#remembering the time specifically in junior year ap us history & we had to make this stupid ww2 music video girl i don’t even know why idk

[bibleofficial]

me realizing that the slang term i’ve used to say ‘get scammed’ a) isn’t spelled that way & b) is actually a slur

[bittenbyyou]

Smitten

High School!AU | Peter Parker x Reader

genre: fluff

description: Just Peter Parker falling for you and coming up with the silliest plan to talk to you more.

word count: 1.8k

warnings: some Spider-Man Homecoming spoilers, Peter being a dork lol

a/n: Hello! This is my first time writing for Peter and I’m such nervous posting it, but I adore him and thought the origin story of how my bf and I got together suited Peter so well. Lol. So enjoy! 

The first time Peter heard about you was in freshman year when you were ranked number one in academics, earning jealous stares from everyone. But not from him; he was rather impressed.

Sophomore year was when your name came up again through his ex-girlfriend, Liz. Turns out you were her partner for an English project, which he didn’t think much of. He was happy with Liz… until he defeated her dad, who turned out to be a villain called “The Vulture”, and she and her mom moved to Oregon afterwards…

Anyway, it was now junior year and for the first time ever, he had a class with you—good ol’ AP U.S. History. 

“Dude, over here,” Ned called out from the first row of seats near the back corner. Peter smiled at his best friend and made his way over, taking the seat behind him.

“Hey Ned.”

“So glad we have another class together.”

“You said it.”

The two made small talk until you arrived, taking the seat next to Ned. He was mutual friends with a lot of your friends, so you felt comfortable sitting next to someone you were at least acquainted with rather than a stranger.

“Hi Ned,” you said sweetly.

“Oh [Y/N], you’re in this class too? Nice!” Ned gestured a hand towards Peter. “This is my best friend, Peter.”

“Peter… Parker, right?” you asked. Peter was surprised you knew his full name, but then remembered Liz. He nodded his head a few too many times, but you found it endearing. 

“Y-Yeah. Hi.”

“Hi. Nice to meet you. I’m [Y/N].”

Wow. You were cute.

“Sup losers,” a deadpanned voice said from behind you. You turned around to see MJ, jumping out of your seat to give her a big hug. 

“MJ! We’re in the same class, yay!”

“I know you’re not hugging me this early in the morning,” she said with her index finger raised. 

“You know you love me.”

“Ew.”

She gave you two pats on the back and you let go, giggling at her expression of faux disgust. You returned to your seat, which was in the middle of MJ and Ned. MJ then quickly whipped her head around to look at Peter.

“Sup Parker,” MJ said with a salute of two fingers.

“Hey MJ.”

“You met [Y/N] yet?”

“Yeah, Ned introduced us… you know her too?”

“Met her in an elective. She looked lonely.”

“You make me sound like a loser with no friends,” you said, pouting your lips. 

“I have no friends either.”

“You have me!” you chirped.

“And what about us?” Ned asked, gesturing back and forth to him and Peter.

“Whatever,” MJ brushed off. The three of you laughed while Peter watched, feeling somewhat left out even though he was mentioned. 

“I’m a bit jealous. You all already know each other,” you said. Wow, you said exactly what he was thinking. They knew you, but he didn’t.

“Well the only person you don’t know is Peter and I only met him because of the decathlon. He’s really not all that interesting,” MJ said, smirking in his direction. 

“Are you serious? Peter’s the coolest,” Ned said, hyping him up like a true best friend. “Peter knows Sp—”

“Dude!” Peter exclaimed, hinting at him to shut up with his deadly glare. 

Ned chuckled nervously. “I mean… you’ll get to know him, [Y/N]. And he’ll get to know you.”

*Ding!*

Saved by the bell.

From that day on, the four of you grew closer. Group work was always in teams of four in that class which worked out perfectly. Peter quickly learned you hated presentations because you would freeze up and trip on your words, so he volunteered to present instead just to hear you thank him and flash that sweet smile.

At lunch, Ned always invited you and MJ to join him and that’s when Peter learned how passionate you were about food. Specifically the school’s chicken alfredo. 

“It’s delicious!” you said, doing a little happy dance after eating a forkful of pasta. 

“It’s gross, processed food. Do we even know if it’s chicken?” MJ asked, eyeing the meat on her fork suspiciously. 

“I don’t care, I’m still eating it,” you said, enjoying the noms. 

“Aren’t you lactose intolerant?” Ned asked.

“That’s not stopping me.”

“I’m lactose intolerant,” Peter said without thinking. Everyone stared at him with a variety of expressions. MJ was skeptical, Ned was confused, and you were surprised. 

“I literally saw you eating ice cream yesterday,” MJ pointed out. 

“And his bowels paid for it,” Ned lied. Peter let out a nervous laugh.

“Hah, yeah, I was on the toilet… for hours.” You placed a hand over your mouth, trying your best not to laugh. “But I’m fine now!”

“Are you sure you should be eating lunch today then?” you asked. “Wouldn’t want your bowels to hurt again. I’ll do the honors of reducing food waste and eat it for you.”

MJ and Ned stared at Peter. Well, MJ was daring him to eat it with her piercing eyes while Ned gave him a knowing look.

“You can have it,” Peter said warmly, sliding his tray of food over to you.

“Yay!” you cheered. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Because honestly seeing you eat and doing that happy dance again filled him up more than any food could. You were too cute.

Peter was sure of it. He definitely had a crush on you. It took him until almost the end of first semester to realize it, but he knew now. 

He liked how smart you were. The way you answered any question the teacher threw at you so flawlessly was a mystery to him because history bored him. 

He liked how funny you were. The way you were passionately defending why mayo was the superior condiment against MJ and her love for ketchup made him die of laughter. 

He liked how kind you were. The way you helped another girl plan a dance for her quinceanera despite having so much homework. 

He liked how cute you were. The way you fell asleep in class after being the first to finish your test. 

He even liked how clueless you were. The way you knew absolutely nothing about Star Wars but still allowed him to ramble on and on about it in class and listen to him with a caring heart. 

Yup. He definitely liked you. 

A lot.

But he didn’t know how to tell you. You two didn’t hang out outside of school at all and he was so darn shy. It wasn’t until he and MJ hung out at Ned’s place one day when an opportunity arose. You were invited to his house as well, but you declined because of some projects you left till the last minute. 

The trio were building Legos and at one point Ned had to go downstairs and help his lola cook dinner while MJ and Peter remained upstairs. She was sitting on Ned’s bed while Peter was on the floor continuing to build the Lego Death Star. 

“I’m going to give you some advice, Pete,” MJ started to say. Peter looked up at her in confusion.

“About what?”

“About [Y/N].”

His eyes started to wander around the room. “W-What about [Y/N]?”

“What do you think about her?”

“What do I think a-about her? What’s not to think, she’s sweet. She’s nice. She’s kind.”

“Those are synonyms.”

“She’s smart. God, she is so smart, and she gets my jokes and actually laughs at them and—”

“Yup. You like her.”

His face fell. “No… No… No~.”

“So should I call her for you?” She whipped out her phone and Peter panicked.

“Don’t!”

“Why not? You have got to talk to her.”

“I do talk to her.”

“Outside of school,” MJ specified. “I have her number if you want it.”

“No, she’ll find it weird if I text her out of nowhere.”

“So you’re going to continue staring at her when she’s not looking like a total creep?”

“I don’t… I don’t stare,” Peter mumbled. MJ rolled her eyes at his denial.

“You do,” she teased. “Look, I’m going to the restroom. Here’s my phone. Do whatever you’d like with it.”

If Peter was a creep, then MJ was a psychopath because who would let anyone use their phone so freely? He still took the device from her hands and waited until he was alone to tap your name in MJ’s messages. His heart was racing at the thought of having your number, but he didn’t feel ready for it. 

So… he did something else.

5:44 PM | MJ🖤: Hey 🙂

Yikes. He really was a creep.

5:45 PM | You 😇: Hi MJ! What’s up? Did y’all finish building the Legos?

Peter smiled to himself at your enthusiastic greeting. 

5:45 PM | MJ🖤: No, not yet. Ned left us to help with dinner. How are you?

Your next reply didn’t come as fast this time. Peter panicked, wondering if he said something weird. Then again, this whole situation was borderline crazy.

5:49 PM | You 😇: I’m doing my homework. It’s so boring. Wish I was with you all. 🥺

5:50 PM | MJ🖤: We wish you were here too. 💖

Peter saw the thought bubble with three dots pop up, eagerly waiting for your reply. 

5:50 PM | You 😇: Hey MJ… I have a question.

5:50 PM | MJ🖤: Go for it.

5:50 PM | You 😇: Who are you? Lol.

Shit. Shit. Shit. You knew. Oh my god, Peter’s life was over. He got up off the floor and started pacing around the room in panic. 

5:51 PM | You 😇: I know you’re not MJ… so either you stole her phone and I’m going to have to report you for identity theft or she let you use her phone. 

5:53 PM | MJ🖤 : Okay, it’s Peter. Don’t report me. 🥺

He held his breath for your next response, facepalming himself for getting caught so fast.

5:53 PM | You 😇: Peter, why are you pretending to be MJ? If you wanted to text me, I could’ve just given you my number. Haha.

5:53 PM | MJ🖤 : Wait, really? I’m sorry. Idk why I did that.😅

5:53 PM | You 😇: Yeah. Here’s my number XXX-XXX-XXXX. Please text me as yourself. Lolol. 

Peter had the biggest grin spread across his face as he fell onto Ned’s bed in relief. He couldn’t help but laugh at the situation. By some miracle he did it. He got your number… he actually got your number. 

“Why are you staring at my phone like a creepy serial killer?” He looked up to see MJ leaning against Ned’s door frame. 

“Uh… I got her number?”

“How?”

“... You’re going to kill me.”

[hilli98215]

I am confused. I am hurt. I don’t know what to think. This is a long post. A very long post that is personal but I’ve had it in my head for a while to write. You don’t have to read this. This post has no real meaning. It’s more of a rant of how I feel in the world of fandom, my experiences, and why this posts exists. 

Again, you do not have to read this. 

You have been warned.

DO NOT REBLOG THIS POST!!!! 

When I became an English major in college, I did so knowing several things. One of those is the fact I love literature and I love discovering why authors, creators, and artists wrote what became their most well known work.

Where am I going?

My first fandom was when I was in Junior High (about 13-14 years old) that I was a part of, meaning I read fan fiction and discovered fan art of, was either Naruto or Pokémon. To me these works were escapes of my real confusing life. Especially when I moved states and schools. I had no one. Through this, I discovered what I liked and didn’t like in the world of fiction and was introduced to fandom words/slang such as shipping, fan fiction, lemons (which I don’t think is used as often now), different types of writing, yaoi, yuri, and a few more I can’t remember. This also included the all important phrase Don’t like don’t read. This was when I was in my early teens. 

But I was in a phase where I could find what I found interesting and that was that. 

When I got to high school, I was still this awkward quiet kid with no friends. But I did have marching band so that was something. 

At this point was was interested in Ouran Highschool Host Club, Death Note, a series called Beauty Pop, Fullmetal Alchemist, and a few others. This was also around the time where I began writing fanfiction for OHSC and even began buying manga. Anyway, this was my introduction to fandom as a teenager. And this is before Tumblr.

All I had were my friends, videos on YouTube, and my own interests. No one really understood why I loved all these things. 

Then came the very first fandom I became fully obsessed in my sophomore year: a small series called Hetalia Axis Powers. I was completely invested in this fandom. So much so I wrote fan fiction, bought merch, and read a lot of fan fiction myself. I think it was because, at the time I thought it was because the art style was cute, the voice acting wasn’t half bad and it had to do with history. But this is where things got interesting for me and learning about fandom as a whole. 

As a teen, I hadn’t known about AUs and this series had a lot of them. From the usual school AUs to odd ones. I usually stayed in my bubble and kept up the mantra Don’t like Don’t read. 

But why talk about it?

Well, let’s just say a lot of the content later on became weird and new. I learned a lot about new terms like de-aging and ABO. But this leads to interest which once again let me know what genres of fan fiction I like. 

I continued on with this fandom for about 3 years. And what broke it was the drama and how people were finding a sudden moral compass for personified countries. I mean there are other problems with that show that I recognize now as an adult and didn't see as a kid but that’s for another time. But I quietly left because I was beginning to understand that the drama wasn’t worth a tv show.

I would say the next fandom I was invested in and loved and I think had the least amount of drama was Fairy Tail. Now I fell in love with this series because of the story, characters, and the welcoming fandom. Overall there was rarely any drama because I think we all knew that we had to be civil with each other and respect our ships. While I’m not part of that fandom anymore a lot of people on Tumblr and FFN were very welcoming. The main series kinda fizzled out but that was one of the few positive fandom experiences I had.

I was at that point in my life where I was in college, created my Tumblr and posted regularly to escape life. 

Coming off that fandom, I was part of the Yuri on Ice! fandom from beginning to the end. I mean it’s a sports anime that’s about men's figure skating and how it can affect athletes just to get a gist of it.

That’s when my experience with fandom became interesting because these characters were being paired in a way that made me feel like they can’t be paired with anyone else. Like, there was a pairing we were all cheering for to happen by the end. 

This is the first series I was highly interested in as an adult where the ages of the characters were defined. There were a few in their teens, some in their early to mid 20s, and a couple in their 30s. Now this was a historic anime for several reasons. The main being there being a gay relationship being shown in a positive light and mental illness being shown in a way that wasn’t patronizing and negative. I loved this show for those reasons. But I also quickly learned how people would take these characters (especially those with huge age differences) and pair them up. That was my first introduction to criticism of how ‘gross’ it would be for a 15 year old to be paired up with an 18 year old. But I saw a problem that made me second guess my thinking. When I was in high school, I knew someone who was a sophomore at 15 and dated someone who was 18. Why was there a problem? 

I knew if I voiced this that I would be shamed and told that I was disgusting. Eventually I had enough and left shortly after the series ended.

Then came the Voltron: Legendary Defender series. Oh boy.

Now that series came out while I was in college and I often viewed it in a critical perspective similar to one would a piece of literature because my major was in English and that was what I was taught. Like YOI I was part of this fandom day 1 because it was so different from the original Voltron series from the 80s. I loved how the fandom dissected everything in every episode. There were watch parties, analysis videos, and even skits at conventions. It was a fandom I knew I wanted to be a part of. But then there was fanfiction that I found odd and knew that I never wanted to read that. People were writing about topics that made me uncomfortable and I didn’t know how to deal with it. After a while, I questioned why I was forcing myself to read them in the first place. So, I stopped reading them. This was also around the time where I discovered AO3 and their amazing tagging system. Because if the tagging system was not there, I probably would have stopped reading fanfiction all together.

But then there was drama, shipping wars, morality wars, and I had enough. I was there until it ended and left quietly. Which is sad considering I loved the experience but it was ruined by what people thought was right for fictional characters. 

Now you may be asking “What was the point of this post?”

To answer your question, I don’t know.

I have loved reading since I was a kid. And when I got to high school, I had this AP teacher who told us something that has stayed with me to this day.

‘As a reader we are detectives. We want to know why the author wrote this book. We want to know what influenced them.’

I took that saying to heart and approach everything through a critical lens. Which is difficult in a fandom. It’s hard to have a critical approach to a series that everyone takes for a grain of salt.

I have been exposed to a lot of books and pieces of literature that have been considered controversial because of their content. When I left high school, I began to realize what genres of books I like in the YA genre and in literature. 

I experimented.

And when you think about it, that’s what you do with fan fiction and fandom. We are always experimenting. We are always finding what we like and don’t like. 

But recently I’ve noticed a new fandom term that makes me wonder where I fall in all of this craziness we call fandom. 

Pro-Fiction/Pro-Shipper

It wasn’t until last year I saw this word thrown around in a new fandom I am in. I tried to do some research but I couldn't find anything. Nothing. And then I learned it’s a new term in itself.

I won’t go into detail but it reminds of the ‘video games are violent so that makes so-and-so violent’ argument parents made when Mortal Kombat came out. 

Well you still didn’t answer the question.

And you’d be right. I saw a post from a follower that saddened me and honestly freaked me out. Why announce that you hate a specific group? It felt like a call out post without saying any names. A warning that states: Block me or out yourself. Or rather: Block me or else.

Do I identify as this? To tell you the truth, I don’t know. I think critically and see things differently. In fact everyone does. 

We are always going to be influenced by the media whether it be a movie, television, a book, or a video game. We will always love these storylines and characters. We will always take the messages to heart. We will always cheer for the hero and maybe the villain too. 

I do want you guys to remember this, make your own fandom experience. Block those who make you feel uncomfortable and make you feel like you don’t matter. You do.

You are your own person. No one can tell you otherwise. If you feel uncomfortable, then maybe you need to leave the fandom. Or find a space in the fandom that you can be yourself. Or don’t care what people think and do what you always do.

It’s all up to you.

[littlejeanniebean]

peter parker goes to marvel high (normal mcu au)

A/N: Peter’s first day of high school ft. Shuri, Mr. Stark, Mr. Loki, and co. ~1700 words teenaged angst then fluff. More Peter x Shuri in my masterlist :)

Heavily inspired by this post by @spellbounding-slytherin

I’m also a big fan of @tinymintywolf​‘s art :))

- J xx

Fact: Peter Parker was a nervous wreck. May, ever the optimist, had patted his cheeks, kicked him out of the car, and told him to have a good day. Peter had never had a good first day of school. He was smart but had a severe attention deficit, so even his teachers never liked him. His one best friend throughout junior high, Ned Leeds, had moved to New Jersey, so he would probably end up eating alone in some empty classroom just to be safe. And he’d met the principal at orientation last Friday. He had an eye patch and a perpetual frown, used to head up the corrections department for youth offenders. So yeah, high school was going to suck big time.

“Move it, dickwad,” one of the larger boys shoved past him at the door to his homeroom.

Peter strategically chose a seat in the ambiguous, unnoticeable middle. 

A short, bright-eyed girl marched up to him, “You’re in my seat.”

“Sorry! Sorry!” he tried to pick up his backpack but the strap was caught on the leg of his chair, so he just kind of ended up spilling himself over the floor. 

“Crap, I was just messing with you, kid,” she helped him up, “You good?”

“Yeah, yeah, sorry,” he just sort of stood there awkwardly, not meeting her eyes. 

“Dude, you gotta stop apologizing. I’m sorry, okay?” she tried to get him to look at her, “I’m Shuri. I have a messed up sense of humour that scares away any friends I might’ve ended up having. Is it cool if I sit next to you?”

“Yeah, sure,” he nodded, “I’m Perker Pat - Parker Pete - Peter Parker.”

“Cool.”

“Dude, you are sad,” the boy who shoved him coming into the room twirled an expensive-looking pen, sparing him the most derisive of sideways glances.

Peter was saved from actually having to come up with a response when their teacher walked in two-minutes after the bell and put his feet up on his desk, “Okay, kiddies. My name is Mr. Stark, you may call me Mr. Stark. I am your homeroom teacher unless you’re in the wrong room. I also teach AP Math and Computer Science. If you have questions at this point, I honestly wonder how you got this far in life, but I’m obligated to ask.”

The room was silent. 

“Great, do whatever until the bell rings, I guess.”

The class emptied out. 

Peter hung back, “M-Mr. Stark?”

“Yes, Proton.”

“I-it’s Peter, actually.”

“I was talking about your t-shirt.”

“I - Oh, yeah,” he looked down at the “I’m positive” joke print, “um… I just wanted to let you know that I have ADHD, mostly the AD part a-and I don’t expect any special treatment or anything and I’ll work really hard, but I also wanted to join Mathletes and I wasn’t allowed in junior high because I’d always get sidetracked at the meets but I think I can do better now if you’ll give me the chance… butifnotthat’sokay.”

Mr. Stark appraised him, “First meeting is in this room at three.”

“Thank you, sir!” he smiled, but when his teacher didn’t smile back, he fixed his face and walked to his next period.

“I’m Mr. Banner, and there are three things you need to remember if you want to succeed in biochemistry. One: If you’re unsure but proceed without asking for clarification first, I will be angry. Two: If you show up to the lab without completing the prior work assigned, I will be angry. Three: If you do not share work between your lab partners equally, I will be angry. Don’t make me angry.”

“Wanna be lab partners?” Shuri asked.

“Sure,” Peter squeaked and cleared his throat. 

“You’re not going to break a test tube on me, are you?”

He shook his head quickly. 

“You’re a lot of work, Peter Parker, but it’s kind of adorable.”

“Um… thanks?”

“You’re welcome. Now hand me that pipette and fire up the spectrophotometer.”

The last period before lunch was P.E.

“I’m Coach Barton, that’s all you need to know. Let’s do a few warm up laps around the circuit.”

Peter ran hard and was close to fainting as he crossed the line in the middle of the pack.

“Woah, kid, you need to go to the nurse’s?” Coach singled him out.

He tried to say ‘no’ but no sound would come out, so he just shook his head, gasping. He could hear the other boys snickering beyond the pounding of his blood in his brain.

“I think you need to go to the nurse’s,” Coach beckoned to the boy who’d crossed the line first, “Flash, take him to the clinic, would ya?”

“Yes, sir,” the bully from his homeroom smirked at him.

As soon as they were out of the gym, he jostled and picked at the smaller boy only to exhibit the epitome of sympathy in front of Nurse Man-Ti. 

“Here, drink some electrolytes,” she told him and he finished the small bottle in under a minute. 

As soon as Flash was gone, Peter let himself just cry. He wished his aunt would just homeschool him, but it’s been hard since his uncle died and in the face of that, Peter felt bad for feeling bad about his little problems and that made him cry some more.

“Hey,” the nurse sat beside him quietly, “Peter, right?”

He nodded, “I’m sorry.”

“What for? Better out than in, that’s what I always say.”

Peter sniffed.

“Do you want to talk about it? Or make an appointment with Counsellor Barnes?” 

“No, no, I’m fine. I just needed, uh… electrolytes,” he leaves quickly after that.

Peter goes to his locker for his bag and clothes, red eyes trained on the floor so that hopefully nobody notices. He doesn’t notice Shuri arguing with Flash, gesturing forcefully back at his locker. Flash sees him put in his combination and open the door, a cheshire grin spreading across his face. 

“Peter!” Shuri tries to warn him, “Don’t -”

But it’s too late and he’s covered in silly string, a few old socks found decomposing in the gym lockers, and the contents of a bathroom trash can. 

“I’m gonna go change,” he whispers to no one in particular.

“I’ll save you a place at lunch?” Shuri called after him.

Peter stops in his tracks to shoot her a grateful smile, “Thank you.”

Mr. Thor Odinson was a very loud history teacher, but it worked well for keeping Peter’s attention throughout the class, so he was able to answer all the review questions. 

“Teacher’s pet,” Flash scoffed at the sound of the bell.

“Dumbass,” Shuri fake-coughed and pulled Peter to the auditorium.

“I’m Mr. Loki Odinson, you may call me Mr. Loki to distinguish between myself and my hard-of-hearing brother, Thor,” said their quieter drama teacher, “Thompson, if you kick Parker’s chair one more time, I will send you to Fury’s office with no note, no explanation. And he has a very specific way of dealing with those cases.”

Flash stopped and sat straighter. 

“Good, Parker, you seem suitably nervous. Come up here and help me demonstrate a quick improvisation exercise.”

Peter tripped on his way down the aisle to the stage, but kept going. 

“Now, you’re a superhero and I’m a supervillain. You’re trying to turn me over to the good side, but we can only converse alphabetically. So you must start with the letter ‘A’, I must start with the letter ‘B’ and so forth. Are you ready?”

“No.”

“Ah, ah, first rule of improv: the answer is always, ‘Yes, and…’ Let’s go, Parker. You’re brave. You’re bold. You’re a hero.”

“Alright, Mr. Villain, you have two choices,” Peter surprised himself at how his voice carried. It must be the way the auditorium was built, “perish, or join our fight.”

“Blech, I choose to perish,” Mr. Loki dropped to his knees, “C’mon Hero, end me if you have the guts at all.”

“Come on, you know you never wanted to watch the city burn to begin with. The hive possessed you, used you. Now, you have the chance to redeem yourself.”

“Don’t presume to know me because you can’t possibly. You don’t know what I’ve been through. What I’ve lost!”

“Everything,” Peter said quietly, “Everyone you ever cared for. I do know… because so have I. We’re not so different.”

“Fighting the hive is a losing proposition. You have nothing that could work against them!”

“Gas. Even a million eyes are no good in a fog.”

“Huh… I never thought of that. I’ll join your fight, Hero if you’ll let me,” Mr. Loki proffered his “bound” wrists.

“I knew there was some good left in you, Mr. Villain,” Peter “unlocked” the “restraints.”

Mr. Loki mimed holding a knife to Peter’s neck, “Just not that much, I’m afraid. Hive Mother! I’ve got him! I’ve got the hero! Now release my family from the void as you promised!”

Peter wracked his brain from the next letter. The plot twist didn’t help him think either. “... Krap with a ‘k’?” 

Mr. Loki broke character and laughed before clapping and shaking his student’s hand, “That was the most interesting improv demonstration I’ve had in awhile, Parker. You’re a natural. Now everyone pair off and try to top that performance if you can!”

English with Mr. Rogers was the last period of the day. He didn’t look up from his book until everyone was seated, silent, and had their eyes up front. It took a crazy long time and a good deal of organization and yelling on Shuri’s part. 

“Sorry, guys, I was reading a book about anti-gravity. It's impossible to put down!” he joked.

Peter was the only one who laughed.

After giving a bit of a lecture on respect for their instructors, valuing their education, and how much they were going to love English this year, he let them go early. 

“Okay, I’m calling you three Alvin, Simon, and Theodore from now on,” Mr. Stark addressed his small Mathlete gathering, “Our new mascot is a chipmunk, I don’t care that all our other teams are Rocket Raccoons.” 

“Which one of us is Alvin?” Shuri asked.

“Since you asked, you are. Fancy-Pen is Simon and Proton is Theodore. Now, we have a competition to prepare for in… ages from now, so… drill, I guess? I don’t know. Who wants to do Euclidean algorithms?” 

Three hands went up. 

“Nice,” he brought out his expensive Japanese chalk, a gift from his wife, the well-known Fortune 500 CEO, Pepper Potts.

[p-r]

our devices overthrown?

Required Listening: Hope for Something - Alternate by Panama So I think that the most frustrating thing about writing these posts is the ever-present thought that they must, somehow, someway, come full circle. Whether it has been apparent to you or not, I have tried to make each of these have a central theme, albeit a loose one. Every post has generally been a reflection on how I am doing, some epiphany I had, and then me trying to make a mic-dropping final line. This surprisingly takes a lot of work. Typing these isn’t hard, don’t get me wrong, but the desire to maintain authenticity is. It is hard to always think of a way to tell a “story” via the what I thought, the turning point, and then the epiphany format. Sure, it is not a work of fiction, it all actually happened, but I find myself often trying to make that format work in my head before I sit down to write. I want to make sure it sounds clear that I thought something, some event changed my mind, and then give you some big revelation. But I realize that is kinda dumb. Yesterday after my second to last final I was sitting outside the room in which I took the exam, as my next exam just so happened to be in that room. I was feeling all of the nostalgia of things drawing to a close and none of the excitement that comes with being finished with finals at a place as tough academically as Berkeley. Lately my friends and I have been discussing determinism versus free will. If you’re not familiar, determinism is the idea that you are “fated” to do and be certain things, free will is the converse. I had always assumed myself to be a major believer in determinism. Growing up in a devoutly Christian household, you learn to accept the world around you as one that is entirely controlled by someone other than you. If something is good, God gave it. If something is bad, God is teaching us a lesson. I never realized how deeply internalized my notions of determinism were until I started talking to people who deeply rejected it. They argue that determinism is clausterphobic in a sense. The idea that you are stuck in one sort of track with no way out, an idea I formerly found comfort in, seemed stifiling. Even more so, it seemed to undercut everything about myself of which I am proud. My life hasn’t been particularly hard. I also would not call it particularly easy. If you know me, you know that this weird crazy seems to follow my life. If you don’t, picture me kind of like this: standing in a swarm of harmless honeybees, with one hornet flying around me, I can never tell which is which so I am constantly flopping my hands in the air in a desperate and futile attempt to prevent the hornet from stinging me. And you might be thinking that I do something to attract this crazy...and well maybe I do. I know some of it I seek out and I know some of it I try to actively avoid. Regardless, it seems to find me. The pervasive nature of my ails often makes me think that truly I am without device to fight fate. I can be really defeatest and it stinks. Sitting outside of room 202 waiting on my last final, I looked up and down the silent, empty hall and contemplated the question that I have felt most nagging in my life recently. Do I or don’t I have control. To be honest, I think both ideas are terrifying. However, I don’t think that we can truly reject determinism, but I think that we should quantify it. My grades, my ability to not give up when swarmed, my activism, these are all my choices. No God or higher power has forced me like a Raggedy Ann Doll to work as hard as I have. As a child, I always wanted to attend a top university. Looking up and down the hallway I realized that I had made it. I realized that my choice of hardwork led me to the top. I also realized my hard work did not specifically lead me to Berkeley. That, however, was fate. I was going to graduate a year early, so I would be done at the end of my Junior year. I was invited to a Coast to Coast college program in late October where they would have officers from each college speak about applying to their institution. There were various colleges speaking, such as Princeton and Dartmouth, the two I went to see. Berkeley happened to have a presenter there and I remember seeing a slide of Doe Library and thinking that the college was beautiful. I told my mom on the car ride home that I really liked Berkeley, but I knew I would never get in. A few weeks later I had applied early decision at Washington University in Saint Louis as it was close to my hometown. But, I was sitting, bored, in AP US History November 30th. It was near 4pm, as that was the last few minutes of my school day Junior year. I started thinking about applying to Berkeley, on a whim. I looked up the application. Found that the application for the UC system is due November 30th 11:59 PST. I realized that I was too late. So I gave up on applying to Berkeley. I was sitting in a debate round, after being admited to WashU thinking that I had made a grave mistake. But, I had applied early decision, which is binding. I signed a contract that said, essentially, that if I was admitted I would attend after my high school graduation. I started to panic. I did not want to be so close to home. Something felt wrong. I wanted to puke. Every fiber of my being was screaming at me to run. And then it dawned on me. The contract said after my graduation. I was admitted for Fall 2017. If I did not graduate in May of 2017, my admission was non binding. So I decided to withdraw from early graduation. I wrote all the appropriate officers. People were mad, confused, and sad. I hated dissapointing people. I generally think that I am a people pleaser due to my immense social anxiety, but in this instance my resolve had never been greater. I stared down every opposition. Every question if I was sure. Like sure sure. I was, in fact, sure sure. Senior year was my personal hell. I kept wishing that I had graduated early. I felt defeated. I thought that I had lost out on a great college and I would have avoided all the pain I was feeling. Most days I didn’t want to get out of bed. Called in sick a lot. Skipped some even. I had never skipped before. I was down and bleeding from the mouth. Defeat, death, and depression sum up the year nicely. As previous posts detail, coming to Berkeley was not easy. Berkeley started out as a continuation of the hell I was in. And then it started to change for me. It started to become happy. It started to restore in me what my high school peers and high school adminstrators had tried to steal from me. I found friends. I found strength again. Do I still hurt sometimes? Of course. If I didn’t hurt I would detail everything that happened, but I don’t feel like crying in the middle of SFO right now. Do I hope that my existence spites them? I don’t have to hope. They’re stuck in a crummy town with crummy lives and I am happy. I won. I escaped. I know I spite them. And you might be asking, couldn’t I have felt just as happy at WashU or some other university? Sure, I’ll conceed maybe I could have. All I know is that I look around at the people in my life now and I feel nothing but the universe’s perfect allignment. I know that no other college campus I have visited or debated on has felt like this. I feel Berkeley in my bones. I feel like I have known these people all my life and I cannot picture a tomorrow without them. I don’t love Berkeley all the time. I am not naive enough to ignore its problems. Its toll on students. I don’t think its the institution that I was fated to. I think that it is the chance that I, along with those around me, unbeknownst to one another all opened the same decision letter. Sent the deposit. Ended up in the same dorm and same fall program. I think its the idea that a few short months ago if I passed these people on the street they would have meant nothing to me. Another stranger. So back to the question: free will or fate? Answer: Wrong question. Its not either or. Its to what degree. I did the work, but somehow the way things unfolded led me here. It was not exactly what I planned, but it required my choice to work hard. To keep going. Free will in totality cannot exist. Infinity, as a concept, is so mind boggling that it doesn’t make clear numerical sense. Infinite possibilities is what free will entertains. Infinity minus one? Still infinity. Infinity plus infinity? Still infinity. You get the idea. Infinite things are w e i r d. They don’t occur in the nature that we percieve. And sure, properties are not the same as perceptions. But it makes most sense to assume that most things that we encounter are finite. Hence it is most reasonable to believe in some sense of determinism. I think of fate and free will like this. Every major decision we make has a set of doors. There are a lot of them, but the amount is still finite. We can choose which door, but the doors were predecided in a sense, but the next door is dependent on the previous choice. Life is a mixture of free will and fate. I might have been fated to be academically hard working, but I could have ignorned that fated drive, but I chose not to. I had the grades to apply to top colleges due to the one, fated drive and two, the choice to act on such drive. I was fated to apply, I acted on that drive, I was presented with doors and I chose Berkeley. Fate and free will are not mutually exclusive. Its a misconception that they do not work in tandem. One drives the other, each fate presenting us with choices and each choice setting up a new fate for us and so on. Its a push and pull between the two, but neither can ever distinctly gain dominance. The waves are neither classified as coming nor going, for as fast as they go they will return just as fast. It’s a balance. Our wills and fates do so contrary run That our devices still are overthrown; Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own. (Hamlet, 3.2.208), Player King It appears to me that even though Billy Shakes was a cool dude, he knew little of his own potential. But hey, what do I know.

[privatemiddleschool]

Detailed Notes on Private High School in Albuquerque

As soon as learners are permitted to go inside, they can only be allowed to have a connection with another learner within their "pod."

It had been an Awful encounter. Help save your money and put money into on the list of excellent area or charter schools her in ABQ or go to a different private school. Your hard-earned money will likely be so a lot better invested.

For those who’re shifting to Albuquerque, New Mexico and you have school-aged small children, The main problem you to question you is, which school must I send out them to? In the end, deciding on your son or daughter’s school is an enormous offer!

Crucial DISCLAIMERS: Not all boundaries are incorporated. We make every single exertion to ensure that school and district boundary information is up-to-date.

The mission at Cross of Hope Lutheran Elementary School is that each one of our learners creates academically, socially, emotionally, bodily, and spiritually. We center all subjects all-around scientifically study-dependent education approaches that choose into consideration the different ways youngsters master and the fact that every single child involves school at his/her level of advancement, bringing history knowledge and expertise from his/her lifestyle encounters.

Mother or father: Compact class dimensions, excellent academics, as well as a spouse and children sensation are just some of the key benefits of this school. My Young ones get to understand the Bible, be engaged inside the classroom and they are prospering becoming in a little community placing. I'm very satisfied with the instruction They may be acquiring.

Junior: SVA is quite a Neighborhood centered, and functions difficult to educate students of all cultural backgrounds. This school has only recently begun to present AP programs, that's very good for your approaching classes although not much too fantastic for previous courses.

Our educational knowledge listed here is likewise fluid. We entered as a brand new family member in 2020, and also the academic calendar year began in a very distant design. The school has given that moved to some hybrid model, and my son has been ready to fulfill his academics and fellow pupils.

Manzano Day School hosts open residences over the slide and spring and gives campus tours by appointment All year long. Remember to Make contact with the Admission Workplace at 243-6659 or [electronic mail secured] To find out more. We look forward to Conference you!

Our previous college students are Operating professionally in just about every facet of the enjoyment business. We've been happy with our classic curriculum that provides the Main dance topics of ballet, faucet, jazz, and acrobatics, combined with the present lyrical, hip hop and present-day kinds. About

What would you pick? What would you miss out on about being somewhat child? Let us know from the feedback! And don’t fail to remember to share this online video with your pals and subscribe to our channel For additional great movies similar to this one! #123go #school read more #comedy

Alum: While a little Local community, Sandia Look at Academy presented me with several social encounters that assisted me to communicate much better with groups and businesses. Most of my time in high school was used to accomplishing teachers.

Our Learning Aid Professional delivers specific interventions for college students with diagnosed Finding out disabilities, and also help with research methods and organizational abilities. In addition to these services, diagnostic evaluations are offered on campus by our Discovering Guidance Professional.

The school’s curriculum is kind of challenging, however, the courses are smaller and the faculty is devoted to serving each pupil realize success.

[digitaldandelions]

Why Communitists are Critical of Desegregation in the 1960s-1970s

"Why should I care?"

Listen-- there are some things you can learn from Desegregation in the United States and in South Africa like:

Why there is so much disparity currently between our communities.

How to address this disparity for successful communities

--Plus, you can find out how my father radicalized a class of AP US History Students.

I was wondering how to start my first blog. I think it's appropriate to start with my background and a story about how my Dad radicalized an AP US History Class. Let's begin--

My Dad was a Civil Rights Activist and the first Communitist I've ever met.

Subsequently, I am also named after him- Rodney Jerome Sumler. We have the same initials. We have the same Alma Mater: we went to North Carolina A&T State University, an HBCU dedicated to serving our community. My Dad graduated in 1965, the same year of the Civil Rights voting act. During his tenure, he was one of the many student activists who planned the student sit-ins at Woolworths. He's done many other community things since then too, championing affordable housing, getting people from the community elected to directly represent the community, other good things. Now, to the story.

How my Dad Radicalized an entire AP US History Class

I was a Junior in High School. I took AP US History, and we had the usual "ask a family member about history" assignment. There was my Grandfather, who fought in WWII. He loves telling about his time in the Pacific theatre. However, I decided to talk to my Dad about history. At this point, I really hadn't grasped that he was a whole Civil Rights Activist. He was just Dad- who sometimes hung out with Black Panthers and... when you're a teenager, you don't notice these things.

Anyway, I spoke to my father, and I returned to the class with my findings. When asked about what I learned, I stood up and said-

"Desegregation was the worst thing that had happened to Black People."

"Don't you mean /Segregation/ was the Worst thing to happen to Black People?"

--my US history teacher asked, stunned. When you are a teacher, especially a High School teacher, you have to have a very manicured front. It was surprising to me that he was so surprised.

I quickly corrected him, "No, Desegregation was the worst thing to happen to Black people."

I said what I said. Now, here is why:

My father explained that, while Black consumers were released to do business with anyone who they wanted, Black business owners were still segregated. Black business owners still couldn't get the money needed to grow their businesses and compete with mainstream businesses. In many cases, Black people still couldn't get funding well into the 2000s. For example, my parents had to depend on their white friends to get a mortgage to move into a better neighborhood in 2001. Currently, Black people's houses are appraised for much lower than their counterparts.

The US Desegregated Main Street, but they didn't Desegregate the Change Purse

With no capital, Black businesses couldn't compete with mainstream businesses. Unable to compete, and with their primary consumers now doing business with mainstream businesses, many Black businesses failed. This caused the wealth of Black families to circulate out of the community. This is what happened in South Africa as well. Nelson Mandela was able to negotiate the end of Apartheid, but only because the Afrikaners really only care about who controlled the country's wealth. Just as in America, it would take decades, generations, before the indigenous South Africans could properly build their communities. It only came, though, when they began to desegregate the way money flowed.

Anyway, I eloquently explained everything my father told me. I remember having a fascinating discussion about it later. Like, how I noticed that I have never been in a black bakery, been to a black shoemaker, been to a black grocery store. My classmates noticed and listed things too- like, how specifically other communities have these things, but Black people did not in 2005. It was really poignant for my father, precisely because he had a community newspaper. It was difficult for him to advertise with other black businesses, so he had a really informed perspective.

What can we do?

The main problem is the "Desegregation of the Change Purse" -- it's difficult for Black business owners to raise capital (or money) for their businesses. This can be remedied in 3 ways:

Increasing Money Earned: this the most powerful way, and it is a way you can help! Businesses that show a lot of revenue, profit, and strong cash flow are considered good investments! Go to your favorite business and spend money there often. Buy things often- it's even more important than tipping! Frequent purchases demonstrate better cash flow. Increasing money earned will help the following two ways.

Increasing Equity: Equity is money, equipment, or property that you invest into a business to make it successful. For example, if you have no money but have an extra desktop, you can give it to a business as equity! In return, the business can pay you a little money for your investment equity. It's a cool, creative way for a community to fund a business.

Increasing Working Capital with a Loan: This is the most common way to raise money for a business. It is also the quickest way to get working capital, or money used to run a business. These loans can include mortgages to get a building or a piece of property or microloans to buy equipment. Of course, the loan has to be repaid, preferably with business income. Loans can be expensive because of their interest rates- it costs to borrow money. That being said, having the first two items can save you a lot of money in the long run.

How can I do a Capital Raise for my Business?

My father passed in 2015- the same year I started my business. One of my last conversations with him was about the business I wanted to start. I, unfortunately, didn't get to talk to him about this kind of stuff. I'm sure he would have had a lot to say about business funding- he helped so many people start their businesses too. Fortunately, he did teach me how to listen and ask good questions. You can get a lot of knowledge from your community if you ask the right questions!

I learned a great deal about capital raises because of my partnership with business strategists and former SBA loan officers who want to help "Desegregate the Change Purse." In fact, I have teamed up with them, and I am offering a program to help business owners. We'll work with you until you raise $100,000 for your business.

Learn more by booking an appointment with me here-

https://www.digitaldandelions.com/free-consultation

[tech-girls]

Spotlight: Jade Burns

Each month we spotlight a woman or girl in tech who inspires us. This month we are highlighting Jade Burns. Jade is a junior at Albemarle High School enrolled in their Math, Engineering, and Science Academy (MESA). She is a member of the Computer Science Honor Society and Math Honor Society and is active in the Math Club, Chemistry Club, and Key Club, where she is the webmaster. She is a Tech-Girls volunteer and a previous Bio-Med Tech-Girls participant.

How do you work with technology today? During my freshmen year, I volunteered with a student help desk called Patriots (our mascot) Assisting with Technology or PATS Desk. PATS Desk is in our school’s library and at the beginning of each school year, the librarians would recruit students from several study halls to volunteer with PATS Desk, rather than go to study hall. While I volunteered with PATS Desk, I learned a lot about the school-issued laptops, like troubleshooting tips and how to build/rebuild them from scratch.

During my sophomore year, I became an intern with the PATS Desk; the librarians and IT workers were my supervisors. As an intern, I applied my technology skills by creating instructional screencasts to be shown to the entire school, re-imaging all school-issued laptops alongside the IT workers, and other technology-related activities that gave me a taste of the IT world.

Currently, I am in my junior year and both of my MESA classes are engineering, which requires one to become more adept with technology. For instance, we were assigned several build projects such as the marble spring canon and mousetrap car this year; both of these projects required me to create several detailed 3-D drawings on CAD. Prior to this year, I had hardly any experience with 3D drawings, but after these projects, I could practically call myself an expert!

What drives your interest in technology? My interest in technology was set on fire after experiencing the way that society chose boys for computing and technology rather than girls, who were not expected to thrive in STEM. This inaccurate notion upsets me and is a driving factor for why I have come to love STEM so much. 

After personally encountering the obstacles society had for girls interested in STEM, me, being the rebellious individual that I am, obviously, became even more impassioned about STEM because I wanted to prove the ignorant people wrong. So, I decided to venture down the STEM pathway, a journey many of my girl friends fear to this day and was ecstatic to realize that I actually enjoy STEM and am good at it, which definitely hooked me!

What do you remember about your first coding experience? My first coding experience was last year -  my sophomore year - in AP Computer Science A at my high school. The first time I came to this class, I discovered that most of the other students were upperclassmen and that my gender was a serious minority. Girls made up about a 1/4 of the class, but it did make me happy to see that my APCS teacher was in fact a woman, so that helped keep my hopes us for my gender's involvement in STEM. Throughout sophomore year, APCS was definitely one of my most challenging classes - AP World History being the most out of all! I think I struggled with APCS because sophomore year was the first time I took AP classes and I was not used to the workload, fast-paced environment, and I was especially not ready for the fact that my AP classes would require me to pursue my learning independently to some extent. I had been so used to relying on my teacher, that I did not realize I would have to be more in charge of my education in an AP class.

What was your pathway to working in technology? I became part of the close-knit community of MESA within my school and this community has been really valuable to me throughout each school year. It has been so nice forging friendships with people who have similar interests as me and are just as passionate, if not more about STEM! Being part of the MESA community definitely inspired me to work more with technology. It was definitely a big reason for why I decided to be a PATS desk volunteer my freshmen year, and why I became a PATS desk intern my sophomore year. Being part of the technology scene is normal for students in MESA and pushed me to become even more involved. In fact, it is the director of MESA who told me of Tech-Girls in the first place and is how I came to become a mentor at Girl's Geek Day as well as a participant in the SPARK! Hackathon and a Bio-Med Tech-Girls program last year! As my high school career comes to a close next year, I know that MESA will remind me to continue working in technology.

Why is it important to get more girls and women interested in technology? I think it is important to get more girls and women interested in technology because adding their new voices and perspectives is necessary to the further advancement of technology. Technology itself is meant to help all people, which means both genders, so it would make sense if the creators of said technology were comprised of both genders on a more balanced scale. Since females are around 50% of the whole population using technology, shouldn't the creators be comprised of at least 50% females so that input from both sides is used for technology meant for males and females? Regarding technology specific to women, it just makes more sense for women to be creating that technology since it relates to them on a level that men just can't attain to the same degree.

What advice would you give to your younger self? I would tell myself to not be discouraged by the gender-based obstacles that come along with being a girl pursuing STEM. In actuality, applying for the Math, Engineering, and Science Academy (MESA) at Albemarle was a major decision for me and was ultimately a decision that would determine whether or not I was passionate enough about STEM to keep pursuing it. During the decision of applying to MESA, I was very indecisive at times because I was scared I wasn't smart enough to venture down the STEM pathway since I was a girl. I have now realized that was a stupid notion, but society had impressed that upon me. After receiving my acceptance to MESA, my fears evaporated and I grew to be more confident about my self-worth and what I could achieve. Now, I can tell my younger self with conviction that it's not gender determining whether or not you're good enough, it's yourself.  

I think it would be safe to say that my life revolves around anything STEM-related. It's been that way since I was born and I wouldn't have it any other way!

[ibroughtthisonmyselfpixels]

Part 2: The Cross-generational Perspective

In which the influence of Cupid Hawthorne can be felt as early as junior-year history

Warning: contains a scene of murder (of a young person) more explicit than in the previous part, focused on in great detail - specifically, strangulation - and murder as a whole is discussed throughout. There’s also minor homophobia / historical gay denial from a forum poster, transphobia disguised as “it’s just a joke bruh” rhetoric, very mild NSFW implications in one paragraph, and a requisite Cuphead reference since Vidcund would have killed me if I didn’t work King Dice into this somehow.

Castor didn't start collecting trophies deliberately until the third kill. By then, they were more at ease with the monumental task they'd set themselves, and more certain of what He would expect of them. Besides, the higher the body count, the harder it is to tell the victims apart without a souvenir or five. A broken button here, a tie there... Every little helps.

The first and second are both embodied by the same thing – though the need for reminiscence there is more out of desire than duty.

Automatically, they reach for a side drawer on the desk, an old shawl wrapped in a plastic bag wrapped in their hand in seconds. It's how Moms used to store the old photo album at home (may still do, actually; they need to pay them a visit next weekend). But, if anything, the history book inside is even more precious and handled with greater care, each page the wing of a gossamer moth. To desecrate His face would be nothing short of sacrilege.

Their finger runs along His pale jaw, and they pretend the deep-set eyes widen slightly at the sight of them.

Soon, Cupid. I'm nearly there.

The eyes that will first see that face on the page belong not to the nonbinary person they will become, but a teenage girl who happens to carry the name and the penis she had at birth. Her identity is just one of the many things Castor has picked up over time, like pierced ears, the zits that turn her rounded face into a game of connect-the-dots, and a keen interest in aspects of academia that most of her peers refuse to touch.

That last one especially. She didn't get into AP History through luck alone, after all. And it's paid off – she's learned more about the 1920s and 30s in the month or so they've been covering it than anything she gleaned from comparing the differences between World Wars I and II. To a Sim who drinks knowledge like it's water, such a thing is invaluable.

No matter how grisly that knowledge is.

“--looking at the rise of gangsters, mobs, and other such criminals, and how that relates to what we've already studied,” says Mr Piper, breaking through her thoughts. Ah, today's one such 'grisly day', then. “It's no secret that Roaring Heights, even today, has something of a fearsome reputation; when we made our list of qualities a few weeks ago, 'bad crowd' was a term that came up a lot, as I'm sure you remember. The existence of these criminal syndicates was and still is a large factor in those bad crowds, both proverbial and literal.”

“Like the Hook?” shouts a voice (as best as he can with it cracking) from the back of the room. “Is the Hook a syndicate?”

“No, Elliot. And I thought we agreed we wouldn't bring that urban legend up in class again.”

Elliot groans, but he does stay quiet after, thank god. It's not even from the right decade... Weren't it still Sunshine Cove back then?

“I'm more referring to actual families with lengthy histories of illegal activity: the Reeves, the Dandys, and so on. But we're going to focus exclusively on the Hawthorne family today, since they are particularly notorious. Who here knows which crimes the Hawthornes are the most tightly associated with?”

Hands rise sporadically around the room. Sam Nguyen's was up right away, but she was born there, so she's known about everything in this module so far.

Tallying the results in his head, the teacher stops when he sees her own hand still down. “Castor, I'm surprised you don't know,” he remarks.

“I've heard 'em mentioned in passing, Sir; I've just never had a chance to look into it.”

He seems to accept that: “Okay then. Glenn? Any ideas?”

“Extortion tactics, Sir? That's what most mobs do.”

“No it ain't! Haven't you seen CSI? Mobs are about murder. Culling the good guys, making them sleep with the fishes, capiche?” Orchid slips into an attempt at an Italian accent towards the end, one that doesn't jive well with the usual Hollow twang in the slightest.

“Uh, they probably wouldn't talk like that if they're--”

“Don't they blackmail people too?”

“That's the same thing, Clover!”

“Not really; extortion's more about getting what you want, blackmail's about them getting what they don't--”

A sharp tap on the desk with a spare whiteboard duster brings the class to silence and order... very temporarily, since it's broken by the sound of Steve's text-to-speech system. (God, she's just imagined that with a bad Italian accent too...) “Does it depend on which member of the family you're looking at, Sir?”

“That's right, Steve. And so are the other three of you, in that sense. Different generations of Hawthornes have those three aspects covered at different ratios. But while extortion and blackmail were reportedly the roots of the family business, it traces back to the 1910s, beyond the scope of the decades we are looking at this term. It's the second aspect – the murder –” Mr Piper lets the word hang in the room for a short second – “that cast the blackest mark on both them and the town as a whole from the years 1920 to 1930. If you can all turn to Page 74 in 'A Roaring Heights History' for me?”

Ever on the ball, Castor joins the others in retrieving their copy from the bottom of her quite hefty backpack. Damn lack of foresight. The air's thick with the sound of pages turning, numbers counted, 74, 74... ah-ha, there it is. Chapter title on the left, picture on the right, captioned: 'Cupid Hawthorne, feigning grief'. She glances at it by chance --

-- and the very foundations of the Earth shift beneath her.

He's so... striking. So real, despite the medium; like a firework given form. His jaw is practically a V, set in a scream, his lips curling back to show near-perfect teeth. Hair – no, she can hardly call it hair, it's a mane, swept wherever the wind takes it. His nostrils flare, highlighting a nose prominent enough to warrant sculptures, monuments. Eyebrows slant heavy in the fierce expression, and the eyes underneath...! There are a million and one stories within those eyes, greyscale though they are, every imagined fleck of those distant polaroid irises a new memory, of anger, of family, death, blood, anguish...

For a wild moment, for a wild lifetime, she imagines that it's her he is looking at, that his gaze is fixed upon her alone, that she's the reason for this burst of passion within such a soul. His voice, abstract, unheard, repeats within as the name lingers on his mouth, Castor, Castor.

When the world turns again and the echo fades, she's left adrift between peace and unrest.

Looking up to the classroom again is like stepping out of a cinema into a rainy day: brighter than hoped, darker than expected. To her surprise, only two minutes have passed since, given the clock's hands. She looks back at the people behind her. Sam, Steve, even Elliot... His face looks up at them all from the paper, captured and reflected from multiple angles.

And yet none of them seem to see him. If they look, it's briefly, before returning to the text underneath. There's a rarity in their books, and they're choosing to ignore it? Wait, Sam's looked up too – confused – was she, too, caught in the--?

“Uh, Castor?” she whispers. “You okay? You look pale. Need to see the nurse?”

“Uh-? Y-no, it's okay. I'll be fine.”

Castor quickly turns back to the front, to the task at hand – if such a thing even exists. There's words beyond the caption, and the teacher drones on, but they all seem strange now, nonsensical. An emotional dyslexia.

Is she really the only one to feel it? The only one to see Cupid Hawthorne, emblazoned in history, and have a reaction so...

visceral?

The haze the history lesson left behind shields her from the rest of the school day, for better or worse; she's unceremoniously home before she realizes it. Mom One is working tonight, so only her jade-green mother is there to greet her. Dinner's brief, a bowl of mac and cheese and a slice of sheet cake from the local baker's, and then it's time for homework. In theory, anyway.

In practice, the first word she types into Google, on reflex, is “Hawthorne”. She makes no attempt to stop it after that. She does have a week for most of these pieces, and a reputation of being prepared to uphold...

Result after result pours onto the screen, and with it information and revelation. First, that out of all the people in the room that morning, Orchid had been closest to the truth. Matters of money and influence are barely mentioned, with some of the forum users she digs up not even knowing that the criminal activity went that deep. All talk is of the War of the Hawthornes: the players, the game, and even a fraction of the cause.

Crimedivi So turns out they used to run bachelorette challenges in the old days too?? They weren't c**** popular like now, but there were apparently enough of them that RQ ran one, and Cupid meddled in it by killing everyone off!! I mean, wtf???? Even if you don't like your family that's just low you know??????

Castor assumes the asterixes are due to the forum's format, rather than self-imposed (especially when the same poster later refers to it as a series of 'a**a**inations').

Allystelle205 I've heard about that too! That's why no one knows who Rose Quartz ended up marrying in the end, I think: she had to protect his identity to make sure Cupid couldn't track them and kill them again... :O

xxxgogetterx “his”? wasn't she pansexual? there wouldve been women in there too dumba**

Allystelle205 Dude, gay people didn't exist in the 1930s! They would have been killed for--

She scrolls past that hot mess quickly until she finds a mod post warning them that her sexuality's neither up for debate, nor the actual point... she thinks. It doesn't have his name in it, so she doesn't get all the details.

movethatpawawayfromyoursim Anyway, back on topic...... @crimedivi it wouldn't have been the first time Cupid killed off his own family. Pretty much everyone else in it are dead because of him after all – three in that car crash, one got shot, one got strangled. I forget which is which. After that level of evil, killing her suitors to get to her really isn't that much of a stretch

Crimedivi ik ik but until then no one else had to get killed OUTSIDE off the family right?? and think about it, there's NEVER been a bc since where this has happened, people dying cus they wanna get married!!!! its just a new layer of bad somehow yknow??? kinda makes me wanna be sick!!

SpeckleP Especially since Rose Quartz was like reeeeaaaally mentally ill. There's records out there of her being in an asylum once upon a time in Bridgeport I think it was. They say schizophrenia but I think it was more that Cupid had such a hold over her that she broke herself so he couldn't hurt her anymore or something like that? Imagine getting out of there only to lose even more people to him and not knowing why...

Crimedivi now I really AM gonna be sick thanks SpeckleP!!!!!!

She looks at her hands, poised on the keyboard, then over to her open book. He's still there in print, facing away from the gossip about his motives and deeds that splits the screen. Castor slants him towards her again, giving him another long look, waiting for... she doesn't know what. Another change? How can there be change, when he has already infected her mind so thoroughly? How can there be anger, revulsion, at such a sight? And yet it's so easy for others to feel, firmly in the corner of the family scorned...

The book goes back down. Maybe there's something to what Sam said, after all. Maybe Castor is sick – just in a very different way to little Crimedivi.

This notion doesn't bother her as much as she thought it would.

The topic staggers on for another few posts (including a very pointed remark about the healthcare system from AtheistKatherine33) before stalling. Perhaps another website will bring her more insight.

Searching more specifically for “Cupid” this time, it's not long before she's inundated with a wall of neon text that looks like it's from the era of GeoCities, if not somehow earlier. But it doesn't take long for her to convert it into something resembling legibility. It's broken up by a picture – not a copy. This one's captioned “most recent known photo”, but he's less clear here, a calmer face in a crowd of dots and stripes, caught only by a red circle. His arm is linked with that of a black man to his right, in... is she imagining it? Or is it a protective sense? A partner of some kind? That'd be odd, given the era, and yet... they're standing so...

For the first time in months, Castor's chest feels a dismal flickering that she recognizes as dysphoria. She winces. Not now, not... Reading, more reading. She sinks into the paragraphs on paragraphs, feeling the flames of that shrink under a much greater fire.

1914-1918: Records show that Cupid H served in the Roaring Heights branch of the Allied forces during the events of the first World War. Debates are thick on the ground as to how many casualties can be attributed to him in this time ...

Winter-Spring, 1920: After a meeting with a rival syndicate, Oleander, Dogwood and Gillyflower H are killed in a car crash. It later transpires that the crash was due to sabotage of the vehicle in question; despite denying it at first, Cupid would later admit to being the culprit ...

Summer, 1920: Cupid strangles Blush H, then goes on to shoot Bow H in a duel to the death. These are the first murders that he is known to have committed directly, without the use of war as an excuse or a car crash as a buffer. Reports persist, though unsubstantiated, that Cupid was crying during these acts ...

1925: After five years of being in charge of the family business, Cupid H goes into an unexplained exile, leaving the company with no head and no direction ...

1930: A further five years of absence end with a secret reappearance in Raspberry Hearts. Cupid infiltrates the bachelor challenge of his sister Rose Quartz H, using Grey Tundora as a proxy to eliminate all competition. By the time only he and the person who will marry her remain, Cupid reveals himself to her, and--

“Cassie?”

“Mm?” She jolts herself back into the room in time to see a body in the doorway. “Yeah, Mom?”

“Are you okay? I've called up to you four times.”

Oh crap... first too little time has passed, now apparently far too much. “Sorry, I've just been doin' a spot of reading up. I'm fine.”

Mom Two doesn't budge. “I hope you did some of your homework before--”

“Oh, this is homework... sorta. Extracurricular – y- nothing you’d understand,” she reassures a little too quickly for her own mouth.

“What of, hon? Anything in particular?”

Yeesh, what is this, the Inquisition? I'm keepin' him waiting... “Just stuff, Mom. School stuff? That's what extracurricular means. And if I don't get back to it soon it'll be extra-extracurricular, so if y’all could... y’know...?”

The face in the door twists, disconcerted, confused. “Are you sure you're okay? You're not normally so ornery. If there's anything wrong, you know you can tell me and Laverne, don't you?” That look, backed with the sadness under her words, brings mollified shame to Castor's cheeks.

“No, nuffin's wrong. Sorry, didn't mean to shout; s'been a heck of a day, is all. I'm okay, though, honestly,” she adds before more worry can spawn from that. “Promise.”

This, at least, seems placating enough, since her parent smiles again. “Promise promise?”

“Yup. And if I'm wrong, sic Mom One on me in the morning.”

“I will. Anyway, I'm near about past going, so I'm heading to bed. Don't stay up too long now, will you?”

“I won't,” says Castor, already acutely aware of how much of a lie that could turn out to be. “Night, Momma.”

“G'night, little spark.”

And thus Mom Two finally departs, leaving her child to dive back into research, first online then back to off, under the watching eyes of a man briefly seen.

It's little surprise that she sleeps late, book tucked under the pillow; yet, inexplicably, she still jolts awake just before sunrise. She dreamt mostly of Cupid. She couldn't help it. A man so mysterious, powerful, and – judging by the hand pressed between her legs – experienced could invade the dreams of anyone if he desired it. (The fact that he would be several years her senior doesn't cross her mind, addled with mingling red and white splatter stains as it is.)

She spends so much time scrutinizing the parts of the chapter she missed over breakfast that she clean forgets to make up her usual teapot-ponytails. The excess hair weighs more than usual at her nape, a pleasantly strange sensation; few comment on it when she gets into school. At this point, they tend to let her more unconventional fashion choices slide.

Well... most of them do. As morning drags her kicking and screaming into the sticky, perpetual hours of lunch period, an exception first seeded years ago is set to prove the rule.

“Hey, Cassie. What's a gal like you doing in the boy's bathroom?”

Ignore him. Just ignore him. Focus on freshening up.

“Helloooo? I said, what's a gal like you doin--”

“That ain't gonna work, Lemonlips. I'm in too bad a mood.” Focus, focus. Sweep 'cross the eyelid, left to right...

Merlot barks out a laugh that morphs into a gravelly hack halfway through, courtesy of the cigarette aflame in his pale-green hand. “Shit, you're always in a bad mood now. What the hell happened to your sense of humor, babe?” he drawls, lingering on the final word as though it in itself is an insult.

Nothing, your sense of humor just switched into makin' me the butt of every joke when you worked out I was trans, her mind snarls, fingers curling around the eyeshadow brush. But there's no sense in voicing that. She's explained it to him before, even before their friendship dissolved, and he's never gotten it. Out of ignorance or malice, she still doesn't know.

Thank Christ he was in none of her classes today. After the morning she's had – distracted by a roaring beauty, sidelined by a surprise pop quiz in her worst subject, caught passing a note to Floss in Biology – more of Merlot than is necessary would turn her into the very being in the photo.

“I'm only saying that with you saying you're a girl all the time and wearing your hair like a girl and putting on that f-” he stalls, apparently thinking better of it – “makeup like a girl, you oughta be in the bathroom with the other girls. Sue me for making a good point every once in a while.”

A swift wave of red across the other eye. She loves this color; it puts more emphasis on the contrast within her pupils and less on the zit that’s somehow appeared in her eyebrow, what the hell? “Last week I was in the girl's bathroom, and you kicked up a stink about that too. Made out like I was a predator, remember?”

“Jesus Christ, I was only jok--”

“Yeah, well, it weren't funny. It were sick.” On to the next shade in her kit, a deeper hue this time, reminiscent of roses and blood... She wonders how often Cupid saw this color in his line of work. “Besides, everywhere else is full up today, so I'm stuck in here with you--”

“Riiight, right, gotcha,” says her fellow Berry dismissively. “Can't stand the thought of them being prettier than you.”

“It's not--”

“Don't lie, it's always been like that.” He stubs out his smoke on the wall, leaving one of many little marks on the linoleum. “Envy's your Achilles heel, babe, your deadly sin. That's why you broke it off with me, that's why you decided you were a girl – cus you knew you could never match up to what I've got to offer if you just stayed a boy like I asked.”

Her teeth grit together... is she being particularly touchy today, or he particularly aggravating? “Lemonlips, you know for a fact that's not true. I--”

“Bullshit it's not!”

Pain erupts in ear and vision both – “Gyah!” – he's much closer and louder than before, and the alarm's made her jab the brush through her closed lids and into the actual eyeball. “Sunnuva... ” Owww, she thinks as she pulls it out, sending an ugly smear along her right cheekbone, that's gonna sting somethin' awful.

“Sorry. Y-you okay?” she hears beyond the ringing. “Didn't... fuck your face up, did I?” There's a tremble in the tone, an off-key one. Did that actually...? Blinking the injured eye rapidly, she cracks open the other, casts it at him – Adam's apple quivering, but a smile in the mouth and the...

Laughing. The son of a bitch is still laughing.

The brush falls to the floor. Her hand reaches immediately, instead, for her standard trusty watch enclosed in a trouser pocket. By all rights she ought to have done this the second he saw her, but she had to give him a chance, didn't she? Like she does every single... ugh. She prays this time will be quick. Calm and quick.

“Uh, w- what are you doing?” the idiot says, still trying to stifle his guffaws.

“You know what I'm doing,” she replies, evenly. “What's important is what you're doin'. Doing.”

“Oh please, you think I'm gonna fall for that again? I'm getting wise to your tricks, Cas-”

But she is wiser. “No tricks, Merlot. Think about what you're doing. Think about what you're saying. Think about how you're breathing. Think about that breath, caught in your chest. Let it out for me.” The rhythm to her words is coming naturally, as is the subtle swing of the watch, a distraction to the other's eye. Even in their early days, he was drawn to this. “Let the breath in. Let the breath out. Focus on that. The breath in, the breath out. Focus on the breath. Focus on my voice, focus on the watch. Let us fade, let us stay, stay where you can see us. Focus on the breath and the voice and the watch.”

“Yyou're...” The protest is stoppered; he's already slurring.

“Focus on the voice and the watch. On the voice, the watch. The voice. Only the voice. Let the voice guide you. Let me do the work. Focus on the voice. Ignore how your eyes droop. Ignore how your tongue feels heavy. Ignore how your bones slouch. Focus on the voice telling you this. Focus all of your being on the voice. Ignore your tiring. Focus on the voice. Focus... and sleep.”

And he's slack against the wall, dropping to the floor in a well-executed trance state.

There. Now maybe he can shut up. Castor retrieves the brush from the ground, repacks her makeup kit, slips it and the watch into her bag. She's still got a while before class begins again. She can grab a snack from the cafeteria, she decides. Fix her eyeshadow elsewhere, add some blush. Read some more about...

She pauses in front of the door.

On any other day – on the same day, in any other world – this pause would be brief. She would shake it off, swing open and out into the school as herself. The satisfaction of seeing him down for the count would be enough, enough to quell everything, the haunting of her dream, the reminder of what was and what's to come. That would be the end of it.

On this day, she turns back.

A slow approach to her former friend. A discarding of the backpack. A lowering onto bended knees to see him up close. His yellow buzzcut is coarse, a shaved pattern disappearing. The insectine lines across his face are slack in slumber. Long eyelashes rest upon cheeks.

This much is true – he was pretty to her, once upon a time. But there is greater beauty than her own to compare him to, now.

He's not wearing his usual scarf; it's a warm sort of day, so it doesn't call for it, she supposes. The uniform looks incomplete without it, though. Too small for his body, too wide for his neck. His neck. Exposed, thin. The lump of a voicebox within is less clear, hidden by its stretching out, its length. She looks more carefully – there's a vein, or perhaps another birthmark of the skin, crawling to his chin.

It occurs to her, looking at it, how fragile a neck can be. There's only skin and blood protecting the windpipe, and not even that much of it. Anything could sever it, whatever the sharpness. A knife. A pen. A hand. Two hands.

Those of a criminal. Those of a hypnotist.

--three in that car crash, one got shot, one got strangled--

The bathroom at once seems much wider and taller than before, swamping them both. A dizzy Castor looks at her fingers again – red with makeup, green with potential.

Could I-? Could I...?

--the first murders that he is known to have committed directly--

She finds herself reaching out, softly, towards the breathing vessel. Two fingers, a thumb. A pulse underneath. He doesn't stir; the trance must be deep. So very...

He wouldn't even notice. He wouldn't wake. He'd never wake again, would he? No more of those thinly-veiled jokes. No more memories, tainted. No one hurt by him ever again.

And the ocean within her head would stop crashing at the shores of the skull.

--Cupid strangles Blush H--

Left hand joins right. Both fasten, like a collar, around the sleeping Merlot's throat.

Solid ridges form under her touch, columns of muscle. Tighter; the drumbeat rises, a steady rhythm. Tighter; she feels it when he subconsciously swallows. A circle smaller by degrees, the more she squeezes, her grip steadying with each of her own inhales and exhales. Calm and quick.

Calm and quick. Don't get carried away. Don't waste this. Could never waste this. Is she hearing herself, or him, or Him? Who's pretending to be her? Is this pretension? Too many questions. Too much air in the body of this waste of space, his arrogant being, his brother. Flush it out, flush it all out. Let oxygen drip away.  

A quickening of the arteries – a fluttering, a stirring. Dammit. Merlot's coming out, he's aware, he's seeing the vice grip and the body attached to the grip and the eyes of red and green and blue that see him too. He tries to gulp in alarm, to shriek... it won't help. How can it help if he can't breathe to do it? He struggles underneath her, fails to back away, to press forward. His own limbs, ineffectual, reach up to grab hers, to pull her away from this most vital of tasks. A begging for mercy, when he offered her none. A chance to let go.

She presses harder.

He croaks, panics, claws at her haphazardly, barely scratching the surface, much less the spirit; they're limp before he knows it. He's kicking out now, but she isn't dislodged. He has no quarter in this battle, this war, this slaughter. Not anymore. Not now she can sense that nothing's passing through, nothing in, nothing out. Focus on the breath. Hah – focus on the lack of breath. Focus on the blood vessels bursting, tinting the whites of him. Focus on the single tear. Focus on the fear, the danger, the regret, rising, then falling, fading, fading away...

When her own trance lifts, her palms can no longer feel his heart.

Castor finds herself unable to move at first. Then, gradually, carefully, she peels away from him, shuffles back to get a better look at this: her destruction. The body is unchanged on the fundamental level; buzzcut, filled with lines, lashes thick. But it's only a shell. Merlot, as she knew him, as grew up with her, as turned on her, simply isn't there, a victim of his own cocoon.

...no, not of that. A victim of me, she thinks. Thinks again. Victim. Killed. Killed him. It's almost tuneful. I just killed him. I've literally just killed a man. Didn't even need a car to do it. Just hands. 

Wonder if anyone heard me doing it. ...wait, what if they did? What if they find his body? This is going to get out eventually. Lots of things do in this school. What if it does and they find out I did it? What if they see my fingerprints? What would Moms think? What would Mr Piper think? Floss, Sam, wh- what would...

What would He think?

The bag's been dislodged, somehow, in the scuffle. She pulls it back to her, as though in a dream. An errant streak of pink is on the front cover; she can clean that up later. What's important is Page 74, and the Cupid within. The restrained rage. The black and white look that's...

changed. Everything that was within before has coalesced into one emotion. She doesn't have to guess to know it's for her, or to know what it is.

Pride.

The world is suddenly and startlingly hot and cold and wet. She crushes the book to her chest, His picture flat against her heart by coincidence or design. At the same time, there's a smell of ichor and bone and fog, wrapping around her legs. The walls rumble motionlessly.

Of two things, Castor is certain in this moment. First: that Death has come to take the carcass, the damning evidence, of Merlot Lemonlips away. Second: that she will love Cupid Hawthorne for the rest of her limited existence.

[sagealex]

the post about banned books is obviously in reference to books banned on local and state levels, in schools, but even so, public school is likely where most people do the majority of their thoughtful reading in their life.

discussion of this issue brings back memories of a very specific time in my schooling, and, for some reason, I feel like sharing them.

i graduated from high school a couple years ago, and the whole black lives matter movement got up and going while i was in school. the george zimmerman trial happened while i was in my sophomore year of high school, and in class we were reading Fahrenheit 451, and on my own time, I was reading The Complete Transcript of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Assasination Conspiracy Trial.

I had heard of the hashtag #blacklivesmatter already, and I had already formed an opinion about it, but there’s always this anxious few-to-several months between when I hear about something and when my parents see it enough times on the news to get angry and talk about it. So there was a lot of time between when I realized what was happening, and when I realized what everyone else thought was happening.

I remember the day it started. It started in English class.

I remember talking about Jesus on TV in Fahrenheit 451, the morality or immorality was irrelevant when he was only meant for entertainment and advertisement. TV was allowed, but thinking about ideas with any depth wasn’t. And then I remember going home and hearing, for the first time, what my family had decided was true about Trayvon Martin. And then the morning after that I realized the reality of the fact that, despite the information being publicly available for years, most people didn’t know that MLK was killed by agents of the federal government. 

And while the connection between these things doesn’t seem immediately obvious even now, that same morning, the pledge of allegiance made me sick. Students were allowed to stay silent during the pledge in my school, so I stood up like I had for nearly every day of my life up to that point, and I put my hand over my heart and opened my mouth, and physically gagged on the pledge. I just let my hand drop, and I looked down, literally in shame, because I couldn’t do it anymore.

I had been an incredibly patriotic person my whole life, and then suddenly I couldn’t do it anymore.

And when I went to English class later that day, we discussed book burning, and how the information that is destroyed and hidden is probably the most important information to dig into, and I felt

Awful. Just awful.

And after that I started making my own posters and flyers for protests. I had a binder with a hand-drawn pair of black hands upright, with that quote attributed to Alex Hamilton (the British sports commentator), I had my friends hand-copy posters I had drawn up about freedom of speech and net neutrality and such things, I brought articles about recent shootings and protests into my human relations class, as that teacher had a recap of the news every week. And I thought it would all make me feel better. I thought it would make it all better.

It didn’t. I still feel awful. I feel awful and sick, and even though I’m outspoken in some spheres, in others I have to sit by silently in order to be allowed to stay under the roof I have right now, and to keep from earning suspicion from my highly controlling family. I’m the one who watches my siblings right now, one of whom isn’t allowed to go anywhere or do anything without supervision.

The reading of Fahrenheit 451, along with other books on this list, in high school, while I was coming into adulthood and society at large, created some sort of space in my mind. The space created by Fahrenheit 451 was the exact size and shape of the knowledge that, even though we’re taught about Martin Luther King, Jr. in school, even though anyone could see video of so many murders of black people, even though the books are there! They’re right there!

Information is denied by those for whom it is inconvenient.

When we can’t read To Kill a Mockingbird, we don’t get the chance to empathize with people who are blamed by all of their society for something they clearly did not do. When we can’t read Steinbeck’s books about the Great Depression, we don’t get the chance to face the bitter reality faced by refugees of situations they had no hand in. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a nail in the fucking coffin of America’s ability to defend slavery, and for a school to ban it is to deny history, and further obscure the reality of the darkness of America’s history.

For every book I read in my AP classes in my junior and senior years of high school, my English teacher had a different story about how the conservative powers that be in my city would come to him, as head of the English department, and scream at him over the contents of the books he’d have the students read. He told us that, every time, those adults would come prepared with quotes from the books that someone else had given them, since they had never opened the books themselves.

I still haven’t found a way to put this experience fully into words, but in high school English class, a net in the vague shape of the unfairness of the world was weaved to catch onto the ideas that people didn’t want to discuss. Before I had even finished Fahrenheit 451, I lost my faith in the information presented by the TV, I lost faith in the possibility that i might someday reconcile my beliefs with those of the adults in my community, and I lost faith in my country. I lost faith in the idea that everyone will someday come around to the objective truth, and this made me feel ill in a way that hasn’t relented since.

But, in the end of Fahrenheit 451, they talk about the Phoenix, and how people will go on burning themselves down, generation after generation, and how all we have to do is to remember. As long as there’s someone here paying attention, and making it their job to remember what really happened, and to recall the information that was contained by books that others burned, there’s still hope for humanity.

I still don’t know whether things will be okay. I don’t know whether my participation in politics will make any impact, whether I’ll ever have an idea that would really make the world a better place, whether I’ll always live my life in alternate bouts of proud protest and cowed silence, whether people will keep on dying for no reason.

But I know that I can definitely make information more available, and take information from behind paywalls and give it freely to those who are searching for it. And that’s what I’m doing here.

[ofreedsandoaks]

99 questions for the MUSE and 1 question for the MUN.

Originally posted by pan-imagines

Rules: Don’t reblog! Repost with your own answers, tag whoever you want

Developing a character.

1. What is your full name?

Rene ... Larc Delacroix.

2. Where and when were you born?

... which time?

In my first life, I was born in the Morvan Forest near Avallon, France on the Winter Solstice of 1413.  I was reborn in the Summer of 2010 ... in a laboratory ... in Paris ...

3. Who are or were your parents? (Names, professions, personality …)

My father, Alric, was the Seventh Son of the Grandmaster of the Feuilles Coven.  His official title was “Seventh Sage”.  My mother, Helene, was a herbalist.  I don’t know anything about her lineage or how she came to be involved with the Feuilles Coven, but I assume it had something to do with meeting and falling in love with my father.

4. Do you have siblings?

I had six older brothers who I never met, all of whom are deceased.  Now, I have William, and though he is descended from my older brother Gregoire, William is the best brother I could have ever asked for.  Even before we learned of his heritage, he was the closest thing to family that I had ever known.

5. Where do you live now and with whom? Describe the place and the people who live with it.

I live at Delacroix manor, which is owned by my guardian and adoptive father Julian Munch Delacroix.  It’s an expansive mansion on many acres of and with an apple orchard, cherry orchard, an vineyard on top of a beautiful garden courtyard that I enjoy maintaining.  Craig Kanaan is the handyman, but he is also the charge of Julian’s family, having sworn to protect Julian’s line.  He’s very odd, talks a lot, enjoys tinkering things and pranking the rest of the staff.  Anjelah Barnes is the manor’s caretaker.  She’s very Scottish, brazen, and perhaps a bit overprotective.  Betty Johnson is the cook and she basically a culinary wizard from Louisiana.  Over the summer, William and his soon-to-be adoptive foster mother Abigail moved in to the newly-renovated north wing.  William is very artistic and playful; he enjoys nature and has reminded me what it means to be alive.  Abigail is very down-to-earth and loves William very much; she is very supportive and also appears to be adapting to the supernatural world fairly well.

6. What do you do?

I’m currently a Junior at Prentiss Academy where I am believed to be a French transfer student, but I am a witch and botanist first and foremost.  Occasionally, I help Julian with supernatural cases when certain magical expertise is warranted.

7. Write a complete description about yourself. You should consider height, weight, race, hair color, eyes and tattoos, scars or any other mark that differentiates you.

I would say that I am of average height at 5 feet 8 inches.  When last checked, I was 118 pounds, which is improved from the 112 I was while ill over the summer.  I am still very thin, however, but Madame Johnson is helping to remedy that by including high-protein meals in my diet.  I am well-groomed on most days when I am required to leave the manor, but other times -- such as when I spend most of the day or night in the gardens or orchards, I can be quite messy in hair and attire.  My hair is a very dark brown, almost black, and my eyes match.  My skin is very pale despite being of Romani descent.  I have a large vertical scar on the back of my neck and a very intricate tattoo of Sumerian glyphs along my spine.  I also have a very prominent French accent which ... apparently makes me stick out a bit in the middle of Michigan.

8. What social class do you belong to?

When I was a child, I was impoverished.  Under Julian’s care, I am considered wealthy.

9. Do you have allergies, illnesses or other physical weaknesses?

Due to the nature in which my body was created, this vessel is heavily immunocompromised.  I am sick frequently and often require hospitalizations and dialysis to cleanse my blood.  One might consider me to be on home hospice, yet high functioning.  I have an excellent doctor who is doing the very best he can in order to make this body healthy and last as long as possible.

10. Are you right-handed or left-handed?

Left-handed.

11. How does your voice sound?

A mid-tenor somewhat french horn-like sound, quiet, soft-spoken.

12. What phrases or words do you use frequently?

"Merde.”

13. What do you carry in your pockets?

A cell phone.  A small bag containing clear quartz, labradorite, lavender, rosemary, rue, salt, a scarf which serves as a portable altar, and a feather.  A small pouch containing an iron dust bomb (just in case some asshole fae gets too close to William).  I also have my athame sheathed at the small of my back.

14. Do you have tics, hobbies, strange habits or other characteristics that define you?

As far as tics go, I have a tendency to tug on my sleeve cuffs often.  I will occasionally snap the band on my right wrist when I am feeling overwhelmed or wring my hands.  As far as hobbies, it is apparently considered “odd” for a sixteen-year-old to enjoy gardening and farming so much.  I also enjoy dancing and fencing.  Hiking.  Oh, and there’s the whole witch thing ... but very few people know about that.

15. How would you describe your childhood in general?

Free.  My childhood was free.  There was much merriment and magic despite the persecution and the whole ... constantly ... on the move ... thing.

16. What is your earliest memory?

The smoke of a nearby campfire and the sound of music.  I was sitting on the ground and there was a tambourine and I kept slamming my palm against it in time with the music.

17. What studies do you have?

As a Junior at Prentiss Academy, I have special extracurricular activities involving agriculture.  Otherwise, I’m studying AP English, AP Calculus, AP Chemistry, and AP Biology.

19. Where did you learn your skills?

Though I was born with the natural ability to perform magic, I did learn more along the way from the nomadic coven and then later through studying with the Grand Coven.  My swordsmanship was learned from Étienne de Vignolles and Jean de Dunois while serving in the French Army.  I’m self-taught when it comes to dancing.

20. Have you had models to follow in your childhood or adolescence? Describe them.

Pierrot, for all his faults as a drunkard and gambler, was actually a good man at heart and I did look up to him.  He was an excellent hunter, tanner, and orator. 

21. Growing up … What kind of relationship did you have with the members of your family?

I didn’t know my biological family.  My caravan was my family.  We referred to each other as cousins.  Our bond was very strong and deep as we were all we had.

22. What did you want to be when you grew up when you were a child?

I wanted to be an apple farmer, but always being on the move made this an impossibility.

23. What were your favorite activities as a child?

Dancing and fishing.

24. What personality traits did you have when you were a child?

Fairly easy-going, sarcastic, carefree, whimsical, musical, dedicated, open-minded, creative.

25. Were you a popular kid? Who were your friends and what were they like?

Uhm, in a way, I suppose.  We traveled a lot, so I never stayed in one place for very long.  But when I performed for the locals, I was usually pretty popular because of my ... ahm ... talents.

26. When and how was your first kiss?

I think I was five or six years old and it was cold.  I was sitting by the fire to get warm and Dervila ran over to me, threw open my blanket, and kissed me square on the lips.  My lips were chapped.  Hers were overly wet.  It was weird.

27. Are you a virgin? If you are not, when and with whom did you lose your virginity?

Yes.

28. If you are a supernatural being (eg magician, werewolf, vampire), tell the story of how you have become or have learned your own abilities. If you are a normal human, describe any influence that has led you to do what you do today.

I was born a witch.  Seventh son of the seventh son.  It’s kind of a thing.

29. What do you consider the most important event in your life so far?

Being murdered and cursed by the Grand Coven certainly had an impact.

30. Who has had the greatest influence on you?

Technically and literally, I would say the members of the Grand Coven and their progeny.  Currently, I would say that Julian and William have the greatest influence over me.

31. What do you consider your greatest achievement?

Not dying yet. 

32. What is your greatest repentance?

Leaving the campaign to return to Paris which resulted in me being killed and cursed, thus leaving Jeanne without my protection.  If I had been with her at the siege of Compiègne, then maybe history would have turned out a bit differently for her ... 

33. What is the meanest thing you’ve done?

I burned an entire village to the ground when I was ten.

34. Do you have any criminal records?

Nope.  Clean as a whistle.

35. When was the time when you were most afraid?

Anytime I am close to death, I fear the worst.

36. What is the most embarrassing thing you have ever done?

I’m sure I’ve been embarrassed in the past, but I don’t remember any specific instances.

37. If you could change a thing from your past, what would it be, and why?

Please refer to #32.

38. What is your best memory?

Jeanne’s laugh.

40. Are you basically optimistic or pessimistic?

I never really thought about it, but I would say that I’m probably more pessimistic than anything.  I think the worst of many situations.  I have to.

41. What is your greatest fear?

Dying and returning to the employ of the Grand Coven where I will be forced to compulsively comply with their bidding, regardless of will.

42. What are your views on religion?

Do not fucking shove your bullshit, man-made doctrine down my or anyone else’s throats, let alone persecute and execute anyone who does not believe in that very narrow fucking outlandish view that you have.

I mean ... and ye harm none, do as thou will.

43. What are your views on politics?

Unnecessary.  Men use this for the sake of greed and power, nothing more.  Nothing less.  It accomplishes nothing.  #Anarchism

44. What are your views on sex?

Not interested.

45. Could you kill? Under what circumstances would you find killing something acceptable or unacceptable?

I have and will again if anyone threatens those I care about.

46. In your opinion, what is the meanest thing a human can do?

Break a promise.

47. Do you believe in the existence of “soul mates” or true love?

Sure.

48. What do you think makes a successful life?

Happiness.

49. How honest are you about your feelings and thoughts (eg, do you hide your true way of being from others, in what way?)?

I tend to keep a lot of my thoughts and emotions internal, specifically in regard to pain or discomfort, in order to not concern those I care about.

50. Do you discriminate or have prejudices?

Yes, but I often do not act upon them because I’m not a jerk.

51. Is there anything you refuse to do under any circumstances? Why do you refuse to do it?

I refuse to lie to William.  He deserves openness.  He’s family.

52. Why or who, if there is, would you die (or do other extreme things)?

Julian and William.

53. In general, how do you treat others (Sincerely, rudely, keeping them at a distance, etc.)? How you treat them changes according to how well you know them, and if so, how does it change?

In general, I seem indifferent to most people.  I prefer to keep them at a distance, as the closer I am to others, the more dangerous their lives become.

54. Who is the most important person in your life and why?

Julian and William are the most important people in my life.  Julian rescued me from the Grand Coven, gave me a new life.  William taught me how to be alive.

55. Who do you respect the most and why?

Julian.  Always Julian.

56. Who are your friends? Do you have a best friend? Describe those people.

William is my brother and my best friend.  Julian is more of a father figure and guardian.  I would consider Mum-sensei my friend, even though he is my doctor; he can be childish and playful at times, but he is also an accomplished exorcist.  Sam and Dean Winchester are ... friendly acquaintances, I suppose, though I enjoy Sam’s company more than his brother’s for the simple fact that we don’t have as many arguments ... and the fact that Sam is a bit more open-minded and respectful of supernatural persons.  I don’t ... really ... have any other friends?  I suppose Craig, Anjelah, and Betty are all my friends as well, though most of the time, they feel more like caretakers.

57. Do you have a spouse or person of affection? If so, describe that person.

No.  I do not.

58. Have you ever fallen in love? If so, describe what happened.

I love three people very, very deeply.  One is dead.  The others are family.  I have never been “in love” by the conventional definition.

59. What are you looking for in a potential lover?

I don’t care.  I’m not interested.

60. How close are you to your family?

Very close.

61. Have you started your own family? If so, describe them. If so, you want? Why or why not?

No.

62. How would you react if you were desperate for help?

I would turn to Julian, Mum-sensei, or -- if truly desperate -- Emrys.

63. Do you trust someone to protect you? Who Why?

I trust Julian, William, Mum-sensei, Emrys, Craig, and Anjelah to protect me with their lives.

64. If you die or go astray, who would miss you?

Julian and William, I think, would miss me.  Anjelah, too.  Betty might because then I wouldn’t be around to give her outlandish culinary challenges which she seems to enjoy.

65. Who is the person you most despise and why?

He who shall not be named.

66. Do you tend to argue with people, or avoid conflict?

If there is injustice or a complete disregard for the truth and common decency, then yes, I will argue and retaliate.  Most of the time, however, I tend to stay out of it.

67. Do you tend to take the leadership role in social situations?

Not usually, no.  I’m more of a follower.

68. Do you like to interact with large groups of people? Why or why not?

I’m indifferent.

69. Do you care what others think of you?

Not really, no.

70. What is your favorite hobby or hobbies?

I enjoy anything that involves growing flora.  Gardening, farming, botany, herbalism, etc.  Through biology at the academy, I have learned more about cross-breeding and am actually excited when it comes to experimenting with different plants.  Whittling, woodcarving, and basket weaving are also favorite pastimes of mine.  Dancing and hiking, too.

I also somewhat not-so-secretly enjoy watching William create art, specifically drawings and paintings.  I like watching how a few simple lines or curves morph into full-on landscapes and scenes full of details and color.

I also may or may not thoroughly enjoy doing magic for William, such as concocting potions and performing spells at his request.

71. What is your most treasured possession?

My father’s journal.

72. What is your favorite color?

Earth tones -- browns and greens.

73. What is your favorite food?

Crepes.  All sorts of crepes.

74. What, if there is, do you like to read?

True crime, historical crimes, mysteries, nature/science articles.

75. What is your idea of good entertainment (consider music, movies, art, etc.)?

Music and dancing!

76. Do you smoke, drink, or use drugs? If so, why? Do you want to leave it?

I’m French.  I have a vineyard.  There is much wine.

I do smoke ... “herbs” on occasion.

As for drugs, I do take pain killers on a regular basis, especially when I am ill.  I would suffer tremendously without them.

77. What do you do on your typical Saturday night?

Usually hang out in my bedroom or in the home cinema with William.  We’ll watch horror films or anime, or I’ll watch him make art while I weave baskets or dream catchers.

78. What makes you laugh?

Not much, but when I do, William is usually involved.

79. What, if there is, does it shock or offend you?

Nothing, honestly.

80. What would you do if you had insomnia and needed to relax?

Probably sneak into William’s room and watch him sleep, or go out to the conservatory to tend to my plants and smoke some ... herbs ...

81. Do you get stress?

Yes.

82. Are you spontaneous, or do you always need to plan?

I plan, I make plans within plans -- doesn’t mean I always follow them, but it’s always good to have multiple options.

83. What makes you angry?

Blatant disrespect for another person.

84. Describe the routine of a normal day for you. How do you feel when that routine is interrupted?

Either I wake up on my own or Anjelah wakes me.  I get dressed for the day, have breakfast, brush my teeth, go to school if there is school, tend to the orchards and gardens if there is not, come home, spend a couple hours in the conservatory or just hanging out with William, eventually convince myself that doing homework is necessary and end up doing it anyway, have dinner, take a shower, hang out with William some more, talk to Julian if he is home, then go to sleep at some point.

85. What is your greatest strength as a person?

As a person, I’d like to think I have a good grasp at empathy.

86. What is your greatest weakness?

Submissiveness.

87. If you could change something about yourself, what would it be?

I would not be cursed.

88. Generally, are you introverted or extroverted?

Introverted.

89. Generally, are you tidy or cluttered?

Very tidy.

90. Name three things in which you consider yourself very good, and three in which you consider yourself very bad.

Very good:  Magic, botany, strategy.

Very bad:  Decisiveness, making friends, being assertive.

91. Do you like the way you are?

Mostly.  I just don’t like my circumstances.

92. What are your reasons for being an adventurer (or doing anything heroic that an RPG character would do)? Do the real reasons you do differ from what you say in public? (If so, detail both sets of reasons)

Ah ... for ... the good of the colony?  I don’t know.

93. What is the goal you most want to accomplish in your life?

To not be cursed.

94. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Dead and back in the employ of the Grand Coven.  We’re working on that.

95. If you could choose it, how would you like to die?

Doing something meaningful to protect someone I love.

96. You know you’re going to die in 24 hours, name three things you would do before your time runs out.

Say goodbye to Julian and William.

Bequeath my magical possessions to Julian.  Bequeath the Feuilles Grimoire and my father’s journal to William.

Ask William to put me in his sketchbook.

97. Why would you most like to be remembered after your death?

I don’t want to be remembered.  I think it would hurt too much.

98. Which three words best describe your personality?

Indecisive, intelligent, natural.

99. What three words would the others use to describe you?

French, blunt, clever.

100. (Question for the mun) If you could, what advice would you give your character? (You can pretend that you are sitting in front of you and use the right tone for him / her to pay attention to your advice)

It’s okay to have friends.  It’s okay to love.  Being hurt and the loss of loved ones is a part of life.  I know you want to protect others from broken hearts, but in doing so you are also hurting yourself.  You should be enjoying life while you can, because even though we have that sliver of hope to find a way to break the Curse, there is still a very big chance that it will never happen.  Your fear of the future is keeping you from enjoying the present moments that really matter, so just allow yourself to be alive.

Tagged by: No one.  I was tagged on another of my blogs and just felt like doing this on Larc, too.

Tagging: Whoever wants to do it 

[philostudyy]

A College Student’s School Supplies List (with Amazon links)

Hi! I’m entering my senior year of college this fall, and have learned over the past few years that there are some school supplies that become much more necessary in college than they were in high school. In this post, I hope to help anyone who’s entering college figure out what they may need, if you’re on the fence! Most schools are starting up again over the next month or so, so there’s no better time to shop for supplies! I’ll include Amazon links to all of the products I mention, but bear in mind that many of the items that are available in stores are usually less expensive in stores.

*As a note – I’m a philosophy major with minors in English and political science, and have only taken a couple of STEM courses in college. With that being said, I might not be the best resource on STEM supplies for college, but I did take 2 AP sciences and AP Calc BC in high school, so I may be able to help if you’re a little bit younger!

(This picture was taken a year or two ago and originally posted to my main blog, @andthecynicswereoutraged, before I made my studyblr.

BASICS – I’m not going to spend paragraphs explaining to you why you will need paper, notebooks, folders, highlighters, or pens. I think most people probably have that figured out by now. There are a few different ways to go about this, though. Some people swear by using Microsoft OneNote or a similar program. I prefer taking notes by hand. I’ve experimented with using notebooks, binders, and hybrid note-binders, and I think that I prefer using a binder or note-binder. I take notes on lined paper during class, then between classes or at night I highlight and add things that I may have missed. Five Star Reinforced Paper is my top-choice, because I love that I don’t have to add my own sticky reinforcements. I hold all of the papers together using a Staples Better Binder or a Five Star Flex Notebinder. I use Avery Tabbed Binder Dividers to divide the sections, hold syllabi/assignments/readings, and hold extra paper. For pens/pencils, it’s completely up to you. I like to use Pilot G2 pens, but I’m going to be trying some new ones this year, so my favorites may change! I like to have lots of different colored pens and highlighters, so I can organize my notes and make them prettier to look at and study from J

LAPTOP – This one’s also pretty self-explanatory, but I can’t stress how important it is to have a reliable laptop during college. Mine is a Lenovo Yoga 2 (similar), and even though it’s a few years old now, it works really well. I had a MacBook Pro before this, and it ended up having a lot of issues, but I know that a lot of people really like them. It’s just a matter of figuring out what you want. Also, you might want to consider buying a mouse, as I’ve found that it’s sometimes easier to use one if I’m going to be using my computer for an extended period of time. If your laptop is more than 5ish years old when you begin college, it may be worth it to consider getting a new one if you have the resources, because (speaking from experience) it’s really inconvenient to turn your laptop on a few days before winter break ends and discover that it’s completely dead. *sigh*

FLASH DRIVE – In high school, I barely used a flash drive. I know that I owned one, but it didn’t get a whole lot of use since I didn’t have as many long-term projects as I do now. I could usually bang out any paper I had to write in a day or two, so there wasn’t much need to have it accessible all the time. Some people prefer to use Google Drive or OneDrive to save their documents, which I’m starting to like as well. Still, though, I like to have all of my papers on a flash drive, so even if I write in Google Docs I’ll transfer it to the USB when it’s complete. These are becoming MUCH less expensive than they used to be too, which is great. I currently use a yellow SanDisk one, and you can find a similar one here.

PLANNER – Probably my favorite thing on this list. My high school gave us free planners, and I ended up buying Lilly Pulitzer ones my junior and senior years when I was into that style. I’ve used 4 different ones in college, and my favorite actually just started on July 1. It’s a Day Designer for BlueSky one, and I found mine at Target for a few dollars less than the Amazon price. The biggest piece of planner advice I can give – try to avoid spiral-bound. In my experience, no matter how nice a spiral-bound planner is, the spirals end up getting caught on things and bent out of shape and they’re just not worth it.

STICKY NOTES – I’m not going to put links here, because there are so many different ones that I love, but if you’re interested and want links just let me know! I use sticky notes for everything. Every. Thing. I make to-do lists (or to-print, to-buy-at-the-grocery-store, emails-to-send, etc. lists) on them and stick them in my planner or in notebooks. When I have a project to do, I usually use sticky notes to break down the different steps I need to take. I use them to mark sections/important pages in my notebooks and textbooks, then usually stick others inside the notebooks/books to take notes on specific passages. I try to have lots of different sizes and colors on hand at all times, and a mix of the normal paper ones and some of the plastic-y ones. If you’re interested in a more detailed post about how I use sticky notes and the different sizes I use, let me know!

INDEX CARDS – I usually use whatever index cards I find at Target, Staples, or whatever other store I buy school supplies at. They’re usually not more than 50 cents for 100. For foreign languages, some STEM courses, history classes, and any other subject that requires you to learn the definitions of terms, these are a lifesaver. I took British Literature to 1700 (literature history class) and I don’t think I would’ve been able to get an A if I didn’t use notecards. We had quizzes every week, so after every lecture I would put the key terms on notecards so I could begin studying ASAP. I also use these for list-making sometimes, as well as for presentations and for taking notes for papers.

CARDSTOCK – I use cardstock to make study guides, and to write out outlines/plans for papers!

STAPLER – You may not actually need to have one of your own, but it’s helpful to remember to staple together readings or papers immediately after printing them out.

That’s all that I can think of for now! These aren’t anything too unusual, but just a list of supplies that I certainly use more in college than I did in high school.

[garkomedia1]

I Went to Georgetown Prep and Knew Mark Judge—and I Believe Christine Blasey Ford

The entrance to Georgetown Preparatory School in North Bethesda, Maryland. (AP Photo / Manuel Balce Ceneta)

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I have a story to tell about Mark Judge, Georgetown Prep, and Brett Kavanaugh, but it might not be the one you want to hear.

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It also might be too late. The horses have left the barn; the votes are all but counted; the Great Betrayal looms. Where are the men who might have stopped it, the boys I knew at Prep who never would have let this pass? You know who you are. You have sons and daughters, wives and lovers. You went to Prep for longer than I did and knew Brett better than I did. Maybe you don’t think he did what Christine says he did. I can respect that. But you were educated by Jesuits too. How could you not stand up, or quietly put in a call to Brett and lend him encouragement? Just a call: “Brett, wait a minute. You’re my friend. I believe you. But we need to look at this. We need to address it. Publicly, honestly, and slowly.” Friends don’t let friends hedge their way onto the highest court in the land.

I attended Prep from the fall of 1980 through the spring of 1982. Brett Kavanaugh and Mark Judge were one year above me, but I had overlapped with Kavanaugh in junior high; and because Judge and I lived in the same neighborhood, we carpooled to Prep for a year or two. They were both popular boys, and I remember them each with that mixture of fear and fondness that only a 14-year-old boy can feel toward well-liked upperclassmen. There is no question in my mind that Christine Blasey Ford is telling the truth.

I believe her not because I know attacks like the one she describes were regularly happening (I don’t and, for the record, I do not know what happened at the party described by Dr. Ford), or because I have some inside knowledge that Brett Kavanaugh was a sexual assailant (I don’t), or because Prep promoted a culture of drunkenness (it didn’t, though some students did drink and party to excess). Prep was a remarkable school, attended by kind boys, run by good teachers, supported by caring parents. For most of us, the drinking and partying were kept in check by sports, school plays, and studies. But I remember Brett, and Mark even more so, and I am convinced that Dr. Ford is telling the truth because of a very specific detail she shared about the night in question.

Dr. Ford puts Mark Judge in the room. She says he was there, watching, giggling, shouting, until he finally jumped on top of Brett and they all rolled off the bed—allowing Christine room to escape. In her testimony she said that she kept looking over at Judge, hoping he would help: “Mark seemed ambivalent, at times urging Brett on and at times telling him to stop. A couple of times, I made eye contact with Mark and thought he might try to help me, but he did not.” And then she notes that he jumped on the bed twice, the last time toppling them over and allowing her to escape. That’s why I believe her.

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I believe her because the detail takes me back, as immediately and powerfully as an odor, to the Mark Judge I knew in high school. He was one of those kids that other boys would whip up just to see what he’d crash into, a noisy kid with too much mouth on him, a kid who always managed to tip the bucket of boisterousness over into a pool of abusiveness—of self and others. He would be described in today’s therapy-laden culture as someone who “self-medicated” with alcohol. He watched The Benny Hill Show every night and tuned the radio dial every morning to whatever station was playing The Who. “Baba O’Riley” was a favorite. At pep rallies in the school gym before football games he’d come charging in and unabashedly make a fool of himself to get the howling and the cheers started. Maybe that sounds like just more prep-school grotesquerie, but it was also, for a 14-year-old, profoundly liberating. To be someone who didn’t give a damn. Someone who was confident enough to make a buffoon of himself in front of his peers. We’d be shoulder to shoulder in a group and he would rush up and literally throw himself into our midst, giggling and yelling, tackling someone and rolling off into the grass.

Dr. Ford’s description of Mark Judge’s behavior on that night rings absolutely true. When I read it I thought to myself, “Yep. That’s Mark Judge. That’s exactly how it would have gone down. You couldn’t make that up.” He was like a slobbering, overgrown puppy, now that I think of it. And many of the boys at Prep—including me—were actually quite fond of him.

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I remember one Friday at Prep after a football game that I missed for soccer practice. It was played against a school from inner-city DC, which meant that there were probably more African-American boys on our campus that single afternoon than in Prep’s entire 200-year history. The greatest privilege that class provides is a callow ignorance of class inequality, and we were callow, ignorant boys.

The racial tension on the campus that day was off the hook. It was nuts. Unstated, but palpable. This team from DC had bused out to the suburbs to play a bunch of rich white boys on their very lush, green, grassy home field… and they had lost. Abysmally. It was a rout. There was a very weird feeling on the campus. No one seemed happy about it; something felt off. I remember walking out of the gym carrying my book bag and crossing the driveway to get into the car with Judge and some others for the carpool ride home. One of the football players from the other team, a black kid obviously, was standing there, and he waved me over to him in kind of a friendly manner. I thought he wanted directions or something. So I walked up to him, and he walked up to me… and he just flat-out wound up and sucker-punched me in the gut and then kept walking across the driveway. It didn’t really hurt, but the shock of it was overwhelming. One of the most intense things I’ve ever experienced. I didn’t know what to do, so I just kept walking and pretended nothing had happened. Adolescent boys are weird, all of us.

Anyway, Mark Judge was at the car and he saw the whole thing happen. He looked at me and said, “Holy shit, man, are you OK?” And he kind of put his arm around me (very unusual that, in an all-boys prep school, something that would get you called a “faggot” in the 1980s), and he took my bag and threw it into the trunk.

I didn’t say much more than, “Yeah, I’m OK.” There wasn’t really anything more to say. On the way home we stopped and he bought some beer at a 7-11 with his fake ID and we opened the car windows and drank it while listening to The Who. We didn’t say much or talk about the incident. I just wanted to forget it. I didn’t tell anyone about it, not even my parents, mostly because I was so weirded out by the whole thing and even more because I felt like I deserved it. Who was I, who were we? Privileged, white, prep-school boys. We had the money, the cars, the country clubs, the green fields, the happy homes. We had all of it, and we deserved a collective punch in the stomach.

The following week I got called out of Latin class and into the dean of students’ office. The dean was a great guy, a superb individual, a former boxer, and a Jesuit. We called him Pappy Boyington because he was a doppelgänger for the character played by Robert Conrad in the TV series Baa Baa Black Sheep. He sat me down and very carefully and tenderly asked what had happened after the football game the previous Friday. I told him, we talked, and he led me through the confusion in a discussion of forgiveness and pain and injustice. It turns out that Judge had told him what he had seen, not to rat the other kid out, but simply because even Judge, this teenage drunk-ass idiot who would grow up to become a shitty writer with some very bad ideas indeed, had a soul. Had a humanity. Thought that someone needed some help.

With great trepidation I’ve scoured the calendars that Brett Kavanaugh made public, and I recognize many of the names on it. I went to Beach Week, 1982, though I stayed with a different group of boys than he did. It was the end of my sophomore year at Prep and I would be leaving the school in the fall because my family was moving to another state that summer. My parents felt bad about taking me out of a school I loved and in which I was thriving, and they had green-lighted my going to the eastern shore for the week. Yes: There was beer in the condo. There was also tackle football and swimming on the beach. A massive storm had just swept through the area, and we spent the first day frolicking and body-surfing in waves that carried the full force of the Atlantic Ocean behind them. The kind of waves that pick you up and drive you head-first into the sand, relentlessly and mercilessly, and from which you emerge spluttering and laughing.

When I saw that Brett had spent the weekend following at a friend’s house in Rehoboth, I shuddered. I don’t believe I joined him on that occasion, but I know that house. It belonged to the grandmother of a friend of mine. I had spent time with Brett Kavanaugh in it. It might have been in junior high. I can’t be sure. But I know we were still boys then, and we had spent time there as boys do. There were no parties or girls. There was no beer. In the mornings we rode bikes and ate jelly donuts and played basketball for hours—Brett was good—and then went inside and drank pitchers of iced water over Monopoly games that lasted into the evening. It was harmless. Innocent. In retrospect it is heartbreaking to imagine that soon after that week at the beach in 1982, something happened that would ruin lives and more than 35 years later convulse our national politics. I knew the men we’re discussing when they were boys. Our heroes were Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye and Phineas and Gene from A Separate Peace. We wanted to be like them.

I’m not telling this story to excuse Judge, or Kavanaugh, or an obscene culture that treats women as tasty morsels on a man’s groaning board. I believe Christine Blasey Ford. I’m with her. I admit that while watching her testimony I was thinking, “Please let this not be true. Please.” The cognitive dissonance was overwhelming, uproarious. And she stilled it. She didn’t hedge or prevaricate, or claim to remember things she doesn’t or misrepresent what she does. I’m not saying that anyone else is lying, but I’m certain she isn’t.

This is not an apology for guys or a claim that boys will be boys. I have a 10-year-old daughter and know very well what I would do to a boy who did what I believe was done to Christine. I also have a 7-year-old son and am often baffled by the aggressiveness and anger that seem latent within him, the swamp of emotion through which he is condemned as a male to wade on a daily, even hourly, basis. But I also remember some good things about Georgetown Prep. It wasn’t a gladiator school for proto-rapists. There were decent kids there too, and somewhere, I have to believe, we still have some decency in us. 

Who knows the truth, and who can tell it? Christine notes Mark’s ambivalence on that night in in 1982. Did he jump on the bed to join in the assault? Did he do so simply out of the wild teenage exuberance that was characteristic of him, with no clear motivation of any kind? Only Mark could say.

But I knew Mark, a little bit and for only a short time, and I’d like to think that a boy who began to participate in a sexual assault stepped back from the brink, even if for reasons of which he was only dimly aware. I believe that Mark Judge, even in his stupid, drunken state, recognized that something was going on that shouldn’t be going on. That he had a kind of person-to-person awareness of the claims of the other that was lacking in Christine’s assailant. That after having done many wrong things, Mark did one right thing. That he may have prevented the rape of a 15-year-old girl in 1982.

I’d like to think that that boy who comforted me, drove me home, and bought me a beer after I got punched in the gut one afternoon might be able to do another right thing, right now, and reach into his memory, sweep the intervening years away, and tell us the truth about what happened that night.

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A Sister’s Glance into Asperger’s - Alicia Hughes

Will: Age 4 Will floats down the tiled walkway of Best Buy. He makes whooshing noises as he weaves in-between shoppers with huge shopping carts. His homemade cape sails behind him as he gleefully pretends to be a superhero. He’s enjoying himself, even though a few minutes ago he was whining that his legs hurt. The image makes me recall the disaster we had last week when he had to go without it. We’d gone out with my Aunt Jen to Target to look at things Will would want for his birthday. Will was in a phase where everywhere we went he liked to pretend he was a super hero. My mom, seeing nothing wrong with a little imagination, had made him a cape out of my Dad’s old pillowcase with the letters “SW” (standing for Super Will) on the back in blue painters tape. He didn’t leave the house without it. So, of course, when we went to Walmart he insisted that he would wear his cape. My Aunt Jen was staunchly against this. I can vividly imagine how she frankly told my mother so when he first started wearing the cape around. “Do you let him wear that when you go out?” “Yeah of course. He loves it.” My Aunt Jen scoffs, “It’s a little silly don’t you think?” “He is four you know, he’s a little kid. He’s just having fun.” This seemed to quickly put an end of that conversation. But now, with our Mom not here, it was her grounds and her rules. And the last thing she was going to do was have Will walk down the aisles of Target wearing his cape. “You’re not wearing that into the store, Will. Leave it in the house.” She stood with her hands on her hips in front of the door. “No!” I can tell he’s starting to get upset, as his face turns red and mouth starts to turn downward into a pout. “Will, I’m not taking you into the store in that ridiculous cape. You look silly!” “No! No! No!” Will stomps his foot, as tears start to drip down his face, “It’s mine! No!” He’s starting to shake and I can tell a tantrum is coming. Will throws himself on the ground, kicking his legs and slamming his fists into the hardwood. He screams and sobs for fifteen minutes while my aunt stands there, trying to talk him out of the tantrum. “Will, you’re acting like a two-year-old. Do you want me to call your father? Do you think he’ll be happy with this? Four-year-olds don’t throw tantrums like this.” She reaches down to pick him up from the ground. Will is having none of that though, instead he turns and bites her arm. “Will!” She’s furious, I can see it in her eyes, “Jesus you don’t bite! That’s it I’m calling your father.” Later that night was the first time I heard a label put on Will. At seven, the term “anxiety disorder” didn’t have any impact on me. I had no clue what an anxiety disorder was, let alone that they’re the most common psychiatric disability in adults and children with approximately 40 million American adults suffering from one. When I was told that Will was going to go see a doctor I’d been confused. “Is Will sick?” “Not exactly, baby. Will’s just a little different than some of us and needs help from a different kind of doctor.” I had no clue this doctor was actually a psychiatrist.

Will: Age 7 At ten years old I’m not particularly thrilled to be going to some stuffy Christmas party where there would be more grownups than kids. But nevertheless I hurriedly climb out of our car and onto the pavement when we arrive at the party. The ground is dusted in snow, making the light from the streetlamps cast a glow across the entire neighborhood. As we walk up the sidewalk to the house my Dad goes over manners as he always does with Will. “…And what do we do if we don’t like the food they’re giving us? Will?” “Don’t complain?” He mumbles shuffling his feet through the slush. “You got it bud. Let’s work on remembering to try to look a person in the eye when they’re talking to you okay?” Will nods his head resolutely. “Alright.” We finally reach the front door and Will is excited to push the doorbell. My Dad gives him a look that says ‘you better only push it once’ and he listens, Will reaches up and pushes in the white plastic oval only once.  The door opens with Mrs. Jenneve on the other side. She ushers us all inside with an “It’s lovely to see you all!” following it up with “How have you been?” But before my parents have time to answer Will speaks up. “It smells in here.” He pinches his nose between his forefinger and his thumb. As it always does, my face heats up and my cheeks stain red. I nudge him in the side with my elbow “Will!” I whisper yell at him. He scrunches his face up at me in confusion mouthing, “What?” “It’s probably the food you’re smelling. I made a ham and a roast.” Mrs. Jenneve laughs through the incident, trying to play it off “I’ve been cooking all day it feels like! Jeff spent all morning…” I glance up at my parents as Mrs. Jenneve recounts the incident Mr. Jenneve had with the snow blower this morning. I can tell they’re both relieved she didn’t take Will’s comment the wrong way but I know that this will definitely be brought up later.

Will: Age 10 With July in full swing, I’m glad to finally be able to lie around all day in the air-conditioned house. For most kids, summer vacation is a much-needed getaway from the monotonous school lessons and homework. Not for Will. He’s been struggling with his reading, failing to reach his grade level in reading tests again and again. This is the second time I hear a label put on Will. When I’m told Will has Dyslexia, it’s something I understand. I’ve been told about it in passing at school, about how some kids can’t read because the letters and number get all jumbled up in their head. This time I can even acutely relate to Will, as I’m still struggling to choose the right way to write ‘b’ and ‘d’s and ‘w’ and ‘m’s at thirteen. After receiving no help from his teachers, my mom decides to take Will to a tutor.   Mrs. Parish is a solidly built woman with gleaming black hair and sharp eyes. I can tell even from the first meeting that she’s the perfect fit for Will. She takes his out bursts in stride and can talk him out of a negative state of mind. She can coax him into finishing just about any assignment most of the time, with her gentle voice and firm teaching. Will is particularly defeated today, staring gloomily at the words on the page that he just can’t put together to form a sentence. “It’s too hard. There’s too much left in this book, I can’t do it.” “Don’t think about it like that. Just take it page-by-page, chapter-by-chapter. If you only think about how much you have left you’ll just get discouraged. Tackle it piece by piece, instead of trying to handle it all at once.” Will went from reading at a 1st grade level to a 3rd grade level by that October.

Will: Age 12 The new school year is something Will always struggles with. Desperate to hang on to his sleep schedule and nonstop video game marathons, it always takes him at least a month to get back in the swing of things. This year he’s especially struggling with it. I’ve been hearing my parents have hushed conversations lately. They talk about pulling Will out of the private grade school that I had graduated from and that Will still attends. It’s gotten bad this year; the school won’t offer any of Will’s 504 accommodations. They yell at him for reading his tests out loud, but refuse to place him in a separate testing room. Will is struggling more than ever to keep up with the homework without any of the help he needs. After long nights of deliberating, they decide to transfer him to the public middle school at the end of September. Before Will starts his new school, my Mom decides Will should be reevaluated, that he probably needs more than a 504 plan.   This is the third and final time I hear a label put on Will. As a sophomore in high school, I’m not very familiar with the label “Asperger’s Syndrome”, but when I do a quick search of it through Google I recognize the listed behaviors: • limited or inappropriate social interactions • challenges with nonverbal communication coupled with average to above average verbal skills • inability to understand social/emotional issues or nonliteral phrases • lack of eye contact or reciprocal conversation • obsession with specific, often unusual, topics • awkward movements and/or mannerisms Will doesn’t take this label in stride as he did with the others, resenting a label that puts him on the autism spectrum. He’s furious to have to be in different classes than other students, desperate to not be labeled dumb. “Everyone in class is so dumb” he crosses his arms, “It’s too slow.” “It’s not forever, Will. If you work to reach your goals you can go back to a 504 plan instead of an IEP.” My Mom tries to explain to him, but he doesn’t listen. They continue arguing for another hour before my Dad gets frustrated enough to send him to his room. Soon enough I find out through my research into this new label that people who have one disability often times have other disabilities paired with it. I realize that even though Will has dyslexia and suffered through an anxiety disorder that these labels were all really different pieces of this new one.

Will: Age 16 As Will and I check out his schedule for his Junior year, it’s surreal to see AP Chemistry and AP American History printed underneath his name. Will may not be able to write a solid essay but he sure as hell can memorize facts, a talent that shines through in both history and chemistry. Today we drive along the 77 towards Darien Lake on our way to Warped Tour, something he’d been looking forward to for a month. We talk about the future, classes for his senior year and where he wants to go to college. As we sail by trees and cornfields, Will turns to me. “Hey Annie want to hear an interesting fact?” “Not really.” I say at first, tired of hearing irrelevant facts I have no interest in but cave in after seeing Will deflate. “Alright go ahead. What is it?” Will grins, “Did you know Karaoke means "empty orchestra" in Japanese?” “Really? No I didn’t, that’s interesting.” And Will’s face lights up in a smile while he goes into the meaning of other words in foreign languages. I nod along not really listening but letting him go on his random tangent, embracing what makes him different.

Alicia Hughes Nonfiction Oswego, N.Y.