#all this from a girl who did WELL BELOW average in undergrad

[queenboimler]

i am a firm believer that grades dont actually matter

but there is something so goddamn validating about consistently getting better than average grades in law school

[mobscene-london]

BASIC INFORMATION:

NAME: Alexandra Liao. AGE: 28. PLACE OF BIRTH: Beijing, China. AFFILIATION: Neutral. OCCUPATION: Chief Treasurer with J.P. Morgan Chase’s Europe branch, as well as a senior analyst and strategist with them internationally. FACE CLAIM: Angelababy. AVAILABILITY: TAKEN.

        BIOGRAPHY:

What’s the definition of perfection? People could tell you many things, but for half of Beijing, the raven-haired girl with slender, elegantly tapered fingers and dark eyes enough to pull apart your soul, dulcet tones and quiet words, graceful steps and a presence that borders on not being there at all, lips the colour of faded cherry blossoms and a swan column neck, a mind capable of holding her own against the best of the best, an elite who regarded herself as merely average. For them, perfection has a name. She’s called Alexandra Liao.

She grew up in urban western Beijing, amongst homes that were always empty and seemed to stretch on and on, below the eagle-eyed watch of satellite parents who spent hours buried beneath paperwork and strategic plans, and perhaps it shaped her far more than it should have- ripped the girl from her, burned it to ashes, and built a perfect weapon in its stead. Violin, piano, volleyball, ballet: each and every one of them a game of how much can you take? Alexandra gave each and every last thing her all, but even then, she knew that it wasn’t a choice to be the epitome of perfection. If her parents wanted the stars, Alexandra would give them the planets too.

She was too mature for her age, or so they said. Sliding between the dangerous tightropes that mark the blurry waters between child and adult, teenage years weren’t for recklessness and foolish decisions, rather, Alexandra spent them floating between social event after social event, plunging into the muddy waters that was Beijing’s elite with a courteous smile that flickered into an exhausted grimace. The fact that she went to a private school only served to exhaust her more, her classmates being at those same gatherings too. Alexandra’s accomplishments racked up, national math competition firsts, placing in the top three for international violin and piano competitions, but late at night, exhausted off coming out of several hours of sports and lessons, she could only crumble loosely into bed and pray that someday it’d all stop, but that was always too much to hope for.

First place rankings in school, first places in the Menuhin and International Tchaikovsky: Behind each and every accomplishment was a girl who bled for it all, someone who slept at twelve and woke at five, someone who racked up over thirty hours of instrument practice per week. Someone who was still the same quiet and intelligent girl from before, but now was willing to give everything. Anything, and everything she had. (Some would say that she’d paid more than what she owed.)

Her parents looked on approvingly; Alexandra’s smiles became sharper at the edges and more forced, the dark circles around her eyes becoming steadily more and more pronounced. Her people-reading and analysis skills grew; she’d always been astute, but it only seemed that throughout her high school years, they became honed to a deadly point.

Although, when applied to her parents, alarming trends began to emerge. The whispers had never entirely faded about the two, but the whispers, they said that her parents had connections, knew people. That they knew things, a lot of things, things that people desperately tried to bury, things no one should ever know. No one, by any means, was always entirely clean, and it seemed that her parents knew it all. You couldn’t hide anything from them.

She chose to wilfully ignore it all, because it was all still rumour, still speculation, still nothing but blind guesses.

First place ranking and class representative for three years. Menuhin first place wins. International Chopin fifth and third. International Tchaikovsky silver. Bronze, silver, then gold at volleyball nationals, last as captain. China’s International Math Olympiad Team gold for two years, second as captain. The list of her accomplishments went on and on, as did her severe exhaustion and sleep deprivation. Yet, she kept poise with four hours of sleep what many couldn’t do with eight. Whenever others suggested she take a break, she only laughed it off, and said that there wasn’t a choice to quit or fail anymore.

High school exams came, and she passed with a perfect. SATs returned the same. She spoke as valedictorian. Alexandra garnered the attention of several elite schools, and out of the dozen that arrived at her doorstep, she chose Harvard, intending on pursuing business.

Eighteen years had bred someone who was all at once a little less and more than human. She was a god, she was a monster, she was a machine, she was a weapon. No matter what you said, the end result was all the same: Alexandra Liao wasn’t human. She couldn’t have been. No sane person would be able to do the things that she had, could keep up the same smiles day after day, could play the same pieces week after week, could swim and not drown. Alexandra knew what people thought, her only reply was a sardonic smile and a singular, round and round we spin, with feet of lead and wings of tin.

The only way she could keep going was by that same momentum. People had a dangerous tendency to underestimate the strength of her heart and will, and it was that same drive that pushed her forwards, because there was only forwards- going back was impossible. And to most, that was impossible: it made you a monster and god, a robot, but to Alexandra, it was the only way she could just be.

So yes. Quiet. Elegant. Erudite. Polite. Tired. Sad. Determined. Loyal. Cunning. Calculated. A million things that could not and should not exist in one person: they did in her.

That same combination also doomed her as a ticking time bomb. For years, she’d been compartmentalizing, had been letting her irritation fall into neat boxes, but it only seemed that she’d been doing it for far too long. The summer after she graduated, one evening in Berlin, Alexandra simply couldn’t box it up any longer, flinging question after furious question to her parents.

They gave her the truth. They were information brokers. Not corrupt, but rather, nexus points with ties to the underground. Not directly part, but rather, silent observers, people that knew everything but seemed to know nothing, divulging things almost never. They were neutral, uninvolved.

The other truth though? Alexandra couldn’t deal with that truth. She wanted to scream, but nothing came out. How? What? When? Who? Why? Two weeks later, she moved into a dorm at Harvard, and for the next four, said nothing to her parents, and didn’t visit China.

She managed to weather university better than most, known to professors as hardworking, intelligent, and sharp. Two weeks after her undergrad, a single message showed up on her phone, and the world crashed around her. She’d gone four years without dealing with her parents, but they were broaching the topic again. Again. After all the running, hiding, avoiding, they wanted her back. They wanted her to do what they had done. Alexandra didn’t refuse, because refusal wasn’t a choice any longer.

The business textbooks and layers of papers, faces of businessmen and politicians and criminals plastered onto walls in complicated nets dotted her room, and two years later, Alexandra graduated as valedictorian. An heir.

The next three years would be spent at J.P. Morgan’s headquarters in NYC, with Alexandra rapidly jumping up to the position of senior analyst at Treasury. She’d become known as a strategy nexus and nearly infallible predictor and analyst, a part of the team known as the Crows. Still, she did not forget her parents’ command, and her listener nature only made people all the more prone to blurting out things.

The end of her fourth year came, and Alexandra was shifted to London, promoted to Chief Treasurer of their European Branch. She was fine being a civilian. Alexandra Liao did not want to, and had no intention of becoming involved in the darker workings of the world. The young woman herself did not think much of her side job.

There were some things she was perfectly content not knowing, but perhaps knowing the darkness of the world is the only way to counter it. To survive it. To thrive.

Alexandra Liao isn’t sure how this is going to turn out. For now, she’s going to watch from the sidelines. She’s going to be a hawk, and let her sharp eyes narrow in on every corner in this city, not letting a single thing slip. She’ll let her parents know what’s going on, she’ll quietly come to her own conclusions and perhaps let a few things slip here and there as she sees fit.

The thing is though, by no fault of her own, she’s already in over her head. Alexandra Liao is someone who has too many tangled connections to this world, to this life, and no matter how hard she tries to stay neutral, how hard she tries to run, how hard she is going to fight to stop herself from getting sucked into this vortex, has to be a ghost because you can’t hunt them down.

If nothing else, there is one thing she knows with certainty. No matter what, she has to hide, she has to stay out of it all, she has to avoid getting involved, she has to avoid this world altogether. Still, she’s not naive enough to realize just how deadly the position she’s trapped in is for herself and for the others in this city.

In this world, next to a dead body, information is what everyone wants the most.

And she’s the one who knows it all.   

      SOCIAL CONNECTIONS:

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Single. FAMILY: Liao Huning (father, unplayable) Wang Chunlan (mother, unplayable)

[themikithornburg]

How can I share a love of reading with my child?

I have in my mind's eye a memory of one of my stepdaughters at about age eight, kneeling on the basement stairway, lounging on her elbows a few steps up, chin resting in one hand, nose in a book. Her love for reading had overtaken her there; if you wanted to get down to the laundry room, you'd have to go around her. Now that same little girl is (gasp!) the grandmother of an almost-five-year-old, and she's hoping the same thing a lot of readers hope for their children and grandchildren, that a love of reading can be passed down to a new generation. We know that people who read for pleasure are on average more successful academically, and therefore economically. But for us book-lovers, the hope is more personal. We want to share our great joy in reading with the people we love. Sadly, that hope isn't as easily fulfilled as it once was. Distractions seem to multiply by the day. When my stepdaughter was little, "screen time" meant TV time only, and her parents put limits on that. Back when I started to read, we didn't even have a television set. (Yes, I hasten to say, TV had been invented, but the signal from the nearest station didn't reach us.) And it's not only that there are more distractions, or even that our lightning-speed media have shortened attention spans. I don't know if any studies prove this, but talking with students for many years makes me pretty sure that, for a lot of young people, the process of turning words on a page into scenes, pictures, voices, a kind of reality, has never been learned. What for me is the magic of stepping into another world through the pages of a book is, for them, simply not possible. They see words, they know what the words mean, but turning those meanings into vicarious experience, the way a film becomes vicarious experience, is something that just doesn't happen. No one taught us to do that; we learned it somehow on our own. But these kids haven't learned it. This makes reading a chore, sometimes necessary but never pleasurable. They can read, if they must, but it's no fun. It's not something they'd choose to do if they didn't have to. How can we overcome this? How can we share our love of books with our children? An internet search for phrases like "motivating kids to read" brings up millions of suggestions. Some of them seem fairly obvious, others not so much. I've chosen three to list here: 1. Start early to read to your child. This sounds obvious, but it deserves discussion. Early means early. Even very young infants are soothed by the sound of your voice, by the rhythm of phrases and sentences. We know that babies are busy from a few months old, learning to recognize words and speech patterns long before they start to speak. They're fascinated by funny and unusual sounds, like rhyme. Take advantage of that fascination! Babies are natural lovers of words, even before they know what the words mean. And reading out loud to them establishes a tradition, something they look forward to in the relationship between you and them. Children of any age like to be read to. On a very basic level, it means your attention is focused on them, and children – as parents know – are little attention hogs. The reading session is an intimate moment, strengthening the relationship bond. This means that the story you're reading is the medium of the bond. It's part of the intimacy, which is one reason children love to hear the same story over and over. Remember this, when you're bored to tears with Good Night, Moon for the forty-seventh time: repetition takes your child back to a good, comfortable place they'll associate with a book, with reading. But more than that, being read to releases a child to enjoy the story or poem without having to struggle with the printed words. This, believe it or not, is true even for older children and teens. When you read to them, they can get into the story itself, without printed words standing in the way. This is exactly what you're striving for. Even older teens (even middle-aged people, in fact) enjoy being read to. When I was teaching university undergrads, I'd occasionally read a poem or a few paragraphs of prose to my class, and I soon discovered that they loved it. This surprised me, but it shouldn't have; aren't audiobooks a big, profitable business? 2. Take the child's interests into account. If your child is interested in dinosaurs or pirates, give them stories about dinosaurs or pirates. Make the stories age-appropriate – which means, make them a little older than what you think is age-appropriate. As you've probably noticed, kids' minds are stretching, almost always a bit faster than their parents guess. Don't hold them back; pull them forward, a little at a time. Under this heading comes something more than any obvious interests the child has expressed. You know this little person. You know what will appeal to her delight in magic, or to his sense of humor. When I was about ten, my mother gave me a book she'd loved when she was about ten – an adult book, but one a ten-year-old could get into. How did she know I'd love it? Because she recognized things in me that she knew about herself. Share your own reading enthusiasms with your kids, and pay attention to what sets off a spark. 3. No Fighting, No Biting! This is the title of one of my favorite kids' books (by Else Holmelund Minarik, illustrated by Maurice Sendak), and it's also very good advice. Remember, your goal is a child who loves reading. You won't get there by bribes or punishments or rules. Reading should be a reward, not a chore – and certainly not a bone to fight over! If they don't like a book, don't force it on them. If they don't feel like reading, let it go until they do. This can be hard, and there's no law against offering enticements – talking to them about a story they really liked and tempting them to reread it, or putting an interesting book in their line of sight when they're tired or bored or feeling not quite up to snuff. But do not set an hour each day for reading and hold them to it. That makes you a dictator, and kids don't like being dictated to any more than you do. And let kids know that you yourself see reading as a reward, that it's something you do for pleasure. Also, other than observing obvious no-no's (for instance, not giving erotic romance to a nine-year-old), don't worry too much about content or form. What they read doesn't matter so much as the fact they enjoy it. When I was a young teen, I read my way avidly through a whole series of really silly, old-fashioned love stories. I know my mother sighed, thinking they were stupid and "a bad influence" on me. But I loved them, I was evolving as a reader, and if it hadn't been for those books I might never have moved on to Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte. Comic books and graphic novels are fine, no matter what your own parents' taboos may have been; in fact, the presence of pictures probably helps bring a visual reality to the written word. Give your child access to as many different books and kinds of books as possible. Fiction, non-fiction, fantasy, adventure, mystery, poetry, biographies, great literature and the literary equivalent of junk food – they're all grist for your mill, widening the reader's potential horizons and increasing the chances that a child will hit upon something he or she doesn't want to live without. As a reader, whether you're a parent or sibling, grandmother or grandfather, aunt or uncle, you're doing your best to pass along your joy in reading. If you have a suggestion I haven't mentioned here, leave a comment to share with the rest of us! I wrote this post, in a slightly different form, as a guest post on a friend's blog a couple of years ago. I thought it was important enough for another outing. For many years, my friend Anne Click taught reading at the university level to kids who needed a remedial course in this basic skill in order to succeed in their other classes. Some of you may find this shocking, but I can assure you it's not at all uncommon. These young students, in their late teens or older, are not below average in intelligence; actually, the fact that they've managed to get through twelve years of schooling without being able to read well suggests to me that they're extremely clever and resourceful. Anne tells me that the top reasons they've gotten that far without learning to read well are, "in no particular order: 1) stymied brain development in the first 3 to 6 years of life 2) absence of books and or role modeling of reading in the home 3) failure mindset/lack of confidence 4) lack of curiosity (most essential quality of a successful student)." Surely, these are handicaps that the adults in these kids' lives can and should be aware of, and can and should attempt to correct early, before the child suffers the real and difficult consequences of not being able – or not wanting – to read.

[rhnuzlocke]

Episode 22

Scene 13:

[Ren comes back in to find Steven and Zinnia sitting on opposite ends of the couch talking. Zinnia is leaning back with her feet up and Steven has one foot up with his head cocked and resting on this hand. Ren pauses near the doorway to listen in for a minute.]

Zinnia: So she says: “but you’ve been dating me for six months and you had two other girlfriends before me” and I’m like: “that still doesn’t make me a lesbian. I’m bi”. She looked at me like I’d grown a pair of antlers so I start rolling out the definition for her like we hadn’t had this conversation three times already and she says: [aggressive finger quotes] “I think it’s time you stopped pretending to be confused”.

Steven: Yep. I’ve been there.

Zinnia: Haven’t we all? It’s ridiculous not to mention so condescending. How much effort does it take to just respect other people’s identities?

Steven: Too much apparently.

Zinnia: And of course after that she “felt like she couldn’t trust me” because I might “turn straight again” and acted like I was cheating on her every time I found I guy appealing, which is insane.

Steven: Yeah, Wallace pulled that on me too.

Zinnia: Really? But he’s always Mr. Inclusion at Sootopolis Pride.

Steven: This is back in undergrad and there was some other stuff going on with him that played into it. Maybe I should have seen it coming, but it blindsided me too at the time. He actually apologized later. He’s gotten a lot better and we’re still friends.

Zinnia: It’s nice when people can change.

Ren: [stepping into the room] Are you two discussing biphobia in the LGBT community?

Zinnia: Yep!

Ren: [sitting down in the middle of the couch between them] I don’t know what I expected.

Steven: We’re getting to know each other as instructed.

Ren: Well, don’t let me stop you.

Steven: Alright. While we’re on this particular subject, how did you come out to your family, Zinnia?

Zinnia: I just brought a girl home and introduced her as my girlfriend. I figured they probably wouldn’t really care since I had already come home pregnant before. [taking a sip of her drink] I was right.

[Ren nods but Steven’s eyes are almost bugging out of his head. Zinnia’s eyes narrow.]

Zinnia: No follow-up questions.

Ren: Well, how about you, Steven?

Zinnia: Oh yes, how did you come out to stuffy old Mr. Stone? That must be a fun one.

Steven: It was very much like the rest of my adolescence: just one in a series of failed rebellions. My father is a quietly progressive person, but I wasn’t at all sure where the boundary was at the time. So I, being a dyed-in-the-wool drama queen, decided to more or less come out in front of a whole ball full of Kalosè nobles and businessmen.

Zinnia: Oh ho ho!

Steven: I was sixteen and my father took me to Kalos for a business trip and the main event was this ball thrown at the royal palace. I studied dance and got a tutor to get my Kalosè up to snuff in preparation. Then at the ball I danced with all of the young noblewomen and basically charmed everyone, as my father and I had discussed, until I got interested in this guy. We danced and flirted right in front of my father and everyone else and later made out in a dark corner because we were sixteen.

Zinnia: And how did that work out for you?

Steven: Dad was kinda upset, but mostly because he thought he’d forced me to do something I didn’t want to, which wasn’t the case at all. I love attention. So I had to explain that I was bi, not gay, but after that it was fine. And Technologie Agreste is the most lucrative foreign partner Devon has ever had.

Zinnia: Damn! That is some quality hobagging.

Steven: What can I say, I’m good at what I do.

Zinnia: More like good at who you do, ayyyyyy!

[They all laugh and Steven and Zinnia share a glance across the couch.]

Zinnia: And how about you, spitfire?

Ren: Me?

Zinnia: Sure. Wouldn’t want to leave you out. But obviously you don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to.

[Ren looks at their expectant faces.]

Ren: Oh, well, my parents always made it clear it would be fine with them no matter who I brought home.

Steven: That would have been helpful.

Ren: My mom asks me “how things are going” every now and then, but nothing’s really come up so… yeah.

Zinnia: Cool. So Steven, Ren was telling me she learned some ancient training methods from Kaspa. Did you get in on any of those practices?

Steven: I didn’t have the privilege, no.

Zinnia: Too bad. Hey spitfire, wanna spar?

Ren: Right now?

Zinnia: Why not? There’s plenty of room.

Ren: Okay.

[Aster gets up and hops down off the couch, taking one of the pillows with her to use as a bed. Ren and Zinnia go around the back of the couch while Steven slumps down on it.]

Steven: Please don’t break anything.

Ren & Zinnia: Yessir!

[Steven sucks down the rest of the drink while they grapple in the background. There is a thump as Ren goes down and Steven pokes his head over the back of the couch to check on her. Ren is sitting on the floor but seems fine.]

Ren: [complaining] She fights dirty.

Zinnia: [hauling her up] You’ve gotta fight to win, spitfire.

[Steven slides back down and has only just gotten comfortable when there is a much louder thump. Steven jumps up but finds Zinnia flat on her back with Ren hovering over her. Steven sighs in relief.]

Ren: I’m sorry! Are you okay?

Zinnia: Better than okay. [waggling her eyebrows] You can throw me around any time you want, spitfire.

Ren: Oh sweet Celebi.

[Ren comes back around the couch, flushing a deep red, and Steven barely has time to move his legs as she flops back down. Zinnia comes back too, chuckling softly.]

Zinnia: Sorry about that.

Ren: It’s fine. We can go another round later. I just have to calm down. [to Steven] You see what I mean about her?

Steven: [nodding] I do.

Zinnia: [resting her head on her hand and grinning slyly] So you do talk about me.

Steven: [grinning also] When she’s not busy telling me off for flirting.

Ren: [blushing even redder] Not helping!

Steven: Sorry, Ren.

Ren: [muttering darkly] I told you both that you’d get along.

[Ren and Zinnia finish their drinks and have another round of grappling behind the sofa, after which Ren informs Steven and Zinnia that they both play an instrument to get the conversation started again. Zinnia hops up to get her bag and materializes her violin out of her vapor box. Steven get out his viola and it doesn’t take very long for them to find a piece they can play together. Ren smiles and her eyes drift closed as she listens from the couch. Outside many of the pokemon stop what they are doing to listen. When Ren opens her eyes again, she sees Steven and Zinnia grinning at each other as they play. Ren applauds them when they are done and they both take a bow. Zinnia gives Steven a friendly cuff on the shoulder before putting her instrument away and getting out the bottle of bourbon. Steven goes to the kitchen to get supplies and then back to his liquor cabinet to make himself a mint julep. Zinnia has her bourbon neat. Ren tries it and pulls a face so Steven takes hers to make another julep. All three wind up back on the couch. Ren leans back against Steven and Zinnia gradually drift closer until Ren’s legs are in her lap. The three talk and laugh until they eventually get tired and some of the pokemon wander in to sleep. They take turns washing up and putting there sleepwear on. Zinnia has a good laugh about Steven’s pajamas like Ren did the night before. Steven and Ren insist Zinnia take the bed and she agrees until she sees how big it is and offers to share. The other two firmly refuse and get some bedding out of the hall closet for themselves. Steven offers to sleep on the floor but Ren shoves him onto the couch and puts her pillow on the other end. The sofa is a good bit longer and wider than average, but still not large enough for two, so they both curl up on either end. Neither of them stays curled up tightly for very long and Ren falls asleep with her feet touching Steven’s. Steven waits until he is sure she is asleep and gets up. He gets some more cushions to arrange next to the couch on the floor and lays down there. Taraki comes in as he is settling down and gives Ren a nudge. She strokes him for a bit before he goes to curl up nearby. She notices Steven on the floor below her and narrows her eyes before reaching out and taking his hand. They smile at each other and fall asleep holding hands.]