#everyone assigning morality to story lessons is wrong

[spacecasehobbit]

"Stories should teach us [x]," "Stories should teach us [y]," "Stories should teach us-"

No. Wrong. Incorrect.

If you are old enough to choose the stories you engage with for yourself, then you should be choosing stories with the lessons you need and staying out of other people's business when they choose to engage with the stories that weren't right for you.

[emptythoughts12]

Sinigang (School Assignment)

It is important for you to apologize after you did something wrong, but don't try to justify it because wrong is wrong. Maybe you want to fix some relations between you and the victim, but don't be only thinking of yourself, think about how the victim feel because sometimes a sudden close action will make you even farther from the victim. Some relationships are onced broke, then never would be as strong as before anymore. This story impacted me as a 21st century learner by the way how the story is told. I like how the mix of now and the past, the story is presented greatly from a sinigang dinner cooking to show a story of the past and effects of the past. -Caleb The encounter between Liza and Sylvia demonstrates the idea of forgiveness, as Sylvia seeks Liza's understanding for past mistakes. While Liza does not immediately forgive Sylvia, her willingness to listen and nod in acknowledgment signals a quiet step toward accepting the complexities of human imperfection. The story highlights that everyone makes mistakes, but understanding and empathy can pave the way for healing, even if reconciliation is not immediate. As a 21st-century learner, "Sinigang" encourages deep reflection on family relationships, personal growth, and the complexities of human emotions. The story touches on the difficulty of reconciling with the past and dealing with familial expectations, which is something many of us face in modern society as we strive for independence while remaining connected to our roots. -Ruth Vandi

The morals that I have identified is the importance of family. Since the story is based on Filipino culture, we could see how the story revolves around the family. Despite the troubles in the family, they still stuck together (which is kind of toxic). It is implied that Liza holds some sort of grudge against her father, but it doesn't stop her from making him sinigang, his favorite dish. Although the story ends with us wondering whether Liza has indeed forgiven her father or not, we can still see the value of family in her morals. As a 21st century learning, I get to see how the choices of a person could affect someone so deeply. It makes me want to watch my own words and actions, lest it does the same to the people I care about. -Dee Hi, I am Chloe. I would like to share what I felt from the story ‘Sinigang’ with you. At a family funeral, Liza reluctantly attends to support her grieving parents, despite her feelings of detachment. During the wake, she has an uncomfortable encounter with Sylvia, her father’s former lover, who confesses her past mistakes. Liza remains calm but distant, reflecting on the emotional tension between her parents, her relationship with her father, and her own inability to show much emotion. Afterward, she helps her Aunt Loleng cook sinigang, a dish her mother and father enjoy, though Liza feels no warmth in the family connection anymore. The story expresses loss, emotional detachment, and the complex family relationships, showing that sometimes, even within a family, understanding and closure are difficult to achieve. I think the moral lesson is that emotional healing and forgiveness take time, and sometimes, people are not ready to confront or express their feelings. As a 21st century learner and reader, I agree with the moral lesson of this story because I used to have a hard time expressing my feelings and forgiving my friends. How about you? Do you have a similar experience with this story? If so, why don’t you share it?

[rpgchoices]

Sometimes I really want to read a short summary of what to expect from a game with a very particular description that CATER to my OWN SPECIFIC interests, so here we go.

(click here for other videogames)

what to expect from SPELLFORCE 3: SOUL HARVEST

This is a sequel/spin off of Spellforce 3, but you do not need S3 to play it, and you do not need to know any previous lore or story, as this is a stand alone game (there are mentions of characters of the previous game but I did not feel lost at all)

This is a mix or isometric rpg and RTS (real time strategy) gane

You play as a General who did something... wrong in the previous mission but you do not remember what it was. This is part also of the main quest and during the game you will explore your past through dreams

You get assigned to the Wolf Guard by the queen, a second chance. The purpose is stopping some fanatics that are disrupting things in the realm

You can customize your character (only human, male or female, different classes, from necromancer to healer to archer etc.)

You can recruit 5 different characters as companions: Yria, Raith, Kaiawu, Katras, Rerah. You can also create mercenaries to hire

You will receive a main quest from the queen and you can pick up secondary quests from various NPCs, like a usual rpg. Like a usual isometric rpg you travel through the map freely, to go to different places. There is fighting and dialogue (and dialogue choices)

The whole game is voiced. Even the mercenaries you can hire are voiced and add little comments

Every companion has at least one main quest, all pretty connected to the plot, and sometimes a more personal quest to solve

You can talk with your companions and ask them various things

You can romance Kaiawu (m) or Yria (f) or Katras (f) or Raith (m) if you play as a female, and you can romance Kaiawu (m) or Yria (f) if you play as a male

The romance consists of some flirting, a cut scene where you discuss it, doing their personal quest, plus another cut scene and an ending dialogue scene

The game is relatively linear, the choices are mainly small dialogue ones, and romance choice

The RTS part of the game is similar to other rts, you get a village of humans, dark elves or dwarves (based on the mission) to expand, and you need to conquer areas

Usually a main quest will be like this: receive the quest, classic rpg side where you investigate and fight enemies and accept secondary quests, a RTS part where you need to conquer the map, more rpg stuff

There is basically only one ending, thus the story being linear

There is party banter while you travel

The plot in general felt a bit childish, like it was more some kind of moral lesson than a full on mystery solved, but I still enjoyed it.

plot? After a failed mission, General Aerev returns to court and the Queen decides to give them a second chance: lead the royal Wolf Guard to investigate some cultists trying to awaken a god called the God of Light. gameplay? Usual rpg with RTS components, so you will swap between one gameplay and the other during the game. Linear story and minimal choices characters? All characters are quite interesting and voiced. Your companions are characters you can discuss and talk with, with their own personalities, desires etc. There is also romance sadness level? medium, in particular towards the end death? SPOILERS for the ending

There are only two endings.... in one you accept the offer of the God of Light and you die, the other is the real ending. There is also gameplay after the ending, so you do not find out what happens to everyone.

[gir-posting]

tell me about your oc julian? 👀

:D!!!!!!!!!!!!!

im so excited u dont even get it

so full disclosure i only kind of consider him an oc bc for some reason in my mind tabletop/dnd characters count Less for some reason. but i made him for a curse of strahd game i did with some of my very good friends and it so far has been one of the most satisfying and fun campaigns ive ever been in

(also warning for some mentions of body horror/gore and violence it was in fact a horror game. shocking that i really enjoyed the horror game ik! also some spoilers for curse of strahd HEHE)

to start with here are some visuals, i drew all of these but the heroforged pic

^^pidlwick more properly to scale here. + some doodles of the other party members hehe

so to start with curse of strahd is a very dracula flavored campaign; the land of barovia is cut off from the rest of the world by a thick suffocating mist by a powerful vampire lord, strahd von zeravich. he has also cursed barovia with eternal night so that he can thrive without having to worry about the sun. he is also a huge bitch. here is a funko pop i bought of him at a convention because i am not immune to capitalism

julian (or his serial code JL-9) is a warforged created by a mad scientist named molostroi. molostroi was worryingly adept in making flesh homonculis. so he murdered a looooot of people to make his creations. that includes julian, who contains the organs and brain of a person that molostroi murdered For Science. he was also created specifically to murder people, with a built in weapon and everything (that shield you see him wearing in the pics earlier is mostly there because he was hiding the armblade embedded in him. he did NOT take it or his armor off willingly ever.) the goal was eventually to replicate julian in many many many more murder machine robots so that molostroi could execute a siege on strahd's castle

however, unfortunately for everyone, due to the fact that julian has a once human brain, he is sentient! and has been picking up some very clear lessons on morality by reading children's books about a divine hero and how to Act Heroically like him. (this sets up in his mind a pretty clear dichotomy between Heroes and Monsters. heroes protect innocent people while monsters attack them without any real care.) so when eventually he gains enough of a conscience to realize he is fully murdering people and that is very very bad, he lets someone that he was assigned to attack leave unscathed. this does NOT go over well with molostroi and he's almost immediately set to be dismantled and reworked over this.

except, uh-ohhhh, julian was made to kill people, so he turns right back around and murders him instead in a fit of panic. whiiiiich immediately makes him break down because he knows that murdering people is very wrong, and he just did it again, and he must really be a monster if he's still capable of doing such a horrible thing while knowing it's wrong. all of this makes him cry out for forgiveness and help (something he picked up from one of his stories about the Divine Hero) and shockingly someone answers.

the morninglord/god/the sun (whose forced absence is what created the endless night across barovia) answers his prayers and knights him as a paladin, because he can sense his passion for good and doing right by others. it's not very clear in those drawings aside from the second-to-last i suppose but his armor is branded with this symbol as proof of his devotion:

after this happens and he leaves the lab he develops some reactions to his trauma, if something happens that reminds him of the things he's done he'll just. go insane for a minute. his head starts spinning around and he sounds like an exceedingly loud tea kettle. (the first time this happened (other player dumped blood on him because they are weird and insane) i asked the dm to play this song on the music bot because i am a giant predictable geek)

also, in case there was any doubts about how horrible molostroi is here's some journals we found when we eventually had to go back and find something in his laboratory (lovingly and expertly written by the dm. ily hal i can't wait to play with u again when you're ready)

so on the academy: molostroi had a colleague named blinksy, who we meet at his toy shop some time after leaving strahd's castle for the first time (it went very poorly we lost three party members. two of them were only gone temporarily but oh baby. rip *sneeze* we miss you you funky little kenku.) while we were there we found a weird little clown robot dude who liked to follow us around, named pidlwick (shown above. he's very different in the source material but plllbbbbtttttt we have our own version and we like him.) we had to very quickly find some manner of engineer because while we were there he got injured and there was. blood! coming out of him. we got blinsky to take a look at him and he veeeerrry quickly recognized molostroi's work. then he took a closer look at julian and was able to recognize that him and pidlwick were made in the same horrible way.

all this to say blinsky became kind of a father figure to julian and pidlwick. after all was said and done and we defeated strahd, allowing the sun to come back, the scene we leave julian on is him fishing with blinsky on the lake.

that's kind of a rough and dirty description of him especially near the end there lol but god its very hard to summarize dnd characters when there's soooo much to cover in entire campaigns. but either way my boy i love my traumatized robot boy so so much

[arotechno]

I don't know if it's cringe to wax poetic about your own writing, but I'm going to do it anyway. I am going to be spoiling the entirety of The Heartless, so I encourage you to read it (and reblog it/tell me what you think :pleading emoji:) if you haven't, otherwise this post will spoil it. I've just been thinking about it a lot, a year after I really got back into writing it, and I have some (lengthy) reflections on humanity and philosophy and being a good person.

The Heartless has always been a very personal story to me, and I really wanted to get it right, and that's part of why it took me so many tries to complete a version that I was happy with. The first version of the story went quite differently; I was 16 when I wrote it as a short story for a school assignment, in 2015 at the rising peak of d*sk h*rse on tumblr. In the original version of the story, Basil doesn't even exist. Bertrand lives. The story ends abruptly, post-assassination, because I had to write the entire thing in a day so I could turn it in on time. But the important distinction, to me, is that at the time I had only identified as aro for about a year. I was still really coming to terms with it, and since then as I've grown and changed and learned, Ace's story has too.

It was important to me, as I was writing The Heartless this time around, not to paint things in black and white. If Ace was going to question what it meant to be human, I wanted to explicitly divorce love from morality. You have someone like Marcus, who irrevocably sucks despite being "normal", and you have someone like Esther, who is kind and generous and has her own complicated experiences with love. Even Carita isn't necessarily bad, she just doesn't understand and has some prejudice to work through. There's Bertrand, who's kind of an asshole but a good person deep down, and Knife Boy, who learns and grows maybe more than anyone else in the story relative to how long he's "on-screen", if I'm being completely honest, but whose experiences overlap with Ace's in interesting ways. There's a grey area; I wanted everyone to seem sympathetic in some way (except Marcus, all my homies hate Marcus), because it was important for Ace to realize that being Heartless didn't make him demonstrably different from everyone around him. He makes mistakes, big ones, life-altering/life-ending ones, but it's not because he's Heartless. He's not evil or cursed, just human, and being human all along doesn't make him inherently good or more pure, but it doesn't erase the obvious differences between him and the people he meets, either.

In another story, Ace would have learned that "love was in him all along", that maybe the love potion DOES work on him, that maybe he DID have a heart all along and either he had blocked it out or he hadn't accepted that his love was "real" too. But I didn't want to do any of that. It matters that Ace is never "cured" or "changed". There was never anything wrong with him, and whether or not he "did love all along" doesn't matter. The point is that we're people too, and being a person is messy and hard but it's pretty cool, too. Ace strives to do what he believes is right, and actively beats himself up about it when his actions don't measure up to his morals. He chooses to be kind, not in spite of being Heartless, but in many cases because of it.

That was a really important lesson that I had to learn, too, and part of why I find voidpunk relatable as a subculture. There are plenty of people who would seek to dehumanize me or define my experiences as something broken, bad, or cursed. But I'm not cursed, and I'm just as much of a human being as anybody else, because I was born that way. As Basil himself says, love has very little to do with it: we're alive, and that's all there is to it.

Anyway, sorry for ranting about my own story. I'm sure that's a little self-centered. I have just been thinking a lot lately about voidpunk and lovelessness as a philosophy and the way my own experiences with dehumanization came through in The Heartless. It's just a really special story to me. I used to spend a really long time trying to patch holes in the original telling, and trying to find a way forward through a sequel or extended version, but what I came to realize was that things had changed so much that the story needed to change too. It's a story without an end; there isn't a final answer or a simple solution that will bring the equality and understanding we deserve. I couldn't write a definitive ending because there isn't one. We just keep moving forward, trying to live the best we can, and working together as a community. And as long as we know who and what we are and we don't let anyone else define that for us, then we'll be alright. I think that's the story 16-year-old me needed to hear, and I'm happy that I'm in a place now where I felt equipped to tell it.

[verobatto]

Destiel Chronicles

Vol. CVI

It was a love story from the very beginning.

Cas vs AUCas

Hi there! Okay I wanted to finish season 13 in one meta but the last episode has a lot of juice inside so I decided to give it one exclusive meta hehehe.

I will talk here about Cas and his alter ego in the AU world, assign to it a little of daddy issues.

Let's start this...

"Luke, I am your father."

Lucifer finding Jack and trying to convince him about his origins and trying to drag him more and more to connect with him and his hidden intentions, are a reflection for the incoming issue with Chuck and humanity.

So, as always, Lucifer will try to use the manipulative speech with his son by throwing statementa that could be seen as morally accurate.

LUCIFER: Your name is Jack.

JACK: And yours is Lucifer.

DEAN (stalking over in anger) No. No, no. No. You don’t talk to him. (pointing at Lucifer) And you, don’t listen to him. (pointing at Jack)

LUCIFER: (sounding reasonable) Um, don’t you think that’s his choice?

And everyone in the room would say 'he's right' Because that's how Lucifer uses manipulation. He can sound reasonable. And that's the danger of leaving him at his please.

Look at this twist of semantics...

LUCIFER I mean, the point is...humans are not perfect. They’re hardwired to fall. And when they do, they need a fall guy.

CAS (to Jack) That’s a vast oversimplification.

LUCIFER (annoyed) Okay, so true or false, Cas -- um, for almost, like, ever, I’ve been locked away in a Cage?

CAS Yes.

LUCIFER True! It’s true. So how did I do all this evil for all these centuries, I wonder?

As I said, Luci's speech is dangerously logical. Letting Lucifer freely speak, is more dangerous that fight him in a physical battle.

But we know Dean, Cas and Sam won't fall for it.

Remember this is a B-L (Bruckleming) episode, so we will have here a failed attempt of redemption arc for Lucifer. I know Leming was pushing for it, but it wasn't a welcomed idea between writers so... That's why you had Luci crying his tears in front of Gabe, as if he was regretting something, he didn't. Because he is Lucifer. So, goodbye to that idea.

Good performance from Mark Pellegrino tho.

Mary punching Lucifer in the face, closing a circle from 12x23 when she confesses she always dreamt with punching the devil in the face. She did it in that episode but I think this punch was way better satisfying for her.

Jumping to another little take for a foreshadow...

BOBBY Just got news about Charlie and Ketch. Goin’ after the execution squad went sideways. They’re the ones who got ambushed.

This is the cliffhanger or twist of the story we will have in 14x09, when AUMichael posseses Dean again.

Cas vs Cas

Settling the continuity of character development, we had a very visual way to show how much Castiel had grown throughout the seasons.

Before this encounter, we had Castiel coming back to soldier mode, as Dean requested him with the 'whatever it takes' speech.

This time is Dean himself the one asking Cas to use torture over a person, just like he did with Donnie. The only good thing in this scene is Dean and Castiel communicating without talking.

Gif set credit @becauseofthebowties

This preamble was needed to lead us to the AUCas vs Cas scene. In which AUCastiel represented what the Empty was for Castiel at the beginning of this season. AUCas was, certainly, a Castiel that never met Dean Winchester in this reality. Taking that as our base in this discussion, AUCastiel never fell, and he followed Heaven's order blindly, symbolically represented with a Nazi suit.

We could infer Castiel could be like him if Dean had never born and Apocalypse was successful.

But let's check AUCas dialogues...

AW-CASTIEL I haven’t seen many like you. But... But you have to understand that everyone has a breaking point. A...point of pain. Particular, primitive fear, maybe. But it’s a nerve so...raw that your will -- grit, they cease to be factors. And then all your little secrets, they flow from your mind, to mine...until your mind no longer exists.

This speech AUCastiel says to AUCharlie, just like Castiel reading Donnie's mind or torturing that young man, are all foreshadows for what will happen with AUMichael trying to decipher Dean's deepest thoughts and secrets. "What do you want?" Which will be the topic in season 14.

And now, CAS vs CAS...

AW-CASTIEL More than one of us. Fascinating.

CAS (looking at his double) I’ve gotten used to it.

Two Castiels, like the Empty and Cas, or like AUMichael and Dean inside of Dean,'s mind.

AW-CASTIEL You align yourself with the h-humans.

Humans were considered as garbage between these angels in this AU, so, the sole idea of looking at himself in our Castiel been allies with humans it's disgusting.

Gif credit @inacatastrophicmind

CAS I vastly prefer them to angels.

This is a lesson Castiel had learned after meeting Dean and realizing Angels were wrong

AW-CASTIEL Don’t think that you are better than me. Well, we are the same.

This is very interesting, because AUCastiel maybe also has that idea of rebellion inside of him, as he saw it fulfilled in Castiel.

CAS Yes. We are.

The confirmation here is infering Castiel recognizes what kind of angel he was, what kind of angel he could be if he had never met Dean, and at the same time, he is killing that part of him, and accepting who he is now. This will have it's continuity in season 14, and it's conclusion in 15x18, always linked to that dark side he defeats, symbolically represented by the Empty, and the last word said by Jack, his son, bringing him back to life.

Miscellaneous: DESTIEL INTIMACY:

Gif set credit @inacatastrophicmind

This tiny scene here is very important. Castiel approached Dean without talking and opens Dean's backpack to take off the handcuffs. And Dean just let him. There's no sign of surprise in Dean's face, he just let Castiel to sink his hand in his backpack showing us the amount of intimacy between these two characters. The trust and the long term relationship. This is something only a person that is very very close to you is allowed to do. And is so romantic and really meaningful. Is foreshadowing too 14x03 when Dean asks Castiel to get inside his head. Because he trust his angel with his life.

To Conclude:

This episode was a preamble to daddy issues in season 14 (Chuck and John) and it also showed an interesting interact between AUCas and Castiel, textually representing his growth of character.

Hope you like this meta, see you in the next one.

Tagging @magnificent-winged-beast @emblue-sparks @weird-dorky-little-d @michyribeiro @whyjm @legendary-destiel @a-bit-of-influence @thatwitchydestielfan @misha-moose-dean-burger-lover @lykanyouko @evvvissticante @savannadarkbaby @dea-stiel @poorreputation @bre95611 @thewolfathedoor @charlottemanchmal @neii3n @deathswaywardson @followyourenergy @dean-is-bi-till-i-die @hekatelilith-blog @avidbkwrm @anarchiana @dickpuncher365 @vampyrosa @authorsararayne @mybonsai1976 @love-neve-dies @dustythewind @wayward-winchester67 @angelwithashotgunandtrenchcoat @trashblackrainbow @deeutdutdutdoh @destiel-shipper-11 @larrem88 @charmedbycastiel @ran-savant @little-crazy-misha-minion @samoosetheshipper

@shadows-and-padlocked-hearts @mishtho @dancingtuesdaymorning @nerditoutwithbooks @mikennacac73 @justmeand-myinsight @idontwantpeopletoknowmyname @teddybeardoctor @pepevons @helevetica @isthisdestiel @dizzypinwheel @jawnlockwinchester @horsez2 @qanelyytha

@destielle @spnsmile @shippsblog @robot-feels @superlock-in-the-tardis @superduckbatrebel @2musiclover2 @madronasky @anon-non2 @cea1996 @lisafu02 @asphodelesauvage @destiels-canonahhhhhhhhhh

If you wanna be added or removed from this list just let me know.

If you wanna read the previous metas from this season here you have the links:

Vol. XCIII, XCIV, XCV, XCVI, XCVII, XCVIII,CXIX, C, CI, CII, CIII, CIV, CV.

Buenos Aires, April 4 2:01 PM 2021

[a-student-out-of-time]

((Mod, I'm not going to lie, the way you're handling Mikan's past in this blog really makes anon massively uncomfortable. You just had Kokoro indirectly imply that being bullied and suffering doesn't make you worthy of sympathy or compassion. I know you're trying to meet Hiyoko fans halfway and everything, but it feels like you're pandering to them so hard you've actually started to hate bullying victims, like Hiyoko fans do. You're "considering other views" SO much you've become an apologist.))

//I am genuinely confused by what you’re saying here, because none of that is what’s going on.

1. Hiyoko has nothing to do with any of this. At all. She wasn’t mentioned at any point, so I have no idea where you would get this impression that this was meant as pandering or that I’ve become an apologist. That has nothing to do with this conversation at all.

2. None of what you mentioned is what was said. Kokoro was not saying that being the victim of bullying or suffering “doesn't make you worthy of sympathy or compassion.” What she was trying to say was putting your own suffering at the center of the universe and all your experiences is the problem. Of course people who’ve suffered and been through horrible shit that they don’t deserve are worthy of love and compassion, but in the worse cases, they can also develop victim complexes where they feel that, because their lives have been horrible, they feel like they deserve compensation from the universe. Which is often a result of them not getting that love and compassion early on.

The classic example is the villain who does horrible shit because they had a bad childhood or they lost someone they love, and they feel they deserve something in return, like the universe owes them, to the point that other people have to suffer for it. But it’s okay, because the villain’s suffering is justified but everyone else is complaining too much.

3. Morality is not black and white. Like it or not, it’s entirely possible to be the victim of unfortunate circumstances and still be an asshole. Victim complexes, self-pity and the desire for some kind of compensation are the cause of a lot of suffering themselves, where people put their own pain and their own misery at the center of the universe. Often because doing makes them feel important or they torture themselves with it because they don’t feel they’ll ever be important.

What Kokoro was saying was that how you respond to the pain and suffering your life is what really matters. Not by fixating on how mean bullies were to you, not playing misery poker and decided your suffering on how your misery isn’t important or is worthy of blotting out the sun, but thinking about how you can fix it and live a better life.

The sad truth is that wallowing in self-pity is a fundamentally selfish act, and no matter how personal you try and make it, it hurts other people just as much as it hurts you. And it can lead to people pushing away and even hurting those who are only trying to help. You devalue those around you because, no matter how much they care about you, you ultimately give them the impression that they’re wasting your time on you. And that hurts.

4. I absolutely love Mikan as a character, not because she’s cute or “uwu she did nothing wrong.” No, she did a lot of things wrong. A lot of her decisions were, if you look through the story and her free time events, fundamentally selfish: she admits that she only really healed herself for her own sake, she went into medicine partly because she liked having people depend on her, and, when her despair self came out, she 

While I have my own issues with Chapter 3, Mikan is my favorite DR character because of how complex she is. She is kind and she is loving, but she wrestles with feelings of worthlessness which often manifest in self-destructive and outwardly-destructive ways. What she needs is compassion and understanding, and love from someone who isn’t called the Ultimate Despair. That’s really what despair is: deciding that your life doesn’t matter, nothing matters, only misery matters. It hurts you and it hurts other people.

4. I don’t say all this as judgement from an outsider. This is quite frankly the most important life lesson I’ve ever had to learn. I’ve been through all of this myself. I’ve hurt people and ruined good relationships I’ve had because I ended up using a lot of them as emotional crutches to hold myself up, rather than valuing them as I should’ve.

Depression, anxiety and low self-worth are the most painful and awful things to deal with, and I still struggle with them. It clouds your mind and makes pain and misery and sadness seem like the most important things in the world, and of course people are gonna feel like shit when that happens

We have a bit of a problem with selfish desires, where a lot of the time, we assume that being selfish is a fundamentally bad thing and doing so makes you a bad person. Really, doing good things for yourself- when you assign value to yourself as a person in spite of your circumstances, when you can look at your mistakes and say “Alright, I’ll try and learn from this,” and when you stop fixating on all your pain and suffering and mistakes- is the most important thing in the world.

And yes, a big part of that is being compassionate and understanding toward those who’ve suffered. But they also need to be willing to accept the negative thoughts and actions that might’ve emerged from that maelstrom of misery, because ignoring it only leads to it festering and welling up inside you. Ignoring a problem and telling people they’ve done nothing wrong can and does lead to those problems manifesting in new ways.

Ultimately, at the core of all of this is the need for open, honest and compassionate communication, to be able to say that, in spite of all of this, you are still worthy of love and acceptance. You have people who want you to get better, but you also need to be better to yourself. Not focusing on your pain, you problems, or how  unhappy you are with life, but asking what you can do to fix it all and how you can get better. And also understanding that growth takes time and, while you might stumble and make mistakes, it’s important to keep moving forward regardless. Be good to others and to yourselves- that’s my advice for living your best life.

If none of this has been clear in the story so far or if I’ve given the impression of something else, then I apologize and will try and make that more clear in the future. I understand that not everyone has had my experiences or been where I or these characters have been, and I hope this has made my position more transparent to you.

Also, apologies for talking about this for so long, but this kind of story is important to me personally and I’d like to reach out to others so they can understand that.

[oddcoupler222]

Do you have any book recs like yours and w. epic love scenes like yours?

I appreciate anything I’ve written being called epic in any way :) 

I don’t really know if I could accurately compare any books I’ve read to my own but I do have some book recs that I adore! I’ll give you my top ten lesfics for some variety

- Behind the Green Curtain by Riley LaShea (my ultimate fave romance)

When Caton’s sleazy boss offers her a position as his wife’s personal assistant, she accepts the job with reservations, certain Jack Halston has ulterior motives. After meeting Jack’s wife Amelia, though, it’s Caton’s motivations that begin to unravel. As vicious as she is beautiful, Amelia threatens Caton’s position and her sense of decorum. As the attraction between the two women spirals into a torrid affair, Caton is drawn deeper into Jack and Amelia’s world of privilege and prestige, where everything is at stake and nothing is what it seems. 

- All That Matters by Susan X  Meagher

Life is going damned well for Blair Spencer. She's a very successful real estate agent, happily married to a man who encourages her to live the independent life she loves; and they're actively working to have a baby. The wrench in the works is that Blair favors adoption, while her husband David desperately wants to have a biological child. The fates are against them, and they finally seek the help of a group of reproductive specialists. One of the doctors, a surgeon named Kylie Mackenzie, eventually becomes a good friend to Blair. And she needs all of the friends she can get when things start to go horribly wrong at home. As her marriage teeters on the brink of collapse, she relies more and more on Kylie's friendship. Kylie's happily gay; Blair's happily straight. But the way they structure their relationship leads friends and family to privately question whether the pair is setting themselves up for heartache. They eventually come to a crossroads, which could either destroy their friendship or turn it into what each of them has been seeking. The question is whether each woman can change her view of herself and her needs. The answer is all that matters.

- Alone by EJ Noyes 

Half a million dollars will be Celeste Thorne’s reward for spending four years of her life in total isolation. No faces. No voices. No way to leave.

Since Celeste has never really worried about being alone, the generous paycheck she’ll receive for her participation in the solitary psychological experiment seems like easy money.

When she finds an injured hiker in the woods bordering her living compound, her strictly governed world is thrown into disarray. But even as she struggles with the morality of breaking the rules of the experiment, Celeste can’t deny her growing attraction to the kind and enigmatic Olivia Soldano. Still, how much can you really trust a stranger? And how much can you trust yourself when you know all the faces you’ve seen and voices you’ve heard for the past three years have only been your imagination?

But what’s real? Celeste’s reality may lie somewhere between the absolute truth and a carefully constructed deception. (the concept of this is just INcredible. and the execution as well - perfect)

- The Goodmans by Clare Ashton

The lovely doctor Abby Hart lives in her dream cottage in the quintessential English border town of Ludbury, home to the Goodmans. Maggie Goodman, all fire and passion, is like another mother to her, amiable Richard a rock and 60s-child Celia is the grandmother she never had. But Abby has a secret. Best friend Jude Goodman is the love of her life, and very, very straight. Even if Jude had ever given a woman a second glance, there’d also be the small problem of Maggie – she would definitely not approve. But secrets have a habit of sneaking out, and Abby’s not the only one with something to hide. Life is just about to get very interesting for the Goodmans. Things are not what they used to be, but could they be even better? (there are not one but TWO perfectly written romances intertwined in this *chef kiss*)

- Pretending in Paradise by M Ullrich

When travelwisdom.com assigns PR specialist Caroline Beckett and travel blogger Emma Morgan to cover a hot new couples retreat, they're forced to fake a relationship to secure a reservation. Ten days in paradise would be a dream assignment, if only they'd stop arguing long enough to enjoy it. Reputations are Caroline's business. Too bad she was forced out of her previous job when an ex smeared hers all over the office grapevine. She's never getting involved with a coworker again, especially not one as careless and unprofessional as Emma. Emma knows that life is too short to play by the rules. But when she goes too far and a defamation lawsuit puts her job in jeopardy, she has to make nice with Caroline, the image police, and deliver the best story of her career.

Only pretending to be in love sure feels a whole lot like falling in love. When their story goes public, ambition and privacy collide, and their chance at making a fake relationship real might just be collateral damage. (there’s just SOMETHING about this that is super freaking cute)

- The Brutal Truth by Lee Winter

Australian crime reporter Maddie Grey is out of her depth in New York, miserable, and secretly drawn to her powerful, twice-married, media mogul boss, Elena Bartell, who eats failing newspapers for breakfast. As work takes them to Australia, Maddie is goaded into a brief, seemingly harmless bet with her enigmatic boss—where they have to tell the complete truth to each other. It backfires catastrophically.

A lesbian romance about the lies we tell ourselves.

- The Red Files by Lee Winter (kudos to her for being the only author that makes it to this list with two separate books)

Ambitious Daily Sentinel journalist Lauren King is chafing on LA’s vapid social circuit, reporting on glamorous A-list parties while sparring with her rival—the formidable, icy Catherine Ayers. Ayers is an ex-Washington political correspondent who suffered a humiliating fall from grace, and her acerbic, vicious tongue keeps everyone at bay. Everyone, that is, except knockabout Iowa girl King, who is undaunted, unimpressed and gives as good as she gets. One night a curious story unfolds before their eyes: One business launch, 34 prostitutes and a pallet of missing pink champagne. Can the warring pair work together to unravel an incredible story? This is a lesbian fiction with more than a few mysterious twists. (as someone who is usually pretty bored by any plot other than the romance, I actually enjoyed this mystery)

- Tricky Wisdom/Tricky Chances by Camryn Eyde

(for tricky wisdom)  Darcy Wright is a closeted lesbian who has been infatuated with her best friend, Taylor, since junior high. Leaving her small northeast Minnesota town for Harvard in a quest to become a doctor, she moves in with med-student Olivia Boyd, a neurotic, anal, gigantic pain in the backside. The first year of juggling medical school is grueling, but it’s nothing compared to living with Olivia.

Coming out to her friends and family with an anti-climactic flop, Darcy uses her newly publicized sexuality to try and win Taylor’s affections through an ill-hatched scheme that crosses uncomfortable lines. The result is as unexpected to Darcy as Darcy’s affinity for medicine is to Olivia.

The first year of medical school is a nerve-wracking encounter in medicine, learning lessons the hard way, and finding what her heart desires.

Tricky Chances is the sequel to Wisdom, but it’s the only lesfic sequel that i truly felt added to the first one and was just as gripping! Plus, the first book is only 48k words so the followup is perfect to come right after

- Who’d Have Thought by G Benson

Top neurosurgeon Samantha Thomson needs to get married fast and is tightlipped as to why. And with over $200,000 on offer to tie the knot, no questions asked, cash-strapped ER nurse Hayden Pérez isn’t about to demand answers.

The deal is only for a year of marriage, but Hayden’s going into it knowing it will be a nightmare. Sam is complicated, rude, kind of cold, and someone Hayden barely tolerates at work, let alone wants to marry. The hardest part is that Hayden has to convince everyone around them that they’re madly in love and that racing down the aisle together is all they’ve ever wanted. What could possibly go wrong? (this book comes in 9th because i don’t love it QUITE as much as i do all the others, but it was the one that got me into lesfic so! it’s good stuff)

And in a guest pick from the only other voracious lesfic reader i know, @debbie-eagan - 

Beautiful Dreamer by Melissa Brayden - 

Philadelphia real estate broker Devyn Winters is at the peak of her career, closing multimillion-dollar deals and relishing it. She’s pretty much blocked out her formative years in Dreamer’s Bay, where the most exciting thing to happen was the twice a year bake sale. Unfortunately, a distress call hauls her back home and away from the life she’s constructed. Now the question is just how long until she can leave again? And when did boring Elizabeth Draper get so beautiful?

Elizabeth Draper loves people, free time, and a good cup of coffee in the warm sunlight. In the quaint town of Dreamer’s Bay, she’s the only employee of On the Spot, an odd jobs company. She remembers Devyn Winters as shallow in high school, but now everything about Devyn makes her lose focus. Though her brain knows Devyn is only home temporarily, her heart didn’t seem to get the memo (I’m personally not a huge Brayden fan but a lot of other lesfic readers are so I reached out for a second opinion on this matter)

I hope you enjoy!

[courtneystriker]

My Thoughts on the HG Prequel

I just finished reading The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and I got to say, my feelings are mixed. Below I have an entire review  for the story which included how I felt, the expectations, the biases I had going into the new book, and how I felt after reading. Please note there will be spoilers. Also this review isn’t meant to hurt anyone and if you absolutely love the book so far...good! Enjoy it fully! As an aspiring writer myself and someone who studied in college/loves creative writing I’m well aware that people just have different takes on writing. Glad you are enjoying it :)

Anyways, here it goes…

The Expectations

As the Hunger Games series is one of my favorites of all time, I had a strong bias to like this book. Since it was first announced, without knowing any details, I was extremely excited and optimistic. I re-read the entire Hunger Games series twice beforehand in preparation; once with my fiancé and once on my own. The only thing I really wanted, knowing that it took place during the tenth hunger games, was that the arena reflected how new the hunger games were. Then, when we learned what the series was about, people started voicing some concerns or were disappointed by the plot, instead wanting it to be something like Finnick’s arena, Haymitch’s, Mags’, etc. etc. I was not among this group. However, I understand where they were coming from, because I always thought the idea of the first Quarter Quell (the one where the districts voted for the tributes) was an extremely interesting concept. 

Yet I think these things are best left explored in fanfiction as they add nothing to the series and Suzanne Collins did an excellent job just giving us enough information to get the idea. At that point it’d just be a book on details, which could fall short or be a gimmicky, cheap way to keep people reading the series and keep her name relevant. And wasn’t that part of the message in her series, the thing Katniss so heavily criticized that gave a great irony to the books? Who would watch children killing each other for entertainment? Meanwhile, we as the reader are reading these books as a form of entertainment. Plus, Suzanne Collins so skillfully painted the illusion of knowing but not fully knowing their stories that it’s haunting, and I think that is one of the many reasons (along with the battle royale trope being naturally compelling, liking the characters, etc.) that a lot of us are more drawn towards these stories rather than (at least for me)  a book on Snow. 

That being said, I was not against the idea of a book on Snow because I find villain characters, especially grey ones, to be very interesting to read about, and I was pretty certain Suzanne was going to handle this beautifully, especially since you could already feel this atmosphere coming off of Snow in the Hunger Games series. I know some were really concerned about a Snow redemption arc, but to me it felt very obvious that it couldn’t be and it would be more of him sliding into evil.

I did have other concerns when I read the description for the first time. I could not believe they went with the whole tribute from District Twelve thing again. I loved Katniss and District Twelve, but I did not want Katniss 2.0. I said right from the beginning to my fiancé that she’d have to make the tribute from District Twelve extremely different for me to get on board (though I was holding on faith that Collins would). It just felt cheap and gimmicky to rehash the District Twelve thing, it sort of made me feel the same way I would have if she had written about one of the games I mentioned above. Sure, it’d sell, but it wouldn’t add anything to the series. I was thinking she better not hunt, sing, or have any qualities resembling Katniss really.  

Another thing I worried about was the love story they hinted at in the description. It just didn’t make sense to me. Because how was Snow going to ever support the games if from an earlier age he fell in love with a tribute and vowed to protect her? Then later he’s all like pro-hunger games? Just this itself could weaken the entire series if done poorly, because it would weaken the main antagonist’s motives for not only the prequel but also the Hunger Games series as well. I kept thinking either the girl has to die in the arena betraying Snow somehow (which is what I was hoping for), Snow will have to betray her, or perhaps he would have been faking love for her for some sort of personal gain I couldn’t imagine. Either way, I thought it weakened the story's appeal to me. Yet overall I was still excited, desperately waiting for the book’s release. 

And now that I have read it, I have to say it felt forced at a lot of parts and lackluster overall…

*Spoilers start here*

My Review:

Suszanne Collins’ writing style is one I’ve always loved and has consistently appealed to me. Even though this book is written in 3rd person (which some may like less if you don’t particularly like third person) it holds up well against the original series. So I really had no complaints in this regard besides the excessive use of songs (felt like fanfiction a bit). I think if you liked the original series and don’t mind third person you’ll feel right at home with her style.

The concerns others had about Snow’s redemption are completely dismissed in this book. Like I had predicted, she writes about his fall into evil, and although it’s not black and white evil (as I don’t like anyways) you can very much tell he’s a bad guy and that the hardships he faced in life only further pushed him towards obtaining status and power. Overall, he feels true to the character when we end up seeing him in the Hunger Games series, and his journey to power fits the images Finnick painted in Mockingjay. He is very well characterized in the book and perfectly unlikable while maintaining an intriguing internal dialogue (although it does occasionally feel tedious, but not enough to bother me; others may feel differently).

 The way he is written is very much in line with Collin’s great characterization, one of the reasons I always loved The Hunger Games. All the characters felt like real people. They all had an extreme depth to them and I felt they all resembled people I had actually met in real life. There were little to no characters that relied solely on gimmicky personalities to get by. Even very minor characters that seemed depthless and swallow at first--like Katniss’s prep team--had more to them. So I thought going into this book I had nothing to worry about in that regard. I didn’t even really spare it a thought, but boy was I wrong. 

I think Snow and Lucy Grey were the only characters that had (at least partly) the depth that the original Hunger Games cast had. I’ll discuss Lucy Grey later but first let me talk about some side characters. Where to even begin really? There’s a LOT of characters in this book. Frankly, way too many, which I think contributes heavily to the lack of depth in the characters. Honestly there’s so many that the names of characters were hard to keep track of while listening to the audiobook (my hard copy of the book was still in the mail and I didn’t want to wait). Things got a bit clustered in my mind quickly. There were twenty-four tributes, twenty-four mentors,  Snow’s family, The Dean and Drs at the university, Snow’s Peacekeeper crew, and the Covey, and those are just the groups that I can cluster together. At least, the ones I remember having names and getting introduced, but I think that’s everyone really important. There was no real time to develop or get to know them really, which made the tributes’ deaths more meaningless as I could barely recall their names. It caused impactful scenes to weaken significantly overall and it made characters serve only to characterize and amplify Snow’s fall into evil. 

Here’s what I mean by that. The head Gamemaker, Dr. Gaul, really was the character I hated the most while reading this. She was just evil without reason (one of the weakest villain types with little to no personality besides being evil). She even made creepy rhymes as if she was in some sort of horror movie, and the entire point of her character was to contribute a lot to some of the forced plot points driving Snow’s moral decline. For example, there were all her tests, which seemed contrived and all directly connected to getting Snow to think the Hunger Games was a good idea. She was seemingly supposed to be a Dr. Mengele type character, as this book has a lot of Holocaust-esqe imagery. I’m fine with irredeemably evil villains, but instead of getting the depth that a Dr. Mengele character could offer (as some may know, many children that were part of his experiments actually said he was kind and gave them candy, and I find that deeply haunting to this day.) She is a flat, one-dimensional character whose entire personality could be described with one word: sociopath. Evil people are master manipulators, which is how they get away with evil things. I think at one of the funerals she puts on a good public face, and she seems to have power, money and influence. Yet the book doesn’t show this seemingly present quality nearly enough to make her a haunting character. Instead we get nursery rhythms and clearly driven lessons towards evil at are contrived. Like “Write about what you most liked about the war” or the assignment to improve the hunger games? Like what class is this? Why are they taking it? And why are the young kids of the influential deciding this instead of the influential people themselves?

Another character I feel was just there for Snow’s development and to represent an opposite viewpoint but lacked Collin’s usual depth is Sejanus Plinth. As a District 2 citizen whose family got rich off the war and moved to the Capitol, he is the main opposing viewpoint of the book, presenting Snow with a chance to do the right thing. I’ve seen people say he’s a Peeta-like character, but I completely reject that idea. He lacks in the charm Peeta has, relishes in self-pity (although he’s completely justified in his sadness and has a right to be upset), and while he has a heart like Peeta, he ultimately doesn’t know how to use it. Instead of working within his position to get influence like Peeta so masterfully does, he’s hot-headed and continuously makes poor decisions that ultimately don’t help anyone. It’s like he wants to help but doesn’t know how as he’s driven completely by emotion without reason. He too contributes to some forced scenes, particularly my least favorite in the book; when they sneak into the arena. Overall, he just falls flat for me. Again, I feel I don’t know anything about him beyond what he contributes to Snow’s story line and he doesn’t come across as realistic. It’s like Collins just wrote how someone would normally react to the hunger games, slapped a district number on him and went on her merry way. 

I just wasn’t prepared for these sort of characters when the Hunger Games series made even the smallest of characters stand out dramatically. I feel neutral to annoyed by most characters in this novel. I could expand this portion, and maybe if people inquire I’ll elaborate on some of the other characters as I have strong opinions on them, but this post is already getting long, so I’ll move on to Lucy Grey.

Lucy Grey is by far my favorite character even though she is bordering towards being a character from a fanfiction. Not quite a Mary Sue in my opinion but there is a certain connection to fanfiction I made with her. You may have guessed some issues I had with her by reading my expectations earlier in the post, but that has not displaced my love for her. Her personality is very different from Katniss’s, or even Peeta’s or Haymitch’s. She had a different type of charm than all of them, is a natural performer, and seemed more extroverted. Also, the whole idea of the Covey and her “not really” being district was intriguing. It really highlighted the displacement that war can cause and how people can just be in the wrong place at the wrong time. (Although I was confused on how much mobility between the districts there were….and did District Twelve have a fence or no?) It really emphasizes one of the main themes of the book, extreme prejudice against both Capitol and District. Her spot sort of in between really drives home the point that there's literally no difference except extreme poverty, and even then there was poverty in the Capitol, only better hidden. Her bright mood (and clothes), her poised attitude, and her optimism made her endearing. She was confident in her skin yet still held the fear of a sixteen year old going into the hunger games.

There were only two main things that bothered me about her, which was of course the direct connections made to Katniss (which I’ll elaborate on) and the forced “love” story between her and Snow. I suppose that has less to do with her and rather more to do with my dislike of that subplot. And I'm a sucker for some good romantic subplots, but yikes!

I think having one strong connection to Katniss was all that was really needed in this book. I really liked the idea of that connection being the Hanging Tree Song, as I can only imagine how it made Snow feel watching “The Mockingjay” sing it in the propo. Despite me not liking that fact that Lucy Grey is also an enchanting singer as that felt like directly stepping in Katniss’s territory, I did enjoy the little twist of Lucy Grey writing the song. Yet the connections between the two when the plot took us to District Twelve went too far. It felt like it took away all of Katniss’s special places and things. The lake, her katniss roots, her gift towards music, her fondness for the meadow, sneaking into the woods, etc. I think one solid connection would have solidified their bond beautifully. Having so many seemed like it was really trying to force the reader to make the connection when it was already painfully clear I guess? Plus, having Lucy stand out at her reaping ( the whole song part read like a bad, contrived fanfiction bit to me) and having people care about her in the Capitol while moral questions of the hunger games were still surfacing made me start to think...isn’t this how the rebellion for Katniss got started? At least partly. I get it’s a different time. Too close to the war. It just felt way too similar. I guess Collins was going for the idea of a lost rebellion that in a way Lucy Grey started that Katniss later revives. Yet it feels like that invalidates the specialness of what Katniss does in the original series as it’s already happened; it just got erased. I guess history repeats itself, but I really just didn’t like it. I could see the appeal to some extent, and it could be a beautiful connection, but it just wasn’t for me.

Now on to the plot, which is the last thing I’ll talk about as this post is getting ridiculously long. A lot of the plot felt very forced or contrived, which was another shocker coming from Collins because her pacing and plot was done really well in the original series. Of course, a lot of this was driven by Dr. Gaul and Sejanus Plinth as the entire plot hinged on the moral debate of the hunger games these two represent. Other plot points just hinged on what happened to establish the games. I mean the rebel bomb explosion seemingly only happened to change the terrain so Dr. Gaul can then bring up the idea of the different arena and how that made the tributes act differently, thus creating the crazy arenas we see later in the series. I do have some praise for how Collins established the disparities between the earlier hunger games and the ones we see in Katniss day. From the way they lock the tributes up, don’t feed them, the spotty coverage of the arena, etc. All of that was exceptionally well done. The only complaint I have was that so many tributes died before they even got to the arena (though not because I wanted to see them fight). I had been expecting one to escape or something to further establish that this was new territory and was waiting to see how they handled it in earlier times, but I wasn’t expecting that many to die before the arena got started. It just seemed like a huge Capitol failure that they advertised loudly. I really wasn’t expecting that level of incompetence, just an escaped tribute that threatened to embarrass or harm the fragile beginnings of post-war Panem. Instead, most of the pre-arena stuff felt disastrous. A lot of the mentors' deaths felt forced, and it was weird that the academy never really came under fire at all from all the rich and powerful parents whose children were getting killed because of the mentor experiment. Like it seemed there should have been some interaction there, but there wasn’t. Maybe some was passively mentioned but still, it could have been a whole subplot that further established the debate of the hunger games.

While the pre-arena up to the break-in to the arena felt like the most forced part of the book and certainly I felt it needed more workshopping plot wise, it also harbored some great and powerful scenes, like Arachne pulling the sandwich away from the tribute while she was starving and laughing about it. Basically, all those interactions of poverty and captivity meeting the citizens of the Capitol were done well, but nothing spectacular (unlike the scene of Katniss screaming at Buttercup at the end of Mockingjay which is heart wrenching.)

The last plot point I’ll talk about is the “love” story. I wasn’t a fan, but it was sort of what a lot of the plot hinged on and led to the great scene at the lake between Snow and Lucy Grey. How easy it was for him to betray his “love” for status. This led to some of the most interesting and evil internal monologue Snow had in the entire book. I honestly feel the ending scene, the interaction Snow had with the jabberjays and Mockingjays in District Twelve, and the lynching scenes were among the strongest and most memorable.

The love story again felt forced (sorry I’m using that word so much it’s just so accurate) into the story. This hindered the book from having a strong plot in the same way the weaker characters caused forced interactions and plot points to move things along. Yet at the same time the kind of abusive and lackluster nature of their relationship throughout the book fit perfectly with the ending. Unfortunately, it didn’t really make it very compelling for the reader. Luckily Lucy’s  personality kept my interested during these parts. I wouldn’t say their relationship was poorly written at all; in fact the way it was written makes perfect sense. I just think the plot relied too heavily on their “love”, which was gross because of the way Snow is, and the reader knew it had to inevitably end in some kind of betrayal or reveal that there was no love at all. This creates tension for the reader, but I kept wondering: if the love plot had been ditched could we have gotten a stronger plot altogether?

So overall, like I’ve said I’m really conflicted. I know I focused heavily on things I didn’t like, but honestly the book was well written in some regards, plot bouncing between really compelling and a little contrived, the two main characters being written well enough but other characters not so much. Some connections between Lucy Grey and Katniss made at the end were powerful, I loved the Covey, Collins still excelled at writing a lot of the social issues/scenes in the book, and honestly the idea of Lucy Grey being completely forgotten in the Districts that hurts my soul a little. Nothing compared to the feelings I got in any of the Hunger Games books but there’s still something there.

I really hope someone made it through this long ass post. The book was entertaining. I mean I listened to all 16 hours of the audiobook in like a day. I can’t wait until my hardcover comes so I can look through it. Maybe once I know what I’m getting into I can enjoy the book a little more than I did, because right now it’s sitting at very average for me. Maybe I went in with my expectations too high? I certainly like the Hunger Games a lot more and probably always will. Honestly, I love new content, but I’m also the type that likes firm, planned endings to stories (even though it hurts to let things end and the fandoms can suffer from lack of content). I think fans can oftentimes get caught up in what they want and pressure the writer into writing more, which ends up a disappointment since it wasn’t originally planned in the series from the beginning. While I don’t think this is by any means the case with Suzanna Collins or that Lionsgate even pressured her to write this book (I don’t like conspiracies of that sort of thing as a writer myself that plans to have a series in which a book comes out many years after the original part of the series is released), I do wonder if this is the end of the Hunger Games for good. I sure hope so, especially if she would be writing about the other victors. I love them too much and really don’t want to feel similarly about their books, and like I said at the beginning, it wouldn’t add to the series just to my guilty pleasure lol.

Hope you all have enjoyed your reading of the book more than I did :) Again sorry if I wrote anything to upset you! Please if you loved this book ENJOY IT! I’m actually kind of jealous if you did. Feels like missing out on something special.

[skullsandwineglasses]

Life Lessons

The things you thought you wanted when you were 18 are very different from the things that you realize are important when you’re 24. 

1. Meet cutes

You fantasize about running into a stranger at a coffee shop, a book store, a library aisle, a grocery store lineup, etc and that you’ll click with them right away. You think “the one” is out there somewhere. But Ashley from bestdressed put it best: do you really think that out of the 7 or 8 billion or so people on the planet, you were born down the street or a city away from your soulmate? How is life going to be that convenient?

I thought college would be my Debut(TM), especially after a comfortable but uneventful time in high school. But college was quite anticlimactic. I was even less social if that was even possible. It’s hard to make friends when you’re not forced to sit next to the same people everyday. You instead meet people from afar who seem to be living, breathing real-life protagonists: beautiful, smart, witty, stylish, artsy, outspoken. I found myself trying to emulate them. I felt like I was falling behind in terms of who I should be in life. 

I tried to take control. If you don’t put yourself out there, how would meet cutes ever happen? So,

I go to coffee shops: but everyone’s too busy to look up from the work on their laptop screens to pay any attention to anyone else. 

I go to bookstores: but everyone’s too busy scanning the titles on the shelves to pay any attention to anyone else. 

I go to the library: see coffee shop.

I’m in the grocery store and someone asks me about the best coconut milk to use for curry: they get their answer and leave. 

I go to a jazz bar: again, everyone’s too busy listening to the band to pay any attention to anyone else.

I go to a swing dance social night: but everyone’s too busy trying to dance with as many different partners as possible in order to diversify their skills to linger any attention on anyone

You can’t say I didn’t try. 

Bonus:

Imagine you’re feeling bummed that you got assigned an aisle seat on the plane, only to approach your seat and see that a cute guy is sitting in the window seat next to yours. Could this be the meet cute you’ve been waiting for? You sit down. He says hi. You return the greeting a little too excitedly. You move to the fasten your seat belt. He speaks again: “So, my girlfriend has a window seat a couple rows back. I was wondering if you...”

Stunned, you pull the seat belt back and get up, gathering your stuff. “Oh yea, for sure, no bother at all. I wanted a window seat anyway.”

I kid you not. Cringe writes itself. It was like the opening of a bad romcom where the side character has one romantic failure after another. 

-> Moral of the story: Don’t expect to arrive at a place hoping that you’ll lock eyes with someone across the room. People go to places for the services that the place provides, and so they’ll be focused on their purpose for having gone to said place. Taylor Swift songs and YA novels did a wonderful job of misinforming me of how indifferent the social environment is like in public spaces. 

2. Exchanging phone numbers

So, maybe someone finally asks for your number. You part ways at the subway station. He promises to talk to you soon. But after 3 days, you wonder why he hasn’t texted you yet. You get a text from him Sunday morning asking you to meet for coffee that evening. You’re outside the cafe at 7:15, waiting. He texts you apologizing for being late because he was jogging around the lake and lost track of time. He says he’s on his way. You never hear from him again. 

-> Moral of the story: Even if you do ending up having a cute first encounter with someone at a subway station, it doesn’t mean things will work out. I’ve been ghosted like this 3 times. It’s gets harder trying to give men the benefit of the doubt each time.

I had thought that my self worth depended on how many strangers would approach me for my number. I thought that being liked was the only way to be validated. And while being asked for your number is flattering the first time, the illusion quickly shatters when you learn that the success of a relationship hinges on more than just the circumstance of the first meeting. 

3. Reading signs

You’re in line at the airport after returning from a conference trip, waiting to get through customs. You finally reach the customs officer who asks about the reason for your trip. 

“A conference,” you say.

“For?”

“Narrative. You know, like storytelling”

He hands you back your passport. “So are you an author?”

“Oh no, I just study the psychology of storytelling”

His face lights up. “Wow yes, storytelling is so important. It’s the foundation of civilization. That’s great”

“I’m glad you’re able to appreciate it. Not many people do when I tell them.”

“Well that’s because they don’t understand how important storytelling is to the basis of civilization. And for me too as someone who works in law enforcement.”

“Yes, for sure,” you say nodding. You look at the line behind you and start to move to leave.

“Well, it’s too bad we can’t talk more. Have a great day, miss”.

You walk towards the exit where the baggage claim is, and your head’s a blur. Was he...flirting? You’ve never met a stranger who was that interested in your research before, much less a border officer who was willing to stall the line just to ask you more about what you do. 

You begin to wonder if you should have left a card or a number so that you could talk later. You know, for research purposes. It’s always nice to make a friend outside your field who shares the same interests as you. But none of that matters now anyway because #ACAB. What’s done is done. But you still wonder about what his intentions were when he started that conversation. It’s too bad we can’t talk more. Yeah. A shame.

-> Moral of the story: Be more assertive. Offer a way to connect if you’re interested. Why do we keep reinforcing the idea that women can only be acted on and can’t act themselves?

4. To love or be loved

Like many young adults, I often question if my mother really understands what it means to be in love. She seems to like the idea of love, the idea of the perfect fateful meeting, but proudly says that she never fully gave her heart to anyone. She’s always warning that it’s better to receive love than to give it. That you end up at a disadvantage if you love first and love more. 

But I think I’d rather have the agency to make that choice than to be chosen. All throughout high school and in the media, we seem to glorify having someone choose us and love us unconditionally. But that’s unrealistic. There’s no such thing as unconditional, but I do hope to get as a close as possible to it. I want to love someone even if they might not love me back. I want to know how it feels like to put someone else first. Maybe this is just another teenage fantasy that has re-manifested itself in adulthood, but I want the freedom of stretching my feelings out than to feel the weight of that of someone else’s whom I can’t reciprocate. 

It also has to do with how much the alpha male is romanticized in our culture. I realize that I don’t want a domineering male version of my mother, who herself is controlling, obsessive, and possessive. I want a friend, not someone who thinks that I constantly need to be coddled and protected for my own good. 

It’s also a stupid expectation to have of real life men. If the men in my life are any indication, then they have goals and ambitions that they want to pursue. Everyone does. A relationship is a mutual support system. It’s not about how much as can take from someone. 

5. Choices

Some people say that you can fall in love with a city by falling in love in that city. 

TW: Sketchy interactions in ubers/taxis

I was grabbing coffee with a guy that I just met in a foreign city that I was visiting. It was approaching 9pm and he said that he had work the next morning, so we decided to call it a day. I was heading towards the subway station when he said that he called an uber and could drop me off at my hotel. Obviously, warning bells went off, but I was so worried about disappointing him, even though I knew that I wouldn’t see him again anyway after that evening. I just didn’t know how to say no. I reluctantly got in the car with him and instantly regretted it. He moved closer, but when he saw that I was uncomfortable, he moved away. Thankfully. We had an awkward conversation, and the driver dropped me off at my hotel after 10 minutes. I was lucky. I knew it. But looking back at the encounter now, I do wonder what would have happened if I had reciprocated the interest. I mean, I was definitely was curious at the time, but mostly because I was inexperienced and a little desperate to be completely honest. But, I knew that I didn’t want my first kiss or first whatever to be with a stranger who I knew I would never see again since I was leaving the next day. I knew about the emotional confusion that it would cause. I also wasn’t prepared to go as far as I thought he wanted to go, so I didn’t want to give him any wrong impressions and assumed that it was just easier to not show any interest at all. From time to time I still wonder about him and how he’s doing and whether I’ll ever run into him again if I’m back in the city. 

-> Moral of the story: Learn to say no and to stop worrying about whether you’ll offend someone because you want to keep yourself safe. I should have never gotten into that car, and my friends always remind me of that every time I tell them that story. I also acknowledge that some people might not always have that choice, and we should never victim blame. 

For me in that situation, I had a mix of different emotions. Curiosity, attraction, anxiety. My friend told me that I should have told him what I felt at the time and what my boundaries were instead of shutting off. But at the same time, he should have been vocal to me too and voiced what he was thinking, instead of just moving closer in the closed space of an uber. Sketchy af. 

6. Fate (is a lie)

I like to believe in the idea of fate and soulmates. My mother always tells me how I was the product of fate and so a part of me feels entitled to a little bit of that magic too. 

But I got my wake-up call when I walked into a dive bar one Friday night and could have sworn that I saw my first crush from middle school sitting at a table in the centre of the room with a group of his friends. 

We made eye contact, but it was too dark to know for sure. I walked past the table to the bar and asked for a table for one. I sat in the corner and watched him and his friends, curiously.

No one just walks into a dive bar and suddenly decides that the first person you see when you walk through the door is someone you once knew from middle school. I was almost sure that it was him. Was he? 

I was in a city an hour away from where we went to middle school. What are the odds. Was it fate? Was it a coincidence? After 12 years of having never seen this kid, I run into him in a dive bar I’ve never been to before in a city I only go visit maybe once every 2 months. 

Out of all the kids I went to middle school with, I had to run into my first crush? Seems like a joke. What kind of message was the universe trying to send?

In the end, I finished my sangria, and left. He never took one look back at me. And I walked out knowing that I’d never see him again. What seemed like an impossible coincidence just ended up mounting to nothing. 

That’s when I learned that coincidences are just coincidences. There’s nothing more to them unless you decide to make something out of them. 

Concluding remarks:

Maybe y’all are smarter and more perceptive than I am and already knew about these things when you turned 18. But these are lessons that took me 6 years to learn and then some. And even at 24 and having a couple of serendipitous experiences under my belt, I’m still no closer to being the confident, mature, and level-headed adult that I think I should be. I still feel 18 with the unrealistic expectations and mentality embodied by someone that age. Hell, to be honest I’m not entirely sure I remember when it feels like to be an 18 year old anymore. I just feel like an inadequate 24 year old. I shouldn’t be insulting 18 year olds like this. 

[littlebabycrybtch]

oh my god im sorry but i HATE reading analysis discourse so fuckgin much. its so annoying and unnecessary and cruel bc per usual ableists just Scream over everyone and manipulate the view by focusing on the wrong points. disrespect towards this issue is never gonna work and yall would get that if you actually listened to the way the (usually nd) people felt about it and why, but ur too busy mocking them so you look good for consuming the Proper Medias tm. i mean you literally have to know this isnt productive, yall keep going bc you get a kick out of laughing at ‘unintelligent’ people.

‘uu ur teachers didnt oppress u by making u read to kill a mockingbird instead of the hunger games” ok listen 1. media you dont personally care abt can still definitely hold depthful value and be analyzed. oh my god lmao. the people who prefer ~that kind~ of media arent stupid and dont prefer easy thinking, its your own fault for Not looking into it yourself and just assuming its worthless, literally judging a book by its cover. LITERALLY avoiding the analysis skills you claim to have by assuming anything you read in highschool = smart, valuable and anything mainstream = stupid and useless. most books inherently contain symbolism and morals, a lot of these people CAN understand it, theyre just criticizing the inaccessibility of the writing that was forced on them academically. the people analyzing those medias instead of your favs are still taking in lessons even if they prefer to do it in a different format, i mean for instance THG is literally about fucking classism and racism and war you dumb hypocritical tunnel vision bitch, young adult media usually has a Lot of real world parallels in it that very much pertains to how teens see the world, thats the literal POINT, just cuz ur too elitist and dont respect children enough doesnt mean some books are ‘too stupid’ to analyze with any real social value, and 2. A BOOK NOT BEING EXCITING... OR EASY TO UNDERSTAND... IS LITERALLY SMTH VALID TO CRITICIZE IN MANY CASES, ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE GIVING IT TO CHILDREN.... if a kid says “this is boring/too long/uses words that i dont know, so i cant make any sense of it” that doesnt always mean theyre lazy or w/e, if its not a book made for kids (bc kids can understand mature themes but that doesnt. mean you can just throw all the other skills they arent experienced with yet at them, they still need writing tailored to them), Thats your first problem, but sometimes ur book is just fucking boring all together. a book can have as much symbolism as it wants, if its not there to open the mind and provide necessary depth, but to feel self important and make you feel self important for getting it, thats not a good book. and with books i do respect now like TKAM i remember outright saying, “i literally cannot read this and dont get it at all” at like 10 yrs old, and my teachers didnt do shit to explain it or help me or give me any skills at all, they were just like. :) keep trying!! according to your scores we know you can do it!!! so, i did not keep trying, i gave up, and i guarantee if it had been a few years later it would have been easier. if i had been given the opportunity to read stories with similar morals that were made for my age range that i WANTED to read, i guarantee i wouldve gotten so much more out of that. but i was literally DISALLOWED, bro if i grabbed a book that actually interested me, i was told i couldnt check it out at ALL unless it was in the ‘range’ i was assigned, which was college level since i was in 4th grade. so if you think i shouldve kept reading, im being unironic rn, you need to go get a degree, become a teacher, and if a kid or teen says to you what i said, sit them down and TEACH THEM without shame, and fight for better regulations of what reading levels can be pushed on what age groups. if lit analysis is this important to you, FUCKING TEACH IT PROPERLY, that is literally the ONLY REAL SOLUTION to the problem you have, NOT SHAMING the people who were ALREADY FAILED BY THE SYSTEM.

the problem is not ‘idiots think symbolism is stupid’ the problem has ALWAYS been ‘the education system is flawed and how and when children are taught certain skills is so corrupted and damaging, the children growing up with it cannot Help but struggle later in life, and your issue should be with the system”. like can i be real. learn how to Emotionally ~analyze~ posts from sad kids with mental illnesses saying smth as basic as “i wish i wasnt forced to read mature books as a child without any themes pertaining to me at all bc it hurt my already fragile motivations for learning :/” without your ass getting defensive over the classics. bitches stan ‘the door is red to symbolize anger’ but think thg is just a stupid dystopia love triangle book................ ur not even that smart like yall are just elitist like LITERALLY just elitist if you mock the values ppl see in other books and claim theyre too stupid to understand ~real books~. a fucking mickey mouse cartoon could hold the exact same moral lesson as a 1200 page novel written by a college professor of 30 years, like the Exact Same Conclusions CAN be drawn no matter how many words and analogies and metaphors are thrown on top!! for many those fancy details make it more enriching but its literally possible to get the same concepts from “EASIER” material, that is not Lesser it is ACCESSIBLE and it should be ENCOURAGED all the same. yall are gatekeeping and its stupid, if you actually want ppl to analyze media then you’d applaud how they analyze their passions even when you dont share it, not shame them for struggling with understanding other stories. this rly boils down to either ‘i hate ppls preferences and wanna make them feel stupid’ OR the ever so lovely ‘i hate whiny disabled ppl and kids who were pressured to the point of burnout, and wanna make them feel stupid’. its fucking exhausting. idc how you guys feel, you talk to hear yourselves talk and its all just talk and nothing helpful, your disrespect doesnt work bc its an echo of the root problem. for gods sake shut up already lmao

[xiubaek-13]

Definitely Not Hogwarts

Prompt: Baekhyun + “You taste like fucking candy.” + “I was just hoping that y’know… you’d fall in love with me.”

Setting/AU: Magic

Warnings: innuendo, magic, completely non subtle references, swearing.

Word Count: 7,173 (it’s still a drabble, let’s pretend it isn’t this long)

A/N: I hope you enjoy it, you kind of get everyone in this as an added bonus for me taking so long.

If there was something you hated more than changing schools mid-year you had yet to encounter it. Why had you agreed? Because it was a great opportunity. So great that you’d accepted the offer knowing full well that you’d be moving in the middle of the year, packing all of your belongings into boxes - ones to take with you and ones to go into storage, and starting in classes that had already set their dynamic up for the year. Would it be easy? Not at all. Did you still want to do it? You bet your ass you did.

The school was in the middle of nowhere so you had to live on the premises. You’d never been to boarding school before so this concept was somewhat daunting but you were choosing to think of it as a hotel for the moment. All of the students lived in dorms and boarded for the year, only going home at the end of each term, and the teachers lived in separate wings of the school. Yes, wings, because the school was a goddamn castle.

Until a couple of years ago, they had never taken on a teacher’s aide before, but the powers that be had made a treaty between the gifted and the non gifted (god forbid the humans actually use the word magic, apparently that made it seem childlike and not the absolute danger to society that the government liked to portray it as. Magic was neither childlike or the demise of society as we know it but you digress). In the two years following that they had taken on a handful of aides, always non gifted, and usually morally opposed to the concept of magic, a choice that made you think that the wizard in control of the school was in fact, enjoying this whole ‘play nice with the humans’ thing far too much. The aide who had been chosen this year had vacated his position without notice at the end of the second term due to a spell gone wrong. Or something. The particulars were unclear. All you knew was that on one late summer morning you received an offer and should you have accepted that offer (you did, but you made sure not to sound too desperate when accepting it) you would have three days to prepare and move.

Those three days had been a complete and utter whirlwind. Your friends were ecstatic for you. You were the first aide they had selected that had actually had a positive attitude to the concept of magic. First and foremost you believed in science, but you were open to the idea of there being something more out there and if it could be applied to positively benefit human society then you were all for it. Plus, who wasn’t curious about what these kids were being taught?

Your work was sad to see you leave but thankfully you were only employed casually so you didn’t have to adhere to the standard procedure of giving two weeks notice or break any contracts in order to accept your new role, one of the bonuses to being a university student who was unable to work full time. You’d never been happier to not have job security.

Upon arrival to the castle school you were ushered to your wing (the north one with the big spire) by an overly enthusiastic pair of seniors, one of which kept cracking terrible jokes that you guessed were meant to put you at ease but they were just making you cringe, something that the taller senior - you were pretty sure he said his name was Chanyeol - found hilarious. The two showed you to your room, if you could call it that.

You felt like you’d been transported to the world of one of the many books you read while you were growing up - the princess or assassin (your parents made sure you didn’t reach adulthood believing that some man was going to come whisk you off your feet and solve all of life’s problems for you. They gave you books where the women took charge and fucked shit up as well as the damsels in distress, and ones with useless protagonists and ones with good men) living in the tower of a castle, waiting for the unfairly attractive prince or guard to appear so that hijinks could ensue. Your “room” was more of a suite, if castles could have suites. You decided they could, because you couldn’t fathom calling this a room, it was a bit too grandiose for that. You had a bedroom, private study/office, bathroom and tutoring room.

“As you can see, you have space for smaller lessons or tutoring.” Suho explained as you entered the small space, only a few desks and chairs decorating the room. “It’s mostly seniors who will come to you to go over homework, assignments, and anything they’re stuck on.” He added.

“But I’m just here as an aide, not as a teacher. Why would they come to me?” You asked.

Chanyeol replied. “A few reasons. First, if they don’t want the teacher to know that they haven’t fully grasped what was covered in the lesson, the school is super competitive so no one ever wants to let another student see an area that they are weak in. Second, you’ll be marking homework and assignments so they’d come to you if they want clarification around grades. Third, some will come to you to try and scare you. It’s like a sport for some of the students. They see how long the new non-gifted will last before running for the hills.” Your face must have dropped because he instantly waved his hands as he tried to lessen the blow of his statement. “N-not that all students are like that, there’s just a select group who do it. Most of us welcome the initiative to have humans in our school so that they can see that we’re not the evil witches and wizards of their childhood stories.”

“The castle and long robes aren’t helping that, just saying.” You deadpan.

Suho makes a sound akin to choking on air but when you look at him you see that he’s laughing. He looks at Chanyeol as he tries to calm himself but he keeps laughing while trying to speak. “I like her. I don’t think she has anything to worry about with that attitude.” The look the other senior gives him is one of pure exasperation and you have to do all that you can not to crack up at his face.

“Hyung…” he starts but then thinks better of it. His long legs carry him through to the next room, he clears his throat before continuing to speak. You leave Suho, who is still chuckling to himself, in the tutoring room. “This room is your office. It’s kind of a half library, half office. You can do your own research in here and organise all of your work in the room. If you ever need the fire lit just ask me to come and do it. I’m proficient with fire, most students can conjure fire but some would mess with you and light a fire that emits a stench, or one that burns too hot, one that talks to you, you get the idea.”

You nod and make a mental note to ask him to light the fire in winter for you if you haven’t come across any other trustworthy students by then. The proficiency stuff is new information to you. You knew that the gifted could conjure elemental magic but you didn’t know that they had proficiencies for certain elements.

    “I apologise for Chanyeol, he always forgets that the non-gifted don’t know about the proficiencies. I’m assuming that’s why you look confused?” Suho leans against the door frame as he speaks. He pushes off and enters the room once you nod. “To cut a long and dreary history short, gifted - as you refer to us - have the ability to wield elemental magic. Certain families have a proficiency with certain elements which allows them to have superior control over that element. In Chanyeol’s case that is fire. In mine, water. There are nine such students at this school but if we go by our history books there are twelve families with proficiencies. We can do greater things with our elements and we take extra classes to hone our skills with them. Normal students can cast a spell to light a fire in here for you but Chanyeol could click his fingers and a fire would light, or he could create a flame in his hand and have it hover for you.”

“Can he hadouken too?” The words leave your mouth before you can stop them. Chanyeol folds in half, slapping his leg as he laughs. Suho looks less amused. “Or do you guys have special rings? Can your powers combined conjure Captain Planet?” Chanyeol is struggling to breathe because of how hard he’s laughing.

“That’s… that’s not how the elemental magic works.” He begins.

“Suho, I’m kidding.” You interrupt. “You need to brush up on your human pop culture circa the 1990’s.” You smirk. “Just doing my part to help eliminate the dark, evil wizard stereotype all of you have going for you.”

He chuckles at that, shaking his head as he moves towards the next room, lightly shoving Chanyeol as he passes. “This next room is your bedroom. You’ve got one of the better rooms. You should see the aide’s room in the East Wing, it’s like a shoebox. (You thank all that is good for giving you something better than a cupboard under the stairs.) It has your bed, wardrobe, lounge and adjoining bathroom. It’s the only aide room that has that actually, all of the other wings have a communal bathroom for the aides but you lucked out with a private bath.”

You wanted to make a witty remark about that but all words died on your tongue as you stepped into the room. This was far too grand to be called a bedroom. You had a giant four poster bed to one side, a lounge suite by the fireplace, a couple of wardrobes and shelves, a table with four chairs and a little kitchenette. This was more like a studio apartment but in a castle. Everything was ornate, it was like medieval meets industrial aesthetically, which worked far better than you imagined it would.

“It’s pretty nice isn’t it?” Chanyeol remarked. “Like we said, you got pretty much the best aide room out of the lot.” He scratched the back of his head as he pondered what to say next. “Uh, that pretty much concludes the tour of your room. We’ve both got class to get to but Xiumin & D.O. will come by to take you on the tour of the grounds. They’re two of the other students with proficiencies as well, and they’re both trustworthy so you’ll be in good hands.” The two students bowed and waved farewell to you, wishing you well on your first week at the school before they left.

The other two students turned up not long after Suho & Chanyeol left. One arrived while making voice notes into his dictaphone and the other while cleaning his glasses. It wasn’t difficult for you to guess that these two would be top students, they just gave off the ‘we study a lot and it shows in our results’ kind of aura. You had been informed that all of the senior students who would be showing you around were high achievers but where Chanyeol and Suho were a more relaxed and reserved levels of intellect, these two exuded it.

The two students bowed to you and introduced themselves. The one with glasses was D.O. and the one with the dictaphone was Xiumin. You swallowed the urge to make a Harry Potter joke to D.O. but with that style of glasses he was on borrowed time before you blurted it out. You were, after all, supposed to be professional. You might only be a few years older than these seniors but you were an employee of this establishment, not the new kid. You didn’t have to fit in or be classified as cool. You had the feeling that until you actually started working you’d have to keep reminding yourself of that fact.

“So we’ll be showing you the grounds so that you have a general layout of the school. If you get lost you can always ask a student but to be on the safe side I’d recommend a fellow teacher or a student whom you recognise. Others might find it fun to mislead the new non-gifted aide.” D.O. explained. Why were these seniors painting this school like it was filled with miscreants? Did the students not respect their elders or were humans looked down on that much? Were you just a temporary plaything to them or something?

“Do the students have issues with treating the non-gifted aides with any modicum of respect?” You asked.

“It’s not that. The majority of the student body welcome the integration of humans into our school, we have just as much to learn from you as you do from us if our kind are to coexist moving forward.” Xiumin replied. “But there are a select few, as there are in any setting, who will only find pleasure in making your life difficult. They will take any chance they get to embarrass and ridicule you, to trick you and to eventually send you running from this school. Their primitive thought process is that if they have enough aides flee the school that the whole initiative will be discontinued.” He shook his head as he finished speaking, showing you just how dumb he thought this select group of the student body were.

“What Xiumin is trying to say is trust your instincts. Don’t blindly trust a student because they act kind towards you, feel them out and work out if they are playing you. We’ve been through a few too many aides this year and that group think they can send anyone away. For the most part, don’t react to them. If they think their tricks have no effect on you hopefully they’ll just get bored and leave you alone.”

“Or, they will escalate their antics and put me in actual danger.” You rebuked.

“They’d get caught and punished if it came to that.” D.O. deadpanned then added. “I’m sure you’d be fine. While we’re out Lay, another senior, will be putting up warding magic on your room to prevent any hijinks from happening there.” Hijinks? you mouthed but before you could say anything back to the half blood prince wannabe he started walking down the hall.

Xiumin chuckled under his breath and motioned for you to follow. “You’ll get used to him. He’s blunt but he’s not unkind. He doesn’t like his routine being messed with. Normally he’d be running a study group so he’s a little off kilter today. Just work with it please?” You nodded and followed the other male as he set off after not Harry Potter.

The tour was pretty informative, with both boys giving you some history for the different areas which you found fascinating. They also showed you the areas of the school you’d be frequenting the most - the main hall, the teachers lounge, kitchen, and a small selection of the classrooms you’d be in. They marked these locations on a map for you and went over the easiest routes for you to follow. Both of them were very polite and patient with you as you very slowly got your bearings. Xiumin advised for you to memorise the paths rather than any objects in the halls as they had a tendency to move. D.O. eventually led you to a large set of double doors and guided you down towards the grounds at the rear of the school. This place was massive and your brain hurt from trying to remember everything.

“The sports grounds, gym, amphitheater, horticulture and agriculture areas are spread out here. The easiest ways to know the borders of the grounds are the lake at the back, forest to the left and mountains to the right. You’re perfectly safe if you remain within those boundaries. We’ll quickly take you down to each building but you won’t have to come down here too often so don’t worry too much about memorising them.” He stated.

Xiumin added, with a grin on his face. “You’ll probably only come down to watch sporting matches. Even if you don’t really care for sport, adding magic makes the games much more interesting. Occasionally a class will be held down here if they are using spells that require a lot more space than a classroom offers.” You were going to have to witness this if only to put a real image in your mind of what that looked like. Until you did, it would be every tacky wizard movie you’d ever seen playing on repeat, which would drive you batty. The two of them continued showing you everything, adding fun facts and tidbits of history along the way.

“So, uh, forgive my ignorance but we really only have mainstream media to go off here. Do you guys use wands?” You ask.

D.O. scoffs indignantly. “We absolutely do not. Wands are for children and idiots.”

“What he means to say is that we use our hands and minds. Wands exist but are not widely used since they require far less skill and are less accurate.” Xiumin adds.

“Your mainstream media is dumb.” D.O. says.

You raise your hands. “Hey, no disagreement from me here. I know it’s incorrect with its portrayals 99% of the time which is why I asked.” Xiumin chuckles as he calms D.O. down. You hadn’t expected his outburst to be over a fucking wand but hey, weirder things were surely still to come.

Eventually the three of you approached the large doors that would lead you back within the main building. D.O. smiled when you looked to him to lead the way back. “Oh no. You’re going to lead us back to your room as best you can. Consider this a test of your short term memory.” He chuckled as your face fell.

“Fine.” You grumbled. How hard could it be to follow a map back to your room anyway?

Harder than it looked was apparently the answer. You made it back after a few wrong turns. Part of you wondered if this was some cruel joke where they got to laugh at you leading yourself in circles while futilely trying to reach your destination. The other part just wanted you to hurry up and work out how to get back to your room. When you spotted the stairs that led to your hallway you sighed in relief. Both boys smiled brightly at you. “We consider our tour a failure if you can’t find your way back. You might have made a few missteps but you got back without needing any assistance. You’ll know the grounds like the back of your hand soon enough.” Xiumin smiled.

The two of them led you the rest of the way back to your room before bidding you farewell. “We’ll see you in class.” Xiumin said as he bowed, a small smile on his face. He definitely didn’t look old enough to be a senior but who were you to judge? You were in a freaking school of magic, for all you knew he was 400 years old. Or maybe there was a portrait of him hidden in an attic somewhere.

“Thanks for the tour, you both helped me out a lot. I will definitely be using this map over the coming days while I get my bearings. There is a lot of history here,” You gestured to your surroundings. “and it’s fascinating, I know you barely scratched the surface with the small insights you gave me but it was very informative and enjoyable.” You smiled.

D.O. chuckled. “I’m glad you didn’t fine it too boring. Most of the aides that come through here don’t even listen to half of the tour we give.” He paused. “Actually, before we go I have a question for you.” His head tilted to the side as he appraised you, as if looking for some answer to his yet unasked question.

“Go ahead, it’s the least I could do after such a lovely tour.” You replied.

“Well, the least you could do would be nothing but -”

“Let’s not debate semantics right now.” Xiumin interjected.

D.O. huffed, but acquiesced. “Fine. We’ll ignore the idiosyncrasies of the english language for now.” Xiumin rolled his eyes, this was clearly not the first time he’d had to deal with the other nitpicking at insignificant details of the language. “My question is in two parts. Firstly, where do you stand on the issue of magic? and secondly, why did you accept this role?”

Well that wasn’t the question you were expecting. You didn’t know what question you were expecting but it sure as hell wasn’t one this bold, especially not from a student. “To start with, you know I don’t actually have to answer you right? You are technically my students.”

    “Of course. Will you answer it though?” He asked, his gaze locked on yours. The balls on this kid…

“I will, but the point is that I don’t owe you, or any student an explanation like this.” They both nod at you and wait for you to continue. “To answer the first part of your question, I believe in science. Always have and always will, but I’ve always had an interest in magic. It was this mystical thing that appeared in the storybooks of my childhood, and I don’t mean the propaganda that litters the homes of the non gifted, these books had the gifted as heroes, as people who saved the day. I watched the change happen. All it took was one world leader who realised the gifted were real and they feared the abilities you have over non gifted. Suddenly all of the children’s books had evil wizards and witches who would trick you and eat you. I was never swayed, my interest only grew once I realised that the mystical wonders from my childhood books were real. I think that in order for gifted and non gifted to coexist, they need to work together and not look at either side as less than or evil. There are terrible gifted and non gifted people but there are also wonderful gifted and non gifted people. We fear the unknown but if we work together, that fear lessens.”

You pause to take a breath, noticing how wide Xiumin’s eyes have gotten as you’ve been speaking. “As for the second part, part of it has surely been answered in the first part of my response but aside from general curiosity and a belief in our kind working together I also want to be a part of that. It’s not lost on us that most non gifted selected for the program have been heavily against the concept of magic and view the gifted as the devil incarnate. I know I’m probably one of the first to be selected who has no negative preconceptions of what goes on here and I want to do my job, help students and be able to provide workable ideas for the future of our kind coexisting. I believe that if we can work together, science and magic combined will result in wondrous things.”

Finally, he cracked a smile, his whole face changing into that of a bright young man. “You are a welcome change. You’re not wrong when you say that the other aides have a dislike of our kind and of magic as a whole. I think our kind chose the wrong approach by attempting to make a non gifted who was fundamentally against everything that we stand for change their mind by simply existing with us. It was never going to work, and even if it did your government could scratch it up to stockholm syndrome. Just.” His face hardens but his gaze softens as he looks at you. “Keep your wits about you and don’t be fooled by rose coloured glasses.”

***

Your first few days went by without too many hiccups. You’d been thrown into a wide array of classes; apothecary, history of magic, potions, magical law, spellcasting & defense magic. The classes were overwhelming but oh so interesting, to the point that you had to keep reminding yourself that you were supposed to be reading up on the syllabus and grading homework against the guide sheets you’d been given, not giving your full attention to the teacher. That was easier said than done once the topic of dragons came up. It took all of your self restraint not to blurt out “Fucking hell, dragons are real?!” but maintaining your professional facade took priority. You made a note to read up on them later because they were even more fascinating than your childhood stories had hinted at.

You met most of the other proficient students thanks to Suho & Chanyeol introducing them to you. You’d run into Xiumin & D.O. again when they were on their way to their extra credit classes and asked them about their proficiencies, apologising for forgetting to ask the first time you’d met. They’d let you know that Xiumin’s proficiency was ice and D.O.’s was earth. You didn’t get to ask much more about it because they ran off to class, not wanting to be late and have that mark on their records.

“Good Afternoon Chanyeol, what can I do for you?” You’d asked when he approached you with two other students trailing behind him.

He grinned and gestured to the two behind him. “I figured I should introduce you to these two. They’ll either annoy the shit out of you or be model students.” You raised a brow at him. “They’re younger than most seniors, thanks to their proficiencies.” He stage whispered at you.

“You know we can hear you right?” One of them remarks.

To his credit, Chanyeol ignores them and continues talking. “Whilst they are young and immature, they possess a lot of control over their elements, Kai in particular.” He gestures to the boy to his left, who smiles shyly at you and waves. “They figured they should get him through school, disciplined & bursting at the seams with morals before he got too old. His proficiency is teleportation you see, so everyone does what they can to steer him away from a life of crime.”

You nod. “No ill gotten gains for you then.” Kai chuckles. “Can you only teleport yourself or can you take people and objects with you?”

“I can choose. I have to be touching whatever I want to take with me but if someone grabs me I can choose to teleport alone or with them.” He replies.

You lean forward on your desk. “How large an object can you move?” You ask.

He grins at you. “Not telling.”

You sigh dramatically. “Chanyeol, I fear that he might have already given in to a life of crime.” For a moment Chanyeol looks confused until the synapses connect and he realises that you’re poking fun. “If you do a dramatic pose when you teleport then I think you’re well on your way to the criminal mastermind title.”

Kai laughs loudly. “I like her.” he states before wandering off to find his seat. You just hoped the military never found out about him, they’d abuse his power wherever possible and he seemed far too kind for that kind of life.

The other male clears his throat to remind Chanyeol that he is still waiting for his introduction. Chanyeol’s eyes widen and then narrow in frustration. “This is the youngest of the proficient, Sehun. He likes to think that the universe revolves around him but we keep him grounded, figuratively and literally…once or twice.”

You glance past Chanyeol to Sehun. He looks like he has a chip on his shoulder, and the resting bitch face isn’t helping him not seem like a jerk to you but you give him the benefit of the doubt. “Hi Sehun, what is your proficiency?”

He gives you a very slight, like blink and you’d miss it kind of slight, smile as you feel a light breeze wash over you. “Wind.”

You ponder for a moment and bite your tongue to prevent another Captain Planet reference from coming out. “Wind would be the broad term though wouldn’t it? You control air right?” You ask.

He nods. “Yes. I can control and manipulate the air, it’s velocity and molecular structure.”

“Are they trying to prevent you from a life of crime as well by fast tracking your schooling?”

He smirks. “Something like that. I had a huge amount of power but no control over it so I was pushed through school to better harness my power.”

Chanyeol interjects. “His power used to be based off his emotions so he’s had to learn to control himself and basically relearn how to use his power.”

“That’s pretty impressive actually.” You reply.

Sehun actually smiles at that. “I like her too, for now. Nice to meet you.” He nods then also heads to his seat.

Chanyeol smiles warmly. “He caused himself a lot of harm while he was learning. Lay, you haven’t met him yet but he’s proficient in healing, had to patch him and quite a few of us up on several occasions. He seems cold and aloof but he needs to be in order to keep his ability at a safe level.”

“Thanks for introducing me, that’s 6 of you I’ve met so far so I still have 3 to go? Lay being one of them. Who are the other 2?”

You hear the groan in his voice. Clearly he isn’t a fan of these two. “Chen & Baekhyun. They are probably the two who will give you the most grief. Too clever for their own good and they are sneaky as all hell. They control lightning & light. Don’t be fooled by their lost puppy eyes. In fact, ask some of the other aides, I’m sure they have stories.” He glances up as the teacher enters the room and ducks off to his seat.

You’re left to wonder about these two supposed wicked students. What do they look like? (Probably should have asked that in hindsight) Are they really that charming? Had the other aides exaggerated with their stories? You were going to find one after class and learn more about these two. You wanted to be prepared for whenever they decided to show up in your vicinity.

***

“Baekhyun? Is he here?!” The aide shuts the door quickly, looking around the room frantically.

“Woah, woah, calm down. He’s not here. I was just asking about him.” You try to calm the spooked aide. Christ what did this student do to the aides?

“What did he do to you?” She asks quietly.

“Huh? Nothing. I haven’t met him yet.”

“Keep it that way.” She says quickly.

“The better question is what did he do to you?” You take a step towards the aide, determined to get answers. She seems truly afraid of this student. Is she vehemently against magic? Yes. Does that warrant this level of fear? You’re not sure.

“He’s evil.” She whispers.

You roll your eyes. “Come on now. I know you aren’t exactly pro magic but evil? In what way?”

Her eyes widen as she grabs the fabric of your shirt over your shoulders. “He toys with you. He’ll be the sweetest student you ever meet until you do something that he doesn’t like. Then he’s your worst nightmare.”

“So a teenager with an out of control ego. That’s not so bad. You had me thinking he’d be murdering kittens on my doorstep or something.”

She shakes her head. “You don’t understand! He’s proficient in light, sounds lame right?” Maybe it sounded lame to her but you had already put some thought into that power. Manipulating light and dark, controlling shadows - that could be a terrifying power. “It sounds like a nothing proficiency compared to the others but once you realise that light is necessary to everything, it becomes terrifying. He shouldn’t be.” She shudders.

Maybe that attitude is why he doesn’t like you. You think to yourself. Out loud, you attempt to change the subject. “And Chen?”

She scoffs. “He’s a trickster but there is no malice in what he does. He messes with you because he can. Compared to the other one, he’s harmless.”

You bid her farewell and head back towards your room. Another aide stops you down the corridor. “He knew she had a fear of the dark so he manipulated the shadows so that she felt like she was perpetually being engulfed in darkness for the better part of a month. She’s been a nervous wreck around him ever since. All because he didn’t score higher than Kai in class.”

“He sounds like a right jerk.” You state.

“He is. He’s ruthless once he’s decided that you aren’t useful to him anymore. The others are all probably like this but he’s the only one not hiding what an evil monster he and his kind truly are.” The aide leaves before you can give him a piece of your mind. Armed with more information on the remaining two proficient students than you’d had an hour ago, you head back to your room. Lost in thought you fail to notice a student the student that brushes past you.

***

The rest of your day goes smoothly. You attend two more classes and are given homework to mark for each. Sehun comes to you for tutoring after his magical law class. He’d told you he understood the concepts they’d covered but didn’t understand why any of it mattered. You’d done your best to explain the notion of risk and consequence in relation to magical law, using his own grasp on his proficiency as an example. Once he left another student came knocking on your door, one you hadn’t been introduced to yet.

“Are you a senior?” You asked.

He nodded. “You’re our new aide.”

“Your powers of observation are second to none.”

“Hey now, that’s not how you should talk to students!” He exclaimed as he entered the room. You’d figured that he was one of the 3 remaining seniors you were yet to meet, you just didn’t know which one he was. The upturned shape of his mouth screamed ‘I’m mischief incarnate’ so you ruled out Lay.

“Most students would announce themselves upon arrival. Forgive me, I don’t believe we’ve been introduced yet.” You don’t hold out your hand, a tip you were heeding since Xiumin mentioned it.

“I’m Chen and I suck at apothecary. Please help me teacher-nim. I need to be in the top tier of the class so that my parents will get off my back.” He dramatically drops to his knees and overacts begging for help, making you laugh loudly.

“Get up, dear lord. Chen… lightning proficiency right?” He nods. “Do you just invoke it or can you direct it wherever you want it to go?” You ask.

Instead of answering he flicks his wrist and a small electric shock strikes your thumb. It’s similar to when you get a shock from your car or if you touch something after shuffling on carpet. You look up at him to see him smirking. “I can control it, and make it as strong or as delicate as I please.” He waggles his eyebrows at you.

You choose to ignore what he’s implying and continue to question him. “Just lightning or all electrical currents?”

“Oooh we have a smart one this time. Everyone else tried to work out my proficiency based off norse mythology.” He grins, that smile as disarming as you expected it to be.

“Oh please, you’re more shock mouse than god of thunder.” You blurt out. “Though I hear that you aren’t dissimilar to another norse god - Loki.”

He laughs loudly, the sound is music to your ears. “You are not what I was expecting but I’m not mad about it yet.” He settles into a seat at the desk across from you. “But seriously, I need help with this class. Can we work on that now and exchange smartass lines at each other later?”

You laugh and nod, settling back into teacher mode. So far Chen doesn’t seem as bad as the reputation that preceded him but you make sure to keep your wits about you. You know one thing for certain though, this student is a tragic flirt.

***

You’re exhausted after the extra tutoring sessions and the marking. Your bed has never looked so inviting and you cannot wait to slide under the covers and drift off to dreamland. Your alarm had rather rudely pulled you from a particularly salacious dream last night and you were hoping to return to it tonight. You packed away all of your stuff, making sure to lock the students work in your private office. You’d been informed that there was a nullify spell over the room which rendered everyone’s skills, no matter how proficient, useless. Once you were done packing up you made your way to your bathroom to wash up for the night, taking your time to complete your skincare routine and brushing your teeth.

You refrain from rushing to your bed because you are not a child but a sigh of pure joy escapes your lips once you finally crawl under the covers. You think back to the dream you had left this morning and sink into the pillows, closing your eyes. The image of the log cabin in the snow coming back into view. You feel the cozy warmth of the blanket wrapped around you as you wait for him to return. He’d gone to fetch more hot chocolate and sweets so that you could finish watching the movie you’d started just over an hour ago.

Vaguely you recalled him being more built in this mornings dream but as long as he was bringing you sugar who were you to judge. What did alarm you was the sudden change in sensation of the blanket against your skin. Before you felt cozy as it had warmed your clothes but now you could feel it against your skin. When had you suddenly become naked?

Then he appeared. He didn’t look as sweet as you recalled. Rather, he looked annoyed for a fraction of a second before his face transformed, a kind expression now showing on it as he climbed back onto the bed next to you and handed you a mug of the aforementioned hot chocolate and placed a bowl of sweets in front of you. “Thanks babe.” You smiled as you picked up a toffee and put it in your mouth.

“You’re welcome.” The words sounded forced. Like he didn’t want to say them.

You do your best to ignore it and continue watching the movie as you sip your drink. You feel like he’s staring at you and not in a ‘I want to kiss every inch of you before I ravage you’ kind of way. “What?” You ask as you look at him.

“Really? ‘You taste like fucking candy?’ That is the smooth line your subconscious came up with? You need to get out more.” His tone is full of judgement and disgust.

“What?! What are you talking about?” You exclaim, confused. This dream isn’t like the one you wanted to return to.

“In your mind we keep watching this movie and then I lean in to kiss you and say that line.”His judgemental tone is really starting to grate on you.

“Who the fuck are you?” You ask exasperatedly.

“I really thought you were smarter than this.” He chides as he gestures to himself as though he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. “I’m Baekhyun.”

“What the fuck are you doing in my head? I’ve never even met you!” You clutch the blanket around you as you remember your nakedness. Was this still a dream? It felt a little too real to be a dream. There were details missing and if you were dreaming up Baekhyun then you needed to have some stern words with your subconcious about cockblocking you. The dream was supposed to start cringeworthy and saccharine sweet but then twist into a filthy romp. You knew the lines were cheesy, but they were supposed to be. It wasn’t so sweet when your face was planted into the rug about 20 minutes from now.

He shrugs. “I’ve had no reason to seek you out in person, not with everyone painting me as some sort of antichrist to you.”

“So what? You just decided you’d appear in my dream?” You choose to go with this no longer being your dream. You figure that he’s somehow invaded it and that alone is pissing you the hell off.

“I wanted to see what you were like and my proficiency allows me to do this so I figured ‘what the hell’ and popped over for a visit.” He grimaces. “I was not expecting ‘I’ve come to clean ze pool’ levels of dialogue though.”

You close your eyes and shake your head. “You need to get out of my dreams. I didn’t fucking invite you here.” It dawns on you that he must be able to dream walk and that thought somewhat terrifies you. Suddenly the frantic fear that the other aide had doesn’t seem so dramatic.

“Push me out then. Consider this a lesson in defense against wizards. Your mental barriers are weak. I can see everything.” He leans against the wall of the cabin as though he hasn’t a care in the world. You don’t have a clue at how to push him out because why would you? You try to imagine kicking him out of your head and locking a door behind you but he simple laughs at you. You try visualising a vault, and locking away your precious thoughts and memories, slowly filling the vault with more and more items.

He laughs. “Oh you are tragic. I thought the candy line was bad but this, this is just ripped from a poorly written romance novel. ‘I was just hoping that y’know… you’d fall in love with me.’ Excuse me while I barf.”

“Fuck you.” You grumble. You are going to evict this smug prick from your mind if its the last thing you do.

He looks you up and down and smirks. “Non-gifted aren’t usually my thing but I’d make an exception for you.” He winks. “The bit after all of the terrible dialogue isn’t so bad now that I look forward. My, my, you are filthy.”

You want to punch him.

[espressotw]

The Truth is... (thoughts)

Humans are an interesting existence. A living, breathing creature yet simultaneously a story taking up space in this universe. A complicated story partially self-created and partially dictated. Perhaps mostly dictated. But the stories are so fundamental to the reality of our existence that they become invisible to our own eyes, like the reality of blood cells taking in and distributing life-giving oxygen. Really, the vast majority of what keeps us alive is entirely invisible to our own eyes.

Remember when you were a kid, laying alone in your bed, unable to sleep. What sort of stories did you tell yourself in those moments when your brain refused to sleep? For me, it was stories of ghostly creatures sneaking around the house. I was safe, as long as the door was closed. The door was somehow impervious to the brainspawn ghosts. So real were these stories that one of my earliest and most vivid childhood memories was a time in which I sobbed tears of such intense, genuine fear that I was unable to move. That story, based on some misunderstanding of physics, told me that the door swinging open and slamming shut, seemingly of its own accord, could only be the result of some dark or evil force trying to threaten me. My confused mother, holding me tight, tried and failed to explain the forces of air pressure that acted on the door in my dark bedroom that night. 

Perhaps you didn’t think of this as a story, but I think it's important to call it what it is. As a child of six or seven, there was simply no way I could have understood the existence of air as real matter with mass and volume that could act with significant force on the more visible, solid things in my reality. So my brain did what it’s best at, perhaps, if I may be so bold, even what it is meant to do: it told a story. In this case, my associations of apparently self-animating inorganic objects caused a physiological reaction of fear, leading my brain to unfold a scary story of some six-year-old version of demonic forces beyond my perception.

I’ve become so good at telling stories over the years, as many of us have, that it is not only unintentional, but almost unrecognizable. More recently, I told myself a story of redemption. It was a narrative in which I, the morally-matured-and-on-my-way-to self-actualization young adult, felt I had come upon the way I would finally bring myself back to the table with my estranged mother. I finally saw how I could give her the tools to see me on equal terms and simultaneously learn the way of mindfully maintaining my own higher ground rather than sinking myself into the “reality” that was her story. Yes, I’d done it. I’d finally found the way. After more than half a decade of waiting, avoidance, reflection, and growth, I’d finally found the path. 

I was going to teach her about stories and storytelling and about how our interactions were subject to the stories that she was telling herself- and to be fair, the stories I was telling myself- and then approach a reconciliation with a bulwark sensitivity and mindfulness. It all seemed to make sense. It all flowed along the storyline, in narrative pattern. A hook, a time of work and growth, building tension through confrontation until a great climax where she would inevitably- since my methods were correct this time- come around and accept me followed by the happy comedown that follows the reconciliation of long lost loved ones. 

That was the story I told myself. I was so sure of it. I’d matured. I’d grown. I’d been thinking about it for years. How could I be so wrong after so much time and work?

But I was. I was so wrong I’m ashamed to even admit any part of this story. What was I asking her to accept, really? Me? Well, yes, in a sense. But more than that, I was asking her to accept my story. My story that so fundamentally contradicted every aspect of her reality. My story of a genderless, sexually queer, psychadelic, impermanent, internet driven, and most importantly, godless existence. 

My mother, you see, is more or less what we might consider an American Christian Evangelical. A special breed, being of the Mormon tradition, which is in some ways easier and some ways more difficult for me to embrace. Her story is built around ideas like permanence, specifically of the individual and of familial structure. By extension, patriarchal structure and hierarchical structure of god and subject, priesthood holder and disciple. Really, a story with more rigid structure in a sentence than in my entire chapter. 

I’m starting to get a little too big picture here, so I’ll try to reign it back in for the sake of mutual understanding. One example that is perhaps relatable to a vast majority of us by this point. A cough. What does it mean? I had a little bit of a cough today, even a slight headache. This is it, I thought. I have the virus. Everyone in my school will get it. Maybe it’s my fault. Maybe I just manifested symptoms faster. Either way, I have it and our school will shut down. We'll have hundreds of cases in the next couple weeks because I work in a school. I’ll be out of work, so will my colleagues, my friends, the parents of my children. I’m going into the grocery store to buy a few more food items to prepare for quarantine. I walk up to the clerk scanning temperatures as people enter, fully expecting to be just a little over the limit. I make it through. 

But that doesn’t fit my story, so I have to justify it. How? I can change my story by remembering that my family has a quirk where we develop a cough when we’re physically exhausted. That would make sense, I haven’t been sleeping well for a few days. I’ve been working hard. I’ve been stressed. Sure. But I’m a pretty healthy individual and I know my body pretty well, and I just couldn’t convince myself. A cold? No, not like this. There was no other good story. And so my brain found every reason to validate that story. I forgot to wash my hands when I got to school that one day. I opened the door to my apartment building with my bare hands yesterday, maybe I touched my face. I’ve been eating at a local restaurant fairly often. I don’t know their food cleanliness standards, maybe it was there. 

It’s a story we’ve probably all struggled with in the recent past, if not currently. And how much energy have we put into proving or disproving that story? A colleague of mine recently stayed in home quarantine for travel reasons, only to end up fighting this story by himself half the time in what he described as a nightmare of a week (he’s fine). Those of us who have wrestled with this story know how draining it can be. 

But really, it’s no different than any other day. Some stories I live with sound like, ‘I’m the youngest and least experienced at my school, so my ideas are unworthy of sharing.’ Or sometimes, ‘I notice I spend more time prepping than my colleagues, so I must be less capable since I need more time to do the same work.’ These stories are the reason I show up to work at least an hour early every day. They’re the reason I deal with Sunday night anxiety for the first time in my life. They’re the reason I don’t ask for help when part of me knows I should. They’re the reason I finish assignments late. 

The hardest part is that sometimes I’m right! Sometimes I look at a lesson plan or a script written by my colleague and it is objectively of higher quality than my own. And so my brain will confirm its theory. But if I have an idea for a lesson and my colleague says, “Hey, I like that, can I have your template?” No, that’s just a fluke. It’s because I’ve done something similar before at another school. Discard the evidence; it doesn’t fit my story. Thing is, I might not remember the discarded evidence later, even when I should. Even worse, sometimes I get comfortable with a story. Sometimes I want the story to continue, not because it’s good or I like it; no, because it’s familiar. It’s consistent. I already know that story. I know how to cope with it. Anyway, I’m getting a little too big picture again. 

So what stories are you telling yourself?

[leolamin97]

INVADER PINK

Invader Zim x Steven Universe Pitch

INVADER PINK

Synopsis:

   Takes place in Modern Day. Pink is yet to get her colony and there was no Gem War. Pink has yet to be given any chance to prove herself as a Diamond, due to her childish antics, and a few other quirks that tend to lead to destruction (Interest in organics, insistence on doing things by herself, and constant denial of ever being wrong about anything).  Yellow, Blue, and White still baby her which annoys her to no end and threw gas on the fire of her shenanigans. Yellow thinks she’s a nuisance, while Blue thinks she needs constant care and protection. This only intensified after Pink’s biggest screw up that leveled a section of the HW Capital.

   It finally reached a boiling point with Pink Demanding to be treated with respect and given something to do that proves she is just as capable and important as the others. Enter White who gives Pink her wish, telling her that she will take a small entourage to a secret sector to investigate and discover new planets for the empire to conquer. Pink is excited unaware that the sector she was given was a bit of nowhere space the gems couldn’t care less about. White giving her a non-assignment to appease her tantrum and to get her off world for a bit.

   Pink is given a ship a Pearl, a squad of Rubies, a Peridot, and a Sapphire. She takes off to the galaxy and they begin scanning a bunch of lifeless planets. Until they find Earth, Pearl suggests calling the Diamonds but Pink belays that order seeing a chance. She will conquer the planet by herself and prove the others that she is a capable ruler. Due to a fault the ship ends up crashing near Beach City and specifically close to the home of Steven Demayo Universe.

   The 12 year old boy finds the ruler and helps her out, quickly befriending her despite her occasional insults. The other gems find her and attack Steven, but stop on Pink’s orders saying he could be a useful source of information. With Steven’s instruction Pink buries her ship underground and takes residence in the house next to his. She then disguises herself (rather badly) as a 12 year old as well and starts attending school with Steven in order to learn more about humanity. This catches the attention of another new girl in School Connie Maheswaren who quickly sees through Pink’s disguise and calls her an alien despite no one believing her, and she also turns out to be another new neighbor for Steven.

   Thus we follow Pink’s continuous attempts to take over the world and prepare for the Gem invasion. The only thing standing in her way is Connie’s persistence, Steven’s kindness, the beauty of Earth, learning from her mistakes and growing as a person, and her own incompetence.

Characters:

Pink Diamond- The Wannabe Ruler. Not totally stupid, but definitely not evil dictator material. She lives in a bubble of her own self-delusions believing herself to be the greatest thing to grace the universe and constantly spouting Gem superiority. But she knows there a difference between saying your great and actually being it, which she wants to be. She has both an inferiority and Napoleon Complex, trying her hardest to come off as a terror from beyond the stars mostly coming off as adorable, hilarious, or ignorable. She clearly is intelligent able to come up with complex plans for her take overs, but either flubs it at the end or the point of the plan was for something super petty. In her Human disguise she’s as short as Steven keeping her Large Hair, pink skin, and Diamond eyes (She has a skin and eye condition), she wears a Pink T-shirt with a upside down Diamond on it, a skirt, and her little poof shoes.

Steven Demayo Universe- As always he’s our cheery and optimist who see’s the best in everyone even if they aren’t human. Upon seeing Pink he quickly realized she wasn’t the brightest or most capable and thus decides to help her. Even when she declared her plan to take over the world, he didn’t fully buy it thinking she just needed a friend (which she does). Steven became her teacher to being Human (even if every lesson doesn’t fully click). He helps with a lot of her schemes because 1) It always fun doing stuff with her, 2) He knows it’s either gonna fail or be for something dumb, 3) SHE NEEDS A FRIEND!!! Steven isn’t afraid to call her out when she’s being selfish or dumb to the point of hurting someone, and even he has his limits to her antics usually resulting in Steven saying ‘You Jerk’. Steven’s family is divorced, he lives with his father Greg and is constantly being visited by his mom the Brilliant Scientist Rosabella ‘Rose’ Quartzite.  

Connie Maheswaran- A nerdy and socially awkward girl who has trouble making friends due to her interests. She believes in everything paranormal and wants to expose it to the world, mostly resulting in her schoolmates calling her a Crazy Girl and bullying. She is smarter than most kids her age able to do science and work with a variety of machines due to her mother working with Rose Quartz. She is the only one who sees Pink is an alien and thus takes it upon herself to stop her evil schemes, becoming her mortal enemy. She tends to be a little over dramatic and can get a little to “In” to what she’s doing from time to time. She befriends Steven (unaware of how he’s involved with Pink), he’s being her first true friend and goes to him with a lot of her Paranormal theories which he also believes and enjoys.

Pearl- The Lone doctor in this Pink Insane Asylum. She is desperately trying to stay on task despite Pink’s antics, and seems to constantly be on the verge of snapping. But despite that she cares for Pink after a close heart to heart moment the two had before leaving HW. She knows that she is hurting and her attitude is her way of covering it up and hoping to seem bigger than she is. Upon coming to Earth, seeing Pink befriend Steven, and her conquering attempts despite failing have done Pink a lot of good mentally the Diamond being very happy. Thus Pearl plays along and hides their true doings from the Diamonds. Pearl in her human form became a scientist and works with Rose Quartz.

The Ruby Squad- The barest minimum of protection. This squad of Rubies was sent to protect Pink, though they are not the best at it. They follow her orders to a T (only one questioning it, but relents everytime). Though they are mostly left at home and just kinda do whatever until Pink arrives with orders. The Rubies take the form of small dogs whenever they go out with Pink and others.

Random Ideas:

Pink hates School Food, the tastes causes her physical pain. But she loves other Earth food, especially anything Steven cooks

The Gems are vulnerable to certain sound waves, the waves able to disrupt their forms and have different physical effects. Pink while on Earth has been introduced to a Dog Whistle, whenever it’s blown to Pink and other gems it starts feels like they are burning alive.

Pearl pretends to be Pink’s mother and they also created advanced robonoid to act as her father. It mostly opens the door and interacts with humans to keep them from entering the house. Though it can be a little glitchy from time to time.

Peridot mostly stays in the ship to create whatever tech is needed for Pink’s plans and has no interests interacting with humans and just wants to do her job. Though she will be forced to and thus has to take the form of a 12 year old child as well, saying she’s Pink sister (adopted).

Sapphire tries her best to send Pink down the right path even though she doesn’t always listen. Sapphire then spends her time looking down different paths in the future, intrigued by how many there are on this planet. One path that interests her deeply is the visage of a three eyed figure looking at her. She needs to know who or what that is. When going out she takes the form of a 7 year old saying she’s Pink’s sister (also adopted).

Amethyst is a human who likes to be called Amy. She’s Steven’s closest friend in school a year older than him and a whizz at video games and loves Pizza. Almost to an obsessive degree. With a ‘Go with the flow’ attitude she takes everything in stride even more insane space stuff starts going down. She figured out Pink is an alien, but doesn't tell anyone, cause she know Pink ain’t gonna take over anything. She defends Connie one time and befriends her as well, Connie drafting her into her war against Pink though she doesn’t really care, but will step in if things get dangerous for her showing surprisingly capable.

This world is a mesh of Zim and SU, leaning more to the SU side. It’s brighter and a little less cynical and insane. Though it does have its moments and that edge needed for anything Zim related.

Rose and Greg are divorced due to personal reasons, but it was pretty clean and they both love Steven very much. Despite having custody of Steven Greg knows that his son and Rose are close and allows lots of visits wanting Rose to still be apart of Steven’s life. Rose is the greatest scientist on Earth and is constantly busy, but will take any chance and any free time to be with Steven. She can be very eccentric, right on the edge of crazy when talking about science. But has a more calm, emotional, and loving side which she shows to Steven and Greg. She’s terrible at giving advice though usually recounting Steven with stories of her younger more ‘Rebellious’ days as a child, they usually come off as ramblings but Steven after hearing so many can discern the moral of the story.

Possible Episodes:

(This idea is from @bbb35) Pink Diamond believes that boy bands are hypnotic messages by earth government to control the humans, and wants to create a hit song that will be capable of culling the masses.

Pink tries to prepare her Father-Noid for a parent teacher night, thinking she would need both a Mother and Father to appear as normal as possible. But the Father-Noid starts to malfunction.

A field trip to Crystal Labs gives Pink the chance to steal an important piece of tech for her plans. But she has to get through Steven’s eccentric mother who is way into Steven’s new little friend.

When the class gets a bunny for a class pet, Pink thinks it’s cute but also sees a chance to make an adorable army to overrun the humans with. Injecting the Bunny with a special mutagen that causes it to multiply, but it may have gotten out of hand.

Pink attempts to blast Connie and all the other students she doesn’t like into space and towards an abandoned Gem Colony home to an unworldly terror. Can Connie save the day?

It’s Steven’s Birthday and both Pink and Connie are invited, the two determined to prove to the other they are Steven’s best friend and give him the best birthday ever.

(If you like this leave a comment, share your own ideas for expanding this, and maybe this could become a thing in the future. ^^

[en241]

Wednesday, 22 April

Extra Textra 

Here are your Questions & Comments on The Sweater.  But first, my assignment for Friday:

Please watch The Sweater again. This time, instead of watching for the maturation plot, consider the identity problem (the adult’s recognition that they were once someone different, as well as the child’s recognition that adults are different from who they are -- and that someday they too will be an adult). 

Also, try try try to look beyond the didactic reading to the subversive reading; beyond the lesson reading to the message reading. Flip the burger. What if the kid is actually the mature one? No really. The one with fresh batteries in his bullshit detector. (You’ll enjoy the story much more the second time! Have fun!)

Now, on to the comments:

I thought that by the end of the film, the kid would learn a moral lesson like what his mother told him but he didn't. It just ended with him in the church praying that his sweater got eaten by moths. It felt a bit like a letdown but I understand since kids are like that. He is very immature while the mother is the opposite. She is very mature. This makes sense, as adults are usually the mature ones. The kid acted like a typical child. He didn't care about morals he just wanted the right sweater. I think if the film extended beyond 10 minutes, we would see the child eventually mature and realize that what the mother said was correct. 

This was definitely cheerier!I can appreciate how well the introduction is able to portray the overall concept despite it not being in English.Like in Treasure Island there is this idea of a role model or someone to aspire too. Where Long John Silver and Billy Bones were not necessarily healthy role models for a young boy, this hockey player seems much more innocent.Not going to lie, the part where the priest comes in to play was a little weird and kind of did not fit with the narrative in my opinion.It reminds me of the discussion we had about "Where the Wild Things Are" and the idea of teaching lessons through narrative. While WTWTA does so in a less obvious way, "The Sweater" is obvious in its message. The idea of respect and consideration comes into play when the mother explains that if the boy would not wear the blue sweater that Mr. Eaton's feelings would be hurt. The boy is punished for if he does not wear the sweater just as much as if he does which is where this story kind of loses me. The church scene comes off as a kind of easy way out.A salvation story maybe, I don't know this one was a little odd for me.

I believe that was a very good illustrated video. I really enjoyed the story line as well. My first reaction to the video was this kid is just like everyone else. They love the game and love the player. Once the video continued it seemed he was ungrateful. The player everyone looks up to actually took the time to send him something. He did not want the sweater because he did not fit in with the rest of the kids. He did not value what he received because it was not what he wanted. The kid having a blue sweater also showed a form of discrimination. They did not let him play in the game because of the color of his sweater. They did not consider who gave it to him and how much that person meant to him. In relation to our maturation plot, I feel he never made it to that second house. He got lost in the woods and is still trying to find his way.

In watching this video, that character never matured. He still in the end refused to be happy with what he had. In a way, this is what happens in many children's books. Children are never happy with what they are given and just wish everything would work out for them. This is similar to "Where the Wild Things Are." Max just got his way in the end. He was not happy about what happened and what he was given, so he left. When he come back, he was the same as before and was even given his meal after all he had done. In the end, this character is not maturing. He is staying near the very low levels on the mature-meter. 

Moving onto the short story on youtube there's a lot of things happening with this boy, but I think this short story mostly relates to the secret garden because of the effect of negative thinking. I didn't come to this conclusion until he got the wrong sweater and spoke a lot of negativity into existence which brought him a lot of trouble the following time wearing the sweater like getting benched, getting a penalty, breaking his hockey stick then getting yelled at by his mom. His mom said “if you make up your mind before you try it you wont go very far in life,” and “its not what you put on your back its what you put in your head.” I’m stuck between feeling like she’s a wise lady and meant well by writing the letter and getting her son the sweater, and feeling like she noticed how unhappy he was and she could’ve written another letter so he could get the right one but if that happened then he would never learn. 

"The Sweater" is a story about a young boy who started out being a part of a group of boys all wearing the same red white and blue hockey sweater. The group mentality ruled and each individual couldn't see their identity beyond the group. When the boy received the new sweater and was forced to wear it, marked a changing point in his life. He had live with the embarrassment and disgrace of not being like the rest of the group. He had to mature so that he could break away from the group mentality and find his own individual identity.  The mother in the story the driving force because she refused to to return the sweater and made him wear it. You can't get angry and lose your temper. Growing up means taking what you have and learning from it. At the end this boy's efforts were symbolically rewarded by a handshake from the treasured hockey player. 

Well, the video left me at a cliff hanger. I feel as if the lesson wasn't executed very well and had a very abrupt ending . I am not entirely sure what exactly the lesson was,  there could've been a few such as teaching children the importance of not idolizing objects, a healthy balance between your thoughts and your friends. But I do also agree that this could teach adults a lesson, at the end of the video this big scary lady tells him to go to the church and pray for forgiveness and he prays for his shirt to be eaten up by bugs. Sometimes as adults we do a lot of finger-pointing and give a lot of chores and we don't really get that full instruction on how a child should go about it and why which creates a huge gap leading into a place for miscommunication. 

(that’s actually the town priest, wearing his surplice)

After watching the short film "The Sweater" I would like to address the concept of a maturation plot in relation to the short film's storyline. The film portrayed the boy as one who is ungrateful with the gift he received from his mother. This is definitely a realistic possibility for children who do not get what they want. As the story progresses he becomes so concerned with what others will think about him because he did not maintain the socially accepted appearance. This is also a reality for many in society. Just when I thought he would go to church and realize that he was being ungrateful, he instead prayed for the sweater to be taken from him. He failed in his own maturation. This is why I do not see the story having any sort of maturation plot.

The boy did continuously look up to an adult figure as his idol however he did not act as an adult but rather maintained his childish ways. He did not display any sort of personal growth throughout the story but considering his age (10), this is expected.

The plotline of the story set the viewer up to think that after the boy went to church to pray for his sins, but then twisted it and didn't actually resolve the problem at hand. I thought this was interesting because most of the children's literature we have covered resulted in growing, maturing and/or learning some type of lesson throughout the story. I also found it interesting that throughout all of the material we have covered, the children have looked up to and admired an adult figure of some sort and aspired to be like them (coming of age/growing into an adult) and this still reigns true for this story as well (a common theme throughout each reading).

I think the short film was good and the accent was a little hard to understand in the beginning. It seems to me like someone walking into a high school, wearing a rivals team jersey then being shunned. There is a lesson in it and I caught on. I wonder why children shun others, even if it is a rival. Everyone should still talk to you, because it is your preference on what you like. No one should discourage you from something you love.

In this story, the children all wanted to be someone else. Often times children want to be someone famous and well known. This is what the children do in this story. They are looking for a form of identity that all children look for. They never understand that they are all different and that even though they can all be the same person their is nothing wrong with being different. Children look for identity and when they find it, they cling to it. This is what the main character did. The adults in the story have a form of identity but they are not fully aware of it yet. Some laugh at the child for his reaction to the sweater. It shows that even when you become an adult, you still struggle with identity. The lesson in the story at first seems to be don't be different and that children often struggle in accepting that they will grow and change. The reader would learn the lesson of how people will always try to be like others and society often ridicules people for this, but also ridicules them for being different. 

[j4nn4s]

omg so i applied to a job with a writing sample from one of my skam essays and tbh i think its okay enough to post so if ur interested in lengthy 2000 word meta on one of my fave skam themes read below :~)

Right out of the gate, the series opens with a monologue about capitalism and economic politics. The very first line begins a discussion about "market liberalism" and "moving towards world trade." The fact that they chose to use such a political method to captivate their teen girl audience in its first initial seconds speaks to how much regard they have for their demographic. From the start, SKAM goes against common high school show tropes while never once underestimating those watching it. It is way too common of a mistake for shows with this demographic to make, further giving the genre a bad name. 

Continuing with this opening scene, a monologue is read as handmade videos depicting common adolescent antics is displayed. This illustrates the speech while also somewhat referencing the delinquency that’s often displayed in similar shows such as Skins. This speech leads smoothly into the show with it being a school assignment that Jonas, the boyfriend of the season’s protagonist (Eva), is reading out loud. The placement of this serves as an introduction to the series at large while also communicating the level of introspection the show is ready to engage with. 

This monologue introduces a pattern of reflection on aspects of life and our indirect and direct connections to the people around us that foreshadows the themes of the show. As we finish this first season and complete the following three, there are three central themes that are introduced: you never know what someone is going through so always be kind, always communicate with your friends, and no person is ever alone. In a series of three essays, I will be going into each of these with more depth, starting with the former. When I think about where I was in high school as I watch this show, these were the three key points I needed to hear the most. It is much too easy to focus on our particular frame of view and make assumptions on others’ behaviors, not realizing that there might be reasons for these actions that we will never understand. We cannot read minds and we do not know of all the events happening in someone’s life that leads them to make that decision. 

This major theme is first illustrated when a girl, Noora, notices Eva upset after an altercation with another girl. Noora does not know its context and why the other girl had called Eva a slut or why it affected her so much. But she understands that she is hurt by it, and that no matter the context for the comment, being called a slut can hurt. So, she approaches her and as a human, tries to lighten up her night with a lighthearted remark, which introduces herself to her. She noticed that the girl needed a friend and she offered that to her. Through this little action, making sure someone is okay when they’re hurt, there was a domino effect. Eva went to the toilets after and in there she noticed a girl crying, as she was hurt herself. Because of those small seconds of kindness Noora offered, Eva subconsciously passed that on and went to make sure that that person was okay and if she needed a friend. That person, Vilde, gave her a name and Eva went on a mission to find that girl. That girl, Chris, eventually found Vilde. Eva ended up bringing the wrong person, but through this, she became introduced to people she had not known before. Vilde and Chris eventually thanked Eva for that night and Noora and Eva kept up their correspondence. In addition to Sana, who was later introduced to everyone via Chris who saw her as very funny, the five all eventually became friends.

Every time I reflect on this first encounter between those first four characters that lead to them all being friends, it deeply touches me. Because in these vulnerable moments, they all needed friends. Eva did not have friends because of a falling out with her best friend. Noora did not have friends because she just moved to Oslo. And Vilde and Chris were thrown out of their friend group for various reasons and only had each other. And through practicing “radical empathy” (as Rebecca Patton from Reel Honey describes it) and being there for someone who needed it most, they were able to create something so beautiful and positive. 

One reason that made SKAM blow up in the first place, and why it is sincerely the greatest show of its genre, is because they get humanity right where it is least expected: a show about high school. We don’t expect to feel so connected to the characters and for our feelings to be heard and displayed on screen, staring right at us in the face. Our feelings are so complicated, always, but especially as teenagers when we are coming into our hormones and learning about ourselves. And SKAM does a brilliant job of capturing that. We see the main characters in such a vulnerable state at the very beginning of the series and we also see a sequence of events (including in the following episodes) that help them out of this vulnerable state. In its first episode, SKAM teaches its audience unconditional compassion towards strangers. It is beautiful.

Julie Andem expresses the theme of ‘not knowing what others are going through’ again later in season three, though with a more subtle example. In episode five, there is a scene where Isak, the season’s closeted protagonist, and Even, his love interest, discuss Isak's mom's mental health. Essentially, Isak made some not so pleasant remarks. Later on, Even got back together with Sonja, his girlfriend, causing Isak to be very hurt and upset. Andem uses this scene to communicate the idea that you often don't see why people do the things they do and only, instead, see their actions — which we all judge from our own point of reference (like, how we would personally have come to that action ourselves.) This leaves a gap in understanding that is filled with our own judgement that can affect how we respond to that said action. Because the viewer is so skewed in Isak's perspective, we are left just as confused and hurt as he is. All we see is Even's action without fully realizing or considering why. Knowing what we find out later in the season, it can be inferred that he was hurt by Isak's words about people with mental health issues, as he suffers from this himself. He simply went back to what felt comfortable to him — the rocky relationship he has with his girlfriend. However, it is challenging for the viewer to come to this conclusion on their own. This is because one, when the two had that conversation about Isak’s mom, Even didn't come across as upset in the moment. So to us, we are lead to believe that everything is fine, just as Isak does. And two, all we see is his action: him kissing and going back to his girlfriend. We share Isak's pain because we understand why he would feel that way, as we have been with him this entire time. Yet we don't initially feel the same way towards Even as we can only judge him by his words and actions and have already made judgements based on those. 

Andem takes on this complicated task of portraying this very human phenomenon in a quest to make the audience better understand the people they love. She understands that people will put themselves in the protagonist’s shoes when they watch this show and she wants us to learn as much as she wants her characters to learn. Later in the season, Isak discovers Even has bipolar disorder and he reacts a bit poorly at first, but it is because he is uneducated. The only thing he knows about this disorder is what Even’s (at this point) ex-girlfriend tells him, which is highly skewed because she uses her words to achieve a desired outcome: to get Isak to stay away from him. And it works. Until he becomes educated by his friend whose mother has the same mental illness herself, he realizes the disorder does not change how Even loves him. The audience might not have experience with people with bipolar disorder and so Andem takes this opportunity to teach us — as well as her character — how to better understand the people around us. How to better understand strangers. How to better understand friends who might have this, too. These kinds of stories is what I enjoy so much about Julie Andem’s writing; the reason why it is so brilliant. She genuinely tries to understand humans and teenagers through her writing and uses this platform to give her audience lessons that they can bring into their own lives. She displays our personal situations on screen and accompanies it with a solution, so we are able to take it with us into our own lives. [If anything, this is the entire goal of the series.]

In fact, she calls this phenomenon out by name in season two. Noora, that season’s protagonist, sees her boyfriend, William, engage in an act of violence, something that goes against her morals. She seeks Sana’s advice, revealing that she might reluctantly break up with him over it. She says that although she wants to be with him with every ounce of her being, she says she cannot if they disagree on those principles. Sana notices her reluctance and how much she likes him. In that moment, Sana delivers one of the most important quotes of the series itself: “If you haven’t even made an attempt to understand the one you love, then I’ll be pessimistic on behalf of the whole world.” For so much of the season, the idea Noora had of William was hindering the reality of how he actually treated her. On a surface level, the two might disagree about the topic of war and violence. But if you love someone that much, it is worth having those hard discussions. We should not give up on the people we love because of a disagreement on an issue. If we stop seeing the humanity in people, especially our loved ones, we are doomed as a society. This is a tough concept to tackle with adults, let alone teenagers. However, Julie Andem understands how necessary it is to portray it. She realizes that her demographic are the leaders of the future and that we must understand the toxicity of polarization on our relationships to loved ones. Andem uses a digestible scenario such as this one to accomplish one of the most essential moments of its season. As a side note, the rest of this conversation is worth watching as it has such rich writing and important points of discussion that everyone can benefit from, but I digress.

There are several more examples in the show that highlights this phenomenon and each time we are reminded of the dangers of this type of thinking. It is sometimes visualized through consequences (such as in the case of Isak, Even and Sonja) or explicitly said (such as in the scene with Noora and Sana.) But above all, Julie Andem proposes a suggestion to SKAM’s audience — a new mantra to adopt: "Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.”

In the next essay, we will discuss the show’s second theme, that I like to call: for the love of god, communicate with your friends.