I have been in Nice for the past two days which is Amazing but what do the french have against a working wifi connection

Vanya and the Phantom

I asked and y’all answered (special thanks to @schizoidwire and @the-aro-ace-arrow-ace  and all the people who responded to my earlier post for encouraging me!), so it is time for how The Phantom of the Opera song introduction can be read as a look into Vanya’s self-narrative and also foreshadows future events in a really subtle and interesting way. 

I’m channeling my inner Elliot and going into full conspiracy mode. This is gonna be a long one, y’all. 

Part One: In Which I Expose Myself as a Former Theater Kid

So, for those who aren’t familiar with The Phantom of the Opera, it was originally a novel by French writer Gaston Leroux back in 1909. In 1986, Andrew Lloyd Webber rewrote it as a musical. For purposes of my analysis here, I am just going to be discussing the musical because 1) the score used in the opening scene is from it and 2) I’ve never read the book. (If anyone out there has read the book and wants to weigh in, please do!) 

It’s a very aesthetic show, and draws on a lot of gothic themes and imagery. The plot follows an opera house, and specifically a young chorus girl named Christine Daaé. I’m not going to explain the whole show plot in detail because wikipedia exists, but I will do a quick overview here and point out some things as they relate to things I’ll be discussing later. Also there will be a test after and it will NOT be multiple choice.

The show begins when the opera house is sold to new owners who 1) just want to make money and 2) do not respect the opera house’s resident ghost (who isn’t really a ghost, but we’ll get to that later.) When the Phantom makes his presence known, and freaks out the resident prima donna singer (who will be relevant later) Carlotta, who says she won’t sing under these conditions. It is then that Christine appears. She’s quiet and humble and has always lived in the background, but is incredibly talented. The woman who runs the chorus (also owner of the opera house’s resident braincell) suggests Christine sing the part. She does, and is amazing. Everyone is blown away, and she’s catapulted into instant fame and success. 

We later learn that Christine has been studying under the Phantom, who appears to her in mirrors. She calls him the Angel of Music, and thinks that he was sent to teach her by her recently deceased father. He isn’t. He’s actually pretty malicious, and is obsessed with Christine, wants to control her voice, and doesn’t like her dating anyone. Which is a bit awkward when her childhood friend shows up and promptly falls in love with her. 

Anyways, Carlotta is jealous of the attention Christine has been getting and threatens to leave prompting the new owners to cut Christine from the program. The Phantom doesn’t like it at all, sends a bunch of letters, things escalate, people are murdered, and the whole first act ends with the chandelier falling from the ceiling and crashing onto the stage (which is done with really cool effects, oftentimes beginning the show hanging over the audience. It’s a BIG MOMENT and one of the most iconic ones from the show. This will also be relevant later.)

Act two takes place a few months later, wherein no one has seen the Phantom. Shock of all shocks, though, he’s not dead. He’s been writing an opera and he wants Christine to star in it. More stuff happens, you learn the backstory of the Phantom (which is pretty sad, ngl, but in no way makes him less of a creep) and the story ends with the Phantom kidnapping Christine and giving her an ultimatum: stay with him forever, or he kills Raoul (aka childhood friend/romantic interest guy). She agrees to stay with him and he’s so moved by her compassion that he lets them both go and disappears forever. 

Part Two: Casting the Characters

That’s interesting, Rosie (note sarcasm) but you said this was about The Umbrella Academy? I did, in fact. So, we meet Vanya when she’s playing a medley of songs from The Phantom of the Opera. Since it’s primarily the melodies and not one of the orchestral pieces from her performance later (I don’t think), we can assume she’s just playing it for herself (which is nice! good on you, Vanya). 

Maybe she’s never seen the play and just likes the score, but for purposes here, let’s assume she’s familiar with it. 

You can tell a lot about a person by the stories they connect with (for example, I like TUA because I like fun sibling dynamics, found family, music, and being sad). And I think that it makes sense that The Phantom of the Opera would be a story that resonates with Vanya. The overlooked chorus girl finds power in music, and, after years in the background, is finally given a chance to show how special she is. 

So, yeah. I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility that Vanya sees herself as Christine. There are some discrepancies, sure, but this is Vanya’s self-narrative, which we learn pretty much immediately is unreliable. (Love her, but it’s true.) And if Vanya is Christine, then we can try and tap into her perspective to look at some other characters. 

Anyways remember Carlotta (the prima donna opera singer who always got the spotlight and tried to destroy everything good that happened to Christine because she felt threatened that someone might be as good/better than her whose entire personality and role in the story I just summarized, rendering my plot recap useless)? Carlotta is how Vanya views Allison. (Kind of all her siblings, but her relationship with Allison is the most important here.)

Think about the scene in the cabin? 

“You couldn’t risk me threatening your place in the house! You couldn’t handle the fact that Dad might find me special!” - Vanya, having a mental breakdown.

This always struck me as an interesting accusation to throw, since prior to this moment, I don’t think there was any indication that Allison had ever felt threatened by Vanya. She excluded her, sure, and wasn’t super friendly at times, but the idea that Allison has been pulling strings to keep Vanya out of her spotlight is new. But that is exactly the role Carlotta plays in Phantom. 

Fun fact! At one point in the musical, the Phantom enchants Carlotta so that she loses her voice right before coming on stage. 

Part Three: The Phantom of the Opera is there

So based on everything I’ve said so far, the most straightforward reading is then, that Leonard Peabody/Harold Jenkins (who for purposes here I’ll call Leonard) is the stand in for the Phantom, which works... really well. Both in helping to understand Vanya and also because it foreshadows the twist of season one in a really cool way.

So, the Phantom appears to Christine first not as an enemy, but as a friend and teacher, who encourages her to be more confident in her abilities. He trains her to develop her singing ability. While the teacher-student dynamic is actually inverted initially with Vanya and Leonard, from the get go, he is showering her with compliments, encouraging her to be confident in her abilities, and, at least on the surface, supporting her in a way she hasn’t been supported before (he’s a trash human but an expert manipulator). 

But, in the play, the Phantom is also very possessive over Christine and her power (er, I mean voice). He also is perfectly willing to kill and/or hurt people who he views as standing in the way of Christine and her success (see the aforementioned Carlotta incident). Which is exactly what Leonard does to Vanya. He kills the first chair violinist to help her get it, and orchestrates a whole master plan to get her to reveal her powers on his terms. 

Even the part where he starts “training” her to use her powers kind of resembles the second act of the play. The Phantom wrote a play for Christine and she’s going to star in it, whether she wants to or not. 

(One could even make the argument of the parallels between Christine believing the Phantom was sent by her father to teach her and Leonard showing up because of his revenge scheme against Vanya’s father, but I honestly don’t have much support for that.) 

Part Three: Two Conflicting Narratives

So, as you might’ve noticed, I sort of have two different threads of analysis going on right now. 1) The Phantom of the Opera parallel is part of Vanya’s self-narrative and in it she mischaracterizes Allison, making her more suspicious of her motivations and 2) Leonard Peabody is clearly the Phantom and doesn’t bother being subtle about it. I hope that I’ve been convincing (or at least intriguing) for you to get to this point, because here is where they come together.

Vanya has this parallel going, but she doesn’t see Leonard as the Phantom. In the beginning at least, he’s her Raoul. If I had to guess, I’d say Reginald Hargreeves is the Phantom in Vanya’s self-narrative (says he’ll train her but wants to manipulate her and keep her locked away for himself, strict teacher who doesn’t really care about her well being, wearing a mask to appear more normal/human... she wouldn’t exactly be wrong). Leonard, on the other hand, is Vanya’s supporter. He validates her, and believes in her, and taker her side when Carlotta and the opera house owners (er, the rest of the Hargreeves children) gang up on her and conspire to keep her out. 

This is all building to, of course, the final confrontation. The Phantom says Christine has to pick one or the other. When Allison comes to talk to Vanya, Vanya feels as if she’s been given an ultimatum and lashes out.

And that’s where everything (including this parallel) starts to crumble. 

(I honestly don’t know a lot about the other characters and how they fit in. I suppose we could have Five = Raoul if we ignore romance plot and focus on the childhood friend that hasn’t been seen in a while angle? And maybe also Pogo = Madame Giry. Vanya doesn’t really have any friends to be Meg.) 

Part Four: It’s All About the Moon

So that is kind of the gist of The Phantom of the Opera as a window into Vanya’s self-narrative theory, but there are a couple of other loosely related ideas I thought I might as well bring up since this thing is already ridiculously long. 

Remember how I mentioned the chandelier is like, THE scene from The Phantom of the Opera back in part one, and said it’d be relevant later? Bringing that back now, because I’m going to pull a Luther and connect everything to the moon. 

So, to get the obvious out of the way, the moon exploding and the chandelier coming crashing to the stage are similar because something falls, breaks into a bunch of pieces, destroys a bunch of stuff, and creates a powerful and memorable image to close off before an act/season break (the next installment of which begins with a time jump). 

Additionally, it’s worth mentioning that The Phantom of the Opera is told out of order. The opening scene shows a grown up Raoul at an auction for the items left behind after the opera house closes, and it switches to the past as the remains of the chandelier rise upwards to the ceiling, Phantom’s theme swelling (it’s a really cool moment, tbh). Following the prologue of The Umbrella Academy, we switch to the present with two images: Vanya alone on the stage, and then Luther alone on the moon. Which has a kind of symmetry that might mean nothing, but is still kind of cool. 

(Also the item that Raoul buys from the auction is a music box with a monkey crashing symbols on top of it. Which might mean nothing.) 

Part Five: How is she STILL talking about this? (AKA Conclusion)

To be honest, this is more a very tangled “things I noticed and thought were interesting” discussion than a formal essay with any clear thesis. While there is a chance that this was all coincidental and I’ve gone full Pepe Sylvia, the music selection in The Umbrella Academy is one of the things that they seem to be really deliberate about. 

I would love to chat with anyone about this theory, so feel free to reach out in the notes or message me! My inbox is always open. Much love, and thank you for reading, if you got this far! ❤️

Damian’s Sister

So I read @unmaskedagain‘s Lady Noire In Gotham and @monkeebratz‘s SMOL DAMIEN MARIBAT AU. Which created this idea.

A tad bit of background info.

Marinette, as well as most of the class, is between 15 and 16.

Damian has barely turned 11, having spent barely a year with the Wayne’s, so some of the things that they are teaching him are slowly root in his mind, which is why in the beginning he will come across as a bit of a lost boy. Not entirely sure of himself but sure of what he wants.

Marinette has the Black Cat Miraculous, and is notorious among everyone in her class for taking phones. Everyone just laughs about it whenever a phone is missing because it is most likely with Marinette.

*Line Break Inc.*

Marinette sighed as she looked around her classmates, everyone very unimpressed. They all realize that their lives are at stake and that a gun is being pointed at Marinette’s head. But Marinette wasn’t panicking, so why should they?

Marinette wasn’t panicking because she realizes that she had died before. While they aren’t pleasant memories, she still knows how it is to die, and she doesn’t panic just because some villain thinks that they can have a large pay day from the people in her class, from the French government.

Only thing is that they never negotiate with terrorist.

So, no. Marinette was not worried. Not for her life. For her parents, yes, she is worried for them. But not her life.

Marinette looked back to her class and see that the men that have surrounded the class with guns, weren’t paying attention to their guns, very much. Allowing Plagg to slip in and go through the guns, doing whatever it is that Plagg will do to cause luck on their side.

“Hey,” The class president called to her class. Every single one of their eyes turned to her, while also keeping an eye on the men in front of them. The men also turn their entire attention on the young Parisian fully ignoring their guns at that point. “Have we or have we not survived akuma after akuma?” The teens straightened their backs and looked more defiant. “And how did we survive them?” Marinette saw Alya and Cholé smirk before the two and every other female kicked the men in front of them, in the pelvic.

Marinette looked away from her classmates as they cause havoc and escape. The man in front of her smirked as he pulled his trigger, causing nothing to happen.

Marinette is so lucky she is Lady Noire.

The Asian Parisian raised a single eyebrow before she kicks the man in his jaw with her heel. Shame she was wearing her flats that day.

She looked around to her classmates and how they captured the group of men. Adrien and Nino were rounding up the guns and putting them a safe distance away from everyone. Ivan and Myléne were sitting on one. Cholé and Sabrina were putting makeup on one, who looks to be happy to be having makeup being placed on him, or her, Marinette wasn’t getting into that. Alya and Alix had one on his knees and were each pulling his arms behind him. Nathaniel had somehow convinced one to pose for him, every time that the guy tried to move Nathaniel would scream about aesthetic, in French. Rose, Juleka, and Lila were talking to one about all of his regrets in life, well Rose was getting him to talk about it and Juleka was there while Lila was digging into for everything that the man said. Kim and Max were arguing over the best way to hold a person down while demonstrating with two different guys.

“Alya, switch me and call it in.” Marinette walked over to where Alya was with Alix and took her spot, planting her foot in the man’s knee cavity and pulled his arm back towards her. Alya walked away and pulled a phone out from somewhere on her body. Marinette wasn’t going to question it. “Adrien, Nino, will you two check on Madam Bustier?”

Their teacher was rather violently knocked out when she took a stand, alone, against the men. They waked her with one of their guns on the side of her head, she fell over and has been bleeding from where she was hit.

It took another twenty minutes before police or paramedics showed up. Twenty minutes listening to Max and Kim argue, of listening to Rose comfort and Lila berate the same man in broken English, of listening to Cholé give the man (or women) makeup tips in perfect English and listening to Nathaniel occasionally scream in French about aesthetic.

Marinette was proud of her class.

Yeah, they could survive in Gotham as long as they were together.

However.

Three hours later, Marinette has winded up alone. She simply got lost in a crowd and thought she had heard her teacher call for her in one direction, the paramedics had slowly cleared the class and the teacher. The mass hysteria of the area, from the police, to the paramedics, even ten different new reporters (some yelling over each other after having set up too close to one another, both looking like they want to destroy the other one with their mic) has caused Marinette to completely miss her class getting onto their bus back to their hotel.

So, Marinette made a mistake and ended up walking down Crime Alley. She admits it is her fault.

And looking a group of three men in the eyes, all of them having knives, Marinette has had it for the day.

“Plagg, transform me.” She felt the power of creation wash over her as she continued to look the men in the eye. “You are all the worst. I just wanted a vacation from my own villain, but instead I had to come here to deal with other heroes’ villains.” They were in such a state of shock she was easily able to take them down tie them up to a light pole and left an anonymous tip on the GCPD website. When she turned around, she saw a jaw dropped Robin.

“Welp. I’m died.”

“No, no you are not.” He quickly countered and started muttering about five different things and he paced back and forth in front of her. He was talking so fast and so low it was hard for Marinette to understand completely.

“Uh, so sorry but I must be going to my temporary home.” Marinette waved to the side before taking her staff and launching herself the other way that she waved. Marinette got all the way to her room, with there being nine girls on the trip Marinette ended up with her own room. She had just closed the window and dropped her transformation when she heard a tapping on her window.

“AH!” Marinette screamed, jumped, and spun around wielding her purse as a weapon. A throat cleared, making Marinette open her eyes, finding Robin there. “Oh, hello.”

“Hello, I wish for you to be my sister.” Robin stepped off of the windowsill and took a step into the room before turning around and closing the window and the curtain.

“What?” Marinette did not know what was happening, do people just adopt other people in the States?

“You’ll get to know who I am under the mask as well as the rest of the dubbed ‘Batfamily’.” He kept his back towards Marinette as he talked.

“Wait.”

“As well a bit more formal training. You are good; however, you could use some work.”

“Stop.” Marinette finally got Robin to stop talking and turn towards her. Marinette also saw how tense he is. His posture, his face. Marinette was sure that if she could see his eyes, she’d see tears welling up in his eyes.

“Do you not wish to be my sister?”

“Well, it’s just that…”

“Yes of course, it was foolish for me to assume.” He turned away from her and clenched his fist at his sides, Marinette swore he had his eyes clenched underneath his mask.

“Robin, stop.” Marinette reached for him and brought him to sit on the bed with her. “I have parents.”

“Better than mine, I’m sure.” He continued to not look at Marinette, his fists tightened even more.

“I was a sort of miracle child. My parents never thought they could have me, or any child.” Marinette brought his face to look at hers.

“You have no siblings?” His fist unclenched as realization came upon him.

“I’d like one though.” Marinette opened her arms to receive a hug. She kept them open while Robin turned away and took off his mask, bringing his hand up to his face to rub at before turning back around, without his mask, and buried his head in her shoulder and wrapped his arms around her middle.

“I have three brothers and one sister as well as two sorts of sisters. But I had no say in them. I had no say in my parents. But I want a say in who my family is. It would mean the world to me to be your brother and your parent’s son.”

Marinette knew that this moment was very delicate. She had to remind him of his own family, but she didn’t know the situation of his family or how they treated him. Marinette sighed as she ran her fingers through his hair, deciding to just be quite for now and talking to Robin either in the morning or the next night.

A knock at the door interrupted the moment. In a second Robin had gotten across the room and hid in the bathroom and had silently closed the door. Marinette just blinked not sure if what she saw was correct. She slowly stood up and got to the door just as the person on the other side knocked again.

Marinette waited for the knocking to finish before opening the door to her teacher.

“Hello, Madam Bustier.” Marinette smiled brightly and subtly kicked her shoes off, to show that she has been there the entire time.

“Hello Marinette. I need you to do bedroom checks. You know where everyone needs to be. My head is still killing me.” Caline Bustier held up a clip board with a sheet with names across the top, room numbers right next to the name, as well as boxes underneath the names and numbers.

“It is a good thing that tomorrow is supposed to be a free day.” Marinette grabbed hold of the clip board and held it to her chest.

“That is another thing. Everyone is supposed to report to me tomorrow, but you mind if they reported to you?” Bustier leaned against the door jam, seeming to have a difficult time to just stand at that point.

“Not at all. Let me just get my slippers to walk around in the hall with, and I can get started on those bedroom checks as well as tell everyone that you will need to rest tomorrow so they will need to report to me.” Marinette backed out of the doorway a tad to start heading towards the bathroom to put her slippers on her feet as well as warn Robin of what was going on.

“Thank you, if anyone has any questions have them email me.”

“Of course. Rest well, Madam.”

“You’ll also need to do a morning check in and check ins through the day tomorrow.”

“How often do I need to have everyone check in with me?”

“Once an hour, use the clip board to keep track of the times.” Marinette nod and ensured that Bustier made it to her room before slipping back into her own and heading to her bathroom.

“Hey, I need to go…”

“Room check, I heard. I know French.” Marinette nodded, he seemed more hesitant.

Marinette after a moment of neither saying anything asked,  “Do you need to go home?”

“Yes, unfortunately.” He moved back to the bed and picked up his mask and turned back to her still as hesitant. “I’d like to spend the day with you tomorrow. If you are alright with that?”

Marinette smiled and pulled him into a hug. “I’d love to spend the day with my brother.”

In The Darkest Hour

Marinette Dupain-Cheng was not, despite what most would claim, a normal girl, nor did she lead a normal life. Chloè had once claimed that the bakers' daughter held more secrets than Fort Knox, whatever that was. Though she wasn't entirely wrong. Marinette did hold many secrets. Family, friend, random stranger, it didn't matter who talked to her. Unless you were a member of the conversation, not a peep was to be heard about it from Marinette.

As much as it occasionally annoyed them to be unable to get gossip from the girl, the entire class greatly appreciated the girl's talent for secrets. When Chloè, Kim, Max, Alix, Nathaniel, and Juleka needed someone to talk to about being LGBT, Marinette was their only pick. The group quickly became close, Marinette asking their permission to tell the other LGBT classmates to talk to them about it. None of their other classmates could figure out why the group was so close, for which they were extremely greatful. 

Kitty Section was created under Marinette's careful selection, the girl gathering those that had shyly admitted to their preferred method of making music and introducing them, one on one, to Luka and Juleka for consideration of the band they wanted to create.

The one thing the entire class knew about the rest of their classmates was one thing that were in perfect agreement with: Marinette Dupain-Cheng was an odd individual, and no one wanted her to snap. Especially after the appearance of le Papillion. Many of her classmates worried about their secrets, as so very little was known about the girl. Though the class didn't realize it, the only students that did not fear Marinette's akumazation revealing their secrets were the LGBT kids, as Marinette had not only admitted to possibly being either ace or demi due to her lack of attraction to anyone, but they also knew she was keeping secrets before she knew how to talk.

As they gave the girl more and more secrets, she became more and more isolated. No one was willing to give up their confidant, but those that she didn't trust with a secret of her own began to avoid her unless they needed a conversation kept quiet. Marinette simply smiled a small non-committal smile every time they spoke to her while Madame Bustier nodded approvingly at the girl.

A delicate peace existed in the class. Marinette's friends were all extremely protective of her, especially after they learned just why the girl was so secretive. Everything came to a head when Alya suspected Marinette knew the identity of at least one of Paris's heroes after seeing Chat Noir enter a room at the end of his timer- and Marinette walk out seconds later.

In retrospect, Alya could have chosen a better place to confront Marinette than in the school classroom, interrupting Bustier's lesson so that the girl couldn't run away.

The bluenette, of course, denied knowing who Chat Noir was. Alya, however, refused to let up- her blog was at stake, after all.

"C'mon, Mari!" Alya whinned, ignoring the classroom's collective flinch. No one was allowed to call Marinette Mari, new girl or not. "Be a good friend! Do you know what you could do for my blog?"

Marinette glared at the girl. "It's always about what I can do for you, isn't it?"

"Marinette! That was too harsh," Caline scolded her student. "You're supposed to be the example, not the problem starter! She just wants a little help with her career!"

Marinette glared at the teacher. "I said that I don't know the identity of Chat Noir. She kept pushing, insistent that I did even though all she knows is that he entered a room shortly before I exited it. I remained in front of the door until Chat Noir let me know he was properly recharged and left. She wishes to know a secret he would die to protect despite his and his cousin's protests against her stalking them."

"That is highly uncalled for!" Caline scolded. "One should never be judged for curiosity."

"And one should never be judged for the keeping of ones secrets, so be they keeping their own or others'. She's lucky that they haven't filed restraining orders or complaints against her. She could easily be sued for invasion of privacy, charged with jail time for stalking, or have charges brought against her for posting un-consented photos, of minors no less, on a public forum without any kind of authorization- not to mention some of her theories could be considered slander and defamation of character." Marinette retorted, the majority of the class shocked by her sass. The quiet girl usually refused to speak when challenged about her secrets; she had never fought back before (Sabrina was surprised, but more because of Marinette's legal jargon. Perhaps she should attempt a friendship with the girl instead of fearing her closed-off mannerisms). Only a select few that remembered her as a child with no filter (Chloè, Kim, Alix, and Nino) or visibly held no regard to authority figures (Juleka) remembered the old Marinette. The Marinette from before her aunt and uncle's deaths. The Marinette that allowed people to call her Mari.

Irina Karasuma, neè Dupain-Jelevac, adoptive daughter of Gina, had disappeared off the face of the planet when Marinette was eight years old. Six months after her disappearance, the Russian woman was presumed dead- along with her husband. Karasuma Tadaomi was Marinette's favorite out of her adoptive relatives, and everyone knew it. He was the one that taught her how to fight, how to defend herself. He also taught her how to cuss someone out, in French or Japanese, and make them thank her for it. He was the one that taught her just how important secrets were from the moment she was born. Irina taught her, very reluctant, niece how to use her looks to her advantage, the art of flirting, and about seven different languages (plus how to flirt or cuss in many others). By the time her favorite family members vanished (not dead, never dead, they couldn't be dead), Marinette was able to speak nine different languages, not including her mother tongue, plus sing beautifully.

Two weeks after Bustier assigned her detention for standing up to Alya, Marinette found a strange box on her desk, a fox tail amulet and a strange little pocket fox contained inside.

🍯

Adrien Agreste hit record on his phone the second Alya interupted class. He didn't plan on being defended, had only hoped to get a good laugh to share with Felix, until Marinette spoke up. If he weren't so good at acting, Adrien wouldn't have been able to keep the tears from falling. He knew, without a doubt, that Marinette knew his identity- and Ladybug's as well. She hadn't quite managed to close her eyes in time when he detransformed in front of her. The girl had simply pulled out her lunchbox when Plagg mentioned Adrien forgetting his Camembert at home, offering the kwami her own.

"Let me know when your good to go." Was all the girl said before walking out of the room, the sound of fabric sliding against the door letting him know she was leaning against it. Several nerve-racking minutes passed before Adrien announced that he was transformed. He watched the door slightly shift forward as she got off it, though the door never opened. 

He had waited days for the girl to spill. Yes, he was well aware of her reputation. However, he was almost positive that his was too big of a secret to keep. After seventy-two hours of nothing happening, Adrien tracked down his cousin and visited Master Fu.

Master Fu had frowned at him. "We will watch her and see how the situation pans out. If she proves herself enough, I may give her a Miraculous of her own."

The next day, Adrien walked into the massage parlor with the recording of an absolutely unaware Marinette verbally attacking a classmate for trying to pressure her into spilling the secret.

The Guardian had watched the video contemplatively, analyzing the girl. "I think I know the perfect match." He finally said once the video was over. "But I am unsure… it has been several centuries since a true match for her surfaced."

Adrien left more confused than ever, though forgot about the strange encounter once his cousin saw the video. All of Adrien's being was suddenly focused on keeping Felix from taking legal action as Ladybug against the blogger.

🍯

Marinette stared at the small goddess. The fox stared back, then smirked.

"Most kits freak out when they see me." The fox commented.

Marinette smirked back, "I'm not most kits."

"Hmm. We'll see. My name's Trixx, I'm the Kwami of Illusion. My main power is Mirage, we'll be able to see if you can use any other power after we work together for a time. You have five minutes after using my power before you transform… until your an adult."

"Okay. Does this come with a catch? Do I have to fight akumas?"

Trixx grinned ferally. "Nope. All you have to do is not use my Miraculous for evil."

"Good. I think Kitsune would prefer to take out human criminals and night akuma over missing school."

Trixx nearly purred at her newest holder's words, eyes sparkling with pride, "That sounds perfect." It was brilliant for her kit, this one might even grow to be a full fox, to use a name of different origin to mislead people. Who would think a half-Chinese girl would use a Japanese name?

🍯

Marinette transformed with Trixx for the first time that night, fiddling with her weapon before ever leaving her room. She had a flute, the mouth piece pulling out to reveal a sharpened blade on the end, barbs set strategically down the blade so that it would catch without letting go. She slowly pulled the rest of it apart, each one leading to a blade of some sort. The middle had two blades, one on each end, while the others only had one- lengths varying. 

It didn't take more than a second to find the phone-like use, the girl calling Chat Noir to meet her at the Trodacero with Ladybug.

The two heroes beat her to the meeting spot, Huli Jinn joining them after learning how to move around as a Miraculous user. Her dark silver cloak settled around her, shifting and blending with the shadows.

Ladybug eyed her suspiciously. "Who are you and what do you want?" The blond demanded.

Kitsune smirked at him. "Call me Kitsune. I'm the holder of the Fox Miraculous. I thought it best to let you know I was active before you mistook me for an akuma." She lowered her hood and pushed the cloak back, revealing her appearance. Her dress was silver with blue ribbons and sleeves. The skirt had slits up both sides to prevent it impeding movement and the skirt and sleeves were removable- not that the boys knew that. A pair of loose silver pants and black combat boots hid under what most assumed to be a dress. Her Miraculous stayed tucked under her outfit, her mask matching her silver theme- excepting the orange curled fox tails on either side of her mask.

Chat visibly brightened. "So you're here to help us?"

"Not exactly. You two are heroes. You fight akuma no matter when or where they occur. I'm a vigilante- I'm focusing more on keeping the average Parisian safe. If an akuma occurs at night, I'll help you out. But you're on your own during the day. I have school, and I know you do too, but I'm already on thin ice with my teacher, and I have work I have to do. You guys can sleep at night while I keep an eye on things."

Felix eyed her. "Why is your name in Japanese?"

Marinette blinked at him. "My favorite uncle was Japanese. He taught me many things before he vanished a few years ago. I don't know if he's dead or not, I hope not, but I wish to honor his memory and all he taught me."

Chat grinned even brighter at her. "Are you a Honeypot?" He demanded. He only knew one of those, and if she was… "Master Fu said he might give you a Miraculous!"

The other two heroes eyed the cat. "How do you know who I am?" Marinette demanded.

Felix stared at the two. "You're the girl that knows who we are." He dumbly stated.

Marinette huffed. "Yes, I know who you are. Not that anyone would ever learn that for sure."

"What are you going to do about sleep?" Felix demanded. He refused to be the cause of another person being irresponsible about school. 

Kitsune waved her hand through the air. "I can exsist perfectly well by sleeping on the weekends and taking naps throughout the week. Foxes are at their peak at night anyways."

"Didn't you just say you're on thin ice with your teacher?" Ladybug demanded. Chat Noir simply looked highly concerned.

Marinette raised an eyebrow, though Adrien beat her to speaking. "Our teacher doesn't like her right now because she defended my hero persona against a classmate. Our teacher is all for Mar- sorry, Kitsune keeping secrets until those secrets could make someone else rise to the top. She got detention for protecting my identity and defending herself against the girl pestering her."

Felix narrowed his eyes. "So the teacher punishes victims for defending themselves against a bully harrassing them?"

"I wouldn't say that-"

"Yes." Kitsune interupted. "The teacher shows no care for the emotional state of a person being attacked, only for the well-being of the more agressive person. She has had several complaints filed against her, though no action has been taken. My allies and I are getting ready to go to the school board if nothing changes soon."

Felix nodded once in acknowledgement. "Good. I shall retire for the night, Chat, you should do the same. We miss enough sleep as it is." He turned around and muttered under his breath, knowing his cousin could hear him, "And you need to explain to me what a Honeypot is."

Marinette bit back her laugh, fully aware that Felix didn't know her Miraculous also came with heightened senses. "Goodnight, boys."

🍯

Adrien landed in Felix's bedroom, having laughed at the boy the entire way there. Their transformations fell even as Adrien teased his cousin. "Need me to explain what a Honeypot is? Didn't you say that I was the one who was sheltered? That I don't know anything if it's not in an anime?" Felix glared at his cousin. "Okay, fine! A Honeypot is someone who can lure their prey in by their looks and actions, and once they catch what their after, they can make their move. Marinette's aunt taught her how to be a Honeypot when she was little."

Felix eyed his cousin. "What anime did you learn it from?"

Adrien made several insulted noises before Plagg finally outed him.

🍯

Nearly a month later, Caline Bustier and Damoclès were told to pack their bags. The head of the school board called in a favor from an old friend in Japan. The principal had demanded to be allowed to bring one of his teachers with him. She quickly agreed. François-DuPont suffered a hit with the removal of the principal and a teacher for negligence. Hopefully their replacements would help nullify that hit. 

Asano Gakushuu laid his phone on his desk before buzzing for Nagisa. He started speaking before Nagisa could even properly shut the door. "I know you were planning on moving to Paris with Akabane when he got shipped off as an ambassador. I'm not going to try to change your mind." The again went unspoken. They both knew exactly who his best teacher was. 

Gakushuu was always surprised when Nagisa spoke to him- the boy had always been so silent. He hadn't learned until after they started working together exactly why Nagisa was the way he was. "Why did you call me?"

Gakushuu huffed. "Here's the deal. An old acquantence of mine called in a favor I owed her. She recently fired her principal and one of her teachers, and needs a suitable replacement for both. She asked me to take over, I agreed on the stipulation that I got to bring one of my teachers with me."

"Where at?"

"François-DuPont. It's a school in Paris. Instead of struggling to find a new teaching position in a country you are unfamiliar with, you can join me at this school. It's not far from the embassy, so you would still be able to meet Akabane for lunch or whatever."

Nagisa raised his eyebrow at his friend. "You do know that Karma prefers his first name for a reason. We're twenty-six, and have been friends since the end of cram school. Your rivalry should be dead by now." Gakushuu shrugged. Nagisa let out a heavy sigh. "What's my class like? How did the teacher I'm replacing run it?"

"I don't know how accurate my information is, all I have is what the superintendent knew. But the teacher and principal were terminated due to neglecting the students"

Nagisa facepalmed. "End Class bad? Paradise High bad? Or relatively alright?"

Gakushuu shrugged. "Possibly some combination of the first two. They did have one competent teacher for science and math. The terminated teacher was supposed to teach them almost everything else. We won't really know until we get there and assess the situation. They want us there ASAP."

"Of course. I'll tell Karma. Get me the school's address so that we can plan housing."

"I'll forward you all the information by the end of today. Use today to tell your students the news and pack. I'll begin the transfer paperwork. Do you have tickets to Paris already booked?"

Nagisa gave Gakushuu a bland look. "Karma and I leave for Paris this coming Monday. You need to focus more on your own paperwork, mine should be nearly completed."

Asano would never admit that he had been putting off Nagisa's paperwork for as long as possible in hopes that he would stay. Nope, not at all.

🍯

Marinette kept an eye on the new teacher as soon as he arrived. They had been stuck with different substitutes for nearly two weeks while waiting on him to arrive and all the paperwork to go through. The name Shiota Nagisa rung a distant bell in her mind, though she struggled a little with remembering where, exactly, she had heard his name.

"Greetings, everyone." His French was passable enough, though he had a noticable Japanese accent to Marinette's trained ear. "My name is Shiota Nagisa, though you can all call me by my given name. I hope we have a good year together." He offered them a small bow.

Marinette rose to her feet. "Greetings, Nagisa-sensei. I am Marinette Dupain-Cheng, class representative. Thank you for coming to teach us." She offered him a bow in return.

Nagisa gave her an approving grin even as Rose hesitantly spoke up. "Didn't he ask us to call him by his given name?"

Kim explained before Nagisa could. "His name's switched around, like mine! Last name is first and first name is last!" Kim boasted. "The new teach is like me!"

Nagisa hummed appreciatively. Le Chein Kim understood the basics, but not the proper terminology. "A little rough, but basically correct. Though I do not appreciate the interruptions. In Japan, a person's family name is given first and their given name second. It is considered rude to address someone by their given name or a nickname without permission. Dupain-Cheng-chan, please stay after school so that we can discuss the class."

"Yes, Sensei." Marinette acknowledged. 

"Now, in Japan, different honorifics are used to address someone. Here you use madame, mademoidemoiselle, and monsieur. It's a bit more complex in Japan. If you were to speak to an adult, you call them by their family name followed by -san. For example, a friend of mine also lives here. You would address him as Akabane-san. You would address females your age or younger by adding -chan to their surname, males with -kun. People in the grades above you would be addressed as -senpai, which can also be used for someone with more experience. A teacher, doctor, someone in a roll ment to educate someone is addressed as -sensei." Nagisa spent the first day explaining to them the cultural differences between Japan and France, flashing back to Bitch-sensei's less than conventional methods proving their usefulness. Several of his new students seemed to understand the different cultures very well while others seemed to let everything fly over their heads. 

The day finally ended, Nagisa ushering the students out so that he could finally learn just what he was dealing with. "Dupain-Cheng-chan, would you please explain to me how the class was run prior to my arrival? The principal and I were given minimal information about why we were being brought in."

Marinette slightly inclined her head. " Please, call me Marinette. My surname is a mouthful. Caline Bustier was our former teacher. She let bullies run rampant and punished the victims if they stood up for themselves. One of my classmates is obsessed with uncovering the identities of Paris's heroes. The teacher never warned her of all the legal action that could be taken against her for basically stalking underaged people. Césaire was convinced that I knew one of their identities and interupted the class to hound me about it. I denied any knowledge of who they were. She pressured me, insisting I knew and called me by a nickname I do not use. I told her off, the teacher scolded me and gave me detention.

"The former principal wasn't any better. He was easily controlled by people in a place of power, allowing bullies to rule the school even as he brushed an complaints about his teachers under the rug. I was chosen as class representative because my classmates trusted me to know better than anyone just what they wanted or needed without airing their secrets to the world. I am also one of the only students who was not afraid to tell Bustier and Damoclès that they were acting like imbeciles. My class is accustomed to not being able to rely on an adult in charge to handle a situation for them- especially if that situation is hostile. Now days they either handle it themselves or come to me."

Nagisa nodded. "If you wouldn't mind, I would like to began taking some of that responsibility off of you. It will take time for us to learn how to work together, but I assure you that I am not like Caline Bustier."

Marinette eyed the new teacher. "Anything my classmates tell me in confidence will stay with me. But I will attempt to speak with you about the class when needed."

Nagisa inclined his head. "That's fair. I would expect nothing less. What can you tell me about the class? I can't move at mach twenty, nor am I a verifiable genius, but I would like to be able to give all of my students what they need. I was under the impression that I am in charge of everything except mathematics and science?"

Marinette nodded. "Juleka, Mylène, and Nathaniel are all very reserved and shy. Juleka and Nathaniel prefer to hide in the background and let others shine. Mylène is okay as long as there's someone she's comfortable with nearby. Ivan is quiet and has a few anger issues, though he's pretty good at controlling himself as long as le Papillion is inactive. Kim has trouble focusing on class and retaining the information, he does better when he has something to do. I've been making him study with me, letting him practice sports, parkour, that sort of thing while I call out information and question him on the materials. He's not at the top of the class, but he is usually in the top ten. Alix can focus better than Kim, but also learns better when she has something to do. Césaire has a tendency to ignore the materials when the teacher is covering them in favor of working on her blog. She expects someone from the class to share their notes with her later on so she can pass. Sabrina takes care of helping Chloè study, since Chloè learns better with technical terms. Every now and then Sabrina calls me in for help for a particularly difficult subject because, where French sometimes fails, making Chloè learn the material in a different language works every time. Nino learns through music. Everyone else learns relatively well in the class and can mostly interact with new people. Adrien said his cousin's considering transferring in, he's asocial, not big on people, but smart."

"Thank you. I'll see what I can do about helping Le Chein-kun and Kubdel-chan have something interactive during class to help them. Do any of your classmates find music distracting?" Marinette shook her head. "Then I'll ask one of my former classmates for help with making a playlist to help Lahiffe-kun learn the material. What would you suggest to stop Césaire-chan from being on her blog during class?"

Marinette hummed contemplatively. "As long as she has an electronic, she's going to check it. Especially since she knows a few of our classmates will give her the notes."

Nagisa nodded. "I'll have her give me her phone before class. Would you do me a favor?"

Marinette eyed the teacher. "That depends on the favor, Sensei."

"It's nothing bad." Nagisa promised. "I'm just used to students being unwilling to help. I feel your classmates are more likely to listen to you right now than me. You have their trust, I do not. Would you be willing to ask them to stop giving Césaire-chan their notes? It would be different if she were missing class, but she's just not paying attention. She needs to learn that there isn't always going to be someone to cover for her."

Marinette blinked, surprised. "Of course, Sensei."

Nagisa considered the girl. "You have a Chinese and French heritage, yes?"

"I do."

"Where does the grasp on Japanese culture come from?" Nagisa questioned, deeply curious.

Marinette offered a small smile. "My family is very complex. My grandmother is the equivalent of an Italian gypsy and has a penchance for adopting people. My adopted aunt, Irina Dupain-Jelevac, married Karasuma Tadaomi. He taught me many things, including Japanese culture, before they went missing a few years ago."

Nagisa's mouth fell open. "You're related to Bitch-sensei? And Karasuma-sensei?"

Marinette snapped her fingers. "I knew your name sounded familiar! My aunt told me about her attempt at being a teacher and how much she struggled with it. She had a lot of pride in your class. Tadomi-oji-san did too, he was just better at hiding it."

Nagisa stared at the small girl. "They told you about us?"

Marinette shrugged. "A little, yeah. Is that all you needed, Sensei? I need to get to work."

"Y-yes, thank you. Have a nice evening, Marinette-chan."

"You too, Sensei." Marinette called as she walked out the door. She found something in her relaxing slightly with knowing that the new teacher was taught by her uncle. Though she did wonder how Adrien, and possibly Felix if he transfered in, would escape to fight daytime akumas.

🍯

Nagsia flopped on the couch once he got home, startling his husband. "Sup, Nagisa?" Karma asked. Nagisa smiled, even after over a decade his husband hadn't changed from the time they were at Kunikagawa. He even continued elongating his name.

"Guess who my class rep. is related to?"

Karma raised an eyebrow. "I literally have no idea."

"Karasuma-sensei and Bitch-sensei."

"What the fuck?" Karma lost all attempt at feignig disinterest, bolting straight up.

"She's French-Chinese, Italian grandmother. The grandmother adopted Bitch-sensei before she married Karasuma."

"How the hell did you figure all this out?"

"I had her stay after class to get a feel for the class. I was called in to replace a negligent teacher, so I wanted to know exactly what I was working with. After we were officially done, I asked her where she learned so much about Japanese culture, as she seemed to already know what I was teaching today. I was already thinking about Bitch-sensei and her teaching methods before she explained how she was adopted by Karasuma-sensei- as a niece. Apparently they talked about us."

"Holy fucking shit, talk about a full circle. How much does she know?"

"That's the problem, I have no idea. Nor do I know what they taught her." That was more worrying than how much she knew about their past.

🍯

Marinette texted Chloè as she walked. *Césaire's notes privileges have been revoked until further notice, excluding absences.*

*I was waiting on you to snap on her. 🙃*

*New teacher's rules for her. Former Class 3E- 🗡️*

*😮 …………… Trust?*

*With caution.* Marinette pocketed her phone as she walked in the bakery. She could give a good two hours in the bakery, design while cooking supper, and then take a quick nap before patrol.

Emily in Paris episode 3 or it’s still more accurate than American media recent coverture on France.

Ah, I had to write that title. And I am not even talking about American Twitter. But yeah. Feel better. Somewhat I have the impression that this is going to substitute the still a better love story than Twilight in my mind. But, I’m sorry, Stephenie Meyer, I am not here for that but to make a belated, totally improvised, not at all completely planned recap of Episode 3 of Emily in Paris, your favourite Instagram version of the French capital.

So episode 3 starts with our heroine running, as she usually does every morning. Why this Paris is more empty than the town where I live which has like 25,000 inhabitants? So many questions about where did people go. The case is her boss in Chicago calls. Yes, the one who speaks French and should be now best friends with Sylvie but it’s stuck in Chicago with her pregnancy.

I know, Madeline, I know. It would be frustrating for me too that the main trait of my personality was I’m pregnant and on my bed. They both exchange about how now that Doug dumped her Emily’s life is full of croissants and sex, when actually is about sex. Also Emily meets street furniture. As does Madeline, too. I guess that’s not the kind of idea she had of meeting French men. Thanks Anne! Hidalgo of course.

Madeline is sending Emily the corporate commandments for Savoir. Yikes, I thought again, a cultural clash is coming and what are corporate commandments anyway (I don’t know, sounds tacky, I’m just a puzzled European), but for now there are another problems to solve. Emily’s shower breaks, the building manager only speaks French and of course our leading lady is still struggling with understanding it. Also, sidenote: manager building is right with Miss Cooper. Only problems.

Fortunately Gabriel exists and he helps her to break the language barrier. But this isn’t going to magically repair her shower and so Emily has to wash her hair in one of humanity’s wonders, one apex of civilization, the bidet. It’s supposed to be a bad hair day for her afterwards but... Does she look that different? Well, not for me! Discuss:

This shows... A character development! At last! Emily is trying to learn French, and even if her beret isn’t going to help in the task, is good to see she’s trying to adapt. Still, she’s overdoing a bit with that Gioconda bag.

I mean, girl. Relax. In order to improve her knowledge, she tries to trick her teacher - who considers a working place full of French people must be an interesting environment where to study the behaviour of the Emily Cooperius Chicagoensis but refuses the pleasure of her company if there’s not a 50 euros banknote in between. Business is business after all. Cut to Emily reuniting with my adored godess Sylvie, whose elegance and beauty only can be matched with the flag of the twelve stars in the background. Ah, Freude, schöner Götterfunken/ Tochter aus Elysium,/ Wir betreten feuertrunken/ Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!

Well, the case is they are going to film the advertisement for De l’Heure today and it’s an important thing Emily keeps her mouth closed and unsmiling because she looks stupid, at least in Sylvie’s opinion. I’d say more scary but well.

Luc and Julien receive them with the enraged face of every European citizen who just met an aggresive attempt  of being forced into the American Way of Doing Things. Which they refuse naturally. Madeline just sent the corporate commandments and everyone is pissed at nonsense like giving praise in public and critizising in private. But off to filming the spot for the perfume. The location is the Pont d’Alexandre III that has featured in like 20,000 advertisement for fragrances. Here they met Antoine and Emily has the twentieth humiliating experience with languages telling she’s horny out of a sudden when she wanted to mean excited.

Emily meets the model, a Serbian blonde beauty that doesn’t speak French, that’s her personality trait. Our heroine seems rejoiced to find at least a kindred soul but we won’t have more time with the model, whose task is to walk across the bridge naked - or wearing the perfume, Antoine says - , while surrounded by men in costumes. The campaign Dream of Beauty, in short. Emily’s reaction is this:

Antoine argues this is meant to represent the woman’s fantasy, to be desired by all these men. Emily doesn’t think this is going to be appreciated by women at the other side of the Atlantic ocean and says the idea is sexists rather than sexy. Filming stop for they to debate, which seems expensive. Stopping, not debating. Without entering on what fantasies are valid or not and who actually pays attention to advertisements for fragrances - I am not one of these people - we don’t get to learn if Emily knows who Cocteau was.

The following morning the plumber can’t fix Emily’s shower. His gestures are pretty easy to understand, as it’s an universal fact that often the pieces needed to repair are not immediately available. Anyway, Emily asks Gabriel to help her with translation again. She must pay him or something. The thing doesn’t get to be fixed and Emily gets to shower in Gabriel’s appartment.

Maybe he has a fantasy of some sort here? Who knows. At the office and after her class, Emily’s first conversation of the day with Sylvie goes, as usual, for a rocky start. She has made lost money and time to the company, her boss argues, and on top of that she’s the prude police. The final straw for Emily immediately after that is that someone (called Luc) drew a dick on the Sacred Corporate Commandments. Having forgotten the fact that drawing penises is part of the human nature since the dawn of times, Emily doesn’t take well the profanation. It’s too much so she goes to lunch with Mindy.

Mindy - who is celebrating a party later and invites her - rolls her eyes at the corporate commandments and more or less say she deserves the hate because she could not expect French people were going to receive that gladly because they are against all. Well, it’s one of their multiple charms. “People like me! That’s my thing!” , Emily argues. Oh my sweet Summer child... Once back at the office, the commercial is as nonsensical as your average perfume commercial. Emily suggests a poll on Twitter to decide if it’s sexy or sexists. Bad or good, they’ll have publicity. Sounds about right?

One day I want to be Sylvie when she answers, after Emily invited her to Mandy’s party: Sorry, I’m busy. Also when she goes on with a mini the reason you suck moment: “You come to Paris. You walk into my office. You don’t even bother to learn the language. You treat the city like it’s your amusement park”. Apparently Emily can’t wrap her head around the idea of not everyone liking her and that you don’t have why to be friends with your bosses or workmates. Girl, just a civilized relationship with them is enough. Anyway... Emily does invite her, incapable of taking a no for an answer.

As predictable - don’t say you didn’t predict it - the party is a bit crowded and, leaving aside Mindy, Emily doesn’t know anyone there. Because, Sylvie knowing better, she didn’t show up. Well done Madame. Out of water again, Emily finds an apparently cute boy who engages in a conversation with her. With hand kissing at the balcony at all.

All it’s very romantic until, when they are strolling the streets and after flirting a bit, Fabien I think was his name - sorry, not checking again - tells her he likes American pussies. This is too much information all of a sudden for Emily - even if it could lead her to learn another the meaning of a new French word, equally related with felines - and storms off to Gabriel’s restaurant. Why is a thing the chef is there, available to serve her a glass of wine, I don’t know, I didn’t write this thing. But finally, finally, FINALLY our heroine says she’s going to stop trying being liked by everyone. Thank you Paris, you inspired some adult realities on Emily’s brain. It’s also a productive night after all because Gabriel says he likes her. So... yay? Since many of you have already seen the complete season, you know that things are... more complicated than that.

Of course the last three minutes of the episode are reserved for Emily Was Right After All moments. The poll is a success even if the commercial is not universally liked - but as Emily has learn this is not that important anymore -, she takes revenge on Luc bringing a dick shaped bread, or cake - I don’t know exactly what it is - which is a funny and irreverent way to respond him aaaand... finds a present from Antoine on her desk, lingerie from La Perla. Which is, ew, a bit creepy.

Aaaand that was all. I had to rewatch it because it had been eras since I last wrote about this series. I promise to be more disciplined with the next ones. Until then.

P.S. Down with Corporation Commandments.

Top 12 Personal Favorite Hit Songs from 2014

The “least good” of the three best years of the 2010s. This is still a top 12. Because I can, and I will.

I know. People also call it a bad year. And I think they’re wrong.

Disclaimers:

Keep in mind I’m using both the year-end top 100 lists from the US and from France while making these top 10 things. There’s songs in English that charted in my country way higher than they did in their home countries, or even earlier or later, so that might get surprising at times.

Of course there will be stuff in French. We suck. I know. It’s my list. Deal with it.

My musical tastes have always been terrible and I’m not a critic, just a listener and an idiot.

I have sound to color synesthesia which justifies nothing but might explain why I have trouble describing some songs in other terms than visual ones.

New job, which is the one I still have currently. Also, I discovered Doctor Who in December 2013 and you know exactly what happened in 2014 because I dived head first into the extended universe as soon as I finished New Who and I’ve never really recovered since then. The end of the year was highly stressful, with my cat being sick, my father needing a very dangerous surgical intervention, and me being so stressed out I was basically unable to sleep for days. Might explain why there’s a lot of cute songs on this list, I needed cute stuff.

That year wasn’t very generous in good albums from bands I liked. Epica released The Quantum Enigma, and it was okay, Within Temptation had Hydra, and it was also okay, and Coldplay had the very underrated (in my opinion at least) Ghost Stories, a mostly melancholic album full of bittersweet post-breakup songs. So I’m left with no choice but to declare The Birthday Massacre’s album Superstition my album of the year for 2014. They had stayed at a consistent level since Pins And Needles so I wasn’t expecting anything better from them, but boy do they delivered. Here is Divide, it’s about a subterranean world and it might be a metaphor but as you know I’m very literal-minded! Here’s Beyond, about a lady falling in love with a strange woman who might be some sort of fae or supernatural entity!! I love most of the album and there’s only one subpar song on it. I know they’ll never get a crossover hit but they’d deserve it so much. Look at the state of the world. We’re so ready for a new mainstream wave of energetic, angsty, weird music. Just bring it on.

There’s only one non-elligible song that truely pisses me off this time, and it’s Traffic Girl by Indochine, another single from their Black City Parade album. It’s about a policewoman in North Korea who has to wave and smile at non existant traffic all day long and the song presents her as a modern hero. It’s one of my favorite songs on the album and I’m so mad it didn’t make the French year-end list.

Here’s a list of honorable menti-holy shit why is this list so long

Albatraoz (AronChupa) - Riiiiiight at the limit between catchy and annoying. But it’s blissfully short.

Chandelier (Sia) - I would like this more if it wasn’t that painful to listen to, I swear.

Magic in the Air (Magic System) - Insert my usual comment about these guys and their fun & happy songs.

Un Jour Au Mauvais Endroit (Calogero) - Great music, good lyrics. It’s still Calogero and I tend to dislike how overdramatic he usually is. Not enough to ruin that one song for me though.

Je Garde le Sourire (Black M) - This isn’t the last time he’s gonna appear in this post.

Prayer In C (Lilly Wood & The Prick) - A bit repetitive but in a good way.

Budapest (Georges Ezra) - A bit repetitive but in a good way 2, the return but in a completely different genre.

The Monster (Eminem & Rihanna) - We’ve now entered the songs which I considered putting on the list, and yeah, there’s a lot of them even if this is a top 12. “Bad year for pop music”. Yeah. Right.

Addicted To You (Avicii) - This is good, and the music video is great, and I want to stop feeling emotional about Avicii. Please.

Don’t Tell Em (Jeremih) - I. Uh. What the f█ck. Okay. There’s no way I can justify this. I simply adore this beat even if the lyrics are really, really bad. It’s just visually stunning and I really wish the song itself was better.

Photomaton (Jabberwocky) - I don’t think this would have charted without the success of Kavinsky the previous year. But still. Wonderful stuff. Well deserved.

Madame Pavoshko (Black M) - This was on the first version of the list but in the end I really had no room left for it. It’s a song about a guy telling his old teacher he made it in life despite the fact she labelled him a hopeless case at school. With such a premise, it could be an angry song, but no, it’s upbeat, sarcastic and fun. Wonderful stuff.

Le Graal (Kyo) - Kyo? Wait, you mean the embarrassing emo guys from my 2002 and 2003 lists? These guys?? They were back on the charts after ten years?? And suddenly everyone thought it was cool to like them again?? Including me??? Sounds fake but okay

Turn Down For What (DJ Snake) - The last cut. Stim music at its finest, sharp, aggressive and colorful. Everything I ever wanted from a hit song.

Well, that was long. Here’s the actual list.

12 - Wake Me Up (Avicii)

US: #22 / FR: Not on the list

“So wake me up when it’s all over, when I’m wiser and I’m older” should make no sense. You can’t get wiser if you’re asleep. At least that’s what I would probably say if I didn’t feel this. There’s a lot of times in my life I wished I could be switched off and woken up a couple of years later and be like “hello I’m back, I feel better now, what did I miss”. I totally get it.

The only reason this song is so low on the list is the drop. I don’t like it very much. The rest is damn good.

11 - Boom Clap (Charlie XCX)

US: #34 / FR: #84

Boom! Boom! Boom! CLAP. That song got me after its first seconds. Love its atmosphere, very cotton candy-like, very fluffy, with a sharp voice. Doesn’t work well if you listen to it on a loop, though, and that’s the only negative thing I can say against it.

10 - Stay The Night (Zedd)

US: #94 / FR: Not on the list

This on the other hand works very well on repeat and that drop is golden. I’m afraid I don’t have anything very interesting to say about it. It stayed on my playlist from 2014 to summer 2019, though, so that’s an impressive feat.

9 - Rather Be (Clean Bandit)

US: #41 / FR: #18

Several critics I follow have commented this song is 1) mostly meaningless 2) too perfect to say anything about it and I agree. It’s also too perfect to be really passionate about it, unfortunately, but still, very, very good stuff.

8 - Magic (Coldplay)

US: Not on the list / FR: #66

You already know I don’t really like lowkey emotional songs and I also hate the first act of Coldplay’s career, so why on earth did I like Ghost Stories so much and why is Magic making me feel so emotional, you ask? Well it’s because the music itself isn’t bland. It’s lowkey but rich, dense and colourful, and it works much better than whatever they were doing before with their slow boring songs. Also, I really struggle with dramatic vocal performances on quiet emotional songs (which is why I tend to have issues with Adele’s voice on some of her stuff), and here the balance is just ideal. Soft colors, soft textures, soft voice, this is like a colorful plushie you’ve lost for years and just found in the attic and it brings you to tears. I adore it.

Also the part of the lyrics that goes “And if you were to ask me / After all that we've been through / Still believe in magic? / Oh yes I do”, that makes me want to hug someone and never let go.

7 - Waves (Mr Probz)

US: Not on the list / FR: #15

This is completely hypnotic. It’s perfect to drive, to walk, to draw. to sit on a bench and look at the trees. It’s just wave after wave of pastel colors with a good beat and it washes away your anxiety slowly but surely. Therapeutic and beautiful without ever feeling bland. Wonderful stuff.

6 - Uptown Funk (Bruno Mars & Mark Ronson)

US: Not on the list (#1 on the 2015 year-end list) / FR: #3

Everyone loved it and I wasn’t an exception. You all know it and I’ve got nothing new or interesting to say about it. A ton of fun. Love the lyrics.

5 - Sur Ma Route (Black M)

US: Not on the list / FR: #7

If you’re wondering what’s going on in this picture, the guy is parodying a lot of famous movies or series in the music video. It’s a simple but super energetic song about trying to trace your own road in life and all the problems you encounter and how you can’t always count on people you thought were your friends. It’s very propulsive and motivating and it’s my favorite song from that guy even though he made a lot of good songs. Just great stuff. Check it out if you’ve never heard it.

Speaking of being on your own...

4 - Ain’t It Fun (Paramore)

US: #47 / FR: Not on the list

I miss hearing that kind of thing on the radio and yes, I’m aware that makes me sound like an old idiot. Oh how I wish this had been released in 2010 when I just started to work, that would have been perfect. I know the song is supposed to be sarcastic with the whole “ain’t it fun being on your own” angle, but yeah, when your life wasn’t great before, it’s actually liberating to “live in the real world”, even if it sucks at times, even if it’s difficult and you have responsibilities and all.

Also the music video is super cute. Love it.

3 - Pompeii (Bastille)

US: #12 / FR: Not on the list

I’m honestly surprised this is only #3 on this list considering how much I loved this one back when it came out, and don’t get me wrong, it’s still a song I love to this day, just... a bit less. Maybe it’s because of overplay? I’m not exactly sure considering #1 was also played very often and I never ever got tired of it. And it’s well written, and it’s not every day that you hear a song about two dead people talking about the wrath of the gods after their city was engulfed in ash.

So yeah. Not sure what happened there. I hope this band is eventually gonna have another hit like this one. Bastille, more of Pompeii and less of Happier, please.

2 - Dangerous (David Guetta)

US: Not on the list / FR: #8

A few months ago I heard Memories by Maroon 5 and I was instantly filled with a truely disproportionate amount of rage for such a bland pop song. See, I love it when music uses well-known classical tunes and completely changes their context and tone, but Memories doesn’t do any of that, it’s just the Pachelbel canon with some bad lyrics on top. So yeah, it’s a pet peeve.

Dangerous, on the other hand, is a song mixing a small loop of Toccata & Fugue in D minor and it basically uses it as an ominous pseudo-police siren in a song about illegally cruising a car with your possibly criminal, possibly gangster crush and not knowing if you’re scared, in love or feeling the thrill of adventure, or all of that at once. I. Love this damn song.

When the only bad thing I have to say about a song talking about driving at night way too fast is “eh this isn’t as good as Kavinsky”, you know you’ve found gold.

1 - A Sky Full of Stars (Coldplay & Avicii)

US: #51 / FR: #9

As much as I love Dangerous, there wasn’t any doubt about what would top this list. I’ve spent about ten lists explaining how my appreciation of Coldplay kept growing over time and four lists explaining how much I loved Avicii, and this song is the best of both worlds. The first time I heard it, I was driving and, no joke, I was so overwhelmed I had to park my car to properly concentrate on the song.

One day I will have to paint this song to explain how fantastic it looks and I’d have to use purple, china blue and pink watercolor inks and basically paint a psychedelic night sky full of little lights and yeah, this is basically another of these songs that are deeply satisfying on a synesthetic level, and it joins this very select club with the blue song called “Blue”, the song full of bright flashes called “Lights” and the song that looks like gentle pulsing lights called “Fireflies”. I’m trying (and failing) to learn how to play it on the piano. I know the chords, and I suck, but I’m very determined.

On top of that deeply satisfying visual, there’s the soft vocals so specific of the Ghost Stories album, and the very simple, very cute lyrics, and I simply hear “'Cause you're a sky, 'cause you're a sky full of stars, I'm gonna give you my heart” and I die instantly. This is high quality musical fluff. Come to think of it, this list is full of it, and this is the Ultimate Fluffy Song. One fluff to rule them all.

Sidenote, considering I fell into the DW audios right when this song came out, that’s one of my theme songs for Eight and Charley. Because of course it is.

Next up: The beginning of a progressive drop in quality but you wouldn’t be able to tell considering how long this list of honorable mentions is

hogwarts/harry potter fic rec list

Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble by pandacowhipster

When potions prodigy Stiles blows up one cauldron too many during one of his ‘experiments’, he gets assigned to making Wolfsbane Potion for the new groundskeeper. Which wouldn’t be so bad if the guy wasn’t you know, terrifying.

Save a Broom, Ride a Quidditch Player by 42hrb

Derek and Stiles have been mutually pining for each other for years, Cora and Lydia are sick of it.

apparecium by bleep0bleep

Derek is an Auror investigating a cult that hangs out at this new restaurant in Diagon Alley, Roscoe's, when he runs into someone he thought he'd never see again.

Will he be able to stop a rising threat to the wizarding world-- and more importantly, will he be able to make amends with the one who got away?

Lepidopterophobia by hazelandglasz

From a list of prompts : "you walked in on me practicing for datda in an empty classroom, and have now inadvertently discovered that my boggart takes the form of a butterfly, please stop laughing"

Untamed by rosepetals42

Of course, the transfer kid gets mentioned because transfers are rare, but the news isn’t that exciting. In fact, according to Laura, no one even seems to know his first name. The only thing anyone has really figured out about him is that he’s American. And that’s not exactly hard because he obviously has an accent.

The only thing Derek really knows is that, despite other reports, he seems quiet enough, prefers to work alone, and has the most amazing shade of amber eyes that Derek has ever seen.

Not that he’s looking. Obviously.

OR: A Harry Potter AU where Stiles is a Slytherin transfer student and Derek is the grumpy Gryffindor who falls in love with him.

There are also potions, elves, and falcons involved. Oh, and illegal use of magic. Obviously.

chantes une nouvelle chanson pour moi by pr1nc3ssp34ch (dallisons)

Stiles Stilinski has been at Hogwarts since his first year, okay. That's six years of experience. He knows how Hogwarts works, how it operates. He's not quite an expert or anything, but he's pretty damn sure he knows this school.

So why the hell have they waited like a million years to start taking transfer students?

And why is he the only one who can't get a French date?

Confrontation and Confession by literaryoblivion

After the third owl from his son detailing how his Transfiguration teacher has given him detention and the reasons why, Stiles starts to get suspicious of this professor.

He Blinded Me With Library Science by mklutz

Stiles blinks. “Right, the reading room. Do you have your, uh ...library card?” he asks. He’s never been able to make that sound normal and not vaguely dirty when he actually means wand.

Green and Gold by AllTheseSquaresMakeACircle

Derek had a lot to consider going into his fifth year of Hogwarts. His parents were pressuring him to make good grades and to preform well on his O.W.L.'s. They were a family that worked in the Ministry after all. But he was more concerned with Quidditch. And his grades showed. Well, Transfiguration did anyway. So, he was going to get a tutor. That was okay. He just wasn't expecting it to be one Stiles Stilinski.

Or, the Harry Potter AU that popped into my head that refused to leave. It's random and messy and weird. And that's okay.

Mother of Dragons by Lissadiane

Since Hogwarts had opened its doors to werewolves, many Hale children had apparently come through, wary and angry, refusing to socialize with the other students. And one by one, they’d been sorted into Slytherin, obviously, with the odd Ravenclaw to mix things up.

And then along came little Derek Hale, who’d barely gotten his ass on the stool before the hat was calling out Gryffindor.

Everyone thought it was funny, even now, when Derek was in his seventh year. Stiles, though, found it fascinating.

It helped, of course, that Derek was two years older and hotter than the sun.

Get Me In Trouble by scottmcniceass

Stiles is in his seventh and finale year at Hogwarts. Things were supposed to go smoothly-- he'd work hard, hang out with his friends, the usual. Unfortunately for him, the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher has it out for him. To make matters worse, he happens to be the most attractive person Stiles had ever laid eyes on.

Pink Is For Pining (You, You, Nothing But You) by clotpolesonly

“You know you could just ask him out, right?” Scott asked.

Stiles stuffed the toast in his mouth and hoped he wasn’t blushing. “Why would I do that?”

“Because you have a ginormous crush on him.”

“I do not, shut up,” Stiles hissed as well as he could around a mouthful of toast.

“Your pink hair says differently,” Scott sing-songed at him.

***

In which Stiles is a supremely socially awkward metamorphmagus with a crush, Derek is a quietly pining werewolf, and Scott and Lydia are done with their stubbornness and stupidity.

Starting Now I’m Starting Over by skoosiepants

Stiles is surprised, when he accidentally tumbles into Professor Hale’s legs on a mad dash down the halls, that Derek leans down and scoops him up and…cuddles him into his arms.

Or-

Stiles may or may not have gotten his professorship at Hogwarts because he can turn into a cat.

derek’s magic ships it by trilliastra

It starts with a bang. A bang and then someone cursing and Stiles is up in less than a second.

He just wanted to have a peaceful night of sleep after having to deal with stupid Fifth Years pulling a prank on Madam Morell and she snapping at everyone and everything that moved.

It was a fucking horrible day and he’s so not in the mood to deal with someone breaking into his house.

Especially not this someone. “Derek?” Okay, Stiles had dreams like this before, he admits it. Derek Hale apparating into his house and kissing him breathless and then taking him to bed and fucking him until Stiles couldn’t remember his name? Fuck yeah. But he never really thought it was going to happen.

Love Potion Number Stiles by Menacherie

Genim is eleven, and still Genim, but he's eleven and all his dreams are coming true

Genim is eleven and his eyes are covered by a big hat that talks and all he wants is to be just like his mom, follow her footsteps.

Instead the hat calls out Hufflepuff, but it makes Genim happy because he still has a huge family now, a family that isn’t his by blood, but through loyalty.

Call It Magic by teenwolf-lit

Hogwarts AU in which Stiles is the school's Healer, and Derek is the DADA professor/Quidditch Coach

Hot Summer in Diagon Alley by LadyDrace

Derek pays his usual pre-term visit to Stiles' stationary shop in Diagon Alley, but this year things turn out a little differently than normal.

Veils and Moonbeams by kaistrex (weishen)

The fox scampers towards him and now Derek can make out a scatter of black speckles dotted in its fur, most notably in a distinct pattern across its fluffy white cheeks. The same distinct pattern Derek has spent most of his Hufflepuff/Slytherin classes tracing with his eyes.

Derek stares. Memories from his third-year Transfiguration lessons are coming back to him, about Animagi and identifying marks. But Stiles isn't an Animagus. He can’t be. Stiles is the class clown and there’s no way he would have been able to keep this quiet, not to mention to be an unregistered Animagus would result in time in Azkaban. Stiles may be smart-mouthed and headstrong but he’s not stupid.

Is he?

*

Because if anyone would become an (illegal) Animagus to surprise the boy they liked, it would be Stiles Stilinski.

climbing up the walls with you by trilliastra

It’s pretty much a friends with benefits thing, except Stiles is not sure they are friends. Sure, Derek stopped being a jerk to Scott, he even lets Stiles copy his Potions homework sometimes, but aside from some chit-chat while getting dressed, they don’t really talk much.

Still, sex with Derek?

Brilliant.

A Lion’s Guide To Getting The Badger by whatthefuck

There is no way he, Stiles Stilinski, is going over to the Hufflepuff table to ask Derek Hale to the Yule Ball. Not only is he a glorious seventh year to Stiles' measly fifth, but he could have any member of the student population of Hogwarts on his wonderfully toned arms in three weeks time, so why would he pick Stiles?

The Boy Who Pined by lupus

"That will be your legacy, ‘Derek Hale: The Boy Who Pined’, I like it, it suits you.” “Laura I don’t care if we’re related if you say that out loud ever again, I will shank you.”

Hogwarts AU in which Derek likes Stiles but is too emotionally constipated to actually do anything about it.

it does not do to dwell on dreams (and forget to live) by HaleyElizabeth

After years spent abroad, Derek Hale is called back to the United Kingdom, and offered a job at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, as the new Care of Magical Creatures professor. After begrudgingly accepting, Derek quickly realizes that his students are a lot more than he signed up for- one of them in particular.

Fic - Like You Wanna Be Loved 7/16

Author: darriness

Word Count: 1710

Summary: Confusion

Author’s Note: I'm just breaking all the rules now lol The real reason I posted a chapter today is because the next chapter? On Sunday? Things start to go 'boom' so I wanted to get there ;) Thanks as always to my beta @darrenismydarcy and this chapter was also supported by ideas from @slayediest.

AO3 Link

Kurt’s fine with being just friends. He is. Really. Would he rather be holding hands with Blaine and maybe kissing? Of course. Would he like to curl up with him and watch musicals and go walking hand in hand down the hallway? In a perfect world, sure. But he’s totally fine with friendship if that’s what Blaine is offering.

It’s just...it doesn’t FEEL like friendship.

As the weeks progress, Blaine’s actions toward him are not what Kurt could call strictly ‘friendly’. He’s begun to sit next to Kurt during glee practice and will more often than not slide his chair right next to Kurt so that they are sitting thigh to thigh. He casually touches Kurt all the time; on the shoulder, on the hand, and a few times even on his lower back. He keeps making flirty comments and Kurt has lost count of the amount of winks that have been thrown his way.

He tries to play it off as nothing. That Blaine is just a naturally flirtatious person and that his actions toward Kurt are no different than his actions toward anyone else.

Except they ARE different.

He’s purposely started watching the way Blaine is with the other people in glee, and while Blaine is friendly, and sweet, and charming, he isn’t what Kurt would consider flirty with any of them.

He keeps what Kurt is coming to see as a professional distance from them all. He interacts with them during glee, and in the hallway, and during classes (if the stories from the other glee members are anything to go by) but he has yet to accept a single invitation to hang out after school beyond Kurt’s bowling invitation. The girls keep trying to get Kurt to ask him to hang out again but Kurt is still a little gun shy, and he’s becoming more confused by the day.

“So I was thinking,” Mercedes says one afternoon near the end of October while they wait for glee practice to start, “that we are long overdue for a girls’ sleepover.”

Rachel turns and nods enthusiastically from the front row, “Great idea!” She says.

“Yeah I’m in.” Tina says, without looking up from her phone.

Mercedes turns to Kurt, “You in, boo?” she asks.

Kurt shrugs, “Of course.” He says, “Just not at my house because then Rachel will spend the whole night with Finn and not us.”

“I will not!” Rachel scoffs, but Tina, Mercedes, and even Finn, throw Rachel dubious looks. She huffs and turns her nose up, “Fine. We can do it at my place. My dads have been asking why you ladies, and Kurt,” She says with a gesture toward Kurt and he appreciates the separation that she may not have afforded him, or even thought to make, a few years ago, “haven’t been over lately.”

“Excellent.” Mercedes says, “What about you, Blaine?”

Blaine has been sitting silently next to Kurt for a few minutes, typing away on his phone even as the heat of his thigh seeps through his chinos and through Kurt’s jeans onto his skin. He looks up with a questioning look and smiles at Mercedes, “What about me, what?” He asks.

Kurt’s heart pounds as he looks between Mercedes and Blaine. He’s not sure why he didn’t think of the possibility of Mercedes inviting Blaine but he’s caught off guard by it and he both hopes Blaine says yes, and no, in equal measure.

“Ladies, and Kurt, sleepover at Rachel’s. We usually do them every month or so. Typical sleepover stuff; painting nails, eating snacks while watching movies, discussing boys. You interested?” Mercedes asks.

Blaine smiles and Kurt has gotten to know Blaine well enough by now to know he’s going to decline, “I’m sorry. I wish I could but I can’t.”

He doesn’t give an excuse or even ask for a specific date that wasn’t provided to him (a blanket refusal?) but just smiles at each of them in turn before going back to his phone where his smile dissolves into a frown.

Of course it was a refusal. It’s always a refusal. Kurt watches Blaine for a moment and tries to figure him out. What keeps Blaine from hanging out with them after school? Does he secretly not like any of them? Is he polite at school because he has to be, but would rather not spend time with them? Or is there something else going on?

Kurt is prevented from contemplating any further by Mr. Schue entering the room with a jubilant cry of ‘Mashups!’ Kurt quickly looks away as Blaine looks up from his phone but keeps looking out of the corner of his eye as the other boy pockets his phone and smiles brightly at their teacher.

“All right everybody, break off into pairs and take some time to rehearse a mashup of your choice as a warm up!” Mr. Shue says, and even before he’s done talking Blaine is turning toward him.

“Be my partner?” He asks with bright eyes.

Kurt smiles, “Yeah.” He says and Blaine’s eyes brighten further at the acceptance.

“Come on, I wanna try something on the piano!” Blaine says, and then he reaches for Kurt’s hand to pull him down the risers.

Kurt looks down at their joined hands and then around at the other members of the club. No one else is touching, not even Finn and Rachel (who never stop touching) who are still in their original seats and Finn looks like he’s getting told what to do.

As they get to the piano, Kurt feels Blaine squeeze his hand gently before letting go and sitting down on the piano bench, “I was thinking we could do something a little...romantic.” Blaine says and there’s another goddamn wink.

Kurt’s head is seriously starting to hurt and he’s getting close to just asking Blaine what the hell is going on.

Except...then he’s afraid it’ll stop, and he really doesn’t want it to stop.

-- -- --

Blaine:

I’ve decided I’m totally a Patrick.

Kurt:

Dated a lot of women in your past then? :P

Blaine:

I’m a man with a lot of secrets ;) No but seriously, beyond the horrible wardrobe, I think he and I are a lot alike.

Kurt:

Well I definitely wouldn’t mind you owning a store where I could get skin care products at wholesale  prices.

Blaine:

:) And you are so obviously David. You know, after he stops being an entitled a-hole.

Kurt is simultaneously assaulted with multiple thoughts and feelings as he reads Blaine’s text during French class. First, that Blaine is adorably unable to swear even in text form. Second, that Blaine just insinuated that he and Kurt are the equivalent to TV boyfriends (fiancés - Kurt’s brain automatically corrects) and that makes Kurt a little breathless. Third, that texting Blaine has become his favourite part of his day (outside of actually talking to Blaine but texting allows Kurt to keep talking to Blaine after school). And last, that Kurt is still incredibly confused about what the hell is happening between them.

The pair have kept up a near constant text conversation since exchanging numbers weeks ago (though at school Blaine will only text during his free period or lunch - which Kurt finds both adorable and frustrating). While Kurt loves the back and forth, and feels like he’s being flirted with even through a phone, he’s still under the impression that he and Blaine are just friends.

“Mr. Hummel, that wouldn’t be your phone out, would it?” Madame Munrow says from the front of the room and Kurt looks up to find his teacher looking at him with a quirked eyebrow. He knows she knows he’s on his phone, but he also knows that Madame Munrow loves him and won’t make a big deal out of it.

“Not at all, Madame.” He says, swiftly pocketing his phone with a smile.

His teacher rolls her eyes with a smile and a shake of her head before turning back to the board and Kurt goes back to listening and taking notes, even as his phone buzzes in his pocket again.

-- -- --

“Who are you texting?” Blaine quickly shields his phone as Bethany leans over the back of the couch later that night.

“No one. Just a friend.” He says, clicking his phone to turn it off.

“Kurt?” She asks with an eyebrow wiggle.

Blaine rolls his eyes affectionately, “So what if it was?” He asks.

Bethany’s expression turns serious as she leans an elbow on the back of the couch, rests her chin on her palm and sighs, “You like him, don’t you?” She asks.

Blaine shrugs, “It’s...nothing. We’re just friends.” He says, defensively.

Bethany’s lip quirks up as she sighs again and pushes off the couch, “Keep telling yourself that, big guy. Maybe if you say it enough, you’ll convince yourself.”

Blaine narrows his eyes at her, “When did you become thirty years old, and a therapist?” He asks and Bethany giggles before looking at Blaine with a soft smile.

“I want you to be happy, Blainers. That’s all.” She says with a shrug before wandering off to her room.

Blaine sighs and leans his head back on the couch as he watches her go. Happy. What is Bethany talking about? He IS happy. What would make her think he wasn’t?

What does she know anyway? She’s nine. Her idea of happiness is getting the puppy she’s been begging for for months.

He sighs again. Who is he kidding? She’s more astute than he is, than most of the people - child or adult - in his life.

His phone buzzes in his hand and he looks down to find a new text from Kurt.

Kurt:

Which one for tomorrow?

The text is accompanied by two pictures of Kurt, both with him smiling adorably at the camera with his hair lightly falling over his forehead, but wearing a different ascot in each.

Blaine smiles softly at the smiling face and can’t deny that texting Kurt is without a doubt one of his favourite parts of the day (beyond seeing Kurt in person).

He’s so screwed.

Blaine:

Well you look amazing in either but I’d go with the blue. It brings out your eyes.

What are you doing?! He yells at himself after hitting send.

Chapter VII

It was coming to the end of their relationship and I think she saw it before he had. But from talking to Ben all the time now, and also being Becky’s friend, I saw it coming before they both did. One day I remember Becky told me she was tired of always feeling lied to and that she’d heard that Ben was talking to other girls too. She told me she was going to break things off with him and I didn’t know what else to say but, “Awh I’m sorry, I really did think you guys would be great together.”

She then said, “No, it was never great, It always feels like he’s lying and he keeps denying that he’s talking to other people. I get that we’re young, but if exploration was all he wanted, he should’ve just told me. I fell for him and I just can’t do it anymore.”

Unsure of what now to say, I just looked at her and made a goofy face to try to cheer her up. I told her not to worry about it, she was right, she was still very young. We still had much left to live for and that if he wasn’t the one, someone else would be. She smiled and we went about our day.

Later in the evening I got a notification, it was Ben. He was upset and said he didn’t know what was wrong with him because Becky told him it was over. I was trying to calm him down going back and forth trying to get him to understand that it really wasn’t the end of the world. And then I said something I probably should not have said but take it as you will. Unsure of how to get him to calm down I wrote, “Hey look, I’m sorry it didn’t work out with guys but it’s not the end of the world. For example, you know how I used to be trying hard to be straight? I was miserable. But once I figured out what was going on inside of me, I started to feel better. I stopped trying to be something I wasn’t and I feel better because of it.”

Did I mention straight boys like to hear what they want to hear? He did just that. All he replied with was, “I’m not gay.”

Which I proceeded to tell him, “I never said you were, I was just using my life as an example. Sometimes there’s things going on underneath the skin that you can’t see, but they’re there and you can’t hide from it. Once you understand yourself better, you can start to understand others better.”

I got no reply.

Ben was in my fourth hour gym class but he hadn’t said anything to me all day. Even though we used to see each other a lot in between classes, today it felt like he’d been avoiding me. When he saw me come into the locker room I could tell he was uncomfortable so I didn’t say anything. I got dressed to go in the pool since it was Friday and I went on to class. During class we were all in the pool and everything seemed normal, minus him ignoring me. Towards the end of class whenever we’d go swimming, the teacher would allow us some free time to swim and play for a bit before class was over. I didn’t really like being around people in that pool so I got out and sat on the bleachers with some of my friends. Ben stayed in the pool to play catch with his friends, but once the teacher blew his whistle to get out, everyone started making their exit out of the pool. Ben was one of the last people to get out, but when he did the water on his shorts were pressing on his skin and you could see through them. My eyes were glued cause I’d seen Charlie’s dick the year before, but Ben’s was noticeably bigger. And the funny thing is, I wasn’t the only one who noticed. Cause Ben looked down when he caught me looking at his shorts, and he started looking nervous. I didn’t know how to react because I’d never gotten caught staring at a guy like that before, so I just smiled at him, looked down, and bit my lips. He looked around for a second— I’m assuming to see if anyone else was looking, and then started walking towards me. I was with my friends so I wasn’t sure if he was actually coming towards me. But then he stopped in front of me.

Now this normally wouldn’t be a surprise that he walks up to our group after the pool, but he’d been avoiding me all day. He hadn’t said a single word to me since our conversation the night before, so I said nothing. When he stopped in front of me, I was sitting on the bleachers so my eye sight was at his waist. He started talking to some of the girls in the group and I was just sitting there trying hard not to look at it. He then started talking to me like nothing was wrong. However he was looking down on me the same way Charlie had looked down on me when I was pleasing him. What was really going on though? Why did he ignore my message the night before, and now had his crotch in my face. I was admittedly turned on a bit but this was my friend’s now ex-boyfriend and I was unsure if I should even think much of it.

Eventually Ben and I started talking more on Facebook. He never responded to the message but he was now hitting me up again for advice or just to see what I was up to. He started confiding in me a whole lot more as the time went by. I’m not too sure what the conversation was but I remember telling him something along the lines of “Well I like both guys and girls. That’s always a thing too. And honestly you’re a really great guy from what I’ve gotten to to know about you, you’re cute, smart, funny. And you have a big dick, anyone would be lucky to have you as their boyfriend haha.”

He replied with, “Haha thanks, wait, how do you know how big it is?”

Now, I know I should’ve probably responded differently, but what I just read was a straight-claiming guy not getting mad at me for complimenting his dick. So I decided to try to set up a response that may hint to me what was going on in the pool that day. I told him, “Well, you remember a few weeks ago at the pool after we had that conversation where you thought I was calling you gay? Well, that day when you got out of the pool your shorts were rather tight and then you walked closer and well, I enjoyed the view haha”

It didn’t take him long to respond but he said, “So you were looking haha, it’s okay, I’ll take it as a compliment lol.”

Now being curious to see what his response would be, I jokingly said, “Yeah, wouldn’t mind seeing what I could do with it haha.”

It took him a moment to respond but he said, “Haha, well I’m not gay sorry,”

I told him, “I was kidding haha, kind of. But I know you’re not gay, I’m just saying head is head. Jk haha”

Now I know it didn’t necessarily take just this one conversation to get him curious. But eventually me throwing more jokes in like that every now and then, he eventually responded with just sent one word, “Okay.”

Unsure of what he meant by that I said, “Sorry, I know I mess around a lot but you know I’m just joking around right? You can always tell me when it gets uncomfortable and I’ll stop.”

He quickly responded by saying, “No, I meant okay. Let’s do it.”

Feeling surprised and still slightly confused, I responded with, “Wait, you actually want me to suck your dick?”

Which he said, “I mean, I doubt it’ll get hard but I’d let you try if you want.”

Unsure of how to respond, I said, “Okay. Sure, when and where do you want to do it at?”

He asked me, “Can I come over someday?”

Nervously and for good reason I responded with, “Sorry, my parents don’t know I’m into guys so I can’t do it there.”

After a few seconds of no response, I asked him, “What about at school? We could do it during lunch in one of the back bathrooms since there’s no classes back there at that time and everyone else should be in lunch?”

He read it and then said, “Yeah, that could work. But we can’t tell anyone, this has to be between you and I.”

I responded with, “This will be our little secret. Don’t worry about it.”

After going back and forth for another hour or so, we decided it was time to go to sleep so we said our goodnight’s and went to bed.

The next day came and again, the feeling of nervousness was running through me. I was excited cause I already knew what I’d be dealing with when I went down on him. I had that one experience with Charlie so I should be able to work with Ben the same way, only Ben was noticeable bigger. I kept on thinking throughout the morning about what was about to go down at lunch that day. By now we’d switched class schedules so I was in my French class before going to lunch. If you were in my French class in middle school, you’d know we didn’t really do anything. Madame Landrum would spend classes yelling at us to be quiet, pay attention, etc. But we were young and most of the time would not be quiet. Besides the point, during class that day we’d been doing a group activity where we’d have to figure out French words’ English meaning from each other. So being talkative was a huge part of the activity that day but I had too much on mind. And if you know me, whenever I have something on my mind, if I think about it too much with too much already going on around me, I absolutely will forget what I am thinking about.

As the class is ending, I got distracted by my table and started talking about what we were going to have for lunch. The bell rang and all the talk about lunch had me hungry, so I go find my group of friends and we go wander the hallways saying hi to everyone we know. Eventually the bell rang so you either had to be in class, or in lunch. By now I hadn’t even thought about Ben since earlier in class, mostly because I was used to seeing him in the hallways before lunch. Not thinking about him at all, I made my way towards the lunch line and I was the last one there. All of a sudden something felt off. I was standing there trying to figure out what was different but I could not put my finger on it. Then from my peripheral view I saw him. It was Ben. And then I thought to myself, “Fuck.”

I tried to get his attention to tell him to head back to the bathroom but he wasn’t looking my way. I thought he was mad and now I felt like he thought I’d been avoiding him all day, even though I’d just spent the whole day non-stop thinking about him until I got distracted. It was tough gaining back his trust after then because he thought I was just setting him up to be embarrassed, but eventually we were talking again. Only this time, I was starting to develop some feelings for him. I’d never actually talked to anyone the way I talked to him. Eventually one day out of the blue he said, “I love you.” I know we were talking about trying things together and kind of flirting with the idea of being together. Except there was always one thing holding us back, the closet. “The closet” is famously known in the gay community as the limbo we stand in before coming out. The closet however is where most of my fears developed. And one of my biggest fears was meeting the right person and never being able to show them how I really felt because of being scared to be seen. Except now I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t in the closet but there was this “straight” guy saying he loved me. I didn’t know what to think but I started to like him more and more.

After I came out, I learned that not everyone will accept you and not everyone will want to continue being your friend. Though it was hard no longer being friends with some people, I had never felt more relieved in my life to at least be able to be free at school. It may have been the bare minimum of freedom, but it felt great to no longer have to always put on a face for people there. But some people stay scared and unaware of the freedom that stepping out of that space brings. Some people go through their whole lives hiding because of the fear of what everyone may think. He was hiding. He was scared and he didn’t want to admit it. He didn’t want the world to know about our conversations so he stayed in hiding. And me now have fallen for him, I hid with him. Everyone knew I was bisexual, but nobody knew that I had only ever had one guy on my mind. Ben. Nobody could know because Ben was still saying he was straight and I didn’t want him to ever think that he couldn’t trust me. Unfortunately that wasn’t enough. He eventually got a girlfriend and I started feeling lonely again. He was still talking to me from time to time, but now it felt like he was pushing those thoughts away. He was denying the last few months that we spent talking, day and night. But I wanted nothing but happiness for him, so I watched him go on with his life one bad relationship after another. We stopped talking in high school after rumors started floating around about us. He thought I told everyone I sucked his dick, when in reality someone else that I trusted bent my words and used them against me one day. I didn’t just lose friends when that happened, I lost the friendship with the guy I’d fallen for in middle school.

He seemed happy the last time I saw him. I think he was visiting home from college and I saw him at Steak n Shake with some of our old friends. None of them said anything to me as I walked in cheerfully with my friends. I remember the look he gave me though. It was the same look he gave me when we were at the pool. But by then I was too far down the rabbit hole I called my life, to care about him or what I wanted us to have back then. I’d been broken by someone who at this point may have broken me for everyone else I’d meet. I try not to regret any of my life choices, because in the end they created me, but losing your friendship was one of the hardest things that happened to me. Reading the rest of this book you’ll find yourself asking how you could’ve possibly had a huge impact on my life compared to the other things. But losing your trust was the first big regret in my life. Mostly because I’ll never know if you got your feelings figured out. I don’t know if I did more damage than I helped. So I’m sorry “Ben”. I really do hope you found the peace and happiness wherever it is you were looking for it. As I’m writing this I have yet to find it myself. But thank you for giving me those little memories of what it felt like, even if they weren’t real to you and we were young, thank you “Ben.”.

The Room: Chapter 3 - Braiding the Hair

Link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/12710496/chapters/29027607

--------

"How are you feeling?" A loaded question that Daenerys didn't even properly comprehend at this point, but Missandei had asked her and she felt she owed it to her friend to be completely honest. About some stuff anyway, she wasn't ready to tell all; it was all so raw to her. Especially considering she was assaulted by her brother not two hours ago. That was something she couldn't say.

"Better, I think" Was all Daenerys said as she looked down at her hands, her bottom lip wobbling slightly as raw emotion threatened to creep into her pores. The low humming of the train as it chugged along left a silence behind it in the carriage. Don't cry, Targaryen's don't cry, we're the blood of the dragon, people are afraid of us! She tried to channel her Valyrian blood in a time of low strength; she wanted to show people how dangerous she could be, how spectacular of a Witch she was capable of being. People should be afraid of her power, this she had been taught by her father.

Not that this was true anymore; they were the laughing stock of society.

And it was all because of a truth they did not understand or could not comprehend. Had they seen Valyria; had it survived and they had known how great of a nation they were. Perhaps they would think differently. Not that Daenerys knew what Valyria was like, it was long gone before she was born. Her family didn't even have photos, they just had the stories which had been passed down. It was the incest; that was the word everyone had hated when they came out of hiding almost ten years ago. But it wasn't just that in Valyria, lots of Valyrian families interbred. Daenerys supposed after a while they were all just related to each other in the end.

But she did not know; the dead could not defend their reasoning, and so she did not speak ill of them. It was not her place to judge, after all, she is a product of incest.

Finding herself getting lost in thought, her focus shifted back to Missandei. She owed it to Missandei to be the strong willed woman she wanted to become, even more so now in the face of her brother's abuse. So she held the tears back and channelled the energy inside her into steadying her breathing. A few more moments passed in silence before she felt at ease once more and spoke. "The tears have stopped"

"That's not always a good thing" She tried to offer some form of comfort. She wasn't very good at it, but it wasn't her fault. Missandei is, one could say, very socially awkward, especially when they were at school around other people. She hardly spoke to those in her own house out of crippling fear of rejection, but she had got better. She'd even started doing her homework in the Hufflepuff Common Room with a few others and not just with Daenerys in the library. Daenerys felt like she'd helped towards that.

When they first spoke, they'd been partnered up in Potions as Missandei had been struggling and was in need of a patient teacher besides Professor Luwin to help on homework and such. Daenerys had shown a knack for potions early on in her Hogwarts career and so in second year they got paired up. Missandei hadn't said a single word all lesson except for thank you at the end; but she'd done everything Daenerys had suggested and followed her instructions to success.

It had initially been rather odd to Daenerys but the double potions lesson after that it was more apparent that Missandei wanted to speak but was just struggling. Feeling sorry for the girl, as she knew what it was like to feel lonely, she decided to take matters into her own hands. Hardly anyone in Slytherin spoke to Daenerys at this point, or any of the other houses for that matter. So meeting Missandei had given her a chance to show who she truly was behind all the fame of her families shamed household.

She told her she wanted to eat with her at the Lunch table later that day and told her what time she'd be there. Daenerys did not know if she'd show herself; but when she spotted her afro walking towards her nervously, feet shuffling and her head down in fear she felt elated. She had smiled at her, to show her support and since that moment; Missandei had become more and more verbal with Daenerys than she could have ever imagined.

She had actually been thanked by Headmaster Lannister for the teachers had been worried about Missandei's...shyness, as they called it. Of course if she meets any new people she still gets nervous; but it was good to know that Missandei's fears were going away piece by piece. And underneath all this; she'd become a great friend. It was also a friendship that went against everything her family's history had been about.

As Daenerys had just been thinking, Valyria was a product of thousands of years of pure-blooded magic. And Missandei, being a muggleborn Hufflepuff, was none of that.

When Missandei had visited the house in the summer after fifth year; her father had expressed his disappointment at her bloodlines to which Daenerys replied that it did not matter anymore. She was a great witch in her own right and as she reminded her father; they were only alive and living in the UK as a result of not mingling with pureblood to keep their genealogy strong. After that comment, none of her family had said anything, mainly because Daenerys' temperament at this time was getting worse every day due to her inability to tell anyone of Viserys' abuse. She'd shouted at them all until their ears were almost falling off.

She'd had the final say, and so Missandei was a friend for life.

"I know it's not a good thing; but it's better than doing nothing but cry all the time" She said looking at her own reflection in her small hand mirror she always kept her small bag. Her pale skin was duller than ever, her dark circles threatening to creep onto her cheeks and her eyes were a little bloodshot. She looked a mess. She hadn't even bothered to do anything to her hair. Not that it mattered how her face was, her body was ridiculously marred and bruised from her brother anyways.

"You're beautiful" Missandei said as she noted Daenerys was looking at herself in disgust, horrified at the person she'd let herself become. Why was she this all powerful presence at school; and why was she this weak and pathetic creature at home. It needed to change, she needed to go against her brother, she needed to be there for her mother. But how could she do any of these things? She was weak in the face of Viserys. "Here"

Missandei got of her seat on the opposite side of the carriage and sat next to Daenerys. Her face scrunched in confusion and violation of her personal space. She wouldn't say that to Missandei though; she merely spoke in a level voice. "What are you doing?"

"Let me braid your hair" She offered. Daenerys didn't see a problem with it, so she let her body twist towards the window while Missandei got to work.

"This feels... good" It was actually more therapeutic than Daenerys had been expecting. She closed her eyes and imagined herself browsing Madame Malkin's dresses or making potions in her study, reading books on the Second Wizarding War. It was a small chance for a breather; to stop the thoughts swarming her head as she tried to pick herself up and prepare for the hardships of her Seventh year.

"You have incredibly long hair; perfect for braiding" She mused as she hummed a jaunty tune while finishing off the french braid she'd put Daenerys hair into. Daenerys turned and looked in the mirror; it looked... good. She liked her hair like this; she'd have to get Missandei to do it more often. "Almost done, but something is missing"

"What could possibly be missing? My hair looks nice, thank you" Daenerys didn't want to start a full on pamper session in the carriage, but her protests fell on deaf ears and so she sat while Missandei got out her makeup bag and began searching for things she could use on Daenerys skin. Daenerys was surprised that Missandei had all this stuff; did she know how to use it? When she looked at Missandei's face, it wasn't obvious that she was wearing the stuff; but when her eyes got more attuned she could see the powder and mascara and lipstick. Not much but it enhanced Missandei's natural beauty.

Missandei put something on Dany's under eye area, a cream of some sort, perhaps to help with the dark circles? Sleep, that will help, Daenerys thought. She combed her brows through and gave them a bit of shape, she put some mascara on and a clear lip gloss too. Daenerys didn't have any of these things at home; Witches generally didn't wear this type of thing, did they? She'd never seen her mother wear it anyways; those of Valyrian blood had such beauty that it wasn't required.

But then again...

She did look awfully tired; she was so exhausted from the summer of hell that she was surprised to see herself even be able to function. But it was nothing; she could have Madam Bones give her some sleeping draught when she got to school; she'd run out of it at home and had not been allowed to brew more. So she did not worry about it.

The next hour passed by in the Carriage; Daenerys thanked Missandei for her 'new look' stating that she really liked it. The trolley lady came by and Daenerys, feeling she needed a pick me up, got a cauldron cake and some drewballs. She was someone who did not eat much; but every now and then she'd get this huge hankering for sweet stuff, chocolate and cakes and sherbets a plenty. Missandei got two chocolate frogs and a Pumpkin Pasty. Missandei eyed her cards she got from Chocolate frogs. "Oh cool, I don't have Plotemy"

They finished their treats in silence and began talking about their final year and what sort of things would be happening. Daenerys mentioned that she'd heard of some sort of dance that the school would be having. Missandei then mentioned she'd heard someone mention that Quidditch was cancelled. "What? They never cancel Quidditch!"

Missandei had just shrugged. It didn't completely bother Daenerys; she never made the team in the end. Even though she was good, the trauma of her first rape by Viserys had stayed with her all the rest of third year until now. Holding a Quaffle in her hand, she was reminded of his betrayal of her body. He had shown kindness in training her, helping her get better, showing her different moves to confuse opponents. Of course he'd started Hogwarts going straight into sixth year when they came out of hiding and had gotten onto Slytherin's team straight away. And then he undid all that he'd taught her, but raping her in her own ensuite bathroom.

She still remembered the pain, her pleas. Don't do this to me, Viz, please I don't want this, she would cry over and over until it was over. It felt like hours, and as she lied on the bathroom floor, helpless and afraid, she remembered to never show him any kindness ever again. And since then she'd never been able to play Quidditch, but she still liked to watch it. Why would they cancel it?

There was a knock on their compartment door that made Daenerys jump as her thoughts got the better of her once again. She turned to see a small Ravenclaw girl opening the door and looking very nervous about something. Daenerys raised an eyebrow. The girl spoke. "Errr, Headmaster Lannister wants to see you in the teacher's carriage"

Daenerys was confused. "Me?"

The little girl nodded before shuffling away, intently nervous over something. Daenerys wondered if the Headmaster really wanted to see her or not or if it was bullies trying to lure her out of the carriage so they could start their assault on her. Either way, she best thought to investigate to see what the problem was. If the headmaster did want to see her, she did not want to leave him waiting. Turning to Missandei she told her she wouldn't be long and left the carriage after grabbing her wand. She wanted to make sure she wasn't about to be attacked.

The halls of the train were crowded, people setting of Weasley Wizard Wheezes and showing off their new pets. Daenerys didn't have a pet this time around. Her owl had died in a freak plane accident and she hadn't had the heart to replace him yet. She'd make do. Someone shouted out as she walked through the compartments to get to the teacher's one. "Look who it is, it's the inbred bitch, Daddy left you all alone hasn't he?"

"Sod off" Daenerys growled ignoring them. Feeling like she should never have left her carriage, she continued until she was outside the teacher's compartment. It was there she noticed someone else. Six foot, eyes as grey as rainy days, hair as black as night and as curly as can be. He wore his glasses today; and a ridiculous smirk which made Daenerys instantly want to punch him. He was too stood outside the compartment.

"Dany, how nice to see you" His voice said in monotone.

Daenerys felt her jaw click, her eyes glaring at him. She held the hate back in her throat.

"Jon"

A Marketing to Media Translation Dictionary For Journalists Turned Content Marketers

By Emily Gaudette

  Translating is a tricky business. I took seven consecutive years of French classes, and most of the time, my teacher was a Lebanese-American woman named Hala Kim. She liked to remind us that English was her fourth tongue—after Korean, Arabic, and French. In Madame Kim’s unique blend of languages, she’d always say we needed to “be careful to listening.”

My teacher had a charming way of wording things in English because her personal vocabulary was like a complicated French-accented soup: a linguistic bouillabaisse. That’s how complex and lovely things can get when you pour in terms from multiple cultures. In the marketing world, professionals tend to glom onto useful marketing buzzwords as a shared language, and those terms can actually prove useful to professionals in adjacent industries.

As the marketing and media industries continue to look more and more alike, their lexicons overlap too. Ultimately, marketers and media employees want the same thing—engaged audience members—but we’ve all been taught to talk about attention and audience using industry-specific terms.

For all you media folks out there who are planning a switch to marketing, we’ve put together an introductory translation dictionary for you. You can also use this dictionary as a lead tool if you’re a marketing exec who wants to hire a team of Pulitzer Prize-winning writers for your brand’s blog. You’ll need to speak their language to recruit them, and veteran newspaper reporters don’t necessarily know what “map against your KPIs” means.

No matter why you’re reading this, these thirteen alphabetically listed terms should help you communicate across the divide. So let’s get started!

Call to action (CTA)

A call to action (CTA) is a bit of language in a blog post or piece of content that prompts the audience to do something specific.

The primary difference between marketing and the mainstream media (which I’ll call MSM from here on out) is that every single piece of marketing content should require specific action on the part of the reader, even if that action is just” read more”. For a brand, it’s not enough if 1,000 people read a blog post—those people need to click through to more content, subscribe to an email newsletter, or make a purchase. Content marketers never make content for content’s sake.

Meanwhile, a media company like Hearst might publish a feature article in the print edition of Esquire magazine, and the sole “point” of that article might be “make the reader feel like they really get Chris Evans.” Functionally, it’s fluff. Artistically, it’s likely reaching for the standard of a classic celebrity profile like “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold.”

To many, injecting a CTA into a piece of writing is to sully the art form. A CTA is what makes a piece into “sponcon,” or sponsored content. But increasingly, CTAs are looking like useful tools for the MSM. Many media companies have begun putting CTAs on their websites—the pop-up warning you that you’ve reached your third free article for the month and will soon need a paid subscription is one example. A lead form for a magazine’s free email newsletter is another.

CMP

A content marketing platform (CMP) is software for organizing the content marketing process. It looks a lot like a CMS (content management system), but a CMP is designed to help marketers do their jobs effectively. A CMS, on the other hand, serves many different kinds of professionals at once.

Most writers at media companies simply use the CMS as a place to paste in their writing. At media companies run by tech executives like Bustle Media Group, writers may routinely use a CMS for social packaging and basic SEO metadata too, but they still typically turn to platforms like Parse.ly and Chartbeat if they’re interested in their audience metrics.

Over in the marketing world, all that audience data is usually baked into a CMP. At least, it’s there if you’re using a good one. You wouldn’t buy a CMP without data reporting capability, and the really stellar options have a transparent workflow management interface.

Content campaign

A content campaign is a plan for the strategic use of content marketing around a specific goal. This one is a pretty one-to-one translation of “editorial package.” I heard colleagues say “package” and “packaging” constantly while writing for magazines and media companies, and now that I’m in marketing, everyone says “campaign.” Why? No idea. But there’s your translation.

Just like an editorial package, a content campaign is a multi-format publishing plan that might comprise social media posts, videos, gifs, email newsletters, press releases, merchandising, print media, and blog posts. It is the central effort of several content-adjacent teams to get people’s eyeballs on a particular piece of content.

Data-driven

A data-driven strategy or program refers back to data gathered from different avenues on a brand’s target audience. In the MSM, journalists who routinely parse out study findings and crunch numbers in order to report on them often self-identify as data journalists. Not every journalist is a data journalist—that’s how Nate Silver was able to create FiveThirtyEight with a central data-breakdown “gimmick.”

It may be difficult to work as a journalist in the MSM without having any knowledge of statistics, but it is completely impossible to do similar work in marketing without those skills. Though a lot of media still relies heavily on anecdotal evidence like interviews, opinions, or criticism, marketing lives and breathes data.

In the mainstream media, one celebrity’s personal experience with divorce is a compelling enough story to stand on its own. No MSM writer is going to interrupt their lede about Bradley Cooper and Irina Shayk divorcing to dig deep into the national divorce rate, but a content marketer at a dating app company probably pumps out a blog post per week on that data.

Gamification

Gamification is a psychological trick that inspires us to enter sweepstakes, pour hours into Candy Crush, and buy all our lotions at Sephora just to watch those loyalty points rack up. (Just me?) Even if you’re not a marketer, you’re probably familiar with the concept of gamification—it’s the way brands turn engagement into a game-like process that rewards active players with little incentives.

Some especially savvy media companies have played with gamification in recent years. Inverse.com’s email newsletter reward habitual readers by racking up points, which readers can spend in the media company’s webstore. The New York Times has published several stories that use interactive UX designs, and these psychologically “reward” readers for clicking around with funny animations. This gamification of a company’s own website is also a hallmark in data visualization journalism like the stories on FiveThirtyEight.

Hub and spoke

To use a hub and spoke model in content marketing is to center all pieces of content around a single enterprise project. It’s a metaphor: there’s a hub at the center of a bicycle wheel, and each spoke that supports the shape of the tire connects back to that central hub. Content marketers like to advise writers to focus on a “hub” piece—usually a long-form e-book or whitepaper—and then build supporting pieces of content around it, like spokes.

If a writer in the MSM were to write a single definitive feature story and then spend the next few weeks writing short blog posts about the same story, well, they’d be accused of being derivative. There’s a vast cavern between reporting on a beat and repeating yourself, and that’s what keeps “hub and spoke” out of the minds of most media writers. The only time you’ll see an editorial strategy of this kind in the MSM is if a newsroom is particularly attached to search traffic (as marketers are). When I worked at Inverse, a website modeled after Bryan Goldberg’s now-ubiquitous “search-driven” strategy, we called hub and spoke strategy “topic swarming.”

Ideation

Ideation just means pitching or brainstorming. Sometimes marketers use a ten-dollar word when a ten-cent word will do. (See also: “utilize” and “leverage” when you could just say “use.”)

Journalistic

To be “journalistic” in your content marketing work means that you operate “somewhat like a journalist.” You technically interview people at your company and write Q&As. You apply for press passes to trade conventions and cover them the way a journalist would cover a convention. It’s a sliding scale, though. Occasionally, “being journalistic” means you are close to a journalist as a bottle of orange Gatorade is to an orange.

Here’s the thing, though, and I say this from experience: a lot of professional writers in the MSM are just as “journalistic” as content marketers. If you cover the film industry, for instance, and you’re not at a trade publication, chances are you’re not actually breaking “stories” as often as you are publishing explainers and breaking down fan theories. That kind of writing is closer to “making content” than it is to “doing good journalism.” So in this case, marketers just found an apt word to describe a multi-industry phenomenon.

KPIs

Your key performance indicators (KPIs) are a group of measurable values that demonstrate how swiftly a marketing department is working toward its business objectives. Example: if your business objective is to increase your brand’s sales enablement program, your KPI for that goal might be “we will produce twenty-four new marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) this quarter.”

Sidenote: you might be wondering why KPIs are “key” performance indicators instead of just “performance indicators.” The answer is that marketers love to say the word “key.” You’re not just gathering coworkers in a room—you’re inviting key stakeholders. You’re not just telling an audience what a slideshow is going to involve—you’re giving them key takeaways. Don’t ask me why “key” is key—it’s just one of those marketing industry mysteries we don’t talk about, like “how did they get Henry Rollins to speak at Content Marketing World?!” and “why am I the only one in this office who washes their own coffee mug?!”

ROI

You’ll often hear marketers ask for a project or story’s demonstrated return-on-investment (ROI), which is just a fancy way of asking, “How did this do?” If you’re an MSM writer or editor, you might associate ROI with audience metrics like page clicks and social shares.

Marketers tend to have a deeper understanding of ROI because they wear more hats than the average writer at a website or magazine. At a media company, functions like social media strategy, newsletters, video, UX design, SEO, and aud dev are typically split across a team of people, but in a content marketing department, everyone does a bit of everything. That’s why all marketers are responsible for proving ROI on their work, whereas writers are often just told how their stories are doing by other teams.

SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of formatting online content according to parameters set by Google’s algorithm, in order to make that content appear higher on a search engine results page (SERP).

Most writers know what SEO is in a vague sense, but they’re probably not responsible for implementing a strategy. Most media companies tend to separate search data from the pitch process, drawing a line in the sand between the science and art of publishing effectively. For marketers, that line is irrelevant, because the art of content creation will always come second to the science—however, you do need both to do content marketing well.

Because of a lack of education on the subject, many writers think of SEO as simply turning their headline into a question that readers might Google. Content marketing requires a more nuanced understanding of optimization, from meta data to keywords and longtail subject authority.

Snackable

If a piece of content is “snackable,” it means it’s designed to be engaged within a single sitting. A long-form piece of writing is not snackable, but an infographic posted to social media is snackable. Because content marketers typically work in a more diverse array of media formats than writers, they come up with ways to categorize these offerings.

Again, marketers fall in love with buzzwords, but you don’t have to say “snackable” to get a job in the industry. You can just call a social graphic or an infographic or a gif whatever it is.

Thought leader

Admittedly, this is the one content marketing buzzword that creeps me out. A “thought leader” is just an industry critic, talking head, or influencer, but something about that particular phrasing reminds me of Charles Manson.

I’m not alone either. In 2017, progressive outlet The New Republic published an op-ed calling thought leadership a hollow product of income inequality in the Western world. Thought leadership in a business setting, the article argued, is sort of weaponization of TEDTalk-style presentations, and a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing. “The rich have empowered a new kind of thinker—the ‘thought leader’—at the expense of the much-fretted-over ‘public intellectual,’” David Sessions wrote. “Whereas public intellectuals like Noam Chomsky or Martha Nussbaum are skeptical and analytical, thought leaders like Thomas Friedman and Sheryl Sandberg ‘develop their own singular lens to explain the world, and then proselytize that worldview to anyone within earshot.’”

So, it’s up to you whether thought leaders are harmless LinkedIn influencers or agents of late-stage capitalism. You should just know the term if you’re working in content marketing because a lot of folks fancy themselves thought leaders.

UGC

User-generated content (UGC) refers to any online media created by the audience members following a brand. Because marketers want to inspire relationships with their audiences, even more so than the average writer, they tend to put emphasis on UGC. If a brand asks followers to tweet their own stories about a product, or take a photo at a branded event and share with a hashtag, they’re requesting UGC.

Interestingly, MSM writers like to joke about avoiding UGC—see the whole “reply guy” controversy, the “don’t @ me” mindset, or the persistent “don’t read the comments” meme. It’s all done playfully, but the punchline is that an MSM writer doesn’t really want to be bothered with feedback from random readers. Social shares are appreciated, but a modern critic or reporter doesn’t like to think of themselves as embroiled in a constant conversation with the general public. Marketers, on the other hand, are ravenously hungry for that back-and-forth.

Now, this is just a list of thirteen marketing terms that require a bit of context for the average media employee. There are hundreds of more buzzwords, disappearing from industry conversations as quickly as they arrive, but if you know this set, you can have a productive conversation with a content marketer. So go forth and network!

    A Marketing to Media Translation Dictionary For Journalists Turned Content Marketers A Marketing to Media Translation Dictionary For Journalists Turned Content Marketers By Emily Gaudette Translating is a tricky business.

France’s First Lady, a Confidante and Coach, May Break the Mold

By Susan Chira and Lilia Blaise, NY Times, May 11, 2017

PARIS--If France’s president-elect has broken every rule in the political playbook, consider Brigitte Macron, the country’s next first lady.

She met her future husband, Emmanuel, when he was 15 and she was his 39-year-old drama teacher, married with three children. She and his parents at first tried to discourage him from pursuing her, and she has said they did not have a “carnal” relationship when he was in high school, but he eventually won her over.

By all accounts, she was present at every stage of his political evolution, coaching him on his speeches and public demeanor, and she is the one he turns to for an unsparing critique. He treats her as an equal partner and says she will define her future role.

France being France, this unusual couple is already stirring a lively and erudite debate about sexism, ageism, masculinity, contemporary marriage, political stagecraft and what a modern French first lady should actually be.

“It’s like a breath of fresh air in this country,” said Natacha Henry, a writer on gender issues. “I think he won because he didn’t do any kind of macho performance, and that’s what we need. If she’s done that for him, great.”

Some women see the Macrons as breaking with a pattern of powerful men adorning themselves with younger women; others say French history is replete with examples of younger men seeking out older women, from Henri II’s affair with Diane de Poitiers in the 16th century on.

To some, Mr. Macron, 39, is a welcome antidote to past hypermasculine French politicians, and he surrounds himself with strong female advisers and models an egalitarian marriage. Others have mocked him as being under the thumb of a mother figure and even accused him of a gay affair, which he was driven to publicly deny.

In the days after the election, social media posts went viral criticizing the way the couple have sometimes been portrayed in the press: she as a predatory “cougar” and he as a “boy toy”; Ms. Macron, 64, has been called everything from a grandmother making his tea to a “cagole,” a French term for a bimbo. If the ages were reversed, her defenders pointed out, no one would have blinked an eye.

“Madame Macron’s age is a feminist issue here,” Ms. Henry said. “I was at the hairdresser’s at a very small town in Orléans the day he was appointed minister of economy, and all the ladies were so happy she was so much older than him. We’re so fed up with these older guys with young actresses.”

The Macrons both grew up in the northern city of Amiens, Brigitte Macron as the sixth child of a family whose chocolate business was a local institution founded in 1872. She married a banker in 1974 when she was 21, had two daughters and a son, and taught French, Latin and drama in high school.

Like many schoolboys, Emmanuel Macron developed a crush on his teacher. Ms. Macron, during an interview she gave in 2016 to Paris Match magazine, described falling in love: “I felt that I was slipping, too,” she said. “I then asked him to go to Paris” to finish his education, and his parents were also eager to separate them.

While the age of sexual consent in France is 15, it is illegal for teachers to have sex with students under the age of 18; Ms. Macron told the authors of a book about the couple that they did not consummate the relationship while he was in high school. She declined a request for an interview.

In a documentary aired this week on French television, she said he had called her every day and had gradually worn down her resistance. “He assured me that he would return,” she told Paris Match. “At the age of 17, Emmanuel told me, ‘Whatever you do, I will marry you.’ Love took everything in its path and led me to divorce.”

They married in 2007, a year after she formally divorced. A video clip of their wedding shows him thanking her children for accepting him; her daughters were active in his campaign, and the documentary shows him hunting for Easter eggs with his seven stepgrandchildren.

Anne-Élisabeth Moutet, an analyst of French politics and culture, notes that the presentation of the Macron marriage, including Ms. Macron’s interviews, has been carefully staged to try to get out ahead of what might otherwise have been seen as a liability.

In this, she said, they have had the canny advice of Michèle Marchand, known as Mimi, one of France’s best-known celebrity handlers and the owner of a photo agency, who was often photographed at their side during the campaign.

“They decided that it was bound to be an image problem if it was not tackled in a clever way,” Ms. Moutet said.

Candice Nedelec, an author of a book on them, “Les Macron,” said Mr. Macron would emerge backstage from a campaign appearance and reflexively ask, “Where’s Brigitte?”

Mr. Macron has sometimes come off as wordy, theoretical or hard to follow. Ms. Macron told him bluntly to cut parts of his campaign book because they were too boring, Ms. Nedelec said. The documentary shows Ms. Macron rehearsing a speech with him, telling him that he had not spoken loudly enough.

“During a presidential campaign, it’s usually the king and his court,” Ms. Nedelec said. “She’s the one who won’t hesitate to tell him the truth.”

Leah Pisar, an expert in Franco-American relations who worked in the Clinton White House, said Ms. Macron served as his gatekeeper: “You want to get to him, you go through her.”

In this, Ms. Macron also appears maternal, protecting her husband as many French wives are expected to do. She is seen chiding him not to eat junk food on the trail in a documentary that followed his campaign for several months.

But Marlène Schiappa, a campaign adviser on gender issues, and others who know the couple warn against painting her as a Pygmalion figure.

They say that he frames policy and that she is more of a sounding board, contributing only on issues she knows well, including education, culture and women’s rights. Ms. Nedelec said Ms. Macron had urged her husband to include proposals for smaller classes for students in disadvantaged areas.

She and one of her daughters pushed him to help advance women in politics; he has pledged that half the candidates his party will field in the coming legislative elections will be women and that he will appoint many women to his cabinet.

Some of these may be issues that Ms. Macron takes up as first lady, a role that is undefined in France and has no government-paid staff--and polls show the French public wants to keep it that way, said Robert Schneider, who wrote a book about first ladies in France.

Some first ladies in France have been virtually invisible, like Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. During François Hollande’s presidency, there was no official first lady. He left his companion, the journalist Valérie Trierweiler, for an actress, Julie Gayet.

“The role of first lady evolved as women in French society evolved,” Mr. Schneider said. “We went from de Gaulle’s wife, who was very submissive, taking care of the children, very discreet--it corresponded to a bourgeois French family. Then with Carla Bruni and Valérie Trierweiler, we came to modern women who take their place, and that will be accepted.”

But there is less support for overtly political first ladies, he said.

Yet in a television interview after he made it to the presidential runoff, her husband made it clear that she was not vanishing: “She will have a say in what she wants to be. She will have a presence, a voice, a look. She will have it privately by my side as she always has, but she will have a public role because that’s how it goes.”

EDUTAINMENT—NOT THE WORD I’D USE

6/11/12

               Through my education, I have experienced a few interesting things. The main one has been prejudice. I also learned life lessons and how to tough it out through the hard times in which life decides it’s okay to throw you under not only a bus, but a whole 10 ton semi-truck as well. My education even showed that sometimes the most unexpected and life-changing experiences can happen when I went to the Governor’s Scholar Program. A lot of what I learned was not in the criteria or the curriculum that we always tried to rush through. In fact, thinking back to grade school, the only things I can remember are basic social rules and the feelings that accompanied them. Perhaps it is best to understand these experiences by starting with a background story, at the beginning of my education.

                Growing up, I lived in a pre-dominantly black community. It was pretty much what people would call “the ghetto,” due to the abundance of government housing and welfare. Schools were the new baby sitters for parents, who were out working two jobs just to keep food on the table and a roof over their children’s heads. I never really had to think about these issues until my fourth grade or so. Until then I spent my time as most children did. I learned to share and count to 25 through rote memorization in kindergarten, and then learned to write in print and cursive. At some point, I remember trying to learn to read through giant flash cards, which I never caught onto, accompanied by sounds I did not understand. They reminded me of grunts and growls that a wild ape would make.

                  Around second grade, I remember my teacher pulling a couple of other students and me out of class. We had to meet with a woman who talked about logic problems with us. My mother later explained to me that I was placed into a program for students labeled as “advanced,” which, to me, meant I got away from flash cards and writing for a while, which was a relief. It was in third grade that I remember learning the basic subjects of math and science. I also realized what “advanced” meant because, in the third grade, I was one of only a handful of students that could do, as I remember the teacher calling it, “math in my head.”

                I remembered having a lot of close friends at my first elementary school, but because I was in the “Pre-International Baccalaureate Program,” or Pre-IB for short, I had to switch schools. This meant that everyone was bused to a better school, which required the students to wear school uniforms. It's funny though, everybody always argues that school uniforms keep everyone looking the same, but I know from experience this isn't true. There is a difference in the quality, and for children this is very visible. Stains can also be seen. This fueled the differences between me and other students in this program. Poorer students like me had clothes that were bought usually second- or third-hand at a thrift store, which led to being picked on and outcasted from the more wealthy and generally better off group.

                 This was also the start of my realization that I was not as socially aware as the rest of the students in my classes. Perhaps it was because my mother was so protective, or perhaps it was because I did not have access to all the resources they had, either way I did not know a lot of the slang they learned from rap songs. Terms like “phat” and “sweet” took me by surprise; I did not understand them in the way they were being used, which led to me being socially outcasted in later years. Other kids could look through a magazine and ask for presents for Christmas or their birthdays and actually expect to receive them, I was lucky if I even got a present. This led to them knowing brands like K*Swiss and Baby Phat. I had no idea about them until I was picked on for not wearing them. To me, these brands were a sign of wealth, a sign of respect. I did not have money, thus I did not deserve respect.

                One very distinct memory I have of my days riding the bus with the other kids is asking the bus driver if he would allow us to change the radio station to something we all wanted to listen to. One boy, the group leader of all the taunting I got growing up, looked at his friends and said, “Oh yeah, she will probably change the station to something country,” as he proceeded to yodel and carry on. I, being socially awkward and desperate for approval, asked for a rap station, Kiss FM. This was because I had observed them asking for it repeatedly in the past and knew it would shut them up and maybe, just maybe, make them realize that I liked what they liked. It cut me to be made fun of because of my country accent; the prejudice they had for me caused me to work on changing my accent entirely until I no longer had one at all. I refused to be belittled due to something so trivial. I refused to let something I could change take away anymore respect from me. I hated my accent because it caused me to be viewed as ignorant and uneducated.

                Despite the social conflicts of my fourth through seventh grade years, I gained some valuable information. My grandmother became very involved in my education at this point, partly because I was struggling in my classes and mostly because my mother did not have the spare time to help me. Looking back she probably also did it because she hates to see her family tarnished in anyway, especially with bad grades. Our family is suppose to be made of champions and successors, not of illiterate and dumb pee-ons. Regardless of her motivation, she helped me learn to read, and after trying to find several books, we stumbled across Harry Potter. I refused at first, but she read to me a chapter of the book. She even had me watch all three of the HP movies. Before I knew it, I wanted to know how to read as well. I needed to know how to so I could know more about this story and the characters.

                I gained other skills as well being in the Pre-IB program. I joined the fourth grade band and learned to play the flute, we had history, French, arts and humanities, and had a computer class that was focused on the Japanese Culture and Language. The world started to open up to me through my studies, and I then realized that I needed to gain knowledge to get out of the lifestyle I was living. I knew that I always loved school, regardless of the bullying from other students, and it was always better than going home to meet my sister's dad and all he had in store for me. I knew then, no matter how bad it got, I needed to keep my head in the books. I had to keep telling myself, just finish this reading or just finish this math homework it's worth it in the end. Of course, I never realized how far it would take me.

                During my last year of middle school, I moved to a school district which had a pre-dominantly white population. Funding cuts at my previous school district meant that I was stuck with no band, arts and humanities, or language classes. My grandmother, now my care-giver under the state's discretion, decided my education would be better in the Kenton Co. Schools, and so I switched. The social dynamic, however, was the complete opposite of what I had experienced in Covington. I often got picked on for being from a poor community. The education systems were on completely different tracks, going from the IB program to the AP program. Granted that my education in Covington was not of the highest quality, it was not nearly as bad as the people in Kenton Co. Schools believed it was. Even though I was in the International Baccalaureate program, I had to fight to be placed into the proper classes and into the “Gifted and Talented” program at my new school. The teachers, the adults that were suppose to be providing for a better future for all, believed that because I was from a poor community, I could not possibly be smarter than they believed I was. They did not believe I knew what I had told them, forced me to take a test to prove it, and after all that, they still did not give me the proper classes. Even though I tested into the geometry class in the high school, they forced me to take pre-algebra. This was something I had already taken, but the prejudice of the people in charge, the ones meant to protect and enforce the "No-Child-Left-Behind Act," limited my education because of where I was from.

                 I stayed with this school district through to my graduation from high school. This was against my wishes, but living with my grandmother forced me to endure these discomforts. It was apparent that the prejudice of the adults in the schools had trickled down into the student body, poisoning their perception of people such as myself before they really had a chance to learn for themselves. Once again, I became a social outcast because of my heritage, rather than being seen for whom I was and the ideals I held.

                  Regardless of these setbacks, I continued to seek an education of the highest standard. No, I needed to seek out the highest standard. I got back into French when I had the chance, but I was told I was taught the wrong dialect by my new teacher. She said it was Canadian French, and it would never do me any good. Though I remember Mademoiselle Campbell being known for all her great accomplishments with not only the IB testing, but the AP testing as well, I did not bother to argue with the new Madame, who I was to learn from. By this point, I had suffered from a very low self-esteem. I saw no point in arguing with the people in charge. I doubted my worth and the worth of my prior education. I wanted to be something more than the background I came from, but I kept feeling like a failure. I thought I would never make it through college, let alone high school. Even though I kept trying to remind myself that I needed to push through, I needed to get a higher education, the harsh course work, as well as drowning in papers and books of AP and Honors classes, did not help my inner-turmoil.

                 Then it happened, my application had been accepted. Everyone was surprised that I managed to make it into the Governor’s Scholar Program. I say everyone in the literal sense; even I was surprised I made it. To me, this was my ticket to college, and later became my way to a respectable level of self-esteem. I learned my self-worth and made a lot of great friends with varied backgrounds. Being on a college campus for 5 weeks made a world of difference to my confidence level and joy in life. I saw and met people who did not care about your heritage; they did not have prejudice from hearing the name of your hometown. They saw past that and saw you for who you are.

                    Once I went back to high school in Kenton County, senior year was just too long to handle. I knew that my life was going to get better, that through college I would find much more. I had to graduate to make that goal happen. I had to suffer through the bullying. I took the prejudice of my background with a bit more ease. I actually allowed other outcasts to see me for who I was, and gained a group of amazing friends at home. I became the Swim Captain of the Girls Swim Team because I felt unstoppable. I learned how to be a leader and to stand up for what I believed in. Though the system and the way it fostered prejudice and social dynamics had nearly broken me, I had found something to look forward to that my teachers failed to mention in classes.

                   Although I did learn the basics in school, I learned so much more. I experienced life while in high school. I learned human cruelty and what a prejudiced society is capable of. I also found out that beyond those prejudices, people can be truly wonderful. Life can be wonderful. People do not need to be broken by the school system because they are poor. Sometimes they are the ones that need the support of the schools the most. Education leads to liberation. Liberation leads to happy and successful citizens. Is that not what the school system was created for in the first place?

Gurdjieff Quotes

JANUARY 1

MANY MEN BORN, BUT ONLY FEW GROW

He [George Gurdfieff speaking to 12-year-old Fritz Peters] went on to say that his work was not only very difficult, but could also be very dangerous for some people. "This work not for everyone," he said. "FOR example, if I wish to learn to become millionaire, necessary to devote all early life to this aim and no other. If wish to become priest, philosopher, teacher, or businessman, should not come here. Here only teach possibility how become man such as not known in modern times, particularly in western world." He then asked me to look out of the window and to tell him what I saw. I said that, from that window, all I could see was an oak tree. And what, he asked, was on the oak tree? I told him: acorns.

"How many acorns?"

When I replied, rather uncertainly, that I did not know, he said impatiently: "Not exactly, not ask that. Guess how many!"

I said that I supposed there were several thousand of them. He agreed and then asked me how many of the acorns would become oak trees. I answered that I supposed only five or six of them would actually develop into trees, if that many.

He nodded. "Perhaps only one, perhaps not even one. Must learn from Nature. Man is also organism. Nature make many acorns, but possibility to become tree exist for only few acorns. Same with man—many men born, but only few grow. People think this waste, think Nature waste. Not so. Rest become fertilizer, go back into earth and create possibility for more acorns, more men, once in while more tree—more real man. Nature always give—but only give possibility. To become real oak, or real man, must make effort. You understand this, my work, this Institute, not for fertilizer. For real man, only. But must also understand fertilizer necessary to Nature. Possibility for real tree, real man also depend just this fertilizer."

After a rather long silence, he continued: "In west—your world—is belief that man have soul given by God. Not so. Nothing given by God, only Nature give. And Nature only give possibility for soul, not give soul. Must acquire soul through work. But unlike tree, man have many possibilities. As man now exist he have also possibility grow by accident —grow wrong way. Man can become many things, not just fertilizer, not just real man: can become what you call 'good' or 'evil', not proper things for man. Real man not good or evil—real man only conscious, only wish acquire soul for proper development."

~ Fritz Peters "Boyhood with Gurdjieff" ...

TAKE A PIECE OF PAPER AND WRITE YOUR AIM ON IT. MAKE THIS PAPER YOUR GOD

Question: I frequently remember my aim but I have not the energy to do what I feel I should do.

Answer: Man has no energy to fulfill voluntary aims because all his strength, acquired at night during his passive state, is used up in negative manifestations. These are his automatic manifestations, the opposite of his positive, willed manifestations.

For those of you who are already able to remember your aim automatically, but have no strength to do it: Sit for a period of at least one hour alone. Make all your muscles relaxed. Allow your associations [the thoughts and pictures that automatically arise in your mind] to proceed but do not be absorbed by them. Say to them: "If you will let me do as I wish now, I shall later grant you your wishes." Look on your associations as though they belonged to someone else, to keep yourself from identifying with them.

At the end of an hour take a piece of paper and write your aim on it. Make this paper your God. Everything else is nothing. Take it out of your pocket and read it constantly, every day. In this way it becomes part of you, at first theoretically, later actually. To gain energy, practice this exercise of sitting still and making your muscles dead. Only when everything in you is quiet after an hour, make your decision about your aim. Don't let associations absorb you. To undertake a voluntary aim, and to achieve it, gives magnetism and the ability to "do."

~ George Gurdjieff "Views from the Real World" ...

IT WILL REMAIN ONLY THEORY UNLESS YOU LEARN TO UNDERSTAND NOT WITH MIND BUT WITH HEART AND BODY

I arrived on a Saturday night, when the exercises were performed in the same white costumes I had seen in Constantinople, and visitors from Paris were allowed to watch the performance. The exercises consisted of the same rhythmic movements and ritual dances that I had seen before. There were also various demonstrations of telepathic communication that much impressed me at the time: later I was shown the tricks by which the results were obtained.

There were twenty-five or thirty Russians, and about as many English visitors. There were no French or Americans at that time, and between the Russians and English there was very little contact—chiefly owing to difficulties of language.

I was fortunate in this respect. When I arrived, Madame de Hartmann received me in an elegant drawing-room on the ground floor of the Chateau, and told me that Georgy Ivanitch—the name by which Gurdjieff was known among the Russians—would see me the same afternoon. Speaking Turkish, we had no need of an interpreter. He asked for news of Prince Sabaheddin, and went on almost at once to speak of the very same subject—the distinction of Being and Knowing—that we had left at our first talk at Kuru Cheshme, nearly two years before. I made notes of all the talks I had with him, and can therefore reproduce them fairly accurately after all these years.

He said: "You have already too much knowledge. It will remain only theory unless you learn to understand not with mind but with heart and body. Now only your mind is awake: your heart and body are asleep. If you continue like this, soon your mind also will go to sleep, and you will never be able to think any new thoughts. You cannot awaken your own feelings, but you can awaken your body. If you can learn to master your body, you will begin to acquire Being.

"For this, you must look on your body as a servant. It must obey you. It is ignorant and lazy. You must teach it to work. If it refuses to work, you must have no mercy on it. Remember yourself as two— you and your body. When you are master of your body, your feelings will obey you. At present nothing obeys you—not your body, nor your feelings, nor your thoughts. You cannot start with thoughts, because you cannot yet separate yourself from your thoughts.

"This Institute exists to help people to work on themselves. You can work as much or as little as you wish. People come here for various reasons, and they get what they come for. If it is only curiosity, then we arrange things to astonish them. If they come to get knowledge, we have many scientific experiments that will instruct them. But if they come to get Being, then they must do the work themselves. No one else can do the work for them, but it is also true that they cannot create the conditions for themselves. Therefore, we create conditions."

I said that I was tired of being as I was, and wanted to change. He replied: "You must begin at the beginning. You start as kitchen boy; then you will work in the garden, and so on until you have learned how to master your body." He asked me how long I could stay, and I said that I did not know, as it depended on the Peace Treaty with Turkey. He did not seem very interested, and said: "It does not matter. You start now, and we shall see."

~ JG Bennett “Witness ...

BEING EFFORT IS THE ONLY METHOD OF DEVELOPING

Being effort is the only method of developing. You are aware when you have made an effort — when you have done something that you are aware required effort. Every successful effort adds – every failure subtracts.

An effort that involves ample reward is no good. It must be gratuitous. St. Paul said always to be running in the great race. Gurdjieff says "always in a huff." Every effort creates energy and at the same time intrinsic strength...

Everything develops by exercise. Pondering exercises the whole mind...

You work physically until you drop — then beyond this you are using being effort. Everyone lives on his "first wind" — create or find the conditions where you voluntarily proceed to your second wind... Try to discover when you have reached the second wind, then within the realms of common sense repeat this."

~ AR Orage "Orage Gurdjieff Meeting Notes"

...

SEX PRIEURÉ SUNDAY, 28 JANUARY 1923

[a talk given by George Gurdjieff]

The human machine and its functions are very limited. If it is not spoilt, if it is normal and natural, its business and main function is the production of a physical substance, the male and female seed, the sperm. Breathing, eating, thinking, sleep and so on exist for the production of this physical substance, seed, sperm. It is very important not to connect this with its fruit, i.e., child, descendants.

If we take the human machine and consider the question of food as cause, then the effect of food will be the sperm. It is not the moment to speak in detail about cause and effect. We will at the moment confine ourselves to saying that if the question of food is important for a man, the question of sex is equally so. A rightly working machine is one which justifies its construction. It is possible to judge approximately of the right-work of the machine by the quantity of sperm it produces. If sperm is not produced , this means that the machine is not in order. We are now speaking of the correct working of the machine. This also is indispensable for our aims and intentions and possible achievements, for they depend on whether the machine works rightly. Our aim is to have a sound machine and one of its main and indispensable parts is that of sex.

Consequently at the beginning of work on oneself, it is necessary to turn our attention to the question of sex as being one of the main problems. This is why I intend to tackle this problem without delay from the very beginning. Since it is a long business, we will speak about details later and will consider the question both theoretically and practically to establish with all possible exactitude the means for bringing the machine to its proper state.

In the meantime in every machine, if it is being fed, this matter (sperm) is produced. This particular matter is deposited and stored in a definite place in the organism and from time to time in a normal machine this place must be evacuated in order to be refilled. There are two ways of evacuating this place; it can be done either through sexual intercourse, or by transforming this matter into a different kind of matter by will power, using the possibilities given us. But for this second method, for transforming this substance into another kind of substance, we have at present neither the power nor the possibility, for in order to be able to use this substance when we need energy or power, we must first acquire other qualities and powers. And in order to acquire the necessary possibilities we must correct the working of the machine to insure a normal process.

Again, owing to wrong upbringing, a wrong way of living and wrong circumstances, in the case of the majority the state of affairs in this respect is very distressing and needs serious examination. In order to be able to work normally on oneself one must not forget to do what is possible for this process to proceed normally. Since this is the way we are made, for the time being it is necessary from time to time to have normal sexual relations. That time depends on the person, so there are no rules about this. As far as such times are concerned is a question I shall leave to the judgment of our doctors who will explain things to each person. So for this purpose single men should from time to time go to Paris. I advise those of you who intend to work in earnest to look at this question seriously. Everyone must remember that this part of the machine can have a serious braking effect on the general work of the machine. Some people have not the material possibilities (money) for these trips, but since the Institute takes a serious view of the situation, those who intend to work productively will be given the necessary money.

At this point we must speak about one important question, about possible abnormal inner or outer relationships between members of the Institute, due to the abnormalities we have spoken about. In the Institute there are neither men nor women, there arc only members of the Institute. It is a sacred duty of everyone to establish a whole-hearted blood brotherhood between members. Every woman of the Institute must be looked upon either as a sister or a mother. I say this because there are certain things which I have noticed. Now l warn you that starting from today, if even inwardly your attitude is not as to a mother or a sister, if I notice even a secret thought - and let no one doubt that we shall dig out what is within - then without any further conversation I shall be obliged to throw that person out of the Institute within the hour and everyone should do the same. This rule applies to everybody without exception, no matter who they are. I shall let bygones be bygones, but from this moment it will be our sacred duty. This question must be of equal importance with our whole aim. It must be so. If it cannot be, then nothing else can be.

All I have said can be condensed into two points: Sexual relations are to be considered indispensable and I shall provide a way out of the situation to everyone, whether rich or poor. And second — starting from today, begin to train your machine to feel and be conscious of the sisterly and brotherly relationship between members of the Institute.

Now all the doctors should meet together to make themselves familiar with the details of this question and to establish the subjective times required by every man. Starting from tomorrow, we will begin to make out historiometric sheets and so will gradually find out what repairs are required in this matter, after which by degrees we shall come to the question of the repairs themselves.

~ "Gurdjieff's Early Talks 1914-1931"

Based on a true story. The pay was standard. Room, board, and 150 euros per month. “Room” was a single on an 8th floor walk-up, with a communal bathroom in the hall. “Board” was lunch 6 days a week. The salary, less than $6 a day, largely went to the all the other meals I had mistakenly assumed would be included. But I wanted to stay in Paris for the summer, so I moved in the day after the interview. The room was a classic chambre de bonne, with a single bed and unobstructed view of Sacre Coeur. Bonne is short for bonne à tout faire, “good for doing everything.” As such, the advertised governess job was more housekeeping than babysitting. “We’ve never had an au pair,” Mrs. Dimas told me. “We are not rich. We can barely afford you.” She showed me how to vacuum the walls, which were covered in fabric. “My husband is a perfectionist,” she said, adding that it was he who insisted the bedsheets be ironed. The French word for perfectionist, when talking about cleanliness, is maniac. Pronounced “mahn-YAK.” She had a confidence, even when lying, that led me to double-check the driver’s license she’d sometime leave on the kitchen counter. Just 29? There were two children. Four-year-old Patrice, dark-complected and moody, and three-month-old Sidonie, blonde like her mother, and the subject of a christening in the works, with family coming from all over. I would arrive to clean up the breakfast table and get Patrice dressed for school while keeping an eye on Sidonie, who dozed off with a belly full of formula that we made with Volvic bottled water. (Madame herself drank Contrex, which was said to be slimming, while her husband, who owned a restaurant, preferred Badoit, the salty one that aids digestion. I found this very sophisticated, and was trying to decide which water brand best reflected the Parisian I was trying to become.) After dropping Patrice off at nursery school, I’d go back to the apartment where Rose-Annette, as Mrs. Dimas asked me to call her, would go over the housework to be done that day, ensuring I understood the words on the list. She would pull me a coffee from the noisy espresso machine, and then make a production of getting dressed and leaving. Rose-Annette returned for lunch most days around 1 or so, and we ate together. Usually Sidonie would be down for a nap. Rose-Annette showed me how to steam vegetables in the pressure cooker, and to bake clafoutis with fruit fresh she’d bring up from the market. “I can’t believe Americans buy mayonnaise,” she said one day, mixing a dab of mustard into her homemade mayo. I said, “I can’t believe you French eat horse meat.” I wasn’t sure if the playfulness I intended came across. “I adore horse meat,” Rose-Annette said. As a post-script, she added, “Vous.” She corrected me anytime I used the informal word for “you.” On Bastille Day I was “verifying” the laundry (no holiday for the help, so I was following instructions to check every button and zipper before ironing and hanging the clothes). Rose-Annette was picking out blue, white and red outfits for the girls when the phone rang. I guessed it was her mother, because she didn’t seem to have many friends. After confabbing on the christening, slated for September—something about how many pounds of candied almonds to order, the traditional accessory for baptisms—Rose-Annette took the phone into the kitchen and closed the door behind her. “What am going to do when she goes back to America?” I heard her say. “I won’t have any help! I don’t know. Maybe it’s good. It’s getting too cosy.” I was better off than the other au pairs that I met at the playground. Some would smoke, or vape, while our charges played, and we’d all wolf down snacks intended for the kids. I was the only one privileged to call madame by her given name, and to drink rosé with her at lunch. “We polished off a whole bottle,” I bragged to Birgitta, whose family used cloth diapers and made her serve dinner like a waitress. The families looked down upon us, and we upon them. “What kind of work is it that you do?” I asked Rose-Annette over lunch. “If only!” she said. In the ensuing sentences, she may or may not have told me. I missed a lot while pretending to understand. What did become clear, though, to my surprise, was that she wasn’t working. It was a full-time job to get her old position back, she said. First, she needed her papers. The word was similar to “husband” and “baptism gown.” Not in the way it sounded, but in that I heard it a lot, and was aware of its importance in this household, but never saw it. Of course, everyone in France talks about papers. It’s a bureaucratic country where one in five people works for the government, mainly shuffling documents. Everyone needed papers, no one had the papers they needed. Even I lacked papers. My visa had expired in May, not long after the final exam of the Sorbonne’s extension program. I was technically an “illegal,” as were most of the other au pairs at the playground. But none of us were concerned about it. We were white, and our host families were comfortable and connected. We had nothing in common with the bands of Afghans who would also congregate in parks, sitting in a circle, quietly passing around food. “I just purse my lips when I walk past a police station,” Birgitta said. We pulled French faces and imitated the high voices our madames used, especially when speaking to their husbands. Chasing papers, and the stamps to validate them—that was a whole separate task, conducted in separate offices or buildings–sent Rose-Annette out of the house most days of the week. The manila folder, where the papers were collected, migrated around the apartment like a mobile religious object. She took a day trip to Brittany to look through boxes in her parents’ house. All she found there was her old monthly metro pass. She made a cute embarassed face when she showed me the photo-booth image on it, of her flashing a peace sign, and wearing the skunk-stripe hairstyle popular in the aughts. “Awesome,” I said in English, and we slapped hands in an off-center high-five. “She’s meeting a lover!” Birgitta squealed. The love life of our madames was a big topic at the park. “No,” I said. “Not Rose-Annette.” For one thing, she primped more for her husband’s return from work than she did for her morning excursions. Rose-Annette was moony over Antonio, her Nino. She liked to stop in and hang out at the restaurant he owned, she confided to me, until he told her she’d have to put on an apron. “That, no!” she laughed. By August, the bottle of rosé was de rigueur at lunch. “My parents are being difficult about the christening,” Rose-Annette told me. “My father still cannot accept that I married a Portuguese man.” She shrugged her shoulders and lowered one eyelid in existential resignation. “Because of them, I couldn’t let Antonio gain nationality by marrying me. He had to be naturalized before I said yes.” I thought about this as I finished off a bowl of berries in sour cream. If Rose-Annette resented her parents’ disdain for Nino, why did she subject him to their requirements? That seemed so French to me. Rose-Annette loved to consider herself an outsider for having a foreign husband. She found it deliciously outrageous that they allowed Patrice to keep her hair cut in a short buzz. But, with their pastel candied almonds–”they’re expensive, butone must,” she had explained–they were as bourgeois as any of the other parents we dished about at the playground. Sometimes at lunch, after a couple glasses of wine, I got an urge to ask her about French traditions, specifically how she came to reject some and emulate others. But even if I’d had the language skills, I didn’t dare, and I would stand and pick up dishes. “Instead of attempting to change the country during your junior year abroad,” read a pamphlet handed to us at orientation at the Sorbonne, “try to understand and respect the cultural norms in France, even if you disagree with them.” I wrote home to my sister, “Rose-Annette doesn’t even buy baby food!” When the baby started eating solids, I spoon-fed her veal puree’d with butter. My last chore each evening was to wax and buff the girls’ navy leather shoes. A heatwave began. It was exhausting speaking staccato French all day. Going home to the States would be like taking off roller blades and walking without fear of wiping out. My au pair comrades started dropping out of sight, accompanying their host families on vacation to Normandy, Provence, the Riviera. Rose-Annette’s handful of friends also decamped, or so she said. The two of us took to watching a soap opera after lunch. “I’m different, she said during a commercial for a cut-rate airline. “I’d rather take a vacation in winter to someplace warm. Nino can’t leave the restaurant, and I prefer not to desert him.” I bought my return ticket online and, after bringing Patrice home from the crèche, slipped Rose-Annette a note across the kitchen table with the flight information. She gave me a “What am I going to do?” face that was endearing, even touching. She opened a bottle of Brouilly—a red served chilled—and invited me to stay for dinner: cervelles d’agneau. I wondered if I should go get my dictionary. Instead I walked to the living room, where Patrice had turned on the TV. I said, “We’re having lamb brains tonight.” She shot up her fists in the air and said, “Oui!” Back in the kitchen, Rose-Annette said, barely audibly, “My paper chase is coming to an end.” The manila folder, which I hadn’t seen in a couple of weeks, had materialized in her hands. “You’ll go back to university,” she said, curling the tab at the top, “and I’ll go back to work.” Now was my chance to get clear on her profession. Teacher? Secretary? One of France’s 13 million bureaucrats? She didn’t seem to have any passions beyond family and food. The theme music for a game show came on, and we both turned toward the TV. I raised my eyebrows. “Ah, oui!” Rose-Annette said, bringing over the bottle and two glasses. “Scoot over, Patrice.” As I walked down the stairs from my chambre de bonne the morning of the 31st, I wondered if Rose-Annette would give me a tip, or a gift, with my pay. Maybe we’d have a coffee together and she’d give me the day off to finish packing. She was dressed, with her cross-body satchel strapped on. “My mother is coming to stay for a week,” Rose-Annette said, clasping her hands to her head. “You think my husband is maniac? My mother is worse.” The list of chores began with vacuuming the walls. “I’ll drop Patrice at school so you have time for a top-to-bottom,” she said. I don’t know if I’ll be back for lunch because I’ve got one last stamp to beg for.” I blinked at the list. “Wow,” I said. “So you’re really going back to work.” She nodded yes, wild-eyed, and called for Patrice to put on her shoes. Sidonie was acting up. I couldn’t clean and entertain her at the same time, so I turned on the radio loud and let her wail. I sweated like crazy scrubbing mineral deposits off bathroom tiles. When I finished, I taped up the nozzle of the Cif, the white cleanser. I loved the smell. There wasn’t anything like it in the United States. As I was burying it in my purse, I heard the front door, and I froze. Rose-Annette appeared in the apartment hallway, looking alarmed. “She just started,” I said over the din, jumping up to turn off the radio. “I’ll go get her.” I calmed the baby by changing her diaper. I gave her a clean outfit, too. When I came back out from her bedroom, Rose-Annette was hunched over, opening a bottle of wine at the kitchen table. She looked up and said, “Are you OK?” “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Sorry. Just a little frazzled about my flight tomorrow. I want to get everything done.” Rose-Annette reached out for Sidonie with one arm and pulled off her satchel with the other. She smelled the baby’s neck and rocked her. I heard sniffling. “I can’t believe it,” she said, her voice an octave lower than normal, and gravelly. I suspected something serious, something about Nino, maybe. She couldn’t be that worked up just because the baby had been yelling. Or even that I was leaving. I tried to think of an excuse about the Cif, which she may have seen me steal. But then the baby stopped crying, suddenly, and I thought about Rose-Annette’s confidence, which had impressed me when we’d first met. I took a step closer and put my hand on her shoulder, a barrier neither of us expected to be crossed. With a face that reminded me of our soap opera heroine, she closed her eyes and leaned into my hand. She mumbled, “I lost all my papers on the metro.” The post Short Story: The Paris Papers appeared first on .

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One of those serendipitous moments happened recently as I wiped down a new old sofa and otherwise puttered in the apartment that overlooks the courtyard.

In order to not lose my mind–actually to lose myself inside my mind–while doing uninteresting or unpleasant tasks, I listen to podcasts. No amount of mindfulness is going to make me all zen about mopping the floor or sorting laundry or running (or sewing!). I want to get the job done with minimal pain, and the best analgesic is one that makes me think about something else, the more esoteric, the better. Sometimes I do not want to focus on what I am doing. At all.

The first to entertain me was Lauren Bastide, with the most wonderful, we’re-there-in-the-room conversation with Amandine Gay (“La Poudre“).  I was riveted by pieces about the new movie “Tower” and the decline of Lancaster, Pennsylvania (both on “Fresh Air,” which has the greatest interviewer ever, Terry Gross). I discovered Lady Lamb (thanks to “On Point”). People talked about medical mysteries (TED Radio Hour). But then I had no more podcasts left in my feed.

So I switched to the NPR One app, which is like a slot machine for podcasts, except that you never lose. They themselves call it Pandora for public radio–more PG-rated than a slot machine. First I got the founders of Kate Spade talking about how they got started (on “How I Built This“)–a logical progression because both Ted Radio Hour and How I Built This are hosted by Guy Raz, who has the most unbelievable name ever. Then the app decided I needed to hear a show I was unfamiliar with, called “Stuff You Missed in History Class.” WTF? HOW DID THEY KNOW????

I was mostly an A+ student, but I have no idea how  I pulled it off in history (my only non-A’s were in gym class–C. “She never makes trouble” was the only nice thing the gym teacher found to say about me, year after year. Yes, I saw my old report cards not long ago). Those dates…they just wouldn’t adhere to my brain cells, even though I am a math lover and have no trouble memorizing zip codes and country dialing codes. However, it didn’t work with history. And it’s too bad, because I have come to love history, though I still don’t remember the dates. I treat dates in history the way I treat recipes–approximations are good enough. Freudian analysis would probably figure it out, but that would take too much time and effort. And anyway, all I really care about are the stories.

The history podcast was about another momentous women’s march–on Versailles! And there I was, on my knees, rubbing an ammonia solution into a Louis XVI sofa to strip it of all traces of its very charming former owner. Louis XVI! The one getting marched on in that very podcast!

An aside here to discuss the fine lady who was getting rid of her sofa. She was suffering from back pain and was going for an operation any day now, though that didn’t stop her from grabbing the coffee table and rolling up the carpet in front of the sofa–the Carnivore and I were going nuts trying to stop her but she was as quick as butter on a hot skillet. She stood about to my shoulder, which, considering I’m short, is nothing. I bet she didn’t weigh 40 kilos. A wisp of a woman.

As the Carnivore manipulated our neighbor’s camionette (a kind of enclosed pickup that’s very common in France) into her driveway, I chatted with Madame about life. The conversation quickly turned to death. She explained that she was keeping one of the armchairs that matched the sofa because it had been her mother’s, who had lived with her before dying. She then segued to her husband, who died suddenly, in his sleep, not long ago (which might have been a few years, I wasn’t sure). Trying to comfort her, I told her that my parents had died recently, relatively quickly, and in light of what I’d seen, I think the quicker the better. I am not alone in this. When I was leaving my post as a teacher in Africa, my students collected messages for me, and one sweet student wished me “a happy family, a happy life and a quick death!”

Madame grasped my arm and said, “Chut!” (Shush!) But then she went on anyway, and we talked about how a slow death does prepare the survivors for the idea that the loved one would be no longer, while a quick death is probably nicer for the person dying but a shock for the family.

This lady was selling some things in her finely furnished (“j’étais décoratrice!”) little house in order to move in with or near to her daughter, who had married an Italian and had followed him to Milan (she contorted her small, thin face at this, as if she had bitten into a spoiled fruit). First an operation on her back in France, then a new life in Italy. I felt sorry for her, abandoning all the stuff that reminded her of happier times–for some people, stuff is an end unto itself, a way to achieve some kind of status, but for others it is a totem of people or memories of happy times, and, though I knew her but for less than an hour, I think that, even if years ago she was in the former category, she now was in the latter). Plus, the weather in Milan is pretty crappy,  compared with Aude.

Back to the furniture. The sofa is, obviously, a reproduction of Louis XVI. He’s better known as the husband of Marie Antoinette. I say “obviously” because it’s a sofa-bed, a technology that came somewhat later than the late 1700s. Madame said she bought it in Revel, which is a hub for marquetry and fine furniture making. Considering how heavy it is, I believe her.

Louis XVI came after 15 other Louis (Louises?), the first of whom appeared in 814 A.D. The first Louis had a tough act to follow: Charlemagne. There were LOTS of other kings before the first Louis (who was known as both “the pious” AND “the debonaire”!!!!! How did he manage that?), but they had names like Chilperic and Childeric and Chlothar and Dagobert. (You should know that in some places–like Belgium–a dagobert is not unlike a Dagwood sandwich, giving the mitraillet a run for the money.)

The later Louis (Louises?) became known for their interior décors. We won’t spend time on the earliest ones. Louis II, aka “the stutterer”!! Too bad he didn’t see “The King’s Speech.” There also were Louis the Fat (they really weren’t politically correct in those times) and Louis the Young and Louis the Lion and St. Louis (the IX–9th–who built the “new” town of Carcassonne around 1260).  Then Louis X, aka the Quarreler; Louis XI, aka “the prudent, the cunning, the universal spider.” Sorry, but that one is The Best!!! Being Prudent, Cunning AND a Universal Spider? OMG. What a MAN! Or was he a superhero? But that was from 1461-1483. They don’t make them like they used to. Or maybe they do, except for the prudent part, and we are like flies stuck in a trap.

Louis XII was the “father of the people,” followed by a number of other-named monarchs, including Henri II, whose style was much-copied later.

Louis XIII (13th), aka “the Just,” was in the first half of the 1600s. We know that our apartments existed in 1624, though they might have been there earlier. (I will try to get to the bottom of this one day.) His style is known for lots of twists (torsades) and straight lines, which seems like a contradiction, eh?

Louis XIV was known as Louis the Great or the Sun King. Hard to beat that (though his great-grandson, Louis XV–“the Beloved”–seems to have). Fourteen ruled from 1643-1715 and built Versailles. Think glam.

And then we get to Louis XVI (we’re up to 16 here–seize in French, pronounced “says”), the “restorer of French liberty,” who ruled from 1774 to 1792. Note those dates! What happened just two years after 1774? Hmmm! An era of foment all over the place.

Marquetry

Having read “A Tale of Two Cities” (“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Sidney Carton: “It’s a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.” Did you, too, have to memorize that in high school?) and Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables” (“It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.”), I had an impression of the French Revolution as having been a bloody affair directed by perhaps well-meaning but vicious people like Madame Lafarge, Javert, Rousseau and Robespierre and that the revolution was at full swing from the moment the people stormed the Bastille on July 14, 1789, until the day Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette lost their heads on the guillotine in 1792. But in fact, the revolution started earlier and the king hung on for several years. Talks happened, spiced up by marches, including by nasty women.

Among the problems at the time, as “What You Missed in History Class” explains for us, were bad harvests, government deficits, over-taxation and illiquidity. It boiled down to the masses starving.

You must listen to the podcast to get all the details, but basically, people were fed up with not being fed. Call it a minimum wage issue. The podcasters express doubts that Louis XVI was actually evil incarnate or even just callous but instead suspect that he was way over his head and incompetent. In any case, a revolution was born.

Despite all that bad blood, Louis XVI’s style remains much-coveted today. OK, coveted among people who think that IKEA is great if you are 20 years old and on a small budget but then you should buy furniture that will last more than three years, and that proves it by having lasted already more than 100. Coveted by people who do not want to sit on backless benches at dinner. Who do not think that plastic chairs, even Eames, are chic or comfortable.

But how to keep your Louis, Louis, Louis, Louis straight? (And Louis is pronounced like Louie, not Lewis.) First of all, FirstDibs has a great explainer of the different Louis (Louises?). If you are just starting out, start here. Another great resource is the Metropolitan Museum of Art with essays on French chairs and 18th century French furniture more generally.

As the Louvre explains (and they should know), you have Louis XIV and the Regency from 1660-1725, then Rococo from 1725-1755, then classicism and the reign of Louis XVI from 1755-1790.

When I lived in Brussels and Paris was much closer than from where I am now in the deepest corner of rural France (which actually used to be Spain), I always partook of Les Journées de Patrimoine, in which many buildings of historical significance are opened to the public. Sometimes they are museums that drop their usual ticket charges, but the best are government or private buildings that otherwise are strictly off-limits. Once, I toured the Banc de France–like the Federal Reserve, especially because I visited before the euro–and was in a group of very well-dressed, impeccably coiffed, middle-aged Parisians. The kind of people known as bourgeois, or if younger as BCBG—bon chic, bon genre. I saw a couple, in nearly matching tweed suits (her in a skirt, him in trousers whose crease up until that moment had been razor-sharp), on their hands and knees looking at the underbelly of an antique gilded demi-lune console. It’s true there were amazing antiques in every direction, with computers and papers plonked on top.

Fit for a throne

The Carnivore is very sensitive about Louis (Louises?), and is partial to No. 16. He searched high and low for a toilet-paper holder that was in the style of Louis XVI. Even though according to this, toilet paper didn’t get cheap enough for the masses until much later. Far more impressive is the history given by ToiletPaperWorld, which mingles Stephen Crane, money and defecation. “French royalty used lace.” No wonder there was a revolution! (The delicacy of the terms the sites uses is an impressive exercise in euphemisms.)

I have seen references around the Internet to “Louis chairs,” to which I think, WHICH Louis? This alone should qualify me for French citizenship. But which Louis matters only if you’re paying top euro for what’s supposed to be the real thing, in which case, you had better know better. For everything else, “Louis” means something sorta French-antique-looking, probably Louis XVI.

All the same, I have seen how the French teach their young to know their Louis (Louises?). From the time our kid was in the equivalent of second grade, the whole memorize-your-kings thing started. Which is probably why, on a different tour during les Journées de Patrimoine, the docent told us the story of a beautifully painted stucco ceiling in the Marais of Paris, and several of the tour-goers objected vociferously to the dates and kings cited. I was dumbstruck to be in the middle of a heated argument about something that had happened 400 years earlier. At the same time, I was full of admiration, because I absolutely cannot remember such dates.

As for serendipity, what is one of the most beautiful and joyful words in the English language (in French, it’s “happy luck,” not nearly as fun a word as serendipity), algorithms and artificial intelligence are snatching it away from us. Serendipity is opening a newspaper and happening to spy something interesting and relevant. Serendipity is walking into a shop and finding just what you need on sale. Serendipity is running into a friend you haven’t seen in ages someplace unexpected (I once bumped into an old dance buddy from NY in the line for the opera in Rome). Now our news is filtered based on what we like, we shop online for things that are pushed to us, and we know where everybody we’ve ever met is at any moment.

Some of my greatest “aha” moments have been when I have read or listened to things that on the surface didn’t interest me in the least. But they were in publications or on programs that I knew did good work, so I gave them my time. And I was rarely disappointed. I never would have sought out “Stuff You Missed in History Class.” But it came to me, with a story that touched exactly on what I was doing.

Serendipity rules.

Louis, Louis, Louis, Louis One of those serendipitous moments happened recently as I wiped down a new old sofa and otherwise puttered in the apartment that overlooks the courtyard.