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occasionaltirades · 1 year

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Excerpts and Summaries of “From the Heart of Hell: Manuscripts of a Sonderkommando Prisoner“

Dear reader, I write these words in the moments of my greatest despair. I do not know, I do not believe that I will live to read these lines again, ‘after the storm’… It may be that this, these very lines I am writing, will be the only witnesses to what was my life. But I will be happy if my writings reach you, free citizen of the world. Perhaps a spark of my inner fire will ignite in you, and you will fulfill at least a part of our life’s desire: you shall avenge, avenge our deaths!

_______

Four years ago, I read an article. It was titled, “Becoming Anne Frank”, by Dara Horn, and appeared in the November 2018 issue of the Smithsonian Magazine, which is a fantastic publication that I highly recommend. You can find it in any library and subscriptions are very affordable. The older issues and articles (including the aforementioned) are also typically available online. Most people are familiar with Anne Frank and her diary, which was published by her surviving father and has been translated into 70 languages and sold more than 30 million copies. However, this post will not be about Anne Frank, because this article piqued my interest with the following paragraph:

The line most often quoted from Frank’s diary— “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart”—is often called “inspiring,” by which we mean that it flatters us. It makes us feel forgiven for those lapses of our civilization that allow for piles of murdered girls—and if those words came from a murdered girl, well, then, we must be absolved, because they must be true.

It posits that part of the popularity of the book is that it predates the time when Anne’s family was presumably sold out, and by people who probably received a reward of approximately $1.40 per Jew. It continues:

Readers know that the author was a victim of genocide, but that does not mean they are reading a work about genocide. If that were her subject, it is unlikely that those writings would have been universally embraced.

The article mentions other writers, but the one that has compelled me is Zalmen Gradowski. He was a writer that they correctly bet I had never heard of, and whose work I was luckily able to obtain, but only by ordering it from the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, paying for postage from Poland, and hoping it wouldn’t get lost in a lengthy transit. A far cry from a trip to a bookstore or library, where you could hopefully still easily procure a copy of one of the books that many of us may be familiar with from our time in school. In addition to the quotations at the top, Gradowski wrote the following:

This is the real reason why I write – that my condemned life may attain some meaning, that my hellish days and hopeless tomorrows may find some purpose in the future.

Having read these words, I wished to share with you some of what he wrote so that they may reach more people. So that his words may be immortalized in more minds. So that you too can bear some witness to what he says is, “merely a small part of the hell of Birkenau-Auschwitz. It is for you to imagine the reality[…]” “[so] that you will be able to form an image of how the children of our people perished.”

First, let me warn you that the following will not be pleasant. Zalmen Gradowski was forced to work in the Sonderkommando, made to escort prisoners and process bodies. He did not survive, dying in a courageous but unsuccessful prisoner revolt. He wrote on what he could and buried his writings in cans in the camp. His writings were retrieved by a surviving friend, but were damaged, and there are gaps in the text where parts were lost or unreadable. As such, most of what follows will be direct quotations, but may include some guessed words on the part of the compiler or myself. In some places [--] will denote a gap in the text. In parts where I have chosen to skip forward, the ellipses will also be in brackets. This is another reason I wished to post this; the book can be as physically difficult to read as it is emotionally, and I want people to be able to experience at least some of it. For both his sake, and for all our sake in this new year. If you’re interested in that Smithsonian article, here is a link:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/becoming-anne-frank-180970542/

___________________ Zalmen spent just shy of two years in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. He and his family had been considering emigrating to Palestine before war broke out, but after the outbreak of war, Poland was quickly occupied and he, his wife, parents, and two brothers and three sisters were all trapped. During the initial occupation, Zalmen did what he could to help his fellow Jews as the head of the medical and health department of the ghetto's Judenrat ("self-administrating" groups coercively formed by the Nazis to administer the closed-off Jewish populations). He continued to try and help as a member of a health group when they were initially moved to a transit camp where they were held without electricity or heating, and epidemics naturally raged. On December 8, 1942, they were moved to Birkenau where the SS carried out a selection wherein his wife, his mother, sisters, as well as his father and a brother-in-law were immediately murdered. Due to his physical condition, he was selected as a member of the Sonderkommando on December 9, in order to replace the 400 Sonderkommando that had been murdered that same day in the gas chamber of Crematorium I. Being a member of this group allowed him (and others) some ability to smuggle goods such as food to other prisoners, and to bribe guards with personal effects left behind by those murdered in order to lessen the suffering of those guarded. It is, however, also the reason he bore witness to so much hell and was able to record it for us. He worried that the world would not believe what was happening in camps like Auschwitz. That it would be dismissed as "horror propaganda" (which is precisely what the German state claimed it to be). He provides the following reason for his writing:

I write so that at least a tiny fraction of the truth may reach the world[...] This is the only goal; this is the sole purpose of my life. I live here with the thought, with the hope that my writings may reach you, and that at least a part of what I and all of us still alive here strive for, the final will of the murdered sisters and brothers of my people, may be realized in this life. ___________________ Come here to me, you free citizen of the world, who have had the good fortune not to know the rule of the cruel [--] two legged beasts, and I will tell you by what sophisticated, sadistic methods they have murdered millions of human beings from the defenceless, suffering Jewish people, protected by none. [...] If you do not return from your journey, it will be because your human heart was too weak to bear the strain of the gruesome, bestial deeds which your eyes beheld. [...] For you will have fled the world of men to seek comfort among the wildest, most savage beasts, rather than live among cultured demons.

From a section on transport to the concentration camp:

See, my friend, how they march in line as if turned to stone. No weeping, not a cry from a child is heard. Do you know why? Because all weeping by a child is stifled by a blow, both to the mother and the child. Such was the order given by the young wild animals [(Nazi guards)], such was their will. Their bestial instincts have been given free rein, and they are looking only for victims to sate their murderous souls, thirsting for warm Jewish blood. This mass of human beings must comply with their dreadful orders, since their lives are in their hands and their bodies could at any moment be corpses lying in red rivers of blood, with no one to bring them to eternal rest. See, my friend, how the mothers hug their children to stifle their weeping. They tuck their little heads under their shawls, so that the sobbing of the baby, freezing to death, will not be heard.

Here you see a woman standing with a baby in her arms. Her husband is standing next to her. They are staring out at the world passing by them, and instinctively keep glancing down at their lovely little baby. They are plagued by deep anxiety. They are still young, full of life, and the world they see through the windows is calling to them. They have someone to live for, someone to be there for, someone to work and labour for. They have just brought their first child into the world, and thereby woven themselves into the web of eternity, become partners in the building and development of the world. And at their very first steps in the world, they have been stopped and told to leave, to depart from the place they had begun to build their nest.

It is not themselves that they are thinking about. [...] For them, the child is the greatest happiness, the greatest comfort, the shared ideal of their lives. But for those cruel criminals, it is a useless plaything, without value or the right to exist.

After the train from the transport camp has begun moving. Remember that the camps were claimed to be "work camps":

The sound of the whistle rouses the people from their rigid immobility. The train has wrenched itself from [--] of death and is moving on. Mothers kiss their children, women their husbands. Tears of joy are flowing. Everyone has revived and drawn new breath. Hope for new life begins to form. [...] The belief is strengthening that all the rumours are false, all the terrible prophesies are baseless, built upon a single incident, dreadful in itself but not of a mass character.

The adults, who are suffering no less than the children, console themselves with the thought that the authorities will surely provide them with food and water at the next station. They will not deport a people intended as a labour force and let them die of hunger and thirst.

We get off the train. Now, my friend, see what happens. See who has come to welcome us. Soldiers in helmets, with large whips in their hands and big angry dogs at their sides. These are the open arms waiting to receive us [--]. No one understands why there is such a heavy guard. Why such a threatening reception? Why? What are we, that armed forces and wild dogs are needed to deal with us. We have come here to work, calm and peaceful people. So why all these precautions? Wait, and you will understand.

After being sorted into groups, apparently by age, sex, and prior occupation for the pretense of work. Zalmen himself was selected as one of the able-bodied:

The stronger ones, the small group supposedly selected as the best labour force, comfort themselves that transporting the women and children, and the weak and old men, in trucks is a mark of [humanitarian] feeling. Perhaps the authorities wish to spare them the burden of a march on foot after such an exhausting journey.

[...] They came with their wives and children, fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, and now they are all alone, without anyone. [...] They were together everywhere. Left the ghetto together, marched from the camp together, travelled on the locked train together. And now, at their final destination, when they have at least reached the dreadful and frightening point of culmination, they have been separated.

After arriving and being tattooed with an identification number:

From that moment on, you have lost your identity. You are no longer the man who once existed. Today you are a meaningless, worthless, walking number. [--] A hundred such numbers are created and taken to their new homes. [...] We stumble across the clayey ground and reach our new graves in fear and exhaustion. We have scarcely the time to look at our new home and breathe its air, when we are clubbed over the heads. Split skulls and battered faces are pouring with blood. Such is the welcome extended to the new arrivals. We are confused and shocked. [...] They explain briefly that this is the [bouquet] welcoming them to life in the camp.

Who knows how those vile criminals, to whatever species they belong, are now treating his weak, sick mother and dear, beloved sister? Who knows in what grave his father and brother have fallen, and how they are being treated? All stand helpless, anxious, despairing, alone, suffering and broken.

In a heavily damaged passage, Zalmen describes the daily march to work, and every man's eyes looking to the barbed wire of the women's camp. Searching for a relative, wife, sister, child. That maybe a ray of hope still glimmers. "You cannot make yourself believe that they have gone forever."

Outside our block too, a dead number is lying. We approach and have a look. Only this morning he was at work and now he lies motionless. No one cares. No one even sighs. Poor man, if you were with your parents now, their child, what commotion would surround you! Your mother would be lying beside you, weeping and sobbing. Your father would be pacing back and forth, unable to sit still, crying like a baby. Your brothers and sisters would be sitting around you, weeping bitterly and grieving for you. Your friends and [--] would come, and each would [--] the house would be full of sorrow [--] carried away by the terrible misfortune. [--] brothers and sisters [--] like stones in the camp. And when a stone sinks [--] no great misfortune. Grief has [--] them [--].

Zalmen writes about how some individuals still carried out the weekly prayers and songs of praise for God, and the struggle many felt on the topic of faith. As with everything else, he wrote much more, but here is an excerpt regarding the disillusioned bitterly watching the ever-faithful pray and sing, while in their daily lives they watched one tragedy and atrocity after the other:

[They] could inspire no feeling of gratitude, nor move us to sing praises to the Creator of the Universe who had allowed a barbarian nation to murder and annihilate millions of innocent people, men, women and children whose only crime was having been born Jewish; for recognizing the omnipotence of that same G-d to whom they now prayed for having brought monotheism to humanity. And because of this they have now become victims. And they should keep singing his praises? What for? To sing a song of praise before this sea of their own blood? To pray to him who refuses to hear the cries and screams of innocent children?

A recurring theme, but one for which there are no "succinct" passages is that of the despair of separation. The breaking up of families and not knowing the fate of loved ones. The despair of mothers who would have gladly died in their children's stead, but knowing that "the devil wants her too, along with her child, as a sacrifice". It is difficult to convey the sorrow in these pages. Gradowski saw the mass graves, the bodies, and the cremations. The hell of the Sonderkommando was bearing witness to it and knowing the fate that awaited them. It did afford them some capacity to help ease the suffering of fellow prisoners, but also meant quite literally processing the murdered. In a series of chapters close to the end, Zalmen describes the work they were forced to do. Watching as truckloads of women and children were brought to the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. They were stripped and forced to stand naked, waiting for "gates of hell to open and give them free passage to the grave.". He describes girls reunited with their mothers kissing and rejoicing at their reunion despite the knowledge that they will soon be leading them to death. He describes the pain of seeing all these people, full of life, who will "in a few hours, be frozen in death. Their mouths will be silent forever. The sparkling eyes, the bewitching charm, will stare fixedly in one direction - searching through dead eternity".

He laments how this multitude will soon be bodies lying in the mud. Their teeth ripped out for metals, rings and jewelry removed. The pale bodies who were just moments earlier their kin will be dragged across the cement and thrown "like a foul carcass" onto elevators to the crematoria. Within minutes hundreds of lives are reduced to ash. Soon, all of these lives will be confined to wheelbarrows, destined to be dumped into unmarked graves.

No trace will be left of those who stand here now; all these people who once filled entire cities, who once had a place in the world, will be effaced, torn out by the roots as if they had never been born.

Sickeningly, he mentions that on this occasion, representatives of the Nazi party had come for the day's "celebration". High-ranking officers whose faces they had never seen in the 16 months he'd been imprisoned coming to watch these women marched into the gas chambers. At this point in 1944, Germany was losing their war. Somehow this slaughter of innocents was supposed to convince them that this was the real battle, and that this extermination was what mattered as their soldiers fell on all fronts.

Further groups are herded into the gas chambers, more than two thousand people, and he describes how soldiers coldly and calmly dumped the poison in through "eyes" at the top of the chamber and walked away "Proud, brave and content, having accomplished the great task for their nation, their fatherland. They have come one step closer to victory".

Finally, Zalmen describes how, after the gas had been administered, they were to open the doors of these great tombs, from which would blow a "wave of atrocious death". The only sound was a barely audible trickling of fluids flowing from bodies. In a "vast, naked sea", body parts protruded, and heads appeared as if floating in this abyss. They are to pull apart these bodies, that are "twisted into each other like a ball of yarn, as if the devil has deliberately played a diabolical game with them before their death and set them in this pose".

Two frozen eyes stare at you, as if to ask: what will you do with me, brother? More than once you recognize an acquaintance with whom you had spent time before he entered the grave.

At the end, he describes the burning.

The hellish fire extends its flames like open arms and snatched up the corpses like precious treasure. The hair catches fire first. The skin swells up in blisters that burst within a few seconds. The hands and feet start to writhe-the veins tighten and move the limbs. Now the entire corpse ignites, the skin has burst, the fat flows, and you hear the sizzle of burning fire.[...] The head burns the longest. Small blue flames flicker in its sockets-the eyes are consumed with the brain deep down and in the mouth the tongue still burns. The entire process lasts twenty minutes - and a body, a world is reduced to ashes.

In one final letter in September of 1944, Zalmen Gradowski described the location of some of the ash pits, and how much had been dumped into the river. He told the finder where to find his other writings. He died less than one month later, probably on October 7, 1944, in a Sonderkommando revolt after almost two years in the camps. Auschwitz-Birkenau would be liberated by the Red Army three and a half months later, on January 27, 1945.

One message that rings through everything is of the barbarism to which people will resort, looking to blame others for a problem. Complex explanations for ills are ignored entirely in favor of a scapegoat. Further, to paraphrase Gradowski, the greater the civilization, the greater its barbarism. It was an organized, efficient society which gave rise to this atrocity, and it is within organized and "civilized" societies that we see an ever-increasing number of people downplaying or denying them. Societies wherein we have more and more people subscribing brazenly to the ideology of the perpetrators. Please, read and learn as much as you can. Humans are uniquely able to learn, almost directly, from those who came before us. Take in their memory and their lessons and carry them into the future.

#holocaust remembrance day #holocaust #from the heart of hell #shoah #zalmen gradowski

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librarytiem · 23 days

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Critical Literacy in Accessing Internet Reference Resources

Teaching critical literacy skills is a top priority for a teacher librarian. “Fostering literacies to empower life-long learners” is one of the five themes in the Leading Learning Framework (page 10), and half of the bullet points in that theme are about critical literacy. In my experience this can be challenging stuff to teach for elementary students, who use the internet all the time, but aren’t very good at it.

Different strategies are needed depending on the age of the students. As with most things, it’s going to be easier to lay the groundwork for primary students by starting offline rather than on Google. “Understanding what they’ve read and making it their own” seems to me to be enough of a learning goal to keep students busy for most of their primary years. This can be done through reading response, writing activities, or research, and all of these are valuable, curriculum-supported areas of study. But at least as far as critical literacy is concerned, I think it’s very important that the research aspect be given special attention. For another course we read a paper by Daniel Willingham which made the case that critical thinking skills don’t transfer well between disciplines. So how much the ability to hear a story and then summarize it in your own words transfers to reading a book or a website and then recording facts from it is an open question. If research skills are the goal, that’s what needs to be taught and practiced.

For both primary students and intermediate students, whether they are using books or the internet as their source, I would set up a series of small, stand-alone activities for them to practice the skills of finding answers to questions and then rephrasing the material into their own words, recording facts in note form and then turning those notes back into sentences or into some other format (diagrams, pictures, infographics, etc.). These activities could be done in collaboration with classroom teachers, but most importantly, they ought to be done shortly before a class does any sufficiently sized research project in class. Communication with classroom teachers early in the year is key, in order to know those teachers’ plans and how best to schedule around them. Using library prep time to support classroom teachers in this way fulfills the core themes of the teacher librarian position, justifies this time to other staff, and sets students up for success going forward.

For intermediate students, we can incorporate additional goals as well. To note-taking skills I would also add internet searching skills (how to use keyword searches in search engines as well as in district-curated online resources, how to sift through the results to find likely useful resources, judging author intent, etc.) and media literacy in weighing the validity of a source (including cross-referencing and checking for citations or author info). As with note-taking skills, I think the best way to approach these topics is in isolation first, teaching them explicitly with short, focused activities, before immediately putting them to use in more authentic learning activities such as research projects. I’ve been the classroom teacher trying to fit in basic Google skills or a visit to the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus page or kidsboostimmunity.com before jumping into research projects, and I know how much I would appreciate having another teacher who can take on some of that important work and give it the time that it deserves.

Resources used

Canadian Library Association (2014) Leading Learning: Standards of Practice for School Library Learning Commons in Canada 2014.

Public Health Association of BC. “Kids Boost Immunity.” 2024. https://kidsboostimmunity.com

Willingham, Daniel. T. (2019). How to Teach Critical Thinking. Education: Future Frontiers: Occasional Paper Series. New South Wales Department of Education.

Zapato, L. “Help Save the Endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus from Extinction!” 1998-2022. https://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/

#library #education

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archivyrep · 1 year

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Amphibia's folly and the stereotypical archives [Part 4]

Continued from part 3

Anyway, to get out of the archives, they break down a wall, destroying a part of the structure. Sprig crawls through the pipes, arriving in the nearby town, and then runs back, saving Anne. While she is glad to be saved, Anne is angry, noting that the trip out of the valley is how she will get home, saying that they can't mess it up. However, when attempting to save her, he and Anne fall back inside, trapped there. Hilariously, Anne says they are ok because they landed on books, with Sprig adding that "knowledge hurts," reminding me of Finn hitting Jake with a book in one of the episodes of Adventure Time. That's it for the episode. It was more positive than I thought. But it does traffic in some stereotypes about archives.

Reprinted from my Wading Through the Cultural Stacks WordPress blog. Originally posted on July 30, 2020.

Perhaps, we should take Schmuland's recommendation that archivists should start "popularizing their own images of the profession to replace inaccurate or negative images," but also must educate themselves on the stereotypes, then "clearly define how reality differs from the stereotype." [6] I believe my friend fulfilled this in some of their fictional writings, like a recent story entitled "The Universe Runs Through It: Cheering Gargantians, Snotty Peridots, Calm Etherians, and a Perplexed Kipo." It features some great scenes within an archives, especially one where characters watch an oral history interview of another character, and a chief archivist. I am proud of my friend for having such characters and centering archives within their story.

One may ask if the archives in Amphibia is truly an archives. If we define an archives as an institution or organization, whether physical or online, which preserves first-hand documentary heritage (deemed to not only be inactive, irreplaceable, and unique but have permanent or long-term value) or long-term memory of a particular group, whether a business, government, or otherwise non-governmental organizational, or an individual, then this would be more of a repository. Although perhaps you could go to the archive in Amphibia to gather first-hand data, facts, and evidence about the past from various records. The fact that there is no archivist is, again, unfortunate. This is because archivists work to help users find the information they are working for, run the archive, care for, and control records. Such records are not seen as the truth but only a contemporaneous record from a specific organization or individual, with the archives having the authenticity, reliability, integrity, and usability in order to be a trusted resource by society. The latter is the case in this instance.

The Society of American Archivists (SAA) defines a library as a "collection of published materials, including books, magazines, sound and video recordings, and other formats." This archives would fulfill that. However, it is more accurately a "place where things can be stored and maintained; a storehouse," the SAA's definition of a repository. Their definition also notes that this can refer to "any type of organization that holds documents...including manuscripts, photographs, moving image and sound materials, and their electronic equivalents." The fact that these materials seem to have enduring value leans toward this being an archives, so I'm going to stand by that in this case. Although, it is not known if this archives is organized "using the principles of provenance, original order, and collective control" and it appears that all the records are permanent. Even so, we can say with complete certainty that this is not a records center.

Notes

[6] Schmuland, Arlene "The Archival Image in Fiction: An Analysis and Annotated Bibliography." The American Archivist 62, no. 1 (Spring 1999): 52-53. I used Chicago Manual of Style 17th edition (Full note) here.

#archives #saa #society of american archivists #definitions #amphibia #disney #disney animation #anne boonchuy #provenance #libraries #archival studies #archival science #the american archivist #arlene schumland

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thevindicativevordan · 3 years

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On Supergirl

Figured I should put up my thoughts about Kara in the wake of her first film appearance being announced, and the final season of her TV show fast approaching. Short version is: Kara is very cool and DC needs to stop messing with her.

My Introduction to Kara

I was introduced to Kara the way most millennials/Gen Zers were I imagine, via the Loeb Superman/Batman arc which brought the traditional Kara Zor-El Supergirl take into Post-Crisis continuity, after years of DC attempting to have a “Supergirl” without violating the editorial mandate that Kal needed to be the literal “Last Son of Krypton” (an example of one of the dumb ways DC fucked Kara over). Story goes that one day Dan Didio was in line at the Superman ride at Six Flags (I love that ride even though it’s stolen my glasses every time I’ve ridden it, even when I left them in a locker!). The ride had signs that talked about various Superman characters. Didio was reading the entry for Supergirl where it talked about her not being Clark’s cousin but instead some weird merge of alien shapeshifter, angel, and human girl, and he realized how fucking stupid that was, and he went back to the office and told Loeb to bring Kara back.

Years later I would also be standing in line at the Six Flags Superman ride (probably at a different park location but who knows?) as a youngster and would read the new Supergirl sign that trumpeted that Superman had a cousin who shared all his powers, an update reflecting the new Loeb origin. I thought she sounded pretty cool, made a note to see if my library had any Supergirl stories next time I visited, then got on the Superman ride and promptly lost my glasses like an idiot because I wanted to take them off while I was riding and pretend I was changing from my “disguise” into Superman mid flight. My dad grounded me for this afterwards, but it gave me a funny story to tell at family get togethers and isn’t that what Six Flags is all about?

A month later (and with spiffy new glasses), my mom dropped me off at a new library next to where she worked, and they had one of the best Superman collections I’ve ever seen to this day. I was in heaven and while reading every Superman book I could find (I couldn’t check them out because I didn’t have a card, my mom’s card didn’t cover the area the library was in, and my mom wouldn’t have checked them out anyway since comics were “too violent”), I found the trade collecting Kara’s new origin. I read it and I thought both she and Superman were really cool, and Batman was a punk who had to beat Darkseid by cheating, the loser. Turner’s art to my young eyes was the best I had ever seen, and the panels got engraved into my brain.

I still get downright nostalgic whenever I see Turner Superman or Supergirl stuff. I also got my parents to rent the animated movie adaption of the Superman/Batman arc from Blockbuster (remember those?), and that sealed the deal. Seeing Kara hold her own against Darkseid convinced me she was as cool as her cousin. Next time my mom dropped me off at the library next to her workplace, I went looking for Supergirl stuff to read. I found the first volume of her new volume by Joe Kelly taking place after the Loeb arc and dove in.

It was... weird. 5 years later I might have enjoyed it but at the time I was majorly put off. Kara took a secret identity for a day and then ditched it because it was “stupid” and the kids bullied her. She was always getting into fights with Kal, and there was this weird plot that I couldn’t follow about how her dad had sent her to kill Kal, maybe or maybe not? Also she could grow crystals which I thought was dumb, and said she was stronger than her cousin which I couldn’t buy for a second given he looked like he was carved out of marble, and she looked like she relied on sunlight instead of food. I put the volume back on the shelf and kinda gave up on reading the character after that for a while.

I followed her via the DC wiki updates just like I did Superman, and everything I read seemed dumb and convoluted. She was split in two, moped around a lot, made out with an alternate version of her cousin, and basically just flopped about the same way the rest of the Superfamily did during the 00s. Nothing made me think I had made a mistake dropping Kara until I read the latest update to her wiki page.

I was super into what I was reading about the Busiek/Johns era of Superman online. Lex was back and making a big revenge scheme that involved all the other Rogues! Old Superman Rogues were getting revamped and made cool again! Johns reintroduced Brainiac and made him a big threat, with Kal and Kara teaming up to fight him! Busiek was revamping Prankster and telling big ambitious Superman stories! For the first time in a long while, the consensus on the Internet was that Superman was good again. My “home” library had zero Marvel books and no Superman or Batman books, all their DC stuff was Flash or Green Lantern, mainly written by Johns. Insane to think back on now. My hopes that because Johns was involved with Superman, Superman books would show up at my library were fulfilled. They started bringing in Busiek and Johns collections, and someone there also ordered Sterling Gates’ first volume of Supergirl, and I checked everything out since I was old enough to have my own library card, and my parents were worried more about the violent video games I was playing rather than comics.

I read everything and loved it. I also really liked Gates’ take on Kara. She was still an imperfect teenager but she wasn’t insufferably angsty or constantly fighting with Kal. She was going to give the secret identity another try and Lana had “adopted” her. It’s funny remembering how I enjoyed all that given my current thoughts on how Kara should work, but it was great at the time. I liked Gates introducing new foes for Kara, some classic Superman Rogues adapted for her like Bizzarogirl, others crafted specifically for her like Reactron. Gates’ basically rekindled my enjoyment of Kara the same way Busiek & Johns rekindled my enjoyment of Superman.

Of course it ended terribly like everything Superman-related seems to.

I’ve got a whole post I want to do about New Krypton and what came after. In short that is the most blatant example of “hitting the reset button” that I’ve ever seen. All the potential got wasted, and afterwards everything except Lex’s Action Comics stuff just didn’t appeal to me. Gates got booted off Kara for Nick Spencer who ended up leaving himself later, a promising Teen Titans line-up with Kara on it didn’t happen, and the last proper Pre-Flashpoint Superfamily story was a crappy team-up with Doomsday against Bigger Doomsday (thank God for Cornell’s final Luthor/Superman confrontation at least). When news of the reboot arrived, I was honestly happy. The Superline needed an enema.

Controversial opinion time: I liked New 52 Supergirl. It’s weird because a lot of the stuff I hated about Kelly’s run was here, and a lot of the stuff I loved about the Gates’ run was not. This was angry, moody, emotional Kara again, fighting with Kal and not fond of Earth. But I was in my teens at this point, and I didn’t want happy go-lucky Superman or Supergirl. I wanted my heroes angry, scared of the future, ready to go out there and smash some cars. Morrison’s Action Comics was 100% my jam (still is once I really understood the deeper meaning beneath the work) and this Kara felt like a natural fit for this universe. Plus we got Asrar on art and that guy made it damn pretty to look at, lots of cool science fiction stuff going on, even with the dumb H’el storyline.

I loved all the new Rogues Kara got. I loved her new Fortress under the ocean. I loved how traumatized she was by the loss of Krypton, that she wanted more than anything to go home, that her cousin was like a stranger to her since they had been apart for so long. I found all of that incredibly relatable. A lot of the New 52 Supergirl stories might have been schlock but it was my type of schlock damnit, and I enjoyed it!

I kept with her New 52 series all the way through the Red Daughter Saga (which I loved). As someone who grew up on Johns GL (since that was the only comics my home library had), seeing a Supercharacter join a Lantern Corp was the hypest thing ever. I loved the finale about Kara finally letting go of her anger and losing the ring while smashing her foe into the sun, it was incredibly cathartic for me as an angry teen myself. I finally stopped following her series sometime after since I was no longer enjoying the Superline or really DC as a whole. It wasn’t until I heard that New 52 Superman died and the “old” Superman was back, that I checked back into DC.

DC Rebirth & How I Think Kara Should Work

I did not enjoy Supergirl Rebirth, and I think I’ll talk about my problems with it alongside how I think Kara as a character should work since the two are related. A pet peeve of mine that has formed over the years is this: I don’t like it when Superfamily members get turned into Clark clones. Kon wearing glasses and going to Smallville High. Kara going to high school and being involved in journalism. Jon more or less being written as a copy of his dad personality-wise. I hate that kind of stuff because it’s boring. What’s the point of a Superfamily if everyone is just copying Clark? It also doesn’t fit the characters especially in Kara’s case. Why the hell does she want to be a journalist? Were there journalists on Krypton? I don’t remember ever seeing one! Shouldn’t she want to be, I dunno, a scientist? That seems to have been the El family tradition, wouldn’t she have been groomed for that?

This one-off by Shea is honestly the only acceptable outcome for Kara going into journalism for me. She realizes she’s just copying her cousin and switches to something she wants to do. So Orlando copying the show, which already basically turned Kara into an expy of her cousin, just did not appeal to me at all. What had worked for me under Gates way back when was not clicking for me this time. I wanted to see Kara embody the principles of the S-shield in a different way than her cousin did. So I really enjoyed when Rebirth ended and we moved into the Bendis era with Andrekyo relaunching the title as Kara in space.

Kara in space has always felt like a good fit for me. Unlike Kal I’ve come to believe that Kara really shouldn’t be all that fond of Earth. For him it’s home, but for her it’s just where she ended up after her real home got destroyed. I think Kara works well as a sort of nomad, occasionally making stops back home to Earth to check on her cousin, but otherwise? She’s more comfortable out in space than she could ever be on Earth. Out in space she can be Kryptonian (which is what she should think of herself as in contrast to Clark being torn between his Kryptonian biology and human upbringing, and Jon/Kon identifying as human), be her true self, not have to pretend to be human to fit in. Kara founding a moon refuge was one of the best ideas for her that I’ve seen, I would love if DC made her Future State refugee center on the moon canon. I’m excited for more Kara adventures in space with the upcoming Tom King story.

Also love that her and Krypto are getting tied together, if they don’t want to use Krypto in Superman’s stuff, let her have him! Bring on cosmic adventurer Supergirl!

Personality & Other Traits

Kara to me should be more hot-tempered than her cousin. All the Superfamily members should have a temper in my opinion, I see that as the “Deadly Sin” of Superman and his family. But while Kal is like a simmering pot that will explode if it’s left cooking for too long, Kara is like dynamite. Light her fuse at your own peril because she will go off on you.

I also like the idea of Kara being rash. Kal’s got a maturity that came from over a decade of having to live with Lex Luthor constantly getting away with all his evil schemes. He’s patient because he’s been forced to be. Kara? If you ask for her help she’ll give it, but beware because she doesn’t really care about the long term impacts of her decisions. She’s an invulnerable teenager after all.

Really liked that Venditti Annual where Kara got tutored in history by a reincarnation of Hawkman. Kara having a passion for history is a neat trait, would be nice to see her teach Kal or Jon some Kryptonian lore, or have her lead a Kryptonian holiday celebration for the Superfamily because she’s the only one who remembers how to do it.

Sexuality wise I know a lot of people ship Kara and Lena on account of the chemistry between the two in the show. I haven’t watched the show myself but I’m fine with making Kara bisexual, the Superfamily could use some LGBT+ rep, and Lena hasn’t done anything of worth as a villain, so undo that and throw the two together. If we’re letting Harley and Ivy get away with murder I think we can let Lena off the hook too, undo the Ultrawoman weirdness and put the two together. Could be fun seeing the two building that moon refuge together.

All in all I think Kara is a great character who is a stronger embodiment of the immigrant experience than even her cousin in some ways. I hope King does a good job with her, she’s treated better than her cousin on the film side, and that overall the 20s are a better decade for Supergirl than the 10s were.

#supergirl #superman #lena luthor #krypto #dc comics

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awesomelephuoclocblog-blog · 4 years

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https://lephuocloc.com/commercemojo-review/

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fanfic-from-a-67-impala · 5 years

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I’m a Believer

Fulfilling a square for @spnonewordbingo: BRUNCH

Characters: Charlie x questioning lesbian!reader, Sam, Dean

Word Count: 2466

Summary: You were never one for romance, and the idea of love seemed as out of reach as ever. You figured maybe it happens for some people and not others.

But then you saw her face...

Warnings: teensy bit of angst at the beginning

A/N: I’ve been sitting on this idea for a while. I swear I’m getting to requests soon.

Listen to the Monkees song here.

The bunker door opens and closes, followed by Dean’s heavy, uneven steps clanging down the stairs. He reaches the library, where you and Sam lounge in the chairs.

You glance up from your book. “You’re home early.”

“Finished early,” Dean replies, flopping into one of the chairs.

He left for a bar only a few hours earlier to blow off some steam, which usually involves him stumbling through the door in the wee hours, the smell of perfume still lingering on his skin.

“No luck?” Sam asks.

“No, no—plenty of luck,” Dean smirks. “I thought I hit record time last Valentine’s day, but my God, this girl—”

“Okay, thanks, man. Don’t need to hear any more,” you interrupt.

“Sure you do,” Dean says. “Isn’t the deal that you live vicariously through me?”

You shake your head. “What makes you think I have to?”

“Oh, even Sam sees more action than you.”

“Dude, come on,” Sam warns.

Dean holds up a hand. “All I’m saying is—how long have we been riding together?”

“Too long,” you mutter.

He rolls his eyes. “Well, in all our ten years, give or take, not once have you, you know, spent the night out.”

You set your book on the table and cross your arms over your chest, raising an eyebrow.

“I’d offer to help, but—”

“But you know I’d knock you on your ass before you could get out the words ‘last night on earth,’” you finish for him.

“Yeah,” he agrees. “And not in the sexy way.”

You sigh. “I guess it’s just nice to have some kind of connection before I end up in bed with a guy, you know? And, so far, I… haven’t.”

“Sure,” Sam says. “But you don’t want to find someone you do connect with? Dean and I both have at one point or another.”

“I used to,” you shrug. “But I don’t know. I’m starting to think it’s never gonna happen for me.”

Dean scoffs. “What, are you kidding? You could have any guy—”

“You know what?” you cut him off. “How did this become about me?”

“You’re right. It’s none of our business,” Sam concedes.

He turns to Dean. “Anyway, it’s a good thing you’re back early. I just got an email from Charlie. We’re meeting her for brunch tomorrow.”

“Brunch?” you question.

“Yeah,” Sam shrugs. “Right, I forgot you’ve never met her. Charlie’s a hunter friend of ours.”

You furrow your brows in confusion. “What kind of hunter eats brunch?”

Dean chuckles. “She’s got her quirks, that’s for sure,” he admits. “But you’ll love her.”

“Good enough for me,” you nod. “What time are we leaving?”

A bell dings above your head as you follow the boys through the doorway of a cafe in town. The air is tinged with the bite of roasting coffee and something buttery.

A waving hand catches your eye from across the room. The woman it belongs to waves and smiles in your direction.

Definitely not Charlie, you think. You can’t possibly be meeting someone who looks like she belongs on the cover of a magazine.

Still, the boys head in her direction.

Following them, you smooth out your clothes, suddenly regretting your casual choices this morning.

She slides out of the booth and jumps into Sam’s outstretched arms.

“What’s up, bitches?” she says when he releases her.

Dean scoops her up. “Hey, kiddo.”

She pulls away and smiles up at him. She has a beautiful smile, really. It lights up her vibrant green eyes. Long red curls frame her face, and light freckles pepper her cheeks and nose.

You feel your heartbeat start to pound when her curious green eyes land on you.

“(Y/N), this is Charlie,” Sam introduces. “Charlie, (Y/N).”

“So, you’re the famous (Y/N),” she says.

Heat rises to your cheeks. “I don’t know about ‘famous.’”

“Are you kidding?” she says. “These guys told me all about you. Man, I would’ve killed to be there when they first discovered the angels.”

“Well, I would’ve killed to be the one who defeated the leviathans.”

She ushers the three of you into the booth where she was sitting.

“So, Charlie,” Sam says, “what have you been up to?”

“Oh, you know. Hacking big bads, burning bones—the uszh,” she answers. “I was in Missouri on a ghost hunt, decided I’d come by and visit.”

The waiter none of you noticed rounding the corner gives Charlie a disturbed look.

“Uh… what can I get you?” he asks.

Once you’ve all ordered, Dean looks around the restaurant. “Nice place. Very hipster.”

“I know, right?” Charlie says. “I found it online. It got four and a half stars on Yelp.”

“Sorry, ‘Yelp’?” Dean questions.

Sam clears his throat. “It’s a site where people—”

“I know what it is.” Dean turns to Charlie. “I just didn’t peg you as a Yelp kind of girl.”

“Don’t judge me. It’s helpful,” she retorts.

“Sure would’ve been helpful a few weeks ago,” you mutter.

Dean groans. “Oh, don’t remind me.”

“Why? What happened a few weeks ago?” Charlie leans forward in her seat, interested.

You chuckle. “So, we roll into this small, middle-of-nowhere town. It’s before the crack of dawn. It had been a while since the last food break, and there’s one place with its lights on in town, so this one—” you point an accusatory finger at Dean— “drags us there. We take one look at the menu. Turns out it’s a vegan place.”

Charlie laughs and turns to Dean next to her. “You, Dean Winchester, actually stepped foot in a vegan restaurant.”

“Okay, in my defense, we’d been on the road for twelve hours.” He shakes his head. “I wish we’d never taken that case.”

Sam scoffs. “Right. You’d have let those people die so you could have meat.”

“Damn straight.”

You and Sam continue the story while Dean frowns at the memory, pausing only for a satisfied sigh at his burger when the food arrives.

Well into the meal, while Sam is recounting new information he found in the Men of Letters’ archives, your foot brushes against someone else’s. You glance across the table at Charlie, who darts her eyes downward when you meet them, withdrawing her foot.

“All right, I’m going to go get this settled,” Sam says, holding up the check as he slides out of the booth.

“And I’m going to hit the restrooms,” Dean adds before heading to the corner of the restaurant.

You take a sip of cold coffee while Charlie wraps her hands around her glass.

“So,” she says, “this was fun, right?”

“Yeah, it was nice,” you say. “Thanks for letting me tag along. I’ve never done brunch before.”

She bites her lip and leans her hands on the table. “Well, how’s about we have a real meal? Maybe dinner? Tonight?”

You almost choke on your coffee in surprise. You stare at her, convinced you must have heard her wrong.

“Who am I kidding?” she says. “Of course you have plans tonight.”

You shake your head, almost too quickly. “Free as a bird.”

A wide smile grows on her face. “Cool,” she says. “There’s a place across town—Giovanna’s. Say seven?”

You hesitate a moment. You should tell her that you have no intention of getting involved with her, that you don’t even like women.

But don’t you? Doesn’t the overwhelming feeling of wanting to see her again as soon as possible mean there’s something there?

“Sounds great,” you nod.

You walk through the glass doors of the restaurant at thirty seconds past seven.

After brunch, you went back to the bunker and spent an hour deciding what to wear. You’d never cared much for the way you looked before, but tonight, you suspected, was special. You wanted Charlie to see you at your best, something you’ve never wanted of anyone.

You shouted to the boys that you were going to run some errands, and you slipped out, drove into town, and waited in your car a block away from the restaurant until seven o’clock rolled around.

You freeze in the doorway. What were you thinking showing up here alone? By “we,” she obviously meant you and the boys. How stupid will you look when you waltz in by yourself expecting a date when she’s expecting a group dinner?

“Hi,” the hostess greets from behind her stand.

The restaurant smells like rich bread and wine, not even a hint of the greasy odor you’ve become so familiar with at your regular diners. The tables are lined with tablecloths, each set with utensils, wine glasses, and a small flickering candle.

“I’m meeting someone,” you tell the hostess.

“What’s the name?” she asks.

“Uh, Bradbury, I think.”

Across the room, you spot Charlie at a table. She sits at a table for two so that her side faces you. She wears a maroon-colored dress that complements her hair, which she pulled up into a bun.

You barely pull your eyes away to tell the hostess, “I found her.”

Charlie smiles when she glances up at you.

“Hey,” she greets, standing up to give you a hug. “Wow, you look great.”

“Thanks. You look really nice, too,” you say as the two of you settle into your seats.

You stumble over your words at first, but the longer you talk with Charlie, the more relaxed you feel, and conversation flows easily.

She tells you she’s from Kansas and bounced from places like Chicago, where she met the boys, to Michigan. She tries to downplay her computer skills as nothing important, but the enthusiasm in her voice tells you that she’s exceptional at what she does.

You tell her about your hunter’s childhood, growing up on the road, living by motels and dusty backroads like any hunter does. You exchange stories of life on the run—whether it’s from monsters or law enforcement doesn’t seem to make a difference.

Halfway through the entree, your phone buzzes, the screen lighting with Sam’s name.

You look up at Charlie with a wince. “I’m sorry. I should probably take this. The boys get worried.”

“It’s no problem,” she waves you off. “You do what you gotta do.”

You head outside the restaurant and press the button.

“Hey,” you answer.

“(Y/N),” Sam greets. “Just checking in. You okay?”

“I’m fine, Sam. Just got caught up in something.”

He pauses, listening. “What kind of something?”

“Nothing,” you assure him, listening to the gears turning in his mind. “I’m just in town, nothing funky about it. Promise.”

“All right,” he huffs. “Well, as long as you’re in town, do you mind picking up some lighter fluid? We’re running low.”

You let the line go silent for a moment as you construct some story that would offer a reason why you won’t be coming home with lighter fluid, or any supplies, really.

“(Y/N)?” he asks before you think of something.

“I can’t do that,” you spit out.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, I’m kind of… on a… a date?”

“You’re on a what?”

“What?” Dean’s muffled voice sounds through the speaker.

“She’s on a date,” Sam says. “You’re on a date?”

You sigh. “Yes, and you two are interrupting it.”

“Wait a second,” Dean says. “Who? Where? Wh—”

“Date now, details later,” you insist.

“All right, all right,” Sam says. “I guess we won’t wait up?”

“Yeah, don’t,” you say. “Good night, boys.”

You switch off your phone and dart back to your table, where Charlie waits patiently.

“All good?” she asks.

You nod. “All good.”

Again, you slip into a natural back-and-forth of light anecdotes and shy advances.

A lull settles between you over a shared dessert, and you decide to break the silence.

“You know, I’ve, um—” you pause to lick your spoon— “I’ve never done this before.”

“Had a chocolate souffle?” she suggests. “That’s a crying shame.”

“Well, that, too,” you shrug. “But I meant I’ve never done this before.” You gesture between the two of you. “The date thing. With a woman.”

Realization fills her features as she smacks her lips lightly and places her spoon on the plate.

“Well…” she drawls. “What did you think?”

As you play the night through in your mind, storing some moments to remember on a rainy day, you can’t help the smile that crosses over your face.

“Five stars.”

The next morning, the bunker halls are cold and quiet, but you hear the boys’ voices as you round the corner of the kitchen.

Their chattering ceases as their expectant eyes land on you.

“So?” Dean says after you say nothing.

“‘So’?” you repeat, pouring a cup of coffee.

He rolls his eyes. “So, how ‘bout that Chiefs game?”

“How was your date?” Sam interjects.

You take a sip of your coffee and turn to them. “It was good.”

Dean throws his hands in the air while Sam stares at you with wide eyes.

“It was… better than good?” You bite your lip and sigh. “It was great, and it was magical, and I think I’m in love. Is that what you want to hear?”

Sam looks to his brother, then you. “That’s great, (Y/N), but are we ever going to meet the guy?”

You turn your attention down to your coffee. “Well…”

“We already know him, don’t we?” Dean says. “God, tell me it’s not Garth.”

“What? No—”

“It’s Garth, isn’t it?” he says. “I swear, that guy keeps making the eyes at you.”

Sam furrows his brow. “‘The eyes’? That’s not even a thing.”

“It’s a thing. You just don’t—”

“It’s not Garth!” you shout.

Dean’s shoulders relax as he huffs out a sigh.

“Then, who…” Sam trails off as his eyes drift to your left.

Charlie stands in the doorway, wrapped in a grey Men of Letter’s robe.

“Morning,” she says, stepping toward you.

You smile at her, frustration at the boys melting away. “Good morning.”

She wraps an arm securely around your waist before turning her head to the boys.

“What’s up, bitches?”

They stare at you for a minute, mouths gaping.

“Charlie?” Sam finally manages. “Charlie’s your guy?”

“Hey, I am a lady,” she remarks. “A queen in some realms.”

He nods. “Of course.”

“We just didn’t think you…” Dean gestures to you.

“Oh, me neither,” you admit, draping an arm over Charlie’s shoulders. “But it feels right, you know?”

Even with sleepy eyes and unbrushed hair, she flashes you a smile that makes your heart flutter. As if to return the sentiment, she tilts her head up to peck your lips.

“Now,” she says, “about that ‘I think I’m in love’…”

Tags: @ellie-andthemachine @gaybrieljax @electraphyng @emerald-watermelon-199 @mersuperwholocked-lowlife

#Supernatural #Supernatural x reader #Spn x reader #Supernatural oneshot #Spn oneshot #Spn #Charlie Bradbury #Charlie Bradbury x reader #Charlie x reader #Charlie Bradbury oneshot #Charlie oneshot #Sam Winchester #Dean Winchester #oneshot #crimson and clover #wlw reader #writing is hard #fluff

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ashleygouin2-blog · 5 years

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WV Converter Convert WV To MP3, FLAC, WAV, And Other Formats

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Ideally, archived audio information needs to be as near the unique CD as potential, with full and correct metadata, encoded in a lossless format (usually Free Lossless Audio Codec, or FLAC). This requires a variety of space, the cost of which would once have been prohibitive, but the plummeting price of storage makes it possible to maintain those files as a backup, and make copies for everyday use. You can too encode copies using lossy codecs for playback on units with restricted storage. FlacSquisher can convert all your Flac files to MP3 with ease while sustaining the directory construction in the unique library. Is there a flac-player on iOs that has an honest strategy to deal with playlists? I might like to import and usem3u recordsdata on my phone. Step 1 - Select the file that you just need to play (FLAC in this case). Earlier this week I needed convert a stack of outdated audio books from them4a format to a extra Android-pleasant format likemp3 — and SoundConverter did what I needed effortlessly. Look for a mp3 converter which encodes utilizing all CPU cores simultaneously, get the job completed in double quick time. Audials Tunebite Platinum is suitable with forty import formats and can convert to eleven output formats. It isn't as fast as Swap, but its streaming content material recorder is the most impressive. Edit your audio tracks earlier than changing. Change to the Editor Tab and comply with the instructions of the Editing Audio chapter. Convert any audio information back to FLAC with out audio high quality loss. Appropriate for archiving: FLAC is an open format, and there's no technology loss if you want to convert your data to another format in the future. In addition to the frame CRCs and MD5 signature, FLAC has a verify choice that decodes the encoded stream in parallel with the encoding process and compares the result to the unique, aborting with an error if there's a mismatch.Nonetheless, gear is bar-none one of the best ways to enhance the quality of your sound. Gear is like the engine and ignition components of your car - audio format is like the brand of gasoline you employ. Certain, it can make a distinction, however provided that you exit of your strategy to actually use something that is bad. In any other case, it's insignificant in the bigger scheme of things. Would you pay $0.20 extra a gallon if Shell guaranteed its gasoline improved the facility output of your automotive by zero.08%, and also you had to go to a special fuel station to get it? No - not until you are the lead engineer of an F1 workforce. That's what lossless audio high quality is - it is the last little bit you'll be able to squeeze out of a near-perfect setup.Free Freemake Audio Converter converts FLAC to MP3 preserving the original high quality. Turn heavy FLAC files to MP3 rapidly and simply and save space in your onerous drive. Play and edit the transformed music on any device together with iPhone and Android, and with any software. HQ recordsdata are supported. We've shared four reliable methods for changing FLAC to MP3 on Mac and Home windows. If you're just converting every so often, the web instruments should be adequate to fulfill your wants. But for lengthy-time users, you have to know on-line FLAC to MP3 converters may waste numerous time when uploading and converting large measurement information. What's extra, it's a must to personal steady community connection.Should you don't need to take the time to convert your FLAC recordsdata to play them on your iPhone or iPad, there's an app to unravel this downside for you; in truth, there are a number of. Most of those apps work by circumventing the standard sync" feature in iTunes, permitting you to share recordsdata directly to the app installed in your machine. Once the app is installed, it ought to show up under your iPhone or iPad once linked to your laptop. From there, you must be able to drag files from a folder on to the app, and you'll be set.

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thelunarbond · 5 years

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chocolate chip, biscotti, Dutch letter, and fig roll for Yume, Minami, and Phoenix?

Chocolate Chip: What smell reminds you of your childhood?

💙 Yume 💙 :

“The smell of the beach! The sea water, the sand… It reminds me of when me and my dad would go to the beach and go out in our boat. Since I moved to Westerlyn, I’ve kinda missed the beach, but I get to see it a lot when I travel! The beach brings out a childlike joy in me. I should invite the other Lunar Bond members to the beach soon!”

💕Minami 💕:

“Old books. Like, really, really old books. My sister used to take me to the library in Upper Lake when I was a kid and I’d listen to a storyteller every Sunday afternoon. I’d never actually rent books from there like my sister would, but I’d play with the other kids and talk to the storyteller, who was always nice and she would bring homemade cookies for all of us. Fun times!”

Phoenix:

“This is probably gonna be a little weird, but… paint. The smell of wet paint that’s drying. Also, the smell of crayons. And pencils. The smell of clay. Just… art materials. My mother was a very talented fine artist. She’d spend hours upon hours in her studio, painting or sculpting or drawing. It was normal to not see her for up to a day at a time. But the work she made was incredible. You could see her feelings in every brush stroke and every mark in a sculpture. It was through my mother’s work that my young mind started to understand art. She’d sometimes even make paintings of my favourite book characters or little clay figures of my favourite cartoon characters for my birthday when I was younger. I can’t really go into art stores anymore. They make me a little… emotional.”

Biscotti: What languages do you speak? Which one feels the most intimate to you?

(Note: As the Lunar Bond isn’t set in our world but features human characters, the names of countries and languages are different! As this aspect isn’t fully planned and completed yet, I’ll put the closest to our world’s equivalent as their answers, but I may do an updated version when I plan it out more)

💙 Yume 💙 :

“Hmm… I’ve travelled a lot, so I can speak quite a few languages, but none of them are fluent. I’m pretty good at French, German, Italian… but for the most part I can ask for directions or for food in a cafe and that’s about it. An intimate language? Oh, I absolutely adore the sound of Italian. It’s so pretty. I’ve used a pickup line on Chase in Italian once but then I realised that he learnt Spanish at school, not Italian. It was kinda embarrassing but he didn’t seem to care!”

💕Minami 💕:

“I’m pretty good at Japanese as my dad’s family still live there. I’m still pretty rusty at my reading or writing skills though. And I’d also say it’s my most intimate language as it reminds me of family. It’s a little part of who I am, you know? Those family members mean a lot to me.”

Phoenix:

“I… don’t speak any other languages. It’s kinda embarrassing, actually. Yume and Chase speak at least one language to a basic degree and Minami is virtually fluent in Japanese speaking, and Alexis is learning French in order to speak to an online friend… So it’s only me and Lavender who can’t speak any other languages. I’d like to learn another language if I get time to. Maybe Minami can tutor me… I might be biased because I’m monolingual, but English is my most intimate language as I can take in what is being said to me. But I do really like the sound of French.”

Dutch Letter: If you could decorate your room anyway you wanted, how would it look?

💙 Yume 💙 :

“Oh, I’ve thought about this for the longest time! I’d cover one wall in photos from my travels and photos of me and my friends as a feature wall, and have a glittery, custom king sized bed! I’d also have a big, sparkly shelf unit full of trinkets and souvenirs from different countries and a walk in wardrobe to keep all my clothes and shoes in. Oh, and a pink rug. And a dog. I know a dog isn’t room decor but I always picture my dream room having a dog in it!”

💕Minami 💕:

“I’m the kind of person who thinks that less is more, so I’d have plain yellow walls, floating shelves with books and trinkety bits on, and a double bed with yellow patterned sheets. From the ceiling I’d hang little fairy cutouts and I’d have bunting on one wall. I’d also get a huge houseplant to put in the corner. It wouldn’t be a massive room, but not too small either. I’d maybe also have a comfy chair to relax in as well.”

Phoenix:

“I’ve never really had to design a room before. But I’d like white walls, as any accent colour looks good with white, and one entire wall would just be shelves to put my books and things on, so I can look at them. There’d also be a snug in the corner to read my books in. I feel like I’d have a blue accent colour, as blue is relaxing, so maybe a blue rug and blue bed sheets, and I’d paint the wardrobe and drawers blue as well. I’d also get a few cacti and succulents to dot around the room and my shelves because I like to look after plants. I have no idea if that would look good, but it looks very “Phoenix” in my head.”

Fig Roll: What promise do you wish you could take back?

💙 Yume 💙:

“Oof, we’re getting into the heavy stuff all of a sudden. This question makes me sad. I’m not the kind of person to make promises I’d want to take back, but… I’ve done it before. I promised my little sister I wouldn’t move out and leave her on her own, but I ended up running away. Maybe I want to take it back because I broke it, and I know that makes me a bad sibling. She’s probably never forgiven me for what I did. I want to see her again so I can apologise, but she’d be furious… Haha. I don’t really like this talk of sad stuff. Let’s try and lighten the mood again!”

💕Minami 💕:

“Oh… At school, I promised this one girl that we’d be best friends forever. I wish I could take it back because I didn’t see how she was using me, and talking about me behind my back. She’d spread my phone number to everyone and they all texted me horrible things. I never suspected her of doing such a thing, but all the signs were right in front of me, even when I made such a dumb promise to her. Maybe I was feigning ignorance or something. I know it’s dumb to think about that promise as something serious, but it really reflects my ignorance at the time. …And as for promises to my family, well… I don’t really want to get into them. It’d make it depressing.”

Phoenix:

“Promises I want to take back?… I don’t feel the most comfortable talking about this kind of thing, because I don’t make many promises. I wouldn’t promise someone anything if there was a slight chance that I’d want to take it back. You see, I don’t really get close enough to people to make promises in the first place. And I wouldn’t promise something to someone I don’t feel close to. I don’t trust other people’s promises, so I don’t make them in case I can’t fulfil them.”

#sorry this is late!!!#that language question was hard because i havent fleshed out the lunar bond world yet lmao #also the promise one was hard to avoid spoilers with especially regarding minami and phoenix #but i like a challenge #and i hope you like it!!!#oc asks #answers #lunar bond #ailuroscorvus

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omgshecodes · 5 years

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„Before you can swim, you need to learn how to dive.“

This piece of wisdom as told by my mentor @carlaelisafischer guided me through the day, and in the following passages you will understand what’s behind.

Today I wrote my last and most important exam: programming. Now I won’t sugarcoat anything but rather say it straight: I completely failed - but you know what? I am not afraid to admit that I did. No, let me even go beyond that. Meanwhile I learned not to be afraid of failure per se, and this exactly is what makes one powerful, invincible, persistent.

When I came in touch with CS in the beginning of last year, as every coding beginner I faced the question which programming language I should learn best, but more importantly what resources I should use. I found myself juggling between several programming languages as well as resources which is literally the worst you could do (who remembers my post on that?). Eventually I decided to settle for the programming language C and I came across this super amazing online course offered by @harvarduniversity called CS50.

I did this course at a very slow pace though since, back then, my son wasn’t in kindergarten yet so I didn’t have as much time as I do have now. So eventually I could acquire some basic knowledge but I didn’t make it to the depths.

Nonetheless, the little knowledge I had of C definitely helped me in starting out well with university where we’re being taught C++. However, only a few weeks in uni made me realize that a) we go at a super fast pace and b) programming was slowly but surely absorbed by all other classes - even in the truest sense of the word due to a overlap in my schedule which made me miss programming class every two weeks. Somewhere along the line I was lagging behind to the degree that I didn’t even make any effort to catch up because I was just busy with every other demanding class.

At this point I already allowed myself to go slower and change my game. While I started uni with the illusion to ace it within the standard period of study, now it was all about survival and merely fulfilling the minimum of requirements. Carla made me understand that university does not really pursue the goal to make you learn in-depth but to make you qualified/employable only. Hence, the real learning and studying should be taking place privately and auto-didactically.

So when I finished my second last exam last week I had 8 days left until today’s programming exam, but as I continued studying for that exam I realized that I was lacking in concentration a lot as I have been studying day and night for other exams since the passed 3 weeks. At some point your brain just shuts you know. That was why I allowed myself a mini vacation which ultimately left me with another 4 days to prepare for the exam and hence, make up for several months of programming, which was totally unrealistic already.

Given this background information, the only way I saw to pass the exam was to scheme a „puzzle algorithm“ which looked like me relying on printed code snippets and the script we were offered by university. If you have read my last post, we were allowed to bring anything with us to the exam, ranging from complete programs printed on paper over books to just anything you could imagine, except for electronic devices. But the materials I took with me only distracted me and my mind just could not get involved with the exam simply because I haven’t practiced in months.

The last 20 minutes of the exam were actually quite funny because there was me, having retired and starting to relax, while I heard my classmates hitting their keyboards like crazy in hopes to get this exam finished in time. I, for my share, was thinking about how I’m going to proceed from this failure, and this is where my lovely mentor Carla comes into the picture.

I can truly say that Carla is a light of guidance for me. When I reached out to her her right after the exam she was already ready to catch me, serving me with all of her wisdom.

I won’t go into detail as to all the things she said because our voice messages sometimes take up to an hour, but put in a nutshell:

She highlighted the fact that university does not set a system for me, but merely sets appointments where I am asked for a solution to a specific problem, so in a sense I gotta know what university wants know, but then it is completely up to me how I am going to achieve that. I should do it my own way, build my own battle plan in which I am the only person to determine which things happen when. Nothing should be chewed for me. You need your own system and own plan, and then you’re dangerous.

Thus, Carla advised me to let programming class be and act as if I am not enrolled in university. She recommended me to rely on and trust in my own learning ability because I need to become myself - by myself. She suggested that I should start out small (again) and take baby steps as I am in desperate need of learning achievements because this is how one learns best, because learning gotta be fun. Ultimately, she told me that I need to learn how to dive first in order to be able to swim, meaning I should dive in the depths of fundamentals, I should go under water as an inurement for defeat.

Right after our conversation I went to the city library and borrowed this gem right here which is an introduction to C. Ironically, the book’s cover shows some lemons and you know what they say: if life hands you lemons, make lemonade! :-) The plan is to work my way through the book without using any other resources such as university’s offered script or the internet and with the pre-installed terminal on my Mac plus a simple text editor instead of a bloated IDE, just after the motto back to the basics.

All I can say is that I am super motivated to start over with a new strategy and devour this book as my only resource. It feels good to keep it minimal for the sake of maintaining an overview - it lowers the pressure. And it feels good to rely on myself - which, again, does lower the pressure. And most importantly, I am happy I can take you guys with me as I grow. I mean, ‘omgshecodes’ was and still is my personal studygram, so let’s record both my defeats and achievements in oder to keep it real! Let’s do this! :-)

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cicadachime91 · 2 years

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Home Improvement DIY Projects instructions A Few Ideas To truly get you Started

DIY home improvement projects, each large and little, are happening inside everybody's neighborhood each and every and every saturday and sunday. So rather as compared to postpone your individual home improvement regarding another six months why don't you just dust particles off the hammer and saw, get your creative fruit drinks flowing and find into your project nowadays. If you are a novice in home improvement DO-IT-YOURSELF style then you can become begun in the 'do it yourself' method by initially tackling a small project, a single that does not involve a great package of skill based knowledge. Say, for example, you have got just relocated and you are not too impressed using the previous occupant's colour scheme throughout the particular house - an individual can start your current home improvement career by heading to your local paint shop, load yourself plan brushes, paint, turpentine and the few ground cover sheets - turn up the music in addition to go crazy about the walls. The painting project is one that does not involve acquiring or hiring expensive equipment nevertheless the ending result can end up being quite spectacular, especially if you have combined colors effectively. If you intend to paint the interior of your current home first then it is a new good idea to possess a family discussion to hear everyone's suggestion about the proposed color system. The children's landscapes are important particularly if you are likely to paint their rooms due to the fact if you just went ahead plus used colors an individual like without asking them it might result in major grief. Merely imagine how amazed your sports jock 16-year-old son would likely react if he or she came home by practice to get you had painted the sanctum a mix of purples in addition to pinks. Remember everyone has an opinion about colors and the object is to reach a consensus together. The saying should go that 'a transformation is as excellent as being a holiday' plus using a freshly painted home certainly helps make the rooms experience fresh and revitalized. At the conclusion of the task you will stop up with a great sense of fulfillment and probably a dash of determination to start a person on the path to your following DIY home improvement project. Easy Tips For Outside Typically the House Other relatively inexpensive home improvement DIY projects can certainly de completed typically the external regions of typically the home. You may be thinking of which it is time frame to change your yard area but no longer actually understand what in order to do. So the particular best move in this situation is usually to borrow a several books from your local library or look online at exactly how some of typically the more elegant in addition to expensive properties have got structured their backyards. For Bostons Finest Masonry , an individual could really put some interesting attributes like building a fountain or installing some benches around the perimeter associated with the garden. You may even decide to get on a larger home improvement DIY job and build your own gazebo in your backyard. If typically the garden needs a general spruce-up then maybe something as easy as clearing away bushes and bushes can produce a marked variation for the appearance regarding your backyard. Provide a little thought on what an individual can do to improve the appearance and features of your home and grounds and then visit the local handyman shop or go about line for a few advice and direction to ensure your home improvement DIY project is a roaring success.

#Chimney Repair

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loadingreward822 · 3 years

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Adobe Acrobat Indesign

Adobe Acrobat Professional Indesign

Indesign Vs Acrobat

Adobe Indesign Tutorials

Adobe Acrobat Indesign

InDesign offers a direct and simple workflow that dramatically reduces the time and effort required to produce accessible PDF documents from an InDesign layout. Most of the tasks are executed within InDesign, with only a few final steps required in Adobe Acrobat. Please note: I don't want to use book and adobe acrobat. I want to use only adobe indesign cs6 or cc. To sum up: You can use the book feature and make a PDF of the two documents. (non-destructive) You can use Acrobat or another PDF editor to merge the PDFs (non-destructive).

Submitted by circleinteractive on Mon, 2015-07-27 13:22

Download and installation questions

How do I know if my computer meets the basic hardware and software requirements?

Each product includes its system requirements on the product page. Creative Cloud applications' requirements are also available on Adobe's website. Web scraper chrome extension. To see the full list of Adobe products, visit the Adobe for Nonprofits through Charity Digital Exchange programme page.

How do I download, install, and activate Adobe products?

Follow the instructions in the fulfilment email you received from Charity Digital Exchange with the subject line 'Your Adobe Donation Request #xxxxxx Through Charity Digital Exchange.'

Do I have to register for an Adobe.com account and activate the product?

Yes. You must register for an Adobe account first before you can download and install Adobe software. To register:

Go to the Adobe home page.

Click Sign In. On the sign-in page, click Get an Adobe ID.

Enter your information and click Sign Up.

Where can I find technical support?

If you have download, installation, or activation issues, visit the Adobe Support page.

Adobe for Nonprofits through Charity Digital Exchange programme questions

Which Adobe products are available through Charity Digital Exchange?

Adobe offers both donations and access to discounted rates through Charity Digital Exchange:

Donations of select titles: Adobe currently offers Acrobat Pro for Windows, Acrobat Pro for Mac, and the Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements bundle for Windows and Mac. Eligible organisations may receive up to four donated Adobe products within a (US) fiscal year (July 1 to June 30).

Access to discounted rates for Creative Cloud: Adobe offers access to discounted rates on Creative Cloud and Acrobat Pro DC memberships. The Creative Cloud Complete plan includes Adobe Photoshop CC, Illustrator CC, Premiere Pro CC, InDesign CC, and many more products. See the Adobe website for a full list of products included in the Complete plan. The Acrobat Pro DC plan includes Acrobat Pro DC and access to Document Cloud services.

Is my organisation eligible for Adobe products through Charity Digital Exchange?

How much do Creative Cloud and Acrobat Pro DCcost when requested through Charity Digital Exchange?

Charity Digital Exchange’s admin fee for the access to discounted rates is £4. After requesting this access, you'll pay Adobe directly.

For the Complete plan, you'll pay Adobe for the first year of Creative Cloud membership, a discount of 60% off the retail price. Unless you cancel, you'll pay Adobe every year after, a discount of 40% off the retail price. Adobe will state during the checkout process that your contract will renew automatically at standard rates, but you will actually be billed at the discounted rate.

For the Acrobat Pro DC plan, you'll pay Adobe directly at a 13% discount. After the initial one-year period ends, Adobe will automatically renew the membership at the standard retail rate unless you choose to cancel.

Why do the plans' discounts change after the first year?

Adobe's offer to Charity Digital Exchange members uses the same pricing model as its offer to students and teachers. The first year is a promotional rate. Every subsequent year of the Complete plan is discounted 40% off the retail rate. Subsequent years of the Acrobat Pro DC plan are billed at the retail rate.

Why does Adobe not offer Creative Cloud or Acrobat Pro DC as a donation?

The number of design applications included in the suite, the cost of the cloud services Adobe offers, and the transition from a desktop-based to a cloud-based industry make it challenging for Adobe to offer Creative Cloud and Acrobat Pro DC as a donation. Also, by offering Creative Cloud and Acrobat Pro DC at a discount, Adobe can make it available to more organisation types than it could for a donated product.

Why is there an admin fee for the access to discounted rates?

TechSoup (the global partner for Charity Digital Exchange) charges a one-time administrative fee per to support all of their programmes, services, and education, helping nonprofits and charities around the world to use technology to further their missions.

Does Charity Digital Exchange offer a different licensing model than Creative Cloud or Acrobat Pro DC for individuals?

No. Charity Digital Exchange currently offers only access to discounted rates on the individual membership.

Can I get Creative Cloud products with a perpetual license like the previous Creative Suite products offered?

No. Adobe has transitioned to a cloud business model for its former Creative Suite products and no longer offers perpetual licenses for those products.

How is Creative Cloud different from Creative Suite?

Creative Cloud is the evolution of Creative Suite. Most of the products included in Creative Suite are available in Creative Cloud, including many that were not previously in Creative Suite. Creative Cloud offers these products through a subscription model. Complete plan members can pay monthly or annually, and Acrobat Pro DC plan members must pay monthly. Both members always get the latest version of each product. The Creative Cloud Complete plan for individuals also includes access to many online Adobe services and 20GB of cloud storage space.

See TechSoup’s article Adobe Creative Cloud: What's New, What's Different for more information.

How is Creative Cloud different from Document Cloud?

Creative Cloud includes apps for designing creative assets, like photos, video, audio, graphics, and interactive content. Document Cloud includes Acrobat Pro DC. Both include cloud-based storage space, which integrates with Adobe's mobile apps. The Acrobat Pro DC plan also includes the Adobe Sign service.

How is Acrobat Pro DC different from previous version of Acrobat Pro?

See the comparison of versions of Acrobat Pro on the Adobe website.

Should I choose the monthly or annual payment schedule for the Complete plan?

The total price for the year is the same for both payment schedules, and you must agree to a one-year contract obligation regardless of the payment schedule you choose. The difference between the two payment schedules is only how often you pay, not how much you pay. Acrobat Pro DC plan members must pay monthly.

How many Creative Cloud and Acrobat Pro DC memberships can I request?

You can get as many Creative Cloud individual memberships as your organisation needs through Charity Digital Exchange’s access to discounted rates. You just need to request one product for each individual who needs a membership. Each membership is valid for one user on up to two computers.

Do the applications run in a browser?

No. You install and run the Creative Cloud desktop applications, like Photoshop and Illustrator, directly on your computer.

How many computers can I install Adobe software on?

Adobe allows each user to install its software on up to two computers. This can be home and office, desktop and laptop, Windows or Mac, or any other combination. However, you can't run the software simultaneously on both computers. If you install the software on more than two computers, you will need to deactivate the software first on one of the computers.

Do I need to be connected constantly in order to use Creative Cloud or Acrobat Pro DC applications?

No. Your Creative Cloud desktop applications are installed and run directly on your computer. You only need to be online to install your software and if you are using the Creative Cloud or Acrobat Pro DC services like syncing your files. An Internet connection is required the first time you install and license your desktop applications, but you can use the applications in offline mode with a valid software license. The desktop applications will attempt to validate your software licenses every 30 days. For annual members, you can use the applications for up to 99 days in offline mode. Month-to-month members can use the software for up to 30 days in offline mode.

Do I need to store all of the files I create with Creative Cloud or Acrobat Pro DC in Adobe's cloud storage?

No. You can save all of your files to your computer and share only the ones you want.

Can I install and use Creative Cloud or Acrobat Pro DC products on public access computers in my library or nonprofit public access computer lab?

No. This offer is only valid for users who are employees or volunteers within an organisation.

Can I renew my Creative Cloud or Acrobat Pro DC membership with Charity Digital Exchange’s access to discounted rates offer?

My organisation already has one or more memberships at retail rates. Are we still eligible for additional memberships at the discounted nonprofit rate?

Yes. Existing individual memberships are ineligible for the discounted nonprofit rate, but an organisation can request new memberships at that rate for individuals who don't have them.

Are Creative Cloud or Acrobat Pro DC memberships transferable? Can a new employee or volunteer use a former employee or volunteer's membership for the remaining contract obligation?

Individual memberships are managed on an individual level, and the user's email address is connected to the Adobe ID. With individual memberships, your organisation can't change the member's Adobe ID or password, so you should make proper billing arrangements when an employee or volunteer leaves.

Adobe Acrobat Professional Indesign

What is the difference between Photoshop Elements and Photoshop CC?

See TechSoup’s post Adobe Photoshop Elements 13 vs. Adobe Photoshop CC.

What is the difference between Premiere Elements and Premiere Pro CC?

Indesign Vs Acrobat

See TechSoup’s post Adobe Premiere Elements 13 vs. Adobe Premiere CC.

What happens if I cancel my Adobe Creative Cloud or Acrobat Pro DC membership?

If you cancel within the first 14 days, Adobe will issue a full refund. If you cancel after the first 14 days, Adobe will refund half of your remaining contract obligation. Regardless of whether you pay annually or monthly, you are still obligated to pay for half of the remaining year's membership.

After you cancel, Creative Cloud and Acrobat Pro DC applications will stop working. However, you will continue to have access to your Creative Cloud membership's free benefits, including 2 GB Creative Cloud storage or 5 GB Document Cloud storage and use of certain services.

Adobe Indesign Tutorials

Will I lose all my files if I leave Creative Cloud or Document Cloud?

Adobe Acrobat Indesign

Audacity7. No. You can save all of your files to your computer and keep them before you leave Creative Cloud or Document Cloud. Mozilla thunderbird. If you've stored more than 2 GB of files on Adobe's Creative Cloud storage space or more than 5 GB of files on Adobe's Document Cloud storage space when you cancel your membership, you will lose files stored beyond the initial 2 GB or 5 GB you used unless you back them up ahead of time.

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perpetually-jungshook · 6 years

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Seokjin: 50% Sight

Genre: awkward shy Seokjin, 100% fluff

Warnings: a little social anxiety, handicap: blindness (OC)

Word Count: 4.2k

Summary: Seokjin doesn’t get out much between classes and his part time job narrating for the local library’s Services for the Blind program- not to mention the fact that he’s painfully anxious about talking to people. But he’s also a diehard romantic and hopes that someday, he’ll find someone with the same amount of love for literature.

He scoots the chair a centimeter closer to the desk. Pause. He scoots the chair back a centimeter and a half. Pause.

Seokjin sighs, resting his elbows on the table and pressing his palms into his eye sockets. Three thirty in the morning. That’s what the clock said the last time he looked… what? Maybe (hopefully) five minutes ago, before he decided he would rest his eyes. Just a power nap to make him more alert.

He chances a glance at the clock in the upper right corner of the monitor.

3:57am

Seokjin sighs again. Where had the time gone? The words on the screen had stared back at him, eating at his attention, nagging at his vision. “Sleep,” they read. “Sleep and take care of this after you’ve woken up.” But he can’t do that. The library is paying him for this. He only has six hours to finish recording.

He reaches out and takes another long sip of now cold coffee, setting down the mug and dropping his arm like it’s made of lead. The soft orange glow from the lamp in the corner casts everything in a warm, comforting light, except what catches the harsh glare from the computer screen.

The monitor sits idle for a minute as Seokjin stares, then initiates sleep mode. Sleep. That does sound nice…

His head hitting his arm on the table jolts him awake. Right. He needs to be recording.

With a swift jiggle of the mouse, the computer screen brightens, bringing up the nine hours worth of reading Seokjin has already done. Which book is he even on now? A quick glance at the title printed on the top of the page reminds him. Ah yes White Noise. Written by Don Delillo, read by Jin. Thankfully he’d had the forethought to highlight the portion he’d left off on. After a quick clearing of his throat, Seokjin presses record.

“Make no mistake. I take these children seriously. It is not probable-”

Seokjin cuts himself off and clips to the end of last sentence. Probable? Possible. He needs to slow down, but three cups of coffee in the past two hours isn’t helping. Slow down. He takes a deep breath and starts again.

Reading for the local library’s Services for the Blind program had originally been a volunteer opportunity. Jin had some spare time over summer break and he needed to read these books for his classes anyway, so why not contribute to a good cause? But then someone apparently made a massive donation and the library asked him to be a part time employee.

For a full time college student, the pay is decent and it not only buys the necessities like food and rent and all that adult garbage, but it also gives him some freedom to go to the movies or add to a growing library of his own.

“It is not possible to see too much in them, to overindulge your casual gift for the study of character.”

Seokjin pauses to take a few deep breaths. Slow down and enunciate.

He’s not sure how many people actually utilize the audio files as he hasn’t met that many (any) blind people at the library. However, he’s logged over three hundred hours narrating. That’s what the receptionist told him last time he’d asked. Since starting, he’s been paid for over three hundred hours.

Seokjin doesn’t even have to talk to people in order to do it. The library sends him a list of manuscripts (and he can often times request specific ones), he narrates them, and a direct deposit is added to his bank account. For an introvert who loves to read, it’s not half bad.

He usually doesn’t procrastinate, but last minute homework assignments and projects that catch students by surprise are always a pain. Still, Seokjin had been eyeing a new novel for some time now and he kind of has to fulfill a certain monthly quota to keep his job… so improvise, adapt, overcome, and all that.

At five twenty five, Seokjin hits the “submit for peer review” button. The staff had been kind enough to supply him with the necessary equipment at home- the microphone and editing software- but every story still needs to be checked for quality control. Granted, Linda, the receptionist that usually helped him, has previously said that no one actually checks. This means Seokjin has to do most of the editing to ensure the value of his content. Because why do the work if he isn’t going to do it well?

Seokjin pushes himself away from the desk, snagging his computer charger under the wheels. He groans and decides he’ll fix it in the morning. Wait. It is the morning. He’ll have to leave for his first class in a little under three hours.

Oh well, who needs sleep?

On the way home, after five hours of classes, Seokjin stops by the library, though, not the school one with all the textbooks and works arbitrarily titled “classics.” He goes to the public library, the place where he submits his audio recordings.

Linda, a heavy but happy middle aged woman with her love of the world and baking clearly visible in her smile, spots him immediately and waves enthusiastically, cooing, “There’s that handsome face I always miss!”

Seokjin laughs lightly, even if he can feel his chest constrict with nervousness, “Hello, good to be back.”

He hopes she won’t launch into some story this time about her three cats. She does. And Seokjin listens politely the whole time even though the only thing he wants to do is hide away in a corner and flip through a pleasantly worn novel with slightly yellowed pages that smell distinctly like old-book.

He tries to come here at least once a week, but realistically only visits once or twice a month. School and his job tend to be very time consuming and keep him constantly at home or on campus.

Seokjin walks past the familiar shelves lined with novels and can’t help but notice the ones that he’s narrated. Some of them are cringeworthy, like the one he submitted last night. Others are more pleasant experiences that left him with a more personally, subjectively meaningful experience with the novel-

The book immediately catches Seokjin’s attention. An anthology of poetry. This is what he will read. Seokjin carefully removes it from the shelf and carries it to his usual corner desk with all the gentleness and respect of holding someone else’s child. He turns on the small lamp suspended by a divider and settles in.

The library is quiet, pleasantly so, and lets Seokjin get lost in the words on the pages. Books allow him to escape from social anxiety and an ever persisting, self perpetuating feeling of loneliness.

The library is so quiet, in fact, that Linda’s voice easily penetrates his concentration as she says, “Yeah hon, he just submitted it last night.”

Seokjin can’t hear the reply, but his attention immediately diverts from the poem in front of him. Submitted? He? Last night? He submitted the audiobook last night, but it could just be a coincidence, right? He takes a deep breath to calm his nerves, trying to recall something from an introduction to psychology class about applying completely random conversations to oneself based on coincidence and association.

“Are you sure? You just donated so much last week- not that the library would turn down another one but we do provide the recording services for free.”

Recording services. That’s one coincidence too many.

He looks up, leaning around a shelf of books to see the front desk. A girl stands in front of Linda, still talking too quietly to be heard. Seokjin can only see her profile and curiosity strikes him first, the simple kind of enchantment that affects a person when seeing an unconventionally pretty face.

“Alright let me go burn that onto a CD real quick. Stay right here, okay hon?”

The girl nods and splays her hand on the front desk’s granite countertop as Linda moseys into the office behind her. Seokjin watches, his finger idly pulling at the corners of the pages in front of him, causing them to fan. When did the libraries start offering CDs? Especially when the audio files are available online? Well, this does not concern him directly and they seem to have it all figured out so Seokjin lets his attention drop back to his book. He’s just doing that psychology thing. What was it? Association… association something. When things that seem relevant to a person make them think they are relevant. Seokjin just can’t quite remember the term-

“Here it is, White Noise,” Linda’s voice pulls him from the poems again.

That’s definitely the book that Seokjin just finished narrating. Even if he doesn’t remember half of it. The girl reaches around in her purse and pulls out a piece of paper, but the action is… kind of strange. She doesn’t look at the bag. Then it occurs to him. Maybe she’s blind. It would make sense why she would be listening to the recordings.

The girl replies inaudibly.

“Sorry hon, I have no control over who it’s assigned to. The computers take care of that between our volunteers. But I can definitely submit a request.”

There’s another pause as the girl speaks.

“No, unfortunately that’s private information…”

Linda’s eyes suddenly flick to look at Seokjin and he immediately drops his gaze back to the poetry anthology, heart racing, cheeks warm. They had definitely been talking about him. But why? His recordings, obviously. But what’s this about requesting? And private information?

The girl leaves and Jin reluctantly picks up his book. He has to check out now and talk to Linda again. Not “has to.” Wants to.

“Linda is nice,” he tells himself for the millionth time. “She wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.”

He carefully places the anthology in front of her, taking out his library card.

“Ready?”

Seokjin nods.

Linda hums to herself as she scans out the book and carefully places it back in his hands. There’s an awkwardly long pause as she gives him a knowing smile, still holding onto his card.

“Hon, do you know why the library was able to hire you?”

“Because of donations?” he ventures timidly.

Linda’s smile grows wider, reading like the look someone might give their friend who just passed by their crush, “That’s right. Donations. From a donor. Singular. Why? Because you have a fan.”

A fan?

She continues, “That girl that just came in here, the one you were staring at, she’s the person who secretly pays your salary.”

Linda winks, causing Seokjin’s eyes to widen with surprise as he searches for an appropriate response.

“Not that it’s any of my business, but she comes in here on Mondays,” another wink. “You have a good day now.”

Seokjin walks away from the counter, pulse points throbbing and a pinch forming in his throat. She probably wasn’t supposed to say any of that. “Secretly pays his salary,” which means she probably wants anonymity. He blushes. And now he knows.

What perplexes him is the fact that- granted this is based on assumptions- according to their conversation, the girl specifically requested Seokjin to read something. It simultaneously warms his heart and makes him nervous. What does she think of him? His voice? Does she notice when he stumbles over his words or doesn’t smooth over a cut in an audio clip? Before, Seokjin felt almost… detached from what he does, narrating, because he was just speaking into the proverbial void. But now- now he knows someone is listening.

Seokjin blushes as he finally reaches his car. He sits down behind the wheel and takes a deep breath.

“Calm down. Don’t excite yourself,” he murmurs, looking at his ghostly reflection, barely visible on the windshield. “She probably just likes the same books. That’s all.”

And that’s what Seokjin tells himself for the next seven days.

He doesn’t get a chance to do any recording, though he receives an email from the library asking for him to narrate The Picture of Dorian Gray. Because it is not available in digital manuscript (though, he doesn’t look very hard), he has to stop by the library to rent a copy- and return his poetry anthology. He has three weeks to get the book recorded, so waiting a week is not a pressing problem.

Of course, he absolutely, definitely, certainly does not go on Monday on purpose.

Seokjin looks around as he enters the familiar building, anthology in hand. He doesn’t know what to expect, but he shames himself for feeling a tad disappointed when he does not see the girl.

Linda gives him a friendly smile, “Hey there hon. How can I help you?”

He feels his cheeks heat up from social embarrassment and guilt. His voice is quiet but only a tad bit timid as he places the poetry anthology on the counter, “I’m returning this.”

“Alright thank you.” She scans the book and places it on a cart beside her.

“Also, I got a request for a recording and came by to pick up the book.”

“Ah yes, picking up the book,” Linda’s smile becomes knowing, her words notably odd and formal. “What’s the book?”

Seokjin shows her the email, presenting her with his phone. She nods, pulls her chair toward her keyboard, types something in, and gets up, “Let me go get that for you. Wait right here.”

Fingers tapping quietly on the cold surface of the front desk, Seokjin tries to calm his frantic heartbeat. He’s not sure why he’s nervous. The girl isn’t here. It’s just Linda and him and the books. The books. Trustworthy, safe. Seokjin smiles.

Linda moves back into his field of attention, scanning the book and placing it in front of him. Right, he needs his card. Retrieving it from his pocket, he places it on the counter for her before picking up the book to place it in his bag.

The middle aged woman clears her throat, glancing at her watch, “If I were you, I would- ahem- skim over the book a little. Maybe take a seat and read for ten or twenty minutes.”

Seokjin has never been good at identifying implications socially. In books? Absolutely. Analyzing text, finding hidden meanings, it’s his favorite pastime. But is Linda hinting that he stay for a reason? She must be. Maybe the girl usually comes around that time.

He nods, a small gesture of affirmation, “Ten or twenty minutes.”

The next twelve and a half minutes are characterized by frequent, almost paranoid, mostly neurotic, nauseously excited glances up every time the door opens. A mail runner, a little boy and his mother- or maybe his aunt, Seokjin shouldn’t judge, a homeless man, a couple of students with their university sweatshirts…

The girl.

Seokjin’s cheeks flood with heat and his gaze drops back down to his book. Why? She’s carrying a cane this time, clearly blind. She wouldn’t know he’s staring.

Linda, though she is usually loud, speaks (probably purposefully) louder than normal, “Hello hon! How can I help you?”

When he looks up, he finds her nodding, gesturing at Seokjin to come over. He frantically shakes his head, mental panic button pressed. His palms are already clammy, hands a little shaky- when was the last time he talked to a girl? Earlier today in class. No, no. When was the last time he talked to a girl? Conversed? Not just a “hey what pages did the professor say we had to read?” kind of conversation? He thinks for a moment. Then for two. The fact that it takes so long kind of answers his question. Or maybe it’s just the fact that all of his thoughts seem to have misted over in a rush of adrenaline.

Blood roars in his ears, so loud that he can’t hear what Linda is saying. He doesn’t think his legs would hold him up, and even if they did, could he walk straight? Could he talk without his voice cracking? Lord, the girl can’t see. He would have to make a good impression using her other senses and how does one do that?

And now she’s leaving.

Seokjin’s body reacts before his mind can, a different kind of panic that calls him to action. He’s stumbling across the library, almost catching on the corner of a shelf as he sprints forward, opening the door.

He lets out a breathless, “Let me get that for you.”

She pauses, sightless eyes staring ahead, lips parting as if she wants to say something. She says nothing. The moment lasts an eternity.

Then she lets out a quiet, soft, “Thank you.”

The moment breaks and she passes through the door. Maybe it’s just Seokjin, but he thinks- for a second- that there is a bit of a rush to her step. He watches as she walks toward the curb a few meters away, cane tapping rhythmically, methodically. She gets into the back seat of a shiny, spotless white car and Seokjin watches until it disappears in traffic.

He continues to stand in the doorway until the homeless man comes back and bumps him. Startled, before Linda can make any remarks on the interaction (or maybe he just wasn’t listening in the first place), Seokjin flees to his car.

A week later with the weekend behind him, Seokjin has narrated half of the requested book. He has one week left to finish it. Technically. It’s not like Linda is standing there with a gun to his head saying, “If you don’t finish this on time you’ll bite a bullet.” It’s more of a principle thing, helps the library see that he is a valuable, punctual asset.

Linda is busy talking to another patron when he enters, which saves him from the “playfully” patronizing conversation. She always means well, but wouldn’t be helping.

He finds his seat at his usual desk and waits, reading ahead a little bit to know what he’ll be narrating tonight. He looks at the clock. He waits. He waits a little more. His nerves are not as strung out as last time, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t anxious. The typical questions run through his head. What if the girl thinks he’s creepy? Would she even know who he is? Would she care? Would the girl even show up?

Why is Seokjin even so intrigued by her? Because she pays his salary? Because she likes his voice above the others that might volunteer? Because she’s pretty and mysterious and Seokjin, being an addict to romantic narratives, wants to find some sort of story in these circumstances?

The door opens, revealing the girl. She doesn’t have her cane, but this time Seokjin pays careful attention. He notices the way that she reaches out with a sense of cautious familiarity. The girl moves slowly, but not detrimentally so. She finds the front desk, skillfully avoiding the patron Linda is still talking to. Fascinating.

Seokjin rises and walks up to her quietly, then clears his throat, “Hello, my name is Seokjin. I just wanted to say thank you for requesting the narration of these books because it gives me a steady job that I’m happy with.”

This is what Seokjin wants to do. But he stays frozen in his seat, staring at her. At least he won’t be mortified by her looking over and seeing him stare. Is that socially incorrect? Impolite? His anxiety peaks again, but he gets up and walks over. A shaky breath. Shaky knees. Sweaty palms. A wavering voice.

“Excuse me…” he says, swallowing hard.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Linda briefly look up from her computer screen. She’s still helping the other person, but she does take the time to shoot him an encouraging smile.

The girl completely ignores him.

Seokjin clears his throat, repeating, “Excuse me.”

The girl tilts her head, a natural expression of confusion flitting across her face, “I’m sorry. Let me get out of your way.”

His cheeks burn. She interpreted it wrong. He messed up. She’s going to think he’s awkward. Now what is he supposed to say? Just say something.

“N-no. I… I wanted to ask if…”

He’s boxed himself in. Just say the words. He can save it. “If you are the one who requests the books.”

But of course that’s not what he says either.

“I wanted to know if you needed help finding anything. Linda seems very busy and I know the library pretty well.”

Does she even know who Linda is? Had Linda ever introduced herself? The girl couldn’t have read the name tag. Oh GOD-

The girl runs her hand softly across the countertop of the front desk, her cheeks dusted a light pink, voice quiet, “Could you help me find Les Misérables by Hugo?”

Seokjin nods before remembering she can’t see it. “Follow me. It’s right this way.”

He starts heading toward the aisle labeled Gr-Hy, organized alphabetically by author’s last name, but halfway there, he again realizes that she can’t see. How could he be so stupid? Seokjin, cheeks burning, turns around to retrace his steps and collect the girl when he almost runs directly into her.

She halts, staring ahead, almost at his chest, “Are you okay?”

Seokjin stops himself from nodding, “Yeah. I’m fine I just…”

He doesn’t want to be rude and question her abilities. Quite the contrary, he’s rather impressed. But Seokjin doesn’t know whether that would be rude as well. He lets the sentence trail off in favor of walking the few more steps to the section he’s looking for. With trembling hands, he removes the book from the row. Should he say something? Hand it to her? How so? One of the girl’s hands is at her side, the other is poised on the shelf beside her, feeling her way around the environment. She’s not ready to receive the book. How is he supposed to give it?

Seokjin reaches out, gently catching the hand by her side. He turns it palm up and puts the novel down, placing the edge strategically so she’s able to curl her fingers around it.

Wait. He’d touched her. Is that inappropriate? Does she think he’s weird? Will she be angry-?

“Is your name Jin?”

Seokjin’s thoughts stutter, then flatline as he tries to process the abrupt flood of information. A simple question and yet: she knows. Had she recognized his voice? Obviously she took it from his narrations, as he signs the front of each novel audibly with a pen name, “written by the author, read by Jin.”

His voice is breathier than he intends as he replies, “Yes. Kind of.”

“Kind of?” the girl’s undertones are curious.

“My name is Seokjin, but I use Jin as a…” the lump in his throat makes him choke on the sentence.

“Pen name?” A small, knowing smile forms on her lips.

“Exactly.”

Pause.

“My name is _____,” her smile widens, even as she stares blankly at his chest. Though it isn’t a dull blankness. Sure, her eyes don’t metaphorically express the same sort of emotions one might see commonly, but there is still the light of life. Still the crinkle that denotes a genuine smile.

Seokjin lets go of the book and her hand, knowing he lingered far too long to be casual.

“Nice to meet you,” he blushes, thankful that she doesn’t know.

Pause.

“Thank you… for narrating all of those stories. My boyfriend and I really enjoy them.”

“B-boyfriend?” the word slips out before he can stop it.

She laughs, a sound that opens the floodgates for a feeling of content warmth within him. She says, “I’m just kidding. I don’t have a boyfriend. But I do enjoy your stories- well, your voice reading them.”

“Thank you. I really appreciate that.”

Pause.

Seokjin searches for something to say. He can’t ask her to carry the whole conversation. Just say something.

“May I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“I’m not sure if it’s socially appropriate…” he feels embarrassed for even saying this.

“Go ahead,” she laughs again, an authentically happy sound. “Now I’m intrigued.”

The fact that she uses the word “intrigued” makes him smile.

“If I may ask, why are you looking for this book-” he wants to kick himself for phrasing. She’s not looking for anything. But it’s too late to take it back. “-when you can’t exactly… read it? I’m sorry if that sounds rude…”

“It’s not. It’s a good question,” _____’s cheeks dust a light pink. “I was actually going to ask Linda to put this aside for you to narrate.”

“Les Misérables?” Seokjin finds himself giggling in both shock and excitement. “Have you read it?”

“No not yet,” the smile doesn’t leave her lips, even when he slips up and uses a sight-related word for an activity.

“It’s wonderful. I would love to narrate it for you.”

“Really?” Hope.

“Yes of course. Granted, it might take me a while because it’s so long but…”

As they continue to make small talk, Seokjin finally starts to do something that is very rare for him. He finally begins to relax.

✩✩✩♔✩✩✩

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