me’.

Disclaimer: Guy x Guy, Suggestive. Also there’s cussing here so tread carefully who am I kidding all of us love an Eisuke and a Soryu who say fuck and also do it later on. Also, this chapter includes the PoVs of both characters, i.e Eisuke and Soryu (totally not just for the heck of it) First it’s Eisuke, then Soryu and then back to Eisuke. The change of banners will tell you.

Word count: 3022. Lol the least I can do in an attempt to make up for the delay is publish a long ass chapter.

P.S.: I’m always open for feedback. Feel free to hit my asks anytime, about any of my works (you can ask as anonymous if you don’t want me to know who you are lol)

I wake up to the sound of something chiming near my head.

With one of my arms draped lazily over Soryu’s sleeping figure, I reach out for my mobile with the other. As soon as I type in the password and check the mail, I almost immediately regret it. Sighing, I place the phone back on the nightstand and turn around to face Soryu’s back, conveniently ignoring the message, ready to doze off again for a little bit.

The moment my eyes close, my phone starts buzzing. An annoyed huff escapes me before I manage to find the device again and answer the call.

“Good morning, Ichinomiya!” Jason says on the other end of the line, his voice retaining its usual cheeriness even at 7AM in the morning. Does this man not sleep, or what.

“What do you want.”

“Yes, yes, Eisuke. I’m doing well, thank you for asking,” the fucker says, sarcasm practically dripping from his words, “How about yourself?”

“Bye.” I mutter, about to hang up. Don’t get me wrong, but I have neither the time nor the desire to be happy go lucky for someone who ruined my peaceful morning.

“Hold your horses, mister. I called for a reason, actually.”

Then get to it already, damnit.

“I wanted to let you know we’re meeting at my office at ten-thirty today. Works for you?”

“Mm,” I reply, sitting up as I think. I feel Soryu stir beside me and I pause, not wanting to wake him up. But instead of opening his eyes and waking up, he just turns around and wraps an arm around my lap, nestling into it as if I was a body pillow. “Yeah. I’ll be there.”

“Okay, see you then.”

I hang up and run my fingers through my hair, letting myself enjoy the calm for a minute more before I need to get up. The moment I lift myself off the bed, I feel Soryu stir again at the loss of contact, but he manages to grab on to a nearby pillow to make up for it.

I’ll admit, for a moment I am tempted to rip that pillow out of his hands and get back into the bed with him, because Eisuke Ichinomiya doesn’t take kindly to being replaced, but I quickly shake my head to dismiss the thought.

I take a quick shower and put on my shirt, opting for my usual formal attire. Every little movement of mine is made quietly with the desire to not wake him up, because I know he needs the sleep if he doesn’t want to face the full wrath of a terrible hangover.

“Mmm,” he groans, still fully asleep, having no idea of the tough morning that awaits him. Speaking of hangovers, I walk over to the landline in the room and dial up the reception, trying to choose between the ideas of letting his hangover kill him or being a good citizen and saving his sorry ass.

“Morning, I’d like a bottle of ibuprofen and a glass of water in my room, and make it quick,” I tell the receptionist and hang up, my eyes catching the sight of a small notebook and pen on the nightstand.

I grab the pen and open the notebook, smirking as I write down a few words.

“I’m out to meet Jason for the business you definitely fucked up yesterday. I hope you’re no longer a man-child who yells ‘I am batman’ out of nowhere. On the off chance you are, let me remind you that puking on the bed is something you shouldn’t be doing.” “P.S. Yes, you did actually yell ‘I am batman’ yesterday.”

I tear the piece of paper and place the note beside him on my side of the bed, already imaging his reaction in my head.

I wake up with the unquenchable desire to throw my head into either a toilet or a paper bag.

The light blaring into the room through the windows feels nothing less than needles pricking into my eyes. As soon as my eyes adjust to the light, I get off the bed and make my way towards the bathroom, although barely in time. My hands grab on to the sides of the toilet seat as if it were a life support and my stomach somersaults as I vomit its contents out.

It, no doubt, is one of the worst hangovers of my life. This is also the first time the hangover is so bad that I feel the need to puke, that it doesn’t just stop at a headache. I can hold my liquor well, and have never had to face a lot of them, but this one is so violent that the back of my throat stings.

What in the hecks did I drink last night? How bad was it?

The memories of last night start to flood in, although they are fragmented beyond repair. The last thing I remember as clear as day is the time Eisuke and I met Jason at the bar. I vaguely recall us having a discussion over a few drinks and Eisuke walking out to take a call.

“That bastard,” I hiss, remembering the part where Jason showed me a new drink, the name of which I don’t remember, and asked me to try it. That’s where my brain starts getting fuzzy again.

A broken, foggy memory of the man laughing at my intoxicated ass passes through the front of my mind.

“Fuck.”

I got drunk.

Scratch that, I got wasted.

I got wasted at a meeting where I was supposed to remain in control of myself.

Damn it, Soryu. Could it get any worse?

That’s when I realise, yes, it could. And yes, it definitely did.

Wait a second. What happened after that? How did I make it back to the fucking room? Don’t tell me, did Eisuke bring me back?

I slowly lift myself up and walk back to the door of the bathroom. I try to remember what happened after I got completely inebriated but nothing comes to mind. My eyes sweep the room for a sign of anything that would help me at least piece the broken fragments of last night in some sort of a cohesive sequence. I don’t find any sign of Eisuke, but instead, my eyes stop at a note lying on his side of the bed.

Before I can so much as take a step in its direction, though, I feel the world go for a toss and my body once again turns back to the support of the toilet… only to throw up again. I hold the commode tightly as my body heaves, tired after spilling the contents of last night twice now. I take a moment to calm down and then get up and make my way towards the note I remember seeing.

Out of all the things to do, why the fuck did I do that?

Sweet mother of holy crap.

If Eisuke is to be believed, which he mostly is, the only way to describe my behaviour last night would be complete madness. My fingers clench around the paper in embarrassment, clutching it hard while my feet carry me back to the bathroom to clean myself up. Just when I think I have regained control over my exhausted self, I feel my stomach do a practice run-through of a gymnastics session as my body lurches forward, spilling its remaining contents into the toilet.

“Ah, shit,” I mutter, resting my head on the back of my palm, my eyes stinging with the pain of throwing up thrice this time, “I’m never drinking anything Jason gives me, ever again.”

“That sounds like a wise decision,” Ichinomiya butts in. Funny, because he doesn’t have a butt, really. Although cracking jokes right now isn’t really my best option.

My body agrees, because his voice coming out of nowhere makes my shoulders jump in an almost comedic way and I whip my head to look back at him like a literal deer caught in headlights. He’s keeping his jacket on the bed and chuckling at my reaction as we speak.

“I see you didn’t puke on the bed,” He smirks, undoing the top button of his shirt. “Very considerate of you.”

“Shut up, Ichinomiya,” I say, turning around and sitting down so that my back is against the toilet seat.

I hear his footsteps as I close my eyes, taking a deep breath. I roll my head back, regretting everything that has led me to this situation. Before long, a dull pain starts pulsating through my head and that’s all it takes for me to know I’m in for a crappy headache for breakfast. Just as I am about to let out an annoyed groan, I hear Eisuke’s footsteps cease a short distance away. “Here, have this.”

I open my eyes slowly and blink a couple of times before looking up at him. He is leaning against the door leading to the bathroom, holding a glass of water in one hand and a bottle of ibuprofen in the other.

I reach out to grab the bottle and take a pill out, muttering a low thanks, and take the glass of water from him. It doesn’t take me long to swallow the pill gratefully, and I notice Eisuke take a few steps forward and sit down beside me on the floor. My fingers freeze in the middle of tightening the bottle cap as I stare at him, then at the spot he is sitting on, then back at him.

Is this Ichinomiya? Or am I in some fucked up fantasy land?

I blink for a second or two before looking at him again.

There is no way in hell this pain in the ass without an ass is sitting on the floor right now.

“What.” He asks when he sees me staring at him for a whole minute… or at least a whole minute.

“Are you okay?”

He turns his head to look at me, raising a brow.

“Why is Your Royal Highness sitting on the floor of a bathroom?” I ask, overlooking the throbbing in my head for a moment to smirk at him. Of course, it’s just for a moment because the moment that moment gets over, my headache comes back to me with full force.

Needless to say, he ignores the jab. Instead, he bends his body a little closer to my own and looks up at me, and I almost lose my shit again at the actual look of concern he gives me. “Feeling better?” he asks, his face close enough that I can smell his cologne.

Which is worth noticing, because he doesn’t wear strong scents. “I… yeah, I’m fine,” I say, focusing on the way a few strands of his hair fall over his eyes. I’m not sure why I have a faint feeling that he is about to kiss me.

The moment that thought enters my mind, a few more fragments from yesterday come back to me. I vaguely remember bits and pieces of the scene where Eisuke helped me out of my business clothes and put on the casual ones. I recall a small bit where I brought my face closer to his and before I can walk through it any further, the memory cuts out, leaving a throbbing pain in its wake.

Wait… does that mean we kissed last night?

“Okay, enough small talk,” he says, stopping me from thinking any further, “We have a long day ahead of us and you might want to freshen up if you want to play a productive role in it.”

“Give me a break, my head feels like someone has opened a club in here.”

“You’ve got 20 minutes.”

... Motherfucker.

Soryu places the platinum key card in front of the card reader and the door to our room slides open to allow the both of us to enter. It is now eight-thirty in the evening, and the both of us are a little tired because wow, it was a long day.

Since I already finished the business part of our trip this morning with Jason, Soryu and I were free to do whatever we wanted for the rest of the day. I took him out for brunch to a private little restaurant just a little way away from the main city and gave him a run-down of the crux of what happened in the meeting this morning. After brunch, we went for a little sightseeing around town and on Soryu’s suggestion, checked out some of the local spots he knew about - much to my dismay, of course.

Why? Well, the crowds here are no joke, and we couldn’t take the limo so we had to walk around the city. Yes, we had to walk around the streets. In a city full of people. People left and right. People front and back. People here, people there. Basically every fucking where. No wonder I was drained out.

“Let’s pack our bags before calling it a night, yeah?” Soryu says, pulling me out of my reverie. I look around the room and find it to be just as clean and fresh as it was the night we checked in.

“Mm,” I hum, walking into the room and towards my suitcase. Placing it on the bed, I walk over and open the door to my side of the closet and take a handful of clothes. I start packing my bags and I see Soryu following suit.

He starts gathering his clothes and after he is done packing the ones in the closet, he reaches out to the ones we wore yesterday. They are placed on one side of the bed, clean and folded, thanks to the room service. As soon as his fingers come in contact with the blue shirt I made him wear to bed last night, I notice him pause mid-way.

“What is it?” I ask when he doesn’t move for a few moments. He doesn’t answer me immediately, looking almost as if he was in the middle of thinking something deep. “Earth to Soryu,” I call out again, and he finally gives a non-committal hum. “What is it?” I ask one more time, even though I hate repeating myself.

“Uh, some pieces of last night are coming back to me,” he says, closing his eyes as one of his hands starts massaging his temple.

That should be a good thing, right? What’s got him so serious?

I stop thinking when I see his eyes open in my periphery, and he slowly lifts his head up to look at me. “Did we kiss? I-I mean, did I kiss you last night?” He blurts out, and I look at him only to see his face looking in my direction without its usual emotionlessness.

Wait, is that even a word?

“I don’t-” he cuts in, stopping my thoughts midway, “Th- I don’t think that’s possib-”

“Yes.” I interrupt, not wanting him to dismiss it just like that. “Yes, we kissed last night.” He freezes completely. He just looks at me in what seems like complete shock, and doesn’t speak for a few moments before he finally comes to his senses.

“Fuck, I’m sorr-”

“There’s nothing to apologise for,” I say, taking a step towards him. “So, don’t.”

“No, Eisuke,” He says, taking a small step back, “You don’t get it. I was completely out of my mind and I shouldn’t have-”

“You don’t regret it, do you?” I ask, taking another step towards him to cut him off.

He takes another step back and pauses, contemplating. He looks like someone just asked him to give up on omelettes, which would be comical enough to make me chuckle any other day except right now, I am not in the mood for jokes.

“The kiss,” I repeat, taking another step in his direction.

Goddamnit, how many more times will I have to repeat myself in this one god forsaken day?

“Do you regret it, Soryu?” I ask, my voice low, and he tries to take another step back - only to bump into the wall behind him.

“Should I?” He suddenly says, looking up, his eyes staring into my own. I take the one last step towards him that brings us just mere inches away from each other.

“I don’t know about you,” I whisper, and I see his breath quicken, “But I don’t.”

“You don’t?” He repeats, his voice cracking. A light blush creeps into his cheeks as I take one small step forward, now almost pressing our bodies to each other’s.

I bring a finger up to his face and graze his jawline with it, slowly trailing it down his chin and along his neck. His eyes involuntarily close at the contact and he takes a sharp breath. “No, Soryu,” I whisper, my other hand finding its way to his side, lightly scratching over the cloth, “I don’t.”

I hear his breathing pick up some more pace as he dips his head, his forehead barely touching my shoulder. I bring my face closer to his ear and I feel him catch his breath, his body ceasing all movement.

“There seems to be a lot of confusion between us,” I whisper, and I watch as his body shudders slightly the moment those words leave my mouth, “How about we do something to ensure there is no more confusion?”

“A-and what is that?” He chokes out, nearly melting when my tongue slides down his ear.

Fuck, Soryu.

He lets out a pleased hum at the touch, and I barely manage to keep it all together.

Oh god, this is going to be the death of me.

His hands come to rest on my chest, his fingers folding against my shirt.

“Soryu Oh,” I whisper, my fingers reaching out to hold him by the back of his neck while my teeth nibbled on his earlobe, “Let me fucking kiss you.”

He gasps, his fingers coiling around the fabric of my shirt. After a pause, he answers me in breath so shallow I almost don’t catch it.

An answer that makes me lose my fucking mind.

“Okay.”

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slytherinknowitall · 4 years ago

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Potion Fumes and Cauldron Leaks

Chapter 17: Falling For The Underdog

(Click here for chapter 16!)

(Click here to start from the beginning!)

Disclaimer: I don’t own the “Harry Potter” book series. The story of “Harry Potter” is the property of J. K. Rowling, it is not my intellectual property. There is no financial gain made from this nor will any be sought. This is for entertainment purposes only.

The following weekend, Severus found himself in a situation that he would have never thought possible – he spent the entire day with a woman.

Despite it being a Saturday, Granger had arrived at his private quarters quite early. While he usually woke up long before the rest of the castle, Severus had never really considered himself a morning person. He normally worked late and slept little, often waking up in a cold sweat after just a few hours of sleep due to horrible nightmares. So needless to say, he had been rather surprised when his apprentice had shown up at his door long before the house elves had even started to prepare breakfast. As he’d let her in, he had asked himself if perhaps she was suffering from the same problem as him.

The two of them had spent a lot of time together over the past week. Ever since he had given her unimpeded access to his rooms, Granger had come by even more often than before, and so they had often spent their evenings together. Everything inside him was still screaming that this was wrong, that they were becoming way too comfortable with each other. But yet, he could not help but feel a rush of ecstasy surge through his entire body every single time she walked into his sitting room.

He had given her the password in what had been almost a moment of mental aberration, and he had soon started to regret it. He had tried telling himself that the reason for that regret was that such an action was simply inappropriate for a teacher, but deep down, he knew that he was really just scared of rejection; scared that she would not take him up on the offer and that she would find it creepy and weird. But the next day, when he had come back from teaching the fourth year Slytherins and Gryffindors, he had found Granger in his sitting room, fussing over a small sandwich platter from the kitchens which was placed on the table in front of her. Severus still could not have described the emotions he had experienced upon seeing this. On one hand, he had felt massive relief. On the other, it had felt weirdly domestic for some reason; almost as though he had come home after a long day of work to a loving home – something which had been completely new to him.

Sometimes, the pair would be working on potions together, and other times, Severus would be sitting at his desk marking essays while Granger would curl up on his sofa as she studied. Today, however, they were doing what both of them loved the most: reading.

The Potions Master was seated in one of his big wing chairs, a copy of his favourite journal, The Practical Potioneer, in his hands, whereas Granger was spread out across the sofa as usual, deeply engrossed in his volume of Hélas, Je me suis Transfiguré Les Pieds by medieval French wizard Malecrit. Over the last couple of days, Severus had slowly begun to notice how eager she seemed to get her hands on classics from the wizarding world, and he did not exactly know how to feel about that – to him, it somehow appeared as though she was almost desperately trying to make up for the time she had spent growing up around Muggles.

They had both been reading in silence for a while when Severus stumbled across an especially interesting paragraph on the uses of Alihotsy in magical antidepressants. Opening his mouth to share this new piece of information with the knowledge-hungry witch, he looked up and instantly had to draw a sharp breath. Unbeknownst to him, Granger had shifted in her position a few minutes ago, and now her grey skirt had ridden up just far enough to reveal her toned thighs as well as barely the slightest hint of the subtle crease running horizontally underneath her behind.

Severus gulped. It was hard to ignore the way that the shadows of the fire burning a mere few feet away were dancing across her tender, milky flesh. Why was she wearing her uniform – a uniform with what now suddenly seemed like a ridiculously short skirt – on a day with no classes?! For a split second, the thought that she was trying to seduce him crossed his mind, but he quickly dismissed that. Never in a million years would Granger be the type of person to try to recreate a scene from a low-budget adult movie, especially not with one of her professors. And if he was being honest with himself, he would have found her appearance bewitching even if she had been wearing a potato sack.

Having long forgotten about what he had originally wanted to say, he blurted out the first thing he could think of. “I do have to say, I find it rather bizarre that Miss Weasley of all people would behave in such a manner towards you. I would be terrified of making someone even remotely angry if they knew of my deepest secret.”

Granger did not even look up. “But that’s not how friendships work.”

“What?” His eyebrows shot up in surprise.

“A real friend would never betray you just because you’ve had a fight with them,” she said as she pushed herself up into a seated position. Severus did not know if he was glad or disappointed that her legs were now covered again. “A promise is a promise. That fact doesn’t change just because you’re having a disagreement or because you don’t like each other anymore.”

Yet again, he was pleasantly surprised by her maturity; it made him feel a tiny bit less like a predator preying on an innocent girl.

“Plus, the real problem is Ron. I love him –“ Severus felt a slight sting at these words. “But he’s just so unpredictable sometimes. And at the end of the day, Ginny will always side with him, because he’s her brother, and Harry will do the same, because he’s his best friend and because Ginny is his girlfriend. All three of them are on the Quidditch team together, and they all share common interests. I am the odd one out, and so if someone has to leave the group, it will always be me first.”

Severus was stunned. He wanted to disagree, wanted to tell her that what she was saying was wrong – but he knew that it was the truth. Just like himself, she was and would always be an outsider.

“Anyway,” Granger continued, taking a look at her wristwatch. “I think I have to go. I still want to stop by the library to pick up some books before it closes. Thank you for having me, as always.”

And with that, she stood up, straightened out her clothes and put the book she had been reading back in its place on one of the countless shelves lining the dark room before making her way to the exit. But just as she was about to disappear through the hole in the wall, she lingered for a second.

“Professor Snape?”

Severus was caught off guard by how nervous she suddenly sounded. “Yes, Miss Granger?”

She took her bottom lip between her teeth. “It’s okay if you don’t want to, but the other teachers normally address me by my first name when I’m alone with them. So perhaps you could do that, too? Only in private, of course.”

Severus gave her a calculated look. It probably sounded nonsensical, especially after he had already allowed her into his chambers, but he was still somewhat afraid of getting too close to her. Wasn’t using her first name taking it a bit too far? But at the same time, her request flooded his soul with a feeling of genuine happiness.

“All right … Hermione.”

*************** *************** ***************

“Come on, Hermione, I know you’re in there! Open the door!”

The brightest witch of her age was surprise to hear what sounded like frantic knocking as she climbed up the stairs leading to her Head Girl suite. It was not long until she arrived at the top and discovered a certain redhead banging on her door.

“I know you’re really mad at me, but can we please just talk about it?”

“Ginny?” she said, making the other witch jump in surprise. “What are you doing?”

“Hermione!” Ginny exclaimed before running towards her friend at the speed of light and hugging her so hard that the two of them almost tumbled over. “I am so, so sorry! I know I treated you like crap, and for a stupid reason, too! I don’t know what got into me, I’m just so stressed right now, and I let Ron get the better of me! Harry is also sorry, but Ron is still mad, and so he feels like he’s sort of caught in the middle, and –“

Hermione took a step back and offered her a smile. “Gin, it’s all right. No hard feelings, okay?”

“Oh, you are truly too good for this world!” Ginny called out before moving in for another suffocating embrace.

Hermione could not suppress a chuckle. She was still upset about how she had been treated, of course; but she had learnt a long time ago that sometimes, being happy was more important than being right. War hero or not, at the end of the day, she was just a girl, and a girl needed her best friend.

Now that their frivolous fight was finally behind them, it did not take long before the two teenagers fell back into their old ways. They soon found themselves on Hermione’s bed, with countless Muggle nail supplies spread out around them, talking about this and that. However, the newest Hogwarts gossip was not really able to awaken Hermione’s enthusiasm like it usually did. Something had been occupying her mind for a few days now, and it took her a long time before she finally mustered up the courage to bring it up.

“Hey, Gin …” she said meekly.

“Yes?” Ginny replied, biting her tongue in concentration as she carefully painted the tiny nail of one of her little toes in a pastel pink colour.

“Um …” Hermione had absolutely no idea how to broach the subject. “I need your advice on something.”

It was only then that the sixth-year looked up.

“What’s going on?” she asked concerned.

“So …” Taking a shaky breath, she decided to just make it quick and painless, like ripping off a band-aid. “I think that I might be starting to like Professor Snape.”

Oh Merlin, she had finally said it aloud! After many sleepless nights of confusion, dismay and solitary pining, she had finally admitted it – to Ginny and to herself.

Too scared of her reaction, Hermione did not dare to look Ginny in the eyes. But to her surprise, the only response was a high-pitched giggle.

“Hermione, you like all teachers. So I’m not at all surprised that you like that tosser, too. Even though I do not know how you could, especially enough to become his apprentice and –“

“No, I –“ She rubbed the back of her neck with a trembling hand. “I think I might fancy him.”

“WHAT?!” yelled Ginny as she jumped to her feet, knocking over a couple of bottles of nail polish and spilling their content all over the comforter in the process.

“Ginny, please!” she tried to calm her down, but it was to no avail – the whirlwind that was Ginevra Weasley had already been unleashed.

“You have a crush on Snape? SNAPE?! The greasy git of the dungeons? The most hated teacher in all of Hogwarts? That Snape?!”

Her look was filled with nothing but disbelief and betrayal.

“Gods, I don’t know!” Hermione’s eyes were starting to burn and fill with tears. She could not help but feel embarrassed. “I have all of these confounding feelings, and I don’t know what to make of them, okay?!”

“Hey, hey, come on! It’s nothing to cry about.” Ginny hurriedly sat back down and rubbed her back reassuringly, though she still had horror written all over her face. “Even if we’re talking about Snape here.”

A salty tear rolled down Hermione’s blushed cheek. “I don’t even know when it started, I just –“ The words got stuck in her throat as she erupted into sobs. “How can I like a teacher in that way?! Like, maybe that could even get me EXPELLED!”

Ginny pulled her into a half hug. “Now, calm down, we’ll figure this out somehow! Why do you like him?”

Hermione sniffled. “I don’t know! It’s just that he’s being so nice to me!”

“Really?” Ginny tilted her head to the left, obviously doubting the statement. “Snape and nice?”

“Yes, extremely nice!” Hermione blurted out as she wiped her flushed face with the back of her hand. “You know, after our stupid argument, I felt so sad and miserable. But then he invited me over, and we had some tea, and he let me vent. He consoled me, Gin!”

In hindsight, the brunette would later realise that she did not know how exactly he had become aware of their fallout in the first place. She certainly had never openly mentioned it in front of him. But at that moment, with her raw emotions causing mayhem inside her mind, the thought did not occur to her even once.

“You’re kidding!” Hermione could only shake her head before she broke into tears again. “Hey, I’m sorry! It’s just hard to imagine that someone like Snape might actually have some real human feelings.”

“Well, he does! I feel like he actually cares about me, you know? Like, it almost feels as though he’s my friend. He even gave me the password to his rooms so that I would have somewhere to retreat to.”

“WHA–“ Clearly forcing herself to remain calm, Ginny took a deep breath. “Are you being for real?”

“Of course! I’ve been spending time there every day!”

Shocked, Ginny put a palm on her chest. “Hold on! Severus Snape, a grown man and teacher at this school, is allowing you, a beautiful 18-year-old student of his, in his private quarters where the two of you are completely alone? Ew, what a creep!”

“It’s not like that!” Hermione protested, her facial features contorting into a grimace. “Never once has he done anything even remotely inappropriate! We just work on something together or read some books, and sometimes we eat meals together. If anything, I’m the one who has taken it too far.”

“What do you mean?” No response. “Hermione?”

“I hugged him once …”

It was merely a whisper, but she heard her nonetheless.

“YOU DID WHAT?”

Hermione hung her head, burying her hands deep in her massive brown locks. “I hugged him in the Entrance Hall during the Hallowe’en Feast. We had talked earlier about how he didn’t want to come because of how much he hates dressing up, but then he surprised me by showing up with his teeth charmed to look like a vampire and … I don’t know, I just became so excited, and before I knew it, I was hugging him!”

Ginny could only look at her, baffled-eyed. “Did he, like, hug you back?”

She thought about it for a second.

“Yeah, I think so.” She scrunched up her face. “I liked it, too.”

No one said anything for a long time. Then, letting out a forced laugh, the redhead ultimately mumbled, “Wow, I … really don’t know what to say.”

“I’m screwed!” Hermione exclaimed as she teared up again.

Ginny let out a huge sigh. “Look, at the end of the day, you cannot help who you fall for. And while I’m certainly not a fan of the Dungeon Bat myself, you definitely could have done worse.”

Ignoring the other girl’s glare, she continued, “He’s smart, just like you, and according to what you told me, he’s also treating you right. And to be honest, he’s not really as ugly as we all make him out to be. So liking him is not as ridiculous as it might sound at first. Plus, maybe this infatuation is just a phase. So many girls get crushes on their teachers at some point. Chances are by tomorrow you’re already over it.”

She grabbed her hand. “The only thing I’m worried about is how friendly you two seem to be getting. This could actually get you into major trouble should anyone notice. And it will also not help you get over this silly crush if you keep seeing him this often. So maybe just try and distance yourself for a little while, ‘kay? I bet that once this whole thing with Ron blows over, your feelings won’t be all over the place like this anymore.”

(Click here for chapter 18!)

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sjrresearch · 4 years ago

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Why Not Wargame World War I or Vietnam?

Historical Wargaming, like many hobbies, has fads. One year, Ancients might be big, or it may be Colonials. The next, World War II. But two periods have not, at least in my own observation, gotten their day in the sun. At least not in US wargaming circles (and I will be speaking almost exclusively to that, as I am less familiar with, though still knowledgeable of, the British wargaming scene).

These periods are the First World War and Vietnam. Both were major conflicts with plenty of research materials available (unlike, say, the Grand Chaco War). Both have libraries of rules and boardgames written for them, but neither, at least not at the cons I’ve attended, are quite the attention-getters that other conflicts do. Why is this? I have some theories as to why.

Just a disclaimer, this is mostly an opinion piece, and your mileage may vary.

American and British Views of the First World War and Vietnam

Let’s face it. Most American wargamers are patriotic folks. We want to play wargames where “our boys” feature prominently. World War II more than fits that bill. World War I does not. By the time the American Expeditionary Force arrived in France in strength in early 1918, the German Army was on its last legs. The Americans arrived in theatre in time to push the Germans off the proverbial cliff when the last German offensive in the west failed. Our active participation in the First World War was barely six months. Our fleets fought no major battles, and by the time we were shuttling troops to Europe, the U-Boat and raider menace was a shadow of what it used to be. In the air, American heroes were made, such as Frank Luke and Eddy Rickenbacker, but they, too, missed the worst of the Allied fortunes of the previous year.

In short, while American forces improved the overall strategic position of the Western Allies, the US Army was poorly prepared for the modern battlefield. Many of the American offensives, in the beginning, used the same types of massed frontal assaults that the British and French had abandoned the previous year due to the horrific casualties involved. The US Army often had to buy equipment from the British and the French to supplement their own needs, as our own industry had not geared up for war by the time the war ended.

In short, our role in the First World War was a minor one, relatively speaking. And that carries through to American wargamers. British wargamers learned a quite different lesson about the First World War from their school classes and their families than we did. We had 4 million men in the military for the First World War, half of that went to France, and half of that saw any combat. Compare that with the Second World War, where you had 15 million Americans in the military. So, for many wargamers of a certain age, they were more likely to have a World War II veteran in the family at some point than a World War I veteran.

In Britain, this was different. Over 5 million men in Great Britain enlisted, which was almost 25% of the male population at the time. Add in the fact that the British lost almost 750,000 men worldwide over four years and the United States lost 110,000 in the space of five or six months, a different image of World War I appears. In the US, it is a conflict we do not game much because nobody pays much attention to it (though, with recent movie releases such as 1917, this seems to be changing). In Britain, World War I is seen as a national tragedy. It is of boys being sent off to the slaughter at places like the Somme and Passandachele. And since Britain is in many ways the “mecca” of hobby wargaming, it is inevitable that a feeling of “No, that’s just not something we want to game out” took hold for an awfully long time.

Moreover, the Western Front was not a war of movement except at the very beginning and end. That is why most boardgames on World War I tend to concentrate either on other theatres (the East is extremely popular), 1914 or 1918. Miniatures games tend to center around the same, or game out the war in the air or at sea.

Vietnam is the opposite in so very many ways. American participation in the conflict was massive from the beginning, and the conflict lasted ten years. Approximately 2.7 million Americans served in Vietnam, and the war showcased some advanced weapons systems on both sides. But it was an unpopular war at home that tore the social fabric of the time asunder. Wargaming in this country truly came of age in the 1970s, and Vietnam was still seen as a “dirty” war, again, one not worth gaming. In British wargaming circles, Vietnam has been big and never really stopped being big. I remember all my British “glossies” (slang for the British Wargaming magazines, named as such for their glossy covers) full of articles on Vietnam.

There was a small uptick in gaming Vietnam in the mid-to-late 1980s in this country, as various movies came out from Hollywood, but the nature of the conflict is not easy to game. Vietnam epitomized the old saying about combat: “Long periods of boredom punctuated by short, sharp moments of sheer terror.” There were long periods of time where patrols would go out and find…nothing. Then a patrol would go out, and all hell would break loose. That is not easy to game. That is the larger truth at the tactical level about counterinsurgency. It’s not how many guerillas you kill, but it’s what you do to use “soft power” to undercut their support. That said, I have seen some good miniatures games on the subject, but most board games on Vietnam seem to be focused on the strategic and operational levels.

Add in the popular beliefs about Vietnam and the men who fought there. None of them were true, but the media popularized them in the day, and popular opinion demonized the soldiers who fought there. Going back to fads, it was not hard to see why American wargamers to this day get a little queasy about gaming Vietnam.

Availability of Games and Miniatures

I am happy to say that times are a-changin’, as the old protest song from the Vietnam-era goes. Perhaps with World War I, there are no veterans in living memory, and there’s better history being done now (especially new history on the tactical innovations developed on the Western front putting an end to the pernicious myth of half-trained boys being slaughtered by uncaring commanders). And with Vietnam in this country, we are starting to see more Vietnam veterans opening up about their experiences and game designers and rules writers listening to them.

So, here is an overview of what is out there both board gaming and miniatures-wise:

Board Games World War I

Ted Racier has written quite a few games on the First World War. It is not a period I game for the most part, but I played the 1918 game back when he published it in Command magazine. I personally think it was one of the three best games Command ever published, and I am glad to see GMT is bringing it back.

We all know what I think of this game, and I think it was a welcome window into the strategic realities of World War I. It is still one of the best Card Driven Games of all time.

I do not own this game, but the premise of doing a worldwide game of the First World War does intrigue me. It seems to put proper focus on economics and diplomacy, with the war of movement slowing down into an attritional model. All in all, it looks good, but if someone who has played it could let me know how it plays, that would be appreciated.

This game has been out for a while, and I had also heard a lot of buzz about it when it was released. Clash of Arms could have had a solid game in this, and I played it once. The rules needed a lot of work and probably could have used the “living rules” concept that other game companies used.

Board Games Vietnam

A note, this is not all-inclusive as there are a lot of Vietnam board games out there. I had to cherry-pick which ones would be of the widest possible interest.

For a while, this game by Victory Games was the game on the Vietnam War. It was truly a monster game and covered every aspect of the war, from pacification to how dedicated the combatants were. It was well-designed and state of the art for its time. Sadly, it is out of print and not cheap to come by, but it is worth it if you can find a copy.

Downtown is probably one of the best games on what goes into planning and running an air campaign out there today. GMT still has the game in print (it is one of two games on Vietnam I own), and I have played it on VASSAL a few times. I really do like it. The designer, Lee Brinscombe-Wood, has gone on to write An Elusive Victory (The Arab-Israeli wars in the air) and The Burning Blue (The Battle of Britain), and Red Storm (A hypothetical Third World War in the skies over Germany) were also written all using the same rules system. The game details well the frustrations faced by the Americans over the skies of North Vietnam. You can purchase a copy here.

Mark H. Walker did some really neat work with his Lock ‘N Load series, and one of the first games in the series was about Vietnam. Lock N’ Load is a system that is at the same level as Squad Leader but is a bit simpler to play, but no less nuanced nor fun. I own the 1st Edition of Band of Heroes and will one of these days go out and get the new versions of the series. All of them play the same, with an emphasis on putting tactical decisions into the hands of the player, keeping the game moving and fun, with most scenarios taking no more than an hour or two. You get all the troop types: US Army, USMC, ARVN, NVA, VC, and yes, even Australians (for those wanting to game out the movie Danger Close). You can get a copy here.

Meatgrinder is a game from the folks at Against the Odds magazine about the last stand of the ARVN at the town of Xuan Loc in 1975. The rules are beautifully written, and the articles that come with the game are incredible reading at times. It is games like this that remind us that there was still a war going on after the US pulled out in 1973, and the fall of South Vietnam had consequences. And it is just a great story of a hell of a stand. You can purchase a copy of the issue and the game here.

This was the game that was on everyone’s minds when it came out in 2014. The COIN series is an innovative set of games designed around a common rule set that games out insurgencies like Cuba in the 1950s, Columbia in the 1990s, and Afghanistan today, as well as Vietnam. I have yet to play any of the COIN games, but I want to. They are all highly recommended and address the problem of counterinsurgency quite well in a strategic context. You can purchase a copy here.

Miniatures Rules for World War I and Vietnam

Richard Clarke has a reputation with Too Fat Lardies for putting out good rules with card-driven mechanics. It is not everyone’s cup of tea, but it can produce a good game. I haven’t played Through the Mud and the Blood myself, but it has very good information on the various armies of the Western Front and the tactics they used, with the rules author making a fine argument that the tactical innovation opened up the stalemate of the Western Front in 1918 (it did). Too Fat Lardies’ products can be found all over the internet or in PDF or physical format on their website.

Peter Pig’s rules are meant for larger-scale fights, where each stand of troops is about a company in size, and the 6’x4’ board is sub-divided into squares and plays something like a board game. I will not say it is my cup of tea but may swear by it. You can buy digital copies via Peter Pig.

There are several rules for World War I also on Wargames Vault, and some, like Westfront, sound intriguing, but take a look for yourself.

Even though Force on Force is still sadly out of print, their Vietnam sourcebook and rules were probably one of the best rules sets out there for gaming the Vietnam war. Happily, PDF copies are still available for sale from the publisher for $20.00. You will need the base rules to play as well, but those are also available on PDF from the publisher.

Two Hour Wargames (THW) has been blurring the line between RPGs and Wargames for a while now and promising (and delivering) games in under two hours. Their Vietnam game is no different, as the game is centered around the idea of your “character” controlling a squad, and like most THW products, the game has very simple rules. There is also a campaign generator for scenarios you can play out on the tabletop. It is a great fun, pulpy take on Vietnam and is well worth the $20.00 price tag. The rules are for sale in PDF and can be found here.

Next week, we’ll discuss miniatures themselves, as that’s going to take an entire article in its own right!

At SJR Research, we specialize in creating compelling narratives and provide research to give your game the kind of details that engage your players and create a resonant world they want to spend time in. If you are interested in learning more about our gaming research services, you can browse SJR Research’s service on our site at SJR Research.

(This article is credited to Jason Weiser. Jason is a long-time wargamer with published works in the Journal of the Society of Twentieth Century Wargamers; Miniature Wargames Magazine; and Wargames, Strategy, and Soldier.)

#wargaming #vietnam war #world war I #history

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tricksterslav · 5 years ago

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Hi there I don’t have any experience with the Witcher. Never played the games or read the books. I’ve watched the trailer for the Netflix series. I was wondering what you meant by the issues you have with no Slavic representation in the aesthetic and other things like that? Also I’m from the US so I’m incredibly uninformed on this topic and would enjoy being enlightened. I promise I’m not being sarcastic and if I’m coming off as rude I’m sorry

(Disclaimer - I am not an expert nor do I claim to be, I'm speaking from my own heart and the knowledge I have)

To get into the issue, you've got to understand that for most people that've read The Witcher, it's a very important book. I grew up on foreign fantasy and adventure novels and when my mom handed me a book that was Polish -it was weird. I didn't know Polish fantasy novels even existed - I was fed grim, westernized fantasy beforehand. The Witcher immediately stood out to me- it was complex, intelligent, with a lot of morals and likeable, but problematic characters. It had strong girl protagonists (including Ciri, who's canonically lesbian/bisexual), intriguing action, and it was perfect. I'm sure a lot of people feel the same about it. It's a unique piece of Polish culture, rooted deeply.

The Witcher is riddled with references to Polish history and culture, especially Slavic mythology. Monsters such as Strzyga, poroniec, wąpierz (or even the Wild Hunt, [even though it does appear also in German mythology]) hail from Slavic mythology. Superstitions (such as children being born under a bad moon) are driven from Slavic beliefs. The dryads that take Ciri in while she's exiled are creatures from Slavic mythology. It doesn't matter that Witcher takes place in a fictional world. It's a fictional world build upon slavic motifs.

Now imagine that amazing book, and the incredible game (made by polish artists) taken by a big corporation such as Netflix. They cast non-Slavic actors as the main characters, they leave out everything that makes it unique and beautiful, and turn it into a stereotypical fantasy setting- English castles, French costumes, American actors. There's nothing distinct about it now - it's not a beautiful, captivating story anymore. It's just a mainstream tale about a guy with a sword. And it's fed to a target audience - mostly people who have no knowledge of the books at all, who don't know what this book means to us.

I don't know how people can not be mad about it. If any of my information is false, be free to correct me, but I'd much rather enjoy something made properly than another mediocare Netflix show that leans heavily on special effects for any semblance of quality at all.

Slavic people don't get represented in the media- and I've talked about it before, but to take any sliver of the brand that we had - something distinct, something ours, and exclude us from it? I was very excited for the show, at first, because I didn't know how badly executed it's going to be. This is an utter disappointment, and I'm going to express my dissatisfaction.

Sorry for the long post, but I hope I've helped you understand the problem a little more.

#witcher #the witcher #the witcher discourse #discourse #answered #thanks for asking #long post #polish #poland #slavic #slavic culture #slavic folklore

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etudier-avec-bella · 5 years ago

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My First Term at University

Hello! If you’ve been following me for a while, you may have noticed that this blog has been pretty dead for the past few months. Like, literally no new posts have gone up from me since results day. Yikes. Where have I been, and what’s been going on? That’s what I’m here to clear up. Because I have a lot to talk about.

I am going to be touching on three main topics: Life at York, my course and how I’ve been studying, and- finally- my mental wellbeing.

So, grab a hot drink, get cosy, and prepare for what is possibly the longest piece of writing I’ve ever produced in my life. Seriously. It’s huge.

**Disclaimer: In no way is this post supposed to reflect the ‘real’ life of the average student at York, nor am I making any comment on the quality of education or student life at York. I am aware that I’m extremely lucky to be a student on one of the best Chemistry courses in the country, and this post is simply detailing how I found the transition from living at home to living independently as a university student. York- I love you. Even if you weren’t my first choice, I am so glad I ended up here. I’ve met some wonderful people and learned so many incredible things just in this first term alone. Please don’t take this post as me hating on York or something, because I really, really don’t lmao**

Life in York

Let’s kick things off by talking about what it’s like to live in York!

Contrary to what I initially assumed about moving to a university in the middle of the countryside (i.e. that there would be nothing to do), York is a beautiful city, and I’m so excited to get better acquainted with it over the next three years.

The high streets here are jam-packed full of hidden gems- I seriously think that you could go to a different coffee shop every day for a year, there are so many of them dotted around. I’ve loved being able to wander around and see where my feet take me, and there’s always somewhere new to discover; bookshops, cafés, museums, the castle walls, art exhibits, concerts… Oh, my!

Some of my favourite places that I’ve discovered so far are:

● Drift-In- my favourite little coffee shop! It’s never too busy if you go before midday, making it the ideal place to crack out some work in a more relaxed studying environment. They also offer a 10% student discount, and have a wall of polaroids of the dogs who have visited the café. Incredible.

● Lucky Days- the perfect place to take your friends for lunch! They also do really good cakes if you ever feel like treating yourself after submitting an assignment.

● The Little Apple Bookshop- There are lots of cute little indie bookshops on the road leading to the art gallery, but I think that this one is my personal favourite. Stock changes frequently, so it’s worth popping in every once in a while, and they have classic novels at much lower prices than the likes of Waterstones (for all of you English Lit students out there!)

As for the University Campus, it’s similarly wonderful. The River runs right through Campus West, making itself home to lots of ducks, geese, and other waterfowl. We also have wild bunnies outside the Biology greenhouses, and I always see them hopping around in the dark when I walk home from my French classes. Campus West isn’t too big- you can walk from one side to the other in about 15 minutes- so the student community is super tight-knit. I have friends from loads of different colleges who I’ve met through mixers, societies, and my classes, and it’s really easy for us to link up and do stuff together because we’re all so near to each other.

There are also some pretty cool places on campus, if you don’t feel like leaving to go to the city centre- the Sir Jack Lyons Concert Hall are always putting on lunchtime concerts with cheap tickets for students, which is a nice way to wind down after working all day AND show support for the music students, and there’s also a student-ran supermarket in Wentworth College called Scoop, where you can bring your own containers and buy spices/grains/pasta in bulk for much cheaper than you can in other similar supermarkets. Scoop also sell boxes of locally-sourced produce, making it easy to support small businesses on a budget!

Honestly, there are still lots of places on campus that I’m yet to visit. Whenever I get fed up of working, I like to go for a little 30-minute walk to the other side of the university grounds and see what I can find (there’s a really lovely garden behind Derwent College, it has a big stately manor house and lots of fancy greenery). It’s a nice way to get some fresh air and change up the scenery when I get stir-crazy from being in my room for so long.

My Course/Studying

As many, many people have told me in the past- university-level Chemistry is hard. And you know what? They were right. However, I like a challenge as much as the next overachiever, and as a self-confessed science nerd I’ve got to say… My course is a dream.

I know I’m only one term into my first year, but the way I look at basically everything around me has already changed so much. The fundamental knowledge you gain just from first module covers all of the main bases, and I’ve found that the way I think about and approach scientific problems is already very different to the way I would have looked at them during my A-Levels. You’re encouraged to think a lot more openly, and apply relatively basic concepts to solve really tricky problems instead of just learning the answers to a syllabus- it’s a great chance to utilise your all of your skills.

In terms of how I’ve been studying, not a lot has changed. My exams don’t carry any real credit this year, but I’m still aiming to achieve high grades. Over the Christmas break, I’ve been focusing a lot more on resting rather than working- so I whilst I haven’t done a LOT, the revision I’ve done has been productive. I still use flashcards and Quizlet, but I’ve recently introduced summary posters onto the scene as well, which has been working well for me. I’ll make a post on how I make these in the near future!

Overall, the first term has been pretty good academically. I feel stretched and challenged, and things are at a manageable level of difficulty. Which brings me onto something that has not been at a manageable level of difficulty this term…

My Wellbeing

Mental health. Something of a taboo topic within the study community. It’s something we all will deal with, and something most of us will struggle with to some degree at times. So, why don’t we talk about it more?

I won’t go into super deep, personal detail in this next section. Mostly because there are some things I’m not comfortable with sharing on the internet. However, I do think it’s important for me to use my small platform of followers to talk about my own experiences and attempt to tackle the stigma about being a student and struggling with mental health, so I am going to be as honest as I can about what’s been going on.

Before coming to university, I was already having a difficult time with my mental health, and had been for a few years. This summer was a particularly bad one for me. A-Levels left me completely exhausted, results day was a bit of a sticky one, and thinking about life as I knew it coming to an end was terrifying. I knew that, once I moved to uni, I was going to feel even sadder, lonelier, and more out-of-place than I already did. And I had no idea how to deal with it.

I believe that one of the biggest contributing factors to my sudden and sharp decline in mental wellness after arriving in York was the fact that, even two months later, I still hadn’t gotten over my Durham rejection. Ignoring my initial disappointment was a bad idea, though I didn’t know it at the time.

As someone who has been a high achiever their entire life, rejection and failure aren’t things I’m used to dealing with at all. Not on this scale, at least. Academics was the one thing I could always rely on, the one thing underpinning all of my successes. The one thing within which I had manifested almost my entire personality. Before, I was always Bella, the smart one. Bella, top of the class. Bella, the straight-A student; set to do great things; capable of going anywhere… But, now, here I was. Bella, just got rejected by her dream university.

Trying to settle into student life with a completely secure sense of self is hard enough- trying to settle in whilst struggling to cope with all of these new, conflicting feelings? It was so, so difficult. WAY more than I would ever admit to in real life. Stupid me was too proud to admit that I was upset to ‘only be going to my second choice’ so I told friends, family, and everyone else that I was perfectly happy to be going to York instead of Durham, and that I wasn’t sad about it at all.

(I want to clarify that I am in NO way trying to diminish the hard work and achievements of anybody who got into their second choice university, or anybody else who got into York. Only now have I realised that it’s nothing to be ashamed of, and if anything you should be proud that your efforts got you into whichever school you ended up in. I’m just sharing with you all how much I struggled to accept this rejection, and how it affected my mental health).

I knew people who had gotten in, and I saw them posting on Instagram about matriculation and other social events at the university. This completely broke my heart. I was happy for my friends who were studying there- they worked hard and more than deserved to be there… but I couldn’t help but feel jealous. I wanted to be there with them. The place that I had worked so incredibly hard to receive an offer for.

Although it’s embarrassing to admit, I did actually cry a bit after seeing these posts. I didn’t know how to process my feelings, because for those first few weeks after rejection I absolutely refused to let myself mope (looking back, I’ve got no idea why I did that. Wtf Bella?). I was determined to be strong about it and try to force myself to be happy with the situation I found myself in- despite the fact that, deep down, I knew it wasn’t where I wanted to be. Not at first, anyway. Pair the bittersweet pain of first-time rejection with my consistent struggle with self-esteem and low moods… Things got ugly fast.

If I had to put a finger on when I started to feel things getting really bad, I’d trace back to somewhere near the first month mark. Freshers week, whilst it felt awkward and drawn-out, wasn’t too bad in terms of my mental wellbeing. I think I was so caught up in trying to adjust to this crazy, new life I had that I didn’t have a lot of time to stop and wonder how I was feeling. Those of you who also struggle with mental health issues will know that they never really go away. They always at least linger in the background, if they aren’t in the forefront of your mind. So I suppose you could say that I felt my strange, healthy-but-unhealthy version of ‘normal’.

I hadn’t yet adapted to life as a York student, but that wasn’t much of a concern at this point. It takes a long time to adjust to change, and I had only been there for a few days. I thought I just needed to wait it out. But, after the first few weeks passed by, I started to notice something weird.

I still didn’t feel settled in. In fact, I didn’t feel like I was there at all. Nothing felt ‘real’. After years of dreaming and wondering what life would be like at university, I suddenly found that the situation I was in wasn’t what I expected it to be at all. I didn’t ‘feel’ like a university student here, even months into this first term. Or, rather, I didn’t feel what I had decided that being a university student ought to feel like.

For my whole life, I’ve attached so much of my identity to my intelligence and educational aspirations. To reach the highest stage of my academic career thus far- the place I’ve been working to get to my whole life- and find out that it was possible that this wasn’t where I wanted to be caused me to completely lose my sense of identity.

The conflict between feeling ‘too good’ for here, but simultaneously viewing my rejection as me ‘not being good enough’ for Durham left me drifting somewhere in the middle with all aspects of my life. University was a big deal for me, and had been for as long as I could remember. I attached so much of who I was to my work, and ergo the university I was going to go to. Having failed to prove to myself that I was who people had been telling me I was for years, I didn’t have scraps of personality left to hold onto.

I felt as though I didn’t belong here, but also that if that were true I didn’t really know where I did belong. I knew that I was smart, and that I was capable of achieving the A-Level grades that I needed to meet my offer requirements for my first choice. Things just didn’t go to plan in my Maths exams. But, at the same time, whenever I struggled with the work here in York, I would say to myself: ‘Oh, look. You can’t even manage the work they give you here. How did you ever think you were good enough for Durham?’

As you can imagine, this made my mental health quite difficult to manage properly. My inability to cope with rejection, trying to live independently for the first time, facing a whole new series of academic challenges, and missing my friends/family ALL took its toll on me in more ways than I care to say. But, stubborn old me tried to make the best of an unexpected, difficult situation. I decided that I wasn’t going to be ungrateful.

I had been accepted into one of the best schools for my subject in the country. I was going to try and make the most of life here, even if it wasn’t what I had wanted in the beginning, and even if it was proving to be a lot harder than I thought it would be. I wish I could say I was able to move past the sadness I felt because of my rejection and because of all of the other things going on in my life (my already poor mental health, trying to live independently…), but that just wasn’t the case.

To keep it short and sweet, student life was kicking my arse.

The dip in my mental health began to affect my ability to work and take care of myself. I was struggling with this sudden and total lack of motivation to keep up with just about everything.

Independent study was completely forgotten about. I skipped countless music rehearsals, and rarely spent time with my flatmates and friends. I didn’t cook properly- I relied on foods that took less than five minutes to cook or didn’t eat at all. I didn’t put as much effort into looking after myself and looking presentable as usual; I usually love dressing nicely, carrying out elaborate skincare and makeup routines- but all of that immediately went out of the window. I rarely left my room, and I would stay essentially completely by myself for days at a time.

There was no part of my life that didn’t take a blow as a result of my poor wellbeing. It was like I’d given up and decided I would just settle for the bare minimum and float aimlessly until the winter break arrived. I didn’t care anymore. Not about appearance, not about my work, and not about me.

Now is probably the time to mention that I didn’t actually tell anyone that this was going on, spare one of my closest friends who I knew for sure wouldn’t judge me. To this day, most people still have no idea that I was having such a bad time, and that I’m still feeling the residual negative emotions from the last few weeks of term. There are a lot of reasons why I didn’t talk to anyone about it, but the main two were that I’m a very private person, and that my family isn't always the most understanding when it comes to helping each other deal with mental health issues. I desperately wanted other people to know what I was going through, but the thought of coming out and telling them straight-up petrified me. I knew I couldn’t do it. So, I chose to hide all of it under the façade of being exhausted from my busy timetable. Or whatever excuse was most convenient at the time for whoever asked me what was wrong.

Another reason I didn’t tell anybody about what was going on kind of plays into the problems I’d been wrestling with before coming to uni (they’ve been an issue for much longer than just this summer, just to point out). I won’t talk about them in detail, because I’m not ready to discuss a lot of what I went through and what I’m still going through, but I’ll say that part of it is that I have a pretty crippling fear of being judged by other people. For my physical appearance, for my academic achievements, for my personal opinions and preferences- for everything. Everything. I don’t really talk about myself to anybody, so even just writing this post feels a bit odd. As you can imagine, admitting I’d been having a terrible time with my mental health to my close friends and family was out of the question.

I had basically reached my lowest point ever. I felt lonely, isolated, and completely lost. I wasn’t living the life people were expecting me to, and I wasn’t

Maybe this seems silly to some of you out there reading this who are dealing with a much bigger and more painful situations than my own. I recognise that there are much worse things I could be going through. And no, of course not every day of the past term was awful. I’m not trying to say that being rejected from my dream university caused this- rather that it fed into what was already a significantly complex problem. But, for someone like myself who pinned all of their self-worth on their educational goals and achievements- for someone who had never really ‘failed’ at something like this before- I was pretty fucking crushed. Enough to make me lose track of basic things I’d never usually had a problem managing before.

My problems had engulfed my life. I was miserable and couldn’t stand it. I was fed up of sticking it out alone. Desperate to let someone else take the burden for a little while, I finally, finally decided it might be worth considering getting some help.

I made an appointment to go and visit the University mental health services, and they signposted me to the local NHS mental health services. The waiting list for an assessment was surprisingly short- it only took me 2-3 weeks to get an appointment where I could receive an initial diagnosis and learn what treatments were available.

It was at this point I found out that I had an anxiety disorder.

This wasn’t particularly shocking news- I struggled with social anxiety as a young teenager- but it made me quite emotional to finally hear someone tell me that what I was feeling WAS part of a bigger problem. It wasn’t just me blowing things out of proportion.

So, that brings us to where I am now. Currently on the waiting list for group therapy. I haven’t really decided if its something I want to talk about on this blog yet, but I feel like even just sharing with other students that I took the step to go and seek help from my uni will hopefully encourage more people who are struggling to do so as well. Most universities have decent mental health services, or at least someone who can point you in the direction of the appropriate resources to help you, so it’s definitely worth looking into in my opinion.

But, right now, I’m feeling okay. This term has been challenging for me and my emotional wellbeing, but the knowledge that I ploughed through and (for the first time in my life) asked for help when I knew I needed it makes me feel proud of myself. A month away from halls has definitely helped me, and I’m actually looking forward to going back with a new, rejuvenated perspective on student life- which leads me onto the final section of this long, waffly post...

What have I learned? How am I trying to make changes? What are my plans for the future?

Well, aside from developing my Chemical knowledge through some pretty fantastic lecture courses and practical sessions, I’ve discovered a lot about myself this term. For example- I’ve realised that I place too much of my personal value on academic achievement and the prestige of the institutions I’m a member of. I should learn to accept that I am so much more than my grades, and that it doesn’t matter where I go to school. Sure, it would have been nice to enjoy all of the things life in Durham has to offer, but does it really matter when I’m living in a beautiful city, studying the subject I love with people who are just as excited about it as I am, and watching myself change and blossom into a completely new person? Not at all.

The most important thing, and the most difficult, was to admit and accept that I wasn’t having a good time here. And that it was okay to feel like this. I could lie to everyone around me about it and say that I was happy, but I couldn’t lie to myself anymore. In fact, it took being honest with myself for me to actually start to feel a little bit happier about where I was- literally AND mentally.

I suppose this begs the following question: would I consider transferring? Surely, after all of the emotional chaos I went through trying to get over what felt like the biggest setback of my life so far, I would take the ‘easy way out’ and re-sit my Maths papers so that I could re-apply to Durham and live the life I was convinced I needed to be living?

Honestly… No. Partially because the heartbreak of being rejected was kind of enough to put me off potentially going through it again by re-applying, but also because I feel like this is an important life experience for me to have.

I need to learn healthy coping mechanisms for dealing with rejection and being in situations I didn’t initially want to be in. Obviously, there are lines and limits with this kind of thing, and it differs from person to person and situation to situation, but I’m in a good place for me, I think. It isn’t perfect, but it isn’t meant to be. And I know that if I work hard to make the most of everything my life has to offer me, I’ll reach a point where the struggles I’m dealing with now will be but a distant memory.

...

So, that’s all I want to mention for now! I hope this explains why I’ve been so absent from this blog. Being productive was something I really struggled to do this term, so I didn’t have much going on that I could really post about. However, I’m looking forward to showing more of what my life as a Chemistry student at York looks like when I move back up for term two.

Talking about this has really helped me to reflect on my experiences and gain a little bit of closure from what was a pretty wild and confusing 11 weeks. I might post more content like this in the future, because I think it’s important to show other students that they aren’t alone and more people are dealing with things like this than they realise, but I won’t make any promises just yet.

I hope you are all having a lovely winter break, wherever you are, and I hope you are all looking forward to the next term of school, college, university, or even just the New Year by itself!

See you soon.

Bella <3

#studyblr #mental health #student mental health #anxiety #coping with anxiety

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umccall71 · 5 years ago

Text

Chapter 14

Characters:Prince Liam x (mc) Lady Saige

Rating:Mature Content includes profanity, sexual content,talks about depression.

Word Count:2226

Disclaimer: All characters used are sole property of Pixelberry. I am simply borrowing them for entertainment.

Summary:After a summer of a Lifetime Prince Liam thought he could have it all. He was carefree, free, and sharing time with the woman of his dreams. When life as easy a balancing act between love and duty, he realizes his truths are lies, wrong is right, and decisions do have consequences.Lady Saige never imagined she would be one of his consequences. When an act of utter horror throws her world into a tailspin.

Warning: This series contains subject matter of depression and hopelessness .The story may trigger certain individuals. Please be advised. If your reading this series you are acknowledging you are at least 18 +.

A/N: Sorry for the long delay . Things have been hectic. I had to take some time to focus on my health. Thanks for understanding and your patience.

***************************

Liam and Saige spent the next two weeks managing coronation preparations,talks of their what happens next, and building expectations for their future. Liam spent long days at the palace with every possible noble schmoozing the new king to be. Every moment that he had a free minute he would send Saige a thoughtful, fun, flirty text.Liam was falling into his new role smoothly, but the mere glimpse of Constantine in his path sent his blood boiling . He fought the urge to want to strangle his father daily. It was count down to the coronation and the exit of the former king and queen. Liam sat in the dark study with the drapes drawn pouring over upcoming trade agreements and his speech to the council upon being crowned king. He heard a tap at the door ,when he saw it open presumptively by Regina and Constantine.

“Liam, it has been impossible to get a minute to speak to you about this foolish notion of us leaving the palace. That … that's just unheard of in Cordonian history. The king father and queen reside at the palace even with the change in power, ``she waves the thought off. “ You will need our guidance in selecting a future queen. Surely you have thought this through with the upcoming social season?”she looked on quizzically.

He squeezed his eyes closed , rubbed his temple, and stood walking over to the bar cart. Liam poured himself a finger of scotch before taking a deep breath to attempt a civil reaction to the woman that had been a mother figure to him since he lost his own. “Regina...did he not tell you there is no need for a social season, I am with Saige and she will rule beside me”, his words are interrupted by a maniacal chuckle.

“Surely you wouldn’t think that some girl from America would be a representation to our people of Cordonia? Liam...she's a ..a commoner, she spat with such disdain and as if the words left a sour taste on her tongue. “Your first true decision after being crowned will be choosing your bride. Don't worry, we will help you make the right choice to lead with you,”

Liam slammed the tumbler down on the desk almost shattering it. “I don't need any guidance with my marriage, nor my decisions as king…. Regina”,he responded through a clenched jaw. “Saige is not some passing fancy.. Or did your husband not share that with you? She will be my better half as we decide together the next chapter in Cordonian history”, he conveyed almost as if he had to convince her she was worthy, “father sees her potential ...don't you?”

Constantine gulped loudly,adjusting his collar uncomfortably considering his next words, “Liam, what Regina means is…”,he is cut off by Regina.”I know exactly what I meant Connie,'' she sneered.”This girl is not suitable to be in contention for a suitor. You are surrounded by a wealth of the finest women Cordonia has to offer.”

“You make them sound like contestants in national dog show competition to be judged…”he snarked. “Why do you seem surprised by what will happen leading up to the events of the coronation? This has all been explained to Constantine...including your departure from the palace, `` Liam stared daggers at his father as he spoke to Regina.

“Liam! Do not be crass… show some respect for your father!”,she barked ...appalled by his words.

“Respect is a commodity in short supply when it comes to father… he has lost mine”, his nostrils flared , liam fought to control his breathing and anger. “I have a lot of work to do, so if you two would show yourselves out….”he trailed off .Liam sat back down in his chair, reached for his phone and stared at his lock screen picture...his bride, Saige. There was something so calming just looking into her eyes, even if it were just her picture. He thought to the moment she would walk through the doors of the palace and consider this her home. He also knew as long as Constantine was there … there was no chance in hell this would become a reality for them.

Regina and Constantine started walking toward the door, but suddenly she stopped and glanced at Liam perplexed by his demeanor. “Something has changed in you Liam. I remember you were the one that was always on your best behavior. We could count on you to do what you were told, ``she tapped her chin with her well manicured french tipped nails.

Liam wouldn’t look up at them as he sent a quick text to Saige.”I will be there soon my love. I missed you all day.” He smiled briefly before hitting send. “Your husband can shed some light on what has caused the shift in my manners and demeanor. When he learns to show respect for others.. Perhaps someone will give him respect in return, ``he responded through gritted teeth.

“Come along Constantine… we know when we’re not wanted”,she huffed our the door clacking her stilettos against the marbled floors down the hall until the sound faded.Constantine glances back contemplating if he should try to get through to his youngest son, “Liam...I hope that one day you’ll understand I meant no harm , but you can have true lady beside you on coronation night.”

Liam bit his bottom lip until he tasted the mercurial salty drops of his blood in his mouth. Every thought in him wanted to thrash his father for yet again disrespecting the woman he loves.. his wife… his Saige.Liam fought the anger coursing through his veins, fighting the urge to end Constantine where where he stands… but he chose to adjust him suit coat, straighten his stack of papers, adjust his cuff links before walking out the door passed his father…. silently. Liam knee he couldn’t keep fighting every minute to convince Constantine that Saige was perfect for him. He thought as he jogged down the stairs, “luckily we won’t have to deal with this backwards elitist attitude much longer.” Liam climbed into the back of his suv as bastien drove him back to Lythikos. He thumbed through his camera roll, viewing the countless candid shots he’d collected of himself with Saige. To see her genuinely smile and seem so light… so free was true happiness to him. “Bastien… I need you and several members of the royal guard to make certain the staff pack up the former king and queen and deliver their belongings to the empty duchy furthest from the palace. They will try to stall hoping I’ll change my mind, but my resolve is unwavering. I need make sure that Saige can explore the palace without bumping into the man that tried to rape her without any sense of remorse.” Bastien nodded in the rear view mirror, “yes sir.”

A short time later they arrived and Liam bolted out of the car and bid Bastien good night. “ Thank you for everything Bas… I won’t forget it.”Liam slowly opened the front door … walked softly up the staircase.. and eased into his and Saige’s bedroom. He toed quietly out of his shoes careful not to startle her if she were asleep . He smiled as he started toward the bathroom to shower before he was pulled from his thoughts by the sound of Saige talking in her sleep, frantically pleading with someone telling them no.. he saw her features tense and scared.

“Please don’t… don’t take our baby… we love him .. please I can’t lose him !Noooooo!” She cried out in a piercing shrill anguish. Liam saw the tears escaping her closed eyes. He made his way over to her and pulled her body into his chest .. holding her as if he were her anchor. He whispered near her ear, “ Saige… baby I’m here… I’ve got you. No one is going to take you away from us… never again. Love.. please wake up”,he pleaded. She slowly began opening her eyes, trying to piece together where she was and who was with her in that moment.Her body shook in horror for what seemed like an eternity

Her voice spoke sounding so small, “ Liam?”

“Yes love...I’m here.. I’m here with you.please tell me what has you do frightened?”, his eyes searched hers for answers, for recognition.

She shook her her , willing the nightmare away. Feeling that if she spoke it out loud it would manifest into her reality.” Saige wrapped her arms around her arms as Liam held onto her body.She wouldn’t stop shaking .., reliving the dream in her wake state.

Saige began to sob again while Liam held her close. Something so paralyzing about her dream. She contemplated telling Liam she feared losing their child at the hands of his father. She knew he was already holding it together by a thin strand. Liam became physically angry every time his father’s name was mentioned. Saige knew that her being attacked by Constantine wasn’t Liam’s fault… although she blamed him briefly.Saige didn’t want to jeopardize Liam in his ascension to the crown. He was born to be the leader and the man he is today… but only if nothing stumbles his path.

Liam’s soft hands held her face and seemed to register that she was truly frightened. “Love… what has you so terrified in your sleep? We promised to protect each other… let me protect you...please.”The room grew silent.. a pin drop could be heard. The palpable pain could be cut with a knife.He knew she wasn’t herself in that moment, but he afforded her the chance to open up to him in her own time. He wasn’t letting the nightmare go, but he felt trying to force her to speak in that moment would be detrimental to her health… her mental stability. He was so proud in the time he’s watched Saige come from that room in the in treatment center to where she had been recently with her new therapist. He wondered what could have triggered her to slip into this dark place.

“Saige… you know I love you with all of my heart.. I want you and our family that we are anticipating”, he gently stroked her arms that were freezing in light of her having been wrapped up. She flinched at the mention of their family. “What’s wrong love… you can tell me anything.. you know that right?”

She paused as she considered what to say… how much to say… wondered would he understand. “ Liam… I don’t know if.. if we should be thinking about a baby “, she sniffed back the tears.” Maybe, you might decide you don’t want to have a family with me.. perhaps there’s some socialite that would be better suited to be the mother to royalty.”

Liam tensed up at hearing her spewing this doubt about her being a mother to his child. “ Saige… you know that I only want you… in my heart .. you are the only woman I need. I couldn’t fathom another carrying and giving birth to my child… our child.”She saw his blue eyes glistening as he tried to control his tears. Not even in passing would he consider not having Saige as his bride and the mother of his children.

She sat up in his arms and then stood .. Saige walked to the balcony doors and opened them to feel the cool breeze on her damp skin. “Liam, what if I get pregnant and then someone takes them from me.. from us? To go through nine months and have that child stolen…”,she trailed off. Saige stares out into the darkness of the lythikos night sky.

Liam strolled over and enveloped her small frame in his arms.. he draped his arms around her.. swallowing her into him. “ Love… where is this coming from ? You were so excited st the possibility of us .. of us trying to get pregnant”, he whispered. “What’s changed? I know you’ve been talking to Dr. Ashton, but what changed to have you thinking I would be better off with someone else as the mother of my child?”

Saige leaned back into him.. collecting her thoughts… “ Liam… I’m tired all the time, I’m emotional, I’m … I’m “, she farted into the room and grabbed her phone. Saige started frantically sliding through her apps until she came to the one that tracked her … her cycle. “It has to be nerves, there’s no way this soon”, she mumbled searching for dates on a calendar.

“Saige.. what is it? What are looking for? Your scaring me a little. Are you alright?”, worry etched on his face. He reached for her when he noticed the calendar she was looking into fearful. Saige .. do you.. do you not feel well? Are you alright?

She dropped her phone to the floor, covering her face in disbelief .. “ this isn’t real. Liam … Liam I’m late… what if this means?”Saige ran to the bathroom and ran cold water over her face . Liam followed behind grabbing a towel and wet it with a cool water . He led her to the side of the tub placing the towel on the back of her neck. “Saige… do you… think you might be pregnant?”

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riseandshinelittleblossom · 6 years ago

Text

Unfinished Business (1/6?)

A/N: So a while back I posted a six sentence Sunday for this. Sorry its taken so long to pull it together, but I hope you enjoy it all the same. As always if you’d like to be added or removed from the tags let me know.

Summary: Today is the day that Renee will become the Queen of Cordonia, but oh how her mind still wanders...

Disclaimer: I don’t own these characters, we’re just having a good time. Also this series will contain smatters of Canon dialogue that I also do not own

Masterlist

Tags: @ritachacha @fullbeaumonty @leelee10898 @tornbetween2loves @zaffrenotes @hopefulmoonobject @ownworldresident @alj4890 @writerxdreamer @stiles-o-dylan24 @lettersofwrittencollective

Renee was already staring blankly out of the window when her alarm sounded. She knew that Maxwell would want to wake her up as usual, but this morning-the morning of her wedding to King Liam- she felt that she needed a few moments alone to gather up her thoughts.

She rolled to her back, the royal linen plush beneath her bare shoulders. They were some of the most comfortable sheets she'd ever slept in, nothing at all like the cheap polyester ones on her own bed back in New York.

'I wonder what the thread count is,' she thought rubbing a pinch of the material between her fingers.

She groaned aloud, hating her brain for trying to distract itself from the fact that she was getting married today, and not to the love of her life.

It wasn't that Renee didn't love Liam, because she definitely did. He was kind and gentle and quite possibly the best man she had ever met. He adored her and wanted nothing but for her to be happy.

And Cordonia needed this wedding. It was bigger than her feelings for Liam; bigger than her feelings for him. All three of them knew it, just as all three of them were well aware that that had been the only reason Renee had accepted the King's proposal. Hers was to be a political marriage, one that would heal a nation. Renee just hoped that one day she could love Liam- really love him - the way he deserved to be.

She checked her phone again noting that she didn't have much time left before Maxwell would come to wake her. She turned,peering out the window once more, her mind traveling back to when it all began.

************

Renee stared at the ceiling of her bedroom inside the Beaumont Estate, her mind still reeling from the events of the night.

Someone had wanted Liam to choose Countess Madeleine tonight and they had been willing to devastate her reputation over it.

Duchess Olivia had left in haste, withdrawing from the social season. Had she received an ominous letter tonight as well?

She sat up, twisting her body to fluff her goose down pillow for the millionth time. Deciding the effort was fruitless she flung back the heavy quilt and stepped into the slippers that laid next to the bed. They were at least two sizes too big-a pair of Maxwell's that he had graciously lent her shortly after her arrival in Cordonia. She wiggled her toes within them for a moment before throwing her long, tan cardigan over her and striding out of the room.

The halls of Beaumont Manor were wide and darkened, although in the light of day they boasted many fine works of art. Most of them were commissioned portraits of Beaumonts long since passed, but there were many landscapes as well. Renee's favorite however, hung at the back of this very hallway- a ballerina in a royal blue tutu. It was in a gilded frame, one that by itself would have fetched the brothers Beaumont a pretty penny, but Maxwell had told her that painting had been his mother's favorite as well and neither he nor Bertrand would ever dream of touching it.

She cast her gaze longingly toward the piece only for a moment before turning in the other direction and padding down the hallway.

She entered a great room on her way to the kitchen, the ornate French doors which headed out onto the open air patio hung ajar and a warm breeze entered the room through them. Renee tugged her cardigan closer, partially because the wind chilled her slightly but mostly she was afraid.

She paused a moment, assessing her surroundings, taking note of the heavy candle stick which sat not far from her ready to be used as a weapon if the occasion suddenly called for it.

Renee stilled herself, her ears perking up. She could hear the sound of someone dropping ice cubes into a glass on the patio, and breathed a sigh of relief. There was no intruder, one of her favorite brothers was helping himself to the dry bar.

She made her way towards the doors. Peeking around the edge she saw Bertrand on one of the outdoor couches, tumbler of amber liquid in hand. He didn't notice her so she didn't announce herself, opting instead to simply observe the older Beaumont for awhile.

Bertrand Beaumont was certainly handsome, Renee would give him that, though his arrogance and patronizing demeanor were somewhat off-putting.

She watched as he stared out into the modest vineyards behind the estate his hand absentmindedly swirling his tumbler, gold, wire framed glasses perched on the end of his nose. Renee took note of the letter she had received earlier, now sealed inside a large Ziploc bag, on the table before him.

He sipped his liquor slowly, seeming to savor the burn as he swallowed. The moon was high in the sky- not yet full, but in two days time it would be- and it cast it's eerie glow over the man with an almost ethereal brilliance.

Renee sighed as she leaned into the doorway, very much enjoying this side of her sponsor. She smiled noticing that he wasn't wearing his usual sweater vest and blazer, but instead a plaid pair of flannel pajamas and a deep blue, silk robe.

“So he does take the vest off some of the time. Drake owes me 20 euros.” She smirked to herself.

Bertrand leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, both hands grasping his glass between them. He looked tired and she wondered why he hadn't gone to bed yet.

“Care to join me, Lady Renee?”

She stumbled back at the sound of his voice, surprised he knew she was there. Silently she stepped onto the patio, tugging her cardigan ever closer.

Renee settled into a spot on the adjoining love seat as Bertrand rose from his perch and shuffled to the bar.

“Pick your poison, milady. We are still pretty well stocked from hosting the court.”

“Whatever you're having is fine.” She said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Gran Patron it is, then.” he declared. “On the rocks?”

“No thank you, Your Grace.”

Bertrand paused, his blue eyes meeting hers briefly, an uncharacteristic grin tugging at his lips. He poured her glass and sauntered back to his seat before passing it to her.

They sipped their tequila in contented silence for quite awhile, Bertrand rising to refill his before Renee finally spoke up,

“Can I ask you something? And I expect an honest answer.”

Bertrand flourished a hand between them.

“Feel free to ask anything you'd like, Lady Renee. You will likely never find me in a more candid mood.” He chuckled.

“Why did you come get me? From the airport, I mean.”

He sipped his glass and pulled it from his mouth, sucking his teeth as if it had quenched his thirst and a soft “aahh” sound escaped him. He didn't look at her, training his eyes instead on his bare toes wiggling them freely as he considered his answer.

Renee, however couldn't have pulled her gaze from the Duke if she had tried. Suddenly feeling exposed in the silence, she kicked off her oversized slippers and brought her legs up tucking them under her in an attempt to shrink. Bertrand seemed to have that effect on her. With his no-nonsense attitude and authoritative tone, he commanded the attention and respect of those around him. Where Renee was normally strong-willed and brazen, she always felt more subdued in his presence.

“Renee, I meant it when I said that I consider you to be a member of this house, and as long as I am it's head no one will ever get away with scandalizing one of its members. That being said, I have found myself taking a liking to you, aside from our arrangement and what can be gained should the King choose you for his bride. It has been...nice to feel a woman's presence at Ramsford again. To have a feminine perspective on House Beaumont.”

Renee smirked. “You mean we're friends,B.”

Bertrand sighed, but smiled in response raising his glass to her. “And I count myself lucky because of it. You are…. remarkable, milady. But if you ever tell a soul, I will deny those words til the end.”

She let out a loud guffaw, dramatically knocking back the end of her drink and when she corrected her head she found her sponsor directly in front of her. His fingers grazed hers as he collected her glass, turning to refill it.

“Well that was... prompt.”

“Let it never be said that I am not a gracious host.”

“And so modest! I don't know how you manage, Your Grace.”

Bertrand returned handing her a filled glass, but this time he sat down beside her on the love seat, his knees falling open and, had her legs been outstretched, they would've knocked into her.

They fell into a companionable silence, the Duke taking in the moonlit grounds, the lady taking in the Duke. He was in a rare form this evening and she was sure she didn't want to miss a second of it.

After a while an audible breath escaped the man's nose-not quite a snort, but close.

“Tell me, Renee, what was your life like before all of this?” He gestured widely before continuing, “ I know you were a waitress, but often one's occupation is merely a sliver of who they are.”

“Well I wasn't just a waitress. I also sang the blues.”

Bertrand frowned, his neck craning to look at her. “Surely your life wasn't that dismal.”

“No, B!” She chuckled, “I literally sang the blues. I was a lounge singer in a jazz bar. I was also an aspiring songwriter, though I guess that part is still true.”

The Duke nodded knowingly. “A woman of the arts, then? My mother was as well.”

“Maxwell said as much.”

“I would very much enjoy it if I could hear you sing one day.

Renee blinked at him, her lips parting to speak but nothing came out, so she closed them instead offering a nod in response.

“One more question for you, milady, then I will head to bed. Did you mean what you said at the airport tonight? Have you fallen in love with someone that isn't our King?”

Again she opened and closed her mouth unsure of what to say. She dropped her head and peered into her glass.

“Yes.”

Her voice was so soft that Bertrand wasn't sure she'd spoken at all.

“Hmmm, I see. Then why, may I ask, did you decide to stay?”

“For you, Bertrand. And Maxwell, of course.”

*********

A light rap at the door returned Renee to the present. She wiped her eyes, not even realizing that tears had begun to form at their edges.

She twisted the knob, inhaling deeply and exhaling loudly before she opened it. She expected to see Maxwell, but what she found instead was her entire wedding party.

"Rise and shine, little blossom!" Maxwell called.

"Ah! What are you all doing here?" Renee questioned, eyes going wide.

"Celebrating the big day, of course. We're not going to let a little drama stop us from memorializing Wedding Day 2k18!" Maxwell grinned throwing his arm around her shoulders.

Her friends explained how they wanted to spirit her away for the morning for some pre wedding pampering and seeing the excitement on everyone's faces there was no way she could say no even if all she wanted to do was put on her dress and get on with it.

Renee's eyes met Liam's as everyone shuffled towards the door to let her get dressed. She could see his wheels turning, the concern that seemed ever present when he looked at her swirling in his dark eyes.

"If fine, Liam," she tried to reassure, quickly kissing his cheek. "I'll meet you all at breakfast."

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