#like i think it was my 7th grade english teacher who guided us away from that which makes sense for that age group

[hua-fei-hua]

“the hardest part of characterization is getting their voice down” “the hardest part of characterization is nailing their quirks w/o flanderizing them” “the hardest part of characterization is--”

SILENCE. the hardest part of characterizations is figuring out their opinions on things that don’t appear in their canon and/or justifying said opinions for them

[moonshinebruja]

Gentrification and living in Cambridge, MA (Part 1)

Cambridge, Ma, the birthplace of Harvard and MIT, it's beautiful when you're a student who loves academics.   The buildings here are breathtaking, but do you ever wonder? What is the cost to create this type of environment?  Well, that's why I'm here to set the record straight.  I lived here for 4 years, from 2013-2017, for high school, in section 8.

 My dream was to attend Cambridge Rindge and Latin, the building took my breath away when I wandered here in the end of 7th grade, thinking there would be no better place to live, and my wonderful mother who wanted the best education for me changed location for me and my little brother.  For the betterment of our education, she sacrificed everything for us. The fantasy was short-lived for me once I met my guidance counselor in the community C,

we'll call him "Mr. White" for now.  He is everything I am not...white, Male, and privileged. I never minded the culture clash until I realized that I was in a school full of students I’ll never know the names of.  It was like walking into a sea full of sharks.  I never stood a chance standing at 5'1, brown, and Muslim.  Once Mr. White heard my mother's broken English, he realized something I didn't, he could easily dictate my classes. It only took him 5 minutes to pick out my classes and he later got yelled at by the secretary for it in front of me. So much for having a competent role-model. I saw my so-called guidance counselor four times after that, he was merely a figure of authority and was rarely anywhere to be seen.  What the heck was he always running from?  He gets paid to guide students and he couldn't even do that. 

 While I struggled with basic classes, such as Physics, my only advice was to stay after class to learn more from a teacher who barely knew how to teach physics.  That was horrendous, I ended up teaching myself Physics in an online class.  When an online class can teach better than a teacher who teaches kids in high school, that’s when you should reform the education system and carefully choose who you let teach a class. When I wanted to learn computer science,I was denied, you’d THINK the school would be happy when learning that a female wants to learn programming, but instead I was told “No, you’re an art student, you shouldn't learn computer science" by Mr. White. I want to be a versatile student, not just an art student.  I struggled with my identity as a student in Cambridge.

 I spent my summers working for the Community art center in Area 4, I hosted public art events in parks in Cambridge and Kendall square.  I learned something in the Art center that I never learned in school, and that was racism and classism.  The word gentrification was thrown around like hotcakes and for the first time, I learned what everyone was scared of, being kicked out of their own homes.  Why was this never taught in school and why did a 6-year-old tell me “I’m sad, my friend is movingaway because it’s too expensive to live here”? 

  I went home and did my research.  According to my research, I was living in the most expensive place to live in the whole state of Massachusetts.  I did my internship at suburban justice, a building near Harvard.  I was excited to learn more about social justice and to attend social justice workshops.  In one of the workshops, I was told that section 8 keeps the poor from saving money by increasing rent.  The rich want us to be unable to afford more than the necessities.  I realized this to be the truth when I started earning some cash through a Mural Apprentice job in 2018.  I only earned 150-250 a month, and section 8 increased the rent by $100 more.  Aside from the $8.50 bus fare I was paying to get to work 2-3 times a week, section 8 was trying to steal the very little I had to my name.  I am writing this to start a conversation. Thank you for reading part 1 of Gentrification and living in Cambridge, MA.

[chiquitck]

Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Between Worlds (or on Airplanes)

So, I’m above the clouds right now, white pillows below me and vast blue sky above. I’m on a flight to Berlin, to visit two of my closest friends, I’m anticipating the hugs and excited to explore every inch of the city. This is a familiar setting, I’m content just seeing the way the sun shines so much more brightly up here in the sky, unfiltered by the cloudy skies as we so call them. Really, up high there are no clouds. There never are. I’m disconnected from the world, but at the same time, I feel like all of it is open to me, like this isn’t anyone’s territory but the whole world’s. If I didn’t know my plane’s destination, I’d be happy not knowing, and I wouldn’t until we landed. Somewhere over the clouds, I can let my dreams wander wherever I dare.

And I’m thinking about the first time this particular feeling, along with most of my life experiences, started making sense.

I was 12, in 7th grade, still living in California (the US is my host country). One evening I was sitting on our carpet between the dining room and the living room - really, that house had no rooms on the lower floor, it was all open and full of light - and I remember my father excitedly telling me that he finally knew what we were.

Naturally I was like, what? What do you mean, what I am? Am I a vampire after all? Can I fly?

”You’re third culture kids, all three of you”

Of course, the term didn’t ring a bell back then. He explained it to my siblings and I, saying that third culture kids are kids like us, that live in another country than their parents are from, or whose parents are from two different countries, or who’ve moved around. Ding ding ding, bingo.

Then he gave me a book. “Third Culture Kids: Growing Up Between Worlds” by David C. Pollock and Ruth E. Van Reken, both of whom knew Ruth Useem, who coined the term third culture kids - and the term third culture, the distinct culture that each TCK creates out of all the cultures they’ve built ties to.

I read that life-changing book for the first time that winter of 2014, while on a trip visiting family. Funnily enough, I read it on the airplane, too - plenty of time on long-haul 12 hour flights! This flight is only an hour n a bit long, so I’m listening to BTS’ new album on repeat while writing a blog post.

I recall reading the first anecdote by a fellow TCK in the book, a girl called Erika on a plane leaving Singapore, the country she’d mostly grown up in, gazing down on it for the last time, being lost as to where she fit in the world when she made it back to the US, moving around and missing “home” but never again finding it as she left it. I still get a lump on my throat when I think about it. I think it’s a story integral to TCK’s experience. We’ve all sat on an airplane feeling our lives be ripped away from us like the ground beneath our feet. We’ve all landed someplace else and found ourselves even less grounded than we were in the air.

Speaking of which, my airplane is descending. We’re in the clouds now. Yes, I’m on airplane mode. It’s a propeller plane, the wheels went down. I can’t see Berlin yet, but I have faith it’s down there.

The book continued to touch upon so many areas of the TCK experience, from who we are and what defines us, to what unique challenges we face and how we can cope, to what we can contribute to the world and in what ways we can turn this into a gift. Rootlessness, restlessness, unresolved grief, adaption, ways of thinking, relatable stories that’ll make you chuckle or cry with empathy, rich stories full of other TCK’s lives that’ll make you feel so much less alone - this book has got it all. If you’re a TCK, this is a guide to yourself and to life. I truly don’t know if I’d gotten this far without it...

I CAN SEE BERLIN. WE BROKE THROUGH THE CLOUDS. Gosh, everything looks like a tiny tiny world of toys from up here. We’re gliding above the earth on wings. No matter how many hundreds upon hundreds of times I’ve done it, I still love flying.

Anyway, my point was: read Third Culture Kids - Growing Up Between Worlds if you haven’t already.

Oh, why am I thinking about this on a flight?

There must be so many TCKs out there who don’t know they are TCKs, who can’t put a name to their experience or identity, who may or may not know there are many others like them...

I feel lucky to have found out I am a TCK. I always have been, but knowing allows me to understand it better, and understanding leads to making the best out of myself. I hope that, through these books, through these online blogs, through the voices of many TCKs all over the world, we can establish a community and an awareness for ourselves.

So what are the chances of someone knowing the term TCK? What are the chances of my English teacher bringing it up in class, the first teacher to ever do so? What are the chances of that being the only lesson I miss due to an unfortunate wisdom tooth operation? THEY CAN’T BE VERY HIGH, SO WHYYYY THE HELL DID EXACTLY THIS HAPPEN TO ME- 。・°°・(＞_＜)・°°・。

I just wish I had the chance to share with people in real life, to for once feel like I understand the concept of “home” and of “belonging” like FCKs seem to, but in my own way. So here I am on the internet, instead of real life - as always. Ughhhhh.

I know this post is all over the place, but so am I. Quite literally. I’ve just arrived at Berlin-Tegel airport, and it feels so... homey. comforting. warm. Although I have happy memories of being here once with my dear @pleasekillme432 (the flight was iconic, man), airports are also just a safe haven for me. So here I stay, relishing this sweet taste of home just for a little while. I can’t wait for my friend to show up at my arrival gate, yet already now, I’m smiling.

✈️

[abybweisse]

Do you think that preteens and teenagers should really be reading Black Butler? I have seen posts saying how they shouldn't be, because of the themes that it deals with and they can't fully understand them a lot of the time. Not to mention how is IS rated TV-MA and the manga is 17+. But most fans continue to be younger, some as young as 11!

I think Yen Press just says “young adult”, and Hachette Book Group specifies 16. 16 is probably a good age to start at, considering the mature content of the series. The average person under that might really have trouble grasping some things or be too disturbed by them. However… many people older than that have the same issues, honestly.

And there are people under 16 who have the reading comprehension skills to understand it very well and the emotional wherewithal to handle the themes and gruesome details. I was already in my late thirties when I got into this series, but I was once one of those young people who read way above my age and didn’t really have a problem with content. Not any serious problems, anyway.

Not only did I pleasure-read “Brave New World” when I was 12 (in 7th grade), but I chose to use it for papers sometimes, even though I knew it would be required reading in 12th grade. 😆 By the time I *had* to write a thesis on it in my AP English class, I didn’t need to do anything but choose my topic within it, look up some pointers, and get my wording right. Got a 98/100 on that… and that’s from a teacher who only gives you 100/100 if your paper gets published somewhere. And she was not joking about that…. She made a copy of that paper for her own collection; I actually still have the original with the red ink marks.

Back in 7th grade I got so bored with my English class that I was kind of acting up, so they placed me in honors. My honors teacher probably wished they hadn’t… because when it came time to do one of our book reports, I wrote mine on “Being There”. It has a somewhat graphic description of a (clothing on) sex act between two men, and one of the men has severely limited mental capacity, so it wouldn’t be considered consensual — he didn’t understand what the other man was even trying to do. Anyway, she didn’t know beforehand what book I’d selected, and when I turned it in she probably didn’t look right away. When the papers were returned, mine hadn’t been graded. Instead, it had a note saying she wouldn’t grade it unless she got a signed note from my father saying it was okay. That woman figured there’s no way my *father* would let his precious 12/13yr old *daughter* read such “smut” if he knew about it. Little did she know…. Next day I returned with that signed letter. My father handed her her own damn ass for trying to limit what I’m allowed to read. He’d been a literature enthusiast and poet for most his life and a poetry critic for many years, and he’d also always hated the school system. Like… in general. Pffft. I… think I might still have that paper, too? Not sure.

Anyway, there’s a point to this; it isn’t just me bragging about myself. I promise.

Just because some group of people decided that you should be at least a certain age to read something doesn’t mean you actually have to be. The minimum age they come up with is a good guide… for the average reader. Of course, those groups are generally also worried about “young, impressionable minds being fouled by exposure” to _____ (fill in the blank). That’s probably why my 7th grade honors English teacher didn’t approve of my book choice. I, for one, think it should be on an individual basis whether someone actually follows that guide.

That said, I *do* (from time to time) come across readers in this fandom that maybe shouldn’t have picked up the series at the age they did… or even at all. Some can handle the mature content but have trouble fully understanding what they are reading, even if it’s in their native language. Others comprehend it just fine (or well enough) but are traumatized by the content. And there are those who simply don’t get it, eventually find it disturbing beyond measure, and typically end up leaving the fandom.

**So, it’s ultimately not really a matter of age but a matter of the individual’s reading comprehension and their ability to handle mature content.**

[deatharcana]

when i was young, i had so many dreams. first i wanted to become a vet. i love animals, and i wanted to make sure people could live happily with their pets. but then i realized i would have to operate on them or put them down, and i would get sad. so i decided being a vet wasn’t for me. then i wanted to be an astronomer. stars and planets and space fascinated me, especially late into elementary school. when i was going to open houses for middle schools, i put ones that had prominent astronomy clubs at the top of my list. but then i was told that it was a bad idea because the schools weren’t in my neighborhood. so i went to my closest zoned middle school to make it easier, even though that wasn’t in my neighborhood either. i ended up giving up on astronomy because my middle school had no club for it and any attempts of looking into it at home were met with responses like “you should look into being a doctor, they make lots of money.”

i liked to draw in middle school too. even though i was only in an art class for 6th grade, the teacher said i had a good grasp on the things she would ask us to do, and she liked the things i made during our “freestyle” days. during 7th grade i would go to the art room during lunch to doodle, because i didn’t like sitting with people who made fun of me in the cafeteria. but then the art teacher reached out to my parents to see if they would let me stay after school for a late-day art class she had twice a week. my parents didn’t know i drew; i kept it hidden for a reason. they were upset at me for “not showing them” the things i did, and then pushed for me to do it more and more. drawing wasn’t fun anymore. so i stopped. i remember telling the art teacher i was sorry during the last week of 8th grade. now i’m sorry to myself too, because if i had kept drawing, i think i would have been much happier. i think it’s safe to say that it might be a current “dream” to attempt to pick it up again. but i know it’s not possible.

in high school, i joined band. it was one of the few things of school i enjoyed, because it wasn’t something that i could be pushed to do; it was something i enjoyed no matter what. i got into a fight during one of my classes in sophmore year because a classmate was making fun of band kids. i met some of my best friends in band, and i still talk to two of them to this day. i thought about maybe becoming a music teacher; mr. oberle was one of the nicest people at school and he helped me with a lot. so i thought maybe i could do the same for kids in the future. but towards the end of junior year, something clicked and i just felt like it would be better if i didn’t pursue it. i don’t actually remember what it was; an overheard conversation seems right but i can’t guarantee it. i had no way of continuing music after leaving high school anyway, so it’s probably best in that regard.

the last dream i had was to become an english teacher in japan or south korea; it’s no surprise that it stemmed from being a weeb interested in anime at first, but it branched out much further than that. my aunt, before she passed away, was an english teacher who traveled the world and taught english in a bunch of different countries. she was the one person who seemed determined to keep my interest where it was. my room is filled with all different kinds of language books for japanese and korean, along with history books, books that focused on different aspects of the countries (a book about japan’s red-light district and one on north korea are examples) and travel guides. i still hope that maybe this dream is a possibility, that in some way it might come to fruition.

but now, i have two dreams that seem to coincide with each other. to live past the age of 30, or to die before then. only one will be fulfilled, and it’s not hard to tell which one it will be based on how i am now.