#Sadly don’t think any news on this will be unbiased | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

fae-fucker · 2 years

Text

Breaking Time: Part 1

After more moral deliberation than what is probalby justified, I've decided to snark this book after all. You see, I’ve sort of realized that what I have to say would make for a ridiculously long book review, so I might as well do this. But because the horse I'll be kicking is half-dead already, I figured I'd go easier on it, and this snark will be shorter and speedier than my usual ones, going at about five chapters per post, or 5 ch/p. This means I'll be mostly recapping the events and cutting back on my line-by-line nitpicking, only adding quotes when they're extra bad or when they're funny bad. If recap-heavy isn't your vibe, feel free to skip this snark.

So, a few important disclaimers before we get into this:

I don't follow Sasha on anywhere, never have, and never will. All I know about her personally is that she's got red hair and she's weaponized her awful taste in literatture to create a career for herself. She also seemingly can't write for shit, but got a publishing deal and became a New York Times bestseller off of her own fanbase. Gatekeep girlboss etc. I'm saying this to explain why I might not pick up on references to her own life or similarities between her and the main character, of which there are apparently many. Feel free to inform me of these if you like, but it's likely that I'll miss them in the text itself. However, that also means I'm not biased for or against Klara, so I'll be looking at her as her own character, as it should be tbh. Self-inserts are fine in fanfic but shouldn't be a thing in published lit.

I have an at best passing and at worst insufficient knowledge of the mythology and folklore that will be referenced in the book. Yes, I'm sorry, but I probably won't be able to know where Sasha fucks up, which means I'll fuck up by proxy. I know some very basic things, mostly stuff that overlaps with Nordic folklore, plus stuff I've picked up from other media, but I haven't done any in-depth research myself. So if you see something outrageously wrong and I don't pick up on it, feel free to inform me, just don't be a dick about it.

I have not read Outlander and I never will! However, I do have a good friend who has read it, so I might ask them about this stuff. This means I sadly won't be able to see just how close the similarities are (though I know Klara and Claire are basically the same name, shame on you Sasha), but I'm not about to read Outlander just for this snark, sorry huns. Some things even I won't read.

With all this in mind, what exactly will I be critquing if I can't talk about the most juicy stuff, you might ask? Well, everything else! The romance, the worldbuilding, the plot, the writing, the characters. I'd say there's plenty of stuff to look at aside from the most blatantly bad shit, and one could argue that this gives me sort of an unbiased and somewhat objective look at the work.

Okay, it's not fully unbiased of course. I'm doing a snark before I've even finished the book, meaning I fully assume it'll stay bad enough to talk about throughout. That's the definition of biased. But! I genuinely have no particular ill will toward Sasha or her work, and I want to see what she's cooked up for us, what she's been working on for so long. I thought Lindsay Cummings' standalone work wasn't phenomenal, but at least it was, I dunno, intriguing? I need to know for scientific reasons whether Sasha on her own can carry a novel, whether her solo projects will be any better than Zenith.

Now, you might wonder why I'm giving Breaking Time this treatment while The Murder Complex only got a review? For one, I didn't think TMC would be fun to snark, since it was just ... nothing. It woud just be me moaning about the stupid worldbuilding and edgy writing over and over. It was basically Zenith but on Earth, complete with another white-haired murderous waif.

But, if we have to be honest ... Who's the main person to blame for Zenith? Cummings didn't have any sort of audience before Zenith, and I don't know if she has one after. The only reason Zenith exists, and lbr, this book exists, is because Sasha already has a dedicated audience. (Though not dedicated enough anymore, judging by the GR ratings, oof.) So, in my opinion, if a YouTuber gets to coast off of their existing influence to sell their books while actually good authors have to scrape together what they can, then they deserve higher scrutiny from the public.

Because of her fanbase, she got to publish this book that genuinely reads like a first draft, something that wouldn’t have been published if the publisher didn’t know it would sell regardless of quality. I think that fucking uuuh sucks ass? So I’m here to tell you why that’s a bad practice and that publishing sucks and you shouldn’t buy Youtuber books.

Ahem. Well, that was long. Now let's get into it!

Chapter 1: Callum

The book opens in 1568, and we're in the POV of a man named Callum, who's staggering out of a pub in search of his friend Thomas.

We find out that Callum and Thomas are both pit fighters, and Thomas has recently been getting his entire ass handed to him, which is worrying. They both work for a man slash abusive father figure named Brice. They’re both orphans and Thomas is Callum’s older brother figure, so he’s very attached to Thomas as a role model, though Callum is especially bummed out about not having a mom.

Callum keeps wandering around looking for Thomas with no response, and he's extra worried because a while earlier, Thomas had given him his most prized and secret possession: a notebook. This would indeed be quite worrisome, Callum, I'm with you there.

Callum recalls that Thomas has been acting strange these last few months, disappearing at regular intervals and coming back weird and mean, talking about mystical creatures as if he'd met them. Thomas would also talk about mysterious men who leap between worlds, oooh.

They’re coming, Cal, you’ll see. It’s as simple as stepping through a veil.

Who’s coming, Thomas? What veil? Callum asked, and Thomas would laugh.

What an asshole, lol. Ok but why wouldn't he explain to Callum who he's talking about? He's clearly willing to talk about his other experiences. So what in-universe reason does Thomas have for just laughing Callum off instead of telling him what's going on? I know we need to keep it mysterious for the reader but this just makes no sense.

Giving me Soyina laughing at Andi for asking how she brings people back to life with "science."

Callum hears a sound and finds Thomas, super-stabbed and bleeding out fast. Callum feels bad about stealing his dirk earlier, he'd done it because he was worried Thomas would hurt himself with it, but now he thinks he might have been able to defend himself if Callum hadn't taken it. We also get this:

He wished suddenly, ferociously, that he’d had a proper mother, one whose wisdom he could call upon to calmly guide his hands. However, Thomas was the only family he had.

Literally what. I get that we have to establish that Callum doesn't have a mother and Thomas is basically his older brother, but we have already established that. This just feels really jarring to me. Like his best friend and brother is bleeding out and Callum is bitter about how he doesn't have a mom? Anyway.

Someone attacks Callum, a mysterious man with white hair and amber eyes. He's holding the dagger that he presumably used to stab Thomas, so Callum loses his marbles and attacks him right back. It doesn't do much of anything, and it seems the stranger has some sort of supernatural powers, ooh.

“I’m going to have fun with you,” the stranger whispered. “I like a man with a bit of fight in him. It’s more fun to play with your prey, don’t you think?”

Gee, I wonder if he's the bad guy. (But also I'm internally cringing because this is basically how I wrote the bad guy in my book at first before betas pointed out he was too hammy. None of us are above bad writing, kids. Check yourself before you Shrek yourself.)

“I dinnae believe I’m going to Heaven,” Callum said, raising his fists once more, drawing strength from the familiar ache that radiated through his arms. “But I cannae wait to bring you to Hell with me.”

You couldn't add a little "hasta la vista" in there? Or mayhaps a "yippee ki-yay, motherfucker"? No? Too much? Cuz I swear it would've fit right in.

Man, even when he's getting his ass beat by a bad man, our hero simply must have his little epic badass moment and the shitty one-liner, huh?

Plus, it's so clunky and awkwardly written. If it's supposed to be badass, why does it sound like he rehearsed it in the shower for ages and still got it wrong? If I were the villain here I'd defo giggle.

Anyway, his big dick bonanza doesn't last very long and the bad man cuts him up like a shish kebab. Callum collapses next to Thomas all dramatic, and then the bad man collects some of Thomas's blood.

“If you’ll excuse me, there’s one last Pillar I must find.”

Pillar?

The unearthly amber eyes melted into darkness as his opponent backed away and turned, disappearing into the shadows once more. Softly hissed words echoed in the alley. Àiteachan dìomhair, fosgailte dhomh, Àiteachan dìomhair, fosgailte dhomh…

A bunch of spooky magic mist surrounds the bad man and Callum is bleeding out. Then he hears Thomas’ voice saying “Get up, scunner” and this is enough to push Callum to a final attack, and he manages to grab onto the bad man (noticing that he has knots tattooed around his collarbone, those will be important later I guess) and time seems to stop just as his blade connects with the bad dude's neck.

A bright glow burned against his lids. He closed his eyes tighter and welcomed whatever might follow, only hoping he’d find Thomas there. A wall of light had formed above, descending as if the sun were pulling him through the sky. His body rose into its searing embrace.

He waited for the long drop to the ground, but it never came.

Callum kept soaring.

Not just through the street.

Not to death’s embrace.

But somewhere else.

Leaping to another world, like the man in Thomas’s story, Callum thought.

So he leaped.

The previous descriptions all sound distinctly like Callum has no control over his movement, but sure, end the chapter on that note just for the drama of it.

Honestly, for a first chapter, it's not bad! The writing is a bit iffy in spots, but it sets up one of the main characters, his background, his relationships and connections, his motivations, and it introduces an antagonist and some intriguing lore as well! It’s a little too fast for my taste, but overall, not bad!

Chapter 2: Klara

We’re in “Present Day” now, with our second protagonist. Her chapter starts like this:

Klara usually thought of rain as Scotland’s natural lullaby, but right now it felt more like the bars of a prison cell.

Hell if I know.

We find out that Klara is in covering for her aunt Sorcha (of course) as receptionist of Kingshill Manor, an old Scottish inn that Klara’s family owns that’s filled with old Scottish stuff that I’m sure Sasha researched for a whole five minutes. We also find out that Klara’s mother died fairly recently of cancer, and that Klara moved back to Scotland so she could apply to college there instead of in the States.

Her father used to be a CFO of a “boutique hotel chain” in the US, and boy am I suddenly reminded of why I rarely read contemporary romance. It’s just very hard for me to relate or care about an affluent pretty white girl going on adventures. Red hair isn’t a personality trait, no matter how many booktubers want to convince you it is <3

Anyway, turns out that Klara doesn’t actually want to study astronomy in Edinburgh because it was her dead mother’s dream rather than hers, and she’s now received a confirmation letter in the mail saying that her withdrawal has been accepted.

Klara wanted more than to study the stars—she longed to discover new ones. New worlds.

Yeah I’m pretty sure you still need to study astronomy in order to do that. Unless she means she wants to get into crystal healing or crypto.

Her dad returns home and Klara explains (in narration) that she’s not yet ready to tell him about her college decision, because he’s a big softie and is still deeply affected by his wife’s death. He convinces Klara to go do something because she hasn’t been outside in 3 days. She decides to schedule a visit to her grandmother over the weekend. And then ... grabs the car keys to go ... somewhere? We don’t really get any destination or anything. It’s clearly just a super clumsy way of getting her out of the house and into the car. Why couldn’t she just go to her grandma’s now? Idk man.

Before you read this next quote, I want you to know that Klara previously mentioned a doorknob in the shape of a horse’s head. It comes back now like this:

“Okay,” [Klara’s dad] said. “Be safe.”

She turned back again, smiling, leaving one hand on the doorknob. The horse’s cool brass nose pressed into her palm. She met his eyes. Dark green, like hers. It was the only feature she’d inherited from him.

The ... horse? The only feature she inherited from the horse head doorknob?

Look, I know what this is supposed to refer to, but man is it awkwardly written. This is something even a cursory edit would’ve picked up. Did nobody read this before it got published?

Idk.

Her dad invites her to go to the pub later to see a band, and we get the obligatory not-like-other-girls rant.

At eighteen, she could legally drink in Scotland. It should have been every normal American teenager’s dream, but Klara had never felt normal—not even before they uprooted their lives to a country across the ocean. Going to a pub to socialize with strangers was the last thing on her mind. Cute mailman aside, she preferred the leading men of romance novels, who were hot and charming and broody and didn’t try to pull her into any awkward conversations.

This will sound cruel but um. I hope this isn’t Sasha’s actual thought process, because this is straight up baby logic. I love cringey romance novel heroes as much as the next lonely fuck, but to aspire to date someone who’s similar to them IRL? Bruv.

Is Sasha single? I hope she is, because if not, her SO now knows what she actually wants in a partner given that she wrote her ideal man into a self-insert romance novel.

Anyway, she goes out for a drive and then sees a Mysterious Man on the road. She swerves to avoid him but finds his crumpled body on the ground anyway.

Chapter 3: Klara

Klara’s panicking and inspects the stranger. He’s barely conscious and covered in blood. Kingshill Manor is closer than any other town and hospital, and she forgot her phone at home, so she gets the guy into her car and drives back to call an ambulance.

He keeps mumbling something about Thomas, so she assumes that’s his name. Once back in the manor, he falls over and she lands with her head on his muscled chest, because of course. She inspects his hot bod and finds that he’s got no actual wounds, and worries that he maybe murdered someone.

Though he was slim, there was muscle on him. She took in his dark, curly hair and sun-bronzed face. Even in his rain-soaked, filthy state, she couldn’t help but notice how attractive he was. He kind of resembled the guy on the cover of A Loch Ness Lass in Love.

Yeah, Sasha’s Pinterest board for this book has pictures of a wet Henry Cavill and several equally wet lookalikes, none of whom I would call slim. Unless she means “slim” as in “not fat” and not “skinny.”

Klara finds a dirk on him, the one we know he took from Thomas.

The blade was covered in dirt, but Klara could tell it was well taken care of, regularly sharpened and polished, free of rust. The studded handle was wound in leather, which was soft and worn. Cold crept up her spine. Like the dirk was used often.

Cold crept up her spine like the dirk was used often? Again, I get what this is supposed to say, but it’s so weird and awkward and reading it felt like getting smacked in the face. Just removing “like” would’ve saved it, IMO, which once again begs the question: who edited this?

Chapter 4: Callum

The chapter opens on a flashback of Thomas and Callum hiking up a mountain, which Callum hates but is doing for his bestie brother figure. Then it abruptly ends with Thomas telling Callum that he’s lost and it’s time to wake up. Very ominouse.

Callum wakes up in the now-times and is confused by everything. He thinks Klara is a bean-nighe and the paramedic inspecting him is holding some sort of weird metallic torch. Looking around, Callum seems to think he’s in some lavish mansion or something. Which I think he is, but even more lavish for him because he’s a 16th century peasant.

The doctor asks if Callum has been drinking, which Callum confirms and mentions The Black Heart, the same pub he had stumbled out of at the start of the novel that still exists in the present day. This, apparently, is enough to make the doctor believe he’s dealing with a drunk and recommend he takes aspirin and water and drinks a bit less.

So um ... Wasn’t Callum covered in blood? Like, not only that, but he’s likely concussed and seems confused by his surroundings? Wouldn’t a paramedic find all of this sort of alarming, even if the patient doesn’t have any visible wounds? This all seems very convenient to me.

Anyway, throughout all this, Callum is very aware of Klara becuase she’s just so pretty, and also because he thinks she might be a banshee.

“He’s lucky to not be dead.” The sound of her voice was strange, an accent unlike anything Callum had ever heard. Not Scottish—nor English, nor French—but spirited. Perhaps she was Scottish, after all.

There’s something deeply embarrassing and uncomfortably personal about this, like reading smut by a bad writer where you can tell this is specifically for them only and you’re just “lucky” to be along for the ride. The idea of an American author, obsessed with Scotland, thinking that a 16th century Scottish stud would find her modern American accent “spirited” enough to maybe be Scottish?

It’s embarrassing. You should be embarrassed.

Also, this has introduced my first major issue with this premise, but we’ll get there.

Callum thinks Klara was the one who had healed his fatal wound and begins sheepishly cleaning up the mess he caused. Two American tourists walk in and assume he’s the receptionist? I have to reiterate that my guy is covered in blood, but the tourists seem to think he’s in costume.

Callum knew the lairds of the lands lived different lives, but he could hardly understand this man.

But Klara’s accent is spirited, is it? (We find out later that the tourists are Texan, while Klara lived in New York. Weird vibe, if you ask me. Doesn’t seem to make any linguistic sense why Callum would find one appealing and the other incomprehensible, but what do I know.)

There’s some more comedic shenanigans that you can probably imagine a better version of, but Klara returns and Callum has the obligatory think on how hot and beautiful and ginger she is.

Her beauty reminded Callum of the stories sailors told as they passed through Rosemere on the way to the coast—of the beautiful mermaids that ensnared men’s hearts and dragged them to the depths of the sea. He had never understood why, if the men knew what fate lay before them, they didn’t turn away from the sea-devils before it was too late.

Now, looking at the lady before him, Callum understood.

Insta-love? In MY shitty shovelware equivalent of YA? Perish the thought.

Klara orders Callum to go wait in a different room -- the paramedic has left by now, btw -- and Callum goes off to have a survivor’s guilt trip about Thomas’s death and how he couldn’t save him and how he should’ve been the one to die. He rips off his shirt because it’s got Thomas’s blood on it (sigh) and then makes a vow on one knee to get revenge on the man who killed Thomas. It’s very dramatic.

Chapter 5: Klara

Of course, Klara walks in on Callum doing his little half-naked vow. And God forgive me for showing this to all of your virgin eyes.

Other than on TV, which didn’t really count, she hadn’t seen many men’s bodies in her eighteen years of life—except for Steven, her ex-boyfriend. She would’ve felt guilty for almost forgetting about him but then again, he was forgettable. And Steven seemed to have forgotten about her when he cheated on prom night...

Callum’s body was...not forgettable.

Muscled. Ripped. Svelte. Bonnie. Tan and lean, with a dusting of dark hair on his upper chest which also sprouted below his belly button and went lower than she cared to admit she had noticed. Definitely not forgettable.

HE CAN’T BE MUSCLED AND RIPPED WHILE ALSO BEING SVELTE AND LEAN. THIS IS NOT HOW DESCRIPTIONS WORK. It’s like she just threw on all the “hot” words without thinking of what her character actually looked like.

Sasha, I will be in your walls later this week, so clear out your fucking schedule.

(Also “cheated on prom night” makes it sound like he cheated on prom night. As in he was dating prom night and cheated on it.)

Klara hurries off to find Callum some clothes from the lost and found stash. When she returns, he makes fun of her being embarrassed by his nakedness.

He chuckled softly and took the bundle from her hands. “Dinnae fash, it’s just skin.”

She allowed her gaze to drift downward. He looked back at her, eyes sparkling.

He held her gaze. Time seemed to slow and stretch, like freshly made taffy.

God, what love potion did she accidentally take? She wasn’t the insta-love crush type, and she didn’t need to become one all of a sudden.

1) What a wild tone shift. How is this anywhere near how anybody would act in this situation?

2) Just because you shine a spotlight on your bad choices doesn’t make them not bad choices, Sasha. “Uhuhuhu, if I SAY it’s not insta-love, then its not insta-love!” Not how that works, hun.

3) Did you just use the word gaze twice in three sentences. Editing whomst?

Anyway, they introduce themselves and Callum goes to change into his new fit. He does ask about the dirk and notebook he had on him, but Klara lies and says she found nothing, because she’s still worried he’s a serial killer and doesn’t want him to have his knife. Fair enough.

She says she never found a phone on him but that he could use hers to call someone, then offers her dad to give him a ride home, but gets nothing in response. She offers him food and that gets him going. Then when Callum seems confused by his mishmash of new clothes, we get this:

“Yeah. Come on, [the clothes] scream vintage.”

She put the nuked breakfast burrito onto a plate and turned to see a bewildered Callum sitting at the other end of the table, staring at his hands.

“Acid wash? Scrunchies? Lots of hair spray?” Nothing. “Taylor Swift’s 1989?” He looked even more confused.

Hey Sasha, um, don’t mind my T-posing behind you at this very moment, but when do you think Taylor Swift’s 1989 was released? Just asking.

Klara suspects that maybe Callum comes from some isolated village, or that he suffered some sort of brain injury, which one would think the EMT would also wonder, but I guess the healthcare in Scotland is pure doggy doo-doo in this universe.

Klara slid the plate of food across the table.

“I hope you’re not a vegetarian.”

He gave her a questioning look. “I’m no Lutheran, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Uh...” Was that the famous dry Scottish humor she still didn’t get? “Do you like meat?”

He nodded, shaggy hair flopping with the movement. “Very much.”

Klara gave him a tight-lipped smile. His deep Scottish brogue was probably the thickest accent she had ever heard, which was saying a lot because a Glaswegian school group had once visited the manor.

Ah yes, the deep Scottish brogue of “very much.” Seriously though, why is his speech reduced to just having a thick accent? These people aren’t only thousands of miles apart in space, but nearly 500 years apart. They should not be able to communicate.

It feels like Sasha couldn’t even be bothered to look up those funny Scottish tweets that went viral a while ago, to make it seem at least slightly more authentic. Or ask any actual Scottish person to read through this mess.

Anyway, Callum thinks that Klara cooked his food, which she technically did, and is surprised by what he thinks is a noble lady doing the cooking herself.

“I thought the rich always employed a kitchen staff. You’re a...different sort of lady.”

“A different sort?” Was that a compliment or an insult? Klara laughed, mostly to hide a wince. Her family wasn’t rich—far from it—she couldn’t blame Callum for assuming. She did live in a massive, cool manor house brimming with antiques and oddities.

“Far from it”??? Didn’t you say your dad was a CFO of a boutique chain in the US? Babygirl just say you’re privileged and move on, you’re not fooling anybody with that “uhuhu we’re so HUMBLE and POOR in our MASSIVE HISTORIC MANSION FILLED WITH ANTIQUITIES.” This is why I can’t read contemporary romance written by pretty straight white women. I have to suffer through characters thinking that not being able to afford a fifth Live, Laugh, Love sign is oppression.

Also, if you remove “far from it,” the sentence becomes “Her family wasn’t rich, she couldn’t blame Callum for assuming.” This makes no sense, even with the aside. Did you miss a word somewhere? WHO EDITED THIS?! A little monkey???

They end up talking about Thomas being gone and Klara gets all sad about it because loss is tragic etc, and they bond over it. I’m not gonna say anything about this because I assume this is based on Sasha’s own life. Klara offers to help him find whoever took Thomas from him, but doesn’t know where Rosemere is, so instead they decide to go to The Black Hart.

She drives him there and thinks he’s about to kiss her before he gets out, which she doesn’t seem to mind, but this isn’t insta-love! It’s NOT insta-love! Shut up!

Callum gets out and heads for The Black Hart, but obviously it’s all modern and different now, so he chickens out and walks into the forest instead. Klara is compelled to follow him because of a Mysterious, Unexplained Feeling. Like, she’s physically pulled back into the plot by it. Watch the master Sasha at work, crafting her story for us to enjoy:

And yet, though she had only known him a few hours, she felt a tinge of sadness.

Well, less of a tinge...more like a pull.

[...] Deep in her chest, a knot formed. It was the strangest thing. Like nothing she had felt before. It wasn’t love, or empathy. It was a physical feeling, like a rope was tightening around her ribs. [...]

But the farther she drove from The Black Hart, the more the feeling intensified. It felt as if something was pulling her back. The longer she resisted, the tighter it became, until it was so tight, she felt like something would break inside her.

“What is this,” she choked, turning the wheel around. Her body moved of its own accord, but her brain was still trying to catch up.

To her relief, the feeling lessened as she got closer to the pub. [...]

Trust yourself.

Her mother’s words came to her, so loud and real in Klara’s mind that she actually looked to see if her mother was standing just outside the car, calling to her.

Yeah, excapt don’t trust yourself. Trust the plot literally pulling you back into it with mysterious feelings.

GOD. I said “mini snark” and then wrote this. So sorry, everyone. But also, no I’m not <3

#eff reads: breaking time

6 notes · View notes

vanessasilva1 · 2 years

Text

Inspection services old Lyme CT

Our full residential property home inspection services in Old Lyme CT is a non-invasive evaluation of a home’s visible and readily accessible components. We’ll give you our unbiased perspective on the home’s condition so that you can go on to negotiate any necessary repairs or improvements without missing critical details that could impact the quality of your investment. We may utilize aerial drone photography during our inspection to evaluate a roofing system that can’t be safely walked, typically due to steep pitch or existing damage. An infrared thermometer may be used to verify suspected areas of moisture intrusion, energy inefficiency, or electrical issues occurring within the home. A moisture meter and circuit tester are also often employed.

Hire a Home Inspector for Your New Build Home!

When buying an older home most prospective buyers will hire a home inspector without a doubt, but what about a brand new home? I mean the new build home is brand new and just built so it should be perfect right? Sadly this isn’t always true. Here are some reasons you should get your home inspected and the best tactics to go about it.

New homes can have problems, too

Sure, a new home may look flawless, but that’s because no one has lived in it to see if anything’s amiss. Ever notice how new products can be riddled with flaws that are caught only after they’ve been tried out by consumers? Well, the same is true for homes. Buy a new one, and you’re essentially the guinea pig testing how well the HVAC system works and whether the basement floods during a storm. An old home, by contrast, may have more wear and tear, but the owner is required by law to disclose any known problems.

New homes aren’t always built to code

We know what you’re wondering: Don’t county building inspectors make sure construction on a new home is up to snuff? They should, but that doesn’t always happen in reality. County inspectors work for the municipality and make sure new construction lives up to a minimum building code—repeat, minimum—plus these public servants don’t work for you. And unless you’re a general contractor or know nailed drywall as opposed to screwed, well, you just might be screwed yourself.

Why new homes should ideally get two inspections

In fact, if you’re buying a home under construction, you should hire an inspector twice. The first time is so he can look over the home before the walls are closed, and inspect framing and systems installation. The second should be after the home is complete, so he can inspect everything else.

While hiring one twice might seem like costly overkill, think of it this way: If you spring for an early pre-drywall inspection, the inspector will make sure the studs, insulation, home systems, beams, and posts have been installed properly. That’s a sneak peek most home inspectors don’t get to make with homes once the walls are up. And if problems turn up, you can take the list of complaints and concerns—an early punch list—to the builder to correct before the walls are closed.

Once construction is complete, ask your inspector to review the house a few days before your final walk-through with the builder. The inspector is trained to notice details that escape the unpracticed eye. Add these issues to your final punch list, and don’t fork over the final payment until each problem is solved.

If you’re not part of the construction process and buy a spec house after it’s completed, add a home inspection contingency to your sales contract and hire an inspector to review the property before closing. Not only will an inspector make sure the house and systems are sound, but if you accompany him on his rounds, he’ll also teach you how to operate and maintain your new home.

Call Anchor Home Inspection

Anchor Home Inspection is always available by phone to answer questions regarding your home. If you would like to consult with a professional about a home inspection, call Anchor Home Inspection now to schedule a home inspection today.

Anchor Home Inspections is a quality Home Inspector to Rhode Island and Connecticut. Contact us to schedule a home inspection or any of our other home inspection services.

0 notes

4mph1b10us · 3 years

Text

korekiiyo shiingujii ana1ysiis

spoii1ers for ndrv3!

iit’s quiite hard to wriite 1iike thiis wiith autocorrect on, so from the 1iine break be1ow ii wii11 not be usiing my typiing quiirk Σ(･口･)

word count (exc1udiing author’s notes): 1,611 words

tota1: 1,717 words

for siimp1iiciity's sake, ii've done thiis on computer so that there's not a wa11 of text

~*~

"You wonder, "Who is this?" Yes... I shall make that clear first. My name is Korekiyo Shinguji... I am called the Ultimate Anthropologist."

~*~

Hello everyone, my name is Milo, and today I’ll be doing my best to cover one of my favorite characters in the Danganronpa universe, Korekiyo Shinguji. He is originally from the 3rd mainline game, New Danganronpa v3: Killing Harmony. Since I don’t physically own the game, I’m basing most of this essay entirely on the Danganronpa Wiki page for Shinguji. Please read that if you desire a more lengthy look at his actions from an unbiased perspective since this one leans more towards empathy than hatred. Whoops!

We first properly meet him after talking to everyone else inside of Hope’s Peak. He’s in the main hall and standing away from the doors leading out to the courtyard. When he introduces himself, Shinguji goes on to talk about anthropology and the beauty of humanity. This proceeds to creep Akamatsu out.

Alongside that, in Chapter 3, we are unfortunately forced to see his relationship with his sister. It’s weird and only gets weirder if you spend two of your Free Time events talking to him when you first play as Akamatsu. He’s evaluated that all girls present at the academy would be great “friends” for his sister, barring Iruma and Harukawa. This is because Shinguji believes that Harukawa doesn’t believe in the power of love, and Iruma is just… well, she’s Iruma. Hardly the girl you would want to send home to your parents.

This weird incest plotline is unfortunately present in most Danganronpa games, such as Leon and his cousin (though one-sided on his cousin’s behalf; he didn’t like her), Tsumugi in the Love Hotel (if you consider that canon), and Monotaro & Monophanie (which is then implemented into Gokuharu’s execution, killing them both).

His sister’s name is never disclosed in-game or in any other Danganronpa media, so the fandom dubbed her “Miyadera/Miyatera,” which is an alternate way of reading Shinguji’s last name. The miya character - represented as 宮 - and tera character - 寺 - are both present in Shinguji, 真宮寺. For the rest of this essay/paper, I’ll be referring to his sister as Miyadera, and himself as Shinguji.

I’ll be getting deeper into his mischaracterization later on, but I want to talk about his appearance for now. Mainly, his hair, his mask, and the lipstick he wears. From what we see of Miyadera in Shinguji’s execution, if that is Miyadera at all, we can see that she had long hair, and when Shinguji was turned into a ghost, it was the exact shade of Shinguji’s hair. From here, we can assume that Miyadera looks exactly, if not similar, to Shinguji.

His lipstick and mask are results of representations of his tulpa, Miyadera. Tulpa is defined as “a concept in mysticism and the paranormal of a being or object which is created through spiritual or mental powers.” In much simpler terms, it is an object or living thing that was created/imagined through spiritual/mental abilities. Shinguji gained a tulpa by being beaten half to death by villagers shortly after arriving there. When he was in a state between life and death, he saw his sister, who joined his subconscious and took control of his body whenever his mask was off. It’s why we only see him take off his make once Saihara dubs him the culprit of Chapter 3, and why his voice suddenly took a more feminine tone. A quote from Miyadera, which can be found in the game, is, "Sweet Korekiyo, calm yourself... Their words are all hollow. There is no meaning to any of them... You must teach these ignorant children a lesson."

That statement can be interpreted two ways, one; that she’s trying to calm him down and two; she’s repeating whatever she said to him during childhood. It’s implied that Miyadera passed away from disease sometime before Killing Harmony takes place, which is both a good and bad thing. It’s great because then we have some time frame of how she was and how she acted when Shinguji knew her best.

Whenever I read the quote above, or any of her quotes, to be honest, I am filled with a sense of dread, or even, despair. The following quote especially makes me feel terrible; "Calm yourself, Korekiyo. You mustn't raise your voice. You mustn't stutter. You mustn't lose composure. You mustn't become flustered. You mustn't waver. Look at their horrid faces. This sorry lot is not worth agonizing over."

Have you noticed how she’s setting guidelines on how to defend himself? She’s turning Shinguji’s attention away from Saihara and the trial and to her because she knows that Shinguji trusts her even after all these years.

You might be wondering, “Milo, what the hell does that all have to do with Shinguji?” And I’ll tell you plain and simple: he was abused by Miyadera. Shocking, I know. Having Shinguji rave and rant about being in love with her, only to be a victim? Sadly, it’s very true indeed. Shinguji was most likely groomed and gaslighted into thinking that Miyadera loved him when that was not the case.

Gaslighting is defined as, “[to] manipulate (someone) by psychological means into questioning their own sanity.” From the two quotes I provided, it doesn’t seem to make sense. Miyadera only sounds like a kind, worrisome older sister. Incorrect, I say. She’s emotionally gaslighting him, trying to make him believe that the trial makes no sense and he shouldn’t worry about any of them. I can also bet she used this tactic to control him as a younger person as well.

It’s a well-known fact that children are both impressionable and gullible. If an older sister figure came up to you as a child and told you to do unmentionable things, unfortunately, you might follow her directions. Shinguji states that his sister was a sickly girl who often stayed in the hospital. When she would come home, he’d be at his easiest to manipulate. Why would his dear, sweet, sickly, older sister ever lie to him?

Next, I’m going to be covering his relationships with other students, namely Shuichi Saihara and Rantaro Amami. These will delve further into spoiler territory, so if you didn’t already read the warnings I put in place, here is your extra warning for spoilers for Chapter 3 of Killing Harmony.

To start with, I’ll be exploring his poorer relationships first. Most of the girls fit into this category, namely Iruma, Harukawa, Chabashira, and Yonaga - that means he has a terrible standing with four of the eight girls present at the beginning of Killing Harmony, five if you count Yumeno’s way of dealing with Chabashira’s murder. Shinguji even taunts her once they solve that mystery, stating, “Let me guess, you’ll never forgive me. Himiko, you must hate me so very much right now. Maybe you’d feel better if I was executed by Monokuma…”

Shinguji has a poor relationship with Iruma and Harukawa due to seeing them as “unfit” to be “friends” with Miyadera. He has a poor relationship with Chabashira because he’s a degenerate male, but he still thinks she made a good friend for his sister. His poor relationship with Yonaga is shown in Chapter 3 when Yonaga forms the student council. Once again, I’m making amends to some parts of the characters. I’ll be referring to Yonaga’s god as God, simply because Atua is an actual Polynesian god in real life. Shinguji doesn’t worship any god, and so wants to study Yonaga’s God purely for anthropologic purposes. This displeases Yonaga, who then states that God's business hours are closed for the day. In Chapter 3 when Yumeno brings up Yonaga’s God, he simply asks whether or not they’re done talking about it, cementing his distrust in faith.

Next, I’ll cover his better relationships. Akamatsu isn’t too terribly creeped out by him and instead sees Shinguji as a kind guy who cares about his sister. Akamatsu even apologizes for saying that Shinguji would be into inc*st, this event either taking place in his first or second Free Time event. I’m saving his and Saihara’s relationship for last since I’ll have the most to write about then. Instead, please enjoy the news that in the events of Ultimate Talent Development Plan (UTDP for typing purposes), Shinguji and Amami are actually great friends. In Amami’s first free time event, he tells Akamatsu that Korekiyo has a strong personality, but she’ll be able to understand him plenty if she takes time to. It’s also stated that Amami emphasizes that Shinguji is also the calm and clever type.

Lastly, I’ll be exploring his relationship with Saihara. It’s slightly rocky, if only because Shinguji hasn’t let go of his sister yet, but it’s miles better than his relationship with Chabashira. Slight side note before we begin, I’ll be discounting the Love Hotel scene mostly because I’m a minor and I don’t feel completely comfortable having to watch that simply because I’m writing an analysis. As the game progresses to Chapter 3, Shinguji and Saihara have built trust between themselves. While Saihara still found Shinguji creepy, he [Saihara] never discounted him simply for existing. There was even a point where Shinguji offered to help Saihara communicate with Akamatsu from beyond the grave, though he was turned down.

Korekiyo Shinguji is a misunderstood and somewhat tragic character who usually gets disregarded and uncredited all because people do not like him. However he’s not an “uwu soft twamatized bean <3” either. He’s a strong character who has questionable morals at best and a terrible representation of an abused character at worst.

~*~

thank you for readiing!! p1ease make sure to get a hea1thy amount of s1eep and that you do have a cup of water and some food, you deserve iit!!

sources:

- https://danganronpa.fandom.com/wiki/Korekiyo_Shinguji

- https://www.quotev.com/story/7873923/Danganronpa-Class-Trials/73 (siide note: how fucked up iis iit that ii was on1y ab1e to fiind a transcriiptiion of the triia1 on quotev)

#korekiyo shinguji #shinguji korekiyo #sister shinguji #miyadera shinguji #drv3 #ndrv3 #killing harmony #new danganronpa v3 #new danganronpa killing harmony #character analysis #korekiyo shinguji analysis

45 notes · View notes

temporoom · 3 years

Note

Hi! I'm a big TPN fan who's dying to read A Letter from Norman. I read your spoiler post about it. As a big Ray fan, what you wrote about him having a crush on a older girl really got me curious. What kind of interest did he have in her? How did he show it? What's their story?! It's hard to imagine since he acts different with only Emma. I'm so itching to get all the juicy details. Maybe even my RayEmma ship will sink, but I don't care! I need to know!! Would you kindly enlighten me? Thanks! QuQ

Thank you so much for trusting me with this ! Sadly, i am far from being unbiased, and that post is kinda old, so I need to rectify something :

No, Ray doesn’t have a crush on Susan.

It’s just me and my own weird tastes in ships (I also like to see them as being actual siblings). But he indeed treated her differently from other children at the orphanage, mostly because SHE was treating him differentely as well. I’ll try to summarize, while giving as much detail as possible, the chapter.

(It’s a detailed summary of it, so very long)

The beginning of the chapter starts with Norman talking about Ray for 4 pages (without mentioning Emma individually, take it as you will), he explains that he has never seen Ray’s tears in his entire life, but thinks that he may have seen him cry once. And he then goes on to explain in which circumstances it was. (The flash-backs part aren’t from Norman’s point of view, but from an omniscient narrator.)

It starts some time after Emma’s 9th birthday and the shipment of one of their younger sibling (called Jimmy but this is irrelevant). Most children go on with their life, looked after by their eldest sibling, Susan, the only one of her age left at the house. After proposing a game of hide-and-seek, she convinces Ray (with the help of Emma) to come and play with them instead of sulking in his corner. She tells Ray that she knows he is sad, and wants him to get better, to Ray’s annoyance, since he expected Jimmy to be shipped anyway. (She ruffles his hair by the way, he probably took that habit from her).

During the game, they explain that Susan is their elder, and the smartest in the house, even giving Norman a hard time during tag, so if they want to win they have to do better than follow Ray’s laziness. She is extremely attentive, noticing any changes in her siblings. Even Ray, who thinks he has mastered his poker face, couldn’t tell if she noticed those within him, as each time a sibling leaves she comes to him and forces him to play with them to lift his spirit. Ray observed her enough to know she didn’t discover the truth, and finds her pity towards him annoying. (And we all know Ray is a tsundere)

When he is about to give up on finding a better hiding spot, Ray finds a wounded bird. Emma suggests they take care of it, but Norman and Ray explains that if they were to touch the bird, then its family would never come to get him back again. Since the birds’s mother don’t seem to come, and Emma starts to feel sorry for the bird (being an orphan herself). She wants to take him home.

Ray scolds her, asking if she really thinks it would be happy in a cage, and that maybe it was the bird’s destiny to die here. To which Emma replies that maybe it was Ray’s fate to meet that bird and he shouldn’t leave it here. Emma wins the argument thanks to Norman, and they catch the bird. Susan joins them, and after getting Isabella’s approval, their older sister tells that the three of them are the one who will take care of the bird, to Ray’s annoyance again.

Norman names it Ner, and they get a cage with a little sign with its name written on it. The bird is a robin. To feed Ner, Emma goes to search for worms, and brings back a ton, making Susan squeal in disgust and hides behind Ray, only trusting him to protect her from them.

As time pass, the robin gets better, and everyone got attached to it. Then, Isabella announces to Ray that she received a sudden call from the center, asking for an extra shipment this month, and this shipment is Susan. (it mentions that it was very sudden, and considering the time... it’s most likely for the Tifari). Isabella asks Ray if he expected her to live until her 12th birthday, he doesn’t reply to that, but it’s what he thought. She then asks him to look after Susan to make sure she doesn’t escape.

Ray suddenly realizes how much he would miss her if she leaves, how no one would speak to him like she does... No one would comfort him like she does. Of course he cares about Emma and Norman, but Susan was the only one capable of seeing those changes he couldn’t even notice himself. Her stubborness “saved him” (I quote). He considers finding a replacement to Susan, but knows it would mean sacrifying Emma or Norman. There is nothing to do about it, and he knows he can’t save everyone. He considers making his plan earlier, but it’s not ready to do so yet.

As he walks into the corridor, he wakes Ner up, who thinks the boy is here to bring him food. Ray mocks the bird for trusting him so much, and for being dependant of humans, comfortably locked in its cage. (You know what parralels he makes here, I hope I don’t have to explain) As Ray tries to free the bird and opens the cage’s door, Susan spots him and starts to scold him. Telling him that everyone takes good care of the bird, and he shouldn’t let it escape. (french translation here, idk about how it is in japanese)

It only reminds him of how she is going to die. Susan scolds him each time he is too harsh or refuses to play with the other kids, he thinks for a moment that a real sister, linked by blood to him, would have done that.

“I don’t think... It is happy to live in this cage...” He blurts out, almost revealing the truth. Did I just gave a link to my own art? Yes. And then ran away to his bedroom, leaving Susan confused.

The next day Isabella’s announces Susan’s “adoption”. While everyone congratulates her, Ray has been avoiding her during the whole day, even skipping his duties to the bird. Susan talked to Emma and Norman about what happened the night before, but they were as confused as her. She starts to doubt her own conviction and if keeping the bird is truly a good idea. She admits that she finds Ray always sad whenever one of their siblings leave, to which Emma replies what everyone had seen of him until now :

“But... Ray is never happy...”

No one had noticed Ray’s feelings. Everyone believed that he was just always like that, and even the idea of a Ray walking around smiling happily disturbs the red head. Susan dismisses it, and tells that Ray would be happier anyway without her, since she was annoying him so much. Emma and Norman reassures her, and tell her that she will be very missed. Susan thinks about those three’s friendship, envying it over her own loneliness as the last of their older siblings and without any news of how they are. But also happy they can count on each other, if one of them gets separated from the others, she was sure they would find each other again.

The day of her depart, a sudden wave of nostalgia hits her as she walks through the hallway of the house, she looks at the bird, its cardboard with the initial of her three favorite people written on it. When she bumps into Ray, while he looks at her sullen (making her even sadder), she asks him if she can take Ner with her. Saying that since Ray doesn’t seem to like the bird, it would be fine if she kept it. Before Ray could reply, Isabella agrees. But the boy knows that if she takes the bird with her, it’s most likely to end up just like she will.

While the kids are sad to see both their older sister and the bird leave, most are okay with it. But Ray raises his voice to refuse. And despite Isabella’s stare, he insists on keeping Ner. Susan snaps and yell at Ray, asking him why he is acting like this and what he wants. She continues by saying that if she lets the bird here, Ray would try to free it again, denouncing him in front of everyone.

Ray seems taken aback as the other children looks at him. But Susan doesn’t want to back down. She wants the bird with her, she had hoped it would solve everyone’s problem, and especially Ray’s one with the bird... Seeing him refuse was beyong her comprehension. Ray stops himself, before it’s too late, from telling her that if she takes the bird with her, they will both die. He yells back at her that in the end, she’ll just do whatever she wants to and take the bird with him, whether he wants it or not, and then finishs preparing the table for breakfast.

The other kids are angry at him for ruining their last breakfast with Susan, and trying to free Ner. But Emma and Norman notices that there’s something wrong with him, he seems to react too strongly when it comes to the robin. Emma proposes to Norman to prepare a gift for Susan, to leave a memento of them to her. The boy, immediately understanding her intention, agrees. Despite Susan being able to see the changes in Ray more easily, they were the ones who understood him the best after all.

Ray stays in the library during that time, thinking about solutions to save the bird, but Susan always stays near the cage, so Ray would not free it. No matter what possibilities come to his mind, Ray always come to same conclusion : it will be killed. He concludes that Isabella is testing his loyalty by checking how far he would go to save his sister and the bird, or if he would only save one of them. He doesn’t even know why he is so bothered by that bird, thinking that he just has to let it be killed like he had let all his other siblings die until now. Even if he can’t save Susan, he desesperately wants to save the bird... yet Susan doesn’t let him. (Do I really need to point out the metaphor again?)

As Susan is changing into her new uniform, Emma takes the cage, pretexting that she is going to clean it up one last time before she leaves. While Susan shows her clothes proudly to her mother, Ray comes and tells her that she can take the bird with her in the end, as well as to apologize for his behavior earlier. He looks like he is making amends for his actions, in the most natural way possible, and yet Susan sees that something is not going right. But she can’t ask what it is as she is overflowed by gifts from her younger siblings.

When she is about to get the cage back, Emma and Norman ran up to her, and apologize. They let the bird fly away. Everyone is shocked, and despite that Susan let a sad smile form on her lips.

“I see... But if it managed to fly, then it means that it got better.”

Then Emma gives to Susan a bracelet with one of Ner’s feathers attached to it. (The one that naturally falls don’t think they took it directly from the bird). She shows to her similar bracelets to the one she is giving on her wrist and Norman’s one, and pulls Ray closer to she can attach one last bracelet to his wrist. She tells Susan that like that, they are still together even if she leaves.

Susan bursts into tears, thankful for the gift. And apologize for yelling at Ray in front of everyone, recognizing that it was selfish of her to want to keep Ner to herself because she was sad of leaving Grace Field alone. She explains to him that because the bird was named after them, she wanted it to keep them close to her, just like how Ray perceived himself in the bird, she saw them in it as well.

Before leaving one last time, she pats Ray’s head (he definitely took this habit from her) and asks him to never stay alone again. She ruffles his hair, as he voice breaks when he nods. He apologizes to her one last time, so quietly that only her, Emma and Norman can hear him. Either for being angry at her... or for being unable to save her. (it’s left to interpretation) She leaves with a smile on her face.

When Ray is alone with Norman and Emma, he asks them what they did with the bird. Norman replies without any hesitation that it seemed to be important to Ray, so they deliberately freed it. Emma follows up by telling him that she thought thoroughly about what he told her about the bird being unhappy in its cage, and she concluded that she wouldn’t a life like that either, dying alone in a cage. Even if she was protected and feed, if she was a bird, she would still prefer flying in the sky.

Ray knew at that moment that whatever may happen, Emma and Norman would choose to fly free. He is glad that he has them. He thanks them for doing it, Norman replies that when he is ready, Ray can tell them why he wanted to free the bird. Emma smiles and asks him to, play with them tomorrow. Susan is not here to drag him into their games after all. Ray misses her, but thinks that with Emma and Norman by his side, everything will be alright.

Then we end the flash back and go back to Norman’s narration but I won’t extend myself on it, this ask was about Susan.

In conclusion: their relationship is the one of “blood-related” siblings, in the sense that they find each other annoying and yet stays close and attached to one another. But no matter how close Susan was of Ray, his closest friends are still Emma and Norman.

It’s a very beautiful chapter, and I love it. I hope you found some kind of answer in this very long post ! As for me, I prefer to leave it at that, so everyone can have their own interpretations of Ray’s and Susan’s relationship.

But to be honest there’s only like... two Noremma’s moment in this whole book, and the rest of the time it’s Norman thinking about Ray. And since you are a Rayemma shipper, there’s an entire chapter where Emma and Ray shares one braincell and are cute.

#the promised neverland #tpn #ynn #yakusoku no neverland #ray #emma #norman #susan #isabella #a letter from norman #novel #summary #detailed summary

49 notes · View notes

linklethehistorian · 3 years

Text

New Working Link to DarkestJay’s English Translation of Fifteen & Commentary on the Discrepancies Therein (PLEASE READ)

Information below the cut for length, as well as spoiler information relating to my article.

If recently you’ve tried to access DarkestJay8686’s English Translation of Fifteen on WattPad through the link I provided at the beginning of my article, you’ve probably already noticed that that link is, unfortunately, very dead; the reason that this has happened is because, sadly, as of late, they — and other translators in the fandom who also post their works to WattPad — have been facing a struggle with their works constantly being flagged on the site and forcibly removed for copyright reasons multiple times over, forcing them to eventually give up and move their content somewhere else where it would be safe from harm.

Upon learning of their arrival on a new, safer platform, I had considered simply exchanging the old link out for the new one at the beginning of my article, where it was before, and altering my notes to reflect this, and I’m sure that I still will as soon as I can find the time to rework everything properly, but in the meanwhile, there’s something I’ve also badly needed to discuss with you all about these translations for some time, and what better time and way, I thought, than to do it in this post where I provide you with the new link?

I’m sure that many of you reading both my article and their translation have noticed that back in the Arcade scene, there was something I had mentioned happening in the novel that didn’t quite match up with DarkestJay’s presentation of those events — namely, Sheep being the first to leave the building, instead of Dazai and Chuuya; well, that difference is actually quite important as one of the main reasons why, while their work may overall be excellent and I do encourage everyone to read it regardless, I still personally would never recommend making it the only thing you read if you want to truly understand Fifteen and all of its events 100% correctly.

Yes, I am saying exactly what you think I’m saying: my information within my article was NOT incorrect — Jay’s translation of the scene, however, was, and if you don’t believe me, you can go read Lea’s translation of the scene and see it for yourself.

Now, before I say anything else, I want to make this 100% clear: I in no way am intending to imply that Jay’s work on the whole is anything but exceptional, nor am I even remotely saying that you shouldn’t read at all; in fact, I highly recommend you do read it in its entirety, because despite a few small mis-steps, as someone who owns two copies of the original Japanese light novel, has read many an English translation, and knows this story extensively well, I will be the first to very enthusiastically say that this translation is actually quite good and very, very helpful overall — an absolutely essential resource for anyone who does not speak the original language but still wants to read, experience and understand Fifteen as if they could. I am extremely, extremely grateful and appreciative of their hard work in making that possible for all English speakers, and I don’t ever want to come across as anything else or make it seem like any of that is any less than true.

That being said, though, it nevertheless absolutely cannot and should not be your only resource on the matter, because if it is, you will unavoidably end up being misled on some matters — unintentionally, of course, but still misled all the same.

Because this was translated well after the anime came out — unlike Lea’s partial but nonetheless equally wonderful translation, which came into existence very shortly after the novel was first handed out in theaters alongside DEAD APPLE, a whole year before the animated adaption was even a concept — DarkestJay’s translation does have some points where it is extremely clear that said television show’s rather poorly handled and highly inaccurate interpretation very heavily affected the OP’s perception of things, and thus caused the OP, Jay, to incorrectly interpret and translate certain parts of some scenes and/or dialogue that otherwise might not have been super clear to someone not fully, extensively familiar with the language.

Specifically, as I mentioned above, there is the one particular instance among the many that I can easily point out: due to the pre-knowledge of the anime’s awful take on the story, there is a point in this translation where Jay simply assumes it to be true that Dazai and Chuuya were the ones to leave the Arcade, with Sheep calling out to their retreating backs, and thus incorrectly translates it as such, when in fact it unfolds in exactly the opposite manner in the original version of the tale; likewise, there are also many bits of dialogue throughout the entirety of the book where the perceived “understanding” of the characters’ nature’s as the show wrongly presented them caused Jay to take the liberty of wording things in certain different ways, or make certain alterations to the type of punctuation used that Jay believed suited them, rather than leaving them in their unaltered states, as they were intended to be read.

This is the major issue with going into a project like this with this kind of confirmation bias; no matter how good your intentions may be, because you expect that you already understand something or know what’s going to happen, you’re much more likely to think it’s safe to cut corners, and rather than carefully researching the context, tone, and other specifics and particulars of every line before you write it out and post it — the way you would if you started with a completely blank slate and no idea of what would happen in it — you will more often than not just assume that it plays out in the way you expect it to if it seems close enough, and quickly go with that presumption as if it is fact without bothering to make 100% sure of it.

Again, no offense to OP, because translation work is very hard, and as I said, overall, it is a wonderful translation and I do think it’s well worth the read, but problems like this are why I personally recommend anyone reading this to also check out Lea’s translated summary with excerpts and translation of the bonus chapter in conjunction with Jay’s, as Lea’s came out long before a Fifteen anime was even a concept and, as such, was completely unbiased — therefore being an excellent source to check facts against where possible.

Of course, there are definitely also some points where both translations are different but neither is actually wrong — as while Lea’s is less literal about every phrasing so it’s not super awkward sounding in English and flows better to read, Jay’s is almost always more literal instead, and thus differences in personal preference for wording can easily diverge while still getting the point across fine in both — but these instances are much different from the ones where it is clear Jay actually slipped up, so I’m sure you won’t have trouble defining them. As much as I would like to be of help in this regard, I must sadly inform you that I will not personally be pointing out all of these slip-ups here at this time, nor do I have any plan to do so at any time in the foreseeable future. for I have neither the time nor the desire to go about critiquing a fellow fan’s work when I’m already dedicating enough time and energy just to writing about the mountain of mistakes that the anime made without also adding more difficult and unnecessary extra work onto that.

If you have any questions about a particular line in the translation and if it indeed is correct, you can absolutely feel free to send me an ask about it and I will try to help you with it to the best of my ability, but beyond that, I will not be engaging with the matter much farther than I already have.

(However, on one last note, I will, for now, add that — as I expect this might become a point of much contention and is something that will come up in my article later on, anyway — the “it must be because I love you” scene that you will find in Jay’s translation is actually not exactly one such instance where a mistake was made, at least in regards to the “‘I love you” bit; if you’re curious about the exact details of how that all works, you can read about it in my post here. So yes, that does indeed exist, and you are free to take it in whatever way you want. I’m not personally an SKK shipper myself, but if that’s your thing, then good for you — go for it and enjoy it; it can be canon support for your ship if you want it to be.)

Thank you for reading, and, as promised, here is the link to Jay’s new account, as well as their Twitter, and where you can currently access their translation of Fifteen. Enjoy.

[See the recent related addendum]

[View the masterlist of my article]

12 notes · View notes

stranger-who-writes-fiction · 3 years

Text

Alright HERE WE GO...SOME PRESS!

By which I mean, Tom King was on ComicPop discussing Supergirl! So we have CONTEXT AND BACKGROUND INFO! WOO!

Gonna get into it below, but my recommendation, as always: the best way to have an informed opinion is to get the info firsthand, so don’t just take my word for it! Go forth! Watch the thing! (Language advisory, though. There is some swearing.)

Okay. With that out of the way, LET’S GO!

Gonna lead off with a summary of the Supergirl bits, as they discuss a variety of things, from Strange Adventures to Batman/Catwoman to the canned New Gods project:

How Tom King came to be the writer of Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow:

King’s longtime editor, Jaime Rich, was moved from the Bat books to the Super books.

King, historically, likes to take on characters that ‘need help.’ He cites the example of Kirby who, upon coming to DC, asked what their lowest-selling title was, which is how he ended up on Jimmy Olsen.

So, when King asks which character needs help, Rich, to King: Supergirl. We have trouble selling that book.

King, describing Supergirl: ‘She’s singular in a way Mr. Miracle and Vision are not.’ Says that if you ask any four year old who Supergirl is, they know.

Editors asked him, ‘what’s your take? what are you gonna do with her?’

King then discusses the difference between his approach to Bat people vs. Super people.

Bat people: It’s a deconstruction approach. King brings up Kite Man from his Batman run. You tear the character down and build them back up, a la Dark Knight Returns

Super people: It’s not about deconstruction. Let them be themselves. They’re wonderful, let them be wonderful.

But he does mention sort of stripping down the character to their purest form; he describes it as chiseling off the barnacles that have built up on the character, over the years.

Additionally, he says ‘evil doesn’t work for the Super family of characters.’

He mentions Superman: Up in the Sky. He says that there’s deep stuff in Up in the Sky, but the theme of every page is simply: Superman is awesome.

King: “I don’t want to make Kara mean or sad. I want to test her.”

The host compares ‘angry Kara’ stories to ‘evil Superman’ stories in that there are many of them, such to the point that people think Kara is relatable because she’s miserable and angry all the time.

The host: I don’t get that.

(Same dude, same.)

King talked to Steve Orlando

They discussed the fact that Supergirl knew her planet; the people who died were her friends, family, classmates.

King summarizes Kara’s original Silver Age origin: she witnessed three huge, traumatic losses of life. First, when Krypton exploded. Then again when the Kryptonite started killing Argo residents, and then again when the meteorites destroyed the lead shielding that was keeping Argo safe.

King: “That’s some f-ing trauma! I don’t know if you’ve read my books, but I love the trauma in characters.”

King thus describes Kara as world-weary, she swears, ‘she has seen some sh*t’.

On the new character, Ruthye:

She’s a child on a vengeance quest.

She’s named after King’s niece, Ruthie.

The pronunciation for the comic character, though, is Ruth-Eye.

One of his sons told him to add the ‘e’ on the end to make it look cooler.

Further discussion of Kara herself:

King noted that there’s sometimes a tendency to be very precious with the character.

King: ‘Let’s not be precious with Supergirl.’

This is not the story of a sixteen-year-old girl discovering the world; King says that Supergirl has been that sixteen-year-old for a long time now.

He describes it more as a move from Supergirl to Superwoman.

Art and Influences:

Talking about the red sun planet that Kara visits for her twenty-first birthday, King says he was reading a lot of Conan, which influenced the look of that portion of the story.

The impetus for getting Evely on the book: King said his editor emailed him, ‘Hey, how about Bilquis?’ King: “And I did a happy dance!”

Evely sent King a mood board of the types of things she wanted to draw; Moebius, Kirby, Wally Wood, landscapes in particular.

Also, King says Evely is fast! She’s already halfway through the book, art-wise, and King is confident the book will release on time.

The host asked him, following up on King’s description of the book as a fantasy/western, ‘Is this True Grit?’

King: “It’s True Grit inspired. The novel AND the movie.”

If asked to give the Hollywood pitch: ‘It’s True Grit in space with Supergirl as Rooster Cogburn.’

Details about this book, as compared to Other Tom King titles:

He’s using captions on this comic--he’d thrown out captions as a storytelling device after Batman, but he found a ‘good voice’ for this comic.

King was prepared to do his usual twelve issues, but they said no one buys Supergirl comics, so it’s eight issues.

King says that Strange Adventures, Rorschach, and to a lesser extent, Batman/Catwoman, were written at a time when the world felt very apocalyptic.

He considers them to be angrier books; they are about what happens when evil is in our life, and how we deal with that.

Supergirl is the start of the ‘next generation’ of titles.

It was written during the pandemic, but King hoped that by the time it was released, the pandemic and this very dark time in our history would be past.

He says it’s a ‘roaring 20s’ book. Not about anger, or trauma, it’s about stepping into the future and kicking a**.

THUS CONCLUDES the Supergirl portion of the interview.

Okay, so! Now that we’ve been objective and presented the information in a straightforward, unbiased manner...SOME THOUGHTS AND OPINONS!

The thing I was most curious about was how King got the book, so I was EXTREMELY PLEASED to get the full story.

This wasn’t like. King desperately wanting to do a Supergirl book, nor was it DC coming to King like, ‘Take Supergirl!’

Sadly, it was, ‘which book needs the most help right now? In the Superman lineup?’

He even said that Supergirl was kind of just sitting around, no one was doing anything with her/there were no plans.

(So the idea that King stole this opportunity from a woman is not true. There were NO PLANS.)

(Also it’s not based on the FS stuff, I suspect they gave the FS team some ideas from his pitch to work with, as that entire event was sort of a stop-gap/fill-in as they hurried to relaunch their line.)

Anyways!

My initial thought that this is DC’s attempt to sell some dang Supergirl books? Not that far off! XD

Boy, I hope it works.

(Important to note: This is not news. Supergirl has historically always sold poorly. I’ve heard from actual Supergirl writers that the trades do not sell, which is a huge problem.

So King, who is KNOWN for having really good trade sales, is as solid a gamble as they could probably hope for.

He said Superman: Up in the Sky is his third best-selling trade. A WAL-MART BOOK! Is just behind Vision and Mr. Miracle!

Basically: If this doesn’t work, I don’t know that anything will.)

As for the specifics of King’s take in particular!

Again...I really want to see it, before I pass judgement on it.

I liked the Andreyko run! And that was pretty edgy!

Also, we have never seen a twenty-something Kara, post-Crisis. She’s always been a teenager. Thus I’m pretty willing to go along with this approach because it’s entirely new territory.

And it does seem like King is enjoying leaning into the idea of a Super who swears and kicks butt and is just a little ‘done’ with it all.

It might not mesh with my ideal Kara but again. I need to see it, before I come to any firm conclusions.

Honestly the thing that gives me the most pause? Is that King says this book really focuses on Supergirl, not Kara, which is a more recent identity for her.

(That is somewhat true! The ‘Kara Danvers’ identity is wholly new to the show; she’s always been Linda Lee, Linda Danvers, Kara Kent, or Linda Lang, when she has a secret identity. Sometimes she doesn’t.)

(Also of note: Tom pronounces it ‘Care-a’, like the cartoon.)

(PERSONALLY I like KAHr-a, like in the show, because it creates a phonetic consistency with ‘KAHl-el’ but that’s not really relevant to a comic book. You can mentally pronounce it however you choose! XD)

So, yeah, I like the Kara Danvers part of her identity, I like earth-bound Supergirl stories, but. This isn’t that. Which I’ll need to make peace with, I guess. XD

Otherwise? Tell me a story, Mr. King. Even if I hate it, Evely will draw it beautifully, Lopes will color it masterfully, and that’s half the battle, right there.

I’m sad King didn’t mention the Gates/Igle run! But I also understand he’s probably been looking at more recent stuff; those Gates/Igle comics are fifteen years old, oh man, oh geez, how are they that old already.

King did confirm that this is 100% in-continuity, and will affect the character going into the future.

But, IDK, given the sort of. Grim beginnings of how this book came to be, what with the reminder that the Supergirl title doesn’t sell well...who knows what the future will look like, for Kara!

I stand by my guess that Kara will graduate to ‘Superwoman’ and the Supergirl mantle will pass to someone else, maybe Ruthye? She might be a bit young, though.

Mmm. What else, what else?

Oh, this is pretty funny, IMO: when King first teased the new character, Ruthye, a bunch of SG fans rushed to google to see if there was any clue as to like. What it could mean.

And they freaked out over some obscure connection where that name appears but hey, turns out! It’s just a made up name! Based on King’s niece!

It’s funny because SG fans never learn, man. Just chill out, read the dang book, then get all upset and huff and puff and blow your twitter house down.

They briefly mentioned the Peter David run; King said the PAD stuff was great.

He’s already teased that ‘treat’ and, okay. Time for some rumination on that specifically.

I’ve read the whole PAD run. It wasn’t my cup of tea, I don’t really like the DnD, angels and demons stuff. Also, it wasn’t Kara; it’s an entirely different character who uses the name ‘Supergirl.’

Also, stuff from that run didn’t age well.

And on top of that, PAD turned out to be...kind of a jerk! As so many folks in the comic industry are.

There’s also...an extremely weird, mean-spirited vibe through the whole back half of the run; I thought maybe I was imagining it at the time, but I recently went back to “Many Happy Returns”, the final story arc of the title, and David’s introduction in the trade...it doesn’t read like a guy who was in it for the love of the character, you know?

All of which to say! I’m not excited about connections to the PAD stuff.

But I know a lot of fans who love that run, love that version of the character.

So like. Eh! Not for me, but to the folks who enjoy it, I hope it’s cool/fun, whatever it is.

(Still think it’ll be a variant or an easter egg or something, but we’ll see.)

(Oh, hmmm! Evely *did* post a WIP of like. Some creepy skull gate that they presumably encounter...hmmmmm.)

Okay, this is crazy long, and there’s no fun art or anything to go with it--OR IS THERE?!?!?!

BOOM. From Bilquis Evely’s twitter today. (GO. FOLLOW. HER. FOR THE GOOD ART.)

(LIKE!!! I look at this and I just! Can’t! Bring myself to not be hyped as all heck! LOOK AT THIS! AND iT’S JUST THE PENCILS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

God, wish that Supergirl sold better, so we could get a full year of this. HNNNNGGGGGGG.

Oh! That was another thing King discussed in detail; that 8 is way different from his usual 12, in terms of pacing and story. The beats fall at different places (obviously) so it was a bit of a challenge for him.

Actually, now that I’m thinking about it...maybe 8 will be good. Issue 10 just dropped for Strange Adventures, and wow, it has felt LONG. (I mean, the last four? Three? issues are also bi-monthly so that doesn’t help but. Still.)

(Superman: Up in the Sky was twelve issues but half the length, because it was a Wal-Mart book, so it was more like six.)

OKAY! For real, I’ve gone on long enough. XD

SOON. Soon. June 15th, to be exact. Mark yer calendars!

#stranger speaks #supergirl: woman of tomorrow #long post #LONG!#dc comics

4 notes · View notes

figure-skating-watch-party · 3 years

Text

Japanese nationals

This one will be very brief... I really wasn’t up to getting up early in the morning to watch Japanese nationals during Christmas and if you don’t watch it live, it means that you probably won’t see it ever because Japanese television or federation or whoever guard the videos like a hawk and very few videos are available on youtube for a very short time. Sigh... I just watched the available videos at lightning speed and chose just a few skaters, so it’s in no way complete.

Kana Muramoto / Daisuke Takahashi - The Mask / La Bayadere

Sadly, very sadly this is the only ice dance team I managed to see. I had a link to the full playlist and yet I didn’t watch immediately and of course when I came back the whole yt account was gone... And I was so interested in ice dance, because there were five senior teams competing! We saw only three at NHK and I didn’t know anything about the other two. Sigh again...

Back to Kana and Daisuke. Daisuke changed the costume but there was really no need, he rocked the yellow pants! Good twizzles and I also think the lift was better. I like how diverse their programs are. Maybe they could keep the FD for the next season to make it even better.

Men

Recently I came to the conclusion that when it comes to Japanese skaters I either love them or they don’t bring me any emotions at all. There’s no in between. It’s strange, it usually doesn’t work this way for me...

Koshiro Shimada - Fire dance / Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini He was so excited and I liked his step sequence in the short. His skating is so smooth and beautiful but ... I didn’t feel anything in the free.

Kazuki Tomono - The hardest button to button / Moulin Rouge He’s an icredible performer and I think he can do just any program and make it his own. So. Much. Energy. In the short and in the free as well, he skated in an icredible tempo in the free. I don’t even know how it’s possible.

Shun Sato - Pirates of the Caribbean / Battle of fthe kings His skating skills are awesome.

Keiji Tanaka - Hip hip chin chin / Sherlock Holmes Honestly, I really really tried to get into his programs and haven’t succeeded yet. He has awesome step sequences though.

Yuma Kagiyama - Vocussion / Avatar If I heard just the music I would have said: oh, that’s a strange choice. And yet he makes it work. His 3A in the SP? Perfection. And his FP is even better, he has beautiful spins and really makes you to follow him on the ice and in his journey.

Shoma Uno - Great Spirit / Dancing on my own / Oboe exhibition Shoma is such a special skater. Just seeing him happy makes me happy too. He dives into the music and brings you with him on the ice, makes you feel what he feels. He’s not portraying characters, he’s not playing, I don’t think he’ll ever skate to Chaplin for example, he’s always himself on the ice. He doesn’t need big gestures and big words. He just skates. (And I usually love and prefer story telling programs, but yet again, Shoma is special) His step sequence in the SP is fire! I read Jackie Wong’s tweet saying: “It’s not at all an exaggeration to say that the move to Stephane Lambiel saved Shoma Uno’s career.” I’m so grateful Shoma and Stephane work so well together. Oh, and I love his new exhibition.

Yuzuru Hanyu - Let me entertain you / Heaven and Earth I should probably clarify that me and Yuzuru have a very complicated relationship and I’m trying not to pay much attention to him. That’s because 1) I find the majority of his programs boring and 2) I don’t want to encounter the chaos that’s surrounding him. Some people are seriously crazy. With that said, his SP was good, surprisingly entertaining. The FP... I watched it and ... nothing at all. No emotions in me whatsoever. Did I witness technical perfection? Probably yes. Some of his jumps look like he’s doing quintuples at least. But it’s the same lyrical drama over and over... I honestly tried to be as unbiased as possible but when all your timeline is deaded and in heaven and crying, I was expecting something. Something special that will instantly convert me into being his fan... and it hasn’t happened. But it’s ok. Yuzuru has so many fans that he certainly won’t mind that I’m not among them.

Ladies

Mako Yamashita - Una voce poco fa / A thousand years I just love the playfullness of her SP. The FP is so nice, such a shame that some small mistakes made such a big difference in scoring and placements.

Mai Mihara - It’s magic / Fairy of the forest She’s light, she’s a princess, she deserves.

Satoko Miyahara - Methamorphosis / Tosca Again, it’s a pattern. Universally loved skater, praised for interpretation and I don’t feel anything. Though I love her layback spin. And then came Tosca. And I was enchanted. I LOVED IT!

Kaori Sakamoto - Bach ala jazz / The Matrix What can I say, she’s my favourite lady. I love her skating, her power.

Rika Kihira - The fire within / Baby god bless you Wow. I am surprised. So far I haven’t found Rika’s programs particularly interesting and now this? Such a mature, beautiful performance. So good. And the step sequence. The cartwheel. Really impressive. (So different from Jun’s The Fire within and yet equally beautiful). Quad salchow in the free. I am again speechless. I may prefer her SP but she indeed skates beautifully. I’ve been converted I have to admit.

#figure skating #figureskating #watch party #current season #japanese nationals 2020 #shoma uno

12 notes · View notes

r-ahh-mi · 4 years

Text

A Cure I Know // Part 5

Part 1 II Part 2 II Part 3 II Part 4 II

Pairing: Elliot Alderson x fem!OC (Emerson)

Summary: A sex addict & a nut case - what a perfect pairing, don’t you think?

Warnings: Brief brief brief hint of sex talk, but overall pretty much no warnings.

Word Count: 1.5k

A/N: If you’d like to be added to my tag list for this series or any of my other writing pieces, let me know and I will happily add you! Enjoy this cute little number xx

The evening after work was stiff and cold. Everything and everyone seemed to be frozen in their spots as they attempted, with crossed arms, to hold in any form of heat that was manageable during the cold month of January that hit New York like a gust of wind; both literal and figurative. Usually after work I would have gone straight home on severely chilled nights like this, but it was a Thursday. Thursday was therapy day. I was never fond of therapy, though I suppose it did give me someone with an unbiased opinion to talk to, but I just didn’t feel like I got anything out of it which I wasn’t going to blame on my therapist. She was nothing smaller than an angel who was trying to chisel away at the layered cement wall I’d built up around myself.

You know me enough to realize that I'm not the most open person with others. It wasn’t that I didn’t find it appealing--i’m sure it would be beneficial for me to vent to my therapist or anyone willing to listen and get out my emotions instead of seeking out some sort of feeling through my body being sweaty and entangled with a near stranger, but everything felt so routine now. I wasn’t fond of therapy, but I also didn’t want to give it up because it was something I've been doing for years and it was something that i got to jot down on my calendar every other week. I didn’t want to stop seeking out intimacy with strangers because it was what I had been doing for years. Though I didn’t jot it down on a calendar, well, usually i didn’t, but i craved routine I guess you could say. I craved something that let me go through the motions, yet still gave me something to do besides sitting in my home with my thoughts to unravel on themselves.

Though, come to think of it, I hadn’t sought out anyone for sexual purposes at all this week. Seemingly normal to most, but not to me. I’m sure it was just my mind being preoccupied and busy...or maybe I'm finally cured of this ultimate craving for some sort of affection that is absent from my day to day life. The thing that struck me the most was how okay I was with that. I didn’t feel empty, I didn’t feel as though my routine had been thrown off its course or that my life didn’t have some sort of goal or purpose to fulfill. I was okay with it and had never even paid attention to the matter up until this very moment.

I didn’t let my mind get too carried away into this satisfactory feeling--after all, I had places to go.

Thankfully the cozy loft building, that my therapist was located in, was nothing more than a ten minute walk at the very very worst. The cold temperatures were perfect motivation for my legs to get some lightning speed into them as they strolled quickly down the sidewalks that were just beginning to be littered with a light layer of snow. I let out an appropriately volumed sigh as I hung up my scarf and damp hat on the coat rack set just near the door. I was expecting to see Rose, the always smilie receptionist, which I did see, but stood next to her, just on the opposite side of the desk was someone I couldn't even have fathomed I would come in contact in this space.

Neither of us said anything as we stood there, both of us fully knowing, but not quite understanding why we were seeing each other's familiar faces in a space that was usually our own and completely separate from each other’s lives. It nearly felt like one of us had found out an intimate detail about the other, quite by accident.

“Elliot?” My words came out as if I was asking a question--Was this Elliot I was seeing? Was this a familiar face? Of course I knew it was, but my mind was still attempting to fit all the pieces of the puzzle together.

A large puff of air gulped its way down his throat as his prominent Adam's apple nearly popped right out from under the tanned skin of his neck.

“Hi”, was all he managed to say as he stood there, visibly uncomfortable and looking as if I had found out something I wasn’t meant to know about.

“So uh...you see Krista--I-I mean Dr. Gordon?”

At the mention of her name Elliot lifted his eyes to mine, but quickly moved them back to some space he found safe enough to hold zoned out eye contact with.

“Yeah.”

“Oh, uh..cool!”, I spoke with a little too much excitement in my voice for the occasion, but I suppose you could call that a little nervous habit of mine.

It didn’t take Elliot but a millisecond for him to lift the dark fabric onto his head, creating several shadows along his cheeks, nose and chin as he began taking big steps towards the door I had just entered in from.

My body was still standing in the entrance so I knew Elliot would need to either ask me to move, and do so kindly, or I could think ahead and move out of the way for him. I’m sure you could guess which option I went with.

“Can you move.”

“Sure”, I quirked with a rotten grin on my face. Elliot didn’t seem too keen on buying into my teasing manor as he rolled his eyes, but still stood in his place.

“Please.”

“Please what, Elliot?”, I placed special attention to this name as it rolled off of my tongue.

Elliot shook his head, letting a tiny, you’d miss it if you blinked, grin appear before his sadly too familiar frown lines set back into his face.

“Emerson, I'm ready for you.”

I turned my head over my shoulder to see the ever pleasant face of Krista, formally known as Dr. Gordon, but she had always assured me she wanted to be on a first name basis with one another to secure some sort of comfort. I adored her.

I smiled at her as she watched curiously while me and Elliot exchanged body language that was much too uncomfortable for two people to know each other well, but also too familiar for them to be total strangers.

Without a word I moved my body out of the way, keeping my much too happy grin on my face as Elliot shook his head, but his lips were much more relaxed this time. Not a frown, not a grin--somewhere in between. I watched as he pressed his palm on the steel door handle and let his body waltz out into the cold New York night. I too made an effort to move my body in the direction I was meant to be heading in, that is until I heard a very faint, but clear “bye Emerson”.

I turned around quickly, stopping dead in my course to Krista’s office, but all I could make out was Elliot's slim shadow against the lighted sidewalk just outside the once cracked door that was now fully shut. Surely my mind could’ve made it up and that was my very first logical explanation, but there was a tiny voice that also wanted Elliot to have said my name.

Whether it was meant to be heard or just for him, I didn’t care. Though it was a simple and generic mannerism that was taught to toddlers when teaching them “please” “thank you” “hello”, and other friendly exchanges, but a simple goodbye from Elliot seemed like a lot coming from him and it elicited a reaction in me that even Krista took note of.

“Do you two know each other?”

I turned back around to the curious faced woman and clasped my hands together in my front as I debated on how to reply—because both a yes and no would be truthful answers.

“Sort of”, I shrugged as I walked past Krista and took my normal spot on the couch, but I couldn’t help but feel the warmth beneath me.

My thoughts began to wonder as to why he was sitting on this very same couch, or rather why he needed to seek out a therapist in the first place. I knew not everyone needed a full blown reason to seek therapy. For some it was used as having a person to talk to that was guaranteed to listen and be non biased; everyone needs that. On the other hand, what if he was seeing Krista because he had a problem. Whether that be a past or present problem, I wasn’t too concerned with, I mainly was just curious as to know why.

Maybe Elliot and I weren’t so far apart from one another. We both seemed to share lifestyles that were far from identical, but also the same in the fact that we both wore masks during our day to day lives. Elliot just thought he was good at hiding his and maybe to the rest of the world the mask fit perfectly and succeeded at its job. But I too wore a mask, just a different threading weaved its way into mine.

The saying ‘creative minds think alike’ can also be the same for just about anyone who shared a common personality trait. Crazy minds can also think a like and I could tell that me and Elliot, we were both fucking insane.

Tag: @rawmemalek @sassystrawberryk @itsme690 @imnottiredofgettingoveryou @lovelymalekk @mezzomercury @sherlollydramoine @rami-malek-trash @amcquivey @txmel @crystalmethchristmas @ramimedley

#elliot alderson #mr robot #mr robot fic #elliot alderson fic #rami malek #rami malek fic #writing #rami malek fan fiction #mr robot fan fiction #elliot alderson fan fiction #elliot alderson x oc #elliot alderson x reader #rami malek x oc #rami malek x reader

64 notes · View notes

straight-into-the-animus · 4 years

Text

His And Mine Are The Same (Ezio x Leo)

So, I came here with something no one asked for and made a reincarnation/soulmate AU between Ezio and Leonardo. I hope you enjoy!

Read here on Ao3

“Mio caro, what are you doing?” Ezio’s voice was still rough from sleep as he yawned and stretched, looking over at Leonardo from where he was lying in bed. The artist, in turn, looked up from where he was sketching in his chair, charcoal staining his hands. The man smiled easily, a warm feeling spreading through Ezio and under his skin.

“You’re a wonderful subject to sketch, Ezio, but only when you’re asleep.” Leonardo’s smile grew at the furrow in his lover’s brow. “Otherwise you never sit or stay anywhere long enough to get a decent picture.”

“Is that an insult or a compliment?” Ezio sniffed, faux wounded, before turning and sitting up. He made to get out of the bed, sheets pooling at his hips, but Leonardo slid into bed to stop him with nothing more than a hand on his arm.

“Don’t pout, you’re too handsome for it.” Leonardo reprimanded him, pressing a kiss to the corner of the younger man’s mouth, the dark beginnings of a beard tickling his lips and cheek.

“Show me the sketch and maybe I’ll forget to be upset that you left our bed for this.”

“No such luck. Mi dispiace, amore mio, but… some things are just for myself when I miss you.” Leonardo smiled as he spoke, truth coloring his words like the oils he used in his paintings.

“Then you’re going to have to find another way to make it up to me.” Ezio grinned, and Leonardo mirrored it as he leaned in, hand moving up Ezio’s arm to cup his cheek.

“I think we can find some way to do that.” The morning was young, after all. They could pretend that they had all the time in the world.

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

The museum was nearly full but Ezio tried his best to keep an eye on Claudia and Yusuf as they darted around the different art exhibits. He had agreed to drive the two teens and to pay a bit for any tickets they needed; a good deal of it was because of his mother, he would admit, but there was another part of him that felt he needed to keep an eye out for his younger sister and, well… She was gone.

Not that Yusuf was… untrustworthy, but he'd be much more at ease with the teens in his sight. There was no such luck and he resigned himself to wandering the art until he eventually got the text to pick them up and drive them home; or, more his luck, drive them to the nearest hamburger place and pay for their dinner.

“Mi scusi, are you lost?” Ezio turned to look behind him, finding a man around his age, maybe a bit older, sitting on one of the benches near the abstracts, a small sketchpad in his hands, and a pencil. He could almost be taken for one of the museum staff if it wasn’t for the shoulder-length dirty blonde hair and the dark red beanie he was wearing. Something warm barely began to fill his chest before he tamped it down.

“Only a bit. I’ve never been here before, so I…” Ezio tried to shrug and play it off. “It’s no matter. Though, if I’m being honest, most people come to these places with the intent of studying the art, not making more.” He quirked an eyebrow upwards and the other only blushed a little bit, sitting up straighter.

“It’s the perfect place for inspiration if you think about it.”

“It’s quite loud for inspiration.”

“Do you like to be a contrarian?” The other man gave his own look, and Ezio couldn’t help to smirk before he felt bold and came to sit next to the other.

“What’s your name?”

“Leonardo. And you, signore?”

“Ezio. A pleasure.” They shook hands and Ezio tried to sneak a peek at the sketchpad before Leonardo quickly flipped it closed. “What do you draw?”

“People. Objects. Anything, really.”

“And I can’t see?”

“We have yet to decide if you’re worthy enough for that.” Leonardo was matter of fact and Ezio’s smirk turned into a full-blown grin as he chuckled.

“Maybe I can be your next model?”

A light, almost indignant blush spread across Leonardo’s nose and cheeks, highlighting his many freckles. “We’ll just have to see.”

Dear God above, Ezio knew he needed more.

“Is it always this busy?”

“No. But it’s only because they uncovered new da Vinci sketches.”

“Wasn’t that a movie?”

Leonardo actually paused before continuing.

“Not that. A few months ago some historians found buried sketches of an unknown male model in the floorboards underneath the da Vinci studio in Venice and some more in Rome. They were confirmed to be his and they were eventually brought here for the public to see for the first and limited time.”

“Are you somehow related to Leonardo da Vinci? I mean, the same first name, you seem to know about him quite well…?”

“You’re sadly not original about that.” Leonardo rolled his eyes as he spoke, but instead of any dissuading tone or rejection, he almost seemed to look amused. They were sitting close at this point, and Ezio allowed himself to watch and take the artist in for just a second more.

“Maybe you’ll give me more ability to be original if we spend some more time together? I could work on my material some more.”

“And what do you suggest we do, Ezio?” He cocked his head, and Ezio took a second to consider.

“You obviously know more than I do. Mind showing me the da Vinci sketches and where they are?”

“If I could get us through the crowd, I’d be happy to show you. There’s a line to see them.”

“I can get us through the crowd if you’d be open to it.” The invitation was there, and though Ezio would completely understand if he denied it, but there was a small part of him that wanted nothing more than to spend more time with this artist, find what made him tick. It wasn’t just some passing fantasy; it was there and insistent. He wanted anxiously as Leonardo thought, and found himself inwardly overjoyed when the blonde smiled and nodded.

“It’s a deal.”

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

Ezio ended up using some skills Rosa had taught him and made sure Leonardo was close as they slipped through the crowds and lines, eventually getting to the entrance of the small room where the sketches were set up. The lights were dim, so as not to fade the sketches or curl the yellow paper, and the displays they were set in were distanced behind red ropes. A few small scraps were held in glass boxes you could peer down into. There were a few of them, and they both went down the line, coming into view of one whose subject was lying face down in bed, long hair falling over the nape of his neck with what looked like sheets wrapping him.

“So… Did he have a lover?” Ezio whispered as they waited to move ahead to see the next one.

“Maybe. Obviously someone important to him. The detail is rushed, but… you can feel the care in each stroke at the same time.”

“It’s kind of sad they couldn’t exactly be open about it.” Ezio murmured, and Leonardo hummed as they went down the line, the subject’s face always out of view or obscured somehow but the body in different activities; sleeping, some reading, once even just sitting reclined on a bench in what looked like nicely detailed, if somewhat extravagant, robes.

“I don’t think…” Leonardo started off softly, stopping as they came to the final propped up sketch, “I don’t think they cared all that much. They had each other, didn’t they? If they really were lovers, at least.”

Ezio glanced over at Leonardo as he started to be the leader, watching the older man as his eyes flitted over the pages and pictures. “You really think so?”

Leonardo nodded before Ezio even finished, and they stopped as they came to final pieces of paper. More to the point, it was Leonardo who stopped in his tracks as Ezio almost ran into him. He had to stifle the shout of surprise and stop himself from disrupting the other patrons as Leonardo peered down into the case.

“What’s wrong?” Ezio wasn’t even sure if there was anything wrong since he didn’t look particularly upset or anything, but there was something almost distant on his face as he looked down. Ezio followed his gaze, quickly sparing a glance at the plaque which labeled the picture as the possible identity of da Vinci’s secret lover.

The picture was of a sleeping man, obviously satisfied somehow. Only one part of his face was visible, the rest lying against a pillow, but it was easy to see the small marks on his face, almost lovingly included. A scar ran on his lip, and Ezio felt a shiver down his spine as he looked at this man who had so obviously captured the artist’s heart in such a manner to deserve being immortalized in hidden sketches.

“Nothing.” Leonardo finally spoke up, seemingly coming back to himself. “I simply… I simply wish that I could draw as well as that.” He offered lamely, a slightly embarrassed tinge of pink adding itself onto his cheeks.

“I’m sure you draw just as well as this man. Likely even better. Don’t compare yourself to him.” Ezio was quiet but insistent, and the blonde finally turned to look at him.

“You think so?”

“I do. Though, I can’t say that I’m the most unbiased judge.” He grinned a bit. “I’ve been sort of rejected from looking at them.”

The tinge deepened just a bit, and Leonardo spared a glance back the paper before his eyes darted back to Ezio. “If…” Leonardo started off slowly and a bit hesitantly, “you would like to actually see them… I could try and use you for an example if you’d be up to it.”

Ezio’s grin turned into a beaming smile and he nodded. “Anytime you need me, I’m there.”

Leonardo mirrored his smile and Ezio was struck with a foreign feeling, but something that he somehow knew all the same. They were young. And they had all the time in the world, didn’t they?

I hope you enjoy! If you do I have a Masterpost here and more ideas for writings and prompts here, so feel free to request! If you’d like to support me, I have a ko-fi here! Safety and peace!

#ezio auditore #leonardo da vinci #ezioleo #assassin's creed #assassin's creed 2 #my writings

18 notes · View notes

imagine-loki · 4 years

Text

Pride and Prejudice

TITLE: Pride and Prejudice CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: Chapter 38 AUTHOR: wolfpawn

ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine Loki was raised on Jotunheim as Laufey’s son after the war, but an agreement was then made that he would wed Odin’s daughter so Odin could secure the alliance of Jotunheim through the marriage. Loki, in turn, was raised to be king of Jotunheim, but how he views Asgard is far different from how Odin’s daughter is raised leading to a clash of cultures as well as uncertainty between the pair of betrothed youths. RATING: Mature NOTES/WARNINGS: Forced Marriage, not all fun and games. My first real step back into the Loki scene in over a year.

Tags - @skulliebythesea @asimovethroughthisworld @blackcherry26-blog @we-shadowhunter2901

Ella used her seidr to plough the snow in front of her and compact it enough to have it easy to walk on. Behind her, the majority of the men left in the city that housed the Jotnar palace were with them, ready to assist people to leave their homes as a result of Laufey’s orders.

“That is an interesting ability to have,” Greta commented.

In the hour they had been walking side by side, neither woman had said anything to the other.

“It is a learned one. It takes many hundreds of years of practice, then, by the time you die, you supposedly realise that you barely knew anything, to begin with. Or so I am told, personally, I think I know more than most considering my ability and age.” She smiled as she lifted her dress to step over a large portion of ice. “I rarely seem to use it for anything but convenience though.” “Makes one wonder why you would invest time in it, to begin with, if all it does is make things more convenient.”

Ella could see Greta’s point. “When it is needed for other matters, no skill is greater. My grandfather, Bor, he was a seidr wielder too, it allowed him the power to defeat the Dark Elves, my father holds Gungnir because his seidr is even more powerful with it. The reason specifically why His Majesty was all too happy to take my father’s offer of an arranged marriage between Prince Loki and I was because, with my inherited ability to easily be trained in seidr, I bring with me a new ability to the Jotnar royal line. It is a rarely required strength but one worth having should it be required.” Greta said nothing for a short time as she walked along beside the Aesir princess. She thought over what Ella had said as well as thought over other thoughts that came into her mind as they made their way through the snow. One thought came to her more than others as they did but Greta did not think it something she could ask.

“There is something you wish to know.” Greta looked at Ella in shock. “I can all but read the thoughts on your face. You want to know why I chose you, don’t you?” “Can you read minds?” Greta became fearful at the thought.

“No, I just can read beings. I have been around too many for so long to not have learnt many things.” Ella explained. “With regards to why you specifically. I want to get to know you a slight bit more and you do not seem to want to bury me under several meters of solid ice, so I figured this to be as good a time as any to talk.”

“Why?” “You like Helbindi, do you not?” “I do.” “And you do not overly dislike me?” “I do not dislike you in the slightest, I think you brave for not only coming here when you knew many would loathe you and you fought to stay and have done nothing but want better for our realm since you first set foot here,” Greta smirked. “And how you treat those who dismiss you is something I will never cease to enjoy.” “Being female is not a sign of weakness, nor is it a prerequisite to being such.” Ella looked at the frozen ground in front of her. “Is there supposed to be running water here?”

“There was, apparently, before the war, it is long gone. How could you know that?” “When I use my seidr to move the snow, it gives me a general feel for what I am moving, in case there is a chasm here that I am not aware of, it has alerted me to flowing water. “Really?” Greta could not contain her excitement.

“Yes, so this is good, for the record, Jotunheim is not defrosting?” “No, this is not good, it is a miracle. We never thought it would happen again, my mother spoke of it as an impossibility.”

“Now you get to tell her otherwise.” “She is dead.” “I am genuinely sorry to hear that.” In truth, Ella was.

“Without the Casket, any who get ill did not last long.” “Yet you do not hate me for my father’s actions?” “You did not take it and it was taken for the actions of Jotunheim, to be angry with the Allfather would require being angry with my father, who stood and slaughtered Midgardians which caused this mess.” She stated sadly.

The silence returned for a while before the women had travelled what they could of the day. The murmur amongst those with them as to there being water flowing in Jotunheim once more lifting spirits as they did so.

“Can I ask you something?” Ella looked over at the Frost Giant. “The customs of your realm?” “Which ones?” “The ones between mates.” “What of them?” “Who thought to ever do such a thing? To have affection for another so to attach to one another by the mouth. Who thought that was something to do?”

Ella laughed at the explanation. “I have no idea. Loki would love your analysis on it.” “Did he find it odd at first?” “When I explained what two young Vanir in the gardens of the palace were doing, he first thought they were trying to eat one another and when I explained it, I think I made him at risk of seeing his breakfast again. He was nauseous from the mere thought of such things. Though, learning the etiquette of kissing the back of a hand served him well, I think that was as far as he could ever be pushed.” Greta frowned. “So, he never kissed you?” “Norns no. He sees it as odd, which I can see the reasoning for.” She shrugged.

Greta noted the slight sadness in Ella’s features at saying that. “You wish he did not?” She ventured.

Ella admonished herself internally for not hiding her emotions well enough. “In Asgard, it is normal, to not express affection in such a manner after a lifetime of thinking it normal leads to complex feelings on the matter. It is not of great importance but it is a peculiar feeling.” Seeing that the princess was not pleased with discussing the issue, Greta contemplated not speaking again before something that she had hoped to ask anyone Aesir or Vanir on came to mind. “Whatever about the mouth-kiss thing but what in the realms is it when mates use their mouths elsewhere? Is that truly something beings do?” Knowing what the Frost Giant was referencing to, Ella snorted a small laugh. “I am no use to you regarding that matter on an experience level, but I can say from speaking to women who have done it and from having read about it, it is common in many places.” “Helbindi has been pleading with Prince Loki to ask you to give him the book on such things,” Greta informed her.

“I know, he tried to have Arden ask me too. The thing is, it was not a book but at least a hundred. Beings from different realms love to write in regards to sex and everything pertaining to the topic, I have found.” Greta found herself laughing. “He is adamant to know of it.” “And no doubt put it to some form of use.”

Greta nodded. “Yes.”

Ella smiled. “With you?” “If I am lucky.”

“He does think a lot of you. I see him look at you across the throne room,” Ella informed her. “I do think he wishes very much wishes to be your mate and I think you well suited, not that my opinion matters any bit.”

“You are an unbiased source, so I take your statement over that of others. You have no agenda to push on this matter.”

Ella gave a small smile and got into the bed she had used her seidr to make for her, ensuring that Greta had something similar.

“I have to ask though, with everything that happened with Býleistr and his mate, with how she was Prince Loki’s love before, how do you think this will go?”

“If I am honest, I am not sure. I cannot pretend that this is all going to go well but it is not about how things are with Loki and his brother but about Jotunheim and the safety of us all.” Ella stated firmly before trying to get some rest, thinking the same herself.

It took a few days to get to the location where they would part ways with the men. On route, they warned all they saw of the order from Laufey hoping the Jotnar would listen to them and make their way East to where they would be more protected.

With directions to their destination, Ella and Greta began the walk alone, not thinking of much other than what was required of them on their journey.

When they arrived at the location, Ella frowned slightly as she looked at the building in front of her. It did not look like a palace or indeed a grand house, if anything, it looked like nothing she had ever seen before in the flesh. It had the appearance of a fortress over anything. They arrived at the gates, unsurprised to see them locked. With only a flick of her seidr, she had them opened and walked in.

When they arrived to the main door, it took even less effort to unlock them also. She looked around the bare hallway they found themselves in before thinking of what needed doing. Beside her, Greta looked somewhat uncomfortable.

“Býleistr?” Ella called out harshly. “I need to speak with you immediately.” Her voice echoed through the hall.

The sound of a door opening close by telling her of the location of the older prince. She waited for his arrival apprehensively.

“Why are you here?” He growled as he came into sight. “How dare you come here and demand my presence.”

“I did not demand it, if I were demanding, I would have told you to get into my presence immediately as I was going to speak with you, not implore that I needed to, and, since you are asking why I am here, that answers if you have left here any time recently. War is upon us.”

“What?” He demanded, his concern clear to see.

“Alfheim is at risk of falling, as you know, Jotunheim is the closest realm to it. If we do not prepare, we could be next. Loki and Helbindi have already joined my brother, the Light Elves and the Vanir. His Majesty wished to allow you a few days recovery before calling on you also but Jotunheim can wait no longer, she needs her third son to join the fray. The last remaining guards are gone to get the people to bring them to the East, if you remain here and they breach the realm, you will be cut off from the rest of us and will not last long against their magic, you need to get back to the palace.” “My father banished me here.” He snarled.

“He sent you here to quell unrest, giving you time away from the talk of others with your mates, you know this was not a punishment, not in the true sense. We all know that were Laufey to command it, you would know the true meaning of suffering. Cease acting as though you will not return, you know you will assist with this, you were raised for this and are a damn good fighter who enjoys a fight so don’t pretend you are not already considering going.” She turned to leave. “Why did my father send you?” “Because the men are needed to assist those who need them, you are too remote to simply trot here and then continue to them. I offered to inform you.” “Why?” “Because, as your brother’s mate, my being here should show you the severity of the situation.”

“How do I know this is not some sort of trick?” “You mean by my father to bring down Jotunheim from the inside?” Býleistr nodded. “Because were that the case, you being here alone and unaware of such things would actually have benefited such a plot, because I broke through your defences without alerting you until I called your name.” Býleistr frowned and looked at the door, noting that she had, in fact, done so. “Because if my father were to think of something like that, he would not give one single solitary care to you and your mates as you are of so little importance to him that he would most likely forget you and they even existed because as far as the guarding of Nine Realms are concerned; you, Býleistr, son of Laufey and Fárbauti, are so far down the list of issues he would see fit to be concerned about, that you would not make it into a thousand-page book of said list, I am sorry to inform you. I respect that in your personal thoughts, you are your paramount concern, as indeed we all are to ourselves, but to my father, the Allfather, King of Asgard and protector of the realms, you are nothing. I could obliterate you right here and now, so you cannot fathom what he could do but he would not do such a thing, nor will I, we need you alive to help our realm.” Býleistr shook his head. “I will not leave to help Asgard.” “Odd you should say that since none have asked such a boon of you.” “You mentioned ‘our’ realm.” “Yes, a you and I inclusive ‘our’. I am referencing Jotunheim, our home, our realm. I know you have yet to see past my appearance to see me as of here, but I am the mate of your brother, the children of which will be of Jotunheim, raised as Jotnar. All I do, I do for Jotunheim but you are so busy hating my skin to realise it.” She looked to where she could now see Alma and Angrboða watching them. “If anything, you should like me, I opened the door to you getting your second mate and talked Loki into not wanting to have you skinned for it. Now, get what you need and come on. It’s not a swift journey.”

“I do not take orders from you.” “I do not take no for an answer, so decide now if you want to be forced back by my seidr or your own free will because we are going back to the palace and you will be facing your father, so do you do so as a son willing to serve him or as a man forced back who disobeyed not an order from me, but his father.” Ella challenged.

Býleistr snarled for a moment. “What did you mean ‘It is clear I did not know’? Did you think I had a part in this, that I would do such a thing?”

“I did not know, such as I do not pretend to know what you are thinking now with regards to how you wish to return to the palace.” She looked at Greta. “We have done as instructed, so I suggest getting a few moments to compose yourself before we return, however our mates’ brother decides he wishes to do this.”

“So you expect us to just leave and follow you, is that it?” Angrboða growled.

“I have stated that it is the order of our king, so on the presentation of such knowledge, yes, I do.”

“You think we take orders from you.” “You take orders from your King,” Ella stated each word with enunciation and loudly. “You are not above him, nor are I or indeed your mate, lest you forget you are not the child of the king but the simply the mate of said child, the same as for me. I offered to come to show the severity of the situation and upon order from my King to ensure your return, I will follow said order should my last breathe be caused by it. Only I will not be at risk of such, for none will be so stupid as to challenge me on it. Now, I will ask you once more, please, get what you need, I can use my seidr so we do not need to carry it back and we can leave as soon as possible. Seeing you travel amongst those forced to flee will give them a sense that you are there for them, it will strengthen their thoughts, not just of your father, but of you specifically for standing with them.” She looked at Býleistr as she spoke the last few words. “They want to feel safe, you are a known fighter, you will make them feel so.”

Býleistr contemplated her words for a moment. “Alma, ‘Boda, get your belongings, we leave as soon as we are ready.” He stated, walking towards his mates. “Stay here,” He ordered Ella and Greta.

“I am going getting something to eat,” Ella stated, heading towards the area she hoped housed the kitchen. “We have not eaten since breakfast and we are hungry and I can literally smell the food from here and I am not leaving with an empty stomach. You pack, we eat.”

#Loki #others #submission #imagine #Chapter 38 #wolfpawn #Pride and Prejudice

58 notes · View notes

wolfpawn · 4 years

Text

Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 38

Story Summary - Based on an idea I had that I submitted to Imagine Loki. Imagine Loki was raised on Jotunheim as Laufey’s son after the war, but an agreement was then made that he would wed Odin’s daughter so Odin could secure the alliance of Jotunheim through the marriage. Loki, in turn, was raised to be king of Jotunheim, but how he views Asgard is far different from how Odin’s daughter is raised leading to a clash of cultures as well as uncertainty between the pair of betrothed youths.

Chapter Summary - Ella and Greta speak as they make their way to Byleistr and his mates, forming the buds of a friendship.

Previous Chapter

Tags - @peppermint-j @damalseer @perpetual-fangirl @tinchentitri @inspired-snowflace @raphaelaisabella @alexakeyloveloki @caffiend-queen @devilbat @nonsensicalobsessions @skulliebythesea @majoringinlife @salempoe @lotus-eyedindiangoddess @rookienumber98 @ivytoh @agarwaeneth @rosierossette @arch-venus25 @nessamaurice

Request if you wish to be tagged

“That is an interesting ability to have,” Greta commented.

In the hour they had been walking side by side, neither woman had said anything to the other.

“Now you get to tell her otherwise.” “She is dead.” “I am genuinely sorry to hear that.” In truth, Ella was.

Greta noted the slight sadness in Ella’s features at saying that. “You wish he did not?” She ventured.

Greta nodded. “Yes.”

Ella smiled. “With you?” “If I am lucky.”

“You are an unbiased source, so I take your statement over that of others. You have no agenda to push on this matter.”

Ella gave a small smile and got into the bed she had used her seidr to make for her, ensuring that Greta had something similar.

“I have to ask though, with everything that happened with Býleistr and his mate, with how she was Prince Loki’s love before, how do you think this will go?”

With directions to their destination, Ella and Greta began the walk alone, not thinking of much other than what was required of them on their journey.

“Býleistr?” Ella called out harshly. “I need to speak with you immediately.” Her voice echoed through the hall.

The sound of a door opening close by telling her of the location of the older prince. She waited for his arrival apprehensively.

“Why are you here?” He growled as he came into sight. “How dare you come here and demand my presence.”

“What?” He demanded, his concern clear to see.

Býleistr snarled for a moment. “What did you mean ‘It is clear I did not know’? Did you think I had a part in this, that I would do such a thing?”

“So you expect us to just leave and follow you, is that it?” Angrboða growled.

“I have stated that it is the order of our king, so on the presentation of such knowledge, yes, I do.”

#pride and prejudice #wolfpawn #loki fic #chapter 38

38 notes · View notes

jiminscaramel · 5 years

Text

champion | wonho [mx]

[GENRE] smut, fluff

[COUNT] 3k+

[PAIRING] fem. reader x Wonho

[WARNINGS] PWP, slight breath play, unprotected sex, cream pie, oral (f. receiving), overstimulation, vanilla

[AU] soccer au

[A/N] so this as a combo of two requests (as shown below) and I thought I’d incorporate the two seeing as they were pretty flexible ideas. Also I’m pretty sure you can’t be in a relationship with your client when you’re an agent but pls humour me for the sake of this oneshot. I am a Brit so I have written the word football instead of soccer so I hope that doesn’t cause any confusion. Anyways, enjoy!

The humidity hits you just as hard as the camera flashes the second your leg peeks out from the car door. You graciously pull the rest of your frame out, discreetly fixing the hem of your satin slip before fixing your hair. You can already feel a dewy layer of sweat covering your skin and running down your back. You take Wonho’s arm nonchalantly, flashing him an impish smile before following the flagstone path into the restaurant.

You turn and smile confidently for the cameras shoved in front of your face, even pausing for a second to strike a sultry pose, ensuring the paparazzi had clear and sufficient pictures for tomorrow’s papers. Wonho rolls his eyes lightheartedly, patiently waiting beside you. He’s proud of you and unlike many other football players, he doesn’t see you as a trophy wife or a shallow headed girlfriend to parade around on his arm like an accessory. You’d known each other long before he’d reached this level of fame, way before he’d signed his very first contract and although he hadn’t yet popped the big question, you know he’s the one you want to spend the rest of your life with.

You slip your hand under his arm again as he leads you through the immaculate glass doors that follow through to a marble foyer. The din of the photographers quietens down as the doors silently close behind you and in its place is the soft sound of the live quartet in the centre of the room. A hostess greets the two of you, skipping formalities and leading you straight to your table, immediately recognising Wonho. She hands you a pair of menus and flutters away to get your drinks.

“This is nice,” you bite back a smile and peek over the card, your smokey eyes wide in awe and glistening in delight.

“Only the best for my girl,” he winks and you duck down behind your menu, flustered. Although you’d been together for years, Wonho still takes every opportunity he can find to shamelessly flirt with you. Equipped with witty one-liners and drop-dead cheesy pickup lines, he never misses a moment to use them on you, always earning flushed cheeks and averted eyes as his reward. It’s terribly corny, but you love it.

The service is quick, it gives you no time to even think about the hunger pangs in your stomach and the food is exquisite – unique, fresh and bold flavours exploding on your tongue with every forkful.

“So…” you begin slow, unsure if you’re right to start this particular conversation. “What are we celebrating?”

He smiles through a mouthful and leans back, wiping his mouth and loosening a button on his shirt, revealing more flesh. “Nothing, baby, I just wanted to take you out to dinner while we’re here.”

Your eyebrows furrow together as you try to understand what he means by ‘nothing’. “Are you sure? There’s nothing else we’re celebrating?”

He sighs and fidgets in his seat, reaching for his wine glass. “I didn’t sign the contract,” he suddenly admits. “Yet.”

You sigh in exasperation, your cutlery clattering in your plate. “Wonho–”

“I know, baby, but I still have time to make a decision. I don’t want to rush into anything. This is a huge signing we’re talking about, our lives will change again in… well, the best way. I hope. What if things don’t work out, you know? What if you end up hating Spain?” He leans forward, the concern completely evident on his face, eyes wide with worry and eyebrows upturned.

“The contract is perfect, Wonho. It’s the perfect opportunity for you to get out there and dominate another league.”

“It’s a team sport,” he deadpans. “It’s not like I’m up against another team on my own, is it?”

You roll your eyes. “What I mean is, me hating Spain is the least of our concerns. I just want what’s best for you and that you have immense potential which I don’t think is being shown. I just don’t think the club is giving you enough credit or time on the pitch, not to mention all of the other other issues we’ve spoken about. Signing a new contract with them for another five years isn’t worth it. It’s suicide, Wonho.”

He leans back again, one arm thrown over the back of the chair, his tongue running across the inside of his cheek, eyes as black as the night. He studies you with a familiar intensity you recognise as concentration and watch as it morphs into reasoning. He knows you’re right, you’d spent the better half of your time together as his agent, negotiating deals for major clubs and doing all the behind the scenes work to ensure he always had the best. And while it’s no longer your job, having long handed the reins to somebody else, it doesn’t stop you from giving your professional input.

Though you try your hardest to stay impartial and unbiased, preferring to think about these things logically instead of emotionally, the lines this time feel a little blurred. You start to question your motives and the proximity of personal and professional opinion. Are you really thinking about it the way a critical friend would or is it your own desire presiding?

“I know you’re right,” he echoes your thoughts, his eyes still dark and stormy. “I know you are, but I don’t… I don’t want to leave London. I’m happy there.”

“Wonho,” you begin softly, sighing sadly as you finally understand his hesitancy.

“I know it sounds stupid but really. We’ve been everywhere, constantly moving here and there and I haven’t felt more at home anywhere else. To leave and start again…” He stares into the glass, swirling the ruby red liquid around absent-mindedly. “I just don’t know.”

You reach forward and reach for his arm, gently squeezing in the hopes of being reassuring. “You know I’ll support you whatever you choose to decide. I just want you to have the best. I want you to be happy. I’m sorry for pushing you, we don’t need to rush into anything, ok? I can speak to your agent and see if there’s anything else we can do?”

He shrugs dismissively and offers you a small smile, albeit a sad one. “I think we should forget about it for now. I don’t want to ruin our last night here.”

You smile, a little unsure, but not wanting to linger any longer on the subject. “Sure.”

He flags down a waiter in Spanish and pays the bill, standing up to help you out. The photographers still crowd the valet though there’re significantly less, allowing you more room to breathe. You feel bad having brought the subject up, guilty that the night seems to have gone a little awry, but you can think of a few things to make amends.

“When did it get so hot?” You huff, stomping around the villa barefoot opening every door and window in sight in the hopes of catching an elusive breeze to relieve you from the suffocating humidity.

Even in your underwear and crepe kimono you feel smothered, as if the air is pushing down against gravity, squashing you in between. You turn and find Wonho staring thoughtfully into the night, pacing on the patio. He nurses a whiskey in one hand while carding his other through his hair, visibly distressed.

“Wonho, it’s not gonna do you any good worrying about it now,” you try to reassure his nerves, sidling up beside him. He avoids your gaze, eyes dropping low to his feet. “Hey,” you cup his cheek, forcing his gaze back up to meet yours. “Whatever choice you make, I’ll be standing right beside you. There no right or wrong, it’s just what you decide.”

He leans into your touch, his own hand resting atop yours, gently squeezing. He sighs and closes his eyes, knowing you’re right but worrying nevertheless. He wants to make you happy regardless of his decision, no longer thinking about deals for himself but how they’ll also benefit you. It’s not how it’s supposed to go, but that’s always been Wonho – selfless and all-inclusive.

“I just want to make you happy,” he whispers, afraid of disturbing the still night.

“I have you. For the rest of my life. I couldn’t be happy enough,” you lean in and gently seal your sentence with a kiss, a soft peck to his lips that wracks your body with a frisson of excitement.

He chases your lips as you pull away, further words unnecessary and made redundant by your body language, and pull the glass from his hand. You saunter back into the villa and place it down of the table, heading straight to the bedroom, skin burning with his searing gaze.

And it doesn’t take him long at all, to find you sprawled enticingly on the cotton sheets, kimono shed and left on a little heap on the floor. Your eyes smoulder, silently beckoning him forward. His weight dips the mattress, knees caging you in on either side, a low groan rumbling in his throat as he drinks you all in.

His palms sink into the sheets on either sides of your head and for a moment, your eyes lock. You see Wonho for who he is and all the traits that add up to make him. His vulnerability, his modesty, his confidence and his tenderness. His strengths and his weaknesses, greatest dreams and worst fears. And you find that despite knowing everything about him, despite knowing the best and the worst of him, you still love him. It only makes you want him more and love him more fiercely.

His forehead knocks against yours and his eyes flutter closed as he hums with content, listening to your body, your soul. Your eyes close too, your chest heaving with suspense. The air is electric, unadulterated lust and want coursing through the air, channeled through his impeccable self restraint.

He gently kisses your forehead, trailing his lips down your face before nestling into your neck. His breath fans across your skin, igniting it even further and your thighs clench at the contact. “I love you,” he whispers into your skin, inscribing the words with his breath.

You gasp at the feeling, a short rush of air escaping your lungs as you reply, “I love you too.”

But he notices the way your body tenses and reacts to his proximity, a small smirk pulling the corners of his plump lips. “Oh?” He breathes intentionally into your neck, close but not quite touching, sending you into a state of fervour.

Your heart stutters and a small whimper sounds at the back of your throat, the teasing unbearable and afraid of what he’ll do with the new discovery. You clench your thighs even tighter in a desperate attempt to get yourself under control but it’s fruitless.

Wonho’s lips ghost down to your collarbones, nipping gently on the taught skin, before travelling further south to your pebbled nipples beneath your bra. He hums desperately against your skin, the vibrations coursing through every inch of your body. You tense up again but Wonho has none of it and knocks your legs apart with his hand, his fingers finding your damp clothed heat.

“Baby,” he coos into your chest, rubbing circles into your damp panties. “You’re so wet already, I haven’t even started.” He reaches around your arched back and snaps off the clasps of your bra, allowing you to shed it to give him better access. But instead of latching on and devouring you as you’d expect he barely touches you. His lips ghost across the swell of your breasts, purposefully avoiding the area you so need him most.

The damp spot in your underwear soon turns into a wet spot, your arousal sleeping through the lace and moistening his fingers. You whine even louder, tears brimming in the corners of your eyes but he only laughs under his breath, torturing you further.

“You like that, don’t you, baby?” He asks, inching closer to your nipple. “You like it when I tease you like this, hm?”

You shake your head no, countless desires clouding your thoughts.

“No?” He suddenly latches on to your breast, tongue swirling around your hardened nipple earning a cry in response. Gently holding it between his teeth he pulls away and watches it bounce back before blowing across the wet.

Your groans of pleasure are music to his ears, his own signs of arousal becoming all too clear. He does the same to the other nipple, relishing in your torture, before pulling away entirely and flipping you over on all fours. He takes his time when pulling your underwear down, your arousal smearing your inner thighs.

“God, you’re so beautiful,” he admires unabashedly, his erection growing harder with each passing second. “So beautiful and so wet for me.”

“Wonho please,” you beg but you’re not sure what for. Your clit throbs in the exposed air, begging also for some sort of relief – any sort of relief. “Please–” but your pleading is harshly cut off.

Wonho licks a stripe along the length of your pussy, his tongue flat and warm against your folds. It offers little relief, as his pace is torturously slow, but the feeling is heavenly. His hands grip your ass tight, keeping you in place as he devours you whole, your hips rolling into his tongue. Profanities run like a river past your lips, tumbling incoherently into the humid night. A thin sheen of sweat coats your skin as your hands fist the sheets, knuckles aching with the sheer strength.

He teases your clit with the tip of his tongue, your little bundle of nerves sending euphoria coursing through your veins. He finally pulls away, mouth slick with your arousal, smirking at your dishevelled state. “You taste so sweet, baby,” his breath ghosting along your folds rips another surge of desire through you. “So sweet.”

You mewl into the sheets as he pushes your head down into the pillows, freeing his member from the confines of his shorts, but he isn’t moving fast enough. You back your hips onto him but he holds you firmly in place, his hands digging into your waist. You look back and marvel at his splendour, his broad shoulders and chest and rippling muscles in his arms; such a stark contrast between size has your insides fluttering.

Wonho rubs the tip of his cock along your folds, your slick coating his member, before easily slipping inside of you. You collectively gasp as he bottoms out, a guttural groan sounding from the depths of his chest. He stills for a second, gaining composure and adjusting, his breathing laboured as he reaches the near end of his self-control.

“Baby, you’re so tight,” he marvels at the way you feel, the way your walls flutter around him so deliciously. “God, you drive me crazy.”

He moves his hips slow, rolling them steadily and teasing you, leaving you begging for more. His vice grip prevents you from getting what you want and although you love it and hate it in equal parts, you start to grow dangerously impatient. “Wonho–”

“Shh, baby, I know what you want,” his pace grows quicker, though it does nothing to quench your thirst. It’s an agonisingly slow build up, the heat pooling in your stomach hotter than lava, but you relish every inch of him. Every movement, every touch and every breath you hold dear and savour for the moment, saving them for your darkest hours.

Soon, the room fills with the sound of slick skin against skin, the both of your sweating profusely from the efforts. His thrusts are relentless, his purchase tighter than ever and your cries are voluble, incessant yet incoherent; hungry for more yet insatiable.

Your walls flutter around his cock as his head hits your g-spot, his hand pushing your head further into the sheets to get a deeper angle. You feel your slick on the duvet, certain that you’ve completely ruined the bedding, but the idea turns you on further.

“Get those fingers working, kitten,” he demands, pulling one of your arms back. You obediently fumble to get your hand on your clit, working figures of eight into your bud in time to his thrusts. “Good girl. That’s my good girl,” his words get lost in his grunts as he works himself towards release.

Your eyes squeeze shut as the familiar feeling in your gut blooms and threatens to spill over. “Wonho, I’m so close. Fuck, I’m so close, I’m gonna cum–” your words string together unintelligibly, filling the room with lewd confessions.

“You’ve taken me so fucking well, baby. Are you ready to cum for me?” He asks between gritted teeth. “You ready to cum all over my cock?”

You nod fervently, an inconsolable sobbing mess, your fingers working overtime to keep up with him. “Yes, Wonho please!”

“Fuck,” he curses under his breath as he feels you come undone, your juices squirting everywhere and running down your hand. Your walls spasm around him as the knot in your stomach unravels, your cries subsiding into mewls of overstimulated pleasure.

His grunts and moans become more primal, sloppier and quicker, signalling his near end. “Baby, I’m so close, so close,” he whispers, leaning forward to bury his face in your neck. His chest is cold against your back, puddles of sweat making you shiver against him. His self-restraint has long snapped, his hips pounding and pistoning with no other intention but to find his release. And he finally does.

Your name falls from his lips like a heavenly prayer, as if you’re his saving grace, as he loses himself completely within you. His warm seed spills inside and coats your walls, dripping out along with your own cum. You both lay in a heaving, sweaty heap, Wonho still buried deep inside you, wincing as he feels you still flutter around him. His breath against your neck sends shivers down your spine and despite the awful humidity, your hairs stand on end.

He finally rolls over and pulls out, a small, hoarse cry escaping your throat.

“Fuck,” he pants, shying away into his side of the bed, timidness taking over.

“Yeah... fuck,” you both burst into giggles, laughing away as if he Wonho hadn’t been fucking your brains out five minutes ago.

“This might have swayed me in my decision making,” he admits, throwing an arm over his face.

“Yeah?”

“Mm,” he confirms.

You push up off the bed and sway your hips as you make your way to the bathroom, cum dripping down your thighs and glistening in the dim light. You smirk as Wonho peeks from behind his arm, his cock twitching in response. “Let’s see if I can sway you further.”

#wonho smut #monsta x smut #wonho x reader #wonho fluff #wonho angst #wonho fics #changkyun smut #kihyun smut #shownu smut #hyungwon smut #jooheon smut #minhyuk smut #Monsta x #monsta x fluff #monsta x angst #monsta x fic #monsta x fics

543 notes · View notes

deamabilisworld · 4 years

Text

My struggle with gender, philosophy and feminism

During my army days I was fascinated in metaphysics. This is what sort of got me into mathematics and philosophy. They are really intertwind topics. However, I gradually shown interest in philosophy of gender.

I can think of multiple reasons for that:

On an analytic stand point, partially under the influence of daoism, the dualic image of things appealed to me. I’ve grown convinced in the idea that there are two negating views of the world and we must accet both as living beings. It was convenient, like many of the old world writers, to assign them to the concept of gender. Not as attached to sex. Human beings developed a lore under the concept of duality, and attached to sex the idea of gender which relates to this duality. The polar genders (and whats between them) seem engrained in many cultures and especially western lore, and it has influence on the way we preceive the world.

This sort of lead me to the second reason: While philosophy historically attempted to create an impersonal frame of mind, one of pure logos, being, godliness which would rationalize basically everything, there was also this frame which attempts to understand things from the personal, from context and from emotional connection to them.

And of course, the fact that I am transgender made me think about gender a lot. As I read more I realized how useful philosophy is to rationalize these thoughts. Being transgender is not only a personal emotion, it is highly rationally justified when you understand the analysis of language, culture etc.

Sidenote: no, philosophy doesn’t mean only ‘post modernism’ and def not ‘illogical’. I should write on the topic at some point, but most of my reading focused on the british or ‘analytic’ philosophy which really attempted to ground itself on mathematics (as the root of language) and science. At first, because like most of us, I believed in medicalism and biology as the root of all knowledge, evolutionary psychology and all, and then gradually discovered both from the empiric standpoint and the philosophical standpoint how unsound this position is, as I progressed through reading of the analytic tradition (and read my loverboy, Wittgy).

Anyway, back to present day Emma.

The Rowling incident resulted in a major split in the feminist movement in Israel. What happened basically was this: The Slut Walk in Israel started off by queer anarchists. One of its major leaders was a queer trans woman with a beard called Dan Vag. TERFs and liberal feminists really didn’t like the idea and put a lot of pressure and shaming against the Slut Walk.

Dan Vag committed suicide after this atrocies public shaming. Since she was a source of inspiration to the queer anarchists, her death broke the community down. The new leaders of the Slut Walk, or more specifically the Tel-Aviv Slut Walk were mostly cis women, both TERF and liberal (along side, began a mass marketing movement of the walk, a lot of social media coverage, association with major political figures and of course: capitalization from the walk by selling t shirts and merch).

The topic declined in the following years until Rowling raised her ugly head which raised the awareness that the feminist circles in Israel are not safe for trans and bisexual women. This brought a major split within the movement. The Slut Walk currently is much more gay (lead by a lesbian woman, open to trans people) and yet still very liberal (though not libertarian, they sided with the TERF circles).

Anyhow, thing is, that though trans were outcasted from feminist circles before, it was always more subtle and manipulative. The Rowling incident made everything louder and more exposed. Which is a good thing. It finally opened a discussion which should have occured years before. So... I guess... thank you Rowling for being such a dumb, vicious person.

Thing is, while there is much good intention, most of the discussions are made using Facebook which is sort of shit for discourse. I should note, we have many doctors and academics who were willing to take the time and write very serious posts about the matter (sadly no rational argument or post from any figure with knowledge supporting the TERF side, almost as though it is mostly a load of rubbish and they repeat the same dumb arguments over and over again), but seeing as though they are mostly posted in Facebook, most people don’t come to contact with the information and it is quickly forgotten. Plus, most of the discourse on Gender Theory within our circle remains very... undergrad and below level.

Enters ol’ narcissist me. People pushed me for some time, and I thought about it myself, of preparing a YouTube video about the topic. But I had two major issues:

A. I wished to cover the TERF side as unbiased and maturely as possible

B. I wished to bring something new and insighting to the table and not repeat the abundant information that is avaiable everywhere (which TERFs don’t seem to read or be able to understand God knows why).

Ben Shapiro’s gender video was just translated to Hebrew, and I prepared a script for it but I felt bad replying to such an idiot. While he argues similar things to many TERFs, I don’t see value in replying to them because none of his points holds up to scrutiny more then 5 sec.

I was actually insulted. They are willing to hold extremely lazy believes, that are so easy to debunk, and not think for even 5min about the people who are hurt by that. They are not the ones who are hurt by their views and I can see why thinking about these topics places them in inconvenience so I guess it doesn’t matter for them. You know... the banality of evil and all that.

But then I remembered I studied Deleuze during the last summer vacation, and I remember his view on Science in Desert Island which intrigued me, specifically with relation to intersex.

Specifically, the fact that science attempts to induct from cases to general theories, and then apply them to different phenomena, implies that science would attempt to enforce sameness and eliminate differences. Thus, for instance, by creating the binary presentation of sex, intersex become an anomaly for the theory, which is either ignored or regularly supposed to be contained in one of these two categories for convenience. Likewise, statements as 'Women have property X' don't fully describe which category has property X: people of similar sex hormones balance, people with a certain genetic markup, people with a female or male anatomy etc. Thus the description increases our underdeterminancy and raises the issue of under-diagnosis in trans and intersex people.

I also saw a rescent video which made me think about this issue further:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcOhfOrz0HM

And I had many thoughts:

It’s an interesting take on the issue, it can demonstrate many of the things people don’t understand about sex and gender in an easy to follow manner, Deleuze is a very sexy man and it would be a great opening video about the binary view on sex.

Anyhow, this got me excited.

I mailed a few of my professors, some professionals I know for Deleuze and stuff, one of them was even interested in making it a complete research with me about Deleuze and gender (apparently, not a topic discussed enough cause everyone is at the other party, parising Foucault for the same shit over and over again while forgetting that Deleuze guy who was a serious golden boy).

Anyhow, I’m excited about that.

#blog #terf #queer-anarchist #deleuze #ludwig wittgenstein #analytic philosophy #daoism

4 notes · View notes

kekekentyuh · 4 years

Text

The Quirks and Qualms of Online Class

The global pandemic terrorizing us as of the moment has taken so much of our lives when limited social contact was introduced. Preventing the virus from spreading further has reduced our lives to crumbs, robbing a lot of us of the chance to create a better life for ourselves in the outside world, forcing us to powerlessly retreat within the walls of our homes. And sadly, to say the very least, even the education system wasn’t safe from the Corona effect.

Remote learning seems to be the next logical step that most academic institutions can come up with because of the whole social distancing thing. For a while, it was a step so many dreaded to take because of how evident it was that it was just a disaster begging to take place — the countless government officials continuously campaigning to push through with the academic year weren’t of good help either — although it eventually arrived to a point where it was the only thing they could think of. Some have already opted to use this means of providing as early as April to finish off the previous school year, or summer semesters in some university constituents, all in little steps, but in general, we all know how it is: this type of learning is new to most of us, especially for those of us who are used to face to face learning, and we’re all learning to adjust to it while we’re still contained indoors.

The university I attend already had us undergo the whole process of online learning during our Midyear semester last June, where we took a couple of subjects that we were supposed to enroll in for the summer had the world not gone batshit crazy, opting only to open the possibility of attending that midyear semester for those who are required to do so in their respective course program curricula. We held synchronous online sessions via Zoom, where meetings were recorded for everyone's access, making for more accessible resources for note-taking, and used the online learning platform Canvas as pilot testers (both accounts provided by the university itself along with our emails) that we utilized for transfer of information, like learning materials and paperless, digital submissions, generally, and it all seemed to work, for a term that lasted a month maximum. But even before it began, I had a lot of qualms and reservations, particularly on how it’s all going to play out, and how it’s going to affect my performance and my academic standing, because up to that point, I’ve never taken any class or required academic sessions within virtual online learning platforms (not that I was happy while I was taking it, anyway; it’s a hellhole waiting to burst like a pimple). And that was just for a Midyear semester, which was four weeks at most; given how they’re planning to have this coming regularly-paced semester (shortened for the purpose of everyone’s convenience, although I’m pretty sure that’s going to do more harm than benefit, especially for students) purely on remote learning accords, we have no idea how we’re all going to take it on, not with major subjects and a lot of skill-based outputs being asked of us, which are probably much, much heavier than the countless submissions we had to do previously.

But you know what the boomers think: it’s all better than letting the school year just fly away, they didn’t have access to privileges like this so we’d better put up with it. Go now, plan later; and to that, I say one thing — you can’t stop a runaway train.

Even though one month of putting up with this mess is probably just a rough estimate of just how grueling an entire semester online is going to be, I would like to share a few of the things that I’ve noticed about remote learning that are not so great, and, to be completely unbiased, fine by my own judgment. I’m going to use the experiences me and my fellow Biology majors had whilst taking them to truly evaluate how effective it is for university students here in the Philippines, all with the company of you, my dear readers. This is, however, limited to the things we’ve experienced, and may vary for different situations, like from the point of view of a faculty member or a student of a different school, so please, take all of this with a grain of salt. We have no idea if things are going to play out exactly like they did previously, but it’s good to know a few things to prepare ourselves, right? Consider this as sort of a primer — from one lousy college student to another. If we’re going to deal with this bullshit, we’re going to look at it together.

For starters, remote learning is kind of energy efficient — and when I say that, I don’t mean chill. God, no; it’s anything but. The main thing I really like about learning from home is that it saves us a lot more time and physical energy than how much we usually need to attend face to face classes. It’s a very striking point, and I’m sure some may see it beneficial, especially those who still need to put up with the commute to go on campus. We don’t have to worry more about budgeting our time between classes and activities outside, like what time we’d have to wake up so we can have more time to get ready for our day ahead, or where to eat and what to wear to go out. We can wear home clothes while attending classes (not like your clothes even matter, anyway; at least not in UP) and don’t have to deal with the headaches and heartburns you get when you try commuting in the Metro, since we’re all just indoors. And let’s not forget, for someone who attends a university situated in the middle of a bustling city with people of all shapes and sizes that you can never trust, being confined to our homes means we are in a much safer environment, where we wouldn’t have to worry about being robbed every fifteen seconds or won’t have to look twice so every passing vehicle gets a lesser chance of ejecting us off the street. We’re all sitting within the walls of our homes, so we have lesser things to worry about logistically, so to speak. Besides, stepping outside is even more of a risk now than ever, and making available materials to access at home may reduce the probability of that risk getting the best of us, so at least that’s out of the way, like it’s supposed to be.

One thing that also struck me about remote learning is how it’s heavily dependent on how you pace your studies and work. Since your learning environment consists mostly of you and the digital materials, apart from the synchronous classes some professors require, a lot of the time, the way you’re going to deal with this is mainly on how you decide to work on it and how your pace with regards to taking everything on would be, and since there are scheduled deadlines and exams, and you can’t afford to lose any of your precious time monkeying around, albeit the hard way, you’ll definitely learn to manage your time on your own. It’s not completely individual, as there were still group tasks and outputs to be submitted as a unit, but since you’re all alone in your workspace, it’ll all depend on how well you manage to properly do these requirements. Time management is a key factor in college, or in any school level setting really, a skill better than any studying technique you will ever come across, since it helps a student tackle the countless loads of work being tossed their way without it stacking up to immediate doom, and remote learning prompts one to find the method that allows one to work with the flow the easiest — kind of like the perfect key to crank up an engine.

But the thing about remote learning is, for a whole student system not entirely prepared and properly equipped for it, the cons outweigh the pros — by about a mile.

To put it simply, limited contact is much more stressful in the parts of those who are actually involved in the setup, which are, primarily, the student and the teacher. Home environments, right up the first bullet, are not all conducive learning environments. This is entirely dependent on various factors, which may range from more personal ones, like unfavorable familial setups or various distractions at home, or more logistical ones, like the location of the home itself, all contributing to numbers and numbers of disruptive tendencies, none of which are under the child’s control, which may result to their lack of focus or increased anxiety. Home environments are not made for learning, unlike schools and universities where students are free to study without any distractions, and this may hold back the smooth process of their learning if continuous and entirely destructive — and there’s nothing the students nor the instructors can do about it but stress out. The number one most notorious culprit of them all, undeniably, would be the alarmingly appalling mediocrity of the Internet connection the majority has access to, which, on particularly bad days, may result to unfavorable situations almost unexpectedly, like constantly being cut off from the session and unclear instructions from professors, mostly, who have unfavorable access to the Internet themselves. The constant unannounced power cutoffs in some parts of the country (which is, personally, my biggest qualm and pet peeve that I have developed during quarantine) would come in at a close second, especially since a lot of these blackouts have no given range, much to the dismay of the consumers. On top of these are some unexpected inconveniences, like glitchy learning environments and faulty instructor-to-student communication, brought by lack of time synchronization, mostly, that may not seem like much, but can make this whole experience a whole lot shittier than it actually is.

And what’s even more stressful is the few solutions to these problems can all but do so much; mobile data as a substitute for WiFi connections can only give us so much with promos and the money it costs, but in the end, it’s still no match for the data requirements synchronous meeting platforms like Zoom or Google Meet require, so it’s best to just skip the class than waste your time and data trying to reconnect. Instructor-prepared course packs, which contain all materials needed for the subject, definitely designed to cater to students who lack the resources to make it to online classes, may work, but there’s still a lot of considerations that need to be made for their evaluations, which, preferably, need to match with the rest of the class they’re in. I know — no one wins here, except probably only the officials of our crappy Internet providers, happy that they still have a lot of people to leech out of.

The curriculum of the various degree programs students are enrolled in are at stake, because so much adjustments need to be done in order for them to be suitable for the online setting that they all, well, don’t feel like genuine learning methods anymore. Skill-based programs, like mine in Biology, for example, are particularly affected by these changes, since the materials and the opportunities for us to learn the skills we need for our degree are out there: at the labs, at the campus, out at the world. The pertinence of the development of methods to teach these practical courses with limited contact cannot be denied, but actually fulfilling those requirements physically and learning them with your own experience is something with much more impact, and that can’t be denied, too. The limits imposed on learning these necessarily skills will also limit the students to what they’re being given; if they’re given half the materials to make a bun of bread, they’ll only come up with half of that bun, because they’re given so limited resources. We don’t even know how lab classes will take place — how are we supposed to be sure we’re going to learn from them? Not only that, but the curriculum coming to play is at stake, too; take synchronous evaluation procedures, for instance. Does anyone want to take a quiz or an exam with relentlessly flopping Internet, with electrical power that plays Russian Roulette every single day of the year? Of course not, because you want to do as well as you possibly can in this exam. Do you want to wake up to a blaring, incomplete grade because the assignment file you’ve busted your ass for just didn’t make it through the portal, although you swore to your underwear drawer that you did? Of course not, and that’s why checking the submission box three times is almost nothing. So much of the learning process is being compromised and limited by a lot of factors outside of our control, it’s almost impossible to bounce back into the much-favored learning headspace we all desire to be in. We’re spending so much time worrying about not being able to learn because of so many things around us glitching that we lose, albeit gradually, our focus on actually learning.

These factors all narrow down to one big boulder about to trample one smacking detail within us: our mental health. It’s already bad enough that we’re dealing with the health crisis erupting everywhere around us, a health crisis that doesn’t seem to want to tone down anytime soon, and hearing and seeing so much of the tragedy it’s bringing to our country continuously, but we have to also constantly worry about whether or not we’re learning the right things or submitting the right things on time and still making sure we’re doing our best despite all of it. Imagine the constant anxiety and the rigid schedule of a regular semester multiplied thrice, all dumped online — with a few adjustments here and a few tweaks there, but almost inaccessible to some, and too much for many. You're not even sure, at any given point within the months-long span of supposed learning, if you're doing it to actually absorb the knowledge, or just fulfilling it because it's a requirement, and just hurriedly making sure everything is taken care of because you don't have any more energy to drag it on longer. That’s how mentally draining it is. And I get that I might be exaggerating (I have an underlying tendency to do so; forgive me, my bad) but who’s to say that it may not ring true for some? If you’re anything like me, who finds comfort in the company of peers, in the little things like building a routine and sticking to it, distracting yourself with new, uncharted things every day, and managing your stress outside the confinements of a house, then it’s probably taking a huge toll on you, too.

But all that’s nothing compared to those directly affected by the pandemic, like the family members of healthcare workers, those whose main modes of making a living were laid off due to contact protocols, and, most importantly, those who lost so many people dear to them because of a virus no one can contain. I can’t explain how much my heart cracks in my chest when I see a student looking to social media to ask for a means to fund his schooling, or when a person I rarely know is knocking to ask for a few pesos to get their ailing family members through. Remote learning, online classes, really, would work just fine — if you belong above that margin. If you have access to resources without going scathed, have nothing else to do but focus on what’s important for you, and leave the rest of the world outside your door. The exclusivity of remote learning is striking, and it’s extremely absurd how much people want to push through with it despite so many consequences for so many unwilling benefactors — six million children, to be exact — left behind. Children should never have to beg, lose themselves, or destroy themselves to be able to learn, because it’s their right to be given a chance to be the best they can by pursuing this education to the fullest extent. Apparently many people disagree.

Let me call remote learning for what it really is — a temporary aid, unsustainable way of dragging the students to uncharted waters. It’s a band-aid solution, meant to temporarily do what needs to be done while the future is still unknown. So many calls to stop the year from coming up have been put out there, as well as so much postponing and halting of the flow of inconcrete plans, promising to improve, but time and time again, to nothing; and amid so many calls for help, just within the education sector, there has been no reliable answer. Academic Freeze, which aims to halt the school year altogether, is not a plausible way of resolving this, as it is only student centered; although it may be beneficial for us, a lot of employees in the education system may lose their modes of income as well, which may lead to a shortcoming in their part. But given that, we also cannot turn our backs from the fact that so much of the student population, almost six million, will not be able to enroll, because education is a right that every child must be given, and if one child deserves to go on studying, they all deserve to. And postponing the opening of the academic year and delaying what is to come can only do so much.

Contain the pandemic — that’s the answer. If this administration, particularly the department concerned with this issue, truly cares about the rights of every Filipino to quality, equitable, culture-based and complete basic education, then they’ll take the necessary steps to put an end to this and protect not only those rights, but, to the administration itself, the welfare of their people.

Delaying the problem isn’t putting an end to it, because what’s only slowing down is going to gain momentum later on.

So many thoughts and so many words! What did you think about these experiences? And if your’re from the Philippines, what do you think about the Department of Education’s response to this rising concern? I’d love to hear your thoughts! Let me know by reaching me through the Inquiries page, or through my social media here I'd love to hear from anybody!

Like always, I wish everyone is doing well, being safe and secure, and in good health! I hope everyone is taking care of themselves by sanitizing and garnering a healthy lifestyle! It means a lot to me that you're here reading. Thanks for staying, and I’ll see you on the next one!

#online #classes #online classes #qualms #quirks #pros #cons #philippines #issue #education #children #university #hacking through life #hacking #through #life #off #the #beat #off the beat

1 note · View note