How to become a polyglot the easy way:

look for queer representation in media

find a foreign tv show with a promising bromance

enter a fandom where 99% of the people are from another country

learn the language to engage with the fandom and the original content

Bonus: don't use the owl app.

Potentially you gotta stop making all those substitutions to the spells, witch bestie.

If you're trying to learn magic and have chosen to do so through other people's published instructional manuals, and the magic isn't working, consider asking yourself if you are actually following the rituals provided.

I've been speaking with multiple people lately who are all struggling with the same thing, so perhaps a post on this topic is germane.

Unless you understand the tradition you're working with and why certain things have certain meanings, you probably do not have the background required to make effective substitutions.

Working within someone else's established tradition is not the same as working within your personal eclectic path.

Imagine you go into a working group which is super into bioregional practice and they've developed elaborate rituals which always work for them.

They give you a purification ritual which calls for a red apple, wild-harvested cotton, and local mulberries to be worked over during a full moon.

They do not tell you why each of these things is included. They just give you the list.

We're going to substitute a store-bought cotton ball, obviously, and what to do about the mulberries? We can google "mulberry correspondences," find out they're related to "healing" which is the closest thing we can figure has anything to do with a purification ritual, then pretty much figure that since chamomile is associated with sleep and purification, and sleep is a Lunar thing, right, that we can just use a sleepytime chamomile tea bag, and there you have it!

What the working group has failed to tell you is that this entire ritual is based on local mythology where the cotton wight fell in love with the mulberry dryad and they got married under the full moon by sharing an apple, and the entire ritual isn't based on sympathetic container magic, but is a heirophany which recreates the marriage of local sacred spirits, each of whom has sworn to heal and purify those who honor their love.

A heck of a lot of witchcraft authors do not break down why every single step is taken.

And if you apply contemporary witch-lite logic to everything ("cotton is white so I'm going to relate that to color correspondences and substitute a white candle for purity"), you can end up immediately canceling out a spell.

Not understanding or connecting with certain spell/ritual steps is not a good reason to change them.

You had mulberries once as a kid and they gave you stomach cramps and now you personally associate them with hexing and sickness, so even though there is a ripe mulberry tree outside, you are going to go get a container of blackberries instead, which you personally associate with purification, and -

(You get the drift)

The spell calls for making a paper box, within which you hide the wild cotton and mulberry. Then, at a crossroads at the full moon, you unfold the box to reveal its contents, and offer an apple to the correspondences.

Which would mean we'd have to learn how to make a paper box (fun!) but also like, why this unfolding thing? Nothing I've read so far in my witchcraft books has explained the magical meaning behind opening a paper box. This is basically a container spell, right? I'll just use a glass jar.

(The plant spirits who informed the local coven about this spellwork specified an opaque, degradable container)

If you're using other people's work, you're more or less sacrificing yourself to the reality that they probably are not explaining everything to you, and that your assumptions about what makes that magic tick could be so far off base that even your most educated guesses will fall short.

Yeah, using other people's traditions can mean you don't have what's required to do everything, and that's kind of just the way it is.

I'm not trying to be Mr. Just Go And Buy Stuff You Moneybags, but I guess I am being Mr. If You Can't Do It Then You Can't Do it.

And no, I'm not saying that it's impossible to figure out substitutions.

I'm specifically referring to a situation where a practitioner is trying to figure out magic, hasn't been able to make strides, and then it turns out they've been radically modifying and altering spells from specific traditions to a point where the spell is obviously functionally DOA.

At one point I was learning some slightly advanced bit of coding. I downloaded a set of files from a code library and installed them on my website.

The thing was, at that point in my education, I had enough experience to basically understand what was going on with each file. So, I edited them as I went, modifying them to my custom specifications.

Wouldn't you know it! When I launched the code it was broken. DOA, if you will.

I went back to the code library, and the top comment was,

INSTALL THE FILES AND MAKE SURE THEY WORK BEFORE YOU TRY TO CHANGE THEM. Everyone keeps changing things before they even test launch it and then they come back here and complain that the code is broken. IT ISN'T BROKEN.

in light of this post i wanna talk abt my ocs names!!!! obv some of u were already here for the changes but!!!! the logic behind my da oc names hehehehe

WARDENS

Evadne (/iːˈvædniː/; Ancient Greek: Εὐάδνη): From Greek Εὐάδνη (Euadne), from εὖ (eu) meaning "good" possibly combined with Cretan Greek ἀδνός (adnos) meaning "holy".

Explanation: Felt like an unwell name for a trans Circle mage to choose for herself.

Kalyani (/kæljɑːni/; Sanskrit: कल्याणी): Means "beautiful, lovely, auspicious" in Sanskrit.

Explanation: Default Tabris is Kallian, which seems like a good Fereldan name, but I really wanted to draw on themes around belonging and identity with Kal, and so giving her a name that could be confused for Kallian was something I really wanted to do - to reflect the Anglicisation that often happens to our mothertongue names. Also, desi elves ftw.

Faris (/ˈfaː.ris/; Arabic; فارس): Means "horseman, knight" in Arabic.

Explanation: One of my favourite names.

Aedan (/ˈeɪ.dən/; Old Irish: Áedán): From the Old Irish name Áedán meaning "little fire", a diminutive of Áed.

Explanation: Literally just the default m!Cousland name because I could not be bothered.

CHAMPIONS

Lysander (/laɪˈsændə/): Latinized form of the Greek name Λύσανδρος (Lysandros), and it means "liberator".

Explanation: Pro-mage Hawke. Self explanatory (:

Miranda (/mɪ.ˈɹæn.də/): Derived from Latin mirandus meaning "admirable, wonderful". The name was created by Shakespeare for the heroine in his play The Tempest (1611), in which Miranda and her father Prospero are stranded on an island.

Explanation: I do just like the name but hmmm potentially some thoughts around mage!Hawke and Malcolm dynamics...?

Damon (/ˈdeɪ.mən/; Ancient Greek: Δάμων): Derived from Greek δαμάζω (damazo) meaning "to tame". According to Greek legend, Damon and Pythias were friends who lived on Syracuse in the 4th century BC. When Pythias was sentenced to death, he was allowed to temporarily go free on the condition that Damon take his place in prison. Pythias returned just before Damon was to be executed in his place, and the king was so impressed with their loyalty to one another that he pardoned Pythias.

Explanation: Thinking about Handers so no one talk to me rn.

Amalia (/a.ˈmaː.li̯a/; Greek; Αμαλία): Short form of Germanic names beginning with the element amal. This element means "unceasing, vigorous, brave", or it can refer to the Gothic dynasty of the Amali (derived from the same root).

Explanation: Chose this one because I wanted a warrior!Hawke, who was only ever really a warrior because of necessity. Of all my Hawkes, Mal is actually the one who adapts to being a noble well (Leandra's daughter, through and through), and so I wanted to explore different kinds of strength.

Alexis (/ə.ˈlɛk.sɪs/; Ancient Greek; Ἄλεξις): From the Greek name Ἄλεξις (Alexis) meaning "helper" or "defender", derived from Greek ἀλέξω (alexo) meaning "to defend, to help".

Explanation: Felt like a super fitting name for a red warrior Hawke tbh!!!!

Joan (/ˈd͡ʒoʊn/): Medieval English form of Johanne, an Old French form of Iohanna (Joanna). A famous bearer was Joan of Arc, a patron saint of France (where she is known as Jeanne d'Arc). She was a 15th-century peasant girl who, after claiming she heard messages from God, was given leadership of the French army. She defeated the English in the battle of Orléans but was eventually captured and burned at the stake.

Explanation: Joan is my pro-Templar Sebmancing playthrough. Of course I named her after Joan of Arc.

Maimunah (/maj.ˈmuː.nah/; Arabic: ميمونة): Means "auspicious, blessed, favourable" in Arabic, in the Malay and Indonesian form.

Explanation: Thought about Malcolm naming his tiny mage daughter and wanted to cry. Also, I've always really loved this name - I knew an adult with this name as a kid, and she was really just... I admired her so much. So why not!!!

INQUISITOR

Isra (/ʔis.ˈraːʔ/; Arabic: إسراء): Means "nocturnal journey", derived from Arabic سرى (sara) meaning "to travel at night" - refers to the Prophet's journey from Makkah to Jerusalem (Isra' and Mi'raj)

Explanation: If you know the context behind this name, then the link to the Herald is quite obvious.

Iskandar (/ʔis.ˈkan.dar/; Arabic: إسكندر): Arabic, Malay and Indonesian form of the name Alexander, which is the Latinized form of the Greek name Ἀλέξανδρος (Alexandros), which meant "defending men" from Greek ἀλέξω (alexo) meaning "to defend, help" and ἀνήρ (aner) meaning "man" (genitive ἀνδρός).

Explanation: I've talked a bit abt it before over here!

Mahanon

Explanation: Default m!Lavellan name.

Ellana

Explanation: Default f!Lavellan name.

Marya (/ˈma.rʲjə/)

Explanation: Actually, I wanted to do Arya but. Um. I accidentally. Anyway.

hi!! if your inbox is open can i please request sfw & nsfw hcs for medic with a vampire s/o who needs to feed? thank you 🦇🖤

Thank you so much for the request. It was really fun to think about. Also, it's not just feeding headcanons if that's ok. Additional vampire dating stuff, I got carried away. I hope you enjoy it, though

Tw and content: lots of mentions of blood, of course. Some Catholic fetishism near the end. Cannibalism? Kind of? Medic drinking blood, really. Sadomasochism. Most of my vampire logic is based on interviews with the vampire and Draculaura (the book) and my own personal head canons, so the logic switches around sometimes. Google translate German.

Relationship:

Ok, so to start, everything I've stated in my first medic hcs still stands but I'll re state a few things

I feel like he'd let you drain patients for sure.

He'd never tell them. At least for a good while, lmao

When people are dying left and right on the field, he'll definitely bring a few to his lab to drain before the crew has enough time to re spawn and realize.

If you'd like him to keep up this practice I feel like he'd ask you preferences.

Wanna get drunk? Well, a demo corpse is yet to be disposed of

Or maybe just a bit buzzed? A spy is here!

Of corse, he'd keep blood bags in the fridge for you

If you wanna feed on him, though, well now you've got a whole new can of worms

If you ask him if you can feed on him, he'd be very surprised and then surprised that he is surprised.

"You want to feed on me? Oh! Well... ja. Yes- I can do that. I don't know why I didn't suspect this. I mean- I am your partner."

Yes. He's doing this

And tbh he's a little to excited

Not only does it do it for him (more on that later), but he just finds the whole process incredibly interesting.

He's a doctor, after all. And of corse it's his duty as a doctor (and your boyfriend) to take note of your species' behavior

"Would you say you prefer drinking blood straight from the neck or peircing a vein and draining it into a cup?"

"Would you be equally satisfied if drained my own blood into iv bags or is the intimacy a part of the feeding process?"

I feel like once or twice you drank to much from him and he was a bit insistent on monitoring his blood pressure when you fed for a while.

Man, doss he love to resurch you.

He tries his best from experimenting on you.

(Tempting. Very Tempting. But he manages to hold back.)

I like to imagine he tried to take your blood pressure and was surprised to see it was zero.

"Fasinating" He would say

"What did you expect?"

"I'm not sure..."

"Well I AM dead. Blood dosnt exactly flow amymore."

"Tell me more about the whole... being dead thing?"

He asks so many questions it's kind of unbearable at first lmao

I feel like if he knew you were a vampire before you started dating or early in he'd have an easier time opening up to you than a human

People see and treat him as a monster all the time. Him interacting with a literal monster with a thirst for blood no less makes him more comfortable opening up about his strange interests than usual.

"They'd probably get it"

I feel like he's always wanted to drink blood tbh

I mean, he's tasted it. No doubt. When you have such a gory hobby and your gloves somehow always have fresh blood on them, you're bound to get blood in your mouth at some point.

But to actually drink it has never been attempted.

I think one time you're drinking from a blood bag while you both are chilling somewhere, and he just goes, "How does that taste?"

You think it's another round of one of his routine questions and respond something like "it's nice. Refreshing. Irony. Warm. It's kind of like a soup, I guess? It tastes different when you're dead. I can tell you that much." And just keep slurping

"Can i... try it?"

You look at him and after a moment of thinking go "yeah."

You have a feeling he probably won't like it. When you were human, it just tasted like blood. Blood is blood. But when you were turned. When your body died and now ran on dark supernatural forces. When the only thing that could keep these dark forces thriving and preserving your mortal vessel was the warm essence of what once lived. It tasted different. This new way of life (or after life) gave you new senses. New flavors, new colors, new sounds. Suddenly, blood, raw organs. It tastes good.

He took a sip. He took a moment to think. Then he took another, longer sip. And his response

"I think I like it."

It was by no means his favorite drink, nor was it something he drank frequently. But on occasion, he did. Mostly with you, but he'd find himself occasionally sipping on it while at work or home alone.

Also he probably just smells like blood most of the time

Like not strongly of it, for a human, it's noting more than a subtle after note but for a vampire such as yourself, senses heightened and all that, it's easier to recognize and find it quite enjoyable.

I feel like if your a sun sensitive vampire he'd give you his coat alot.

He's a large man with a larger coat.

If you worry about the sun he'd take it off and drape it around you, more often than not placing the shoulders of it on top of your head. Letting the shadow of his large coat cover all of you.

Also I like to imagine he sharpens your Fangs every now and then for you if you ask

I like to imagine you both rob Graves together lmao

Pet names. i can't think of many good vampire ones, but i like "meine süße Fledermaus" (my sweet bat) and "Königin/König der Nacht" (queen/king of the night)

Sexual

He really has a thing for being bitten, man.

He's sadomasochistic, and man, does the masochism really show around you.

He loves being used as a blood bag in the heat of it all.

When His senses are nearing the point of extreme and you bite into his neck or shoulder or chest

Lawd have mercy the moans your about to hear.

That feeling of sex mixed and muddied with pain drives him crazy

Idk how you feel about vampires and religion mixing, but I'm imagining medic likes to have his hands tied up with Rosarys.

Tied up with rosaries and fucked by a force of darkness?

I feel like hes kind of into Catholic guilt sex if that makes sense?

Again, depending on how you imagine vampires mix with religion. If you let him, I feel like he'd also like to tie you up with rosaries.

Not just because of the whole power dynamic thing he's into

But like the gothic imagery is hot

Also, blow jobs with Fangs?

He dosnt like getting bit there but like it's the risk that's hot you know?

Like you COULD but you won't.

That's the hot part you know?

Also just like- with your vampiric powers can be useful in bed.

If we're going by Dracula rules.

Super strength, speed, and can change form at will, to grow from large to small?

Now i haven't finished the book so I might get the nuances of this wrong but like... I'm just saying.

Super strength. Can pin him down nice and easy. And as I've stated in my past hc post. If he likes to be hit around nice and good that'll certainly help.

Super speed? Thrusting, bouncing, hand jobs. Enough said.

Can grow and shrink at will? The possibilities of that, man.

Shrink just a tad so he can feel bigger in you

Or larger to tower over him.

(It'll make your dick bigger along with the rest of your body if you've got one, just saying...)

Sorry, I don't have a lot for the sexual portion, I feel like most of what I needed to say was already stated, but I hope you enjoyed it. This was fun to think about. I may update a few more times if I got new ideas. Thank you sm for the request! Tbh I was thinking about writing a medic/vampire a day or two ago and this was great inspiration! Stay batty!

Squealed with excitement when I saw your post saying you were watching zom 100. Are you going to read the manga? Also please make a post sharing your opinions of it. I literally love reading your rants about manga and anime, positive and critical. I frequent the "sloot bitches about things" tag all the time lmao

Holy shit, I only thought ppl came for my smut, I'm glad you like reading me complain about shit and rant lol

The manga is on my list but my backlog of stuff I want to check out is stupidly long, so...I get to it when I get to it ig

Anyway my thoughts on the anime

In a world where zombie apocalypse fiction is largely bleak and depressing, it's so nice to see a series go "Fuck it, in the post apocalypse, do what makes you happy." It frames the zombie outbreak and breakdown of society in an optimistic way, and I think a lot of people need that. In a culture that's so collectivist and so stressed out, that cultural shift in modern Japan to prioritizing your own happiness and mental well-being really makes me happy.

The animation and especially the COLORSSSS are so nice. There are a few shots where corners had to be cut, but given how fucked the anime production was in terms of schedule I'm more than willing to put up with it. The zombies and the gore having these saturated paint colors instead of just being red is so nice, and it makes the Zom100 zombies stand out from other series.

I could talk forever about the colors in this series. I've never seen a zombie apocalypse that looked so bright and poppy and FUN. If you haven't seen anything from this show, just watch the opening and ending you won't regret it.

I also love shows that have an optimistic message in a bleak fucked up setting. Like if Berserk is grim optimism and struggling against brutality and hardship, Zom100 is bright optimism in a dead landscape. It's fluorescent paint sprayed and sloshed on grey corpses and cracked concrete, and I love looking at it. Like LOOK at this!

Beatrix is best girl, I accept no arguments to the contrary. She's a German weeb who wears samurai armor and wants to restore Japan's natural beauty, infodumps about hot springs history, and is just so fun. Everything in this series is just so fucking fun.

Kencho is hot as fuck and if you like himbos, watch this series for him. He wants to be a comedian. He's a superhunk with a heart of gold. He's working on a comedy bit where he butt-chugs udon noodles. I want him so bad I'm shaking.

Shizuka is a new inspiration for my One Piece OC Minerva, since their color designs are similar and both go from coldly logical to willing to follow their hearts and have fun. Though girl, wear some more protective clothing. You're in a sports bra and leggings and a hoodie, Beatrix at least sometimes wears the samurai armor and Akira had the diving suit for a while.

Obviously I fuck with Kanta on concept alone, and his VA (same as Bakugo and Ghiaccio) understands his assignment. A bitter NEET who wants to fuck things up only to realize he's collapsed under his own loneliness and just needed friendship, and realized too late that he essentially sabotaged his own happiness. Also hearing him cry pathetically in the last few episodes was low-key...activating my almonds a bit 😳

Given how problematic the production and release was, I'm gonna be disappointed but not surprised if there aren't further seasons. Still, they end it on a positive note that makes it a satisfying "ending" if it never gets animated beyond that. Besides, there's always the manga! I'm gonna link the op and Ed because I love them so much.

Also interesting fact, but this anime got recommended to me...by one of my sixth graders??? She's a huge otaku and I love that she's comfortable around me enough to nerd out (in rapid Japanese I don't always understand lol) bc normally she seems like a bit of a loner, but...madam you are 12. Kencho is showing hole on a regular basis, one of the villain dudes is an Ugly Bastard who has the goal of forcing his tongue down a girl's throat. Where are your parents 👀

15 QUESTIONS FOR 15 FRIENDS

I was tagged by @edsbacktattoo! Thank you Jams! ❤

ARE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE?

First name, no. But my middle name is my Oma's name. I used to not like it growing up because it's a very German name that no one knew how to pronounce or spell, but now that I'm older I like that it's more unique!

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED?

Yesterday when I saw that clip of John Stewart talking about his dog that recently passed. AND THEN I made the mistake of reading the comments and seeing all these other people talk about their deceased dogs. 😭😭😭

DO YOU HAVE KIDS?

Nope! I used to think that I would want them, but now that I work with kids I know I'm not cut out to be a parent lol. I love kids and working with them is so rewarding, but I also love that I get to go home to a quiet house at the end of the day!

WHAT SPORTS DO YOU PLAY/HAVE YOU PLAYED?

None, lol. The closest I've ever come to liking sports on any level is watching sports anime.

DO YOU USE SARCASM?

Occasionally, but not that often.

WHAT'S YOUR EYE COLOUR?

A very light blue; almost grey. Fun fact, before I started wearing glasses I got asked, like, at least once a month whether they were contacts because no one could believe that was my real eye colour.

SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS?

I'm a big ass wimp so I have to go with happy endings. I like a good drama/tragedy as well, but man I cannot handle scary things.

ANY TALENTS?

Hmm, I guess writing and storytelling. I would say I'm pretty creative. I'm also pretty good at logic puzzles and games where you have to suss things out.

WHERE WERE YOU BORN?

Canada and that's still where I live!

WHAT ARE YOUR HOBBIES?

Reading's a pretty big one. Cuddling up with a good book and a cup of tea makes for a heavenly afternoon. I'm also very much a board game person and occasionally a video game person as well. Also, I don't know if it counts as a hobby but I do go to multiple ones a year so I suppose it should, I'm a big fan of anime/comic cons!

DO YOU HAVE ANY PETS?

YES!!! I have three dogs and they are the lights of my life. Diddy (short for Didymus, named after the Labyrinth character) is almost fourteen and he is my special little baby. He's a Shih Tzu and he's sassy and kinda stubborn but he's also incredibly affectionate. Charlie is a nearly thirteen year old Chinese Crest/Pomeranian mix and he's a walking ball of anxiety but also a very sweet and gentle boy. Ollie is my newest baby at only six months old and he's a Border Collie/Great Pyrenees mix. He's a puppy so he's very rambunctious and playful, but he's also so so smart.

HOW TALL ARE YOU?

5'9''

FAVOURITE SUBJECT IN SCHOOL?

English Lit, a subject I loved so much I got a whole ass degree in it!

DREAM JOB?

I honestly think it's my current job? I've also always wanted to be a published author so I guess that's something to strive for, but if I stayed a school librarian for the rest of my life I think I would be very happy.

No pressure tags: @boobarellie @crowmunculus @doumeki-deserves-better @bioticdisaster @snake-snack-stede @asneakyfox @thermoskind @classycoffeecat @piratecaptainscaptainpirates @merryfinches and anyone else who wants to do it! ❤

I don't know if the writers in DS9 noticed the klingon situation happening. Someone probably just wanted the klingons to go back to the fighting so that they can be the baddies again but they had a gem to work with that could have gone in a completely different direction if people didn't care about war so much.

The first klingon that gets to DS9 and stays is the owner of the klingon restaurant. A guy who just is in it for the show, he serves food, he turns off his translator, he sings traditional songs. He is the stereotypical klingon but he doesn't exploit the war part of the klingon culture.

There are two things we know about klingons before that: they do war and they write operas (probably to speak about war, they mention a lot the songs that will speak of their battles). This guy is tangentially using the cultural part of the klingon culture, he doesn't even wear war-like clothes, he is wearing what? Linen? And people love it.

But when Dax' friends come to seek revenge, one of them complain that things are changing. People don't want to go to war like before, they open restaurants now. Old klingons with a personal vendetta as opposed to young klingons doing other things that are not fighting.

We have House of Quark, that shows us a klingon using honorless ways of achieving power and influence. He is using money to keep his house to himself. Other klingons turn his back on him, this is the worst cowardice. Also, in such a male dominated culture, there is a way for women to have power. Through family and marriage, alright, but there she is, Grilka, using it all to keep her house for her.

There could have been a battle there, the traditional way, but in the end there was none because it would have been honorless to just kill Quark. I can understand that this is not the first time something like this happens. Klingons harshly criticise those who don't do battle right.

But then we have the leader of the klingons choosing battle against the dominion and against the federation and against it all, probably manipulated by the dominion so we have all the conflict with the klingons again. Worf is there unable to choose if he wants to be klingon or not.

We are told that klingons always bring trouble, they are aggressive, Quark doesn't want to deal with them in his bar. But those klingons are in the army. They are soldiers. They are ready to die in battle any time, that is the glory. So when they are alive, they are The Alivest, and that comes with alcohol to deal with severe ptsd (there is no possible way klingon warriors don't have side-effects to this life) and with "party" according to their hypermasculine/army concept of party: destructive, it's only fun if it is the thing I see as fun.

This is something Worf doesn't get because he hasn't lived it, he didn't grow up with klingons and he didn't go to war with klingons. And that is never explained because "klingons are like that".

But they aren't. We've seen other klingons who arent' like that. The restaurant owner. Kor. Grilka with Quark. Probably others I don't know because I haven't seen all Star Trek.

Klingons speak abruptly in what seems to outside bystanders "an angry way", they gesture in a way that looks aggressive from the outside. They are one of the most emotional races in the Star Trek universe (and they probably were created as a contrast to the logical Vulcans, the 60s scifi thing that I hate so much).

Here is the thing though: That happens to Mediterraneans and Spanish speakers when Northern Europeans look at us! I've seen real fear in the face of German people sitting next to me when I was speaking with Venezuelan friends. I had to actually told the Germans that we were not fighting, that we were speaking about something else. That happens to Arabs too when they are in Northern countries. Certain peoples are always barbaric and aggressive from the outside.

So klingons have a warrior culture but not all of them are warriors. They speak about any important or relevant task to society as "it is a honor", "you did it with honor". Honor is very important but there is honor in cooking and cleaning, in caring for other people, in composing songs. It is more an idiom to congratulate someone than a reality of war.

And now that peace had been reached with the Federation, that they stopped their traditional war ways, some people like it. Some people find honor in other things. The old guard don't, they still remember the war, they still told their children about the good old times and their children envy them. But many others didn't have those good old times to begin with because even in the most war-like state ever, some people never go to war. There are probably klingon widows stuck in Qo'noS who don't remember war warmly. There are probably workers and farmers who never left their planet to conquer the galaxy.

Worf is superfar from all this. He only has visited klingon territory. He has spent his life amongst humans, unable to really behave like them (I bet he was mainly with white bland people) and idealising things that he had never lived or heard from the klingon people. Only the human version of klingon until he has been old enough. And still, he joined Starfleet. How many klingons are there in Starfleet? What do they think of the other aliens in Starfleet?

So if the writers didn't want to take the war route (or at least, not with the klingon), we could have seen the social change in klingon culture from the old ways of war to something more peaceful. They still have their traditional fights, now turned into sports. They still have their idioms related to war, battle and honor, but they use them to any and all aspects of life. "This food is worthy of a warrior", "It's such a good day, one could die happily in a day like this", "You brought honor to this house with grades as good as this, son".

In a change like this, Worf would be very confused at the beginning but he could befriend the restaurant owner, he could have a place amongst klingons, a privileged one even because he knows how other cultures do things. He could finally find his place as someone between cultures without renouncing to any of them.

I know we already are seeing the cracks in Ferengi culture, so it may have been to many cracks in different cultures at the same time, but that could also have been an interesting take, how all cultures are affected by the wormhole. The whole situation has changed now that we can travel fast through it, there is no need to go back to the old ways. Klingon still have an army, they offer to patrol and be of service since they have the skills, but they are not the conquerors they once were because there is no honor in that anymore. Some want to take control, go back to the war ways, but they solve it amongst themselves, the klingon way.

Maybe they didn't do this because they were doing something similar to this with Cardassia, with the civil and government change and all that. But they really did dirty to the klingons by making them, yet again, the brainless barbarians obsessed with battle. Poor restaurant guy, who has he to speak to?

reading level anon here. thank you so much for that detailed explanation, i really appreciate it! and if you have a spare moment and willingness in the future, i'd love to hear more about your opinion on whether languages are hard and how they're classified. i didn't consider english as a particularly difficult language either before i've started seeing those posts about reading levels and how english is so quirky and basically three languages in a trenchcoat which always pisses me off, 'cause sure, english is quirky and interesting, but not any more than all the other languages. i would actually love to see people trying to learn and struggle with hungarian (my native language) for a change, i'd be so ready to answer any questions and muse about homonyms and other linguistic features, turkish loanwords, puns, etc, and just help out with learning any way i can, but that obviously will never happen because very very few people want to learn hungarian. i am also an english major because i never think important life decisions through. anyway, sorry for being bitter in your inbox and once again thank you for taking my question seriously and answering it so thoroughly.

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Ooh, Hungarian!

Having known friends who did try, your language actually is a gigantic pain in the ass. Hahaha. Hungarian, Basque, and Navajo would be my picks for languages people I know actually attempt and then go "Oh no!" about.

I'm sure there are plenty of other Native North American languages that would stump people just as badly, but nobody I know attempts any of those.

Obviously, language "difficulty" is inherently relative. Spanish is dead easy if you're a native English speaker with a big vocabulary and good verbal skills. Japanese is tricky. But I wouldn't say Japanese is really that hard in an objective sense. It's simply more distant from English than Spanish is.

(For reference, I'm fluent-ish but out of practice and never very colloquial in Spanish, can read a little Japanese, and have studied but am garbage at Mandarin, Russian, German, and French. Uh, plus some Old English and various other things. Korean, here I come!)

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So are any languages inherently "hard"?

I'd say yes. I'd break it down by aspects of languages, and some things make them hard to learn at the super beginner phase while others are a pain even once you know a lot, but some genuinely are harder than others. It's not just about distance from one's native language.

Languages face pressure to be easy to produce, e.g. easy pronunciations, regular conjugations, limited vocabulary, simple writing systems. They also face pressure to be easy to understand, e.g. words that sound extremely distinct from each other, lots of words with specific meanings, unambiguous written forms.

In certain ways, reading Japanese is actually pretty easy. Characters are a nuisance to learn, but once you know them, they remove a lot of ambiguity from writing. They can also be used for puns, including visual puns. In Japanese specifically, they're often used for shit like all those proper nouns in One Piece that have furigana giving some ambiguous English loan word name as the pronunciation but kanji that make it more obvious what the proper noun is referring to.

ノースブルー with 北の海 for example. Even if you speak English, "North Blue" isn't that clear. 海 makes it clear it's the name of an ocean.

Characters also have a lot of internal logic (radicals, standard stroke directions). They're taught abysmally by most Japanese texts for English speakers that I've seen, but bad teaching isn't the same as the thing itself being hard.

I also think people often focus too much on the writing system, whether it's English's spelling... uh... quirks or Japanese' use of multiple systems together. In a practical sense, you have to know the dominant written form in order to study most languages easily, but the core of a language is speech, so I think classifying them as hard/not hard just based on writing is dumb.

What factors should we evaluate hardness by?

My main criteria are:

complexity

predictability

commonness of a feature compared to other languages

I wouldn't look at something being a language isolate in and of itself, but a language isolate may have features that are pretty uncommon in world languages, and that is something I'd look at.

To pick a really obvious example, the middle voice is uncommon. Most languages have active voice and passive voice. Other voices aren't that common. Though, wow, according to wikipedia:

Some languages have even more grammatical voices. For example, Classical Mongolian features five voices: active, passive, causative, reciprocal, and cooperative.

What the shit, Classical Mongolian? What is all of that???

I'm told Basque is full of the ergative and it confuses the shit out of learners.

Mandarin tones scare native English speakers because Tones Scary, but it only has the 5, and they sound decently different. As tonal languages go, that's really not that bad.

Grammatical gender isn't predictable from the nature of the thing (a table or whatever), but in many languages like Spanish, you can guess from what letter the word ends in. A language where you can't guess would be harder.

I don't really count quality of learning materials as part of the language's native difficulty, but that's obviously a factor too. English has a wealth of instructional materials for people coming from basically every language. A lot of Native languages of the Americas have learning materials in English or in Spanish or not at all, so you'd need to know one of those languages and/or travel to where the few native speakers are to learn.

Is English difficult?

English is not three languages in a trench coat, really. People say that because they're thinking about vocab and know fuckall about how languages work. Here's how I'd evaluate English:

Grammar: easy - weaksauce Germanic grammar with all the case-marking stripped out and some word order stuff solidified as a consequence; no grammatical gender; plenty of irregular verbs, but they tend to go in sets that have the same pattern; conjugations aren't that complex; we don't indicate politeness or formality with grammar

Pronunciation: easy to moderate - English has a medium size sound inventory compared to world languages. Many of its sounds are extremely common ones. The few that are less common you can get away with mispronouncing without being totally unintelligible. Still, th (θ and ð), r, ʒ, and possibly our ch and sh sounds are a problem for lots of learners. We have a lot of words that differ only by a similar vowel sound, and our vowels shift around between dialects, so that can be slightly tricky for listening comprehension.

Writing system: moderate - Our spelling isn't random, but chunks of it operate on one set of historical rules while other chunks of it operate on others. There is logic: it just doesn't apply to every word the same way. OTOH, the lack of phonetic spelling is helpful for distinguishing homophones while reading.

Vocabulary: moderate to hard - English has a fuckton of words. Just so many. There's no standard for judging what counts as an individual word, but however you slice it, English has more than our Germanic neighbors or the Romance languages we ripped off much of our vocab from. We also love our acronyms, which all sound the same because they are acronyms. (A thing one of my old language teachers bitched about from her English learning days.) Politeness and formality are often conveyed with word choice in ways that are hard to pin down. It's more of a sum total effect thing than one with precise rules. OTOH, most normal people use a very small inventory of words in speech, so you could get by with a much more basic set of vocab to start with.

Dialects: easy - English has no official standard and a number of countries where it's the official or de facto language, but they're all highly mutually intelligible and grammar works the same. (Well, okay, maybe less so if you're looking at the extremes of Caribbean creoles, but still...) The differences tend to be minor spelling changes and a handful of basic vocabulary items that mean something hilariously different. There is very little gap between written and spoken English compared to many languages with written forms. Writing is just speaking plus some extra vocabulary and a little more formality.

Speed of evolution: bad, v. bad, red alert - Every language has slang and evolves, but English seems to be especially speedy and gung ho about this, probably because we don't have much of a standard and we're so colloquial. We love coining new words, and anything that sounds like an affix gets shoved on all of the things. (And unlike an agglutinating language, this isn't something that's going to be clearly explained in a textbook.) English is neologism hell, especially if you're hanging out with nerds on tumblr.

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Personally, I'd put English at the upper end of easy, edging into moderate. The hard bit is memorizing our eighty bajillion words, and that's easier than if the hard part is the basic grammar. Our spelling sucks, but most native speakers can't spell worth a damn either, so even moderate gains in that area make a learner able to get by with spellcheck.

And procedurally, we're pretty easy because we produce the full range of media, so you can easily find a book for 5-year-olds or 10-year-olds or 15-year-olds to practice on. Avoiding English on the internet would be a lot harder than finding some, and there are zillions of resources out there for learners.

For hard, I'd pick languages with shittons of case-marking or with way more than three grammatical genders. Procedurally, I'd pick languages from the Americas because genocide and forcible suppression of native languages have led to many of them having few native speakers, few closely related living languages, and not much media in them. Some don't have any written standard at all.

I don't know a ton about Hungarian, but from what I do know, I'd put it at the upper end of moderate or the lower end of hard for your pain-in-the-ass case system. Ugh, case. My nemesis!

16, 22, 34, 36, 46, 56, 64, 66, 70, 76, 78, 86, 88, 92, 94, 96, 100

16. Do theoretical ethical debates have any value? Is it important people discuss ethical dilemmas, e.g. the trolley problem? I just think it's fun to think about stuff like that, so it is of value for me. I also think it can be pretty insightful when you take the position of the devil's advocate.

22. How long does it take you to fall in love with somebody? Is the sensation of ‘falling in love’ or ‘being in love’ better? Since I think that I've found my true love I can say that the being in love part was reached quite quickly. And oh my, truly being in love is something else. The first week of us being together already felt like we've known each other for ages.

34. Was your childhood happy? Yes, I cherish a lot of moments and feelings.

36. Have you ever met someone who had a very similar personality to your own? Did you get along? We've been together for almost four years and we love each other deeply.

46. Is true world peace ever possible? Man I wish, but I don't think so. Humans will always find ways to form groups and discriminate against each other. We will always find new differences that will separate us. It's just in our nature.

56. What do you think about artificial intelligence? I love working with it and thinking about the ethics behind it. Like what does it even mean to understand something. We're all like 'well it's just programmed to show emotions or learn a language', well yeah but how is that any different to the way humans learn about the world?

64. How consistent is your perception of time? Pretty inconsistent as of late. I sometimes forget parts of what I've done during the day. Sometimes being in the present feels like it happens ages ago. Did I even go for a run today? What did I eat yesterday? I am quite scared of losing my mind pretty early.

66. How do you feel about the idea ‘an eye for an eye’? I understand the historical significance of it. As it being one of the first forms of regulated justice. But now it's a very antiquated way of thinking.

70. What’s the tragedy of your life? I would describe myself as a quite artsy and visual person. And I have a condition that will eventually make me go blind.

76. Do you crave approval and/or praise? Oh yes. I think everything I do is wrong or stupid or I'm not doing enough in general, so I need constant reassurance.

78. Are you ever going to be satisfied? I think I'm on a good way.

86. What’s your toxic trait? Are you trying to improve yourself and fix it? Needing time to process things that bug me or depress me. I often need a while to come forward with an explanation as to why I’m quiet or in a bad mood. I’m aware of that

88. Are you a jealous person? If ContraPoints has taught me one thing it's the difference between jealousy and envy. And I would consider myself more of an envious person, especially regarding skills, abilities, looks, etc.

92. Do you speak multiple languages? Which do you dream in? What language would you want to learn? Fluent in German and English. I think and dream in both. But I'm currently learning Dutch. And if there was more time I'd also love to learn more Japanese and Korean.

94. How would you describe yourself when you love? Do you love forcefully, unconditionally, gently, quietly, desperately? Passionately, with every fiber of my being.

96. Is your perception of yourself similar or the same to how others perceive you? I recently found out that it differs quite a lot. I think I'm barely doing enough for uni and everyone else thinks I'm a huge nerd who does way too much.

100. What belief do you have that isn’t logically grounded, but you still firmly believe in? That love is the most important experience of the human condition and that soulmates exist.

Those were a lot, took me a while, thanks for the questions ✌️

hello there @clevverboy in the name of not derailing an along very long post I'll try to answer here:

small 1) I don't know the official FBI logic to splitting Catholics off from other Christians, However I can guess. For a very long time, and even in some evangelical circles today there was/is very intense anti-Catholic feeling. You can still find churches in the South declaring that the Pope is the "anti-christ" or "whore of Rome" When the first Catholic to run for US President, Al Smith (1928) was running there was a conspiracy theory that he was gonna dig a secret tunnel to Rome to get orders direct from the Pope. When JFK became the second Catholic to run for President (1960) he had to give a dramatic speech about how he wasn't going to take orders from the Pope (it's a great speech btw). Today it's largely faded and no one seems to really bring up our second Catholic President, Joe Biden's religion all that much and no one seems worried he's taking orders from the Pope.

Big 1) Okay so there are lots of things that are antisemitic, like any form of racism there are more than one racist stereotypes, ones that sometimes contradict themselves. For example there are racist stereotypes that black people are somehow both lazy and don't want to work, and super humanity strong and violently criminal.

I'll do my best to run down some of those common ones against Jews, but I'll surely miss some, and the ones I see in my life as a secular America Jew of a Reform background won't be the same as ones others see.

1) Jews rule the world. This is expressed in a lot of ways but in general the idea is that Jews in general, or named Jews (most often George Soros or The Rothschild family) run/control/own the world banking system, the media, the government, this or that political party, secretly this or that political movement of mostly non-Jews. This also feeds an image of Jews as shadowy plotters planning out years long movie villain plots

2) Jews are greedy/rich. The idea that Jews love money above everything, and will do anything to get money. Also that all Jews have money. Jews are like anyone, there are poor Jews, and rich ones, ones good with money, good at math, and ones who are always broke because they're bad with money.

3) Jews are sex perverts, and after non-Jewish women. You don't see this one as out in the open as you once did. Back in the late 1800s through the 1920s there was an obsession with what was called at the time "white slavery" and today might be called sex trafficking. Sometimes Asians were blamed for kidnapping illy white women off the streets but Jews also were targets of this accusation as well. Today I've seen many times people claiming that Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein are/were in some way representative of the Jewish people. Which also brings us to Qanon a theory that a shadow elite who secret run things are sex trafficking children, and also killing and eating them. which brings us to

4) The Blood Libel. Dating back to the 1100s this is the idea that Jews kill non-Jewish children/babies, usually to us their blood for some ritual. There are a few Catholic saint who were the "victims" of Jewish ritual murder. Today Qanon keeps that idea alive and well with the idea that the shadow cabal kills and eats children as part of a ritual for satan. But you see accusations of "baby killer" and stealing organs, and drinking blood around

5) Jews have questionable loyalty. This dates way back, in the early 1900s France was ripped apart by what was known as the Dreyfus affair, when a Jewish army officer, Alfred Dreyfus was accused of being a German spy, largely because he was Jewish. Basically this idea is that Jews will always be more loyal to fellow Jews and the overarching Jewish conspiracy than to any non-Jews, be these friends, community, organization or even country. In modern times its often seen when people accuse non-Israeli Jews of being loyal to Israel, or imply or say they are foreign. I believe Trump called Israel "your country" when talking to a group of American Jews, he may have done that more than once. I've seen a lot of pictures of Jewish-American lawmakers with stars of David placed over their pictures calling them "Mossad agents"

any ways I'm not sure this counts as a #6 since it kind of interlinks with some others, and also I feel like all minorities (and women) face this when it comes to talking about bigotry. But basically there's an idea that Jews are cynically making it up, see our plotting and greed, and that maybe we're just saying stuff to help Israel, see our dual loyalty. Which of course is what you were implying, at the time you asked this question and right now as I check, #freepalestine wasn't trending for me, the "trending now" is 1 Black Lives Matter, 2 Stop Asian Hate, 3 Cruella, 4 Motogp, 5 Tommyimmit, 6 Far Cry 6, 7 The Boyz, 8 Lucifer, and 9 Playchoices.

gotta agree with the other anon, your ferrari assessment seems very plausible and rationally/logically thought through for me (i'm 23 and basically grew up on watching f1/loving ferrari, schumi and vettel so yeah, not the most veteran tifosi, but it gets the job done haha!). i've loved watching charles succeed to sauber and then to ferrari in 2019 and i, as you do as well, hope that, when or if the time comes, his depature with ferrari will come after a fulfilled, prosperous, successful and overall happy career with them.

as for the feeder series, which i've also been following, the fda (ferrari driver academy) have quite full stables compared to other junior programs such as, say, mercedes. merc have a lone junior in f3 (frederik vesti), one in freca (paul aron) and three or so still in karting i believe. while none of the fda have struck me as the equal to charles (that boy has simply been extraordinary, especially in lower categories so comparing them would be a bit difficult), they do have great drivers. i mean, mick won f2 and f3 and he's part of the fda and now in f1, currently they have callum ilott, in f2 they have marcus armstrong (not really delivering with dams racing) and robert shwartzman (in a prema, seems v talented), in f3 arthur leclerc (prema, tough luck in the previous rounds) and some others in freca and italian f4 (maya weug, dino beganovic etc.). i don't know how much this helps but hey, ferrari ramblings never hurt, do they? :')

greetings and much love from germany ❤

much love to you too from here ❤️❤️

and ajdjfk no, no you are all esteemed in my eyes, I haven’t followed F1 seriously since I was like 10? or younger? It was one of those fundamental childhood pasttimes that happened more on the peripheral because let’s face it I was barely a sentient human being when Schumi was winning all the time so I am always happy to hear from Ferrari fans who have been following for a longer time because it gives great perspective that’s different from someone like me who recently got back into F1 but have this kind of gap in between my childhood memories of Ferrari and the Ferrari of today.

But !! It’s good to hear about what you think of their juniors for sure! I know about most of them via following the FDA socials, but I don’t have much of a read on their performances especially the younger they are shfjf. Definitely agree with my limited knowledge that it’s hard to compare any of them with how Charles did in the junior categories (especially after he formally got picked up by the FDA) and also he really took Sauber to unforeseen heights,, Charles is really something else and it makes me get a bit of a sparkle in my eye again to see him in Ferrari, and I haven’t seen really seen quite that same intensity of a sparkle with the other Ferrari juniors so far, even though there are definitely great and talented drivers among their ranks 😭❤️

it’s making me kind of emo to think that Ferrari has come quite far with their junior program to have an overabundance of choice with young talents when they’ve historically favored more seasoned drivers, and how Jules Bianchi inspired Ferrari to start their program and continue to be honored by them, and how Enzo Ferrari once said “I love to think that Ferrari can create drivers as much as cars” and here we are with the first FDA grad who have moved up to the Ferrari seat with Charles and everyone else in the FDA now showing promise to take up another Ferrari seat in the future 🥺❤️❤️

And of course the Ferrari ramblings never hurt, my inbox is always open to you, lovely german anon!! ❤️❤️

So, I know this is kind of a small thing but I wanted to post it anyway. I'm FtM (22) transgender, I've been out since I was around 16, offically started working towards name change about a year and a half ago, and I've been on testosterone almost 1 year now. I was raised by some really shitty guardians from 12-19, who absolutely didn't accept me being trans. I was always told "There's no way you're a boy, you like face masks (had bad acne and was trying to take care of my skin) and bathbombs/bath oils/whatever. (Sorry for wanting to smell good I guess)" I got away from them finally and could transition. Now, due to that and dysphoria, I really REALLY worked on presenting as masculine as possible. Male cologne, outfits, etc. But, I did miss painting my nails, honestly. I was always too scared that it would be the moment someone jumped up and had a HAHA GOTCHA YOURE FAKING scenario, so I didn't.

I've gotten into Rammstein for about the past year or so and instantly was drawn to Richard. I love them all of course, but after learning about Richard's childhood I gravitated towards him since we were similar in that aspect. I found myself adoring the way he was so confident, absolute banging outfits and appearance, he had a mohawk and so did I. I just really look up to him.

And he paints his nails.

I've been debating on and off this past 6 months or so on getting back into painting my nails. Logically, I knew anyone can paint their nails and obviously as a little punk ass dude I knew that gender roles are dumb anyway, live your life. But I was also caught between that and dysphoria.

The more I watched Rammstein, the more I felt confident in exploring outside the typical bounds of masculine presenting. Frau Schneider, Till in that pink fuzzy jacket, multiple times the guys have been in drag or dresses, things like that helped me feel a bit better.

If these burly, metal german guys can do this shit then my 5'5 american ass can do it too. So I'm writing this to basically say thanks to Richard (and the rest of Rammstein) for giving me the confidence to finally go for painting my nails again. <3

Hello Jade! Hope you're doing well today!💕

I just wanted to say how cool it is that you are learning Japanese!!☺ I've thought about it and my dad sometimes asks me to but I have not committed to the idea yet haha. Just out of curiosity, what encouraged you to study it, if you're comfortable answering! And what do you think about it? Cause I might consider learning in the future❤

Good evening (night) from my time zone, dear! 🎵

Oh, thank you so much! Yes, you may, I love talking about everything language-related 😚.

There were different reasons that coalesced into my motivation to study japanese.

First and foremost, languages have always been my passion. So when I started watching anime, it was in japanese with subtitles, which soon let to me wanting to learn the language. The older I got and the more I got to know about its complexity and the deep rooted connection to the japanese culture, the stronger my wish got. My interest in the japanese culture peaked when I had a chance to visit Japan. I even made a friend there, so now I'd also love to be able to talk japanese with her!

When I got into university, I was overjoyed to find that the language faculty offers japanese classes. I'm still quite the beginner though. 🥴

So yeah, in conclusion my wish to learn japanese started with wanting to understand animes and ended in a total fascination for thw complexity of Japan's culture and language.

As for what I think about it - mind you, my first languages are german and spanish, so my point of view may not be helpful for a native chinese/english talker like you 🙏🏼. Here's what I have to offer:

The pronounciation I find the easiest, as it is quite close to spanish in its softness. In general though, it's a fairly different language to any language I've learned before. The particles are what is the trickiest part for me, I get confused all the time 😩. The rest of the grammar has been easy enough so far, though you have to ignore any other language stored in my brain in order to use the sentence structure correctly.

Hiragana and Katakana came easy to me, as I find the syllabic writing system quite logical. Kanji, on the other hand, is highly complex, but I guess you know all about that hahaha - I love Kanji though. I love the symbolism behind the signs.

SO THIS WAS A RAMBLE SORRY FOR GOING ON FOR SO LONG I HOPE ANY OF THIS IS WHAT YOU WANTED TO HEAR

Take care dear! 😘

I've a small query (if it doesn't float your boat, no worries!) I was interested in how you got into learning languages, what led you to it? I've become curious since learning a new language as an adult has only increased my awe of multilingual folk (additionally, I vaguely remember a post about a request in exchange for a donation to charity, and wondered if there were any you'd like a donation to)

First of all, good luck with the language learning! It’s not easy as an adult, but I do think it’s worth it, both in terms of cultural fluency and brain elasticity.

My answer to the language thing is actually extremely complicated, so I’ll be putting it under the cut. I’ll put the charity stuff above the cut so more people can see it.

— I’d just like to warn you, though, before I start, that I have been locked in this house for over a month with no respite and I HAVE A LOT OF WORDS AND FEELINGS IN ME SO THIS POST HAS SO MANY OF BOTH OF THOSE THINGS!!

anyway

There are so many charities that I want to donate to now that it honestly makes my head spin. Every time I look at a site like GoFundMe it kind of makes me want to cry. So a lot of donations I’ve made have been to like local businesses, restaurants, etc. who will close down without help. (Also a lot of local native groups, who are disproportionately suffering right now.) I’ve also been donating to various food banks — Philabundance, a Philly-centric charity that deals with food insecurity in general, is a good one. That was a regular of mine even before the outbreak. I’ve also donated to a lot of the local services in the small town where I’m in now, though you’ll need to PM me if you want the name of that. (It’s… very small.) 

Off Their Plate is another great charity that’s been working with small restaurants (who can’t open for business) to get food to first responders. They’re partnered with World Central Kitchen, which is another fantastic charity that helps out during disasters. Plus well-known ones like Feeding America, No Kid Hungry (important while school is out and kids aren’t getting breakfast/lunch there), Direct Relief, etc.

(I uhhh may have overstrained my charity budget the past couple months. It’s odd how that adds to stress and relieves it at the same time.)

I tend to avoid religious charities, especially Salvation Army, because they’re occasionally discriminatory in how they distribute resources and we no longer have laws & oversight to make sure they don’t do shady shit. So I just avoid them in general now. I also avoid the American Red Cross because they’ve been known to misuse funds. Research is key!

I also worry about some of my regular charities, like Immigration Equality & Rainbow Railroad (helps LGBTQ people in dangerous countries immigrate to less dangerous ones), the Native American Rights Fund, various local abortion funds, RAICES (provides legal services to immigrants & refugees), the ACLU, Dysautonomia International, the Rainforest Action Network, etc… A lot of them are getting fewer donations than they’re used to because we’re in the middle of such life-shattering events.

If you are really interested in making a donation (please, please, please do) those are all good options. I also fully recommend looking up needy organizations, services, people, etc. in your own area. I try to donate to a healthy mixture of national/international organizations, local needs, and temporary issues du jour. (Disaster relief, bail funds for protesters, fighting new discriminatory laws, etc.) I would genuinely appreciate any donations, especially if you find a cause near and dear to your heart that I would never even hear about. Anything along these same lines, y’know? If you have anything you’d like me to do in return, just hmu.

I constantly stress about who to donate to — there are so many good organizations and so few dollars to give them — but at a certain point, every dollar to a cause you believe in counts. Every dollar you donate helps to make the world a little bit better for at least one person. That’s what I have to tell myself to calm myself down, haha. So even the smallest donation you make to any of these groups would mean a lot to me.

Anyway, onto the language stuff:

For me personally, I grew up bilingual. Deafness runs in my family, so I learned sign language from a very young age. Note: I say “sign language” rather than ASL. I learned sign language kind of organically, which ended up making a mess later in life. My parents mostly taught me, but so did my daycare (at a deaf school) and so did my babysitters and so did other family members, etc. The point is, not all of them used the same sign language. There was a wide mixture of ASL, SEE, and home signs and my current signing style is… problematic. lmao. My family all understands it (hey, they taught it to me) and I can have conversations with American sign language users, but I know they can’t love my signing lmao. I’ve considered sitting down and taking a legit ASL class for years, but there are so many classes I want to take… I don’t know.

After that, it largely became a case of taking languages whenever they were made available to me. I’ve always liked them. We moved around a lot when I was a preteen so I went to a lot of different schools. (4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade were all different schools.) It was rough at home and hard to make friends so I guess I threw myself into academics a lot. My sixth grade school was an odd one; it was a 6-8 grade school and you were supposed to take a crash course in three different languages in sixth grade so you could choose one and take it in 7th and 8th grade. I ended up taking Spanish, French, and German that year. I liked French best! But then we moved so it was kind of moot. (And I hated German, sorry Germans. My mouth doesn’t like the noises. It didn’t help that my teacher was weirdly sympathetic to Nazi-era Germany…? But I guess that’s another post.)

When we moved to Florida, you had to have special permission to take language classes in 7th grade. (FL doesn’t have great academics.) But since I’d already had some Spanish in NC, they let me take it! And then I moved schools again. This new school, my 8th grade school, I’d be in until I graduated 12th grade years later — but the employee turnover at that school was almost comedically bad?  I took Spanish for like a year and a half there and had three different teachers. So at this point I’d had 5 different Spanish teachers, all from different countries (where they spoke slightly different Spanish!), all reteaching the same ideas over and over again because they didn’t know where the last teacher had left off. In the end, my last Spanish teacher sent me to the school library with some textbooks because he felt like I was very good at languages and he couldn’t adequately teach me in the environment he’d been thrown into. (My high school was very terrible. So he was right.)

SO I SWITCHED TO FRENCH. I took French for 3-4 years in high school (can’t remember when I started) but the same shit started happening. By the last year, my French teacher had the French I, II, III, and IV students IN THE SAME CLASS and she just put the advanced students in small groups and had us do independent study. Sigh… Around this same time, I started three other languages. At this point, I was getting kind of accustomed to self-study so I applied for a Latin class in the Florida Virtual School and took a year of that. I also spent a summer studying at the University of Chicago when I was 16-17 and learned Middle Egyptian then. (Yes, I was an ancient cultures nerd even back then.)

The Japanese has always been an odd case. Like I said, my 8-12 education was fairly terrible. They had this thing where they used a computer program to teach kids math and the teacher kind of taught along? When I transferred to the school in the middle of 8th grade, the teacher didn’t know what to do with me so he just plopped me in front of a computer and told me to do as much as I could. They started me in… Pre-Algebra, I think? Which I’d already taken in sixth grade. So I ended up getting through Pre-Algebra, Geometry, Algebra, and Algebra II, which… wasn’t in the teacher’s plans. I’d kind of finished several years of math in like a quarter. And then they didn’t have any more classes. So he just told me to like. Sit quietly and amuse myself for the last few months of school?? (Terrible, terrible school.) So I went to the library and found a book about Japanese and started teaching myself that. I really, really liked Japanese! Like it’s a language that just clicks really well with the way my brain works, I think. It’s very logical, I like the syllabary, etc. And I think growing up signing helped me with pictographic languages like Middle Egyptian and Japanese. My brain easily connects visual symbols with concepts.

When I went to college, the plan was honestly to learn more Egyptian and start translating, and I kept taking French to help me read old research in various ancient study fields. I ended up transferring out of the NELC major, though, due to some ethical problems… I guess that’s another post. Several years into my RELS/FOLK degree I went to my parents like. Look. I love learning this stuff but none of it’s useful. Remember how much I loved Japanese? Can I go back to learning that? I could translate that and that’s a legit skill. So I applied to a program through my school and studied in Japan for a while and ended up really doubling down on that language. Weird how I came back to it years later, but I guess it was always the one I loved best.

I have a mind that’s very pattern-based, so I guess I’ve always loved learning languages and the patterns behind them. (This may be why languages with a lot of rule exceptions, like French, irritate me.) They’re like puzzles that I’ve always enjoyed teasing out. Unfortunately, the way my education bounced around meant that I never got a good grounding in most of those languages, so I’ve largely lost them. I can still read French fairly well and my Japanese is good… My Spanish is like. Enough to get me around in the southern US. My German is abysmal. I remember very little Latin & Middle Egyptian. (It’s been over 10 years, I guess.)

So I guess what I feel the need to say to you is that if you don’t use it, you will lose it. I did well in all my language classes. They’ve always been fairly easy for me. Like. Straight As, no problem. I don’t say this to brag. I say it so you know that even for someone like me, whose brain is fairly well-wired for languages, it’s very, very difficult to retain languages when you’re not using them. If you’re not used to taking languages or you started late in life, it’s even harder. So even on the days you don’t want to practice! You gotta practice! Ganbare! Bon chance!

Liam & Edie

Liam: [sends her some kind of coded thing where the answer equals 6 when she works it out so she knows he's not living his best life without her because they're both weird little nerds] Edie: I'm so insanely bored Edie: what lesson are you in and how many negative ⭐s is it Liam: german Liam: all the negatives Liam: [sends her a picture of his textbook with everyone's eyes stabbed out via pencil holes like miss you] Edie: awh, you wanna give me schadenfreude 😍🥴 Edie: that's generous Edie: I was just thinking that a Columbine would liven this place up Liam: write your list, I'll try & think of anyone I'd wanna keep off mine except for you Edie: but being the last ones standing is what we aim for Edie: and what I want right now Liam: anything else you want before I kick that plan off? Edie: don't need time to say any final farewells to any dickhead in this place Liam: you've got a steadier hand, I'll need you to carve no farewells onto the bullets Edie: more deserving use of my time than whatever I'm not being taught right now Edie: how's your aim though? Liam: -9 ⭐s for the lesson you're in Liam: but + it for my aim Edie: my fault for naively thinking Physics might be interesting when I picked it Edie: forgot we were catering for the braindead masses Edie: I believe it, no bullshit brag detected Liam: chemistry would've let you blow more things up Liam: & make 💊 Edie: 😤 I'm mad Edie: no amount of black holes are gonna make up for this Liam: we'll learn it online Edie: but I wanna blow things up with you now Edie: or not learn German vocab Liam: let's go blow up a 🚽 they have to let you out in case you're about to bleed or cry in front of everyone Edie: and am I? Liam: in front of me & whoever else is in there Liam: unless you wanna upload it after Edie: I do need to make the overreaction my fam had over the weekend worth the headache Edie: owed more trouble, like Liam: my dad was on one too, he's the only one not allowed to show up by his logic Liam: you want a bigger scale? every 🚽 in the building Liam: maybe school would have to shut Edie: Know that, my sister is the definition of one rule for her, another for the rest of us Edie: I reckon we could do 'em all without getting caught in the act Edie: more fun after the fact 📹 to claim it Liam: just need to get creative with our explosives, I won't have enough 🧨 to do every bathroom Liam: you in the labs or a standard classroom? Edie: labs Edie: she's scheduled a breakdown any moment now anyway, she's always pissing off to cry herself so I'll take my opportunity and cue as such Liam: 3 HNO3 + C6H7(OH)3O2  H2SO4 →  C6H7(ONO2)3O2 + 3 H2O Liam: only need nitric & sulphuric acid from you Edie: you're a hot evil genius, okay Liam: there's a story behind it but maybe I shouldn't give it to you Liam: keep that train of thought intact Edie: but I need it Edie: I can keep 'em both on track, trust me Liam: you need it? tell me about that first Edie: I love stories Edie: and I liked talking to you, a lot Edie: and I like it when you give me things Edie: so yeah, it's a need Liam: to make you happy then Liam: the year is 1846 and this german-swiss scientist was messing in his kitchen Liam: he spilled a mixture of those 2 acids I told you to get on his table & grabbed the first thing he had about to clean it up Liam: happened to be a cotton apron & he hung it on his oven door to dry after, super chill until it exploded Edie: that's perfect Edie: scientists really loved making shit happen on accident, just like all life Edie: 🧫🦠 Liam: I was an accident & look how that turned out Edie: Big same Liam: my sister too, different loser dad though Edie: yeah? Edie: we've got that in common too Liam: does seem to be pretty common Edie: happy little accidents Edie: or not so Liam: I don't wanna be like that Liam: the different girls bit at least Edie: people love repeating their parents mistakes and bullshit Edie: even when they railed on it for years Edie: I don't fucking get it Edie: make your own, at least Liam: maybe you'll think this is one but I gotta say it Liam: I don't care about claiming 🚽💥 I wanna claim you Liam: be with me Edie: You mean it Edie: no bullshit Liam: only if there's bullshit that comes with being official & exclusive all of that Edie: I think that's a really, really good idea Edie: not a mistake but even if it was, I still want it Liam: alright, it's yours, me & the gay 🖤 shit Edie: [sends him a 🥰 selfie] Liam: it's my background Edie: you were already mine Edie: [glitter moment shamelessly] Liam: took the longest shower & I'm still finding it 🗺❌ Edie: good thing you suit it Edie: we can try again though, after the literal shitstorm, a shower is a good idea Liam: yeah, wouldn't suit that Liam: german teacher can disagree as loud as she wants Edie: 😏 Edie: can keep their filth and their hands to themselves Liam: I respect that you only covered me in glitter so that those girls would think I was gay & do the same Edie: people gotta respect territory Edie: works until I perfect your tat Liam: I'll get on the school roof with a 📢 Edie: You're everything Liam: you can sample it when you write a song about me Edie: I will Edie: your friend is not getting a feature Liam: his loss Liam: I'll only gloat for a while Edie: you can go as hard as you want, I reckon Edie: you've earnt it, like Liam: I'll go as hard as you want Liam: you're my girl now Edie: I'm yours Liam: make your physics teacher cry for me then Liam: we've got shit to do Edie: 😄 Edie: done Edie: where are we meeting when I'm fully done and have secured the shit? Liam: [a location] Edie: 👍 Liam: 🔜 Edie: making people cry is a speciality of mine Liam: it won't work on me Edie: I don't want to make you cry Edie: ever Liam: good thing I can't ever, all that toxic masculinity Edie: not missing out on much Edie: even if Miss makes a proper performance out of it Edie: more fun ways to do that Liam: yeah there are Edie: 💣💥 Liam: don't have to hand you a 🧨 to cause 🎇🎆 Edie: you don't even know how true that is Edie: yet Liam: for now it's a guess Edie: I'll show you Liam: I just wanna feel something Liam: that's not only 💊🥤 Edie: I will make that happen Edie: you don't need to believe me, just wait Liam: I'm waiting Edie: you deserve to feel everything Liam: I've tried but it don't work out like that Edie: you can't? Edie: or only certain emotions Liam: there's no 💣💥 in me Edie: we can be dead inside together and make it happen to everyone else Edie: for now Edie: [show up] Liam: [just kiss her too hard because everything you do is a little bit too much boy, okay you're numb but there's too many emotions trapped under the surface that we're not addressing so] Edie: [thank god we're so overwhelmed ourselves that we can just roll with this and have it be the most extra thing] Liam: [this is why you two work] Edie: [just approaching this like you aren't her first honey not even 'cos we're fronting but feelings and trying to make you feel things] Liam: [realistically who have you ever slept with either boy unless you've gotten with one of Rio's friends casually prior to this or something like] Edie: [just out here doing the most from the jump, the fam must be like HELLO???] Liam: [shouldn't be here for it but I am] Edie: [we all are by all I mean us and them, no one else lol] Liam: [imagine how shook he'd be because didn't expect it to be like this] Edie: [awkward, like the levels you must pay attention to no one but Rio 'cos she isn't really conspicuous in how she be lol] Liam: [and if he did get with one of Rio's friends when he first started stalking her it clearly didn't work out so he's probably bracing himself for another failed attempt and then] Edie: [it makes logical sense, like tryna get in the friend group lowkey but none of her friends are really here for it[ Liam: [yeah and like in my head he started stalking Rio when his sister had just died so he wouldn't have been bringing his A game] Edie: [exactly dr phil] Liam: [but obviously nothing happened that she could clock as a red flag when she's thinking of suspects he was probably just really blah because numb] Edie: [yeah, and none of her friends are gonna chat shit on the boy who's sister just died really like it's to be expected] Liam: [it's a good cover like you said] Edie: [just sat here like it's so rude we're gonna kill Edie, as if it wasn't rude before] Liam: [I do feel so bad for him even though he literally fucks with Rio's entire life] Edie: [lol same, it's like if you could just stop doing that tah] Liam: [I think it's partly because we both know she ends up okay and living as happy a life as poss whereas he does not] Edie: [yeah, there's no hope and that's just sad, even if you were an absolute dick, like Ro, per example, still sad she dies for everyone else] Liam: [agreed] Edie: [and you aren't that insufferable boy which is just well] Liam: [nobody is, she's next level] Liam: [anyway also do your vandalism and have way more fun than you expected with that as well] Edie: [when it's just a moment for you immediately and you're all in] Liam: [do we wanna close the school or not let them destroy every bathroom in the place for various reasons lol?] Edie: [on the one hand, maybe get caught before you do every bathroom for that trouble mood, on the other, if you shamelessly upload it you'd get in more trouble for making the school look dumb and shit hmm, I think this time get caught and we'll let you be sneaky trouble causing nerds plenty of other times[ Liam: [I'm about that, we know you're both pretty distracted rn so] Edie: [it feels more legit for this instance, and we can separate you and they'd probably call Ali in for the drama of it] Liam: [you can work your way into the fam later boy you're trying to keep your gf highkey for now, I love the idea of both their mums getting called in and awkwardly meeting haha] Edie: [they'd lowkey want them to kick up a fuss and separate them for the school but Ali knows how well that works so it's like well soz you'll have to cope] Liam: [whereas his mum is the opposite, you know the sort never backs the kid and is just wholeheartedly like yes do whatever you think @ the school] Edie: [ahh the joys] Edie: [once that drama has unfurled and you're in your separate detention moments, sending him a pic from the school website of all the staff but she's digitally ❌d out all their eyes] Liam: I miss you too Edie: I hope so Liam: what else would I be doing? Edie: I don't know Edie: you are full of good ideas Liam: I was thinking about setting the fire alarm off Edie: an acceptable second to thinking about me constantly Edie: would hate to perish in a fire with all these cunts Liam: to be with you Liam: I'd get you before they made you line up in the playground for the head count Edie: then we can leave, like we planned Edie: they'll have let our mas fuck off by now Liam: 🗑🔥 Liam: boring if it wasn't for you Edie: you're like Edie: seeing a new colour Liam: maybe I should leave you there longer so you can work on your song about me Edie: don't though Edie: I know it sounds cliche but that's the only way I can explain how blindsided but transformed I feel from you Liam: you're the only person who's said it, don't think that's how cliches work Edie: I don't just say pretty things for the sake of it Edie: or anything Edie: I mean it, regardless of what it does or don't sound like Liam: I know you mean it Edie: if we both set one, it'll take them longer to get back inside Edie: hide and seek and we can finish what we started? Liam: you're on Edie: 3️⃣2️⃣1️⃣ Liam: 1️⃣ 2️⃣ 3️⃣ Edie: [ahh this poor school lol] Liam: [love that you get to be notorious though gal cos peeps gonna be talking about these antics for ages] Edie: [in this fam you have to make your own rep or life is really hard junie and grace, I said what I said] Liam: [tea though] Liam: [I'm trying to think of somewhere cool they could go and my first thought was like a junkyard vibe so they can destroy more things like life is strange and sex education unless you have any better ideas] Edie: [that's always a mood, also very akin to the barn which will clearly be your domain so] Liam: [yeah and somewhere she's probably been loads of times that she knows all the hiding places of so they don't need to be interrupted again] Edie: [live your best destructive lives] Liam: [when he would be and lowkey forget what he's meant to be doing here, such fun, not devastating me at all] Edie: [the theme of these painful two years lmao, I'm so glad you never find out babe truly] Liam: [though ngl I wish you could survive and we could see if y'all as a couple could survive that] Edie: [ahh when you can't do it all, so rude] Liam: [could've had it all rolling in the deep] Edie: [soz you've got to die my love] Liam: [soz you both have, his poor mother] Edie: [yeah that is no fun] Liam: [soz both your kids are dead babe but we need it for the plot] Edie: [some people have the worst luck truly]

Lack OF Context

I never honestly prayed before, but I always had this small belief that someone existed up there, someone who controlled us or at least could control us; that thought lead me to have my first conversation with GOD. I mean I did all the talking, I wouldn't know if he responded.

Anirudh texted me after a week. I'm surprised how he texts me even after I repeatedly ignore him. I mean.....I love him, I want to talk to him, I want to meet him, and I probably can but I choose not to because 12th grade is really crucial to get into med school and I can't afforde to get used to him right now (also if my parents get to know about him I'm dead). I reply to him occasionally ,though, and that makes me happy.

Me: “Dad! Hurry up”

Dad: “ I'm almost done Tanvi...get the keys from mom”

Me: “Can you please teach the concept of punctuality to your husband mom.....he gets me late for my classes every day”

Dad: “Go by yourself no ”

Me: “I would dad if you allowed me to take ubers”

Dad: “well you have a bicycle”

Mom: “ argument over! (throws the keys to dad) now leave”

Once we sat in the car the argument started off from exactly where it ended

Dad: “ Tanvi! What about the bicycle?”

Me: “ Dad! How in the world do you lose your common sense sometimes? I'll sweat my lungs out if I bicycle 8 kilometres every day.

Dad: Well, you'll sweat my pockets out if you do an uber everyday

Me: I wonder how you'll pay for my med school though

Dad: I earn enough honey, and your mom does too.

Me: got you!!! My logic wins

Dad: shit!! No one's logic wins it's an argument with no winner.

Me: come on dad I'm the clear winner

Dad: I'll agree to disagree

Me: yeah sure!!

We were laughing around when all of a sudden I noticed a tiny kid randomly standing on the road and screamed; dad pressed the brake and turned the steering which made the car turn 360 degrees and crash into a light pole. The kid just ran away, but if I ever see that kid again I'm really going to run a car over him (I won't though). I was fine but my dad's head hit the steering wheel and was bleeding ( I should have reminded him to wear his seat belt.....well he should have reminded himself to wear his seat belt); he was half unconscious and was blabbering some shit. As I was unbuckling my seat belt, a guy on a motorcycle pulled up at my dad's side of the car and said “Is everything alright sir?” My dad continued to blabber unclearly. The guy interrupted me and said “ Glad to know sir... I am Seerat Kherwal, I am 31 years old, I work at Toogle as an assistant manager and my salary is ₹400,000 per month” At that point, I really didn't understand what the hell was happening and took time to process it. He continued “My family and friends consider me to be a very kind man I'm here to ask you if I could marry your daughter” I couldn't believe the randomness of the situation, but then processed it immediately and shouted at the guy “ Man what the fuck is wrong with you? Firstly the man's head is bleeding.what the hell are you doing instead of taking him to the freaking hospital? and secondly, I'm just 17” I wasn't even able to process what I was speaking. The guy spoke again “I'm sorry my love, can you help me get your father to the back seat?”

I got down and went to help him. “Don't call me ‛love’ please” he replied “Sure darling” I just decided to stay quiet this time. I helped him shift dad to the back seat. I took my handkerchief out and tied it to my dad's head. Seerat parked his motorcycle on the footpath, got into the driver's seat and I sat beside him. He started to drive the half broken car.

I've always kinda been into older men but that's more of a sexual thing and less of a romantic thing; even taking that into consideration this conversation was creepy....... from his side at least.

Seerat: ‛don't worry babe! Chandigarh is a small city the hospital won't be too far’

Me:‛ I'm really thankful for the help sir, but please call me Tanvi instead of babe or darling or love!! uh uh right right right right!!’

Seerat: ‛(immediately changed the direction of the steering and smiled with embarrassment) ’

Me:‛ you just spoke as if you know Chandigarh so well!! What happened huh?’

Dad: ‛ (in a very low voice) Tanvi tell mom that I loved her’

Me: ‛what the hell dad! You're not dying....we'll get you to the hospital asap....calm down’

Dad: (blabbered some shit)

Seerat: ‛do you think he'll say yes for the marriage Tanvi?’

Me: ‛ Shut the fuck up, please!! ’

After a few more extremely uncomfortable conversations (for me at least) with seerat and a little more random blabbering by my dad, we reached outside the emergency.

I told him to look after dad while I got some help. I brought a nurse with a wheelchair. Seerat gave me the car keys. “Thank you so much, sir.” He moved his cheek towards me and said “don't forget the bye-bye kiss Tanvi.” I think my brain wasn't working properly at that moment; instead of slapping his face I unwillingly kissed his cheek. Once I brought my face back to myself, the nurse was standing in place of Seerat and we were inside the hospital; the nurse was blushing as if Shawn Mendes just kissed her. I really didn't know if I forgot walking into the hospital or if we actually magically appeared there. I could have literally seen flying German Shepherd that day..... it wouldn't surprise me. My dad was completely unconscious and was being rushed in. Once we were inside, the doctor checked him and said “There's nothing to worry about... We'll have to give him a small dose of anesthesia and a few stitches.” They told me to wait in the corridor; I felt relieved. After I waited out for a few minutes, all the clocks in the emergency section started to make the weird hen noise, and the nurse came running to me. “ma'am we need you inside” I rushed inside. The doctor said “ Kid! Our department considers 11:43 AM as a very unlucky time and it's also a 13th today so we'll need your help....you have to make the first step of the stitching procedure we'll take over from there.” A panic attack hit me and I replied immediately while panting “ma'am my father is lying unconscious there you can't be joking around right now” “I'm not joking around kid” I looked at the nurse ( her name tag said eeshrat.....I didn't notice the doctor's name tag) and she nodded, conveying to me that it's true. I was pretty sure that that's not how hospitals work but, apparently, that's how my day was working... so I went with the flow. I took three deep breaths and told her to guide me. Eeahrat gave me a pair of gloves; the doctor handed me over the needle driver with a curved needle and suture material attached to it. She pointed to the starting of my dad's wound, put her fingers around his wound and said “right here kid” My mind, body, and soul were filled with frustration, so I pierced the needle right into the eye of the doctor, instead, and then got back to reality (which means I didn't pierce into her eye but imagined doing so because I really felt like doing so). I calmed my tits down and slowly took the needle closer to my dad's wound and carefully pierced it into his skin just like they showed in House M.D (it's a medical TV show.... I'm not even sure if they ever showed sutures in it, but yeah!). The doctor carefully took the driver from my hand; I slowly took a few steps back to the wall and fell to the ground with relief. ‘Could the day get any weirder’ I thought to myself. But I won't say it was all bad because doing the sutures gave me so much inner satisfaction ,and filled me with pride.....I gave sutures even before I got into med school, and I did it for my dad, but why did I do it??.... well!! I better not think about it.

“You did a very good job kid.... wait here you have some signing to do” The doctor went outside. Eeshrat, the nurse, was looking after dad, while I was still down to the floor. Once I was calmer and started to get up, the room all of a sudden sank deeper into the ground, and I fell back on the floor. I thought it was an earthquake and wasn't even surprised, but the sinking of the room was too even to be an earthquake. While Eeshrat was panicking, the door automatically closed and a small part of the ceiling opened up, and two suited up women jumped in from there. I just wanted to pick my unconscious dad up on my shoulders and run away from there. When Eeshrat tried to run away they shot her with a taser gun. My dad would have probably peed his pants if he was conscious at this point; I could have totally peed my pants too. “ There's no need to panic. We're from S.R.P.D. We're a government secret organization and we help them in emergencies and we were in urgent need for this aircraft because it's the only aircraft in the country that has an invisibility feature.” I literally said, “What the fuck” out loud. I was so glad in the morning that my periods were over and was hoping for a good day but this wasn't a very good day honestly. The other lady continued from there “ We're really sorry, but it's our policy to not allow anyone out immediately in these situations because of security issues, but we'll let you go soon.” Immediately after saying that she shot me with the taser too.

The second I woke up, I freaked out. The room in which I gave sutures to my dad was now an aircraft.....and we were in the fucking sky. The floor of the aircraft was transparent so I could see through it. It was scary and fascinating at the same time. Apparently, the aircraft was invisible from outside. I really didn't believe that. Eeshrat was sitting beside me and weeping, so I just brushed my palm on her head. My dad just woke up, noticed that we're flying, screamed and fainted again. “ I think it's time ma'am,” one of the suited ladies said to the other. “ People it's time... you need to get ready” They threw a bag at each of us. They tried to wake dad up but he wouldn't move.

Suited lady: “ We just gave you parachutes... We'll be releasing you right now”

Me: (That scared the living shit out of me, so I immediately interrupted) “ ma'am what what what.... you can't just leave us at some random place.... how do we get back home....and we might die we don't even know how to use these things”

Eeshrat: “you should have left us in the hospital itself what kind of stupid policy do you have.”

Suited lady: “we're sorry for the inconvenience...... You'll be instructed what to do and we've made sure that the landing area is safe..... We've transferred some money to your respective accounts and the nearest city is 5 kilometres from your landing place.....you can figure out your way from there”.

Me: “well ma'am I'm still scared. Can you not take us with you and drop us off later?”

Suited Lady : “you either jump here or we kill you later..the choice is yours”

Me: “can you instruct us with the parachutes please”

After they gave us the instructions, a small door opened up at the bottom of the aircraft... I have no idea where it appeared from though. Eeshrat jumped first. They decided to tie my dad up to me because he didn't seem to wake up. “ you're responsible for your dad ma'am” the lady said and pushed me out. I was screaming for obvious reasons. I just looked up to see the aircraft, but I couldn't see it. So the invisibility feature was real. I felt like I was in a Marvel movie. I was having the time of my life falling from so high though. My dad was still unconscious and that surprises me till date; how can someone be unconscious through all this shit? Well, Dad has always been a pussy. We were slowly getting closer to land. While we were falling, we suddenly became static in the air. I could only move my eyes, while rest of my body became static. I couldn't even pinch myself to check if it was a reality. This time there was no chance that I could process what was happening. Did you ever notice those glitches in old TVs? That kind of glitch literally occurred all around us (it felt as if we were trapped inside a TV). I wanted to scream but I couldn't. The glitch lasted few seconds, and after that, the ground below changed into sky.......an endless dark sky. I was suddenly able to move my head, so I saw up. Morning sky on the top, night sky at the bottom, and no land; It was beautiful to look at, but I couldn't appreciate it at that point of time. It suddenly felt like someone switched the gravity switch on and we started to fall again. We were falling towards the night sky. The closer we were getting to the night sky the faster my heart started to race. Once we almost fell into it, I just screamed and closed my eyes; I could hear the nurse scream too.

After closing my eyes for 5 seconds and probably after entering the night sky, a soft surface hit my butt hardly......I felt like I was sitting somewhere. While panting my lungs out, I opened my eyes to see myself sitting in my half broken car beside my mom. “why does he even buy such expensive cars when he can't even drive properly” She continued ranting while I was completely clueless. I just looked back to see that dad was still unconscious and the nurse was just staring outside the window....she looked traumatized. Mom stopped the car, smiled and said to the nurse “ your stop is here Eeshrat” The nurse, without even saying thank you, opened the door and started walking into the rain; she was just looking at one point and her eyes were watery. I immediately got out of the car and went to her. “do you remember any of that.... did it actually happen?” “I don't want to talk about it..... please leave” She pushed me away. I walked back to the car with disappointment. My mom said “ What an ungrateful lady.” I didn't have enough energy to respond to mom.

Once we were back home, I just ran into the house instead of helping mom with dad. While I was running into the room, I just stopped at the ‛Lord Vishnu’ picture that I talked to in the morning. I removed my glasses and threw them away in awe after seeing ‛Lord Vishnu’ wink at me. This wink reminded me of the conversation I had with him in the morning

‛ hey, bro! I really feel if not you, someone actually exists up there... Anyways

You know how crazily I want to be a doctor right...I just want to be able enough to treat my parents if they ever fall sick... It's the least I can do for them. When I earn enough money as a doctor I'll go for sky diving......I don't want to use my parents' money for something so high up on my bucket list Yeah.. also I have this thing for older men I don't know why... I want to kiss an older guy someday... like at least 10 years older... Not my dad though... Obviously duh..... Okay, this is something I really need an answer for..... Like the dimensions shit Nolan showed in interstellar or like the portals doctor strange opens....is that shit actually possible...I see so many people arguing about it...Is it actually possible... Anyways who cares okay bye’

I HOPE NOBODY DRUGGED ME THAT DAY