#german is reading comprehension we don’t even have to answer in german + we can use the dictionary and have notes w us | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

blackswaneuroparedux · 4 years ago

Text

Anonymous asked: I enjoyed reading your posts about Napoleon’s death and it’s quite timely given its the 200th anniversary of his death this year in May. I was wondering, because you know a lot about military history (your served right? That’s cool to fly combat helicopters) and you live in France but aren’t French, what your take was on Napoleon and how do the French view him? Do they hail him as a hero or do they like others see him like a Hitler or a Stalin? Do you see him as a hero or a villain of history?

5 May 1821 was a memorable date because Napoleon, one of the most iconic figures in world history, died while in bitter exile on a remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean. Napoleon Bonaparte, as you know rose from obscure soldier to a kind of new Caesar, and yet he remains a uniquely controversial figure to this day especially in France. You raise interesting questions about Napoleon and his legacy. If I may reframe your questions in another way. Should we think of him as a flawed but essentially heroic visionary who changed Europe for the better? Or was he simply a military dictator, whose cult of personality and lust for power set a template for the likes of Hitler?

However one chooses to answer this question can we just - to get this out of the way - simply and definitively say that Napoleon was not Hitler. Not even close. No offence intended to you but this is just dumb ahistorical thinking and it’s a lazy lie. This comparison was made by some in the horrid aftermath of the Second World War but only held little currency for only a short time thereafter. Obviously that view didn’t exist before Hitler in the 19th Century and these days I don’t know any serious historian who takes that comparison seriously.

I confess I don’t have a definitive answer if he was a hero or a villain one way or the other because Napoleon has really left a very complicated legacy. It really depends on where you’re coming from.

As a staunch Brit I do take pride in Britain’s victorious war against Napoleonic France - and in a good natured way rubbing it in the noses of French friends at every opportunity I get because it’s in our cultural DNA and it’s bloody good fun (why else would we make Waterloo train station the London terminus of the Eurostar international rail service from its opening in 1994? Or why hang a huge gilded portrait of the Duke of Wellington as the first thing that greets any visitor to the residence of the British ambassador at the British Embassy?). On a personal level I take special pride in knowing my family ancestors did their bit on the battlefield to fight against Napoleon during those tumultuous times. However, as an ex-combat veteran who studied Napoleonic warfare with fan girl enthusiasm, I have huge respect for Napoleon as a brilliant military commander. And to makes things more weird, as a Francophile resident of who loves living and working in France (and my partner is French) I have a grudging but growing regard for Napoleon’s political and cultural legacy, especially when I consider the current dross of political mediocrity on both the political left and the right. So for me it’s a complicated issue how I feel about Napoleon, the man, the soldier, and the political leader.

If it’s not so straightforward for me to answer the for/against Napoleon question then it It’s especially true for the French, who even after 200 years, still have fiercely divided opinions about Napoleon and his legacy - but intriguingly, not always in clear cut ways.

I only have to think about my French neighbours in my apartment building to see how divisive Napoleon the man and his legacy is. Over the past year or so of the Covid lockdown we’ve all gotten to know each other better and we help each other. Over the Covid year we’ve gathered in the inner courtyard for a buffet and just lifted each other spirits up.

One of my neighbours, a crusty old ex-general in the army who has an enviable collection of military history books that I steal, liberate, borrow, often discuss military figures in history like Napoleon over our regular games of chess and a glass of wine. He is from very old aristocracy of the ancien regime and whose family suffered at the hands of ‘madame guillotine’ during the French Revolution. They lost everything. He has mixed emotions about Napoleon himself as an old fashioned monarchist. As a military man he naturally admires the man and the military genius but he despises the secularisation that the French Revolution ushered in as well as the rise of the haute bourgeois as middle managers and bureaucrats by the displacement of the aristocracy.

Another retired widowed neighbour I am close to, and with whom I cook with often and discuss art, is an active arts patron and ex-art gallery owner from a very wealthy family that came from the new Napoleonic aristocracy - ie the aristocracy of the Napoleonic era that Napoleon put in place - but she is dismissive of such titles and baubles. She’s a staunch Republican but is happy to concede she is grateful for Napoleon in bringing order out of chaos. She recognises her own ambivalence when she says she dislikes him for reintroducing slavery in the French colonies but also praises him for firmly supporting Paris’s famed Comédie-Française of which she was a past patron.

Another French neighbour, a senior civil servant in the Elysée, is quite dismissive of Napoleon as a war monger but is grudgingly grateful for civil institutions and schools that Napoleon established and which remain in place today.

My other neighbours - whether they be French families or foreign expats like myself - have similarly divisive and complicated attitudes towards Napoleon.

In 2010 an opinion poll in France asked who was the most important man in French history. Napoleon came second, behind General Charles de Gaulle, who led France from exile during the German occupation in World War II and served as a postwar president.

The split in French opinion is closely mirrored in political circles. The divide is generally down political party lines. On the left, there's the 'black legend' of Bonaparte as an ogre. On the right, there is the 'golden legend' of a strong leader who created durable institutions.

Jacques-Olivier Boudon, a history professor at Paris-Sorbonne University and president of the Napoléon Institute, once explained at a talk I attended that French public opinion has always remained deeply divided over Napoleon, with, on the one hand, those who admire the great man, the conqueror, the military leader and, on the other, those who see him as a bloodthirsty tyrant, the gravedigger of the revolution. Politicians in France, Boudon observed, rarely refer to Napoleon for fear of being accused of authoritarian temptations, or not being good Republicans.

On the left-wing of French politics, former prime minister Lionel Jospin penned a controversial best selling book entitled “the Napoleonic Evil” in which he accused the emperor of “perverting the ideas of the Revolution” and imposing “a form of extreme domination”, “despotism” and “a police state” on the French people. He wrote Napoleon was "an obvious failure" - bad for France and the rest of Europe. When he was booted out into final exile, France was isolated, beaten, occupied, dominated, hated and smaller than before. What's more, Napoleon smothered the forces of emancipation awakened by the French and American revolutions and enabled the survival and restoration of monarchies. Some of the legacies with which Napoleon is credited, including the Civil Code, the comprehensive legal system replacing a hodgepodge of feudal laws, were proposed during the revolution, Jospin argued, though he acknowledges that Napoleon actually delivered them, but up to a point, "He guaranteed some principles of the revolution and, at the same time, changed its course, finished it and betrayed it," For instance, Napoleon reintroduced slavery in French colonies, revived a system that allowed the rich to dodge conscription in the military and did nothing to advance gender equality.

At the other end of the spectrum have been former right-wing prime minister Dominique de Villepin, an aristocrat who was once fancied as a future President, a passionate collector of Napoleonic memorabilia, and author of several works on the subject. As a Napoleonic enthusiast he tells a different story. Napoleon was a saviour of France. If there had been no Napoleon, the Republic would not have survived. Advocates like de Villepin point to Napoleon’s undoubted achievements: the Civil Code, the Council of State, the Bank of France, the National Audit office, a centralised and coherent administrative system, lycées, universities, centres of advanced learning known as école normale, chambers of commerce, the metric system, and an honours system based on merit (which France has to this day). He restored the Catholic faith as the state faith but allowed for the freedom of religion for other faiths including Protestantism and Judaism. These were ambitions unachieved during the chaos of the revolution. As it is, these Napoleonic institutions continue to function and underpin French society. Indeed, many were copied in countries conquered by Napoleon, such as Italy, Germany and Poland, and laid the foundations for the modern state.

Back in 2014, French politicians and institutions in particular were nervous in marking the 200th anniversary of Napoleon's exile. My neighbours and other French friends remember that the commemorations centred around the Chateau de Fontainebleau, the traditional home of the kings of France and was the scene where Napoleon said farewell to the Old Guard in the "White Horse Courtyard" (la cour du Cheval Blanc) at the Palace of Fontainebleau. (The courtyard has since been renamed the "Courtyard of Goodbyes".) By all accounts the occasion was very moving. The 1814 Treaty of Fontainebleau stripped Napoleon of his powers (but not his title as Emperor of the French) and sent him into exile on Elba. The cost of the Fontainebleau "farewell" and scores of related events over those three weekends was shouldered not by the central government in Paris but by the local château, a historic monument and UNESCO World Heritage site, and the town of Fontainebleau.

While the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution that toppled the monarchy and delivered thousands to death by guillotine was officially celebrated in 1989, Napoleonic anniversaries are neither officially marked nor celebrated. For example, over a decade ago, the president and prime minister - at the time, Jacques Chirac and Dominque de Villepin - boycotted a ceremony marking the 200th anniversary of the battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon's greatest military victory. Both men were known admirers of Napoleon and yet political calculation and optics (as media spin doctors say) stopped them from fully honouring Napoleon’s crowning military glory.

Optics is everything. The division of opinion in France is perhaps best reflected in the fact that, in a city not shy of naming squares and streets after historical figures, there is not a single “Boulevard Napoleon” or “Place Napoleon” in Paris. On the streets of Paris, there are just two statues of Napoleon. One stands beneath the clock tower at Les Invalides (a military hospital), the other atop a column in the Place Vendôme. Napoleon's red marble tomb, in a crypt under the Invalides dome, is magnificent, perhaps because his remains were interred there during France's Second Empire, when his nephew, Napoleon III, was on the throne.

There are no squares, nor places, nor boulevards named for Napoleon but as far as I know there is one narrow street, the rue Bonaparte, running from the Luxembourg Gardens to the River Seine in the old Latin Quarter. And, that, too, is thanks to Napoleon III. For many, and I include myself, it’s a poor return by the city to the man who commissioned some of its most famous monuments, including the Arc de Triomphe and the Pont des Arts over the River Seine.

It's almost as if Napoleon Bonaparte is not part of the national story.

How Napoleon fits into that national story is something historians, French and non-French, have been grappling with ever since Napoleon died. The plain fact is Napoleon divides historians, what precisely he represents is deeply ambiguous and his political character is the subject of heated controversy. It’s hard for historians to sift through archival documents to make informed judgements and still struggle to separate the man from the myth.

One proof of this myth is in his immortality. After Hitler’s death, there was mostly an embarrassed silence; after Stalin’s, little but denunciation. But when Napoleon died on St Helena in 1821, much of Europe and the Americas could not help thinking of itself as a post-Napoleonic generation. His presence haunts the pages of Stendhal and Alfred de Vigny. In a striking and prescient phrase, Chateaubriand prophesied the “despotism of his memory”, a despotism of the fantastical that in many ways made Romanticism possible and that continues to this day.

The raw material for the future Napoleon myth was provided by one of his St Helena confidants, the Comte de las Cases, whose account of conversations with the great man came out shortly after his death and ran in repeated editions throughout the century. De las Cases somehow metamorphosed the erstwhile dictator into a herald of liberty, the emperor into a slayer of dynasties rather than the founder of his own. To the “great man” school of history Napoleon was grist to their mill, and his meteoric rise redefined the meaning of heroism in the modern world.

The Marxists, for all their dislike of great men, grappled endlessly with the meaning of the 18th Brumaire; indeed one of France’s most eminent Marxist historians, George Lefebvre, wrote what arguably remains the finest of all biographies of him.

It was on this already vast Napoleon literature, a rich terrain for the scholar of ideas, that the great Dutch historian Pieter Geyl was lecturing in 1940 when he was arrested and sent to Buchenwald. There he composed what became one of the classics of historiography, a seminal book entitled Napoleon: For and Against, which charted how generations of intellectuals had happily served up one Napoleon after another. Like those poor souls who crowded the lunatic asylums of mid-19th century France convinced that they were Napoleon, generations of historians and novelists simply could not get him out of their head.

The debate runs on today no less intensely than in the past. Post-Second World War Marxists would argue that he was not, in fact, revolutionary at all. Eric Hobsbawm, a notable British Marxist historian, argued that ‘Most-perhaps all- of his ideas were anticipated by the Revolution’ and that Napoleon’s sole legacy was to twist the ideals of the French Revolution, and make them ‘more conservative, hierarchical and authoritarian’.

This contrasts deeply with the view William Doyle holds of Napoleon. Doyle described Bonaparte as ‘the Revolution incarnate’ and saw Bonaparte’s humbling of Europe’s other powers, the ‘Ancien Regimes’, as a necessary precondition for the birth of the modern world. Whatever one thinks of Napoleon’s character, his sharp intellect is difficult to deny. Even Paul Schroeder, one of Napoleon’s most scathing critics, who condemned his conduct of foreign policy as a ‘criminal enterprise’ never denied Napoleon’s intellect. Schroder concluded that Bonaparte ‘had an extraordinary capacity for planning, decision making, memory, work, mastery of detail and leadership’. The question of whether Napoleon used his genius for the betterment or the detriment of the world, is the heart of the debate which surrounds him.

France's foremost Napoleonic scholar, Jean Tulard, put forward the thesis that Bonaparte was the architect of modern France. "And I would say also pâtissier [a cake and pastry maker] because of the administrative millefeuille that we inherited." Oddly enough, in North America the multilayered mille-feuille cake is called ‘a napoleon.’ Tulard’s works are essential reading of how French historians have come to tackle the question of Napoleon’s legacy. He takes the view that if Napoleon had not crushed a Royalist rebellion and seized power in 1799, the French monarchy and feudalism would have returned, Tulard has written. "Like Cincinnatus in ancient Rome, Napoleon wanted a dictatorship of public salvation. He gets all the power, and, when the project is finished, he returns to his plough." In the event, the old order was never restored in France. When Louis XVIII became emperor in 1814, he served as a constitutional monarch.

In England, until recently the views on Napoleon have traditionally less charitable and more cynical. Professor Christopher Clark, the notable Cambridge University European historian, has written. "Napoleon was not a French patriot - he was first a Corsican and later an imperial figure, a journey in which he bypassed any deep affiliation with the French nation," Clark believed Napoleon’s relationship with the French Revolution is deeply ambivalent.

Did he stabilise the revolutionary state or shut it down mercilessly? Clark believes Napoleon seems to have done both. Napoleon rejected democracy, he suffocated the representative dimension of politics, and he created a culture of courtly display. A month before crowning himself emperor, Napoleon sought approval for establishing an empire from the French in a plebiscite; 3,572,329 voted in favour, 2,567 against. If that landslide resembles an election in North Korea, well, this was no secret ballot. Each ‘yes’ or ‘no’ was recorded, along with the name and address of the voter. Evidently, an overwhelming majority knew which side their baguette was buttered on.

His extravagant coronation in Notre Dame in December 1804 cost 8.5 million francs (€6.5 million or $8.5 million in today's money). He made his brothers, sisters and stepchildren kings, queens, princes and princesses and created a Napoleonic aristocracy numbering 3,500. By any measure, it was a bizarre progression for someone often described as ‘a child of the Revolution.’ By crowning himself emperor, the genuine European kings who surrounded him were not convinced. Always a warrior first, he tried to represent himself as a Caesar, and he wears a Roman toga on the bas-reliefs in his tomb. His coronation crown, a laurel wreath made of gold, sent the same message. His icon, the eagle, was also borrowed from Rome. But Caesar's legitimacy depended on military victories. Ultimately, Napoleon suffered too many defeats.

These days Napoleon the man and his times remain very much in fashion and we are living through something of a new golden age of Napoleonic literature. Those historians who over the past decade or so have had fun denouncing him as the first totalitarian dictator seem to have it all wrong: no angel, to be sure, he ended up doing far more at far less cost than any modern despot. In his widely praised 2014 biography, Napoleon the Great, Andrew Roberts writes: “The ideas that underpin our modern world - meritocracy, equality before the law, property rights, religious toleration, modern secular education, sound finances, and so on - were championed, consolidated, codified and geographically extended by Napoleon. To them he added a rational and efficient local administration, an end to rural banditry, the encouragement of science and the arts, the abolition of feudalism and the greatest codification of laws since the fall of the Roman empire.”

Roberts partly bases his historical judgement on newly released historical documents about Napoleon that were only available in the past decade and has proved to be a boon for all Napoleonic scholars. Newly released 33,000 letters Napoleon wrote that still survive are now used extensively to illustrate the astonishing capacity that Napoleon had for compartmentalising his mind - he laid down the rules for a girls’ boarding school on the eve of the battle of Borodino, for example, and the regulations for Paris’s Comédie-Française while camped in the Kremlin. They also show Napoleon’s extraordinary capacity for micromanaging his empire: he would write to the prefect of Genoa telling him not to allow his mistress into his box at the theatre, and to a corporal of the 13th Line regiment warning him not to drink so much.

For me to have my own perspective on Napoleon is tough. The problem is that nothing with Napoleon is simple, and almost every aspect of his personality is a maddening paradox. He was a military genius who led disastrous campaigns. He was a liberal progressive who reinstated slavery in the French colonies. And take the French Revolution, which came just before Napoleon’s rise to power, his relationship with the French Revolution is deeply ambivalent. Did he stabilise it or shut it down? I agree with those British and French historians who now believe Napoleon seems to have done both.

On the one hand, Napoleon did bring order to a nation that had been drenched in blood in the years after the Revolution. The French people had endured the crackdown known as the 'Reign of Terror', which saw so many marched to the guillotine, as well as political instability, corruption, riots and general violence. Napoleon’s iron will managed to calm the chaos. But he also rubbished some of the core principles of the Revolution. A nation which had boldly brought down the monarchy had to watch as Napoleon crowned himself Emperor, with more power and pageantry than Louis XVI ever had. He also installed his relatives as royals across Europe, creating a new aristocracy. In the words of French politician and author Lionel Jospin, 'He guaranteed some principles of the Revolution and at the same time, changed its course, finished it and betrayed it.'

He also had a feared henchman in the form of Joseph Fouché, who ran a secret police network which instilled dread in the population. Napoleon’s spies were everywhere, stifling political opposition. Dozens of newspapers were suppressed or shut down. Books had to be submitted for approval to the Commission of Revision, which sounds like something straight out of George Orwell. Some would argue Hitler and Stalin followed this playbook perfectly. But here come the contradictions. Napoleon also championed education for all, founding a network of schools. He championed the rights of the Jews. In the territories conquered by Napoleon, laws which kept Jews cooped up in ghettos were abolished. 'I will never accept any proposals that will obligate the Jewish people to leave France,' he once said, 'because to me the Jews are the same as any other citizen in our country.'

He also, crucially, developed the Napoleonic Code, a set of laws which replaced the messy, outdated feudal laws that had been used before. The Napoleonic Code clearly laid out civil laws and due processes, establishing a society based on merit and hard work, rather than privilege. It was rolled out far beyond France, and indisputably helped to modernise Europe. While it certainly had its flaws – women were ignored by its reforms, and were essentially regarded as the property of men – the Napoleonic Code is often brandished as the key evidence for Napoleon’s progressive credentials. In the words of historian Andrew Roberts, author of Napoleon the Great, 'the ideas that underpin our modern world… were championed by Napoleon'.

What about Napoleon’s battlefield exploits? If anything earns comparisons with Hitler, it’s Bonaparte’s apparent appetite for conquest. His forces tore down republics across Europe, and plundered works of art, much like the Nazis would later do. A rampant imperialist, Napoleon gleefully grabbed some of the greatest masterpieces of the Renaissance, and allegedly boasted, 'the whole of Rome is in Paris.'

Napoleon has long enjoyed a stellar reputation as a field commander – his capacities as a military strategist, his ability to read a battle, the painstaking detail with which he made sure that he cold muster a larger force than his adversary or took maximum advantage of the lie of the land – these are stuff of the military legend that has built up around him. It is not without its critics, of course, especially among those who have worked intensively on the later imperial campaigns, in the Peninsula, in Russia, or in the final days of the Empire at Waterloo.

Doubts about his judgment, and allegations of rashness, have been raised in the context of some of his victories, too, most notably, perhaps, at Marengo. But overall his reputation remains largely intact, and his military campaigns have been taught in the curricula of military academies from Saint-Cyr to Sandhurst, alongside such great tacticians as Alexander the Great and Hannibal.

Historians may query his own immodest opinion that his presence on the battlefield was worth an extra forty thousand men to his cause, but it is clear that when he was not present (as he was not for most of the campaign in Spain) the French were wont to struggle. Napoleon understood the value of speed and surprise, but also of structures and loyalties. He reformed the army by introducing the corps system, and he understood military aspirations, rewarding his men with medals and honours; all of which helped ensure that he commanded exceptional levels of personal loyalty from his troops.

Yet, I do find it hard to side with the more staunch defenders of Napoleon who say his reputation as a war monger is to some extent due to British propaganda at the time. They will point out that the Napoleonic Wars, far from being Napoleon’s fault, were just a continuation of previous conflicts that arose thanks to the French Revolution. Napoleon, according to this analysis, inherited a messy situation, and his only real crime was to be very good at defeating enemies on the battlefield. I think that is really pushing things too far. I mean deciding to invade Spain and then Russia were his decisions to invade and conquer.

He was, by any measure, a genius of war. Even his nemesis the Duke of Wellington, when asked who the greatest general of his time was, replied: 'In this age, in past ages, in any age, Napoleon.'

I will qualify all this and agree that Napoleon’s Russian campaign has been rightly held up as a fatal folly which killed so many of his men, but this blunder – epic as it was – should not be compared to Hitler’s wars of evil aggression. Most historians will agree that comparing the two men is horribly flattering to Hitler - a man fuelled by visceral, genocidal hate - and demeaning to Napoleon, who was a product of Enlightenment thinking and left a legacy that in many ways improved Europe.

Napoleon was, of course, no libertarian, and no pluralist. He would tolerate no opposition to his rule, and though it was politicians and civilians who imposed his reforms, the army was never far behind. But comparisons with twentieth-century dictators are well wide of the mark. While he insisted on obedience from those he administered, his ideology was based not on division or hatred, but on administrative efficiency and submission to the law. And the state he believed in remained stubbornly secular.

In Catholic southern Europe, of course, that was not an approach with which it was easy to acquiesce; and disorder, insurgency and partisan attacks can all be counted among the results. But these were principles on which the Emperor would not and could not give ground. If he had beliefs they were not religious or spiritual beliefs, but the secular creed of a man who never forgot that he owed both his military career and his meteoric political rise to the French Revolution, and who never quite abandoned, amidst the monarchical symbolism and the court pomp of the Empire, the republican dreams of his youth. When he claimed, somewhat ambiguously, after the coup of 18 Brumaire that `the Revolution was over’, he almost certainly meant that the principles of 1789 had at last been consummated, and that the continuous cycle of violence of the 1790s could therefore come to an end.

When the Empire was declared in 1804, the wording, again, might seem curious, the French being informed that the `Republic would henceforth be ruled by an Emperor’. Napoleon might be a dictator, but a part at least of him remained a son of the Enlightenment.

The arguments over Napoleon’s status will continue - and that in itself is a testament to the power of one of the most complex figures ever to straddle the world’s stage.

Will the fascination with Napoleon continue for another 200 years?

In France, at least, enthusiasm looks set to diminish. Napoleon and his exploits are scarcely mentioned in French schools anymore. Stéphane Guégan, curator of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, which, among other First Empire artworks, houses a plaster model of Napoleon dressed as a Roman emperor astride a horse, has described France's fascination with him as ‘a national illness.’ He believes that the people who met him were fascinated by his charm. And today, even the most hostile to Napoleon also face this charm. So there is a difficulty to apprehend the duality of this character. As he wrote, “He was born from the revolution, he extended and finished it, and after 1804 he turns into a despot, a dictator.”

In France, Guégan aptly observes, there is a kind of nostalgia, not for dictatorship but for strong leaders. "Our age is suffering a lack of imagination and political utopia,"

Here I think Guégan is onto something. Napoleon’s stock has always risen or fallen according to the vicissitudes of world events and fortunes of France itself.

In the past, history was the study of great men and women. Today the focus of teaching is on trends, issues and movements. France in 1800 is no longer about Louis XVI and Napoleon Bonaparte. It's about the industrial revolution. Man does not make history. History makes men. Or does it? The study of history makes a mug out of those with such simple ideological driven conceits.

For two hundred years on, the French still cannot agree on whether Napoleon was a hero or a villain as he has swung like a pendulum according to the gravitational pull of historical events and forces.

The question I keep asking of myself and also to French friends with whom I discuss such things is what kind of Napoleon does our generation need?

Thanks for your question.

#question #ask #napoleon #french #french history #history #military history #bonaparte #france #historiography #republic #historians #personal

417 notes · View notes

rumblelibrary · 3 years ago

Text

The Diary of Doctor Laszlo Kreizler

Chapter 1

Synopsis: Alienist’s notes are private, sometimes gruesome, secrets of others and of himself.Those pages belongs to secrecy and decadence, have a glimpse to this world made of drafts, notes, accidents and reflections. Or maybe it is you the only person that should ever reach for it.

While you read this imagine Laszlo mostly at the end of his day, scraping the ideas and the thoughts, adjusting previous notes with additions, closing the day behind himself with a couple of sentences while sitting in his evening robe, a good glass of whiskey and his glasses bridged almost at the tip of his nose. Or maybe imagine yourself, you sneaky thing, reach for it from a far shelf.

Word count: 3k

Warnings: listen, this is the set of ideas and confessions of a man living in the 1890’s. Most of them will be outdated, rough, even deprecating in some analysis of the roles of men, women and social status, religion, etc.So be prepared, my point is to make Laszlo reflect upon those topics, but to be as faithful as I can to his time. Mention of death, mutilation, self harm and a minor depiction of a fight. Psychologically troubled young children ahead! Author’s note: I am a nerd for a good Victorian novel and a sexy Alienist.I have always been charmed by Laszlo’s mind and inner conflicts. So I took the chance and tried to have a run into that rollercoaster. The story is placed between season 1 and season 2.

Diary belonging to Dr. Laszlo Kreizler. This is a professional book of annotations over medical treatments of an alienist toward his patients. Do not disclose and send it back to the address if found: Kreizler’s Institute, xxxxxx, New York City (NY) L.K.

Samuel Griswold Goodrich, Illustrated Natural History of the Animal Kingdom (c1859). Contributed for digitization by University Library, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Schiller in his “Die Weltweisen” wrote: So long as philosophy keeps together the structure of the Universe so long does it maintain the world’s machinery by hunger and love. From the philosopher point of view sexual life takes a subordinate position in human’s life, from recent studies pushed by European philosophers, everything is about sexuality and its development. I like to think of the experience of being an alienist as the process of Queen Penelope that, while waiting for her husband Ulysses return, undoes her craftwork every night. I undo the fabulous constructs of people’s beliefs to go back to the rough sketch that stands at the beginning of their loss, their complex, their pain. Maybe that’s why working with children is so motivating and fascinating. They can be saved and yet, I am well aware, some of those sketches already traced in their young lives equal to scars that not even the most advanced theories could cure. But I can sooth them. I can prevent them the torment, the anguish, the recollection at night of those monsters. I feel like a poet would be a better alienist than a philosopher, but I have got no poetry nor philosophy in my veins, but the cold experience of the razor blade judgment of Life itself.

Today I observed a fight among the children at the Institute. Age range between 10 and 12. Boys. The fight was over the possession of a side of the playground, the territory of a pack of youngsters formed under the name of Steven. Peculiar lad, coming from a military background finds comfort in replicating the schemes he lived in his family. He takes the role of the Father/Captain of the team and subjects children that come from a similar background story, but do not posses his same attitude to the command. All quiet on the front, until the space he declared is own spot got affected by the presence of others. Intruders. I knowingly let the events unfold to see how Steven would react to his challenged authority. His reaction was, at first, worded, a sketch, a stage-play of an action he witnessed over and over, and he knew the part so well that some of the contending kids lowered their stance against him. Among considering to mildly intervene into this pyramid scheme of authority, another boy, Jan, calls himself on the role of the educator and hero of the masses and proceeds to unfold a wild and well assessed punch on the newly declared dictator face. Balance is established again. No need for me to arbitrate, once more the laws of nature seem to apply to children as in a state of nature.

Meet John Moore over lunch. His job at the newspaper is picking up, he is charmed by the spirits and the wits that he finds in his shared office with all the other writers. He mentions many, goes on and on over qualities and troubles, gossips and tendencies, and even little scandals here and there. To be aware of all those details gives me no interest, but to see a dear friend so invested clearly gives me something to pick up. To consider also the amount of details and the way he describes this or that member of the journal, I can do a small exercise of analysis. It is almost too easy because John is painfully genuine, even some of the kids at the institute would beat him hands down in a battle of lies. The more he likes somebody, the more he goes on about all the details and the characteristics, often letting aside the physical appearance. When he doesn’t like somebody he has a couple of adjectives for the wits and around four or five for the physical aspects that usually indulge on some repulsive idiosyncrasies. John is a man that painfully fits in the storyline of The Picture of Dorian Gray: to him physical beauty is spiritual beauty and, of course, the other way around. This part of him surely intrigues me, makes me want to tease more from him. But, as a friend, it concerns me as John is way too prone to purposelessly decide that somebody with good eyes is also a good human being, which is a very romantic and admirably naive way of judging matters. I noticed some names that keep repeating in his narration. I dread that it is synonymous of a soon encounter from my side with the objects of his admiration. Fetiches, I dare to say, that I will have to annihilate before they sediment into his mind, perpetuating a narration that soon sees John being mislead by others.

Reserved: Tickets for the Eroica, Symphony n. 3 by Ludwig van Beethoven. Thursday evening.

Note on the show: the first movement lacked the pathos needed to begin with, I am not sure that the guest orchestra really managed to portray the wider emotional ground needed to withstand the whole representation. As the evening progressed there were some outstanding performances by the cellists. Still not approving the choice of reprising the early quick finale movement against the lengthy set of variations and fugue that we are used to in presence of the Eroica. Underwhelming the performance of the horn and oboe, vital in the comprehension of the genius of Beethoven.

Niki is a new addition of the Institute, quite old for the standards. He is already 16, he will leave when summer ends to some expensive college his family meant him to stay. His parents expect me to make him “normal” in the time we are allowed together. He is Austrian and I let him act it out like I don’t understand German for the first week of hist stay until today. I believe I hit his pride, which is good, in the moment I answered back to one of his sneaky comments. Now he knows. He is not safe from me, he doesn’t like it. The young man has a tendency to danger, risky tasks and edgy situations. In his mother’s own words “Niki is not afraid of anything”. The phrase didn’t raise any excitement in the father, rather some sort of painful acceptance that is role as the alpha male of the house is probably not only being challenged, but already diminished, if not abolished. I have taken in consideration that Niki will break himself a bone or two in the process of the therapy, probably out of the spite of boredom or rebellion. It took him less than few days to turn himself into an outcast among the outcasts, which only drives me closer to analyse the complexity of his narcissistic wall of self defence. I gave him a physical challenge to lift a certain weight, he is a pretty skinny one, he didn’t like the challenge, but I am sure he will take it. He is a brainy guy, he hates to be questioned on unfamiliar ground. He won’t sleep at night thinking about it. A challenge, in this first phase, can only bring me closer to the ease of his pains. To continue the observation.

It is a sad privilege of medicine, in particular the one I practice, to be able to witness the weaknesses of the human nature and the reverse side of life. Nevertheless, I oblige this same privilege of the study as life moves into shades of darkness. To be aware of it gives more solace to my soul than to be victim of patiently waiting for the inevitable unfolding of the events. To be able to understand more about psychology would bring more comfort and elevation to any human being, the times might not be there yet, but eventually something will move into the direction of a more wholesome approach.

Dinner meeting with Sara Howard, at the restaurant Jardin Des Cygnes, 7 pm sharp. Do not expect to reach the dessert. Do not know if John will be participating due to undeniable tension among the two and the fatal despise of John over French cuisine.

The case that Sara unfolded tonight to my ears feels more and more like pulled out from some gothic book or from the mind of a Roman historian that needed to justify the godly origins of an Emperor. One killing, apparently random, a very constructed iconography over the body. Signs and insults, shapes and drawings. Is this a work of art? Does the killer wants his victim to be his Mona Lisa? His David? I am charmed and destabilised. If this was a murder like any other, then why to spend so much time into it? Based on the description the act of killing itself was quick: a sharp cut over the throat, almost like not wanting to ruin too much the surface to use as base for, what? I keep rerunning those symbols over and over as Sara described them to me, my mind is flooded with the designs of greek philosophers that needed to explain themselves why the sky is above our head and never collapses on us. Hilarious how, no matter the science advancement, in the mind of many the sky stands inevitably overt their shoulders, suffocates them, brings them to a death of the soul and not of the body. Is all this graphic charade indeed only a form to scream for attention? To stress the eyes of an unaware viewer? It seems ridiculously elaborate, a scream for attention would be quick, it would be like guided by instinct, not reasoning, craftwork. Any man with a knife can paint in blood red the walls of a room and that’s asking for attention. That is the primal howl: look at me! I am here! But this one. I don’t know yet.

Spent the early morning reading anew my copy of The Metamorphosis by Ovid. Didn’t touch it in a long time and I got bedazzled by the world of terrible sensuality, anger and selfishness of those gods and mortals. I think back at all the deviances and weaknesses of human kind and I try to relate it to all of those humanoid figures. Niki would be a minotaur, the lonesome son left in the labyrinth and his strive for success is his bull’s head. Or maybe a centaur, because of his wits and strategic thinking. I might keep up the process, maybe this is the way to understand my patients better, to understand the killer better. Must remember not to romanticise it. Greek gods were probably the first form of self indulging of a society that needed gods to be forgiving and allowing favours and punishments, but only in exchange of sacrifices. But the sacrifice never comes from the God’s will, but from the will of the man that perpetuates the act of killing. To sacrifice someone or something is the sadistic response to a lack of love deeply inherited in human mind that becomes neurotic. Is the killer giving the God of his own neurosis a body to feast upon?

I talked with Jan this morning. The young boy is about 10, but he acts like a full grown adult. I could easily asses that’s the reason why he could challenge Steven in that fight. Two children mimicking adults situations they know too well. Jan is son of an industrial man, but he is also son of the dialectics of the industrial revolution. He sounds like he swallowed some of those books about working class rights and communism, probably pushed by a resentful surrounding (mother?uncle? the midwife?) over the social role of his father. As much as incredibly smart and lectured, Jan lost most of his early occasions in life by spending a considerable amount of time using his fists. The anger ever present in the young boy always surprises me, he seems to be holding a power, a strength of a full grown man in those tiny arms. Nevertheless, he is already the tallest of the group. He is surely an idealist, which makes him also tragically fragile. His strength mixed with his heart of gold can make him the best of the heroes or the worst of the villains. He apologised for the fight, he specified how he didn’t like the sound of Steven’s voice, more than the sound, the level of pitch. I can’t stand somebody shouting orders, I just don’t listen anymore. He is so mature even about his own feelings, almost a gentleman in his chivalry toward the weaker children, honest with his open heart and resentful against any form of injustice. I am not spared by his ways, he would come at me whenever he feels like I was being partial over some of the kids, his sense of justice blinds him and transform a perfectly balanced boy into a ranging animal.

Ordered book, to be delivered around tomorrow evening: Introduction à la méthode de Léonard de Vinci by Paul Valéry. Suddenly feeling myself as a gross ignorant in art themes. I always regarded myself aware of the artistic personalities and tendencies of present and past, but this new amount of perceptions over the human figure and the human body leads me to document myself more. I could ask John for advice, but he wouldn’t take things at matter that seriously. I can almost hear him say how I can make gruesome a pleasant topic such as art. I should probably wait to see the body to push any further aesthetic study, but I find myself not being able to stop. I reckon, I can allow myself a vice or two.

Today I saw the body of the killed man, courtesy of the Isaacson's. To be fair, I had underestimated it. In Sara’s descriptions, probably due to her more analytic mind, all the charm of the representation got lost in favour of a less cryptic and reasonable understanding of the act. Sara got what some alienists will call a masculine mind, which I don’t perfectly agree on. If I apply that same approach John would be a very feminine mind, all wrapped up in romanticising even the ugliest. I guess that dividing the world in “fragile and gentle” and “strong and powerful” is just easier to explain the fluctuation of something that doesn’t need a real name or a category like human inclinations on thoughts. I got a feverish sense of patience by looking at the body. Each symbol traced with sapient slowness, dense of the time that the killer spent with the body. That is a work of hours, he had time and meaning. He had resources and was able to spend not less than the time he needed to reach, a vision? An ideal? A message? Is it the message meant to be understood? Am I supposed to unravel it or it is maybe just the way the killer communicates within himself? And if I do decifrate the code, will that bring me closer to him? Or to his next victim?

Reminder: ask John to replicate all the symbols on the bodies in the correct measure and order. It might be needed some hard convincing. Addition: scheduled meeting, his house, 3 pm.

It wasn’t a day like any other when I met you. Or maybe it was, and that’s why I got so struck by it and now I am here playing it over and over through what my memory clung on so desperately. In my own experience, life was often similar to swimming in a lake. Those rich, dense lakes in the north of (illegible cancelled word) were my father used to bring us during summer. I still feel the pull, the draw down toward the abyss. It ashamed me, in a way, the fear that such a simple feeling aroused in my young mind, unaware nevertheless, that such a feeling would follow me through all my existence. It was a prophecy and, like most of the prophecies, was a riddle. I cradle in my heart the charm of those days, the mindless happiness. The foolish feeling of freedom. Little I knew that freedom would be taken away from me that soon, that the body that used to navigate me over the dense waters, helping me to fight the haul toward the unknown, would become my own cage. That day. Today. The day where I met you, the day I was afloat. The child gasping for air felt the wrench become a gentle push and now he is floating on his back over the scary waters of reality and malice. It gave me relief and it gave me terror, because since that very moment I knew that I would never be able to move on from the sight of you. From the feeling of your eyes lingering on me. From the smile you so easily shone upon me. From the whiff of imported perfume that hit me when you turned on side exploding that swan like neck. And nothing, not even my stern look, could dim that wave of hope that your sole presence washed over me. The abyss roars, calls me to a home of damnation and terror and curses my name and yet you repeated that hell-bound name of mine after me and I felt safe.

John told me so much about you, it feels like I have always known you.

The rope is gone from my neck, the guillotine won’t fall on me, I am spared, I am free.

I have read your latest article, I am thrilled to help with the case.

I am in disbelief.

Your voice.

Dr. Kreizler

How dare you? How dare you to come into my life, to appear, like a vision, mystical, in a way I despised at University when all those theology students talked about the divine. In this very moment I can’t recollect much of what you said, something about the case, about going with John at the obituary. It feels confusing, I feel overstimulated, my memory fails me, I am not sure anymore. I write these few lines and it is passed the hour of the witches and I wish, I demand, to never see you again, because life should never grant hope to a condemned man.

#dr laszlo kreizler #dr laszlo kreizler imagine #dr laszlo kreizler x reader #dr laszlo kreizler x you #laszlo kreizler #laszlo kreizler headcanons #laszlo kreizler x reader #the alienist fanfic #victorian age #v writes #the diary of doctor laszlo kreizler

109 notes · View notes

margridarnauds · 4 years ago

Note

I think it’s just awful how so much mythology, folk lore, local local legends etc. Aren’t easily available online. But is their a reason why those with access to these stories aren’t able to put them online themselves?

Mainly, as far as I’m aware (keeping in mind that I’m just one person in the field and I’ve not been here for very long), the reason is copyright.

That and, to be honest, a little bit of classism (can’t have the rabble accessing our nice, bright, shiny sources!) My field, while we’re gradually accepting that you can be a Celticist coming from a lower class background, still do kind of pin a bit on the idea of the gentleman scholar - A polymath who’s already studied French, German, Latin, and Greek and who can therefore take to Old Irish and Medieval Welsh like a fish to water. For many in the field, there’s the expectation that you already have at the very least an understanding of Gaeilge, or that you already have a strong linguistic background, and that can cause a massive break between the public and the scholars involved. Especially in the instance of editions which, by their nature, are JUST the Irish, with no English translation. Because, hey, it’s just Old Irish, right? There’s a dictionary at the back!

Both UCC and UCD have, to their credit, done an IMMENSE amount of work in making these resources available to the public. UCC has done wonders with their CELT database and Irish Sagas Online, UCD with their Thesaurus Lingua Hibernicae. They’ve done a truly magnificent thing there, and I wouldn’t have been able to enter the field without the diligence and hard work of everyone involved in both projects. The problem is that many of the sources involved are...well. Old. We’ve learned a lot about the Irish language since a lot of these were done, specifically about Old Irish. A lot of them are in very archaic language, because that was the translating style at the time, and some of them cut out whole portions of text. Because it’s got to be in the public domain to be legal, unless you have an instance where the scholar is able to grant permission for their recent edition/translation to be released, such as in the case of Gray’s Cath Maige Tuired, which was given a special release on CELT. On a folkloric level, Duchas is doing amazing work.

What you have to keep in mind is that, unlike Classical studies....we’re a BABY as a field. Many texts still haven’t been translated. Many texts still haven’t even been given editions. And a LOT of work goes into making both editions and translations happen and there are...very few of us that can do the work to make it happen. I would estimate that there’s fewer than 100 Celticists worldwide. It might be as many as two hundred but I strongly doubt it. Hence why, in many of the cases, the last translation was made in either the 19th or early 20th century. It’s because, frankly, since then, no one’s had the time or energy to go over it again, and people were trying to do new editions/translations. With stories like the Iliad and the Odyssey, you can VERY easily get ahold of one of those online because, while there are a ton of newer translations that you won’t be able to get ahold of as easily (Emily Wilson’s Odyssey, for example), there are a LOT of older translations that are still very viable, because you’ve had people studying these texts for literal centuries. In our case, we’re lucky to have one older translation. We...we’ve been around for a little while, really getting our first breath of life in the 18th century, but we only really hit our golden age with the Celtic Revival and the establishment of the Republic, and then we kind of fell out of fashion. A lot of the time, when I ask my supervisor “Has anyone done anything on x subject?”, he’ll give me this kind of beleaguered “Well....”, not because Celticists haven’t cared about the material, but because their hands have been full in a hundred places.

And it’s worse for mythographers, because we are a very tiny section of Celtic Studies. Tiny. You’ll notice that, in my source list, a lot of the names repeat a lot. Why? Well, part of it’s because I personally like their work, but part of it is also that these ARE the big names in the world of the Mythological Cycle. These are the ones who are REALLY focusing and doing a ton of work on it. Other scholars might touch on it, do an article here or there, but very few really commit to it, in the end. In my own program, I’m basically the only one of the MA students with a mythological focus, and even in the department as a whole...I’m basically one of very few. Ulster Cycle and Fenian Cycle get more, but the Mythological Cycle...I don’t want to say there’s a STIGMA against it, but there’s........a different feeling, being in it. A lot of mythological material is still being transcribed and translated, a lot of it is still being talked about for the first time, and we’re pl

In my time, I’ve done two editions/translations of a text, the latter of which was almost completely incomprehensible at points, the vellum that the ink was written on being of a very poor quality; the bottom third of so of the folio was totally faded. Both of those times, it fell to me to transcribe the material, reading it letter by letter, trying to figure out what various abbreviations meant (Irish scribes used a very specialized form of shorthand that, while perfectly comprehensible to them, isn’t always so to us), and then having to translate it, keeping in mind that in some cases, the Irish was a mixture of later Irish and Old Irish. Translating Old Irish is a bit like trying to wrestle with a snake at times - It’s unpredictable, it’s wriggly, and it feels, at times, like just when you think you’re holding onto the head, it shifts and you realize you’re holding onto the tail. It isn’t something that you can really do just because you feel in the mood to do it one day and then publish on Tumblr; it’s a VERY intense process that involves a lot of time, effort, and tears. (Seriously. A lot of tears.)

And...no one gets rich out of Celtic studies. Every one of us who’s either entering into the field or is actually in the field has accepted that it’s a labor of love; I’m statistically unlikely to get a job IN the field and I’ve accepted it. It could very well end up that I get my MA, maybe even my PhD and then...that’s it, done. Now, this isn’t meant to be a pity party, but it does explain why a lot of scholar’s can’t JUST give out pdfs of their books - They do need to get paid, at least a little, though if I’m not mistaken, once they submit their articles to a journal....that’s it. They’ve gotten as much money as they’re going to get. So that could be a factor in why articles tend to get handed out much easier. Books also....keep in mind, we don’t digitize a LOT of our stuff. It was part of why Covid kicked Celtic Studies’ ass. Suddenly, you had a bunch of scholars around the world used to having access to a library who...no longer had access to a library. Or the books in them. I was personally amazed that Tom O’Donnell’s recent book on Fosterage and Mark Williams’ Ireland’s Immortals were actually released in Ebook format, because that’s still a little on the unusual side. We’re slowly coming to terms with the 21st century, but it’s difficult.

Anyway, that’s the answer: Most of it isn’t INTENTIONALLY trying to keep the public out, and for many of the scholars, I know very well that they really want the public to have access to that stuff, but their hands are tied by copyright law + needing to make some amount of money in the very unfair world of academia. I hope that some part of this makes sense. We do want to do more work with the public, it’s just that...well. Copyright law and academia. They’re bastards.

#long post #Anonymous

251 notes · View notes

mirrorthoughts · 3 years ago

Text

Well, let’s try that one again <.<…

Today is an editing day! And I’m very happy about that.

(explanation and ranting about writing and work-stuff under the cut xD)

I didn’t feel able to edit over the last few weeks/months (Scrivener says I last did more than stare at words or wrote new ones in another project in March and before that January), which is probably related - at least partly - to my day job.

It’s just fucking frustrating to create requirements documents when you don’t have enough initial information, won’t get much more than what you have and will probably need to rework said document over the course of the next few weeks and months until the next release is going live. (no, we sadly can’t get rid of that client, yes, I’d love to be rid of them…)

Anyway… most of the time over the last weeks when I opened my Scrivener with the intent to edit the next Fae Heart chapter I just… I stared at the words and couldn’t wrap my head around any of them. They were just too much, I’d need to much concentration to wade through them and even the bare though of it felt so exhausting. Which at the same time really pissed me off and made me feel guilty for not editing at all. And yeah, I know, that sounds like I feel guilty to keep people waiting (which is a small part of it) but there’s actually another reason for that guilt and I have to take a slight tangent for that.

This is not supposed to be a humblebrag or anything. But most if not all of what you can read of me on AO3 is not really edited other than where I turned back to edit or correct stuff while writing it. Everything on AO3 is from NaNo2020 or from the end of last year and up to NaNo2021 I never really felt able to edit my stuff more than reviewing it maybe once for grammar purposes. So as far as I can say everything on AO3 was written in mostly these few steps:

The inital writing

A re-read for grammar and text comprehension after a few days (or in case of the stuff from Nano2020 months) of not having read the inital draft (If I’d written in english that’s where I would post the story if it felt alright, if I’d written in German, there were additional steps before posting it:

Initial translation

Same as step 2, just in english

For the few chapters/stories I had my beta there was a bit of a back and forth between us until they had no more remarks on my story which were also mostly about grammar and text comprehension)

That’s it. No more steps. Not because I thought what I wrote was the pinnacle of literature, but because when I read my own stuff I just didn’t find the spots where I needed to or even could edit to make it better. It felt finished. I didn’t know, didn’t see what I could have done differently. There just were no other options for me to formulate something in a different way. (Though there are a few examples where I actually had the complete opposite problem. I have a hand full of WIPs I had to abbandon because I did nothing but edit them. They never seemed right, no matter what I did.)

So, back to NaNo 2021, to my original point of why I feel guilty not editing at the moment. The simple answer, the tl;dr is: Because I could. At the start of writing NaNo21, I suddenly felt able to edit. I dunno if that is solely a me-problem or if that’s maybe a neurodiverse-problem or something else entirely. Maybe it was the fact that I started editing my “old” stuff to prepare it for posting for half a year before Nano which got the information that “editing actually is good, you know?” finally into my thick skull. Intellectually I knew that already, but as I said, I never was/felt able to actually act on that knowledge…

Whatever it was, when I started writing for Nano I suddenly kind of… knew I would be able to edit it if I wrote bad stuff. That I could write bad stuff, that I could fix it later without needing to immediately iron out everything I didn’t like while writing it - which I still do, don’t get me wrong, but now I’m able to just let something bad stand on the page and get back to it, something my head just wouldn’t let me do before. And boy did I write bad stuff that Nano 😂 or at least it felt oh so very bad!! The dialog felt stilted, the reactions wooden and forced, the order of the events stopped making sense around the third day even though I had a vague plan where I wanted to go! It was fucking horrible - and I loved it! I wrote almost 20-very-horrible-k words and I knew everything I wanted to say was somewhere in there and I would be able to edit it into the story I wanted to tell.

And then after NaNo came December and I wrote an advent calender for a friend (that’s where Not Afraid came from, which I just had so much fun with that I didn’t feel like it needed a lot of editing, so I posted it right there) and I knew I needed to step back from what I’d written for Fae Heart before taking another look on it, so I decided to edit the brunt of it after the new year.

I’d promised the first chapter for christmas/new year so I made an effort to clean that up since that was the one part that actually hadn’t changed much from the initial idea and posted it and in January I started on the rest. I summarized the plot points, shuffled the ~2k-words-blocks I’d written for Nano around until they fit into the plot points the way I wanted them to, how they made sense to me, and started to edit chapter 2, everything over the first two January weeks.

And after that, every time I opened Scrivener, I just stared at the words and did nothing. Which doesn’t mean I didn’t try! I maybe shuffled around half a sentence here or tried to straighten up a 3-sentence-paragraph there, but I just couldn’t keep at it. And every time I opened the chapter I felt like I was starting over again, trying to remember the thoughts I’d had the last time editing, trying to understand what I had written, trying to evaluate if I liked that sentence like this, if the phrasing was good, if I needed to shorten it, what I wanted to do with it. And every time it got harder to see more than just a huge, overwhelming block of words (which is exactly how I feel about the documents at work tbh).

It’s not that I didn’t write over the last few months. I wrote about 4k for my original story I mentioned before. I started another fanfiction because I couldn’t get that special idea out of my head (It’s about 1k plot notes and another k written story), I’m an avid writer of rpgs which means there’s no day I don’t write at least 300-500 words for this or that character. But I just couldn’t edit. My head wouldn’t compute that wall of words into anything I could work with.

That’s why I felt guilty. That’s why I’m so glad I edited another third of that chapter today (even if it’s still 5k and I wanted to edit it down to around 3k; though I think the last third of that chapter doesn’t have that much substance actually. That’s why it’s In there because it was one of those “I just want to write my ~2k for Nano even if it’s just a lot of inflated nothing with only a bit of substance”-parts). And yeah I do still feel guilty to let my dear readers wait for the rest of Fae Heart, but at least I know it’s there, so I will post it eventually.

And I believe it will be better than what I’ve written before, so there’s that :3

Growing is hard 😂…

#seikaze #sei's writing #sei's brain bubbles #Fae Heart #my writing process

1 note · View note

whumpbby · 4 years ago

Note

Hi! So this is kind of a random ask, but I know you have beta fish, and I’m considering getting one. I’ve had beta fish in the past, and despite educating myself on how to take care of them they haven’t lived very long, so I’m hoping you’ll be able to help me. For my past beta fish, I keep them in a five gallon tank (for clarification, I never had more than one beta fish at a time. So I didn’t have multiple of them in the tank don’t worry—they just all lived at different times in the same tank) that had a filter with a pretty low flow on it. I never saw any of the fish have problems swimming with it on. I always used a highly rated water purifying product for the tank water (I forgot what it’s actually called) and I never had any sharp plants that would hurt their fins. I fed them a little every two days because I heard that feeding them everyday was bad for them. Do you happen to know what I was doing wrong? It was frustrating for me because I put a lot of effort into keeping them alive and healthy and then I would see people who kept them in small half gallon bowls have their fish outlive mine. It’s been a couple years, and I want to get another, but I don’t want to accident hurt/kill another one. How do you care for your beta fish? Do you have any advice? Sorry about the rant, but I follow you for your Jason content and happened to stumble upon some of you fish posts and need help. Thanks so much for reading this, and if you do end up offering any advice, I want to thank you for that too!

Hi dear, sorry if I took long to answer - tumblr notoriously does not inform me of messages>>

I understand your pain - especially that the situation with bettas is very frustrating. They tend to suffer from quite a few genetic defects (they are prone to tumours, for example) and are a very abused fish in the aquatic industry. Oftentimes by the time they will get to a caring and dedicated owner, they’ve already went through a lot:0 We just don’t know how healthy the fish is before we got it.

I am by no means an expert, I have lost a few babies since I started the hobby a couple years ago and I can only assume what a few of them suffered from:( One thing that seems to work is leaving them and the tank alone for as long as you can once it’s all set up and cycled and running - apart form the regular maintenance. I am a chronic fiddler who needs to change and add plants, filters, etc, so I constantly have to hold myself back form doing things to the tank. My sister has the same betta for a second year now and the only thing she does with her tank is water changes once every couple weeks - and both him and a thousand of cherry shrimp that live there thriveXD

Some things I nowadays pay attention to that may be useful, however, are:

- water temp has to be consistent, on the warmer side. I keep mine at 26-27C (I don’t know how much that is in F, sorry>>). To that effect the tank needs a lid - it will trap the warm air, protecting the betta form inhaling cold air then they come up for a breath. They labyrinth breathing organ is quite sensitive to that.

- I feed my boys twice a day, so I am not a part of the ‘feed them little’ club. I give them a little pinch of the good flake in the morning (Bug Bites is nice) and a 3-4 granules of a King Betta or a pinch of a protein-rich micro pellets in the evening. A betta breeder I talked to a couple times advised that it’s better to feed the boys a couple times a day in small quantities rather than once - keeps their digestive tracts working and they can avoid constipation. Constipation happens often with bettas and is a headache to solve. I leave frozen bloodworms for special occasions and just rotate the dry foods for variety.

- I change water every week - and every other week make sure to vacuum gravel the substrate. In the planted tanks I vacuum only about 2-3cm of the top layer to not disturb planting substrate below and not to suck up any shrimp, so it’s a gentle operation. In the gravel where there is no growing substrate I go deep - the reason being that I want to free any possible air bubbles stuck underneath where bad bacteria may grow.

- Pick a filter and stick to it. I was very bad at that, but I finally managed to hotwire a combo that seems to work so I will stick to it;) If you can stand the noise, I advise a sponge filter - it’s so easy to clean and manageTT If you can’t stand the hum of the air pump and the bubbles, I recommend a matten filter - or hotwiring an internal filter to a sponge filter - like so - instruction in German, but the visuals are very self-explanatory;] I used gel superglue to connect the filterhead to a sponge filter and now all I have to do once a month or rarer is to pull the sponge off and squeeze it few times in the used tank water! And sometimes clean the showerhead from algae;] It saves you so much money on the cartridges (corner sponge filters are a couple £/$ and last years) and provides extra filtration. My shrimps also eat off it;]

- get a snail. Seriously, I have a snail in every tank - a single nerite will do best for a 5gal. They don’t breed in sweet water, don’t grow large and will keep your glass clean for you - I have not cleaned my tanks’ glass since... ever>> Joe I and Joe II do it for meXD They also provide company for the betta and something fun to look at. And he will scarf uneaten food form the gravel.

- I assume you know about the nitrogen cycle, so I will not bore you here about bacteria and such. But a best chance of saving the betta form stress when you get him home is a cycled tank. You can get an ammonia testing set - or, if you find that a bit intimidating (I do for some reason) you can go to an aquarist shop and they will check your water for you. My local store in town does it for free. I am not sure about big box stores, tho. If you see something being wrong with the betta, check water and see if it needs to be changed asap.

- water changes are mandatory and have to be regular. A 5gal is a convenient size - I am using a 5l bottle left over from mineral water as a measuring tool;) This way I know I am always changing roughly 1/4th of the tank’s water. It’s very easy to see how much water I removed and how much I have to put back in - I can control the water temp and add dechlotinator/vitamins etc before it goes into the tank, so I do not shock my critters with too hot or too cold water. The rule I practice is leaving the dechlorinator in the bottle for about 10 mins before pouring it all into the tank.

- you don’t have to be intimidated by planted tanks:) A little bunch of anubias on a stick is often enough to start with and a good look for a tank, in my opinion. It also makes for a more natural space for the betta he will certainly appreciate. The less fancy stuff the better - I got my first natural rocks form the side of the road (ofc I boiled the life out of them before they got even close to the tank) and they are usually quite cheap on amazon. A stick with a plant and a rock and some small-size gravel is often enough to look good. The plants will also help with eating up nitrites and keeping the water healthy.

- goodness, what else. Medicaiton. Ok. I have tried many meds for my boys and once the fish is in a bad way not much will help, form my experience :( My med set consists of Melafix - I add it to water according to instructions whenever I see my betta without appetite or acting off. It’s a mild anti-bacterial mixture that does not affect snails/shrimp. If that does not help, I use eSHa 2000 or eSHa Exit - they are two very comprehensive meds that deal with a variety of problems. I have never used aquarium salt, but some people swear by it - there’s no specific reason I don’t use it, I just never got around to it.

This is all the chaotic advice, but things to remember (I am not trying to be condescending, I just don't know how much you know;]) are: cycled tank, regular water changes&filter maintenance, consistent temperature and quality food. Bettas are hardy little suckers, but sometimes they are also frail in ways we can’t see until it’s too late. I am already seeing a tumour growing on one of my boys and there is nothing I can do about it except giving him the best life I can - he is still going strong, but I know he will probably not last to the end of the year. It’s a hobby that sometimes seems thankless, but if you do everything right, even if they leave early, at least you’ve given them a good and peaceful time before that:)

If I you have any more questions or just want to share woes, feel free to message, I will do my best to answer:)

#bettas #fishkeeping #Anonymous

14 notes · View notes

sabineelectricheart · 4 years ago

Text

Mumbling in German

Summary: Victor had a request for Lupin, but Cardia will not let him get away with that so easily.

Rating: K+ - Suitable for more mature childen, 9 years and older, with minor action violence without serious injury. May contain mild coarse language. Should not contain any adult themes.

Words: 1000

Notes: Alemannic German, of which Swiss German is a variant, was (and still is) widely considered to be an inferior language, an accent of poor, unrefined, uneducated people. The standard for the German language was the Bavarian German, spoken in and around Ingolstadt, the main university city in the HRE up to the 17th Century.

"So, you'll ask her for me, then?" Victor asked Lupin, the pale green eyes glistening with hope behind the thick glasses.

"I don't know why you can't just do it yourself, man. I mean, the worst she can do is say no." Lupin pointed out with a non-committed shrug.

The chemist flushed, as his stomach began knotting and he opened his mouth to utter some sort of response that would save some sort of his dignity.

"That being said…" Lupin reiterates, trying to keep Victor from imploding on himself over nerves. "I guess I can make you a solid this time. Yeah, I'll ask her for you."

At this time, it was a bit of an open secret that their in-house experimental scientist had his sights on Cardia Beckford for a while. Lupin understands that, he can see where it comes from. Their whole friend group was interested in the girl at one time or another, but Victor…

Well, the pickpocket wonders if it is too demeaning to compare him to a baby chick, stumbling through the relationship side of things like a bird coming out of its egg. Everything seemed like an unsurmountable challenge, and it actually is quite hard when you regularly devolve into unintelligible mumbling in a grotesque Alemannic German every time you feel ill at ease.

Alas, contrary to him and the rest, the chemist never managed to mature his feelings for the girl, and, honestly, it was getting a little ridiculous at this point. If Cardia was not so out of touch sometimes, she would have probably noticed the train-sized collegiate crush he had for her.

Victor sighed in relief. "Thanks Lupin! I owe you!"

The brunet chuckles with a flaunt of his hands. “Fear not, young man. Arsène Lupin, the great gentleman thief, will provide you with the answer!”

*_*_*_*_*

This exchange had been over three days ago, and Victor was starting to become restless with his friend’s silence.

She probably said no and Lupin is trying to find a way to tell me gently. The chemist weighed. I wonder if it’s too late to return to Zurich or if I ought to consider something further away. New York? Cape Town? Hong Kong?

To be fair, Lupin had said that he would provide him with an answer, he neglected to mention when he would do so.

Trying to get his mind off of things, Victor is reading some unremarkable book on medicine at the library, hoping to be left alone until he is certain of his dark, dark fate.

Yeah, Hong Kong is mighty good.

Suddenly, his relative peace and silence are disturbed when the intricate French doors to the room open and onward comes the reason for his dismay.

"Hi, Victor!" Cardia said as she slid into a well-stuffed, tasteful armchair next to the young chemist, near to a side table and a kerosene lamp. "How have you been?"

"I am as I’ve always been.” He tries to respond on an even, calm voice he used with his odd patients. “I'm just studying, Saint-Germain brought some new journals from Paris this week. How are you?"

"Nothing new happening on your life at all?" Cardia questioned with an amused smile, as if faced by a comedic number.

"Err… no…" Victor said hesitantly.

"Are you sure?" Cardia persisted.

Victor started to blush and squirm under Cardia's intense gaze. She knows, he jumped to conclusions on his mind. She knows and she is going to toy with me before she turns me down, she is going to toy with me for a laugh.

The young man started to devolve into panic. He stared back at her smiling face as his mind continued to race. Maybe she does not know. I am just overreacting. I just need to calm down.

"No. Nothing new." Victor said, trying to stop his blush.

"Hmm…” The brunette tutted. “Nothing you, uh, wanted to ask me?"

Scheisse! Victor thought as his stomach flipped over. Several seconds, which felt like hours to him, passed in a blind panic before he calmed enough to realize that Cardia would never tease him like this if she were only going to turn him down, to try to compose an intelligible answer to her question.

Victor's face turned as red as the Saint George Cross as he fought to find to his tongue.

"Well, err… Yes…" he started. "I… Ich… Ich wollte nur… Ich nehme an… Wenn es dir nichts ausmacht…"

Cardia smiled encouragingly at him, even if she did not understand half of what he was saying, and he went on in a rush.

"I was wondering if you would not like to go out with me!" He finished almost shouting and looked down at his journals, hoping she would not burst out laugh at him. “Oder so…”

God, Victor wanted for the ground to open and swallow him whole. Not only he just had to open up his big, fat mouth, but the words to come out had to be in German, a language he is quite confident she did not speak. A heavily-accented Swiss German, at that.

In the depths of his mind, he knows he defaults to his mother language whenever he gets nervous, as it was hard to maintain the English accent while he was so deep into his catastrophic thoughts and fears, and therefore it was comprehensible, even acceptable. However, such a behaviour did not put his mind at ease, as it certainly did not help him put his best foot forward, not when it makes him sound like a cheese-smelling peasant.

Cardia debated asking him to repeat himself a little slower or with an indoor voice, but she did not suppose the man would be able to stand anymore teasing. It was best to take him out of his misery.

"I’d love to." She replied with a grin. “How about we go to the British Museum on Saturday?”

Victor smiled with relief could only think of one thing to say. "Ja."

*_*_*_*_*

Code: Realize Masterlist

#code realize #victor frankenstein

20 notes · View notes

nbmudkip · 5 years ago

Text

a guide to shiny pokémon in sword and shield: what they are, what’s new, and how to get them

hiya! i’m aster, aka lesbianmudkip, and i am a stream moderator for Dallas aka TheSupremeRk9s on youtube! since he’s been streaming his shiny hunting a lot lately, i’ve noticed there is a LOT of confusion and misinformation going around about shiny pokémon in pokémon sword and shield. i would like to help clear things up! this is my attempt at a comprehensive guide to shiny pokémon in sword and shield, for both amateurs and veteran hunters alike.

for new fans

what IS a shiny?

ever since the second generation of pokémon (Gold, Silver, and Crystal), there has been a special phenomenon in pokémon games called shiny pokémon. a shiny pokémon is an extremely rare version of a pokémon that is differently colored from normal members of the species and that sparkles when encountered or sent out into battle.

shiny pokémon don’t necessarily have any increased stats or heightened battle potential. they’re just colored neatly and sparkly! a lot of people like to play pokémon by shiny hunting, which is purposely searching out shiny pokémon to add to their team or collection. people love trying to defy the odds to get something beautiful and rare—VERY rare, in fact.

so what are the odds of finding a shiny pokémon?

unfortunately, the answer to this question can get rather complicated. this is because there are certain methods and conditions capable of increasing the possibility of encountering a shiny! but, to keep things simple, i’ll stick to just the basic, unaltered odds for this explanation. (i may make posts explaining each method in the future!)

in all games from gen 2 (G/S/C) through gen 5 (B/W/B2/W2), the odds of encountering a shiny pokémon in the wild are 1/8192. now, this doesn’t guarantee that you’d find a shiny after 8192 encounters—it’s simply the chance. some people find shiny pokémon in those games after 50 encounters, and some end up going to 50,000! it’s all up to luck.

in all games from gen 6 (X/Y) to the present (SW/SH), the odds of encountering a random shiny pokémon were increased to 1/4096, about double the previous odds. again, this does not guarantee a shiny within 4096 encounters, it is just the likelihood of any individual encounter being shiny!

like i mentioned earlier, there are a LOT of ways to increase the odds of encountering a shiny. listing all the different methods for all the different gens and all their different individual odds would make this post a lot longer than it needs to be, so i won’t be describing them on this post. i would, however, like to mention one especially notable thing: the shiny charm!

the shiny charm is unlike any other method of increasing shiny odds because—well, because it isn’t a method. the shiny charm is a key item obtainable in gens 5 (B/W/B2/W2) to the present (SW/SH). it is only obtainable after completely filling out the entire pokédex—that means catching every single pokémon obtainable in a specific region (game), including starters, version exclusives, and legendaries. it’s not an easy feat, but the reward is high. once the shiny charm is in your inventory, it triples the odds of encountering a shiny pokémon! for wild encounters in the gen 6 games and up, this changes the odds from 1/4096 to 1/1365. the effects of the shiny charm also stack with many methods, allowing you to boost your chances even further. (there are rumors that the shiny charm has an even greater effect in SW/SH than previous gens, but this is unconfirmed.)

SW/SH hunting: what’s new?

shiny hunting methods

in terms of methods in SW/SH, we honestly didn’t get much. however, there is one new method i should go over. the first of the two primary shiny hunting methods in SW/SH is pretty simple, and the only one doable for wild encounters—the number battled method/KO method.

the KO method relies on the number battled count in your pokédex for each pokémon. this counter increases by one every time you knock out or catch a certain species of pokémon. this includes knocking out pokémon owned by trainers. at certain intervals, the odds of encountering a shiny pokémon of that species are increased permanently. here is a table explaining the odds:

so, for example, if someone has knocked out or caught a total of 132 rookidee, and the counter in their pokédex for rookidee reads 132, then their odds of encountering a shiny rookidee are 1/1365. every time that player encounters a rookidee, instead of rolling the 1/4096 chance for a shiny one time, the game will roll it 3 separate times, making the chances 3/4096 or 1/1365.

the only other known method in SW/SH is the masuda method. this is basically the same as in all previous gens since gen 4—breeding a pokémon from one region with a pokémon from another region increases the odds of hatching a shiny pokémon to 1/683, making it 6x more likely. however, one minor change is that instead of needing two pokémon from different regions, one only needs to breed two pokémon from different language games. for example, a french pokémon and a german pokémon breeding will result in the masuda method taking effect. there are also rumors that masuda method breeding produces higher shiny odds than previous gens, but these are unconfirmed.

some confusion has arisen about methods in this game. specifically, many people believe there is a form of chaining for shiny pokémon in this game by knocking out the same species of pokémon consecutively without knocking out another pokémon or shutting off the game. however, the presence of chaining in SW/SH has been proven false. consecutively knocking out pokémon of the same species is more likely to make that species appear, but it has no effect whatsoever on the odds of a shiny. only the number battled in the dex affects shiny odds in SW/SH.

shiny sparkle animations

as some of you may know, SW/SH is unique in that there are two different types of sparkles that may come with a shiny pokémon.

here is a comparison of the two different types of sparkles—one comparison of pokémon being encountered in the wild/in a raid, and one of newly hatched pokémon. one is commonly referred to as squares, and the other as gold stars, or just stars. the question of what these sparkles mean has been much debated since the games were released, and a LOT of misinformation has been spread and reinforced. however, through the power of datamining, we have discovered what the difference actually is!

...unfortunately, the answer is a bit complicated. the reason for this is because the rarity of each type of sparkle is dependent on how the shiny pokémon was encountered.

for wild encounters: the square shaped sparkles are FAR more common than the stars. the stars, in fact, are astronomically rare—there are no videos (that i know of, as of the present date 11/25/19) of encountering a star shiny from a random wild encounter. for every shiny pokémon encountered in the wild, there is a 1/4032 chance that it will have the star sparkles. basically, on top of the 1/4096 chance if encountering a shiny pokémon, there is another 1/4032 roll to see if the shiny pokémon’s sparkles will be stars instead of squares. (this information is not 100% confirmed; however, it is widely agreed on among shiny hunters and seems most probable considering the data we have uncovered combined with the recorded shiny pokémon that have been encountered so far.)

for “special” encounters: the star shaped sparkles are more common, but not by nearly as much. for all special encounter shiny pokémon, there is a 15/16 chance that they will have the star sparkles, and a 1/16 chance that they will have the squares. so, the square sparkles are rarer for these encounters, but not nearly as rare as the star sparkles are in the wild. (for clarification: the games consider any encounter besides a regular wild pokémon to be a special encounter. this includes hatching eggs, raids/max raids, and static encounters like the impidimps on the mushrooms in glimwood tangle or the sizzlipedes in the fire-type gym.)

shiny locked pokémon

unfortunately, shiny locks are back in SW/SH and meaner than ever. for those new to shiny hunting, the term “shiny locked” refers to a pokémon that is programmed in a way that makes it impossible for that pokémon to be shiny. the following is a list of all shiny locked pokémon in SW/SH:

the starters (the grookey, scorbunny, or sobble you get at the beginning of the game as your first pokémon. however, you can get these shiny via breeding!)

all gift pokémon (all in-game trades and all pokémon received from a NPC, such as the toxel at the daycare and the charmander from Leon)

all legendary pokémon (zacian, zamazenta, and eternatus)

EDIT: all wild area pokémon that are too high level to catch are also shiny locked!

a notable exception to this rule is the fossil pokémon. while they appear to be gift pokémon because you receive the fossil items from NPCs, you resurrect them yourself, so technically they are not gift pokémon and thus are not shiny locked.

another notable exception, specifically to the last point: only the RANDOM wild area encounters that are too high level to catch are locked. static encounters that are too high level to catch are not locked!

final notes

that’s just about all the important info about shiny pokémon in SW/SH that i can think of! i’ll update it as information is released, and if anything needs clarification, shoot me an ask or leave a question in the replies. thanks for reading, and as always, good luck on your hunts!

#pokemon #pokemon sword and shield #pokemon swsh #swsh #shiny pokemon #reblog this! i wanna clear up the misinfo #me.txt

881 notes · View notes

aflyingcontradiction · 3 years ago

Text

I posted 1.734 times in 2021

469 posts created (27%)

1265 posts reblogged (73%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 2.7 posts.

I added 1.632 tags in 2021

#cute - 293 posts

#beautiful - 225 posts

#funny - 217 posts

#the magnus archives - 204 posts

#tma relisten - 173 posts

#my babbling - 162 posts

#sounds familiar - 108 posts

#covid 19 - 85 posts

#eurovision - 85 posts

#german stuff - 80 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#and i literally only got a decent grade in physics by learning all the steps to all the problems we did off by heart and then just slotting

My Top Posts in 2021

I honestly feel like the state of the mask discourse hints at a general issue where even plenty of avowed leftists (not to mention the rest of the political spectrum) somehow conflate "It is morally correct to do a thing" with "There ought to be a law mandating that a thing be done" AND DON'T EVEN NOTICE THAT THERE'S AN ENTIRE STEP IN THE ARGUMENT THAT THEY'RE SKIPPING.

104 notes • Posted 2021-07-31 19:25:58 GMT

Okay, I'm saying this as someone who is now fully vaccinated and has very little personal issue with continuing to wear masks pretty much indefinitely in public buildings so that's not where my frustration here stems from (and I shouldn't even need this disclaimer, should I?). But I'm getting fucking FURIOUS with repeatedly seeing this exchange on here:

Amalgam of people A: "For - insert reasons - I don't think it's right to mandate that vaccinated people continue to wear masks." Amalgam of people B: "Well, I'm gonna keep wearing my mask anyway, so there!"

Did I somehow enter a bizarro universe where the lack of a mandate to do a thing is equivalent to a mandate NOT to do the thing??? The topic wasn't "Should you personally be allowed to wear a mask?" nor was it "Is it the right choice to wear a mask?" It was "Should we obligate everybody to wear a mask?" Those are three separate questions. Please, for the love of reading comprehension, treat them as such!

134 notes • Posted 2021-07-31 19:14:30 GMT

tag 9 people you want to get to know better/catch up with

I got tagged by @nikita-not-nikola - thanks for the tag!

last song: I'm not sure, but judging by my listening habits in the past week or so, it's probably Shum by Go_A

last movie: Pride, the 2014 movie about an activist group of gays and lesbians raising money for striking miners in the UK in 1984, or, as my partner summarised it: A movie of wholesome Thatcher bashing.

currently reading: Miami Punk by Juan S. Guse - I don't think I would recommend it, it's very slow-paced and highly experimental, but I'm probably going to finish it.

currently watching: A bunch of things, among them Rutherford Falls

currently craving: Some goddamn rest! (Also mochi.)

I'm tagging @mindthelspace, @jadegreenimmortality, @ante--meridiem, @soryualeksi and @thegreenmeridian and anyone else who feels like answering :P

283 notes • Posted 2021-05-28 14:03:59 GMT

I keep coming across posts that are ... let me attempt to summarise the thing I mean:

OP: Here’s a gendered stereotype/expectation that hurts men. Response to OP: But the source of that stereotype/expectation is men, not women, and it is enforced by men, so (this next bit is either implied or stated outright) it’s men’s own fault and they should stop whining.

And I actually used to agree with the logic of these posts fairly unreservedly some years ago. You can find some of them further back in my blog, if you care to look, I’m sure. But I no longer agree. I now think it’s a sign of someone being so used to thinking in systems and groups that they have forgotten systems and groups consist of individuals.

Because what does “This masculine stereotype is promoted and enforced by men” actually mean? Those posts make it sound like ... self-harm? Like something men-as-a-group have chosen so they don’t get to complain about their own choices? But that’s not how that works in practice, because people that share the same gender aren’t a hivemind. What that really means in practice is a man (or, more frequently, a boy) being told by OTHER PEOPLE, “You need to exist this way and if you don’t, it’s wrong.” and having that rubbed in with mockery, ostracism and, not infrequently, physical violence. The boy who gets bullied for being insufficiently masculine isn’t somehow bringing that on himself because his bullies happen to be male. The man who feels inadequate in his body because he keeps being told he’s not muscular enough isn’t somehow at fault because the people telling him that are also men.

And actually, female stereotypes are also frequently imposed by other women. Like, if you look at who tells girls “You need to start shaving your body hair” and sometimes violently enforces it, that’s frequently their MOTHERS. If you look at who tells women they’re dressed wrong, made up wrong, existing wrong, that’s not infrequently also other women. Does that make those expectations any less harmful or hurtful when it’s other women imposing them, though? Surely not.

Imagine a bully grabbing somebody’s hand and punching them in the face with it and the onlooker going “Why are you hitting yourself?”

649 notes • Posted 2021-02-07 16:49:39 GMT

Graham Norton interrupting his intro to go "Ooh, dogs" is so relatable.

666 notes • Posted 2021-05-22 20:03:59 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#my 2021 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #I'm gonna be irritating and actually post this :P

1 note · View note

brokentoothkiss · 4 years ago

Text

hello i was tagged by @perhapskismet (thank u! 🤍💌) to answer some questions about myself!!

name/nickname: kendall, but also ken and kenz

gender: girl, i use she/her/hers <3 but you can refer to me by little nicknames even if they’re predominantly masculine (cowboy, captain, chief, homie, bro, prettyboy, etc) along with any others

star sign: virgo~

height: 5’7!! ladies if i can’t reach the shelf you need, you can return me for full money back

time: 7:20pm

birthday: august 31

favorite bands/groups: the 1975, the lumineers, the neighbourhood, the strokes, haim, coin

favorite solo artists: role model, troye sivan, orville peck, phoebe bridgers, lorde, bleachers, father john misty

song stuck in my head: bike dream by rostam

last movie: pride and prejudice (2005) which i enjoyed but i’m a total sucker for unspoken love and enemies to lovers

last show: sandition (or at least i’m planning on watching it cause i can never get enough of historical dramas, one disease of many i inherit from my mother)

when did i create this blog: i wanna say mid to late 2019, so i’ve had it for a year now

what do i post: it used to be dark academia, then pink/red lovecore, but now it’s warm pastel pictures and love-based textposts (i’m sure my listography is way more comprehensive than me lol)

last thing i googled: oh nooooo it was “do worms have eyes” for one of my friends, it’s a long story, but to be clear, worms don’t have eyes, they have receptors that can sense when it’s light or dark :))

other blogs: i have one other blog @iwatcheditring for 1975 stuff

do i get asks: yeah if i reblog an ask game but for the most part it’s just me n my mutuals (but i’m always open to anons if you have something to say!! tell me something!)

why did i choose this url: wanted that angelic, lovely vibe. obvs a lot of urls are already taken but withangel is short and sweet. got a lot of angelic imagery goin on around me in 2020 too actually 🕊

following: i’m following 62 blogs

followers: 145 and i love everyone

average hours of sleep: 6-8 counting the times i pass out during the day because i’ve crawled back into bed when i get home

lucky number(s): 11, 3, 8 and possibly 7

instruments: i can figure out songs note by note on the guitar and keyboard, but don’t practice frequently enough :/ though i adore people who can play any kind of instrument

what am i wearing: cream colored turtleneck under a warm, brown, zip up jacket from my dads work years ago, plaid pajama pants, and a small pair of my mom’s costume earrings (she wore them to junior prom 🌞)

dream job: a writer or an artist or even a therapist but i’m not sure if i could pull the skills needed for any of these jobs on a professional level (also the systems fucked and i have to find a way to live)

dream trip: want to go to italy, particularly to see the italian countryside, and scotland (everybody will make fun of me but i might deeply want to see france and hear french spoken by native speakers...)

favorite food: pasta!!!! especially with alfredo sauce or if it’s ravioli

nationality: american but my last name is obviously german, and i share a lot of ancestors from germany

favorite song: all time fav is “mine” by the 1975

last book read: kids of appetite by david arnold

three fictional universes: you’d like to live in: the one where i’m farmer wives with my mutual rosa, the one where i make s’mores for my friend val and then we take a night walk around town, and the one where i fall asleep in the passengers side of my baby si’s car while we drive around listening to the 1975 (not fictional universes just daydreams 🤧)

tagging: @ikea-boy @easeupkid @boyishs @souplove @familytherapy @sapphothetic @light-eater @airsigh @areweforgiven @ivy1975 (or ur main blog) @myfavouritecolorisblue @juenereveuse @thenineteenseventyfive @mariferish @bluesargnts @moodyhouse @keiras and @lifeviamemes but no pressure at all i’m just taggin my mutuals mwah :)

13 notes · View notes

writethehousedown · 4 years ago

Text

Things Are Really Cool (In Nazareth) (Ninex)- Ortega

a/n: wow hi, welcome to whatever the hell this is? this is a sort of a kind of a n19f verse/masp verse crossover set some years after the originals take place (but you don’t need to have read either to read this), borne out of the semi-autobiographical experience of my last few weeks at work trying to teach five year olds mid-pandemic. basically Nina’s a stressed primary teacher and Monet is her primary teacher girlfriend. this is fulfilling the prompt “Nice” only ten days late and also probably has one million and one typos in my haste to get it out in time for at least Christmas xo regardless, i hope u all enjoy and in the words of boyband JLS, “mewwy cwistmas”.

disclaimer: there are a couple of lines i’ve yoinked out of tv shows here- “lesbian having a panic attack” is adapted from Kimmy Schmidt and the “what are you, forty?” ones are from Always Sunny. leave me alone i’m too tired to be funny at this time of year xo

fic summary: When Nina’s headteacher asks her to pull a Nativity play out of thin air with only a week to organise it, Nina is simply too nice to say no. As a consequence, she is blindly oblivious to what her girlfriend Monet is planning, with useless lesbian results.

Nina knew she was a people pleaser. Always had been, always would be. She was simply too nice to say no to anyone. She had never been one to say no to anything.

She’d never taken the last remaining teabag for herself way back at uni; she’d always elected to leave it for Brooke or Yvie, knowing that Brooke would be grumpy all day if she didn’t have her morning cup of tea and not wanting to deal with the caffeine crash Yvie would experience if she made coffee as a substitute.

It had even started way further back in her life than her twenties. The most rebellious thing she’d ever done in high school was to pull out one of the cables of her German teacher’s computer at the back so she’d spend the whole lesson fixing it instead of teaching their class. In Primary, she was the stereotypical, insufferable goody-two-shoes: didn’t ever lose a minute of Golden Time, finished both her set tasks and the extension work that accompanied them perfectly, and was the worst kind of tell-tale.

(At the time, she thought her teachers loved that- the fact that she acted as their five-year-old corporate spy, ready to report any wrongdoings to headquarters. Contrarily, now that she was a teacher to five year olds, Nina thought that if she heard one more story about who skipped who in the line she would climb very slowly and very carefully into the staffroom microwave and blow herself into fifty million partially-heated bits.)

So when her headteacher ducked her head into her classroom on a cold, wet, rainy Wednesday after all the kids had been dispatched home, Nina panicked. Her eyes darted up to the displays on her walls. Fuck, there were still Halloween pumpkins blu-tacked up there. There was, so far, nothing on her December learning journey wall. And there were still Very Hungry Caterpillars made from bottle tops pushed into dollops of paint stuck to bright green backing paper which had been there since the kids’ first week at school back in August.

Well. Red and green were Christmassy colours. Right?

But Mrs Del Rio didn’t seem all that interested in the state of her wall displays. She’d come to ask Nina if she could film a Nativity play with her class.

“It’s for the parents really,” Bianca had rolled her eyes, folding her arms in her usual no-nonsense way. “Just something they can watch and share with the families since we can’t do a real Nativity. It doesn’t need to be anything big- just a few songs…one, two…say four. And then just have the kids in their costumes with a couple of lines. With a backdrop, y’know, there doesn’t need to be props. Just the baby Jesus…the gifts for the three Kings….maybe a couple of no vacancy signs for the innkeepers…that sort of thing. Just for before we finish up term. Maybe if it could be done by next Friday. That okay?”

And Nina, because she was a people pleaser, had nodded and said yes! and of course! and Bianca had nodded curtly at her in the frostiest thank-you the world had ever seen before leaving.

It had only taken the time in which Bianca’s heels had slowly disappeared from hearing distance for the reality of the situation to sink in for Nina. She’d just agreed to do a whole Nativity play, with songs, and costumes, and props, in the space of eight days.

She was going to be sick like little Jack had done that day he’d come into class and projectile-vomited halfway onto the carpet and halfway into Nina’s outstretched hands.

Nina was so consumed by the all-encompassing panic that she didn’t even flinch when there was a loud, jaunty knock at her classroom door.

“High Court Enforcement,” came a loud, brash voice, Nina finally turning to see who was there with glazed eyes. Willam leant against the doorframe, her messy blonde waves falling over the shoulders of her dark blue jumper like curly vines. She was the only teacher who could match the sass levels of the Year 6s and was a colleague that Nina both loved and feared. Loved because she was straight-talking and blunt and altogether hilarious, but feared because her girlfriend was the deputy head of the school and anything Nina said to her would definitely be reported back as gossip.

Also because she was, for all intents and purposes, a pint-pot riot.

“Nina. Nina. Nina,” Willam said repeatedly, her voice monotone and her persistence irritating. Nina mumbled something out.

“What?”

Nina raked her hands through her shock of frizzy blonde curls and sighed, her stress levels already rising. “I said I’m a lesbian having a panic attack.”

“Oh, that’s a mood. I was sent round to do the collection for the support staff but I’ve already spent forty minutes chatting to Alyssa instead of doing what I was asked. Got a grand total of a fiver so far,” Willam shrugged blithely, coming into Nina’s classroom and perching on one of the tiny munchkin-sized tables. “What’s up?”

The pressure-cooker that her mind was rapidly becoming told Nina to throw caution to the wind and vent, so she told Willam everything in a series of babbles barely comprehensible in the English language.

“So you’ve just agreed to doing a full Nativity video in the space of a week?” Willam cocked her head, pulling a confused face. “Why didn’t you just tell Bianca to fuck off?”

Nina paused, feeling all her panic momentarily leave her body as she fixed Willam with a glare. “Are you expecting me to answer that?”

“No, no. Shit, wouldn’t it have been amazing if you had, though? What d’you think would’ve happened? Maybe she’d’ve shouted so loud at you her lungs would’ve just exploded.”

Nina couldn’t help but blurt out a small laugh. “That’s way too dramatic. She wouldn’t even fire me on the spot because that would mean management having to go in and cover my class tomorrow while they tried to find my replacement.”

Nina regretted the small barb at their management team as soon as it was out, but Willam seemed nonplussed.

“Yeah. Court’s way too impatient to deal with your lil’ rugrats.”

“I’m too impatient to deal with them. I’m too impatient to deal with them on a day to day basis. How I’m going to teach them four Christmas songs in the space of a week, fuck knows.”

Willam cocked her head again, her smile becoming patient. “Well if anyone can do it, it’s you.”

Willam’s words were a small source of comfort to Nina. Suddenly everything seemed doable. She matched her colleague’s smile, glad she’d arrived in that moment. “Thanks, Willam.”

As soon as her words were out, she saw the small, playful twinkle in Willam’s eye. “Because nobody else would’ve been mad enough to agree to the damn thing.”

***

Getting her class sorted and organised for the day couldn’t really be likened to herding cats. No, this process was far more chaotic than that. At half past nine each day what could only be described as a minor tsunami of children hit Nina’s classroom: throwing their jackets into the designated tubs with wild abandon and subsequently knocking anything and everything off her adjacent desk, unloading every possible snack in their lunchboxes into their trays and Nina’s pleas for them to only take one snack out falling on deaf ears, spilling their water bottles and getting the zips on their jackets stuck and wanting to tell Nina a billion and one things that seemed to have happened in the 18 hours they had spent outwith her care.

During the month of December this chaos only intensified. Hats, scarves and gloves littered the classroom floor as they fell off the kids like baubles off a dead Christmas tree, shrieks filled the air as they discovered a new chocolate in the advent calendar, and at least half the class surrounded Nina like festive zombies as they all battled to win the competition of “Who can tell Miss West about what their elf on the shelf had got up to overnight the loudest”.

Nina hammered the little bell she kept on her desk with the palm of her hand, stress levels already rising. “Okay, Reception! Jackets in tubs, snacks in trays and bums on carpet!”

As her class giggled about their teacher’s use of the word “bum”, Nina sat down in her wheely chair and waited for them all to join her on the little strip of carpet in front of her smartboard. It was moments like these where she’d be hit with a sort of out of body experience; she was someone’s teacher, she was this class’ first teacher. She was sitting in front of her class waiting to take the register and start their day. It was slightly overwhelming, even though she’d been doing the job for a number of years now.

Eventually her kids were all organised and she’d taken the register and made sure they all had a lunch to eat that day. Nina made sure to put on her best excited face as she prepared to tell them about the Nativity.

“Right, Reception!” she said, injecting lots of mystery into her voice like a storyteller. “I have got some very exciting news for you all today!”

Their little faces all grew equally excited as they were expectant, and Nina’s heart almost popped. Just then, Harry, a boy with enough gel in his hair to single-handedly keep Brylcreem in business for a year and huge bottle-top glasses’ hand went up.

“Yes, Harry?”

The boy bounced on the carpet, incredibly eager. “Can I tell you what my elf did last night?”

Ten more hands immediately shot up, and Nina’s heart sank. Great.

But she was still teaching four and five year olds and this was truly the most important thing in their little lives, so she fixed a bright smile on her face and tilted her head inquisitively. “What did your elf do?”

Harry was now sitting on his knees, towering over the other children and threatening to knock himself over with every passing second as he swayed in the nonexistent breeze. “He did a poop in my Dad’s shoes!”

The rest of the class shrieked with laughter in response. Internally, Nina was rapidly reaching her wit’s end. Love it. A bit of toilet humour to start off the Nativity rehearsals. Great. Exactly what’s needed. “Oh my goodness! What a cheeky elf!”

“He did three poops! And you know what else? They were cola jellybeans! I ate them!”

Sophie, a girl with long ginger hair in a low ponytail and a gap in her smile where two baby teeth once lived, gasped in horror. “You ate the elf’s poop?!”

The rest of the class fell about laughing. Nina had to get control back of the situation.

“Well thank you very much for sharing, Harry! Okay everyone, let’s pop our hands down.”

There were still ten hands waving proudly in the air like rebellious flags.

“We can do more elf stories at the end of the day if there’s time!” Nina lied. There would not be time. There was never time. But it placated most of her class enough for them to follow the instruction. There was, however, one remaining hand up which belonged to Jason, a boy with hair so platinum blonde it seemed otherworldly.

“It’s not an elf story! I’ve got a question,” he insisted, shouting out despite the fact his hand was already up. Nina relented, just in case he did have something important to ask. Maybe he was about to pee himself. Highly likely with the Reception kids.

Jason, pleased as punch that Nina was allowing him to speak, put his hand down. “Can I tell you a rhyming word I’ve just thought of?”

Nina’s smile grew all the more gritted, and the muscles in her face all the more tense. This was going to be the longest week she had experienced in living memory.

***

Nina would never get tired of living with Monet. The sound of her singing as the shower provided a backing track, the unholy racket she seemed to make when she cooked (a symphony of swearing, the banging of kitchen utensils, and the clattering of saucepans and baking trays). The smell of the Dior Sauvage she used instead of perfume and the Cantu hair custard she combed through her hair after she washed it. The fact that Nina could get a cuddle from her any time she wanted and the soft squash of her arms around her.

But living with Monet was best at Christmastime. The endless arguments they got into about their Christmas decorations and what looked best where, both stemming from a fierce loyalty to their own family traditions. The way they’d write their Christmas cards to their friends with a Christmas film playing in the background, and the way Monet would tease her about having such picture-perfect, font-like, primary-teacher handwriting. The way Monet would get too excited in the supermarket and load party food into Nina’s shopping basket like a child trying to sneak chocolate.

Even though Nina was completely exhausted, she still felt herself smile as she turned her key in the lock and heard her girlfriend loudly singing along with Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree, paired with the blast of the extractor fan.

“Hello?” Nina sing-songed as she closed the door shut, shedding her heavy jacket and her scuffed trainers and her backpack full of jotters that had been haphazardly stuffed in as she left work.

“Hello!” Monet chirped back, in what had become their tradition since moving in together all those years ago. “Your timing’s perfect, I just finished dinner.”

“Ooh. What is for dinner?”

Monet gestured to the pile of grated cheese, pan of bubbling baked beans, and loaf of white bread. “Beans on toast.”

Nina snorted and leaned against the counter. “Wow, don’t I have the most perfect domestic housewife! That must’ve taken, what…two hours?”

Monet reached over and squeezed her side, eliciting a yelp that would probably give their downstairs neighbours the wrong idea. “Shady bitch. It’s this or two rice cakes that’ve been in the cupboard for so long I swear they’re turning fossilised.”

“No, I’m kidding. Of course I’m hungry, thanks hun. I’ll make dinner tomorrow,” Nina promised, sliding into one of their second-hand wooden dining chairs as Monet plated up.

“No you won’t,” Monet frowned. “You look dead. What’re your kids doing to you, beating you with their tiny little chairs?”

“The fucking Nativity,” Nina sighed, pausing to thank Monet as she placed two slices of golden toast covered with beans and flakes of grated cheese down in front of her. Admittedly it did look like absolute heaven.

“Have you told Bianca to piss off yet?” Monet scowled, stabbing her toast so hard she threatened to break the plate in two.

“What kind of fantasy-land school do you work at where you can tell your headteacher to piss off and she actually listens?” Nina cocked an eyebrow at her, and Monet shrugged in agreement as she chewed a mouthful. “No, of course not. I’m going to make it happen, though, even if it kills me. We started learning the songs today, which you would think was a simple enough endeavour. Except my class, who usually can’t shut up if their lives depend on it, have all the singing volume and skill of one of Yvie and Scarlet’s cat’s chew toys. They don’t even sound like cats being strangled, that’d probably be louder. It’s like trying to have a sing-song with a room full of laryngitis patients. Except it’s not a room, because apparently we’re not allowed to sing inside because of covid. But I can teach Phonics and the kids can all make the ‘p’ sound at me until their hearts’ content and shower me with their spit like the world’s shittiest production of Singin’ In The Rain? Anyway, we have to rehearse outside. In December. I think my feet actually fell off.”

As Nina finally finished what had unintentionally become a fully-fledged rant, Monet attempted to compose herself as she wiped away a small tear of laughter from her eye and clutched at her belly. Nina watched as her girlfriend took a few deep breaths, then fixed her with a humoured grin. “But apart from all that, how was your day?”

Nina stuck her tongue out at her in response. “Shut up. How was yours?”

Monet rolled her eyes as she speared a bean. “Awful. Tried to assess time with my class today. God I love them, Neens, but they’re so bad, how can they be that bad?”

“If anyone can help them progress, it’s you,” Nina smiled encouragingly, only getting a shaken head in reply.

“No, I can’t. Nobody can. They’re beyond help. Some of the answers I got today wouldn’t even be believable if they were part of some TV comedy show. What month is Christmas in? ‘Santa’. The kid answered Santa. How many months are there in a year? ‘Sixty six’. How many days are there in a week? ‘Two’. TWO!” Monet cried, outraged. Nina couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled up in her throat, and Monet pointed warningly at her in response. “Don’t you dare laugh. This is my reality.”

“Hey, you laughed at my Nativity nightmare!” Nina giggled, to which Monet chuckled guiltily. Nina paused to swipe a bit of toast around the plate with her fork, mopping up any stray tomato sauce. When she looked up from her plate, she saw Monet tapping at her phone. Nina frowned disapprovingly. “Hey. No phones at the table.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Monet apologised quickly, though didn’t put her phone down yet. “Monique’s just sent me a screenshot of her friend that’s getting engaged. Look at the damn size of this ring.”

Monet turned her phone to show Nina. Pictured was a diamond the size of a small Pacific nation and a band encrusted with tiny gems on the finger of somebody she’d never met. Nina couldn’t help the way she screwed her face up, which made Monet blurt a laugh in response. “Not a fan, then?”

Nina pulled a face in thought. She was sure that kind of ring made some girls happy, but to her it just seemed tacky and over-the-top, not to mention heavy. “I’m sure she likes it, but I wouldn’t want something that huge. Imagine working in a Reception class with that?! Play-dough stuck in all the little crevices. And Jesus, what if you lost it? Nah, it would stress me out owning that. I would just want one simple little gold band and one singular tiny diamond. Much less of a burden.”

Monet snorted a laugh as she finished her last mouthful of dinner. “You are the only girl I’ve ever met that would consider an engagement ring a burden. Christ on a crucifix.”

“Well!” Nina protested, before realising she didn’t really have anything else to defend herself with. Then, she narrowed her eyes at her girlfriend playfully, kicking her under the table. “Why’re you so interested in my engagement ring opinions, anyway? You asking?”

Monet chuckled as she put her phone face-down on the table. “Bold of you to assume I can afford council tax, never mind a diamond.”

Nina smiled, shrugging in agreement. “Yeah, fair. What should we do tonight? I have Maths jotters to mark but then that’s me done.”

Monet tilted her head, her expression thoughtful. “I would say fucking our shit days out but I don’t even have the energy to operate a vibrator.”

Nina almost choked on her food as she laughed. “Christ, that’s a mood. Finish dinner, pyjamas, rewatch The Office for the ninety billionth time then bed at 7pm?”

“Sounds good, babe,” Monet smiled, lifting her glass of water up to cheers with as if it was sparkling wine.

***

“Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way! Oh McFun it is to ride in a waffle sofen sleigh, HEY! Jingle bells, Jin-”

“Woah, woah, woah, woah, woah,” Nina cut in, waving her hands frantically and stopping the twenty-three five and four year olds that had previously been singing their little kidney bean-sized lungs out. “What are the words?”

Her class stared back at her as if she’d just asked her what twenty-eight times thirteen was. Although Jeremiah, who was already working at Year 5 level, could probably have worked that out given enough time.

“Oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh,” Nina said, rhythmically and clearly. “You try.”

The children all parroted it back to her in their little voices, word-perfect. Thank God, thought Nina. Jingle Bells seemed to be the only song they recognised, so if they turned out to not know it after all then Nina would very probably need an inhaler despite the fact she wasn’t at all asthmatic.

“Let’s try it with the music!” Nina said cheerfully, making sure the bluetooth speaker she’d brought outside was still on.

“Miss West,” a small voice piped up belonging to Amber, the human embodiment of a whine. “I’m cold!”

“We’ll get inside soon!” Nina replied patiently. “Just let’s practise it one more time!”

“I’m cold too,” piped up Joshua, Amber’s male counterpart.

“I’m freezing,” Amber offered again.

“I know, it’s very cold outside!” Nina smiled sympathetically, even though her teeth were gritted. “But we can’t do our singing inside because of the virus!”

“Why not?” Amber pouted.

Nina didn’t really know. The answer was because of the care inspectorate guidelines, but that was incredibly far beyond the realms of a five-year-old’s comprehension. Just then, an idea struck her.

“Well we need to sing our songs outside so that Santa can hear them when he’s taking his sleigh out for a test drive!” she said animatedly. The wide eyes and ohhhh-s she received in reply made her feel like a genius. Move over, Steven Hawking. “Okay, one more time with Jingle Bells. Nice and loud for Santa!”

“Miss West?”

Nina blinked slowly and heavily, taking a small breath before answering the newest child that demanded her attention. “Yes, Sophie?”

“I’m cold.”

“I’m cold!! We’re all cold!!” Nina replied quickly, just that shade away from snapping so that her class knew she meant business. “We’re doing the song one more time and then we’re going inside! So nice big smiles, nice loud voices, and here…we…go!”

Nina pressed play on the song before any more children could regale her with tales of how their body temperatures had dropped to that of a snowman’s.

“Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way!” they all enthusiastically sang. “Oh McFun it is to ride in a waffle sofen sleigh!”

Nina rubbed so hard at her tired eyes that she thought they might disappear into her skull. She was momentarily glad of the fact that she didn’t have a teaching assistant to help her, as to have any other adult witness this would be embarrassing in the extreme.

Just then she noticed around five parents queued up at the nursery adjacent to the playground, watching with wry smiles on their faces as they waited for their children.

“One more time!” Nina cried, as she stopped the music with freezing cold hands.

***

“So Nina, when you gonna wife your girlfriend?”

Nina very nearly spat out her tea, a horrifying milky brown hurricane only just avoided. She hadn’t been expecting to answer deep, meaningful life questions in the staffroom during a lunch hour, but Willam was the human incarnation of petrol on a campfire and with her around things were always in danger of going from zero to a hundred very quickly. To Nina’s relief Courtney was also in the staffroom, and she whipped around from the countertop and gave her girlfriend daggers.

“Willam!” Courtney chastised her in a hiss that Nina wasn’t quite sure was meant to be audible. Willam only gave her an incredulous glare, affronted that she seemed to be the voice of reason in the conversational chaos.

“What?! Just askin’. I mean you’re what…twenty-nine? Twenty eight?”

“Twenty-six,” Nina replied. She was now at the age where being assumed she was older than she was was a curse, not a blessing. (If she’d told seventeen-year-old Nina that one day she would be disappointed at no longer being ID’d for wine at Sainsburys she’d have laughed in her face.)

“Exactly. That’s wifeing age. Mid to late twenties.”

“Hey, I passed that stage long ago, where the hell’s my ring?“ Courtney asked Willam, stirring the coffee she’d poured into one of the many, many “World’s Best Teacher!” mugs that littered the staffroom cupboards. Willam responded by turning around in her chair and positioning her pencil skirt-clad ass in the air.

“Right here, bitch!”

“Christ Almighty,” Courtney turned away from her, rolling her eyes so hard they looked like little spheric dice. As Willam gave her best impression of a seal on laughing gas, Nina cast her eyes over to Sasha who was sitting at the other end of the staffroom. As they caught each others’ eyes they shared a long-suffering smile that mourned the death of peace and quiet.

Nina was glad the conversation had been diverted from the subject of her perceived lack of marriage plans. Until Sasha opened her mouth, that is.

“I wouldn’t worry, Nina. Me and Shea haven’t had that conversation either. I mean we’d both love to, but there’s more important stuff for us right now, you know? We’re saving for a house and I think we’d rather live in a place we’ve chosen for the foreseeable future than just having one singular big lavish day.”

“It’s all about what you want to do with the person you love the most, isn’t it? Not just doing what society wants you to do,” Courtney chipped in, her voice warm and kind. “Like me and Willam used to be total party girls before we got our shit together. And now, like…there’s nothing I’d rather do of a weekend than curl up with her on the sofa and get all cosy with a film and a blanket and a cup of tea.”

Willam scoffed affectionately. “That’s your ideal weekend plan? What are you, forty?”

“Yes? As are you?” Courtney replied incredulously. Nina heard Sasha snort in her chair. As she turned her gaze back to the other two girls she realised that Willam was still looking at her expectantly. Nina sank back into her seat, a little reserved.

“It’s not really something we’ve spoken about? Well…no, we have spoken about it, obviously,” she babbled, watching as Willam took on the look of someone witnessing a victim of cardiac arrest. “Like we both want to get married. To each other, of course. But teaching is just such a busy job all the time and…you know, we only bought our flat last Summer and…I don’t know, it’s nice not to have everything happen all at once, right?”

Courtney nodded emphatically in agreement. “Of course! And I mean, if she asked, you’d say yes, right?”

Nina had to stop herself from pulling a face. How am I having this conversation with my boss? “Well, yeah. God, I couldn’t imagine life without her at all.”

Willam pretended to gag, which Nina thought was pretty rich from the woman who had begun the entire conversation. Courtney seemed to pick up on her girlfriend’s distaste.

“I don’t think Willam has ever said anything that cute about me!”

Willam turned around to look at her girlfriend, disbelief on her face. “Yeah, I only left my damn husband for you. Fuck me, right?”

Nina’s eyes widened as Sasha gave a yelp from across the staffroom. That was a small piece of workplace gossip she hadn’t expected to learn today. As Courtney’s face turned red and she shot Willam a warning glare, she turned to Nina once more.

“Nina, how’s the Nativity going?” Courtney beamed artificially at her, moving the conversation along with all the grace and decorum of a one-wheeled snow plow.

Considering the question, Nina thought that she’d rather be discussing marriage plans with her boss and colleagues again. “It’s going.”

“That’s a ringing endorsement. I’m sure that was on the poster of Titanic too,” Willam chipped in.

“It wouldn’t be any less disastrous than the actual fate of the Titanic, at least the passengers could’ve probably remembered the words to fucking Jingle Bells,” Nina deadpanned, causing Willam to break into fits of clubbed seal laughter.

Sasha pouted sympathetically from the other side of the room. “It’s those cute bits that the parents love, though, isn’t it? They won’t mind if they get the words wrong.”

“I’m sure there needs to be a foundation of at least an audible tune though, Sash,” Nina smiled resignedly back at her.

“If Bianca wants a Nativity so bad, just tell her to come teach your class,” Willam half-suggested, half-yelled. “Or get Court to teach them! They prolly don’t need to be in tune anyway!”

Courtney’s expression appeared to be the same as Nina’s after her morning’s rehearsal. “Do you ever stop talking shit?”

“You think I’m bad? That bell is going to go for the Comp’s lunch break in five minutes, Bob is gonna arrive, an’ then it’s RIP our eardrums,” Willam said, pointing to the staffroom door for dramatic effect.

“At least Bob has never presented his clothed arsehole to his partner in front of his colleagues,” Courtney cut in at once, her tone deadpan and making Nina splutter a laugh.

“Aw, c’mon Court! That’s just banter. These girls don’t mind.”

“It’s unprofessional!” Courtney clutched her chest. Willam only snorted in response.

“Unprofessional? What are you, forty?”

“We’re the same age!!” Courtney cried in response, her incredulous tone only setting Nina off in a further fit of laughter.

It was only later on that night once she had driven back home, parked, and approached her and Monet’s flat that Nina remembered the staffroom conversation. She cast her gaze up to their first-floor window in their red brick building, almost being able to feel the way her heart gave a swell at the sight of their Christmas tree framed proudly within the glass. And as she got in through the front door, Monet greeted her with a hug and a takeaway leaflet.

“We’ve got nothing in the fridge, so I thought we could get noodles? This came through the door today and I think-” Monet raises her eyebrows, slapped the leaflet into the palm of her hand decisively. “- it’s a sign from God.”

“Well, when you put it like that,” Nina laughed, shrugging off her coat and feeling grateful for not having to cook.

It was only when they were both curled up on the couch, empty pad thai containers in front of them, that Nina turned to Monet and saw the lights on the tree reflected in her eyes. She turned to her girlfriend, threw an arm round her and snuggled in to her side.

“What’s up?” Monet asked, her voice soft and sleepy and a little concerned.

“Nothing,” Nina sighed. It was true. There wasn’t really anything up, and she was the happiest she’d ever been. But she still turned to Monet, tilting her head up inquisitively. “You don’t feel under any pressure at all, do you?”

Monet snorted. “I feel under pressure to get fifteen children who can’t write the word cat on their own to magically be able to write a sentence by the end of the year, yeah.”

Nina rolled her eyes. “No! I mean, like…in life. You didn’t just…buy this flat with me because you felt you had to, right? You wouldn’t do anything because you felt obliged to?”

Monet raised a single eyebrow back at her. “Yeah, I decided to piss my life savings away on a deposit for a flat because I felt I had to. Jesus Christ, Neens.”

“No, no, I know,” Nina chuckled, realising how silly the whole thing now sounded. “But I just mean…in life, like milestones and stuff. You’d never do stuff because you felt you had to keep up, in some way? Reach some goal by a certain age?”

Monet brought an arm around Nina and cuddled her closer, kissing her hair and resting her chin on top of her head. “Everything I do in life, I do because I want to. Especially when it comes to you. Promise.”

Nina gave her girlfriend a squeeze, happy. She took a deep breath, smelt the fabric softener on Monet’s jumper that they both used but just seemed to smell better and feel softer on everything Monet wore.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

***

Nina sat in a child-sized chair with her knees practically up to her chest, a crumpled, printed-out script on her lap that she’d hastily typed up on her work iPad’s notes app the following evening. Her class sat behind her in costumes pulled on over their school uniforms, with books and pens and pieces of paper with botched photocopying on the back under strict instructions not to talk until the whole thing was filmed.

“Okay, Amber!” she smiled breezily at the small girl whose school blouse was sticking out under her angel costume. “You’re kicking off the video. So your line is two thousand years ago, an angel came to a woman called Mary. Practise it for me?”

Amber gripped the hem of her taffeta skirt in two tiny white-knucked fists. “I don’t want to.”

Nina bit her lip. Great start. Fantastic. “We can give it a try together?”

Reluctantly, Amber parroted the words in tandem with her. So far so good.

“Okay. Now do you want to go up against the backdrop and I can film you doing it?”

Amber’s ponytail full of flyaways swung wildly as she shook her head. Nina thought for a moment. Then her eyes came to rest on Hazel- the class’ Mary and, coincidentally, Amber’s best friend.

“What about if Hazel stands with you?”

That seemed to change things and, only slightly hesitantly, both girls got up in front of the hastily staple-gunned silver tinsel.

“Okay Amber. Two thousand years ago, an angel came to a woman called Mary. Ready?”

A nod in reply.

“Go!”

Amber took a deep, shaky breath in. “Two thousand years ago….a woman called Mary.”

Nina stopped filming, fixed the girl with a kind smile. “An angel came to a woman called Mary. Try again?”

The iPad was back in filming mode, and Amber went again. “Two thousand years ago, a…a…a little cute angel came to Mary.”

Nina stopped filming, fixed Amber with two thumbs up. That’ll do.

Things seemed to be going well as Hazel and Oliver (or, Mary and Angel Gabriel) got through their lines without too many bumps in the road. Then, it was time for Amber to take to the stage (or blue curtain with a tinsel border) once more.

“Okay Amber, so your line this time is…Mary told her husband Joseph. Want to practise?”

“Mary told her husband Joseph,” Amber repeated, with all the enthusiasm of a patient about to undergo a colonoscopy. With two days til the deadline, this would have to suffice.

“Perfect! Ready? Three…two…one…go!” Nina smiled encouragingly, as she hit record.

Amber stood beside Mary and Joseph, a little grin on her own face. “Mary told her husband Joyce.”

“…Joseph,” Nina reminded her. Where the fuck had Joyce come from? She hit record again.

“Three…two…one…go!”

“Mary told her husband Joyce.”

Nina couldn’t stop herself from bursting out laughing. “Joseph, Amber!”

The little girl nodded earnestly. “Joseph Amber.”

Nina spluttered. “No…Amber is your name. Joseph is Mary’s husband.”

“Ohhhhhh.”

Nina shook her head, amused. This was what she loved about teaching. None of the other girls working from home could say that they got to spend their day feeling like they were stuck in an episode of You’ve Been Framed.

“Go again. Mary told her husband Joseph. Three…two…one…”

“Mary told…em…um…I can’t remember,” Amber giggled. Nina could feel her own giggles bubbling up inside herself, but she had to stop otherwise it would set her whole class off.

“Mary told her husband Joseph,” Nina repeated, both Amber and Hazel now giggling to each other. “Shh shh! Okay…three…two…one…”

Amber composed herself, took a deep breath. “Mary told her husband Joyce.”

Christ Alive. Nina gasped incredulously, unable to help herself from laughing now. The whole class, Amber herself, and Nina was pretty sure God, were all doing the same. She put her head in her hands, her whole body now shaking with laughter. “Joseph!!”

She already couldn’t wait to tell everybody she knew this story. Not least so she could cement in her mind that it was something that actually happened to her, and not just simply the script of a comedy show she’d dreamed up. Miraculously, mercifully, she managed to get the rest of her class settled down and for Amber to say the correct line on film, even if Nina could be faintly heard frantically mouthing “Joseph!” in the background.

Eventually they reached the innkeepers. Easy enough, in theory.

“Okay, Carter,” Nina smiled encouragingly at the first innkeeper. “When Mary and Joseph ask for a room, you say ‘no, sorry!’. Okay?”

Carter nodded, half a finger stuck up his nose. Nina gestured to him to put his hands down, then began filming. As directed, Mary and Joseph asked if there was any room at the inn.

“YES,” the little boy shouted. The whole class burst out laughing. Nina did not.

Just then, Willam walked past the open door with her class. She gave her a look of inquisition, shooting her a tentative, questioning thumbs up.

Nina put her head in her hands in reply.

***

By some miracle of nature (although it could also have been Nina giving up on work that afternoon) Nina had made it back to the flat before five o’clock. This never happened- five pm was usually the time she left work, but a day full of recording Nativity clips and then putting them together on iMovie while her class played (read; caused havoc) had been tiring and she needed Monet, chocolate, and Merlot.

Only the first thing she heard when she opened the door to her flat wasn’t Monet singing, or the hum of the extractor fan. It was the grainy crackle of a Zoom call and an incredibly distinctive voice.

“So when you doin’ it? Do it tonight. Do it when she gets home from work.”

Monet’s voice- humoured, long-suffering. “I’m not doing it then, Vanj, she’ll be exhausted.”

“That was honestly your best suggestion? When she gets home from work?” Brooke’s voice. “Aren’t you the pinnacle of romance!”

Nina had realised that Monet was on a Zoom call with all the girls, from the way Vanessa had obviously kissed Brooke on camera was being met with half a dozen cries in protest from the others. She excitedly shrugged off her coat and unwrapped herself from her scarf, eager to see her friends again. Part of her was intrigued, though. Why were they all calling each other without her?

“My question is how you’re going to do it,” Akeria’s voice came, as questioning as always. “It needs to be good but it better not be too damn cheesy.”

“An’ you better make sure she got her nails done, she might say no if she ain’t got her nails done!” Silky came shouting through Monet’s Macbook speakers.

“Yeah, you better make it as romantic as you can, Mo,” Scarlet added, making Nina wonder what the hell it was they were all talking about. Before she could wonder any further, she heard Yvie’s distinctive snort of a laugh.

“You are in no position to speak about romance, I mean, need I remind you how you asked me?”

“Shut up,” Scarlet replied, her tone a little bashful as the other girls laughed.

“Monet I could hire you a plane if you really wanted,” Plastique offered, making Nina snort despite the fact she had no idea what the conversation was about.

“Shut up, bitch,” Nina could practically hear the roll of Akeria’s eyes.

Nina toed her shoes off and finally padded through to the kitchen, where Monet’s eyes grew wide when she saw her, her body visibly flinching.

“Hey, babe!” she smiled, looking a little startled. “You’re home earlier than usual!”

“Oh sorry, am I interrupting your Zoom call with all your side chicks?” Nina deadpanned, forcing her way onto Monet’s lap to see her friends on the screen.

“Ninaaa!!!” Vanessa’s face popped up first, her friend waving excitedly as she sat on her sofa in Brooke’s arms. “How are you, girl?”

“Shattered,” Nina sighed, rubbing her eyes harshly. “Just filmed the whole Nativity with the rugrats today. Think it took ten years off my lifespan. How’re you?”

“Good,” Brooke smiled back through the screen. “We ordered our Christmas food today. Trying to convince this one that we don’t need twelve pigs in blankets between two people.”

Vanessa scowled back at her from their position on the sofa. “Uh, yes the hell we do!”

“Twelve pigs in blankets as well as the turkey, stuffing, and all the veg? Y’all are gonna explode,” Akeria said disapprovingly.

“Kiki! How are you?” Nina cried with delight, seeing her friend’s tired but smiling face appear on screen.

“Good. Don’t stop work for a while yet, but it’s fine. Still flat hunting.”

“How’s Pri?” Nina asked, heartened by the way Akeria looked down, trying and failing to suppress a smile.

“Yeah, she’s good. Still batshit crazy. Horny all the time.”

“The ideal girlfriend, really,” Yvie said, a wry smile on her face.

“Nina!” Silky suddenly cut in, yelling. “Did you hear any of what we were talkin’ about before?”

Nina frowned, shook her head. “Something about planes and nails. And cheese. I’m too exhausted to have paid enough attention. Why, were you having a mad bitchfest about me?”

“Trying to ask the girls how best to dump you,” Monet deadpanned. Nina shot Monet a look and squeezed her leg, resulting in her girlfriend yelping and cracking her knee off the table.

Whatever the previous conversation was was soon forgotten about as excited catchups took over. Silky was excited as she was interviewing some singer that Nina had never heard of and wanted the girls to help her work out what questions she was going to ask her. Yvie and Scarlet were lamenting the fact they had to host both of their families for Christmas and had bought a turkey so big Scarlet wasn’t sure it would fit in their oven, and Plastique was telling them the weirdest things she’d been gifted by companies desperate for her to endorse them on Instagram.

“I got a box of sex toys from LoveHoney. That was probably the most random. Me and Naomi had a wild fucking night that night.”

“STOP BEIN’ GROSS,” Silky had yelled down the line, causing Nina to hammer Monet’s volume down button.

Eventually the call came to an end, but not before lots of promises to catch up soon once the situation across the world was better than the shitshow it was currently. As Monet closed her laptop, Nina threw her arms around her neck and nuzzled into her side.

“I miss them,” she sighed, and Monet patter her back comfortingly.

“I know, babe. I miss them too.”

There was a moment of pensive silence, and then Nina spoke again, the Nativity never too far away from her mind.

“I can’t export this video.”

“What?”

“The Nativity video. I can’t export it,” Nina muttered pitifully against her girlfriend’s shoulder.

Monet kissed her hair, making to stand up. “You get a cup of tea. I’ll fix your video.”

“You’re the best,” Nina sighed gratefully, walking over to the kettle.

It was only after she’d sat down with a cup of tea and Monet had promised she’d sorted her video that Nina thought about the conversation she’d walked in on earlier.

She had a strange feeling that it had something to do with her.

***

When Nina arrived at work that morning, she could tell something was…a little different. She couldn’t really tell what it was. It started with the slightly knowing smile Tatianna shot her from across the corridor.

“Congrats, Nina!” she shouted down to her before she ducked into her own classroom.

“Uh…thanks,” she replied a little too late. Okay, the Nativity process had been stressful, but did she really need congratulated?

She supposed she appreciated it. It had been a whirlwind of a process, after all.

Only the odd thing was, it continued. The congratulations came pouring in; Alaska, Ivy from the Nursery school, Alyssa had cooed and gushed for ages about how exciting it was and how happy she was for her.

Nina had only blinked in reply, a little bewildered. “Thanks, Alyssa. It was a stress, but they managed to pull it off in the end.”

Alyssa gave her a funny look, then realisation seemed to dawn on her. “Oh…they’re non-binary! You know I never knew that, sorry sugar. Well congratulations to you both.”

With that, Alyssa hurried away only leaving Nina more confused than ever.

What in the fuck?

When the bell rang and Nina went to collect her class from the line, things only got weirder. Before she could hurry her class inside, Harry’s Mum waved at her from behind the school gate, beckoning her over. Nina’s heart began to sink- she was going to ask her why Harry was only a shepherd, wasn’t she, or why he didn’t get a solo during Little Donkey, or some-other-bullshit-like-that.

To Nina’s surprise, she held up a sparkly gift bag.

“Hi, sorry for bothering you!” she beamed at her. This was already unheard of- a parent apologising for taking up her time? Nina was beginning to question if she had slipped through a crack in the fabric of reality while she’d been sleeping when Harry’s Mum spoke again. “Me and the other parents had a quick whipround and got you a couple of things and a little card to say congratulations! We thought it was the least we could do given your lovely news.”

It was only after Nina had thanked her profusely, taken the bag and led her children into class that her words sank in. What lovely news was she on about?

Nina taught that morning in a daze. Well, ‘taught’ was pushing it; the last few days of term were always movie days or games days, and today was the former. Nina had decided to inject a bit of an educational element to it by showing her class Nativity and then asking them if they thought the film’s play was better than the one they’d put on. Despite it being one of her favourite Christmas films, though, she still wondered why everyone had been congratulating her today. Maybe her Nativity video had really been so amazingly good that people just had to comment on it. Nina decided that this was the only plausible explanation, and so was feeling particularly spirited as it reached breaktime and she sent the kids out to play.

She was sitting in her classroom reading all the messages she’d missed on her group chat when Willam practically crashed through her door.

“Oh my God!” she yelled, practically vibrating with excitement. “Congratulations, you lucky fucker! That’s gotta be the cutest damn thing I’ve ever seen. I mean Bianca probably wants your head on a plate for keeping it in, but still! How’re you celebrating? Should we go to the shop at lunchtime and get prosecco? I mean it’s the last few days of term, I’m sure drinking on the job’s allowed. Court wouldn’t tell anyone.”

Willam was talking with such speed that it took a few seconds for Nina to register everything she’d said. “Why…would Bianca want my head on a plate?”

Willam snorted. “I mean it’s kinda obvious. You don’t think she’s gonna be pissed about it? Then again, maybe she won’t. I don’t know, I can’t get inside her head. I’m not on that Honey I Shrunk The Kids kinda bullshit.”

Nina felt her head was so clouded that even if she possessed the brightest fog lights in the world she still couldn’t see what Willam was trying to say.

“Willam,” she asked, slowly and carefully as she rested her head in her hands. “What the hell are you talking about?”

There was a pause as Willam froze, then as her eyes became huge and wide as she slowly raised a finger to point at Nina. “Jesus Harvey Christ. You…you don’t know, do you?”

Nina frowned, bewildered. “Know what?”

“Oh my God. You don’t know. This is the best thing ever. You don’t even know!” Willam howled with laughter, then, before Nina could ask what she was meant to not know, Willam had dashed out of her classroom and had begun yelling into the hall. “Courtney! Court! She doesn’t know!”

Nina began to feel her heart beat in heavy thuds as the bell went to signal the end of playtime. What didn’t she know?

Eventually Nina managed to reach the end of the day. How, she didn’t know. She was so confused by all the different odd events of the day that she felt she didn’t properly make sense at any point to her class, but that probably didn’t matter as they were all so wrapped up in Christmas nonsense that Nina could’ve left the classroom and they wouldn’t have given a shit.

She was just getting ready to leave work for the weekend when Bianca stuck her head into her classroom and made her almost jump fifty feet in the air.

“Nina,” she began, in her own blunt, abrasive way. She didn’t wait for Nina to greet her as she continued. “I know you must be wandering around with your head in the clouds at the moment, but next time do you think you could maybe just run the video by me first? I mean you’re very lucky that the parents took that well. I mean it’s really about the kids, y’know?”

Nina could only blink at her wide-eyed like a deer in the headlights, getting into trouble but not entirely sure what for. Loath to say anything in response, she simply nodded.

“I mean you should’ve really kept it out,” Bianca frowned. She let the awkward, tense silence hang in the air for a few moments before a humoured smile appeared on her face. “But congratulations. I’m very happy for you.”

Without stopping for Nina to reply, Bianca had turned on her heel and left her classroom. Nina could only look at the space she’d previously been standing in. Maybe all of this was a dream. A fever dream. She’d probably contracted some sort of illness and was experiencing some hallucinogenic vision.

She didn’t know how she made it home without causing a crash, but she managed, and as soon as she was through the door she began to vent to the person she loved most.

“Monet!” she called through to the kitchen, hanging her belongings up. “I’ve had the weirdest fucking day in living memory. So first all the teachers were congratulating me…then I got a present from the parents…then Willam was screaming about me not knowing something…and then Bianca gave me a row at the end of the day…but I still don’t know exactly why…but then she said congratulations to me too?”

It was only when Nina stopped and walked through to the kitchen that she saw the kitchen table all done up with candles and laid beautifully, Nina’s favourite meal (slow cooker beef and buttery mash) on two plates, and Monet sitting at the table with her makeup done, dressed in a backless blue bodycon that Nina had once very nearly broke the zip of trying to rip it off her one weekend away.

“Uh…” Nina frowned, more confused than ever. Slowly, as a smile spread across Monet’s face, she began to connect all the dots of weird and the picture it presented illustrated that somehow her girlfriend had to be behind it all. “Okay, what’s going on?”

Monet got up and leant against the kitchen counter. She very gently took both of Nina’s hands in hers. “You didn’t watch the whole video once I exported it, did you?”

Something like dread crossed with excitement began to pool in Nina’s gut. She narrowed her eyes. “Monet…what did you do?”

Wordlessly, Monet reached back across to the table where she picked up her phone and loaded up the Nativity video. Skipping to the end, she got past the end of Jingle Bells and showed the video to Nina. The screen faded to black, and then, Nina watched as another little title card faded into view.

To the teacher that always gives so much of herself to others, I now want to give all of myself to you.

Miss West, will you marry me?

Love, Monet x

And suddenly everything in Nina felt as if it was made of fire, adrenaline and jet fuel. Her eyes flew open, her hand smacked against her shocked, gaping mouth. Her pulse raced and her heart hammered and all of her limbs turned to jelly to the extent she wasn’t sure she was able to stand any more. When she took her eyes off her phone screen and looked at Monet, her girlfriend was down on their kitchen floor, down on one knee like in every princess movie Nina had ever seen, her hair soft and curled and loose on her shoulders and a bright smile on her painted taupe lips. Gemstone tears brimmed in her dark eyes and hung from her lashes like icicles, and there, in her outstretched hands, was an open navy box.

Inside was a ring - gold band, one small diamond - and it was when Nina saw it that she gave a sob, her own tears springing from her eyes like a broken fountain, uncontrollable and erratic.

“Oh, baby, c’mere,” Monet gave a small laugh, shaking her head and immediately rising from the floor to wrap her arms around her in a hug. Nina took a few shaky, shallow breaths, pawing at Monet’s chest to release herself from her grip and look her in the eyes.

“You! You knew…all this time, and you…you put it in the video, oh my GOD, Monet, I could’ve got in so much trouble…I did get in so much trouble, oh my God…and you didn’t even tell me-”

“I thought you’d at least watch the damn thing through before you uploaded it!” Monet burst out laughing through her tears, and Nina joined in in a lightheaded, giddy way.

“I can’t believe this is real. Fuck. My whole body feels like that time we did poppers in Crete. Oh my God. Is this happening? You want to marry me?”

“Well, I would love to marry you, but I’m waiting on an answer,” Monet smiled bashfully, bringing her arm out from around Nina’s waist and holding the ring up so Nina could see it.

The diamond only seemed to glisten more when she saw it through the tears in her own eyes, and the gold shone warm like the brightest star. It was an engagement ring- her engagement ring- and it was real, and it was surreal, but Monet was in front of her waiting for an answer with tears in her eyes and hope in her heart that matched her own.

And Nina had never been one to say no to anything.

#rpdr fanfiction #ninex #background witney #monet x change #nina west #willam belli #courtney act #things are really cool in nazareth #ortega #fluff #kidfic #proposal fic #ficmas 2020 #day 14: nice #tw: coronavirus reference #submission

15 notes · View notes

favoritefightingfrenchgoth · 5 years ago

Text

huge masterlist of leftist (mainy, some lib) videos, some docs, some articles, divided by topic: that i will edit and add more to later:

Far Right/Alt Right/Fascists:

Charlottesville: The True Alt Right (Goes over the entire Charlottesville rally while using footage/images from the rally and march, including footage from the Nazis that they had livestreamed, how the Nazis began assaulting antifascist protestors, responses to the incident, and how ALL of them are Nazis)

The Cult of Tradition (Goes over the myths and truths of the Founding Fathers/ colonizers, slave owners, American Revolution. Argues against the defenders of statues and monuments)

Philosophy of anti-fascists

Decrypting the Alt Right, how to recognize a fascist + Debating the Alt Right + How to Never Lose a Debate with a Fascist + The Alt Right Playbook series

Handmaids Tale: Spotting Fascism (shows clips from the show including gore),

How to lose an argument

Fox News keeps breaking its own rules

Why the Alt Right is Wrong + What the Alt Right fears + The Lies of Red Ice TV (don’t go into comments, full of Nazis) and part 2

Pewdiepie and the rebranding of white nationalism + The PewDiePipeline: how edgy humor leads to violence Part 2 + Pewdiepie is a Nazi + Pewdiepie and the problem with (fake) racism + Pewdiepie mask off + Pewdiepie doesn’t understand hate symbols

How Cultural Marxism became the Far Right’s scapegoat + Hbomberguy’s Cultural Marxism

Debunking the Alt RIght: Pool parties + + The Golden One: A measured response

How PragerU is lying to you Part 2 Part 3 + Brexit: PragerU vs Reality + PragerU - Big Joel + Dennis Prager is a dick to Holocaust victims + PragerU is conservative junk food + PragerU and Poverty: Misinformation Amateur Hour + PragerU and Justice: a conservative nightmare + PragerU and Marriage: a conservative fever dream

Guns in the Third Reich: A response to Shapiro + others + Ben Shapiro and the politics of Imagination + Leftist’s response to Ben’s 10 tips

The Easy Answers of Youtube Conservatism

Who’s at fault for the refugee crisis? + Stochastic Terrorism and Christchurch

Is Black Panther Alt Right? (No)

Fox News: How to whitewash an atrocity

Getting Sweaty about globalism

The West + Does the West hate itself? + Why do They hate The West?

How societies turn cruel

Were the Crusades defensive? (No)

Stefan Molyneux’s Fall of Rome + Stefan Molyneux, Star Wars The Force Awakens + Stefan Molyneux, The truth about the truth about Wonder Woman + We don’t talk about Elliot Roger - response to Stefan Molyneux + Stefan Molyneux, Aboriginal Australian History and ‘White Guilt’

Racists only have one solution

Trump

Jordan Peterson and The Story of Jordan Peterson + Peterson doesn’t understand Nazism + PhilosophyTube’s Jordan Peterson & The Meaning of Life + Peterson is not profound + Peterson is everything he criticizes and can’t read + The wasteland of Jordan Peterson

Taking feminists out of context + Power fantasy, male objectification, & lady fanservice + Anita Sarkeesian and the people who hate her + InnuendoStudios Why are you so angry? series

Do women destroy civilizations? (No) + She-Ra broke the brains of Anti-SJWs + Does Intersectionality destroy Individuality?

Anti feminism (Ableism abound) + Anti feminism (Warning: Lauren Southern) + Anti feminism (guy uses ableist slurs) + Anti feminism vs facts + Red Pill: Strange Art of Men’s Rights Activism and part two + Women in video game history - The Serfs + Lauren Southern is wrong about tradition

Why Paul Joseph Watson is wrong about everything

The Serfs Steven Chowder

Outrage News + Soyboys: A measured response

How to fall down the Anti SJW rabbit hole

Stonetoss and how hate speech spreads

Sargon of Akkad can’t read (Anti feminism, racism) + Sargon’s petition: a measured response + #FreeSargon: a measured response + Big Joel’s Sargon of Akkad + On Sargon

Joe Rogan Gateway into the Alt Right and part 2 + Pakman gobbles Joe Rogan

FarradaySpeaks - My descent into the alt right pipeline

Dave Rubin gets Orbed + Dave Rubin: Lazy Propagandist

Can women chess? (Yes)

What is virtue signalling?

Bolsonaro & Brazil’s struggle for truth & memory + Bolsonaro & Latin American Fascism + Why Pinochet Apologists Are Wrong (RIP Allende) + Venezuela: The True Face of the Opposition and this + Bolivia is descending into Dictatorship, here’s why and part 2 + Joanna Hausmann is lying about Venezuela (also, German name, south american heritage... 👀👀👀)

Snowflakes-- The Right's War on the Individual

Sports

Hats off to Tim Pool + Tim Pool completely unraveled and backfires bad (self own)

Debunking Steven Crowder on Universal Healthcare

Cuphead: The Fake Outrage

The Boy Who Cried Racist

Denial as a tool of the radical right

The Limits of Logic - Examining Right Wing Logic Through Star Trek and Wittgenstein

Refugees and Human Rights and Part 2 (ties into far right) + Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Laws

Was Hitler a Socialist? (No) + Were the Nazis Socialist? (No)

I can go a bit over Nazis not being socialists also bc I have gotten into arguments about this topic.

Nazis cuddled up with monopolists/big business, protected private businesses, the English word “privatization” was invented to describe their economic policy by the magazine The Economist. They were always anti socialist and anti communist and combined it with antisemitism often using the phrases “Jewish Bolshevism” and “Jewish Marxism”.

Quotes from Hitler’s Mein Kampf, (there’s much more than these, he got very angry over Marx and other Jewish leftists, equating Judaism and communism/Marxism) warning: some antisemitism:

“In the years 1913 and 1914, I, for the first time in various circles which today in part faithfully support the National Socialist movement, expressed the conviction that the question of the future of the German nation was the question of destroying Marxism.”

“While the Jews in their Marxist and democratic press proclaimed to the whole world the lie about 'German militarism' and sought to incriminate Germany by all means, the Marxist and democratic parties were obstructing any comprehensive training of the German national man-power.”

“Marxism represents the most striking phase of the Jewish endeavour to eliminate the dominant significance of personality in every sphere of human life and replace it by the numerical power of the masses.”

Hitler on coopting leftist language and symbolism to get the workers on their side: “The fact that we had chosen red as the colour for our posters sufficed to attract them to our meetings. The ordinary bourgeoisie were very shocked to see that, we had also chosen the symbolic red of Bolshevism and they regarded this as something ambiguously significant. The suspicion was whispered in German Nationalist circles that we also were merely another variety of Marxism, perhaps even Marxists suitably disguised, or better still, Socialists. The actual difference between (National) Socialism and Marxism still remains a mystery to these people up to this day. The charge of Marxism was conclusively proved when it was discovered that at our meetings we deliberately substituted the words 'Fellow-countrymen and Women' for 'Ladies and Gentlemen' and addressed each other as 'Party Comrade'. We used to roar with laughter at these silly faint-hearted bourgeoisie and their efforts to puzzle out our origin, our intentions and our aims. We chose red for our posters after particular and careful deliberation, our intention being to irritate the Left, so as to arouse their attention and tempt them to come to our meetings – if only in order to break them up – so that in this way we got a chance of talking to the people.

“First of all they appealed to their followers to ignore us and keep away from our meetings. Generally speaking this appeal was heeded. But, as time went on, more and more of their followers gradually found their way to us and accepted our teaching. Then the leaders became nervous and uneasy. They clung to their belief that such a development should not be ignored for ever, and that terror must be applied in order to put an end to it.”

Here’s a 1923 interview transcript with Hitler saying the “Socialist” in National Socialist isn’t about socialism and how he tried to redefine socialist in a nationalist and a “by Aryan people, for Aryan people, while everyone still has private property and stuff” way. Here he also kinda goes over this in Mein Kampf.

Nazis who were left economically only are Strasserists, Strasserists in the Nazi Party were killed in 1934′s Night of the Long Knives with George Strasser being killed while Otto Strasser had been in exile from 1930. In 1933, Nazis came up with Reichstag Fire Decree + political prisoners (mainly communists and socialists) were rounded up and were put in the first concentration camps)

Canada’s 10,000 person Antia Riot - Battle of Christie Pits

Manufactured Milkshake hysteria + Revenge of the milkshakes + The Ballad of Andy Ngo

Free Speech:

Freeze Peach + The fatal effects of Hate Speech + Ur-Fascism, Free Speech, and those who forgot

The Snowflake Generation? A Response

It’s Just a Joke + Just be nice you nerds

The Marketplace of Ideas: Germany vs USA + Why Political Correctness kinda rules + Steven Crowder and the silencing of dissident media + The Serfs on Deplatforming

Race:

America is racist + Is the 2nd Amendment racist? (Yes in its implementation)

Systematic/normalized racism + Race, Law, & Politics - PhilosophyTube and Part 2

Implicit bias + Group Bias & Black Pigeon Speaks

The danger of white moderates + Friending and forgiving racists - Kat Blaque + Be honest, you don’t care if they’re racist + Jeffree Starr and performative activism

What is race? + What is white supremacy? + White identity + History of whiteness Also this + 'Humans Are Not Equal': The Dishonest History of Race Genetic Betrayal: The Truth About Race Behind The Misconceptions of Race

Why we have a black history month

Book Chat: "Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race" + Robin DeAngelo’s wonderful paper on white fragility

What is Blackface? + Blackace: A cultural history of a racist art form + Montage from the ending of Spike Lee’s Bamboozled + The New Jim Crow Museum

Racial comparisons

Quebec Mosque Shooting: Manufacturing a conspiracy

The fate of the frog men (Pepe) + White supremacist propaganda vs truth + Do racists “just love their country”? (No)

Moderate Muslims and terror attacks

Abusing statistics (immigration) + The Bell Curve (isn’t real) + The Great Replacement isn’t real + Germany’s demographic demise: a response

Immigration and the fall of Rome + Stefan Molyneux’s Native American Genocide

The Many Lies of Lauren Southern’s Borderless

The killing of Trayvon Martin

on alllivesmatter + on privilege

Shaun’s response to “People of color: You are not oppressed”

European histroy is not white history + Does the Left want to destroy history? + Is Philosophy Just White Guys J3rk!ng Off? + A white man’s war? A response to NoBullshit (People of color and women fighting in MY WW2? More likely than you think)

LGBT (mainly T) stuff:

What is gender? + There are more than two human sexes + Bill Nye vs Pseudoscience and part 2 (Bill said trans rights!!!)

Transphobia in the UK + Transphobia: an analysis by PhilosophyTube + Ben Shapiro’s weapons grade bad takes + Joe Rogan is an idiot and a transphobe + Debunking Trump on LGBT rights

Debunking trans athletes myths (8 video playlist) + Is Trans Inclusion a Threat to Cis People in Gendered Spaces? (No)

Why Trans Roles for Trans Actors? + Trans male visibility

Kat Blaque’s monologue on cis nonsense: “Cis people please stop doing this” + Kat Blaque’s take on JK Rowling

What is a TERF? (Don’t go into the comments!!!) + The Transphobe’s Paradox + Why is the trans suicide rate so high?

Red Scare:

Red Scare and xenophobia + racism + Why they still need their big lies about socialism

“Socialism no food” CIA even said Soviets eat abt the same as Americans , short video going over food shortages

Animal Farm is commonly used in schools to teach about the evils of socialism/communism like mine did:

George Orwell was a socialist anti Stalinist writing about the dangers of authoritarianism. The pig named Snowball (Trotsky) was depicted as good: he wrote the original commandments, was at odds with Napoleon, and he was forced to flee after being attacked by Napoleon’s orders. But Orwell was also a snitch that happily gave out a list of suspected communists to the govt while dying of TB so

McCarthyism

Smith Act trials of Communist Party leaders, domino theory and containment, Eisenhower doctrine, Kennedy doctrine, Johnson doctrine, Reagan doctrine.

CIA funded anti-leftist propaganda campaigns like this

The American Govt often supported coups, wars, and other interference against countries that tried to implement socialism, had strong leftist movements, otherwise just elected leaders that were leftist, many from Operation Condor: Chile, Argentina, Vietnam, Brazil, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia (1971 and 2019), etc

COINTELPRO targeted American leftist, Civil Rights/Black Power, antiwar, Native American rights, and environmental protection movements among others. The FBI targeted and threatened MLK. Spied on and kept files of Einstein and Helen Keller. The FBI drugged and then murdered Black Panther Fred Hampton. Etc

Socialism/Communism:

Before their revolutions, Russia and China were pre-industrial, agricultural, largely illiterate societies whose masses were peasants spread out over truly vast expanses of land. From their revolutions, they rapidly industrialized, became largely literate, and became world powers. With the Soviet Union even flourishing and doing great from their planned economy (5 year plans) while the rest of the world was suffering from the Great Depression.

Important to note so I don’t get accused of being a Tankie: Soviet Union + China also did terrible things, for example there was the persecution/oppression of minorities under Stalin (like Cossacks, Jewish people, his govt was kinda antisemitic), Stalin would also have his political opponents killed (mostly anti Stalinist comrades), they weren’t good on LGBT rights: Lenin decriminalized gay sex in 1917, Stalin recriminalized it in 1936, Stalin reversed a lot of Lenin’s gender equality policies, Mao getting citizens to smelt their own steel and iron wasn’t smart or efficient, etc. Critical support.

Modern day China is state capitalist. China has the second highest number of billionaires in the world just behind the USA. And Former Soviet countries are now also capitalist with Russia #4 on the list of most billionaires.

Cuba

Cuba has a literacy rate of 99.7%, one of the highest in the world thanks to the Cuban Literacy Campaign of 1961 right after the Cuban revolution. Universal, famously high quality healthcare (doctors are their biggest export, plus they have medical internationalism) and education. Almost half of parliament members are women, Cuba has made great strides in gender equality. Cuba is a direct democracy, while the US is more of an oligarchy, with people mainly winning elections based on their wealth or the wealth of their supporters.

Cuba’s biotech industry is considered the best in the world among developing countries, and has generated important innovations in cancer research, HIV/AIDS research. Cuba created the world’s first vaccine against meningitis B.

Discrimination against LGBT people is illegal in Cuba. It is legal in 30 US states. Cuba has healthcare for all, including trans people, and allows trans people to legally change their gender without surgery. From my understanding, the rights and treatment of LGBT people aren’t perfect but better than US.

Assata Shakur: “Revolution is a process, so I was not that shocked to find sexism had not totally disappeared in Cuba, nor had racism, but that although they had not totally disappeared, the revolution was totally committed to struggling against racism and sexism in all their forms. That was and continues to be very important to me. It would be pure fantasy to think that all the ills, such as racism, classism or sexism, could be dealt with in 30 years. But what is realistic is that it is much easier and much more possible to struggle against those ills in a country which is dedicated to social justice and to eliminating injustice.”

Book Another Book The Cuba Libre Story

Who Did Che Guevara Murder? + Che Guevara: Homophobic racist?

Majority of East Germans miss socialism warning: article is biased red scare stuff. Krupp und Krause, a nice pro East song from West Germany that also explains surplus value. Ich suche die DDR, a nice pro East rock song from Feeling B, which was a band of former East Germans, saying they are looking for the GDR and it had been stolen. Two members are now in the famous rock band Rammstein, the whole band is leftist.

People who actually lived through the Soviet Union miss it, while young people who haven’t say the Soviet Union collapse was good. Far majority of Soviet citizens voted to keep the Union in 1991.

Human nature & socialism + Why the web is communist

In defense of socialism + “X Socialist Country has failed!” is a stupid argument

Authoritarianism in socialist countries

Soviet Union through the eyes of an American + Socialism gives a better quality of life + Soviets had a better record of training women in STEM than modern USA + Space race meme

But how come revolution? + How to defeat your boss + A Beginner’s Guide to Overthrowing Capitalism + The Socialist case against billionaires

Intro to Anarchy + PhilosophyTube’s series on Marx + What 'To each according to their need' Means + Private vs Personal Property + V For Vendetta - What is Anarchism? + Was the CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone) a living heck?

How would anarchism work irl part 2 part 3 part 4

Witchcraft, Gender, & Marxism + Black Rad Leftism vs Black Liberalism

Internet archive with Marxist texts + Easy direct action + Speech Synthesis: Bernie Sanders reading Communist Manifesto, Alex Jones reading Communist Manifesto + Communist Maniesto Summary video with quotes

Black Panthers

The good man himself, President Thomas Sankara

Sankara declared the objectives of the “democratic and popular revolution” to be primarily concerned with the tasks of eradicating corruption, fighting environmental degradation, empowering women, and increasing access to education and health care, with the larger goal of liquidating imperial domination. During the course of his presidency, Sankara successfully implemented programs that vastly reduced infant mortality, increased literacy rates and school attendance, and boosted the number of women holding governmental posts. On the environmental front, in the first year of his presidency alone 10 million trees were planted in an effort to combat desertification.

Socialism in America doc

Albert Einstein? Socialist. “Why Socialism?” Video Summary and Quotes

“Production is carried on for profit, not for use. There is no provision that all those able and willing to work will always be in a position to find employment; an “army of unemployed” almost always exists. The worker is constantly in fear of losing his job. Since unemployed and poorly paid workers do not provide a profitable market, the production of consumers’ goods is restricted, and great hardship is the consequence. Technological progress frequently results in more unemployment rather than in an easing of the burden of work for all. The profit motive, in conjunction with competition among capitalists, is responsible for an instability in the accumulation and utilization of capital which leads to increasingly severe depressions. Unlimited competition leads to a huge waste of labor, and to that crippling of the social consciousness of individuals which I mentioned before..

...I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society.”

Stephen Hawking? Socialist. “If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.”

Martin Luther King Jr? christian socialist. an interview with him about a year before his murder, he goes over wealth equality, slave reparations. mainly 16:30 to the end

he supported labor strikes, unions, workers.

‘You are reminding, not only Memphis, but you are reminding the nation that it is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages.

...“Do you know that most of the poor people in our country are working every day? And they are making wages so low that they cannot begin to function in the mainstream of the economic life of our nation.

...”If America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty and make it possible for all of God’s children to have the basic necessities of life, she, too, will go to hell.”

“This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream—a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man's skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality.” AFL-CIO Convention, December 1961

In a story published a week before his assassination, King told Jose Yglesias in the New York Times magazine, “In a sense you could say we are engaged in the class struggle.” The civil rights movement had not cost a dime, he said, but the movement to uproot poverty and inequality throughout the country would “be a long and difficult struggle, for our program calls for a redistribution of economic power.”

Paul Robeson was a socialist and supported the Soviet Union, saying (since the Union had Article 123, banning racial discrimination) "In Russia I felt for the first time like a full human being. No color prejudice like in Mississippi, no color prejudice like in Washington. It was the first time I felt like a human being.. Where I did not feel the pressure of color as I feel in this committee."

When asked why he didn't move to Russia, he replied: "Because my father was a slave, and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay here, and have a part of it just like you. And no fascist-minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear? I am for peace with the Soviet Union, and I am for peace with China, and I am not for peace or friendship with the fascist Franco, and I am not for peace with fascist Nazi Germans. I am for peace with decent people." Here he is singing the USSR anthem and Warszawianka

Muhammad Ali on the Soviet Union: Ali had just returned from a twelve-day visit to the Soviet Union at the invitation of the Soviet Ambassador to the United States to promote the upcoming Moscow Olympics. Ali prayed in Uzbekistan with Soviet Muslims. He sparred with Soviet heavyweights in training for the Olympics. He met with Brezhnev at the Kremlin.

When he returned to the United States he reported back that “they give a man free medical and hospital care, low rent and a job . . . I never felt so free of being robbed.” He expressed disbelief that so many Americans were afraid of war with the Soviet Union. “It’s hard to believe that such a peaceful country wants war.”

Helen Keller? very into socialism. (also unfortunately she was into eugenics)

also js bc I was taught differently as a kid: how she’s portrayed is super ableist. for example: she could always communicate, she and the household had home signs and anne sullivan was just there so she could get an education.

Famous leftists/ leftists in history:

Rory McCann, Liam Cunningham, Danny Devito, James Baldwin, Harry Belafonte, Kwame Ture, W.E.B. Du Bois, civil rights activist James Farmer, Frederick Vanderbilt Field was disowned by the Vanderbilt tycoon family for being a communist, King Camp Gillette creator of the Gillette company/razor, Leslie Feinberg,

Victor Gruen architect who first designed American shopping malls (hated the modern ones), Woody Guthrie, activist and co-creator of the NAACP Florence Kelley, pioneer of the birth control movement Antoinette F. Buchholz Konikow, Rage Against the Machine, Madalyn Murray O'Hair, Albert Schatz who discovered a treatment for tuberculosis, suffragette and founding member of the ACLU Rose Schneiderman, feminist activist Mary Heaton Vorse, editor who compiled slave testimonies George Rawick,

feminist activist that helped change NY labor laws Theresa Malkiel, writer and abolitionist Lysander Spooner (published pamphlets with legal defenses for escaped slaves, would offer legal services for free, supported John Brown),

Capitalism+Liberalism:

What’s wrong with capitalism part one Part two + Noncompete’s why capitalism sucks and part 3 + Why do you work 8 hours per day? + How rich countries rob the poor + Your democracy is a sham

1960 Harvest of Shame documentary, covering plight of migrant farm workers living with atrocious conditions and no living wage. As one worker says at 41:32, "Sure you can get a job, but if you can’t live on what you make, what good is the job?”

Abolish the Monarchy! + Why does Britain Still have a Queen?

How Privatization Fails: Railways + Influencing an election + You are expendable + Misinformation for fun and profit + Manufacturing Consent: How the Media Distorts Reality: Summary of Michael Parenti and Noam Chomsky + Manufacturing Consent Full Noam Chomsky Documentary

Venezuela: myths and Argument ad Venezuelum + The Myth of Capitalism - Dr. Michael Parenti

UN investigating the US for extreme poverty UN report on horrific US inequality and poverty UN condemns Trump admin for exacerbating poverty levels + The American Dream is rapidly becoming the American Illusion says UN expert + Doc Priced Out: LA’s hidden homeless

Stranger Things has some bad politics in it + What if they threw a purge and noone came? + Marvel sucks, Disney sucks (their workers lives) + HBO’s Watchmen and Liberalism + Forrest Gump - What are American values? + TV Show ‘Cops’ Copaganda + Bob’s Burgers and Class Conflict

White Working Class? Part 1: Class, Culture, Capital + White Working Class? Part 2: Race, Class, Migration + Landlords are Bad + Utopia + “Good” Billionaires

Fake Materialism for Real Transphobes on leftist transphobes. “You want to unite the working class? You have to stand up for the whole working class. All of them! All of their struggles! Otherwise, you’re the one being divisive. You’re the one excluding people. Identity can only divide us if we choose not to care about the struggles of others. If we decide that the problems of others can wait, while we sort out the ones that we share: how can we expect people to extend class solidarity to us while we withold our solidarity from them?

Capitalism is built on white supremacy, it’s built on patriarchy, it’s built on cisheteronormativity, on ableism, on settler colonialism, on imperialism, it’s an interlocking and mutually reinforcing system. We don’t get to pick and choose! You either fight the whole thing or you’re fighting none of it! You’re giving quarter to it. And if you want to hold up the fight until everyone agrees to exclude one vector of oppression or another, until we dismiss the concerns of trans people or indigenous people or women or disabled people or whomever, then you’re no different than any other reactionary.”

50 ways capitalism is hurting you part one Part two + PhilosophyTube on How to fix the housing crisis + Is Capitalism Voluntary? (No.) + Should the Rich help the Poor? (Yes and neither should exist) + Healthcare, Ethics, & Postmodernism + How to Succeed in Capitalism

Capitalist Entitlement + Woke Brands + Case study of Capitalism: Ukraine + Capitalism is great (not really) + Is Capitalism destroying healthcare? (Yes) + Overpopulation is a capitalist lie + Mental health under late stage capitalism

Pete Buttigieg + Trump and the problem with Politics + America never stood or freedom + How Unions died in America (Reagan) + Evo Morales on Trump and Obama + Whistleblowers in America

My First Job/Lazybones Manifesto + Second Job + Third Job

Destiny and the Liberal Mind Prison + Civility + Kat Blaque’s Why Liberals annoy me + ThoughtSlime’s Are liberals our enemies? + Why Conservatives can’t stop lying

“Law & Order” And Civil Disobedience + What was Liberalism? Part one Part two Part three Part four + The Dark Side of Liberalism (5 part series) + You can’t beat Trump: Frost/Nixon and the Liberal Lie

Sex Work + Sex Workers and Police, Prison Abolition

Documentary “The Story of American Slavery” from the settlement of Jamestown on + Doc “Slavery and the Making of America” + Doc “Slave Catchers, Slave Resisters” + Doc “The Heritage of Slavery” 1968 w Fannie Lou Hamer & Lerone Bennett, Jr.

Doc “Life of the Rez” goes over horrible conditions on Indigenous American reservations due to colonization, capitalism

Problems with American Police, Examples, Solutions, and BLM 1 hr, 43 minutes long Hasan Piker coverage. Contains videos and imagery of police violence and corruption, including murders.

Parts of his coverage are not good: In at least 2 points in this almost 2 hr coverage, he refers to killer cops as mentally ill/”having personality disorders” and “sociopathic”. At one point refers to an AR-15 as an assault rifle, which is incorrect. + Why Police Brutality is hard to prosecute

Havin Fun + Keeping Hope Alive

Yakko's world but countries that were bombed by the USA after the fall of Germany are bombed

Yakko's World but each time the US invaded or coup'd the country (since the Cold War) it gets louder & more distorted / Yakko’s World but every country the US overthrew since 1945 makes it louder

#communism #socialism #leftism #i said id post this months ago but i forgot #ive had this saved in my drafts since

27 notes · View notes

pumpkinpaix · 4 years ago

Text

tagged by @bahoreal! <3

Rules: Answer 20 questions, then tag 20 bloggers you want to get to know better. please i immediately forget everyone i know whenever i’m told to tag people

Name: cyan

Nickname: 👀

Zodiac Sign: sag sun/sag ris/lib moon/wood dog i don’t believe in astrology--_(:3」∠)_

Height: smol. (4′11″/150cm)

Language(s): fluent: english; conversational fluency: mandarin chinese, french, basic: japanese; i also have basic listening comprehension in shanghai dialect but i couldn’t generate it to save my life _ (´ཀ`」 ∠)_ with all the language studying i’ve done, I feel like i should have more on this list. i took german for a year as well, but oomf, I can barely recall any of it. took ancient greek for a summer and tbh all i remember from that is agora, so who’s the real clown here.

Nationality: usa

Favorite Season: spring! :D everything comes back to life! spring storms! spring flowers! the smell of it!

Favorite Flower: toadflax (*´▽`*) if we’re talking scent-wise, osmanthus and gardenia

Favorite Scent: oh whoops. it’s different though aaahh. well, actually, osmanthus still goes on this list lol. baking bread. sweet pea. apple. cooking food. approaching rain.

Favorite colour(s): the color of sunlight

Favorite animal: snails? :D

Favorite fictional character(s): ooohhh boy. in no particular order: lan xichen. lan wangji. andromeda shun. sophie hatter. alice quinn. quentin coldwater. hermione granger. luna lovegood. sun wukong. enjolras. cosette fauchelevant. loki. joan watson. raven from the teen titans. idk the list continues :’)

Coffee, tea, or hot chocolate: bubble teaaaaaa. or hot chocolate with cinnamon!

Average hours of sleep: whomst know. 7?

Number Of Blankets You Sleep with: currently, four ahahaha.

Dream trip: honestly, I’ve already done so many of my dream trips?? I’ve been to athens and delphi and mycenae in greece, seen the tomb of clytemnestra. i’ve been to the site of hrothgar’s hall in denmark, and I’ve seen the hermitage in saint petersburg and the musée d’orsay, sainte-chapelle, notre dame and the catacombs of paris. i’ve seen several berninis! the david! i’ve seen greek curse tablets in person, which is excellent, and liver models! ostraka! i studied in japan?? which is all EXTREMELY wild like sometimes i think about that and it’s like ???? dang wtf i’ve really lived my child self’s dream. O_O one day, I’d like to see beijing. i’d like to see nüwa’s stones (lol is this even real or just a hazy memory from something my chinese school teacher told me) and I’d like to see my grandparents’ hometowns. and i’d like to visit the rabbit god temple in taiwan. oh, and one day!!! i would like to see the cathedral of chartres and also visit bretagne. :’) oh oh! and vilnius! I’d love to see vilnius and kaunas! and I’d like to see more of the US. im. extremely greedy lmfao. /o\

Blog established: 2012 babee

Followers: i don’t really like talking about follower count publicly, except at milestones hhhhh part of the appeal of tumblr over twitter is no public follower count thank the fucking lord.

Random fact: there is a largely forgotten,once-famous chinese vaudeville magician who went by the name of Long Tack Sam. his wikipedia page is here. his great-granddaughter, ann marie fleming, made both a documentary film and an illustrated biography about his life. i’ve read the book, but I haven’t yet watched the documentary. i always find asian american history fascinating because it’s so little discussed in mainstream US history classes. we learn about the chinese exclusion act, the railroads, and japanese internment but that’s like. it. nothing about chinatowns, the races status of asians in the US, asian celebrities, asian artists, asian gang violence, asian leftist movements and how they were influenced by the black panthers etc. idk. i myself know very little about it, but I’d like to know more.

ANYWAYS, tagging uhhh, @thewickling @tonyglowheart @pilferingapples @kingedmundsroyalmurder @picktheonesthatlast @bodhimcbodeface :’) i think a lot of the other people I know have already been tagged ahahah

#long post #cyan dlc #ask meme #personal #bahoreal #cyan talks too much lsdkjfsljd

18 notes · View notes

ccoccae · 5 years ago

Text

I AM THE BEST ; l.yy ( ii )

⇘ previous part

That’s it.

You’re absolutely losing your mind.

Liu Yangyang highkey vanished.

It was as if his abrupt leave last Wednesday was his farewell to you ㅡ not that he said goodbye though, tsk.

No but seriously.

You haven’t seen him for a wholeass week. He wasn’t in the hallway running around with that annoying classmate of him named Donghyuck - going around and literally giving their juniors and seniors the unending desire to strangle them then and there, he wasn’t sitting with his group of friends during lunch and you didn’t see him in Music Class when your class came in for a survey.

The two blank documents that you shared with him (which he hasn’t opened by the way) is begging to be typed on to serve its purpose.

Ugh - it’s killing you. You don’t know what to write about and if you did, it won’t be a short story - it will be a fricking five book serie. Yangyang? He has quite a mind. He proposes such good answers and arguments that leave you thinking; if he didn’t hate you so much, you would’ve been debate buddies - and maybe friends.

Hold up, don’t get ahead of yourself.

“Uh- Jeno.” you walk to his table during lunch, finally having the guts to do so. His friends who just got their food glance up at you and you shy away slightly at the attention that you don’t want.

“Hey ____!” He greets you and you smile tightly at him, still feeling the stares of his friends. It’s normal for friends to listen to open conversations that aren’t secretive and rather free - but you kinda wish they would just mind their own business.

But they can’t just do that.

What you didn’t know is that people talk about you. About how you’re almost a dipping flower. You appear and awe people around you unconciously and the moment they blink, you’re gone. But they mostly talk about how you always manage to be placed on top or with Yangyang during German exams. It has them shook.

Yangyang literally MOVED from Germany after living there for 6 years and you haven’t even been there for a mere vacation! You blow people’s minds beyond comprehension and you don’t know it.

“B-by any chance, do you have Liu Yangyang’s phone number..?” Your voice is low and soft, still trying to hide yourself from his friends. “It’s because we haven’t started at the project and I- really- don’t- have any connection with h-him.”

You unconciously play with your fingers, waiting for his reponse that doesn’t take long.

“Iㅡ”

Jeno is interrupted by a pitchy voice that you recognise. “I have his number!”

You turn to the opposite side of the round table to see Lee Donghyuck who has his hand in the air, face bright and smiling sweetly at you. “Do you want it?” He asks, leaning into the table.

“U-uh, yes.. please..”

“Okay, I’ll give it you. But only if you buy me a piece of strawberry cake.” His smile turns to a mischievous one - the change is something you expected. Lee Donghyuck without mischief is not Lee Donghyuck.

You are about to take into his deal until his other friend, whom you believe is named Renjun, smacks his back that you can hear it from where you stand.

“OUCH!” Donghyuck screeches and you hold back a giggle. Jeno pokes your elbow softly, making you turn to him.

“Here.”

[ Come over to my place and let’s get this over with. ] is what Liu Yangyang told you after you accidentally called him. He sent his adress right below all your messages that he just ‘read’.

Ouch. Seenzoned.

Yangyang’s mansion was big - well, mansions are supposed to be big. You didn’t expect Yangyang to be THIS rich. You just got used to the fact that he casually wears a Gucci hoodie during Gym classes.

Right when you stood by the gateway, a gaurd comes up to you with a smile asking, "Are you Young Master Liu's guest?" and you nodded. "Follow me please." Then he escorted you through the gate then to the sandstone driveway to the mansion.

From there, a maid - you assume her to be the head maid due to his cold attitude - greets you in chinese. You swear your mind was rusted when it comes to chinese, but you manage to reply to her politely.

The maid halts infront of one of the many big black doors in the first floor. She doesn't knock and that gives you a mini-heart attack.

"Young Master, please stop playing computer games. Your project partner is here." There goes her cold, monotonous tone sending chills up your spine. You haven't heard someone lack so much passion in speaking.

You bite your bottom lip, unable to think of something to say to Yangyang once you face each other.

Should you say 'Hi Yangyang, let's get to work.'? or 'Liu Yangyang, where have you been?!'?.

You are lost in panicked thoughts that you don't notice the maid telling you can now enter until the worker walks past you to attend to her other duties.

With a deep breath, you cautiously step in the room. Darkness greets you and you eyes search for him. Liu Yangyang.

And he's there.

On his expensive looking gaming chair in front of a set of three monitors. The middle one being a curved screen. Your jaw slack at the sight, eyes trailing to the keyboard constantly glowing with many colors upon clicking.

Liu Yangyang meets your awed gaze, then raising his eyebrow at you - mentally asking why you're still glued in your spot like - the door is open boo.

"Did the maid leave?" Yangyang asks, tone colder for it to be considered a question.

"Uh.. yes.. she did." You answer quietly, above a whisper but loud enough for Yangyang to hear.

"Good," Yangyang turns back to his monitor set, putting his headphones back on. "..close the door behind you and take the study table."

You do as what you're told, closing the door behind you and heading towards the study table situated beside Yangyang's gaming set, but the white leather office chair is situated at the opposite side. So when you sit, you're facing Yangyang to the side.

A notebook is open on the table and you look through it after glimpsing that it's German.

' Eine Mädchen beobachtet einen Mord an einer Familie durch eine Reise in Astral-Zeit. Sie ist nicht sicher, ob sie immer noch verhindert, dass die Ereignisse passieren, aber ihre Vision beweist, dass sie richtig ist. Sie möchte sagen, was sie so nicht gesehen hat, aber niemand wird ihr glauben.'

That was written on the page.

"Is this the story idea?" you ask, picking up the notebook and shows to Yangyang who seems to be doing something in his computer.

Yangyang only glances at the paper then nodding.

"Great. We finally have an idea." You murmur to yourself, placing your laptop after moving Yangyang's macbook aside and turning the study lamp on.

Then you star working, fingers tapping on the keyboard in fast yet smooth motions. Your eyes darting from the notebook then back to your computer. After writing the raw idea, you grab a nearby pen and write down additional ideas to shape the story then transferring them to the document.

'Let's make the murder gruesome.'

'The girl must've been attempting her astral time travelling'

'Make the details of the vision a bit hazy'

Because of your sudden concentrated mood, you don't seem to hear Yangyang's frantic clicking on the keyboard and his mouth commanding his teammates, his eyes trained on the computer and aiming to kill opponents.

Yangyang dies again after being sniped by the opponent Widowmaker for the 5th time during this whole game. He falls back onto the chair in exhaustion, his head dropping to see you still perfectly delved into the task at hand.

He's been playing for almost an hour and a half now while you are still working on forming the plot from the story idea Yangyang literally just wrote when it popped into his mind.

'Why is she rushing?' He thought to himself then the thought of him not showing up to the German classes seems to make him feel a tinge of guilt.

Only a bit.

Without a second tought, Yangyang leaves the game, turning his computer off and placing his headphones down.

He slides himself to sit across your figure while clearing his throat. This made you look up to see him taking out his macbook and starting it up.

Yangyang catches your gaze and sharply asks, "What?" with a sassy raise of his brow.

You rapidly blink, immediately turning your concentration back to the computer. "Nothing. Just surprised you finally decided to come and help.." Your last sentence was low as a whisper, but Yangyang still heard it.

"I'm not completely heartless."

"What do you say if we add another character? Let's say it's the boy's family that was murdered." You ask nonchalantly, suddenly a bit more confined to be able to talk to Yangyang.

This slight change also takes Yangyang aback a bit

"S-Sure.." it's rare to see you confine. You're rather reserved, shy and likes to keep a distance. "But we have to connect him to the main character."

"Let's say he's a transferee and the day he transferred is the say the murder happens." You answer quickly as if you've been expecting the question.

"Let's make it a massacre." You suggest and Yangyang raises an eyebrow. "Let's kill off ALL his family members."

Yangyang chokes in his own saliva at the blunt suggestion.

Him choking makes you blink, realising that you've been too 'businessly talkative'.

"A-are you okay?" You ask, looking around for something that will somehow relieve Yangyang, but finds nothing.

"Just fine."

"Okay.."

Yangyang quickly recovers from his fit and so did the awkward silence that now sits on both of your shoulders.

"I.. like the idea." Yangyang says, opening the document. "There has to be atleast three of his family members. Let's say he has his parents and a younger sister."

"Oh yeah sure." You say, typing it down but seeing as Yangyang has already typed it you click backspace and so did Yangyang. "Ah no - I'll delete mine-"

"I literally just deleted what I wrote." Yangyang groans.

"Sorry- I'll type it again.."

You bite your bottom lip, typing the context.

'Why does she always do that?' the boy questions your habitual demeanor when concentrating.

Your lips are slightly swollen under the pressure of your cute front teeth, your hair pulled up to a bun but a portion of your front hair is layed delicately on both sides of your face - framing it perfectly.

You look up to meet Yangyang's eyes and he immediately looks away - mentally asking himself why in the hecking world did he stare.

The rest of the time they work in silence, only the sound of keyboard keys being pressed and occasional questions about the story plot.

"I have to go now." You announce softly, gathering your things when Yangyang nods in agreement.

Surprisingly, Yangyang follows you to the door. So before leaving, you turn to Yangyang.

"Thanks for bearing with me. I just really want to complete this project." You tell him, sincere eyes shooting through Yangyang's unmoving ones. "Goodbye."

A limousine stops by the entrance and a beautiful woman on her late 40s exits the glossy vehicle, her prada heels landing on the sandstone first.

You immediately bow as soon as you make eye contact. You want to leave, but it will be too rude to do it right now.

"Hello dear." The woman says in chinese, strutting to you who keeps a stable but bright smile. "You must be Yang's project partner?"

"Yes, ma'am. I'm _____." You reply, also in chinese and silently thanking your most hated teacher who atleast teached you something good.

"Oh, impressive." Yangyang's mother coos, turning to her son who stands by the porch looking uninterested. "She's also the one who somehow managed to beat you in german class right, son?"

You tense at the mention of 'german class', instantly averting your eyes onto Yangyang whose jaw clenches at the question. There's a feeling in you that just clenches.

You blink in sudden realization, everything suddenly clearer, having the answer to your questions.

Yangyang hates you for being 'better' than him in German class?

Wow.. you should've seen that coming.

"Isn't she the one who got three straight A pluses while you only got two of them and an A." His mother's words take toll on Yangyang. He doesn't like hearing his failure - especially when it comes from his mother with a tone of disappointment.

You watch as Yangyang cold exterior fall when his head hangs low - unable to hold eye contact with his mother.

"Sorry.." he whispers lowly, fingers fidgeting the back of his shirt.

"Anyways," the older woman turns back to you. ".. how's the project going? Is Yang doing his part?"

"It's doing great, ma'am. Yangyang was actually the one who came up with the story idea." You reply, tone always enthusiastic.

"Only the story idea? Huh. What did you came up with Yang? A boy and his tragic love for his violin? Hahaha."

Yangyang's jaw clenches more, his jawline more prominent than it already is.

"Are you staying for dinner, dear?" She asks you.

"Uh, no ma'am. I'm taking my leave now. Good evening." You bow one last time before turning her back and walking out to the gate.

She spares one last glance to see the woman slapping Yangyang's cheek. The scene made you stop on your tracks, worry washing over you.

Feeling like you're staring, Yangyang meets your eyes and he glares.

'All your fault.' he thinks to himself.

⇘ next part

#i am the best #liu yangyang #nct yangyang #yangyang #nct yangyang story #wayv yangyang fluff #wayv #wayv yangyang #rivals #school #school!au

28 notes · View notes