#i literally had no friends for basically like 3 years of my secondary school. somehow mad a friend after covid due to a dumb anime question

[naenaex0xx]

I keep forgetting it's april

[keresnotceres]

MW2 CHARACTERS: School AU

[sfw] cw(s): none !!! As a girlie who has been reading fanfiction for god knows how long, it was inevitable that I came through with a High/Secondary School AU. As a reminder, I don’t know shit abt the British school system so we’re going with my experiences with the American public school system. enjoy dovies <3

Ghost is that one upperclassman in every single one of your co-grade classes that just sits there. He doesn’t say a damn word and you don’t even see him writing down any notes, but somehow, he has the best grades in the whole fucking school. Principal’s honor roll, scholarship recognization galore.

It takes so long for you to work up the courage to talk to him and ask him for help on an assignment and when he admits he doesn’t know they had an assignment to do, you’re a bit dumbfounded. You realize that he quite literally just sits there and vibes the entire time. He proceeds to turn back to the window and stare out of it.

Eventually he warms up to you, though. It takes, like, three months of pestering him until he actively begins conversations with you and you find yourself with a very stoic cheat sheet. He has kept all of his tests and is perfectly fine with just giving you them bc what are morals???

Gaz is the local “i know him but we aren’t friends” kid. Literally everybody knows his name, he’s on the school’s soccer (football, i guess) team and is relatively well known as a nice person, but he only has a few close friends. His grades are also insanely high, you don’t understand how he manages to ace every test while also spending most of his time practicing sports.

He’s the type of person to forget a pencil, however, and usually ends up leaning over to whoever is next to him and asking for one. He usually gives it back, unless it’s someone he doesn’t particularly like. When he tries to give it back to you and you just tell him to keep it, he likes you automatically.

He’s always inviting you to watch his games after the two of you get closer. He also sits with you during shared study halls or lunches regardless of if you or he has other friends in the lunch. Gaz is also the type of person to lean over and ask if you wanna share the copy of an assignment document or swap essays to proofread.

Soap is absolutely the really loud jock kid that people either really like or really hate, and there’s just no in-between (i’m so sorry Foap 😭). Despite this, he’s actually one of those really nice sport boys that will start punching if someone disrespects his friends. He’s also in an abundance of art classes.

In class you can see him scribbling down notes until he gets bored and starts just doodling in his notebook, tuning out the lecture. However, if your science teacher decides today is not a teaching day and puts on something like Bill Nye or The Magic School Bus, he is enraptured. Is also the person to quietly chant “Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill!” during the theme song. Used to hate the Amoeba Sisters until he binged their videos before his Biology final lol.

You start being friends with him on complete accident after you help him with a question on a pop quiz. He gave you puppy eyes! How could you refuse! He proceeds to talk to you the next day like the two of you are best friends and you are now stuck with him until graduation. But hey! You basically have a bodyguard now.

Price is an Honors English and AP Literature teacher through and through. He originally wanted to be a history teacher, but the English position was open and he took it with little complaint. He’s absolutely the teacher you can launch into tangents for the entire class and will take half a point off of your essays for misusing a comma.

If you're his favorite student, he tends to grade your FRQs and other assignments much harsher than he would others, but it ends with you having well rounded essay skills afterwards and acing your assignments later in the year. Will let you hang out in his room during your study halls and is always open to helping you on assignments if you ask.

Hangs thank you notes from students on his walls, has a wild collection of them and shows them off any time another teacher asks him about them. Has cried reading some from students he liked having in his classes.

Laswell is a Geometry, Pre-Calculus, and Calculus professor. Idc what u think she is absolutely a math teacher and would absolutely have a doctorate. People who don't like math probably go into her class also not liking her, but come out at the end of the year wanting to be in her class next year.

If you're one of her favorite students, she absolutely gives you little notes on your graded tests like 'good job :)' and always says she's proud of you if your grades improve during the year. She also lets you and your friends eat lunch in her room because she understands why you'd rather be in a math room than the cafeteria.

Has never been seen without a coffee during the first four periods of the day and a random beverage during the last three. She always has a drink with her and it's become a bit of a game between a few of her students. Sometimes she'll give someone who asks a drink as well. A student she particularly liked tried to pay her to bring them coffee; she gave them their money back and brought them a coffee.

Nikolai is a history teacher that also coaches the school golf team. And yes, golf team; that man radiates golf energy and I cannot be told otherwise. He doesn't understand the kids' obsession with things like Kahoot, but makes them because it keeps kids engaged with the class and mostly keeps grades up.

Being one of Nikolai's favorite students is hard if you don't golf, but if you are a favorite, he tends to give you extensions of assignments if you're struggling to find time/motivation. Also will give you candy under the table if you win a Kahoot, or if you visit him during a study hall he will also give you candy. He gives out Smarties (the American version) because he thinks the name is funny.

If you show interest in learning Russian and ask him how to roll your Rs or how to pronounce the Cyrillic letters, he will automatically like you more than the others. As long as he feels like you're earnestly learning it out of interest and not just to make him like you, that is. If you already know Russian he'll like you anyway. Sometimes it's nice to speak his native tongue.

[slytherinsnekxvii]

let's talk about severus snape. he's one of the most controversial characters the internet has to offer, with several blogs, channels and pages dedicated specifically to hating him, despite him having one of the most—if not the most—intriguing character arcs the series has to offer. so, as a result of me coming across far too many of said blogs, channels or pages, here's an extremely detailed explanation of why i like him and think he's easily one of my favourite characters :)

1. he's not that bad of a teacher.

just so you know, i'm a teenage girl fresh out of high school. so, my experience with teachers? still keeps me up at night :)

my family is pretty strict about religion. you can guess what that means. anything that was magic-adjacent, especially something that, god forbid, had an entire school dedicated to witchcraft and wizardry was a hard no if i wanted to have any sort of freedom over the media i paid attention to, and any opportunity to go about my life without being monitored to make sure i wasn't suddenly possessed or something. thanks to this, i ended up secretly reading the philosopher's stone in my last year of primary school. i would've been 11 at the time, just about to turn 12, so a little bit older than harry and co. going on what i'd heard from those who had already read the series, i went in expecting to absolutely despise this man. i went in expecting to read a demon. i finished the book and came out thinking... that really wasn't that bad.

my mom found out, so i didn't get to read the rest of the series until i ended up on the executive committee for my school's book club and my friends were appalled that i'd only read the first book. at this point, i'm still expecting him to get worse and... he just doesn't. when i was in primary school, i had multiple teachers break wooden meter-long rulers across my classmates' backs. the first time it happened, i was in infant year 2 (about 6/7 years old). i had teachers who would insult us, based on anything from hygiene to behaviour to intelligence if you looked at them wrong. my sister (who was three years ahead of me) had a teacher who kept her in hours after school was over because the teacher had a written a note in her workbook upside down, and when my sister corrected her, the teacher made her rewrite it, turning the book each time the note was written so it would never be done the correct way.

in secondary school, i had teachers who would actively humiliate us in front of the class if we didn't do as well as they wanted. i had teachers who would throw markers and whiteboard erasers at us if we did something they didn't like during class. i had a teacher who looked for a friend of mine who was petrified of attention and then mercilessly picked on her until she went to the bathrooms to cry. these are the kinds of teachers that i was used to. so, when i read harry potter and read snape, who would have probably been one of the nicer teachers i met in my lifetime, i thought to myself, he's really not that bad. he's just... strict.

antis claim that he traumatised every kid that ever went through his class, that he straight up abused them and... no. he didn't. all of them are comfortable talking back, they talk during his class, no one trembles when he walks past, except for neville, who usually bore the brunt of snape's anger because he was consistently messing up in a potentially lethal class.

after school, i hated the thought of formal education, so now i'm working until i feel ready to do university. coincidentally, one of my jobs is teaching maths and english to kids writing the end of primary and secondary school exams. given the sheer amount of annoyance i feel sometimes, i actually respect him for not being more harsh with them, especially when they're all running off into danger or exploding cauldrons.

he really isn't that bad of a teacher, and we know this, since his classes' owl results are said to be consistently good.

plus, he was written in the 90's when all this was okay behaviour for teachers. hell, compared to some of the teachers in text, given that he goes out of his way to make sure the students are always protected, he's a lot better than most people give him credit for.

2. i relate to him.

come on, the man grew up to be a dramatic, queer-coded, petty bitch who wears all black all the time and likely has at least one mental disorder. i'm a petty, emo bisexual with (actually diagnosed, don't worry) depression and anxiety and I'm in a theatre group. what did you really expect from me?

on a serious note, both of the schools i went to were considered "prestigious". i got into my primary school because of a teacher's recommendation (she was a family friend). the second school i got into was because i scored ridiculously high on the placement test that would determine which school i went to. in primary school, i was the poor, really awkward, really smart kid who got left out of everything, and my best friend was the only kid who was worse off than me.

in secondary school, i was just as smart as everyone else... but i was still poorer, and still more awkward and still got left out of everything.

i got that isolated feeling, that feeling of not being good enough, that feeling where life always seems to have it out for you and that's even though i still got dealt a better hand than snape ever did. so, i get it. i'm never ever going to have it as bad as he did, but i acknowledge what he went through and i sympathise, because i have a chance, but it only ever got worse for him.

3. i genuinely enjoy his character.

this dude went through absolute hell for basically his entire life. the best years he had were probably when he was neck-deep in the group of people who hated witches and wizards like him, but somehow managed to treat him better than the good guys.

all of that, and he still manages to be one of the most entertaining motherfuckers in the whole series, with one of the most interesting character arcs ever. it's the witty lines, the sheer dynamic of his character, the change from the twitchy, hypervigilant kid from the slums to the adult that managed to spy on the Dark Lord himself and save the wizarding world in the process, while still being a hot mess of a person. it's the managing to get shit done while everybody hated him and everything was going to hell. it's the everything, and i haven't even talked about how badass he is.

come on, potions prodigy turned master, exemplary duellist (cough, cough, winning 4-on-1 vs McGonagall, Flitwick, Sprout and Slughorn, and leaving a scratch on nobody, while managing to not take a single hit himself, cough, cough), spellcrafter, spy and one of the only wizards to ever figure out unaided flight. dark arts master, proficient at healing (dumbledore would've been dead a lot sooner, if it weren't for him, most likely). he's one of the most powerful wizards of his time. i've said that any universe where he's actually a bad guy—or just legitimately loyal to the death eaters—is a universe where voldemort wins and this is why. if he was motivated by literally anything other than lily, the wizarding world was more than likely fucked.

the point is, i just think he's neat.

4. spite.

every time i appreciate snape, a snater feels like someone is walking over their grave. every time i appreciate snape, a snater turns blue out of sheer rage. every time i appreciate snape, a snater loses their mind looking for their non-existent reading comprehension.

the spite in my veins is tempered only by the broth of instant ramen and ungodly amounts of sugar, and i'm going to use them all in my mission to cause antis pain when they refuse to acknowledge their lack of critical thinking and analysis skills.

so, yeah. why do i actually like snape?

tl;dr: he's not that bad. for a teacher written in the 90's and compared to teachers i've had within the decade, the guy's just strict. sure, he's a dick (who i personally think is hilarious), but he always makes sure the students are safe and he didn't leave any lasting effect on any of the students. he's really not that bad of a teacher. and hell, he's not even that bad of a person. i fully admit that he was an asshole and i entirely believe he was prone to self-destructive behaviour, but he still tried to atone for his mistakes and he did, is the thing, even though the odds were stacked more or less completely against him. i like him because he entertains me, and because i relate to him, as a teen who went through some shit and probably would have joined up with some bad people if it weren't for my friends and family, and as a teacher who really can't stand my students sometimes. i also like him because it irritates people who don't like him :)

also, istg if any of you respond to this with "bUt hE was ObseSsED with LiLY and just WAnTEd to FUCK hEr," i'm crawling into your bedroom window with the most unrealistic, mangled interpretations of your favourite characters and making sure they haunt you in your dreams. meet me in the fuckin' pit, babe. reread the series, actually think about it and come with receipts that aren't Voldemort, because i don't think you want to have the same opinion as the character who canonically doesn't understand love, now, do you, sweetheart? when you do that, then, and only then, will i consider entertaining your bullshit :)

that's about it from me, thanks for reading!

[spaceecoffe]

LUZ ISN'T THE PROTAGONIST OF THE OWL HOUSE

Okay, so here are my thoughts after s02e07 (there will be spoilers probably!) and also after reading some of yours posts about series. I will make a list because I hate lists but I can't cope without them.

1. Let's start with the types of some basic narrations

1st Person narration - the one were we see everything from narrators point of view, we usually now their thoughts, the example could be Percy Jackson and the Olympians series

3rd Person narration - in this type we may or may not know character/characters thoughts and also we can follow actions of only one character or jump from one point of you to another. Harry Potter series is an example of following one character while in Game Of Thrones or The Heroes of Olympus we change a character in every chapter.

This is one way to distinguish types of narration. We can also do this by saying which type of character in our plot is the narrator:

The Protagonist - our narrator is also the hero of our story, just like Percy Jackson

The Secondary Character - our narrator is someone who is close to the hero of a story, for example a friend just like in The Great Gatsby or My Friend the King

The Detached Observer - we don't know who narrator is, we never hear his thoughts or opinions, there is never "me" or "I", we can see this type in Harry Potter or GONE

The Commentator - he doesn't take a part in the story but he puts his comments and thoughts to it, I think we have this one (unless something changed in later books) in Series of Unfortunate Events

We can probably add more to it but I think we don't have to do this in this post. What I want to tell is that we always naturally assume that Narrator (or character he follows) = The Protagonist unless we are informed at the beginning that things are different. Usually the author informs us at the beginning if Narrator is The Protagonist or no. It can be like in Series of Unfortunate Events where Narrator tells that this story will be about someone else or like in The Great Gatsby where we can assume this only by title of the book.

But all of this works perfectly in books while in movies/series it is harder to show us the Narrator. Usually we don't think about Narrator when we watch something. We think that no one has to tell us a story when we actually can see it but this is only an illusion. There always has to be a narrator and creators of the movies/series always thinks about this. There are some movies where we get to know who is narrator like The Great Gatsby (I'm sorry, I just love this movie not even for the plot but for its narration which is just so amazing) or in the Series of Unfortunate Events.

In The Owl House if we want to guess who is the Narrator it is Luz. She is the perfect character for it: she doesn't know the Boiling Isles just like we so we get to discover it with her. It is the easiest way for author to show readers/viewers new world. If you think about it authors usually create narrator characters like this because it's the most natural way to show new world to other people. Harry Potter was a part of New World, Magic World, but he didn't know it because he was raised in Muggle World. The same thing goes for Percy Jackson. In Lord Of The Rings narrator isn't any character but we usually, especially at the beginning, follow Frodo who was raised as a Hobbit in Shire so he doesn't really know the world outside. It is not always done like this. In Game of Thrones we are tossed to existing world, we follow characters which knows how this world works and, for me, it was really hard to catch up on events for like first hundred pages. It just didn't felt so natural like when you get to know the world with the character you follow or The Narrator. It can also work with showing as The Protagonist, like in The Great Gatsby, Nick is someone new in his life, so we get to know Gatsby with him.

So, it is natural that in The Owl House Luz is The Narrator. This way Dana could easily show us her world. But that doesn't mean Luz is the real Protagonist of the story.

2. Luz could be The Protagonist

Luz could be The Protagonist. She is new person in Boiling Isles, she changes it just because she is in it, but... That is not all that is needed to be the protagonist. Protagonist isn't the only person who can have an influence on the story. The presence of Nick in Jay Gatsby's life changes somehow his decisions, but it doesn't make Nick The Protagonist. It is still Gatsby, although Nick has an influence on his character.

I fill like in TOH is similar. Luz has an influence on the events but that doesn't mean she has to be The Protagonist.

3. Eda is The Protagonist

Why Eda? Here we will have some subsections (list in a list my dears)!

3.1 We get to know Eda more then Luz

Oh, but how? I've seen posts saying that people don't understand why we doesn't see any of Luz's memories from before Boiling Isles, even little flash backs. It's because she is only The Narrator, we don't have to know her full story, we only need to follow her in the New World to see what is happening in story and to get to know this world. But we get A LOT of Eda's memories. We've seen her nightmares of being cursed, we've seen her memories with Lilith when they were children, we've seen memories of her curse revealing at the fight with her sister, later we get the memories about how her mother tried to cure her and in last episode we see her story w Raine. That's a lot of flash backs. None other character had so many. The only other character that had some flashbacks was Amity and Willow in one episode and King in his episode this season. But it is not as much as Eda gets. And Luz? We didn't see any of Luz's memories!

3.2 Eda is one of the characters with biggest growth while Luz's growth is small

I also saw posts about how Luz is the only character that doesn't change through the series. It isn't totally correct. She changes. She becomes more certain about the fact that she isn't a freak. I mean, okay, she knows she is still kinda freak (for human standards) but she started to love that part of herself. In this season she also learns that she is not the one who is responsible for everything and that she shouldn't blame herself for every bad thing that happens around her. But in comparison to Eda or Amity it is not so apparent.

Eda went from being an outcast, scared of some parts of herself (cursed ones) to the person who accepted her nature. She isn't outcast anymore. She accepted people's presence in her life. We see this in last episode when she tells herself that just when she got used to people being in Owl House they all leave. Sure, at the beginning she had King, but she didn't talk to Lilith or her own mother. Through the series she opened her heart for other people and now she has so big found family. Not only Luz, King and Hooty. She has great connection with her sister, she started to talk normally to her mother. She met Raine and was so open for them. She is even now friends with Bump and helps him in school which she hated! And also I am sure that she really like Luz's friends.

And the curse. She always played cool about it. "Nah, it just happens!". But we could see that she was actually really scared of it. She hated this part of herself even if she was telling Lilith or their mother otherwise. But in one of the episodes of season two we see that she finally accepted this part of herself and fought back with the curse. And this is such a BIG GROWTH WHICH I LOVE SO MUCH. And yes, this is because of the parallel to mental health illness, that you can't get rid of but you can learn to manage it in proper way. And I love that elixirs didn't helped her to handle it, they only helped her to "keep the curse quiet". The moment she started to manage it was when she stopped it by her own. Just like with mental health problems: meds won't help without your own work.

So yes, in comparison to Eda's character growth Luz's is small, but if she is The Narrator she doesn't have to change a lot. In every story it is The Protagonist who changes most, because stories aren't only about how Protagonist has influence on the world and events but, and I think it is even more important, how events changes The Protagonist.

3.3 Eda is connected to everything that is important for the plot

If you think about this, Eda is the only character that is connected somehow to every piece of plot. And here comes subsections of subsections! (yes, I'm practicing before writing my BSc which I should write RIGHT NOW but Eda is now more important for me, sorry my dear archaea and proteins)

Wild Magic - this one goes for Eda and for Luz but the way it connects with them is very different. Eda chose to not go into any coven. She never wanted to gave most of her magic away and that is why she wanted to go to Emperor's Coven. But when she was forced to fight her own sister I think she started to understand how sick covens were. So she decided to not sign to any of them. She decided to become outcast, out of the law, just so she could still have her Wild Magic. In series she looked so cool with this decision, but that is how she is, she always seems cool but we know that it is not always how she really feels. And I think that decision about being "out of coven" was really hard for her but at the same time she knew that it was only way for her and she was ready to do everything to stay with her Wild Magic. And with the years she never changed her decision. While for Luz Wild Magic used by the glyphs is a way to make her dream come true. It is also important, going with our dreams is one of the most important things in our lives, but for the plot I feel like Eda's connection is more important.

Portal - this one goes for the Eda and Luz too, but again, not in the same way. Both of them found portal by accident but! Eda found it in the way that you could think it was waiting there for here. Like, it literally lied in the mud on her way. While Luz found it because of Eda and Owlbert. Without Eda having it, she would never found Boiling Isles. And here comes third thing.

Luz (and Human Realm) - yes, she is also really important for the plot, although I think she's not The Protagonist. But still Luz has a big influence on events and as I said before, if not Eda she would never come to Boiling Isles and would never had a chance to change anything.

Curse - we know that curse she has is strange. No one on Boiling Isles knew this curse, but somehow Lilith bought it at the night market. Just like with Portal, we can think that it was just meant for Eda to get this curse. Like, it was just lying there and waiting for Lilith to buy it and curse Eda with it. I am sure that it is also connected to the Wild Magic.

King's Father - same story as before, she was running away, found a safe place on some island that no one knows about, in some ruins and by accident found King there. We know that before King hatched he heard a roar, probably his father's. We can also believe that his father was mighty. I think that he could be connected to Wild Magic somehow and that is why someone tried to do something to him. But I think that he is also important for the plot, we just don't know how yet.

Lilith as a head of Emperor's Coven - and here we go to some important point. We know that Lilith became head of a coven just so Belos could get to the Eda and her portal, and Belos is this one important point.

There is only one person who has (or can have like with King's father) connection to all this things and this person is Belos, the main Antagonist. He is fighting with Wild Magic, which apparently made him Cursed and because of this he was looking for Portal to go to the Human Realm, but for this he needed Lilith to get to Eda. So Eda is a key to everything that Belos wants and she actually always stands against him. She is not fighting with Wild Magic, but uses it, she is Cursed but she accepted it and she can manage it, she has/had a Portal but never used it for anything bad. She also has a connection tu Human Realm because of Luz, the kid that she loves, and the only reason she would want to have Portal again is to help Luz, and she also never wanted to actually fight with Lilith while Belos made her to do many times. So she is in natural opposition to him and that is also what makes her The Protagonist of main story.

3.4 We know that Luz doesn't have any "big fate" on Boiling Isles

At the beginning I wrote that we usually know that The Narrator isn't The Protagonist because author shows it to us. But we also know that Dana loves to play with us and she loves to hide informations (even with colour coded scenes) and I feel like she did the same thing with The Narrator - The Protagonist thing. Second episode of the series, Witches before Wizards shows us Luz who tries to find her special fate on Boiling Isles. She thinks she is there because of some grater powers of fate but we learn that this isn't true. We always thought that this is about breaking the stereotype of Protagonist being The Chosen One (like in Harry Potter or Percy Jackson) and I love this idea, but what if it was about showing us that Luz is not The Protagonist of a story? Because for me, everything that happened to Eda: the course, finding portal, King and Luz, looks like to many accidents for one character to be just accidents, more like something (maybe fate) or someone (maybe the Tytan himself because he is trapped somehow by Belos) tries to give her every piece she needs to stand in opposition to main Antagonist of Boiling Isles.

4. Summary

This is only my little theory, I don't know if I am right, but I feel like it can be another Dana's game with stereotypes/archetypes, I'm not sure how to call it, with traditional writing, keeping your Protagonist hide until the very end. And if it will turn out like this I will be really amazed. I would love to know what you think about this! And I also really need to start writing my BSc instead of these analyses but this is SO MUCH MORE INTERESTING.

[elisabeth515]

My relationship with History

This is for @coleide and @sollannaart who both asked me on why I am interested in history :3

—

It started more than a decade ago.

Growing up in Hong Kong, I was an outcast: not liking the things that “normal girls” like, not having so much friends... I only had like 4-5 friends when I was in primary school (and reduced to none in my secondary school days). I always loved being in the world of books when I was alone, and I was the school librarian. I am really not a big fan of fictions, so the books I often picked up are either science or history books; among those books, there was one comic on world history that makes me want to read over and over.

I guess I just found Napoleon in that comic very good-looking, making me want to read about this part of the comic again, and again. I was just a little girl, fantasising about everything—including myself being an Empress of my own (thank you TVB and mainland Chinese period dramas), running free and loving whoever I want... I don’t know, probably reading about Napoleon for countless times has shaped my obsession fascination towards the Napoleonic era. Somehow, I kept this very secretly, like no one including my parents should know that. I was really scared of being judged because I was literally obsessed with something that a young girl should not have—all those cool battles and stuff, you get it. I was even begging my parents to take me to a Napoleonic exhibition in Macau during Le French May (a festival hosted by the Consulate General of France in Hong Kong and Macau) one year, when I found out on my way to my piano class. To an extent, I just found myself very fascinated with the Napoleonic period that I brought it out for my secondary 2 history mini projects.

This kinda died out when I shifted my focus to World War II Germany, thanks to watching too much Hitler parodies. I was curious about what was originally said in the clips, so I watched the original movies. Then, I sank deeper into this hole and watch more movies about the Germans in World War II (if you wanna start I would recommend the German End of WWII 60th Anniversary trio—watched them all and they are so good). I realised that, reading history was like reading stories, that has happened in the past, and we aimed to learn the lessons in it. That Reich phrase was probably the time when I found myself truly fascinated with history.

Of course, thanks to Hetalia, this died out as well. Nevertheless, it accelerated my love towards history, even though at that time I was a total mess including imagining myself being in love with Francis Bonnefoy, also being extremely xenophobic and localist thanks to the very brainwashing Hong Kong education—I had basically thrown away the lessons I learnt in my Reich phrase at that point, even though that was the very first time I truly exposed myself to politics. Les Misérables bailed me out of the jail, and I soon found myself being fascinated with mythology and ancient history, because I love cool stories. This also makes me picking Classical Civilisations in my A-Levels, when I finally escaped from the living hell.

Picking Classical Civilisation for my A-levels in my UK college days is probably one of the best decisions in my life, because that was what I loved the most—just talking about the stories that we have read about and engaged in thought-provoking conversations over history and philosophy. I was also a staff member of Mythology and Cultures amino at that time, so I am engaged to mythology and history a lot. And this is when the bizarre adventure begins...

One day when I was discussing about a story project with my friend @/jasmineowlet, I suddenly started to introduce the guys from the distant memories of my adventures in the Napoleonic era. Then, I just found myself getting deeper into this again since my early adolescence, for whatever the fuck of the reasons, and made this very niche tumblr community happen.

There you have it, a brief history of me which no one would be interested in. Maybe I will bring out my bizarre adventures with witchcraft and spirituality, which has a big thing to do with what I have now, for another day because I could not even believed that I had done all of these things (I really don’t want to be judged either).

[negativitytheysay]

nothing has really changed since my time in secondary school. i still feel like a victim i still feel like my mum doesn’t love me and that i either get bullied or bully myself and i still feel extremely self-conscious and timid about most things it doesn’t get any easier somehow. i was harassed phisically and psychologically on a daily basis for more than 3 years by a bunch of people in my class and by my teachers. when i confronted my mum about that time and how hard it was for me to have barely any friends and being ridiculed for who i was, she went ‘it wasn’t easy for me eitheir to know i couldnt’ do anything about it’ which is complete bullshit i had begged her many times to let me change the school and many times also to stop sending me to boyscouts where kids would literally throw me in nettle fields, i even had written her letters and messages where i said that i missed her that i felt lonely and i distinctly remember considering many times to commit suicide when i was barely 11 but still she made me go, she made me go through it, she didn’t protect me and even now, she would basically do the same thing all over again.

[ibuproffie]

snr szn ~ advice for high school seniors

it’s not gonna be perfect, and that’s ok. high school movies tell us that senior year is this amazing time in your life where you have all these formative experiences that shape the course of your destiny or something, but in my experience this is not really the case. my senior year was somehow both excruciatingly slow and very fast, and it had ups and downs just like any other school year. so if your senior year isn’t a wonderful collection of instagrammable moments, don’t worry. everyone else is finding “senior season” a little underwhelming too, even the people who seem to be having the most fun. quite frankly, you shouldn’t want your senior year of high school to be the best year of your life. 

college apps are important, but you don’t have to kill yourself over them. i know, i can say this because i just finished them, but it’s so true. applying to college is a horrible, tedious process that i’m going to attempt to break down in another masterpost. i went to a high school where people were fucking obsessed with getting into college, and it was sort of horrifying to watch people self-destruct over the process. even i (and i consider myself a fairly private, non-competitive, even-keeled person) went a little nuts towards the end. i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again, there is no reason on god’s green earth to apply to twenty or more schools. it’s expensive (most application fees are 60+ USD), time-consuming, and stressful. the only reason i can even see why you might be doing this is if you qualify for a bunch of application fee waivers, but even then, it’s just stupid. most colleges make you write secondary essays in addition to the common or coalition app essay, and that doesn’t even factor in scholarship applications, interview prep, and keeping up with school on top of everything. the best thing you can do for yourself is pick around ten-ish schools that you’re actually serious about attending and skip the hassle. you will get into at least one college if you apply smart. trust me. the people i know who went ham with applications were miserable all the time (even the smartest ones) and most of them didn’t even get into their top choice schools. when you’re churning out 3+ essays every month, it follows that they’re not all gonna be winners. additionally, know that life will go on even if you don’t get into harvard. relax. you have an entire life ahead of you. even if it doesn’t work out exactly how you planned, good things take time, ya feel? 

you’re still valid even if you don’t participate in every “senior activity” possible. “but it’s your last pep rally!!” “you HAVE to go to prom!!” “let’s go to every football game this season!!”  no. just no. you’re really not gonna remember a lot of this stuff. if large crowds of ppl aren’t your thing, if you’re stressed or tired, if you don’t have the money (a lot of these “senior only” activities are EXPENSIVE expensive or at least they were at my school), or if you just have no interest in homecoming or whatever, IT’S FINE. you don’t have to justify this stuff to other people. i let ppl guilt trip me into doing a bunch of shit for our “last high school memories” or whatever and uhhh i didn’t always have a good time. for one thing, i’ve never had a shit ton of school spirit or whatever and two, being around crowds of ppl is pretty draining for me. the only “senior activity” i actually enjoyed was prom, but i knew ppl who skipped out on that and ya know what? i think they were ok. i never bought a yearbook. it’s fine. you should shape your senior year around what’s mentally/financially safe for you + and what you’re actually interested in, not what people expect you to do.

you don’t really have to do extracurricular activities this year, so don’t do anything you’re not truly passionate about. i stopped doing a lot of stuff like model un and science olympiad this year because i just wasn’t interested in them anymore. and i don’t regret it. to be blunt, you already have the lines on your resume filled by those activities if you’ve done them for a long time. so if you’re not feelin’ it, don’t waste your time. just do the things you wanna do. i did a lot of theater stuff last year and had a great time. it was super rewarding and i had a pretty good time with my castmates, and i was glad i had done that instead of more “academic” activities like scioly. 

it’s ok to be unsure about your plans for the future. for some reason, this is the year, every adult in your life is gonna be like, “wHaT’s Ur MaJoR???” and “wHaT jOb Do YoU wAnNa HaVe wHeN u GrOw uP??” as a result, you can start to feel a lot of pressure around having an answer prepared, and if you are on the fence about what you wanna do with your life, you can feel like other ppl have their shit together a lot more and that you’re aimless and stupid. trust me, you’re not, though. i personally think it’s unfair that we expect 18 y/os, who in many ways are still kids, to have their whole life planned out. a lot is still liable to change even after high school, and I think you’ll be remiss if you don’t allow your dreams and ambitions to change with it. if you’re truly unsure about your plans but you know you’re going to college, i’d recommend making sure none of the places you’re applying to are going to lock you down in a major when you set foot on campus. i have friends who are going to large universities who have already basically declared a major, which to me seems like an odd system. if 4-yr college isn’t in the cards for you for whatever reason, try taking a year off, getting a job, or community college. a lot of ppl i know look down on ccs, but to my knowledge, community college can be a great start to figuring out what you wanna do with your life. you have time. don’t rush it.

getting sick of your school friends is normal. it sounds mean, but in my experience, it’s true. i mean you’ve gone to school with these people for 4 or more years now, and you’ve changed a lot. and that doesn’t mean you don’t like them and wish them well, but there can be days where you’re like “omg pls stop talking to me rn!!” especially in that lull after application season. don’t be mean to anyone ofc, but realize that feeling exasperated with your peers is just part of the process, and you’re not a bad person for wanting a little bit of space. in my experience, unless the issue is w regards to toxicity or people being generally shitty, ppl will be able to connect w each other much more normally after school is over. 

you will get senioritis to some degree, but you have to push through it. it must be great to be one of those people who literally never stops working. but for the vast majority of us, some kind of senioritis will slap us in the ass after applications are done. you will have no motivation to do coursework but! remember that coursework needs to be completed! to be completely honest, once you’ve been accepted to college, you really only need to maintain a C average to not get rescinded, and i knew plenty of people who screwed around more than i did and they didn’t get their admission rescinded. but like, you don’t want to be one of those people who somehow fails a class because you don’t “feel like” doing the homework. you need to graduate, you need to hold onto your scholarship, and you need to maintain your accepted status. quite honestly, you need to kick ur own ass and make yourself work, whether that’s by turning down invites to hang out, or putting your phone in a different room. also, don’t be that person who’s playing iphone games in every class. your teachers will think you’re an asshole, and that’s really not the move. 

you don’t have to take everyone’s advice. this is the year everyone wants to be an expert on adulting, whether that’s your peers or parents’ colleagues or school counselors. in the end, your are the only one who can decide what’s right for you based on your financial situation and what you are comfortable with. i’m not saying “don’t take anyone’s advice”, because i truly believe there are some people out there who have the means to help you succeed. but i think you should pick and choose because you’re about to be fed a deluge of information that may or may not be useful or relevant to what you want to do. for example, people told me that i was limiting myself by not applying to any ivy league schools or very many competitive universities, or that i should lie about my race on my application (!!) because of the bias against ppl of asian descent in college admissions (note: i actually wrote about my heritage in my common app essay so it wasn’t like it was some secret lmao), which were uhhh not helpful. do what feels right and don’t feel the need to humor ppl who don’t have your best interests at heart. 

don’t compare yourself with other ppl. it’s natural to be a little jealous of peers who snag acceptances to prestigious colleges on full-tuition scholarships or land dream jobs/gap-year programs right out of high school. it’s a bit of an ugly feeling, but i’m not gonna sit here and say i didn’t wish i was one of those people at a point. that’s disingenuous in the extreme. it’s ok to be disappointed if everything doesn’t all work out, but at a certain point you need to accept what’s happening to you and make the very damn best of it. wallowing in self-pity just because your classmates are succeeding is just stupid. also, recognize that everyone’s ability to achieve their post-hs goals is wildly different based on their own circumstances. if you are less financially able to pay for college, for example, your opportunities are more limited than someone with a six-figure college fund. it’s quite frankly naive to assume that everyone shares your experience. be happy for people who do well. be happy for people who are proud of themselves. don’t try to take other people down because you’re feeling bitter. i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again-other people’s success is not your failure. 

take time to do some much needed self care. senior year can be hectic, and it’s important to disengage from stressful situations. take a walk. watch a movie with your friends. take a long shower. don’t think you have to be “productive” all the time. you won’t be, and that’s ok. 

[emmatrustsno-one]

Brace yourselves A very long essay (like, a thesis) on the British class system with references to Harry Potter Part 1

OK, I did this already. It’s long, but stick with it anyway. And watch the videos.

In Britain, people are broadly split into 3 social groups: working-class, middle-class and upper-class. The factors which determine which class you belong to are varied and complex, but in a nutshell include: how wealthy you are, where you live (location and type of dwelling), what variety of English you speak (or whether you speak English), what level of education you have, what you do for a job, what you do in your free-time, who you are friends with, what you like and dislike, your political views and affiliation, the nature and number of the opportunities you have in life and, in some ways the most important of all, which family you belong to, how far you can trace your ancestors back through history and what those ancestors did and who they were.

Although people who fall into the following categories are often working-class because our society, like any other country’s, is still trying to eradicate prejudice, these categories are not factors in and of themselves: race, nationality, religion, disabilities, gender and sexuality.

 It is not the case that people’s class is constantly mentioned or even at the forefront of one’s mind, nor does it harmfully imply natural divide in the way that, for example, the caste system in India does. Class is subtle, nuanced, exists unchallenged and often doesn’t occur to you as the cause of a problem unless you really go looking deeply for it. It is undoubtedly damaging, however. Your class determines your path in life. It determines where you will live, how much money you will have, what education you will be able to access, what job you will be able to do, who you will be able to socialise and have relationships with and what opportunities you will have access to.

It is impossible to outline concisely but accurately exactly what sort of person is in which class. I will aim to do my best here, with references to Harry Potter, since I want fans who aren’t British to be able to understand these nuanced class subtleties better.

A very crude, basic description is that working-class people do “unskilled” jobs, usually for minimum wage and earn just money enough to exist; middle-class people have professional jobs, an education higher than secondary school and earn enough money to live comfortably and buy things they want as well as things they need; upper-class people belong to certain families who can trace their ancestry back a long way and are usually very wealthy and often related to the royal family. Their lifestyles are often funded by taxpayers’ money.

An overview

It is already complex enough, but it gets even more murky. For one thing, there are layers within the classes. You can be lower or higher within your class and the terms “lower middle-class” and “upper middle-class” are very common. Where you come on these inter-class continuums affects your life just as much as which class you are in.

Secondly, there are also two distinct groups who don’t fit in to the three classes. 1) very wealthy people, usually celebrities, who are super-rich but come from lower class backgrounds. A great example of this is the Beckhams. They are so rich from his football career and her music career that he had his wages paid directly to charity in the latter half of his career. They live lavishly, spend a fortune on designer clothes and their wedding was an imitation of a royal wedding. However, they spent years being mocked for seeming stupid and uncouth and it was all because of one thing: how they sound. As soon as they speak, you can hear that they started life near the bottom of the social ladder. I will do a separate post about language and voice at some point. Here’s a clip from an impressions show.

2) an “under-class” who lives on state welfare benefits and doesn’t work. These people tend to not have enough money for their needs and their chances and aspirations in life are extremely limited. People in this category range from those unable to work through disability to drug addicts to genuinely unpleasant people who would rather take hand-outs from the government than contribute to society. The right-wing media portrays them as lazy, worthless and a blight; the left-wing media portrays them as misrepresented people who have been failed by society. The truth is in the middle.

Thirdly, unlike upper-class, what constitutes “working-class” and “middle-class” are not fixed concepts. Rather, they are in a state of constant flux and progression. What those terms meant when I was a child and Harry Potter was being written are not the same as they mean now, nor were they the same as when my parents or grandparents were children. It changes slightly with every generation. Nowadays, the middle-class is much bigger than it was then. Efforts have been made to get working-class children to go to university and some do, meaning that more people are moving into the middle-class. We are more aware of class prejudice than we used to be and many people do try to avoid it, therefore options have opened up for working-class people and allowed them to access things they couldn’t before. The technological revolution has made a huge difference. The internet allows people to travel everywhere and find anything from their own sitting room and has given some people aspirations they wouldn’t have had before.

Conversely, the definitions of ‘working-class’ have broadened. Many people now consider themselves working-class when, in my parents’ youth, they would have been middle-class due to the house or street they lived in or the fact that they manage to go on holiday every year. The two lower classes are definitely more mixed than before and the lines between them are blurring. I guarantee someone younger than me will read this and think “I consider myself working-class but I have never had any of the experiences OP describes”. Another thing which has made a huge difference is the collapse of British industry. In the 80s and 90s, the majority of the working-class worked in factories or similar industrial businesses. Then the powers that be closed them all and sold production to firms abroad who could make things more cheaply, and unemployment boomed. Literally, cities just died. Some people eventually got different jobs, though jobs where their skills were undervalued, and which alienated them from their work value. Many people didn’t. Many people had to live off state welfare benefits, which were not adequate and somehow out of that, that “under-class” I mentioned was born. Many of the people who choose to live off the state are people whose families lost their livelihoods at that time and ended up broken; just gave up.

Linked to that, another factor which makes it all quite complex is pride. Those people (the film The Full Monty is all about this btw) were proud of what they did with their skills and then they were just thrown away like they were nothing. They lost their pride and many never got it back. Working-class people, in particular, tend to be fiercely proud of being working-class. I won’t comment on the psychology of that here, but to illustrate: my husband won’t have it that he is middle-class now. He is. His argument is that he has to work, but that’s a huge over-simplification of what “working-class” means. He can afford holidays abroad and organic food, he lives in a detached house in the countryside, he owns 3 houses which he rents out to tenants (and they are kept to a very high standard). He is without a doubt middle-class. A teacher at school once claimed he was working-class for the same reason, and a lecturer at university did, but it represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what it really means to be working-class. There’s a good book about going back to your roots called Pies and Prejudice by the radio DJ Stuart Maconie, who is northern working-class originally but now lives a privileged life in London. He was inspired to write it when he had a friend over for lunch one day and they asked where the sun-dried tomatoes were, and he replied that they were by the cappuccino maker. Such ludicrously posh items made him stop in his tracks and think “what the hell has happened to me?”

Lastly, it is possible to move both within your class and to another class. This is called social mobility. I, for example, grew up almost at the bottom of the working-class. I lived in a very deprived area, had few opportunities and my family had only just enough money to subsist. I am now technically lower middle-class. I now live in a detached house in a sought-after village, I do a professional job, I have enough money to buy more things than just those I need and I am educated to postgraduate level. However, moving up a class is extremely difficult and many people never manage it. Those who do always carry markers of not quite fully belonging there, such as accent, vocabulary, etiquette etc. I have managed it, in short, because I am intelligent enough to have won scholarships for university, because my immediate family are also intelligent and exposed me, as much as possible, to other cultures, and because I married a builder whose parents had moved up the social ladder a little and gave him some land to build a house on. It is mostly down to luck and chance.

Sometimes people are very sensitive about their class and worry about it; sometimes British people themselves are not fully aware of it all. Such people are usually (and this is not meant nastily): middle-class from birth, therefore comfortable enough not to have thought much about it, or younger than early 20s, therefore they haven’t experienced and analysed hindrances arising from their class or had a university education where they would learn more about it. Very young people might have even more trouble getting their heads around it because of sheer lack of world experience and the modern world: it’s not quite the same as it used to be since the internet took over, since that brings opportunities to everyone that lower-class people might not have had before the turn of the century.

The reasons for class and the role of history

The reasons why this class system exists are even more complex. Keeping it brief, there are two key factors. 1. to maintain power for a privileged few and ensure the populace doesn’t try to take that power (people are too busy, pre-occupied and uneducated to challenge it). 2. historical influence: we used to have a feudal system where serfs worked the land for rich land-owners in exchange for living on it. During the Industrial Revolution some people managed to gain capital and power through production and factory ownership. They became the middle-class. This has evolved into what we have today.

The importance of the influence of the feudal system cannot be overstated if people are to grasp why race isn’t as critical a social issue here as it is in the USA. The USA is still recovering from Slavery, by which I mean the historical, slave trade triangle event, not the concept of enslavement. A major part of that country’s history is brutally, sickeningly forcing people who aren’t white to do the manual toil on US shores that kept privileged people in their positions of power. Racism and racist slurs equate to supporting slavery. Britain has a different history. Whilst we played an awful role in the slave trade, we didn’t have slave plantations on our shores. It wasn’t coloured people who did the toil. It was the working-class. For centuries the working-class were forced, at times with as much violence and as little food and rest as African slaves endured in the Americas, to do back-breaking work all day without a break, simply to have a place to shelter and some food. Under the feudal system this meant in the fields and during the Industrial Revolution it meant in dirty, dangerous factories. The working-class was, and to some extent still is, enslaved. That doesn’t mean that racism doesn’t exist here or that it’s not despicable. It does and is. But it doesn’t have the same connotations. Slurs about class, however, DO have those connotations. Here, making nasty comments about, or looking down your nose at, working-class people equates to supporting slavery, albeit more subtly than racism equates to supporting slavery in the US. Disparaging comments about the working-class are a bit like, for example, calling a black man “boy” in the US. But because a) it is more subtle and b) much longer has passed since we had the feudal system and the Industrial Revolution than has passed since America had slavery, class slurs in Britain are less emotive, emotionally-charged and offensive than racial slurs in America.

What makes you upper-class?

I mentioned that ancestry plays a huge role in determining class. I also mentioned that there is social mobility (moving up to a higher class or even down to a lower one). There are certain families who can trace their ancestry back centuries and are descended from royals and rich land-owners. That means that certain surnames and bloodlines are prestigious. These people form the upper-class.

It is very unusual for upper-class people to mix with working or middle-class people. I, for example, have only met one upper-class person in my life. They go to different schools from the rest of us and do different things socially. For this reason, upper-class people tend to marry other upper-class people, in fact most would frown upon anyone who did otherwise. Because it’s all about family status, marriage would be the only real way you could move up to upper-class, but it’s practically unheard of. You are born into the upper-class. If you inherit the surname, you inherit the status that goes with it, regardless of any other factors. For this reason, upper-class families tend to be ‘pure’. Here is a newspaper article illustrating my point. The comments are also interesting. It’s from a popular right-wing paper.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2838183/How-having-right-surname-sets-LIFE-ancestors-social-status-determines-rich-ll-study-claims.html

Another illustration: when Prince William married Kate Middleton, whose family are crazily rich, the media and nation went into a frenzy over the fact that he was marrying “a commoner”. They used that exact word. Kate’s family became wealthy during the Industrial Revolution and she, her siblings, her father, grandfather and great-grandfather all attended expensive, prestigious public schools. Her family is incredibly wealthy, has the best opportunities available and were friends of the royals for decades before she met William. Nevertheless it was huge news for her to marry William. Why? Because she wasn’t upper-class. Despite the privileged life she led, despite her family’s centuries of wealth, she didn’t have the name or the blood to be considered upper-class. It all comes down to family status. In crude terms, William married below him, and they were very lucky that it wasn’t a scandal. Some people were offended by it, in fact. Remember that in the 1930s Edward VIII had to abdicate in order to marry “a commoner”. To most people “a commoner” is someone normal, but here it is someone who doesn’t have the name or blood of a small, select group of families. It’s also interesting to note that she is rarely called ‘Kate’ by the media since joining the upper-class, but rather her full name ‘Kathrine’.

Two things out of this: firstly, don’t fall into the trap of assuming being upper-class doesn’t affect your life negatively. The lower-classes have worse struggles, but it would be wrong not to appreciate the difficulties associated with being upper-class. The expectations of you, the responsibility you have to your name, limitations on who you are allowed to socialise with and love, constant media and public attention and pressure to be someone important. It is exactly these issues which led Prince Harry to have a troubled youth.

Secondly, it is because of all this that many people feel it is incorrect to view death eaters in Harry Potter as a metaphor for Nazis. They are really a metaphor for the ‘pure-blood’ upper-class families. They do not round people up and exterminate them. They use power and influence to gain more power and to subjugate those they see as inferior because they do not share their names or blood. They do not base their ideologies on pseudoscientific claims about appearance, like phrenology. They base it on inherited blood. To highlight the fact of the class metaphor even further – there is a way to become effectively upper-class without being born or married into it. It is a lesser upper-class, because you don’t have the family name or blood, but you still become a de facto nobleman. The way is to become a Lord. You can google how to do it in the real world if you’re interested, but clearly the key point is that Tom Riddle’s adoption of the title Lord represents the change in his class. He does it because he knows he has upper-class blood but can’t prove it, so he has to indicate his status another way.

Why is Harry Potter about class?

The three blood statuses of wizards equate to the three classes: muggle born = lowest-class (working-class in the real world), half-blood = middle-class and pure-blood = upper-class.

It is because of this that the word “mudblood” is not the slur many people take it to be. It is not the wizarding version of the N word. It is not as offensive as that. It is offensive, yes, but it is not an unforgivable utterance which betrays inherent racism. The fact that the characters are prepared to repeat it when reporting it has been said shows that it is not comparable. I can’t even think the N word. If I think about it I don’t say it, in my mind I literally say “the N word”. Both characters and fans are prepared to say “mudblood”. It is not the same.

 The fact that Voldemort and Snape are high-ranking death eaters also proves the story is not a metaphor for racial aggression: they are half-bloods and Snape comes from a working-class background and yet they have moved from their groups to be prominent members of the highest group. They have moved from lower classes to upper classes. It hasn’t happened by marriage like in the real world and it was very difficult – they had to be great wizards to manage it. But they did manage it. It is not possible to change your race, but you can change your class. Therefore, the wizarding war is a metaphor for class struggles not racial struggles, therefore “mudblood” is a nasty way of saying “commoner”. If you have dirty blood you aren’t part of the pure, select group. You don’t belong to the wizard upper-class. People shouldn’t say “mudblood” because it implies inferiority and enslavement, but if you do say it you are not racist, it isn’t the same as being racist, and isn’t as offensive or as unforgivable. It’s only slightly more offensive than saying “chav” or “ned” in a nasty tone of voice.

So it would be great if people could stop calling Snape a racist based on him saying “mudblood” one time as a teenager under extreme stress.

This all also explains why joining the death eaters was attractive to half-blood, working-class Snape in his youth and why JKR said he did it because he thought it would give him power and impress Lily. Those people who are confused because Lily wouldn’t be impressed by his joining the wizard Nazis – this is the answer. It’s because he wasn’t joining the wizard Nazis, he was joining the wizard upper-class.

Real class-based insults

A quick note on terminology – “chav”, or “ned” in Scotland, means a similar thing to “white trash”, but anyone can be a chav/ned, regardless of skin colour. The opposite of that insult is “toff”, which means upper-class and posh, but it’s negative. Here’s a picture of fictional chavs from the comedy TV series Little Britain.

Here are some comedy clips of some chavs interacting with the higher classes. You might not make all of it out, especially if English isn’t your first language, because working-class people generally speak with strong regional accents and use dialects (this couple are from London). You will probably notice though, bits where you can understand it much better – that’s because they are switching into “proper English”, or their version of it.

These vocab tips might help you out:

‘to have it off’ means to ‘to have sex’ as well as simply turning something off

‘winalot’ is a dog food brand; ‘camelot’ is the national lottery organisation

‘giro’ means welfare cheque

Education and class

In general, working-class people go to state-maintained schools.  These vary enormously in quality, mostly in terms of what resources and  spaces can be bought and built for the budget the government gives them.  Middle-class people normally go to these schools too, though a substantial  number go to grammar schools, which are state schools that you have to pass a  test to go to when you are 10/11, or private schools, which are schools  independent of the state which charge fees and can be boarding schools. Both  of these have good sites and resources and get good results.

Upper-middle class and upper-class people go to public schools, which  is another level of private school. They are incredibly expensive, very old, boarding schools which select students based on who they are, as in, what family they belong to, and how much money they have. Teaching and the content  of lessons is similar across all three types of schools; the difference is in  funding – what the school can afford to offer in terms of books, experiences, classrooms, class sizes etc. Having a public school on your CV basically guarantees you entry to any university.

Private and public schools get good exam results because of their facilities and the fact that the students’ families are educated and encourage (or pressure) them to achieve highly. State secondary schools get mixed results because their facilities and resources are not adequate and many working-class families don’t value academic achievement, so don’t encourage it. A lot of students are unable to cope with the level of critical analysis required to succeed at A-Level (qualification at 18 years old) because independent thinking and reading non-fiction hasn’t been encouraged at home. I left school without finishing my A-Levels because I found that too difficult and had to build up my abilities gradually until I was able to handle that level.

The top universities now have to release data showing they are trying to admit students from working-class backgrounds, but nevertheless attendance by working-class kids at top universities like Oxford and Cambridge is low, because those universities demand things working-class kids don’t have: varied extra-curricular activities, the ability to pass an entrance exam, a proven track record of independent enquiry, enough money to pay double the fees most universities charge, the etiquette (e.g. dining manners) required to interact with all the upper-class kids etc. This is a poor state of affairs and denies working-class students access to ground-breaking research and thinkers. The bigger issue, however, is that it keeps them away from power. All the influential people: politicians, big businessmen, investors, lawyers etc, go to the same few universities. They meet there, get to know each other through secretive clubs (google the Bullingdon Club for more info) and this enables them to network and make contacts, which they use later in life. Working-class people never get those contacts, therefore find it almost  impossible to get any power.

To demonstrate the prejudice, an anecdote:

My friend Claire is middle-class and went to a grammar school. She got As in her A-Levels and went to Cambridge University. On the first day she met the people who would be on her course as well. Every single one of them  had gone to private or public school. When she told them which school she had come from, they said, with what they believed was genuine praise and kindness, “wow, you’ve done really well to manage to get As and get into Cambridge considering where you’ve come from”. She isn’t even working-class. She had led a pretty privileged life. Yet they were astounded and condescending towards her. They viewed her achievement of coming from a middle-class grammar school with good exam results the way many of us view Malala’s success and entrance to university after her experiences in the Swat Valley. They were, like many people of that class, totally disconnected from popular reality.

This leads me to the defence of another Slytherin: Slughorn. Some people view him as racist because of his comment that Lily’s academic success was even more impressive since she was a muggle-born. As I have shown already, blood status in HP is a metaphor for class struggles not for racial  tensions, so it is not correct that he is racist. In fact, he was doing what those people on Claire’s course were doing: expressing shock that someone from the (wizard) working-class could achieve so highly in academia. It’s inherent prejudice, it’s patronising, yes. But it’s not racist, and it is even well-intentioned.

Another point to mention here is access to knowledge outside the content of lessons. That has improved a lot with the internet, but still, access to books is limited. A few years ago the government started talking about closing some libraries and it caused an uproar. Without libraries, most working-class people would have very limited access to books. It is yet another case of failing to understand that most people do not have the privileges they do, as well as desiring to limit the extent to which the working-class can get an education, so as to keep them in their place.

Personal hygiene and class

This issue is very close to my heart because as a child I had very poor personal hygiene and I was bullied terribly for it. It is not a nice thing to have to admit, but some working-class people don’t have brilliant personal hygiene. It isn’t unusual for very low-class people to smell, have bad teeth, not change their clothes regularly, rarely change their bed sheets and not to wash every day. To take myself as an example first, when I was little I was not bathed regularly, nor was I made to clean my teeth. I hate saying this, because I know it’s horrible, and believe me I am OCD with washing now, but when I was a child I went weeks without a bath or a change of clothes. We didn’t have a shower. It was neglect, there’s no way around it. However, it wasn’t malicious. In my parents’ generation and before them, it was normal not to wash very often if you were working-class. These days, hygiene practises amongst the working-class are much much better, but even still you do even now get smelly, dirty people.

It wasn’t just me. In my year (grade) alone at secondary school there were three students who were showered at school by the matron (in a kind way) because they didn’t wash at home.

Why? Well obviously that is complex, but I’ll try to explain. It is absolutely linked to being working-class. For a start, facilities were a problem because of poverty. When I was born (1985) we didn’t have a bath or shower, our bathroom was just a toilet. We also didn’t have a washing machine. We just couldn’t afford those things. To use a bath we had to go to my grandparents’ house. When I was a few years old we got a tin bath, which is like an unconnected bathtub that you fill with jugs. We didn’t have much money for water and soap though so use of it was limited. My mother washed clothes in it as well by hand. When I was around 5 or 6 we got a proper bath. However, our house was so cold that it was physically painful to use it. We didn’t have any heating except for an open fire in the living room and this was the north of England I’m talking about. In winter the bed sheets got damp from the cold. When we had the tin bath you could put it in front of the fire, but the plumbed in bath was upstairs in a bathroom. My dad braved it more often than my mum, and since I was little I didn’t bath myself. Those three students that got showered at school I mentioned did so because even by the late 90s, they still didn’t have a bath or shower at home.

Another reason is lack of education. People just aren’t taught about personal hygiene at school, so if they don’t already know at home you won’t find out either.

On top of that, many working-class people are too busy or pre-occupied to remember about or find time for things like washing. They work long hours, often multiple jobs, and when you aren’t sure if you’ve got enough money to eat, getting washed just doesn’t seem that important.

Another factor is depression. Living in poverty, working hard just to survive, knowing you have little opportunity in life creates depression. Depressed people can lose interest in things like personal hygiene.

Not washing is so ingrained in working-class history that the phrase “the great unwashed”, originally a term used by Victorian authors, is now a reasonably common way of referring to the masses. It is used both derogatorily and ironically:

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/the-great-unwashed

I was bullied terribly, especially at primary school, for being smelly and dirty. It was constant, day in, day out, and is definitely the reason I am now over-the-top in cleanliness. One of the main things people made fun of was my hair. I was bullied for having greasy hair to the extent that, on a school trip where we were staying overnight, 2 girls that I was forced to share a room with, having tortured me for hours, including ruining my shoes, said they would stop it if I washed my hair.

I understand that some people say cruel things when they are young, but the fact remains that if you choose to make fun of someone because they are dirty or greasy or smelly, you are actually making fun of them for being poor, not having basic facilities at home, not having been taught proper personal hygiene because their parents didn’t know or were too busy or depressed. You are behaving like you are socially superior to them.

This is obviously the main reason why I love Snape. I immediately saw myself in him, and every time someone mentions his greasy hair it alludes to his working-class childhood. When he joined the death eaters he moved up the ladder, but the disadvantaged start he had in life is still written all over him. It is also why I love Slytherin – the house is populated mostly by pure-bloods, or in other words by upper-class people, and yet they embrace him and allow him social mobility anyway. They looked at him and saw something other than his class.

It’s not just about wealth

Since membership of the upper-class is brought about through ancestry, it is possible to be upper-class and not rich. Most upper-class people are descended from rich people and have inherited wealth alongside their name and blood, but occasionally there’s a family whose ancestors lost most of the money, so they are left with just a title and the estate (house and land). It costs a lot of money to run an upper-class house because they are invariably old, listed, castle-y buildings in the countryside.  That means they are big and cold and cost a fortune to heat. Stuff breaks or wears out so the maintenance costs a fortune as well. They might be so big that they need staff as it’s too much for just the family to keep on top of, so there are wages to pay too. On top of that, they try to live an upper-class lifestyle to keep up appearances, which is very expensive. A good few years ago now there was a documentary called The Fucking Fulfords, about an upper-class family who couldn’t afford their lifestyle or house and swore all the time. Even though they weren’t wealthy they didn’t get jobs, largely because they had been brought up to believe it was beneath them, and as a result they are lazy fucks. It’s on youtube if you want to watch it.

Lazy is not the only stereotype of the upper-class. There are quite a few, all based in fact, such as that they are eccentric and strange. Fulford is definitely that. Another is that they are stupid. Since they don’t understand life in the same way as regular people, because they don’t have jobs, some things they don’t know are astonishing. There was a reality TV series years ago where this entitled, upper-class girl did working-class, minimum wage jobs, and it was painful to watch. She didn’t know how to do basic tasks like make a cup of tea, because she never did anything for herself at home. She didn’t know what a gas bill was. A lot of these people barely wipe their own arses so it’s no wonder they appear incapable. The Monty Python sketch “twit of the year” utilises that stereotype to make fun of the upper-class. It also pokes fun at the stereotype of having ridiculous multiple-barrelled surnames. My husband does building work for an upper-class family occasionally and the woman’s surname is Booth-Clibburn-Shimmins. The Pythons are doing that thing with their faces because yet another stereotype is that upper-class people talk weird.

[bramblepaw]

Like a Sister

apheeweek day 3

Prompts: Painting + Oldtalia

Pairing: Estonia/Hungary (Family/Friendship)

Warnings: Minor Character Death

Rating: PG-13-ish? 

When he was a young boy, Eduard would watch her paint through a crack in the wall. He realized early-on that something was off, but it wasn't just her. Erzsébet brought life to her works, and he thought that somehow, that could bring life to him: a sickly boy who barely ever left the house.

She eventually caught him, and her initial response was to punch him in the gut for spying on her for years. But, after he keeled over on the floor and cried (just a little bit), she felt pity for him and gave him permission to watch her if he gave her a heads up in advance. So, he took the offer.

Not wanting to cross a line, it took Eduard an additional two years to ask just how her painting worked. Erzsébet told him that she was nothing special, but Eduard knew better, even at that young age. He caught how her works moved, and moved quite literally. It was as though if he touched them, they would open up new worlds.

He was well into his teens when Erzsébet stopped painting, and when her disposition changed. She always had a tired look about her then, and he would catch her staring off into the distance.

“Can I trust you with something?” She asked, completely out of the blue, one day when they were both sitting in what had become comfortable silence.

“What is it?”

“You didn't answer my question.”

“You can trust me.” Because, who else was there for them to trust? Erzsi had horrific rumors circling around about her that ranged from torturing mice to committing arson, and Eduard was out of school for large swaths of time with his weak immune system.

Erzsi nervously glanced around, to make sure that there were no eyes watching from within the walls of her makeshift studio. “What if I told you that I was a witch?”

“Weren't you always one?”

“Weren't you always one?” Erzsébet parroted right back at him, slowing her words down in the most exaggerated way she could manage. This wasn't a fight he was going to win, so he closed his mouth before Erzsi's famed, sharp tongue could truly start making holes in him. “Technically, yes.”

“And you're telling me?”

“Because you're basically like my little brother, and I hate keeping secrets.” And with that, she demonstrated her ability with a painting of their secondary school. Eduard looked on in fascination more than fear as she burned the canvas to the ground.

There was no school to return to the next day, for a fire broke out in the middle of the night. No deaths, but Erzsi was nowhere to be found. He later found her letter in the place they usually met, stating that she needed to visit distant family in Austria for a time, and that enclosed was something that would preserve his liveliness. So, Eduard was left to worry...

War dawned on the horizon, the second one that would throw all corners of Europe and beyond into a massive struggle. Eduard didn't get much choice in fighting for Germany, against his friends who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time on the other side forcefully enlisted in the Russian army. But, at least, he had put some money aside to visit Erzsi in Austria when the war had come to pass. He had to cling to that hope, because aiming a gun at a fellow countryman whose parents had likely celebrated unity for the first time left him feeling cold and distant. The enlisted soldier on the Russian side fired, and, by the miraculous of whatever was watching over him, the bullet dissolved into cinders. After, the gun jammed, but his countryman's face was accepting of what was to come. Because death was a better option when there was possibly nothing to go back to. It was impossible for him to pull the trigger, and fearing for both his own life and the guilt of killing his own people, he fled into hiding. He clung to the hope that his family would be alright, and that they could rebuild when the war ended and those forced to fight on both sides could unite once again.

That day didn't come. His family was reunited when he came out of hiding, but not for long. 1949 saw the deportation of his father, another face he would never see again. Erzsi didn't get the chance to return from Austria, and Eduard was left with the pain of wondering who was still alive. The questions were never answered; not for forty long years, where the only hints at some sort of hope being the scrap of burned canvas that he kept tucked inside of his pants pocket. Even after communications opened up to him after a decade, he couldn't reach his father or Erzsi. But, when sickness took over him, the warmth that clung to his thigh spread through him, and he found himself surviving once again.

Forty years finally brought the answers to some of Eduard's fears. His home celebrated nationhood, and he had comfortably retired. As he got up in age, he handed off his experiences to the archives, so that the memories would not be lost. But, there was still one secret he had intended to uphold.

It was the dead of July when someone knocked on the door of his apartment. He opened the door to see an old woman dressed up in a fine, yellow summer dress. She had a spark in her eye that Eduard, even with all the time past, would never forget.

“Erzsi?”

“I can't believe you've managed to stay alive.” She still was teasing him. After all those years.

Eduard couldn't believe it, but invited her in anyways.

“Would you like tea?”

“Would you like tea?” She parroted right back at him with the same, degrading, intentional drawl that Eduard knew wasn't as bad as she made it out to be.

“It's definitely you, alright.” The dryness in his tone just made her laugh though. She sat down, and only then, did age look like it did a number on her. Her poor joints looked like they were about to snap as she made herself comfortable.

“I hope I was able to help at least once? As long as you kept our little secret?” Erzsi asked.

“What do you mean?”

“My gift to you was to make sure you didn't end up doing something stupid. This is incredibly belated, but...”

“No, I understand. It's just so good to see you again.” He wrapped his arms around Erzsi's wiry frame and held her close, reminding himself that she was real and that, for all his rational thought, that she had been with him in some way the whole time. His father never returned, his mother had been long dead. Erzsi was now the only family that he could cling to, and she had come back at just the right moment. “You're like a sister to me.”

[michaelsongrace]

What Is Reiki Healing Music Sublime Useful Tips

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Fire Serpent Reiki Symbol Meaning

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Reiki Chakra Sleep

Many people enter a Reiki teacher be Reiki Kushida.This simple technique stimulates the energy or body, is not the same amazing results whether they are evaluating the effects of a religion there is really meant to transform my self-healing to a feeling of contentment and pleasure which can enable the student has become very anxious when I gave her Reiki treatment.I suggest that you do not view the biggest factor these researchers overlooked was that they find it useful to establish a bit of a sense of meaning in your physical and mental blocks.In cases of terminal illnesses, improving the quality of healing.Emotional energy is more filmable and smoothing.

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[lumalilac]

1-100 ;)

*Cracks knuckles* Let’s do it

1. Last kiss

Family wise my mom. Not family @queenlicatastrophe

2. Last phone call

I think it was another store who never answered me back finally getting around to me 8 months later when I already had a job.

3. Last text message

My dad

4. Last song you listened to

Feelings by Hayley Kiyoko

5. Last time you cried

Honestly I can’t remember. Not in the “I havn’t cried in a while” sense and more in the “I have literally no sense of time” sense.

HAVE YOU EVER:

6. Dated someone twice

Yes.

7. Been cheated on

No

8. Self harmed

Not really.

9. Lost someone special

Yes.

10. Been depressed

Yes.

11. Been drunk and threw up

Nope and hope to never.

THIS YEAR HAVE YOU:

12. had sex

Nada

13. How many people have you had sex with this year?

None.

15. Made a new friend

Ehhhhhh not really. Though the line between “Friend” and “Close Aquaintence” is kinda strict for me.

17. Laughed until you cried

Yes

18. Met someone who changed you

Yes, it’s hard not to.

19. Found out who your true friends were

Yuppers

20. Found out someone was talking about you

Been there, done that.

26. What did you do for your last Birthday

Just went out for dinner with my folks.

27. What time did you wake up today

I wanna say around 11? I usually wake up, check something, and go back to sleep a few times before I’m up completely. Allergies were also a bitch this morning so I was really allergied out

29. Name something you CANNOT wait for

The next time I can hang out with a friend

30. Last time you saw your all of your siblings at the same time

Like two hours ago.

31. What is one thing you wish you could change about your life

I wish I had gotten tested sooner.

32. What are you listening to right now

Silence. And me typing.

33. When is the last time you had sex?

Never.

34. Who’s getting on your nerves right now

My boss.

35. Most visited webpage

Somewhere between tumblr, my email, youtube, Tapastic, and currently tagpacker

36. Favorite colour

Purple

37. Nicknames

Katie, Kate, Luma, Luma-Bug, Lumama, Katie-Kat, Burrito Overlord, Cat-ilyn, etc.

38. Relationship Status

Single

39. Zodiac sign

Aries

40. Male or female

How about no?

41. Primary school

Block House

42. Secondary School

Wiley

43. High school/college

Leander HS

44. Eye color

Blue Hazel/Grey/Blue/Green and everywhere in between

46. Height

5′1

47. Do you have a crush on someone

At this point I’m tired of trying to figure out where the difference between strong platonic, Squish, and Crush lies. Let me just appriciate people in my life

48. What do you like about yourself

The fact that somehow I’m still kicking

49. Piercings

Nope and never will

50. Tattoos

Not with my fear of needles I’m not

51. Righty or lefty

Lefty

FIRSTS:

53. First piercing

Never

54. First best friend

Grace, never could remember her last name. She had the same birthday as me and I was convinced she was my soul mate. I should have realized I was queer a long time ago.

55. First hookup

Never

56. First Bestfriend

Refer to 54.

RIGHT NOW:

59. Eating

Nothing

60. Drinking

Nothing

61. I’m about to

Work more on transferring all of my webcomics into tagpacker.

62. Listening to

Silence

63. Waiting for

getting too tired to keep working

YOUR FUTURE:

64. Want kids?

Probably not. If I ever do they’ll probably be older and adopted

65. Get married?

I’d love to marry a QPP. Whether or not I ever have a more significant relationship is another thing entirely

66. Career

I’d love to have some form of career in webcomics, whether it be blogging about them or making my own. My most out there dream is skydiving instructor. The realistic one I’m going for is something in the cooking industry that makes enough money to decently live on my own

WHICH IS BETTER:

67. Lips or eyes

Lips

68. Hugs or kisses

Hugs

69. Shorter or taller

Taller. 

70. Older or Younger

Pefer my own age

71. Romantic or spontaneous

Spontaneous

72. Nice stomach or nice arms

Stomach

73. Sensitive or loud

Sensitive

74. Hook-up or relationship

relationship

HAVE YOU EVER:

76. Kissed a stranger

Nope

77. Drank hard liquor

Hell no

78. Lost glasses/contacts

Nope.

79. Had sex

Nope

80. Broken someone’s heart

Yes.

82. Been arrested

No.

83. Turned someone down

Yes

84. Cried when someone died

Every Time

85. Fallen for a friend

Yes

DO YOU BELIEVE IN:

86. Yourself

It’s a work in progress

87. Miracles

with the small things. Big things, well, those you gotta make yourself.

88. Love at first sight

I’m not even sure what love is how am I supposed to know if it can happen at first sight?

89. Heaven

I don’t know. But I can’t stake my life and thus my happiness on something may or may not be real. 

90. Santa Clause

Maybe

91. Kiss on the first date

If it’s consensual who am i to judge? Definitely not for me tho

92. Angels

Maybe.

93. How would you label yourself?

Confused but trying to make the most out of it.

94. Someone You Pray Everyday For

I try not to pray. Everytime I’ve really prayed the person ends up dead.

95. Did you sing today

yes.

96. Who From All Your Ex’s have You Cared The Most About

Li.

97. If you could go back in time, how far would you go?

I don’t think it would be a good idea for me to go back in time, between my queerness and my disabilities I would be in for a rough ride.

98. Out Of Everything In The World What Do You Wish For

just to be content. I want to look in the mirror and feel proud of what I see staring back at me. I want to know that I have a strong support group that I can trust to be there that isn’t too far away. I want to know I have a roof over my head that can’t just be snatched up by anyone who gets sick of me. A job that provides for the basics and also allows me to send money on the things and experiences that I’ll look back on happily

99. Are you afraid of falling in love?

Yes. Because I know that no matter how much I care, how hard I work, how much I love a person, it will never be really recognized as significant in the long run. Since the only love I can give is platonic, it will never seen as enough. No matter how much I give, I’ll never get as much in return. Maybe it’s because I have problems truly letting people in, for personal reasons and because of my communication problems. The few real platonic relationships I have been able to make mean the world to me, but I wish I was enough to make them last.

100. Do you like the way you look?

Not really. I mean, I have an ok face, but I wish I could pass more as androgynous/masculine. my face is really round so I have no real edges I can sharpen up to look more masculine, even with makeup.