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samwisethewitch · 4 years

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Divination Basics

From the Roman priest reading auguries to interpret the will of the gods to the modern fortune teller reading with a deck of playing cards, divination has been a part of human spirituality for thousands of years. Today, divination is an important part of many witches’ practices, and can be an important tool for self-reflection and analysis.

Merriam-Webster defines divination as, “the art or practice that seeks to foresee or foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge usually by the interpretation of omens or by the aid of supernatural powers.” Divination can be used for many things, not just to predict the future. It can be used to understand the past, identify patterns at work in your present, or as a tool for working through trauma.

In the book You Are Magical, author Tess Whitehurst describes divination as, “a way of bypassing your linear, thinking mind and accessing the current of divine wisdom and your own inner knowing.” As I’ve discussed in a previous post, all of us are receiving psychic information all the time, though many of us don’t realize it. Divination tools like tarot cards or rune stones act as triggers to help kickstart our natural psychic gifts.

Divination relies on the use of our intuition. Intuition is defined my Merriam-Webster as, “the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference.” These are the things you know without needing to be told. Another way of thinking of it is this: your intuition is the way you interpret the information you receive through your psychic senses.

The most important thing to remember when doing divination is that the tool you are using isn’t giving you information — it’s simply helping you to access information you already know. The revelations come from you, not from the cards or whatever other tool you may be using.

When using divination to foresee the future, it’s important to remember that the future is never set in stone. These tools can only show you the most likely outcome based on your current direction.

Beginner-Friendly Divination Tools

These are the divination methods I would recommend for beginners. For one thing, most of these systems are fairly easy to learn and use. For another, these are some of the most popular divination methods among modern witches, so it’s easy to find information about them and/or talk to other practitioners about their experience.

As you’ll see, each divination method has its own strengths and weaknesses, so you may choose to learn several methods that you can combine to get stronger readings. Or you may find that you can get all the information you need from a single method, which is also okay.

Tarot. This is my personal favorite divination method, but it’s also the one with the most misconceptions surrounding it. Tarot cards do not open a portal to the spirit world, and they probably didn’t originate in Ancient Egypt. In fact, evidence suggests that the tarot comes from a medieval Italian card game called Tarocchi, although the modern tarot deck as we know it didn’t come around until the 20th century. Tarot cards are not any more or less supernatural than ordinary playing cards. (Which, incidentally, can also be used for divination.)

Tarot makes use of archetypes, and many readers interpret the cards as a map of an archetypal spiritual journey. For this reason, tarot cards are especially useful for identifying the underlying patterns and hidden influences in any given situation.

Most tarot decks follow the same set of basic symbolism. Unfortunately, this does mean that new readers will need to study the accepted meanings. This isn’t to say that your readings will always match up 100% with the standard meanings of the cards — you may receive intuitive messages that deviate from tradition. Still, it’s helpful to know a little of the history and traditional symbolism behind this powerful divination tool. The good news is that, since most decks use similar symbolism, once you learn the traditional meanings you can successfully read with almost any tarot deck.

I’m planning to post a more in-depth introduction to tarot very soon, but in the meantime, if you want to learn this divination method I recommend starting with the book Tarot For Beginners by Lisa Chamberlain and/or with the website Biddy Tarot.

Oracle Cards. Oracle cards have been rapidly gaining popularity in the witchcraft and New Age communities in the last few years, and it’s easy to see why. One major appeal of oracle cards is how diverse they are — there are countless different oracle decks out there, each with its own theme and symbolism. Another big plus is how beginner-friendly they are; Oracle cards are usually read intuitively, so most decks won’t require you to learn a complex system of symbolism. (Of course, the fact that every oracle deck uses different symbolism can be frustrating for some readers, because they have to learn a new set of symbols for every deck.)

Some readers (myself included) also find that oracle cards usually give more surface level information. Tess Whitehurst says that, “While oracle cards can help us answer the questions ‘What direction should I take?’ and ‘What is the lesson here?’ tarot cards are more suited to helping us answer the questions ‘What is going on?’ and ‘What is the underlying pattern at work here?'” For this reason, many readers choose to use tarot and oracle cards together to get a more well-rounded look at the situation.

Another common complaint about oracle cards is that many decks are overwhelmingly positive and shy away from dark themes or imagery, which creates an imbalanced reading experience. I think this is best summed up by one Amazon review for the Work Your Light Oracle, which says: “Basically, this is very much a deck for Nice White Ladies(TM) who like crystals and candles but aren’t ‘super into all that witchy stuff.'”

There ARE oracle decks out there that address darker themes, but many of the most popular decks on the market are overwhelmingly positive. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes a little positive encouragement is more helpful than brutal honesty. However, too much focus on the positive can lead you to ignore your problems, which only makes things worse in the long run. For this reason, finding balanced decks is important — if you’re going to use a very shiny happy deck, my advice would be to alternate it with more grounded decks, or with a deck specifically designed for shadow work.

That being said, oracle cards are a great divination tool if you can find a good deck, especially for beginners who are intimidated by more structured systems like tarot and the runes. If you’re interested in working with oracle cards, the best way to start is to find a deck that 1.) you feel a strong attraction to, and 2.) has a good guidebook. (My favorite oracle deck is the Halloween Oracle by Stacey Demarco, which I use for readings all year.)

Runes. The Elder Futhark alphabet is a runic alphabet that originated in ancient Scandinavia around 200 AD. While this was an actual writing system, it also had magical and mythological associations in the cultures that originally used it. While using the runes for divination is a modern practice, it is based on the historical sense of magic surrounding these symbols.

Like tarot, the runes have a traditional set of meanings. However, because there are only twenty-four runes, there aren’t as many meanings to learn as there are with tarot. Some rune sets also contain a blank stone, which has its own special meaning. I have personally found the runes to be a great source of wisdom and insight, although they do tend towards “big picture” messages rather than small details.

However, there is one major stain on the runes’ history; they were studied and used by Nazi occultists before and during World War II. Like many symbols associated with historical Germanic paganism, the runes were appropriated as part of Nazi propaganda — for example, the Sowilo rune was incorporated into the SS logo. This isn’t to say that you can’t reclaim the Elder Futhark alphabet, but I do think it’s important to know the history going in. Because of their association with Nazism, it’s best to avoid wearing or publicly displaying the runes.

There are other ancient alphabets that are used for divination, like the Anglo-Saxon runes or the Irish Ogham, but the Elder Futhark is the most popular.

If you’re interested in learning divination with runes, I recommend the book Pagan Portals: Runes by Kylie Holmes.

Pendulums. Pendulums are interesting because, unlike tarot, oracle cards, and runes, they can be used to answer yes or no questions. For this reason, many readers use pendulums to get clarification on readings they’ve done with other divination methods, but you can also use pendulums on their own.

A pendulum is any small, weighted object hanging from a chain or string. You can buy a pendulum made specifically for divination from a metaphysical shop or an Etsy seller, but you can just as easily use something you already have: a necklace, your housekey, or a small rock or crystal tied to a string.

Pendulums may be the easiest divination method to learn. The only thing you need to do to learn how to interpret a pendulum is ask it what its “yes” and “no” motions look like. To do this, simply hold your pendulum in your hands and focus on your connection to it. Then, let the pendulum hang from its chain or string so it can swing freely. Say or think, “Show me ‘yes’.” Allow the pendulum to swing, and pay attention to its movements. “Yes” is often a forwards-and-backwards swing or a clockwise circle, but your “yes” may look different. (Some witches even notice that different pendulums in their collection have different “yes” and “no” movements!) Once you’ve gotten the pendulum to show you its “yes,” ask it to show you its “no.” For many readers, “no” is a side-to-side swing or a counterclockwise circle, but again, yours may be different.

The biggest downside to pendulums is that because they typically only answer “yes” or “no,” you have to be very specific with your questions. Pendulums aren’t the best tool for general energy readings or open-ended advice. However, that specificity makes them great for validating your gut feelings, interpreting your dreams, identifying a deity or spirit that you think may be reaching out to you, or any other situation that requires a little clarification.

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acrossthewavesoftime · 2 years

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I hope you aren’t cross with me for answering this question in a post, but I didn’t want to be dependent on the character limit for direct messages, so here’s a little post. :-)

If I remember correctly, you did ask me once before, and alas, I still have no idea. The closest I can offer you is The Female Sailor, which dates to approximately 1710.

That however, does not necessarily mean anything at all; considering the wealth of dancing instructions, books and annual releases such as Playford’s English Dancing Master or Thompson’s Country Dances, not to speak of the many, less famous others, I’d say chances that the one internet rando you know who does that sort of thing is familiar with this one specific dance or knows exactly where to find it were low from the start.

The ‘problem’ with country dances is, they’re vastly different from what would count as traditional ballroom dancing nowadays in that each melody has a distinct choreography. Consider now the amount of country dances in existence, and it becomes nigh impossible even for professionals to know them all. That’s also why different instructors or dance groups often have drastically different repertoires; there are just so many to choose from. To illustrate this, as I was chatting with my dancing instructor about personal writings as sources on dances and the social events connected to dancing, I mentioned reading about a Scottish tune and accompanying dance called Mony Musk in Elizabeth Simcoe’s Diary, which I knew because I have a background in making traditional (albeit Irish, not Scottish) music and thus had come across one or the other video of people dancing to the tune and assumed it was fairly popular and well-known. Well, she’d never heard of it before.

There is a reason why modern-day historical dance events are either regulated by sending you a list of choreographies to study beforehand, or opt for a person explaining each dance to the room while dancing. Historically speaking, particularly the latter option isn’t even that off; when a specific dance was requested, the leading couple (i.e. those who requested it) would show how it is done to their immediate neighbours, causing the dance to ‘travel’ down the rows of dancers who’d proceed to observe and then join in with a little delay.

Of course, I looked around some databases and indexes, but sadly couldn’t find what you are looking for.

As for the naming of country dances, the people who choreographed them needed to come up with a distinctive title for each dance, because on account of the sheer number of dances there were, vague descriptions such as “the one with the dos à dos“ or “yet another double minor longways” wouldn’t have helped.

…Which is how we end up with the most randomly named country dances such as Wooden Shoes, The Chestnut, Johnny I’ll Tickle Thee, Excuse Me, or, my favourite, Lawyers Leave Your Pleading. It’s probable the person coming up with the name often just let themselves influence by their immediate surroundings. There are also lots of country dances named for places, people both real and fictional or specific dates and holidays. Current affairs or patriotic sentiments could also inspire a choreographer in need of a name (e.g. Marlborough’s Victory, His Majesty’s Health), not to speak of the slightly more risqué titles (e.g. Frisky Mollie’s Delight, Buxom Betty).

So who knows, maybe the person who named The Female Soldier was indeed inspired by Deborah Sampson, particularly if the dance was of local origin. I would guess though that particularly in the case of dances whose titles were chosen as references to current events, people (unless really famous like e.g. royalty) and pop culture of the day, these would have faded over time, particularly since these dances enjoyed a long history, with some of them, e.g. from the first Playford manuals in the mid-17thcentury, still being danced in the early 19th century.

Perhaps the document you found the reference in might be helpful in uncovering The Female Soldier. Are there any other clues? I know my way around the dancing manuals of the British Isles to some degree, but perhaps looking for American publications might be an option worth exploring? Assuming the title does indeed refer to Deborah Sampson, I’d guess she would have been more famous stateside than in Britain.

Happy searching, and be assured that you’re not the only one searching for an obscure dance; my goal is to find the mysterious Le Jupon rouge (The Red Skirt), a French dance Elizabeth Simcoe enjoyed on one night out partying in Québec.

So, to everyone out there: if you happen to know The Female Soldier or Le Jupon rouge, please contact @benjhawkins or myself! :-)

#ask reply #ask #benjhawkins #historical dancing #dancing #country dance #country dances #playford #thompson #dancing master

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lauraluna98 · 3 years

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Diana’s mothers fanfic

Have you ever think about Diana’s parents?

Have you think how did Daryl become so mean with Diana?

Why only Daryl, the twins and Diana are the only Cavendish remaining?

Where’s Diana’s grandparents?

Who’s Diana’s grandparents?

Why they aren’t there?

Why Bernadette was dead?

Who’s Diana dad?

How’s Bernadette Luna Nova years? If she really studied there

What happened in the Cavendish manor?

I’m going here to ask all these question with this fanfiction I wrote that is going to give a proper and a writing you guys never seen about Bernadette Cavendish the mother of Diana and her wife

Things here are going to change from the canon a little but well this is fanfiction and this is what fanfiction stand for

“Wait Wife? How? Why?”

Yeah Wife, by magic they made their kid and I’m going to explain why I choose a woman to be Bernadette’s wife rather than a dad

Simply, because feels generic and shallow to just simply give Bernadette a generic husband, this wouldn’t give a better writing to Bernadette as if was with another girl, Bernadette would simply marry or just have Diana with a generic man #1 and then one day he will die, leave her, or even plan to kill her

Plus the great majority of the fandom shipps Diakko, and they never think about the whole dilemma around Diana, by Akko’s side is easier she just need to fell in love with Diana and then yay they are together. But What about Diana’s side? Have you guys ever think that she’s an aristocrat (I’m not assumpting that aristocrats are LGBTphobes), she needs to keep a reputation there, a image and even she needs to have kids in order to keep her lineage being the one who will keep the head. So by Diana’s side things are harder, the reputation side she just can be simply strong and say openly that she’s a lesbian and everyone needs to accept that because we are in modern days but things get complicated about having kids

And pretty much the fanarts about a Diakko kid the children is always 100% biological daughter of Diana and Akko, so an artificial insemination by a donator is out of question (unless the donator is someone from the family who looks like them). Trans headcanon? That’s a pretty cool concept I think, tbh I love it, but to that work Diana or Akko wherever is gonna be Trans need to froze their sperm before the HRT if they want to have kids in the future, because the HRT make person infertile after a while. So magic? Well this is a another cool concept if both are cis so a fertility spell enters here, but how this is going to work? Leave that to the writers to do it. This is the idea I pick up with the fertility stone

This is why I come into the idea of giving Diana two mothers rather than a generic dad, because with that possibility Diana would get into the conclusion that a fertility spell is real with her at the first not actually believing it, until she finds out that her father was actually an another mother and she used the fertility stone with Bernadette

See how cool is that? And I’m not even starting to tell about Diana’s mom deeply, because this isn’t a story that takes place in the modern days but in the past

This is going to focus on Diana’s mothers

Bernadette Cavendish (the one everyone knows) and Laura McLaren (better than the generic Diana’s father OC)

Just to enter into the context of this story, the Cavendish family was into a time where they are even more close minded than today, on a time where Diana’s grandmother was alive and she’s a very conservative person, she was LGBTphobe AF not allowing their two daughters being other sexuality rather than straight, she controlled a lot of Bernadette’s life and even pressure her to be perfect

So times there was even worse for her than what is today. Bernadette’s mother was someone who preserve for the traditions and the image of the Cavendish family and this is where Daryl’s hatred among Diana enters

“What? But Diana wasn’t even born”

Because the hate wasn’t with Diana, but at Bernadette, Daryl hated Bernadette

“But in the anime has shown that Daryl had some feelings with her sister”

Really? I’ve only seen her screwing up with Bernadette will to keep the traditions of the family and she simply sell everything, I’ve seen her pretty much being very mean to Diana, not even taking care of her niece, plus when Bernadette was alive she pretty much was bullying Diana for liking Shiny Chariot

Come on the twins are less worse because they are kids but Daryl was a grown ass mother with two kids, she was simply bullying her niece for nothing when Bernadette was still alive in the canon

So this is how I come that Daryl is envy of Bernadette and she in reality hates her and I pretty much think that she’s even responsible for her sister death

Because of power, money and the wish to be the head of the family, Daryl pretty much has shown that in the anime and even her redemption was more like “Yeah you didn’t leave me to die so I’m in debt with you” (If LWA was going to have a season 2 she could pretty much fit into a villain and even if LWA didn’t have, Daryl was more Villainous than Croix ever was)

This envy among Daryl was something that started since she and Bernadette were kids, because their mother prioritize all the attention to the eldest daughter, the eldest daughter should be the one who will deserve to be the head and all the attention, but this is how their mother think is right to do and because of that Daryl starts to hate Bernadette’s side, plus that she was educated into a different way, she got more “evil” and greedy with the influence of her great aunts that think like that, while Bernadette was educated to be someone more “nice” and preserve the traditions of the family, she was even a little influenced by her grandma that actually believes into the fertility stone legend, where all the family think that’s bullshit

Bernadette needs to improve herself as a person to overcome all that weight over her, to have her own personality and freedom, because she didn’t have any freedom on her residence, until she enters on Luna Nova and meet someone called Laura McLaren

Laura is the complete opposite of Bernadette with her family, the McLaren family was like the Cavendish but from Ireland, they are rich too, but they prefer to live on a more simple big house, rather than a big ass castle because is more cheaper to maintain, Laura’s family is open minded AF they already knew about the fertility stone because the matriarch of the family is a 88 years old trans lesbian who used the fertility stone back then, so they are pretty much very fine with LGBT thing. Laura is openly a lesbian and she’s free to be herself, even tho she was most of the time trained with magic to become a powerful witch, so that makes her a strong ass witch that she didn’t even need to study in Luna Nova, but she’s there just for the grade

Laura was going to show to Bernadette how’s the freedom to be herself and not accept everything, that she needs to impose herself when someone is making her feeling down and Bernadette was going to make Laura being more mature with herself, since Laura was a little teen rebel, since she didn’t care that much about the authority of older persons rather than the family, so she really feels like she’s an adult and wanted to be respected like one. She’s the kind of badass tomboy girl who don’t care about authority and thing that she knows how the system works, so she obeys only who she really want

The time was going to be set around 1987 on the very first chapter which could fit very well into the canon since the anime canon takes place 30 years later, plus the time they make into adulthood and when the couple finally have their kids

The 15/16 years students on that time are going to be born on July 1971 to June 1972 and their birthdates will actually fit into the school year

Daryl is 3 years younger in this story she will be born in 1975 just like Laura’s sister Chelsea

The main differs with the canon

Since the time is changed in this AU with the anime being set on 2014 the 16 years old characters of the anime are born in 1998 in this AU.

Another thing I’m going to fix from the canon is the School year, since Luna Nova is a British school I’m going to change the school year from the canon which use the Japanese school year starting on May, but here I’m going to make the year starting in September to June next year with three vacation, December on Winter, two weeks after the easter on a spring break and the 3 months vacations from June to September when the year ends

And the whole magic limitation of them need to be near the sorcerer stone in order to use magic, in this AU they can use magic wherever they want, the most powerful the witch the most capable she is with the magic to point some of them can use their own body as wands

The dates are going to differ from the canon on the AU only when Diana is born and Chariot/Croix age since this is a part of the whole AU where the “anime” is set on 2014 and I make them both on the 30s when I didn’t know their canon ages there, so Chariot will be born on 1984, this will make her a kid when she meets Laura McLaren when she come to the Du Nord family residence to research for the fertility stone this presence of Laura is what made Chariot enchanted with magic

Bernadette have olive green eyes, idk if this differs a lot since we didn’t have proper canon information of her eyes and we didn’t even see her eyes in the anime, the main information is that the Cavendish has mostly blue eyes and I put her with greenish ones just because I want to make her unique, being the only Cavendish with a different eye color in her family

Diana is Irish/Scottish here, since Laura is Irish and Bernadette Scottish this makes Diana half of each (making her more Irish than Amanda lol)

Bernadette didn’t die, but that part could be also the one with Bernadette die and the whole canon anime happen with Laura didn’t come back to see her daughter

The Claiomh Solais didn’t appear for Chariot neither Croix and the main reason is because wasn’t needed at that time, the magic was pretty good, so both girls still become rivals but into another thing that is Broom Racing, just like on the real life we have Formula 1, so why not a championship with broom racing like Formula 1? This is what I bring into the AU in the next story which takes place after this one

Akko still idolize chariot but into her dream to become a Broom Racer and you can see here

Diana also like’s Chariot career but her main Broom Racing icon is her own mother Laura McLaren which become a excellent Broom Racer on the 1990s decade, without actually know that broom racer is her mother

The fic

It’s a remake of The mysterious mother, a lot of things are gonna be like the original but I’m also going to do a lot of changes to give more development to the characters, give more reasons to them to do what they did and also I wanted to do a story to fit in my whole AU

Well I talked a lot but not about the story, but this is because I don’t want to give a lot of spoilers on what happened and the whole answers to all these questions, even the one where Laura leaves Diana, since she’s a nice person, something happened that Laura leaves her lovely wife and her daughter and how did Diana never knew about who’s her dad actually is

Take a read into the very first chapter and have fun because this is going to be a very looong story with some familiar faces around there and some of them that are OC’s but they are needed to appear since most of the cast isn’t born at all despite the teachers at Luna Nova or Chariot and Croix that are still pretty young

This story is also the 3rd part of the whole AU of the fertility stone which you can check out all the parts I’ve wrote just to be more clearer with this whole story

Part 1: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26913469

Part 2: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27899341

Part 3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31098311

Part 4: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23807575

Also not only we are going to know about Diana’s mothers but a lot of things that will play on the part 5 story read it to find out, since the story is going to take place 50 years after this one, also is going to be a very very long story with them I’m already with 30+ chapters wrote and I’m gonna write even more, plus I’m gonna do daily updates so stay all the days on Ao3 for updates on the same time if you got interested on this story (I’m also very sorry with bad English and Grammar since I just put the story into Deepl translator and I change a word or another into the translation, when things get confused, since English is not my language)

Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31098311

Fanfiction: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13875351/1/Laura-McLaren-The-mother-of-Diana-Cavendish-IV

Wattpad: https://www.wattpad.com/1065632225-laura-mclaren-the-mother-of-diana-cavendish-iv-so

#LWA #LWA FIC #Little Witch Academia #LWA fanfiction #bernadette cavendish #Laura McLaren #OC #LWA JP #LWA Diana #Diana Cavendish #Bernadette is gay #Diana has two mothers

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legendaryorangeloot · 4 years

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This is "The Union Screaming House", a short story I wrote as an alternate-universe American M.R. James story (which is why it's not got fully modern language when describing people's race and ethnicity, and the language/spelling in general is idiosyncratic in the way that letters from the <1900s tend to be.) I wrote it in one huge burst on a road trip with my partner from Milwaukee to St. Louis, and never really edited it, but I think it's true to the style and form of the author I'm trying to pay homage to, so all the weaknesses I can see are present in the source works and serve to make it more accurate (sorry, Monty James. you know I love you.)

Dec 22, 18--

My dearest Daniel - I write to you about events which recently occurred in the small town of Union, Mo., feeling certain that they will prove of interest to you, for your personal collections of curious supernatural tales and revolutionary literature. I suppose, as I shall leave no descendants, you may publish my full confession after all parties involved are deceased - such is the advantage of having much-younger friends, I suppose!

We were traveling across the midwestern states at a leisurely pace, hoping to recuperate my equilibrium after the trial in which I had recently defended Mr. W-- S-- against numerous charges of murder, about which: the less said, the better. It had become our custom over a period of weeks to seek out remote roads and tracks and follow them to their sources, which almost invariably were villages and towns with unusual “claims to fame”, such as one that boasted an underground lake, another with what they claimed as the oldest living tree in the state. This proved a diverting experience, and I greatly enjoyed conversing with many of the “oldsters” I met outside general stores and hearing tales of the War, and of their luck or lack there-of in the agriculture business. The endeavor was beginning to allow me to leave behind the feeling of grave wrong-doing that had dogged me since the verdict of the S-- trial, but what replaced it in Union may yet prove to be worse.

It was on one of these rather aimless treks that we found ourselves in Union, home of some 700 people. It was a chill autumn night, and darkness fell early, no later than 5 o. clock. Bryan, who was acting as driver, refused to travel in such a rural area after dark (wise, owing to his appearance - as you may recall from our last visit, Bryan is light enough to pass for “black Irish” stock, and usually does so successfully, but in the more… concerned areas of the country, he has been sometimes “found out”, with all the concurrent discriminatory rigmarole… sneaking “my servant” into my lodging-house rooms has been quite the risky undertaking in some of these towns.) At any rate, we obtained the name of a local widower who would be willing to rent a room to me for the night, and allow Bryan and our four-horse team to stay in his guest house and lavish stables, respectively.

Mr. R--, a sprightly gentleman of maybe 55 years, proved a quite gracious host, and commenced to give me a tour of the property, which was called Blackwater Woods. We walked around the barn, various outbuildings, and past many pastures and livestock holding-pens, before approaching the enormous main house. It was built in a style quite unlike the modest but modern homes of Union proper, and appeared to be designed in the manner of a frontier cabin, but on a scale so large that it made it seem slightly ridiculous, as though perhaps it had been constructed to display at a Worlds Fair and not for humans to inhabit at all. Mr. R-- was oddly reluctant to show me around much of the house in detail, as he had the farm-buildings, but he invited me to dinner and after-dinner drinks and cigars politely enough after escorting me to my second-floor room, which had clearly been a woman’s “boudoir” prior to being pressed into service as a guest room. I changed clothes and washed up with alacrity, eager to get the dust and grime of the road off my person, and still had ample time left to explore my surroundings. The room was large, and sparsely-furnished, but feminine touches from the prior inhabitant (Mrs. R--, I assumed at the time) still remained in the form of a silver-backed hairbrush near the vanity mirror, a jewelry box which played a tune when opened (I shut it quickly, as the mechanism appeared to be functioning not very well, and the too-slow tune rendered me oddly soporific), and a gauzy canopy hanging from the four posts of the bed, which I imagined was intended to be exotic in the manner of a harem, but was instead exotic in the manner of tropical anti-mosquito netting. I was oddly moved by this nod to concepts of Romance and Beauty in such a rural locale, and smiled to myself in the mirror, only to quickly blanch and whip my head round to look when I saw the form of a woman - a dusky-skinned woman, with high cheekbones and full lips - materialize behind me, visible in the mirror! In retrospect, I believe it was not just my terror at being accompanied at a time I believed myself alone that caused me to react so immediately and physically, but that the woman so obviously required help. She could hardly have communicated it more clearly than her facial expression did, even if she had plainly said “Help me!”. When I turned to look where I had seen her standing, near the enormous limestone fireplace, there was no-one there, and looking back in the mirror, she also did not re-appear. But there lingered in the air a smell - you are the only one I could tell this to - a womanly smell, but one that was attractive to me, in a way, which, I know you know, I have not experienced before (or since).

For all those reasons, I was deeply shaken as I went down to the dining-room to eat with Mr. R--. I thought that perhaps I could ask questions about the room’s former inhabitant, but each time I tried to broach the topic, Mr. R-- cut me off with florid tales of inconsequential things, which would have been greatly entertaining, had they not distracted me from my goal. I learned many interesting tid-bits of the area’s history, but was unable to discern a reason for the visage of the woman to appear, or what help she might require. I did learn that the “guest house” where my beloved Bryan now stayed was, in fact, former slave quarters, and this did not sit well with me. I was also able, by making some off-hand comments about the food, to learn that indeed we were alone in the house entirely, the woman who had cooked the meal being employed only at the dinner-hour and returning to her home in Union after serving. I do not remember what we ate.

After the meal, we retired to Mr. R--’s study, and he poured us generous doses of a bourbon of exceptional quality. The study, unlike the rest of the house, was furnished in an extravagant style that would not have seemed much out of place in the wealthiest salons of London or Vienna. Presumably for this reason, it was kept locked at all times with a latch and bolt-lock on the door, and keyed locks on the single window, to which, Mr. R-- explained, he held the only keys. I sipped at my bourbon as he spoke at length about various topics, and realized soon that he was drinking his as though it were water. I saw my opportunity to perhaps gain more information about the mirror woman, so I surreptitiously poured out the rest of my liquor onto the Turkish carpet, and proposed a refill, then another, then another, which I disposed of in the same way. As Mr. R-- became first tipsy, then outright intoxicated, I steered the conversation to the topic of the room I now stayed in. “Was it your wife’s chambers?” He appeared startled by this question and was quick to say, in a brusque manner, “No. It was used for brief, er, overnight stays only, for no-one in particular.” He attempted to change the subject after this answer, but I could see him beetling his brows at me from time to time as we spoke on less consequential matters. The evening wound down soon after this, and I excused myself to my room.

Upon reaching my room, it was no more than ten minutes before I heard the tip-tap of tiny pebbles being flung at my window, the typical sign from Bryan that he was waiting unseen below and wished entry. Never had I more needed his strong and steady presence, his welcome simple physicality, the comfort of his arms - I hope that you do not mind, and rather believe that you will enjoy this part, as unsatisfying as it ended up in reality - and I began to ready myself even as I quietly opened the window, using the heel of my hand to press against my rapidly-stiffening member in preparation for our reunion. But it was not to be, for the Bryan that hoisted himself through my window after climbing up the ivy and planks on the side of the house was not amorous, but terrified. I immediately asked what the trouble was, and he said that we must go, and that he needed to show me something in the “guest house” - which I shall refer to as the slave quarters from now on, as this is more relevant to its position in the story - after which we must flee this house. He used this exact word, “flee”, and it was one of the ways I knew just how serious this revelation he had for me must be.

We both climbed down the side of the huge house as quickly as we could, and dashed across the moonless dark of the lawn, past the garden and woodpile, to the former slave quarters, a squat building greatly resembling Indian long-houses I have seen, but made of sturdy split logs and patched with something between mud and cement. A fire burned inside and smoke spiraled up from the small chimney, and when we reached it and went indoors, shutting the pine-plank door fast behind us, Bryan first kissed me fiercely and quickly, then went on to say “I found this account written on bark, stripped from the walls of this house, hidden in one of the straw mattresses. But it is more than half in slave pidgin and picto-grams, and what English is used is not very grammatical. Do you trust me to tell you the contents truly?” and by way of reply I kissed him tenderly, pressing my forehead to his, and squeezed his hand, saying “With my very life.” He replied that it hopefully would not come to that. He showed me a long strip of bark with writing on it, and what I could read conformed to his translation, which I will put here in more colloquial ways of speaking, for clarity: “Last winter Margaret was called to visit Mr. R-- after sunset and never did return, and he said that she ran away, but never bothered to tell the lawman, or offer a reward for the return of a servant, and I think sometimes that I see her in the upper window, but never except at night when fires are burning in all the rooms of the house. Now he has arranged for me to come to the big house secretly after dark and I fear that I, too, will never return. If you find this, look for me. Meliora.”

We stared at each other wide-eyed as I put together the pieces in my mind and I said to Bryan “I know what we must do, but if you do not like it - I also do not like it - I understand if you must simply go and ready the horses for our escape.” He said that he would accompany me even to the gates of Hell, and I said that it hopefully would not come to that. We went to the great woodpile beside the house and found an axe and hatchet, and used the latter to break the lock of the front door, and went directly to my room. As quietly as one can accomplish such a thing, we began dismantling the room - we moved the furniture to the center, and started using the tools as pry-bars to remove boards from the wall. It was not long before I heard a stifled cry behind me and saw Bryan kneeling near one wall, pulling forth what was unmistakably a winding-shroud, stained with old blood, containing naught but dark skin, bones, and black hair. As I came over to assist him, I stumbled and fell against the limestone mantel, and broke it away, and the falling rock opened the boards of the floor, where more gauzy shrouds were hidden beneath, and my heavy axe smashed the fire-warmed stone at the back of the fireplace, where a recent, beautiful corpse, matching my mirror apparition exactly, lay in surprisingly dignified repose. This kind of noise would wake anyone, even the bourbon-soaked Mr. R--, who entered the room just at that second, and it is hard to say now which sight shocked him the most greatly. But he had no opportunity to say anything about it, as Bryan fairly flew at him from across the room, holding his hand over Mr. R--’s mouth, and the hatchet’s handle across his throat in preparation to strangle the life from him. “No!” I hissed quickly. And Bryan’s expression in that moment caused me to die inside, seeing how fast he thought I would side with the despicable murderer Mr. R-- over the love of my life, due only to our shared skin color, but I put this aside to say my actual piece, which was “We have to make it look like an accident.”

We frog-marched Mr. R-- downstairs, and forced him to unlock the study, confiscating the keys afterwards. We tied him to the heaviest chair using his own silk smoking-jacket, and I touched a brand from the fire to the Turkish carpet I’d soaked with bourbon earlier in the evening, and we did not spare the struggling, squealing Mr. R-- another look as we walked from the room, hands clasped, to return the axes to the woodpile before driving away.

I trust that, after your actions in Lawrence, this story will please you, rather than shock you. I hope that I have done your revolutionary spirit proud in administering fair and equitable justice. After long discussion, I have decided to prove to Bryan that his assumption in the moment Mr. R-- entered the room was entirely wrong, and we depart for France, together, next week. The keys from Mr. R--’s house, we will throw into the Atlantic Ocean, and never mention the sorry incident again.

With love,

Your friend,

J. Schiffmann

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wolfpawn · 4 years

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I Hate You, I Love You, Chapter 119

Chapter Summary - Tom and Danielle go house hunting.

Previous Chapter

Rating - Mature (some chapters contain smut)

Triggers - references to Tom Hiddleston’s work with the #MeToo Movement. That chapter will be tagged accordingly.

authors Note - I have been working on this for the last 3 years, it is currently 180+ chapters long. This will be updated daily, so long as I can get time to do so, obviously.

All image rights belong to their owners

tags: @sweetkingdomstarlight-blog @jessibelle-nerdy-mum @nonsensicalobsessions @damalseer @hiddlesbitch1 @winterisakiller @fairlightswiftly @salempoe @wolfsmom1

If you wish to be tagged, please let me know.

‘What do you think?’ Tom asked as they pulled up to the house.

‘It’s a bit….big. What are we planning, a hundred and one dogs?’ Danielle looked at it. ‘It’s a bit fancy.’

‘Why not get something fancy if we are planning a home at all?’ Tom challenged.

‘Because I don’t want to have mortgage repayments of ten thousand pounds a month I suppose.’ Danielle commented in a bedpan tone. ‘I cannot afford to look at houses like this, Tom.’ She indicated to the house, how much is this even going for?’

‘Just shy of two.’

‘Two what?’ Tom did not look at her. ‘Million? Two million? Tom, what the hell are you thinking?’ She looked at him in shock.

‘That overall, this is a good house, it is big.’

‘I can see that.’ She looked at it again.

‘The front of it is like your parents.’ He pointed out. Danielle had to agree with him, it did. ‘Just look at it, please.’

‘Tom, I think it goes without saying, I cannot afford this.’ She stated. ‘I can’t.’

‘Please Elle, just take a look, we’ll talk more about that in a while.’

Danielle chewed her lip. ‘This is madness.’ she shook her head. ‘What made you even look at this?’

‘I want us to have a nice home.’

‘Nice does not have to equate to two fucking million.’ Danielle pointed out.

‘No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t mean it can’t either.’

‘Madness.’ Danielle shook her head as she got out of the car as the estate agent walked towards them.

Tom got out too and smiled. ‘Good afternoon, sorry for the delay.’

‘Not at all, was the drive out okay?’ He shook Tom’s hand. ‘Arthur Shrewsbury, by the way.’

‘Tom, and this is Danielle.’ He indicated to Danielle who had come up beside him, the estate agent shaking her hand too as she politely smiled at him. ‘The drive out was fine, bar the obvious delay we contacted you about.’ He smiled.

‘Well, let’s not delay any longer, I am sure you have a few places you wish to look at in the area, and we have a bit to go through here. It is a considerable 6,500 square foot property, and includes a car garage, several converted outhouses, a tennis court and a swimming pool.’ Tom refused to look at Danielle as she stared at him in disbelief. ‘It boasts six bedrooms, two studies, a living room, a dining room and a kitchen which of course, comes with all modern conveniences, but maintains a more classic look. It is, I should mention, a building that holds a Grade II restriction and cannot be altered externally in a manner that removes from the original design. That said, the roof does have solar panelling, though it is in accordance with the rules regarding its status.’

‘Wonderful.’ Tom smiled as he placed his hand on Danielle’s lower back, urging her inside.

Danielle, though slightly bothered, had to admit that the house was utterly divine. The house was beautifully done, beams exposed and airy. She could not believe the space it possessed as well as soon beautiful furniture.

‘What do you think?’ Tom asked, his eyes bright when the estate agent had left them to look around.

‘Six bedrooms? What would we ever need six bedrooms for?’

‘Mum, Sarah and Yakov, you and me, Emma and Jack, the Duchess, that is five rooms, Emma and Jack will probably have kids, not to mention, we might….’ He looked at her somewhat coyly, not wanting to make her feel like he was pressurizing her.

‘Planning for every eventuality?’ She smiled. ‘It’s huge, and so far from the city.’

‘I consider it a healthy distance from it.’ Danielle made a head gesture in agreement. ‘We don’t have to say yes, but I want us to look at homes like this.’

‘It is ridiculously expensive.’ Danielle commented. ‘I cannot afford half of this.’

‘Elle,’ Tom placed his arms around her. ‘Please, I know you are a very independent and proud woman, it is part of the reason I love you so much, you are strong, but if the reason we cannot get the perfect home for us, and I am not saying this is it, but in general, is because of your current income, I am going to insist on stepping in, because I can afford it, and I want us to be able to have exactly what we want, I think that if we are talking about making a home, it needs to be right.’

‘I would argue more, but considering the Ben and Sophie Hampstead debacle.’

‘Don’t even mention it. Honestly, it is over two years and they are still not in, he is withdrawing the application.’ Tom informed her.

Danielle looked out the window at the multitude of other buildings on the property. ‘That would not be an issue here.’

‘Definitely not.’

‘It’s too much, Tom. How would we ever even keep it clean?’

‘We’d need a cleaner.’ Tom agreed.

‘And a gardener.’ Danielle looked at the sheer amount of green area. ‘It’s a bit mad.’

The pair walked around the house more. When they came to the bedrooms, they stood in awe at the master bedroom. ‘Wow.’ Tom looked around the spacious room and en-suite. ‘This is bigger than I was expecting.’

‘That’s a bit of an understatement.’ Danielle agreed, looking around her. ‘It’s not very “farmhouse” here, is it?’

‘No.’ Tom opened a door. ‘I found a closet.’

‘I found another….wait this is….what is this?’

‘The nursery.’ Tom informed her, looking at the booklet in his hand. ‘It is smaller and off the main bedroom to ensure peace and tranquillity for any infants.’

‘Or a good room for people with weird sexual fetishes.’ Danielle stated calmly before looking at Tom and the pair laughed.

‘That too, I suppose.’ He grinned.

‘I love the name, by the way. Compton Bassett. This is not very Compton. Not the one N.W.A.rapped about anyway.’

Tom laughed again. ‘This is possibly the furthest thing from that Compton you could imagine.’

They looked around some more and assessed the house. ‘It is lovely.’

‘So you would consider it?’ Danielle made a non-committal noise. ‘What is bothering you, other than the price?’

‘The location from London, it is two hours each way, that is a serious amount of driving, I could go Dublin to Galway in two hours.’ She pointed out. ‘Also, I need to ask, but what is with a tennis court for one, we won’t be holding Wimbleton here next summer, and why, for the love of the divine Jesus, is there an outdoor pool, it is East England, it pisses rain three hundred and sixty days a year, the other five is a light mist. That is just madness to me.’

Tom laughed at her Irish turn of phrase and blatant exasperation at the idea of an outdoor swimming pool. ‘Think of the fun we could have in it?’ He winked at her.

‘What fun, your balls would ascend into your torso as a new pair of ovaries, the average temperature around here in summer is mid teens for fucks sake.’

He kissed her. ‘But is it along the lines of what you would like?’

‘I am a country mouse, I would be happy here, there is so much space, it is how I would want it if we have kids. Bobby and Mac would love it too, though I would insist on having some method of stopping them being able to get off the property, farmers tend to have a “shoot to kill” policy on wandering dogs near livestock.’

Tom paled as he looked at her in shock. ‘What?’

‘Farmers shoot straying dogs. You didn’t know this?’ Tom shook his head in horror. ‘Straying dogs chase livestock and can kill several ewes and lambs in a matter of minutes. It is legal for a farmer to shoot on sight, and rightly so. Honestly, people who don’t take control of their dogs need to stop this bullshit of “my dog is a sweetheart” I have seen the result of a “sweet” labrador left to its own devices, fourteen dead pregnant ewes, and several more wounded or with aborted lambs, two and a half thousand pounds old Irish money, that is about the same as here, maybe a little less, it was not pretty. The farmer was forced to sell a field as a result.’ She shook her head. ‘Dog was dead too, and it wasn’t a nice one, dad got him in, two rounds, but he was bleeding too badly, he suffered for about an hour after the shooting, so there were no winners. I don’t want that for our boys, they will be penned off outside or with us and no way to get into the farmland.’ She stated factually.

‘Yes, definitely.’ Tom agreed, shaken by what she had told him.

Seeing that he was still bothered, she put her hand in his and kissed him. ‘Did I upset you?’

‘No...I….I am not as strong stomached as you are.’

‘You never saw an animal give birth, did you?’ He grimaced and shook his head. ‘Oh boy, you need to toughen up. If they make a film adaptation of “All Creatures Great and Small” consider giving it a miss as a character. You shoving your hand up a mare to help pull out a foal would not do you any favours.’

‘Have you….?’

‘Shoved my hand up a cows or horses vagina, yes, several times. It’s all well and good until she shits on you.’

‘Jesus Christ.’ Tom felt nauseous.

‘Town mouse.’ Danielle laughed in return.

#I Hate You I Love You #chapter 119 #wolfpawn #tom hiddleston #Tom hiddleston fic

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justjessame · 4 years

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If Only Someone Looked At Me Like They Look At Guns 11

I went up the stairs to our bedroom and had to wonder when Annabelle and her sons had made the plans for house hunting. That stank of her knowing that they’d be headed home. I was curious, however, about what houses that their mother had looked into. What type of house did Annabelle think would be right for the three of them and their twins?

I pulled a pretty dress over my top of my bra and underwear set. While my breasts were heavy from pregnancy, the colostrum hadn’t begun yet, for which I was thankful. I’d found nursing pads and had them on hand, but was happy that I hadn’t needed them. Sliding on my ballet flats, brushing and braiding my hair over my shoulder, I cleaned my glasses and put them on to complete my house seeing look.

When I came down the stairs, I noticed the guys weren’t wearing their peacoats, but had put on heavy wool sweaters, as they grabbed my own coat from the hook by the door. I raised an eyebrow and Connor chuckled.

“De babes don like how we smell in dem.” He offered as reasoning.

Murphy nodded, making sure that I was tucked into my own jacket. “Cant ‘ave dere mudder tossin’ ‘er breakfast all over da cobbles can we?”

I smiled as Annabelle joined us in by the door. “Do I get a preview of where we’re heading?” I asked, as they pulled me outside. I realized they had a vehicle. Thank heavens, I thought walking or taking the bus would be a trial depending how far we were going.

Annabelle shook her head. “Nah. Tis a surprise.” She grinned and I squinted at her.

“You’re just as mischievous as they are.” I accused.

“Yer don know da ‘alf of it.” Murphy chuckled, tucking me into the back seat with their mother.

Connor nodded, taking the driver’s seat. “Has she told ya ‘bout da night she had us tinkin’ she killed ‘erself?”

I shook my head, knowing I was being diverted, but loving to hear their stories. Knowing more about them with every single memory they shared. The tale launched, the trio added here and there and I laughed as one tale ran to another while we drove down the roads and toward a few houses that Annabelle thought had potential.

LATER THAT NIGHT~ BACK AT ANNABELLE’S

“Well?” Annabelle asked, pouring me a cup of tea as she and the boys partook in some fine Irish whiskey. “Which did ya like?”

They’d shown me two houses, both over two hours from Annabelle’s home. They were both in the country, and both were spacious and had more than enough room for our children to grow up in. They also had land. One over an acre, with outbuildings and with a very little effort could become a small farm. The other had access to a small brook down a flight of moss covered steps. Both were beautiful. The first, the farmhouse, was very Irish in the whitewashed walls and red doors. The other more modern, but covered in decorative rocks and landscaped well enough to make it fit in with the rolling green surrounding it.

I sighed. They were beautiful and out of the way. They were also so very far from the few people I’d gotten to know. “They were both gorgeous. I just worry-”

“Dat dere too far away?” Connor asked, from his place at my left on the sofa, had seen my glance at Annabelle.

Murphy, sitting on my right, took my hand in his. “We ‘ave da car, Tess.” He assured me, but knew there was more to my argument.

“Yes, and I know that. It’s just,” I stopped, would it really matter that much? I’d moved from West Virginia to Boston without a glance back. Annabelle would find a way to come to me should I need her, and the phone calls would work both ways. “Which one did you two like best?”

Of course each one had a different favorite. I rolled my eyes. Murphy liked the more modern of the two, but Connor loved the older farmhouse with the greater parcel of land. They argued while both drank with their mother. I smiled as they actually debated, rather than tussled. My hand fell to my bump and I lay my head back. Before I knew it, I’d fallen asleep.

I didn’t feel them lift me, or carry me upstairs. I only woke up when I felt the dress being tugged over my head as someone held me against them so I was vertical. Groggy, I blinked open my eyes, and saw Connor in front of me, asking Murphy to unhook my bra.

“I can do it,” I groaned, and tried to reach behind me, but a yawn overtook me. “Give me a second to get my bearings.”

I felt Murphy’s chuckle as his rough fingers unsnapped my bra and freed me from the fabric. I sighed, freedom from constraint was wonderful. “Dere, dat’s better, isn’t it?” His breath caressed my earlobe and I leaned back into his arms.

“Tired ya out,” Connor said, giving me a gentle kiss. “Gonna take some gettin’ used ta, yer bein’ pregnant.”

I smiled against his lips, happy that the taste of whiskey and Connor didn’t make their demons react poorly. “Same for me.”

“Ta bed.” Murphy ordered, lifting me as easily as if I still weighed the same as when we’d met. He kissed me as gently as his brother had and placed me in the center of our makeshift bed. Covering me with the blankets so I wouldn’t be chilled while they got themselves ready for bed, I tried to watch, but then darkness enveloped me and I was asleep again.

I woke in the familiar way, chest to chest with Murphy, back to chest with Connor. They were both wearing their boxers and I still had my panties, so that was new. I could feel our babies fluttering inside me, clearly they knew mommy was awake, but their daddies didn’t. Not yet. I took the time to study Murphy in the early morning sun. Still so innocent in sleep, so pure and perfect. I would roll over to check Connor, but he woke so easily that it would be a rare gift to see him in sleep.

I was so happy to have them back. To be able to share our children’s birth with them, but there was still that fear inside me. The fear that they’d be called back. That we’d pick one of the houses, and I’d be there, alone while they were off in danger. And Annabelle would be two hours away, a short distance by phone, but too far if I needed her. After all, hadn’t I been taken minutes away from home in Boston?

Like they could hear my thoughts as easily as one another, I felt them shift and curl tighter against me. Comforting me, even in their dreams. Connor’s hand curved over my bump, while Murphy’s cradled the under-curve of it. Perhaps that was why the babies were fluttering, they could feel the warmth of their daddies love.

I had to trust in that love. Their love for me, for our babies. If I trusted nothing in this world, that would be the one thing I would hold on to.

#Connor MacManus X OFC X Murphy MacManus #Boondock Saints 2 #alternative universe #pregnacy

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walaw717 · 4 years

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“I will tell you something about stories … They aren’t just entertainment. Don’t be fooled. They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness and death.” ― Leslie Marmon Silko

I grew up in a story telling culture, the Scots-Irish-German culture of the Appalachia plateau and highlands. My youth was full of family stores – grandparent stories of war and youthful pranks and hauntings. I grew up with tales of will o’ the wisps, the dead ringing bells to alert the living that they were buried alive, water horses that would steal you into a watery realm never to return. Stories were the places where I connected to the past and laid the groundwork for the future.

As an adult I fell into a profession that was a story sharing profession, I became a psychotherapist, a counselor if you will, a person who uses stories to “fight off illness and death.” Eventually, I became a specialist in horror stories, a trauma specialist. Experience and specialized training allowed me to learn how to listen to stories of war, rape, pillage, mass murder, surviving torture and in the listening learned to help people edit those stories. Part of that experience and training was being accompanied into my own experience of trauma by a brave and talented therapist who listened to my stories, helped me step back from my stories and see how I could face the darkness and overcome that darkness by realizing that my stories were not abnormal but part of the human condition:

“We have not even to risk the adventure alone for the heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known …we have only to follow the thread of the hero path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a God.

And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outwards, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.” ― Joseph Campbell

My becoming a trauma therapist was a natural transition from a youthful interest in literature, religion, art, science and culture. At the age of twelve I first read Dracula and have re-read it every decade of my life since then, always captivated by the story of the race between Dracula and Van Helsing and van Helsing’s company of common men and women to Dracula’s castle to lay to rest the dark and horrible soul of Dracula once and for all. I see the story of Dracula as the epitome of the seductiveness of trauma and the hidden horror of trauma. In that tale, every single member of van Helsing’s brave band was wounded and changed by the pursuit and casting out of that traumatic darkness in a manner that each member could become their own Van Helsing, their own hero, and conquer the Dracula demon as he manifest in their own story.

Even beyond the story of Dracula my interest in literature, religion, art, science and culture has informed my work as a therapist. Stories like Frankenstein, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Heart of Darkness and more introduced me broadly into the nature of the human condition. As an undergraduate in the History of Art I learned that Art itself was a story and that the history of Art and literature was an even larger story detailing the human condition and the fears and horrors we all faced. It is now close to thirty years I have helped patients address their own story of horror as they live their part of the story of the human condition.

Today it is common for psychotherapists to list the things, they help clients address. Inevitably topping that list “trauma specialist.” It sounds important and useful but is merely a lost leader for most therapists. Few therapists have the disposition or broad training to actually enter the personal world of horror tales of patients. The cost of actually entering that world of trauma to assist is very high for the therapist and one cannot do so without being scared by the stories of their clients, often experiencing secondary trauma. It is more common now for therapists to simply look into the abyss, listen to a second or third hand account of how to treat such trauma and say – I have seen the darkness, I can help. Looking into the abyss is not the same as going through the abyss with someone holding the light like Beatrice did for Dante. Therapists who use a bit of second and third hand awareness of the abyss to advertise themselves as a trauma specialist is like your local GP saying he is a neurosurgeon because he studied the brain in medical school anatomy. He knows the brain is there but does not have a deep experiential understanding of how it really works.

In the modern western canon of heroic heroes fighting illness and death the main hero of the story is the medical professional, the doctor or nurse – a person of science welding knife, potion and bed pan. The “counselor” is poorly respected and often excluded from this role because the very nature of being a counselor has not been to become a person of action applying scalpel and potion to address illness and death. Instead the role of the counselor is more like that of Athena appearing as Mentor to Telemachus in the Odyssey, a guide and moderator moving Telemachus from impulsive youth toward wise thoughtful adult. Unlike the Doctor with a slashing scalpel or a bag full of herbs the counselor’s tools are questions? “Tell me how can I help?” usually followed by “what happened?” and “what happened next?”, thus opening a story to be told and heard, embraced and wept-over, in time understood and hopefully healed in the shared delight of the mentor/counselor showing the story teller how heroically they came through the journey. It is very difficult now for the patient to find an Athena, a Mentor, a van Helsing to listen to the story of their dark ordeal. Sadly, in the effort to gain scientific and financial respectability the “counseling profession” has given up story listening and instead now provides “evidence-based formulas” like a doctor prescribes a pill then rush patients and their stories out of the door in as few sessions as possible. Psychotherapy has so wanted to join the fabled ranks of the medical profession that it has given up its greatest tool, listening and helping rewrite the tales of horror our patients bring us. Instead we simply apply the bandages of evidence-based care to the wound and call it a day never really understanding it is our job to do both, to listen and to teach. In our efforts to receive legitimacy in medicine we forgot that counselors were the bedside manner doctors abandoned with the ten-minute visit imposed by the accountants from the insurance companies.

I also believe that the unwillingness to listen is a lack of courage on the part of many who enter the counseling profession. This lack of courage stems from one major change in the training of Psychotherapists. Now, unlike thirty or more years ago when one had to tell the tale of one’s own race along the Danube and across that Wallachian plain or relate one’s own quest for the great white whale and face the turmoil of one’s inner demons, learning how to overcome the fear and finding great courage in the adventure of the quest to lay one’s demons to rest, one now takes a few courses in university about abstract theories distilled from the writings of the masters of the profession, has a two year internship of how to complete endless forms and then gets a certification as a master of the craft of Counseling. In short, most therapists no longer are required to undertake that great journey of the soul toward self-knowledge and healing. And the very nature of university training tends to exclude counselors more and more from the study of undergraduate humanities which would inform the Counseling student about the historical continuity of the human condition expressed throughout time in literature, Art, religion and history. Having been separated from that knowledge of the humanities Counselors have lost the art and power not only story telling but in the exclusion from their training the struggle with their own journey into the heart of darkness learning how to help edit a story into one of heroic victory. Those who come to us for mentoring leave never understanding why the demon still rises in the night of their soul and why the behavioral plasters we offer in time no longer work. The answer is simple, counselors have stopped listening and even when they do they have never made the journey themselves and really do not know how to guide another through it.

My life partner carries such demons in her soul and time and again she tells me she simply wants someone to help her tell her stories, to have someone to just listen and then show her how to heal. She says that every therapist she approaches insists that she needs to only focus on the here and now and use this technique or another and that she will be well all the while shutting her need to share her stories down. Thanks to therapists shutting her story down she now “feels that it is pointless to even ask for such help” with healing her story. Although I know how, I cannot help her edit her story into one of victory because I am too close to offer the magic of the therapeutic relationship, I cannot be Beatrice to her Dante. I am a commoner in her daily stories and ther is no mystery or magic ther of healer to healed. This being told to focus only on the here and now is not just her story but a story I have heard time and again when I begin with patients and ask them why therapy has not worked in the past. I remember more than one patient telling me that the fact I could hear their story and not be destroyed helped them in turn not allow the story to continue to destroy them.

I believe what has happened in the mental health community in the last fifteen years is a shame. In our efforts to be accepted into the medical/insurance community we have given up the very gift of listening and its power we offered. We turned ourselves over to the behavioral psychology community whose model is the bell and the rat for our understanding of the human condition. Of course, we need the stake, the silver bullet, the whaleboat and harpoon – but we need to help people tell the tale of their struggle, the story of the fear of the quest go with them and show them when, where and how to use the stake, the silver bullet, the whaleboat and harpoon. Above all we to meet patients where they are when they come to see us by first listening to the story as they understand it and offer the empowering “I hear your fear, your frustration your confusion, will you let me help?” We can only do that if we honestly slow down and listen and help them open that story to us with gentle encouragement. When we do that and keep in mind our role is not to allow them to get trapped in telling and retelling but providing them direction through the use of the tools we have not only will therapy move forward quickly but will allow our patients to have lasing relief. If all we do is offer them “tools” without the context of their story then in the end, we offer them nothing.

“Everything is held together with stories. Barry Lopez

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margridarnauds · 3 years

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a@fallenidol-453 and @any59

YOU ASKED FOR IT.

So, first off: Let’s start off with a story. I’m in my flat in Ireland, doing....Celtic Studies things. Namely, looking at Quinn’s workbook, flipping between it and Strachan’s paradigms, crying. Okay, not really crying, more “knitting my brows and scribbling furiously, because WHY is this language like this?”

My housemate comes in with a friend of hers. We have the usual smalltalk, you know “What do you do here?” “Oh, Celtic Studies.” “Celtic Studies!” *I tense as I prepare for the inevitable “So, do you have any family.........” question* “Well, we just so happen to be fluent in Irish!”

Now, this is much rarer than a lot of people would think in Ireland, because the Irish education system is.........shit when it comes to teaching Irish. I literally never had someone in Ireland tell me, “Oh, I LOVED studying Irish! It was my favorite class!” And the more someone loves the Irish language, the more that they generally hate how it’s taught. So, I’m like “Oh, cool! Here’s what it looked like a thousand years ago!” and I show off my paradigms, going to the first page, which is the section on definite articles.

There’s this moment of silence as she looks at it, HER eyebrows knitting just like mine were a few minutes ago. “Is that....Latin? It looks like Latin.”

Now, there are two options with this story: One is that she was lying through her teeth about knowing Irish fluently in order to impress the naive American. Problem with that is that, of course, you risk being called on it. BUT the second is what I’m going with, namely that the language has changed a lot more than people generally think it has. (There’s about the same period of time between Old Irish and Modern Irish as there is between the creation of Beowulf and the present day. Imagine trying to read Beowulf without knowing ANY Old English and you’ll see the problem straight away.) This is actually a problem, because a lot of the time, people will see foreign-born Celticists writing in Old Irish/Middle Welsh/etc. and instead of thinking of us as professional scholars who are taking advantage of a dead language in order to send what are essentially very niche memes (not necessarily even “meme” in the sense of joke), they think “Oh! The dumb foreigner’s mangling the language! So funny!”

...and yes. This has happened to multiple people I know, including myself. It’s annoying.

So, how much has the language changed? There are essentially five stages of the language that we are able to trace: Primitive Irish, Old Irish, Middle Irish, Early Modern Irish, and Gaeilge/Modern Irish + Proto-Celtic which is the sort of shared ancestor between all the Celtic languages and the reason why some of these words are confusingly familiar and my brain needs about twenty minutes to reboot when I’m going in-between Middle Welsh and Old Irish.

Going back to our friend, the definite article: In the modern language, there are two forms of the definite article, as you’ll learn in your very first lesson on Duolingo: An (singular) and Na (plural). You can see this reflected all over the place, probably most obviously in the names for instutions like “An Post” (the post office) and An Garda Síochána (The Guard of the Peace, the police force).

In Old Irish? There were multiple forms of the definite article, and they had to agree with the gender, person, and case. In the Middle Irish period, those distinctions gradually fall away, becoming even pronouned in the Early Modern Irish period, leading to the language as we have it in the modern day.

Some other changes:

- Loss of deponents. Old Irish used to have a system that was like the deponent verbs of Latin, where you had words that LOOKED passive, but were active in meaning. As time went on, they totally dropped those, taking different approaches to how to deal with the old deponent verbs. (Sometimes they’d use, say, the verbal noun form AS the verb, sometimes they’d apply deponent endings to verbs that hadn’t been deponents before.....it’s a mess.)

-Loss of the neuter gender. Gone entirely, save for a few fossilized examples, though with some efforts to bring it back in some form in the interest of non-binary people. In the time of Old Irish, however, there was a full neuter gender, complete with a neuter article.

- The loss of declensions. “BUT,” you might say, if you’ve studied Modern Irish, “Modern Irish HAS declensions!” And you’d be right! It does! Five, in fact. .......Old Irish had thirteen.

What happens over time is that people look at all those declensions and are like “That is an ASSLOAD of declensions, let’s simplify!” And so they start treating some declensions like they’re another declension, so the number of declensions goes down over time as the others all get sorted into new categories.

Also, the categorization is different. In the modern language, you just hear that the declensions are decided by the endings, which.....is probably one of the reasons why so many people hate learning Irish, because it seems arbitrary, when, in reality, it isn’t. In Old Irish, we actually go back even FURTHER in time, to Primitive Irish (which ended around the 7th century) and, even further back in time, Proto-Celtic, because that is where the declensions actually come from. Irish used to look quite like Gaulish or Latin, with similar endings - “Fer” was “viros”, which became “viras”, “ingen” was “enigenā”, which became “inigena”, “rígain” was “rígainí” in the Proto-Celtic, “athair” was “ɸatīr” in the PC, “túath” was “toutā”, “Día” was “Dewos”........etc.

That’s why “fer” and “Día” are both o-stems, despite looking almost nothing alike, it’s why they behave the same way - They shared the same endings back in the day. That’s why we call them o-stems in the first place, it isn’t because of what’s IN them, it’s what used to be in them.

“Ingen” is an a-stem for the same reason.

“Rígain” is an i-stem.

“Athair” is a r-stem.

There’s METHOD to the madness, I promise.

- There’s a loss of distinction of sounds - Old Irish was very strict on “This is spelled with an A and THIS is spelled with an O and those are TWO DIFFERENT SOUNDS.” Middle Irish was like “Eh? Let’s make it a general “schwa” sound.” So the spellings vary a lot starting in that period, Early Modern Irish only adds to the confusion (a favorite Celticist Hobby is pointing out the sometimes flat-out *weird* Early Modern Irish spellings of Old Irish names because *oh, boy*), and by the time you get to the modern language, a lot of things are spelled quite differently from what you’d think. Some consonants also soften in their sounds - the preposition “Co”, for example, becomes “Go”, “ocus” becomes “agus”, etc.

- Univerbation. Essentially, Old Irish had a LOT of compound verbs like do-beir, do-gni, at-tá, ad-cí, ro-cluineathar etc. And, in the modern language, “do-beir” becomes “tabhair”, “do´gní” becomes -“á dhéanamh”, etc. Essentially, they took what’s known as the protonic form of the verb, which is the version we would use following a conjunct particle like “ní”, which expresses a negative form of an action, and they made that the regular form of the verb. They were like “Nope, don’t want to handle it, not today, Satan.” And sometimes, those forms would evolve as well, so I could be looking at a verb in Early Modern Irish, go “that looks vaguely familiar” and then realize that it’s a VERY mutated form of an Old Irish word.

- The ~copula~. So, the copula is....an alternative to the substantive verb used in certain circumstances, indicating a state of being. Which seems really....grammar-y, but all that really means is that it translates out to “is, am, are” in English. If you ever read any medieval Irish texts, you’ll notice a lot of syntax that’s like “Cold is the wind from Norway”, “It is not a good thing you have done”, etc. The reason is because, in the actual Irish, all this would have begun with a form of the copula. It was a VERY popular way of starting off a sentence, instead of the usual Verb-Subject-Object form. In the Old Irish period, the copula was inflected, meaning that, like the definite article, it changed depending on certain factors, namely person, number, and tense. “Am” would be “I am” (”Am rí” - “I am a king”) “At” would be you (sing.) are (“At gataige” - “You are a thief), “Is” would be “he/she/it is” (”Is lóech” - “He/She/It is a warrior”), “ammi” would be “we are” (”Ammi druíd” - “We are druids/magicians”).....etc. Now, once again, starting in the Middle Irish period, you have people going “............that is an ass-load of work, let’s just use the third singular and call it a day.” This is why, in Duolingo, you have to say “Is cailín mé” a thousand times. In the Old Irish period, you would just say “Am ingen”, but, with that loss of distinction of the copula, pronouns become increasingly important to the Irish language. Some of this was already present in Old Irish, with the 3rd sing. copula being used for the sake of emphasis, “It is I who takes Bres to the trash fire, where he belongs”, sometimes with an emphasizing pronoun for added drama, but it eventually gets to the point where the others are consumed entirely.

- Independent pronouns also come into their own, being uniformly used after the copula, with the infixed pronouns that had been uniform going away. So, for example, if I wanted to say “I kill him” in Modern Irish, I would say “Maráim é” - if I wanted to say it in Old Irish, I would say “Nan-Marbu”, with the no being what’s known as a meaningless conjunct particle (it’s there to say “LOOK! AN INFIXED PARTICLE!”).

- A lot of the verb forms, like the nouns, get smushed together - There were at least three different forms of the preterite (in Modern Irish, known as the “Simple Past”) in Old Irish, in Middle Irish, the S-preterite gradually grows to dominate, to the point where now, there is only the simple past, with endings varying depending on if you’re talking first or second conjugation verbs. Likewise, the future tense goes from having five different categories of future tenses to being divided into first or second conjugation verbs in the present day.

Overall, there’s more, there’s a lot more, but I think that you can get the gist. When I see primitive Irish, I’m like “Okay, it’s Old Irish - The Latin edition”. It looks WEIRD, but it looks OLD and, for the most part, fairly recognizable. We don’t see it that often, outside of an ogham stone, that’s why we make such a big deal when we do. Old Irish, I’m like “FRIEND....who sometimes scares me”, Middle Irish, I’m like “Okay, this is a bit weird, but I can understand most of it, especially if I’m reading an edition where the editor explains things”, Early Modern Irish looks, to me, like everything’s been tossed into a blender. I KNOW that some of the words look familiar, but it’s HARD and it kind of hurts my brain to stare at it for too long. Modern Irish actually looks better, because it’s streamlined, the spellings are consistent, etc., but it still looks......almost eerie, actually. It also shows in how these things are taught - If you’re in an Old Irish program, you’re taught Old Irish and Middle Irish; if you’re in a Modern Irish program, you’re taught Early Modern Irish and Gaeilge (or you’re expected to know Gaeilge off the bat.) And what should probably be mentioned is that, actually, there was likely only ever a brief period where “Old Irish” was actually spoken or written - Kim McCone pointed out in an article that, actually, in some of our oldest, most sanctified sources for Old Irish, the Wurtzburg Gospels, we’re already seeing traces of Middle Irishicisms. It’s likely that, among the general populace, they were already simplifying their speech, but that the scribes who wrote this stuff down, that literary elite, took a conservative approach to the language, essentially a medieval Irish Academie Francaise, and they tried to preserve the “pure” form, only to lose the battle as time went on and even they started using these forms of the language. It’s also why we put SUCH a massive emphasis on dating....(besides the fact that it’s the closest thing we can come to dating anything, *badum tss*): Scribes, along with copying old texts, would actually sometimes put older forms of the words in newer texts in the hopes of it looking older or more authoritative. There are some bardic poems in the 16th century that are actually EERILY good. Likewise, you have some scribes looking at an older text and being like “Oh, that doesn’t look how it should! I should fix it!”, only to drop a Middle Irishicism on an Old Irish verb. And sometimes a scribe will try to correct the correction and makes it even worse. We have to analyze the whole text, weighing all of it together to see when a text might have actually been composed.

We talk a lot about how Irish has survived over the years in spite of everything, and that’s IMPORTANT, but I feel like it’s also important to say that it’s changed, it’s reinvented itself. It isn’t static and it’s never really BEEN static, and I think, my ongoing confusion aside, that that’s really important. I can’t translate an 18th century Irish text, at least not EASILY (even though I want to do my PhD on an Early Modern text so RIP me), but someone who got their PhD in 19th century Gaelic Literature also can’t translate Old Irish (and yes.....it has happened where people act like studying Irish literature = being able to “explain” Old Irish materials to me. Because, again, Dumb Foreigners Can’t Know What We’re Talking About) We’ve got to work together to get the fullest possible picture. The language had a past, it has a future.

#long post #celtic studies #also why we DO need to study modern Irish as well #because we can only get so much from the older materials and it's important to remember there's more outside the medieval world #my new program is Very Big on me learning modern Celtic languages along with older languages and honestly I'm thrilled #because I view it as a matter of respect as much as anything else

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ava-candide · 5 years

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Here’s your problem. You are in charge of Poldark, one of the UK’s most successful TV series of the past five years. A huge hit in the US, the show made its leads, Aidan Turner and Eleanor Tomlinson, stars overnight. Last year’s fourth series was watched by 6m UK viewers at the height of a World Cup summer. (The final series of Game of Thrones, by comparison, reached just 3.39m viewers, and most soaps average 5m.) The series is based on 12 hugely popular books, of which you have adapted just seven. So there are five further novels to plunder. But...

“The first seven books are set in the 18th century and finish at the end of 1799,” explains the writer Debbie Horsfield, whose problem this actually is. “But then Winston Graham stopped writing — and when he came back for book eight, The Stranger from the Sea, he left an 11-year gap in the story and changed almost everything. We leave Ross in series four a frustrated MP. When we meet him in book eight, he’s basically a spy for the British government. Dwight [Enys, the doctor] is helping George III with his madness. Graham doesn’t really explain how any of this happened.”

None of this would matter if the latest TV adaptation of the books, like the 1975 version, simply gave up at the end of the first seven. There is, however, an informal agreement between cast and creative team that — if everyone is still around and available in 10 years — they will reunite to finish the final novels. “There’s nothing on paper, but everybody has said yes,” Horsfield says. “Why wouldn’t we?”

So she set about trying to fill in that 11-year gap for the fifth and perhaps final series, and turned, as the show has often done, to the ferociously radical politics of the time. There she found a real-life Ross Poldark in the shape of a radical war hero who had married one of his servants — Colonel Edward “Ned” Despard. (It’s tempting to say that desperate times call for Despard measures.)

“The parallels between him and Ross are quite astonishing,” Horsfield says. “They were both military men — Despard was a hero of the American Revolutionary War and his wife, Kitty, was originally a Jamaican servant in his kitchen. I asked Andrew Graham whether his father had based Ross on Ned, but he hadn’t heard of him. Despard’s history doesn’t end well, so it seemed that he could become the ‘There but for the grace of God’ figure for Ross.”

Vincent Regan, who knows how to buckle a swash, with roles in the BBC’s The Musketeers, Troy, 300 and Clash of the Titans, brings a rugged determination to the role. He roars his way through the first two episodes like a force of nature, and in this Horsfield has stayed true to the real-life Ned. After the American Revolutionary War, he was made superintendent of what became Belize, until he fell in love with Catherine (Kitty) and set out to give freed slaves the same rights as white settlers. This did not go down well in London — Despard was recalled and jailed. When he was released, he joined the London Corresponding Society, a radical organisation inspired by Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man, and agitated for the end of slavery.

“Ross was clearly an abolitionist, and there has always been a political thread running through Graham’s books,” Horsfield notes. “Period dramas shouldn’t be clean, neat and tidy — they should matter as much as contemporary stories.” To illustrate this, she sketches out what seems at first an improbably modern storyline: Luke Norris’s character, Dwight, the troubled Royal Navy doctor, develops a form of PTSD treatment for the villainous George Warleggan, played with chilling power in this series as a man driven literally mad with grief at the loss of his wife, Elizabeth.

“Graham mentions in passing in book eight that Dwight went to France to study with a Dr Pinel,” Norris says. “He was a real historical figure who pioneered humane ways of dealing with mental health issues, at a time when we locked people in Bedlam, plunged them into icy water, whipped them, beat them, locked them in cages, sedated them and purged them to rid them of demons or animal spirits.”

“It made sense,” Horsfield adds. “By book eight, Dwight has become the go-to expert on mental health, being called in to consult over George III.”

We forget there was a strong possibility of an English revolution at that time. There were serious food shortages and measures to suppress any kind of dissent, including trade unions. “The beauty of the novels is that the dashing Byronic hero makes thrilling drama out of the dullest school history lessons,” Horsfield says. “Ross opposes the greed of bankers and wealthy industrialists, so it made sense for him to have served with Ned, and for Ross and Demelza to be caught up in the story of Ned and Kitty.”

The idea of a radical mixed-race couple cutting a swathe through London at that time is almost certain to incite adverse comment. In fact, there were black Londoners in Roman times, the first settled black community in the capital was in the Elizabethan era, and by the time Despard was recalled to England, about 2% of London’s population was black.

It’s also true that in the early 19th century, the British secret service was headed by William Wickham, a civil servant busy infiltrating radical groups such as the London Corresponding Society. By gradual steps, Horsfield leads Ross and Demelza through the first two years of the missing 11, gradually wrapping Ross in the plots and skulduggery of political espionage.

For Turner, the arrival of Poldark’s old commanding officer provided a couple of welcome changes. “It was nice that Ross finally had a friend,” he says with a grin. “I got on great with Vince — he was an English actor doing an Irish accent, and I’m an Irish actor doing an English accent, so we do good impressions of each other.

“And it felt like there was a lot more action in the series, with Debbie given free rein. There’s much more sword-fighting, that’s for sure. We’ve had pistols, riding and swimming in previous seasons, but you can’t beat fighting with real steel swords. You can’t fool around with them. You just have to commit and go for it, and hope everything will be fine.”

Turner famously does his own stunts, except in the scenes where Poldark gallops along the cliffs. “For insurance reasons,” he points out hastily. “But they put me on a horse on the first day of shooting, back when I was such a young and innocent man. I was pretty nervous, I was on a horse and Debbie says I was quite fierce...” He pauses. “But I think I was a little bit nicer than that.”

He will miss the show, he admits. “We had pretty much the same crew for the entire job, so it was like a proper family, and I’ll miss everyone a lot. You hope to keep in touch — you tend to with the actors, but not so much with the crew.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Turner found his final day of shooting very emotional. “It’s always been amazing working alongside Eleanor, we get on great, and the last day was just the two of us doing some bedroom scenes,” he recalls. “That was quite lovely, and it seemed to make sense that it was just the two of us. It was poignant to leave things there.”

Leave them there? What about the talk of reuniting in 10 years? “I wouldn’t rule it out,” he says, then tacks a little to the left. “I mean, I wouldn’t rule anything out. That’s for other people to decide. It depends if it’s something the audience wants to see.”

Horsfield can’t see why the audience would have changed by then. “When I started this adaptation, people were asking how I was going to make it relevant for now,” she says. “But you don’t need to update it, because the concerns of the time and the concerns of Winston Graham are still the concerns we have now.

“Things actually don’t change. We all want to find a sense of community and not be exploited. That Europe, surveillance, terrorism and immigration are still hot topics may be a shame, but it’s really no surprise.

“If we are to come back in 10 years, dealing with mental health and continental politics — I mean, you’d be crazy to say that they won’t be hot topics in 2030. Constant conflict around the same ideas may be depressing for me as a person, but as a drama writer, it makes my job a whole lot easier.”

#aidanpics

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ad-ciu · 5 years

Text

Thesis Tales: The Monster Horse

So, I have a story for you. A story about a man and his horse. His very, very strange horse. But, for context I better explain where this all comes from to start with.

I have been utterly silent here on Tumblr for the last several months as I have been writing my Master’s thesis. Now that it is finished, I can return to the lands of the living and participate in society again. However, like some shellshocked hero stumbling out of an Underworld with a collection of stolen goods under one arm, I have returned with stories!

You see, I wrote my thesis on Conall Cernach, someone who is greeted mostly with ‘Who?’ when I talk about him. You probably know his cousin and foster-brother better than him, Cú Chulainn. Since nobody has bothered to really write about Conall in the last, oh.... let’s say ever, I am technically the world expert on him at this point which is both amusing and terrifying. So what better to do with this undeserved position but yell about how cool he is on the internet.

Today, in what I hope to make a semi-regular discussion of what I discovered in my thesis, I’m going to be talking about the monstrous steed Conall Cernach rides, Derg Drúchtach, ‘Dripping Red.’

So, I love this horse. I love this horse so much because, oh my god, it is so fucked up. Without the broader context of horses in medieval Irish lit., it’s a freaky horse, with the context, it’s just so weird.

So! Let me tell you about my favorite insane animal. But, before that: Horses and Heroes.

As a hero in medieval Irish literature, you need horses to pull your chariot. I’m not going to get into the whole argument about if chariots ever existed in Ireland (yeah it’s a thing, we’ve never actually found any), but the Ulster Cycle never stops harping about heroes and their chariots. These powerful, elegant beasts capable in battle are epitomized by Cú Chulainn’s horses, Liath Macha and Dub Sainglend.

These twin horses come to Cú Chulainn from the Otherworld, emerging from beneath a lake. They are powerful, beautiful, and fierce in battle. In the early modern version of Cú Chulainn’s death, Oidheadh Con Culainn, Liath Macha even seems to have some sort of Otherworldly knowledge, as they refuse to allow Láeg, Cú Chulainn’s charioteer, harness them on the day that Cú Chulainn dies as it is aware of the threat to its master’s life. In the older version of the tale, Brislech Mór Maige Muirthemne, Laith Macha goes into a rage when their master is mortally wounded and kills 90 men.

Though these horses are not always named, they accompany Cú Chulainn through many of his stories, princely and noble things, the horses of an upper-class warrior, befitting Cú Chulainn. They are the beauty and poise of the Otherworld.

But then there is Conall’s Horse. Derg Drúchtach, ‘Dripping Red.’

Only appearing by name in two different stories, Oidheadh Con Culainn and Brislech Mór Maige Muirthemne, Conall’s horse is referenced to in passing in the glosses of other texts. It is a monster without a doubt. If Cú Chulainn’s horses are the beauty and grace of the Otherworld, Conall’s is the violent terror that stalks there.

Derg Drúchtach is a blood red horse, though its name, ‘Dripping Red’ carries the implication in Old Irish that it is specifically dripping red with blood. Therefore, the horse might be red, or is might be so gore-splattered you can’t tell the difference.

On top of this, the horse has a dog’s head. While this is not strictly uncommon for Ireland, there is an entire book written on this odd fact (Werewolves, Magical Hounds, and Dog-Headed Men in Celtic Literature: a Typological Study of Shape-Shifting by Phillip A. Bernhardt-House), this is the only instance that I am aware of a horse being given a hound’s head.

(These two features of the horse, being red and being dog-headed, are divided into two separate horses by the time of Oidheadh Con Culainn, but in the original version of the story is a single being.)

Furthermore, because this horse cannot stop being morbidly fascinating, it is so strong that when Conall rides it at a breakneck pace to hunt down and slaughter every single person who had a hand in the death of Cú Chulainn, it tears hunks out of the turf in such a flurry that it appears as though the steed is followed by all the ravens in Ireland. On top of this, it foams at the mouth to the extent that the horse and rider appear to be at the epicenter of a mobile snowstorm.

And if all of this was not enough, the horse Eats People.

Or, well, bites most of people’s torso’s off, I’ll admit I am presuming it then eats the remains due to its name.

The one instance where the horse is given considerable ‘screen time’ is in Brislech Mór Maige Muirthemne when Conall has hunted down Lugaid, one of the men who killed Cú Chulainn. As Lugaid has had an arm cut off by the corpse of Cú Chulainn, Conall is compelled by his honour to bind one of his own arms behind his back to make it a fair duel. However, the two men find themselves matched, neither able to kill the other.

In this moment of realization, Conall glances over at his horse, and the horse gets the memo and stalks over to Lugaid. As the two men fight, Derg Drúchtach strikes, tearing out a hunk of Lugaid’s torso so large that it proves to be a mortal blow. When Lugaid tries to reproach Conall for cheating, as he said it would be a duel alone, Conall corrects him, saying that he is not responsible for the acts of wild animals and insane creatures.

Derg Drúchtach, the mad, gore-splattered, dog-headed, man eating horse that foams at the bit so much it appears to be in a snowstorm, kills Lugaid. Saving its master from the duel while also saving his honour.

This absolute insane animal has no clear equivalents elsewhere in Irish saga literature. A mad, frenzied animal that drips with the blood of men it has presumably eaten is only ever seen with Conall Cernach. Other heroes have their horses, but they are noble, powerful beings befitting their rider. Conall on the other hand rides on the back of this vicious, mad animal.

Why does this horse exist? I have absolutely no idea. Since the conception tales of heroes sometimes include the conception of horses, I suspect that the lost conception story of Conall Cernach we see referenced in the Tale Lists may have made reference to the horse. Or, potentially it was expanded on in other stories now lost to us. Either way, the fact that it appears in two different stories separated by several hundred years, and is eluded to in the glosses on other stories, suggests that something is going on with this horse. But, we might never know.

And, despite this, it is my absolute favorite animal from the Irish sagas.

#celtic mythology #celtic #conall cernach #irish sagas #mythology #irish mythology

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bbclesmis · 5 years

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‘Valjean is like Spider-Man’

DOMINIC WEST FIGURES he's played his share of awful people. The serial killer Fred West in Appropriate Adult? Jimmy McNulty, the Baltimore cop in The Wire? A lovable rogue, but a rogue nonetheless. Noah Solloway, the lead in The Affair? "He's deeply silly," West contends. "Just a silly man!" In the film Colette (out this Friday), he plays a sadistic husband who locks his gifted wife (Keira Knightley) away and makes her write books for which he claims credit.

"As an actor, you do live with these people and experience what they're feeling," sighs the actor, 49. "If they're a******s, it's exhausting and ultimately degrading. So it was such a relief to play someone who's great." And he smiles that irascible smile, the one that makes you root for West even when he's playing murderers and pretentious, adulterous novelists.

Jean Valjean, West's character in the BBC's adaptation of Les Miserables, is not only "great" in the actor's eyes. He is nothing less than the "greatest hero in all literature": a superhero ex-convict who has spent 19 years in prison being tortured by Inspector Javert (David Oyelowo) for stealing a loaf of bread, but who determines on his release to be the best possible man he can be... with heartbreaking results.

West considers Victor Hugo's French revolutionary epic to be the "greatest novel ever written", too - "much better than War and Peace!" - and certainly much better than the famous musical (he's not a fan).

"Valjean is not just a good guy, he's an amazing guy. Like Spider-Man!" he beams. "He climbs up the sides of buildings to rescue kids. And he has the legitimacy of intense suffering; he's done 19 years of hard labour. That knocks Iron Man into a cocked hat! Then you get into the humanity of Valjean, his demons, his desperate need to redeem himself... He's trying not to be the brute that the prison has turned him into. You become a better person by spending time with someone like that."

He has asked me to his home, a converted brewery in Wiltshire that he shares with his wife, Catherine FitzGerald, and four children - Dora, 11, Senan, ten, Francis, nine, and Christabel, five - "I'm trying to cut down," he jokes. (He has another daughter, Martha, from his first marriage, who is studying English at Oxford and wants to act.) "I think all households should have a five-year-old girl running round," he says. "I just think it's better for children. Stops them from becoming little princesses. It's much harder to be a spoilt brat as one of four."

HE OPENS THE door unshaven and unkempt with a general air of bohemian bonhomie. He puts on a succession of silly voices as he leads me through to his kitchen. "Teas? Light refreshments? Do we want hot milk in our coffees? Yes?" He's such a chameleon as an actor that even his own accent sounds as if it's put on. He was educated at Eton, but his family isn't proper posh. His Irish father owned a plastics factory in Sheffield, his mother was an actor and he's the sixth of seven children.

The Wests have been doing up the house for about three years, but only moved in last summer - there are paintings waiting to be hung, pieces of Lego, mugs, antiques scattered around... The house used to be a "very manageable cottage next to a derelict brewery, but having decided to connect them all together they're only now getting used to the layout. "There are about five different doors to choose from. I didn't realise how spread out it would be. It's enormous!" They moved from west London to give the kids more space to range around when they're teenagers: "I want my kids to be around trees and animals more."

We take refuge in his office, up in the rafters of the old brewery, where he sinks into an armchair and resumes recounting his love affair with Les Miserables.

THE BBC VERSION is written by Andrew Davies and picks up more or less where his adaptation of War and Peace left off. It opens on the field of Waterloo in 1815 in the aftermath of Napoleon's defeat. Back in Paris, the royalists are resurgent - but can't quell the forces unleashed by the Revolution.

In the first episode, we follow Valjean's ill-starred attempts at redemption after his nemesis, Javert, releases him; meanwhile, the grisette Fantine (Lily Collins) falls for a cad (Johnny Flynn) and becomes pregnant with little Cosette - whose path will cross with Valjean's in the future. Six episodes, much heartache and many improbable coincidences will take us all the way up to the 1832 June Rebellion in Paris.

West hadn't read the epic novel, but now that he has, he's a convert. He even loves Hugo's digressions into the design of the Paris sewers. "Actually, I'd have loved it if we could have made six seasons out of it," he says. 'There's more than enough material and it's all important and relevant. As with any great classic, it's big enough to handle any amount of interpretations."

Javert's antipathy to Valjean is one of the engines of the plot - but it's also something of a mystery. Why does Javert hate him so much? "I always like to trace motivations to sex," West says. "I said to David, 'Javert obviously fancies him!' But he thought that was crass."

Did the rivalry extend off-set? "You're never quite sure where the character ends and the actor starts," he laughs. "But the key to David is that he's actually royal. He's a prince in Nigeria. And he doesn't drink. He's very religious. He's been married to his wife since he was 19 and they have four beautiful children. I hadn't realised people like that existed in the acting world! He's a very inspiring guy."

The co-stars decided it was the shared trauma of being institutionalised that set their characters against one another. "Valjean doesn't think he deserves anything other than brutality. Javert is constantly reminding him he's just a common criminal who breaks rocks and murders people."

Oyelowo is one of a number of non-white actors in the cast, marking a departure from traditional costume-drama casting. West jokes that he really wanted to do it all with 'A1lo'Allo accents, but: "Like any classic, it's not a museum piece. It has relevance to modern life. Eponine and the girls all talk like modern London girls. And therefore it looks like modern Britain, too."

THE PRODUCTION LOOKS likely to make Collins, as Fantine, a star. "She's incredible," says West. "It's an exhausting part. So harrowing. Any actress who goes for it deserves all the accolades she gets..." The first scene they shot together was Fantine's death, filmed in a freezing manor house outside Brussels at 5am. "She really went for it. I was like, 'Oh my God! How did you do those spasm things?' She said, 'I just made it up'." I imagine it's reassuring to have West on set: he is very experienced, but doesn't take himself too seriously. Do the younger actors come to him for advice? "Pfah! No. I'm jaded and lazy."

The Wire was the show that brought him fame, as well as a credibility not usually open to Old Etonians. But originally he didn't want to be in it. "And it turns out to have been the one thing that everyone knows me for and it was one of the best shows ever made! I think [creator] David Simon is almost the Victor Hugo of our time... certainly the Charles Dickens."

The Affair offers more escapist pleasure, its marital rows interspersed with good-looking people having sex (even if he doesn't think much of Noah). The Wests are about to decamp to LA for the filming of the final season, but it will be without Ruth Wilson this time. Last February, she disclosed in a Radio Times interview that she was "sure" she earned less than West. "I don't want more money, I just want equal money," she added. Not long after that her character Alison Bailey was killed off. What was all that about? "Oh, not related!" West yelps.

He remains good friends with Wilson. The main point of contention on set was whose behind would be visible in the sex scenes. "We used to fight about it. 'You're on top this time', 'No! I was on top the last three times!'"

He'd never given much thought to who was paid what, he says. "I never asked what the money is on a show. It was more a question of if I wanted to do it. So it woke me up to the issue. I never realised the disparity and the injustice."

It's one of a number of changes he has noticed since the #MeToo movement gained ground. "One thing that's happened is a positive discrimination in favour of female directors. But the main thing is that unacceptable behaviour from male directors or actors is now either not possible, or you can call them out on it. There was one guy in particular whose behaviour was disgusting. Particularly to young females in minor roles. I tried to counter it on several occasions. But now it wouldn't be so hard to get rid of them."

'Treatment of women has taken a big step back in television'

He twists his face in derision at those who feel the feminists have gone "too far". "Treatment of women has taken a big step back in the past 20 years," he says, his voice rising. "Particularly in television, which has become more pornographic and the burden of that falls squarely on young women. Things like Game of Thrones, where you get a pair of bare breasts every five minutes... I mustn't say this, but..." Say it!

"I'm fairly sure that 20 years ago young actresses would not have had pressure put on them to take their clothes off. The parts young actresses get, particularly pretty ones, involve violent rape. When I think about my daughter going into the profession... I'm just really glad that #MeToo has started to counteract what has happened in the past 20 years."

He puts it down to internet porn - "It's made boys feel that women are sex objects who are easily available" - as well as social media. "If you can swipe someone's face because you don't think they're pretty and it costs you that little... I haven't done it myself, but it cheapens it."

HE's CONCERNED AT the turn the world is taking: he mentions Trump, climate change, teenage boys becoming addicted to the online game Fortnite. A wariness of modernity seems to have inspired the move to the countryside; he and his wife are "luddites", he confesses. "I'm not one of those people who say, 'How can you bring children into this world?' But I do want to spend a lot more time hanging out with my kids and running around in forests."

Once he has finished filming the last season of The Affair, he plans to hire an enormous camper van, bundle the entire family into it and spend a few months driving around the States.

"It's the last chance we have," he explains. "They're nearly teenagers, so they're not going to want to spend that much time with their old man for much longer. I've spent a long time away from them. So we're taking six months, four months of it travelling. I've taken them out of school - there are no big exams. We'll home school them. They'll read. No screens. You're not going to get a better education than that. If you travel with as little as possible, you get much more interesting experiences."

Radio Times 5-11 January 2019

#les mis bbc #bbc les mis #dominic west #Jean Valjean #valvert #david oyelowo #javert #Lily Collins #fantine #Interviews #articles #radio times

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lingthusiasm · 5 years

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Transcript Episode 26: Why do C and G come in hard and soft versions? Palatalization

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 26: Why do C and G come in hard and soft versions? Palatalization. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 26 show notes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics! I'm Gretchen McCulloch.

Lauren: And I'm Lauren Gawne, and today, we're getting enthusiastic about palatalisation. That is to say, “What the heck is going on with G and C?” But first, thanks to everyone for your enthusiastic recommending during our November Recommend-A-Thon.

Gretchen: Yes, thanks so much for all your tweets, and posts, and shares, and all of the new people that you've brought in with you to listen to Lingthusiasm.

Lauren: We will be thanking every one of you who made some kind of public declaration about their love of Lingthusiasm. We'll give you until the end of the month to add yourself to that esteemed group of people, so we can thank you all in our annual anniversary post.

Gretchen: Yes, so you have till the end of November 2018 to be part of this year's Recommend-A-Thon thank you post, which will live in perpetuity on our website. Last year we thanked 100 people. This year, I think we can thank even more. I'm really excited by what we've seen so far.

Lauren: I'm feeling very confident about that. And of course, you can continue to recommend us to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life any time of the year.

Gretchen: I also want to thank everybody who came out to the live shows.

Lauren: Yay! I'm not gonna lie, we're recording this before the live shows.

Gretchen: So we're really hoping people actually come.

Lauren: We are just going to have to assume that they were an absolute rolling success.

Gretchen: We're recording well in advance at the moment to make sure that we have episodes for when Lauren's on leave. We're very excited about those live shows. I assume they were great. Thanks so much to everyone who came out in Melbourne and Sydney. It was so fun to get to see those cities. We also want to remind you that if you're thinking about getting Lingthusiasm merch for any linguists or language enthusiasts in your life, if you want to get someone a scarf with the International Phonetic Alphabet, or tree symbol diagrams on them, or a tie with the IPA on it, or various baby outfits, or T-shirts that say, “Not judging your grammar, just analysing it,” or many other things, now is a great time to place an order so that arrives towards the end of the year.

Lauren: Remember, it's also totally okay to use this as a list of suggestions for other people to buy you, or if you enjoy doing a bit of holiday shopping for yourself, we're not gonna stop you.

Gretchen: We definitely noticed from last year that RedBubble typically runs some sales this time of year, so hopefully, you can take advantage of those to get you and/or your friends and family some great Lingthusiasm swag.

Lauren: Speaking of the holiday season, it's a very important holiday season coming up that's the Northern Hemisphere winter conference season, which I'm usually excited about. Not doing so much travel this year.

Gretchen: Well, the Australian Linguistic Society is also having its annual meeting in Adelaide in December, which I'm going to be at because I'm still in Australia. Our latest Patreon bonus episode is all about the academic conference circuit and how to make it work for you.

Lauren: I had a lot of fun in this episode. This is all of mine and Gretchen's favourite survival tips for navigating academic conferences. If you've never been to one before, or you've only been to a couple, they're lots of fun, and they can be even more fun.

Gretchen: Yes, so you can go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm to check those out, or lingthusiasm.com/merch for the merch. We’ll repeat those links at the end of the episode, so you don't have to write them down now.

[Music]

Gretchen: So, G and C are really weird letters because they're these two letters that, in a whole bunch of languages, often come with multiple sounds. You have the sounds in their names like /dʒ/ and /s/, and then you have other sounds like /g/ and /k/, and then even more sounds. These letters are so weird.

Lauren: I'm not known for being the most reliable when it comes to a spelling bee, and I feel like it's often letters like G and C that trip me up because they have so many different pronunciation disguises that they put on.

Gretchen: They really do. They especially do that in different languages. You can do a brief sample of this through different languages' words for “cheese.”

Lauren: Ooo, let's do a cross-linguistic cheese platter!

Gretchen: Cross-linguistic cheese tour! First, we have the Latin “caseus” (/kaseʊs/) meaning “cheese.” And this gives rise to a whole bunch of other words for “cheese” in different languages. You have English “cheese” (/tʃi:z/), you have German “Käse” (/ke:zə/), you have Spanish “queso” (/keso/).

Lauren: Yeah. Because I was like, “Well, in Italian you have ‘formaggio,’” which is like a completely different historical word. But then I remembered that my favourite Italian pasta from Rome is cacio (/katʃo/) e pepe and that's – the Italian-Latin word for “cheese” is still hidden in that very excellent pasta dish.

Gretchen: And then because I started thinking about this, I was looking up other languages’ word for “cheese,” and I saw the Dutch “kaas” (/kɑːs/), which, I don't speak any Dutch, but there's one Dutch word that I know which is “pindakaas,” and “pindakaas” literally translates as “peanut cheese.”

Lauren: Oh. Oh, hang on. Like peanut butter?

Gretchen: Yeah, so the Dutch word for “peanut butter” is literally translated as “peanut cheese,” which at first seems like, “This is maybe an interesting dish,” but then you're like, “Is ‘peanut butter’ really any better as a term for it?” Because it's still a dairy metaphor.

Lauren: Yeah, because I was like, “That's a weird choice,” but actually, it's not that different.

Gretchen: It's really not that different at all. Especially, if you think of a cream cheese, which is like a creamier cheese, maybe? Peanut butter is kind of creamy sometimes.

Lauren: I'm still gonna eat it no matter what it's called.

Gretchen: Then you have Irish “cáis” (/kɑːʃ/), which is also from Latin “caseus”. “Caseus” is spelled with a C and an S. They're pronounced /k/ and /s/.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: But “cheese” takes that initial /k/ and makes it /tʃ/. “Käse” and “queso” and “cacio” keep that initial /k/ sound at the beginning, but “cacio” changes the /s/ into /tʃ/.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: Dutch keeps it the way it was. And then Irish also changes the second one into “cáis” (/kɑːʃ/). Different languages have taken this one word that seemed like it had a fairly straightforward pronunciation and altered it in slightly different ways.

Lauren: I was trying to make a cheese metaphor about things, like, fermenting and going funky with age, but I guess this is why we’re a linguistics podcast and not a food podcast.

Gretchen: “Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a food podcast about linguistics.” And this is all this weird stuff that C gets up to between different languages, historically, and in different languages in the modern era. G does the same type of thing. If you were a kid, you might have learned about hard G and soft G, or hard C and soft C.

Lauren: I really struggle with the idea of hard C and soft C, and hard G and soft G. Just to help other people who might as well, hard G is the /g/ sound and soft G is when it's used more like /ʒ/.

Gretchen: Yes, /ʒ/ or /dʒ/, which is one of the reasons why this terminology is not generally linguist-approved.

Lauren: Yeah, I just – I think about, for example, when I was chatting with Suzy Styles on the work we do about how we have this cross-sensory idea and “hard” and “soft” as a metaphor just don't work for me for those sounds. Apologies if I leave Gretchen to do all of the explaining the difference between them today.

Gretchen: Well, I don't think I'm really going to use the terms either. I'm just gonna mention the specific sound because you see when it happens cross-linguistically, there's a lot more going on than just that. These are two letters that both have that hard-soft thing going on. We don't talk about “hard Q” and “soft Q,” or “hard P” and “soft P.”

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: So why do these letters come in hard and soft versions, even if you can't remember which version is which? To do this, we need to also go back to the Romans.

Lauren: Yes, there were simpler times back in Old Latin.

Gretchen: The Latin alphabet comes from Greek, as a lot of people know. But this is one of things that always puzzled me as a kid – because I was a kid who was into the Greek alphabet – I was like, “Look, the Greeks have this letter, kappa, which stands for the K sound, and it looks like a K, and it's where we get the modern K. And they have this letter, gamma, which was very clearly supposed to be a G. Who invented the C? Why is it there, and why does it cause me so much trouble?”

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: It turns out that this is explained by the Etruscans, who were people that didn't make a distinction between the /g/ sound and the /k/ sound, like the sound in “gamma” and the sound in “kappa.” They borrowed the Greek alphabet for their language, which we don't know very much about, but we know that they didn't care about the difference between gamma and kappa because they just borrowed one, which was gamma, and they used it for both because it didn't really matter for them. Then, the Romans actually didn't initially borrow their alphabet from the Greeks. They borrowed it from the Etruscans.

Lauren: Because the Etruscans were living on the Italian peninsula, so they just borrowed it from the locals.

Gretchen: Yeah, so they just borrowed it from the locals.

Lauren: I do love an ethically locally sourced alphabet, personally.

Gretchen: Nice, locally sourced alphabet. We have fragments of pottery from the Etruscans, but we don't know a whole lot about their language. We know it wasn't Indo-European because all the Indo-European languages do distinguish between the gamma and the kappa sounds. So the Romans borrow it from the Etruscans, and then they're left with like, “Oh, geez, we actually do want to make this distinction between these two sounds that we have, but the Etruscans don't have.”

Lauren: And so someone invented the letter G.

Gretchen: Like an actual person?

Lauren: Apparently. I mean, I'm quoting from Wikipedia.

Gretchen: Do we know their name?

Lauren: Apparently, his name was Spurius Carvilius Ruga, which definitely doesn't sound like a spurious name at all.

Gretchen: That's a really spurious name. So he invented the letter G?

Lauren: Yeah, so at this point the letter C was the third letter in the alphabet, still, and he was like, “Well, look, we have this /k/ sound.” K wasn't cool anymore as a letter to represent /k/. They were all using the rounded – what we think of as C now. He was like, “We need to make more of a distinction.” And so apparently – there are people who disagree with this, but I like this story about young Spurius – created the letter G and was like, “Now, we can make the distinction again.”

Gretchen: If you look at a capital G, it just looks like a C with an extra stroke added on to it, right?

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: A gamma is like a right angle in the top left corner (Γ), and then you can curve it to make a C, and then you can add an extra stroke to make the G.

Lauren: So that's where the Romans got to. And he popped it in the alphabet in the seventh position, which is originally where a little Greek letter known as "zeta" used to live.

Gretchen: So is he responsible for the demotion of zeta as well?

Lauren: Yeah. I mean, well, no, Z also wasn't cool anymore, because the Romans didn't need it, so they never really borrowed it from the Greeks. Because, again, they got all their alphabet from the Etruscans. So the Romans weren't really down with –

Gretchen: Oh, that’s it. Okay.

Lauren: – zeta. They kind of had it there. He's was like, “Well, let's just drop that letter out, and we'll add this cool, new G thing that I invented.”

Gretchen: So he kicked out zeta and replaced it with G?

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: That's great. I love that. Latin actually pronounced – all of their C’s and G’s were /k/ and /g/.

Lauren: Imagine doing a Latin spelling bee. It would be so great. I mean, I guess that’s why they don’t have spelling bees in most languages that have regular orthographies.

Gretchen: Yeah, so easy! You know, you have your classic Latin phrase "veni vidi vici" (/weni widi wiki/) “I came. I saw. I conquered.”

Lauren: I like that you’ve used the original Latin pronunciation there, so you sound a little bit ridiculous.

Gretchen: I'd always pronounced this /vɛni vidi vitʃi/, but then I had a Latin teacher who told me, “No, no, it's actually /weni widi wiki/," and it just sounds so foolish.

Lauren: Yes, every time I hear it. So that "vici" is the C – what we think of as C – being pronounced as /k/, as in the word for “cheese.”

Gretchen: Then, in Late Latin, everything starts to go wrong. And by “wrong,” I mean “great.”

Lauren: For the Empire as well as the language.

Gretchen: Yeah, the Empire was a bit messed up. But also the language started fragmenting and becoming all these different versions. In many of the different areas, people started pronouncing the C and the G in a different way, sometimes.

Lauren: I love the “sometimes” bit. We talk about the environment that sounds are in can make them change, adds a bit of context. And that's really where the fun and the messiness of language can really play out, when you have language changing over time.

Gretchen: Yeah, we need to talk about a particular area of the mouth. This is the roof of your mouth. I'm touching it right now, but you can't see me, because it's inside. This isn’t gonna be a very useful demonstration.

Lauren: If you have clean-enough hands, and you don't mind looking a bit ridiculous in public, you can turn the tip of your finger up to the ceiling and press it into the roof of your mouth or use your tongue.

Gretchen: This is the back part of the roof of your mouth. Not the front bit right behind your teeth, but the back bit by your molars. There's kind of a little lump there. This is known in linguistics as the “palate.” There's a whole bunch of sounds that involve the palate and involve some sort of constriction at the palate, the back part of the roof of your mouth.

Lauren: It's a big chunk of space. You've got that soft bit further towards the back that you might not want to prod if you have a sensitive gag reflex.

Gretchen: Yeah, we don’t advise that.

Lauren: And you have that hard bit closer to the teeth. There's a lot of space to play with there.

Gretchen: Yeah, so there's a lot of space. You can drop your jaw and let a lot of space happen there. What's crucial about the palate is it's a space where you can make both vowels and consonants. You could make an /i/ sound, and your tongue will be towards your palate. You can make a /j/ sound, and your tongue will be towards your palate. You could make a /ʃ/ sound, and your tongue will be towards your palate.

Lauren: I'm just sitting here quietly going “sh, sh, sh” to myself.

Gretchen: I was teaching a roomful of Intro to Linguistics students about the palate, and I was saying, “Okay, we're gonna make a distinction between where S is produced, which is towards the front of the roof of your mouth –" and we don't call that the “palate,” we we use the “palate” just refer to the back part of the roof of your mouth – “and the /ʃ/ sound, which is on the palate or near the palate." I was getting the room to say “sss,” “shh,” “sss,” “shh,” back and forth. Then, I was like, “You guys thought you were enrolled in Intro to Linguistics, but you're actually enrolled in Intro to Parseltongue.”

Lauren: The very “sss-shh”-y sounds of the snake language of Harry Potter, for the three of you out there who aren't familiar. If you don't feel like making these sounds, or you want to see what other people's tongues are doing, as always with these episodes, I'm linking you to one of my favourite websites, which is where they stuck a bunch of phoneticians in an MRI machine, and you can see their tongues doing all these things, if you just click on the column of sounds called Palatals.

Gretchen: That's great. I like that website so much. So the palatals, and the /dʒ/ sound is also towards the palatals. At least it's a lot more similar to the palatals than /k/ and /g/.

Lauren: In contrast, /k/ and /g/ are made a bit further back from the palate, closer towards the back of the mouth.

Gretchen: If you’re just thinking about these palatal sounds, the thing is that because there are both vowels and consonants that can be palatal, and you have a vowel that's produced near the palate, and a consonant near it, the vowel tends to attract the consonant and make it more palatal and make it more similar to each other, because humans like to be efficient about these things.

Lauren: Even if you don't remember any terminology, and you certainly don't have to, the takeaway here is that our mouths are very good at being lazy, and they will strive to do as little moving as possible. It's like, “If I'm already there for the vowel, why am I taking myself all the way to the back of the palate? I'm just gonna hang here.” I'm always happy to celebrate laziness.

Gretchen: These palatal vowels, these vowels that are produced near the palate, tend to pull certain consonants with them. This is what happened to the /k/ and the /g/ sound.

Lauren: And it didn't necessarily happen the same way in all the different languages that descend from Latin.

Gretchen: Right, so in French, which is probably the most familiar to English because we borrowed a lot of words from French – so, sometimes you have /k/ becoming /s/ in English from Latin, sometimes you have it becoming /tʃ/ in English from Latin. You have things like “caseus” becoming “cheese,” but also something like “circus" (/kirkus/) becoming “circus” (/sɝkəs/). All those /k/’s get pulled more towards the roof of the mouth.

Lauren: But only if the vowel is luring them there, right? If the vowel isn't near that palatal bit, if the vowel is already back where the /k/ is, then it just stays there.

Gretchen: Yeah, so that's the thing. In a word like “circus” the /k/ is before an I, which was pronounced /i/, /sirkus/, whereas, the second C is before a U and that one stays /sirkus/, not /sirsus/.

Lauren: I like how I’m like, “/sirkus/ sounds completely normal. /sirsus/ sounds very wrong.”

Gretchen: Yeah, /sirsus/ is just like, “No, that didn't happen.” So, /i/ and /e/, which became I and E in English, are the ones that tend to pull the consonants towards them. Whereas /u/ and /o/ and /a/ are the ones that let the constant stay where they want to be.

Lauren: Which solves a mystery of – I mean, spelling bees are entirely mysterious to me, as I think we've established – but it solves that mystery of spelling bees, because I was always like, “Why would you ask...” – because you can ask in a spelling bee the origin of a word. And so if you ask like, “I have to spell the word 'circus.' Please, spelling bee master, tell me the origin of the word.” If I know it's a Latin word, like, “Well, that means it probably is C-I and not K-I, because originally it was probably /kirkus/”

Gretchen: Yeah, because you don't have K's in Latinate words because all of their C's changed when they were in front of an I or an E.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: This also explains why there's some disagreement about how to pronounce the word “Celtic.”

Lauren: Oh, yeah, there's a really great post by Stan Carey that goes into the history of this, but – I don't know. I have to think really hard if I say /kɛltɪk/ or /sɛltɪk/. But I think I say /kɛltɪk/.

Gretchen: I definitely say /kɛltɪk/, but there's some sports team that's correctly pronounced /sɛltɪk/, because that's what people say when they talk about the sports team?

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: I've definitely heard people say /sɛltɪk/. This is one of those ones where if you're obeying the Latinate rules, you're like, “Well, C-E, that must mean that the C is pronounced like an S.” And yet – because when Irish and Scottish Gaelics borrowed the Latin alphabet, it also hadn't had this sound change happen yet. All the C's were still pronounced like /k/, so all of the C's in Gaelic are hard. And so “Celt” /kɛlt/ is – there's no K in Gaelic. The C's are all pronounced /k/.

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: So if you use the Gaelic pronunciation, then it's /kɛlt/, but if you're looking at it, and you're like, “Well, but I thought my rule was the C gets pronounced like S," then it's /sɛlt/.

Lauren: Which brings us to another major scandal in terms of how words are pronounced, which is, of course, the word that I say as /dʒɪbəɹɪʃ/ (gibberish).

Gretchen: And the word that I said on a previous episode as /gɪbəɹɪʃ/ because – I don't know. Why not say it that way?

Lauren: Yeah, I – to be honest – had not paid much attention to your pronunciation, but we had quite a few people draw attention to the fact that we have different pronunciations for this word.

Gretchen: Yeah, and this is the same thing like with /dʒɪf/ and /gɪf/ (GIF) where –

Lauren: Which is definitely not a major argument at all.

Gretchen: No, no one cares about that one on the internet. I've never heard any argument about it. With the G's, when we get a word from French, or from Latin, or from Italian, or sometimes from Spanish – but generally, Spanish, that's its own thing – we tend to pronounce that G as a /dʒ/ or a /ʒ/ like in “rouge.” But when we get it from a different language, we often pronounce it as a /g/ instead.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: So of course, when we get it from an acronym like with GIF, all bets are off, really. There's no statistical bias in either direction.

Lauren: We have been talking exclusively about C and G, but they are not the only letters that cause me grief with spelling, which is fundamentally about palatalisation. There are other sounds in English that are also very attracted to the palate.

Gretchen: Yeah, and these are both /t/ and /d/, T and D, and /s/ and /z/, or S and Z. They're pronounced more towards the front of the palate, but, again, if they're in front of an /i/ or an /e/ sound, they tend to get pulled back towards the palate instead of pulled forward. They all get pulled toward the centre of the mouth.

Lauren: The palate is like the black hole at the centre of the mouth universe.

Gretchen: It's got gravity pulling everything towards it. Yeah, it's a very attractive place. I think it's also kind of a very easy place to say because it's just right there in the middle. So it could be anything. You don't have to go to a lot of effort to make it happen.

Lauren: Yeah, the tongue is just kind of going straight up from its neutral spot. What kind of examples do we see with these letters?

Gretchen: There's some ones that are really old that are embedded into English spelling, words like “station” and “ratio” with that T-I-O-N ending. They were at one point pronounced like /statiʌn/ and /ratio/.

Lauren: Again, would have made spelling tests a lot easier.

Gretchen: Way easier, /ratio/! The Romans said this. But /ratʃio/, /io/ gets shortened into /raʃio/ or /steʃiʌn/ and eventually gets /steʃʌn/ and /reʃio/, and other words like that. Then there's also some that are super new, and they're not even reflected in standard English spelling. They're only in representations of informal speech. That's the words like "didja?"

Lauren: As in, “Didja find out any good facts about palatalisation? Yes, I did.”

Gretchen: Yeah! If you have “did” and “you” – well, “you” can become “ya,” obviously. Then that "ya" sound, the Y at the beginning, it's also palatal, so it can pull the D towards /dɪdʒə/. I went to . a really great restaurant when I was in New York City a couple months ago, which was pointed out to me by someone on Twitter as a linguistically interesting restaurant that I should go to. It is called “Jeet Jet.”

Lauren: “Jeet Jet?”

Gretchen: “Jeet Jet,” spelled J-E-E-T J-E-T.

Lauren: Oh, as in, “Did you eat yet?”

Gretchen: Yeah.

Lauren: “Jeet Jet.”

Gretchen: “Jeet Jet?”

Lauren: That was great. Everything is just lapsing into the palatal centre.

Gretchen: So palatal! It's a palatal palace of food.

Lauren: This is why we're not a food podcast.

Gretchen: Every so often when I used to mark linguistics papers for Intro to Linguistics, you’d get somebody who would write – instead of “palatal,” they'd write “palatial.”

Lauren: Did you draw a little palace?

Gretchen: It sounds like it’s a little palace! But also, why is it not “palatial” because “palatial” is actually the palatised version of “palatal?”

Lauren: It makes sense. We might have to let the language kick on for another couple of centuries to let that process happen.

Gretchen: What's really cool about palatals is that they keep going with the trajectories of the language. In French and Italian, the C's and G's became /dʒ/and /ʒ/ and /ʃ/ and /s/, and that's pretty well-established. In Spanish, they did this other thing. The Spanish C in front of E or I went to /θ/ in Spain, like "cerveza" (/θerbeθa/), and to /s/ in South America like /serbesa/. The J, and G, and also the X – they’re now like a /h/ sound, like in "Xavier” (/havier/). But they stopped for a while at a /ʃ/ sound. For a while, this X in Spanish was pronounced /ʃ/.

Lauren: Hmm, just hung out there for a while?

Gretchen: Yeah, you can see that trajectory happening. It happened at a very specific point in Spanish history, because this point when X was being pronounced /ʃ/ also happened right around when the Spanish conquerors were first coming in contact with Nahuatl speakers in Central America. In Nahuatl, there was a sound /ʃ/, and the Spanish speakers were like, “Well, we have a letter to represent /ʃ/. It's an X. We're going to use the X to represent /ʃ/ like we do in our own language.” They transcribed certain Nahuatl words, like the word “Mexico” – /meʃiko/ – perfectly reasonably.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: But then Spanish kept changing, and not a lot of people spoke Nahuatl, and so /meʃiko/ became /mehiko/, because the X sound was shifted from /ʃ/ to /h/.

Lauren: And so “Mexico,” did the pronunciation of it – just went with it even though it was meant to be /ʃ/?

Gretchen: A representation of the Nahuatl word.

Lauren: Ah, there you go.

Gretchen: Other languages looked at it – like English looked at the spelling of this word and said, “Well, you have an X there. We have an X.”

Lauren: “We pronounce it /ks/."

Gretchen: “Here's how we pronounce the X.” And this is where we get /mɛksɪko/, but it's actually an attempt at representing this Nahuatl sound, but then Spanish changed out from under it.

Lauren: It reminds me of when “Beijing” was updated from the older word, “Peking.” We still have “Peking” in “Peking Duck,” and you have that /k/ there in the “-king.” When it was updated, it becomes “-jing,” because over the centuries since it was originally written down, palatalisation has occurred in Mandarin Chinese.

Gretchen: Oh, that's so good! I just thought the Europeans are really incompetent at transcribing things.

Lauren: I mean, the Europeans were pretty incompetent, and I'm sure that was part of the problem. But you actually have that palatalisation happening in Mandarin as well. It's not just an Indo-European phenomenon.

Gretchen: Oh, so there's just a sound change happening in Mandarin as well at the same time. That's so good.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: There's also a really interesting historical example of other languages doing palatalisation, because once you can spot palatalisation, you can find it everywhere. It's in so many languages. I'd be honestly more surprised to find a language that had never done any sort of palatalisation – that hadn’t done it – than I would be surprised to find it in another language. Bantu languages, which are spoken in a wide swath of Africa, they have a set of prefixes that go at the beginning of certain nouns and verbs to indicate which category the nouns belong to, in a very, very simple explanation of that. One of these prefixes is used before a noun to make it the language related to that noun.

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: So you have things like – in the Congo, the language that’s spoken is Kikongo.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: In Rwanda, the language that’s spoken is Kinyarwanda. In Botswana, the language that spoken is Setswana. What's really interesting here is that this prefix, you can tell it's started out as /ki/, but in some languages it's become /tʃi/ or /ʃi/ or /si/ or /se/. You can tell that's because this palatal vowel has brought it more towards the vowel. So you have Kiswahili, but isiZulu or isiXhosa], or Tshivenda. Some of them still have the /ki/, some of them have changed it to /si/ or /tʃi/. You can see this relationship because they all have the same prefix, but it's changed differently because the sound changes have happened differently in the different languages.

Lauren: Exactly the same set of changes as we get with our cheeses of Europe.

Gretchen: The same cheese-changes. I have a very vivid memory about when I first learned about palatalisation. This was when I went to Scottish Gaelic summer camp when I was 10 or 12?

Lauren: The thing is we don't have summer camps in Australia. So I find all summer camps mysterious. I'm like, “Of course, you went on summer camp for Gaelic. Like, that's that weird thing that North Americans do. They go on summer camp.”

Gretchen: It is not very common to go on summer camp for Gaelic. Most of the other kids that were there, were there to learn, like, fiddle, or step dance, or something, which is still fairly rare. Most people go, like, canoeing or something.

Lauren: Okay.

Gretchen: But I was a budding linguist, and I wanted to learn Gaelic. So when I was learning Gaelic, they told me about this distinction between broad vowels and slender vowels. This is super important in Gaelic and in Irish as well, because a whole bunch of consonants in Gaelic change the way they're pronounced depending on which vowels they’re next to.

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: So you end up with all these silent vowels where the vowel itself is silent, but it's just being used to tell you how to pronounce the consonant that it's next to.

Lauren: This is a bit like when I realised the reason you don't hear, in Spanish or in English – the word “guitar,” you don't hear that U – is because Spanish uses U in the same way there, to indicate that it should be a /g/ and not a /ʒɪtɑɹ/.

Gretchen: Exactly, it means the same U that's in, like, "Guillaume" to indicate that that is a /g/ – or in “guerre,” “guerrilla,” for “war.”

Lauren: Yeah, it was a complete revelation for me when I was like, “I'm not meant to – the U is just there to help me, not to hinder me.”

Gretchen: Yeah, it's to help you according to a completely different system that you only understand incompletely.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: This is the same thing for Gaelic. If you have a word, “fáilte,” which is the word for "welcome," and the last two letters are T-E, the way you know that that T is pronounced like a /tʃ/ is because there's an E next to it. Or if you have names like “Sean,” or “Sinead,” or “Siobhan,” the way that you know that that S is pronounced like a /ʃ/ is because it has an E or an I next to it.

Lauren: Just, like, “Come with me towards the palate.”

Gretchen: This is the kind of thing that they teach you in Gaelic 101. They’re like, “Here's the broad vowels. Here's the slender vowels. Here's why they're so important,” because they tell you how to do this with all your consonants. And yet, afterwards, I was like, “But English also kind of does this. Because if you have a word like “circus,” the way that you know how each of the C's is pronounced is based on the same distinction between what Gaelic traditionally calls “broad” and “slender” vowels, but we can call “palatal” or “non-palatal” vowels. The slender vowels in Gaelic are the same thing as a palatal vowel, or a front vowel to use the proper linguistic term. All of those are the same class of things that all cause the same types of sound changes. The “broad” vowels, or the “non-palatal” vowels, or the “back” vowels are all the same category of stuff that doesn't cause the sound change. And that totally rocked my world when I figured it out the first time.

Lauren: I think the thing is, given my general spelling issues, even though I have trouble with spelling, I really appreciate that palatalisation makes pronouncing things easier. In many ways, it's really great that the writing system we have captures this history of how these sounds were all the way back to Latin, all the way back to our friend Spurius, and they're there to help us.

Gretchen: Yeah, it makes certain connections easier to see. A word like “electric,” “electricity,” the C is still there, and when you add an I on to it with the “-ity” ending, you can see it change pronunciation. You can see the connections between those words more straightforwardly. Whereas, if there was a K at the end, you wouldn't necessarily know that it was one that was going to change its pronunciation if an I was added to it. I think what fascinates me about palatalisation is it's one of the ways in which linguistics lets us peer deeply into the soul of a language, or into history of a language, and into the connections between languages, and lets us think of these things that we think of as messy and anomalous as actually a unified part of our shared anatomy across all of the spoken languages that we have this in common, which is that we all find it easier to pronounce things in a certain area of our mouths the same. That makes us part of this really big human story in what seems to be just annoying ways to spell things.

[Music]

Lauren: For more Lingthusiasm, and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on Apple podcasts, iTunes, Google Podcasts, SoundCloud, or wherever else you get your podcasts. We're also now on Spotify, so if you use that, you can find us there. You can follow us at @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. And you can get IPA scarves, IPA ties, and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I tweet and blog as Superlinguo.

Gretchen: I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, and my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com. To listen to bonus episodes, ask us your linguistics questions, help keep the show ad-free, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Recent bonus topics include: hyperforeignisms, multilingual babies, homonyms, and how to have a good time at academic conferences. You could help us pick the next topic by becoming a patron. Can't afford to pledge? That's okay too. We also really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life. Especially this month, we're doing our special anniversary round to help the show grow.

Lauren: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne, our audio producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producers are A.E. Prévost and Sarah Dopierala, and our editorial manager is Emily Gref, Our production assistants are Celine Yoon and Fabianne Anderberg. Our music is by The Triangles. Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

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#linguistics #podcast #transcripts #episode 26 #palatal #palatals #palatalisation #phonetics #phonology #pronunciation #spelling #c #g #Latin #English #orthography #writing #history #sound change

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blogaboutmusic · 6 years

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all the playlists !

did this a while ago, but my spotify changed so much that i decided to do it again, and also because i have a lot of new followers! thank you & thank you if you follow my playlists! Be sure to check the list out bc i have a playlist for almost every genre & mood!

● ✧･ﾟ*✧･ﾟ* existential crisis: everything i have that is sad ● 2019 ; letz getit: music i discovered so far in 2019 / music that is important to me in 2019 ● 20(18)GAYTEEN: every album that came out in 2018 (at least of artists i like) ● 20(19)BITEEN: every album that came out in 2019 (/artist i like :) ) ● 5sᴏs ; complete: i think the title says it all ● ａｌｉｅｎｓ: a mix full of alt. songs. dope. 10/10 recommend to aliens ● all of it ; alternative ?: stuff that is alt but not quite, pop punk but not quite, rock but not quite, etc! ● all of it ; emo music: EVERYTHING YOU NEED. EVERYTHING SAD. EVERYTHING ANGRY. EVERYTHING GUITAR. pop-punk punk-rock emo/rock indie/alternative ● all of it ; k-pop: all the k-pop music that I listen to, stuffed into one mix. ● ᴀʟʟ ᴛɪᴍᴇ ʟᴏᴡ ; ᴄᴏᴍᴘʟᴇᴛᴇ: all of all time low’s music ● angry k-pop bops: a playlist that was inspired by district 9 of stray kids ● autumn, baby: perfect songs for fall! ● back to the future: idk some albums that i love listening to that go really well together ● bandito tour ; twenty one pilots: a playlist for an upcoming concert ● b͓̽a͓̽n͓̽g͓̽ ͓̽c͓̽h͓̽a͓̽n͓̽: a playlist for my bias of stray kids! ● ʙᴀɴɢᴛᴀɴɢ sᴏɴʏᴇᴏɴᴅᴀɴ ; ʙᴛs: all of bts’ music in one playlist ● best intro's, no argue: okay but really 505 is one of the best songs ever don’t fight me on that one ● bi bops: actually it doesnt matter if you’re gay, straight, pan or bi, these all work. just bops. ● b-sides, : songs i tend to forget about because i mostly listen to other songs on the albums... but they deserve the world so there you go ● 𝖇𝖎𝖙𝖊 𝖒𝖊: kinda angry, kinda alternative. ● bon voyage: i listened to this a lot when i went to paris and when i have to travel a lot. travel worthy. ● bop that Bussy ; emo version: FAV EMO JAMS AND BOPS AND BANGERS ● bring me the horizon ; complete : all of bmth’s music ● bts amsterdam 13.10.18: SETLIST ly tour amsterdam but also europe. i miss them a lot & wanna thank them for one of my best nights ever

● calm my anxious ass: what i need when i’m breaking down & alone again ● chanyeol (っ◔◡◔)っ: a playlist for my exo bias, mostly english sung songs though ● chilly billy doobop: so nice to have as background music or for when there’s a friend over. just ever so fckn CHILL ● classical // piano: classical music, mostly piano ● current mood: songs i’m probably listening to right now (lmao still) ● daniel james howell: a playlist for my fav youtuber!!! ● daydream: my playlist with music that makes me dream for a better version of me ● ᴅᴀʏ6 ; ᴄᴏᴍᴘʟᴇᴛᴇ: every day6 song ever. stan talent stan day6 ● death / school mix: songs about dying & other relatable stuff for school, ha ha ● dizzy tummy: stuff i listen to strolling through the city or being in a specific trainride ● dope on a rope: no, this isn't a playlist for the growlers' song, it's old beats. ● emo & alternative: sum emo tunes! totally random *insert that one crazy emoji with the tongue out* ● energize this tired bub: upbeat tempo music that really energizes me ● energetic appleflap: playlist for a friend (that i have crush on) ● eɴᴛᴇʀᴛᴀɪɴᴍᴇɴᴛ ᴛᴏᴜʀ ᴡᴀᴛᴇʀᴘᴀʀᴋꜱ: music i listened to before & after my waterparks concert + every waterparks song ever & the setlist ● ᴇxᴏ ; xᴏxᴏ: exo complete. please give us a ot9 comeback ● exploring: stuff i have yet to listen to ● fᴀʟʟ ᴏᴜᴛ ʙᴏʏ ; ᴄᴏᴍᴘʟᴇᴛᴇ: all of FOB’s music. can you believe i’m still emo trash? ● frickity freck!: fresh alt-ish music ● fuck me up: a ReAlLy gOoD aLterNaTiVe / IndiE / eMo playlist? ● funky dunky business: the bass in these is mostly really mcflipping good ● geez, morty: playlist for fake friends ● ɢᴏᴛ7 ; ᴀʜɢᴀsᴇ: all of got7 their music ● ɢʀᴇᴇɴ ᴅᴀʏ ; ᴄᴏᴍᴘʟᴇᴛᴇ: all of green day aka my fav band their music ! every.thing. ● grrr. : just metal and grunge. heavy shit ● guitars: really good guitars like guns ‘n roses & beatles and just guitars that i love??? ● guns n' roses setlist: setlist g ‘n r Europe 2017 ● halsey: indie artist, all her music in a playlist ● happy vibes: music that makes me smile!! ● hoe anthems (k-pop ver.); k-pop bops that make me go wanna hoe the heck out ● homework // calm: music i listen to when i make homework ● hug me pls: acoustic songs i wanna listen to while cuddling ● i’m a mess: a good, short playlist i- lol- unironically made when i discovered Michael Clifford had a girlfriend lmao i hope theyre happy they deserve it ● i, an intellectual: a nerd: music from movies and series i really dig ● interactive introverts: music they played and i listened to before interactive introverts ● jae = bae: this one goes out to jae, guitarist and vocal legend in the band day6 ● jazzin' away: jazz, my friend. ● j-pop ; rock 'n soul: my favourite j-pop songs!! yes, that includes all one ok rock songs. ● journal writings: i attempt to keep up a journal. this gives me vibes. sometimes a bit more uptempo, but mostly a bit softer ● judith.eliza: for a friend ● jughead's tape: for jughead jones, of riverdale ● just guitars, nothing else.: just acoustic guitars of some of my fav songs, really good for while studying i think ● k-grooves: korean r&b and indie ● k-pop ; essential jams: my favourite k-pop songs, which are quite a lot! ● k-pop ; girls: all my girl groups’ music ● k-rock ; you make myday: all my favourite k-rock songs, yes that includes every day6 song because they are just that good sorry ● last young renegade tour: music i listened to before & after my all time low concert + the setlist ● letters to you: songs that made me think of my crush. i think people can realate? ● let there be luf: some new alt, sum songs about love ● lilacskyjimin ; fav: playlist for a friend ● lone hours: in: feeling lonely? we do, too, dont worry. youre not alone. ● mama: stuff i grew up with / stuff my mother and i both like ● marina & the diamonds: apperantly she’s only called marina now? one of the best female singers i know, indie as f*ck ● ᴍᴇᴇᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴛʜᴇʀᴇ ; 5sos: playlist for the 5sos concert, setlist and the songs in between! ● micmicbudgee ; fav: playlist for a friend ● mom jeans, tired eyes: mostly 70s and 80s BOPS ● ᴍᴏɴsᴛᴀ x ; ᴍᴏɴʙᴇʙᴇ: all of monsta x’s music in a playlist ● muse ; complete: all of alt rock band muse their songs ● my chemical romance ; complete: emo rock band mcr all of their music ● my youngblood chronicals: alt rock songs. the reason why i’m still fighting ● nederlandse bodem: my favourite Dutch songs! ● ɴᴇᴏ ᴄᴜʟᴛᴜʀᴇ ᴛᴇᴄʜɴᴏʟᴏɢʏ ; ɴᴄᴛ: nct complete, in a playlist ● nienisneckdeep ; fav: playlist for a friend ● nights: songs i like to listen to before going to sleep ● noa.myg: fav: another playlist for a friend ● non-english bops: jewish, french, spanish, swedish, irish and celtic music like omnia (which is partly english but i think it fits here so tough luck) ● one ok rock ; complete: one ok rock is a japanese rock band that sings in english in their latest work ● ᴘᴀɴɪᴄ! ᴀᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅɪsᴄᴏ ; ᴄᴏᴍᴘʟᴇᴛᴇ: all of panic! at the disco’s music in a playlist ● paramore ; complete: paramore was a punk rock band with a female singer, and now they make alt rock ● paris: a playlist for a city that i miss, a time that i miss ● ᴘᴇɴᴛᴀɢᴏɴ ; ᴄᴏᴍᴘʟᴇᴛᴇ: aka all of k-pop group Pentagon their music in a playlist ● pizza punk: waterparks, neck deep, with con and music like that. perfect for skating eheh ● power vocals: beautiful voices ! voices that make me jealous ● problems with sleeping: lovely alt songs, some of them are about not being able to sleep ● queen discography: you know that movie, bohemian rhapsody..? ● rad activist shit: end gun violence. black lives matter. abortions should be legal, pedophiles and rapists should not be able to walk free. oh and love is love, get over it. angry songs, songs about revolution. ● rainbow: love songs, some sad (rain), some ever so happy (sun). together they make a rainbow ● red hot chili peppers: the red hot chili peppers are rock band and if you dont know them, look them up!! ● revolution radio 2017: music i listened to before & after my green day concert + the setlist ● rev up my spaceship, bois: modern hard rock in a playlist! ● sad boi o’clock: another sad playlist, you can never have enough of these ● sᴀʏ ᴛʜᴇ ɴᴀᴍᴇ ; sᴇᴠᴇɴᴛᴇᴇɴ: seventeens (k-pop) complete music discography ● skylinn ; khaleesiqoyi: first playlist i made for a friend: my best friend ● slytherin headgirl: this is what the people in slytherin listen to, i swear ● socrates would deffo stan: indie and alt, only for intellectuals (i’m just kidding) ● soft; rock™: soft (old) rock ● soft; k-pop: for if you wanna weep along with exo, bts,, etc ● soundtrack of my life 🌙: the basics to my music ● space jams 🚀: most songs are about wanting to run away, perfect for when you’re in space ● spoopy rave: i secretly listen to this through the year, idec ● starry skies, snazzy beats: mostly cute beats, perfect for studying or staring at the sky ● sᴛᴀʏ ; sᴛʀᴀʏ ᴋɪᴅs !: all of stray kids songs, go stan them already and please stay ● stranger things: songs that give me a stranger things vibe ● supernatural ; rock & grunge: stuff Dean Winchester would listen to, blue oyster cult, aerosmith, black sabbath, stuff like that ● tae tae: a playlist for v of bts, one of my biases ● the 1975: an alt band, latest work: an brief inquiry into online relationships ● the neighbourhood: very chill music. kinda rap, kinda alt ● these physically turn me on: really, really good songs, or nice vocals, idk how to explain ● tits out for harambe: the closest thing i have to pop music / rap i guess, with khai dreams, frank ocean, childish gambino, ari, troye, ya know ● tokyo: a playlist for dreaming about the feeling of a city ● travel back in time: 50s, 60s music, stuff i listen to with my grandpa but also alone cuz its fun ● twenty øne piløts ; complete: all of twenty one pilots their music ● underappreciated alt songs: alternative songs that i think deserve (even more) hype! ● waterparks ; complete: nice new pop punk band that deffo has a lot of talent! ● when the week ends: a mix for the weekend ● wubbalubbadubdub: old bops that make me forget about my sadness ● year in review: 2018: music i discovered in 2018 / music that was important to me in 2018 / songs that came out in 2018 ● yoongi: songs where you can sing yoongi really clearly and songs that make me think of him ● you’re making me feel miserable: songs i listened to after i confessed to my crush and he turned me down sksksksk

please reblog, it helps my blog a lot, tysm

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loretranscripts · 5 years

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Lore Episode 26: Brought Back (Transcript) - 25th January 2016

tw: racism, colonialism, live burial, slavery

Disclaimer: This transcript is entirely non-profit and fan-made. All credit for this content goes to Aaron Mahnke, creator of Lore podcast. It is by a fan, for fans, and meant to make the content of the podcast more accessible to all. Also, there may be mistakes, despite rigorous re-reading on my part. Feel free to point them out, but please be nice!

No one wants to die. If the human design was scheduled for a revision, that’s one of the features that would get an overhaul. Our mortality has been an obsession since the dawn of humanity itself – humans long for ways to avoid death, or at least make it bearable. Some cultures have practically moved heaven and earth doing so. Thousands of years ago, the Egyptians built enormous stone structures in order to house their dead and ensure them a place in the afterlife. They perfected the art of embalming so that even after death, their bodies might be ready for a new existence in a new place. Death is a reality for all of us, whether we like it or not. Young or old, rich or poor, healthy or sick, life is one long journey down a road, and we walk until its over. Some think they see the light at the end of it all while others hope for darkness, and that’s where the mystery of it all comes in: no one knows what’s on the other side. We just know that the proverbial walk ends at some point, and maybe that’s why we spend so much time guessing at it, building story and myth and belief around this thing we can’t put our finger on. What would be easier, some say, is if we just didn’t die, if we somehow went on forever. It’s impossible, but we dream of it anyway. No one returns from the grave… do they? Most sane, well-adjusted people would say no, but stories exist that say otherwise, and these stories aren’t new. They’ve been around for thousands of years and span multiple cultures, and like their subject matter these stories simply refuse to die. One reason for that, as hard as it is to believe, is because some of those stories appear to be true. Depending on where you look, and who you ask, there are whispers of those who beat the odds. Sometimes the journey doesn’t end after all. Sometimes, the dead really do walk. I’m Aaron Mahnke, and this is Lore.

The quintessential zombie movie, the one that all the commentators say was responsible for putting zombies on the map nearly 50 years ago, was George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. The creatures that Romero brought to the big screen managed to influence generations of film makers, giving us the iconic zombie that we see today in television shows like The Walking Dead. The trouble is, Romero never used the word “zombie” to describe the creatures from his landmark film. Instead, they were “ghouls”, a creature borrowed from Arabian folklore. According to the mythology, ghouls are demons who eat the dead and, because of that, are traditionally found in graveyards. But Romero’s ghouls were not the first undead creatures to hunger for the flesh and blood of the living. Some think that honour falls to the Odyssey, the epic Greek poem written by Homer nearly 3000 years ago. In the story, there’s a scene where Odysseus needs to get some information from a long-dead prophet named Tiresias. To give the spirit strength to speak, Odysseus feeds him blood. In a lot of ways, the creatures we think of today as zombies are similar to the European tales of the revenant. They’ve gone by many names – the ancient Irish called them Neamh-Mhairbh, meaning “the undead”; in Germany they are the Wiedergänger, “the ones who walk again”; and in Nordic mythology, they’re called the draugr. The name “revenant” itself is Latin and means “the returned”. The basic idea is pretty easy to guess from that – revenants were those who were once dead, but returned to haunt and terrorize their neighbours and family. It might sound like fantasy to our modern sensibilities, but some people really did think that this could happen.

Historians in the Middle Ages wrote about revenant activity as if it were fact. One man, William of Newburgh, wrote in 1190 that, and I quote, “It would not be easy to believe that the corpses of the dead should sally from their graves, and should wander about to the terror or destruction of the living, did not frequent examples, occurring in our own times, suffice to establish this fact, to the truth of which there is abundant testimony. Were I to write down all the instances of this kind which I have ascertained to have befallen in our times, the undertaking would be beyond measure, laborious, and troublesome”. Newburgh goes on to wonder why the ancient writers never mentioned events like these, but doesn’t seem to take that as proof that revenants are pure fantasy. They mentioned all sorts of boring things, mundane and unimportant, so why not the unnatural and unusual? He was, of course, wrong – the ancient Greeks did have certain beliefs surrounding the dead and their ability to return to haunt the living, but to them it was much more complicated, and each revenant came back with its own unique purpose. You see, the Greco-Roman culture believed that there was a gap between the date of someone’s actual death and their intended date of death. Remember, this was a culture that believed in the Moirai – the Fates – who had a plan for everyone. So, for example, a farmer might be destined to die in his 80s from natural causes, but he might instead die in an accident at the market or in his field. People who died early, according to the legends, were doomed to wander the land of the living as spirits until the day of their intended death arrived. Still with me? Good. So, what the Greeks believed was that it was possible to control those wandering spirits – all you needed to do was make a curse tablet, something written on clay or tin or even parchment, and then bury it in the person’s grave. Like a key in the ignition of a car, this tablet would empower someone to control the wandering dead. Now, it might sound like the world’s creepiest Martha Stewart how-to project, but to the Greeks magic like this was a powerful part of their belief system. The dead weren’t really gone, and because of that they could serve a purpose. Unfortunately, that’s not an attitude that was unique to the Greeks, and in the right culture, at the right time, under the right pressure, that idea can be devastating.

In Haiti, the vast majority of the people there are genetically connected to West Africa to some degree, up to 95% according to some studies. It’s a remnant of a darker time, when slavery was legal, and millions of Africans were pulled from their homes and transported across the Atlantic to work the sugar plantations that filled the Spanish coffers. We tend to imagine African slaves being shipped to the new world with no possessions beside the clothing on their backs, but they came with their beliefs, with their customs and traditions, and with centuries of folklore and superstition. They might not have carried luggage filled with precious heirlooms, but they held the most important pieces of their identity in their minds and hearts. No one can take that away. There are a few ideas that need to be understood about this transplanted culture. First, they believed that the soul and the body were connected, but also that death could be a moment of separation between the two. Not always, but it could be – I’ll explain more about that in a moment. Second, they lived with a hatred and fear of slavery. Slavery, of course, took away their freedom, it took away their power. They no longer had control over their lives, their dreams, or even their own bodies. Whether they liked it or not, they were doomed to endure horribly difficult labour for the rest of their lives; only death would break the chains and set them free. Third, that freedom wasn’t guaranteed. While most Africans dreamed of returning to their homeland in the afterlife, there were some who wanted to get there quicker. Suicide was common in colonial Haiti, but it was also frowned upon. In fact, it was believed that those who ended their own life wouldn’t be taken back to Africa at all. Instead, they would be punished. The penalty, it was said, was eternal imprisonment inside their own body, without control or power over themselves. It was, in a sense, just like their own life. To the slaves of Haiti, hell was just more slavery, but a slavery that went on forever. These bodies and trapped souls had a name in their culture: the zombie. It was first recorded in 1872, when a linguistic scholar recorded a zombie as, and I quote, “a phantom or ghost, not infrequently heard in the southern states in nurseries and among the servants”. The name, it turns out, has African roots as well. In the Congo they use the word nzambi, which means the spirit of a dead person. It’s related to two other words that both mean “god” and “fetish” – fetish in the sense of manufacturing a thing, a creature that has been made. The walking dead, at least according to Haitian lore, are real.

What did these zombie look like? Well, thanks to Zora Neale Hurston, we have a first-hand account. Hurston was an African American author, known for her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, and regarded as one of the pillars of the Harlem Renaissance. And it was while researching folklore during a trip to Haiti in 1936 that she encountered one. In her book Tell my Horse, Hurston recounts what happened. “I had the rare opportunity to see and touch an authentic case”, she wrote. “I listened to the broken noises in its throat.... If I had not experienced all of this in the strong sunlight of a hospital yard, I might have come away from Haiti interested but doubtful. But I saw this case of Felicia Felix-Mentor which was vouched for by the highest authority. So I know that there are Zombies in Haiti. People have been called back from the dead. The sight was dreadful. That blank face with the dead eyes. The eyelids were white all around the eyes as if it had been burned with acid. There was nothing you could say to her or get from her except by looking at her, and the sight of this wreckage was too much to endure for long”. Wreckage. I can’t think of another word with as much beauty and horror as that, in the context. Something was happening in Haiti, and the result was wreckage, lives broken and torn apart by something – but what? The assumption might be that these people had all attempted suicide, but suicide is common in many cultures, not just in Haiti. When you dig deeper, though, it’s possible to uncover the truth, and in this case, the truth is much darker than we like to believe. Zombies, it turns out, can be created.

On the night of April 30th, 1962, a man walked into Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Haiti. He was sick and complained of body aches, a fever and, most recently, coughing fits that brought blood up from his lungs. Naturally, the medical staff were concerned, and they admitted him for tests and treatment. This man, Clairvius Narcisse, was seen by a number of medical doctors but his condition quickly deteriorated. One of his sisters, Angelina, was there at his bedside, and according to her his lips turned blue and he complained to her about a tingling sensation all over his body. But despite the hospital’s best efforts, Narcisse died the next day. Two doctors, one American and one American-trained, each confirmed his death. The man’s sister, Angelina, signed the death certificate after confirming the man’s identity. Because she couldn’t read or write, she did so by pressing her thumbprint onto the paper, and then his family began the painful process of burying their loved one and trying to move on. Death, as always, is a part of life; never a pleasant one, but a part nonetheless. Over 18 years later, in 1981, Angelina Narcisse was walking through the market in her village, something she did nearly every day. She knew the faces of each vendor, she knew the scents and the sounds that filled the space there, but when she looked down the dirt road toward the small crowd of people something frightened her, and she screamed. There, walking toward her, was her brother Clairvius. He was, of course, older now, but it was him. She would have recognised him anywhere, and when he finally approached her and named himself with a childhood nickname, any doubt she might have had melted away. What followed was a whirlwind of revelations as Clairvius told his sister what had happened to him, and it all started, he said, in the hospital room. According to him, his last moments in the bed there were dark, but fully aware. He could no longer see anyone, and he couldn’t move, but he remembered hearing the doctor pronounce him dead. He remembered the sound of his sister weeping. He even remembered the rough, cotton sheet being pulled up and over his face. But awareness continued on to his funeral, where he claimed to hear the procession. He even pointed to a scar on his face – he claimed that it was the result of one of the coffin nails cutting him. Later, the family brought in a psychiatrist, who performed a series of tests on Clairvius to see is he was a fraud, but the man passed with flying colours, answering questions that no one but Clairvius himself could have known. In an addition, over 200 friends and family members vouched for the man’s identity. This, all of them confirmed, was Clairvius Narcisse.

So, what happened to him? According to Clairvius himself, he was poisoned by his brother over a property dispute. How? He wasn’t sure, but shortly after his burial, a group of men dug up his coffin and pulled him free. That’s a thought worth locking away deep in the back of your brain, by the way: trapped inside a coffin beneath the earth, blind and paralysed, cold and scared. It’s a wonder the man didn’t go insane. The men who dug him up were led by a priest called a Bokor. The men chained Clairvius and then guided him away to a sugar plantation, where he was forced to work alongside others in a similar state of helplessness. Daily doses of a mysterious drug kept them all unable to resist or leave. According to his story, he managed to escape two years later, but fearing what his brother might do to him if he were to show up alive, he avoided returning home. It was only the news of his brother’s death many years later that coaxed him out of hiding. The story of Clairvius Narcisse has perplexed scientists and historians for decades. In the 1980s, Harvard sent an ethno-botanist named Wade Davis to investigate the mysterious drug, and the result of his trip was a book called The Serpent and the Rainbow, which would go on to be a New York Times bestseller as well as a Hollywood movie, but few agree on the conclusions. Samples of the drug that Wade collected have all been disproven, no illegal sugar plantations staffed by zombie slaves has ever been discovered, and the doctors have been accused of misreading the symptoms and prematurely declaring the man dead – there are so many doubts. To the people closest to him, though, the facts are solid. Clairvius Narcisse died, his family watched his burial in the cemetery, he was mourned and missed, and 18 years later he came back into their lives. The walking dead: medical mishap or the result of Haitian black magic? We may never know for sure.

Stories of the walking dead are everywhere these days. It’s as if we’ve traded in our obsession with extending our life and resigned to the fact that normal death, the kind where we die and stay dead, might be better. We fear death because it means the loss of control, the loss of purpose and freedom. Death, in the eyes of many people, robs us of our identity and replaces it with finality. It’s understandable, then, how slavery can be viewed through that same lens. It removes a person’s ability to make decisions for themselves – it turns them, in a sense, into nothing more than a machine for the benefit of another person. But what if there really are individuals out there, the Bokor and evil priests, who have discovered a way to manufacture their own walking dead, who have perfected the art of enslaving a man or women deeper than any slave owner might have managed before, to rob them of their very soul and bind them to an afterlife of tireless, ceaseless labour? In February of 1976, Francine Illeus was admitted to her local hospital in Haiti. She said she felt weak and light-headed. Her digestive system was failing, and her stomach ached. The doctors there treated her and then released her. Several days later, she passed away and was buried in the local graveyard. She had only been 30 years old. Three years later, Francine’s mother received a call from a friend a few miles away. She needed her to come to the local marketplace there, and said it was urgent. Francine’s mother didn’t know what the trouble was, but she made the journey as quickly as she could. Once there, she was told that a woman had been found in the market. She was emaciated, catatonic, and refused to move from where she was squatting in the corner, head down, hands laced over her face. The woman, it turned out, was Francine Illeus. Her mother brought her home and tried to help her, but Francine seemed to be gone. She was there in body, but there was very little spirit left. Subsequent doctors and psychiatrists have spent time with Francine, but with very little progress to show for it. On a whim, Francine’s mother had the coffin exhumed. She had to see for herself if this woman, little more than a walking corpse, truly was her daughter. Yes, the woman had the same scar on her forehead that her daughter had, yes, they looked alike, yes, others recognised her as Francine, but she needed to know for sure. When the men pulled the coffin out of the earth, it was heavy, too heavy, they murmured, to be empty. More doubtful by the minute, Francine’s mother asked them to open it, and when the last nail had been pulled free from the wood, the lid was lifted and cast aside. The coffin wasn’t empty after all – it was full of rocks.

[Closing statements]

#lore podcast #podcasts #aaron mahnke #podcast transcripts #zombie #zombies #night of the walking dead #revenant #voodoo #haiti #transcripts #26

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chasholidays · 5 years

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Hi! Whenever I hear the song 'Christmas Wrapping' by The Waitresses I think of a Bellarke modern AU based on it, with the two of them meeting and almost getting together all through a busy year, and it never working out, and then all sorting itself out at Christmas, and would love to read your take on it. Here's the link to a youtube vid with the lyrics in case you don't know the song: youtube. com/ watch?v=ARq6uYSsUq0 Good luck with all the writing, you're awesome!

hey y’all, due to the realities of “having shit to do over the hoildays,” I’ll be taking a few days off of posting after this! we’ll be back for the last seven fills starting Saturday, 12/29. however you are spending the rest of the week, I hope you enjoy it!

December

“You look miserable.”

Bellamy was zoning out, plotting out the rest of his (fairly grim) evening in his head and ignoring the sounds of the lodge party around him, but the unfamiliar voice startles him out of it and looks down to see a cute blonde wearing a truly hideous sweater and smiling up at him from under a reindeer-ear headband.

“You look shockingly upbeat,” he says without thinking, and she laughs.

“Haven’t you ever heard of Christmas cheer?”

He glances between her mug and her face. “So just a bunch of alcohol?”

“95% Bailey’s, 5% hot chocolate,” she agrees. “With whipped cream on the top.”

He has to smile. “So you’re saying I should be drunker.”

“I don’t know you or your life, but you are at a Christmas party. So, yes, you should be drunker and less sad. Unless you’re a mopey drunk, in which case you should be drunker and more sad.”

He laughs. “One, I’m not really at this party.”

The woman pointedly looks around, then back at him. “Are you astral projecting?”

“My sister works here, so she got me a deal on the room, but I’m not really doing any of the guest stuff. I just wanted coffee. Non-Irish.”

“Why aren’t you doing guest stuff? Just because you got a deal doesn’t make you not a guest. And feel free to tell me to leave you alone any time, I won’t be offended.”

“I’ll just leave once I’ve got my coffee,” he says, with a smile he hopes comes across as friendly and teasing, not smug. The woman is cute and also right: in theory, he really should be taking advantage of all the facilities at the lodge. Not that he’s ever much for parties, especially ugly-sweater parties, but he could at least be learning to ski or something. “I’m in grad school,” he explains. “I’m done for the semester, but I’m trying to get ahead for next semester. And I teach too, so–free time doesn’t really exist right now.”

“What are you studying?”

“Education. It’s a licensing thing, I can teach, but I need a masters’ for–” He waves his hand. “You don’t care.”

“Professional license?” she asks, to his surprise. “Or something like that. It’s a professional license in Massachusetts.”

“That’s where I’m getting mine, yeah.”

“What do you teach?”

“History.”

The woman nods, takes another sip of her drink. “I’m in Boston. I’m not a teacher, but I’m a social worker, so I talk to a lot of teachers about how the kids are doing. Are you done with grading?”

“Mostly,” he says, absent. The crowd clears enough he can get to the drinks table, and he’s glad when she follows him as he finds a mug and fills it up. “You’re in Boston?”

“Yeah.”

He laughs. “Wow, me too. What are the odds?”

“Probably not that bad. I think it’s mostly people from New England here. It’s a pain to get to Vermont.”

“I guess you’re right. What area of the city are you in?”

She’s not that close to him, but it’s not like it’s a huge city. He knows some of the schools she works with, and they have some acquaintances in common. He’s also competent enough to learn that her name is Clarke Griffin, she’s twenty-five, single, and bisexual, and she just keeps getting cuter and drunker. Which is actually kind of a problem, because in order to not feel scuzzy flirting with her, he’d have to get a lot drunker himself, and he still has stuff he really has to get done tonight.

“Are you here through the holiday?” he asks, once he’s stayed for as long as he possibly can without breaking out in anxiety hives.

“No, this is actually my last day. Our office doesn’t close except for Christmas day, so we always need coverage. My friend Raven said time is a construct, so we always go on vacation the week before Christmas to celebrate.”

He nods. “That sucks.”

“I don’t mind. The office is dead and I’m the only one around, it’s kind of nice. I catch up on paperwork and play my music really loud.”

He smiles. “I meant that you’re leaving here and I really can’t stick around tonight. Grading to finish up and papers to submit.”

“So you’re going to start having fun after I leave.”

“Probably not, but I’ll at least have maybe two hours of free time.”

“And I’m guessing it’s not any better once you get home.”

“I’m used to it.”

“Yeah, but I want to ask for your number. But if you never have free time–”

“If I get your number, I can get in touch when I do have free time.”

“Works for me.” They trade phones for the number exchange. “Good luck with the grading.”

“Good luck with not being too hungover tomorrow.”

“I’m good at not getting hungover.” She bites the corner of her mouth. “Do you think there’s any mistletoe around?”

“No idea.”

She leans up and kisses the corner of his mouth, light. “Well,just pretend. Merry Christmas, Bellamy Blake.”

He smiles. “Merry Christmas.”

February

Bellamy has three spring breaks, which is both better and worse than it sounds.

New England has this regional quirk where the K-12 schools have two spring breaks, one in February and one in April, which Bellamy would be fine with, except that colleges don’t do that, so he has a total of three weeks off over the course of the spring, but it’s never actually being totally off. When he’s not teaching, he’s still got grad school, and when grad school is off, he still has to teach.

Still, with teaching off his plate, he has a little more flex time, enough that he thinks he could, potentially, actually get a drink with Clarke.

There’s a part of him that thinks even asking is stupid. He liked Clarke, enjoyed talking to her and would like to do it more, but this year feels like the wrong time to attempt a new friendship, let alone a new romance. But pending getting in touch with her until after the summer semester seems risky, at best. He doesn’t want to miss out on something good just because he regularly realizes weeks have passed without his noticing.

And it’s not as if they’ve been completely out of touch. He was competent enough to text her the day after their first meeting, to make sure she’d made it home okay, and she in turn asked if he’d finished his grading. It hadn’t been a long conversation, but she’d texted him a few weeks later with a history question, and he’d checked in for advice about a student who was acting up. They’re both doing their best to keep the connection alive, tending to that small spark, and that means Bellamy can put in the effort to actually see her, now that he has some time.

Me: I sort of have a break coming up

Clarke: Sort of good for youWhat break?

Me: February break for high schoolI still have grad school stuff, but no teachingSo I probably have some amount of free time

Clarke: Shit

Me: Yeah, I hate some amount of free time too

Clarke: Not thatI’m chaperoning a trip for some of the kids at a group home over spring breakIt’s a great programReally coolI love doing itBut I’m going to be in California all week

Me: That does sound like a great programWhere in California?

Clarke explains the itinerary, where she’s most excited to go, what challenges she’s anticipating, and it’s sort of the whole Clarke problem in a nutshell. Part of him feels like he should take this as a sign it’s not meant to be, that he and Clarke will only ever be ships passing in the night and it’s pointless to fight it. But every time he talks to her, it reminds him of why he does like her, why he wants to figure out how this could work.

And, a week later, she’s texting him pictures of herself on a California vacation, so she wants to figure it out too.

It’s just a matter of time.

April

Me: Do you want to come to my birthday party?

Clarke: Yes, obviouslyBut I’m not going to get carried away and say I’m actually comingI think we might be cursed

Me: That would be a weird curse

Clarke: It would, but I’m not taking any chancesWhen’s your birthday?

Me: April 25

Clarke: Happy early birthdayTurning 30, right?

Me: Somehow, yeah

Clarke: I assume the party isn’t on the 25th

Me: No, on Friday

Clarke: This Friday?

Me: Yeah, I know it’s short noticeI wasn’t planning to do anything but then my friend talked me into it

Clarke: I think I can actually make it!Where and when?

Obviously, Bellamy doesn’t actually think they’re cursed, but he does have some trouble believing that Clarke will actually make it, or ]that it will actually be good if she does. Maybe she’ll show up and he’ll realize he doesn’t like her as much as he thought he did, that he’s too invested in a person he barely knows.

“Maybe you’re just scared because you haven’t had a crush in like five years,” Miller says, dry.

“It hasn’t been that long.”

“You sure?”

Bellamy frowns, trying to remember. “Gina and I dated three years ago, so–”

“Yeah, but she picked you up at a bar. It’s not like you had time to get in your head about it.”

“Clarke picked me up at a ski lodge.”

“And then left and you haven’t seen her for four months. And you’ve been in your head about it the whole time.”

This is probably both true and a large part of his problem. Bellamy’s pretty good at relationships, if he does say so himself, but actually getting intoa relationship is always rocky. Especially when he has a crush. Clarke is the worst of all worlds because it should be a slam dunk, but the universe is conspiring against them.

Right on cue, his phone buzzes with a text from her: So we might actually be cursed.

He groans. “Fuck, I think she’s canceling.”

Miller’s eyebrows shoot up. “Seriously?”

Clarke: I think I’m still going to make itBut one of my clients has a problem with her foster homeAnd I need to get her out and find somewhere else for her to goSo I’m going to be late to very lateI’ll text when I’m done to make sure you’re still thereSorry

Me: You really don’t have to apologizeGo help the kid I hope everything’s okay

Miller’s watching him. “So?”

“Work emergency. She’s delayed.” He sighs. “Honestly, if I didn’t know better, I’d say she just didn’t want to hang out, but she started it, and she keeps saying she wants to make this work.”

“Does she ever invite you to do stuff?”

“Yeah, every couple weeks, but she’s busy too. She works Tuesday to Saturday, so Fridays are usually out, and a lot of weird overtime. Or emergencies, like this.” He smiles with half his mouth, caught between amusement and weariness. “Last time she asked if I wanted to hang out, I was chaperoning a dance. The time before that, I was out of town.”

“So you two really do have the world’s shittiest luck.”

“From what I can tell, yeah. Even if she comes tonight, I have no idea when our schedules are going to work out again.”

“But you’re going to keep trying?”

He takes a drink of his beer, shoots Miller a sidelong glance. “What, you think I shouldn’t?”

“Nah, just surprised. I sort of figured you’d just give up on the whole thing. Decide this was the universe’s way of telling you that it wasn’t meant to be. I probably couldn’t even make fun of you for giving up at this point.”

“I want it to work,” he says. “Or at least give it a fair shot.”

“Huh.” Miller raises his glass. “Then I hope she shows.”

“Yeah, me too.”

She texts at 10:30 to ask if he’ll still be there in fifteen minutes, and he probably wouldn’t be staying much longer left to his own devices, but she’s worth waiting for.

It doesn’t occur to him until she sits down next to him that this is his first time seeing her in person since December. It’s a little disorienting, how rarely they’ve actually been together, relative to how much he likes her.

“Hey, happy birthday,” she says.

“Thanks. Everything okay? With the kid.”

“It’s not great. Her foster dad was making her really uncomfortable. We got her out for the night, but she’ll need a new placement, and we probably have to do an investigation into the family.”

“That sucks.”

“It does, but I’m done with it for the night, so–I’m all yours. Is anyone else still around?”

“I made them leave so they wouldn’t make fun of me.”

“For waiting around for me?”

“For being shitty at flirting.”

She grins, the brightness of it lighting up her whole face. “You don’t really need to do a lot of flirting. I’m pre-picked up.”

“I like flirting.”

“But you’re shitty at it.”

“I’m practicing.”

She laughs. “Well, at least you know it’s going to work.”

“That helps.” He leans in, his own smile huge. “So, do you come here often?”

“First time. But I’m hoping to come back.”

They stay for another two hours and make out in their Lyft, but when Clarke asks if he wants to come up to her place, he shakes his head.

“I’ve got stuff to do tomorrow, and I don’t–” He smiles, a little sheepish. “I don’t know when I’m going to see you again, and I don’t want it to be, like–”

“We sleep together and don’t see each other for another four months?”

“Pretty much.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.” She leans over for one more kiss. “Happy birthday, Bellamy.”

“Thanks.”

June

Clarke: So, is summer less busy for you?

Me: Usually yes

Clarke: But we’re cursed?

Me: Twelve-month masters. I have one more summer term to goPlus I’m going on vacation with my sisterBut in theory next fall is going to be better

Clarke: In theory?

Me: I’ll be done with school but we might still be cursedI don’t want to jinx it

Clarke: TrueFingers crossedKeep me posted

August

Me: Good news/bad news

Clarke: Your vacation got canceled so you can hang out with me next week?

Me: Close The AP history teacher just quitAnd they want me to replace herWhich is awesome, I really want to be teaching that classBut she took all her materials and left with no noticeSo I’m going to be scrambling to come up with an entire APUSH curriculum

Clarke: So you’re going to be really busy next semester

Me: I’m going to be really busy next semester

Clarke: I got a promotion so Kind of similar boat thereI was going to tell you whenever or I saw youOr whenever it kept me from seeing youWhichever came first

Me: Definitely the second oneWith our luck

Clarke: Yeah, sounds rightCongrats though, that’s awesome

Me: You tooGlad everything else in our lives is going well

Clarke: It could be worseNothing could be going well

Me: YeahStill, we should at least get drinks to celebrate

Clarke: Probably sometime in October

Me: That sounds rightSee you then

Clarke: It’s a tentative date

October

Clarke: Am I allowed to booty call you?

Bellamy’s buried under a pile of grading, but the sound of the phone pulls his attention back, and he finds it and stares at the message for a long second, trying to do the math in his head. Clarke is at a Halloween party that he was theoretically invited to, but he was just too slammed.

No is an acceptable answer pops up and he smiles.

Me: No, you should definitely come overBooty calls are very welcomeDo you have my address?

Clarke: I actually don’tAre you easily accessible via public transportation

Me: Yeah but on the green lineSo

Clarke: That’s fineI’m in Cambridge, I’ll take the train over and sober upSee you soon

Amazingly, the knowledge that Clarke is coming over doesn’t completely break his concentration. If anything, it actually motivates him more, because he wants to be done and have his full focus on his–whatever Clarke is. His pending girlfriend, maybe. The person he’s definitely going to date when they can just get their acts together.

The person he’s spending tonight with, for sure.

Things go wrong five minutes after she gets on the red line.

Clarke: We’re standing by between Central and Harvard

Me: Did they say why?

Clarke: I assume signal problemIt’s always signal problemAnyway, I might be a while

Me: That’s fineJust let me know when you get here

In theory, it’s about forty minutes on the red line to the green line, but Clarke stands by at every station between Harvard and Park Street, and then her next train goes out of service and Symphony, so it ends up being a full two hours before she arrives, exhausted and still dressed in Hogwarts robes.

“I don’t even want to get laid anymore, I just want to pass out.”

Bellamy smiles, pulling her into his arms. “Yeah, I don’t blame you. Do you want to sleep here?”

“If you don’t mind.”

He kisses her hair. “I wanted to see you, or course I don’t want you to just leave. You want the tour?”

“I assume it’s short.”

“It is. And it ends at the bed.”

It’s nice, having Clarke in his space. He loans her a t-shirt to sleep in and she gets settled while he brushes his teeth and gets ready himself. He hasn’t had anyone sleep over since he and Gina broke up, and it’s nice, the way she curls around him and exhales like there’s nowhere else she’d rather be.

“This girl was hitting on me at the party,” she murmurs.

“Yeah? Was she cute?”

“She was. But it was like–I have someone. Or I want to have someone, I guess. I don’t know why I’d hook up with someone else when I just want to be with you.”

He pulls her closer, rubs his thumb against her shoulder. “Yeah, I’m glad you came here. I know it’s been–rough.”

“It’s not just you. I’ve been busy and held up and–” She presses her lips against his chest. “It feels like maybe this wasn’t supposed to happen, but I still want it to.”

“Me too. But I have somewhere to be early tomorrow so–”

“So we’ll catch up later.”

He smiles. “Yeah, we always do.”

December

The thing about Christmas is that it is, by mutual communal agreement, a big deal. It’s not one of those holidays where you just sort of celebrate it with whoever you’re with; spending Christmas with someone means something.

So Bellamy figures he’ll ask Clarke if she wants to hang out after the holiday. He knows she’s doing her usual trip with Raven and working the holiday, so he figures he can check in once the dust has settled, maybe make some plans with her for New Year’s.

He never lies about what he’s doing, but he feels weird telling her. It feels so dramatic and stupid, opting out of the holiday, and he doesn’t want her to feel like she has to hang out with him.

Which is also stupid. It’s stupid all the way down.

But somehow, it feels like next year is going to be better. After a year of playing phone tag and trying to make things work, they’re still trying. And he’s getting into the groove of teaching AP and Clarke isn’t going to work on weekends anymore and they might be able to make time to see each other more than once every few months.

It doesn’t feel like he needs to rush it now. They’re already taking their time, so they might as well do it right.

So New Year’s with Clarke. That seems doable. And he’ll relax until then.

She sends a bunch of pictures from her vacation in Florida, which means selfies in a bathing suit and sunglasses, pretty much the best Christmas present ever, and when she gets back and asks what he’s up to, he admits that he’s around and free.

His phone rings immediately. “You’re in Boston doing nothing right now?” she demands.

“I’m playing video games, it’s not nothing.”

There’s a pause. “You don’t want to see me?”

He scrambles up, even though she can’t see him. “Fuck, of course I do.”

“But you weren’t going to tell me you were here?”

“It’s Christmas Eve.”

“And?”

“I thought it might be weird. I’m not even doing anything, just sitting at home alone. It’s not like–” He sighs. “I didn’t want it to be a big deal.”

“It’s not. Can I come over?”

“Yeah, of course.”

Half of him expects the train to fuck her over again, or for something else to go wrong, but he tidies up a little anyway, just in case she really does show up. He wishes he had a tree, or at least a few lights, but it’s too late for that.

It’s not like Clarke’s coming to see his (lack of) decorations anyway. He’s the big draw.

“I can’t believe it’s only been two months since I saw you,” he teases, when she arrives, but Clarke isn’t fooling around. She yanks him down by the front of his shirt, mouth crashing into his, and Bellamy laughs into the kiss. “Hi.”

“Hi. Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas.” He tucks her hair behind her ear. “I figured we’d just hang out after the holiday.”

“Which is a total waste of two days we could be hanging out. I thought you were hanging out with your sister again.”

“I was going to, but then I realized I don’t have anything to do for vacation.”

“And you didn’t tell me.”

“I didn’t want to ask you to come spend Christmas with me. It seemed weird. We’re not even–are we dating?”

“Not very often.”

“I think this is going to be our year. I’m finally going to have enough time to be a real person. Or at least to be your boyfriend.”

“New Year’s resolution?”

“If there’s one thing I learned this year it’s that you’re worth prioritizing.”

“Yeah?”

“I spent a whole year wishing I was seeing you. I don’t want to do that again.”

“But you wanted to wait until December 26th to see me,” she teases.

“Sorry. Do you want to spend Christmas watching Netflix on my couch and making out? I didn’t get you anything and I’m planning to have mac and cheese for dinner. It’s not going to be glamorous.”

“Am I going to see you again in the next week?”

“As much as you want, yeah. School’s out until after New Year’s, so I’ve got plenty of time.”

“Perfect. I want to get laid.”

He laughs. “I can’t believe you waited a whole year for this. Most people who have just given up by now.”

“It’s like you don’t even know how hot you are.” Her expression softens, and she leans in, giving him a soft kiss. “You’re worth waiting for, Bellamy.”

“And you’re worth making time for.” He tugs her toward the couch, and they settle in, close and warm.

Somehow, it feels like Christmas. No tree, no presents, not even any snow, but warm and happiness and–love, probably. The start of it, at least. Something growing.

“This is going to be our year,” he says, and she smiles.

“Yeah, I think so too.”

#rubycaspar

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