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aidanchaser · 3 years ago

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Table of Contents beta’d by @ageofzero @magic713m @ccboomer @aubsenroute @somebodyswatson

Chapter Fifteen The Heist

Luna Lovegood hated Hogwarts. Yes, she was in Ravenclaw, and yes, she loved learning, but school? School was where curiosity went to die in a long, slow, stretched out sentence.

For Luna, the transition from her family home, where her father had encouraged her explorations and experiments, to a place of high stone walls and demanding bells had been terrible for her, and she’d nearly quit after her first year.

Now she was glad that she had persisted, because school had one thing worthwhile: Ginny Weasley.

When Ginny had hexed those boys for calling her Loony, the stars in the dark night had burst into existence, and school had become not just bearable, but pleasant. Luna had skipped everywhere for the rest of the that week.

This year, however, there was no skipping. Even Herbology, one of Luna’s favourite subjects, was overcast by the horrid cloud that Snape and the Carrows left on the school.

At least Ginny and Neville were in Herbology with her. N.E.W.T.-level courses often combined sixth and seventh years, and Luna was glad to have her closest friends with her at least once a week.

They were currently repotting Venomous Tentacula, which involved lots of soothing whispers and gentle strokes to the stem and vines. Neville worked easily, and Luna did too, even humming a lullaby to her knot of vines as she transferred the plant into a larger pot and carefully aerated the soil.

“Ow!” Ginny hissed, drawing her hand away from her plant.

Luna patted one of her vines and paused her melody. “Did it bite you, Ginny?”

Ginny pressed her wounded hand to her mouth. “Just got me with its leaves. Bloody bastard hates me.”

“You have to be gentle,” she sang, and reached for a watering can.

“I am gentle!”

Luna giggled. Ginny could be gentle, but it was not her natural state by any stretch.

Once Luna had finished repotting her Tentacula, she moved to Ginny’s station to help her work.

“You have to be kind and patient.” Luna ran her fingers along one of the vines. “It’s a sensitive plant.”

Beneath Luna’s hands, the vines no longer lashed out with sharp, sudden outbursts of movement, but instead swayed in time to her humming.

“See?” Luna paused her song. “Now put your fertilizer in that pot.”

Professor Sprout praised them all for their hard work, and congratulated them for finishing the lesson without any bite accidents. “There’s usually at least one of you turned bright purple and on your way up to the hospital wing, but you all did excellent work today,” she beamed at them.

“Hospital wing’s full up anyway,” Hannah Abbott mumbled, just out of Sprout’s earshot, as she cleaned up her work station.

Hannah looked unusually wild today. Her thick plaits were uncharacteristically loose, and dirt streaked her cheeks. She wrestled her book into her bag with the sort of determination one might use when salvaging Snargaluff pods.

Neville reached across his station to hers and picked up her shovel and trowel. “Ernie will be fine,” he murmured, and returned her tools to the greenhouse shed.

Hannah tried and failed to regain control of her trembling lip, then hurried out of the greenhouse before Neville could come back.

It wasn’t just Ernie, who was recovering from a detention after he had called the Daily Prophet “rubbish” and added that he hoped Harry would show up at Hogwarts so he could “put Snape in his place.”

It was Parvati and Padma Patil, who had refused to attend Muggle Studies. Each night that they refused earned them a night of detention, until after three weeks both girls had become too ill to attend any of their classes.

It was Hugh Ward, who had defiantly announced to the boys in his Slytherin dormitory that he was a half-blood.

Luna didn’t know what curses the boys had used to try to punish Hugh for being so proud of his Muggle lineage, but he had been in the hospital wing all week. Luna had visited him, and the Patil twins. She made a point to visit anyone who had been in Dumbledore’s Army, because they were her friends.

On these visits, it was not uncommon for her to find Hannah, helping Madam Pomfrey change linens and administer medicine to those who needed it. Though Hannah never did any of the Charm work in the hospital wing, she watched closely each time Madam Pomfrey cast a spell.

Luna knew that Hannah wanted to become a Healer. Each time Luna visited the hospital wing, she thought about becoming a Healer, too. She liked caring for people, and she was taking enough N.E.W.T.s for it. But so much of Healing was urgent, and Luna had never done well with urgent.

“Must you always move so slowly?” Ginny snapped.

Luna frowned at her gloves as she packed them away. She much preferred the greenhouse to the castle and couldn’t understand why Ginny was so eager to get back. She’d much rather be down here with the fresh air than back with the Carrows.

“Come on,” Ginny whined, “I’m starved.”

Luna squeezed her Herbology textbook between her personal field guide and the thick tome for Transfiguration. With those three texts and her scaly Care of Magical Creatures book, her bag was nearly bursting at the seams.

“Why didn’t you eat breakfast?” Luna shouldered her heavy bag and hurried to the door where Ginny and Neville were waiting.

“I wasn’t hungry at breakfast.”

“Helen said she was sulking in the Owlery after a row with Harry,” Neville whispered, but not as quietly as he should have.

“We didn’t have a row! And anyway, don’t use his name. Someone might hear you.”

“Should we just call him You-Know-Who?” Neville asked with a grin.

Ginny shoved him, none too gently, and picked up her pace, leaving Neville and Luna trailing behind her.

Luna pursed her lips and looked up at Neville. There was something different about him this year, but Luna couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

“Did you grow taller over the summer?” she asked, and tried to gauge if she was looking up more than she had looked up last year.

“What? Oh — yeah, I did. Gran sent out for a whole new wardrobe.” He wrinkled his nose. “It was only like, an inch I think, but she insisted. I think it was her way of apologising that Mum and Dad were gone most of the summer.”

Luna tilted her head. “I suppose they work quite a lot.”

Neville laughed. “I haven’t seen much of them since… well, I guess since Voldemort came back. I mean, a meal here and there, but usually only one at a time.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s not bad.” He adjusted his bag. “Their work’s important. And I’ve always had Gran around.”

Luna looked down at her hands. There was dirt under her nails, and she supposed she ought to clean up before lunch, but she liked when her hands were dirty. It reminded her of her mother, who had always smelled like earth and soot. It also reminded her of her father, whose fingers were often stained with ink.

“But you miss them.”

It wasn’t a question. Luna didn’t ask questions she already knew the answers to. There were plenty of other questions to be concerned with.

“What do you think we should call Harry?” she asked. “And I suppose we’ll need names for Ron and Hermione as well. Should we all have secret names? Like cats, perhaps? I should like to be Turnip.”

When she and Neville reached the castle, Ginny was waiting impatiently at the door.

“You both walk slow,” she complained, and stormed inside.

“My,” Luna said, “it must have been quite a bad fight with Parsnip.”

Neville frowned. “No, I don’t like that one.”

“Butterscotch?”

“Hmm…”

“Pickled Herring?”

“Must it be food?”

“I like Pickled Herring, because it sounds like him, but backwards.”

“I suppose.”

Luna waved goodbye to Neville and joined the Ravenclaw table. She sat next to a girl named Kim Sheringham, who Luna did not consider a friend, exactly, but they had lived together for the better part of six years, which might count for something to other people. It just didn’t count very much to Luna.

“Hi, Luna,” said Kim.

“Hello,” Luna said, but remained focused on her lunch

“How was Herbology?”

Luna hummed. “Warm. Pleasant.” She reached for the pitcher and poured herself a glass of water.

“Sounds nice. Listen, do you think you could do me a favour?”

Luna stared at Kim and took a sip from her cup. She waited for Kim to ask for what she really wanted.

Kim faltered, but she’d always been more keen on small talk than Luna. Finally, she said, “Could you tell Flitwick I’m not well? I need to review for the Muggle Studies exam tonight. Please, I just can’t keep all the Sacred Twenty-Eight straight. Just tell Flitwick I fell ill after lunch or something. Any excuse will do.”

Ravenclaws, as a rule, did not skip lessons — unless they had an exam to prepare for.

“I could review with you,” Luna offered, and pretended not to notice the way Kim’s brow furrowed.

“That’s alright, thanks. Just tell him I’m not well. He’ll believe whatever you say, you know.”

Now it was Luna’s turn to frown. She didn’t understand what Kim meant, but she didn’t get to ask because Kim was already leaving.

Luna finished her meal alone, still puzzling over Kim’s comment, and wandered to Charms by herself. She apologised to Flitwick for Kim’s absence, and promised to take notes for two. Flitwick readily accepted her vague excuse, and this only puzzled Luna more. How had Kim known that Flitwick would not press her?

She was distracted throughout class, but her notes were no less for it. She was not sure that they would help Kim — no one ever asked to borrow Luna’s colourful, pictographic notes — but Luna would not mind explaining them.

After Charms, Luna had a free period, while the Gryffindors took their Charms lesson. She passed Ginny and Neville outside Flitwick’s classroom door and smiled. Ginny grinned back, which worried Luna. It was not the sort of grin that suggested Ginny was truly in a better mood; it was Ginny’s mischievous grin.

Luna waited until she was in the library to check the Galleon in her pocket. She had not noticed it grow warm during her Charms lesson, but it must have, for there was a new date and time inscribed where the identification number would be. Tonight, an hour before Muggle Studies.

Whatever Ginny had planned would get them all into trouble, certainly, but Luna at least knew that it would be fun, and fun was in such short supply these days.

There was plenty of time between now and then, so Luna set about working on their personalised field guides for Herbology. She had started adding to it, not just for Herbology, but also for Care of Magical Creatures. Hagrid was sweet, but Luna did not find him an adept professor. She could appreciate the practicality of his lessons, at least, but had started recording what she learned from their field experiments into her Herbology project. She enjoyed this sort of work, collecting information and organising it. And decorating it.

Professor Flitwick had suggested a career studying magical plants and animals, doing field work, exploring, traveling and notetaking, making discoveries. Luna liked the idea of it, but the way he had presented it sounded tedious. He had mentioned the Ministry and paperwork, almost as if he had been trying to put her off from the job. He had even suggested that she spend her summer reaching out to people at the Ministry to try some job-shadowing, but Luna had a hard time finding people in the Ministry that were not involved with either the Death Eaters, the Rotfang Conspiracy, or the Heliopath Army.

Was it not enough to simply wander?

Luna had never been good at purpose. It was one of the many things she had always admired about Ginny. Ginny had always known who she was and what she wanted. Luna, for all her appearances of self-assurance, wondered and doubted far more than anyone knew.

Luna finished her note about Fire Crabs in preparation for tomorrow’s lesson and waited for the ink to dry. She swung her legs back and forth and stared out of the large window. Neither of her parents had ever made a living on the things they were passionate about. They did things that were uninteresting to fund their curiosities. She wondered if she would end up doing the same.

With a sigh, Luna closed her field guide and headed down to the Great Hall for dinner. Again, she ate alone, but she watched Ginny talk with one of the girls from her dorm. Ginny’s smile was wide but empty, and she tapped her fork anxiously against her plate.

Neville sat alone, picking at his food, and Seamus and Lavender sat together, but they had more interest in the professors’ table than in each other.

Luna shook her head. Gryffindors were always so obvious. If the Carrows were even a little bit smarter, they might have known to be suspicious.

Neville left dinner first, and after an exact count of thirty, Ginny followed. The rest of the D.A. made their way out of the Great Hall in staggered exits. Some relied on a count of their own choosing. Some relied on waiting until a certain number of people had exited before they made their way to the seventh floor.

If Umbridge had taught them anything, it was how to avoid getting caught.

Luna waited until Michael Corner loudly announced that he was going to check on Padma, and trailed after him at her usual aimless pace. When he headed for the hospital wing, Luna went all the way back to Ravenclaw Tower, but instead of climbing the stairs, she slipped down another corridor to the Room of Requirement.

The Room no longer looked as it had for D.A. meetings. In fact, Luna thought it looked rather like a proper classroom. There were even stacks of reference books on some of the desks.

“I thought if anyone did walk in on us, it would look like we were studying,” Neville said, when he saw Luna’s curious glance.

She hummed thoughtfully. “You should ask it not to let anyone walk in on us.”

Neville looked surprised, then frowned and sank into one of the desks. He drummed his fingers thoughtfully.

Luna always appreciated the way Neville took her ideas seriously, rather than laughed at them, or dismissed them instantly, the way so many of her peers and professors did.

Padma and Parvati returned from the hospital wing with Michael, and a small crowd surrounded them, asking if they were alright. Hannah and Susan were notable outliers, clustered by themselves and whispering quietly. Ginny, too, stood alone, trying to count heads, and another girl in a green headscarf, someone Luna had not spoken to since those early days of the D.A., sat by herself.

Luna slipped into the desk beside Atalanta Shafiq. She smiled pleasantly.

“Hello. It’s Atalanta, isn’t it?”

The girl stared at her with large brown eyes. Luna thought she was in fourth year, the same Dennis Creevey would have been in.

“You’re Luna.”

Luna’s smile widened. “How did you know?”

“Everyone knows you. You’re one of the people who went to the Ministry with Potter two summers ago.”

“Oh, you mean Pickled Herring.”

Atalanta stared at Luna as if she had lost her mind, a look Luna was used to, though she hadn’t seen it in a while. She hadn’t spent much time with new people recently.

“You’re friends with Hugh, aren’t you?” Luna asked her.

Atalanta nodded. “I know you visit him. How is he?”

“Oh — he’s well. Don’t you see him yourself?”

The girl turned to stare straight ahead. Her face was hard and her voice tight. “He asked me to stop coming. As if everyone doesn’t already know we’re friends — as if he has anyone else to bring him notes —” She broke off abruptly and her nostrils flared. “Everyone knows we were friends with the Creeveys anyway. My lineage doesn’t protect me as much as he thinks it does.”

“It sounds like he cares about you.” Luna hummed. “But you seem like someone who can take care of yourself. It’s okay for both of those things to be true, you know.”

Atalanta did not say anything. Luna appreciated the way the girl considered her words. It was like watching someone put together a puzzle, and Luna loved puzzles.

The door opened and closed one last time for Pearl Lais and Ginny announced, “I think that’s everyone. Let’s get started.”

All conversations ceased as she spoke. Ginny commanded a room with more ease than Harry had. Luna could not help but smile dreamily.

“So as you all know, tonight we have an exam for Muggle Studies.”

“I won’t take it,” Zacharias Smith announced loudly.

“And we fully plan to resume our protest,” Parvati added, voice defiant. Padma looked less confident, but she nodded when Parvati looked at her.

“Standing outside the Muggle Studies classroom is great,” Neville said, “but if we could do something more coordinated and subversive, we might be able to get more students on our side, and you wouldn’t have to go to detention.”

Padma raised an eyebrow. “You have something planned that won’t get us in trouble?”

“As long as we don’t get caught,” Ginny grinned. “I heard Snape threatened to take your Prefect badge. Your protest has been great, but it’s not worth that. We need people like you in charge as much as possible. Let me show you what we have in mind. It’s so easy, even Neville could do it.”

Neville did not look upset by the remark in the least, and pulled a stack of loose parchment from the desk at the front of the classroom. He began passing it out.

“It’s partly a Muggle-trick,” he said, “so it’s perfect for Muggle Studies.”

“There’s a bit of Charm, of course,” Ginny said, “to make it more interesting.”

Ginny and Neville explained the procedure of the prank to the members of Dumbledore’s Army. Everyone had several sheets to practice with, but Luna took to it right away. She found it a rather endearing bit of spellwork, but she knew that Alecto Carrow would hate it. Still, it was a harmless and funny prank. Even if they did get caught, the punishment couldn’t be too severe.

As Luna finished folding her third sheet of parchment, just for something to do with her hands, Ginny slid into the desk next to her.

“Hey,” she said, “I have a special job for you.”

Luna looked up from her parchment as Ginny pressed a small bottle into her hands.

“Neville got that from Herbology today. Can you smear it into Carrow’s book before the exam?”

Luna held up the colourless vial. “Should I wear dragonhide gloves?”

“No, it has to be ingested. Just the corners of the pages will do.”

“How will I get the book?”

“Just ask her for it. Say you need to check your notes or something. She’ll believe whatever you tell her.”

Luna stared into Ginny’s deep brown eyes. “Why?”

“You have an honest face. If I ask, she’ll know something’s up.”

Luna wasn’t sure what it meant that she had an, “honest face,” but it was the nicest compliment Ginny had given her all year, so she took it and pressed it into her memory like she pressed flowers into her field guide.

“I should go now, then,” she said. “So I’ll have time.”

“Don’t worry about getting caught,” Ginny said. “I’ve got something else planned and she’ll probably single me out for the whole thing.”

Luna didn’t mean to smile, but she did. “I would be honoured to have detention with you,” and she punctuated her statement with a curtsy. Ginny laughed, and it made whatever punishments Luna might receive for smearing poison into Alecto Carrow’s book worth it.

As Ginny had predicted, Professor Carrow did not suspect anything was amiss when Luna arrived at her office early and asked to check her notes against the enormous tome that she read out of during their lessons. She muttered something about Ravenclaws and perfectionism, then left Luna at a desk with her notes and the book.

Carefully, Luna dabbed some of the poison onto her finger and smeared it onto the upper right corners of each page. She pretended to skim some of the pages, and even made a few marks into her own notes to sell the lie, but she wondered if she even needed to. Professor Carrow hardly paid her any mind.

When she had finished, she thanked Professor Carrow, and waited until she was alone in the hallway to wipe her hands clean.

All students were required to take Muggle Studies, and the curriculum was entirely new, so everyone, from first year to seventh, took it together in the Great Hall three evenings a week. Luna found it slightly more entertaining than History of Magic, because while Professor Carrow could drone on much like Professor Binns, Carrow at least took questions, and Luna loved when her friends asked questions.

In their very first class, Neville had challenged every line of Professor Carrow’s reading. She had snappishly asked for his lineage not twenty minutes into class. With a wide grin, Neville had said, “Longbottom and Fawley.”

The other day, Ginny had asked Professor Carrow why they weren’t going to evaluate the Carrow family tree the way they had the Bones family. Professor Carrow had turned red and Luna had expected her to hex Ginny then and there.

Luna had not asked any questions yet, though she had, at one point, raised her hand to point out that it was unfair to accuse Muggles of being liars and cheats when Thicknesse was a continuation of Scrimgeour’s evil plot to bring down the Ministry through the horrors of gum disease. The other students had laughed, and Professor Carrow had given her a condescending smile.

“How could the Ministry allow such plots to happen right under their nose?” Professor Carrow had asked with a sickly smile.

“Same way they allowed Death Eaters to infiltrate and Voldemort to take over,” Neville had said loudly, and he’d gotten a week of detention.

The dining tables were removed from the Great Hall each night of Muggle Studies and were replaced with rows of desks. Students sat by year and by house, so Luna took a seat near the back of one of the Ravenclaw aisles. She thought it was a good thing that the D.A. was largely composed of upper-years. Professor Carrow would be less likely to notice them folding up their exams.

The Great Hall was quiet as students worked on their exams. Quills scratched against parchment and occasionally Luna heard the sound of a page turning as Professor Carrow licked her finger and turned the page of her heavy tome.

As she folded up her exam just like they had practiced in the Room of Requirement, Luna watched Professor Carrow closely. The woman coughed after five pages and reached for her tea. After ten pages, she rubbed her throat and finished her drink. By the fifteenth page, her cheeks were already flushed purple and she looked uncomfortable.

“Professor!” Ginny shouted. She didn’t need to shout, since the hall was as silent as O.W.L.s had been, but as her voice echoed, every head turned to her.

She had her hand stretched as high as she could and she bounced anxiously. “Professor!”

Professor Carrow stood from her desk and frowned down at Ginny. “This is an exam, girl. Be quiet.”

“It’s an emergency, Professor. Can I go? I’ll only be a minute.”

Professor Carrow’s mouth lifted in a sneer. “No.”

“Please, Professor? I mean, I’ll use my exam if I have to, but —”

Laughter rippled across the hall and Ginny grinned.

“Make it quick!” Carrow snapped at her, and Ginny sprinted from the hall.

She really was gone only a minute — both Luna and Professor Carrow counted — and Luna wondered what she possibly could have accomplished during that time.

Ginny maintained an appearance of studiousness as she returned to her exam, and Professor Carrow returned to her book. She rubbed her throat again and looked at her empty tea cup. She snapped her fingers impatiently. A house-elf appeared with a pop and poured her a fresh cup, then vanished just as quickly.

Luna forgot all about the clusters of parchment that decorated her desk. Her focus was wholly on Professor Carrow as the woman inspected the cup of tea. She sniffed it, tapped her wand against it, took a small sip, and seemed satisfied. She finished the cup and went back to her book.

Luna kept watching, and it was another seven pages before Professor Carrow licked her finger and paused. She looked at her hand, at the book, and then directly at Luna. Luna tried to shrink into her seat.

Carrow got to her feet and started down the aisle of Ravenclaw desks with a look of fury that might have cowed a dragon. Luna, however, was spared immediate consequences by a squeak that began on the Gryffindor side of the room, followed closely by a squeak from the Hufflepuff aisle.

Hastily, Luna Animated the collection of parchment mice that she had so carefully constructed during the exam. They joined the chorus of mice that now filled the hall, leaping off of desks and scampering towards Professor Carrow.

Luna didn’t think Professor Carrow was a woman who feared mice, but it at least startled her, and it certainly upset several of the other students, who screamed as the parchment creations scurried over their feet and onto their desks. Students leapt up onto chairs and desks, and the entire hall descended into chaos.

It was impossible to tell, as Ginny and Neville had probably planned, where the mice had come from. Carrow pointed her wand at the ones nearest to her, and they went up in flames, but they were quickly replaced with more. Some tried to climb her skirt while others scampered across the room, nibbling on exams and tearing every piece of parchment to shreds.

“Everyone out!” Carrow snapped, crushing one of the mice under her heel. “Orderly!” she added as a few of the more skittish students bolted for the door.

But even those that ran reached a wall of students who had, for some reason, stalled in the doorway of the Great Hall.

“What now?” Carrow elbowed her way to the front, and Luna stood on her tiptoes to peer over Draco Malfoy’s shoulder. She saw a message painted on the floor of the entrance hall in bright red, impossible to miss.

DUMBLEDORE’S ARMY: NOW RECRUITING

Professor Carrow tried to vanish the mess, but it sparked with fireworks and she leapt backwards. A pair of first years stared in awe. A few upper years laughed.

“Weasley!” Carrow snapped, and a few of the older students waited for the inevitable joke of, “Which one?” before realising that Ginny was the only Weasley left at Hogwarts.

Ginny leaned against the pillar that framed the door into the Great Hall. She smiled at Carrow. “Yes, Professor?”

Professor Carrow lifted her wand. “You’ll get more than detention, brat —”

“Say, Professor,” Ginny said, “you’ve got a little something on your —” Ginny gestured to her face, then paused and gestured to Carrow’s hands, “well — everywhere.”

Professor Carrow looked down at her hands, now bright purple.

“That looks like Venomous Tentacula poison,” said Neville. “You ought to be careful around the greenhouses, Professor.”

Carrow whipped around and aimed her wand at Neville, then searched the crowd for Luna. “You,” she snapped.

Luna raised her eyebrows.

“What’s your name?”

“Lovegood,” Luna said, before it had even occurred to her to lie.

Carrow ran her tongue across her teeth. “Lovegood? Your father runs The Quibbler?”

“Er — yes, Professor.”

“You and Weasley, to the Headmaster Snape’s office immediately.”

Luna started for the stairs, but Ginny folded her arms over her chest and refused to move.

“Weasley!”

“Snape isn’t Headmaster.”

“I’ve had just about enough of you. Pureblooded or not —”

“Last week you called me a blood traitor, but this week you’re suddenly all concerned with —”

“Imperio.”

Luna watched, horrified, as Ginny’s posture relaxed and her dark eyes widened.

“Stop!” Luna cried, which, futile as it was, at least provided cover as Neville drew his wand.

“Stupefy!” Neville shouted, and Professor Carrow fell backwards, sprawled over Ginny’s message on the floor.

A few of the students cheered and footsteps thundered down the stairs.

Amycus Carrow and Argus Filch shoved their way through the crowd of students. They took in the mess of paint on the floor, the unconscious and purple professor, and Neville with his wand drawn.

“What did you do, you filthy brat!” Amycus snarled.

“She was only Stunned,” Seamus Finnigan shouted. “Seemed fair since she was using a bloody Unforgivable!”

“Another week of detention then?” Neville asked, with more bravery than Luna thought anyone should have, considering how many detentions had landed students in the infirmary.

“No, I think your punishment should be a bit more public and swift —”

“Professor?” Malfoy interrupted. He grabbed Luna’s arm and pulled her forward. His Head Boy badge glinted in the candlelight. “Professor Carrow was just about to take Lovegood and Weasley up to the Headmaster’s office. Shall I help you escort them?”

Amycus Carrow did not do well with being interrupted. It was a challenge for him to hold so many thoughts in his head at once.

“Lovegood and Weasley?”

“Yes, sir. They’re responsible for this mess, too. Pansy can help Professor Carrow, here, and I’ll help you get this lot to Professor Snape.”

Luna did not fight Malfoy’s tight grip on her arm as he took her to Snape’s office, not the way Ginny pushed and pulled on Amycus as he dragged her up the stairs. Neville, too, was more docile in Filch’s grip, and he eyed Malfoy suspiciously.

Carrow announced the password, “Asphodel,” and the gargoyle that guarded the stairs to the Headmaster’s office parted with ease.

Luna was so rarely angry. Anger was a concept, something she witnessed in others, and maybe glimpsed in herself the way she could glimpse the edge of the Black Lake on a clear day. She did not feel true anger very often, but as she was pulled up to the Headmaster’s office, it rose in her chest with each step.

It was horribly unfair of Hogwarts, who had denied Umbridge access to the Headmaster’s office, to allow Snape control over it, when Snape was the very one who had killed Dumbledore.

Luna tried to swallow down her anger, but it refused to budge. She hated Hogwarts.

Carrow pounded his fist on the heavy oak door at the top of the stairs and pushed it open.

The Headmaster’s office was different from what Luna remembered. She’d only seen it once before, but she had adored it. There had been so many trinkets bobbing and whizzing about; it had been full of noise and life. It had reminded her of her mother’s office.

Now, however, it was cold and empty, with nothing but a Pensieve in a corner and a desk stacked with parchment. Fawkes’ perch remained, but was empty, and behind the Headmaster’s desk were the frames of all the previous Headmasters, including Dumbledore, fast asleep. She looked away, and settled on Snape’s face. As much as she disliked Snape, looking at him hurt less than looking at Dumbledore’s portrait.

Snape, seated at the Headmaster’s desk, kept his eyes on what looked to Luna like a letter.

“No, please, come right in,” he drawled. “I’m not busy or anything.”

“These students cursed Alecto,” Amycus said. “Stunned her right in the entrance hall.”

“They had nothing to do with it!” Neville snapped. “I Stunned her because she used an Unforgivable on Ginny! It was just me!”

With an eerie amount of care, Snape set the letter aside and finally looked at the group that had invaded his office. His face had no more displeasure than it usually did as he looked at each of them.

“Then give Longbottom a detention,” he finally said to Carrow. “Five feet of lines reading, ‘I will not hex my professors’ ought to do it.”

Luna could not tell if Snape was serious. Amycus appeared to be having the same problem. His jaw worked fruitlessly before he finally sputtered, “That’s it?”

Snape stood. “What would you like me to do? Expel him and send him back to his Dumbledore-fanatic parents? You’re in charge of discipline, Carrow. So discipline them. Can’t you control a few children?” He opened a cabinet and pulled out a cloak. “I have business off of the grounds tonight. I expect that this will be dealt with by the time I return.”

Snape held the door open for them, and Carrow reluctantly led them back down to the corridor. Snape swept past them, dark cloak billowing the way it had as he had paced the aisles during his Potions lessons, and disappeared down the stairs.

Carrow watched him go, a hard look on his face. “Are the dungeons ready, Filch?”

“Oiled the hinges this morning, sir,” Filch said. “Haven’t put the chains back in yet —”

“It’ll do for now.”

Ginny’s thrashing did not hinder Carrow in the slightest as he, Filch, and Malfoy took the three of them downstairs into the dungeons. Their wands were set on a nearby shelf, tauntingly visible but well out of reach, and then the three were left alone until Carrow could come up with something more creative.

“Did you see it?” Neville’s voice was steady, and he leaned almost comfortably against the stone wall.

The iron-wrought bars rattled as Ginny kicked them, but they did not budge. “Of course I saw it. We ought to go for it now, while Snape’s gone.”

Luna eyed a trickle of water that slid from the ceiling and into a small puddle on the floor. She wondered if it came from the Black Lake or a leaky pipe. “What did you notice?” she asked.

“The Sword of Godric Gryffindor,” Ginny said. “Didn’t you see it hanging under Dumbledore’s portrait?”

“Oh. Is it important?”

“Dumbledore left it to Harry,” Neville said. “He needs it. I don’t know how we could get it to him, though.”

“I can talk to him,” Ginny said. “If we could just get out of here —” She kicked again, but the bars did not budge under her assault.

“We aren’t getting out of here.” Neville retrieved a worn piece of parchment and a golden feather from his pocket. He searched for a dry spot on the floor and unfolded the old parchment. “But we can make a plan. Halloween would be good, when everyone’s at the feast.”

Ginny gave the bars one more kick for good measure, then joined Neville on the floor.

Neville pressed the tip of the feather to the parchment like a quill and said, “I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.”

—————————— ✶✶✶ ——————————

Ginny was forced to scrub the entrance hall clean until there was no trace of her graffiti, and students could see their reflection in the polished floor. It took her the better part of three full weeks and her hands were blistered and cracked when she was finished.

Luna spent every night reading out loud from Alecto Carrow’s horrible book, and if she faltered or hesitated in any way, she earned a welt and had to start over. It went on for two weeks.

Neville was left in the dungeons for a week, and did not appear for lessons nor meals. He said nothing about what happened to him, but he flinched when Seamus clapped him on the shoulder at his first meal back.

It wasn’t even an hour later that Susan approached Neville and asked what the revenge plan was. Neville told her to keep her head down until the Halloween feast.

To an outsider, it might have appeared that the Carrows had won. Muggle Studies lessons passed without incident. There were small protests in Dark Arts, but nothing more dramatic than civil disobedience. It was quiet at Hogwarts, until Halloween.

They started small. Seamus and Parvati slipped some of the Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes Exploding Whizz-Bangs into the eggs at breakfast with a Switching Spell. After the chaos of breakfast, Alecto Carrow promised to hold the entire school for an extra hour of Muggle Studies that evening if no one confessed or gave up the perpetrator.

No one said a word.

Lavender took the leaflets from the Daily Prophet with Harry’s face and the bounty and modified them. Instead of “Undesirable No 1” the leaflet read, “Desirable Chosen 1” which was enough of a change to get their point across. She lamented that Dean could have done better, but the rest of the D.A. praised her work.

The leaflets were blown up to twice their size and pasted into windows all across the castle, with the help of everyone in the D.A. Every common room, from Gryffindor to Slytherin, was plastered with Harry’s face.

By lunch, the Carrows were scorching walls left and right, and Atalanta Shafiq told everyone that the Carrows had accidentally blasted a hole through the Slytherin Common room right into the Black Lake and flooded the dormitories.

Neville’s job was an unfortunate one, but he took it with grace. He waited until lunch was nearly over, then shouted at Crabbe and asked, “I know you said you’re a pureblood, but isn’t there a bit of troll in your tree? Was it on your mother or father’s side?”

Crabbe threw a hex that sent Neville flying five feet backwards and when he got up, he was puking up something slimy. Hannah escorted him to the hospital wing.

Ginny’s role for the day revolved around being as suspicious as possible without getting into real trouble. She ducked through hidden corridors. She paused to fiddle with her bag or her shoes. Luna stayed close with her for most of it, until after Transfiguration, they ducked out of Amycus’ careful watch by slipping into Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom.

Demelza was waiting for them. “Ready?” she asked.

Ginny nodded and plucked out a strand of her hair.

Luna left the bathroom with Demelza, but Amycus Carrow saw exactly what he expected to see: Luna Lovegood and Ginny Weasley heading down to the Halloween feast.

Luna watched Demelza sit next to Helen Donoghue and engage Helen as easily as if she really were Ginny. Amycus stood at the door, eyes intent on Ginny. Luna could not help but smile, despite her trepidation at her own task.

She ate slowly, unsure how full her stomach ought to be. She looked at the professors and bit her tongue when she noticed that Snape was missing. Their plan hinged on Snape being out of his office.

Well, it was too late for them to change course now. Neville was waiting for her in the hospital wing, and Ginny was probably already hiding out by the Headmaster’s office.

Luna took a deep breath, pulled the bright yellow half of a Fainting Fancy from her pocket, and swallowed.

She woke with a headache in a corridor not far from the hospital wing with Neville and Michael Corner leaning over her. She licked her lips and tried to swallow down the spiced pepper flavour that seemed stuck to her tongue. She decided that she didn’t care for the second half of those Fainting Fancies.

“Are you alright?” Michael asked her.

Luna sat up and rubbed her throbbing head. “I fell,” she said.

“I tried to catch you. You should have warned me when you were going to do it.”

“It’s alright,” Neville said.

Luna gagged. His breath smelled like Porlock dung.

“You’d better get back to the feast,” Neville told Michael. “The less time you’re with us, the better it’ll look for you.”

“Are you alright?” Luna asked Neville as Michael hurried back to the Great Hall.

Neville grimaced. “I was hoping for boils. Madam Pomfrey says I’ll be tasting acid for a week, but she was at least able to stop the puking, so we can go ahead with the plan. Everything seems to be going well so far.”

“Oh… there is one thing…”

Luna told him that she had not seen Snape at the feast. Neville checked the map while they walked.

“I don’t see him at all,” Neville frowned. He ran his finger across the Marauder’s Map. “Oh — he’s just arrived at the gates. What do you think he left for?”

“Perhaps he’s joined a league of vampires. Halloween is a special holiday for them.”

“Then I guess we’d better hurry up before he finds us and drinks our blood.” Neville squinted at the map. “You catch up with Ginny. I have an idea. Peeves is just around the corner and if he can stall…”

Neville was still talking as he disappeared behind a tapestry of Mordicus Egg cooking over an open fire. Luna paused to watch the heavy tapestry resettle in Neville’s wake. The threads of the flames seemed alive as they rippled back and forth, until finally the tapestry stilled.

She skipped on ahead to the gargoyle at the end of the corridor. She spun around once in a circle, and did not see Ginny. So she spun again, and this time Ginny stepped out from behind a suit of armor.

“How’s Demelza doing?” Ginny asked.

“She’s very good at being you,” Luna said, then said, “Asphodel,” to the statue. It stepped aside easily and Luna hummed. “I really thought he would have changed it.”

“It’s a good thing he didn’t. Where’s Neville?”

“He said to go on without him.”

Ginny was already halfway up the stairs. “Alohomora,” she said, and the lock on the office door clicked open. She shoved the heavy door with her shoulder.

Ginny ran in for the sword, and Luna listened at the door. While she listened, her eyes roved over the portraits. Their oily eyes were fixed on Ginny as she lifted the Sword of Godric Gryffindor from its display.

“Breaking and entering!” one portrait shouted. “In the Headmaster’s office!”

“Put that sword back, child,” Dilys Derwent said in a kinder voice. “I’m sure you mean well, but —”

“Thievery!” Phineas Nigellus Black shrieked at her. “Unheard of! In my time —”

“Treachery!” one woman with a thick wand shouted.

“You’re the traitors!” Ginny shouted back at them. “Letting Snape in here — helping him — and after what he did to Dumbledore!”

She broke off and stared at Dumbledore’s portrait. It’s gold frame glistened, and the impression of Dumbledore stared back at her, as still and as unmoving as any Muggle portrait.

Luna abandoned her post at the door and came to Ginny’s side. She stared at Dumbledore’s portrait and felt her heart grow heavy, the way it did each time she passed her mother’s office in the basement of their family home.

“Ginny,” she whispered, “we should go. You can’t argue with what’s been done.”

“It isn’t fair.” Ginny turned her fierce glare on all the portraits, then back onto Dumbledore’s still portrait. “You know what the sword is for, what it can do. Tell them.”

The portrait did not so much as blink at her.

“Ginny.” Luna tugged on her arm.

Ginny’s lower lip trembled, and she turned away from Dumbledore’s portrait. Luna pulled her towards the door, but froze on the first step.

Ginny heard it too — footsteps coming up for them.

They backed into the office, but there was nowhere to go, nowhere to run as Snape and the Carrows burst into the office. Ginny brandished the sword as she might a wand for a duel. Luna did not have time to reach for her wand as Amycus Carrow thrust Neville at her. He fell into her and she staggered under his weight.

“You two,” Alecto Carrow sneered, “are supposed to be in the hospital wing.”

“Oh, but I feel much better,” Luna said. Neville only groaned.

“How’d you find us?” Ginny snapped.

“Hogwarts is a castle filled with portraits, Miss Weasley. I think you can figure out the rest.” Snape waved his wand and Ginny jumped as if the sword had burned her. It clattered to the ground and she clutched her hand to her chest.

“I thought,” Snape drawled, “I asked you two to control these children.”

“We did —” Amycus protested. “We have — she was just in the Hall, I swear.”

“I think a detention in the Forbidden Forest ought to teach them a lesson or two. Every night for the next week. From sundown to midnight.”

Luna tipped her head to one side. “But —”

Ginny squeezed her wrist and she stopped talking.

But that meant they would be with Hagrid instead of at Muggle Studies lessons. She wondered if Snape just didn’t realise when Muggle Studies lessons were. Did he think they were during normal lesson hours?

“And what if they try it again?” the Carrows asked.

Snape removed his cloak and pulled out a smudged piece of parchment from his pocket. “I expect you’ll prevent them from trying again.” He glanced at the sword on the floor. “I’ll have it removed from Hogwarts, then this will no longer be a problem.”

As he tucked the parchment into a book on his desk, Luna was certain that the smudge of ink was actually a small black pawprint. She supposed if Snape was a vampire, he must have a familiar by now.

Snape took a seat at his desk and surveyed the small crowd in his office. “Well? Is there a reason you’re all still here?”

The Carrows shoved Ginny towards the door, and Luna helped Neville limp down the stairs.

“Yes, I know,” she heard Snape say as the door closed. “I can have a duplicate ready in days.”

And as the latch on the door clicked, Luna thought that she heard the familiar rumble of Dumbledore’s voice.

—————————— ✶✶✶ ——————————

It was midnight, but no one was keen on heading back to the castle just yet. Ginny sat down in the grass and leaned against one of the trees on the edge of the forest, still in view of Hagrid’s hut, but away from where Neville was helping Hagrid pick Moondew for Madam Rosmerta’s Butterbeer.

Luna crouched down beside her.

“Do you think the Carrows will come and collect us?” Ginny asked. “Or could we stay out here all night?”

Luna ran her hand over the trunk of the tree. She loved the transition from the soft moss to the rough bark and back again.

“It’s just so empty in the common room,” Ginny said. “Is it like that in Ravenclaw?”

Luna crossed her legs and folded her hands in her lap. She thought for a moment. “A bit. Terry Boot never came back. Mandy checks for his name in the paper every day. Anthony Goldstein wasn’t a Muggle-born, but his family left for Canada after Dumbledore’s funeral, and they don’t plan to come back any time soon.” She plucked a small dandelion flower from the grass by her knee. “I expect it’s worst in Hufflepuff.”

Ginny folded her arms over her chest and looked up at the stars over Hagrid’s hut. “I miss him, Luna. I miss him so much, but when we talk it’s like he isn’t there. And I — I know you probably don’t want to hear it — I’m sorry — but I don’t know that I have anyone else —”

Luna reached for another dandelion and folded the stems into the beginning of a flower chain. “I will never take half of you,” Luna said, “and I don’t believe that you are one to give halves.”

Ginny’s laugh was sad. It made Luna’s chest ache. She leaned against Ginny and continued working on her flower chain.

They sat in silence, until nearly two, when Hagrid insisted they return to their bunks.

“I’ll walk yeh ter the castle,” he said, “but don’ let Filch catch you on your way up.”

Neville waved the map. “We’ll be alright. As long as any portraits don’t get involved.”

Luna tied off the flower chain into a crown and stood. She spun in a circle and dropped the circlet on Ginny’s head. “Up we go,” she said, holding her hand out to Ginny.

Ginny took it. “Thanks, Luna.”

Luna smiled. She pulled Ginny along and hurried to catch up with Neville. She took his hand as well.

Luna hated Hogwarts, and she had no desire to go back behind those high stone walls, but at least she did not have to go alone. At least she could go with friends.

#luna lovegood #hp fic #hp everyone lives #hp everyone lives au #harry potter #hp #dh

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thefiveavengers · 5 years ago

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jester and sexuality/romantic inclinations

so, this is my last day of summer break (actually the day before last, but tomorow is monday) and I decided to put into words what my thoughts about this dicey, dicey subject are. First, these are solely my opinons based on 1) watching the second campaign, 2)watching talks machina and the meta knowledge that comes with that and 3) assuming the players are playing in good faith and are open minded to organic changes that might come to their characters along the way.

and second, I do have my biases, and I come from the following inclinations: I ship lavorregard, and I don’t believe Jester is straight.

That said let’s begin. I’ve written a far amount about the lavorregard ship, but mostly focused on Beau’s feelings and her perspective. Right before the ep that Beau reveals the crush to Nott I wrote the following: “ If I were to put a chronology on Beau’s feelings for Jester it would go something like that: 1)“This girl is cute and somehow I like her way more than I usually like, well, anybody” 2) “This girl is cute and we are… friends???” 3) “This girl is cute, we are friends and I love her” 4) “We are friends, I love her AND I think she is hot” 5) “This girl is hot, I love her and maybe I love her as more than friends?”

But last ep I think it shifted to, “I’m definetely into Jester as more than friends and she’s never been hotter AND I think I’m getting to a point where I’m ready to actually process my feelings regarding that and be open about it.”

And lo and behold, the very next ep we saw Beau actually processing her feelings when talking to Nott. But what about Jester?

I’ve seen some people express the idea that “wouldn’t it be galaxy brain if all three cr ladies had independently decided when creating their characters that they are lesbians?” and honestly, while a cute thought, I don’t think that’s what’s happening. In my opinion what happened was, Marisha created Beau as a lesbian and she made sure to make that clear as possible from the get go, and one of the reasons I think she did that is because she entered the campaign looking to avoid a pc/pc romance, since the one she was in in cr1 took such a toll on her. She probably figured it would be a safe bet, playing a lesbian she would shield herself from the male characters and most likely the other female characters would not be interested in Beau, right?

Enter Ashley Johnson. Honestly I don’t think Ashley had such a clear idea that Yasha was (or is) a lesbian. She had a wife, and from what has been said in canon Zualla was her only romantic and sexual relationship. Now, from what we’ve seen Yasha hasn’t expressed any interest in men, but to be fair she hasn’t really expressed interest in much anybody. She called Jester adorable in the very first ep and she seems to be fond of Beau’s flirtations even if not directly responding to them. The conversation where Yasha has said that she has “seen {Beau} a lot” coupled with one of the songs in Yasha’s playlist has me convinced that Yasha has some kind of feelings for Beau, even if is just a small crush. And I say this as someone who doesnt ship Beau/Yasha. I don’t think they would make a good match, but that doesn’t mean I’d deny either of them having interest in the other. But that doesn’t mean Yasha is for sure a lesbian who would never engage with a men ever. She seems pretty adamant on not having any romantic connections, so its hard to gauge really where her interests lie. She is for sure though a wlw.

Now, when it comes to Jester and Laura Bailey that’s when things get complicated. I would assume that most of us that have considered the possibility of Jester not being straight have read the excellent essay on comphet by tumblr user fuzzy-face ( https://fuzzy-face.tumblr.com/post/185001577009/you-make-your-own-fairytale-jester-comphet ), so I’m not gonna rehash what she’s said already. While I do agree almost wholeheartedly with this post, I’ll say this, I don’t think Laura Bailey when creating Jester set out to tell a story of a wlw learning how to overcome comphet. But (BUT!,!) I also don’t think her idea was Jester is totally straight and that’s that! I think she created Jester as a sexually and romantically inexperienced young woman that almost immediately got a crush on Fjord because, among other reasons, he reminded her of a hero from her smut books.

Recently, with the new upload of talks to the CR youtube channel, I rewatched this talks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZqJzNj_1tI , which is about the ep a Hole in the Plan, deep into the pirate arc, but before the first big Beau/Jester moment, the conversation they had in the boat on ep 46. First I must express my annoyance at the fact that Laura and Marisha are the guests and yet at least 80% of the questions are about Fjord. I know it was in his arc, but COME ON! Also I was very surprised by how open they are talking about Fjord/Jester as if it were a done deal alaready. When anyone involved in Talks claim that they don’t do shipping questions, you should show them this ep because it is all about shipping questions. Anyways, Laura clearly states that Jester has a crush on Fjord (at the time at least) and she compares it to a super intense high school crush. So to me there is no refuting the fact that at least at some point Jester had a crush on Fjord.

What I do find it interesting is when you compare her answers in that talks to what she said in the most recent talks she’s participated ( https://youtu.be/_NmZ2b_Q3So ) which seem to at least indicate that Jester has, on a level or another, moved on from said crush. It’s also, the now infamous moment where Laura talks about Jester’s crush...es. We’ll get back to that.

That’s all good and dandy, but this is meta outside the game. Let’s go analyze actual in-game developments. As far as I can remember (and I’m not an expert in Fjord/Jester, so I might be forgetting something) these are the moments Jester spoke directly or inderectly about her crush on Fjord; when Caleb point blank asked her if she was sweet on him (to which she answered “I don’t know” and let’s keep that in mind); when she talked to nott about first kisses and the best thing she can say about it is that it didnt make her feel dead, and to me the most significant moment; when she asks the traveler how to make a boy like her. Now, I’ve seen some people band about this as irrefutable proof that Jester IS straight, otherwise she wouldnt be asking the traveler advice about boys, but in this case she wasn’t talking about boys in general, she was talking about ONE boy and that was Fjord.

And that’s the crux of the matter isn’t it? Jester has demonstrated sexual/romantic interest in one man and one man alone, and that’s fjord. That does not mean she is straight. It doesn’t even mean that she, if a wlw, is bi. Her crush on Fjord has been wrapped around in all these expectations and I think its hard to parse how much was just projecting, among other things, the romance her parents had. Also, let me comment on how all these developments were long ago, during the pirate arc, over one year ago in real time.

Jester has commented about Fjord’s appearance and Caleb’s and even pointed out to Reani that hot boi Essek was hot, but its all done very matter-of-factly. And if we are going to talk about Jester commenting on people’s apperances we have to acknowledge how Jester cannot SHUT UP about how she finds women beautiful. From Beau to Nott, from Reani to random shop girl in Uthodurn and her obssession with the Bright Queen in particular its all very in your face. Once someone wanted to argue with me that this is just how straight girls air their insecurities, and even if that’s true and not just misogyny, the only time Jester commented on a woman’s apperance with any kind of insecure note was one time when she compared herself to her mother.

Look, the thing is, if we take at face value every comment Jester has made about Fjord’s looks and strenght, we also have to take at face value how distraught she looked and sounded facing the idea that Beau’s new vestiments wouldn’t let her abs show. Is it funny? Yes, but it’s funny for the idea that Jester is very appreciative of Beau’s abs, which, I’m still waiting for the straight explanation if anyone if willing to give me.

To end, this goddamned book that I’ve started, the thing that gives me the most certainty that Jester is not straight and that a Beau/Jester romance is not only possible but likely is that I do not believe Laura Bailey is cruel. If she had no interest in exploring the possibility of a not-straight Jester and a B/J romance she wouldn’t been doing what she has been doing for awhile now.

And what do I mean about that? I mean that even before Beau’s confession there’s been a different dynamic to their relationship. I already mentioned the “but can I see her abs????” incident, but also her encouragement about beau’s qualities and abilities (beau, you’re super strong), using the traveler as a proxy to her feelings (the traveler thinks you’ll do great, the traveler thinks you’re awesome, the traveler loves you), waiting to hold beau when she went up a column and showing disapointment when she didnt fell into her arms, listening to Beau regarding her wanting to confront her dad, being super, and I mean SUPER bummed out when Beau and Reani kissed and took a walk. And after the confession things ramped up.

Like, that was Laura Bailey listening to the conversation between Nott and Beau, not Jester. She could have had continued to play out their friendship as usual, but that’s not what she did. She used this opportunity to play the romantic possibility as never before. Making sure that Jester shielded Beau’s body in combat, being VERY specific that when her double cured her, she leaned over her body and put her hands to her face and even contradicting Matt, pointing out that when she woke up, it wasn’t the laughing hand that she first saw, but Jester’s face. And then there’s ep 89, the juiciest lavorregard ep since ep 46. It’s romantic comedy set up, one character confesses their love to a third one, and the one character who is the target of that love starts a conversation with “Are you avoiding me? Because I think I know why.” That’s a romantic trope ladies and gents, and Laura Bailey the genius she is played it to perfection. Not being sure why she was so upset about not curing Beau (a sentiment that battle mercy Jester has never expressed before). Wanting to punish Beau’s dad for not treating her right, getting to an agreement after arguing about tarot and molly. Afterwards engaging Fjord in an activity that she usually associates with beau, that goes disastrously and thanks to the dice gods, I could see, in real time the comphet melting away.

And concluding with the fact that she bet 20 extra gold on Beau on the down low.

So coming back to the idea of Jester having crush...es, to me is very clear those crushes are, the one she has/had on Fjord and her new emerging one on Beau. do I think Jester herself is aware of these feelings? Not really, but Laura sure is.

look this is not about being entitled or acusing anyone of queerbaiting if my ship doesnt pan out. its just, you know, laura’s sister is a lesbian, and I do think that gives people some perspective that they might not have, and I genuinely don’t think she would be playing things as she is, if she didn’t have any interest in playing out to the end.

#critical role #jester #jester lavorre #beaujester #lavorregard #this got super long and took me a few hours #but anyways these are most of my feelings regarding queer jester

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moon-yeongjun · 4 years ago

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Hey Sunny, it’s Tae || Moon Sibs

Summary: Tae comes out to his sister, Sunny! Very cute and pure.

tw: references to religion and homophobia

@moon-yeongtae

TAE:

Tae was going to tell his sister he was gay. Probably.

It might be better if he’d told himself that he really wanted to tell his sister he was gay, but he would see where the conversation took him. If he’d done that, he might not be standing outside of her room feeling like he was about to throw up all over the runner carpet in their hallway. (It was kind of an ugly rug anyway, right? No one would care if he puked on it.)

It was just, this was a very important moment. This was sort of a gauge for how well the rest of his coming out might go. Jun-hyung had to love him anyway. They were the two men. They had to stick together, plus Tae knew that his hyung had a little bit of a soft spot for him.

Sunny didn’t have that same obligation. Sunny could totally decide she thought he was gross and evil and going to hell and scream and tell their mother everything he said to her.

Tae looked down at his hands and realized they were shaking. Saturday afternoon wasn’t a time for shaking fingers. He should be lounging around playing games or texting Nemo. Instead he was here, trying to be brave.

The deal was this: Tae really wanted to be himself. His whole self.

Tae wanted to be able to watch TV with his family and mention that one of the guys on the screen was good looking. He wanted to be able to talk about boys with his sisters maybe or like, tell his family about who he loved and why it was so important to him.

The most important thing was that he wanted to be able to feel unafraid in his own house. As it was, Tae had this constant worry in the back of his mind that he would slip up and say something and that would be it. He’d be kicked out or hated or regarded as something unnatural. He was tired of being afraid.

Tae lifted his hand and knocked on the door, knowing Sunny was alone in there. He’d texted her--told her he had something he wanted to run by her--and she’d told him she’d be in her room.

“Hey, Sunny,” he said. “It’s Tae.”

SUNNY:

Sunny didn’t get much alone time. She didn’t really care about that-- when you were born a triplet, alone was kind of a foreign concept. Even when her sisters weren’t there, they also kind of were. She could hear their voices, you know, like-- if she were out with her friends getting ice cream, she knew what Star would order, and she knew Sky would rather just have all the toppings without the soft serve. That’s what being a triplet was like. It wasn’t like she could read their minds or like she didn’t have her own...but she knew them so well it was impossible not to think about them even when they weren’t there.

Like right now. Sky was at one of her clarinet lessons and Star went along a lot of the time to do stuff in NTO with Eomma. Sunny went along sometimes, but just as often stayed behind. She didn’t like shopping as much and it could really take forever.

So she was stretched out on her bed, watching videos. She didn’t think anything of the text, honestly. Tae was...as weird as her sisters weren’t. She loved him, of course, but she couldn’t predict all his teenagery moods, how there were times he’d let her play on the Switch with him or watch him train, and other times bark at her to go away!! like she’d done something wrong.

Tae just thought he was cooler than all of them. Junnie said he’d grow out of it.

He appeared now, peeking through a half opened door. She didn’t look up from her video. She was watching Haikyuu! “Hiiiiii,” she said, feet kicking in the air a little. The door hinge squeaked a little and then closed. Sunny glanced up from the episode and saw Tae just standing there.

“Uh...you okay?” Sunny said as she tugged out one of her earbuds. “You look like you have a stomachache.”

TAE:

Tae did have a stomachache. He actually almost wanted to laugh because he thought that might be the only way to banish the ice cold tingling in feeling in his chest that had frozen him to the spot.

Now that he was here--now that he was looking at Sunny’s face--he didn’t know if he could do this. He tried to smile, failed, and nodded his head silently before finally moving into the room. He made sure to shut the door behind him even though he knew they weren’t going to get interrupted. No one else was home, but he could feel the terror worming its way into his limbs at the thought of his eomma standing just outside the door and overhearing what he was about to say.

It shouldn’t be this hard to be himself. He shouldn’t be this scared, but he was.

“What are you watching?” Tae said as he moved closer to her bed. He sat on the very corner, his hands folded in his lap, and he tried again to smile. He was a little more successful this time, he thought, but he wasn’t sure because he couldn’t exactly feel his face.

It struck him that he might have a panic attack here in his sister’s room, and he started counting in his head.

One, I’m going to be okay. Two, this is fine. Three, all I need to do is just say it. Four, I can do this. Five, she will still love me.

The sound of Sunny’s voice was muffled, like Tae was under water, and he finally looked up and met her eyes. “I have to tell you something, but you have to promise to keep it a secret for now, okay?”

SUNNY:

“The new episode of Haikyuu,” answered Sunny and she looked back down again, frowning a little. She’d missed some stuff. She clicked stop on her laptop and by the time she looked up, Tae had moved further into her room and was sitting down on the corner of her bed.

This was officially the weirdest Tae had ever been.

Come to think of it, how often did Tae really text her? If they did, it was about chores stuff or sometimes Sunny would ask Tae when he was coming home, or vice versa. Otherwise, Sunny always popped by Tae’s room or inserted herself into his movie nights or video game tourneys. (Star and Sky didn’t like playing video games, so Sunny had no choice but to make Tae and his friends play with her).

But he never came to her.

Never.

Okay, maybe once. Junnie was working and Tae was bored, so he had no other choice.

But he’d just ask if that was the case. Was it something with school? Sunny’s hand moved back to grab her pony tail and bring it around so she could bite down on it. Tae still wasn’t speaking though...and the silence started to make her squirm.

“Oppa,” she said. Then, louder: “Oppaaa, what’s going on?”

Finally, Tae spoke.

A secret?

Uh-oh. Did Tae get in another fight? Was he suspended and didn’t tell Eomma?

Sunny blinked. She scooched back onto her shins, sitting so her legs were underneath her. “Um, okay. It’s not bad though, right? You’re not in trouble again, right?”

TAE:

Ha.

Tae wished he was in trouble again. In fact, for a second he considered saying yes. He would laugh and hang his head and say something like, Yeah, I guess I’m pretty easy to read, huh? They would both go on with their lives, Sunny disappointed in her troublemaking brother and Tae hiding in the closet where it was safe.

But what was the point of that? Tae knew he couldn’t hide forever--he didn’t want to hide forever--and what was the difference between now and a year from now, really? Not that he could keep it to himself that long.

Tae looked up at his sister and felt his throat try to close on him. He coughed and then realized that Sunny was sort of swimming in front of him as his eyes stung. He was going to cry. God, that was so embarrassing. It was just--he didn’t want to hide anymore. He was tired.

“No--I uh--ha--”

Tae trailed off and ran his fingers through his hair as he shifted on the bed. Why was this so hard? He’d even practiced. It was easy.

Just say it!

“Well, I wanted to sort of tell you something...it’s about me. And I totally understand if you don’t really want to talk to me anymore after you hear it or--well, if you need time, or whatever. Wow, this is really hard to say. I’m just--uh--”

Tae’s breath faltered and the tears started falling down his cheeks. He laughed as he wiped at his eyes. “Um, I’m gay. Y-yeah.”

Tae focused on a small section of Sunny’s comforter, not really seeing it at all. “I like boys.”

SUNNY:

Tae started to cry. Sunny’s eyes widened. “Tae-yah…” she started, her voice a tiny, reedy thing-- smaller than it had ever been. Because she was the loud one. People talked about the sisters in one-word descriptors like they were little crossword clues to help keep them apart. Sky was quiet, Sunny was loud. Star was funny, Sky polite, Sunny nice. Star and Sky were both cowards, but Sunny was brave.

But those one words couldn’t really describe a person. Sometimes Sunny got quiet. Sometimes, Sunny got scared.

She was scared now. And after Tae said he was gay-- she was terrified.

But not because he was gay. Tae’s tears and his identity didn’t make sense to her in the cause-effect kind of way. Sunny thought there must be another explanation. And all the explanations were huge and horrifying.

She scooched on the bed immediately, and she reached her arms around Tae’s shoulders. “Oh, oh no, are you not allowed to tell me because of Eomma? Did she say not to? It’s okay, I don’t care, I promise! Of course I still want to talk to you!” She squeezed him even tighter, her head falling forward against her brother’s shoulder.

Her heart was pounding, but only because of the scenario in her head-- one where their eomma had found out and told Tae never to say anything to anyone. That’d be awful, if it were Sunny, she’d be so lonely.

TAE:

Sunny’s arms were around him and Tae didn’t know what to do. He was shocked, really. He hadn’t expected her to hug him and now he held his arms up and away from her body like if he touched her she would burn him. And what she said…

Tae blinked some tears from his eyes and slowly lowered his hands until they rested on her shoulders. This was a good sign though, right? She was hugging him instead of kicking him out of her room and suddenly he felt an overwhelming surge of affection for his sister. He was glad he’d told her and he could feel some of the weight melting off his shoulders as she pressed her head into his shoulder.

“I--” he started. “I haven’t told Eomma,” he said, feeling a little bit ashamed. The fear was bigger than the shame, though, and he knew he still wasn’t ready to tell everyone.

“Jun-hyung knows, but that’s it. I--I’m too scared to tell anyone else.”

SUNNY:

Wait, Eomma didn’t know? Sunny pulled away and her brows furrowed in confusion. If Eomma didn’t know then why…

Sunny’s shoulders fell along with her stomach. That falling feeling didn’t just disappear either. It rose around her. Her brother had really thought that she wouldn’t love him because of this.

Once again, she couldn’t help but think about Star and Sky. She knew it was because she was the most co-dependent or whatever, something that Star sneered at her when they got into fights. But her sisters were in this room whether Tae or Sunny wanted them to or not. She saw Star on her right and Sky on her left. Why would he think we’d care about that? We’re not bigots! Star would exclaim. And Sky, well...she was tougher but even Sky. Sky would love Tae anyway.

“Oh,” she settled back on her calves again, her voice still small. As much as she hated Tae thinking she could ever reject him, she also couldn’t ignore the fact he came to her anyway.

Her. Not her sisters. That was so... weird. Star was the confident one, after all. Sky was the smartest. Sunny was…?

I’m so offended, Star would say.

It’s because you hang out with him the most, Sky would explain.

She wished both of them were here now though.

“I--I’m sorry. It’s not because of something I said, right? Did I do something homophobic?” She frowned deeper. “I didn’t mean it if I did. I like gay people. I mean, Nemo oppa was dating that boy and I didn’t c--” And then she gasped, her hands flying up to her mouth, eyes nearly bugging out of her head.

“Oh my god, you and Nemo are boyfriends!” she squealed.

TAE:

Tae was about to open his mouth and assure Sunny that she’d done nothing wrong. It was all him. He was the one who was too scared to be himself and she shouldn’t blame herself for him keeping secrets. His eyes no longer stung--they were red and puffy and his chest was lighter than it had been in days and it was all because Sunny had accepted him. She’d hugged him and told him she still loved him in her own way, so of course he couldn’t let her blame herself.

He didn’t get the chance to do that, though, because she gasped and sat back on her heels and yeah…

It was super embarrassing actually that once she’d known he was gay, she’d known about him and Nemo. Tae’s face flushed and he picked at his sweatpants.

This wasn’t the time for it--not really--but he couldn’t keep the stupid smile off of his face. Hearing Sunny call him and Nemo boyfriends had his heart galloping in his chest. He almost wished Nemo were here so he could hold his hand and kiss his cheeks and say something cheesy like, See how obvious I am about how much I like you. Even Sunny knows.

But Nemo wasn’t here and the closest Tae could get to him was to think about how he would sit in his bed and text Nemo about all of this later and then they would flirt and talk about how they wanted to be kissing and he would be happy.

“Um--” Tae said, still smiling his stupid smile that Nemo liked so much because it showed off his stupid teeth. Ugh, thinking about Nemo liking his teeth made him smile even bigger, too, and just for a second Tae appreciated that this was how life could be. He could sit with his sisters and talk about Nemo and he wouldn’t have to hide how he really felt. It was a liberating thought.

“I don’t know. I mean we kind of are, yeah--we are, but it’s hard because not everyone knows about me and--” Tae looked at his sister and couldn’t resist the temptation to fall into this conversation and live like nothing was a secret anymore.

“I like him so much, Sunny. Like, so, so much. He’s so nice and cute and sweet and I like kissing him. A lot.”

Tae’s cheeks were hot, but he was happy.

SUNNY:

Yup, Sunny did the maths! She was quite good at maths, and also, it wasn’t a very hard equation. Tae+Nemo=boyfriends. Now that she noticed, she felt stupid for not seeing it before. Nemo coming over almost every single weekend...the way they always raced off to hang out in Tae’s room, door firmly shut… all the times Tae got pissed at Sunny for no reason when she forced them to come out and play with her. Now she understood.

Ah. She had gotten in the way of-- boyfriend stuff. (Ew????)

And Sunny might have actually started going ew ew ew, if Tae didn’t blush the way Star blushed whenever Oliver from Bio talked to her or complimented her hair. This was a Tae she really hadn’t ever seen, only ever in glimpses-- but now that she thought about it, those glimpses happened around Nemo too, whenever Nemo made Tae laugh.

She couldn’t ew that. She couldn’t ew Tae’s smile and how quickly and sweetly he talked, like he couldn’t keep all his words in anymore.

It was a really good thing she had so much practice with boy-crazy Star. Wow, maybe this would be Star and Tae’s thing once Tae told Star.

“That’s crazy!” Sunny laughed. She meant crazy as in that’s so cool-awesome-wow-wow-wow, not crazy like the actual meaning. “Wow, you guys have been dating a really long time then, huh? Like-- oh, maybe the fall?” she scrunched up her nose as she tried to remember. It was kinda strange, since Nemo had always just...been around. “You were dating at the carnival, definitely! Did you ask him out or did he ask you out?”

TAE:

Thinking about being with Nemo didn’t really have any sort of start date for Tae. Yeah, they’d kissed after he won his tournament and Tae knew he would remember that moment probably for the rest of his life, but when he looked back, it was hard to say that’s when everything started. How was he supposed to put a start date on loving Nemo? Kissing didn’t make their relationship ‘official’. Tae had loved Nemo for a long time, long before he ever thought about kissing being an extension of that love.

They’d sort of fallen together, the way Tae saw it. They were best friends first, and yes, he could say they were boyfriends now and maybe that meant something else to other people, but for him it was just how things were. He loved Nemo. Nemo made him just as happy now as he did when Tae would share his legos and they would make castles and dragons and stupid little houses that fell down when he poked them.

So yeah, Tae wanted to say that he and Nemo had been dating for a long time, but in the grand scheme of loving each other, it really hadn’t been that long at all, had it?

Of course, Tae didn’t need to get into all of that with his sister. He barely even understood the complicated definitions forced on relationships, so he should probably just stick to the basics. “I think I asked him out. Or, well, I kissed him first so I think that counts. I was so nervous when I did it, but afterward it just felt right.”

Tae looked at Sunny with earnest eyes and tried to make her understand how loving Nemo could never be a sin. Not in a million years. “I know that people at church say it’s bad, but how can something that feels so right and so true be bad, Sunny? And I’m scared that Eomma agrees with them and Nemo is so good and sweet and nice and I don’t want her to hate him because of me. I don’t want her to hate me either, but if she hated him that would just be so unfair and I don’t think I can tell her.”

SUNNY:

Sunny wanted to tell Tae that Eomma would never.

But...hadn’t Sunny immediately assumed Tae’s tears had to do with their eomma? Once again, Sunny’s shoulders slumped, her eyebrows pulling down too. She pulled at her pony tail again, wanting to chew on it as was her habit, but she stopped herself and only fiddled with the ends of her long blond hair as she worried her lip between her teeth.

The thing was, Sunny couldn’t imagine Eomma not loving Tae, even with this news. Yeah, their eomma was pretty religious and very traditional and was obsessed with finding Junnie a wife and setting Tae up too-- as soon as they were all older, Sunny was sure Eomma would be pestering them all about finding nice Korean boys who would support them. And that was kind of appealing sometimes. Star was going to date a billion white boys just to be difficult, but Sky said all the time that she wouldn’t mind having a smart and handsome engineer or lawyer or doctor, and she liked the idea of someone sharing their culture so they wouldn’t make fun of her food or think their holidays were weird. Sunny wasn’t sure herself. She never thought about boys. She liked… well, playing volleyball. All she wanted to do was play volleyball, practice with her team, hang out. She was really young though so maybe that would all change?

Or maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe she’d never want to get married. Would Eomma hate her then too?

She still couldn’t imagine it. Sure, disappointment, like how she was punishing Junnie but it wasn’t like...well, she wasn’t kicking Junnie out.

“I don’t think she’d hate Nemo or you, oppa,” Sunny said softly. She reached forward and took Tae’s hand, squeezing it and smiling, even as tiny tears pricked her eyes. “Maybe she won’t get it at first, but...well, she hated when Star and I bleached our hair, y’know? Remember how mad she was? But she got over it. And whenever you want to tell her, I can be there, and I’ll tell her it’s totally normal and not all churches even think it’s a sin anymore.”

TAE:

Tae didn’t even know what to say really. He was feeling so many things all at once, but the thing he felt the most was gratitude. Sunny didn’t have to say those things, but she was saying them and she meant them. She was looking into his eyes and telling him that she was on his side and Tae knew he was going to cry. There was no way around it.

The relief and the love he felt for his sister in this moment all welled up in his chest at once and filled his eyes with hot stinging tears. “I--” he said, blinking so that his vision cleared. There was nothing he could say. Not really. Nothing was good enough to express how he felt.

Instead of saying anything Tae leaned in and hugged his sister. He hugged her tight as more tears spilled down his cheeks and he tried to imagine doing this again with his whole family and it going the same way. He wanted to tell his eomma. He wanted her to look at him like Sunny had looked at him and tell him that she was still proud of him and still loved him.

That thought flashed bright in his mind and a sob wracked his frame. He didn’t know if he should laugh or cry harder, so he did both, feeling like a huge idiot.

“Thank y-you,” Tae said, his voice wet and thick. “I--um--I’m really glad I told you.”

#para #sunny #moon siblings #jun is not in this lmfao but i love these kIDS

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marsbaumer · 5 years ago

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hello !! the name is cal, pronouns they/them, and i’m in the est timezone. i’m so very excited to bring my kiddo mars to the deja brew !! listed below is going to be some information on the little mess. at the very bottom i’ve listed some possible connections as well that i think would be neat to explore. if you would like to plot feel free to like this and i’ll come to your ims or let me know if you’d prefer to plot over discord. i am very excited and look forward to writing with you all uwu

basics

name: mars baumer job: baker at deja brew & podcast host age: twenty-three gender: nonbinary pronouns: she/they sexuality: bisexual / biromantic birthday: april 2nd zodiac: aries personality type: the entertainer | esfp pinterest board: click here

regular order

large black coffee with a shot of caramel & whipped cream on top

aesthetics

listening to conspiracy podcasts in a deadbeat car in an empty parking lot in the middle of the night

the wafting smell of freshly made blueberry muffins and pockets of sunshine that warm your skin

skinned knees covered by alien themed band-aids

theme song: boy bye by brockhampton

ring in their ears like a bark always feel left in the dark trauma the price for the patience character shift like an arc move like my shit stay in park don't feel the love or respect grip like a hand on my neck this is the year, place your bets (boy, bye)

positive & negative

brash ( adj ) : self-assertive in a rude, noisy, or overbearing way.

sagacious ( adj ) : having or showing keen mental discernment and good judgment; shrewd.

planetary commentary: updates every thursday @ 3:33am

planetary commentary is a podcast that focuses on all sorts of topics though they primarily tend to center around conspiracy theories, murder mysteries, missing people cases, space, lgbtqa+ subjects, and the occasional book or movie reviews. it could be seen as a bit of a messy podcast, however, it has gained quite the following over the year and a half its been available. ( first premiered may 1st, 2017 )

the chronicles of unknowing: updates every sunday @ 3:33am

a sci-fi, fantasy podcast centered around a boy as he journeys through a strange and mysterious land. he could not recall his name nor how he ended up in such an empty place. he simply woke up one day in a empty house where faceless photos presented themselves on dusty walls. how will he deal with the loneliness this empty town envokes and how will he choose to proceed when there is no clear direction? join the nameless boy as he logs his journey via tape recorder. ( first premiered october 1st, 2019 )

then

mars was born to their mother in the early hours of april second after tiring hours of labour. her mother, anastasia baumer, was over the moon to have her child in her arms after nine long months. it was a lonely celebration, though. no one was there to congratulate her or see her beautiful baby. no, instead, she welcomed mars into the world with just herself as family.

being a working single mother was tough, the money that anastasia’s parents had left her helped in mars’ younger years before they were old enough to go into daycare. things were bound to get more difficult as life went on as the finances were harder to keep up with, especially rent which only increased over the years. still, the child and mother duo were happy and lived life to its fullest. sure, mars couldn’t join any extracurricular sports, but they enjoyed writing and helping their mother with cooking/baking.

of course, life just couldn’t sort itself out for them. no matter how much anastasia gave, the world only took and took and took. it only made sense for the world’s greed to fall on mars as well. on their twelfth birthday, their mother made a choice to go out in the rain to pick up their birthday cake. she never made it home. mars waited up all night until the police came knocking to deliver the news.

( death tw ) a hit and run. she was left to die in the rain alone. that was probably the worst part. the fact that life couldn’t be gentle with her even til the end. mars wanted the hard truth. what was their mother’s last moments like? who left her to die? why would they do such a thing? there were so many questions they had and the police, with much hesitance, answered to the best of their abilities. their mother’s best friend met them at the station. she attempted to stay strong, however even in her righteous anger, tears swept her cheeks. it was a long month that followed.

left alone, mars was placed in foster care. the system was incredibly difficult to move through. they ended up being incredibly difficult to handle between poorly adjusting in school and slipping out of the houses. it took two years of swapping between three foster homes before they found the knox household. the knox’s consisted of cillian and avery knox as well as their son isak. it was a somewhat strange ensemble that mars joined. isak was cillian’s son from a previous marriage before he’d met avery and fell harder than ever before. it was...cute. they gave them space and isak was different from the other kids they ended up staying with previously. for starters, he was only a year younger than them. he complimented their vibe the first time they met and then asked what they thought about aliens. needless to say, their introduction into the knox’s dynamic and to each of them personally was a welcomed change.

fourteen years old, mars finally found a place they could settle down in and mourn their mother while attempting to settle. it was nice, living with avery- living with another person of colour, who encouraged their desire to explore different styles and, later on, pronouns when they started to question their gender. the support of cillian and isak as well encourage their unique interests and desire to learn about their self. the family helped them in ways they could never pay back.

( cancer tw, death tw ) life never failed to come back to ruin them. they had at least six years of blissful peace before isak began to get sick. it was a terrible time and took a while to catch on to. yet, the diagnosis wasn’t promising. cancer never was. isak held out a while against the leukemia that made him sick. almost a year, in fact, before he ended up passing. the devastation they felt was an echo of the past as they lost their best friend and brother.

now

two years later found mars living outside the knox household and in a two bedroom apartment with someone they found on craig’s list or something. they liked to introduce them and tell tales about how they ended up rooming together, even going as far as claiming they found them on the side of the road.

mars has been working at the deja brew for about two years now. after dropping out of school for when isak was sick, they decided not to return. their fathers were disgruntled, but allowed it. after all, they were there on scholarship anyways. they had expected them to return, however, mars has yet to show any interest in continuing their program.

mars can come across as a very detached individual, however, they are in actuality very passionate. get them speaking about something they have an interest in and they seem to do a complete 180 in personality as they talk.

they enjoy experimenting in the kitchen, whether it be baking or cooking. occasionally, they’ll have their co-workers and some customers try one of their end products to get a gauge on how it turned out. unfortunately, they’re not always good. most of the time they’re stomach-able, though, so that’s good.

they just began a new podcast titled the chronicles of unknowing. they haven’t told anyone, but the main character is based off of their brother. they wanted to remember him and transform their grief into something that could possible help others but also potentially allow for isak to still touch peoples lives.

they publish the podcasts under the pseudonym mercury as they believe it takes the whole act of them creating away from their self and focuses things on the actual content they put out.

#hqbrew:intro #| gonna message folks back now !!#| also please ignore any grammar or spelling errors in here aaaaa

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canadahowriting · 6 years ago

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Like Real People Do

I can only spend so many hours rewriting this. This will have to do.

There isnt enough Louis x Clem fanfiction out there, writers get your shit together!!!

First song is Like Real People Do by Hozier while the second song is With a Little Help From my Friends by The Beatles.

In which Clementine fully experiences music.

The sun had long past set behind the school, darkening the courtyard and beckoning the kids inside. Clementine and AJ were the first to retreat indoors as they had spent the day increasing the size of the schools safe zone. It was no surprise that AJ insisted on going with Clementine and Aasim, claiming he was old enough to go on such a simple job. Clementine found no point in arguing with him.

AJ was clearly exhausted from the long trek but Clementine knew he’d never admit that. She now knew he probably regretted tagging along, too, but he’d never admit that one as well.

Louis couldn't help but feel disappointed as he watched the pair retreat inside with a frown. Violet scoffed. “You’re hopeless.” She said as she stood up from the bench the pair sat at.

He couldn’t help it. He was looking forward to talking with her as he hadn’t seen much of her all day. They had headed out before sunrise and Louis wasn’t much of a morning person.

“C’mon, kicking me while im down? Now that's cold, Vi.” Louis placed a hand over his heart as he watched Violet leave with a teasing smile. He could practically see her rolling her eyes.

“Why not just go talk to her?” Violet asked with a raise of her eyebrow. She, however, didn’t stop to hear his response.

Louis paused, taken aback. “Like go to her room?” He thought aloud. He may not know as much as he would like to about her, but he knew enough to know that she wouldn’t love that idea. Yet, despite his better judgement, he found himself in the hallway by her room.

It had been surprisingly long since Louis had been to this side of the school. Since Minnie and Sophie died, he didn’t have any reason to. Furthermore, this just left him with fewer excuses to stop by Clementine and AJ’s room.

He was still a couple doors down from their room when he stopped dead in his tracks, a voice silencing all of his previous thoughts. He couldn’t quite make out the words, but he had no doubt the voice came from Clementine.

Louis took a few more light and short steps towards the room until he could make out her words. My god was she singing?

“I had a thought, dear, however scary. About that night, the bugs and the dirt” He couldn’t recognize the song, which was surprising as his collection of old records was always growing. He found himself focusing on her beautifully imperfect voice. “ I will not ask you where you came from, I will not ask you, neither should you.”

His cheeks felt red hot as he pictured her face to the voice. She sounded so relaxed, something he noticed, wasn’t very common for her.

With that thought he realized this was a moment he really shouldn’t be eavesdropping on.

He retreated back towards his room, but not without the new song humming from his lips and Clementines voice plaguing his thoughts.

Louis couldn’t stop smiling.

Marlon had insisted on Clementine and AJ taking the day off. Clementine, however, couldn’t agree to that.

She had little problem leaving AJ with Tenn as he was easily distracted by the countless amounts of colours to share. Watching AJ make his first friend brought a heavy weight off her shoulders but she couldn’t help but fear that it wouldn’t last long. Groups like this never really did.

Knowing Aasim, Brody, and Violet were already out hunting and fishing, Clementine decided to look for Louis. She knew he had been the one to upkeep the greenhouse when it was still functioning, so she decided he would be the first step to getting it back in working order.

Marlon told her you could always find him in the library with the piano, where she first met him.

The closer she got to the library, the louder the piano became. It wasn’t as confidently played as the first time she heard it. Instead, she heard the same few chords in different keys being played over and over. She could feel his frustration.

Clementine stopped as she entered the doorway, genuinely interested in hearing him play. She never expected there to be people who kept up with the arts and cultures of the old world.

Louis had his eyebrows furrowed in thought. He was obviously heavily focused on the song in his head. It was surprisingly comforting to see him play, to ignore the hell going on outside the walls like it never existed. A small smile graced her lips.

“I will not ask you where you came from....” Louis started to sing, pausing every once in a while to hum the lyrics instead. Clementines mouth opened wide in surprise. “I will not ask and nei- Oh, hey Clementine!”

All shock turned into anger as Clementine quickly made her way across the room. Louis’s eyes widened as she shoved him off of the pianos bench. “You were eavesdropping, weren’t you!” She accused, placing her hands on her hips for dramatic effect. She stared down at him with a fire in her eyes.

Louis took a second to process what exactly was happening, but when he did, he couldn’t stop the grimace rising to his face.

“I swear I didn’t mean to!” Louis started as he carefully stood to his feet. He kept his hands in front of him in an attempt to ease her. “I was stopping by your room to give you something, but that song you were singing was really good! I just really wanted to learn it, y’know?”

The tension in Clementines shoulders slowly left as she rolled her eyes. “So what was it then?” She asked with a tight frown. She was used to singing AJ to sleep, but the thought of someone else hearing her was super embarrassing.

“What?”

“What were you bringing me, doofus.”

“Oh...” Louis paused. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. “My attention of course.”

Clementine felt herself begin to blush at the silly one liner. He sat there with a confident grin and his head slightly tilted, waiting patiently for her reaction. She quickly looked away, not being able to maintain eye contact with him any longer. She wasn't sure why.

“Well,” Clementine started, moving her hands from her hips to cross her arms over her chest. “you were way off key.”

Louis felt his smile grow wider, if that was even possible. “What, and you could do better?” He challenged with a raise of his eyebrow. Of course he knew she could do better, as she actually knew the song. He just hoped she would take the bait.

Clementine couldn’t help the small tilt in her lips as she rolled her eyes once more. “You are the musician, aren’t you?” She teased.

Louis took a seat on the pianos bench once again and moved over to offer Clementine a seat. He was surprised when she took it. “Yet here I am, asking you for help.” She looked down at the keys with uncertainty. “That’s what im here for.” He assured, placing his hands on the familiar keys. “I just need help with some of the lyrics.”

It took strength to not let out a chuckle at the face Clementine was giving him. “You really expect me to sing along with you.” She deadpanned.

“I could only dream.” Louis murmured, a dreamy look on his face. “Just tell me where im wrong.”

Clementine felt her heart pounding in her chest, but swallowed a breath down hard. She gestured for him to start.

“ I had a thought, however scary...” The chords he played were shockingly familiar to the original, one that Clementine hadn’t listened to since she discovered it in the new frontier. She decided she liked his version better. “About that night, with the bugs and the dirt. Why were you digging? What did you bury?“

Clementine stopped him before he could continue. “Your pacing is off- the lyrics are a lot more lighter then what you are singing them as.”

“Oh?”

She rolled her eyes. She was falling right into his trap, but she found that she really didn’t mind.

Clementine absentmindedly placed her hands on the keys, lightly enough to not actually play them. She kept her eyes on her fingers as she felt Louis’s eyes burning into her face. “I had a thought, dear, however scary, about that night, the bugs and the dirt- See?”

Louis played along absentmindedly on the piano as his focus was mainly on what she was saying. She wasn’t really singing, more speaking the lyrics in the general tone of the song. That was a lot more then what he thought he’d get from her.

“So then the first verse- I will not ask you where you came from

I will not ask you, neither should you.” Louis paused to look at Clementine for her to continue the lyrics for him. That was about as much as he heard her sing the night before.

Clementine hesitated, turning to look at him to gauge his reaction as she sang the next lyrics. “Honey just put your sweet lips on my lips, we should just kiss like real people do.” She finished off with a nervous and shaky breath, something that caught Louis very off guard. He felt his face and neck turn all shades of red.

“Wow.” Was all he was able to come up with in response. “You have a really nice voice.” He later added after too long of a pause.

Clementine broke eye contact him and let out a cough to clear her throat. She moved over slightly, much to Louis’ dismay, as she realized just how close they had gotten. He suddenly felt the urge to change the subject, feeling as if she was quickly closing herself back off once again. “Who is that song even by, anyways?” He asked, trying to lighten the tension.

“I don’t know.” Clementine started with an uncommonly unsure voice. “I found a lot of records and discs at one of the larger groups I used to be with. It helped AJ sleep through the night when he was a baby. Now, its me singing instead.”

Louis watched as Clementine smiled fondly at the memory. It was nice to listen to her open up, even with something as small as that. He wanted her to smile more often.

“Well, that gives me the perfect idea.”

Clementine spun on her chair to face Louis as he stood from the bench. He made his way over to the record player placed on the table where she first found her backpack. There were records scattered messily around the table, some even stacked on the ground. “You’ve got quite the collection.” She noted.

“Ah, yes.” Louis said with a hum, stopping at a certain stack of records until he picked out a particular album he was looking for. He held the album up proudly for Clementine to see. “The Beatles! These guys were huge way before we were ever born.” Clementine, of course, recognized the name from her parents. It made her realize how long it’s been since she thought about anything before this all started.

“I personally think their hits are a little overrated.” Louis admitted as he fiddled with the stylus of the record player. The fuzzy static eventually blended into the song. “This song, however, is my personal favourite.” He added, sending her a smile from over his shoulder.

“What would you think if I sang out of tune?

Would you stand up and walk out on me?

Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song

And I'll try not to sing out of key.”

Clementine couldn’t help but laugh at the way Louis moved his hips as he walked towards her. He was horrifically off beat. “You’re horrible.” She said as she tried her best to hold back her laughter.

“That’s the point!” Louis grinned, moving his arms in time with his hips. “Who cares. Enjoy the moment.” He held out his hand to her, an offer.

Clementine looked down at his hand skeptically. “I don’t dance.” Despite her words, she put her hand in his. Louis softened.

“Just move with the music. Don’t think about it. Dancing isn’t about thinking.”

Louis took her other hand in an attempt to ease her. He moved their arms back and forth in a goofy fashion, his body swaying side to side. Clementine stared down at their feet, hesitantly following his movements. “You’re still thinking too much.” He started, bringing her eyes back up to him. “Just feel the music.”

Clementine found herself focusing on him instead. She went from studying the dreads that were beginning to cover his face to his carefree smile and then to his freckles. His face was covered in them and she couldn’t help but admire them. She hadn’t seen them up close before. AJ once questioned him about them.

“What’s with all those spots on your face?” AJ asked, not at all concerned with offending.

“AJ!” Clementine had scolded, giving him a stern look. Louis only laughed and squatted down to his level to give AJ a better look at his spots.

“They’re called freckles. I was born with them. Just like how you were born with such curly hair.” Louis explained, much to Clementines surprise. She found herself thinking fondly of that moment, and many other moments shes shared with him.

Louis soon brought her out of her thoughts “Now you’ve got it!” He praised, laughter bubbling in his throat. “You’re a natural.”

Clementine smiled up at him, but it quickly dissipated as her attention was brought to the floor. The track faded out and was replaced by a scratchy buzz. Louis looked down at her with a frown, their hands still locked together despite the fact they were no longer dancing. “What is it?”

“What are your intentions?” Clementine asked, very suddenly. She looked back up at him and quickly continued before he could answer. “Why are you so nice to me? To AJ?”

Louis’s eyes widened as he looked down at her, clearly caught off guard. Was it not obvious? “I mean, I thought it was pretty clear.” He spoke with a nervous laugh. Clementines face said otherwise. “Are you really gonna make me say it?”

Clementine let go of his hands so she could cross her arms over her chest. Louis awkwardly placed his hand on his neck. “Fine! Fine. I mean, I like you, Clem.” Her mouth widened in shock. She guesses it was pretty obvious, with the constant flirting, but she told herself it was just who he is. Or at least, everybody elses reactions told her that. “At first I thought it was just attraction, but there’s something here. I don’t know what to call it, but I know you feel it too. I want to help you, Clem. You and AJ. Bring some silliness into that kids life.”

Louis watched Clementines shocked expression shift into admiration. The same sort of expression she wore when he gave AJ his dinner. Louis felt his heart beating in his throat.

Clementine broke eye contact as she looked at the ground with a blush. “I... I didn’t think I was capable of feeling that way.” She spoke with an awkward laugh. Louis couldn’t help but feel disappointed.

Clementine quickly picked up on it as his expression spoke wonders. She grabbed his hand, a new force of determination overtaking her. “But I do.” She assured, confidently. “I do feel that way.”

Louis visibly relaxed, a relieved sigh leaving his lips. He couldn’t help but pull her into a hug, head tucking into her neck. “Thank god. That would’ve been pretty awkward.”

Clementine laughed before humming a thank you into his chest. “For what?” Louis asked, pulling back only enough to get a look at her face. He wasn’t ready to let go of this moment just yet.

“For reminding me and AJ what its like to be real. To be human.”

#twdg #twdgs4 #twd #telltale #clementine #louis #louisentine #twdg louisentine #clouis #twdg clouis #the walking dead game #louis and clementine #louisxclem #clemxlouis #twdg louis #twdg clementine

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buzzdixonwriter · 6 years ago

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Four Movies About Movies

If you love movies the way I do, you’ll appreciate the quadruple goodness Netflix is currently offering.

First off, Shirkers, a wild story about a lost film made over 30 years ago by a group of female Singaporean punks and their con-artist film school professor.

Of course, being a Singapore punk back in the 1980s meant you looked like an anime fan girl, but it’s the thought that counts, right?

Wikipedia sums up the basic premise: “In 1992, Sandi Tan, alongside friends Jasmine Ng and Sophie Siddique, as well as film teacher Georges Cardona shot the independent film Shirkers. After wrapping, Tan, Ng, and Siddique left the footage with Cardona as the trio went to study abroad for college. However, Cardona disappeared with the footage and the trio never saw or heard from him again. “20 years later, and 10 years following Cardona’s death, Cardona’s wife emailed Tan, informing her that she was in possession of the footage for Shirkers, minus the audio tracks. In the proceeding years, Tan decided to digitize the footage and use it to make something new - a documentary about the making of the film.”

Shirkers is a delight. It captures the edgy exuberance of youth (and contrasts same with the middle age reality the three teens grew into) and offers an insight into the culture of Singapore, squeaky clean on the outside but containing its own forms of social rebellion.

Cardona, the bogus film school professor, is one of a long line of cinematic con men who tried to get a project off the ground with nothing more than a smile and a shoeshine.

That he comes across as more misguided than malevolent may be part of Tan’s shading of the story, but it may also reflect something about the man himself: Never fully satisfied with who he really was, always wanting to build and embellish on that life, but while reckless apparently never cold hearted or cruel.

It’s a wonderful movie and extremely thought provoking.

Another cinematic con man can be found in The Other Side Of The Wind and They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, both released through Royal Road Entertainment.

It’s the savvy film company that releases not one but two movies based on an infamous lost / unreleasable film.

We’ll start with They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead, a documentary about Orson Welles’ struggles to complete The Other Side Of The Wind and incorporating a lot of footage from that project that couldn’t be used in the final assembly (among other things, actors were replaced or changed parts).

While one could cite Welles as the titular con man, in truth there was a legion of schnooks, scammers, and slickee boiz attached to The Other Side Of The Wind over the years. The film was a hard luck project from the gitgo, getting mixed up with deposed shahs, revolutionary governments, and international embezzlers.

By the time all the dust had settled and some sense could be made out of the complicated rights’ claims, Welles and 90% of his cast had died. What little bit he had assembled was analyzed, his copious notes and interviews were pored over, and in the end The Other Side Of The Wind was finally released.

Was it a good movie?

Well…let’s say it a movie, an Orson Welles’ movie, and let it go at that.

The Other Side Of The Wind had a long genesis, starting shortly after Hemingway’s suicide and evolving over the years to become a story about a macho film director.

However, the Great Big Shocking Reveal that Welles planned in the 1960s / 70s had become pretty passé by the 1980s and is now kinda corny. It’s valid in the movie as a period piece but that works against the film; it’s not a living document but a look back at a different era, a different attitude.

The conceit of The Other Side Of The Wind is that it’s a documentary about the last film / last night of a legendary film maker, J.J. Hannaford (played by John Huston). “The Other Side Of The Wind” is the uncompleted film he is shooting at the time of his death; it will remain uncompleted because the star stormed off the set (part of the aforementioned Great Big Shocking Reveal) and Hannaford, faced with a hostile studio and investors who have puled their cash, dies in a car crash, possibly a suicide.

The bulk of the film takes place at Hannaford’s home during a birthday party for him; it is shot using various film gauges and stocks to represent different film crews / journalists / film buffs recording the same event.

It’s a very free flowing / highly improvised affair with moments that can pass from brilliant to banal and back again in a flash (how much of this is because Welles’ was unable to assemble it the way he envisions, and how much is just a lack of material is open to debate).

A grim joke running through the bigger film is that “The Other Side Of The Wind” (i.e., the film-within-the-film) is constantly being interrupted during its various screenings, so there’s no way of appraising it as a totality.

“The Other Side Of The Wind” was Welles’ attempt to ape the free form film making style briefly popular during the late 60s and early 70s.

It actually looks like a Russ Meyer film of that era, beautifully photographed, filmed with striking images, and lots of naked ladies.

Lots and lots and lots of naked ladies.

There’s a story about Alfred Hitchcock working on his supposed last film at Universal (in reality, the studio indulging an old man who made them a fortune by giving him an office and a secretary and the chance to hang out with old film making friends). Hitchcock worked on a script with a writer he’d used in the past, but the further they got into the story, the more the writer realized what he was writing had nothing to do with what could possibly be filmed and released by a major studio, but rather were the erotic fantasies and fetishes of a doddering old man.

“The Other Side Of The Wind” has that kind of feel to it, and while it’s well done and memorable, lordie, it ain’t good. That The Other Side Of The Wind manages to rise a couple of notches above that is a credit to Welles and his posthumous collaborators.

Rounding out our list, Filmworker is a fascinating story about Leon Vitali, a successful young worker who landed the choice role of Lord Burlington in Barry Lyndon and become so mesmerized by Stanley Kubrick’s directorial prowess that he abandoned his acting career to becomes Kubrick’s assistant.

This isn’t the kind of story one expects to see about a talented film maker, a story about an acolyte who remains loyal and steadfast decades after the master’s death.

While Filmworker references most of Kubrick’s films, it focuses most tightly on Barry Lyndon, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut.

There’s a wealth of fascinating material here, including R. Lee Emery crowing about how he stole the role of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman from under Tim Colceri in Full Metal Jacket, and the intricacies of finding a compatible work around for Kubrick’s obsessive directorial style vs child labor laws.

Vitali’s own career and early life, especially the not-at-all-positive influence of his father, are also delved into.

By the end of the film, one feels happy for Vitali: Looking back, he thinks he made the right career choice, and if he’s happy with the way things turned out, who are we to question that?

#movies #Shirkers #The Other Side Of The Wind #They'll Love Me When I'm Dead #Filmworker #Stanley Kubrick #Orson Welles #Leon Vitali #film making

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a-robin-among-thorns · 7 years ago

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Too Old For Your Age

Part 1: Colors

Contains minor spoilers from the manga.

This is the first of the drabbles (although it ended up much longer than I would have thought) I have planned based on this post I made a while back. The tone and content ended up slightly different from that of the original post but I believe I’m mostly happy with how it came out. I can’t really make any promises on when the next one will come but I will try my best.

Word Count: 2,871

“Did you have any fun at Ethan’s party?” Chise asked hopefully as she and Elias entered in the front door.

She was somewhat afraid of what his answer might be. Although they had obviously been present for the party, Ethan’s 11th birthday had provided a prime education opportunity for the human teacher and her oblivious pupil. Elias had in time and practice grown more aware of his own feelings of jealousy and how to act appropriately when they sprung, but he was still no master. He shrugged off his robe and glanced down at his party favor bag sporting a picture of a man in a blue and red costume. “I suppose so, although I can’t say I understood much of it.”

“That’s fine, there’s still a lot I didn’t understand either.” Chise said with a small shrug and a relieved smile.

She made her way to the living room and was about to rest on the couch when she found Elias’ gaze was lingering on her with the clear indication of curiosity etched across his features. She cocked her head in questioning, “What is it?”

“Did you have a good time?” he asked bluntly. Chise frowned. “What makes you say that?”

“You seemed…stiff during most of the party.” Chise was almost surprised he had noticed, but quickly thought better of it. Elias deserved a little more credit than she was giving him. He was growing more perceptive by the day, steadily coming into an ability to read her at the very least and other humans on infrequent occasion.

She thought for a moment. “I think had a good time…” it was true…mostly. When her attention wasn’t focused on the glamoured mage awkwardly meandering around the Barklem Home Chise had enjoyed talking to Stella and meeting a few of Ethan’s younger friends. However, she still had felt…distant. She initially had chocked the feeling up to the difference in age, although that had never before caused any rift between her and the Barklem siblings. Yet when she saw the children engaged in games and stories of colorful characters and playful frivolities, she was almost frustrated at her inability to join along. “I guess…I still don’t really know how friends or children are supposed to enjoy themselves.”

Elias took his turn to cock his head. “Why do you suppose that is?”

That…was a good question. Why indeed?

“I’m not sure…I guess I just I never got a chance to do anything children normally do. Even before…even when I was with my family I couldn’t go to school or play outside.” Her early life in Japan had slowly begun to bleed into her memory over the years. As she remembered more and more she realized that strangely enough her happy memories had been buried alongside the dark ones. Perhaps that was because those few bright moments were only bright in comparison. Anyone in a normal situation would call her earliest days of hiding indoors alongside her mother until her father could ward off hungry assailants terrifying rather than comforting. Not to say there were no truly bright moments. Brief minutes between hiding and running had yielded tumbling over park toys with her father or cooking with her mother. But even so, those few lights were hardly an equal for the seemingly endless night up until a fateful trip across the hemisphere.

Her grip tightened on her own party favor. “I didn’t have much of a childhood when I really think about it.” Why did this cause her heart to sink so much now?

Large gentle fingertips cupped her jaw tenderly urging her gaze upwards. “Did I upset you, Chise? I didn’t mean to pry into something you’d rather not think about.” He said with a hint of worry in his voice as he brushed his thumb across her cheek.

A wave of guilt washed over her. This outing was supposed to help Elias deal with his feelings of envy and here she was getting tangled up in her own. She placed her hand atop of his and made efforts to swallow the knot growing uncomfortably in her throat. It wouldn’t do for a teacher to lose composure in front of her student.

“You didn’t upset me, I just got a bit lost in thought.” Elias hummed in response clearly not convinced by her answer but respecting her desire not to divulge all at once.

The humming continued as he released her jaw placing his hand on his chin in contemplation. “Thinking about it, I don’t suppose I had much of one either.” He said in a somewhat uncertain tone.

“Really? Even when you were traveling with Lindel?” Mention of Echoes brought a grumble out Elias.

“Although that time was formative, I wouldn’t call it a proper childhood. It was mostly spent navigating a very harsh land with more than a few unpleasant encounters.” The hand on his chin slowly dropped to his chest as his eyes fixed on a pattern on the wall. “I wonder…maybe that has something to do with why neither of us could understand much of the party. I believe we may have missed something important in those years.” Although his tone remained neutral a slight wistfulness played on the edge of Elias’ eyes making something in Chise’s chest ache.

Something important…what was it that the other children had that she didn’t that made her so envious? Or maybe it was something they didn’t have? They didn’t have to worry about ravenous other-creatures eagerly waiting to find out if they tasted sweet or bitter. And because of that, they could roam play yards free of invisible assailants.

“If I had to guess I’d say you missed the chance to have fun free of worry. That’s the nice thing about being a kid really. Responsibilities and expectations don’t exist or at least not as great as they do in adulthood. They get to do things for the sake of enjoying them no matter how insignificant they may seem.”

Elias glanced upward in thought, cogs turning in his skull. “Let’s do that then.”

Chise raised an eyebrow “Do what?” “Those ‘insignificant fun things’ children do, let’s do some of them.” “Really? Why?”

“You can teach me what a ‘childhood’ should feel like and you can get to experience some of the things you couldn’t in Japan.” He stated plainly making Chise feel a little sheepish.

“Are you sure? Some of it is definitely pretty silly and don’t we have orders due?”

“If it doesn’t bother you then I don’t mind silly and Silver Lady can take care of anything minor.” He hesitated briefly before adding. “Of course if you would rather not than we do not have to do anything.” Chise didn’t like the idea of dumping work onto Silver although certainly wouldn’t mind…However, Elias was rarely so insistent and eager.

She cracked a cautious smile. “Well, I guess I don’t see why not.” His head bobbed in a happy nod “Now then, how should we begin?”

“Oh! um…” Right…what did children do these days? What had she done, or wanted to do, as a child that Elias would enjoy?

She fidgeted slightly causing the bag in her hands to crinkle. The party favors…She began to rummage lightly through its contents, a few plastic toys, a paper book and- Oh! This was an easy place to start. She pulled out a small yellow cardboard box eyeing it slightly, “Why don’t we start with these? Could you grab some blank paper and meet me at the dining table?”

In a few moments, they were sitting in their respective seats at the dining table, a small stack of cream white stationary and two small boxes of crayons sat in front of them. Chise reached for a box hesitating slightly. Would it be better to leave them in their box or to lay them all out on the table? Probably the table. Elias watched Chise’s motions patiently as she took one of the thin boxes and propped it open. He took the other box and followed her example.

“Have you seen crayons before?” She asked curiously. “Once maybe, although I don’t know what they’re for. They are a writing instrument, yes?” “They’re more of an instrument for drawing…”

She poured the crayons of her box into her hand and placed them on the table, Elias did the same. A faint waxy smell permeated the air. There were ten crayons in all, the boxes had both yielded the same colors; red, green, blue, yellow and black.

“So…there’s really not much to this,” she grabbed a black crayon and a piece of stationery, “you just take one and draw a picture.”

Elias stared at the crayons with a critical eye. “I can only take one?” His hand wavered over the red but retracted, frightened by the commitment of the decision. Chise giggled.

“You can use as many as you’d like, but it’s like a quill, it’s hard to use more than one at a time.”

Elias seemed to relax and picked up the red. “What should I draw?”

“Whatever you’d like, there aren’t any rules. Although you should probably take off your gloves, the crayon could leave a stain, maybe roll up your sleeves too.” Elias nodded and complied placing his gloves on the corner of the table. He picked up the red once again and ran his fingers over it pressing lightly to gauge its strength before positioning it like he would a quill pen. It was almost comically small in his enormous lavender hands. He tentatively placed his crayon against the stationary and slowly dragged it across the surface. “It’s…rougher than a quill.”

Chise smiled, with a creature as old as Elias there were very few new experiences. Watching him work through the kinks of a rare first try was oddly endearing. Until the crayon snapped.

He lifted the fractured halves to his face and sighed. “I’m sorry Chise…”

“It’s ok!” she reassured quickly leaning forward and grabbing his hand that lay on the table, “there’s another red you can use. Besides!” She grabbed the half still bearing a point and scribbled a circle on Elias’ paper. “It still can be used, it’s just a bit smaller.” She smiled at him before releasing his hand and handing him the spare red crayon. He took it cautiously before trying again, making sure to press lighter this time. After a few strokes, he started moving more confidently and eventually switched to the green crayon.

An odd sense of pride welled up in Chise as she watched him grow faster and more assured. She rested her elbow on the table propping her chin against her hand in thought trying to come up with something to draw herself. She glanced out the kitchen window where the early summer wooly bugs drifted through the air, baaing lazily. That seemed easy enough.

She dragged the black crayon lightly in curves creating a puffy cloud body followed by six black legs. The gentle action was calming. She couldn’t recall the last time she had drawn like this aside from little doodles in the margins of her notes.

Hmm, what did their faces look like again? She peered up for the window but caught Elias staring at her intently. He didn’t meet her eyes but held his gaze for a moment before returning to his drawing.

That was…odd.

Deciding that if he didn’t want to explain she shouldn’t pry, she returned to her own drawing.

A comfortable silence settled over them occasionally accompanied by a shift of paper or changing colors. It wasn’t until she had finished coloring in the bug’s face and legs that the silence was broken by a groan from Elias.

“Is there a method for undoing mistakes?” She thought for a moment. “I don’t think so, at least not for crayons and paper.” “Hmm,” he held up his paper eyeing it with scrutiny, “I see.”

Flames bloomed from his fingers swallowing up the stationery in an instant with not a trace of ash left to prove it had ever existed. He took a new slip of paper and nonchalantly resumed drawing.

Chise huffed. “You know these don’t have to be perfect or anything.” “I would still rather start over.” Elias replied with a shrug. She sighed without exasperation and continued onto the bugs wings.

The silence returned as Chise finished her wooly bug. She placed it aside grabbing a new paper and briefly caught Elias staring at her again. She elected to ignore it since he seemed content enough and started drawing a salamander. After finishing rather quickly, during which Elias burned another sheet, Chise excused herself to the washroom briefly which Elias only distractedly acknowledged. When she returned Silver Lady was at the kitchen sink washing vegetables.

“Ack! Silver I’m sorry are we in-” the brownie raised a finger to her lips and smiled brightly before returning to her washing. A half smile found its way to Chise’s lips as she went to sit down before realizing her chair had been moved. It now sat on the side normally reserved for Elias alone who still sat quietly scribbling away.

She could have sworn she heard Silver chuckle.

Very aware of the fluttering in her chest, Chise grabbed a new sheet and sat next to her mage. Elias paused briefly to curl an arm around her shoulders leaning her to his side without a word. Well used to his heedless affections, Chise leaned her cheek against his side. As she did so, she caught a glimpse of his paper. Apparently, he had started over again as it currently only bore two empty black ovals. He gave her a quick side hug before releasing her and returning to the paper once more.

Her eyes lingered on his skull, quietly observing the shadows and contours from the dips and grooves in the bone.

Finally breaking away her gaze, she picked up a black crayon and set to work.

——

Peals of Silver’s bell finally brought the magi out of their concentration after the sun had sunk just below the horizon.

“Dinner time already?” Chise said as she stretched her back and arms.

“It seems to be.” Elias responded, “We should probably wash up before helping set the table.”

Nodding Chise made her way to the washroom. She returned shortly finding Ruth positioned at his seat and the table already clear of their little project.

“Uh, where are-?” Silver with plates in both hands gestured toward the fridge with a small hum.

Held in place by small magnets were their drawings; three by Chise and one by Elias. She Stepped closer to get a better look at the picture Elias had been so finicky about getting correct. Chise felt her cheeks burn.

It was only her head and shoulders but with red hair and green eyes, the drawing was unmistakably her. The drawing had her hair down on her shoulders, a thin line for a smile and wore her red sweater. He had even put in a little blue in the background for a sketchy sky. It wasn’t perfect; the eyes were slightly different sizes, the nose was off center and there were several places where the colors ran together. But either Elias was finally satisfied with the outcome or Silver Lady had seized it before flames could lick it up. Regardless, Chise was…touched it had been spared.

Warmth settled on her shoulder and side.

“I see we had the same idea.” He pointed to her final picture causing Chise’s blush to flare hotter. His skull had proven not as difficult as she would have previously thought, at least from the side, but she had run out of room for all but a little of his horns causing it to look a little funny. She wasn’t sure if proud was the right word for her feelings toward the drawing, there had to be at least three mistakes on her paper for every one on Elias’, but she certainly felt glad she had made it.

She grasped the hand placed on her shoulder giving it a small squeeze. “Your drawing looks very nice.”

He made a satisfied sound. “Thank you, yours does as well.”

“So what do you think of our first childhood activity?”

Elias shifted his head as he methodically analyzed his feelings over the past few hours. “I would say it was enjoyable in its simplicity. Although I did find myself wishing I had more colors to use.”

Chise smiled, “We can pick up a bigger pack next time we’re in town…if you’d ever like to do this again that is.”

He hummed softly as his thumb circled her shoulder blade. “I think I’d like that very much.”

#the ancient magus bride #mahou tsukai no yome #mahoutsukai no yome #elias ainsworth #chise hatori #elias x chise #chise x elias #robinthorn #fan fiction #fan fic #stormy writes #too old for your age #I’m not sure if this classifies as fluff or not #but I had a lot of fun writing it #posting at 3 am cause I’m impatient and an irresponsible student lol #edit: whoops forgot the chapter title #edit 2: fixed the link at the top to not be a horrendous eyesore

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hegemoneapple · 4 years ago

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Basilisk Eyes: Chapter 24: Clown barf

Crossposted: Basilisk Eyes by Hegemone | Completed: Chapter 24 out of 157 | T | AO3 | FFN | WATT | HPFF

Knowing that he only had to make it through Saturday and Sunday with Dudley made Harry almost giddy until he remembered that he had to make it through Saturday and Sunday with Dudley. He tuned the radio to the BBC news station and listened to the stories while he worked his way through ironing the stacks of napkins. While he was listening, he felt like he was escaping being Harry for a while and it was nice.

Also, listening to stories about children in Rwanda who were forced to become soldiers and kill people when they were younger than he was kind of helped put everything in perspective. Some of them had lost their legs or arms in the war (and… he imagined… their eyesight, though the story didn’t say that specifically). It occurred to him that many of them must be orphans like him, too. All because some people thought that they were more human than others… it made him think of wixen and their pureblood nonsense. He was lost in thought when a wisp of smoke grazed his nose. He jerked the iron up and felt the napkin that he’d been ironing with his fingertips.

“Ow!” he shouted and stuck his burned fingertips in his mouth. He was pretty sure there were scorch marks and holes in the napkin, but he didn’t want to investigate further.

“Oh, no!” he started panicking. He was tempted to throw the burnt napkin in the bin, but knew that Aunt Petunia would count the napkins and he’d be hit with whatever was nearest. He turned off the radio because he couldn’t think while they kept talking.

He twirled around for a little bit—dashing from side to side as he tried to figure out what he could do to fix the burnt napkin until he got dizzy and disoriented and almost fell down, then he focused on breathing until he was calm.

“Okay. It’s a burnt napkin, not the end of the world,” he told himself sternly. He really didn’t want to show up at training with more bruises.

He put his hands on his hips as he calmed down and touched his pocket.

My staff!

He took out the collapsed staff and touched it to the napkin and said “Reparo napkin” hoping that it would work even though he didn’t know the magic word for napkin. He felt it. It was cool again, not burning hot and he couldn’t feel any holes or difference in the cloth from the other napkins. Maybe it worked! He put the napkin in the middle of the stack and kept ironing, but didn’t turn the radio back on, afraid that he’d drift away again.

Finally, at half past 9, he’d put away all the napkins, the ironing board, and iron away and climbed upstairs to his bed. The Dursleys weren’t home yet and he was glad.

He put on his pajamas and climbed into bed, leaving the window open just in case Hedwig came back in the middle of the night.

It’s not outside the realm of possibility.

oO0OooO0OooO0OooO0Oo

Harry knew something was up by the way Aunt Petunia was pounding up the staircase early the next morning. She flung open his bedroom door and stomped over to his bed where she was flapping something in his face and demanding to know, “What is this, boy? Just what do you think this is?”

Harry cowered down into his sheets, trying to get his face out of the range of the cloth that she was slapping him with.

“I don’t know,” Harry ventured. “Could you tell me… please?”

“Just what do you think you’re up to? You think this is a funny prank? Do you?” she shrieked, continuing to flail him with the cloth. “All I want is for everything to be perfect when Dudders comes home from school… but you just have to go and ruin everything… ”

“I’m sorry, Aunt Petunia,” Harry tried, hoping it would appease her.

“Oh, you’re sorry, are you? Well, so am I. I’m sorry we ever agreed to allow you and your strangeness to enter our home. We thought we could stomp it out of you, but no. Even now, damaged as you are, you’re still doing it!”

“What did I do, Aunt Petunia?” Harry asked again.

“My napkin! My beautiful napkin! Yesterday they were all perfect and white and today this one… ” she seemed at a loss for words. “These were my grandmother’s napkins, pure Irish linen! Now this one… looks like clown barf!” Her anger was palpable.

“What?” said Harry disbelieving. When she hit him in the face with the napkin again, he grabbed at it, managing to yank it from his Aunt’s hand and ran his fingers over it from seam to seam. It felt like the ones he ironed last night—nothing different about it.

“I ironed them, Aunt Petunia, just like you said.”

Okay, I burned one and tried to fix it. I guess that didn’t work. It’s not burned though, no holes!

“I know you did ma… something vile,” she finished, unable to utter the word.

He didn’t deny it and felt heat rising in his neck and cheeks.

She snatched the napkin from his hand and stood very still over his bed. Harry had the sense that she had her hand raised as if to slap him and he cringed, bracing himself for the blow. But she suddenly turned and stormed out of the room, slamming his door as she left.

Harry sat in his bed for a little bit, trying to calm his racing heart. He didn’t know if he should get up and go down right away and get breakfast started or wait a little until she cooled down.

He decided to go somewhere in between.

As he nervously pulled on his clothes, feeling the seams to make sure they weren’t inside out and tried to make his hair lie flat, he chanted to himself… Saturday, Sunday, Saturday, Sunday, Saturday, Sunday. . .

As he was picking up his glasses to put them on, he traced the cracked lens with his fingertips.

I guess it is good I didn’t try to repair this crack.

He put his collapsed staff in his pocket and started out of his room to head to the bathroom, but in the hallway, he heard Dudley emerging from his room and decided to duck back into his room and wait. Last summer he would have made a mad dash to the bathroom to get in first and lock the door before Dudders who couldn’t move nearly as quickly as Harry… but then he always had to move quickly when he was exiting, too, to dodge the waiting blows from his cousin and he didn’t want to risk that today.

Once Dudley was safely in the bathroom, Harry went quietly down the stairs and used the bathroom downstairs. Since he had unloaded all his items from his school trunk into his staff, he also had his toothbrush and toothpaste.

This staff is so handy, especially with the extendable storage charm. Everyone should have one of these.

He laughed at himself for sounding like one of the infomercials Aunt Petunia watched.

He walked cautiously to the kitchen, listening for cues that Aunt Petunia had cooled down. It was awfully quiet.

That can’t be good.

He was tempted to go back upstairs and wait a little longer but then he heard Dudley emerging from the bathroom and decided to try his luck in the kitchen. At the door, he held his staff in his pocket with his thumb and middle finger to get a description of the kitchen. He didn’t think his aunt or uncle would very much like the staff’s description of them: “a thin, dour woman to your right washing dishes at the sink and a ruddy, obese man to your left reading a paper at a table.” He stifled the laugh that threatened to escape his throat.

He went to the stove to start tackling the stack of eggs, sausages, and tomatoes that were undoubtedly on the docket—it would be a full English breakfast for sure with Dudders home from school now.

Aunt Petunia had laid everything out as she’d been doing since he’d awoken on Privet Drive earlier that month. He ran his fingers lightly over the waiting food and utensils, surprised that she’d taken care to do it this morning when she was so angry with him for ruining her napkin.

Maybe she did it before she discovered the napkin.

He was getting better at knowing when the sausages would be done—he couldn’t time them using the clock (he’d never get away with casting the time charm in the company of Vernon and Petunia), but he’d sing a song in his head (R.E.M.’s Everybody Hurts mostly) as a way to gauge the time and then poke at them with the tongs and smell them until he was certain they were done. He hadn’t had a negative review yet, which was as much praise as he was ever going to get.

He’d loaded up the plate with sausages and had started with the eggs when Dudley finally made it downstairs. He tried to keep his posture as neutral as possible and didn’t turn when Dudley came into the kitchen. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon fawned over Dudley as Harry expected and Harry managed to escape their notice for a while longer.

Harry was surprised when Dudley turned on a telly in the kitchen. He didn’t know it was there.

Must be a welcome-home Dudley present so he can watch his favorite shows while eating.

Its sickening noise littered the kitchen.

He’d finished up the scrambled eggs and was starting with the tomatoes and mushrooms when Aunt Petunia came near him to retrieve the eggs and he flinched, expecting her to hit him. She just huffed loudly, obviously annoyed at his presence, but didn’t touch him.

Weird.

The baked beans were bubbling softly on the back burner and Harry turned off the heat, then carefully scooped them into the bowl that Aunt Petunia had set by the can for them. He touched the tongs to the frying tomatoes and mushrooms and tried to flip them, but it was really hard to know if he’d done it or just turned them to mush. He’d made some progress with the slippery vegetables during the week, but apparently not enough because Aunt Petunia took over, sending him on his way with her hip.

He had no choice now, but to sit down at the table and try to eat. He gulped and then slipped his hand in his pocket to touch the staff for more seamless guidance to the table where his hand found the back of the chair and he pulled it out and sat down. He used the staff to get a sense of where the dishes were on the table and only reached for toast, eggs, and sausages as the rest would have required asking Uncle Vernon or Dudley to pass them to him.

“Watch what you’re doing, boy!” Uncle Vernon yelled, using the tone that he reserved just for Harry.

Harry started, then recovering quickly, put the serving spoon back in the bowl of eggs and lightly touched the space between the bowl and his plate and discovered that some of the eggs had dropped off the spoon onto the tablecloth. He picked them up carefully and put them on his plate.

“Why’s Harry wearing sunglasses inside?” Dudley asked through a mouth of food.

“Harumph,” was all the response Dudley got from his father. Harry was surprised. It was a perfect segue into how Harry was now even more of a burden on the family, one of Uncle Vernon’s favorite topics.

Dudley’s attention was drawn back to his show and Harry was able to eat in relative peace.

#Basilisk Eyes #Hegemone #Blind harry potter #Privet Drive #fanfiction

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italiandisheslove212-blog · 4 years ago

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2,000 Complimentary Dishes an Evening, Seasoned by Silicon Valley Chefs

With unemployment skyrocketing in this region of have-nots and haves, a neighborhood Boys and Girls Club has transformed right into a pop-up takeout operation to feed one of the most disadvantaged. Miles Harris, a volunteer, given out free dinners at the Boys as well as Girls Club in East Palo Alto, Calif., last month. PALO ALTO, Calif.-- Andres Pantoja, an up-and-coming Silicon Valley chef, invested his pre-pandemic evenings delicately preparing the $115 plate of lamb chops and also deboning the $42 Psari Plaki entire fish at a stylish restaurant right here. It is agitated job offering 200 upscale dishes a night. His brand-new gig is confirming way more disorderly, though-- making thousands of complimentary meals that seem priceless to those being served: the garden enthusiasts, custodians, building employees, caretakers as well as others who have seen their meager earnings decrease better as the coronavirus devastations the economic situation. Mr. Pantoja has entered into a massive effort to assist feed the poorest families in a region with one of the country's widest revenue spaces. Call it tech-to-table, a Silicon Valley effort to feed the hungry crafted by a regional Boys as well as Girls Clubs chapter. The organization's president, Peter Fortenbaugh, a Harvard M.B.A., utilized his background functioning at McKinsey & Co. as well as great deals of links to transform what had actually been an education-centric program for underprivileged students right into one of the busiest takeout procedures in the Bay Area. 2 websites offer greater than 2,000 cost-free dishes an evening, one in East Palo Alto, as well as the other in Redwood City, where Mr. Pantoja runs the show with liveliness. " Jambalaya tonight: Chicken, andouille sausage, some shrimp," he said on a current night, as one of his fellow chefs stirred in the rice. The spices? "So many points: paprika, cumin, chili powder. The rest is a secret blend." Today, the team served its 100,000 th meal, spending now $30,000 a week. A recent infusion of $218,000 came in from a bike fund-raiser, 784 individuals with a quarantine twist. " Most of the motorcyclists got on a Peloton," said Tina Syer, that as primary development police officer directs fund-raising for the organization. Eighty dollars per motorcyclist was provided by, to name a few benefactors, Jeff Weiner, who lately stepped down as chief executive of LinkedIn, as well as Dr. Michelle Sandberg, sister of Sheryl Sandberg, the principal operating police officer of Facebook. Food insecurity-- a light term for horror of being starving-- has become main to the Covid-19 story as work losses expand persistent. So go the stories from individuals aligned starting at 4 p.m. outside both Boys and also Girls Club sites: a housekeeper with four children whose revenue has dropped to $110 a week from $400; a 57-year-old janitor that shed his job when Macy's closed and also stays in a home with seven people, none now employed; a mom of 3 whose spouse, a painter, gets only periodic tasks currently. " The proprietors of your houses do not desire him to come near them," said the female, that is undocumented and provided just her first name, Josefina, to prevent difficulty from migration officials. She and also others described the food as specifically helpful, considered that rent needs to precede. At the very least fifty percent of those that go to are undocumented immigrants, according to neighborhood authorities, consisting of a member of the East Palo Alto City Counsel. The populace faces a dual threat from lost tasks and also a certain susceptability to the virus as a result of the dense living conditions and also tasks that, when they aren't lost, aren't the kind that can be corrected Zoom. Mike Francois, a great Samaritan community participant, utilizes his 1986 Silverado pickup to take 25 meals each night from the East Palo Alto club to provide to family members in the area, consisting of a having a hard time family members with six children, 5 of them teenage children. "They constantly involve my truck smiling," he said. The procedure generates mixed feelings in the boss, Mr. Fortenbaugh, president of the Boys and also Girls Clubs of the Peninsula, which he took over 16 years earlier after a quick technology occupation as well as a job at McKinsey & Co. " I have 2 emotions," Mr. Fortenbaugh said. "I'm truly depressing. A lot of America doesn't realize just how difficult this is on the low-income immigrant community. However component of me is proud and confident we can do something." Ditto and also bravo, claimed Russell Hancock, head of state as well as president of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, a think-tank whose study reveals the enormity of the region's earnings space: 75 percent of riches in the area is now held by 13 percent of the homeowners, the largest ever such span gauged here. " Then this situation embeds in," Mr. Hancock stated, "and also instantly we're no longer just regreting that some people are well off and also some individuals less well off. Currently it's a concern of survival itself." Ever the engineer, Mr. Fortenbaugh likes the efficiency and also energetic feel of a start-up at the free-food business. Till Covid-19 hit, the club focused on tutoring, university preparedness as well as after-school events for family members. It offered 350 meals in-person to the pupils that remained late at the clubs to research. After that you should not miss to review michelecasadeimassari.com to understand regarding Michele, if you love italian foods.

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#italian chef #foods #chef

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rdclsuperfoods · 5 years ago

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Between finicky eating habits, constantly changing bodies, and a glut of kid-focused food-and-drink marketing, it can be tricky to figure out exactly what (and how much) to feed an active child. We know that children aren’t just scaled-down adults, but research is still sparse in youth sports nutrition.

Solid nutritional research is hard to conduct even among adults, and the challenges are greater with prepubescent kids. The subjects rapidly outgrow specific developmental phases, and the ethics of using children as test subjects—particularly if the eating patterns in question could be unhealthy—are murky, explains Brian Timmons, research director of the Child Health and Exercise Medicine Program at McMaster University. But scientists and nutritionists agree on one major point: how you feed your active child now will impact them for decades to come, both physically and psychologically.

Whether your kids are hiking with you in the backcountry or heading to soccer practice, here’s what you need to know about fueling your mini athlete for optimal adventuring.

Their Healthy Plate Looks a Lot Like Yours

The most important lesson to teach an active child is that food is fuel, says Danelle Kabush, a mental-performance consultant with the Canadian Sport Psychology Association. Timmons explains that eating well for kids looks a lot like it does for adults: lots of vegetables and other whole foods, carbohydrates to support energy expenditure, protein to encourage muscle repair and growth, and fat, because it’s essential to development.

Jessalyn O’Donnell, sports dietitian for Athletics Canada and mother to a very active four-year-old, is a fan of what dietitians call the “athlete’s plate”: a meal with plenty of vegetables, a portion of protein, a grain or starch, and some healthy fats. “Carbohydrate needs should fluctuate according to activity intensity, duration, and type of sport,” O’Donnell says. Protein is still key, but aim for 15 grams per meal rather than the adult-size recommendation of 20 grams. “Fat aligns with general-population recommendations—around 20 to 35 percent of total energy intake,” she says. Don’t get too caught up in measuring macronutrients, though. Use the athlete’s plate as a guideline and you’ll be in range.

Kids Burn More than You Might Expect

Between the ages of 8 and 11, children who spend at least an hour a day moving need around 1,800 to 2,200 calories, according to the USDA. (You can see the recommendations broken out by age and activity level on its website.) Anything more than an hour of daily activity could be considered “heavy training,” which creates a greater caloric need, according to a review published in the Journal of Sports Science and Medicine.

Unfortunately, effort and caloric burn are hard to measure in children. Have you ever taken a ten-year-old on a bike ride? You likely noticed that it took them more effort than it took you to climb a hill, but they might still beat you in a sprint to the parking lot after a quick break. In addition to wild swings in energy expenditure, prepubescent children are burning calories quickly to aid their rapid growth and development, making their needs even trickier to quantify, explains O’Donnell.

Thinking about your child’s nutrition in broader terms, rather than tracking every minute of active play, may be an easier way to ensure that they’re eating enough. O’Donnell typically avoids discussing calories with her patients, particularly children. “Instead I use growth and health markers to determine if total [intake and output] is appropriate.” If you want to know if your child is meeting those markers, talk to their pediatrician.

Kids Use Fuel Differently

Kids naturally burn a higher ratio of fat for fuel compared to adults. “Adult bodies burn sugar first, then fat, then a bit of protein,” Timmons says. “But kids rely more on fat utilization compared to carbohydrates during exercise. In some of our research, we see healthy kids using up to 20 percent more fat than adults.” Timmons believes it may be possible to train the body’s metabolic machinery during childhood, and that eating fat as fuel during endurance workouts as a child could help the body burn fat more efficiently in the future. Metabolic flexibility—the ability to switch between burning carbohydrates and fat as fuel—is a predictor of health, while metabolic inflexibility, conversely, has been linked to type 2 diabetes.

“When you give children an external source of energy, like a sugary sports drink, their bodies suddenly shift to using glucose,” he says. “During a long hike, your kid is largely relying on fat oxidation, so something like trail mix is a better option than a purely carbohydrate-based snack.”

Real, Whole Foods Matter

Kids should avoid supplements of any kind unless prescribed by a doctor. Earlier this summer, researchers found that dietary supplements sold for weight loss, muscle building, and energy were associated with increased risk for severe medical events in children and young adults. Active children still need to replenish muscle glycogen and repair damaged tissue during and after exercise, but a balanced diet of whole foods beats out protein powders or energy gels, according to Timmons. “It’s easy to lose sight of the overall diet when thinking about athletic needs,” he says.

For activities that last under an hour, Timmons recommends making sure that your child has access to healthy snacks with a dose of fat, like trail mix or a peanut-butter sandwich, if they ask for food. On longer days, if you notice they’re not eating and their energy is flagging, set a good example: regularly take bites of whatever fuel you brought along, and encourage them to do the same.

For postworkout recovery, most kids just need a well-rounded meal, says Timmons. If a quicker hit of calories is in order, go for an old-school staple: milk. “We did a large-scale study with milk versus sports drinks for recovery,” Timmons says. “The protein, fluid, carbohydrates, and salt in milk are all great for recovery and muscle repair.”

Hydration Is Simple

Hydration is hugely important for any athlete, but as a parent, your job is simple: offer easy access to water and help your child notice thirst cues. “Thirst is the best gauge for when kids should drink,” Timmons adds. If you’re worried about how much they’re drinking, have them hop on a scale pre- and postexercise. A loss of 2 or 3 percent of body weight isn’t abnormal on a hot day for a hard effort like a cross-country race, says Timmons.

Skip sugary drinks like Gatorade in favor of water or a homemade blend. “There’s certainly a role for sports drinks for an athletic kid expending a lot of energy, especially in endurance sports,” adds Timmons. But watered-down fruit juice with a pinch of sea salt will do just fine.

A Positive Relationship with Food Starts Early

The most important part of childhood nutrition is for kids to develop a healthy relationship with food and their bodies. That education will likely have to come from you, as coaches and teachers aren’t trained to dispel nutritional advice and often accidentally spread misinformation, says Timmons. Even professional athletes can set a bad example: the New York University School of Medicine recently released a statement condemning sports teams’ rhetoric around nutrition, suggesting that most of the sugary food and drink marketed through “multi-million-dollar television and online sports sponsorships” is unhealthy, especially for children.

Kabush explains that she’s also seen an increase in pressure for young athletes to look a certain way, which can lead to unhealthy habits like extreme dieting and binge-eating patterns. “I can’t imagine growing up right now, especially with social media, with the pressure to have a ‘perfect’ body,” Kabush says. When healthy eating isn’t part of a child’s early life, they’re more likely to be swayed by fad diets and unrealistic body-image expectations as they grow up.

“Nutrition knowledge should be a part of a young athlete’s development from an early age,” Timmons concludes. It’s as critical to their mental health as it is to their physical growth.

via Outside Magazine: Nutrition

#IFTTT #Outside Magazine: Nutrition

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thekillingquill · 8 years ago

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At the Drive-In: Part 3

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Pairing: Jughead x Reader Word Count: 3,158 Epilogue Word Count: 602 Warnings: Mentions of physical abuse, there are teenage hormones at work, it gets a little sad? But no really, hormones at work. Summary: Reader escapes her home at night and runs to the Twilight Drive-In where Jughead is her reluctant host. His little interloper is slowly burrowing her way into his heart. A/N: This is the third and final part. I’ve included the epilogue in this post. I didn’t proofread :)

EDIT: There’s a sequel--Dark Side Of Your Room

Jughead found himself looking for her at school but he didn’t know where she existed outside of their nights together at Pop’s and the Drive-In. It was abundantly clear that, other than her proclivity for B&E, Jughead didn’t know much about her. He tried finding her in the library, as she often would read at Pop’s, but came up empty. It was a longshot, but he even looked in the student lounge.

It occurred to him, around fourth period, that he didn’t even know if they shared the same classes. He didn’t know what electives she took or where her locker was located. If it wasn’t for her scent clinging desperately to his pillow and his sleep shirts, he’d think that he made her up in a moment of insanity.

Perhaps it was a blessing that she wasn’t there last night. The news had been handed down the telephone line until somehow Jeanette of all people was telling him: the city had sold the Twilight Drive-In and they would be out of a job by the end of the weekend.

His first thought had been the loss of his home. His second thought had been the loss of income. His third thought was of Y/N and their nights together. All in all, Jughead was drowning in a sea of loss with no lifeboat in sight.

Along with the loss of his home and the absence of Y/N, Jughead also had Archie and Betty to worry about and of course, the murder of Jason Blossom. It surprised him how much time he found to miss Y/N. When she didn’t show up again he spent the night staring at the ceiling, shivering. No matter how many layers he piled on, the bed still felt too cold.

He tried not to let it bother him when she didn’t show up on the second night. He focused on deciding the closing night film while trying to find ways to save the drive-in. All the distractions in the world couldn’t help the quiet ache of loneliness in his chest. He thought that he’d nixed this feeling over the summer when Archie disappeared on him and Betty was out of touch. Yet, here it was again, courtesy of Y/N.

He thought he might have caught a glimpse of her in the cafeteria, but had lost sight of her by the time he pushed through the throng of students. It wasn’t until the closing night screening of Rebel Without a Cause that he saw her again.

The man’s expression is partly cloudy as he finishes their transaction and pulls into the rapidly filling lot at the drive-in. Y/N almost doesn’t recognize the woman in her exuberantly giggly and moony-eyed state. For a moment, they appear to be like any other family unit attending the closing night of the iconic Twilight Drive-In: Mom and Dad reminiscing about their time as teens while their moody offspring listens with a strange fascination.

It is a side of her family that Y/N has never seen before. It is a strange juxtaposition to the hurricane of three days ago that left so much destruction along with physical and emotional pain. But that storm has passed and this night is calm. Looking at the man and the woman, Y/N predicts that there is a chance of showers later on in the evening.

This is the busiest Y/N has ever seen the drive-in. She cranes her neck around seeing students from Riverdale High and their parents, and over in the darkest part of the lot are the regulars. The man pulls into a spot and the woman leans into his shoulder with a shout of laughter. “Should we tell her, babe?” She asks, nuzzling her nose into the man’s neck. The man twists away with an unfamiliar laugh. “I’m gonna tell her. Baby, this is the exact spot at the drive-in where we made you!” The man catches Y/N’s eyes in the rearview mirror and the strange smile melts off of his face like snow on a hot day. He clears his throat and looks away from her. “You go on and meet your friends, kid.” Y/N doesn’t need to be told twice. The doors to the backseat have only opened from the outside for the last six years, so she crawls out of the open window with a practiced grace. She reaches through the window and grabs her messenger bag off of the floor and mutters a quick goodbye to her parents.

She puts her clenched fists in her jacket pockets, waking with her head down and hair shielding her face. She makes a beeline for the public washrooms at the concession and checks to make sure she was completely alone. She braced her hands on either side of the sink and mentally prepared herself for the night ahead.

Jeanette doesn’t even notice when Y/N leaves the bathroom and heads straight up the stairs. For a moment she just stands at the top of the stairs to watch Jughead as he works. His movements are so sure and precise, but there’s a yearning and melancholy air about him tonight.

It has only been three days, but seeing him knocks the breath out of her lungs. For the past three days she has been overwhelmed by the undiluted feeling of wanting. She wanted to see him, to talk to him, to rest her cheek against his shoulder blade and slip her hand beneath his shirt to feel the warmth of his skin. She wants him, Jughead Jones, but isn’t brave enough to say how she wants him. She just does, always.

Being trapped inside her room these last few days has left her feeling like she could crawl up the walls and claw her way out of her skin. The man thought that it would be a good idea for her to stay out of sight and it almost felt parental at times. He brought her small tokens that made her heart throb painfully in her chest: a box of old magazines for collages, a milkshake from Pop’s, and a box of the cookies she used to love as a child. While he was attentive and kind, all she really wanted was Jughead who could offer her nothing but the worn paperback book in his bag, a safe place to exist and good company.

He finally notices her and she watches as his face transitions through a myriad of emotion: relief, confusion and then he put up his guard, that facade he’s perfected of disdainful disinterest. “What are you doing here?” He asks accusingly. She looks down at the floor and clears her throat. “Believe it or not,” she says with forced levity, pushing her hair away from her face. “I came here with my parents. Yeah, apparently this is where they had their very first day and here’s a bonus too much information fact for you: this is also where I was conceived.”

She looks up to gauge his reaction and sees that his arms are crossed over his chest and jaw is clenched tightly in anger. And then he sees her eye for the first time and his jaw drops and arms fall to his side in shock. He takes two quick steps forward and lifts his hand to touch her face. She reacts automatically, catching his wrist in her hand and pausing its movements. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, stroking the soft skin over his pulse point. She gently guides his hand to her cheek and squeezes his wrist before releasing it.

He swallows hard and tilts her head so that he left eye is under the limited light of the projectionist’s booth. The dark shadow around her eye remains and he can no longer deny what he’s seeing: Y/N with a blackened eye.

“How did this happen?” He asks softly. She laughs softly and nuzzles her cheek into his hand.

“I didn’t check the weather report.” Jughead brings his other hand up to cup her face, searching her eyes for an answer that makes sense.

“I… I don’t know what that means.” He tells her desperately. His frown is prominent as he smooths her hair back “Did someone do this to you? Y/N did your dad hit you?”

She can’t help it. She laughs and brings her hands up to squeeze his wrists. “You know, women have the capacity for violence, too.” She tells him with a rueful smile. “I don’t want to talk about it, Jug. I just want to enjoy tonight, with you.”

She wraps her arms around his middle and presses her fingers to his shoulder blades and inhales his intoxicating smell. “I am so sorry about the drive-in, Jug.” He wraps his arms around her shoulders and presses his nose against her neck, sighing in relief. “What will you do?” “I’ll figure something out. But tonight the drive-in is still open, so I better get back to work.” Jughead gives her one last squeeze and goes back to preparing the film. Y/N lays on the bed and watches him. Occasionally he looks over at her and smiles. It’s a subconscious act on his part as he is still struggling with the reality that she has re-appeared in his life.

They sit side by side to watch the last movie play at the Twilight Drive-In with Jughead’s arm across her shoulders and her arms wrapped tightly around his waist. She rests her right cheek against his shoulder and breathes in his scent. Halfway through the movie her fingers slip up his shirt to stroke the warm, soft skin of his side. She waits to see what he will do: will he rebuff her? Will he hold her closer, kiss her, give in to the tension that has been building between them for weeks? After a moment of silence she feels his fingers slip under the collar of her shirt, tracing the line of her clavicle and rubbing circles under her bra strap. She presses her thighs together and groans happily into his neck. She feels his other hand cup her elbow and he brings her closer, pressing his lips to her hairline. For the rest of the movie Jughead slowly massages the skin available to him and she relaxes further and further into his body. He doesn’t even mind when she falls asleep with thirty minutes left in the movie.

He’s just happy to have her there with him.

She’s sitting on their bed (when did it become theirs and not his?) with her legs crossed when he comes back from shutting down the drive-in for the night. She’s picking at her thumb nail and smiling at him shyly. His mouth is dry with nerves.

He won’t deny that it felt good to feel her nails lightly scratching his side during the movie, or that he didn’t like the sounds she made when he dragged a finger along her collarbone. He is finally admitting it to himself: he likes her. “This place has always felt special to me, Jughead. But since I met you, it’s become almost like an oasis. I am going to treasure every memory I have of us here.” She gestures to the bed, inviting him closer. He walks towards her like he’s in a trance and when he sits down, she reaches for his hand and intertwines their fingers. “I’d really like if we could make more memories tonight.” He reaches up and brushes her hair away from her black eye and swallows thickly. He’s overcome by concern. Where will she go for sanctuary when things get bad at home? “We can still go to Pop’s.” He tells her. She smiles at him sadly and squeezes his hand and turns so she’s facing him with her legs still crossed. He mimics her position, stroking his thumb along her knuckles. “Pop’’s was never ours, Jughead. That place has always been for you, Betty and Archie. I’ve seen you guys there. That’s where you’re all meant to be.” “You’re talking like this is the last time we’re going to see each other.” Jughead struggles to get the words out, realizing that this could be the last time he sees her. He squeezes her hand and she squeezes his back.

“If we see each other,” she says slowly, “it will be different.” Jughead lets her words circle his mind, coming to the same conclusion each time. This would be their last night together. As much as he wants to hold tightly to what they have, this relationship might have run its course. He did have his friends and he couldn’t imagine a scenario where Y/N was with them at Pop’s. His friends and what he and Y/N have (had?) are so different and have always been so separate from one another. “I started thinking of people’s anger like storms. That’s what I meant earlier by not checking the weather report. I was distracted during dinner and the storm came in fast. I should have known better because she was drinking red wine. I tried to leave and she turned on me, backhanded me once on the right cheek and then missed my left and hit my eye. Dad actually threw her out. She only came back today.” Jughead remained silent as she spoke, listening intently to her candor and supporting her by continuously stroking the back of her hand with his thumb and placing his other hand on her knee and squeezing it gently. She laughs and brings their intertwined hands to her mouth, placing a shy kiss to his knuckles. “If it’s okay with you,” she whispers leaning closer to him. “I’d like to kiss you now.” “Yeah,” Jughead mumbles, entranced by her nearness. There’s the slightest hint of bubble gum on her breath. His hand slides up her knee to grip her thigh and he presses his mouth to hers gently, being careful of her injury. Their first kiss feels like that first breath of air when you’ve been under water. It excites and relaxes, it is war and peace, it is the beginning and the end.

She smiles into their kiss and squeezes his hand, bringing her other hand to the back of his neck and leaning further into him. She is completely under his spell. She will be cursed to love Jughead Jones the Third for the rest of her young life.

He breaks their kiss and buries his face in her neck, breathing in her scent. He presses a gentle kiss on the side of her neck and bites down softly on her shoulder. He releases her hand and pulls her onto his lap with a growl. She squeaks at the sudden movement and frames his face in both of her hands. They kiss again, a little harder this time and she relaxes her jaw enough to allow her tongue to trace his upper lip. Jughead groans and she licks into his mouth, pressing even closer to him.

Jughead shrugs off his jacket and pulls off his beanie, tossing them to the side and putting his hands on her ribs like an additional cage around her wild heart. She buries her hand in his hair, tugging on it gently as they kiss.

He pulls back and looks up at her with half lidded eyes. He reaches back and pulls his shirt over his head and she places her hand on his heated skin, directly over his racing heart. His hands claw desperately at her shirt as he falls back on the bed. She sits up, laughing at his dazed expression, and pulls her shirt over her head. She leans down and rests her elbows on either side of his head. “You okay there, Jug?” With each word she brushes her lips against his but never fully kisses him. “Yeah,” he breathes, nodding his head. “I’m good.” “Me too,” she whispers, pressing her mouth to his firmly. His palms slide up her back until he is pushing against her shoulder blades, pressing her closer so that they are skin on skin. He involuntarily jerks his hips upwards and is surprised and embarrassed by the low moan he releases that is lost in the sound of Y/N’s whimper. “Are you okay?” He asks, pushing her hair away from her face. “No no no no, that felt really good, Jug. I was just surprised is all.” She brushes the hair away from his face and presses a kiss to the corner of his mouth and drags her mouth slowly to his neck, sucking lightly on the skin just beneath his ear. He lets out a soft moan and arches into her, and she pulls away from him with a strangled moan of her own. And then she reaches between them for his belt, hands brushing against the bulge in his jeans. Jughead gasps and grabs for her hand desperately, pulling it away from his belt. “I’m sorry,” she says immediately, rolling off of him and onto the mattress. “I’m so sorry, I should have asked first.” “I just… it’s okay… I just don’t want to do… that.” Jughead tries to explain through his panting.

“Okay. I’m really sorry, Jughead.” She reaches out, but isn’t sure whether he wants her to touch him right now. He grips her hand and laces their fingers together, letting it rest on his stomach. “It’s okay,” he says again and he’s not sure if he’s telling her that, or himself. He turns so that they are facing each other and she traces the curve of his jaw with her fingertips lightly, asking him in a whisper if it’s okay. He nods, leaning forward to kiss her chin and her cheek and then pushes himself up on one elbow so that he can kiss her forehead. She reciprocated by pressing a lingering kiss to each freckle.

They spend their last night together at the drive-in exchanging lazy kisses and sharing personal stories that would leave them feeling vulnerable and weak in the light of day. They touch each other gently, and make each other laugh (“I used to think that you were a blizzard: cold and dangerous. Now I know that you’re a summer rain: hot and electric. And getting me wet.”).

In the morning Jughead makes sure to kiss her on every square inch of the projectionist’s booth. It turns out she was right, after that night they didn’t meet up at Pop’s or say hi in the hallways. Jughead tried keeping tabs on her, seeking her out each day at school to look for any new bruises. But he got so busy with the Jason Blossom investigation, dealing with his broken family, and starting a new relationship with Betty that he didn’t even notice the day she disappeared.

But he would see her again.

Epilogue:

He hangs up the payphone, Betty’s voice trapped in his mind and turns to start his first day at Southside High when he sees her walking down the hall wearing a leather jacket two sizes too big. She’s walking with three other girls, and she looks happier than he’s ever seen her. She has laughter on her lips when she catches his eye.

Like metal to a magnet, he feels himself being pulled toward her. She says something to her friends and walks towards him as if in a trance. They meet in the middle and without warning she launches herself at him in a tight hug.

She smells different--like smoke, leather and honey.

“It’s so good to see you.” She tells him, burying her face in his neck and inhaling the familiar scent. He pulls back from her, his hands coming to cup her elbows gently. His eyes move rapidly over her face, memorizing the slight changes in her appearance. She’s wearing dark makeup, and her lips are quirked in the quiet smile she used to give him at the drive-in. There is an unbridled energy in her eyes that he’s never seen before.

“What are you doing here?” He asks her breathlessly. Her smile stays in place, but her eyes go sad.

“Not too long after the drive-in closed, there was a big storm brewing. It was the biggest storm to ever hit and someone called the police. When Sheriff Keller showed up he saw all of the destruction and I was put into foster care. My dad and I still see each other all the time, but I can’t be around my mom.”

“Did she hurt you?” Jughead asks her softly. His concern makes her eyes burn with emotion. She looks at the students in the hall and gestures for Jughead to lean down. She presses her cheek against his and whispers in his ear.

“She came at me with a knife. By the time Sheriff Keller showed up she had already cut me.” She pulls back from Jughead and shrugs her shoulder so that her leather jacket slips down her arm. There on her shoulder, pink and puckered, is a jagged scar about two inches in length. He reaches out and brushes his index finger over the raised skin.

“I’m so sorry,” he says. He’s not sure what the apology is: sorry for not being there, sorry I got caught up in my own shit and forgot about you, sorry this happened to you, sorry our safe haven got torn down?

“It’s okay. Things are better for me now.”

“Are you… are you happy?” Jughead asks. She beams at him, giving him another hug. He lets her sway them from side to side.

“I am, Jughead, I really am. I just wish you could be, too.” She pulls away and steps back from him, lest she be tempted to keep touching him. With a tilt of their head they begin to walk down the hall together. “So last I heard you were living with Archie Andrews. How’d you end up at Southside?”

“Things at Archie’s didn’t work out. I’m with a southside foster family now.” They reach the doors of the cafeteria and Y/N pauses and turns to him.

“I guess that means I’ll be seeing you around.” She starts walking backwards, keeping him in her sights for as long as possible.

“Yeah, I’ll see you.” He watches her walk away, not realizing that he is subconsciously looking for the Serpent patch until she turns around and he sees it clear as day: the two headed snake.

Tag list: @tasteofswallowedwords @forsythe-pendleton-jones-iv @jillisbetterthanyou @rainbows-and-glitter-bitch @murderyoursoul @ri-verdale

#Quill Writes #this was having some copy paste issues :(#jughead jones imagine #jughead jones x reader #Jughead imagine #riverdale imagine

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deniscollins · 5 years ago

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Poor Schools Keep Getting Crushed in Football. Is It Time to Level the Playing Field?

During the past decade, Hoover High and Des Moines’s four other large public high schools have a cumulative record of 0-104 against rivals with more affluent student bodies from the Polk County suburbs. If you were responsible for creating football conferences, which is usually based on a combination of school size and location, would you instead create conferences based on the poverty level of a school’s student body: (1) Yes, (2) No? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

An hour before kickoff at a game this month at Hoover High School, the opposing football team, Indianola High, pulled up and unloaded the large video monitor that would let its coaching staff analyze plays, moment by moment, throughout the game. The coaches at Hoover High, where most students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, would have to make do with watching the old-fashioned way. Another loss, a Hoover student told the principal, seemed imminent.

Indianola ran 84 yards for a touchdown on their first play, the running back shedding Hoover’s smaller players like a video-game villain. The game ended in a 35-7 loss for Hoover, to no one’s surprise.

During the past decade, Hoover High and Des Moines’s four other large public high schools have a cumulative record of 0-104 against rivals with more affluent student bodies from the Polk County suburbs, according to figures compiled by The Des Moines Register. They rarely do any better against similar opponents from beyond the county, like Indianola. The disparity has been the topic of news articles and impassioned conversations across the state, from Sioux City to Davenport.

With all that losing, leaders in places like Des Moines are contemplating a change in how high school athletic teams are matched up against one another: What if the poverty level of a school’s student body was used to decide which teams it played?

The concept, now in use or under consideration in numerous American states and cities, turns on its head old notions of athletics as an equalizer. The thought of intentionally lumping poor schools into lesser divisions, separate from richer schools that have fancy equipment and larger and more specialized coaching staffs, rankles some educators, who say it sends a terrible message.

“Our kids don’t want to be classified as poor kids who have to play lower-level competition,” said Mitchell Moore, a coach at Roosevelt High School in Des Moines. “I’m a big believer that socioeconomics has nothing to do with catching a football.”

But at Hoover, where losing has gotten exhausting for players and fans alike, moving down to a lower division would be a welcome relief, many parents and students say. The idea of judging teams based on wealth may sound distasteful in concept, but the reality of losing night after night, year after year, feels far worse. And schools with extra resources for special training and technology, they say, simply do better on the field — so why not acknowledge that in the matchups?

“On just about every Friday night, they outsize us, they outman us, and they outnumber us,” Sherry Poole, Hoover’s principal, said about the suburban powerhouses on the school’s schedule that routinely win state championships. “Your heart just kind of stops whenever someone gets crunched.”

Dustin Hagler, a 17-year-old senior who plays on both the offensive and defensive lines for Hoover High, and is also the senior class president, said that he saw students in the hallways who would make good football players, but that they consistently resisted his recruiting efforts.

“It’s hard when you lose,” he said. “But it’s not just losing. It’s almost like you feel beat down. Like the odds are stacked against you.”

Over the past few years, officials overseeing high school sports in states including Minnesota, Oregon and Colorado have added provisions allowing schools with high poverty levels to drop down to lower athletic divisions. Washington State will introduce the idea next year, and Iowa is considering it.

Schools are commonly assigned to athletic divisions based on their enrollment, and Hoover, with more than 1,000 students, has long been placed in the state’s top athletic division, competing with the largest of Iowa’s public and private high schools. Its traditional rivals include city schools with relatively high poverty rates, but also suburban schools that have won the past nine state championships.

Ways of gauging poverty levels vary, but state athletic officials typically rely on the percentage of students who qualify for free or reduced-price school lunches. At Hoover, about 75 percent qualify, compared with about 10 percent, on average, in neighboring suburban schools. At Indianola High, Hoover’s opponent on that recent game night, about 21 percent of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches.

The debate over whether economic status should have a place in deciding a sports team’s competition has been fierce. The issue has led to awkward conversations among school administrators, parents and teammates, raising questions about fairness and the meaning of high school sports.

Supporters say the approach, intended to give poorer schools a better chance of winning games, will help students gain confidence. They also say it could reduce the risk of concussions and other injuries against teams with more expensive and elaborate training resources and access to better nutrition.

“We don’t feel like we are coddling these students; we feel like we are trying to put them on an even playing field,” said Peter Weber, executive director of the Oregon School Activities Association, which oversees high school athletics. “We need to match kids up with competition that is safe for them so they can walk out on a field and be competitive.”

But others, including many coaches, say the change adds new barriers for impoverished students, and suggests they are too weak or too poor to compete against richer rivals. Why, they ask, should students’ athletic potential be limited by their parents’ bank accounts? And some opponents say tinkering with longstanding athletic matchups in an attempt to even the odds is a way of babying young people — a “medals for everyone” mentality that undermines lessons in resilience and grit.

“They’re out there making do with what they have, and that’s the right thing to do,” said Gabe Murray, 19, a former Hoover football player.

Tom Farrey, executive director of the Aspen Institute’s Sports & Society Program, said the sports achievement disparity between wealthy suburban public schools and their urban counterparts has degenerated into “a competitive gap that is similar to the income gap” in the nation.

“The divide has always been there,” he said, “but it has widened.”

The disparity, experts say, is meaningful beyond the world of athletics because sports participation has been found to aid in academic success and college admissions, and is a predictor for professional success.

The discussion comes at a critical juncture for youth sports, where participation rates for many activities — particularly football — are in decline because of fears about brain injury and because children’s interests more than ever fall outside engagement in traditional sports, according to studies.

For the moment, switching leagues is not yet an option in Iowa, where the Iowa High School Athletic Association is scheduled to discuss the issue later this year. If a request by the Des Moines Public Schools and other districts is approved, Hoover and other schools could apply to drop down a division.

Historically, the imbalance in high school sports has been between public schools and private schools, which are often able to recruit students and offer scholarships.

In Iowa, which has comparatively few large private schools that excel in sports, tension has centered around disparities between public high schools that have similar enrollment sizes but very different student demographics.

Thomas Ahart, superintendent of the Des Moines Public Schools, said students in the district must often work after-school jobs to support their families, which prevents many from participating in sports.

Dr. Ahart and others have pointed to the correlation between schools that win championships and how few students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches.

Across all Iowa schools, the percentage of students who qualify for such meals is about 43 percent, while Dr. Ahart said Des Moines’s dominant suburban sports schools have rates around 7 percent. In Des Moines public schools, about three-quarters of students qualify for free meals.

“There’s a real issue of equity of opportunity, and the foundation of the problem is tied most directly to poverty,” he said. “Even if we do everything right, the chances of us getting a victory is slim to none.”

Mr. Farrey, from the Sports & Society Program, said he believed more effort should be made by schools to encourage students — whatever their skill level — to play sports, instead of focusing primarily on winning and competitiveness.

“Kids do sports because they are looking to do something larger than themselves,” he said. “It’s not about whether you win. Sports are fun.”

But in Des Moines, high school football has not been much fun in recent years, some players said.

Kyle Fischer, whose son, Jerad Fischer, is Hoover’s quarterback, said wealthier schools have an undeniable advantage, so moving Hoover to a lower league would simply be recognizing that truth. He said that neither parents nor schools should be ashamed of trying to give their children the opportunity to compete equitably, including wanting kids to avoid sustaining injuries while playing against bigger, stronger players.

“They need to look at fairness across the board,” said Mr. Fischer. “I don’t believe in coddling kids, but the kids are just not getting the same opportunities.”

#High School Football #Poverty

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artstarstv · 6 years ago

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Music for Introverts: An Interview with Shuze Ren

Whenever the Composer and Sound Designer Shuze Ren sees an artwork—moving image, photo or painting—he immediately envisions its soundtrack. It makes sense, as Ren is a film composer who has scored films that have premiered everywhere from Telluride to the Clermont Ferrand Film Festival, and his projects have been featured in Variety.

Ren, who has lived in Japan, New York, China and Switzerland, studied film scoring at Boston’s Berklee College of Music, followed by graduate film studies at Columbia University. He was also invited to the 2018 Globes de Cristal, the French equivalent to the Golden Globes, for his outstanding work in cinema. A powerhouse with equal understanding for image and sound, Ren equally brings moods and landscapes to the cinematic language, which alters the rhythms of film and is a master at creating cinematic illusions. With influences that range from Johnny Greenwood to John Cage, Brian Eno, Bach in Tarkvosky and Zbignew Preisner, his trademark sound—for films and in music—is a kind of aural richness, rich with synth tones.

In his own words, Ren says: “I think what I lean towards is an aural richness, created by something for example, of falling water with a nostalgic synth tone, or a muted piano against the sound of thick whispering dialogue against the creek of footsteps on an old wooden floor. A combination of things that creates an image despite the medium being cinema. Think synesthesia.”

As Ren gears up for the release of his debut album coming out next year on the Maia record label, and is working on the score for a film directed by Swedish-Costa Rican director Nathalie Alvarez Mesen, he took some time to chat about nostalgic piano sonatas and Squarepusher, as well as composing beyond Hollywood.

Where does the real magic happen when scoring for films?

Shuze Ren: I score films rather untraditionally, I’ve been trained to do it the classic Hollywood thematic way. But for me what feels most natural is to get into the mood of the music that needs to be written. This is something that comes naturally, but the hard part is focusing or fine-tuning the appropriate resonance of emotion needed, once this happens. The real magic I suppose comes, as my compass/center has been realigned to the scene and I essentially select what’s needed whilst I play until the feeling releases, bit similar to finding something that is cathartic to the feeling. I’m not sure sometimes if I’m merely just someone who is sensitive to sounds and music that recognizes what’s needed like a stylist. Except I’m both playing and selecting at the same time.

What is your typical instrument of choice to begin with for scoring?

A synthesizer of some sort, a prophet 08 is good to create digital warmth for a diegetic score of an ‘indie mannered film,’ whilst a prophet 06 is ideal for a non-diegetic score for what I do. I use a synthesizer as a test to see what’s needed, I often tell people I work with, that I have a feeling that the model of a camera dictates the music more than you think or would like to think, and that the instrument is often acting as a color variant to the image. Sometimes I use digital signal processing of diegetic sounds to test this as well, when no keyboard is available.

How do you know what music fits for certain scenes?

Watching a lot of films, from all different genres etc. (4000 films is a good mark) and realizing that some great films have music that unintentionally distort the narrative or vice versa for better and for worse but most importantly knowing why. Having music in your ears at all times during your daily routines and different environments helps you create a gauge of how the same music works differently under different soundscapes and visual stimuli, a soft nostalgic piano piece can

be beautiful with the sound of autumn leaves whistling against the wind but at the same time feel piercingly provocative with the sound of rain and traffic.

How do you approach composition and orchestration?

I am a huge fan of Joni Mitchell, the singer songwriter. She’s also a painter. I approach orchestration as sound, like a paint palette each stroke adds something to the painting. They weave in and out, they clash, they resolve. I suppose you have to an understanding of theory to not think about the technicalities. But Instead of doing this with an orchestra, I create texture with the layering of sounds, effectively by obeying the principles of orchestration but towards all sounds and qualities of the instruments and not just in tonal notes. Another reason why doing post-production audio work as well as music can coincide together to create something unique to the medium of motion pictures.

While most people might not realize, sound is as equally as important as visuals in film and TV. Why is scoring so overlooked?

I read an old school audio book in the Cinémathèque Française, it was written: “You do not go to the cinema to listen to music.” I think this is true for me, as I think the epicenter is in Cinematic language and is what is the most magnetic. For me in the most beautiful instances, film music leaves you a vivid painting of a scene that makes you linger between dream and memory. As what you saw on the screen is what you picture, but the music paints the tone on top of it so well that it fits like a vivid painting that you can’t stop looking at after.

What is your approach to naturally and seamlessly connect audio with film?

Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa said: “For a scene to work with music and visuals, the scene must be shot in a way that depletes 50% of the visuals so that 50% of the music can fit.” Too pretty of a visual with music, and vice versa, will cause imbalance. Knowing this helps tremendously. However, there is a way where this ratio can be changed by incorporating carefully-selected sounds to the tonality, instrumentation, and sonics of the music. This in my opinion is what creates mood and complex emotions, an illusion. Just like in LOST IN TRANSLATION, actress Scarlett Johansson stares outside the hotel window in silence, as the music of Squarepusher comes in, this scene creates a feeling of longing. If the scene had sounds of the streets outside the hotel, or of the cleaning maid outside vacuuming, with the same music, this would create a feeling of sadness or passing, of some sorts; two very different adjectives in the cinematic world.

What is the focus of your forthcoming album coming out 2018/19?

My focus on my album will be to see how far this translation of senses from visual to sound and music will go. Some friends have been taking me to gallery’s/exhibitions of photographers and painters, and often when I see an artwork, I hear the music that could fit with it instantly. The focus of my album will be to try and translate accurately what I want to say musically so a specific color is perceived with the music, giving people a clear visual to the different moods/ vivid images I have felt in the recent years. Like the pianist and the book reader in a room. It will be music for introverts.

Image stills from “Shelter” by Natalie Alvarez (Gothenburg Film Festival 2018), Tear Of The Peony by Yuxi Li (Telluride Film Festival 2016), “Kiko” by Jamil Munoz, “Deux Assiettes Pour Trois” by Noe Dosen (Clermont Ferrand Film Festival 2017) and “Tail End Of The Year” by Chieh Yang (Taipei Film

Festival 2018).

Interview by Nadja Sayej.

#shuze ren #music #musician #films #film #score #film score

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jackkel-dragon · 7 years ago

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Blue Reflection “Steam” Review

I wrote up a long review for a game I’ve been playing lately, and was going to post it as a Steam review until I noticed that my review went over the character limit. Since I couldn’t find a way to cut it down that I liked, I decided to post the full version of the review here. Behind a read more for length and spoilers. (Spoilers are also behind a warning to make the main review low-spoiler.)

Blue Reflection is a magical girl JRPG, a type of game I've been hoping to see for a while. It plays similarly to a Persona game, where it is split into daily life segments for getting to know the characters and otherworld segments for exploring and fighting.

The story is very character-focused, which works to its favor. Most of the story involves the main character gaining power through empathizing with others, allowing herself and those she meets to grow. This power is used to fight supernatural monsters from outer space and the negative emotions they impose on an otherworld sustained by humanity's collective unconscious. While there is an overarching plot, it doesn't get much play until near the end of the game. More information than that goes into spoiler territory, so that will be addressed later.

The "daily life" gameplay is very similar to the Persona series, albeit simpler and more streamlined. Outside of story chapters, free time can be spent exploring the school, completing side quests, or spending time with friends. There are several interesting things you can find in the school, particularly an odd collectible-like system where finding glowing spots in the school will open up new topics for the main character's IM app. Side quests involve either jumping into the otherworld to fight monsters/collect items, or simply bringing items to the person in question. While simple in design, each side quest has an interesting hook to give context to the mission, and so it's interesting to see what each student has problems with. Spending time with friends works similarly to Social Links/Confidants in the Persona series, where you get special events at certain levels of affection. During some of these events, the player may get a choice on how to respond, which changes the skill the player earns from completing that event. There is also a system where, at the end of each day, the player can decide what to do at night, which can cause certain events to play the next morning (sometimes giving stat boosts). There's no real time limit to free time, so it's possible to complete everything except for alternate scenes in a single playthrough.

The other gameplay for the game takes place in "The Common", an otherworld that is shaped by the collective unconscious. Because of its nature, it is split into certain "zones" such as Joy and Fear. Here the player fights monsters and prepares to fight the "Sephirot", giant monsters from outer space. The basic exploration will be familiar to those who have played the Atelier games, since it involves the same kind of on-screen monster icons and the ability to find items in certain areas. Battles are turn-based, though there are some interesting systems unlocked later in the game that make the wait time between turns an active part of the battle (such as allowing the use of a special meter to heal or accelerate turns). Instead of having XP, the game uses "growth points" to level up, which are gained exclusively from story progress and spending time with friends in daily life. This reduces some of the grind found in other JRPGs. On the other hand, it's easy enough to grind growth points from spending time with friends that combat will be easy for most of the game, even on the hardest difficulty. Each character also learns far more skills than you will ever need to use, and some skills end up being redundant because of this. While there is a system for learning specific skills in the growth point system, whatever combination of level ups you decide on will end up leaving you more than powerful enough to win. This is made even easier since HP/MP is restored after each fight. Battles can still be fun once you've become overpowered, but don't go into the game expecting something as difficult as a Megami Tensei game.

The last major gameplay element involves fighting the giant bosses. These are 2-3 phase fights that involve a single large enemy with multiple parts. You can finish each phase just by killing the main part, but each sub-part you kill will be inactive for a while and cause a debuff to the main body. These fights also allow the non-magical friends of the main character to support the team, usually with small buffs or attacks that increase the special gauge (which allows for certain abilities between turns later in the game, as mentioned earlier). These fights are usually about as easy as the rest of the game, but may take a bit longer due to high HP and the need for the player to heal.

Overall, it's a fun magical girl RPG, though not something for anyone looking for a challenge. This is very much a game focused on the stories of its major characters, with the main story and battles as part of the experience (but not the focus).

A note on the PC port: The game no longer has a game-breaking crash thanks to a patch, but it still is pretty resource-hungry and can crash under certain conditions. If you don't have a pretty recent computer, it may be better to look into the PS4 version.

Now, onto some spoiler talk... If you want to go in blind, the review essentially ends here.

====SPOILERS====

Note: I'm going to assume some basic knowledge of character names and such, in order to avoid making this part of the review longer than it already is.

To start with, I really like the characters and most of the story of the game. That might come into question with my later ramblings if I don't point it out right away. It's mostly how the main plot was handled near the end that gets to me.

With that said, let's start with some good things about the story. I really like most of the characters, and they all have really nice stories when you complete their friendship events. Even some characters that I wouldn't give a chance in real life ended up growing on me. The daily life main plot regarding the school festival was also a really nice way to explain why Hinako was getting so close to her classmates.

Now, something I have a problem with is the Sephirot. Aside from sounding cool, I have a hard time finding out what connections they have to Kabbalah and its philosophy. Aside from surface connections (Yesod, the foundation, being the first one fought; Da'at/Daath, the place where all Sephirot are one, being the last fought), I can't see a whole lot of how these space monsters are connected to Jewish mysticism. Now, the series everyone thinks inspired the game--the Megami Tensei franchise--also makes heavy use of mythology in every game. But those games also show their work in how everything connects to what they are named after. The tarot arcana in the Persona series are always thematically related to the people they are assigned to. The initial and ultimate personae of the leads are connected to the theme of the game. (For example, Orpheus/Thanatos are connected to Death.) Aside from Daath's sudden idea to combine all of humanity into one being, I don't see much connection between Blue Reflection's Sephirot and the real world's idea of Sephirot. Maybe this is a lack of research on my part, but it still bugs me.

The main plot also contradicts itself and becomes a mess near the end. Yuzu and Lime being ghosts is actually foreshadowed fairly early, but then gets swept under the rug until the reveal. More importantly, Daath directly contradicts things that Yuzu, Lime, and Yuri claim, and no one explains why this thing that shows up in the last twenty minutes of the game is suddenly changing all the information we were told. For instance, Yuzu and Lime claim that there are 22 singularities, each with a Reflector. This is further shown in a scene without Hinako that proves they aren't lying to her about this. But then, after they are outed as ghosts, they say there is only one Reflector at a time. Hinako never addresses this, and Daath later points out that only Hinako is a Reflector. There's a lot more I could complain about Daath, really. Yuzu and Lime also recognize it (him?) when he decides to show up in the final scene, yet never thought to mention him to Hinako before he started killing and absorbing people.

Even worse than Daath is the ending. I was mostly okay with it at first, despite not liking how many Japanese stories seem to end with timeloops or resets. (I have to wonder if Puella Magi Madoka Magica inspired Blue Reflection to use this particular trope, despite this game not needing such a plot point.) But the more I think about it, the suckier it is without making some serious assumptions. Basically, Yuzu and Lime return to being dead. Daath is gone, but apparently might come back later (he's not clear on whether he's dying or not). But everything else in the story snaps back to the opening cutscene, aside from Hinako remembering some of what happened. This memory alone seems to warrant a bittersweet, rather than downer, ending. But keep this in mind: this means that all twelve of Hinako's friends and all of the sidequest characters are back to where they were at the start of the game. Rin is back to being indecisive about her crush. Sarasa is back to being bitter and upset that Hinako stopped ballet. Shihori is back to being hated for something she isn't doing. Mao is back to being a loner jerk that keeps others at arms length. All of those problems that Hinako fixed are now undone, and now she doesn't have magic or Yuzu/Lime to help her re-fix everything. You have to assume that Hinako can befriend everyone again and help them in more mundane ways to solve their problems, otherwise the ending is really depressing. Yet Hinako is just happy that she didn't forget about Yuzu and Lime, and we're supposed to be okay with just that. I thought this game was about empathy and friendship overcoming adversity, not how everything one does in life is ultimately pointless.

There are other things that bother me, but those are the more major ones. Accidentally undercutting the premise of the story in the last half hour of the game is not really a good way to leave a lasting impression. I still like the game, but unless a sequel/spinoff fixes some of the issues, I have to mentally rewrite or re-contextualize the ending in order to be okay with it.

At any rate, I still recommend the game. It's a fun game, and the character-focused parts of the story are really good. As a story of how Hinako comes to terms with not being able to dance again thanks to her new friends, it works well. Just try not to take the self-contradicting myth arc too seriously if you don't want to get annoyed.

#blue reflection #game review

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