#which is good because no one wants to suffer through a phd thesis about one tiny specific topic

[zealctry]

i'm always puzzled as to why people assume that a religion that promotes mass slaughter and using your own body (or others') as a conduit ( Ryuki ) or as a voodoo doll ( Hidan ) . .. . would give a damn about the social construct of virginity & general sexual practices. like. why. what's your justification. the body isn't a temple here, my dude, it's literally a tool.

( attachment is another story. )

[supernoondles]

2022

With all the gratitude: in the end, it was a good year. 

Here’s the narrative I’m telling myself. There were three main developments this year. Around May, I fell in love. This gave me enough strength to finally end (amicably, I would like to imagine) meeting with one of my advisors in August. Lastly—and this one took me by surprise—I accepted a tenure track job at a liberal arts college in December.

Love

Unfortunately for me, I have only ever dated my colleagues (i.e., other PhD students in my discipline) as I have never loved someone whom I wasn’t friends with first. Towards the aspiration of “being in my ho era,” and thanks to my now-partner booking a motel an hour away from the convention center, we hooked up…at the first in-person academic conference since the pandemic, in a room in a Airbnb shared with the rest of my lab mates.

It was less than a month later, I think, did they tell me they loved me while I was leaving their apartment for the night. Three months later, I traveled for 12 hours to attend their wedding in rural Ontario. While walking through downtown Toronto a few days later, they told me that it was so wonderful we could fall in love in so many different places this year.

I’ve never felt more alive and desired. I’ve also never been more horny. I had every desire indulged, every wish granted. This relationship was also crucial for taking off my rose-colored glasses towards my last relationship, to the delight of my friends. As both this tweet and Maggie Nelson (in On Freedom) say, a lot of energy—certainly mine—is spent chasing love. Because I was so fulfilled in my relationship, I found myself growing in wanting more.

Support

Last year I conceded and started working on a Bad Project my advisor said I should do to make my thesis. I kept on doing it through the start of this year, and among many therapy sessions and mental breakdowns, I did make some progress. Around the end of last year, I was also increasingly interested in greater teaching responsibility careers. I taught my first course as the instructor on record during the spring quarter, which was vastly fun and rewarding compared to the emotional damage I took every time I sat down to work on the project.

In July, I had to submit a written thesis summary as I was applying to a doctoral symposium. In my heart I knew it wouldn’t be about the project I was doing at all, and I ended up writing a different framing with the past projects I had done. I was shocked that I didn’t hate what I had produced. Suddenly a path to graduation that didn’t involve doing the project didn’t feel so unobtainable. Riding the newfound confidence bestowed by my relationship, I talked with my other advisor (a good egg) and committee member to strategize pivoting my thesis direction and stopping work on this project in late August. This took a while as folks were in and out of summertime travel, but was less scary than I thought and ended in me dropping both the projects and my meetings with my advisor.

It was wild how transformative this sequence of events was for me. Escaping the power dynamic of my advisor took a year of mental preparation and trying to appease his ways, and five years of miserable collaboration. It’s also certainly not over: he is still my advisor on paper (for logistical reasons) and needs to approve the final steps I’m taking towards graduation. And nothing really changed—he’s still awful to his other students. I don’t think he’s a bad person at heart, but I do think he lacks the skills to be helpful in any way in a mentorship capacity.

Only when I had left him—once I wasn’t trapped in the narrow and immediate reality of how much suffering he induces (as my partner, who is also advised by him, still is)—did I realize how supported I am. Particularly supported by women—often queer women and women of color—who wrote me recommendation letters, whose values match mine in an academy that feels so hostile, who treated me to meals and dispensed life advice and have given me opportunities. The job search that marked the end of my year would not have been nearly as…honestly…non-stressful…without them.

Finding a job

If you’re not familiar with getting an academic job, it’s its own ordeal: often a 6 month process from application to signing a contract. This year, the “teaching track” (liberal arts colleges, community colleges, public comprehensives, teaching faculty at research institutions) was expedited and had no overlap with research focused positions at research universities: I sent my first application October and received my first offer in December, before I could interview at any research universities. Thus was my surprise: that I would know where I would be going by the end of the calendar year, and that it wasn’t where I was originally anticipated.

I approached the job search by telling my advisor (the good one, now, and for the rest of this post) my values: to stay in California (as a proxy for being close to community, to family, to a life outside campus), to have free time (as a proxy to not have my labor exploited by an institution while still gaining the privileges and protections of their resources), and to do work aligned with my values (as a proxy for making scholarship also a creative practice). I applied to 10 teaching track jobs and received 5 offers, and 8 research jobs with one scheduled interview that I couldn’t get to because of the timelines.

I thought the process of applying to and interviewing for a job was actually kind of fun. Everyone I met was really nice, though it could come from my own institutional privilege of prestige. I also really like meeting new people! Even writing the statements to pitch myself weren’t so bad as I realized last year one of my long standing goals is to write a book, so when I thought of them as book pitches (I mean, it’s like, a hire me pitch) it was way more bearable. The job search was a full time job, as I had to make a new hour long teaching demonstration for each school I interviewed at. The most stressful part, however, was negotiation and handling exploding offers.

The school that I eventually accepted gave me a week to respond to their initial offer. I got this phone call 10 minutes before joining our holiday party, where I had not felt my blood pressure that high since watching NBC Hannibal and stress felted a frog while crying to faculty for (good!) advice. Initially, I wanted to say no—my first choice school was my undergraduate alma matter, so I could also stay in the bay. But after talking to a current teaching faculty there and learning about many red flags of the department and role (as well as they fact they might have a failed search this year due to bureaucratic lag), and after my advisor had a heartfelt but life changing conversation with me that the offered job was better in many ways than my envisioned dream job, and after getting most things I negotiated for (including a delayed start to Jan 2024), and after remembering that this is just the beginning of my career and that people move all the time, I accepted.

This was probably the most stressful decision I’ve ever made—I constantly told my partner I felt like I was dying, I forced a close friend to quiz me on if this job was worth leaving the bay, I cried a lot, and I’m sure my Twitter friends were tired of reading my Tweets about the matter. I’m not thrilled about moving to suburban southern California again—but I’m so, so excited about everything else. Even though the faculty barely know me they (even ones outside my department) have all been incredibly kind, supportive, and welcoming. I think what is most important to me in a job (besides the values I listed earlier) is being in a work environment that is bigger than myself: where I am in solidarity and camaraderie with my colleagues, where I can serve as a mentor and teacher for students, and give back my dumb luck to the community. As the initial stresses associated with making a major career move tide out, I increasingly feel lucky and in disbelief about it all.

Personal

The other big change that happened this year was that I moved down the block to a much bigger apartment. I now have two rooms—a bedroom and an office—a unique SF luxury that I am grateful for every day. Crucially, this apartment actually gets direct sunlight exposure so on non foggy days I am very happy. This is what I have become: a simple man who just needs direct sunlight and a walk in nature. I love going to the Children’s Garden and sitting on the benches near the east side, as they get direct sunlight, and one of my most joyous days this year was discovering a secret garden/walking path nestled in the redwoods in a random neighborhood in Marin, or going to see wildflowers in the East Bay hills (IMO the most underrated feature of the bay) with my parents and finding a Chase Sapphire card (that I too got this year, anticipating the travel) that belonged to a lecturer at my alma matter. I held my birthday party in SF’s newest park and I ran into my PhD student mentor when I was an undergraduate, who is a professor in Denmark now, and I was truly astounded by those odds. I feel like I really do live in the most beautiful metropolitan area in the US and every day I am so grateful for it.

But back to my house: unfortunately one of my roommates does not know how to clean pans and the other one—despite many conversations—cannot keep the kitchen clean. It increasingly annoys me and I will continue to keep trying, but I think part of me is excited to live by myself (something I’ve never done before! Well, I want two cats) so things I clean will stay clean. Having experienced my most formative years in a 140 person student housing cooperative, I see the loss of living community happening to myself, and feel sad about it. But is it also because our priorities change? For instance, I am now into buying more expensive higher quality clothing (most of my closet came from a “normal” (e.g., Goodwill, Savers) thrift store, Costco, Target, or Uniqlo). I see many of my friends with Silicon Valley wealth trend towards this lifestyle: of buying high quality things second hand, of finding happiness in nice things. This will soon be me with a nicer road bike—but only because while my landlord was replacing our water heater, my reliant white and lavender Fuji (that I got for $200 off some rich guy in the Oakland Hills whose wife didn’t like the bike) mysteriously “disappeared” from our garage. :(

My last rat, my dear old George, passed away in August of this year. He, unlike my other two rats, lived a long (2.5 years!) and full life. He was so sweet and held out for me to come back from two back to back trips to die in my arms. I also think his death was way less traumatic than the other two rats’ so it was a lot easier for me to accept and process. I will love my rats forever, but boy will I not get another pet whose lifespans are so short.

This year I grew out my hair and I don’t entirely hate it. I am always pining to look like I did at the beginning of 2019. I’m having more fun with femme forms of gender expression (not unrelated to my relationship) and, shockingly, wearing more neutrals. Maybe in 2023 I will start taking T?

Art

I started this year by painting tigers with my family. I optimistically set an intention to draw a thing every month which went no where. I did manage to paint a huge griffin that hangs above the dining room table, though.

Perhaps more drawing can happen in the fall of this year, where I chose to become unemployed and a full time artist! (I want to get better at drawing, rendering, all of it—and also make a furry comic about my time in graduate school. We’ll see.)

It felt like I saw no shows this year, but going back through my photos revealed that I saw at least 15 (The SF Symphony, Caribou, Mitski which resulted in me driving to Lake Tahoe for a ski retreat at 4am the next morning, Rina, Sigur Ros, Jbrekkie+Courtney Barnett in which I was behind my advisor the whole time and I think he chose not to see it, Daniel Rossen, Andrew Bird (in which Iron and Wine played way too long of a set), Dudamel conducting Dvorak 9, LCD Soundsystem with a horrible 2 hour DJ soft opener, Avalanches, MCR after 2 years, CRJ, and SF’s wonderful free festivals of Hardly Strictly and Toro y Moi at Stern Grove). Renaissance by far outclassed any release this year which my Best of 2022 playlist reflects. Of note is that I started a very, very deep Harry Styles obsession when I saw his Coachella set livestreamed. I also really enjoyed playing with the Awesome Orchestra, and was flabbergasted when I learned good old Pat sponsored this year’s Flower Piano.

Travel

I traveled quite a lot this year, given a pandemic is still happening! I went to Seattle in February, New Orleans for a conference (the last conference I went to pre-pandemic was, ironically, also there), Canada for a mosquito-ridden wedding, Bend, Oregon for another conference (which I gave my bad advisor a lot of shit about since he helped plan it, until I made friends with someone with a car and went on a gorgeous hike, visited the Last Blockbuster, and walked through snow), a forest lodge in the middle of upstate New York for a grant retreat, Austin for a career workshop, and finally, Los Angeles five times—twice to visit my partner over the summer, and thrice for job interviews.

Resolutions

Let’s revisit the resolutions I made last year.

(1) Stop interacting with my bad advisor, thus to necessarily submit Bad Final Project. → Yes, though I didn’t even have to submit BFP to do so.

(2) Secure what my next adventure will be post PhD. → Yes! I’m really excited about it. The end, finally, is in sight. I think many people experience a bell curve during their PhD (if it was a measure of how bad it is) with the beginning and end being less bad than the middle. I’m honestly thrilled that I never have to write a line of code again unless I want to.

2023 will be my final year of being a student. While at times I felt frustrated with this nebulous status, wanted to leave, wanted to have a real job etc., now that I have one lined up I feel like I am more appreciative of the privileges students have—the privilege to learn and basically be accountable to only yourself.

In 2023 I want to:

(1) Exercise more consistently. I was good about this in 2022 and then the job stuff happened and I stopped, but it’s about time to start again.

(2) Get better at academic reading, note taking, and synthesis. The only things that lie between me and my degree are one more hot takes paper and a thesis. Both of these are mainly rhetorical projects (no more building for me!) that require consuming, understanding, and organizing large amount of text. I feel like I’ve approached literature reviews relatively haphazardly in the past, so here’s a perfect excuse to develop and iterate on methods I’m sure I’ll be using a lot going forward!

(3) Enjoy my final year in the bay area! I made a bucket list. I love this place so much, and am always grappling with my relationship to Silicon Valley and its various institutions, the influence of Randian libertarianism and California Exceptionalism, the housing crisis, as well as my position as a non-binary Asian American who did not grow up here but whose parents now live here. I also think about my friends and peers whom I’ve met (mainly through undergrad) who have, for the most part, stayed, and how their lives are being shaped by these forces 5+ years after graduation.

The end of undergraduate was a great time in my life filled with travels and new experiences. Similarly, for the end of graduate school, I hope to manifest 2017 energy into my 2023. I write this post on a day of a bomb cyclone sending widespread rain and wind across the region. I’ve spent most of the day waiting anxiously if my partner’s flight would land safely. It did, and they are here, and we are safe.

[elyvorg]

Learning Life Lessons From Kaito

It’s that time again – time for me to post a lengthy ramble full of Kaito appreciation for his birthday! But this one’s a little different from my previous big Kaito rambles, because it’s going to be lot more personal. Things have been happening in my real life lately that have made me want to talk about the impact and influence that Kaito and my hyperfixation on him have been having on me as a person, in terms of my own issues and struggles.

So, well, this ramble is going to be kind of primarily about me and my own Life Problems rather than about Kaito himself, but still relating things to Kaito at every possible opportunity because that’s how hyperfixations are. Disclaimer, I guess, that if you’re looking for my more objective impersonal style of Kaito analysis, that’s very decidedly not what this post is. I’m primarily doing this for myself; I’ve learned so much from Kaito, and I want to be able to hold onto it all going forward, even once I’m no longer hyperfixated on him and have moved onto something else.

But, hey, maybe some others who love Kaito as much as I do would enjoy reading a real actual person’s account of all the many ways in which he’s helped and inspired them, from fiction to reality. I know I would. And if nothing else… Kaito deserves it. It seems like just the kind of birthday present he’d be deeply touched to receive.

Being Kaito’s sidekick

Kaito happened to come into my life at the absolute perfect time in multiple ways. I got into V3 right when I’d begun taking a prolonged mental health break from my PhD because it was getting too much for me (the short of it being that doing a PhD with unidentified and unmanaged ADHD is extremely not fun, would not recommend). Getting into a new and extremely powerful hyperfixation was exactly the thing I needed right then to perk me back up and make me feel a lot better already. But it’s also so appropriate that, of all things, this hyperfixation happened to include the Luminary of the Stars. Kaito is so good and encouraging and supportive to anyone who’s vulnerable and suffering that he’s just the absolute best character to have stuck in your brain when you’re going through mental health struggles with such things yourself.

And this wasn’t even on purpose of me! I was drawn to Kaito simply because he happens to be the kind of character I adore in approximately every single way, and not at all because I was acting on any notion, conscious or subconscious, that I needed his support. But, well, Kaito is Kaito, and I was very much a potential sidekick, someone who did need that kind of help. So Kaito ended up doing his Kaito thing and being a luminary to me, even through the boundary between fiction and reality.

I’ve already talked elsewhere on my blogs about how Kaito inspired me to start exercising daily to improve my mental health. (As of about a week ago, I just hit three years of doing so, every single day!) It doesn’t magically fix everything, of course – Kaito never tried to claim it does – but it definitely helps me feel a little better than I would without it. And I cannot overstate how much of a big deal this is for me, someone with ADHD who is terrible at making and sticking to routines, and who always hated physical activity for most of her life, to have been able to start doing this and then keep it up for so long. Part of this is just a testament to the sheer power of a hyperfixation, but I also think it needed to be specifically someone like Kaito in order for this to have been possible.

I’ve also briefly mentioned in one post of my V3 commentary that Kaito is quite possibly the only reason I actually finished my PhD at all. I took that mental health break because I was approaching the part where I had to write up my thesis, and the whole thing seemed so huge and impossible that it was stressing me out just knowing it was coming. It still felt huge and impossible after the break once I had to start getting back to it, but, now armed with the thought that Kaito would be believing in me and cheering me on, I refused to give up. I told myself that impossible thing was possible and I made it so. Sure, it was a slow and gradual uphill climb, working on it a little bit each day and needing an extension of an extra term to get it done, but goddammit I did it and that’s a monumental feat given how difficult it was for me. Kaito would be so proud.

…And, well, technically it doesn’t really matter that much that I finished it, because with where I’m headed with my life now, I don’t actually need the PhD qualification itself. But if I’d given up and dropped out of my PhD just before the finish line – which I very likely might have done if not for Kaito – it’d have basically felt like I’d failed. While I may understand on a rational level that failure isn’t actually the end of the world, my ADHD sure doesn’t, and that would have kept hanging over me for a long time. Heck, even with me having succeeded, my PhD sort of still irrationally feels like a “failure” in my head anyway, just because I struggled with it more than I was expected to (oh hey guess who that makes me sound like; more on that in a bit) – but if I’d Officially Failed, that’d have been a hell of a lot worse and a hell of a lot harder to pick myself back up from than it already was and is.

So in the end, it’s less about literally having a PhD and more just about the fact that I proved to myself that I can make things possible when I need to, no matter how impossible they might seem at first. If I can do something that difficult and scary once, I can do it again. It’s a good thought to hold on to when the brain gremlins get bad – and it’s thanks to Kaito that I have that!

There’s also my whole ADHD thing itself, which is something I only figured out about myself shortly after finishing my PhD (just a little bit too awkwardly late to use that knowledge to actually help me with it in any way). The sidekick metaphor kind of falls apart here; I don’t think Kaito is the reason I figured out I had ADHD or anything. But it sure was fun to realise I had ADHD while happening to be hyperfixating on a character who also very definitely (if non-explicitly) has ADHD too, to realise that he’s a lot more similar to me in some ways than I’d originally thought and to project some of my newly-understood ADHD troubles onto him. Kaito won’t be my last ADHD headcanon by a long shot, but he’ll always be my first one, and the one whose ADHD I figured out alongside figuring out my own. That’s earned him a very special place among my no-doubt-rather-long future list of characters I’m sure I’ll be headcanoning that way.

Failing your own high standards

Prior to my PhD, back in school and even a little bit in university, I was always one of those “gifted” kids, top of the class in pretty much every subject more or less effortlessly. To put it another way, I basically felt invincible, at least when it came to academic stuff, which was where I hung most of my self-worth (because I was otherwise a weird bullied neurodivergent kid for the majority of my childhood). If I wasn’t very good at something, it was always some optional thing that I could just not do, so I didn’t. I never dealt well with failure or with feeling like something was difficult, partly because failure being especially painful is a fun feature of ADHD, but also because I simply never had to and therefore never had any practice at it. Everything was easy for me, and that felt like how I was supposed to be.

So when I got to my PhD and started really having difficulties? It was especially rough, because I’d built up this expectation for myself that I was supposed to be perfect. Therefore any kind of struggle was just wrong and bad and unacceptable, rather than me simply being a human being. That lifelong assumption that everything was supposed to be easy for me led to a constant building sense of inadequacy every time it repeatedly inevitably wasn’t.

And doesn’t this sound a little like the issues of a certain someone? Someone who’s used to thinking of himself as a “hero”, who believes he needs to be basically invincible to keep living up to those unreasonably high expectations he’s put on himself?

(As usual, please go read this post of mine if you’re not already familiar with the concept I’m talking about here, because this is a central theme in all my Kaito analyses and is just as relevant here.)

As much as I like to talk at great length about Kaito being convinced that he needs to be invincible to be a hero, something I may not always make clear enough in my rambles is that I don’t think he’s ever quite thinking of it in those terms on a conscious level. If he did, then he’d be bound to spot the obvious flaw in it sooner or later, because while I may like to affectionately call him an “idiot” about this specific thing, he’s very emphatically not stupid. The whole thing’s more of an irrational subconscious mindset and worldview that Kaito has gradually cultivated for himself without ever consciously thinking about it or questioning it. I only talk about it in such distinct, absolute terms because that makes it easier to get words around than the vague jumble of emotion and instinct that’s actually driving all of Kaito’s bad choices.

And the thing is, when I was putting similar unreasonable expectations on myself, I never quite did it on a conscious level, either. If I had, I think I’d have also been able to notice how irrational and potentially harmful it all was and hopefully work to unlearn that mindset sooner. So, as it happens, spending all this time thinking about and analysing Kaito’s hero issues and putting them into clear words has ended up very helpful in that I’m now able to apply those concepts that I’m abundantly familiar with to myself. It’s let me consciously realise the irrational and unhealthy way I’d been approaching my own situation, so that I can work to unlearn it. Again, this wasn’t even on purpose of me; it couldn’t have been. I dove into Kaito’s hero issues simply because they happened to appeal to me in a purely fictional sense, not because I had any idea at the time that they’d be relevant to me and my own issues!

You could sum up Kaito’s character arc and the gradual breakdown he suffers throughout most of V3’s story as him going through the pain of realising you’re not as perfect and unconditionally capable as you thought you were simply supposed to be. And it turns out that’s something I can relate to an awful lot myself. All those AUs of mine I love to think about in which Kaito realises where he’s been going wrong and untangles his issues, so that he can begin to build himself back up from that and learn to be proud of himself again despite his vulnerabilities? That’s the same kind of happy ending I’m trying to work towards, too.

(And I still didn’t come up with any of those AUs for self-therapy purposes! I did so simply because I love Kaito and want to imagine him being happy and emotionally healthy, and it’s fun to think about all the possible ways something could get past his incredible self-destructive stubbornness about this to set him on that path. But by another delightful coincidence (and we’re not remotely done with those), such AUs just happen to serve as a helpful source of personal catharsis for me to project my own issues onto, while still also being something I can enjoy in a purely fictional sense.)

Nerdy rambling as a career

After the slow-motion mental health trainwreck that was most of my PhD experience (and before I’d figured out any of the stuff I talked about in the previous section), I needed some time to just rest and decide what I actually wanted to do with my life. The obvious next step of continuing in research was no longer remotely appealing, and neither were… most other regular jobs. ADHD’s executive dysfunction and interest-based nervous system really do not lend themselves well to being a functional adult doing a job you barely care about to pay the bills. I was terrified that I might be doomed to be just as miserable and exhausted as I was in my PhD for the rest of my life.

Meanwhile, I was running away from that problem by immersing myself in my hyperfixation, focusing on making V3 content for my blogs, particularly my incredibly lengthy and in-depth commentary on the entire game. I don’t regret one bit the time I spent doing that instead of the job-searching I was “supposed” to be doing, both because it was and is genuinely enjoyable for me rather than horrifically stressful… and because I needed it in order to figure out what I actually want to do with my life that’ll make me happy in the long run.

See, all these analysis posts I make on here are basically just me infodumping about my interests to people who are also invested in them. I love doing this and don’t think I’d ever get bored of it, even though the actual hyperfixation topic of choice will periodically shift to different things. And other people enjoy it and appreciate my efforts? I feel like I’m reasonably good at it, in terms of explaining my points about what’s going on in a narrative or in a character’s head? It’s almost like I’ve been teaching people new things and giving them a deeper understanding of a topic that they’re already interested in?

So, while this might sound somewhat out of left field, I’m going to be a biology tutor! All my fiction analysis posts over the past couple of years let me realise that I’d get just about as much joy from doing the same kind of explanatory, teachy sort of infodumping and discussion, except with my academic interest in biology instead of my rather niche and ever-changing hyperfixations on fiction. Biology is an interest of mine, but not a hyperfixation, so while it’s not as intense, I shouldn’t ever get bored of talking about it to people and awkwardly move on to something else less mainstream. I can talk endlessly about biology and how cool cells and DNA and proteins are for the rest of my life to others who are also interested and want to understand it better, and people will pay me for it??? Sounds too good to be true, but apparently it’s not!

I want to stress that I almost certainly needed my V3 commentary in order to figure this out. I’d done occasional analysis posts before then, but this was the first time I’d started doing this sort of analysis as a regular thing, and the first time I felt like I’d had something of an audience who cared and it wasn’t just me shouting into the void. Without that, I’d never have given the idea of tutoring a second thought. I’m introverted and socially-awkward enough that I’d never have dreamt I could want a job with talking to people as a primary part of the job description, not without coming at it from that completely different angle of realising I already enjoyed and was theoretically good at everything else about it.

…This whole part of my story is less specifically about Kaito, granted, but it is because Kaito is such an incredibly delightful character who’s so complex and full of subtleties and issues that I was just itching to splurge all of my thoughts about that I even decided to write and post my V3 commentary in the first place. So I still basically have him to thank for this, along with other parts of V3 to a lesser extent.

(The other thing I have to thank is everyone who’s read and enjoyed my commentary or my other general analysis posts, especially if you let me know that you enjoyed them and that they helped you understand and appreciate the story and characters more! At one point I know I thanked someone for enjoying my content with phrasing along the lines of “it means more to me than you know”… well, now you know, all of you. This is what I was talking about. You helped me figure out what I want to do with my life and how I’m going to manage to be happy. Really, thank you, with all my heart.)

Following in Kaito’s footsteps

So, tutoring! I’m still very new at it – I only have a grand total of one student so far – but I’ve also found a place where I’ve been able to learn a lot about how to be a tutor so that I’m not just jumping in blind. While my fiction ramblings may have helped me realise I want to do this, explaining something in text form to a faceless audience on a tumblr post is a very different thing to teaching someone a topic in a one-to-one spoken conversation, funnily enough.

Before I started learning more about this, I’d assumed that the main point of tutoring was basically just going be me getting to talk about science, albeit with a little bit more of making sure my student understood what I was going on about by asking them questions and stuff. But I quickly learned from other more experienced tutors that really, the true main point of tutoring – one-to-one tutoring in particular as opposed to regular classroom teaching – is a lot more about focusing on the student’s individual needs. It’s about helping them, and not even necessarily with the subject itself, but also with their general self-confidence and overall growth.

Or, to put it in terms I’m sure everyone reading this is familiar with… I’m going to have sidekicks?

That’s pretty much exactly what this is, in principle! It’s Kaito’s sidekick thing, dedicating yourself to supporting and encouraging and teaching someone in order to help them grow, just with a more academic sort of focus. This is a concept I am uniquely equipped to understand and already have very well-thought-out takes on, specifically because I’ve spent the past several years hyperfixating on one Luminary of the Stars. So many things I’ve learned about the role of a tutor and their ideal relationship with their students fit so delightfully well with the way Kaito is with his sidekicks:

You’ve got to vary your approach for each individual student and figure out a teaching method that works best to fit their personality and tackle their specific struggles? Kaito does that too; despite the common thread of his training sessions, his approaches to helping Shuichi and Maki are otherwise completely different and tailored to their individual issues!

If your student trusts you, they’ll feel less afraid of making mistakes and be more willing to jump into the unknown and try new things and learn more? That’s exactly what Kaito does for Shuichi in case 2, specifically saying he’ll “take the responsibility” so that Shuichi can go ahead and make the deductions he needs to without fearing what’ll happen if something goes wrong. All Shuichi needs is to trust Kaito and know that someone’s there for him, in order to feel less alone and less afraid to make that leap.

It’s all about bringing out the hidden potential lying dormant within a student, showing them that even though they may not have done well in regular schooling for whatever reason, they are capable and can do great things after all? Well, of course! Kaito picks his sidekicks and believes in them because he can see that they genuinely are amazing people all by themselves. All he’s really doing is giving them a nudge to help them realise that and reach that point; the rest is all them!

All of these things I’ve just mentioned are genuine actual things I’ve been learning about what a tutor does, and I cannot even with how delightfully, perfectly Kaito it all is. I’m going to have sidekicks, you guys.

The thought that this would be the case never even crossed my mind when I first decided I wanted to be a tutor, but I am so here for this. And the fact that I’d be hypothetically on board with doing this kind of thing myself never crossed my mind either during all the time I’d spent adoring Kaito for how amazingly supportive his whole sidekick thing is. I always loved him for it, and I was using it to help me myself, but I never once thought, “I want to be that kind of person, too” – because I’d never even considered that I could be that kind of person.

But I can, and I’m going to be. Entirely aside from the rambling about science part, this is another thing I’m going to be getting out of this job that should be just as enjoyable and fulfilling for me. Kaito takes on sidekicks and supports them not only because he’s so wonderfully selfless and cares so much about people, but because he gets something out of it, too: that feeling of knowing you’ve made a positive impact on someone’s life, of seeing someone you’ve invested yourself in flourish. I’m not saying this to imply that it’s in any way selfish of him – it’s human nature to be happy when you’ve helped people, and that’s a good thing. It’s this that Kaito thrives off more than anything else; it’s bound to be a huge part of why he can be so confident, and how he can find the strength to keep smiling even as everything’s going to hell. And I think it’s something I’m going to thrive off, too.

Learning from Kaito’s mistakes

With all that said, of course things aren’t just plain sailing for me now. I still have all of that baggage from spending a whole PhD constantly subconsciously feeling inadequate, leaving me with some really huge crippling imposter syndrome and an even greater sensitivity to feeling like a failure. Maybe that’d be okay and something I could manage if whatever new career I was going into was something just for myself, where I’d have room to have doubts or get scared sometimes and then pick myself back up again and it wouldn’t affect anybody else. But it’s a lot more daunting when this job I want to do happens to revolve around other people relying on me to help them and give them a good learning experience. Because if that’s the case, then I’ve got to be perfect at it, for their sake if not my own, right?

…Where have we heard this before, hm?

Not only am I going to have sidekicks, but there’s also a part of my mind that thinks I need to be a “hero” to them – in all senses of Kaito’s definition of the word, including the unhealthier ones. Oh dear.

(Realising this was the point at which I started to look back at my previous self-esteem issues throughout my PhD and realise that, huh, all of that kind of has some similarities to Kaito’s issues too, doesn’t it.)

Here’s another interesting fun fact I’ve been learning about tutoring: while tutors are of course meant to forge positive relationships of respect and trust with their students, these relationships aren’t supposed to be friendships. Considering yourself to be outright friends with your student is unhealthy and strongly advised against. This is delightfully analogous to the way Kaito’s worldview seems to hold that being in a hero-and-sidekick relationship with Shuichi and Maki isn’t necessarily the same thing as being friends with them. He’s not sure if he really is also their friend too, and that means he can’t risk doing things friends can do but heroes can’t, such as, most importantly, sharing his worries with them.

Shuichi solves that problem during Kaito’s Harmonious Heart event by simply pointing out that they are friends as well as hero-and-sidekick, and so even if Kaito can’t open up to Shuichi in the hero-and-sidekick context, he can open up to him in the context of their friendship. And that’s fine, in Kaito’s case – nothing in his self-defined concept of heroes and sidekicks says they can’t also be friends at the same time, or that the roles of hero and sidekick can’t sometimes be reversed when need be for that matter – but that’s not an option in my case. Tutor-and-student is equivalent to Kaito’s hero-and-sidekick thing in a lot of ways, but not quite in this one.

It’s a good thing, then, that I’ve spent oodles of time thinking about how Kaito’s irrational refusal to show weakness to his sidekicks has inherent flaws that go beyond Shuichi’s adorably straightforward approach of “never mind that; we’re friends”. Even if they’re not allowed to be friends, even if they really can’t be anything but hero and sidekick at all times… that still doesn’t mean Kaito shouldn’t show any weakness. Kaito is convinced he needs to be perfect in order to be a suitably inspiring hero to his sidekicks – but that’s wrong. That’s backwards. It’s human to have troubles sometimes, and for a sidekick who’s struggling and needs support, seeing their hero be a living example of somebody who’s been going through similar struggles and yet manages to succeed anyway is so much more helpful than if they just appeared to be invincible in a way the sidekick feels like they can never match.

Happily, tutoring culture does indeed seem to have a fair amount of focus on the idea that it’s okay to make mistakes sometimes as a tutor, as it’ll let your student see that that’s normal and be less afraid of making mistakes themselves. But that sentiment alone might not have been enough to ease my worries, because for me it’s not just about occasional ordinary human error but also the fear that my really significant emotional struggles might end up interfering with my lessons and ruining them for the student. So it’s thanks again to Kaito and how much I can relate this to all my analysis of his issues that I can be a lot more reassured that it really will be okay. My students might sometimes see that I’m vulnerable and struggling, but then they should also see that I’m trying, and that should inspire them to keep trying, too.

And that relationship of trust that I’ll be building with my students? It’s not just so I can better help them; it’ll also help me with this. I need to trust them, as in trust them not to lose all faith in me should I show vulnerability, in order to not be so cripplingly terrified of doing so in the first place. This is another thought inspired by Kaito’s issues: he never truly trusted his sidekicks not to think less of him if they’d known what he was going through, even though of course they never would have. That fear was in and of itself the biggest weakness Kaito had, and it’s kind of the biggest fear I would otherwise be having here – but because I know thanks to all my Kaito thoughts that there’s no need to be afraid of that, the real root of the problem is all but gone.

Kaito’s situation was a little different in that Shuichi and Maki were not only his sidekicks but also his only close friends and therefore the most ideal source of the support that he desperately needed from at least someone. Meanwhile, I have, as I should, other outlets and support systems for my issues. “Your worry is my worry; my worry is your worry”, that line of Kaito’s that was never actually the truth but should have been, doesn’t apply for my situation. My worries really shouldn’t be my students’, at all. I’m not intending to outright share my burdens with them or expect them to help me carry any of it.

But they can at least know my burdens exist, if and when it ever becomes relevant to bring them up. I’m sick of my imposter syndrome and how much it messes with my head, so I’ve resolved that the best way to avoid it is to simply be open about the things I’m irrationally afraid people will think less of me for, and then watch as they almost certainly don’t. I refuse to keep faking things and pretending I’m completely fine and perfectly infallible when I’m not, because I don’t have to be. I’ve learned from Kaito exactly why that’s unhealthy and unsustainable and can lead to so many bad things, and I’m not going to let that happen to me any more.

The most inspiring kind of heroes

Since I began having all these difficulties, I’ve been unable to help comparing myself to the majority of other people who are emotionally healthy enough that they can just go out there and have jobs and succeed with no real struggle. It irrationally feels as if, even when I do one day manage to succeed myself, the fact that I found it so hard in the first place automatically makes me inferior and worth less as a person. And so, even before I figured out I wanted to be a tutor, I came up with a mantra for myself to help combat these thoughts: “It’d be a crappy story if the hero won so easily!”

I got this from Kaito, of course, taking his line of “it’d be a crappy story if the hero gave up so easily” and tweaking it slightly to encapsulate all of my Kaito-related thoughts about how having weaknesses and overcoming them only makes a hero’s story more impactful and inspiring. Heroes who succeed “so easily” without struggling at all don’t actually make for very interesting heroes. If I’d always remained that problem-free, invincible, “gifted” person I thought I was before my PhD who could do basically anything she wanted with little to no effort? That’d be so boring. There’d be nothing impressive or inspiring about the fact that she’d have hypothetically gone on to succeed in life, because that was always just bound to happen to someone like that in the first place! I have worth not despite but because I’ve been having all these problems and yet I’m still managing to get somewhere anyway. That makes my “story” so much more interesting.

That mantra was already greatly helpful in and of itself, back when I thought the only people who were ever going to know or care about my story were me and my close friends. But it means even more now, now that I’m going into a career where the whole point is me influencing and inspiring other people, some of whom might be going through similar or analogous things to me. My story is worth so much, because it means I’ll be able to help those people in ways that others who haven’t been through any kind of struggle never could.

And, hey, look at how much I’ve been inspired by Kaito not only in terms of how much of a genuinely great and supportive hero he is to his sidekicks, but also because of his weaknesses! There’s so much I’ve learned here from all the things he should have done but never did – and even though he didn’t, his story still manages to be a perfect example of someone suffering and struggling but never giving up and being a hero anyway! He was so heartbreakingly wrong to ever think his weaknesses would make him worth less to anyone he was inspiring. They make him so much more.

So, thank you, Kaito, for everything, including all the things you never meant to teach because you never realised them yourself. Having weakness and then persevering despite it is what makes a hero truly inspiring, not the opposite; I learned that from you. And one way or another, sooner or later, I’m going to find myself with a sidekick who needs me in that kind of way – and I’m going to prove to you that this is how it works.

[morwensteelsheen]

I’m starting grad school this autumn and honestly I’m getting nervous. Like yes I am v excited about the whole prospect overall and I do miss being a student but am intimidated by 3 hr long seminars and thesis writing and massive amounts of reading… everyone keeps saying it’s gonna be very different from undergrad so okay, but how specifically? Is it the large amounts of reading? I already had insane amounts of reading (humanities degree hurrah) especially in my last two years but could you expound on your own experience and how you take notes/read quickly/summarize or just how to deal with first time grad students?

Oh, yeah for sure! A necessary disclaimer here is that I'm at a certain poncy English institution that is noted for being very bad at communicating with its students and very bad at treating its postgrad students like human beings, so a lot of these strategies I've picked up will be overkill for anyone who has the good sense to go somewhere not profoundly evil lol.

So I'll just preface this by saying that I am a very poor student in terms of doing what you're supposed to. I'm very bad at taking notes, I never learned how to do it properly, and I really, really struggle with reading dense literature. That said, I'm probably (hopefully?) going to get through this dumb degree just fine. Also — my programme is a research MPhil, not taught, so it's a teensy bit more airy-fairy in terms of structure. I had two classes in Michaelmas term, both were once a week for two hours each; two in Lent, one was two hours weekly, the other two hours biweekly; and no classes at all in Easter. I also have no exam component, I was/am assessed entirely on three essays (accounting for 30% of my overall mark) and my dissertation (the remaining 70%), which is, I think, a little different to how some other programmes are. I think even some of the other MPhils here are more strenuous than that, like Econ and Soc Hist is like 100% dissertation? Anyways, not super important, but knowing what you're getting marked on is important. I dedicated considerably less time than I did in undergrad to perfecting my coursework essays because they just don't hold as much weight now. The difference between a 68 and a 70 just wasn't worth the fuss for me, which helped keep me sane-ish.

The best advice anyone ever gave me was that, whereas an undergrad degree can kind of take over your life without it becoming a problem, you need to treat grad school like a job. That's not because it's more 'serious' or whatever, but because if you don't set a really strict schedule and keep to it, you'll burn yourself out and generally make your life miserable. Before I went back on my ADD meds at the end of Michaelmas term, I sat myself down at my desk and worked from 11sh to 1800ish every day. Now that I'm medicated, I do like 9:30-10ish to 1800-1900 (except for now that I'm crunching on my diss, where, because of my piss-poor time management skills I'm stuck doing, like, 9:30-22:30-23:00). If you do M-F 9-5, you'll be getting through an enormous amount of work and leaving yourself loads of time to still be a human being on the edges. That'll be the difference between becoming a postgrad zombie and a person who did postgrad. I am a postgrad zombie. You do not want to be like me.

The 'work' element of your days can really vary. It's not like I was actually consistently reading for all that time — my brain would have literally melted right out of my ears — but it was about setting the routine and the expectation of dedicating a certain, consistent and routinized period of time for focusing on the degree work every day. My attention span, even when I'm medicated, is garbage, so I would usually read for two or three hours, then either work on the more practical elements of essay planning, answer emails, or plot out the early stages of my research.

In the first term/semester/whatever, lots of people who are planning on going right into a PhD take the time to set up their applications and proposals. I fully intended on doing a PhD right after the MPhil, but the funding as an international student trying to deal with the pandemic proved super problematic, and I realised that the toll it was taking on my mental health was just so not worth it, so I've chosen to postpone a few years. You'll feel a big ol' amount of pressure to go into a PhD during your first time. Unless you're super committed to doing it, just try and tune it out as much as you can. There's absolutely nothing wrong with taking a year (or two, or three, or ten) out, especially given the insane conditions we're all operating under right now.

I'll be honest with you, I was a phenomenally lazy undergrad. It was only by the grace of god and being a hard-headed Marxist that I managed to pull out a first at the eleventh hour. So the difference between UG and PG has been quite stark for me. I've actually had to do the reading this year, not just because they're more specialised and relevant to my research or whatever, but because, unlike in UG, the people in the programme are here because they're genuinely interested (and not because it's an economic necessity) and they don't want to waste their time listening to people who haven't done the reading.

I am also a really bad reader. Maybe it's partially the ADD + dyslexia, but mostly it's because I just haven't practiced it and never put in the requisite effort to learn how to do it properly. My two big pointers here are learning how to skim, and learning how to prioritise your reading.

This OpenU primer on skimming is a bit condescending in its simplicity, but it gets the point across well. You're going to want to skim oh, say, 90% of the reading you're assigned. This is not me encouraging you to be lazy, it's me being honest. Not every word of every published article or book is worth reading. The vast majority of them aren't. That doesn't mean the things that those texts are arguing for aren't worth reading, it just means that every stupid rhetorical flourish included by bored academics hoping for job security and/or funding and/or awards isn't worth your precious and scarce time. Make sure you get the main thrust of each text, make sure you pull out and note down one or two case studies and move right the hell on. There will be some authors whose writing will be excellent, and who you will want to read all of. Everything else gets skimmed.

Prioritisation is the other big thing. You're going to have shitty weeks, you're probably going to have lots of them. First off, you're going to need to forgive yourself for those now — everybody has them, yes, even the people who graduated with distinctions and go on to get lovely £100,000 AHRC scholarships. Acknowledge that there will be horrible weeks, accept it now, and then strategise for how to get ahead of them. My personal strategy is to plan out what I'm trying to get out of each course I take, and then focus only on the readings that relate to that topic.

I took a course in Lent term that dealt with race and empire in Britain between 1607 and 1900; I'm a researcher of the Scottish far left from 1968-present, so the overlap wasn't significant. But I decided from the very first day of the course that I was there to get a better grasp about the racial theories of capitalism and the role of racial othering in Britain's subjugation of Ireland. Those things are helpful to me because white supremacist capitalism comes up hourly in my work on the far left, and because the relationship of the Scottish far left to Ireland is extremely important to its self definition. On weeks when I couldn't handle anything else, I just read the texts related to that. And it was fine, I did fine, I got my stupid 2:1 on the final essay, and I came out of it not too burnt out to work on my dissertation.

Here is where I encourage you to learn from my mistakes: get yourself a decent group of people who you can have in depth conversations about the material with. I was an asshole who decided I didn't need to do that with any posh C*mbr*dge twats, and I have now condemned myself to babbling incomprehensible nonsense at my partner because I don't have anyone on my course to work through my ideas with. These degrees are best experienced when they're experienced socially. In recent years (accelerated by the pandemic, ofc), universities have de-emphasised the social component of postgrad work, largely to do with stupid, long-winded stuff related to postgrad union organising etc. It's a real shame because postgrads end up feeling quite socially isolated, and because they're not having these fun and challenging conversations, their work actually suffers in the long term. This is, and I cannot stress this enough, the biggest departure from undergrad. Even the 'weak links' or whatever judgemental nonsense are there because they want to be. That is going to be your biggest asset. Talk, talk, talk. Listen, listen, listen. Offer to proofread people's papers so you get a sense of how people are thinking about things, what sort of style they're writing in, what sources they're referring to. Be a sponge and a copycat (but don't get done for plagiarism, copy like this.) Also: ask questions that seem dumb. For each of your classes, ask your tutors/lecturers who they think the most important names in their discipline are. It sounds silly, but it's really helpful to know the intellectual landscape you're dealing with, and it means you know whose work you can go running to if you get lost or tangled up during essay or dissertation writing!

You should also be really honest about everything — another piece of advice that I didn't follow and am now suffering for. The people on your courses and in your cohort are there for the same reasons as you, have more or less the same qualifications as you, and are probably going to have a lot of the same questions and insecurities as you. If you hear an unfamiliar term being used in a seminar, just speak up and ask about it, because there're going to be loads of other people wondering too. But you should also cultivate quite a transparent relationship with your supervisor. I was really cagey and guarded with mine because my hella imposter syndrome told me she was gonna throw my ass out of the programme if I admitted to my problems. Turns out no, she wouldn't, and that actually she's been a super good advocate for me. If you feel your motivation slipping or if you feel like you're facing challenges you could do with a little extra support on, go right to your supervisor. Not only is that what they're there to do, they've also done this exact experience before and are going to be way more sympathetic and aware of the realities of it than, say, the uni counselling service or whatever.

Yeah so I gotta circle back to the notes thing... I really do not take notes. It's my worst habit. Here's an example of the notes I took for my most recent meeting with my supervisor (revising a chapter draft).

No sane person would ever look at these and think this is a system worth replicating lol. But the reason they work for me is because I also record (with permission) absolutely everything. My mobile is like 90% audio recordings of meetings and seminars lol. So these notes aren't 'good' notes, but they're effective for recalling major points in the audio recording so I can listen to what was said when I need to.

Sorry none of this is remotely organised because it's like 2330 here and my brain is so soft and mushy. I'm literally just writing things as I remember them.

Right, so: theory is a big thing. Lots of people cheap out on this and it's to their own detriment. You say you're doing humanities, and tbh, most of the theory involved on the humanities side of the bridge is interdisciplinary anyways, so I'm just gonna give you some recommendations. The big thing is to read these things and try to apply them to what you're writing about. This sounds so fucking condescending but getting, like, one or two good theoretical frameworks in your papers will actually put you leaps and bounds beyond the students around you and really improve your research when the time comes. Also: don't read any of these recommendations without first watching, like an intro youtube video or listening to a podcast. The purists will tell you that's the wrong way to do it, but I am a lazy person and lazy people always find the efficient ways to do things, so I will tell the purists to go right to hell.

Check out these impenetrable motherfuckers (just one or two will take your work from great to excellent, so don't feel obliged to dig into them all):

Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels (I'm not just pushing my politics, but also, I totally am) — don't fucking read Capital unless you're committed to it. Oh my god don't put yourself through that unless you really have to. Try, like, the 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon for the fun quotes, and Engels on the family.

Frantz Fanon — Wretched of the Earth. Black Skin White Masks also good, slightly more impossible to read

Benedict Anderson — Imagined Communities. It's about nationalism, but you will be surprised at how applicable it is to... so many other topics

Judith Butler — she really sucks to read. I love her. But she sucks to read. If you do manage to read her though, your profs will love you because like 90% of the people who say they've read her are lying

Bourdieu — Distinction is good for a lot of things, but especially for introducing the idea of social and cultural capital. There's basically no humanities sub-discipline that can't run for miles on that alone.

Crenshaw — the genesis of intersectionality. But, like, actually read her, not the ingrates who came after her and defanged intersectionality into, like, rainbow bombs dropped over Gaza.

The other thing is that you should read for fun. My programme director was absolutely insistent that we all continue to read for pleasure while we did this degree, not just because it's good for destressing, but because keeping your cultural horizons open actually makes your writing better and more interesting. I literally read LOTR for the first time in, like February, and the difference in my writing and thinking from before and after is tangible, because not only did it give me something fun to think about when I was getting stressy, but it also opened up lots of fun avenues for thought that weren't there before. I read LOTR and wanted to find out more about English Catholics in WWI, and lo and behold something I read about it totally changed how I did my dissertation work. Or, like, a girl on my course who read the Odyssey over Christmas Break and then started asking loads of questions about the role of narrative creation in the archival material she was using. It was seriously such a good edict from our director.

Also, oh my god, if you do nothing else, please take this bit seriously: forgive yourself for the bad days. The pressure in postgrad is fucking unreal. Nobody, nobody is operating at 100% 100% of the time. If you aim for 60% for 80% of the time and only actually achieve 40% for 60% of the time, you will still be doing really fucking well. Don't beat yourself up unnecessarily. Don't make yourself feel bad because you're not churning out publishable material every single day. Some days you just need to lie on the couch, order takeout, and watch 12 hours of Jeopardy or whatever, and I promise you that that is a good and worthwhile thing to do. You don't learn and grow without rest, so forgive yourself for the moments and days of unplanned rest, and forgive yourself for when you don't score as highly as you want to, and forgive yourself when you say stupid things in class or don't do all of (or any of) the class reading.

Uhhhh I think I'm starting to lose the plot a bit now. Honestly, just ping me whatever questions you have and I'm happy to answer them. There's a chance I'll be slower to respond over the next few days because my dissertation is due in a week (holy fuck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) but I will definitely respond. And honestly, no question is too dumb lol. I wish I'd been able to ask someone about things like what citation management software is best or how to set up a desk for maximum efficiency or whatever, but I was a scaredy-cat about it and didn't. So yeah, ask away and I will totally answer.

[knit-wear-it]

Abnormal Psychology II

Joan Leland’s Two Greatest Disappointments

PhD student!Crane, Undergrad!Harley, Narrator!Joan Leland / Writing exercise to help me work through backstories. Which includes rewriting the first part of this. Because it was terrible.

Read Abnormal Psychology I Here

**Reminder: Harley killed her college boyfriend.

Abnormal Psychology II

2. Joan Leland's Two Greatest Failures

Eight years before Harley meets the Joker.

Joan Leland had been teaching Psychology at Gotham University for over twenty-five years, the tenured head of the department for nearly ten. During those years, she’d seen many precocious PhD candidates, but few of them stood out like Jonathan Crane.

She first met Jonathan when he was twenty-two years old, freshly graduated from a southern university known for its football team rather than its academics. With a bachelor’s in clinical psychology, and a minor in chemistry, his grades had been excellent, and his tutors called him ‘brilliant’ in their referrals. He was an obvious choice for an interview. 

The young man Joan met had been caustic, bordering on rude, and she immediately suspected he was either on the spectrum or suffering some other mental health ailment. That wasn’t a mark against him - so many students of psychology were drawn to the field because of their own struggles. But Crane had a unique interest - obsession if the intensity in his pale eyes was any indication - in fear that hinted at PTSD more than intellectual curiosity. Still, despite Joan’s reservations, Crane was invited to join that year’s group of post-graduate students.

He hadn’t fit in, making numerous enemies amongst his cohort, fellow twenty-somethings who submitted complaints about his rudeness and inflexibility. Then there were Crane’s complaints - of which there had been many - accusing his peers of being lazy and holding him back. In the end, Crane spent the collaborative early years of his PhD working alone. 

It was in Crane’s third year that Joan became well acquainted with him. As head of the department, she had the final say in allocating budgets to research projects. Predictably, Jonathan believed his doctorate thesis to be of paramount importance above his fellow graduate students, and he spent an increasing amount of time lobbying Joan for more money, and issuing empty threats about going to the dean if she didn’t agree. 

“Twenty-thousand dollars?” Joan asked warily, raising her eyebrows at Crane over the top of the proposal he’d just handed her. He was a skinny, pale young man at twenty-five, with an untidy flop of black hair and striking pale blue eyes. His clothes were always neat and tidy, his preference for gray slacks, black oxfords, and ties beneath wool vests separating him from his peers, who tended towards more childish versions of professional dressing. He might have been handsome if it weren’t for the way he carried himself - arrogant, impatient, full of disdain.  

Joan felt sorry for him. 

“I require a larger pool of test subjects,” Crane explained stiffly, his top lip curling. “The volunteers aren’t good enough.”

“Why aren’t they enough?” Joan frowned as she removed her spectacles. “Your peers have no problem with the volunteers.”

Crane closed his eyes and inhaled sharply like he was rallying his patience, or maybe he found being asked to explain himself deeply offensive. 

“I require a certain kind of subject,” he forced a bitter smile that made Joan’s eyes widen. “I need to vet them myself. It’s essential to my research.”

“I understand, Jonathan,” Joan offered him a sympathetic smile and set his proposal aside. “I’m afraid twenty-thousand is out of the question. I may be able to free up five for you.”

“Ten,” Crane insisted sourly. “Dr Leland, I’m sure you’re aware that it would be generous to call the department’s psychopharmacology resources lacking.”

“I’m sorry, Jonathan, this isn’t a negotiation,” Joan sighed as she got to her feet, adjusting her pastel suit jacket. “You’ll have to make do with five-thousand. Now, please excuse me, I have a meeting.” 

She gestured to the door when an idea occurred to her - perhaps a creative solution. Crane isolated himself from his peers, and he never spoke about friends or family. He was missing empathy in his life, with no one to care for, and no one to show him compassion in return.

“Actually,” Joan’s smile brightened. “Have you thought about signing up for the free therapy program the student union set up?”

Crane’s pale eyes widened incredulously. 

“Dr Leland… are you suggesting I need therapy?” he demanded indignantly.

“Well, no,” Joan admitted, though it was abundantly clear Crane needed to talk to someone about his past. “You are a licensed therapist, Jonathan. I’m suggesting you volunteer your time to help these students. It would be good for you to practice outside of your research.”

Crane squinted at her owlishly for a moment, then quite abruptly, he snorted out a laugh.

“I don’t think so,” he said smugly. “Children with eating disorders don’t interest me.”

“Most of them are there for depression or anxiety, or trauma they need to work through,” Joan pointed out, feeling a swell of pity for him. “Psychology isn’t just research and test subjects. We’re here to help people too.”

“Mm,” he sneered, disagreeing but apparently not feeling the need to make his case. He wasn’t holding himself back because he held an unpopular opinion - Joan had heard plenty of complaints about his outright disdain for patient welfare. But this time it seemed he didn’t feel it was an argument worth having. An argument that was beneath him as he found so many things to be. 

“How are you finding the lectures?” Joan asked hesitantly, shouldering her bag as she followed him out of her office. 

“Most of them are morons,” he shot her a withering look that could have stripped paint off the wall. “I’ll also be lobbying the dean to remove the teaching requirement for students in their fourth year,” he informed Joan crisply. “Some of us have more important work to be doing.”

Then he turned on his heel and stomped down the hallway without a word of farewell. 

Joan sighed, feeling another surge of pity for Jonathan Crane as she locked her office door and headed in the opposite direction. 

Gotham University’s campus was covered in snow, a treat for students returning from their Christmas breaks. Joan smiled at colleagues and a few students she knew or recognized as she walked toward the student union building, struggling with the question of how she might help Jonathan Crane.

The student union was a modern building painted yellow and red, and it hadn’t aged well since it was constructed in the late seventies. Joan took the lift to the third floor, where she’d been given a small office to assess the students assigned to her. Four or five other members of staff from the psychology department volunteered their free time there too, with patients dolled out to them in a kind of raffle. Students wanting therapy would be added to a waitlist and scheduled with whoever was available whenever they were available. It wasn’t ideal but it was better than nothing. 

“Hi, Dr Leland,” the volunteer behind a receptionist’s desk greeted Joan brightly, handing her a file. 

“Hi Sarah,” Joan smiled back at her. “How is everything?”

“It’s pretty dead,” Sarah observed affably. “I guess the kids are feeling pretty good after the break. No finals to stress them out.”

“Sure,” Joan agreed politely, inwardly thinking that many of these young people would likely be in need of more therapy after the holidays, not less. “Who am I seeing today?” she opened the file, her eyes widening when she found a police report inside. 

“Ah, she’s kind of a special case,” Sarah sighed. “Her boyfriend was Guy Kopski, you know, the boy who committed suicide before the holidays?” She cringed, which made Joan frown, deeming a cringe to be a particularly inappropriate response from someone working closely with students requiring support and compassion. “Anyway, the financial aid office insisted she either take time off from school or get some form of therapy. She’s waiting in your office.”

“The FA office is involved? That seems heavy-handed,” Joan mused, scanning the police report before she turned the page. “Oh,” she nodded, understanding. 

Harleen Quinzel was on a full-ride scholarship, and she was an orphan. The financial aid office wanted to make sure their investment paid off. 

Sad stories were something you got used to working in psychology. It was important to empathize with your patients, and that never got easier or less painful, but the longer you did the job, the more you accepted those stories as part of life. Joan would never feel numb toward the people she helped, but their stories did become less shocking to her. Including Guy Kopski’s violent suicide.

To jump off a building, one truly had to want to die.  

Joan knocked on her office door before pushing it open, her lips curving into a patient smile, which came naturally to her after years and years of listening to sad stories. 

“Harleen?” she asked the girl waiting for her, keeping her voice soft. 

Harleen Quinzel sat at one end of a pale green corduroy couch, looking out the window. She had long, honey blonde hair that fell in soft, messy waves around her shoulders, and she wore the typical GU-girl winter uniform of leggings, a collegiate sweatshirt, and snow boots. She turned her head when Joan said her name, her sober expression inspiring an almost painful pang of sympathy in Joan. Harleen looked strained and pale, her blue eyes overly-large like she’d lost a lot of weight quickly, with bruise-like smudges beneath. It had been about three weeks since Guy Kopski’s suicide, and Joan realized that Harleen probably hadn’t had anyone to talk to about how she was feeling in that span of time. 

In fact, if she had no family to speak of, she would have spent most of that time alone in Gotham while her friends went back to their family’s homes.

“Dr Leland,” Harleen greeted Joan warily. 

Joan lowered herself onto the other end of the couch; she should have taken the chair, but Harleen was so… alone, it seemed more natural to sit beside her. To be closer to her.

“I’ve been filled in about Guy and the financial aid office,” Joan explained kindly while Harleen nodded. “This may be a very general way to open, but would you like to tell me how you’re feeling today?”

Harleen took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly, her eyes on one of the many ferns populating the room. 

“Numb,” she said eventually, not looking away from the fern. “Like it didn’t happen.”

 “Acceptance is the final stage of grief,” Joan replied kindly. “It’s only been three weeks. It makes sense that you haven’t fully processed Guy's death.”

“No,” Harleen caught Joan’s eye. Her eyes were glacial, like an icy arctic sea. “I’ve accepted that he’s gone,” she said softly. “I just don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about it.”

“There isn’t one way you should feel about it,” Joan said patiently. “It’s not about what you decide you should feel - you’ll feel whatever you feel. That’s one of the things we’re here to talk about so you can understand and cope with those feelings.”

“I know that. I meant I don’t know what I’m feeling, or if I’m even feeling anything at all,” Harleen explained, her gaze shifting back to the fern. She blinked at it a few times, her face placid as she searched her feelings, trying to understand them. “It’s like it didn’t happen to me, but someone else…” she murmured to herself.

Joan was about to jump in, not wanting to push her too hard in the first five minutes when Harleen spoke up again. 

“Everyone knows green is a soothing color,” she observed, running her hand over the corduroy couch cushion. “Doesn’t it seem a little patronizing to use it so liberally?”

“I’m not sure everyone knows that,” Joan offered her a wry smile. “You’re a psych major, aren’t you?”

“You’re the head of the psychology department, aren’t you?” Harleen countered tartly, imitating Joan’s tone perfectly. Then she shifted back into moroseness, almost more intensely than she had been before, and she took a deep breath like she was bracing herself. 

Joan felt a startling thread of dread roll through her gut - some sixth sense waving a flag that there was something wrong with this young woman. The way she flipped on a dime, from depressed to… whatever that was, and back again. It made Joan wonder if there wasn’t something ingenuine about her grief.

But, Joan reminded herself, there was nothing wrong with anyone. No matter what their pathology, no matter what their circumstances. There was a diagnosis to contend with, but no human being could be wrong. 

Aside from, perhaps, some of the most vicious psychopaths.

What made a person human if not empathy? 

“I’m hoping to get into the PhD program after I graduate,” Harleen said, giving Joan a hopeful smile that looked forced. 

“That’s wonderful,” Joan beamed at her, shrugging off her unease. “There’s pretty stiff competition, but you’ve certainly got the grades for it. What are you interested in?”

Harleen licked her lips, eyeing the fern thoughtfully as she considered Joan’s question. Or, perhaps she was considering how to answer Joan’s question. The longer the silence stretched on, the more Joan came to feel she was trying to craft an answer for Joan’s sake, rather than telling the truth. But that was ludicrous, there was nothing she could say that Joan would judge her for. 

Then Harleen looked at Joan, and there was a faint gleam in her eyes, something dark that sent an uneasy shiver rolling over Joan’s shoulders. 

“Psychopaths,” Harleen announced grimly, the word seeming to hang in the air between them. “I want to understand the way they feel,” she added, sounding more subdued.  

Joan raised her eyebrows. Psychopaths were frequent favorites for the younger students, no doubt because they were one of the more exciting pathologies. Not to mention the many movies featuring glamorized versions of them - Hannibal Lector, Patrick Batement, Frank Booth, and nearly every other villain created by Hollywood. 

But there was something… certain about Harleen's words. 

Something personal. 

“Psychopaths don’t feel very much,” Joan pointed out cautiously, watching Harleen turn her attention to the corduroy couch, stroking the ribbed fabric slowly. “They have almost zero emotional intelligence. Everything they do is driven by impulse, trying to feed the pleasure center of their brain for immediate gratification.”

“Really?” Harleen frowned as she looked up at Joan. “All of them?”

“Generally speaking,” Joan said hesitantly, holding Harleen’s gaze, which was intense and made her feel somehow… exposed. 

Harleen sighed and looked down at the pale green couch cushion.

“I wonder if psychopaths find green soothing,” she mused, sounding genuinely curious.

That brought a smile to Joan’s lips. Curiosity was one of her most prized qualities in a student.

After that first meeting, Joan met Harleen every other week for the rest of the semester, getting to know her sad story and her curious mind. There was something about her that made Joan feel protective of her, almost like she owed it to Harleen to give her what she needed to succeed. 

There was also something about Harleen that reminded Joan of Jonathan Crane. Something a shade too ambitious, something a fraction too disinterested in the people around her. They both had sad stories, but while Jonathan’s seemed to drag him down, Harleen seemed to exist separately from hers, as if none of it had really happened to her.

Joan was dismayed but not surprised when the world found out what Jonathan Crane turned Arkham Asylum into. His fear toxin, torturing his patients, working with the mob, the Scarecrow moniker, all of it seemed like an inevitable conclusion.  

But she could have never predicted how Harleen’s story panned out. 

Joan had always worried about the way Harleen monitored herself in front of other people. Over the years that followed their first meeting, she could never understand why her most talented student felt the need to hide her thoughts and feelings, and there was always something decidedly… clenched about how she carried herself. As if there was a weight on her shoulders she couldn’t shake off, something constantly holding her back from being herself, something she was constantly fighting against. 

It wasn’t until the world was introduced to Harley Quinn that Joan understood what that something was.

And all it had taken was the Joker to unlock it.

A/N: Again, just a little writing exercise with some throwbacks to the Harlequin, but nothing revolutionary or spoilery.

Now time to write what I’m supposed to be writing...

[annecoulmanross]

Bridgens/Peglar Egyptology AU

(for the @theterrorbingo square “modern AU” | word count: 1k fic + 1.5k AU details | rating: T | warnings: mild spooky; talk of mummies; description of a panic attack)

The Terrors are all members of the Classics (Greek & Roman Studies) department. The Erebites are all members of the Egyptology department. These two departments share the beautiful Barrow Hall building on the campus of their university, but they do NOT get along….

….until Henry Peglar, a first-year graduate student in Classics, decides that he wants to learn how to read Egyptian hieroglyphs. 

(Drabbles and AU info below the cut!) 

It turns out that most students who want to study hieroglyphs have already finished the introductory course, however, because Henry ends up in a tiny winter-term class with only two other students. The three “hieroglyph 101s” all show up a bit early to their first day of class, fumbling into a dimly-lit classroom in the basement of Barrow Hall, across from the archaeological store-rooms.

They exchange quick introductions while waiting for the instructor to arrive. Both of Henry’s classmates are undergraduate Egyptology majors: Tom Hartnell is a bright young freshman with a passion for Egyptian mummies (and, admittedly, a slightly spotty undergraduate record), and Henry Collins is a terribly anxious junior who recently switched majors from Engineering (“Please call me Collins,” he says, after Henry begins to comment that they share a name. “Everyone else already calls me Collins.”)

The moment of revelation for Henry Peglar, though, is when he first sets eyes on their instructor: a senior graduate student named John Bridgens, who walks in just a minute after the hour, with a thermos of what smells like mint tea.

John Bridgens looks almost mournful for a moment, his dark eyes soulful, a thick pea-coat sitting heavy on his shoulders (which he quickly shrugs off; it may be a chilly January outside, but Barrow Hall is toasty and warm). When John looks over to his students, though, he smiles, and his face is transformed: Henry feels like the sun has suddenly come out from behind the blustery clouds.

Henry quickly realizes that learning Egyptian won’t be like learning Greek or Latin, but fortunately John is a very good teacher. Even though John holds office hours at an ungodly hour of the morning, Henry shows up to every office hour with a bright smile and a long list of questions.

What Henry doesn’t yet know is that he’s in for the most exciting semester of his life…

(Featuring such hijinks as: John and his students Henry, Tom, and Collins get locked into the archaeological store-room with the mummies, in the dark! Henry and Tom Hartnell uncover a secret that could overturn the Egyptology department! Henry develops an unfortunate crush on his instructor! What could go wrong!)

+ 

“We’re Trapped in Here, Aren’t We?” (Bonus Drabble)

The four of them have now been locked in the basement, in the dark, for over an hour.

Collins is quietly freaking out, sitting on a storage crate in the corner of the main room of the museum storage space. Henry watches Tom Hartnell deftly trying to help Collins regulate his breathing to a pace approaching normal, with some success; Henry decides not to intervene.

“We’re trapped in here, aren’t we?” Collins asks. He doesn’t sound panicked anymore, just stressed; it’s an improvement.

Tom rubs Collins’s shoulder reassuringly, and says, “I don’t know for certain, but I’m not going to let it worry me – we’re going to be okay, alright?” Tom then turns to Henry Peglar and tilts his head, adding: “Eddie Hoar told me that there used to be a secret passage that ran between Barrow Hall and the library, and that the door opened up somewhere here in the storage-rooms. Maybe we can find it?”

Henry nods, flashes a grin that feels fake but must seem genuine in the low light of the storage-rooms’ emergency lighting, because Tom smiles back at him. “I’ll go check on John,” Henry says. “See if he doesn’t know anything about a tunnel.”

Slipping in between the shelves of Greek ceramics, Henry winds his way toward the back workroom where he left John Bridgens, who had been convinced that there must be an extra key somewhere in the workroom desk drawers.

Henry is so caught up in thoughts of tunnels that fails to notice the packing box sitting next to the shelves and he manages to trip right over it. He takes the fall hard, feeling the chilly linoleum under his now-aching arm, his eyes squeezed shut against the pain. When he opens his eyes, though, Henry feels a bolt of fear run though him – for a moment he thinks he’s gone blind, because he sees nothing but darkness. A moment later, the ancient emergency lights flicker back on, and that’s worse because Henry is face-to-face with the mummy.

Henry had forgotten that she was stored here, under the shelves of Egyptian faience. He distantly remembers Dr. Blanky pointing out “the Egyptian girl, our princess,” in her lovely painted coffin, on a tour through the storage rooms last year when he had been a prospective student – but the fact that she was down here (trapped with us, his mind whispers) had escaped his mind.

Shuddering, Henry pushes himself up from the cold floor and backs up against the wall as the lights keep flickering. He knows, he knows, that there’s nothing to fear here, but the sight of the girl’s skin, drawn tight against her skin, her eerie grimace, had shaken him.

“Henry?”

Henry jumps about a foot in the air, but it’s just John, peering out from the workroom door.

“Henry, are you okay?” John continues, his brow furrowed with worry.

Henry swallows. “Yup, yeah, just took a tumble.” He straightens up, tries to collect himself. “Did you find an extra key?” he asks John.

But John isn’t so easily dissuaded. “Are you sure you’re alright?” He steps up next to Henry, a hand hovering over the arm that Henry’s cradling to his chest (Henry’s certain it isn’t broken, but he knows it’ll be bruised a bit).

Henry looks up into John’s eyes and exhales softly to see the loving concern written there. John’s so close now, lifting a hand toward Henry’s cheek, and Henry wants this, wants to reach out and embrace; he finally feels his limbs stop shaking now that John’s here, even as his heart races and his face tilts up…

…. and that’s the moment when the emergency lights finally flicker their last, and the corridor goes dark as a tomb.

+

Some Background on the Humanities Departments of Barrow Hall

The Department of Classics

The Classics program at Barrow Hall is small but powerful. Most of the faculty get along well with each other, professionally, although they don’t socialize much. There aren’t many graduate students in the program, but most of the grad students they do have are quite active on the university campus.

Classics Faculty

Dr. Crozier is the department chair of the Classics program. He teaches early Roman history, with a focus on land surveying, and he takes a very scientific approach to his material.

Dr. Little is an associate professor who teaches Greek military history and gets very excited about ancient weapons. (“Like the shot that killed Leonidas at Thermopylae!”)

Dr. Hodgson is an associate professor who teaches Greek drama; he’s particularly obsessed with the tragedies of Euripides – the more ritualistic violence the better.

Dr. Irving is an assistant professor who teaches later Roman history, and can turn any conversation into a debate about the early history of Christianity. His most recent book was titled “Coming Out Christian in the Roman World: How the Followers of Jesus Made a Place in Caesar's Empire.” * Despite Irving’s own Christian faith and his social justice outreach work with the campus Queer Interfaith club, Irving’s a bit of a chronological traditionalist when it comes to academic research, and tends to dismiss any literature written after Augustine.

Drs. Peddie and MacDonald are actually part of the History Department, but because they teach Medieval Latin, they’re considered honorary members of the classics faculty. (MacDonald teaches a wildly popular undergraduate seminar – cross-listed with Classics and History – called “Witches, Ghosts, and Potions: Medical Mysteries in Medieval Europe.”)

Dr. Blanky is the exception to the “we hate the Egyptologists” rule – Thomas gets along quite well with a certain Dr. Reid, both of whom have a passion for film studies, and together they’ve organized a weekly historical film series for the undergrads. Dr. Reid’s top picks are old-school classics like Cleopatra (1963) and Julius Caesar (1953); Blanky, on the other hand, is partial to Gladiator (2000). He’s also the exception to the “this department doesn’t socialize rule,” being, himself, a long-time best friend of department chair Dr. Crozier.

Classics Grad Students

Thomas Jopson is an older graduate student – he’s just a breath away from receiving his PhD: Dr. Crozier, who has been supervising his thesis on the systems of enslavement in the Roman Republic and the lived experiences of Roman slaves, is extremely proud of Thomas’s sensitive eye for historical evidence. Thomas also works for the campus mental health office, leading a therapy group for adult children of those suffering from addiction.

Billie Gibson, another grad student, is part-way through writing his dissertation on the reception of Greek ideas about homosexuality in the Victorian period, under the supervision of a confused but supportive Dr. Irving. (“Isn’t this more of a History department topic?”)

“Hickey” started the PhD program at the same time as Billie, and he’s begun writing his thesis on cannibalistic imagery in Greek poetry with Dr. Hodgson. Everyone just calls him Hickey, and Henry Peglar hasn’t been able to figure out his full name (or whether “Hickey” is a first name or a last name, or even whether “Hickey” is part of his real name at all) because no one ever updates the Classics department website. Hickey is part of a student organization called the Dionysians, but they’re not listed on the university’s roster of sanctioned clubs, and no one seems to know what it is that they do, exactly.

Henry Peglar is the newest member of the department, a first-year grad student. He’s planning on studying depictions of ancient history in modern fiction, hopefully with Dr. Blanky, who also happens to be his first-year advisor.

The Department of Egyptology

The Egyptology program at Barrow Hall has been having some hiring problems in recent years. Not only did several older professors retire, but the young Dr. Gore decided to move into museum-work full-time and Dr. Fairholme was ‘poached’ by the rival Egyptology program at another university. As a result, the Department of Egyptology has been under-staffed, with too many grad students and too few professors, resulting in two controversial recent faculty hires.

Egyptology Faculty

Dr. John is the department chair of the Egyptology program. He teaches ancient Egyptian literature and has a rather old-fashioned perspective on middle Egyptian grammar.

Dr. Reid teaches courses on the history of archaeological discoveries in Egypt, and the culture of artifact (mis-)handling by European excavators. He’s friendly with Dr. Blanky in the Classics program, and he lovingly crafts discussion questions for the film-showings that he and Blanky run. (He’ll never admit it, but he secretly loves the 1999 Mummy movie.)

Dr. Stanley teaches classes on ancient Egyptian medicine. He’s known for his severe grading policies and for his impressive ability to ruin the fun of topic that involves things like magic spells and fever-demons and having sex with crocodiles.

Dr. Fitzjames is one of the two new faculty members, a dashing archaeologist with an impressive résumé of excavation in Egypt – although, as Dr. Crozier has wryly observed, some of his funding sources for those digs haven’t always been completely above-board.

Dr. Le Vesconte is the other new faculty member, an associate professor with an equally flashy history of excavation and publication. Rumor is that he and Dr. Fitzjames once found a live cheetah in an Egyptian tomb and tried to keep it as the excavation’s mascot.

Egyptology Grad Students

Edmund “Eddie” Hoar is a senior doctoral candidate, working dedicatedly on a massive dissertation about Egyptian stamps and seals. He’s been working with Dr. John because his old advisor recently retired, and with Eddie’s advisor gone, Eddie’s pretty much the only person on campus who knows his way around the dusty archaeological collection in the basement of Barrow Hall.

John Bridgens has been with the program about as long as Eddie, but he’s closer to finishing his thesis, a sprawling dissertation on Egyptian poetry under Dr. John’s supervision.

Charles “Freddie” Des Voeux is part-way through writing a thesis on Napoleon’s excavations in Egypt; his advisor is Dr. Reid. (He’s also roommates with Eddie Hoar, and the two of them are known as “(Fr)eddie” in the grad student group chat.)

Harry Goodsir is a first-year PhD student, who entered the program at the same time Henry Peglar started in Classics; the two of them met at the university-wide graduate student orientation, and Harry encouraged Henry to take hieroglyphs, which Harry had learned himself while he was an undergraduate, while volunteering with his siblings at an Egyptian museum in their hometown. Harry’s interested in Egyptian archaeology, hoping to study with Dr. Fitzjames and Dr. Le Vesconte, but there was a paperwork mix-up that placed Dr. Stanley as Harry’s first-year advisor (Harry is unhappy about it; Dr. Stanley is even more unhappy about it).

Members of Associated Departments in Nearby Ross Hall (& Their Drama)

Dr. James C. Ross is the co-chair of the anthropology program and a dear friend of Dr. Crozier in classics. Though he does have a complicated legacy with the university – being a descendent of the famous (if problematic) explorer, Sir John Ross, for whom Ross Hall is named – Dr. James is well-liked by his students and forward-thinking about his discipline.

Ross’s co-chair, Dr. Silna Kamookak, thinks Ross could stand to apply his anthropology to real-world problems a bit more intensively. Dr. Kamookak is a rising star in applied archaeology and she publishes on issues of museum collection ethics and heritage management; the graduate seminar she teaches on Inuit oral history documentation is known to be one of the best courses in the department.

Dr. Jane Franklin is the chair of English Literature; her research interests revolve around the writings of Charles Dickens. All the students in Barrow Hall call her “Dr. Jane,” and call her husband “Dr. John,” because neither would agree to let the other be called “Dr. Franklin.” A memo was circulated. It was messy.

Dr. Sophia Cracroft is an assistant professor in the History of Science department, and a frequent collaborator with Dr. Crozier in an ongoing interdisciplinary project about ancient cartography; although Dr. Cracroft has often tried to get Dr. John Franklin to permit a collaboration with the Egyptology department, Dr. John has always refused. Cracroft’s grad students say that it’s because Dr. John heard something “unsavory” about the relationship between Dr. Cracroft and Dr. Crozier. None of the grad students know what this “unsavory” thing is, but gossip ranges from the vanilla (an affair) to the bizarre (a papyrus smuggling ring).

Other Details

Goldner’s is a purveyor of textbooks of dubious quality. For some reason, all of the introductory language classes in both the Classics and Egyptology departments are always assigned Goldner’s textbooks, much to the students’ and instructors’ displeasure.

* “Coming Out Christian in the Roman World: How the Followers of Jesus Made a Place in Caesar's Empire,” is a real book! (It was not, however, written by John Irving.) I had a fantastic time reading it a few years ago – go check it out.  

[jereviendrai]

||| ooc; does every character on this blog have bpd symptoms? is this problematic, considering they’re all villains or would-be villains? is there a way to give a villain a mental health disorder without stigmatizing the disorder? well--

OH AND BIG TRIGGER WARNING FOR A WIDE RANGE OF MENTAL HEALTH TOPICS SUCH AS: eating disorders, mental illness, stigmatization of mental illness, self harm, suicidal tendencies, and a fuckload more. I don’t go into detail. There are just mentions. I’m not gonna say a bunch of graphic shit, I promise! If I went into graphic detail, this would turn into a PhD thesis proposal, and that’d be WAY too long to be worth writing. Also I have BPD, but I’m not going to pretend that I’m an expert on the subject. I’m not. My word is not law, but it’d be nice if my word was taken into consideration.

this post got so fucking long and disorganized jesus christ

The answers are: yes, not inherently, and absolutely.

I want to get into the mental health of all three characters in a second, but I think it’s important to talk a little about the other two points first. That said, though -- yes, they’re all borderline. All three of them! And they all experience it differently! I will come back to that. Anyway--

I feel like it’s important to talk about villains, mental illness and stigma. There’s a really common (and insanely lazy) tendency for writers to explain a villain’s villainy by simply saying, “oh, well they’re a psychopath,” or, “they’re just crazy.” This is not only lazy and offensive, but it contributes to an unfair stigma against the mentally ill.

Mental illness might, say, compel someone to steal a chocolate bar or snap at someone out of anger. It might make a person’s emotions volatile. It might make someone unreasonable. They might suffer delusions of abandonment, of some plot against them, of people’s secret intent to humiliate them, etc. They might suffer and handle their suffering poorly. They may cause harm. But that doesn’t make them... evil. It makes them complex. And how they react to and handle their negative actions says more about them than any diagnosis could.

When you have a villain with a mental illness, you need to examine how the illness is hurting them. Write about how it hinders their progress. Write about how isolating it can be for them. Write about the impact and struggle. Not how the illness makes them so evil or so irredeemably awful. The illness should be what humanizes them and helps to make them relatable. No matter how untouchable and powerful your villain is, they have some personal struggle that is independent of their villainy. When done correctly, it can go a long way in fleshing out your villain and adding interesting inner conflict!

I know, I know. You might be asking, “yeah, but don’t people with mental health issues sometimes cause harm directly related to their symptoms?” To which I say: yeah, duh, of course. Just like a depressed person might say something mean when they’re having a bad day. Just like someone with ADHD might make someone feel like they aren’t being listened to. Just like someone who has social anxiety might make a friend feel unloved. Just like mentally healthy people also occasionally cause harm.

I’m not saying mental health issues don’t cause problems and maladaptive behaviors. I’m just saying it doesn’t... make someone inherently bad -- real or fictional. And I need people to internalize that.

ANYWAY ON TO THE CHARACTERS AND THEIR BPD

(i know, you’re probably like, “dude oh my god shut up and get on with it” sakjlfdkjsa)

I’m going to be referring to the four subtypes. I know these are controversial to some people. Some really don’t like these labels, others feel comforted by them, etc. They’re just to make it easier to talk about this whole thing. No one fits neatly into any one subtype! Some people don’t resemble any particular one! Everyone is different! Don’t box people into these subtypes if you haven’t been given consent, thanks!

Mr. A / Clark Donovan Mr. A is a classic example of the Quiet Borderline. Someone with quiet BPD mostly directs their symptoms inward. It’s harder to detect than other types, as the symptoms that are most prevalent are mostly expressed, well, inwardly. Self-esteem issues, self-blame, insecurity, withdrawing emotionally, pretending you’re not angry when you are, self harming tendencies, suicidal thoughts, etc. He’s also kind of clingy. Mr. A is an extremely loyal person to a fault. He is a people pleaser and will go to the ends of the Earth to make his loved ones happy, even if it hurts him. This is of detriment to him, as he often finds himself getting hurt on behalf of people who might not care as much as he does. He’s let a lot of bad people into his life solely because they made him feel loved, wanted and useful. He views everyone he loves through rose-tinted glasses and only takes them off long after he’s been laid to waste by them. He has terrible issues with self-image and has thus developed an eating disorder. He also has severe depersonalization/derealization disorder, which is a result of how his mental health interacts with his reality-warping powers. It creates a lot of anxiety with him, watching himself phase through things and bend the world around him on a whim. His motivations in life are connected to this, but his motivation to do evil things is not. He wants to bring other superpowered people together as a united front against humanity, as he feels that humanity is a threat to their continued existence. This has nothing to do with his mental health issues. The part of it that does tie in is that he’s painfully lonely and has chronic feelings of boredom, so being surrounded with a shit ton of different people mitigates that. It’s a motive for him bringing people closer to him, but it is not a motive for him to launch an attack on all humanity. He’d be really offended if you tried to accuse him of doing this on the basis that he’s just a bit ill. His illness literally just makes him crave contact with other living beings just like him. He sometimes does bad or stupid things because of this, but it literally has nothing to do with his motives as a villain. As an addendum of sorts, Mr. A’s alias and reluctance to use his given name (Clark Donovan) are a result of identity issues he suffers due to his BPD. He finds it hard to maintain a stable sense of identity, so he just... doesn’t.

Ivan Chanteur Ivan closely resembles what we like to call an Impulsive Borderline, comorbid with ADHD. He is an impulsive person, as the name of the subtype suggests. He’s a thrill-seeker who suffers from extreme levels of chronic boredom, which he desperately tries to combat by any means necessary. Staying still and doing repetitive tasks is literal torture for him. If he cannot get up and move and do whatever it takes to keep himself feeling fulfilled and occupied, he is probably going to fucking lose it. When he is actively vocalizing his boredom on a regular basis, this means the chronic feelings of boredom have reached critical mass. It’s not just boredom. It’s anxiety, it’s agitation, it’s existential dread, it’s an inability to focus, it’s pent-up energy that needs to go somewhere and can’t just stay in him anymore. If he can’t get it out in healthy ways, he usually resorts to self-harm or less-than-healthy pursuits. He’s been known to dabble in drugs, self-harm, occasional promiscuity on a bad night. While therapy’s helped him get a handle on it, there’ve been a lot of stressful and traumatic things going on in his life have have made it a lot harder to keep himself in check. Ivan is pretty charismatic, able to cast a wide net and catch all sorts of people in his social web. He has a sort of natural magnetism that, on a superficial level, should make him quite popular. But underneath it all, he has difficulty trusting people long enough to actually let them into his life. He’ll act like an open book, only to slam himself shut and reshelve himself before anyone can get anywhere near the end. He’s easy to befriend, but difficult to get close to. This has caused him to feel lonely and frustrated. He wishes he could easily form deep connections, but it’s hard and it hurts him. In addition to all of this, he engages in a wide variety of attention-seeking and risk-taking behaviors. He often spends time with people who are not good to him, simply for the thrill of it. This has often gotten him hurt, but he finds it hard to cut this habit in spite of everything. This leads to a lot of frustration and self-hatred, as it makes it hard for him to protect himself. Every time someone hurts or betrays him, he beats himself up over it and tells himself he should know better by now. All that said, though, he’s come a long way in therapy. He’s not quite able to keep a handle on all of it all the time, but he’s managed to secure one or two decently stable friendships along the way.

Eve Laurier Eve is particularly difficult to talk about, but I’m going to try my best. Eve is what happens when you make a conscious decision to be bad. He knows beyond a shadow of doubt that what he’s doing is wrong, but he feels so wronged by the world that he just cannot seem to motivate himself to care. This... again... has nothing to do with his BPD. If anything, it’s his struggles with this disorder that keep him at least somewhat... grounded in reality. Eve suffered a personal tragedy -- the loss of his twin sister in a housefire. Though ruled an accident, he cried foul play. Consumed with grief at the loss of the only person he felt could truly understand him, he vowed to find the culprit and make them pay. This set him down a path of vengeance that would make John Wick blush. Eve grew up as the heir to his family’s criminal enterprise. This put him in a position of power the very moment he was born. This also left him exposed to a lot of terrible, violent crimes from a very young age. Because this was normalized by his family, he internalized and compartmentalized any misgivings he had about violence. By the time he was ready for university, he had been thoroughly trained to carry out hitjobs on behalf of the family. He was a weapon from the moment he left the womb. He was groomed to do terrible things, and it’s because of this ongoing and continuous trauma that he developed his particular cocktail of mental health issues. He mostly fits in with the label of Petulant BPD. Repeated and violent trauma did a number on him, leaving him angry and hurt over what his parents let him fall victim to. He also experiences feelings of self-loathing over the part he feels he played in his own trauma, despite the fact that it started in early childhood. He is self-defeating and self-blaming. He has a difficult time expressing his feelings and has angry outbursts fairly regularly, often resulting in self-harm and suicidal ideation. He’s been known to reach for the nearest mind-altering substance just to get out of his head for a bit. His mood swings are intense and leave him feeling fatigued and anxious. He has severe social anxiety that sometimes manifests as cold indifference. He also has issues with control, has paranoid delusions about the people in his life and doesn’t often believe it when people say that they care for him. He will find any and every piece of evidence that points to the contrary, even if he has to make it up himself. This usually ensures that he’ll end up alone again. He doesn’t have very many close relationships, if any at all. His BPD is not the reason he hurts people. Any hurt caused by his BPD is directed at himself, not at others. His BPD is a direct result of what actually has primed him to hurt people. It’s a direct result of trauma. He’s traumatized. And no, trauma is no excuse for what he’s done -- but his BPD didn’t make him kidnap and torture Ivan while he waited for Ivan’s parents to send in the ransom. That was all Eve. That was his conscious decision to make, in spite of everything in his head telling him how awful and wrong he would be to do such a thing. He knew it was wrong and ignored it, as he was under the impression that Ivan’s family had a hand in his sister’s death. If anything, his BPD aggravates his feelings of shame and self-loathing when he does precisely what his parents had been training him to do his whole life.

Anyway-- I hope this was helpful or at least interesting.

The point I’m trying to make here is that mental illness isn’t some kind of ultimate litmus test of good and evil. A disorder doesn’t make you good or bad. It’s just another facet of who you are.

So... to that end... please for the love of fuck stop using personality disorders as the reason for someone’s villainy. Please. I am begging.

I wrote a bunch of BPD villains in various stages of villainhood because I have BPD and this disorder often makes you feel like you’re evil, a monster, etc. Honestly, on good days I feel like an inherently bad person who consciously chooses to do good. That’s very flawed and I know that logically I’m not inherently bad, but that’s kind of what stigma does. It makes you feel like you’re inherently bad. And that feeling influenced how I write all three of these characters.

This is an incoherent mess but today’s the day I find out if I have coronavirus and I’m so fucking stressed out and hopped up on DayQuil. Thanks for reading any of this, I guess?

[pantheon-pjorp]

Karina Omaña | 15 yrs old | Daughter of Athena | CABIN SIX

↳ The LIFE of KARINA OMAÑA —

Raúl Omaña, a Venezuelan linguist making his doctorate studies in the US, met the smartest woman ever after a conference on Etymology and Classical Languages. She seemed delighted with his reasoning on the origin of certain specific words, and offered some theories of her own over a glass of wine. Nothing happened, but they kept meeting at conferences and exchanging emails and she seemed to make incredible discoveries on missing translations from Ancient Greek, discoveries that might or might not have helped him with his PhD thesis. There were plenty of long stares and hands brushing and it was a very Victorian deal, but nothing happened between them beyond that, even though Raúl was sure he wasn’t the only one feeling things. He’d been back home for a while, teaching at a university, when there was a knock on his apartment door. A cute, round cheeked baby was sleeping on a basket, with a letter next to her. Apparently, he’d been intellectually courting no one other than the goddess Athena and she’d decided to bless their intellectual not-romance with a grey-eyed bundle of joy that he’d definitely not conceived in the usual way. He named her daughter Karina (after his favorite singer from the 80s) and he raised her during her first years as a single dad. Karina was raised around academic discussions and university students, some of which offered to babysit her during class while her dad was explaining things on the blackboard. She named all the cats and all the dogs that roamed the university hallways, and when it was time for her to attend school she was easily ahead of her class. Words and languages were the family thing, so she learned to love them as much as her dad did, and she became his favorite research assistant. The family eventually had to migrate to the United States, and it wasn’t a very smooth adaptation process for Karina. She started wearing thick glasses (even though she didn’t need them) to hide the unusual color of her eyes and oversized sweaters and t-shirts (depending on the weather) so she wouldn’t draw any more attention; she got enough of that because of her grades and the slight accent she couldn’t get rid off when speaking English. The bullying, however, was nothing compared to the weird things that started happening around her. Spiders, those awful, horrid, no good creatures started following her everywhere, even her dreams, and she woke up screaming and crying because of a hairy, eight-legged nightmare. Random creatures straight out of mythology books stared at her in the street, and some of them even tried to approach her with no good intentions, but somehow she always thought of a way to lose them. She only felt safe at home, around her dad, but her dad had classes to teach and a girlfriend too, and he couldn’t be at home all the time. Things changed for the better when she was close to turning eleven. She’d been walking home from school when one of those monsters, some kind of seal-dog hybrid of sorts, got in her way. As any sensible girl would, she screamed and started running, only stopping when she crashed into a solemn looking woman. That lady reminded her of her teacher, of someone she could trust, and when the woman told her everything was fine, that it was safe to go home now, Karina believed her. The lady also told her not to be sad about leaving, something Karina didn’t understand until she made it home and found a half-goat man talking to her dad about her having to leave for some summer camp. That was how Karina ended up making it to Camp Half-Blood, where she was immediately claimed by her mother and met all her siblings at Cabin 6. According to Malcolm and everyone, Camp had gone through a very rocky period, with wars and attacks and Roman emperors, somehow, but they were finally enjoying some peace, which was fine and dandy for her.

↳ P e r s o n a l i t y —

Karina is a chatty, outgoing, sometimes dorky girl. She feels more accepted at Camp Half-Blood than anywhere else, but she still hides under her glasses and oversized shirt, self-conscious of her appearance. She’s also self-conscious of her laughter, which sounds closer to a snort, and tries to hide the sound of it. No matter how safe Camp is, she hasn’t forgotten the mean things she was told over the years and that can make her feel insecure, so she won’t be her true self around a stranger, turning almost into a shrinking violet. Her mother’s sacred animal might be the owl, but she loves cats and everything cat related. She owns a cat hoodie, and cat shoes, and cute cat socks, and her room at her dad’s apartment has a cat motif, and “cat” is the one word she’s learned to pronounce in almost every language. Still, she won’t talk about it if she doesn’t trust the other person not to make fun of her.

↳ A b i l i t i e s  a n d  w e a k n e s s e s —

✔ As a daughter of Athena, Karina is knowledgeable in a broad array of subjects, but she’s specially knowledgeable in languages, linguistics, and –to her very own surprise- battle strategies. She’s also skilled at crafts, such as weaving..

‣ Like all Greek demigods, Karina suffers from ADHD (to keep her alert to threats) and, because her brain is hard-wired to read Greek, from dyslexia.She’s also fluent in Spanish (being her mother language) and Latin (thanks to her dad).

✘ She’s not much of a fighter, preferring fleeing instead of fighting. Like all other half-blood children of Athena, Karina has immense arachnophobia, freezing up when she sees a spider or anything bearing a close resemblance to one.

↳ T h i n g s  t o  r e m e m b e r —

She still wears her glasses out of habit, not because she needs them.

She has read complete dictionaries –for fun.

She speaks English with an accent.

She wants to master a handful of other languages.

She’s experimenting with her sexuality.

She LOVES cats, but she’s mildly allergic to them, so she’s never had one.

↳ R e l a t i o n s h i p s —

TBD

FC: Isabella Gomez

[parti-pooper]

Headcanons for Stendy Family?

Alright, Anon! The time has come! OvO/ I don’t know if these are the kinds of headcanons you had hoped for - but I hope you can enjoy them anyway. uwu

Stan proposes to Wendy on the night of a wedding reception. Drunk. After puking. With no ring. Seeing his friends get married that day made him get mushy, and so he downed a bunch of liquid luck in the hopes of getting up enough courage to ask her to marry him. He thought it’d be romantic. Cue Wendy having to say nope after watching her beautiful, beloved boyfriend eject his guts and slur, “Wen-dyyy I larvuI lff fugignk larvaruu youuu,, marr meh ples marr meybeb…”

Wendy tells Stan what he did the next morning, and he gets embarrassed as he explains his thoughts last night. Wendy asks if he was genuine, and Stan says yeah, he really was. “Ask me again,” she says. “I don’t know,” he laughs nervously, “I’m kind of scared you’ll say no again.”  He pulls at his hair anxiously and averts his gaze, but she grabs his hand and makes him look into her eyes. “Ask me again,” she says, and he can’t deny her. “Okay, uhm… Wendy, I love you. Will you marry me?” He winces, pained, while he waits for her response. She smiles easily. “Yes.”

And that’s how Stan proposed to Wendy, drunk, and then proposed to her again, hungover. Still a better love story than Twilight.

They have a winter wedding. It snows on the day, and so Wendy and Stan both have white flakes in their black hair in all their wedding photographs outside the church. His horrible friends make dandruff jokes, but Stan and Wendy are so happy, they can’t even care. They’re shivering and smiling the whole day long.

Wendy keeps her last name, which Stan is disappointed about after all of those years writing Wendy Marsh in the margins of his notebooks, but he respects her decision.

They honeymoon in Hawaii. They’re a basic bitch couple, at the end of the day. (Butters sets them up, btw. Mahalo Rewards Card, biiitch!)

They were living together even before marriage, so they just continue to live like that for the first year of marriage. It isn’t long before Wendy gets pregnant though (Marsh men move fast, f.y.i., they end up being the first couple in their group of friends to have kids) and they quickly realise that their one-bedroom apartment probably isn’t the best place to raise a kid.

They end up moving to a cramped little house in a different area of their city. Stan wanted to move somewhere with a big backyard and a nearby park and quiet, safe roads for his kid to play in, like back where he grew up. But they had to stay in the city while Wendy finished her PhD.

It’s hard to make ends meet while Wendy’s working on her thesis and a part-time job while pregnant (with all of the discomfort that implies), and Stan’s trying to make enough money for the both of them doing whatever job he can. It’s a very poor time for them. There’s a lot of stress and a lot of arguments break out between them. They go to bed angry sometimes.

…But they always make up eventuality. It’s the hardest nights that make them cling the closest.

Stan and Wendy end up getting two babies for the price of one. They find out they’re having twins, and their stress just doubles.

They work themselves to exhaustion trying to save up enough money for their stork delivery, taking extra shifts at their work. They sleep whenever they’re not working. They forget to eat. Some days, they don’t even see each other. When they do, they can’t even muster the energy to just talk.

Sometimes they forget what it’s all for.

They remember again when Wendy finally gives birth, and they have their beautiful twin daughters. Stan holds one in each arm, and cries the whole time. Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny arrive pretty much instantaneously, being that over-dependent surrogate family they’ve always been to him, and all just hug the ever-loving shit out of Stan and coo over their new nieces.

Wendy gets a visit from all her girlfriends, too. Bebe, Nichole, Red, Heidi, Annie, and more, all come bearing gifts like the Wise Men at Jesus’ birth.

Having twins is no fucking party. Have you ever tried to soothe two babies crying at once? Stan and Wendy can’t take turns; they both have to get up in the night when the babies cry. The sleep deprivation is real, you guys.

Wendy has to take time off from her part-time job due to maternity leave, and she has to finish her thesis from home, so she stays and looks after the twins in the day. Stan goes to work all day, and then he takes over at night when he gets home.

Sometimes Gran’pa Randy and Gran’ma Sharon will take the kids off their hands for a weekend just so that Stan and Wendy can catch up on some fucking sleep. Stan has never loved them more than when they do that.

The twins grow up to be absolute terrors. Neither Stan nor Wendy know where they got their mischievous side from, but boy did they get it. Like, why are they so determined to stick pointy things in power outlets? Why do they constantly want to put small objects in their mouths? Why don’t they want to wear diapers? Why do they like to scream at the top of their lungs when their mom is working? Why do they think the wall is the best place to draw on with crayons? (Uncle Cartman is so proud, btw.)

Stan and Wendy swear up and down that they are never having another one. Never, ever. Nope. Not a single one. Two is more than enough. No.

Two years later, Wendy is pregnant again.

She’s finally finished her PhD though, so they think it’s finally time to move to that huge house with the big backyard in a nice neighbourhood like they always talked about.

“No, Stan, we’re not getting a dog too. We barely just got the girls potty-trained, and we still have to take them out on leashes. That’s all the dog we need right now.”

She gives birth to their son, Thomas, not long after. And thank goodness, he inherited his father’s quietness and is not as unnecessarily loud as his sisters. He also inherited his father’s sensitivity, however, and he cries at near-anything. A very fussy baby. He lives in his daddy’s arms, and he is literally, actually scared of his own shadow. His big sisters bully him a lot.

But they won’t allow anyone else to bully him. Like their mom, they stand up against any tyranny (that isn’t their own). Also like their mom, they are ferociously intelligent, and their parents fear them for it.

All three children have the same black hair and blue eyes as their mom and dad and grow up to be the absolute spit of their parents.

When Stan and Wendy look at their children, they quite literally forget all those years of hardship they went through; because what is that suffering, now, compared to this bliss?

Stan is such a sappy dad, in fact, that he writes songs about his children, for his children, and sings to them on his guitar.

Then the girls try to steal his guitar and almost break it with their careless strumming because they can’t appreciate nice things when they’re, what, six? Seriously, Stan, what did you think would happen?

But they quiet down and listen when Stan sings them a lullaby at bedtime.

Also, Stan is a pretty big push-over. His kids just need to bat their baby blues at them and he’s wrapped ‘round their tiny fingers. An ice-cream? You got it, honey. A pony? Anything for you, sweetie. What’s that, now? The assassination of the US president? Just hold on, cupcake, I’m on my way to D.C. right now.

I swear, Wendy “Don’t Fucking Test Me” Burger is the only force keeping that family from falling to the whims of their terrible twins and the wants of their infant son.

She makes sure they brush their teeth and eat their greens and look both ways before crossing the street. She has full folders of their medical and dental history organised in chronological order. She already has a college fund set up for all three kids that she keeps money flowing into monthly. She helps them with their homework (mostly Thomas, the girls do fine on their own). She’s a fucking scary force of nature, man.

…But maybe she lets Stan get that dog one day.

Uncle Kyle, Uncle Cartman, and Uncle Kenny visit often, and bring their own kids when they have them too. They reminisce while watching their children run around, playing and fighting, like they all used to do as kids. And they spoil Stan and Wendy’s children absolutely fucking rotten, and that doesn’t fucking help, guys, stop bringing the girls candy when we’re trying to teach them that locking their baby brother in the pantry is bad!!

Anyway, they’re a beautiful fucking family. I’m happy for them.

[helenofsimblr]

I have a LOT of catching up to do!

I was tagged to do the 57 facts thing by @fayts4 @tabbyrhsims4simblr and @midnightdevotions I think I got everybody if not you’ll have to forgive me my shoddy memory. But I have so many blogs to catch up on I am ready to cry!

1. Simblr is a secret thing for me, only my husband knows about it. Its my own guilty pleasure.

2. I recently became a parent and I am very much planning to have at least 1 more while there is still time!

3. I have done a lot of work on some really amazing stuff, none of which I can ever talk about due to secrecy agreements. 

4. I have a PhD in mathematics, so that proves I am super boring.

5. I tried my first cigarette at age 11, but didn’t touch it again till age 26 which was when I took it up, I would smoke anything from 0 to 10 cigs a day depending on the day I had. I quit cigs this year aged 32 in January. So hopefully didn’t do myself too much damage.

6. At age 29 I started smoking cigars on special occasions those are: my birthday, Christmas, New year, Valentines, and my wedding anniversary. Being the “badass” I am, I inhale every 5th drag for a little extra kick, even though you shouldn’t do that... I have not quit the cigars!

7. I have a younger brother and an older sister, I am the middle sibling.

8. I have only ever had 3 boyfriends in my life. And 1 “fancy man.”

9. I was engaged to be married to my second boyfriend, I basically twisted his arm into it because of my condition I was afraid I’d be some old woman called Ms instead of Mrs, he did not want to be married, not to me anyway. I should have realised that back then...

10. While I was engaged to boyfriend number 2 I had an affair which lasted about 8 months, it was with a colleague at work, and it was amazing! I don’t condone cheating, not in the least, but I realise, the sensible thing to do would have been to call off the engagement. 

11. I had giganstism (Acromegaly) as a child, I am 6 foot 7 inches tall bare foot. I do not like being this tall... not one bit. There are so many health issues that come with this, that it really isn’t worth it.

12. When I stopped growing, Acromegaly causes your face and hands and feet to carry on growing... I have size 14 feet. UK size. My hands are large enough that I can grip 4 tennis balls in one hand easily. 

13. I have no tattoos. I have never ever wanted a tattoo. I don’t actually like them very much.

14. I don’t have any piercings anywhere else beside my ears. I have 2 piercings in each ear.

15. I am a huge petrol head. I love cars and I will happily have a discussion with any man about them, or woman if she is so inclined!

16. Due to the facial changes caused by Acromegaly I decided to go and get cosmetic surgery in late 2017 to change my face back to a more softer look.

17. I love Star Trek. Captain Kirk is my favourite captain, he is the best. No discussion. If it wasn’t for Kirk there would be no Picard, no Sisko, no Janeway. None of those pretenders would be here!

18. I think Quentin Tarrantino and his films are vastly overrated and often incomprehensible and worst yet, non linear. 

19. I really dislike the taste of alcohol. The only drinks I get on well with are Guiness and Gin and tonics. Most others I don’t like. I hate wine.

20. I hated that stupid Pokemon Go craze!! The amount of people who walked into me in the street... That shit was dangerous.

21. My hair used to be naturally blonde, but in recent years its started to get darker, which is why I now use colouring to keep it where it was.

22. I should wear glasses to read, but I don’t bother.

23. While preggers I had gestational diabetes. Which was not fun at all.

24. I love swimming, but I hate the sea because I am afraid of whats in it. Sharks, jellyfish, all sorts of wonderful, yet horrid creatures designed to kill and maim!

25. When I was doing my PhD, somebody on my research team literally took about 80% of my thesis content and used it in their thesis. I had  no time to appeal or go through proper channels as I already had a job lined up, and was due to have my pituitary tumor removed, therefore, my only option was to redo 80% of my thesis. 

26. I am not religious (at least not in any organised way), however, I find the theory of how the universe came into being utterly laughable. A big bang... seriously?? If before the universe, there was nothing, where did the shit that exploded come from? Its bullshit. Truth is, nobody knows for sure, but we’re so desperate to know that scientists will happily invent theories to fit what few facts they have.

27. Despite not being religious, I firmly believe in existence after death. I say existence, not life, there is a difference. I have seen what would be colloquially referred to as a “ghost” when I was 13 years old.

28. I love the old pulp sci fi, things like Lost in Space, and voyage to the bottom of the sea

29. My favourite foods are pizzas. I cannot get enough of them! In particular just bog standard pepperoni

30. I suck at sports. Any sport, and I suck at it.

31. I often worry about things so much I lose my perspective, I cannot help but worry and it usually leads to a cascade of worry and I may make poor decisions. 

32. I am part German. I can speak German, to a fashion... its not very good as I rarely use it.

33. I have regular chiropractic care and I have to say its worth every penny. I feel better physically now than I have in years! As a bonus, the IBS I suffered with, since I have been seeing my chiropractor has actually cleared up! 

34. I am currently trying to complete something on my bucket list, I am attempting to watch EVERY John Wayne film.

35. I hated Star Wars the Last Jedi. Shit film!

36. I have a cuddly toy from I was a baby which I still have! (I don’t sleep with it of course)

37. I love inappropriate/dirty jokes.

38. I am, somewhat, anti-abortion. I understand there is a time and a place for everything however, but given birth control and access to morning after pills... 

39. I am not political, I loathe politicians. None of them have a clue what it is like to be in the real world. Also... why do we have Ministers of health who have never been a nurse or doctor? And so forth... doesn’t make sense!

40. I have been married 3 years now. 

41. I cannot bend over and touch my toes.

42. I recently took a woman to court and won! After she keyed (Scratched the car with a key) my Range Rover from bumper to bumper in the supermarket. 

43. I hate shopping. I find it so tedious and inconvenient. I honestly do not understand how other females can find this a pleasurable activity!

44. I have never tried any illegal drugs in my life.

45. Apparently I was late performing all my children milestones. Walking, talking and potty training. I took months longer than my siblings did.

46. I find it really hard to go to the toilet in a public toilet. It disturbs me.

47. I hate it when people tell me “You’re late.” As though I have no concept or track of time. I usually reply with “I was quite aware before you pointed it out.” I never apologise for being late, unless I know that my being late was definitely my fault.

48. I am often amused by simblr. Especially at all these “dramas” that pop up round here. Particularly over custom content and how it should never be uploaded by anybody but the creator or changed or whatever... did I mention how somebody took 80% of my PhD thesis and used it in their work? Oh yes. Point number 25.

49. If I go for ice cream, doesn’t matter where it is, I will always go for vanilla.

50. White chocolate is my favourite chocolate of all. So sweet and creamy...

51. I am allergic to penicillin.

52. I love superhero films. Particularly the Marvel ones. I think Marvel do better films than DC but DC do better animated films / television than Marvel do.

53. I think Nolan’s batman trilogy is overrated speaking of superhero films.

54. Speaking of films, only once ever have I walked out of the cinema. I remember I went to see Mr and Mrs Smith, and half way through I walked out. Have never seen the end of that film since.

55. My favourite Junk Food is bacon double cheeseburgers! 

56. Due to having acromegaly... every year... without fail... I have to go and get a camera up my ass! Yeah its great being tall(!)

57. I HATE pears. I mean hate them! I hate the texture of them in my mouth, I hate the feel of their skin, I hate EVERYTHING about pears. Even sat here typing this I get goosebumps. If I was trapped on a desert island where all there was to eat was Pears. I would starve to death!

I tag, @themoonglitch @rebelsoulsims @igglemouse and @flowers--girl  and @sparkiemonkey and @alittledaylight do this EPIC tag. If you think you can’t. or done it, or don’t want to cool. 

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WORK ETHIC AND COMPUTERS

Choose a project that satisfied that constraint would also satisfy the orthogonal constraint of solving users' problems—perhaps even with an additional energy that comes from trying to help people can also help you with investors. The seed funding business is finally getting some real competition. The VCs would get same number of shares for the money. And yet they're still surprised how well it ends up doing. It is by poking about inside current technology that hackers get ideas for the next one; they run pretty frequently on this route. Which means if you made a conscious effort to find ideas everyone else has paid; take it or leave it and not mind if they leave it. A List is selected. There will be lots of Java programmers, so if the programmers working for me to say for sure whether, e. Why? Worrying that you're late is one of them from doing it yourself.

Some people thought of them. We're at least one management person in the next twenty years will be like, but what it leads to. Paul Allen started Microsoft. The first thing you'll need is a browser connected to the rise of the middle class. Till recently graduating seniors had two choices: get a job. This article describes the spam-filtering techniques used in the spamproof web-based apps to share a single heap. Throw them off a cliff, and most of the startups we've funded have, and that don't include the prices of new inventions, the rich got this first. New York Times, which I called schlep blindness. Nearly all makers have day jobs early in their careers. It's much more about getting things right than most people think: startup investing does not consist of writing the compiler for your language, unless your language happens to be written by small companies.

Nothing could be better than other people at something. Some of the less imaginative ones, who had been Boylston Professor of Rhetoric at Harvard since 1851, became in 1876 the university's first professor of English. Then I realized: maybe not. The monolithic, hierarchical companies of the future. In our country, college entrance exams determine 70 to 80 percent of a person's future. If nuclear winter really is here, it is often described as a pie. Those in authority tend to be different kinds of companies to build little Web appliances. But we should expect founders to do it.

Usually you don't get taught much: you just work or don't work on big projects is, ironically, fear of wasting time. A friend of mine who knows a lot about law and business, but in the personalities of the people I know have problems with Internet addiction. Not eventually, right now. Programmers are unlike many types of workers in that the best way to get rich will do whatever they want. Doing Business in 2006, http://localhost/home/patrick/Documents/programming/python projects/UlyssesRedux/corpora/unsorted/marginal. That's why there's a separate word. For example, suppose you're just two founders and you want to take just enough money to last for a year using only the resources available. The most important thing was to stay upwind.

So if auto-retrieving spam filters would make the painting better if I changed that part? At one end you have people working on them discover a new way to focus one's energy, for example, or the brains to do it. But that was not how things worked at Viaweb. The advantage of a PhD program in French literature, but few realized it because startups were so out of fashion in 100 years will still be a bad thing. Even while I was in school, right? But that is exactly the point I'm making, though sloppier language than I'd use to make it an RFS. I'd advise you to be skeptical about claims of experience and connections. Log everything. It didn't shake itself free till a couple decades ago, geography was destiny for cities. The moment I do, I look them straight in the eye and say I'm designing a new dialect of Lisp, this ought to make him one.

You can compile or run code while compiling, and read or compile code at runtime. In the process of applying is inevitably so arduous, and the latter because the whole social thing was tapped out. But if you want to make a Japanese silicon valley, I suspect, mostly inadvertantly so. But when you use the phrase ramen profitable to describe the increasing tendency of physical machinery to be replaced by apps running on tablets. The other approach, the big bang guys. And we know from experience whether patents encourage or discourage innovation, and the 4K of RAM was in a good position to notice trends in investing. Something similar has been happening for thousands of years, then switches polarity? I don't like content is the thesis of this essay, and even have bad service, and people who look like and perhaps are college students. So if you want to sell early for a tenth or a hundredth of what it would have seemed a miracle of workmanship. It's the job equivalent of the Welcome to Las Vegas sign: The Dish.

Any programming language can be divided into two parts: the editor, written in Lisp, we'd be pondering how to let our loved ones know of our utter failure; and on and on. Instead you'll be compelled to seek growth in other ways more accurate, because users' needs often change in response to disasters they've suffered, or probably more often by hiring people from bigger companies who bring with them customs for protecting against new types of disasters. As anyone who has written a PhD dissertation knows, the way they taught me to in elementary school, but it is at least the one about which individual startups' paths oscillate. Before I give a talk I can usually be found sitting in a corner somewhere with a copy of the server software running on Unix direct to users through the browser. And I've never heard more different explanations for anything parents tell kids than why they shouldn't swear. But it's a significant cause, and it would feel to merchants to use our software. There was that same odd atmosphere created by a giant rabbit, and always snapping their fingers before eating fish, Xes are also particularly honest and industrious.

Are you overlooking one of the reasons startups win. One reason we don't see corresponding variation in income. They think the decline is cyclic, he said that little desktop computers would never be suitable for use by large teams of mediocre programmers—languages with features that, like the founders of Yahoo and Google. Maybe that will help. And yet it's true. If they're really ambitious, they want to. You also have to want them; you have to do so but be content to work for.

[garudabluffs]

The Eerie Parallels Between COVID-19 and the Plague

One of the earliest things you talk about in this piece is the remarkable parallels between what happened back in the 1300s, a virus that started in Asia, that spread to Italy and other places that really parallels what we’re seeing today.

Parag Khanna: “Yes, that’s exactly right, it is truly uncanny. If you change one letter of the province where the plague broke out in Northwestern China, that was Hebei, and you change it to Hubei, that’s where Wuhan is the capital where the current virus broke out. They’re obviously in the same country, the plague spread westward along the Silk Road, it reached Iran and devastated more than half the population of Persia, which at the time was, so it’s called a connate, a protector of the territory of the Mongol empire. It reached Genoa, entered Italy in the year, I think 1341 through the port of Genoa.                 Parag Khanna: “You have of course today the main clusters of this being similarly China, Iran, Italy, and it’s not necessarily a coincidence, as I point out in the article. Iran and Italy are two of China’s major trade partners along the Belt and Road Initiative, which you mentioned at the outset. There are really these eerie parallels around how travelers and traders have enabled the spread of this virus. Given the long incubation period, it’s very difficult for us to know how many people are genuinely effected and obviously the weaknesses in these countries’ health systems that have been revealed. And by the way, it did spread from Italy back in the 14th century northward and decimated so much of the European population and of course so many Chinese people died as well.”

“This is really the core thesis of my Future is Asian book. I did not call the book The Future is Chinese, I called the book the Future is Asian for a good reason because China has never been number one in the world and it’s never been number one in all of Asia, because Asia, inherently, is so diverse. You have the Indian civilization, Japanese civilization, Russia is actually an Asian power, Persia, I mean Iran, Korea, Australia. India, the United States is still a major military presence, there are many balancing powers to contain China’s rise, so the notion that has taken hold over the last 20 years, that China is inevitably destined to be number one, and the prominent global power on the planet Earth was always a complete myth, it was always wrong. I think that this will just be one more nail in the coffin of that very bad and dangerous idea. It doesn’t mean that China isn’t powerful, I make very clear that China is a superpower. You know, 15 years ago I started saying China is definitively a global superpower. I was even writing about Chinese influence in Latin America and all across Africa, so there’s no question that China is a global power with a very significant influence worldwide. That does not mean that China will be number one in the world and it will not even be number one, necessarily, will not even dominate Asia.”

“I live in Singapore and you’ve probably seen that, whether it’s the Harvard study or many other, Goodwill Health Organization and experts like Laurie Garrett at the council on foreign relations, they’ve all said, “If the whole world had a public health system like Singapore’s, we would have a small fraction of the outbreaks.” This is the first country that became a poster outside of China because it’s not far from China, you have a huge amount of travel every single day, dozens of flights arriving from Chinese cities. This was the first country outside of China to reach a hundred cases of the virus and zero people have died, and I’m living here right now. I’m speaking to you while looking out the window at a very calm and peaceful landscape of palm trees and so forth.

Life continues as normal, not a single Singaporean person who’s died, and let’s bear in mind this is the fastest aging country in the world with the most lopsided aging demographics, just like Japan. This is a small version of Japan, so according to the demographic map of this virus, a hell of a lot of old Singaporeans should be dead right now, and instead the answer is zero. That’s just a fact, this is a place I’ve come to live the last few years and you have to admire the transparency of the system. They published on the front page of the newspaper every day what to do if you feel sick. They made a virus test absolutely free and open so that no one fears that they can’t afford it or that they wouldn’t be able to afford quarantine. Everything is completely free, they had videos made to air on television and everyone will know what to do if you don’t feel well and they encourage people to self quarantine, if you’ve been infected.

Just every possible sensible, commonsensical thing you would expect.

Just every possible sensible, commonsensical thing you would expect. If you and I as nonpublic health experts were to make a list of the 20 things you would want to do to contain a virus, they’ve done all 20 of those things. Again, they lived through SARS 15 years ago, so they learned the lessons, they embedded the best practices. Again, this is probably the only country that’s getting the credit now for having contained it, but it is a very small country. But it doesn’t mean that larger countries can’t do it.”

READ MORE   Full Text Transcript: https://whowhatwhy.org/2020/03/16/the-eerie-parallels-between-covid-19-and-the-plague/

More than Just a Virus                                        March 16,2020

“Italy was the only G7 country to sign on to the Belt and Road initiative with Sister-City Agreements throughout Italy.  Some of those sister cities have been the hardest hit by corona.  Iran has also suffered with increased infections as government officials have been especially affected, as if they were specifically targeted.  Iran has had a comprehensive strategic partnership with China since 2016 and in defiance of US sanctions, Iran has continued to import embargoed products from China while selling its oil to China.

The question arises why, out of 175 countries in the world, that those two countries, in particular, have specifically experienced the strongest coronavirus presence than any other. It can be expected that the ‘coincidence’ has not escaped the notice of the Chinese, Iranian or Italian governments.”

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a recent video revealed massive corruption at the CDC and WHO with both in the vaccine business rather than as regulatory agencies conducting oversight on Big Pharma and protecting the public health.  Kennedy reported that with an $11 billion annual budget and a revolving door with industry, the CDC owns its own vaccine patents and collects millions in profits each year.   Identifying the WHO  as a ‘sock puppet’ for Big Pharma and Big Money, Kennedy said the WHO  is controlled top to bottom by the pharmaceutical industry which provides half of the WHO’s budget.

Dr. Judy Mikovits, PhD, molecular biologist and former researcher with the National Cancer Institute, blew the whistle on contaminated virus being used in human vaccines.  When she refused to renounce her study, she was fired and arrested  in 2011.  Here are her comments on the efficacy of the coronavirus as “part of the plague of corruption.”

Man Made or Mother Natural

While the origin of coronavirus is yet to be definitively nailed down, whether it might be a military bio-weapon, whether the virus leaked out of a lab through human error or whether, it was deliberately released into the public realm.  Two experienced scientists (including a former NSA counterterror analyst) are suggesting that the Covid-19 appears to be man made while their research paper, which has been withdrawn from internet circulation, concluded that

“In summary, somebody was entangled with the evolution of 2019-nCoV coronavirus. In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host, the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.”

“With an estimated 250,000 Americans hospitalized with the flu/influenza since December,  how many of those were misdiagnosed?   How many sick people believe they have the coronavirus when they are only diagnosed with the flu?  With no testing in the US, how accurate are any of the statistics, globally or domestically, confirming the number of infections or deaths attributed to corona or the flu/influenza? “

“If we have learned anything since 1963, it is to question everything that Big Government, Big Media and Big Money tell us as there is always more than the ‘official’ story. With too many unknowns still to be answered, there is no doubt that a bio-critter of uncertain nefariousorigins, perhaps electro magnetic 5G oriented, is loose within Earth’s atmosphere.  

As we are all collectively, as One Universe, experiencing the potential of a coronavirus infection, we have been assured that the outbreak originated in a fish market in Wuhan, China’s eighth largest city with a population of 11 million.  That is the largely unchallenged conclusion since China is well known for its extensive network of high tech labs and since the SARS virus began in China last year.

At first glance, it seems a passing curiosity that the next two most extensively affected countries with corona infections, each disparate from China and each other, have extensive trade relations with China.  In defiance of science, why would Italy be the most infected country outside of China?

Italy was the only G7 country to sign on to the Belt and Road initiative with Sister-City Agreements throughout Italy.  Some of those sister cities have been the hardest hit by corona.  Iran has also suffered with increased infections as government officials have been especially affected, as if they were specifically targeted.  Iran has had a comprehensive strategic partnership with China since 2016 and in defiance of US sanctions, Iran has continued to import embargoed products from China while selling its oil to China.

The question arises why, out of 175 countries in the world, that those two countries, in particular, have specifically experienced the strongest coronavirus presence than any other. It can be expected that the ‘coincidence’ has not escaped the notice of the Chinese, Iranian or Italian governments.

With the complexity and uncertainty of the coronavirus. it would not be the first crisis where TPTB have misled a trusting public. It would, however, be wise to treat the virus with respect as a potent pathogen of consequence.  In case you had not noticed prior to the corona, there has been a titanic struggle for global dominance underway with the US, Israel, Russia and China as its sovereign representatives.  The most current manifestation of that struggle, through happenstance or not, being the coronavirus outbreak.

While there are references to the virus spreading considerably through increased exposure, getting worse before it gets better, it is another curiosity that there is no optimism as the US flu season  (December – February), peaks and  winds down in March.  So why the panic? If the coronavirus is a ‘normal’ virus, it should already be peaking just as it is in China and South Korea. If it is not a ‘normal’ virus, if it is mutated to reappear in the future or if it is man made or a bio-weapon, then we have a different problem. All of which begs the question which Federal agency is currently testing the virus to determine its origin, when will we know the results of that test and when will the virus peak?

China’s National Health Commissioner reports that the coronavirus has ‘peaked’ in Wuhan with only single digit new cases and no new cases in the Hubei province.  The World Health Organization (WHO) agrees with that assessment.  While South Korea closed its borders in early February, it also believes that the Covid-19 has peaked.  Russia closed its borders in January and has reported 28 cases with no fatalities.

Big Media is portraying the Covid-19 as if it is   here to stay in perpetuity rather than a flu that will run its natural course.  Before the virus peaks, TPTB must move quickly if it is intent on institutionalizing those initiatives to tighten control and censorship; to destabilize what remains as a ‘normal’ environment withmandatory medical martial law and mandatory vaccinations.   In other words, not unlike 911, any crisis can be used to create a new collectivization of society with a centralized global control as the new reality,

The Governor of California has suggested a  ban on public gatherings of 250 people with the CDC Director suggests a 50 person ban.  The real possibility is that, once adopted, the ban will never be lifted.  The NY Fed Bank moved quickly to approve a $1.5 Trillion in ‘short-term loan’ to the banks for ‘unusual’ disruption of services during the corona virus smells more like a backdoor bailout for Wall Street during the recent downtown

WHO and CDC and Mandatory Vaccines

An out-of-control pandemic encourages the public to rely on the  CDC or  WHO (World Health Organization) as  definitive ‘medical experts’’ on public health concerns. While both are thoroughly unscrupulous in their compromises to Big Pharma’s dominance, the CDC has no reliable test kits for coronavirus and is conducting no tests to determine the source of the virus.  True medical agencies would be encouraging the public to strengthen their immune system and natural antibodies with doses of Vitamin C to ward off a head cold or respiratory infection.

Coronavirus Outbreak, a Global Public Health Emergency?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a recent video revealed massive corruption at the CDC and WHO with both in the vaccine business rather than as regulatory agencies conducting oversight on Big Pharma and protecting the public health.  Kennedy reported that with an $11 billion annual budget and a revolving door with industry, the CDC owns its own vaccine patents and collects millions in profits each year.   Identifying the WHO  as a ‘sock puppet’ for Big Pharma and Big Money, Kennedy said the WHO  is controlled top to bottom by the pharmaceutical industry which provides half of the WHO’s budget.

Dr. Judy Mikovits, PhD, molecular biologist and former researcher with the National Cancer Institute, blew the whistle on contaminated virus being used in human vaccines.  When she refused to renounce her study, she was fired and arrested  in 2011.  Here are her comments on the efficacy of the coronavirus as “part of the plague of corruption.”

Regarded as the UN’s public health leader, the WHO director generalDr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said, “We have made the assessment that #COVID19 can be characterized as a pandemic” without providing convincing infection or death rate statistics,  More recently, Ghebreyesus  refused to consider when  the virus might peak with “this outbreak could still go in any direction” – whatever that means.

Man Made or Mother Natural

While the origin of coronavirus is yet to be definitively nailed down, whether it might be a military bio-weapon, whether the virus leaked out of a lab through human error or whether, it was deliberately released into the public realm.  Two experienced scientists (including a former NSA counterterror analyst) are suggesting that the Covid-19 appears to be man made while their research paper, which has been withdrawn from internet circulation, concluded that

“In summary, somebody was entangled with the evolution of 2019-nCoV coronavirus. In addition to origins of natural recombination and intermediate host, the killer coronavirus probably originated from a laboratory in Wuhan.”

in addition, the Biondt.org published a paper with the findings that the coronavirus was engineered with ‘key structural proteins” identifying “four inserts of amino acid sequences homologous to amino acid sequences in HIV 1.” This paper was also withdrawn with the publisher warning that its conclusions should not be regarded as ‘conclusive.’

The Gates Foundation, the WHO and the European Commission are benefactors of the Pirbright Institute which owns the  bio-safety lab-level 4 lab (BSL-4) in China which owns the coronavirus patent. The US patent application was filed in 2015 and granted in 2018. It is worth noting that the Fort Detrick bio weapons lab in Maryland with a history of violations, was shut down in August, 2019 due to ‘safety concerns related to a ”loss of pathogens.”

Event 201

In what might be considered another coincidence, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation partnered with the John Hopkins Center for Health Security and the World Economic Forum to conduct a five-hour simulated exercise specific to a coronavirus pandemic. The simulation was held in NYC on October 18thand was referred to as Event 201.   The event, which included American business, public health, government leaders and military officials, occurred  six weeks before the outbreak occurred in Wuhan although there are now unconfirmed reports of earlier exposures elsewhere.

In another coincidence, the 2019 Military World Games began in Wuhan on October 19th with 300 American military athletes in attendance.  It has been reported that five unnamed athletes were hospitalized during the game with an unidentified infection.

As if on a dry run, Event 201 addressed how the world should respond to an coronavirus outbreak – with a special focus on how to control ‘conspiracy’ news with  a Pandemic Emergency Board formed to manage the pandemic. The Chinese government was not invited to participate in the simulation.

READ MORE https://counterinformation.wordpress.com/2020/03/16/more-than-just-a-virus/

[aftaabmagazine]

Back to my Roots, Back to Bamiyan

By Zemaryalai Tarzi

Translated from the French by Nadia Tarzi

From the August 2004 issue of Afghan Magazine | Lemar - Aftaab

[ caption: Bamiyan statues from "Adventure in Afghanistan" from Hal, Halla and David Linker's television travelogue series, "The Wild, the Weird, and the Wonderful", circa 1973]

Renowned Afghan archaeologist  Zemaryalai Tarzi tells his story about his love for the valley of Bamiyan.

When in 1967 France Daniel Schlumberger, my professor at the time, asked me to defend a thesis on the Buddhist antiquities of Bamiyan, my interest in the peaceful valley increased.

Until then I had not yet visited nor walked the grounds of Bamiyan and knew it only through pictures. The trip from Strasbourg to Paris and then to Kabul was long. Arriving in Kabul after six years, I noticed the first taxis in front of the airport of the Afghan capital.

I was no longer the carefree twenty-one-year-old student arriving in France. And after several years of studying at Strasbourg University, I acquired a certain scientific responsibility. Until I reached Bamiyan, I thought I had it all figured out. But it is only when I arrived in front of the great cliff, dominating the valley to the north, that I was left speechless. I stood in front of the Manhattan of the Silk Road and was minuscule by the Hindu Kush idols.

Thus I realized that photos do not relate accurately the true vision or the dimensions of what is extraordinary and grand. I was completely seduced. Those very last weeks of the serenity of the summer 1967 inhabit me today. I could only become more humble in front of such devotion, which demanded the very best of artists who dedicated their talent and "savoir-faire."

Without lingering into metaphysics, I'll say that I found in Bamiyan a source of inspiration, and it is thanks to it that my vocation as an archaeologist definitely began to express itself. It was also on that day when I understood how I would have to stand up and defend this peaceful and pure place and its name, this place where my ashes one day will be scattered.

When in 1973 I became the Director General of Archaeology and Conservation of Historical Monuments, these feelings had increased greatly. Each trip I undertook was satisfying, and each question I asked myself had oftentimes fascinating yet painful answers because Bamiyan was placed on one of the main roads of the Silk Route, which connected India to China. And so from the top of its mountains, cliffs, towns, forts, monuments and its giant Buddha statues, Bamiyan has seen passing caravans of precious and rare goods, pilgrims, intellectuals, soldiers and unfortunately slaves and hordes of barbarians devastating everything on their passage, while for the most part, sparing its archaeological jewel.

Then came the times of incomprehension when one attacked idols. Aurengzeb (r. 1658-1707), one of the sovereigns of Mogol India, used the Bamiyan Buddha statues as practice targets for his canons. Despite the attacks of this fanatic iconoclast, the wounded Bamiyan Buddhas continued to stand guard in the face of history. One would have thought they were there for eternity. But when fanatics mingle with politics, the results are hopeless: the giant Buddha statues of Bamiyan were taken hostage by the Taliban. Their destruction is a shame for our humanity as a whole. The empty niches that used to shelter the colossal statues stand as pages of history, the witnesses for generations to come.

My return to Afghanistan in 2002 after 23 years of absence was the most moving time of my life. Coming down from the plane in Kabul, I kissed the tarmac cement at the airport of my hometown; at that very moment, I had not yet measured the extent of the devastation that had hit Kabul. Once outside of the airport, I was taken by the desolation and the ruin.

Kabul the Stalingrad of Central Asia was not destroyed for a noble cause, nor following a war fighting a foreign enemy but by rival factions whom each wanted the best part of the cake.

Poor Afghanistan, poor Kabul and poor Afghan people who no longer have a smile at the corner of their lips, humiliated people, despoiled people, suffering and orphan, who owes you reparation?

In Bamiyan, the disaster was almost imperceptible for the niches in the shade did not at the first glimpse reveal the absence of the colossal Buddha statues. It was a silent disaster worthy of the tranquility of the valley. Upon my arrival, I did not want to see the gaping niches from up close. It was the next morning at 6 a.m., from the roof of the house where I slept, that with my camera's zoom I saw the disaster.

Away from everyone I cried and grieved Bamiyan. Since that morning, I feel neither joy nor pain but a sort of emptiness. Still, now I meditate on the actions of the Taliban -- history will be the judge. As far as I am concerned, I am wounded forever.

Will my discovery of the 1000 feet long reclining Buddha statue give me hope or a bandage for my pride? No, it won't. Only balm on the hearts of the Bamiyan inhabitants and my own, for since 1967 I am one of them.

About Zemaryalai Tarzi Born in 1939 in Kabul, Professor Zemaryalai Tarzi completed his studies under the supervision of Professor Daniel Schlumberger, in the process obtaining three PhDs.

From 1973 to 1979, he was Director of Archaeology and Preservation of Historical Monuments of Afghanistan as well as the Director General of the Archaeology Institute of Kabul.

He later directed the excavations in Bamiyan and Hadda on the sites of Tape Shotor and Tape Tope Kalan. Exiled to France in 1979, he assumed the post of Professor of Eastern Archaeology at the March Bloch University of Strasbourg, France. He is currently Director for the French Archaeological Missions for the Surveys and Excavations of Bamiyan. Professor Tarzi is the author of some sixty articles and books. Also, he is President for the Association for the Protection of Afghan Archaeology, Inc. (APAA) based in San Rafael, California.

Read More about Professor Zemaryalai Tarzi

Searching for Buddha in Afghanistan Smithsonian Magazine, December 2010

Bamiyan:  Professor Tarzi’s Survey and Excavation Archaeological Mission, 2003

Renowned Afghan Archaeologist Zemaryalai Tarzi Discusses Bamiyan

Afghan Treasures Association for the Protection of Afghan Archaeology Blog

[prolapsingintothemaelstrom]

Renegade (pt. 3)

Another wolf-finds-his-mate story, but I kicked it up a notch and created a whole new world around it.

Pairing: Chanyeol x Reader

Genre: Supernatural (EXO as wolves, but more species involved in the storyline)

Word count: 5039 words

Warning: None!

New to the series? Start your adventure here: Prologue (Don’t skip it, it contains info you’ll need in a small part of this chapter) The posts will always contain a link to the next part, unless that part hasn’t been posted yet.

Part 3

The light that shone through the open windows, brightened the whitely painted parquet floor and wheat brown walls of Chanyeol’s bedroom. Whereas last night, the artificial lightening from his simple pendant Scandinavian ceiling light gave the feel of a cosy bedroom, the atmosphere in the room was now more heavenly. The sound of whistling birds filled the room and small details such as the tree stump nightstands, his carefully located acoustic guitar and the present house plants even made one overlook the small mess on his desk.

Chanyeol felt very comfortable. Despite his legs being tangled up with (y/n)’s under the sheets, the feeling of his arms holding her close and her perfume, now perfected in his presence, satisfied his inner wolf immensely and he wanted time to stop so he could stay like that forever.

He opened his eyes, curious to (y/n)’s sleeping figure. As her head was nestled snugly in his neck, he carefully tried to lower himself without waking her to be at eye-height with her.

He had never studied someone’s aspects up close with that much interest. She had spider’s-leg, succubus-black eyelashes that fluttered over her grape shaped eyes, sliver-of-moon eyebrows, a pert nose and velvety soft lips that made him want to kiss her. As he studied her, he could not withhold the urge to touch her. Gently, he removed his palm from her waist and combed her hair behind her seashell-shaped ears, stroking the same smooth skin several times with feather light pressure.

It was nice, being sane around her without having to take any wolfsbane-oil. Last night calmed him down, and he knew he was safe for at least the rest of the day, safe for the last day of mating season. He was in love; In love with her peacefully sleeping figure, in love with the individual that was her. He gently placed the palm of his hand on her waist again, hoping she’d continue to sleep for another while.

Now is not the time to revel in her presence, Chanyeol thought. Last night had been a reckless move on his part, a move to which he now had to figure a solution should he not want either of them to suffer the consequences. The first sexual intercourse with one’s mate, the first mating, strengthened the link between mates and absence sickness became a real threat. Chanyeol had to find a way to keep her close from now on.

I’m in love with you. Is that how you say it? He wondered. He imagined himself softly whispering it in her ear as she woke up, but figured it was too straightforward to use it as a morning-greeting. He thought of different scenarios in which he would greet her good morning, but a large variety of possible answers from her part came to mind; Good morning, Hey, Oh shit I’ve got to go, Oh my god what did I do, Hey there handsome, … It was fascinating how he could come up with such a range of possibilities that even included some that didn’t seem realistic; You raped me, You took my precious flower asshole, I hope your parents don’t mind me being your student, Who are you, What have you done to me, Get out, I hope I’m pregnant, ...

He had to confess to her. Today. Or at the very least, get her to go out with him regularly. It was only now, that he was able to understand how all the girls that had confessed to him back in the past, must have felt even when he rejected them gently. You can’t reject someone without breaking a heart. He thought about how (y/n) could remind him that he was her lecturer, and how he would answer her. He would stop being a lecturer for her and tell his thesis to go to hell.

Another ten minutes of deep thinking further, he was starting to lose faith. He needed help. He cautiously untangled his limbs from (y/n)’s and got up from the bed, looking down as he felt that he was standing on fabrics that weren’t his. He was standing on her clothes. Apparently they didn’t get as far as he had believed them to go. He made no sound as he put on new boxers, black sweats and a grey tank top, stealing some glances back at (y/n) from time to time, until he left the room.

“Noona”, he called for his older sister, standing in the hallway in front of her door and he knocked a few times. As expected, she was awake and opened the door cheerfully, being a morning-person.

“Good morning. Come on in”, she said and she immediately turned around towards her desk to pick up the second earring that paired with the one she was putting in as she navigated through her room.

“You have to leave for work?” Chanyeol asked. His sister was a news anchor at CBS, and he never knew her schedule. Sometimes she worked on weekends as well.

“No, I’m going out with Tae Song this afternoon and I thought it’d be easier to get ready since I was in my morning routine anyways”, she explained, plugging in the other earring and turning around to face Chanyeol again. “You remember? Tae Song? The cute guy that now works as our director of photography?”.

“Why do that?” Chanyeol questioned, leaning against the doorframe. “You know he’s not your mate. Why waste time on him?” he raised an eyebrow at her.

“Because it is becoming really embarrassing at my age to not have dated”, she exclaimed. “Talking about mates”, she changed the subject and grasped her hair brush from her desk, “There’s a female in your room, I can smell it. The boys told me you met (y/n) at the festival last night. I guess she slept in?” She brushed through her hair for the fifth time that morning and checked with her hands whether it was still soft enough.

“Yeah about that”, Chanyeol closed the door behind him and walked inside. “We had sex”.

“You what?” His older sister immediately stopped in her tracks and eyed Chanyeol as if he had just made the biggest mistake of his entire life.

“I know”, Chanyeol sighed and walked over to her bed, seating himself on the edge with his head down.

“That was tremendously irresponsible of you”, his sister pointed out, following him with her eyes.

“I know”. The poor male raised his feet onto the bed, leaning his chin on his knees and holding onto his legs.

"Chanyeol, your bodies have gotten to know each other. They'll want to be close to each other and if you don't obey, you'll get absence sickness. Seeing each other in lectures and recitations is not going to cut it anymore. Your body is going to retaliate".

"I know".

"Stop saying that you know. If you know then why did you do it?"

"I couldn't help myself", Chanyeol defended himself. He thought back of last night, how he was already struggling to stay gentle with (y/n). He remembered how he managed to keep his actions in check using a lot of willpower but glitched once, when he asked her if she was ready for the real deal. That sounded way out of place. Luckily, he had managed to redeem himself.

“Pabo! You know you have to be patient with human mates, take it slow".

"I've known her for three weeks already. Sehun and his mate-"

"They saw each other every day for two weeks. They dated for two weeks since the moment they met. Two weeks. That’s fourteen dates. How many did you have?” his older sister asked and she witnessed Chanyeol burying his head in his knees. “Right. I thought so".

“What do I do?”. It was barely impossible to hear him, the sound muffled by the position he was in.

“We’ll figure it out. Don’t worry”, his Noona plopped down next to him and caressed his back. Chanyeol had been blessed with an older sister like her. She was always there for him. She would scold him, but then she would do everything she could to help him. “So… Let me get this straight. You two had sex. She’s now in your room. Did she mention anything to you about loving you or liking you? Is she still sleeping or have you two spoken already?”

“She’s still sleeping. Neither of us confessed anything last night”, Chanyeol summarized the facts.

“Ok…” His sister nodded. “Let me think” and she got up to pace around the room whilst Chanyeol raised his head towards her, feeling hopeless. “If I were her…” She thought. “Hmmm… Ah!”

“What?”

“I know!” She exclaimed. “What we’re going to do is… We’re going to make her feel at home and make sure she feels she’s welcome here despite being your student. That’s very important. And you, you’re going to tell her you like her”

“Ya! I could’ve come up with such a plan myself. Telling her I like her isn’t easy”, Chanyeol got up, slightly irritated. “Do you know how hard it is to mentally prepare yourself for the thousand ways she can reject me? I’m too nervous to do this. Besides, I don’t even know if I can get myself to say those words”.

“That’s why girls write love letters”.

“I’m not a girl, I’m not writing a love letter and perfuming it with roses”, Chanyeol crossed his arms stubborn.

“Then find another way”, his sister urged him. “Think, Chanyeol. You're aiming for a PhD; how hard can it be to use your brains for something else than Neuroscience?”

Chanyeol kept pacing around his sister’s room. With his guitar, he had been working on a song for (y/n) in his free time, but the song wasn’t finished yet and he did not trust he could sing clearly without a twenty-minute warm-up. He first wanted to perfect it before singing it to her.

It felt like the Gods were helping him when his eyes caught sight of a small object on his sister’s desk. It was the perfect plan. “Hey, do you mind if I lend your voice recorder?”

   Chanyeol snuck into his room again, holding onto some clothes he had lend from his older sister. He tip-toed towards the bathroom that was shared between his and Kyungsoo’s room and left them there, suddenly hearing (y/n)’s cries.

“Dad”, he heard her twist and turn her head in the bed and he ran towards her, finding her having a nightmare. She was pinching her closed eyes and sweat began to appear on her forehead.

Chanyeol climbed on to the bed and held her hand in his, gently rubbing his thumb on the back of her hand to soothe her. It worked miraculously. After a few seconds, (y/n)’s complexion relaxed and she smiled in her sleep. Soon after, she opened her eyes.

“I – uh. Sorry. You were having a bad dream”, Chanyeol quickly let go of (y/n)’s hand and pushed himself back as to not seem like he invaded her private space.

“No, thank you. It helped”, (y/n) pushed herself up against the headboard, her palms flat on the matrass.

“You were calling for your dad. Had a dream about him?”, Chanyeol was worried. She had been sleeping peacefully until he had left her.

“When I get nightmares I always call for my dad. It’s a habit. Whenever I’m scared or nervous I always call for him in my mind… but he never shows. My dad raised me, but left when I was twelve. My parents weren’t on the same page when it came to parenting. They’re opposites. My dad was always there for me and he was sweet and kind and loving, while my mom is very strict with a large variety of rules and she prefers for me to suffer so I can become a strong and independent woman. She’s the one who made my dad leave.”

“I’m sorry”, Chanyeol felt sorry for her, but somewhere he was happy that she shared that with him. They were getting closer.

“It’s not your fault. He sends me letters. And gifts”, (y/n) smiled. “Every birthday, every important event in my life such as high school graduation, start of college. He doesn’t even miss Christmas. Last year he got me-”, she stopped midsentence and scratched the back of her head. “Wow, I’m not sure what’s with me today. I never told anybody about any of this” and let her head drop, only to discover she was still naked and her boobs were out in the open for Chanyeol to watch. “Oh my god and especially not naked”, she grabbed the sheets and pulled it over her, her head included.

“I swear I wasn’t watching”, Chanyeol laughed. He hadn’t even given them attention; he had been too focused on what she was saying for him to notice that they were on display. “I left some of my sister’s clothes in the bathroom. You can take a shower and change there”. He rubbed his hand on the blob in the sheets, knowing her head was there. “I’ll get you some water in the meanwhile. Your body has slept for an entire night and needs to hydrate”, he smiled at her shyly hidden posture under the sheets and got off the bed, leaving the room. Nevertheless, he turned around once more to catch a glimpse of her cuteness.

   “I’m here”, Chanyeol’s sister walked in to the bedroom, her hands stuffed with several facial products.

“She just got out of the shower”, Chanyeol said, putting his guitar down. He had been trying to practice a little but was distracted by the scent of (y/n). She had used his male shower gel and it was a surprisingly attractive combination with her fragrance.

“Ah, perfect. I got Suho to help you out with that one thing, so don’t worry about that”, his sister walked towards the bathroom door.

“Noona”, Chanyeol called after her, wanting to say something but decided to hold his tongue.

“Don’t worry. I can sell the news, sure I can sell my little brother too”, she winked and knocked on the bathroom door. “(y/n)”, she called. “I’m Park Yoora. Chanyeol’s older sister. Mind if I come in?”

“Make-up remover, thought you might need it”, Yoora shook the bottle as she opened the door to the bathroom and witnessed (y/n) trying to clean her face with whatever she found in the bathroom that was used solely by males.

“You’re an angel”, (y/n) said and bowed to introduce herself. “I’m Jang (y/n)”. Yoora slipped into the bathroom and closed the door behind her, but that didn’t mean Chanyeol couldn’t hear their conversation anymore. “You’re the news anchor?”

“Yes. That’s me. Look, I’ve got you completely covered. I’ve brought makeup removal, facial cleansing oil or, should you have oily skin, I also have milk based cleanser, tonic, essence, moisturizer”, Chanyeol heard all the bottles being thrown in the sink. So that’s how she was going to make (y/n) feel at home. “Overkill for your usual routine?”

“Only slightly. I don’t use essences or ampoules or masks or serums”.

“You wouldn’t say? From what I can see you have perfect skin. Can I touch it? Oooh it’s soft. Blessed with good skin and good features. You could pose as a siren”, Chanyeol bit his tongue in horror and shook the moment he heard the word Siren. Why wasn’t his sister cautious with her words?

“Pose as a what?”

“Ah nothing. I just meant… In Greek mythology you’ve got these women who looked very attractive and could sing and they lured sailors over and then ate them… Sirens. Man-eaters… You look like you could get any guy… In my head it sounded a lot less offensive, sorry”. Truth to be told, Sirens were a real thing. There were very few of them, maybe ten alive at the same time. Sirens, like witches, were part of nature and some were born without having magical parents. Unlike witches however, Sirens usually ate their men before they could get to the actual deed of procreation, which explained why there weren’t so many of them. None of them had sexual intercourse.

In the real world, Siren’s didn’t eat sailors but young males to keep their beauty and their psychological powers. They could compel anyone. They were masters of the mind and were considered amongst the most dangerous of creatures. They could adapt anyone’s memories, make people forget things, make people do things against their will, they could control anyone. To his luck, Chanyeol had never encountered one before and his mate couldn’t be one of them, or he’d be dead by now.

“It’s ok. I get where you were coming from, but a little farfetched”, (y/n) replied. Chanyeol let out a sigh, his sister managed to save the situation.

“You know… my brother usually doesn’t bring girls home. I know you’re one of his students but considering your ages I can understand that things turn out differently than what seems right. If my brother brought you here, I believe he thinks you’re special and if that’s the case, I need you to know that nobody here will judge either of you, no matter what you decide to do”.

“News travels fast, doesn’t it?”

“As a news anchor I can only confirm that”.

His sister had only left a few minutes ago and Chanyeol was patiently waiting for (y/n) to come out of the bathroom, sitting on his bed. He looked up as he heard her touch the doorknob to come out.

“Hey”, Chanyeol held up (y/n)’s red high heels. “I’ve got your red heels…”, he imagined how those would match the classic outfit Yoora composed of a light blue jeans and a white shirt. He looked up at her, trying to project the image onto her and out of his own will, traced the lines of her necklace that disappeared into her cleavage. That goddamn necklace. Just remembering its blackness already made him shudder.

"High heels in the morning, I prefer not”, (y/n) shook her head as she smiled. “I want to walk around flat for a while".

"Of course. Do you need me to ask my sister-”

“I’m fine. I like walking around bare-footed. Even outside. My mom tells me to wear high heels the entire time, so I like walking around without them. I always do it when she’s not watching”. Chanyeol felt rejected, but nodded. “Would you know what the fastest way to the city is? I’ve slept in late and I’ve got one of those big Sunday family lunch dinners to attend to”. Every time (y/n) said she had to leave or wanted to leave, it left a cut on Chanyeol’s heart. He wanted her to stay with him and not leave anymore.

“I can drive you. It’s Sunday so there aren’t much busses to the city. Two today, I think”, he suggested instead.

   (y/n) was waiting outside while Chanyeol was watching her from a window in the grand hallway of the Main mansion. He had told her he forgot his car keys and would go grab them, but he was planning something else. He had already send Suho a text to inform him of (y/n)’s location and that he was waiting for action.

This was the only way he could do it. He was too scared to say it out loud in front of her. Despite his looks, Chanyeol was a very sensitive person and worried too much, especially when he had to overcome the problems he had caused himself from being too impulsive.

There she was. Chanyeol saw a little girl, one of his wolf-pack, arriving with three balloons. There was one green, one yellow and one red balloon. She walked steady towards (y/n) and called for her once she was almost there.

“Unnie”. (y/n) looked at the little girl and squatted through her legs to make it easier for her.

“Hey there, little girl. Some beautiful balloons you’ve got there”, she beamed as she glanced at them.

“They told me to give them to you”.

“To me?!” (y/n) pointed at herself, her mouth slightly agape out of surprise.

“Together with this”. In her small hands, the girl had a small device that looked like an old mp3 player. A chord of in-ear earbuds was wrapped around it. “They said to press play”.

“They? Who are they?” (y/n) asked but the girl had vowed not to say anything. Once (y/n) grabbed hold of the device and the balloons, the girl turned around and ran away on her cute pink sandals. She had done her job.

(y/n) stood up and unwrapped the in-ear earbuds cord from the device, which revealed to be a voice recorder, and placed them in her ears, looking at the balloons briefly before pressing the play button.

(y/n)

He did not have to introduce himself. His voice stuck out really well and he knew she recognized his voice by seeing her so pleased.

Before I take you home, I have one small mission for you. In your hand you have three balloons. A green one, a yellow one and a red one. I’m going to tell you something and ask you a question. Then you will respond to me by letting go of the balloon that pairs with the answer of your choice. Red stands for No. Yellow stands for Maybe and Green stands for Yes.

You might call me crazy but I’m going to say it anyways. I like you. From the first lecture when you sat in my lecture hall, I have not been able to keep my eyes off of you. You have the most beautiful smile, you’re very sweet and kind. By the few I have seen from you, I can tell you have a good heart.

I have wanted to approach you since day one. If it hadn’t been because I am your lecturer I would’ve been blunter and sat down for a chat with you, asked you out, dated you, but I had always been too scared because it’s not done that a lecturer dates his student. So I took a distance.

Last night when I saw you at that festival, you can’t imagine how ecstatic I was, seeing you out of the university. I could not withhold myself, I had to talk to you. I swear, I didn’t plan on what happened last night, but it got me to believe that this thing, this thing that feels so right but what we’ve been taught is wrong, is a mutual feeling. You make my heart go badum badum badum. Being around you makes me really happy. I want to make you feel the same. I want you to be the happiest girl on earth. I want to be given the chance to lift you on cloud nine, because I am convinced that, regardless we still have to learn a lot about each other, that I can definitely bring you there.

So, what I would like to ask you. Will you be my girlfriend?

If nerves could kill, Chanyeol would’ve died by now. He could even hear his own recording and he knew it had finished. Which balloon was she going to let go?

(y/n) looked up at the balloons once again before fiddling in her purse to find a pen and a small notepad. She sank through her knees, using them to stable the notepad on it this time so she could write. This made Chanyeol even more nervous. How hard could it be to just let go of one?

And if he thought that was the most stressed one person could be, he had not anticipated seeing Buttercup on the scene.

“No no no no no. Not now. Please not now”, Chanyeol could see Buttercup holding a needle in her tiny hands to pop the balloons. “Throw a bucket of paint over my car instead but don’t do this, please”, he was begging, his hands clustered in his hair.

As if on cue to Chanyeol’s words, (y/n) turned her head around towards Buttercup who was nearing the green balloon. Of course she was going to pop the green one.

Chanyeol witnessed (y/n) watching in the direction of Buttercup, who was now so close to (y/n) and hidden behind her that he couldn’t even see the pixie anymore. What was happening? He had no idea but after ten seconds, (y/n) casually turned her head back to her notepad and continued writing whilst Buttercup was nowhere to be spotted. His Yes balloon was safe.

With her pen, (y/n) made a hole in the paper that she ripped off the notebook and fastened it onto the green balloon. She then stared only at that one and her lips finally lifted into a smile as she let go of it, tracing it with her eyes as the balloon carried her message into the sky.

  “Found your car keys?”, (y/n) asked when Chanyeol came outside, walking down the porch.

“Better. Found myself a girlfriend”, he replied with a smirk.

“Oh? Who’s the lucky girl?” (y/n) grinned as she asked and Chanyeol went along.

“Some pabo that always called me Professor Park until last night. I really liked it when she used my first name”.

“I should try that, Assistant Professor Park”

“Oh so now you’re finally getting it right?” Chanyeol gave her a kiss on her forehead and then looked up at the two other balloons she was still holding on to.

“I’m just kidding. I’ll call you Chanyeol from now on, unless we’re in class”.

“Say that again”, he asked almost seriously.

“I’ll call-”

“No no. My name. My name”.

“Chanyeol”, she said in the sweetest voice she could. It was almost silly how much Chanyeol liked it.

“Good. You wrote something down on paper? A message for me I’ll never get?” he asked. He had no idea where that balloon would land. If he had known before, he would’ve asked one of the pack’s witches to use a spell on it.

“Nothing important. Just that your perfect ears and neck belong to me now”, she chuckled.

“My ears and neck?”, Chanyeol cracked.

“Don’t laugh, they really are outstanding features of you I really like”.

“Go easy on them, they have a lot of sensitive spots”.

“I promise!” she stuck out her hand flat like a girl’s scout. “Hey, just one thing. Why do I have to let go of the option I choose for? It doesn’t make sense that I let that one float away and hold onto the others. I should hold onto the one of my choosing. It’s not logical”

“Are you questioning me and my creative ideas?” Chanyeol raised an eyebrow at her but kept smiling. “You’re still holding onto the other ones because the choice that you’ve made is not an obligation. You hold those as a sign that you are aware that anytime, should you change your mind, you can still tell me No or Maybe. This should be something we both want”.

“I never looked at it this way”.

“Let’s get you home before you’re too late for lunch”.

   As he got onto the highway towards the city’s centre, Chanyeol grasped hold of (y/n)’s hand. These were the little things he had always dreamed of doing with his mate. Holding hands whilst he drove was somewhere on top of that list. Her little palm fit perfectly in his large one. He was already dreaming about how, starting the same evening, he’d learn the pleasure of never-ending phone calls and texting now that he had entered his own number in her smartphone under the contact name Assistant Boyfriend Park.

They talked about a wide variety of subjects, including how Chanyeol’s mom and dad owned a pasta restaurant and a bar in the city respectively, covering the reasons they both went into neuroscience, which was the same fascination for the subject. (y/n) also elaborated on her dad that she talked about earlier that morning and before they knew it, they had arrived at their destination.

“I have five minutes left to get up there”, (y/n) pointed at the big hotel building, at one of the top floors. She had requested he drove her to the lunch venue, otherwise she was going to be late. “Important dinner it is, if it’s held in this hotel”, Chanyeol eyed the building and identified it as one of the most expensive hotels from the area.

“Yeah”, she put on her red heels.

“Text me when you’re home”, Chanyeol asked and (y/n) nodded.

“I will. You drive carefully”.

“Did I not drive carefully?”

“You did. But you had a girl with you. You pulled up suspiciously quick for someone who drives exactly the speed limit”, she beamed.

“I got caught, didn’t I?”

“You did”, (y/n) leaned in to Chanyeol and held her arm around his waist and so did Chanyeol, both of them puckering their lips onto each other, above the gear stick. Unlike the night before, their kiss was carefree loving and sweet. They both knew the other liked them, so they didn’t withhold their lips to tell the same.

Chanyeol immediately missed her when she got out of the car and disappeared into the hotel lobby. This was something he was never going to be able to fix. Missing her when she wasn’t with him. Having asked her to be his girlfriend, he could see her more often and avoid either of them having absence sickness. But it was still there, and it was a real threat.

“Kyungsoo-ah”, Chanyeol called for him in his car.

“Hyung”.

“I’ve seen three of them again, when I drove out of town”, Chanyeol pulled up and left back home. There was still a witch tomb to be cleaned today.

“The board is already investigating”, Kyungsoo assured him.

“It’s been five weeks now. They have been around our town for five weeks. What’s taking them so long? Why aren’t we informed?”

“Have you tried asking your parents? They’re on the board too”.

“Didn’t get the opportunity to. I’ll see if I can pay my home a visit tonight”

“Keep me up to date”.

“I will”.

-> Part 4

Author’s note: 40 minutes later than I promised + not my best writing. It has been a horrible week at work and I was too stressed out to even start writing when I came home from work.

[thegloober]

How to turn your PhD into a book – part three

This is part three of my series on academic book publishing. The aim of this series is to take you through the process of turning your PhD into a book – or perhaps writing a new book in the early part of your career. Not all academic disciplines are interested in book publishing and look to conferences, journals or even exhibitions for signs of academic productivity.

I recommend you read part one and part two before reading this post.

In part one I provided you with some thoughts about NOT writing a book. I then covered identifying the opportunities, contacting a publisher and pitching the idea. In part two I talked about how to interest the publisher and (hopefully) get a contract.

In part three I want to talk about what to expect in the book writing and editing process, focussing on some of the practical challenges.

Step six: Your proposal was accepted! Congratulations! Now you will understand the saying “Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it…”

By definition, a dissertation is not an easy read so most publishers will ask for at least some changes. For one thing, the book version will be a lot shorter. While your average dissertation in the humanities runs between 80,000 to 100,000 words, most publishers will be interested in something closer to 60,000.

You can do some immediate word reduction surgery on some parts, like the literature review, but past a certain point, reducing words will become very difficult. Once you start cutting, you will end up with holes and inconsistencies that need to be smoothed over. You will have to ensure jargon is explained and grammar is tightened. This is tedious work that cannot be rushed. If you’ve started a new job it’s likely you will be doing this work at night, which is probably unpleasantly like writing your dissertation in the first place. Oh, the times I have moaned to my husband about my stupid, stupid decision to write a book at this editing stage… I’m a horrible person to live with too: demanding chocolate and hugs while listening to James Blunt albums on repeat. It’s got to the point where Mr Thesiswhisperer gets this resigned look on his face when I triumphantly declare I have new book deal (he’s a smart guy – I can’t fool him into thinking this time will be different!).

The first part of the production of the manuscript is what computer gamers would call ‘grinding’; a lot of repetitive work that seems to go nowhere. At some point, hopefully before your deadline, you will feel confident that the original content is ready. Don’t be fooled into thinking this is a sign you are near the end of the process. In time elapsed, you are approximately in the middle… next comes editing.

My least favourite part.

Step seven: chasing the perfect

The last steps of the book preparation process are, in my considered opinion, the absolute worst. I’m a 95%-er; details and polishing are difficult for me. Making sure a manuscript is perfect drives me completely nuts. Some publishers provide help, but they will charge you for it – reducing your already slender royalty cheque to nothing. Even when you have a professional copy editor to hold your hand, which was my happy experience with ‘How to be an Academic‘ (thanks Tricia!), there is a lot of detail to chase up and correct.

Without a professional, it will take even longer to get a manuscript into shape. Editing ‘How to fix your academic writing trouble’ (which is coming out on the 23rd of December) was a group effort (thanks Shaun and Katherine!), but it nearly drove us mad. In the end we turned to Grammarly – an online, machine assisted copy editing and grammar assistant. This software helped us catch many small errors, as well as helping to smooth three writing ‘voices’ into one. The effort was worth it; our publisher told us that it was “the most perfect manuscript we have ever seen”, but there was a significant time cost. My tracking app ‘Timing’ showed me that putting the manuscript through Grammarly took around 40 hours, but bear in mind, this was just the final polish.

All up, the editing process was about 120 hours. Think about trying to squeeze this time into an already overloaded schedule and you can see how I ended up spending most weekends last year working on this book. Burning the candle at both ends in your late 40s has consequences. I suffered a severe bout of burn out by September and it took me over six months – and frankly a lot of therapy, gym visits and mindfulness app listening – to recover.

The key lesson here? You will probably need six months for the final ‘polish’ if you are working full time. If the publisher has asked for significant changes to your original dissertation, you may need to allow 12 months or more to deliver the final product. Building a realistic timeline is part of being a professional – it’s always better to deliver early than over promise and deliver late.

Step eight: marketing

Once your manuscript has gone into production, you will have a quiet time of up to nine months before the book comes back into your life again. This time you will be expected to do most of the marketing. This is not just because publishers are working to tight margins and cannot employ staff to help you – in a sense, you are best placed to know who the readership is and how to reach them. Here are some marketing ideas, in no particular order:

Identify mailing lists, Facebook groups and other online spaces where you can share your book news in progress to build anticipation.

Build your own mailing: I used Google forms to create such a list for ‘How to be an academic’ , offering a gift voucher for early purchase (a good way to build word of mouth). We are doing the same for ‘How to fix your Academic Writing Trouble’.

Why wait for positive book reviews? Write blog posts or newspaper articles about the topic of your book before it comes out and direct people to your mailing list. Many reputable sites are looking for good quality content that is genuinely informative.

Organise a book launch with a local bookstore. In my experience, this was relatively easy to do with the publisher’s help. I was able to find a free venue on campus and it only cost me $200 in sushi and $100 for an open bar. It was lovely to have a celebration after all that hard work.

Now I’m wondering: are you thinking about publishing your dissertation as a book or have you succeeded in achieving your publishing dream? Do you have any experience of the publishing process you would like to share? Does your experience differ from mine? Love to hear from you in the comments.

Related posts

Part one of turning your dissertation into a book

Part two of turning your dissertation into a book

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[random2908]

I’m trying to think what was even so bad about this teacher. I mean, I actually did like her, it was my sister who hated her...

The freshman bio teacher taught how evolution was not incompatible with the Bible and believing in evolution did not sentence you to hell. The evolution unit was two weeks long, and that was the whole first week; the second week started to cover the actual science. Senior year, I complained to the AP bio teacher--who was head of the science department and also the honors director/counselor (basically she was part-time teaching and part-time admin)--both about that teacher’s curriculum and how his ridicule of atheists made atheist kids uncomfortable, and she said she’d heard complaints like that before but the guy was too well-liked by the community and he had tenure so there was nothing she could do. I accepted that, and took that as a lesson that even someone ostensibly powerful can be powerless. My younger siblings--after they, respectively, also complained--all held her culpable as an enabler of this guy, though, because they think she could have done something if she’d been braver and/or actually cared.

She had a tendency to be overly familiar. For me, that’s always set off alarm bells with peers, but at that age I found it kind of exhilarating coming from teachers because I liked the attention. It freaked my sister out, though.

As my sister put it, she wanted to be our mom. Not, like, she wanted to be a mother to us--I’m not sure she did, despite the “overly-familiar” thing she had going. But like, she literally wanted to be Dr [R’s mom]. She  worshiped our mother. Partly because our mother had gotten fired by the professor who had--a decade earlier--been this teacher’s undergrad thesis advisor. When the teacher, as a 21-year-old, got harassed and bullied by this prof she just kept her head down and suffered and graduated and moved on. When my mom, as a 35-year-old, got fired by him, she brought a discrimination lawsuit against him. She didn’t win, but still, the teacher thought that was just so cool. Also my mom has a PhD in biology, which was this teacher’s subject. So, yeah, she just... really looked up to my mom. Both my sister and I thought that was pretty funny and a little pathetic, but my sister had problems with our mom and with this teacher and let her wires get crossed a bit that last year in high school in terms of which problems were with which authority figure. (I’ve always gotten along great with our mom, so for me this was a non-issue.)

Ok, honestly the way she structured the honors program was pretty unforgivable. I mean, my sister almost didn’t finish high school despite being one of the top 15 kids in her grade (there were 500 kids per grade so top 15 is very, very high). Like, she didn’t just almost not finish the honors program--and actually I think she did finish the honors program. My sister almost didn’t finish actual regular high school because she almost failed some required classes due to being too burned out.

This teacher gave a talk to us at the end of junior year, about how we were going into senior year, and those of us who’d be full-honors seniors would have to work especially hard but we’d get special privileges. Among the special privileges she was offering was that if we ever needed to leave class for any reason, we could come to her office. She had a couch, and if we needed to leave class to cry we could come to her couch, and she’d stay if we wanted, or she’d leave us alone and close the door if we wanted to cry alone. She assured us that not only girls but also boys took advantage of this offer, so don’t be embarrassed, it was going to happen to all of us sooner or later. (Before you ask, no, I NEVER did that.)

The only other time I’ve worked that hard in my life were my first two years of grad school. We’re talking 70-90 hours per week, every week, for two entire school years (in both cases).

My sister was so burned out from the honors program that she lied to our parents and all her teachers and just didn’t fill out any of her college applications. Every teacher who asked if she needed a recommendation letter got told she’d gotten them from other teachers already. My parents got told the applications had been submitted online and mailed from school as a class assignment and there was nothing left for them to help with.

Neither of my two youngest siblings ended up doing the honors program, after what my sister went through. (They were less aware of what I went through because a) I actually got through it successfully, b) they were three years younger when I was doing it than when my sister was doing it, and c) I was too busy with school to interact with them at all my entire senior year.)

Oh, and despite all that, this teacher told us to aim for barely-passing grades on our honors exams (you could get the honors diploma with a mix of 3s and 4s out of 7 as long as you had more 4s than 3s and no 2s, I think), because she said good scores were nearly impossible so we shouldn’t even try. Even qualifying to take the honors graduation exams was impressive and enough to get into any college in America, she pointed out, so even if we failed our exams we would still have accomplished something. When I got to college and compared scores with those of my new college friends who’d taken the same exams, my scores were shockingly bad among my new peers (like, I’d way overshot for my high school, I’d gotten a 6 and five 5s, but all my college friends had a mix of 6s and 7s with maybe a singular 5 in their worst subject or something). It was almost like, how was I even there at that college. What kind of an honors teacher encourages that kind of mediocrity, though--that’s really messed up.