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kjack89 · 1 year ago

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Back to Where We Started (Chap. 2/?)

The E/R Mr. & Mrs. Smith AU continues. Read Part 1 here (tumblr | AO3)

Modern AU, established E/R.

Three Years Later

The village president heaved a sigh so loud that it actually caused feedback on the shoddy microphone system set up in Village Hall. “The Board recognizes Mr. Smith for public comment,” he said with a reluctance usually reserved for someone agreeing to a root canal.

Enjolras stood to head up to the podium, but before he could even inch away from his seat, a board member raised her hand. “Mr. President,” she said shrilly, “I would like to remind the speaker that public comment is limited to three minutes per speaker.”

She had the audacity to smirk at him, and Enjolras ground his teeth together as he glared at her. He was well aware of the rules, especially since the so-called ‘Smith Rules’ had been voted into effect only the prior year, and only after he had successfully filibustered the village board into not renewing an entirely unnecessary TIF district.

Of course, he was also well aware that the local ordinance on public comment was in direct violation of state statute, just as he was equally well aware that he had no ability to fight it lest he do the exact opposite of his intended purpose and draw attention to himself.

After three years, Enjolras was fairly certain that this was his personal hell.

Still, he took a deep breath and forced his expression into something slightly less murderous as he stepped up to the microphone. “Good evening,” he said. “Four days ago, the village library board of trustees voted in a meeting that was not advertised to the public – in violation of the Open Meetings Act, I would add – to remove a number of books from the shelves without any public input. These books—”

“Mr. Smith,” the village president interrupted, sounding bored, “if you have an issue with the library board, you should take it to the library board.”

Enjolras gritted his teeth and counted to five in his head before continuing, “As much as I would love to take it to the library board, that board has implemented even more draconian rules when it comes to public comment, including submitting a request to comment five days in advance and then subsequently denying such requests. Therefore, I would like to use my time here to make sure the public record reflects—”

He was again interrupted, this time by a different board member. “Motion to table public comment,” he said.

Enjolras’s scowl deepened. “You can’t table public comment—”

“Seconded,” another board member said.

“All those in favor?” the village president said quickly, before Enjolras could say anything else. He didn’t even wait for any of the board members to speak. “The ayes have it and public comment is tabled. Turning now to our committee reports…”

Planning how to best simultaneously firebomb the entire village board’s houses using nothing but common household goods was the only thing that kept Enjolras from losing his entire mind on the drive home.

Grantaire glanced up when Enjolras stomped inside. “I’d ask how it went, but…”

Enjolras snorted and flopped down on the couch. “I think putting bamboo shoots under my fingernails would be preferable,” he said dryly.

Grantaire nodded. “Want me to take your mind off of it?” he offered.

Enjolras sighed, considering it for a moment. “Yeah, ok.”

“You know,” Grantaire said about twenty minutes later as he looked for wherever he had tossed his boxers on the living room floor, “if it bothers you that much, you can always just not go.”

Enjolras propped himself up on his elbow, frowning. “What?”

“I’m just saying,” Grantaire said with a shrug, tugging his jeans on. “You don’t have to go to every single village board, library board, school board, whatever the fuck board meeting in this town.”

Enjolras stared at him. “But then how will things get better?”

Grantaire gave him a look. “You tell me.”

Now Enjolras sat up, his frown deepening into a scowl. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“Just…” Grantaire sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “You’ve been doing this for how long now? And has anything gotten demonstrably better?” Enjolras opened his mouth to respond but Grantaire beat him to it. “And don’t give me that, the arc of the moral universe thing—”

“Yes, Dr. King is generally fairly difficult to argue against, so I can understand why you wouldn’t want me to bring that up,” Enjolras said coolly.

Once upon a time, this would have devolved into an argument, the kind that had them shouting at each other and usually ended with them fucking on the floor until one or both of them had rug burn. Now, Grantaire just shrugged his shirt on and buttoned it with nimble fingers. “Anyway,” he said, “I’m gonna go order food. The usual?”

“Yeah,” Enjolras said, a little dully. “The usual.”

Grantaire nodded and headed into the kitchen and Enjolras got up off the couch, grabbing his own clothes and putting them on mechanically, his mind elsewhere.

Mainly on continuing the argument he and Grantaire should’ve been having in his head. Where he always won, of course, though it wasn’t nearly as satisfying this way.

He started to follow Grantaire to the kitchen but paused in the hallway in front of one of Grantaire’s photos, blown up and framed. It was one of Enjolras’s favorites, a close up of an elephant sloshing through mud, and a sudden memory popped in his head, unbidden.

Grantaire pressed a kiss between Enjolras’s shoulder blades as they lay tangled in the sheets in their hotel room in Nairobi. “What are you thinking?”

“Mostly that what we just did could get us sentenced to jail,” Enjolras told him.

Grantaire laughed lightly, reaching down to lace his fingers with Enjolras’s. “Yeah, but it was worth it, right?” He didn’t wait for an answer, trailing kisses up Enjolras’s neck until Enjolras turned over to kiss him properly. “But I don’t think our committing illegal acts of sodomy is the only thing on your mind.”

It hadn’t even been two days and Grantaire already knew him better than anyone in a long time, and Enjolras sighed, scratching his fingernails lightly across Grantaire’s stubble. “It’s not,” he admitted, “but what I’m about to say is going to sound stupid in comparison.”

Grantaire turned his head to brush a kiss across Enjolras’s palm. “Try me.”

“This whole time that I’ve been in Africa, I never got to see an elephant.”

“Seriously?” Grantaire said with a light laugh, though his expression softened when he saw the look on Enjolras’s face. “I’m sorry. That’s not stupid.”

“You say after laughing,” Enjolras grumbled.

Grantaire leaned in and kissed him, slow and sweet. “How about this?” he said softly. “I’ll bring you back to Africa one day, and we’ll see all kinds of elephants.”

It was a ridiculous thing for anyone to say after only two days, but for some reason, Enjolras couldn’t find it in himself to make fun of him. “Ok,” he said instead. “That sounds like a plan.”

But they never had made it back to Africa, or anywhere else for that matter. Combeferre had seen to that, in perhaps some kind of extremely thorough retribution for Enjolras going just slightly rogue.

He had seen Combeferre exactly once since returning stateside three years prior, on the day he and Grantaire went to fill out the paperwork for their marriage license, when Combeferre had brought him a driver’s license, and nothing else.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” Enjolras asked, almost insulted, as he squinted at the driver’s license Combeferre had just handed him.

“Nothing,” Combeferre told him, unusually dry. “That’s sort of the point.”

Enjolras frowned at him. “You’re not even going to give me a passport?”

Combeferre just gave him a look. “I give you a passport and at the first sign of anything exciting happening in some country halfway around the globe, you’ll be gone, defeating the entire purpose of this little exercise.”

He was right, of course, not that Enjolras would ever admit that. “So, what, I’m just stuck here for the rest of my life?”

“Only for the next three to five years.”

Combeferre didn’t say it harshly but Enjolras still flinched, the reality of what faced him hitting for perhaps the first time and settling like dread in the pit of his stomach. “But what am I supposed to do for the next three to five years that’s actually worthwhile?”

For the first time that morning, Combeferre looked like he was trying very hard not to laugh, or at least smile. “Have you ever heard the expression ‘act locally, think globally’?”

Enjolras stared at him, incredulous. “You want me to change the world from here?”

“No,” Combeferre said honestly, “but I suspect you’re going to try regardless.” He fixed Enjolras with a stern look. “Just as long as nothing you do gets absolutely any media attention outside of this town, county at the most, you’ll be fine.”

“Do you have any idea—” Enjolras started hotly, but Combeferre cut him off.

“This was your idea,” he said, matching Enjolras’s tone. “Don’t blame me for trying to make sure it gets executed properly.” He paused, giving Enjolras a searching look before adding, deliberately casual, “Unless you no longer want to go through with this.”

Enjolras’s stubbornness more than anything kept him from admitting that he’d been thinking just that. “I didn’t say that.”

Something flickered in Combeferre’s expression, and he shrugged and looked away. “Fine,” he said. “Then if you do want to go through with this, this is how you do it. You stay here, you keep your head down, and you don’t draw any attention to yourself.”

Enjolras swallowed and nodded. “Fine,” he said, tucking the fake driver’s license into his pocket. “Then I’ll see you in three to five years, I guess.”

But of course, all of that was easier said than done, and not just because dealing with the village board and all the other nominally elected boards in the village were enough to drive Enjolras to drink the way that Grantaire did. There was also the small matter of Grantaire, who had apparently taken his promise to take Enjolras back to Africa seriously.

They had spent much of the first few weeks of their marriage lying in bed next to each other, Enjolras’s head pillowed on Grantaire’s chest as Grantaire enthusiastically told Enjolras all of the places that he planned on taking him for their honeymoon, or on vacation.

And every time, Enjolras would demur, or hedge, or make up some reason why now was really not a good time. Until, on the fifth time Enjolras had suggested that they should instead reupholster the living room furniture, Grantaire had rubbed a soothing hand down Enjolras’s arm.

“I just want you to know,” he said, his voice quiet, “I understand, and I want to try to help you.”

Enjolras frowned, rolling onto his side to look up at him. “What do you understand?”

“Your PTSD,” Grantaire said, and Enjolras stared blankly at him. “I wish I had put it together sooner, but…that’s why you don’t want to leave, because of what happened in Burundi.”

“No, that’s not—” Enjolras cut himself off and pushed himself away from Grantaire, his blood inexplicably pounding in his ears. “I don’t have PTSD.”

Grantaire watched him with something wary in his expression. “Ok,” he said, though he didn’t sound like he believed Enjolras even remotely. “Just know that I’m here for you, in whatever way you need me to be, and for however long it takes.”

But it hadn’t taken long for Grantaire to stop asking altogether, and as their life together settled into a well-worn and, to Enjolras at least, miserable pattern, the gulf between them had grown to the point where they might as well have been in separate countries, if not continents. Enjolras spent most of his time on his computer or phone; Grantaire spent most of his time at work or in his dark room he’d set up in the garden shed; and neither of them said anything to fill the space between them.

Maybe that was just how marriage was supposed to go.

“Food’ll be here in twenty,” Grantaire said, breaking his reverie so suddenly that Enjolras flinched, startled. Grantaire frowned slightly, his brow furrowing. “What are you doing?”

Enjolras jerked a shrug. “Just looking at this picture,” he said, before throwing caution to the wind and asking, “Do you remember promising to take me back to Africa?”

Grantaire’s eyes slid to the picture then away again, his expression unchanged. “Yeah,” he said shortly, before telling Enjolras, “Don’t forget, I have an early start tomorrow morning.”

“Right.” Grantaire nodded and started to brush past him but Enjolras reached out, grabbing his arm. “Grantaire, wait. I—”

He broke off as Grantaire looked back at him, something almost pained in his expression. “What?”

Enjolras’s throat felt tight, and he shook his head. “Never mind,” he said. “Food’ll be here in twenty?”

Grantaire nodded again. “Yeah.”

“The usual?”

“Yeah.”

After three years of marriage, what was even left to say?

— — — — —

Enjolras woke up the next morning alone in bed, and it took him a moment to remember what Grantaire had said about having an early start. He rolled over onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, trying to summon the motivation to get out of bed for yet another day of the same exact thing.

Without warning, he heard the shrill sound of his cell phone ringing, and he heaved a sigh, turning onto his side to reach for his phone on his nightstand.

But that phone was silent, its screen black, even as the piercing ring continued, and Enjolras was suddenly reminded of the only other thing Combeferre had given him.

“Here,” he said, a little gruffly, handing over a small black flip-phone. “Paid for in cash, entirely untraceable. Use it if there’s ever an emergency.”

Enjolras scrambled out of bed, dropping to the floor to paw through the storage bins under the bed until he found the phone in question, plugged in underneath the bed where he’d put it almost three years ago.

With trembling fingers, he opened the phone and held it up to his ear. “What happened?”

“Good to hear your voice, too,” Combeferre said, and Enjolras allowed himself about thirty seconds of smiling at the automatic relief of hearing his best friend and partner-in-crime’s voice after so long.

“It is,” he said. “Good to hear your voice, I mean, but I don’t think you called just because of that.”

“I didn’t,” Combeferre confirmed, suddenly serious. “Someone leaked a number of top secret documents relating to foreign, namely American, interference in Burundi.”

Enjolras went very still. “With Lamarque?”

“Yeah,” Combeferre said. “The documents included a redacted file on Lamarque’s killer.”

Enjolras stood instantly, his heart pounding. “Then it’s go time,” he said. “Three years are long enough for the moral universe. Time to get some justice on our own terms.”

“Enjolras,” Combeferre said, something strange in his voice, “the documents were leaked.”

“So?”

“So someone wanted us to find them. Counted on us finding them.”

Enjolras shook his head, not following where Combeferre was going with this. “And?” he said impatiently.

“And I need you to remember that,” Combeferre said, his voice low. “Whatever was released was deliberately chosen by someone and leaked in such a way that they knew we’d find it. That you’d find it. And they had a reason for doing so.”

“Combeferre what—”

“It was Grantaire.”

Combeferre delivered the words with solemnity, like he was dropping a bomb onto Enjolras’s life, and Enjolras paused, trying to understand what he was saying, and what Grantaire could possibly have to do with any of this. “What was Grantaire?”

Combeferre took a deep breath. “Grantaire killed General Lamarque.”

>>Read Part 3 Here>>

#exr #enjolras x grantaire #enjoltaire #enjolras #grantaire #fanfiction #les miserables #modern au #spies and assassins au #mr and mrs smith au #flashback heavy chapter sorry #some things are easier to show in a movie lol

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obsessivelooter · 2 years ago

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𝐌𝐚𝐠𝐮𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐢𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐫𝐲: 𝐌𝐲 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐚

Prelude:

Recently there was a large book fair in my city, this year with a much wider assortment of manga (last year I saw like 6 series tops). So I decided to pick one out, there were very few first volumes and most I wasn't interested in but this one stuck out to me from its cover alone.

Actual book talk:

The book follows a kid named Theo Fumis, a good egg, who adores books, but in his hometown of Amun is discriminated against on the account of his mixed race so isn’t allowed in the local public library. Theo dreams of one day visiting Aftzaak, City of books, where he could read all the books he wants.

I’m not gonna say the plot is exceptionally special, I'm sure something similar already exists but, I really like it. I enjoy seeing how the most disenfranchised members of society are treated, it really helps set up a good groundwork for any further worldbuilding.

[worldbuilding]

Hell, let's talk more about the worldbuilding. The fact that it’s based on Arabia and the folklore of Arabian nights is really refreshing, and it works really well in the context of the story, considering the importance of the Islamic golden age in the history of literature and libraries. The Islamic culture of giving alms is covered briefly as well, and the possible reason why Theo hasn't received any deepens the world nicely. Plus the astatic is just 😙👌.

Not to say the text rests on its laurels, it has some really nice worldbuilding unique to it. For example, the one that really impressed me was how the sea in this world has become virtually unnavigable due to the heavy fog, and thus the most popular book series is about a pirate captain mapping the world to claim it as its own(in a chill way). According to the VERY nice worldbuilding section at the back of the volume, it's also pushed by the central library to promote cultural tolerance among its readers, which is very cool of them 👍! The central library and its librarians seem very interesting as well, can't wait to learn more about them in their offices in further volumes. the magic system has some potential but at least in this volume it's not heavily explored, but I would love to learn more about spirits that can apparently enchant books.

[pretty pictures]

before continue I'd love to share some of this books incredible art!

I especially liked this page-turning pair of two-page spreads

and this is that worldbuilding section I talked about

[Characters]

All the characters were very interesting with the exception of the townsfolk who understandably didn't get many lines.

Theo is the quintessential kid protagonist, staying very nice and polite even through all the racism he goes through on the daily basis. That’s not saying he’s some kind of saint, he loathes his long ears, pale complexion, and blonde hair, that differentiate him from the townsfolk, wishing he wasn't shunned. He also feels guilty for making his sister have to provide for him and his education.

Tifa, is an especially hard working and caring sister to Theo, working dawn to dusk to put him through school and give him opportunities that she never had because she can’t read. My hope is that she isn’t relegated just to flashbacks after Theo leaves town.

The Kafans (librarians)

from all the librarians has to be Pipiri, a rowdy pixie like creature, the primary representative of the restoration office, her off the cuff and silly yet knowledgeable personality with her expressive movement quickly endured me to her. I especially liked her interactions with her junior and protogyny Nanako, where she is often the butt of the joke.

Nanako herself is a grate character. She’s fairly reserved but not shy and highly skilled for her age and experience. her mild nature plays perfectly off Pipiri’s hot and brash nature; even though she seems somewhat demining in their interactions it’s obvious Nanako admirers if mothing Pipiri’s skills as a restorer, a position with Nanako is dedicated mind and soul.

Sedona despite being the Kafan we spend the most time with didn't feel especially interesting. Only after I had some time to reflect, I realized that she was the only person we saw using magic, I assumed magic was not that rare among Kafans but it's possible it's rare and mostly concentrated in the members of the Protection office.

Lastly, there’s Anzu, the head of the expedition and an experienced member of the liaisons office. Let's get this out of the way first she's a MILF with a hard M, she's a mother of six with what has to be a very dedicated husband. She's by far the most experienced and knowledgeable in the group. I liked her a lot!

[Final thoughts]

Overall I really liked My Magus of the Library! The story is fairly simple and straightforward, but the characters and worldbuilding make it a unique and enjoyable take on the fantasy genre. It's got a lot of potential and I'm looking forward to the next volume (actually in the time it took me to write this I already bought the next volume, but haven't touched it yet).

If you like good worldbuilding and appreciate libraries this is a manga for you

#magus of the library #mitsu izumi #manga #graphic novel #manga review #book review #arabian nights #worldbuilding #grimoire #fantasy #adventure #manga art #library #books #sorry for any typos

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clockworklozenges · 2 years ago

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The reason I support zlibrary is not to pirate new books, but rather to acquire old ones. Take Immanuel Kant's (may he rot in the deepest of hells for forcing philosophy students to endure the same misery he sought to endorse) seminal work, The Groundwork For The Metaphysics Of Morals. Immanuel Kant has been dead since 1804, which at the time of writing is 219 slutty, slutty years. That's a touch more than the 20 years for trademarking and copyrighting laws generally reserve. His descendants, if there are any, and there are likely not as Kant was a frigid weasel-man, are probably rich enough.

Google Books does have a preview of this book, yes, but those previews lack page numbers, so are fundamentally worthless as resources to cite. My local library has no copies, and my university library has three - one is taken out by an individual with the speed and hunger of a bear at a fishmarket as soon as the reading list is released, another is taken out by the lecturers who are forced to teach Kantian ethics and the third is lost in the labyrinthine web of the library sorting system, likely never to see the light of day again. The only people who make money from Groundwork, a book students and academics need to reference, are those who sell it for £70 just for a digital copy.

I cannot afford to drop that much (and know most students can't either) on a single citation. Just because I want to say "goodwill shines forth like a precious jewel" in my essay does not mean I'm morally obligated to spend £70 for those 7 words. Nobody benefits but a publishing corporation with a stranglehold on education. I see that as ethical piracy - the author is dead and their beneficiaries get nothing. Why spend £30 on Penguin's edition of Plato's Republic when Plato gets nothing out of it?

However, it's different with small authors. Authors who are independent or little-known, or crucially, alive to see the benefits of their work, should have their books bought. There is legitimate harm caused to a person through that act. But books that are old and inaccessible for whatever reason are to my mind, fair game, as no food is taken from the mouths of the authors, only from the pockets of publishers who bought the rights and want to milk Immanuel Kant's saggy prussian teats for all he's worth.

Idk if this is common knowledge, but since I’ve been seeing a lot of celebration at the return of zlibrary, I want to make sure that everyone knows that pirated books can destroy an author’s career. If you are pirating works by indie authors who are in Kindle Unlimited, Amazon considers that a breech of exclusivity agreement and can shut down your account. Forever. You can’t get a second account. And they won’t pay out the three months of earnings they owe you.

Traditionally published authors have also been struggling to get contracts, advances, and publisher support, and this shit can ruin it for them too. For the love of god use a real library. Get a KU subscription. Ask an author if they’ll send you an arc! Wait for a sale! Keep pirating your D*sney movies or whatever but there are so many ethical, cheap/free options for books. You are not hurting The Man, you’re hurting someone who is just trying to pay their bills.

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kleptonancydrew · 3 years ago

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Nancy Drew and Education

So apparently the Clue Crew is full of teachers? Who knew. Well, as a former homeschooled student, current teacher, and (hopefully) future homeschooling parent/teacher I have been planning on integrating the games into lessons for a long time. Below the cut I have just a few of my many ideas (some more fleshed out than others). Feel free to use, adapt, or add your own!

SCK:

- Braille

o How blind/vision impaired people navigate the world

§ How we can make it more accessible for them

o How do braille books and printers work

- ASL

o Memorizing the alphabet and basic signs

§ Build up fluency

o How HOH/deaf people navigate the world

§ How we can make it more accessible for them

o Connections of ASL to other signed languages

§ French Sign Language versus British Sign Language

- Dangers of gas leaks

o What to do if you smell or hear gas

- Inequalities between mens and womens sporting opportunities

o See Women’s Soccer

- What are performance enhancing drugs

o What is the difference between #steroids and the steroids your doctor might prescribe

- How drug running is a gateway crime

- Why blackmailing people isn’t good

- More reasons to never move to Florida

- Why you shouldn’t go to an actual high school part one

STFD:

- Television in NYC

o Soap Operas

o How television sets work

o Role of director

o Teleprompters

o Props

o Agents

- Theatre in NY

o Broadway

§ Learn a show

o Carnegie Hall

- Dangers in the ways we obsess over celebrities

o Paparazzi

o Stalkers

o Respecting privacy

- NY taxi system

- NY regional accents

- NY as a center for immigration – salad bowl

o Ellis Island

- History of NYC

o Geography of NYC

- Typewriters

- Towers of Hanoi

- Encoding

- How to make chocolates (with or without poison)

- Read along:

o New York the Novel (Edward Rutherford)

o The Power Broker

o All of a Kind Family

MHM:

- San Francisco Gold Rush

- Earthquake and Fires in San Fran

- Golden Gate Bridge

- Angel Island

o Asian (Chinese) Immigration to the USA

- Chinese Zodiac

- Fortune telling (and why it’s not okay)

- Bed and Breakfasts

- San Francisco today

o Technology boom

o Overpriced everything

§ How this hurts established residents

§ Homelessness in San Fran

- Bandits in the American West

- Hauntings in American buildings

- How to remove and install tile

- Renovations – refurbish something

- Antiques

o Visit an antique shop

- Importance of fire safety

- How to install lighting fixtures properly

- How to fix a dumbwaiter

o How not to be a dumb waiter

- Tangrams

- What is the Victorian period

o Significance of Queen Victoria

- Read Along:

o Little Brother

o Paper Son: Lee’s Journey to America

o Angel Island Gateway to Golden Mountain

TRT:

- The French Revolution

o Marie Antoinette

o Women and the French Revolution

o Worldwide effects of the Revolution

o Historians of the French Revolution

- Writing history

o How we can focus on different events in history, how we can be sympathetic to certain people, how we can fulfill different spaces in the historical narrative, criticism of history as a field, entering history as a field

- Wisconsin Dairy industry

- Alarm systems and how they work

- Fingerprinting

- Elevator safety

- Ski lifts

o Skiing

- Vandalism

- Taking care of libraries

- Latitude and longitude

- Keeping records of good events and bad events

o Nothing you do will ever stop me from loving you

- Some people keep different sleep schedules

- Journalism

- Making translations

- Why France has different holidays – to keep the ski lodges from getting too full

FIN:

- History of theatre spaces

- Use of film at theatres

- Magicians

o Houdini

o Learn a ‘magic’ trick

- Library of Congress

- Demolition – wrecking balls

o What’s involved

- Plaster casts

- Historic register of buildings

o Visit a local historic building

- Price of concessions and movie tickets today

- Nickelodeons

- Celebrity stunts for attention from press

o Celebrity endorsements

- Jazz music

o Dancing

- Kidnapping stories

o What to do if someone tries to grab you

- Rubber vs. electricity

- Art/artists of the 20s

SSH:

- Numbering systems (particularly ones not based on 10)

- Cultures of South America

o Maya

§ Cultural understandings

§ Connections to what appears at Beech Hill

o Aztec

o Inca

- Myths of lesser civilizations because of European preconceptions

- Why do countries have consulates/embassies in other countries

- What is amnesia and other medical memory issues

- Provenance and why its important part one

- Roles and responsibilities within a museum

o Visit a museum

o How to be critical of a museum and how knowledge is presented to you

- Modern art

o Make your own

o Visit a modern art museum

- Periodic Table of Elements

- Positive and negative molds for casting

DOG:

- Prohibition

o Speakeasys

o Amendments to constitution

o Drinking age restrictions

§ Comparison of USA to European countries

o Connections to modern drug policies

- Recognizing and photographing local birds

- Dangers in the forest – ticks and other pests

- Why water sources are important

o Flint water crisis

- Visit a state park

o Importance of maintaining public land

- Alcatraz

- How to care for dogs

- Noise pollution

o Light pollution

CAR:

- History of carousels

o Visit a carousel

- Lathes

- Harmonicas

- Band organs

- Writing messages with lemon juice and other hidden inks

- How to iron

o How not to iron

- How to make a sundae

- How amusement park rides are designed

- Soldering

- What is parole

o Welcoming those who have been in prison back to society

o Problems with the American prison system

§ How it disproportionately affects minority groups

o What can be done in prison reform

o Abuses in prison

o Making mental and spiritual help and guidance more available

o Making sanitary products available

o Prison for profit hurts everybody except the prison owner

o Educational opportunities for those in prison

o More half-way help

o Juvenile sentencing reform – more out of system help

o Respecting humanity of prisoners

o Ending the death penalty

- Depression

o How to get help

o How to help others

o Dealing with loss

DDI:

- Native peoples of the Pacific Northwest

- Orcas and other whales

o Whaling industry in Northwest and Northeast

o Things whale products were used for

o Visit natural history museum with whale exhibition

- Visit an aquarium with a good reputation

o Problems with places that do not take care of their sea life – particularly large sea life like whales

- What is a chowder and how is it made

o Try or make chowder

- Crabs

o Restrictions on different types of crabs – what type is local

o Try a crab dish

- Importance of different knots

o Get some rope and learn how to tie different knots

- Know the NATO alphabet and letter flags

- Boating knowledge

o Go on a boating trip – know the port and starboard sides

- Learn how to kayak

- Try to learn how to skip rocks

- Visit a lighthouse

o Importance and histories of lighthouses

- Smuggling – what is it and why does it happen

- Shanghaiing

- Chess

SHA:

- The continuous oppression and mistreatment of Native Americans

o From Mayflower to Pocahontas to Trail of Tears to Dakota to DAPL to Reservations to food deserts to voting rights to much much more

§ How to support current Native voices and concerns

o Why Native Americans are not a costume

o “Possession” of Native American objects and land

§ Arrowheads and native jewelry

o Broad overview of regional Native American groups – using their own voices

§ Special focus on local Native American groups

· Is there a local museum/educational resource that is either Native created or known for respecting Native voices

o Current Native Americans of note (ex: politicians, activists, artists)

o While the previous focuses on Native Americans in the modern day USA – also discuss First Nations from Canada and Native Groups from more southern areas

- Why temperature and pan matters when baking (show what happens in the oven when it goes wrong)

- Magnets and how different metals react differently to magnets

- How to take care of a horse and other farm animals

o Visit a local farm

o Try horse-riding

- Dangers of rattle snakes and scorpions

- Lassos and how to use them

- Legends of outlaws in the American West

- Ghost towns

- Flower stitches when knitting/crocheting

- Petrified wood

- How to make a campfire

- Picking fruits and veggies when they are ready

- Flower language

- Read Along:

o Native American folk tales

o Motorcycles and Sweetgrass

o Gone Away Lake

o Black Beauty?

CUR:

- Where are the moors

- Different regional accents within the United Kingdom

- British foods

- Latin

o Learn fun phrases and prayers

- Ancestry and genealogy

o Map your own family tree and recognize family crests

o How adoption has historically been a binding and irrefutable concept for lineage

o Find places your family lived

o Leaving a history for your descendants

§ Write a story book for them

o British Royal Family

§ Why incest is bad

- Parrots and their intelligence

- Secret passages in old buildings

- Alchemy

o Connections to modern understandings of science

o Historical understandings of elements

- Astrological signs

- Witch trials

- Legends of lycanthropy and other monsters

- Importance of not taking other peoples medicines

- Runic alphabet

- Feeding your pets a healthy diet

- Typing practice

- How to embrace the idea that home taught students are evil geniuses

- Forges and melting points of different metals

- Carnivorous plants

- Succulents

- Constellations in different places

- Read Along:

o The Secret Garden

o The London Eye Mystery

o Beastly

CLK:

- Great Depression

o Causes and effects

o Who was hurt

o Who was not hurt

o Areas of America

§ Dust bowl

o Famous people and literature

o Homelessness and poverty

§ Bread lines

§ Soup kitchens

§ Anti-homelessness architecture

§ Connections to mental illness and veterans

§ How we can help those who do not have homes today

- Early Telephones

- Shakespeare

- History of Nancy Drew

o Mildred Wirt Benson

o Edward Stratemeyer

- Fishing – why different fish respond to different bait

- Orphanages in the early 20th century

- Gas prices and accessibility of cars through time

- How to make pie

- What is jurisdiction and what is significant about crossing state lines

- How do banks work

o Safety deposit boxes

- Identify theft

- How to use a sewing machine

o Sew an item of clothing

- Mini golf – why and what

- Mirrors and their usefulness

- Stamp collections

- Radios and call signs

o Comparison to modern internet forms

- Telegrams

- Read along:

o Shakespeare

§ Midsummer Night’s Dream

§ Others

o Pollyanna

o Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm

o The Grapes of Wrath

TRN:

- Trains

o Steam trains

o Visit a train museum

o Take a train ride (if not a normal event)

o Importance of transcontinental railway

o Trains around the USA today

o Trains around the world (TGV, bullet train)

- Abraham Lincoln

- Mark Twain

- How to make a good burger (you leave off the PB&J)

- Slugs

- Periodic Table of Elements – abbreviations

- Gemstones

- History of Mining

o England (Newcastle upon Tyne)

o American West

o Appalachia

o Company Store

o Health issues for miners

o Danger of mines

o Current issues for mining

- Dancing the Hurley Burley

- People who collect creepy dolls

o History of porcelain dolls

- Embroidery

o How to

o Patterns/symbols

- General Stores in the American West

o Sears

- How to make taffy

- Find a well maintained and beautiful tomb and research who is entombed

- Focusing light through a magnifying glass can start a fire

- Read Along:

o Murder on the Orient Express

o Mark Twain books

DAN:

- All lessons in French

- How using different ingredients and different amounts of ingredients can affect the outcome of your cookies

- Paris métro

o History

o How to read/follow a métro map

o RER

- Montmartre and other Parisian neighbourhoods

- History of Île de la France and Square de Vert Galant Parc and Pont Neuf

- WWII and the French Resistance

o Cross of Lorraine

o Vichy France

o Abuses of the French gov’t in this period

- Paris and the fashion world

- Beauty standards and the rejection of natural beauty by society

o Dangers of weight and figure standards

o You are beautiful as you are

- Catacombs of Paris

- Famous French Dishes (from this region)

o Or Bretagne since I know and like them better

- The French Café

- Moulin in France

- Tea and how hot leaf water can taste so bad but still be good for you

- Buildings of Baron Haussmann

- Paris History

- Decoders

- Importance of vitraux historically, culturally, and religiously

- Read Along:

o Little Kids

§ Madeline

§ Babar

§ Petit Ours

§ Plume

o High School

§ Hunchback of Notre Dame

§ Les Mis

§ Dale Van Kley

CRE:

- History of Hawai’i and her native people

o How the USA screwed them over and continues to do so

§ Land colonizing today

o Listen to voices from Native Peoples

- Pearl Harbor

o USS Arizona

- Native myths and legends

- Local flora and fauna

- Surfing

- How to make bead necklaces

- Snorkeling

- Entomology

o Find some local bugs and identify and observe them

- Horticulture

o See if you can graft something

o Watch a carnation placed in water with food dye

o Regrow a fruit or veggie from the leftovers

- Go looking for seashells – see how many complete shells you can find

- Be aware of pesticides and the dangers they offer

o Dangers of organic food too

- Make something with pineapple in it

- Fishing – different kinds of native fish

- Volcanos

- Hula

ICE:

- Wolf sanctuaries – respecting wildlife and their place in the wild and not the domestic

o What to do if you see a wolf in the real world

- Fur trapping in Canada history

- Regions and Capitols of Canada

o Visit Canada?

- How the Canadian government works

- Use of French language in Canada

o Unique features of Canadian French

- Ice fishing

- How to cook omelets, salmon, etc.

o How to not add paprika cause like ew

- Fossils

- Radiation

o Marie Curie

- How to be a good maid

- Snowballs/ice balls

- Ice skating

- Winter weather safety

- Avalanches

- Saunas

- Birthmarks

- Fax machines

- How to not lie about bird watching

- Frozen water safety

- Modern offenses against First Nations by Canadian Government

CRY:

- Culture of the Arawak and Caraïbe

o Voodoo

- Mardi Gras in New Orleans

- Hurricane Katrina and aftermath

- French Influence

- Eyes and their parts and functions

- Teeth and their parts and functions

- Alligators in the Southern USA and how they are dangerous pests

- Graveyards/cemeteries and how to be comfortable in them

o Modern burial practices

o Why are they above ground in Louisiana?

o Places where they are running out of space for the dead

o Historic violations of final resting places

- Ventriloquism

- Lizards and how to care for them

- Rube Goldberg machines

- Curio shops

- Crystal Skulls

VEN:

- International crime

- Organized crime

- Scopa

- Italian basics

o Learn an Italian aria

- Italian food

o Not just spaghetti

- History of Venice

o Current issues in Venice

- Carrier pigeons

- Micro-dots

- “Observing the architecture”

- Try to make gelato (or just get gelato, either way you get gelato)

- Disguising yourself – put on an outfit and try to get me to not recognize you

- Picking locks

- Secret codes

- Solfege

o With hand signs

o Learn a song in solfege

- Carnivale

- Learn how the sausage gets made

o How to deal with food poisoning

- How to secure your living space against burglars

o Glass breaks, motion sensors, keypads, magnets, and more

- Read Along:

o Heist Society

o The Prince

o Merchant of Venice

HAU:

- Irish lessons (as much of this in Irish as possible)

o Why the Irish language is important

- Geography of Ireland

o Provinces and counties

- Irish names

- Why Ireland has disliked and should dislike the UK

o Historically

o Famine

§ Emmigration

o Easter Rising

o Troubles

o Present-Day

- Importance of alcohol in Ireland

o Uisce beatha

o Guinness

§ Guinness world records

- Irish music

o Irish instruments

o Learn some Rebel songs

- Ogham runes

- Irish foods

o Something with lamb, who cares what

- Don’t use friends for land development

- Bogs

- Chemical Reactions

- Rockets

- Inventions and secrecy during WWII

- Religion in Ireland

o Pagan traditions

o Christianity

o Catholic/Protestant tensions

- Irish wedding traditions

- How printing presses work

- Irish castles

- Sheep sheering/raising sheep

- Irish legends

o Fae

o Leprechauns

- Don’t drive and talk on the phone

RAN:

- Why blackface is problematic? (the fact that this needs to be said is problematic in and of itself)

- Scuba diving

- Sailing

- Bermuda Triangle

- Bats

- Primates and their intelligence

o Problems with animal research

o Koko

o Jane Goodall

- Island resort culture

- Metal detectors

- Pirates

o And the Caribbean

o Their abuses

o Different kinds

o Modern day pirates

- How do walkie-talkies work

- US mistreatment of island territories

- Read Along:

o Bloody Jack (Meyer)

WAC:

- Edgar Allan Poe

o Stories

o Baltimore

- Piano

- Victorian Dining traditions

o How to set a place for fancy dining

o How to fold napkins

o Table manners

o How to serve someone at a fancy dinner

o How courses might work

o How to use your silverware

- Why you shouldn’t go to an actual high school part two

o Just fyi – that’s not how uniforms work

§ Have a school inspired dress code for a week

- Bullying and why you absolutely will not be a bully

o How to respond to bullying

o Importance of talking to adults and counseling

- Logic puzzles

- Research the founding of a local school

- Stringed Instruments

- Plagiarism

o Turnitin

- Making sandwiches – like a good deli style sandwich

- Photography scavenger hunt – make a digital (or physical) yearbook

- Squirrels

- Orthographic projection

- DNA/RNA

- Saving every major project on three different thumb drives

- Getting along with roommates

- States and Capitals

o Countries and capitals of the world

TOT:

- Tornados

o Technology used to observe tornados

- Meteorology

- Prairie dogs

- Life on the great plains

- Great Plains Native Americans

- Small towns in the Midwest honestly be like that

- Defensive driving

- Make a disaster kit

- Know what to do in various natural emergency situations

o What is the local alert protocol

o What do local authorities recommend

- How to maintain and fix a car

- How to fix a broken device

- What is tenure

- How to budget

o Go to the grocery store on a strict budget (however much you come in under budget is your candy budget)

- Read Along:

o Little House

SAW:

- Basic Japanese phrases

o Learn to count

o Writing in Japanese

- Sudoku, nonograms, renograms

- Japanese ghost legends

- Japanese culture

o Tourism

§ Ryokans

o Space – everything small

o Politeness/formalities

o Hot springs/baths

o Tatami and paper walls

- Japanese cultural dress

o Kimonos

o Lolita? Fashion

- Japanese names

o Last name first

o How to address others in Japan

- Martial Arts

o Ninjutsu

§ Traditional tools

- Japanese tea ceremony

- Schools in Japan

- Teaching English as a foreign language

- Japanese subway/train system

- Pachinko and Japanese gaming

- Japanese vending machines

- Robotic animals

- Bento

- Japanese foods

- Origami

- How to fake a haunting

CAP:

- Basic German phrases

o How to make a German word

o Connections of German to English

- German food favourites

o Especially cakes

- Storytelling as a cultural entity

o How memory has worked differently in different times

- Glass blowing

- How castles provided for the local community

- Bavaria in Germany

o Cultural dress

- Glockenspiel

- How to make board games

- Monster stories of central Europe

- How to monitor security camera remotely

- Read Along:

o Heidi

ASH:

- Arson

o Watching how different accelerants burn a piece of paper

- All politicians are at least somewhat self-serving

o But write a letter to a local politician anyway

§ Different ways to contact elected officials, and why some don’t work

- How to make ice cream

- How a police investigation works

o Problems with police departments around the world – specifically USA

o Ways that police work unfairly targets minorities

§ If Nancy is innocent how many others are

- How to use matches and lighters safely

- Why you should not return to the scene of a crime – particularly a fire

- Making sure smoke detectors work properly and the system is connected

o We might not go to school but fire drills are still important

- What is a mass spectrometer

- Who to call if you’ve been arrested

- What to do if you get pulled over

- How the media can skew the truth and make their own narratives

- Sound mixing

- Be careful with what you say/post/record

o Keep receipts and clarify when possible

TMB:

- What not to do at an archaeological site

- Ancient Egyptian History

o Pantheon, notable figures, relevant events

o Pyramids, sphinx

o Pharaohs

- Modern Egypt

o Arabic alphabet

- History of archaeological digs in Egypt

o Why they’ve been problematic

- Dangers of the tombs

- Mummys

o How they are put together

- Tomb raiders

- Importance of water in the desert

- How to piece together a broken artifact

- How to gently brush off an artifact

- There is no such thing as a dictionary for ancient Egyptian

- Aliens did not build the pyramids

- Senet

- Desert life safety

- How mirrors can be used to light a room

- Read Along

o Rick Riordan

DED:

- Nikola Tesla

o All his fun stuff

o Tesla Coils

- 3-D printing

- Gummy fingerprints

- Faraday Cage

- Basic electric concepts

o How to build a circuit board

- Chemical safety

- How a lab might work

- Valuing different skills within academia

- Ultraviolet light

- How motorcycles work

- Freelance photography

- How to use academic databases

GTH:

- Slavery in the United States

o Origins

o ‘End’

o Civil War

o The connection to “southern culture”

o Continued abuses of Black people in America

§ Importance of recognizing Black voices and what they are saying

§ Listening even when it’s uncomfortable

§ Checking privilege when you have it

o Jim Crow Laws

- Plantations

- Gone With the Wind

o The good and the bad

- Civil War spies – female

- Carbon monoxide poisoning

- Burned out houses are not a safe space

- Do not go digging through people’s coffins – rest in PEACE

- Understanding that your family can be flawed

- If you don’t want to get married, if you’re not happy in a relationship, end it

- When a member of your family is sick you take care of them

- Make a will, just in case your cousin kills you

- Bachelor and bachelorette parties should feature activities that everyone is comfortable with

- Read Along:

o My Last Skirt: The Story of Jennie Hodgers, Union Soldier

SPY:

- Scotland and their identity

o Celtic Nations

o Independent Scotland

o Call a Scottish person

- Unicorns and other mythical creatures in Scotland

- Scottish food

o The appetizing parts

- History of spies

- Biowarfare

o Code Orange

o Other teenage stories dealing with anthrax

o Current events and concerns

o Historical biowarfare (smallpox blankets)

- Ziplining

- Archery

- How to bug someone

- Tartans and plaids

o Kilts

- Augmented Reality Glasses

- Record players

- How to reset a circuit breaker

- Read Along:

o Gallagher Girls

o Code Orange

o Little House (Martha)

o Little Brother (Doctorow)

MED:

- Don��t meet your heroes

- New Zealand

o Maori culture

- Survivor style game shows and realism

- I’m not saying Aliens can’t exist, I’m saying they def aren’t involved here

- Kayaking

- Submarines and what they can do

- Turtles

- Earthquakes

- Be careful with rope bridges

LIE:

- Provenance and why it’s important part two

- Greek art and how it was originally painted vibrantly

o Abuses of Greek art through the ages

- The British Museum and the issues with that

- Greek pantheon

o Legends and notable figures

o Religious traditions

- Iliad and Odyssey

- Art forgery

- How to fire clay pots and pottery

- Memorizing lines for a play

o Staging for a play

o Role of a director

- Theatre

o Lights

o Curtains

o Fly system

o Sound

- Greek alphabet

- Historical importance of the Greek language and culture

o Alexander the Great and Hellenization

- Olympics

o Historic and modern

- Greece and the European Union

- Make something with pomegranates

- Read Along:

o Iliad

o Odyssey

o The Thief

o Percy Jackson

SEA:

- Iceland

o Culture

§ Naming traditions

o Language

o Music

o Food

- Shipbuilding

o Historic and modern ships

- Ice caving

- Northern Lights

- Tides

- Snowmobiling

- Poetry

- What is xenophobia

MID:

- Some games just shouldn’t be made

- American witch trials

o What actually went down

o Misconceptions

- Treating people with albinism as real people

- Arson is bad

- Herbal remedies and how they can interfere with modern medicine

- Witchcraft and how not to

- Salem MA

- Ignorance promotes fear and hatred so we do our best to learn about others

#Nancy Drew Games #Clue Crew #Teaching #Education #Nancy Drew

37 notes · View notes

katieskarlette · 3 years ago

Text

No book for me (yet) :(

So I tried to be conscientious and get the new Sylvanas book from a brick-and-mortar bookstore instead of giving Jeff Bezos more money. It was a dumpster fire of fail, and I ended up ordering it from Amazon after all, only now I have to wait until Sunday, April 3rd, to get it.

[Explanation/rambling rant below.]

I remember a small, locally-owned bookstore in a strip mall where I used to order books when I was in elementary school. You could order and reserve a particular book, no matter how niche and obscure, and they’d call you to let you know when it was ready to pickup. That was over thirty years ago. Yet I can’t do the same thing now. I can order that book online and have it shipped to me, yes. But apparently my local B.A.M. (Books-a-Million) won’t do what that mom-and-pop store did circa 1988. You can only reserve a book that they already physically have in stock. They will not order a book that they wouldn’t normally carry and put it aside for you to pick up in-store. You have to do it online and have it shipped to your door. Is that convenient? Sure, but if I want to save $5+ on shipping by driving less than ten minutes out of my way, and have the experience of walking into a bookstore, browsing other stuff, and then taking the book home, I’m out of luck.

Maybe I’m biased because I work in a public library, where reserving and picking up books--especially hot new releases--is a major part of my job, but it can’t be that complicated for a big store like B.A.M. to set up a system for in-store pickup. I’m sure they would have some people order and then not pick up, leaving them stuck with an obscure book nobody else wants, but they could solve that easily by requiring customers to pay when ordering. Then if someone doesn’t pick up the book, the store still gets the money.

So yeah, there was no option to walk into a store a buy a copy of the book, so I was forced to order it online. I had gift cards from Christmas for both B.A.M. and Amazon, and by also ordering something a family member wanted I could get free shipping from Amazon, so that’s the route I went. But I’m pissed.

If I had known that’s what would end up happening, I would have ordered long ago so I could have gotten the book in the mail today. I had called B.A.M. on Thursday to reserve a copy, but they told me then I couldn’t reserve a book they didn’t have in the store yet. They didn’t tell me that they hadn’t even ordered the book at all. They had to have known that, and if they didn’t then their system sucks even more than I thought. Instead I went blissfully through the last few days, assuming I could just walk in today and grab a copy off the shelf, only to call this morning and learn this. It’s bullshit.

I already had a bad taste in my mouth giving Blizzard my money right now, and I’m not exactly thrilled with feeling like I have to read a book to (hopefully) understand the trainwreck that is Shadowlands lore (although I’ve bought every Warcraft novel so far, regardless of my current opinion on the plot), but I thought maybe I could ease my conscience a little bit by getting the damn book from a brick-and-mortar store, but no. There are no locally-owned bookstores in my city anymore (that aren’t exclusively Christian), so I didn’t even have the option to support one, but I figured even a big chain like B.A.M. was better than Bezos’ yacht fund. And they would have been, if they actually had the book in stock. WoW is too “niche” for them to bother stocking on their shelves, apparently. It didn’t used to be. I guess the franchise really has fallen that far.

And no, the consortium of 50+ libraries that includes my place of employment hasn’t ordered a single copy of the book, either, despite having a handful of the previous WoW novels in the system.

Could I download the audiobook version? Yes, but my brain doesn’t play nicely with audiobooks, and I lose focus very quickly. Could I download the ebook? Yes, but I’d still want the hardcover for my collection, so I’d end up paying for it twice. No thanks.

Arg! I was so looking forward to binge-reading the book on my day off tomorrow, but nope. I’m screwed. I’ll have to dodge spoilers as best I can. :(

#rambling about wow

3 notes · View notes

alianoralacanta · 1 year ago

Note

My local library system (in the UK) did not have a separate young adult’s section until 2001. Until then, all books that might have been categorised as YA were shelved in the adult section, within whichever subject genre made sense. It is now four stacks next to the adult fantasy/sci-fi section, itself separated into three stacks for YA (material the librarians consider to be specifically aimed at teenagers but unlikely to cause harm to children who want a “first adult book” or who have sensitivities to subjects typical of a well-educated 10-year-old) and one stack of “crossover” (which as used in this library would probably also be YA, but is distinguished as being aimed at teenagers and tackling subjects in a manner unsuitable for people who aren’t teenagers yet). Fiction and non-fiction are included, but due to purchasing decisions (informed by a committee mostly formed of 12-19-year-olds) The thinking is that teenagers like being treated like adults and are generally capable of following the norms of a modern library without prompting. This also helps out adults who want to read things like The Hunger Games but don’t want to be condescended towards for doing so. (There’s also an “easy adult reading” section for adults with low literacy, but it’s nowhere near the YA/crossover books - one of the criteria for YA/crossover inclusion at the local library is reading fluency at least to the level expected of an 11-year-old). Some books continue to be shelved in both YA/crossover and adult sections of the library, although this tends to be reserved for popular library books of the last ten years. This is when the teenager committee system got instituted for YA purchasing decisions; if they and the accession system for adults both happen to agree a particular.book is needed in multiple copies, at least one will go in both sections. That’s how arbitrary age banding is. This is not to say it is useless. It gives young readers an approachable method of expanding their tastes beyond the children’s library, which is particularly important in larger libraries that have physical barriers between some areas (one library near me has children’s books on a different floor to the floors for adult/teenage books). If a reader with low confidence knows that there is a particular section of the library which has books they will reliably find approachable and will meet them where they are, that reader will return again and again. If they know there’s somewhere to go when they’ve finished those books, the cycle continues for life. There’s a lot of books with LGBTQ+ characters/topics and books featuring minorities on the YA/crossover shelves, but that’s because readers of that age group have been demanding lots of books about such characters and topics. I expect that in the next decade or two, a similarly explosive increase will be seen in the numbers of books centering LGBTQ+ and minority experiences in the adult section in the library. Other sections, from adult non-fiction all the way to the picture books for under-5s, have been gradually gaining books that aren’t full of white-coded characters, but not at the same rate. The stories always existed. It’s simply that the sheer amount of these stories in YA and crossover makes it look like a neglected topic elsewhere in comparison, despite all of them having significantly increased over the last 25 years. (In the UK, the lifting of Section 28 in 2003 - 20 years ago - had a huge effect, and now those people are old enough to be in positions to affect commissioning of new books. It’s difficult to shelve a book before it’s published).

The other anon talking about YA as a genre demographic really gave me a lot to think about. It put some things in perspective. Gotta admit, I never really understood how YA authors and readers often say things like 'YA is the only place with books by and about people of color, queer people, etc.' Those stories have always existed, though? Are they saying the stories that always existed didn't actually exist until YA was created less than 20 years ago??? It does not compute. Maybe another part of it is that tropey stories like the ones in YA are also in genre fiction for adults, but they're harder to find because they're not all gathered in one place like in YA.

YA fans also just assume that old shit that sounds like YA was marketed as YA, often because it was rereleased as such. But just because the term 'YA' is old doesn't mean its current form is.

#libraries #YA #crossover #hooking in readers

141 notes · View notes

thepoisonroom · 4 years ago

Text

if your library doesn’t have an item you need, you can submit a request for them to purchase it! note that this is mostly true for public and academic/university/college libraries; school libraries don’t regularly offer this option, though you can speak with your librarian to learn more about what you can do.

submitting a request doesn’t guarantee they’ll purchase it 100% of the time, but it’s a good way to express your needs, and libraries often use this information to identify areas where their collection and services are lacking and create acquisitions plans! this is an especially useful option if you want:

a new or upcoming book! identifying highly-anticipated releases helps libraries make decisions about ordering books, developing collections, and planning outreach/programming

a translation or format (e.g. large print, braille, screen-readable e-book, audiobook on CD or tape, audiobook on playaway) that you need to access the work.

purchase requests are a great way to encourage your library to buy upcoming books that you’re excited about! this is a really good option for supporting authors, especially when you can’t buy the book yourself. read on for more info. keep in mind also that most libraries have privacy policies that protect any identifying data about patrons, including what individuals check out and what they request. if you’re not sure what your library’s policy is, check their website or contact their reference desk (see below).

if your library doesn’t have a book you want, there are a few options you can and should explore before jumping to a purchase request:

see if it’s available in alternate formats through other library tools! many libraries subscribe to publisher databases or ebook/audiobook borrowing platforms like overdrive. the items available here will not always be listed/discoverable in your library’s catalog system.

request it through interlibrary loan (ILL) or outerlibrary loan (OLL)! these are both commonly used terms for requesting items from other libraries. different libraries use these differently but most should offer one or both.

contact your library’s reference desk to see if they can help you find another way to access the thing you want! you can often get in touch with a librarian directly online; it’ll usually be listed as “ask a librarian chat” or something similar. most libraries will also answer questions over the phone or email, in person or will have a “contact us” web form you can submit.

so if you’ve checked out your options and you’re sure you want to purchase request, the process is pretty straightforward! my local public library’s website has this handy little link right at the bottom, but it’ll usually be listed as “request a purchase” or “recommend a purchase”

[image description: this image shows a list of links in black text on a grey background. The list of links is titled “Popular services”. The services listed are: reserve a computer, check your email, recommend a purchase, outerlibrary loan, ask a librarian, computing and wireless, reserve meeting rooms, email newsletters, and curbside pickup. The link that says “recommend a purchase” is circled in red.]

most libraries will have a webform that you fill out with item information that’ll look something like this:

[image description: this image shows half of an unfilled web form written in black text on a white background. The first field says Title above it. It is a textbox. The next field is a textbox titled Author/creator. The third field is a textbox titled Publisher. The fourth field is a textbox titled Date of publication. Below the textbox it says “Use the format YYYY-MM-DD (e.g., 2018-12-25)”. The fifth field is a textbox titled ISBN. Below the textbox it says “Please do not include any spaces or hyphens in the ISBN. The final field is titled Type of material. It has single-selection buttons for two options: Adult and Children’s/Teen.]

[image description: this image shows half of an unfilled web form written in black text on a white background. The first field has the title Format above it. It is a dropdown menu with the option “CD - Music” selected. The next field is a textbox titled Subject. The next field is a textbox. Above the textbox are the words “Where did you hear about this title?. Below the textbox it says “Give specific sources if possible. It might help us find more great materials”. The final field is an expandable textbox. It is titled “Additional comments”.]

the key things to remember when filling out the form are:

be specific if you need a specific format, translation, or edition!

not sure if the format/translation you want exists? use worldcat.org to find out! their search engine has this handy “view all formats and languages”/”view all editions” option that lets you see what might be available. it’s not guaranteed to be exhaustive, but it’s a good starting point. note that worldcat categorizes books (incl. ebooks) as distinct from audiobooks. clicking this button on a print book listing will show me only other print and ebook formats, and clicking it on an audiobook listing will only show me other audiobook formats.

[image description: This image shows a worldcat.org search result listing for the book We Had a Little Real Estate Problem by Kliph Nesteroff. The listing tells us that it is for an English-language print biography published 2021 by Simon & Schuster. The listing includes two links. One says “View all formats and languages”. This link is circled in red. The other link says “View all editions”.]

speaking of worldcat, it can be a great place to find the publication information you might need to populate the form. that said, try not to stress too much about the ISBN. it’ll be different for hardcover versus paperback versus ebook and vary between editions. just focus on being very specific about it if you need a specific format or language to access it.

if your library’s form includes a comments field, this can be a good place to put feedback for context, such as “our library doesn’t have many books on X topic and I’d like more” or “I think this book is an important text for my program/major” or “I recommend this text to a lot of my students and think it would be good if it were more easily accessible”. this kind of information is very helpful for librarians trying to decide how to develop their collections.

i hope that helps! it’s not a very complicated process, but i wanted to make sure to provide some context about how library purchases can help authors, improve your accessibility options, and show your library that there’s a demand for books on specific topics! i also hope to provide some clarification about library privacy policies and making your voice heard at your library.

#i know this might seem stupidly simple but i'm just remembering like two years ago when h*ather h*vrilesky #tweeted that it's insulting to authors to tell them you're going to check their book out from the library and #library twitter absolutely descended on her #there are lots of ways to support authors even if you can't buy their books yourself!!!#and i think it's easy to feel like there's nothing you can do it you don't personally have money and i want to remind people that #using public services and telling them ways they can better serve you is also a great way to get involved!#personal nonsense #long post #library science #i was worried this was too commonsense but i mean i work in a library so of course i know this is an option #but not everyone does

66 notes · View notes

melissanovels · 4 years ago

Photo

♡ Chapter 4 of TRANSIENT TIME TRAVELLER is out! ♡

○ Read on my Website ○ Read on Tumblr (below) ○ Read on Ao3 ○ Read on Royal Road ○

TTT is an LGBTQ+ historical fantasy novel about Aida, a time traveller hellbent on proving the innocence of a 1,200-year-old dead queen, and Lorian, an escaped princess-turned-officer who wants to drain the royal blood from their body, & the two coming together with the help of their mischievous future selves.

♡ Reblogs are appreciated! ♡

Read Chapter 4 Below:

She flipped through the third history text she’d finished that week, trying to spot any more clues she’d missed. It was lunch time, so she’d yet again found herself in the campus library instead of the dining hall or open piazzas with the other students. She’d tested the librarians and found that not many of them came around this corner of the ancient building. It let her eat her lunch of bread and butter in peace.

She pushed up her glasses as she leaned over her spine-broken books. It’d been two weeks since the semester started and she’d already finished all of the reading and had a head start on her essays and future projects, giving her ample time to read up about her new country’s history. One of the key aspects of wanting to get into Durante Academy was this library. More than 40,000 books were archived here. Everything from pre-classical recipes to first editions of history texts. She’d discovered a new biography on Eve’s life. Her favorite color? Burgundy. Aida couldn’t wait to buy a dress in that deep shade of royalty.

But she was getting nowhere today. Not only did this volume not have the answers she was searching for, there was a bug burrowing into her brain.

She hadn’t spoken to Lorian since the day they first met. It shouldn’t have mattered, being that he’d only done her a favor. She couldn’t remember a lot about what happened because she’d gotten completely baked, but she remembered that they’d bonded, right? That’s what people did, right? Or acquaintances at best. Her sisters often talked to one another about school, boys, girls. Their favorite actors and which ones they wanted to marry, what they wanted to be when they grew up. They’d never asked Aida what she wanted, never cared about her passions, but this boy had. That had to account for something, didn’t it?

So why hadn’t they talked since?

And why the fuck did it bother her so much?

Someone giggled. Down the aisle of books, three girls from one of Aida’s history classes were hiding. They had their hands cupped to their mouths as they whispered and pretended not to be looking at Aida. As a distant grandfather clock chimed for one, they ran off, their black dresses catching on their long legs.

Aida bit hard into her bread and chewed the tough crust so she couldn’t hear her thumping heart.

It didn’t bother her.

They didn’t bother her.

Her stomach growled in upset, so she organized her borrowed books and readied to leave. All she’d managed to find today was a new spelling of Queen Eve’s name—“Eta,” though scholars said this might’ve been a nickname used only by her loved ones—and, unfortunately, a new drawing of the Colosseum’s interior.

She didn’t know why she put so much time into these dead monarchs. Who were they but people who started and ended wars, who fucked and died vigorously and left palaces as their tombstones? The crown was now tolerable at best. No ruthless killings of Visatorre in the Colosseum, none that were publicized. She was able to go to school now, it wasn’t banned anymore. So why put all this time and energy into a system that didn’t give a damn about you in the first place?

“Aida?”

She started. She recognized that voice, and all of her nagging suspicions and fears suddenly disappeared with her upset stomach.

Lorian bounded up the library steps two at a time to meet her. He was waving, like she wouldn’t see an officer coming at her. Well, officer-in-training; she couldn’t let him get a big ego around her. “There you are!” he said, and took off his hat in a bow. “Good afternoon. Did you have lunch yet?”

She shuffled her books together and wiped any sort of emotion from her face. “How do you keep finding me? Are you spying on me?”

“Of course not. I’ve heard from the teachers that you enjoy spending your afternoon’s here, and I had a free afternoon to myself, so I decided to come find you.” He looked around without his eyes catching on anything. “A little medieval here, is it not? Different from the newly upgraded buildings.”

“A building built two hundred years ago with history dating back to the Classical era is medieval? No.”

He smiled that smile of his that irked her. “You have me there. So, have you learned anything more about Eve?”

She was surprised he remembered that. “Not much, only that—”She checked her notes. “People who loved her called her ‘Eta’, like how some Aldaían call their spouses ‘ama’ for ‘beloved’. That’s not well-known.”

“I didn’t know that, and I’ve been taught a lot about Roma’s history. You know, I didn’t know that she’d killed King Julius II’s wife. I was taught she’d killed him.”

“He’d killed himself a few days later. That’s what the books say, anyway. What books did you read from that? I’d like to research that topic. Most books say the opposite.” She started putting away her books. “Back when we were indulging in unfavorable substances, I pegged you as someone who didn’t know much about Eve.”

“I was…incapacitated at the time. Do forgive me if I said anything too obtrusive to you. I don’t remember much of what happened.” He looked around the now empty floor. “Please keep that night confidential. I don’t want it to harm either of our reputations.”

“What, two young people enjoying one another’s company with a natural reserve akin to morphine?”

“I mean two young people spending their time in…a woman’s bedroom. At night. It’s highly provocative, and I didn’t mean anything by that.”

“It was my dorm room, but sure. I’m sure that Roman standards suggest you spending your time elsewhere.”

“Please, don’t think me immodest, Miss Mirko. Aida,” he corrected when Aida gave him a look. “That had been my first day on the job. I’d…left my home quite suddenly not too long ago, and I was still getting my bearings when I was allowed entry as an officer for this prestigious Academy. I sought only to do the right thing, though I did enjoy our company that evening.”

“The evening spent with me talking at you for three hours straight about shit only I find interesting.”

“On the contrary. I found much of what you told me quite interesting. I was true on my word about never meeting a person as outspoken as you are.”

“Because the upbringing was that bad?”

He only nodded. “Very.”

“Then that’s something we have in common.” She stood on her tiptoes to put away a book on a high shelf. Lorian went to help but stopped once he realized she had it.

“Were you taught history in school?” Aida asked.

“In my teachings, yes. I didn’t really go to school, I was more so homeschooled. Why?”

“Because not many of us were lucky enough to be taught history. The good stuff, anyway. The shit that makes you think. A lot of what’s done in Bělico is taught orally. That’s how it was with me before I pushed for secondary schooling. Some of the schools don’t accept Visatorre into the school system. They’re still stuck in the past. I was the only one in my graduating class. It’s why I care so much.”

“That’s quite admirable. Not many people our age are adamant about getting the word out like you are. Most people just learn what’s needed to pass and carry on.”

“It’s the stuff that everyone should know about. What else we gonna learn about? The current royals? Gag me, I can’t stand them.”

Lorian offered to place one of the books on the high shelf. Aida tried it herself before giving in and lending it to him.

“Do you know if…the Bělico queen has done anything?” Lorian asked. “You’re from Bělico, right? Is she alright?”

“Queen Beatrice?” Aida asked. “Fuck no. I haven’t even seen the queen in person and I lived there all my life. She’s just like the queen here.”

“How so?”

Aida gave him a curious look before carrying on. He was a part of the royal guard, how did he not know about political affairs? “All they do is sit on the sidelines while their husbands do all the work, and it’s terrible work. Absolutely dreadful. If I were queen, I’d be like Queen Eve, who got shit done during her lifetime. Irrigation? Reconstructed. Trade routes from here to Aldaí? Reinvented. She’d helped to fund the first school for the blind, did you know that? She was interested in eyesight in a time which eyeglasses hadn’t been invented yet. Roman scholars would lead you to believe the good and loyal Romans did all that, but no. It was done by a queen whose city no longer exists. I’d honor her by doing everything she couldn’t do and more. I’d rework the entire system of Lyrica.”

“Will you now?” Lorian asked, leaning down to meet her eyes.

She tasted a sense of sarcasm on his tongue. She fought against it and stared into his eyes. It was hard, doing that with some people, but not so much with him. “Yeah, I will.”

“How—”

“I’d fix the school systems first. All children deserve to be taught, and it’d be the easiest change from a financial standpoint. Aldaí is progressive when it comes to this, so we can leave that to Prince Zaahir and that new princess he married. What was her name again? Beatrice and Lu…”

“I-I don’t recall,” Lorian said quickly, “but I agree with you. Aldaí is very progressive.”

“So then, if we can work out some type of stronger alliance with them, we then get to work on local modernization through the help of showing that the crown actually gives a fuck about us. We never see the royals, ever.”

“They do make public appearances from time to time,” he defended.

“Yeah, bullshit, I’ve never seen them. If anything, they only visit the biggest, strongest cities that’re pouring lyria into their pockets.”

Lorian shrugged in agreement. He looked like he had more to say on the matter but kept quiet so as not to interrupt her.

“So, I’d make them do more public showings. It might make the extremists angry, maybe make them more targets than they already are, but the monarchies have to show the people that they’re fighting for them. It’s exactly what Eve did in Siina. She was such a vocal, public figure, always visiting street markets and meeting with the people. And how do they do that?” She pointed at Lorian.

“I haven’t the faintest—”

“By listening to the people, yes, thank you. Open up more administrations and city councils so the people can be more in charge of their fates than the fucking officers and Constables frightening us into submission. No offense.”

“None taken.”

She looked down at one of her history texts. “We’re in a golden age of the world. No one is fighting one another. We’re not wasting hundreds of gold lyria on war strategies or extra officers. The last one was back in, what 1137? Twenty-two years ago? Back when we were babes? And that was just a fourteen-month fling where important Bělican crops weren’t being properly regulated across the sea because of unforeseen trade agreements. It left Roma without sugar for nearly a year. You see, I could change the world if I was given the chance, but I can’t do that because I have a fucking circle on my forehead!”

Her voice travelled across the library, skipping up the stairs and across the aisles of hidden knowledge. Lorian pressed his thin lips together, pretending he was an officer for the crown and did not enjoy breaking the rules.

Aida cleared her throat. She was getting ahead of herself again. She was going to push him away by being herself. She dialed it back. “The only chance I have is to become a historian. I might not be able to get a job right away, but when I graduate with a diploma from this Academy, I know someone out there will take me seriously.”

Lorian gave that considerable thought before nodding to himself. “Well, if it’s any consolation, I take you very seriously.”

“Course you do. The first time we met, I was fucking naked.”

“E-excuse me, I averted my gaze. I have values.”

“Like a true gentleman.”

Lorian opened his mouth to say more, then caught on whatever she’d said and smiled. “Yeah, I suppose so.”

She smiled back at him. She didn’t know what she had with this officer-in-training and why they clicked as well as they did—he was charismatic, helpful, charming, kind, easy-going. Everything she wasn’t. She hadn’t seen him in action, but he was probably good at his job, and had more friends than he knew what to do with. Total opposites in every regard, aside from the fact that they could share a blunt and be perfectly content with simply being near each other.

She frowned, not knowing why that made her so sad.

The heavy, wooden double doors leading to the main halls opened, and one of Aida’s advisors, Mister Omar, came out. He had a note in his wrinkled hand and his balding head was sweating from getting from his officer to the library before lunch period ended.

Lorian stepped back from Aida, self-conscious about how close they were to someone’s eyes. “Well, I should be off, then.” He bowed and put on his hat to cover his eyes. “Farewell, Miss Mirko, Mister Omar.”

“Farewell,” Mister Omar said, and watched him leave before whispering to Aida, “Miss Mirko, I just received a letter from the dean. He said he wishes to speak with you as soon as you’re available.”

“What does he wish to speak to me about?” Aida asked. “I was just getting back to my classes. You can’t fight me for choosing to spend my lunch here.”

“I don’t believe it’s about your elongated breaks in this great Rosalia Library,” he said, trying to be funny and failing. “Uh, no. Well, here. You can read it for yourself, but it came with a message saying to come to him before the end of the day.”

Aida took the letter.

In Regards to the Termination of Aida Mirko’s 6-Year Scholarship

She covered her mouth. Something inside of her split open and was releasing a foul rot in the pit of her stomach. Her hands went cold, her face hot. She strained her eyes to see if anything more had been written on it, but that was it. A simple declaration that had taken all of her hopes and dreams into bettering herself and the world and throwing it out like an unwanted child.

She ran. Fighting on her cane to make her go faster, she broke around the corner and ran out of the library. She wouldn’t read the rest of the letter. There wasn’t any time. She’d go to the dean and fight. She’d demand her right to be here and fight. They wouldn’t take this knowledge away from her, not now.

She pushed through the pain and trotted down the wide marble steps from the cloister into the open courtyard. Here, students in black and white uniforms continued their lunch in peace. Girls decorated flower crowns and boys tackled one another to the grass like toddlers. A couple flirted with one another near the well in the center of the yard. Aida ran past them all. This was all a mistake. It had to be.

The dean’s office was one of the older buildings covered in ivy, right beside the church that students seldom used. At the front gates, two statues of lions acted as guards for the door. Two actual officers stood watch over the building at all hours of the day. The leather holding the rapiers on their hips were worn from use.

Aida forced the wheeze back into her throat. “I have…a letter from the dean. Open the gates. Please,” she added, wondering if these grown men would care for novelties like “please” and “thank you.”

The two men looked at one another, then shrugged and went to open the gate.

She barreled in before they fully opened the door and knocked furiously on the knocker. Beside the dean’s home was his personal horses and carriages. Aida had locked-on to his carriage, as she’d thought about egging it multiple times, but beside his carriage were two other carriages she didn’t recognize. They had the King’s Lions engraved on them in gold: a Constable carriage.

“Fuck,” she cursed, then shook the thought out of her mind and knocked louder. “Dr. Falco!” she announced. “Dr. Falco, it’s Aida Mirko. I’m a freshman who just started this year. You called to speak to me. May I please come in?”

The door unlocked twice, and one of the dean’s maids welcomed her with a bow. “Hello, Miss. What was it that you wished to—?”

Aida let herself in.

“Excuse me, Miss!”

It was a magnificent house that smelled of syrup and old collections. Books on shelves she could never reach and busts of naked men and women from a tainted royal line. Walking around a terribly gaudy zebra pelt, Aida snaked into the main room and knocked on the door.

It opened upon her third knock.

Dr. Falco was sitting in a large chair behind a mahogany table. Around him were papers and texts, and behind him, a map of the world was centered between two windows. Bělico in the west, Aldaí in the east, and Roma centered amongst it all, even though the Earth was, in fact, a sphere, and nobody was truly in the center of anything.

Between Aida and the dean stood three men. Two wore the same uniforms and pants as Lorian, but their ages and medals told her they were actual officers, not ones training to please the king and queen.

The other man, one with curly brown hair and golden aiguillettes and sashes across his jacket, indicated who he was immediately.

The Constable looked down at Aida with hollow eyes. They were cold and dark, as if he was looking at a sheep ready to be slaughtered. He set down the document he was reading and turned to face her. One hand went to his waist belt, to his rapier handle which shone gold in the sunlight. “Welcome, Miss Mirko,” he said.

Aida gulped at him knowing her name. Constables were leaders of twenty, sometimes thirty men in Roma, and with the air of stuffy egoism on him, this man was probably high in rank.

She swallowed back her fear. “Why was my scholarship terminated? What have I done wrong?”

“That’s the thing. Have a seat, my dear.”

She didn’t.

The Constable waited. “My name is Carmello Carmine, right-hand Constable to Her Majesty the Queen.”

She didn’t blink.

The Constable narrowed his eyes, then focused on her cane. “I’ve been informed that your scholarship to this school was for six years based on the principles of your excellence in history and language as well as your race and upbringing.”

“And?” she said, itching to fight him for how he said that.

“And a law has just been put into place to make amendments to that initial proposition. Under the new, current law—”

“What law?” she interrupted. “I never heard anything about that in the paper.”

“The law,” he pressed, “indicating that it is unjust to allow a student any favorable outcomes when it comes to the acceptance rate to any Roman academy.”

Aida looked over the letter about her scholarship expulsion. “So what does that mean? I’m still enrolled into the school, aren’t I? I earned it. I left everything I had for—”

The Constable picked up his paper again. “The dean and I were going over your academia records and attendance rates.”

“I’ve been to every class!” she said. “I even started doing extra credit!”

“And,” he said, ignoring her, “unfortunately, we’ve concluded that your grades do not meet the qualifications to earn the scholarship for the next six years. Unless you can come up with the funds to attend this coming year, which we’ve estimated that someone who’s living on-campus would come up to 510 gold lyria, we unfortunately cannot enroll you into Durante Academy at this time.”

Aida tried doing the math in her head, hating herself with how long it was taking her. She thought it cost 450 gold lyria per semester, not 500 and change. Her mother didn’t even make that in a year with the farm. For six more years, at 500 gold lyria a semester…

She dropped her head. “I don’t have that kind of money.”

He lowered his paper. “Then I’m sorry to deliver the news—”

“But that’s not fair!” she exploded. She tried digging for any sort of advantage to keep her at his level. It was like fighting with her mother. Her eyes were watering.

“—that after this semester—”

“No!”

“You will no longer be able to attend Durante Academy as a student.”

Aida tried to read her letter again, searching for a loophole that already made her acceptance to this Academy shaky, but she couldn’t think. No matter how much she fought these people to be seen as equal, it’d never happen. It’s what Queen Eve had tried to fight for and failed. It’s what people like her had fought for for centuries and failed. All because of these kings and queens and these rules they bent to make their world more hateful.

She grit her teeth. In history, they said that the Visatorre queen had killed the king’s wife. Others said she’d killed the king. Aida had never believed either statement, but now, feeling the anger pulse in her ears, her eyes water in front of four men aiming to hurt her, she wouldn’t have blamed her for wiping people like this off the face of the fucking planet.

Holding back tears, she threw her walking cane at the Constable, scattering their papers and spooking the Constable backwards. “Fuck you! Fuck you and the crown you serve! All of you deserve to be buried in the Catacombs for the amount of shit you do for us!”

“Good God, Miss!” he said, staring down at her thrown cane. “Control yourself!”

The other officers unsheathed their rapiers, but the Constable held out his hand to make them put them away. “Miss, do you realize what you’ve just—”

She spat on the ground, cursed their mothers, and left, tears steaming from her bloodshot eyes.

“Miss!”

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. She’d worked for years to get here, she’d dedicated her life to this cause she believed in. She was to learn all this new information she was hoping to uncover about Eve and for this stupid bullshit country, but she hadn’t done shit.

Her mother was right about her.

She left the house through the back, through the gardens and near the horse-drawn carriages. She didn’t want those damn officers seeing her like this, and she didn’t want to be seen leaving the headmaster’s home in tears.

The chickens in the nearby coop clucked at her. The hens pecked at the ground while their rooster counterparts watched from the top of the coop.

The door to their coop was left open, letting them roam the contained land.

Aida cast a seething glare at the house behind her, then at the carriages left unattended.

Then she crawled into the chicken coop and started collecting her throwing eggs.

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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 years ago

Text

Pluralist, your daily link-dose: 24 Feb 2020

Today’s links

How “Authoritarian Blindness” kept Xi from dealing with coronavirus: Zeynep Tufekci in outstanding form.

The Snowden Archive: every publicly available Snowden doc, collected and annotated.

Key computer vision researcher quits: facial recognition is a moral quagmire.

My interview on adversarial interoperability: you can’t shop your way out of late-stage capitalism.

81 Fortune 100 companies demand binding arbitration: monopoly and its justice system.

I’m coming to Kelowna! Canada Reads is bringing me to the BC interior, March 5.

A flat earther commits suicide by conspiracy theory: conspiracies are comorbid with corruption.

This day in history: 2019, 2015, 2010, 2005

Colophon: Recent publications, current writing projects, upcoming appearances, current reading

How “Authoritarian Blindness” kept Xi from dealing with coronavirus (permalink)

Xi Jinping’s refashioning of the Chinese internet to ratchet up surveillance and censorship made it all but impossible for the Chinese state to use the internet to detect and contain Corona Virus, writes Zeynep Tufekci in The Atlantic. Tufekci talks about “authoritarian blindness,” where people too scared to tell the autocrat the hard truths makes it impossible for the autocrat to set policy that reflects reality.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/02/coronavirus-and-blindness-authoritarianism/606922/

(Cue Mao telling China to “eat 5 meals a day” because his apparats were too scared to warn him of impending famine, then selling off the nation’s food reserves for foreign currency because he thought it was surplus. Food production collapsed.)

Before Xi, a certain amount of online dissidence was tolerated because it helped root out dangerously corrupt local leaders before they could do real damage. It’s always hard to make autocracies sustainable because corruption and looting leaves them hollow and brittle.

When Xi took power in 2012, he restored “one man rule” and began a series of maneuvers, including purges, to consolidate power for himself. The rise and rise of China’s mobile internet made this far more effective than at any time in history.

“Authoritarian blindness” kicked off the Hong Kong protests because the state so badly misjudged the cause and severity of the grievances there. The same thing happened in Wuhan when doctors and netizens faced retaliation for describing early virus outbreaks.

The reality-debt built up by official denial always results in reality bankruptcy, eventually – so finally, the reports of the virus were so widespread and alarming they could no longer be suppressed. But by then, the virus had proliferated. This is an important point: “the killer digital app for authoritarianism isn’t listening in on people through increased surveillance, but listening to them as they express their honest opinions, especially complaints.”

That’s how you stabilize the unstable: by using digital authoritarianism to fine tune the minimum viable amount of good governance to diffuse public anger. It’s how you maximize your looting without getting strung up by your ankles.

The Snowden Archive (permalink)

The Snowden Surveillance Archive collects “all documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that have subsequently been published by news media.”

https://snowdenarchive.cjfe.org/greenstone/cgi-bin/library.cgi

It’s indexed and searchable, created by Canadian Journalists for Free Expression and the Politics of Surveillance Project at the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. (Canada is a “Five Eyes” country that partners with the NSA on global mass surveillance)

There’s a “Portable Archive” version – a tarball with all the docs so you can create your own mirror:

https://snowdenarchive.cjfe.org/greenstone/collect/snowden1/portablearchive.html

They provide instructions for turning this into a kiosk they call a “Snowden Archive-in-a-Box.” Costs about CAD120.00

Key computer vision researcher quits (permalink)

Joseph Redmon is the creator of YOLO (You Only Look Once), a key Computer Vision technology. He’s just announced his resignation from computer vision work, citing ethical concerns with Facial Recognition.

https://twitter.com/pjreddie/status/1230523827446091776

His thread is really important, calling out the gap between what ML researchers SAY they want to do about ethics and how they actually deal with ethical issues: “basically all facial recognition work would not get published if we took Broader Impacts sections seriously.”

“There is almost no upside and enormous downside risk.” That’s some serious Oppenheimer stuff right there. The kicker? “For most of grad school I bought in to the myth that science is apolitical and research is objectively moral and good no matter what the subject is.”

My interview on adversarial interoperability (permalink)

The Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons podcast (which offers information security advice and analysis for non-technical people) just posted part 2 of our interview on Adversarial Interoperability, Right To Repair, and technological fairness.

http://podcast.firewallsdontstopdragons.com/2020/02/24/adversarial-interoperability-part-2/

Part one went live last week:

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1229842619380858885

In this one, I try to explain how John Deere’s war on farm-based repairs is connected to Apple’s war on independent repair, and how consumer choices can’t solve either problem — but collective action can!

It’ll take a movement, not individual action. Thankfully, such a movement exists. EFF’s Electronic Frontier Alliance, a network of groups nationwide working on local issues with national coordination. It’s the antidote to individual powerlessness.

https://www.eff.org/electronic-frontier-alliance/allies

81 Fortune 100 companies demand binding arbitration (permalink)

Binding arbitration was originally created as a way for giant corporations to resolve their disputes with each other without decades-long court battles costing tens of millions of dollars. SCOTUS ratified the principal in 1925: firms of similar size and power could use binding arbitration as an alternative to litigation.

http://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/we-now-have-a-justice-system-just-for-corporations

In the century since, corporations have eroded the idea of arbitration as something reserved for co-equals and have turned it into a condition of employment and of being a customer.

In an era of both monopoly and monoposony, it can be hard to find a single employer OR vendor who will conduct business with you unless you first surrender the rights your elected lawmakers decided that you are entitled to.

Today, the largest corporations in the world require you to “agree” to binding arbitration before you can conduct business with them: your monopolistic ISP or cable operator probably does.

As do Walmart, Uber, and Amazon (and not coincidentally, all three have crowded out all the competitors you might choose to take your business to if this strikes you as unfair).

In 2019, SCOTUS ratified the practice.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/13/business/binding-arbitration-consumers/index.html

81 out of the Fortune 100 non-negotiably require binding arbitration if you want to conduct business with them. “Arbitration is often confidential and the outcome doesn’t enter the public record” – if you get screwed you won’t know if it’s a one-off or a pattern.

This is especially pernicious in the realm of US health care. There is ONE pain specialist in all of Southern California that my insurer covers who doesn’t require binding arbitration. When I took my daughter to the ER with a broken bone, they threatened not to treat her unless we signed an arbitration waiver – and that ER is now owned by a PE firm that bought every medical practice in a 10mi radius and now they all do it.

We are literally replacing public courts with private corporate justice, where the “judge” is paid by the company that maimed you, or ripped you off, or killed you.

I’m coming to Kelowna! (permalink)

I’ve never been to Kelwona, BC or anywhere in BC apart from Victoria and Vancouver, so I am SO TOTALLY EXCITED to be appearing in Kelowna for Canada Reads on Mar 5. Please come and say hello! (it’s free!)

https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cbc-radio-presents-in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-96154415445

The event is a collaboration between the Kelowna Public Library and CBC Books, and I’m being emceed and interviewed by Sarah Penton. It’s going to be recorded for airing later as well (I’ll be sure to fold it into my podcast, which you can get here: http://craphound.com/podcast/)

A flat earther commits suicide by conspiracy theory (permalink)

A(nother) flat-earther has tried to prove that the Earth is disc-shaped by launching a homemade rocket. This one (“Mad” Mike Hughes) killed himself by pancaking into the desert.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/daredevil-mad-mike-hughes-dies-homemade-rocket-launch-filmed-tv-n1141286

This is awful. Jokes about “Darwin Awards” don’t change that.

When you scratch a conspiracist, you generally find two things:

Someone who knows chapter-&-verse about real conspiracies (e.g. “If you think antivax is so outlandish, let me tell you about the Sackler family”)

Someone who has been traumatized by conspiracies (belief that the levees were dynamited during Katrina to drown Black neighborhoods are often embraced by people whose family were flooded out in 58 when the levees in Tupelo were dynamited to drown Black neighborhoods).

A belief that the aerospace industry engages in coverups and conspiracies is not, in and of itself, irrational. Aerospace is the land of conspiracies and coverups. Look at the Boeing 737 Max!

Conspiracies are an epiphenomenon of market concentration. “Two may keep a secret if one of them is dead”: the ability to conspire is a collective action problem, wherein linear increases in the number of conspirators yield geometric increases in the likelihood of defections. When an industry is reduced to 3-5 giants, the likelihood is that every top exec at each company worked as a top exec at one or more of the others (to say nothing of the likelihood of intercompany friendships, marriages, etc). Moreover, an industry that concentrated will almost certainly be regulated by its own former execs, as they are likely the only ones qualified to understand its workings.

Many of us were appalled by the sight of the nation’s tech leaders gathered around a table at Trump Tower after the inauguration.

But we should have been even more alarmed by the realization that all the leaders of the tech industry fit around a single table.

We are living in both a golden age of conspiratorial thinking and of actual conspiracies. The conspiracy theories don’t necessarily refer to the actual conspiracies, but “conspiracy” is a plausible idea with a lot of explanatory power in 2020.

We spend a lot of time wondering about how we can fix the false beliefs that people have, but some of our focus needs to be on reducing the plausibility of conspiracy itself. Make industries more competitive and diverse, make regulators more accountable.

Put out the fires, sure, but clear away the brush so that they don’t keep reigniting.

I strongly recommend Anna Merlan’s REPUBLIC OF LIES for more.

https://boingboing.net/2019/09/21/from-opioids-to-antivax.html

This day in history (permalink)

#15yrsago: Labour MP Brian Sedgemore excoriates his own government’s terror laws in the speech of his lifetime: https://web.archive.org/web/20050227035611/http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmhansrd/cm050223/debtext/50223-21.htm

#10yrsago: How ducks, Nazis and themeparks gave America its color TV transition: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/feb/23/digital-switchover-bbc-spectrum

#5yrsago: Alex Stamos, then CSO of Yahoo, publicly calls out then-NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers on crypto backdoors: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/02/yahoo-exec-goes-mano-a-mano-with-nsa-director-over-crypo-backdoors/

#5yrsago: A chronology of the Canadian Conservative Party’s war on science under PM Stephen Harper: https://scienceblogs.com/confessions/2013/05/20/the-canadian-war-on-science-a-long-unexaggerated-devastating-chronological-indictment

#5yrsago: Citizenfour, Laura Poitras’s movie about Edward Snowden, wins the Academy Award for best documentary: https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/edward-snowden-congratulates-laura-poitras-winning-best-documentary-oscar-citizenfour

#1yrago: Every AOC staffer will earn a living wage: https://www.rollcall.com/2019/02/22/alexandria-ocasio-cortezs-call-for-a-living-wage-starts-in-her-office/

#1yrago: Richard Sackler’s “verbal gymnastics” in defending his family’s role in killing 200,000 Americans with opiods: https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/02/sackler-behind-oxycontin-fraud-offered-twisted-mind-boggling-defense/

#1yrago: German neo-Nazis use Qanon memes to signal-boost their messages: https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-fringe-groups-are-using-qanon-to-amplify-their-wild-messages

#1yrago: French courts fine UBS €3.7b for helping French plutes dodge their taxes: https://www.thelocal.fr/20190220/breaking-french-court-hits-swiss-bank-ubs-with-37-billion-fine-in-french-tax-fraud-case

#1yrago: Apple to close down its east Texas stores to avoid having any nexus with America’s worst patent court: https://www.macrumors.com/2019/02/22/apple-closing-stores-in-eastern-district-texas/

#1yrago: Small business cancels its unusably slow Frontier internet service, Frontier sticks them with a $4,300 cancellation fee: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/frontier-demands-4300-cancellation-fee-despite-horribly-slow-internet/

#1yrago: Fast food millionaire complains that social media makes kids feel so entitled that they are no longer willing to work for free: https://amp.news.com.au/finance/work/careers/muffin-break-boss-fury-over-youth-who-wont-work-unpaid/news-story/57607ea9a1bbe52ba7746cff031306f2

#1yrago: Apps built with Facebook’s SDK shovel incredible quantities of incredibly sensitive data into Facebook’s gaping maw: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/22/facebook-receives-personal-health-data-from-apps-wsj.html

#1yrago: Super-high end prop horror-movie eyeballs, including kits to make your own: https://fourthsealstudios.com/

#1yrago: EU advances its catastrophic Copyright Directive without fixing any of its most dangerous flaws: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/02/european-governments-approve-controversial-new-copyright-law/

Colophon (permalink)

Today’s top sources: Four Short Links (https://www.oreilly.com/feed/four-short-links), Slashdot (https://slashdot.org), Naked Capitalism (https://nakedcapitalism.com/”).

Hugo nominators! My story “Unauthorized Bread” is eligible in the Novella category and you can read it free on Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/

Upcoming appearances:

Canada Reads Kelowna: March 5, 6PM, Kelowna Library, 1380 Ellis Street, with CBC’s Sarah Penton https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cbc-radio-presents-in-conversation-with-cory-doctorow-tickets-96154415445

Currently writing: I just finished a short story, “The Canadian Miracle,” for MIT Tech Review. It’s a story set in the world of my next novel, “The Lost Cause,” a post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation. I’m getting geared up to start work on the novel now, though the timing is going to depend on another pending commission (I’ve been solicited by an NGO) to write a short story set in the world’s prehistory.

Currently reading: I finished Andrea Bernstein’s “American Oligarchs” this week; it’s a magnificent history of the Kushner and Trump families, showing how they cheated, stole and lied their way into power. I’m getting really into Anna Weiner’s memoir about tech, “Uncanny Valley.” I just loaded Matt Stoller’s “Goliath” onto my underwater MP3 player and I’m listening to it as I swim laps.

Latest podcast: Persuasion, Adaptation, and the Arms Race for Your Attention: https://craphound.com/podcast/2020/02/10/persuasion-adaptation-and-the-arms-race-for-your-attention/

Upcoming books: “Poesy the Monster Slayer” (Jul 2020), a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Pre-order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627?utm_source=socialmedia&utm_medium=socialpost&utm_term=na-poesycorypreorder&utm_content=na-preorder-buynow&utm_campaign=9781626723627

(we’re having a launch for it in Burbank on July 11 at Dark Delicacies and you can get me AND Poesy to sign it and Dark Del will ship it to the monster kids in your life in time for the release date).

“Attack Surface”: The third Little Brother book, Oct 20, 2020.

“Little Brother/Homeland”: A reissue omnibus edition with a very special, s00per s33kr1t intro.

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takingcourage · 5 years ago

Text

Second Thoughts

Pairing: Jaime x MC

Word Count: 3,500

Summary: Days after their “first date,” Arden is still trying to figure out what kissing Jaime means for their relationship.

Note: I love Jaime Lewis more with every passing moment. Don’t tell my husband.

Anyway, this is my paltry attempt to follow up on that scene with Jaime in Chapter 9. I’m sure it will become AU fairly quickly, but c’est la vie. I just can’t get enough of these two.

Switching tabs for the umpteenth time, Arden double checked that the details in her email matched the news release she was typing. If she had a dollar for every tab she’d opened in that afternoon alone, it would be the equivalent of her new weekly salary, if not more.

Is mother-in-law always hyphenated? Let me check Google, came a voice from her left.

Even with June’s light staccato punctuating her thoughts, Arden managed to maintain a steady pace as she typed. When she came to the end of her sentence, one hand flew to the phone beside the keyboard, adjusting the volume to help cover any future errant musings from her coworkers. Music didn’t solve everything, but it certainly helped.

This was the week that was never going to end. Taking on Ellen’s responsibilities may have been a dream come true, but that dream was turning out to be exhausting. Arden had spent the past several days living for those few moments on the couch with Jinx and Opie before the need for sleep forced her to bed.

With everything that had gone on, she’d hardly had time to think about the other development that was weighing on her mind: her time in the mountains with Jaime. She’d found her mind wandering back to relive his words over and again, but aside from a few texts, she hadn’t spoken to him since. A chaotic news cycle meant that she hadn’t even started to process what implications that night might hold as they moved forward.

But you’ll see him tonight.

Arden inhaled sharply at the minor shift in Beethoven’s 7th, forcing herself to actually read the words on her screen. His symphonies had always been her go-to music for editing and revising, and over time, she’d developed a system that was almost scientific. The 7th, her favorite, was reserved for local stories that needed a bit of sparkle in order to be truly newsworthy. She could never make it through the symphony’s second movement without starting to see some magic in the mundane. Today of all days, she needed the extra oomph.

“And I’ve used hometown four times already,” she muttered under her breath as she opened yet another tab to search for synonyms. Country, household, land, family…

“Arden?”

June’s spoken words cut through the scherzo and Arden extended a finger to tap the music paused. “What’s up?”

“Did you hear my question?”

Her lips bent in apology. “Sorry, I had my volume up pretty loud. What’d you ask?”

June swung toward her with gusto, nearly upsetting the pile of papers at the edge of her desk. “Do you have any big plans for tonight?”

“I’m having dinner with my dad. And Jaime,” she added against her better judgment. Arden tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, eyes flitting to the corner of her computer screen. They’d reached the point of the afternoon where June started searching for any bit of conversation that might make those final hours of her work week pass more manageably. Nevermind that the sooner their work was finished, the sooner they could go home.

“Yeahhhh?”

“It’s not like that,” Arden contradicted, grateful not to hear June’s thoughts at that particular moment.

“Of course it’s not.” The patronizing tone grated her skin. “Come on, Arden. Are you sure he’s not the reason you’ve been ignoring you-know-who?” June cast a furtive glance across the room, but Aubrey was nowhere to be found.

“You know Jaime’s my friend.” Even as they came out, the words tasted bitter on her tongue. “And I don’t ignore Aubrey. I’m just not interested in him in that way.”

June gave her a shushing, followed by an exaggerated eye roll as she launched into a description of her evening’s itinerary. Arden nodded along politely, but her mind was miles away.

She’d called Jaime her friend for over a decade. Why was the descriptor so distasteful today? I’ll make sure to get “best” in there next time, she promised. That’s probably why it seems so weird.

Stomach jolting in reprimand, she lifted a thumb to her teeth and bit down with gentle force. You know it’s more than that, Arden. Best friends don’t make out with each other under the stars.

But she certainly wasn’t telling June all of that.

_______________________________________________________________________

“Do you want regular or wavy potato chips?” Arden called over her shoulder, tapping an impatient thumb against the edge of the cabinet door. Tradition compelled her to ask the question although the answer had remained unchanged for nearly fifteen years.

“Always regular.” Jaime answered, stepping into the kitchen. Even from several feet away, her blood still ran hot at his presence. This definitely doesn’t feel like a friendship anymore, Arden contemplated idly before answering.

“You and your weird obsession with chips that are folded in on themselves…” She turned toward him, immediately distracted by a sliver of bare skin as he leaned into the fridge to find their drinks. Just a few nights ago, she’d held onto that same exposed skin, eager to gain purchase as they explored one another under the starlight.

She gripped the bags tightly, aware of how poor a substitute the plastic packaging was for the feeling of him under her touch. Now that she knew what she’d been missing, was there any hope of ever turning back?

Arden pretended to look out the window, appalled by the possibility that he might catch her ogling him. He’d probably like it, she considered with a blush. But we still haven’t talked about where we’re going with this. I don’t want him to think that I’m just into his body... though it is a definite perk.

Even though she knew her thoughts were private, she couldn’t help sensing a distinct skip in her pulse as he stood and met her gaze. Darker than usual, his warm brown eyes were almost suffocating this evening.

I’ve missed you this week. A lot.

Between his thoughts and his eyes, Arden thought she would be lucky if she ever breathed normally again. Remembering both her task and her father’s presence a room away, she took a tentative step toward the doorway. “I missed you too,” she answered, trying to keep her voice even as she passed within mere inches of him.

Seemingly unaware of her turmoil, Jaime leaned against the doorjamb and surveyed her thoughtfully. “I’m super proud of you for making it through your first week of your dream job with a smile on your face. Has it started feeling real yet?”

“It feels pretty real to my back. I’ve worn heels way too many days this week. And I think I’m going to strain my eyes into needing glasses if I keep staring at screens so long.”

“What?” she asked at his hint of a smile. His eyes, fond and fixed on her, glued her feet to the spot.

"I’m just remembering that time you stole your dad’s reading glasses so you could go undercover for the story you were writing about chess club.”

Arden groaned, hanging her head at the memory. “Don’t remind me. For some reason, I thought the upperclassmen would respect me if I went full investigative journalist for my first article. It wasn’t my finest moment.”

“You really gave it your all though -- checking out those library books on chess strategies, reading up on body language analyses -- the glasses were just the final touch.”

“There’s a reason I’ve never played chess again.”

After a pause, he mused, “But I do wonder what you’d look like with glasses now.” With bent knuckle, he lifted her chin and gently turned her face to the side. There was nothing romantic in the gesture, but her flesh had turned to fire under his touch even before his thoughts entered her mind.

Damn, you’re beautiful.

It wasn’t just his eyes and words that were threatening to steal her breath away, she realized as her own thoughts found a similar vein to his own. Perhaps it was that one tendril of hair that always seemed to fall to his forehead, or the electricity in the growing distance between her face and his fingers. Or maybe it was the way his lips had curved into a knowing smile. His lips.

Once she started, she couldn’t look away from them. Her tongue darted across the seam of her mouth, muscle memory reliving the same moments as her consciousness. But that one evening of kissing under the stars wasn’t enough. She wanted more. With her eyes firmly locked on his full, pink mouth, she needed more. Later, she encouraged herself with a sigh.

Trying to force her thoughts clear, Arden offered weakly, “We should go eat before dad comes looking for us.”

“You’re probably right. But are you up for spending some time together after that? I mean, I totally understand if you just want to go home and sleep, but I was kind of hoping...”

"Me too,” she was close enough that her forearm brushed against the crook of his elbow as she leaned into the words. Her skin prickled at the contact. “That sounds like exactly what I need.”

Is it wrong of me to hope that your dad turns in early tonight?

Arden’s lips pulled into a conciliatory smirk as she followed him into the living room. Placing both bags of chips on the coffee table, she glanced over to the plated sub sandwiches her father had bought. “Are we missing anything?”

“Just you.” Jaime swept a hand toward the empty the couch before taking a side for himself. “We’re here to celebrate your promotion, remember? You kinda have to be there for it.”

She sank onto the cushion, careful to leave several inches between their knees as she reminded herself to play it cool. Sneaking a glance at her father, she took great comfort in remembering that the man’s powers of observation were fairly limited.

That wasn't to say that he wouldn't support their relationship or be happy to hear the news if and when it came. But Arden wasn't going to begin making announcements until she knew what it was they were announcing. She certainly didn’t want him finding out anything before she’d had a chance to work things out with Jaime.

Arden popped the lid on her drink, hoping that the initial burn of carbonation would help to center her anxious mind.

From his place in the chair, her father picked up the remote to find the Northbridge News broadcast he’d recorded earlier in the day. He punched a series of buttons, but the screen remained blank.

“Must be the batteries.” He rose and made his way upstairs, calling over his shoulder, “I’ll just be a second.”

By instinct, her eyes gravitated toward Jaime. His hand fell to her knee, rising up her leg fractionally as she pushed herself closer to him.

“I...” she started, meeting his gaze before her eyes shot to his mouth. If possible, he looked even more desirable now than he had in the kitchen. His lips were parted, almost daring her to take advantage of the solitude...

Arden, you’ve got to stop looking at my mouth like that.

But she really couldn’t resist. Within seconds, she was doing a lot more than just looking. Compelled by an urgency she could hardly explain, Arden’s mouth sought contact with his.

Jaime returned the kiss with purpose, fingers spreading across her cheeks to draw her closer. She moved with him, eyelids fluttering closed as she allowed the heady sensation of touch to drive her. One of her hands raked through his hair while the other slipped to his side, desperate for the heat of his skin.

It was the creak of an upstairs floorboard which finally separated them, though Arden's hand still clutched tightly to the thin layer of shirt that separated her fingers from his skin.

Can we pick this up again later? I’ve been waiting to kiss you all week.

“Absolutely,” she whispered, breathless.

If we go to the docks, we can have some privacy...and I wouldn’t say no to more starlit kisses with you.

"My thoughts exactly," Arden agreed, releasing her grip so that he could straighten his clothes. Taking in his disheveled appearance, she giggled and stretched out a hand to comb his hair back into place.

Footsteps above signaled her father’s impending return.

“For what it’s worth, I’ve told him to stop buying batteries from the dollar store.”

“He never listens,” Arden confirmed. “And he wonders where I got my stubborn streak...”

“Found them!” her father announced, descending the stairs.

Arden wasn't sure which experience was more surreal: watching herself on television in the role she'd coveted since grade school or sitting next to her best friend with the imprint of his kisses still on her lips. Both contributed to the sense of unreality that had been building within her for the entire week. It still felt like she was floating through another person's life.

She’d kissed and been kissed plenty of times before, especially during the first year she’d spent at college. More often than not, she’d been relieved to know that the kisses didn’t really mean anything. They’d been about enjoying the moment, not establishing an actual relationship.

But with Jaime, her feelings were completely different. She wasn't willing for whatever this was to be a one-time thing. A two-time thing, she corrected herself, feeling the impulse to smile as she remembered how desperate they'd been to touch each other again.

As her eyes glazed and the television blared before her, Arden came to terms with the inevitable: there was more to this than just friendship.

______________________________________________________________________

At her father’s first mention of turning in for the night, they made their goodbyes and meandered out to the quiet street. The evening smelled strongly of cut grass, but Arden could detect faint traces of lake water as the breeze tickled through the hairs at her neck.

"The docks?" Arden allowed her hand to swing against his thigh, joy swelling in her chest when he caught the fingers against his palm.

"You already know the answer to that,” he teased mildly.

"Just thought I'd check. You are entitled to change your mind." His thumb rubbed circles over her knuckles and she tightened her grip as they stepped from the pavement to the uneven path leading to he woods.

"You'd still know before I told you."

"Probably.”

“I don’t mind, you know.”

“Even though this means you’ll never be able to surprise me again?”

“Don’t be so sure. I may find a workaround someday.”

“I’ll bet you do,” she smiled, brushing up against his side. He took the opportunity to adjust his grip, sliding his fingers between her own.

I’ve been dreaming of nights like this for forever, he marveled as they reached the edge of the lake.

He led her to the end of the platform, letting go of her hand so that they could sit. Dropping to the wooden slats beside him, she sat cross-legged, body subconsciously bracing for the conversation to come.

What if he’s changed his mind? she worried in a panic. Don’t be ridiculous, her rational mind countered, what did he just say? Remembering his words helped to spur her forward.

“So you said something the other night about us working on forever?” She asked, hoping to build off his previous thought.

“Yeah, that was probably presumptuous of me,” he countered, running a hand through his hair as he looked out over the water. She didn’t need to hear his thoughts to read the nervousness in his stilted movement. It occurred to her that it might take more than just her words to convince him.

Arden scooted closer to him, allowing her knee to brush against the leg of his jeans. “It wasn’t presumptuous at all. Especially not after we kissed like that.”

Jaime’s lips quirked up at her reminder, but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “All the same, I know there's a lot happening all at once, Arden. This is one of a lot of changes to happen to you lately, and I'm not going to push you into anything you're not ready for.” He grew quiet for a moment, weighing his words. "But you already know how I feel. If you think you might feel the same way, then I’d like to start planning a second date."

She remained silent for several moments, not wanting to say anything that she might later regret. More than that, she wanted Jaime to know that she’d fully considered her response before it was given. "You know what's funny? Looking forward to seeing you tonight has been the highlight of my whole week. Every day, I kept wishing that I was getting off early so that we could have dinner or go and do something together. And... I kind of think that I might want those things forever. Or at least as far into the future as I can see. And I think that’s a pretty far way..." she whispered finally, angling so she could look him full in the face.

Are you saying what I think you’re saying?

She leaned over and kissed him soundly on the mouth, grinning against his lips as what she’d intended to be a single kiss turned into many more.

“I’m saying,” she said when they parted for air, “that I’d like to go on as many dates with you as you want to take me on.”

His eyes glittered under the starlight as he gazed on her. “Fair warning -- that’s going to be a lot of dates.”

“I’m fine with that,” she assured with a radiant smile.

“I think it might take the rest of our lives.”

Her stomach jolted at the insinuation, but for once, the thought of a permanent relationship didn’t dissuade her. As long as she was here with him, she couldn’t imagine ever wanting to be anywhere else.

“I think I might like that,” she told him finally.

"And you’re sure I didn't scare you into this by telling you I loved you?"

"Of all the things I feel right now, scared isn't even on the radar."

“What is on the radar?”

“A lot more than I could ever process tonight. But,” she added, noting the hint of concern in his face, “thanks to you, I’m feeling a lot better about it all. As rough as this week has been, knowing that you believed in me really helped. And the kissing sure didn’t hurt anything..."

"Good,” he assured with a cheeky smile. "And Arden? You’ve been doing an amazing job. I’ve been watching your broadcasts every night and I can hardly look away from the screen."

She bumped his side playfully with her elbow. “That might just be because you’re in love with me.” It was startling how easily the words rolled off her tongue.

“Or it might be because it’s obvious that you’re doing a job you love.”

"I hope dad comes around to seeing it that way. Even though he’s proud about my promotion, I still don't think he's sold on me doing this as a career."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not right now.”

His brows rose skeptically.

“I know you'll think I'm bottling things up, but honestly, I'm so sick of thinking and talking that I just need to do something else for a while. It’s been days since we’ve seen each other and I think I’d rather just enjoy your company." She trailed off expectantly, hoping that he would take the unspoken invitation.

"Kinda wish I had those powers of yours right now. Is this your way of telling me you want to get back to kissing?"

She rolled over to her stomach, propping herself on an elbow to look up at the gleam of moonlight over his features. "I know we're new at this, but I may as well just tell you that I almost always want to get back to kissing."

______________________________________________________________________

“You know,” she told him later, head at rest on his very comfortable shoulder. “I’ve been wanting to do that out here since you took me for a ride on the yacht.”

“Really?”

“What was I supposed to do with you getting all shirtless and distracting?” she teased, hand skimming mindless patterns along the toned muscles beneath his shirt.

Jaime’s mouth fell open wide. “If I remember correctly, I wasn’t the only one who stripped down that night.”

“Of course not. I couldn’t let you have all the fun. But don’t worry. You’ll learn to recognize my flirting eventually. We can start practicing on that second date you’re going to take me on.”

“About that...” he ventured, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head. “Do you have any plans for tomorrow?”

#playchoices #playchoices fanfiction #wishful thinking #jaime lewis #jaime x mc

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camigani · 7 years ago

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Update: My Trip to China

Hi, all, it’s been an insane couple of months! Where have I been and why haven’t I been updating? Well, I’ve finally moved in a completely new place all by myself with a new job and lots of pleasant isolation in a tiny town by the sea. Right before that, my family took me overseas to China for a final family trip. I only got food poisoning twice. Oh, and I caught a cold. -v-

LONG POST UNDER THE CUT!!

Things I noticed that generally happen in China:

1) There are a lot of couples! Compared to Japan and Taiwan, I noticed the people here are more open about traveling and showing affection (and discourse) publicly. Where are the lonesome ones? Well, my brother deduced that because Chinese has so many people, the single people stay at home. TvT

2) Women like to cling onto arms or hold hands with their friends or lovers. My Shanghainese housemate was like this, too. I guess it’s a cultural thing.

3) Men tend to smoke, not women. You find women smoking sometimes, but it’s usually associated with being dirty and shameless. The men tend to cough and spit a lot. Everyone openly coughs and sneezes. There are no common words for “Excuse me” and “Bless you/Salud/Gesundheit/etc” in the Chinese language. It feels rude, but that’s how they are.

4) The subways are hi-tech. The navigation is better than Japan and Taiwan. The maps are friendly and easy to read for Chinese and English-literate people. Similar to an airport, however, you have to pass your bags and luggages through a scanning system and have your liquid containers examined before security allows you to board trains. The rides are cleaner.

5) In modern areas, everyone is very well-dressed. They have a fashion style evolved to incorporating modern and slightly retro looks. Unlike Taiwan and Japan, you don’t see people wearing traditional clothing unless it’s for shows or homely occasions.

6) There are cameras everywhere. It’s like London crosses the Patriot Act. Cameras on the highways, cameras on the streets, cameras in the subways. They use facial recognition and license plate recognition. A price of freedom to pay, but because of this system, we were able to track down one of our luggages that we left in a taxi cab. (Haha.) Security checked where my parents got off onto the subway, found the license plate of the taxi cab, and phoned the taxi driver to tell him to meet my parents at XX station to drop off their luggage.

7) They, uh, don’t like Japanese things in China. There are very few Japanese cars, buildings, and brands, going as far as vandalizing Japanese chain stores and boycotting products despite being safer and better. You can say it’s attributed to history and culture. Chinese people view self-humiliation in a different light. They can be quite envious.

8) Infrastructure is king. Not being political; from an objective outlook, the US spends a hefty amount of tax money on military. China invests in infrastructure. There are a lot of building projects going into apartments, museums, preserving historical sites, and parks and recreation. It’s at the point where national parks are completely paved and tiled. (Kinda defeats the purpose of national parks, but at least you don’t have to worry about muddy shoes.)

9) Local vendors that don’t belong to companies or corporations may sometimes be unsanitary, but the food quality is generally cheaper and tastier. Otherwise, if it wasn’t tasty, how would they sell?

10) Hype isn’t always a good thing. Just about every restaurant we’ve gone to where it was packed with people was just okay. Quiet hole-in-the-walls have a personable charm, quicker service, and equally if not better food. Real talk, the original ma po tofu shop serves tofu that is extremely spicy and bitter. Not worth it.

11) Public facilities like museums and libraries are taken quite seriously. The government believes when things are free, people are more civilized. Go figure, yet in my experiences, people were. Not sure about the museums since there’s a lot of Chinese history and culture to go through, anyway, but the public libraries are utilized to the fullest. You need identification to get inside, and every then, you’re only allowed to bring certain material into the library after going through a baggage and metal scan. There are lockers for your things. It was school time next to a university when I visited, so every seat was occupied with a busy Chinese scholar with a stack of books reviewing notes and practicing words or formulas. It was pretty surreal. I didn’t take pictures, but I’ll let you know there were very few fictional books where I visited.

12) Chinese people don’t listen to signs or tourist warning information. Seriously, as someone who’s part Chinese, myself, the tourists can be extremely disrespectful, and it’s super embarrassing. It’s usually the older generation because...well, if you know your history, you might know why they’re like this. But if it says no cellphones and pictures, you’ll find cellphones and pictures. Lower your sound? Someone’s yelling on their phone about the most trivial thing like what they ate for dinner. Stay on the path? Let me just hop this fence and proceed to head towards this dangerous slippery waterfall to take a mediocre selfie. Yeah, it wasn’t a great time. Someone like Germany would blow their brains out.

13) BRING YOUR OWN TOILET PAPER

I cannot stress enough how precious soft butt paper is. The kind they sell in China are sandpaper scrolls on your tender cheeks. Bring your own tp from home if you are to survive the plight of the outdoor public restroom. And soap or sanitizer. There is normally running water in bathrooms, but no soap! What’s the point if the bacteria is going to spread through the water?! Be prepared for squatting, turds, smells, and wet rims. Unless you stake out in your western hotel all day, you WILL find a squat toilet, and there is a high chance it WILL smell or be mysteriously slippery.

Anyway, here are some pictures I lazily took. The descriptions are all on the top of the photos.

We went to Shanghai first. The people are meh at best. But the architecture is interesting because of the heavy western influences. (Missing obligatory picture of The Bund because I exported it somewhere else.)

Beef noodle soup! My favorite! I like it with a little spiciness. They made the noddles with a knee paddle. Only $2 USD!

I’m not sure how to explain it correctly, nor do I know what the exact name of the method used to make the noodles is. I tried to explain it in the crude drawing I made below.

...

This is KFC.

The majority of the trip was spent in Chengdu in Sichuan Province. It’s hot and humid in the summer, but it was just right when we went.

There are a lot of open markets. Look at all the meat and produce! They even had morel mushrooms. Too bad we didn’t have a stove or butter in our hotel.

We visited Kuanzhai Street, a historical alley consisting of wide and narrow paths with historical buildings. Its initial intent is to let tourists experience some of the old culture of China, but nowadays, there are a bunch of vendors who try to capitalize on how many people go there. It gets very crowded.

A most mysterious wall of memes.

Not bad.

Sugar-blown rooster! It tastes like those rainbow lollipops you sometimes see at fairs or candy shops. You get to blow up the sugar, yourself. An interactive show. :)

Burnt sugar rooster! It tastes like the top of a creme brûlée.

Went on a tour to a panda rehabilitation center. Chengdu is a popular spot for earthquakes, and the one in 2017 left pandas injured and traumatized. This place helps them recuperate until they’re well enough to go back to the public zoos. Outside to greet us was a 5-some of panda statues. The one that stood out was the one on the far right with one leg. I thought he was just leaning his leg behind him, but it turns out, his leg is missing! Affirmative action?

(Missing black and white panda because my good captures were all videos.) The red panda tails are so fluffy and gravity-defying. The tails are like a foot long and stay straight in the air.

A Tibetan-like feast! You eat with your hands, and they give you gloves. Everything was fresh and tasty. They served us yak milk. It tastes like if you mix 1 part milk, 2 parts water, so it’s not bad if you don’t mind the watery taste. Over here, your wealth is measured by the number of white yaks you own.

I’m missing pictures, but there was a good number of performances with singing, dancing, and conga lines at our table. My dad got really into it. Because some Chinese cultures are normally reserved, they weren’t used to his disco dancing. Later, they called him Uncle Buddha. And they said he looked high.

Jiuzhaigou. It was closed since the 2008 earthquake due to high levels of mountain and road collapses. It opened recently, so the locals were surprised to hear that it was open again. You can even take pictures wearing local minority Chinese garb. I think it was around $3 USD, but we needed to haul butt.

WATCH THE PICKLE!! We stayed at a decent hotel, but a popular breakfast dish in China is porridge with various kinds of pickled vegetables. I figured I needed vegetables to help me “go” easier during our travels, so I ate a little of everything. So did my dad. My brother and surprisingly my mom, who eats more veggies than anyone in our family, skipped out. Two hours of a bus ride later, I threw up on the street. My dad threw up minutes after I did. We’re pretty sure the old used for the spicy pickle was stale.

Eh, what can you do?

A clear limestone lake. Surprisingly not many people here. It was also very quiet and clean.

We went to Leshan to see the giant Buddha. It’s not too bad of a walk, maybe because it’s at sea level. (Two days prior, Jiuzhaigou was at 7000ft/2100m, so it was really hard to hike without getting tired.) This thing is HUGE. You might be able to see tiny people in the upper right-hand corner for scale. Only take pictures on the Buddha’s right side!

By the way, there are a lot of little statues and tiny Buddha carvings littered on the hike up there. Per Chinese superstition, you are not supposed to take pictures of them. Some either house evil spirits that you can take home with you or you might trap good spirits from spreading fortune.

Very pretty architecture behind the statue. You can drink tea here for about $5, however, it’s a tourist trap! Don’t waste your money and time. See how these pictures don’t have tourists in them? It’s because they were all caught up drinking tea and sitting on their butts.

Aw, the picture rotated. Anyway, here’s a fly modern monk with Nike’s and a smartphone.

Kinda mad I can’t remember this place, but there were many elephant themes in this tourist town we visited. My brother (listed in the picture below with the ONLY pair of long pants and jacket he stupidly packed for the 12-day trip) found a mantou shop that sells these long buns for only 1 YUAN. That’s like $0.17 USD. As a bun advocate, he said they were tasty.

DPRAUNNDKA (Someone was drunk, alright.)

Hot pot! Taiwan was better, and the Guangdong guys were too afraid to try to spicy broth. (Like Hong Kong, haha. Because Cantonese people don’t like spicy food, according to Himaruya.) It was okay, but we only had 30 minutes to eat before catching a show. I don’t have pictures, but the sets and performances were really cool!

Gelatins! Sketchy at best but tasty-looking!

A pleasant view of the hike up Umeishan. Right past this chasm are monkeys! If I panned my phone down, you would’ve seen trash. This is from the monkeys eating tourists’ food. You have to watch your pockets and bags because they’ll go through them for kicks, usually not even for food. And don’t wear red because it intimidates them.

You can hire rickshaw(?) carriers to take you up the mountain. Great for elderly or lazy people. I think it’s about $32 per way.

Famous Emeishan statue thing. You are supposed to take pictures relevant to your zodiac sign, so there are twelve positions like a clock. It’s COLD up there. But the hike makes you warm! And there’s a cable cart that takes you up most of the way.

Zoomed-in luna month friend. It was behind a temple door. The wings looked so soft.

I forgot what this trail was called. The whole hike was about 7 km. Supposed to be 10, but it started to rain, so we skipped the end. Lots of tourists in places, but very nice scenery. Walk fast to avoid smokers. Why do they smoke while walking? :/

Beer Garden in Chengdu City. It’s a strip of bars and clubs where foreigners can sing American pop songs and drink beer. Lots of “trashy” women with rich drunk men. It’s an insane atmosphere with rich-looking people and every bar being full. Seriously. I’d show more pictures, but you really need a video to get an idea of the vibe. Here’s one of Goose Island, whatever that means. Next to it were two hedge sheep. Look at this shit, there’s a picture of the White House on the poster! Ahhh! XD

Chengdu Global Center Mall

Cheese and rice, I thought Tokyo’s AEON Laketown mall was huge. This place has a hotel and a water theme park built into it with a grocery store and food court in the basement. At this point, my family’s feet hurt from all the walking. -.-’

Boo. We came too late. All the boba was sold out. Hey, cat poop coffee on the top.

Just why?

Last full day in Chengdu. Here’s the outside of the museum. You have to wait in line to get screened before going in, however, it’s free.

An underground strip mall. Okay here me out, we tried very hard to look for bootleg Chinglish shirts, but we could NOT find any. The Chinese locals seemed to either snatch them up or we weren’t looking in the right places.

lol and that’s it. We went back to Shanghai for a full day after that, but I caught major food poisoning from something I ate. It was bad. My bowels felt all twisty and uncomfortable. So I spent the entire day in the hotel while my family had a blast eating food and looking at architecture. My brother found a slew of funny Chinglish menus. I wish I had the pictures. If I find them, I’ll pass them along.

Thanks for reading and I’ll try to update stuff when I get settled down in my new place. :3

#china #not hetalia

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lokidoki-imagines · 7 years ago

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Library Vigilante

Pairing: Loki x Reader

Content/Warnings: Fluff, second hand embarrassment

Words: 2360

Prompt: Library AU ‘You’re overdue on this book and I want it so I’m tracking u the fuck down’

You can request more by dropping me an with an idea or pick a prompt from my favourite prompt lists one liners, 100 kinks, generals, AU’s and holiday prompts :) Hope you enjoy!

“I’m sorry, that book still hasn’t been returned to us yet.” The kind lady behind the desk spoke as she tapped away at her keys, “The gentlemen who has it is going to have a hefty fine when he decides to return it.”

“He’s gonna have more than a hefty fine.” You mumbled, tapping your fingers off the desk. “How long overdue is it?” You asked, peering over the desk at the screen hoping to catch a glimpse of the name of this mysterious gentlemen. The librarian pulled her screen away abruptly making you huff in defeat.

“I’m sorry Miss but that’s confidential information, you’ll have to wait until the book is returned or try another library.” She pulled her mouth into a tight line and began typing once again. You needed that book, it was the last one in the series and you were not prepared to pay a whole $25 on a book, not when there was a perfectly good one you could loan out for free. Slumping on the desk the librarian peered at you over her glasses, “Do you need anything else dear?” Yes I do I need that bloody book.

Pulling your head up you put on the best fake smile you could muster and glanced quickly at her name tag. “Susan,” You beamed, leaning ever slightly towards her “I just really need that book. You see, a poor art student like me doesn’t have a lot of money and libraries are where I can enjoy myself without having to pay and -”

“You should always donate some change to your local libraries dear, we have bills too you know.” Your smile dropped momentarily before you realised your face was betraying your annoyance. “Oh yes! I know that only too well Susan, see if you could just give me the details of the man who has the book I want, I could do you a favour and go and collect it.” Susan stared at you blankly, her fingers stilled over her keyboard. “I could be the libraries vigilante if you like.” You laughed, tucking a piece of your hair behind your ear nervously. “Like an avenger, only on a smaller scale.”

Susan began to shake her head as you clasped your hands together, “We don’t need -”

“No I know you don’t but see I need that book!” You snapped at her, you’d already tried the other libraries for it when you discovered last week that it was loaned out. Unfortunately for you so were all the other copies. You gave her your award winning puppy dog face before she switched the computer off and placed a sign on her desk saying ‘Out to lunch’. You frowned as you watched her collect her things and move to the room that was reserved for staff only.

It was completely empty in there, it was your local library that you frequented quite often but never really saw anyone else there. You weren’t stupid, you knew that being the closest library to the local college there was always students drifting in trying to look inconspicuous as they made their way to the first floor history section. Wandering around the place you realised that the place was actually empty, Susan was out back for her 45 minute break and no doubt there were students canoodling upstairs but...You were alone.

Heart racing with sweaty palms, you ran around to the other side of the desk and switched the computer on. All you needed was a name and an address and then you could hightail it out of there like nothing had happened.

“Okay, calm down, you’re not hacking S.H.I.E.L.D...” You mumbled as you were faced with a password entry system. Putting your head in your hands you glanced around the desk, there wasn’t much save for a photo of a man in a cap and gown and a bobble head of Thor. You snorted, flicking his head as you racked your brain for an idea. Pausing, you began to type.

Books. Password denied.

Avengers. Password denied.

One attempt left. You glanced at the nodding Thor and tried again, holding your breath you typed Thor.

Password accepted.

“Black widow eat your heart out!” You muttered before typing the name of the book into the database. “Susan, we all have our vices.” It had been loaned out for quite a while, the man who currently possessed it has had it for 7 weeks. Who takes 7 weeks to read a book?! You thought while pulling up his details.

Grabbing a pen from a pot you quickly scribbled down his name and address on a piece of paper before switching the computer off again and hightailing it out of there.

It was a warm day so you decided to walk seeing as it was only a couple of blocks away from the library, you were running through the scenario of how the situation was going to go in your head when you realised that it wasn’t quite as far as you had thought. It was a small set of fancy apartments that was just down the road from the avengers tower, you remember the media saying that Tony Stark had built them but no one figured out what for.

You scanned the list of names next to buzzers until you found the one you were after, “Donald Blake you’re mine!” You whispered as you pushed the buzzer for the apartment above his.

“Hello?” A voice crackled through the intercom.

“Hi! I’m Donald’s girlfriend and I thought I’d surprise him,” You chirped, “he think’s I’m in California!” This better work.

“Oh how romantic! Do you want me to buzz you in?” The voice asked.

You let out a silent prayer to whatever God happened to be listening before replying in a sickly sweet voice, “Yes thank you that would be amazing!”

Moments later you heard the tell tale buzz of the door unlocking, you quickly rushed through the glass doors and into the lift, pushing the button for the 3rd floor. The end was in sight, you were so close to getting the book and if you were honest, the adrenaline from the whole thing was more fun now than actually getting the book. The doors opened as your stepped out and made your way to the only door, steeling yourself you took a deep breath in and knocked quickly.

Picking at the skin around your thumbs you stopped breathing when the door opened to reveal none other than Thor, God of thunder himself.

He looked bigger than you’d imagined. Not that you’d imagined him of course, but he seemed bigger than he did on TV. You swallowed quickly as your checked the name and address on the slip of paper.

You looked up at the confused God, “Hi, does uh, Donald Blake live here?” You asked quickly, glancing at the paper before showing the God the slip too.

His laughter was like a boom, deep and hearty his whole body shook as he stepped aside to let you in. He shut the door behind himself before he led you through to a sitting room.

“Loki!” He laughed, gesturing to a man reclining on a chaise in the window, book open in hand. He was handsome you’d give him that, not in the obvious way like Thor but handsome non the less for a guy who tried to take over New York.

Your eyes locked with his when you realised that Donald Blake probably wasn’t gonna be sharing an apartment with the two asgardian brothers. Loki’s eyes roamed over your form as you stood next to his brother, his gaze was calculating and judgemental but not as cold and icy as you’d thought it would be. There was more indifference really.

“Brother.” He replied eventually, his voice more silky than you’d expected it. His eye’s had gone back to his book once he’d examined you and Thor motioned for you to sit.

“No thank you,” You noticed the younger prince’s eyes snap over to watch the scene unfold. “I’ve actually come for Donald Blake.” Puffing your chest out you turned away from Thor’s amused smile to glare at the raven haired prince who was watching you with curiosity.

“I’m guessing Donald Blake is a fake name, I don’t care. All I know is that I didn’t hack into that stupid computer using your name,” You shoved a finger into Thor’s chest before pausing and smiling, “Susan loves you by the way, you’d make her day if you visited.” Turning back around to Loki you noticed he’d close his book and sat up, your nerves were getting the better of you now as he stood up to his full height.

He’s taller than I thought he’d be.

“Anyway, you’re overdue on a book I want so I’ve tracked you down so you can return it.” Placing your hands on your hips you nodded once, signalling that you were finished.

Loki’s mouth fell agape slightly before looking off to the side confused. Your confidence and bravado that had spurred you on had left, the adrenaline in your veins was replaced with fire as you felt yourself getting more embarrassed with each beat of silence.

Thor had taken to sitting on the couch that Loki was leaning on, a large smile plastered onto his distractingly attractive face. “You hacked into the libraries system?” Loki clarified.

You nodded. “Found our name and address?”

Oh god.

“Came here, let yourself in.”

Oh no.

“Knocked on our door and now you’re demanding a book back so that you may read it?”

I sound like a freakin’ psycho.

Thor looked between me and his brother who at that moment in time, had his head cocked to the left and was studying you very intently.

“How did you get into the building?” Thor laughed, taking a swig of whatever was in the bright rainbow coloured mug.

Oh god now I’m gonna sound insane, officially insane. You thought before clasping your hands behind your back, rocking on the balls of your feet. “There’s a very nice lady upstairs, and uh, I told her that I’d flew in from California to see my boyfriend, Donald.” Thor clasped Loki on the shoulder and stood up taking his rainbow mug and his chuckles with him down the corridor.

You panicked, how could the god of thunder leave you with the god who’d tried to take over your planet not even 5 years earlier? Movement caught your eye as you watched Loki move with every bit of elegance you’d expect from a prince over to a leaning pile of books in the corner.

He didn’t seem as bad as every said really, watching him move books from the top to the bottom before moving the pile all together to sift through another you began to wonder.

“Which one’s your favourite?” You asked quietly, his hands pausing for a moment before carrying on with their task. You left it there, you’d already made yourself look like a lunatic and didn’t want to annoy the trickster god anymore by asking him mundane questions.

He seemed to find what he was looking for and straightened up, walking over to where you were with three very purposeful strides. “Here,” He spoke softly, handing you the book you’d come for. You smiled and flicked through the pages out of habit. “It’s this series actually.”

Your smile dropped as you looked up to him, realising that he was answering your question after all. “I rather liked this series, of all the boring books earth has to offer these one’s are rather amusing I suppose.”

“If you like these one’s then any of the books written by Neil Gaiman would probably suit you,” You let out a breathy laugh as you tucked the book into your rucksack. “His stories are about norse gods actually, and how they -” You stopped as you realised you were babbling again, with a wave of your hand you glanced at the door. “You don’t care, why would you? I should get out of your hair, thanks for the book.” You turned to leave as Thor entered the room again.

Waving at him over Loki’s shoulder you turned back to the raven haired god, “Maybe I’ll see you at the library sometime,” You smiled at him as you pulled the door open, “bring money, Susan says you’ve a hefty fine waiting for you!” You laughed nervously before closing the door behind you.

Mind whirling from meeting two very handsome gods, you leaned against the wall as you waited for the elevator to arrive. “Book lady!” Your head whipped round to see Thor standing in the doorway to the apartment you’d just exited.

“Yeah?” You answered as you saw Loki glancing nervously between his brother and you, “What’s your name?” Thor boomed as the lift arrived with a ding.

You grinned, “Y/N.” Stepping into the lift you tried to ignore the quiet bickering that was going on between the two brothers. You pressed the button for the ground floor but it wasn’t moving, and the doors wouldn’t close either. Watching as Thor grinned at his brother while talking quietly you began to stroll back over to the pair.

“Not to sound imposing, but the elevator’s broke.” Loki glared hard at Thor once more before watching his brother walk away.

Loki’s mouth opened and then closed again, looking off the the side you followed his gaze but found nothing of interest.

“You ok Loki?” His head snapped back with wide eyes.

He cleared his throat and nodded, “Would you like to get coffee?” He asked quickly, glancing behind him at Thor who was grinning like a mad man.

Once again you felt yourself warm up as you nodded a bit too quickly, “I think I’d really like that.” Loki’s face relaxed as he grabbed a jacket from the coat stand and pulled the door shut. “You take every girl who tracks you down for books out for coffee?” You teased, taking the stairs with him.

He smirked as he held the glass entry door for you, “Only the ones called Y/N.”

#loki imagine #loki x reader #loki oneshot #loki drabble #loki prompt #loki x oc #loki fanfic #loki laufeyson #thor ragnarok #thor #fluff #imagines #imagines blog #marvel imagine #thor imagine #loki odinson #send in requests #askbox open

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bangkokjacknews · 4 years ago

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Ecommerce - From science fiction to reality

Ecommerce – The World at Your Fingertips

In 1974, ten years before home computing made the transition from science fiction to reality, Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008) was interviewed by Australia’s ABC Network and asked how computers, which at that time were large enough to be housed in computer rooms that were around the size of a basketball court, would change the future for the everyday person. The author replied with an accurate description of what we today recognize as online shopping and banking. Responding to a question about how life might be for the interviewer’s son Clarke responded, ‘he will have, in his own house, a computer terminal through which he will be able to talk and access any information he needs for his everyday life. Like his bank statements, his theater reservations and anything else required in the course of living in a complex modern society. And this will be in compact form in his own home, which he will take for granted as much as we do the telephone.’ For many, in 1974, the idea that everybody will be able to carry around, in their pocket, information about anything that has ever happened, throughout history, and be able to access anything of current value, would be far too hard to imagine. Remember, in 1974 the Encyclopedia Britannica was made up of over twenty volumes that would be hard enough to transport around in a small van. And even they only scratched the surface in terms of information. It would take people of vision to change our established way of doing things and yet sometimes even the most imaginative can be embarrassed by their own limitations. For example, in 1966 the esteemed Time Magazine insisted that remote shopping would flop because ‘women like to be able to get out of the house, to be able to handle the merchandise and be able to change their minds.’ In 1986 American technical author Clifford Stoll was working as a system’s administrator at the Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory in California when he identified an intrusion by the hacker, Marcus Hess. At that time computer networks were in their infancy and very little was known about intrusion. It is now known that even military networks gave so little attention to their security in those early days that often the default passwords remained unchanged and users were able to log on to many networks by simply typing in the word ‘guest.’ Stoll, however, was one day given the relatively minor task of finding a seventy-five cent discrepancy on the Lawrence Berkley network and he quickly realized that an unauthorized user had logged into the system for nine seconds and not paid for it. Unsurprisingly recovering less than a dollar was not the motive Stoll had for tracking down the culprit. Instead he was keener to discover how somebody unknown had gained access to a private network, and why. A ten month investigation led to a honey trap and, for the first time in history, international law enforcement agencies worked together in order to trace the villain and make an arrest. Markus Hess, who later confessed to working for the Soviet KGB became the first person to be jailed as a result of a digital forensic investigation. Clifford Stoll wrote a book about his hunt for the hacker called The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage and later contributed to many publications on the subject of online security. Stoll however, has not always been as successful in identifying internet trends and patterns. On February 27 1995 he wrote on the subject of growing online communities and noted, ‘visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic? That’s baloney,’ he continued. ‘Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.’ And he wasn’t finished. ‘Try reading a book on disc. At best it’s an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can’t take that laptop to the beach. And yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT media Lab, predicts that we’ll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the internet. Uh… sure!’ This was all in the same year as internet giants Amazon and eBay were formed and still Clifford Stoll had more to say on the matter. ‘So how come,’ he continued, ‘my local mall does more business in a single afternoon that the entire internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the internet, which there isn’t, the network is missing the most essential ingredient of capitalism – salespeople.’ To be fair to Clifford Stoll this was still four years before any reliable and trustworthy way of sending money over the internet had been developed and the general public were still a long way from feeling confident about feeding their credit card information into the unknown. Clifford Stoll rounded up his article with the observation that, ‘while the internet beckons brightly, seductively flashing an icon of knowledge as power, this non-place lures us to surrender our time on earth. A poor substitute it is, this virtual reality where frustration is legion and where, in the holy names of education and progress, important aspect of human interactions are relentlessly devalued.’ Well, he was right about that part at least but the rest of Stoll’s summery of Ecommerce has proved to be inaccurate to the tune of over one trillion dollars every year. And this is only the beginning. However, in fairness to Clifford Stoll it must be conceded that very few people could have foreseen the impact Ecommerce would have had upon the buying habits of just about every person in the western world. Especially considering it at a time when very few people had even heard of the internet, let alone connected to it after unplugging their telephones and using the lead for dial up access. (It all seems so long ago now doesn’t it?) Stoll, to his credit, can laugh at his previous observations and once noted, when reminded of his Newsweek article, ‘Of my many mistakes, flubs and howlers, few have been as public as my 1995 howler. Now, whenever I think I know what’s happening, I temper my thoughts. Might be wrong Cliff…’ - Albert Jack Albert Jack AUDIOBOOKS available for download here

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devosdevine · 7 years ago

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I’m a Witch.

Witch.

Why use that word? Mostly, because it's true.

Also, because it's an incredibly important word.

As Madeline Miller explains in her brilliant Guardian article, From Circe to Clinton: why powerful women are cast as witches, the word witch "reflect[s] our ideas about women back to ourselves." This lone syllable is a palimpsest of information about women's history: forms of feminine power, fear of feminine power, and the independence of women who hold power.

I learned I was a witch at age 11. Unfortunately, not by owl.

When I was 9, my progressive Episcopal school hired a remarkably conservative pastor. He taught my third grade Bible class that women were inferior members of the Christian faith. Convinced of my equality, I fought him openly. When the class reached Corinthians, I was exiled to the hallway.

Fortunately, I also spent that year studying Scandinavian history and mythology. I thus realized that pre-Christian spiritual alternatives existed, but the old gods still seemed distant, found only in fairy tales and books of ancient history.

Two years later, I stumbled on a curious volume at a used book fair. It was pink, with an picture of a beautiful woman on the cover and a compelling title: The Holy Book of Women's Mysteries. I took it home and devoured it in one sitting.

Running into my mother's bedroom, waving the book like a flag, I hollered, "Mom! I understand now! I'M A WITCH! Everything makes sense!" I was deliriously happy.

My mother lowered her newspaper and said levelly, "OK. But you can't ever say that to anyone else. They won't understand."

If you've met me, you know I'm a rules-follower. (Well, except when my Bible teacher tells me to accept my subservience.) I didn't speak the word "witch" to anyone else for nearly ten years.

Yet, I was a lucky wee witch: I had little supervision, an allowance, subway tokens, and all of New York City at my disposal. I bought a tarot deck at a comic book shop, made a wand from a branch found in Central Park, taught myself to meditate, and spent hours on the floor of Barnes and Noble devouring feminist classics and occult texts.

I paid scant attention to pop cultural depictions of witchcraft. It seemed a bit dangerous: would my curiosity indicate that I was, indeed, a witch? Also, I didn't want to get my information from Willow. I wanted real magic.

When I reached Duke University, I found a trove of resources in the Divinity Library, which was often empty and had a forgotten copy machine in the basement. I studied there, Xeroxing whole chapters from Doreen Valiente's works after I finished my homework.

I also found mentors: a married pair of witches raising their young daughter in the craft. They took me in, filled the many gaps in my knowledge, taught me how to perform rituals with proper tools and other witches, and coached me through many challenges. But they practiced in secret, because North Carolina wasn't a safe place to be a witch in the 1990s. So I practiced in secret, too.

Until I met my husband. Nominally Christian, he was remarkably sanguine about my beliefs and befuddled by my secrecy. We spoke Methodist vows at our wedding, but did so bathed in sunshine and surrounded by flowers, bees, and butterflies, so that I could feel the presence of the divine.

I stuck a toe out of the broom closet after my daughter's birth. As her primary role model, secrecy and sneaking around seemed like a terrible precedent to set. We decided to become an interfaith family: our daughter was baptized, but also included in my observances. Today, we celebrate all pagan holidays and some Christian holidays. Openly.

Yet, I didn't really leave the broom closet until we moved to Asheville, where I found allies, resources, and wise teachers including Byron Ballard, Becky Beyer, Sarah Chappell, Maia Toll, Jodi Rhoden, and Katie Vie. When I stopped hiding, I found my tribe.

So, what do I believe now?

Animism

I am an animist, which means that I perceive all natural things - rocks, plants, trees - as in some way alive. I also believe in divine immanence - an organizing force in the universe that is both holy and present in all natural things. I believe we can perceive divine order in the patterns of sacred geometry - pentagrams, spirals, stars, whorls, the Fibonacci sequence. (Here, let Donald Duck explain!) Thus, I believe nature is to be cherished, protected, and venerated.

Views about classic theological questions - the soul, the afterlife - vary widely among animists. Personally, I think our bodies and consciousness return to nature, but I really don't know what that means. I doubt my mind is capable of understanding it.

Paganism

Paganism is a polytheistic religious practice. I believe it is difficult for the human mind to approach the divine without some organizing principles. Gods, goddesses, myths, and stories help us conceive of the divine in a concrete way. Forming a relationship with one of these manifestations is a way to venerate the divine in the material world.

Views about classic theological questions vary as widely as you might expect among pagans. We have a "family goddess" and organize our veneration around her symbolism and incarnation.

Witchcraft

Witchcraft is a practice, not a religion. Thus, one can be pagan and a witch, pagan but not a witch, and a witch but not a pagan. I happen to be both. There are too many strands of witchcraft to list here.

Witchcraft, as I define it, is the practice of magic.

I think of magic as the conscious direction of intention on the material world. My practices are informed by Reclaiming, Norse, and Dianic Wiccan practices. (But I no longer use materials created by trans-exclusionary authors.) I'm also starting to learn about Appalachian folk magic, since I'm surrounded by it. However, I also think of magic and science as a spectrum: magic can be defined as a collection of observed (and still somewhat fuzzy) knowledge that has been passed down along generations but not incorporated into the laws and rules of "science." I read Sagan and Einstein along with spell books.

My daily spiritual practices include meditation; reading tarot; caring for our land; invoking, spending time in the presence of, and making offerings to our family's matron goddess; working on our family altar; casting spells; and taking classes in herbalism, mysticism, or history. Special spiritual practices are reserved for holidays known as sabbats and esbats.

Sabbats are the eight holy days observed by many Euro-American pagans and witches. They represent spokes on the Wheel of the Year. These are holidays for our family, and we have special traditions associated with each. Many are revivals of pre-Christian festival days, and fall close to popular holidays. Samhain is one of the holiest days of the year, often referred to as "The Witches' New Year." Yule is a lot like Christmas, so our family observes a full week of wintry celebrations. Imbolc is the return of the sun, a better version of Groundhog Day. Ostara is very similar to Easter. Beltane is May Day, and my daughter's school actually celebrates a version of it with costumes, maypole dancing, treats, and games. Summer Solstice, or Litha, is a time for staying up with the sun, catching fireflies, drinking champagne in the grass, and making strawberry shortcakes. Lammas is the first harvest festival; we visit local farms, make bread, and learn about food systems. Mabon, or Autumn Equinox, is the big harvest festival, and I see it as the kickoff of the "season of the witch," when everyone is getting ready for Halloween and I can luxuriate in feeling normal for a month! We carve pumpkins, pick apples, and decorate like love children of the Addams and the Griswolds.

Esbats are rituals held at the Full Moon and New Moon. These are special times for holding rituals and casting spells, so I set up a small ritual for my daughter wherein I teach her some new skill like grounding or casting a circle. Then I do my own rituals and spellwork after she's in bed.

My decision to leave the broom closet was informed by (1) a new sense of safety, because witchcraft is extremely popular right now, but also (2) a new sense of responsibility, because of the misogyny unearthed in the 2016 election.

Clearly, the election itself was informed by a persistent hatred of powerful women. "Witch" played a strong role in misogynistic descriptions and depictions of Hillary Clinton. For younger women, especially witches like myself, this was alternately infuriating and thrilling. It was both a denigration of us as individuals and a recognition of our political power.

As Kristen Sollee has explained, “Witches have always been politically radical, in my opinion, but it seems that even more American witches are these days because the internet allows for a new kind of organizing on a larger scale." After the election, activist witches began to organize, often via the internet or in spaces created by feminist entrepreneurs. W.I.T.C.H's many outposts. Intersectional feminist events at Hauswitch, Catland, Ritualcravt. (And many more I'm surely leaving out.)

Women who were witches - and women who weren't - began to see themselves reflected in the activism of witchcraft.

Then Donald Trump co-opted the term "witch hunt." It rang hollow. As Josephine Livingston said:

On the one side, we have the young woman. Her natal chart is fully indexed; she can read tarot. She knows that Planned Parenthood guards her liberty. Her interest in witchhood is bound up with her political conscience, gender identity, and sense of humor. On the other, the President of the United States. His witchhood is, by contrast, a simple claim: that enemies hunt him for no good reason.

Like Livingston, I believe that "the only sorcery effective against him is solidarity: more magic, more craft, more witches."

If you can hex, do it.

If you can work to regenerate the earth, do it.

If you can bind, do it.

If you have the power of persuasion, use it.

But above all...

If you're a witch, use the word.

It's a powerful word. It rings with history, beauty, pain, and magic. We could all use a little more magic right now, by which I simply mean a little more intention in our relations with the material world, and a little more faith that our intentions matter.

Then, as Miller asks, "perhaps we can at last celebrate female strength, recognising that witches – and women – are not going away."

“We are the granddaughters of the witches you could not burn.” It’s not a biological claim. It’s a tribal cry of belonging. A recognition of my powerful foremothers, the women who were called “witch”: Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, Anne Boleyn, the herbalists, the alewives, the midwives, Hillary.

I’m a witch.

#witch #witchcraft #witches #politics #feminism #pagan #paganism #animism #animist

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