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my-bated-breath · 4 years

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Research Shows Zutara Would Have Been the Ideal Friends to Lovers Dynamic (part 2)

Anti-Zutara arguments: Zuko and Katara hold such a deep and meaningful platonic bond that should it ever turn into a romantic one, their relationship would be automatically ruined.

Me, with my 3.8k meta that cites a research paper on relationships: Are you sure about that.

And with that (not) academically appropriate introduction, I present part 2 of my meta “Research Shows that Zutara Would Have Been the Ideal Friends to Lovers Dynamic,” where I use research on emotional intimacy to demonstrate that Zutara is more than capable of transitioning into a romance. Still, that claim in itself presents a rather complicated question: What is the transition between friendship to romance, and how is it achieved?

“On Becoming ‘More Than Friends: The Transition From Friendship to Romantic Relationship” is a research paper by Arizona State University professors Laura K. Guerrero and Paul A. Mongeau that sets out to answer this. In their paper, Guerrero and Mongeau explore a multitude of aspects regarding relationship development, but part 1 and part 2 of this meta will focus on their research on stages of intimacy.

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Excerpt from “Research Shows that Zutara Would Have Been the Ideal Friends to Lovers Dynamic” (part 1)

According to Guerrero and Mongeau, “...scholars have argued that intimacy is located in different types of interactions, ranging from sexual activity and physical contact to warm, cozy interactions that can occur between friends, family members, and lovers…” Guerrero and Mongeau then reference a relationship model where the initial stages (i.e. perceiving similarities, achieving rapport, and inducing self-disclosure) reflect both platonic and romantic intimacy through communication while the latter stages (i.e. role-taking, achieving interpersonal role fit, and achieving dyadic crystallization) often see both individuals as achieving a higher level of intimacy that involves more self-awareness.

Definitions, because some terminology in this quote is field-specific:

Perception of similarity: (similar in background, values, etc.) which contributes to pair rapport

Pair rapport: produces positive emotional and behavioral responses to the partner, promotes effective communication and instills feelings of self-validation

Self-disclosure: a process of communication by which one person reveals information about themselves to another. The information can be descriptive or evaluative and can include thoughts, feelings, aspirations, goals, failures, successes, fears, and dreams, as well as one's likes, dislikes, and favorites.

Role-taking: ability to understand the partner's perspective and empathize with his/her role in the interaction and the relationship

Role-fit: partners assess the extent of their similarities in personality, needs, and roles

Dyadic crystallization: partners become increasingly involved with each other and committed to the relationship and they form an identity as a committed couple

(Source: Quizlet -- not the most reliable source, I know, but once again field-specific terms tend to be ubiquitous in their definitions, and I doubt that this Quizlet can be that inaccurate)

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Part 1 of this meta (click for the link) proves how Zuko and Katara achieve the “initial stages of intimacy,” including perceived similarities, pair rapport, and self-disclosure, which are common to both platonic and romantic relationships (and seen often in transitioning relationships). And because I have no self-control, I promised a part 2 that shows how Zutara fulfills the latter stages of intimacy as well, in which intimacy is based more on cognition than communication.

(Note: I had taken the burden of proof too seriously in part 1, and thus that meta delves (far too) deep into the intricacies of Zuko and Katara’s backstories, character arcs, and dialogue. This meta will be significantly less heavy-handed on the analysis because we already have 3,800 words of that and that’s more than enough).

So with that taken care of, let’s begin.

Role-taking

Definition: ability to understand the partner's perspective and empathize with his/her role in the interaction and the relationship.

After Zuko’s choice in the Crossroads of Destiny, his relationship with Katara becomes tenser until it reaches a breaking point in The Southern Raiders, where the following exchange occurs:

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The Southern Raiders Dialogue

Zuko: This isn't fair! Everyone else seems to trust me now! What is it with you?

Katara: Oh, everyone trusts you now! I was the first person to trust you! Remember, back in Ba Sing Se. And you turned around and betrayed me, betrayed all of us!

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Although Katara is angry in this scene, her open communication and Zuko’s empathy with her (established in the Crystal Catacombs) allows him to understand Katara’s perspective, to understand that he is the one at fault, and to understand that he has to be the one to make amends.

Zuko: What can I do to make it up to you?

Then, throughout the Southern Raiders, there is an inherent understanding between the two that Zuko is only a guide to track down her mother’s killer while Katara is the decider of this man’s fate. Their roles are evidenced by Zuko providing Katara with information (as seen in the left screenshot) and Katara acting with the information given (as seen in the right screenshot, where Zuko asks Katara if she is ready).

Left screenshot -

Zuko: I know who killed your mother, and I'm going to help you find him.

Right screenshot -

Zuko: This is it, Katara. Are you ready to face him?

However, Zuko is not the only one to perceive and accept the other party’s role within their relationship. Having decided to fight Azula alongside Zuko the day before Sozin’s Comet, Katara is in disbelief when Zuko accepts an Agni Kai with Azula, one on one.

Katara: What are you doing? She's playing you. She knows she can't take us both, so she's trying to separate us.

Zuko: I know. But I can take her this time.

Katara: But even you admitted to your uncle that you would need help facing Azula.

Zuko: There's something off about her; I can't explain it but she's slipping. And this way, no one else has to get hurt.

Still, Katara nods, empathizing with Zuko’s position and thus allowing him to take on a new role. In particular, she recognizes Zuko’s need to fight alone rather than together, which shifts the dynamic and interactions in their relationship.

With both Zuko and Katara achieving role-taking, we now move on to-

Role-fit

Definition: partners assess the extent of their similarities in personality, needs, and roles.

(Note: there’s a little bit of a stretch in needs and roles, but given much of Zuko and Katara’s life had been centered around defeating the Fire Nation, it still captures an essential part of their relationship.)

Zuko and Katara assessing the extent of the similarities in their personality:

(Frankly, this moment can apply to personality, needs, and roles)

Zuko and Katara assessing the extent of the similarities in their needs:

Zuko and Katara assessing the extent of the similarities in their roles:

I wish there had been more canon material with Zuko and Katara evaluating their personalities and needs on a more personal level. However, since the glimpses of peace we see in the ATLA finale are not focused on Zuko and Katara’s relationship (for better or for worse), the fact that the Crystal Catacombs exchange exists is already very telling. Additionally, it’s not difficult to imagine the two of them had a conversation about their personalities and needs given their track record of open communication and mutual support.

Dyadic Crystallization

Definition: partners become increasingly involved with each other and committed to the relationship and they form an identity as a committed couple.

After joining the GAang in the Western Air Temple, Zuko and Katara become “increasingly involved with each other” (even if their interactions are not always positive), as evidenced by the following:

Of course, their commitment to each other forms after Katara forgives Zuko and they work together as a team:

Though Zuko and Katara may not have formed an identity as a romantic couple, their platonic relationship relies on a profound foundation of teamwork, protectiveness, and support. Should they transition into a romantic relationship, this same foundation can be channeled with them working together to solve personal and political problems, protecting each other from physical and emotional wounds, and supporting one another with steadfast faith and determination.

Of course, the same logic applies to every stage of intimacy both parts of this meta explore. We already see how Zuko and Katara fulfill the other stages - perceived similarities, pair rapport, self-disclosure, role-taking, role-fit, and dyadic crystallization - in constructive ways throughout their platonic bond, so we can assume that their approach to these stages of intimacy would be similar in a romantic bond as well. After all, they already share a deep emotional connection, so the last gap their relationship would need to bridge between platonic and romantic lines would not be one of closeness (which anti-Zutara arguments point to as a cause for increasing toxicity between the two), but one of attraction.

As Guerrero and Mongeau note, “in this case, couples sustain high levels of friendship-based intimacy while adding passion-based intimacy. In a sense, these couples have already laid part of the groundwork for building a close romantic relationship.”

Thus, without needing to undergo a dramatic shift in quantity or quality, the existing emotional energy in Zutara lends itself well to both friendships and romances. Here we have a relationship where outward circumstances may change - from war to peace, from rebels to leaders - yet their internal framework, even while (hypothetically) in the process of adjusting from friends to lovers, has endured through the past and will continue to endure well into the future.

#atla #atla meta #zutara #zutara meta #my bated breath analyzes #my bated breath's posts #I'm showing my support for Zutara by citing research papers #this is my contribution #stages of relationship intimacies

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ichigo-daifuku · 3 years

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To Dye For

Fandom: Boku no Hero Academia Relationships: Dabi | Todoroki Toya & Todoroki Natsuo, Todoroki Family Genre: Gen, Angst, Canon Compliant, Random Encounters, Character Study Word Count: 1.6k | AO3 Link

Synopsis: Natsuo encounters a mysterious man in the hair care products aisle at the grocery store.

Warning: The following contains mild spoilers for the Endeavor Agency Arc and the Paranormal Liberation War Arc.

Natsuo stared at his reflection in the mirror and frowned.

As a college student, hustle and bustle filled his everyday life. He attended classes, studied diligently, moved from one deadline to another, and participated in extracurricular activities. It was a lot to get used to at first, but the newfound freedom he had was nothing short of amazing. He could do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted to, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

When Natsuo had spare time, he would usually spend it going on dates with his girlfriend or visiting Rei at the hospital together with Fuyumi. As of late, however, he had little time to do either. School activities had caused his schedule to become more hectic. The upcoming final exams would signal the end of the academic year, and Natsuo had a lot of tasks to accomplish in preparation for them.

He had been so preoccupied with his responsibilities that before he knew it, the streaks at the sides of his hair had grown crimson.

Growing up, Natsuo detested the crimson strands on his head. He didn’t mind how they stood out against his predominantly white hair at first, but as his hatred for his father grew, the sentiment spread to the biological traits he inherited from him. He loathed how those crimson streaks were the same shade as his father’s. In time, Natsuo despised how their resemblance was uncanny. People had always pointed out how his face and frame looked like a younger version of Enji. It was one of his pet peeves.

Natsuo would never forget how, for a long while, he was prohibited from visiting his mother at the hospital because she couldn’t bear to see him. He reminded her too much of Enji, even though his father was as good as a stranger to him. Natsuo wasn’t like him at all, but even if that was the truth, his physical appearance alone was an undeniable indication that he was his son.

When he was in his early teens, he started bleaching and dyeing the six streaks of his hair white. He had a way to lessen his likeness to his father, and he took the opportunity to do so. Now, truth be told, Natsuo had come to the point where he was unused to seeing his crimson hair. It was an odd feeling, but he had learned to live with it.

In retrospect, he should’ve requested a touch-up last week when he went for a haircut at the barbershop, but he had been in a rush. He disliked freeloaders and didn’t want to be one, so he prioritized attending the group meeting he had instead. With a sigh, he shook his head but didn’t regret his choice. He considered dropping by the barbershop again but thought otherwise. He could do it by himself. It had been a while since he had done the bleaching process on his own, but it was simple enough. He could do it.

Natsuo slipped his navy blue coat on and went on his way to the grocery store near his dormitory. The winter chill felt soothing and nice against his skin. It eased his mind and relieved the stress he was under, and he felt glad he decided to go out today.

At the grocery store, he proceeded to the aisle of hair care products and grabbed his favorite brand of hair bleach kit. He hummed to the tune of the music playing through the speakers and looked around, wondering if the hair bleach kit would suffice since he had the other products he needed in the dormitory. Now that he thought about it, he could do some grocery shopping as well. He should get a shopping cart.

A fellow customer entered the area he was standing on. The lanky man wore a hooded jacket that covered the majority of his face. He had his hands inside his pockets as he browsed the shelves.

The man seemed to be someone around Natsuo’s age, more or less. Natsuo was taller than him but granted, he was taller and burlier than most of his peers. He wondered if he was also a college student like him and, if so, if he attended the same institution he did. Natsuo attempted to catch a glimpse of the man’s face but failed. The stranger wore sunglasses, obscuring his features even further, except for the ebony hair hanging across his forehead. Although uncertain, Natsuo considered the possibility of this stranger’s covered-up attire being connected to his Quirk.

With a gloved hand, the man picked up a box of black hair dye and read the description on the packaging.

Oh, no, Natsuo thought, Anything but that one.

“Hey, man,” Natsuo called, approaching the stranger in a friendly manner. “I wouldn’t recommend that brand. The quality isn’t very good.”

The man stiffened but, nevertheless, replied, “Is that so?”

“Yeah. I used that brand when I dyed my hair blond when I was younger, and it completely faded after a few washes.”

“Why?”

“Well, as I said, the quality is—”

“Not that,” the man interjected, not bothering to face Natsuo fully, “Why would you dye your hair blond?”

“Ah, well… to piss my old man off,” Natsuo admitted.

“Why?”

“He has this… rivalry with a certain blond man, so he hates him. I thought it would irritate him.”

Natsuo was oversharing, and he knew it. His hand came up to rub the nape of his neck as he chuckled in mild embarrassment. He had nothing to be embarrassed about when he was just answering the man’s question, right?

To his surprise, the man probed, curious about his story, “And? Did it do the trick?”

“Nah.” Natsuo shook his head. “He just glared at me for a bit and went back to pretending I don’t exist.”

The man let out a humorless chuckle. “Figures.”

Looking back, Natsuo realized how petty of a prank that was. Of course, the man would think so, too. “Yeah.”

There was a lull in the conversation. The man shifted his head to look at Natsuo.

Natsuo was unable to see the man’s face due to his sunglasses, but he could feel his eyes as they traveled from the hair bleach kit in his hand and then to his hair.

The stranger’s shoulders shook as he stifled a laugh. He turned away and placed the low-quality hair dye back on the shelf.

Natsuo scanned the items near him and pointed to a certain section. “If you’d like a really good hair dye, this is the brand I’d recommend.”

“There’s no need.” At a leisurely pace, the man turned around and made his way to the shelf across them, grabbing a medium-sized bottle.

Hair dye remover, Natsuo noted, which made no sense to him. Wasn’t he looking for hair dye?

The man inspected the item in his hand and put it inside his pocket.

Natsuo’s eyes widened at the scene in front of him. “Hey, what do you think you’re—”

Ignoring his question, the man stepped closer to Natsuo, and with amusement laced in his voice, spoke, “Make sure to watch the news, okay?”

Natsuo froze. Why did this person seem almost… familiar?

“See you around,” the man said and walked away, “Todoroki Natsuo.”

Alarm bells rang inside Natsuo’s head. This stranger called him by his full name. He had never introduced himself nor was he wearing anything that would give away his identity.

The second Natsuo was able to collect his thoughts and get over his initial panic, he ran after the man to question him, but he was nowhere to be found. The security alarms didn’t go off despite the man stealing something from the grocery store, his escape successful.

Natsuo reported the shoplifting incident to a staff member. Since the man’s physical appearance was too obscured, the authorities had very little clue to his identity. They recorded the theft but could do nothing much about it, ultimately deciding to watch out for similar incidents from now on. When they asked Natsuo if there was anything else he had to say, Natsuo contemplated it but chose not to inform the authorities of the fact that the man knew his identity and was, most likely, after him.

On his way back to the dormitory, Natsuo clutched the handle of the paper bag of hair products in his fist, wary of his surroundings. He couldn’t help it. Having been targeted and attacked by a villain in the past, he had to stay vigilant. Moreover, why did that person tell him to watch the news? The crime he committed was theft—a petty one at that—and would hardly be worth a headline.

Still, it worried Natsuo. He sent Fuyumi a message subtly informing her of his whereabouts in case something happens to him. Not wanting to cause her unnecessary panic, he decided to leave out the details of the encounter he had at the grocery store. He’d tell her later, but for now, he reminded her to take care of herself. Shoto was at U.A., at least, he would be fine there. Rei would be safe at the hospital while Endeavor could handle himself.

Natsuo boarded the train and sat down. He set his elbows on his knees and shut his eyes, the pads of the fingertips of his right hand gently touching their counterparts on his left as he leaned forward and bowed his head, lost in thought.

Who was that man?

The question plagued his mind for a long time but held no answer.

Notes: This was supposed to be a humorous fic… but here we are.

When I was writing this story, I thought a lot about that panel in Chapter 302 where Rei said she “started seeing hints of [Enji] in the children’s faces,” and while Shoto’s left side was shown, Natsuo’s entire face was beside him.

I hope you’re all enjoying Season 5 so far. Thank you for reading! ♡

BNHA Masterlist | Main Masterlist

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raspberry-starship · 2 years

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Start reading the series here.

Masterlist for this book is here.

Read by scrolling up the tag here.

Sadie was left alone in the Bunker with Donatello for about three days. In that time, seven texts to both Winchesters and the angel (whose number she now had) went unanswered. Donatello was a squirrelly guy, and it only got worse as time progressed. They took turns going out to get chicken, during which time she always got him some fruit as well, worried about the lack of plant fiber in his diet. She spent most of her time available in the library or the back storeroom, scanning passages into her computer. By the middle of the second day, Donatello was barely looking her in the eye, and by the beginning of the third, she was quite sure he wasn’t sleeping at all. He began dodging questions and avoiding any room that she occupied.

She sent the message to Sam and scrolled back to see the other texts he hadn’t answered. With a sigh, she set her phone down and leaned back in her chair. The library was silent around her, which she noticed for the first time. To counter this, she put on some music, the volume set down low. She sat pondering to The Wombats for a long moment when she heard a shuffling to her left.

She glanced up at the sound. A form scurried away from the war room, towards the kitchen. With a frown, she set her chair back down onto all four legs, cocking her head to the side. She stood and slunk across the Bunker, her sock-covered feet keeping her quiet.

Donatello was in the kitchen, muttering to himself. She drew closer, peering around the doorway to see what he was doing. He had a pad of paper in his hands as he waited for his coffee to brew, his pencil scribbling notes and scratching other things out. This behavior she didn’t find so unusual, actually, it made her feel a little more at ease; he was just an academic lost in his work. She retreated back to her own work.

Donatello remained in the back workroom when the others returned, all of whom apologized to Sadie for missing her texts. She waved them off and asked if they had brought food for dinner—she was starving.

After that, they sat in the library, Dean and Sadie across from Cas and an empty seat. Sadie sat back in her chair, one knee up and her eyes unfocused. Beside her, Dean was field-stripping his gun, the equipment needed to clean it on the table beside him. His phone vibrated on the table between him and Sadie. Charlie was texting him.

He set down his gun and picked up the phone. Across from him, Cas was silent, pondering something with a frown as he stared off into the distance. Below the text was a link to a missing persons report.

Dean sighed through his nose and rolled his eyes. The picture they used was her old high school ID. He didn’t need to be a psychic to know who had filled out this form. Her aunt hadn’t even gotten some of the description right—she was 5’7” at least, if not taller now, and she didn’t wear the glasses pictured anymore. The woman didn’t even have a current photo of her niece. No wonder Ren was so apt to think she was a disappointment—the only adult who was supposed to care about her would never be impressed by or endeared to Ren in any way. Not to mention that Melanie had filled out the missing persons report months after Ren had disappeared and this was a half-assed search if Dean had ever seen one. It made him seethe, but he just replied with a “thank you” and to Charlie and set the phone down.

Sam walked into the library with four bottles in his hand and his laptop in the other. He set two down at the end of the table, one for Dean and one for Cas then walked behind the angel to his seat. He set his laptop down and reached across the table to set a different bottle down in front of Sadie. She awoke from her daze, looking down to see that he’d brought the specific cider she liked. She sat up a bit, a look of surprise and awe on her face. He didn’t look at her, just took his seat directly across from her, a beer in his hand, the same as Cas and Dean.

She hadn’t even talked about the specific kind she liked best—he’d just remembered what she’d been drinking when he’d visited her in Chicago. Quietly touched, Sadie picked up the cider and took a sip. He must’ve gotten it with the beer on his way home from getting food. She made a note to thank him later.

They’d already caught her up on what she’d missed. Lucifer had a new ally in Anael, Ketch was back (they explained who he was, as well), and said mercenary was currently working for a Prince of Hell named Asmodeus (also explained to her) but supposedly acting as a double-agent for the Winchesters—apparently even he was against the idea of Lucifer roaming free on the Earth. Sadie got the feeling however that there was something else about him that they hadn’t told her, because the Winchesters seemed to take quite a dislike towards him, Dean in particular.

“So. Ketch.” Cas said, sitting forward in his chair, “Can we trust him?”

“Not even a little.” Dean replied, putting his now-cleaned gun back together.

“Yeah, of course not, but,” Sam heaved a resigned sigh, “we need him, for now.”

“Right.” Cas seemed less than enthused. “And when we don’t?”

Dean cocked his completed weapon and set it down, giving the angel a stony look. “Guess.”

Sadie’s brow twitched a little at that, unsure how she felt about plotting the death of another human after he’d “served his use”. They made a lot of what she felt were extreme decisions, but she decided not to question it—she knew they were the experts here, not her. She turned in early, once she’d finished her cider.

Later, as Sam shuffled off to bed, his tired feet dragged a little on the linoleum floor. When his back finally hit his mattress, he noticed a text.

He let out a soft, tired snort of a laugh through his nose and responded.

He waited a moment as she replied.

He smiled a bit to himself.

He moved to set the phone down when it vibrated again.

He sighed with half-meant exasperation and a smile of adoration.

He took a breath in and felt himself shudder ever so slightly. Swallowing, he texted back.

With that, he set his phone down and turned onto his side, facing away from it and the door. The room felt oddly quiet for some reason like it was holding its breath. He had wondered whether or not the cider would be going overboard, but now that it had been confirmed to have made her happy, he felt odd. He felt like he was feeding some primal version of himself that was supposed to be locked deep, deep down inside of him—a being that wanted desperately for her to be closer.

Every time he allowed himself to dote on her, or make up excuses to sit with her, or wonder what she was doing when he was away, he was allowing himself to form a habit—an attachment to her. He wasn’t sure if it was a strictly bad thing, but there was an unsettling feeling in the pit of his stomach like he was somehow letting his guard down and would get shot when he least expected it. He wondered what that shot would be, and then sometime later, he slipped into unconsciousness.

* * *

The next morning, Sam was returning from the lower level, holding a dusty book that would (hopefully) help to translate another book he already had waiting for him in the library. As he walked down the hall, it took him a moment to notice that his shoes weren’t the only sound he could hear. He paused, listening, and a smile crept up onto his face.

It had begun a couple weeks ago. He had been getting another cup of coffee when he heard the soft sound of someone singing. Sadie was a big believer in daily showers—she went back and forth, but right now she was on a strictly morning schedule, as opposed to evening. Convincing himself that there was no harm in it, he had drawn closer to the bathroom, staying far from the door, around the corner, and just listened.

Today, he leaned back against the wall, pausing to listen for a moment. She always sang along with whatever she was playing like it was an afterthought—absent-mindedly harmonizing with the tinny speaker of her phone. This morning, she was playing a Sadie classic: “Snowed Under” by Keane—a song that never failed to get her excited.

“The man knows how to build, Sam!” She’d said to him once while they drove, he in the passenger side watching her with a smile. “He takes you on a rollercoaster with all the songs but this one—this is the one!”

She was quiet when the chorus came, careful not to be too disruptive to the other people staying in the Bunker. She took long showers some mornings, but there was never any shortage of hot water because, as she’d informed Dean when he’d tried to pin the lack of hot water on her, she was a fan of the lukewarm/on-the-cold-side shower. She was a weird, weird woman.

Sam wondered what it was that he enjoyed so much about hearing her singing from the bathroom. Maybe it was because he liked being reminded that she was here. Maybe it was because she was so meditative and calm when she was alone in the shower, genuinely unaware of her being loud enough to be a bother or point of focus at all—and she really wasn’t, he was just tuned in to her. Maybe it was just because he liked her voice.

He told himself then that he might never know why, as a hint to his brain to get into gear and stop feeding the beast—the creature inside of him that hungered for her. It ached for her to be close, but again, it would be deprived. He would not let his resolve crack; he would not drag her into his mess of a life, no matter how strong her magnetic pull was. He really couldn’t think of any other way to describe it: she had a force that was constantly trying to make him a satellite—to drag him into orbit around her. The power of those kinds of feelings made him nervous.

Time lost its hold on him as he got back to work in the library. He moved from book to book, one table covered in filing boxes and folders of records Sadie had pulled out of the archive to look through, while the middle desk was holding the three books Sam was using. Behind him was the blackboard Sadie had been using, now divided in two—one side for books to go through, the other for files to go through.

“Mornin’.” A weary-sounding Sadie said as she shuffled into the library.

He glanced up, smiling softly at her without thinking about it. “Hey.”

She walked over to stand beside him, a mug of her tea in hand and her glasses on. She leaned on the table, looking at the blackboard. He turned slowly, straightening from where he’d been bent over reading a book to stand in the same position beside her. She sighed, looking a little dejected, and a damp strand of hair came loose from behind her ear. He tried not to watch her face too closely—he needed to act like a normal person. He dryly wished himself luck with that before he spoke.

“So, uh, how are you?” He rested his hands at the edge of the table on either side of his waist.

She shrugged a bit absently.

He stared at her for a moment and then smiled, realizing what the issue was.

“C’mon.” He guided her by the shoulders, pushing her to walk in front of him.

“What?” She frowned, protesting but still allowing him to gently guide her into the war room.

“We gotta get some food in you, Ogg.” Sam said with a smile.

She rolled her eyes and did poorly as she tried to subdue a smile of her own.

They were out of cereal, which was the main reason why she hadn’t eaten, so he offered to make her scrambled eggs—one of the few things he knew how to make that didn’t come from a box recipe. She told him that she didn’t need him to dote on her and that she didn’t want to put him out, but he simply shook his head and told her she could repay him by doing the dishes. Begrudgingly, she accepted.

When he got the eggs onto a plate and turned to walk over and give them to her, she had her chin in her hand and her gaze glued to a spot he’d never see, somewhere to her right. She had one brow quirked, as though pondering something deeply. Sam smiled a little to himself and brought the plate over.

“Dig in.” He said, taking a seat across from her.

She jumped a little as he pulled her out of her daze, then she quietly thanked him again. He pulled out his phone.

“I’ll tell Dean to get some cereal when he goes out today.”

“Mm.” Sadie nodded, chewing her first bite, “This is pretty good, Spaceman.”

He let out a little chuckle of self-deprecation, setting his phone face-down onto the table beside him. “Uh, thanks. It’s hard to go wrong with scrambled eggs.”

She shrugged, “My dad always made them weird.”

“Your dad?” He raised his brows.

“Mm.” She swallowed her most recent bite, “He was the cook most of the time. My mom liked them a bit over-done so he’d always make them that way. Ian and Cath didn’t mind but for the longest time, I thought that all scrambled eggs were dry and gross. This is a nice level of cooked or whatever the phrase is.”

He smirked, “Well, I’m glad my eggs are satisfactory.”

“The salsa too, it’s nice.” She nodded, still seeming a bit out of it, but also maybe she was just in a good mood today.

He smiled softly at her, and then they went back to talking about research. Currently, most of what she was doing involved organizing, scanning, and combing through the archive. She identified things that might be of some use to them, wrote them on the board, and read some when he was out. He read a lot faster than her, so when he was there, she stuck to the other aspects of her job.

Dean awoke sometime after her, where he proceeded to make breakfast for himself and Donatello, most of which was bacon, as it turned out. As Sadie was doing the dishes, Sam returned for a coffee refill only to find Dean with a big plate of bacon in front of him.

“Uh… dude?” Sam quirked a brow.

“What?” Dean asked, mouth a bit full.

“You’re not fifteen anymore.” Sam let out a little scoff, “Maybe you oughta cool it with the nitrates?”

“Ha!” Sadie barked a laugh from across the room, gathering both Winchesters’ attention. She glanced over her shoulder with a wry smile for the younger one, “Nerd.”

“What?” Sam frowned.

She snorted, “That was just such a ‘you’ way of referring to bacon. You’re a nerd.”

“Psh-aha!” Dean laughed, pointing to her and looking up at his brother, “She’s right. What’s that thing Ian says?”

“Geek-check.” Sadie smirked.

“Ah-heh-heh!” Dean chuckled, nodding to Sam, “Geek-check.”

“Oh,” Sam rolled his eyes, unable to fully hide the smile, “gimme a break.”

“You give me one first!” Dean replied indignantly, taking a bite of a new piece of bacon.

Sam then noticed that there was no more room in the drying rack, and Sadie was kindly doing all the dishes, including those Dean used. With a sigh, Sam set his empty mug of coffee down on the table and walked over to her side.

“And to think I was nice enough to make you breakfast this morning.” He grumbled, head bowed to hide his smirk as he bent down to grab a towel off the cabinet near her knee.

She snorted, handing him a plate, “I only speak the truth, Spaceman.”

“Yeah, right.” He dried and put the dish away.

For a little while, they worked in silence, her music playing in the background. A song came on with a beat she began tapping her foot to. A velvety woman’s voice came through the speakers, the soft texture of an electric guitar behind her. Sadie began humming along and when it reached the chorus, Dean lifted his head.

“What is this?” He asked.

She blinked and glanced over at him. “Oh, it’s uh, The Wire by HAIM—H-A-I-M.”

“Huh.” Dean made no further comment as to whether or not he liked the song. (He did, he just wasn’t going to give either her or Sam the satisfaction of knowing that. It was a hard song to dislike, though.)

Cas shuffled into the doorway then, a flat look on his face. Sadie handed Sam the last dish and leaned over to turn her music down. Dean glanced up at the angel.

“What’s up, sunshine. How’s the professor?” He asked around another mouthful of bacon.

Cas sighed, raising his hands a bit and then dropping them on either side of him in quiet exasperation. “I don’t know. I’m not an expert.”

Dean frowned in a way that said “fair enough” and faced forwards again.

“Sadie,” Cas began slowly, eyes narrowed a bit as he thought.

Her head jerked up immediately, brows raised to silently say she was listening.

“How long has Donatello gone without… “ Cas swallowed like what he had to say next tasted bad, “…showering?”

Sadie frowned intensely for a long moment. “Uh… I haven’t heard him go take a shower at all.”

“Hm.” Cas’s brow was furrowed in thought.

There was a beat of silence, then Dean turned to examine the angel. “What?”

Cas shook his head, “It’s nothing. Never mind.”

Dean’s brows rose. “You sure?”

Cas sighed, “Yes, Dean.”

“Alright!” Dean put his hands up in mock surrender, facing his food again.

Cas watched him for a moment, subduing a grimace. “Dean, have you eaten any fruit in the past couple of days? I’ve heard that it isn’t healthy for humans to consume so much greasy food.”

Dean’s hand fell to the table with a thump, his eyes rolling dramatically. As he and Cas began their back-and-forth, Sam drew up beside Sadie.

“How come you didn’t say anything to him?” Sam asked with a little smirk, leaning his hands on the kitchen island.

She let out a sigh of laughter, glancing up at him, “Because. You’re much more fun to tease.”

He couldn’t stifle a chuckle of disbelief, shaking his head and glancing away. She watched his profile, a content smile on her face. With a sigh, he turned back to her, a small smile still in his eyes.

“You come into my home, you eat my eggs—”

“—Oh, no, no, no.” She wagged a finger at him, “You invited me here and you gave me the eggs, remember? Don’t you start.”

“Fine! Fine.” Sam shrugged, “I guess I’ll be less generous in the future.”

She nodded stoutly, still in the bit, “There you go. Problem solved.”

“EUREKA!” A voice bellowed excitedly from the hall before Donatello barreled into the room, waving a loose-leaf sheet of paper, “Eureka! Eureka!”

“What?” Cas asked in confusion as Donatello pushed past him to slam the paper down on the table in front of Dean.

“I’ve got it!” Donatello said, taking a deep breath, muttering to himself, “Whoo boy, that running really took it outta me.��

“No way.” Sam rushed over to the table, snatching the paper out of Dean’s hand.

“Dude!” Dean protested.

“Shh!” Sam waved him off, already reading the list of ingredients. There was a beat of silence then he let out a little chuckle of disbelief, “Holy shit, we—… we actually have most of this stuff here, already.”

“It seems like a lot more ingredients than Lucifer described.” Cas said skeptically, now standing behind Dean.

“Well, I’m assuming it’s a different spell.” Donatello explained, “Since it’s the demon tablet, it’s bound to be different than the angel tablet.”

Cas narrowed his eyes a little at Donatello’s profile, suspicious of him for a reason he could not yet describe. Dean, on the other hand, was eager to hear what they needed to get.

“Alright, well?” He slapped the table to get Sam’s attention, raising his eyebrows in a silent but impatient demand for information.

“Yeah, yeah, uh,” Sam let out another small laugh of surprise as Sadie came up to look over his shoulder at the list, “yeah, most of this stuff we actually have here, in the Bunker.”

“Really?” Dean perked up a little.

“Except for archangel grace.” Cas interjected.

“No, actually,” Sadie shook her head, brows raised in surprise.

“Yeah, she’s right, it isn’t even on here.” Sam shook his head in amazed disbelief. He looked up to Donatello with a grin and clapped him on the shoulder, “Donatello, you did it!”

“Ah, well, you know.” Donatello shrugged sheepishly.

“The only thing we need is…” Sam narrowed his eyes at the list, “…the hearts of Gog and Magog?”

“What’s that?” Dean asked, all of them turning to Donatello except Cas, who was now more than a little confused, as told by the look on his face.

“Uh, sometimes referred to as brothers, other times as lands.” Donatello chuckled lightly, “You know how Bibles are—too damn many translations.”

“Wait, Gog and—and Magog,” Cas’s eyes narrowed, “I’d heard rumors, but I didn’t think they were human.”

“Oh, yes.” Donatello said reverently. “According to the tablet, they were ancient warriors who enslaved half the Fertile Crescent, until some priests cast a spell to bind them away in ‘a place without a place and a time without a time.’”

There was silence for a moment. Cas glanced up from where he’d been pondering a distant spot with a frown, catching Sadie’s eyes on him.

“Huh.” Sam said, he, his brother, and Donatello unaware of the silent exchange happening between their other two members of their party.

Sadie raised her brows a little, in that way humans did when they were silently asking if someone was okay. Cas nodded a little, though it seemed rushed and not totally honest. Despite this, she dropped it as Dean spoke again, standing from his seat.

“Okay, so we’re supposed to find these guys and cut out their hearts?” He rested his hands on his hips, “How?”

“The demon tablet has very specific instructions on how to free them.” Donatello said, before adding gravely, “These men are very dangerous.”

Cas sighed, “Then I’ll do it.”

“I’ll go with you.” Dean said immediately.

“Excellent! Uh, Sam and I will stay behind to, uh, uh, assemble the other ingredients with the, uh, lovely Miss Eldredge.” Donatello indicated Sadie with a smile.

She blushed a little in surprise at the warmth of his compliment and tone—it was so different than how he’d been interacting with her over the past couple of days. Beside her, Sam forced away the frown that had made a home on his face, knowing that he had better things to focus on than indulging a knee-jerk reaction to someone else flattering Sadie in front of him.

“Now, um,” Donatello was blissfully unaware of any tension as he asked, “where do you keep your virgin lamb’s blood?”

Sadie’s brows rose. “Your what?”

“It’s, uh—” Sam stumbled over his words, looking back and forth between them, “it’s downstairs, let’s, uh, go set it up in the library.”

“Great idea.” Donatello nodded stoutly, plucking the paper from Sam’s hands and scurrying out of the room in that direction.

For a moment, they were left in stunned silence, then they all turned to look at one another.

“Well, he certainly seems chipper.” Dean commented, a bit bewildered.

“Mm.” Cas agreed.

“Well, uh,” Sam took a breath, “let’s get to work.”

#supernatural rewrite #spn fanfic #spn rewrite #supernatural fanfic #spn fanfiction #sam winchester fanfiction #sam winchester fic #supernatural fanfiction #sam winchester x oc #supernatural #sam winchester #solicitude

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professorbcampbell · 3 years

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Game, Set || Solo

Timing: April 28th, 2021

Location: Ben Campbell’s Home

Description: Ben hosts his last event of the semester, with a very particular goal in mind.

TW: Grooming

Checking his perfectly coiffed hair in the mirror, Ben smoothed the front of his navy-blue sweater—cashmere, of course, paired with a pair of dark pants and polished brown brogues. His glasses were tucked in the front of his sweater, completing the carefully cultivated image he strove for. With a final satisfied examination in the mirror, Ben headed stairs to the kitchen. Tonight was his final salon of the school year and he had a reputation to maintain. He’d catered food from The Codfather and that was being kept piping hot. He’d also put together a few large charcuterie boards together on his own, something that never failed to impress guests. Why it did he had no idea. Anyone could lay together fancy cheeses, an assortment of 8 dollar crackers, cold meats, and a bunch of grapes on a board. But, it impressed. And he was all about impressions.

Just as he was about to pour himself a glass of water, Ben heard the doorbell ring. Glancing at his watch, he smiled. Fifteen minutes early. Someone was eager to please. No matter, this could work well. Ben rolled his sleeves up and pulled on an apron from the hat rack, tying it behind him before walking to the door. And, lo and behold, a student stood on his front door.

“Matt! Ah, I’m sorry, you’re a bit earlier than expected! Or rather, I’m a bit behind schedule. Come in, come in.” He said with a jovial wave of his hand.

“I’m so sorry—I didn’t, I didn’t want to be late.” Matt sputtered, but entered all the same. He held up a bottle of wine in offering. Even from here, Ben could tell it was a cheap bottle, but that was to be expected with these children. “The invitation said to bring whatever we’d like to drink—where should I put this, sir?”

Wiping his spotless hands on his equally spotless apron, Ben waved a hand, “Call me Ben, please. We’re all equals here. It’s the precise reasons I have these events. You can set the bottle down on the bar. I don’t partake, but I’m sure other people will enjoy it. Do you mind lending a hand in the kitchen? You caught me in the middle of finishing the appetizers.” He said.

Matt set the bottle down next to an absurdly expensive decanter of whiskey that Ben kept for appearances before following him in the kitchen. Over the next fifteen minutes, Ben made light conversation with the young man over the charcuterie boards, listening to the boy’s eager stories, and gently probing for information. He’d been working on Matt for the better part of the semester, meeting with the student during office hours at first, then happening upon him at the coffee shop, chatting about Matt’s latest papers and indulging his woefully off-base opinions on Diogenes. And it was culminating now, with this. This meeting of the minds, this farce of an intellectualist salon where Ben could test him. See how the other members found his latest prey.

Guest began to arrive and Ben played the role of host as he always did. The guest list included his cherry-picked batch of current students, invited alumni and former students, who were still eager for a scrap of his attention, a few faculty members who enjoyed a free meal and indulging the students, as well as a few members of Hrvsht’ooooor loyal. They were the only ones who truly mattered at these events. Well. Them and the prospective children. Ben may be the one leading the rituals, but he needed the approval of his followers as well.

Hours went by in an enjoyable flurry of perfectly calculated activity. Drinks and appetizers passed by with the requisite amount of small talk and discussion. Food was distributed shortly afterwards while students read out poetry they’d written, excerpts from dissertations, and other such nonsense. Meanwhile, Ben was keeping an eye on his potential offerings. There were three who had… potential for something within their ranks. One, a young graduate student was a fitful, anxious thing really. She seemed like she could be swayed into following Hrvsht’ooooor. At least, for some amount of time. Another was a junior who had ambition that fair outstripped his means. Ben could see him thriving in their ranks. Which left young Matt Davis. There was really only one choice in his mind. But, he had to see how the other members felt about this.

Each of them had their own little tells to cast their vote— Pamela touched the pearls around her neck as she pretended to mull over something insightful the graduate student said, while Daniel touched his cuff-links after laughing alongside the junior. But, Ben was focused on his brother. Thomas made a point to coming to each of these events, claiming that he had always been an academic and he could live vicariously through his baby brother’s success at UMWC. A lie. Thomas had never cared about academia and he certainly didn’t care now. All he cared about were the books and ensuring that the sacrifices Ben brought to the table were worthy of their Lord. And now, Ben watched as Matt tried, and failed, to make an impression on his brother. Thomas smiled politely before excusing himself, holding up his empty whiskey glass.

Ben’s eyes followed Thomas as he went to the decanter and poured himself a generous finger of whiskey. His brother took his sweet time as he leaned against Ben’s bookshelf with the glass in hand. He swirled the whiskey around, staring at the amber liquid for a long moment as a grin played on his face. Bastard. He knew what Ben was waiting for.

Their eyes met as Thomas’s hand drifted in a very subtle gesture, his thumb pointing to the floor.

Ben nodded.

Hrvsht’ooooor would be sated soon enough.

#solo #wickedswriting #grooming tw #//if you'd like a tw free summary pls let me know!

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academiaipromise · 4 years

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Hello!

This is a series that was inspired by some stressed-filled Zoom calls that I’ve been having with some underclassmen for both my extracurricular organizations and peer mentoring programs. If you’re still reading this, chances are, you’re either going back to college soon or starting college for the first time in the year that is 2020. While we all are probably focusing on the safety of ourselves and our loved ones (as we arguably should), many incoming freshmen I’ve been talking to are also stressed about college things: emailing professors, study tips, how to balance virtual classes. So, in case you feel like reading a series of tips written by a 4th year undergrad who at least pretends to know what she’s doing, click below to read the second entry. Click here for the first.

Tip #2: Zoomin’, or Keeping a Life/Work Balance During Online or Hybrid Courses

When trying to figure out the order in which to post these tips, I was struck with the realization that I start school in a little over a week. So, if anyone is in this same boat, I figured it would be important to talk about class registration tips when there’s still time for you do something about it. This post is a long one, but here’s hoping you can find some advice in it.

So something to clarify right off the bat: when everything started moving to a virtual format, everybody and their mother on the Internet starting coming forward with tips on how to work from home. And while that’s kind of what’s happening here, I take issue with two things: working from home is not the same as working from home during a global crisis, and working from home is not the same as virtual college. So I’ll try to get as specific as I can, but also try to throw in some tips that might work better for you than they do for me.

Part One: Registering for Classes

Okay so this part you might have already done, but it’s good to keep in mind. While the recommended hours at every university is different, in my experience the average recommendation is 15 credits hours per semester. It’s important to note though that this is only an average: if you plan on taking courses in the summer, graduating early/later than 4 years, or taking on multiple majors, all of these things affect the credit hours you should be taking.

The unpleasant reality of registering for courses is there’s really no way to know how a specific class will be. There’s always RateMyProfessor.com or other tools, but who’s to say that professors will be like they normally are if they’re trying to figure out how to teach online/hybrid classes? Also, it’s a good thought to keep in mind that typically only two kinds of people leave public reviews of a professor/course: those who really loved the class, and those who really hated the class. So read and figure out what exactly they’re saying, not just how they feel about the course. And just know yourself - if someone from a humanities background says a statistics class is too hard, but you're great with numbers, that’s not always the best advice to heed. Listen to your gut instinct, both when registering and during drop/add week.

My advice for registering for classes right now? Whatever your instinct is, go a little less if you’re able. The reason I say this is because studying in 2020 can be...a lot, in the same way doing anything in 2020 is. I was only registered for 12 credit hours last semester, and even that became difficult to manage toward the end (moving back home suddenly, people you know getting sick, trying to protect high risk loved ones/yourself, all of which can and probably will happen again this semester). I would just say to go in overestimating how much time you need for yourself vs classes - there will be other semesters, and it’s better to take less classes now and not burn out or struggle mentally (or even just academically) in your first semester of college. Please just be kind to yourself.

Part Two: Zoom, or the True Necessary Evil

Maybe you used Zoom all throughout your last months of high school; maybe your university is using Microsoft Teams or something to that effect. Either way, here is what I’ve found to be helpful during my unforeseen five month foray into Zoom, seemingly with no end in sight.

1. Zoom is a tool. Yes, I kind of hate Zoom, and you may also come to hate Zoom if you don’t already, but there are benefits. You can send in written questions or raise your hand through Zoom if your professor allows that feature, both of which are very helpful in trying to show engagement while also trying to respect any kind of Zoom decorum. This post is going to be long enough, and my next post will have more to do with extracurriculars and virtual opportunities, but if you ever need to host a Zoom and want to just use all of its features, I’m more than happy to answer DMs. I’ve had to sit through so many Zoom tutorials for Student Involvement, and if I can spare anyone from that, I would love to.

2. Balance what you keep digitally versus what’s on paper. Okay, so this is definitely, definitely up to personal preference, but speaking from experience, I just don’t view online or hybrid classes as the opportunity to go fully digital if you’ve never been fully digital before. For me, I always take handwritten notes, mainly because when it comes to remembering things, I either have more of an auditory memory, or I can remember the way that I wrote something when I was taking notes. Considering online classes usually decrease the auditory memory aspect a lot, when things moved virtual I made a point to keep taking handwritten notes. However, something that I’ve found particularly appealing is using Google Calendar (or iCal, Outlook, whatever it is you prefer) to an excess. When scheduling Zoom calls, I always save the Zoom link in the description of the event on my Google Calendar. Trust me, this is a lot better than trying to go through your email to find the link that professor sent. So I would advice to think about your learning preferences and figure out a way to still play to your strengths, even if it might technically be a little less convenient.

3. Schedule screen breaks. This is so important for so many reasons. While I’ve invested in some blue light glasses because I am slowly losing my vision after years of reading books by flashlight or AO3 fics on my phone until late at night, I still get fatigued being on a screen for so long. Because it’s not just school that’s on the screen; it’s your clubs, your social interactions, maybe your job. I would recommend scheduling screen breaks that coincide with some sort of physical activity (I don’t necessarily mean an intensive physical activity, although if you want to feel free; I more am referring to getting up out of your chair and walking around your room or apartment. Or going outside. Ride your bike. Do some yoga. Eat some food. Etc.), but if you’re feeling particularly busy or overwhelmed, taking notes from a physical book works just as well. Even if you feel okay at the moment, scheduling breaks and following that schedule can save you from screen fatigue hitting all at once - it will take a lot longer to get over a headache between your eyes/your eye twitching or your neck and/or shoulder locking up than just allowing simple short breaks throughout your day.

4. Schedule time between Zooms. This may sound like the same thing as taking screen breaks, but what I’ve found is that Zoom is a lot more draining that in person classes. I used to schedule Zoom calls back to back like I would classes (again, personal preference, but I was always the person who would take all of their classes from 9:30-3:30 on Tuesday/Thursday, and no classes on Monday/Wednesday/Friday), but found out pretty quickly that I was wrecked after two or more Zoom calls in a row. Honestly, now I won’t schedule any two Zoom calls within a half an hour of each other - between calls, I like to walk around, grab a snack, stretch, close my eyes and try and suppress the social anxiety that seems to accompany every Zoom class or meeting I’ve ever had. (Tangent: I’m thoroughly convinced southerners were not meant to operate Zoom calls. No one knows how to hang up the dang call without being rude because we were taught to have 30 minute conversations in a doorway on our way out.) Maybe there are people who can go on Zoom calls for three hours or so (and I’ve done that with friends, whether just working on group projects or hanging out), but my personal recommendation would be just to space it out more than normal if you’re able.

5. Create an ideal weekly schedule. This is not “your most productive week ever,” or “this is the rigid schedule you will follow for eternity with no deviations.” One of my most difficult adjustments in college was the changing schedules; maybe you were planning on finishing an important paper on Thursday night, only for your group project to decide to meet that night instead. And that will happen, even with virtual meetings (maybe especially with virtual meetings, as people definitely tend to overestimate your availability when it’s digital). What I’ve found that helps is to create an ideal weekly schedule, both in general and a more specific one at the start of the week, because that means that when things get shuffled around, you actually reschedule that thing that you wanted to do, whether it’s homework, yoga, or just...being alone for a bit. It allows you to still feel like you’re prioritizing your time and activities, even when your schedule changes with little to no warning.

Part Three: Some Final Thoughts

If you can invest in a second monitor, now might really be the time to do it. If you’d prefer, I used a laptop riser for most of college before this all happened (yay nerve damage in my neck!) and an external keyboard and mouse. I would just compare models and figure out what works best financially if that’s something you want to do.

Ultimately, if this doesn’t come across in every tip I post, please just be patient with yourself this semester. This is a weird time, and I know that starting your first semester you might be 100% committed to starting off strong or making a great first impression. And that’s awesome, but sometimes that just might not be realistic. Look at last week’s post on contacting your professor, and reach out early just to introduce yourself. Establishing a relationship early on is always good, but especially considering that this semester really might have moments where you need some extra time or grace from them. Can’t focus? Can’t find motivation? That’s understandable; we’re in a global crisis right now. Just listen to yourself and always put your health and the health of your loved ones before school. I hope that these tips can at least help you navigate your first year with a little less trepidation.

------------------------------------

So that’s it for this entry! As always, if you have specific questions, please don’t hesitate to ask. Again, I am a student at an SEC university in the United States, so I’m not claiming to be an expert in all things, but I have TA'ed multiple freshman seminars, and will be making this series for the freshmen that I know starting at my school this year anyways, so putting them on this blog is no big deal. Next post (which will hopefully be up sooner than this one was) will specifically be on extracurriculars and virtual opportunities, so if you have specific questions on that as well, I’m all ears.

#studyblr #college tips #study tips #academia #first year of college #first year advice #first year tips #academiaipromise #zoom tips

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fieryanmitsu · 4 years

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Talented Fingers | A3! Week 2020 – Day 1 (Itaru/Izumi/Tsumugi) | 18+, NSFW

It’s been a while since I’ve written, unfortunately, but when I saw that A3! Week was happening, I just knew I had to try to whip something up!

So, here’s my entry for Day 1 of A3! Week 2020~ We were given three prompts for each day to choose from… And, because I like to challenge my imagination (read: torture my brain), I decided that I would use all three prompts in each entry, haha.

Since one of the prompts for Day 1 was Link Skills, I just knew that I had to go with “Talented Tutors”, which features two of my favourite A3! boys: Itaru and Tsumugi. But, I will warn everyone now that this is a completely mindless, self-indulgent and spicy piece of nonsense, hahaha. I LOVE Izumi as a character as well, and I love her paired with both Itaru and Tsumugi, but couldn’t choose between the two considering the prompt… and so this happened.

Note that this entry is NSFW, but the rest of my entries should be SFW (unless something drastically changes). So if you’re under-aged or uncomfortable with NSFW content, please do check back again!

TALENTED FINGERS

PROMPTS: Director | Link Skills | Firsts

CHARACTERS: Izumi Tachibana, Itaru Chigasaki, Tsumugi Tsukioka

PAIRINGS: Itaru/Izumi/Tsumugi

My fanfic masterpost: Here

AO3: Link in my Blog Menu

CONTENT WARNINGS: 18+ rating, NSFW, contains smutty/sexual descriptions and situations, tutor/student fantasy

“I’m home!” Izumi announced tiredly as she walked into the first-floor lounge of the Mankai dorms. She had been helping her friend’s theatre troupe with painting background sets all day and she felt completely beaten up. She was sure that her knees would be bruised tomorrow and that her back would be in a world of pain when she woke up – her arm was already starting to feel like jelly.

“Welcome home! You’re back so late – you must be exhausted,” Tsumugi greeted from his spot at one of the tables. Piles of papers were sprawled out in front of him.

“GJ. Welcome home,” Itaru piped in from his spot seated across from Tsumugi. There were stacks of paper laid out before the other young man, as well. Two cups and a nearly empty pot of coffee also sat on the table between the two.

“This is an odd sight. Don’t you usually work in your room, Itaru?” Izumi asked as she walked over to the pair.

Instead of replying, Itaru simply sighed and took another sip of his coffee with one hand. With the other, he lifted one of the papers and handed it to Izumi.

She glanced at the paper and saw that it was a chemistry worksheet covered in messy hand-written responses. However, the amount of pencil marks was almost completely overshadowed by harsh red ink. Itaru’s handwriting was scrawled all over the page, circling wrong answers and writing comments in the margins. On the top right corner was Taichi’s name.

“I asked Itaru to help me with looking over the students’ homework since he used to work as a tutor as well. It’s almost exam time, so they all wanted some extra help,” Tsumugi responded with a sheepish chuckle.

“I didn’t know you worked as a tutor before, Itaru.”

“Back when I was a university student, I tutored as a part time gig. It paid well, you know,” Itaru responded with a shrug, taking a moment to tap a few buttons on his phone screen before turning back to the worksheet. Izumi had a good feeling she knew exactly what he had spent all of his earnings as she briefly stared at one of his games running automatically on his phone.

“But, wow, it looks like there’s still a lot of work ahead of you… It’s almost midnight already,” Izumi remarked, glancing at the papers on the table and nudging through them lightly. While there was a large pile of papers with red marks, there was also a significant stack that was unedited.

“Hmmm, I suppose so. Itaru’s been working on correcting worksheets while I’ve been making some study plans based on what areas they’re struggling with.”

“Yeah, usually worksheets don’t take this long to work through…. But, Taichi’s homework is a disaster… and don’t even get me started on Tenma… It’s taking me three times as long to go through theirs than the others’…” Itaru sighed again.

“Do you need any help? I don’t have any tutoring experience, but if there’s anything I can do, please let me lend you two a hand,” Izumi offered.

“You wouldn’t mind? Maybe you could go through the Japanese homework? It’s just checking off if they wrote the kanji properly and in the right context, so I think that you should be able to handle that,” Tsumugi replied as he shifted through the worksheets on the table.

“No problem! Oh! I’ll make us a new pot of coffee! My friend also gave me box of cookies as a thank you as well – let’s share them together!”

“Ahhhh, caffeine and sugar – the best nutrients for our brains~ Want to feed me one? Since my hands are busy?” Itaru asked with a teasing smirk.

Izumi rolled her eyes and plunked the now-open box of cookies on the table.

“Nice try, but that smile won’t work on me!”

“Ah, well, it was worth a shot,” Itaru lamented as he helped himself to one of the cookies, mumbling a quick thanks through a mouthful of crumbs before he picked up his pen again.

“Oh, Azuma was telling me about this bakery the other day,” Tsumugi remarked, examining the box. “But, thanks again for helping, Izumi. I’ll leave the worksheets here for you.”

“No problem – glad to help!”

After brewing a new pot of coffee, Izumi grabbed herself a mug and sat down in front of the worksheets that Tsumugi had collected for her. As she took a sip of the coffee, she couldn’t help but stare for a moment at the two men in front of her. It was a striking image – two handsome young men bent over their work with serious looks of concentration, pens flying across the pages.

The Mankai Company students were certainly lucky to have access to not one, but two talented tutors. She hadn’t been a bad student back in her school days, but she had always been middle of the pack when it came to academic subjects. She couldn’t help but idly wonder how it would have been if she had been tutored by Tsumugi and Itaru. She had seen them both explain concepts to the students before, and they were both always so clear and easy to understand. Maybe she would have had an easier time in school.

As she focused on the worksheets in front of her, listening only to the scratching of pen on paper, the ticking of the clock and the occasional sipping of coffee, Izumi felt her eyelids grow heavy. She had been doing physical labour for close to eight hours, and it was now close to one in the morning. She tried to shake her head to wake up, but soon found herself completely nodding off….

“… Izumi… Izumi… Wake up, Izumi…!”

Izumi’s eyes snapped open as she heard someone call her name. Tsumugi and Itaru were staring at her with furrowed brows.

“Eh?! I-I’m so sorry!! I didn’t mean to drift off on you two!”

“So you did fall asleep on us,” Itaru sighed. “And here I was hoping you were just resting your eyes. You have some nerve, falling asleep on your tutors.”

“Huh? Tutors? Wait… what’s going on here?” she exclaimed, suddenly realizing her surroundings.

She had expected to be in the lounge at the Mankai dorms, but instead, she was in her bedroom back at her parents’ house. The three of them were sitting at a coffee table with worksheets and textbooks spread out before them. Looking down, she also realized that she was in her high school uniform. She idly noticed with a cringe that the skirt was a tad tighter on her than she remembered it being when she was in school – she really had to cut back on the rice…

“Why are we in my room? And why am I wearing my high school uniform?!”

“Ahaha, you must still be half-asleep, Izumi,” Tsumugi chuckled. “I know we usually tutor you at the public library, but it’s closed for emergency repairs from a water main break right now, so we’re here at your house instead.”

“And as for your uniform… well, we did ask if you wanted to change into something more comfortable first, but you were so eager to get started on studying and didn’t want to bother. But, despite your eagerness, you fell asleep…” Itaru remarked wryly.

Izumi felt like her head was swimming. What the heck was happening? Was this some kind of lucid dream? Was it because she had been wondering what it’d be like to be tutored by Tsumugi and Itaru that she had suddenly dreamed of them tutoring her?! She couldn’t believe how embarrassing this was – especially since she was in her high school uniform. What was she even supposed to do in this situation? Maybe she should pinch herself. But, before she could do anything, Itaru suddenly leaned towards her with a smirk on his face – a very seductive smirk, she couldn’t help noting.

“You know... you've been a naughty girl, falling asleep on us... Naughty girls need to be punished,” he drawled, as he inched closer to her, so that by the time he said ‘punished’, it was right in her left ear. She shuddered and felt a pleasant shiver shoot down her back.

"That’s right… Maybe we need to do something to wake you up,” Tsumugi added, closing in on her other side. “Perhaps… this will wake you up?”

And then, she felt Tsumugi’s tongue lick her ear, and she let out a yelp as he took her right earlobe in his mouth and started nibbling on it.

“Aaah, Ts-Tsumugi!! St-stop, that tickles! Nnngg-!” Izumi protested, but instead, his tongue was now licking up the back of her ear and she heard herself moan.

“Now, now, Tsumugi, that’s not a punishment at all – you’re much too gentle,” Itaru purred before he brushed aside the hair at her neck, his fingertips feeling like fire. Then, suddenly, his lips were on her neck and she yelped as she felt a sharp pain. Did he just give her a hickey?!

"Itaru!! What are you doing—!”

Both Itaru and Tsumugi were now nuzzling either side of her neck, their breath puffing against her skin, and she felt like her face was on fire. This was bad! This was very bad! But, she also felt a tell-tale shot of pleasure uncoiling in the pit of her stomach, and a stirring between her legs.

"Now, let's see if you've been paying attention...” Itaru said, lifting his face from her neck. “I was just reviewing dissociation with you. Have you solved the problem yet? Can you tell me the chemical equation for the dissociation for sodium chloride? Don't forget to provide an explanation if you want full marks."

"H-Huh? Sodium chloride?” Izumi squeaked, her mind trying to catch up with what Itaru was saying – it was very hard to focus when Tsumugi was sucking on the fingers of her hand. “U-Ummm, what was dissociation again?" How many years had it been since she’d looked at a chemistry textbook?!

"Tsk, tsk, tsk. You really weren't paying attention, Izumi. Were you distracted while I was teaching you?" Itaru scolded, placing one long finger against her lips before she could respond. His finger then slid down her chin, tracing down her neck and stopping at the collar of her shirt. "Maybe... you really aren't comfortable in that uniform. Let me help you loosen it up."

The next thing she knew, Itaru had pulled off the ribbon tie around her neck and was slowly unbuttoning her shirt. How was he doing that with one hand?!

"Itaru!!" she protested. She knew that she should button up her shirt again, because this was going nowhere good fast, but couldn’t muster the strength in her arm when she saw him flash her a crooked smirk. Instead, her heart fluttered in her chest – if only she didn’t find that smug face so attractive!!

Suddenly, she felt a tug on her right hand.

"Izumi..." Tsumugi looked at her with the saddest puppy-dog eyes and she felt her heart shoot up her throat. Gosh, he was so, so cute. "I had asked you to finish filling in the kanji on this worksheet, but you’ve only filled in two of the blanks… I worked so hard to make up this worksheet – were the questions too dull? Is my teaching boring you?”

“N-Not at all, Tsumugi!! You’d never bore me!” Izumi protested immediately, her mouth moving faster than her brain. All she could think was how she could stop this angel from looking so disappointed.

“Maybe… I should do something to make my lesson more engaging?” he asked softly, the light in his eyes had now turned from puppy-dog to something distinctly more dangerous. She felt Tsumugi’s hand settle on her right leg and whimpered as she felt his hand creep up her thigh, his fingertips tracing delicate circles across her skin.

Suddenly she felt a chill on her chest – her shirt was now wide open, and then she felt two hands push gently on her shoulders, and she was splayed on her back.

“It’s not good if you aren’t paying attention to your tutors, Izumi. Keep your attention only on us this time,” Itaru purred.

Itaru bent down and began kissing the top of her left breast. She let out a gasp at the sudden contact, but it quickly turned into a moan as he sucked harder and left another hickey. His left hand came up and grasped at her bra, quickly undoing the conveniently-located front clasp, exposing her breasts to the open air.

“Ahhhhh, I-Itaru,” Izumi gasped as his hand cupped her left breast and began to massage it gently, his fingers rolling her erect nipple. His mouth closed over the right breast and noisily sucked and kissed.

Before she could think too much more about Itaru’s ministrations, Tsumugi’s voice interrupted her thoughts.

“That’s right, Izumi… let us teach you how to feel good.”

She felt him spread her knees apart and push up her skirt. He gently trailed his fingers down both of her legs, and she twitched at the ticklish sensation. Then, she felt one of his fingers trace the line where her panties met her thighs. The feeling of the edge of his nail against the sensitive flesh made her groan, her voice becoming louder as he moved his finger over to her most sensitive spot.

“You’re such a quick learner, Izumi, you’re already so wet that it’s soaking through your panties…” And indeed, as he pressed and stroked her, she felt her juices soaking through the thin layer of cotton.

She yelped as she suddenly felt Itaru’s teeth lightly scrape across her breast and his left hand tweaked her nipple, as if he didn’t want to be forgotten. A shot of pleasure coursed through her and she felt her back arch off the floor.

“Nnnnng, I-Itaru!”

Before she could recover, she let out a gasp as Tsumugi’s finger moved the panel of her underwear aside and plunged a single finger into her.

“Ah… ah…. Ts-Tsumugi…!” She could feel a gush of hot liquid ooze out of her opening at the sudden entry.

It all felt so good. The sensation of both Itaru playing with her breasts, and the steady pump of Tsumugi’s finger inside of her. She could feel a pressure building up inside the depths of her stomach and she let out another loud, wanton moan.

“… Izumi… Izumi… Wake up, Izumi…!”

Tsumugi gently shook Izumi’s shoulder as she whimpered again in her sleep, but she wasn’t stirring from her slumber.

They had moved the young director to the coach when she’d fallen asleep in her chair about half an hour ago. But, suddenly, they heard her groaning and calling their names. They could see that she was squirming on the couch and was panting heavily. Concerned, they had decided to check on her.

“She seems to be having a bad dream… Should we try harder to wake her up?” Tsumugi questioned, looking up at Itaru.

“Hmmm, yeah, she’s sweating a bit, maybe she’s getting sick… it would be better for her to sleep in her bed—” Itaru started to respond, but was interrupted by Izumi. Moaning his name. In a very, very erotic voice.

“Nnnnng, I-Itaru!”

Itaru’s eyes widened in shock. The young director’s brows scrunched up and her lips were parted in a pant. He had never seen such an expression on her face before. And the way she had moaned his name sent blood rushing to his groin. He immediately clasped a hand over his mouth to stifle the choking sound he had made. He had no idea what she was dreaming about, but she was giving him bad ideas and his mind was about to kick into overdrive—

A moment later, she let out another moan.

“Ah… ah…. Ts-Tsumugi…!”

Tsumugi immediately felt his face flush. He was sure that if he looked in a mirror, his face would be red as a tomato. His eyes instinctively flickered to the juncture of her thighs as she clenched her legs together in another squirm. He felt his brain short-circuiting as his imagination jumped to the most inappropriate conclusion—NO, he couldn’t just assume that! Maybe she was dreaming about something else. Though he was secretly hoping that she really was dreaming about him—

“I-I’ll wake her up!” Tsumugi nearly shouted, cutting off his train of thought, his voice cracking in his desperation to cover up his embarrassment.

He quickly shook her shoulder, a little rougher this time.

“Izumi! Wake up!!” he said again, probably louder than he intended.

Finally, Izumi’s eyes snapped open, and she saw Itaru and Tsumugi staring down at her, both looking at her with anxious faces. Maybe she was still groggy, but they also looked quite red-faced.

One second passed in silence as she stared at the two men. And then another. And then, two things hit her like a truck. One, she remembered every detail of her dream. Two, she became distinctly aware that her panties were soaking wet. She could not believe it. She had never had such an intensely vivid and sexual dream before. In fact, this was the first time she could even remember having a wet dream at all. A wet dream about the two men who were crouching right in front of her!!

Izumi shot up into an upright position, heart racing and face flushing furiously.

“I-I’m so s-sorry I fell asleep! I-I’m not feeling well, so I’m going to go back to my room!” she quickly stammered out before swinging herself off the couch.

“Have a good night!” she added quickly before she stumbled out of the lounge and practically ran to her room, leaving behind two very hot and bothered tutors.

I can’t believe this trash fire is my first contribution to the A3! fandom, hahaha. I’m sorrynotsorry for this. I had way too much fun writing this, so I hope you enjoyed it as well!

-Anmitsu

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agirlunderarock · 4 years

Text

How I accidentally wrote 20 page paper on Boromir for one of my Final Ever University Papers PART 2

So this took me 5ever because I had to go through my actual paper again to find the sources and the citations I had, and then throw out the academic fluffer I had to speak with. But anyway just be prepared for a long ass read because we gotta touch on nearly every source I argued with in this post before getting to the good stuff. If you haven’t read Part 1 well here it is

Okay Okay where was I?

I said that academics were wrong with how they were judging Boromir right? Is that where I left off? Well thats where I’m starting

So before I go further I need to explain that the main premise for my paper is an argument to characterize Boromir with loyalty and fear, instead of power hungry and whatever the hell used, and then throw out this good vs. evil binary that’s often used to describe the lord of the rings- because lets be real, it looks like that on the surface but everyone has their ups and downs at least once or twice, and if not within the Lord of the Rings, it comes from books that are set in previous ages.

ANYWAY

Keep the fear and loyalty things in mind alright?

Fear sounds like an odd choice for a character I’m supposed to be defending right? I know.

We’ll get to that just bear with me.

So in order to say that academics were wrong, I first had to look at where they were coming from and try to see what textual evidence they had. Because if you’ve done academic research, you know how important textual evidence is.

So while finding literally nothing that focused specifically on Boromir, I found J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia : Scholarship and Critical Assessment by Michael D. C. Drout, which I still have questions about but hey it was a good starting point. You would think that a whole Encyclopedia dedicated to Tolkien would have more than a handful of entries dedicated to Boromir. I mean mentioning him in Gondorian politics or relations with Rohan or even Boromir I instead of just Boromir II but heres the thing, IN THE WHOLE IN ENCYCLOPEDIA HE WAS ONLY MENTIONED 8 TIMES.

THE NAME BOROMIR (which in this document only refers to Boromir II) ONLY APPEARS IN EIGHT ENTRIES.

You know what those entries are?

‘double of,’ - okay what the fuck does that mean?

I honestly don’t remember what it means I think it had to do with character foils, you know like how Neville is a foil for Harry in Harry Potter? If I remember correctly, it identified the common foils, Gandalf v. Saruman, Frodo v. Gollum and Aragorn v. Boromir. I could be totally wrong about this, its been exactly a year and I didn’t focus on this entry.

‘Faramir and,’- yes we know Boromir is Faramir’s older brother. What else ya got?

‘herosim of,’- Ah yes sounds promising

And you think it would shed some positive light on our boy right? RIGHT? Heres what the entry said per the quote in paper “It is in fact Boromir’s desire for the victory of Minas Tirith and his own glory there in that motivates his own grasp for the ring: the heroic motivations of fame, reward, and revenge (in this case on Sauron)” ( Drout 270 ).

LIKE EXCUSE ME WHAT THE FUCK- sorry wait, let me show you how I rephrased that for academic purposes: This description does not actually describe Boromir as being heroic, but later explains why these descriptions of heroism are actually evil compared to characters like Aragorn, Frodo, Gimli and the rest of the Fellowship.

‘penance of,’- Yet another character who achieves redemption through death. Great. I hate it. Shut up. Kill this trope.

and finally, ‘tyranny of.’- yes because Boromir was obviously a tyrant, but I say again SHOW ME TEXTUAL EVIDENCE

AND I’M TALKING ONLY ABOUT THE BOOKS HERE REMEMBER ALL OF THIS IS INFORMATION ON THE BOOKS. like there were entries on things from the movies, and even fanfiction, but THESE ENTRIES WERE BUILT ON RESOURCES THAT BUILT ARGUMENTS ABOUT THE BOOKS

I’m getting off track here

ANYWAYS

At the end of each of those entries were list of sources that the author used to create those entries. So guess what that meant- Ya girl was hand delivered sources to search for and hopefully they had some specific pages references for me to look up within the actual book series. At least you would think thats what I found, but NOOOOOOOOO, what I actually found is that EVERY SINGLE REFERENCED SOURCE CHARACTERIZED BOROMIR ONLY BY HIS ATTEMPT TO TAKE THE RING FROM FRODO.

Thats like living your whole life and having people who say they know you intimately (not in the romantic sense in the knows you to your core sense) BUT the only thing they really know about you is that one time in pre-school you tried to draw a rocket on the wall but actually it looked like a penis thats the only thing anyone will remember you for. I didn’t do this by the way, nor know anyone who did this but some kid somewhere probably did

But you know me at this point I had to check the sources and see what they were saying. So I took up Patrick Grant’s “Tolkien: Archetype and Word,” where he talks mostly about Frodo. I know its a stretch BUT he talks about loyalty specifically Sam’s loyalty to Frodo, and remember we want to establish that Boromir is incredibly loyal, so we have to see what he’s actually up against according to the critics

“…Sam Gamgee, whose part is least publicly acclaimed of all, but who in the sense in which we are now using the word, is especially heroic. His unfailing devotion to Frodo is exemplary, and here again Sam is a key link in bring the meaning of the book to the reader, the everyman who admires great deeds but wonders what his own part might be in important events which seem well enough wrought without him” ( 180 ).

Okay that seems fair from how Tolkien himself has talked about Sam right. And you’re probably like okay, but what the fuck does that have to do with Boromir? Literally just further down the page he says:

“…. The fellowship breaks only when the bond of obedience is broken, as it is by Boromir, whose pride and lust for personal power are evidence of false heroism” (180).

LUST FOR PERSONAL POWER???? PRIDE?????

SHOW ME THE PAGES SIR

GIVE THEM TO ME

I know you’re probably thinking, ‘but wait he’s actually kinda right-”

WRONG

Its anxiety, I’m telling you

I counted

its fear and anxiety

but again I’m getting a head of myself. Basically Grant just took a shat on Boromir to make Sam look good.

EXCUSE ME SIR SAM IS A GODDAMN MASTERPIECE ON HIS OWN THANKS. DON’T TRASH BOROMIR TO COMPLIMENT SAM. Also be wary of people who do this in general, if they put someone else down instead of just out right complimenting you take it as a warning

Oh and did I mention that because Grant says Boromir is technically being selfish, another critics analysis makes Boromir Evil, because acts done out of selfish pursuits are seen as evil and a “perversion of human will.” But you know, thats just how it be sometimes when you’re putting literature in conversation with one another.

Just know I pick on Grant a lot, mostly because he says shit like this: “…the most blinding love derives directly from such obedience,” (180). when it comes to Sam, and then takes a shit on Boromir. Like we’re going to come back to the obedience thing in a little bit, but just know that Merry, Pippin, Faramir, Eowyn, Even Sam at one point, and I mean I guess by some extension movie!Arwen take a big ‘ol shit on the idea that the only way to be heroic is to be OBEDIENT.

I get it, its another Catholic thing. I’m Catholic, I know what its getting at. But consider- no

Basically I boil this shit down to one thing

Sam Only Owes Loyalty To Frodo.

Literally his main concern throughout the book is Frodo and then the Shire and what that encompasses. So yeah its easy to be loyal and obedient to someone who shares all the same ideas and values as you and has a pretty similar lived experience right??? ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY And before anyone says Sam was loyal to the fellowship, Sam would literally cut a bitch for Frodo. He woulda fought Aragorn in the Prancing Pony if he thought he had to. He gave a second thought to Merry and Pippin when they left the Fellowship, but it wasn’t a “we should go back for them all or wait for them” It was “i’m gonna support mr. Frodo, even if Idon’t much like the gollum creature he decided to drag around but fair i guess cuz none of us know the fucking way into Mordor.”

So I made a chart to demonstrate why comparing Boromir and Sam is a big no no, and what kinda things Boromir was working with the whole time he was part of the fellowship.

Did I forget to mention that this was supposed to be a visual research paper?

So Sam and Frodo had a lot of the same Fears and values.

Our Boy Boromir over here has to deal with being a political/military figure, meet the demands of his father, he’s gotta try to be a good brother, he’s gotta learn to get along with the fellowship, and then each of those new or old loyalties has different responsibility and expectations he’s supposed to meet. And because I had to include Aristotelian ideas as part of the class, to quote myself: Despite the Aristotelian concept that it is impossible to be a virtuous friend to many, Boromir’s actions throughout The Fellowship of the Ring show him attempting to do this ( Aristotle 9 ). Like thats literally why he ends up a member of the Fellowship, he’s a little unsure of this plan, but hey its the best one he’s heard and if everyone thinks its going to work then by golly he’ll see it done. But again Aristotle (just in your head pronounce it like chipotle for me please) wants to try to establish a structure that I think is stoopid, he’s got a thing that says “it is a more terrible thing to defraud a comrade than a fellow-citizen, more terrible not to help a brother than a stranger, and more terrible to wound a father than any one else” (15).

So remember those loyalties in the little blue squiggles up in the picture, we already know that Denethor, and Faramir bump heads a little, and then the soldiers serving with Boromir probably have their own ideas about how Gondor should be defended, and then he goes to the Council of Elrong and they’re saying something completely different from what he’s heard- theres a lot of threads pulling the Captain in different directions. He’s got a lot hats to wear and demands to fulfill and living under the shadow of Mordor with all of those responsibilities is bound to give anyone anxiety.

But don’t just take my word for it

The movie actually reinforces this. I know the book says Boromir was “...pierced with many black feathered arrows” But the movie specifically makes it 3

Now I’m sure Mr. Peter Jackson didn’t intend for what I’m about to say, but I think its a pretty cool notion to think about. Because you can summarize Boromir’s conflicting loyalties into “family’ ‘country’ and “Fellowship’. Like his father would have him bring the ring to Gondor, his role as a military/political figure for Gondor means he should be doing whatever he has to in order to protect his country, and the Fellowship is like nah man we destroy this thing and everything else will fall into place, and Boromir is left having to decide whih of these things to act upon. Family, Country, and the Fellowship are the competing signs that make up is character arc, and his grapple with these three things is ultimately what leads to his death.

Now if your thinking family and country should be lumped together- theres a reason for it, just trust me, bare with me please

But basically what I’m trying to get at is given all these factors, you can’t compare a character like Boromir with all these responsibilities hanging off him to be comparable to Sam whose only responsibility is Frodo.

But you know who does share all these same demands

Faramir

Like take a look at their character arcs- if you can the text on this next pic is super teeny

If thats too small for you don’t worry about it because we’re gonna get into why Faramir is a better foil for Boromir, and how this should affect the way we as the reader come to understand his character. So fun stuff in the next part! Sorry for dragging this out, but just like my original paper, this turned out to be WAY longer than I expected.

#The Lord of the Rings #Boromir #me talking about Boromir #the fellowship of the ring #character analysis #character development

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gellavonhamster · 4 years

Text

good people

gen || Montgomery Montgomery & Bertrand Baudelaire || pre-canon

ao3 link eng || ao3 link rus

Monty Montgomery learned about the deaths of Count and Countess *** somewhere about two in the afternoon, in the lobby of the Biology Faculty of Gerald Durrell University of Natural Science. He didn’t know them personally, and that day he could not even recall their faces when reading an article about their deaths, just as many years later he could not – unfortunately – recall the face of their son, whom he did know personally back in the day and had met as often as not. At the same time, he could remember in detail the moment he heard they were dead – the hum of voices in the vast corridors of the faculty building, sunlight glistening on glass in the frames of photographs and newspaper clippings hanging on the walls, the sound of his own footsteps. He was descending the stairs, almost hopping like a kid because he had just managed to talk a teacher into letting him submit the report a day later, and consequently was in a splendid mood. Few things can compete with the joy that a student experiences when the deadline for a paper that still exists only as a title page gets postponed for a later date. Immersed in happy thoughts, he went down to the ground floor, and was just heading for the exit when he suddenly saw a crowd of students and teachers huddled together and discussing something animatedly. One of the students was holding a widely unfolded newspaper, and several people at once were reading something over his shoulder.

“Must be a change of government or something,” Monty thought as he approached them. Frankly, the prospect of writing a paper in two days concerned him much more at that time than a hypothetical coup.

“Ah, Montgomery!” shouted one of those reading the paper, Professor Stein of the Herpetology Department. Stein was always shouting: he had hearing problems. Now, on the other hand, a raised voice was more than appropriate, for too many people were talking at once.

“Good afternoon, Professor,” Monty gave him a nod of greeting as he joined the group. Getting closer to the paper was impossible – the crowd was too thick. “What’s the news?”

“A murder, Montgomery! A crime story at its finest; the whole city is going insane! Come read.” At that, Professor grabbed him by the elbow and pushed him into the middle of the crowd, so that Monty found himself right behind the left shoulder of the guy with the newspaper.

He took a look at the page, found the piece everyone was reading, and grew cold.

“Poison darts! With snake venom!” Stein exclaimed. Monty winced as if in pain. The loud noises around him were distracting; he wanted to read carefully, turn each word round in his head, persuade himself it was not what he thought it was. Coincidences do happen sometimes, after all. “And where – at the opera! Right during the performance!”

“Yeah,” someone to the right of the newspaper chimed in, “straight out of Gaston Leroy.”

“Leroux,” Monty corrected mechanically. He was suddenly overcome with fierce and helpless anger. He stepped back. “I’m sorry, Professor, I really have to go.”

Walking quickly, even quicker than back when he was urged on by the unwritten report, he headed for the door.

Well then, La Forza del Destino. Poison darts. Snake venom.

And his flatmate, who went to the opera yesterday and didn’t come back home.

***

Bertrand asked him to procure the venom about a week ago.

It might have been Thursday, or maybe Friday. Monty was writing a term paper then, one that he could not set about writing earlier because he was busy doing other things, from the tasks assigned to him by VFD to attending the parties organized by other volunteers, which in some cases seemed as important to him, even vital at times. VFD gave him time to deal with the exam period, relieving him from participation in any missions for the nearest future – the pursuance of science was highly valued among their ranks. Many volunteers flaunted some academic degrees, but not many of them got those degrees officially, even if they deserved them objectively. Some Doctors and Masters among them didn’t even hold a certificate of Bachelor’s Degree. Fighting the fires, both literal and figurative, took up a lot of time and energy, leaving virtually none of it for attending the lectures or even distance education. However, the VFD members had connections – Had Connections even, capitalized – owing to which many of them got the opportunity to call themselves professors or academicians, although all their scientific contributions, sometimes absolutely groundbreaking, remained hidden from the general public.

At the Biology Faculty, VFD Had some Connections as well, and if Monty wished so, he probably could obtain the Master’s or even Doctor’s Degree without much effort, but he had no such wish. He desired recognition and respect from the people outside the organization, desired to make discoveries that he could tell the whole world about – desired for everything to be fair. That was why he had spent the whole previous week in a kind of a time loop. Every day looked like the day before: writing, writing, writing, leafing through the sources frenziedly after another bookmark gets lost, sorting the materials collected in the expedition, drinking gallons of coffee, and occasionally sleeping. And feeding Maturin, of course. As to Monty himself, it was Bertrand who had been feeding him, which was very kind of him, because Monty couldn’t even afford the time to heat some ready-to-cook foods. Bertrand simply used to come into his room, not even knocking anymore so that not to distract him, put a plate of vegetable couscous or spaghetti bolognese or something in front of him, and leave before Monty noticed that plate. The dirty dishes he used to take away in the same manner, unnoticed. Monty had to yell “Thank you!” for the whole house to hear, to which Bertrand yelled back “You owe me!” from his room or from the kitchen. He was joking, and Monty knew that, but still planned at least to stand treat at the pub after the exams were over.

That morning, Bertrand knocked on the door again – first came in, then knocked. That meant he needed Monty to pay attention to him.

“Hello, hello, hello!” Monty exclaimed, turning on the chair, immediately knocked one his books off the table, and bent to pick it up. “I am listening to you attentively, o dearest neighbour.”

“You’re going to the uni tomorrow, aren’t you?” Bertrand asked.

Monty nodded. “Yeah, to submit this Frankenstein’s monster. Only the bibliography left to do.”

“You’re a hero,” Bertrand praised him. Monty thought so too, in all honesty. “Could you do something for me while you’re at it?”

“Buddy, I would’ve wasted away without you here over the last few days. What exactly do you need?”

“I need,” Bertrand felt for something in the pocket of his trousers, took out some scrap of paper, and gave it to Monty, “a vial of venom of this snake.”

Monty’s heart lurched. He skimmed the note.

“Oh,” he said. “No problem. There are a couple of excellent specimens of this species at the City Herpetological Centre.”

“I know,” Bertrand replied. “I thought of asking N or S, but I don’t know them well. I wouldn’t like to shoot my mouth off in front of the people I do not trust completely,” he sat down on the edge of Monty’s bed. “Not these days.”

Monty noticed that Bertrand was trying not to meet his eyes.

“I see. Tomorrow it’ll be done.”

“Thank you,” Bertrand smiled slightly, still not looking at Monty. Instead, he was looking at Maturin, the turtle, which was chewing on a salad leaf in its terrarium. The turtle was undoubtedly remarkable, but it wasn’t hard to see that Bertrand was rather looking through it than at it. Sooner or later that was bound to happen, Monty thought. Sooner or later, each volunteer had to do something… like that. Not necessarily related to deathly poisons and what very logically results from their use, but still something that made it difficult to look one’s friends in the eye. Like it was now difficult for Bertrand.

“Who?” Monty asked in a hushed voice. “I’m not asking about the name, I’m asking if you know that person. Or were you just given a description?”

“A description,” Bertrand echoed. He smiled again, wider and brighter, but still somewhat stiffly. “Don’t worry about me. I am not a child, I’ll handle this.”

***

“And so he did,” Monty thought as he was unlocking the door to his flat.

Bertrand was already home; there was no need to call their acquaintances or go to Kit’s place. When Monty entered, his flatmate was sitting at the kitchen table and rubbing his knuckles on one hand with the thumb of the other. His face was calm, without any trace of either tears or smile. It reminded Monty of the kind of “Closed” sign that people put on the shop doors on Sundays.

“There you are,” Monty said, peeking into the kitchen. Bertrand gave a start and looked at him.

“Hi,” he said, and offered Monty a faint smile. It didn’t look too convincing. “How did the report thing go?”

“They let me submit it later,” Monty told him. He didn’t know how to ask Bertrand about what was really vexing him, so he asked another question that was, in his opinion, appropriate in any situation. “Would you like some tea?”

“That would be nice, thank you.”

Monty went into the kitchen, took the teapot off the stove, shook it and made sure it was empty, filled it with water, ignited the burner, put the teapot on the stove. Having been in a hurry to check if Bertrand was home, he didn’t have time to take his shoes off, and was now stamping around the kitchen in outdoor shoes. “Gotta sweep the floor later,” he noted to himself. It came with experience – the skill of not forgetting about the dull everyday things like cleaning and cooking while your entire world was in a whirl and threatening to fall apart.

“I saw the article in the newspaper,” he began as he took teacups from the dish drainer. Bertrand was still sitting at the table in silence, still rubbing his hands absentmindedly. “About the opera.”

“Yeah, I’ve already read it, too.”

“You lied when you told me you didn’t know who the target was, didn’t you? When you asked me to get you the venom.”

“I did,” Bertrand agreed. He leaned back in his chair. It wasn’t hard to see by his eyes that he hadn’t caught even a minute of sleep last night. “Do we have any lemons for tea?”

“Um?.. I think there must be some. Check the fridge. Why did you lie?”

“You had enough problems of your own. And you still do. I didn’t want you to worry about me as well,” Bertrand got up from the table, walked up to the fridge, and took out a bowl containing half a lemon. Having taken a knife and a board, he started cutting the lemon into very neat identical pieces. Everything Bertrand did was neat.

“Yeah, you can want whatever you like,” Monty muttered. The teapot was still taking its time to boil, and just standing empty-handed and discussing the murder committed by his neighbour was unbearable, so he took a cloth and started cleaning the sink aggressively. That was not the first time he procured poisons required by other volunteers. Perhaps he hadn’t killed anyone himself – yet – but he suspected that in a sense he already was partially responsible for a number of deaths. It was scary, it was weighing down on him, it kept him up at night and made him drink and dance and party with a vengeance in the hope of forgetting himself – but that was him, and when it came to Bertrand, it was a hundred times more of a shame. Bertrand was a good person. Bertrand didn’t deserve to be turned into a murderer. Monty was hoping he could express that all in such a way as not to make it seem like his heart is aching not so much for his friend as for his own hurt feelings, but the right words just wouldn’t come.

“You are one of the best people I know,” he finally began. Bertrand made a strange sound, something between a laugh and a sob. Monty turned and saw that he had already cut the leftover lemon and was now standing with an absent look on his face, clutching the knife. “Don’t hold the knife with the edge toward you. Fucking hell, B,” he raised his voice when Bertrand didn’t react. “Don’t hold the knife with the edge toward you, and put it down anyway!”

The knife fell on the table with a thud. Bertrand closed his eyes, leaned on the tabletop with both hands, and lowered his head so that Monty couldn’t get a good look at his countenance.

“I keep remembering that he hit O several times when boozed up, back when O was a boy,” he spoke quietly. “He used to drink, you know – not every day, but he used to go on drinking sprees from time to time. O’s taking after him in that respect. I keep thinking back on it as if it makes an excuse for me, but it really doesn’t, you see? And she was innocent – I mean, the rational part of me gets that she wasn’t, I know who she and her husband used to finance and what they used to cover up, but all I can remember is that she was usually nice to O, and to B after she moved to the City too.” Now his voice was taut, his face burning with indignation, his former numbness gone without a trace. “How come this task was assigned to B, of all people? After they had basically accepted her as family?”

Monty knew, personally and by repute, several Bs among their associates, but this time Bertrand didn’t have to specify who he was talking about.

“I am angry they made you do this, you are angry they made her…”

“Because she didn’t deserve this,” Bertrand interrupted him. “Because she’s a good person.”

Monty realized that Bertrand was basically repeating word for word what he had been reflecting on earlier himself, and smiled sadly.

“How willing we are to assure the others vehemently that they are good people,” he spoke. He was completely in agreement with Bertrand about Beatrice. She was not just fun, but also reliable, which was much more important. She looked after her own. She was vivid and loud and incredibly brave and incredibly loving, and Bertrand was right: she did not deserve this. “And never as willing to defend ourselves the same way. Perhaps that is where our hope lies? In our inability to turn a blind eye to our own faults?”

Bertrand took off his glasses, inelegantly wiped off the tears that had broken out after all, and put the glasses on again.

“Monty,” he said gently, “you’re a good person too, you know that?”

Monty blinked, then blinked again, feeling that soon he might have to wipe off the tears too. Bertrand was one of the best people Monty knew, and he didn’t deserve to be turned into a murderer, and didn’t deserve to labour under such grave delusion about other people either – but the fact that someone still considered him a good person gave Monty confidence that despite all his wrongdoings, he still wasn’t a lost cause.

He reached out and ruffled Bertrand’s hair.

“Sit down,” he told him. “The tea’s about to be ready.”

#asoue #a series of unfortunate events #uncle monty #montgomery montgomery #bertrand baudelaire #snicketverse #not completely satisfied w/ this one but i like some bits so let it be here #yes the name of the turtle is a reference to stephen king's it #iirc they reference danny the champion of the world as early as atwq and it was published in the 70s #and time is a construct anyway (especially in the snicketverse) so i couldn't resist #talk talk talk #gella talks snicketverse #my fic

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thebraveandthebroiled · 5 years

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Heyo, it’s paper writing time and your friendly neighborhood librarian is back with another set of tips. Finding all the sources you need for your papers can be a difficult and time-consuming experience. So, here’s some tricks that y’all can do to get to those sweet sweet sources that seem to be eluding you.

Search an article’s reference section

Search an article’s author(s) for further work they’ve written in the field

Search for other articles that have cited your article

First step, take one article that you have that really resonates with what you are trying to express in your paper, baring that take any article you’ve got that seems on topic. Now, head to the very end of that article and check out the Reference / Works Cited / Notes / Bibliography section*. This section is filled with the sources that your article’s author(s) has used to write up their work. These are also sources that will often be relevant, if not more so, to the paper you want to write. Huzzah! There’s the first batch of new sources!

For example, I'm working on a paper on the importance of games in the library and I have an article called Playing in the Past: A history of Games, Toys, and Puzzles in North American Libraries by S. Nicholson. Going to the back of the article I can see that there are over 70 sources in its Reference section. Reading through the sources those by Jenny Levine, in particular, look like they might be useful for my paper.

Step two, write down the name of the author of your article as well as any new authors you’ve found in the previous step. Go into your library’s journal database (or google scholar) and search for any other articles these folks have written. Often times academics get super passionate about a particular field of research and will write many many works on the stuff they love best. Take advantage of this love and see if they have written other articles that are helpful to your paper! Woot, you’ve got a couple more now.

For example, searching Scott Nicholson (the author of my above article) I can see he’s continued to research games and gamification. And most recently he’s been publishing on escape rooms. The escape rooms articles will be useful for a section of my paper on the most recent gaming trends in the library.

Looking further into Jenny Levine’s works I can see that she’s written several articles that will be helpful to support some points I want to make within my paper.

Final step! So, in the first step we looked to see what sources an author cited in their work. Well, now we’re going to reverse that. Some databases will allow you to see the cited by option and some won’t.** For this bit then I’ll direct y’all to google scholar. Enter in the title of one of your articles into the search bar, hit search, and you’ll see a blue ‘Cited by’ link below the article’s description. Click that link and you’ll be lead to all the other folks who’ve used the article within their own research. Some of that is gonna be relevant to your own paper and just like that you’ve got the sources you need to finish off your paper. Excellent job!!

For example, if we plug in my original article into the search it looks like there are 40 other articles that have cited it.

Clicking on that link we can see right off the bat there are several that are relevant to my paper!

To conclude, academia doesn’t exist in a void. Folks are talking to each other and about each other. They’re building on the research that came before or taking that research to task. There is an ongoing conversation in any field of study and by seeing how it links together you can build your own work into that narrative.

If you need help during the research process I urge y’all to pop over to your library and ask a librarian for assistance. I promise you’re never a bother, it's our job to help and it’s work we enjoy doing!

I hope this has been useful and I wish you all happy researching!

*These are often collected at the end of the whole work but some styles use footnotes and those are at the end of each individual page.

** If you want help with how your database works and want to know whether it has an inbuilt cited by function please ask your librarian to give you a hand. They’ll be happy to show you how.

#research #paper writing #academia #research papers #librarianship #happy researching!

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brightbeautifulthings · 4 years

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My Decade in Books

@aliteraryprincess, thank you for tagging me, sweets! 💛

The rules: respond to the prompt “my decade in books” however you want, & then tag some ppl! I chose a book or series to define each year of the decade, some w/a little description. You can do that, or make up your own response

Oof. This is hard for me because I'm superbad at years/numbers or remembering when things happened, and I don't have a clear picture until I started blogging, but I'll give it a try! I'm also linking my lists of best books of the year from 2016 on.

2010 - It's hard to remember this far back. I think I was pretty obsessed with Chuck Palahniuk, which I fortunately grew out of, and I was probably re-reading a lot of my high school favorites like Christopher Pike and Laurell K. Hamilton. Most memorable: I remember reading Into the Wild at the job I had at the time and liking it well enough.

2011 - I think this was before school got too intense, and I still enjoyed reading. 😂 I remember taking a really fun summer class in children's lit where we got to read The Hunger Games, Percy Jackson, and Francesca Lia Block. Most memorable: reading Weetzie Bat at the bottom of my stairs (the lowest point in my apartment) during a tornado warning.

2012 - In my last year of undergraduate studies, I was reading a lot of pre-WWII American fiction like Sinclair Lewis and John Steinbeck, and a lot of contemporary American fiction like Karen Russell, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, etc. It pretty much set the tone for the rest of my academic career. Most memorable: reading "All That" by David Foster Wallace and falling absolutely in love with his writer voice.

2013 - I had a bit of break between degrees here, so I used it to binge a lot of the things I had been missing (the new Thirst series by Christopher Pike, The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare), along with probably a lot of Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter. Most memorable: ruining a copy of The Whores on the Hill on a trip and somehow ending up with two more copies.

2014 - I was in graduate school for this year (and a bit of some others, but years/semesters do not line up well) so I was reading almost everything David Foster Wallace ever wrote, plus quite a bit of theory, memoirs, and Holocaust fiction. Most memorable: pounding Infinite Jest in a month, and guiltily reading The White Rabbit Chronicles when I was supposed to be doing other things.

2015 - This wasn't a great year. I had a hideous modernism class in which I hated almost everything I had to read (James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, T.S. Eliot), and a superhard Marlowe/Shakespeare class that covered a LOT of ground: all the major Marlowe plays, plus a bunch of Shakespeare histories. Most memorable: reading Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany and being like wtf on every single page.

2016 - This was my first year of blogging! Can you believe it's been this long? This was a golden year of reading for me. Once I was out of school, I had time to catch up on everything I'd missed, and there were so many amazing things! I fell in love with The Raven Cycle, Six of Crows, Graceling, ACOTAR, and everything Rainbow Rowell I could get my hands on. Most memorable: all of those things, since I'm still in love with them.

2017 - This was my second year of blogging, and I fell in love with Nora Sakavic, Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant, and Laini Taylor. I also read a lot of horror, even more than my usual (The Girl With All the Gifts and Newsflesh standing out among them), and I finally read through all the Percy Jackson books for the first time. Most memorable: Wayward Children and All for the Game -- I'm still obsessed!

2018 - In my third year of blogging, I continued my Riordan binge with The Heroes of Olympus and started a year-long read of Les Mis, which worked so well I'll probably be picking a daunting classic like that every year. I had the opportunity to read so many underrated and small press authors that year (The Art of Escaping by Erin Callahan, Imaginary Girls by Nova Ren Suma, The Dark Beneath The Ice by Amelinda Bérubé). Most memorable: Into The Drowning Deep by Mira Grant, If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio, and My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix.

2019 - This was probably my worst reading year since I started blogging. I read 145 books (amazing!), but so many of them were three-star and forgettable, including my daunting classic, The Count of Monte Cristo. However, I absolutely crushed my YA backlist doing the Bingo challenge at Forgotten YA Gems, and it was a great year for YA publishing, since 8/15 of my favorite books of the year were actually released that year (Call Down the Hawk by Maggie Stiefvater and Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell among them). Most memorable: In An Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire, The Naturals by Jennifer Lynn Barnes, and The Bone Houses by Emily Lloyd-Jones.

Tagging: @northernbookworm, @zynita, @anassarhenisch, @existential-celestial, @maddie-mux, @infinitebookwrms, @lornaslibrary, @sylvanshiner, @cleo-queen-of-pirates, @paper-stardust, @sleepy-being, @3ammuses, @iridescentetherealdragon

#yrstruly #my decade in books #tag meme #aliteraryprincess #book tag

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bookenders · 5 years

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I don't know how I just realized you were having this celebration, friend! but congratulations! being one of your followers has been such an incredible thing, I love seeing the things that you come up with, and adore your characters! could I get a url based drabble?

[Help me celebrate 800!]

@abalonetea! Friend! Thank you so, so much! 💜 Having you as a follower has been equally incredible!

For you, a lovely little drabble.

Things I was thinking of while writing it: MBMBaM, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, going to grad students’ office hours in the basements of the humanities buildings, and Tolkien-style linguistics!

Sitting at his desk in the pipe-ridden basement office, Alistair carefully set his still steaming cup of tea next to a mug full of pens and adjusted his glasses. Before him, covering the entire length of the desk, was a very old map of a very secret place.

The lost land was not so much a missing jewel as a page torn from an old book. One that, once found, will complete the story, not be the story itself. One piece of information does not a mythos make.

Abalone, Land of the Lonely Tribes. Ab-, prefix, meaning “away from,” and root word alone, from the Old English “ana,” “unaccompanied, all by oneself.” Or, more literally, “wholly oneself.” And that’s it, isn’t it? A land untouched by outside influence, hidden beyond the mists all these years. No interaction with anyone else, no outside influence - just a land, living on its own, wholly itself and no other.

It’s discovery had been Alistair’s dream since he first learned to read a map’s key. Once he started reading about it, he was never seen without a book in his hands, even at the dinner table, no matter what his parents threatened him with to put it down. The habit turned into a virtue once he was accepted to university. And now, little 9 year old Alistair, the child who checked out Latin books from the library to teach himself the language, would be absolutely screaming with joy and excitement.

It took ten years of sifting through dusty library stacks, fighting tooth and nail for funding, traveling around the world with nothing but a change of socks and a toothbrush to talk to people whose languages he didn’t know, being sequestered in basement after basement with the excuse of ‘no offices available sorry,’ and defending his ‘unfounded’ research to men who thought they were better than everyone else because of a piece of paper, but today was the day.

He’d come across a stray note in the margins of an old poetry book from an author whose name he would have to write down as soon as he averted this elation-induced panic attack, and traced it’s origin to a woman who had written not one, but two whole books about the true origins of the Atlantis myth. Apparently, over time, the name’s etymology went through some confusing translation phases and ended up in the Old English borrow word soup. In the bibliography of the second book, he found a title that caught his eye.

Unfortunately, it was only available in India. So he spent two days learning specific phrases in Hindi and Urdu before spending half his meager funding on a one way plane ticket to a city he’d never heard of. That source led him to a phone call with the head curator at The British Museum, who was not amused by his request to plunder their archives looking for a big unknown something.

Nothing a few favors for the security guards and interns couldn’t fix, however. Which cost him the rest of that semester’s grant funds. But that didn’t matter. Because inside a sealed wooden crate beneath an enormous coffin full of tattered shoes, he found it.

Oh, gods.

It was exactly as the Atlantis woman had described it. Or, rather, exactly as the people who discovered the map in the 1600s described it. Old and worn yes, and yellow-brown at the edges and around some of the ink blots, but surprisingly well preserved. The ink hadn’t even run or bled at all. It was a true miracle find. If only it were labeled.

All that was left was to actually find the region on said map that held Abalone.Left hand gripping the compass, right hand holding his place in the weathered explorer’s logbook, Alistair knew he was close. Two more coordinates to try, one more triangulation to calculate, and-

There. Right there.

On the eastern edge of the Coaldim Mountain range, just south of the Infinite Lake, in the small patch of flat land he had thought was a grove.

He found it.

Abalone.

He had gotten so close, closer than anyone in history. This was his life’s work, his ultimate achievement, the very thing that would elevate him to the third floor windowed offices.

In his joyous haste to celebrate his monumental academic achievement in his teeny tiny basement office, his arm swung a smidge too wide and nudged the mug full of pens on his desk. Alistair watched, eyes bugging out in panic, as the mug wobbled around and around and around before tipping ever so slightly one way, then bobbing the other, until finally giving in to gravity’s cruel intentions and spilling pens all over the map. His heart was in his throat, beating loud enough to rattle the pipes behind and overhead.

The handle of the mug twisted, caught the edge of the tea saucer, and, like a circus man paid peanuts to launch his friend up up and away via see-saw, threw the full, steaming cup into the air. It turned over once, gravity continuing to play tricks on poor Alistair by keeping the liquid nestled inside the cup’s curve, before landing upside down with a flourish of tea in a calming, chamomile-scented wave settling on the parchment sand.

The map of a landlocked region was now an ocean. The very old, very rare, very fragile map on loan from The British Museum.

With the future of his career so close, yet now so, so far out of reach, Alistair only had one regretful thought fall out of his mind.

“Aw, beans…”

I guess Abalone will have to remain away from everyone and wholly itself for a little longer. 🤷🏻‍♀️

There’s a really dumb subtle pun in here, too.

Spilling tea ➡ spill the tea ➡ reveal information, but I inverted it. Ohoho!

**********

Want more original fiction? Take a gander at my original writing tag and my short stories tag!

For writing advice and observations, check out my advice tag.

Want info on my WIPs? Have a look-see at me WIP page!

Do you like the way I put words together? Consider buying me a Ko-Fi! (Link in my blog description!)

Want to be added to my original fiction tag or my WIP tags? Let me know! 😊

Originals Tag List: @piratequeenofpixies, @quilloftheclouds, @snickertoodles, @carmenwrites, @purpleshadows1989, @ofvisitorsthefairest, @theevolutionofledarose, @kriss-the-writing-nerd, @waterfallwritings

#ender answers #800 Followers #writeblr #amwriting #spilled ink #writers on tumblr #writers of tumblr #short story #flash fiction #abalonetea #original fiction #creative writing #original writing #my writing #bookenders original #bookenders shorts #I recently finished watching Good Omens so I might have some Gaiman in my writing style today #that's what happens when you're an imitator #these things just kinda happen

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sisterofiris · 6 years

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The Layperson’s Guide to Online Research

The Internet is full of badly researched and sometimes straight-up wrong information. Who would’ve guessed? From reinterpretations of ancient sources being taken at face value by history enthusiasts (like that infamous pre-patriarchal Persephone post) to well-intentioned but ahistorical writing spreading misinformation among modern polytheists (like the myth of Hestia abdicating in favour of Dionysos), it’s often hard to know what is trustworthy information and what is not. Unfortunately, this makes things difficult when you, a non-academic, want to research a topic.

My biggest recommendation will always be to turn to a local university library (often there are even lectures and conferences you can attend without being a student) or to subscribe to a digital library like JStor. On the other hand, I completely understand that for various reasons, not everyone can access these resources. This is why I’m here to help.

In this post, I will outline the steps you should take to check whether an online source is trustworthy and up-to-date. I will mainly focus on researching ancient history, but bear in mind that you can use the same (or similar) steps to research many different topics.

The vetting process below may seem like a lot to take in, but it all boils down to five questions:

where does this come from?

who is the author?

what are their sources?

when did they write this?

who else wrote about this?

Step One: Where does this come from?

The first thing you need to do is check the website where the information comes from. Trustworthy signs to look for are a .edu or .org web address, a university logo, or the description of the website as a professional resource. Very, very often, websites with flashy or sparkly designs are made by amateurs and are not trustworthy. Any web page that doesn’t tell you who wrote it or why is not trustworthy.

When you’re looking at books and articles uploaded online (such as Google Books), make sure they were published professionally by a publishing house or peer-reviewed journal. Mainstream news articles range from accurate (BBC) to completely unreliable (Daily Mail), but since even the best of them can be sensationalistic, I recommend digging further.

Another very important thing to look out for is ideology. Is the website devoted to a certain issue, like proving the Ancient Greeks were black, the Sumerians were contacted by aliens, or the Hittites worshipped a pre-patriarchal Mother Goddess? Congratulations, this information is biased. Some of it may be correct, but you should check steps two to five very carefully before believing it.

Generally, you should look for websites that are focused on your topic, not websites that use your topic to prove a point.

Here are two examples to illustrate the difference:

Not trustworthy: this page about Persephone as an archetype. The website focuses on the Enneagram, not on Greek mythology, and the web design is amateurish. Even though the page mentions mythology, its purpose is to establish Persephone’s personality type, not to discuss her role as a deity in Ancient Greece.

Trustworthy: this page about Ancient Egyptian women and religion. The website looks far more professional, and by clicking on the logo in the top left, you will get to the organisation’s page, The Stoa Consortium. On the right, there is an “About” section which explains that the website was set up by a Professor of Classics and is funded by various universities, as well as by the US Department of Education.

However, determining whether or not a website is any good is not always so easy. Theoi.com, for example, is an independent resource with no academic support, but it’s very well put together and reliable. Meanwhile, Academia.edu is a platform for scholars, but less reputable people can easily slip through and post their “translations” of haiku in Linear A. Experts can have informal blogs, and non-experts can write professional-looking news articles. It’s hard to know which ones of them to trust.

This is where Step Two comes in handy.

Step Two: Who is the author?

A trustworthy source will always identify its author. Some pages (like my own blog’s “About” section) will only tell you the person’s credentials, often for privacy reasons. This is a good start, but you should try to find out more - particularly whether this person actually is what they claim to be. (In my case, it’s fairly easy to tell, since I’ve posted pictures from university projects (x, x) and my identity can be deduced from various links and tidbits I’ve shared - but please be skeptical about what I say as well! Just because I’m an ancient civilisations student doesn’t mean I’m always right!)

Once you know who the author is, you need to check whether they are not only educated, but educated in the subject. This means a university degree (preferably a masters, and even more preferably a PhD) or other proof of expertise in the subject (like an experienced weaver sharing their perspective on ancient tapestries). Whatever the person’s qualifications, they need to be serious (i.e. not “one time in college I took a class on Greek mythology”) and directly related to the subject.

Here are some examples:

Not trustworthy: that pre-patriarchal Persephone post. Its author is a layperson who fell into the same trap I’m trying to prevent: they read a few web pages and decided they were the truth. Luckily, they seem to have somewhat learnt from their mistake.

Usually trustworthy, but not in this case: Gerda Lerner writing about the Hittites. While Gerda Lerner was very learned in women’s studies, she was not a Hittitologist - nor particularly familiar with ancient civilisations in general - and she did not have the nuanced understanding necessary to discuss women in the context of Hittite society.

Trustworthy and non-academic: Janet Stephens’ hairstyle reconstructions. Janet Stephens is not an archeologist, but she is a very experienced hairdresser. This makes her qualified to reconstruct and reproduce ancient hairstyles. (Note that this does NOT make her qualified to discuss, say, the religious implications of hair-binding in Ancient Greece. It makes her qualified to do what she does: style hair.)

Trustworthy and academic: Paul Schubert’s blog (in French) about Ancient Greece in the modern world. His “About” page has a link to his university page, which contains his biography and credentials. He writes about his expert subject, and stays well within its boundaries.

Step Three: What are their sources?

Next, you need to determine where they get their information from. For ancient history, the number one, most important source is ancient texts. Anything that cites ancient texts with their reference (Homer, Iliad, XΧII 389-390) is automatically more trustworthy than anything that doesn’t. If you want to research in-depth, I would recommend looking up these references to get an idea of what they say (Theoi.com and Perseus both have free text databases).

References to modern texts (especially books and articles) are good, but the author shouldn’t only cite these. This turns research into a game of broken telephone - so-and-so told me that so-and-so said that Plato wrote... What’s more, you need to make sure these sources are also trustworthy. Just because a page provide links doesn’t mean they’re relevant or well-researched - if so, then rickrolling would be the peak of academia.

Lastly, I shouldn’t need to say this, but information without sources is not information. That’s like me telling you I’m secretly the princess of Liechtenstein. It might be true, but you can’t know for sure without proof.

Again, some examples:

Not trustworthy: this quote by Plato and this one supposedly from a cuneiform tablet. Neither has a clear reference, nor context: the first is just attributed to Plato’s Symposium, and the second’s author varies from Naram-Sin to a Chaldean king to Cicero. (What’s more, both have strongly ahistorical content. Plato would never have written about “Greek mythology”, and the Mesopotamians had no concept of a “book”.)

Could be trustworthy, but you should check: Medievalpoc’s sources on Ancient Egyptian transatlantic voyages. Yes, a variety of links are provided, but are they any good? A few clicks will show that they lead to the Daily Mail, a paper written by two ideologically-motivated Mormons, and a bunch of articles about ancient people building boats (which nobody doubts, but which doesn’t prove they could sail across the Atlantic).

Trustworthy: Hittite Prayers to the Sun-God by Daniel Schwemer. This is a fully cited article with ancient sources.

Step Four: When did they write this?

The next important step is to find out when this information was written. This is because research is constantly evolving, and older interpretations may no longer be considered valid. This obviously includes views with underlying racism, sexism and homophobia, but it also applies to less obvious things, like the fact that the Sumerian word zag is now read za₃.

Unfortunately, for copyright reasons, most information available online for free is a bit outdated. You should still aim for more recent publications if you can, and definitely avoid anything that’s fifty years old or more. The only exception is for translations of ancient texts, which stay pretty much the same apart from a few spots where their translators’ biases come through - and the exception to the exception is texts in Mesopotamian languages, in which case you should really, really try to find a translation that’s younger than fifty years.

Academic podcasts, blogs and newsletters come in very handy here, because they offer insights on modern research while often being written in accessible language.

Yet more examples:

Not trustworthy: Martin Nilsson’s The Mycenaean Origin of Greek Mythology (1932). Though Martin Nilsson was a great scholar, modern research has evolved since this book was published (in 1932 in Germany - a context you can definitely sense while reading). What’s more, it was written before Mycenaean Greek was even deciphered.

Trustworthy: Eric Cline’s 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed (2015). Not only is the writing easily accessible to non-experts, this book is up-to-date and written by someone at the forefront of research in Late Bronze Age societies.

Step Five: Who else wrote about this?

This last step is basically fact-checking. Your author may have the best of credentials, they may have written their article on the most respectable of websites, but their theory could still be rejected by the majority of their peers. Look up the book or article’s title followed by “review”, which will hopefully generate other experts’ opinions on the matter - or just keep browsing different websites.

This step is not the most important and can often be skipped - you don’t need to fact-check every word you read. But if you want to research something in-depth, if a claim seems iffy, or if any of the above steps gave mixed results, you should always look for outside input. And no, you won’t always get definite answers on whether something is true. Such is our knowledge about history. But it will give you a more rounded understanding of the topic, and that’s always valuable.

A final note

If you’re not sure whether something is trustworthy, please don’t hesitate to ask! Historians and history students are your friends, and we want you to have accurate information. There’s a lot of us on Tumblr and elsewhere who are happy to help out with that. We can’t be there for everyone 24/7, but we’ll gladly point you in the direction you need!

#research #history #ancient history #ancient greece #mesopotamia #studies #infodump #debunk

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sparklyeevee · 3 years

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Since it's fall, reminder to anyone who may be writing their first college-level papers in the next month or so that you write the introduction after the body text. Body text, then conclusion, then introduction, then bibliography. You can't explain what you're about to say until you actually know what you said.

Also if your instructor is serious about "don't use 'I' in a formal paper", use "this essay will..." (literature and the humanities) or "this paper will..." (history and the sciences) "discuss/describe/explore/attempt to answer/attempt to explain". Prefer the first three for literature, as especially persnickety lit professors may be aware that "essay" and "attempt" are synonyms, and "this essay will attempt" is therefore redundant. If you have discussed the meaning of the word "essay" in class and your professor has a sense of humor, "this paper will essay to" is viable, but don't use it more than once with the same instructor.

The first time you reference a digital source, paste a link (the DOI if it's a scholarly source and has one) to it into your bibliography section, along with a brief description of what it's a citation for, the author's name and year of publication, or both. I.e. "Smith, 1987. Parents fear social consequences for children who stutter." This is for your own ease of use when doing in-text citations and the bibliography, and will not be included in the version you submit, so it needn't be formal or make sense to anyone but you.

If you don't already have a clear idea of what you're going to write, or if you tend to lose your thread, start with either a series of bolded headings with the points you know you want to hit (these can be removed later if your style guide does not allow for them) or an informal paragraph describing your argument or ideas the way you might describe them out loud. (The latter can sometimes be edited into a passable introductory paragraph).

Example of bolded headings form for a paper about the relationship between stuttering and disruptive behavior disorders:

Introduction (including definitions)

old misconceptions and misattributions

modern stereotypes

stuttering and gender

changes over time

Genetic Relationships of Stuttering, ADHD, ODD, and Conduct Disorder

social difficulties

high anxiety/normal self-esteem

selective mutism as volitional and oppositional

fucking Rima et al

Conclusion

The 2nd through 5th and 7th through 10th bullet points above were eventually given the single headings "Background" and "Discussion" respectively. Each bullet point represents anywhere between half a paragraph and two paragraphs of writing.

Example of the paragraph format for an essay on models of resistance in dystopian YA:

Dystopian YA tends to distrust organized resistance and prefer lone heroes. Organized resistance is usually corrupt (Hunger Games) or has been subverted (Matched, The Testing). Divergent is a bit better: no less than two corrupt resistances, but at least the final victory is a team effort and Tris's personal victory doesn't immediately solve everything (drippy water sculpture metaphor). Unwind also has both legitimate and illegitimate resistances, and a clearer sense of what it's doing with them (the reader never thinks the Clappers are the good guys). Unrealistically ubiquitous surveillance - the Resistance is always off in the woods somewhere (Hunger Games dodged this one then turned around and walked into it). All government officials are loyal (except in Hunger Games, and sometimes like one high level woman or male prison guard). Where is the rest of the world? Where is California? Resistance mentors and status quo mentors. Too much emphasis on assassination. Direct action is always treated as suspect and never works, except sometimes rescue of prisoners or hostages. Besties are always traitors (misogyny). Most dystopias have a higher standard of living than the modern day US. (Need to figure out how Maze Runner fits in here). Common use of memory alteration feels significant here. Main point: these books fail to provide models of resistance that feel usable or applicable, and many discourage things that work in real life. PoC are less bad (mostly). Fucking source on why this is a real problem. Dystopias for adults aren't better they just have different problems. What's academic for "if you blame teenage girls for this I will come to your house and kill you in real life"?

Don't worry if yours isn't that long. My dystopian YA paper is in progress and will likely be thesis-length when completed.

1/3 of the way in to your paper, you will worry you can't cover everything without going way over page count. 2/3 of the way in you will worry you're gonna be massively under page count. Both anxieties are normal and incorrect, but the second one is less incorrect. Your first draft will be a little underlength - leave time to expand it.

The real reason to get into the habit of not trying to write papers the night before is that otherwise you'll eventually disappoint yourself and your professor in a class you love by handing in a just-okay paper that could have been awesome if you'd had an extra day.

If you have thoughts or ideas while reading things that are for, or might be usable for, your paper, write them down so you can use them. If doing it in a word doc is too stressful because it's Official, do it in an email to yourself, or make a tag for it and post it to Tumblr. Don't use Facebook - too hard to find your old posts.

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aurickyponting292 · 3 years

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