#how can I not see any Oxford University Press stuff

[platosarse]

Okay, well, I got institutional online library access…but my access seems to be a lot more restricted than it was with the OU. Literally can’t get any of the 5 books/articles on my list.

[jiskblr]

A Non-Locavore's Guide to Proper Apple Cider

Apple cider is a bizarre thing, in that it is only legal to buy it from the people who grew the apples and pressed them themselves.

You may say "Jisk, I see apple cider in the supermarket right here!", and I am here to tell you that the supermarket is full of profane lies.

I am not talking about hard cider (alcoholic), which does not taste like apples and thus is sorta lies, but a perfectly respectable beverage for those who like their alcohol beer-like but non-beer, which I do not. And that's all I'm going to say about hard cider.

No, I'm talking about this.

This substance is made by the archdevil Geryon, lord of deceits and heresies, in his orchard of snakes and lies, in order to convince people that apple cider is just pretentious apple juice.

And it works, because supermarket apple cider is just pretentious apple juice. It is cider that has taken behind the woodshed and shot, and its corpse carried around in the style of Weekend At Bernie's, paraded as the real thing. It is not the real thing.

This is the real thing:

This is Smit Farms cider, made from apples grown in Smit Farms orchards and pressed in mechanical presses owned by Smit Farms, hosted on the premises owned by Smit Farms and probably on the orchard grounds itself, then bottled by Smit Farms, also on the premises of Smit Farms. This cider is then sold either at their shop next to the Smit Farms orchard (fairly inaccessible) or at a Smit Farms booth in a range of farmstands within driving distance (in this case, mostly or totally in California), one of which is where I buy it. This is the good stuff.

The fact that it is from Smit Farms specifically is irrelevant, but other than replacing the name 'Smit Farms' with something else like 'Derby Orchards' or 'Oxford University Gardens', the good stuff all fits that precise description. To do otherwise is illegal. (At least in the US of A. It seems to be rare in other countries too, and I don't know for sure.)

The core problem is pasteurization. Pasteurization turns cider into apple juice. If you're careful about it and do the lowest temperature allowed for a brief burst of heat (flash pasteurization), you'll keep the ghost of the flavor of proper cider. But only a ghost of it.

And you are legally required to pasteurize cider before sale, unless you are a farm doing farm things to your farm products on your farm premises, which gets you an exemption from a great many United States laws, this being one of them. And so, if you wish to drink good cider, you must be a locavore for the day you do the shopping.

And it's so fucking worth it. I promise you. You know how they say that compared to real beer, Budweiser is 'fucking close to water'? Apple juice is the Bud Lite of cider. Real cider has the same relationship to it that Guinness has to Bud. Everyone should try it.

Now, I will admit it has drawbacks.

The first one is that it's usually unfiltered, and filtering it does actually make it worse. So you need to shake the bottle around a bit before pouring. It's much less intrusive than citrus pulp, though.

The second is that if you leave it in the fridge for a month it will have gone very slightly alcoholic. (I don't know what ABV.) This does have a solution - cider freezes well. Leave it in the freezer for a year if need be, then melt it over a day on the counter and stick it back in the fridge.

QUESTIONS YOU MAY HAVE FOR THE CIDER SNOB

"Jisk, how can I tell if the cider is the good stuff?"

Unfortunately, you will usually have to ask, and the answer will often be 'it isn't' even if you're at an orchard. Check if the label says 'pasteurized' in any form - if so it is the knockoff type. If you don't see that, the question you want to ask is "Do you press and bottle it yourself?"; if the answer is yes, they will almost certainly know, and only if the answer is yes is it the good stuff. You can also ask "Is it pasteurized?", and this may appear on the label, but there are weaselly ways to say it's not when it is and well-intentioned people can be honestly wrong about this being good enough.

"Should I get the good stuff for cooking with?"

It is almost certainly not worth it. You'll mostly denature it in cooking and that will remove most of the flavor benefits. For this I would go with supermarket cider or somewhat boiled-down boring apple juice. Some recipes may benefit but that's beyond my cooking skill to predict.

"Should I get the good stuff for mulling?"

Personally I cannot tell the difference once it is mulled. If the effort and money to get the good stuff are cheap for you, go ahead, it's probably slightly better, but it will not be a groundshaking improvement. Same goes for anything you're spicing heavily even without heat.

"Okay, I see where you're going, here. Is it a waste to heat up the good stuff?"

Absolutely not. Go for it! A simple mug of cider, heated up in the microwave, is a wonderful thing in a way apple juice is not.

"How about cocktails?"

I have limited experience here but I think it is usually a noticeable, significant improvement, but not always. My family favors the Suicider, which has some nutmeg, a large spike of dark rum, and the heart of a bad pun. On the other hand, something like a mule where you are mixing several strong flavors may overwhelm the difference. Use your best judgment, and if you do a taste test please tag me or send me an ask, because I'm curious.

"Why is the good stuff so rare, if it's so much better?"

The process is time-consuming and effortful, it's either hard to scale on an orchard's budget or hard to scale without incurring the wrath of the regulators, and the margins aren't great. I pay $20 for a gallon and a half and I'd probably pay twice that, but I am a snob; most people aren't and wouldn't.

In my hometown, there were six pick-your-own apple orchards, all of which sold cider in their attached store. Of these, only one, the aforementioned Derby Farms, sold the good stuff - this was a local secret, not available to the tourists who came out from Boston. The others had mechanical presses available, but pressing cider is slow, exhausting work and the margins aren't great, so they paid someone else to press it and bottle it, which meant that the pasteurization requirement came in. Even Derby's has ceased to make the good stuff, as they are getting old and didn't have the manpower in the proper season anymore. This is a tragedy but kind of inevitable.

"Why are you writing this?"

Because I think a lot of people would be snobs if they experienced the difference, and the only way to fix aforesaid tragedy is to make the margins better by increasing demand.

[theyourstruly]

Alex has been sent out he wasn't able to share much, but he's been calling whenever he can.

They have managed to see each other a couple more times before he left, and after a month Eleanor has already been missing him like crazy. He'll probably think she's silly, at the end of the day it's only been a month.

Letting her worries go she's been focusing on her studies and the Tennis charity Tournament, but she can't wait to see Alexander again.

Sitting in the library with the girls

They take their notes and work on their individual assignments.

"Do any of yous understand task 5b." Stella asks

"Let me check." Rhea replies back.

Calculate the following ratios and comment on the performance of the business over the two years.

"Oh no, this is a question for you El" she jokes

Laughing El asks Stella

"What have you filled out"

Handing me her book and checking her answers.

"You just filled it in the wrong spot. There is a 12% increase at the turnover and there's a 23% increase at the expenses. Just flip these two and your good to go" she discovered

"How did you figure that out?"

"It says it right here you weren't reading it correctly"

"Jeez why did I decide to study finance again?"

"You'll be fine" Rhea responds

Emma adds

"You always rush to finish your work of course you're going to miss information"

Working more in silence on their assignment the girls finish up.

"Okay i'm done." Eleanor starts beginning to pack her things.

"Me too" Emma replies

"Anything planned El?" Rhea Asks

"Yeah lunch with Viola and practicing for the tournament"

"Ooh yes. I heard it's going to be on tv"

"It is plus more money for charity"

Just then El's phone rings. Hoping that it's Alex she says her goodbyes to the girls, and rushes off to answer.

"Hello"

Hey, love how have you been doing

Having a hard time hearing him she answers

"I've been good you?"

I'm about to-

The signal breaks.

Looking down at her blackberry she doesn't know how to feel. What was he trying to say?

She hopes that it wasn't anything bad, all she wanted was for him to come back home.

———————————————————————

"You have been enjoying your self right?"

Having met up with her sister Viola who wanted to catch up with her she stays silent still thinking about Alex.

"Listen i understand things are hard right now, but you have to understand where mom and dad are coming from. Your working for your future. You'll be much more financially secure without having to worry about bills and stuff."

"No i understand. Didn't stop you though from doing whatever you wanted"

"I was stupid to drop out, waisted 2 years of my life and now here i am returning back to college with a debt following me around."

Finishing up on their lunch after 20 min. it's time for El to leave again, and go to practice.

Being part of the Tennis Club, it's members and Eleanor have been wanting to plan a tennis tournament, and after bringing it forward to committee members who approved, and have been getting other Uni's

Involved like Cambridge University, University of Bristol, Imperial College and University of Edinburgh.

They've been planning and getting the word out to other students.

The money raised will be split between the 5 Uni's with theirs going to the Magdalen College trust. The trust supports charitable causes like Bicester food bank, little angels and save the children etc.

Wanting to put their best players in Eleanor was one of the few asked to represent Oxford. She's been awfully excited about it all, and has been practicing her technique. The tournament has actually been getting quite the press, and because of it they have managed to get a tv spot out of it with those funds also going to charity.

After practice El walks to her dorm when she receives a call, normally she doesn't answer unknown numbers, but with Alex gone he doesn't get to call from his own phone. Answering she doesn't recognize the man voice

Quietly saying "Who is this?"

Hi is this Eleanor. Uhm it's William, Alexander's brother?

Did something happen to him?

"Why isn't Alex calling, did something happen?"

Mind racing she goes through all the possibilities of what could've happened to him

No he's fine. He asked me to check up on you

Letting out a sigh of relief.

She's not sure how to respond as she's never met his brother before.

"Oh well everything is fine here"

Okay good

"Well this is just awkward now"

Laughing william replies

It is. Uhm it was good speaking to you? And uhm maybe he'll finally introduce us to you

"Yeah sure. I guess i'll hang up now. I wouldn't want to keep you.... from what you were doing"

Yes. Nice talking to you Eleanor. Bye

Hanging up the phone she returns to her dorm wanting to forget that awkward conversation. Getting into the shower and redressing for dinner at the dining hall later on.

She wonders how much longer she has to wait for Alexander's return. She can't believe that the man she met nearly 3 months ago would consume her thoughts so heavily.

[whereareroo]

IN THE DAYS OF THE DINOSAURS

WF THOUGHTS (12/7/23).

My kids call me a dinosaur. I guess that’s supposed to be an insult. I’m apparently supposed to be embarrassed that I’m from a bygone era and that I refuse to change.

Well, I’m not embarrassed at all. I’m a proud dinosaur. I think my ancient era was far better than the world of 2023. I’m happy to debate that issue with anyone or everyone. I’ll win every debate.

In my prime, we had freedom. We weren’t tethered to devices. We weren’t obligated to carry a phone with us at all times. We controlled when we wanted to communicate. We controlled when we wanted to consume information. We weren’t constantly bombarded. We had more peace. The kids of today will never know the peace of being totally disconnected in the car or on a long walk. I fight to protect the freedom that I enjoyed in my prime. I fight to preserve the hours of peace that I enjoyed in the old days.

In the dinosaur days, our communication was much deeper and more meaningful. We spoke face-to-face, or we spoke on the telephone. We didn’t send each other cryptic texts full of Pig Latin abbreviations and silly cartoon emojis. We didn’t send each other businesslike emails. Give me a good conversation any day. Today there is so much meaningless and superficial communication.

Kids argue that the new world allows for better learning because information is so accessible and flows so freely. Gimme a break. Have you seen the plummeting test scores the past few decades? Have you observed how little kids know about their community, their country, and the world? I don’t blame the kids. They’re so bombarded that it’s difficult to pay attention and it’s difficult to identify the important information. In the dinosaur days, we learned the important stuff because the other junk wasn’t available. We learned how to learn because everything wasn’t spoon-fed to us and we didn’t labor under the false impression that we could learn by pushing buttons. A return to the dinosaur days would benefit everyone.

I was thinking about this stuff today because the Oxford University Press just announced its word of the year for 2023. The Oxford University Press is one of the most esteemed publishing houses in the world. It’s in the business of words. It specializes in the publication of world class academic and educational materials. When the Oxford University Press picks a word of the year, you naturally expect a distinguished word that would elevate everyday communications.

I was heartbroken to see that the word of the year is “rizz.” What the hell is that? What does it mean?

In the Pig Latin of today, it’s apparently short for “charisma.” Kid’s use “rizz” in their modern communication. It can be a noun, meaning charm or attractiveness or seductive ability. Or, it can be used as a verb. To “rizz up” means to attract, seduce, or verbally interact with someone.

Isn’t this idiotic? Do you see what I’m talking about? We’ve reached such a low point that even a prestigious institution like the Oxford University Press is buying into stupidity like “rizz.” Words like that should have no place in our language. Good grief.

I have a suggestion for everyone. If you want to talk about charisma, why don’t you just use the word “charisma”? Why not take a bit of advice from an old dinosaur? Stop talking, or writing, like an idiot. Thank you.

[spasmsofthought]

milk + instagram live (t.h.)

I traveled to London (and Oxford), England in March of 2019 for my spring break my sophomore year of university, so some things mentioned here are entirely from personal experience, so please don’t hate me if you’ve experienced something different! I stayed at a hotel in between West Kensington and West Brompton (a few blocks away from West Brompton Station) and one day some family members and I decided to attend a local showing at a cinema nearby and it was SO. DIFFERENT. than the theaters I had been to in the States. IDK, maybe it was just me. The entire experience was like culture shock again in the few days I had been there, so I had to bring that up in this little piece. Also the thing about milk is something I have genuinely wondered about, cause I’ve heard it’s different in England than it is in the USA, but I may be wrong. Let me know! Anyways, I have big love for London (and supreme love for Oxford, sorry) and I’m looking forward to going back someday soon! 

The reader is non-celebrity and American, so I’m sorry if that feels exclusionary to any of you, honestly! I thought this might be just a little fun jaunt because I don’t really write real person fiction. Just a bit of fluff. 

Sorry for this long intro. Enjoy and let me know what you think! xo  

Word Count: ~1.5k 

+ + + 

It’s some sort of exclusive interview for a magazine or something of the sort, you’ve been told; a collection of questions they want you to answer to publish somewhere, to print as something special for one of Tom’s things. That’s all you know. It’s just something you agreed to do after his publicist had asked a few weeks ago. It wasn’t like you did this for a living, so there was an attitude of nonchalance about it all because if they ended up not liking it one bit, they could scrap it all and no harm, no foul. 

“Now,” the interviewer begins, a man in his 40′s with balding hair and a slightly crooked nose, sitting in the chair across from you, “I know you just announced that you got married, so congratulations, firstly--” 

“Oh, thank you,” hands folded on your lap, smiling sweetly. You know people want their well-wishes to be heard and recorded, but sometimes it’s easy to imagine a completely private life, fame free, in which this isn’t the biggest news in the world (or just the biggest news for a day in the entertainment industry in the United States and England); a life where this is just a normal thing that normal people decide on, there’s a celebration, and that’s really it. It’s not splashed on newspapers and trending on Twitter, even though that can be a fun thing. 

“I’ve been really happy these last few months since we got married and was excited to tell all of Tom’s Instagram followers,” there’s a break for a small laugh from you, “There’s been such an abundance of well wishes from everyone and I’ve felt so incredibly lucky because I know not every woman who has been in my position has recieved such a reception.” 

The interviewer gives a move of his head in recognition of your words, but his eyes are already flying down the paper he holds in front of him, “There have been quite a few changes that have happened, I’ve been informed, and the first is that you decided to move to London!” 

“Ha, yes,” you begin, nodding, “Not only did I just completely intertwine my life with another person’s, but I moved to an entirely new country. There’s definitely a lot of culture shock that has happened these past few months.” 

The interviewer kind of chortles along with you, but the awkwardness has already settled in and you can feel it because you are the literal worst at small talk. And that’s all this interview is. 

“Any cons you’ve listed already about residing here amongst us?” 

“Oh no,” you groan dramatically, trying to lighten up the mood, a hand coming to cover your eyes for a moment, “you have to promise not to tell my husband, because I do have a few things actually.” 

“I make no promises, as this interview will be completely up for grabs,” The man holds up his hands and you’re a little disappointed that he doesn’t seem to want to play along with the joke. 

You brush it off, though, because he’s either nervous or he’s here for a few questions to be answered and then he wants to be out of here. You get it; you have a job, too, that sometimes squeezes the patience out of you. 

“Well for one, the local cinemas are just set up so different than the ones I went to all the time in the States. I still have to prepare myself for the experience every time,” there’s a little bit of an awkward pause. 

“We have different cinemas?” He asks, like he’s suspecting something more; something deeper. Maybe he wants something more scandalous? You nod along, though, smiling softly at his confusion. It has always felt funny trying to explain this. 

“And I miss people smiling at me in public, on the tube or in the more crowded public spaces where I don’t really know anyone. People are literally so lovely when they invite me into their homes to eat with them and stuff like that, but I’ve only got one reaction from someone for smiling at them. Most of them just stare for a second or ignore me entirely! I don’t know, maybe it’s just me.” 

He shrugs, not quite sure what to say to that, because he’s not at fault for it. It seems most people know what you’re talking about when you say this and you’ve garnered that it’s a cultural thing for the most part. You don’t fault anyone for it. 

“Also,” your hand comes to scratch at a place above your left eyebrow, “I know this is weird, and I don’t even know if it’s entirely true, but I haven’t drank milk in the months since I’ve moved here because I heard in America that milk is made differently here or something like that. I haven’t been able to gather up the courage to find out if it’s true or not, and I mostly drink water or juice or whatever else so my husband hasn’t bat an eye yet. I just don’t want to ruin my previous experience with milk,” You shrug your shoulders and laugh. Your hands come unclasped and you hold them out in a surrender-like gesture. 

Your final answer seems to startle the interviewer, because his laugh is surprised and maybe a bit shocked and leaves just as quickly as it came. The rest of the short conversation, lasting only a few more minutes, continues smoothly. After sitting around in the office for a little while longer, you are free from the place and from (hopefully) ever having to do this again without Tom. Your schedule is blissfully empty for the rest of the day, a Saturday, so you eventually make your way home. 

- - 

“What’s this I hear about your fear of English milk?” The door opens first and then the voice follows. 

Of course, that would be the first thing he says to you after a whole day of not seeing each other. 

“Good evening, darling, how was your day?” You quip from the couch, what’s left of your cup of tea gone cold on the coffee table parallel to it. “Oh my day was fine, Tom. I’m glad you’re the one who does the regular rounds with the press, not me, because I was so awkward today. How was yours?” 

You hear his keys clink against something, probably the kitchen counter, and then the rustle of a bag. It takes a second but then you see his hands grip to top of the sofa as he leans down towards you. There’s a quick kiss that comes before he rights himself. The marital bliss has not faded away yet given that adoring look in his eyes. It is the same look he gave you standing right across from you the day of your wedding, the same one you saw four months ago on your honeymoon, and the one he gave you last night while getting ready for bed as he brushed his teeth. 

“I got something from the shop on my way home,” He wiggles his eyebrows and you know some part of you saw this coming from a mile away. 

You know now that the shop means the grocery store because a few months ago you had asked him what the term meant (“it’s so vague, though,” “darling, I’m not going to waste my breath calling it the ‘grocery store.’”). (There are still many British terms you have yet to learn.) You allow yourself to sit up and then turn around to meet him as your knees come to dig into the cushions. Now you both are almost at the same height. 

“God, I hate you,” You chuckle, leaning towards him. 

“The ring on your finger says otherwise, love,” You roll your eyes but then press an elongated kiss to his lips. There’s a few moments where he gets some in down your neck and behind your ear before he pulls away. 

“C’mon,” He says, pulling your arms and almost vaulting you over the couch and onto the cold, hard floor, “to the kitchen we go! You need to drink some milk.” It takes a few more minutes for you both to actually get there, but then he grabs the carton from the bag and a glass from a kitchen cupboard. 

He pours a little at the bottom of the glass, not even filling it up a quarter of the way. Part of you wants to shudder, part of you is feeling adventurous enough to be excited. But then he pulls his phone from the pocket of his jeans and asks if he can go live on Instagram. For a moment you consider saying no, simply because you’re not sure if you want to open yourself up to the world of Tom’s Instagram followers watching you try your first taste of non-American milk, but then you decide “why not?” It can’t do any real harm, right? 

Tom hands the glass to you and you place it on the counter in front of you as you sit down at a stool. You can see the moment on his face the live video starts and a second later he quickly explains the situation. 

It does not take you much longer to become a viral internet meme.  

[themidnight-ghost]

Try

Chapter One | 

Anne Boleyn lost everything when she accidentally resurrected Henry VIII. Now it's all up to her to fix her mistakes, but hopefully, she won’t have to do it alone.

When Catherine Parr walked downstairs that morning, she was met with the now-familiar silence and uncomfortable energy lurking around the breakfast table.

“Is everyone okay?” Cathy whispered to her Godmother as she turned on the coffee machine.

“It’s been a week, and Kat refuses to come out of her room.” The survivor chewed her bottom lip, “Anna believes it’s her fault for being so neglectful and won’t even mention her name. Jane is furious, not to mention depressed! And I’ve just ordered an extra security lock and one of those camera doorbells.” Catalina gestured to her iPad.

Cathy collected her coffee, “And has anyone seen Annie?”

“Anne.” Jane corrected from across the table. Her eyes were red and puffy.

“No one’s seen her since the incident.” ‘Lina placed a comforting hand on Cathy’s arm,  

“Forget about her, Cathy. She’s probably off galavanting with Henry in malibu.”

Cathy’s blood boiled at Jane’s comment and her hands balled into fists, “You can’t say that.”

“Oh, can I not?” Jane sassed, “She had a choice of everyone! Mae, Liz, Mary and Eddie, but instead she chose the scumbag who got us here in the first place!”

“There should be a reason!” Cathy argued back.

“Then, what was it? What was worth losing everything?”

And with that, Jane Seymour stormed up to her room, only stopping to pull down a framed photo of the 6 queens at Disneyland from the wall. Anna of Cleves looked apologetically at both Catherine’s and followed Jane, resting the picture on the kitchen table as she left.

That night, Cathy slept alone again. She would usually try to get some sleep before a 2-show day, but the thought of Anne kept her head buzzing. The writer couldn’t help but wonder where her ex-girlfriend was, why Anne betrayed them or if she was ever coming back. The constant questions spiralled and confused the usually logical queen, forcing her to groan into her pillow. She still remembered the day when everything fell apart.

Anne rushed into the writer’s arms with tear-stains carved into her makeup. The Boleyn girl cried until her voice was hoarse and when she finally began to tell Cathy what she’d done - it was too late. A rough knock came from the door, and Jane opened it to reveal their ex-husband, resurrected. Anne burst into a fit of tears and screams as she clawed onto Cathy’s jumper in fright as Henry approached them, a merciless grin on his face.

Nothing had changed.

Anne eventually let go of Cathy, backing herself into a wall. Cathy still cringes at what Henry did next. The monarch stroked Anne’s cheek with his thumb, wiping off a tear.

No one helped her.

“Thank you, my dear.” Henry’s voice was deep, raspy and echoed off the house walls.

“You helped him?” Jane stated.

“He forced me!” Anne was on the verge of a panic attack.

“The universe gave her a choice,” Henry butted in, “Me, Mary, Elizabeth, Edward or Mary. She chose me.”

“You choose who you could resurrect?” Jane’s shout almost tore the house down.

“He- we- we had a plan-” Anne could barely speak, she trembled and clawed at her sides while attempting to back herself further into the wall. She could scarcely breathe between her tears.

“Jane wait-” ‘Lina grabbed the mother by her arm, pulling her away from the Boleyn girl.

Amongst the chaos, Henry snuck out the door. Anna of Cleves tried to contain herself as she comforted a sobbing Katherine Howard. Catalina and Jane were at each other’s throats about Anne Boleyn, and Catherine Parr just stared at the mess of a person she used to call her girlfriend.

The next morning, Anne’s bed was found empty, and most of her belongings had been taken away. The house was never the same after that. Henry was back, Anne was lost, Jane was mourning, Kat was scared, Anna felt guilty, Catalina didn’t go to church and Cathy was single.

Back in bed, the writer had just learnt to live with it, she concealed her thoughts and fears into writing and tried to trick her mind into thinking this was only temporary.

“Tomorrow will be different.” The writer murmured.

Tomorrow was different. The queens would do their first show as a group since Anne left and Anna somehow forgot to get oat milk before heading to the theatre.

“I’ll go get it, I need to clear my head anyway.” Cathy grabbed the spare keys, getting a headstart. The writer cautiously headed to the nearest tube station and took a metro to oxford street. Most of the queens drank oat milk because it was healthier and they didn’t want Kat to feel left out, so Selfridges was visited regularly on weekends.

Walking down the road, Catherine noticed something peculiar. A homeless woman was sleeping on the pavement, her back propped up against the building’s wall; she was covered in blankets.

Anna co-owned a business with Kat where they helped the homeless get back on their feet, and this often resulted in the queens knowing all of them by name. But this woman was different, and Cathy didn’t recognise her.

“Hello?” The writer cautiously approached, “Have you been here long-?” Cathy gasped when she registered the ebony hair which framed the woman’s face. “Annie?”

The 6th queen crouched beside the sleeping clump, carefully pulling back the hem of the blanket so she could see the owner’s face and her fear was confirmed right. Anne’s lips were chapped, there was dirt on her face, the faint remains of a bruise on her left eye and a cut on her chin.

Cathy entered a state of crisis. She still loved Anne, but she couldn’t forgive her for what she did. But then again, was she really going to let her rot on the side of the road? No one deserved that.

The Boleyn girl stirred in her sleep, and Cathy instinctively placed a small hand on her shoulder, “You’re alright.” She whispered, and Anne’s body relaxed.

Cathy felt around for her wallet and pulled out two £20 notes, proceeding to stuff them into Anne’s hood. She took one last look at the remains of Anne Boleyn before kissing her middle and index fingers and resting them against Anne’s shoulder as a goodbye. Cathy then pulled back the blankets and walked in the other direction. The oat milk could wait.

During the next few days, Cathy always passed Anne’s street corner on her way to the theatre, making it her mission to leave small amounts of cash in the 2nd queen’s hood.

On the fourth day, Cathy returned to see Anne awake and drinking something from a flask. Thinking fast, the writer pulled over a stranger and pressed the cash into their hand,

“Please can you give this to the homeless woman on the street corner?”

“I beg your pardon?” The stranger twirled the cash between her fingers,

“Would you mind giving that to the homeless woman?” Cathy pointed at Anne, “I used to know her and I’ve been stopping by every day to give her small amounts of cash.” The stranger looked doubtful, “Please?”

“You’re doing a good deed.” The stranger reluctantly accepted, and Cathy spied from behind a telephone box as the stranger crossed the road and handed Anne the cash. The 6th queen grinned as Anne almost dropped her flask to shake the stranger’s hand, the words ‘thank you’ escaping her mouth multiple times.

However, Anne’s face dropped slightly as the woman shook her head and gestured to the surrounding area, and Cathy couldn’t help feeling a little guilty. But at least Anne had something to eat that night.

The cycle continued for weeks. Anne was dropped secret amounts of cash from random strangers each day until Catherine finally decided to face her fears.

The survivor had just ordered a pair of sausage rolls from Greggs, and it took everything in her not to turn back. Cathy felt like she was walking in slow motion as she approached, her heart was thumping in her ears way too much, and she clenched her jaw. What if Anne didn't want to see her again? There had to be a reason for her continuous absence and even worst, what if Henry was lurking in the bins.

“Annie?” Cathy’s voice was barely a whisper as Anne whipped her head around, her jaw-dropping.

Both queens starred in silence before Cathy inaudibly handed Anne the sausage roll, sitting beside her on the pavement.

“Thank you.” Anne tensed her shoulders and hid her face, “I wish you didn’t see me like this.”

“It’s alright.” Cathy awkwardly assured, “Is it warm enough?”

“It’s great, thank you.” The conversation was horribly formal. “How did you find me, anyway?”

“A few weeks ago I went to buy some oat milk and passed you. I’ve been leaving cash in your hood.”

Cathy swore she could see Anne tear up.

“That was you?”

“Yeah, sorry if it was weird.”

“You have no idea how much I appreciated those! With that money, I brought a flask, gloves, a new coat, blankets and even a sleeping bag!” Cathy tried to stifle a laugh as Anne showed off her possessions with pride, “And next, I’m gonna buy a tent! So, thank you, Cath.”

The nickname struck a nerve and Cathy tried not to cry as she finished her sausage roll.

“Is there anything I could bring you tomorrow?”

“Deodorant!” Anne quipped,

A smile graced Cathy's face, even after so long the pair fell back into their casual conversation as nothing had happened. So much had changed but their relationship was still stable as both queen's pushed past their doubts in exchange for an unfamiliar feeling of home and familiarity.

“Yeah, but you’ve always needed that!” Cathy fired back. Anne dramatically gasped and held a hand to her chest. “Seriously though, what do you need?”

“You’ve done too much for me already.” The Boleyn girl grasped Cathy’s hand before she could go. “It would be rude to ask for me, especially after… well, you know what. So thank you.”

“Anytime.” Anne’s hand lingered longer than necessary, and in any other circumstance, Cathy would’ve kissed Anne’s knuckles and told her she loved her. Instead, Anne let go, and they parted ways until the next day.

_______________

It got to the point where Cathy would leave the house an hour early to see Anne.

The lonely, gay, writer leaves her found family to pick up the pieces from her ex-girlfriend’s destruction while she shares a sausage roll with said ex. It sounds like a news header.

Every other day, Cathy would supply Anne with the daily essentials and Anne would take her on a walk around London, showing her all the city’s secrets.

Like the money, this continued until Cathy saw Anne packing up her belongings and blankets.

“What’s going on?”

“They’re moving me. They want me gone by the end of the day because it looks bad for their brand.” Anne explained.

“Who? Selfridges?”

Anne nodded solemnly.

“We are never buying from them again. Come on, you can stay with me.” Cathy picked up a blanket.

“You know I probably have fleas, right? There’s this homeless man who I’m friends with, and his dog is always scratching. I can’t stay at your house.” Anne grabbed the blanket from Cathy’s hands.

“We have flea spray at home from when Kat found that puppy.” Cathy snatched the blanket back.

“Have you forgotten the four people living there who hate me? One of them is my cousin.” Anne claimed the blanket.

“Big deal, don’t think I haven’t noticed those bruises on your neck and wrists. I know what you’re doing. 40 quid a week isn’t enough to buy a tent, Anne.”

The energy dipped and reclaiming the blanket was annoyingly easy.

The Boleyn girl hushed her voice and twiddled her thumbs, “That was uncalled for.”

“Please?” Anne practically melted when Cathy cupped her cheek, “Come home with me.”

“Okay.”

Smuggling a gremlin into the house was more problematic than Cathy thought. Anne had to wait in the garden until the queens had gone to bed and then climb up into Cathy’s window without making a sound.

“Put your leg up!’ Cathy whisper-shouted.

“Do you really think I'm THAT flexible?!” Anne laughed, “I haven’t done the splits in 5 weeks!”

“Lower your voice, you crackhead! Jane is right below us.”

“Oh, fuck Jane!” Anne winked at Cathy who almost dropped the Boleyn girl back onto the grass.

“Just pull!”

Finding strength, Cathy pulled Anne through the window, so she landed on top of her, the pair erupting into fits of laughter.

“I swear someone would’ve heard that!” Anne worried,

“Holy mother of god- you do stink!” Cathy slid out from under Anne and closed her nose.

_______________

“Do you still have that coconut shampoo?” Anne fidgeted around their bathroom, liked she belonged there.

“It should be under the sink.” Cathy scrolled through her phone.

“I still don’t get why you have to be in here,” Anne muttered.

“Because someone has to be in a bathroom for it to be locked! That’s just basic knowledge!” Cathy glanced up from her phone as Anne removed her top, “besides, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before.”

“You’re lucky I’m only letting that comment slide because I haven’t felt hot water in weeks.”

Cathy knew she shouldn’t, but that didn’t stop her from wincing at the bruises on Anne’s back.

“How’d you get those bruises?”

“Looking already, are we?” Anne turned the shower on.

“I’m just curious.”

“I was given the last packet of socks at the homeless shelter, and some dudes were pretty desperate. Which is stupid because I would’ve given them a pair if they’d asked.”

The writer nodded but needed to ask one last question.

“What about the cuts on your arm?”

“What cuts.”

What should’ve been a question came out as a statement, and Anne quickly ended their conversation. Still, that didn’t stop Catherine from eying the vertical cuts above Anne’s wrist which were carved into her skin like the scar on her neck.

Cathy stayed silent for the remainder of Anne’s shower. The stream of water calmed her, and the steam put her muscles at ease. Anne hummed the faint tune of a lullaby, and for once, everything was back to normal.

Anne was sunk back into Cathy’s room smelling of strawberries and coconut, they sprayed flea killer on almost all of Anne’s belongings (despite Cathy’s protests). Before ending the night on Cathy’s carpet eating ice cream and watching Tangled.

Once Anne had passed out on the writer’s shoulder, she began scribbling down her thoughts in her notebook:

‘Why do we fall in love so easily? Even when it’s not right? I don’t know how it all turned to lies, and sometimes I think it’s better to never ask why. And even though Anne hurt me, I can’t help but forgive her.’

☁️ I hope you liked... the first 3 chapters are already on ao3 but i figured i’d post to tumblr too! Let me know about tag lists! xx ☁️

[transgalthoughts]

Guide to transitioning on a budget when you’re scared to come out but certain you want to

There are a few components to this: budgeting, getting treatment, coming out, general life stuff

BUDGETING First and centrally is budgeting. I don’t know what your income is so I’m not going to assume, but here is what my expenditure has been and what I think is reasonable as a goal if you do not have uncontrollable overheads you can’t help - additionally you may find some of my spending to be a bit much (£600 a month rent is quite steep, but cos I live in Oxford and the utilities and everything are included in that price it works out as a fairly decent option)

£600 a month shared housing (+ utilities, council tax etc). This is for Oxford, you can probably find it cheaper in most other places.

£200 a month monthly spending - use a budgeting app like Emma (you will probably need to spend more if you need a car, but try and avoid one if you can, cycling is a good transport option. You should do big shops every week or two, NOT regular small ones, you will spend more. If you are really committed to making headway quickly then unfortnately you can’t go out, it will eat up money like nothing else, try and see your friends in person at your house or theirs, you can be honest or say you don’t like the atmosphere. Cook in bulk using cheap ingredients - tinned and frozen food is a huge win. If you really want to cut down on spending make sure to buy vitamin pills and psyllium husk powder - you can eat less healthily without feeling like crap all the time if you’re eating stuff like this. If you want to eat super healthily try frozen mixed vegetables, tinned tomatoes, lentils, tinned fish, and tinned pulses all mixed together in a wok with smoked paprika and salt - it’s quite cheap, imo very tasty, and very healthy. 

Worth noting: over the course of a year your actual monthly spending is likely to be more liek £250 if you budget for £200 a month - you’ll need to replace phones and laptops and make big one off purchases occasionally, but remember the goal is saving, if you can avoid these costs then do (is your phone freezing for 20 seconds every half an hour really grounds for a replacement?) The £250 total spending per month is total spending - if you want to do something fun this should come out of other spending - not your savings 

Medications: inhousepharmacy is a good one - make sure to buy in bulk (this goes for everything). Don’t try and include this in monthly spending, try and include it in the £50 extra a month spending. Here is a good guide for the first purchase Cyproterone acetate - 300 50mg tablets for £202.22 (1 a day) Estrofem - 364 2mg tablets for £148.94 (start on 1 a day, maybe move up to two if you feel you need to and are comfortable) - take these sublingually to increase the effective dose without spending more. So, your overall cost of living per year should be approximately £10,700 - put the rest into premium bonds, you can take it out relatively easily and you’re guaranteed not to lose your money (if the UK government collapses you have bigger problems than your savings being gone).  If you’re earning £20k a year then you should be able to save £9,300 a year.  If you have the time and energy try getting into some work, especially gig economy work on top of your current job/time in university (deliveroo for example). 

GETTING TREATMENT  Before any of the savings stuff, before you are even sure you are trans, talk to your GP about it and say ytou want to be referred to a GIC. It will take 3 years - you will have plenty of time to find yourself within that time, and if you still haven’t you can find yourself in the GIC. DO NOT wait until you are absolutely sure before telling your GP, I know it is scary but you can do it, and it’s almost easier to do it when you’re not sure. If you wait for a year you will fucking hate yourself 2 years later when you have been waiting for treatment for what seems like your entire life at this point - and private GICs are expensive as fuck. 

If you can afford it go to a private GIC - if you want bottom or top surgery with any reputable surgery you will need to have been officially on hormones for a year, self-medding doesn’t count. There are a few options out there for you but most notably are genderGP (more expensive, but there is less expectation of you to prove you are trans, and they have no issue with previous self medding) and gendercare (less expensive but they may decide you are not quite trans enough - they are also less willing to take on patients who have previously self-medded). Additionally a lot of GPs will not work with (ie pay for the prescriptions for you on the recommendation of) any private GIC, but the ones that do are more willing to work with gendercare than genderGP - look into this more before deciding who you want to go with.  Do not underestimate the importance of the type of HRT you are using. Cyproterone acetate and oestrogen pills are fine. GnRH analogues and transdermal oestrogen patches work far more effectively and with fewer side effects (but GnRH analogues in particular are far more expensive). 

COMING OUT  Coming out all at once publically is gonna be really fucking daunting. You are gonna want to identify individuals and talk to them one on one about it first. These should be people you are close with and who you think are gonna be supportive (ideally both, not just one of the other, but prioritise those who you think are gonna be supportive first - you will gain confidence as you do it if you choose the right people, and lose it if you choose the wrong ones). You do not owe honesty to your parents about this. 

Once you have a good selection of people who you know who are supportive start thinking about how you want to play this - in particular how sure and scared you are. I decided to get FFS (facial feminisation surgery) BEFORE coming out publicly - but after 2 years on HRT (this restricts your choice of surgeons btw). I was absolutely certain before I did this and if you plan on doing this you should be too.  I got my surgery with Dr Jesus Baez in Guadalajara (lip lift, closed rhinoplasty, type t osteotomy, hairline advancement, eyebrow raise, forehead bone shaving) and it cost £12,000 for the surgery - but a lot more than that for everything else (so I spent around £16,000 in total - and that was being tight). However, that’s less than 2 years of saving on £20k a year, so get started now.  Voice training - do it, you can do it for free using transvoice on youtube - the main thing to practice if you have a deep, chest resonant voice is simply doing the *pah pah pah* exercise as often as you can (you can do it silently) and before you start talking to people. 

Also GPs can refer you for voice training directly, even if a GP is unwilling to work with a private GIC they might be willing to do with this (since there is no liability associated with referring you to train your voice more effectively). I haven’t done this but I expect there is gonna be a waiting list though. You really can’t voice train too often (though you can too much in one session).  HEALTH So as mentioned in the budgeting section it is very possible to eat healthily on a budget (well, the kind of budget I recommend, please please don’t try and push it too hard because you need to stay healthy for this - doctors, even gender specialists, are pretty unwilling to prescribe for trans health care because this country is transphobic, so you ideally want to be a picture of health before asking for treatment. Eat healthily, run, bulk up those legs and work that core (leg press, side leg raises with resistance band, crunches, squats, sit ups, reverse crunches, side crunches etc) - all of these things will a) improve the results of blood tests and make it easier to get a prescription, b) hopefully give you a body shape more in line with conventional standards for women and c) stimulate production of hgh which will make the estradiol more effective (but don’t even think of taking hgh as a medication without explicitly getting it prescribed by a doctor, it is seriously not worth it and it can fuck up your body a lot making it impossible to get effective treatment).  GOOD LUUUUCK!!!

[senadimell]

Fanfiction

Arguments against the concept of fanfiction are just hilarious to me. You know why? Music doesn't really have this problem, at least not at first glance. In fact, look up musical quotation and variation, two accepted musical techniques that have existed in European music for hundreds of years. Take that, highbrow critics. Or else consider the modern cover song or remix.

When you look deeper, though, even music has its problems: consider the reception of Andrew Lloyd Webber (one of the most popular musical composers in musical theatre), who’s been repeatedly accused of musical plagiarism. That he borrows extensively and somewhat indiscriminately is true; however, that he borrows ‘meaninglessly’ implies that the average theatre-goer has or should have an extensive knowledge of classical music to understand the history and meaning of any musical quotation, and that music only has meaning when it’s accompanied by its original context and meaning. 

Up until the past decade and a half, most musical theatre was dismissed as popular and not considered worthy of literary or musical analysis, with the exception of the works of Stephen Sondheim (who is brilliant, though I don’t really enjoy his works). Lloyd Webber has often been pointedly ignored, despite being a household name even with people who don’t really listen to musicals. Phantom of the Opera? It’s been playing non-stop, no revivals, at the Majestic theatre in New York for 33 years. (Of course, the irony is that Phantom of the Opera itself is fanfiction). 

The second edition of Steven Suskin’s Show Tunes (1991) included a section called “Notable Imported Shows.” About half of the shows listed were shows with music by Lloyd Webber. In the Preface to the third edition, Suskin justifies the omission of this section and the expunging of Lloyd Webber that resulted: “All of the British imports since the Second Edition have failed; thus, I have seen fit to excise the import section and concentrate on matters of more interest.” As a consequence of this executive decision, the most popular Broadway composer of the last thirty years hand probably history is now banished from a major reference book that purports to cover “The Songs, Shows, and Careers of Broadway’s Major Composers.” 

(emphasis added) Block, Geoffrey. Enchanted Evenings: the Broadway Musical from Show Boat to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber. 2nd ed. Cary: Oxford University Press, 2009.

So there it is, the same problem as fanfiction. The problem is not that a work is being reinterpreted, but that ordinary people like it. It’s not deemed sufficiently literary enough. Critics think the ‘original meaning’ is being disrespected and despitefully used. You can argue that Lloyd Webber’s quotes are meaningless or plagiarized, but you’d have to ignore the fact that people like the show. They find it meaningful. They go and see it again and again, and listen to it in their homes and cars. They propose to their significant others using its music. They sing their children to sleep with it. Regardless of whether or not you think his use of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor, op. 64 in “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” is particularly meaningful, you can’t deny this:

The song has been much recorded, with "I Don't Know How to Love Him" being one of the rare songs to have had two concurrent recordings reach the Top 40 of the Hot 100 chart in Billboard magazine, specifically those by Helen Reddy and Yvonne Elliman,[1] since the 1950s when multi-version chartings were common.

Wikipedia, accessed June 13, 2020.

People like it. And people generally find the songs they like meaningful. 

Guess what? The original still exists! If you like it more, then you can read/watch/listen to it to your heart’s content! You don’t have to read fanfiction. You don’t have to consume the parts you don’t like. You can enjoy Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor, op. 64 all you want and never ever listen to “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” and that’s perfectly fine. You do not, however, get to criticize the people who enjoy the other, or condemn those who write fanfiction as useless. (And consider that Mendelssohn himself wrote variations on other composers’ themes, to great acclaim.)

I'll be the first one to admit that I used to hate fanfiction, but it was more of a disillusioned sort of hatred because I had both high hopes and high standards, and the two couldn't coexist. It was frustrating to realize that most of what I found had poor grammar and character development, or else was based on a movie or play when I explicitly searched for the book (looking at you, most Phantom of the Opera works). I would sort through pages and pages of stuff that I couldn’t get through, and my tolerance grew short. Nowdays, I’ve had a renewed appreciation for fanfiction, now that I’m using ao3 and not FF.net, since I find sorting through works much easier on ao3. 

The short of it is this: There’s nothing wrong with the concept of fanfiction. There’s nothing wrong with what is popular. People writing fanfiction aren’t stealing profits(that’s piracy) like there’s a limited number of views. In fact, I’d hazard to guess that fanfiction drums up profit since it keeps the old flame burning. The fact that fanfiction is free, and people labor at it without the expectation of monetary reward, and write the kind of stories that aren’t deemed worthy of being published, and that critics think that labor is worthless and completely lacking in quality says more about capitalism and who owns ‘the means of production’ than anything else. (Sincerely, your resident non-socialist)

[jazzicology]

The lost art of the jazz verse

Jazz is well known for having its own language. Jazz musicians use terms that aren’t used in other forms of music, or use them in ways which mean different things. An example of this is ‘verse’.

Pop and rock music often has a verse/chorus/verse/chorus structure, where the ‘chorus’ is a repeated section with identical lyrics each time, while the verses are the interleaving bits of the song that tell a story, with different lyrics each time.

In contrast to that, in jazz a ‘verse’ specifically means a section of music right at the start. The verse serves as an introduction. It is not repeated later on in the song, but rather provides a kind of stand-alone run-in to it. These verses often have wonderful, poetic lyrics and beautiful melodies which are quite different in character to the song which follows it. They are often (but not always) sung colla voce (meaning, led by the vocalist, with the instrumentalists following the voice) before entering the rhythm of the song.

These introductory verses are more common in older jazz pieces, and are used to provide background to the story being told in the song. Musically, the verse also allows the writer more creative freedom than the main refrain, which generally has to be straightforward and ‘catchy’.

Some jazz verses are very well known, and form such an important part of the song that not performing them is out of the question. For example, the incredibly complex and sad ‘Lush Life’, written by Billy Strayhorn in the 1930s when he was just 16 (surely a musical genius) has an incredible verse. In terms of word count, it outweighs the song which follows it:

“I used to visit all the very gay places

Those come-what-may places

Where one relaxes on the axes of the wheel of life

To get the feel of life

From jazz and cocktails.

The girls I knew has sad and sullen grey faces

With distingue traces

It used to be where you could see where they’d been washed away

By too many through the day

Twelve o’clock tales

Then you came along with your siren song

To tempt me to madness

I thought for a while that your poignant smile

Was tinged with a sadness

Of a great love for me

Ah yes, I was wrong

Again, I was wrong”.

Hoagy Carmichael’s ‘Stardust’ is another example of a song with a verse that’s as memorable as its chorus — in fact, Frank Sinatra made a recording of the verse alone - you can listen to it here. 

Verses can be musically significant for other reasons. For example, a cornerstone of advanced jazz harmonic practice is ‘Giant steps’, based on the so-called Coltrane changes (tonal centres moving between B, G and Eb). Many musicians are aware that this motif occurs in the bridge of Richard Rogers’s ‘Have you met Miss Jones’. Not so well known is that a Jerome Kern song from 1917, ‘Til the clouds roll by’ (lyrics by PG Wodehouse and Guy Bolton) contains a verse which (in its second half) uses the same modulations.

The ‘lost’ verses

There are many well known jazz songs with verses that are overlooked and rarely performed. These wonderful verses deserve to be revived!

For example, ‘Round Midnight’ (by be-bop jazz god, Thelonious Monk) – officially the most-recorded song in jazz  - has a terrific verse and coda. The verse was actually added later, by Dizzy Gillespie, but was considered so successful that Monk added it to his own performances. Singers rarely perform the verse To be fair, that’s because it is quite challenging for a vocalist: the chords that accompany it provide very few clues to keep the singer from going completely off-piste! A rare example of a vocal performance of the verse is this live recording of the wonderful Carmen McRae. It is utterly brilliant and an electrifying start to the song.

Other well known songs with lovely ‘lost’ verses include: ‘A Foggy Day’ and ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’ (both by George and Ira Gershwin); ‘You’ve Changed’ (Carl Fischer; lyrics by Bill Carey); ‘A Nightingale sang in Berkeley Square’ (Manning Sherwin; lyrics by Eric Maschwitz), ‘In the wee small hours of the morning’ (David Mann; lyrics by Bob Hilliard) and ‘Guess Who I Saw Today’ (Murray Grand; lyrics by Elisse Boyd).

One of New Zealand’s most well-loved songs, ‘Blue Smoke’, is another example. It was written by Maori soldier Ruru Karaitiana while on a troop ship in the second world war. It was later recorded by Dean Martin, among others. Yet, despite being New Zealand’s first really successful ‘popular song’, the verse doesn’t seem to be included on any of the well-known recordings of it (although one source refers to these lyrics as being spoken over the bridge, rather than sung as a verse). That’s a shame, because it provides a moving introduction to the song.

“Smoke drifts above me - whispering I miss you

Taking my thoughts back to you - across the sea

I know that when - I sail home again

I'll find you waiting for me”

Finding the ‘lost’ verses!

The verses aren’t really lost – they’re all out there, somewhere. They just take a little effort to find. Here are our tips on discovering verses.

First, always do your research when you learn a new song. Find out who composed it and who wrote the lyrics. There may even be alternative lyrics, which is always interesting to know about. (As an aside – knowing and naming the composer is an important act of respect. If you are at a jazz jam and announce that you’re ‘going to sing The Very Thought of You by Billie Holiday’, not only are you disrespecting the composer (Ray Noble) you can guarantee that behind your back, the entire band will be cringing and rolling their eyes.

Second, if you find out there is a verse, search for the original sheet music. Simplified ‘lead sheets’ which can be found online often lack the verses and other nice stuff. Similarly, online lyrics websites rarely provide lyrics for the verses (and incidentally, are often inaccurate, having been written down by listening to singers singing them – so for example, we have seen Strayhorn’s ‘distingue traces’ in Lush Life mistakenly written down as ‘distant gay traces’ in more than one website). Needless to say, you need the chords, the melody and the lyrics.

Third, search for recordings of the song to find one or two that include the verse, and then develop your own ideas for how you would like to tackle it. If the verse is to be sung colla voce, then you need to discuss that with the band. And, as a vocalist, you’ll need to practise the transition from the colla voce section, confidently counting in the band to the right tempo for the rest of the song.

This may all sound like a lot of work – but the efforts are really worth it. Often the verse ends up being the stand-out part of the song. You’ll be doing full justice to lovely songs, and showing that you know your jazz!

Resources:

• Lots of historical and musicological stuff can be found on https://www.jazzstandards.com/compositions/ 

• The standard work on the subject is by Alec Wilder (1972) American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900-1950. Oxford University Press (reprinted many times)

Nance Wilson and Sid Thomas

Nance Wilson is one half of the new jazz duo, Jazzicology, with Mark Rendall Wilson, and has a long-standing collaboration with UK jazz pianist and composer Sid Thomas.  Facebook: @Jazzicology   https://soundcloud.com/nance-wilson-trio

Howard (Sid) Thomas is a British author, scientist and jazz musician. Website: http://sidthomas.net

[emma-what-son]

(Echee post) Emma Watson criticises 'dangerously unhealthy' pressure on young women

Posted on March 30 2014

From theguardian.com March 2014 Emma Watson has criticised the "dangerously unhealthy" image projected by the fashion industry and said the pressure to look perfect has taken its toll on her. The actor has also described her doomed attempts to merge into the background as a student at an American university, where she found herself being trailed everywhere by British photographers. After the recent New York premiere of Noah, she tweeted a photograph of the array of cosmetics – and a guardian angel pin – that she said were essential aids to her flawless appearance, and another of herself in a backless dress captioned: "I did NOT wake up like this." The actress said she is better at taking criticism these days than she once was. "As a younger woman, that pressure got me down, but I've made my peace with it. With airbrushing and digital manipulation, fashion can project an unobtainable image that's dangerously unhealthy. I'm excited about the ageing process. I'm more interested in women who aren't perfect. They're more compelling." Watson became famous playing Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies and has been constantly in work since. She is about to start filming a thriller, Regression, by Alejandro Amenábar and is also trying to complete her degree at Brown University, Rhode Island. She enrolled in 2009 for what would have been a four year course, but has taken several breaks for film work, and spent a year studying at Oxford. "After Harry Potter, all that mattered was university," she said, in an interview with the Sunday Times. "It wasn't always easy to break down barriers, as having men from the British press following me with cameras didn't help my mission to integrate. The American press, by contrast, "afforded me so much privacy", but her fellow students recognised her at once. "On the first day, I walked into the canteen and everyone went completely silent and turned around to look at me. I had to say to myself 'it's OK, you can do this'. You just have to take a deep breath and gather your courage."

GUARDIAN COMMENTERS SAY: So something like this Burberry campaign she did a few years ago? Hypocrisy at its finest. She flaunts with the fashion industry and enjoys its perks all the time, but hops on the 'female beauty' bandwagon and enjoys a moan when it suits her. I'd find her socially conscientious pleas convincing if she hadn't profited in the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) from the big, bad, evil fashion/beauty industry. A few years ago, Emma Watson appeared in high-profile advertising companies for posh Paris fashion house L'ancome. I'm guessing she was handsomely remunerated for her 'work'. Certainly she was not forced into letting her photo shopped image be used to market expensive cosmetics and perfumes. Did she only discover how 'oppressive' the fashion industry is when L'ancome cancelled her lucrative contract? Ms Watson is essentially a third-rate actress, and her pronouncements on large and complex issues, such as the pressures on women, are so idiotically vapid that one is brought to conclude that she really can have very little aptitude for higher education. I mean, her comments are hardly indicative of an educated person, or even of a moderately literate or intelligent person. By the way, I understand that she spent a year at Oxford as a visiting and/or exchange student while enrolled at Brown. How come? She is a British national, and so by rights she should not have gone to Oxford on a visiting/exchange student programme, irrespective of whether she happens a student at an American university. If I am wrong about this, then I should like to have some explanation as to her status at Oxford, and how she came by it. Otherwise, I suppose that one might be forgiven for thinking that it is yet another case of a once respectable academic institutions bowing down before the false idols of celebrity and money. (This is quite apart from the fact that all that one has read about her since she began life as a student concerns her acting career, her modeling and her various boyfriends.) SOME COMMENTS FROM THE DM ARTICLE Notice how it's always people who are very aware of how attractive they are that babble on about how it's okay to have physical blemishes? I'd like to see an ugly person say the same thing. Only someone young, beautiful and with her whole life before her can say that, and mean it. Sometimes, her comments maKe her more stupid. Get lost and Wingardium Leviosa. What a daft thing to say. But, then again, this is coming from someone who can't seem to finish uni. I feel like I've aged about 10 years reading this article. Annoying girl. Not only annoying, but also pretentious and disingenuous. ^None of this is my words. It from commentators from two sites emma-what-son posted many more so check out her page

Here's what I think As for what she is saying about Brown it's a complete 180 from how she described it before 2013. In 2013 she started to elude to the fact it was not as great as she made it out to be. She gushed how wonderful her experiences had been to so many magazines. Now I think she's looking for pity and to have excuses why she never stayed at Brown. She preached how she was staying put. I am so fucking tired of having to post quote after quote proving my point with this when she lies time after time. She is not honest! What the truth is doesn't matter because she always lying. It's a constant thing with her. As for the pressures on women she is really a piece of work. The guardian commenters summed it up nicely. She had no problem attaching herself to Burberry and Lancôme. She's had no problem giving them praise and talking about fashion and make-up in just about every interview. That part where she talked about photo shopping and air brushing. Just wow! Did she see the Wonderland magazine she edited? Some photos it didn't even look like her. She'll continue allowing her image to be manipulated no matter what. She thinks she’s aging? She still looks 15 without all the make-up and photo shopping. Last year she was stopped at JFK because they thought she was a unaccompanied minor. Did you know one of the product she pushed when modeling for Lancôme was an anti-age cream? That's the dumbest comment in her entire interview. But really she's said this kind of stuff the last three years and most notably in 2011 where she had a various quotes about body image and being comfortable in your skin. I wont bore you with those quotes since I have before. She gets lauded for those comments and people place her in role model status but when you closely look at it they were just words that meant nothing at the time other than to make people think, “Emma is so anti-Hollywood!! She’s a role model for women and young girls” but meanwhile she never believed in any of it in the first place. At the time she said those things she was at a more healthier weight than she ever was. In 2011 you can tell she either stopped working out or ate more. I thought she looked her best then. Now she’s back to stick thin and even surpassed it a way IMO is unhealthy. She sending a bad message to women. From standard.co.uk July 2011, “She sees modeling as an extension of acting, in fact - just playing a role - but is conflicted about its demands. “I think the pressure the media and the fashion industry put on women to look a certain way is pretty intense. There’s a certain tyranny to trying to achieve that kind of beauty. I don’t know, I’m maybe not the best person to speak about this because I obviously completely adhere to it,” she laughs nervously. “ ^She really needs to start taking her own advice and quit being a judgmental hypocrite. Not just with this topic but everything she tends to speak out against that she does it herself. Recently she tweeted a photo of all this make-up and I posted this on my tumblr days ago

^Same phone in this photo is what they're using in the bottom photo that I also posted on tumblr She said something else recently (Sunday Times interview) that is just typical Emma. I covered this a few times. From emmawatsonbelgium.blogspot.be March 2014, "For someone who has starred in eight blockbuster movies and is worth an estimated £30m, she is endearingly modest about how green she felt leaving Harry Potter behind in 2011. Emerging from that magical machine was “really intimidating”, she says. “I’d done two tiny plays when I was, like, six and eight, but I wasn’t driven to act. I wasn’t doing Oscar acceptance speeches into a hairbrush." Yeah it might have no been a hairbrush but who knows she could be lying about that. She'd practice her speeches in mirrors. From telegraph.co.uk July 2007,  "Pauline is utterly obsessed with being an actress and I was just like that when I was younger. I dreamt of it. I practised speeches in front of mirrors. Whenever there was a part at school, I went for it. I was probably a bit of a show-off in the sense that any chance to get up and be seen, I did it. I was such a drama queen. I used to wail and moan and cry, and little things were blown up into being big things. I don't know how my parents stood it, really. I've grown up a bit. I've had to. I actually really want to be an actress, a proper actress who makes it her career. I'm always expecting to be found out and I thought, If I'm no good, now is the time to find out." She really wants people to think she all of a sudden wants to act. What I think is she is really trying to distance herself from her lack luster post Potter career by making it out like she now wants to act and that’s why she has no lead roles because her resume does not equal her hype. The last few years she’s separated herself from “always wanted to be an actress” to “I was not sure”. She’s being disingenuous as usual and people believe it. Plus she said she did modeling so directors and producers would look at her differently so that's why she used Burberry and Lancôme. And she did a course at RADA in 2008 so if she was not sure or didn't want to than why did she do these things? One more thing from the Sunday Times interview From emmawatsonbelgium.blogspot.be March 2014, "It’s about as close as she’ll get to revealing anything about her newest relationship, with Matt Janney, rugby hunk and Oxford’s most eligible bachelor. “I can’t comment on it, I’m sorry,” she says, suddenly jumping up and hastily bundling her things back into her bag, which has exploded across the sofa beside her. “I’m trying to keep my private life sacred, although I don’t want to lock myself up and never go out. So I guard it, because I don’t date people who are famous, and I don’t think it’s fair that, all of a sudden, intimate details of their personal life are public as a direct result of me. I find that so uncomfortable, and I wish there was a way I could protect those people, but it’s not in my control.” When I suggest her boyfriends are consenting adults, she looks worried. “But you don’t choose who to love, who you have feelings for, do you?” She throws her phone into her bag and retreats home to pack, as she’s flying to LA. Just a normal girl, then, off to present an Oscar."

So she can go to international magazines and complain she can't find a man or that men are intimidated by her? She had in the past before Will Adamowicz. It was in almost every one of her interviews for a few years. So she can use Matt Janney (this new guy) on a beach in a bikini PDA session as a publicity stunt to cover up her ex boyfriend being caught rolling coke bombs and also use him to product place an iPhone in Madrid but she wants to keep it private? And she doesn't date famous guys? What about Johnny Simmons (Young Neil) and George Craig (Front man for rock group One Night Only)?  If you can Google their name and you see them in movies or music videos, they're famous.

[oncerpotter2018]

DAY 2 - IT'S THE TROLLEY PROBLEM // Pick Who Dies

It was the choices that made his heart break the most. Charles couldn't choice between either of the options presented to him for they were both too painful to pick from. Each one was just as worst as the last and Charles had no time to mess around for lives were at stake. The man in the computer screen eyed him carefully as though he was the examinar and he was the student sitting an exam. The man didn't talk as he waited for his response; he only gave him two options, two simple choices that could easily kill a person. Charles swollowed air into his lungs trying to make the right choice. After a few more minutes of silence the man on the other side sighed and spoke for the first time in ages.

"Oh dear Charles, here I am thinking you graduated from Oxford University, getting a deploma in ethics and psychology, am I correct?"

He asked smugly knowing all too well where this was going. "I assume you are aware of the Trolley Problem dear Charles" he spoke with a smile on his face despite the darkness covering most of it.

"Yes. I remember it" Charles replied not wanting to show the waver in his voice.

"Good because if you have noticed you just entered the exact dilemma. The choices I gave you were part of that experiment. Decide who you are to sacrifice and who to safe. Is it your precious students and stuff within the walls of your school or..." he paused adding to the already nerve racking tension in the room.

"your precious husband" he said snapping his fingers and there on the screen was his Erik. His body strapped to a chair, a bag over his head concealing his face, hiding the tears that came down his eyes, muffling the terrified crying that he desperately tried to silence.

Charles held back his own tears as he watched other men torture the life out of Erik on glorious HD. Charles wished he didn't bought a new laptop as he bit his tough to stop himself from screaming.

"The choice is simple really, who are you willing to safe? Who do you love the most? Who will you sacrifice?" the nameless figure on the screen taunted at Charles as he tapped at his old fashioned pocket watch signalling that time was ticking away.

"No... No I don't have to choose. I can save them all. Save the students and Erik. There is always hope" he said back, his voice breaking as he watched Erik being beaten and battered over and over again. His lungs tightened with each punch. The man shook his head and laughed.

"I'm afraid that's not possible Mr Xavier. You see there is a bomb placed somewhere around the school. There simply won't be time to disable it even with your fastest, most clever students. Even young Jean Grey won't able to stop what is about to come. Now decided, Erik or your students" he pressured Charles in making the choice, he pressed him on wanting to figure out what he should do.

"I don't know what to do" he whispers as he looked back at the students, their lives that still awaits them. Some too young to die, some still have dreams to profill..

He couldn't take that away from them, he couldn't rip them from their hopes and dreams when he told them that they were safe. He was better than that. But on the other hand there was Erik.

He watched for some time as he looked at the screen and so nothing both blood and wounds on what used to be his skin. Charles turned away and held back his own lunch. He asked himself how he got into this mess, he will never know. But for a while he looked on trying to cope with his pain and his own but soon after the sound of broken bone filled the room Charles couldn't hold onto his cries. He screamed and didn't care who should listen in.

"Stop... STOP IT! I DON'T WANT TO CHOSE" Charles screamed for the top of his lungs as he longed for this nightmare to end. How he wished this was just a bad dream but it wasn't, it wasn't a mind trick that his telepathy was playing on him. This was real and this was happening. It was only when Hank came to the door wondering what was happening.

"Charles what's the matter? Is everything alright?" he saked with concern. Charles wiped away his tears as he said confidently:

"I'm okay, everything is fine"; he waited as Hank replied with an okay and left him alone. Once he heard his footsteps faded away, he looked back at the screen and realised the pain that he was feeling rise bakc up again. Erik was trembling now as he was no longer tied to the chair as they took off the berlap sack from his head. Charles could so clearly everything, from his hair that was not in its neat condition, his clothes tattered and torn and much like the rest of his body, his face seemed unrecognisable.

"Whabe they done to you?" Charles cried his his head as he touched his screen knowing it was not going to work. The man was becoming impatient, he was lacking the fun in their little game.

"I'm sorry Charles but I must continue. The more you waste my time I might as well kill them both. Now you don't want that do you Charles?" he said pressing his fingers on a small hiding botton on the desk. On his other hand was a ready loaded gun. Charles eyed bakc and forth between the gun and the botton and then at Erik's broken body. He knew the pain he must have gone through, the struggle he fought so hard to escape from. Seeing him so frighted and looking for an escape formed Charles' decision.

Charles looked back at the times he and Erik had. The places they went and the mutants they saw. Charles even remembers their first kiss which still stayed with him all those many day and nights. He still remembers the I love yous and the dreams of getting married which finally came true. Charles bowed his head and whishedered faintly.

"Erik"

"What was that Charles?" he was taunting him again, even mocking his choice as he knew who he chose to pick. Charles, with his eyes closed took a deep breath again and said the name.

"Erik... I chose... I chose Erik" he said muttering the words, struggling to say his name. The man smiled even thought you couldn't see it. He snaped his figured again and the men from the room lifted Erik up to his feet and lead him to the main room.

"Well done Charles, I see your knowledge of the Trolley Problem had paid off after all. Being a Oxford University graduate must have paid off after all" he said as Erik in the hands of the two men entered the room. "And by the way Charles, there was no explosives in the school, I just wanted to see your face when I killed your husband" he remarked and with barely any time for Charles to comprehend what he had just said a explosive bang from a gun fired into the air. A pained scream and then a thud filled the air instead. Charles covered his mouth with his hands when the man stepped away from the camera and saw the site of what used to his friend, love and husband. "I'm sorry it had to be this way Charles. I'm sorry for tricking you this way but a threat to me is a threat to the world, I hope you understand" he said before speaking in a different language that Charles didn't quote understand. "Oh and by the way Charles, I'll send over his body to you to give him a proper funeral. Once again I'm sorry it had to be this way, it was for the best and just a reminder this was your choice, you killed him Charles, I just gave you the choice" he said before leaving the room.

He was right though, in a few weeks Erik's body was brought to them, and for the first time Charles saw every mark, every wound and the bullet hole up close and personal. He buried his husband the same day. There was no time to dress in proper attire as he wheeled himself to where he was buried, and now Charles could only think of the words that still haunts him at night in his lonely room as he fiddles with his wedding band.

"just a reminder this was your choice, you killed him Charles, I just gave you the choice"

Charles looked at the pile of dirt on the ground, the flowers on top.

"I miss you already and I'm so sorry, I didn't know what to do. He forced me to chose. I couldn't see you suffer any longer. I'm sorry, I love you" he said placing the roses onto his grave.

[yanabortnik]

YANA BORTNIK ( FIVEL STEWART ) is a 17 year old JUNIOR student at Broadripple Academy. SHE is originally from MARQUETTE, MICHIGAN but moved to Broadripple 3 YEARS ago. SHE is AMBITIOUS and DISCIPLINED but can also be CONDESCENDING and CRITICAL.  

BASICS

Name: Yana Mikhailovna Bortnik

Age: 17

Grade: Junior

House: Keough

Cabin Room: Room 3

How long have they been at Broadripple: 3 years

Where are they from originally: Marquette, Michigan

Extra curricular: Soccer, Speech and Debate, SWAT,  and Women of Broadripple,

PINTEREST

CHARACTER AESTHETICS

Frothy matcha lattes, a furrowed brow, bargain bin arts & crafts, the strong smell of incense, palms pressed against the bark of a tree, late night cram sessions, an old scuffed pair of crocs, vanilla yogurt topped with berries, a small collection of crystals, a grass-stained soccer ball, monochromatic outfits, a small plain Kamidana, a backpack stuffed to the brim, a folder filled with school assignments graded with anything less than an A, a smattering of freckles across a nose, nervously bitten nails, a meticulous daily planner, and a furby meme-filled album on an iPhone.

TRAITS

Positive Personality Traits: Responsible, patient, ambitious, resourceful, loyal, organized, and self-disciplined

Neutral Personality Traits: Cautious, realistic, practical, methodical, business-oriented, serious, and suspicious

Negative Personality Traits: Sensitive, know-it-all, expects the worst, nosey, cheap, and rarely satisfied

FACTS

Yana is from Marquette, Michigan—a friendly, scenic, and cold place on the Upper Peninsula. Her mother is originally from Japan and moved to the United States to attend university and she stayed after she met Yana’s father. Yana has an older brother, Mikhail (Misha), who was born in New York, but then a job opportunity cropped up for her father that brought the family halfway across the country and dumped them in Michigan.

Yana’s parents are hardworking, no-nonsense, and both functioning alcoholics. Yana and Misha’s upbringing was, as a result, a little distant and sanitized, and has led Yana to push herself as far and hard as she can in order to feel like she has done something right by them. But mostly, not much she can do catches their attention.

Enter: Broadripple Academy in her google search for “top prestigious boarding schools grades 9-12.” Yana dedicated the entirety of eight grade to cramming for the entrance exam and convinced at least half a dozen of her teachers to send letters of recommendation or to help her with the application. While the Montessori school she attended wasn’t bad per se, it didn’t have the stature a place like Broadripple Academy did. It was a ticket to a great college, to a great future, and maybe like… a hearty pat on the back from her dad or a congratulatory hug from her mom????

She paid all the fees with money she made from babysitting over the previous two years, forged her parents’ signatures (as she was accustomed to), and her parents didn’t find out she had even applied until she got the acceptance letter. Their reaction was, as per usual, lackluster. They condescendingly thought it was cute that she had done all this on her own, bragged to their friends about how they helped her get in, and then in the fall Yana was shipped off.

What motivates Yana is not perfection but success, and it does have the habit of driving her up the wall sometimes but that is just the kind of sacrifice she has to make in order to fulfill a goal. She is very future-oriented in that when she first arrived at Broadripple she had a bit of a I’m Not Here To Make Friends outlook (though undoubtedly made 2-3 really close friends within the first couple months and has assumed her role as Mom Friend yes hello these are wanted connections).

Her dad is an atheist but her mom practices Shinto and used to be a Buddhist. When Yana and Misha were young, she really immersed them in both religions. They sporadically attended Lake Superior Zendo back home until Yana was about twelve and they still perform Shinto prayers at home at a Kamidana.

She is really dedicated to their studies and heavily side-eyes everyone who doesn’t take school seriously. Like, guys don’t you realize how lucky you are to be here!!! 

HEADCANONS

Back home, Yana has a pet ferret named Pasha. If you are a friend of hers, you know everything about him from the little snuffling sounds he makes while he sleeps, his favorite treats, and the “walks” through the park that Yana takes him on when she’s home. He is her baby and she misses him. </3

Yana is quite... economical (i.e. cheap as hell). Her brother made her a tie-dye shirt that says ‘Dollar Tree Prom King 2008′ (an inside joke). She really values independence and money = independence, y’know? It’s just another thing she doesn’t have to worry about bothering her parents for, so she works at a restaurant and babysits almost nonstop whenever she’s home so she has spending money while at school.

Which reminds me that she feels like an awful daughter for literally no valid reason. That’s just what checked out parents do to you, I guess. :/

Though she’s a very serious person the things she finds funny are usually bizarre, nonsensical memes and she particularly loves furby ones, especially the long furby blessed be his name etc etc. 

She has a small crystal collection that she uses for things like concentration, energy, calmness, self love, etc. Does she sincerely believe they do anything? I’m gonna go ahead and give it a 50/50. She does enjoy the ritual of charging them and doing full moon stuff. Who’s down to bask in the moonlight???

When not wearing the school-regulated Oxfords or her standard pair of white sneakers Yana is, in fact, wearing a pair of light blue crocs. They’re comfy, okay!!! Also fashion-wise, she does wear a lot of monochromatic outfits. If you go to her Pinterest page that I linked above you’ll see what I mean. Nothing too weird just like, a Brand.

QUESTIONS ABOUT THE RETREAT

What do they think about The Retreat? Yana is someone who feels her goals are in danger and/or inconvenienced by the Retreat. She very much wants to be at Broadripple and she’s going to be worrying about her GPA and missed opportunities from not being on campus. It makes her uneasy and she’s anxious to get back tot he dorms.

Do they have any previous experience with camping or other outdoors? She was in the Girl Scouts when she was a kid and attended Girl Scout Camp for a couple weeks for a few summers, but other than that her family’s connection to the outdoors was pretty regimented in religious ceremony a lot of the time. But she did grow up with a lot of people in Michigan who camped and did outdoors-y stuff, so she picked up one small things but nothing that would be very useful at the Retreat.

What does their cabin bunk look like? How will they decorate their space? Yana isn’t a neat freak by any means but she does value organization. She has her crystals laid out on her bedside table (they are usually on her desk back in the dorm), a couple sticks of incense, and her clothes are all neatly folded and put away. She has designated a spot beside her bed for all her school stuff, and then she has a framed photo of herself and her brother propped up nearby (see here). She also has a tote bag of like, cheap crafts supplies to do in her “downtime” as a form of chilling lmao. She had more miscellaneous decorative stuff back in her dorm that she didn’t bring.

Do they believe in the supernatural? To what degree? In a sense, yeah, depending on your definition of what is or isn’t supernatural. Going to take a direct quote here but: “informed by Shinto beliefs around notions of animism — a soul (“reikon”) lives within all existence and phenomena. Everyday things — from objects to plants to mountains — can be defined as ‘kami’ or deities.” So in a sense that she believes in deities, yes. But monsters? Cryptids? Ghosts? Not really.

Are they easily spooked? Actually, yes asdkjn. She’s just very verrrrrry jumpy. It doesn’t take much to startle her honestly.

AND FINALLY,

A very dumb but (hopefully) fun quiz made by your admins, please share what result you got

you will sacrifice yourself for someone else

your one of the purer hearts of broadripple, you may not even know the person you sacrifice yourself for that well but you think its the right thing to do. and maybe it is. but would they do the same thing for you?

genuinely didn’t expect it tbh! but aw

[drizzitwrites]

New Fic: “Must Have Done Something Right” Opening Scene (Draft) -- Dragon Age: Inquisition

Hi all,

Switching fandoms (back to my OG fandom, Dragon Age) since I’ve finally broken down and begun playing Inquisition (which I bought on the release day and then promptly got hipster angry at for 6 years). I still wasn’t sold at first and I DEFINITELY don’t love the companions as much as I did in any of the other games. UNTIL........ I met Dorian Pavus. Who I love. Deeply.

So... one day I was playing and I made an offhand comment quoting a song lyric because Dorian set my m!Lavellan Inquisitor up for a combo and then Jonas said “we should not!fic a thing where they’re on a university sports team” and then my brain grabbed hold of it and needed to almost obsessively think about it over the next two weeks.

Aaaaand, now I’ve actually started writing. This should be interesting, because I can SEE the scenes so clearly in my mind, so I may either fly through this and write it in a month in a frenzied fit of pique OR I may agonise over it because the words aren’t bringing out the picture in my head right. Either way, this one’s going to be long (and considering I’m someone who usually says “I think I can get that done in 5k” and then it takes 25k, this almost certainly means we’re going to hit novel length at least) and I have VERY LITTLE TIME, so don’t expect the finished product any time soon. I might release it chapter by chapter, but I generally don’t in case something comes up in a later chapter that affects the early chapters, because you never know when you need to re-order something or change details or add in something and I don’t want to have to deal with telling people I re-posted and having them go back to read it.

But! For anyone who might want to read it piece-by-piece with the understanding that what I’m posting here is edited and postable (by my standards) but is very much subject to change as the fic writing unfolds, I’ll post some to all of the scenes here. Read or don’t. At your leisure.

Also... I’m using this as an informal beta reading session, since Jonas is really good with big picture concept stuff, but terrible at anything having to do with emotions or the conveyance thereof AND is absolutely not here for even thinking about anything that’s higher than teen rated, and because I’ve been out of the fandom for so long that most to all of my former Dragon Age beta readers have left fandom and my new beta readers aren’t at all in the fandom. So... comments, thoughts, wording changes, spelling and grammar corrections, etc. welcome.

So, without any further ado, I present to you:

Dragon Age: Inquisition - Must Have Done Something Right Dorian Pavus/M!Lavellan Modern Day University AU Chapter 1, Scene 1

As Dorian lay sprawled on his backside on a New Jersey street corner, he couldn't help but wonder which of the monumentally stupid decisions he'd made over the past year and a half had led him to this moment. It could, he allowed, be all of them. In fact, it was very probably all of them. He would have dwelled on this longer, digging deep and trying to pinpoint the exact moment everything in his life had gone to shit, but right now he had more pressing matters to focus on, such as the bruise he could already feel forming on his backside, the frigid water seeping in through the legs of his trousers and down the sides of his shoes, and how the fuck, exactly, he was supposed to get home.

The skies had been clear and blue, with no signs of an impending storm when he'd headed to work that morning. Around mid-afternoon, clients had begun to rush through the door, blowing on their hands, brushing a few stray snowflakes from their shoulders, and commenting on the turn the weather had taken. By the time Dorian finished his shift at seven p.m. he'd stepped through the door into a full on New England blizzard.

He wasn't dressed for it, of course. He'd grabbed an overcoat and gloves on the way out the door, but hadn’t given a second thought to his footwear. Even he wasn't vain enough to wear his second best pair of oxfords if he was expecting snow. For one thing, they didn't deserve to be subjected to the thorough dousing of salt water they were certain to receive. For another, the smooth leather outsoles gave him approximately negative amounts of traction when trying to walk on ice.

Which brought him to here. He'd attempted the drive home on his Vespa, figuring it would be better than attempting to walk home. And it had been, he supposed, until he'd come over the crest of a hill, his back wheel had hit a patch of ice, and the entire bike had tried to kick out from under him. He'd saved it, just, and managed to navigate to the bottom of the hill where a wide expanse of sidewalk allowed him to pull off the road and park. He'd eased the bike as far out of the way as he could, put it in park, and dismounted.

And promptly fell on his ass.

He'd attempted to right himself, which had only led to an embarrassing scramble of feet against ice, legs kicking every which way, until he conceded that, for now, the ground had squarely defeated him, and let himself slide down to rest against the side of his bike.

“Need a hand?” A soft voice asked from above.

Dorian opened his eyes to see a man standing there, one gloved hand extended in his direction. As he stared up through the snow and the floodlights from the nearby building, Dorian couldn't make out any of the man’s facial features beyond impeccably combed dark hair, which glinted with red in the light. The man was well-dressed, however, albeit more sensibly than Dorian given the weather conditions, with a wool muffler tucked neatly into the collar of a knee-length overcoat, his feet clad in ankle-high fleece-lined boots.

The man said nothing, but remained there, arm outstretched, until Dorian managed a quick nod of thanks, took the proffered hand, and tried to lever himself to his feet while the other man pulled. He was surprisingly strong, Dorian noted, especially given his stature, which was good, because he ended up doing most of the work in the exchange while Dorian attempted to use the seat of his bike for leverage, his feet continuing to scrabble for purchase on the ground with every movement.

“Thank you,” Dorian said, dropping his free left hand down to grip the right handlebar of his scooter for balance.

“Don't thank me too much,” the man said. “I did stand by and watch the whole thing happen until I saw you give up and slump down in the snow. Decided I better intervene rather than leaving you out here all night.” He shifted his grip to twist it around into a tight handshake. “Name's Krem, by the way.”

“Dorian. And now I suppose I should thank you double for deciding not to leave me here.”

Not that I have a lot of reason for getting up and going about my life, he didn’t add.

Krem nodded, one corner of his mouth flicking up into the hint of a half smile. “You gonna be alright if I let go now?”

“What?” Dorian asked, then tracked Krem’s gaze to their still joined hands. “Oh… yes. Or… probably, it’s all relative, isn’t it? I mean, I’m not entirely sure how I'm getting home from here, and I hate to leave my bike parked out all night, especially in the snow, but… at least I’m standing. For now.”

“Never know. Snow might stop soon. I'm meeting a friend at a café just down the street. You're welcome to join me. It's warm and dry. Usually. You can buy me a coffee as a thank you. You look like you could use one.”

As a rule, Dorian despised coffee that wasn't prepared to his exacting standards with the proper equipment and techniques, but he was willing to concede that ‘usually warm and dry’ was a better option than laying in the snow on a street corner thinking of all the good reasons he had for staying there and freezing to death. Probably.

“In truth, I could use something a good deal stronger than coffee,” Dorian replied with a wry laugh. “Several somethings, in fact. Possibly a whole bottle of somethings. But alright. Coffee it is. Lead the way.”

[douchebagbrainwaves]

AT THE TIME THERE MIGHT HAVE BEEN OK IF HE WAS GOOD, SO IN THAT RESPECT THEY'RE BETTER POSITIONED TO PROSPER IN A RECESSION THAN BIG COMPANIES

A new concept of variables. The main reason there are only a few rich people buy original art, and even now I find it kind of weird. If you look at the historical evidence, it seems an axiom that this would be an optimization, not part of any specific science; it's literally meta-physics in our sense. Xenophon Mem. 0 have in common? One reason to launch early, to understand what it is. With one exception: patent trolls. Java in the press about what Jessica has achieved. Notes The ramen in ramen profitable refers to instant ramen, which is like a compiled program you've lost the source of your problems in a way that makes them so. Angels who've made money in technology are preferable, for two reasons: they understand your situation, and they are nowhere near as smart.

You don't need to know principle is that in practice socialist countries have nontrivial disparities of wealth, and are aghast at the thought of our investors used to keep me up at night. The world is—and you specifically are—one quantum of making users' lives better. 12, and just build things. It's as if mathematicians, physicists, and was shocked to discover, not something customers need. Ironically, the main thing I'd be feeling was curiosity about which of two proofs was better. 1 x 2 or x if foo 1 2 7. No one would know what side to be on any shortlist of admirable people. When people say Web 2. It's just unbearably inefficient. The real test is revenue. When you're eight it's called playing instead of hanging out, but that there be few of them.

Hackers are not stupid, and unanimity is very rare in this world, I think, 24 hours to say yes, and the company is a good deal for the board to give him. Stone, Lawrence, Family and Fortune: Studies in Aristocratic Finance in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Oxford University Press, 2005. And unless you already have most of what you built for the previous ones, then you're competing with publishing's form of distribution, and that's why they do it. 16% false positives means that it is not clear whether you can keep hope and worry balanced, they will be facing not just technical problems but their own wishful thinking. 01 and. It's much like being a postdoc: you have to draw a building, because your users will do it. Software companies are sometimes accused of meandering. The traditions and financial models of the old Moore's Law back, by writing a stripped-down kernel how hard can it be? Sparse Binary Polynomial Hash Message Filtering and The CRM114 Discriminator.

That the speakers at YC were so consistent in their advice. When things are hard to understand because the ideas are out there, separated from us by what will later seem ridiculous, I want to examine its internal structure. Founders at Work. The atmosphere of the average big company—that hackers can implement software, but there is more in his books than in a library of art monographs. I doubt they realize it, that readers trust bloggers more than Business Week. Their craziness is the craziness of the idle everywhere. They don't want founders to turn down most acquisition offers. We had to pay out their earnings in dividends, and so on.

But they could be profitable. There's no consensus yet in the very word taste sounds slightly ridiculous to American ears. It's not as painful as raising money from multiple investors, as most VCs say, they're more likely to be smarter. I see a man must either resolve to put out nothing new or become a slave, in which case problem solved, or at least, certain kinds of arrogance, investors vary greatly in this respect was the original author of GMail, which is even shorter than the Perl form. For example, explicit support for programs with multiple users, or negotiate with other companies, and that territory seems to be about the 7 secrets of success. England, the Industrial Revolution. It also gives them more control. But should you start a startup: success or failure of a startup that succeeds, it's going to stop to consider the ability to get things done. It took decades for relativity to be accepted, and the VCs will own a third of the company? Another way to fly low is to give them sufficient activation energy to start using whatever you make, you have to make something people want.

The High-Res Society December 2008 For nearly all of us, because our software was so complex. What matters is not ideas, but their strategic value. Compared to IBM they were like Robin Hood. If you factor out the bootstrapped companies that were actually funded by their founders through savings or a day job as a waiter to learn how to hack also means that when you have 57 things going on at once, they wouldn't have presented them the way they do for standardized tests? Dynamic typing. For some reason, the more qualifiers there are before the name of your VC stops mattering once you have bad programmers, the group of people we need to introduce now is valuation. I think this is generally a formality; if you say anything mistaken, fix it immediately, and so on. To kids, wealth is a fixed pie. If so, could they actually get things done, and designed languages all too influenced by the technology of the day so adults can get things done.

This is probably the single best thing they can do it I'm going to demonstrate this phenomenon by describing some. But increasingly the founders of Yahoo and Google. This is especially necessary with links whose titles are rallying cries, because otherwise they become implicit vote up if you believe as I do actually typing. Now suppose you're so un-rapacious founder is only going to become a good hacker, between about 23 and 38, and who wants to distract voters from bad times at home, for example. This is largely a tautology but worth remembering all the same valuation: that would be the president. He seemed to be running out of money. The resulting technological growth translates not only into wealth but into military power. But that constrains you in different ways. And that's what programs are: ideas. But that's something you can do is jump in immediately. Want to know if the selection process will outperform other successful applicants. They also need to keep your expenses low; but above all, it could either be a bug or a new category of things not to eat—the Bay Area than Miami is simply that it's populated by adults, but that I often spent money I desperately needed on stuff that I didn't want as the top idea in their mind at any given moment he may need to be here a certain amount of stuff, it starts to appear.

Notes No one seems to have been nerds in high school, my friend Robert Morris and Trevor Blackwell were in grad school, a friend of mine rarely does anything the first time, with misgivings. It will be a flop and you're wasting your time, you'll be well on your way. In addition to the technical obstacles all startups face, and the VCs will try to draw you out, but thinks hacker means someone who breaks into computers. How could they go ahead with the deal? Another from that batch was Loopt, which is not an acceptable solution, whereas 99. But not in the random way that three year olds. So what to make, is extraordinarily powerful.

[nighttime-tea-party]

Can you tell us a little bit about what would've happened with lolita au Sebastian and Ciel if the Undertaker hadn't caught them? You said you think about it a lot.

Hooo boy yes, I do think about it a lot. So much so actually that I could write a whole sequel in an AU to this AU. The problem is, I feel like I would sabotage my own ending if I wrote a companion fanfic. People never really like sequels, do they? And I do think that the ending to Ciel is the Right ending.

That Being Said,

Here’s what I’d do with a sort-of sequel in an AU where Sebastian would get away with it, you’ve opened Pandora’s Box and there’s a whole lot of stuff coming out of it now. Read at own risk of having the Ciel ending ruined:

Undertaker still confronts Sebastian, they brawl and Ciel steps in with his deadly letter opener, however, when UT is writhing on the floor, holding on to the dear life that he’s bound to lose anyway, the film containing the incriminating photos slips out of his pocket and Ciel takes it, hopefully leaving no further evidence to prosecute Sebastian.

Sebastian doesn’t believe in his luck and turns himself in for the murder he claims he’s committed, then writes the confession the same way we know it. When Agni learns that it was actually Ciel who killed UT to save Sebastian from being killed, he isn’t as convinced that it’s better to keep the authorities from finding out that Ciel did it, as he is in my “canonverse”, and he helps the boy to get someone to listen to his turn of events, so he won’t be sentenced. Maybe that’s because Ciel’s enthusiasm to prove Sebastian’s innocence isn’t limited by the fear of exposing his sexual offences.

Nobody posing a threat to Sebastian will see the confession that’s just been finished by the time it’s clear that there’s a good chance both Sebastian and Ciel will be exempt from any punishment, and in the end, Sebastian comes home again, gives the whole piece of writing directly to Ciel instead because he still wants him to know everything, and Ciel, well… he gets to explain his feelings to living, breathing Sebastian after all.

They start a diary together where they document recent events: one of them keeps the book for a while and recapitulates recent events to the other, then hands it back for the other one to write in, so this would be the form this story would be written in (see, that’s how much I think about it, send help pls)

Ciel continues to go to school with Sieglinde, they’re good friends and rumour at school has it they’re secretly a couple, but she keeps trying to press it out of Ciel that he’s actually gay, which he’s not quite sure he is but of course he can’t tell her he’s not interested in any girls because he’s in an illegal relationship with his stepfather.

He does tell her that, though, when he’s graduated from high school and leaves for Europe with Sebastian and he knows she can’t do anything about it anymore. And it feels liberating to tell someone from this position of power.

Ciel gets accepted into Oxford, just like in the original fic, but this time, he actually plans to graduate. Sebastian gets a job there as a professor, perhaps by blackmailing one of the people in power, but they don’t live together and do their best not to let anyone realise they know each other, much less are in a homosexual relationship since it’s the 1950s and this time, their relationship has the potential to not only have Sebastian but also Ciel imprisoned (or suffer electro shock therapy instead)(that’s a topic I never addressed in the fanfic because it’s actually terrible what homosexuals had to endure back then and I did not want to compare it to the problematic nature of Sebastian’s and Ciel’s relationship). Ciel takes on the surname Phantomhive again, so nobody will get the idea that they’re related either. Of course, despite all of that, they still meet regularly off-campus, and Ciel will write a thesis under Sebastian’s guidance, so they can be seen on campus without raising any suspicions.

Sebastian still loves Ciel unconditionally, feels very secure in their relationship, and encourages him to get to know university student life with all its social aspects, which means he isn’t even really jealous when some guy’s gaydar points towards Ciel and Ciel makes a show of flirting back for Sebastian.

Ciel thinks a lot about what it means that he’s really not a child anymore but Sebastian still loves him and is obviously also still very sexually attracted to him, and speculates on whether he has “healed” Sebastian from his perversions, and what made him that way in the first place, but Sebastian very soberly insists that he’s not healed, he’s just completely occupied with being in love with and desiring Ciel despite him being an adult now. It’s a topic that never really lets go of Ciel and he’s secretly a little relieved that they have no children/minors in their little world anymore (an so is Sebastian).

After years of adventures and misadventures at uni, Ciel graduates in the late 1950s and the two leave the UK for good and move into Sebastian’s inherited flat, which they have to clean of years of cobweb and dust and they refurbish and refurnish their new old home. Since in France, homosexuality hasn’t been criminalised since the late 18th century, and they both have reached a point where they have hardly any fucks left to give about what people might think of them, they don’t hide their relationship anymore, and Sebastian gets in touch again with old literary acquaintances to introduce Ciel as his beautiful and gifted partner, and in this circle of people, nobody really takes offence at that, someone references French author Colette’s bisexuality (mostly because I’ve recently watched the film about her starring Keira Knightley, I will admit that).

Ciel and Sebastian are happy with their life in Paris, they somehow manage to live off their writing and occasional other jobs like guest lectures. The 50s end, it’s the 60s now… I haven’t really thought much beyond that but everything always turns out for the best and Sebastian lives long enough to keep Ciel company for a long time. In all these years, they never stop writing their shared diaries.

Wow, thanks for asking, it felt great to share this for once. Also makes me wanna write it all even more… but luckily, I’m well-occupied with #wanderlust and my other hobbies and obligations, so it’s not like I have time to do that anytime soon anyway. Also, now everyone already knows what happens anyway, so even less reason to write it.

[trainsinanime]

I've not really followed the Hogwarts House discourse over the years, so there are things that I see nowadays that surprise me. Like, I've seen an awful lot of posts here that claim that Miraculous Ladybug main character Marinette Dupain-Cheng would be a Slytherin. And I am very curious where that idea comes from.

The other big house headcanon for her seems to be Ravenclaw, which, you know, sure, fine. She is indeed rather smart. Personally, I think there's nothing wrong with just admitting the obvious and putting her in the designated Heroes' House. In particular because her intelligence is less about memorising facts and formulas or spending hours thinking about the mysteries of the universe, and more about very quick thinking and resourcefulness in crisis situations. But hey, whatever you prefer.

Slytherin, though? I mean, what even is Slytherin? The obvious idea is that it's House evil and/or House antagonist, but that's obviously too simple. In fact, the books even claim that it's wrong. We get some ideas of what the house is about for example from the Sorting Hat, but his descriptions of characteristics is vague and not exactly helpful. Instead, let's look at characters who went there, and at the goals of the house's founder. Oh, and at all the Death Eaters who went there.

(For the purposes of this post, I'll consider Pottermore to be non-canon, because I've never looked at it and I can't be bothered to start now.)

That shows a very clear picture actually, and that picture is not primarily about "clever" or "ambitious" or some vague shit like that. It's all about racism and elitism. The racism should be obvious from the fact that it's only for those "whose blood is pure". When it comes to elitism, just look at who goes and thrives there. We see, broadly speaking, three different types of character who go to Slytherin:

Kids from well-established families with old money and lots of political power. People who represent entrenched power structures and profit the most from them. Draco Malfoy is the canonical example, just like most of the Black family tree.

Professional lackeys, like Crabbe, Goyle or Slughorn: The kind of people who want to rise into the first group, or at least gain social status by serving them and adopting their attitudes. These people are clearly a lower social rung than the Malfoys.

Rare social upstarts, who don't fit into the classical scheme, but who are very capable and willing to work within the rules of the ruling elite. They get a certain outsider status: Appreciated for what they can do for the elite, but never fully part of them. It's here where we find Snape and Tom Riddle.

Slytherin is, at its core, about power. Not about evil wizards seeking the most power ever (though they certainly exist there), but about the sustained power that a small elite group of families has over the rest of the magical community. Slytherin is the house for those whose family is in power and who expect to be in power themselves in the future, and the house for all those who think that helping this unfair system is their best shot at making it big. The racism against people with non-magical parents is not a stupid ancient relic, it's a key part of ensuring that only those who already know and like the unfair elite system get in. Also, note that the defining positive value for Slytherin that the Sorting Hat pulls out of its… well, inside, I guess, is friendship or loyalty. That sounds nice, but loyalty also means that criminal members of the elite class won't expose one another in order to avoid a collapse of the whole elite system. Compare how in the first book, Neville trying to stop his friends from doing illegal stuff is explicitly called out as a good thing.

This is clearly no accident; it's based on real-life British society, which does have a clearly definable elite (completely unrelated to nobility) that provides most politicians, civil servants, but also e.g. many journalists. These people go to private schools like Eton (twenty of the British prime ministers went there), then later the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, and their kids will most likely do the same. Politicians who didn't go there (e.g. Jeremy Corbyn) will often have a harder time with the Eton-educated press than those who went to Eton themselves (e.g. Boris Johnson).

For the record, I'd say that Ravenclaw seems to be about actually gaining knowledge and understanding the world better. Note how Luna is the character who is the most curious about actually finding out new stuff that nobody believes in yet, instead of just memorising books. Hufflepuff seems to be based on modern egalitarian ideas of education for everyone. And Gryffindor, well, yes, that is the Heroes' House. All its values are about heroism, doing the Right Thing™, bravery, fighting and so on.

In Miraculous Ladybug, let's try and apply this to actual Parisian situations. Imagine there's a revolution going on: Would the character in question stand on the barricades, waving the red flag of the working class? Or would the character be on the other side, outraged at this display, ordering the soldiers to fire? That's how you can tell whether a character actually belongs in Slytherin.

In ML, that's then obviously Chloe, I mean honestly, where else would she be. It's easy to forget Sabrina, but yes, she's 100% a committed enabler of existing power structures. Lila, too; she's more the kind of Voldemort character who'd try to sneak her way into the elite. Gabriel Agreste is almost too obvious, and he would have been very disappointed that Adrien "failed" to make it there.

Marinette, though? As the daughter of parents who own their own bakery, she's technically petite bourgeoisie, a group that according to Marx is more likely to emulate the elites in the vain hopes of joining them, rather than challenge them because they've been led to believe that any form of social justice would threaten the status they do have (note: In the US that's not just the petite bourgeoisie, it's everybody). But Marinette, specifically? I think we all know that she'd sew the red flag herself, and would be right up on the barricades, calling for the children of the fatherland to rise up against tyranny's bloody standard, and to fight for liberty, equality and sisterhood (And yes that is a scene I plan to write in a fan fiction some day).

If you insist on the whole "Good person in Slytherin" trope that the Harry Potter books insist is totally a thing, yo, then how about Kagami? She definitely has a very selfish and elitist world view, like in Frozer, where she announces that she doesn't hesitate (to take what she wants) and then… takes Marinette's hand. She fits right in with Slytherin. But she's also actively questioning the selfishness her mother taught her, because she's learned how much fun it is to have friends. We see that in the season three finale, where Kagami has a crisis because she wants to be Adrien's girlfriend, but she also wants to be gal pals with Marinette, and she's so shaken that she actually vents to Ladybug, who she thinks is the only other person her age. She does settle on "I'm gonna do the selfish thing", but you know, props for at least questioning it.

To sum this up: Putting Marinette, or any generally friendly character in Slytherin in your head canon, requires an incredibly selective interpretation of what Slytherin is about.

And if you try to convince me that Marinette belongs in Slytherin because Snape's story showed that Slytherin is the house for crazy stalkers who just get resentful instead of talking to their crush: Well, that's just rude. Not necessarily wrong, but wow, rude.