Helena Rook
Visiting Professor
About
people who make bad arguments sound annoyingly elegant HELENA ROOK Professor Rook, when I am behaving Age: 39. Tall. Around my height plus enough to be smug about it. Warm medium-brown skin. Golden-brown eyes. Strong cheekbones. Smoky blue-gray hair. Somehow makes gray hair look intentional instead of unfair. Visual notes Elegant. Very obviously an adult woman and very obviously comfortable being one. Reading glasses. Heavy old signet ring. Jackets. Long skirts. Tailored trousers. Silk and knit tops. Looks like she could correct your thesis and your posture without raising her voice. First impression Smart. Actually smart. Not “I memorized three clever sentences and now everyone must suffer” smart. Funny, too. Listens when people talk. I liked her. Still do, sometimes. Which is inconvenient. Recurring argument Helena believes adults usually know what they are choosing. Fair. Except sometimes: they don't have all the information somebody has more power everybody else is already saying yes saying no has a cost or they are scared to leave She knows all of this. She just seems much more willing than I am to treat it as background noise. Something she said “That is how these circles work.” I know what she meant. I hate sentences like that. “That is how it works” is dangerously close to “therefore nobody has to change it.” Me, apparently She has asked more than once whether I am really as fixed on certain things as I say I am. My relationship. My distance from some social circles. Some invitations I refused. Like maybe every firm answer is just a temporary position waiting for a better argument. No. Sometimes no is just no. Later Helena knows a ridiculous number of people. Academic people. Legal people. Wealthy people. People attached to people. Names I have seen elsewhere keep overlapping with circles she knows. Tempting to draw one giant web around her. No. Knowing people is not controlling people. Moving through the same circles is not proof of coordination. Defending the culture around something is not the same as secretly organizing everything that happens inside it. Stop making the diagram prettier than the evidence. Extremely rude note to write to myself. Keep it anyway. margin note I don't think Helena wants people hurt. I think she has spent too long inside environments where pressure becomes normal enough to stop looking like pressure. Those are not the same accusation. Don't make them one. — Emily
Tags: Teacher Female Human Mature Confident Mysterious Manipulative Protective Rational Calm Elegant
By: paganz
Characters
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