guilty of devotion - [dnp au]

7.:. anxious // ezi

TW: suicidal thoughts

october 19th

Forest School, the all-boys academy I studied at before, is rather incomparable to MAC.

Here you're allowed to do almost everything that was previously forbidden or unaccepted. Doodling on the sides of your notebooks? Check. Expressing your opinion and being tolerated just like an adult? Check. Using your phone in class? PDA? Lgbtq+ PDA? Check, check, check.

Apart from how the Forest School's dormitory if it had one would be like - you're free, even encouraged to decorate and renovate your room. For instance, our room's walls are coated in messages - everyone who enters 555 is entitled to write anything they wish to over the grey paint. Most student invaded rooms are similar.

We can express ourselves however we want. Something quite difficult to get used to when all your life you've been stuck in the mainstream school system, permitted to do close to zero.

During my introduction lecture of Audio-Visual Editing, which we - as photographers - were supposed to have for some reason, I'm sat staring at an opened and untouched Premiere Pro sequence on the iMac in front of me.

I can't concentrate on neither my new nerd of a teacher nor the task we've been assigned. Both En and Dodie - the only people I talk to from my course - are absent; think they're preparing for the two day excursion our and some other Media Art department's courses, like the first-year video operators and animators, go on after school.

Such an inconvenient time to have an excursion, really, as the little break we're given at the end of the month is in more than a week, they could've arranged it around then. But no.

As I've heard, we'll be staying at a hotel in a forest near the city of Galway (the destination of our trip); a place where, apparently, most of MAC's students, and teachers, have got drunk at. Typical for us.

I'm thrown back into reality when a sudden realization of someone calling me -by the name Mister- kicks in. When I look up, no one other than the subject's teacher is attempting to attract my attention by hitting his hands against my desk periodically. I shake my head and mutter a Sorry.

- It's fine. Just show me what you've got. - the faded purple haired man looks straight into my eyes with a creepy grin, a feeling of uneasiness striking my nerves.

He wants to see how the task of trying out things with Premiere's basic tools is going for me-- which is awful because all I've done is opened a new project and named it failure.

I clear my throat as I turn back to the computer, accidentally clicking on a pop up on the screen when I touch the mouse. The screen turns to black and soft, barely audible sounds begin to come out of the computer's built in speakers. I turn up the volume to make sure what the sound is and furrow my eyebrows, waiting for something to happen.

Suddenly, a colourful, poorly drawn animation of three nude guys moaning while seemingly - can't tell for sure since the image quality is too nasty - fucking each other surfaces.

Oh yes, Philip, put it in my mouth. Sooner, daddy!

The familiar sound of Jack's exaggerated voice hits the computer's speakers, causing everyone in the room of 30 of my course mates to turn their heads towards where I've taken a seat, by the entrance door.

I don't bother paying attention to my teacher's Turn it off! 's as I, shocked, stare into the screen, incapable of understanding what exactly to do and why I'm seeing this stupid animation.

While - as I've figured - Phil's character goes on about only belonging to only a William, the teacher grabs my mouse aggressively and begins clicking on places, wishing to get rid of the pop up but when it doesn't work, I suddenly react by pressing the on/off button on the back side of the screen.