#I did not expect for today to be one of historical significance

[wndaswife]

(fic request) pls write this w nun!wanda (if you want) 😵😵😵

to worship and submit | wanda maximoff & fem!reader

Being the daughter of the man that leads the church choir means attending the services when you run out of excuses to be anywhere else, but a young woman who's recently joined the parish to become a nun has begun to make your time there worthwhile.

Word count: 7419

Tags: smut, fluff, humour, sacrilege, quite literally fucking in front of a crucifix, even i feel slightly guilty for writing it, strap-ons, rough sex, spanking, slapping, spitting, degradation, praise, daddy kink, mentions of masturbation, sub!wanda maximoff, dom!reader | MINORS DNI

A/N: SO... i did do some research for this fic... but only SOME... meaning some of the info may be incorrect fyi!!!

gif credit to evilly

Every Sunday since your dad joined the church as their choir leader, you’d been making yourself busy in advance just in case he’d ask if you wanted to come to the services. 

You were proud of your dad — really, you were — because he loved music and loved the community the church brought him, and the church was closeby to where your mom worked as an elementary school teacher, so your parents were able to work together when there were community events that involved both the school and the church.

Though, being happy for your dad didn’t mean you also had to be happy when he invited you to the services.

Sometimes you’d attend special occasions like Easter and other holidays and church events wherein your dad prepared his own assortment of music and such for the choir to play, but only because you were there to support him and what he was passionate about — music and community and his family.

Such events were big deals at the church he volunteered at because it was well-known for its large community; the church itself was closely connected to a nearby convent where it had close ties to the nunnery there, as well as having one of if not the most ornate architecture all preserved within a historically-significant religious landmark.

But for the last few weeks, he hadn’t asked you to go with him because he was so busy with the new influx of students joining from the Catholic elementary school your mom worked at; they were all there singing on the weekends for their volunteer hours, but at the very least, your dad said they were still enthusiastic and friendly kids.

So on the morning of one of the very rare occasions in which you hadn’t had anything planned for the Sunday because you weren’t expecting him to invite you as he hadn’t for the last while, your dad invited you to the service.

You could’ve truly made up an excuse and flat-out lied about being busy, but it’d been a while since he asked and you knew he’d been working hard with the new students in his group, so you supposed it wasn’t so much trouble to accept his offer, even if you did groan it out in a superficial fit about having to get out of bed earlier.

It wasn’t that you not being religious had anything major to do with avoiding going to church, because you didn’t entirely mind when your religious parents brought you to the services for special occasions, but rather because you didn’t very much have the patience or sufficient concern for the readings and worship to attend the nearly-two-hour services.

That was truly your most pressing issue with attending the Sunday services with your dad, but today was different, with an unexpected experience to make you dread going even more than you did previously.

“Excuse me?” a timid, unfamiliar voice chirped from behind you.

You turned to see a young woman standing by the doorway of the back hall where the entrance to the choir balcony was. 

Typically, you sat around there when your dad was conducting because you weren’t very involved in the church enough to sit at the pews nor were you part of the choir. 

But from where you were sitting, you weren’t entirely uninvolved as you could still see and hear the services — it was the perfect spot. 

“You aren’t allowed to sit here,” the young woman told you, running the pads of her two fingers along the edge of her sleeve. 

Her dark brown hair was neatly pulled back into a conservative bun and she was wearing a black plain dress with a modest plain scoop neckline to show the buttons and collar of the crisply-ironed long-sleeved white blouse underneath that all of the church’s nuns wore, but the simplicity of her outfit and the uncovering of her hair meant to you that she was presently studying at the church to become a nun. 

“I’m the choir dude’s daughter,” you said with a polite smile and looked away, expecting for your response to be all the elaboration she needed. 

In a way that was subtle with the intention not to be offensive but in that very manner was offensive in itself because of how irritating her caution was, the woman cleared her throat. 

“I-I know,” she pressed, “but this area isn’t open for seating. For anyone.”

When you didn’t answer for a moment as you stared at her, she quickly said, “I’m sorry. They told me to tell you.”

“I’ll find a spot in the pews,” you answered and collected your things. 

From the corner of your eye, it seemed that she wanted to offer a seating alternative just to make up for what she was forced to tell you, but there wasn’t very much else she could offer. 

That Thursday, you were back at the church to pick up an ironed uniform for your dad; it was for a special event set for the upcoming Sunday, and the church pressed it for him and everything. 

It was a nice gesture.

They were nice people.

On Thursdays, there were only morning services and events for children in another spacious room where they could colour and play with the church’s team leaders and nuns. 

But in the afternoon — which it now was — there wasn’t anything going on. 

When you arrived, the church was still and warm with gentle sunlight shining through the stained glass windows and casting a myriad of colours against the pews. 

You looked over your dad’s text again and walked through the directions he told you to take to get to the back halls of the church, just a few turns from the stairway that led up to the choir balcony. 

The room where you were to pick up the uniform was as pretty as the rest of the church; it was a small prayer room with a pedestal and stained windows and red carpeting, but it was much cozier and probably hadn’t been used for prayer for the group size it was designed for in a little while.

You could see through the glass door the folded uniform for your dad on the windowsill behind the pedestal with a name tag placed on top of it ready for pick-up along with a few other clothes for some other church volunteers. 

Upon entry, you closed the door quietly behind you and stepped into the room where you could now see a small table by the window and a familiar young woman sitting with a notebook, jotting a few things down from what looked like a leather-bound book. 

“Can I just get my dad’s uniform from there, or do I need to sign it off or something?” you asked, announcing your presence. 

She looked up from the notebook and at you then to the uniforms on the windowsill. 

“Oh, you’re…” She paused and thought for a moment. “The choir conductor’s daughter?”

“Yeah.”

“I can sign it off for you,” she replied and smiled. 

She stood from the table and walked around it to the uniforms, where a piece of paper was set beside the line of neatly-folded clothes.

You watched as she jotted down a few things onto the paper with a pen before carefully picking up the packaged uniform and turning to hand it to you.

“Thank you,” you answered. 

“Of course. Have a good day,” she replied and bid you a goodbye before heading back to the table by the window. 

You were on the way to leave the room, but you couldn’t, for some odd reason, take your eyes away from the way she lowered herself into her seat and resumed her notetaking. 

She didn’t notice when you changed your direction and walked towards the table she was sitting at until you were perhaps just a metre away from her, when she then looked up from her notes and up at you. 

“Did I give you the wrong uniform?” she asked, worried and now standing up from her chair. 

“No,” you answered quickly and waved your hand.

She stayed standing, curious as to why you walked back. 

“Hard at work?” you asked, pointing at her notebook. 

Confused for a moment, perhaps by your curiosity in speaking with her, she looked over to her notebook and then back at you with a friendly smile, “Yes, a little. They gave me something to study from. I’m just taking notes.”

Carefully, you reached forward and spun her notebook around so you could read it. 

Her curiosity seemed to spike when you leaned forward to read her notes, and she looked at you with a small smile. 

“Um,” she started awkwardly. “I want to apologise for earlier this week. For making you move seats.”

“Oh, it’s fine,” you replied and looked up from her notes to smile at her reassuringly. “I know they just made you tell me because you’re new.”

The young woman seemed reassured, her shoulders even relaxing a bit when you said it. 

“You’re still… What do you call it? Like, you’re studying to be a nun here? Not fully one yet?”

She shook her head. 

“Yes, I’m in the study period before becoming a novitiate,” she answered. 

Your fingers ran over her delicate handwriting, feeling the indentations of her pen against the paper.

“To worship and submit,” you read aloud from the notebook. “Fascinating.”

She caught onto your twinge of sarcasm but approached it with humour, laughing a little and conceding, “It is a bit medieval, but an important quality, I’d presume.”

Reflecting suddenly on how young the woman seemed much younger than the other nuns, you asked her, “How old are you?”

“Twenty-four.”

She was a bit older than you, but still quite young.

Her hair was down now, though still neatly brushed and free of frizz and tucked behind her ears. She was wearing a white long-sleeved shirt and an ankle-length black skirt patterned lightly with gardenias. 

“How did you get into wanting to be a nun, anyhow?” you asked and moved your attention away from the notebook and towards her. “You don’t seem like the type.”

“I-I don’t?” she inquired, almost sounding nervous at the implication that she wasn’t training herself properly. 

“I mean, pious and submissive — sure,” you said, referring to her notes, which made her seem a bit flustered, “but not like a nun.”

She questioned curiously, “More like…?”

After humming aloud in thought, you turned to her with your hip laying against the edge of the table and suggested, “Elementary school teacher. Vet. I don’t know, something like that.”

She was pretty — truly. 

Cute, even. 

“When I was younger, I wanted to be a vet,” she told you, smiling sweetly. 

“Changed your mind?”

“Younger as in quite young, perhaps around ten,” she recalled. “My parents are both rather religious and ever since I turned fourteen it’s always been their intention to have me join a congregation.”

Interest piqued, you asked, “And your intention for yourself was…?”

“For myself?” she repeated as if taken by surprise. 

You nodded once. 

She paused for a moment to hum thoughtfully before saying, “I was happy to follow whichever path my parents intended for me.”

“You find passion in nunnery?” you asked. “Genuine question — not judging.”

“Of course,” she answered. 

Your phone buzzed in your pocket and you quickly checked it to see that your dad had messaged asking if you were able to pick up his uniform.

“I’m sorry. I’ve been holding you back from something,” the woman apologised and stepped to the side to allow you to leave.

Sliding your phone back into your pocket and adjusting your dad’s uniform in your hand, you replied, “No, not at all. My dad’s just impatient. I should get going now though, since here’s a few errands I have to run before noon.”

She nodded in understanding. 

“It was nice being able to talk with you,” she then said. “I haven’t been able to talk with very many people since I came here. It’s all just been about studying and the church.”

Before you left, you made sure to ask for her name, to which she replied telling you it was ‘Wanda.’

Cute name.

It’d been quite a while since you ever attended the services two weeks in a row. The last you did was during the last half of August the first year your dad started conducting the church choir, during which you had nothing else to do but wait for classes to start — so you went to the services.

This time, because the church was celebrating something special, your dad asked both you and your mother to attend the service because he’d been working on preparing a set of songs for the occasion.

Under the guise of being a supportive daughter, your parents didn’t second guess why you were so willing to attend the service this week, nor did they ask if there was a certain individual you were perhaps a bit excited to see again.

Truthfully, you couldn’t stop thinking of Wanda since you last saw her a few days ago. There was much to her you felt laid dormant and sleeping, awakened only just in the slightest during the conversation you had with her. She was kind and curious, but also painfully naive. 

She was a few years older than you but knew far less about the truth of her own ambitions and strayed perhaps not even a foot’s distance away from behind her parents’ shadows.

Wanda was interesting, but intrigued you for far too long for her to be only that. Though you couldn’t very well figure out what it was about her that made her bounce around in your head like a pinball until an unassuming evening.

It was sincerely an unrelated act when you first started, travelling your hand down between your legs in the silence of the evening to relieve yourself of the pent-up stress from classes that’d come over you during the last few days.

Truly, it was completely unrelated to Wanda and anything and everything about her when you started, and even during, until you reached your peak of release and found your imagination flashing with curiosities about what she looked like under her garments, how she’d squeal if you spanked her ass and if she’d like it, or how she’d cry out in sheer pleasure if you forced her down and made her take her spankings regardless.

For a moment afterwards there was guilt, but every day onwards there was curiosity, wondering for hours about what you’d seen when you reached that point of pleasure during which Wanda was your only muse.

You’d like to tell yourself it was only that curiosity that guided your willingness to attend the service with your parents, but it was something else entirely too — something completely carnal.

For the first hour of the service, Wanda was still nowhere to be seen. Because of the church’s connections with its convent, the nuns had a large role in some of the day-to-day happenings, but mostly during important church events like what you were presently attending.

Wanda wasn’t a nun yet; she was yet to be even a novitiate as she had mentioned, and so perhaps she just didn’t get to attend events like these. 

Though you personally found that counter-productive, you weren't one to complain about the convent’s decisions, but you did wish you got to see Wanda.

If she wasn’t one to be able to attend such events, when would you see her next?

After coming to the realisation that you probably just weren’t going to see her today or perhaps even for a little while, you excused yourself after having been present for nearly all of your dad’s song arrangements and with enough time to be able to be back from the washroom with well-enough time to catch the rest of his songs.

To your surprise, you saw the very woman who’d been on your mind for the last hour was sitting in the hall by the stairway that led up to the choir balcony. She was wearing the same outfit as she had been the first time you met her, with her hair done up in the same way too.

“Excuse me, but you aren’t allowed to sit here,” you teased, approaching from the right and walking into the hallway.

She quickly swiped at her eyes and began to apologise before she raised her head and saw it was you who had spoken to her, and you who now stood beside the bench she was sitting on.

Though she smiled and seemed relieved and happy to see you, you could tell that she’d just been crying — alone in this hallway away from the service and the nuns and sitting at the far end of the bench so as not to be seen by the people attending the mass.

Wanda stood, running her palms down the sides of her dress with a friendly smile while saying, “You’re here.”

“Yeah,” you answered distractedly as you focused on the slight redness of her eyes and the tip of her nose. 

You then asked once you were sure she’d been crying, “Are you okay?”

Suddenly feeling self-conscious after realising it must've been obvious that she’d been crying, Wanda carefully wiped under her eyes again and even tried making herself seem less dishevelled by tucking her hair behind her ears before you took her hands away from her face and made her stop fidgeting with her appearance.

“Seriously, what’s wrong?” you pressed.

Dismissively as to not bring any more attention to herself, she told you, “It’s really nothing. It’s nothing to bother you with.”

“I wanna be bothered,” you answered lightheartedly. “Come on.”

Wanda smiled at your gaiety and you urged her to tell you what was wrong once more before she finally exhaled in surrender though she didn’t sit down before speaking, implying that in spite of the fact of giving in to you, she wasn’t very well planning on delving too deep into what had been bothering her.

“Earlier today, I had accidentally misplaced the leather book I’d been studying from — the one you saw me with a few days prior, if you can remember,” she said. “And I was scolded terribly for it. It was quite deserving as it was an important collection of notes and such, so I do not question from where my scolding had come, but it seems to me that all I’ve done since I started here is get myself in trouble with the other nuns.”

Here, you tried taking her hand and urging her to sit down, but she wouldn’t, and slipped her fingers out of your hold.

“They found the book in one of the small prayer rooms I’d been studying in, so at the very least it was not a mistake of ruining the integrity of the book by losing it completely, but rather the very principle of having been given something so important and misplacing it,” she continued.

Wanda swallowed and seemed to be contemplating whether to go into more detail, and you could tell that there was something else that had been bothering her that didn’t exactly have to do with misplacing the book.

Before she had the chance to make a decision, there was a passerby who came from the service in search of the restrooms, which interrupted Wanda’s train of thought as she and the man exchanged a brief hello.

“We can go somewhere else,” you offered, taking her hand and heading down the hallway with her. She didn’t take her hand away from you this time, but instead told you that she only needed time to be on her own and that she was fine now. 

The only other place you knew was the prayer room you picked your dad’s uniform up in, and fortunately it was unlocked.

You ushered Wanda into the room and she smiled at you from behind and you led her forward to one of the front seats in front of the altar, regarding you with admiration for the effort you put into wanting to express your concern for her and make sure she felt heard. 

The early morning beams of light shone through the stained glass like they had that afternoon you’d come here a few days prior, but the room was far less stuffy now, familiar and almost reminiscent of something nostalgic. 

The feeling could easily be because of the fact that you’d been envisioning what you could remember from it nearly every hour since that past Thursday, with the room in the background of your mental portrait of Wanda. 

She settled down in the seat beside you, feeling encouraged more so because she wanted now to be closer to you rather than solely to sit and talk about what had been bothering her. 

But she could partake in the latter if that was what you asked of her — and it was. 

“I know that I hardly know you, but I’ve been here for nearly a whole month and you are the person I feel closest to,” she confessed.

You felt flattered, though you knew telling you that she felt close to you wasn’t exactly the point of why she said that. 

Wanda further reflected aloud, “I’m getting nowhere I’m supposed to, not finding the call to God like both my parents and the nuns told me about though I have even given it plenty of time. I studied English in college and yet can find not even a little interest in my religious readings.”

While she thought in silence for a moment, you didn’t interrupt her. 

When she found the words to verbalise what she’d been meaning to say, she began with a question: “Do you remember when you asked what my own intentions were for myself? On Thursday?”

You nodded. 

“It’s ridiculous, but I can’t even recall the last time I sincerely asked that to myself, but perhaps in shallower terms, such as wondering where I might be in a few years or what I might do with my time in the convent.

“But never what I wanted — never who I wanted to be.”

After a moment, when you were sure she wasn’t trying to find words to express herself nor contemplating whether to say something, you asked, “And do you know who you want to be?”

For a brief moment — half of one, really — Wanda looked thoughtful, and then she said and gestured to her clothing and the prayer room, “Not this.”

“So then, what?” you inquired further. 

You teased, “A vet?”

Wanda giggled and sat back a bit in her seat. “Perhaps if I were ten,” she said. 

Then more seriously, she added, “But now, I’m not very sure.”

“How did you come to realise what you were interested in?” Wanda asked. “For example, your studies. What are you studying?”

She was talking fast, obviously very invested in your conversation together and also rather curious about you. 

You thought that was cute; you liked Wanda. 

“I’m studying philosophy,” you told her to which she straightened and was eager to hear more about. “But with studies, it’s different, because you’re talking about more personal matters. Academics are far different from personal paths.”

Wanda seemed a bit disappointed because she was looking for a definite answer, but what you explained certainly made sense to her. 

She pondered about something then instead asked, “So about personal matters, then. What about those?”

“What about them?”

“Give me a principle to follow,” she sought. “Something I might be able to apply here. Something as general as you’d like it to be, but applicable.”

Her steadily growing smile made it clear that though she was certainly looking for advice, she also thoroughly enjoyed exchanging quips with you and exploring more about you. 

In a way, she was as eager to learn about you than how to help herself, if not more so. 

You hummed thoughtfully and Wanda watched as you were deep in thought. 

“A principle for you,” you said, “could easily be that it’s okay to be selfish, to think only of yourself when you’ve spent so long doing anything else.”

Wanda asked, slightly amused but far more curious, “You recommend hedonism?” 

“To you?”

She nodded. 

You replied, “Indubitably.”

If you hadn’t already been thinking of Wanda in painfully great amounts before that morning, then you certainly were afterwards. 

The third week came around and by then Wanda was banging against every square inch of your skull like an intruder, necessitating the need to be seen and thought of every other minute in any way you could.

Perhaps the relationship you developed with her thus far was one of friendship and nothing more, yet her persistence that never strayed too far from your mind seemed to you that she had become reminiscent of something greater than a platonic figure. 

In any case, you had to muster the ability to ask your dad in the most nonchalant manner you could if it were possible for you attend Sunday’s service. 

You did it in a way that did not make it seem to him that you were about to become a familiar face in the church, but rather that someone had simply happened to ask you for help during the last service and wondered if you might be able to attend the next — which is quite literally what you told him. 

It wasn’t a lie. 

Not even when you said that it was a young woman who was studying to become a novitiate at the convent that was curious about the choir and the other volunteers and had asked you about it last week, because Wanda did truly ask about the choir and the other people who volunteered at the church once. 

But that wasn’t at all the reason why you wanted to attend the service that Sunday. 

“Y/N,” a voice called in a hushed tone when you passed the hallway leading up to the choir stairway where your dad had already walked up towards. 

You slipped away from the people filing into the pews and quickly came to Wanda’s side. 

“Don’t you have places to be aside from fraternising with the guests?” you teased as she took your wrist and led you towards the room you both seemed to like talking in the most. 

“After last week’s ordeal with the book, I’ve been put on some kind of probation from participating in the services so I have more time to study independently,” she told you, not seeming particularly worried.

She added, “On Sundays, the convent is rather empty, so they wouldn’t notice that I’m off not studying. Though I could very well say I chose to study in one of the extra prayer rooms here.”

“And I’m sure they remember how much you love the prayer rooms here,” you said, wiggling your eyebrows at your reference to her having lost the book in one of them. 

Wanda faked a laugh in the driest manner you’d ever heard and you nudged her arm to which she told you to stop joking around with her so she could tell you something important. 

She closed the prayer room door and sat you down beside her. 

From a small bag on the chair to her left, she pulled out a small dictionary. 

Here, you were tempted to make fun of her and ask why she was carrying around a dictionary so tiny, but you recalled that she had wanted to ask you about something serious. 

She flipped open to a page she had bookmarked. 

“Hedonism,” she read aloud. “In philosophy, the belief that pleasure and the absence of pain is the most important principle in determining the morality of an action.”

Wanda looked up at you from the dictionary. “This is what you meant?” she asked. 

You nodded. 

Curiously, you inquired, “Do you agree with it?”

She looked back down to the page in which had written three definitions of hedonism, the third being the one defined by philosophy. 

The first two you could not quite read upside down. 

“I have never heard of it in such detail before the time you mentioned it last week,” she said, running her eyes over the words in contemplation, “but it’s interesting.”

“What would be your first endeavour to pleasure, if you had to make a guess?” you asked her.

Wanda ran over the words of the definition again with her eyes, perhaps still deep in thought about it or absently doing so while she contemplated an answer to your question. 

“My first?” she repeated. 

You looked down at the dictionary page now that she was holding it at a slightly different angle that oriented the letters better for you. 

The first definition read, ‘Pursuit of pleasure.’

And the second — you had to tip your head to the side a bit to decipher it — read, ‘Sensual self-indulgence.’

During your deep concentration, Wanda had come to an answer to your question, and it wasn’t until she leaned forward and kissed your unsuspecting lips that you realised she had even stopped looking at the page. 

It was the uttering of her muffled words against your lips that triggered something deep within you, perhaps equally as restrained as her own. 

An unfinished sentence, but one on its own nonetheless. 

‘I want…’ she had uttered, breathless and with one hand cupping your cheek and feeling with the pads of her fingers the softness of your skin. 

With that, you hastily reached forward and grasped at her ass, lifting her from her seat and stripping her down so she was in nothing but her undergarments. 

The paths of your nails streaked red against her pale skin while you devoured her every step of the way, your lips following every inch of skin that became exposed to you while your hands made quick work of unzipping her dress and unbuttoning her blouse. 

She sighed when you kissed her breasts and squeezed your hands around her waist and hips, taking her selfishly and finally spreading her legs and sitting her down in your lap. 

“Are you…” you began between breaths, pausing to figure out your wording and sitting back in your seat to look at her. “Have you had sex?”

Wanda giggled, finding your question amusing. “Of course I have,” she replied and took your hands and placed them on her hips again. 

“Cocky,” you jested, hooking your thumb under the clasp of her bra and releasing it so it snapped against her back, causing her to arch her body into you with a soft gasp. “Thought you might’ve been abstinent or something.”

“I don’t mean to be cocky,” she said in a low voice. “But I am certainly not abstinent.”

“Should I be jealous?”

“Only if you choose to be.”

“I choose to be,” you said with conviction. “So for whom should I be jealous, then?”

“College students.”

You gasped superficially.

“You fuck college students? Exclusively?”

“No!” she laughed. “I mean I haven’t been very active since my time in college.”

“Haven’t had sex since college?”

She corrected, “I didn’t mean that either.”

“So what did you mean?”

“This conversation is like pulling teeth.”

“Why? You want me to fuck you hard against this floor right now, baby?” you asked. The very crudeness of your words, albeit teasing, made Wanda’s breath hitch, and so within that reaction you found her first tell. “No foreplay or anything?”

“This isn’t foreplay?”

“Hardly.”

“Then what is?” she asked though sounding slightly pouty about it. 

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re all turned on and impatient from just that. Teasing gets you off?” you pressed. “Didn’t even have to be told how I wanna see your gorgeous ass bruise when I fuck your cunt from behind like you’re my sick little fucktoy whore?”

Her hips twitched. 

“Y/N…” she muttered, perhaps out of impatience or forewarning for how you were teasing her, either way you could not tell and weren’t very rushed in trying to figure it out. 

You pulled her bra down and released one of her breasts, slapping it lightly with your fingers and causing her to gasp before pinching one of her sensitive pink buds. 

There would be no indulging her past what you were willing to indulge; you were careful not to touch her more than what was intentional. 

You bucked your hips up under the guise of adjusting your seating, grinding your stiff cock against the soaking panties which were now beginning to soak your pants. 

Her cunt was sensitive beyond the thin fabric, causing the strap to rub her perfectly through her soft, swollen folds; you could practically hear how sticky she was without even looking. 

“What is that?” she quickly asked, looking down between her thighs. She tried moving back to get a better look, but you quickly held onto her hip with your other hand and pulled her harshly back to her original position, making her throbbing clit rub directly onto your cock. 

A strangled yelp was breathed past her lips. 

“Don’t move unless I tell you to, you understand?” you told her. 

She nodded.

“Everywhere else in this building, there is only one God, but here in this room, I am yours. You will listen to what I tell you and take what I give you, even if it hurts. You’ll be grateful that I make you hurt as much as you will when I give you pleasure.”

In spite of everything, Wanda repressed a tiny smile and said, “You’re scary when you’re authoritative with me.”

You laughed through your nose and replied, “I can get scarier.”

Her smile widened into a grin and Wanda’s hand came to the back of your neck when you leaned forward and kissed her, one arm circling around her waist and carefully slipping her off your lap as you stood from your seat. 

“We’ll get caught,” she voiced concern against your lips.

“Then be the lookout.” 

You made sure she didn’t trip on her way up to the podium, and soon you had her chest laid flat against the lectern and facing the front doors, the shadow of the large crucifix behind the both of you casted against the red carpet from the morning sun shining from behind the stained glass. 

Wanda listened as you unzipped your pants and when she made an attempt to turn her head and look at what you were doing, you put your other hand against her upper back and pressed her back down, reducing her line of sight to your face and shoulder and nothing else. 

Her clothed cunt was prodded at, the stiff tip of your strap finding her hole through her panties and nudging at it teasingly. She groaned impatiently and reached back to take hold of your hand, to grab onto anything and urge you forward.

In response, you spanked her harshly and made Wanda yelp out in surprise and wince.

“You dirty, impatient slut,” you spat.

She immediately whimpered, “I’m sorry, daddy.”

That satisfied something in you that you hadn’t even known you wanted, and you were more than happy to share in that satisfaction.

You hummed and tucked a finger under the waistband of Wanda’s panties, making her twitch impatiently while also doing her best to listen to her orders. Then you laid your hand flat against her lower back, rubbing her supportively and making a warm flush form across her face.

“You’re a good girl, aren’t you, Wanda?” you asked, looking up her bent-over half-naked body to the back of her head.

She nodded.

“Good girl,” she confirmed with a nod.

Gently, you squeezed her ass and danced your fingers up to the waistband of her panties that you finally pulled down, exposing her gorgeous, glistening cunt.

It took just as much resistance from you not to shove your cock right into her as much as it took Wanda to not thrust her hips back and grind her clit against your strap.

“Why don’t you tell me all you’ve been studying about the last little while?” you said, running a hand down her ass and sliding a thumb into her pussy, feeling heaps of pride with the way you slipped inside with no resistance. 

She was incredibly wet and so, so warm.

Distracted by the way your thumb probed shallowly at her hole, giving her just enough pleasure to make her throb but just short of enough to satisfy her entirely, it took Wanda a few moments to regain her focus before she finally asked, “S-Studying? About what?”

“You’re a smart girl, Wanda,” you encouraged, slowly sliding your thumb out and grazing the pad of it lightly over her swollen slit and across the hood of her clit. “Methods on how to be a proper nun. For example, swear yourself to the Lord, abstain from sex, so on and so forth.”

Wanda swallowed and tried her best to focus with the way your thumb began spreading her cunt out, revealing to you the glistening folds of her pussy. She began stuttering and finally squeezed her eyes shut hard enough to be able to recall some of her studies.

“Um, there was…” she uttered and ran her fingers along the edge of the wooden lectern, “living in modesty; not showing off one’s body in any crude manner, not partaking in pleasures of the flesh.”

Three of your fingers began rubbing slow circles against Wanda’s hole, squelching against her dripping cunt and making her tremble and moan shakily.

“And what next?” you asked.

“I-I can’t… Can’t focus…” she told you helplessly.

Your thumb flicked at her clit and Wanda’s body jerked forward. 

“One more,” you urged. “Come on. Give me one more good one and I’ll fuck you with my cock. You want that, don’t you?”

Intentionally, you began to focus on her clit now, having your index finger graze it as your middle and ring finger slowly began delving in and out of her sticky hole, purposefully making it even more difficult for Wanda to find the words for herself.

“I want… I want that,” she shuddered, hanging her head and squeezed her eyes shut again.

“So, then, give me one more.”

Wanda’s breathing deepened as she tried her hardest to focus. 

With every intention to make it more difficult for her, you reached up with your other hand and pulled her bra down, allowing you access to knead her breast and feel her nipple harden against the palm of your hand.

She whimpered into her arm and bit down on her bottom lip.

You stepped forward and removed your fingers from her cunt to rub the length of your strap through her pussy, wet fingers taking hold of its base and running it through her swollen folds.

“A-Ah, Y/N, please…” she mewled, though neither of you were quite sure whether she was begging for you to stop and allow her to think thoroughly or for you to have mercy on her completely and just fuck her.

“One more,” you reiterated and aligned the tip of your cock with her entrance. 

You placed both hands on her hips and began pulling her backwards, fucking her shallowly and watching her pussy take your cock with just as much anticipation as Wanda was struggling to withhold.

She hugged around you beautifully and it was truly only the tip; you couldn’t wait another moment to fuck her until she was begging for you to fuck her until it hurt.

“A-Another,” she finally trembled out, “is to be, by nature, a woman of submission, to worship your God and seek no amount of personal domination over–”

Fully satisfied with her answer and terribly impatient yourself, your fingernails dug into Wanda’s hips and you jerked her ass back against you, forcing her to take your entire cock in one swift movement.

She cried out and you wrapped a hand around her waist, running your nails down her side and feeling an inexplicable need to mark her, to cause her pain, to reduce her to a whimpering trembling, bruised mess so cock-drunk that all she’d feel for the next three days is the aftermath of being rough-fucked like a slut.

“Hit me, please, daddy,” she begged, wrapping her fingers around the edge of the lectern and arching her back.

So you did — repeatedly. 

You spanked Wanda over and over, having the sound of your palm meeting her ass echo through the room and only reiterating to the both of you how she was much less of a nun or a student or any reflection of purity, but a braindead nympho whore good for nothing but getting her pussy fucked raw.

She was a loud fuck, crying out in whimpers and moans and other strings of partially-comprehensible words telling you how good your cock felt and how much she loved getting fucked by you.

The playing organs and belting choir playing during the service muffled Wanda out, but Jesus Christ, if any of them out there had been able to hear her getting fucked down the hallway, they might just think for a moment that it was the calling of an angel or at least something in some way divine.

But none of them would ever know what it looked like to fuck Wanda from behind, pulling her up with their hand around her neck so you had access to slap her face and spit into her mouth like you could, pinching her clit and fucking her through to her third orgasm.

How beautiful she looked, sweaty and a mess with her long brown hair fanned out and stuck in strands against her back, crying out in equal parts pain and pleasure and finding herself incredibly pleased by being used like a filthy object.

And you’d make sure no one else could get the chance to see the sight but you.

“I’m gonna come again, Y/N,” she cried, breasts pressed against the cold wood of the lectern and arms pressed against her back. “This is my last, please, I can’t take anymore.”

You let go of her wrists and wrapped an arm around her waist, lifting her from the lectern. She was arched at a slight angle so your arm could assist in continuing to fuck her, but she was now much closer, and she was now able to loll her head back against your shoulder.

“This is the closest thing a slut like you will ever get to heaven, angel,” you told her, kissing her temple. “Make your God proud and come on my cock, filthy bitch.”

Wanda reached back and held onto you for support while her eyes squeezed shut, her lips parting as a silent cry escaped her, her third and final orgasm coming over her without mercy.

You squeezed at her breast and leaned your head down and bit at her shoulder and up the back of her neck, getting in as many markings of your ownership as you could.

She sighed out and uttered your name, to which you ran your hands up her stomach, one hand moving up to her face and gently tilting her head over so you could kiss her lips.

Her knees buckled out and you carefully set her down on the floor before sitting down beside her. Wanda panted heavily into your chest, one hand on your knee and the other arm wrapped around your shoulder. 

You had your arms around her waist, rubbing her back supportively and whispering in her ear words upon words of how beautiful she looked, how good she’d been for you, then soon confessing how much you’d been thinking of her over the last few weeks, how much of your mind she occupied and how much of your time you spent thinking of her.

Wanda liked hearing that last part most, but she particularly enjoyed when you told her how it felt to masturbate to her, to imagine her looking up at you and choking on your cock at your final point of release, and how really being with her was plenty more enjoyable and, quite frankly, more beautiful than you ever could’ve fantasised about on your own. 

The both of you were on your knees, sweaty with the labour of sex and kneeling in each other’s arms at the foot of the towering crucifix, whispering and giggling to each other all the equally sweet and dirty confessions you could exchange before the service was over.

[marsivian]

well, here's something that might be interesting (or not idk) about one of the many parts of brazilian history that I like, about a brazilian historical figure, the first woman to enlist in the brazilian army, in 1822, Maria Quitéria ran away from home and joined the artillery regiment under the false soldier name "josé medeiros'' (yeah, reminds of the story of Mulan lol) for this, she cut her hair short and wore "men's" clothes, managing to fool the army officers for a while, which already challenged the social and gender norms of that time, when her true identity was discovered, major silva and castro, impressed by her abilities and bravery, allowed her to continue in the army, where she became a leading figure, taking part in several important battles including the independence of brazil. she was decorated by emperor dom pedro I himself with the Imperial order of the southern cross, in recognition of her valour and contributions to the country's independence, although the terminologies of feminism and gender non-conformity did not exist at the time, maria quitéria defied gender expectations in a significant way at a time like that, and today, Maria Quitéria is considered a national heroine and she is often remembered in celebrations and tributes related to brazil's independence

[gwenllian-in-the-abbey]

Interesting post about the dispute regarding the successions of Rosby and Stokeworth.

https://www.tumblr.com/mononijikayu/713886501993431040/im-rereading-fb-today-and-found-something?source=share

Hi anon, thanks for sharing that post, it was interesting reading.

And I think that there are two things going on here. On the one hand, the OP is absolutely correct that the Rosby and Stokeworth inheritances were a catch 22 for Rhaenyra. Now, I think framing it as her "protecting" the Rosby and Stokeworth younger brothers from being murdered by the possibly disloyal Hugh and Ulf is a bit of a stretch, I don't think she cared about Rosby or Stokeworth or their heirs in the slightest (it should go without saying that we're talking about book!Rhaenyra here), and if she'd felt like making the daughters the Ladies of Rosby and Stokeworth and marrying them to Hugh and Ulf was the correct course of action, she would have done just that. I think she simply found Corlys' argument to be the more persuasive one-- if she created a precedent for absolute primogeniture throughout the realm she might lose valuable supporters and she could not afford to lose them at the time. Additionally, it's altogether possible that she did not want to ennoble Hugh and Ulf with their loyalty yet unproven. If they'd turned their cloaks not just with their dragons but with their newly acquired lands and armies, forget about the younger Rosby and Stokeworth sons, that would have been a disaster for Rhaenyra. The point is, there are reasons for Rhaenyra denying the Rosby and Stokeworth daughters the right to inherit ahead of their brothers, good ones even.

The other point the OP makes, that women often have to be just as brutal as men, but are judged more harshly for it is also true. You'll find no argument there. In fact, I've argued on this very blog that historically queens regnant have had to be even more brutal than men-- more punishing towards the smallfolk, quicker to war, harsher in their judgments-- in order to be taken seriously. So again, no argument from me there.

The thing is, there's a bit of a strawman here on OPs part. While I admit that there are fans who use Rosby and Stokeworth or Rhaenyra's ruthlessness as something of a gotcha, the point isn't that Rhaenyra should have given those lands to the Rosby and Stokeworth daughters, or that she was singularly worse than men who had sat the throne (she was worse than some, better than others), or even that she's a hypocrite. Rather, Rosby and Stokeworth specifically serve to counter the idea that Rhaenyra being queen would have meant anything positive for women as a whole. Because fans of Rhaenyra can't have it both ways here. They cannot claim that Rhaenyra is the more progressive, less misogynistic choice, but then make excuses for her regressive decisions and policies. And to be clear, I don't blame Rhaenyra for this. Obviously, individuals attempting to thwart the system without enacting broad changes often end up capitulating to existing power structures. In fact, it would be almost impossible not to within the feudal context. But regardless, either putting a woman on the throne is broadly significant as more than a historical footnote, or it isn't. And if it isn't, if Rhaenyra's policies do not benefit any women besides Rhaenyra in any meaningful capacity, then there's no greater good argument for her going to war.

And this only matters because many of Rhaenyra's fans try to frame the conflict in terms of morality, when you can easily reason that from a harm reduction standpoint, the actual moral choice would be for Rhaenyra not to press her claim. It's unfair, but Aegon got there first, was crowned and anointed first, and hold the city. If she accepts his peace terms, she can keep doing what she's been doing for the last decade, chilling on Dragonstone and tens of thousands of people get to stay alive. Now, I don't actually expect her to act morally here, she's acting in her own self interest rather than in the interest of the greater good, and that's fine, but let's not pretend she has the moral high ground.

[annie-creates]

What an evil thing to do

Pairing: Lady Lesso x reader

Genre: angst (sort of)

Words: 1000

Note: English is not my first language so there might be some mistakes. I never expected my first fic here to be angst but here we are. There probably won't be part two as I might use a similar plot as part of a series I'm planning (and hopefully will write). I'm aware this isn't my best work but I need to get into writing in english somehow.

You were sitting in your office late at night, grading tests from today’s lesson. Uniting the faculties of good and evil wasn’t exactly easy at first, but with time you all got a hang of it. Your students learnt to accept and tolerate each other and the teachers who had mixed classes, including you, learnt how to treat them equally. At the beginning of the year, you’d say their differences were almost insuperable… but today, giving out As and Bs for an identical test on villain and hero qualities, you believed the differences were almost overcomed.

You had the same trust in your relationship with Lady Lesso. You’ve been teaching in the school for good for some time, yet not enough to not be still considered new by some. Maybe that’s why you were asked to teach a mixed class, you didn’t have time to fully take up the prejudices about the other school and it’s students as your own. Obviously you were in some sort of contact with the dean of evil since you started teaching here, but she didn’t seem to do as much as bat an eye on you. Uniting the schools helped to change that. Suddenly you were forced to share weekly meetings with the teachers and deans, sometimes taking hours and elongating long into the night.

And all of a sudden, the evil dean slowly picked up an unusual interest in you. At first it was just staring you down during teachers’ meetings or breakfasts in the dinning hall. Then she started visiting you at the end of your class under the excuse of making sure her villainy students are given proper education. Then she started asking your opinion on different books, graduate students and their fairy tale stories or historical events. You were surprised she even read, and that she noticed you liked it too. But nothing can go unnoticed to the eye of Lady Lesso.

That’s how you slowly but steadily got yourself into a relationship full of secret dates, nights spent at each other’s chambers and hours of proving your love to each other. You didn’t have a doubt you two would overcome every branch thrown under your feet as long as she was by your side. Actually that’s exactly where you were going the moment your pen left the last test graded. The dark blanket of night has already fallen outside your window hours ago, but you didn’t want to leave your work unfinished to be done the next day. You still made it your point to go through the corridors basically unnoticeable, even though all of the students should be already long in beds with their heads full of dreams.

You did expect the light to be still on under the door of the evil dean’s room, it wasn’t unusual she was waiting for you to show up. If she got tired of waiting, she went on a quest to find you wherever you were at the moment and get you where she wanted to have you. She wasn’t one to be extra patient. However you didn’t expect to hear multiple people talking behind the closed door loud enough to be heard in the stoned hallway.

“Seriously, I’d never think the dean of evil herself will fall so weak.” You weren’t sure who her companion was, but they didn’t sound so happy with whatever was going on between them.

“I’m not! You better choose your word’s carefully Sader…” your lover exclaims through gritted teeth and you hear her significant cane move and slam into the other teacher’s chest.

“All I’m trying to say is, Lady Lesso, I never took you as one for love.” Says the other teacher in a noticeably calmer tone.

At that Lesso laughed so throaty she might even start grunting. “Please, love is a childish fairytale. There’s no love in villainy. Most definitely not anywhere near me. Evil doesn’t love.” She said the word with such hatred she might as well have a mouth full of snake venom. “And the goodie teacher’s pet? She’s nothing more than a desperate overachiever destined to burn out. This idea of good and evil together… it’s repulsive.” She mocked the younger girl with disgust.

“I suggest you better tell miss Y/n that. Have an awful night dean.” With that the other teacher opened the door to leave and you pushed yourself into the wall behind the door hoping to become one with the cold stone. You couldn’t believe what you just heard. Lesso wasn’t one for much affection, sure, she was more of a passionate person… but did she really think so low of you? Were you really just a pet for her to play with whenever she got bored of her evil life? You heard a shattering come from the room and at the same time you felt like it’s the breaking of your own heart.

Your breath quickened up paired with your thumping heart. Not really knowing how, probably thanks to your body remembering the way from muscle memory, you got out of the hallways and to the old bridge over the lake that wasn’t being used anymore. You could hardly see though the tears in your eyes, leaning on the low wall of the bridge. The rough stone was cutting into your palms, but all you could concentrate on was the words of the woman you so stupidly fell in love with.

Did she always think like that? Did she seduce you just for the thrill and fun? Were you just a naïve girl whose feelings weren’t important? Who she secretly found disgusting all along to begin with? Maybe she was right, evil couldn’t love. Yet you believed the two of you would rewrite this stereotypical rule too. Guess you weren’t that important to her after all. She got you entangled in her web of sweet words and passionate kisses and now you were broken and tattered by her cruel words. What an evil thing to do.

[indignantlemur]

Hey :) watching the Canada nationals today and it struck me: andorians would probably love figure skating?? Thoughts?

I've had some thoughts about this myself, actually! Thanks for the ask!

When I look at Andorians as I've written them and consider how they would view various activities, ideas, etc, I go through three questions which I feel would have informed their historical mindset:

(1) Does it contribute to the safety and prosperity of the Clan or the Empire?

Historically, Andorians couldn't afford to waste much in the way of time, energy, or resources. This had a huge impact on their attitudes towards anything deemed frivolous or reckless or wasteful, which is much more severe than the average Human might expect; if it doesn't serve the Clan or the Emperor, then it's not important enough to waste resources on. That sort of ingrained thinking is slow to change. In fact, it's really only been in recent centuries, starting just after the Unification of Andoria, that their cultivation of the arts and leisurely pursuits has really taken off. They experienced a wild renaissance period shortly after the Unification, during which resource-intensive but culturally vital accomplishments were made and traditional artforms were refined and popularized on a much wider scale than ever before.

This new peace brought about by the formation of the Federation has set the stage for a second renaissance, though what this new era will bring to Andoria and its people is yet unknown.

(2) Does it burn more resources than it earns?

Rapid metabolism, life in high energy-cost environments, and resource scarcity do not do the Andorians any favours. Historically, the Clans had to be very choosy about where they invested time, food, materials, and people. Anything that didn't help to provide for the Clan was dismissed as fanciful at best, and a dangerous waste of resources at worst. Life.in recent centuries has been much less harsh, allowing for a great deal of leeway where none existed before, but old attitudes linger nonetheless.

(3) Does it fulfill some cultural or religious need which might make it exempt from the previous two requirements?

Historically, calculated expenditures of valuable resources were made to boost morale, to strengthen bonds between families, and to create a sense of community. Festivals, rites, fêtes, you name it. If it could keep the populace happy, the Clans would find a way to make it happen. For the longest time, these events were the sole exceptions to the first two points - and for good reason. Even the most wretched of peoples need more than the bare minimum to thrive. Andorians are no different than anyone else in that regard.

So: figure skating. Let's take a look at it.

On the one hand, I feel like Andorians would be excellent at figure skating between their inherent strength and balance (their antennae being integral to their sense of balance, our course), and Andorians are certainly well known in canon lore for being big on the arts. Post-Unification Andorians place a huge emphasis on art and culture, which bodes well for the adoption of figure skating as an art form.

On the other hand, however, figure skating is a huge energy sink in a culture that has a significant stigma against wasting precious resources. Andorians are most suited for short, brutal bursts of activity as a result of their average metabolic rate. Developing in a resource scarce environment as they did, this shaped the Andorian view on acceptable activities and pastimes. Sustained activity, such as marathons, would be done when necessary (and certainly Imperial Guardsmen would have to meet a bare minimum endurance requirement to qualify for field assignments) but otherwise not pursued recreationally on a large scale.

Consider also that a number of Andorian-origin sports developed as a replacement for their ancient raids and battles. Post-Unification, sports and displays of martial prowess were an outlet for a people with a great deal of natural aggression and nowhere to direct it. Eventually, as time passed and the old ways of constant warfare lost their hold on Andorians as a whole, competitions of skill became as much about prestige and honour as cooperation and unity.

Looking at the question from that perspective, I could see a number of winter sports being popular with Andorians - cross-country skiing, sledding, ice climbing, even speed skating. I suppose it would come down to a question of whether or not figure skating would be considered a sport in their eyes versus an artform based on dancing.

Based on how I've written Andorians, I think they'd initially dismiss figure skating as Human nonsense based on their own cultural mores, but perhaps would gradually warm up to the idea over the decades until younger generations embraced it. It might start as a novelty for rebellious teens, or maybe as a niche hobby for a select few that would eventually gain traction with the wider populace. Certainly, by the time we hit the TNG-era, it might be fully adopted and embraced as a pastime amongst Andorians.

...I think that was all mostly coherent and sensible. Feel free to ask follow up questions! ❄️🇨🇦⛸️

[good-to-drive]

John Lennon, Richard Nixon, and Presentism in Our Discussion of Mental Illness

So I'm reading a new book about Richard Nixon and it's got me thinking about presentism in how we discuss Richard Nixon's mental illness(es), and, because I have Beatles brainrot, it's also got me thinking about whether this same mentality could affect how we talk about John.

Both Nixon and John's lives were heavily influenced by their lifelong battles with severe, persistent mental illness, but understanding the historical context of that battle and how it was fundamentally different from what a person might experience today seems to be largely ignored.

We tend to talk about Nixon in particular as if a) he or someone around him had identified that he was exhibiting symptoms of depression, paranoid delusions, and (most likely) psychosis, b) that he or someone around him understood these conditions as so-called "no fault" illnesses that could/should be treated, and c) that this treatment would have been effective.

In other words, we still understand Nixon's mental deterioration as if it had happened today.

Now, to be clear, a LOT of people in Nixon's inner circle described behavior that they personally found unsettling, and the Pentagon had stopped taking orders from the White House by the end of Nixon's presidency because they were so disturbed by his degree of disconnection from reality. So I'm not trying to argue that his condition went unnoticed -- rather, we can reasonably say that almost no one in Nixon's inner circle believed he was "normal."

(I mean, he literally screamed at God and had conversations with portraits of former presidents. It wasn't subtle.)

But the entire conceptualization of mental disorders as legitimate illnesses that can/should be treated was nowhere near as prevalent during Watergate as it is today. Even if the people around him recognized that Nixon was "acting crazy", it's not realistic to project our own ideas about mental illness onto them and assume that they conceptualized that behavior as an illness that Nixon could not control and had not chosen, believed that it was possible to treat that illness, or even had any desire to see that illness be treated.

(Incidentally, the only significant medical intervention in response to Nixon's illness was to start dosing him with anticonvulsants, resulting in significant memory loss.)

It's less clear whether Nixon himself was aware that he was losing touch with reality (my guess is "kinda"), but even if he did have insight into his mental condition he almost definitely didn't have deep familiarity with terms like "PTSD" and "psychotic break" that might help him understand what was happening to him. We can also assume that, if he did have some inkling of what was happening to him, he likely felt an even greater sense of self-hatred and revulsion at his own condition than a person might experience today.

I know there's still a huge stigma around "bad" mental illnesses, but I also know I'm incredibly lucky to have experienced a psychotic break in 2014 and not 1974. Mental hospitals were still sometimes referred to as "snake pits" because they were so horrible, and the average person did not consider someone with severe, persistent mental illness to have any future or hope whatsoever. I'm not a doctor, much less a doctor from the 70s, so I truly don't know what the prognosis for someone like Nixon would have been. But Nixon himself most likely would have believed it was very poor.

To put this another way, Nixon’s ability to have insight into his own illness was impaired by the lack of insight in the society in which he lived, and the way he processed his own experiences would have been more heavily rooted in confusion, shame, and hopelessness. Also, the degree to which we can hold Nixon to blame for failing to manage his mental illness and pursue effective treatment definitely isn't zero, but it's certainly not on par with what you could expect of a person today.

Now I'm absolutely NOT saying any of that to give Dick a free pass for the horrible things he did and said (any more than I think we should give John a free pass). Nixon was a monster in many ways. But I'd rather understand a monster within their actual context than within an imagined one.

TL;DR I think it's worthwhile to ask ourselves whether we're looking at one of the defining factors in Dick and John's lives through a distorted lens, and, if so, how that distorts our perception of them as human beings.

[runwayrunway]

when germans think lufthansa nobody thinks ah yes the name the nazis gave to their airline, because the hansa name is a direct tie to something far older and that is far more suitably neutrally nationalist propaganda - Hansa. The Hanseatic League. The "earliest predecessor to the EU" and something that remains such a point of pride that formerly Hanseatic cities keep it in their name centuries after the Hanseatic league was wiped from all maps. Something that remains on modern city signs and even on car registration plates, like Hamburg giving up the single "H" to the smaller and far less important city of Hanover just so they can have their "HH" for Hansastadt Hamburg

With Lufthansa it's not so much the etymology that's the issue as the historical context. The name itself is entirely harmless but the original Deutsch Luft Hansa was a government apparatus which used forced labor of prisoners including children and was run by members of the Nazi party including several who had personal hands in war crimes. Today's Lufthansa is technically a different company but it was lead by many of the same people, most notably Deutsche Bank manager Kurt Weigelt, Luftwaffe Oberkommando Kurt Knipfer, and Luftwaffe chief of staff Werner Kreipe. This company was actually established with the name Luftag and then spent a significant amount of money to continue using the pre-war name and crane logo. (East Germany's flag carrier pre-Interflug also attempted to do this until Luftag/Lufthansa sued them into bankruptcy for it. To be clear, they also should not have done this, in my opinion.) They also seem to consider themselves to be the same company, if stating their founding date as 1926 is any indication. They've taken some downright bizarre actions when it comes to if they want to acknowledge this or not, including commissioning studies by historians and then suppressing their publication. Keeping the Luftag or Interflug name would not have changed this but the fact that they chose to continue branding themselves as Lufthansa definitely exacerbates it.

This is the unfortunate double reality in which German companies which keep the names of their Nazi-era counterparts are forced to operate. I'm sure somebody who knows more about cars than me could talk about Volkswagen or Porsche, which literally takes its name from an officer of the SS who produced weaponry for the war effort. Should they have outright changed their names? That's a bigger question than I can answer. I generally lean towards 'yes' in the same way I do for Chanel - the fact that a company is no longer literally owned by the same people it once was doesn't make the bitter pill that is branding itself with the name of someone who contributed to genocide much easier to swallow, and even more so with something inherently political like a flag carrier. Both Italy and Japan, for example, retired the brands of Ala Littoria and Imperial Japanese Airways. But there's obviously not a consensus here and I am just one person with one opinion. I find Chanel and Porsche to be far more inherently loaded than Lufthansa, but that doesn't mean there isn't a conversation to be had surrounding this topic, and people have been having that conversation for years.

This is, in all honesty, about the least of my political criticisms of the current Lufthansa. It's been the better part of a century and they are no longer literally abducting people to build their radar systems to the best of my knowledge, nor do they have any 150-year-old SS officers serving on their board. But they are still indisputably linked to Nazi Germany, which I expect they are pretty reluctant to lean into when discussing their history because if they did that would be terrible (and as far as I know of German law probably also illegal). Of the large airlines in the world this is a pretty uniquely Lufthansa baggage to deal with and it puts them in a pretty unfortunate spot a lot of the time, but as I was getting at in my post I do think there's a lot they could do that actually leans into German identity rather than being quarterlyreportcore without sticking Third Reich imagery on their planes but I can also understand why they may be hesitant to brand themselves in any way that isn't super sterile given that they have this history. It is just inherently harder to make being Lufthansa your brand than it is to make being the country that has really great glaciers your brand.

No, it's not the main thing that is associated with the name 'Lufthansa' and it shouldn't be. Yes, Lufthansa is a brand which was actively put forth by the Third Reich rather than just coincidentally existing at the same time and that is always going to be a nasty barnacle attached to the airline.

[beautiful-basque-country]

From “GUIDEPOST OBSERVER: Racism in Spain” by E.N. Bouffard

First published in GUIDEPOST - 31 July 1981

“Racism . . . hatred or intolerance of another race. . .” Random House College Dictionary

In 1978, there were over 158,000 “extranjeros”  residing in Spain representing 61 of the world’s nations from 5 continents. Spain never has had a “racial” problem in the sense that the U.S. has with its blacks and “chicanos;” or the British with their minorities from Africa, Pakistan and India. In fact, Spaniards are most fond of saying that they harbor no racial prejudice whatsoever.

What the Spaniards say is true in one sense. Certainly, no one from the foreign community seems to be complaining about racial discrimination — personal or institutional. (...) In another sense what the Spaniards say is not the whole truth in at least two significant cases. The first involves the Basques; the second the gypsies. <- don't expect nothing more to be said about how Spaniards are racist towards Roma people, it's a subject the author decided didn't need a development.

No “Spaniard” will ever raise a racial issue in discussing the Basques. On the contrary, almost every Basque — some 2 million of them — will agree with the oft and publicly repeated proposition of Herri Batasuna — “No somos españoles!” [We are not Spaniards]

(...) There is only one conclusion to draw from this kind of statement. Whoever makes it does not know the history of the Basques on the Iberian Peninsula, desires to forget it or wants to alter the history books. The Basques have been on this Peninsula so long they do not even know where they came from or how their language originated. Their origins go back beyond recorded history.

Just as one can not understand the ideological roots of communism without reading Marx and Lenin, one can not understand Basque racism without being familiar with Sabino Arana Goiri. All this nonsense of Basque racism which most Basques believe today began with this “ultra” Basque nationalist. In other words, Basque racism is less than 100 years of the thousands the Basques have been on the Peninsula intermarrying with the rest of the population.

In any event, to learn more about Sabino, I had to be satisfied with books written about him by his followers. One of these was a book by ORTZI-a pen name for Herri Batasuna congressman, Francisco Letamendia. The title: “Historia to Euskadi: el nacionalismo vasco y ETA.” Ortzi wrote: “Of the components of (Basque) nationalism which include race, language, character and customs and historic personality, for Sabino the decisive one was race.” He continues: “The racism of Sabino is an ingredient that did not exist in the foral tradition, and it constitutes without any doubt, the most repulsive and disagreeable aspect of his doctrine. “ At least, Ortzi is honest!

<- the fact that Ortzi wrote his opinions on Basque nationalism around A WHOLE CENTURY after Arana's racist views may have something to do with, I don't know, Basque society leaving old ideas behind. Also, notice how the author talks about Sabino (and not by his surname) as if he wasn't worthy of respect. Talking about hate.

What Ortzi states is true. Unfortunately, Sabino’s racial heritage remains. There are other relevant quotes from Sabino:

“Race is the essential element of the nation;  without the Basque race, there would be no Basque country.” <- it was the 19th century when Arana wrote this. Race equaled people. Spanish nationalists were talking about the Spanish race at the same time, but Bouffard chooses silence.

“Unlike the Spanish race which is a mixture of races, the Basque race is original. The Basque race, original and unclassifiable among the races of the world, is not a mixture like the Spanish race . . . “

“A Basque is one who possesses a Basque surname.”

“The principal enemy of the Basque race is the “ Maketa” invasion.” (Maketa is part of Sabino’s inventive language and means Spanish.) <- no, it means from outside EH, a foreigner is a maketo by Arana's terms.

“This invasion corrupted the venerable traditions and customs of the country . . . If the Basque country was independent, this invasion would not be harmful. The Spaniards would be received as foreigners. Their numbers would be limited. Interracial marriages would be prohibited . . .”

“The Basque language . . . is the most ancient and perfect of known languages. But its importance remains subordinated to race . . . The defensive value of the language is an instrument to preserve the Basque country from the Spanish invasion . . . for us it would be ruinous if the Spaniards who reside in our territory speak Euskera.”

Sabino hated — and that is the only word one can use — the “Spaniards.” He once wrote: “Spain is the most degenerated and wretched nation of Europe; its race the most vile and despicable.” On every occasion available, Sabino insulted them.

The Basque-Spanish problem? The root of that problem comes from the seed planted by Sabino Arana. His contemporary followers infected their children with the disease. The subsequent generation in turn, their children. By the time the Spanish Civil War was over (the Basques were losers) coupled with 36 years of Franco’s cultural repression every Basque family had been thoroughly indoctrinated in Basque racism and hatred of the “Spaniards.” <- I'm currently at a loss for words by this whole paragraph. From stating that ETA has something to do with Arana and insinuating the Spanish Civil War was against Basque people, this has it all.

For some reason, Basque bitterness towards the “Spaniards” has not been reciprocated. Until ETA went “haywire,” the Spaniard would talk about the Basque with “cariño” [endearment] and respect. Many still do but with a heavy heart. <- the audacity of this bitch!!!!!! Spain has been oppressing us for centuries but hey, they love us fondly.

(...) The Spanish-Basque problem with its roots in Basque racism and mistrust will be around for generations to come. Unfortunately, the average Spaniard knows next to nothing about Sabino Arana and his pernicious doctrines. Therefore, they will never understand why the Basques continue to state: “no somos españoles!”. <- such an unrequited love the one of Spaniards for Basques...

That what such a f*cking ride. Btw, Guidepost is the oldest publication in English of Spain, and it's edited by the American Club of Madrid. So this was written by an American living in Spain, I presume.

That was in 1981. And in all this article that oozes hatred and misinformation towards us, the author couldn't even feel their bias. The naiveté of the Spaniards not knowing why the Basques hate them so much in contrast with Basque people being evil, infected by hateful, +100-year-old racist ideas is something that would make anyone cry.

[nakimkcapstone]

An example on how I am using ChatGPT for my script

I would like to present an update on how I choose to implement ChatGPT within my presentable. While it would be easy to just tell ChatGPT to "write me a script based on ___" I feel that there are a number of factors that would not only present a surface-level project, but also one that lacks creativity as well. As I stated in other updates, I want to treat ChatGPT as an assistant. In this case, I stumbled across a cultural question when writing my script. For context, one of my characters referred to another as "Lord", and I wondered if the use-case was appropriate as a title, since Lord carries multiple meanings in different cultures.

Instead of just describing the workflow, I thought I'd present the conversation I had with Chat GPT in full. ----------------------- CHAT GPT CONVERSATION ---------------------

MATT: In Japanese culture, is it common to have Lords?

CHATGPT: In traditional Japanese culture, particularly during the feudal period from the 12th to the 19th century, lords played a significant role in society. These lords, known as "daimyo," were powerful landowners who controlled territories throughout Japan. They were essentially feudal lords who held significant political, military, and economic power within their domains.

Under the daimyo were the samurai, who served as warriors and administrators, sworn to loyalty to their lords. The relationship between a lord and their samurai was a central aspect of the feudal system in Japan.

While the feudal system and the role of daimyo have largely faded away with the modernization of Japan, aspects of this historical system and the cultural reverence for hierarchy and authority still influence Japanese society to some extent today. However, in contemporary Japan, the term "lord" is not commonly used to refer to individuals holding such positions of power. Instead, Japan has a modern democratic government with elected officials and a constitutional monarchy.

MATT: Did japanese workers, often warriors, consider their bosses as lords?

CHATGPT: In feudal Japan, warriors, such as samurai, were typically bound by loyalty to their lords, known as daimyo. This loyalty was a fundamental aspect of the feudal system, where samurai served their lords in exchange for protection, land, and status. The relationship between a samurai and their lord was characterized by a sense of duty, honor, and obedience.

While the concept of a "boss" in the modern workplace context is different from the relationship between a samurai and their lord, there are some parallels. In contemporary Japanese culture, there is a strong emphasis on respect for authority and hierarchy in the workplace. Employees often show deference and loyalty to their superiors, and the relationship between workers and their bosses can sometimes resemble the dynamics of feudal allegiance.

However, it's essential to note that the modern workplace in Japan operates within a different social and legal framework compared to the feudal system of the past. While there may be elements of respect and loyalty reminiscent of the relationship between samurai and their lords, the dynamics are not identical, and the terminology and expectations have evolved to suit the modern context.

MATT: could anyone be a daimyo, or did daimyo need to have political power?

CHATGPT: In feudal Japan, the title of daimyo was typically conferred upon individuals who held significant political, military, and economic power within their respective domains. While there was a degree of hereditary succession in some cases, particularly among powerful families, the ability to become a daimyo was not solely determined by birthright. Factors such as military prowess, wealth, connections to the ruling shogunate or imperial court, and alliances with other influential families could all contribute to someone attaining the status of daimyo.

Furthermore, during periods of civil strife or instability, individuals with the military strength and political acumen could rise to power and establish themselves as daimyo through conquest or alliance-building.

In essence, while there were certain societal structures and expectations that influenced who could become a daimyo, the position was not strictly limited to individuals with inherited political power. Successful daimyo often demonstrated their ability to govern effectively, maintain order within their domains, and navigate the complex political landscape of feudal Japan.

MATT: could someone who just had a lot of money be considered a daimyo?

CHATGPT: In feudal Japan, while wealth certainly played a significant role in one's ability to exert power and influence, simply having a lot of money would not typically be sufficient to be considered a daimyo. The title of daimyo was not solely based on wealth but rather on a combination of factors, including political power, military strength, land ownership, connections to the ruling authorities, and social status.

Many daimyo came from noble families with long-standing histories of power and influence. Others rose to prominence through military prowess, alliances, or strategic marriages. While wealth could facilitate these endeavors by allowing individuals to raise armies, fund construction projects, or bribe officials, it was not the sole determinant of daimyo status.

However, it's important to note that during periods of upheaval or transition, such as civil wars or when central authority was weakened, individuals with significant wealth could sometimes leverage their resources to acquire political power and establish themselves as daimyo. Yet, even in these cases, they would typically need to demonstrate the ability to govern effectively and maintain control over a territory to be widely recognized as daimyo.

MATT: I am creating a short film set in Japan and would like your advice using this information. In the story, someone is trying to meet with a character, who is of high wealth due to his past as a bounty hunter or samurai.  However, he has put his past behind him and is trying to live peacefully.  The person who is trying to see him is stopped by a hired guard. Would this guard refer to the character as "lord"?

CHATGPT: In your short film scenario, the guard's manner of addressing the character could depend on various factors, including the guard's own background, the cultural context of the setting, and the specific relationship between the character and the guard.

Given that the character is portrayed as having a high status due to their past as a bounty hunter or samurai, it's possible that the guard might show a certain level of deference or respect when addressing them. In the feudal context of Japan, individuals of high status were often addressed with honorific titles such as "lord" or "master."

However, since your character is depicted as having retired from their past life and is attempting to live peacefully, they may prefer not to be addressed with such titles, as it could remind them of a time they are trying to leave behind. The guard may also be aware of this and choose to address the character in a more neutral or respectful manner, using their name or a respectful term like "sir" or "mister."

Ultimately, the way the guard addresses the character could serve to highlight their respect for the character's past accomplishments while also acknowledging their desire for a peaceful life. This can add depth to the characters and help convey the themes of the story effectively.

MATT: So would it be more accurate to call him "Lord" or "Master"?

CHATGPT: In the context of feudal Japan, "Lord" or "Master" could be appropriate titles for addressing someone of high status like a former samurai or bounty hunter who has retired. These titles convey a sense of respect and deference to the individual's past accomplishments and status.

However, it's essential to consider the character's personal preferences and the dynamics of the specific situation. If the character has put their past behind them and prefers not to be reminded of their former title or status, the guard might opt for a more neutral or respectful term like "Sir" or simply their name.

Ultimately, the choice of title should reflect the relationship between the character and the guard, as well as the tone and themes of your short film. You might consider exploring how the use of different titles impacts the interactions between the characters and contributes to the overall atmosphere and narrative of the story.

MATT: In this story, the guard would have respect for the character. Based on this character's personality, I don't think anything that reminds him of his past would phase him, as he already lives with the guilt of what he has done.

However I do believe "Master" being more neutral would be more structurally correct.

CHATGPT: Given the character's personality and the guard's respect for him, using "Master" as a title for the character would indeed be a suitable choice. "Master" carries a sense of respect and formality without necessarily evoking specific connotations of past roles or titles. It's a neutral term that acknowledges the character's status and authority without necessarily highlighting their past.

Using "Master" in this context would align with the guard's respect for the character and their acknowledgment of his position without overly emphasizing his past as a samurai or bounty hunter. It allows the guard to show deference and respect while also maintaining a level of neutrality and discretion that might be appropriate given the character's desire for a peaceful life.

Ultimately, the choice of title should serve the story and characters in a way that feels authentic and meaningful to the narrative you're creating. If "Master" feels structurally correct and aligns with the themes and dynamics of your story, then it's a suitable choice for the guard's manner of addressing the character.

MATT: Thank you

CHATGPT: You're welcome! If you have any more questions or need further assistance as you develop your short film, feel free to ask. Good luck with your project!

--------------------------------------END----------------------------------- Make sure to double-check your responses, as ChatGPT isn't always 100% correct. And don't forget to thank your AI in case of a robot uprising 😜

Until Next Update!

[redbug]

Pot 1

I had a lot to talk about after work today and not a soul to spill it all to, so I guess all good things (being generally ignorant of tumblr) come to an end. I honestly wasn't feeling too great about my job all summer, I was a little bored, my house was uncomfortable (historical New England house, figures it was meant for when Maine was still cold and didn't feel like 95...thanks exxon), my workplace was sort of messy; overall it just felt really unfulfilling. Like a summer job. And I feel like I'm at the point in my life and academic career where I can, and should, do more than that. But things have nearly completely turned around over the past week.

Recently (as in literally last month) I've become obsessed with lobsters. It started because we got two brand new ones in at my job. They were wild caught and sitting in the market crates when one of our researchers found them. They're both 1/30 million in rarity; one is completely orange (she looks like she's already been cooked, lol) and the other is "calico" or "cinnamon" (very dark brown with yellow speckles). For the purposes of anonymous blogging, I'm just going to call them Orange and Calico. Calico is crazy to look at, and by crazy I mean cool. I've never seen a lobster that looks like that. It was like love at first sight (little did I know how little answers I would get about why-she-even-looks-like-that, but for another time). But from that point forward I have done absolutely nothing but think, talk, and read about lobsters.

Within the first few days, easily 20 hours of reading. That number's about doubled now, as of the time of writing this. I never really even considered liking lobsters to begin with. I knew nothing about them and didn't care to before Calico. As it turns out, though, they're really interesting animals in nearly every regard. I mean, these animals have fascinating chemistry happening in the cuticle just to "produce" color, they have long and complicated courtship, their anatomy is freakishly cool, and not to mention how historically and culturally significant the fishery is here- though I suppose perhaps that's thanks to people. Either way- a criminally underrated animal. Not a food, but an animal. It feels weird to type that being that I study zoology- and even more so being that I concentrate in entomology. Lobsters are, really, just wet bugs. After being on a lobster tirade and borrowing several of her books (thanks btw), my boss, T, approached me in the main room on one crowded day and said, "if I go downstairs [wet lab] and get you a lobster, could you do a lecture outside on the porch?" and, well, sure, I could come up with something. That some-thing is now a whole-thing. Every hour I do this damn lecture and god I don't think I can get tired of it. The guests just go nuts for it too. Sometimes I even do personal and private lectures for special tour groups that we have come in. I get such thoughtful and insightful questions about lobsters afterwards and it makes me believe that nobody ever gave the public the idea that this was an interesting animal, either.

I was taking out the trash after we closed one day and a couple of the administrative staff for the department I work for said that they love the lecture and they always open up their office window so that they can hear it from just across the breezeway. I keep my mic on during questions- they say they just keep learning new things. Apparently they were so fond of it that they decided to let our bureau director (who was previously the head lobster biologist) know how great this random thing I had put together on the spot was. I've actually now grown quite fond of Orange, I know her a little better than I do Calico, because T chose to bring Orange up that day I sealed my fate as the lobster information booth. We were struggling a little bit with guest expectations because people are afraid of change, and the building is entirely different from when it closed down during the start of the Covid-19 pandemic (which is still happening by the way!). Once this lobster thing took off we knew we had to keep it. I've written down loads of information and scripting for my coworkers so they can do the lectures in my absence, T made signs to advertise it, they gave me a bigger microphone, hell, they even set up a new tank for it so that I don't have to walk a live lobster around like an idiot. Though Orange decided she'd had enough and went on a minor hunger strike, so fair enough, and we now use our Cotton Candy lobster- who's 1 in 100 million. He's kind of a drama queen but once you pick him up his attitude can be summarized by "I guess I'm here now". And he's continued eating, so, probably more fit for the bill anyhow. We have all of the weird colors except for white and split, by the way. It's like I'm trading on Animal Jam again. They all have different rarity rankings.

During this whole thing I've been keeping contact with the current lobster biologist, F. She's awesome. Her and her colleagues gave us a great presentation on the fishery during our training and they're all a wealth of knowledge. Today she decided to meet with me in person to chat a little more about trends we're seeing in the Gulf right now as far as conditions and populations. I'll cut to the more exciting chase: They are going to try and get me on a contracted lobster boat to observe a real vent-less trap survey this month. Just to see! I'm so excited. I think the physical experience will be really good for me. It's one thing to read about it and hear about it- it's another to be there. Besides, what an amazing opportunity? Invaluable to experience that in my undergraduate career- especially because I just happened to be really good at talking to people about wet bugs.

I can really, hardly contain my excitement, in all seriousness. It's not a promise or a certainty but damn, I hope so! I originally asked F if there were aaaaany programs she knew of that could maybe get me out on a boat someday- I totally wasn't expecting for the answer to be 'yeah, with us'! It's slightly frustrating that I have to keep this news on the dl at work or be quite literally bombarded by my coworkers- who are capable of and encouraged to email the lobster scientists, too, if they want, but only ever seem interested when I do it- because it's not that they are interested in lobsters, but rather that they suffer from terrible FOMO. Our facility is small, and all of the sort of "lower" employees live together in provided housing, and if there's one thing I've learned about them, it's that: if you do it, and if you have it, they have to too. It's really strange sometimes. Regardless of whether or not they get that sorted out, I have been thinking a lot, too, about the people I might meet on this trip. Getting to learn where people came from to wind up in their research is oddly encouraging to me. Plus, more people to pester about lobsters. I wonder what I'll be doing. I wonder what the boat will look like. I wonder how many lobsters I'll see. I wonder! Eek!

Aside from lobsters (thank god it's over amirite?), lots of other really fortunate things are happening at work lately. Everyone has seemed to pick up on and enjoy my knack for preserving the occasional dead animal we (inevitability) end up with. They're nice teaching tools for the facility, in my defense. About a week or two ago now a man approached me because of the shark on my name tag and asked if we wanted his 9-foot hammerhead shark mount (with real jaws!) as he was moving and couldn't take it with him. I wish in that moment I said no, I want it, but alas I did the right thing and directed him to my boss. Well, T wants me to be the one to help retrieve it! How cool! I saw pictures of it- it's beautifully done. Shark "mounts" are usually fiberglass, lightweight composite, or casted- which of course depending on the skill of the artist can look tacky if the paint job is bad or the shark's features are.. exaggerated. I was very impressed with this one though. Beautiful, graceful and realistic. I'll be picking it up for the facility at the end of the season.

It truly does not end there. Two years ago, my workplace put in a permit request to collect some specimens from this sort of depository that the state has of materials from otherwise illegal-to-possess animals to be used for science/education purposes. Well they finally heard back with a yes. T actually wants my help curating whatever collection of things that we take. My university doesn't offer any curation programs/courses/experiences, or I'd have taken them in a heartbeat. She gave me a list of species and asked me to read through and take note of what I'd like to grab if available. I'm not sure when we'd be receiving them but I can't wait for it, either.

Speaking of curation, after one of my lobster lectures today my coworker, who is working here on an internship through her university, introduced me to her.. other boss? Not sure what to call her, H. They must have already been talking about my affinity for playing with carcasses because she opened the conversation after the handshake straightaway with how she has this space that her and her colleagues are working on, I don't remember what she called it, it's meant to be educational but the important part is that she wants to fill it with bugs, skulls etc. I looked at her like this when she said that, I think. So I told her of course I would be happy to help and offer a couple of pieces because it sounds like a nice place, and that I'd shoot her an email. And then she drops this bombshell, "Well, we have grant money for this, so, we would probably want to pay you". Any annoyance I felt when my coworker promptly begged me to 'please teach her everything!!!' (despite having explained the entire process of cleaning a carcass, proper pinning technique, and what chemicals of what concentrations to use for wets at least twice EACH) for the fifth time this week (I mean, seriously, just read. You're going into science) was immediately overlooked and overshadowed. I felt at this point that I had received so much good news and so many good opportunities today that something catastrophic was bound to happen. Eek! Somebody has yet to pinch me, is all that I'm saying!

I say at work that I'm "wiggling" or "stumbling" into these positions, or that I'm having great luck, but truthfully, it has to be me, too, right? I've been working really hard- to do good, to be knowledgable, to be professional, and I really think it's paying off. It can't be coincidence that all of these people see something in me worth mentioning, worth bringing on boats, worth tasking, and worth hiring. I was feeling so down and unsure about myself at the beginning of the summer, and about my potential as having a career begins to become a more serious idea, but this has all been really pleasant and really affirming that I am where I should be, and most importantly that I'm making it. This is a message to be kinder to yourself, I guess. You could try liking lobsters too, maybe they'll bring you their (apparently very many) blessings.

That's really mostly everything from work I wanted to get off of my mind. My hands regularly get fissures from some immune issues I have, and I, unfortunately, think that the open skin contracted an infection via the ~ubiquitous touch tank~, so it's amazing I've been well enough composed for all of this considering the medication I had to take this morning makes me a liiittle.. drowsy. In other mundane news, I've gotten really great at cooking fish, I think. I wish I fished as often as I fished at the beginning of the summer.. you can't beat a nice oven-baked striper.

I turn 21 in 2 days, so that's cool! Can't wait to shoot pool with a DRINK this time! Any pool lovers!? Any drink lovers!?? I think I'll order a mojito.

[oliviainjapann]

May 25th- Osaka Day Trip

Today was a very successful day in Osaka! In the morning my friends and I cooked breakfast together and make eggs and it was so wholesome and cute. I will be doing that from now on for the rest of our breakfasts. We then had our class meeting, and then started our trip to Osaka. The train wasn’t bad because my friends and I did a spotify jam again which was fun to listen to one another music. Upon arrival to Osaka, we first went to another observation deck. I’m not the biggest fan of them, but it was cool to see the highway in between the buildings. Ryder and I also tried to take aesthetic photos with our matching new adidas but they did not turn out too great. We got lunch in the basement floor which I was not the biggest fan of because there weren’t the greatest options and we settled on Indian again. I’m usually a fan of Indian but I’ve been having it too much. We then went to Osaka Castle, which was really massive and cool to see from the outside. Ryder and I once again tried to get good pics and it did not work out once again. The whole class watched us too which was funny. We then went to the shopping district where we split up as a class and my group first went to Starbucks to relax for a minute. We then shopped around a bit and got some clothes and then traveled to Umida station where Ryder wanted to get new sunglasses. The girls and I looked for shoes, and I found another cute pair that I wanted so bad so I in fact got another pair of shoes. How I will fit them into my luggage I am not sure of. We then called it a day and travelled home as we were quite tired and ready to lay in bed.

Academic Reflection

Todays reading focused on the urbanization of Osaka and urban planning in general. It really stuck with me that Japan simply destroys buildings to build new ones in their places, rather than renovating them as the US typically does. Even historically significant buildings in Japan aren’t protected like they are in America. Also, seeing the highway built in between buildings was a perfect example of how businesses in Japan will use as much space as they can to maximize profit. I’m glad Professor Smith pointed this highway out to us!

It was also very surprising to me how Osaka is so industrialized and almost NYC-esque than I expected. Corporations and businesses definitely try to profit off of any square inch that they can get, and market everything towards tourists and eye-appealing designs, such as the large crab or octopus on the outside of restaurants that we saw! Everything was also very mismatched and had work, play, and leisure aspects altogether once again, until the US that is a bit more planned and organized. This is honestly a very functional design and allows one to have everything they need right at their finger tips!

[industry212]

Breaking: Binance Chief Resigns Over Money-Laundering Scandal

Money-laundering scandal forces Binance chief to step down

"Binance became the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange in part because of the crimes it committed -- now it is paying one of the largest corporate penalties in US history," said Attorney General Merrick Garland in a statement.

The Department of Justice stated that Binance's guilty plea is part of a coordinated effort with the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

According to the Department of Justice, Zhao pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering programme and resigned as CEO.

Zhao, a Canadian who lives in the United States, submitted his plea in person in the United States, according to Garland.

According to court filings, Zhao agreed to pay a $50 million fine as part of his plea deal.

Binance's agreements with Treasury Department agencies include a $3.4 billion civil money penalty and a $968 million penalty involving OFAC. These are the largest settlements in the agencies' history.

"Binance turned a blind eye to its legal obligations in the pursuit of profit," said Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in a statement.

"Its willful failures allowed money to flow to terrorists, cybercriminals and child abusers through its platform."

Binance "deliberately undermined its own sanctions monitoring controls," she said, allowing over 1.5 million virtual currency trades that violated US sanctions and failing to notify suspicious activities.

Yellen called the sanctions and Binance's five-year monitorship a "milestone for the virtual currency industry."

Suspicious activity

According to the Treasury, Binance's offences included failing to block and report transactions with groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, as well as matching trades between US users and those in sanctioned jurisdictions such as Iran and North Korea.

Moving forward, Binance must file mandatory suspicious activity reports, in addition to examining historical transactions to report such conduct to authorities, according to Garland.

"This will advance our criminal investigations into malicious cyber activity and terrorism fundraising, including the use of cryptocurrency exchanges to support groups such as Hamas," he went on to say.

Binance was founded in 2017 and quickly dominated the cryptocurrency trading market, making Zhao a billionaire.

Binance operates cryptocurrency exchanges and other services all over the world, but it has taken a significant hit since the crypto markets crashed and regulators began investigating the legality of its operations.

Zhao, widely regarded as the archrival of disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, is expected to be sentenced at a later date.

Zhao is currently restricted from operating Binance's company as a result of the agreement.

'Misguided decisions'

Binance said in a statement that it "made misguided decisions along the way" as it grew swiftly in an industry in the "early stages of regulation."

"Today, Binance takes responsibility for this past chapter," according to the statement.

The corporation also stated that it did not have enough compliance controls at first and that it is attempting to restructure. Richard Teng, the company's former global head of regional markets, will succeed Zhao as CEO.

Zhao stated in a separate social media declaration, "I made mistakes, and I must accept responsibility."

The latest agreement excludes the company's dealings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, another regulator, which filed a slew of accusations against Binance in June, alleging that it allowed US people to trade even though it was not registered as a securities exchange in the country.

The SEC also claims that the business misappropriated consumer monies.

While Binance was started in China, Zhao relocated its operations to other places across the world following Beijing's crackdown on the cryptocurrency sector.

The volatile business soared in 2021, thanks to a slew of complicated products and celebrity endorsements, propelling it to a valuation of more than $3 trillion the previous year.

However, a series of scandals, including the collapse of the FTX exchange and criminal charges against its executives, caused public trust to dwindle and investors to withdraw their funds.

[ithappensblog]

more than an orange shirt

Over the past few years, I've embarked on a profound journey of self-discovery, one that has taken me deep into the roots of my ancestry. My motivation for this exploration stemmed from the absence of a relationship with my father's family, which left a void in my understanding of my roots. Little did I know that this quest would uncover pieces of Aboriginal heritage I never knew existed within me.

When I met Jason, I was aware that he was Métis and had been raised with the rich traditions and culture that came with it. I wholeheartedly embraced his background and over the years have immersed myself in Powwows and educational opportunities that shed light on the Indigenous peoples of our country. Yet, it was only when I delved into my own ancestry that I truly comprehended the depth of this connection.

Discovering my Aboriginal heritage resonated deep within me, tugging at my heartstrings in a way I hadn't expected. This newfound knowledge wasn't just about adding another layer to my identity; it was about acknowledging the historical and cultural significance of my roots.

As parents, Jason and I have made it a priority to pass down pieces of our different heritages to our daughter. She eagerly absorbs the stories and traditions of our respective backgrounds, fostering a sense of pride and belonging that will hopefully stay with her throughout her life. Some of our forebears were forced to conceal their true identities out of fear, a painful reality that we cannot ignore. We will honour them by standing tall and proud of who we are and who we come from.

Today, on Truth and Reconciliation Day, our reflections go beyond our personal journeys. We must remember what the people before us endured. We must realize the continued suffering of Indigenous peoples in Canada due to over a century of mistreatment.

This day serves as a stark reminder of the importance of educating yourself and your children about the land you call home, the history it holds, and the ongoing struggles faced by Indigenous communities.

This day is more than just sporting an orange shirt.

As I reflect on my journey, I am grateful for the pieces of my heritage that I've uncovered. I am proud to stand alongside my partner and daughter, committed to learning, respecting, and preserving the traditions and cultures of all our ancestors. I am committed to advocating for the fair treatment of the Indigenous peoples and recognize the damage residential schools caused. It's been a long journey of self-discovery, empathy, and unity.

I hope this post serves as a reminder to acknowledge the past and work toward a better future for all. Because, unfortunately, it's 2023 and some of the very people who this land belongs to, don't even have the luxury of clean drinking water. Some families are still suffering from intergenerational trauma because of the disgusting harm Indigenous children faced for over 100 years. Let that sink in.

[mondaysjournal]

7/1/2023 - The First Candle

Today I went to Amesbury, a town that is normally an hour outside of Boston, but was an hour and a half today because of traffic on I-95. It wasn't a terrible drive, but it was better on the way back since I didn't have to wait in stopped time so much. As I got close to the center of town, I began to expect much less, as it looked as sprawled out as most towns in this country, though I was pleasantly surprised once I actually got to where I was going.

I parked around here, and behind that sign for the chinese restaurant is where the game store was. I bought two LTR set boosters, and even though they were both duds, I did get some useful cards to put in my decks that you'll see in the end. One useful card, anyway. I decided to walk further in.

There's a little owl at the top of the entrance if you zoom in up there. It wasn't apparent until I walked further down that Amesbury is a historic mill town, with a few of these old factories converted into buildings that now have shops and some housing. This next picture is just a mural that I saw.

The Merrimack River runs through this town, as it is located in the Merrimack Valley. I don't know what other towns are in this location, and I don't know if I'll be visiting them. There is one smaller stream/river that runs through the main street, and I took a few pictures of it like this.

I also saw a cabbage white while I was looking at this stream.

Here's the entrance to some of the mills in the back.

I was hungry, so I went to a place further down the street right next to this entrance and got a sandwich. I wanted roast beef, but they were out of it so I just got turkey instead and an iced mocha. They were alright. I wasn't going to sit down and spend an hour eating lunch which is why I went here instead of somewhere else. Maybe at the next town I'll do that. There was a big painting of a comic on the inside, you can see here.

I went further in, and saw that I could get a better look of the river if I went down one of the paths to the left.

Maybe the nicest thing I saw, other than the river.

I liked this view especially.

I then went back and looked around some shops to get you something. I ended up deciding on some saltwater taffy from this store called the hedgehog general store.

I went further down to the right, towards a part of town that had a bar or something like that where a lot of people were. Past that was another view of the stream, which I am still not sure if it was connected to the merrimack river or not. Here's what it looked like.

This is a better view I got when I went down closer to the water.

And then I went back and got a picture of one of the converted mills which had the bar I was talking about. They all sort of looked like this.

This is Amesbury.

There was a record store near this where I bought a record for $12. I don't have a record player, I just wanted to get it because its an album I've listened to a lot. I then went back to the area where I first saw the river near the mills just to see if there was anything else. There was a bird in its nest in a tree.

I felt like I had seen pretty much everything at this point, so I went in search of a better view of the river. I found a place called Alliance Park which was just a small patch of land with some benches. This bench is where I sat.

I was there for about twenty minutes just sitting before I decided to go back home. I think I was in town for about 3 hours. And this is what I pulled:

It was a nice place for the most part. Maybe not as exciting as some of the things you said I could do, but I thought it was worthwhile. I like finding significance in small things. Like you. Next weekend, I'll be going to Londonderry, NH. Will I ever return to Amesbury? I'm not sure. I think there are probably nicer places to take you. I'm always thinking about you wherever I go. I love you so much.

[umichenginabroad]

Week 5 in Limerick

Hey guys, it’s Katie again, and here’s what happened this past week in Limerick.

Monday: Today, I changed up the procedure in the lab a bit. I’m using the same amount of sludge and acid, but I add the acid after running the reactor, then run it again at a lower temperature. Based on the results from today, it’s possible that doing this results in more liquid product and less hydrochar, but I will need to do a few more trials to be sure. We didn’t do much that evening besides hang out, but we had plans to go kayaking the next day, so it was nice to have a chill evening.

Tuesday: I started by repeating the experiment from yesterday, but during the second run of the HTC reactor, it heated past the set temperature, so I had to discard the products. It wasn’t a huge deal since I have plenty of time to run the various trials, but it was a little frustrating. In the evening, we went kayaking. We lucked out with the weather because it had been pouring rain on and off all day, but cleared up when we went out on the river. It was different than expected since we stayed in the same area on the river and played kayaking games like kayak polo, races, and kayak tag. It was a great time, even though I crashed into everyone multiple times. 

Wednesday: Today we switched things up a bit in the lab by going to use the scanning electron microscope, or SEM, to look at the hydrochar I collected. This ended up being kind of boring because they didn’t have time to train me on how to use the SEM, so I mostly watched Nina look at the samples and practice adjusting the microscope to see better. There was also a program to show some of the elements contained within the hydrochar, and to save pictures of the SEM view. Afterwards, it was too late to start another trial that would take hours, so I went home for the day. I took a quick trip to downtown Limerick to get a book, The Priory of the Orange Tree, which I had heard good things about.

A pretty dog mural in downtown Limerick

Thursday: Today, I retried the experiment procedure from earlier in the week, because Nina and I were not sure why the product in the reactor overheated. I observed the temperature, and when it once again went over 10 degrees above the set point, I told Nina, but this time she told me to collect the product as usual, suspecting an exothermic reaction caused by the acid. Unfortunately, I spilled some of my product at the end, so I couldn't get accurate mass measurements. Friday was pretty much the same, so there's not much to say there.

Saturday: Today, Pascale and I took a bus up to Dublin for the Pride Parade. It was my first one, and it was so cool to watch everyone marching and dancing by, having a great time. Super excited to go to another one next year. Then, I went to see the Book of Kells at Trinity College. First, I walked through a room with information about Irish illuminated manuscripts, which had some enlarged photos of the pages (we can't take photos of the actual book). Then, I saw the original Book of Kells in its own room, and walked up to the Old Library. It had busts of several famous people, as well as manuscripts from an old wealthy family's collection. Once that was over, Pascale and I walked around a little more, got food, and almost missed our bus back to Limerick because we couldn't find the stop. In the evening, we went to the David Bowie Experience at Dolan's, which had a band performing Bowie's greatest hits. It was very loud, but lots of fun, and the band did a great job.

Top left: Image from an illuminated manuscript. Top right: The Old Library. Bottom left: Pascale and me at the Pride Parade. Bottom right: idk what that is

Sunday: Since we were all tired from the concert last night, we took it easy in the morning. In the mid-afternoon, Pascale and I took a bus to see the Rock of Cashel, a complex of medieval buildings with great historical and religious significance. In the 25 minutes or so we had before closing, Pascale and I explored the old Gothic cathedral, graveyard, and chapel, all of which have fascinating histories. The Rock of Cashel is known as the legendary site where St. Patrick banished the devil, as well as the seat of the High Kings of Munster (Southern Ireland). Afterwards, we caught the next bus back to Limerick, grabbed a quick dinner, and headed back to the apartment.

Top left: the Rock of Cashel. Top right: view from the Rock of Cashel. Bottom left: side view of the Rock of Cashel, including the Round Tower. Bottom right: tapestry in a chapel.

[edelweissacermacrophyllum]

Slavery

Joshua 17-18, Proverbs 10:31-11:8, John 1: 29-51

The old testament passage today is part of a longer chunk where the writer describes which parts of the Levant every tribe of Israel got and where the boundaries were, based off local land marks. The timeline and age of this book would actually be pretty easy to fact check (I mean, compared to normal historical accounts) because some of the towns mentioned are present in the archaeological record and we can see where they all line up.

Of course, we mix timelines too, talking about where ancient structures were in comparison to present day modern landmarks. If this book is artificial history for political purposes, there is a clear purpose here: creating a national identity out of a bunch of squabbling tribes, uniting them under one king. But it is also conceivable that this is a somewhat accurate depiction of what happened. That being said, I don't have the data to prove that statment and somebody else probably does so I'll leave it alone.

What I want to draw attention to are the few times it says that the Israelites were unable to completely kill all the locals. It says that they do forced labour and that state of affairs continues until this day, assuming the day of writing. After all the Levitical commands to be kind to the foreigners residing among them, after they were constantly reminded that they were slaves in Egypt, they have managed to justify their own use of slavery. It's about the most normal thing in human history: the "othering" of people so that our abuses of them are justified. We still do it today, with those who pick our vegetables, make our clothes, and live on our streets. I'm trying to be less of a reductionist and to see the deep significance, or even spiritual force behind the mundane things in our lives. It's to help me experience more intention, meaning, and significance in life.

We do not go a day without our gut killing a million microorganisms. We do not go a day without our lives being supported by the work of people who work hard in inhumane conditions because they have no choice. There is a huge diffusion of responsibility for this, and it's tricky to think about when we too, feel like we're a paycheque away from ruin, but the rich people who are actually responsible for making the decisions can't be expected to make the right ones. What is our next holy action if we are feeling like slaves forced to benefit from worse slavery? Is it actual violence? I don't think so. I think it is community organizing, as Jesus did. I think we need to protest and be disruptive when we can, tar and feather the rich when we can get away with it, and cultivate our own community security. And don't give rich Christians more money.