#this is still in committee and hopefully will not get out

[novemberheart]

{overview} You get attacked. Does your pack step up for you?

{warnings} violence, blood, mentions of sexual content (no sexual abuse), fem reader, cursing, poly141, pain, crying, angst, a/b/o dynamics

Chapter 10 <- Chapter 11 -> Chapter 12

It was Simon’s last day of physical therapy. If he passed this he would be cleared to get back out in the field. On his way, he dropped you off at another Omega Committee event. This one you were actually excited about. It was a hike through the forest at the far end of the base. Priya wasn't there and you wished you had the presence of mind to have asked her for her number. But luckily you ran into Anais.

“You smell like peaches and cream. Anyone ever told you that?” she asked. The sound of Johnny yelling “peaches” instantly ran through your mind.

“A few, yeah.” you smiled.

“Well that's what I'm going to call you, PC for short.” she giggled. You had been called worse. Anais was a chatter. You didn't really mind though.

“Can I ask you something- something personal,” she whispered, leaning even closer to you. Curiosity killed the cat.

“How does it work with all five of you? Do they take turns-” she whispered.

“Oh my god, Anais.” you couldn't help but chuckle, despite the flaming of your cheeks. To be honest you were wondering the same thing.

“That was too much! I'm so sorry. I was just curious and I thought we were friends”-

“Anais it's alright. If I knew I probably wouldn't mind sharing a bit of info.” You assured. She relaxed.

“So you haven't?”

“No,” you responded truthfully.

“Have you ever?” she trailed off. You hadn't. You never really had the chance. You weren't sure if your pack members would approve of you spilling this information everywhere. “I'll take that as a no.” she snickered. You gave her a playful side-eye.

“Don’t worry about it. Took me forever to lose mine too.” she signed.

“It has not been forever!” you gasped, swatting at her. She laughed loudly causing a few heads to turn. Neither of you really cared.

“Just don't get your hopes up. First times are always terrible,” she advised, bumping you with her arm.

“Thanks for the pep talk.” you huffed.

“Do you have a favorite pack member yet?” she asked suddenly. You quickly shook your head. You enjoyed them all- truthfully. “I think if I was in a pack I would have my favorites. Hopefully one would be my alpha, but you never know,” she smirked.

“Can I ask you something?” you began.

“Shoot.”

“Did it hurt when you were marked?” you questioned.

“The first time, yes. I was in a long-term relationship with an alpha who wasn't entirely nice.”

“I'm sorry Anais.”

She quickly waved you off. “Don't worry about it. It was a long time ago. The second time, not as much. He did it during my heat and it only hurt for a day when I came out of it.” she explained.

“You’re strong Anais.” you said. She flashed you a smile.

“We’re omegas, PC. We have to be.”

The hike back was partly uphill, which was nobody's favorite.

“It was so beautiful when we left. When did it get so bloody hot out?” you panted.

“Look. The heat turns you English.” Anais chuckled through her own pants. You may have picked up a few phrases from the boys.

“Alright, everyone, take five!” One of the group leaders shouted. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. You had made it to the edge of the base, still a little under half a mile to get back.

“I’m going to go refill my water. You need some?” you asked. Anais flopped down on the grass, her arms blocking her face from the sun.

“No thank you.” she groaned, rolling onto her stomach. You made your way up to the front, intending to tell one of the leaders you were going to go get some water. You huffed as the same five omegas were consuming all their attention. “Whatever.” you sighed. You knew where it was, you had filled your water bottle up with Kyle a few days ago when he took you bird watching. Besides, Anais knew where you were.

You made your way quickly towards the buildings, going between them to the other side where the water fountain was.

“My thumbs gonna fall off,” you grumbled. You had to press and hold the button down hard. Kyle made it look easy. Your ears perked up at the sound of footsteps. Your head darted around not seeing anything. You figured you didn't need water that bad and began walking back.

You were abruptly thrown to the ground. Your shorts offered absolutely no protection against the rough gravel. The whole left side of your body slid against the ground, the force of the shove sending you a few feet. There was a low growl behind you and you acted purely on instinct. You felt a hand on your ankle pulling you back. You flipped yourself around, swinging your arm luckily catching a man's face with your claws. He howled, throwing himself away from you. You quickly shuffled backward trying to find your footing.

“Shit, that's 141.” the other man with him cursed. He grabbed the bleeding man pulling him away. Even though they were leaving, you knew you weren't safe. You were finally able to get your footing and began running around the corner, almost knocking Anais down in the process.

“What the fuck!” she shrieked. You were beginning to bleed at this point. It started dripping down your left leg, and right knee. It was starting to show through your shirt on your left side, your elbow, both your hands, and your chin. “It's okay, lovie.” she soothed. You were trying your hardest to keep it together, not wanting to create a scene, however, the pain and fear were making it very difficult.

“I can't go back to the group like this,” you whined. People will think you’re crazy.

“Don't worry. This wasn't your fault. Everyone will understand.” she soothed, gently pulling you along. You held your ground shaking your head. “PC you're bleeding a lot. You need help.” she insisted.

“I want my pack.” you whimpered. You pressed the backside of your hand against your mouth, your throat constricting.

“If you come with me you can get to them.” she urged. It was the push you needed. Luckily you didn't get very far before a group leader noticed and raced towards you.

“What happened?” he questioned. You ignored him, not really in the mood to talk to strange men, and pulled your backpack forward grabbing your phone out of the front pocket. You were lucky it hadn't shattered in the ordeal.

“Someone attacked her.” Anais growled, annoyed that he couldn't use the context clues.

“Hello?” Johnny had picked up after one ring. Hearing his voice made it impossible to hold back any tears. You sobbed into the phone. You heard him repeat your name on the other end, it growing louder and louder every time it left his lips.

“I need you, please. I'm not really sure where I’m at.”

“It's alright, Bon. I have your location pulled up on my phone, I'm near there. Just don't hang up,” he assured. Your chip. You breathed a sigh of relief, leaning against the side of the building.

“I think you should head back to the group.” The group leader directed towards Anais.

“No way,” she growled. “I’m not leaving her”

“Thank you.” you mouthed.

“Of course,” she whispered back. She leaned against the building with you. The rest of the group was still there, the other group leaders trying to prevent them from getting any closer. You didn't need to worry about that, as Johnny quickly rounded the corner, gravel flying under his feet. His mouth fell open at the state of you. His arms extended out and you quickly threw yourself at him, neither of you caring about any blood, sweat, or tears.

“I got you, baby,” he whispered, causing you to lose it again.

“I want to go home.” you whimpered, against his shoulder. Your legs were wrapped firmly around his waist, his arms squeezing you so hard you might have even more bruises.

“Alright.” he soothed. He nodded his head to the group leader and Anais.

“I'll come and visit you in a few days,” Anais called after you.

“Thank you.” you sputtered back. He didn't say a word but pressed his lips against the side of your head every few feet. He stopped setting you down causing you to sob louder. He peeled off his jacket quickly. Carefully dabbing your legs, where the most blood was coming out. He didn't want you to leave a trail of blood everywhere.

He went a back way, not wanting everyone to see his bloodied-up omega. Johnny carried you like you were a feather, weaving through buildings like it was just another day. Well to him it probably was.

Luckily too many people weren't hanging out around your home, the few that did were ignored or met with a snarl. You whimpered at the sound, all your senses on overdrive. You could tell how upset Johnny was, even though you couldn't smell him. He was shaking, growls escaping him nearly every moment. “Almost there.” he soothed. He made it out of the elevator, slamming his key card against the sensor and throwing open the door.

He set you down on the kitchen counter, making no move to pull away from you. He needed to calm you down first.

“S’alright,” he repeated against your head. “I need you to relax for me, lass. Gonna get you all taken care of, aye?” he shut his eyes tightly, resting his body against yours. Your hands dug into his shirt, and you growled at the inability to smell him. “I know what’ll help.” he soothed. He pulled away causing you to whine, and he darted into John's room grabbing a shirt out of his dresser. He brought it back, holding it up towards your face. You were about to bury your face in it but stopped.

“I don't want to get it bloody.” you sobbed.

“He won't mind, bon. Plus we know how to get blood stains out.”

You didn't need to be told twice, you buried your face into the fabric, nuzzling up to Johnny again. After a few moments, your breathing returned to normal and the tears fell quietly. You were quivering now, the pain making up for the loss of adrenaline. “Gonna tell the rest, okay?” he asked, causing you to nod.

He grabbed his phone out of his pocket.

-come home asap. Omega emergency

He tossed the phone on the counter, pulling away from you, sitting down in one of the stools so he was almost face-to-face with you.

“Need you to tell me what happened,” he demanded softly. He kept his jacket pressed against your legs and used a sleeve to stop the bleeding of your elbow.

“I went to get water,” you whispered. Your eyes burned, now dry. “I heard someone walking so I started to leave then all of a sudden someone pushed me to the ground.” his face twitched, his jaw clenching so hard you worried for his teeth. “He grabbed my ankle and started pulling me back, but I turned around and scratched him across his face. One of them said something about 141 and then they ran away,” you explained.

“That’s good. Did exactly what you should've. This happen by the water fountain?” he asked.

“Mhhh,” you confirmed, wondering what he was getting at. The door swung open.

“Holy shit,” Kyle hissed, eyeing you up and down. He was a bit out of breath and you wondered if he ran all the way here like Johnny had. “Let me see.” he insisted, nearly pushing Johnny out of the way. He peeled away the sweatshirt and pulled John's shirt out of your hands.

“Some bastards shoved her.” Johnny snarled.

“By where you took me to see the birds,” you spoke up.

“They've got cameras.” Kyle said exactly what Johnny was thinking. “Should get it pulled up for when the alphas come.” As if on cue the door slammed open again.

“Where is sh”- John cut himself off. “Let me see.” he demanded, pushing Kyle out of the way. If you weren't in pain you would've laughed.

“Someone pushed me, Johnny’s trying to find it on the cameras.” you caught him up to speed. Simon moved towards Johnny glaring over his shoulder at the device. “It was my fault,” you whispered to John. Everyone's head snapped to you. John had your face in his hands, looking over your chin. “I went away from the group to get some water. I should've stayed with the”-

“You don't get to take credit for this.” John sneered. “I don't care where the hell you are, who you are around, this should never happen to you. Understand?” he ordered.

“Yes, Alpha,” you responded quickly.

“Don't make it a habit though,” Kyle spoke, hovering back over by you and John.

“Got it,” Johnny said. John left you but Kyle stayed.

“I'm gonna take a few pictures of you, love. Gotta keep the evidence,” he explained.

“Okay,” you replied softly. Your eyes trained on the three men watching the video. Johnny's face curled again, gripping his phone so tight his knuckles were white. Simon and John appeared to be fairly level-headed, trying to pick up on every detail.

“Record it before someone deletes it,” John instructed. John came back to you, pressing his lips against your forehead. “I’m going to go take care of a few things. Me and Simon’ll be back soon,” he spoke through gritted teeth, taking an inhale of your scent to prevent himself from shaking. He pulled away, Simon following behind him like a dog. “Send me the pictures after.”

“You did good, pup.” Simon praised, heading out the door with John.

Hi friends! Hope you enjoyed this chapter! Chapter 12 will be up in two days! See you then! 🧡

[koiukiy-o]

orphic; (adj.) mysterious and entrancing, beyond ordinary understanding. ─── 007. the paper.

-> summary: when you, a final-year student at the grove, get assigned to study under anaxagoras—one of the legendary seven sages—you know things are about to get interesting. but as the weeks go by, the line between correlation and causation starts to blur, and the more time you spend with professor anaxagoras, the more drawn to him you become in ways you never expected. the rules of the academy are clear, and the risks are an unfortunate possibility, but curiosity is a dangerous thing. and maybe, just maybe, some risks are worth taking. after all, isn’t every great discovery just a leap of faith? -> pairing: anaxa x gn!reader. -> tropes: professor x student, slow burn, forbidden romance. -> wc: 3.3k -> warnings: potential hsr spoilers from TB mission: "Light Slips the Gate, Shadow Greets the Throne" (3.1 update). main character is written to be 21+ years of age, at the very least. (anaxa is written to be around 26-27 years of age.) swearing, mature themes, suggestive content.

-> a/n: this chapter is a bit dry, and incredibly fast paced, the angst lords held my shoulders gently and demanded my cooperation, and who am i to refuse... > unfortunately not a good angst writer. hopefully the next chapter fills in some gaps :P -> prev. || next. -> orphic; the masterlist.

Professor Anaxagoras stood at the front of the lecture hall, one hand braced against the edge of the desk, the other holding a thick folder of notes he hadn’t opened.

“—the symposium will run the final weekend of the month,” he said. “Attendance is limited to invitees and selected applicants. Presenters will include faculty, visiting lecturers, and a handful of external contributors with the appropriate security clearances.”

You glanced up from your notes. Kira stopped doodling in the margin of her page. Even Ilias straightened a little.

Professor Anaxagoras continued, eyes flicking briefly to the back of the hall, as if confirming something invisible. “Among the guests: Socrippe of the Erythrokeramists, whose work on semiotic containment theory in sacred structures should be familiar to most of you—”

“...and, by unfortunate persistence of committee will,” Anaxagoras said with unmistakable restraint, “Cerces, formerly of this faculty.”

That got a few scattered reactions—raised brows, a murmur or two.

“You may know her from her former lectures in phenomenology. Some of you”—his eyes passed over the hall with unreadable stillness—“have studied under her. You will find no one more exacting in her critique of academic laziness.”

You don’t realize you’re holding your breath until you let it out. The name lingers in the air.

“She specializes in ontology, and approaches metaphysics through embodied cognition. Expect poetry disguised as philosophy,” he said. “Or vice versa.”

Your pen stilled on the page.

Kira nudged you lightly under the desk, eyes narrowed in curiosity.

“She also,” Anaxagoras added, tone flatter now, “insists on calling the panel a ‘dialogic constellation,’ so prepare yourselves.”

Ilias made a face. “What does that even mean?”

“She thinks it sounds more participatory,” Anaxagoras replied, already turning toward the desk, “though experience suggests otherwise.”

“Socrippe of the Erythrokeramists,” he said, “representing a school that approaches spiritual inquiry through artistic interpretation. They concern themselves with the soul, with perception, and with questions of embodied truth—often through mediums most of you would not consider academic. They also lead artistic education across much of the western scholastic network, claiming creativity is essential to understanding.”

“Apuleius,” he said last. “Of the Nodists. Their position is… less subtle. They believe all things are numbers. Not metaphorically—literally.”

He turned back to the room, chalk still in hand.

“To the Nodists, mathematics is not a tool, but a medium through which spiritual logic is expressed. They treat equations as divine revelation. Apuleius is their youngest speaker in a decade. He may attempt to convert you.”

A ripple of laughter this time. Ilias muttered something about cult vibes.

He went on, with a slight pause, “Expect graphs. Animated ones.”

A quiet wave of laughter rippled through the room.

“The application window closes by the end of this week. No extensions. Submission requires a statement of focus and relevant academic record.”

You’re still in your seat by the time lecture ends, notebook open but mostly ignored now, letting the noise filter out around you.

You shift, elbow brushing Kira’s as she taps the cap of her water bottle against the edge of the desk. Ilias, who’s been half-slumped over his notebook for most of the lecture, perks up.

“You still applying?” Ilias asks Kira—too quickly, voice a little too bright, like he’s rehearsed it and still tripped over the delivery.

Kira glances at him. “I am.”

He blinks. “Wait, really?”

She nods, casual as ever. “Yeah.” Her eyes flick to you, unreadable for half a second. 

Ilias sits up straighter like he’s just been hit by lightning. “Oh. Uh. Cool. That’s cool. I mean, I was thinking about it. Just, you know—my grades, maybe not entirely be optimal for that kind of thing… But hey—if you’re applying, maybe I will too. Strength in numbers, right? Mutual suffering.”

Kira smirks. “If you make it, I’ll bake you a whole cake.”

“You’re underestimating how motivating that is,” Ilias says, already pulling out his tablet like he’s going to start the application right then and there.

“I’m hoping everyone else applies too,” she says, “Would be nice. Like a little field trip.”

From behind you, unhurried footsteps and an exaggerated yawn cuts through– low, rough, clinging to sleep.

You glance back to see Phainon making his way down from the last row, cardigan half off one shoulder, white shirt rumpled, one eye still closed against the light. Behind him, Mydei trails with quiet ease, carrying two bags like it was second nature. 

Phainon drops into the seat in front of you with a thud and immediately turns sideways to slump across your desk like gravity has personally betrayed him.

“If anyone asks,” he mutters, “I was here the whole time.”

“Obviously,” you say, nudging his arm off your notebook. “Nothing says ‘academic presence’ like arriving in slow motion after the lecture ends.”

He makes a muffled noise that might be agreement, despair, or both.

“You missed a lot,” Kira offers, lightly. “Prof talked about the symposium.” 

Phainon lifts his head just enough to look at you. “You’re actually applying, right?”

You blink. “No? For the millionth time, I am not.”

Mydei slides onto the table in front of you, legs swinging gently off the edge. He rests his chin on his hand and surveys the group like a tired tutor trying to gauge who did the reading. “I applied last night. I figured you might change your mind after…” His gaze cuts toward the hallway—where Anaxagoras had been—

You stiffen.

And then, as if summoned by the gods of chaos, Ilias flails into the conversation with all the grace of a brick in freefall. “I know made a legally binding promise not to bring it up, and I’ve honored that oath under duress.”

You close your eyes. “Ilias—”

“But someone else brought it up!” he continues, pointing a wildly accusatory finger at Mydei. “So technically, this is no longer my fault and I am absolutely allowed to say— he touched your hand!”

You drop your forehead to the table with a dull thunk.

“Ilias,” you mutter into the woodgrain.

“I saw it!” he insists, wide-eyed. “AnaxaY/N fingertip touch was monumental! And you– you went full system crash. I saw the cursor spinning-buffering wheel-blue screen of existential crisis all over your face!”

Kira raises an eyebrow, barely turning her head. “You’re not wrong,” she says, voice even. “It was painfully obvious, too.”

You shoot her a look. “Whose side are you on?”

She shrugs, unbothered. “I’m just saying. You paused while handing the phone back to him like the fate of the world depended on it.”

Ilias gasps in vindication. “Thank you! Finally, someone sees the truth.”

Kira takes a long sip of water, then adds lightly, “Besides, I think it’s sweet. Tragic, probably. But sweet.”

You scoff. “It was just an email.”

“Sure,” she says, her eyes glinting.

Ilias points at her, triumphant. “This is why Kira’s the only one here qualified to interpret sexual tension.”

You press your palms to your face. “Please stop saying sexual tension.’”

“Why?” Kira asks, tone playful now. “It’s starting to feel... accurate.”

Mydei lets the laughter die down before turning his attention back to you. His voice is gentler this time, quieter. “You don’t have to explain yourself. But if you are going to change your mind, make sure it’s because you want to. Not because someone brushed your hand and your brain rewrote its operating system.”

Your mouth opens, then closes.

“That’s not what happened, and I’m not changing my mind.” you mutter.

Ilias says from the table, still face-down. “As if I didn’t see you walk into a wooden beam afterward.”

Kira flicks a piece of bread at his head. “Enough.”

Mydei grins, stretching languidly as he slides back off the table. 

Phainon makes a low noise, something between scandal and amusement. “But seriously, a weekend of intellectual sparring in a windowless auditorium doesn’t interest you?”

Ilias gives him a look. “That can’t be a selling point.”

“I think Honour Roll’s applying,” Kira murmurs, nodding her head towards a guy taking notes… after class ended? “Had his hand raised before prof even finished the sentence.”

Ilias gives her a look. “Isn’t he the one who thought metaphysics was ghost biology?” 

You side-eye her. “He defined Cartesian dualism as a debate between two guys named Descartes.”

“He looked so proud, too.” 

She hides a grin behind her bottle. “At least he’s consistent. So,” Kira says slowly, “should we all apply and make this a collective breakdown?” and though she addressed the entire table, her eyes were fixed on you.

You raise a brow. “I just said I wasn’t applying.”

She shrugs. “People say a lot of things before peer pressure.”

“I am alarmingly immune to group influence,” you say.

Mydei tilts his head at you. “You’re really out?”

“For now,” you say, and tap your pen against the edge of the desk. “Not every mystery needs a dissertation.”

Kira leans toward the desk, elbow resting against the edge. “What’s a symposium even like?”

Mydei shrugs one shoulder, eyes still on the page. “Professor Anaxagoras never goes to those actually,” he says, matter-of-fact. “Too many vague theories and recycled arguments.” He mocks, albeit accurately. “Said it’s a waste of time.”

You pause, the words settling in.

You look at the open notebook in front of you, still mostly blank. Outside, sunlight drifts in across the floor, catching the edge of a scuffed boot, the curve of Kira’s pen, the fold of Phainon’s sleeve where he’s halfway to sleep again.

Mydei doesn’t elaborate, and Phainon doesn’t ask. He’s already slouching deeper in his chair, arms folded behind his head, eyes drifting shut again. “Wake me if enlightenment knocks,” he mutters.

Mydei flips his pen between his fingers. “If it does, it won’t be for you.”

The room’s mostly empty now, the last of the footsteps fading into the corridor outside.

You start gathering your things too. Kira stretches, rotating her wrist where she'd been fidgeting with her bottle cap. She nudges Ilias’ ankle lightly with her foot. “Come on.” 

Ilias startles like he wasn’t expecting to be addressed directly. “Me? You want me to–? Okay, yes. I am coming. Coming is what I’m doing.”

He scrambles to gather his things, nearly knocking over his water bottle in the process. Kira just watches, expression unreadable.

He swings the strap over his shoulder, catches it on the back of the chair, and nearly falls backward trying to recover.

Kira raises an eyebrow. “You good?”

“I’m excellent,” he says, voice going high and too fast. “Never better.”

She starts walking. “Right.”

He follows like a loyal, over-caffeinated puppy. “Did you know that pringles fit perfectly in a cylindrical tube because they’re hyperbolic paraboloids plotted over a circular domain?” 

Kira, mid-sip of her tea, blinks at him. "... Do you even know what that means?"

Ilias freezes for a split second, his eyes widening slightly. His hand hovers awkwardly over his fries, which he suddenly seems much less interested in. “Uh. I mean... yeah, totally. It’s... it’s like geometry or something.”

He clears his throat, trying to recover. “You know, math... shapes... real smooth stuff—yeah, I read about it somewhere.”

Kira watches him for a moment, her lips curling into a knowing smirk. “Sure you did.”

Ilias sighs dramatically and shrugs, defeated. "Okay, fine, maybe I don't exactly know what I’m talking about. But you were impressed, right?"

Their voices drift toward the door, Kira’s dry commentary punctuated by Ilias’s increasingly flustered rebuttals.

You’re still smiling faintly when your phone buzzes.

It’s an email.

From: Anaxagoras Subject: (blank) “Student, Appreciate your thoughts—if and when you have them. Regards, Anaxagoras”

That’s all.

Student?

You stare at the files attached:

Cerces_Entanglement.pdf Cerces_SubjectiveStructure.pdf

You’re still not applying. You haven’t changed your mind.

But you download them anyway.

It’s past midnight when you finally open it.

You’d told yourself you were just going to skim. One paragraph, maybe two—enough to say you’d looked. Enough to reply, if he ever asked.

But the first page pulls you in.

Cerces doesn’t write like she’s explaining something. She writes like the truth’s already there, and you’ve simply forgotten how to see it. The language is dense, sure, but it unfolds—slowly, precisely—like it was meant for people willing to do the work.

She makes a case for perception not as a filter, but as a force. Subjective experience shaping what is real, not just coloring it.

You don’t even realize how long you’ve been reading until the cursor on your half-finished assignment blinks back at you, still waiting. You blink down at your screen. Somehow, you’re already halfway through a side note you didn’t plan to write, tying Cerces’ structure-of-thought models to the assignment. 

You hadn’t meant to write that. You hadn’t meant to use any of it.

But here you are.

The question was already formed in your mind before his chalk reached the lower edge of the board the next day.

You didn’t raise your hand at first. You waited for the shift in tone he always used to signal the end of the main lecture arc. Waited for that half-step back from the board, the pivot, the glance across the room to see who had been keeping up. And when it came, you lifted your hand.

“Professor?” you said.

Anaxagoras didn’t sigh. He didn’t frown. He simply turned his head slowly, gaze catching on you with the kind of mechanical precision that suggested your voice had registered—barely.

You didn’t waver. “I had a question about the holographic encoding model,” you said, steady. “If we assume memories are distributed across a system rather than stored locally—does that imply the memory itself could exist as a form of interference pattern? One that reassembles partially, depending on context? Or is it more likely that what we call noise is actually unreadable signal?”

There was a beat of silence.

You felt it ripple across the room, a collective moment of attention, not quite tension—but close. Ilias, one row behind, sat up straighter. Kira had already lowered her pen, watching.

Anaxagoras didn’t speak right away.

He reached instead for the edge of the podium, adjusting a stray paper with unnecessary precision—his movements precise, composed, almost too still. The board still glowed behind him, but his eyes didn’t return to the projection. They flicked to you—once.

And then away again.

“Review the Feynman boundary analog,” he said flatly. “It’s in the assigned material.”

You blinked. “I did, but that doesn’t address the noise threshold—if the scale is nonlinear, wouldn’t that change the coherence—”

“You’ll find the constants you’re referring to in the last section,” he said, already turning back to the board. His voice held no edge, no invitation. “Try reading more closely.”

The dismissal was cold.

You sat there, notebook open, page half-filled with the equations you’d been working through during his lecture. The words hit sharper than they should’ve. 

“I did read it,” you said, softer than you meant to. Your voice sounded smaller in the large hall, like it didn’t belong.

Anaxagoras didn’t look back. He nodded once—mechanically. “Then read it again.”

No further comment. No elaboration.

He returned to his notes as if the exchange hadn’t happened at all.

You sat there, motionless, your pen frozen midair. Slowly, you closed your notebook, spine pressing against your fingers until it hurt. You didn’t speak again for the rest of the class. Just stared at the fading diagrams on the board, heart thudding low in your chest.

No rebuttal. No protest.

The cafe is buzzing with the usual mid-afternoon rush, students hunched over their laptops, friends chatting in the corner booths. But as you approach the counter, you can’t shake the knot in your stomach.

Kira is behind the register, her usual bright smile faltering slightly when she sees you. Her eyes narrow, a silent question forming as she taps your order into the system. You force a smile, trying to push past the unease creeping up on you.

“One medium cappuccino, please,” you say, voice steady enough to fool anyone who might be listening.

She presses the button to start the machine, but her gaze lingers on you, studying you in the way only she can. “You good?” she asks, her tone soft but sharp with concern. She’s already noticed—how could she not? The lines between your brows, the way you hold yourself too stiffly–

You shake your head slightly, waving it off. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just tired, you know? Assignment stuff.”

She doesn’t buy it for a second. You can see it in the way her lips press together, in the small shift in her posture as she pours the espresso, then expertly steams the milk. 

Once she finishes, she slides the coffee cup toward you. “Take a seat,” she says, her voice more firm now. “I’ll be right over.”

You try to protest, but she’s already grabbing a chair and pulling it out next to you before you can stop her. She’s nothing if not persistent.

You set your laptop down as she sits beside you, her expression gentle but resolute.

“So,” Kira says, casually glancing at your screen. “Tell me what’s up.”

You give her a half-hearted smile, opening your laptop again but not really focusing on it. “Seriously, Kira. I’m fine.”

She doesn’t budge, her gaze never leaving you as she tilts her head, considering you with all the patience she can muster. “You know you can be honest with me, right?”

You exhale slowly, your fingers hovering over the keys as you consider how much to say. The truth feels too tangled, too messy to admit out loud. But Kira is waiting, and she’s not going to let you distract yourself with your work.

With a frustrated sigh, you finally lean back in your chair and close the laptop. “It’s Anaxagoras,” you mutter, your eyes dropping to the table. “He’s just being weird. You saw him in class today, didn’t you?” 

Kira’s eyes soften, but she doesn’t say anything right away. She lets you breathe, lets the words settle into the air before she speaks. 

“I noticed. But you know he’s difficult to read,” she says gently. 

After a brief pause, you push her hand aside and open your laptop, scrolling until you find the email, still sitting there like a little landmine in your inbox. “He sent me this after I told him I’m not applying to attend the symposium the other day.” You flick the screen toward her.

Kira leans in, reading quickly. “‘Appreciate your thoughts—if and when you have them.’ Huh.”

“What?”

She gives you a flat look. “What did you reply?”

You blink. “I didn’t, yet.” 

“…Why not?”

“I—I didn’t know what to say?” you protest, a little too defensively. “It’s good. It’s actually really good. But if I just emailed back like, ‘Nice paper, Professor,’ I’d sound like an idiot. I was gonna sit with it. Think. Wait until I had something meaningful to say.”

Kira squints. “And how long has it been?”

You hesitate. “Two days.”

She stares at you. “Okay. So maybe that’s why he’s being cold?”

You blink. “What do you mean?”

“I mean—maybe he’s sulking.” A sudden smirk takes over her face.

You blink slowly. “...Sulking?”

Kira nods, casual as anything. “Mhm.”

You stare at her. “Why would he be sulking?”

She lifts a shoulder. “I dunno. You didn’t email him back.”

You frown, puzzled. “But... why would that make him upset?”

Kira looks at you like you just asked why water is wet. “’Cause he sent you a paper.”

“I know, but I’m sure he sends papers to people all the time.”

“Yeah,” she says, like that proves her point. “But he sent it to you. With a note. That said he’d appreciate your thoughts.”

You look down at your laptop, then back at her. “…But I haven’t had time to really sit with it yet. I didn’t wanna reply with something shallow like ‘cool’ or whatever.”

Kira nods like that makes sense, but only a little. That annoying grin is still plastered on her face. “Still. You didn’t say anything. And now he’s ignoring you.”

You tilt your head. “But that doesn’t mean he’s upset. Maybe he was just in a bad mood today.”

She squints a bit. “Yeah, but... he’s usually more focused on you. You know?”

You furrow your brow, trying to backtrack in your head. “... It was just an email?”

Kira shrugs. “Still.”

You nod slowly, still not really getting it, but also kind of… getting it.

Kira pats your arm. “You’re smart. But you’re kinda dumb, too.”

You blink at her. “Thanks?”

“Anytime,” she says, already standing to get back to the counter.

“…Alchemy,” Anaxagoras begins without preamble, voice steady, measured. “Despite the clichés, was never simply the pursuit of gold. It was the architecture of transformation—externally, yes. But also internally. Philosophically. Psychologically. In some theories, even mnemonically.”  

You glance up.  

Anaxagoras, meanwhile, walks slowly across the platform, gesturing without flourish. “Certain alchemic schools treated memory not as record, but as relic—something to be unearthed, transmuted, and occasionally… relived.”  

He pauses.  

“Cerces, for example, argues this too,” he adds, almost lazily, eyes skimming across the rows of students. “Though she does not call it alchemy.”  

And then—without warning—his gaze lands on you. Not unkind. Not pointed. But undeniably direct.  

“In one of her papers, she proposes a model where memory isn’t stored, but stabilized—by narrative. That stability is fragile, vulnerable to external disruption. So,” he says, as if this is all perfectly routine, “what happens when that narrative fails?”  

You blink. Slowly.  

“Chaos,” you say, forcing a bored tone, not bothering to lift your head. “Or a very dramatic existential crisis. Depending on your level of caffeine.”

You don’t look at him. But out of the corner of your eye, you catch the slight twitch of his mouth. Not quite a smile. But close enough.

You swear his voice is the slightest bit drier when he continues.

“Chaos, yes. Though Cerces might use the word collapse.”  

You flip a page in your notebook, already scribbling something down before you realize what you're doing.

Ilias leans in, whispering from the side of his mouth. “You didn’t tell me the secret midnight reading was actually good.”  

You keep writing. “Shut up, Ilias.”  

You would have replied sooner. You really would have.

It wasn’t because the paper wasn’t interesting—it was, annoyingly so. Precise and elegant and infuriatingly thought-provoking in the way only he could be. But you didn’t know what to say. Not yet.

Opening your laptop, you now see 1 unread message from: Anaxagoras@thegrove.edu Subject: RE: – Curious if any of the arguments held up under your scrutiny. —A.

Half of you wishes you could just smash your laptop (or your head) into the wall, but the other half of you is desperately trying to compose yourself long enough to make sense of what you’re about to do.

Before you know it, you have your phone pressed to your ear with a death grip. 

You check the time: 3:07 a.m.

Then you stare at the blinking cursor on your laptop screen. 

It rings six times before a groggy voice picks up.

“…What?”

“I need your help.”

A pause. Then Ilias exhales, clearly still half-asleep. “Are you in immediate danger?”

“Academic danger, if that counts,” you admit. “I’m trying to write an email to Professor Anaxagoras. I just… I’m stuck.”

There’s a long silence. You hear the creak of bedsprings.

“You called me at 3 a.m. to help you write an email?”

“Yes.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes,” you say again, calmly. “I’ve drafted five versions, none of them feel right. I’m overthinking the phrasing.”

“…Okay. What's the context?”

“I read through the papers he sent me. He followed up this afternoon and asked for my thoughts. I don’t want to send something too short, but I also don’t want it to sound like I’m trying too hard. I just want to sound competent.”

“Okay, reasonable. What have you written so far?”

“I’m worried I sound like I’m trying to seduce him. Sending an email that sounds like a confession of undying love for someone who doesn’t even know your middle name doesn’t seem appropriate.”

He groans dramatically. “Just read the damn drafts. I’m getting secondhand anxiety here.”

“‘Dear Anaxagoras, I hope this email finds you well. I have carefully reviewed your paper, and—’”

He cuts you off with a loud snort. “That’s the seduction version?”

You stare at the phone screen. “...I can’t tell anymore.”

“I’m crying, oh my god. Okay, what’s next?”

You glance at the most recent draft and read aloud: “Dear Professor Anaxagoras, thank you for forwarding the studies. I’ve reviewed them and would appreciate the opportunity to discuss a few thoughts, if you’re available.”

A pause. Then: “That sounds… fine? Why don’t you like it?”

“It feels a little generic. I don’t want it to sound like a template.”

“Well, you are emailing your professor. It’s not supposed to sound like a novel.”

You lean back in your chair, running a hand across your face. “I know. I just keep second-guessing the tone. I want to acknowledge that I’ve read and thought about the material, not just skimmed it.”

“Okay. Then add a sentence. Mention something specific.”

You nod slowly. “Maybe something like: ‘The section regarding recursive stability in cognitive patterning was especially relevant to my current work on--”

“Stop right there. It’s 3 a.m., I don’t have the brain cells to translate Nerd Latin.”

You adjust the wording slightly on your screen. “I think this version works.”

“Good. Send it.”

You hesitate for a moment, rereading. “Alright.”

You hit the button.

There’s a long, terrible silence. You stare at your inbox, watching the email disappear into the ether.

Ilias groans lightly. “There. Done. Crisis averted. I’m going back to sleep.”

“Thanks,” you say. “Sorry for waking you.”

“Night.” Click.

-> next.

taglist: @starglitterz @kazumist @naraven @cozyunderworld @pinksaiyans @pearlm00n @your-sleeparalysisdem0n @francisnyx @qwnelisa @chessitune @leafythat @cursedneuvillette @hanakokunzz @nellqzz @ladymothbeth @chokifandom @yourfavouritecitizen @sugarlol12345 @aspiring-bookworm @kad0o @yourfavoritefreakyhan @mavuika-marquez @fellow-anime-weeb927 @beateater @bothsacredanddust @acrylicxu @average-scara-fan @pinkytoxichearts @amorismujica @luciliae @paleocarcharias @chuuya-san @https-seishu @feliju @duckydee-0 @dei-lilxc @eliawis @strawb3rri-bliss

(send an ask/comment to be added!)

[anistarrose]

volunteer for progressive ballot initiatives, make republicans scream and cry

The worst bill yet of this Trump administration just passed, so we're all rightly fucking pissed. We all want to fucking Do Something, and there are a lot of options, which are generally not mutually exclusive. I am here to passionately suggest just one of the many Things You Can Do, available in over half the U.S. states, which is the ballot initiative — circumventing our shitass politicians to make progress directly, with laws that citizens design.

Now, how do you get involved with a ballot initiative, you may ask? Well, to get started from square one:

Check this list to see if your state allows citizen-initiated ballot measures (to create state laws, or to amend the state constitution). It's only about half the states, but there's more red states and swing states than you'd think.

If your state's on the list, look up "[state name] ballot initiatives 2025," and the same for 2026, and peruse the results. See if there are any ballot initiatives you strongly agree with, perhaps aiming to do what your state's politicians would never do.

Look up the organizers' websites, and see if they need volunteers to collect signatures for the initiative to get on the ballot. A well-organized initiative will have an online sign-up page, and a simple, accessible, virtual training process. If they already have the signatures, and they're on the ballot in 2025, they may instead need canvassers to get out the vote. Either way, is where you come in.

For example, if you're in Michigan, you might search for ballot measures, and see a news result about getting utility corporations' dark money out of politics. From there, you can easily find Michiganders for Money Out of Politics: the coalition currently recruiting volunteers to help collect over 300,000 signatures, so that the initiative can be approved for the 2026 ballot. If you're in Ohio, you might see news about Ohio Equal Rights, aiming to protect transgender Ohioans and other marginalized people with their ballot initiative. If you're in Oklahoma, you might come across Raise the Wage Oklahoma, which has gathered enough signatures to appear on the ballot, but will certainly need canvassers for the special election in June 2026. Most states with a citizen-initiated process see initiatives almost every year (including the swing and red states listed above!), and you'll never know for sure unless you look.

Of course, you'll statistically also find ballot initiatives that suck ass, because conservatives with too much time on their hands can initiate ballot measures, too. These are... technically still good to be informed about, so you can get a head start warning people not to sign the petitions or to vote for them! Evidently, Colorado voters will want to warn people not to fall for deceptive arguments about right-to-work laws, for example — to hopefully prevent said issue from being placed on the ballot, and if not, then to simply defeat it at the ballot box.

All in all, a lot of statewide bright spots in 2022 and 2023's elections came from ballot measures. Massachusetts taxed millionaires, Ohio and Michigan protected abortion rights, Nevada passed the state's Equal Rights Amendment, and more. All this progress rested on the backs of volunteers, who first collected signatures to qualify these initiatives for the ballot, followed by get-out-the-vote canvassing to ensure they would actually pass.

Collecting signatures is easy to learn, and it can be simple to do your small or medium-sized part — hell, I'm personally too disabled to stand outside soliciting signatures for hours in hot weather, but I absolutely can and will get the signatures of every single like-minded person I already know in my state. That's allowed! That's a thing ballot committees actively find helpful! And people doing their small part to collect signatures, frankly, is the only reason that any good policy has been made in my state in over a decade. That's not hyperbole. So join me — and tell your representatives to go fuck themselves, while we create better fucking laws on our own. Republicans already screamed and cried so much when states did that for abortion and millionaire taxes and civil rights. We can keep making them scream and cry. With this method, and many, many other ones.

[crowttore]

HIII AUPHIE!!! i'm so excited about your writing ask event! if you are still taking requests, i would love to see you write for Cyno + maybe an academic rivals trope? thank you so much wahhh and please take plenty of breaks as you work on these! <3

Aaaaaa hi Ze! Thank you so much for dropping by! Little known crow trivia, I had a short phase of being down bad for Cyno >w<

Tags: Cyno + reader, implied modern au, academic rivals (to friends?), stressed reader, puns, 700 words

"Look at that," a dry voice came from behind you, immediately causing a knee-jerk reaction as you slammed your notebook shut, "I didn't have you penned down as a cheater."

Escape was impossible once Cyno had locked his sights on someone, so what was there to do except swallow the already building annoyance at being disturbed (especially when your head was already heavy from the lack of oxygen in the dusty library) and face him head on?

"Maybe because I've never cheated, Mr. self-declared disciplinary committee," you scowled as he all too casually sat down across the table, "and if you're just here to spout baseless accusations, then I'll consider it a shoddy attempt at sabotaging me."

The ensuing silence was all too brief, Cyno's sigh cutting through the air as lightning from a clear sky. "No, see," he began, deft fingers snatching your pen, "I wasn't referring to the existence of any previous misdeeds, I substituted the word 'pegged' for 'penned' to make a play on your usage of a red pen, typically used by professors for corrections, and the unflattering connotations with a student carrying one around. This would be funny precisely because you're known to never step off the line."

Almost agonizingly slow, his words travelled from the point of contact at your outer ear and inward, feeling as though they dissolved everything in their path.

"That's not-" you huffed in indignation when warm fingers wrapped around your wrist, preventing the attempt at taking back your pen, "you said 'penned down' which would make any reasonable listener think of 'pinned down' which instead makes it an accusation with bad pronunciation. No one says 'pegged down'..."

To your great disbelief, so great in fact that you couldn't help but look around to check if any of your peers were watching, Cyno pulled out a small stack of post-it notes and began scribbling away with your pen.

His name left your lips almost immediately, and you swatted the uneven white bangs to the side so you could properly look him in the eye as you spoke, tone somber enough to hopefully get the point across. "You might have time to mess around, but I don't."

"Because your grades have been dropping," he supplied, lacking the glimmer of mischief in his eyes that others swore they never saw.

"Because the subjects are increasing in complexity," you snapped, briefly wondering if your teeth would crumple from how tight your jaw was clenched. The pen would surely have snapped had it been in your hand instead of his.

Cyno merely clicked his tongue while leaning back with his arms crossed. It was a foolish attempt at lying, his freakish sixth sense no doubt having already caught a million tells giving you away. But how were you supposed to admit to your own insignificance in front of the one person you'd always taken pride in challenging?

Feeling the telltale tightening of your chest and the urge to tap your foot against the polished floors, you knew you were about to dig your own grave a little deeper. "It was three points, Cyno, not like your scores never fluctuate."

Maybe you truly should dig your own grave, at least then no one would be able to see the blood rushing to your cheeks at a rapid pace.

Your back straightened with every inch Cyno leaned towards you, his expression far too attentive, "but I know when I've done a poor job. Usually you would too. I've never seen you look so shocked, and now you're burying yourself in work? Something is-"

"Everything is fine," you interjected, sweeping the scattered books and loose paper into your back.

"Good," Cyno continued, "then I trust there'll be no objections to following me bag," he effortlessly moved beside you and picked up your bag before there was time to protest, "and helping me revise for the test next week. I can offer dinner as compensation."

Surprise coursed through your body, mind reeling to make sense of the offer. You'd never considered him more than an acquaintance, an infuriating one at that, not nearly close enough to make such a considerate offer.

"Fine. But if the food is bad, I'll give you wrong answers."

Genshin masterlist

[emma-ofnormandy]

Ooof- I haven’t written anything of significance in at least six months, probably more. So a big shout out to @mercurygray for hosting the 2025 @blind-dates-fest. It got me writing a bit and hopefully I can keep it going. Without further a do, an introduction to Felicity Collins- an OC for the SAS: Rogue Heroes fandom.

She hated the damp, she hated the cold, and it seemed like that was all London offered once the sun went down. At least in Cairo, even in the darkest depths of the night, the air was warm, and the breeze carried a hint of something wonderful rather than the lingering chill and the overwhelming scent of depression.

At least it was what she imagined depression would smell like if it had a scent.

Felicity didn’t remember this place being so miserable as a young girl. Then again, London hadn’t been thrust into a world war back then, and she hadn’t yet experienced the feel of regular sunshine. God she missed Cairo. She missed the sun, she missed the food. She missed the simplicity of it, of her existence before she’d thought she needed to do more. 

Why had she thought she needed to do more?

It was a question that grated every time she sat through another meeting, more often than not a useless one, filled with people who carried too many secrets and couldn’t tell full truths. 

The most recent one she had been forced to endure, the one that had her dragging her feet through the dark and damp hours long past her planned outbound train departure, had been another one of those… the useless kind. 

British SOE had spoken ad nauseam about things she had already been briefed about and drove home the fact, in no uncertain terms, that her bosses answered to them, damn what the Prime Minister believed. Anyone under the guise of the twenty committee, or any other SS moniker for that matter, were allowed to operate as they did simply at the benevolence of the Army.

As if the fact that they were a security office, outside the confines of military protocol and therefore free to pick and plant and decipher as they saw fit, was irrelevant. 

The disastrous meeting still grated. They had spoken to her as if she was a trained carrier pigeon sent only to deliver mail between the infighters, a person of little consequence with not a brain in her head, rather than someone sent with important operational information that she had translated and would be pertinent in the coming months of invasion.

“Ridiculous men,” she grumbled. Of the two sexes, they were far more enamored with their own importance and Felicity had very little patience for it.

On the days they left her feeling more like a punching bag than an intelligence asset, she had to remind herself that she was doing good work, important work. Work that she needed to do because others were not capable of doing it. Work that they had sought her out to complete.

I am important. 

The blinking lights of the Ritz shimmered as she turned the corner, and Felicity could feel the irritation and frustration begin to subside. Sight of the opulent hotel meant she wasn’t far from the rooms the agency kept down a shadowed side street and for a few blissful hours she’d be able to forget about the insanity and egos that came with war. And, if she couldn’t forget it, she’d at least be able to drown it in whatever cheap liquor the last inhabitants of the rooms had left.

A cacophony of shouting carried above the London street and her attention was drawn to the hotel’s main doors as a collection of soldiers tumbled through them.

While not the first men in uniform she’d seen tossed from the Ritz, it certainly was the most at any one time. In the dim light, it was hard to make out their insignia, but they were British by the sounds of it.

Speaking of ridiculous men…

Not wanting to get caught up in the chaos of what she could only assume was a drunk regiment on leave, Felicity made a move to cross to the other side of the street, her attention distracted as she searched for her keys. Unaware of the movement ahead of her, she ran headlong into someone, scattering the contents of her purse along the pavement.

She cursed under her breath, irritated with the bodies that continued to congregate, unaware or uncaring of the coming and goings of those around them. She didn’t bother to look up at the man she’d run into as she bent down to collect her things. 

“I am so sorry, I was just getting ready to cross and wasn’t watching-.”

“Felicity?”

Whatever excuse she had been ready with promptly left her as shock and unease coiled in her stomach at the sound of her name on the soldier’s lips.

There was only one she knew with that accent. Of all the regiments stationed in London, of all the men of her acquaintance that could have come out of the Ritz, it was the one from Cairo.

Felicity peered up at him as she finished collecting the last of her belongings, his eyes unreadable against the bright backdrop. Silence settled, both determining the next best move to make, months of things unsaid hanging in the air between them. 

Her gaze swooped over him as she rose. He appeared the same for the most part, though there was the unmistakable look of a man that has been to war about him. The hollows of his cheeks were a little deeper, the purpling around his eyes perhaps more pronounced than she remembered. He looked tired, physically and mentally, and something inside her ached.

He wasn’t the same man she’d left in Cairo.

“Pat,” she said, hitting him with the warmest smile she could muster, but before she could get a word out, he took hold of her upper arm and moved them away from the collecting group of men.

“What are you doing here?”

She arched a brow, put off by the tone in his voice. Not even a half hearted ‘nice to see you’ or a ‘surprise seeing you here’, just straight to the heart of it.

She resisted the urge to yank her arm from his grip.

He must have been able to sense her irritation because he released her arm and shoved it into the pocket of his jacket but made no attempt to reword his question. He simply stared at her, expecting her to explain.

Uncomfortable with his scrutiny, Felicity brushed a speck of invisible dirt from her coat. “I am working in Woodstock. I had to come into London for a meeting.”

“Woodstock?” Pat’s eyes narrowed as he seemed to flip through a reel of information, connecting the dots on some imaginary board in his mind.

Upon his realization, his lips formed a thin line as he bit out, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“Calm down,” she snapped, gaze searching over his shoulder to the soldiers who didn’t seem to notice his outburst. “It is not as dramatic as you are assuming.” She took a breath, once again glancing about to ensure they had not attracted unwanted attention. “I am doing translation work.”

Mostly, but it did not seem wise to borrow more trouble so she left it at that. 

The idea that she wasn’t in the field, nor involved in something more clandestine, seemed to settle him a little. She knew where Pat’s mind had gone when he’d made the connection and knew what the imagined implications of it meant in regards to their relations in Cairo.  

His immediate concerns no longer a worry, the tension that had taken him receded by a fraction. “When?” he asked.

“When, what?”

“When did you,” he hesitated for a moment, “move back to England.”

“March.”

Rather than look right at him, Felicity watched the passing traffic. She’d known her flight date that last night they’d seen each other, and, if he had looked around her room with any scrutiny, he would have seen the bag. She hadn’t said a word, though, had acted as if it was just another night, and she knew if she looked at him, she would see the realization in his eyes, and possibly the hurt.

She didn’t think she could handle the hurt.

“A gentleman my father knew stopped by the museum when he was in Cairo from time to time,” she said, trying to justify… well, everything. “And I assisted in some translation work for him, off record of course.”

Their gazes finally did meet, and Pat looked at her skeptically. Nothing with MI-5 or any other intelligence agency was off record.

“When it looked like Africa was going to be secured,” she continued, refusing to give him the acknowledgment of what she also knew to be true, “he asked if I wanted to help in a more official capacity. It seems my father’s instance for certain academic skills has proven useful.”

“Last I knew, you said you had no interest in joining.”

Felicity didn’t miss the skepticism that laced his words.

“I never said I wasn’t interested in joining the cause,” she said defensively, “just that I wasn’t interested in saluting to a man who knew less than I did.” His lips quirked as she continued. “Luckily for me, no one in Blenheim requires salutes, at least from me, so it seems to be a good fit for the moment.”

Distantly, a car honked and a ways down another group of men loudly stumbled in their direction. More soldiers on leave she assumed. Their last hurrah before the inevitable.

“I looked for you,” he admitted, the words almost inaudible over the ruckus around them. “The next time I went into Cairo, I stopped by. Your roommate said you’d left the city, but didn’t know where you’d gone.”

She knew; Winnie had written to her almost immediately. God bless that woman for keeping secrets. Her roommate may have brought home every stray from the streets of Cairo, but she was as loyal as the day was long and would have never given up what Felicity told her, no matter what charms the American had tried.

Felicity had thought it best to make a clean break from him, given the situation he’d be going into and her unknown future with her move. It had seemed to be the simplest option, and the decision had paid off until this very moment.

She shuffled her feet, uncomfortable with the words left unsaid. She hadn’t expected him to care. A part of her didn’t want him to.

“I thought it was best that… well you know how…” she gestured vaguely, at a loss of any sort of acceptable excuse.

There wasn’t one, she knew. It’d been a shit thing to do, but there was no taking it back now.

Pat shifted away from her as a loud, mustached soldier hollered incoherently at the passing group of men, and for a moment Felicity thought that was the end of their conversation. It would have probably been for the best, given that she had just admitted running out on him purposely, but he didn’t make a move to leave, simply watched the commotion for a moment.

“I should thank you for those Italian lessons you insisted on,” he finally said, turning back to watch her. “They ended up coming in handy.”

Felicity blushed. While the Italian lessons had started for practical reasons, the longer they had carried them on, the more they had felt like a farce. He’d certainly been an eager student, but at their last lesson he’d only uttered a few phrases, and they weren’t ones a person used in securing important military assets and locations.

A jealous twinge churned in her stomach at the thought and she tried to tamp it down. She had no right to that emotion.

“I’m glad they came in handy,” she said flippantly, “had I known you were headed for Italy, I guess I would have insisted on less distractions.”

There was a flicker of a sly, almost mischievous smile on his lips before it disappeared into the darkness once more, and Felicity imagined his mind went to the same place hers had and her blush only deepened.

She cleared her throat, eyes jumping to the hotel, too embarrassed to look at him. “I guess I’ll have to admit, then, that I ended up keeping tabs on your advance through Italy.”

“Worried I’d go and get myself killed?” He drawled.

It had crossed her mind only dozens of times since she’d met him and only once she had left Cairo had she been able to set it to the back of her thoughts.

Until they’d been dumped into Italy, at least.

“I had tried not to keep tabs on SAS. Didn’t want to know that very thing, but after you took Bagnara, the Axis communications blew up and I was assigned.” Truthfully, she had felt a moment of pride for the men then, for him especially, as she translated the intercepted hysterics of their eminimes. She had been glad to see success in spite of the absolute insanity she knew they reveled in. “I’m glad you made it through.”

Her words softened the harsh lines in his face and for a moment she saw a glimpse of the man from the earlier days, from the before times when SAS was just finding its wings and the weight of what was to come wasn’t such a burden on his shoulders.

“Riley!” A large man called from the truck that idled just beyond.

Pat waved, but his gaze didn’t leave hers. Finally, he mumbled, “I’ve got to-”

“Of course,” she interrupted. “I should get going as well. Train out is bright and early.”

He looked as if he wanted to say something else but when he just stood there, seemingly lost in his own thoughts, Felicity stepped in and kissed his cheek. “It was good to see you Pat.” 

She moved just far enough away to study his face as she gave his hand a squeeze before dropping it back to her side. SAS was not going to have an easy time moving forward, not that the past had been a walk in the park, but she knew that what was coming from France would be the worst yet. 

She hoped this wouldn’t be the last time she saw him, but she was not foolish enough to believe it. 

“If you find yourself in a writing mood, Ludlow Street. Apartment 5B. My aunt will make sure I get it.”

He nodded and the corners of his mouth lifted in a half there smile. “I imagine you’ll know where I am headed before I even know where I am so…” the words hung there in invitation, and she returned the gesture.

“Take care of yourself,” Felicity reached up and fixed a lock of dark hair that fell across his forehead. “And if you make it to Paris, snag me a good bottle of wine. Maybe we can share it someday.”

Without another word she stepped away and continued towards the far end of the block, not daring to look back and watch him load up and drive away.

[homestuckreplay]

EOA1 ==> Media, Agency and the Suburbs in Act 1 of Homestuck

It is April 13, 1959. Mr. Egbert, Sr. has recently made the move out of the city into a newly built house in the suburbs, because clowning isn't paying so well after the recession. His son John hasn't seen his friend Rose since they moved. Staring out the window at 4:13pm and glimpsing nothing but the neighbor's wall, John goes downstairs to catch the second half of a black and white episode of Truth or Consequences, losing himself for fifteen minutes in their world of pranks, hilarity and emotional family reunions. Hopefully for his birthday, his dad will get him that cool new board game and its all-important hours of distraction.

We pick up the daily newspaper, and flip to the funnies to see John's new antics.

(Essay below the cut - about 5k words.)

==> I: John’s Suburb in Historical Context, or: Johntext

During the 1940s and 1950s, mass expansion of the American suburbs was accompanied by a ‘best of both worlds’ promise. Families who moved there could enjoy easy travel to the city via car for work and leisure, but wouldn’t have to deal with the ‘undesirable’ parts of city life, such as noise, pollution, or people from marginalized groups. Suburbs were characterized by detached, single family houses that guaranteed each family their own bubble of space away from neighbors, but also promised a community of likeminded people with whom to form neighborhood associations and PTA committees. Residents could enjoy independence from city governance and increased control over their own living spaces, but anybody who might push back against current social norms would be quietly excluded. Utopian promises and attractive prices encouraged many Americans to make the move, and many of them have never left. 

Here in 2009, it’s not uncommon for people to have lived their entire lives in the suburbs - often in a single house. Promises of progress and innovation within households have remained strictly cosmetic, while the values guarding suburban families and communities have changed very little. Although people of color comprise an increasing percentage of suburban residents, white people are still overrepresented. The same is true of married couples’ overrepresentation compared to other family structures. Suburban architecture remains centralized around the car as the primary means of transportation, and the separation of residential from commercial areas. Opportunities and reasons to leave the house are both minimized. 

With the growth of the suburbs came increased criticism of their designs and ideals. Their dream of a spacious home for each family has led to feelings of isolation, while the promised communities have primarily formed around churches and strict Christian ideals. Residents lack trust in their neighbors, and as such, children are no longer left to their own devices outside of the house. The suburban goal of easy car accessibility to cities has ended in highway congestion, air pollution and lack of public transport or pedestrian access. And while the percentage of Americans living in the suburbs continues to increase, not everyone has the luxury of choosing where they live - particularly children and teenagers. 

Homestuck’s main character John Egbert doesn't directly express a hatred of the suburbs - he seems more conflicted, showing fondness for the tire swing in a kid's yard (p.27), the fireplace (p.50) and the father smoking a pipe (p.74), while also expressing that he feels stuck in his home (p.30, 253), that he avoids his father's company (p.30), and that he feels something missing from his life (p.82). He doesn't seem aware of the source of his emptiness, just that he's always felt it, and we can only guess the source through incredibly subtle context clues, such as the work's title and the way John longingly gazes towards the outside.

It's certainly possible for someone with an otherwise privileged life to feel alienation in the suburbs, but those who differ from the white nuclear family ideal tend to have these feelings heightened, and may be ostracized by the community or threatened into conformity. Similarly, the gulf between John and his dad, and their separate perceptions of that relationship, could be simply generational, or could suggest bigger, unseen differences between them.

One interpretation I and others have discussed is that John is a transgender woman who has yet to actively realize her identity, but knows on some level that she can’t achieve the strict gender expectations of a suburban community. This loss of self-understanding would contribute to John's feelings of absence and lack of control, and strain her relationship with a father who expects her to fit a male gender role. 

This might be my favorite possible explanation, but there are lots of others, any or all of which could be true. John being queer in any sense would mean he might not fit into the nuclear family structure of the suburbs as an adult. John being a person of color in an otherwise white neighborhood would visually distinguish him from his neighbors and cause them to judge him based on stereotypes, and if John is mixed race and Dad is white, this distinction could highlight differences between them too, the absence in John's life marked by a disconnection from a culture he's a part of. John being neurodivergent could impact his ability to interact with other people in the neighborhood, or to replicate the rules and performativity of daily life. Single parent family structures are more accepted in 2009 than they were in 1959, but it's still possible that some past scandal involving Dad and John's family life is hanging over them, fresh in the minds of their neighborhood - perhaps one that just like Nanna's death, Dad 'never wants to talk about'. Any of these factors could lead to John being ostracized by his community and mean that even at a young age he didn't 'buy in' to the idea of the happy suburban family. 

I believe it is intentional that Homestuck hasn’t defined John’s location more specifically than ‘west of Kansas’. Although research has shown that different suburbs have their own individual characters, critics tend to emphasize their similarities. We’re supposed to think that John would have broadly the same experiences if he lives in Arizona or Colorado, Texas or Georgia, maybe even England or Belgium. The externalities of John’s life are the same as countless other kids in the Western world, not because of John’s choices or even his dad’s choices, but due to the larger structures that organize families into houses, houses into suburbs, and suburbs into sources of constraint.

==> II: If You Love Your House So Much, Why Don’t You Never Leave It?

The suburbs walk hand in hand with advances in technology. The 1950s saw a boom in the sale of household appliances, with devices for cooking and cleaning promising to lighten the housework load for women, and television providing entertainment for the whole family from the comfort of the living room. Various corporations created model homes to display the futuristic properties of their fantastical appliances, promising consumers that in the future, all homes would look just like this. This was a marketing tactic primarily benefiting the corporations - but in some cases, they were successful. General Electric’s ‘New American’ home in Denver featured a dishwasher as early as 1935, and these increased in affordability and domestic popularity across the 1950s and 60s. Disneyland’s Monsanto ‘House of the Future’ boasted a microwave oven. The house opened in real world 1957 but was ‘set in 1986’, and by 1986, one in four American homes owned a microwave. The Westinghouse ‘Home of Tomorrow’ contained the first ever portable radios - six of them, with radio outlets in every room to grant every family member a constant supply of media. 

This idea of constant, individualized media consumption may have been the greatest called shot of these houses. In 1959, John would be limited to a handful of TV channels on a fixed schedule, fighting over the tuning dials with his dad, but in 2009 he almost certainly knows the delights of Megavideo on top of having a video game collection, DVD collection and TV on demand service. 

Televisions were marketed to families in the 1950s claiming that they would keep families closer, as parents and children alike would want to stay home and watch together instead of going out to separate places, and many parents at first expressed relief at always knowing where their teenage children were, and consequently, being able to keep an eye on them. Television altered the boundaries between public and private space, allowing people to experience a public activity such as a trip to the movies, a performance from a live musician, even witnessing the moon landing, without leaving the home or interacting with strangers. 

Increasingly, media is marketed with the promise of interactivity and agency. Television provided a world to passively escape into, but video games allow the player to actually embody a character in that world. They present fantasies of control, of being able to explore a virtual map according to the player’s whims, and offering in-character choices that allow the player to control the narrative itself. Players are compelled by the possibility of media they can customize to their own specific tastes, and media they can master and bend to their will instead of simply observe. In this way, the Nintendo Wii isn’t so different from the fridge-freezer that promised greater mastery over the family’s diet, or the modern microwave oven and its dozens of settings and options for preparing food. 

As our society moves from home televisions to home computers and video game systems into an age of portable, all in one smartphones, we and the media become more dependent on each other, and we expect to have access to it more of the time. John Egbert has found connection with a close friend who lives multiple timezones east and stays in regular and real time contact with her. That friendship enriches his life, and wouldn't have been possible without today’s high speed internet and instant messaging services. John’s computer opens up an incredible social world, but - as we’ve seen with Rose losing power - if he lost that technology, he’d also lose that community. 

So, advertisers ask, what possible reason is there to leave? Why would you go somewhere mundane, like a park or a youth club, when you could go up on a plane surrounded by dangerous criminals and outsmart them all in time to save your friend? When you can bike down the highways from Missouri to Virginia to save the girl you like from natural disasters? You can be a hard boiled detective, a monster's best friend, a scientist making contact with aliens, an oil magnate turned savior of the world, a FBI agent surgically given the face of a terrorist, and a world leading expert on ghost slime - and you’ll never get dirty, you’ll never get hurt, and your dad will be right in the next room with a constant supply of fresh baked cakes and fatherly affection. What possible reason do kids have to complain, or to feel like anything is missing from their lives, when they can master reality from couches and computer chairs?

John Egbert embodies constant media consumption. Two of his five stated interests are consuming media - specifically movies and video games - and even when he’s not actively watching or playing something, he’s surrounded by media. His room is filled with movie posters, the television in the living room is switched on even when nobody’s watching, and the first thing he does after loading his computer is check for webcomic updates. Even his thoughts are consumed. He’s constantly replaying his favorite scenes in his head, which seems to bring him genuine joy, fixating on the next game he wants to play, and filling his social interactions with references to his favorite franchises. Even before actually entering Sburb’s virtual reality, John already wasn’t present in his material space. He’s digitally transitioned from what Lynn Spigel describes as ‘the home address to “home page”... computer generations rather than genders’. 

==> III: Kids These Days Just Don’t Respect The Cultural Idea Of Childhood We Created For Them

The suburban home loves technology, but the reverse may not be true. A significant amount of mass media depicts the suburbs as the place where creativity and individuality go to die, reflecting the cultural criticisms instead of the promises. Some of the earliest sitcoms, such as I Love Lucy and The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, predated widespread criticisms of the suburbs and presented an idealized suburban life. These soon gave way to the ‘fantastic sitcoms’ of the 1960s, including Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie. These shows have implausible premises, featuring supernatural creatures, aliens or futuristic settings while still depicting mundane suburban realities. This juxtaposition opened up new questions about the real world, asking why we exclude certain people from communities and playing with the strict roles within the nuclear family. 

Media aimed at young people often presents a world where kids are in control and regular power structures are inverted. 1950s and 60s comic strips aimed at kids, such as Peanuts and Dennis the Menace, were also set in the suburbs - but an idealized version of the suburbs where kids could roam freely, not confined to the home and able to disobey the instructions of adults without consequences. Some parents restrict these from children, not wanting them to ‘get the wrong idea’ and copy the bad behavior they see in comics or on TV. Popular music is a site of rebellion amongst teenagers - The Kinks in the 1960s, Talking Heads and Bruce Springsteen in the 1980s, Green Day and Blink-182 in the 1990s and 2000s, and uncountable other acts have put criticisms of suburbia to music and created a cultural dream of escape by getting on the road, joining a rock band and never putting down roots again. 

In a time of rapid technological change, parents fear the impact technology and new media will have on their children, partly because they didn’t grow up with those technologies themselves. Television was feared because it gave children access to knowledge, different worldviews, and the realities of the adult world that parents wanted to keep from them, lessening parents’ control over their kids. It was also feared for its all-consuming nature, for making children want to watch constantly at the expense of homework, chores and family meals. More recently, video games have been feared for these same addictive properties, and for the belief that they negatively impact social interaction and cause increased aggression and violence. 

But John isn’t like other teenagers. His taste is striking for being exclusively movies that reinforce ideals of the nuclear family - usually suburban, with the exception of New York City-based Ghostbusters II - which suggests he doesn’t only want to escape his current life, he wants to legitimate it to himself. John’s movies end with family reconciliation, not with the kids getting one over on the parents. If John feels like he doesn’t fit into suburban ideals, he can try to connect with them by seeing them through the eyes of a character he likes. In a world where John’s primary source of agency is the media he chooses to consume, he could easily choose to reject his unsatisfying life altogether and live vicariously through outlaws and exiles, getting really into Westerns or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but he doesn’t. He chooses characters who are fundamentally conventional, despite their rough edges, suggesting he’d really like to just fit in and be content with what he has.

Sburb, however, is the game that actualizes parents’ worst fears, inverting the power structures of the house, giving Rose and John dominion over the space while Dad - formerly both the breadwinner and the homemaker - has been relegated to an unseen location. John has access to a physically dangerous inventory system and a strife specibus that encourages him to solve problems by hitting them with a hammer.

Media promises us an escape, and it undoubtedly has the power to teach us and open our eyes to new perspectives, but in many cases provides nothing more than a filter over our lives. Encouraging people to live in a state of distraction, a TV show or video game gives us an easy way to hide from reality. People look for a new technology to solve their problems instead of a social solution, placing parental controls over their children’s television and internet usage instead of having honest conversations among families about media consumption, and designing security systems to keep ‘undesirable’ people from trespassing in middle class neighborhoods without questioning why those people are excluded from suburban society in the first place.

==> IV: There’s A Fine Line Between Fantasy And Reality And My House Is Built There

In the 1935 movie Murder by Television, a money-hungry scientist manipulates the interference between telephone lines and television broadcast signals to create the ‘death ray,’ and murder somebody on the other side of a television screen. Released less than a decade after the world’s first television broadcast, this movie demonstrates our cultural obsession with the boundaries between electrical and real space, and our dream of making those boundaries permeable. The 1950s presented TV families (such as the Nelsons from The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet) as normal families whose lives just happened to be televised, but who behaved the same way on and off screen to the point of forgetting the cameras were rolling. To this day, reality television such as Big Brother and The Bachelor promise to show us contestants’ authentic private lives, and even when we as viewers know the show is staged, we choose to buy into the fantasy.

More recently, 1998’s The Truman Show literalizes our dependence on the media, its ubiquity in our lives, and the impact this has on our personal relationships by showing a man whose whole life has been orchestrated by a TV production company that broadcasts him 24/7. Through a lucky accident with a time portal I obtained a copy of 2023’s Barbie, in which a plastic doll lives the dream life promised by her marketing, but starts thinking about mortality and the ‘real world’ when her owner’s mother starts drawing pictures of her with typical adult problems.

In both of these movies, the characters are happy until they are forced to confront the constructed nature of their worlds. By understanding the production and design processes controlling their lives, they become disillusioned with the simulation of perfection and begin searching for something more authentic. Even though Truman and Barbie both escape synthesized worlds and achieve full human agency, their endings are bittersweet. Their ‘escape’ lands them in present day Los Angeles, with all the social constraints, local mass produced suburbs, and constant diet of blockbuster media that this implies.

Blurring these boundaries is an effective advertising strategy as well as a narrative one. Adverts invite players to ‘become’ the main character of a video game, such as a Kid Chameleon promotion inviting players to ‘change personalities faster than they’ll change helmets’ and ‘transform’ themselves into a variety of mavericks. A Mortal Kombat arcade machine advert showed real men bursting out of the machine to attack the player. Promotions for The Sims 2 featured real photographs of people with the Sims interface added digitally, presenting the controllable Sims within the game as more than just pixels.

Following in this grand tradition, Sburb takes the permeable boundary between electrical and real space and smashes a meteor through it. Sburb answers the question of ‘can technology transform our society?’ with a 'yes'  loud enough to shake the neighborhood houses from their foundations. Sburb represents the greatest and most utopian promises of technology, as well as the worst of our cultural fears around it. 

The appeal of Sburb as a game is that it promises teenagers control over their lives in a world where they’re otherwise powerless. It’s a way to speedrun growing up - alchemy mechanics offer the chance to manipulate space and create all the material goods the player wants, but the game also bestows responsibility for tackling a crisis, for maintaining the home, perhaps even saving the world. And the players who are going to want this badly enough to fight through the impossible challenges Sburb presents are the kids who really can’t wait, the ones who aren’t doing well, and who feel trapped enough in their everyday lives that they would risk it all on an experimental technology to escape. 

In truth, many scholars challenge the concepts of interactivity and agency in video games, arguing that these are players’ perceptions and not their realities. Games invite players to participate in the creation of art, but the relationship is never equal, with the creators always having the final say on exactly how much free will the player is allowed. Even a game that aims to be open world and allow for as much free play as possible is bound by the limitations of processing power and how many options a human can reasonably write and code for. 

Sburb also puts restrictions on its players. Most likely, there are limits on what objects can be created via alchemy, and Sburb would likely restrict any item that could be used to work against the game. Players being controlled by commands which are interpreted by a computer also ensure that only commands coded for in the game are transmitted to the player. When a command is incorrect, the narrator steps in to help the player (p.253). And so far, the game has dramatic ways of keeping John on a very linear path - first starting a clock so he had no choice but to focus on stopping the meteor, then cutting him off from the world so that he has to stay in his current location. It’s impossible to have agency while living within a game that can and will end your life with four minutes and thirteen seconds of notice.

The ‘homes of tomorrow’ discussed at the start of part II were designed as sentient spaces, responsive to their inhabitants and able to almost anticipate their needs. John Brehm said about MOMA’s 1999 Un-Private House exhibition, ‘one can prepare a meal with the help of a virtual chef from a favorite restaurant and have dinner with a virtual guest or friend through the liquid wall’ and suggested that the house was ‘an extension of the body or a transparency of the mind… that both protects and transcends the limitations of the body’. In 2000, the Microsoft Home in New York City showed a future where people could control the lights, thermostats, security systems and stereos directly from their phones, even from another location. The home of tomorrow promises it can be anything its owner wants it to be, without questioning the idea that the privately owned, individualized home should exist and be desired.

Of course, the houses of tomorrow are always singular, prototype homes built with no thought of neighbors and community, but perhaps sacrificing a whole neighborhood to build the perfect home is a tradeoff some people have to make. Far from the static, impersonal houses of the suburbs, Sburb allows players to create their dream houses, offering bigger bedrooms, additional floors, and an endless void to throw your father’s harlequin statues into. It’s another technology that offers transformative potential for the family home, but is ultimately still driven by it, forming an individualist utopian bubble within a larger, far more conservative and restrictive structure.

==> V: If I Die, I Wanna Die In The Suburbs

The remote control, the video game joystick, and the Sburb alchemiter all tell us we can master reality by mastering technology. If that’s the case, then John still has to master technology. A shattered window from stack modus failures and a desktop littered with enraged programming files show us just how far John is from mastering either of these things.

John’s lack of agency goes far deeper than being trapped in the suburbs. His simple choice to pick something up and put it down is controlled by external agents. Though he can choose to escape his father in the kitchen by going to his room, a variety of screens will follow him and keep him in his own personalized panopticon. Rose’s mastery over the cursor means that John can’t guarantee the objects in his room will be where he left them, and even John’s thoughts are surveilled, interpreted and transmitted outwards by the narrator.

The USA PATRIOT act of 2001 expanded the US government’s legal rights to monitor electronic communication, and the early 2000s saw increased covert network surveillance by governments and private corporations alike. John’s technological illiteracy means he probably doesn’t know how to use a VPN and might not have known as a kid that his internet activities weren’t private, but in Act 2, inside Sburb, he begins to realize. Just as parents fretted at PTA meetings, John’s media has allowed him to eat from the Tree of Knowledge and put an end to his carefully constructed childhood, all on the cultural milestone of his thirteenth birthday. 

Sburb has compounded the problem of John being surveilled and puppeted, but didn't invent it. The first 136 pages of Homestuck establish the meta-narrative restrictions on his life, from his inventory system to his being guided by commands, before he installs the game. There are layers of control over John’s life that he’ll need to break through one at a time. The first will be acquiring the Sburb server disc, which will give John greater power within Sburb, and the ability to use the full extent of its abilities. The second will be escaping the game of Sburb, which could be accomplished by simply winning the game (like in 1995’s Jumanji), or by using some kind of cheat or glitch to break out of it (2003’s Spy Kids 3: Game Over), but either way John will need to master the game mechanics. 

The final layer is Homestuck itself, and unfortunately for us, John escaping the player and narrator’s influence over his life would almost certainly mean the end of the comic. But in Homestuck the Earth is already being destroyed, and being a webcomic that doesn’t have the constraints of a two hour Hollywood movie, the story doesn’t have to stop at the level of escaping the simulation. It has the chance to go a layer further, and imagine a world where John and his friends are able to enact real and meaningful change.

John has clearly had an emotional dependency on media for a long time, and now, he has a physical dependency too. Sburb is the thing keeping him alive, and his only hope to save the rest of the world, but he’s not alone in seeing popular media as a sacred text necessary for his existence. Smethurst and Craps point out that the player reacts to the game as much as the game does to the player - if anywhere, agency can be found in players’ interpretations of a game. Increasingly we rely on fiction to shape our politics and our worldviews, while also reading texts at a surface level. While media itself is insufficient to give us agency, media literacy is a big step towards asking questions about what restricts our agency, how, and why. The way John discusses movies now isn’t too in depth, with reviews like ‘the applejuice scene was so funny’ and ‘cage is sweet. so sweet.’ But in a story about becoming part of a video game, media literacy could be a very powerful tool for John, and he could come out of this as a genuine movie critic.

==> Conclusion

While Homestuck is a distinctly modern multimedia experience, it exists in a much larger tradition of media that criticizes the suburbs, and depicts the fantasy of escape for young people. Like other metafictional works before it, it handles these themes self-reflexively, showing its main character combat the horrors of the suburbs directly, instead of depicting a fantasy where problems do not exist. 

Based on its first act, Homestuck is a story about John Egbert’s quest for agency in a world that constantly tries to restrict it. John’s life so far has been defined by the suburbs, by a single but unremarkable point in space that he’s been trapped in for the first thirteen years of his life. John is both physically confined to his suburban neighborhood, and socially confined into being the ideal of the middle class all American boy that has been presented as his only option. John’s taste in media reinforces the ideals of his society, meaning he has yet to question the status quo of his existence or examine the source of his depression. John is also controlled directly by his server player, the Homestuck players, and the narrator. 

John’s experiences playing Sburb show us that while the escape media provides for us is real and can change us in meaningful ways, it can only solve the first step of the problem - and isn’t without its own risks and drawbacks. In order to truly develop agency, John will need to question the existence of the suburbs themselves, and not only his placein them. He’ll also need to  - at some point - quit the game, return to reality, and use the skills he’s learned in the game to develop mastery over both the physical world and the story itself.

==> Sources

I wrote this essay after reading Lynn Spigel’s excellent essay collection ‘Welcome to the Dreamhouse: Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs’ (2001), which I would highly recommend.

Full bibliography

Filmography

[jusst-you-race]

I just got caught up with the CCC. I love it!! And Landoscar FINALLY getting together?? I loved how it was in Lando’s stream. And how Lando publicly blushed in front of all his followers. And also the haasbands bickering but also being so sweet 🥹🥹

I don’t know what I’m gonna do when this fic ends. I’m gonna have to find another long fic with all my favorite ships (I won’t be able to) ☹️

AHHHH thank you!!!! we haven’t seen it but Lando has been bullied by his chat for ages for grinning like an idiot every time Oscar messages him so getting asked out on stream was therapeutic for them… because I’m so deep into this fic that I’m now considering the feelings of a fictional chat for a fictional stream… they were stoked though

I’m sure there will be other fics with lots of ships!!! I mean I hit a lot of the popular ones lmao so we shall cross our fingers! plus there are a couple ccc sequels being written atm that are brilliant so please go follow along with

the condominium community committee containing children by @pitlanewrites

and the sun is still in the sky (and shinin’ above you) by @zoyanazyalenskyautism

both excellent fics to hopefully fill the void when I finish!

[ihaveforgortoomany]

Sonetto and the Breakaway Incident:

The revised Prologue I think makes clear Sonetto does not know the full context of the Incident with Constantine's involvement (add Matilda here as well I think both of them out of the SPDM kids still alive don't have full context).

This is based on the changed "my classmate" line to "I... took a different path", as I mentioned in the translation changes the line was meant to convey Vertin unlike Sonetto is not trained in offensive arcanum (probably taught for self-defence but not the primary goal of the Timekeeper).

(Ill make a separate post about the people Vertin had met prior to Regulus once I have sufficient evidence on them maybe.)

Sonetto and Vertin have not spoken likely in 4 years (hopefully we might get more insight in those years at some point) and I speculate all Sonetto knows is that everyone else was taken by the Storm and not Vertin, not knowing Constantine's plot to manipulate the situation.

People who know the full context of the situation: Constantine, Vertin, Madam Z, Mesmer Jr and likely Lilya. As Horrorpedia mentioned in Greenlake lids who asked about the Incident were thrown in the Guardhouse. Additionally Vertin is already guarded emotionally as a person so most of the suitcase fam would not know (if Vila knew she deffo would start second guessing letting the Raysshki kids go to SPDM but I speculate once Madam Z became Vice Committee member she reformed the SPDM a bit).

All Sonetto thinks is that Vertin afterwards graduated early and became the Timekeeper until the events of the Prologue when they meet again. While their relationship is healing, it would be a while until Sonetto likely finds out the truth and I think this may be the tipping point for her loyalty. The only way would be either Vertin or Constantine (or even Mesmer Jr) directly bringing up the Incident at some point.

Again maybe this is already common knowledge but in general Sonetto is interesting as a representing the good of the Foundation, of what it should be, and the many ways it is not.

[loves-to-lose]

L processes her emotions -

Focusing on the good. I was nominated for a kudos at work today after I got a call from a client on my team (community rehab and psych services team)who was in crisis because his electric was shut off. Which should NOT be happening when we are his payeee. Advocated for him, got his bill paid and worked to make sure this doesn’t happen again, hopefully sounded some alarms that we need a better process.

I can’t describe what it’s like working in a mental and behavioral health nonprofit, that is everything that the facist administration is attacking. I’m literally a representative in the DEIB committee. Administration is so scared we’re gonna lose funding. They took pronouns out of the emails. They pulled out of the city’s pride festival (unacceptable but I fucking get it) we’re supposed to hide all gay pride, anti racist, things in our facility. It’s too much!! The agency is having a town hall meeting about it tomorrow and everyone’s wearing their pride shirts. I don’t have one but I have a GLOSS (a full 🏳️‍⚧️ punk band) shirt that I’ll wear. Like I said, all too much.

Ok on to the next part to process…I’ve talked about my mom’s life long drug addiction here plenty of times…deep trauma there lol. But she had back surgery Friday at the VA hospital and they didn’t look at her chart and gave her morphine…bad for herrrrr. They also sent her home with oxy, her behavior has been triggggggering. I’ve essentially had to social work my mom, like the physical therapist never called, her housing is being messed with, everything!!!

I’m honestly so so proud of myself. Even though I have $50 to my name for a week and a half not even gonna think about that part lmao. I am still editing pics, obviously just a bit overwhelmed.

I am carrying it all exceptionally well. Writing, playing bass, impulses are more in control than ever. No time to hyper fixate on sex. (I see that changing)

OH!!!!! And I signed up at my alma maters for a post-grad certification in “Sustainability and social equity studies” 🤪🤪have to channel the chaos and uncertainty and fear into something!! Need to learn how to create something better!!! If nothing else I will have hope in a better future but first we must resist and learn all we can. Ok, I feel better. Got it all out.

[stevishabitat]

Judge orders HHS, CDC and FDA to restore webpages and data : Shots - Health News : NPR

A federal judge has ordered federal health agencies to restore websites and datasets that were abruptly pulled down beginning in late January, prompting an outcry from medical and public health communities.

The temporary restraining order was granted in response to a lawsuit filed against the federal government by Doctors for America (DFA), a progressive advocacy group representing physicians, and the nonprofit Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group.

Last week, a spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told NPR "changes to the HHS website and HHS division websites are in accordance with President Trump's January 20 Executive Orders, Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government and Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing."

The pages that are now set to be revived include information for patients about HIV testing and HIV prevention medication, guidance on contraceptives, datasets that show vulnerability to natural disasters and emergencies, and an action plan for improving enrollment of underrepresented populations in clinical trials.

Judge John Bates with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2001, said the sudden loss of these resources had jeopardized the work of clinicians and public health. "It bears emphasizing who ultimately bears the harm of defendants' actions: everyday Americans, and most acutely, underprivileged Americans, seeking healthcare," he wrote in his opinion.

The Department of Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have until midnight Tuesday to bring back the specific webpages cited in the lawsuit.

By the end of the week, the order directs the federal government to identify any other resources that physicians rely on to provide medical care and restore those as well.

Questions remain about how much information was changed

"This is a very strong decision," said Dorit Reiss, a law professor at the University of California College of the Law San Francisco. The order explains how the takedown of websites and data was "likely legally flawed" because it "lacked notice" and there was "no explanation for the broad action," she said. "It suggests the government is in a weak place for this case."

HHS didn't reply to NPR's request for comment on the order.

Many webpages that were initially removed have since reappeared on CDC, FDA and HHS websites, although it's still unclear how much remains missing and what information has been modified.

"There's a lot of shifting ground here where they tore down a lot of stuff. They put some of it back up, but not nearly all of it," said Zach Shelley, an attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group. "Hopefully with this order, we get everything that's important back up."

The sudden loss of websites prompted a mad rush in the scientific community to download and archive data. Dr. Joshua Sharfstein was among those on a CDC advisory committee who wrote the CDC's acting director protesting the purge of data.

He said the advisers have now sent a second letter pointing out that they remain concerned about "how communities will be able to monitor diseases and receive guidance on current disease investigations," the possibility of "broad workforce reductions," and "disruptions in grant funding."

The judge's order underscores any changes to resources and data should be based on "reasoned decision-making," said Sharfstein, a professor of public health practice at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

"Some of these websites provided actual recommendations on how to take care of patients," he said. "These are not just like books on the shelf. These are like heavily thumbed through manuals that people really need."

[imaginespazzi]

Bestie!! How are you doing?? Been missing you around here, happy to see you popping back up :)

Wow quite a bit of time has gone by b/w our convo. Was gearing up for watching the Final Four and suddenly its the day of the WNBA draft. With that said, an applause for all UConn players for making it through the celebrations to this point. Im very excited for the looks and reactions tonight. Plus to see how everything shakes out after #1. Feels a bit harder to predict on the whole than past years..

So. Oh my God THEY WON! Feels like that result being reality is actually still processing (in fairness, its been a week) but man it was such a delight to see a fairytale/storybook/dream scenario play out for Paige & Azzi and a deserving team. PSA you blew me away!

Cant wait to recap todays event with you later and catch up more. Maybe youll get to it, but some version of my last ask started below for you so we're fully back on track.

-☕️

*Bestie!

Yes indeed, trying to focus on the pleasantness of return to some routine and comforts of home after a while away. And thank you, the experience was great all around minus one half of a game ha.

Very true, the next play mentality is simply necessary on court & in life. You make a fair point, in reality Im not sure that Ms. Kitley deserves that scenario. And it looks like regardless that they should see each other within the W (which I wouldnt have felt as comfortable speculating for GA at this time last year).

In less relationship focused tea 😝 - holy transfer portal movement. Can we discuss a bit please? Olivia Miles what?And then some eyebrow raising, not necessarily expected player movement out of Southern Cal and LSU. Now I believe that players leaving nowadays isnt really an indicator of anything deep per se, but sounding like possibly in these programs cases theres maybe something more dramatic to it?

Happy seeing the Juju NPOY news. Well deserved I think (the award committee got this right imo) and hopefully something uplifting for her at the moment.

Well tomorrow is coming whether we like it or not. Just gotta face it head on. Heres hoping for at least a quality team performance, controlling what can be controlled. 🙏 take care, happy almost Friday!*

HI MY LOVEEEE

First of all, before I get into your, have you been seeing all this Georgia and Azzi content? LIKE HELLO GEORGIA THAT IS A TAKEN WOMAN WHY ARE YOU FANGIRLING THIS HARD M'AM??

God these last two weeks have been insane. LIKE THEY REALLY FUCKING WON MAN!

And then everything we got last night like WOW WOW WOW WOW

Anyways Ms. Kitley has been saved from that scenario thank god!

I would loveeee your thoughts on the draft if you wanna share them because honestly, it went nothing like I expected if we're being real.

THE TRANSFER PORTAL!! Jesus christ, I've been so caught up in my team but Olivia to TCU? Ta'niya to SC? Half of UCLA gone? USC in shambled? MILAYSIA OUT OF SC? So much is happening oh my god it's literally free agency.

[eponymous-rose]

Monday!

Started out the day with a 7AM Zoom fitness class, which was a lot of fun, but I was overcome with sleepiness by the end of it and took advantage of today's somewhat lighter schedule (NO MORE INTERVIEWS) to doze in bed a little longer. Clara, who was equally tired from all her hard work rolling around and purring while I planked and tried not to squish her with my dumbbells, approved of this idea.

I finally dragged myself out of bed and had some coffee and breakfast, then got to work on e-mails. We're organizing some support for a colleague who will be out on medical leave for a few months, and within a couple hours, well over half the faculty has already volunteered to bring his family meals. What a lovely bunch of people. Meanwhile, my students are Really Uncomfortable with the idea that their final papers in my class are not "fill in the blank" and are instead "tell a story about the data you've been working with all class". I gave them a rubric for some structure, but the content is up to them, and they're Very Unhappy that I have done such a thing. It'll be okay, I know, but these couple days before the first-draft deadline will be full of angst.

I guess I should mention that I recently applied to (and interviewed for) another faculty position, partly out of genuine interest and partly because retention offers are the one and only way we can bring external money into the department's coffers... and my salary is functionally the same as it was when I started almost six years ago. After putting out a couple feelers among colleagues I trust, I wound up having a great candid chat last week with my department chair over coffee (this is how non-dysfunctional the department is - he celebrated the interview with me and wanted to figure out how we could leverage that to give me a raise!), but the policy changed recently so that I'd need a full offer before they could start the retention process. Oh well! It's good to keep in practice, regardless. I should find out whether I made it to the final stage of interviews (which would be in-person and two days long) sometime this week.

...on that note, a recruiter reached out for a very prestigious faculty position last week and I chatted with her today to clarify that they were asking about me and not just wanting recommendations from me (after all, I'm still pre-tenure!). Nope, I was indeed the one "brought to their attention"! Went ahead and threw in my CV and cover letter. Can't hurt, right? Doing this kind of thing feels much less underhanded and sneaky knowing that it's just a matter of course in our department and that my colleagues and chair approve. Still feels weird, though.

Okay, time to head to the office! Meeting with a grad student, meeting with the faculty search committee (we had our last interview on Thursday/Friday of last week and we have to bring our recommendation to the faculty meeting tomorrow - we're trying to push this through ASAP so we can hopefully just roar through the college's soft hiring freeze), then meeting with an undergrad. The rain has finally let up for a second, so it's time to thread that needle and catch the bus!

(Narrator's voice: she did not in any way, shape, or form thread the needle and avoid the rain.)

Meeting with my Master's student went great! He's referring to the PhD as a "when" rather than an "if", which I think is a great fit for him (he loves both research and teaching, his career aspirations require a PhD, and he's an excellent writer - this feels like a natural progression). We went through the requirements for him to get his master's and pass the qualifying exam and realized he's basically there - he only has to write a 15-page "mini-thesis" and not a full thesis if he's going on to the PhD, and hey, he recently gave me an excellent draft of a scientific journal article that's around that length. He has to give a 20-minute presentation about his research, and hey, he recently gave an excellent 15-minute presentation at a national conference. He has to have discussed his research ideas with at least three other people around the department, and hey, he's spent the last few months doing just that. Very little work is needed to get to the next step, so I think we're well on track for him to take (and pass) the exam in the next couple of months! We also set up a strategy meeting with a professor at another department who's serving as his external committee member.

On to the search committee meeting! We're all coming prepared with our top 2 candidates of the 5 we've interviewed, and after some difficult deliberations, I've got my list in hand. My prediction: all 5 are going to appear on *somebody's* list and we're going to have our work cut out for us when it comes to narrowing the field. I'm not too fussed because all five would make great colleagues (although there's one that really just feels like a repeat of expertise we already have in the department), but I do have my preferred candidates that I'm going to speak up for.

Hah! It turns out, we're all more or less on the same page - all five of us eliminate one candidate from consideration after some discussion, and then the chair of the search committee asks us who we'd pick if we had to choose only one, and all five of us (plus the grad students!) say the same name. We'll see how things go with the full faculty tomorrow! We need consensus before we send out an offer/battle the dean's office in single combat to be allowed to send out an offer during a "hiring freeze".

I have a couple minutes to check my e-mail and put in some information to get a badge to be allowed to enter the restricted area where, fingers crossed, some research buddies and I will be measuring the properties of a controlled-burn fire. Still finalizing the details on that one, but it looks like lines of communication are slowly reopening and the subcontracts are indeed going to be paid out. Whew.

Great chat with an undergrad research assistant about her work - she's found some really cool severe weather events in Finland to add to her analysis of high-latitude storms. We talk about Roblox and how neither of us knows anything about it - the context is that I'm giving a talk on Thursday evening to a club that's doing a stormchasing simulation in Roblox, and I have never felt more ancient and yet deeply amused by the Kids These Days.

She's also paying way closer attention to the weather than I am, and recommends heading home early to avoid the big storm blowing in today. Off I go!

[grey-and-lavender]

Good morning good morning!

It has already been a Strange One, lads. I woke up 80 minutes before my alarm and couldn't get back to sleep. While I'm still sick, I feel so much better than yesterday that I'm practically giddy with it. Then, while I was making an early breakfast, the power went out for over an hour.

I was dressing my bedraggled ass to campus so I could get a bagel and spend the day masked in my office alone, the power turned back on. Yay! This means I get to stay home today. I'm going to have the weekly meeting with my supervisor over zoom.

But! The exciting news is my supervisor has said I'm almost done the proposal! There's very little left to futz with before it goes off to the rest of my committee (who will inevitably have comments and some pretty cutting criticism) but this means I will hopefully meet my goal of being ABD by the end of this month.

What are you folks up to today?

[aliterarydance]

Romanticizing My Dissertation Writing Process

I now have 6 months in which to finish my Doctoral Dissertation.

Unfortunately, I have recently fallen into a bout of burnout-related depression. My proposal defense process was, to put it mildly, a shitshow. I spent basically spent the entirety of 2024, save for the month of January (during which I defended my Qualifying Exams), working on and writing my proposal. Only to find out a WEEK before my proposal defense that my advisor had not read ANYTHING I had written and sent him for comments over that year. He had very specific and detailed comments about changes he wanted me to make right before my defense, though. I rushed like crazy, made those changes, had them approved, and then went into my proposal defense. But even still, I passed with MAJOR REVISIONS necessary. The committee thought my project too big and not actionable in the time I had left for my dissertation. One committee member even said that I had enough to fuel an entire career worth of research, but it was too much to do in the 3 articles I was planning on writing for my dissertation.

The absolute RUB THE SALT IN THE WOUNDS of it all, is that the suggestions they had for me on how to condense and complete my dissertation were EXACTLY what I had initially proposed in October of 2023 when I first created my committee. To have spent a year on a track that my advisor advised me on, only to turn around over a year later and end up back to what was basically word-for-word my initial idea was ... well, disheartening to say the least.

Since January, when the whole fiasco that was my proposal defense went down, I've essentially had less and less motivation to work on my dissertation. I cobbled together revisions based on what my advisor asked for, only for him to AGAIN not really comment on any of my writing. He literally left ONE COMMENT on 18 pages of writing, and it was basically about a spelling mistake. And for him to tell me that he didn't see how this new writing fit in with my old writing when he told me not to use my old writing at all and start fresh ... yeah, I think my depression really went into swing after that.

The last three months have basically been me putting off working on my dissertation to work on my part-time research instead. But my working capacity for even that has really fallen. In the last month, maybe the last two months, unless I'm doing friends and family-related things, I've basically been sitting in my apartment, reading fanfiction, not showering or moving at all, having a terrible sleep schedule.

ALL of this to say, I definitely have a problem, and these are absolutely the same depression symptoms I exhibited the last time I was in therapy and on medication, over 5 years ago. I am going to find a therapist to help me through this while I hustle to finish my dissertation so I can still graduate on time.

The plan for this blog for the next 6 months is to post a daily recap of the things I do, big or small, personal or academic. Hopefully, in having a daily tracker of this kind, I'll be more inclined to stay on track, be productive, but also work my way out of these depression symptoms by moving about and doing things.

So yeah, the plan to romanticize the next six months of my life in the hopes of completing my dissertation on time and getting out of this mental and emotional funk I'm in begins now. Because, as the quote at the top says, the only way for me to be a writer and get this done is to just sit down and write.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Michelangelo Signorile at The Signorile Report:

For weeks we had some Democrats claiming they wanted to see what Trump planned to do before making judgments, a few of them even vowing to “work with” Trump on various issues. It’s hard to believe that they thought anything positive could come from a man who was impeached twice, incited a violent insurrection, and tried to overturn an election. In fairness, it’s by far not all Democrats. House members like Reps. Robert Garcia, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jasmine Crockett, Maxwell Frost, and others have been hitting Trump and MAGA hard. Senators Chris Murphy, Brian Schatz, Sheldon Whitehouse and others in the Senate have been sounding the alarm since the election, and many Democratic senators, from Tammy Duckworth to Elizabeth Warren, forcefully took on his nominees for the Cabinet in hearings. But too many have caved to Trump, allowing for the advancement of the odious Laken Riley Act before he even took office—something that many of Democrats now realize they bungled:

[Those Democratic lawmakers have likened the handling of the bill to a disorganized retreat and warn it has sparked deep frustration in a caucus still stung from the loss of their majority in November. “There is huge frustration that the bill didn’t go to committee on something so consequential,” fumed one Democratic senator who requested anonymity to discuss the intense debate that rocked the caucus.]

And now, within hours of being sworn in yesterday, Trump is keeping the promise he made that he would be a dictator on Day One. He granted clemency to all of the nearly 1600 January 6th insurrectionists, pardoning most of them while commuting the sentences of 14 members of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, most of whom were convicted of seditious conspiracy. Violent white supremacist thugs who bludgeoned police officers were released, free to now engage in more crimes on behalf of Trump, who’s federal law enforcement agencies surely won’t be tracking them or bringing charges again. This shows that in the MAGA civil war, Steve Bannon and the hardcore MAGA are getting what they want—at least on this issue—even as Bannon was nowhere to be seen at the elite billionaire’s club in the Rotunda for the inauguration, which some saw as a sign that Elon Musk was getting the last laugh.

I wrote just last week in covering the MAGA civil war that JD Vance told Fox News that those January 6th prisoners who engaged in violence “obviously” would not be pardoned, and it caused an avalanche of attacks against him on social media from MAGA. He had to respond, but even his response came under heated assault as insufficient when he clarified that only those who had a “garbage trial” would be pardoned. Of course, Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of all of them, bowing to those who told Vance that every one of them got a “garbage trial.” This tells us that JD Vance is clearly not in the loop, sidelined already by Trump, and that the MAGA insurrectionists were a priority for Trump. So is prosecuting his perceived enemies: Trump, in another speech to elite donors following his inaugural speech, attacked President Biden for preemptively pardoning Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former Joint Chiefs chairman, Mark Miley; the entire January 6th Committee and their staffs; and the police officers who testified before the January 6th Committee.

[...] The good news is that, yes, the midterms are next year. Republicans have a tiny majority in the House. The Senate may be tougher, but Democrats in 2018, 2020 and 2022 showed that opposition to Trump’s radical agenda and the fight for abortion rights galvanized Democrats. And particularly when Trump is not on the ballot, bringing out the low-propensity and low-information voters, Republicans lose in a big way running on Trump’s extremist agenda. But Democrats have got to move fast, because there’s so much despair among the base, which can often lead to complacency. Democrats have got to show America that they will be the defenders of freedom and that people have a stake in getting out to vote against this tyrannical new administration.

As promised, Donald Trump would be a “Day One Dictator”. He’ll also be the dictator for the next four years.

[despair-to-future-arcs]

Twilight Syndrome Murder Case - The Journalist

[Part 1]

[X]

So... where do you want me to start in all this?

Well... maybe you can start when you heard about the case or when you started to investigate? That could be a good starting point.

Okay, well on July 7th - I wasn't there when the whole thing occur, I was busy with an assignment, turn it in but seems Headmaster Kirigiri and Koichi had already left so I decided to wait until tomorrow.

So the next day, I went to headmaster's office and drop off the assignment. However when I walked in, Koichi was drunk...

...

...

...

Date: July 8th, 2011

Time: 7:15 AM

*As then Masa walked in the headmaster's office*

Hey there, sorry that I ran a bit late - I was going to bring back an assignment and-.

...? *Masa looks over at a certain person lying on the couch*

...

...I guess he got drunk again?

Yes he did and I had to bring him home, seems he was really sloshed from finish up Class 79-A and now he's going to work on Class 79-B.

Wait... the Steering Committee still haven't given him more scouts? You think they would of done that by now.

I know, I've ask them if they can do that but of course they think it be a waste of money but we need to bring this to them right away.

I see... well, maybe I can bring it; besides, I just got an assignment done and going to report to them so I can give it to them.

Oh thanks Miss. Esumi, that be a great help them; will leave it to you then.

*As Masa walks over, Jin gives the file for Class 79 to her...*

Thanks, anyways I'll be off then; hope Mr. Kizakura sleeps well...

*As then Masa walks out of the office and heads over to the Faculty Buildings*

...

...

...

*Masa then looks over the list of students* Hmm, looks like we got quite the list here it seems and seems someone named 'Yuki Meada' is the Ultimate Lucky Student.

And seems we got Mitsuhiro Higa... ugh, I remember he made some rather sexual comments towards female journalist which I remember my dad warn me about.

Well, yet again; there was Leon Kuwata who does behave himself so hopefully Mr. Higa does the same.

*As Masa walks into the facility buildings, she notice one of the guards look panic*

GUARD: Mi-Miss. Esumi?! Wh-What are you doing here?

Well I came to drop off the assignment I was finish and was going to give the Steering Committee Class 79-A, is everything okay?

GUARD: Well... um... you see-.

*As then shouting can be heard*

???: YOU BETTER EXPLAIN WHAT THE FUCK HAPPEN TO MY DAUGHTER YOU PIECE OF SHITS, HOW DID YOU LET HER DIE!

UGETSU: Lo-Look calm down, w-we were just...!

???: I DON'T GIVE 2 FUCKS, TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK HAPPEN!

???: Toshiro, look just calm yourself! I'm sure there is some explanation for this but you all did say she be protected, so what happen?!

AKIHIKO: Well first off you can't just barge in here when we just arrive!

FUYUHIKO: Well sorry but you fuckers need to explain what the fuck happen to my sister!

CHISA: Look, we can assure you as soon as Mr. Kizakura arrives, will figure this out!

...Something tells me I came in at a bad time.

GUARD: Ye-Yeah... you did, you might want to wait until they are done arguing.

Maybe but knowing the Steering Committee there just gonna scapegoat Headmaster Kirigiri and Mr. Kizakura plus I did promise to drop this off, if anything I had a feeling this would happen.

GUARD: Wait, are you seriously going in there?!

Well yeah, figure I do something because it sounds like it's going to get worse so let's go...

GUARD: Good luck, god your gonna need it...

*As then Masa walks inside which she notices a bunch of tattoo men and other thugs connected to the Yakuza which one of them notice Masa*

YAKUZA MEMBER: Hey kid, can you leave? Sorry but Mr. Kuzuruyu and his wife are talking with the guys in charge?

I'm aware, the guard warn me and I'm here to drop off something from Mr. Kizakura and the headmaster, it's only going to take a moment.

YAKUZA MEMBER: Well sorry but as say, it'll only be for a moment.

Right but I want to come here and drop this off...

And trust me... those 4 gentlemen are just going to throw them under the bus, like usual...

???: Wait really...?

*As then a stronger man walk over*

I overheard your conversation, were you sent by the Headmaster and Mr. Kizakura?

YAKUZA MEMBER: Oh hey, 2nd-in-command - I was just telling this kid to leave.

I know but hearing what she say and they were mentioning some guy named 'Koichi Kizakura', where is he?

He's drunk right now and I came to bring this instead, if asking I help with scouting and I came here because I had finish an assignment; Masa Esumi, Ultimate Journalist of Class 76-A.

I see... so those guys were just gonna blame someone else, that's not surprising from what I heard.

Still you say your a journalist, huh? Well if that's the case then maybe you can help us out, just follow me and I'll inform my boss.