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merryfortune · 3 years ago

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Leech

Un-Love You Challenge: 06. I want to need you

Ship: Daruizen/Nodoka

Fandom: Healin’ Good PreCure

Word Count: 2.7k

Synopsis: There's a pity in wanting and in needing, pity that Nodoka obliges when Daruizen, in the form of a Nanobyougen, asks for a little more than just refuge.

A faint tap, tap, tap on her widow competed with the scratch, scratch, scratch of Nodoka’s pencil in her work booklet as she completed a bout of English homework and study. At first, she had thought it her imagination but there was something pitiful, like a baby bird, about this noise so she decided, sliding her chair back, the sound of the feet dragging on the wooden floorboards was musical, it was time to investigate and so, she did.

She stood by her far side window: it was huge and she always felt caught up in some awe of the wind and sunshine and in that glint, she saw it. Small and tiny and yes, something incredibly pitiful and Nodoka’s heart ached. Not for a baby bird, although that was almost accurate as she thought of what was fought for by the lakeside that an arborist cherished, but for something else.

“Daruizen…? Is that you?” Nodoka murmured as she caught this tiny little thing in her hands upon opening the window.

He looked up at her. His body was small and bulbous save for his wiry, leathery wings but admittedly, he didn’t look like much. Not compared to the final iteration of his self that Nodoka had seen and had vanquished as Cure Grace. Oh, she remembered him as being as colossal as a skyscraper and as being so resistant to how she and her friends could fight him because of all the Mega Parts that he had inserted into himself.

He had gone from being a giant among villains to being able to fit in the palm of Nodoka’s hand. He resembled Shindoine in this form: round and winged, not much by the way of being humanlike or anything else like that but apparently, he was still capable of emotions, of speech.

He looked up at her with a wounded expression, teardrops in the corners of his acidic yellow eyes, “Help me, please, Cure Grace.”

Nodoka grimaced. She sighed and she still felt the sunshine on her face. She still felt that what her past deeds unto Daruizen were right and justified. Rabirin’s words as a confidante and source of direction rang true to her right now and in her ear and yet, her heart ached for the misery that she held in her hands.

Daruizen turned shy in her hands. His wings cramped and crowded him as he hung what little of his head that he could, in shame. Nodoka moved a hand and Daruizen shuddered. She was gentle as she pet the top of his head with her fingertip, considering what she ought to do.

She had wanted to help him but that past tense to her desire was quickly becoming present tense. Without Rabirin, or even Asumi, to defer to on short notice for counsel, it was up to Nodoka to make her own decisions and she knew in her heart that she was a good, kind person and she wanted to extend the help that she had received from friends, family, and medical professionals to even the undeserving like Daruizen. She sighed.

“I’ve hopefully built up enough immunity to you, after everything that’s happened.” Nodoka murmured but her brows pinched forward. “However, if you do anything untoward then there will be consequences.” She said that even when she stroked the top of his head.

Daruizen cuddled up to her. As though he were making a promise to behave but Nodoka was sceptical of him. Even if he looked all adorable and pathetic in this form. She sighed. Disappointed in herself that she was even letting him melt her heart like this. She just knew if Rabirin were here, she would disapprove but as she was not, all that mattered was Daruizen’s approval and already, Nodoka could feel him leech life energy from herself through her finger. Like a pinprick.

He nattered pleasantly and already, Nodoka could see some difference in his Nano-Byougen form. His wings fluttered and he was eager for more but Nodoka bopped him on the head.

“No.” she scolded him. “You’re only allowed a little bit per day. I - I’m still really scared of when you went berserk with the Mega Parts… I don’t want that happening again.” The strength her voice quavered when she revealed her fear.

Daruizen’s eyes glimmered. They neither softened or hardened; showed sympathy nor harshness; showed only that he had heard Nodoka and he had listened to her, too. And so, with a tender uneasiness, Nodoka allowed Daruizen into her life once more.

She returned to her desk to study and Daruizen stayed nearby, as though chained or leashed to her presence. He was mostly unnoticeable but Nodoka felt distinctly irritated to have him around. Even as she tried to do her homework, their previous encounters played hard and fast and sharp in her head. It was difficult to believe that such a powerful foe and combatant, one who had so closely rivalled her in every step of the way on her journey of being a Pretty Cure could be rendered so lowly and microscopic. That he even remained at all.

Yet despite this friction between them, Nodoka found it did get easier. Though there had been many a moment wherein she had been tempted to keep him all locked up in a jar, she didn’t. Every couple of hours in the daylight, she gave him a little bit of herself to have a nibble on. That, too, got easier as well.

At first, it felt a pinprick and then, Nodoka didn’t notice it at all. What was once a chore to her, soon became something that she looked forward to or even enjoyed. Of course, “soon” spanned many days, even a month or so. It wasn’t something that happened swiftly like a river, more like the slow erosion that one would have caused by surging through a valley.

Daruizen’s gratitude became cute to her. The way his face lit up when the energy he absorbed was particularly rich with good vibrations and energising magic; the way his wings scrunched up when Nodoka had had a crummy day and it was reflecting in the residual magic that he fed off her. Either way, these little in between moments were becoming increasingly precious to Nodoka.

Even if they didn’t speak much - as in having grand conversations - it was still apparent that he was only doing this for himself. He wanted what he had lost back and honestly, Nodoka couldn’t blame him for that. She wanted her own magic as Cure Grace back pretty badly as well. Not that her health was failing or otherwise declining since giving up the rod, but it wasn’t exactly superhuman. Nodoka had gotten less paper cuts, less bumps and scratches having her alter ego Cure Grace around, she observed. She could even run a little bit farther on her running route as well, she had had to shorten it as well now that it had been several months since she had last felt the power of being a Pretty Cure course through her.

So yeah, she could understand why Daruizen wanted to be a big, mean Terabyougen again. She just hoped that when it was all done and dusted, he wasn’t going to be that big or that mean. He was pretty manageable, and even downright adorable, being this small and useless.

As peculiar as their relationship was - calling them host and parasite was probably the most accurate way to describe the nuances of their relationship, she thinks - Nodoka had gotten used to him. She was even going to miss him when he had gotten his powers back and decided to vanish. Doing whatever it was that armyless Terabyougens do, Nodoka supposed.

She had even let him sleep with him as of late. Again, really. Just like old times in a stretch of the imagination. After all, they had been literally inseparable for several years in Nodoka’s childhood and preadolescence. Even if they were mostly oblivious to each other, but he did make a good little bed bug. He didn’t bite.

Daruizen would brood on her pillow, just by her face and together, they would sleep. Sometimes, Daruizen would rest against her face and Nodoka would enjoy just how velvety he felt, even if it was a velvet streaked with grease or oil and she would wake up with some sort of smear to wipe off his morning and he enjoyed her warmth. The warmth that humans emanated was gentle, it was uncubatory and safe, completely unlike the unrelenting and horrible warmth of the magmic, undermined world of the Byougens.

Even so, their routine was very touch and go. The cat might have been out of the bag regarding the Pretty Cures and her parents knowing about all of that was well past gone but it was a completely different feline to worry about if they were to find out that one of those monsters was still around. And even worse, living under their roof with their precious daughter but somewhere in amongst those daily cycles of giving Daruizen the table scraps of her energy, she had forgotten that one day, it might be entirely possible that her parents, or her friends, might find out about him.

Daruizen had latched onto her fingers as per usual to have a feed of her energy whilst she flipped through the book she was meant to be reading for literature class when there was a bright light. Daruizen had eaten his fill and so, he reverted to his previous form, more evolved than his present.

Nodoka was blinded as Daruizen transformed in front of her. She stumbled back off her chair and even fell onto the floor as she looked up at the unfolding cataclysm of white and red and black. From the kitchen below, she could hear her parents call and fuss for her but she could hardly find her voice as she bore witness to the rebirth of the Byougens General Daruizen. Her heart hammered in her chest and all she could do was tremble as her room was filled with these blinding lights.

Yet it wasn’t because he was her enemy that she was horrified. Nodoka was horrified, she was actually wondering if that’s what it was like to transform into Cure Grace in front of others and just before that wondering could transform into a reverie, she was accosted by Daruizen. She heard the dull thumps of his feet landing on the floor, then she heard the sound of knees dropping on the wooden floorboards and was completely blindsided as she felt arms surge out from the light and embrace her. They were tight, either side of her and she was brought down to her knees by it.

Daruizen was hugging her. He emanated this spiky gratitude yet despite how offensive it was, it felt fragile too. Fit to break if Nodoka did so much as breathe. She was just barraged with this clingy affection as he hugged her, buried his face into her shoulder and there was a sob. It was awful, somewhere between swallowed and completely cried out.

Nodoka’s hands twitched and unthinkingly, despite that fragility that bawled, Nodoka hugged him back. When that light faded, he was human. Or maybe just human enough, Nodoka realised as he cradled him. His horns were smaller than before: tiny, little nubs of velvet. His face had a pinker colouration to it than before, when he had been of such a mossy pallor. Even his clothes weren’t quite so sharp, they were softer, rounder, and even more floral by the embroidery. The red which was once like dried blood was now an earthier brown.

This was a Daruizen who was not quite human but not quite a devil either. A new type of Terabyougen, perhaps? Nodoka didn’t know but she could see where her help had patched him up. He was healthier than before, so to speak. She let go of a flurry of anxiety that Daruizen might be on the cusp of attacking her, backstabbing the kindness that she had shown him but no. She didn’t think it was going to be like that.

“A-Are you okay?” Nodoka asked, stuttering with a tinge of surprise. “Are you scared?”

Daruizen growled.

Nodoka shuddered. It was a harsh, rasping noise from the bottom of his throat and it spooked her.

“Yes…” Daruizen finally admitted after that moment of broken repose.

“You poor thing… It was scary for the first time for me, too. Not knowing what was happening to my body, the surge of new energy and magic…” Nodoka consoled him.

“That’s not it.” Daruizen sharply intoned.

His raised voice scared Nodoka again. Her body freezing as she felt the fangs of his voice in her skin but again, when it was all over, and Daruizen could find it within himself to behave, she relaxed and it felt like she was shaking off a dousing of ice-cold water.

“I’m scared of leaving you.” Daruizen murmured and every word was so difficult for him to say but he said it. And he said some more, pressing on. “I’m scared of losing you.”

Nodoka blinked, “What do you mean…?” she asked.

Daruizen pulled back and Nodoka was harrowed by his facial expression. He was mid-bawl, tears and all. He held onto the mid of her shoulders before his clawed hands slipped downwards, along her willowy limbs and all to timidly hold her hands.

“I - I want to need you.” he sobbed.

“Pardon?” It still did not compute with Nodoka.

“I-I want your light.” Daruizen didn’t know how else to explain it. “I want your love.” Every breath he took was painful as he revealed all his icky feelings to her. “You are my beginning and my end and I - and I’m scared of not having you. Of being cast aside by you or torn away from you. There is nothing left in this world for me but I stayed. I survived. A-All because I wanted to return to you. I - I want to be healed and - and now that I am. I don’t want to be because it might mean losing to you again.”

Nodoka was shaken to hear such passionate words from Daruizen. The begging and the confessing. It was so utterly selfish but it was so utterly him as well, desperately clinging to what he had as it no longer came so easy or so simple to him. Nodoka sighed. Her expression softened and she reached out to Daruizen. She pet the top of his head and his hair was soft as silk. Slowly, Daruizen began to calm down. He swallowed a hard lump in his throat and he sank into Nodoka’s lap. He cuddled up to her, trying to make himself small again, just like a Nanobyougen, bringing up his legs to his chest as he held onto her.

“There, there,” she murmured, “I understand now.”

Daruizen turned his head slightly so he could see Nodoka, even if it was through the strands of his fringe. He was shy, trying to hide his outburst and ugly emotions. It didn’t suit him, he thought, with his tail literally between his legs. But it also suited him, or at the very least Nodoka, to be soothed. To have his head stroked and be told everything was alright.

“I’ve always wanted to see the best in you and as forces of nature - the good and bad, the sick and the healthy - we’re always going to be in tandem so I want there to be balance too. Some way to meet in the middle, so Daruizen… I want you to need me too. I like being the heroine after all.” Nodoka replied.

“I’m glad.” Daruizen’s voice was faint as he replied, he closed his eyes as Nodoka kept consoling him, with her voice, with her hand, with all of her heart and soul.

#unlove you challenge #darunodo #healin good precure #precure #healin good #hanadera nodoka #cure grace #daruizen #writing tag

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rigelmejo · 4 years ago

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Unrelated completely, regarding listening reading method:

I am genuinely so excited to test the listening reading method out wholeheartedly. When I looked up the method, few people were trying it with Chinese, and of the people I saw a lot were beginners with less vocabulary than I have which I think both made the task harder for them and made their progress look different than I imagine mine will.

For example, in my first attempts using listening reading method, I noticed I picked up a TON of words I could already read, and a TON of phrases I could already read but didn’t properly “chunk” until I heard them aloud. Whereas the beginners tended to document picking up entirely new words, and not understanding much of any paragraph for the first several chapters. Whereas again, because I had more vocabulary, my first chapters I listening reading method did I heard a TON of individual words/followed the main gist, and it took several chapters for me to start finally understanding full phrase chunks and sentence chunks together. I 100% think the listening reading method can work with mandarin, I just think since few people have tried it and shared the experience, I’m going to find out how much it can improve someone’s mandarin myself...

I saw people who did listening reading method with german, and Dutch, who like the creator of the method ended up going from 0 to B1-B2 listening and sometimes-reading* skill in 3-5 months (reading skill tended to depend on how much they focused on the actual text during target language audio/target language text portion). The people with the most success usually already had a foundation of several hundred or a couple thousand common words, and had seen some grammar summarized beforehand (both of which I have already done with mandarin). I’m extremely curious how far the listening reading method can take my reading skills specifically - since the method mainly improves listening, and reading is simply affected a bit as a consequence of picking up new words/reading target language text along with the audio during one of the steps. With Chinese I suspect I’ll have to do more Hanzi learning, and reading-only work like intensive reading, to supplement my reading skills. However I already do a lot of intensive reading, so maybe that will keep the skills relatively even.

I do know that only couple dozen hours of listening reading method already boosted my listening skills a TON. So listening reading method definitely improves listening skills, as it is intended to. The actual method suggests learners listen read through an entire novel in a week or two, then do another novel etc, at least 3 novels though potentially more - and redoing some novels again from the start if desired. For my kind of novels - like Guardian by Priest, that means 106+ chapters, 800+ pages, 30 minutes audio a chapter (53 hours for the English text-chinese audio portion, another 53 hours for the Chinese text-chinese audio portion, and lets say half as many hours to read it in English 26.5 hours). So that is 132.5+ hours to listen read to Guardian. The listening reading method assumes you do a few books, so let’s say around 3 books, 396 hours (roughly 400 hours). Well... no wonder people saw such improvements! 400 hours of listening to comprehensible input in a European language will get an English speaker quite far into learning. Most European languages according to FSI take around 600-750 hours for an English native speaker to learn. Listening reading method would fill a huge chunk of those hours, and if you focus on the reading portion too, then that should definitely at least be a solid foundation into B1 I can imagine.

Listening reading methods creator also tends to do these in 6-12 hour reading bursts per day - which I absolutely never do because I’m lazy and unable to focus on things for too long usually without switching things up. But like I’ve mentioned, even me just doing maybe 12 hours of listening reading method so far, in small 30 minute to 2 hour chunks, has been enough to make noticeable improvement in my listening comprehension. If someone is already intermediate and just wants to improve their listening skill, I think they’d see fast results like I have regarding their listening skill dragging up closer to their reading skill level.

When I read the listening reading method creators website, they sounded like 10 hours was about how long it took (for beginners in a language) to start parsing individual words and recognizing them, 30 hours to start hearing word chunks and phrases they could understand, and 60-100 hours to start comprehending a majority of the words.

I am therefore very curious what my rate of improvement will be. I do feel chinese study using the listening reading method at least for listening skills will see similar levels of improvement. I’m wondering if my listening skills will improve a bit faster, since I’m already past the “progress at 30 hours” mark expectations wise - I can hear many individual words, can hear many sentence chunks/phrases, and just struggle to follow some full sentences and catch brand new words until I’ve heard them several times. I do very much want to completely go through Guardian with this method - for many reasons lol. 1. Because I’ve been wanting to read it in english and I’ll have a chance to use that for study which is cool, 2. Because I’ve been wanting to read it in chinese and this makes it doable/more comprehensible for my current skill level (aka following along to the audiobook I will read at a less slow pace/comprehend more since the English will be fresh in my mind, compared to if I just read it extensively on its own), 3. Avenuex made a beautiful audiobook I adore and I’ll have an excuse to listen to it while actually comprehending everything since I’ll have the English and Chinese novel to look at while o read! So... once I’m through Guardian, I’ll be able to answer for myself what over 100 hours of progress doing the listening reading method produce, how well it works when using a book with a more complicated/high vocab style - which is sort of priest, reading challenge wise, and the kind of novel the listening reading method creator recommends using. Also, I’ll have read Guardian! ovo)/ and I will have read a full priest novel, so I’ll have picked up words by my favorite author that will hopefully make other priest novels easier to read (the same reason Tian Ya Ke may be helpful).

———-

Another thing people who have tried the listening reading method suggest doing first (particularly if studying a language much different than your native language, but for any language tbh). The creator of the method suggested: knowing a few hundred to a few thousand common words, and having looked at a grammar guide or overview prior. That’s something anyone who’s already a bit of a beginner, to low intermediate, probably has done or is doing. In addition, some people who have done this method suggested using something like sentence audio flashcards (in English and target language audio) and listening to them a few times, repeating them, until one felt comfortable with them. Generally common word/grammar ones, and you could do “listening reading” with those sentences too (reading them while listening to the audio). This would serve as a primer to learn the basics comfortably before going into listening reading novels. They suggested doing yjis would make the method work better - they got to B2 in Dutch in a handful of months of intensive listening reading by doing this beforehand and they think it helped a lot. While I think it’s not necessary, I do think of listening reading is hard, then getting a basis beforehand as a beginner and/or covering a easier basics common language material first will help. I use the Chinese SpoonFed Audio files which basically amounts to the same thing but no reading (if I used the flashcards still, it would include reading). So I do have some sentences/phrases/words I have a good listening foundation for already. Also, as mentioned, I do read, so for many common words and Hanzi I already can read them. I do think this advice is very good for beginners though, if they want to see noticable results sooner (versus 30-50 hours into listening reading before they start learning significant amounts - basically it just means they’d do 30-50 hours prestudy instead of basic common words/grammar, to make the listening reading initially less difficult). A total beginner could dive right into listening reading (just like my chaotic self first started to try to read Chinese knowing 500 words and brute forcing mdzs and guardian a few paragraphs at a time), it just means it’ll feel more difficult at first for a while, and they’ll be mostly learning basics for a while first before they build enough of a basis to comprehend more. Which is fine. It all just comes down to how much incompréhensibilty can you personally tolerate without giving up. The creator of the method? Can tolerate a TON. Me? I can tolerate a brutally large amount, surprisingly, but usually I need to comprehend had least the main idea and that’s a minimum of like 40-60% depending on which parts I’m comprehending. Most people will feel it’s unbearable until they can comprehend at least 80-90% (and I certainly PREFER material I comprehend that much of). And most people ideally are comfortable once they understand 95-98% (think reading a book in your native language with some unknown words you can figure out easily from context, or graded readers made to feel this easy with around this many unknown words for you to figure out in context, or maybe manhua/manga/comics once you’re a pretty decent intemediate level in a language etc).

#January progress #listening reading method #rant #I am genuinely like #so excited #as soon as I’m in the right mood to do it #I can’t wait to #because it’s just like a bunch of stuff I wanna do #!!!!!!#and I really do think the method has merit #since I discovered it and at the Least #combined some of its points into my regular study routine and reading #it’s improved my listening skills a LOT

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oh-boy-me · 4 years ago

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hi, you mentioned Japanese was your third language, could you share some tips and ways you learnt it? I’ve been meaning to learn some Japanese but I just can’t figure out how to get started. Thanks ^^

Oh yeah of course!! I’m always happy help out in that regard :)

On top of all of this, I have to lead with the fact that guidance from a teacher or tutor of some kind is always good, so if you have access to that I do highly encourage it. I know it’s very hard though, especially if you’re still in the West at a time like this.

First things’s first

You might remember hearing about things like “auditory learning” and “visual learning” and then never thinking about them again. They’re actually really important for the path you take when learning a language. I had a really hard time remembering the materials I read, for example, but the ones I heard and practiced in class were much easier.

The four types, to get rid of their technical names and make them more obvious, are seeing, hearing, reading, and hands-on approaches.

People who learn though seeing will benefit from manga or watching children's shows, while those who learn best through hearing will get more help from podcasts or traditional lectures. If you learn by reading, taking notes and reading texts will help (although you should take notes regardless lol). And if you do best hands-on, you'll want to multitask, whether it's doing something unrelated while reviewing, or using a task or goal to practice.

You aren't limited to, and shouldn't limit yourself to, resources that fit your learning type best, but when you're finding yourself stuck it's useful to have an idea of how you'll most easily be able to push forward. Language has two main element pairs—reading/writing and speaking/listening—and while you'll want to get used to everything, it's fine to focus on one or the other at first, especially with pictorial languages like Japanese. If you find yourself reading a lot, kanji will be a more immediate concern, but if you're focused on speaking you won't need to worry about it for a while. The opposite is true for tone-indicating particles like ne or deshou.

Anyway, with that in mind, you'll be able to fine tune your experience, but here are some overarching tips that should apply no matter what kind of learner you are.

Getting Started

It's obvious once you get started, but you want to master hiragana before you even begin to think about katakana or kanji. You can use hiragana In any situation, technically, and you'll want to be able to look back at your notes and be able to pronounce them later.

On a similar note, it's much more important to be able to read kanji than to be able to write it.

As soon as you can, stop using the Latin alphabet to label pronunciation. It'll help you with your hiragana, and the further you detach your Japanese from your English, the better.

What I mean by that last sentence is, Japanese and English are different languages, so if you try to think of everything with a one-to-one relationship to English, you'll find yourself getting stuck very often. Sometimes things won't work the way they do in English, and "that's just how it is" is going to be the most helpful answer. (Which is why practicing in any way you can is really important).

Be active in your learning! Don't just "get the gist of it", really dig into the sentences you read or hear to make sure you're picking up on everything that’s being said.

When I get something wrong, I find it useful to figure out what it is I accidentally said or wrote (for example, instead of watashi no saifu [my wallet] watashi wa saifu [I am a wallet]). It helps me remember to not make the same mistake later.

Above all else, keep it fun for yourself! If you hate your book, there's probably a better one out there. Learn songs. Play games. You're more likely to remember things if you actually care about the information, so give yourself something to care about.

Reading/Writing

For learning any alphabet, hiragana and katakana included, watching YouTube videos will help you best see how to naturally write it.

LingoDeer is actually pretty good for the Japanese syllabaries too, so that's also an option.

Children's books, slice-of-life manga, news articles, and video games without timed text are some of my favorite ways to practice reading.

For writing, journaling is usually pretty fun, and of course if you're up for it you can always find a study buddy or a pen pal to write back and forth with.

The important thing is to stay on your level and not overwhelm yourself with things you don't know yet, especially with writing. You're going to sound like a preschooler for a little while, and that's fine.

Periodically test yourself on groups of kanji to make sure you're retaining them.

Unfortunately, Japanese can be really picky about its writing (look at 未 [not yet] and 末 [end], or わ [wa] and れ [re], for example), so it's important to keep close track of it and practice a lot so that your muscle memory can start to take over.

Speaking/Listening

The absolute best option is to go to Japan, since that will force you to practice, but assuming that's not going to happen (lol) and you're working on your own, children's cartoons, songs of all kinds, and YouTube videos are going to be your best friends.

Repeat everything you hear to get used to saying it! Repeat prompt questions before answering them, and while you don't need to parrot literally everything in a video, if something catches your ear or is being heavily emphasized, give it a whirl.

Tsu and r are the sounds that are noticeably different from English, so you want to get used to those. U and f are technically different too, but you can get away with using their English equivalents.

If you find yourself getting bored in your spare time, try to talk to yourself in Japanese, whether it's narrating what you're going to do tomorrow or answering imaginary interviews for when you inevitably become famous. Even if you get stuck, it's one of the most natural way to practice verbal sentence building.

Resources

LingoDeer is an app with some free lessons on top of a subscription service for the full package. In terms of languages like Japanese and Chinese, it feels a little more natural to get started with than Duolingo.

That said, Duolingo is free and very useful.

Maggie Sensei, HiNative, and Japanese Language Stack Exchange are great for explaining grammar points. Keep in mind that the latter two are forums, so you should check to make sure people aren't disagreeing with an answer.

Jisho is a useful dictionary for both standard Japanese and slang! Just be sure the words are breaking up where they should, because Jisho always takes the first option it sees. Isolate parts of a sentence if you think other kanji or particles are getting in the way.

It won't work for everyone, but I have this book called Remembering the Kanji by James Heisig that's proved helpful for me. You can find all of the introduction and part one for free here.

#renoodle #anon demon #language ref

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solitrewq · 4 years ago

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Listening across the Aisle

I have never been a very social person. Friendly, sure. Helpful, absolutely. Caring, yes. But not social. Intensely social-based behaviors confuse me, so for the most part I avoid them. Wearing makeup, cultivating a persona based on images... even "simple" contracts like "nose goes".

That’s why you don’t see social media posts from me about current events. It’s not that I don’t care that a conversation happens around the world. It’s not that I don’t have thoughts of my own. It’s because those aren’t the skills I have to make change. Instead, my super power is listening and understanding. I analyze by habit. I constantly question everything, including and especially my own listening and understanding skills.

I have always been a seeker of conversations. Freshman year at Duke I disturbed many a student’s quiet morning by joining their solitary breakfast and talking to them. Almost every single airplane flight I took during my college years was accompanied by a seat neighbor who suddenly felt encouraged to give me a detailed life story. And when Mormon Elders knocked on my door here in Washington I invited them in, accompanied them to church, and enjoyed Tabernacle choir performances in order to better see the world as they did. And I have not suffered for these conversations. Despite popular opinion, I didn’t lose myself and what I believe in by putting myself in a position to also understand the nature and impact of Mormon doctrine and faith.

Because conversations are important. Understanding is important. For all parties involved to listen and be listened to. And I get worried when I look at the public face of society’s discourse - comment sections everywhere, editorials on news sites, news anchors, social media posts - because I don’t see any conversations anywhere. In fact, what I see is anti-conversation. And I see it in equal measure everywhere from everyone. Equal measure, consider that VERY closely. In fact, if it’s any hope for reconciliation, it’s the fact that everyone everywhere seems to be behaving and reacting to everything in a completely synced pattern, the same mental formation no matter the stance.

When did “just don’t have a conversation, there is nothing you can say to these people” become a widely acceptable mature adult reaction to problems? Why is it a common thing for me to see heated, confrontational messages zipping back and forth until ten unrelated mean spirited messages later one party suddenly realizes, “oops, misread everything you said, we were on the same side/page all along!”. How is it that I can nearly guarantee that when I see someone mocking someone else - being a sheep, not questioning sources, not critically thinking about their own actions, they will turn around and in the same breath demonstrate the exact behaviors they were mocking? It’s the oddest feeling to watch and I can’t explain it except for a collective decision to turn off listening... even ones own words. Also, why has it ever been okay to openly make fun of other humans anyways? What exactly is the purpose of getting angry and saying mean things? How does this help?

One of the saddest things to me is when I see a thread where people repeat the same exact thing over and over. When I’m in a meeting and someone suggests the same thing I just suggested or I’m in a conversation and the other person has not changed their words or thoughts in the slightest after something I said... I too feel the need to repeat myself over and over because I don’t feel heard or listened to. And yet, I see people on repeat now with the same verbatims over and over, to the point where they just copy paste their same exact words everywhere. Repetition is not a symptom of lower functioning brain cells or using talking points and being unable to think, repetition is a symptom of yelling something as loud as you can at the world and having nobody care enough to hear you and listen to what you said. Repetition is a devastating sign of a lonely, isolated, conversation-less world.

So I have a proposal. Let’s take a look at our surroundings and calculate the probability that we’re not listening well enough. Did we grow up in a culture? Are we homo sapiens? Is there a person in the world somewhere that you don’t understand? My personal calculation here gives me this result: there’s a 99.9999999% chance that I am not maximizing my listening potential and have room to grow. So I will work on it. I will continue to write sticky notes with ideas as to how to be more approachable and seek others’ ideas. I will check out books from the library titled things like “You’re Not Listening” and read them closely. And I will question my own sources and assumptions whenever I can, because what harm will it do to me? And I ask that everyone else who got a similar result from their calculations to do the same. We cannot take responsibility for the world, but we can take personal responsibility for ourselves and we can ALL do a better job of that. There is no moral high ground here.

If you’re still on the fence, I made a longer, more targeted list of circumstances that indicate a need to listen better:

During a conversation, even while making an active effort to use all the brain cells available to you, you still cannot conceive of a single thing that would change your mind

Your knowledge and facts are not first-hand. Or they might be but you honestly have no idea when/where you obtained that knowledge from

Off the bat, you casually assume certain people you talk to are most likely in favor of genocide and murder

You cannot properly evaluate anything that is written here without first knowing who I voted for - at which point you can make a full evaluation

You have strong/physical reactions to simple things like words with actual real-life English meanings, even given no context. Look we can even try a few: conspiracy, liberal, flu

You are reading this list and thinking of ways that it applies to someone else other than you

We are in a time. Connecting with people is not a priority. Things are becoming more and more difficult, even as they should be becoming easier. There are so many things we don’t control, so many things we can’t keep track of, so many imperfect humans in one small area... maybe let’s withdraw from all of that and look within. Look for those who have tried to be heard by us and listen to them.

I am still an extremely imperfect listener and conversationalist, I can only do my best. I don’t wear earphones in public. I strive to leave room in my world, my surroundings, for others to join. And I’m always open to conversation. If you would like to practice, would like to be listened to, would like to say hi... I’ll be here.

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percabeth4life · 4 years ago

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Three Old Ladies Knit Socks of Death

First Chapter || Previous Chapter || Next Chapter || AO3

I’m really glad that I have a clue as to what happened, even if the constant buzzing surrounding everyone is driving me nuts.

Someone cast a spell of some sort to trick everyone into thinking that Ms. Dodds never existed. The buzzing kept trying to affect me, but it couldn’t get me through my Purifying powers.

Thank Pontus for those.

But the buzzing is very, very, very, annoying.

One important thing I noticed was that Grover didn’t have any buzzing around him, which means that he is fully aware of Ms. Dodds. That and the fact that he’s a horrible liar.

Mr. Brunner’s buzzing didn’t lower at all, but nor did it raise.

I think he’s the source of the buzzing honestly, still not sure if he’s safe. He hasn’t asked for the pen that’s a sword that’s a pen back.

But everyone is denying that Ms. Dodds exists.

…

I may or may not be using it as practice for my purification powers.

…

It seems like a good idea (and keeps my mind off of…)

OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO

Okay so one person had to go to the nurses office cause I managed to get rid of the buzzing around her with my purifying powers, and whoops…

Apparently, mortals can’t handle that.

Everyone is saying she had a psychotic break yelling about a Ms. Dodds and how she definitely exists…

So, I’ve decided that I should not test my purification powers on helpless mortals.

Katara would be ashamed of me for testing my powers like that.

I’ve also decided to rewatch Avatar: The Last Airbender for the twenty-fourth time.

Don’t judge me, it’s a great show and my teacher for waterbending!

And maybe I’ll see more about healing with waterbending, I can’t remember all the details and I need a way to learn without hurting myself first.

Purification is still cooler, but healing will definitely be helpful in the future. Besides, it’s practically a signature move for Katara, the whole world would’ve ended in the show if it weren’t for her healing abilities.

OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO

Carl was excited for my experiments with the water holder, I was messing with some ice and ignoring the growing sense of doom that was coming as exams got closer.

Triton would be disappointed in me for not paying attention to my lessons now, but I can’t help it.

It’s so hard to focus when you’re trying not to focus on the fact that you killed someone, sure she was a fury, but she had feelings and stuff too.

I shook my head, nope nope nope, not thinking about that right now.

Work on the magic portable ice fish tank.

I sighed, fiddling with the ice to twist it into the right shape.

I’ll need to add the runes-

“Percy!”

I made the ice shatter into a thousand tiny pieces and melt and nearly fell off the bed.

…

“You okay man?”

I nodded, pushing myself up and pretending like my face wasn’t on fire.

“I’m fine.”

“What were you doing anyways?”

Uh…

“I was trying to do a palm reading on my hands.” Nailed it.

“Baa-ha-ha, you do palm readings?”

“No, but I thought I’d give it a shot. I was trying to see if I could pass my exams.”

“If you study you might,” Grover bleated out.

I sniffed, raising my nose and hiding a smile, “Studying is for the weak!” I declared grandly.

Grover laughed.

OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO

I opened my eyes to an unfamiliar view, fields with misty figures as far as the eye could see.

I frowned.

Where am I?

I wandered forward, waving a hand in the face of one of the figures. They didn’t react.

Yep definitely a dream.

Now I just have to figure out where I am.

I probably should’ve gotten around to reading up on prophetic dreaming like probably dad Oceanus mentioned one of those times I was there, but I got distracted.

I wandered the fields, looking around in confusion, this place was very unfamiliar.

Except, a feeling of familiarity clung to me from one direction, so I started that way.

It felt like a low burn edging my senses, I’m not sure where I felt it before, I don’t really remember this feeling.

The sound of leathery wings made me look up, my eyes widening at the three figures.

Hades’s furies.

I suddenly realized where I was.

The itch of a curse made me want to scratch my arms. But looking up, Ms. Dodds, one of the furies, is alive.

It was like I could breathe for the first time in weeks.

I didn’t just kill someone who could think and breathe and feel like us.

I almost felt like sitting down right there, I let out a breath and held back the tears.

Thank Pontus.

I woke up

OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO

I practiced my Ocarina more, sitting next to some of the plants Grover has and settling the music book in front of me to try one of the basic tricks. Growing plants.

Technically it’s supposed to be done with coral and sea grass and other undersea plants, but I don’t have those. So, I just have to make due with the plants that Grover has.

Grover came in while I was mid-song, but I ignored him, the plant seems a bit brighter, just a little taller.

I smiled, it’s going alright.

Not as much as it should be, but it’s certainly improving.

OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO

School was itching at my nerves. The constant buzzing was driving me up a wall and I was snapping quicker at people instead of doing it the smart way like Triton taught me.

I watched more Avatar and tried to resist the urge to break something.

I have no outlet, I can’t go practice my waterbending, I can’t talk to Triton, I only have Carl who just plain doesn’t understand.

School studies are getting harder and harder for me to do.

I could handle Pre-Calc thanks to all of Triton’s help in the past, and Latin wasn’t that hard either (why is every language but English easier? Should I try learning Spanish or French?), but otherwise… I kind of just gave up.

The buzzing stayed in the back of my head.

I threw myself into my books from Triton, devouring the information on Siren’s Song that I had been ignoring so far.

I practiced my Ocarina and paid attention to my clubs again some. Triton said they were good for me.

The buzzing filled the rooms when there was even a moment of silence.

I ended up kicked out of Model UN because of my lowering grades but music club had pity on me.

I practiced more.

The buzzing didn’t stop.

I snapped at a teacher one time too many, I’m not welcome back at the school next year.

What an underwhelming way to get kicked out this time.

The buzzing was unrelenting.

OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO

I’m really glad for my starglobe. I’ve just been sitting here staring at it for the last hour.

Grover keeps giving me weird looks, but… It’s just sparkly and pretty and reminds me of Triton. It reminds me of the sea that one time my mom let me “sleepover” at a friends house. I got to see the stars from the sea and it was amazing.

“Did you know your eyes change colors?”

I looked up at Grover.

“What?”

“Well, they’re normally this sharp green, like, sea green, but you’re looking at your sparkly snowglobe and your eyes just turn like, silver-gray?”

I blinked, “Do they?”

“Yeah, I mean it’s cool.”

“Hmm, I guess I get it from my mom, her’s do the same thing.”

OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO

It was the night before my Latin exam.

As much as I don’t trust Mr. Brunner, I just couldn’t figure out this one translation, and I lost the answer key.

Ugh.

I decided to go ask him, at least he would know I was trying. As long as he didn’t like, try to kill me or something, it’d be fine!

…

Hopefully I didn’t just jinx myself.

OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO

I was almost to the door to his office, but something was off.

I stopped, realization hitting.

The buzzing was quiet.

I was almost to his door, where the buzzing is usually very loud, and there was nothing.

I frowned, was he not there? But the light is on?

The door was ajar slightly, and I stepped closer, as quiet as I can be.

“… worried about Percy, sir.”

I stopped, tilting my head. That was Grover.

My heart sank, so I was right, he is working with Mr. Brunner.

“… alone this summer?” Grover questioned, “I mean, a Kindly One in the school! Now that we know for sure, and they know too-“

“We would only make matters worse by rushing him,” Mr. Brunner interrupted, “We need the boy to mature more.”

“But he may not have time. The summer solstice deadline-“

“Will have to be resolved without him, Grover. Let him enjoy his ignorance while he still can.”

“Sir he saw her…”

“His imagination,” Mr. Brunner insisted. “The Mist over the students and staff will be enough to convince him of that. He may still have the pen, but the Mist over it will stop him from realizing.”

“Sir, I… I can’t fail in my duties again.” Grover’s voice was choked with emotion. “You know what that would mean.”

“You haven’t failed, Grover,” Mr. Brunner soothed. “I should have seen her for what she was. Now let’s just worry about keeping Percy-“

I shifted back, a small creak of my rubber shoe bottom on the linoleum floors echoes through the halls.

Mr. Brunner went silent.

I slipped back, seeing a shadow of something larger than Mr. Brunner in a wheelchair pass the lighted glass. It was holding an archer’s bow.

I moved, sliding into the first door I could find and pressed against the wall by the door.

I could fight if I needed too, my trident charm in hand, but… I need time to process.

A shadow went past, clop-clop-clop passing by. Like muffled hoof beats.

A large shadow paused by the window.

Mr. Brunner spoke, “Nothing, my nerves haven’t been right since the winter solstice.”

“Mine neither,” Grover said. “But I could have sworn…”

“Go back to the dorm,” Mr. Brunner told him. “You’ve got a long day of exams tomorrow.”

“Don’t remind me.”

The lights went out in Mr. Brunner’s office.

I waited there, going through what I just learned.

They’re worried about me, whether about my health of something else to do with me…

The buzzing is probably this Mist that he talked about, I’m not sure what that is, a spell of some kind I suppose. When I can talk to Triton again I’ll ask. Maybe it’s a land magic?

Mr. Brunner, whoever he is, has no idea that I know about gods and mythical beings and the like. I can use that to my advantage if he is actually a threat.

They know about the winter solstice mess, all I know is that there’s been a theft.

I frowned, are they blaming me too? And what’s this about a summer solstice deadline? That sounds bad.

Why do they need me to mature more? What do they need to worry about keeping me from? What’s going on?

One thing I’m sure of, Mr. Brunner is definitely not human. Some human animal crossover based on the sounds I heard. Horse half? Centaur? That’s the best I’ve got right now. I’ll look into it more later.

I stood in the dark waiting.

Grover is working with him though.

My chest hurt, could I trust Grover? Was he just going to attack me? Try to hurt me?

I want Triton, I want Triton so badly. He would know what to do.

But I can’t. Triton said not to contact him until things calmed down.

Based on Grover and Mr. Brunner, things are definitely not calm.

I stood in the dark.

OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO

I returned to my room when I calmed, nodding to Grover and settling back down with my notes.

“Hey,” He said, bleary-eyed. “You gonna be ready for this test?”

I glanced over, trying to bury any emotions, Triton had said that Grover might have empathic abilities and I can’t let him know what I’m feeling.

I forced a smile, “Yeah, I’ll be fine.” I faked a yawn, “I think I’m gonna go to bed now though. Too tired to get much more done.”

And I am tired, I’m so tired of being here.

I just want to go home, see my mom, hug her, talk to Triton.

I want to be back in the still dirty (but much improved) river and cleaning it and talking to the fish and other sea animals.

I want to go to events with Triton and talk to my merfolk friends and trade notes on our powers.

I don’t want to be here wondering if my friend is going to betray me and attack me. I don’t want to wonder if my teacher is going to try to hurt me.

I just want home.

OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO

Honestly, I fell asleep trying not to cry, so when I woke up in my probable dad’s palace, hidden in an alcove, I kinda burst into tears.

It’s like my dreams are trying to comfort me.

I curled up and cried, this year sucks.

Everything first semester was bad, but since the solstice I’ve been so alone.

Everything aches I just want to see Triton, to talk to my friends, to not be so utterly alone.

I can’t trust Grover, I can’t trust Mr. Brunner, I certainly can’t trust any of the other students in the school.

“Oh dear…”

Soothing curls wrapped around me, banishing the cold currents that felt so like my probable dad’s palace.

A hand was on my back, I couldn’t really see through the tears though.

“Hush now little Half-Blood, it’s alright.”

I took a few minutes to calm my breathing, to stop the tears, the unknown person whispering soothing words the whole time.

When I could finally look at them, I finally saw the Titaness Tethys.

…

Oh no, don’t tell me I just cried like an idiot in front of my probable dad’s wife.

I want to curl up and die, why me.

She settled next to me in the alcove, her hand still rubbing my back, “Are you feeling better?”

I swallowed, nodding.

“Yes Tethys-ran” I whispered.

Using the proper terms of respect are important. Ran is for queen, which she is, Ari would be for king.

She smiled at me, “There, that’s better. Let’s get you something to eat hmm?”

I nodded, letting her tug me out of the alcove.

“We still have only caught the beginning of your name little half-blood, starts with a P right?”

I flushed, “It’s Percy, Tethys-ran.”

“Ah, then a pleasure to meet you Percy-tou”

I flushed, tou is used for children regardless of gender, it’s basically calling them cute little one.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you to, Tethys-ran.”

She led me to the kitchens it seems. There’s a lot of noise as they work on making the food.

Her hand was still on my back, it was grounding.

“Do you have any favorites?”

She was looking at me.

“Oh uh, I like water chestnuts? And uh frozen Plumose? Um…”

She smiled, “Any meats?”

“… tuna?”

She nodded, nudging me forward as she spoke rapid Halmaheran.

“Get something -- him to eat, something on the --- end. And something -- snack on. And some --- if you --.”

I couldn’t catch everything that she said, unfortunately, but I’m pleased I caught as much as I did. She was talking really fast and had an accent I don’t know.

It took only a few minutes before she was ushering me out, a few bowls of food in her hands.

I ended up sitting with her in another alcove, nibbling on the snacks she got me. And sucking clean water from one of the plants, usually used for that purpose. Not like you can have cups with drinks underwater.

She let us eat quietly, her gaze on me.

I glanced at her, then looked away again.

“You seem to find yourself in our palace fairly often Percy-tou.”

I shifted, “I’m sorry, I don’t know why.”

She hummed, “It’s no fault of yours, though you should learn how to control your dream walking.”

I frowned, “Dream walking?”

She smiled, “That’s what this particular branch of prophetic dreaming is called, though the technical name is Hioipihaiho.”

I frowned, Halmaheran.

“You mind effectively leaves your body and travels to another place. It is different from Ahioimua, which is looking into the future of the place you are, Imuaireira, which is seeing the future or other places, Ahiomuri, which is seeing the past of your current location, and Amuritereira, seeing the past of another place.”

I wished I had my notebook to take notes.

“Dream walking is simply traveling, it’s the most common form of prophetic dreaming in Half-Bloods. None of them technically require dreaming, though it is the easiest way to receive the visions of the other forms.”

Okay that’s interesting, so I could do this awake… How would that work?

“Though slipping through the shields of our palace to prevent entrance from those trying to come is impressive. I’m very curious as to how you’ve done so accidentally.”

I chewed on one of the nuts in my snack bowl, “I don’t know, I just started showing up here.”

She nodded, “Well, it’s certainly interesting.”

It must be because Oceanus is my dad? Is this more evidence towards that? I have a lot of really solid evidence now.

I kinda want to say that I know, but I promised Triton I wouldn’t ask or talk about my immortal parent. It would interfere with my safety.

So, I kept my mouth shut and resisted the urge to tell her.

“What had you so upset? When you first arrived?”

I nibbled on one of the tuna pieces, “I uh… Just had a stressful week.”

I ducked my head.

“Oh? Anything in particular?”

“I have a lot of big tests, and found out a friend isn’t actually a friend…”

She hummed, “A sad thing to learn.”

“Yeah…”

She ran a hand through my hair, I peeked up.

She smiled, “Friends come and go like the tides, it is good to learn from your time with them, and they will leave a mark on you. But don’t let them hold you back or cling to what has passed. If they are not your friend accept that and move forward, else you will drown.”

I relaxed, she’s not wrong. Grover was apparently not really trying to be my friend, he was spying on me?

Regardless of what he was doing, I just have to accept it.

It hurts, but… it would be better for me to move on.

I nodded, “Thanks.”

“Well, I believe it is time for you to wake. I’ve already held you here longer than you should’ve been.”

She gathered our bowls and flicked away.

Almost immediately I felt the yank at me. Like a strong current tugging me away.

“Stay safe Percy-tou.”

Oh.

I woke up.

OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO

I finished the Latin exam.

I know that I messed up like half the grammar, but the translation to English wasn’t too hard, I could use context for some of the grammar, and I’m good at the word definitions so that was easy at least. The few history questions were annoying, but I didn’t struggle too badly.

The buzzing in my ear made it hard to focus though.

I think I managed a C? Maybe even a B if my guessing for the grammar was good enough.

I’ll just have to wait and see I guess.

I started to head out when Mr. Brunner called me back.

I swallowed back my fear that he found out about me overhearing him last night, he wouldn’t call me out for that in front of the class.

“Percy,” he said. “Don’t be discouraged about leaving Yancy. It’s… it’s for the best.”

My heart sank, I know that I can’t trust him, really, I do, but… I couldn’t help but like him as a teacher.

It hurt to hear him say that, in front of the whole class too.

The other students snickered, Nancy sent me a smug grin.

“Okay, sir.” I mumbled.

“I mean…” Mr. Brunner wheeled his chair back and forth, like he wasn’t sure what to say. “this isn’t the right place for you. It was only a matter of time.”

What does he mean by that?! That I’m destined to be kicked out? That despite the high standards he’s been holding me to he had zero faith in me? That he was going to insure I would be kicked out if it wasn’t something else?

“Right,” I whispered.

“No, no,” Mr. Brunner said. “Oh, confound it all. What I’m trying to say… you’re not normal, Percy. That’s-“

“Thanks,” I blurted, holding back my fear that he could know about my power, “Thanks a lot, sir, for reminding me.”

I bolted, hearing his call as I fled.

OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO

The last day of term had finally arrived.

I gathered up my notebooks, my waterskin, my assorted gifts from Triton and my friends, Carl in his new transportable tank, and carefully put everything up in my two bags, my waterskin on top. My suitcase held the extra and all of my clothes.

The other guys were talking about their plans for their breaks.

They’re all juvenile delinquents like me, kids that can’t manage it in other schools, but they’re rich ones.

Doesn’t mean I have to let them know that I’m not doing much unless Triton can contact me soon. I probably shouldn’t even go to the river until Triton gets ahold of me.

One of them asked what I was doing this summer.

“I’ll be visiting some of my friends overseas. I haven’t seen them since winter break.” I flashed them a bright smile that hid the ache in my chest as they questioned me more.

“Where do they live?”

“Oh, on some islands a bit out. They’re a bit spread out, so I’ll probably move around some.”

“That’s cool, looking forward to it?”

“Yeah,” I grinned, “They’re a lot of fun.”

They went back to talking about their trips but did leave an opening for me to join if I wanted.

I didn’t, they were all kind of jerks to Grover, but I appreciated it.

The only person that I was nervous about saying goodbye to was Grover. Even with Tethys’s advice, even knowing that he may try to harm me, it’s so hard to let it go.

Turns out I don’t have to yet though because he’s coming with me. We have tickets on the same Greyhound bus to Manhattan.

Seems suspicious.

OO OO OO OO OO OO OO OO

Grover is clearly very nervous, glancing around and down the aisles, watching the passengers. It was similar to how he acted every time we left Yancy. I ducked my head and didn’t say anything about it.

“Hey Percy?”

I glanced at him, “Yeah?”

“I uh, I know that uh, that we’re going different ways this summer. But…. I thought, uh, here-“

He handed me a card, “Just take this, in case you need me this summer.”

I took the card, which is in the most obnoxious fancy script that took me a minute of squinting at to read.

Grover Underwood

Keeper

Half-Blood Hill

Long Island, New York

(800) 009-0009

My heart almost stopped, Half-Blood Hill.

What does this have to do with Half-Bloods?

“What’s Half-“

“Don’t say it aloud!” He yelped, “That’s my, um… summer address.”

I stared at him, is he trying to trick me into going into some sort of trap?

“Okay, so if I want to visit.”

“Or… or if you need me.” He nodded.

“Why would I need you?”

I couldn’t help the bitter words. How could I trust him after what I overheard the other day?

Grover blushed right down to his Adam’s apple. “Look, Percy, the truth is, I—I kind of have to protect you.”

I stared at him, the likely mythological being that I’m half convinced is supposed to be assassinating me.

“Grover, what exactly are you protecting me from?”

Could I have misunderstood?

Suddenly there was a huge grinding noise under our feet. Black smoke poured from the dashboard and the whole bus filled with a smell like rotten eggs. The driver cursed and limped the Greyhound over to the side of the highway.

After a few minutes clanking around in the engine compartment, the driver announced we’d all have to get off. Grover and I filed outside with everyone else, and my senses were on fire.

It was like a web of feeling, fabric flowing over me, almost sparking as it moved.

My head snapped around, on the other side of the road, across four lanes of asphalt shimmering with afternoon heat, was an old-fashioned fruit stand.

There, next to it in rocking chairs in the shade of a maple tree, sat three old ladies knitting the biggest pair of socks I’ve ever seen.

And those old ladies were... dangerous.

The energy I could tell was there, it was overloading my senses.

I couldn’t feel anything but the crackling fabric flowing over me.

The lady on the right knitted one of the socks, the lady on the left knitted the other. The lady in the middle held an enormous basket of electric-blue yarn that made me feel like a knife was pressed to my throat.

The combined feelings made me want to claw at my skin, what is this? Who are they? What’s going on?

The three ladies were looking right at me. I rubbed at my arms.

Grover made a strangled sound and I glanced at him. Just barely resisting bolting from the area.

“Grover?” I said. “Hey, man—”

“Tell me they’re not looking at you. They are, aren’t they?”

I swallowed, oh dear.

“Yeah, why?”

The lady in the middle took out a pair of scissors, massive scissors—gold and silver, long bladed, like shears. I heard Grover catch his breath.

“We’re getting on the bus,” he told me. “Come on.”

I stood still, staring at the old ladies with the scissors that made my head spin, their presence that made electric fabric rub at my skin, and their yarn that felt like knives prickling my neck.

“Come on!” He called, prying open the door and climbing inside.

The old ladies still watched me, and the middle one lifted the scissors.

I could hear the snip of her cutting the yarn from across all four lanes of traffic. Her two friends bundled up the electric-blue socks and I felt the at this point familiar buzz fill my head. The three ladies were gone between one blink and the next.

At the fear of the bus, the driver wrenched a big chunk of smoking metal out of the engine compartment. The bus shuddered, and the engine roared back to life.

The prickling of a knife, the electric fabric, the head spinning all faded, almost entirely gone.

The passengers cheered.

“Darn right!” yelled the driver. He slapped the bus with his hat. “Everybody back on board!”

We got back on, the buzzing still nudging me. I pushed my power as hard as I could, shoving the buzzing trying to reach me away.

Grover looked sick, I didn’t feel great myself, but the buzzing had faded almost entirely.

“Grover?”

“Yeah?”

I hesitated, should I? I want to know… I need to know if he’s actually a threat.

I licked my lips, “What are you not telling me?”

He dabbed his forehead with his shirt sleeve. “Percy, what did you see back at the fruit stand?”

“There were three old ladies, two knitting giant socks, one holding yarn. The one in the middle cut the yarn, then they left.

He closed his eyes and made a gesture with his fingers, one I recognized from my time with Triton. A symbol to ward of evil. With magic behind it, it can do small things. Otherwise it’s just a simple hand motion.

“You saw her snip the cord.”

“Yeah. So?” Who were those old ladies? Nothing has bothered my senses like them before.

“This is not happening,” Grover mumbled. He started chewing at his thumb. “I don’t want this to be like last time.”

I scowled, “What last time?”

“Always sixth grade. They never get past sixth.”

“Grover,” I snapped, because I just want answers! “What are you talking about?”

“Let me walk you home from the bus station. Promise me.”

I stared at him, there’s no way I’m letting him know where I live. I’m not endangering my mom like that.

“Sure.”

He continued to bemoan my fate, looking at me mournfully, like he was already picking the kind of flowers I’d like best on my coffin (Forget-me-nots so I can boss people around even when I’m dead).

#percy jackson #powerful percy #percy figures out how to control water young #percy calls himself a waterbender #waterbender percy #Avatar the legend of percy #avatar: the legend of percy #avatar fan percy #grover #Grover underwood #pjo #percy jackson fanfiction #pjo fanfiction #pjo fanfic #smart percy #strong percy

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koholinthibiscus · 4 years ago

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My Tumblr Journey and mental health

What the hell is this? Where am I? What do I do and how do I do it?

You often hear of people getting to their 30′s and feeling more comfortable in their skin and just owning, accepting and loving themselves. Well, maybe it’s because I need psychotherapy, and maybe it’s because I’ve come into adulthood in a period with huge economic and political upheaval as well as a pandemic; but I don’t feel that way. I feel simultaneously old and young. clueless about young things (like tmblr) and clueless about old things (like mortgages... even though I have one)

I’ve deleted Facebook and use twitter sparingly these days so the reason joined this site is to purely vent. To write my thoughts out and send them into the internet ether to languish, probably ignored. But just getting it out might make all the difference to my physical and mental well being so I’m just going to give it a shot and see where things go.

I feel terribly alone and isolated. I have a type of social anxiety that you probably wouldn't notice. You might just think I’m an idiot or a bitch. You might barely acknowledge my existence. I’m pretty average so I may not register. But when I’m done talking I will think and think and think about it. How did I come across? why the fuck did I say that? You think I’m a fucking idiot don’t you? I will simply torture myself forever and ever. And I avoid social interaction, especially with new people, as much as I can. I can just about manage in a workplace setting but all my energy for this is taken up with that.

I feel unheard, unseen and unsatisfied. I feel a lump in my throat and a weight in my chest. I feel exhausted and headachey most of the time. I can’t bear this current situation. I have a visceral hate for my country. I can’t bear sad news. I can’t cope with news that implicates humans as ignorant, unsympathetic, inhumane creatures. I feel deep sadness at the existential threat our planet faces and confusion and sadness when I realise that barely anyone in my real life feels the same urgency and guilt. I have changed my lifestyle (probably not enough) to try and alleviate the guilt but it hasn’t worked.

So I get into things to try and distract myself; fandoms, stories, subjects, video games, novels and I feel sad about it because I feel useless “not good at it” or that they’re a waste of time. I hate myself so much that my hobbies make me sad. How stupid is that? I’ve recently been getting into DnD during lock down and watching critical role. I enjoy it but it makes me sooooo sad and jealous that I don’t have a strong friend group like that who can enjoy playing DnD with the same level of fun, ease and camaraderie. It literally hurts my heart and I’ve been feeling weird for days. So I’ve tried to make myself better by consuming things. I’ve bought a new set of dice and bought some unrelated books.

I skip from one subject or thing to the next feeling unsatisfied and discontent. I don’t practice things, I don’t finish things. I give up. And I feel like I’m giving up at life. I am lazy and stupid. My hobbies, likes and interests feel like a plaster over a gaping wound and was working but it’s not any more. Getting lost in a fantasy world just makes me feel sad I can’t create my own or be with a group of friends, either on line or on person where I can create together.

I am petrified of parent hood. I have an amazing 3 year old. She is a marvel. But I have a constant dread of failing her. Doing too much, doing too little. I want her to strive for happiness. Take on hard things, work at things till she’s good at them, whatever it may be. I honestly don’t care what as long as she enjoys it, has a passion for it and is ultimately happy. I want to push her, but I don’t want to push her too much. I worry about sending wrong messages. I worry about not doing enough with her. I do not want to bring her up the way that my mother brought me up. I am terrified of repeating the same mistakes.

I’m ultimately a kind person who is trying their best but can’t unleash my true potential due to depression, anxiety and self-confidence issues. I get so angry and sad at people who don’t follow the same ideals as me. which.... isn’t ideal. I can’t stand TERFs, racists, ableists, misogynists, right wing people, climate change deniers, ignorant people. I can’t stand it when people think that poor people only have themselves to blame. I hate capitalism and colonialism. I want to change the way the world operates even if it is to my detriment as a white CIS English women living in comfort. I feel trapped in suburbia where nothing changes and no one looks or is different.

I don’t mean to fetishize certain communities with that statement and I reliaze that it’s probably ignorant of me to suggest that everyone is the same too, given that I struggle to interact with people. And I’m not suggesting that I’m some sort of special flower or that ‘I’m not like other women’ (eeww) either, I know there are people out there I would probably get on with but like I say, I struggle.

It frustrates me when people don’t feel the same way politically. I think that people’s politics are based on their morals so I struggle with conservatives for example. I don’t understand them or where they come from. I want things that people need to be owned by the public and free at the point of access, healthcare being the main one and I fear for the future of the NHS. Yes, even if it means higher taxes (but I obviously want the super rich taxed more) I don’t believe billionaires should exist. I want universal basic income. If the human race keeps breeding, if we keep suffering from pandemics, if we progress technologically to the point where mechanization is even more prevalent, we will not need people to have jobs. We need UBI to level the playing field. And I want a vegan world. All of the above makes my head swim with anger and despair. What type of world will my child have to endure when she gets to my age? I fucking hope it’s better than this. I can honestly say that I believe I am on the right side of history with my politics. It is ultimately about being kind and humane. But no... I’m probably seen as a soft SJW snowflake keyboard warrior twat by my family (which is why I went off facebook). Even though I have a masters in Gender studies and a career in social justice work, but sure, I’m just after the ‘internet points’ or want to look ‘woke’. I feel like not many people truly know me and if they do know all of the above and don’t like what they see, I don’t know man, that kills me. I want people to think well of me. I want people to think I am a good person.

I could yap on for ages about this honestly but it would make little sense.

I think I wanted to start this as a place to get my feelings down because I am starting a journey of therapy soon. My sessions should begin in September but I feel the need to get stuff out now. I’m having a bit of a shit time in my head right now and I felt like I would burst.

I’m already worried that I will appear stupid and self centered. There is nothing particularly wrong with my life. I have a good job that I love but am also petrified of it and of getting it wrong so I self sabotage, worry and don’t believe in my abilities and I’ve been doing that since college. (I need to un pack how I feel about work and my actions around it, I have a lot of thoughts, maybe for another time)

I pick the spots on my face till they become angry red welts, I pick the skin around my nails till they get infected and then I hate myself for how I look, even though it was my fault in the first place. I don’t shower, don’t wash my face, don’t get enough sleep then look in the mirror and see my greasy lank hair, baggy grey eyes and bad skin and I just hate myself. Is this an analogy for the entirety of my personality? I am my own worst enemy and I need to give myself a fucking break. Easier said than done.

Things to unpack in therapy:

My work

My politics and how I interact, deal with people who don’t feel the same way as me

My child hood and family dynamics - It’s fucked up y’all.

My Child

My husband

My past relationship

The sick thing I do at night when i think about horrible things, like the death of my child for no god damn reason. (Is it punishment?)

It’s frustrating being so aware of my issues and not feeling able to do anything about it.

It’s probably an effect of lock down but I have been feeling really bad consistently for a very long period of time now and it’s exhausting. I always have peaks and troughs, feel great to OK for sometimes a good few months then it just comes down on me like a bag of hammers and I feel like death for 2-4 weeks.

I’ve been having those hiccups more often and for longer. I’m so fucking tired man. A couple of months ago a I had a terrible headache for 4 days, could barely move and felt tearful all the time. I just thought it was a migraine attack at the time (which I very very rarely have) but I coincided with a particular event that I’m not ready to talk about (It’s really not that juicy it’s quite fucking pathetic actually) and I think it was a major depressive episode.

I think I’m done now, I’m emotionally exhausted after reading this through and my throat hurts from trying not to cry. Maybe this is the start of my tumblr journey maybe I’ll delete it all in a few days I don’t know. I had to try something.

#mentalhealth depresson anxiety tumblrnovice isthishowhastgaswork?

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red-stick-progressive · 6 years ago

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A response to that racist responding repeatedly to my additions to the post on Colonial Genocide

1: “La Hispaniola, in where most if not all of the indigenous population dissapeared. I’m only agreeing partially with you, Spanish colonization was devastating, BUT that just isn’t ALL (as you dare to put, in a kinda of cospirazy-theory way): There were a lot of other factors, in were DID play a part the illnesses and the war the own indians had agaisnt others.”

(Then you talk about the Aztec, unrelated to Hispaniola)

2: “The book you provided to me has taken, unsurprisingly, the highest balance of people (8 million) it supposed to exist in the island of La Hispainola before 1492 (of course, the bigger deads, the better! gets easier to acuse of holocaust and genocide).”

(You misread Stannard, I assume in a preview or something. He mentions the population estimate considered standard by most academia for most of the history of the research of the indigenous peoples of the new world, which was the laughable 8 million in the entire western hemisphere. This is obviously an example of academia being a tool of propaganda, colonialist and yes genocidal propaganda. By diminishing the population they reduce the weight of the colonial crimes and reduce the legitimacy of contemporary peoples to the identities of their ancestors. All which benefits colonial power structures. Currently, the most conservative and still legitimate estimate of populations in Mexico before contact is 25 million. That is just in the region of Mexico. The most current and reasonable estimate for the population of Hispaniola before contact is 1.8 to 2.9 million. That many Taino people may have lived on that island when the Spanish arrived. Less than 1 generation later there were no Taino left on the island. All that survived, less than 50 thousand did so as slaves elsewhere or as refugees in other native nations.

American Holocaust by David E Stannard

https://gsp.yale.edu/case-studies/colonial-genocides-project/hispaniola

http://www.wou.edu/history/files/2015/08/Cain-Stoneking-HST-499.pdf )

3: “There you have the ciphers of people other specialist gives that goes from 60.000 (how they dare!) to 8 million, and the problems actual historians have to put a real number, because, as I’ve been saying, de las Casas simply exagerated the number of deads and the ways spaniards killed indians to make his point (spaniards bad, indians good). You know, census didn’t exist that time in 1492. But of course, that’s not a problem for those who’re appealed to lie. Just put the higher, albeit surreal, cypher to make it more proper to accuse of “genocide”, call you book something as “Genocide in America” or “Holocaust”, and you’ve got it.”

(This is mostly incomprehensible. First of all, no contemporary estimates are done exclusively based on personal accounts. Most population estimates are done by testable evidence like residence numbers in archeological sites compared to a standard model for what local populations looked like. This is still a flawed system constantly producing unreasonably small estimates but even this system far dwarfs what you argue. Cuz you’re a racist who is divorced from reality so much so that you are still using decades-old estimates based on nothing but propaganda.

The second point I have to address is that holocaust is a title, and genocide is a defined term. According to Google, Genocide: “the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation.” There is no conceivable argument against the fact that what the Dutch, the English, the Portuguese, and the Spanish did in the new world is genocide. Every single European power has dirtied hands. They stole land, erased languages and profited from other people doing the killing even if they didn’t explicitly do so at first.

https://www.google.com/search?q=genocide+define&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS750US750&oq=genocide+define&aqs=chrome..69i57.4815j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 )

4: “how in 1492-1502 spaniards AND indigenous people were both attacked by a same illness, the supposed illness spanish were “using” to kill indians (like 8 hundreds of millions of tHroUsAnDs of hundreds), per your lasts reviews… They were so smart that you know, “used” the same illness to being killed.”

(As for the idea that the same diseases killing millions of Natives were also killing the Spanish, that is very specifically not true. The diseases that the colonizers and conquistadors brought and then weaponized were more or less experientially harmless to them in context. Things like measles and the flu or malaria and typhus. Even the common cold and chickenpox killed and spread like plagues. The things that were periodic plagues in Europe such as cholera, bubonic plague, and smallpox were instantly devastating. Describing how and why is its own post and maybe I will make that post soon but I’ll just say here that Europe was a fucking dumpster fire in terms of sanitation where most cultures in the New World were so socially organized that every early encounter with any given tribe is usually followed with the Europeans marveling at how often Natives bathe and how much soap they use. Another important factor is the fact that Europe had dozens of different livestock animals that lived in immediate proximity to people often sharing water sources to defecate into and drink from. This meant diseases leaped from chickens and pigs and cows and horses to people much more frequently in the thousands of years since domestication. Native Agriculture developed along different paths and so the numerous livestock animals throughout the western hemisphere were fewer and more sanitarily maintained than in the eastern hemisphere. The only disease spread back to Europe during the Columbian exchange was syphilis, though not a plague still terrified Europe. Important detail: it also did not nearly exterminate the entire population of the entire Old World.

The specific example in the first section of American Holocaust was the first such plague event, that made many Spaniards sick and killed thousands of Natives almost immediately. The first plague, unexpected and abrupt, the Spanish took note and it informed the numerous following invasions. It was swine flu, the kind Columbus deliberately spread ahead of himself later on in his return invasions.

As for the argument that the Spanish didn’t know that spread disease and plagues was possible or that they did so accidentally… I mean, to think this you just have to deny or ignore the insurmountable volume of personal; and first-hand accounts of people saying that’s what they were doing. The compilation of accounts and historical sources that Stannard uses often is Harvest of Violence, but Robert Cormack, it is a hard read of historians primarily from Guatemala and Mexico. As opposed to the pure Spanish propaganda you seem to subscribe to, it prioritizes our own voices and is also filled with the accounts from the colonizers themselves which need no special framing to be transparent and genocidal as they discuss leaving the plagued and dead in fields to prevent healthy harvest and piling the dead and debris in the aqueducts and canals of Tenochtitlan to starve and pollute and trap civilians. Just to be clear and definitive though, Europeans definitely knew about plague bodies spreading plague, obviously, they did not understand how or why, but they did. The Spanish had weaponized blood infected with leprosy to poison wine in Naples in 1495, and there were incidents of biological warfare all throughout the Reconquista, which pointedly ended in 1492 before Columbus left Seville.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200679/ : examples of Europeans using infected cadavers to poison arrows and wells and so on many times throughout history and recorded by contemporaries.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1198743X14641744 : the Spanish blood in wine thing, as well as a long list of other biological attacks in Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconquista : this is just a link to the Reconquista from Wikipedia in case you were unaware of the very recent and relevant Spanish relationship with ethnic cleansing and genocide.)

5: “In this article, of course, if you could read spanish,”

(I can read Spanish, and speak it. I used to be pretty fluent but now mi español es limitado y lento, pero es mejor que otras personas, ¿no?)

6: “there were indians that just went to the forest and lived there outside from the cities, and like, nobody had a problem with that. Why they didn’t dissapear? Maybe, because, you know, conquest was not a genocide?or in other words: If it can be considered a genocide, is the worst and most inneficient genocide made ever.”

(I’m going to begin with the weird racist part about living in the forest. I, honest to god, don’t know what to say to explain why that's a laughably dumb claim and fundamentally racist thing to say at all. I was shouted at by some dumb racist in a town hall for my local representative, a Republican who hates immigrants etc. One of the things the racist yelled at me was “Go back to the woods.” I don’t know, figured I’d just mention that. Also, you know, it also just didn’t work either. Natives did flee from persecution and attack, and there are many individual accounts of being hunted down by dogs and soldiers and being brutally killed for it. One of the chiefs of the Hispaniola Natives fled with the few survivors of his people to another island where he identified the wealth and valuables that the Spanish sought and threw them in a river in a desperate attempt to make the Spanish leave them alone. He was known by Hatuey, and the “ good christian” Spaniards crucified him and burned him alive.

Also, I would argue that the relative efficiency of a genocide is not super relevant when measuring its moral value. Odd metric btw.)

7: “You can accuse of spanish colonialism of sclavitude, clasism, racism (even race wasn’t a part in the idea of conquering the indians, was a religious thing) and a lot of other things, really, I’m not even doubting about that, but “Genocide” it’s not one of them.”

(The Spanish are actually the best case for inventing the notion of race, they applied a lense that mirrors the way American white supremacists measured race and how Nazi’s determined whether someone was Jewish regardless of identity or practice. The Spanish invented “Limpieza de Sangre” during the Reconquista while expelling Jews from Spain and hunting remaining Moors. And we know that Columbus brought it to the New World during colonization.

Again just google the word genocide. https://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/659/tracing-the-roots-of-discrimination/ )

8: “even in the ancient spanish colonies there still a lot of indigenous people that survived and thanks to the own spanish colonial politics, instead of being killed in the moment for being considered as “sub-humans” or put in indian reservations and being killed of drunkness or surviving by putting casinos, but it is what it seems when some anglo-american just accuse other countries of doing the same and it shows.”

(Whew boy. Where to start?

“Ancient” Spanish colonies? Ancient?

Indigenous people survived despite colonial politics.

Literally, every account dehumanizes the Natives. Every single one, even the patronizing friars and supposed benefactors who just so happened to still not do anything to help Natives.

Just gonna put this here “put in indian reservations and being killed of drunkness or surviving by putting casinos,” Jesus.

And, ding ding ding, ya fucking idiot; can’t even read. I’m not “anglo-american” I’m Lumbee/Nanticoke, an indigenous eastern woodlands Native American. The Spanish colonized the Lumbee predecessors; idiot.)

@imanopinionatedadult @givemeyourtired @roxas-has-the-stick @givemeamomentortwo @thatmidstea @padawan-thunderairborne

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danfanciesphil · 6 years ago

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Hey, I am looking at doing the Creative Writing MA in Paris,but I was just wondering what it was like in general? Like the modules and how big the course is etc?? It sounds so so good but i'm unsure at the moment if i want to apply. Especially since I'm low on money to pay for tuition... :(

hey! ah i am so pleased to hear you’re considering it! i’ll give you a brief rundown of what the course is like below the cut.

In Term One (Sept - Dec), the modules for Creative Writing are:

A choice between two compulsory modules:

- Fiction 1 - Poetry 1

And a secondary module unrelated to the first. I chose to do French Cinema, but there are lots of other options to do with art, literature, and other creative subjects. There should be a module guide on the website as I can’t remember them all.

I am not interested in poetry, so I chose Fiction 1 and French Cinema.

In Fiction 1 you get:

- 3 hours of taught lesson, once a week. So a three hour lecture/workshop.- A reading list of relevant novels relating to the theme of the week. It is expected that you read the novel before your class to prepare. - Each week, a different subject will be introduced. For example, in week one you might focus on character, in week two plot, and so on. - Half of the 3 hour lesson is focused on the lecture (your teacher will introduce the subject, maybe do a presentation, and then you’ll discuss the book). - The second half of the 3 hour lesson is dedicated to workshopping. On top of reading the novel to prepare for the lesson, you are expected to have read the pieces people have submitted (online) for the workshop. You take it in turns to submit something - about 3 people go each week. Everyone will read the submitted pieces, and then discuss it in class. People bring up what they liked, what they didn’t like, and hopefully give some constructive criticism.

I cannot speak for what you will get from your second module in term one as they are all different, except that you will get:

- 3 hours taught lesson, once a week. - A reading list- Probable access to musuems/cinemas/relevant study spaces

At the end of term one, you will be expected to submit a 7,000 word assignment of creative prose. It can be whatever you like. The deadline is early January. On top of this, there will be another assignment due for your second module - obviously this will vary depending on what module you choose. I had to submit a 4,000 word essay on Feminism in the French New Wave (cinema).

In Term Two (Jan - May), the modules for Creative Writing are:

- Fiction 2/Poetry 2- Paris: The Residency

You do not get to pick a module in your second term, they are both compulsory. (Sidenote: if you picked Poetry 1 in Term One, then you must pick Poetry 2 in Term Two. You cannot do Poetry and then Fiction or vice versa as far as I know.)

In Fiction 2 you get:

- 3 hours taught class time once a week- A reading list of relevant novels- The same structure is in place as in Fiction 1 with half workshop half lecture, however the teachers will be different and have very different approaches (which is very helpful imo!) I learnt way more in Fiction 2 than Fiction 1 personally, but I’ve had great teachers in my second term.

In Paris: The Residency you get:

- 3 hours taught class time once a week- A reading list of relevant novels- A homework task each week to do so that the following week it can be workshopped. Examples of these homework tasks are ‘follow a stranger for ten minutes - discreetly - watching their mannerisms, gait, etc. and write about who they might be’, or ‘try and lose yourself in the streets of the city, then spend fifteen minutes just writing all that you see and hear’, etc. - This module is supposed to be about ‘city writing’, so they want you to write about Paris, or wherever else you feel drawn to city-wise. - I will be honest with you, I really disliked this class. However, I personally didn’t like it because I came on this course to work on and complete my novel (which Fiction 1 and 2 allowed me to do by submitting different chunks of it each week for workshopping and for the assignments), and it seemed a waste of time to be writing silly things about the city each week when I could have been more productive by working on the novel. The class isn’t poorly taught, it just had no relevance to me. I also don’t really enjoy ‘city writing’ as it seems bland, but that’s just a personal preference! Not enjoying this module did not (really) detract from the overall experience of the course, so it was fine.

At the end of Term Two, you are expected to submit one 7,000 word piece of fiction for Fiction Two, and another 7,000 word piece of fiction (city-themed!) for Paris: The Residency. Ngl, this killed me a little bit, because they’re both due on the same day haha, but I did it! And I did very well, so it is possible.

After this, you start work on your dissertation. For anyone doing (Fiction, not Poetry) Creative Writing, this is a 12,000 word piece of fiction. It can be whatever you want, but you must pick a supervisor to meet with 3 times before the deadline (met with mine today and she was so super lovely i could kiss her) to make sure you’re on the right track.

Other Things About The Course:

- It’s based on a campus that doesn’t belong to Kent University, so we only take up a small section of the building. This doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it does limit us as students as we aren’t permitted to use all of the classrooms and study spaces. It’s a beautiful building, but it’s very old, and in the winter it was very cold. Having no place to study (there are some but very few) can be a bit of a problem especially in those cold months. In the summer I just sit in the courtyard and work which is d i v i n e. So that’s easier.

- It’s pretty small, and pretty far away. So, in Term One, there were maybe 30-35 students across the whole course (not just Creative Writing, I mean everyone from Kent University on the Paris campus). The faculty are lovely, lovely people but there are really only 3 of them actually there full-time (yes, really). I have no complaints about these lovely staff, however it does make one feel a little cut off from the main University at times. Frank (who I can absolutely put you in touch with if you need!) is the person to go to with any issues, and I’ve yet to see him not be able to help someone who needs it whether it’s issues with finance, scheduling, contacting staff or whatever.

- In Term Two (important!), the amount of students studying in Paris DOUBLES in size. This is because Kent also offers a ‘split-site’ MA course in Creative Writing along with a variety of other subjects. Students that opt of the split-site MA spend Term One in Canterbury at the main Kent campus, and Term Two in Paris. This is a tricky thing to get to grips with, mostly because having a bunch of new people try and insert themselves into your established Paris life is tricky to accept. However, we eventually integrated fine, and only a few minor problems occurred. Also, it is important to note that if you were interested in doing the split-site course, there is funding for it if you apply for a Masters Loan. For the solely Paris-based course, there is no funding aside from scholarships.

- French courses are provided (two hours a week, and you are divided up by existing skill into three different classes).

- You receive free access to both the BNF and The American Library in Paris which is very, very important as all study material in regular libraries is obviously in French. These two places have study materials in English, which is fantastic.

- Accommodation is almost impossibly difficult to find, and Kent will be little to no help I’m not even joking. They’ll give you a vague list of places to try, but rent is so fucking expensive here, and if you don’t speak French you’ve basically had it. I can discuss some options with you that worked for me if you give me a private chat message.

- Don’t expect to be coddled when you get here. I’m quite an independent person, so I didn’t really mind this, but it is in no way similar to the experience I had as a fresher at undergrad. They give you a headstart, some contact information for a local gym, a local bank, etc, but then you are more or less on your own. That sounds pretty daunting but it’s also incredibly freeing and definitely gives you the chance to bond with all your classmates! I’ve made friends for life here (and found a girlfriend) so I do not think this was a bad thing at all.

That’s pretty much all I can think of to tell you right now! If you have any more specific questions I’d be happy to answer them, and if you decide to go ahead with it let me know as I can give you some tips on how to set yourself up here.

I wish you the best love, please don’t hesitate to ask me anything more!

xxx

#good luck!#sorry this is sooooo long lol #ellen shh #peachesandpincurls #ellen answers

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fucking-zawa-sensei · 7 years ago

Text

Don’t Kid Yourself: Chapter 3 - Did You Do This Just To Hurt Me?

Pairing: Erasermic – Shouta Aizawa|Eraserhead/Hizashi Yamada|Present Mic

Categories: pining, unrequited love, slow burn, angst, very very slow burn

Word Count: 3,000+

Summary: After a short lived silence, Yamada asks to talk in private. Aizawa resists the urge to smash his head into something.

Notes: This was a hard one. I struggled to decide where to stop. Things are going to take a turn after this chapter. Thanks for dealing with all the pain I keep throwing at you. I meant it when I said slow burn. I really meant it. Stick with me and it will get better, promise. Feedback is always appreciated, no matter how small the comment. I love each and every reader.

Read it on AO3

Other Chapters: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]

Chapter 3: Did You Do This Just To Hurt Me?

Yamada doesn’t really speak to him for two whole days. Sure, there’s the occasional exchange of words at work, can you hand me that? Why was so and so absent? Here’s 1-A’s tests. Nothing real, though. The most significant thing that’s passed through the short gap between their desks was a pen.

Aizawa taps said pen against the top ring of his gradebook, chin resting in his hand. He leans forward a bit, allowing more of his hair to fall down over his shoulder and between Yamada and him.

You want to play this game? Fine, he thinks.

Aizawa finishes marking down the latest test scores for his students and closes the binder, slipping it into his bag.

He’s halfway out of his chair when he hears it, small, mumbled, reluctant. He doesn’t even catch the full thing.

“-ve a goodnight.”

Aizawa pauses and turns back to look at Yamada, whose bottom lip is poking out just the tiniest bit, says, “What was that?”

Now the lip pokes out further. Yamada turns away.

“I said have a goodnight.”

Aizawa hesitates, his left hand gripping the top of his chair and his right hand holding the strap of his bag.

“You too,” Aizawa says.

“C-can, can we talk?”

No.

Aizawa looks at the door longingly, then back at Yamada, who has turned fully around in his chair to look up at Aizawa. His eyebrows are turned upward, but not in the overdramatic way they usually are. No, this is subtle, small.

He’s really upset.

Aizawa sighs, tightening his grip on his bag.

“Not here,” he says.

“Yeah, no, obviously, no. I didn’t want to talk now,” Yamada says, voice picking up, waving his hands a bit. He glances down at his computer screen’s toolbar, checking the time. “Give me 10 minutes to finish this?” Yamada nods at the stack of English essays on his desk, holding up all ten fingers.

“Sure. Where do you want to go?”

Yamada looks out the window beside them like someplace private is going to just materialize behind it.

“Uh…my car?”

“What?”

“I…don’t want to be in public,” Yamada says, looking down at his knee.

Shit, not even a café or something? He’s serious, Aizawa thinks.

“Fine. Your car,” Aizawa relents, letting go of his chair and stepping back. Yamada looks up. “I’ll meet you there.”

“Great!” Yamada calls after him as he heads toward the door. It sounds confident, like everything Yamada says does, but Aizawa knows it’s a bold-faced lie.

Aizawa does a loop of the hall, almost entirely empty now, classes over.

What am I going to do for 10 minutes? I should have just stayed in the staff room and worked on more assignments.

He stops walking in front of the long stretch of windows that face the new dorm buildings.

Uraraka and Asui are sitting on a bench under a small cluster of trees. They’re bent over a book they’ve got propped between their laps. The kid with the copy quirk from 1-B comes over, what was his name? Aizawa thinks, stepping a bit closer to the window. The boy leans over the back of the bench and says something that makes Uraraka frown. Asui lightly pushes him away, shooing him with her hand. The boy leaves and Uraraka puts on an enormously large smile.

Clearly fake, Aizawa thinks. Asui pulls her into a reassuring hug. Uraraka’s smile tones down. Asui gives Uraraka's shoulder a pat before they separate, re-situating themselves around their shared book, and Aizawa turns away from the window.

When they were in high school, Yamada had acted much the same way, constantly putting on a mask whenever something bothered him. Aizawa swore his mouth grew each time something bad happened, allowing more room to show off his shining white teeth. His smile rivaled All Might’s. In private, though, he’d shut down. His smile would drop and his body would follow quickly after, drooping from his shoulders to his feet.

Aizawa remembers not knowing quite how to comfort someone with as much personality and exuberance as Yamada. It was odd the first time Yamada had let him see that side of him. Aizawa had awkwardly wrapped his arm around Yamada’s shoulder and patted him on the back, not especially knowledgeable about how physical contact was supposed to happen. They’d been studying at Yamada’s house and the blonde had gotten a text he wasn’t very fond of. To this day, Aizawa wasn’t sure what that message said, but as messed up it as it might be, was glad they’d sent it. Yamada had taken the pat on the back as an invite, launching himself into Aizawa’s arms. Aizawa had never held someone before that. He rubbed Yamada’s back as he leaned his head against Aizawa’s shoulder.

Aizawa wonders what would happen now, after confessing to Yamada and being turned down, after the past couple years of awkwardly trying to repair the chasm that event had carved into their friendship. Would Yamada still allow himself to fall into Aizawa’s arms?

This year had been rough, with class 1-A’s unrelenting magnetism for all things evil and tragic. Aizawa had sought solace in Yamada’s friendship a number of times. Yamada hadn’t come to him, though, not for a long time.

Does Imai hold him when he cries, now?

Aizawa’s mind skips to Yamada’s constant presence and penchant for over protectiveness after the USJ attack. He shakes his head. That was an exception, he was his best friend, any rational person would be worried after something like that. He couldn’t use the clingy way Yamada acted in the weeks while he healed as a basis for gauging the man’s feelings.

Aizawa sighs, turning around to walk back towards the staff room. He stops just outside and leans against the wall. There’s a clock posted on the opposite side.

Just about ten minutes, huh? Guess I spent more time day dreaming than I thought.

The door next to him slides open and Yamada walks out, practically running right into him.

“Ah! Shouta!” Yamada yells, stepping back, hands up. “I thought you were meeting me at the car?”

Aizawa shrugs, turning to start towards the exit. Yamada mutters something low and quiet behind him, which he doesn’t pick up. With Yamada’s quirk, he knows he wasn’t meant to. If he wanted to be heard, he’d be heard.

They walk in silence. It doesn’t take long to reach the car. Aizawa’s heart is already beating faster and Yamada hasn’t even unlocked it yet.

Yamada takes a deep breath and Aizawa mirrors it. Yamada laughs a bit.

“Nervous?” he asks.

Aizawa shrugs again.

Yamada looks down at his hand where he’s holding the keys, his smile fading slowly, over the rim of his glasses, Aizawa can see his eyelids sliding down, half-lidded. Yamada presses the unlock button, but keeps looking at his hand for a few seconds before he pops open the door and slides in.

Why is he so sad? Aizawa thinks.

Aizawa opens the back door to place his bag on the back seat. With one last deep breath, he opens the passenger door and slides into the seat, shutting the door behind him. His fingers linger on the handle before falling into his lap.

Yamada’s car has never been so quiet.

He looks over at the blonde, who is staring straight ahead. The parking lot is empty of people, almost empty of cars.

“I…don’t know where to start,” Yamada admits.

Aizawa doesn’t say anything back. Yamada is the one who asked to talk, so he’ll give him as much time as he needs to get it out.

God knows he’s given me time.

Yamada’s eyes slip shut behind his sunglasses.

“Do you think I’m an idiot?” Yamada asks, quietly. Aizawa leans back a bit at that.

“What?”

“I know you aren’t sick every time you say you aren’t feeling well when we hang out. Do you think I’m an idiot?” Yamada turns toward him when he finishes his thought. Yamada reaches up to take off his sunglasses, folding the arms and placing them gently atop the dashboard of the car.

“N…no.”

“I go along with it because I know that you’re hurting and I know it’s hard, it’s hard for me too. I’m trying, Shouta, I’m trying.” Yamada looks desperate, but something about the way he’s wording things starts making something awful bubble up in Aizawa’s chest.

In reality, Aizawa knows that Yamada doesn't have a lot of free time available between teaching, hero work, the radio show, and all the events he hosts. He knows trying to separate what little time he does have between time for Imai and time for Aizawa is difficult. It would be easier for everyone if they could just do things together. It would be, which is why they've been trying so hard to make it happen, but sometimes Aizawa can't handle it.

Some days are fine. Some days they drink and laugh, watch movies, help each other with assignments, or Aizawa lets Yamada practice his interview questions and answers on him. Some days he can tolerate Imai. Some days he even thinks he might like the man, as he points out something Aizawa hadn’t noticed on a case, or remembers his favorite flavor of tea and has it steeped and ready when he shows up at their door.

Other times, he can't stand the thought of them together.

Other times, just the sight of Imai makes his throat feel tight and his fists clench.

Other times, he doesn't want to hear Yamada's voice.

In reality, he knows Yamada’s right. He’s trying.

But Aizawa is sure as shit trying too.

“It’s hard for you?” Aizawa says, voice low. Apparently, Yamada doesn’t hear the accusation, because he continues on.

“Yes! I love Haru. I’m not sorry that I love Haru. I won’t apologize for loving Haru, but I’m sorry it’s hurting you. You two are the most important people in my life. I can’t lose you. I can’t stop being friends with you. I can’t. Sometimes I just wish…”

“Things could go back to the way they used to be?” Aizawa asks.

Back before I said I loved you.

Yamada shakes his head quickly, then throws his hand up, but pauses halfway, undoubtedly planning to run his fingers through his hair, but realizing it’s still gelled and brushing the roof of the car. His hand falls heavily back down to his lap, smacking against his leather pants.

“Shouta, I don’t know what you want me to do. I don’t know how to fix this. I need your help. Tell me what to do. What was I supposed to say?”

You were supposed to say “I love you too.”

“I don’t know,” Aizawa says.

Yamada shakes his head.

“I should have listened to Nemuri when she said not to bring Haru,” Yamada looks down at his lap. “But I wanted to keep believing that if I tried hard enough I could make this work,” his finger gestures between Aizawa’s body and his. “I wanted to believe that I could have Haru and I could also have you. We tried keeping everything separate in the beginning…but it’s so hard, Shouta. You’re my best friend, I want to be able to talk to you about the person I love. I want to be able to show him to you, I want you to like him, I want you to get to know him, I want-”

“What about what I want?” Aizawa cuts him off.

Yamada’s mouth is still open. His green eyes look up from his lap to meet Aizawa’s hard gaze. Aizawa knows he’s frowning, knows he’s dropped his calm collected façade, knows he looks angry, but he doesn’t care. He is angry.

“What…you want?” Yamada repeats, slowly.

“Yes. What I want. I don’t want to hang out with Imai. I don’t want to watch you be happy with him. I don’t want to watch you hug him or kiss him or hold hands with him or make sickeningly stupid sounds when he points out cute animals to you. I don’t want that.” Aizawa can’t remember the last time he’d fought with Yamada, can’t remember the last time he’d said something like this. Had he ever? Until now, he’d been content to just ride it out, hope the pain dulled with time.

“But…”

“No. Listen to me, Hizashi. I know that you are trying. I appreciate that. I do. I’m happy you didn’t just cut me off after I confessed...my feelings...to you. I know that I’ve made things awkward between us. I know that I should be able to talk to you about Imai and talk to Imai without hating every second of it, but I can’t. I thought this would fade...” Aizawa trails off. He notices Yamada’s eyes get a little wider, before glancing away at that last part. “I’ve known you for fifteen years, though, Hizashi. Maybe I wasn’t in love with you for all of that time, but I can’t erase that. I can’t ignore that.”

Aizawa sucks in a deep breath, looks down at where Yamada’s hands are clenched into fists on his lap. There’s a heavy silent pause. He keeps his gaze lowered, stares at the mesmerizing motion of Yamada rubbing his thumb against the side of his pointer finger.

“I don’t want to lose you, either. If I could, I’d go back to before I ever told you how I felt and stop myself.”

Aizawa watches Yamada’s right hand fly up from his leg to his mouth. Aizawa’s breath catches in his throat for a moment.

“Why are you crying?” he asks, but the blonde just keeps his eyes closed and shakes his head, tears streaming down his cheeks as he presses his hand hard against his lips. Small, high pitched hiccupping noises are trying to fight their way through his fingers. Yamada always had a hard time crying and keeping his quirk in check at the same time. His other hand raises up and covers what little mouth isn’t already being held closed.

Aizawa thinks back to earlier, when he’d been reminiscing about how to comfort Yamada now that things had changed. He doesn’t move his hands toward the blonde.

They sit there for several minutes, Yamada trying to swallow his sobs, Aizawa waiting it out with his head pressed against the window. Finally, Yamada lowers his hand back down. His voice is shaky, dropping a little uncontrollably in pitch as he speaks.

“I don’t want you to take it back.”

Aizawa’s eyes widen. He turns to look at Yamada, who is facing him fully.

“I don’t want you to hide how you feel from me, Shouta. If you don’t want to see Imai, I won’t bring him out with us. If you don’t want me to speak about Imai, I won’t. I won’t ever talk about him again. You’re right, I have been selfish.”

But I’m the one who doesn’t want you to be happy.

Yamada clenches his fists, and then smiles, big, shining.

Fake.

“It will be like he doesn’t even exist,” the blonde promises.

Liar.

Yamada unzips his leather jacket to wipe his hands on the cotton shirt underneath, not wanting to tarnish the expensive fabric. When he’s done, he reaches across the center console and grabs Aizawa’s left hand between both of his.

“I will do everything I can to make this right.”

“Hizashi…no.”

“I can’t lose you,” he insists, bringing Aizawa’s hand up, gripping it tightly. Yamada smiles wide again.

Stop.

“I’ll fix this.”

Aizawa wants to bash his head into the window so hard it breaks.

“Didn’ you just say you didn’t want to pretend?” he grits out, jaw tight. Aizawa pulls his hand back. “You just said you don’t want me to hide how I feel. Why should you?”

Yamada’s eyes widen, his hands still held out. He looks down and to the side.

“Because I don’t want to hurt you…”

“You think not talking about Imai will make him disappear from my mind? You think I’ll just forget he exists? Somehow I’ll just start believing you’re not going home to him every night?”

Yamada huffs, crosses his arms, and leans back in the seat.

“Then what you want me to do, Shouta?”

“Just wait it out.”

“It’s been two years!”

It’s nearly been fifteen for me.

Aizawa turns away, presses his forehead against the window again.

“Yeah, well, I just need more time to get over you.”

Aizawa reaches toward the door handle, but the little lock sign flips over. He glances back to Yamada.

“Seriously?”

Yamada’s hand is hovering over the controls on his door. He doesn’t look at Aizawa.

“I’m not done,” Yamada’s voice is stern.

“I am.”

“But I’m the one who asked you to talk...there are still things I want to say.”

“Say them, then. Hurry up,” Aizawa demands, getting impatient.

Yamada’s mouth opens and then closes. After a moment, he presses the unlock button and the car makes a small whirring noise as all the doors unlock.

Aizawa can tell Yamada wants to say something else, but Yamada’s just sitting there pulling at the edge of his fingerless gloves where they cover his wrists.

Aizawa sighs.

“Not inviting Imai to hang out with us would help. It’s a start.”

Yamada doesn’t look up from his glove, but nods.

“Thank you, Hizashi. For trying.”

“Thank you for putting up with me.”

“I love you,” Aizawa says, exasperated. He watches as Yamada’s hand stills, his breathing stops. “I’d put up with pretty much anything.”

Aizawa leans over the back of the seat to grab his bag, trying not to look at Yamada anymore as he pulls it forward and into his lap. It’s hard not to notice his frown though, or the way his eyes start to water again. Aizawa pushes his door open. He never thought loving his best friend would cause them both so much pain.

As he turns to step out of the car, something pulls on the back of his costume. He glances back to see it’s Yamada’s hand, trailing his gaze up the leather arm, over the studded shoulder, and to his face, he sees Yamada’s crying again. Except, this time his mouth is open, but no sound is coming out.

“What?” Aizawa asks.

Yamada’s grip tightens on his back, the fabric pulling uncomfortably across Aizawa’s chest.

“Hizashi, use your words, dammit.”

Yamada shakes his head, lets go.

“I…”

Say it.

“You?”

Yamada stares at him. His green eyes shifting back and forth between Aizawa’s. Then, his mouth trembles, snaps shut. He leans back in his seat, looking at the steering wheel.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Aizawa swallows.

Yamada digs his keys out of his jacket pocket and puts them in the ignition. Aizawa closes the door gently and steps back, leaving enough room for Yamada to pull out of his spot and drive out of the lot.

“Yeah, see you tomorrow,” Aizawa tells the empty air.

#erasermic #maizawa #don't kid yourself #erasermic fanfiction #maizawa fanfiction #erasermic fanfic #maizawa fanfic #aizawa shouta/yamada hizashi #aizawa shouta #yamada hizashi #erasermic fic #maizawa fic #bnha fanfiction #boku no hero academia fanfiction #mha fanfiction #bnha fanfic #my hero academia fanfiction #my hero academia fanfic #boku no hero academia fanfic

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ruminativerabbi · 4 years ago

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The Southern Border

As the crisis on our southern border becomes more serious and the problem of how exactly to deal with unaccompanied children crossing, or attempting to cross, into the U.S. becomes more intractable with each passing day, we have begun to hear the same “but this is not who we are” argument so familiar to us all from the days following mass shootings or violent attacks on public buildings or seats of power. In the wake of the January riot at the Capitol, I wrote to you all suggesting that there is something self-serving and untrue in that argument when applied to insurrectionist violence directed against the Congress, an opinion I embraced after reading Joanne B. Freeman’s remarkable book, The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War. (To review my comments from last January, click here.) Now, I would like to apply that line of thinking to the crisis at the border.

If there was one theme running faithfully through my own public school education, it was that America was a nation of immigrants, that we all came from somewhere, that even the native Indians, incorrectly taken as aborigines by the European settlers who came here in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, were themselves descended from people who crossed the then-extant Bering Land Bridge that linked Siberia and Alaska during the Ice Age and so were also reasonably to be considered some version of immigrants to North America. (For more on the Bering Land Bridge, click here.) For most of us, that settled the matter: we were all either immigrants or the descendants of immigrants. Even the Indians! And the fact that a significant number of children in my elementary school had parents who had somehow survived the war in Europe and come here after the Second War only made that thought even more satisfying. I believe the first poem I was obliged to memorize during my days at P.S. 196 was Emma Lazarus’s “The Great Colossus,” written in the year of my grandmother’s birth specifically to raise money to construct the pedestal atop which the Status of Liberty stands to this day and eventually cast onto a bronze plaque attached to that same pedestal.

Boy-me was beyond impressed. The poet’s description of the statue as “a mighty woman with a torch, whose flame is the imprisoned lightning and whose name the Mother of Exiles” was more than resonant with me. My people, after all, too came here fleeing persecution in Belarus and Poland—a fact my father mentioned regularly throughout my childhood—and that was without knowing the fate that would have awaited them had they failed to get out when they could and did. The rest of the poem spoke equally directly to the young me. When I read that “from her beacon-hand glows world-wide welcome,” I imagined my grandparents passing through Ellis Island and wondering what fate awaited them here. And when the poet imagined Lady Liberty herself addressing the decaying lands of the Old World and imploring them to send to us “your tired, your poor,” your homeless and tempest-tost, and that they would be welcomed by Lady Liberty herself, on duty 24/7 holding aloft her “lamp beside the golden door” to welcome them, I knew what made America great—inclusivity, tolerance, hospitality, empathy, and kindness.

It was a very moving set of ideas to boy-me. It still is. But how true is it exactly? That I only found out later when I began to read on my own.

The United States was founded exclusively by immigrants from Europe or by the native-born descendants of earlier immigrants, but their sense of what they wanted future immigration to yield was not quite as expansive as Emma Lazarus’s poem suggests it ought to have been: the Naturalization Act of 1790, for example, dealt with the way individuals coming to the independent United States could become citizens and was quite specific: the ability to become an American citizen was formally to be limited to “free white persons…of good character.” There was, therefore, no path to citizenship at all for slaves, free black people, Asians, or, most bizarrely of all, actual native Americans. And that was how things were for quite some time. (It is true that some few states before the Civil War allowed Black people to be considered citizens, but only of that specific state and not of the country. Today, of course, there is no such thing as being a citizen of one of the states but not of the nation.) Indeed, the first instance in which a serious number of residents without the priorly requisite European pedigree became entitled to American citizenship was the passing of the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek in 1831, which created a path to citizenship specifically (and only) for Choctaw Indians who agreed to remain in Mississippi. (In exchange, the Choctaws agreed to abandon their claim to about 15 million acres of land in what is now Oklahoma.) I am quite certain that the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek was not part of our curriculum in eleventh grade.

Things moved ahead, but only very slowly. In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution offered citizenship to all people born within the boundaries of the United States, including Black people, but specifically excluding Indians residing on reservations. Two years later, Congress passed the Naturalization Act of 1870 that created, and for the first time, a possibility for Black people to immigrate to the United States and become citizens…but that same law not only denied the possibility of immigrants coming here from China but actually revoked the citizenship of Americans of Chinese descent who were already here.

The Page Act of 1875 had as its specific point, to quote its sponsor Representative Horace Page (R-California), “to end the danger of cheap Chinese labor and immoral Chinese women” by making it illegal for Chinese women to immigrate to the United States. And then, seven years later, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 made it illegal for any Chinese laborers, male or female, to enter the United States.

And then we get to the twentieth century. The Immigration Act of 1917 went a step further still, barring all immigration from Pacific Island nations and from the Far East, but also imposing for the first time literacy tests on would-be immigrants as well as creating for the first time categories of people to whom immigration was to be denied unrelated to national origin. The sanitized expressions “mentally defective individuals” and “persons with constitutional psychopathic inferiority” were used to deny openly gay people the possibility of entry, along with undesirable “illiterates, imbeciles, insane persons, and paupers.” But it was the Immigration Act of 1924, framed in its day as a mere extension of the earlier act, that for the first time established immigration quotas. Formally, the idea was to restrict immigration to a number equivalent to 2% of the number of Americans who claimed that nation as their ancestral home in the 1890 census. But the real purpose was to keep out Italians, Greeks, Poles, and (I can’t help thinking especially) Eastern European Jews. (I hardly have to pause to note what happened to those Jews who would have come here to start new lives but who were instead condemned to be present when the Nazis occupied their homelands.)

And that is how things stood for a very long time. Of course, no one in those days would have dreamt of using President Trump’s vulgar expression to describe the countries from which the President was keen to see no immigration at all. Or at least not in public. But the sentiment behind the Immigration Act of 1924 was exactly the same, only the identity of the specific nations so qualified was different.

The situation at the southern border is dire. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, himself a Cuban refugee, is doing his best to deal with an impossible situation. And, indeed, it turns out that expressing horror at the policies of the previous administration with respect to the separation of families and the caging of children is distinctly easier than figuring out what exactly to do with large number of unaccompanied children arriving at the border possessed solely of whatever they are carrying with them. There are a thousand good reasons to shove them back over the border and let them fend for themselves. They aren’t playing by the rules. We have no idea who their parents are. They mostly don’t speak English at all, let alone well. Like children everywhere, they have no way to sustain themselves by going to work and legally earning a living. All the above are excellent and fully cogent reasons for giving these kids a hot meal and shipping them back where they came from.

But what of the lady in the harbor and her torch, still burning in the night, still calling out to the tempest-tost, to the homeless, to the destitute, to the exhausted? The question isn’t really what President Trump would have done or what President Biden can or will do. The question is what the Mother of Exiles would say if she could turn to the south and consider the border with Mexico. Would she set down her lamp, shut the golden door, and tell these freeloaders to go to hell? Or would she come down from her pedestal, tie up her skirts, and make her way south to use her “imprisoned lightning” to illuminate the nighttime sky while she gathers the children in unto her and offers them shelter in this, the greatest and most powerful of all nations? It strikes me that it is to Lady Liberty that we should be looking for counsel in the matter of the current crisis, not to even the most well-me of politicians.\

#Statue of Liberty #Emma Lazarus #Southern Border #Immigration #Who We Are

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rigelmejo · 4 years ago

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I don’t know if this extensive reading has helped but I FEEL like it has helped lol. When I started 小王子 how long was it taking a chapter? Just under 5 minutes per page right?

Well I know I got faster than that. Today my Internet was down so while waiting for things to restart and load and stuff I read like 5 chapters of the book. I read them out loud (just a handful of words I didn’t know how to say out loud). I was reading at slow but steady speaking speed so that’s still faster than 5 minutes a page. Ok I just timed myself to test it and I am taking 2 minutes to read a page, and I would guess 3 minutes if I slowed down to consider a bit more on the sayings/less familiar hanzi. That’s better then the 4.5-5 minutes I started at! So I must’ve picked up some words from this book. So I would say... yes a little extensive reading seems to be helping reading speed. Also! I have 16 pages to go! This story is so short. It is sweet and odd and so human though maybe that is why it’s remained loved like Alice in wonderland. (Fun fact I also read 2 chapters of Alice in wonderland in French this week and it is just as bizarre to me as when I watched the movie as a kid, But I do think in book form if I were 6-9 I would’ve related more since Alice’s POV in the story is pretty relatable... and when I was a kid and watched the movie I just did Not relate aha).

Anyway from 4.5 minutes to 2-3 is great!

What I did with graded readers/extensive reading this month, that I am hoping is why this helped:

Read graded reader (butterfly lovers, Pleco, 500 unique characters) - not hard but very satisfying to finish it and read it quickly when it used to take me 40 minutes to read a few Pleco pages of it). So that was a few thousand words comprehensible extensive reading.

Read another graded reader, chinese short stories. While I think it’s good as a study companion, a lot of very specific words which I tripped on (antique coins, being scammed). Which was fine I just think it was not the funnest reading material? It was mostly graded reader though I had to look up a couple handfuls of words.

Read a little of my 500 character Sinolingua reader (2 stories). Also read through the back of it which has all the words in the book, and the HSK 3 words included in the book - I knew all those words but it was a nice refresher. Mostly it was just nice to see how much easier these stories were to read compared to when I first got the book. (I would recommend these books as readers if you want something for adults and in short segments, the short stories are simplified prose from established authors, and the quality of storytelling can therefore be felt a bit. They feel more meaningful as short stories and therefore enjoyable if a bit basic (since they’ve been simplified). You can tell though compared to the Chinese Short Stories book above, which was probably written by a teacher/language textbook maker and not necessarily a literary writer.

Read mandarin companion journey to the center of the earth. 450 unique characters. Another easy read that felt really nice, compared to when I first read a mandarin companion book.

Started reading 小王子 on paper, so extensive reading with little word look up (I’ve looked up less than 10 words so far when reading on paper - notable words I looked up because it frustrated me I didn’t know them: 悲伤，惊奇，惊讶，匆匆，逐渐，观察，测试 a lot of these because I know I’ve seen these Hanzi before I just never remember specifically like 惊讶惊奇 what the difference is or guan pronunciation 观察 or 测 I tend to forget when it’s not in 测试). I started reading it because it’s supposed to have around 2000 unique words (so not too many), and be pretty easy reading level (so a bit easier than 活着 which is the novel Chinese learners often get recommended). Basically, this was the extensive reading book choice step up from graded readers - it’s got a bit over 1000 unique hanzi, not an overwhelming amount of unique words, but it is not a graded reader so if it goes well I could jump to other stuff of similar or slightly less “ease” while still having it feel this “easy” to read (and hopefully take days to read instead of months).

Started reading 笑猫日记之会唱歌的猫 in Pleco, so clicking words I didn’t know (though this one only had a word or two a page unknown). I saw it recommended on a Chinese learners form as easy reading material after graded readers, and I agree! It’s very easy to read! I could understand it without clicking words but it is nice to understand fully since it’s convenient, and look up the pronunciation etc. I read 8 chapters so far. I also listened to a few chapters after reading, but idk if it helped at all.

15 ish chapters into 小王子 I found it online and reread 4 chapters with a click dictionary for unknown words. It was nice just clarifying the word pronunciations and fuzzy bits, also the online translation was different so seeing the difference on how they decided to word it (mostly just seeing synonyms used instead or different sayings for certain parts). I listened to a couple chapters audio afterwards, idk if it helped.

Unrelated, but I did listen read to 5 chapters of 默读 mainly following the Chinese text so, idk if that would’ve helped my overall reading at all (I want to say no but I did notice in general much more general gist comprehension of lines in MoDu then last time I read a couple months ago - although listening to the audio and being able to glance at the English for unknown words of course also makes things much more comprehensible that’s why listen reading method is the structure it is ahh).

Listened to some audio for 小王子 during work because I happened to find it, for chapters 1-4. Just playing in the background. I looked at the text while listening to one to match pronunciation to some words, since the chapter was like 5 minutes long in listening. Again interesting to see their word choice since It was yet another translation (I think I like my print books translation best).

Back to reading print 小王子 today and I think the audio beforehand did help me with being able to pronounce more of what I’m reading. Read like 4 chapters in one short break, another 3 chapters just now. While I don’t know how well the reading speed will translate to reading harder stuff like guardian (which was oddly also taking me 5 minutes a page? Why is that my default speed?), my reading speed doing extensive reading on “stuff mostly easy” to me has increased noticeably. (Fun fact when I read English technical text like psychology and physics books and educational etc I think my reading speed is it’s like 10-20 pages an hour... I do not read non fiction very fast).

So anyway, my goal with extensive reading easy material this month was to see if I could push UP what my starting base level “easy” material is.

What I used to do is practice with an “easier text” (which was still pretty hard for me tbh) and then once it got bearable (took 30-40 minutes to read instead of an hour), I’d switch to a harder material that took me 1-1.5 hours to read. Then when I’d burn out, I’d go back to that “easier” text until it got easier at 20-30 minutes to read. Then I might pick a harder base reading text (usually what used to be the hard one that would now take 30-40 minutes to read), and find something even harder. Lately that has been 寒舍 as my “easier” text, taking 20-30 minutes a full chapter (2 mini chapters), and 天涯客 as my harder text at 30-40ish minutes a chapter. And yes, at this point I could pick something harder but they’re both hard enough I was just sticking to them. You might notice none of these were actually easy for me though, my actual base easy materials were still graded readers, and manhua. So I want to push that upward until there’s some “easier” material below 寒舍 that I can be built up to and read easily Without a dictionary aid. So I can have a solid base that’s reliable. Hanshe is an “easier” practice material but it’s not necessarily something I can read extensively with ease. But if I keep pushing up the difficulty of what I can extensively read, bit by bit, I will eventually Get it to hanshe (or a little below it realistically but still firmly in regular-webnovel-exist at the reading level). I will not get faster at reading these hard things unless my base level of reading is both higher and already a reasonable speed. (I’m guessing anyway??).

Well happy to say this plan is working. I guess the advice articles I read were right somewhat. I knew graded readers could drag you from 0 beginner to some reading ability, since It’s what I originally did with Chinese (and even French sort of). But I was very quick about it because I’m impatient and easily bored by too-easy things apparently lol. I read 1 mandarin companion graded reader (the 300 word Sherlock Holmes one), a couple chapters of 2 other graded readers, then started on a random webnovel (the bl 他们的故事 which somehow thankfully is on the easier end for novels) and looked a lot of words up to get through. But I did not think to try to “match my reading level and increase gradually” in regular novels, even tho if it works for graded readers it probably works for regular stuff!

And in school in our native languages, that’s why our elementary schools had libraries, and we read books for our age group and the chapter books we read were much easier than what we read as teens or what adults read! I remember bunnicula and cat wings those were not hard but they were chapter stories. Then I remember Dracula and hg wells and mark Twain in high school and how they felt a bit Hard despite me being one of those kids rated at college reading level in 3rd grade. Now as a kid? I had the same tendencies I do now, so I’m not surprised I always jump in the deep end and Try to read hard stuff (and it must help since it’s part of why I got good at reading my native language, and definitely has helped my chinese and french). I would be like 7 and pick up a mitchner novel of My dad’s (is that the author of stuff like Alaska etc?) and I’d read a couple pages and feel drained trying to follow it and give up. Or the huge The Witching Hour by Anne Rice, or HG Wells History of the world, or the biography of benjamin Franklin, I never finished any of these or had any idea what they were about I just got curious and opened up a couple pages every now and then. Yet somehow that must’ve been part of why my reading level so early on was considered “good”? I’m guessing.

But I wasn’t actually good at reading in the sense of doing it often or fast until my dad started reading to me at like age 8-9 I think it was Harry Potter which at the time worked out since the books got harder each time, and also my dad reads out loud slow just like he tutors slow lol so eventually I read myself so he’d stop boring me (I love him and loved the bonding time I’m sure but truly i just apparently always liked jumping in the deep end). Eventually his strategy Im guessing to get me to read slightly harder stuff each time worked, because by books 4-5 I read each in 2 days. He was so impressed because before that I couldn’t read long books and not fast, and that’s when he thought I got good at reading. Looking back lol it’s actually so funny? How much work he had to do to get me to read and how what ended up working I still sort of do now. He started me on Hop on Pop as a kid as my first book cause One Fish Two Fish bored me and I thought jumping on a dad was funny, and he did that just to do something to get me to pick up a book lol. Then he got me that digital book toy they had back then where you had a real book but it was in a digital holder and if you clicked words with the pen it read them out loud. Literally how I learn Chinese now... he really got me digital equivalent to graded readers back then ToT. And just like as a kid I still pick up stuff way beyond my level and just read a couple pages at random. It’s just. Kind of funny to me how much I didn’t really change that much after all ToT

BACK ON THE TOPIC OF APRIL PROGRESS lol ok. I listened to Guardian ep 1 today just in the background so no subs etc and I was Floored by how much I completely understood. I’ve been listening to SpoonFed chinese again (15 audios listened to this month), but I’m floored if it made a difference?! Since I was mostly listening in the background not focusing and missing some stuff. Idk if it made a difference, or listening reading method just that 1.5 hours I did this month or what. Or if my listening skills have been this decent I just don’t test them since I usually watch shows with hard Chinese subs (and read the subs), or watch shows with English subs. So like. Anyway mejo back in what was it august 2019 when I started studying? Would be so happy. Back when I started watching guardian and only knew ni hao and xie xie and zai jian.

Also I can’t even remember now if I did extensive reading guardian (after reading the English translation), this month too or just last month. But I’m sure that helped and I should test general reading sometime of a priest novel. Like.. literally what kicked off the “I should extensive read more” this month is me Desperately wanting to kick up my reading speed after the horrific 25 page guardian chapter I read that took like 1.5 hours.

#rant #april #april progress #reading progress #to be honest tho truly I’m really happy with my chinese progress so far #it has yeah sooooo much farther to go #and communication wise I’m ahhhh not not anywhere much yet #but listening and reading are already significantly further than Japanese was at 2.5 years #and honestly ‘as slow progress as Japanese’ was my assumption and goal when I started #so I figured I would not read this good for 4 years at least #so just under 2 years? I’m pretty amazed

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