0negirlarmy:

booksandwildthings:

satanmoriarty:

dizpotter:

CAN WE TALK ABOUT THIS?

I mean, can we just talk about how this parallels the actual education system?  Where they’re so concerned about teaching us things like logarithms and graphing that we don’t know shit about what’s actually out there in the adult world, like doing taxes or writing checks or anything?  I mean, “It is the view of the Ministry that a theoretical knowledge will be sufficient to get you through your examinations, which after all, is what school is all about.”  School children are often under the impression that getting A’s in all their classes ensures a successful future, but really, it’s so ignorant because the real world isn’t just one big question-and-answer paper.  There is so much more to the world than being able to give back information like some kind of super-computer, and brainwashing children into thinking that theory is key is just going to lead to a bunch of children falling flat on their faces when they’re pushed into the adult world and feel as if everything new they try to do is wrong because it wasn’t taught to them step-by-step.  I just really love Harry’s line, “And how is theory supposed to prepare us for what’s out there?” because I feel as if sometimes we just learn things for the sake of knowing them, despite whether it is actually useful. Yes, school is important, and getting bad grades isn’t a good way to start your future, but it’s so much more than that, you see.

this sounds a lot like something Hermione would say

I think that’s the reason why everyone has such strong negative feelings toward Umbridge (as a person, not a character). I can’t tell you how many times I heard people say that they wanted Umbridge to die more than Voldemort. And I must say that I feel the same.

Voldemort is a racist dictator. While these have existed, and still do, the majority of us don’t live under such a tyrant. We’ve heard about them in history books and on the news- but they’re already dead or on the other side of the world. While we can be horrified at the terror such a person can spread and how, well, evil they can be, a character of this archetype doesn’t strike a personal chord with most of us.

But Umbridge does. As stated before, she represents everything that we hate about the public school system. Most of us know or have a teacher, professor, principal, or school administrator who, to probably a lesser degree, personifies what Umbridge is saying. They teach only to the test, or tell teachers to do so, they insist on including useless things in their curriculums, they PASS LAWS SO THAT SUCH A SCHOOL SYSTEM CAN CONTINUE. This is something that affects nearly every public school in the US, (and I’m guessing the UK as well). Nearly every student has to go through school learning things that they will never use in real life and that in no way prepare them for the real world, just so the various boards of education can use the higher test scores as ‘proof’ that we’re ‘smarter’ than other states, countries, etc., and therefore deserve more funding.

We hate Umbridge so much (again, as a person, not a character) because she represents a villain we all have in our own lives. Possibly every single person who has read this book can connect with the frustration Harry and the other students feel.

We hate Umbridge so much because everything she is, everything she represents, is very real and very personal to every single one of us.

Theoretical and philosophical teachings are important (mostly in times of peace where nations can grow internally), but now the system is so broken that student knowledge of theory is a measure of the school’s performance rather than an individual’s ability to survive. 

kkatkkrap:

shawarmababy:

Iron Man 3 Superbowl Trailer

Extended Cut

zodiaccity:

 

Aries

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REBLOG, REBLOG!!

swarajist:

their high school principal
told me I couldn’t teach
poetry with profanity
so I asked my students,
“Raise your hand if you’ve heard of the Holocaust.”
in unison, their arms rose up like poisonous gas
then straightened out like an SS infantry
“Okay. Please put your hands down.
Now raise your hand if you’ve heard of the Rwandan genocide.”
blank stares mixed with curious ignorance
a quivering hand out of the crowd
half-way raised, like a lone survivor
struggling to stand up in Kigali
“Luz, are you sure about that?”
“No.”
“That’s what I thought.”

“Carlos—what’s genocide?”

they won’t let you hear the truth at school
if that person says “fuck”
can’t even talk about “fuck”
even though a third of your senior class
is pregnant.

I can’t teach an 18-year-old girl in a public school
how to use a condom that will save her life
and that of the orphan she will be forced
to give to the foster care system—
“Carlos, how many 13-year-olds do you know that are HIV-positive?”

“Honestly, none. But I do visit a shelter every Monday and talk with
six 12-year-old girls with diagnosed AIDS.”
while 4th graders three blocks away give little boys blowjobs during recess
I met an 11-year-old gang member in the Bronx who carries
a semi-automatic weapon to study hall so he can make it home
and you want me to censor my language

“Carlos, what’s genocide?”

your books leave out Emmett Till and Medgar Evers
call themselves “World History” and don’t mention
King Leopold or diamond mines
call themselves “Politics in the Modern World”
and don’t mention Apartheid

“Carlos, what’s genocide?”

you wonder why children hide in adult bodies
lie under light-color-eyed contact lenses
learn to fetishize the size of their asses
and simultaneously hate their lips
my students thought Che Guevara was a rapper
from East Harlem
still think my Mumia t-shirt is of Bob Marley
how can literacy not include Phyllis Wheatley?
schools were built in the shadows of ghosts
filtered through incest and grinding teeth
molded under veils of extravagant ritual

“Carlos, what’s genocide?”

“Roselyn, how old was she? Cuántos años tuvo tu madre cuando se murió?”

“My mother had 32 years when she died. Ella era bellísima.”

…what’s genocide?

they’ve moved from sterilizing “Boriqua” women
injecting indigenous sisters with Hepatitis B,
now they just kill mothers with silent poison
stain their loyalty and love into veins and suffocate them

…what’s genocide?

Ridwan’s father hung himself
in the box because he thought his son
was ashamed of him

…what’s genocide?

Maureen’s mother gave her
skin lightening cream
the day before she started the 6th grade

…what’s genocide?

she carves straight lines into her
beautiful brown thighs so she can remember
what it feels like to heal

…what’s genocide?
…what’s genocide?

“Carlos, what’s genocide?”

“Luz, this…
this right here…

is genocide.”

blondegirlfit:

clype:

He gets it.

actually so powerful

chrissyrebekah:

Evelyn stands across from me atop the Sears tower.  The wind is blowing so violently that I am struggling to stand straight, let alone stay in one place.  But she stands, sturdy as a rock, with emotionless eyes as unmoving as her body though the wind must be affecting her too.  It doesn’t seem like it.

Intimidation.  That’s the first emotion I feel.  Coursing through me like the before-effects of fear.

But I don’t feel fear anymore.  Not with Evelyn.

She towers over me like her son always does, leaving me feeling powerless and small.  But with Tobias, this smallness is comfortable.  This powerlessness feels safe because I know he has enough power for the both of us.

Not with her.

I’m surprised anyone trusts her; her very air is distrustful to me.  She reminds me of a poison that creeps into your veins, unnoticed, unchanging, until one moment you’re dead. 

“I am his family.  I am permanent.  You are temporary.”

The words sting me, reminding me that this woman hates me.  She has no faith in my part in Tobias’s life, though she herself used him to gain the trust and control of the Dauntless.  She is only temporary, yet she feels as if making me feel small and temporary will make me disappear.

She couldn’t be more wrong.

“Hello, Beatrice.”  Her use of my real name makes me slightly uncomfortable and very angry.  Only my old faction knew that name.  I know she was from there, but the fact that she dares pretend that she is still Abnegation, still selfless, infuriates me so much that my blood feels like its boiling.  I want to kill her, I want to so badly; I want to wrap my hands around her neck and squeeze the life out of her.

I want you dead, Evelyn Eaton.

“Hello, Evelyn.”  I respond, flatly, trying to ward off any emotions from sneaking into my tone of voice.  I want to be monotonous, uncaring, and emotionless.  I want her to think she has no hold on me.

“So, Beatrice, are you going to work with me or not?  You and I both know you’re in the seat of power, here and everywhere else.  So what are you going to do?  Use it in the way your teeny tiny brain deems fit, or use it in a way that can bring you and I to power such as we’ve never known?”

“I think you and I both know what the answer to that is, Evelyn.”  I respond, coolly.

“Ah, I thought just as much,” she replies, all too calmly and with much too great of a calculated demeanor, “which is why I brought a little persuasion tool.”

My heart starts to race.  Persuasion tool?  What kind of persuasion tool?

Then I see him.  And my heart stops.

Tobias, eyes as lifeless as a shark’s, walks towards Evelyn with robotic movements.  “As you can see,” Evelyn begins, “My son is under a serum that I found in Jeanine’s collection before we destroyed the Erudite faction.  When tested on you, you were too strong for it.  But my son is a weaker Divergent, and has succumbed rather nicely to the simulation.”  She turns towards Tobias.  “Tobias, to the edge.”

I watch with wide eyes as Tobias lifelessly obeys, walking with one foot in front of the other straight to the edge of the building.  His toes hang over nothingness as I pray the wind won’t shake him loose from his already timid heel grip on the building.

“You would do this to your son, Evelyn?  Your only child?  You would destroy him for power?”

She laughs, condescendingly.  “My son wouldn’t cooperate with me unless he was under the serum.  What kind of son is that, one who won’t work with his own mother?”

Her sick, twisted ideals churn my stomach as I wait, breathlessly, on the tips of my toes, to jump after Tobias.

“You still have a choice, Beatrice.  Work with me and Tobias lives.  Choose your own, selfish ambitions, and he dies.  The decision is yours.”

The anticipation runs through my veins, burning my every fiber with a fear I thought I could never feel.  I cannot, I simply cannot, live without Tobias; I cannot go on without him.  He is the only reason I’ve made it as far as I have, he is the only thing on this earth I have worth living for.

I cannot lose him.

But I know that if Tobias was here, and I mean really here, he would insist that I give him up and keep my power for good.

But I can’t do that; I can’t make that decision; I’d rather live through an apocalypse with Tobias than through paradise with him gone.

Just as I open my mouth to respond to Evelyn, to tell her that I will indeed work with her to give her what she wants most, a strong gust of wind pushes Tobias off balance.  He seems to wake up from a deep slumber and shouts when he sees where he is. 

It is one of his four worst fears.  Heights.  I can see in his eyes that he is simply terrified.  He claws the air, trying to push himself back onto the building, but it is too late.

“Tobias!”  I shout, sprinting towards him, trying to save him.  But I can’t.  His arms reach for me as he falls off the side of the building, swept away by the wind.

“Tobias, no!  Don’t go!” I scream as I throw myself off the building after him.  I can’t live without him; so I will die with him.  As I drop through the air and reach him, our hands interlock and he pulls me into his arms.

“Why’d you jump?”  He questions, in a shaky voice.

“You die, I die too; remember?”  I shout back, on the verge of tears. 

The wind blowing into my face from the fall makes me tear up anyways, and all the emotion rips me apart so much that I feel the tears streaming down my face, falling down, down, down until I can’t see them hit the ground that we are headed to so quickly. 

Tobias takes me and pushes me, hard, away from him.  After a moment of surprise, I realize that there is water under me, and I have a chance of living if I fall into it.  But now he is too far away to pull towards me, and there is nothing under him.

I watch with wide eyes as the ground comes closer and closer.  “Tobias, no, please, let me die with you!”  I scream, petrified.  He looks up at me one last time and shouts, “I love you!” before embracing the ground.

“NO!” I scream as loud as I possibly can and shoot out of bed in a cold sweat.  “Oh God, please don’t let that be true.  Oh my God, please God no.  Please.”  I pray, shaking and quivering like a leaf until I feel his sturdy arms around me.

It was just a dream.  Oh, thank you God.

“Tris, Tris are you ok?  What happened?”  He pulls me close to him and rocks me back and forth gently, pressing one hand to my back and one against my head so I am leaning against his chest.  The gesture is so comforting, so loving, and so familiar that I begin to sob at the thought of losing it.  Of losing him. 

“I had a dream,” I say, between sobs, “tha—that you died.  Your mom killed you—you were under a simulation.”

“What?” He asks, confusedly.  He doesn’t understand.

Oh, Tobias, please.  Don’t make me relive this.

“The simulation made you go to the edge of a building, and you woke up just as you were falling off.  I jumped wit—with you,” I sniff, my voice quaking and tears threatening to resurface twice as violently as before, “and you pushed me aw—ay.  Promise me, Tobias.  Promise me that if you die, I die too.” And with that, I begin to sob.  I’m crying so much that it hurts, my body convulses with each torrent of tears.  I feel him wrap his arms around me even tighter, like a vise, protecting me. 

“Hey, it’s ok, I’m still here Tris.”  His voice breaks a little as he holds me against him, placing his forehead against mine.  “I’m still here, I’m not going anywhere.  I’ll always be here, Tris.”

“I knew we shouldn’t have trusted Evelyn, I knew it, I knew she was trou—”

“You were right,” Tobias interrupts, cutting me off, “I know that now.  I knew it the moment she took all of our guns.  She’s power hungry and we’re her next target.  But I will not let her have us, neither you nor me, she won’t get us.  Okay?”  He presses his lips against mine, calming me.

“I’m here forever, Tris.  If you die, I die too; but if you live, I live too.”

I nod as I shrink into Tobias’s arms, pushing as far as I can to dissolve into his chest and only feel his heartbeat as I try to steady my own.

© Copyright Christina Boothe, 2012.

All roots of this story are directly linked to the work of Veronica Roth from her book series, Divergent. Such content belongs to Veronica Roth and I have no intentions to plagiarize or steal her work in any way.

fyeaharttips:

Source: Analytical Figure Drawing SP08- A blog from an ‘08 figure drawing class that offers useful information about the figure.

I only put a couple of images here to preview, click the link to see the rest!

Thanks to the lovely anon who showed me this!