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WIP Wednesday

I got tagged by @groceryreceipts and @mollywog. Here's a little preview of from my Hanahaki MJ fic!

Something about Finnick—his charm, maybe, or the way he carries Annie’s love like a gift—eases something in me. For once, the dandelions in my throat don't feel so suffocating .  On my way back to my corner, I spare a glance at Gale—hunkered down, asleep. I wonder what he’d say if he knew about my condition. All the times I told him love wasn’t for me. That I’d never come around. And then I did—but not for him. Would it be the final straw that would make him leave? Would he be ashamed I’d conceded to love in a way that would kill me if the war didn’t first? Would he ask why I'm not taking the obvious way out, when I’ve spent all our time together running from pain? I catch a pair of weary blue eyes watching me. Peeta. Worry and something I can't name is etched onto his face. I slow without thinking as I pass him. "Couldn't sleep?" I ask.  He shakes his head. "Too much on my mind," he admits. His hand runs through his hair in a gesture I find charmingly boyish. I hesitate. “Is it something I could tell you was real?” I ask awkwardly. Talking to Finnick and Peeta earlier may have been my limit for uncomfortable conversation. He begins to answer but goes quiet, eyes drifting to my hand as it presses against my throat. The discomfort there is growing—hot, scratchy, a cough curling just beneath it. He picks up the water canister and offers it to me. I’m caught off guard—the gesture feels like a thread pulling me back to those seamless exchanges of food and drink on the Victory Tour.

Tagging anyone left who wants to play!

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i suspect that a huge factor in the defense of students using gen ai (and academic dishonesty in general tbh) comes from the fundamental misunderstanding of how school works.

to simplify thousands of educator's theories into the simplest terms, there are two types of stuff you're learning in school: content and skills. content is what we often think of as the material in school- spelling, times tables, names, dates, facts, etc.- whereas skills are usually more subtle. think phonics, mental math, reading comprehension, comparing and contrasting; though students do those things often, the how usually isn't deemed as important as the what.

this leads to a disconnect that's most obvious when students ask the infamous "when will we use this in the real world?" they have- often correctly- identified content that the content is niche, outdated, or not optimized but haven't considered the skills that this class/lesson/assignment will teach.

i can think of two shining examples from when i was a kid. one was in middle school when they announced that we were now gonna be studying latin, and we all wondered why on earth they would choose latin as our foreign language. every adult promised us it'd be helpful if we went into medicine, law, or religion (ignoring that most of us didn't want to go into medicine, law, or religion), but we didn't buy that and never took it seriously. the truth was that our new principal knew that learning languages gets harder as you get older, and so building the skills of learning a language while it was easy for us was more important than which language we learned, and that's an answer twelve year old me would've actually respected.

similarly, my geometry class all hated proofs. we couldn't think of a single situation where you'd have to convince someone a triangle was a triangle and "look at it, of course it's a triangle" wouldn't be an acceptable answer. it was actually the band director who pointed out that it wasn't literally about triangles; it was about being able to prove or disprove something, anything using facts.

and so, so, so many assignments that are annoying as hell in school make more sense when you think about the skills as well as the content. "why do i have to present information about something the teacher obviously already knows about?" because research, verifying sources, summarizing, and public speaking are all really important skills. "why does this have to be a group project?" because you will have to work with other people in your life, and learning how to be a team player (and deal with people who aren't) is an essential skill. "why do we have to read these scientific articles and learn about graphs?" because if you can understand them, people can't lie to you about them.

now, of course, there's a lot we could do better- especially we as in the american school system. the reason i have an education minor but am not teaching is because of those issues. there are plenty of assignments that are busywork and teachers that are assholes and ways that the system is failing us.

but that doesn't mean you should cut off your nose to spite your face!

the ability to learn and grow and think critically is one of our most powerful tools as people. our brains are capable of incredible things! however, the same way you can't lift a car unless you consistently lift and build up to that, your brain needs to train in order to do its best.

so yeah, maybe chatgpt can write a five paragraph essay for you on the differences between thomas jefferson and alexander hamilton's governing philosophies. and maybe it won't even fuck it up! congratulations, you got away with it. but by outright refusing to use your brain and practice these skills, who have you helped? you haven't learned anything. worse, you haven't even learned how to learn.

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I've been seeing this in my head for two days:

“Hey, Delly,” he says miserably, leaning against the doorway to her room when he finds her. “Can I talk to you?”

Delly herself is lying on the floor, her blonde hair fanned out around her as she tosses one of Katniss’s balls of yarn into the air, catching and tossing it repeatedly. She pauses, tilting her head towards the door until she’s looking at him upside down, and shrugs.

“What’s up?” she asks, waiting for him to clamber over and lay on the floor beside side her, their heads next to each others, but their feet pointed in the opposite directions. “Did something happen?”

“Yeah,” he nods, staring up at the ceiling fan.

Delly waits. Peeta has a tendency to keep things to himself, plus, he hates it when people pry. She tosses the yarn back up, catching and tossing, catching and tossing.

“Do you think…” he trails off. “Do you think that people can change?”

Delly shrugs. “I don’t know, depends on the person.”

“What if…it’s a stubborn person?” he asks.

“Like you?” she turns towards him with a smirk, and he just rolls his eyes.

“Okay. Yeah, yeah.” He replies dryly, but she can detect the hint of a smile, so she's won.

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The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004)  dir. Garry Marshall

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Butting Heads at Work 📜✨

Co-Workers/Forced Proximity Trope reigns supreme!

I love when they roast each other in a professional setting. I want them to hate each other due to own prejudice and biases!

Give me all the recs! :D

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“superman” “miss lane” wow I’ve got the biggest boner

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We just met the Imperial Princess, the psycho emperor’s half sister, and I love her already.

Emperor wants to marry her off to XZ for power and she’s all “dude he’s already got a girlfriend, the optics plus he’s gonna hate me no thanks” and the emperor is all “well they broke up also I am gonna kill her on the battlefield and we can blame the rebels.”

And she is smart enough to say sure sure oh wise emperor but goes back and has an absolute fit because she realizes that even if somehow XZ does not suspect who offed his woman, between a psychotic brother and a super powerful and not wanting to be used husband, she’s gonna be fucked and not in the way Xie Zheng wants to fuck Fan Chanyou.

When her maid is all “but he’s a great choice, young and powerful and coool” and she rages “do you think he can have a good end?” Aaaaa my lady with a brain!

All that and she has the mad hots for ML’s advisor who I really really like and who honestly appears to be chill enough to put up with her so I hope that works out.

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all animals have a place in the ecosystem and that includes humans and im sick of encountering edgelords who say the earth would be better off if we were wiped out. you wanna mess things up for every species that has adapted to live alongside us? as far as i can tell our existance is pretty intertwined with the world we live in, and caring about animals should include caring about humans because we're also animals. so we should probably focus on doing good with the resources we have instead of fantasizing about a big nuclear reset button. you sound like a pokémon villain.

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My two brain cells 🖤🤍

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There are gonna be people who won't like hearing this but if you want to live in a world where mixed marriages, families, and adoptions (particularly POC adopting outside their "race") aren't maligned and discriminated against, then you have got to get more chill about seeing someone partaking in something cultural that you don't think fits the "race" you perceive them as.

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Here I am again, updating this fic for the third day in a row...

Chater Update!!!!

A Girl, A Boy and Everything Else, Chapter 14: minutes, hours, days [part 3]

Preview:

She takes a deep breath, cupping his face with two hands. “Peeta Mellark.” “Uh-huh,” he replies dumbly. “I love you,” she says it very seriously, frowning like she’s upset, but she’s not – he doesn’t think – not exactly. “More than I love myself. So, so much.” “T-thank you,” he says, wide-eyed and stunned.

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I never assume or even consider that people might be crying ”for attention” or to manipulate me. To me crying in public is an absolute nightmare so I’m just like damn they must be soooooooo embarrassed ill just pretend I didn’t notice so they don’t feel bad.

Constantly learning that that’s not how most people think.

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I know the point of being a good writer is having the ability to be flexible in the type of content you write, but I still find it absolutely WILD that these 2 things were written by the same person