#now his only remaining life goal is my dissertation

[lovesodeepandwideandwell]

Well, at least my grandfather lived to see the election result he wanted

[halfagonyandhope]

ignite the stars │ch. 2

first chapter (x)

Satine Kryze is an internationally-recognized scholar in genocide studies who recently resigned from the Department of State over her concerns regarding the agency's ethics. Ben Kenobi is a tenured professor at Georgetown University studying the use of religion to justify military conflicts. Once high school sweethearts, the two haven't spoken since parting ways for university. That is, until Satine accepts a research fellowship - at Georgetown.

---

“And here, Madam Secretary,” says Ben with a flourishing gesture, “is your office.”

Satine opens her mouth to thank him. But before she can, she catches sight of the nameplate on the wall by her door.

Satine Kryze, PhD

And then she sees the nameplate next to hers, labeling the adjacent office: Ben Kenobi, PhD.

How on earth had she not noticed this morning?

She grimaces before she can arrange her features. She knows better than to hope he hasn’t caught glimpse of her face.

“You see now why I wanted to warn you,” says Ben.

She can’t help but burst into laughter, and he joins her. “Forgive me,” she says after a moment. “As I said, the first day was long, and I just didn’t expect…”

“To run into a past lover? To be blindsided with the knowledge that your office is right next to said past lover’s office?”

“Ben,” she hisses, looking around. But the hallway is empty, and all the office doors are closed.

“No one’s around,” he says, pacifying. “Vos and Ventress don't teach or come to campus on Mondays, Windu is teaching halfway across campus at the moment, and Billaba’s on sabbatical this semester.”

Satine rolls her eyes. “You know as well as I that their grad students are likely floating around. Grad students live at campus.”

“Touché,” he says. He softens his tone. “I shan’t bring it up again.”

Satine curses internally, finding herself melting at his accent. Ben’s parents, a pair of successful Foreign Service Officers, had been assigned to the American embassy in London when he’d been born, and he’d learned to speak there. Though he’d lived in America for the majority of his life, the posh dialect had remained, and it had been one of the things that Satine had fallen for first.

“Thank you,” Satine says, satisfied, and moves to unlock her door.

Before she can, though, Ben steps forward. “Are you heading home? Can I walk you to your bus stop?”

Her hand extended toward the door, Satine mulls this over. “I’m not sure that is a good idea.”

“It’s dark,” says Ben, “and you’ve already gotten lost once.”

Satine groans, rolling her eyes at him. “You’re not going to let me forget that, are you?”

“There’s very little I can tease you about, and I dearly love to laugh. More so if it’s at you.”

She smacks his shoulder in good fun.

His eyes widen in mock surprise. “Have you renounced your pacifist ideals? Have the years taught you that you were once too optimistic? That your goals were unrealistic?”

“Dr. Kenobi, I can honestly say that yours is the only face I have ever wanted to punch.”

Ben laughs deeply. “I’m honored, Dr. Kryze.”

She brandishes her keys in front of her. “Only you could turn my doctorate into an insult.”

“You misunderstand me,” says Ben, still chuckling. “It’s just…” He shrugs. “We’d always talked about going to grad school, back when we were younger and…stupider. Knowing what I know now about academia, I’m amazed we both did it.” He steps closer. “And I’d never insult your doctorate. I actually cited your dissertation within my own.”

Satine gapes at him and almost drops her keys. “You cited my dissertation? In your dissertation?” She hates the way her heart flutters, but it’s the most romantic thing she thinks she’s ever heard.

Damn him.

“Of course,” says Ben. “You finished yours before I completed mine - because I did a tour in Afghanistan between undergrad and grad school - and it was a fundamental text in the argument I made.”

At this, she does drop her keys. “You actually read the whole thing?”

He nods. “And so you know I’m not lying, I believe it was, what? Two hundred and seventy pages long? Including references, tables, and figures, of course.” He kneels to pick up her keys and then hands them back to her.

Satine turns to the office door. “I’ve changed my mind,” she says sharply. “You may walk me to my bus stop.”

Ben just grins.

---

Satine shuts the door to her condo and leans against it. “Fuck,” she says.

True to his word, Ben had walked her to her bus stop, his elbow out so she could slip her arm around his as they walked over icy sidewalks. She had been pleased for her decision to wear heels so that she could see eye to eye with him, but the trek across campus had turned that feeling to regret quickly. After almost slipping once, she’d held onto his arm a bit too tightly.

But he hadn’t complained.

On the bus heading home, Satine had looked up the route from her office to the bus stop, wondering why the walk had seemed shorter this morning. Her jaw had fallen when she’d realized he’d taken her the long way around campus.

And now, searching her feelings, she can’t find she’s mad about it.

She should be mad. She should be upset. After all, she’d spent most of undergrad rejecting any attempts from potential suitors to court her - and she’d spent all of those years comparing anyone she let close to her to the standards Ben had set. For a time, she’d wondered if perhaps maybe she wasn’t attracted to men after all, such was the dismal state of her love life.

The only way she’d managed to move forward was to keep the break clean, and she hadn’t once wavered in that choice.

Though Ben had clearly kept tabs on her, Satine hadn’t allowed herself the same luxury when it came to him. She’d never searched his name online - though she’d wanted to more times than she could count - or asked once-mutual friends about him. 

The flood of new information about him she’d discovered today is like oxygen to a starved set of lungs, and she muses over the bits and pieces of him she’d never known.

He’d gone to war.

He’d earned a doctorate.

He’d cited her goddamn dissertation in his dissertation.

And perhaps most intriguing of all: he hadn’t been wearing a wedding band.

That had surprised her, when she’d noticed. Whenever he’d crossed her mind since their parting when they were eighteen, she’d imagined him settled down with a partner and perhaps a child. Satine had wished him every happiness in her mind. But she’d never actually considered that he would end up alone; his charm had made that seemingly impossible. She feels a twinge of sadness in her gut.

Satine runs a hand through her hair, then drops her bag to the floor.

It’s possible, of course, that he’s seeing someone and isn’t actually single. But even though Ben is a flirt, he was never the type to be overly flirtatious to others when he’d had someone waiting for him at home. A lot has obviously changed over the years, but Satine can’t imagine that aspect of him is different. So, no, she decides. He likely is unattached.

Grumbling, she kicks off her heels, hangs up her jacket, and heads to the kitchen, flipping on lights on her way there. Her mind continues to wander as she heats up the meal she’d prepped the day before, and she eats standing up, too preoccupied to make her way over to the table to sit.

What if…

She puts down her fork a little too forcefully.

No, she tells herself firmly.

First, there is the matter of it being completely unprofessional to date within the workplace. And second, there is the other, infinitely more ominous matter of her heart being so shattered after her original parting from Ben that she is still picking up the pieces nearly twenty years later. She doesn’t think she has the strength to put it together again, should they try to pursue a romantic relationship and it not work out.

However…Satine is also self-aware enough to know she won’t be able to prevent herself from falling for him this time around either. 

She leans forward, elbows on the countertop.

“Fuck,” she says again.

[seimeinotaka]

Rêverie (An OberonXGudako fic)

MASSIVE LOSTBELT 6 SPOILERS INCLUDING OBERON'S PROFILE AND BOND CE

Summary: Oberon has been unexpectedly summoned to Chaldea. He wonders why he is even there as he reminisces what happened in Avalon Le Fae. But it seems Ritsuka isn't leaving him alone, much to his annoyance.

Thanks to jellyfishy for beta-reading this!

Once again, the story has major spoilers for LB6, Oberon's profile and Bond CE, as well as important plot points of Solomon, LB1 and LB5.

There's implied one-sided love, mentions of heavy topics such as loss, and mentions of deceased characters.

"Master, Master, you've gotten better at this!"

"Thank you, Gogh! I've been practicing a lot using the tips you and Oui gave me. Even Jeanne Alter praised my background, hehe!"

"Hey, I said it was passable. Pas-sa-ble!"

Ritsuka Fujimaru has been drawing something in the cafeteria, surrounded by many servants that come and go. No one asks what she is doing, they all seem to know or if they don’t, they don’t bother to ask.

It is so bothersome. Annoying.

So many people surrounding her, like an ultraviolet lamp that attracts all the bugs. Never mind that they end up getting zapped the moment they ever dare to touch it.

The people, the sound, the merriment, it all annoys Oberon, who only watches in silence as he eats some ice cream with melon.

To be able to smile like that, even after discarding all of those stories...Oberon doesn't hide a crooked smile. In the end, the lostbelts are no more than faint dreams doomed to end, forgotten by the winners, the panhuman history citizens. Ritsuka Fujimaru isn't different. For her, it's like reading the doujin the swimsuit berserker is making. Once the pages are closed, the story ends and it ceases to exist. She can choose to forget.

Truly detestable.

-

Oberon stares and then walks away, just as Ritsuka lifts her face. She looks around, the feeling of being watched faintly breaking her concentration.

But in the end he doesn't say a word as he leaves.

-

“Hey, you keep looking at Master!” Jeanne Alter slams her hands on the table where Oberon is sitting. Said Master is working again, too enthralled talking with Gogh to notice Jeanne Alter slipping away to talk to him.

“Does it bother if I do?” He gives her a crooked smile as she huffs and scowls. Though of course her face turns slightly pink.

“Tch, of course not! It's just your stare is getting on my nerves! Wouldn't you get distracted if someone is looking at you intensely?”

“I am a creation, not a creator. I wouldn't understand what you're saying. Besides, I wasn’t looking at her or you anyway,” he says mockingly.

“Hmph, whatever you say. Leave when Master is drawing, what she is doing is very important and I won't let you make it messy.”

“Hah, a page of your little comic? As if you need a lot of care. But fret not, I am certain that with your keen insight and guidance it will be something so memorable, up to the level of the famous writers here in Chaldea.”

“You bug...Bring it, I will burn you to a crisp! Moths do like fire, don't they? Surely you will feel at home then!” Jeanne Alter laughs. “I'll let you know that it is something so impressive that it would make you cry, if you're capable of that anyway.”

Though her Saint Graph right now is one of a Berserker, it seems the insight of the Avenger still exists deep within. After all, only those who are similar can recognize each other. Fake recognizes fake. Emptiness recognizes emptiness. Hate can only recognize hate.

Though come to think about it, Ritsuka has always been writing, he noticed she kept a small book on her, during quiet times. Perhaps a diary of sorts. It wouldn’t be surprising, to record everything she has experienced, as the writer of the winning history.

-

When we die, we'll become like those stories. Our lives are stories that might be discussed and forgotten, so it's not that different from your midsummer night dream.

A dream you forget once you wake up from your slumber.

“You're a tsundere,” Ritsuka says flatly as she rests her chin on her hand. She even dares to give Oberon a shrug and a smile, as if she can tell the truth between the lies.

“Ah, you're annoying.”

“That's exactly what I'm talking about, hehe!”

An obnoxious smile continues to be on her face, and he simply looks at her with unveiled disgust and apathy.

“Why am I even here?”

“Well, you answered the call, so you can only blame yourself for that.”

“What.”

“The rayshift system call can be refused. That's an inescapable truth. You lie a lot but there are some truths in your words. Or actions in this case. You wanted to be in Chaldea, even if you don’t want to admit it.”

“Ah there it is, your virtuous nature shining through. One day you'll be fooled by someone who is pretending to be your ally...ah, my bad, that has already happened, isn't that right? Maybe you should learn your lesson.”

“Ah, yes. But it doesn't change that you are here. And because you lie often, that means I can just take it whatever way I like. You'll just deny it even if I'm right. But you can't deny we get along pretty well!”

“We do not!”

“See, that's a lie!”

“Ah, I'm going to the cafeteria! Don't follow me!”

Yet we thrive on dreams, don’t we?

“How long do you think I've been in this business? Have you interacted already with some of the servants here? I can tell you don’t mind my company.”

“I quit, I'll break the contract!”

“So, one cube or two?” Ritsuka dares to offer him the sugar cube container, even holding some tongs, just to put the amount he requests in his cup.

“You really want a poisoned tea, right, wonderful Master?~”

Even if they are something that doesn’t exist, we yearn for them, even to make them a reality. No matter how impossible. No matter how painful.

That is why we can never get rid of them.

Even if we forget once the veil of dawn has ended, something of it remains.

-

“There's so much that is subjective. For example, you were Artoria's Merlin, weren't you? For a moment you were Merlin, that was her truth. There's different Merlins, I mean we have different Artorias here from different eras and classes. You were a different Merlin than the one I know.”

Ritsuka is busy trying different colors. Oui and Gogh got into a discussion on how to best get the tones she was aiming for, and they even went to do some research on their own. The reds of a forest seem familiar yet not quite right, not that Oberon was looking at the notebook.

It has to have a dreamlike feeling, that’s what she wanted, but that’s not easy to pour into a painting.

“What we see as a lie or as truth, it changes with our perception. Your lies and my truths might be different, but it's ok. In the end we have only one perspective. That's why lies and truths can mix, that's why contradictions exist. I mean, that is why you are here.”

“Here's some advice from the bottom of my heart, don't quit your day job, Master. Stick to the world saving and leave the philosophical dissertation to virtually anyone else.”

In the end, does the truth really matter?

Something that can change when you close your eyes. Something that is as fleeting as a moth's life.

Would anything change in the grand scheme of things?

To protect Ritsuka, Chaldea forged a story, one where Romani Archaman was at fault for everything that happened.

To the world that is on the verge of disappearing, that became the truth.

To everyone in Chaldea, the truth is that this girl worked harder than anyone to protect this world.

That was what Sherlock Holmes said once they met. Oberon didn’t like him, but in a way he seems familiar. Holmes is a great detective, but since he keeps everything to himself, he might be wrong the entire time until the last minute.

So it’s not like Oberon can take him that seriously.

Even so, he told him the story of the great journey before Panhuman History was at risk by the Alien God. A story of which he was somehow aware, but it seems different when it is told by someone else.

To Oberon, it was a story of selfish survival. A fitting story of those who fight in the mud to continue existing.

To Holmes, it was a story of humanity bravely fighting to avoid destruction. An unlikely event that might have inspired others. Or rather, that is how the Leonardo Da Vinci from that time would have framed it, since Holmes isn’t an author and the current Da Vinci is someone different now.

The events are there, what changes is our perception of them. Perhaps this is where truths and lies take root, the lie of today becomes the truth of tomorrow.

The lie allows the fake existence to continue even when the dream has already ended.

But in the end, everything will fade, so nothing really matters.

-

"Well, I don't know if it has a meaning, but doesn't that mean you can give it your own? Just like how I can take your lies the way I want."

"Aren't you a simplistic one? No, perhaps it is that kind of thinking that has let you get this far. What a naive Master Chaldea has. Though it helps you accomplish your goals. "

He is not sure why they are taking tea while chatting, but here he is. Perhaps it is to hide his annoyance, the Master won’t stop until she gets what she wants anyway, so he is just avoiding a pointless squabble.

"You can think whatever you want~ and in any case, even if the feelings of today will be nothing in the future, that doesn't mean they are worthless. Because they affect the you of today and that is the moment when you are alive.”

The joy of living, that is something Oberon can’t understand nor tolerate. It angers him.

Of course, he is an entity of the abyss so how could he comprehend that?

The will of self-destruction, the cessation of existence. That something is so fundamentally wrong that it must wiped out, for there is no way to fix something that crooked.

Faerie Britain wished for him because it had to be wiped away from all records, because it had no way of being salvaged.

Therefore, he can only listen to those words.

(Perhaps it is the envy of not having something? Perhaps it is the bitterness of no longer having something to do, to dream for? Or simple ennui that no matter what, in the end it doesn’t matter?)

Ritsuka ignores his silence, as she continues.

“I don't know but for someone who likes stories you don't seem like you're actually enjoying them.”

“Would you enjoy a story where you fade away like everyone in the lostbelts you have erased? Ah, my bad. Surely, as the winner you can afford to disregard those stories. Silly me, of course you would be able to believe that as the victor you can claim to be the true history. Panhuman history is in the end mankind's right path, after all, and everything else can fade into the abyss.”

Her smile is complex, almost a facade. From one angle it looks like a forlorn frown, from the other a faint smile. She plays with the spoon on her table.

"Hmmm, I wonder..."

 Dr. Roman, we finally beat the British Lostbelt. It was unlike any other places we were, and I keep thinking of Percival's words...

   I wish you were still here.

The sacrifice of someone can mean the whole world for a single person. The sacrifices of millions can become a mere statistic, a simple cold number to show how bad an event was. In the end, it doesn't matter.

What was once lost will never come back.

The void left in one's soul will never heal, it only becomes more bearable with time.

But even so, that lingering pain is the proof that someone was alive, that they left a mark on the others they met as one looks at the twinkling stars and reminisces of the never-happening-again past.

“Did you know the true opposite of love isn't hate but indifference?”

“Haaah? Perhaps you didn't think so but I was being honest about my suggestion. Thinking too much will only hurt your head. You should only focus on what's in front of you.”

“Whether you love or hate, you end up putting a lot of attention to the object of your affections, but if you're indifferent to it, it ceases to exist. Perhaps your hatred of everything is because there's something you cannot afford to lose.”

Titania was the wife of Oberon in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream. She was the only one who could accept the king's eccentric personality.

But in reality, she was just a creation for the story, a being who was never real.

Of course, there isn't a person like that in the world.

Someone who accepts a hollow entity like me.

“I don’t know, if Arjuna Alter was able to come to terms with his own humanity, well...nevermind. I was just thinking aloud.”

(Ideals are just that.

A concept not belonging to this world.

It is when you reconcile with the flawed reality that you can grasp your happiness, the one you have.)

“Heh-Hahahaha, that's rich, Master!”

This is so sickening.

Only Titania could have loved(tolerated) such an unpleasant existence. Only Titania could have loved(tolerated) a being born of hate, a destructive force whose only purpose is to rend everything to ashes.

But the fact is, Titania doesn't exist. This means no one could accept someone like him.

That is the unpleasant truth.

That is why people are entranced(poisoned) by falsehoods, lies to sweeten the body and protect the soul. It's a sweet elixir to hide from the harsh reality, the ultimate end of the journey of everyone, a pointless, worthless life. Because at the end of the dream, no matter what one has accomplished, it doesn't change the finale of this story and it is doomed to be forgotten. 

Just as the one princess from before, who also fell in love with the Fairy King. The one who tried to give fire to his cold body. But he didn't notice this, not even when her snow body had ceased to move, a protection of love.

So in the end, if it's not acknowledged, it is the same as it never had happened.

“Tell me, does it matter to you? Are you going to tell me you know how I feel? That you understand what I'm going through? Come on, tell me your important story, that everything is going to be alright as long as I'm not alone-”

“I can't. I don't know how you feel. Even if we had suffered the same, I wouldn't know how you feel.”

Her words or her smile, the same as before. He doesn’t know which but it cuts him short.

“All I know is the pain of losing someone important to me, but that's not what you're feeling, right?”

The Titania I wish for doesn't exist in this world. The Faerie Britain that gave birth to me no longer exists, even if I have accomplished my goal. 

I am merely a dream whose purpose has been fulfilled and thus, the curtain shall be down as I exit the stage.

The things I yearn for are merely dreams. Even so, I hope, because I saw it existed for someone else. For another Oberon, not the one I am.

The illusion of happiness, the hope of a love.

I don't know how it is to not be Oberon, the lying king. The king without any other purpose. The villain that has exited the stage having won, but now even that victory is pointless.

Then, why am I still here? 

“For what it's worth, I like you. You're nice company, lies and all.”

“You’re an odd one.”

“I've been told that often.”

“It's not a compliment, you have no taste.”

“You know, for Panhuman history I am the hero, ensuring our world survives. But to everyone else from every lostbelt erased...I am the worst of the worst, the villain that destroys their world.”

Ritsuka traces the notebook on her hands. The contents of the rest could be disclosed but Oberon doesn’t open any of the other pile of notebooks, so they all lie on her bed.

“Patxi cursed me for showing him a world that he thought was happier than his.”

Tears fell from her eyes as she smiled weakly. “I wonder if that was ever the right choice.”

“Panhuman history isn't the perfect utopia you can imagine. Humans seek hatred and war, there's suffering and agony. While some can lead happy lives, there's so many who can't even enjoy a warm meal or think of a future. Kirshtaria saw that, he wanted to make a better world because ours was so imperfect.”

“Why are we still going?”

“Why was ours the correct one?”

“Even now, I don't know. And I'm not sure if I'll ever know. Any justification might seem a rationalization, something to feel less guilty for killing all those people.”

“That is why I cannot forget, I cannot let the history of those lostbelts be erased. Even if I'm the only one who remembers,” her grip on the notebook tightened, “I can never forget them.”

Like a dream, one time Oberon caught sight of what she was drawing, finally reaching the dreamy red hue she long sought, depicting the autumn forest Oberon knew and hated.

The words depicting what happened in Faerie Britain, the stories of Artoria, Morgan, of Barghest, Baobhan Sith and Melusine, of Aurora, of Mike, of Ector, of Knocknarea, of him.

“Even if the rest of the world forgets, I cannot. That's why I want to record as much as I can. I caused them to disappear, remembering all of them is the least I can do.”

“That's guilt for you.”

“...Yes, I can't deny that. I've caused many people to suffer, that is why I cannot stop.”

“You're an idiot. Pursuing a fleeting dream that will only cause you to hurt, as your heart tears itself apart with these thorns you surround yourself with.”

“I guess. But someone has to do it right? But even so…

“I enjoy the moments with everyone here in Chaldea and I can say I'm happy.

But I also feel deep sadness for everything that I have done and continue to do.”

There are many contradicting truths, woven into each other.

Like overlapping threads in a beautiful(horrible) story.

“I could think Panhuman history is the correct one because it was there. There was a reason why it was chosen.”

“And if there isn't? If there is truly no meaning to your journey? That the reason your world was chosen was a mere whim of fate, a sudden lucky roll of the dice? That there is nothing special to your world that makes you worthy of the title of proper human history?”

“Then I guess I will have to make it so that there is one.”

“And if you can't?”

“Just because I can't doesn't mean I shouldn't try.”

“Trying doesn't mean you will succeed. Morgan tried her hardest, but in the end, she still failed, crumbling in despair as her Faerie kingdom burnt to ashes.”

“Well, that will come bite me when the time comes, but for now, that’s all I can do, right?”

In the end, as long as it entertains, does it matter?

What is the purpose of a story? To bring joy(tears)? To break one from that moment of boredom, of despair, and heal the soul even if just a little?

And in the end, does it even matter?

-

“I like this Saint Graph more.”

It’s been a long time since he has donned the clothes as King Oberon. Once the façade was over, once he could ascend, he has never worn anything but the colors of the depths of the abyss. Anyone else would think they are unsightly, hateful, depressing.

After all, the warmth of King Oberon’s butterfly wings makes children smile, makes people trust him. His monstruous limbs right now are not enchanting.

“I thought you were a butterfly girl. And I have been wearing these ever since, why are you even saying this up until now?”

“I just wanted to say that. I like the fluffy cape and the butterfly wings, but you sound less pained right now. And this outfit is cool too.”

In the end, perhaps Titania isn't meant to be someone who brings the sun to your eyes, with laughter so contagious that she makes the bitterness of a day go away. She's not a neverending warmth on a cold winter, nor a guiding bright star up in the dark sky. She's not the simple to your complicated, the light to your dark, the smile to your frown, the opposite of your miserable existence that brings joy to your life. An illogical being that accepts you in spite of your incompatibility. 

Was I wrong all along? 

A companion when watching a wonderful(decadent) play.

Someone who walks by your side in a crumbling world.

Someone whose company makes the poison more bearable and hell, tolerable.

Someone who simply loves me for who I am. Who gazed at the abyss, saw the void yet didn't run away.

Ah, this is so laughable, an amateur terrible tragicomedy, a hideous play with no sickeningly sweet ending.

(Perhaps it is because Titania is a wretched creature herself. Or perhaps because Titania's wings have been torn off that she understands a small fragment of you. Even if true understanding is a lie, a pipe dream. Titania has seen her own hell and can sympathize with yours, with the emptiness and resentment you hold. Not fearing it, not judging it. Just accepting you as the flawed existence you are.

If that is the case, then there is nothing beautiful about Titania.)

But even so...

"...You are..."

"Did you say something?"

"No, nevermind."

Ritsuka smiles as Oberon looks away. He grumbles about the cramped space as he hoards the bed, swatting a mosquito away while she writes in her diary. The boring stories she writes that he doesn't care about even if his fingers have traced those letters.

But even so, he stays.

Ah, love is a bothersome thing.

-

Thank you for reading!

Now, OH BOY WHERE TO BEGIN. Title comes from Debussy's Rêverie. I wanted to play with it, seeing that Oberon's Bond CE is called Pavane for a Dead Princess, which is the title of a melody by Ravel. I am sure it is no coincidence. Both Ravel and Debussy were considered the cornerstones of Impressionism in music, however, they both HATED being labeled like that.

Pavane for a Dead Princess is one of Ravel's solo compositions for the piano. However, unlike what the title implies, Ravel specifically said that it wasn't meant to be a melody of a funeral, but he wanted to evoke the idea of a princess dancing to the pavane. However, some people didn't really listen to him. So in this case, I think that rather than to see Oberon's CE as a funeral to Blanca, it is a way to celebrate her story, even if it didn't end on the happier note we would have wished. You can listen to it here

Now Rêverie is by Debussy and it's meant to feel like a dream, hence the name. The melody became a massive hit, though Debussy later hated this piece because he felt that he had written better pieces but this one was the one that made him famous. Since it was written when he was young, he felt he was still lacking a lot, but the melody became one of his most popular compositions nonetheless. I think that story ties nicely with what we perceive vs what others perceive. You can listen to it here

Now onto the actual fic, I had this vague idea when part 3 was released, especially after all the spoilers about Oberon's true identity. I really wanted to get him, and I was super lucky. In between getting him, his profile and bond lines being translated, I just got possessed to write this as a way to honor and thank him for coming home AND to give him a sort of happy ending after Avalon.

Oberon in that bed is thanks to that comic on Twitter where he is eating chips without any care and the kind reminder of his voice lines that in spite of him constantly complaining, he spends an awful lot of time on our room. Hehehe.

Best of luck if you are pulling for him! And once again, thank you for reading!

[morihaus]

Folklore

Two apprentices make their way to the shore of the Isle of the Wise, basket and blanket in tow, already chattering away with one another. Although the College of the Sapiarchs has a reputation its rigorous and cutthroat academic atmosphere, even its most studious pupils are encouraged to take reprieves from their works, if not for their own benefit then for the benefit of the hardworking staff, those who have earned their own breaks from instructing and professing, as well as those who have important duties and research of their own to attend to.

Runalenwe and Pannolaire each possess their own cutthroat reputations, so it is with some surprise that their peers observe them taking these personal allowances of unstructured time not to get a leg up on their competition, but to get out from the halls of learning and into the natural splendor of the wild. They always take their breaks together, ostensibly to keep an eye on their most spirited and contentious academic rival, but also in the spirit of camaraderie; even as they have butted heads over their decades-long apprenticeships, they have found themselves rather transfixed on one another, interested, entertained, some might even say 'enamored.' It's true that they might consider themselves lovers, but they were not young or carefree, rather their love was ennobling and constructive, a means to an end- they would say- and all the fun they have along the way is merely incidental.

Runalenwe reaches what she considers a good place to rest, a nice shady spot under a tree, waves lapping at the shore before them. She unfurls the bright sheet they've brought at, inviting Pannolaire to take her seat before her, to which the other woman smiles and sets herself down very prim and proper. As Runalenwe joins her, she sets their woven basket down beside them, and continues on with their line of dialogue.

"Quite the ambitious project, a catalogue of Tamriel's famed magical artifacts," Pannolaire says. "Was her 12-page dissertation on the Flask of Lillandril not enough?" Her dark crest of brown hair seems to shimmer with life in the sun's light, as does the dress of decorative feathers and scales that she's donned instead of her apprentice's garb. Her companion thinks she cuts a figure rather like a bird of paradise, head held high against her collar of colorful plumage.

"Oh, I'd be fascinated to hear how many she can turn up." Runalenwe replies as she gets comfortable, propping herself up with an elbow against the blanket. "The research will be interesting- and her reports are always wonderfully detailed to be sure. The problem is by just 20 years time, I'm sure we'll be made aware of several new artifacts, or new qualities to the ones we already know, and all her work will be made obsolete. That's the problem with such presumptuous 'catalogues', better to channel your focus on just one thing. She clearly wishes she could be Sapiarch of just about every discipline!" She laughs, a few strands of her curly straw-colored hair swinging free of her top-bun. It's a noble laugh, haughty and mocking, yet it touches Pannolaire just the same as the warm bubbling laugh that came out of her honestly, most often when they were alone.

Pannolaire unpacks the food she'd brought, laying out the small spread as they continue to speak. Rolls of bread, fresh fruit, aged wine, and shellfish. "Which single artifact would you focus on?" Pannolaire glances up as she hands her a warm roll. "Some destructive staff? A weather worker?"

She chuckles, taking a small bite and clearing her mouth before responding. "Oh, Pannolaire, I've more interests than just shocking the daylights out of things! It's funny you should ask, actually."

"It is?" Pannolaire says.

"Yes, and I'll tell you why." Runalenwe grins.

Pannolaire smiles as well, cracking into a shellfish with practiced grace. "Please do."

"You are, I'm sure, familiar with the Ring of Phynaster? Artifact created by the ascended Aldmeri sorcerer Phynaster, great explorer and adventurer, a hero of the High King Aurthelel's court?" Pannolaire nods, not speaking for modesty as she samples some fruit. "It provides the wearer with protection against magics and poisons- it's popularly believed to have been created to facilitate in Phynaster's daring yet dangerous lifestyle, and even to have aided in his mythical long stride. But this story has been confused with time- it is misunderstood by so many of the scholars of Tamriel, those who forget that Phynaster was once one of us, a mortal, with mortal wants, mortal acquaintances."

Pannolaire watches Runalenwe as she orates, every word uttered with such a poise to belie rehearsal, and yet her character is so spontaneous, like an arc of lightning from a hand, or the first crackle of thunder. These qualities make her quite the speaker to spectate, and so she hangs on her every word.

"Phynaster himself was quite a cautious sort- his stride wasn't simply long, it was measured, well-conceived through careful calculation. His safety and longevity was more or less the product of a wise and careful mind. He did not forge his famed ring for his own sake, but for the sake of a lover." Runalenwe's lips curve into even more of a satisfied smile, the kind that tells Pannolaire she's hanging knowledge over her head right now, a coy mocking gesture. She shoots her a look as though to say 'don't leave me in suspense', and the other apprentice continues on. "A certain firebrand, another mage of Aurthelel's court, the oldest and most venerable court of Alinor, composed of only the most respected ancestors; Phynaster, Syrabane, Ruilil, Peregrine- even noble Trinimac brushed shoulders with her and counted her as his peer, as well as his comrade in arms. She was Eeartora the Tempest, queen of the skies, her words commanded storms and her spells sundered coral citadels to the depths of the sea, all to be forgotten as her own legend grew. It was she who caught the first Alinor Sunbird and brought it, unscathed, to the feet of King Aurthelel, and it was she who first mounted a great gryphon and rode it, as Welkynar, into battle."

Her audience of one helps herself to some shellfish as the other sings the praises of this noble and venerated ancestor. Runalenwe considers herself a woman of action, but Pannolaire finds her waxing lyrical on the matters of magic, of magicians, and most anything having to do with her noble clan of wizards. "That certainly sounds like the type of woman who could benefit from such a ring." Pannolaire remarks, smiling and discarding the now emptied remains of her morsel, golden eyes locked on her companion.

"Indeed!" Runalenwe agrees heartily, laughing softly to herself. "And that is what he must have thought, for with her in mind he endeavored to create the powerful artifact that we know today. She was its first holder, and she would go on to bequeath it to her descendants, before ascending to join with her lover in Aetherius..." Her smile lingers, Pannolaire can feel the purposeful pause she is taking and raises a hand to her lips as she chuckles for her lover's theatrics. "Eeartora's line would follow in her wake, living as war mages, welkynars, and studious heroes of their eras. What's more," She raises her chin proudly at this, the rays of sunlight giving a glow to her tan skin. "Her line leads directly to yours truly."

"Ah, I see... no wonder you were going out of your way to flatter her to such a degree." Pannolaire remarks, smirking behind her gloved hand.

Runalenwe scoffs, but smiles. "I can't be shamed for honoring my ancestors, can I?" And with that, she reaches down and helps herself to some fruit, satisfied with her piece.

Her lover gives her a moment's rest, then says something with no other goal than to prod at her ego. "I'm not sure I believe you. I mean, such a famed and legendary ancestor- I've known whole hosts of wizards who give her worship."

Runalenwe, true to form, almost chokes on her apple. "You don't believe me!?" She asks with raised brows, somewhat aware of the game they now play, somewhat genuinely scandalized.

"I'm not sure if I believe you." She corrects her.

"I'll have you know there are extensive genealogical records in my family's tomb!"

Again, Pannolaire laughs behind her hand, and her lover's eyes trace the glimpse of her lips. "Well then, you must take me there on our next sabbatical."

This time, Runalenwe's laugh is brash and untempered, her grin wrinkles her freckled face and her shoulders bob up and down. "Sabbatical! Oh, how rich- what are we, twelfth years???"

Pannolaire laughs along with her, laying beside her, sharing this bright and tranquil day all to themselves. Their hearts are light- they race when they stack their projects up against one another's, when they give presentations knowing that the other is watching, whenever they hold formal dialogue with their peers and mentors watching. How odd it is that their hearts race now, alone together, wearing no uniform and beheld to no observation, no assessment, free to be as they are. Runalenwe's hand finds its place in Pannolaire's, and after an interlude of silence and pecking at their meal, one speaks back up.

"...I'm no good with enchanting, but," Pannolaire says, dark lids drooping as her eyes wander out to sea. "I'm a fool for such romantic gestures... I would love to make you something, something just for you." With these words she shuffles up against Runalenwe's side, leaning against the other woman.

Runalenwe raises her arm to wrap around Pannolaire's waist, pulling her closer still. She leans in to press her head against the other's. "How sweet." Her forehead lies against her temple, her lips hover about her ear as she speaks softly. "What would you make for me, Pann?"

Pannolaire thinks on her skill sets, shifting about with a small bubble of nervousness. She lets herself fall closer against Runalenwe's soft embrace, letting out a long sigh. "A book on etiquette, perhaps."

The other woman chuckles. "I'm classically trained, love."

"In Aldmeri, sure. But would you know how to say 'good day' to a Nord?" Pannolaire retorts.

She laughs again, and for lack of a response presses her lips against her cheek. Pannolaire laughs too, forgetting the lunch they'd packed and shifting about to bury her face in the crook of her lover's neck, leaving a couple of black marks where she plants her kisses. Arms wrapped around her, Runalenwe replies. "Do they have those- good days- in that frigid country of theirs? Honestly, I'd be shocked if they see the sun."

Pannolaire pulls away only to smile and laugh at her peer. "Of course they see the sun!" The two chuckle on that point for a moment, before she settles in once again. "Well, actually, there is an interesting phenomenon that occurs at extreme northern latitudes- sunless days- they only happen at select parts of the year though..."

Runalenwe, content to hold her lover's body as she goes into a long tangent about novel astronomical phenomena and the Nordic holidays that coincide with them, closes her eyes and smiles. Her hand slowly traces Pannolaire's side, gentle and unobtrusive, as not to distract her from her speech.

She easily goes on for nearly half an hour, and it's only Runalenwe's reminder of the cooling food that makes her take pause, before the two resume their dialogue. They continue on like this until the sun dips down, embraced by the sea.

[youvebeenlivingfictional]

I’m Always Curious Part Thirteen

Previous Part | Next Part |  Masterlist Notes: Not beta-read. I hope everyone is well!! Thank you to everyone that’s read/liked/reblogged/replied! I really appreciate it! Warnings: Uummmm none? I think? Tiny bit of angst but definitely less than last chapter. Summary: Maybe it was stupid, but I didn’t want Pike knowing -- about Sorrel, about my dad, about Spargo trying to hold it over me. It had rattled me then, and it unsettled me now. 

 “How long are we not going to talk about it?” The Captain frowned, head tipping just a little as he asked, “Not talk about what?” I fixed him with a knowing look, and his mouth twisted into something that was a grimace masquerading as a smile.  The Treaty of Willfall had been signed by Choholl and Chihurs. Cornwell had chosen not to return for the negotiations, but instead had checked in with myself and Pike at the end of every session to see how we were progressing. Una’s analysis was just a day off; we had been able to bring the remaining conflicts to a peaceful resolution within five days. A diplomatic attaché from Starfleet was being briefed and would be stationed on the planet to help oversee the demilitarization and transitions of power that had been discussed. It was only the beginning for Larilia, but I beamed off of the planet feeling like I’d done some good. Throughout the remainder of our time on-world, Pike and I had discussed nothing but our strategy - we didn’t talk about home, or our lives like we used to; we didn’t discuss what had happened with Spargo. Our conversations were single-minded, to the point. I kinda liked it that way; I couldn’t allow Spargo’s threats to creep in and cloud our goal while we were there. But now that we were back on the ship, now that I was somehow alone again with Pike in his ready room, each of us two drinks deep and finished discussing the report I’d written up for my time on Larilia, the questions and the worries were creeping back in.

“You want another one?” Pike asked instead of answering my questions he stood from his couch. I cringed. “Am I going to need it for this conversation?” I asked before draining what was left in my glass. He chuckled, plucking the empty glass out of my hand and walking back over to his small bar. I glanced after him before looking ahead again. There was an ottoman in front of me, one that I’d been so tempted to use every time I was in there, but I couldn’t bring myself to muster the audacity to put my feet up. Maybe if I got a few slush-os in me first.  “Your laughter isn’t as reassuring as you think it is,” I grumbled. “Noted.” I smiled a little at that, resting my forehead on my hand as I waited for him to come back. “Here.” I looked up when I heard him and took my proffered glass with a mumbled, “Thanks.” Putting my Spock-cap on and drawing the logical conclusion, Pike should’ve resettled on the couch where he’d been lounging. Instead he lowered himself onto the ottoman directly in front of me, our knees brushing. My heart leapt into my throat as Pike looked down into his glass again. I looked over his face, at where his eyelashes fanned out. As he raised his head, I mirrored his previous countenance, looking down into the dark depths of my drink and swirling it around a bit. “I spoke to Admiral Cornwell,” He finally said, “And Spargo would technically have a case for insubordination-- but,” He cut in as I sucked my lips between my teeth, biting down on them to keep from saying anything stupid, “It’s been already been proven that Spargo was working in his own self-interests and not for the good of Larilia or the Federation. To top it all off, the Admiral had some additional information given to her about the...Situation that occurred between yourself and Spargo.” I frowned, releasing my lips from between my teeth and lifting my gaze back to Pike’s. “Additional…? I’m sorry, I don’t understand.” “Number One mentioned a few things that Spargo apparently said to you. Cornwell needs you to confirm them, otherwise they’re just hearsay--” I leaned back in my seat, turning to look out of the window, watching the stars blur together as my stomach churned uneasily. I knew it wasn’t the drinks, it was the worry. 

Una. Blabbermouth. “What she told us was only in the interest of defending you--” Pike began to justify, and I grumbled, “I know.” That didn’t make it any easier. In truth, I didn’t plan on relaying that particular interaction to Cornwell or Pike myself. Maybe it was stupid, but I didn’t want Pike knowing -- about Sorrel, about my dad, about Spargo trying to hold it over me. It had rattled me then, and it unsettled me now. “...Why didn’t you tell me that Spargo spoke to you that way?” Pike’s voice was careful, soft; he wasn’t condemning me, he was just confused, “You said that you thought that we had discussed strategy, but surely you didn’t think--” “No,” I shook my head, “Of course not, not that. You’re not a cruel man, Christopher.” His name slipping past my lips was enough to stun both of us. I watched his body shift, saw his eyes widen slightly in the space of a blink. I closed my mouth immediately, swallowing thickly before I made a show of setting my drink aside. Pike lowered his head, chuckling again, and I scrubbed my hand over my face. “I’m sorry-- and again: I do not find your laughter reassuring.” “You’ve had a long week, lieutenant, and I’m not exactly offended at being told that I’m not cruel.” I rested my head on my hand again, considering. “So, if I confirm with Cornwell what Spargo...Said, as well the logs from my PADD…?” Pike nodded, sitting up straight. “It’ll be fine. Spargo’s apparently got a long history of steering these negotiations in directions that favor him. I told you that you had my word, didn’t I?” I nodded, murmuring, “You did.” I met Pike’s eye again, giving him what smile I could manage. “Thank you, Captain.” He offered me a soft smile, one that loosened my own. “Anytime, lieutenant.” 

--

“Everything in order?” I looked up at Number One, smiling. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to be sitting at a console.” I watched her step away to speak with Lieutenant Commander Thaleh, who was leaning over an ensign’s console. I knew I’d have to speak to Una about what she’d relayed to Cornwell and Pike about my dealings with Spargo, but now wasn’t the time. Frankly I had a lot of questions for Una, but it never seemed like quite the right time. Now and again, when I was trying to sleep, and every single disappointing thing I’d ever done in my life flooded into my mind to keep my awake, Una’s face would sometimes pop up - her frown from that day that Captain and I had returned from Sandblossom. Lately, though, my mind would offer me three conflicting images - all of Pike. The first was the last glimpse of him in the turbolift, that night we’d been at Liquara. The second was from just after he’d told me I was going to be serving as a translator on Larilia, when he’d waved off my apology -  that guarded little twist of his mouth as he’d said, “I overstepped.” The third, the most recent, was the look of surprise when I’d said his name in his ready room. The way his damn tractor-beam-blue eyes had widened - his head pulling back, the quick breath that he’d sucked in. It was like I’d burned him. And then to just laugh it off a moment later, like it was nothing.  I still couldn’t believe that I’d called him ‘Christopher’. Idiot. I mean sure, that was his name, but he was my Captain. I turned away from Una and Thaleh and refocused on my console. I was back on the ship, I was secure in my position, and the Enterprise was on its way to its next destination: a planet in the Beta Quadrant, with a language whose dialect that I had only the vaguest grasp on, but a written language that had been part of my dissertation. Spargo and Larilia were in my rear view. I could worry about Una and tractor-beam-blue later. Tag list: @angels-pie ; @fantasticcopeaglepasta​

[septic-skele]

UT - In All But Name

Summary: Papyrus has grown up believing that he's never had or even needed parents. When the other children explain what a dad is, however, he comes to the conclusion that Sans has been his dad all along.

Sans and Papyrus, last surviving skeleton monsters of Snowdin Town, were sons of mystery.

No one was sure of where they were originally from, the exact time they snuck into Snowdin or how long they had been there before they were noticed. It was to Sans’ credit that some of the shopkeepers to this day were unaware that he had snatched their foodstuff to line his pockets. Grillby, however, was more observant than most, clearing away the trash behind his bar to uncover the sneak thief and the hungry, fussy bundle he protected with his life.

No matter how the nosy yet well-meaning townsfolk poked and prodded, they could never pry anything out of Sans about their parents. Whenever the topic came around, it seemed to trigger all of his trap doors; in the span of a soul beat, he would close off with a tense shrug and a grin.

“Dunno, it doesn’t really matter. Hey, I actually gotta get goin’, okay? Y’know. Papyrus.” That was all he would say, as if Papyrus’ existence explained nothing and everything at once. Baffling, the townsfolk thought, but they wouldn’t stand between Sans and supervision of his charge for an answer.

Why not ask Papyrus then? the bold ones pointed out, only to be reminded that Papyrus had just recently grown into striped shirts. If he was an infant when they arrived in town, he would have little to no memory of his parentage unless his brother opted to inform him. Sans’ obvious caginess about it made that unlikely and it would be unfair to upset Papyrus by pointing out that something was missing from his life. It wasn’t their place to drop such a realization on him.

If there was ever a scenario where the notion of a parent was strictly necessary, such as school registries or field trips, Sans handled it with the teachers behind closed doors. He was Papyrus’ guardian, a single parent in all but name—though whispered rumors of that sort weren’t unheard of either.

“Are we certain they’re brothers? If Sans is older than he looks, he could be…”

“No, no. Skeleton genes ran strong, back in the day. Papyrus would be his spitting image if it was like that.”

“What if he takes his looks after the mother?”

“Grillby said that Sans was barely out of striped shirts himself when he found them! He couldn’t have, not at that age—certainly not with a gimp soul.”

Those conversations were always smothered before either of the skeletons got close enough to overhear; no one wanted to risk offending Sans any further with the suggestion.

With all of the secrecy surrounding the subject, a short attention span and the wide-eyed obliviousness of a carefree child, Papyrus remained largely unaware. He had his brother, his teachers, the various children he (hoped to) call his friends. What more could a baby bones ask for? What more could he want?

One afternoon, after what might have been four rounds of the game Humans and Monsters, Papyrus finally felt the surrounding enthusiasm waning. He was always cast as the scary human, chasing down the other children with the goal of snatching and eating them. They had proved to be expert runners and hiders, scrambling away from him at every turn with very convincing shouts of disgust. Nevertheless, Papyrus was relentless in his attempt to play the game properly. At long last he caught up with them to find that they collapsed into the snow, worn down and breathless.

“Wowie! That was a lot of fun, right?” he burst out eagerly, undeterred when they groaned at his presence. “Oh, don’t worry! The game’s on pause; I won’t try to eat you now!” With no further ado he scooted himself into their circle and crossed his legs nicely. A couple of them glared at him. They must be sore losers of the game.

“We didn’t really wanna play Humans and Monsters, Papyrus,” a rabbit monster by the name of Hedda told him flatly. “’Least ways, not with you.”

“Oh!” How was he supposed to respond to that? “I’m sorry. But thank you for playing anyway; it was fun! We can play something else now if you want! What do you like to do? Do you like puzzles?”

“No,” Hedda huffed, ears flattening in annoyance.

“I don’t think I have time for another game. My dad’s coming to get me soon,” a boy named Chiff sighed.

“You got lots of homework?” Capra, a teacher’s daughter, guessed sympathetically.

“Nope. Dinner’s been cold two times this week ’cause Dad’s late picking me up, so Mama’s mad at him about it. She wants him to come get me a whole half hour early!”

A half hour was an eternity of playtime stolen from him. Scandalized gasps of dismay went around the cluster at this dreadful news.

“That’s awful! Instead of taking you earlier, your dad should just walk you home faster. You should tell him that,” Capra advised firmly, backed up by noises of approval.

Papyrus, for his part, concurred with the others, though his brow was furrowed with curiosity. When something he didn’t know was brought up in conversation, he would often nod and smile anyway, happy to pretend he was in on the secret, but the question had been on his mind for some time.

“What is a dad?” he asked. He had heard them speak of their dads before, always referring to a specific adult in their lives, but he was never certain of what singled that one out as a “dad”. It was only now that he was in the right mood to ask and the others seemed in the right mood to answer him.

“Don’t be stupid!” Hedda snickered, shoving at him. “Everybody knows what a dad is! Don’t you have one?”

“Well, tell me what it is,” he urged, bouncing back upright just as hurriedly, “so I can know if I do or not! Why’s it so important to have? What is a dad?”

Hedda drew herself up confidently, as though an entire dissertation on the matter had already been prepared, only to falter as she gave it a second thought. Until now she had never needed to explain something she believed to be common knowledge. “A dad…Well, a dad’s someone older who’s in charge of you,” she announced at last, folding her arms authoritatively. “He makes up the rules.”

If that was the only condition, Papyrus had quite a number of dads! His teachers had pasted colorful “Class Rules” posters on the walls. The King made rules for the entire Underground and Sans had created plenty of annoying house rules: finish homework before playing, clean your whole plate, don’t try to build snowmen in the house, close the door after coming inside but don’t slam it. That had to count for something.

“That’s not all a dad does,” Chiff protested before Papyrus could comment on this.

“Oh, then you tell him what it does, if you’re so smart!”

“My dad takes me all sorts of places, like I said. And he shows me how to do stuff, like reading and numbers and magic and…lots of things! And he scolds me when I get in trouble.”

Gnawing pensively on one of his knuckles, Papyrus mulled over this information. Briefly he considered the river person, who had taken him and Sans in a boat on their special outings to Waterfall, but there wasn’t much else to say about them. They didn’t fit the rest of the criteria.

Because he had never met the King, he couldn’t be sure of his opinion on getting in trouble. At school he often heard of things that the King had said or done, but did that count as Asgore showing him things? Probably not, which meant that he was out of the running too.

Still, that hardly created a shortage. His teachers spent all day explaining sums and magic and Sans helped him read a picture book every evening. None of them were happy with him when he misbehaved; that he had learned the hard way, many times over. Sometimes he would walk from a teacher’s scolding with a note in his hand, right home to Sans’ reproach for making them scold him in the first place. Oftentimes it felt like they were ganging up on him.

He frowned. “Is that all they do?”

“Not just that! When you’re not being naughty, dads are really nice to you. They give extra big hugs; sometimes they’re so big, they take you right off the floor!” Capra asserted. “And they play games with you and cheer you up when you’re sad and take care of you when you’re sick or hurt. They buy you sweets and clothes and tuck you in at night and tell you that they love you very much.”

At that Papyrus perked up. The teachers played games with him and his classmates sometimes at recess and if he got scraped up they would take him to the school healer, but comfort, big hugs and tucking in? All of those things were Sans’ job.

Just a few weeks ago, when they were playing chase, Papyrus had slipped on an icy patch and smacked his head too hard. As soon as Sans reached him, he had gathered him up in a hug, patting his back and hushing him while he cried. Later that night, when the headache became truly awful, Sans perched on his bedside and pet his skull until he fell asleep. The next day, he had chocolate syrup in Papyrus’ oatmeal as a surprise treat.

“Nyeheheh! I do have a dad!” Papyrus exclaimed. “Sans is my dad!”

“Sans is your brother,” Hedda snorted. “Brothers can’t be dads.”

“Why not?” Chest puffing out in defense of his new conclusion—and Sans’ honor—Papyrus remained triumphant. “If those are all of the things only a dad does and Sans does them all, that means I’ve got a brother who’s cool enough to be both! Can your brothers do all that your dad does too?”

Hedda’s nose twitched. “Well—” Before she could muster an answer, an older monster calling interrupted the conversation. Chiff pushed himself upright.

“There he is,” he informed them before raising his voice. “Coming, Dad! I gotta go. Bye, Hedda. Bye, Capra. See you tomorrow, maybe.”

“I hope so!” Papyrus chirped. He was eager to play another game with him sometime, as thanks for being part of the group to offer him all of this newfound knowledge. Next time he could catch all three of them at once, he would have to ask what the difference was between a mom and a dad.

Once Chiff left, the girls rose to make their exit too. Papyrus trailed after them at a distance, hoping not to seem overeager or clingy for companionship, but he wasn’t too far to see when their parents came to fetch them. He couldn’t help but feel pleased on their behalf at the hugs and kisses they received.

It was curious, though, that Sans had never asked Papyrus to call him by the well-deserved title. Papyrus had only ever called him “brother” and Sans called him “bro” in response.

Oh, stars! Did Sans think Papyrus didn’t want to call him Dad? Was he hurt about it? Papyrus had learned quickly over his short lifetime that even when Sans was hurt, he would pretend he was fine for some stupid adult reason. Was he secretly disappointed that Papyrus only thought of him as a brother all this time?

How could he not have noticed? If no one had told him the secrets of dad-ness, how was Papyrus supposed to know? With this new wisdom, he couldn’t let that stand any longer. He had to set it all right!

“Hey, Pap!” Sans hailed as he waded through the snow, his grin weary but no less genuine. “Did you have fun?”

Lighting up, Papyrus whirled around to face him and, now ready to demonstrate his new regard for Sans’ feelings, charged and flung himself at him for a hug. “Dad!”

With his arms tight around his brother’s neck and his face tucked into his shoulder, he didn’t see the way Sans’ smile froze or the startled looks Hedda and Capra’s parents cast their way. As he gingerly returned the embrace, Sans forced an uncertain laugh.

“…Bro? You ready to go home?”

“Yes! Ooh, can we have oatmeal tonight? Can we? May we?”

Maybe Papyrus hadn’t realized what he said. Maybe it was a fleeting, random aberration, Sans decided, like calling a tutor “Mom” by mistake. Shouldn’t he have corrected himself already, though?

“I guess breakfast for dinner couldn’t hurt,” he answered, rolling with the changed subject. He wouldn’t comment.

“With chocolate syrup?”

“Heh, sure thing, buddy. We can’t miss oat on that!”

Papyrus groaned, shoving into his side in annoyance, though he didn’t resist when Sans promptly slung an arm around his shoulders to give him another affectionate squeeze.

That would have been the end of it, Sans thought, if it hadn’t been for Papyrus’ call at dinner:

“Dad, we’re almost out of milk!”

And after dinner:

“Dad, look at the puzzle I drew in school!”

And at bedtime:

“Da-a-ad! Dad!” he appealed to Sans down the hall, following it with a small, self-satisfied giggle as if he had just done something particularly clever. “I’m ready for my story and tucking in!”

Was this…some attempt at a joke? If so, Sans wasn’t sure of the punchline. Eye sockets narrowed in bewilderment, he slowly eased into his usual perch on the edge of the bed. Snuggled into his blankets, Papyrus beamed at him in anticipation as he picked up the book.

Sans opened it, read the first two lines aloud—and then promptly gave up. With a shake of his head, he propped the book face down against his leg. “Papyrus, what’s gotten into you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve been talkin’ to me weird all night. Why aren’t you just using my name?”

Judging by the expression that came over Papyrus’ face, this was clearly not the reaction he was expecting or hoping for. Confidence faltering, he scrambled upright in bed, displacing the carefully arranged blankets. “I—No, but I am! That’s what I’m supposed to call you!”

“‘Dad’? Why would you think you gotta call me that?” Fingers subtly tightening on the book, he lowered his head. “Was someone teasing you for not having one?” That would be some well calculated cruelty.

“No, no, see, that’s just it, I do have one! I do ’cause I’ve got you!” Papyrus protested. “Hedda asked me if I didn’t have a dad so I asked her, ‘What’s a dad?’ and everyone said it’s a monster who teaches you things and scolds you for trouble and makes you happy when you’re not and takes good care of you, with lots of hugs and niceness! So I said I do too have a dad, and it’s my brother, so I can call you both, can’t I? ’Cause I thought you might be sad about me not calling you that, ’cause that’s what you are, so I thought I ought to call you that so it’ll make you happy!”

Blinking through this slew of information—rather impressively fit into one breath—Sans reeled back slightly, stammering. “Papyrus, I…I’m not your dad.”

“But you are,” he insisted. “I know you are. There are rules and everything and I checked them for you. You act just like a dad’s supposed to!”

“Okay, well—thank you, but acting like a dad isn’t the same as being a dad.” Sliding the book off to the side, Sans weighed his words. “Listen, Pap. I really love you; I love you with my whole soul.”

The doubt on Papyrus’ face was swept away with delight at the familiar words. He loved this guessing game. “More than ketchup?”

“More than that.”

“More than space books?”

“More than that too.” Twisting, he scratched his free hand gently over the crown of his brother’s skull. “More than gold—”

“And your trombone? And your best jacket?”

“And my slippers, and even more than sleeping—though I love those a whole lot too. But you had a dad once and it wasn’t me.” He smiled, though it didn’t quite reach his eye sockets. “He was our dad, for us to share.”

Eyes round, Papyrus peeked past Sans’ outstretched hand. “But I don’t remember him.”

“I know. It was a long time ago…I don’t really remember much either, but I know someone was there in our lives back then. Who else would it be?”

“Oh.” Picking at a loose thread on his blanket, Papyrus considered. “Did he love me as much as you do?”

“Heh, I’m sure he did. Who wouldn’t love a cool guy like you?”

“So where is he then? Why doesn’t he live with us? The other dads live with Hedda and Chiff and Capra!”

Sans wavered, digging his toes into Papyrus’ worn carpet. How could he explain it in a way Pap would understand when most of his own ideas were fog, faint hopes and guesswork? His next word was more of a sigh. “Well…he probably thought it would be better for us to strike out on our own. Prove how strong and independent we can be without his help.”

“Oh! We’ve done that right, haven’t we? I’m super-duper cool and you take care of me just as good as a dad could!”

He was a sorry substitute, nothing more, but Sans was already aware that putting himself down in front of Papyrus would only upset him. He wouldn’t mention it. “Yeah. So all we would have to do to make Dad proud is keep going on the way we are now. We’re…doing alright without him, aren’t we?” The last thing he wanted was to create a new sense of loss for something that was little more than a whisper.

“We’re more than alright, Sans!” Papyrus reassured him, a balm on Sans’ soul as he reached to squeeze his hand. “We’re great! If he comes to visit someday, so he can know how good we’re doing, everybody in Snowdin will be able to tell him so! Wait and see!”

“We may be waiting a long time for that, Paps…years, probably.” His voice fell a shade softer. “Or forever. I dunno.”

“Well, we can still be great in the meantime! I can be patient and be happy at the same time, as long as you’re with me!”

“Heh…you really are the coolest.”

“I know! And whenever Dad comes, if he comes, he’ll see that.”

“Maybe. Maybe.”

[irenadel]

i wanna talk books so I made a meme

@doorsclosingslowly here’s the answers to your questions :)

6. If you read in more than one language, is there a difference between the experience of reading in your native language(s) and reading in other languages?

Virginia Woolf has a great quote in A Room of One’s Own where she says that women writers need to develop their own “sentence” and that this can only be developed through creating a tradition of female writing. She says that while reading male writers is pleasurable, it isn’t useful for the female writer, that she can’t learn from the way men write. Their “sentence” isn’t suitable for female writing. I’m.... unsure of how much I agree with her on this but I find the theory useful for describing how I approach literature in Spanish vs English.

Especially in terms of language, not so much in regards to narrative or worldbuilding or even themes, I find Spanish to be pleasurable but not useful. I very rarely find myself reading something in Spanish and thinking “ooooh, I wish I could do that! I want to steal that! How did they come up with this?” The “sentence” for writing in Spanish isn’t one I recognize or want to imitate... except maybe for VERY few exceptions like Carlos Fuentes and Borges. Whereas I can spend a lot of time reading English un-selfconsciously and then suddenly be struck by a turn of phrase that I must somehow or other make my own. That almost never happens to me when reading Spanish.

9. Fiction or non-fiction or both? In what ratio? Where do you draw the line between the two?

Oh god, this is embarassing. Erm... fiction to a fault. On 2020 and 2019 I did try to make a concerted effort to read more nonfiction, ESPECIALLY more popular science books. I still kind of childishly consider myself to not be “smart like that” and that science isn’t for me, because I don’t understand it. I used to think science fiction wasn’t for me, for similar reasons. When I do read nonfiction it tends to be history and literary criticism.

I’m finishing my degree on English literature and though I had a period of hating hard on literary criticism, I think it was mostly me rebelling against the French brand of it. I HAVE to admit I love reading new historicism, especially now that I’m working on my dissertation and I had to read a lot on Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre.

Hopefully 2021 will be the year I read a bit more science.

11. The worst book hangover you’ve ever had

Augh... I remember two in recent years. Let me see... in 2017 I finished the last book in the Realm of the Elderlings. I had read the first book in the series around maybe the mid 2000s. I devoured it in a single weekend, still hungry for more of the story. I did not have access to the rest of the trilogy for a couple of years after, but as soon as I got them I read them as fast as I could. I remember reading those books during class, pretending to pay attention to a lecture on Linguistics but actually fully engrossed in Robin Hobb’s world.

It’s a world that was with me for more than 10 years. Characters that I knew intimately from multiple re-readings for more than 10 years. My dissertationg is about the first trilogy for crying out loud! I hadn’t wanted to read the last trilogy and the last book on the trilogy because I didn’t want that connection to end. But finally I gave in...

It was a book hangover because I was reading late at night when I realized, halfway through the book, a character I loved deeply was probably going to die and I just HAD to know, I HAD to be sure. So I read through the night going from disbelief to anger, to grief, to grim acceptance. I wasn’t able to put down the book until 11 am the next day, by which point I was openly sobbing and would have thrown the book across the room except I think I was reading in my computer.

The second book hangover I remember was less because of sprinting through the book and more because of the circumstances. Last December I had decided to finish as many books I could in hopes of reaching my Good Reads goal (which I didn’’t) and I was going through His Dark Materials pretty quickly when on the 25th I got the news that my grandmother died. I wasn’t able to go see her at the hospital or at a funeral, or even go see my dad and uncles because she had died of covid-19 and the situation was still pretty dire in the city.

Then Philip Pullman decided to be an absolute asshole to me and the characters in his book arrived to the Land of the Dead. Being an atheist fantasy series and me having just recently come to terms with the fact that I’m not even agnostic... it was very tough to go through Pullman’s exploration of mortality and the importance of life on Earth. I agreed completely that materiality and the here-and-now far outweigh any contemplations of an afterlife... but my grandmother had died very suddenly.... she had still been a pretty strong old lady before she contracted covid... I had spoken to her a couple of days before and she was still strong enough to bitch about litter getting inside her room...

I finished The Amber Spyglass in a rush as well and somehow it got mixed with my mourning process and my anger at myself for having taken my grandmother’s life for granted... for not having cherished the materiality of her existence when I had the chance... I hadn’t finished writing my dissertation’s first draft yet and there were some heavy issues going on in my household.... I was exhausted from having to survive the year and I think I still am... and it all mixed up with the bittersweet ending of Pullman’s His Dark Materials and the inevitability of loss... all I remember from between the 25th and the 31st of December 2020 was exhaustedly reheating Christmas food, trying to write, and slogging through The Amber Spyglass... it feels like it was a week-long literary hangover...

14. The book that, in hindsight, really should have clued you in to the fact that you’re _________ (queer/in love/doomed to be an academic/etc)

So this is slightly NSFW but I should have known, and stopped being such a snob about it, that I had WAY MORE in common with the furries than I cared to admit given that my first impression of Smaug the Golden when reading The Hobbit at the tender age of 8 was “wow! he’s dreamy!” *facepalm *(also betraying a worrying tendency to crushing on irredeemable assholes and other miscellaneous villains...) I have accepted my status as a weird monsterfucker AND a weird alienfucker. Inhuman anatomy makes me hot, and I should have known it from DAY ONE!

23. The book you expected to hate, didn’t, and then got angry about not hating

The Hunger Games, which I’m STILL salty about and will probably remain salty about for the rest of my life.

I hateread it because a friend told me about how he hated it, given his bitter ex loved it and though I agree with all his criticisms and have a bunch of my own... I still cannot stop finding stupid Katniss profoundly likeable! CURSES! A pox upon your house Suzanne Collins! I still think your dystopia is a cowardly, white-lady-who-has-never-feared-state-violence dystopia, I still think your love triangle was absolutely unnecessary and I still think you tried to cop out of admitting you (and your character) like pretty dresses by making the pretty dresses compulsory. Be brave! Don’t give me this “I’m not like other girls” bullshit! Be brave! Make your violent spectacle reality show as a criticism of the USA’s consumerism and callousness a voluntary thing! Don’t wash your heroine’s hands clean of the sin of wanting fame and fortune and survival at all costs!

But... fuck... I... still like Katniss... I’m glad little girls in 2008 got a heroine who kicked ass, looked good and wasn’t a perfectly strong and powerful person all the time. I’m glad they got competence and vulnerability... Fuck my life...

31. Bonus question: rec me something!

This is hard... since I get the feeling we have very different tastes in reading material but... If you haven’t heard of the Vampire: The Masquerade roleplaying game (or even if you have) take a crack at the Baali Clanbook. Even if you don’t understand the game mechanics I think you’ll enjoy the history portion because it’s about a clan of devil-worshipping vampires who do their devil worshipping through implanting evil insects on people... and I suspect it might be up your alley...

[patricia-von-arundel]

I remember you saying you are a history fan and I was wondering how long you envision El and Byleth ruling for before they can abdicate the throne or get rid of the position? I feel like all of the lords would likely have to rule most or all of their life in order to accomplish their goals. Even creating a system with no rulers seems like it would take up most of their lifetime or past it. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this as someone who knows history if you have the time! Thanks!

I have a history degree! I focused primarily on the High Middle Ages (roughly 1000-1300), and wrote my dissertation on the relationship between patronage and power in early twelfth-century France. 😁 So I'm going to tackle this from that perspective - though honestly, I think the use of the 1100s in 3H is no coincidence. Let me ramble on a little about that first - indulge me. It will influence the rest of what I want to say.

Western Europe in the High Middle Ages was in the midst of what is now called the Investiture Controversy. Basically, you had a series of nascent powers - kingdoms and empires and duchies that were forming into what we think of them today; things were a lot messier in the Early Middle Ages - and then you had the Church. Theoretically, they'd all keep each other in balance - the pope needed the support of the kings/emperors to retain his position; kings and emperors needed the support of their aristocrats; and both needed the Church because excommunication was a big deal and could lose you power in an instant.

But, like I said - theoretically.

In practice, it was... more complicated.

Like, the pope excommunicates you for simony, but you're the Holy Roman Emperor? Fuck you - I say this guy is pope now. Get out of Rome. But you won't, so now the real pope, the one who isn't the squatter in the basilica, can go live in Avignon. But oh, crap, my next-door nobles and the King of England like the old pope, and they have an army, and maybe I'll backtrack? Ever so sorry, your popeliness.

Sound familiar?

Yeah.

It was a mess. Culminating ultimately in the Reformation, but we're not going that far.

So - abdicating.

Abdication generally led to violence. And generally was the result of violence. Now, in many cases, that was due to the one forced off the throne trying to get it back - through any means necessary - and all the mess that followed. So fair enough, they could have just fucked off somewhere else. But most didn't. Guess being a king has its perks.

There are a few examples earlier in European history of kings leaving their throne - Æthelred Unræd comes to mind; and the Witenagemot/Things in earlier Germanic/Viking/Anglo-Saxon could remove a ruler (and the Thing included commoners/women in decision-making). But by the twelfth century, it wasn't happening except through violence. This applied to the nobility, as well - the nobility, often controlling much of the means of food production, had enormous influence. (Consider how late Germany and Italy actually became unified lands; the king of France was essentially a figurehood due to the power of the French - and sometimes English - nobility.) People who had power clung to it. And most of them wanted more of it.

But let's go back to one of the words above: figurehead.

That is what the current powers in Fódlan might become in the slow transition to a more democratic power structure. Society does not transform overnight. It is a slow, often trial-and-error process. What Edelgard and the surviving nobility will have to do is come to terms with that - and be ready to stand in as proverbial whipping boys when things go wrong.

Establish a system whereby people can let their voices be heard - but understand that it may be awhile before those people trust that they will be heard. Reformations in power structure and governance; those schools Ferdinand spoke of - but also figuring out how to fund them. The balance of needing government coffers, and rightful suspicion of those in the Kingdom and the Alliance of whom those coffers will benefit. There will be small-scale rebellions. Pretenders. Distant family members of those who've died suddenly demanding a piece of the pie. Uprisings. (When William the Conqueror got pushback from the North of England, he simply burned it all down and left people to starve. Not the best solution, really.) Not to mention the total mess that is going to be the situation with the church, and the fact that many will be devastated and angry at what has happened there. "Opiate of the masses" and all...

During all of this, there needs to be the appearance of strong, central leadership. I know some people say that means Edelgard went back on her word - but not necessarily. She's potentially offering herself in sacrifice (even if only proverbially). She is the face of leadership in Fódlan, while (potentially) holding little or none of the true power. And I think she would be willing to do that.

There's also the matter of inheritance - leaving aside magical crest babies or other fan contrivances, if we put Edelgard and f!Byleth together, there's no evidence they could have biological children. They could adopt, but that wasn't common practice for inheritance. And Edelgard says, of course, that she wouldn't necessarily choose her own child to inherit. (If she ends up with one of the men and has biological children, things potentially grow more complicated, but let's leave that aside for now.)

Again, let us look back at the Witenagemot: they chose leaders, as well as making/interpreting laws. If Edelgard and the other nobles implement a parliamentary body, they can give it the authority to determine leadership in Fódlan. That might mean those already in power keep leadership; it might not. The best solution would be, in my mind, slowly feeding power from the nobility/royalty to a parliament. This might, in practice, take several generations - meaning even if Edelgard remained emperor her entire life, she still has not gone back on her word. And again, as discussed above, this may be publically the appearance of power, while behind the scenes, she works with or even defers to a larger group composed of representatives of different parts of society.

So all that rambling aside... I don't think she can abdicate safely and cleanly. And she probably quickly realizes that. I don't see that as breaking her word - I see that as growth as a person, learning that everything is not as black-and-white as her 17-year-old self believed it to be. It isn't as simple as handing over reigns of power. Not in a society such as Fódlan. Reform takes time. A long, long time.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

0 MEANS USING THE WEB AS A PLATFORM DIDN'T LIVE MUCH PAST THE FIRST CONFERENCE

This phrase began with musicians, who perform at night. Most are service businesses—restaurants, barbershops, plumbers, and so on. 0 conference would presumably be full of geeks, right? This side of the story: what an essay really is, and how you write one. Getting work makes him a successful actor, but he doesn't only become an actor when he's successful. Larry Page and Sergey Brin wanted to search the web. He was like Michael Jordan. But the first time around it was co-opted by Sun, and we got Java applets. Albrecht Durer did the same thing that makes everyone else want the stock of successful startups is that they're not. But there is also huge source of implicit tags that they ignore: the text within web links. The test of any investment is the ratio of return to risk, if both were lower.

I advised startups never to let anyone fly under them, meaning never to let any other company offer a cheaper, easier solution. Let's start with a promising question and get nowhere. Unfortunately, the question is a complex one. Especially if it meant independence for my native land, hacking. Another reason people don't work on big things, you seem to have been influenced by the Chinese example. Bertrand Russell wrote in a letter in 1912: Hitherto the people attracted to philosophy have been mostly those who loved the big generalizations, which were all wrong, so that few people with exact minds have taken up the subject. Originally, yes, there does seem to be several categories of cuts: things I got wrong, things that seem obvious in retrospect. All those unseen details combine to produce something that's just stunning, like a skateboard. Should you add x feature?

As an example of this rule; if you assume that knowledge can be represented as a list of predicate logic expressions whose arguments represent abstract concepts, you'll have a lot in the calculus class, but I know that when it comes to empathy are practically solipsists. 0 have in common. And yet if I had to write in school are not only not essays, they're one of the angels in his Baptism of Christ. And so hackers, like painters, must have empathy to do really great work. Does Web 2. In the best case—if you're really organized—if you're really organized—you're just writing it down. I found that what the teacher wanted us to do was pretend that the story had really taken place, and to know how to calculate time and space complexity and about Turing completeness.

What made it possible for small organizations to succeed in some domain, you have to compete with other local barbers. I read an interview with Joe Kraus, the co-founder of Excite. You can use the cram schools to show you where most of the 1970s. No doubt it was a description of Google? How to Start a Startup I advised startups never to let any other company offer a cheaper, easier solution. 7x a year, whereas a company that grows at 5% a week will 4 years later be making $7900 a month, which is one of those things that seem obvious in retrospect. It does seem to me very important to be able to get a day job that's closely related to your real work. Number two, research must be substantial—and as anyone who has written a PhD dissertation knows, the way to approach the current philosophical tradition may be neither to get lost in pointless speculations like Berkeley, nor to shut them down like Wittgenstein, but to get the rest you have sit through a movie.

The goal he announces in the Metaphysics was partly that he set off with contradictory aims: to explore the most abstract ideas, guided by the assumption that it was a waste of time? It's not considered insulting to say that life is too short for, the word that pops into my head is bullshit. I was a kid I was always being told to look at it. It's not just a barbershop whose founders were unusually lucky and hard-working. Web 2. They're not doing research per se, though if in the course of trying to discover them because they're useless, let's try to discover them because they're useful. In theory this sort of hill-climbing could get a startup into trouble. He has noticed that theoretical knowledge is often acquired for its own sake, out of curiosity, one of the first digital computers, Rod Brooks wrote, programs written for them usually did not work. Most businesses are tightly constrained in a.

And so began the study of ancient texts had such prestige that it remained the backbone of education until the late 19th century. Basically, what Ajax means is Javascript now works. As credentials are superseded by performance, a similar role is the best source of rapid change. Once you dilute a startup with ordinary office workers—with type-B procrastinating, no matter how much you're getting done. Most don't discover anything that remarkable, but some through luck or the efforts of their founders ended up growing very fast, we wouldn't need a separate word for startups, and in particular the most successful startups, or they'll be out of business and the people would be interested in painting. They work well enough in everyday life are fuzzy, and break down if pushed too hard. Musicians often seem to work in record stores. By which one defended it. Why are they so hot to invest in photo-sharing apps, rather than for any practical need. But unfortunately that was not the conclusion Aristotle's successors derived from works like the Metaphysics.

The reason credentials have such prestige is that for so long the large organizations in a market can come close. The Airbeds just won the first poll among all the YC startups in their batch by a landslide. By gradually chipping away at the abuse of credentials, you could probably make them more airtight. The next best, for startups that aren't charging initially, is active users. Perhaps not everyone can make an equally dramatic mark on the world; I don't know if Plato or Aristotle were the first to ask any of the hackers I know write programs. The people who want a deep understanding of what you're doing. Other times nothing seems interesting. And so instead of correcting the problem Aristotle discovered by falling into it—that you can easily get lost if you talk too loosely about very abstract ideas—they continued to fall into place. I've used both these excuses at one time or another. We didn't draw any conclusions.

But the two phenomena rapidly fused to produce a principle that now seems obvious: paying energetic young people market rates, and getting correspondingly high performance from them. For a painter, a museum is a reference library of techniques. They're interrupt-driven, and soon you are too. But schools change slower than scholarship: the study of ancient texts is a valid field for scholarship, why not start the type with the most potential? It's like having a vacuum cleaner hooked up to your imagination. Why not as past-due notices are always saying do it now? This was particularly true in consulting, law, and finance, where it led to the phenomenon of yuppies. That was as far as I'd gotten at the time. Only a tiny fraction are startups. To some extent you have to adjust the angle just right: you have to take these cycles into account, because they're affected by how you react to them. 6x 7% 33.

Thanks to Sam Altman, Abby Kirigin, and Anton van Straaten for putting up with me.

[jenyfly]

Writing redux

Hello! It’s been a while. I don’t think I’ve made an original update for upwards of a year. But one of the things that I desperately need to get back into the habit of is writing regularly, and writing for myself. I know how cliched that sounds, so take some assurance that the resurrection of this habit is driven purely by self-interest: I am trying to finish a semi-polished draft of my dissertation by next May. Some -- or most, or all but me -- would say that this is a very ambitious goal. I think my way of processing this passive-but-direct attack on my motivation and abilities is to pair writing something that I’m required to with writing something for fun. Double the work, but half the misery.

Having also learned that writing for fun still needs to be goal-oriented, my goal is to reread The fucking Raven Cycle and, you know. Reflect. Thoughts and feelings. Any emotional imprints that the original text evoked has been, I think anyway, completely wiped; I rely purely on informal concepts and fanfiction to keep my sense of attachment to this series afloat. I am also now older, and more time-crunched, and more miserable. As such, I have three questions that I am hoping to answer:

First (how the fuck do you add bullet points again), will I fall for Adam Parrish as deeply as I did the first time around? And if so, why? I remember feelings of connection and protection, despite our positionalities having minimal overlap. Like, Adam Parrish : Richard Campbell Gansey III :: Adam Parrish : me. I remember feeling uneasy about parts of his monologue, and I remember needing to rationalize what I read by pointing to his poverty, his abuse as acceptable excuses. I am, within the year, going to be a goddamn sociologist, and I have since interacted with many who came from poverty, from abuse, who in turn abused power that they have suddenly or gradually gained. I think what I am trying to say is that, people do terrible things due to a complex mix of history, context, trauma, and opportunity. How do you hold knowledge of that in one hand, and draw a line in the sand with your other? I don’t remember feeling so uncomfortable with Adam Parrish -- purely from memory, I cannot recall any instance of him perpetuating abuse. But this is also part of the question; is that what Adam Parrish supposed to represent -- an actively aware and complete rejection of abuse that can only be spurred by a certain type of intimacy? To be clear, I’m not interested in disproving those original feelings in any way, but I want to cast a harsher, more honest light on that original attachment.

Second, I want to complete just as careful an examination on the feelings that Richard Campbell Gansey III evoked. According to, like, pop criteria, I am middle class. So Gansey should be just as unknowable as Adam is. And yet, Gansey is also familiar in the sense that he is a product of a well-established -- there must be a literary term for this, but I will stick with -- legacy of boy-wonder protagonists, that yes, totally colonized the books I loved reading as a kid. The Dark is Rising series we know, but A Wrinkle in Time -- like, Sandy and Dennys could get it. I can’t think of any other examples, but by the time we got to Harry Potter and his poverty, his abuse -- it registered as something unpleasant, but unfounded in personal experience. I know that being Gansey involves constantly feeling guilty, but shit, that feeling is contagious even when we aren’t a copycat of Will Stanton (oof, so many Wills). Frankly, maybe because he is an archetypal(?) iteration, I am not as enthused about answering this question -- but still, there remains an important question of, what is Gansey’s role in these books, and does he fulfill it well?

The third question is a question about Kavinsky, and specifically, about the embedded antisemitism that I have seen others argue his character represents. I don’t know how widespread or developed this argument is, but this question is a personal one because my partner is Jewish. Having grown up in the Midwest, a Chinese-American island among white, Christian suburbanites, I had no sense of what Jewish culture was -- and this lack of knowledge extended into most of my young adult life. During the last few years, I have been learning, but really -- still infantile in my comprehension of what constitutes antisemitism. I should also note that my research interests have, for many years, revolved around unequal access to water resources in Palestine. It is due to these interests that I developed a specific perspective about Israel, and it has been interesting to recognize that some aspects of this perspective have changed as a consequence of my having a Jewish partner, and learning about his family’s history. I say all this as a prelude to a more cohesive statement of, my learning and opinions, about antisemitism, about Israel and Palestine, about injustice more broadly, is still evolving, accumulating, and frequently unsettled because of my desire to take into account perspectives that are not considered mainstream, what some people tend to call ‘vulnerable’ or ‘marginalized’ -- but also, like, blegh I hate those labels. Anyway, I will be thinking about Kavinsky and how antisemitism may be represented in his character as I reread the book.

This is all in preparation for Call Down the Hawk, I should add. I mean, yeah, fuck, I love Adam Parrish, and the multi-part revealing of Ronan Lynch’s feelings for him was, I remember, gorgeous. I care about Ronan as an extension of my attachment to Adam -- like, I can objectively appreciate Ronan’s character, but also, no contest. So there’s also that.

[nealcassatiel]

The Answers Have Been Under My Nose...

Hello everyone, there are moments when I feel like a fool and kick myself for not realising these things sooner. 

Some background on me to make that statement true: I completed both my undergraduate and graduate dissertation on the American poet Allen Ginsberg. I spent five years at university studying American road literature and the Beat generation. 

Some background on Supernatural: Kripke half-based Sam and Dean on Sal and Dean from Jack Kerouac’s classic road novel ‘On The Road’ (hence the sub title for this blog ‘‘On The Road’ So Far’’. Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty are based on the real life writers Jack Kerouac (author of said novel) and Neal Cassady. 

Here is the page on my blog with the metas specifically related to Supernatural and the Beat generation (scroll right to the bottom for the conclusive introductory post).

If you would like to follow my main tumblr account specifically dedicated to Allen Ginsberg and his friends here is the link.

So what have I only just realised?

Cass vs Cas

You know that question on why on earth is Cas written as ‘CASS’ in the Supernatural scripts despite Castiel being spelled with one ‘s’? Well, it’s probably a reference no Neal CASSady, the real life Dean Moriarty. In this way, the genesis of Dean’s character is linked to ‘Cass’, making them two sides of the same coin - in effect he is the angel version of Dean, just like Neal Cassady was the real life version of Dean Moriarty.

Why Jack?

And why is Jack called Jack? I have often assumed it is because Jack is synonymous with ‘man’, or perhaps it is a reference to John Winchester? But maybe Jack Klein ‘J.K.’ is a reference to ‘Jack Kerouac’. And so as Cas and Dean are interlinked so are Sam and Jack - Jack is the nephelim version of Sal, just like Jack Kerouac is the real life version of Dean Moriarty. Sam and Jack are interlinked at their genesis - mirroring each other just like Dean and Cas mirror each other in different ways.

Jack and Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac was born to a religious family. His brother Gerard died as a child surrounded by nuns who thought he was a Saint. During his death he said he had a vision of the Virgin Mary and after his death Kerouac still felt his dead brother’s presence, regarding him as a guardian angel always with him. Kerouac’s mother was a devout Catholic and instilled this faith within Jack. Jack went through many struggles throughout his life and was highly spiritual. He became highly interested in Buddhism throughout the 50s and 60s, although he remained Catholic until early death caused by his addiction to alcohol. He was a stunning man with an athletic build yet was also pensive and existential. He believed deeply in Catholicism and believed he would reach salvation in the end despite his suffering. 

Jack Kline’s mother died at his birth. Religion, her belief and love of God, and faith in her son were imbedded within her sacrificial death. Her death, her faith in goodness, and her assertion that an ‘angel is watching over’ Jack are reminiscent of Kerouac’s early life. As his religious and Saintly dead brother watched over him, Jack’s religious and Saintly dead mother watch over him. Kerouac’s formative years in his early twenties were informed by his friendship with Neal Cassady who took him on the road across America. Similarly, Cas has been formative to Jack in his Nephilim early twenties. Cas too took him on the road across America on adventures. 

The similarities may stop there with Supernatural as I’m assuming that Kerouac’s later life won’t be seen within Jack, unless they wish to give Jack a drinking problem. Nor do I hope that Jack will spiral and cause his own demise.

More Thoughts

If you have read through my metas on Cas and Ginsberg, you’ll see that I also link Cas to Carlo Marx (based on Allen Ginsberg) who was a great friend to Kerouac and Neal, and was romantically involved with Neal on and off for many years. Linking Neal CASSady to Cas doesn’t necessarily negate the links between Cas and Carlo/Ginsberg, it just makes this is bit more confusing. Within the context of this discussion, it remains clear that Cass and Dean are interlinked through these literary references just like Sam and Jack are linked through the same sources.

In Season 14

In Season 13 we have seen Jack being mirrored to both Sam, Dean, and Cas. But let’s focus on Sam who he has mirrored a lot this past season, what with his powers, his struggle between good and evil, and his struggle between nurture and the evil blood within him. In this next season it is evident that Sam and Jack will be further linked together - both dealing with the death of Lucifer whilst also having the same goal of rescuing Dean. As two halves they will struggle together towards the same goal. Cas on the other hand, without Dean, is without his alternate side and I hope that the coming season will further differentiate the differences between Sam & Jack’s reaction to Michael!Dean and Cas’s reaction to Michael!Dean. 

I probably will have more thoughts on this, although it is always a struggle to find the pertinent information across these two worlds in my brain and fit them together. I have been meaning to further investigate the links between Allen Ginsberg and Cas (which i have done to some extent), however it is difficult to discern the relevant links from a whole wealth of information. But the bare bones of this is;

Jack Kline is linked to Jack Kerouac. Jack Kerouac’s character in ‘On The Road’ is Sal Paradise. Sam is based on Sal. Therefore Jack is the angelic mirror of Sam.

Neal CASSady is linked to Cas. Neal Cassady’s character in ‘On The Road’ is Dean Moriarty. Dean Winchester is based on Dean Moray. Therefore Cas is the angelic mirror of Dean.

Conclusion: I am an idiot and can’t believe I’ve only seen this now despite being no. 1 fan of the Beat Generation to whom I’ve dedicated over a decade of my life to. 

Jack Kline... Jack Kerouac... how did I not see this before...

[fanta-ceo]

Terms of Our Relationship

pairings: Yoongi x Reader, Jimin x OC

genre: established relationship, angst, workaholic!yoongi

word count: 3,096

description: It's the first time she's seen him in two days. And that's okay, except that technically, they share the same bed. 

I'm busier than you think. Can you be okay with that?

A/N: Originally written in 3rd and I didn’t want to switch it to 2nd lol. Plz understand

It's the first time she's seen him in two days. And that's okay, except that technically, they share the same bed. He barely remembers to come home these days—when he's not camped in the office, analyzing complex data for his boss working overtime he won't get paid for, he usually finds what little time he has left in the studio. That was their agreement when they moved in together.

I'm busier than you think. Can you be okay with that?

She'd understood. She herself had passions and dreams she was aiming for—when she wasn't at work, she was still attending school, finishing her PhD and working long hours, agonizing over her dissertation. They were wrecks; she remembered to go to the gym more often than she remembered to eat, and she had a feeling Yoongi remembered to eat even less.

And yet... despite their busy schedules, despite the hundreds of reasons why they couldn't be a normal couple and cuddle on the couch and eat dinner together and go on dates, something still stung in his absence. Whenever she laid in bed, trying quiet her anxious thoughts, she'd remember the few times she'd done it in his arms. The times back when things were more intense and less serious at once, back when her hold on him had appeared tentative at best, and he'd gone out of his way to assure her that she was on his mind, that he wanted something from her.

She isn't less in love with him. If anything, she's only fallen deeper. And she doubts he's changed his mind about her—he's not the type to sleep with women he doesn't care about, to sign a lease with someone who he plans on losing interest in. She only wished that in the hundreds of priorities on their lists, their own relationship would be a bit closer to the top.

She wishes this wasn't the first time she's seen her boyfriend in two days. But more than that biting sting of loneliness and aching of missing him, there's gratitude—that he's in her life, that he's here, that he thought this was important enough to take time off of his busy schedule to come to this frivolous group date. 

She doesn't know how it ended up like this. Yoongi got along with her friends okay, but if they were going to go out together, they usually hung out with Namjoon or Hoseok. Yoongi could charm the pants off anyone, but he found it a drag to hang around her friends and their boyfriends. Except Soojung and Jimin.

Yoongi was different from her other friends—a kid with dreams who had lived off the streets for too long before regaining his footing, passionately fighting and scraping his way to what he had now. It had been a coincidence—blessed luck—that they'd met at all, that he'd seen something in her worth sticking around for. He had a group of friends of his own, a small collection of people he considered worth keeping track of and visiting with every few weeks, so of course he didn't need anything from her friends' boyfriends. If he was an outsider, it was something he was familiar with.

But Jimin didn't seem to mind if Yoongi was closed off to friendship. They could spend a night together, Jimin chatting cheerfully and laughing at Yoongi's banter, and both would leave utterly content even if they didn't see each other for another month. Jimin didn't think Yoongi was rude if he dropped off the face of the earth for weeks at a time. 

She hasn't seen him in two days, but he could be in the studio right now, doing what he really loved but instead he was here at this restaurant, looking painfully gorgeous in a black suit and a little too tired for her taste as he stood by the front door, checking his phone and scanning the room simultaneously for her and her friends. The feelings she feels bubbling to the surface surge with painful intensity—longing the foremost, warm affection mingling with the aching emotion in a way that twisted her stomach.

She doesn't like living like this.

When he sees her and something in his eyes solidifies—something distant and anxious that becomes warm and solid when his eyes meet hers—she feels that wrenching longing. I'm busier than you think. Can you be okay with that? She couldn't ask for more time. She had asked for this as well, hadn't she? She was busy too. Wasn't that why it had made so much sense, back then? Being with him meant they were both free to pursue their passions, and she needed that because she'd worked for over a decade to get to this point in her life. This is what she had wanted. 

The thought rang hollow to her. Worked a decade to live with a man you barely see, to lose your mind in work that can't satisfy your heart, to long for someone who's just always out of reach. Somehow, along the way, he'd become something even more important to her than all of her goals and ambitions. A younger her would have been horrified to hear it, and Yoongi... she couldn't admit that kind of weakness to him. To admit that in their precious time together, she had changed, that the terms of their relationship were beginning to twist and break inside of her.

Their relationship was built off of how much they liked one another but how fiercely independently they lived—a loving relationship of how much they didn't need each other. Loneliness, longing—it all amounted to selfishness. She wasn't going to hold him back like that. 

She could never admit that, for her, the scales had tipped. That she needed something he'd told her he wouldn't give her, and she had agreed. She wouldn't do that to him.

Something about that cut inside her, deep like the other emotions he inspired that wrecked havoc within her. But it was just another emotion to keep to herself, waiting for a time when their relationship could be more than these wisps and shadows. 

~*~

He smells so good.

She's half out of her mind, trying to focus on the conversation when he's so close, when he's warm and so handsome and smells so good, and his hand is on her thigh under the table—he's watching Jimin with sharp eyes, his lips curved like the smirk of a predator, but Jimin's lips are twitching into a smile all the while so she thinks they're really having fun—but his thumb is tracing small circles on her thigh, and of course all she can think about is him.

Soojung is watching Jimin in his element, bubbly and relaxed and almost child like. He leads the conversation easily, leading them sideways and backwards in ways that make them laugh. When Soojung does speak, it's to antagonize her—which, with Yoongi so close and with her losing her mind over emotions and hormones, she could barely handle. She usually sputtered out generic responses because she was utterly brain dead, something that would make Soojung snicker and Yoongi chuckle as he glanced at her.

He's just so... well, there's a lot of words. Handsome, confident—but really, he's just insanely hot when he's like this. The last time she'd seen him, he'd looked half dead in a giant, over-sized t-shirt and shorts as he'd stumbled blearily to the coffee she'd made a half hour earlier. She'd been rushing out the door to get to class, and they hadn't even kissed goodbye. 

The contrast was ridiculous. She loved him sleepy and half-dead before he got his caffeine fix. This side of Yoongi was just another favorite.

The pressure of his thumb into her skin is hypnotic. She feels her eyes drifting shut. She wants to be alone with him. But she couldn't even ask him to come home for herself—she had to wait to ask for a little time until this group date opportunity. Why was she so scared of asking for more time with him? Why couldn't she just be honest, that she needed him at night when her anxieties and fears started to overwhelm her? She needed the comfort of his touch to remind her that there was more to life than exhausting and endless assignments and projects. 

She needs him. She misses their dates when they would talk, when he would laugh and tease her, when he would listen, when he would share some of the incredible thoughts banging around in his mind, the things he too often kept inside. She missed connecting with him, feeling like he was apart of her as well as her own beating heart. Why does it feel like she's been so utterly stupid, like she's made a terrible mistake by waiting so long to ask him on a date? Why did she wait for a group date if he was going to say yes so easily? Wasn't all of this her fault?

She can't get her mind off of him, and Yoongi must notice because he leans over then and murmurs in her ear, "Do you want to get out of here?" She can see Jimin and Soojung obviously watching the exchange, but she can only nod in relief.

"Keeping secrets?" Soojung asked, smirking into her drink as she took a sip and eyed them coyly. 

"I think I should get my girlfriend home," Yoongi said, going for his wallet. Jimim shook his head, smiling. "I invited you guys to my favorite restaurant, and you think I'll let you cover the bill? You guys should get going. Return the favor later." 

She knows Yoongi hates owing people, and she knows Yoongi hates letting other people pay, and she knows Jimin is doing it just to toy with them in a harmless way. But She couldn't concentrate on the exchange long—her focus dissolved to Yoongi's hand that remained resting on her thigh. She found herself wishing she'd worn a dress, that maybe his hand could have made contact with bare skin—it was a shadow of a thought, an impulse or desire with no substance for her rational mind to challenge. She was so on edge. All she really wanted was to hug him. 

She missed her boyfriend. A lot. 

It had been two days since she'd seen him last, but the last conversation they'd had had been over cereal, and that was four days before—and the last deep conversation they'd had had been two and a half weeks back, over a stupid TV show. The last time they'd fallen asleep talking together was... six weeks?

Jimin ended up paying for the bill, but that gave she and Yoongi the freedom to leave at their convenience—immediately—and as she glanced over her shoulder, she noticed Jimin and Soojung smiling at each other with an affection so intimiate, it felt like intrusion to glimpse it. It made her happy. At least her friend was doing well.

"I took the bus," she says when Yoongi starts scanning the lot for her car. 

Yoongi answers by pulling her waist and walking to his with a casual yet firm hand that suggests it's instinctive and utterly natural. She doesn't mind that he's quiet because communication is more than just words and after two years, she understands that it's enough for him to be near her, and if he didn't want her, he wouldn't be touching her.

He opens her door for her like he always does—chivalry made her antsy at best when she was younger, but Yoongi did it so naturally, she figured it was simply apart of who he was. And there was no part of him she didn't adore. When he gets into the driver's seat, it's natural for him to take her hand in his and hold it as he drives.

Does he know what these simple touches mean to me? She'd had a string of past boyfriends whose proximity had left her buzzed but empty. His touch was like a slow burn, solid and warm at first, but it sparked a fire that burned hotter and hotter in the pit of her stomach. She just wanted to curl up in his arms and lose herself in the reassuring calm of his presence. 

Does he need me like I need him?

She doubted it. He missed her, probably—he usually did after spending so much time isolated in the studio. But being wanted... that was better than need. She knew that. She'd had a few boys who had used her, for her heart and her body and for her reluctance to walk away. Yoongi wasn't like that. She knew for certain that he had everything he needed in his friends and his music and his work. She was lucky to get any of his time, his affection.

She didn't know what he saw in her. But she was desperately grateful for it. He has no reason to use her, and all the reason in the world to walk away—that's why it means everything that he's here. 

When they get back to their apartment, she unlocks the door and steps in. Exhaustion from the long day—the four hour lab, the next three she'd spent in the library until her six hour shift at work—it's all beginning to settle in, and she's planning on falling in bed without the shower she should probably take, all with the hope that he'll follow her.

He catches her hand effortlessly as he closes the door behind them, pulling her so that she stumbles, right into his arms. She freezes as he buries his face in her neck—no, nuzzles her. "I love you," he mumbles. 

Her heart melts, and her fingers slide to his back, clinging to him. Do you know how much I need you? "I love you," she sighs in a mumble. It's something like a physical relief, expressing even a fraction of the need she feels tearing her apart. 

They stand there long enough that her own exhaustion returns in a wave. "Let's go to bed," she sighs, making to move again.

But Yoongi unexpectedly kisses her neck then—but instead of pulling back, she feels a hot swipe of his tongue on her skin. She's jarred into alertness, pulse beginning to race. She wants to laugh at herself. Honestly—with his hand on her thigh at the restaurant so long, did she really think he just wanted to sleep? But he'd still been holding her at the door for almost ten minutes, making no move to initiate. As if a simple embrace was as important as sex. She doesn't understand him, but she adores him. 

He continues to suck in a way that will leave a mark, a way that undoes her, and her fingers press into his back. He laughs—a low, husky sound—against the skin of her neck. "Move to the bed?" He suggests.

She nods, brain foggy, but he doesn't tease her because this is a side of her he accepts just like all the others. It's okay that her brain shuts off sometimes—what did he say once? You're a kind of girl who thinks a lot of thoughts, so I think it's cute when you're like this. 

Sex isn't sex when it's with Yoongi. Sex used to be something she dreaded, something scary and sometimes painful and something she did because she was scared to be alone, to watch them walk away because she couldn't make them stay. 

With Yoongi, it's love. It's gentle, and fun, and intoxicatingly deep, and through his kiss, through his touch, she feels all of the frayed edges of her emotions begin to reconnect inside of her. It's not everything, of course—but it is something, that they can still come together like this. And when Yoongi asks for this, she knows him enough by now to know that it's just not hormones or impulse. He does it because he loves her, because he misses her, because he wants the emotional connection as much as the physical.

The best part is right now, though—just after they've cleaned up together in the bathroom, when Yoongi is just a little too sarcastic, and she's a little too frazzled to think straight, so they tease each other. But their bickering easily shifts into conversation, easy exchange of ideas with an openness and ease they don't usually employ. And they cuddle in the night; she was so tired, weary from the day, and if anything she should be more tired—he should be the same of course—but this is more important than even sleep. 

She'll stay awake for days if it means just a little more precious time with him. "Let's make breakfast together tomorrow," Yoongi mumbles sleepily as they both begin to drift off.

"I hope it's lunch," she quips.

"Let's sleep for a long time," he agrees, kissing her forehead.

"Are you going into the studio tomorrow?" she asks.

"No," he says. "Let's just stay in. I miss you."

"Okay," she agrees.

It's not a promise that they'll spend their nights together like a normal busy couple. He'll still work late into the night and pass out on the couch at the studio, and she'll still work nights and days for work and camp out in the library to get her studying done, but that's okay. 

I'm busier than you think. Can you be okay with that?

It was okay, because she'd known going into this exactly what it would be. And even though it would be so easy to overlook her, to forget about her when their passions pulled them in such different directions, he still made time for times like these. She was his priority, no matter how the signs might have indicated otherwise. This, right here, being in his arms after weeks of distance, was enough.

She couldn't doubt it for a second. He loved her. Remembering that, feeling that, was enough for her.

[mittensmorgul]

I know there have been times in the series where people were in love with the idea of Cas giving up his grace for Dean or dying for him or making some other big sacrifice. And I just really really hate that idea? It reminds me too much of the unhealthy brodependency cycle. I don't want to see Cas become human like that, forced to under duress or making his ultimate life goal be about "bleeding for the Winchesters." We're getting past that. So I'm glad S10 didn't do the grace cure for example.

Hi there… I feel like I should make at least one disclaimer here before I even start to reply to this…

Disclaimer #1: I am not now, nor have I ever been in love with the idea of Cas giving up his grace FOR Dean, or dying FOR Dean. You used the words “forced” and “under duress.” You even referenced his line from 7.22 about “bleeding for the Winchesters.” Out of context that does sound really bad, and I’ll get to why below, but I really don’t get any of these objections to Cas giving up his grace, because they seem to ignore Cas’s own free will to make that choice for himself, you know? More on that in a second. First,

Disclaimer #2: Hi, I’m MittenWraith and you may remember me from such fanfic offerings as Revenge of the Subtext, which was essentially a rewrite of the end of s10 (that spared Charlie first off) and gave Cas the agency to CHOOSE to give up his grace, not because he was forced to, but because doing so (at the time in canon at the end of s10) also gave him everything he wanted– to be able to stay with Dean and NOT have to watch him murder the world, to finally free himself from the politics and feelings of duty to Heaven (which he’s since essentially declared his loyalty first to the Winchesters over and above Heaven… telling Kelvin to his face that he’s not doing any of this for any sort of redemption in Heaven, he doesn’t even care about that anymore, and referring to the Winchesters as his “family” and the other angels as his “men”). Cas has dissociated HIMSELF from Heaven of his own free will. To his way of thinking, using that grace to save Dean from an eternity of torment was merely a side benefit, you know?

I think we’re approaching this from two fundamentally different basic assumptions about Castiel. I’m not certain if there’s anything I can say that will help you see it from another angle here… but folks keep asking, so I’ll keep trying…

I started writing a thesis (I’m calling it that because it’s gonna be long, and structured like a doctoral dissertation. Hell, I might even write an abstract… it’s gonna be involved) on Castiel’s entire character arc as represented through his struggle for agency and free will against the blind obedience to Heaven that has been forcibly reprogrammed into angels who deviate from their orders. This is the lens through which all of Cas’s development has occurred. As for my thesis, it’s currently stalled out because writing deadlines for pinefest demand I work on that first, and I’ve only covered Cas’s first eight episodes out of 100 and already the paper is more than 1k, so clearly it’s gonna take an astounding amount of time that I just don’t have right now for me to actually research and write…

Point is, even in those first eight episodes (4.01, 4.02, 4.03, 4.07, 4.09, 4.10, 4.15, 4.16), this is already his main conflict as a character. Duty and obedience to heaven versus thinking for himself and doing what he personally feels is right. We see him push back against his orders in 4.18 giving Dean information that will help him “defy prophecy” for the first time, and then we see him attempt to make a complete break with Heaven in 4.20 only to be captured and dragged back for “angel boot camp.” When he returns to his vessel, he’s entirely back to Full Obedience Mode as a function of his grace having been tinkered with in Heaven. Anna lampshades just how horrible what was being done to him there really was, just as Dean lampshaded just how unhappy Anna was when she was given no other choice but to take her own grace back on in 4.10. Her free will, her choice to be human was taken away from her and she did “what she had to do.”

Worst. Phrase. On the show. Ever.

In 8.23 Cas may have had his grace taken from him against his will, but he tried to make the best of it. He struggled with his sudden humanity, but by 9.06 he’d made his peace with it.

CASTIEL: No, Dean. (He puts the box on the counter and turns to face DEAN.) I’m not. I failed at being an angel. Everything I ever attempted came out wrong. But here … at least I have a shot at getting things right. I guess you can’t see it, but … there’s a real dignity in what I do – human dignity.

His entire conversation with Ephraim underscores just how he feels now, and truly introduces this question for the first time:

EPHRAIM: Shh-shh-shhh. It’ll be over soon. I’ll take the pain away.CASTIEL: I want to live.EPHRAIM: But as what, Castiel? As an angel? or a man?

(hey lookie there’s my tag for this entire concept…) but then there’s this:

EPHRAIM: You say you want to live. But you can’t see what I see. By choosing a human life, you’ve already given up. You … chose … death.

Because to Ephraim, who it’s been established has NO understanding of human pain, of human emotions at all, ANY pain is something worth killing over. Even a teenage girl being “sorta bummed” about her boyfriend breaking up with her. To him, ANY human emotions were a pain not worth suffering.

Meanwhile Cas had been doing everything in his power to SAVE HIMSELF, attempting to draw a banishing sigil in blood, cutting his hand on the rose thorns, until Dean managed to toss the angel blade to him and he could kill Ephraim before Ephraim killed him. Cas’s will to live was greater than his desire to only live as an angel. Even if he hadn’t fully chosen humanity for himself back then, he had passed step one of the test and chosen life.

This concept is underscored again when Cas describes to Sam why Dean would cling so hard to being a demon in 10.03:

SAM: What the hell are we doing to him, Cas? I mean, even after I gave him all that blood, he still said he didn’t want to be cured, that he didn’t want to be human.CASTIEL: Well… I see his point. You know, only humans can feel real joy, but … also such profound pain. This is easier.

Cas understands, because he’s experienced the same thing… he KNOWS the real joy and profound pain of being human now, and he also knows what it’s like to not be able to feel those things– not because he knows what it’s like to be a demon, but because he believes it’s similar enough to what it feels like being an angel. Now if that’s not horrifying, and if it doesn’t say bucketloads about Cas’s own personal regret about his own “I did what I had to do” moment in 9.09, in stealing Theo’s grace in what amounted to a sacrifice of his OWN humanity in order to save Dean… Tell me if ANY of this sounds like Cas is happy with this non-choice:

CASTIEL (on the phone) : Dean, I don’t have a lot of time, so listen. The leader of the opposition is an angel named Malachi.DEAN: How do you know that?CASTIEL: He had me. I, uh, I was tortured. But I got away.DEAN: How?CASTIEL: I… I did what I had to. I became what they’ve become. A barbarian.DEAN: What are you – Cas, where are you?CASTIEL: It’s better I stay away. They’re gonna want me even more now. But I’m gonna be all right. I… I got my Grace back. Well, not mine per se, but it’ll do.DEAN: Wait, you’re – you’re back? You got your mojo?CASTIEL: I’m not sure. But I am an angel.DEAN: And you’re okay with that?CASTIEL: If we’re going to war, I need to be ready.DEAN: (pause) Cas.CASTIEL: Dean. There’s more.DEAN: What?CASTIEL: Didn’t you say Sam was healed by an angel named Ezekiel?DEAN: Uh… Yeah, why?CASTIEL: Ezekiel is dead.DEAN: What?CASTIEL: He died when the angels fell.DEAN’s face has a very concentrated “oh this is bad” expression.

A VERY CONCENTRATED “OH THIS IS BAD” EXPRESSION

Under torture by Theo, Cas had asked for a quick death, until he heard that Ezekiel had died in the fall, and realized that Dean had trusted Ezekiel to help heal Sam… THIS INFORMATION WAS WORTH DOING “WHAT HE HAD TO DO” just to be sure that Sam and Dean were safe from this unknown angel that HE had personally vouched for… that we’ve just learned is actually Gadreel…

IT’S ALL A HUGE MESS.

To me, Cas’s decision to take on another angel’s grace was just as much of a non-choice as Metatron stealing his original grace had been. And to Cas, WHAT he is doesn’t necessarily matter as much as the fact that HE CHOSE IT FOR HIMSELF.

Every single time he’s done what he had to do, every time his agency’s been taken from him, the vehicle that made it possible was his grace.

He’s been asked over and over again for years if he’s really an angel (and been told to his face by numerous other angels that he ISN’T an angel anymore), he’s been called a tool and told he was only marginally useful… and yet he’s been called Family and welcomed unconditionally by the Winchesters. Mostly because they’re not FORCING him to be anything in particular, you know?

As to your “Always happy to bleed for the Winchesters” from 7.21, I’ve written a lot about Cas’s mental state in late s7 here, which goes a long way to give a fuller context to that line. Out of context, it sounds very different to seeing how it fits with the entire picture of Cas’s late s7 guilt. In a lot of ways, running away from his responsibility (think “I don’t fight I watch the bees” and constantly referring to himself and his actions in the third person, with “An angel brought the Leviathan back into this world, and – and they begged him. They begged him not to do it.”). It took redeeming himself in some small measure by helping to send the Leviathan back to Purgatory in 7.23 for him to even BEGIN to integrate himself again… And then begins his depression/atonement arc that includes his ongoing battle with his own agency via his choice to remain in Purgatory, his complete loss of agency to Naomi, and then Metatron… this has ALWAYS been what has driven and defined Castiel’s narrative, and every bit of character development he’s ever experienced.

And it’s ALWAYS been tied to his identity as an angel and the very existence of his grace. And even HE has said that he doesn’t identify as an angel anymore or feel allied to Heaven, but like Demon Dean clinging to whatever it was that made him a demon because it was easier not to feel that pain, like Soulless Sam desperate to do anything to prevent himself from being reunited with his soul, Cas is still holding on to his grace in a similar way (narratively speaking).

(thing is, once Dean was cured of the Mark and once Sam was reunited with their soul, they were GRATEFUL not to have been left in that unfeeling state, you know? they’ll take the pain, because it beats “being a stepford bitch in paradise.”)

Cas believes he needs his grace to be “useful,” despite already beginning to understand how the Winchesters see him as family. I don’t believe that Cas will be given a “no choice” scenario in which he’ll feel compelled to sacrifice his grace in an emergency situation, as some sort of “throwing himself on a grenade” because he had no other choice. The entire POINT is that it would be his freely-made CHOICE.

No matter WHAT he chooses. I’m not saying he absolutely must give up his grace. I’m saying that every sign and every conflict that’s driven his narrative development over the last 9 seasons has been leading him along this path where eventually he WILL have that choice. And when that time comes, I believe that what he eventually will choose for himself (because he wants it) is to live out a human life with the Winchesters.

I am REALLY looking forward to 13.04, because I think we’re going to gain a LOT of insight into Cas’s current emotional/mental state. And HOW he comes back from his current state of not-aliveness is going to be key to understanding what’s in store for him over the next season. So until then, I’m going to stand by this analysis.

[pamphletstoinspire]

Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross - (Edith Stein) - Feast Day: August 9 - Ordinary Time

Teresa Benedict of the Cross Edith Stein (1891-1942) - nun, - Discalced Carmelite, martyr

"We bow down before the testimony of the life and death of Edith Stein, an outstanding daughter of Israel and at the same time a daughter of the Carmelite Order, Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, a personality who united within her rich life a dramatic synthesis of our century. It was the synthesis of a history full of deep wounds that are still hurting ... and also the synthesis of the full truth about man. All this came together in a single heart that remained restless and unfulfilled until it finally found rest in God." These were the words of Pope John Paul II when he beatified Edith Stein in Cologne on 1 May 1987.

Who was this woman?

Edith Stein was born in Breslau on 12 October 1891, the youngest of 11, as her family were celebrating Yom Kippur, that most important Jewish festival, the Feast of Atonement. "More than anything else, this helped make the youngest child very precious to her mother." Being born on this day was like a foreshadowing to Edith, a future Carmelite nun.

Edith's father, who ran a timber business, died when she had only just turned two. Her mother, a very devout, hard-working, strong-willed and truly wonderful woman, now had to fend for herself and to look after the family and their large business. However, she did not succeed in keeping up a living faith in her children. Edith lost her faith in God. "I consciously decided, of my own volition, to give up praying," she said.

In 1911 she passed her exams with flying colors and enrolled at the University of Breslau to study German and history, though this was a mere "bread-and-butter" choice. Her real interest was in philosophy and in women's issues. She became a member of the Prussian Society for Women's Franchise. "When I was at school and during my first years at university," she wrote later, "I was a radical suffragette. Then I lost interest in the whole issue. Now I am looking for purely pragmatic solutions."

In 1913, Edith Stein transferred to Göttingen University, to study under the mentorship of Edmund Husserl. She became his pupil and teaching assistant, and he later tutored her for a doctorate. At the time, anyone who was interested in philosophy was fascinated by Husserl's new view of reality, whereby the world as we perceive it does not merely exist in a Kantian way, in our subjective perception. His pupils saw his philosophy as a return to objects: "back to things". Husserl's phenomenology unwittingly led many of his pupils to the Christian faith. In Göttingen Edith Stein also met the philosopher Max Scheler, who directed her attention to Roman Catholicism. Nevertheless, she did not neglect her "bread-and-butter" studies and passed her degree with distinction in January 1915, though she did not follow it up with teacher training.

"I no longer have a life of my own," she wrote at the beginning of the First World War, having done a nursing course and gone to serve in an Austrian field hospital. This was a hard time for her, during which she looked after the sick in the typhus ward, worked in an operating theatre, and saw young people die. When the hospital was dissolved, in 1916, she followed Husserl as his assistant to the German city of Freiburg, where she passed her doctorate summa cum laude (with the utmost distinction) in 1917, after writing a thesis on "The Problem of Empathy."

During this period she went to Frankfurt Cathedral and saw a woman with a shopping basket going in to kneel for a brief prayer. "This was something totally new to me. In the synagogues and Protestant churches I had visited people simply went to the services. Here, however, I saw someone coming straight from the busy marketplace into this empty church, as if she was going to have an intimate conversation. It was something I never forgot. "Towards the end of her dissertation she wrote: "There have been people who believed that a sudden change had occurred within them and that this was a result of God's grace." How could she come to such a conclusion? Edith Stein had been good friends with Husserl's Göttingen assistant, Adolf Reinach, and his wife.

When Reinach fell in Flanders in November 1917, Edith went to Göttingen to visit his widow. The Reinachs had converted to Protestantism. Edith felt uneasy about meeting the young widow at first, but was surprised when she actually met with a woman of faith. "This was my first encounter with the Cross and the divine power it imparts to those who bear it ... it was the moment when my unbelief collapsed and Christ began to shine his light on me - Christ in the mystery of the Cross." Later, she wrote: "Things were in God's plan which I had not planned at all. I am coming to the living faith and conviction that - from God's point of view - there is no chance and that the whole of my life, down to every detail, has been mapped out in God's divine providence and makes complete and perfect sense in God's all-seeing eyes."

In Autumn 1918 Edith Stein gave up her job as Husserl's teaching assistant. She wanted to work independently. It was not until 1930 that she saw Husserl again after her conversion, and she shared with him about her faith, as she would have liked him to become a Christian, too. Then she wrote down the amazing words: "Every time I feel my powerlessness and inability to influence people directly, I become more keenly aware of the necessity of my own holocaust."

Edith Stein wanted to obtain a professorship, a goal that was impossible for a woman at the time. Husserl wrote the following reference: "Should academic careers be opened up to ladies, then I can recommend her whole-heartedly and as my first choice for admission to a professorship." Later, she was refused a professorship on account of her Jewishness.

Back in Breslau, Edith Stein began to write articles about the philosophical foundation of psychology. However, she also read the New Testament, Kierkegaard and Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises. She felt that one could not just read a book like that, but had to put it into practice.

In the summer of 1921. she spent several weeks in Bergzabern (in the Palatinate) on the country estate of Hedwig Conrad-Martius, another pupil of Husserl's. Hedwig had converted to Protestantism with her husband. One evening Edith picked up an autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila and read this book all night. "When I had finished the book, I said to myself: This is the truth." Later, looking back on her life, she wrote: "My longing for truth was a single prayer."

On 1 January 1922 Edith Stein was baptized. It was the Feast of the Circumcision of Jesus, when Jesus entered into the covenant of Abraham. Edith Stein stood by the baptismal font, wearing Hedwig Conrad-Martius' white wedding cloak. Hedwig washer godmother. "I had given up practising my Jewish religion when I was a 14-year-old girl and did not begin to feel Jewish again until I had returned to God." From this moment on she was continually aware that she belonged to Christ not only spiritually, but also through her blood. At the Feast of the Purification of Mary - another day with an Old Testament reference - she was confirmed by the Bishop of Speyer in his private chapel.

After her conversion she went straight to Breslau: "Mother," she said, "I am a Catholic." The two women cried. Hedwig Conrad Martius wrote: "Behold, two Israelites indeed, in whom is no deceit!" (cf. John 1:47).

Immediately after her conversion she wanted to join a Carmelite convent. However, her spiritual mentors, Vicar-General Schwind of Speyer, and Erich Przywara SJ, stopped her from doing so. Until Easter 1931 she held a position teaching German and history at the Dominican Sisters' school and teacher training college of St. Magdalen's Convent in Speyer. At the same time she was encouraged by Arch-Abbot Raphael Walzer of Beuron Abbey to accept extensive speaking engagements, mainly on women's issues. "During the time immediately before and quite some time after my conversion I ... thought that leading a religious life meant giving up all earthly things and having one's mind fixed on divine things only. Gradually, however, I learnt that other things are expected of us in this world... I even believe that the deeper someone is drawn to God, the more he has to `get beyond himself' in this sense, that is, go into the world and carry divine life into it."

She worked enormously hard, translating the letters and diaries of Cardinal Newman from his pre-Catholic period as well as Thomas Aquinas' Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate. The latter was a very free translation, for the sake of dialogue with modern philosophy. Erich Przywara also encouraged her to write her own philosophical works. She learnt that it was possible to "pursue scholarship as a service to God... It was not until I had understood this that I seriously began to approach academic work again." To gain strength for her life and work, she frequently went to the Benedictine Monastery of Beuron, to celebrate the great festivals of the Church year.

In 1931 Edith Stein left the convent school in Speyer and devoted herself to working for a professorship again, this time in Breslau and Freiburg, though her endeavours were in vain. It was then that she wrote Potency and Act, a study of the central concepts developed by Thomas Aquinas. Later, at the Carmelite Convent in Cologne, she rewrote this study to produce her main philosophical and theological oeuvre, Finite and Eternal Being. By then, however, it was no longer possible to print the book.

In 1932 she accepted a lectureship position at the Roman Catholic division of the German Institute for Educational Studies at the University of Munster, where she developed her anthropology. She successfully combined scholarship and faith in her work and her teaching, seeking to be a "tool of the Lord" in everything she taught. "If anyone comes to me, I want to lead them to Him."

In 1933 darkness broke out over Germany. "I had heard of severe measures against Jews before. But now it dawned on me that God had laid his hand heavily on His people, and that the destiny of these people would also be mine." The Aryan Law of the Nazis made it impossible for Edith Stein to continue teaching. "If I can't go on here, then there are no longer any opportunities for me in Germany," she wrote; "I had become a stranger in the world."

The Arch-Abbot of Beuron, Walzer, now no longer stopped her from entering a Carmelite convent. While in Speyer, she had already taken a vow of poverty, chastity and obedience. In 1933 she met with the prioress of the Carmelite Convent in Cologne. "Human activities cannot help us, but only the suffering of Christ. It is my desire to share in it."

Edith Stein went to Breslau for the last time, to say good-bye to her mother and her family. Her last day at home was her birthday, 12 October, which was also the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles. Edith went to the synagogue with her mother. It was a hard day for the two women. "Why did you get to know it [Christianity]?" her mother asked, "I don't want to say anything against him. He may have been a very good person. But why did he make himself God?" Edith's mother cried. The following day Edith was on the train to Cologne. "I did not feel any passionate joy. What I had just experienced was too terrible. But I felt a profound peace - in the safe haven of God's will." From now on she wrote to her mother every week, though she never received any replies. Instead, her sister Rosa sent her news from Breslau.

Edith joined the Carmelite Convent of Cologne on 14 October, and her investiture took place on 15 April, 1934. The mass was celebrated by the Arch-Abbot of Beuron. Edith Stein was now known as Sister Teresia Benedicta a Cruce - Teresa, Blessed of the Cross. In 1938 she wrote: "I understood the cross as the destiny of God's people, which was beginning to be apparent at the time (1933). I felt that those who understood the Cross of Christ should take it upon themselves on everybody's behalf. Of course, I know better now what it means to be wedded to the Lord in the sign of the cross. However, one can never comprehend it, because it is a mystery." On 21 April 1935 she took her temporary vows. On 14 September 1936, the renewal of her vows coincided with her mother's death in Breslau. "My mother held on to her faith to the last moment. But as her faith and her firm trust in her God ... were the last thing that was still alive in the throes of her death, I am confident that she will have met a very merciful judge and that she is now my most faithful helper, so that I can reach the goal as well."

When she made her eternal profession on 21 April 1938, she had the words of St. John of the Cross printed on her devotional picture: "Henceforth my only vocation is to love." Her final work was to be devoted to this author.

Edith Stein's entry into the Carmelite Order was not escapism. "Those who join the Carmelite Order are not lost to their near and dear ones, but have been won for them, because it is our vocation to intercede to God for everyone." In particular, she interceded to God for her people: "I keep thinking of Queen Esther who was taken away from her people precisely because God wanted her to plead with the king on behalf of her nation. I am a very poor and powerless little Esther, but the King who has chosen me is infinitely great and merciful. This is great comfort." (31 October 1938)

On 9 November 1938 the anti-Semitism of the Nazis became apparent to the whole world.

Synagogues were burnt, and the Jewish people were subjected to terror. The prioress of the Carmelite Convent in Cologne did her utmost to take Sister Teresia Benedicta a Cruce abroad. On New Year's Eve 1938 she was smuggled across the border into the Netherlands, to the Carmelite Convent in Echt in the Province of Limburg. This is where she wrote her will on 9 June 1939: "Even now I accept the death that God has prepared for me in complete submission and with joy as being his most holy will for me. I ask the Lord to accept my life and my death ... so that the Lord will be accepted by His people and that His Kingdom may come in glory, for the salvation of Germany and the peace of the world."

While in the Cologne convent, Edith Stein had been given permission to start her academic studies again. Among other things, she wrote about "The Life of a Jewish Family" (that is, her own family): "I simply want to report what I experienced as part of Jewish humanity," she said, pointing out that "we who grew up in Judaism have a duty to bear witness ... to the young generation who are brought up in racial hatred from early childhood."

In Echt, Edith Stein hurriedly completed her study of "The Church's Teacher of Mysticism and the Father of the Carmelites, John of the Cross, on the Occasion of the 400th Anniversary of His Birth, 1542-1942." In 1941 she wrote to a friend, who was also a member of her order: "One can only gain a scientia crucis (knowledge of the cross) if one has thoroughly experienced the cross. I have been convinced of this from the first moment onwards and have said with all my heart: 'Ave, Crux, Spes unica' (I welcome you, Cross, our only hope)." Her study on St. John of the Cross is entitled: "Kreuzeswissenschaft" (The Science of the Cross).

Edith Stein was arrested by the Gestapo on 2 August 1942, while she was in the chapel with the other sisters. She was to report within five minutes, together with her sister Rosa, who had also converted and was serving at the Echt Convent. Her last words to be heard in Echt were addressed to Rosa: "Come, we are going for our people."

Together with many other Jewish Christians, the two women were taken to a transit camp in Amersfoort and then to Westerbork. This was an act of retaliation against the letter of protest written by the Dutch Roman Catholic Bishops against the pogroms and deportations of Jews. Edith commented, "I never knew that people could be like this, neither did I know that my brothers and sisters would have to suffer like this. ... I pray for them every hour. Will God hear my prayers? He will certainly hear them in their distress." Prof. Jan Nota, who was greatly attached to her, wrote later: "She is a witness to God's presence in a world where God is absent."

On 7 August, early in the morning, 987 Jews were deported to Auschwitz. It was probably on 9 August that Sister Teresia Benedicta a Cruce, her sister and many other of her people were gassed.

When Edith Stein was beatified in Cologne on 1 May 1987, the Church honoured "a daughter of Israel", as Pope John Paul II put it, who, as a Catholic during Nazi persecution, remained faithful to the crucified Lord Jesus Christ and, as a Jew, to her people in loving faithfulness."

[shenzhenblog]

3 ways to become a learning machine

I smile whenever I look at my university diploma hanging on the wall, because everything I learned then is no longer relevant now. Does it means that we should stop wasting all this energy, time and money on university? Not really: rather, as soon as we complete our “formal studies”, we need to become learning machines. I’ll rephrase it: we must become machines of continuous learning. We have no choice or we will be out of the game, left behind like cavemen after the Stone Age.

For a period of 25 years, as a HR executive, I began interviews with candidates by asking: “What have you learned in the last six-twelve months?”. Unprepared for this kind of question, many candidates weren’t able to answer: the interview was over.

If you have a Bachelor’s degree or a Master’s, do you consider it as the point of arrival, or the beginning of your journey? If you consider it the point of arrival, you’re deceiving yourself. Our long-term success and fulfillment relies on us constantly cultivating our minds. Do not think of your abilities as something immutable, but as something that you can develop over time.

I am convinced that we must have learning agility. By this I mean the ability to remain open to new ways of thinking, to learn continuously in an innovative way, to reflect, to go into unknown territories, and to leave behind our complacency and our torpor. Someone, somewhere is learning faster than you. To become machines of continuous learning, we must not forget three important rules:

Rule 1: Don’t be too much of a specialist.

Let’s start with a question: if you think of Leonardo da Vinci, what word comes to mind? Painter? Scientist? Writer? Inventor? Architect? He was all of these: as the embodiment of the term “Renaissance man”, he roamed between disciplines, avoiding the kind of excessive specialization that stops us being able to think and understand in terms of systems.

So the first rule is not to limit our learning to a single subject. Steve Jobs once explained why Apple products were so stylish, clean and perfectly designed: when he was a student, he attended a calligraphy course and wanted to translate this aesthetic into his company’s products. The design of Apple products is now iconic.

Returning to Leonardo da Vinci, the polymath once said: “Learning never exhausts the mind”. While few of us can aspire to his dazzling achievements, his appetite for learning is something we can all embrace. And learning is not something that happens uniquely at university, at night school, or at a professional course in your office. What we do in our spare time can provide lessons to energize our working life.

You coached an amateur sport team? You started to learn how to manage a team. You tutored students? You learned how to motivate people. You sold something, whether putting a piece of furniture on eBay or by doing an odd job for cash? You grasped the psychology of buyers. You took on an advisory role in local politics or volunteered in a campaign you believe in? Then you understood the complexity and dynamics of a group. You took visitors around a museum or showed them the sights of your city? Well, you learned how to capture people’s attention. You worked as a bartender? Kudos, you mastered a formidable skill: managing difficult (in this case, drunken) clients. You were a babysitter? Well, you fostered a sense of responsibility. In other words, many seemingly trivial jobs can still be key elements in your work experience.

Try to eat food that you cannot pronounce the name of, to learn 50 words from a foreign language, to mingle with people outside your usual tribe, to learn to read music, to memorize poetry, to get lost in a city you do not know (my advice: try Venice), to volunteer in a project you don’t really understand, to read a book you would not usually read, to switch off TV at least five days per week, to listen to music you would not normally listen, to watch a movie without volume to understand by observing body language: in other words try to get out of your comfort zone and dismantle the way you usually think. Learning will occur in a mysterious and magical way.

Looking out: A boy stands in an archway in Venice

Image: REUTERS/Alessandro Bianchi

Rule 2: Failure is part of success, if we learn from it

I have a serious problem in accepting that the opposite of success is failure. On the contrary, I believe that a key element of success is failure, provided that we learn from it. Over the course of our lives, we collect many successful failures, those experiences which may be galling at first but which ultimately teach us not to repeat the same mistakes. You learn by making these mistakes. As the Chinese philosopher Confucius wrote: “I hear and I forget. If I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” To this one could add, “if I’m wrong, I do not forget, I learn and I can explain it to others.”

As reported in the book “Work Rules!” by Laszlo Bock, head of the innovative People Operations at Google, the United States spent $156 billion on employee training in 2011, a staggering amount. Like Laszo, I do not think much of traditional learning methods, in which one person speaks while others listen and take notes; in a corporate setting, this is better known as “death by PowerPoint”. You learn a lot more by actually trying to do something new and considering failure not as some kind of fatal disease to be avoided at all costs, but rather as a healthy step in our learning process. Let me share some examples.

Who missed 12,345 goal attempts in his basketball career? Michael Jordan, who scored on “only” 12,192 shots, is arguably the greatest basketball player of all times. Thomas Edison created almost 10,000 failed prototypes of his electric bulb, before succeeding.

In the business sphere, what do Richard Branson, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg have in common? They all failed several times before succeeding in their endeavors, as this intriguing article explains.

Henry Ford wrote that failure is the best opportunity to begin again more intelligently. If we are never wrong, we have never learned anything of substance. Learning really means getting out of our comfort zone; in some cases, it can mean suffering before our ideas take off. Johannes Houshofer is a professor of psychology and neurobiology at Princeton. He posted a version of his CV on Twitter that was a long list of failures, explaining that failures are part of our learning experience, not something that we have to hide. If I were to write the list of my own failures this blog would be at least 30 pages long and, as my career progresses, my list of failures becomes truly impressive. So, I have invented a terms for myself. I have collected successful failures, and learned a lot from them.

Rule 3: Learning never stops

You never stop learning. In 1938, Ingeborg Rapoport had just finished writing her thesis in medicine and was about to become a doctor but, because of the odious racial laws passed by the Nazi regime, she was denied the qualification because of her Jewish heritage. She emigrated to the United States, where she continued her studies in medicine, working in many hospitals as a paediatrician and neonatologist before returning to East Germany in her fifties, where she founded the first clinic of neonatology East Berlin. In 2015, the University of Hamburg decided to remedy the injustice and, after 77 years, she defended her dissertation of 1938, and obtained her Degree at the age of 102 years. For her commitment to learning and fighting this injustice she is one of my heroes.

So: become a learning machine, enjoy successful failures and don’t stop learning even when you are 102. Let’s invent the future by investing in our learning. It will be – most of the time – a joyful journey to freedom, as nobody will ever take away what we have learned and our choices as people.

Note : This article was originally posted on Weforum

Paolo Gallo

Over the last 30 years, Paolo Gallo has been Chief Human Resources Officer at the World Economic Forum in Geneva; Chief Learning Officer at The World Bank in Washington DC; and Director of Human Resources at the European Bank for Reconstruction & Development in London.

3 ways to become a learning machine was originally published on Shenzhen Blog

[discoveringhistory]

Dissertation Weekly: Making Discoveries & Changing My Interpretation and Perception

As I write this week’s blog I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of an important letter from the great-great grandson of Douglas and Kate Bemo! 

One of the pitfalls of graduate school is that you never seem to get enough time to conduct research on your chosen dissertation topic while you are 1) up to your eyeballs in coursework, 2) opt to add an additional 15 hours of coursework for a graduate minor to your program of study, 3) and are prepping for your comprehensive exams.  At this juncture in my graduate career I am past all three of these important milestones.  I also had the good fortune to come into my program with roughly 90% of my research completed (something that is rare in my field).  To date I have written the prologue, epilogue, and first two chapters of my dissertation and am working on the remaining three so I can hopefully stay on track to defend in early May and graduate in July 2019. (Note: I had hoped to be further along at this point in time. Moving, settling in to my new residence, my wedding, taking on my step son and his mental health and legal challenges, and my own near exhaustion has slowed down my progress more than I ever imagined!) One of the challenges I face is writing while researching and attempting to fill the gaps and little nooks and crannies that remain so I am have as much material as possible to flesh out the life and experiences of Douglas Bemo as an AfroMvskoke/Seminole man living in a very complex and ever-changing world in the Indian Territory in the mid to late 19th century.

The front page of the American Missionary in January 1873 touts the evangelizing work of Rev. D.B. Nichols at Howard University. In July 1872 Douglas was enrolled in and left at Howard University where he was a student in the Model School and a member of the Military Department’s Corps of Cadets until he left in 1874. Note the area highlighted by the pin box.  The “Creek Indian” Nichols refers to in his description is indeed Douglas. His presence at Howard and his connection to the non-denominational church founded by Nichols made excellent PR material.

As of late I have been able to flesh out details of Douglas’ life that 1) his wife Kate NEVER mentions in her one sided portrayal of him in her diary and 2) I never thought I would discover. To some the details may seem minor, nothing of consequence.  However, when you are writing about an AfroMvksoke/Seminole man-- a person of color-- who has been marginalized in his wife’s diary (a primary source of great value to historians) and rendered voiceless by most histories of Indian Territory, the responsibility to flesh out the small details is imperative. Being able to find Douglas’ pay slips from the Mvskoke Nation, his appointment letter as a prosecuting attorney for the Mvskoke Nation, the American Missionary article that mentions him simply as a “Creek Indian”, or a fragment of a school essay he wrote while at the Tullahassee Mission provides me with insight into him that helps me as a historian or recover his voice. When Douglas died in 1898 his wife elected to not run an obituary in any of the local papers. For historians and geneaolgists obituaries are little goldmines of information and help us to pull threads of a person’s life together. For Douglas, however, his erasure from the “go-to” local history sources silences his voice. At this point in the writing of my dissertation I almost see the project as an extended obituary for Douglas.  Despite the best attempt of his wife to erase him from memory and control how he was viewed by anyone reading her diary, my work is an intervention and call to change how we use our sources as historians. What are we missing by simply looking at them from one perspective?  LOTS is the easy answer. In my case, as I am discovering every day, the little details are the most important and telling...and so critical to my understanding of this complex interracial marriage at a time when such unions normally followed a predictable pattern of an Anglo-American male paired with an Indigenous female. 

This news snippet about Minnie Tappan, a Cheyenne survivor of the infamous Sand Creek Massacre, intersects with my look into Douglas’ time at Howard University.  Douglas and Minnie were classmates at Howard and as the only American Indians enrolled at Howard at the time they surely closed paths.

Just this week I discovered that Douglas attended Howard University with a young woman named Minnie Tappan.  A Cheyenne, Minnie was “orphaned” after the infamous Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado Territory during the Civil War.  (Note: I use the term orphaned in quotes on purpose. Even though her parents were killed, Minnie would have been taken in my Aunts, Uncles, or other members of her mother’s clan. Anglo-Americans did not recognize this cultural practice with respect to American Indian peoples.) Taken back East by Samuel Tappan, Minnie was enrolled in Howard University.  In 1873 Minnie contracted consumption and died in her dorm room at Miner’s Hall on the Howard Campus.  News of her death surely filtered among the student body. For Douglas this must have been a terrifying prospect-- would he contract consumption and be next? The presence of another American Indian face on the Howard campus surely reassured and lifted Douglas’ spirits. In letters to Kate, back in Indian Territory teaching at a Mvskoke Nation agency school, Douglas mentions the passing of an Indian girl from Colorado. To some this may seem a trivial detail. However, for Douglas seeing Minnie’s face on campus meant there was someone else like him, he was not an Indigenous island unto himself. So the small bits and pieces of his life are now coming into sharper focus and making him seem so very real.

A photo of Kate Edwards Bemo Mitchell as an older woman. This photo surfaced online and after comparing it to a verified photo of Kate in her younger days there is no doubt it is Kate.  

While looking for the traces of Douglas’ life, more details about Kate keep cropping up.  The photo above is a recent discovery that stopped me in my tracks.  Seeing the face of Kate as an older woman I was struck that Douglas did not get the privilege of living into his later years to watch his son grow into adulthood, marry, and have his own family.  Douglas never got to be a grandfather and share the stories of his life with his descendants. Their views about Douglas come solely from Kate’s very partisan telling of her life and how she was impacted by her unfortunate marriage to her “worthless” Indian. Not only was history robbed of Douglas’ voice but his descendants as well. Now, I am even more determined to search as many archival sources in Oklahoma as possible in the hope I will find an image of Douglas to counterbalance Kate’s well crafted image.  While this goal may not be realized during the writing of my dissertation I do hope that one day an image will surface. Looking into the life of Douglas’ brother Alec (Alexander) --who spent his life living in the Seminole Nation with his wife and large family-- may be the only chance to see what Douglas may have looked like, so the search for an image of Alec is on! 

My scheduling calendar and book are a crazy patchwork colors and scribbles.  This is the only way I can keep all the tasks related to my work, research, and family life in some semblance of order.

Of course the most difficult part of this entire process of writing a dissertation is keeping research, writing, thinking, reading, and family life scheduled and organized.  My calendars/schedules (seen above in glorious colors) are nothing short of a form of managed chaos/controlled insanity at the moment. At this juncture I am really soul searching and looking at my progress, deadlines, and thinking about the fact I MIGHT have to push my defense off until October 2019 and graduate in December 2019. This would mean I missed my target deadline of earning my PhD and Graduate Minor in museum studies in four years start to finish by one semester. Part of me wants to push forward and graduate in July (so I can walk in may graduation and participate in departmental convocation) while the other part of me wants to produce an important dissertation and knows deep down that I need the time. Stay tuned, resolving this dilemma will be an interesting ride.

So, in my quest to flesh out Douglas’ lived experience in the Indian Territory I will be heading to Oklahoma City and the amazing collections of the Oklahoma Historical Society at the end of February. Add to that a trip to Howard University in D.C. (February), Western Kansas and Fort Wallace (March) and the Presbyterian Historical Society in Philly (April) and a possible research swing to the Seminole Nation in Wewoka, OK and you get an idea of what it is like to write and research simultaneously. Thank goodness for frequent flyer points, my husband’s willingness to pay for trips, and my love of travel...for I truly am a historian on the road.

Thanks for reading, hope you have enjoyed this edition of Dissertation Weekly.  Stay tuned! Next week I will share about one of my recent research experiences and the need for document preservation in local communities!

Cheers,

Michelle and Josie the Kitten

Josie supervises the writing of a fellowship application. She is an excellent proofreader as long as you don’t want her to flip the pages.