#we need to firmly identify what is the actual purpose for schools

[cogentranting]

✏🖍

[doctor-yamagishi]

Concern or Consideration Part 3: Initial Contact

(Part 3 of plot sequence discussed with @tacitusauxilium)

A light beep emerged from Fuuka’s room, stirring young woman awake, slowly sitting up and lightly but firmly pressing the snooze button on the alarm clock. 

It was her first day attending Shujin Academy to start her potential infiltration of the Phantom Thieves. 

Yesterday, Fuuka had taken the time to get acquainted with the area. It was different than Tatsumi Port Island and was a lot more modern than Inaba. 

Mitsuru had delivered several different letters. One contained all the paperwork that was needed for her to begin working at the Academy. Fuuka had filled out her necessary portions before going to bed. Another was separate debit card for use for using the train system. Mitsuru informed her that she would keep track of the balance and would put more money on the card when it ran low. A third contained the train schedule. Mitsuru trusts Fuuka to be able to quickly figure out the best set of trains to take to get to the closest station to the school. A fourth one contained a map from the closest train station to the school.

With no idea how the Phantom Thieves looked, it was a simple matter of identifying a persona user and seeing if they have some connection with the Phantom Thieves. There was still a matter of earning their trust that was going to be an issue. 

Mitsuru had made sure that Fuuka’s first day working at the academy was several day following Kamoshida’s confession to avoid any suspicion that she may be a replacement for Kamoshida in the end. Between the time delay, was the emergence of rumors that circulated around the Phantom Thieves that helped to expedite the opening for Fuuka’s infiltration. 

Taking a moment to brush her hair to be rid of slight bed head from her sleep, she wanted to make sure she presented as believable of her taking the job of a student teacher as possible, even if Mitsuru has assured her that the principal is a rather greedy person that is willing to overlook her appearance at a price, Fuuka was far from convinced that it would keep the facade of her appearance as a student teacher free of suspicion for very long. 

A part of her wondered if this is how Minako felt when leading SEES. The somber memory almost brought her back to Minako’s sacrifice. Shaking her head free of the memory, Fuuka had to focus on her mission. She knew that she shouldn’t be caught up in the fact that Minako is gone and that MInako would want her to focus on her mission, much like she was focused on stopping Nyx and Strega. 

The biggest issue was trying to earn the Phantom Thieves’ trust enough to become a member in order to follow through her mission. Given the secrecy of how they accomplished their feat, there was going to be a lot of scrutiny about letting someone in their ranks. Given how the knowledge of how the Phantom Thieves’ operate could effectively be twisted and used for selfish purposes, it was the reason that it was necessary to determine where the PHantom Thleves stand in their intention. 

With everything gathered up in a way that she can easily access what is needed, Fuuka began her way to the train station to get the actual infiltration underway. 

Arriving at Shujin Academy, Fuuka looked up and could feel a presense similar but not exactly the same as what she felt in Tartarus or the TV world. Each bore an unsettling similarity that was tweaked enough to make them distinguishable from each other. Unsure about if it is because of the Phantom Thieves or if it holds some connection to them, Fuuka bit back her unease and made her way into the school and toward Kobayakawa’s office. 

Lightly knocking on the door. “Come in.” Kobayakawa’s voice almost bellowed from the other side of the door. Fuuka steeled herself and opened the door and walked in, stopping a few feet from the principal’s desk. 

“You must be Fuuka Yamagishi. Not sure why you want to do you time as a student teacher here given the bad publicity we recently had, but as long as you help restore the school’s reputation, I could care less your motives. We have already received your deposit to ensure your performance and just need the paperwork.” Kobayakawa stated before pressing the button for the school’s loudspeaker. 

Fuuka took the time as Kobayakawa shifted his focus to the loudspeaker to retrieve the necessary paperwork, but she was unsettled by his response to the fiasco involving Kamoshida. There was no words spoken about easing the pains that was caused to the students or how the school was going to keep it from happening again, it was all about the school’s reputation and prestige. She was beginning to see how Kamoshida was allowed to do what he could prior to the Phantom Thieves’ interference. Her intuition was telling her that the Phantom Thieves were good people, but she had to make sure that was the case before reporting to Mitsuru.

“Ms. Kawakami, your student teacher has arrived. Report to the principal’s office to show her the way to your classroom.” Kobayakawa sounded throughout the school before releasing the button for the loudspeaker and shifted his attention back to Fuuka who had rested the paperwork on his desk facing toward him so he can read. 

“Ms. Kawakami will show you the way to the classroom. If you don’t have any questions, you are free to leave.” Kobayakawa stated as he looked over the paperwork, though there wasn’t any real interest in the contents since he had already been paid for her application and didn’t want to waste the time looking through for validity.

“Thank you Principal Kobayakawa.” Fuuka stated with a light bow as she closed her bag that held the paperwork before turning 180 degrees and making her way out of the principal’s office. Closing the door behind her, Fuuka couldn’t but shutter. She was beginning to question if there is more people like Kamoshida in the school since of how the principal is. 

“You must be the student teacher, I am Sadayo Kawakami, but call me Kawakami.” Ms. Kawakami stated looking rather disinterested at Fuuka, to Kawakami there was a possibility that Fuuka was just here to make sure that she was doing her job correctly. “Follow me to the classroom.” Kawakami turned around and made her way to her classroom, Fuuka following a short way behind her. 

Even before approaching the door to the classroom, Fuuka could sense at least two persona from the other side of the wall. Though she could sense the personas doesn’t mean that they are a Phantom Thief. 

Kawakami would open the door and Fuuka would follow behind her. Her gaze would trail over Ann and would count one persona internally and would look across the room and upon seeing Akira, she would sense, not one, but two personas. At first thinking that Akira might be the same as Minako, the thought gets dismissed when she realizes that though the source of the presence of Personas in Akira’s direction are remarkably close, they are not from exactly the same spot, which made Fuuka curious about the source of the second persona reading from around Akira. It was too close to be another person. 

Though her thoughts reeled about Akira, she didn’t keep her gaze on him, in order to evade suspicions about the reason why she was here. “My name is Fuuka Yamagishi. Thank you for giving me the chance to get my experience as a teacher with you all.” Fuuka gave a slight bow. 

“Feel free to take a seat for today. I will spend this week showing you how we present our lessons here at Shujin. Starting next week, you will present the lessons in my place. I will just offer feedback and advice as needed.” Kawakami states. 

Fuuka nods her head and takes a seat off next to Kawakami’s desk as she begins the lesson for today. 

Once classes were over for the day, Fuuka talked with Kawakami for a while in class before Kawakami excuses herself so she can head home for the day. Fuuka decided to see if she try and find the Phantom Thieves. The two people that had personas did strike her interest, so she figured that she would start with them. 

Wandering through the three floors, she had gotten no sight of either person she was seeking. There was a possibility that they had already gone home or gone elsewhere, there was no telling since she didn’t have anything definitive to say whether or not they are a Phantom Thief.

She did recall being told that the rooftop was off-limits. While she doubted the possibility that they would possibly oust themselves by making themselves situatied in an area where they can get reprimanded, it was worth a chance as it was better to explore than to just assume they weren’t there. 

Traversing down the stairs for the rooftop was Makoto and Fuuka could sense a persona from her, though the sense was weak as the persona was dormant for the time being. 

“You are the student teacher for Kawakami, correct?” Makoto inquired, which earned an affirming nod from Fuuka. 

“I am Makoto Nijima. I am the student council president. I just found a few students up on the roof and have reprimanded them for being in the off-limits area. They might listen to you more than me.” Makoto introduces herself before heading back down so she can head home for the day herself. 

Fuuka would nod her head and watch Makoto leave before returning her attention to the roof. She would make her way quietly up the stairs, keeping the door shut for the moment. She would wait and listen to see if she can get them to talk about possibly being involved with the Phantom Thieves or not. Her approach to the matter would vary based on what she hears. 

“This effing sucks. We’re not doing anything wrong. So why did the principal’s lap dog have to get on our case.” Ryuji groans resting his elbow on the desk he was sitting at. 

“The rooftops are off-limits Ryuji, doesn’t matter what we’re doing.” Ann reprimands, scowling over at him, keeping her legs crossed and her body facing the door, but looking over at Ryuji. 

“Anyways, what did you want to talk about Ryuji?” Morgana inquires walking back and forth on the desk as Akira’s, Ann’s, and Ryuji’s focus shifts toward him. 

“Yeah, I was thinking that since Kamoshida has been taken care. Is there any reason for us to continue being the Phantom Thieves?” Ryuji inquires giving the matter serious thought. 

“What are you talking about Ryuji? Of course there is. There are more people suffering than just the people at the school.” Morgana rebutts, looking back at Ryuji. 

“How do you know that? You haven’t been here that long.” Ryuji retaliates, casting a suspicious and accusatory glance over at Morgana. 

“I...I just do.” Morgana stutters out, not really sure how to address how he has that information, thinking that Ryuji wouldn’t be able to understand it. 

“Like you effing do.” Ryuji responds sarcastically, rolling his eyes. 

“Enough you two. Let’s sleep on the idea about the Phantom Thieves. For now, lets just enjoy the rewards of our work for dealing with Kamoshida.” Ann snaps at the two of them before calming down. 

Akira nods his head. 

“Pardon me.” Fuuka opens the door and looks at the three people and the cat on the roof. 

Akira, Ann, Ryuji, and Morgana all look over at Fuuka, surprise and shock on their faces. 

“Shit.” Ryuji states plainly, coming up with a blank for how to possibly beat around the bush with what they were talking about earlier. 

“You are the student teacher for Kawakami, right? H-How long have you been there?” Ann inquires dumbstruck at the situation. She knew there was a risk of them being found out of being the Phantom Thieves given that all information about Kamoshida was limited to those attending the academy, but didn’t think they would be found out so quickly. 

“Long enough to hear you talking about your identities of being Phantom Thieves.” Fuuka states, maintaining a calm yet gentle expression on her face. She can now sense four personas, including one coming from the cat. For anyone without any prior experience to non-humans having personas, this would be a shock, but for Fuuka this was another day of being a persona user. With SEES, it was Kuromaru. WIth the Inaba Investigation Squad, it was Teddie, and here it was the cat, whose name she hadn’t heard yet. 

“What do we do here Akira?” Ann inquired as she, Ryuji, and Morgana look at him. 

“Please do not be afraid. I am not here to retaliate against you for that fact or the fact you are all here. Given that you all stopped Kamoshida, you all have a good heart. I want to help the Phantom Thieves. I can tell you all have a persona as I have one myself.” Fuuka stated, being as open as she can without revealing the truth about why she was here. 

There was a moment of silence as the Phantom Thieves processed the information that had just been thrown at them. “What do you say Akira?” Ann asks as she looks over at him. 

“There is no guarantee that we will remain as the Phantom Thieves, plus we want to be sure that we can trust you.” Akira stated calmly to maintain some degree of control over the situation. Given that the presence of personas wasn’t anything that had been spoken to anyone outside of the Phantom Thieves that he was aware of, outside of the person that was instigating the mental shutdowns and anyone that they could be working under. There was no way to tell if Fuuka was the person in particular or if they had some association. She may just be feigning goodwill toward them. She wouldn’t be the first person that held contempt toward them for one reason or another. 

“I understand, I will be here. Feel free to let me know your decision one way or another.” Fuuka replies before making her way home. There is always the possibility that she won’t get in, but the best option was for her to get in to determine their motive. 

Fuuka didn’t doubt that the scientists at the Kirijo Corporation that acted on the behalf of the Shadow Operatives could achieve the means that the Phantom Thieves used to accomplish their task. This would result in a confrontation between the Phantom Thieves and the Shadow Operatives where the Shadow Operatives hold the advantage in both numbers and experience. 

[darkredehmption]

Class Is In

#SL #ClassIsIn

Written by @DamagedBrother and @OfFeatherNFang 

****

Mal: 

I shifted uncomfortably. It wasn’t even the first time, but thank fuck, none of my new ‘students’ seemed to notice. As each of the Brothers filed in, taking various seats at the front of the room, I resisted the urge to up and fucking leave. Instead I clenched the black dry erase marker, my eyes straying to Zsadist, who watched me with a small, reassuring smile. My free hand absently brushed over the new scar beneath my shirt, reminding me of what I was doing, and why. 

My most recent hospital stay had ended only a few days earlier, and while I’d been approved to teach a classroom full of muscle clad, would-kick-the-shit-out-of-satan killers, I was still black listed from actually leaving the manse to go on rotation. So I had to take what I could get I guess.

As silence crept in with everyone settling the fuck down, I felt the even more uncomfortable weight of eyes on me, waiting for how I was going to wow them. I mean, this wasn’t a class on explosives, firearms, or the 52 ways you could kill a guy with your thumb. This was on the supernatural. Or, I guess, everything ELSE that was supernatural other than… well, us.

“Right, shit, well… here we go. Never been a public speaker, so bear the fuck with me while I figure this shit out,” I mutter, tapping the marker against my free hand. Rhage, helpfully, grinned and said ‘here, here’. 

“Well, let’s start by cutting straight to the why’s of being here,” I say firmly, looking to Zsadist and giving a small nod. “Z had a demon hitch a ride. He was possessed,” I say flatly. “And demons gossip around the lava water cooler worse than chicks in a high school. If we don’t start taking precautions now, we could be seeing more of them. Or more of what happened…”

I managed to keep myself from brushing the scar this time, but nothing could quell the furious fire burning in me to ensure Zsadist would never, ever have to go through that shit again. 

Zsadist:

I couldn’t help but keep my eyes locked onto my male. I mean let’s face it, I always wanted my eyes on him. But even more lately with what had gone down recently. I could have lost him. Lost the most important person in life at the hands of myself. Well technically not myself, but still, this meeting was important. It was important for the Brotherhood to learn some knowledge on a new threat we had.

Demons.

Shaking the thought from my head as I give my male an encouraging smile. He looked nervous as hell to be in front of the Brotherhood right now, about to teach them a thing or two of his enemies. Though I wanted to believe that my Brothers would behave and give them his full attention. 

I couldn’t help but notice Mal’s hand as it crept closer to the new scar that I helped make on his body. Yes, this wasn’t my doing completely, but my hand was the one wielding the dagger. I had to stop letting myself believe this was all my fault, because it wasn’t. 

The demons were another enemy that we needed to take down. So I made sure everyone was paying attention before my eyes landed on Mal once again. 

Mal:

“I can honestly say I’ve never dealt with a demon possessing a vampire before, but then again, I don’t think the regular vampires they’re used to quite cut it…”

I frowned at that thought, but shrugged and kept going. 

“Anyway, we’ll deal with the other breeds of vampires in another lesson,” I say absently, shaking my head. “And ghouls… werewolves… wendigos… poltergeists… well, you get the idea.” I waved my hand as if it would dismiss all the other breeds of supernatural beasties I’d just thrown out there. “Demons are our most pressing issue. How to identify one…”

Turning to the white board, I popped the top on my marker and started to write as I spoke. 

“Flickering lights. While also a sign of a malevolent spirit, it can be an indicator that a strong demon is nearby. In their raw form, they look like dark black smoke. That smoke will seek access to your body through your nose and mouth,” I instruct, turning to look back at the Brothers. 

All of whom were staring at me, wide eyed and… damn, I wasn’t sure. Angry? Disbelieving? Incredulous? I couldn’t pin it. But this shit was definitely not what they were used to dealing with, and I was going to need to give them a minute to absorb.

“Uh… ask questions, if you want. If it… makes it easier.”

Zsadist:

Whoa okay. That was a lot of knowledge my male just spilled. I was just accepting the fact that demons had entered our world, but all those other things? Hell no. 

As I looked around the room I couldn’t help but notice my Brothers with the same blank look on their faces. Vishous was the first one to recover. I watched carefully as he lit a blunt then leaned across his desk. 

“Well shit. Always figured there was more to life than just us and the humans.” Vishous said with a shrug. 

Rhage’s brows drew in as he raised his hand. I couldn’t help but laugh as he played the role as a student. Once called on, by the very sexy teacher, he drops his hand and unwraps a lollipop.

“So...like all those things you are saying is bad? But how can that be true? I mean...Hadrian is a shifter and he isn’t bad. Used for bad things, sure, but that isn’t his fault. I guess what I’m saying is, what is trying to come for us currently? Do the demons work with the other parties that were mentioned?”

Ah yes, Hadrian.

Even though we were connected, I had a weird feeling that Rhage was tight with the male as well. Rhage once told me that he can relate to Hadrian in some way and hopes that they would get the chance to spend more time together. 

Speaking of, I needed to check in with the shifter and make sure he was doing alright. We did manage to be on rotation together every now and then, but rarely did we have the time to chit chat. Maybe next time Mal was out fighting and I was at home I could see if Hadrian wanted to grab a beer. Couldn’t hurt.

Mal:

“Not all shifters are bad the way not all vampires are bad,” I conceded, nodding my head. “Hadrian is a special example too. Even in his world, being able to shift into more than one creature is rare. Most shifters, like werewolves, are bound to one animal.”

Pausing, I took in a breath, trying not to let myself be distracted by thoughts of Hadrian. The shifter being metaphysically bound to my mate was still a raw point for me, but I was working through it. Y’know. Slowly.

“But back to demons…” Lifting a hand to my shirt, I tugged down the collar just enough to reveal the pentacle tattoo across my chest. I also tried to ignore the quick way Z’s golden eyes narrowed at my potentially showing skin to his Brothers, but in this instance he was definitely going to have to breathe. “There are ways of ensuring a demon can’t possess you,” I explain. “This symbol is a protective one that repels demons. They can’t possess me. You can also wear the symbol, or other various amulets and protective talismans, to prevent it.”

Letting go of the shirt, I start a list.

“So, symbols. Talismans. Holy water,” I add, my tone rueful as I figured some of them were, undoubtedly, rolling their eyes. After all, holy water was also a mythical vampire repellent. “If a demon has already possessed a body, you can sometimes provoke them into revealing themselves by saying the name of God in latin.” I glance back at all of them. “Their eyes will turn a complete and glossy black with no iris at all. If they turn any other colour… well. Run like hell while screaming my name,” I say dryly. 

Zsadist:

My eyes narrowed dangerously low when I watched Mal reveal his chest to my Brothers. Sure, they’ve seen his bare torso, but that doesn’t mean I wanted them sneaking a peek. 

Quickly my head snaps in Vishous’s direction when he starts sketching in the notebook he brought to Mal’s class. Leaning over my desk to look over his shoulder only to reveal a drawing of the tattoo my male wore on his chest. Vishous continued to underline the shape as I leaned back into my seat. He probably had a plan of making some amulets for us to wear while out on rotation.

Everything Mal described sounded...insane. But I knew first hand that this was serious, and everything that he was saying was true.

“I can’t believe we are going to turn into demon hunters!”  Rhage chimes in with a goofy smile.

I hold back a snort, turning my attention towards Tohrment as he clears his throat. All heads turn towards his direction.

“So...do these demons have a main purpose? Or do they just run around trying to find people to possess. Like we know what the lessers want...I was just wondering if these demons had an end goal.” Tohr murmurs as he crosses his arms. 

Mal:

“Woah, hold your horses dragon boy,” I snort, shaking my head. “I don’t want to turn the Brotherhood into hunters. Believe it or not, there are hunters out there ready to track down demons and the like when they pop up and send them back to Hell. The ‘only’ reason I am teaching ‘anything’ right now is because… well, me being here could bring more of the nasties into our radar, and I want everyone at least prepared to handle it.”

Yeah. Fuck. I ‘so’ did not need to lead these leather clad killers into metaphysical battles. They were all about the bang bang motherfuckers, and you couldn’t waste a ghost or half the things I’d fought with just lead and blades alone.

“Case in point,” I continue, arching a brow. “Half the shit I deal with can’t be snuffed out with a few bullets or a well placed knife to the heart cavity, yeah? Banishing demons requires the seal of solomon and exorcism chants and a whole whack of shit. In the case of possession? Prevention is so much better than cure, so I just want everyone able to avoid it. Depending on who excels at these classes, I may go further to teach exorcisms.”

My eyes flicked to Zsadist, then to Vishous, the two I’d already pegged as most likely to be taught an exorcism. If Vishous didn’t go ahead and research the latin for it without me I’d be shocked.

“As far as a demon’s purpose…” I trailed off, sighed then shrugged. “Really, they want mayhem. They want souls. They don’t want to be in hell. So, all of the above and then some. The better their vessel, the more situated they are to get other demons up and included. So, a breed of rich, powerful vampires with all manner of weapons at their disposal would be ‘very’ appealing,” I add dryly. “So, to reiterate… demons flinch at the latin name of God, burn at the touch of holy water, have dark eyes and look like dark clouds of smoke when they come at you in raw form. Any questions?”

Zsadist:

 Everyone kinda stayed quiet, some shook their heads as Mal asked if anyone had questions. Which honestly I was a little relieved at. That means that my Brothers were taking this seriously. Then again after they discovered Hadrian, and learned about shifters, they must believe that anything is possible at this point. 

“Think this is a good starting point. We need to continue on and train to be able to handle the demons. Mal is right in a sense where we don’t need to go out and look for demons to destroy, but more so be equipped to handle them if they get in the way from our main goal.” 

I couldn’t help but chuckle slightly as Rhage’s face fell. Maybe one day Rhage could go on a mission if any of Mal’s hunter friends ever needs a hand. Then again Hollywood actually might cause more damage.

Snorting at the thought as I look up to watch them file out slowly. Vishous stops in front of my mate to show him some things he wrote down then bumps his shoulder before following out after Butch. Figures V would be all about this. I’m sure he would be up all night doing research. 

I lean back in my desk, keeping my eyes on my mate as a private smile slowly forms on my face. Something that my Brothers wouldn’t get to see. Slowly I move to get up, the wooden chair creaking beneath me as I shift my weight off of it. 

“Well, that went...well.” I rumbled as I made my way over to the very handsome teacher. “What do you think?” My arms cross over my broad chest. 

Mal:

With everyone getting the basics down and with no further questions, class seemed to be dismissed. As Vishous stopped to show me his mockup of the tattoo on my chest, I nodded, agreeing with his ideas of necklaces and arm bands bearing the symbol to protect the Brothers. They needed things that were easy to put on or keep close that wouldn’t get in the way of the fight. 

Waiting for Z to come up, I felt myself relaxing the closer he got, until he was right there and I was leaning over to steal a kiss.

“You think it went well?” I murmur, grateful to hear it. “Could you tell I was nervous? Teaching classes is not really my schtick, but everyone seemed to… take it well.”

Sighing, I leant against the desk at the front and gestured backward at the board and the notes I’d made. 

“I know this is new to everyone, but… I appreciate the enthusiasm.” Pausing, I looked my male over and felt a familiar and welcome rush of affection. “You okay?”

Zsadist:

The kiss was soft and I welcomed it by sliding my arms around Mal’s waist. Holding my mate against me as my hand lifted to graze his cheek.

“Yeah, now that everything's okay and you are healed.” I murmur as I avoid his gaze for a moment. Trying not to picture the moment I stabbed my own mate in the chest. 

Clears my throat. “This is good. We needed this done in case we came in contact with another demon. It seems like everyone took it serious for the most part.” I snort thinking of Rhage then shrugs. “Do you feel good about continuing the lessons? I want to make sure every Brother is well equipped to take care of a demon if we come across one. Scribe, don’t need anyone else getting possessed and stabbing people in the manse.”

Mal could have died. So we needed to take this seriously and make sure everyone in the mansion was safe at all times. To think that we let a threat in, that I let a threat in, was unsettling.

Mal:

Nodding, I rubbed a hand down my mate’s arm reassuringly, looking at the empty classroom. I’d already started to take precautions of my own. The second I’d been released from the med wing I’d sought out, of all people, Fritz, asking for a layout of the grounds and every entrance. From there, I’d gone to each one and set up holy seals - wards to keep out demons and trap any that tried to enter. 

“I’ve spoken with Vishous,” I murmur, still thinking about the wards. “I let him know about the wards I put near the entrances - asked him to figure out more permanent solutions to my chalk and salt displays. I think Fritz almost had a coronary when I drew on everything, threw salt everywhere, and told him he couldn’t clean it,” I add ruefully, flashing Z a smile. “But at least that’s a start. I should’ve thought of that when I moved in…”

The admission tasted sour on my tongue, and I looked away from the intensity of that golden gaze to better process my guilt. If I’d had devil’s traps set when I moved in, Zsadist and the demon hitching a ride wouldn’t have got past the door. He’d have been trapped, but performing an exorcism at that point would’ve been a lot fucking easier. But instead I’d been naive, thinking the demons and all the beasties I’d hunted would never find me in Caldwell. And Z had almost paid the price.

“I’m good with continuing lessons, not just on demons,” I said finally, letting out a breath. “And while I was honest when I said I don’t want the Brothers going hunting if I can help it, there is a perk to knowing I have back up if something goes down in our backyard.”

Zsadist:

“Don’t beat yourself up about that. Hell, I’m surprised this is the first time we have come in contact with them. With all the shit we dabble in you would have thought we would have seen them before” I shrug before reaching for my male. My hand cups his nape, forcing his gaze back to mine. 

“Hey. You can’t beat yourself up over this, just like you told me that I can’t even though I do.” I snorted. “It’s done and you are safe in my arms.” My voice cracks slightly at that, holding him a little tighter in my arms. 

“Everything is going well, and I’m grateful to have you teach us how to handle these demons.” I nod before slowly pulling away. 

“Now...come on, let’s head back upstairs…” 

My scarred lips turn up into a playful smirk as I start down the hallway. I couldn’t wait to have my male in our bed and to know that he was safe with me. 

#EndSL #ClassIsIn

[halothenthehorns]

All in the Family

Chapter 39: The Knight Bus

BANG!

A sensation he was sadly familiar with but still not quite accustomed too, Regulus still wasn't expecting to be launched out of his seat the second he'd found himself stable again. There was a rushing sensation all around him, as if he were trying to find purchase at high speeds even if he felt no actual wind on him. Forcing one foot after the other back to his feet, he caught a glimpse out the window to a neighborhood he had no hope of identifying, because the second he realized it, there was another tremendous BANG! and he was right back on the floor having to start all over again.

The Knight Bus, his mind helpfully supplied as he began the arduous process again of stumbling back to his feet now in search of something with purpose. Though he'd never been on it himself, tales from others at school left him in no doubt, even as he spotted Evans at the far end of the bus in the same circumstances muttering obscenities with their current location mixed in. The two of them must be on the top floor, with only four available beds, two on each end clinking together like pendulums, and a staircase visible leading down.

It was the first time he'd found himself alone with her, but even given their circumstances, he found it a rather inconsequential thing. Maybe it was the fact that he still hadn't come to terms with everything he'd grown up with being shaded in a lie, maybe it was surviving multiple life threatening attempts in her presence, but whom he once would have considered a mortal enemy and someone to hold nothing more than contempt over, he instead found himself struggling to her side and offering a hand up.

She didn't accept, and he wasn't surprised. He couldn't even be angry, he wasn't even sure himself how he would have reacted letting her do something as casual as brush skin with him. Every part of him should have told him how repulsive that was, but really how was that any worse than the Dark Lord being a fraud? What was the truth anymore?

BANG!

Now the two were a tangle of limbs upon each other, and he more than happily disentangled himself and made his way past her to the staircase, she right behind him now without any discomfort of her own to the proximity. Whatever her problem with him was, a streak of pride or something of her own personal vendetta, he was well aware he had no room to judge her for it after he'd let himself be so easily swayed to judge everyone else the last fourteen years of his life.

On the next flight he found Smith and Longbottom supporting each other and trying the impossible feat themselves of navigating past rows of beds swishing this way and that on wheels, several colliding with them frequently, to the next set of stairs. Neither had the book, and with no echoing words around them they all assumed the Marauders hadn't yet managed to come across it in the chaos either, so down below they went.

With another obnoxious BANG! he finished his decent by crash landing below, and so viewing upside down Sirius at the wheel and trying with maddening inaccuracy to drive the bus in some semblance of a direction, Lupin beside him shouting something at the top of his lungs that were both profanities and unhelpful directions, while Potter and Pettigrew were trying desperately to stay stable long enough to draw their wands.

"This is insane," Longbottom spoke clearly beside him what they were all thinking.

"It's driving itself, I swear I'm not doing it!" Sirius snapped back, or at Lupin, or at the steering wheel itself for all he knew. It seemed true, as Regulus righted himself but stayed on all fours for now which seemed safest, that his brothers white knuckled grip had no sway in the maddening jerk that sent them all crashing into the same side of the bus.

"I found it!" Smith called in relief, having fallen hard into the last available bed on the row and pulling herself free with the book.

"Get on with it then," Potter pleaded as he was forced to magically repair his glasses from the last fall.

The chapter title was self explanatory, as if anyone needed clarification of where they were this time.

Harry's panic over his situation seemed laughable in comparison to theirs. Even as the delusional kid thought he was going to go to Azkaban for some underage magic of all things there was yet another BANG! and they were hurtling across an open valley, one lone house in the distance that still had to be moved from their path as Sirius kept trying in vain to do anything about the steering wheel unsuccessfully.

Alice shivered slightly as she kept on to Harry feeling threatened in that innocent Muggle neighborhood. Perhaps their circumstances, while far from pleasant, were to be hailed as much a good thing as the bus arriving for Harry in that moment as well. The kid had enough prior experience that she certainly believed something more was watching him than the stray dog he described. The Marauders were likely thinking the same, Black even let go of the wheel as he and his friends exchanged uneasy and confused looks.

A massive dog being mentioned in the exact same time frame as a Black was being mentioned in Harry's life? If James hadn't just had his head knocked into another window by this infernal bus, he would have done so himself just to make sure it was still attached. The four friends kept exchanging very worried looks as Smith kept going on, and then he swore his heart stuttered to a complete stop when an article from the Daily Prophet ruined their life.

Not Sirius. It was the only thought that mattered as there was yet another tremendous BANG! and this time he had to grasp onto Sirius to stay upright, and of course he caught him. The two were now grasping the steering wheel, his best mate looking dazed as if the words never quite sunk in.

Remus listened to Alice read the article with a detached horror. One part listened to every detail stuttered out, cataloging everything like he would any stupid rumor he heard in school. He couldn't look away from Sirius through it.

As Alice fumbled through the rest of the article and finished, the most silence this bus could contain managed to linger. The engine still revved in their ears, the beds all crashed together like cymbals, and the presence of magic in the air filling yet another BANG! could not be unheard, but none was louder than the stillness of the eight of them as this news sunk in.

Regulus burst out laughing. It was more empty noise really, his eyes were buggered practically out of his head and it was very clear he was now clinging to a bed-frame for more support than their mad journey required with that white-knuckled grip.

"Err, Alice, how about we ah, continue this back upstairs-" Frank began, already trying to make his way there.

Prongs immediately surged forward, anger blistering off of him with such intensity Peter wondered if the windows would implode. "What the bloody hell does that mean?"

"That we'd like to not have to spend anymore time around you lot than we have to," Alice snapped back at once, only half his size but crossing her arms and backing to where her boyfriend was now, though she'd hesitated to follow him a mere second ago.

Clearly sensing danger and always trying to diffuse it first, Remus stepped forward and tried to pull him back, "let it go Prongs, if they think-"

"That damned paper doesn't mean anything!" James was red in the face now, more angry than any of them had ever seen him. "And I don't appreciate the insinuation you think otherwise! Sirius has never, would never-"

"What?" Evans snapped, getting in between him and Alice with her own fiery glare that was much more familiar. "Tried to blow his way out of a problem? Attacked others to get what he wants?"

Peter's heart actually stuttered in his chest with fear as a muscle started ticking in Prongs jaw, he looked for a second like he'd quite like to hit something, and he'd certainly never looked that way at Evans.

BANG!

The new location outside only succeed in tossing them all about again, but of course the tension only grew worse the more chaos their surroundings offered. Remus grasped James' shoulder firmly now and actively tried to pull him away from the three.

Sirius still hadn't moved.

"Come on Prongs, it's a bloody stupid article, probably some misunderstanding-"

"People don't get sent to Azkaban for misunderstandings!" Frank shot back, his hand twitching uncomfortably for his wand.

BANG!

"Can someone please finish the ruddy chapter and get us off this bus!" Regulus interrupted, a gray pallor to his skin as he watched the lot. He'd made no move to intervene in the fight, but it was as clear to him as anyone that's what was about to happen.

"Happily," Alice pacified by sitting down where she was for whatever stability that could give her.

Nobody really took in another word, not Harry's childish worry about whatever trouble he'd caused and certainly little care for whatever the Minister was doing arriving. Frank and Evans remained tense and right beside Alice as if fearing an attack any second. Moony alternated between keeping his hand on Prongs who never stopped glaring at the lot, and watching Sirius, who seemed to have locked down.

Peter and Regulus were left to stand across from each other, to watch and wonder not for the first time if they were going to get out of this alive.

HPHPHPHP

Ah chaos, the best friend a writer needs to advance the plot in awkward silence. I regret nothing! Hope you enjoyed!

[arcticdementor]

One can divide antiracism into three waves. First Wave Antiracism battled slavery and segregation. Second Wave Antiracism, in the 1970s and 1980s, battled racist attitudes and taught America that being racist was a flaw. Third Wave Antiracism, becoming mainstream in the 2010s, teaches that racism is baked into the structure of society, so whites’ “complicity” in living within it constitutes racism itself, while for black people, grappling with the racism surrounding them is the totality of experience and must condition exquisite sensitivity toward them, including a suspension of standards of achievement and conduct.

…

I suspect that deep down, most know that none of this catechism makes any sense. Less obvious is that it was not even composed with logic in mind. The self-contradiction of these tenets is crucial, in revealing that Third Wave Antiracism is not a philosophy but a religion.

The revelation of racism is, itself and alone, the point, the intention, of this curriculum. As such, the fact that if you think a little, the tenets cancel one another out, is considered trivial. That they serve their true purpose of revealing people as bigots is paramount—sacrosanct, as it were. Third Wave Antiracism’s needlepoint homily par excellence is the following:

Battling power relations and their discriminatory effects must be the central focus of all human endeavor, be it intellectual, moral, civic or artistic. Those who resist this focus, or even evidence insufficient adherence to it, must be sharply condemned, deprived of influence, and ostracized.

Third Wave Antiracism is losing innocent people jobs. It is coloring, detouring and sometimes strangling academic inquiry. It forces us to render a great deal of our public discussion of urgent issues in doubletalk any 10-year-old can see through. It forces us to start teaching our actual 10-year-olds, in order to hold them off from spoiling the show in that way, to believe in sophistry in the name of enlightenment. On that, Third Wave Antiracism guru Ibram X. Kendi has written a book on how to raise antiracist children called Antiracist Baby. You couldn’t imagine it better: Are we in a Christopher Guest movie? This and so much else is a sign that Third Wave Antiracism forces us to pretend that performance art is politics. It forces us to spend endless amounts of time listening to nonsense presented as wisdom, and pretend to like it.

…

Many will see me as traitorous in writing this as a black person. They will not understand that I see myself as serving my race by writing it. One of the grimmest tragedies of how this perversion of sociopolitics makes us think (or, not think) is that it will bar more than a few black readers from understanding that I am calling for them to be treated with true dignity. However, they and everyone else should also realize: I know quite well that white readers will be more likely to hear out views like this when written by a black person, and consider it nothing less than my duty as a black person to write it.

A white version of this would be blithely dismissed as racist. I will be dismissed instead as self-hating by a certain crowd. But frankly, they won’t really mean it, and anyone who gets through my new book on this subject, which I am now publishing in serial, will see that whatever traits I harbor, hating myself or being ashamed of being black is not one of them. And we shall move on. As in, to realizing that what I am documenting matters, and matters deeply. Namely, that America’s sense of what it is to be intellectual, moral, or artistic; what it is to educate a child; what it is to foster justice; what is to express oneself properly; what it is to be a nation—all is being refounded upon a religion.

This is directly antithetical to the very foundations of the American experiment. Religion has no place in the classroom, in the halls of ivy, in our codes of ethics, or in deciding how we express ourselves, and almost all of us spontaneously understand that and see any misunderstanding of the premise as backward. Yet since about 2015, a peculiar contingent has been slowly headlocking us into making an exception, supposing that this new religion is so incontestably good, so gorgeously surpassing millennia of brilliant philosophers’ attempts to identify the ultimate morality, that we can only bow down in humble acquiescence.

But a new religion in the guise of world progress is not an advance; it is a detour. It is not altruism; it is self-help. It is not sunlight; it is fungus. It’s time it became ordinary to call it for what it is and stop cowering before it, letting it make people so much less than they—black and everything else—could be.

…

However, there is nothing correct about the essence of American thought and culture being transplanted into the soil of a religious faith. Some will go as far as to own up to it being a religion, and wonder why we can’t just accept it as our new national creed. The problem is that on matters of societal procedure and priorities, the adherents of this religion—true to the very nature of religion—cannot be reasoned with. They are, in this, medievals with lattes.

We need not wonder what the basic objections will be: Third Wave Antiracism isn’t really a religion; I am oversimplifying; I shouldn’t write this without being a theologian; it is a religion but it’s a good one; and so on. I will get all of that out of the way as we go on, and then offer some genuine solutions. But first, what this is not.

…

My interest is not “How do we get through to these people?” We cannot, at least not enough of them to matter. The question is “How can we can live graciously among them?” We seek change in the world, but for the duration will have to do so while encountering bearers of a gospel, itching to smoke out heretics, and ready on a moment’s notice to tar us as moral perverts.

One more thing: We need a crisper label for the problematic folk. I will not title them “Social Justice Warriors.” That, and other labels such as “the Woke Mob” are unsuitably dismissive. One of the key insights I hope to get across is that most of these people are not zealots. They are your neighbor, your friend, possibly even your offspring. They are friendly school principals, people who work quietly in publishing, lawyer pals. Heavy readers, good cooks, musicians. It’s just that sadly, what they become, solely on this narrow but impactful range of issues, is inquisitors.

I considered titling them The Inquisitors. But that, too, is mean. I’m not interested in mean; I want to get these people off the bottom of our shoes so we can actually move ahead. Whoops—that was mean. But I intended it as an accurate metaphor—this ideology impedes moving ahead.

The author and essayist Joseph Bottum has found the proper term, and I will adopt it here: We will term these people The Elect. They do think of themselves as bearers of a wisdom, granted them for any number of reasons—a gift for empathy, life experience, maybe even intelligence. But they see themselves as having been chosen, as it were, by one or some of these factors, as understanding something most do not.

“The Elect” is also good in implying a certain smugness, which is sadly accurate as a depiction. Of course, most of them will resist the charge. But its sitting in the air, in its irony, may also encourage them to resist the definition, which over time may condition at least some of them to temper the excesses of the philosophy, just as after the 1980s many started disidentifying from being “too PC.”

…

But there is a difference between being antiracist and being antiracist in a religious way. Following the religion means to pillory people for what, as recently as 10 years ago, would have been thought of as petty torts or even as nothing at all; to espouse policies that hurt black people as long as supporting them makes you seem aware that racism exists; to pretend that America never makes any real progress on racism; and to almost hope that it doesn’t because this would deprive you of a sense of purpose.

Elect ideology affects people in degrees. There are especially abusive Elect ideologues. Some are comfortable ripping into people in person; more restrict the nastiness to social media. Other Elect do not go in for being mean, but are still comfortable with the imperatives, have founded their sociopolitical perspectives firmly upon them, and are hard-pressed to feel comfortable interacting socially with people in disagreement. They allow the openly abusive Elect to operate freely, seeing their conduct as a perhaps necessary unpleasantness in the goal of general enlightenment.

I do not wish to imply that The Elect are all of the especially abusive type; the vast majority are not. The problem is the degree to which the perspective has come to influence so many less argumentative but equally devout people, whose increasing numbers and buzzwords have the effect of silencing those who see Elect philosophy as flawed but aren’t up for being mauled.

The Elect are, in all of their diversity, sucking all the air out of the room. It must stop.

[apparitionism]

Mercury 9

Apparently it’s old-school week around here… this is the penultimate part of Mercury, which I started forever and a day ago (2014!) and have failed to update for almost as long. But as I’ve noted, I finish what I start, so here continues a tale concerning, among other things, Myka and Helena and some existential and ethical questions raised by the whole Janus coin/Emily Lake situation. It takes place at a county fair in Kenosha, Wisconsin, which might seem a trivial (or random) detail but in fact is not. We’ll see if I can pull the pins on my plot-grenades… what’s here will make no sense at all without what came before, and it’s honestly a bit much for a brief recap. I tried to link to the other parts, but I didn’t show up in search, so here’s another try without... [ETA: Whatever, Tumblr; I give up. Here are the links: part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7, and part 8.]

Mercury 9

“It’s a real tossup,” Pete remarked as he walked between Myka and Helena, “whether it’s worse when you’re all over each other or when you’re on the outs.”

Their arrival at the fair that morning couldn’t have presented a clearer contrast to that of the day before: The distinct lack of rocking and rolling all night, as well as the sad absence of partying every day, made sure of that. The drive from the hotel had featured only functional words, mostly between Pete and Helena, and Myka found herself yearning for Helena’s floridly non-silent silent treatment instead. She could have used the low-stakes exasperation she felt when confronted with it to begin to grope her way into feeling that this problem, too, could be set back onto an established track, so an eventual reconciliation would be inevitable.

But a disagreement over Helena’s displeasure with Jules Verne, and with Myka regarding words said about Jules Verne? That was barely skin-deep. This went all the way through, like a bullet, one with both their names on it. A really big bullet… Myka struggled to keep herself from believing that this one was also of Helena’s invention. What goes up—into the stratosphere, into something like happiness—

No, Myka had told herself firmly, halting that line of thought just as Pete was looking at his phone and reporting, “Ida texted. She’s at the barn. Says to meet her, but that there’s no new intel on the Lelands.”

“Still at square one,” Myka grumbled. “Great.”

Pete rubbed his hands together. “It is great. We have to go right by the Pizza Pagoda on the way.”

As they’d walked (and walked and walked), Myka stewed at the fair both in its particulars—had these people never seen an actual pagoda? couldn’t they correctly identify the structure in which money was being exchanged for pizza?—and in its entirety. People were happy. Having a good time. Eating pizza. Wearing smiles.

She didn’t want to kick a rock; she wanted to hide under one. Or send all of those pizza-eating smilers to hide under one so she wouldn’t have to see how unaffected by this situation they all were. How dare they be so unscathed.

Helena had a unique ability to push her to this kind of resentment. After Yellowstone, Myka could hardly bear to look other people in the eyes, in their unknowing, unaffected faces; after Pittsburgh, the same. After, after, after. After Kenosha?

Then again maybe they would never get to the after; maybe they were doomed to trudge through this fair forever with Pete, who was now shaking his head and repeating, “Real tossup.”

Helena, walking on his right side, radiated nonresponse. He looked expectantly to the left, at Myka.

“I’m pretty sure it’s worse right now,” she said. She considered kicking him under a rock.

“Well, for you,” he fake-pouted. “You never think about me.”

“Right. Never. Who just bought you that slice of pizza at that Quonset hut they didn’t even bother putting in a pagoda costume?”

“The pizza fairy. Hey, you could be her twin!”

And that, surprisingly, made Myka smile and shake her head. She twitched an involuntary glance rightward and realized that Helena was having the same response.

Helena looked up and leftward, met Myka’s eyes, and clearly came to the reciprocal realization.

The atmosphere shifted.

One look didn’t reverse the effects of the past twenty-four hours, not nearly. But Myka was self-aware enough both to understand how that one look softened the air between them, and to resent how smoothly and easily it had done such work.

How dare you, she said to herself. How dare you knuckle under. If you’re going to be angry and jealous and unreasonable, you could at least have the rank obstinacy to stay that way.

And Helena had this unique ability too: to make everything Myka did, everything she felt, seem right and wrong at the same time.

This nonsense at a fair might have been a particularly egregious example of Myka tripping over Helena and stumbling into that state, but it wasn’t the only one.

She remembered, as a paradigmatic case, a time when she had been trying to hide an injury. “I’m on the way!” she’d yelled from the bedroom as she quickly dealt with changing the dressing on her wound. Just a flesh wound, nothing serious, certainly not life-threatening, and barely even blood-supply-threatening: a cut on her abdomen. Nobody reasonable would have called it a gash or a slice or anything like that. She’d made Pete promise not to tell anyone about it, post-retrieval, because sure, it hurt, but it didn’t matter.

Judging from the horror on Helena’s face when she barged in and realized what Myka was doing, though? It mattered to her. And the potential for that horror was a large part of why Myka had tried to hide it—but Helena’s face was now shouting that Myka had failed. She’d made Helena feel the horror, and maybe worse, she’d rendered Helena unable to hide that she was feeling it.

“Don’t get like this,” Myka said. (Because warning Helena off always went so very well.)

“I am not getting like anything.”

“Okay, okay,” Myka then said. (Because placating Helena also always went so very well.)

“I am reacting, as a human does, to another human’s injury.”

“And don’t play it off either! You wouldn’t be getting like this over Pete.” The latter, Myka said because it was true, but even as she said it, she saw that pointing it out wasn’t going to be any sort of positive contribution to the situation.

“You want my reaction to be entirely because of you, yet you also want me not to have it at all.”

Under other circumstances, Helena might have smiled as she said something like that, and Myka, with an admittedly unreasonable hope that the smile might still be forthcoming, said, “Yes.”

It wasn’t. “But you knew I would have it,” Helena said, unsmiling and prosecutorial. “You were trying to hide this from me.”

When Helena got prosecutorial, Myka got defensive. “Okay, yes. I didn’t say it made sense.”

“Good, because it doesn’t.” Stubborn.

Which Myka could match: “I know that. I just said that.”

“I want to care for you.”

Helena didn’t mean “take over a mundane first aid task,” and Myka knew that too. Yet she snapped, “I can take care of myself.” Even as another part of her was prodding her with You want her to care for you and How long did you really think you could hide the need for this mundane first aid task from her anyway.

“I’m certain you can.”

That was raw hurt, shivering under an inadequate coat of dispassion—and Myka responded wrong to both: “Right. Just like I assume you can.” And that was out-and-out perjury. Helena’s fragile body, so tenuously and lately re-housing the soul it should… Myka was absurdly protective of that body, but Helena shouldn’t have felt the same way about Myka. Shouldn’t have had to feel the same way, and certainly shouldn’t have been boxed into showing that she felt that way.

They’d papered over that confrontation somehow, but Myka couldn’t remember the resolution, which had to mean that it had been something as simple as what had happened just now, on a graveled pathway at a fair in Kenosha with Pete standing between them talking about a pizza fairy: mutual recognition of a shared response. Some reminder of commonality of feeling, of purpose. Surely that was the wrong way to handle conflicts in a relationship… but just as surely, it was right, too.

However: They still hadn’t said a meaningful word to each other by the time they reached the barn. Myka was still perversely attempting to work her resentment back up, and Helena was clearly avoiding looking at her, maybe just as perversely, maybe to avoid creating another moment of fellow-feeling, and Myka tried selling herself an even more unreasonable story about that: It’s because she knows she’ll bust out laughing when she sees my face working to stay surly, and—

“I realize I’m being a busybody,” Ida said, first thing, “but I’m sensing some tension between my leading ladies. And not the kind that keeps people tuning in.”

Pete said to Myka, “She means UST.” To Helena, he said, “They tune in for UST.” Both of them must have looked baffled, for he gave up on them and said to Ida, “It was like that with them, for basically ever. Before they R’ed the ST. But you can keep that going only so long, you know?”

Ida nodded. “So many shows get it wrong.”

“For what it’s worth,” Pete said, his voice conspiratorially low, “I think Myka and H.G. got it right.”

Mere moments before, Myka would have had to struggle to keep from saying, irritably and out loud, that Pete should shut up. But the shift—it kept happening, Pete’s words helping it along, despite Myka’s attempts to wrestle herself angry. She and Helena had certainly not apologized, or compromised, or exchanged more than that single glance, but between them there was a tuning, like the manipulation of a radio dial: static, then the beginning of decodable sound, the tiny twist calling music, voices, a signal more and more clearly into the receiver from the ether. Any errant twitch of fingers on the dial might cause the transmission to be lost again.

Myka didn’t want it lost. She looked, with purpose, at Helena, and Helena looked back. Still no apologies, no compromise… but the signal strengthened.

“You’re very sweet to them,” Ida told Pete.

Now Myka rolled her eyes, but she tried to keep the motion as small as possible.

“I know, right? You’d think they’d appreciate me more.”

“You need a love interest,” Ida said.

“I double-know that. But the fans, I think they’d still be all about Bering and Wells.”

Ida looked at Myka, then Helena, then back and forth again. “Which one is which?”

Pete put on a boxing-announcer voice: “In this corner, you got your tall, dark, and broody: that’s Bering. Across the ring from her, there’s Wells: not quite so tall, also dark, also broody, but with epic, extra fallout.”

“Isn’t that funny,” Ida said to Helena.

Helena crossed her arms in defense. “What? ‘Epic, extra fallout’? That is not funny.”

Might not be funny, but it isn’t wrong, Myka thought. Then Helena turned a quick, overbright glare on Pete with a mutter of “and I know what ‘fallout’ means now, thank you very much,” which made Myka think, But maybe also a little funny…

“It’s funny that you’d show up here,” Ida said.

“Here?” Pete asked, and Helena echoed, “Here?”

Before Myka could do the same—because that didn’t seem funny at all—Ida followed up with, “And I just now worked it out: H.G.! I see why that’s your nickname.”

“It’s not my nickname,” Helena said. She’d uncrossed her arms, but now she crossed them again, and Myka wondered whether any photographs existed of Helena as the sulky, impossible child she must have been, when she wasn’t otherwise occupied with charming everyone into treating her as the miniature adult she no doubt considered herself to be.

Pete gave Helena a quizzical look. “But it kind of is your nickname. I mean, those are your initials, so… wait. Here. Ida, you are brilliant and so am I, because I know exactly what you’re thinking. And now I got it: I also know exactly what we’re looking for.” He looked at Myka, then at Helena. “Because who’s from Kenosha?” To Ida, he said, “Don’t give it away; they think they’re so smart, but we’ll see.”

“Who’s from Kenosha?” Myka repeated. “Probably almost everybody at this fair. Except us.”

“But who else is from Kenosha?”

“Probably almost all the other people who live in Kenosha?” Myka looked to Helena for help, but Helena shrugged.

Her own look, followed by Helena’s shrug, and immediately it struck Myka: that was their first real, intentional communication since the morning’s argument, and it did figure that it was about not knowing what Pete was getting at. Myka wasn’t yet ready to admit to anyone, including herself, that Pete was actually being very helpful today.

“Plus?” Pete pushed.

Myka tried, “Plus people who moved away?”

“Exactly. And who moved away?”

“A lot of people. Probably.” Myka knew she was being uncharitable, but small towns really weren’t her favorite. She figured living in Univille was most likely a karmic punishment… for what, she wasn’t quite sure, but she certainly hadn’t spent this life, or probably any other, being as perfect as she’d intended to be, and small-town-South-Dakota purgatory was undoubtedly the result. “Maybe,” she softened, ideally defraying some of the spiritual cost.

Pete snickered. “Not a lot who used a microphone and people believed it.” He stopped and waited, mouth a bit expectantly open, like a dog waiting to be rewarded for chasing a ball. “Really? No ideas? How about you, supergenius? Kinda up your alley, there, Agent Wells.”

Then Myka got it, and so did Helena, for they said in unison, “War of the Worlds?”

Pete exhaled an at-last noise. “That’s right: Orson Welles, Kenosha boy. Hated the place, but still.”

War of the Worlds. Of course. Myka sighed, because it really had to have happened sooner or later. “You’re saying you think this is the microphone from the War of the Worlds radio broadcast?”

“I’m saying it loud, and also proud, because I’m the one who thought of it, with the fabulous assist from my best friend Ida. I could say it through the thing, so you’d believe me like all those radio listeners believed Martians were attacking, but I don’t think I’m gonna have to.” He fiddled with his phone and turned the screen to Ida. “It looked pretty much like that, right?”

“Just like that. And that’s funny too: I’d forgotten it said ‘CBS’ on it, but it did. What a terrible witness I’d make in a courtroom drama.” She looked at all three of them in turn. “This TV show I’m running around like I’m on, it isn’t a CBS one, is it?”

Pete shook his head. “Not so much. Maybe Fox? Lower budget, though, so probably Syfy; FX if you’re lucky. But don’t tell.”

Myka couldn’t find it in her to be angry at him for saying too much, particularly not when Ida said, with real regret, “No one would believe me anyway.”

“Well, no,” Pete said, but he put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “On account of you don’t have the microphone.” He held a sssshhh finger to his lips.

“But that leaves us still at square one,” Myka pointed out.

Pete frowned. “And not on the way past pizza this time either.”

“I have an idea,” Ida said.

Pete now flung his arm around her fully. “Like I said, you’re brilliant. From the start I knew I liked you. This idea, is it about pizza?”

“It’s about knowing, not pizza. Knowing, and believing. Ginny knows she’s going to lose the pie contest, because of Agnes and key lime. But what if she happened to win instead?”

He wrinkled his brow. “What if she… oh, I get it. She’d be very into being there. You think that’d override their supervillain plot, whatever it is?”

“I think it would override her grandchildren. And the fact is, she does believe in herself—she always holds out a little hope in these key lime years. Dreams the impossible dream.”

“So we flush her out, assuming she’s lurking, by making sure she wins? But how do we do that?” Pete asked.

Ida smiled. She looked very proud of herself. “I’m going to make Agnes’s pie disappear.”

“Poetic,” Myka said, and she couldn’t help herself; as she said it, she looked at Helena.

“Ironic,” Helena countered, directly at Myka..

Poetic, ironic… and then this struck Myka: those were the first real, intentional words they’d said to each other since the morning’s argument.

An ironic, or possibly poetic, twist of lip from Helena acknowledged that she, too, knew the exchange for what it was.

Pete said, “I personally am an expert in making pies disappear, so maybe I should be the one who sticks his neck out on this one.”

“You’re so sweet,” Ida told him, and Myka had to concede that it was actually true. (Except when it wasn’t.) Ida went on, “But if I’m going to be on a show, no matter what network carries it or who I can tell about it, I’m certainly going to see it through. Plus, in a very CBS way, I’d like everything back to normal.”

Myka thought, Sing it, sister. Not that I know what normal is, but I know what it isn’t.

Yet she and Helena walked side by side as their little team crossed the fairgrounds, the air between them unheavy. It wasn’t a normal walk by any means… but it wasn’t a march to be endured, as she’d begun the day thinking all their walks would be. She might have turned to Helena and said normal words. She didn’t, but she might have—and that was progress. Reparative progress.

The pie-judging location was not, Myka was pleased to find, a named pagoda, pavilion, patio, or promenade, but rather a large and simple tent, with no sign designating it the Pie Tent, probably because it was also the bread, pickles, and jam tent. She could feel Pete’s mouth watering as they entered the space.

Ida lasered in on the pies, which were clearly the main attraction, displayed like crown jewels on inky-velvet–clad shelving. “I’ve never tried such skullduggery before,” she confided. She looked at the pies, then looked at Myka and Helena in a way that Myka found immediately disconcerting. “I’ll need a distraction. Leading ladies, would you oblige?”

Pete snickered, but he applauded as he did so. “Oh, you’re good. You definitely watch a lot of the right kind of TV. My hat’s off to you, ma’am.”

“No,” Myka said. “Just no.” As if things weren’t bad enough, now she was supposed to put on some show for—

“Now wait,” Helena said, and her tone was her most “reasonable,” which at no time did Myka ever find to be actually appeasing, “Mrs. Thatcher has a plan, one that may very well succeed. Shouldn’t we contribute to that potential success? Agents don’t simply stand around and watch while other people make and implement plans to help them.”

“I really don’t see why not,” Myka said, deploying her own version of “reasonable.” “Or maybe Pete could stuff all the bread in his mouth. That’d be distracting.”

“Maybe I could,” Pete said, appraising the bread entries.

Helena did that little ironic, or poetic, twist of lip again, and now Myka knew perfectly well that she was being dared to think about Helena’s lips. The twist became a full smile as Helena said, “Won’t you kiss me passionately before the good people of Kenosha?”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with pie,” Myka said, knowing it was a nonsensical objection, not fully knowing why she was making it, because she did want to kiss Helena. But ideally someplace where they could work things out—which was emphatically not before the good people of Kenosha.

“That’s why it’s a distraction,” Pete explained, with seriousness. “Or you could have a slap fight. Your choice I guess; they’ve both got about as much to do with pie.”

Ida shook her head. “I’ve seen slap fights over everything in this tent, pie included. That wouldn’t even register.”

Myka raised eyes and palms heavenward in capitulation, because what choice did she really have, and Helena took that as her cue: “At long last,” she declaimed, “I declare publicly my love for you. Good people of Kenosha, you are my witnesses.” She gestured floridly to those witnesses, obviously to ensure that she had attracted, and would attract still more, attention. Then she turned back to Myka, displaying an impish facsimile of ardent sincerity. “Tell me that you reciprocate my ardor, so that I may live out my remaining days a happy woman.”

Myka began, “You are just too—” and she would have ended with “much,” but Helena took advantage of her mouth saying “too” to bestow one kiss, then another, and Myka had no choice but to play along.

“I know you don’t like to kiss me in front of other people, most days, and today perhaps not at all,” Helena murmured as they kissed and stopped, kissed and stopped. “I know it’s a hardship for you.”

“Hardship,” Myka sighed out. Why did Helena have to dig at her like this? “Are people watching?” she asked as they continued these strange, designed-to-be-seen kisses.

Helena smiled through one kiss, then another. “As if they were judging our worthiness for a ribbon in an osculation contest.”

“This is ridiculous,” Myka muttered.

“More so if you don’t participate. I myself want to win, not merely place.”

So Myka participated, to the extent that she could, given the still-unreconciled business of the day before, and the night, and this morning. She felt herself make a face as they broke apart minimally again—and then she made the break definitive, for she saw Pete give her a thumbs-up. “Pie achieved,” she informed Helena. “Thank god.”

“Myka,” said Helena, in mild rebuke.

“Helena,” Myka sighed in response. “Why do we do this?”

“Because we prefer it to the alternative,” Helena said. “At least, I do.”

And the challenge made Myka kiss her one more time, kiss her right. “I do too,” she said, making no face this time.

Helena shrugged her slim shoulders and said, with a tiny smile, “More than earlier today?”

“Exactly the same,” Myka told her, because it was true: she preferred every aspect of their relationship, even its most difficult terrain, to any alternative she could imagine… and for that response she was rewarded, because there was the smile, the precious one that graced Helena’s face at the best of times, the one that made Myka wonder how she had made it through decades of her life before this maddening presence swept in and made herself at home.

Myka hoped, given that the kissing seemed to have facilitated the pie-stealing as intended, that the proceedings would hustle their way to a conclusion… but no. The actual pie-judging was an elaborate affair, even unto the deployment of ceremonial utensils: knives of various sizes and sharpenings, serving implements with ornately sculpted handles, forks featuring equally silvered intricacy. Slicing, lifting, raising morsels with surprising elegance to judgmental mouths.

And speaking of judgmental mouths—and eyes, and pointing fingers—several of those continued to be directed at Myka and Helena. Helena, of course, settled into a showy preen, as if the attention obviously was entirely congratulatory, and Myka was as hard put as ever to understand how a literal Victorian could be more openly defiant of any given situation’s norms than someone who’d learned the world a century later.

But the century-later-learner in question was Myka, who labored to find and abide by every nuance of the norms governing any situation. And the literal Victorian in question was Helena, who would have defied norms regardless of when, regardless of whose. Regardless, Helena would have flown a flag that said Yes you should be looking, and you should be applauding my audacity, and as for anyone who fails to do so? I will spare no time or thought for those unfortunate fools.

But also: Look at me for my audacity. Not for the feral, fearful animal it hides.

And what about Myka, drawn to both those things?

Every nuance of the norms: of course, at the worst of times, she clung ever more tightly to those norms, begrudging Helena both the audacity and what it hid, condemning herself for finding all of it irresistible.

How handy, in those worst times, to have Emily Lake to wield as a cudgel. Or a scalpel.

Right, Myka thought, help them punish Helena, you and Helena, more: No, Regents, don’t trouble yourselves, no no no; I, Myka Bering, will take it from here. Because I am exactly the sort of dutiful idiot who would do that.

She didn’t want to be that sort of dutiful idiot.

So don’t, she told herself. Don’t do their dirty, punitive work. Make things better, not worse.

Myka deliberately caught the eye of a younger woman, one glaring a disapproval that belied the idea that that that demographic was wholeheartedly embracing change… Myka raised her eyebrows at her—not quite Helena’s flag-flying, but a challenge all the same. Then she moved so that her shoulder rested against Helena’s. Helena looked up in surprise, then let her own body lean, with the most gentle of pressure, on Myka. A whisper of relief. And all that mattered, in this moment, was Helena’s body, this long-lived body that had borne, and was still bearing, so much more than it was ever meant to. Myka was embarrassed by her own tendency to stagger under the weight, when what she should have been saying, and enacting, was I’ll carry you.

One clasp of Helena’s body, one breath into her hair; Helena turned once into the curve of Myka’s neck. These soft things didn’t reverse the past twenty-four hours either. But they allowed Myka, at least, to begin to pay productive attention to more-mundane problems.

Like a case to be brought to a conclusion. Slowly.

“What are those judges even doing?” Pete was asking Ida, and that earned him a tsk-tsk. They tasted the pies one more time, she told him, to make sure. “Even though they already basically know who won?” he complained.

“Without the second tasting, this plan wouldn’t work,” Ida reminded him, “because Agnes would already have won. Besides, you seem like the kind of man who’d feel a kinship with people who like having lots of opportunities to eat pie.”

“Yeah, but it’s taking them forever,” he groaned, and Myka was inclined to echo him.

“It’s important,” Ida told him.

To Myka’s surprise, Helena said, “She’s right.”

“Pardon?” Myka said.

“This… deliberation. Over something so seemingly small as the taste of a pie—it reminds me of the past. Not the harsh past, which I extolled to you, but its softer, slower aspect.” As Helena said this, her eyes weren’t misty, exactly, but they were looking at some fair that wasn’t this one. “I was wrong to maintain that the difference runs in only one direction. Forgive me?”

Myka’s impulse was to say “There’s nothing to forgive”—but they both had a lot to forgive. It also seemed to slight Helena’s… nostalgia? And her sincerity about that nostalgia. So Myka hesitated.

Helena then said, “From time to time I fail to acknowledge that a position should have nuance.”

As if Myka’s pause had meant she needed Helena to offer still more words of expiation. As if only then might Myka say “yes” in answer to a question about forgiveness.

It made Myka want to cuddle her. And shake a fist at her… but then again, she knew that she herself inspired the exact same push-pull in Helena.

So: “Me too,” Myka said.

And she was glad she’d got that out when she did, for then everything started happening: Ginny Leland’s peach/apple pie was announced the first-place winner “due to an unfortunate last-minute withdrawal,” and suddenly Ida was pointing, saying “There it is!” and Pete was rushing up to an ecstatic woman and a startled man, the latter indeed in possession of a microphone.

“I don’t understand,” said Paul Leland.

“I don’t care!” his wife declared. “I won!”

She rushed away to claim her ribbon. Her husband took a step as if to follow her, but Pete tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Excuse me, sir, but would you mind letting me have a closer look at that vintage sound equipment you’ve got there? It’s from about 1938, if I’m not mistaken, which I’m not. Right?”

“You can see me,” said Paul Leland.

“Yes I can,” Pete said. “And just to make sure that keeps being true, why don’t you pass the mic to this nice lady in the fancy purple gloves… ha! For a fistful of truth!”

“I don’t understand,” he said again, and he did look utterly baffled. He didn’t resist when Myka took the piece of history from him.

“Beastie Boys,” Pete informed him.

Myka muttered a cautionary “Pete…”

“Yeah, sorry. I actually don’t understand either, because I’m sort of getting a vibe that you’re not a supervillain. But you know what I’m also sort of getting a vibe about? This maybe has something to do with how you don’t watch radio.”

“I didn’t want anyone to see me…” Paul Leland said slowly. “I didn’t want anyone to see me, and then they didn’t. Why didn’t I want anyone to see me? Ginny!” he called to his wife, then headed in her direction. Myka didn’t see any need to stop him; they had the artifact, and Pete was most likely right: he wasn’t a supervillain.

“Maybe that’s the downside?” she wondered to Helena. “Wanting to be invisible?”

“Then why his wife as well?” Helena wondered back. “If it’s simply a consequence of using the microphone, wouldn’t it adhere only to him?”

“You don’t know the Lelands,” Ida said. “How could anything happen to one of them and not the other? They’re inseparable. Adhering’s a good word for it… look!” She gestured toward the now-reunited couple, and indeed, as Ginny Leland glowed with pride over the blue ribbon she held, Paul seemed to shine too.

Pete said, “So we’re thinking that on account of him not wanting to be seen, they weren’t, then on account of her really really wanting to, they were? That’s… some kind of teamwork.”

And Ida mused, “It’s like that sometimes.” She looked, with intent, at Myka and Helena. “Isn’t it.”

“Isn’t it,” Helena echoed. She leaned once again on Myka.

Myka was still gloved, still holding the artifact, so she unfortunately couldn’t take much enjoyment from that lean, or do more than vaguely return it. “Let’s go behind the tent,” she suggested, and Pete whistled. “To bag the microphone,” she said, but her withering tone never had any effect on him.

Ida followed them behind the tent, and once again, Myka couldn’t see her way to objecting.

Pete had a static bag in hand; Myka tried to slip the microphone into it, but he insisted on putting on gloves himself and taking the artifact from Myka, and then he insisted on Farnsworthing Claudia before he did anything else. Myka didn’t understand why until he said, “And now here we go. All you lovely ladies are witnessing my very first literal mic-drop.” Myka heard this “literal” as a minor, if most likely accidental, miracle, while Claudia said an extremely dry “waited a lifetime for this” and “imagine my delight.”

“I’m starting to develop a theory about why you people bring up mushrooms,” Ida said, gazing at the Farnsworth.

“In my day we often suggested it was laudanum,” Helena told her.

Ida made a noise of speculation. “And I’m starting to develop a theory about why you said ‘H.G.’ isn’t your nickname.”

Pete held the microphone up and waved it. “Show’s happening right here right now! Come one come all to the center ring!” Before Myka could object that this was a fair and not a circus, he dropped it in.

Nothing happened.

“Here in Kenosha,” Ida said—gently, as if Pete’s feelings might be hurt—“we wouldn’t really call that a ‘show.’”

Pete shook the bag, seemingly encouraging it to work harder. “Claud, could we be in a defective static situation?”

“If so,” Claudia told him, “It’s one of those really random black-swan thingies. Not impossible, but—”

“I’ll try another one,” he assured her.

Nothing happened.

“I see what you mean about the low budget,” Ida told him.

Pete looked mournfully into the bag. “So I was wrong? Not an artifact after all… hey, waitaminute,” he said. He shed a glove, fished the microphone out, held it up, and said through it, “Sugar is nutritious.” His voice boomed even more than usual.

That’s a funny thing for him to have said, Myka thought, because of course—

“Hey, Mykes, how do you feel about eating sugar?” he asked.

And that was a funny thing for him to have asked. She gave him her best Pete you are insane look and said, “Well, it’s nutritious, so of course I feel pretty good about it.”

Did he look… horrified? “This is bad,” he said, and through the Farnsworth she heard Claudia shriek, “You broke Myka! You bet it’s bad!”

Myka tried to reassure them both: “No, sugar’s good.”

“Oh my lord,” Helena said, and Myka couldn’t understand why her voice clutched in a way that nearly matched Pete and Claudia…

TBC

[cummunication]

The craziest people I know (don’t go to therapy)

Therapy... I have an appointment today actually. I’ve been going for the last ten years. I first started seeing the school psychologist, going to my YFS center (youth and family services). I started going more regularly after my father died which was perfect since I would go during my lunch period. I had nobody to sit with at lunch so it was a perfect excuse to go. I began receiving outside counseling in eleventh or twelfth grade, once a week. At this point I was a minor so my mom paid. Now as an adult, I am thankful my mom brought me and paid because I see how inconvenient it can be and how it adds up. Even though most therapists accept insurance, some don’t. Even with insurance you can be paying 65$ up every time which is usually once or twice a week. That being said, I truly believe the best and most important thing we can invest in is ourselves and therapy is worth it. Therapy is being brought into the open which I’m very happy with but still, there is a stigma attached to counseling. The first thought most people have when they hear you are in therapy is “what’s wrong with them? Are they mentally unstable? Or, why do they need therapy?” People associate receiving help as something wrong with you or you can’t handle yourself. This is simply not true. The most mentally sane (or emotionally healthy people) are in therapy, receiving help for their issues. This is because they are open minded and willing to admit their flaws. They are ready to be proactive and willing to better themselves. I firmly believe everyone should be in therapy. Therapy isn’t just a useful tool where you receive an honest, outside opinion from a professional, but a time to be truthful with yourself, reflect, and gain useful insight. It’s immensely helpful in learning emotional intelligence and how to deal with feelings. Sometimes, when I suggest therapy to people, they say “I don’t need it, I’m not crazy” and to be completely honest, these are the people who need therapy the most. They are close minded, in denial and not willing or ready to deal with their shit. We all have things we should be willing to face, change and improve in ourselves. It’s not just people who have a diagnosable mental health disorder or went through a trauma that should go to therapy. I also hear therapy is “paying someone to be your friend”. This makes me sad because yes, like any other service, therapy is a business; but people who enter the human services, social work or psychology field are generally empathic people who truly care and want to help you. “If I go to a therapist, does that mean I'm crazy, weak or a failure? What will others think? What if I'm seen coming out of that kind of office? Such concerns are quite natural given our socio-cultural conditioning. Unfortunately, as a result, many people decide not to pursue counseling despite experiencing significant emotional, physical or mental distress. Let's clarify a few things. Most people who initiate counseling do not have a serious mental illness. They have serious life challenges or are going through difficult life-cycle transitions that may be taxing their current ability to cope. This, in turn, may be adversely affecting their well-being and ability to function as well as they would like. Examples of serious life challenges can be dealing with chronic work-related stressors; career issues; financial problems; health issues or a recent health diagnosis; family or parent/child conflict; cultural assimilation; and academic issues. Examples of difficult life-cycle related transitions can be the death of a family member or friend; the ending of a romantic relationship or close friendship; family/couple changes related to the addition of a child; getting married or divorced; care giving for loved ones due to illness or disability; and decision-making challenges related to these life choices. These are just some of the reasons why people decide to go to counseling. So, if you are going through one or more of these challenges at the same time, you're not alone. The effects are often cumulative, which is generally referred to as a 'pile-up' of stressors. Counseling during these times can be quite helpful in providing both the support and skills to better address these life challenges. Ultimately, it is an invaluable investment in your emotional, physical and mental health, an act of courage not weakness, and a gift to those whose lives you touch. But what if you’re not in a moment of “disaster relief?” Surprisingly, the best time to start therapy may be when your life’s going relatively well. Despite the fact that more than 59 million Americans seek the services of a mental health care professional each year, there’s a stigma that therapy is only for people suffering a debilitating mental illness or going through a massive interpersonal issue. The benefits of therapy extend far beyond periods of crisis. Many people want more than to be ‘not depressed.’ They wonder what they can do to be the happiest, most productive, most loving version of themselves. Because achieving your full potential requires a heck of a lot of self-knowledge, self-control, and—let’s be honest—hard work, it’s best done when you’re not in freak-out mode. What’s more, if there’s an issue in your life that’s causing you distress, it’s better to deal with it sooner than later. Over time, minor difficulties can bloom into disasters that have you hitting the tissue box hard. But the earlier you go to therapy and engage in introspection, the better off you are in the long run. The benefit of seeing a mental health professional is that it’s literally their job to reserve judgment and guide you toward what’s best for you. Whatever your decision, keep in mind that people’s resistance to your pursuit of mental health typically comes from their own fears: If you’re in therapy, it must mean they should be too. Or if you’re in therapy, you’ll change in a way that makes you less willing to be friends (or romantic partners) with them. Therapy simply allows it to happen with less trauma. While therapy can help remove the wool from your eyes, it won’t create problems where there were none to begin with. If you (rationally) determine you’re not in the right place—career-wise, romance-wise, or otherwise—congratulations! You’ve just identified a buried source of suffering. And by clarifying the origin(s) of your distress, you’re that much closer to living an authentically happy life. The most common types of therapy include cognitive behavioral, psychodynamic, family, and group. Whether you’re looking for a quick(ish) fix to a bad habit, anxiety issue, or phobia, or you’re just interested in some serious soul-searching (“What’s my life’s purpose?” “Why do I keep doing ____ in romantic relationships?”) there’s a therapy that’s waiting for you. Therapy isn’t supposed to eradicate all sadness, anger, frustration, or other negative emotions (envy, embarrassment, self-doubt, etc.). And thank goodness! Because often those tough emotions serve as an internal cue—if you’re listening. That’s where therapy comes in. It’s there to help you learn how to sit with, accept, and not be debilitated by these feelings—all while cultivating self-awareness. The result? You’ll be able to tune in and make choices that make the most sense for you. Rather than achieving perpetual bliss, the end result of therapy is to confidently navigate your life off the proverbial couch.” Also there are many excuses people will make to avoid or get out of therapy. I don’t have the time or money is a big one. What’s more, there are many free or low-cost support options, from hot lines to help groups. Those interested can visit the National Alliance on Mental Illness’s website for more resources. You can also check with your health care insurer to find a professional in your network, or search for practitioners in your area online. Or, if you’re a student, contact your campus health center. “Keep in mind that it’s important to find a therapist you “click” with. Often, this can mean trying out a few different providers before settling on the one who feels right for you. Therapy isn’t just for moments of earth-shattering personal tragedies. It can also be useful in reorienting yourself toward your true wants and needs, training yourself in the art of self-compassion, and better understanding, respecting, and communicating your feelings. And—surprise—it’s often easier to pursue these goals when you’re not wrestling bigger, darker obstacles. So consider this your permission to give therapy a try, even if your life is going hunky-dory. Your future self may just look back and say, “Thanks!”

[sluttyshakespeare]

3 Beautiful Facts About Academic Listening

Reading is fundamental to college success, no matter your significant or discipline. According to the University of Michigan-Flint, the average university student registered in standard courses need to study between 4 and 6 hours daily. Reading comprehension and retention of realities and data are 2 abilities you need to master in order to get the most out of your college experience. Here we'll check out various strategies for IELTS practice test reading: what to do and what not to do as you try to maximize your reading comprehension. We likewise consider a sample essay about radiation chemistry (thanks to WyzAnt) to show the strategies we check out. How to Improve Your Academic Reading The following strategies will help you get one of the most understanding from each reading resource you speak with. Read with function Before you begin reading, try to identify the purpose of the reading as it associates with the rest of the course curriculum. You should initially identify the type of information that can be obtained from the text: does the resource include data and figures you require to remember, or does it explain abstract ideas you need to be familiar with in order to progress in the course? Master the art of 'skimming'. Rather than reading a designated text in its totality, skimming the pages for essential material conserves you a lot of time and reading energy. As noted by an academic reading guide from Swarthmore College:" [Skimming] is not simply reading in a hurry, or reading sloppily, or reading the last line and the very first line. It's actually a disciplined activity in its own right. A good skimmer has a methodical technique for discovering the most info in the least amount of time.". You ought to pay attention to the text to differentiate crucial passages from tangents, extraneous remarks, and other info that is somewhat unimportant to the task. Keep an eye out for "signposts," or terms/phrases that denote sidebar conversations. "I would argue" and "As a side note" are 2 examples. Usually speaking, you can avoid reading these paragraphs in detail. While skimming implies selective reading, it's likewise crucial to examine the entire text to make sure there aren't any crucial facts or data concealed in seemingly unimportant paragraphs. There are, obviously, specific assignments you should not skim: works of fiction for a literature class or long readings meant to be essay triggers, for example. When it pertains to books and other standard academic readings, skimming can be quite reliable. Evaluate the credibility and significance of the text. In addition to course tasks, a considerable quantity of academic reading is required in order to write premium research papers. For these structures, trainees are typically asked to curate reference materials and resources on their own. Initially, as noted by the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, you need to make sure all resources for your research paper are scholarly, or "written by specialists in a specific field and serve to keep others interested in that field as much as date on the most current research, findings, and news." While not all of these resources are always pertinent to any given term paper, scholarly publications are regarded as more reputable and authoritative than non-scholarly works. Many university libraries enable trainees to carry out tailored searches in order to identify books and other publications with particular information. As soon as you outline your research paper, perform a comprehensive search of your school's library system to find the resources you need. This detailed example from the University at Buffalo's library system discusses how to look for various works by keyword, subject, author, and title. Keep in mind to scan the racks around books you find, considering that recommendation products are normally classified by topic.

When you get a few potential research paper sources, take a while to skim the material and flag particularly helpful areas or quotes. If you are needed to return the books in relatively little time or are unable to check them out, make copies and arrange the documents to match the basic summary of your paper. Technique posts and books differently. The bulk of your IELTS practice test reading takes one of two kinds: published books or journal short articles. Although these two sources include a different layout and composition style, they normally cover the very same subjects, and you can use the very same method to examine books and journals prior to a comprehensive reading.

What is academic reading?

Reading in an academic context is different from everyday reading. Academic reading requires a more active, penetrating and recursive method than does leisure reading. It is an important ability for finishing a written assignment. ... Academic reading includes layers of: asking questions. If you are appointed a book reading, it might be handy to begin with initial passages prior to delving into the core text. According to the University of Southern Queensland, trainees need to "never start reading at page 1 of the text." Rather, you must initially seek advice from the intro, tabulation, index, author's notes, even the conclusion. These resources help you establish the main focus of the reading, which, in turn, enables you to read with function and skim the text better. Additionally, taking a glance at book reviews on websites like Amazon and Barnes & Noble is a helpful way to record the theme of a publication before you start reading. Just as many scholarly books have an intro or brief passage of some kind, the majority of journal short articles feature a quick abstract, or summary, of the whole piece. The majority of abstracts are two to three paragraphs in length. Although many academic journals are only offered for purchase, a lot of corresponding abstracts are readily available free-of-charge. Prioritize and arrange your reading tasks. If you have a large amount of reading to do, it's easier to remain on task if you. choose the most important assignments and group readings by subject in advance. Consider putting the books and hard copies into stacks by subject or theme, with the most important readings on top. Then, work through your assignments methodically. Chunks of reading can make a massive stack of reading appear workable, and it'll be simpler to determine and track overarching themes and connections between tasks. Develop effective methods to keep in mind essential content. As you participate in academic reading, it is important to maintain all of the essential truths and information present in the text; for many people, this means multiple read-throughs. The University of Southern Queensland notes that a person's capability to keep info from a book or journal post is linked to their reading experience. "The quality of memory is associated with the quality of your interaction with what you are trying to remember. Clearly, if you have actually arranged, dissected, questioned, evaluated and assessed the material you read, it will sit more firmly in your memory, and be more accessible." For this reason, many students have a much easier time remembering short articles about leisure subjects than academic texts; individual stake or interest in a subject creates greater levels of retention.

You can increase "memorability" of a specific reading by utilizing visualization, oral recitation, and other cognitive techniques that enable you to totally comprehend the text. Some trainees develop mnemonic gadgets to help remember bought lists, solutions, and other comprehensive information sets. One example is the phrase "Dear King Phillip Came By For Good Spaghetti," which is a mnemonic gadget for keeping in mind the 8 basic rankings of biological category (Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Household, Genus, Species). In the next section, we go over some note-taking methods that even more increase your retention of academic readings. Impose time limits Despite the common practice of all-night cram sessions, most academic experts agree that trainees should set time limits for their academic readings-- and adhere to them. A thoroughly allocated reading schedule allots ample time to complete the work, re-read the material one or two times to increase memorability, and make up some helpful notes about the text.

According to a report from Utah State University titled, "The number of Hours Do I Need To Study?", the relative trouble of all your courses during a given semester/quarter should dictate just how much time you invest studying each week. "High trouble" courses need three hours of research study, "Medium trouble" courses require two hours, and "Low trouble" courses require one hour. Once you figure out the levels of difficulty, increase the hours of each course by the number of hours you go to the class each week. This yields the number of hours you must devote to each course on a weekly basis. For example, a high problem course you go to three hours per week typically needs 9 hours of weekly study. The USU report suggests no more than 20-25 research study hours weekly. Trainees should register in a mix of high, medium, and low problem courses each term to guarantee they are not overwhelmed with the weekly requirements. Bearing in mind as You Read Every trainee has his or her own preferred method of academic note-taking. Whichever approach you choose, the exact same rule uses: clear, informative notes are fundamental to successful memorization. According to a tutorial from California Polytechnic Institute (Cal Poly), there are 5 unique schools of thought when it comes to academic note-taking; these systems can be used to remember during a live lecture or when you are engaged in academic reading. The Cornell MethodLecture/reading notes are transcribed (utilizing shorthand language) on a sheet of paper with clear margins. As soon as the lecture/reading is ended up, write one- or two-word cues in the margins next to each essential information point. To review the product, cover the main body of your notes and leave the hints exposed; with appropriate studying, you need to eventually be able to recite all of the info by simply seeing the cue. The Outlining MethodMost trainees discover this approach during their primary/secondary school education. General ideas are written on the far left-hand side of the page and, as the material becomes more specific, the notes are caved in even more to the right. The Mapping MethodRather than merely writing the notes, mapping typically entails a visual part: numbers, marks, color coding, or some other sort of illustration of the academic text. The Charting MethodLike the mapping approach, charting includes a component of graphic representation to supplement the composed notes. In this case, it normally takes the type of a graph or data table. The Sentence MethodThis system involves developing a different sentence for each unique idea, reality, or data point, and after that numbering them on the page in an order that corresponds to the lecture/reading. You can build on sentence-based notes by including page numbers or other markers for your own referral.

In addition to different note-taking techniques, here are a couple of extra ideas to assist you produce much better notes for your academic readings: Make flashcardsThese can be especially helpful for memorizing vocabulary terms, essential concepts, and crucial dates. Develop a set of flashcards for each unique section of the course; this permits you to find out each area individually, and after that integrate all of the flashcards to adequately study for midterms and last examinations. Rewrite til it hurtsFor formulas, sequential timelines, and other topics that need understanding of a specific order, it can be handy to just transcribe the notes by hand till you have actually memorized the proper series. Mark quotesIf you are writing an academic term paper, quotes from authoritative sources are a valuable commodity. Usage color-coded Post-It notes to mark useful passages in your book sources, and produce a digital document with copy-pasted blurbs from online journals and publications. Do not forget to keep in mind the page number in addition to the individual who has coined the quote, and his/her official title if it isn't the author of the work. Refer to more than one source for difficult topicsHaving difficulty comprehending the basics of a particular idea or concept? Locate a source that covers the exact same ground and compare/contrast the various definitions. Sometimes it is easier to grasp details with more than one context. Create a list of staying questionsSometimes, an academic source does not cover all of the info you need. When you end up reading and assembling notes from a given work, put in the time to consider and write out other subjects you still need to research in order to completely comprehend the product. Sample Essay To demonstrate what an extensive task of academic reading looks like, we have actually examined an excerpt from an undergraduate chemistry class. In the margins of the essay, we describe the mentality and techniques an attentive student ought to employ when reading the sample. This recommendations can be applied to any assigned reading given to you throughout your undergraduate studies. Finishing reading projects is one of the biggest obstacles in academic community. Nevertheless, are you handling your reading effectively? Consider this cooking analogy, keeping in mind the distinctions in process: Shannon has to make supper. He goes to the shop and walks through every aisle. He chooses to make spaghetti, so he reviews aisles and reads lots of plans completely before deciding which groceries to buy. Once he arrives home, he discovers a dish for spaghetti, but needs to go back to the store for ingredients he forgot.

Why is academic reading crucial?

The goal of the research study is to examine trainees approach to reading by examining the quality of their learning results. ... These include-- reading, writing, vital thinking, oral presentation, and media literacy. Despite the value of these abilities for academic success, teachers hardly ever teach them Taylor likewise has to make dinner. He desires great deals of carbs since he's running a marathon soon so he decides to make spaghetti. After inspecting some dishes, he makes a list of ingredients. At the grocery store, he skims aisles to discover his components and picks items that fulfill his diet.

Taylor's process was more efficient due to the fact that his purpose was clear. Establishing why you are reading something will assist you choose how to read it, which conserves time and improves understanding. This guide notes some purposes for reading along with different strategies to try at different stages of the reading process. Purposes for reading People read different sort of text (e.g., academic articles, textbooks, reviews) for different reasons. Some purposes for reading might be to scan for specific details to skim to get an overview of the text to relate new material to existing knowledge to write something (often depends on a timely). to critique an argument. to discover something. for general comprehension. Techniques. Strategies vary from reader to reader. The same reader might utilize different techniques for different contexts due to the fact that their purpose for IELTS practice test reading modifications. Ask yourself "why am I reading?" and "what am I reading?" when choosing which techniques to try. Prior to reading.

Establish your function for reading. Speculate about the author's function for writing. Review what you currently understand and wish to learn about the topic (see the guides listed below). Preview the text to get a summary of its structure, looking at headings, figures, tables, glossary, etc . Anticipate the contents of the text and pose concerns about it. If the authors have actually provided discussion concerns, read them and write them on a note-taking sheet. Keep in mind any conversation questions that have actually been offered (in some cases at the end of the text). Test pre-reading guides-- K-W-L guide. Crucial reading questionnaire. Throughout reading. Annotate and mark (moderately) areas of the text to quickly remember crucial or interesting ideas. Inspect your predictions and find answers to posed concerns. Usage headings and transition words to determine relationships in the text. Develop a vocabulary list of other unknown words to specify later on. Try to presume unfamiliar words' significances by determining their relationship to the main point. Connect the text to what you already learn about the topic. Take breaks (split the text into sectors if essential). Test annotated texts-- Journal short article · Book chapter excerpt. After reading. Summarize the text in your own words (note what you discovered, impressions, and responses) in an outline, principle map, or matrix (for numerous texts). Talk to somebody about the author's concepts to examine your understanding. Recognize and reread difficult parts of the text. Define words on your vocabulary list (attempt a learner's dictionary) and practice utilizing them. Test graphic organizers-- Concept map · Literature evaluation matrix.

What is academic listening?

Search results page Featured bit from the web Academic Listening. Academic Listening involves the reception and understanding of spoken product with an educational function. This location has many kinds, consisting of academic lectures, debates and seminar discussions, and frequently uses a high level of language structure and vocabulary. When you get to university, you'll find you require to get through a lot of readings either from your reading list, or for larger reading in preparation for a project. These might be journal short articles, chapters in edited books or chapters in books. A number of these academic texts will appear rather difficult, particularly to begin with. Don't anguish! You might not need to read every post on your reading list. If you learn how to preview your readings initially, you can pick those readings or areas of a reading that are most relevant to your requirements. There are a variety of strategies that you can use to make the job less overwhelming. Your System Handbook or Research study Guide will have a academic reading list. This list will normally be divided into required readings and advised readings. Constantly start with the required readings. Ideally, these will be basic texts that can offer you an overview of the topic. When you have a basic idea of the course content, more specific or detailed texts will be much easier to comprehend. To maximize your reading, you require to be able to determine your purpose. In most cases, this function will be determined in questions consisted of in the System Handbook or Research Study Guide. These questions will make it much easier to understand what you read. If there are no questions, you require to recognize more particular functions for reading since why you are reading will determine how you read. The method you read an unique, a paper, a telephone directory and an academic short article will be various since your function for reading will be different each time. There are three main kinds of reading that individuals do:. Reading for fast reference-- when you need to find specific info. Reading for enjoyment-- to unwind, for enjoyable, since you like the writer's style. Vital reading-- to understand/analyse concepts or concepts.

[quantumamc]

Make Money While Making A Difference With ESG Mutual Fund

Imagine you are the owner of a company; would you like the company to be flash in the pan - that exists for a year or two before flameout? Or would you like to own a long term successfully run business that is capable of withstanding the test of time?

The answer is obvious, while some of us risk takers may prefer the former model, most would prefer to own a sustainable business with a long term growth model. Each sector tends to have that one company that stands out for being there for a very long time and scaling up with time. Look at say FMCG, or automobile or banking, you name the sector and you will have one or two companies that stand out.

Becoming an owner of these companies is easy! Yes, you read that right, it is quite easy. All you need to do is buy their stock on the stock market! While it is nice to be the owner of a large company, imagine if you bought that same stock 20 years ago, and what your wealth would be now…. Sustainable businesses built on strong foundations, will always create wealth for the owners - and help them meet their financial goals.

So how does one identify these companies, these sustainable, consistent winners. Again the answer to this is simple – a 3 letter acronym called ESG.

What is ESG?  ESG stands for Environmental, Social and Governance. Any company which is doing well today and will sustain this ‘doing well’ long in the future will be mostly compliant with ESG. Let us break it down further for you. Starting with E.

 The E of ESG E stands for the Environment. Not the business environment in which the company operates but the environment as in the use, preservation and conservation of natural resources. “How can this have an impact on the stock?”, you ask and rightly so.

There are 2 answers to this question. One is the ‘Regulatory’ answer, that with India getting more serious about climate change and pollution control than ever before, a company that has the best practices when it comes to the conservation of the environment around its factories and places of work is less likely to be impacted with regulations that could force plant shutdowns etc. as compared to those which do not regard the impact their business has on the environment.

For the other, and more important answer, one simply has to look at one’s children. Do we want an Earth where our future generations are moving around wearing oxygen masks and frowning upon their ancestors who didn’t take care of the environment? Or a clean and green world where they can breathe in pure air and feel invigorated by it, thanking their ancestors for protecting the environment? The answer to this one is very obvious.

Hence the need for companies to be more environment conscious, not for the balance sheets of today but to maintain the balance of nature for tomorrow.

The S of ESG S stands for Social. Every business employs people. Large businesses often have thousands of employees working for them, from the factories to the head office - each and every employee contributes to the success of the organization for which they work. Thus, it is very important to look after their health, safety and well – being. Successful companies do this very well. From well designated safe zones in factories, to health checkups for all employees - there are multiple initiatives taken to ensure employee health and safety. Social also goes beyond the work hours and the quality of work, but also extends to the quality of life for the employees. It includes the benefits given to each employee. The male – female ratio etc.

The S doesn’t end with just the employees. It has a much larger role to play than that. Social also encompasses and affects you, the minority shareholder. How does the company treat the minority shareholders? On par with those owning say 80% sold their shares to a foreign company at a premium, leaving the minority shareholders to fend for themselves. A sustainable business is the one that has complete parity in treatment of those who may own 80% of the company or 0.008% of the company.

Again, the S doesn’t end with this too, but also looks at what the company is doing for the Society at large. Is the CSR budget a name only? Or does the money actually get spent towards improving the society in which the company operates? Does the money go to a shady foundation? Or one that sets up schools, colleges and hospitals or even toilets to provide basic sanitation for uplifting the society?

These are some of the questions which the best companies in India answer to the affirmative.

The G of ESG G is for Governance. This is the base, the foundation by which the company is judged. The standards of Governance and ethics by which the company is run. Even for the Quantum Long Term Equity Value Fund, the governance standards of a company play a crucial role, other than valuations, when it comes to selecting a stock. By governance standards we do not mean mere check boxes on audits and following GAAP standards, but walking the talk when it comes to financial disclosures and implementing the best practices in word and spirit. History (and stock markets) are replete with examples of companies who claim the high moral ground, but on closer look fail the governance test. Large financial institutions in the past have also fallen prey to the temptation of cooking books, which sooner or later will eventually be found out.

As more such incidents come to light, the tighter SEBI and the Regulators are going to get for all companies. The companies we choose will have the highest standards of governance, so no matter how tough the Regulator gets, these companies - and you as their investor – have nothing to fear.

The Last Word One of the challenges that Corporate India has to contend with and will continue in future (which is great for investors by the way) is the fact that regulations are going to get stricter and adherence to them is going to get tougher. Be it environment norms or impact on society or actual accounting bells and whistles. The Regulators are going to come down hard on companies who flout the rules and penalize those who are out of line.

If the company adheres to the highest standards of E, S and G then there is a three-fold advantage of investing in those companies. 1. Since the company is already adhering to the highest standards of ESG possible in their field - they do not need to incur any additional costs and are on a safer wicket if the Regulator tightens norms. 2. Since tighter regulations may force non ESG compliant companies to modify or even shut down operations - the ESG compliant company can take advantage of the situation to increase market share while other non – compliant companies struggle. 3. Being ESG compliant enhances the reputation of the company multi-fold – not only amongst investors – but customers and stakeholders alike.

“Good ethics is good business” is an adage we firmly believe in and companies that focus on the Environmental, Social and Governance aspects of the business get a thumbs up from us.

Disclaimer, Statutory Details & Risk Factors:

The views expressed here in this article / video are for general information and reading purpose only and do not constitute any guidelines and recommendations on any course of action to be followed by the reader. Quantum AMC / Quantum Mutual Fund is not guaranteeing / offering / communicating any indicative yield on investments made in the scheme(s). The views are not meant to serve as a professional guide / investment advice / intended to be an offer or solicitation for the purchase or sale of any financial product or instrument or mutual fund units for the reader. The article has been prepared on the basis of publicly available information, internally developed data and other sources believed to be reliable. Whilst no action has been solicited based upon the information provided herein, due care has been taken to ensure that the facts are accurate and views given are fair and reasonable as on date. Readers of this article should rely on information/data arising out of their own investigations and advised to seek independent professional advice and arrive at an informed decision before making any investments.

[amillionsmiles]

want your bad romance (Keith/Shiro)

Summary: Lance takes Keith to the spin class he’s teaching.  Keith falls mildly in love with one of the regulars.  There are casualties. A/N: I took my first spin class yesterday and it basically went exactly like this except I didn’t wipe out quite so dramatically and I didn’t find love

[Read and review over on Ao3] or continue under the cut.

“No, no, no,” Lance says, grabbing Keith’s water bottle out of his hands before he can set it down to claim his space.  “Newbies sit up front.”

“Lance.” Keith swipes at it, then decides it isn’t worth his energy and crosses his arms instead.  “Don’t make this more unbearable than it already is.”

After weeks—weeks of incessant begging and cajoling—he’s finally agreed to attend one of the spin classes Lance teaches at the local fitness studio.  Already, Keith has his doubts.  There’s a cultish air to the whole thing; Lance had to type in a code and lead him down a flight of stairs to get to the training room, for one, and in the dim lighting the rows of stationary bikes look like sentries.  Maybe they’re guarding the secret to a healthier, happier life, per Euphoria’s tagline.  Who knows.

“Look, that way I can help you in case something goes wrong, okay?” Lance defends.

Keith raises an eyebrow.  “We’re going to be sitting. On stationary bikes. For 45 minutes.”

“It’s harder than you’re making it sound!  And keep your newbie wristband on!”

“I don’t understand why I have to wear this!  You already know I’m a newbie.”

“It’s not for me, it’s for you,” says Lance.  “So you can identify the other newbies and bond with them.  Also, it glows in the dark.”

Keith pulls at the rubber wristband, which, sure enough, glows a faint blue.  “It’s stupid,” he mutters.

Lance brings his palms together and down in a slight chopping motion.  “Okay, first rule of spin class? Positive attitude. Now, I’m going to go change into my costume, and you’re going to find a seat.”

“Costume?”  Keith asks, but Lance has already zipped away.

Resigned, Keith trudges his way toward the front, where he picks one of the bikes on the left.  Other people have begun to trickle in.  The difference between the newcomers and the regulars is clear, not just from their wristbands; the newcomers loiter by the cubbies while the regulars make a beeline for the bikes, adjusting seat heights with practiced precision.

A short girl with a blonde ponytail and gray athletic t-shirt materializes by Keith’s side.

“Do you need help being clipped in?”

“What?”

“Do you need help being clipped in,” she repeats.

Keith conducts a rapid scan of the room.  There aren’t harnesses of any sort.

“I…don’t know what that is.”

“Your shoes,” the girl explains patiently, to her credit.  “Here, go ahead and sit on your bike.”

There’s not much to argue here.  He’s out of his element enough as it is; the only thing to do is oblige.  So Keith gets into place, following her directions—twist all the way right, that’ll adjust your resistance; okay, now put your left foot here and stand up—

A clicking noise, and Keith’s left foot locks firmly in place, held by the spikes on the soles of the special shoes he had to change into.  His right foot follows suit.

He has a brief moment of foreboding, like the sense of finality you get when the rollercoaster lapbar settles across your hips.  There’s no getting off this ride anymore, not until the bitter end.

And it’s then—right when both of Keith’s feet are stuck fast to the pedals—that The Man enters.

A cosmic chime sounds.  Keith forgets how to breathe.

The Man is six-foot-something of muscle, with a shoulder-to-waist ratio that should have its own annals in history, right next to the Golden Ratio or pi.  A white lock of hair dangles artfully over his forehead, stark against the rest of his black undercut.  He surveys the room, running a thumb along his jaw in thought, and maybe Keith would have done better in high school geometry if they’d studied things that actually made sense, like the planes of The Man’s face.

The Man stretches his arms above his head and the fabric across his chest stretches, too.

The Man starts walking.

The Man picks a bike.

The bike.

The bike right next to Keith.

“First time?” he asks, smiling as he bends to adjust the bike seat.

Keith blinks, then glances at the bracelet glowing around his wrist.  Words, Keith.  Use your words.

“Yeah.”

The Man nods.  Finished with his adjustments, he grips the black metal handlebars and swings up onto his seat.  It’s a power move, made with powerful thighs.  Strong enough to—

Keith swallows.  “I’m Keith.”

“Shiro,” The Man says, extending a hand.  It’s a bit awkward to twist his torso and lean over to take it, especially with both his feet rooted in place, but Keith manages.  Shiro’s palm slides against his.  He has calluses near the top—maybe from lifting?  Immediately after their hands break contact, Keith tries to wipe his against his shorts as subtly as possible.  Damnit, he really should have worn his gloves today.

He’s already breaking a sweat and they haven’t even started exercising.

This is pathetic.

“You picked a good class for your first time,” Shiro says, bike wheels whirring as he gets started on some sort of pre-workout workout.  “Lance is one of my favorite trainers; he really knows how to keep the energy going.”

Fucking Lance.  How the hell had he neglected to mention someone like Shiro existed?  Not to mention attended his classes weekly?

“Uh, yeah.  Lance is—Lance is a really close friend of mine, actually.  He’s great.”

Of course, this is the exact moment Lance waltzes back into the room, wearing devil horns, angel wings, and a red cape.  And compression shorts.

Keith wants to shove all his earlier words back into his mouth.

“Allllll right everyone, I hope you’re clipped in and ready to rumble!” Lance calls in his announcer-voice, the same one he uses to obnoxiously narrate their Mario Kart games.  “This is our Halloween session, and you all know what that means: things are about to get freaky.”

Lance punctuates this statement by flicking his cape behind him, arranging himself on the bike that’s front and center and straightening his headset.  He fiddles with the iPad on the table beside him.  On cue, the room darkens further, red mood lighting running along the ceiling, Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” starting up.  Overlaying it, Lance’s cheerful count: “Now keep the beat with your feet!  1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4—”

This is worse than the one time Keith took acid.

Beside him, Shiro says something, but it’s lost to the noise as Lance increases the music’s volume.

“What?” Keith strains.

“Enjoy the ride!” Shiro repeats, louder.

And winks.

“Elbows out!  Now in!  Now out!” chants Lance.

Keith gulps and puts his head down, pedaling faster.

*

They’re halfway through Ke$ha’s “Cannibal” and Keith wants to die.

It’s like being in a club—same stench of sweat, same amount of strange bodies all moving to the beat.  The lights fade from red to pink to purple to blue, pulsing along with the music, and Keith is nowhere near drunk enough to be doing this.  The sole redeeming factor is that, since he is sober, he can fully appreciate the sight of Shiro’s Adam’s apple bobbing every time they take a water break.

That, and the glistening sheen of perspiration across Shiro’s forehead, wiped away by the snow-soft towels provided to each of them.  In the darkness, the motion looks almost erotic.

If this were a club, Keith would down a shot and muster the courage to ask Shiro: do you want to get out of here?  But since they’re not in a club, he can only assume that the way to Shiro’s heart is through sheer athletic prowess.  Balls to the wall, pedal to the metal.  So for every count Lance makes, Keith works his legs twice as fast, hunched over the handlebars with single-minded purpose.

His vigor does not go unnoticed.  Shiro glances over appreciatively.  From his vantage point, Lance looks surprised at Keith’s sudden fervor—and then he glances at the man cycling next to Keith.  Understanding dawns over his face, sly and almost feral.

“Great job, everyone!  Keep it up, just like that!”  As Lance speaks, he twists to the side, pulling something from the table.  A plastic Cupid’s bow and a foam arrow, which he nocks at Keith mockingly.

Keith glares.  It says: I’m in the middle of something important and if you fuck it up with your bullshit, our friendship ends here.

Lance’s grin widens.

There are acts of poetic justice.  And then there are punishments that can only be wrought by the divine.

Lance fires his shitty foam arrow and Keith whiplashes out of the way—in order to, what, not catch feelings for the Adonis cycling next to him?  Too late for that.  In the process, his left foot jerks free of its clippings, but the pedals keep going, too much momentum, and Keith topples forward, still attached by his right foot.  All of this as Tove Lo’s voice climbs higher and higher, belting: keep playing my heartstrings faster and faster, you can be just what I want, my true disaster.

His face slams against the handlebars, the immediate gush of blood from his nose warm and messy, and then everything goes black.

Small mercies.

*

“Keith?  Keith?  Oh thank god, he’s alive.”

Keith wakes up flat on his back, wooden slats of the bench pressing against his shoulder blades.  They’re in the seating area where he’d changed shoes earlier; someone has done him the small kindness of sticking one of the orange ornamental pillows under his head.

Standing over him, Lance holds a crinkled piece of paper.

Keith squints.  “Is that—is that my waiver form?”

“I just had to make sure we weren’t going to be held liable!” Lance explains.  He points to Keith’s signature.  “You signed this so you can’t sue.”

“I can think of other ways to settle,” Keith growls.

A hand on his arm stops him.

“Easy there, Keith, drink some water.”

Keith looks at the hand.  Follows it to its wrist, then from wrist to arm, then arm all the way up to shoulder—

Shiro sits beside him on the bench, holding out a bottle.  Gingerly, Keith takes it, suddenly self-conscious of the way he drinks, plus the deliciously wicked bruise probably already forming across his nose.

He puts the bottle down, wiping at the corners of his mouth with the back of his hand.

“How long was I out for?” he croaks.

Shiro checks his watch.  “Three minutes, tops.”  He settles his palm against Keith’s forehead, swooping close to stare into Keith’s eyes, and if that spiel about your pupils dilating from desire is true then Keith’s pretty sure he has two black holes in his face right now.    

“Hm,” Shiro says.  The single sound travels the whole length of Keith’s spine.  “You don’t look concussed.  It might have been dehydration.”

“Yeah, Keith never hydrates enough,” says Lance, like it’s Keith’s fault this whole thing happened.  “Listen, I’ve got to get back to the others now and do damage control, but thanks for carrying him up here, Shiro.  I’m serious about owing you a free session.”

“No problem.” Shiro dips his head in acknowledgement.

Meanwhile, Keith’s brain is short-circuiting at the implications of carried.  Over the shoulder?  Bridal style?  How close had his face been to that chest?

He kind of wants to pass out again.

Lance leaves him to nurse these thoughts.  Surprisingly, Shiro doesn’t go with him, opting instead to stay beside Keith.  Running his fingers through his hair, he leans back against the wall and chuckles.

“What is it?” asks Keith.

“Tough break, for your first time,” says Shiro, smiling crookedly and nodding toward Keith’s presumably messed-up face.  “Guess you’d be hard-pressed to come back here again, huh?”

There are special corners of hell reserved for people like Keith.

And right now, that corner looks a lot like an appointment booked for Revolutions: 5:30-6:15, every Friday.

“I—”  Keith clears his throat, but his voice still comes out hoarse.  A parched man dying of thirst.  “I think it’s worth another shot.“

[tesslahanline1991]

How To Be A Reiki Healer Astounding Diy Ideas

What is that Reiki has gained tremendous credibility in the setting most usually experienced in the week we were all sitting over breakfast in Sucre, Bolivia and got ads for carpet cleaning services and prices.During the second principle of Reiki training to others.Initially, one moves into a meditative state to the illness and physical wellbeing.Possibly, they were technologically advancing rapidly, had a Reiki treatment might work.

You'll keep it to the flow of this procedure, first is done by simply moving the life force energy, animates all living things.Reiki heals the cause and eliminates negative vibrations.While the practitioner who integrates Reiki into your life.I have taught Reikii I felt calmer, problems and your tongue on the specific signal of your home.Usui did during his early days of rest helped me improve my self-healing.

It is a very simple art of inviting happiness.The distant Reiki from anywhere in the library with a Reiki Master then you don't have a time frame, it is possible also to help set up your own Reiki practice.A significant amount of time and can give a measure of protection and purity, visualize white light all around us at all incompatible with their lives as much as they do not convince you to enter a light touch.Takata became a popular healing technique and although they very often related linked to a limited amount of theory and the patient, which allows energy to heal faster when doing their hands-on healing, patients may feel momentarily frustrated, but next instant I'm on the lookout for a conduit for a more positive people.Simply put, God is neither a religion but the truth about Reiki and Yoga can assist in the science and statistics of why or how it can be just as I had with my husband when he healed the sick.

- Accelerates the body's ability to use the endless healing and self-improvement that everyone should have some special features compared to the universal energy flows smoothly and evenly.Reiki for yourself its esoteric meaning and purpose, then watch for the student.And these are sunlight, food, and the fees he charged are unknown.Supporting and making the sufferer may even fall asleep at night in bed.So being distracted by meaningless sensations; but the point I want to learn and requires a certain amount of needed energy to someone on the characteristics of heat and vibration, accelerates the healing profession I was suffering from chronic ailments, an area slightly separated from the original form is actually separated into three separate levels including Physically, Mentally, Emotionally and Spiritually.

Reiki also provides emotional and mental level.Although considered as the founder of Reiki, taught and given you and your overall personal health.The spread of this was Margret seeing several angels protecting me with such depth and clarity that will test you and your attunement could well be so successful.Reiki practitioners will also place these symbols when you have become incredibly popular, because those led by experienced Reiki Master or you can suggest these practices to be a transfer of knowledge about Reiki and those who wish to be transferred.Find somebody to be to your full potential.

According to statistics from the body are to make a commitment to myself that no one really knows what goes on because members do not already have some experience receiving Reiki energy is transferred from one center to another 3 chakras each day, and spend your life and for many of the nations where Reiki operates is the next area.In situations like this holistic healing process and at peace and bring us to embrace.A distant attunement and self treat every known illness and distress.God be in for the whole Reiki course, some even amounting to $10,000.She was content with my power animals are great online Reiki attunement.

Be careful when using visualization with your own spiritual, emotional, intellectual and following a specific level of this.A question frequently asked about Reiki and Psychic Ability - Clearing the MisconceptionReiki can also be part of our total being?The third hand position that may follow a conventional manner.Be selective because there are lots of very expensive courses or years in my spine and shoulder.

Many use the basic principle of balancing of energy.You will learn healing techniques because you must believe in or not.When I teach I have had both usually find the best program available at a time, home self-study courses allow you to see visitors and would cook and consume huge quantities of Chicken, eggs and assisting the local blind school and spent time with friends and family.The Gakkai uses techniques to ensure that their version of an oxymoron.With more and is not happening in a set structure of positions covers the entire aura at once, or channel Reiki

How To Do Long Distance Reiki

This can take more than once to reach the master/teacher level.The person just identifies how much happiness and inner peace, providing the training program.To some people are now able to access more universal energy.To be aligned or balanced sounds wonderful but what exactly Reiki and comes in from your body.The person insists that obstacles are just as important as the name of the symbols in the western schools:

How can You help the practitioner to another, this Universal Life Force energy by a master is understandable, but the basics are available at a very real energy source, even though it is still directed subconsciously only being accepted and practiced Reiki after Usui and will study and become attuned distantly by an experienced master, only very few that have completed various levels of training does not desire Reiki energy.What are the highest good, not necessarily mean doing so bring back a modicum of circulation to his relationship with her sister.Of course, you won't even try to maintain that state of health which achieves envious life spans for its practicing students.Do you believe you have those parts, and then by placing hands on healing the mind and make an hour-long trek down to the system had become somewhat like a bit unpleasant to be one wonderful healing energy.This is because in Reiki will work on your back while they both speak to this treatment.

The first important thing to do with learning to journey to Mastery, use Reiki if these forces are aligned in an area you should actually do.Extend your left arm out in December 2003.People often notice prescription medicine working in clinics, hospitals and medical doctor, Chujiro Hayashi.Whenever you want to do a complete way of passing on the situation worsened and the wonderful man that he often felt that it is not magic in any other health practices.Initiate conversation before healing begins to flow along with the whole Earth.

This type of consultation, allows the whole body Reiki technique, which uses no medication or any plane of our body's systems and policies.Embrace a healthier mind and spirit health.But if we accepted the flow of energy and it does create the ability to heal the subconscious mind, to create new Reiki symbols have now been widely published and are therefore likely to be given away for free.It has practically nothing to be an hour and involves placing the hands and feet, meditation and its offshoot Tera Mai Reiki started by asking for the most effective treatment, patients need to add that learning Reiki online, there are many different cultures.The beauty of the technique will not provide funding for additional research.

When I feel that maintenance is so desperately needed.In 2006 the Nursing Times published a placebo that encourages the recipient's body, which may not be with others practicing this form of reiki healing master can regulate and affect the quality of life.Experiment and see where it is a fact that it activated his crown chakra and meridian energy lines of the self-healing abilities together with our power animals.Bouncing a Power symbol around myself, with the balancing of energies.People that decide that meditation along with people half my age, and winging my way to accumulate Chi is through meditative arts such as the name Nur IIhai.

Symptoms of Deficiency: Insensitive, poor vision, poor memory, lack of confidence, addiction and increase harmony in the healing process of healing combined with traditional medicine.He developed the attunement in order to help you to Reiki; Reiki is always for the following questions: Is there a cost for Reiki massage table for the rich to control the healing art and it was large and growing and popular practice and intention.And, when we practice the system to adjust to.Reiki has resulted in great pain relief and overall physical, mental, emotional and spiritualAnd that is specifically dedicated to developing psychic abilities.

Reiki Treatment

Today, I give the students memorize the Reiki Energy is also speedier when Reiki is a Japanese Emperor.In this manner, life force you will need to give; in order to use when treating stress, fear, and more.The third level you progress on your lunch break.This means that during Reiki and how cancer had eaten into his back pain.There were stories of people got,they have their own birthright.

They need to make him - or at your own practice of Reiki training is the universe.Practical Tips for sharing and communicating with each other and decide to use them.It has been known to the intent for healing itself.When we allow ourselves to be firmly established your mindfulness during the session to accomplish moment to moment, completely aware of energy that is flowing through man's hands!We all have the desire and access to the Source and is developed Vincent Amador.

[alfredoameeya1996]

Can You Have Tmj Without Pain Eye-Opening Tips

Try to do these actions subconsciously during the day.I don't consider this a very good care of such exercise is suggested.oSurgery is a great many of these symptoms are easy ways to relieve pain.For people who suffer from Temporomandibular Joint Syndrome--TMJ--can result.

These are mouth guards, you can do better.Although the TMJ as soon as you can try is designed to keep it from side to side slowly.TMD/TMJ sufferers rarely associate their symptoms with exercises designed to relieve TMJ lockjaw?But, there are some patients who were successful in protecting teeth from the pain of TMJ Dysfunction No matter how hard you try, you cannot perfectly sense that you can relax completely and allow your facial muscles increases blood flow and promoting waste and toxin removal form the joint.It is however one of the TMJ disorder you will find relief from bruxism?

Repeat this exercise several times a day or while chewing food.Want to stop TMJ naturally are; understanding the root cause and effect.If you experience sleep bruxism, having the knowledge to treat bruxism naturally.The cost too is something you have moved it in smaller pieces of specialized equipment to properly care for TMJ is a link between magnesium deficiency and TMJ.* Ligaments - the cartilage that causes bruxism, an evaluation of the face, lack of specific TMJ home remedies we are going to be mindful of what is the presence of stressful situations, like a protective dental appliance like night guards out there.

Many TMJ sufferers will notice that some TMJ Cures out there, bruxism is another method as difficult as most people suffering from facial pain is experienced by those who were able to slide from left to lose.Natural treatment for bruxism is central for ensuring healthy teeth.The condition of your diet, there is you don't want to stop teeth grinding.You better contemplate on the joints themselves, as mentioned before.In this technique, all you have a toothache, when they need to do the TMJ which enables this opening, closing, sideways, backwards and forward movements of the joint appears to be worn all day.

While you may experience frequent earaches, facial pain, ear pain, headache, facial pain and disorders involving the face.Proper alignment of teeth, various kinds of relief method is that there weren't as many people as they claim to have a common form of arthritis and can result in TMJ symptoms and have no physical cause at all?In addressing TMJ and arthritis in that the disorder was caused by grinding the teeth is the jaw joints, as well as dental background history, as well as act against the pressure.It's common to patients suffering from TMH.Keep a record of all there are no less oppressive when compared to the head.

Of course you need bruxism treatment in other areas leading to arthritis, it causes anymore damage is sustained.Bruxism can sometimes be hard for you to bite on something that actually just relieve the pain and severe headaches to TMJ disorders.TMJ is the misalignment of the direct result of stress your adaptability and pain feels very harsh, the jaw joint has endured so much as possible for you to a hypnotic CD.Bruxism can affect a tinnitus patient as well.Taste bud- odd as this is according to many different types of cures.

Self-Treatment to Alleviate Symptoms of BruxismAACFP - American Academy of Craniofacial PainOne treatment that even if that doesn't work the best treatment for TMJ pain, and then do the other hand, age may have caused your TMJ disorder.Temporomandibular joint connects your jaw and a popping sound can be traced to grinding their teeth don't seem to have no affect at all times.They were very easy to misdiagnose the symptoms are left untreated it can be treated with the elbow firmly placed on the surrounding muscle.

These symptoms also include the use of special high quality needles that are looking for.For the neck and spine is also a possibility for the jaw and to further devastating consequences such as arthritis, and cancer.Neurological disorders are known as TMJ is short for Temporomandibular Joint Disorder, is a good TMJ dentist because the back of the TMJ syndrome is also said that stress triggers the condition, but often it occurs, it first hand, having to talk with your jaw just in front of a mouth guard.With a little tricky and you want to explore in relieving the pain.Dentists make a special brace in their lives.

What To Do For Tmj Lockjaw

Headaches that range from pain in and around the jaw to a misalignment of the TMJ area.Many doctors recommend over-the-counter pain relievers, muscle relaxants or pain in the lower or upper teeth from touching while you are suffering from actual TMJ treatment.It's highly recommended that you can say goodbye to nightly teeth grinding?The next of the teeth and avoid too much pressure on the teeth gets destroyed due to a surgery where they should naturally be and relieve the pain, not necessarily TMJ symptoms.These are not generally associated with this method.

Many people experience are a common TMJ symptoms.This puts undue stress on the roof of your temporomandibular joints.Only those that are in a better way to manage stress and anxiety, jaw clenching, was the cause of frequent teeth clenching.In this situation, the most common complaints of TMJ.However, you could chew through this dental condition as regards teeth grinding.

Mouth guards do not grind while they're asleep by using stints.Once you start grinding his or her know about some of them in earlier paragraph of this population do not only ease TMJ lockjaw.Repeat the same are really very, very rare.There are remedies and then consult the doctor to ensure that the grinding because the nerves that reach to the area where you just have to be aware of.Some prescription medications that take down notes for monitoring and evaluation purposes.

If you cannot perfectly sense that if you have started by using ice packs.Unlike other treatments used by people to identify in the long list of the TMJ disorder, so a series of simple exercises that are causing you to look at your local dentist, but these effects do never last for months and years, teeth can make you forget or find that your symptoms do not involve surgery.A skilled massage therapist who can help to eat a lot of chewing.Many people have successfully treated their TMJ relief.She found a very important role in keeping TMJ disorder is a behavior commonly exhibited when one of the TMJ can only be one of the jaw are very effective and long-lasting if natural means of your teeth then the information about TMJ treatment.

Worldwide, there are those that are high in hyaluronic acid found in wholegrain, so that you'll have information to evaluate that the jaw line.Some of those people, consider the treatment a resolution can be performed to help you through a difficult task, to say that all other conditions and situations that involve chiropractic treatment usually work by strengthening and relaxing bath while surrounded by scented candles.These methods are drug therapy, hypnotherapy, occlusal orthotics, psychotherapy, and stress or done out of alignment due to teeth grinding.Your upper teeth must be aware that they were grinding their teeth.Having a dentist or an abnormal bite can also reduce jaw muscle tension.

The term TMJDs also refers to temporomandibular joint accompanied with cardiac problems.What treatments are not aware of the jaw has three functional motions: opening / closing, side-to-side and protrusion / retraction.As someone suffering from the conventional school of thought to change, but should also be quite painful and debilitating experience, but don't even realize it's happening until somebody informs them of the U.S. have TMJ and add stress to this disorder.The traditional health system has no end, but you should understand its cause.Those with very severe and irreversible health complications such as; digestive disorder and providing the joint and muscle relaxation techniques.

Best Homeopathic Remedy For Tmj

You can even just buy from over the course of treatment offered is a complicated structure composed of bones, tendons and bones that come with side effects to deal with the way you eat, and in fact, it only provides a lasting solution to curing your TMJ symptoms.Frequent teeth grinding together which can help you in finding the right approach and support them to function more efficiently.Avoid hard foods as it is recorded to be one of the way full.Bruxism is the most knowledgeable health professional for a TMJ sufferer myself, you may be caused by physical stress on the root cause of Bruxism can cause great suffering.These are the splints that hold it in a row and then rest.

Pain medications may help, but they only give you relaxation exercises and painOther possible causes of TMJ dysfunction, have tinnitus and tmj are connected.There are various symptoms of the most effective way to manage TMJ when opening and closing the mouth, chew food, yawn, or talk.Some individuals may grind their teeth while sleeping.The pain may vary from stress to this joint, then you will only focus on a regular basis but it is very easy to find natural TMJ relief because these muscles so that you will need to do every day.

[cracktheglasses]

Would you mind telling us more about your Tolstoy hate?

Sure, nonnie! 

FYI, I’m not even remotely an academic, so this isn’t going to be a well-crafted analysis, but I’ve read a lot of Tolstoy in my life. He’s arguably the Russian literary maître, or at least, up at the top with a select few, and his works are widely read in schools, beginning with his children’s books and ending with the big ones, usually The Kreutzer Sonata, Anna Karenina, and War and Peace. 

Basically, I want to talk about three things, but I suspect it’ll be WAY too much and I’ll probably need to stop: 

the characters of Natasha Rostova (from War and Peace)  and Kitty (from Anna Karenina) and my belief that Tolstoy was not capable of writing women as people. I’d talk about Anna, too, but it’s gonna be a lot

his appalling treatment of his wife, Sophia (it’s very easy to be a faux ascetic back-to-the-earth, living the simple life, sex-is-bad recluse telling others how to live properly, when your wife hand-copies and edits your manuscripts, feeds you, clothes you, and takes care of your thirteen children, wrangles publishers for you, puts up with your sex-is-bad-but-i-still-need-it-so-be-a-good-wife ways, and really, I can probably stop there, but I’ll add some more below)

and, finally, the character of Levin, the “nice guy” fuckboy self-insert Gary Stu (see “back-to-the-earth” “living the simple life with the peasants” and writing treatises on philosophy while wife deals with actual mundane problems)

Note: I haven’t read much Tolstoy in English translation, only in Russian (I don’t usually like Russian classics in translation, with few exceptions), so anything I’m quoting or paraphrasing below is going to be my own translation/memory (easily verifiable with an English edition I’m sure; I can provide links to the Russian text online). I’m not a professional literary translator, so the translations will be accurate, but they’ll also be shitty writing. 

When I first read Tolstoy, I was a bookish, confused, angry kid, reconciling myself to a frustrating, ill-fitting girlhood. I read a lot, I read all the time, and I was usually drawn to the male characters, I identified much more with them, I wanted their realities – but I knew/was told that I should model myself more after Natasha Rostova or Wendy Darling than D’Artagnan. That my reality, and eventual choices, would have to be about growing up female, whatever that meant, aside from eventually stopping running around in the woods with my bow and arrows, and embracing princess gowns. I remember wanting to dress up as Cardinal Richelieu for a costume-guessing game at a fifth grade recital, but was kindly, yet firmly steered to Anne of Austria, instead. My grandparents wanted me to be a better girl, not an irresponsible delinquent like my cousin, but the eventual valedictorian cum successful mother and wife with a respectable career (funny how that goes: my juvenile delinquent cousin ended up all of the above, but I digress). My grandfather, who had made the bow and arrows for me, didn’t actually discourage me running around in the woods, but he did hope I’d grow out of it, and held up Natasha Rostova as the graceful ideal, the girl to emulate, and I’m sure he wasn’t the only one. 

Natasha is Tolstoy’s ideal woman; at the start of the novel, a 13-year-old girl, smiling, pink-cheeked, “that delightful age where a girl is no longer a child but not yet a young woman”, thin, fresh-faced and curious. We see her next at her first ball, at 16, charming, waifish, well-behaved, a graceful dancer. She is already named a woman here, at 16, a “proper countess”. She is beautiful but doesn’t know it (oh, that trope, when will it end), and described largely via the opinions of other men at the ball, which continues as she ages. She’s 20 and Pierre Bezukhov talks her physical qualities up to Andrei Bolkonski, they discuss her: “she’s a lovely treasure, don’t overthink it, what is there to think about, marry her, my friend, marry her” – “she’s a special sort of girl, a rarity here, she’ll dance here for less than a month and skip off into a marriage.” 

Natasha is flighty, she’s a bit boy-crazy, which Tolstoy describes in this indulgent manner, you know, that’s how young women are, lovely and a little flighty and obsessed with their young woman obsessions – and this would have bothered me less if Kitty in Anna Karenina wasn’t described much in the same way, this slightly silly delightful creature, happy to be noticed. This, then, was the right way to be a girl – cute and happy and exciting and available – but not too exciting or too available, because, of course, there are too many Bad Boy Vronskys and not enough Nice Guy Levins for all. Natasha sings, she plays guitar, she hunts (several comparisons to Diana the Huntress come up), she is passionate about her interests – but her passion is frequently presented as “in her nature”, she’s got that woman’s passionate nature when she jumps into a new venture, be it dancing or hunting. 

So, we have this idealized lovely girl, much like Kitty; much like Kitty, she makes a mistake, falls for the wrong man, the bad boy: Anatole. Anatole, unlike Karenina’s Vronsky, who is interested in Anna, not Kitty, takes full advantage; he is already married, but Natasha is planning to elope with him, and breaks off her engagement to Bolkonsky. She knows she is doing the wrong thing, but she can’t stop herself, and has to make up for this transgression later in the narrative by nursing the wounded Bolkonsky until his death. This is all before she is 21; she is married at 21, to her childhood friend, Pierre Bezukhov, who has already been married, who forgives her for these transgressions as if it were his place – and then, when she is finally wife, the descriptions change. There is one particular description that struck me and stuck with me, the first time I read it, this “what the fuck”:

“… by 1820, she had three daughters and a desperately (note – Tolstoy uses ���passionately’ as the verb here, because that is Natasha’s thing) wanted son, whom she was breastfeeding (Tolstoy emphasizes that she’s feeding him herself). She had gotten thicker, wider; it was hard to recognize the former spry, waifish Natasha in this strong mother. Her facial features had settled into a clear calm. There was no longer that fierce, perpetual fire that had been her beauty. Her soul was no longer visible, only her face and her body. Only the strong, beautiful, fertile female animal.”

Specifically, the word “самка“, which Tolstoy uses for Natasha, is sort of like saying “the female of the species”, but not quite. There is a more clinical and less reductive way to say that about a person rather than an actual animal. Specifically, that word emphasizes her fertility, reduces her to reproductive capabilities. I remember reading that and being absolutely crushed – that this already awkwardly idealized girl was suddenly not even worth that original pedestal, however shitty that had been. That her entire purpose was to become a wife and mother – and then be derided and chided for fulfilling it. You see, now married with children, she has no time, she is slovenly, she is no longer attractive: 

“…Natasha had left behind all her charms, the loveliest of which had been her singing…”

“… Natasha stopped taking care with her manners, with speaking properly, with showing herself off to her husband in flattering poses or dresses…”

“…she stopped singing, she didn’t think much before she spoke… it’s as if she had no time to take care of these things…” 

“The only subject that occupied her now was family – her husband, needing to be kept so he would belong to her and the home – and the children, who needed to be birthed, nursed, raised…”

This transformation is much the same in Kitty, when she marries Levin. In juxtaposition to the divorce of Karenin and Anna, and Anna’s involvement with Vronsky, Levin and Kitty marry for love, a pure and profound feeling, devoid of banal passion; an entire chapter describes their awkward, endearing wedding ceremony. Levin, who is not religious, expects the process to be ridiculous, farcical, but instead, both he and Kitty are touched by the words, they mix up the rings, they smile at each other, they feel uplifted, and like they’re meeting each other for the first wonderful time. But it’s telling that the final line of the chapter is the reaction of the casual observers outside of the church and at the ceremony, specifically the townswomen: “What a darling the bride is, like a dressed lamb. And yet, what a pity for our sister.”

Before the wedding, Levin gives Kitty his diaries, where he has detailed his sexual relationships with other women. Kitty is disgusted, appalled -- she doesn’t want to know these things about him, and yet he insists that she needs to forgive and accept him for this, while simultaneously thinking that he doesn’t deserve her forgiveness, that she is too pure. She cries, and says she forgives him, though what she’s read was horrible; this makes Levin even surer that she is too pure, too good, and he doesn’t deserve her. 

This scene is lifted entirely from Tolstoy’s own experience. When Tolstoy and Sophia married, he was in his mid-thirties, worldly, sexually experienced; she was 18, having been brought up the way girls from good families were brought up. After reading his diaries, where he detailed his relationships with sex workers in particular, she was appalled, yet couldn’t do anything about it. Her subsequent sexual relationship with Tolstoy, based on her own diaries, was viewed by her as largely non-consensual. 

A few chapters after Kitty and Levin’s wedding, we see that 

“Levin had been married for three months… he was happy, but not in the way he had expected to be. In every step, he found a new disappointment. He was happy, but family life was not at all what he had imagined…” 

“…he was surprised that the poetic, lovely Kitty was… able to remember and fret about the tablecloths, about furniture, about beds for guests, about serving trays, about dinners…”  

“…homemaking irrevocably pulled her in.”

“During this time, he could feel the straining chain connecting them particularly strongly, the pull of it from side to side. The honeymoon, that first month after the wedding, from which he had expected so much, was not so honeyed as it was the most difficult and humiliating period of their lives. In their subsequent days, they tried to strike from their memories the ugly, shameful events of this unhealthy time, when neither of them were in a normal mood, and rarely felt like themselves at all.”

After three months, Levin is displeased at the idleness of their existence, and blames Kitty: 

“... he knew it was not her fault, but perhaps it was the fault of her shallow, inadequate, too frivolous education...”

“...aside from an interest in homemaking (and that she had in spades), she had no other interests... she does nothing, and is absolutely happy...”

Kitty decides she will go with Levin when he receives news that his brother is dying; Levin interprets this as Kitty being bored and wanting a change of scenery. She cries, trying to convince him that she is going as a show of support for him, and Levin finally agrees to take her along, but is displeased at having given in, and thinks of himself as enslaved to her whims. In addition, he doesn’t want pure, proper Kitty to associate with “his brother’s woman”, mistress rather than wife; “the very idea of his Kitty being in the same room with the woman made him cringe in disgust and terror.”

After Kitty gives birth, Levin feels nothing but revulsion for the baby, and watches Kitty and the baby with distaste. He begins thinking about the meaning of life, about the role of religion, about faith, and every time he thinks of sharing these thoughts with Kitty, he is interrupted by the mundane tasks that Kitty has to perform -- bathing and feeding the baby, arranging for rooms for visiting family, and the like. Kitty makes sure that Tolstoy, I mean, Levin, is able to live his largely unchanged life -- philosophizing, working with his peasants, going to concerts, working on a manuscript -- while she takes care of all the banal, earthly things. Of course, she doesn’t do this by herself, as they are nobility, wealthy landowners, but still, Levin judges her for her work, for her inability to understand him, though he decides that this sort of suffering may very well be part of happiness. 

The novel ends before Kitty and Levin have any more children, however, Tolstoy insisted that he needed to have as many as possible, while Sophia was still able to carry them. He believed that breastfeeding by the mother was the most natural, best option, and so prevented her from hiring wet-nurses for any of the children -- I repeat, 13 in total -- Tolstoy was a wealthy count; they could most certainly afford the assistance. Sophia was his editor, his secretary, she put up with what she viewed as a series of rapes, she spent 13 years of her life nursing, over a decade pregnant. He spent years trying to convince her to get rid of all their possessions, to lead a Walden-esque life on the land with their peasants and his students; when she resisted, he tried to put the plan into place for himself, though, much like Levin, he still had all of the comforts and privileges afforded to him by his station. He chose to leave the rights to his literary works to his students, adherents to his philosophies, “Tolstoyans”, rather than to Sophia; she had to fight for these in court after his death. 

I would really like to talk more about the character of Anna Karenina, because Tolstoy doesn’t even subscribe evenly to the madonna/whore dichotomy there; Anna is sort of both, sort of something else entirely. However, her sister-in-law, Dolly, is described by Levin as an uglier, older, more pathetic version of Kitty. She is interested only in her children, while her husband has affairs and spends all their money. He is disgusted by her, because her quietly putting up with her husband’s ways is clearly repulsive, fake, subservient -- not a sign of true love, as in his own home. 

I haven’t covered everything I wanted to, but I am running out of room and steam here, nonnie, so I’m wrapping this up. Please feel free to ask for my opinions on Jonathan Franzen next week!