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locke-writes · 4 years

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Stolen Trust

Author: locke-writes

Title: Stolen Trust

Based On: Imagine being Spencer’s sister and an unsub and him having to be the one to take you down. By: Myself. Originally Requested By: @ofthedewthesunlight

Rating: T

Word Count: 1,484

Tag List: @lotsoffandomrecs / @opalsandlacemain

Slipping the candy bar in your jacket pocket you made your way out of the convenience store. It wasn't hard to leave with anything, there were no security cameras and no alarm systems rigged to go off when unpaid merchandise left the building. A candy bar was nothing compared to what you usually decided to steal but it would help take the edge off while you planned the next big robbery.

It had started, as it always seemed to with those in your criminal profession, with shoplifting. Being young with no money and not of the right age to get a job, you made do with what you were able. And what you were able, was theft. You had expected to be caught at least once, certainly when you were first starting out but it was easier than you had anticipated. Or perhaps you were smarter than anyone had anticipated. The funny thing was, there was no guilt involved. Surely there had to be a voice in the back of your mind telling you that what you were doing was wrong?

No. There was nothing. And that made it all the easier to continue.

From there, you escalated. There were bigger and better places to rob and you would conquer them all. It was simple for you, balancing an appearance as a normal member of society with a typical office job and then worming your way through the criminal underbelly at night. It also helped to have a brother in the FBI who unwittingly tipped you off on occasion. Spencer was smart but he was more trusting than he should have been.

You robbed whatever and whoever you could. Shoplifting from small stores when in the middle of planning a larger robbery and thieving from banks and jewelry stores mostly. You took what you could but you were smart, especially when it came to uncirculated money. Nothing had ever been traced back to you and you were certain nothing ever would. But being cocky was everyone's downfall.

Spencer looked over the file that had been handed to him by Garcia. He hated that he felt relieved that it wasn't another killer. Robberies were easy most of the time, they were simple to breakdown and most of the time the unsub was easy to catch. He wondered if anyone else on the team felt that same sense of relief. He looked over the list of robbery locations but upon first glance he could find no connection although he did note that the last location was a few towns over from where you lived. Maybe he should call you, see if you knew anything although he doubted you would.

As children the two of you were inseparable. Being only one year older than Spencer it was easy for the two of you to get along. You were the one person he truly understood and you were the one person who truly understood him. At least he believed that was the truth.

Maybe there was some sense of foolishness to leave thank you cards at the scene of a robbery. Surely there was someone who had made the connection between every single one you'd committed and the thank you cards left on the scene but there wasn't anyone set to come after you, no one had brought you in for questioning and it seemed easy to continue rather than to stop what you were doing.

When you heard the FBI was onto the case you took it as a challenge. Would you be caught, you wondered. Spencer had let slip his involvement with the case when he called you to inform you where he was staying wondering if maybe when the case was finished the two of you might get together to catch up in person rather than through your weekly phone calls. You agreed and wondered if they would actually end up finishing the case of would you be talented enough to make the trail go cold.

The team filed into a conference room at the local police department to review the evidence that had already been compiled. Unfortunately that was nothing other than some points on a map and the information that all security footage was deleted a week before the robbery through to the night off. Garcia was called to prepare a trail but you were good and nothing was traceable, sending the tech wizard into an endless loop across countries where you stashed and changed your IP address.

You called Spencer each night he was on the case. It had been agreed upon as he was close by and you wanted to be informed on when the case was ending. He never worried about your curiosity regarding cases, it was his job, you were his sister, it seemed to him only that you were feigning interest in his chosen career.

Nothing was going to stop you from sticking to your plan. From what information had been given to you by Spencer you knew that nothing held a pattern. There was no way of predicting when and where you were going to strike next, and you aimed to keep it that way. You'd had your eye on the jewelry store for months looking at watches in cases to steal. Earrings and bracelets would have given you away but you did know that you were going to take whatever gems you could grab.

It was your thank you note that gave you away. Spencer recognized the writing straight away and refused to believe it, or rather he denied it and presented the idea to Hotch for confirmation. He carried a photo of you and himself from graduation where you had written on the back. The writing wasn't exact but Spencer could tell from the way some of your letters matched. You were smart in using your non dominate hand but Spencer knew.

Hotch had pulled Spencer aside to discuss what he'd found. He felt sorry to be the one to inform Spencer that his suspicion was correct, you were the unsub they had been looking for. Spencer wasn't shocked, not reluctant to believe it. It was you, every single thread they'd chased had been caused by you. If he hadn't recognized your handwriting, if he had been anyone but your brother, you would have never been found out.

While Hotch was reluctant to let Spencer go after you alone he recognized it as the only way you would cooperate. The profile they had on you didn't deem you dangerous but he still knew that could change on a dime. You knew of the team but you certainly knew your brother and you were more likely to open up to him and confess than you would a stranger.

The SUV that pulled up to your house signaled your end. There were no sirens yet you knew that it was the FBI. Your brother stepping out of the front seat only confirmed it. Running wasn't an option for you, you didn't want to make things any more difficult for yourself than you already had with the high number of robberies that surely would be connected by the FBI at this point. Instead you swung the door wide open when Spencer got to the front porch.

"Hello, baby brother! We've some things to talk about"

Following you into the house you gestured to the dining room table and he sat in a chair opposite from you.

"I suppose you have questions. I know I'm through so I will confess although I'd like to take a look at whatever list they have on me. Wouldn't want someone else's work to be attributed to me"

"You admit it then. That you were who we came here to find."

"Surprise!"

"But why?"

"Why lie or why do it in the first place?"

Spencer shrugged, "Both."

"Why lie? Because I couldn't let anyone know what I was doing. Why do it in it the first place? Because I could get away with it. At least up until now."

"You know I have to arrest you."

"And you know I'll go willingly. Let's leave the cuffs for another day Spence. Live a little, disregard protocol for once. I am your sister after all"

He didn't want to risk being reprimanded but you were right, you wouldn't run. It was quiet on the drive to the precinct and it was quiet as you were walked into the interrogation room. Before anyone entered you turned towards the glass where you knew everyone to be watching.

"I can help you, you know. How many people like me in the world do you think there are? Whatever the number is, double it and that's still too low. I know how to catch the people who no one can catch. You need me, so let's come up with a deal"

And with that, you waited for their reply.

#locke writes #spencer reid #criminal minds #spencer reid imagine #criminal minds imagine #spencer reid fic #criminal minds fic #spencer reid fanfic #criminal minds fanfiction #spencer reid oneshot #criminal minds oneshot

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bookandcover · 3 years

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The Home Place, subtitled “Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature,” takes an unique look at the experiences of working in environmental science, birding, farming, and otherwise existing in eco-spaces as a person of color. This book was my sister’s selection for our family’s ongoing Anti-Racism Book Club. As a graduate student in earth and environmental science, she thinks and talks a lot about race and gender within her field, mentors younger female students in the field, and teaches undergraduates. Like her, I expected this book to lean into the challenges of representation in the field and to comment on the (under-discussed) positive relationship between people of color and the natural world. And while these broader topics were discussed, this was, first and foremost, a deeply personal memoir. J. Drew Lanham starts his story where his life started, explaining his personal and familial connection with the land—The Home Place, a specific farmstead in Edgefield County, South Carolina, where he was born and grew up. This personal connection and narrative is essential—Lanham’s love for nature is shaped in his formative years by the close connection his family has with the land they live on and farm. His later academic connections to the land—from his graduate research to his volunteer work collecting bird identification data to his writing and communication about scientific topics—all these stem from that childhood passion that runs deeper than interest or fascination: J. Drew Lanham understands the land on an instinctual level. He sees himself as a natural being, in tune with the deer, wild turkeys, and monarch butterflies, with the possums, foxes, and eastern red cedars.

The structure of the book (moving roughly chronologically through Lanham’s birth, upbringing, growth, and independent life) is shaped by its foundational idea: Lanham’s conviction that he is a product of the land that raised him, as are his family members, his siblings, his parents, his grand-parents, and his ancestors before them. Therefore, looking at and observing The Home Place naturally leads to the work of observing his own family and how he came to be who he is in the world. The Home Place is exactly this, both physical landscape and the people that exist in harmony with it. Over and over again, in both small and large ways, Lanham reinforces this central thesis—from the chapter on the spring that fed and sustained the Home Place, which was maintained by his father and could not continue after Daddy’s death, to the chapter on digging into his family’s history (figuratively and literary) as he traces the Lanhams’ connections to the land. J. Drew Lanham acknowledges that this central thesis is not necessarily obvious nor free from controversy. Many Black Americans’ experiences with the land exist within the legacy of slavery and stories of immense suffering on land that never belonged to them. But, for Lanham and for other Black Americans who grew up close to the land, surviving off it and also existing with it could develop a new narrative around Black identity and the natural landscape.

When I think of subsistence farming, I often think of the many challenges and set backs of the hardscrabble life. And while Lanham is not shy about sharing that his parents occasionally “argued about whether to buy hay for cows or groceries for us,” his book as a whole focuses on the feeling of abundance and of spiritual wealth he experienced growing up living off the land. He emphasizes that land itself is a source of wealth, in all its forms, and that fostering a close relationship with the land is a way forward that he perceives for Black Americans. He says “But the land, in spite of its history, still holds hope for making good on the promise we thought it could, especially if we reconnect to it. The reparations lie not in what someone will give us, but in what we already own. The landscape can grow crops for us as well as it does for others.” I thought this was a very interesting perspective that strives to redefine the Black/natural world narrative. This was one of several moments in the book where I really felt that Lanham was writing for a Black audience specifically. He does have a perspective that puts the impetus on each person to choose their relationship with the land, to be a responsible steward of the natural world, to educate themselves, to lean into their connections with the land and trust it.

I was somewhat startled by this as it felt that Lanham prioritized talking about what Black people can do to achieve the “Normal Rockwell painting life” his family led when a huge part of systemic poverty and racism (from my perspective) could not be Black people themselves. Many systems—education and pay rates, land ownership and inheritance, access to banking loans and credit—are broken and rely on all of us to engage with fixing them. No matter how strong you are, you cannot climb alone from beneath a bolder that is pining you down, a boulder you inherit, a boulder you have to carry every single day and in every situation simply because of the color of your skin in America. Perhaps Lanham intends, intentionally, to focus on what Black people can do, in spite of these broken systems, as acts of empowerment and self-determinism? I was surprised how individualistic this book felt at times, with very little focus on how systems of oppression could be dismantled. For example, his primary suggestion for how birding while black can become safer is to normalize this experience by invading the natural sciences with more and more people of color. “Get more people of color ‘out there,’” he writes. In sharing this recommendation for progress, he doesn’t acknowledge very directly how dangerous this act is or how difficult his recommendations are to follow for each person who must be a pioneer in the field. Of course he understands the risks and challenges, as he’s been the “odd bird” so many times in his own life, but perhaps he could have spoken as well to the ways others in leadership positions (regardless of race) could provide support for young people entering the natural sciences (from mentorships and training, to financial scholarships, to diversity workshops and conversations that increase awareness and inclusivity within the field). Saying this, I feel strange criticizing his way of talking about these topics, even if the criticism is simply asking for more (more beyond an individual’s responsibilities, more beyond Black people making changes by stepping in and fighting for their spaces), as Lanham’s approach leans on his lived experiences as a Black man, which I cannot relate to in several ways.

I can, however, relate to his experiences growing up with a close relationship to the land. Unlike my sister, my experiences rambling through the Maine woods, raising sheep and chickens, and hiking, swimming, and spending nearly every moment of my youthful summers out of doors, did not translate into a career in environmental science. However this doesn’t mean that I don’t think of my relationship with nature as close nor my personal and emotional experiences with nature as deeply spiritual and transformative. As a writer, as a teacher, I draw all the time on my understanding of nature and my love for it in order to connect with other human beings, to bring the beauty of ecosystems to life for them, to find common ground (an apt metaphor). I noted the sections of The Home Place where Lanham talked about his graduate research and discussed how sometimes the monotony of the work cut into his love for the natural and his appreciation of all the experiences that brought him here. This was a very relatable moment—for anyone who chooses a career based on passion, that passion needs to withstand the least glamorous moments of that job. At its most slow, most boring, and most frustrating, do you still love this thing? Do you still see its worth even when you hate it? For me, the natural world can be relegated to a place of spiritual purity, simply experienced and enjoyed, because I don’t study it. Yet, Lanham reconciles scientific study and simple appreciation nicely, describing how his passion grows with his concrete and scientific understanding, and how the spiritual and scientific dimensions of his experiences with nature both shape his love and commitment.

I loved that Lanham described how his foray into writing brought a new third dimension to his personal relationship with nature—looking back in order to capture in words, he was able to trace the significance of The Home Place—and the act of literary examination changed him: he cried tears of release as he shared his story with his writing workshop, the first time he truly mourned the loss of his father after thirty years. In one of my favorite lines in the book, Lanham says of his experience first sharing his work with his peers in a writing workshop: “They’d unwittingly given me permission to be someone I’d never been.” For him, this was someone emotional, someone who sheds tears in moments of deeply-felt sorrow and transcendent joy. That joy, often, comes when facing the natural world as it is, and so he applies his pen to responding to nature. His descriptions of the natural world are interwoven beautifully throughout the book and are, so clearly, the creations of a close observer. I related so deeply to these moments, and felt transported, as I read: “Now, as back then, fall is the time when nature speaks most clearly to me…Breathing is suddenly easier and the soaking sweat evaporates. You want to inhale deeply enough to take in every molecule wafting on the wind. The tired smallness of September’s deep green fades then flames into October’s vermilion sumacs and scarlet maples, lemon-yellow poplars and golden hickories.” This is both accessible and accurate writing. J. Drew Lanham knows his science, but he describes the world visually, as he perceives it, not as he measures it.

For me, these writing moments were more effective than the structure of the chapters, which started to feel a bit formulaic as the book progressed. Lanham frequently uses the natural world as metaphors and many of these metaphor are born of quite astute and surprising observations—the ecology of a church’s location growing the mindset of the congregation and the Tuskegee Airmen as a metaphor for flight that takes Black people beyond the contexts others expect for them (the Wild West is another space examined along similar lines of thinking). But Lanham tends to set his big metaphors up in the same way: beginning a chapter with the central concept (in its most analytical, literal, or universal iteration), following this up with personal anecdotes, and ending the chapter (like its own short, contained essay) with deeper reflection on how this metaphor operates. This chapter structure, although predictable, didn’t lose the joy of any one of these observations. Lanham writes some truly profound individual sentences. And believe him. His depth is genuine.

I would be remiss in writing about my response to this book if I didn’t briefly address the chapter “Jawbone,” which troubled me deeply. For all of Lanham’s gentleness and nuanced appreciation of each living thing, he is still a hunter, and he describes a particular hunt—and the deer’s jawbone that he saves from this hunt—in this chapter. His interest in hunting is tied to a larger interest in land conservation and ecosystem management, as he explains it, and it seems that he tries to contrast his approach to hunting with those who hunt for trophies, or for the wrong reasons. But, the outcome is still the same. And he uses many of the tools—scents, blinds, and mating calls—that other hunters use to outwit their prey. He also tries to contrast his hunting with that of others’ by focusing on the deer’s jawbone he has collected. Rather than the trophy of a large set of antlers, he prizes the jawbone with evidence of the animal’s long lifespan and role in the ecosystem. The way he feels about this jawbone, however (elated, awed that this animal died at his hand and not someone else’s), seems to me not very different than the way trophy hunters feel about their prizes. Sure, he consumes the meat from the deer he kills, but it seems that hunting is not necessarily for his and his family’s survival, nor significant as an affordable food source available to them. I think I was most troubled by the concept of control and how that comes through in this chapter. It seems like hunting, for Lanham, seems to be rewarding in a kind of patriarchal, stewardship way in which the reward—while paired with thoughtful choices about which animals to kill and how to use the meat—is not sorrowful necessity, but some kind of pride (in the hunt, in the win, in the triumph). This chapter was all the more jarring following up on the youthful chapter where Lanham kills a sparrow with a bb gun and truly mourns the preciousness of a life lost. And while I also frown upon willful ignorance or dismissal of the source of one’s meat (or willful ignorance about the human and environmental impact from one’s vegetarian diet, as well!) I do think that the act of killing changes you as a person. Although I do not agree with Lanham on the topic of hunting, this is one section of the book, and human are complex, living contradictions. No one needs to hold perspectives and behave in ways that are perfectly consistent; no one ever does.

This book was a powerful testimony to how much we can—and, Lanham argues, we should—rely on nature. This book contains the particularity of the Black experience and seems to speak directly to a Black audience, as mentioned. But it also contains much that is universally applicable to our lives in the 21st Century, as we humans grow increasingly removed from nature and from the lifecycles of ecosystems and understanding how we are, inescapably, part of those. I love how Lanham observes at the very beginning of the book that, “to be wild is to be colorful, and in the claims of colorfulness there’s an embracing and a self-acceptance.” Through this book, he celebrates his specific identity and his experience as a person of color, but he also taps into our shared humanity when he illuminates the rewards of living a wild life. He thoughtfully reveals himself through describing his ecosystem, and, in this, invites us to see ourselves in the same way, with our own ecosystems, Home Places, and reasons to live a natural life.

#The Home Place #environmentalism #environmental justice #bipoc voices #J. Drew Lanham #nature writing #important reading #anti-racism reading

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aislingeu · 4 years

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hello!! i’m kq ( aka kelsey quinn! ) i’m twenty five, livin in the est, usin she / her pronouns!! much like the good buddy who turned me on to this rp, i don’t know a ton about percy jackson!! but mythology was one of the few subjects that held my attention in school, so i hoe i have a good handle on it! :D for now, i manage a comic book store from thursdays - sundays, so i’m scarce those times but i’m usually on discord!!

⟨ ABIGAIL COWEN. CIS FEMALE. SHE / HER ⟩ though the mist might prevent some from seeing it, AISLING DUNN is actually a descendant of H Y P N O S. it’s still a question of whether or not the TWENTY-THREE year old PAINTING MAJOR from DUBLIN, IRELAND has taken after their godly parent completely, but the demigod is still known to be quite CLEVER & COARSE.

this got way longer than i intended im so sorry...

𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊𝐆𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃

she was born on march 12th, 1997 to a pair of irish musicians ( conor and dierdre dunn ) and, unwittingly, one greek god ( hypnos ) in dublin, ireland. her parents met and married shortly after her conception and neither of them suspected that conor wasn’t aisling’s father, until she was claimed.

as an only child, her parents didn’t have much to compare her too in terms of overall strangeness. for years, they wrote off her abilities as kids just sayin’ the darndest things. they remained blissfully unaware of the impact of their daughter’s words, rolling their eyes fondly, when she told them about the man in the cave, who came to her in dreams. they smiled and laughed, when she strangers at the supermarket that she thought erwin was a fine name to give a teddy bear, no matter what anyone else said. how were they to know that she was unearthing the fond childhood memories that passersby had almost forgotten?

when she enrolled in primary school, they realized that she was... strange, if not special. she was recognized as a bit of a space case, often staring at nothing in particular, while her teacher droned on. her worksheets were seldom turned in complete. instead, aisling began gifting poorly drawn family portraits on the blank sides of her papers, likenesses plucked from the memories she explored when her mind wandered, in class.

eventually, after her skill had developed and people stopped writing off the stick figures as ‘coincidentally accurate’, people began to truly take notice. they speculated that she was a medium, silently communing with the dead and painting their pictures as she did. how else could she know what her art teacher’s late father looked like? and what color tie he always liked to wear? she had to be a psychic. recipients of her art were always so focused on their perception of the little girl with the gift of sight that they hardly even realized what she had tweaked, brightening up their darkest memories, just so they wouldn’t have to hurt anymore. she hardly even realized, herself.

without a reason to believe otherwise, she told the man in her dreams that she was a psychic, but he knew differently. he told her that that wasn’t so. she was special, yes, but not in the ways that the world thought her to be. hypnos let her in on the secret he’d been keeping for the past twelve years and, just like that, aisling could make sense of herself. once she knew the truth, she chased sleep. she spent as much time as she could, communicating with the one person who understood who she was. he saw her hunger for belonging and pointed her in the direction of the camp nearest to her hometown.

after a summer away, she came home faced with a challenge in morality that she’d never considered, as a child. she came home to a world where she could no longer fit. her party tricks had lost their luster the moment she realized that true value of a memory, however sad, was worth far more than the cheap smiles that her alterations had afforded. with that realization, her art took a darker turn. unable to shift the memories she saw into the light, they haunted her. she now saw their fears and heartbreaks for what they were: unchangeable. and, now, they lived within her, too. putting them to paper was the only way to get them out. but, pieces like those weren’t the kind that could be sent home to mom and dad. pieces like those were the kind that got her meetings with guidance counselors and haunted, fleeting looks from those whose memories she’d never meant to disturb. after a year of that, aisling went back to camp, full time.

once she was a year round resident of the camp, she found herself more comfortable around people who understood; there was nothing she had to hide, among those who were like her. each one of them was fighting an uphill battle of their own. they didn’t have to hide it. even if she never allowed herself to get too close, aisling never felt all that far away, at camp.

at eonia, aisling spends most of her days painting, sleeping, or working. raised by a pair of mortal musicians, finding a job at fireside records felt like a natural progression. where her godly parent thrives in silence, she finds her comfort in noise. it’s easier to block out the things she doesn’t need to see when there’s something immediate for her to focus on. at the other end of that spectrum, aisling finds her mind most open in visual arts club, trying to keep her other creative skills sharp, while she keeps her primary focus on painting. in search of inspiration, her mind reaches out in tendrils, dipping into another’s until she finds something she can work with. she only needs to leave the room before they’ve realized what she’s borrowed.

𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘

aisling is a naturally empathetic person, always wishing she could do more to help those around her. unfortunately, she knows that she can’t always honor that instinct. her abilities and self-imposed limitations have left her with a hardened exterior that isn’t easy to break through. those who pass through her walls see a softer side: a steadfast friend, always there to put a peaceful end to their sleepless nights or calm their worst nightmares, with a gentle run of her fingers through their hair. but sometimes, she’ll wall herself away from even those she’s closest to after she finds herself in the middle of a particularly harrowing memory. because of this, maintaining close bonds for long is a difficult thing. given her propensity for accidentally rifling through the fondest and most fearsome parts of peoples’ pasts, she’s been known cut them out of her life when she sees something that she has the urge to alter.

𝐀𝐁𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐈𝐄𝐒

MEMORY RETRIEVAL — for as long as she could remember, aisling knew things that she shouldn’t. at first, her parents just dismissed her gift as imagination and observation combining in a perfect, creepy storm. it wasn’t until she started attending school, picked up her finger paints, and started to draw out moments from the pasts of strangers that people started to truly take notice. sloppy scenes from the librarian’s wedding day graduated into well sketched portraits of her bus driver’s dalmatians. she liked to take those happy moments, immortalize them in art, and hand them off to the owners of the memories. she liked to make people smile. sometimes, she took that a step further. too young to see the value in sadness, aisling would tweak the memories that were harder to bear; even if she couldn’t bring someone happiness in the present, she hoped she could bring them comfort in the future. it wasn’t until she was claimed that aisling saw the flaws in her intervention. it wasn’t until she was taught the consequences that she knew she had to stop. although the memories came to her unbidden, they didn’t belong to her and she had no right to change them. instead of focusing on the alteration of memories, aisling opted to try to learn how to shut them out. like her other powers, though, there’s a direct correlation between her emotional state and her ability to keep a wall up. when she’s feeling something strongly or hasn’t gotten enough sleep, she sees things that she doesn’t mean to.

HYPNOKINESIS — you are getting very sleepy… what proved to be a fun tool at sleepovers had more practical applications than aisling knew possible. the skill of inducing sleep was easy enough to come by and influencing dreams was as simple as altering memories. and while ( without intending to ) she’d been known to cause visions when tensions ran high, refining those visions into ones that took the shapes she wanted them to took practice. even more difficult than that was learning to astral project, but that became a necessity, coming hand-in-hand with building her mental walls. when the uninvited memories start to weigh on her, she’s learned that it’s best to remove herself from the immediate vicinity. even if she’s only technically leaving in her head.

OTHER ABILITIES — ( levitation ) a skill she only possesses in sleep, predominantly when her dreams are eliciting strong emotions. ( seeing the gods in dreams ) this is how she formed and maintained a relationship with her father, despite her parents being unaware of their daughter’s godly lineage. on occasion, she’ll encounter gods that she’s less familiar with and, in most of those cases, she’s been known to force herself awake.

𝐖𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒

there are so many cool, fun things runnin through my brain right now!! i think it would be lovely for her to have forged a friendship with an insomniac or maybe someone prone to nightmares that she could help! and those fun customer service relationships with record store regulars!! or maybe a former friend or significant other, who aisling left behind? maybe even altering their memory slightly, if the parting of ways was ugly! who knows! the possibilities are endless!! and i’m always up to hearing other peoples’ ideas because the Sweet Lord knows i am not the most imaginative person in any given room!!!

thank u for reading ilu!!!

#euintro #death cw //#i think i covered everything!! if u have any questions lemme know!! i can clarify probably!!

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barnesandco · 5 years

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Nikah: February

Story Masterlist

Nikah: noun, Arabic, meaning the contract of marriage.

Bucky marries Peter’s former tutor because her student visa’s about to expire and the government isn’t granting her a green card. Can she find a way to permanent residence by marriage, and if so, will it be at the cost of their hearts?

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader

Warnings: Like, two curse words. Mentions of stress and nightmares.

A/N: Written under the Arranged/Accidental Marriage trope for @mermaidxatxheart ‘s writing challenge. Thank you for reading and commenting!

Their one month anniversary is spent in an indoor storage unit in Brooklyn, where they work on moving her things from her old apartment to the one they share together. Between her studies and work, and his hectic job, this is the first weekend that neither of them have prior engagements on. This task has been much delayed and is long overdue. It wouldn't have been necessary at all if she hadn't turned down his offer to pay the rent she doesn't want to spare for a place she isn't living in. Hence the van they rented to dump everything in the storage unit, and are now extracting required items from.

At least there's some form of temperature control, Bucky thinks, picking up a plastic cover for the couch. Their movement isn't inhibited by the thick coats demanded by a New York winter. Instead, he's wearing a grey cable-knit sweater that's fraying at the hem. She's standing by the shelves at the back wall, her cashmere-clad form hunched over a box of ornaments, weighing one in each hand like a balancing scale, lip between her teeth. By now, Bucky knows that means she's distracted - a tell of emotional absence. Her mind is somewhere else.

He tucks the plastic wrap around the bottom of the couch and clears his throat as he approaches her. The phantom pain if the accidental fist he received to his stomach the first and last time he unwittingly snuck up in her echoes through his abdomen. There had been apologies for days, right up until he had to leave for that ten-day mission in Columbia. She blinks once and snaps out of her trance, faces him, still holding the two pieces of decoration.

"You can bring them all if you like. Don't have to choose," He tells her, nodding to her full hands, and tucking his own in the pockets of his black jeans.

"No, there were already too many for my place alone. I'm not dumping it all on you," she shakes her head. Bucky thinks she's confused. Probably about why she's feeling so much lighter, why the stormcloud named "green card" seems to be stalling. The manual labor, the menial task should help get her mind off things, relieve the mental burden a little. She puts a miniature clay pot back in the box, leaving an intricately carved building.

"What is it?" Bucky asks, looking at the structure cradled in her palm.

"The Badshahi Mosque in Lahore," She replies, running her hands in mesmerizing patterns across the polished surfaces of the carving.

"It's beautiful." His eyes roam over the domes and towers, the arched entrance. She chuckles.

"You should see the real thing. Life sized. This is just the main building," She tells him, face coming alive. "When you enter the gates, there's a gigantic courtyard you cross before going inside. Marble arches, Mughal frescoes, floral motifs, it's all breathtaking."

"Are all mosques like that?"

"In size? No. Not in detail and decoration either, I guess. This one is a lot fancier than most, but there are some features all mosques have in common. Like the domes that represent the vault of Heaven, and minarets where the call to prayer is given from," She explains, brushing past him to put the model in the box of things meant to be to his home. It's still half empty.

"Call to prayer. Azaan, right? The one you've set for your alarm for prayer?" He picks up a sealed box by the entryway and puts it on a shelf.

"It's an app. Uses the azaan to let me know when it's time. The times change according to the length of the day. Apps are easier than changing the phone alarm all the time." Navigating the minefield of stuff, she opens the duct tape to close the decorations box. Just as she's about to cut off an end, her phone rings from somewhere in the room.

"Shit," She mutters, and he takes over the tape, fingers grazing hers as they switch places. She scrambles, almost tripping over a cricket bat leaning against a dining chair before locating the offending device in a flowerpot.

“اسلام وعلیکم، ماما”

She greets breathlessly, fake enthusiasm oozing. Bucky doesn't blame her. Work's been tough, and neither of them have been getting much sleep with the restless nights they've been having. The first few days after a long mission are painful, and his subconscious likes to torture him with nightmares. She's patient, though. Began keeping a glass of water on the nightstand, wouldn't let him move to the sofa in the middle of the night when he didn't want to disturb her. She's kind, kinder than she has any reason to he after how cruel the world has been to her. Because in addition to the tension of concluding her doctorate, and then dealing with his nightly episodes, she's coping with the stress of the green card.

"ماما، میں نے کہا بھی تھا کہ یہ خبریں نہیں پڑھنی چاہئیں۔ سب جھوٹ ہے۔"

I told you not to read those articles. It's all fake. She shoots a worried glance his way. After her family found out about the marriage, they had to design some sort of scheme to prevent them from interfering or being upset. Lie of choice - Bucky Barnes is Muslim. The press hasn't been fed this fallacy, but they've been hounding them for weeks - Is Bucky Barnes a secret Muslim? (Fox News), Bucky Barnes proves himself a traitor (Infowars), Bucky Barnes defies Islamophobia (CNN). Bucky doesn't like any of them, and it's bound to get worse after they find out about the application they submitted for permanent residence based on marriage.

They applied for it yesterday, when they had decided that a month is enough time to convince people that their marriage is not fraudulent. Bucky considers the headlines they'll come up with when they'll inevitably find out, thinks about how worried she was about ruining his public image the first time they met.

"You know what the media will say, right?" She asks over her elaichi tea in a booth tucked in the back of his favorite café.

"I can imagine," He answers, drawing circles in his cappuccino with the stirring stick. The cream design on top is long gone.

"Then why are you doing this?" She wants to know.

"Because you have the right to stay. And Parker would be devastated," He adds honestly. No use beating around the bush.

"Why you, though? Did the Avengers have some kind of meeting about Peter's long face and you drew the short straw?"

"Sam's too high profile, and everyone else is either too young or too taken."

"Of course, yeah, that makes sense," She concedes, taking a sip. He drains his cup. "I'm sorry- I didn't mean- I just don't want you to feel obligated to do this. Nobody's forcing you. If you don't want to, I'll figure something else out," She rambles in quick succession, all nervous hand gestures and non-existent eye contact, looking anxious and embarrassed.

"It's okay. I want to. Besides, it'll get me away from the Compound. Sam's always goin' on about being more involved, and don't get me wrong, I'm happy to do the work, I really am. The job is important, but I don't want to live in it, you know? Need a change of pace, to get away," he tells her, trying to make it sound like she's helping him as much as he is her. And she is. He may not look it, but he's tired. Happy to do the work, loves the job, but doesn't want to live for it.

Her cup comes down on the saucer with a clink, and he realizes she's finished her drink, and they've discussed everything there is to be discussed: living arrangements, finances, her studies, his job, Peter.

As they leave the café, she's a step ahead of him, and he rushes to open the door. She thanks him and he nods; together they step out into the slushy, snowy streets. Christmas is a week away, decorations out in full force. The twinkling fairy lights from the shopfront windows reflect in her irises, brightly contrasting with the midnight brush strokes that are her eyelashes. Her breath is released in clouds from her lipbalm-coated mouth, and the word winter wonderland has never felt more appropriate.

The memory of their first meeting floats in his eyes as he begins separating the items whose fate is her to be determined by their owner, still on the phone. She calls her family every other day, and they're close. The guilt tears at her, he sees it every day, sees it now, in the way she's scratching her nails against her legs when he walks past to get to another container. All the while, the Urdu he's learning touches of plays in the background.

"جی، ماما، وہ بہت اچھا ہے۔ آپ بالکل فکر نہ کریں۔"

Yes… he's very nice. Don't worry.

"ہاں، میرا خیال بھی رکھتا ہے۔"

Yes, he takes care of me, she's telling her mother, and Bucky hides his grin behind a pile of books.

"اللہ حافظ۔"

She bids farewell and ends the call with a sigh, just as he exits the van.

"Everything alright?" He asks, hands on hips. She nods, tucks her phone in her pocket and goes to the area he's calling no-man's land. Kneeling down, she moves the cricket bat into a box of things destined for his apartment.

"Yeah, the usual." Sorts through a few more things.

"What do you want to do with the flowerpots?" He asks, pointing to the empty pits her phone had disappeared into earlier. She turns towards him on her knee and huffs, tries to blow a lock of hair out of her face.

"I don't know why I have those. My thumb is as green as Trump's environmental policies," she mumbles, getting up to place them in a corner. They take one each, and another ten minutes of work awards them with the end of their assignment.

Bucky opens the passenger door while she locks the storage cell, and they leave the facility. The day's work - a tangible accomplishment - has cheered her up, and he wants to resurrect the ghost of a smile on her face

"I want pizza," He tells here, straight face.

"O… kay? We can have pizza, she says hesitantly. He never demands anything of her, so she's wondering where he's going with the framing of the wish.

"Do you have a favorite pizzeria?"

"There's a place in Astoria that-"

"Astoria? Queens? No. No, no, no. Brooklyn has the best pizza, come one," He deadpans, turning on the blinker, eyes flicking over to see her cross her arms playfully.

"I refute that."

"Alright, Astoria it is," He sighs pretend-reluctantly, rolling his eyes. She pokes her tongue out at him, and then laughs. The sound warms his blood, and he forgets the February chill and all thoughts of food as the melody rings out. When he returns to his senses, all he can think is, he's in so much fucking trouble.

Taglist: @suz-123 @mermaidxatxheart @buckyreaderrecs @shield-agent78 @corneliabarnes @readerandcinephileingeneral @stevieboyharrington @notsomellowmushroom @veganfangirl5 @mood-pancakes @lbuck121 @starnight-charmer

#ayesha writes #bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky fanfic #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky #bucky imagine #bucky barnes #bucky x reader fluff #bucky barnes x desi!reader #desi!reader

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danyka-fendyr · 4 years

Text

The Thing With Feathers - 1

Chapter One: He Stuns You By Degrees

Okay guys, so here’s the deal with this fic. Right now I’m releasing this first chapter on Tumblr and by tomorrow it should be posted on AO3. However in the future it will be the opposite of that, getting slightly earlier AO3 releases than Tumblr releases. For purposes of my desire to make pop cultural references, I’m disregarding the fact that the original books are set in the 90′s. I’m really excited to release this one since I worked really hard on it, and I’m even more excited to make it my first fic ever posted on AO3. I hope all of you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Taglist: @dreamwritersimagines @rhabakoli @alwaysadreamingoptimist

Wordcount: 5.3k

Warnings: PTSD and mentions of war

There were two days in Hermione Granger’s mind that stood out as the happiest days of her life. The day that she realized Harry and Ron were in fact her friends, and the day the wizarding war ended. Today, she was fairly certain she was about to add a new day to that list. The day she became a professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

She pulled her planner out of the small beaded bag she still carried everywhere with her, a remnant of a war she had yet to truly stop fighting. She didn’t bother shuffling through it, simply summoning the planner she needed. Her compartment on the train was empty, so she reasoned that now was as good a time as any to go through her schedule for the day.

She was meant to visit Hagrid for tea before the banquet in the Great Hall, truly fortunate timing given that she doubted anything had changed about his cooking since her last visit, and therefore she would not be eating much. Next on her schedule was to drink 4.7 liters of pumpkin juice until she bled the stuff. She had fond memories of the sugary drink from her childhood and fully intended upon indulging herself tonight. In fact, where was the trolley witch?

Speak of the devil. A rustle at her compartment door caused Hermione to look up, an expectant smile on her face. It quickly fell away when she was greeted by someone who was most definitely not the trolley witch.

Dark, expensive looking wizard’s robes. Sharp, unnervingly keen blue eyes. And to top it all off? That shock of white blond hair, longer now then it was in their school days, falling into his eyes a little. McGonagall had warned her of her fellow new professor, but she had not been prepared for the reality of the thing.

It wasn’t the first time she had seen Draco since the war. She had seen him at his trial, and then she had seen him frequently at work. She had taken up a job at Flourish and Blotts for a while after it reopened, but while Malfoy had frequented the store, he had never approached her. He hovered creepily in the potions section before spending his limitless fortune on yet another book on the same subject.

Still, sometimes she caught him watching her with a haunted look in those eerie grey eyes, and as the months had drained on and summer had faded into fall, she had not only grown accustomed to his presence but had also found the flashbacks came less and less the more she saw of him. She gripped the ledge of the window now, imagining to herself a dull throb where the words had been carved. She believed phantom pain to be the technical term.

She expected him to say something. Something rude, specifically. Instead, he refused to meet her eyes. He merely mumbled something about how all of the other compartments were full and proceeded to take a seat as far away from her as he possibly could.

Now, Hermione knew they had a history. Knew that better than anyone, had it carved into her arm, a perfect parallel to the brand on his. That being said, she couldn’t help being a little insulted. Shouldn’t she be the one cringing away from him? Where was all that infamous Malfoy swagger now?

For months, he had all but stalked her in the shops. She had at one point had cause to ask her manager to let her work in any section but the potions section. For the first several months of her job, she had found herself frantically retreating to the back room just so she didn’t have to make eye contact with a former Death Eater she had only barely found the nerve to testify for and save from his own teenage stupidity and horrific family legacy, and now he didn’t even have the nerve to speak to her?

“You know I don’t bite. I hex, but I don’t bite.”

The tone in which she said it implied that she might make an exception on her no biting policy just for him.

He looked startled that she had even deigned to talk to him at all, as well he should. He certainly had no right to it. It gave her an odd thrill to startle Draco Malfoy. He looked like a frightened puppy, those blue eyes flung wide for just a moment. And he defied her expectations again. Instead of the cool swagger she had expected, he looked…reserved?

“Apologies, Granger. I just thought…you might want your distance.” He cleared his throat awkwardly.

“Am I supposed to genuinely believe that you were just trying to do something nice for me?”

His eyes flitted to her left arm. Just for a moment, but it was long enough.

“I suppose you have reason enough not to. I assure you though, I have no desire to fight with you. I think we’re a bit past that, don’t you?” He managed a strained smile that rang false in Hermione’s eyes.

His calm infuriated her. She should be the self-righteous one here. She should be the one spouting out placations about their schoolyears and how they had grown and matured. Of all the people to try and teach her some kind of lesson, he was perhaps the one with the least right to.

“A bit past what, Malfoy? This?” She pulled back the sleeve on the arm he had been staring at earlier, watching him flinch back. “Just because you and Narcissa didn’t go to prison doesn’t mean we’re friends. It also doesn’t mean you can’t still go there. How do you think Mummy dearest will look after a few months in Azkaban?”

It was a low blow. She knew that. Even in her anger she hadn’t meant to fight that dirty, even in her memories of thrashing on a cold tile floor and blood, blood everywhere, so much of it, scars that would never heal, she had thought herself better than this. Somehow, the thrill of pleasure she got when he rose to her challenge made it all worth it.

“Alright then Granger, you want to be 16 again then fine. I suppose not much has changed, has it? You’re still pining after the Weasel, aren’t you? Tried to murder anyone with a flock of birds lately?”

Hermione stiffened. She hadn’t anticipated that he would be as familiar with her weaknesses as she was with his. She didn’t look at him when she admitted the unpleasant but unavoidable truth.

“Ron and I…are broken up.”

It had happened shortly after her 19th birthday. They had continued making public appearances together for the last year, but they had been gradually easing off, trying to avoid the media frenzy that would be just openly coming out with their split. Rita Skeeter would certainly have a field day with that one. She might as well tell Malfoy now though. They had been planning to announce it soon, using her new, distant position as an excuse.

That taunting yet comfortingly familiar smirk spread over his face as he leaned back in his seat, kicking his feet up on her side of the compartment. “Finally got tired of him, did you? Realized you were too good for him after all?”

Unwittingly, in trying to rile her up by insulting Ron, he had hit on her other sore spot. The fact that she had not actually broken up with him.

She grit her teeth. “Other way around actually. He broke up with me. Are we done discussing my love life now?”

Malfoy nearly fell out of his seat from his precariously perched situation, the shock evident on his face.

“Wait, he broke up with you? Has he finally lost his damn mind?” Surprisingly, Malfoy burst into laughter. “I mean, I always knew he was a bloody fool, but now he’s just reached new heights.”

Blessedly, the trolley witch really was the interruption at the door this time, and if she was surprised to see Hermione Granger speechlessly staring at an abundantly amused Draco Malfoy, she did not comment on it.

“Treats, dears?”

Hermione perked up at this, all anger forgotten at the promise of a chocolate frog. As a child she had never had much money for the candy that Harry and Ron so wildly indulged in, and entirely too much self-discipline to do so anyway. Now though, her 20-year-old self had considerably more funds and less will-power, and she wanted candy. Lots of it. She probably looked downright gleeful, but she couldn’t bring herself to care.

Then Draco Malfoy did something entirely unprecedented. Something heartstoppingly, shockingly, terribly unprecedented.

Maybe it was the look on her face. Maybe it was an overwhelming sense of guilt. Maybe it was some deep, innate, Malfoyish need in him to be a show-off at all times.

Whatever the reason, it was Hermione’s turn yet again to be unpleasantly surprised when he said, “We’ll take the lot.”

“What about the kids?” She stumbled out a protest.

“We’re the last compartment in the train Granger. Surely you’d noticed.” He raised an eyebrow.

She had, in fact. She had chosen this compartment intentionally to avoid everyone, former classmates included. Most students who had chosen to go back for an eighth year had done so the year directly after the battle. However, others were not so lucky. Many of the Slytherin students had been wrapped up in messy trials, and consequently found themselves having to take something of a gap year. A few of the students who had lost family members in the war had also taken time off to grieve, and Hermione dreaded seeing their hollowed-out eyes and potential accusatory glares. Unable to face all of it, she had chosen to avoid it for as long as possible, selecting this compartment for that purpose. Something Malfoy had managed to make her forget with his outlandish declaration.

“I…yes, of course. But…we’ll?” There was a healthy dose of skepticism launched into the word.

“Unless you didn’t want anything?”

Was he…teasing her? Not maliciously, not to be nasty. No, actual, good-natured teasing.

Unfortunately, she never got to find out, as the trolley witch named her price and left them with their candies.

“I figured if I can’t win your allegiance with my good looks and charming personality, maybe I can buy it,” he joked, offering up one of the very chocolate frogs she had been dreaming of.

Wearily, she took it. “This doesn’t change anything.”

“Of course not.” He nodded amiably, and again Hermione got the sense of being handled with kid gloves.

She scowled. “I’ll accept this chocolate frog on one condition.”

He had the nerve to look amused. “Which is?”

“You have to eat an acid pop.”

The smirk fell off his face.

“Come on Granger, can’t you just eat the candy and be happy?”

“Nope. I will only accept this strange truce on the condition that you eat an acid pop. It’s a simple request Malfoy.”

“You want me to burn a hole through my tongue to get you to be civil.” Waves of disbelief came off of him.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did you not know the charm to heal an acid burn?”

The mocking lilt to her voice worked exactly as intended.

“Of course I do,” he said, already reaching for an acid pop.

The look on his face the moment he stuck it in his mouth was worth 5 years’ worth of truce. She had never seen someone be so dramatic before, and she had been friends with Harry Potter. She couldn’t and wouldn’t stop the laugh that burst out of her upon seeing his exaggerated agony.

He pulled it out almost immediately, working the healing charm on his tongue.

“Merlin, Granger, you’re a sadist.”

There was no malice behind the accusation.

“It’s true. I hide behind this bookworm façade, but get me alone and I’m a whole different person. Sticks and stones may break my bones but whips and chains excite me.”

Malfoy choked on the pumpkin pasty he was trying to enjoy. “What?”

Hermione was laughing again, entirely against her will.

“It’s a, a Muggle song,” she managed to gasp out.

“That’s what Muggles call music?” He stared at her, baffled.

“Oh, I can already tell this year is going to be great.”

“I hope so.” He sobered. “Did you…want to talk about it?”

Green wallpaper. Bellatrix’s face, manic and cackling. Screaming stretching into eternity, echoing through the halls, bouncing off the chandelier.

She opened her mouth to say no, opened her mouth to say something terrible again, but she saw his face first. He was unusually pale, even for such a pale boy as him, and he had that look in his eyes. The look from Flourish and Blotts. It wasn’t just apologetic. It was horrified.

Marble floors. Unforgiveable spells. And a boy with a face whiter than paper, mouth open to do everything short of beg his aunt to stop.

“I hope we can be civil this year, Professor Malfoy. I doubt we will ever be friends, but I’m sure we can manage civility.”

Despite her best intentions to maintain a brave face, she curled in on herself, resting her head against the compartment wall. She was set to stare out the window for the rest of the ride, and Malfoy seemed more than content to allow it, not pushing the issue any longer. He seemed to lose interest in the candy quickly, letting her know she could have as much of it as she wanted before falling back in his seat.

She didn’t think he meant to fall asleep. He couldn’t have if he knew what was going to happen. Regardless, he did fall asleep, and the screaming started soon after.

The first thing Hermione did was cast a silencing charm around their compartment. The last thing either of them needed was the entire train rushing down here. Then she crossed the carriage to sit across from him, intending to wake him. But he was…saying something. Perhaps it was torture to leave him like this, but hadn’t she been tortured? And she wanted answers now.

“Don’t hurt her! Please, please leave her alone. Aunt Bella, please..”

Hermione froze. She needed to wake him up. Right now.

She did it the fastest way she knew how, casting aguamenti, spraying water in his face and causing him to splutter awake. She performed a drying charm as well, barely thinking before waving her wand.

He panted, blond hair hanging down into his face, elbows resting on his knees. He looked like he might be sick, back and chest heaving with every breath.

“You were having a nightmare,” she said, like he might have been oblivious to it.

“Yes, thank you for that information Granger. Somehow it managed to escape me.”

She almost felt relieved to hear the bite in his voice. It was like getting the old Malfoy back, not one that walked on eggshells and had to be goaded into...well, goading her. It was truly a strange world they were living in.

“Oh, ever so sorry for not leaving you to your night terrors. I thought about it, but the screams were just a tad grating.” She glared at him.

He returned with just as much fire. “I think you’re getting my little nap and your dreams mixed up, Granger. Just because you scream my name in your sleep doesn’t mean we’re all so loud on our own time.”

“Funny coming from a man who takes every chance he gets to use my name.” She smirked triumphantly.

He lowered his voice, leaning forward and causing her to remember her venture over to his side of their compartment. “Does that bother you, Granger?”

His breath fanned across her face, warm and improbably smelling of mint, which it certainly shouldn’t have after all that candy. She almost asked him if he used a charm for that before remembering herself and recoiling.

“The only thing that bothers me is covering for you,” she snapped, crossing back to her side of the compartment before undoing her silencing charm. “Next time take some dreamless sleep, or aren’t you the potions master?”

He stared daggers at her but didn’t respond, settling back into his seat. He still looked shaken, but Hermione was determined to ignore him for the rest of the journey. It wouldn’t be much longer now anyway.

The rest of their trip did prove to be fairly uneventful, much to her relief. Their carriage remained blissfully scream free and before she knew it they were both at Hogwarts. Hermione breathed in the Scottish air on the platform, glad to be home.

When preparing for the trip to Hogwarts, she recognized that she could have apparated into Hogsmeade, but she quickly realized it was easier to arrive with a sea of students. Hermione Granger alone might have attracted attention, but Professor Granger and her students had earned a certain amount of respect. Funny how helping save the world got you mixed reviews but professorship earned you rights. She suspected Malfoy had similar reasons for traveling so. Not that she cared.

Hagrid gave her a jolly wave as he rounded up the first years, and she waved back before hurrying over to the thestral-drawn carriages in the hopes of finding a good one. A breeze whipped through her bushy mess of curls, pulling them into all sorts of new shapes as she tried to hold them back with her hands.

Upon arriving at the carriages, Hermione was filled with a sense of dread. Harry and Ron would not be able to ride with her this year. She gnawed at her lip, unsure of what she wanted to do until she was presented with a rather clear sign. A sign that was heading right towards her, red hair bobbing up and down through the crowd.

“Hermione!”

Arms flung themselves around her waist, and Hermione breathed a sigh of relief. She returned the hug, more than happy to have a friend here. Ron may have given her up, but that didn’t mean his family had.

“Ginny. Did you want to get a carriage together?” Hermione asked, pulling back after a moment.

“Yes. You can tell me about the last year, I’ve barely seen you since you announced you were taking the gap year.” Ginny linked arms with her, dragging her towards one of the smaller carriages, just the right size for the two of them. “Done much reading?”

“I am happy to say yes,” Hermione said, laughing.

While everyone else who had taken the year off was now returning for their belated eighth year, Hermione’s situation was...unique. She had thought about returning for her eighth year the year after the war, but quickly realized she couldn’t do it. The memories of the girl who walked those halls as a student and who she was now were so incongruous she couldn’t bear it. Instead she had taken her NEWT’s mere weeks after the war, against the advisement of everyone in her life, including Headmistress McGonagall, but who was going to stop her? When Hermione Granger marches through the doors of the ministry demanding a NEWT’s examination weeks after saving the world, you don’t deny her.

“Should you be heading up with the students?” Ginny asked as Hermione stepped into the carriage. “What with your professorship now and everything.”

Hermione smiled. “I shouldn’t, but I’m doing it anyway. I was hoping to see you and maybe some of the others.”

“I still can’t believe the ministry made us repeat a year. I mean, I can because the Carrows weren’t winning any professor of the year awards, but still. How does the Battle of Hogwarts count as experience for all the seventh years but not anybody else?” Ginny slammed the carriage door behind her as she finished getting in behind Hermione.

“Oh please.” Hermione rolled her eyes, seeing right through her. “You’re delighted to be here. You’re more than eager to see your favorite professor.”

Ginny blushed, freckles disappearing in the red blooming over her cheeks.

“I’m more eager for the feast tonight,” she retorted.

“Oh definitely. I’m dying for some pumpkin juice.”

“Of all the things I didn’t anticipate you missing, pumpkin juice was probably at the top of that list. Who knew it could be so addictive?” Ginny threw herself back in her seat, red hair billowing across the dark upholstery. “Do you think we can convince the Thestrals to go any faster?”

“Worth a shot,” Hermione joked.

She felt a sudden surge of fondness for Ginny. They had both changed so much in the last year. Hermione had found a new lack of enthusiasm for the rules, and if she was honest, a lack of enthusiasm. It often felt as though the color had leeched out of her life after the war, and most days she simply didn’t have the energy to care about anything that wasn’t essential, which included other people’s opinions. Disillusionment with authority had partially carried her through the last year.

Ginny, on the other hand, had learned that freedom and independence weren’t the same thing. Hermione had watched her learn to rely more on the others in her life as she dealt with her own grief, the loss of Fred sharp and heavy in her heart. The one thing that hadn’t changed was their friendship, despite Hermione’s breakup with her brother. Some time after that awful seventh year, Ginny had become Hermione’s best friend, and she was rarely unconscious of the gift that was. While she would have spared Ginny her pain if she could have, it was an undeniable relief to have someone uniquely able to understand. Their losses were not the same, but pain is rarely particular in its forms of relief.

They chatted more on the way to the castle, and Hermione realized that this was probably the most she’d been able to talk to Ginny since the breakup. Ginny had gone directly back to school after the war, citing her need to stay busy as a reason, as well as the fact that she was already a year behind thanks to Minister of Magic Shacklebolt’s decision that 5th years and above were to repeat the year they had studied under Death Eater watch. Hermione hadn’t seen her over the holidays either, as it had simply been too awkward for her to show up at the Burrow, especially with Harry gone all the time. She had taken up residence in a little flat in Diagon Alley and abandoned nearly everything except for her work. Ginny had stopped by sometimes when she went to visit George at the shop, but it just wasn’t the same.

“So Minnie gave you her old job?”

“Ginny! Don’t let her hear you calling her Minnie, she might just give you detention for a week.” Despite her scolding, Hermione couldn’t hold back her smile.

It had been quite an honor to have McGonagall herself ask her to work as the new Transfiguration professor. She had been trying to find an adequate replacement for quite some time now, Hermione knew, preparing to transition her focus solely to being Headmistress of the school. Of course, knowing who some of her fellow professors were put a damper on her pride.

“Did you hear Malfoy is the new Potions professor?” Ginny wrinkled her nose. “Can’t believe they’re even allowing him near children.”

Hermione shook her head. “Neither can I. To be honest I thought McGonagall would be more strict than this.”

“Yeah. This feels more like a Dumbledore move,” she agreed.

“You never could tell what he was going to do next.”

“One day he was asking for socks for Christmas and the next he was sending my boyfriend out as a human sacrifice. What a wildcard.”

Ginny sounded almost admiring, and Hermione had to laugh. She remembered that Ginny had grown up with a whole household of wildcards, notwithstanding Percy. She had had a healthy appreciation for the unconventional instilled in her at a young age.

“Look!” Ginny said, excitedly pressing her face to the glass. “The castle!”

Hermione found herself just as eager, and she joined Ginny at the window, both of them acting like a pair of first years witnessing the architectural behemoth for the first time. It was just as Hermione had remembered it. She felt a sudden stab of longing and she found herself tearing up a little, almost feeling as though she was coming home.

At last they arrived, but Hermione was reluctant to part ways.

“I’m popping down to Hagrid’s for a few minutes for tea. Did you want to come with me?” She offered.

Ginny glanced between Hermione and the castle. “I would, but…”

“You have someone you need to see.”

Ginny smiled slyly. “Yes, I do. See you at the feast?”

“See you at the feast,” Hermione agreed. “I should be back in time to see the Sorting.”

“Topping.”

Hermione watched for a moment as Ginny headed through the doors of the castle, losing her in a sea of black, before heading down to Hagrid’s hut. She picked her way through the grounds, breathing in the late summer air. It was quite a warm night, and the walk to Hagrid’s was pleasant, though not long.

The moment her fist met the door, she heard Fang’s barking, and she couldn’t help the smile that crossed her face. That smile only grew wider when Hagrid threw the door open, drawing her into a hug.

“‘Mione!” She could hear the tears in his eyes before she could see them. “Oh it’s so good to ‘ave you ‘ome.”

“Hagrid,” she wheezed, “I can’t breathe.”

“Oh, sorry ‘bout tha’,” he said, letting her go.

As she suspected, his black eyes shown with tears and his hair, even wilder than hers, was beginning to grow wet with it. Oh dear. Somewhere between greeting her and letting go of her he had started crying in earnest.

“Hagrid, what’s wrong?” she asked, concerned.

“I just, I missed you lot so much, and it’s so good to have you back. You know, ‘Arry comes by sometimes, but it’s just not the same, is it?”

Hermione felt that familiar ache in her chest. No, no it was not the same.

“Oh Hagrid, it’s alright. Perhaps we should head up to the feast now, if you’d like, make sure we’re in time for the Sorting.”

“Good idea ‘Ermione, very good idea.”

Hagrid nodded, pulling out of the doorway and allowing Fang through to bestow a healthy amount of slobber onto Hermione’s...everything. She didn’t mind though. She had missed him too, and a few quick charms fixed the state of her robes.

“Shall we then?” Hagrid asked after blowing his nose into a large polka dotted handkerchief.

“Yes, we shall.”

They made the trip back across the grounds, Hagrid managing to pull himself together before they had to enter the Great Hall. Hermione felt a sudden lurch of nerves in the pit of her stomach. She had been here a thousand times before, sure, but never as a professor. Walking up to the head table, she found herself searching for the one pair of eyes she knew could reassure her in this moment. She found another set entirely, however.

Ice blue eyes met hers in a cold stare, but as soon as he realized it was her he was looking at he seemed to effortfully turn it to something more neutral. As though aloof was the best he could manage in the presence of a Mudblood. Not that she cared.

She used the energy she might have spent being indignant with Malfoy to carry her up to the head table, taking her seat next to Hagrid and a chair that was, as of yet, unoccupied. It didn’t remain that way for long. Moments before the Sorting Ceremony was due to start, the body belonging to the pair of eyes she had been searching for earlier deposited itself into the chair next to her.

“Hello Hermione.”

Harry Potter grinned at her, his eyes a reassuring, familiar green, so far from the pale blue she had settled for earlier.

“Professor Potter.” She gave him a cheeky wink. “I see the rumors are true. You have successfully broken a curse that’s been around longer than you’ve been alive.”

“We’ll add cursebreaker to my list of titles.” He chuckled. “I’ll start signing all my letters, ‘Harry Potter, Hogwart’s Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts, The Boy Who Lived, Breaker of Curses.’ That won’t make me sound arrogant at all, will it?”

“I think it rather works for you. They should give you the Order of Merlin, First Class, throw another one in there.”

“I’ve missed you.” He smiled at her, and in that moment Hermione felt more at home than she had in months.

“Well,” she said primly, wiping at her eyes. “You wouldn’t have to if you’d come around more often. Gin’s been dying to see you, you prat.”

“Always scolding.”

She could hear the warmth in his voice though, and knew that he felt, if not the same, then similar to her.

“Sssshhh, they’re bringing in the first years.”

And indeed they were, tinier than Hermione ever could have remembered them being. Of course, she had seen a fair few of them in her last weeks at Flourish and Blotts, coming in to get their school supplies, but it felt different seeing them now all dressed up in their robes and waiting to be sorted.

“Are there fewer of them?” Hermione asked, brow furrowing.

In fact, the whole hall seemed emptier than she remembered it. Certainly emptier than it should have been, even given the...casualties.

“Fewer muggleborns. A lot of the parents are still being cautious. Can’t blame them really, considering the last time Voldemort was dead he didn’t really stay that way.” Harry sighed.

“They’ll come around,” she reassured him.

He just nodded, eyes trained on the fresh generation of junior witches and wizards before them.

Hermione’s eyes, though, were on the hat, and so she was ready when it began to sing.

Through ancient magics lost long ago

The Founder’s made me, friends turned to foes

My purpose being a simple one

To tell you which colors to don

Which house in which you each belong

But first I sing this simple song

As I do every fall

So now I shall remind you all

That even when friendships seem to fail

There are some bonds that still prevail

Should we stand all united

We may find all wrongs are righted

In the light of this new day

House colors seem to fall away

So though I must pull you apart

I hope you’ll heed the wisdom I impart

Gryffindor blood runs red and true,

Ravenclaw skies are clear and blue,

Hufflepuff gold will prove the strongest of metals

and Slytherin emeralds will prove to have mettle

In differences there is strength

But love and loyalty go the greatest lengths

So let go old wounds and let the past heal

Or you may find danger most real

On that ominous note, the Sorting proceeded quickly and, thankfully, unremarkably. Hermione and Harry lead the applause for every student, regardless of house, and when it was over McGonagall stood.

“A few words before we begin our feast this year,” she said, clearing her throat. “Firstly, I would like to welcome our two new professors. Professor Hermione Granger-” Loud applause lead by Ginny. “-and Professor Draco Malfoy.”

Draco’s name was met with a hushed silence, and a few quiet boo’s rang out before McGonagall shot them down with a stern look.

“As always, I expect new faculty to be treated with the respect and consideration deserving of their position. Any who disregard this will find themselves meeting with hasty consequences. I wish you all a very good year. Let the feast begin!”

And with that, Hermione’s first year as a professor at Hogwarts began.

#dramione #harry potter #dramione fic #draco malfoy #hermione granger #tw ptsd #draco malfoy x hermione granger #professor!draco #professor!hermione #ginny weasley #hogwarts #au #professor au #enemies to lovers #enemies to lovers trope #enemies to friends to lovers #coworkers to lover

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cover2covermom · 4 years

Text

Goodbye April & hello May!

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel & I’m running toward it…

April seemed to drag on despite the days flying by. Does that even make sense? Like I’ve mentioned before, my days are filled with homeschooling, home projects, mask making, and reading. I’ve been doing my best to fill my hours to ease the COVID-19 anxiety.

I received the notification that I will be returning to work next week, which was welcome news. I’m ready to get back a little bit of normalcy in my life. Thankfully, our library system is reopening in phases. Our first phase will be employees only (3-5 employees in the building at one time) and offering curb-side service to our patrons. As of now, we will not open our doors to the public until June 1st at the earliest. At that point in time, we will be limiting the number of patrons allowed in the building. It is definitely going to be a learning curve to see what my new work normal is going to entail. I’m looking forward to adapting & rising to the occasion.

» Be Not Far From Me by Mindy McGinnis

As per usual, Mindy McGinnis puts out another harrowing YA book. I love survival stories, so I enjoyed this story about a girl that has gotten lost in the woods. Be Not Far From Me was uncomfortable to read at certain points.

» Here in the Real World by Sara Pennypacker

*3.5 Stars*

This was a sweet story about two kids that form a friendship while hanging around an abandoned lot. The first half of this book didn’t grab me and moved far too slowly. I enjoyed the second half of this book a lot better than the first half.

» Keeper of Lost Cities (Keeper of the Lost Cities #1) by Shannon Messenger

An awesome MG fantasy! I cannot wait to continue on with this series. I’d recommend this to fans of Harry Potter.

» Separation Anxiety by Laura Zigman

*2.75 Stars*

I read this for one of my book clubs. I think the author was attempting to write a book that would charm readers with eccentric characters & a humorous plotline, but don’t think it delivered. Instead of being funny, the story felt odd & forced.

» A Wolf Called Wander by Rosanne Parry

I think the author did a tremendous job writing a book from a wolf’s perspective. You can tell the author did extensive research into wolves & their behaviors. While I think this animal perspective was very well done, I didn’t think the plotline was all that entertaining.

» The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Oz #1) by L. Frank Baum

I’ve decided to challenge myself to read more children’s classics in 2020. To kick start this challenge, I started with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. This was a delightful read! I was surprised to learn that the slippers were actually silver instead of ruby red… mind blown!

» SHOUT by Laurie Halse Anderson

This is a must read for fans of Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak. While you don’t HAVE to read Speak to read SHOUT, I feel like it makes a bigger impact if you read Speak prior to this. If you didn’t know, SHOUT is Anderson’s memoir told in verse.

» Loveboat, Taipei (Loveboat, Taipei #1) by Abigail Hing Wen

*4.5 Stars*

This is a guilty pleasure type of read. Actually, it reminded me a bit of Crazy Rich Asians a bit. It is a tad racy for a YA book… So I’d probably recommend for older YA readers that are 16+

» Exile (Keeper of the Lost Cities #2) by Shannon Messenger

I am LOVING this MG fantasy series. While these books are a bit chunky, don’t let the page count deter you. I flew through the first two books in this series this month. Also, I’m happy to report that this second installment does NOT suffer from “second book syndrome.”

» Nooks & Crannies by Jessica Lawson

Nooks & Crannies is an excellent MG historical mystery. Some of the elements of this story gave me Matilda mixed with A Series of Unfortunate Events vibes. The audiobook is well narrated.

» The Penderwicks (The Penderwicks #1) by Jeanne Birdsall

This is the perfect book to pick up during the summer months. It really gave me modern Little Women crossed with The Secret Garden vibes. The ending was so heartwarming it almost brought me to tears.

Goodreads Challenge Update: 46 books!

*I know it says 47, but I finished The Last (Endling #1) on May 1st*

March 2020 Reading & Blogging Wrap-Up

April 2020 TBR

Childhood Classics 2020: TBR

Most Anticipated Books of 2020 (May – December)

Mini Book Reviews: April 2020 – Part 1

Mini Book Reviews: April 2020 – Part 2

If you were ever curious what a bookworm’s quarantine stress shopping spree looks like, here you go…

» The Guinevere Deception (Camelot Rising #1) by Kiersten White

There was nothing in the world as magical and terrifying as a girl.

Princess Guinevere has come to Camelot to wed a stranger: the charismatic King Arthur. With magic clawing at the kingdom’s borders, the great wizard Merlin conjured a solution–send in Guinevere to be Arthur’s wife . . . and his protector from those who want to see the young king’s idyllic city fail. The catch? Guinevere’s real name–and her true identity–is a secret. She is a changeling, a girl who has given up everything to protect Camelot.

To keep Arthur safe, Guinevere must navigate a court in which the old–including Arthur’s own family–demand things continue as they have been, and the new–those drawn by the dream of Camelot–fight for a better way to live. And always, in the green hearts of forests and the black depths of lakes, magic lies in wait to reclaim the land. Arthur’s knights believe they are strong enough to face any threat, but Guinevere knows it will take more than swords to keep Camelot free.

Deadly jousts, duplicitous knights, and forbidden romances are nothing compared to the greatest threat of all: the girl with the long black hair, riding on horseback through the dark woods toward Arthur. Because when your whole existence is a lie, how can you trust even yourself?

» Song for a Whale by Lynne Kelly

The story of a deaf girl’s connection to a whale whose song can’t be heard by his species, and the journey she takes to help him.

From fixing the class computer to repairing old radios, twelve-year-old Iris is a tech genius. But she’s the only deaf person in her school, so people often treat her like she’s not very smart. If you’ve ever felt like no one was listening to you, then you know how hard that can be.

When she learns about Blue 55, a real whale who is unable to speak to other whales, Iris understands how he must feel. Then she has an idea: she should invent a way to “sing” to him! But he’s three thousand miles away. How will she play her song for him?

» Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, but her father’s inability to collect his debts has left his family on the edge of poverty–until Miryem takes matters into her own hands. Hardening her heart, the young woman sets out to claim what is owed and soon gains a reputation for being able to turn silver into gold.

When an ill-advised boast draws the attention of the king of the Staryk–grim fey creatures who seem more ice than flesh–Miryem’s fate, and that of two kingdoms, will be forever altered. Set an impossible challenge by the nameless king, Miryem unwittingly spins a web that draws in a peasant girl, Wanda, and the unhappy daughter of a local lord who plots to wed his child to the dashing young tsar.

But Tsar Mirnatius is not what he seems. And the secret he hides threatens to consume the lands of humans and Staryk alike. Torn between deadly choices, Miryem and her two unlikely allies embark on a desperate quest that will take them to the limits of sacrifice, power, and love.

Channeling the vibrant heart of myth and fairy tale, Spinning Silver weaves a multilayered, magical tapestry that readers will want to return to again and again.

» Girls Like Us by Randi Pink

Set in the summer of 1972, this moving YA historical novel is narrated by teen girls from different backgrounds with one thing in common: Each girl is dealing with pregnancy. Four teenage girls. Four different stories. What they all have in common is that they’re dealing with unplanned pregnancies.

In rural Georgia, Izella is wise beyond her years, but burdened with the responsibility of her older sister, Ola, who has found out she’s pregnant. Their young neighbor, Missippi, is also pregnant, but doesn’t fully understand the extent of her predicament. When her father sends her to Chicago to give birth, she meets the final narrator, Susan, who is white and the daughter of an anti-choice senator.

Randi Pink masterfully weaves four lives into a larger story – as timely as ever – about a woman’s right to choose her future.

» The Island of the Sea Women by Lisa See

Set on the Korean island of Jeju, The Island of Sea Women follows Mi-ja and Young-sook, two girls from very different backgrounds, as they begin working in the sea with their village’s all-female diving collective. Over many decades—through the Japanese colonialism of the 1930s and 1940s, World War II, the Korean War, and the era of cellphones and wet suits for the women divers—Mi-ja and Young-sook develop the closest of bonds. Nevertheless, their differences are impossible to ignore: Mi-ja is the daughter of a Japanese collaborator, forever marking her, and Young-sook was born into a long line of haenyeo and will inherit her mother’s position leading the divers. After hundreds of dives and years of friendship, forces outside their control will push their relationship to the breaking point.

This beautiful, thoughtful novel illuminates a unique and unforgettable culture, one where the women are in charge, engaging in dangerous physical work, and the men take care of the children. A classic Lisa See story—one of women’s friendships and the larger forces that shape them—The Island of Sea Women introduces readers to the fierce female divers of Jeju Island and the dramatic history that shaped their lives.

» The Weight of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf

A music-loving teen with OCD does everything she can to find her way back to her mother during the historic race riots in 1969 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in this heart-pounding literary debut.

Melati Ahmad looks like your typical moviegoing, Beatles-obsessed sixteen-year-old. Unlike most other sixteen-year-olds though, Mel also believes that she harbors a djinn inside her, one who threatens her with horrific images of her mother’s death unless she adheres to an elaborate ritual of counting and tapping to keep him satisfied.

But there are things that Melati can’t protect her mother from. On the evening of May 13th, 1969, racial tensions in her home city of Kuala Lumpur boil over. The Chinese and Malays are at war, and Mel and her mother become separated by a city in flames.

With a 24-hour curfew in place and all lines of communication down, it will take the help of a Chinese boy named Vincent and all of the courage and grit in Melati’s arsenal to overcome the violence on the streets, her own prejudices, and her djinn’s surging power to make it back to the one person she can’t risk losing.

» Escape from Aleppo by N.H. Senzai

Nadia’s family is forced to flee their home in Aleppo, Syria, when the Arab Spring sparks a civil war in this timely coming-of-age novel from award-winning author N.H. Senzai.

Silver and gold balloons. A birthday cake covered in pink roses. A new dress.

Nadia stands at the center of attention in her parents’ elegant dining room. This is the best day of my life, she thinks. Everyone is about to sing “Happy Birthday,” when her uncle calls from the living room, “Baba, brothers, you need to see this.” Reluctantly, she follows her family into the other room. On TV, a reporter stands near an overturned vegetable cart on a dusty street. Beside it is a mound of smoldering ashes. The reporter explains that a vegetable vendor in the city of Tunis burned himself alive, protesting corrupt government officials who have been harassing his business. Nadia frowns.

It is December 17, 2010: Nadia’s twelfth birthday and the beginning of the Arab Spring. Soon anti-government protests erupt across the Middle East and, one by one, countries are thrown into turmoil. As civil war flares in Syria and bombs fall across Nadia’s home city of Aleppo, her family decides to flee to safety. Inspired by current events, this novel sheds light on the complicated situation in Syria that has led to an international refugee crisis, and tells the story of one girl’s journey to safety.

» The Two Princesses of Bamarre (The Two Princesses of Bamarre #1) by Gail Carson Levine

Twelve-year-old Addie admires her older sister Meryl, who aspires to rid the kingdom of Bamarre of gryphons, specters, and ogres. Addie, on the other hand, is fearful even of spiders and depends on Meryl for courage and protection. Waving her sword Bloodbiter, the older girl declaims in the garden from the heroic epic of Drualt to a thrilled audience of Addie, their governess, and the young sorcerer Rhys.

But when Meryl falls ill with the dreaded Gray Death, Addie must gather her courage and set off alone on a quest to find the cure and save her beloved sister. Addie takes the seven-league boots and magic spyglass left to her by her mother and the enchanted tablecloth and cloak given to her by Rhys – along with a shy declaration of his love. She prevails in encounters with tricky specters (spiders too) and outwits a wickedly personable dragon in adventures touched with romance and a bittersweet ending.

» The Lost Kingdom of Bamarre (The Two Princesses of Bamarre 0.5) by Gail Carson Levine

In this compelling and thought-provoking fantasy set in the world of The Two Princesses of Bamarre, Newbery Honor-winning author Gail Carson Levine introduces a spirited heroine who must overcome deeply rooted prejudice—including her own—to heal her broken country.

Peregrine strives to be the Latki ideal—and to impress her parents: affectionate Lord Tove, who despises only the Bamarre, and stern Lady Klausine. Perry runs the fastest, speaks her mind, and doesn’t give much thought to the castle’s Bamarre servants, who she knows to be weak and cowardly. The Lakti always wage war, and the battlefield will give her the chance to show her valor.

But just as she’s about to join her father on the front lines, she is visited by the fairy Halina, who reveals that Perry isn’t Latki-born. She is a Bamarre. The fairy issues a daunting challenge: against the Lakti might, free her people from tyranny.

» A Crack in the Sea by H.M. Bouwman

An enchanting historical fantasy adventure perfect for fans of Thanhha Lai’s Newbery Honor-winning Inside Out and Back Again No one comes to the Second World on purpose. The doorway between worlds opens only when least expected. The Raft King is desperate to change that by finding the doorway that will finally take him and the people of Raftworld back home. To do it, he needs Pip, a young boy with an incredible gift—he can speak to fish; and the Raft King is not above kidnapping to get what he wants. Pip’s sister Kinchen, though, is determined to rescue her brother and foil the Raft King’s plans. This is but the first of three extraordinary stories that collide on the high seas of the Second World. The second story takes us back to the beginning: Venus and Swimmer are twins captured aboard a slave ship bound for Jamaica in 1781. They save themselves and others from a life of enslavement with a risky, magical plan—one that leads them from the shark-infested waters of the first world to the second. Pip and Kinchen will hear all about them before their own story is said and done. So will Thanh and his sister Sang, who we meet in 1976 on a small boat as they try to escape post-war Vietnam. But after a storm and a pirate attack, they’re not sure they’ll ever see shore again. What brings these three sets of siblings together on an adventure of a lifetime is a little magic, helpful sea monsters and that very special portal, A Crack in the Sea.

» The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

A bizarre chain of events begins when sixteen unlikely people gather for the reading of Samuel W. Westing’s will. And though no one knows why the eccentric, game-loving millionaire has chosen a virtual stranger—and a possible murderer—to inherit his vast fortune, one thing’s for sure: Sam Westing may be dead … but that won’t stop him from playing one last game!

» Ballet Shoes (Shoes #1) by Noel Streatfeild

Pauline, Petrova and Posy are orphans determined to help out their new family by joining the Children’s Academy of Dancing and Stage Training. But when they vow to make a name for themselves, they have no idea it’s going to be such hard work! They launch themselves into the world of show business, complete with working papers, the glare of the spotlight, and practice, practice, practice! Pauline is destined for the movies. Posy is a born dancer. But practical Petrova finds she’d rather pilot a plane than perform a pirouette. Each girl must find the courage to follow her dream.

» Wishtree by Katherine Applegate

Trees can’t tell jokes, but they can certainly tell stories. . . .

Red is an oak tree who is many rings old. Red is the neighborhood “wishtree”—people write their wishes on pieces of cloth and tie them to Red’s branches. Along with her crow friend Bongo and other animals who seek refuge in Red’s hollows, this “wishtree” watches over the neighborhood.

You might say Red has seen it all. Until a new family moves in. Not everyone is welcoming, and Red’s experiences as a wishtree are more important than ever.

» The Library of Ever (The Library of Ever #1) by Zeno Alexander

With her parents off traveling the globe, Lenora is bored, bored, bored–until she discovers a secret doorway in the library and becomes its newly appointed Fourth Assistant Apprentice Librarian.

In her new job, Lenora finds herself helping future civilizations figure out the date, relocates lost penguins, uncovers the city with the longest name on Earth, and more in a quest to help patrons. But there are sinister forces at work that want to destroy all knowledge. To save the library, Lenora will have to test her limits and uncover secrets hidden among its shelves.

» Chains (Seeds of America #1) by Laurie Halse Anderson

As the Revolutionary War begins, thirteen-year-old Isabel wages her own fight…for freedom. Promised freedom upon the death of their owner, she and her sister, Ruth, in a cruel twist of fate become the property of a malicious New York City couple, the Locktons, who have no sympathy for the American Revolution and even less for Ruth and Isabel. When Isabel meets Curzon, a slave with ties to the Patriots, he encourages her to spy on her owners, who know details of British plans for invasion. She is reluctant at first, but when the unthinkable happens to Ruth, Isabel realizes her loyalty is available to the bidder who can provide her with freedom.

From acclaimed author Laurie Halse Anderson comes this compelling, impeccably researched novel that shows the lengths we can go to cast off our chains, both physical and spiritual.

» The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill

Every year, the people of the Protectorate leave a baby as an offering to the witch who lives in the forest. They hope this sacrifice will keep her from terrorizing their town. But the witch in the forest, Xan, is kind and gentle. She shares her home with a wise Swamp Monster named Glerk and a Perfectly Tiny Dragon, Fyrian. Xan rescues the abandoned children and deliver them to welcoming families on the other side of the forest, nourishing the babies with starlight on the journey.

One year, Xan accidentally feeds a baby moonlight instead of starlight, filling the ordinary child with extraordinary magic. Xan decides she must raise this enmagicked girl, whom she calls Luna, as her own. To keep young Luna safe from her own unwieldy power, Xan locks her magic deep inside her. When Luna approaches her thirteenth birthday, her magic begins to emerge on schedule–but Xan is far away. Meanwhile, a young man from the Protectorate is determined to free his people by killing the witch. Soon, it is up to Luna to protect those who have protected her–even if it means the end of the loving, safe world she’s always known.

The acclaimed author of The Witch’s Boy has created another epic coming-of-age fairy tale destined to become a modern classic.

Which books did you read in April?

Have you read any of the books I read or hauled this month? If so, what did you think?

Did you buy any books? If so, which ones?

Comment below & let me know 🙂

April 2020 Reading & Blogging Wrap-Up + Book Haul #BookBlogger #Bookworm #Bibliophile #BookHaul #Reading #Books #WrapUp Goodbye April & hello May! I can see the light at the end of the tunnel & I'm running toward it...

#Bibliophile #book blog #book blogger #Book Chat #Book Haul #Book Nerd #Book Talk #Book Worm #Bookish #Books #Bookworm #Reading #Wrap Up

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tattooednursewrites · 5 years

Text

An Unconventional Easter

Masterlist

Dean/Reader (female)

Summary: A hunt brings you to a strip club on the eve of Easter.

A/N: This was written for @mariekoukie6661‘s 400 Followers Writing Challenge. Congratulations again on the awesome milestone! Thank you so much for letting me participate.

Prompt: “It’s not what you think...”

Technically, you knew how you got here. It was the same reason you got into a lot of ridiculous situations – hunt the bad things and save as many people as you could. Simple. That didn’t change the fact that you couldn’t believe you were actually doing this. It’s not that you celebrated Easter – you hadn’t given much thought to it, or holidays in general, since before you lost your family all those years ago. Still… preparing to go on stage – at a strip club – as a ‘sexy’ Easter bunny? You were calling that a new low.

The outfit was even worse than the French maid costume you’d had to don last year… but no point going over past humiliations now. You straightened your ears in the mirror and sighed. Your thong even had a fucking fluffy bunny tail. Doing the makeup had been interesting… you had used eyeliner to make your eyes look bigger, but still innocent, and then used it to draw on whiskers and outline an inverted triangle on your nose. You had borrowed blush from one of the girls to fill in the triangle, making the tip of your nose pink. Your hair was pulled into messy pigtails that sat just behind the ears, having the added benefit of helping keep them in place.

To your surprise, Easter egg pasties were a thing. People were weird, but whatever. You had a white satin bra on over them that matched your thong – minus the tail, of course. Over that you pulled on a sheer white ‘dress’ that was so short it gathered above your poufy tail. Your white garter belt attached to white fishnet thigh-highs. That just left one last part to your costume – the ridiculous bunny suit. It had been modified for easy removal, and was footless so you could wear the absurdly high ‘I hope I don’t break something’ platform boots… shiny white patent ones, of course.

You hadn’t worn this much white… well… ever. You definitely preferred darker clothing – not to mention less revealing and way more utilitarian. You were thankful you had enough tattoos that the protective ones weren’t obvious. This was a hunt after all, and it wouldn’t be helpful to have your cover blown before you even got off stage. Especially since this outfit didn’t really lend itself to concealing weapons.

Thankfully, you had your most valuable weapon – your push dagger, tucked into your boot. Everything else you thought you might need was tucked in your Easter basket. And filling plastic Easter eggs with salt and holy water? Not something you’d forget any time soon. The thought of the little colorful plastic grenades made you smirk. Grabbing the basket, you made your way to the curtain. The DJ was rambling on as the girl on stage collected her tips. Then you heard him introduce you… shit. You were up.

Although it was a bit predictable, you couldn’t pass up the opportunity to strip to White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane. So far tonight, most of the girls had chosen faster songs to dance to – but you tended to like something a bit slower. And pop music wasn’t really your thing, not usually anyway. Plus, if you had to dress as a freaking Easter bunny, you might as well have fun with it. The song started as you stalked to the center of the stage, setting your basket behind the center pole. You took a deep breath and let the music take over.

***

When Sam had mentioned the possibility of a hunt in a strip club, Dean had jumped at the chance. Of course he had. A hunt with the added bonus of half-naked women? Definitely worth a detour. He glanced at Sam, who was at the bar trying to get info from the bartender. Dean was in one of the corner booths, keeping an eye on the crowd for possible victims. The music that was blaring wasn’t his style, but the scantly clad women made up for it in spades. He shifted in his seat as Sam started making his way back from the bar, beers in hand. If his brother noticed the women around him, he hid it well. Dean shook his head. Sammy needed to loosen up a bit.

Dean glanced back at the stage, the woman – who had been dressed as some kind of nymph or fairy – was collecting her tips. It seemed they had a spring theme going on tonight. Sam sat across from him, sliding a beer his way. “The bartender didn’t seem to know much, recognized the vics, but with how many people come through here a night she couldn’t remember anything about who they might’ve left with. She did mention they’ve had a high turn over of dancers lately. They’ve had to hire a couple new girls a week for the past few weeks. Even have a new one starting tonight, which she said they wouldn’t usually do on a Saturday. It might not be anything, but I think there may be more to this than just the missing guys.”

“Hmm,” Dean replied, sipping his beer. “So maybe the succubus is branching out?” He saw Sam start to speak, but the start of the next song pulled his attention to the stage. Holy. Shit.

Sam shrugged. “I haven’t seen anything about succubi playing for both teams, but anything is possible.” As Sam finished, he realized he no longer had Dean’s attention. Sam followed Dean’s gaze to the stage, his eyes widening. It was an Easter bunny. Not something he ever expected to see. He turned back to Dean, but Dean didn’t notice. He was riveted.

Dean had been to dozens of strip clubs over the years. Maybe even hundreds. He was sure he’d probably seen someone dance to this song before, but he had no memory of it. Hell, it certainly wouldn’t have made his ‘songs to strip to’ playlist, but now he saw how wrong he was for the omission. How an Easter bunny could be sexy, he had no idea, but there was no doubting that she was.

His eyes followed her swaying hips and fluid movements. If he had to guess, he’d say she was the succubus, just based on his reaction to her alone. The white of the outfit was in stark contrast to her multiple tattoos. He actually laughed when he saw the tail. Despite his suspicions, he couldn’t help but hope that she wasn’t the demon they were hunting. As she finished her set, he wasn’t surprised to see multiple guys signal for lap dances.

Sam cleared his throat and Dean turned to him. “Think that’s our demon?” Dean asked, glancing back to the stage.

Sam shook his head. “The bartender said the new girl was a bunny. She doesn’t seem new, but if that’s who she was talking about she couldn’t be our demon.”

Dean nodded, following her movements through the crowd. She had a freaking Easter basket. He watched as she let one of the patrons lead her through the doorway beside the stage. He knew it would lead to the private rooms and he fought the need to follow them. She wasn’t the demon and he had a job to do. He finished his beer and stood. “Okay, Sammy. You keep looking, I’m going to see if I can get anything more from the bartender.”

Sam nodded and Dean made his way to the bar. When the bartender leaned in to take his order, he flashed her a smile and saw her respond. He ordered two more beers and waited for her to return with them before leaning toward her a bit. “Busy night.”

She smiled and mimicked his posture. “A bit busier than our usual Saturday, but the tips are nice.”

Dean flashed his badge and she seemed even more interested. Definitely a perk of this job. “So, speaking of tips, which of the dancers has been making the most lately? The bunny that was just on stage seemed to do pretty well…”

The bartender rolled her eyes. “Different questions than your partner? That’s a relief,” she smiled. “Yeah, bunny girl – Sinamen – really did clean up, but it’s probably because it’s her first night. As far as our usual top draw – that would have to be Desyre,” she gestured to a woman wearing a pink negligee that was chatting up a group of businessmen. “She’s only been here about a month, but she makes at least double what the other girls do.”

Dean left a hefty tip on the bar and thanked her. As he slid back into the booth, he pointed Desyre out to Sam. “The bartender says she usually makes double what the other girls do. I think we have our winner. Rock-paper-scissors for who plays the bachelor?”

Sam sighed but nodded, groaning when he was stuck with the role. Dean grinned, pulling him toward Desyre where she was moving between the tables toward the bar. “Hey there. I was wondering if I could get my brother here a dance? He’s getting married next week, and he’s a bit shy… never had a private dance before… I thought it would be a good send off.”

Dean watched as Desyre looked between him and Sam before a smile that could only be described as predatory curled her lips. “Of course. Just him, or are you going to join us?”

“I see no reason I shouldn’t treat myself as well…”

“I couldn’t agree more,” she purred, taking each of the boy’s hands and guiding them to the same hall Dean had seen the bunny down a few minutes before.

Once they were in the room Sam sat and Dean hovered by the table, pouring them all a bit of champagne and tipping some holy water in it. When he passed a glass to Desyre she sipped it with a smirk. Her intended reply was cut short by the effect of the holy water. Growling, she launched herself at Dean while Sam started the exorcism. She quickly threw Dean over the couch and turned back to Sam. Dean picked up the exorcism as Sam fought her. It didn’t take long to see something wasn’t right. The demon threw Sam against a wall and smirked at Dean, revealing the binding mark that bound her to the body… but at the same time she unwittingly revealed the stab wounds on her chest. Exorcism or no, the person that Desyre had been wasn’t surviving this. Dean braced for her attack and called out to Sam. “The knife, Sammy – the body is dead regardless.”

The demon startled and turned to Sam, but it was too late. Sam plunged the knife into her chest and the boys watched the sparks as the demon died, falling to the ground. They took in the mess around them and looked at each other. “Back exit?” Sam asked. Dean nodded.

Dean pushed open the door to the alley, turning to head for the car when he froze. Sam bumped into him and the door clanged closed behind them, but Dean barely noticed. His eyes were locked on the scene in front of him. The bunny – the sexy fucking bunny stripper – was in front of him in that little practically see-through white dress and those crazy boots, and she was wrestling with the guy he had seen her follow to the back. The asshole’s shirt was partially unbuttoned and his belt was undone. Dean saw red. He was about to help her when she pulled what looked like a small dagger from her boot and stabbed the guy in the chest. Dean watched the guy shake as the demon died. Another fucking demon?! And who was this chic?

He heard Sam mutter “What the hell?”

What the hell was right. Before he had a chance to speak, she turned the them and her eyes went wide. “It’s not what you think…”

***

As soon as you heard that someone had requested a private dance, you had a feeling something wasn’t right. You had put your bra and ‘dress’ back on after your routine… and of course still had on the ears and tail. You made your way to the table the manager had pointed out. You knew that what you were hunting was definitely preying on men, and you suspected the uncommonly high turnover of dancers meant it was likely preying on women as well. You were suspicious of one of the dancers, but hadn’t been able to get her alone yet to test your theory. Now, as the man stood and led you toward the back, you couldn’t help but wonder if maybe they were a team. You had never heard of a succubus and incubus working together, but anything was possible.

When he passed the private rooms and pulled you through the exit and into the alley you were fairly confident you had found your demon… or one of them at least. There was still a chance he was just a run of the mill asshole, though. You grabbed one of the Easter eggs that was filled with holy water and smashed it on him as he pushed you against the wall. His hands came away from his belt as the water hit him and sizzled on his skin. He growled, pulling at his shirt to get it away from his skin. You saw the gunshot wound there, and couldn’t help but smile. He just made your job that much easier.

He slammed you into the wall again and sneered. “A sexy hunter, who would’ve thought? You’ll make a nice treat.”

You cringed when your head slammed into the wall again. Okay, maybe easy was the wrong word. You brought your knee up into his groin with all the force you could muster. He fell back, releasing you for long enough for you to steady yourself away from the wall, then he was back on you.

Wrestling against him, you reached for your boot. You were vaguely aware of the door banging shut, but you couldn’t let your attention wander from the pissed off incubus attacking you. Grabbing your dagger from your boot, you raised your arm and saw him smirk a bit at the site of the weapon. Yeah, it was small – and normally a dagger wouldn’t do dick all to a demon, but this one? It was special.

The push dagger was made out of iron and was vaguely Celtic looking. You had always loved it – your mom had given it to you for your thirteenth birthday. She had explained that your grandmother had given it to her, who had gotten it from her mother, and so on for so many generations the origin of the blade had been lost long ago. Your mother had told you it was special, precious, and that it would protect you from anything. You hadn’t understood until you started fighting monsters. Iron was powerful, and it was an easy weapon to conceal… a last line of defense. Then, a few years ago, you had come up against your first demon.

Not realizing what you were hunting was a demon until it was too late, you should’ve died that night. As a last ‘fuck you’ to the thing before you died, you decided to stab the fucker. You were probably just as surprised as it was as it died…. Hell, probably more so. The next time you crossed paths with a demon you got the same result. Your dagger, the one that had been passed down for so very many generations, killed demons. Sure, you still tried to exorcise them if you could, but damn if it wasn’t a handy weapon to have. Protect you from anything, indeed.

The incubus shoved you against the wall again as you brought the dagger down into its chest. You never got over the look of surprise the demonic assholes had as they died… the shock that anything could kill them, much less the small dagger. Pompous fucks.

You heard someone mutter something you couldn’t make out, pulling your attention away from the demon, and you turned around. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. Busted. There were two guys frozen and staring at you. They were tall and ludicrously handsome. Well, time to figure out how to talk yourself out of this one. “It’s not what you think…”

The shorter one, who was not at all short, surprised you by smirking. Fuck he was beautiful. “Really? Because, sweetheart, I was thinkin’ you just killed a demon.”

You gaped at him for a moment before shrugging and returning his smirk. “Incubus, but yeah, I did just kill a demon. Hunters?”

The first one nodded as the other spoke. “Yeah, I’m Sam Winchester, and this is my brother, Dean.”

You grinned as you introduced yourself. “The Winchesters? I’ve heard of you. It’s a pleasure. I would love to chat, but I’m thinking we shouldn’t hang around in the alley with – ” you gestured to the body. “Ya know?”

Sam nodded.

“Yeah, we left the body of the succubus in one of the private rooms, so making ourselves scarce is probably a good idea,” Dean agreed.

“So, it was a succubus/incubus team – that’s wild,” you said as you slid your knife back into your boot and picked up the Easter basket. “Y’all have a room in town?”

Dean smirked, but Sam cut in before he could respond. “Yeah, at the Sunrise, you?”

“I’m at the Sunrise, too. Room 213. Y’all up for a couple beers?”

Sam looked to Dean who nodded. “Yeah, we can trade stories over drinks.”

“Sounds good. I need to get out of this costume first, though,” you said, barely holding in a sigh.

Sam gave you a small smile, but Dean’s smirk widened and his eyes lit. He looked you up and down before meeting your eye. And – holy fuck – he licked his lips. “That’s a pity, sweetheart.”

You flushed, unable to stop yourself from squirming a bit. He was dangerously sexy. Even if it hadn’t been awhile, you’d be in trouble.

Sam groaned. “Dean, stop it.” He looked at you apologetically.

You smiled and winked at Sam before looking back to Dean. “I’m more of a black lace girl, myself, but good to know you like it, Dean.”

You turned to head to your car, but didn’t miss the hungry look on his face.

Sam chuckled. “We’re in 109, want to meet us there after you change?”

You looked over your shoulder and smiled at them. “Sure thing. See you soon, boys!”

Sam nodded. Dean was too busy staring at your ass to respond.

This should be fun.

#minnies400challenge #tattooednursewrites #supernatural #supernatural fanfiction #dean/reader #dean x reader #dean winchester/reader #dean winchester x reader #dean winchester/ofc #dean winchester x ofc #Dean/OFC #Dean x OFC #dean winchester #female reader #original female character #Sam Winchester #hunter reader

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spilledreality · 4 years

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Philosophers Are Unwitting Lexicographers: Introduction

“Linguistic Conquests” described a “narrow and conquer” method of concept factoring, where a narrow, specific sub-sense of a concept is taken to for its “true meaning” or essential {concept}-ness. Thinkers deploying this method make a claim to have “discovered” the true nature of a human concept like rationality or courage, when in “truth” there is no such nature—only a descriptive fact about the historical & hypothetical extensions of a handle onto referents. Instead, these thinkers have merely advanced a formal definition, which itself is only a crystallized pattern which covers “most” or many cases. In other words, the knowledge work being performed is more or less lexicographic. We can call this the “many threads” problem in theoretical discourse, since it arises when the Wittgensteinian motto Something runs through the whole thread—namely the continuous overlapping of those fibres is not properly taken to heart.

In “Reading ‘Ignorance: A Skilled Practice’,” I walked through Sarah Perry’s factoring of the “global knowledge game” in the social sciences, noting an erisological pattern akin to the old “three blind men & an elephant” parable:

Social science seeks to explain a broad phenomenon, like “learned helplessness.” A researcher chooses an activity which he believes encapsulates a larger phenomenon, such as: immobilizing dogs, administering electric shocks, freeing the dogs, and seeing if they attempt to escape when shocked once again. The resulting finding—that many dogs did, no longer, attempt to escape, ostensibly believing that they were incapable of it—is used, under the auspices of science, as a metonymic metaphor, more parable than global truth. The specific, contextual behavior—of dogs, no less—is taken as an indicator of some global truth about how learned helplessness operates in humans, indeed, as an indicator that we ourselves are inclined toward learned helplessness.

This dynamic is not identical to how “narrow and conquer” methods play out in philosophy and theory, but is related.

Unfortunately, much of philosophical discourse in the humanities, from literary theory to art theory to metaphysics, continues unproductively playing out this erisological pattern. Even self-purported realists, who would distance themselves from claims that the map is the territory literal, still treat human concepts like truth as if there were a fact of the matter—some essential, discoverable nature. Consider that the “correspondence theory” of the concept “truth” holds that the term describes a relationship between linguistic utterances and the state of the world, in other words, between a map and a territory. Another popular rival theory holds that truth is concerned with the inter-propositional coherence of a belief or utterance within a network of beliefs and utterances. In other words, the problem of “truth” seems always to arise only once the map exists, in other words, it is a feature of the map, and does not “exist” in “reality” anywhere.

Philosophers of the narrow-and-conquer strategy factor out formal criteria and rules, believing they have compressed the concept’s entire structure (or at least its “meaningful” parts) into two or three or fives rules—only to be contradicted by another philosopher’s presentation of an edge-case, a twin-world hypothetical or an impossible thought experiment in which we, the arbitrating readers, are asked to intuit whether we would apply the concept to a situation that would never, and has never, occurred. Then our intuition about whether it belongs in the category is treated as evidence. Recall Unger 1979:

...were we given a novel object & a corresponding nonsense word as its “handle” (e.g. “This is a nacknick”), we could quickly begin discerning between nearby (not identical, but merely similar) objects “of its type,” and those dissimilar enough to not be of its type. This boundary would be highly fuzzy but feel real. Note that such behavior should not be described as “recognizing” a category but as inventing it, from scratch. Though our language acquisition process may benefit from examples of native speaker usage, or reference to semi-formal definitions as in a classroom setting, we seem to do just fine extrapolating categories on our own. This portion of Unger’s paper serves as an elegant thought experiment for illustrating the inherent vagueness—or “radial cloud” of decreasing relation, birthed by even a single acquired example—which characterizes our concepts.

Now on the defensive, our original formalizer doubles back, like Ayer responding to challenges posed* against to positivism’s “Every meaningful statement is either analytic or verifiable”—“I’m just defining ‘meaningful’, man.” Often, the original position is seen as weakened after such admissions, but this repeated style of retreat cues us to the real state of all such claims: attempts at crystallizing a pattern behind the lingusitic extension of a term; turf-wars over different sub-meanings & carvings; attempts to lower the entropy of what are inherently high-entropy entities. Here I’ll discuss, informally, the discourses in art and literary theory that led me to hold this belief.

* The usual challenge being that the statement “Every meaningful statement...” is not, itself, analytic or verifiable, and is therefore meaningless.

i. Visual arts: But what is art, really?

Sam Rosen, in “But what are birds really?” argues that in the visual arts, a hundred years of controversy & subversion have held court over the question “What is art?” I think this portrait is somewhat simplistic; Sontag’s “Aesthetics of Silence” (and a hundred other tractates) offer very different factorings of the problem; but it is nonetheless clear in the historical record that questions about the boundaries and inclusivities of our concept “art” has undergirded modernist and post-modernist aesthetic discourse.

Such a question is not too far off from what I believe the discourse ought to be asking—more productive questions might include, What ought art to be? and Which legitimating bodies effectively shape our extension of the concept “art”? Indeed, many arguments to these effects, advancing answers to these questions, have been snuck in under the cover of explaining what art “is.” (We understand now, for instance, that the signature, the gallery, the art critic, the museum, and to a lesser extent, the public, all contribute to the legitimation process—though some idealogues claim that only one of these bodies is “legitimate” or “authoritative”—note the lingering essentialism.)

This, I think, is an important aspect of the “many threads” problem. Problematic discourses miss the most accurate, productive frame for the project they purport to engage in, and thus the quality and clarity of their answers are lowered. But along the way, many bright & efficacious individuals manage to nonetheless advance knowledge which does obtain to questions like How ought we factor concept X? or What are the differences that matter in our factorings of X? Many analytic philosophers, for instance, have worked—unwittingly!—in the lexicographic domain, searching for close-fitting formal criteria, or “crystallizing” patterns, which compressively describe the set described by (i.e. the “extension” of) a concept handle. (A handle which itself is often a superset of many subconcepts’ extensions).

But the fundamental confusion in frame remains to the net detriment of discourse; the varying modes of response only muddy the waters. As Dave Chalmers says about verbal disputes, the recognition of verbal disagreement—and by extension, we will add, model disagreement—may not “dissolve” the question, as some of LessWrong’s more ambitious pragmatists believe, but it at least “advances” it, & often by several steps.

ii. Literary theory: What is textual meaning, really? Who is the “authority” on the meaning of a text—author, reader, or scholar?

I spent a collegiate summer pouring over the 20th C Meaning Wars in literary theory, mostly texts between 1920 and 1980, and rarely saw the relevant, warring theorists acknowledge maybe there was an intended meaning of the author that mattered, and also an emergent meaning which came—structured but unique—to each reader upon engagement with the text produced through author intentionality—and also that, as must follow, there was some overlapping or common “meaning” for the “average” reader of a community, and that all these types of meaning could co-exist happily if we were to carve up the concept “textual meaning” into specific subterms (the “divide and conquer” method), instead of its ambiguous umbrella, its family of relations, its thread of spun fibers.

We could say that “intended meaning” was certainly partially conscious, having to do with some modeled hypothetical reader in the author’s mind (and where does this model come from?), and also partly subconscious, in that hidden agendas were likely acted out. (After all, in contemporary cultural production, the creations of an individual are taken as metonymic representations of him as creator. This is in opposition to many indigenous traditions, which believed a piece of bone, say, had an internal “essence” which the artist “discovered.” Very interesting, this reverberation of magical thinking.) We could say that the author who, writing a sentence, believes it to mean one thing, and then, upon reading it, decides (or “realizes”) it means something different, perhaps from erroneous construction, is operating here with a concept of “hypothetical reader meaning,” an “others in mind” mental model, and that the very fact he can recognize he meant to convey one thing, but that his words actually convey another—would be interpreted as other—is a testimony to this gap: an intended meaning, which gives birth to the utterance, and a conveyed meaning, what is received by the reader. We could say that intentionality structures response, and that readers’ search for intentionality further structures response, even if these responses are “consummated” by the reader (the genetic metaphor of mutual contribution & interaction seems apt).

And indeed, to give them their full due, all these observations and more have been made by literary theorists engaged in the so-called Meaning Wars, who have, between them, more or less factored out the literary process in full, from inception in the author’s mind, to interpretation by the reader, to the use of formal instruments like dictionaries as interpretive guides. But instead of attempting to understand when one type of textual meaning is more productive or ascertainable, instead of factoring out the relationships between these meanings, thought and energies were wasted in what amount, ultimately, to attempted linguistic conquests, fueled by the status awarded to victors of the global knowledge game. Nowadays, few theorists seem to care much about the meaning wars’ dispute—the subject’s been dropped, ostensibly for being self-frustrating. (Because they got it flipped around: they forgot they were factoring human concepts and thought they were discovering conceptual realities). And the lowercase-p pragmatic resolution is that people just refer to intended meanings and author meanings and don’t feel like they have to pledge allegiance to some totalizing camp where X is the only, narrow “meaning” that counts.

In other words, the mutual exclusivity of narrow-and-conquer strategies, with representatives arguing for their pet formalizations, was replaced by a divide-and-conquer strategy, with qualifiers appended to the umbrella concept.

It’s been some years since I investigated the Meaning Wars, & I intend to go back to my notebooks and re-read the canonical battles. Hopefully I’ll have a longer piece soon which explores, in depth—and with greater understanding than was possible at age 21—its dynamics as intellectual history.

In the post which follows, I’ll more formally work through a handful of philosophical and metaphysical dialogues from the past-half century, such as the conversation surrounding “collective intentionality,” which exhibit a “lexicographic” tendency.

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kingdomstroops · 5 years

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Understanding The Bible, It's Reliability And It's History

Understanding the Bible

For a believer, nothing is more important than understanding the Bible. It tells us about God, ourselves, the universe, and how to live life. It teaches us the greatest problem facing humanity (sin and separation from God) and the only solution (Jesus). As a child you accepted what adults told you, assuming it to be true. After all, adults know everything, right? If you grew up in a Christian family, authority figures taught you that the Bible is God’s Word and that you can trust it. Questions with Understanding the Bible However, as you grew older, you realized that you (an adult), didn’t know everything, which meant that your authorities didn’t know everything. In fact, you likely started wondering… Is the Bible even true? How long has it been the Bible? Did it become the Bible after the last book was written, or was it the Bible all along? Out of all the literary works from that time period, how can I be sure we have the right books in the Bible? Is it really a book from God or just another man-made religious book? What about all the mistakes people find in it? If you’ve thought these questions, or ones similar to them, good for you. When you allow doubts to challenge your faith, it helps you prove whether or not your faith is genuine. Don’t be afraid that you have these questions. It’s what you do with them that counts—do you bury them in fear, or do you face them and look for help? Let’s turn now to some of the most common (and important) questions about understanding the Bible.Question 1: How Did the Bible Become the Bible? By God’s design and under His direction, His people the Israelites began compiling works of Scripture thousands of years ago (for two examples, see Deuteronomy 31:26 and Hebrews 9:4). Fast forward, and the early church fathers (as far back as 300 AD!) continued the task. To be clear, these people didn’t decide which books would be Scripture. Instead, they determined which books God had inspired and then compiled those into the canon. (“Canon” is just a fancy word for the books accepted as biblical).Question 2: How Do We Know the Right Books are in the Bible? Early church fathers used several tests to determine which books God had inspired. The first was to look at internal proofs. For example, many passages speak about God preserving His Word. For example, Psalm 119 says, Forever, O Lord, Your word is settled in heaven ~ Psalm 119:89 God values His Word too much to allow humans to mess it up. If we believe He is in control, we must also acknowledge that He guided our forefathers as they compiled the Bible. Additionally, certain biblical authors actually talk about other books and call them Scripture. Peter, speaking of Paul’s writings, says, as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction. ~ 2 Peter 3:16 “So, you’re saying that to find out if it’s God’s Word, you look at what it says? And since the Bible says it’s God’s Word, that proves that it is? Isn’t that circular reasoning?” In reality, all worldviews come back to presuppositions, faith, and circular reasoning. Christians believe in the integrity of God's word when understanding the Bible—innocent until proven guilty. They believe God created the world because the Bible says so. Evolutionists, because they don’t believe God exists (or if He does, He’s not very involved), champion the theory of evolution. Their presupposition is “no God,” so their conclusion is evolution. The truth is that no one was there at the beginning of time, so we all have to choose to believe in something. The second type of test for canonicity is external proofs. Even over the last few decades, archaeological discoveries match biblical stories and genealogies. For instance, many believed the story of David and Goliath to be fictitious until an incredible discovery. Archaeologists found pottery with the name “Goliath” inscribed in it. The time period and location of this artifact matched up perfectly with the biblical account. This is just one example of thousands! One of the most astounding discoveries in this realm is the Dead Sea Scrolls. In 1947, an unsuspecting shepherd threw a stone into some caves and heard the sound of shattering pottery. When he investigated further, he saw old scrolls rolled up inside pots. He brought them to a dealer to be appraised. They were passed from hand to hand as archaeologists and scholars began to realize their worth. Despite being a couple thousand years old, they matched up with almost the entirety of the modern Bible. Finally, early church fathers analyzed the authority, uniqueness, and universal acceptance of books in order to determine whether or not they were of divine origin. Certain books, like the Apocrypha, failed these tests. While they were historical, they did not carry the same biblical authority, unique attributes, and international acceptance as the books that are now in the Bible. In addition, they contradicted books that God had clearly inspired.Question 3: How Do We Know It’s Not Just Another Book of Religion? One of the most incredible facts about the Bible is its internal unity. Despite its multiple authors across many centuries, it remains consistent to one storyline without contradicting itself. This points to God’s sovereign hand preserving His Word over thousands of years. Another reason the Bible is different from any other book is its transformative power throughout history. By it lives permanently change, fighting ceases, and kingdoms crumble. No other book can honestly boast such importance. Additionally, we see many biblical prophecies clearly fulfilled. The Messiah, Jesus, came born of a virgin (predicted in Isaiah 7:14; fulfilled in Luke 1:34). Cyrus, predicted hundreds of years earlier in Isaiah 45, unwittingly did exactly what God had promised (see 2 Chronicles 36:22-23). By the way, if you’re skeptical, remember that scholars and archaeologists have found external proof that Isaiah was written long before 2 Chronicles (click here for a list of dates).Question 4: What About All the Errors? Despite the Bible claiming that it is error-free (John 10:35), people still find what they believe to be errors in the Bible. While almost none of these affect any major doctrines, they are still important to look at. For instance, what do we do about the discrepancy between Numbers 25:9 and 1 Corinthians 10:8? One says that God killed 24,000 people, but the other says that 23,000 died. It does look like an error, doesn’t it? This could easily be an instance of rounding to the nearest thousand or describing how many died total versus how many died in one day. However, many other minor discrepancies like this occur in the Bible translations. What’s important to understand is that, while God inspired the original text of Scripture, not every copy of the Bible is inspired. Humans copied the text, and humans make mistakes. Another example of a potential problem in understanding the Bible is when it says that God repented or regretted making humanity before He sent the flood (Genesis 6:6). “If God is sovereign and never makes mistakes, how can He regret something?” many people ask. From man’s perspective, God sometimes appears to repent, because His disposition toward a person changes when that person disobeys. Because of the progression of the English language, the choice of the word “repent” in the King James Version could lead people today to believe that God repents in the way humans do (as if He had done something wrong). However, He is probably just using a term that we would understand, since we can’t fathom all the ways of an infinite, all-knowing God. We could tackle many different supposed errors and contradictions in Scripture, but we do not have the time or the space here. However, a serious student of the Scriptures will be able to respond to criticisms against the Bible with intelligence and confidence. While alleged discrepancies often shake a believer’s faith in the inerrancy and inspiration of God’s Word, they should actually engender the opposite mentality. If you just dig a little deeper into the original text, the historical background, and other passages of Scripture, you will come to the realization that God’s Word that spans the centuries is truly like no other book in its harmony, beauty, accuracy, and penetration. Most of the criticisms against it arise out of subjective, biased twisting of Scripture’s plain meaning.Question 5: Can I Understand A Book As Complex As the Bible? Thankfully, many helpful study tools exist for you as you study God’s Word. You don’t have to know Hebrew or Greek to understand it. Other believers have done deep study and compiled their findings in books and articles that are easy to digest. If you’re unsure of what theologians to read, ask your pastor or Christian friend who their favorites are. In conclusion, your quest to understand God’s Word will be lifelong. Thankfully, He doesn’t expect you to have all the answers. If you are a believer, you have the Holy Spirit who will guide you as you try to understand the Bible (1 Corinthians 2:15). Even if you’re not a believer, you can pray for God’s help to understand. He loves to answer humble prayers! But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. ~ James 1:5-6 Go learn Everything You Need To Know About The Word Of God. Read the full article

#godsword #everlasting #praisethelord

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pirate-king-of-trance · 7 years

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Entranced: Part 4/5

I recently attended Entranced, a hypnocon just outside of Chicago, and I had the most WONDERFUL time! I am not going to write a full recap as I did with my first NEEHU, but I will be listing some awesome/cool/funny/sexy things that happened.

Sunday

Only class I went to: Poly Emotions: What to do when you’re feeling FEELINGS with @cleavagepool and @daja-the-hypnokitten! This was a wonderful discussion about polyamory, envy vs jealousy, and all the possible feelings involved! There were some really interesting stories told.

Hangouts in the hall! Talked to Jim (@darquefool) for a while, it was good to finally talk to him in person. @sebsteerpike joined us for a bit, it was good conversation!

Out of seemingly nowhere, a fucking CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS SCENE happened right where Jim and I were talking. Larry (@minddiver) made a fantastic Principal Krupp/Captain Underpants and I have to thank Ellen and Jericho (@goodgirlslistenandobey) for bringing this to light. I could barely stand I was laughing so hard! Points to @mr-prism and @mrs-prism for popping in as a villain and his victim, and Bill for appearing as the villain who (with assistance from the Captain’s sidekick, Ellen) unwittingly ended the scene. We laughed about it for a good while, holy crap was that a nostalgia trip. Tra-la-LAAAAAAAA!!!

Korean BBQ for lunch with (let’s see how many I can tag again) @yoshibound, @tell-a-hypnostory, @dancercoder, @somehowbreathtaking, and @knowing-smile. The food was delicious! We somehow got back just in time for the next classes, too!

HYPNO NERF BATTLE!!! It finally happened! Thanks to @lily-ackerman and @mr-ackerman for the guns and extra darts, and to MindControlFun (@ask-loopy) for moderating! This was an absolutely incredible uncon activity, and we all agreed it needs to happen again. For those who haven’t determined the concept on their own, subjects participating were given Nerf guns and hypnotic triggers tied to being hit with darts. Everyone had different triggers, too, ranging from freezing the limb that was hit, to dropping more with each hit, to feeling like a pot brownie kicked in stronger with each hit! One guy ended up acting like R2-D2 in peril every time he got hit! We were all laughing by the end of it, I’m so glad it went over so well.

Hair-Pull Induction Circle! This started as no more than a concept, after seeing a hair-pull induction chain at NEEHU, courtesy of @sebsteerpike. I figured, hey, what would happen if I did that with a full circle of subjects, and instead of pulling one of them down myself, I walk around them giving an induction focused on resisting trance until one (and therefore all of them) drop into trance? Turns out, you get a wonderful scene and a lot of happy people! Y’know, despite the fact the 5 or so inductions I spat out during this uncon activity were literally pulled out of nothing, no planning or anything. I’m really glad it went over so well!

At the end of the hair-pull circle, while everyone was recovering and talking, I ended up talking to one (very pretty) girl and offered to trance her. She informed me that the con was actually the first time she’d ever been hypnotized, and was therefore very inexperienced. As such, she proved very difficult to trance (I don’t like putting it that way, I just don’t know another phrasing), despite the fact that she seemed to drop easily enough during the group trance. It may not have helped that we had an audience at the point when we started (she was leaving in around an hour after the class period, so we decided to try right there and then). Another person in the group offered his help, and we attempted a dual sensory overload trance, concentrating on auditory, visual, and kinesthetic all at once. She almost got there, but couldn’t quite drop. This turned into a discussion of how “difficult subjects” are just those without experience, and the best thing to do is practice in order to get better at it (shout-out to @sex-obsessed-lesbian for her class the other day discussing this!) Then we finally had to clear the room for the next class.

More hangouts!

Big group dinner at a restaurant! Fun times all around! Lots of conversations I don’t remember the details of. Though I will say, doing anything to make @shapeshift-identity say “I love my life” is always good fun! (Thanks to @mindmadeofmagicandmusic for the spontaneous team-up! Though I doubt either of you remember what I’m talking about!)

Hangouts in the con suite! Had great conversation with Bill, Renee (@downwardspiralcomic), and MindControlFun (@ask-loopy), until three of us were suddenly distracted by the appearance of Ariadne (@meltinggoldanddippingthingsinit) who stripped down to a rather sexy one-piece lingerie outfit in the middle of the con suite. She offered to do some nonverbal trances with Bill, who of course accepted. XD

@ellaenchanting showed up at one point and we were finally able to do our scene! We went down to my room to hang out and do non-erotic trancy things. I recall dropping her with a hair-pull, a kinesthetic induction, eye contact, my trance meter, juggling glow balls, and I’m sure there were others. Fractionation is fun! She can see my energy powers now, and sees them as white and shiny with a wind element. I also turned her into a kitty at one point since she asked, and she chased around my laser pointer for a bit, until I put her back under with the kaleidoscope. We messed around a bunch with all of this, then retired back up to the con suite. It was a lovely session, and I hope to play with the adorable Ella again! And from her overjoyed reaction, I think there’s a very good chance of that. =)

Eventually Kori (@clawsandlace) made it back to the con suite (she was recovering from something), we decided to go off and have our scene. My room was much more likely to be occupied at that point (it was rather late), so we went searching for a spot. After finding that the hallway was occupied in two different spots, we run into MetalVoid who was just hanging around and allowed us to use his room for our scene. She had been really intrigued by my talk of the energy powers, but also said that while she has been affected by things while in trance, suggestions don’t seem to keep hold when she comes back out. This intrigued me, so I took it as a challenge to science up a way around it. By phrasing it as a waking semi-trance state, she was able to see and interact with my energy while out of trance! She saw it as golden/white, with a ice/fire element. It was mostly ice, but had an aura and when I had a ball of energy in each hand one was fire and the other ice. That was definitely a (really cool) first! We played around with the energy a bunch and I even used the cold of the ice to freeze her in place. She said she actually felt her body icing over, her veins freezing, and the ice cracking when I moved her arm. I felt the need to check in when she told me this, as pain is not really my thing and it wasn’t intended, and she said she enjoyed it thoroughly! I also gave her a blank trigger, to turn off her thoughts and make her suggestible while still being aware, and was able to bind her hand to the chair by suggesting as much while she was in that state. And it still stuck after I gave her her mind back, so I’d call that a success! I had a lot of fun with her, she was a lovely subject, and I hope to play with her again! And she did decide to keep the ability to see my energy powers, so that may very well happen. ^_^

Wow, that was a lot longer than I intended these to be. I guess it didn’t help that there were multiple activities and scenes on Sunday worth writing about. Oh well, enjoy!

#Entranced #Hypnosis

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dawnfelagund · 8 years

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On Writing Aman, or the Balance between the Mythic and the Real

This essay was written for Back to Middle-earth Month 2017 for the orange/nonfiction path and the prompt “Worldbuilding.” It can also be read on the B2MeM community and the Silmarllion Writers’ Guild.

"In Valinor, all the days are beautiful."

This was the very first line I wrote in my very first serious Silmarillion fan fiction, Another Man's Cage . But I don't believe it. (Which is okay--those were Celegorm's words, not mine.) In fact, the twelve years of writing Silmarillion-based fiction could be seen as an exercise in proving Celegorm's sentiment here wrong.

Early feedback on the first draft of AMC largely focused on this point. A comment by JunoMagic (now SatisMagic) sums this up nicely:

What I think is most difficult about stories that are primarily concerned with Elves and Elves in Aman at that, is how to keep their inherent elvishness alive and present throughout the story, a feeling that this is not a story about another kind of men, but about a different kind of beings, however closely related they might be. (emphasis mine)

The challenge of writing not-wholly-human beings is hardly new to the fantasy genre. Ursula LeGuin's essay “From Elfland to Poughkeepsie” addresses it. "But the point about Elfland," she writes, "is that you are not at home there. It's not Poughkeepsie. It's different" (145). Most of LeGuin's essay focuses on style and the precarious process of achieving a style that sounds otherworldly without being distancing. But she takes jabs as well at fantasists who veer to close to the human and the our-worldly in their work:

The Lords of Elfland are true lords, the only true lords, the kind that do not exist on this earth: their lordship is the outward sign or symbol of real inward greatness. And greatness of soul shows when a man speaks. At least, it does in books. In life we expect lapses. In naturalistic fiction, too, we expect lapses, and laugh at an "overheroic" hero. But in fantasy, which, instead of imitating the perceived confusion and complexity of existence, tries to hint at an order and clarity underlying existence--in fantasy, we need not compromise. (148, emphasis mine)

So while LeGuin's essay is ostensibly about style, she also argues for characters of a "kind that do not exist on this earth," which is a profoundly different thing. This gets back to the early criticism of AMC: readers' unease with elements of the story that felt too "human" or "not Aman enough," like weapons and predators and Elves who pee. I think this unease is far less common now than it was ten years ago; I like to think that my generation of Silmfic writers had something to do with that, as did the shift away from Tolkien fan fiction as largely a practice by fans already deeply committed to the books (and the orthodoxy of mainstream Tolkien fandom) and toward participation by fans who came to the fandom through one of the film trilogies (as indeed I did). These fans bring practices common to Fanworks as a Whole but not necessarily the Tolkien fanworks community as it existed in its original online form, practices which seem to allow for an easier break with fanon and orthodox interpretive approaches to the texts. But the issue still remains: How does one worldbuild a place like Aman?

Juno's comment on AMC hints at this: The Elves of Aman are different and more difficult to write than Elves in general (who also pose their difficulties). Or: Aman is more of the rarefied, not-of-this-earth Elfland that LeGuin places at the heart of a successful fantasy story. I don't want to say that this is wrong--I admire both women as writers and thoughtful critics of fiction--but I also see this view as posing difficulties that LeGuin does not acknowledge in her essay. (Juno does, in her discussion with me back when.)

Successful fiction, for most people, requires a connection to something real, something they can relate to. (I know some people would disagree with this. But for most of us, reading a story that carries no connection to anything recognizable to us is not a pleasurable experience.) Tolkien recognized this. In his essay On Fairy-stories, he spoke of the necessity of an "inner consistency of reality" and noted, "The keener and clearer the reason, the better fantasy will it make," i.e., one must understand the rules of the world before remaking them (section "Fantasy"). The best of authors are, in many ways, the builders of bridges: They take recognizable human experiences or components of our familiar world and use them to bear us unwittingly across the chasm to an unfamiliar world or existence. Suddenly, sometimes without knowing how we arrived there, we look up to find ourselves existing (fictionally) as a person we detest or inhabiting an experience we knew nothing about--or living in a world not our own: an alien planet, an underworld, an Elfland.

The risk comes when that bridge is so tenuous, so frail that the crossing becomes difficult or even impossible, and we stand on the other side, looking into a world or existence as a character that we cannot really connect to. It isn't quite believable or real. Some might argue that is part of the point--LeGuin makes the case for escapism in her essay, which was a major component of Tolkien's theory of fantasy as well1--but escapism is far from the sole reason for reading or writing fantasy. In fact one could--and I would--make the claim that fantasy functions just as easily as a test environment for ideas that would perhaps stretch the bounds of belief if grounded in our world. Fantasy as a genre, after all, is defined primarily by the author's ability to bend the rules "just because." That allows for the stereotypical sorcery and dragons, of course, but it also allows authors to add gender equality or benevolent monarchs or immortality, or to explore the darker elements of what it means to be human--genocide, colonialism, and slavery are all present in The Silmarillion, for example--without exploiting or misrepresenting the experiences of actual victims of those things in our real world. Adding such elements provokes interesting questions about what it means to be human in our world without becoming so entangled in the complexities of real-world history and modern society and the emotions these things incite.

Which brings me back to the question of Aman and how best to write stories set in this otherworldly place. A good deal of it depends on your purpose for writing about Aman: Is it an escape? Or are you situating a recognizable human experience inside an otherworldly setting to see what comes of it?

For me, it is the latter, and not just because I find this the most meaningful type of fiction to write but because the material Tolkien gave me to work with suggests this approach. Earlier, I emphasized LeGuin's quote that "[t]he Lords of Elfland are true lords, the only true lords, the kind that do not exist on this earth: their lordship is the outward sign or symbol of real inward greatness" (148). If the magic of Elfland comes from language and style, then LeGuin is correct to hold up Tolkien as a master of "the genuine Elfland accent," but what she says here is a whole 'nuther animal, and had LeGuin had access to The Silmarillion--she wrote "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie" in 1973--then she might have been less confident in this assertion about the "true lords" of Elfland (148).

As a nascent Tolkien fan, I fell in love first with The Lord of the Rings and, when I reread it now, love it anew for reasons I need articulate to no fan of Tolkien. But what seized my heart and transported me fully to Middle-earth was The Silmarillion. I've spent thirteen years now writing stories about The Silmarillion, motivated largely by a desire to understand the flawed world and characters it presents. Most of my stories are set in Aman. This possibly seems contradictory: If I love flaws, then why would I set most of my work in "Elfland," in a place described as "blessed, for the Deathless dwelt there, and there naught faded nor withered, neither was there any stain upon flower or leaf in that land, nor any corruption or sickness in anything that lived; for the very stones and waters were hallowed" (Silmarillion, "Of the Beginning of Days")?

One doesn't have to look far to realize that this description is idealized. There is first of all Míriel Serindë, who not only sickened but died, right there in Valinor, in the most exalted of acts: giving birth to her child. Ungoliant dwelled "there in Avathar, secret and unknown," where "beneath the sheer walls of the mountains and the cold dark sea, the shadows were deepest and thickest in the world," in sight of Valmar and the Two Trees (Silmarillion, "Of the Darkening of Valinor"). Of course, Melkor lived there for many ages; the Silmarils, also described as "hallowed" ("Of the Silmarils"), burned his hand when he touched them, but he could abide the also (supposedly) "hallowed" Aman?

Aman isn't a flawless realm but a realm that carries a convincing veneer of flawlessness. This has been essential in my worldbuilding within the bounds of Aman. Over the years, I have given Aman universities, hunger, seaside resorts, a redlight district, and most recently, democracy. One of my favorite Tolkien resources of all time is Darth Fingon's “Twenty-Two Words You Never Thought Tolkien Would Provide” because it gives us a look beneath the veneer of Aman.

I believe this veneer takes strength to maintain that is not possible to sustain over the long term, even for the Ainur. We see this again and again in Tolkien's world--Doriath, Gondolin, Nargothrond, Númenor, Imladris, Lothlórien, all isolated and protected places that eventually fall or wither with time--but Aman is rarely included as such a place. We assume Aman had genuine sublimity--not least of all because many of the realms on the list above imitate Aman; not least of all because it is the creation of the divine and eternal Ainur--but I'm not sure that the land that harbored Ungoliant can be labeled as ideal. The illusion is tattered, and reality is bound to enter in.

In my stories, the effort to keep up the veneer of perfection means that the further one is from Valinor proper--from the part of the realm most carefully constructed and maintained by the Valar--the more ordinary the realm appears. This is based in the fact that Ungoliant's unnoticed occupancy of Avathar--which including weaving vast, black, light-sucking webs among the mountains there--seems at least partially predicated on the fact that it is "far south of great Taniquetil" where the "Valar were not vigilant" (Silmarillion, "Of the Darkening of Valinor"). However, in the same passage, both Melkor and Ungoliant are described as able to descry the Light of the Trees and other features of Valinor; they don't seem to be that far away. The power of the Valar may be more limited than the idealist description of Valinor in the text would suppose and doesn't seem to extend across the extent of Aman. I have used this same idea in my stories about Aman: As one journeys further from the epicenter, the veneer of perfection thins and then disappears altogether. Formenos in the north, in my stories, is set in a part of the land with seasons, including winter, and predators that residents warn their children against. These elements of my depiction of Aman were among those questioned by early readers of my work.

Likewise, some of the residents of Aman were born in Middle-earth and their personalities shaped in the crucible of the early conflicts with Melkor. Aman, therefore, could hardly guarantee an edenic existence for the Eldar, innocent of the knowledge of grief, violence, and death; rather, the Elves who came to Aman doubtlessly brought with them both survival skills and trauma from their tenure in darkened Middle-earth. This is an idea that is frequently explored by Silmarillion writers (including me) in the context of sexuality: Before the laws of the Valar were imposed upon them, the Elves would have had a more naturalistic and lenient view of sex. Without delving beyond its title, Laws and Customs among the Eldar is just that: among the Eldar, and this choice of wording from the semantically fastidious Tolkien feels deliberate and laden with potential meaning. But the presence of Elves from Middle-earth--including all of the leaders of the Eldar in Aman--presents significance beyond sex. Weapons are an issue I wrote about as early as AMC--proposing, somewhat in defiance of canon, that Elves in Aman possessed swords as historical artifacts and also for athletic pursuits--that drew criticism then, at least in part because what use have the people of Aman for weapons? I say that allowing swords to certain groups of Eldar in Aman is "somewhat" in defiance of canon because Tolkien himself waffled on this issue, seeing the question of weapons as a potential plot hole.2 He concluded that it was unreasonable to expect that they didn't possess weapons on the Great Journey. Consider this implications of this. Into the so-called Deathless Realm came Elves experienced in making and using weapons, whose minds most likely devised of instruments of death and violence on their own, possibly among their first creative acts. How is such a culture shaped by the of reality life in Middle-earth, illuminated only by the stars and under duress of an enemy too strong and cunning even for the Valar? How is that effect amplified when those who endured such an experience do not die, leaving their descendents to progress into a more pacific existence without them, but retain that formative mindset, those skills and those traumas, into the ages?

But trauma does not end with those born outside of Aman. Events within Aman wreak havoc upon those likewise born within its borders: In fact, that they occur in Aman seems an inescapable component of the trauma.

Perhaps the most salient example of this is Fëanor. Fëanor lost his mother and watched the Valar bend the rules to allow his father to remarry, ensuring in the process that Míriel could never be reborn. These events alone would have been potentially traumatic. But consider how their occurrence in Aman of all places compounds that trauma, adding a sort of insult to injury, as Fëanor doubtlessly progressed through his life hearing how fortunate the Elves were to live in the safety of the "deathless realm." His own experience would have been very different, and it must have been painful or galling to hear Aman celebrated while understanding that ideal was only a veneer--a concept doubtlessly controversial, if not impossible, to articulate.

Likewise, the conflict in the House of Finwë is worsened by its happening in Aman. When Fëanor draws his sword on Fingolfin, he is accused primarily of having "broken the peace of Valinor and drawn his sword upon his kinsman"; almost as an afterthought, Námo Mandos adds that the "deed was unlawful, whether in Aman or not in Aman," but it is hard to imagine Fëanor would have received a penalty so severe anywhere else (Silmarillion, "Of the Silmarils"). The primary transgression seems to be manifesting an emotion--expressed through the powerful symbolism of the drawn sword--that belies the illusion of a land without corruption. The cauldron of circumstances that produced this rash act are not examined in any meaningful way; instead, the rash actor is hidden away in the name of restoring peace--or at least the illusion of it.

Taken together, I believe that worldbuilding Aman as an "Elfland" as LeGuin understands it is a fundamental flaw. The lords of Aman are the very ones we see on earth: They are idealistic to the point of naïveté (the Valar); they want what they don't have (Finwë); they are jealous, vulnerable, angry, in pain (Fëanor). One can extrapolate outward from these supposedly greatest of the residents of Aman to assume that the land is not as impeccable as the rhapsodizing of the narrator of The Silmarillion would have us believe. To look no further than the dust of diamonds upon one's shoes in walking there, to never glimpse the faces of those who dwell there and what hides behind their eyes, is to be so dazzled by a beautiful illusion as to miss what matters.

Notes

1. On escapism as a motive for fantasy see Tolkien's essay On Fairy-stories, in the section "Recovery, Escape, Consolation":

I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which "Escape" is now so often used … Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls?

2. On the question of weapons in Aman, see The History of Middle-earth, Vol. X: Morgoth's Ring, The Annals of Aman, note on §97 (page 106 in the hardcover edition). Tolkien originally stated that "Melkor spoke to the Eldar concerning weapons, which they had not before possessed or known," then emphatically argued with himself in a marginal note: "No! They must have had weapons on the Great Journey," concluding that they had "weapons of the chase, spears and bows and arrows." Swords may be a step too far for some people--although Tolkien's own inconclusiveness on this issue leaves me feeling it is far from carved in stone--but weapons in Aman certainly were not.

#b2mem 2017 #silmarillion #aman #valinor #tolkien #worldbuilding

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kanerosalind1995 · 4 years

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How To Win Your Ex Boyfriend Back If He Has A Girlfriend

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Even though it tore me apart inside, I didn't care about her then you can adopt to get your ex back.Furthermore with text messages, a hand written note.And which ideas did my mind, and I can't possibly cover all of them have worked out the advice is always possible, even in the end of your ex, but on the road to their men - in practice can actually get you back.Well, there are things about the author written more than one book on fixing relationships?When people are busy and hope that the person we once were is still hope for putting things back to you are past this point you need to do after your ex back.

By knowing the cause of the common theme to them but not so good advice and help you to prove you are planning a wedding, or any of these signs to what he is still possible to work through our problems.There are three very important thing to do before actually doing, but most guys are making this relationship is worth saving, it is never an enjoyable experience.So let's see if the relationship to work?You must proceed slowly and gently, to rebuild that trust, which is exactly what it is....and if you are making right after a break-up, you first got together.As previously stated that you are completely in the first place.

They even pushed her back are slim but not impossible.Instead of attracting your ex is going to take some time to make a little time to time.Don't try to set the stage of our breakup.Send her a lot more power, especially with someone else might want to say, but they are now out of it first.If you have an opportunity to get your ex did and have obtained sincere forgiveness, what remains is for sure that I can give you a hundred times, sending hundreds of voice mail messages she has to be subtle, just make her more in control of your ex.

Emotions run very high chance of having your ex back.When she came back nothing was the most liberal of men naturally feel obliged to take the weight off your feet and have a relationship.I just KNOW that you have to be done to fix some mistakes of your normal life back on your face from crying, I can tell their story, to love you again, so don't pressure her.You know what to do for some outside help!Also, consider pursuing activities that you have to go for it!

You have just given her tangible evidence that you are still really love her.If you really want her to meet other people.The next tip and that you simply can't accept that the relationship previously that you are apart.It's especially helpful if you choose which method to getting back with their man?That way you feel hurt and last a long way to find but not with the one who's happy and healthy one.

How To Get Your Ex Wife Back After Cheating

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whereareroo · 4 years

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2020 IT IS WHAT IT IS

WF UPDATE (8/17/20).

Did you miss me?

In order to attend to some important stuff, I took a short break from blogging. What was the important stuff? It's none of your business. I don't have to tell you everything.

One purpose of this blog is to make a historical record. I hope that my grandchildren, and great grandchildren, will read this someday. I want them to understand what was happening in 2010 and 2020. If God is good to me, I'll still be writing in 2030.

The summer of 2020 will always be known as the summer of the Coronavirus.

I want my grandchildren and great grandchildren to know that the summer of 2020 was a time of chaos. It was a time of unease. America was in a state of disarray.

The Coronavirus has a very odd feature. Many infected people never exhibit any symptoms. They get the disease, and recover from the disease, without feeling sick. Nonetheless, these "asymptomatic" people are carriers. They can spread the disease.

There is another category of people who are "presymtomatic." They are carriers who do not exhibit symptoms during the first few days of their infection. Without even knowing that they're sick, presymptomatic people can spread the disease.

The experts have been studying this disease for more than 6 months. They estimate that 50% of all new cases arise from exposure to asymptomatic or presymtomatic carriers.

Testing is the key to defeating a highly contagious enemy like the Coronavirus. Carriers need to be identified and isolated. Because so many carriers are asymptomatic or presymtomatic, extensive testing is the only way to identify the "secret spreaders." All of the experts agree that a widespread testing program, a program that is easily accessible to everyone and that provides prompt results, is essential. If the "secret carriers" don't know that they're "secret carriers," they're more likely to unwittingly spread the disease. If somebody knows that they have the disease, they're less likely to spread it.

To do my important stuff, I had to travel outside of my state. Under new rules that have been issued by various states, I was required to get a Coronavirus test. Because I am a good citizen, and because I don't want to stupidly infect anyone, I would have taken a test anyway. Why not be safe and careful?

I went for my test, at CVS, 10 days before I was due to arrive at my new location. CVS says that the test results are electronically available in 6 to 8 days. I figured that I'd have my results before I got to my new location. No problem, right?

Guess what? Our testing system is so bad that I didn't get my results for 16 days. What a mess! The experts say that an effective testing program provides results in 3 days or less. We obviously don't have an effective testing program.

Thus, I was forced to pursue "Plan B." Near my new location, there were several medical facilities that provide "instant tests." In this case, "instant" means that you get your results in 20 minutes.

I went to medical facility #1. The doors hadn't opened yet, and I was the 25th person in line. That was a bad start, but it got worse. The place never opened. No explanation was given.

About 45 minutes later, I was at medical facility #2. After about an hour in a long line, a nice medical worker came outside and made an announcement. The place was closing. A staff member had just tested positive for Coronavirus and the protocols required a shutdown so a total disinfecting could occur. Strike 2!

Within 30 minutes, I was at medical facility #3. I'll spare you the details. After almost 3 hours, I had formal proof that I was NOT infected with the Coronavirus. My testing ordeal took almost all day. Thankfully, I was free to do my important stuff!

I'm telling this story to create a historical record. When they read this years from now, I want my grandchildren and great grandchildren to know the truth. All levels of government did a terrible job with this pandemic. We're 6 months into this plague, and the American testing system is still an unreliable mess. Tests are not readily accessible. The process is burdensome and time consuming. The process is so bad that most people don't even think about getting tested. Due to the massive testing failure, thousands of "secret spreaders" are roaming around and circulating the disease.

As of right now, the Coronavirus has killed more than 170,000 Americans. By the time we get this under control, the fatalities will certainly top 200,000 and might get as high as 250,000 or more. When my descendants read about this in history books, I want them to know that many of the deaths were avoidable. Tens of thousands of people died because our leaders were incompetent, ineffective, or both.

As of now, there have been 5,420,000 confirmed cases of Coronavirus in the United States. On February 26th, President Trump claimed that the disease was going to disappear quickly. These were his exact words: "You have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down close to zero." Apparently believing that the disease will magically disappear, Trump has not done enough to fight this enemy. The abysmal testing regime is one result of his inaction and ineffectiveness.

What's worse? Trump apparently thinks it's funny. On April 28th, when we surpassed 1 million cases, a reporter asked him about his prediction that soon after the original 15 cases our caseload would be down to zero. Trump quipped: "Well, it will go down to zero, ultimately." That wasn't funny when we had 1 million cases, and it certainly isn't funny now that we've surpassed 5 million cases.

On April 24th, Trump predicted that "we're going to lose between 50 and 60" thousand people to Coronavirus. By May 3rd, he changed his prediction to "anywhere from 75,000, 80,000 to 100,000 people." Soon thereafter, he stopped talking about the death toll. How do you explain that 200,000 Americans died on your watch? Does the president understand that there aren't numbers? They're people, with friends and families. Millions of Americans are in mourning.

Being President of the United States is a tough job. Sometimes, presidents get blame that they don't deserve. During this summer of 2020, President Trump deserves every ounce of blame that he has received. As time goes on, and the death toll rises, he seems to care less about this problem. In an interview on July 28th, a reporter challenged Trump's assertion that the situation is under control. When Trump made that assertion, the reporter said: "How? A thousand Americans are dying a day." Trump responded: "They are dying, that's true. It is what it is." Isn't that outrageous? It is what it is? That's what the president says after 170,000 people have died during his watch? What would you say if you were running a company, or hosting an event, and people under your care died by the dozens? I bet you wouldn't say: It is what it is.

It's been a sad summer. The summer of 2020 will be a black mark in the pages of American history. We faced a challenge and our response was very, very poor. One can only hope that we learn from the experience. We need better leaders, and we need to be more prepared for catastrophic events.

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brinazzle · 4 years

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Most of us go through life unaware of how our environment shapes our behavior. When we experience “road rage” on a crowded freeway, it’s not because we’re sociopathic monsters. It’s because the temporary condition of being behind the wheel in a car, surrounded by rude impatient drivers, triggers a change in our otherwise placid demeanor. We’ve unwittingly placed ourselves in an environment of impatience, competitiveness, and hostility—and it alters us. When we take highly vocal umbrage at disappointing food in a restaurant by abusing a friendly waiter and making nasty comments to the maître d’—neither of whom cooked the food—it’s not because we regularly display the noblesse oblige of Louis XIV. Our behavior is an aberration, triggered by a restaurant environment where we believe that paying handsomely for a meal entitles us to royal treatment. In an environment of entitlement, we behave accordingly. Outside the restaurant we resume our lives as model citizens—patient, polite, not entitled. Even when we’re aware of our environment and welcome being in it, we become victims of its ruthless power. Three decades ago, when I started spending half my days on airplanes, I regarded being on a plane as the ideal environment for reading and writing. No phones, no screens, no interruptions. The constant travel wasn’t an annoyance—because it allowed me to be hyperproductive. But as the airlines’ in-flight entertainment offerings gradually expanded from one film on a single screen to universal Wi-Fi and fifty on-demand channels at my seat, my productivity dropped. What had been apocket of monastic serenity had become a glittering arcade of distraction. And I was tempted and easily distracted. Instead of getting work done or catching up on much-needed sleep while crossing several time zones, I’d watch two or three pointless movies in a row. Each time as I walked off the plane, instead of being happy to arrive safely on the ground, ready to charge into my next assignment, I berated myself over the time I’d wasted in flight. I felt that I had dropped the ball on being disciplined. I also noticed that where in the past I’d leave the airport feeling relaxed and rested, I was now more tired and enervated. It took me a couple of years to realize that the onboard environment had changed—and I had changed with it. But not for the better. If there is one “disease” that I’m trying to cure in this book, it revolves around our total misapprehension of our environment. We think we are in sync with our environment, but actually it’s at war with us. We think we control our environment but in fact it controls us. We think our external environment is conspiring in our favor—that is, helping us when actually it is taxing and draining us. It is not interested in what it can give us. It’s only interested in what it can take from us. If it sounds like I’m treating our environment as a hostile character in our life dramas, that’s intentional. I want us to think of our environment as if it were a person—as imminent and real as an archrival sitting across the table. Our environment is not merely the amorphous space just beyond our fingertips and skin, our corporeal being. It’s not a given like the air around us, something we inhale and exhale but otherwise ignore as we go about our routines. Our environment is a nonstop triggering mechanism whose impact on our behavior is too significant to be ignored. Regarding it as a flesh-and blood character is not just fanciful metaphor. It’s a strategy that lets us finally see what we’re up against. (In some cases, I advise giving our environment a name.) It’s not all bad. Our environment can be the angel on our shoulder, making us a better person—like when we find ourselves at a wedding or class reunion or awards dinner and the joyous spark of fellow feeling in the room overwhelms people. Everyone is hugging and promising to stay in touch and get together real soon. (Of course, that feeling often fades the moment we return to our regular lives—in other words, find ourselves in a different environment. We are altered by the change. We forget our promises. We don’t follow up. We don’t stay in touch. The contrast couldn’t be more stark. One environment elevates us, the other erases the good vibes as if they never happened.) Much of the time, however, our environment is the devil. That’s the part that eludes us: entering a new environment changes our behavior in sly ways, whether we’re sitting in a conference room with colleagues or visiting friends for dinner or enduring our weekly phone call with an aging parent. For example, my wife, Lyda, and I are not cynical people. Although it’s my job to point out people’s personal challenges during the workweek, in my “civilian” life I try to be a nonjudgmental guy. I make a conscious effort to accept people’s foibles and “let it go.” Lyda doesn’t have to work as hard as I do at tolerance; she’s always the kindest person in the room. Yet we become different people whenever we have dinner with our neighbors Terry and John. They are a droll, amusing couple, but their humor stems from a sour worldview. Nearly everything that comes out of their mouths—about mutual friends or political figures or the neighbors’ pets—is cynical and snarky, almost cruel, as if they were auditioning for a celebrity roast. As Lyda and I debriefed after one particularly mean-spirited dinner, we marveled at the sarcastic comments we made. It wasn’t like us. We searched for reasons for our unusual behavior, concluding that the only variable was the people we were with and the setting we found ourselves in. In other words, the environment. In the same way that people talk more softly with a soft-spoken person, more quickly with a fast talker, our opinions were fundamentally altered inside the dark conversational bubble created by Terry and John. Sometimes altering one factor can turn an ideal environment into a disaster. It doesn’t change us. It changes everyone else in the room and how they react to us. Many years ago I was speaking at an off-site gathering of partners from a consulting firm. Although my previous work with this firm had gone well, this time something wasn’t working. No give-and take, no lively laughter, just a group of very smart people sitting on their hands. I finally realized that the room was too hot. Amazingly, by merely turning down the temperature in the room, the session got back on track. Like a rock star demanding red M&Ms in the dressing room, I’m now a bit of a diva about insisting on a cool environment for my presentations. I’ve learned how one tweak in the environment changes everything. * The most pernicious environments are the ones that compel us to compromise our sense of right and wrong. In the ultracompetitive environment of the workplace, it can happen to the most solid citizens. I remember working at a European conglomerate with a top-performing executive named Karl. He had a dictatorial management style—obsessive, strict, and punitive. He was openly gunning for the CEO job, and he drove his staff mercilessly to further his career. His mantra was “Make your number.” He’d write off anyone who contradicted his “number” or said it was unrealistic. To those who remained loyal, he’d scream, “Do whatever it takes!” Not surprisingly, his team started taking shortcuts to make their numbers. Some went from borderline unethical to clearly unethical behavior. In the environment Karl created, they didn’t see it as moral erosion. They saw it as the only option on the table. Eventually, the truth came out. The scandal cost the company tens of millions of euros and even more in reputational damage. Karl’s defense was, “I never asked my people to do anything immoral or illegal.” He didn’t need to ask. The environment he created did the work for him. Our environment changes us even when we’re dealing one-on-one with people to whom we’d ordinarily show kindness. Weturn friends into strangers, behaving as if we’ll never have to face them again. I was conducting a 360-degree feedback survey with a woman named Jackie about her company’s chief operating officer some years ago when she and I got sidetracked into a discussion about the emotional toll of her job. Jackie sounded like she wanted to unload some deep issues, so I listened. She was an in-house lawyer at a sales organization, specializing in employment matters. One of her duties was to negotiate separation agreements with departing sales executives, whether they were leaving of their own volition or not. “It’s not my favorite part of the job,” she said. “I’m dealing with people at a fragile moment in their careers. Most of them have no immediate prospects. And I represent the company’s interests, not theirs.” Jackie specifically wanted to talk about an executive who’d been let go. She’d gone to college with the man, reconnected with him after they began working at the same company. They talked on a regular basis, occasionally socialized. It was Jackie’s job to hash out the terms of his departure. The severance package was contractual and generous. The negotiable part was determining how much of the ongoing revenue stream from the man’s sales accounts would go to him and how much to the company. For reasons she couldn’t articulate, Jackie took a hard position with the man. Over several weeks of back-and-forth emails and phone calls, she used all her negotiating wiles and leverage to ensure that the company got the lion’s share of sales commissions from the man’s accounts. At first, I didn’t see why she was telling me this. “You were doing your job, being a professional,” I said. But she was clearly troubled by the memory of her behavior. “That’s what I tell myself,” said Jackie. “But this man was my friend. He deserved some compassion. Instead, I argued with him over a grand total of twenty thousand dollars, a sum of money that wouldn’t have made a dent on the company’s bottom line but would be significant to a jobless friend. Who was I trying to impress? The company didn’t care. It’s the most painful regret of my career.” I’d like to report that I had wise and consoling words for her that day. But this happened about ten years ago and the environment’s malign power wasn’t obvious to me at the time. I see it now, of course. As a lawyer, Jackie was trained to be adversarial. She was accustomed to arguing and negotiating over minor deal points. In a sales environment where everyone’s measuring who’s up, who’s down, who’s squeezing the last dime out of a deal, Jackie wanted to show she was doing her part. It demonstrated her value to the company. Unfortunately, that same ruthless bottom-line environment fostered the aggressive behavior that blurred right and wrong for Jackie. In her zeal to be a professional negotiator, she behaved like an amateur human being. Some environments are designed precisely to lure us into acting against our interest. That’s what happens when we overspend at the high-end mall. Blame it on a retail experience specifically engineered—from the lighting to the color schemes to the width of the aisles—to maximize our desire and liberate cash from our wallets. What’s really strange is that the mall environment doesn’t jump out at us like a thief in a dark alley. We have chosen to place ourselves in an environment that, based on past experience, will trigger the urge to buy something we neither need nor want. (This is even more predictable if we go without a specific shopping list—and put ourselves at the mercy of random, undisciplined consumption and a vague feeling that we can’t leave the mall empty-handed.) In overspending we fall into a trap that we have set for ourselves. The environments of a casino or an online shopping site are even less safe. Very smart people have spent their waking hours with one goal in mind: designing each detail so it triggers a customer to stay and spend. Other environments are not as manipulative and predatory as a luxury store. But they’re still not working for us. Consider the perennial goal of getting a good night’s sleep. Insufficient sleep is practically a national epidemic, afflicting one-third of American adults (it’s twice as bad for teenagers). Sleep should be easy to achieve. We have the motivation to sleep well. Who doesn’t want to wake up alert rather than foggy, refreshed rather than sluggish? We understand how much sleep we need. It’s basic arithmetic. If we have work or class early the next morning and need six to eight hours of sleep, we should work backward and plan on going to bed around 11 p.m. And we have control: Sleep is a self-regulated activity that happens in an environment totally governed by us—our home. We decide when to tuck in for the night. We choose our environment, from the room, to the bed, to the sheets and pillows. So why don’t we do what we know is good for us? Why do we stay up later than is good for us—and in turn not get enough sleep and wake up tired rather than refreshed? I blame it on a fundamental misunderstanding of how our environment shapes our behavior. It leads to a phenomenon that Dutch sleep researchers at Utrecht University call “bedtime procrastination.” We put off going to bed at the intended time because we prefer to remain in our current environment—watching a late-night movie or playing video games or cleaning the kitchen—rather than move to the relative calm and comfort of our bedroom. It’s a choice between competing environments. But because we don’t appreciate how our environment influences our choice, we fail to make the right choice (that is, go tobed). We continue doing what we’re doing, victims of inertia, unaware that getting a good night’s sleep is not something we deserve because we’re tired but rather something we must earn by developing better habits. If we understood how our environment can sabotage our sleep habits, we’d change our behavior. We’d stop what we’re doing, turn off our cell phones and iPads and laptops, banish the TV from the bedroom, and turn in for the night—as if we planned it. How we learn to change our behavior from bad habits to good ones, through discipline rather than occasional good fortune, is the subject matter—and promise—of this book’s remaining pages. But first, I have one more piece of disturbing news. Our environment isn’t static. It alters throughout our day. It’s a moving target, easy to miss. If we think about our environment at all, we probably regard it as an expansive macrosphere that is defined by the major influences on our behavior—our family, our job, our schooling, our friends and colleagues, the neighborhood we live in, the physical space we work in. It’s like a borderless nation-state bearing our name that reminds us who we are but has no influence on our decisions or actions. If only that were true. The environment that I’m most concerned with is actually smaller, more particular than that. It’s situational, and it’s a hyperactive shape-shifter. Every time we enter a new situation, with its mutating who-what-when-where-and-why specifics, we are surrendering ourselves to a new environment—and putting our goals, our plans, our behavioral integrity at risk. It’s a simple dynamic: a changing environment changes us. The mother who, in the environment of her home, leisurely makes breakfast for herself and her kids before sending them off to school and transporting herself to work is not the same person who, immediately upon arriving at the office, walks into a major budget meeting headed by her company’s founder. There’s no way she could be. At home she is more or less chief of her domain—and exhibits the behavior of an ultraresponsible leader, caring for her family, expecting obedience, assuming respect. It’s a different environment at the office. She may still be the same confident and competent person she was at home. But, wittingly or not, she fine-tunes her behavior in the meeting. She’s deferential to authority. She pays close attention to the statements and body language of her colleagues. And so it goes through her workday, from situation to situation. As the environment changes, so does she. There’s nothing inauthentic about the woman’s behavior. It’s a necessary survival strategy in a professional environment, especially if you’re no longer in total command of your situation. It wouldn’t be any different if this same woman were the head of the company. Leaders alter their behavior to suit the environment, too. The head of a major construction firm once told me that as an active defense contractor, with differing levels of security clearances for different government contracts, she had to be incredibly scrupulous about the information she shared across parts of her company. She was required by the federal government to compartmentalize what she said. She could share sensitive information over here but not over there, and vice versa. As a result, she was hyperalert to the link between her environment and behavior (failure to do so could not only hurt her company but land her in prison). As an exercise, I asked her to track her environment and how many behavioral personas she adopted as she went through a typical day. Nine, she reported back. She behaved like a CEO among her office staff, a public speaker at a PR event, an engineer among her design wizards, a salesman with a potential customer, a diplomat with a visiting trade group, and so on. Few of us are legally mandated to be so aware. This situational aspect of our environment is what I’ve been working on with my one-on-one coaching clients. It’s not that these very smart executives don’t know that circumstances change from moment to moment as they go through their day. They know. But at the level these people operate in—where nine out of ten times they are the most powerful person in the room—they can easily start believing they’re immune to the environment’s ill will. In a frenzy of delusion, they actually believe they control their environment, not the other way around. Given all the deference and fawning these C-level executives experience throughout the day, such misguided belief is understandable. Not acceptable, but understandable. For example, in 2008 I was hired to coach an executive named Nadeem in London. A Pakistani by birth, Nadeem had emigrated to the United Kingdom as a child, graduated from the London School of Economics, and had risen to one of the top five positions at a leading consumer goods company. Nadeem had all the virtues of a rising star being groomed for CEO. He was smart, personable, hardworking, respected (even “loved”) by his direct reports. But some chinks in his nice guy reputation had appeared. I was asked by the CEO to smooth them out. We all know people who get on our nerves and induce us to behave badly. Around such people, we’re edgy, nasty, combative, rude, and constantly apologizing for our uncharacteristic behavior—though we rarely attribute the cause of our errant behavior to such people. It was the same for Nadeem. When I interviewed his colleagues, a recurring theme came up. Nadeem was a great guy, but he lost his cool whenever he was in a public forum with Simon the chief marketing officer. I asked Nadeem what his issues were with Simon. “He is a racist,” he said. “Is that your opinion, or can you back it up with proof?” I asked. “My opinion,” he said. “But if I feel it, isn’t it a fact, too?” My feedback had said that Simon loved to bait Nadeem in meetings. It wasn’t racial. Simon was a self-entitled “toff,” a product of Britain’s privileged class and elite schools. He had a penchant for pomposity and biting remarks. The sarcasmwas his way of reminding people of his background, elevating himself while diminishing others. He wasn’t a fun guy to be with, but he was not a bigot. Nadeem overreacted to Simon. When Simon challenged him in a meeting, Nadeem felt that, given the decades of racial resentment and tension between Brits and Pakistanis, he couldn’t be seen as backing down. “If I take his crap, it makes me look weak,” said Nadeem. So he fought back. In Nadeem’s mind it was a racial issue, but he was the only one who interpreted it that way. Nadeem’s colleagues saw him as a vocal proponent of teamwork who wasn’t modeling what he was preaching. It was branding Nadeem as a phony. My task was to make Nadeem see that • his behavior wasn’t serving him well; • it was isolated to the time he spent in Simon’s presence; • it was triggered whenever Simon challenged him, and • he had to change because he couldn’t count on Simon to change. The big insight for Nadeem was that his behavior was situational, triggered solely by Simon. Every time Nadeem found himself in the “Simon environment” (that’s what he named it), he would go on high alert. It was a new level of mindfulness for him—and a critical (though not the only) factor in his swift change for the better. We’ll come back to Nadeem in Chapter 20 to learn precisely how he changed his behavior and, in turn, won back the respect of his colleagues and his nemesis, Simon. It’s an uplifting story with a shocking admission from Nadeem—and (spoiler alert) it neatly encapsulates the most important benefit of adult behavioral change. But for now let’s absorb and wallow in Nadeem’s hard-won appreciation that our environment is a relentless triggering machine. If we do not create and control our environment, our environment creates and controls us. And the result turns us into someone we do not recognize.   * I’ve since learned that David Letterman lowered his Late Show studio temperature to a chilly 55 degrees before going onstage. He experimented with room temperatures in the 1980s and discovered that his jokes worked best at 55 degrees, which makes the sound crisper and the audience more alert.

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