theromaboo · 2 years ago
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Beginner Latin class in Canada is the funniest thing ever and it is mostly French's fault. I had to learn Latin in sixth grade, and it was hilarious. I have vivid memories of it.
For one, everyone in my class knew at least some French, and how to pronounce French. Latin is not pronounced anything like French, but Latin really reminded us of French.
SO WE ALL PRONOUNCED IT AS IF IT WAS FRENCH.
My teacher had to explain for like ten minutes how to pronounce "est".
It went like this:
Him: "In Latin, you pronounce every letter."
Us: "yeah yeah we understand"
Him: "So what does this word sound like?" *writes down "est"*
Us: ÈÈÈÈÈÈÈÈ
Him: *shrieks*
That's not all. Because it was a Catholic school, he had to teach us like a million prayers in Latin. (Classical pronunciation for some reason #praying to God all catholicly in the way Cicero would've pronounced it)
He put the St. Michael the Archangel prayer up on the smart board, and we had to read it aloud. We were doing fine, until we reached this dreaded word: "tuque".
The word tuque was a part of our daily lives. It was pronounced "took" (oo as in food) and that's what we called winter hats.
So when we came across that word, our first response was to pronounce it in the way we always did.
The moment, transcribed as I remember it:
"Uh, soup... pleeses. No, supplices. Uh, supplices depree- argh! Deprecamur. Yes. Supplices deprecamur... TOOOOK" *the sound of "TOOOOK" echoes through the air as we look at each other in shame*
My teacher: "???? WHO SAID TOOOOK??"
That's not all. We also had to use the Oxford Latin course, I think. I think that because the pictures were WHACK.
My teacher said "oh, the drawings are a little funny looking. Just ignore them."
But that did not prepare us for THIS
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The entire class roasted our boi Quintus a whole lot.
"Why is his head all misshapen like that?"
"What is he smiling at?"
"Why do his shorts have three leg holes?"
Ahh, good times.
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samwhump · 29 days ago
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happy wincest wednesday!!!! 🥳 supernatural canon is incredibly undecided on this matter, so i want to know YOUR headcanons for what language(s) sam and dean have studied! do you think they have overlap anywhere, or would they divide and conquer? 🤔 i think about this so often, so i want to know other people's opinions too :)
(@incesthemes)
oh this is SUCH a fun question; thank you for thinking of me!!! and I'm sorry I didn't get around to answering last week; it's been a wild few weeks IRL.
I definitely think that both Sam and Dean have a passing familiarity with the languages that canonically would be useful in hunting, for whatever reason - Latin for spells, Sumerian and maybe Akkadian and old Aramaic for mythology stuff. idk why, but I envision Dean as picking up pronunciation/speaking/vocab skills pretty easily, whereas Sam gets more interested in the more rigid rules/structure of the languages themselves and learns any different alphabet(s) for writing that he can.
one specific headcanon I am obsessed with is the idea of Sam becoming fluent in Enochian during his time in the Cage, because Lucifer and Michael would go long periods speaking nothing else. I can't remember which fic it's from (I think I have maybe seen it in more than one?) but I really really enjoy the concept that there is some kind of split between "Old Enochian" and "New Enochian" and that Sam would have picked up on Old Enochian because that's what Lucifer would have known (having been locked in the Cage while the language was developing over the centuries). when he gets out, he tries to use his Enochian fluency to help with one case or another (talk to an angel, idk, my headcanons are only as fleshed out as I want them to be ohKAYY) and realizes that what he's grown so familiar and accustomed to is actually something that pretty much just links...him and Lucifer, and no one else. (and Michael, but Michael probably can also speak New Enochian if prompted). PRETTY FUN AND FUCKED UP HUH. yes. I love.
on a less serious note, I personally chose to believe that Sam went through an anime phase as a teenager (on that Sailor Moon, Gundam, Ranma 1/2, late '90s shit - iykyk) and picked up on some conversational Japanese, because he was definitely a "down with dubs/subs or bust" kinda elitist guy. probably also taught himself katakana/hiragana and some basic kanji (did he maybe get a kanji tramp stamp while wasted as a freshman at Stanford that he refuses to acknowledge to this day? perhaps.)
I think Dean probably took the bare minimum (probably a year, added up across schools) of Spanish to fulfill any foreign language requirements in high school, and despite pretending to hate it and skipping class most of the time, he actually picked up on it very quickly and still remembers way more than he lets on.
tbh, I could probably think on this some more, but these are just the first thoughts to come to mind! I hope this made some level of sense lol my brain is hella fried. thank you so much for the question!!!!!! (and everything you do for WW!)
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twinklsoriano · 1 month ago
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To the young Twinkle,
Do not worry, for this is not the end of your journey. Despite the challenges life has thrown your way, you stand resilient. Bounce back with even greater strength this time, knowing there are still people behind you, cheering, and believing in your potential. Though others may tower over you, stand tall and shine even brighter than before.
I grew up without the luxury of instant gratification. My parents instilled in me the importance of education, and values of hard work, and perseverance. Life was undeniably tough back then.  Regardless, I was an outgoing and well-liked child. I used to dance, play, dress like a princess. People around me seemed to like me just because I am good at dancing.
At the age of 8, I faced the distressing experience of being chased by my male classmates on my way home. They would steal kisses from me and constantly threaten that if I didn't let them walk home with me, they would hang me from a tree. With both of my parents working tirelessly day and night, they couldn't always accompany us to school. This left me to navigate the journey alone. I told my father what was happening, and he taught me how to protect myself. He showed me how to use my long umbrella to keep the boys away and told me to hit them if they got too close. One day, I had to use it for real. I hit one of the boys on the head and ran away, crying, as fast as I could to get away from them. Upon reaching our doorstep, I remember hastily wiping away my tears, not wanting my mom to see me crying. School wasn't fun for me. My classmates had their own friends, but I was always alone, not knowing how to join them.
At the age of 10, my world shattered when my father passed away from a heart attack. It was our darkest hour. I didn't witness his death firsthand; instead, on my way home, I noticed neighbors looking at me strangely, though I didn't understand why at the time. When I arrived home, the house was enveloped in darkness, everything seemingly shut down. Upstairs, I found my siblings quietly crying. It wasn't until the arrival of the casket that the reality of our loss hit me.
Months after my father's passing, life took on a new rhythm. I watched my mom hustle tirelessly, taking on multiple jobs to support the six of us. From teaching college students in the morning to tutoring after class, she then shifted to online teaching late into the night.
Meanwhile, as I entered junior high school, I felt hopeful for a fresh start. I was accepted into the Journalism special program, an elite section at the time. Initially, everything seemed fine—I had a few friends. However, things took a turn when dominant circles of friends began to emerge in the class. They were smart, fast learners, financially stable, and possessed all the qualities needed to excel as budding journalists. I couldn't help but feel envious of their intelligence and abilities. I desperately wanted to belong and be smart enough to fit in, but I felt like I fell short. The pressure to maintain good grades was overwhelming. I watched as some of my friends were removed from the curriculum, transferred to regular sections, and I feared I might be next. 
I struggled with my studies, so I turned to extracurricular activities like dance sport and radio broadcasting. Falling in love with dance sport, I put in my best effort and was chosen to dance 5 latin and 5 standard dances in the Batang Pinoy Luzon Leg Dance Sport Competition. Securing sixth place in the standard category against competitors from across Luzon was one of my proudest moments. After I won, I felt seen and heard in a way. It wasn't just about the praise or acknowledgment; it was about the genuine connection and validation that came with it. It affirmed that my efforts mattered, that my presence was enough, and that I was worthy of something.
Next, I tried radio broadcasting. Initially a substitute, then I got my chance to compete when another broadcaster fell ill. Though I didn't perform as well as I'd hoped, I persisted. Every Saturday, I attended free training sessions at school, walking back and forth to school. I do not have any decent clothes and shoes, so I wore my mother's clothes and shoes that were obviously too big on me. Every time I arrived at school, the dominant circle of friends in my section would stare at me down from head to toe and laugh at me. I endured all the side eyes and laughter from my peers. As a teenager, their laughter hurt deeply, leaving me feeling discouraged and low. Despite pouring my heart and soul into radio broadcasting, I still felt I was rejected and failed. 
This time, I struggled to participate in class and socialize. I lost interest in studying and often skipped class. In class, I felt left out and ignored. My grades dropped, and my adviser told my mom I was just being lazy. I found myself among the three students in my curriculum who didn't make it onto the honor roll in Grade 10. I began to doubt myself, feeling incapable and unintelligent. I believed I had given my all, but it was disheartening to think that maybe I just wasn't good enough, destined to be mediocre. 
With this weight on my shoulders, another blow hit hard. In the final months of Grade 10, I learned that my only friend in that section had spread a hurtful lie about me to our classmates. The betrayal left me shattered and alone, burdened with a pain I didn't know how to bear. This was also the time when my mom had to leave for the United States to work. I felt utterly alone, with no one by my side to lean on. I had to bear the weight of all my problems by myself, processing everything alone. 
One day, I locked myself away for weeks. Even if I tried to eat, I would always vomit everything. I found satisfaction in cutting my hair, pulling out my hair from roots, leaving bald spots.
Transferring to Sacred Heart College for senior high school was a chance for a fresh start, influenced by my mother and sister who were alumni. With my mom finding success at her job in the United States, we were finally able to leave our small space behind.
Personally, I was thrilled to have the freedom to treat myself occasionally with the pocket money I had saved up. It was a taste of a better life, one we had longed for. However, money can't buy happiness indeed. Despite the improvements in our living situation, I continued to struggle emotionally. However, I kept this hidden as I started senior high school, taking advantage of the fact that no one knew me. Although I made new friends, there were still people who said hurtful things. Three girls from my section began to spread hateful words about me, causing me to feel increasingly isolated and disliked. I felt like I was battling demons inside my head, experiencing a whirlwind of emotions including sadness, guilt, anger, resentment, and bitterness. Despite this, I kept up a facade of normalcy, interacting with others as if everything was fine. Out of fear, I kept my feelings hidden from my loved ones, convinced that I couldn't share the messiness of my mind. I was afraid of needing help, afraid of rejection or being perceived as weak or crazy. 
On the bright side, I met people who believed in me wholeheartedly. They welcomed me into TV Broadcasting as a news reporter, where I finally felt a sense of belonging. Despite my self-doubt during training, I found myself surrounded by kind-hearted individuals who supported and encouraged me every step of the way.  Thanks to their support, I achieved remarkable success. I won multiple awards, including being named the 1st Best News Reporter and 1st Best Scriptwriter at the District level, 1st Best Scriptwriter at the Regional level, and 6th Best Scriptwriter in TV Broadcasting at the National level. Their belief in me helped me thrive. 
With these experiences, I realized that It was a journey of self-discovery and resilience, as I navigated through the challenges and setbacks that life threw my way. In the solitude of my retreat from the world, I found solace in the embrace of my family. They became my pillars of strength, offering unwavering support and understanding during my darkest moments. 
Despite the challenges that had weighed me down in the past, I refused to be defined by my struggles. Instead, I embraced the opportunity for growth and transformation. As the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months, I felt myself growing stronger, both mentally and emotionally. I emerged from my self-imposed exile with a newfound sense of clarity and purpose. No longer held back by self-doubt or fear, I was ready to take control of my narrative and reclaim my place in the world.
Just like the stars that twinkle in the night sky, I knew that my light would shine brightly once again. With unwavering resolve, I set out to conquer my dreams and illuminate the path ahead with hope and possibility.
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saint-starflicker · 10 months ago
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This transcript begins at 00:04:05 because that is when the English begins, regretfully this transcript writer is not fluent enough in Spanish to transcribe the entire video.
Hi How are you?
I’m good. How are you?
Very good. I’m very excited to be here chatting with you about Fraternity that is just out in the Spanish market.
Yes! Thank you for having me. I’m so excited.
We’re very excited too. Andy, the first question for those who do not know you yet: What can you tell us about Fraternity? How did you come up with the idea for this book?
Yeah so Fraternity is a young adult thriller. It is set in 1991 in eastern America, in the United States, in Massachusetts, and it’s a story about a group of boys at a boarding school who find each other because they kind of don’t have anything in common except for one thing, which is that they’re all queer. And at the time, this is something they need to keep secret for their safety and so they form a secret club in the school and start having these parties every once in a while so they can all sort of be themselves around each other. One day, one of them needs to change a grade because he’s failing gym class like so many of us did if you grew up queer, and they sneak into the headmaster’s office to change the grade so they find the big black book that they think is the gradebook, open it, and it’s something else. And this takes the story into the realm of the occult and the supernatural and things really go to places they never thought possible. And I wrote the book because I was just at a place in my life where I felt really ready to look back on my experiences of growing up queer, my queer boyhood, in a time when things weren’t as accepted, things weren’t as good, because I’m looking around now as an adult and seeing things kind of unfortunately moving backward. You know, more and more anti-queer legislation in my country, public opinion really shifting and this culture war going on and so umm I wanted to sort of process some of my own experiences and experiences of my friends growing up to kind of make a sort of lessons in survival for a new generation. To impart some of the things that kept me safe and kept me motivated to keep living my life and being myself. But I wanted to put that in the frame of a story that I would’ve wanted to read as a young reader so, a story that is twisty and occult and scary and funny and exciting. A book that I would’ve wanted as much as a book that I would’ve needed.
I feel like we are going to a very good moment in publishing because there is a lot of representation and space for these kinds of books.
Yes.
That, for me, I mean, they are vital for all the teenagers around the world and also for adults because at least in the Spanish market and also Latin America both young readers and adults read YA fiction, you know? There is no clear line dividing YA and adult fiction so I mean I feel like this is a very important book. And then this leads to my next question. The book is set in the 90s, I mean in the AIDS crisis. Why did you choose that historical moment to include in the novel?
Yeah. So, as I mentioned I grew up in a time that was not quite as friendly to queer people but I’m not quite that old. I had my boyhood about ten years later, in like the early 2000s but when I was thinking about writing this story, I thought, oh, if I just pitch it back a little bit it can still feel like the time that I grew up but I can also include some really important pieces of queer history, specifically around the AIDS crisis, the politics of that time, and because I feel like as huge a moment as that was it’s still not really taught to the degree that I think it should be and I think a lot of young queer people are moving through the world potentially unaware of that period of time and how it’s still affecting everything. That, the people who are making our laws and who are shaping the stories around queer people were there then, remember that and that has colored a lot of their attitudes around queer people. That, you know…so even if you were born decades after the crisis, it is still affecting you and you might not even know it. So I wanted to include that in the story for young adult readers.
All right. That’s very interesting, and I feel like it also makes the difference from other YA novels, you know? To give some context for younger people about that moment in history. So that is great. And then, how did you turn out to be a writer? You’re also an actor, I mean, tell me about this phase of writing books.
Yes. So, I’ve always written. Ever since I was a little kid I was always writing stories, writing plays, and in fact so I went to school for theater because I got into a nice school and they gave me a scholarship and so it seemed like the right thing to do. But even while I was in school I wasn’t totally convinced that I was going to stick with it and all of my other classes that weren’t my core theater classes were in creative writing, in argumentative writing, in poetry, you know, I was trying to find what I liked to write and how I liked to write and gain skills in writing at the same time that I was pursuing this theater education. I ended up leaving school because I got a job in a touring cast of a Broadway show and so that sort of set me on this path and I was really focused there for a while, but then maybe like five or six years ago now or longer, I was missing the writing side of things and I was feeling ready to share that part of myself so I wrote a musical which got programmed at this theater called the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge Massachusetts near Boston and that was sort of my first public thing that I’d written. Around the same time, I met Maggie Lehrman who is my editor on Fraternity and all of my books, socially and we got to talking and I shared some ideas and I actually shared with her a kind of script that was trying Fraternity in like another form, so, those were sample pages that I had. That led to me writing The Backstagers which was my middle grade series based on a series of comic books. So I did three of those and when that kind of wrapped up, she reminded me, she was like, “Hey you had that idea, Fraternity, would you ever think about that” and I said oh yeah I gotta get around to that…and then of course the pandemic happened and I had a lot of time and I was not acting. No one was acting. And so I finally said, okay, it’s time. And I sat down and wrote it.
Which was the most challenging part of writing this book that, for all the people joining, Fraternity, is the book which was published by Andy and is out in the Spanish market and also is coming out very soon in Latin America. So which was the hardest part or most challenging of writing the book?
I think the most challenging part about writing the book was that there was a lot that I wanted to include because to me when I think about queerness and queer boyhood it encompasses so much and I thought it’s all part of it, like, the politics, the magic, the crisis, the friendships, the movies they’re seeing, the music they’re listening to… I couldn’t leave any of it out. It would’ve been something else. It would’ve been a different book. And so, being really deliberate about like the structure of the book and where it was going to sort of tackle each thing, each kind of social moment, where it could be funny, where it could be sad, where it would be scary, and making that all kind of feel organic and that it makes sense and that it all does fit in the same book. There’s a lot of shifting things around. Being like, we’ve been in this…It’s been a horror story for too long, it needs to be a friendship story again for a little while, it’s been a friendship story for too long, it needs to become a political story for a little while. You know, making sure that journey was smooth and that everything kind of fit into the next thing. Also I spent a lot of time with the actual calendar. I ordered a vintage calendar of 1991 and 1992 because there are real events in the book that needed to happen on specific days. Also it’s kind of tracking the students through a school year so I was like, where are their breaks, when would they go home, when would they be at school, what does their school schedule look like…So there was a lot of plotting out really deliberately like what day every single scene of the book is happening during and making sure that was consistent. That was really hard, kind of busywork.
OK. I will check some of the questions that we have here before I move on. Someone here is asking if there will be a sequel of Fraternity at some point?
I don’t know. I think there is a lot more story to tell, I love these characters, and I have envisioned a lot more of what could happen with them. I also think it stands alone quite nicely as a complete thing. So, you know, if people are begging for it I would love to do it but also I’m very proud of it as is.
OK. And here someone is asking: What went into the decision to make it a novel instead of a play?
Great question. The scale of the story that I wanted to tell. They go to multiple cities, there’s quite a strong supernatural element, there’s literally a demon, we go to other realms, there’s a presidential election. I mean, it’s a big story on a big scale. It just seemed kind of like a story that could only be in a novel form. And then as I really started to explore it in a novel, I got so excited writing in the POV’s of the three main characters, getting to really be in their heads in a way you can kind of only do in a novel. If it was a script, if it was a play or a movie or something the actor would know those secrets and you try to sort of try to have them come through in the emotion and what’s going on inside of yourself but to be able to actually tell the readers these boys’ thoughts was really exciting. I like that about books.
OK, one more question here. Fran wants to know which one of your artistic phases do you enjoy the most. This is tricky.
Yeah it is tricky! You know, I always miss the one that I’m not doing. So I’ve been really lucky to bounce from thing to thing and do lots of different things. I think they all kind of feed each other. I think I’m a better actor because I write, I’m a better writer because I act. My husband is a director and getting to work alongside him and see what his work is all about informs everything I’m doing and so…yeah. I haven’t been writing so much lately because I’ve been busy. I actually just opened a musical last night in Chicago where I am right now. And so, of course, now that I’m acting really full time doing eight shows a week I’m like thinking about what stories I want to sit down and work on. So I really can’t answer, because they all are related.
How did you find it in the fact of publishing? Because you are an exposed person, because you’re an actor and everything, but having written a book and having the book out in the world in different languages. How is the feeling of having people around the world reading something you wrote in English? How is the feeling and the pressure or joy of having come and having some people reaching you out?
That’s a great question. It’s OK. It’s good. The book is very personal to me. I’m kind of all over it, even though it’s about these different characters they’re all me a little bit in some way and a lot of these things are very personal to me. So it’s very vulnerable, and it’s vulnerable to share anything you’ve created, especially from thin air. Backstagers was a different experience because I was kind of taking this story that already existed and then continuing it. But this was just all from my little brain. So that’s vulnerable, but at the same time I’m quite used to being, umm, sharing myself as an actor. I put myself out there all the time and when people don’t like your performance of something, it’s literally you. It’s literally my body, my voice, my face, whatever, which…it’s a little easier to put up a collection of words, a story out to the world and people either get it or they don’t and it’s at least not me? When people don’t get it… Luckily I’ve been really blown away by the reception. The people that get it really get it, and I’m really so moved by that. But if they don’t, I just get back and say well, I wrote the book I wanted to write, I knew exactly what I wanted to do and I really feel like this is it and I don’t really have any regrets about what it is. Not every book is going to be for everybody. It’s subjective. People will respond to things differently. But at least if they ever don’t like it, it’s not literally me, so it’s easier than when you’re acting. (Laughs.) Yeah.
(Laughs.) Who are your influences in terms of literature? It can be either authors or books that mark you as a reader actually?
Yeah, great question. Gosh. I mean, I grew up loving Salinger, which is there’s a strong influence in Fraternity with, I mean, they’re all a little bit Holden Caulfield-y but then Zooey is named after Zooey Glass in Franny and Zooey. Lately I’ve been loving John Darnielle’s books he put out a book maybe two years ago Devil House that I love the way he plays with form, his books are so surprising. He’s kind of never doing what you think he’s doing. You think you know where the story’s going and then it goes somewhere totally different. I’ve always loved him. Oh, gosh, I’m on the spot. Who else do I know? Those are two major influences, for sure.
OK perfect. Here, we are getting a lot of comments. People saying that they really connected with the book, that the book helped someone to help set their identity as a queer teenaged guy so thank you so much, many emotional comments that it’s all so—
Good. Great!
—the power of the globe here reaching people and changing lives. So, I feel like this is the power of literature at some point. You know?
Right. And so I can’t believe it’s going to be translated and going to be available to so many more people around the world. Thanks for having me today in English. Thanks for tuning in. I wish I could speak to all of you directly in Spanish. Thanks for putting up with my English.
OK and now this is one of my silly questions that I love making to the authors. If you need to choose one of your characters to be your best friend, another one to be your lover, and another one to marry you, who would you choose for each situation?
Oh, easy. This is easy. Leo would be my best friend because he is hilarious because he can pick locks which I’m sure will come in handy and just is like a resourceful and good, good, good friend. My lover would be Daniel because he’s the star athlete. He’s very hot and everyone knows that. He’s also just a really nice guy. He has a dreamy smile, I think. And then I would marry Zooey because I think he’s the most like myself and so I think we would just be a good partnership. We would be good for each other.
Perfect. That’s fun. Basically, you enjoy in general horror books, movies, anything related to the occult and dark stuff?
Yes. Yes, in researching to sort of create the magic in the book I really wanted it to feel different than a lot of what I’ve read in other YA especially where it’s not like Harry Potter or something where they’re pointing a wand and beams of visible light are flying around and someone turns into a unicorn right away or something like that. I wanted it to feel like the actual witchcraft and occultism that really exists in the world in kind of every culture where they perform a ritual with actual stuff that they have to grind up and put on and it’s magic that they’re touching and then a couple days later something happens that could be explained away as a coincidence but they know because they did the spell that they did something. And so I did a lot of research into occultism, occult practices, witchcraft, I got a little hands-on with it, I got really into it for a while and that was really fun and fascinating but I always loved horror stories growing up I always loved Goosebumps when I was a little kid and then as I got older I was reading Stephen King. I’ve always been drawn towards the other side. I don’t know why.
My last question is: Are you working in something in terms of books? Do you have any idea for something to write in the near future?
Yes. I am slowly, gently working on another book that is not paranormal at all. If Fraternity was kind of my way of looking at my boyhood through the lens of all these different people kind of exploding it into a big story, I’m working on something that’s kind of exploring my young adulthood where as I said I left school to start working on a big show and that was quite a tumultuous crazy experience to be kind of shoved into that world at quite a young age and in the wake of a loss, my father had died a couple of months before I went out on tour and so kind of very fictionalized version of that kind of thing, a story about a young person that is kind of thrown into a theatrical spotlight and sort of not in a way I’ve seen before where it’s kind of looking at the less glittery aspects. You think Broadway, the bright lights of Broadway, you think everything’s great but it’s actually there’s some darkness there too. So it’s about that and we’ll see if we ever finish it.
I hope you do I mean, we are going to be waiting to read it. Andy, thanks a lot for joining us this afternoon, night, depending on where you are. It has been great to talk to you and I hope you have a very good end of the year.
Thank you very much. Thanks so much for having me. I hope everyone checks out the book and enjoys it.
OK bye, take care.
Bye. Thank you, thank you thank you.
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fallingfor-fics · 4 years ago
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Teachers Pet-chapter 16: everything’s fine
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chapter 15
I had just got done in Transfiguration and was headed to Snape's class for our lessons, yawning as I walked down the hallways passing all the students headed to lunch. I was dreadfully tired, I had only gotten 4 hours of sleep and was barely making it through the day. The only things on my mind being sleep and Severus. The conversation we had last night still burned in my mind. Thinking over and over again about him giving me his robes, talking to me, and giving me advice.
 It was such a special moment to me, and now I had to see him after all that and my feelings for him having grown. I didn't think it was possible to fall harder for someone practically overnight, but now I was sure I more than fancied him, It was definitely a whole crush now. A silly schoolgirl crush I should remind myself. I continued to the dungeons and waited for the last few kids to shuffle out of his room. It didn't take them long, kids seemed to hurry out of there as if they were being chased by a dementor or something. I knocked on the open door signaling my presence as I walked in. "Good afternoon Professor." I said smiling and walking over to his desk. He hummed a response and was writing something in a book. After about three minutes of silence he looked up at me, I had taken my seat now and was using my wand to mess around and levitate some of my books to pass the time, I smiled and then looked over and saw he was staring at me with a stern face and they all fell from the air onto my table. "Heh oops" I said, wincing and shrugging my shoulders. "Have you come to play around Ms. L/n or are you here to learn?" he questioned with his usual student voice. "I've come to learn, and it's Y/n!" I said flashing a sarcastic smile, to which he responded with a scowl.
   "For this lesson I'm gonna have you do some chores for me, I need to work and we can study in our evening classes." he said turning back to his book. I frowned realizing we weren't gonna be talking much and got up lazily walking over to him. "Ok, what'll it be? Cauldron cleaning? Potion organizing?" I said in a sarcastic but somewhat respectful tone. "Make yourself busy, I don't have time to look over what needs to be done." He responded as he continued to scribble in his book. I looked at it trying to see what it was, "What ya got there? Is it your diary?" I teased crossing my arms. He looked up at me with an unamused look, "Make. Yourself. Busy." he said sternly. I guess he wasn't in a fun mood today, and he was back to normal ol' Severus. A thought crossed my mind, what if he was being like this because of our conversation last night? And that's why he didn't want to talk to me. I fiddled with my fingers not walking away yet as I continued to ponder on the thought, I felt his eyes on me and I met mine with his. "Can I help you Ms. L/n?" he said clearly not wanting to deal with my antics. "Did I do something wrong? Is it because of last night?" I spat out internally slapping myself for letting my thoughts slip out. He stiffened a bit and his face flashed with an emotion I couldn't put my tongue on, and it was gone before I could guess. "I assure you Ms. L/n it doesn't concern you." I looked at him and he went back to writing, that was bullshit, it may not be about last night, but he definitely has some sort of issue with me. I walked away and walked around the room looking for stuff that needed to be done. There were a few dirty cauldrons so I scrubbed those, his storage closet was still organized from when I had last arranged it, and everything else looked clean enough.
   Hmm, make myself busy he says, I looked over to one of the bookshelves and noticed it was all out of whack, every book had a place, but they were not in any pattern. I figured I could sort them into alphabetical order and began doing so, he had many bookshelves so I figured it wouldn't hurt to just use magic to sort them. I began on the farthest shelf and thirty minutes later I was on the second to last one. Books floating in the air as I found proper places for each of them. I lifted one and noticed its beautiful exterior, it was a rose color and had an anatomical heart on the cover, it was labeled "Amor Promerendae." It was Latin I knew that much, but I didn't remember much Latin, my father had made my sister and I learn at least three languages, but I haven't practiced my Latin in years and I had given up on it,  I looked over at Severus and he wasn't paying me any attention. "Amor" I whispered to myself, well that was obviously love. Any one would guess that, I looked back at Severus and he was still glued to his writing. I walked over to his other shelves trying to find any sort of language dictionary but only found ones for Greek and French. "Sir?" I said looking over at him. "What Ms. L/n?" he said annoyed, "Do you happen to know what the Latin word P-prom-eren-dae? Means" I said, struggling to say it correctly. He looked up for a moment to think, "Earning, I believe" He said going back to work. I thanked him and looked at the book again. "Earning love" I whispered as I opened the book up. As I opened it a flower fell from its pages and to the floor, my eyes went wide and I quickly picked it up and turned my back to Severus to hide my finding. The flower looked like it had been in here for decades maybe. I began to flip through but just as I presumed it was all in Latin. I grabbed my wand off the shelf I had left it on and put it to the pages, I muttered a Translation spell they had taught me at Beauxbatons and the pages quickly turned to English. I flipped through the pages to make sure it worked and stopped when I saw handwriting in the margins of some of the pages. I was very scribbly and barely legible, but some phrases and sentences where underlined and circled, one note read, "failed" hmm strange I looked to the phrase it was written next to "This above all: to thine self be true" Whoever wrote in this must have been having a tough time they were unable to succeed in self love when they were in the process of earning someone else's.
Soon the bell rang starting me and I quickly used magic to put the books on the shelf and looked at Severus, he had gotten up and was writing lessons on the board. I looked at the book and used a shrinking spell and put it in my bra. Quickly walking to the front of the room and grabbing my bag and robes, "Thanks Professor see you in a bit!" I said quickly rushing out of his room not waiting for a response. I rushed to my dormitory and hid the book on the underside of Hera's cage. She stared at me as I did so, "Don't give me that look!" I said rushing back out and heading to DADA.I got in the class as soon as the bell rang and quickly sat down. Things with Harry and I were back to normal and it wasn't awkward any longer. "Good evening class! Today we will be doing something extra fun, so if you will all push the tables to the edges of the room and line up on each side of the room." I stood next to Harry and Ron stood across from us as everyone lined up. "Ok now whoever is across from you will be your partner. I shot a look to Harry and Ron, "No I call r-" I began but was cut off by the hideous professor, "Ahh Y/n I see you are the odd ball out once more I guess that leaves me to be your partner" he said smirking and walking to stand across from me. I shot Harry and look, and he just stifled a laugh.  "Today we will practice the rather simple shielding spell that we studied yesterday. Its incantation is simple, does anyone remember what it is?" "Protego!" one girl said batting her eyes at him. "Yes, very good! Now you will take turns casting light and non harmful spells at one another and using Protego to block them, it's important to be careful and take your time, we don't want to have any incidents." he said looking at me to which I just gave him a sarcastic grin as I folded my arms over my chest.
"Now spread out and begin whenever you are ready" murmurs between students filled the room as they talked with their partners and began practicing. I looked at Lockhart and he stood smiling at me. He raised his wand and I raised mine as well. "You first" he said and I shot him a smirk to which he dropped his smile for a second "Aqua Eructo" I said and water began to spur from the tip of my wand, it shot in his direction, but he thought fast and deflected it with the protection spell. He smiled tensely at me as I gave him a look, hoping he'd catch on, I wasn't going to mess around if he insisted on continuing to single me out. "Good" he said regain his composure, "My turn" he said we raised our wands and I prepared myself. "Vermillious!" he shouted, and red sparks shot from his wand, "Protego!" I said and successfully blocked them. How dare her, that was most certainly not a non harmful spell! It was considered a light dueling spell for that matter! We continued on for the next hour of class.
   The bell rang and this time I hung back as everyone left to confront Lockhart. "What did you think you were doing?" I said as he sat and leaned back into his chair smiling, "That was not an unharmful spell! If I had not blocked it I could have lost an eye!" I said, raising my voice. I had had it with this man. "Oh please Y/n I knew you could block it no problem!" he said, shrugging. "Not when I'm caught off guard by a spell that's dangerous!" he looked at me with dark eyes and stood up, "Ok, here," he quickly raised his wand and my eyes went wide, not ready for what he was going to send my way, out of defense before he could say anything I raised my wand, "Expelliarmus!" I shouted before he could say anything and sent him flying back over his desk. I cupped my mouth realizing what I'd just done, not that it didn't feel amazing. He quickly got up and gave me a dark look. "Professor I didn't mean to, it was out of defense I swear!" I spat out walking over to him. He didn't take his eyes off mine and hovered over me, "Oh thats, quite alright, Y/n. Just be careful, you never know the consequences of your actions." He said in a calm deep tone, it was frightening. "Now you better go, you don't want to be late." He said never taking his eyes off me as I grabbed my things and quickly sped out, mumbling to myself "What on earth does that mean?"
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aceofpandas · 4 years ago
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What-if for Season 4
So at the end of season 3’s episode “Ladybug” we see that Adrien "asking” Lila to get Marinette back in school and what not. Words are spoken and wow just look at how they’re spoken:
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That line right there! Okay so I watched this episode in English and in [Latin American] Spanish and wow the way that line is spoken. Both voice actors really conveyed how Adrien would channel his anger. It’s not an emotion we really got to see in Adrien before but in both languages the barely contained anger is something I feel is in line with what we know about Adrien who controls and is conscious of his emotions. It got me thinking about how passive aggressive this boy really is and man oh man how I wish that it get’s worked into season 4. Passive aggressive Adrien Agreste vs. resident liar/manipulator Lila Rossi. Yaaaas sign me up.
Hopefully, this side of him is explored next season and we can finally give Adrien some rivals who can help us explore his character a little more. This ending suggests that Lila is completely in Adrien’s danger radar and he’ll be in Protect Marinette Mode (similar to his Protect Ladybug Mode). In fact, the scene pictured above aligns with his self-sacrificial tendencies that he has as Chat Noir. Lots of people have mentioned that agreeing to the photoshoot is him selling his soul,  but he also establishes that he won’t ever have a genuine friendship with Lila. Bring on the war!
I personally think that Adrien, who we know isn’t too confrontational, will take a subtle approach. And how can he do that? Well, he could channel his inner actor where he can certainly play the part of “friend” while simultaneously working to discredit Lila. 
Like you can not tell me that Adrien, who’s enrolled in a bunch of activities, was not enrolled in acting classes at some point in his homeschooled life. His mom was an actress, so it’s not like his parents would be against the idea of acting lessons. He was even the VA for his own superhero persona in canon’s LB+CN movie lmaoooo. Yes, he’s a model and very much loved by the people of Paris so perhaps being chosen for the role isn’t too surprising, but that also doesn’t mean he has no talent or training for it. Let’s be real, modeling could be the compromise to his parents wanting their son to follow in their footsteps. Modeling is the fashion from his dad and the art of perfecting his facial expressions from his mom.
And like even if acting lessons were never a thing, his mom was around in his life. We know basically nothing about the woman, so really we can speculate that she showed Adrien a thing or two about acting. Let’s say it was through her that Adrien learned to be expressive, to be not expressive, and to be anywhere in between. His mom could have taught him to roll with what life has to offer through ad libs and improv. Adrien we’ve seen to have a dramatic flair as both Adrien and Chat Noir, and he honestly controls his temper waaaay better than we give him credit. Sure he makes mistakes, but really he’s human and he does learn from them (now if only the writing could keep character development for its characters but yeeaaaah).
Here’s a scenario where Adrien can start his stop Lila campaign:
Adrien and Lila are interviewed about the recent shoot and you know questions roll around about how was it working with together, they’re classmates right, are the two dating, yada yada
Adrien answering and not even trying to let Lila get the first word in because the boy is on high alert and knows this girl will try to spin it in her favor
“Oh, it was surprising my father even thought of letting one of my classmates model with me. In fact, I didn’t even know Lila was interested in modeling. Still, it was interesting to work with someone new to the field.”
Which on the surface seems like an ordinary, polite response; appropriate of Adrien but it’s also everything Adrien needs to corner Lila. 
In all of three sentences Adrien says he played no part in making the photoshoot happen, effectively shuts down the possibility of dating Lila, and establishes to the public that Lila is nothing more than a classmate, one he doesn’t even know well.
Lila is annoyed but she’s not giving up because she’s under the impression that Adrien is far too agreeable and spineless therefore she writes him off as Not a Threat
Hahahaha jokes, Adrien plays on people underestimating him
“Well, I didn’t want you to think that I wanted to make it seem like I was using you because we’re friends and friends don’t do that.”
Or something along those lines I dunno
“That’s the great thing about our class everyone is so nice that we can all be friends. Lots of us are so creative and I love getting to know everyone. Nathaniel, Lila’s desk mate, is a great artist; sketching, painting, he’s your guy. He’s currently working on a superhero comic with Marc from the other class and I can’t wait for what else they come up with for the sequel. Ivan, who sits in front of Nathaniel, he’s a rockin’ drummer, and Rose, she’s another one of our classmates, killer voice and awesome lyrics. Her best friend, Juleka plays bass and I’ve actually modeled with her before. Nothing official, but since I know Juleka wants to be a model I honestly thought she was going to be the one I was modeling with for this shoot. Sure it wasn’t a huge shoot, but Juleka did such a great job. And the clothes we modeled were made by our everyday Ladybug, Marinette Dupain-Cheng. Marinette, she’s also our class rep by the way, is such a brilliant designer! Did you know that she actually won one of my father’s contests? Her hat was adored by Audrey Bourgeois AND she was offered the chance to move to New York. And you know…”
Basically, Adrien ends up spending the rest of the interview talking about how much he knows about his friends and “gee it’s such a shame I don’t really know much about you Lila.”
Read: you aren’t special, I have more friends, and I actually pay attention to them.
Bonus point: Alec is the one who interviews them and he picks up on Lila becoming more and more frustrated with Adrien. 
Pretty in character for him to poke the bear *cough* Stormy Weather *cough* so for him to let Adrien take the reins of the interview for the sake of drama isn’t that much of a stretch.
Alec: What about Lila? 
Adrien: I don’t know, I really don’t want to get anything wrong so she can answer
The next day, the interview is the only thing anyone can talk about 
Adrien’s classmates gushing about how sweet Adrien is because he literally showed them that he really cares about them. 
Adrien remembering all this information about all of them and hyping everyone up on TV!!
Friends know each other’s dreams and likes and dislikes and Adrien isn’t known to have lots of free time, but him making the effort to remember all that about each person is flattering to the class
Let Adrien show how much he appreciates and admires his friends pleeeeeeease
Lila can be in the background plotting how to paint Adrien in a bad light 
But uhhh the class is going full Protect This Precious Boy at this point so your plan has to be fool-proof Lila
Bonus point: the class is now more sus of Lila after the whole Marinette-got-expelled-and-then-unexpelled (which is still fresh in their minds). 
No one get’s an expulsion reversed unless they’re innocent 
And dude Lila was in the middle of that whole mess. 
Whatever Lila did shows she has the power to get any of them expelled. 
If the kids aren’t at least wary of Lila in season 4, then the writers really be tripping because too many red flags around Lila for people to just wave them off.
In other news, Marinette starts to trend after enough of Adrien’s fans connect the dots that she’s the same girl who they chased around that time she and Adrien went to the movies
If the majority of Parisians weren’t convinced they were dating back then, oh boy they at least ship it by this point hahahaha
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alpaca-writes · 3 years ago
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Mystics, Chapter 12
When Arch becomes hired on at Mystics by the strange shopkeeper Lyrem Nomadus, everything seems to be going well- in fact, their life nearly becomes perfection. Soon enough, however, Arch realizes that perhaps not everything is as perfect as it seems….
Directory: [chapter one] [chapter two] [chapter three] [chapter four] [chapter five] [chapter six] [chapter seven] [chapter eight] [chapter nine] [chapter ten] [chapter eleven]
Tag list: @myst-in-the-mirror, @livingforthewhump
CW: memory whump, psychological whump, noncon touching (nonsexual), swearing. torture mention, car accident mention
CHAPTER TWELVE: THE FUTURE IS UNCERTAIN
        Store meeting. 8pm tonight. –
        “And, send.” Lyrem muttered to himself, then sighed. He laid his elbow against the countertop, staring mindlessly at his phone and drank the last sip of his coffee before throwing it into the trash bin beside him. The shapeshifter was in the alley, waiting for their cue. All Lyrem needed now, was Arch. A slight flittering sound alerted him to a new text.
        Omw.
        Perfect. Everything was in motion. Everything was going to work out. Arch needed a little more push. Just a slight nudge to keep them interested in working for him. The farther they went, the harder it would be to return to innocence. He couldn’t allow them the chance to turn away. He needed to awaken their memories naturally. He needed them to be lost in their fury. He needed them to take that extra step- he needed them to kill. And who better to help them to do that than-
        The front door flew open in a rage. Lyrem was faced with a version of himself blazoning with passionate anger. His eyes were red, his face was pink. He looked as though…
        “What happened to you?” He asked himself. The other Lyrem wiped a stray unstoppable tear from his face.
        “Oh, you’ll fucking find out!” He shouted. He travelled through the store and directly entered the employee washroom. He remained in there for several minutes before emerging with his face rinsed but still tender. He announced to his other self, still in a fit. “I’m taking the SUV.”
        The present Lyrem raised a brow, then returned to staring at his texts. It wasn’t often that he dared cross himself within a time-stream.
        “Just don’t crash the damn thing.” He hollered, but his future self was already gone through the back.
        -----
        The Labyrinth.
        Arch had only ever heard of it.
        What they knew was simply that it was a place of emptiness. It was a place where nothing existed. A place where suffering, joy, life and death ceased to be. It was also a place that stole you from the world. A step into the depths of the Labyrinth and you’d be forgotten to all. Forgotten to the whole world- except for the very one who had tossed you in. Even on Earth, the Labyrinth would ensure you’d never exist there either- not even in a memory. It wasn’t like simple Latin blood magic. This was a loss to endure forever.
        Now, they saw it, and it was much less impressive than they expected. Lyrem had propped open the back door as Arch held onto the man’s body- or the person they were to assume was the man. But… Arch knew better than to believe everything they heard. They were reminded of the policeman, Grenn, and what he had said a week ago-
        “How does a guy walk away from a car crash with a Bowie stuck in his leg?”
        At the time, it wasn’t as important to know how the man got away, as much as it was important to find him. Lyrem seemed sure that they had found him, but Arch wasn’t so sure- especially not after they leaned into his right leg. There wasn’t anything remotely close to a reaction from him. The knife was buried at lease two inches into his leg, of that, Arch was certain; and no one could heal from that in a week. The Labyrinth wouldn’t be pleasant, certainly, but at least they weren’t about to kill an innocent man.
        “Well?” Lyrem touted, “What are you waiting for?”
        Arch looked up and down the empty alleyway. Usually, Lyrem’s vehicle would be blocking the view of the street from the alley’s entrance, but it wasn’t around tonight. Maybe it was at a mechanics’; maybe Arch would get lucky.
        “Nothing,” they said, dismally. They propped the man up, who was now completely unconscious from a second well-placed blow to the head, and kicked him forward into the darkness.
        Lyrem closed the door after the shapeshifter.
        “I am proud of you, Arch,” he said, but this time, it sounded skeptical. Like he was testing them. He could see the change in their demeanour and he measured what this new version of Arch might mean for him.
        “That wasn’t the man, was it?” They postulated. Lyrem squirmed under their gaze. He nodded apologetically, and gave a half smile.
        “Too clever for your own good,” he praised warmly. Approaching, he clasped his hands together.  “You caught me. That was not the Man- though you certainly put him in his place, didn’t you? The Labyrinth… I would choose death over the Labyrinth a hundred times over if given a choice. Quite diabolical of you to choose the Labyrinth.”
        Arch stepped backward, nearly tripping over their own feet to do so. Lyrem regarded their movement keenly, and furrowed his brows.
        “What’s wrong, Arch?”
        “Nothing,” they mumbled, looking away, towards the door. “What… was he? Why did he look like the man?”
        “Oh,” Lyrem realized. “He is a shapeshifter. Hard beings to find, I will admit but for this particular job, he did just perfect. Well worth the expense I think.”
        Arch squinted their eyes at Lyrem, who was so comfortable with the idea of tossing people away.
        “So, he was like you?” Arch alleged tentatively. “A… a monster?”
         Lyrem stepped forward at the accusation, towering himself over the kid that he regarded so highly. A sharp betrayal stung him in the chest. He had almost forgotten that his future self had visited him to retrieve the SUV. He may finally know exactly what set him off into such a fury.
        “Say that again.”
        Arch stammered and stumbled over their words, their hands finding their way to their pocket where their phone was missing, but the mace, thankfully, remained. Lyrem stopped them with a finger to their lips, resulting in an upsetting silence from Arch.
        “I am not a monster,” he stated. “What I am is a bestower of great gifts. I gave you dominance and power over those who have oppressed you and you would lower me to the tier of a shapeshifter- a monster?”
        Arch was shaking now, unable to move any further away, and too fearful to object to his statements.
        “You promised me your life, your devotion to this work that I do. Arch, if I am truly a monster in your eyes, then you need not fear me any more than the one that stares back at you from a mirror.”
        Lyrem lowered his fingers, and took a deep breath.
        “I will forgive you, Arch. I will forgive you because I care about you, and because you did something very difficult for me today.” Lyrem raised his arm again, setting a hand on their shoulder. “And I suspect you are still trying to remember everything that you and I have done together. So… I apologize if this experience was… rattling.”
        “My…” Arch mumbled, still stricken with a sense of danger that was overwhelming them, reason and all. “My mom… she warned me…”
        The memories were fading… They were fading quickly. But their mom… their mom?... told them… somebody told them not to trust this man. The man with the gem shop. The man who forced them to work late. The man who taught them what power truly was.
        This was the man they feared. And they feared him more than anything else in the world.
        The lid of the mace hit the alleyway’s pavement, rolling into a gutter of the road. The hiss of the spray and the following spewed insults, were enough of a distraction for Arch to run into the street after they had thrown the emptied canister into the old man’s face. The only thing screaming in their mind was the knowledge that they had to return home and not Lyrem’s well chosen words that echoed down to them as he followed them at a slower pace to the sidewalk.
        “YOU UNGRATEFUL WRETCH!”
        Arch flew down the many streets, pushing past the evening street-walkers if needed. Their legs fought them the whole way; still recovering from the bruises from the crash and their back still feeling the panging effects from the whiplash that caused a near-constant aching. For now, they couldn’t care less. They needed to get home. They needed to be safe. They needed…
        For whatever reason, a visual of Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore popped into their head. There was something about it that was wrong. There was something missing. Someone missing. Who was telling them about that ridiculous movie, again?
        Who would be waiting for them at the house? They thought.
        Maleficent. That stupid cat.
        People lived with other people though, didn’t they? Families. They realized. That was what it was called. They had one of those. Human families. Siblings and grandparents and fathers and…
        They reached the end of their block, their own face worn from the fears of that night and exhausted from everything that had been revealed to them. They weren’t a monster… They couldn’t be.
        They were Arch. They were a stupid high school student who had a part-time job. They had friends... they had little hobbies… they failed Spanish class.
        They also tortured Kyle. They flayed his skin so that Lyrem could dry them and use them as paper for certain macabre spell work.
        The more they ran with the knowledge of what they had done and who they had hurt, the harder it was to continue… the easier it was to give up. Their knees buckled, hitting the sidewalk pavement with force. Out of breath, and feeling nauseous, Arch’s forehead met the hot ground next; their arms and hands curled around their head as they threatened to pull their own hair out as a means of distraction from their horrible reality.
        “There you are…”
        Arch gulped, and merely wept, soaking the sidewalk in a small spot where their face was supported only by their forearms. They felt a firm grasp pulling them up by the elbow, and they succumbed to its demands. Their knees were torn into by stray pebbles, tossed on from the boulevards- some were still small enough to remain stuck beneath their there, leaving specks of red across their skin.
        “Wh-where…” Arch started to say- though they didn’t entirely know what they were trying to ask as a fog of grief and anger and fear poured over them. “Where’s… my…”
        It was exhausting, trying to remember exactly what was so wrong- why they couldn’t stand to be around Lyrem right now- and despite their best efforts to pull away, he dutifully remained by their side as they walked the rest of the street together. Slowly they arrived at the front door of the house.  
         Maleficent sat there at the top of the porch, waiting; her blue eyes peering judgmentally at the kid as they found their way up the stairs. A long grey tail swept from side to side lazily, then she proceeded to lick herself.
        Lyrem closed them into the house; the scent of burning paper filling it. He had lit a small fire in the living room and stacked several small Rubbermaid containers beside it- one of which, sitting on the raised slate hearth was half empty.
        The futon was roughly shoved back into the form of a couch. Bags of clothing in multiple colours remained by the door, as well as a stack of math and chemistry texts with haphazardly strewn loose-leaf papers.
        He sat Arch down on the futon as he laid a hand on their back. Gently, he caressed them and pulled a warm fleece throw over their lap. Arch curled into it, and watched the fire burn, engulfing the last memories of the people they thought of as family. Lyrem return to stoking it. He picked through some photos and papers from the open bin, allowing Arch to watch as he tossed them to the flames.
        Arch found themselves drifting into a deep dreamless sleep. With a pillow under their head and the room growing too warm, Lyrem studied them fondly as he continued to shove their past into the flames. Over an hour later, he closed the lid on the one of the last bins. He would return to burning those papers and photos another time. He pushed the little metal bar to close the flue on the fire, and shut the door on it as it groaned like a horn.
        “You rang…?”
        Lyrem turned around, seeing Paimon, he scoffed. Then held a finger to his lips to keep the demon quiet until he shooed him into the kitchen. Lyrem started the kettle on the stove. Paimon looked from the couch and then back to Lyrem warily, and then opened his mouth.
        “Don’t say it,” Lyrem interjected. Paimon looked slightly offended.
        “I was going to say that our lawyer has their papers ready,” Paimon replied with an innocent conjecture. Removing his tall hat, he placed it on the small worn wooden table. Lyrem nodded, and he continued. “But also, that you are getting too close.”
        Lyrem pulled himself away from the cupboard; a tin of hot chocolate powder in his hand, he considered using it as a bludgeoning instrument- but even if he had something more weaponized, Paimon wouldn’t have felt a thing. He was a demon, after all.
         “All Arch has to do is sign and your debts will become their debts. You won’t ever have to worry about what you owe- well until you make another ridiculous deal, that is.”
        “Keeping Maria alive was not a ridiculous deal,” Lyrem said. He pulled three mugs out of the cupboard, filling them with spoonfuls of the powder. Now they only needed to wait for the water to boil.
        “My apologies,” Paimon instilled a silence into the room. Absently he sifted through the mail with Charlotte’s name sprawled over it. Insurance payment reminders, some neighbourhood notices, and list of seemingly random addresses she had penned out over the phone one day, they all sat in a heap. “Their mother, then?”
        Lyrem accepted the shame with dignity and crossed his arms as he leaned into the fridge.
“It had to be done. Arch is too easily influenced by them,” He spoke simply. “Thank you again for providing me with another doorway. It took a lot of energy… I may need to devour a heart or two before I replenish my strength.”
“Have you considered that you might be getting in a little over your head?”
Lyrem shook it. “No. I- I am not in over my head, Paimon. My head is still well above the waterline, thank you very much.”
Paimon smoothed his beard to the end and regarded the man skeptically.
“So, you will still allow Arch to sign?”
Lyrem blinked, his lashes fluttering bit as he thought of his answer. Then he scowled.
“They already said they would sign. I am sure that if Arch cares about me, and cares about the work ahead of them, that they will make the right decision for themselves.”
“And if they make the wrong decision?” Paimon postulated.
Lyrem fell silent just in time for the kettle to scream out with a high whistle. He shut off the stove, and picked it up. Filling the three mugs and giving them a stir, he passed one to Paimon, then moved to the living room.
With a light nudge, Arch awoke to the smell of the warm chocolate sugar and accepted the cup as they sat up. Wrapping their blanket around their shoulders, Lyrem asked.
“Are you feeling better, now?”
Arch nodded, brushing away some dried tears. Past Lyrem’s head of grey, the light was on in the kitchen with the demon in black sitting there still. He caught their gaze and held it carefully. Arch waved.
Paimon nodded back with a slight sideways grin.
“What’s Paimon doing here?” they asked, whispering to Lyrem.
Good. They remembered Paimon.
“He’s just here to catch up, that’s all.” Lyrem left them to their own devices on the couch and returned to the kitchen table as he retrieved his own comforting mug and held onto it with both hands as if the simple act could warm his rapidly cooling heart.
‘Let them enjoy their prom- their graduation. One last night out with their friends.” Lyrem was asking- no, pleading more than telling.
“Immediately after. I don’t want you to be running around any longer with this target on your back. It makes me… uneasy.” Paimon adjusted in his seat. “You and I still have much to do.”
“Yes. Yes, I know.” Lyrem sipped on his hot chocolate as his hazel eyes glazed over from thoughts that were perhaps too deep for his own good.
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heeytwelve · 4 years ago
Text
The Mage only had one job
“None of it comes naturally to me. Words. Language. Speaking. I don’t remember when I learned to talk, but I know they tried to send me to specialists. Apparently, that can happen to kids in care, or kids with parents who never talk to them—they just don’t learn how.
Excerpt From: Rainbow Rowell. “Carry On.” 
I honestly do not understand The Mage here. Like, fucking WHY, when you spend so MUCH of your time, magic, when you were practically obsessed about creating the most powerful Mage AND you sacrificed (theoretically) love of your life or at least the only living ally - WHY would you just throw away the precious thing you finally got? Ok, let’s not talk about fatherly feelings (you obviously had none of it) but let’s thinking about Simon as your fighting asset - speaking - is the main and only one essential skill of any mage, and you just throwing it on random people’s (people with limited time and not exactly friendly or loving) shoulders,  this crucial responsibility? Are you for real? You could have put him in rich posh fancy professional place, you could have hire dozen of language speakers to come from his childhood, you could have teach him magic books from childhood. Like Pitches did with their kids.
“He wants me to stand apart from everyone else. Separate training. Special lessons. I don’t think he’d even let me go to school at Watford if he weren’t the headmaster there—and if he didn’t think it was the safest place for me.
”Excerpt From: Rainbow Rowell. “Carry On. I would look back at how he neglected Natasha’s books and say that he might be adept of SWORD power, like pure fighting with magic energy, no words whatsoever. BUT. He did use books A LOT when he was a student. And again, when he was a student, didn’t he complained how ISOLATED he felt because of elitism? How he had to get to everything himself with the stubbornness and will. And knowing that, WHY he made it difficult for Simon as well? I mean, again. NO FEELINGS, but he would be much more successful in creating and  training the greatest mage IF HE WOULDN”T RUINED IT from the beginning. AND I am sure the emotional intellect skills are taught and essential for mage as well (otherwise they would evaporate people every day, people are annoying). Skills, like, you know, - not going off - deal with frustrations and etc, even use your magic with wisdom. And he had none of that. As we can see, The Mage would withdraw and ALIENATE him again from usual lessons and activities. Where he can grow as a mage and learn. And.. Networking, what?
“Like in our sixth year, when he practically ignored me. Every time I tried to talk to him, he told me he was in the middle of something important.”
Excerpt From: Rainbow Rowell. “Carry On.” Apple Books.
Attention! It is one of years where Simon had to learn as quick as possible, he’s mature, he’s growing, the war is soon. And The Mage? Yeah, back to challenging his emotional health and restrict knowledge. Like he has something more important to do. Like Simon is NOT his BIGGEST hope to win. Mage, honestly, where you brain at?
Meanwhile Pitches:
“Of course, sir. Though I think you’ll find I’m still quite ahead of the class; my mother always insisted on summer work in Greek and Latin”
Excerpt From: Rainbow Rowell. “Carry On.”
And Simon?
“But then he decided I was better off spending part of every year with the Normals. To stay close to the language and to keep my wits about me: “Let hardship sharpen your blade, Simon.”
...
“I’m the blade. The Mage’s sword. And I’m not sure if these summers in children’s homes make me any sharper.…”
Excerpt From: Rainbow Rowell. “Carry On.”
Again - NO magic practice, NO learning, NO theory, NO speach practice, but plenty of stress and emotional wreckage and (Mage’s favourite, now I suspect) ISOLATION. Huh? I’m fucking starting to suspect that someone from opposite side possessed The Mage’s body to destroy his plan, cause, really - he can’t be THAT stupid.
Yeah. And after all this poor job of his, The Mage says:
“ But you’re not the Chosen One.
“You’re just a child,” he says, disappointed.”
Excerpt From: Rainbow Rowell. “Carry On.”
(Forgive my language, this scene makes my blood boil) Well, because you fucking sabotaged him from the beginning, you, incompetent fuck? You DIDN’T CHOOSE HIM. You didn’t raise him well. That, was your only job, and YOU fucking BOMBED it.
p.s. I hope Simon’s birthday (being on father’s day) reminded him what an arse of a father he was every year.
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hecohansen31 · 5 years ago
Text
Reaching Ecstasy:
Art Teacher! Michael Langdon+Student! Reader.
(A/N): Hello there, lovelies!
I know that it has been quite some time since i last wrote these things, but I have been rather busy with life and other things and writing is kind of a rather busy thing for me, so I hope to be writing more once some things go off my schedule.
So, please forgive me, and I hope to be writing more during the holidays!
(Alongside trying to do a masterlist!).
This was an idea that I worked up after a few history of art lessons, about the sculptures of Bernini, which are absolutely beautiful, so do check them out!
With this being said, I hope you’ll enjoy this, andy! as always: if you want to be tagged in it, you just have to like the picture and it’ll be out on Sunday!
SUMMARY: When the times come for your interview with Mr. Langdon, your art teacher, you can’t help but be rather confused by his requests.
WORDS: 4,7 K
WARNINGS: Oral Sex (Female Receiving), Compromising Situation and Slight Dub-Con (Michael using his position of power over Reader, although she is consensual to the entire thing) (also Reader is absolutely legal, since she is 20, in this fic!), Blasphemous talk abotu Ecstasy.
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The arrival of Mr. Langdon had brought some kind of change in the life of the students of Saint Therese, a private catholic boarding school, where troubled young ladies were sent so that they could be taught to be wives, able to properly satisfy their husbands.
The peculiar teacher wasn’t only a male, and attractive as sin, but he had rather interesting methods of teaching, constantly pushing boundaries and trying out new teaching techniques, which resulted in a major interest in his subject history of art from his students.
But what was the strangest thing about him was his way to examine student’s knowledge of his subject since he didn’t ask questions about it in class, in front of many people, but he asked the students to meet him in his office for a private interview.
At first it had seemed dauntingly terrifying and everyone thought he hid more, than just a simple interview about Picasso, Rubens or Giotto.
But once Coco had tried to “seduce” him, which resulted in her getting a complain on her behavior and failing the class, something for which she still complained with her ‘Marie Antoinette attitude’, meanwhile you just rolled your eyes at her stupidity.
Although Mr. Langdon asked each interview to remain private between him and the student for the student’s privacy, some of your fellow students had revealed you some details, mostly because you were extremely anxious about the exam.
History of art was one of your favorite subjects at the boarding school and you were fascinated by Mr. Langdon’s ingenious lessons (although all the girls would joke about him being a male version of “Mona Lisa Smile”), so you didn’t want to fail it.
And from what you had gathered from your friends, Mr. Langdon wasn’t only interested in your knowledge of his subject, but he was also questioning you about your most inner soul.
But deep down nobody had wanted to reveal you some of the questions.
“They are private, (Y/N)” had mumbled Mallory, looking at you as if she had been burned by fire “… I am sorry but I think that it isn’t something that I can tell you, but believe me, nothing will ever make you feel ready enough for what it is to come���.
So, you weren’t truly calm when you walked in Mr. Langdon’s office, escorted by than governess Mrs. Venable, who liked Mr. Langdon less than anybody else did, since according to her, and from what Madison had referred to you, after an accurate mission of spying on the strict governess, ‘he was the portrait of any debauchery and sin’.
She was probably bitter, because he didn’t believe in her mindless rules, alongside acting like he owned the place, stealing everything she had built with her steady and merciless hand.
“Mrs. (L/N), remember to answer Mr. Langdon truthfully” she mumbled as she left you on the threshold of the closed studio, where the art story teacher interviewed his subjects “… good luck”.
You just bowed your head in submission, before you approached to knock onto the door, being immediately welcomed by Mr. Langon’s dark and hoarse voice, as he adjusted himself behind his desk, where various drawing stood, alongside many more books, which laid open.
The scarce light gave the office some kind of gloomy atmosphere and this didn’t ease the anxiety you felt churning in your stomach, desperately wanting to call for Mrs. Venable, but as you set your feet over the threshold Mr. Langdon’s eyes were onto you, staring at you predatorily.
“Mrs. (Y/N) such an honor to finally meet you” he mumbled, inviting you with an elegant gesture of his hand, ordering you to come forward and sit, in front of him, to which you obeyed quickly.
Unlike many of your fellow students, you didn’t have any behavioral trauma or problem, you were more a shy child your parents had no use of in their travels.
‘Why can’t you just smile more?’.
‘Why can’t you have friends?’.
‘Why can’t you just be more like us?’.
You had no clue why you were so closed off, sensitive and gentle, anything your parents didn’t approve of, since they were socialite of the highest steps of the celebrity ladder: you were an ashamed dot on their immaculate records.
Hence, they had thought that the private boarding school could hide you well enough and maybe had they remembered about you they would have some day come to take you back.
You didn’t hate the boarding school, as many of your fellow students did: it gave you a chance to appreciate your usual calm style of life, which you loved with all your shy heart, but still…
… in some moments you wondered whether you were losing something of the outside world.
Maybe it was men like Michael Langdon that made you blush just as they looked at you.
You took a seat, in front of him, focusing your attention on the conjoined hands in your lap, although Mr. Langdon’s gaze stayed on you, in an heavy velvety caress that got you to tremble lightly, meanwhile a thrill of an unknown emotion moved down your spine.
“… you are rather interested in my subject” a quick nod was all you were able to reply “…although you don’t intervene often, I see that you listed in your future work options of wanting to to take a job in the art sector”.
Although it wasn’t an inquiry you knew he was expecting an answer.
“… I would love to work in a gallery or with children, teaching, although it can be difficult sometimes”.
“I can absolutely agree with that” his tone was almost heartfelt and it eased you on a more comfortable note, with you straightening your stance onto the chair, although your eyes were still linked to your hands “… have you ever visited any art gallery or museum?”.
“Oh, I have been in Italy for a whole month, meanwhile my parents were on a tour” you replied immediately, excited that now you knew somebody who would appreciate the same delicacies as you.
“Are they musicians?” you were sure that the answer could be found not only in the latest tabloids but also in your file so the fact that Mr. Langdon was ignorant on the matter surprised you.
Positively.
“Actors, they are mostly performing in theater, lately” you explained, thinking about the Italian tour you had gone on, barely sixteen and meanwhile your parents slept off their hangover you visited many beautiful cities, recognizing some of them in Langdon’s drawing.
“Acting: when life imitates art” he mumbled, his tone lightly sarcastic and you couldn’t stop a little giggle to leave your lips “… but I am glad to know that I am not talking only with lost causes: people like you make teaching worth it”.
Although they were compliments, there was some darker tone in Mr. Langdon’s words, seducing and hypnotizing, which got you to finally raise your head and meet his cerulean eyes, a mix of beautiful blue was tinted with the shades of grey, mostly for the influence of the dark room.
His blonde curls were elegantly styled as a veil of gold, soft at the sole sight and you wondered whether he had simply woken up like this or took care of it, and you thought what it would feel to card an hand through it and pull it, meanwhile you straightened it, entwining it through your fingers.
All these thoughts made you unfocused and when you realized that Michael Langdon had caught you in your fantasy you blushed immediately softly retiring again your gaze onto your hands.
And you felt Mr. Langdon’s smug look on you, as if his plan was working.
“Then I hope you visited Rome, and Galleria Borghese” you nodded immediately, remembering walking the beautiful mansion in the middle of the chaotic Rome, just to be welcomed with your own retire from the chaotic city life, in a peace of the senses that had brought you to lose yourself.
Mr. Langdon fidgeted with some drawings, before he moved to you a polaroid with the beautiful “Apollo and Dafne” statue by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
The two statues entwined in a fatal embrace that had doomed Dafne in becoming Apollo’s favorite plant.
“Then you won’t mind telling me what this is” and you immediately replied with the most classical of answers, explaining the dates and the commission behind the sculpture, before moving onto an explanation of what this statue stood for.
You gaze was linked to the photo, but you felt Mr. Langdon’s heavy eyes on you.
“… can you also tell me the reason behind the inscription on the base of the statue” he stopped you halfway your mumblings to point to the basement, where a Latin phrase was written.
“It’s a warning against the temptations of lust” you immediately replied, moving your eyes onto Mr. Langdon’s face, since it wasn’t something you had talked in class: you could barely mumble something about ‘lust’ or ‘temptation’ without having to explain the meaning of it to Mrs. Venable.
“… oh, truly delightful” praised you Mr. Langdon, making you blush, but you withheld his stare, proud of your answer “… do you think that lust is bad, Mrs. (L/N)?”.
You couldn’t help but blush, because since you had isolated yourself from your fellow peers, you had never experienced lust to the point that you had thought it wasn’t in your destiny.
But there was something downright sinful, that made you feel lust, indeed, towards Mr. Langdon.
You weren’t the first one to fall to his charms, hence the reason why you tried desperately to be so in control with him.
“…I do think that it depends” you mumbled, meanwhile Mr. Langdon shifted his head onto an hand, looking at you closer, making you feel even more intimidated, although his eyes showed a true light of interest, as if he valued your opinion “Measure is something important in each thing: Lucretius would condemn lust, alongside Virgil… the impossibility to fulfill desire is something that damns Dido, but…”.
“But?” he was literally pending onto your lips, wondering what would be coming next and you couldn’t help but be beyond proud of that effect, straightening your position on the chair.
“… but is life worth without pleasure? Passion can be devastating, but Lord Tennison doesn’t say 'tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’, doesn’t Ovid find damnation and his greatest glory in love?”.
“A true classicist, Mrs. (L/N)” commented Michael, softly, his eyes caressing you and his interest sparking up “… but we are making all this pagan talk … when Bernini was a loyal collaborator of the Catholic Church, such as in this work of his”.
And then “Saint Theresa” was shown to you, the beauty of the form intensified by the marble chosen and the décor around the entire chapel, where the Cornaro family watched the miracle happening in the center of it.
After a brief description of the chapel, you moved onto explaining Saint Theresa’s legend: she had been documenting this in her diaries, talking about how she had been transfixed in the chest by an arrow, shot by an angel, like drawn and sculpted in the complex statue.
And this brought the saint to prove what was described in the Sant Scriptures as “ecstasy”.
“Ecstasy could be described in a more earthly way as…” and you tried to calm down, smothering the blush that was fighting to show up on your face “… an orgasm, since Bernini used the depiction of sexual ecstasy, which gained quite a few times some rather problematic critics and accuseo f being blasphemous, mostly because we are in the Counterreformation era…”.
You tried to shove off your uneasiness trying to cover the embarrassment with overtalking, which was something you always did and would function most of the time…
… but not with Mr. Langdon.
“… Mrs. (L/N) there is no need to be shy, I am not Mrs. Venable” he laughed, sending you a very pointed look, before he smirked “… Bernini does indeed have an… ambiguity to his sculptures, which I honestly find like it’s one of the most interesting about his style, don’t you think?”.
You were all red in the face, you could totally feel it, immediately reaching out to gently pull up your sleeves and pushing the collar of your modest uniform, a simple plain shirt under a black overalls, with a skirt instead of pants, which covered both your chest and your legs, since the skirt was over the knee.
The only tempting exception to the rules was the stockings, rigorously black but slightly sheer.
“… I found it…” you tried to take some time ignoring the question and looking around Mr. Langdon’s desk, more to fake some kind of delirious confusion than to actually hide your gaze “… interesting”.
“Certainly, a girl who can speak about Bernini and Tennyson and Lucretius can surely use some better term than simply ‘interesting’ “ the arrogant way with which he spoke got something to act up in you and suddenly you lost any pretense of embarrassment.
“… of course, I can! And I find Bernini extremely interesting because of his beautiful depiction of ethereal beauty, mixed and stained with some human pleasures, hence the depiction of such pleasures in his statues”.
You hadn’t looked even in the slightest at Michael for the entire time of the discourse as you met his gaze knowing perfectly that you had gone over your role as a student, probably disrespecting him in some way.
But Mr. Langdon was simply looking at you as if he had the “Saint Theresa” of Bernini shown in front of him, and you just took a deep breath trying to recompose yourself, and as your hands retreated from Mr. Langdon’s desk, but he quickly reached out for them, holding them in an extremely tight grip as you reached out to look in his eyes.
“Truly wonderful, Mrs. (L/N)” he mumbled, looking at you completely absorbed in your eyes, before he left your hands and your gaze, making you almost stumble on the desk lowering yourself on it and almost falling ungracefully on your elbows, as he moved to retrieve something.
What he tried to find, meanwhile you wondered whether what had just happened was just your imagination acting up or had truly happened, was the little block of paper where he teachers wrote their grade of the students, which would be given to Mrs. Venable and added to the other grade for the final exam.
He then moved it to you, offering it to your eyes and although the grade was definitely impressive you couldn’t help but gawk at it.
“Something is wrong, Mrs. (L/N)?” he asked, meanwhile you scrunched your nose, and although anything screamed in your body to just shut up, you were unable to obey it and muttered, without even thinking.
“I think that I deserve more than the grade you have me, sir”.
He smirked, meanwhile realization slowly came over to you about what you had just said.
“Well, well” he commented, slowly pushing himself in a more relaxed position in his chair, his legs crossing over and his ankle touching perfectly his knee “… I gotta admit that I love a girl who is ambitious”.
Again, your mouth spoke again, and you were unable to withhold your words.
“I am not ambitious. I know what I deserve and won’t settle for anything else”.
After your little discourse Mr. Langdon was definitely intrigued, amusement and something darker shining in his eyes.
“And to think that you appear like such a shy and meek girl” he mumbled, his lips following perfectly each word in a sensual dance, that ignited your cheeks, but you didn’t back down, standing to your phrase “… the little mouse has the personality of a fierce lioness, I gotta admit that I like that about you, Mrs. (L/N), almost as much as I love that pretense of innocence you hid behind…”.
“I don’t know what you mean” you muttered, finally your embarrassment setting up, in your guts, although nothing in you wanted to stay and be lost in those provocative eyes.
“Exactly, you act like this pure sweet girl, shy and scared by anything, when in reality you don’t want nothing more than a proper competition, somebody who understand what you think and will challenge… you want to roar and somebody who will answer”.
You couldn’t help but agree with the entire thing, although you were too ashamed to admit it.
For all your life people had tried to change you to shape you in their prospective, but nobody had ever tried to lower themselves to your level and understand you.
Give you a proper challenge that would burn out the rest.
Except Mr. Langdon.
“It is true, you, Mrs. (L/N), deserve definitely something more, more than this boarding school, more than feeling like you mean nothing and that you count less than that” his hand again shot out and this time it caressed your arms, naked due to the fabric that had ridden up, meanwhile you attempted to relax and cool your body temperature “… but you are the one who stuck yourself in this position, hence you are the only one who can help yourself out”.
“But I don’t know how” the entire discourse spoke to you in a soulful way that you couldn’t help but answer with your deepest soul exposed.
“… ecstasy is the freest of the expressions of glory” you didn’t follow Mr. Langdon’s discourse, what “ecstasy” had to do with you, but still with the way he was gently caressing you and the way his tone had become so serious “… in ecstasy saints and martyrs discover the deepest of secrets, and you, my dear, little mouse, should do the same”.
Breath was taken from your lungs and your answer took a few minutes.
“How can I experience ecstasy?! I am not even a believer!” desperation shone in your tone, since as you had been put in front of your sadness, your existence explained and reduced to nothing more than a cliché, you felt nothing more than an emptiness that threated to consume you.
“What is truly ecstasy, if we cut off the entire religious part?” his hand moved in elegant gesture, completely hypnotizing your face “… it isn’t nothing more than when you feel the freest, Mrs. (L/N): sex shows us the most vulnerable side of us”.
Your cheeks were definitely on fire and you immediately raised from the chair, some part of you indignant to his indecent proposal, and some other…
… desperately wanted to follow on.
“This is abuse of your power!” you screamed and grabbed the first drawings that you found on his desk and threw them in his face, but he didn’t have any reactions, instead remaining perfectly icy and glacial, and before you knew it, the part of you that was aroused by his suggestion made wet heat recoil in your nest, the one between your legs.
“Then run away, Mrs. (L/N)” he was extremely serious “… you can tell it to Mrs. Venable, give her a reason to throw me away, please…”.
But you didn’t move, you didn’t run away and you didn’t say anything to Mrs. Venable instead shooting a quick look at the door to find that it was closed perfectly.
“… or stay here, be my guest and found out how much better life can be” his voice was an erotic whisper and you were sure it was meant simply for your ears “… it can be strangely freeing to let our darkest desire finally get the best of us, after we oppressed them for so long”.
You didn’t know if it was the fact that Mr. Langdon had chosen you, beside your schoolmates, prettier and more interesting than you or his discourse, but something had started being ignited in your chest and suddenly you were just unable to stop the fire from spreading.
And soon you were onto the desk, leaning down to kiss Mr. Langdon, you, who was barely able to have a normal talk with people, doing the first move, which was gently welcomed with a sweet answer of Mr. Langdon’s lips, pressing against yours with an emphasis that brought down any resistance you had.
You broke apart just for air, and when you did, although Michael was hiding everything in his gaze you caught a bit of surprise as if he hadn’t expected you to act up on your desire.
And soon his mouth, barely away from yours, was turned in a smirk.
“… you are a delight, Mrs. (L/N)”.
“(Y/N)” you mumbled shyly, before hiding your gaze “… you might as well as call me by my first name since you seem to know everything about me”.
“Then I insist you call me Michael” he grabbed your chin to push you to meet his tantalizing beautiful eyes “… you taste so much sweeter, than I thought”.
“You have thought about this?” you asked, surprised, enough for Michael to push you back in your chair, with a light push, meanwhile he raised from the chair, effectively towering over you.
“Oh you have no idea how much the thought of you crosses my mind” you blushed, immediately at his meaningful words, pushing yourself further in your seat, meanwhile he came around the desk to effectively tower over you, making you shiver in your sit “… the only girl with a mind that is capable to attract me”.
You blushed, feeling yourself unable to stop a giggle from coming to life in your stomach, meanwhile Mr. Langdon… Michael was in front of you.
“Twice as beautiful as a Raphael’s painting…” he continued, meanwhile he gently lowered till he was between your legs and you couldn’t help but blush, knowing what would come next.
Had your stack of erotica spoken the truth.
“… and if you taste sweet from your mouth, I wonder what you’ll taste like down there” and before you knew it, your stockings were pushed down on your legs and discarded without minding them any interest, he then raise dlightly your long skirt, making you blush and attempt to close them “… don’t deny my little piece of heaven, little Theresa”.
The words made a thrill go down your spine and suddenly your legs, slowly opened revealing your simple green panties, nothing too much, simple cotton since it did the job pretty well, and didn’t irritate you, but also didn’t hide your arousal very well.
And you were suddenly conscious that Michael knew about it all too well, as his eyes reflected lust and satisfaction.
“I could smell you perfectly as you walked in here, you were scared, but wanted more…” his hands come up slowly to your thighs, effectively caressing the tender skin of the inner part, just a few millimeters from your nest, perfectly hidden by soaked panties, shining in the dim light of office “… and then you started talking about ecstasy and passion flowed in you, you are a fucking masterpiece”.
And his hands finally came up to your panties and pressed down onto your puffy folds, excitation having pushed them to swollen lightly and you were unable to stop a moan from leaving your mouth, but luckily you caught yourself, biting your lips to suppress the sound.
And Michael smirked at that, before his fingers traced a little line between your fold, teasing you further, before they came to a halt right on your clit, and there his touch becoming even more featherlight.
He looked at you in the eyes, after that, and your cheeks were again moderately red, this time due to arousal and not embarrassment.
This was definitely freeing.
He smirked knowing exactly how you were feeling, meanwhile his hand moved down your thighs pushing lightly in them and you were sure that marks would be in there, although the pressure helped you focus on an earthlier level..
“… doesn’t it feel good?” he muttered, meanwhile you breathed down, heavily “… doesn’t it feel right?”.
You were just able to nod, begging for more and Michael didn’t hesitate to give you more, again caressing you with the back of his hand, before he pushed your panties to the side, with such ferocity that you couldn’t help but blush, and hide your face in your hands.
You were vulnerable and open for him, your arousal evident and you couldn’t help but feel self-conscious for a single moment, before Michael’s tongue came down between your folds tracing the same line he had touched with his hands, and if you had been left breathless by his hands-
His tongue caught all your breath and you held it in your lungs.
Surprise coursed through you and a tremble went through your body.
“So responsive” he mumbled, truly amazed by your reactions and suddenly shyness started disappearing in your soul, solely focusing on your pleasure “… my little girl”.
And he pushed himself further in you, his tongue finding your clit and his lips attaching on it, sucking it, till he got enough and moved to collect the wetness you held between your thighs, your juices glowing on his face.
And then his tongue parted your folds, penetrating you in the deepest and most secret part.
You were past the point of no return.
You didn’t know what was going on through your body, only pleasure coursed through you and before you knew it, you were lost in your own personal ecstasy, with Michael’s expert mouth, pushing his tongue in you, teasing your little pearl with slow strokes and then fucking you with his tongue, in fast thrusts, knowing exactly what to do to make you crazy.
“… I am close” you mumbled, not knowing why you felt the need to make Michael’s attention fall on you, as he raised his head to finally meet your eyes and the sight was so intensely erotic, that you felt even more arousal flood in your center “… fuck, this is just… I don’t know if I can…”.
Michael looked like an angel, with his long blonde hair, perfectly styled and before he even knew it you tangled your hands in them, pulling them till his mouth came to the point where you wanted and he smirked, against your pearl, gently biting it, a little pain that brought you back to reality.
But then the real fun began because Michael intensified his moves till he brought you over the edge again, helping himself with his fingers, after he eased one in you, a sudden penetration which had been strange for a few minutes before Michael crooked his finger gently in you, hitting that perfect spot and making you almost fall from your chair.
From that moment on Michael held a hand against your waist, to restrain you from buckling up against his face and his fingers, gently easing pleasure in you.
And this was enough for you.
Your ecstasy came onto you not like some kind of stabbing or poking made by an angel (although you had to admit that you heard some kind of angelic choir) but in waves of pleasure, and with Michael’s teasing smile, suckling lightly on your clit.
Your breath became shallow and your fingers dug in the chair, meanwhile you tried to push yourself through it, feeling the pleasure take over and never wanting to leave this kind of sensation.
When you came down, after Michael let you ride the waves of your orgasm with the gentle help of his finger since his tongue was too rough for your oversensitive folds, gently ushering you in your afterglow and when you were able to breath down without feeling like each breath lasted for ever…
… you saw the expression on Michael’s face.
Shame came to your mind first, at the knowledge that you had just done ‘that’ with your teacher, but he looked at you as if he had the true “Saint Theresa”, sculpted by Bernini in front of him.
“… I am…” you tried to apologize, quickly closing your legs, ashamed by how free you had let yourself be.
It was true you had left yourself be too free with him, and you weren’t sure if you could go back to how you had been before.
“… you are beautiful, little girl” he smirked, and laid a soft kiss on your inner thigh “… my own little private Saint Theresa in ecstasy”.
---
So as always: any kind of feedback is welcomed, as long as it is nice and well-behaved!
And here are to some lovelies who wanted to be tagged!
@so-langdon​​ @blakewaterxx​​ @1-800-bitchcraft​​ @rocketgirl2410​​ @lovelylangdonx​​ @dyns33​​ @lathraios​​ @rosegoldrichie​​ @im-the-music-whore​​  @misfitgirlwrites​​ @orendamill​​ @loveableasshole​​ @ awblessme @forgivemelucifer​​ @antichristfern​​ @hornyhetero​​ @weehawkendawngunsdrawnyouron​​ @ohlookheather​​ @ kanikatalwar07 @atomicsimblr​​ @ yourosesyourshirt @ maskedrawing @ahsteriawrites​​ @ azula-stark @cinefine​​ @ babynarwhal05 @langdonsvcrd​​ @wickedlangdon​​ @cherry-blood666​​ @ ferrarileclerc96  @luyism​​ @sona-blues​ @alyssa23145678910​ @ lsutgurxb @lightroo​ @emilys-username0​ @ jassiepoohbear @ kaccatus @nightsblackroses​ @ unpredictabledinosaur @multimxker13​ @psychowriter2702​ @chogiwait-world​  
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kirkwallhellmouth · 4 years ago
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CW for discussion of gun violence, murder, racism, and homophobia:
I now have had the experience of having a former student who was murdered.
Early this morning (aka "last night" as far as my sleep patterns are concerned), I found out that one student that I'd taught during my brief time as a 7th and 8th grade teacher had died a week or so ago. That he'd been murdered, apparently shot in his own yard/drive way in a drive-by by some twenty-year-old who later turned himself in. My former student was 17, just a week away from his 18th birthday.
My mom mentioned to me as the news was on that a student from the high school adjacent to the junior high I'd taught at had been killed. She didn't know if he'd been "one of mine" or not. So I googled. His name seemed familiar--his nickname sounded really familiar--and I knew his face. So I did something I hadn't done since September of 2016: I looked at my old seating charts. And there was his name in my first block class.
First block was a pain for me. That is putting it mildly. But I don't remember him as one of the bullies, just as a kid who'd rather spend the class period goofing off. And from everything I read about him, he was growing up to be a decent guy--always looking out for the needs of his friends, excelling in basketball, and looking forward to a future of playing college basketball. He was his mother's only child, and she'd got home almost right after he got shot.
I'm saddened, but mostly I'm angry. Neither of those two words are strong enough, but they're the easiest way to describe something far more complicated.
I'm angry that this teenager I knew briefly as a 7th had his future and his life stolen from him. I'm angry that his mother saw her only baby die violently and far too soon. I'm angry that the 20-year-old who killed him made the decision to do a drive-by. I'm angry for all the young people at that school who had their friend and team mate ripped away from them.
And I'm angry about how the year I tried to teach was set up--"the game was rigged from the start." That year, students and teachers were set up for failure from the word go. From a brand new discipline policy which was good on paper but which hadn't been given time to be implemented in anything resembling a workable fashion to our school--and others--getting selected via raffle or drawing or some other Hunger Games type shenanigans to test out a new critical-thinking-focused English/Language Arts curriculum which was clearly designed for class sizes far under the 30+ students we averaged with an expectation that students were at reading level (which most of our students were not) which turned our lessons into part literature class, part history class (the book for 7th grade had the Sudanese civil war as a background, and the one for 8th grade was in poetry from in addition to having the Vietnam war as its backdrop).
In addition, we had a principal who was out of his depth and out of touch with the reality of our school's...well, reality. We were all struggling with so many new things, and he felt it appropriate to tell us all in our first faculty meeting that he didn't feel that any of us deserved our upcoming paychecks.
The school system did us all dirty. The state did us dirty (which is sadly not a new thing in Alabama). Most of all, the white people who had set up and partitioned off the city hundreds of years ago, and then decades ago, and continuing into the present and future did those kids dirty. That year the city was supposed to reach 100% compliance with desegregation. The 2016-2017 school year. I doubt it did, because of its location and the nature of districting. I had maybe four white kids and maybe three Latine kids in three classes of around 30 kids a class. That was pretty reflective of the total school make-up. Because the school wasn't really near integrated neighborhoods. Because of how the city had been sculpted over the years by shitty white people and by probably some well-meaning but clueless and ignorant white people.
So I'm angry that because of the history and current reality of the state of Alabama, those kids were set up for a shitty first year in a new school. And I, in turn, was too.
The day I told my administrators I had to quit, the principal ask me "who told me" to do a mini lesson about respecting people's differences. A lesson I had thrown together because I was tired of feeling that no one wanted to do anything about the homophobic bullying that I was dealing with in my first black class, or the bullying I had to handle in my other classes. The lesson was to try to combat students' bullying of other students, but I was tired of getting bullied myself for being gender nonconforming (because at the time, I hadn't fully realized that I'm trans and nonbinary).
I was the second English teacher to resign before October.
I can only hope things got better for those kids, both the bullied and the bullies.
The school eventually--maybe the next year, I don't remember--got a different, more experienced principal.
But I'm still angry that that situation existed the way it did.
And I'm still angry that a former student who was growing into a responsible young man was murdered.
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musedrevolution · 4 years ago
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Why do we teach music history?
I’ll be honest for a moment here: I have not enjoyed music history in college. The class has always felt unnecessary: memorize this information, spit it back out. Learn these names, these pieces, and these dates. I can’t imagine needing it. But music history the subject has always fascinated me. When I took piano lessons in high school, my teacher would always instruct me to research the composer a little whenever I got a piece by someone I hadn’t played before. I not only did this research, but did it enthusiastically. I was excited to share what I found about Haydn or Tchaikovsky. 
One could argue that it was simply the way I was being taught that could change my opinion on similar material so drastically. I don’t disagree with that assertion. My previous music history education was a conversation that I got to contribute to. I got to feel like an expert sometimes because I came in with information that my teacher didn’t necessarily have. She didn’t give it to me, I found it on my own, while everything I’ve learned in college music history has come straight from the textbook or the lecture. But I would also like to argue that I was learning the material for a completely different reason when I loved it in high school piano. 
Here, I am ignoring the fact that my piano lessons were not graded and did not contribute to my GPA. I know that part of the reason I learn music history now is because I would like a good grade in my class, but that motivation is not what I am discussing here. I am focusing now on the purpose provided by the scenario. Why was the music history being taught? 
I would assert that my college music history classes are being taught in a bubble. I am learning music history because I have been told that it is “important,” although I have seen little justification for this in the rest of my studies. As a student whose primary focus is wind ensemble music, I rarely play pieces by the composers we study in-depth. When I eventually direct a band myself, this trend is likely to continue. Mozart simply didn’t write for wind ensemble, as the wind ensemble did not yet exist. My theory classes covered the music of the baroque and classical eras well before we discussed them in music history, meaning that I was once again unable to apply the things I had learned in the history class. 
This bubble is further created by one of my music history professors outright forbidding our class from connecting what we were learning in class to the music we were familiar with. The class covered music from ancient times until the year 1750. We were explicitly forbidden from mentioning anything that occurred after 1750 in our work. I did a presentation on renaissance instruments at one point, and was not allowed to mention the trombone when discussing the sackbut, nor the oboe while discussing the crumhorn. 
Without the ability to compare the past to the present, the class felt absolutely useless. Why do I need to care about the sackbut in the first place if it is not to understand the origin of the trombone? Why should I care about baroque opera that I can’t understand if I can’t connect it to the modern musical theater that I have so much affection for? 
My answer to these questions became “because I want an A in the class.” As a teacher, I hope that my students never have to answer the question “why do I need to know this” with “because I want a good grade.” That answer leads to a lack of motivation and, worse, a lack of understanding. When students don’t see purpose in learning the material, they aim to memorize rather than really engage with the content. They prepare for an assessment rather than attempting to really internalize the concepts. As an educator, that is heartbreaking. 
Yet that has been the case with my music history education much of the time. When I have asked the question “why are we learning about X,” I am often met with the argument that “X was a genius” or “X is a brilliant piece of music.” I have never found that to be a satisfactory answer. There are lots of things that are brilliant that I have no interest in studying in-depth because I know I will not use the information: papers on particle physics, for example. I’m glad someone did it, but I feel no compulsion to engage with it just because it is a work of genius. I also think that “genius” and “brilliant” are very subjective terms, and are often misused in the world of music, but that’s beside the point. 
Returning to my love of the music history I learned in piano back in high school, I never had to ask why I was learning it: I applied it immediately. I learned about the Russian revolution when playing Russian music, and put the anger and fear that so many people experienced into my interpretation of the piece. Even five years later I remember playing a Kabalevsky’s Sonatina in a minor and learning about the small act of rebellion he committed against the communist party he was employed by when he included two measures with emphasized syncopation. Syncopation was considered a “western” concept rather than a “Russian” one, and therefore could not be used in Russian music. I still know this because I got to apply that knowledge to my performance. Even if my parents didn’t know why those two measures were important, they could tell they were important because I brought them out of the texture a little. 
That application made the material mean something. Kabalevsky was more than a name and set of random facts. He was a rebel. He was fighting against oppressors. He was cool to a sixteen year old me. I have never experienced that thought in my music history classes. 
So the question becomes this: how do we get the goal of academic music history classes to be application? 
As a future high school band director, the solution is simpler than it is for my collegiate music history professors. I will have the opportunity to do something very similar to what my piano teachers did, and teach music history alongside the pieces we are performing: if we are performing “The Washington Post” march by Sousa, we will discuss march form and history, along with why John Phillip Sousa was a big deal and how the march got its name. Where was it performed for the first time? Students will connect to this information because they will be able to use to inform a stellar performance. 
This is quite impossible in a college music history class. At my university, there are members of no less than ten different ensembles enrolled in my music history class, including students specializing in wind ensemble, choir, orchestra, and jazz. It would be impossible to cover every composer we’re playing pieces by, and no composer would be directly relevant to everyone in the room. So this solution that is simple in a band room becomes impossible. 
I would suggest changing the goal of music history from knowing about certain composers and pieces to learning a skill set that is applicable to any composer and any piece. This skill set would include an advanced musical vocabulary. We would still need to learn about genres, forms, textures, and instrumentation. We would have a basic timeline of the evolution of these concepts so we can understand approximately where a piece fits in. We would learn about the useful generalizations that can be made using the idea of musical eras. This necessary skill set would also include research skills: how do you learn about music once you’re out of this classroom?
Now with the idea of a skill based curriculum comes the question: what about all of the “brilliant” composers that we focus so extensively on in our current model? Well, firstly it is important to remember that some of them fit into an understanding of the musical ideas I’ve already discussed. You cannot talk about the evolution of the symphony without talking about Beethoven. You cannot discuss the development of opera without discussing Mozart and Wagner. But these discussions can be had based on what they did rather than simply their excellence. Students can learn for themselves why these figures were important. These so-called geniuses can also offer great practice for the application of research skills that are so essential to music history scholarship. Rather than simply reading about these people in a textbook, why not read primary sources focused on their work? Why not expect students to find pieces that demonstrate general characteristics common to a composer’s style? Not only will students learn more about whatever great master is being studied, but they will be able to apply that information beyond that individual. 
This approach would have multiple advantages. Firstly, if we’re studying the people in music history for reasons other than “they’re important” it is far easier to diversify the curriculum. Music history is very straight, very white, and very male. When pieces and composers are being used as part of a broader curriculum rather than the sole focus, lesser known artists and works can be incorporated. A lesser known classical sonata can be substituted for one by Mozart. A wind ensemble symphony can serve as an example of the genre’s modern incarnation just as easily as an orchestral one. This allows all students, even those for whom orchestra or choir is not their primary focus, even those who are not white men, to see themselves in the class, and to connect to that. 
Secondly, and I cannot stress this enough, students can apply this curriculum when they are not discussing Mozart or Beethoven. As a band director, it is unlikely that I program much Mozart. But I will certainly use my understanding of how to discuss music history when I program a symphony for band, or discuss the latin origins of a piece like Kevin Day’s “Havana.” (If you don’t know Kevin Day, you will one day. He writes great wind ensemble music and is going to be HUGE). My students will need background on these pieces just as much as they would if they were playing baroque music. I wish I was being prepared as if that were the case. 
Instead, I am learning names and dates. I am learning piece titles and the fact that they are “brilliant.” If I am to apply this information outside of my music history classes, I have to figure out how to do that myself. I can do that, but I hope that the music history community aims to make their class more worthwhile to the students. Students don’t dislike music history because they are lazy or stupid. They dislike it because they don’t know what it’s for. I think it’s high time we change that. 
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handern · 4 years ago
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Yo it's Arthur anon. I've started listening to Mike Duncan's History of Rome podcast with space partner and ???? I've taken world history classes. I KNOW that Rome conquered Gaul but holy shit. It's really messed up that even in like, french history classes what we got was "Asterix" and not genocide. Is this just an American miseducation thing, or does everyone just like, pretend it wasn't that bad to cover for later imperialism???
Oh yeah it was pretty fucked up
I hate Julius Caesar's guts so when you get me started I can go off for hours
I'm going to talk only from memory of my classes and readings on the topic from 3 years ago (ok that was INTENSIVE reading bc I hate that fucker and read everything I could find) so bear in mind that some things might be not too accurate but I'll keep it vague to give the big picture (also I'm biased bc I hate his guts)
Basically Caesar wanted real bad to be senator but to be there you had to have military victories and a LOT of money to pay for public installations (and probably bribery but given a much more palatable name than bribery)
Except that he needed to be appointed to the administration of a territory in order to justify being a general going to war and stuff
If I recall correctly he wanted Macedonia or a region close to Macedonia bc it looked cool and there were a lot of resources to steal there except, BAD LUCK, the one person in charge of the administration of a roman region who kicked the bucket soon enough was the one handling Gauls
Now they already had been commercing with Gauls of a long, LONG time, they had access to commercial roads and controlled a part of the south of France already and Spain, and well, contrary to the greeks who were a bit further away, Romans were neighbors with the Gauls
Basically his whole campaign was briberies and throwing a chief against another to have them kill each other, then throw the losing clan into slavery, which is exactly what europeans did in africa and in the americas centuries later (or tried to do at least)
Romans were technologically inferior to the Celts, who had kickass metallurgy techniques for both shields and swords and their scabbards, but the Romans still managed to get these "secrets" from whoever sold it to them and it turned the tides in their favor
Basically the only reason the Celts lost the fight was that they were not united, which Vercingetorix tried to do but too late (that's the really fast version)
What's fascinating is that the Romans had already started the conquest much before Caesar, but in a slow insidious way
Through commercial roads people had to learn to speak roman/latin, they offered scholarships to the rulers' heirs (Vercingetorix served in the roman army), they kept themselves up to date with their politics and religion and internal conflict, etc.
The military part was really just an excuse for Caesar to show off, steal riches and get more slaves to sell so he could be senator, all while shoving new names to the Celts' groups/political systems, and pretending that he did much cooler stuff than he really did in his books, which were propaganda tailored to impress the Senate and should never have been taken as history books like historians and scholars did for centuries
And after that was done, it was just a matter of building a few cities and send some Romans in there, almost EXACTLY like that asterix book where Caesar builds a shopping mall near the village and everyone goes oh it's actually cool to have some theater and running water and also they're not trying to kill us anymore! cultural assimilation was always the best weapon of war of the Romans, along with propaganda and their law system
Long story short : yeha it's not just the USA, I'm french and only heard of all that bc of my archeology studies and I remember very clearly going to my history teacher at age 14 to ask when we would stop learning about Rome and pre-roman Egypt and actually learn about the Gauls. He was very embarrassed to say that the Gauls were not in the national program, but neither was the cultural assimilation of Egypt, we were only taught about the pretty parts so the pyramids and the gods
AND NOW THAT I'M ON THE TOPIC
the image we have of the celts nowadays is 50% imperialist fuck Julius Caesar's fault, 50% Napoleon's imperialist ass' fault and I'll die mad about it
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borealis-strange · 4 years ago
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Chapter 15: One vision
Summary:
"October 12, 1671
After a month of traveling, my crew and I finally found an island to live on after being exiled. It looks quite promising and has abundant vegetation. It seems that this island has never been documented. At the moment there seem to be no inhabitants other than animals. The night is already falling and the best thing is to rest. Tomorrow we will continue our exploration. "
P.S.: There are only three chapters left
Tag-list:  @whitequeen-ofwillowgreen​ @likesomekindofcheese  @0-primejive-0
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March started in the blink of an eye. The queen informed them that they had to return to the castle to continue their studies. In addition, she believed that they had already been punished enough, she had also finished her affairs outside the country.
Since they had arrived at the castle Roger's visions became more constant. He did not give them much importance but the curious thing about those visions was that it was always the same. That night was no exception.
As on other occasions, he was in a church. The church's architecture was similar to that of the Black Queen's Castle with its large pointed arches crossing diagonally to form a vault at the top. The only difference was that this church was not so gloomy, but quite the opposite, it was completely white. The only thing that gave it color were the red carpets and the rose arrangements on the sides of the hall.
On the benches sat upper class people dressed in elegant clothes.
At the altar was a woman with long blonde hair wearing a white dress that reached to the floor.
And in front of her was a man in silver armor kneeled.
-Gentlemen, I present to you Atlas Reinaldo Black, your undisputed king. Therefore, all those who have come this day to provide vassalage and service, are you willing to do it? - The priestess spoke with a sweet almost angelic voice.
All visions began in the same way, with the coronation of Atlas. He still didn't understand why he had them. Did the spirit of Atlas want to say something to him? All his visions were about the future, not about the past, and less if it was about someone with whom he had no blood relationship.
Roger sat on one of the benches in front to see better the details or some clue as to why that vision.
-Do you promise and swear to rule the island of Rhye, as well as its possessions and other territories belonging to any of it, in accordance with their respective laws and customs? - The woman continued with the coronation ritual.
-I solemnly promise it - Atlas replied.
-And to ensure, to the extent of its power, that all its judgments are presided over by Law, Justice and Mercy? -
-Yes -
-Will you maintain with all her power the laws of our Goddess and the true profession of the Gospel? Will you keep Rhye in the Reformed Protestant religion established by law? Will the Church of Rhye, its doctrine, worship, discipline, and government as established by law, maintain and preserve? And will it preserve the bishops and clerics of Rhye and the churches in their care all the rights and privileges that are recognized by law? -
-I promise. Everything I have promised up to now I will fulfill and keep with the help of our Goddess -
The oath to the crown had not changed much, it was practically the same. The only thing that changed was how many kings were crowned. Formerly there was only one king but as the small towns expand Rhye was divided into four regions. And, according to custom, the four kings have to be crowned at the same time.
-By the power that my goddess grants me on earth - The priestess continued with the coronation - I name you the first king of this new nation. - He grabbed the crown - And you will be known as ...
Roger did not hear the ending as he woke up suddenly. That always happened, just at the end of the ceremony he woke up. He really didn't care how Atlas would be known as; he already knew that, the priestess would only say "and you will be known as Atlas the perfect king"
He lay in his bed for a few minutes thinking about what to do. That day they had no classes and had nothing to do. Freddie went to visit his parents and John went to who knows where.
He got up and dressed in the first thing he found. He left his room but did not go directly to the dining room, that morning he was not hungry. He wandered around the castle a little looking for Brian. And, unsurprisingly, he was sitting quietly in the library.
-What are you doing in the library?- Roger asked as he sat next to Brian.
-Do you remember the book of magical creatures? Well, I'm still trying to figure out what language it is in order to know all the secrets it hides -
Roger rolled his eyes.
-Are you seriously still with that? It's just a fantasy book, you should forget it -
Roger walked over to get a better look at the book and that was what had Brian so intrigued. He saw the words written in black ink and immediately identified the language.
-Oh! - Roger exclaimed - It's in Latin -
Brian looked at him confused.
- You know Latin ?! -
-I only know a little, but in the time I was with the king he taught me a little Latin -
Brian felt stupid, how could he ever have noticed? It was quite obvious, Latin was the first language used in Rhye, besides the one they used, but gradually it was no longer used.
-Do you want to help me translate it? - Brian asked Roger hoping that with his help he could decipher it.
Roger accepted, he had nothing better to do.
In the queen's immense library, they found a dictionary that will help them know what it said. It was probably used by the queen to translate ancient Rhye texts and books.
After an hour, and with the help of Roger's knowledge, they managed to translate the first page of the book;
"October 12, 1671
After a month of traveling, my crew and I finally found an island to live on after being exiled. It looks quite promising and has abundant vegetation. It seems that this island has never been documented. At the moment there seem to be no inhabitants other than animals. The night is already falling and the best thing is to rest. Tomorrow we will continue our exploration. "
That was strange to say the least. The author had a story similar of Atlas, perhaps they were from the same crew, but did not explain the magical creatures.
They continued reading and discovered very very interesting things.
Brian skipped some things to get to the interesting, like the pages where the author wrote about the magical creatures and know once and for all if they were a reality or a fantasy.
The book contains several drawings of different magical creatures; the text had descriptions of physical characteristics and abilities, all with comments from the book's author. It was evident that the author felt a deep hatred with these creatures and how they ruined "his perfect kingdom".
Brian could not trust these texts very much, most likely those descriptions were influenced by the hatred of the author. He would never know how true they were. Perhaps you would look for a book by an author with a more objective point of view.
Roger had been gone for a while but Brian was continuing his investigation. During all that time Brian believed less that this book was about Rhye but when he reached the end of the book he found a sheet folded in four.
It was a map. A map of Rhye.
Looking closely at the sheet Brian couldn't believe what he was seeing. It was completely impossible. He checked it very carefully to make sure what he saw was true.
It had the same shape of the island (with slight variations), it had marked the mountains of the west, the seven seas of Rhye, and the rivers. The only thing that was not marked was Nevermore, but it wasn't because they probably still didn't know the danger of that forest.
The author of the book had come to Rhye.
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kuramirocket · 4 years ago
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Carlos Muñoz, Jr. remembers when he first began to ponder the meaning of his Mexican roots.Muñoz, now 80, was living in the crowded Segundo barrio of El Paso, Texas. His family—like thousands of other émigrés—had settled there decades earlier, refugees fleeing violence spawned by the Mexican Revolution.Neither of his parents had made it past elementary school, but they wanted more for their son. So young Carlos walked across town every day to an Anglo neighborhood where the local school had more resources than barrio campuses.In that world, Carlos became Charles—rechristened in fifth grade by a white teacher in an attempt to “Americanize” him.
His school records were altered to label him Charles. But nothing else about him changed. “I began to wonder about what that meant,” he recalls. “That was the first time that I started thinking about identity and culture and that kind of stuff.”
It wouldn’t be the last.
The next year his family moved from El Paso to Los Angeles, where they hopscotched among barrios from the Eastside to Downtown to South Los Angeles. And no matter whether his teachers called him Carlos or Charles, their ingrained attitudes about his Mexican heritage narrowed his path.
The counselors at Belmont High School steered Charles away from college prep and toward vocational ed, even though he was an honor student. They suggested he become a carpenter, like his dad.
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“If you were Black or Brown and a male at that time, you automatically got to be an industrial arts major,” he says. “You take the basic courses in English, history and government, but you don’t get the algebra and the biology courses.”
He didn’t realize until after he graduated with honors in 1958 that those courses he missed were required for admission to California’s public universities.
It would take six years for Charles to navigate a route—through community college, military service and a white-collar job that paid well but left him unfulfilled—to the campus of Cal State LA.
There, in the midst of a nascent Chicano rights movement, Charles reclaimed Carlos and played a key role in a history-making venture that would create new paths for Latino students: the creation at Cal State LA of the first Mexican American Studies program in the nation.
Its launch five decades ago—which Muñoz, then a graduate student, helped lead—would usher in a new era of ethnic studies across the Southwestern United States and ultimately around the country. Today more than 400 universities have programs dedicated to the study of the history, circumstances and culture of Latinos in America.
“Right now, there’s an awareness of ethnic studies. … But the beginnings of ethnic studies, as a discipline, were right here at Cal State LA,” says Professor Dolores Delgado Bernal, chair of what is now the Department of Chicana(o) and Latina(o) Studies.
“The discipline offers a lot to students, in terms of their identities, their intellect, what interests they pursue. Taking these courses allows students to say, ‘I can claim and be proud of who I am, and that allows me to better understand and accept others who are not like me.’ ”
“It’s becoming increasingly important to have that interdisciplinary background, and an understanding of other cultures and races,” Delgado Bernal says.
Today Muñoz is a professor emeritus in the Department of Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. He’s an author, political scientist, historian and scholar, specializing in social and revolutionary movements.
But the challenges Muñoz encountered on his journey from the barrio to the ivory tower typify the struggles that many Latino students still face today—and illustrate why Chicano Studies was necessary decades ago, and still has an important role to play.
In its early years, the Cal State LA program was a resource for local students who felt intimidated by college and invisible on campus.
The spotlight on Chicano history and culture allowed them to see themselves through a new lens, one scrubbed of stereotypes. And its sweeping scope connected them to other marginalized groups, illuminating struggles for equality that students found ultimately empowering.
“To me, the thing about Chicano Studies is that it was eye-opening to the truth and history,”  Carmen Ramírez, an Oxnard city councilwoman who attended Cal State LA for two years in the 1970s, says. “If you don’t know the truth, you can’t fix the future. … We need to know our history.”
And the dividends spread far beyond the campus, the student body and local communities. By its very existence, the Cal State LA program gave national credibility to the concept of ethnic studies as an intellectual pursuit.
“Chicano Studies opened the door to possibilities of employment on university faculties,” said Raul Ruiz, professor emeritus in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at Cal State Northridge, which hired him in 1970. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Cal State LA in 1967, and went on to earn his master’s and Ph.D. at Harvard. Ruiz died this year at 78 years old. 
“Chicano Studies gave us opportunities to teach at the college level. And that was very significant in an era when many of us never had a Latino professor.”
At that time, “there were only about five Mexican Americans in the country with Ph.D.s in the social sciences,” recalls Muñoz, who earned his B.A. in political science from Cal State LA and a Ph.D. in government from the Claremont Graduate School.
Like Ruiz and Muñoz, several of the campus movement’s leaders went on to become college professors and scholarly experts in the field.
But even when they were offered faculty positions in Latino Studies, their contributions were often minimized or disregarded.
“Now we’re very visible at universities across the nation,” Muñoz says. “But during my career, I often had to face that perspective— you’re just ideologues, not scholars—from conservative faculty. It was not an easy path.”
For students like Ruiz, the path was equally challenging.
Ruiz had moved to Los Angeles from El Paso as a child in the 1950s. Told he wasn’t “college material,” Ruiz enrolled in Trade Tech, studied mechanical drawing and took a job drafting engineering plans for aviation systems. A year of that made him miserable, so he quit and in the mid-’60s applied to Cal State LA as an English major.
Then, as now, the Cal State LA campus was walking distance from one of the largest urban Mexican American communities in the United States. But few students in that community were being prepared for college.
The university experience seemed so remote that Eastside parents who could see the hillside campus from their yards thought “the building on the hill was the Sybil Brand Institute” for incarcerated women, Cal State LA Professor Ralph C. Guzmán told the University’s College Times newspaper in 1968.
Guzmán, who helped draft early Chicano Studies proposals, was one of just a handful of Latino faculty members then.
Ruiz was the only Mexican American kid in most of his classes, he said.
“I remember as an English major, the sense of me being up against everything. I remember making a presentation and the other students came at me hard with criticism,” Ruiz said. “I remember saying to myself, ‘Next time you’re going to know more than everybody else.’ ”
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Ultimately, that would motivate him to develop a rigorous background in research. But as a new student, he found the social isolation to be a destabilizing experience.
After a professor told him he was smart “but basically illiterate,” Ruiz spent hours alone in the library—after classes and before his post office job—teaching himself to write.
“I would practice writing sentences and improving them until I could write a paragraph, and then an essay,” he said. It took him six months to develop the skills he needed. The skills he should have been taught in high school.
Cal State LA already had a robust interdisciplinary program of Latin American Studies, with classes that focused on Mexican culture but had little connection to the American experience.
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“It was a marvelous program. It opened up my consciousness,” Ruiz said. But he came to realize that he knew more about Mexicans in Mexico than he did about families like his, “Mexicans in my own community.”
Beyond the University, in his own community, unrest and outrage were brewing. Mexican Americans had found their voice and were beginning to challenge the status quo. And nowhere did that coalesce more vividly than in the neighborhoods around Cal State LA.
“It was actually right here in the city of Los Angeles where the Chicano movement started,” noted legendary civil rights leader Dolores Huerta, when she visited campus to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Chicano Studies in September 2018.
The Chicano Studies program helped empower young activists and bring national attention to the challenges and concerns of Mexican Americans, she said.
Ruiz remembered what that felt like. “We were becoming part of this growing social movement that was sweeping the country, with massive anti-war protests and civil rights marches,” he recalled.
Community organizers rallied Eastside families to join the demonstrations. Student groups on campus worked together behind the scenes for change.
“I was not a radical person,” Ruiz said. “But you couldn’t help but become involved, or at least think about it.”
In March 1968, that awareness came to a head, as thousands of students at five high schools within a six-mile radius of Cal State LA walked out of classes and took to the streets, to challenge an educational system that didn’t recognize their worth or value their needs.
Thirteen adults would be arrested, jailed and charged with conspiracy for helping organize the walkouts. Muñoz—who’d proudly changed his name back to Carlos—was among them.
By then Muñoz was a Cal State LA graduate student and a U.S. veteran, who understood why students were walking out. The kid whom counselors steered away from college prep classes in high school was now on his way to becoming a university professor—and he was on the front lines of the battle to improve education for younger Latinos.
Police arrested Muñoz at gunpoint three months after the walkouts, as he sat at the kitchen table in his apartment doing his political science homework, and his wife and two young children slept upstairs. Muñoz spent two years on bail and faced a possible prison term of 66 years, until an appellate court dismissed the charges as a violation of the defendants’ First Amendment rights.
The walkouts alarmed the educational establishment, but energized the local community and moved education to the front of an activist agenda.
Cal State LA students, faculty and administration partnered with community groups to help broaden opportunities.
That summer Cal State LA’s student government voted to allocate $40,000 for an Educational Opportunity Program that would provide the support needed by students who were motivated but underprepared. Sixty-eight Latino and Black freshmen were admitted through the program that first year.
And University leaders agreed to work with student activists to get the Chicano Studies program up and running. The pioneering program was launched in the fall of 1968—with four courses and funding from student government.
Muñoz wound up teaching the program’s introductory course in the fall of 1968: Mexican American 100. Graduate student Gilbert Gonzalez taught Mexican American 111, a course on Mexican American history, and Professor Guzmán taught two upper-division classes.
“I was a first-year grad student in political science,” Muñoz recalls. “I had no teaching experience. I didn’t even know how the University worked. … We were very, very fortunate that there were progressive people in the administration. They were very helpful in generating support.”
In fact, the Chicano Studies movement at Cal State LA created a blueprint for collaboration—in an era when campus clashes were the primary tools of social and academic change.
Students worked with parents and with University leaders. Chicano and Black student groups supported one another. Both groups wanted a voice, a bigger presence on campus and a curriculum that reflected their culture and history.
Today, the Department of Chicana(o) and Latina(o) Studies offers more than 150 courses, taught by scholars from a wide range of disciplines. Its academic legacy is strong and its graduates have contributed immeasurably to the University, the region and beyond.
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The number of students majoring in Chicano Studies has grown by almost 40% over the past 18 months, said Department Chair Delgado Bernal at the anniversary celebration.
“Maybe that’s because of the political climate,” she surmised. “Students are looking to understand it, and to have the skills, knowledge and rhetoric to respond.”
Over the years, the department has opened new career paths for students, elevated the status of Chicano scholarship and empowered successive generations in ways that only understanding your culture and history can do.
Its success reflects the foresight of its founders and the University’s ongoing commitment to academic rigor, inclusion and equality.
“Our whole purpose was assisting our community, supporting the aspirations of students and asserting our right to be here,” Muñoz says of the department’s creation a half-century ago.
“We said let’s do something so our younger brothers and sisters won’t be victimized by racism, the way we were.”
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purplesurveys · 4 years ago
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797
What is your favorite thing to do on your phone? Fucking around on social media like a true Gen Z-er would, lmao. I have several games that I’d play occasionally, but most of the time I just check the same three apps – Messenger, Facebook, and Twitter. Do you know what you are going to be for Halloween this year? If so, what? I don’t even know if I have plans for the rest of the year. Do you still go trick-or-treating, and if so, how old are you? The last time we did was 2015, when we were 17. Nowadays we just have costume parties. Which Disney princess resembles you the most? At the moment it’s probably Moana, but I heard they’re making a Southeast Asian Disney princess so I’m waiting for her :) What color was your first phone? I’m not sure what the model’s actual color was because it was already in a Winnie the Pooh case when I got it as a present, but the case itself was red.
Was your first phone a flip phone? No, it was one of the Nokia ones with a slightly green screen and the Snake game on it. Have you ever butt dialed someone? I don’t think so. It’s normally the other way around. What is your favorite pizza parlor? We don’t have many of that around here; most places serve a little bit of everything with pizzas usually having its own section on the menu. That said, my favorite place to get pizza is Mama Lou’s if I have some cash on me and want to be fancy, and Yellow Cab if I want fast food pizza but still quality pizza. What is an old website that closed down that you miss? I’m pretty sure Tumblr shut down my old survey blog, the one I’ve had since 2012 or 2013, and I’m very bummed out by it. It’s also weird to me because I have a blog that’s been inactive for much longer and that one is still up... so I don’t know why they would shut down the blog that served as my journal during my teen years. I occasionally look back on it to see how I was doing then and compare it to who I am now, so it sucks that I can’t do that anymore. If you're a girl, have you ever had an embarrassing period story? I guess, but I’ve also reached a point where I’ve stopped seeing period mishaps as embarrassing. Stuff like that just happens sometimes, and I can’t be around people who are going to be babies about it. ...If so, what happened? The worst instance was leaking during a PE workout and my classmate pointing it out for me, and then having to change into denim jeans for the rest of the workout since that was the only other pair of bottoms I had.  What was your worst experience in high school? I can remember one but I don’t wanna relive my anxieties here by writing it in full detail so no thanks. What was your high school's mascot? We don’t have a mascot; we only had colors. Do you listen to Grace VanderWaal? Only if she’s on the radio. I don’t dislike her but I also don’t think I’ve ever looked up her music voluntarily. ...if yes, what's your favorite song of hers? I’m not familiar with her song titles. I’ve caught some songs that I liked but I wouldn’t be able to tell you which ones they were. Do you watch America's Got Talent? Only the compilation videos they’ve got on YouTube. Which country has the best accent? I don’t really rank accents lol Did you cry at your high school graduation? I cried the night before. I find that I don’t usually cry when an event that’s supposed to be emotional is happening, but I do cry before or after it. Did you cry at your college graduation (if applicable)? LOL if applicable, fucking same. I think I’ll mostly be relieved when it finally happens because I’m expecting it to keep getting postponed for now. Do your parents try to stop you from chasing your dreams? No, but they’re also realistic. I tried to court my dad about having an internship with WWE at Connecticut, and he was less than enthusiastic about it which I completely understood. What dreams have stuck with you since childhood? My dream house, to go to Wrestlemania, and to have a lot of money hahaha. Who is a former friend that you wish would come back into your life? Egh, I feel like the way life has turned out has been for the best and I’m currently not wishing any of my former friends back. I suppose it would be nice to have my relationship with Macy back, though. Have you ever been in a serious romantic relationship? Yes, like the one I’m in now. Who was your favorite Spice Girl? I didn’t have one but I did have a soft spot for Victoria Beckham since she’s always in fashion magazines and also because her family has always looked so happy. But I never really liked her as part of the group? because I knew about Victoria before I knew about the Spice Girls. Sorryyy please put your pitchforks down I was born in 1998 :(( <333 Did you ever want to be in a band or music group? No. What instrument did you play in the marching band? We don’t have a club like that here. If you could take any one type of dance class right now, what kind you take? Ballet. Who got kicked off of your favorite talent show that you were mad about? There were a gazillion unfair eliminations on American Idol but I remember being most pissed off over Scotty McCreery’s win and Pia Toscano’s elimination. Do you own the entire series on DVD of any TV show? If so, what? I have a bootleg box set of the 80s sitcom Perfect Strangers, but other than that I’ve been able to watch TV shows via torrent or Netflix, soooo. What show did you always want to be on when you were a kid? I wanted to be a part of the dancing audience on Hi-5, and to be dumped with slime at the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards lol. Can you tell the difference between Mary-Kate and Ashley? No. Who is your favorite set of twins? Seoeon and Seojun from The Return of Superman. What is the stupidest baby name you have heard recently? Welp, nothing has beaten Covid Bryant yet... What is the grossest thing you have ever vomited up? Nothing too gross. Just alcohol. Have you ever thrown up in public, in front of someone else? Yes. The sensation of puking terrifies me so there’ve been a few times I asked Gabie to go to the Pop-Up washroom with me, enter a stall also with me, and to calm me down while I throw up D: ...If yes, was it embarrassing? I don’t find it embarrassing because she’s my girlfriend. I’d never ask anyone else to do the same thing for me though. Did you ever take your dog to school? Just once, for my graduation shoot. Name one person you know who had a baby in high school. No one in my batch had a baby while in high school, just shortly after. I’m not naming them but one of them already has three kids, one has a boy, and another one also has a boy. Do you keep a list of your favorite quotes? No. Describe your dream wedding in three words. Lots of food. What is your favorite Chinese restaurant? Tim Ho Wan or King Bee. Does Chinese food make you feel sick? No. Well Filipinos are kinda used to Chinese food, so it would be odd for us to get sick from it. Have you ever seen someone throw up on a plane? Fortunately no. But on a boat and a ship, yes. Do you get motion sickness? Yes, easily.
I’m just going to ignore the next seven questions because I’m tired of entertaining questions like these. Has God ever healed you of anything? If so, what? Do you believe in God? Do you pray, and if so, to whom? What is the most boring church you have ever attended? What is the most lively church you have ever attended? Do you find church fun or boring? When was the last time you went to a church service? When did you learn to ride a bike? I haven’t learned yet. I’ve had a few lucky rounds but they never lasted for more than five seconds. What do you hate the most about summer? The weather. Certainly not as fun when there’s no breeze from the beach complementing the heat. What is your favorite thing to do in a swimming pool? Stay away wherever most of the people are because it’s a little gross. Which part of your body is the most muscular? I don’t know. Do you like sugar skulls? No. Have you ever painted a sugar skull on your face? I probably had it done as a kid. Are you an artist? No. Did you ever take Latin in school? No but we were taught French very briefly because the foundress of my old school is from France. The lessons didn’t really catch on. What was the last race you ran called? I’ve never been in a race/marathon/walkathon before. Do you prefer to run in the street or on the sidewalk? Side of the street. Sidewalks are pretty inconsistent so I’m more likely to trip running on it. Which major holiday is closest to your birthday? Easter is always very near or exactly on my birthday.
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demigodsanswer · 5 years ago
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Hazel Levesque: Into the Prophecy-verse pt. 1
Time for the prologue to an AU I’ve wanted to write for a long time and need to finally get out of my brain. Hazel is a little OOC in this, but that’s because it’s an AU where she grows up in the modern world, not the 1920s. 
Description:
Rome was a three-thousand year old empire, with two capitals - Old Rome in Italy and New Rome in America. New Rome was the powerhouse of the gods and their hero’s.
The children of the Olympian gods lived amongst mortals, the most powerful of them joining the Legion, and some even earning fame status when major prophecies thrusted one or a few of them into the spot light. 
Hazel Levesque is an unclaimed, unimportant demigod, unsuitable for the esteemed legion. And she’s about to find herself at the middle of a major prophecy. 
~*~*~*~
Alright let’s do this one last time
“My name is Jason Grace. I’m the son of Jupiter and for ten years, I’ve the one and only child of the Big Three. I’m pretty sure you know the rest: I saved a bunch of people, fell in love, saved the city, and then I saved the city again and again and again. I also did this [cut to Jason getting hit in the head with a brick]. We don’t talk about that. Look, I’m a comic book, I’m a cereal, did a Christmas album, have an excellent theme song, and a so-so popsicle. I mean, I’ve looked worse. But after everything, I still love being the hero. I mean, who wouldn’t? So no matter how many hits I take, I always find a way to come back, because the only thing standing between this city and oblivion is me. There’s only one child of the Big Three. And you’re looking at him.” 
Hazel was listening to her music too loud to hear Chiron calling her. She had her first day at some prep school for demigods, meaning she was leaving Chiron’s half-way house for unclaimed and untamable demigods. 
New Rome was overflowing with demigods who either hadn’t been claimed or had been rejected from the Legion. Lupa had deemed her and her friend Leo “too insubordinate” for the Legion. He set the wolf on fire (an accident) and she had told the wolf to eat shit (not an accident.) Demigods who didn’t fit in the Legion and couldn’t live at their home with their mortal parents (like Hazel, who’s mom had been deem “unsuitable”) or didn’t have mortal parents (like Leo) lived in one of the half-way houses. There was hundreds of them around the country, all named “Chiron’s Half-Way House,” but only the New Rome branch was actually graced by the old Greek Centaur. 
He did his best to train or rehabilitate problem kids, getting them ready for either the legion or the real world. He was the one who had insisted every demigod apply to some fancy, over-priced prep school. And Hazel was the only one of them dumb enough to be smart enough to get in.  
 “Do I have to go?” She asked Chiron, as he adjusted the collar of her uniform (which she already hated.) 
“This is a step in the right direction for you Hazel.” 
She tugged on one of her curls, pulling it straight in front of her eyes before letting it bounce back into place. Chiron led her out to the car. Leo was waiting out on the front porch. 
“Don’t forget us little people while you’re off becoming some famous hero or some shit, Levesque.” He said, smiling. 
Hazel pulled him into a hug. “Who could forget you?” 
“I’ll bust you out as soon as I can,” he whispered. 
Hazel sat, clearly angry, in the back of Chiron’s car. He couldn’t drive, being a centaur and all, so Argus, the thousand-eyed half-way house driver was behind the wheel, and Chiron lectured her about all of her opportunities. 
“I don’t care,” Hazel protested. “I don’t want to go, I’m only here because I drew some pictures.” Her scholarship was art-based, that was true. She was a good artist. Not a really notable demigod skill, though. Still, someone had to mosaic all of Jason Grace’s accomplishments. They were only one year away from some world-ending prophecy that the tabloids still had yet to leak. So it was only a matter of time before Golden Boy Supreme (as Leo had nicknamed him) added another line on his resume. And if Hazel was lucky, which she rarely was, she’d be there to sculpt the whole thing in marble. 
“You passed the entrance exam just like everyone else,” Chiron told her. “This is your opportunity, Hazel. Do you want to end up like --” 
He cut himself off, but she knew how that sentence ended. Like her mother. Her mom wasn’t perfect, but she wasn’t bad. She was actually pretty cool. The courts were just picky about who was allowed to raise demigod children. Even mega-Hero Grace grew up with a foster mom - Sally Jackson, poster mom for good demigod parenting. Literally, her picture was on the side of buses. She had her own book. She had been on The View with the nine muses. 
Her mom wasn’t Sally Jackson, for sure, but she always made sure Hazel had food, and she taught her how to draw. The court’s problem was her mom’s inability to hold down a job. The only thing she managed consistently was selling her own homemade jewelry. It was all bullshit though. If Hazel wasn’t a demigod, they never would have separated them. 
“Whatever,” Hazel said as they pulled up to the school. She grabbed her backpack and suitcase, and preyed to whatever god her father was that she would be kicked out by the end of the day. 
“Tie your shoes!” Chiron yelled after her. She ignored him. 
Hazel walked into a whirlwind. The school was huge. Most people were in their uniforms, although a few wore ancient Roman style armor over theirs. Some carried stacks of books, and other had spears and swords. Half her day was academic - Latin, literature, history, science, and math. The other half was training - weaponry, climbing, survival skills, and pegasus riding. At least they had Pegasi here. She had been trained well enough at the half way house, but there were unfortunately lacking in magic horses. Well, besides Chiron’s lower half, which Hazel wasn’t too keen on riding. 
“You’re shoe’s untied,” a stranger said, passing Hazel. 
“Yeah, I know it’s a choice.” 
The sneakers probably weren’t uniform, but she didn’t earn the label “insubordinate” for nothing. 
She found her locker, wide and tall enough for armor, weapons, and other demigod provisions, and shoved her suitcase in it. She figured she would move into her dorm later on. 
Someone opened the locker next to hers. “Oh this is so embarrassing,” Hazel said to her locker neighbor, “we are wearing the same jacket.” She laughed awkwardly, but the girl just rolled her eyes before walking away. 
Off to a good start, Hazel though before grabbing her backpack and moving on to her first class. 
Each class seemed to come with its own thousand pound textbook. And the long, winding hallways made it impossible to stop at her locker in between classes. By fifth period - history - she had four new text books and figured she was about to get one more. 
She walked in late. She hoped the darkness of the room helped cover her late arrival, but she cast a shadow in front of the projector. 
“Ah Miss. Levesque,” her history teacher, some old guy named Mr. Quintus, paused the movie, “you’re late.” 
She shrugged, “Maybe y’all are just early.” 
A girl with black spiky hair and dark eye make up let out a stifled chuckle. Quitus and Hazel looked at her. “Sorry, it was just so quiet.” 
“Please take your seat, Miss, Levesque.” He started playing the movie again. Some history documentary. The Romans loved those. This one had some young narrator, who would have been handsome if it wasn’t for the scar down his face. With his blond hair and blue eyes, Hazel could have mistaken him for Jason Grace, if Jason were twenty-five, not fifteen. 
“The Titan Saturn, lord of Time, was overthrown by Jupiter and his other brothers and sisters, and his remains cast away.” 
Hazel was just staring to tune the whole thing out when Quintus paused the video again. “Can anyone tell me the Greek name for the Titan Saturn?” The girl next to Hazel raised her hand. “Yes, Miss. Grace?” 
“Kronos,” she offered. 
“Very good,” Quintus restarted the film. Hazel thought about leaning over and asking her if she was related to Jason, but figured she probably got that all the time. 
A week later, Quintus stopped Hazel on her way out the door. “Miss. Levesque?” 
She walked over to his desk. “What’s up?” 
Quintus showed her the score from their history quiz the day before. A red 0/100 was written across the scantron. 
“A zero?” Hazel tried to look genuinely upset. “A few more of those and you’ll probably have to kick me out of here, huh?”
“If a person wearing a blind fold took a true or false quiz at random, what score would they get?” 
“Fifty percent?” 
Quintus changed her 0 to a 100. “That’s right.” He stood and faced the bored to start erasing that day’s lecture notes. “Are you familiar with the story of Icarus, Miss. Levesque?” 
“Uh yeah, he was escaping the Labyrinth with his father with a pair of bronze wings. But he flew too close to the sun, the wax melted, and he fell into the ocean. it’s about pride, right?” 
“Correct,” he said, turning to face her, “but you left out a crucial element. Yes, Icarus was instructed by his father not to fly too high. But he was also told not too fly too low, as the sea mist could also weaken the wax.”
“Why are you telling me this?” She asked. 
“You’re trying to quit, and I won’t let you. You must remember not to let yourself fly too low, it’s just as dangerous. I’m assigning you a personal essay. Not about history, but about yourself and the kind of person who you want to be.” 
Hazel had spent an hour at her desk, trying to write anything for Quintus or for her literature essay, but her ADHD was going off the rails. She wished Leo would make good on his promise to bust her out of there. 
But she decided not to wait for Leo. 
She hadn’t seen her mom in a while. She grabbed her hoodie before making her way down the fire escape. 
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