Stet

<looks closely at video> Hm. Given how this hedgehog walks, we can divide the strides into “short” and “long” without much lossy.

The short strides (back foot forward/front foot back) seem to be major or minor thirds, depending on where the hedgehog is on the piano. This is relevant, because a) those intervals are common and b) the swap between major and minor in jazz is common, and major/minor thirds are a pretty standard way to achieve that effect.

And...I can’t get a good angle on the “long” strides, but I believe they’re in the perfect fourth-augmented fourth/diminished fifth-perfect fifth range. Perfect fourths and fifths are considered pretty, and augmented fourth/diminished fifths (slash because they’re identical) are called tritones and are widely considered really frikkin’ weird.

(Seriously. I learned to recognize tritones in my aural skills course by going, “Ah, yes, the interval that confuses me.”)

“I am whole and complete in myself”

So I was DMing a this game where the players venture through this dungeon and eventually encounter two boss. One being a Skeleton Knight and the other is a Skeleton Gunslinger (with a cowboy hat), amoung a large numbers of minions. After a big fight, the party destroyed the minions and the grappling monk, subdued the knight and tied him up with rope. However, the fighter pixie decided that the undead cowboy then could potentially be reasoned with.

Pixie: “Hey, your leader down there is kinda tied up atm, and you are by yourself. Wouldn’t you rather ditch him and adventure with us? Btw I like your hat.”

At this point the entire table was arguing if you can reason with an undead, as typically it’s not possible, but the pixie rolled anyways. He figured this one was a special case being so out of place in the entire dungeon.

*rolls a 19* uh… Close enough

DM(me): The skeleton Gunslinger threw his rifle across his back, then pulls out a cigar and place it in his mouth, which he lit it with match and let out a long huff that sends smoke through every openings in his skull face

“Hey you know what, I like you… *huff* Yeah I’ll join you. I’ve been kinda sick of working with Asar anyways.”

At this point everyone starts losing their shit over this turn around.

Party rogue (ooc): WHAT A BADASS SKELETON!

Skeleton Knight(me): He screams to his old minion as he is still pinned to the ground by the monk, “YOU TRAITOR!”

Skeleton Gunslinger: “Let’s face it boss *let’s out another huff* You’re boned”

 Okay, I said. I’m sorry, it won’t happen again. It was a mistake. 

 Already that year I knew three people who were out longterm for mental illness. Already kids were high in classes just to get by them. Already what was tolerated was a bunch of kids having breakdowns. 

 It was a mistake it won’t happen again. I make sure that my answers are big on the science test. The boy next to me can’t afford medication for his learning disability and hasn’t slept since his parents split and if he doesn’t get a 2.0 he loses his team, the last thing he has left. 

 It was a mistake it won’t happen again. When I pass her my homework I ask her quietly if her mom was getting better. When the semester ends and we are in different classes, I start doing her assignments on the side. She sends me snaps from chemotherapy. 

 It was a mistake it won’t happen again. When I hand over the notes, I make sure there’s plenty of marginal positive thoughts. They haven’t smiled all month. I know what it’s like to be too tired and doing nothing at all. 

 It was a mistake. Your students are resorting to immoral choices because they have no other option. You make grades the be-all and end-all priority, no matter what else might be happening. You force them into situations where they can either fail and definitely have a permanent punishment, or cheat and probably pass - it’s worth the risk. Your students stand in solidarity, not to praise the might of learning: but to gather together in the right of living. You are the one who made the dichotomy of student/human. We are not both, are given “either like it or leave it”, are trained almost like robots. Do the work, don’t ask questions, don’t challenge the authority. 

Student faces a challenging personal situation. Student does not tell teacher. Student misses school, doesn’t complete work (for whatever reason) and then bitches silently about it, claiming that teachers are unfair and “don’t even know what’s going on”.

Then tell me what’s going on.

They think I’m being hard on them, picking on them etc. No, I’m doing my job. But if you’re having a difficult time and would appreciate some understanding then fuck, just tell me that. You don’t have to disclose details. If I’m just aware there’s a problem then I can be understanding and figure out ways to get work from you in a way that benefits both of us.

Stop vilifying teachers. We are people too. Don’t you think we do the same thing in our own lives?

you are being hard on them. you know why? because it’s our job to figure out something is wrong. a student often doesn’t have the words, doesn’t have the strength, feels like we wouldn’t care anyway. we are the adults. 

are you joking me with this? students are told that the only thing that matters is their grades. do you know how many teachers don’t care? to the extent that i once had a teacher tell me that missing class for a funeral was going to hurt my gpa. “decent people” are rare. “decent people” don’t happen in public schools very often at all.

i didn’t trust anyone to know about my mental illness. i saw what happened to my friends. pointless counselor visits. some were expelled because they were a “danger to themselves.” in my grade of 150, in one year, seventeen of my peers had killed themselves. because of teachers who think it’s the responsibility of teenagers to be able to maturely express a serious problem that adults struggle to convey.

i’ll vilify the hell out of teachers. because you know what? to many kids, we are the villain. we push them to do terrible things to themselves all in the name of a state standards. i’m guessing at some point you’ve seen maslow’s hierarchy of needs? did you read it? kids - people - cannot function without basic needs. like eating, like a safe home, like the things i mentioned above. 

you’re the teacher. yet you just expect students to magically “learn to express” something they shouldn’t have to. you should already know. 

When I was falling apart in high school, some of the teachers wanted to help. And I was very grateful for that; my parents were being terrible and any mental health ‘help’ I could access was also terrible. So a teacher who smiled at me and didn’t yell at me for being ditzy and leaving classes to cry was good. But that was all they could do, even the ones who wanted to help. My marks, for yearly exams, were out of their hands, marked by impersonal people from somewhere else who didn’t know or care that I was dying, that I was studying all I could and still never good enough, and so on.