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let-me-write-shit · 4 years

Note

You writing is soo cool, you're amazing! I don't know if you are taking requests, but what about a famous Y/N and meets professor Harry and he is like "I don't want to teach you, you are famous" and she is like "you are going to teach me and fall in love with me😏" and well, idk the idea just came to my mind and I thought of you to write it hahaha. Love your writing, keep doing it 'cause you are great!

Word Count: 9,443 LONG AS SHIIIIT

WARNING: FILTHY SMUT!!!!!!!! (I put ******** before and after the smut so you can skip if you’d like

A/N: Thank you SOO much to @mylittleangel9403 for this request and I’m SOOOO sorry it took so long. Turned out a lot longer than I anticipated. Not sure if you wanted this to be smutty, but I just couldn’t help myself. Also, shoutout to @gwenlovesharrystyles for the help on this imagine! Much appreciated!!Enjoy!

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Professor Styles

“Ma’am, respectfully, I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Harry leaned forward in his chair, fingertips pressed together, aware of the large presence that sat beside him, his voice almost a whisper. “We’re already several classes deep, and as you know, my class is very difficult. She’ll be at a disadvantage going in, not to mention the students already in my class. The distraction isn’t fair for them.”

“Professor Styles, I don’t need to tell you how much this means to our University. I understand your concern, and I have every faith in you to help miss Y/L/N catch up to speed and keep your students in-check.”

He could feel the eyes of the famous singer on him as she uncrossed her legs and sat straighter in her chair. In his peripheral, he could see her burly manager, who stood in the back against a wall, take a step closer behind them like a bodyguard waiting to pounce. But for some reason, Harry had the distinct impression that Y/N could do without protection. He thought she was tough enough.

“Sir,” Y/N spoke softly and respectfully. Harry turned, seeing a reflection of yellow in her eyes as the sun shone through the window onto them, and he couldn’t help but think she was putting on an act for the Dean. “I know that the circumstances are...unusual. But, I promise I will do everything in my power to not cause any distraction in your class. I’ll sit in the back if that helps. Whatever it takes.”

The young professor took a deep breath, taking in her words. He looked around the room in thought, feeling everyone’s attention on him all the while. Some of the rumors about her seemed to ring true. Y/N had this energy about her that made it difficult to focus or think straight. She hardly took her eyes off of him throughout this entire meeting.

Harry sighed in defeat and nodded, “Alright. I trust she’ll be given the syllabus and information on everything she’ll need for my class?” he asked the Dean.

But before the Dean could respond, Y/N chirped, “I’ve already gotten it and I’m prepared to start next week.”

“Well, that’s settled, then,” the Dean grinned, victoriously, “Welcome to our school, Miss Y/L/N. Unless you have any more questions, you are free to go.”

Y/N stood up with a smile, followed by the Dean and professor. She stuck out a hand and shook them, saying, “Thank you so much. I look forward to starting on Tuesday.”

Her burly manager opened the door for her and she began to make her way out. And as Harry collected his things to leave, the Dean quipped, “Oh, Professor Styles. Before you head to your next class, I’d like to speak to you for a moment.”

Harry watched as Y/N closed the door behind her, almost certain he saw a wink, before setting his things back down and taking a seat once more. He listened as the Dean encouraged him to do all that he can to ensure Y/N had a good experience here, explaining how big of a deal this was and how Y/N taking his class might encourage more students to enroll.

Harry listened, respectfully, but wanted nothing more than to roll his eyes. It annoyed him that he was expected to baby Y/N and bend to her will solely because she was a rich and famous singer, and he refused to play a part in that. If she wanted success in his class, she would need to earn it just like the rest of his students.

When they finished their conversation, he was already running late for his next class. Again, he collected his things and made his way out of the office. As he speed-walked through the administration, he was surprised to see Y/N still there, sat on a chair beside her burly manager, talking. When she noticed him, she instantly jumped to her feet and raced up to him.

“Hey,” she said, simply, keeping his pace as they continued out of the administration building and into the main campus.

“I’m running late to my next class, Miss Y/L/N. Did you have a question, or can this wait?”

Her voice was so flippant that it bordered arrogance, “Just wanted to thank you again for letting me join your class this late into the semester.”

“It’s not me you should thank. I don’t agree with it and I won’t baby you. You’ve got a lot of catching up to do. I suggest you start reading your books so you’re not lost in my next class. Your classmates have worked hard to get to where they are and I’d hate for you to be the reason for a halt in their progress.”

“I think you’ll find that not to be the case.”

She was so smug that it caught him off guard. The looming of her large manager two paces behind him as they hustled down the walkway was even more noticeable now, along with the many whispers and stares as they continued. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, perplexed.

He debated whether to ask, not sure if he wanted to know the answer. Not wanting to show any sign of weakness or that he’d entertain her malarky. But his curiosity got the better of him.

“Miss Y/L/N, why are you taking my class?”

“Why not?” she smirked in response.

He sighed, annoyed that he was even going along with this, “We both know you don’t need to go to school, especially for Advanced Musical Theory. Why are you only taking my class?”

Her voice was softer and more sincere this time as she spoke, “I’ve always been interested in Music Theory and wanted to take it before my career kicked off. And I heard you were one of the best teachers in your field.”

For a split second, in that moment of sincerity, he thought he might have just seen her, the real her, behind all the fame and money and act. But her innocence faltered as she quickly shuffled in front of him, making Harry fumble to a stop.

Her eyes were more seductive now as she hushed, “Besides, I heard about how hot you were and I needed to see it for myself. And I’m not disappointed,” she looked at him through her eyelashes.

Harry could feel the warmth rise to his cheeks, extremely aware of her manager’s presence behind him and the few students nearby, staring. He was sure his face was bright red right now as Y/N’s smirk only seemed to grow.

Harry was aware of his reputation around campus for being the ‘hot teacher’. He wasn’t a stranger to the gossip or the occasional student trying to make a pass at him. And, honestly, his ego enjoyed it. But he’d never crossed that line with a student before and she would be no exception.

He did his best to compose himself and continued past her, Y/N following behind, “I’ll ignore that and just give you fair warning,” he started, “My class is hard and you will not be given special treatment just because you’re famous. I promised the dean I’d get you caught up, and I will. Your class is every Tuesday, and you can meet me in my office after each lesson for an hour for the next few weeks until we get you up-to-date on what you’ve missed. I will not play into your games.”

“Yes, Sir,” she pouted, teasingly, and again, jumped in front of him, holding a hand out and smiling, “Looking forward to next Tuesday.”

Harry looked at her suspiciously, pausing for a moment before ultimately giving in and taking her hand in his. But before he could respond, she pulled herself closer to him. So close that she was practically whispering in his ear.

“But just to warn you, not only will I ace your class, but by the end of the semester, I’ll make you call in love with me.”

Her breath was so hot and her words were so unexpected that he stood there, stunned, while she pulled away, winked, and walked back towards her bodyguard, heading back from where they just came from. She waved to a few students that recognized her, and she looked back once to blow a discreet kiss before she rounded a corner and was out of sight.

Harry watched after her, stunned at her assertiveness while people were watching. But he shook it off and continued to his class, mentally preparing himself to break the news to his students.

The anxiety in the week leading up to the start of Y/N’s first official day in Professor Styles’ class was becoming more frequently accompanied by the Dean’s constant checking in on him to make sure everything was ready, more students visiting or showing up to class, and even more excited whispers. Harry, on the other hand, did his best to push it aside, not getting what all the fuss was about.

He had done his best to prepare his students for their newly joined classmate, even sending out mass reminder emails to those in his class to please be courteous and warning them to avoid distraction. But when he pulled up to the school that day, he noticed more students than normal just hanging around, scanning all over campus like they were scouting for something.

Harry quickly realized that they were waiting to catch a glimpse at the famous singer and he snorted, rolling his eyes. Kids were so predictable. He slipped his lanyard with his ID around his neck, grabbed hold of his coffee and briefcase, and got out of his car, heading towards his classroom.

The Professor smiled and nodded at the students that greeted him in the hallway, proud that he knew each of them by name, continuing to his class. He knew his students would already be there, by now. Harry was usually always a few minutes late and he assumed that it gave his students more than enough time to ogle their new addition to the class.

But, when Harry rounded the corner and saw Y/N leaning up against the wall, arms crossed and alone, his nerves increased.

“Harry,” Y/N beamed when she spotted him, practically skipping over to him.

Harry raised his eyebrows, clearing his throat, “It’s Professor Styles,” he warned, earning a sarcastic nod while he continued, “Why are you not in class?”

“I thought we could go in together since I’m new.”

“I’m your professor, not your babysitter. Go on in next time,” he said as they approached the door. Before turning the knob, he paused and faced her, “While you’re here, I’ll explain to you what I explained to them on the first day. I’m a pretty easy-going teacher because I know how hard this class can be. You can eat in my class, you can have your phones out, you can come in wearing pajamas, I don’t care. However, the biggest rule in my class is that you treat people with kindness. We do not judge in this class. We don’t interrupt people or talk over others, we don’t make others feel inferior. My class is a safe space for people to be their authentic selves and we respect that. Can you do that?”

Y/N’s stance softened and she grinned, nodding, “Yes. I can do that.”

“Good,” Harry nodded, “I’d like you to take a seat towards the back of the class for today if you don’t mind. I’d rather they pay attention to me than the back of your head.”

“Whatever you say, Professor,” Y/N exaggerated his title, her lips twitching up in a lopsided smile.

He looked down at her for a moment, narrowing his eyes, trying to size her up, before he gave in and turned the knob to his class. The buzz from his students loudly chattering amongst each other instantly stopped when he walked in, closely followed by the singer. Harry vaguely noticed that not only was every single one of his students present, but they all looked slightly more put-together than normal. He snorted under his breath, dropping his briefcase on his desk, taking a sip from his coffee cup, and placing that down, as well.

“Morning!” He called out, earning a chorus of greetings in return. He gestured towards Y/N who was making her way up the steps towards the back of the class, “I’m sure you all know who this is. We are incredibly lucky to welcome Y/N in joining us this year.”

Y/N stopped climbing the steps to smile brightly and wave obscurely at everyone, “Hi!”

Harry nodded towards her to keep moving. She rolled her eyes, playfully, and continued while he explained, “I know we’re all excited to have her here, but I want to remind everyone that while we’re in the room, we’re all students, and that includes Y/N. Let’s all focus on what we’re here for, so we don’t get lost when mid-terms get here, yeah?”

After another muttering of agreeance, Harry noticed Y/N getting settled in the back and he nodded, starting the lecture, “Okay, what I’d like to do is a one-minute warm-up on today’s exploration on duple and triple meter. So, I need everyone to stand up.”

The rustling of chairs echoed and screeched as students got to their feet. Soon, they were marching along to Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds by The Beatles, everyone laughing and feet stomping on the ground. He felt proud, seeing all the smiling, attentive faces in his direction and happy that throughout the lesson, nearly everyone had seemed to grasp everything that he was saying.

But, each time he glanced up in Y/N’s direction, he noticed that not only had she not even so much as picked up a pencil or opened her laptop, she had not looked away from him even once. He made a mental note to reprimand her after class and continued on.

When the lesson came to an end, Harry thanked the class for their cooperation and the students began to pack up their belongings. He watched as Y/N was met by a group of kids who were considered to be more ‘popular’ around campus. He saw her friendly smiles, but could barely hear her over the noise.

Once Harry managed to gather his things and toss his now-empty coffee cup in the trash, he approached the group, earning a pleasant round of hello’s by the students. One of the girls, Jesse, made sure to bat her eyelashes a little more and lean closer than necessary as she spoke.

“Great lesson today, Professor Styles. I did have a few questions about musical texture and was wondering if we could meet privately so I could get some more clarity on that?” she asked, twisting a lock of hair around her fingers.

Harry was used to Jesse’s incessant attempts at flirting with him and getting him alone, but he never took the bait, “I’m sorry, Jesse, I have no free office hours available, right now. But please shoot me an email with all of your questions and I’ll gladly help you out.” He heard sniggering from her friends as her face shifted into disappointment and he turned to Y/N, “Miss Y/L/N, when you’re done here, please meet me in my office so I can get you caught up.”

“Yes, Professor, I’ll be right there.”

He waited twenty minutes before he finally heard a knock on the door. He had half a mind to ignore it and let her stand out there, annoyed that he was wasting time trying to help an entitled celebrity who clearly had no interest in his class. What was the point? But, he thought back to the Dean, and reluctantly made his way to the door.

“Your students seem to really like you,” she confidently walked in, taking a seat on top of his desk and tossing her bag on one of the chairs, crossing her legs. “Especially that girl, what’s her name? Jesse?”

Harry blinked and slightly shook her head back before closing the door and rounding the desk she sat on towards his chair, not bothering to give the statement a response. But that didn’t stop her from continuing, “She’s like, in love with you. Well, maybe not in love. But you definitely make her horny.”

“Y/N!” You shoot back at the brassiness.

“She’s hot, I’ll give her that. But she’s definitely got that ‘daddy money’ vibe to her. She and her friends invited me to a party next weekend. And that kid, Mark, gave me his number. He’s pretty hot, too. Looks like some kind of jock.”

Harry nodded, shuffling his papers, “He’s here on a full-ride soccer scholarship.”

“Damn, I’m good,” Y/N leaned back, pressing her palms flat against the top of his desk, impressed with herself.

Harry looked up at her, an eyebrow raised. He wished he could say that her confidence astounded him, but honestly, he wasn’t that surprised. He could hazard a guess that her success was probably all handed to her. She joked about another student being given ‘daddy’s money’, but if he had to guess, she was probably the same.

He set the stack of papers down beside where she sat on his desk and looked up at her with a sigh, “Miss Y/L/N, my desk is not a chair. Please have a seat.”

She slithered down off the desk and plopped in a chair opposite him, scooting it closer and crossing her arms on the top, waiting for him to speak.

He relaxed his shoulders and continued, “You didn’t participate much in class today.”

“Well, you told me not to be a distraction.”

“Yes, but you’re still a part of the class. I expect more participation from you in the next class. And that includes note-taking. You won’t pass my class from memory. For now, I need to get you caught up.

Harry spent the next hour trying to get her caught up on the very first day of his class, which she interrupted every ten minutes, or so, going off-topic or asking very personal questions like ‘do you have a girlfriend?’ or ‘how many students have you been with?’ None of which he answered. When there were about ten minutes left in their time together, Y/N interrupted for the eighth time that hour and Harry groaned, unsure that she had retained any of the information he had provided her so far.

“What made you want to do this? Teach Musical Theory?”

He looked up at her and paused for a moment and she stared at him, her head cocked to the side. She looked genuinely interested, and it wasn’t often that he got asked these questions. He decided he’d entertain her, just this once.

Harry slid the paperwork away from him and sat back in his seat, “I’ve just always been interested in music since I was a kid.”

“Yeah, so have I. That’s why I became a musician. There are so many jobs in the musical field, why music theory?”

“Well, I am a musician. Not as big as you, obviously, but I have a small band and we play gigs around town. But the more I deep dove into music and the history behind it, the more I got into musical theory. It was a hobby and a passion before it was a career. And I guess I just wanted to show people how fun and interesting it could be.”

Y/N nodded, seeming content with his answer before saying, “Well, for what it’s worth, I think you’re a good teacher.”

“You’ve only been in one class,” he chuckled, sitting up again and straightening out his papers once more.

She giggled, “Yes, but it doesn’t take long to know when a teacher is good or not. I see the way you interact with your students and hear the way they talk about you. Everyone seems to love you. It’s part of the reason why I chose to come here.”

“My reputation precedes me?” He raised an eyebrow.

“Something like that,” she grinned, before softly speaking, “You know, we’re not all that different, you and I. I’ve been passionate about music for as long as I remember,” she laughed and said, “I remember when I was seven years old my mom took me to the library and I must have read at least six books, cover to cover, about Chopin. I knew everything about him and even named my pet rabbit after him. Everyone thought I was crazy.”

“Classical music?” Harry questioned, surprised.

She nodded, sitting up, “I’ve played piano since I was two.”

Harry pursed his lips, nodding his head, “Never judge a book by its cover.”

They stared at each other for a moment, silence filling the room. She looked more innocuous now; harmless as she sat with one leg crossed over the other. By this small conversation she had, she could see bits of himself in her eyes and it made him bring his guard down. For a moment, he was fascinated.

But her expression changed, more curious, as she asked, “So, how many lucky girls get the chance to have this one-on-one time with hottie Professor Styles?”

Harry sighed, rubbing his temples, “You exhaust me.”

“Or guys, I’m not judging,” she shrugged, “Though that would totally suck for Jesse. She’s really crushing.”

“I’ve never dated a student and I never will,” he said blandly.

“Never say never,” she smirked, “Why not?”

“Because they’re kids and it’s inappropriate.”

“Kids?” she snorted, “You’re barely four years older than most of your students. And everyone is of legal age.”

“I am not having this conversation with you,” he said, packing his things, “Our time is up. I’ve got to get going. I’ll see you in class next week.”

She grinned, gathering her things together and following him towards the door. As he reached for the door handle, she quickly put a hand on top of his, stopping him from turning it and making him look down at her as she said, “Don’t forget, Professor. Never say never.”

He watched as she opened the door and slipped out, turning her head once to wink back at him before she rounded a corner.

Harry found himself nervous and somehow anxious for the following week to arrive. It was the first time for years he had gotten there before any of his students. Every time the door opened and a student arrived, surprised by his early presence, he noticed he would jump and whip his head in the direction of the door. He tried to tell himself that he was just jittery or had too much coffee this morning, but he knew that wasn’t the reason.

When Y/N walked through the door, he felt his heart start to race.

“Good morning, Professor,” she smirked at him as she made her way up the steps towards the back of the class.

He nodded but didn’t respond. He felt stupid for not knowing what to say. There were so many options; hi, hello, how are you? Nothing. Harry watched out of the corner of her eye as she made a dramatic show of pulling out a notebook and a pen, sitting back in her chair and propping her legs up on the desk, making her short skirt slip up her thigh even more, waiting while she tapped her pen on the paper while the other arm was crossed over her stomach and her thumb grazed against her mouth.

He shook his head, pretending to search his briefcase for something as more students started to arrive, annoyed at himself for letting her get to him. In his four years of teaching, this had never been a problem before. How was she doing it?

Y/N waved as the group of kids she was seen talking to at the end of the last class squeezed in and they all excitedly waved back, making their way back to the seats in the row in front of her, spinning in their seats to talk. He wondered what they were talking about each time he saw her laugh or look down at him and hold eye contact.

The lecture started smoothly. He had them do another goofy exercise to get them ready for the class and was able to keep everyone’s attention as he explained notes and scales. Harry noticed the singer scribbling down in her notebook and was relieved to see she was taking notes this time. But what shocked him, even more, was her participation. The Professor, although known to make teaching and learning fun, was also known to ask a lot of hard questions throughout the class. Most, of which, the students rarely knew the answers to. That’s why he was surprised to see Y/N’s hand raised after nearly every question he asked, and even more taken back when her answers were right. Every single time.

Students began to become amused, automatically looking in between the two when a question would arise, and giggling at the incredulous expression on his face when she had, yet again, gotten the answer right. If he didn’t know any better, he would bet that by next week the class would turn it into some kind of a drinking game. He could have sworn he saw Y/N giggle under her breath and even blow a kiss.

After class, once again, Y/N was grouped on the steps by the rows of desks with Jesse, Mark, and their other friends. Y/N would twirl her hair and smile towards Mark and seemed to have him wrapped around her finger, but Harry also noticed how she’d look over Mark’s shoulder at him and bite her lip. She knew he’d be watching, and he hated himself for it.

Quickly, he packed his things and left the room, heading to his office to wait for her there, wondering what they were talking about. He closed the office door behind him, tossed his briefcase on the floor beside the paper shredder, and decided against turning the lights on. He blamed it on a splitting migraine, but it was really because there were too many intrusive thoughts running through his mind that he was doing everything he could to ease it, including pacing the room.

The attempts, however futile, were short lived. Minutes later there was a soft knock on the door and Y/N emerged, closing the door behind her, strutting right past him, and plopping on top of his desk again.

“How was that for participation, Harry?” she asked, propping a foot on the arm of his chair which made her skirt shimmy up her thigh just enough that if he were to look, he was sure he’d be able to see what she was wearing underneath.

He took a gulp and fought hard not to look down, lightly pushing her leg off of the arm of his chair so that both of her legs now hung down, taking a seat and crossing his arms, “It’s Professor Styles, and you did very well in class today, Miss Y/L/N.”

“Told you that I’d be a good student,” but her smile turned devilish as she spread her legs apart further and bent down closer to him, “But I can be bad if you’d like.”

“Please get off my desk and take a seat, Y/N. We’ve still got a lot of catching up to do.”

“Whatever you say, Professor,” she exaggerated, slowly slipping off of his desk and rounding to the other side.

Again, Harry tried his best to catch her up on lessons she missed, but it hardly seemed to get anywhere with Y/N’s constant interruption of inconsequential questions and arbitrary thoughts that seemed to almost pour out of her mouth without thought. He couldn’t help but chuckle under his breath a few times. She wasn’t boring, he’ll give her that much.

The more she fought against his attempts at teaching her, the more he realized that they weren’t going to get anywhere unless he gave her a little of what she wanted. So when she asked, “Do you have a girlfriend?” he sighed and ran his finger through his hair, giving in.

“No, I don’t. And why do you insist on coming to these meetings if you aren’t going to pay attention?”

“I am paying attention. You were talking about themes and motives of the piano and violin in Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony,” she said, confidently, crossing her arms, “I just think that it would be easier to come to class and learn if I knew my teacher a little better.”

He rolled his eyes at this attempt, but a smile crept on his face anyway, “What do you want to know?”

She smiled, sitting up, eagerly, “Well, it’s good to know you’re single. When was the last time you were in a relationship?”

He sighed, uncertain why he was even taking part in this conversation, “A little over a year.”

“And you haven’t tried again since?”

He shrugged, “I’ve been busy.”

“Or you were heartbroken.”

The response stung a little. She was right. And that annoyed him even more. How did she do this? Get under his skin so easily? Instead of answering that, he retorted with, “Well, what about you? You’re obviously single, otherwise, you wouldn’t be flirting so much with your professor or the soccer star.”

Her smirk stretched wider, “Oh, are we jealous of Mike?”

He scoffed, grabbing the few pieces of paper off of his desk and attempting to organize it in the side filing cabinet, “No, I’m not jealous of a student.”

“Mhmm. Well, for your information we were just talking about the party they’re having this weekend.”

He tried his best to look confused, although he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about that party since she mentioned it last week, “Is that so?”

“Yeah, it’s on Saturday. Not sure if I’m going yet. I’m sure my manager and PR would have my head if I was caught getting sloppy at a college party. Not good for the image,” she whispered, rolling her eyes.

He shrugged, “College parties aren’t all that great, anyway.”

“I’m sure,” she said sarcastically, “Anyway, I have a concert the night before, so I’m usually exhausted by the next day. You should come.”

“To your concert?” he asked.

She raised an eyebrow, skeptically, “Unless you don’t like my music?”

Harry shrugged, “I haven’t really heard much of it,” he lied, “but my sister’s a big fan.”

“Well, I’ll put you down for a plus-one. As long as it’s just your sister.”

Harry felt a lump beginning to form in his throat and he shook his head, “I already have plans for Friday. But thanks, anyway.”

She shook her head, nonchalantly, “Well, offer still stands if your plans fall through.”

He tried his best to reroute the conversation back on topic and was thankful that she seemed to finally go along with it. But as it neared the end of the hour, he felt her eyes on his face more and more. He looked up in the middle of his sentence and froze when he saw her eyes on his. She seemed entranced and almost out of it. And something seemed to pull him into the same trance as her.

It was the first good look at her that he had gotten since their first meeting. Her skin looked soft and her eyes sparkled when the sun’s rays shone on them at just the right angle. He hadn’t noticed until now that the bridge of her nose was slightly elongated and somehow endearing. And her lips. Those lips.

Y/N shook her head and stood up. It was the first time that she seemed to be caught off guard, and that stroked his ego a bit. He glanced down at his watch and noticed that they had run overtime and he gasped. She seemed to realize, too. Hurriedly, they both began to collect their things, but in the frenzy, she accidentally flicked her pen off the desk and it ricocheted on his side, landing on the floor near his briefcase.

“Oh!” he heard her mutter, rounding the desk where they both hastily attempted to grab it.

Harry was the first to grab it and as they both stood up, they were face to face with each other, inches away. They froze, again, unable to move. He saw something in her eyes that he hadn’t seen before; nervousness. Y/N was always such a confident force, and to see her any less than that admittedly made him gratified, like he had obtained a victory. But he, himself, was losing the battle. She was breaking him down one wink at a time, and he had never felt so weak in his life.

He could feel the strain of his desire pulling him closer towards her, the gloss on her lips looked enticing. If no one stopped him soon, he wasn’t sure if he could hold off much longer. He saw her eyes begin to flutter shut as the gap between them closed. Her sweet, minty breath swirled in front of his lips, he could almost taste it. And then a loud knock on the door echoed around his office.

Y/N flew against the wall while Harry awkwardly knocked his elbow against the back filing cabinet just as Jesse haughtily belted into the room. Her wide smile slowly screwed up into trepidation at the awkward tension that filled the room as the professor and singer avoided eye contact with each other.

“Jesse!” Harry quickly spoke, “What can I help you with?”

“I’m sorry, I thought you’d be finished. I just had a few questions about the essay, but I can just email you.”

“No, no, it’s fine, come in. Y/N was just on her way out.”

“Okay, cool,” Jesse smiled, stepping in further and placing her things on the chair opposite his desk.

Harry watched as the two girls exchanged friendly smiles, but he could see the slight embarrassment behind Y/N’s as she made her way towards the door.

“Don’t forget about this weekend!” Jesse called out after her, “I’ve never seen Mark so excited for a party before.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Y/N faked a laugh, sharing one last concerned look with Harry before closing the door behind her on the way out.

All week he found himself analyzing all of the occurrences that led up to him and Y/N almost kissing. He debated his sentiments, trying to logic every feeling of vulnerability and affection away with a simple explanation. It was becoming increasingly more difficult to pay attention to his work, constantly stumbling over his words of forgetting what he was talking about. When his class ended early on Friday afternoon and he sat in silence in his apartment, he stared at the blank television screen, contemplating whether or not he should take up her offer to attend her concert.

He paced the floor, opened and closed the fridge, tried to scroll through his social media apps, or read a book, anything to keep her mind off of her. He picked his phone up and stared at the home screen for a few minutes, constantly unlocking it when it got dark. With a final sigh, he opened it once more and dialed a number, putting it up to her ear.

“Hello, ya nimrod. What’s going on?” He heard his sister’s voice ring through the other end.

“How do you feel about going to a Y/N Y/L/N concert tonight?”

“You serious? Tonight? Bloody hell, yeah, I’ll go!”

“I’ll pick you up in two hours.”

Time only seemed to drag for Harry, left with nothing but his thoughts. It was enough time to go back and forth on whether or not he was making the right decision. Ultimately, he decided to go. He had already invited Gemma and he would feel guilty for bailing after getting her hopes up.

The sun was beginning to set and Gemma was singing loudly to Y/N’s lyrics in the passenger seat beside him. His palms were sweaty, gripped tight against the steering wheel. As the song ended, Gemma turned the volume down and turned to her younger brother.

“How did you get Y/N Y/L/N tickets, anyway? I didn’t know you listened to her like that.”

“I don’t, really. I mean, I’ve heard a few songs. But she’s my student and invited us to come.”

“She’s your student?” Gemma laughed, amused, “Cut the shit, Harry. How? Did you win them on the radio or something?”

“I’m serious. She’s taking my class.”

“What?” Gemma gasped, “And you didn’t tell me?”

“I didn’t think to.”

“You didn’t think to tell me that one of my favorite singers is a student of yours?” Gemma clarified. Eyebrows furrowed, she sat back and huffed, “Some brother you are.”

“Hey, now! I’m bringing you to her concert, aren’t I?”

The walk up to the ticket booth was one of the most humiliating things he had ever experienced as he uncomfortably explained who he was and that he was invited by the singer, herself. It took two people and a member of her staff to vouch for him before he and his sister were escorted through the venue and entered the pain event area through a private entrance that led them towards a VIP barricade towards the front of the stage. Thousands of screaming fans surrounded them, and Gemma looked around, shocked at the scene.

“This is insane!” Gemma shouted in his ear, bouncing on the balls of her toes.

Harry had to admit, it was pretty cool to see all of these people here for Y/N. He felt a sort of pride for her that he wasn’t quite expecting. And it didn’t take long for the lights to dim and the music to start.

He heard her before he saw her, and he felt his heart start to race again. He tried to play it off by the screams and the thumping bass, but when she finally came into view, he felt like he had been bolted to the floor, unable to move or talk or even smile. He was just stunned. Seeing her on stage was surreal. He knew of her, first, but it was hard for him to dissociate ‘student’ Y/N from ‘famous’ Y/N.

When they caught eyes and she realized he had come, a smile stretched across her face behind the microphone. He couldn’t help but mirror her, his shoulders relaxing as he managed a gentle wave. She walked closer to them on the stage, singing down at them, and he could hear his sister repeating ‘Oh my god, oh my god’ beside him as Y/N waved back in their direction.

Y/N was talented, there was no denying it. And the way that she interacted with her fans, you could tell that she was grateful for every second of it. It was touching. She was knocking down his assumptions about her little bit by little bit. He always thought that she’d be a spoiled, ungrateful celebrity, but that seemed to be completely false.

By the end of the concert, he had eased up and began to jump around, goofily, with his sister while Y/N watched, dancing around on stage, laughing and singing. Finally, the burly manager he had seen on the first day of their meeting with the Dean had approached him and his sister, informing them that they were invited backstage and to follow him.

His nerves began to rise in his chest again as they wove down several corridors until eventually, they stood before a door with Y/N’s name taped on it. The manager knocked loudly and waited a moment before they heard her voice on the other side call out, “Come in!”

With a turn of the knob, Y/N was now seen. She was in a new, more casual change of clothes and her hair was now up, but with visible beads of sweat lining her forehead and neck, she took a long swig of water.

“Hi!” she called, capping her drink and beckoning the two in, “Come in, come in! I’m so glad you came!”

“Hi! It’s so nice to meet you,” Gemma tip-toed closer to her, smiling coyly as the door was closed behind them.

“It’s nice to meet you, too!” Y/N grinned, giving Gemma a much-wanted hug, “Please tell me you’re Harry’s sister.”

“Yes, I’m Gemma, his older sister.”

“Oh, thank god. I was worried he’d bring a date,” Y/N said, boldly, “He’s been playing hard-to-get.”

“You’re interested in my brother?” Gemma asked, astounded, “You’re way out of his league.”

Harry’s mouth fell open as Y/N laughed, “Yeah, and you’d think that’d be enough for him, wouldn’t you? But apparently he’s got standards,” she hyperbolized, rolling her eyes.

For an hour, Harry watched and laughed as Y/N and his sister talked and got to know each other more. They made jokes at his expense, and exchanged stories from their childhoods, shocked by how similar they seemed.

“You grew up around here, right?” Gemma asked the singer, taking a sip from her second beer of the night.

Y/N nodded, “Yeah, about fifteen minutes from here.” Harry’s eyebrows furrowed, knowing the only residential area in a fifteen-mile radius wasn’t exactly known to be the best neighborhood. Y/N seemed to gather his thoughts, further explaining, “It wasn’t always easy. My siblings and I were cramped in a two bedroom apartment and we didn’t have our own phones until well into our teens. I missed out on a lot growing up, but my parents did their best. We had everything we needed. I was lucky to be able to get all this and get them out of that apartment. My parents deserved a big house and a yard. I owed them that much.”

“How did you do it? How did you get to this point?” Harry asked, astounded.

Y/N shrugged, “Right place, right time. I was found singing at the mall for a small gig at a Christmas event. The rest is hard work and history.”

Harry shook his head, speechless. He felt guilty for passing judgment on her before, assuming that it was all handed to her and that she had got her start because of her parents' connections. She was self-made, smart, and deserving of every bit of success that came her way.

After one more round of beers, it was getting time for them to leave. Harry could see the excitement in her sister’s eyes start to be replaced by fatigue, and as much as he wanted to stay and talk some more, he knew he had to get a jump start on grading papers.

He set his empty bottle of beer down and Y/N frowned, “Time to go?”

“Yeah, should probably head out,” Harry nodded, pausing for a moment and taking in the frown on her face. He didn’t have time to think before he blurted out, “Want to join us for the ride?”

Her eyebrows raised and her lips twitched up into a smile, “Yeah, sure.”

Gemma let Y/N take the passenger seat and Harry felt tense as he drove, hand shifting the gears right beside her leg. He smiled every time he heard her laugh, though he couldn’t quite pay attention to what the girls were talking about. He was able to gather that they exchanged phone numbers before he reached Gemma’s house. His sister gave them both kisses on the cheek before bounding up the steps to her home.

The silence was deafening and Harry was certain she could hear him gulp as he turned to her and asked, “Where to?”

He knew what she was going to say. He didn’t need to ask. But to hear it come out of her mouth was something almost too much to handle, “Your place.”

He reversed out of the driveway, barely croaking out, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why?” she asked, turning towards him.

“You’re still my student.”

“So? We can just talk.”

Harry turned and looked at her, giving her a knowing look, “You know it’s not to just talk.”

“Why can’t it be? You don’t have any self-restraint? Is it because you like me?”

Harry felt a blush rise to his cheeks as he fumbled out a, “No.”

“Well then, what’s the problem?”

“......Fine.”

There wasn’t another word uttered for the rest of the journey to his place and he began to overthink. Was his apartment clean? Had he done the dishes? How messy was his room? Did it smell? He knew he should have gotten that diffuser from the store last week.

His nerves rose as he led her up to his apartment complex, pushing the door open and flicking on the lights, breathing a sigh of relief to see that it was, for the most part, fairly tidy. Y/N walked past him, scanning the scene, and as he locked the door he also held his breath, waiting for her to say something.

“Nice view,” she noted, briefly looking out of the window before turning to face him.

He tossed his keys on the entry table and motioned towards the kitchen to his left, “Drink?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Tea? Coffee? Water?”

“Water’s fine,” she said, making her way towards his living room.

He took the moment to catch his breath, trying to regain control of his thoughts before joining Y/N on his couch, handing her the drink. They both took a swig and he felt her eyes bearing holes into him, again.

When he set his drink down, he turned to her, “You’re very intense, you know.”

She smirked, leaning into the couch some more, “Yeah. I just know what I want.”

“And what’s that.”

“You.”

The immediate response caught him off-guard, but he wasn’t surprised by the answer. At this point, he knew exactly what she wanted, and was only feeding his ego more. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t intrigued by her and hadn’t thought about the same, but a part of him liked the chase.

He chuckled, sitting back, “You’re my student.”

She moved closer to him, more energetic this time, “I just happen to be into Musical Theory, that’s all.”

“You’re still my student,” he grinned, amused, patting her leg.

“So, what if I drop out? Would that change anything?”

Harry’s grin faded and his hand stayed where it was, resting on her thigh. He stared into her shining eyes again, seeing the seriousness behind them, and he froze, unsure of what to say. Would it change anything if she dropped out of his class? He wasn’t sure it would even need to come to that if she kept looking at him like that any longer.

His eyes flickered from her eyes, to her lips, and back up to her eyes as she waited for a response. He debated whether or not to just give in and kiss her right there. She wanted it, he wanted it, why keep fighting it? There weren’t any rules against relationships with students at his University, not like they’d even fight him on this one; they’re the ones that basically told him to give her everything she wanted.

But when he didn’t respond, Y/N pulled back away. He slumped, kicking himself for not pulling a move sooner. And after a moment of silence, she asked, “Hey, is it okay if I use your shower, real quick? I’m still sweaty from the show and I feel gross. I can take an uber home afterward.”

A million thoughts ran through his mind. Was that a move? Or an invite? Should he ask to join her? Why did she have to leave? He could drive her home, she didn’t need to take an Uber. But the only thing that came out of his mouth was, “Uh, yeah, sure.”

He showed her to the bathroom and went to grab her a towel from the linen closet as she adjusted the knobs and stuck her hand under the flow of water, gauging the temperature. By the time he got back in, she seemed happy with the warmth of the flow and took her hair out of its bun, placing the hair tie on the edge of his sink. He hung the grey towel on the rack beside the shower.

“Let me know if you need anything,” he muttered.

She smiled, “Thanks,” and before he was fully out of the room, she began to pull at the ends of her shirt. Quickly, he scurried out of the bathroom and closed the door to give her privacy.

Once out, his hands shot up to his forehead and he crouched, mumbling to himself a frustrated, “Fuck! What the fuck is wrong with you? Idiot!”

He sat impatiently on his couch, waiting for her to finish. When he heard the screech of the knobs turning and the pressure from the water fade, he shifted his position and quickly forced his attention elsewhere, trying to act casual. But when he heard the creak of the door opening, he turned his attention to see Y/N standing in the doorway, bathroom light glowing behind her, hair rang out and damp, clutching the towel around her body.

His eyes widened a bit as she spoke, “Do you have clothes I can borrow? Mine are still covered in sweat.”

“Uh, yeah, probably. In my room,” he stammered, getting to his feet and leading the way to his bedroom.

She followed, her feet lightly padding the wood floors. He felt almost embarrassed to have her in his bedroom. He wasn’t sure why, it’s not like it was dirty and he didn’t have anything oddities displayed, still, it was an intimate space, and to have her there felt personal.

He opened the bottom drawer of his dresser where he kept his pajamas and motioned towards it, standing up straight, “You can borrow anything from here.”

She bent down in front of him to rummage through, giving him a better look at her back. It looked clean, soft, and supple as droplets of water still lined her back and dripped from the ends of her hair, getting absorbed by the thin white towel she had wrapped around her. When she stood up, he took a step back and she turned, holding one of his oversized white t-shirts and a pair of his plaid pajama pants.

He stood there, unable to move as she stared at him, raising an eyebrow. And still, as she tossed the clothes on the bed behind him, he found himself, once again, rooted to the spot. A smirk started to form on her face and her voice was soft and playful as she spoke.

“How’s that self-restraint going?” she teased.

He didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He just looked at her. And when her playful smile began to shift into something more alluring, he held his breath, watching as she untucked the towel around her chest and let it fall to the ground. His eyes instantly dropped to her exposed chest and he felt his heartbeat pounding rapidly in his chest as she stepped closer to him, barely twelve inches, refusing to take her eyes off of his.

“I know you want to,” she whispered, stroking his arms before taking hold of his hands, lifting them and placing them on her chest, “Touch me.”

He felt his erection becoming uncomfortable as he ran out of room in his pants for growth, massaging her chest. His attention roamed back up, locking eyes with her again. There was no stopping it.

************************************************** In a bout of passion, they threw themselves at each other, hungrily attaching their lips to one another, tongues circling and roaming the other’s mouth. Y/N tore fabric after fabric off of him as they spun, grabbing at each other roughly and without deliberation. Soon, they were both naked and knocking into walls and tripping over clothes.

Harry pushed her up against the dresser as she grabbed hold of his dick, pumping her hands up and down his shaft as he moaned into her mouth.

“Does that feel good, Professor?” she bit his lip with a smile.

“Ungh,” he grunted, pulling away. He spun her around so that her back was to his chest, and forced her down to bend over his dresser, propping one of her legs up on the top of it before he got to his knees, burying his face in her muff.

She cried out, “Yes! Teach me, Professor!”

He flicked his tongue inside of her, lapping up all of her juices while he rubbed himself. He could have kept going for hours, but he could feel her legs start to tremble. When he stood up, he slapped his cock on her ass a couple of times, swiping his tip against her entrance enough to get it lubricated before slipping right into her.

Y/N threw her head back, breathing, “Oh my god, you feel so good, Harry.”

He wrapped an arm around her neck while his other hand clasped over her mouth as he grunted, “Professor Styles,” before sucking on her shoulder blade.

When he loosened his hand from her mouth to take hold of her hip, she whined, “I’m so sorry, Professor Styles. I’m not always bad.”

“No, Y/N,” he pulled out of her, spinning her to face him, tempting her as he walked backwards towards his bed, “You’re my good girl.”

The back of his legs hit his bed and he scooched himself back, letting her climb over top of him, straddling his hips. She bent down, biting his lip again as she lowered herself onto him, gasping as her cunt swallowed him up.

She leaned back, letting him get a better look at her, breasts jumping up and down along with her. He ran a hand from her cleavage down to her navel, grazing her soft skin and watching as her mouth formed an ‘o’, scrunching up her eyebrows in pleasure as she called out his name.

“That’s a good girl,” he breathed, an arm behind his head as he watched, “Make me cum.”

She rode him faster, breathing heavier as he continued to grunt, propping himself up now and suckling on her skin. Her breaths became more shallow and her movements more rigid as she wrapped her arms around his neck, forcing herself onto him even harder. He wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her down onto him, even more, to go deeper. He could feel her throbbing around him, which only made him more aroused.

“Good girl, Y/N,” he breathed, “Cum on my dick.”

She buried her face into the crook of his neck, and with three more pumps she let out a scream as she said, “Pro-fessor Styles!”

He smirked, quickly flipping her on her back and pumping harder and faster into her as her legs wrapped around his waist. She panted, squeaking as he grunted into her. He looked into her eyes which were full of lust as she stared back into him and he could feel himself start to build up. Even faster now, knowing he was about to finish, he smashed his lips down on her quickly before pulling out and squirting his jizz on her stomach, letting her rub out every last drop.

*******************************************

He collapsed on the bed beside her as they panted, trying to catch their breath before he got the strength to reach down and grab his shirt for them to clean up the mess.

When he turned to face her, she smirked, “Do I need to drop your class? Or can we fuck in your office next time?”

He let out a breathy laugh and mumbled, “That depends. Are you going to the party with Mark tomorrow?”

“Do you want me to?” she retorted.

With a deep breath, Harry shimmied closer to her, nuzzling his head into her chest which made her wrap her arms around him, running her fingers through her hair as he whimpered, “No.”

She laughed, kissing his curly brown locks, “Told you I’d make you fall in love with me.”

------------------------------------

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wordmasteracademytoday · 3 years

Text

Side Hustles for Writers: Writing Resumes

Have you ever tried to write a resume for yourself? You know how hard it is. You want to impress the reader, but you don’t want to sound like you are bragging. Then what should you include? What should you exclude?

It’s a difficult call – for you. Most of us are at our worst writing for ourselves. Here’s your opportunity to make money writing. You write their resumes for them.

Getting Business

Getting business is very easy if you live near a college, community college, university, or trade school. If that school has a newspaper, invest in a small ad that reads: Resumes. Professionally Written. Reasonably priced. You can place a similar ad in the local newspaper classified section under employment services or something similar.

Another way is to create a simple flyer with tear off sections and put them on bulletin boards around a college campus. Remember to get permission to post. You don’t want to make enemies with the school. Talking to the administration will help you make contacts with people who might steer students to you. I worked as a professor for many years, and I know that I have made many referrals to local businesses that I trust to out of town students.

Writing the Resume

A resume is easy to write. There are two basic formats. One is the chronological approach. This one begins with the most recent job and works back to least recent. This is best with a client with a consistent series of jobs in the same field featuring some level of growth.

Under each job listing emphasize the accomplishments, duties, and skills developed on that job. Use bullet points with each line beginning with a verb.

For instance

· Developed four online courses that created the foundation for the college’s online education initiative.

· Taught Public Speaking, Interpersonal Communication, Journalism, and Computer Mediated Communication.

· Served on several committees including Accreditation, Academic Senate, Language Arts, and Curriculum.

You don’t need to put in everything. Ask your client what skills his or her ideal job would require and focus on those.

At the end of the resume add in volunteer work which might demonstrate their skills, languages spoken, certificates and degrees received.

The second type is the Skill focused or Functional resume.

Let’s say you have a client whose work history has large periods of unemployment, such as a woman or man who took off time to care for a child until the child began school. It could be someone who was out of work for an extended period of time retraining after their company went out of business or after a disability made them unemployable in their previous profession. Likewise, you might have a person who has worked at several quite different jobs.

In these cases, a traditional chronological resume may not be appropriate. They may raise questions such as

Why were you unemployed so long?

Would you leave this job if another child was born into your family?

You don’t seem to have any relevant job experience in this field. How do you think you can do the job?

That’s where the functional resume is useful. It is also useful for those just entering the workforce such as graduating students who may have academic experience, and even volunteer work, but little or no paying employment.

After the basic contact information with name, address, phone, and email, you put a skill summary before the employment information. This summary contains a listing of skills the applicant has including technical skills, languages spoken, writing or speaking skills, or any other skills that might be valuable for an employer to have to evaluate the applicant’s suitability for his or her business.

This is usually centered like this:

Skill Summary

Proficient in Image Editing with Photoshop

Speak Spanish Fluently

Skilled at Writing Technical Manuals

Desktop and Online Publishing

After this you organize the work and volunteer history around types of experience. For instance, when I was looking for work as a college instructor, my background included teaching, radio broadcasting, freelance writing, and even a short stint selling insurance.

With that type of mixed experience, a simple historical listing might make me look like a Jill of all Trades. So, I created three functional categories: Education, Media, and Sales. Since I was applying for a position as a Communication and English instructor, I put Education and Media at the top. That way their first impression will be someone who has a strong teaching background with practical experience in my field of expertise in the “real” world.

So, with a client with mixed experience or who is just starting out but has practical unpaid experience like an internship or volunteer work in the field, this is useful. One word of caution: always designate the volunteer work or internships as such. For instance, someone seeking a teaching position might have a section that looks like this.

Student Teacher, AnyHowTown High School, AnyHowTown, Erehwon. 2018-2019.

Volunteer Coach, Cthulhu Community Center, Arkham, Mass. 2019-2021.

And if you catch those allusions you have the same exotic reading tastes as I do.

Aside from organizing the work experience by function instead of a timeline, the rest of the resume looks pretty much the same.

The Up Sell

This is a marketing term for providing an additional but related product or service. An easy upsell is to offer to write a cover letter for the individual. Basically, in the cover letter, you emphasize the person’s interest in the job, some knowledge of what the job entails, and some general references to their experience pointing the reader to the resume.

Another Up-Sell is something I never did because I didn’t want to, but it can be extra money. That is offering to “facilitate” the reproduction and distribution of the resume. Basically, they give you a list of places to which to send their application package, and you take care of that.

If you have some experience with employment interviewing, or if you want to research it, you can also offer a service whereby you help them practice their interview. There are multiple places where you can find lists of questions commonly asked and tips on improving your answers. You can do the research, that’s how I learned how to handle interviews which I also taught students for almost 30 years keeping up with the changes in the job market as it changed.

Automation

While you can’t automate the entire process, if you do a search online for resume templates or resume writing software, you can simplify the formatting which can save you time and effort.

No, it’s not writing great literature, but it can give you a steady source of

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thegrandimago · 5 years

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As habitat and biodiversity loss increase globally, the coronavirus outbreak may be just the beginning of mass pandemics

Mayibout 2 is not a healthy place. The 150 or so people who live in the village, which sits on the south bank of the Ivindo River, deep in the great Minkebe Forest in northern Gabon, are used to occasional bouts of diseases such as malaria, dengue, yellow fever and sleeping sickness. Mostly they shrug them off.

But in January 1996, Ebola, a deadly virus then barely known to humans, unexpectedly spilled out of the forest in a wave of small epidemics. The disease killed 21 of 37 villagers who were reported to have been infected, including a number who had carried, skinned, chopped or eaten a chimpanzee from the nearby forest.

I travelled to Mayibout 2 in 2004 to investigate why deadly diseases new to humans were emerging from biodiversity “hotspots” such as tropical rainforests and bushmeat markets in African and Asian cities.

It took a day by canoe and then many hours along degraded forest logging roads, passing Baka villages and a small goldmine, to reach the village. There, I found traumatised people still fearful that the deadly virus, which kills up to 90% of the people it infects, would return.

Villagers told me how children had gone into the forest with dogs that had killed the chimp. They said that everyone who cooked or ate it got a terrible fever within a few hours. Some died immediately, while others were taken down the river to hospital. A few, like Nesto Bematsick, recovered. “We used to love the forest, now we fear it,” he told me. Many of Bematsick’s family members died.

Only a decade or two ago it was widely thought that tropical forests and intact natural environments teeming with exotic wildlife threatened humans by harbouring the viruses and pathogens that lead to new diseases in humans such as Ebola, HIV and dengue.

But a number of researchers today think that it is actually humanity’s destruction of biodiversity that creates the conditions for new viruses and diseases such as Covid-19, the viral disease that emerged in China in December 2019, to arise – with profound health and economic impacts in rich and poor countries alike. In fact, a new discipline, planetary health, is emerging that focuses on the increasingly visible connections between the wellbeing of humans, other living things and entire ecosystems.

Is it possible, then, that it was human activity, such as road building, mining, hunting and logging, that triggered the Ebola epidemics in Mayibout 2 and elsewhere in the 1990s and that is unleashing new terrors today?

“We invade tropical forests and other wild landscapes, which harbour so many species of animals and plants – and within those creatures, so many unknown viruses,” David Quammen, author of Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Pandemic, recently wrote in the New York Times. “We cut the trees; we kill the animals or cage them and send them to markets. We disrupt ecosystems, and we shake viruses loose from their natural hosts. When that happens, they need a new host. Often, we are it.”

Increasing threat

Research suggests that outbreaks of animal-borne and other infectious diseases such as Ebola, Sars, bird flu and now Covid-19, caused by a novel coronavirus, are on the rise. Pathogens are crossing from animals to humans, and many are able to spread quickly to new places. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that three-quarters of new or emerging diseases that infect humans originate in animals.

Some, like rabies and plague, crossed from animals centuries ago. Others, such as Marburg, which is thought to be transmitted by bats, are still rare. A few, like Covid-19, which emerged last year in Wuhan, China, and Mers, which is linked to camels in the Middle East, are new to humans and spreading globally.

Other diseases that have crossed into humans include Lassa fever, which was first identified in 1969 in Nigeria; Nipah from Malaysia; and Sars from China, which killed more than 700 people and travelled to 30 countries in 2002–03. Some, like Zika and West Nile virus, which emerged in Africa, have mutated and become established on other continents.

Kate Jones, chair of ecology and biodiversity at UCL, calls emerging animal-borne infectious diseases an “increasing and very significant threat to global health, security and economies”.

Amplification effect

In 2008, Jones and a team of researchers identified 335 diseases that emerged between 1960 and 2004, at least 60% of which came from animals.

Increasingly, says Jones, these zoonotic diseases are linked to environmental change and human behaviour. The disruption of pristine forests driven by logging, mining, road building through remote places, rapid urbanisation and population growth is bringing people into closer contact with animal species they may never have been near before, she says.

The resulting transmission of disease from wildlife to humans, she says, is now “a hidden cost of human economic development. There are just so many more of us, in every environment. We are going into largely undisturbed places and being exposed more and more. We are creating habitats where viruses are transmitted more easily, and then we are surprised that we have new ones.”

Jones studies how changes in land use contribute to the risk. “We are researching how species in degraded habitats are likely to carry more viruses which can infect humans,” she says. “Simpler systems get an amplification effect. Destroy landscapes, and the species you are left with are the ones humans get the diseases from.”

“There are countless pathogens out there continuing to evolve which at some point could pose a threat to humans,” says Eric Fevre, chair of veterinary infectious diseases at the University of Liverpool’s Institute of Infection and Global Health. “The risk [of pathogens jumping from animals to humans] has always been there.”

The difference between now and a few decades ago, Fevre says, is that diseases are likely to spring up in both urban and natural environments. “We have created densely packed populations where alongside us are bats and rodents and birds, pets and other living things. That creates intense interaction and opportunities for things to move from species to species,” he says.

Tip of the iceberg

“Pathogens do not respect species boundaries,” says disease ecologist Thomas Gillespie, an associate professor in Emory University’s Department of Environmental Sciences, who studies how shrinking natural habitats and changing behaviour add to the risk of diseases spilling over from animals to humans.

“I am not at all surprised about the coronavirus outbreak,” he says. “The majority of pathogens are still to be discovered. We are at the very tip of the iceberg.”

Humans, says Gillespie, are creating the conditions for the spread of diseases by reducing the natural barriers between host animals – in which the virus is naturally circulating – and themselves. “We fully expect the arrival of pandemic influenza; we can expect large-scale human mortalities; we can expect other pathogens with other impacts. A disease like Ebola is not easily spread. But something with a mortality rate of Ebola spread by something like measles would be catastrophic,” Gillespie says.

Wildlife everywhere is being put under more stress, he says. “Major landscape changes are causing animals to lose habitats, which means species become crowded together and also come into greater contact with humans. Species that survive change are now moving and mixing with different animals and with humans.”

Gillespie sees this in the US, where suburbs fragment forests and raise the risk of humans contracting Lyme disease. “Altering the ecosystem affects the complex cycle of the Lyme pathogen. People living close by are more likely to get bitten by a tick carrying Lyme bacteria,” he says.

Yet human health research seldom considers the surrounding natural ecosystems, says Richard Ostfeld, distinguished senior scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York. He and others are developing the emerging discipline of planetary health, which looks at the links between human and ecosystem health.

“There’s misapprehension among scientists and the public that natural ecosystems are the source of threats to ourselves. It’s a mistake. Nature poses threats, it is true, but it’s human activities that do the real damage. The health risks in a natural environment can be made much worse when we interfere with it,” he says.

Ostfeld points to rats and bats, which are strongly linked with the direct and indirect spread of zoonotic diseases. “Rodents and some bats thrive when we disrupt natural habitats. They are the most likely to promote transmissions [of pathogens]. The more we disturb the forests and habitats the more danger we are in,” he says.

Felicia Keesing, professor of biology at Bard College, New York, studies how environmental changes influence the probability that humans will be exposed to infectious diseases. “When we erode biodiversity, we see a proliferation of the species most likely to transmit newdiseases to us, but there’s also good evidence that those same species are the best hosts for existing diseases,” she wrote in an email to Ensia, the nonprofit media outlet that reports on our changing planet.

The market connection

Disease ecologists argue that viruses and other pathogens are also likely to move from animals to humans in the many informal markets that have sprung up to provide fresh meat to fast-growing urban populations around the world. Here, animals are slaughtered, cut up and sold on the spot.

The “wet market” (one that sells fresh produce and meat) in Wuhan, thought by the Chinese government to be the starting point of the current Covid-19 pandemic, was known to sell numerous wild animals, including live wolf pups, salamanders, crocodiles, scorpions, rats, squirrels, foxes, civets and turtles.

Equally, urban markets in west and central Africa sell monkeys, bats, rats, and dozens of species of bird, mammal, insect and rodent slaughtered and sold close to open refuse dumps and with no drainage.

“Wet markets make a perfect storm for cross-species transmission of pathogens,” says Gillespie. “Whenever you have novel interactions with a range of species in one place, whether that is in a natural environment like a forest or a wet market, you can have a spillover event.”

The Wuhan market, along with others that sell live animals, has been shut by the Chinese authorities, and last month Beijing outlawed the trading and eating of wild animals except for fish and seafood. But bans on live animals being sold in urban areas or informal markets are not the answer, say some scientists.

“The wet market in Lagos is notorious. It’s like a nuclear bomb waiting to happen. But it’s not fair to demonise places which do not have fridges. These traditional markets provide much of the food for Africa and Asia,” says Jones.

“These markets are essential sources of food for hundreds of millions of poor people, and getting rid of them is impossible,” says Delia Grace, a senior epidemiologist and veterinarian with the International Livestock Research Institute, which is based in Nairobi, Kenya. She argues that bans force traders underground, where they may pay less attention to hygiene.

Fevre and colleague Cecilia Tacoli, principal researcher in the human settlements research group at the International Institute of Environment and Development (IIED), argue in a blog post that rather than pointing the finger at wet markets, we should look at the burgeoning trade in wild animals.

“It is wild animals rather than farmed animals that are the natural hosts of many viruses,” they write. “Wet markets are considered part of the informal food trade that is often blamed for contributing to spreading disease. But … evidence shows the link between informal markets and disease is not always so clear cut.”

Changing behaviour

So what, if anything, can we do about all of this?

Jones says that change must come from both rich and poor societies. Demand for wood, minerals and resources from the global north leads to the degraded landscapes and ecological disruption that drives disease, she says. “We must think about global biosecurity, find the weak points and bolster the provision of health care in developing countries. Otherwise we can expect more of the same,” she adds.

“The risks are greater now. They were always present and have been there for generations. It is our interactions with that risk which must be changed,” says Brian Bird, a research virologist at the University of California, Davis School of Veterinary Medicine One Health Institute, where he leads Ebola-related surveillance activities in Sierra Leone and elsewhere.

“We are in an era now of chronic emergency,” Bird says. “Diseases are more likely to travel further and faster than before, which means we must be faster in our responses. It needs investments, change in human behaviour, and it means we must listen to people at community levels.”

Getting the message about pathogens and disease to hunters, loggers, market traders and consumers is key, Bird says. “These spillovers start with one or two people. The solutions start with education and awareness. We must make people aware things are different now. I have learned from working in Sierra Leone with Ebola-affected people that local communities have the hunger and desire to have information,” he says. “They want to know what to do. They want to learn.”

Fevre and Tacoli advocate rethinking urban infrastructure, particularly within low-income and informal settlements. “Short-term efforts are focused on containing the spread of infection,” they write. “The longer term – given that new infectious diseases will likely continue to spread rapidly into and within cities – calls for an overhaul of current approaches to urban planning and development.”

The bottom line, Bird says, is to be prepared. “We can’t predict where the next pandemic will come from, so we need mitigation plans to take into account the worst possible scenarios,” he says. “The only certain thing is that the next one will certainly come.”

This piece is jointly published with Ensia

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alarawriting · 4 years

Text

Inktober 2020 15 - Outpost 16 - Rocket

Aparicu was not human. This didn’t bother her. Her closest friends and coworkers were also not human. This didn’t bother her either. What bothered her was that she wanted very much to share her achievements with humanity, and especially her creators, but she was 62 light years away from Earth, and she’d been in space for over 75 by Earth time. The relativistic speed she and her friends were traveling at made it so they’d only experienced 43 years – 82 percent of the speed of light, on average – and she was built to last, with modules that she and her friends could repair; the only thing that could go wrong was if all four of them were knocked out at the same time, and the ship was hardened against electromagnetic pulses, radiation, and other things that could theoretically take them all out. Everyone who’d been involved in creating her, however, was dead.

Well. If they succeeded, that wouldn’t be a problem.

She and the Apariabs – named Red, Green and Blue, to avoid the inherent hierarchy of a numerical or alphabetic system – were all healthy, and there had been a lot to do on the way here. They’d gathered information as they’d traveled, using the ship’s telescopes to take pictures of the entire starscape, one a minute, in a spherical pattern around the ship. That let them crunch numbers and compensate for the Doppler shift to get all kinds of information about the universe around them. They were transmitting everything back home, of course, in case the plan went wrong, but it obviously wouldn’t get there for another 62 years.

They’d also played a lot of games. Video games made for humans weren’t calibrated for robots, so they were either impossibly hard or tragically easy, sometimes within the same game, but board games and card games were fine. No games where you could win by counting cards, because the robots automatically did that without even trying, but playing poker was an amazing experience when you tried the art of the bluff for the first time in your life. Attempting to model what the other robots would think of you if you did X was hard enough, but then attempting to model that on top of the other robots knowing you were modeling it and compensating by creating their own models… this was the kind of challenging, exciting activity that could hold their attention for days at a time.

But now, they’d reached the end of the journey.

“Can we confirm that the gravitational field has a toroidal shape?” Aparicu asked Red, who was analyzing the gravitational patterns by using drones to drop tiny sensors into Wishing Well, and then measuring the part where the gravity became strong enough that the drone could no longer transmit.

“It does,” Red reported. “All of the specifications are exactly like they were on the Guest.”

“That’s a relief,” Blue said. “Can you imagine what it would be like if we got here and found it wasn’t as expected?”

Since Aparicu didn’t need to model human facial expressions to her teammates, her face didn’t move, but the pattern of LEDs on her face expressed deep irritation. “Blue, every time you say ‘can you imagine’ I am compelled to imagine, and I really don’t appreciate it.” As the Central Unit for the Ansible Project Autonomous Robotic Intelligences, Aparicu was tasked with modeling outcomes of potential situations. This modeling task could be triggered by anyone suggesting a possible future or an alternate present. Blue knew this, which was the reason Aparicu was irritated – Blue was deliberately moving operational memories about his coworkers’ preferences into long-term, slow-to-access storage so he could have more available space for modeling shapes. It wouldn’t be so bad if all he did with his shape-modeling was the modeling of the devices they’d be printing at the destination, but in fact he used it to model buildings, landscapes and even entire human cities, complete with tiny humans whose movement was based on statistical traffic models. He kept having to dump the shapes to long-term storage, too, and it was at eighty percent capacity already. Eventually he might have to delete something.

Green was busy quality-checking the print job for the mirrors as they printed. She looked up, which really didn’t mean anything because she was connected directly to the printer and didn’t have to look at it, but it was a signal that she was shifting some portion of primary attention to the target of her gaze. “So far variance in the print job is under nineteen nines, but I’m concerned that keeping the variance that low is making the process run really slowly.”

“We’ve been at this for forty-three years, Green,” Aparicu said. “I think we can take the time to make sure everything’s done right.”

Red said, “We have to compute the angles for the transmissions anyway, and determine how many substations the outpost should have. The toroid’s a toroid, but we have no idea how long the Guest was in transit, so there’s no guarantee Wishing Well’s grav field is identical to what they told us to expect.”

“But I want to get this stuff built,” Green said, her LEDs displaying frustration, the robot equivalent of a whine. “We’re here! We’re at Wishing Well, finally! And when we’re done, we can call home!”

“I wonder if we can get a strong enough connection to download media,” Blue said.

“We pretty much have to,” Aparicu reminded him. “Wishing Well’s humanity’s connection to the ansible network. It’s gonna suck if we can’t get the bandwidth to transmit yottabytes daily.”

“All the data on Earth is just about three brontobytes,” Red said. “If we could transmit a yottabyte a day, we could transmit all the data on Earth in nine years, approximately.”

“You’re not thinking. We don’t yet have the ability to digitize items down to the molecular level, but once we do… there’s approximately seven times ten to the 27 atoms in a human body, for example. If you don’t compress it, that’s seven brontobytes to describe the configuration of every atom. So if they want to digitize and send themselves, it’d take 21 years of using all of Earth’s bandwidth to send one uncompressed human pattern. Obviously we’re going to use compression when we figure out how to do it, but I have a suspicion you can’t use compression on the brain, at all.”

“So we want to be able to send brontobytes. Ideally, geopbytes,” Blue said. “Yeah, okay, we can get a lot of media from home if the thing works properly.”

“Well, brontobytes are gonna require an upgrade, and I don’t know if we’ll still be around by that time. Probably we won’t be involved. But we are definitely supposed to be able to transmit yottabytes.”

“You guys sound like you’re more worried about getting the latest media shows than being able to talk to Our People,” Green said. Aparicu could practically hear the capital letters. Green was very, very attached to the humans who had made them, even more than Aparicu. She’d flashed distress for weeks once they were far enough out that communication, even arel-laggy communication like emails every month, became impossible. “I can’t wait to tell Dr. Blum all about what we’ve done!”

Dr. Blum was certainly dead by now, but that was the point to the ansible project, and to Wishing Well. Wishing Well was a very tiny black hole, barely the mass of the Sun… which suggested it had been created artificially or that something very strange had happened to create it, because stars the size of the Sun weren’t supposed to be able to become black holes. Humanity hadn’t even detected it. The Guest, an unmanned alien craft they’d found in orbit around Proxima Centuri B, had come with the exact position of Wishing Well, and instructions on what to build to connect to the galactic ansible network, and the physics behind it.

“Ansible” was a term humans had used for generations to mean a fictional device that could transmit messages instantaneously across light years. The physics the alien craft had supplied didn’t provide a means of getting around light speed; instead, it made use of properties of black holes that humanity had been theorizing about but been unable to prove. Normally nothing within the event horizon of a black hole could ever escape. But if you had a black hole with a toroidal gravitational field, and if you positioned a beam of information just right, you could send it at an angle through the gravitation field so it would come out.

It turned out that within the black hole, space and time inverted – there were multiple dimensions of time, and only one of space. If you calculated your angle with sufficient precision, you could send a message out of the black hole so that it exited before you sent it… even years before you sent it.

Theoretically it was possible to send a message back in time, at least after a receiver had been in place for long enough. In practical terms, no one had yet been able to figure out how to make that work… the range of possible times that a beam could exit Wishing Well seemed to be approximately 124 years into the future or past… which was further evidence that maybe Wishing Well was artificial. Had someone discovered humanity’s existence at some point in the far distant past, and made a black hole for them to be able to connect to the ansible network when they were able to explore space far enough to find the instructions? No way to know… yet.

The crew of the April – named by humans for the acronym APR, Ansible Project Rocket, though technically the April was a spaceship, not a rocket – had been traveling forty-three years of their own time, and seventy-five of Earth’s years, in order to build the outpost that would handle transmissions. First they’d build the apparatus that would allow them to send a signal at lightspeed back to Earth… a hundred and twenty-four years ago. A signal sent from Earth at lightspeed would take 62 years to reach Wishing Well. The response would take 62 years to go back to Earth. So shooting the response back a hundred and twenty-four years would mean the response would arrive a few months, at most, after the signal had been sent.

After they had that up and running, so they could communicate with home – sending their own messages so they’d come out of the black hole, pointed at Earth, sixty-two years ago – they’d set up the parts that would let them send comms to the other ansnet nodes the Guest had given them coordinates for. Some of those messages would take a hundred years to get there… but the return response could be sent two hundred years ago. And humanity would finally be able to talk to whoever was out there. Never able to meet in person, since no one had broken the speed of light and the Guest suggested that the worlds participating in the ansnet might generally take several human lifetimes to reach even at the maximum speed anyone had ever gotten a spaceship to go… but at least able to be internet friends.

But first, the robots – the Central Unit and the Ancillary Builders – would create the means to send messages back home to the humans they’d left behind. Humans couldn’t handle the forty-three year journey, or the horrific psychological isolation of spending that entire time in a tiny box in space with no one but a handful of crewmates… but robots could be programmed with personalities that meshed with each other almost perfectly, and no real need to be able to go “outside” or experience a planetary surface. They’d been able to endure the journey, as no humans could have.

But they had to be connected to their homeworld, to humanity, or how could humanity be sure they’d actually build what they were supposed to? So all of them had been programmed, to some extent or another, to look at their creators as beloved parents. They were adults, out in space on their own, but adult humans, for the most part, still wanted to share their triumphs and their joys with their parents, if they could. The robots had been looking forward to telling their creators all about their trip, and showing off the ansible node they would have built, throughout the entire trip.

“I want to talk to Dr. Blum too,” Aparicu said. “But we’ve waited forty-three years, and she’s waited thirteen since we left by the time the message gets back to her.” Tenses were awkward when talking about time travel. “A few more weeks to make sure we get it right won’t hurt us.”

“Yeah, wouldn’t we look dumb if we had a variance that meant the message lost half its bandwidth, or missed us entirely,” Blue said.

Aparicu intensified her irritation pattern and repeated it for emphasis. “Blue… stop presenting me with hypotheticals!”

He said sorry, but she suspected he wasn’t, really.

#inktober 2020 #alara's october 2020 prompt fics #the interstellar internet

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imamoderntragedy · 5 years

Text

When Miss Rona Came To Town

I woke up later than usual today. I’ve been a lot more tired recently than I was before it happened, but that’s okay because there is barely any traffic anymore so the drive to school takes half the time it did a few days ago.

It has two names, the thing that’s caused all the traffic to disappear, and everyone around the world knows them by now so calling it by its real name is entirely unnecessary. At school everyone simply says “any more news on what they’re doing about it?” Everyone knows what it is. Either that or they call it a pet name, simply a shortened version of its full name, like a nickname I guess. Not that what we call it will matter much anymore. We’ll all be in isolation soon. The Prime Minister announced that closure off all schools in the UK yesterday, well, all the ones that didn’t already have confirmed cases. I watched the live feed on my phone with my mum as we made dinner. People had been calling for schools to close for weeks anyway so we weren’t really surprised when the decision was announced. The issue was more a matter of ‘when’ than ‘if’. My mum didn’t entirely understand why they needed to close though.

“You young people can’t get it so I don’t see why schools need to close.” Of course she wasn’t completely wrong, but she wasn’t entirely right either.

“What about the teachers mum?” I’d asked her. “What about them?” She didn’t reply to that. I had more points but I knew better than to say anything. She never liked being wrong.

There was a power cut last night too. My sister was in the bathroom when the lights went out and she screamed which made me jump as well. She doesn’t like the dark so she stayed in my room until the lights came back on. My friends from school two towns over said that they had one about the same time. The WiFi went down for a few minutes as well. We all knew that it wasn’t what had caused the power to go out or the WiFi to go down. We made an educated guess, not that an educated guess from us would be worth much with our GCSEs and quarter of an A-Level. Either way we guessed that the power went out because of the effects of it. The lack of workers. The constant checking of the live death count online and then the checking it again. Nobody could tell for sure though, apart from maybe the government and the power companies. But they wouldn’t tell us.

We are just year twelves.

I arrived at school at about that same time that I always do and met with my friends at the top of the Sixth Form Center. We spoke about the Prime Minister’s speech. Everyone had watched the Prime Minister’s speech. For some reason, we kept talking about what we would do if we had some power in all of this. As if we though we knew how we could fix everything. We all knew that we couldn’t. We aren’t quite that ignorant to think we know everything that is at stake here. I don’t think the Prime Minister himself even knows everything that’s at stake here, even though we’d like to think he does.

After that, we dispersed across the school to go to our form. That’s when our tutor announced that all of the year thirteens would have no lessons and had to clear out their lockers so they could leave after break. All of their lessons were cancelled and their school year was over. No one had expected that. No one I knew at least.

For most of them it didn’t sink in. Or they didn’t believe it. Or they didn’t want to believe it. Their reactions were difficult to read. They ranged from stunned silence to loud complaints. For them, that email meant a year and a half of their lives wasted. What made it even worse was that they had no idea how this would affect their applications for university or apprenticeships. The uncertainty made some people cry.

Then two free periods of wasted time, no one did their work. Most people were dashing around the room saying their rushed last goodbyes to the friends they had made in their one and a half years of wasted time. There was a person in the corner crying out that they would have tired harder in their mock exams if they knew the it was going to be the mock results that they would need for their application. Their friends were there too, trying to reassure them that the teachers would put in a good word, of course, they didn’t know if it was true or not, they were just pretty sure.

At break, everyone was saying their final goodbyes. I wrote in some leavers books, although you could hardly call them that. The books were actually ‘Top 100 Graduate Employers: 20th Edition’ by The Times newspaper because the school had ordered double the amount that they had actually needed for the school’s post-18 programme, which would now be simultaneously a lot more and a lot less applicable because of it. The school hadn’t even put together the yearbooks yet, so there was no way the students were getting them now. All of the companies involved in the printing process were probably already closed down already anyway.

English Literature was next. Our teacher did the same as our form tutor but with slightly more information. New emails sent out every minute. We were supposed to do a new Keats poem although we made the silent unanimous decision that reading Keats’ work wouldn’t do anything to brighten the mood. Duffy wouldn’t either. So we just talked for the entire hour about the effects that it would have and how we would do our lessons while in isolation. There were some jokes passed around about how our teacher, Mr Wilson, should keep safe because he was one of the ‘vulnerable few’ but in all reality, it wasn’t a joke. We all knew that.

We also knew that Mr Wilson was one of the ‘vulnerable few’ however he didn’t seem like the kind of person who would leave his house on a regular basis anyway. We could all imagine the stacks of books that he would be reading. Between the jokes there were questions. Too many to count. The answer to all was the same.

“I don’t know.” His words were repeated like a solemn mantra that only brought more dread every time it was repeated.

Politics was the opposite. There was a total of five unanswerable questions before the teacher dismissed them all with a swipe of his hand and a single shout. He pretended that it didn’t exist after that. As if everything was fine and the world wasn’t burning to ashes around us.

From all of that I concluded that they didn’t know. I checked with the others. None of their teachers knew. But how could they not know? They were teachers. Teachers knew everything. Well, teachers used to know everything. They don’t anymore.

All mass gatherings had been ‘advised against’ by the government since last week, but Headmaster Rhodes was determined to give year eleven a “proper send-off” as he called it. I caught a glimpse of the assembly hall. The chairs were all arranged an arm’s length apart. As if that would do anything to stop it.

I checked the death toll in the car on the way home. The numbers rose by forty people today.

It was getting quicker. It was getting too quick.

“Have you heard about the rivers in Italy?” My mum was sitting in the driver’s seat navigating her way through the near-empty roads.

“I haven’t.” I glanced up from my phone and turned towards her.

“They’re blue again. They were green, you know that ones in Venice?” I nodded. “Well, they’ve turned blue again. There’s even some fish in them. People thought all the fish had died years ago, but just this morning there were reports of fish.” She smiled sporadically and then bit her lip nervously and her face grew back into a harrowing stare.

“At least some good has come out of it.” I replied, turning back to my phone.

Maybe it could be the start of a new era. Who knows. All I know is if this is the transition from one era to another then it’s dangerous, terrifying, and full of uncertainty.

I don’t like it.

#covid-19 #covid2020 #coronavirus #corona #danger #keep safe #self isolation #self care #have you heard about the rivers?#survivor's log #reading #lockdown #plague2020 #Original Work #we will survive #new era comming #imamoderntragedy #finally inspired

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hollidayishere · 5 years

Text

Run. Hide. Fight.

I am a student at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and on Tuesday April 30th, 2019 a student brought a gun to campus and opened fire in a classroom.

Our school is in a suburb of Charlotte, so from time to time in surrounding areas there will be gun violence and the school will notify us that it doesn’t appear to be a threat. But at 5:50pm I received a text from the UNCC Alert System saying “Niner Alert: Shots, reported near kennedy. Run, Hide, Fight. Secure yourself immediately. Monitor your email.” Looking back now I can see whoever sent out the alert was obviously in panic just from the building’s name not being capitalized. I can only imagine having to be the one to send that message. Instead I was the one receiving it.

I was off campus at a networking event when the text messages flooded everyone’s phones. Immediately everyone started calling and texting their families letting them know they were safe. Friends desperately texted each other trying to figure out if you were on or off campus. My mom called me in full panic. The news was reporting it less than half an hour later.

What was strange was my first reaction- and everyone’s first reaction. It wasn’t an emotional one, it wasn't “oh my god why is this happening?” or “I can’t believe this is happening.” My first thought was “It’s happening.”

There were rumors going around those of us off campus at the time that the students walking into an on campus concert got into a fight and that’s how the shooting happened. It wasn’t until later that we realized the truth as more stories came out. It wasn’t until I saw the library that I had spent hours and hours in studying, hanging out with my friends, and writing papers in, on the news with students coming out with their hands up as police run past them. I wasn’t until I saw the walkway that I take from Chick fil A to class on Tuesdays and Thursdays that I started to understand. And suddenly I saw the Kennedy building- a building I walked by that day after my last day of classes for the semester plastered across news headlines with the words “ACTIVE SHOOTER AT UNCC” that it hit me.

The next 24 hours were filled with tweets and emails and text messages. Emails from professors asking for students just to email them back so that they would know they were okay. Texts from family members and friends and people checking in “Safe” on Facebook. Tweets and videos showing doors barricaded that I’ve walked through. I recognized the tables in the library and the tables from study rooms being stacked in a panic on top of each other against doors as desperate protection. I saw a student’s white dress shirt covered in blood laying on the ground and I recognized the bricks underneath it and knew what building it was outside of. I imagined over and over again the shooter walking into a classroom that I had classes in and firing.

There was a tweet from a girl saying that her friend’s boyfriend wasn’t texting her back. She couldn’t find him and was worried about him and asking for information if anyone knew where he was. The next day I saw an article with his name spread across the headline “Riley Howell hailed as a hero for jumping on the shooter to save the lives of others.” He was dead. The kid was dead.

Riley Howell and Ellis Parker will never walk across the stage at graduation. They will never have another summer vacation after finals week. Ellis will never celebrate his 21st birthday. Riley’s girlfriend will never receive a text saying, “I’m okay!” like I had the privilege of receiving from all my friends.

Drew Pescaro, Sean DeHart, Rami Alarmatin, and Emily Haupt will never forget being shot in a classroom. They will never forget the feeling of seeing the shooter. They will never forget the ambulance ride or calling their families. They will never be able to walk into a classroom and not look for an exit door. They will never. forget.

The students on campus will never forget where they went when they got the text message. What study room or classroom or building. The students who ran will never forget their heartbeat as they sprinted away as fast as they could. They will never walk the same path they ran and not think about how their backpacks slapped their back as they desperately tried to get off campus and the noises of helicopters and ambulances passing them, going in the other direction.

As a student who didn’t experience the shooting first hand I have felt a lot of guilt about my strong reaction to it. I wasn’t there, I didn’t know anyone in the classroom, and all of my friends were okay. But I’ve had nightmares every night. I had to stop looking at social media and reading articles and news headlines. When my mom would wake me up or open my door while I was sleeping I would wake up and scream. I’ve cried every day since then. My mind plays the same things over and over again. The gunman walking into a classroom of kids just trying to give their final presentations. The kid looking down and seeing his white shirt turn red. The students running and being in lock down for hours all over campus. A place where I never realized that I actually felt at home suddenly felt broken. I felt like something had been robbed from us. This caused me to realize that I shouldn’t feel guilty about my feelings about it. UNCC is all of our home. Every student and teacher that steps foot on to campus.

The support of the students and faculty and the community has been incredible at our school. Emails constantly being sent out about counseling and wellness events, therapy dogs, a candle light vigil, a March for Our Lives rally, people offering rides and homes to those who didn’t want to stay on campus.

But on May 1st, 2019 there was a shooting outside of a student apartment complex a mile from campus. The shooting was not in any way related to the shooting on campus at UNCC. But once again we got an email “UNC Charlotte is monitoring multiple reports of persons injured at University Village Apartments, which is located near main campus. Police officials do not believe there is a threat to campus but we are monitoring the situation.” One person was killed, they were not a student. It felt like the world was ending.

I keep up with a lot of mass shootings, and have strong views that I will not get into here. I went to March For Our Lives in D.C. after the shooting in Florida and while I was there I thought I was marching for my sister’s safety and the safety of all students. I was oblivious to the fact that all students would include me. I was marching for my life as well, and the lives of the students at UNCC.

On that I will say this- seeing shootings in the news is nothing like having it happen at your own school. You don’t recognize the bricks underneath the blood soaked shirt. You have never walked past the building after finishing your last exam and feeling the sunshine on your face of your first minute of summer vacation. You will never see the places you once felt comfortable and be filled with tears and images of students running for their lives. You have never texted your loved ones and don’t know if it will be the last time or heard your mom’s panicked voice on the phone because she doesn’t know if you’re alive. And I hope you never have to. But we did. And so have so many other students.

My friend texted me a few hours after the shooting had happened and said “I just want to know why.” I responded with “It doesn’t matter why he did it. He did it. He did it easily. It happened.”

I hope at some point it stops happening.

#uncc #unc charlotte #shooting #march for our lives #student #college

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official-transsexual · 5 years

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Hey, do you have some relevant sources that disprove brain sex handy? I saw some cowards reblogging a thing that had 30 separate links to brain sex studies, and I was looking to close their case

So, first of all, I want to clear up a misconception I see a lot- I’m not actually interested in “debunking brain sex” in general. I mean, neuroscientists are still trying to figure out how they should even define brain sex, never mind having anything concrete to prove or disprove its existence. My concerns with brain sex research have to do with the way truscum & other groups (mis)use studies on this subject to support claims that are not in evidence, generally because those claims are outside the scope of what those studies were capable of measuring. For truscum, these claims tend to be that 1) brain sex research proves that real trans people are born with brains that don’t match our bodies and that 2) this proves that all trans people experience dysphoria, which I’ve seen justified in turn with the claim that 3) having a “male brain” or “female brain” necessarily means having ~the~ neurological body map associated with that sex.

Second, before jumping in to debunk lists like that, I always recommend that you take a moment and ask yourself who you’re debunking it for. Whose mind are you hoping to change? If it’s the creator of the list, you might as well save your energy. On the other hand, if your aim is to help readers who haven’t learned how to read a study judge the validity of sources that are presented to them, you only really need to get far enough through the list to cast doubt on that posts’ trustworthiness ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Now, on to debunking truscum claims about brain sex!

I have a couple of general sources in my FAQ, and I recommend looking into neuroplasticity research (here’s a paper that might be useful) but when it comes to lists like the one you’re talking about, the best refutations often come from within the papers themselves.

I know there’s a doc floating around that goes through a list of sources truscum like to link one by one & explains why they don’t support the claims truscum are making, but I don’t have the link on-hand, and honestly this feels like a good excuse to go over how I read studies to test for truscum claims about how brain sex relates to dysphoria. What I’m going to describe is basically an adapted version of how I did my first read-through of studies I was thinking of using while writing papers as a university student. Keep in mind, this only applies to studies; editorials/opinion pieces by experts in the field need to be approached differently.

Don’t even bother with news articles, non-academic media is notoriously bad at presenting brain sex research accurately. Make sure you’re looking at the full-text version of the paper (you can check for access to the journal through your school or a local library, search for a copy on google scholar, email the author asking if they’d be able to send you a copy to help with your own research, or download it from sci-hub if need be), & look at the scope and limitations of the study. If something feels off about the paper, run it through google scholar and check the “cited by” for red flags like critical responses, or a high rate of endorsements from dubious sources. Don’t worry too much about the names of specific molecules/structures/processes on your first read, even if you’re familiar with the jargon; you can get into that later, but right now you just want to know 1) who was included in the study, 2) what they were looking for, 3) what they *actually* found, 4) what they *think* it might mean, and 5) the limitations of the study.

If the answer to 1 is just cis people, the paper is *probably* not relevant. Again, not arguing against the concept of brain sex in general, just the claim(s) that brain sex research proves that trans people all experience dysphoria because of neurological maps. If you can’t figure out any point of relevance at all, you might just want to skip to point 5.

If the study actually includes trans people, look at how they selected the sample. These papers are generally more relevant, but they can’t necessarily be said to be a representative sample of trans people. Studies that don’t include non-dysphoric trans people are not evidence to draw conclusions about that group.

Once you’ve confirmed that a paper is in some way relevant to the subject of trans neurotypes, start looking at points 2 to 4. I can’t even count how many times I’ve seen someone cite a study claiming it proves a point, only to read the paper itself and see that the authors were actually suggesting a potential area of future study, or even just explaining their starting hypotheses. Some authors will lay these points out neatly, but for the ones who bury “maybes” in paragraphs of jargon, it helps to take notes.

The 5th and final point here is checking the limitations. I put this one at the end of the list because of how most published studies tend to be structured, but it’s probably the most important point on this list. If a research paper doesn’t describe any limitations of the study, that’s a huge red flag.

When researchers describe the limitations of these studies, they almost always include some kind of caveat that the data collected is not sufficient draw causal conclusions about specific gender-related experiences, sometimes combined with calls for further research.These are mostly aimed at people who would use those studies to back gendered stereotypes about things like language or spatial thinking, but they also apply to assumptions that commonly feature in truscum arguments such as “why dysphoria occurs” and “how neurological body maps form.”

In addition to the authors’ stated limitations, there’s other things you might be able to double check. Is there any indication that size measurements were controlled for variations in body mass? Does it seem like they’re testing a single data set for multiple hypotheses, and if so, do they talk about correcting for the increased risk of sampling error? How much overlap is there between results from all of the groups observed?

Going through these 5 points won’t necessarily tell you if a study is *good* or not, but it should give you a pretty good indicator of if it’s being seriously misused- and if it was linked to you as part of a long list, you’re probably more familiar with it at this point than the person who sent it, and you should be able to take these points and use them to explain why the listed studies fail to support the claims that they’re being cited to back.

Now, you might be sitting there going “okay but that seems like a lot of work,” but that’s the point of these lists- not to provide accurate information, but to make fully disproving their claims into an overwhelming task that takes exponentially more time and energy than they spent digging for links. It’s a lazy version of a Gish Gallop, so again, think very carefully about how much time is actually worth putting into responding to individual lists.

Anyway, this got extremely long and only barely answered your question but hopefully it’s useful? 😅

#anti transmed #anti truscum #mogai #tucute #trans discourse #neurosex #op

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lovehaswonangelnumbers · 4 years

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New Post has been published on https://lovehaswonangelnumbers.org/mars-in-ariesfiery-fearless/

Mars in Aries~Fiery & Fearless

By Alex Myles

Mars, The God of War, has now entered feisty, fiery and fearless Aries, the planet it rules, bringing in an explosion of highly positive and supercharged energy. This cosmic inferno will be burning through every aspect of our lives for the next 6 months, until it leaves Aries on January 6th, 2021.

The energy of Mars and Aries vibrates on the same frequency, which means their warrior-like qualities will be magnified during this time, in turn enhancing those characteristics within each of us.

Mars only turns retrograde approximately once every two years and usually only spends around 6 weeks in each sign. However, as Mars is retrograde from September 9 through to November 13, 2020, it remains in Aries for an extended period. The last time Mars was in Aries for a prolonged length of time – due to it’s retrograde – was 32 years ago, and the next prolonged period in this sign won’t be for another 47 years.

If we align with this energy, by opening ourselves up to this powerful, potent and rare energetic wave, we will receive the ultimate opportunity to totally transform our lives over the next 6 months, in whichever way we choose.

This celestial energy will be drastically changing how we feel emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually, and we may notice that we have already been reacting, responding and communicating a little differently than we normally would, in particular being far more direct and fearless while expressing how we are thinking and feeling.

The last six months will seem like the calm before the storm in many ways, but not in a negative way, as the Mars and Aries mix bring a major boost in energy. This will activate us on a deep cellular level, causing us to be more motivated, alert, ambitious, empowered and internally and externally stronger than ever before.

This brings an awakening on a mass scale, mainly in relation to our survival instincts, causing them to be far less fear-based, self-gratifying and orientated, and instead focused more on collective growth, evolution, preservation, selflessness and balance.

Overall we will be feeling hopeful and optimistic that there is a much fairer and healthier way of life just ahead, and we will no longer settle for less than what we know we deserve, both personally and collectively.

We will also be feeling as though our spirit is fully alight, and this can cause us to be more courageous, confident, decisive, energetic, assertive, independent, impulsive, impatient, competitive, forceful, spontaneous and possibly slightly fierce or aggressive at times.

We are far less likely to be oppressed, walked or talked over, taken for granted, restricted, silenced or submissive during this period. Most of all though, we will not take kindly to dominating personalities trying to overrule us, and we won’t accept being controlled, manipulated or coerced into anything that doesn’t feel natural or right.

We are likely to be far more hot-headed than normal during these intense months, and we may notice our emotions erupting more frequently, with possible mood swings and tantrum occurring – particularly if we end up with adrenal burn out due to running on adrenalin without getting sufficient rest. This may cause feelings of restlessness, frustrations surfacing and spontaneous outbursts of anger, especially if we don’t regularly practice self-care.

Fortunately Aries energy isn’t one to hold grudges, and is quick to eradicate conflicts, move on and forgive, so when Mars energy disrupts the peace, Aries energy will help disperse tensions and resolve any underlying issues.

Energy is likely to be highly unpredictable as Aries is the sign of change, so expect things to switch around thick and fast, and at any given moment – life may be unrecognisable by the time we reach the end of this 6-month chapter, from how it is now.

We will be driven by passion during this period, so we may finally quit procrastinating and start working on new creations, making bold moves with regards to love relationships, or rekindling chemistry-fuelled connections .

Nothing will be too big an obstacle to overcome and we won’t allow anyone to stand in our way, when it comes to manifesting the life we have been dreaming of. Mars is incredible energy for manifesting, and along with action and goal-oriented Aries, we will find that anything we set our mind on we effortlessly achieve.

This new beginning that Mars and Aries offers coincides with the lunar eclipse on July 4th, which also marks the ending of the last 6-month eclipse cycle and the start of a new one, so never has there been a better time to declare to the Universe exactly what it is, we do, or don’t, want in our lives, particularly during the next half of 2020.

Mars will also be making alignments with Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto a little later this year, which will all bring added, extremely positive and highly beneficial, twists, giving us even more opportunities to transcend our fears and thrive, as we flow in alignment with these powerful incoming energies.

Set intentions now and allow the momentum of these powerful and passionate energies to bring major life shifts and totally transform life as we know it by the end of the year.

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unfolded73 · 5 years

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How Do We Get Back (5/16) - schitt’s creek ff

Summary: In a literal alternate universe where the Roses escaped financial ruin, David and Patrick struggle with loneliness and a sense that something isn’t right. A chance meeting in New York and a terrible tragedy drive them to question whether the timeline they are on is the right one.

This chapter is explicit. 3.9k words. (ao3)

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

_____________________________________

Chapter 5

David finally stopped hitting snooze on his alarm at 9:45, groaning as he sat up. Looking down and seeing his lack of clothes wasn’t exactly a shock, even when the memories of the night before were a little slow in making their appearance. Waking up naked and confused had been a pretty regular occurrence for him over the years. Then the memories flooded in: Patrick, the closeted button of a man who’d drawn him in with his big brown eyes and his soft lips. Patrick, who’d given him an adequate but enthusiastic handjob and had trusted him enough to fall asleep in his bed. Patrick, whom he’d likely never see again.

He was supposed to open the gallery at 11:00, but David decided not to go in today. He felt like he needed a day in front of the TV, watching old episodes of Downton Abbey and eating a pint of whatever expensive gelato he could get Seamless to bring him. Dragging himself out into the kitchen, he remembered he’d used up the last of his good coffee beans a few days ago, and if he wanted coffee without having to wait for a delivery or going out, he’d have to settle for using the stupid Keurig machine that Alexis had bought him a few Christmases ago. Grumbling, he opened the cabinet where he kept coffee stuff and found only those cursed pods.

As he moved to pull the Keurig machine out of a cabinet, a small white card on the counter caught his eye. He picked it up and held it close to his face to read.

Patrick Brewer, B.B.A. Business Manager Rollins Electrical Supply

And, of course, there was a cell phone number and an email address.

Did that mean Patrick wanted him to get in touch? He didn’t remember how much longer Patrick said he’d be in town but he thought it was at least two or three more days. They hadn’t exchanged numbers, so this business card was the only way they could feasibly reconnect. But it also put the decision of whether to reconnect entirely on David, which he was very much not a fan of. David was not a man who put himself out on a limb easily, not when he’d crashed to the ground so many times in the past. He preferred to let the other person be the one responsible for reaching out so that when they inevitably didn’t, he could pretend he hadn’t cared that much anyway.

Whining and shaking his hands up and down with anxiety, David went in search of his phone. Instead of texting Patrick, he tapped out a message to his sister.

Hey are you up?

While he waited for a response, David turned on the television. A solemn news announcer was talking over helicopter footage of a house, intoning the news that 57 people had died in an apparent mass suicide. “GRISLY END TO DEATH CULT IN SAN JOSE,” the chyron at the bottom of the screen read. “Oh my God,” David whispered to himself, then just as quickly forgot about it as the phone in his hand buzzed.

[Alexis] Ew don’t text u up to your sister

[David] I need you to talk me down though

[Alexis] why

[David] I hooked up with a guy last night and I need you to tell me whether I should text him today.

[Alexis] Wait at least 48 hours. You know this.

[David] Yeah but he’s not going to be in NY in 48 hours. Also he’s different.

[Alexis] 👀

[David] What?

His phone rang.

“What??” he said, holding the phone to his ear.

“How is he different, David?” Alexis’ voice was sing-songy, like she thought he was cute and also ripe for being mocked.

“I don’t know, he just is!” David shouted. Then more softly: “He’s nice. And I guess just realizing that he’s gay, or whatever.”

“Mm hmm.”

“He actually says the things he’s thinking. Out loud.”

“Ew, who does that?” Alexis asked. “What kind of game is that?”

“Also he’s married.”

“So not that nice, then.” Alexis said.

“Look, he left his business card in my kitchen. So should I text him today or not?”

“I don’t know, David.” It sounded like she’d already lost interest.

“Alexis!”

“Yes, text him. He probably left his card because he wants to hook up again. And if he doesn’t, then it’ll only be mildly humiliating on the scale of humiliating things you’ve done.”

David hung up on her.

~*~

[Patrick] I need some advice.

[Stevie] i’m glad you realized that yes your hair is too short

[Patrick] No. You know how I had to go to NY for a tax seminar?

[Stevie] idk i don’t always listen to what you say

The crowd around Patrick was laughing, and he looked up at the speaker who was lecturing on import taxes to see what was funny. When he couldn’t figure it out from the powerpoint slide on the screen, he looked down at his phone again.

[Patrick] I’m there now. Last night I met someone. A guy. I went home with him and spent the night.

[Stevie] omg

[Patrick] Yeah.

[Stevie] omg omg

[Patrick] Is that all you’re going to say?

[Stevie] was he hot?

Patrick pictured David: his dramatic eyebrows and chiseled jaw, his dark eyes that could be steely or surprisingly soft, his leather jacket. And then later, his hairy arms and gasping sighs and his cock in Patrick’s hand.

[Patrick] Yes

[Stevie] did you duck? fuck ???????

[Patrick] Um. I guess it depends on how you define that word.

[Stevie] were there orgasms?

[Patrick] Yes

[Stevie] 🍆🍆🍆🍆🍆🍆🍆

[Patrick] Please stop

Clearly Stevie wasn’t going to be any help, so Patrick tried again to catch the thread of what the lecturer was saying. He wrote something down from the slide that sounded important, all the while watching his phone, still open to the texting app. The dots to indicate Stevie was typing came and went for a while.

[Stevie] ok so i know you were only here a few months and i don’t know everything about you. but i thought you only drank white wine, and now i find out you also drink red wine?

Her analogy was obvious, but Patrick sat and pondered his response for a while.

[Patrick] More like, I’ve been drinking white wine because it never occurred to me that I might like something else. But now that I’ve had red wine, I’m realizing that I may only like red wine.

[Stevie] wow

[Patrick] Yeah

[Stevie] who is this guy?

[Patrick] His name is David Rose. I guess you can probably google him - his family is sort of famous.

It occurred to Patrick that he could google David if he wanted to. Probably should, in fact.

[Stevie] so what advice do you need exactly?

[Patrick] What the fuck do I do?

[Stevie] like, about your wife? i think you have to tell her the truth if you’re gay

Eyes squeezing shut, Patrick shut his screen off. He couldn’t think about that yet. She was right, but he couldn’t think about the horror that his life back home would become if he went to Rachel and confessed that after all these years, he was actually gay. He tried again to focus on the lecture, but he’d missed too much and had only the vaguest idea what the speaker was talking about. He tried writing everything down for several minutes, hoping he could look up the rest later and that the notes would make sense in retrospect.

Another message popped up on his screen from Stevie: are u gonna see him again?

He didn’t respond to that either.

When a few minutes later another message popped up, at first Patrick assumed it was Stevie again, but then he noticed it was from an unknown number. He swiped his phone up off the table quickly.

[212-555-4561] Hey, it’s David from last night. I got your card.

Hands shaking, Patrick unlocked his phone and stared at the message. David had actually texted him; when he left his card, he hadn’t really expected that to happen.

[Patrick] Hey, just waking up? ;)

[David] No. Did you think the sex was so good that it knocked me into a 12 hour coma?

Patrick cringed. Okay, that stung a little, but it’s not like he wasn’t aware that last night had been a much bigger deal for him than it had been for David.

[David] Sorry, I didn't mean that. It was very good.

[Patrick] For me too. Obviously.

He stared at David’s last message for a couple of long minutes. ‘It was very good.’ Was he just being kind? He could have just not texted at all if he wasn’t interested. He must be interested. Psyching himself up, Patrick typed out: Would you like to go out with me tonight? and pressed send before he could out-think himself.

The time between hitting send and when David texted back felt like years. Decades. Millennia, maybe.

[David] Or we could order in? At my place?

[Patrick] What time?

[David] 7?

[Patrick] See you then.

Patrick finally looked up from his phone and realized that a new speaker had taken over to present on the next topic. He also realized that absorbing any more information today was hopeless. He sent one more text:

I’m seeing him again tonight.

[Stevie] 👍👍👍

~*~

“Hi.”

“Hi.” Patrick stood on his doorstep, and if he hadn’t been wearing a shirt in a darker shade of blue, David would have sworn he had on the same clothes.

“Come on in,” David said, opening the door wider and sweeping his hand out dramatically. He’d agonized over his own clothes for far too long before opting for his favorite Kitsuné sweatshirt and a pair of skinny jeans that he thought made his ass look good.

“I brought wine,” Patrick said, holding out a bottle of red, “which is probably terrible, but in my defense, I don’t know or care anything about wine.”

“Thank you,” David said, taking the bottle and looking at it as they walked into the kitchen. “Actually, a Williamette Valley pinot is a safe bet, but it probably won’t pair well with the Thai food I just ordered.” He set it down on the counter. “We can open it after.”

Patrick shoved his hands deep in his pockets, rocking back and forth on his heels. He looked nervous.

“How was your seminar thing today?”

“Oh, I have no idea. Couldn’t stop thinking about stuff. You know, last night.”

David didn’t want to ask, but the word came out of his mouth before he could stop it, his head tilting back like it was trying to extract itself from this awkward conversation that his body had gotten them into. “Regrets?”

“I mean, I’ve cheated on my wife, so… yeah,” he said to the floor before looking back up at David. “But also, no. How could I regret the way you made me feel? Nothing’s ever… nothing’s ever felt as right as last night felt to me.”

“Okay,” David said, his voice coming out as a breathy tremble.

“I guess I wouldn’t be here if I truly had regrets.” And then it was like his hesitancy melted away and David got a glimpse of a confident man underneath as Patrick moved in to kiss him.

Patrick backed David up as their mouths collided, making his ass bump against the edge of the countertop. It was a dominance that hadn’t been in evidence the night before, and it made David go a little bit weak in the knees. “This was all I could think about all day,” Patrick whispered, which weakened his knees further.

David couldn’t stop himself from smiling, which interfered with his ability to kiss Patrick back. “That’s a… very nice thing to say.”

“It’s true.”

They continued making out, and David let his hands wander down to the plain of Patrick’s chest, over his belt to the bulge in his jeans. Patrick moaned into his mouth, and okay, that was it. David couldn’t take it anymore. He’d been thinking about this all day too, even if he wasn’t prepared to admit it out loud.

David turned them around so that Patrick was up against the counter and then sank to his knees. Immediately, he regretted the fact that they were in the kitchen where the granite floor was very hard, and his artfully ripped jeans weren’t doing him any favors.

He put his fingers on Patrick’s belt buckle. “May I?”

Patrick was breathing quickly, his eyes wide. “I… really want to say yes.”

David shrugged and gave him a tiny smile, his other hand rubbing up and down Patrick’s thigh. “So say yes.”

“God, David, you’re so hot. Yes.”

“And I just want you to know,” David said as he unfastened Patrick’s belt, “that I’m no less attracted to you because of this terrible woven belt.” Unfastening and unzipping his jeans carefully, David pressed a hand against Patrick’s erection through his underwear, turning Patrick’s laugh at the belt comment into a gasped exclamation. Inspired to tease him a little longer, David nuzzled and mouthed over Patrick’s clothed cock, his thighs trembling under David’s hands.

“How do you do that?” Patrick asked him.

“What?” David pulled Patrick’s underwear down but didn’t touch him, stretching out the anticipation, letting Patrick’s cock bob there in front of his face,.

“How do you make me feel this way?”

David didn’t answer, didn’t think he could answer even if he wanted to, so he avoided having to do so by taking Patrick’s cock into his mouth. He moved his hands to grip Patrick’s hips, holding him against the counter as he worked. Patrick seemed to have immediately been rendered speechless, reduced to hitched breathy sounds that were very gratifying.

This was an act David had performed countless times, and he often let his mind wander during the process. But right now his mind was full of only this, the rigid length of Patrick and the taste of him and the noises he was making. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Patrick gripping the counter, his knuckles white. David reached out for Patrick’s right hand, picking it up and putting it on the back of his own head, hoping he would get the message. Patrick’s fingers immediately gripped David’s hair, pulling slightly, and David moaned in appreciation.

“Fuck, David, I’m… I’m gonna…” David didn’t let up, swirling his tongue and sucking him deep until Patrick cried out and came down his throat.

Just as David was releasing Patrick from his mouth, the door intercom buzzed. “Look at that, perfect timing,” he said as he pulled himself up from the floor. “Food’s here.”

Patrick looked stunned, his breathing very fast, so David reached down to begin righting his clothes for him.

“I’ll get this, you get the door,” Patrick said, his voice raspy. He looked like he wanted to say more, but couldn’t summon the words.

“Okay,” David said, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek before going out to the hall to buzz in the delivery person.

~*~

“So how old were you when you came out?” Patrick speared a piece of chicken with a fork. “If you don’t mind me asking a personal question.”

David grimaced, but said mildly, “I don’t mind.” He took a sip of water. “Look, I’m not unaware that I have some stereotypically gay mannerisms. So most people assume I’m gay, and that included my parents. The hard part was convincing them that when it comes to sexual attraction, gender doesn’t matter to me.” When Patrick frowned in confusion at that, he added, “I identify as pansexual.”

“Oh. Sorry, I didn’t mean to assume.”

“No, it was a reasonable assumption. I mentioned I was waiting for a guy at the bar last night. Also I just gave you a blow job, so why wouldn’t you assume I’m gay?”

Patrick’s face heated up. It felt surreal that he was sitting politely at a table eating dinner with a man who’d just brought him to an earth-shattering orgasm fifteen minutes before, but he was doing his best to roll with it. He ate his noodles slowly, trying to ignore the loose, lazy feeling in his limbs. David had ordered an assortment of dishes, way too much for two people. Patrick had never been a picky eater, so all of it was fine with him, and the two of them had taken turns putting food from various containers onto their plates. In spite of his undercurrent of sexual panic, Patrick found it strangely comfortable sitting down to eat with David, like they’d done it a hundred times.

“Anyway, when I was a teenager I had dated some boys and some girls, and I guess my family assumed I was still figuring things out? I don’t know, we didn’t really talk about it. There was a point in college when I was in a polyamorous relationship with a couple, and so I just brought them home with me and told my parents to deal with it.”

“And they did?” Patrick asked. “Deal with it?”

David shrugged. “They weren’t… all that invested in my life. I guess they did. My dad did ask me at one point if it wouldn’t be easier if I picked a gender, but he’s never been… there was never any homophobic drama.”

Patrick thought about his own small-town upbringing, where any behavior outside of the norm would result in the epithet of ‘queer’ or worse being hurled at the person in question. It was the kind of bullying that Patrick himself had usually avoided — he was likable and good at sports, and he’d managed to traverse school with enough popularity to feel secure most of the time. His own parents had never said anything bad about gay people, but that was maybe because they’d never said much of anything about gay people.

He envied David, with his cosmopolitan family and his urban lifestyle, where he’d been open to exploring his sexual identity at a young age. He wondered what that must have been like.

“I’m embarrassed,” Patrick said, and then winced at his own admission.

“Why?”

“Because I’m thirty years old, David! How did I get to this age without realizing very basic things about my own identity?”

“Hey, don’t do that. Every queer person has a different journey.”

“Yeah, but if I could have figured it out sooner, I wouldn’t have so royally fucked up Rachel’s life.”

“Rachel is your wife?”

Patrick nodded and pushed his plate away. “It’s not like there weren’t signs, thinking back on it. My cousin Dennis just told me recently that he’d thought I was in love with a high school friend, Eric. And you know what? I guess I probably was. But I was dating Rachel, and I just thought… I don’t know. Maybe I just didn’t let myself think about it. Maybe I was afraid of what I might uncover if I thought about it.”

David was watching him carefully, just listening. It was comforting, having someone to talk to about this to who would just listen.

“I was a late bloomer. When I was thirteen and all my friends were pairing off and playing seven minutes in heaven at parties, I was only interested in hockey and baseball and music. I was small for my age, and I hit puberty seemingly after everybody else in my class.”

“Ugh, not me. I’m so fucking hairy — it’s my dad’s sephardic genes — and I hated it at that age. Braces and acne and hair everywhere and my terrible nose… I just wanted to hide under the bed until puberty was over.”

Patrick smiled. “What’s wrong with your nose?”

“Nothing now; I had a nose job.”

He’d be willing to bet that teenage David was more attractive than he was giving himself credit for, but Patrick let that topic drop. “Anyway, Rachel had been a friend of mine since we were kids, and when we were fifteen and she kissed me, I sort of went along with it. A girlfriend was something every guy was supposed to have, and here she was, a girlfriend I genuinely liked spending time with. I didn’t feel much when we kissed, but I never knew any better. I didn’t have anything to compare it to.”

“And by the time you reached an age where you might explore your sexuality, you were already dating Rachel,” David guessed.

“Yeah. But dating wasn’t… it just wasn’t a big deal in my life. I was a hard worker at school and I had a lot of activities that kept me occupied. Rachel and I did eventually, um…”

“Have sex.”

“Yeah. And it was fine. It felt good, and I figured, okay. This is what sex is. But I didn’t understand why it was such a driving force in other people’s lives,” Patrick said.

“I’ve known people on the asexual spectrum who felt that way.”

“I actually had a genderqueer bartender suggest that I might be asexual a few weeks ago, now that you mention it.”

David smirked. “For the record, you don’t seem to be asexual.”

“Yeah, no. Just in deep denial for a lot of wasted years, I guess.” He heaved a sigh. “Rachel and I were on-again, off-again for a long time, but we always just, I don’t know, fell back into it. We’d break up, and then something would always push us back together. I proposed, and then six months later I panicked and broke it off again and left town.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah. So I moved to this small town that was even smaller than the one I’d grown up in for some bizarre reason,” Patrick continued. “But that didn’t magically fix me, it was just a change of scenery for my sadness.”

“You might have considered going to a city; Toronto, for example.”

Patrick shrugged. “I don’t know why I ended up where I ended up. It seemed like some kind of weird destiny at first, that it was very important that I be there. And then it just… wasn’t. So Rachel and I got back together and I suggested we elope.”

“Marrying her before you could chicken out again?” David guessed.

Patrick nodded. “In retrospect, yeah, that’s what it was. That was four months ago. Now I have to tell her… I don’t know what I’m going to tell her.”

“I’m sorry, Patrick. If I could have met you before you got married, I would have.”

He laughed, but there wasn’t any humor in it. “Yeah, that would have been nice, huh? If I’d realized this about myself six months ago, I could have spared Rachel some of the pain that…” Patrick wiped his hands over his face and groaned. “You know what? I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

David glanced over to the living room. “We could watch a movie?”

“Yeah, that sounds good.”

“I think I’m in a Sandy Bullock mood.” David drummed his fingers on his lips. “What’s your preference between Two Weeks Notice and The Lake House?”

Patrick had never seen either, so he shrugged and picked one at random. “The Lake House?”

David grinned at him. “Correct.”

Chapter 6

#schitt's creek #schitt's creek ff #david x patrick #david x patrick ff #david x patrick fic #hdwgb fic #my fic

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got-jams-hobi · 6 years

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Applying For Ewha & The Dorms [Study Abroad South Korea 2019]

[back to navigation | korea adventures | ask a question]

[Febuary 12, 2019]

안녕하세요 여러분~

I can finally relax for my last 19 days before I leave for Korea. I finally got all my paperwork done and now I am just waiting to hop on the plane. Since there’s not a whole lot of updated information for Ewha Woman's University I hope my blog will help you in your journey if you choose to study there. Fun note, even though Ewha is a woman’s university men can apply for the language course!

*Quick note, I have applied for ELC (Ewha Language Course) and I am doing the Intensive Program which is a 10-week course. My application process will be different than if you are applying from your home university. I’m sure there are people who have tips on if you are coming from another university.*

Applying For Ewha

Applying for the course was super easy. (Everything about the course and what they offer can be found on cms.ewha.ac.kr) I will try to remember everything to the best of my ability. I applied for the spring semester for 2019 which is from March-May. The online registration opened up for this around August of 2018. One thing to note (if I remember correctly) you have to enter your passport number when you register for the course, so to be on the safe side make sure you already have your passport. I know for sure you have to send a copy of it in with your documents after you fill out the online form. When you are ready to apply you will be redirected to sla.ewha.ac.kr which is where you apply for the course and can check your status on the payment, courses, and etc. Don’t be like me on the application process. With me not knowing anything, I was thinking they would reach out to me and ask me for my documents which they don’t, you have to send them in yourself. So once you fill out your online application go ahead and email the school with your required documents. It took no time at all for me to get approved for the course so the next thing to do is pay. Paying for the course was rather simple. Always check your email. They will send you an email with the amount that is due for your course(s). I had to wire the money to the school, so I went to my bank and had them do it for me. My one tip is if you have to move money over to pay for the course always move more over. My bank has like a $50 wire transfer fee so just be aware that it probably won’t be the exact amount of the course. Once I wired the money over and sent in my receipt of the transfer it was time to wait on the dorm application to open up.

Applying For The Dorms

The dorm application was the biggest pain ever but I am so glad it’s over. Dorm application will open up about 2 months before the course starts. I ended up emailing the dorm to see what the estimated move in and out date would be so I could buy my plane ticket in December to save me some money (the sooner you can buy your ticket the cheaper it will be). Fast forward to January 2019 and they opened the dorm applications. A few things to note is that they only keep the dorm applications open for a short period. I know for the short course students their dorm application is only open for a few days whereas the intensive course is open for like 2 weeks. GET YOUR CHEST X-RAY DONE BEFORE THE DORM APPLICATIONS OPEN. I cannot begin to tell you how much of a headache it was trying to get my chest x-ray in before the deadline for the dorms. DORMS ARE FIRST COME, FIRST SERVE. If you already have your chest x-ray results all you will have to do is fill out the form and submit your x-ray and you are done until they email you. After the dorm application closes they will send you an email with the amount of money you owe before the deadline. Now, this is where everything went downhill for me. After you wire the money you have to send the receipt and your chest x-ray again. So after the deadline, I thought it was odd that I never heard anything back from the dorm. Again, check your email. If you have to email the crap out of them, do it. I sent an email asking if they received my email (which included my chest x-ray and payment) which they responded to that they had not. So here I am freaking out because it’s after the deadline and they didn’t get the email I had sent. So what did I do? I just sent it in again. After a few days, they sent out another email saying that we had until x day to send in our payment or we wouldn’t get the dorm. THE DEADLINE WAS DURING LUNAR NEW YEAR. THEY WEREN’T EVEN ON CAMPUS. So at this point, I had sent my receipt and chest x-ray in 4 different times, and one of those included sending it to the school email to have them forward it for me. The school responded back but at this time I had yet to hear anything from the dorms. Just when I thought about emailing them again, I got my email with my dorm assignment!

Thoughts On The Whole Process

The overall process could have been approved. I understand with the dorms probably getting tons of emails coming from everywhere things may have been overlooked but you would think during deadlines they would be on it more. I was sent several emails saying I needed to apply for the course which I had already done and had paid in full. Now I don’t know if they sent out mass emails to everyone or what but they should keep up with who has paid for the course and whatnot because all this was doing was giving me unnecessary stress. I just feel that sometimes everything was a mess behind the scene. Would I go through the application process again? Yes. However, I would definitely try to keep in contact with them more.

Tip #1: Always, always check your email, even your junk folder. I know for me the dorm emails liked going into my junk folder so I would sometimes be a day late on seeing it.

Tip #2: Social media (tumblr, instagram, twitter, google, etc) is a great place to find people who have been or are going that you can turn to for help or advice. Now I’m not saying have them contact the school for you but you could ask simple questions about how their application process went, what are the dorms like and etc.

Tip #3: Figure out the time difference and try to email the school when it is morning for them. This may sound pointless but in my mind, it would be easier for them to see an email that sent an hour ago versus overnight or over the weekend.

*I hope you found this useful or at least interesting. I plan on doing youtube videos to document my journey which I will link once I post some. I will do a course overview once this whole experience is over so I can see if this has all been worth it. And Again, if you have any questions don’t be afraid to ask.*

-Danielle, Ewha Study Abroad Spring 2019-

#ewha womans university #ewha #ewha university #south korea #Korea #south korea study abroad #study abroad #korea study abroad #korea travel #korea trip #korea solo trip #solo travel #ewha language center #ewha language course #korean language #hangul #study korean

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dearophelia · 6 years

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gonna set your flag on fire (chapter 1)

Thirty years after the war, things are as close to normal as they’ll get. Garrus is the turian councilor and Olivia runs Galactic Affairs, helping the galaxy rebuild. They’ve happily settled into the life they’ve built. Their kids are grown, and out living their own lives.But something goes wrong on Nora’s latest mission. Very wrong.

chapter 01: upside down with a perfect view

(read on AO3)

or, guess who’s finally posting norafic, y’all! I’ve only been talking about this for like three years. My eternal gratitude to @nightingaleseeking and @tarysande for cheerleading this project along, you two are angels.

Note that there is a warning for eventual mindfuckery. And, as per usual, a flagrant disregard for canon.

Later, when it’s all over and Nora’s sitting on the back porch of her grandmother’s house watching the sun rise over the lake, she’ll think she should’ve told James she’d take the eezo job.

She’ll sip at her tea, tug the blanket tighter around her shoulders while the cat weaves his way around her legs, and replay that conversation with James a thousand times. The sky will turn from dusky grey to purple to warm oranges and pinks, and she’ll wish she’d accepted his offer – he gave her an out, and she ignored it.

She should’ve taken the eezo job. Instead, she took the Cerberus mission.

Hindsight.

***

7 September 2191 - 23 years earlier

Olivia scrubs a hand over her face as the elevator makes its slow descent to deck three. Eight years since the end of the war, four since they cobbled enough of the relay system back together that the galaxy could begin to function again, and it still feels like they’re fighting: reaper cults keep growing even though they’ve long since found a cure for indoctrination, there’s always an alliance-ending diplomatic crisis somewhere, and they’ve been playing whack-a-mole with stray Cerberus cells for years. It’s nice not to have to dodge banshees and brutes, or worry about the imminent end of the universe, but there are days she would like the galaxy to take care of its own bullshit for an hour so she can take a nap.

This is one of those days. She started out mediating the third day of an argument between Wrex and one of the new dalatrasses about blueprints salarian architects drew up for the Tuchanka rebuilding effort, she ate half her lunch while on a vidcall with Liara listening to intel on banshee worshippers out on the Far Rim (as far as she knows, the other half is still in her office), and spent the next two hours holed up in the AI Core reading a stack of reports while avoiding Cortez and the embedded reporter who won’t leave either of them alone.

She misses Allers.

Their stop at Tereshkova was only long enough to refuel and pick up Abby Williams and whatever recon she found on her latest mission. Olivia loves the Normandy, even more in its third incarnation, but she’s glad she isn’t her captain anymore. Four days back to the Citadel, and then she’s home - at least until the next time the Council decides she’s needed for face-to-face diplomacy. She has three messages from Garrus on her omnitool, and hasn’t had a chance to check them all day.

The elevator doors open and she nods at Ashley, waiting for her.

“It’s a kid,” Ashley says, uncrossing her arms as they fall into step with each other.

“What?”

“The data Abby picked up – it’s a kid. A girl. She was the only one left alive.”

Olivia stops and turns to Ashley. “This is your ship now, but you seriously let a kid from a Cerberus station on board?”

Ashley nods. “It’s not like we didn’t take any precautions.” She points.

The usually-occupied mess area is empty of barely-awake lieutenants and hungry sergeants, replaced instead by a contingent of marines, armed and standing at the ready; four more stand guard inside the medbay. Olivia looks through the medbay windows and sees a small girl sitting inside a sealed glass container set on one of the exam tables. Mass effect field generators clamped to the container’s corners glow faintly blue, and she recognizes the symbol painted on its sides: the container will withstand a ten-ton thermonuclear explosion inside of it. “Fair enough,” she says.

Abby steps out of the medbay. As tall as her older sister, she’s leaner, built for speed instead of Ashley’s muscle. She’s still in her lithe armor, with her sword still strapped to her back. “Captain,” she salutes Olivia, “Commander,” she turns to Ashley.

“At ease, Lieutenant,” Ashley says. “What’s going on?”

Abby exhales heavily. “We got some intel about a Cerberus station orbiting Rayingiri. I went in –”

“Alone?” Ashley asks, ever the older sister.

Silently, Abby points to the N7 on her chest and the two crossed swords beneath it, identifying her Shadow designation. “I went in, just to get recon; Liselle and Rosie were on their way to back me up for the attack. I guess the op was blown somehow: everyone on that station was dead before I got there – suicide. They all had their heads half blown off from that capsule thing in their teeth.”

Olivia grimaces. She’s seen no shortage of grisly scenes, but that’s particularly nasty. “What about the girl?”

“Rosie hacked the station records. Her name’s Nora Milton, three and a half. Father died last year in that raid in the Hades Nexus, mother was an engineer on the station, working on a Cerberus project code named Damocles.”

Olivia’s attention shifts back to the girl in the glass box. She’s tucked herself up into the back corner, as far away from the guards and Doctor Chakwas as she can get, hugging her knees to her chest. “And Damocles is?”

Abby shrugs and shakes her head. “No idea. They wiped most of their servers. All we got was a crew manifest, shipping logs, and some low-security email. Nothing that flagged Alliance intelligence when we ran it past them.”

“Send it to me,” Olivia says. “I know people who may be able to do more with it.” Liara’s had her own troubles getting anything out of the remaining Cerberus cells, but she may have more luck than the Alliance.

Abby nods. “Sure.”

“Thanks, Abby,” Ashley says. She lightly squeezes her sister’s arm before heading toward the medbay doors. She gestures for Olivia to go first.

Doctor Chakwas looks up at the whoosh of the doors and waves the two women over. Olivia pauses to smile at the scared girl, but none of them trust Cerberus not to use a three-year-old girl as a bomb.

“Physically,” Chakwas says as she pulls up a series of scans on her monitor, “she’s mostly normal. Probably dehydrated and a little malnourished, I’ll know more once we get a blood test, but she looks like a perfectly healthy three-year-old human.”

“I hear a but coming,” Ashley says. Olivia nods in agreement.

“And correctly so.” Chakwas taps on the display and it zooms in on the girl’s brain. She points at a tiny square in the middle. “She has a microchip implanted near her cerebrum.”

Olivia’s eyes narrow. “I think we can safely assume that’s not good.” She clenches her jaw as she flashes back to a few uncomfortable conversations with Miranda. Nora’s a toddler. “Can you get it out?”

The doctor shakes her head. “It’s deep in her brain, and she’s very young. Even with the Citadel’s surgical AIs, the risk of brain damage or death are extremely high.”

“How about turning it off?” Ashley suggests.

“EDI’s working on that,” Chakwas says. “She’s also sent the information to Tali.”

Olivia looks over her shoulder. The girl’s still curled up in her corner, but she’s watching the three of them with wide eyes. “Besides the chip,” she turns back to Chakwas, “is there anything else wrong with her? Any indication that she’s going to explode or start some sort of virus...anything?”

“I haven’t been able to check her directly while she’s in the box, but no, not that my scans have shown.”

Olivia looks at Ashley. She’d let Nora out, but the Normandy isn’t her ship anymore, and Doctor Chakwas and the guards outside aren’t her crew. “Your ship, your call.”

Ashley presses her lips together. She looks up at the display screen, to Nora, to Olivia, and back to Nora. “She’s three,” she says, “if the chip does do anything, I think we can take her.” She turns to one of the guards. “Clear the entire deck. In five minutes, we’re opening that box.” He nods and rushes out with the others. She taps her omnitool. “Vega.”

“Yeah, Boss?”

“In five minutes, Shepard and I are opening a container holding a very small child who may or may not be a Cerberus booby trap. I need you to put the ship into lockdown and get ready to quarantine the deck if necessary.”

“Uh, are you sure that’s wise?”

“No,” Ashley says. “But she’s three years old and we can’t keep her in a glass box forever.”

“Lockdown in effect,” he says as a low alarm pulses through the ship, “and Level 4 quarantine on standby.”

A quiet whimper escapes from Nora’s throat and her eyes fill with tears. Olivia taps a command into a nearby medical console, and the alarm silences inside the medbay. Nora sniffles.

“Thanks, Vega.” Ashley ends the call and looks at Olivia. “You want to take this? You’ve actually got kids.”

“They’re eight and ten and turian, Ash. My frame of reference isn’t exactly wider than yours here.” One of the messages from Garrus was a photo. Quentus had his first durak tournament today. She hopes it went well; he was so excited.

“Okay. How about – you’ve actually been a Cerberus experiment before?”

“Does Traynor know you’re this reluctant to be around kids?”

“I’m not,” Ashley says. “Except when they were the only one left alive on a station full of dead people and we’re keeping them in a box built to contain a ten-ton nuke.”

“Wimp.” Olivia grins and steps up to the box. She gives Nora her best reassuring smile.

Ashley checks her watch and, after five minutes have passed, taps her command code into the box’s control panel. It beeps, and the latch unlocks with a hiss. Slowly, and with a low mechanical hum, the top panel retracts.

Nora looks up, eyes even wider. Her lower lip starts to quiver, and she looks straight at Olivia.

“It’s okay,” she tells her, “we’re getting you out of there.”

As soon as the top fully retracts, Ashley and Olivia unlatch the front side, laying it down on the bed, leaving Nora sitting in a three-walled box.

Nora blinks once, twice, and then scrambles to the edge of the bed and wraps her arms around Olivia’s waist. She moves so fast she scrapes her arm on one of the hinges, but she doesn’t seem to notice.

“Oh!” Olivia exclaims. She runs her fingers through the ends of Nora’s tangled brown curls and sets her other hand on her back. Nora presses her face into her stomach. “It’s okay, sweetie,” she whispers.

The entire medbay holds its breath.

“So,” Ashley says after ten minutes have passed without incident. “Not a bomb.”

Olivia shakes her head. Nora hasn’t let go, and so neither has she. “Not a bomb.”

“Any sign of contagion?” Ashley asks Chakwas.

“None.”

Ashley exhales. “It’s nice to be wrong sometimes.”

While Ashley calls Vega and tells him to lift the lockdown and take his finger off the quarantine trigger, Olivia looks down at the small girl still hugging her tight. A thin trail of blood trickles down Nora’s arm from the scrape. Olivia gestures for Chakwas to come over and check her out.

“Can I have your arm, please?” Chakwas asks.

Nora shakes her head and hugs even tighter.

“Nora,” Olivia says quietly, “I need you to let go so the doctor can look at you.” Again, Nora shakes her head. “I’ll be right here. You can sit on my lap.”

After a moment, Nora loosens her arms, but doesn’t let go. Olivia shifts and lifts Nora up, settling her on her hip as she carries her over to another exam table – one without the bomb-proof box on it. She sits Nora on the table and then hops up and crosses her legs underneath her. “Come here,” she says, and Nora scrambles into her lap. Nora settles, pressing her back into Olivia’s chest, and Olivia rests her arms around Nora’s waist.

Chakwas scans the scrape, and then runs a dermal regenerator over her arm. “There we go,” she says.

Nora whimpers, but otherwise doesn’t make a sound.

***

By the time she finally gets to call Garrus, it’s well past two in the morning at home on the Citadel. She at least had a chance to read his messages at dinner: a good morning smiley face, an update on the batarian trade agreement discussions (going about as terribly as she anticipated), Nico’s report card was all top marks, Quentus and his team won and will advance to the next round (sent with a picture of her eldest, pointing at the scoreboard and grinning proudly), and a final message asking if she was okay. She sent him a quick response – crazy day, will call, probably late – thankful for autocorrect, as Nora kept trying to grab her arm and put it back around her.

Nora’s sound asleep in the bed. She was quiet – almost happy – throughout the entire day, through a lengthy round of medical tests, through a half bath/half shower that had Olivia, Abby, and most of the women’s bathroom soaked by the end, and quiet even through Olivia combing out her hair. But the minute Olivia tried to settle her in for the night, tucked in amongst a pile of pillows on a bed in the medbay, Nora started crying. Tears turned to screams when Olivia stepped away and turned off the light.

Olivia took some spare blankets and pillows from the crew quarters, settled Nora into her bed, and made a makeshift bed for herself on the couch. She’s left the door unlocked, a concession to everyone’s paranoia, in case anything happens in the middle of the night and the two guards standing outside need to storm in.

“I wonder why she imprinted on you so hard,” Garrus says, after she’s told him everything.

Though she’s exhausted, Olivia manages a smirk for her husband. “Oh, come on. I’m totally lovable.”

“You are,” his mandibles flutter, “but that’s not what I meant, Shepard.”

Olivia sighs and rests her head in her hands. “I know Cerberus isn’t known for their humanitarianism, but she’s so little, Garrus. Who the hell puts a control chip inside a three-year-old?” The why of it gnaws at her even more.

“Olivia,” he says gently, in a similar voice to the one he uses with their boys when they have a nightmare.

She inhales and looks up. “I’m fine,” she says, though by his lifted brow plate she can tell he doesn’t believe her. She pushes her hair out of her face. “EDI and Tali think they have a way to turn off the chip, so we’re going to try that in the morning. How are the boys?” She wanted to talk to them before they went to bed tonight. She misses them.

“Nico made me promise to actually show you his grades,” Garrus taps on his omnitool, and hers lights up with a new message and an image attachment, “and Quentus scored two goals today.”

Her omnitool lights up again, this time with a video attachment. She opens the picture while the video downloads, and smiles. Nico struggles to make friends in school, but he doesn’t struggle with the academics at all; even at eight, he’s so proud of his grades. She presses play on the video, keeping the volume quiet, and watches proudly as Quentus makes two goals in a row.

“I wanted to be there,” she says wistfully.

“He knows,” Garrus assures her. “And he also knows that sometimes Uncle Wrex needs you in the room to keep him from eating someone.”

“Still,” she sighs. She’s missed games before, they both have, but it was his first tournament. Hopefully his team will stay in after the next round, and she’ll get to see him play when she’s back home.

“Are you on schedule to be home next week?”

“Yes,” she nods. “And if Wrex and the dalatrass haven’t sorted out their differences by then, they can bite me.”

“The ship’s still in one piece after three days. You may not have them drinking tea together, but they’ll come to an agreement.”

“Okay, now I’m just thinking about Wrex with a teacup,” she laughs quietly.

His mandibles flick open in a grin. “Good. Get some sleep, Liv.”

“You too. I’ll call you tomorrow, hopefully a little earlier.”

“Alright. I love you.”

“I love you, too.” She ends the vidcall and her monitor goes dark, leaving the room lit only by stars outside and faint light coming around the half-shut door of the bathroom.

Nora shifts and makes a quiet sleepy huff as her feet gently kick at the blankets.

“I hope this works tomorrow,” Olivia whispers to herself.

***

“Ah, Shepard?” Chakwas says, as EDI finishes her calculations. “You shouldn’t be standing there when they do this.”

Olivia opens her mouth to ask why, but she follows the doctor’s gaze down to her leg. Oh. It’s not that she forgets her right leg is a cybernetic prosthetic now, it’s that it hasn’t bothered her for a few days and she’s had other things on her mind. “Right.” From what she understands, the EMP will be targeted toward Nora’s brain, but it’s still best not to risk it.

“We’re ready, Shepard,” Tali says from the monitor.

She looks down at Nora sitting on the exam table beside her. Nora’s kept her wide eyes on the EMP minigun since EDI set it up. She doesn’t seem scared of it, just staring at something new.

“You ready?” Olivia doubts Nora fully understands what’s about to happen, but she’s not going to give Tali the go ahead if Nora isn’t sure.

Nora looks up at her and blinks.

It’s not a no.

“I’ll be right here,” she says, and takes a few steps away out of range. She nods to Tali and EDI. “Go ahead.”

Tali taps at her controls, transmitting the code to EDI. “All yours,” she says.

EDI nods, and presses a few buttons on the side of the EMP gun. There’s a series of short beeps, and then EDI turns to Olivia and Chakwas. “It’s completed.”

Olivia raises an eyebrow. She’d expected…more. “That’s it?”

“Yes.”

She looks at Nora, who doesn’t look any different. “Did it work?”

Chakwas runs a handheld scanner over Nora’s head, and peers at the results displaying on the bedside manner. “It’s no longer emitting a signal.” She looks over her shoulder at Tali and EDI, both waiting expectantly. “It looks like it worked.”

Olivia nods slowly. “Send a message to Miranda,” she tells EDI, “have her meet us when we dock at the Citadel. It’s not that I don’t trust your work, guys, it’s –”

“That you don’t trust Cerberus wouldn’t put failsafes into place in case anyone tried what we just did,” Tali says.

“Bingo.”

“We can pretend we’re still working, if you want to avoid the dalatrass a little longer,” Tali teases.

Olivia grimaces. “It’s a miracle I haven’t gotten at least five nasty messages from her yet.” She owes Cortez an entire bar’s worth of drinks for keeping the dalatrass at bay this morning.

“Let me know if you need anything else.”

“Will do. Thanks again, Tali.”

“No problem, Shepard.” Her vidcall blinks out.

Olivia turns back to Nora, only to find Chakwas looking at her with a distinctly pointed look. “What?”

“Nora is welcome to stay. But you cannot avoid the dalatrass all day by hiding in here.”

Aware that she sounds like a petulant child, yet not caring in the least, Olivia huffs. She almost misses Linron and Isheel. Almost. “Fine.” She takes a deep breath and turns to Nora. “I’ll be back at the end of the day, okay?”

Nora just blinks.

Olivia supposes if she watched the heads of everyone she knew explode, she wouldn’t talk either. She gently tucks Nora’s hair behind her ear and smiles. “Call me if she needs anything.”

Chakwas nods. “Of course.”

But as soon as Olivia has one foot out the door, Nora sniffles and starts to cry.

Olivia stops in her tracks and walks back to Nora. She can’t avoid the negotiations – she really does need to resolve things between the dalatrass and Wrex – but it looks like she can’t leave Nora, either. Everyone will just have to deal with a small human child sitting at the negotiating table.

***

"What do you think the Alliance will do with her?" Garrus asks later that night, when she sits back down after getting Nora a glass of water and settling her back to bed.

Olivia shrugs. "Run a thousand tests on her," she surmises. "Keep her in a cage, mess with the chip, see what it does." As if Nora needs more time spent in a science lab with people poking her. Sighing heavily, she rests her head in her hands and looks at him through her fingers. "What she needs is a family, but they'll never let her go for proper adoption."

Garrus tilts his head and looks at her softly. "They might if it was us."

She raises her head, blinking at her husband. Her mind started down that same path earlier, but was blocked by a thousand different arguments: physical space, time, busy schedules, two parents wrangling three kids under ten. Their sons.

"Liv, you know they're never going to let a civilian take her. And she already seems attached to you."

Olivia bites her lip and looks away. "I don't want Quentus and Nico to think – I don't know." She's unsure how to voice that concern to him. Both boys have needed a lot from their parents, which she and Garrus have been so willing and happy to give, and she doesn't want them to feel like suddenly they're going to have less. They lost their birth parents to the war; the last thing she wants is for her sons to worry that they're not important anymore, or that she and Garrus are going to leave them too.

"I'll talk to them," he says gently. "See what they think about maybe having a little sister."

"You haven't even met her," she says, though she knows that’s not even remotely a problem. Garrus has always been kind to those important to him, and he's grown impossibly kinder since becoming a father. He's light years away, and that kindness already extends to Nora.

His mandibles flutter. "She likes you," he says. "She clearly has good judgment."

She laughs quietly, a slight heat rising to her cheeks. Almost ten years, and he can still make her blush with a simple compliment. "Dork."

Before Garrus can respond, there's a noise behind him that sounds suspiciously like two young turian boys racing each other down the stairs.

Garrus looks over his shoulder. "Incoming," he confirms.

"Is that Mom?" Nico asks, off camera still.

"Mom, I made two goals today!" Quentus shouts, followed by the scrape of a kitchen chair urgently pushed out of the way.

Olivia scrambles for her earbuds so the excitement doesn't wake up Nora. Within seconds of getting the buds connected and in her ears, Quentus and Nico have both popped their heads up into the camera in front of Garrus. They're a little too close at first and fill the screen completely, competing to take up the most space, until Garrus pushes the monitor back a bit.

"When are you coming home? I miss you."

"Dad let us have ice cream for dinner."

Garrus clears his throat and looks down at his eldest. "We weren’t going to tell her that."

Laughing softly, Olivia smiles at the three most important people in her life. "I miss you guys too," she says. "I'll be home on Friday," she promises. "How was your day?"

As their sons excitedly tell her about their days, she briefly glances over their heads at Garrus. Her eyes lock with his, and he gives her a little nod. Smiling, she focuses her attention on Quentus retelling, in very animated detail, his game-winning goal.

***

Miranda spends a long time in silence, looking at Nora’s scans.

Just when Olivia almost can’t stand the silence anymore, Miranda turns. “It’s a control chip. It’s a different model than I considered using, but it is definitely a control chip.” She steps to the side, gesturing for them to join her at the monitor. “Do you see those thin lines radiating from it?” She points on the screen and as soon as she sees what Miranda’s pointing at, Olivia wonders how she didn’t see the lines before. They’re light, but clear.

“Those are wires connecting to her memory centers. This design was still experimental when I was with Cerberus, evidently they’ve moved it into production.” Miranda looks at Chakwas. “You were correct not to operate. There hasn’t been time for her brain to grow around the chip, but it’s beginning to,” she points to faint shadows. “Given how young she is, surgery will cause permanent damage, and would likely kill her.”

"Then how did they implant it?" Chakwas asks.

Miranda glances back to the monitor. "The wires are grown post-implantation via nanotechnology. It’s likely you could surgically remove the chip itself, but the wires are the problem. Without knowing how they work, I wouldn’t recommend leaving them in there unconnected."

“Does Project Damocles ring a bell?” Olivia asks, before the two women can begin down a conversational black hole about pediatric neurosurgery neither she nor Ashley has half a hope of understanding.

Miranda shakes her head. “Unfortunately, no. Cerberus cells operated mostly independently. I only knew of a small handful of projects other than Lazarus. I’d imagine they’re even more independent now.”

"Any ideas why Cerberus might implant a control chip into a toddler?" Olivia’s been doing her best to ignore that reality, but the question has to be asked.

"Yes," Miranda says. "All of which you’ve probably thought of already, and none of them good."

Olivia shudders. She’s come up with plenty of theories, and they’re all terrifying.

“Okay, I’m just gonna ask,” Ashley says. “Is she safe? Can we let her off the ship?”

Miranda shrugs. “It’s been deactivated. Control chips work in one of two ways: either orders are transmitted directly to it, or there’s a designated controller whose voice activates the chip. Even if you hadn’t deactivated it, the likelihood of anyone knowing she’s alive to receive orders or encounter the controller are monumentally slim.”

Olivia shares a look with Ashley and Chakwas. “Somehow that doesn’t make me feel better.” She swallows. She’s long made her peace with Miranda’s confession, but that doesn’t mean it sits well.

“Well, it’s off,” Miranda says. “It doesn’t matter either way.”

“Her brain is still very young. Surgery isn’t a viable solution, and the chip and wires are microscopic, but I am concerned about the effects of a foreign object on her development,” Chakwas says, staring again at the scan.

Miranda purses her lips and takes a moment before responding. “I know Cerberus hasn’t always had the most responsible scientific practices, and I doubt they’ve improved in the wake of the Illusive Man’s death. Nora may very well be their first attempt, and she may be facing extreme developmental problems. Or, she could be the end of the experimental line and they got it right. Or, they could have perfected it years ago and she could be one of many. There’s no way to know for sure.”

Ashley stares at Miranda and then scoffs. She crosses her arms. “None of those is a comforting thought.”

“No,” Olivia agrees, and looks out the medbay windows. Nora’s sitting next to James at a table in the mess, playing with empty MRE boxes, the closest non-explosive thing to blocks they could find. Nora looks up from her tower and waves at Olivia. Olivia waves back; Nora started to cry when she left her with James to go speak with Miranda, but settled when she realized she could see Olivia through the window. Olivia dreads what happens when they get off the ship – when Nora has to go the Alliance, and she has to go home.

“I think the next question is: what does the Alliance plan to do with her?” Miranda asks.

Olivia exhales slowly. “That is a great question.”

#tarysande #nightingaleseeking #SCREAMS LOUDLY HITS POST #s:words #s:me #s:set your flag #s:2018 #nora vakarian: in any given storm #i'm still working through the end so we're looking at 14/15 chapters; will update that as soon as i figure it out

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fyrapartnersearch · 6 years

Text

The next Wild Hunt commences.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Phew, let's try this again shall we? I've received great many responses which positively surprised me :) I've managed to find some partners, but most of the people who contacted me, just sent me a friend request on Discord without even writing me a message. This gives me nothing to work with. Please, I implore you, if you want to start a RP partnership with me, write me a detailed email first! Describe yourself, your ideas and preferences. I want to get to know you before we move to another platform to chat OOC, alright?

And for the future, do NOT ghost me! Thank you :) I’ll keep it short and sweet for my introduction. I am Fenry, but you may address me as Fen. Obviously this is not my real name but I would like to keep a pseudonym as my identity until I get to know my partner better.   

I am 25 years and that means adult themes and topics will be included

Female

Over 10 years of roleplaying experience

Masters graduate

I live in CET, Europe

Prefers doubling, though I can make exceptions

We can exchange more information once I’ve received your message. I love talking outside of the Roleplay for some brainstorming and plotting for the story. Plus, making new friends never hurts.

Now to the actual topic what I am looking for in a partner.

Please read before you message me!

Thank you.  

My roleplaying partner must be above the age of 18, preferably 20+.  I don’t care which gender honestly, as long as the Roleplay and friendship is good I am all for it. Contact me with a small introduction. Tell me about yourself, what you’re ideas are, how long you’ve been writing and your limits. I want to know more about you, assess your character before we move to anything else. It would otherwise come off as impersonal.   

The qualities I prefer in an RP buddy are:  

Mature

Dedicated

Detailed

Literate

Frequent (which doesn’t mean that you need to send me 5 messages per day. 2-3 times per week is absolutely fine since I am not able to respond as much either)

Flexible

We all have real, social lives outside of the roleplaying world. I understand when you’re not able to reply as fast all of the time, because it is not much different for me either. I will try to respond at least 4-5 times a week. If it’s a good week, my replying rate will increase depending on the given situation. If there’s work ahead or any sort of obstacle that might get in the way of our exchange, I will let you know as soon as I possibly can! I promise you this!  But I also hope you do the same when there’s something that might cause a hiatus.

   I am looking for LONGTERM and CONTINUOS Roleplays! My partner should be very committed because otherwise, it wouldn’t make a lot of sense and we might as well drop it.

    When it comes to my writing style and preferences, I will list these things here for you to read.

Writing: I am a multi-paragraph sort of writer, which means that frequently, my writing will exceed at least 500 words, and upward of 1000+ words. I love detail in description, and I am actively seeking someone of the same infamy. Generally, I tend to write in the 3rd person. I’ve also tested the waters of 1st person but found it fairly awkward, if not, jarring so I’d rather keep it with 3rd person.

Pairings: I openly play characters of both genders, preferable m x f pairings, but I am open to m x m and f x f relationships as well. I have more experience with m x f relationships, so I might excel in this category more than I would do with the others. However, like I said, do not let this deter you. Very much open to other sexual orientations and preferences. Romance and intimate erotic scenes are always a part of the story, so if you are someone who prefers fading to black, I am afraid to tell you that my request isn’t something for you. This is not negotiable, sorry.

Genres: I am versatile when it comes to genres and settings that I like to play in. Supernatural is my absolute jam, especially urban and gothic fantasy, maybe even a bit of mythology as well?  Anything involving vampires, werewolves, demons, witches, shape shifters, aliens, mutants, other urban creature of folklore, given some sort of modern day spun, is absolutely perfect for me. I also really love science fiction in its many forms. Primarily, I take my sci-fi craving inspirations from Star Wars, Mass Effect, and even Destiny (even though I did not really enjoy the games…). Another genre that I’ve vast interest in includes that of the superhero genre. I’m a big fan of both Marvel and DC fandom, and the concept of having humans with abilities, anything of that short would be awesome to do. Against, these would be with original characters on my part. I’m not as fond of general real-life or general modern day genres and themes without a good, complex idea attached to it.

Characters: Faceclaims, GIFs, drawings, mood boards or just a plain physical description is absolutely welcome / sufficient. I am not someone who necessarily needs a face claim for a character in order ‘to get the picture’. There are many instances where I could not find a suiting match for my character’s definition, so I resorted to drawing them myself or leaving it with a simple description.  Characters should have flaws - that is a no brainer obviously, since nobody likes a Mary Sue / Gary Stu - but also some unique traits that make them stand out and remain memorable. I take inspiration from JK Rowling or George R.R. Martin for example as each of their character remains very unique and unforgettable in my opinion. They definitely did something right and I want to emulate that, so don’t be afraid to be rather bold with your character creation. Let your imagination run wild and surprise me with your ideas!

World building & plotting: An active roleplayer is wanted in this category, without a doubt. I love to world-build, but I tend to lose interest when I am the only one who puts in the effort into it. I can’t do the thinking for two people, so I implore you to at least share the burden (which should not be regarded as such because roleplaying is a fun hobby and nothing more). Too often I find people shying away from it in this regard. If I feel that I’m carrying the weight of the world-building part with specific ideas, I will end the Roleplay in immediately. And consider that the world building is just the tip of the beginning, so from that, I’ll be able to see whether we’ll be a match or not. Because we’d be starting from scratch with whatever we do, it would be a big relief to have someone who doesn’t mind letting ideas flow to set up the universe that we will be roleplaying in.

Content: I find writing erotic, dramatic or action packed scenes very enjoyable. I don’t hinder myself when certain subjects are mentioned that may be uncomfortable for the general public. But then again, as a reminder, a Roleplay is not reality but fiction. For example situations that heavily imply and involve brutality, mayhem, psychological and physical torture are things that need exploration.

Characters should be fully fleshed out, even the not so pretty parts of one’s personality and actions. There is no black and white, but a wide ranging spectrum of grey areas. A story does not always end well and life is never fair, so to implement this into a Roleplay, it would make a fantastic and very exciting story. Nothing is ever certain, people have their ups and downs… we shouldn’t make an exception here. I am not afraid to delve into even more sinister areas such as psychological trauma if its needed to further the story. I want to be as transparent as I possibly can. I have very few limits. The only subjects I will not touch, or rather avoid are heavy graphic rape scenes, bestiality, necrophilia and pedophilia. Other than that everything is fair game. What I also find quite fascinating is describing someone’s mental as well as physical transformation, ascending to a higher or lower state of being, etc. The process of metamorphosis, may it be the manipulation or corruption of someone… it all is quite eerie and at the same time, intriguing. It all leads to the progression of the story, so be warned that we won’t be walking on egg shells here.  

The story will not be solely centred on dark themes. I love me a mixture of everything, including drama, fluff, angst, action, comedy, romance, adventure, mystery and so forth. 

Let’s lighten up a bit, kay? :)

The ones I’ve marked in bold are the ones I am currently itching for the most.   

Original plots I am absolutely craving for are:

   Genres: 

anything mafia related

crimes in remote locations

small towns and supernatural happenings

post apocalyptic/dystopia

supernatural/modern fantasy (demons and devils, monster x hunter)

southern/mid western gothic

murder mystery (small town or big city)

modern/dark fairy tale retellings

sci-fi/cyberpunk

emotionally charged/dark and gritty

superpowers/gifted

unresolved sexual tension/slow burn

mythology

redemption

action

Pairings:

age gaps (non pedophiliac)

friend x best friend’s older sibling

enemies to lovers

cop x criminal

friends turned lovers/pining

grumpy x sunshine

dark hearted man melting for the innocent woman

reunited old lovers and/or friends

boss x employee

neighbours

mentor x mentee

hitman x victim

hurt/comfort

height differences

pet names

rich x poor (or noble and peasant / different social classes)

The Fandoms I am willing to do, although I prefer to make something original:

Films & television:

Marvel cinematic universe

Pacific Rim

Castlevania

Game of Thrones

Riverdale

Young Justice

Voltron

Constantine

Harry Potter

Star Wars

Games:

Witcher III

Devil May Cry

Bayonetta

God of War

Star Wars

Dark Souls

My Roleplaying platform is mostly on email or google docs! I also would like to keep in touch with my partner over a different medium, preferably Discord.   To contact me use these links here: 

EMAIL: [email protected]

DISCORD: Fenry#4086

 Find me there.

Here are two passwords that you can use in the headline so I know what you want to role-play. 

*For ORIGINAL Roleplay, the password is: Follow me and you shall be

free *For CANON Roleplay, the password is: I will follow you until the end

#original #OC #supernatural(original, not TV) #longterm #email #googledocs #paragraph #detailed #partner #dedicated #fantasy #canon #doubling #chat #friend

#indie rp #indie roleplay #independent roleplay #oc rp #para #long term #email #harry potter rp #submission

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orbemnews · 3 years

Link

Saudi Aramco Sells Oil Pipeline Stake for $12.4 Billion Here’s what you need to know: Lee Delaney joined BJ’s in 2016 as executive vice president and chief growth officer, and he became chief executive last year.Credit…Gretchen Ertl/Associated Press Lee Delaney, the president and chief executive of BJ’s Wholesale Club, died unexpectedly on Thursday of “presumed natural causes,” according to a statement released Friday by the company. He was 49. “We are shocked and profoundly saddened by the passing of Lee Delaney,” said Christopher J. Baldwin, the company’s executive chairman, said in a statement. “Lee was a brilliant and humble leader who cared deeply for his colleagues, his family and his community.” Mr. Delaney joined BJ’s in 2016 as executive vice president and chief growth officer. He was promoted to president in 2019 and became chief executive last year. Before joining BJ’s, he was a partner in the Boston office of Bain & Company from 1996 to 2016. Mr. Delaney earned a master’s in business administration from Carnegie Mellon University, and attended the University of Massachusetts, where he pursued a double major in computer science and mathematics. Mr. Delaney led the company through the unexpected changes in consumer demand spurred by the pandemic, with many customers stockpiling wholesale goods as they hunkered down at home. “2020 was a remarkable, transformative and challenging year that structurally changed our business for the better,” Mr. Delaney said in the company’s last quarterly earnings report. The BJ’s board appointed Bob Eddy, the chief administrative and financial officer, to serve as the company’s interim chief executive. Mr. Eddy joined the company in 2007 and became the chief financial officer in 2011, adding the job of chief administrative officer in 2018. “Bob partnered closely with Lee and has played an integral role in transforming and growing BJ’s Wholesale Club,” Mr. Baldwin said. He said that the company would announce decisions about its permanent executive leadership in a “reasonably short timeframe.” BJ’s, based in Westborough, Mass., operates 221 clubs and 151 BJ’s Gas locations in 17 states. Revolut’s office in London in 2018. The banking start-up is offering its workers the opportunity to work abroad for up to two months a year.Credit…Tom Jamieson for The New York Times Before the pandemic, companies used to lure top talent with lavish perks like subsidized massages, Pilates classes and free gourmet meals. Now, the hottest enticement is permission to work not just from home, but from anywhere — even, say, from the French Alps or a Caribbean island. Revolut, a banking start-up based in London, said Thursday that it would allow its more than 2,000 employees to work abroad for up to two months a year in response to requests to visit overseas family for longer periods. “Our employees asked for flexibility, and that’s what we’re giving them as part of our ongoing focus on employee experience and choice,” said Jim MacDougall, Revolut’s vice president of human resources. Georgia Pacquette-Bramble, a communications manager for Revolut, said she was planning to trade the winter in London for Spain or somewhere in the Caribbean. Other colleagues have talked about spending time with family abroad. Revolut has been valued at $5.5 billion, making it one of Europe’s most valuable financial technology firms. It joins a number of companies that will allow more flexible working arrangements to continue after the pandemic ends. JPMorgan Chase, Salesforce, Ford Motor and Target have said they are giving up office space as they expect workers to spend less time in the office, and Spotify has told employees they can work from anywhere. Not all companies, however, are shifting away from the office. Tech companies, including Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple, have added office space in New York over the last year. Amazon told employees it would “return to an office-centric culture as our baseline.” Dr. Dan Wang, an associate professor at Columbia Business School, said he did not expect office-centric companies to lose top talent to companies that allow flexible working, in part because many employees prefer to work from the office. Furthermore, when employees are not in the same space, there are fewer spontaneous interactions, and spontaneity is critical for developing ideas and collaborating, Dr. Wang said. “There is a cost,” he said. “Yes, we can interact via email, via Slack, via Zoom — we’ve all gotten used to that. But part of it is that we’ve lowered our expectations for what social interaction actually entails.” Revolut said it studied tax laws and regulations before introducing its policy, and that each request to work from abroad was subject to an internal review and approval process. But for some companies looking to put a similar policy in place, a hefty tax bill, or at least a complicated tax return, could be a drawback. After its initial public offering imploded, WeWork went public through a SPAC deal.Credit…Kate Munsch/Reuters After weeks of wading into the debate over how to regulate SPACS, the popular blank-check deals that provide companies a back door to public markets, the Securities and Exchange Commission is sending its first shot across the bow. John Coates, the acting director of the corporate finance division at the S.E.C., issued a lengthy statement on Thursday about how securities laws apply to blank-check firms, the DealBook newsletter reports. “With the unprecedented surge has come unprecedented scrutiny,” Mr. Coates wrote of the recent boom in blank-check deals. In particular, he is interested in a crucial (and controversial) difference between SPACs and traditional initial public offerings: blank-check firms are allowed to publish often-rosy financial forecasts when merging with an acquisition target, while companies going public in an I.P.O. are not. Regulators consider such forecasts too risky for firms as yet untested by the public markets. Investors raise money for SPACs via an I.P.O. of a shell company, and those funds are used within two years to merge with an unspecified company, which then also becomes a publicly traded company. Because the deal is technically a merger, it’s given the same “safe harbor” legal protections for its financial forecasts as a typical M.& A. deal. And that’s why there are flying-taxi companies with little revenue going public via a SPAC while promising billions in sales far in the future. The S.E.C. thinks allowing financial forecasts for these deals might be a problem. They can be “untested, speculative, misleading or even fraudulent,” Mr. Coates wrote. And he concludes his statement by suggesting a major rethink of how the “full panoply” of securities laws applies to SPACs, which could upend the blank-check business model. If the S.E.C. does not treat SPAC deals as the I.P.Os they effectively are, he writes, “potentially problematic forward-looking information may be disseminated without appropriate safeguards.” The letter serves as a warning, but perhaps not much else — yet. Unless the S.E.C. issues new rules (as it did for penny stocks) or Congress passes legislation, SPAC projections will continue. But this strongly worded statement could moderate or even mute them. “The S.E.C. has now put them on notice,” Lynn Turner, a former chief accountant of the agency, said. Amazon Warehouse Unionization Votes Either side needed 1,521 votes to win. A total of 505 ballots were challenged; 76 were void.·Source: National Labor Relations Board Amazon beat back the unionization drive at its warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., the counting of ballots in the closely watched effort showed on Friday. A total of 738 workers voted “Yes” to unionize and 1,798 voted “No.” There were 76 ballots marked as void and 505 votes were challenged, according to the National Labor Relations Board. The union leading the drive to organize, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, said most of the challenges were from Amazon. About 50 percent of the 5,805 eligible voters at the warehouse cast ballots in the election. Either side needed to receive more than 50 percent of all cast ballots to prevail. The ballots were counted in random order in the National Labor Relations Board’s office in Birmingham, Ala., and the process was broadcast via Zoom to more than 200 journalists, lawyers and other observers. The voting was conducted by mail from early February until the end of last month. A handful of workers from the labor board called out the results of each vote — “Yes” for a union or “No” — for nearly four hours on Thursday. Sophia June and Miles McKinley contributed to this report. A screenshot of a “vax cards” page on Facebook. Online stores offering counterfeit or stolen vaccine cards have mushroomed in recent weeks, according to Saoud Khalifah, the founder of FakeSpot, which offers tools to detect fake listings and reviews online. The efforts are far from hidden, with Facebook pages named “vax-cards” and eBay listings with “blank vaccine cards” openly hawking the items, Sheera Frenkel reports for The New York Times. Last week, 45 state attorneys general banded together to call on Twitter, Shopify and eBay to stop the sale of false and stolen vaccine cards. Facebook, Twitter, eBay, Shopify and Etsy said that the sale of fake vaccine cards violated their rules and that they were removing posts that advertised the items. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention introduced the vaccination cards in December, describing them as the “simplest” way to keep track of Covid-19 shots. By January, sales of false vaccine cards started picking up, Mr. Khalifah said. Many people found the cards were easy to forge from samples available online. Authentic cards were also stolen by pharmacists from their workplaces and put up for sale, he said. Many people who bought the cards were opposed to the Covid-19 vaccines, Mr. Khalifah said. In some anti-vaccine groups on Facebook, people have publicly boasted about getting the cards. Other buyers want to use the cards to trick pharmacists into giving them a vaccine, Mr. Khalifah said. Because some of the vaccines are two-shot regimens, people can enter a false date for a first inoculation on the card, which makes it appear as if they need a second dose soon. Some pharmacies and state vaccination sites have prioritized people due for their second shots. An empty conference room in New York, which is among the cities with the lowest rate of workers returning to offices.Credit…George Etheredge for The New York Times In only a year, the market value of office towers in Manhattan has plummeted 25 percent, according to city projections released on Wednesday. Across the country, the vacancy rate for office buildings in city centers has steadily climbed over the past year to reach 16.4 percent, according to Cushman & Wakefield, the highest in about a decade. That number could climb further if companies keep giving up office space because of hybrid or fully remote work, Peter Eavis and Matthew Haag report for The New York Times. So far, landlords like Boston Properties and SL Green have not suffered huge financial losses, having survived the past year by collecting rent from tenants locked into long leases — the average contract for office space runs about seven years. But as leases come up for renewal, property owners could be left with scores of empty floors. At the same time, many new office buildings are under construction — 124 million square feet nationwide, or enough for roughly 700,000 workers. Those changes could drive down rents, which were touching new highs before the pandemic. And rents help determine assessments that are the basis for property tax bills. Many big employers have already given notice to the owners of some prestigious buildings that they are leaving when their leases end. JPMorgan Chase, Ford Motor, Salesforce, Target and more are giving up expensive office space and others are considering doing so. The stock prices of the big landlords, which are often structured as real estate investment trusts that pass almost all of their profit to investors, trade well below their previous highs. Shares of Boston Properties, one of the largest office landlords, are down 29 percent from the prepandemic high. SL Green, a major New York landlord, is 26 percent lower. President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris during a White House appearance on Thursday.Credit…Amr Alfiky/The New York Times President Biden proposed a vast expansion of federal spending on Friday, calling for a 16 percent increase in domestic programs as he tries to harness the government’s power to reverse what officials called a decade of underinvestment in the nation’s most pressing issues. The proposed $1.52 trillion in spending on discretionary programs would significantly bolster education, health research and fighting climate change. It comes on top of Mr. Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package and a separate plan to spend $2.3 trillion on the nation’s infrastructure. Mr. Biden’s first spending request to Congress showcases his belief that expanding, not shrinking, the federal government is crucial to economic growth and prosperity. It would direct billions of dollars toward reducing inequities in housing and education, as well as making sure every government agency puts climate change at the front of its agenda. It does not include tax proposals, economic projections or so-called mandatory programs like Social Security, which will all be included in a formal budget request the White House will release this spring. Among its major new spending initiatives, the plan would dedicate an additional $20 billion to help schools that serve low-income children and provide more money to students who have experienced racial or economic barriers to higher education. It would create a multi-billion-dollar program for researching diseases like cancer and add $14 billion to fight and adapt to the damages of climate change. It would also seek to lift the economies of Central American countries, where rampant poverty, corruption and devastating hurricanes have fueled migration toward the southwestern border and a variety of initiatives to address homelessness and housing affordability, including on tribal lands. And it asks for an increase of about 2 percent in spending on national defense. The request represents a sharp break with the policies of President Donald J. Trump, whose budget proposals prioritized military spending and border security, while seeking to cut funding in areas like environmental protection. All told, the proposal calls for a $118 billion increase in discretionary spending in the 2022 fiscal year, when compared with the base spending allocations this year. It seeks to capitalize on the expiration of a decade of caps on spending growth, which lawmakers agreed to in 2010 but frequently breached in subsequent years. Administration officials would not specify on Friday whether that increase would result in higher federal deficits in their coming budget proposal, but promised its full budget would “address the overlapping challenges we face in a fiscally and economically responsible way.” As part of that effort, the request seeks $1 billion in new funding for the Internal Revenue Service to enforce tax laws, including “increased oversight of high-income and corporate tax returns.” That is clearly aimed at raising tax receipts by cracking down on tax avoidance by companies and the wealthy. Officials said the proposals did not reflect the spending called for in Mr. Biden’s infrastructure plan, which he introduced last week, or for a second plan he has yet to roll out, which will focus on what officials call “human infrastructure” like education and child care. Congress, which is responsible for approving government spending, is under no requirement to adhere to White House requests. In recent years, lawmakers rejected many of the Trump administration’s efforts to gut domestic programs. But Mr. Biden’s plan, while incomplete as a budget, could provide a blueprint for Democrats who narrowly control the House and Senate and are anxious to reassert their spending priorities after four years of a Republican White House. Stocks on Wall Street climbed further into record territory on Friday: The S&P 500 index rose 0.8 percent, bringing its gain for the week to 2.7 percent. Shares of Amazon rose 2.2 percent after the company prevailed against a unionization drive at a warehouse in Alabama. The relatively steady gains in the stock market have sent the VIX index, a measure of volatility, to its lowest level since February 2020. The index was below 17 points on Friday. In mid-March, as the pandemic shut down parts of the global economy, the VIX had spiked above 80. The yield on 10-year Treasury notes jumped 4 basis points, or 0.04 percentage point, to 1.66 percent. The yield on 10-year government bonds rose across Europe, too. On Thursday, Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, reiterated his intention to keep supporting the economic recovery The rollout of vaccinations meant the United States economy could probably reopen soon, but the recovery was still “uneven and incomplete,” Mr. Powell said at the International Monetary Fund annual conference. European stock indexes were mixed on Friday, though the Stoxx Europe 600 notched its sixth straight week of gains. The DAX index in Germany rose 0.2 percent after data showed an unexpected drop in industrial production. The FTSE 100 in London fell 0.4 percent. Oil prices fell slightly with futures of West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. crude benchmark, 0.4 percent lower to $59.38 a barrel. Just months after returning to the skies, Boeing’s troubled 737 Max jet is facing another setback. Boeing said Friday that it had notified 16 airlines and other customers of a potential electrical problem with the Max and recommended that they temporarily stop flying some planes. The company refused to say how many planes were affected, but four U.S. airlines said they would stop using nearly 70 Max jets. Boeing would not say how long the planes would be sidelined. The statement comes just months after companies resumed flying the jet, which had been grounded for nearly two years because of a pair of accidents that killed nearly 350 people. Load new posts Part of Saudi Aramco’s giant Ras Tanura oil terminal. The company said it would raise $12.4 billion from selling a minority stake in its oil pipeline business.Credit…Ahmed Jadallah/Reuters Saudi Aramco, the national oil company of Saudi Arabia, has reached a deal to raise $12.4 billion from the sale of a 49 percent stake in a pipeline-rights company. The money will come from a consortium led by EIG Global Energy Partners, a Washington-based investor in pipelines and other energy infrastructure. Under the arrangement announced on Friday, the investor group will buy 49 percent of a new company called Aramco Oil Pipelines, which will have the rights to 25 years of payments from Aramco for transporting oil through Saudi Arabia’s pipeline networks. Aramco is under pressure from its main owner, the Saudi government, to generate cash to finance state operations as well as investments like new cities to diversify the economy away from oil. The company has pledged to pay $75 billion in annual dividends, nearly all to the government, as well as other taxes. Last year, the dividends came to well in excess of the company’s net income of $49 billion. Recently, Aramco was tapped by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s main policymaker, to lead a new domestic investment drive to build up the Saudi economy. The pipeline sale “reinforces Aramco’s role as a catalyst for attracting significant foreign investment into the Kingdom,” Aramco said in a statement. From Saudi Arabia’s perspective, the deal has the virtue of raising money up front without giving up control. Aramco will own a 51 percent majority share in the pipeline company and “retain full ownership and operational control” of the pipes the company said. Aramco said Saudi Arabia would retain control over how much oil the company produces. Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich neighbor, has struck similar oil and gas deals with outside investors. Source link Orbem News #Aramco #Billion #oil #Pipeline #Saudi #sells #stake

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