#trying to analyze what the fuck kind of entity was involved with that

[taffy-glitch]

ok ok look i understand that celia recognizing chester and emails from "john" and whatever the FUCK is going on with lena and gwen is all mind-boggling and such but

i feel like im not seeing NEARLY as many posts about the statement this episode???

I only listened once but what the fuck is the significance of those donations???? The laughter?? "it's all for a good cause"???????

WHO THE FUCK IS THE "SECURITY FIRM" THAT DEALT WITH IT?????

[mantis-in-the-dirt]

alright then, boys. i have quite a few thoughts and questions to consider about the inbetween and generally karl’s lore from today- i won’t be adding thoughts about the actual tales (the pit), although i might make a post about that later. just be warned, this might be kinda long-ish! i will probably expand on details within these posts later. it’s probably a bit ramble-y, but i,, cannot collect my thoughts better lmao. also, spoilers from the most recent tftsmp, in case that wasn’t clear. 

(also, forgive me if there’s any bad grammar, i’m pretty tired.)

unless i refer to them as cc!, i am talking about the character!

tw for mentions of manipulation, mentions of blood, mentions of the prison.

this is set up like a list, mostly because i will absolutely fail to keep my points in check if i don’t do it this way.

1. let’s start where Karl does- in spawn. he spawns in the inbetween, and based on what we’ve seen, his respawn point does seem to be set within the inbetween. my thoughts on this aren’t super specific, and they tangle a bit with minecraft mechanics, so. if his respawn point is set in the inbetween, that means, with Minecraft logic, he will come back right inside of the inbetween next time he leaves his time travel. what i am assuming is the inbetween is put in the/a world’s overworld, while the other side is through the nether, which means that the set spawn is naturally in the inbetween. unless Karl has a respawn anchor within the inbetween, he is naturally going to spawn there if whatever marks his respawn is destroyed. but other than that- he hasn’t set a spawn point of any kind within the other side, so technically, by Minecraft laws, he should be respawning within the inbetween. this doesn’t necessarily mean anything- for story purposes, it’s likely he’s just in the other side anyways, but it’s interesting to think about.

2. another quite glaring point from tonight’s stream. the inbetween’s threats to force karl to stay. this implies that it somehow has a way to stop him from leaving, which could involve many things. we don’t know the logic of how he joins and leaves the inbetween after he travels, and therefore we don’t know where he is. is the inbetween a separate physical plane? is it in his mind? if it’s in his mind, how would he be restrained? if it’s physical, where is it in relation the the rest of the smp? also, keep in mind this strange physical-mental-no info plane kinda idea. it’ll come up in another point soon.

3. whoo boy, this one. probably the one i’m questioning the most, if i’m being honest. one of the things we have the least answers on.. who the fuck is the inbetween? is it the castle itself, some kind of sentient being who has control and can grow itself? is there someone or something controlling the castle, making it place those books or placing the books themselves? is this force necessarily malevolent? it’s obviously not all powerful, because whoever was working to get karl out had spots that the entity couldn’t see before, and karl managed to get messages. it refers to itself as person, it refers to itself by calling itself ‘i’, implying it is some kind of sentient entity, so what and who is it?

4. i do not think either place is benevolent. neither of them seem even close to truly friendly, and both of them give big red flags in every way they talk. the inbetween is more obvious, because we have quite a bit more info on it. it’s used manipulative techniques, it’s tried to force karl into doing things and to stay. the other side hasn’t done anything specific enough to garner direct dislike, but for multiple reasons, i don’t trust it. this may be a personal opinion, but i think greeting karl like he’s familiar is strange. it said welcome home, which implies a few things (that he’s been there before, that it knows him, that it is somehow familiar with him) that we haven’t learned enough about to properly analyze. i still find it weird, however. (this is less of a concise point and more of a kind of guess/theory.)

5. this is something i said in my last short little post on the tales, but i noticed it once again within this tales, especially with a fewer specific lines. the inbetween continues to use extremely similar and the same methods of manipulation as our green smiley man himself does, which may or may not be important, but i find worth noting. 

6. there was blood in the supposedly secret room. it was a ‘surprise,’ phrased like it was supposed to be some kind of happy thing. first off, there was blood with the sign “don’t stray from the path :]” which is undeniably creepy. of all the ways you could’ve sent a message, that’s horrifying. secondly, this is one of the first (the first, possibly?) physical threats of violence within the inbetween, and we’ve observed quite often in this fandom the difference between physical and mental attacks. last, where did the blood come from? we’ve seen no physical bodies other than karl himself and the many copies of him. did something hurt the karl copies? if not, whose blood is it, and how is there so much of it all over the room?

7. this is likely a complete coincidence, or even if it isn’t it won’t matter to lore, but the blocks that we’ve seen of the other side are mostly the same as the prison. there’s a lot of blackstone and possible obsidian and such.

8. the inbetween and the other side seem almost inverse of each other. each different part of them that we are able to compare so far seems to be exactly opposite from each other. from the obvious things- the color schemes, the flowers- to the less obvious details- the way they speak to karl. the build of the other side so far seems to be foreboding and creepy, kinda strange and unusual type of build. the build of the inbetween looks peaceful and calm, very gentle and pretty. it’s obviously purposeful, and i think there are some connections with the nether (the other side) vs. the overworld (the inbetween.) 

9. there are still the karl’s wandering around all over the inbetween, and we got more information on them today. they are versions of karl who have ‘lost themselves’ and become stuck here, cursed to wander the halls of the castle together. this is a very, very interesting idea. first off, let me be clear. time travel is a tricky thing, and depending on the world and the lore of how cc!karl has decided he wants to do it. logically, these copies of karl cannot be from the past, because if they are stuck, then karl himself would be stuck, and none of the rest of the copies would be there. this then implies that either versions of himself from the future have come back and gotten stuck, and/or that there is some form of alternate reality talk coming into play here. also, to go back into the previous point, are there going to be any kind of flip-side karl’s in the other side, or are there going to be no entities at all?

10. who is warning karl out of the inbetween? the inbetween has shown us no people other than karl and his copies, but someone or something is putting the books there to warn him, and something obviously seems to know that the inbetween isn’t right. however, is this force actually trying to be helpful? is it trying to warn him away from the inbetween because they want to help him away from malevolent places, or do they just want him to come to the other side? is there some force within the castle that holds enough power to put out books with differing opinions to the inbetween’s books, or is someone manually setting out these stories?

11. where is the inbetween, and how does karl get there? we haven’t been given specific information on how karl arrives or leaves the inbetween, or where the inbetween is. is it an entire other dimension? is it within karl’s mind, or is it in a physical plane? what does it mean that karl has gone into another dimension in wherever he is? will this cause difficulties in leaving or coming back to this area in general? adding onto this with a small idea, we have been given the ‘other side’ and the ‘inbetween.’ does this imply that there is a third side, and if so, what is it? is it something we already know, like the dreamsmp, or is it a completely new world?

12. i do not think the other side is a good thing. i do not think it is going to turn out well for karl. however, it currently seems to be the better place for karl to be. it seems to be the ‘good’ out of the two, just from what we’ve seen. despite this, it seems to fight all these common stereotypes of being ‘good.’ it’s dark and scary and seems very dreary. does this or will this reflect on the dream smp itself? does it mirror anything that the dreamsmp does with stereotypes or characters?

alright then, that’s it! if you made it to the end, i hope you agreed with a couple of these points, and i hope a couple of these questions are ones other people are having as well.

sorry for the ramble essay lmao 

[metvmorqhoses]

Lis I adore your Sugar Baddie Type analysis! But TOM RIDDLE?!

ok two more anons asked this and you are all really right, this indeed needs some explanations.

to put tom among the “sugar baddies” trope is the consequence of my *more mature* personal opinion about his character, therefore it is for you to decide how right i might be in the end. i was also specifically referring to his dynamic with bellatrix, which never stops to fascinate me. but again, since none or very little of this is clearly mentioned in the books, which are sadly not specifically about him, all this will always be up to interpretations.

tom riddle (and then voldemort consequentially) is one of the most ruthless, fascinating villains ever created, pure in his evil as much as in his ideology, extremely selfish and wicked, so full of hatred, fear, ambition and, yes, desperation as well. so purely evil, in fact, that people too many times tend to oversimplify his character and more importantly his behaviors. to most, voldemort is too evil to do anything else but evil; too evil to be anything else but a full-time fairytale-like villain. we can hardly picture him enjoying a quidditch game, or a pie, or reading a book about anything else but horcruxes-making; we don’t even dare to try to picture him having sex, if not in a degrading way towards his victim, ehrm, partner. and this is all absolutely true, but i love to think there is also… more.

to really strike me, a villain must still possess the shreds, the deformities of what once their humanity was. it’s what i love about ancient mythologies - even gods have human-shaped hearts. but those hearts in their chests are redder, have twisted forms, pulse with more insistence - and they are so much heavier.

i like to think voldemort falls in this category, even if it’s not always easy to come to realize this when you first read the books. after all, as any real myth, and i say this with a bit of pride, there is little or nothing left of the real person behind it, not in the minds of those who come after them, at least.

growing up with the hp books, i had this same idea of tom riddle as well and i think the novels are to some extent to blame for this, after all they are told from harry’s point of view and we can’t really blame him for falling for the fairytale-like monster trick, it’s obvious that tom himself wanted everyone to perceive him like that, to fear him like that, that’s, after all, the very reason he became voldemort in the first place, to get rid of his humanity - and i can’t honestly think of anything more painfully human than that.

yet, when i say “human” i’m not trying to belittle his demi-god aura, or his exceptionality, quite the opposite: i’m endlessly fascinated by his being a finer, higher, more sophisticated kind of human - with the horrors that came with it as well. even when harry tries to consider him as person, even while he watches him as a boy in the orphanage, harry is presented with an inhuman psychopath, but i don’t think it is necessary always the case. i like to think one as intelligent and exceptional (and damaged) as tom could easily go from pure evil to (potentially) pure love in a split second. and that’s absolutely disturbing in a person, and twisted, and really interesting. after all, there are many ways one can be unable to love: being conceived under a love potion doesn’t necessarily make you alien to love, but maybe simply unable to understand or trust it. i think this interpretation fits more tom’s character: he had ALL the capabilities others had, he actually had more than, even the one to love, but his past and choices and consequential fears made him the monster he became.

recently analyzing his character, i found myself intrigued to go past his evil-entity facade, looking at him in a more real person kind of way, trying to understand him more as a real-life dictator with supernatural powers. a man behind the monster, behind the endless power. and i like to think in the end he did enjoy quidditch games, and pies, and music, and literature, and art, and did care, in his twisted and dangerous way of course, about some people - bellatrix, most of all.

he screamed when she died. he tried to avenge her. he had a daughter with her. and in all honesty i can’t really see him having an aseptic one-night-stand sex for some heir-conceiving frenzy, it’s terribly out of character for someone who’s been planning to live forever and being the world’s eternal dictator since he was six years old. i’m sure delphini was a mistake and this means he was actively having sex with bellatrix, the said most loyal lieutenant, whom he tried to avenge, whom he screamed for, to whom he literally entrusted a piece of his own torn soul (how awfully romantic). bellatrix who was basically almost seen as a queen by everyone, incredibly feared and respected. bellatrix who was always behind him, and yet ahead of everyone else in every single battle/meeting/situation - and he let her. do you think someone like voldemort would have allowed anyone to be that annoying if he had not enjoyed it? anyone else would have been killed for much less. bellatrix who had talent, and courage, and the strength to never give up for all those years in azkaban, just to one day see him again. i think him intelligent and deep enough to be fascinated by that, especially if that beautiful mind was as twisted as his own. also i think him intelligent enough to value beauty: the beauty of magic, of nature, of her body. all those sentiments are linked and they absolutely don’t diminish the horrors in my mind, they just magnify them.

but i also think their relationship, as twisted and complicated and unhealthy as it might have been, wasn’t a degraded slave and master one. leaving aside the fact i don’t think he would have enjoyed to fuck a worthless worm at all and that bellatrix can be literally perceived as anything but that, i think he viewed sex as something deeply human, and therefore far beneath him. extremely good-looking as he was, i think he considered women something he would have never lessened himself with.

then why having sex with bellatrix and favor her, even publicly, even if in a really subtle way? the only possible answer is there were sentiments involved, admiration for her, trust in her, desire for her beyond reason, even. i also think he would have only ever allowed himself to appear that human with someone he literally trusted more than his very self. i don’t want to explore here all the possible implications and internal crisis this might have caused them both, but this is why they probably are my favorite fictional couple and that’s why i’m so fascinated by them both. they do fall in the trope, but not as the normal “pure girl saves villain” kind of way, but in a much higher one: what’s really perfect about them is they found each other in darkness, they are kindred spirits in power and terror, and yet this doesn’t mean they can’t love or care, but just that it’s a black kind of love they share. a terrible one.

i think bellatrix was the great woman behind the great man, whom he rewarded publicly, and dashingly and twistingly loved privately. and if we can’t really see him doing any of those things, it’s because he succeeded in making us just see the terrible mask of voldemort, finally becoming the hideous myth that could so safely protect and immortalize the broken, desperate and exceptionally talented tom riddle.

[annoyed-galaxy]

“I finally touched one of those strange crystals floating around this realm. When I touched it, my vision got blurred and a massive headache crashed over me. It was almost like I was suffering from Arcane Fever.

When I woke up, I was in some building. I went out of the room I was in just to see a bunch of people with robes. I approached one of them and asked where I was. She explained to me that I was in the Hall of the Vigilants. I asked her who she was. She said her name was Viranya and that she served Stendarr, the God of Mercy, in wiping out Daedra.

I was so confused.

I asked her if she was Aeterna because she looked like me: yellow-tinted skin, slanted eyes, pointy ears. She had no idea what Aeterna was or what that meant but said she was an Altmer, or High Elf. She looked at me strangely after that.

After I spoke with her, I roamed around the hall a little bit. The keeper gave me some supplies and asked that I be on my way. I guess they really did not like the fact that a random stranger just woke up in the middle of their sacred hall. Let alone one who asking strange questions like who was Stendarr or what were Daedra.

Stendarr is one of the Nine Divines, the religious entities of Skyrim (the land I was in) and Daedra are basically demons. So I know I’m not on Vyn anymore. Wonder if these entities are just powerful mages like the Light-Born or if they are actual divine beings. Who knows.

After leaving the hall, I went outside and I already hate Skyrim. I hate it so much that I’d rather go back to the Powder Desert in Enderal or even Nehrim!

It’s. So. Fucking. Cold.

I was confused as to why the keeper had given me lots of furs and a tent.

Then I understood as I walked further away from the hall. Nothing in my life has made me hate the cold more than this. I love winter, don’t get me wrong, but Skyrim is the definition of a fucking winter wonderland and I hate it. I barely made it that far away from the Hall before I had to try and set up a little camp.

It took forever to get a blasted fire running, but when it did, I felt better than I had when I first stepped out into this blizzarding wasteland.

As I sat by my fire, trying desperately to warm myself up, I realized that I could not cast magic. Well, the magic that I had known. I also did not have Arcane Fever. I tried casting a small restoration spell on myself and there was no headache involved or anything. I was actually amazed!

I slept through the night, shivering in my little tent, desperately missing Star City and Jespar. I met more people in my first hours in Skyrim then I will ever see on Vyn again. The notion was kind of heartbreaking.

As I woke up, I tried packing up and moving out. But it was so damn cold that I was freezing as I walked away. I tried hurriedly making another camp but passed out.

I woke up in a small camp where someone had a left note saying they stole some money off of me. I was a little irritated but at least they just took my money and not everything else I had from that special realm. Where I woke up, for a second I thought I was near Starling territory because the building I was near was similar to the architecture of Star City. It even had moving stuff and those big metal doors. I couldn’t get in though. It was still freezing cold and I made another large campfire. Then I went out for a little bit and found a fort. The fort, of course, was infested with bandits. Despite my lack of magic, I’ve always known how to use a blade so these guys were nothing compared to what I’ve seen.

Slaying bandits is easy. Trying to get back to my warm and cozy camp while freezing my ass off? Not so easy.

I passed out. Again.

Fuck Skyrim.

This time when I woke up, I was in an actual inn. Nightcaller Inn as it was called. I was in the town of Dawnstar. I managed to get some food, warm up, and relax a little bit. I asked the innkeeper about where I might be able to learn about magic. He explained that magic is frowned upon in Skryim and that the few places I could learn about were at the College of Winterhold (wherever the hell that is) or through court wizards.

Trying to understand magic in this world was more confusing and taxing than it has ever been for me in Vyn. Maybe that’s why all those Arcanists in the Order were jealous of me. Read a book and bam! Magic learned. When I went to the court wizard, she explained to me that reading spell tomes would take time, that I would have to analyze the glyphs and graphs and everything in between in order to understand a spell. Another thing was that I had to actually analyze spells themselves. What they were made of, how they were made, how they worked. The spells are constructed different in this world.

I asked her if anyone had ever suffered from Arcane Fever and she said that wasn’t a thing. The only thing close to what I described was simple mental exhaustion.

Taking this knowledge, I went back to the inn attempting to try my hand at learning magic the traditional way. I could understand most of these things a little easier since I already knew about magic. Part of me was wondering whether or not I should just stick to my sword and dagger. If one thing as Prophetess taught me, it was that magic was actually fun. I was determined to take advantage of the no-Arcane Fever penalty and have some fun. If I was going to be stuck here, I was going to at least learn some shit. Jespar might find it cool and interesting. That anyone can learn magic!

So far, this world has seemed a lot better than Vyn already (except for the fucking cold!).

Until I heard that nightmares are plaguing the poor people of Dawnstar. Unnatural nightmares. Caused by a Daedric Prince named Vaermina.

I swear...can’t I go anywhere without there being some dramatic ass problem and people reaching out to me for help?! I have my own issues. But...I know Jespar wouldn’t want me to turn my back on people who need help. Calia too. Tharael even.

So, once I’m rested, tomorrow I go with this Priest of Mara who asked for my help to Nightcaller Temple. Skyrim is becoming more interesting the longer I stay.

Wish you were here Jes. Would make the cold a little more bearable ♥“

⊱ ────── {.⋅ ✯ ⋅.} ────── ⊰ 

Frostfall makes trying to navigate Skyrim much more difficult, but a lot more fun. It adds for an entertaining twist to Clerissa’s journey through this unknown land. I’ll be posting a list of my mods since I’m pretty sure I finally have all of them finalized. Mods like Spell Research are making it more difficult to learn magic but interesting at the same time. It also adds spell crafting from Oblivion back but with a more immersive touch which I liiiiike.

On the next episode of DragonBall Z-wait shit wrong series...

Ahem

On the next episode of Lost Prophetess, Clerissa goes out of her way to find out why people are having strange nightmares. Is the Red Madness a thing even in this world? Or is it something completely different that she has no idea what to make of it.

[rubyslipperscollective]

we’ve got spirit - an exploration of varsity pep from a cheerleader’s perspective

**an essay from my english class senior year of high school. i reflect on my experiences as a cheerleader (an activity which is no longer in any way congruent with my identity) and on the culture of athletics in my high school**

“And now, please rise for the playing of our national anthem.”

It’s my first ever away game––Friday night lights. Sweaty hand gripping pom-pom, pom-pom pressed against my heart, heart racing. I don’t remember what town we were playing, but it was far. Our buses got lost on the way there; the ride was long. Really long. Long enough for the seniors to get drunk in the back of the bus.

I was 14 years old, 93 pounds, and a terrible cheerleader. I knew nothing about how to balance in the air or support another girl in a pyramid. Thankfully, I had three experienced seniors as my bases. Not thankfully, they were all wasted.

The girls who were seniors when I was a freshman were pretty and mean: just how cheerleaders are meant to be. They treated freshman (particularly the ones who sucked at cheerleading, namely me) as essentially sub-human. At the first captain’s practice, one of the captains insulted my ability to dance until I cried. Probably two weeks later, a different, particularly unkind senior commented that I “looked like a slug” when I was in the air stunting.

The seniors were in charge. They were popular and I was not. They could be as mean as they wanted and there was simply nothing that could be done about it. After they graduated, we no longer had older, more popular cheerleaders to torment us, so Cougar Nation (as our fan section has titled themselves) stepped in.

The student section hates their cheerleaders, treating us about as inhumanely as those seniors did. I’ve been told it has always been this way, but in reality it must have all started when the football team tanked. Four consecutive seasons without a win, including my freshman and sophomore year, are bound to make cheerleaders seem annoying. Any cheer with the word “victory” in it immediately serves as a joke with that kind of losing record. My first ever Cougar Night was a Saturday night home game. We lost 65-0 and a drunken high schooler threw a soft pretzel at me.

Each time I trekked onto the track I was focused less on pep than I was on an internal pep-talk. It’s not personal. They aren’t booing because they hate you, Dani, they’re booing because they hate the cheerleaders as an entity.

But even once the football team was on the rise––nearly winning a state title in my junior year––love for the cheerleaders never seemed to catch on.

The cheerleaders that we see on TV and read about in books are never like me. They always feel loved by their fan sections; they are always confident and popular. I didn’t go into cheerleading looking for confidence and popularity––I went into it because I have a lot of spirit and I didn’t feel like throwing away twelve years of dance classes––but the confidence would have been nice, at least. So it didn’t make sense to me, with all these ideas of what cheerleaders are supposed to feel like, why I would walk away from every game feeling more hated than the last.

I set out to analyze this phenomenon, and started by questioning why students wouldn’t cooperate with cheers even when we were winning games. There were a select few call-back cheers that a select few fans would participate in, but other than that, participation was sparse if present. There seemed to be no direct logic behind this, so my research required some deep plunging into the nature and culture of our varsity athletics. I started, most logically, with the Cougar Nation Facebook group.

The Cougar Nation Facebook group is a necessity for any sports fan in our high school, promoting the attendance and sportsmanship of students at all athletic events...kinda. By promoting attendance, I mean “you better fucking show up you fucking pieces of egg fart” (this is a real quote). By promoting sportsmanship I mean insulting other teams’ mascots, hygiene, and their sexual habits, as well as leading offensive/obscene chants against referees and specific players on opposing teams. And by all athletic events I mean only boys’ athletic events. And maybe a girls’ championship once in a while. At the end of each post they give “shoutouts” to people who, in the past week, have drank impressive amounts or hurt themselves in some idiotic way. Girls only receive shoutouts for instagram posts that expose notable amounts of their bodies.

The culture of our sports fans is to be as obnoxious as is humanly possible. In attending sporting events, they aim not to support student athletes, but rather is to piss off as many people as they can. The atmosphere they create is not conducive to the growth of anyone involved––student athletes cannot perform well under this kind of negative pressure, referees will make calls unfavorable to teams with abrasive fan sections, students who are not interested in drinking and/or being ridiculed by their peers feel excluded from the sports scene, and administrators face heat for having drunk and insufferable high schoolers on their hands.

Even though I was cheer captain this past year, I was never once made to feel invited or included in the promotion of school spirit by Cougar Nation. For this I am thankful. Over my four years as a CHS cheerleader, students’ behavior at athletic events has become something I am ashamed of. All four of my years, my spot for sideline cheers was the closest to the student section, and I essentially became the face of the cheerleaders as far as Cougar Nation was concerned...and never in my life have I held a more thoroughly embarrassing title. As a cheerleader during this past basketball season I was pointed and laughed at for trying to get the fan section to cheer along with the squad at a quarter. During the football season, in addition to being hit with a soft pretzel and a few other projectiles, I have been yelled at to pick up students’ dropped foodstuffs and water bottles (filled with anything but water) and called a number of unfavorable names based off of both my personality and appearance.

When I shout “Yell C-H-S!” into the crowd, nobody responds minus maybe a drunken fan screaming “No, bitch!” It’s not because they don’t like me and it’s not because I am doing a bad job––facts I have had to assure myself time and time again––but because our fans don’t come to the game for the athletes. They come to the game for themselves. Unlike other schools’ sports fans, who go to games to support their friends and express school pride, our sports fans have two alternative goals in showing up:

1. To get drunk (and, subgoal: to not get breathalyzed)

2. To get something entertaining on their Snapchat story.

Cougar Nation doesn’t treat their members nor their athletes with the respect that athletes or students or human beings in general deserve. Even though I moved the entire cheer squad down 30 feet to get the fan section involved on Cougar Night, and I got a surprisingly large number of people to shout with me, respect for the cheerleaders will never be there. There will always be someone rowdy enough to throw a soft pretzel at a freshman and then later demand that she pick up his bottle of vodka when he drops it. It is the nature of The Nation.

And, much like when I was a freshman taking blows from mean seniors, my position is a powerless one. The people who run the Cougar Nation group are popular, I am not. They have momentum––an entire student population––behind them, backing them up. I have only myself. I can’t ask that they cheer along with the words twenty girls are yelling at them when they won’t even allow girls to make posts in the Facebook group, and worse yet won’t advertise for girls’ athletic events. I can’t singlehandedly out-cheer fifteen boys, drunk and shirtless, screaming “bullshit” at referees in the basketball semi-finals. I can’t force conventional school spirit upon kids whose sole desire is to get drunk for Wednesday night baseball games. I can’t change people who don’t want to be changed.

Maybe this just wasn’t meant to be a school with the clean-cut, family-friendly school spirit I was hoping for when I signed up for cheerleading. Maybe our version of school spirit is in fact what all schools will eventually come to adopt––I mean, hey, we must be ranked first in the state for a reason, right? Maybe, someday, a freshman in a CHS cheer uniform will get hit with a soft pretzel and hope to change the ways of The Nation, just like me. And maybe, unlike me, she’ll figure out how to do it.