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desertduality · 4 months

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gigs phasmo but the ghost is just confused mumbo jumbo

physically unable to write a snippet so here's a whole oneshot AKJSDKJ I hope you like it!! Personally I had a ton of fun lmao

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The house was nice, as far as haunted locations went. The flowers out front were dead, sure, but that was probably on account of their caretaker being dead as well.

The neighbors had been the ones to call this address in, claiming that although the owner of the property had died quite some months ago, lights frequently turned on and off in the house. The police had been by several times to check for intruders, and had come up empty every time. Finally, some desperate neighbor had given in and called paranormal investigators.

So there they were, Impulse pulling up on the curb just as the sun dipped below the horizon. Prime ghost hunting time, for some reason; Scar hadn’t really paid attention to the science and research when he’d signed up for the job. Besides, the other three had all that handled quite nicely. Scar was just along for the ride.

“Scar, you know what you’re doing?” Impulse asked, grabbing a flashlight off the wall and clipping his walkie onto his belt.

“Sir, yes sir!” Scar quipped, scanning the gear for his usual fare. “One paraba-dolical microphone coming up.”

“Grab a thermometer, too,” Impulse suggested, clapping him on the shoulder on his way out of the van. “Let’s try to keep this one clean! The company is running low on cursed items with resurrection abilities.”

“I know for a fact we’ve made the biggest dent in that,” Skizz’s voice crackled out of the walkie, changing to a slight echo as he presumably walked in the house.

“Why do you sound proud of that?” Grian asked, speaking into the radio as he grabbed a salt canister. Scar snickered, reaching over him to grab the thermometer.

“We’ve got a record going, man! No one can stop us!”

“You have to admire his positivity,” Scar said brightly, clicking his flashlight to make sure it worked.

“Yeah, I guess he’s got that going for him,” Grian replied, giving a short wave as he left the van. “See you on the inside, Scar.”

Scar gave a jaunty wave, doing one last check on his equipment before starting after him. A voice cut him off before he could leave.

“Did anyone check the name?” Impulse asked, and Scar turned around to squint at the corkboard, eyes catching on the top.

Huh. Interesting.

Scar clicked the talk button on his walkie. “Looks like… Mumbo Jumbo?”

There was a long pause, and Scar almost thought they had missed it somehow. Then the response came.

“Scar,” Grian said, sounding tiredly amused. “If you can’t pronounce it, don’t just make something up.”

“No, It— It literally says Mumbo Jumbo,” Scar replied, glancing up to double check. “Don’t make me waste a photo to prove it. I will, you know I will.”

“Don’t, Scar,” Impulse jumped in, so quickly that the start of his sentence cut out. “We believe you.”

“Get in here before I come and drag you, Face,” Skizz chimed in, and Scar rolled his eyes with a chuckle, stepping out of the van.

The house was warmer than the air outside, so Scar took that as a sign that someone had gotten to the fuse box. He wandered around with the paradabolic microphone for a few minutes, watching closely for big leaps in the readings. Eventually, Impulse called out from upstairs, claiming that he’d found the room. Scar hurried towards him, making it there just in time to watch him set up the video camera, fiddling with the tripod and muttering complaints about its stability.

The room was a bedroom, a large bed against one wall and a shelf full of dead plants on the other. Everything was covered with a thin layer of dust, but that was pretty usual. Obviously no one had been keeping up with the cleaning.

“Anyone done spirit box?” Grian asked, and Scar jumped and whirled around, finding him in the doorway. Grian giggled, and Scar huffed.

“Not yet,” Impulse said, finally getting the tripod to settle. He looked over at them. “Want us to leave?”

“Not really,” Grian grumbled, starting to power up the spirit box. “But yes.”

Scar walked out of the door and Impulse followed him, closing it and leaving Grian in the room alone. Immediately, they heard the telltale singing introduction of Grian beginning to ask questions. The rest of the house was quiet. So far, everything had been entirely unremarkable.

“I’m going to go grab D.O.T.S and a book,” Impulse spoke suddenly, starting to walk away. “Maybe you could start grabbing some stuff for a polty pile?”

“Sure, will do,” Scar said, and started picking up objects from the table in the hallway. A lot of picture frames and spare wires, for whatever reason.

Grian opened the door to the room just as Scar arrived with his arms full, and Scar tilted his head at the odd look on the other’s face. His eyebrows were furrowed and he was wearing a faint frown.

“What’s wrong?” Scar asked, curious. Normally, Grian came out of a spirit box session with wide eyes and immediately ran to the van. This was out of character.

“I think…” Grian started, contemplative frown getting more pronounced. “I think the ghost apologized to me.”

“...huh?”

“I asked where it was,” Grian said, spirit box slack in his hand. “And then it said something, and then I screamed, and then it— I could have sworn it said sorry. Like, for scaring me.”

“Oh,” Scar said, tilting his head. “Has that happened before?”

Grian shook his head slowly, staring at the spirit box for a minute before exhaling forcefully. “Let’s just keep going,” he said, shoving the device in his pocket. “We still have a job to do.” Then, into his walkie: “We’ve got spirit box, guys. One thing down.”

They kept doing their jobs like they normally would, but none of them could quite shake the sense of something being different.

Usually, the haunted locations they visited had a foreboding sort of feeling to them. They get in and out of those places as soon as possible, the feeling of imminent danger settling on their shoulders like a heavy jacket. There was none of that, here. It was obviously haunted, but it still just felt like... a house. It didn’t feel malicious at all.

Impulse put a book down, and writing appeared a few minutes later. Just a single sentence, asking if they would water the plants on their way out.

They laid down D.O.T.S and stayed out in the van for a while, eventually seeing a tall, hazy figure pass quickly through.

They caught ghost orbs on the video surveillance.

Impulse took the Ultraviolet flashlight and found fingerprints on the side of the video camera, like the ghost had been curious about it.

The salt Grian had placed on the ground was smeared and scattered, almost as if the ghost had slipped on it instead of stepped in it.

“If we discovered some new type of ghost,” Grian said eventually, muffled through his own hands covering his face, after hours of pouring over the conflicting evidence. “I am going to be upset.”

“None of this makes sense!” Impulse complained, flipping through the research journal that Scar had never touched. He was scowling at the pages like they’d personally offended him. “It won’t even hunt!”

“He seems kinda friendly,” Scar said, staring at the steady line of the EMF reader on the screen. “The poor guy just wants his plants watered. I don’t even have the heart to tell him that it probably wouldn’t help. Those things are dead dead.”

Impulse’s head thunked down on the table in front of him. “We’re so fired.”

In the silence following that statement, Skizz burst into the van, holding an object aloft in celebration.

“I found it!” Skizz yelled triumphantly, the wrinkly figure of the monkey paw clutched in his hand. “It fell behind some boxes. I told you it was here.”

“Oooh,” Scar said, rushing over in excitement. “What should we wish for?”

“A quick death?” Grian said flatly.

Scar waved a dismissive hand. “I’ve had too many of those. It gets kind of boring, believe it or not.”

“Let’s just wish to see it,” Impulse said, heaving himself up from his hunched position by the monitor. “We’ve done everything else we could do, let’s just do it.”

“Sure, why not,” Grian said, shrugging. “Let’s go out in a blaze of glory, then.”

“That’s the spirit!” Skizz laughed, and together the four of them marched back into the house.

The room was exactly as they’d left it, and Impulse took a moment to turn off the D.O.T.S. Then they stood in a loose circle, tense and determined. Whatever was happening here, it would be over soon. One way or the other. Maybe the company wouldn’t even bother to bring them back, this time.

Skizz held the monkey paw aloft, dim light casting dramatic shadows on his face. “I wish to see the ghost!”

A finger on the monkey paw cracked and groaned as it bent down, and a chill swept across the room, quick and encompassing. Their flashlights flickered, and then died, leaving them in complete darkness. For a long moment, the only sound was their chorus of quick and shaky breathing.

When the lights turned back on, Scar was face to face with a ghost. A ghost that looked equally as startled as he was.

Scar yelped and stumbled backwards, tripping over the open book on the ground and hurtling towards the bed. The ghost — a tall man with dark hair and an absolutely wonderful mustache — lunged forward and reached out as if to catch him, eyes wide and panicked. To be fair to the dead man, it absolutely would have worked if his hands were still a tangible thing; As it were, his attempt at grabbing Scar to keep him upright was rather rudely foiled by his outstretched hand passing right through Scar’s flailing arm.

Scar hit the bed with a grunt as various cries of alarm sounded out around him, light bouncing around the room haphazardly as the sound of clattering reached his ears; someone had dropped their flashlight, apparently. Scar laid on the bed and stared at the ceiling, dazed.

“Oh gosh! I’m so— I didn’t mean to pop in like that, I—”

Scar looked up just in time to watch a crucifix fly through the air and pass harmlessly through the ghost’s head, hitting the wall with a thud and falling gracelessly to the floor. The ghost yelped and ducked — much too late, not that it mattered, anyway — and Scar’s gaze next landed on Grian, still standing there with his arm extended in a throwing motion, hand empty and eyes wide.

“What was that gonna do, G?!” Skizz asked hysterically, fumbling for his camera, accidentally snapping a picture of his own face and swearing when the light blinded him.

Impulse had knocked over the tripod in all of the chaos, and was now frantically attempting to set it back upright. The ghost — Mumbo Jumbo — turned his anxious eyes on Scar, who for once was struck speechless, jaw slack.

“Are you alright, mate?” Mumbo Jumbo asked, hands fidgeting together. “I didn’t mean to scare you, but— Well, you summoned me. There’s only so much to be done for that.”

With everyone else still scrambling about the room, Scar allowed himself a few seconds to process things. Most ghosts they’d come across — all of them, actually — had been nothing less than murderous and bloodthirsty. The cordial ghost of a perfectly normal man was not something they had been trained for, but that didn’t exactly mean that it was impossible. Sure, maybe it had come way, way out of left field, but Scar prided himself on rolling with the punches. He pushed himself up from the bed with a sheepish, charming smile.

“It’s all good,” Scar said, bright and friendly. “For sure our fault, we summoned you and got surprised when you showed up. Kind of rude of us, I think. Your mattress is super comfortable, by the way.”

Mumbo Jumbo blinked, as if surprised by the onslaught of words, a confused little furrow appearing between his brows. “Thank you?” he said, glancing behind him at the bed. “It was…expensive.”

“I mean, hey! We spend a lot of our lifetime in a bed, right? Might as well shell out some cash for quality.”

“What are we doing?” Grian asked quickly, almost like he was talking to himself, hands pressed to his head in utter bafflement. “This is insane, what is happening.”

“Grian! Don’t be rude,” Scar admonished playfully, then turned back to grin at the ghost. “Mumbo Jumbo, right?”

The man nodded faintly. “Just…Mumbo is fine.”

“Sweet! I’m Scar,” Scar said, and then started pointing to his friends, all standing stock still in various stages of shock and confusion. “The rude one who throws stuff is Grian, that’s Impulse by the window, and over there is Skizz!”

“Nice to meet you?” Mumbo said, glancing around nervously. “I would offer to shake your hand, but…”

“God, this is weird,” Skizz blurted, eyes still wide but starting to relax his stance. “You do know you’re dead, right? We never actually get to ask any of the ghosts we meet.”

“Oh, I— Yeah, I’m well aware,” Mumbo said, laughing a little. “You’ve met other ghosts, then?”

“We’re ghost hunters,” Impulse said, and now that the shock was fading, Scar could see a spark of excitement in his eyes. “But I mean— We’ve never met any like you.”

“Mostly they want to kill us,” Grian said, stepping up next to Scar. “Are you sure you don’t want to kill us?”

“I don’t think I know how, much less want to,” Mumbo said, glancing out the window. “Did someone call you to find me? I’ve been trying not to scare anyone, but I suppose the lights might’ve done me in.”

“Yeah, that was pretty much what tipped them off,” Scar said apologetically. “A few too many weird things happen and boom, here we are.”

“What happens now?” Mumbo asked, chuckling nervously. “I mean, you found me. Job done, yeah?”

“Usually we figure out what type of ghost it is and the company sends out a specialized team to evict it,” Impulse answered, brow pinched in thought. “But normally that’s for safety reasons. You don’t seem like a threat. No offense.”

“Oh, none taken.”

“Can I ask how you died?” Skizz asked, eyes alight with curiosity.

“Skizz,” Grian hissed. “You can’t just ask people how they died!”

“I was just wondering!”

“No, it’s— it’s fine,” Mumbo stuttered, and Scar had a feeling that if ghosts could blush, he would be doing it. “I… fell down the stairs.”

Scar nodded solemnly. “Could have happened to anyone.”

“So what are we actually going to do about this?” Grian asked, vaguely gesturing at the room. “It feels like it would be wrong to kick this guy out of his own house. He’s not really causing trouble.”

“Yeah, I— I do like my house,” Mumbo interjected, awkward smile on his face. “I’d rather stay, if that’s alright.”

“Someone’s bound to move in eventually, you know,” Skizz said, pitying frown on his face. “There’s already a for sale sign in the yard. The new owners might not be super ghost-friendly.”

Mumbo’s shoulders slumped, a dejected look on his face as he frowned at the floor. Scar felt a pang of sympathy grow in his chest, and he glanced out the window at the rows of houses down the street.

It really was quite a nice neighborhood.

“...You know,” Scar started, gaze drifting over to Grian, a slow smile forming on his face. “Our lease is almost up.”

Grian looked over at him, eyes already resigned, and sighed.

Scar laughed, grinning, and Mumbo slowly smiled back.

#this let me practice my ability to write silly fun things AKSJDKJ it was a blast actually :]#thank you for the prompt anon!! I hope i brought your vision to life aksjdk #goodtimeswithscar #gtws #grian #skizzleman #impulsesv #mumbo jumbo #my writing #writing request #now that this is finished i am going to go to bed <33 #might post this on ao3 later but rn i'm tired <3

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mcflymemes · 1 month

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AS SAID BY GARRUS VAKARIAN, updated version * assorted dialogue from the mass effect trilogy, adjust as necessary

i can't find any hard evidence.

good luck, [name]. maybe they'll listen to you.

i'm coming with you.

sometimes it feels like the rules are only there to stop me from doing my work.

i just couldn't take it anymore.

maybe i can get the job done my way for a change.

if you're wrong, we'll pay for it. but if you're right, and we did nothing, i think we'd regret it a whole lot more.

i thought you were dead.

it sure is good to see a friendly face.

at least it's not hard to find criminals here. all i have to do is point my gun and shoot.

my feelings got in the way of my better judgement.

i'll make you a deal. you get me out of here alive, and i'll tell you the whole damn thing.

nobody would give me a mirror. how bad is it?

don't make me laugh, damn it.

some women find facial scars attractive.

i'm fit for duty whenever you need me.

when i got to the meeting point, no one was there.

kill you? no. but i don't mind slowing you down a little.

what do you want from me, [name]?

i know you want to talk about this... but i don't. not yet.

it's so much easier to see the world in black and white. gray... i don't know what to do with gray.

my instincts are what got me into this mess.

never knew you had a weakness for men with scars.

well, why the hell not? there's nobody in this galaxy i respect more than you.

if we can figure out a way to make it work, then... yeah. definitely.

you're about the only friend i've got left in this screwed-up galaxy.

you don't ever have to worry about making me uncomfortable. nervous, yes... but never uncomfortable.

i brought wine.

your hair looks... good. and your waist is... very supportive.

hopefully that's not offensive in human culture.

i want something to go right. just once.

think you can win this thing, [name]?

i'm pretty sure we'll still need giant guns... and lots of them.

so... is this the part where we shake hands?

the scars are starting to fade. i remember they drove you wild.

i've been doing some more research on human customs.

glad to know my romantic skills made an impression.

let's not go there.

i can afford the good stuff.

what about you? i'm starting to see some wear and tear.

don't forget to come up for air. and not just because all these people need you. because i need you.

if you're suggesting i'm scared... game on.

still trying to make me blush, huh?

i'd be lying if i said i didn't hope it would inspire a certain... mood.

it seemed like you needed time to... figure us out.

the worst part about the galaxy going to hell would've been never getting to see you again.

not saying you don't know how to handle a gun. just saying some of us know how to make it dance.

i've actually seen you dance. no comment.

i know there are other things you're good at.

probably not a lot of air in here. an hour if we're lucky.

so tell me. think a girl would fall for that?

it gets even better when you try it in bed.

you don't lack for places to get lost.

did we break anything last night?

you'll find a way to win. and when this is over, i'll be waiting for you.

if this thing goes sideways and we both end up there... meet me at the bar. i'm buying.

forgive the insubordination, but your boyfriend has an order for you.

come back alive. it'd be an awfully empty galaxy without you.

we're in this 'til the end.

we didn’t kill these people. and we’re going to shut down the bastards who did.

looks like we’ve got a siege on our hand.

if anyone needs fresh clips or a bathroom break, now’s the time.

oh crap!

guess he didn’t like the food.

looks like we got the jump.

pretty extreme, but those were desperate times.

we won’t get a second chance.

that was me, sorry.

nothing like being stranded.

we’ll do more than that.

just the usual minor flesh wound.

what would these people have done if we hadn’t shown up?

i was there when you two had your thing, remember? just get a room and work it out.

stay angry. we’ll need it to get through this.

drinks will be on me.

one of my favorite places to fight!

i’m hard to kill. you should know that.

it’s gonna be bad all over.

for whatever it’s worth, i’m with you.

you’ve waited long enough for this day.

just wait ‘til this war is over.

you came along and warmed my heart with your winning personality.

maybe you’d like to go work for them instead?

how do i not have one of those?

surprise on our side for once. i like it.

brutal, but it makes a certain kind of sense.

#garrus vakarian #mass effect #mcflymemes #rp prompt #rp meme #rp memes #roleplay memes #roleplay prompt #rp starters #ask meme #ask memes #roleplay meme #roleplay inbox prompts #rp inbox meme #inbox prompt #inbox meme #sentence starter prompt #sentence starter #sentence starters

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sweetbbyshion · 3 months

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untitled

-> Toji Fushiguro x Reader (gender neutral)

characters: Toji Fushiguro

genre: fluff

summary: uni has been stressing you out and your boyfriend is as tired

warnings: established relationship, age gap, this was written while i was stressing over assessments and i just needed a big strong sexy man to make me take a break, might be ooc

network: @eveningatthemoviesnetwork

Toji thinks he might smash his head against the wall if he hears you sigh loudly one more time. He turns his body on the couch to peek at you, hunching over a bunch of papers at the kitchen table. He can see two word documents opened on your laptop, one full of words and the other still blank. Next to it, his laptop that you begged to use has google opened and he can vaguely see the numerous windows in the tab. You sigh again, like you have been in the past hour, and drop your head on your arms.

Toji has no idea what you’re doing. He guesses it must be some university project but the calendar displayed on the fridge doesn't have an exam coming up soon. He gets up from the couch and makes his way to you. He puts his hand on the back of the chair, leaning down a bit and squinting his eyes to look at the tiny words on the laptop. Toji feels a bit too dumb when he doesn't understand all of the fancy words you used but your boyfriend can tell you're writing your interpretation of a poem.

“You need to start wearing your glasses.” you murmur, looking at the older man, your head lazily resting on your hand, as he keeps squinting. He scoffs, Toji would never wear those ugly glasses he got. It makes him look stupid, even after the amount of times you denied it and no matter how many times you sloppily made out with him wherever he wore those horrible glasses, a fire suddenly lighting you up when you saw the frames on his face. “Don't come complaining when your head starts hurting again.”

“What you got there that got you stressing out so much?” He decides to ignore your comment, changing the subject to the reason for your stress.

You sigh once more, resting your head on his forearm. “Gotta start writing one of my assessments for one of my classes. The professor is making us write about everything we’ve learned in class with our opinions and academic research to support it. It absolutely sucks and I wanna drop out.” you ramble. Toji’s chuckle has you frowning, “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing, nothing. How about you take a break?” As good as that sounds, you shake your head denying his proposal. “Take a break. Not asking. Sit on the couch with me and relax for a bit.” His tone suggests that you would probably regret your decision if you choose to go against him.

Reluctantly, you get up from the uncomfortable chair and stretch your arms above your head. You feel your back crack from being in the same position for so long and you just want to lay in bed and sleep. Toji places his hands on your hips where the shirt isn't covering, squeezing the flesh as he pulls you a bit closer to him and you throw your arms around his shoulders as you sway a bit from side to side. Toji smiles a little when he hears you giggling, happy that you stopped sighing and stressing for a little bit. “ Should I be an old man’s sugar baby? I’ll share the money with you.” You tease, planting a kiss on his cheek. Toji rolls his eyes at your teasing tone. You lean back a little to look at the man, his big hands placed on your back to support your weight. “I'm starting to think you have a type. Like old men that much, doll?”

“Only one.” You reply, playing with the soft ends of his hair that are almost reaching his shoulders. “Unfortunately my old man isn't a billionaire that will give me a yatch for my birthday.” You press a small kiss to his lips. “I can't complain much though, my boyfriend is really sexy.”

Your boyfriend arches a brow, smirking at your remarks. “Yeah? What can I do to steal you away from that grandpa?” You pretend to think for a bit, a small pout appearing on your lips that Toji wants to kiss away more than anything. “Cuddle with me on the couch and watch a few episodes of a crappy reality show before I start feeling bad and go back to my assessment?”

Toji thinks for a bit. He wants you to relax for a while before you (and himself) go crazy with the constant sighing but you have a gift for choosing horrible shows that have Toji wanting nothing more than to punch the TV. Your boyfriend knows he can’t deny your request when he looks at you and you’re staring right back at him. Even if he had it in him to refuse your proposal, your tired eyes and the way you’re looking at him with so much adoration is enough for Toji to pull you to the couch.

You sit as close to him as you can and pull his arm to wrap around your shoulders. You snuggle comfortably on his side while pressing a few kisses on his jaw and neck that make Toji get goosebumps. This time, he doesn't act all dramatic like he usually does when you’re this close to him. He doesn't tease you or calls you clingy while playfully pushing you away just to watch you crawl back to him. This time, Toji lets you push and pull him until you’re comfortable. He doesn't even complain when he sees you open netflix and select a reality show with a weird name and an obnoxious couple on the cover.

Toji thinks all of this is worth it when you place a small kiss on his cheek and whisper “I love you” before falling asleep five minutes after in his arms.

#kora posts!#toji fushiguro #toji x reader #toji fluff #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen fluff #toji fushiguro x reader #toji fushiguro fluff #jujutsu kaisen x you #jujutsu kaisen x y/n

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bleubrri · 2 years

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۪۪۫۫ ༄ؘ ˑ ɪᴛ’s ᴀʟɪᴠᴇ ! — ᴊᴇᴀɴ x ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ

༄ؘ ˑ contains: best friends → lovers , mutual pining , costumes errywhere , dry humping , m!oral , jean whining n whimpering hehe , reader bein kinda bossy >:7 , black coded!fem!reader , vaginal sex , creampie [ maybe more idk bro it’s 3am @_@ ]

༄ؘ ˑ wc: SIGH 4k :/

༄ؘ ˑ a/n: this is for the if you really think that you can stomach me collab by the light of my life @strawberrystepmom !! i wanted to post it in october but i’m useless so forgive me T^T lil talk about protection in there—communication is sexc!! also pls use condoms + practice safe sex xoxo

"these are all awful." you whine, sitting against jeans headboard and scrolling through his 'costume ideas' pinterest board.

he’s got his head underneath the desk, trying to fish out the mario kart disc thats fallen down the back, so his response is muffled. "they’re the most popular ones from the last decade!"

"jean, i am not wearing any of these."

he shuffles back out, dust covered disc in hand and pouting down at you. "there isn't one that you like?"

"not remotely."

"you’re being picky." he says, slotting the disc into the console and tossing you the player 1 controller.

"i’m being honest." you mutter, scrolling past a particularly awful rendition of a cops & robbers costume. he flops onto the bed and rests his head on your shoulder, peeking at the screen.

"y'know I worked really hard cultivating this. hours of research and painstaking decisi—hey!" his head knocks against the headboard when you yank yourself from under his weight.

"you're so annoying.." you mutter, navigating the homescreen and selecting grand prix. the character and course selection are accompanied with jeans babbling (we’ve gotta pick a good one—the standards are high! maybe i should just pick and force a decision on you—) that earns him unconvinced grunts and looks of skepticism.

the subject gets temporarily lost in the chaos that naturally ensues when jean selects rainbow road, 3 minutes of screaming and curses and shuffling onto your knees to get a better vantage point. it isn’t until the final lap when your item box is shuffling that you pipe up, “i guess we don’t have to do something matching..”

jean almost veers off of the track.

he frowns, glancing at your profile as he tries to maintain his first place spot. “…what?” he says. you’ve always dressed up together. since you were kids halloween had been your guys’ favourite holiday, and yet here you were suggesting that you break a years long (albeit unofficial) october tradition.

“i mean we could just go as separate things? if that makes it easier.” and it seems like appropriate timing when you unleash a blue shell and obliterate jeans universe.

you’re glowing, shrieking in triumph as you pass the finish line and leave jean in the dust. he watches your characters parade around the winners podium with a clenched jaw and sinking feeling.

“sure.” he agrees, tight lipped smile making you pause. you didn’t really expect him to agree—you’d only suggested it in case he had a particular costume that he was set on wearing. jean had always been the one to pick your costumes, you just went along with it, and always ending up looking decent so you couldn’t complain. he was always more into the whole idea of dressing up anyway. but you hadn’t really anticipated him ditching your thing in order to.. what, impress some new college friends?

you blink at him, a protest like the cork of a wine bottle, stuck in your throat and threatening to choke you. “cool.” you manage, “just.. let me know what you’re going as, yeah?”

“tryna scope out the competition?”

you give him a good natured shove, rolling your eyes as a smile fights it’s way across your face.

something like that, you think.

this was a bad fucking idea.

as the rhythmic percussion from the speakers gets close enough to rattle your bones, it starts to set in that jean was right. people have taken their costumes really fucking seriously. there are a few token stragglers: eren, in a hoodie and a purge mask and a short, raven haired senior with faux fangs and devil horns. but for the most part all you can see is elaborate sfx gore, girls in animal ears and enough fabric to border on public indecency. and everyone looks great.

you feel pathetic, turning up in a matching costume unbeknownst to your best friend. what if he’s mad? you’d gone from feeling somewhat pretty to utterly mortified in the span of a tacky monster mash-grime remix. your internal debate of whether to bolt back down the road and uber home is interrupted by connie (gruesomely accurate stitches and foam kitchen knife complementing his chucky outfit) who tackles you in a bear hug that reeks of tequila.

“y’look great!” he slurs, clinging to you for so long that he starts swaying.

stifling a laugh, you detach from him and start guiding him back inside. “thanks con, you too.” you shout over the music.

after successfully delivering connie to mikasa (in a very expensive looking black swan costume) you start to navigate the crowd in an attempt to find something to drink.

jean had been developing a steady buzz in the hour or so that he’d been here. he wasn’t having fun. you’d rejected his offer of a ride and for some reason it had given him the urge to drink his blood volume in vodka cokes. he’d made pretty good headway so far, drowning out the compliments on his frankenstein costume with deep gulps from his glass. it felt weird, not having your complimentary figure beside him to admire all night.

somewhere between the fourth beer and third shot of rum he decided that he was mad at you. but it had dissipated pretty quickly—he was refilling his glass when he caught a glimpse of you.

connie was half-slung over your shoulder (gripping you awfully tight and saying something into your ear that has jeans teeth grinding together) but he could still clearly see the monikers of your costume. white streaks in your hair. blackened stitches along your jaw that mirror his own. jean feels the air get punched from his lungs when his eyes scan over your dress. the sheer, pale fabric practically glowing in the dim lighting. there’s a white corset that hugs your waist and follows the curve of your hips that jean can’t seem to tear his gaze from. the whole ensemble.. it’s hauntingly beautiful. you’re beautiful.

jean swallows down a forbidden feeling that claws at his ribcage, tears at the flesh of his throat in its frenzied attempt to escape.

he bolts down the hall to connie’s room, shouldering past vague acquaintances and slipping into his friends bathroom. the white knuckle grip that he has on the sink isn’t doing much to help ground him. his heart hammering in his chest and his head spinning unfortunately isn’t entirely the alcohols fault. scooping some cold water into his cupped hand, jean gulps it down and tries to cool the heat painting his cheeks and swirling in his gut.

bride of fucking frankenstein. is that why you’d asked what he was dressing up as? he groans, pressing the chilled tips of his fingers into his temple, mindful of the black face-paint stitches adorning his forehead. jean has spent almost 2 decades carefully steering you towards costumes that were safe—cute and perfect for the best of friends. jean has long since had his grand epiphany, long since resigned himself to keeping it all to himself, long since mourned the loss of what might have been. but he cannot risk a lifelong friendship with you on a gamble of ifs and maybes. so he straightens his jacket, plasters on his brightest smile and heads straight for you.

“well well well.” he drawls, coming up behind you as you’re mixing a drink. the sound of his voice has you sucking in a breath and turning to him with your bottom lip tucked between your teeth.

“couldn’t help yourself, huh? guess you’re just obsessed with me.”

you grin, glad that he seems like the jean you know and love. “please, this was a last minute ditch effort.” you shoot back, “i just couldn’t find anything else that looked okay!”

“ohh of course. forgive my wildly inaccurate assumption then.”

you chuckle, handing him a drink as you pour yourself another. “seriously though, dyou hate it?”

jean frowns over the rim of his cup, taking in your doe eyes and vulnerable expression that point to you being serious. “hate it? what would i hate it?”

“i don’t know.. you wanted to dress up alone this year so.. i thought you might be disappointed.” he stares at you blankly, cup hovering away from his lips. he’s got such pretty lips, you’ve always thought so. it would be.. weird to tell him that, right? though it’s probably weird how hard you’re staring at them right now and—oh god you’re staring.

“you wanted to dress up alone!” he says, confused.

“wh—i didn’t! i suggested it for you but.. i love our couples costumes.” you give him that shy smile that he adores and jean feels his insides turn to jelly. you have to know what you’re doing. you’ve baited him—hook, line and sinker and like the lovesick little guppy that he is he’s latched on and being stripped of oxygen.

“couples costumes?” he breaths.

“yeah i mean, we’re kind of like a couple.” you shrug, and jean almost faints. “we do everything together.” oh god, you need to shut the fuck up before you ruin everything. before he calls you out for overstepping and—

a whirlwind of colour that takes the form of sasha in a willy wonka costume (complete with crumpled wrappers spilling from her pockets) is suddenly ushering you both towards your group of friends before jean can respond and you can apologise. she pushes you down into the circle that’s forming, empty bottle of corona sitting menacingly in the centre.

jean groans, running a hand through his hair in a way that you can’t look at for too long or you might do something you’ll regret.

“what’re we? 16?” sasha just sticks her tongue out and slots down between macro and an on-the-verge-of-passing-out connie.

the games a hybrid—spin the bottle and 7 minutes in heaven, with people bending over the circle for a peck on the lips while the current 2 victims occupy the storage closet at the end of the hall. you find your eyes are focused on the fascinating items on the shopping list stuck to the fridge as jean locks lips with a pretty little blonde girl—hitch, you’re pretty sure. you don’t notice the glares that your best friend sporadically shoots in reiners direction when the bulky blonde kisses you for a little longer than necessary, earning whoops and cheers from your giddy friends. when the flick of erens wrist dictates that you and jean are next for the closet, the whole group groans.

“what?” floch says, clearly confused as to your apparent reputation.

“these are the worst.” mikasa deadpans, earning a playful shove from you.

“we are not!”

“what, they fuck super loud or something?” floch asks. jeans cheeks are reddening at the implication.

“hardly.” connie mumbles, suddenly following the conversation. “last time they were in there forever, found ‘em passed out after watchin’ a movie on his phone.”

you smile, pushing yourself up and extending a hand to jean. “i’m thinking insidious 2? maybe the conjuring?”

“stop. you know hocus pocus is more my speed.” he matches your smirk and laces your hands together, your friends’ booing accompanying you down the hall as you make your way to the closet.

you’re both settled on the floor, backs against the shelves and scrolling through jeans phone to find a movie. it’s dark, the only light coming from the small screen, but he can still see the outline of your figure in his peripherals, pressed up against him with your head on his shoulder, where it belongs.

“hey.” he finds himself blurting out. it’s the familiarity, the closeness that’s loosening his lips and making his iron resolve crumble.

“hey.” you smile up at him, and as he skims over your face, long lashes swept with mascara, pointed brows and lips sculpted with a dark crimson that almost looks black, jean has the startling urge to confess that he’s hopelessly, desperately in love with you.

“did you mean it? before..”

“what?”

“that we’re like a couple.” he presses.

“oh, i—” theres an apology on the tip of your tongue that somehow morphs under the intensity of his gaze, warm eyes piercing even in the low light. “i mean, we are, aren’t we? strangers always think we’re together. we’re just not, ah.. intimate like a couple.”

jeans ears are ringing. what might have been is beginning to look like what could be, what’s right at his fingertips.

“do you want to be?” it’s barely a whisper, his face so close to yours that when he swipes over his lips you can feel the heat from his tongue. your gaze flickers down, glued to his lips, and without a second thought you find yourself nodding.

“are you sure?” this time, he’s so close that you can feel the syllables against your lips.

“kiss me.”

and jean does not need to be told twice.

it’s a chaste thing, a sweet thing. just skin against skin. you both share a sigh against eachother and it’s filled with so much relief, so much longing that it’s only natural for his hands to make their way to your cheeks, coaxing your head back as his tongue starts to lick into your mouth.

wet smacking and heavy breaths are fogging the space of the closet as your hands curl around his wrists. jeans hands cup your jaw, a breathy chuckle bubbling up when he rests his forehead against yours. it’s so infectious that you find yourself giggling along with him, mirroring the shapes he traces into you on his pulsepoints.

“you have no idea.” jean finds himself mumbling between slow savours of your lips. “god, you drive me crazy.” and you do. he thinks he can feel his fucking brain chemistry altering with every brush of your tongue against his own.

it’s becoming harder and harder to ignore the desire pooling between your legs at the feeling of your best friend cradling your face like you’re made of glass and kissing you until you’re dizzy. your limbs feel phantom as you slowly push him against the shelves, your thighs finding purchase surrounding his long legs and hands slipping into his hair. his phone is still on somewhere, cool-blue light casting shadows over your figure. even straddling him, you’re only marginally taller, but jean loves it, your pretty face there for him to behold and your tits squished against the confines of your corset at the perfect level to latch onto. your cleavage being on display is more of an obvious byproduct of having breasts as apposed to a purposeful attempt at being alluring, but jean thanks whatever deity is looking over him and happily sucks a trail of bruises into the soft skin before him. he can feel your breathing increasing with every graze of his teeth, every violet mark etched into your skin. and when he delivers a particularly harsh nip, your thighs clenching around him and your grip on his nape tightening, jean thinks he has to be ascending.

the tent in his pants is considerable, poking into your core even through the whispy layers of your dress. large hands have settled on your waist when you start to rock in his lap, a sputtering groan spilling into your chest as his dick twitches in anticipation.

“fuck, jean—i need you.”

he’s frantic, bunching up your dress to expose your bare thighs and dampened panties. he perches you over his dick, stifling a moan from the pulsing heat of your cunt radiating against his bulge. the movements of your hips are aided by warm hands settled on them, grinding you against his cock as you gasp and moan at the friction. he almost whines in response, fingertips digging into your soft flesh. “don’t—oh shit—don’t have a condom.”

he can’t form a sentence, let alone a coherent thought. but like the angel that you are, you do it for him, tug his face back from where it’s buried in your neck, smiling fondly at his lidded eyes and parted lips. “i mean, i’m clean. and.. on birth control.” you whisper, as if he wasn’t nursing you day and night after your IUD appointment. tucking a strand of hair behind the reddened tip of his ear, you press your lips to the stubble that peppers his jaw. it’s rough, mildly grating in a way that brings heat to the surface of your skin and has you wondering how it would feel against your inner thighs. “and i trust you.” you smile.

a confession is dangerously close to bursting from his chest. jean might as well just plunge a fist through flesh and bone, part his ribcage and present his beating heart to you. he would do it, if you asked.

“fuck, are you sure?” he’s blindly scrambling for his phone. “i—i’m clean and everything but are you sure?” and suddenly the screen is being lit up in front of you with goddamn test results. you laugh, because it’s so sweet and so jean—giving you peace of mind despite your assurances, checking in on you again and again because he cares. you pull up your own recent results and present it to him, his eyes barely flicking over it before his gaze is relocked with yours. you chuck your phone to the side, palming his bulge in languid strokes with your free hand and shuffling down the length of his legs. “never been more sure of anything.”

jeans so hopped up on endorphins, on the taste of you and the arousal searing his skin that he hardly notices you flicking the clasp of his belt buckle. he’s shook from his stupor when he feels the cool air hit his dick, tip shiny with so much precum that its started to drip down to his balls. you weren’t sure what you were expecting, but the slight curve of his shaft, the bulbous head and mushroom tip, the length of it has your eyes wide and mouth pooling with saliva. you delight in the way his cock twitches and he shivers when you blow against his wet slit. and when you wrap a hand at his base, immediately pumping him with slickened strokes, he reels, arching into your touch and slamming a hand over his mouth to muffle his groans.

oh god, oh god you’re gonna ruin him, thumbing his slit and squeezing his cockhead until he’s leaking into your hand and planning your honeymoon. pink darts from between your teeth and you press the flat of your tongue against him, salty liquid bursting across your tastebuds that has you humming and taking the tip of his dick into the wet heat of your mouth. jeans nails are digging bloody crescents into the skin of his palm as he tries to hold back the sounds of his pleasure, but when you suckle on his slit and swirl your fucking tongue against the sensitive underside of his cock, jean feels his balls tighten and flames ignite under his skin.

“shit—shitshitshit wait!” and you’re pulling off of him with a lewd pop and a ditzy smile. there’s a string of saliva and pre that tethers him to your lips and jean doesn’t think you’ve ever looked so beautiful.

“god you’re so..” jeans panting, scouring his lust-dipped brain for a word that does you justice. his reaction has you preening, dragging down your panties and pecking his lips with a grin. “so’re you.”

your thighs return to their place around his hips, the bare heat of your sexes mingling when you press your clit into the underside of his shaft from its place against his stomach. jeans hands are guiding your mouth to reconnect with his, desire clawing at his chest. “let me taste you.” he breaths.

your pussy flutters at his request, baritone syllables making more slick ooze from your slit. “as much as i would love that,” you link your hands around his broad shoulders, pressing your weight into your knees to position his cock over your dripping entrance. you can see the beginnings of a protest shaping his pretty lips that you’re quick to silence, “i want you to cum.” and when his dick is enveloped with hot, wet softness, jean can’t do anything but gasp.

while the tightness of your cunt is threatening to milk him dry, he knows this can’t exactly be comfortable for you, the wetness of your shared arousal doing little to compensate for the lack of prep. gentle rolls of his hips accompany soft words and presses of his lips to the trail of bruises along your chest. “shh, you’re okay. it’s just me, just focus on me.”

slippery circles are pressed into your clit that have you relaxing under his touch and clenching around his cock simultaneously. “look how good you’re doing, baby.” he whipers, your hazy eyes blinking down to where you’re connected. you haven’t taken all of him, though he doesn’t seem to mind, his thrusts picking up and settling into a pace that has your toes curling. one of your hands slips from around his neck in a stubborn blur. he has to cum first. jean does more for you than he probably realises, doting on you like the angel that he is. they’ll be time for more later. but he has to have the first. your fingers trail the soft skin of his sac, nails grazing the cropped hair at his base that has him shuddering beneath you. you can almost feel his load churning under your touch when you roll the heavy weight of his balls between your fingertips.

electricity is sparking between you—it’s under your skin and in your gut and tethering the beating muscles in your chests.

“i—have wanted you—” his words are choked, impending orgasm a breath away, “—for so fucking long. i fucking—i love you. i’m so fucking in love with you.” his confession comes as he does, searing heat from his release coating your insides and splashing through the depths of your cunt. your foreheads are pressed together as you gasp and whisper against his lips, jeans hips fucking his load into you as he helps you chase your own high.

“i love you. always have.” it’s a little slurred, a little breathy. but when jean feels your pussy squeezing him in a vice, slick sounds of arousal bouncing off of the dark walls of the closet, he doesn’t think it could be any more fucking perfect.

reiner has his tongue shoved down bertls throat when you both emerge, blinking at the harsh light. the group doesn’t even give you a second look, at first. when reiner pulls back, leaving the brunet with pink cheeks and wide eyes, jean is the one to clear his throat and direct their attention to your disheveled figures.

“we’re, uh, we’re gonna head out.”

your hands are intertwined. which isn’t a foreign feeling at all, though his cum dripping down your thighs is certainly new.

“no fucking way.” connie seems to have sobered up exponentially, eyeing your mess of hickeys, wrinkled clothes and jeans wild hair.

“i’ll be damned.” erens smirking with his brows raised as you manoeuvre the little crowd and head for the door. throwing a quick wave over your shoulder, you flash a sheepish smile to your friends, stumbling out a goodbye as jean tugs you out the door.

“uh, happy halloween guys!”

as soon as the door slams jeans pulling you in for a kiss. his lips are quickly becoming your favourite thing so you are not complaining, looping your arms round his waist to pull him further into your orbit.

“so.” you muse, “what’re we now? like.. fuck buddies?” you joke.

jean thinks on it, dramatically squinting his eyes and humming in thought. “i’d prefer the term smash bros.”

the look of disgust that colours your face as you shove him away and head down the street has laughter bubbling in his chest and his hands pulling you flush against his chest.

“you’re so stupid.” you pout, barely masking your adorable smile. “can’t believe i slept with you. can’t believe im in love with you.” you’re teasing him, taking his lips for yourself and giggling against him. but if he’s being completely honest with himself, jean can’t fucking believe it either.

#: @luvkun4 @sheluvzeren @oxygenstarrved @wh0reforlevi

#jean x reader #jean x reader smut #jean x black reader #jean smut #jean kirstein x reader smut #jean kirstein smut #jean kirstein x reader #aot x black reader #aot x reader smut #aot x reader #aot smut #aot x you #aot x y/n #iyrtycsm collab #jean x you #jean x y/n

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ghostlystyles · 1 year

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𝐖𝐀𝐈𝐓 𝐔𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐋 𝐌𝐎𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆

anthony lockwood x gn!reader

anthony lockwood can definitely be a drama queen

request: Hi, could you do an Anthony Lockwood x reader where the reader is extremely exhausted and ends up passing out during a mission and Anthony gets really worried about the reader? Thanks :D

tessa’s notes: thank you anon for sending in the first request i’ve ever gotten, i hope this is what you had in mind :)

warnings: fluff, swearing, blood, sleep deprivation, fainting, a bit of angst?, canon typical violence, comment if i missed any <3

word count: 1,5k

— YOU OPENED THE door of 35 Portland Row in the middle of the night for what had to be the twentieth time that month and saw a middle-aged couple standing on your doorstep. “Lockwood & Co?” the man asked. “Yeah, that’s us. How can we help you?” you yawned, leaning against the open door. “Our house is haunted and it’s keeping us up at night. We figured you might be able to help us.”

You led the couple towards the kitchen and made them a cup of tea. “Oi, get up! There’s people here!” you called and not long after your three friends joined you at the dining table.

“So, tell us about what’s haunting your house,” Lockwood started, placing his ankle on his thigh. He wore a black, graphic jumper, joggers and his hair was messy. Although liking it, you’d been begging him for months to lose the suit every once in a while and usually midnight was the only time you got to see it, so you couldn’t help but grin.

“Well— we don’t know. We know there’s two but we’ve never seen them, only heard,” the woman explained. “And what did you hear?” you asked, leaning your head onto your hands with your eyelids heavy.

“Just— knocks on the walls and, we constantly have this feeling of crippling anxiety and fear and— we always feel like we’re being followed,” the man answered in detail. “Okay, that sounds like a Type One, so you don’t have to worry. We could get the job done tomorrow evening.”

“We actually don’t have a place to stay, we assumed you could just get it done right away.”

“That— okay. It might be possible, but it will cost significantly more as it’s extremely last minute.”

“That would be great, thank you so much. Money’s not an issue, we’ll pay you any reasonable price.”

“I’ll have to discuss it with my partners, if you’ll excuse us,” Lockwood nodded professionally as the four of you got up and walked into the corridor.

“What do you guys think?” he asked. “I think I could do it, they’re only Type Ones,” Lucy shrugged. “Well, I’d prefer it if I had time to research, but I guess it could work,” George added, rubbing his eyes. “And you, Y/N?”

“I— yeah, sure. I reckon I just need a coffee and then we can get to work,” you yawned, leaning against the wall to support your legs. “You sure? You’re not sleeping well as it is and you’re starting to look like a ghost yourself,” Lucy frowned worriedly. “A friendly ghost, I hope, but it’s fine, it’ll earn us some good money,” you joked. “I really don’t think that’s a good idea, Y/N, we should just tell them no,” George added. “Yeah, are you really sure? We can wait until the morning. We don’t owe those people anything,” Lockwood pitched in. “Yes, Lockwood! I promise it’s fine! It won’t take long anyway.”

— THE FOUR OF you slowly entered the house that belonged to the couple. “Lockwood and I will take the upstairs, you take the downstairs?” you whispered as you looked around cautiously. “You two gotta stick together, huh?” Lucy nudged you playfully. “Oh, fuck off,” you rolled your eyes with a smile. You always got the same response, but it just made sense. Lockwood had excellent Sight, and you were a pretty good Listener, George was average on all talents, but Lucy was an outstanding Listener.

“Does everyone have all their stuff?” Lockwood asked, with his hands in his pockets and you all nodded. “Okay, then let’s stop fucking around and get this done.”

Lockwood quickly walked up the stairs and you followed him, frankly a lot less quickly, as your limbs felt heavy on your body. “Y/N! You coming?” Lockwood stopped at the top of the stairs when he noticed you weren’t next to him anymore. “Yes, just give me a moment,” you muttered, stifling back another yawn. “Are you sure you’re okay?” Lockwood asked once more, his face coated in worry. “Yes, Lockwood, how many times? Just, stop worrying about me for a second!” you grumbled as you strolled further onto the first floor.

“I— Jesus, I was just making sure you weren’t gonna faint or something,” Lockwood muttered, slightly taken aback. "Wait, shh—," you whispered as you covered Lockwood's mouth with your hands. "I hear something."

You closed your eyes and focused, so you could hear the sound better. You heard the soft shuffling of bony feet and echoing sighs, but you couldn't quite tell where it came from. "I'm pretty sure it's a Stalker," you concluded. “Where is it?” Lockwood asked. “I don’t know… I can’t tell,” you said, you squeezed your eyes shut, but it felt like your head was stuffed with cotton. Likely because of the sleep deprivation, but you’d never admit that, of course. The two of you started walking in the direction of one of the rooms and warily looked around. You closed your eyes, but you’d lost the sound of footsteps.

“I think we chose the wrong direction,” you muttered and Lockwood nodded in agreement. You walked out of the room and back into the corridor, when you were suddenly overtaken by dizziness and a sick feeling. You halted for a moment and took a deep breath, but the feeling didn’t go away. Instead, black spots started filling your peripheral vision and slowly spread their way to the center of your gaze. “Lockwood… I don’t feel so good,” you trembled, before everything went black.

“Y/N!” Lockwood exclaimed as he heard your body collapse with the ground and he rushed over to you, cradling your face in his hands. “Y/N?” he croaked as he brushed your hair out of your face. After about half a minute, your eyes fluttered open and you saw Lockwood’s face hover over you. “Hi,” he gave you a watery smile and his expression shifted from anxious to relieved.

You slowly sat up and immediately felt like vomiting, as your limbs were aching and your head was pounding from the fall. “Hey, hey, slow down,” Lockwood whispered tenderly, “how are you feeling?”

“Everything hurts,” you said, when you felt something warm dripping down your cheeks. Lockwood’s gaze slightly shifted and he gasped when he saw the huge gash across your nose bridge. “What happened?” you winced, feeling the wound sting. “I don’t— you must’ve hit your head on the banister or something,” Lockwood worried with wide eyes, “we should take you to the hospital, that probably needs stitches.”

“No way! I’m not letting someone sew my skin like it’s a piece of fabric!”

“It’ll be okay, I promise. George, Luce and I wil be there the whole time and besides, it’s gonna leave one badass scar.”

— A TRIP TO the hospital and a fuckton of stitches later, Lockwood was carrying you bridal style down the streets of London. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone get this injured on a Type One mission,” Lucy chuckled. “Be nice to me Luce, I fainted and smacked my head into a banister,” you laughed, hitting her shoulder. “I suggest we all just listen to me next time, because I get really scared when people faint,” George sighed. “Oh, you should've seen Lockwood, Georgie. He looked at me as if I was dying.”

“Look, in my defence, I didn’t know what happened. For all I knew, you could’ve had a knife in your back and were slowly bleeding out,” Lockwood scoffed. “I’m just kidding, it was very sweet of you,” you reassured him as you patted his cheek. “You’re always so dramatic,” Lucy smiled, as she nudged Lockwood with her shoulder and he gave her a side-eye. “Anyway, when we get home, you’re going to bed and you’re not coming out of there until I say so,” Lockwood started, looking down at you, “and I’m going to find those people and try to rake up the price by a lot, so we don’t have to open the door in the middle of the night again.”

“That seems like a good idea, I’ll go with you,” George said and Lockwood nodded approvingly. “Why did it take me nearly perishing at the hands of a fucking banister for us to realise that taking clients in the middle of the night is a terrible idea?” you laughed loudly, throwing your head back. “Aha! So you do admit that you very nearly died and I have the right to be concerned about you and your well-being!” Lockwood exclaimed as he slightly swung you, making you scream and tightly hold onto him.

Lucy caught George’s gaze and shook her head with a smile, “we really should’ve waited until the morning.”

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dearlybelovedemilyko · 2 months

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The Patron Saint of Things That Go Boom

or who’s St. Barbara and what does she have to do with Shadows House?

I came across the name St. Barbara a while back, when I was looking up the meaning of the name Barbara for a possible Shadows House name meanings edit (you know the ones). It didn’t cross my mind that a Catholic saint could possibly have anything to do with a manga about shadow people in a cult and I googled her solely out of curiosity but, as you can probably infer from the fact that you’re reading a post about it tagged #shadows house, I was in for a surprise.

To sum up her life story, St. Barbara was born the daughter of a pagan noble, who kept her locked up in a tower and sheltered from outside influence. One day he came back from a trip to find that in his absence she had converted to Christianity and wanted to dedicate her life to faith as a virgin, which was not only a really bad look at the time but also ruined his plan to marry her for money. He then turned her in as a Christian to the prefect, who sentenced her to imprisonment and torture and, when she didn’t lose her faith and her wounds were miraculously healed every morning, to death. (Another Christian tried to defend her and was also sentenced to death)

St. Barbara’s father insisted on being the one to carry the sentence, killing her himself. However, a storm broke out as soon as she died, and both the father and the prefect were struck by lightning, burning to death as punishment for their actions.

Due to their role in her story, St. Barbara is seen as a protector against lightning, and consequently against fire and explosions (there is also an old belief that she could control them). The connection to explosions was so strong that she became the patron saint of literally anything explosion related, anyone who works with explosions, or anyone in danger of dying in an explosion, from gunsmiths to miners. Hell, look at this actual website calling her “the patron saint of things that go boom".

Sounds familiar, right? Barbara’s seizures, both in the manga and the anime, are accompanied by lightning effects. This is more subtle in the manga, in fact I hadn’t realized what those lines were supposed to be until I watched the anime (see: the gif right after the title of this post), but they’re clearly there. She’s the only character that gets this effect, nobody else so far produces lightning along with their soot.

Her usual seizures take the shape of a storm/tornado, complete with wind sound effects in the anime, while the worst ones we’ve seen so far, the one that gave Barbie her scar and that one that almost killed Barbara, have notably caused, guess what, explosions.

Notice also how it was raining in both occasions, and how in both of these explosions someone nearly died.

At this point the parallels seem too clear to be unintentional, and I'd believe you if you told me that somehow Somato and I fell down the same internet rabbit hole researching about this saint, so I thought I should share this information with you guys.

There are lots of coming and going fan theories about Barbara's soot powers, if we ever get to see them, so maybe this can give us some clues. It would certainly be interesting if she turned out to have lightning and/or explosion powers that she still can't control, and that work involuntarily during her seizures. It would also be cool as hell if she got a gun.

#shadows house #shadows house spoilers #barbara shadow #shadows house meta

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jinx-s-things · 3 months

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Ghost - Amber Freeman

Summary: you and your parents move into a new house and you meet Amber Freeman who is a ghost.

It’s been 3 days since you and your parents moved in to our new house. Your parent bought the house after all the murders that happened it was real cheap. You started looking into what happened and people say are house is haunted. we’ve already had psychos snooping around the house.

You were just unpacking things when you heard the tap turn on you went and turned it off and finished what you were doing.

You were placing a picture on a shelf when it turned on again so you stomped over to the sink, when you seen a cup moving by itself, you thought you was seeing things.

Later that night you were were startled from a deep sleep by a loud noise followed by whispers. Just as you was about to move the covers where ripped off your bed.

“So it’s really haunted then”

“Give me my cover and let me sleep or so help me I Will get the exorcist in”

in the corner of the room you notice mist or is it? The longer you stare the mist begins to change you now see a beautiful shimmering apparition of a woman with long dark hair and deep brown eyes. You had noticed that half of her face was burnt and so were her clothes, this was awkward but cool you thought.

The woman finally spoke she said “yeah it is haunted I lived here before you”

“What happened to your face?” You said curiously

“It got burnt when I tried to Murder some people.”

You suddenly recognised her from your research

“OMG your Amber Freeman that crazy Ghostface bitch” you shout

Amber looked shocked for a minute but smirked.

“Yeah I am and there are more of us”

“More dead Ghostfaces?”

Amber nodded her head.

Amber then turned to mist and was gone you then tried to go back to bed but felt like somebody was watching you which was probably Amber and the others. The next day Amber showed up again and then talked for hours and hours, she talked about how she talked about the murders and how she died she was hoping to scare you with her stories but the intrigued you.

It felt good talking to Amber so you did it again and again. You realised that you were falling in love with her more each day but you thought it was weird because she was dead. You wanted to ask Amber if she felt the same way but was too scared to ask but one you finally got the courage. The day it happened Amber was sitting on your bed talking about some movie all you think about was what to say.

Amber noticed you weren’t listening and got annoyed “hey you listening” Amber said

“Yeah” you replied suddenly you couldn’t keep it in anymore and blurted it out. You waited for her reaction feeling anxious she just stared at you after a few moments of silence you said “well” you then felt hands grabbing your face and the next thing you know her lips were on yours her lips were soft, you ran your hands through her dark hair.

She then pulled back and you both started laughing Amber stared into your eyes and smiled “so I guess that means yes” you said still laughing “it is and I love you” she replied

“I love you too”.

#scream #amber freeman #scream fanfic #amber freeman x reader #mikey madison #amber freeman fanfic #amber freeman x y/n #amber freeman x you #scream 2022

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bibuddie · 27 days

Note

okay i'll bit why exactly do we want tommy in more episodes? ....like are we not rooting for buddie, why do we want tommy here when if he sticks around the chances of us getting buddie are going to drop significantly, like we should want him gone by the end of the season. I don't want him sticking around because he's a threat to the story I've wanted the writers to do for the last 6 years. I guess I assumed with your URL that you're also rooting for Buddie but perhaps I was wrong and you're rooting for Bucktommy to be endgame which just absolutely not, sorry. Yeah 3 episodes vs 6 years, does not even match.

okay idk what’s in the air today but as my beloved @canonbibuck so eloquently put, “we want tommy in more episodes so he can stick his tongue into buck’s anus. hope this helps”

on a real, first of all, please remember this is all fiction. like, we’ve lost the plot so severely i think. second of all, i’d love to introduce you to this GROUNDBREAKING concept called ✨multishipping✨!! back in the days when one direction rpf was a bigger thing and even before that, everyone was shipped with EVERYONE. in fact, it was ENCOURAGED!! the more ships under your belt, the better!! now it’s much less endorsed and i honestly have no idea why!! THIRDLY like, in the loveliest kindest way possible, i have stuff going on outside of tumblr and like i genuinely don’t think its that deep?? i get wanting your ship to be endgame (i’m actually rooting for buddie endgame despite what you want to believe), but this website isn’t my entire life?? i’m in the middle of a biomedical science major, i’m spending my full summer doing some really cool research at a really prestigious university, i’m doing stuff i’m really proud of, and i’m so happy that there’s other things in my life apart from this website and this show. i love it, and i love the community on here for the most part, but i think it’d pay for all of us to remember it really isn’t That deep in the slighest. breathe, relax your shoulders, it’s fine. me enjoying bucktommy while it lasts and writing fic about them won’t kill you, i swear.

(and yeah, i want tommy to stick around. i’ve actually got reallt attached. his crinkly eyes and crooked smile have beguiled me. sue me.)

#bucktommy #anon #asks

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saphronethaleph · 2 days

Text

Visiting Time

The front door opened with a crash.

“Sonic!” a voice shouted. “You’re not getting away this time!”

Tails lifted his welding mask, and turned off the torch. Then he hopped out of his garage, and into the main living area of their house.

“Hi, Silver,” he said.

“Tails!” Silver replied, waving. “Great to see you again. Where’s Sonic? I’m here to pay him back for what he did!”

“He’s out at the moment, not sure where,” Tails replied, shrugging. “What did he do, exactly? There’s a lot of stuff it could be…”

“You mean he’s been doing a lot of stuff he needs to pay for?” Silver asked, going over to one of the sofas and sitting down.

Tails shrugged. “No, not really, but he’s done a lot of stuff, and a lot of that could get misinterpreted! That’s the way it usually works, like with the Iblis Trigger or when Shadow got mistaken for him.”

Silver frowned. “Iblis Trigger?”

“I don’t actually know myself, but my research turned up a note from myself!” Tails replied. “It was back last time we broke time… no, maybe the time before last time?”

He scratched his head, then shook it. “Anyway, Sonic isn’t the Iblis Trigger, I’m supposed to tell you that. How’s the future, by the way?”

“You know, same old, same old,” Silver said. “Hey, can I get a mug of cocoa?”

Tails blurred into the kitchen and began mixing some up. “So… post apocalypse?”

“That’s same old, same old, for you,” Silver concurred readily. “This time I guess it’s global warming?”

“Huh,” Tails frowned. “I was pretty sure my Ring Energy Generators would prevent that, by using clean energy instead of fossil fuels. Any specifics?”

“Yeah, it’s nothing to do with fossil fuels,” Silver shrugged. “When I said warming, I meant literally. Volcanic eruptions and lava and stuff.”

“Oh!” Tails said. “I guess we might need to talk to Chip and see if he knows what’s going on… so what do you think Sonic has done, exactly?”

Silver floated over the cocoa and took a sip. “Man, you’re good at that… anyway, he built a giant robot and was using it to attack people.”

Tails gave him a perplexed look.

“Okay, look,” Silver began. “I know that realistically speaking it was probably actually Eggman who did it. But you know Sonic, the best way to get him to help out is to challenge him to a battle and then work from there.”

“I have trouble arguing with that,” Tails said, flicking both his tails, then snapped his fingers. “Oh, hold on a minute! I have something I’ve been working on to try and help with this kind of thing!”

He scampered off into his workshop, and Silver shrugged before drinking some cocoa.

A minute or so later, Tails came back with an odd-looking contraption.

“This is a recent project!” Tails explained, flicking some switches, and a little generator thingummy began to spin faster and faster with an ascending whiiiiir sound. “Aaand… there we go!”

Silver leaned in to see what was going on.

“...so, what does it do, exactly?” he asked.

“It detects inconsistencies in the fabric of space and time!” Tails explained, both his namesake tails flicking back and forth. “I got the idea after Sonic told me about this one time where I never met him and I ended up making myself cyborg tails. And this other time where I was a pirate. And, well, all the other times we’ve messed with that kind of thing… anyway, it detects where parallel lines of time are resonating with our own timeline, and identifies the points where our own history is being driven off course, because a different world is leaking into our own through a micro-hole to a universe only a few picometres in the ana or kata direction.”

Silver frowned.

“I’m not exactly an expert on temporal mechanics, but that sounds extremely specific,” he said. “How could you possibly identify those?”

“Well, it was easy enough once I had a big enough sample set,” Tails shrugged. “Which took about a month. Anyway, uh… okay… there we go!”

He pointed to the screen. “See here? Your personal timeline intersects with Sonic’s timeline in about a week, and you’re carrying one of the Chaos Emeralds at the time. The… yellow one, I think.”

Silver rummaged in his quills, and brought out a blue Chaos Emerald. “The blue one, actually.”

“That must be it!” Tails declared. “You need to bring the yellow one instead, because otherwise you and Sonic are going to be trying to go Super with two blue Emeralds and no yellow one. Once you’ve done that, that should fix the timeline until the next time it breaks.”

“Huh,” Silver mused, draining the last of his cocoa. “I guess that makes sense… I’d better go and find the yellow one instead. And work out what to do with the few weeks I’ll get to enjoy being in a non post apocalypse.”

Tails gave him a thumbs-up. “No problem! This just shows the value of my P.L.O.T. hole detector!”

#miles tails prower #silver the hedgehog #sonic the hedgehog #time travel #bad puns

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acourtofinkandpapyrus · 7 months

Text

A Flower With Petals of Flame: Part Twelve (Eris x Reader)

Warnings: Trauma and betrayal O.O

Part eleven Part thirteen

Tag list: Open

Y/N and Eris are struggling to go back to normal, and Eris and Sam still don't like each other.

Sorry I'm not keeping up with posting! I've been having trouble sitting down and writing, and my motivation is waning 😭

Maybe it was petty, but I didn’t care. I was quiet, a smile on my face that I didn’t feel the whole time we got ready, and still once we made it into the nearby forest.

“And you’re absolutely fine?” Eris questioned again as he followed me through the forest.

Sam had taught me long ago how to find the almost invisible traces he left if I ever needed to find him. And sure enough, I found them here.

“Again, why wouldn’t I be? Nothing bad happened.” I say, and I feel a twinge of guilt for not being honest with him.

But I need his help, and I do not need him storming off in a huff and leaving me alone to figure this out.

So I continued to lie.

I don’t know what would happen if he actually figured out what was wrong before I told him, but I didn’t really want to know.

All my years in the afterlife, I never found anyone I cared for as much as I had Eris. It wasn’t like I was waiting for him, but I had never found someone I could truly be myself with besides him.

It hurt too much to remember that he’s not interested, that we were just friends.

But it is enough for me.

If I can keep my damn emotions in check that is.

Eventually I found the old withered cabin Sam must be staying in. Eris made to just stride in the front door, but I grabbed him by the collar of his shirt. “Are you trying to die?” I ask him sharply.

He gives me a baffled look, and I roll my eyes, using my magic to open the door from a distance.

A flurry of arrows rained down in the doorway, and Eris paled.

“You seriously weren't expecting him to have defenses up?” I ask, a brow raising in question.

Eris grimaced, “Do you?”

I nod. “Not so violent or obvious, but you work with what you have.”

“Wow. Rude.” Sam said from one of the trees above us, and I snorted as Eris’s head swiveled back and around, trying to find him in the trees.

Sam gracefully landed on the ground, and I could tell Eris was highly unnerved.

I on the other hand chuckled, moving to give my friend a hug. “I’m guessing you haven’t figured out how to use that thing we stole yet, have you?” I tease a bit, pulling away after a moment.

I could feel Eris willing me to look at him like a physical string, but I ignored it.

He sighed, obviously already tired of me. “No, I haven’t. Though, from the research I’ve done, I found it’s called an Astral, and is somehow linked to the Astrei.” He said, a slight edge to his tone.

I stiffened. In my small group of trusted friends in afterlife, Sam and Asterin were the only two who hadn’t had direct contact with the Asteri in some way, so they still only had a faint clue as to what they could do.

“We’ll have to be careful then.” I murmur, more to myself than to him.

What we’ve been working at for years was to put a stop to the Asteri. The last thing we needed was them showing up here where no one was ready for a battle.

It wouldn’t be a battle, it would be a massacre. The thought hit me like an arrow, making me wince.

“Let’s see it then.” Eris said, a bit impatiently.

Sam glared at him. “You’re not in charge here.” Sam gritted out, and I rolled my eyes.

“Both of you cut it the fuck out.” I snapped, and Eris seemed taken aback. Sam was used to this me though, and shrugged.

Letting Sam lead us through the remaining traps, we all took a seat at the kitchen table, if you could call the rotting piece of wood even that.

The Astral was now sitting in the middle of the table, and I examined it, prodding it with my magic.

I could scent both of my friends' agitation and finally growled, “If you two are going to be pissy and beat your chests, can you do it where it’s not breaking my concentration?”

Sam must have shot Eris a look as he rises, because Eris growls as he watches Sam leave.

“That included you.” I say, not taking my eyes off of the Astral.

Eris shifted uncomfortably. “You’re upset with me.” He says plainly, and I stiffen.

“Yes.” I say, sighing as I temporarily give up on studying the Astral. I tilt my head as I look at him, letting him see my displeasure.

“What-”

A crash makes me shoot to my feet. Eris and I give each other only one look before we’re both sprinting out the front door to find Sam holding a dagger against someone's neck.

Azriel’s neck.

Our eyes meet and I watch his face flicker to surprise and then hurt as he sees who I’m with.

“Sam, let him go.” I hiss, storming over and leaving Eris behind me.

Sam raised an eyebrow, quickly taking the knife away and stepping back, but still eyeing him cautiously. “Another friend of yours?” He asked, and Azriel eyed him also, sizing up this human who had gotten the drop on him.

My lip twitched up in a smirk as I thought about how everyone would tease Az for letting a human sneak up on him.

Sam wasn’t just any human though.

Any semblance of a smile fled from my face as Azriel turned his gaze onto me. “Y/N, what’s going on here?”

He was still used to me being sweet and pliant. So he wasn’t expecting me to roll my eyes, sticking my hands in my pockets and say, “I don’t know Azriel, maybe you should keep a closer eye on family members.”

His eyes widened, nostrils flaring slightly as he realized who exactly Erica was.

The cool mask he usually wore was cracked, and I took that moment of him being unsure to say, “I’m trying to fix things, and the last thing I need is you and my brother interfering right now.”

His face snapped into it’s cool unbothered state. “But you need him?” Azriel half growled, his eyes burrowing into me.

My shoulders straightened. I was not letting fucking Azriel make me back down. I had faced the Asteri and won, my brother’s friend was like a goddamned angry puppy in comparison.

“Well, maybe it’s-” Eris started, but shut up when I shot him a glare.

“Contrary to popular opinion-” I say, turning my head back to Azriel who only had a glimmer of shock in his hazel eyes. “Eris can be helpful, nice even.”

Azriel studied me carefully. “What happened to you?”

I sigh. I relax slightly as I run my hand through my hair. “I was always like this Az. I’m sure you remember dear old dad?” I ask, looking up at him.

His eyes darted to Sam and Eris, as if waiting for them to leave.

Both of them had heard this story before.

Azriel, realizing no one was going to leave, tilted his head slightly, as if to say, Of course.

“I wasn’t allowed to be anything other than what everyone saw. The pretty lady of night who was as harmless as a dove. That was never who I really was, but I had to hide who I was because of my father.” As I spoke, I saw Azriel’s gaze darken.

“You could have told us. You could have been yourself around us.”

His voice was angry, and I shouldn’t blame him, I really shouldn’t.

But my day was already shit, and he wasn’t fucking listening.

“When were we ever in a room where my father, or someone loyal to my father wasn’t also in there?” I ask, staring at him.

“We are going home.” He snarled, walking up and attempting to grab my arm.

I say attempting because Sam was right back at him with the dagger and Eris stepped in front of me, protecting us with a wall of fire.

“It looks like no one is going anywhere for awhile.” Eris said with a smug smile.

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flightlessangelwings · 1 year

Text

Trust and Intuition Chapter 1- The Vigilante

Din Djarin x fem!reader (no use of y/n)

Word count- 3.2k

Warnings- set between seasons 1 and 2, canon typical violence, action, suspense, protective!Din, badass!reader

Notes- While this chapter doesn’t have smut, my blog is still 18+ only so minors please do not interact! This is a rewrite of the very first Mando fic I ever wrote! And boy did I realize how choppy my writing used to be as I was editing and reworking this lol! But this will be 4 parts to this series and then some sequel fics as well so we've got a big story here! The planet here, Dria, is one I made up. Updates on Mondays. Enjoy and let me know what you think!

Feel free to follow s my update blog and turn on post notifications to stay up to date on when I post! @flightlessangelwings-updates

The Mandalorian sat in the cockpit of the Razor Crest and sighed. His new mission was simple in theory, but daunting in reality: find where this child is from and return him home. He stared back at the baby as he found himself wondering where in the galaxy he should start. The child just stared back at him and smiled widely. The pair stared at each other for a few moments in a comfortable silence before the Mandolorian spoke.

“We’ll figure this out, buddy,” he assured the baby, who giggled in response. As he stared at the little creature with affection, Mando remembered a planet that was renowned for its vast library and research. “That’s as good a place as any to start,” he sighed to himself as he set a course, “Dria.”

The trip there was quiet and uneventful; everyone in this part of the galaxy seemed to keep to themselves, which was completely fine with the Mandalorian. The Maker truly looked out for him this time as no one bothered him as he landed his ship in a dock on the outskirts of the capital city. From above, Mando could see several different climates on the planet, but the capital was a bustling spot of green and life in the middle of a desert region. Buildings lit up the landscape and the nearby sea reflected the bright sun that beamed down on the people there. Further into the desert and the outskirts, old ruins covered the landscape.

It felt peaceful.

The child babbled and watched as Mando gathered his weapons and prepared for the trek out, “Ready kid?” he asked as he settled him into his pram. Mando gently stroked the baby’s cheek once and tilted his helmet with affection as his foundling looked up at him in awe, “Come on.”

Dria’s capital city was bustling with life. Traders worked in the large market in the center of town, and there were libraries on every corner. Education was obviously highly important in this society as a school was almost always in sight. The Mandalorian spent most of the morning browsing around the libraries for any information on the child’s species, but with no luck.

“I’m looking for any information on a rare species,” Mando asked one of the scholars at the third library he visited as he laid his hands on the counter. The child stayed at his side in his pram, quietly looking around at the sights that Dria had to offer.

She glanced down at the child and studied him for a few moments, but obviously was unfamiliar with what he spoke of, “I think what you’re looking for is in the archives at the royal palace,” she suggested, “That’s where the most lucrative information is kept.”

“Well, I guess it’s the palace then,” he told the child with a heavy sigh. Having no other options, the Mandalorian went to the large palace on the top of the hill and asked for an audience with the king. The palace guards and advisors scrambled: what does a Mandalorian want with the king?

“Mandalorian, the king will see you now,” a guard called Mando’s attention just as he was about to give up and leave. He nodded without a word and followed the guard into the main audience chamber.

It was a lavish room filled with old weapons as decor on the walls and the best woven rugs on the floors. The only decor that stood out was the large tapestry with the crescent moon and three stars symbol: obviously the symbol of Dria. For how much it was decorated, the room itself was mostly bare. A few tables lined the walls, a few bookshelves littered the walls, and the large throne sat elevated in the center of the room. On that throne, sat the king, dressed in all black topped with a dark silk cape.

“I am King Vero Alcyron of Dria,” he spoke in an authoritative yet smooth voice, “But you already knew that.” The king had an imposing presence that commanded the attention of a room. He could be considered classically handsome and he was tall; one would find him charming upon first meeting. Yet, there was something about him that Mando instantly didn’t trust, he just couldn’t quite figure out why. Perhaps it was because he held a vague resemblance to someone…

Mando gave a small nod, but said nothing yet. He stood tall with his arms crossed in front of him.

“What brings a Mandalorian all the way out here to my humble little planet?” Vero stood and stepped down to level with the Mandalorian, “What could my archives possibly have that would be of interest to you?” his eyes dropped down to the child for a moment before meeting Mando’s visor once more.

“I’m looking for answers,” he stated simply.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific than that,” the king scoffed.

Mando chose his words carefully, “This creature,” he gestured to the baby reluctantly, hating having to draw attention to him, “I’ve never seen one like him before and I need to know more.”

The king sneered, “I thought your duty was only to capture targets, not ask questions, Mandalorian.”

“I have been tasked with something more with this one,” the words rolled off his tongue easily. When it came to the safety of the child, Mando had no hesitation. There were only a few he trusted, and this king was not one of them. Omitting information came easy when the child was on the line.

“I’m intrigued,” Vero paused for a moment as a huff left his lips, “I’ll grant you access to the palace library, but I need you to do something for me first. Nothing comes for free after all.”

The Mandalorian sighed quietly; of course it wouldn’t be this easy, “What do you need?”

“There’s a vigilante running around causing havoc in my city,” King Vero started.

“And you need this vigilante taken care of,” Mando guessed the end of his sentence.

“Yes and no,” the king paced, “I need him brought to me alive. You see, not only has he stolen from me and started riots in my streets,” he took a few steps towards the bounty hunter as he tapped his fingers together, “But he’s also kidnapped my queen. I need to know what he’s done with her,” his voice lowered to no more than a growl.

“Understood,” Mando said simply before he turned to leave, not having any interest at all in the king’s affairs. The baby’s pram followed close behind, never leaving his caretaker’s side.

“Alive, Mando!” Vero called to his back. His eyes narrowed as he watched the armored figure walk away and a dark smirk lit up his face.

You navigated your way through the busy plaza with your small embroidered duffle bag strapped tightly against your body. A hood covered your head, you wore goggles to cover your eyes and a mask with a voice changer covered the lower half of your face. Your identity was completely concealed. No one paid you any mind as you kept your head down and ducked around anyone you passed by. The only time you let your presence known was to help a woman that was being heckled by an unruly customer, and then went right back to your anonymity.

You came up to a stand and made a purchase quickly before you moved on, your purchase safely tucked in your bag. You took a few steps before you had a strange feeling, like you were being watched. As you looked over your shoulder, you noticed who was watching you: a Mandalorian. A short gasp escaped your lips as you turned to run, knowing instantly that he was here for you.

“Shit,” you cursed under your breath as you weasled your way out of the crowded part of the plaza. In the back of your mind, you knew it was only a matter of time before the king would send someone after you. He didn’t exactly approve of your presence in his city, especially since it made his citizens question his authority. You didn’t look behind you, but you knew he was still on your tail.

When you turned around a corner to a quiet alley, you almost ran directly into the Mandalorian. Without a word, he reached out to grab your arm, but you slipped back before his hand closed on you. In one swift movement, you flung your bag into the shadows and pulled out two small staffs. You were determined not to go down without a fight, even if you knew what the outcome would be. As you readied your stance, you noticed the pram at the Mandalorian’s side and the little green creature with wide eyes and a soft gasp escaped your lips.

The Mandalorian stood his ground and waited for you to make the first move, and it didn’t go unnoticed by him that you paused upon noticing the child. You exhaled before you lashed out at him with your batons. He ducked and countered with a knife. The alley was quiet, save for the clangs of your weapons as you parried with the bounty hunter. You groaned under your mask as you quickly realized you exerted more energy than he did, and you knew your disadvantage quickly.

After studying your movements, Mando got the advantage and knocked you off your feet. He was actually impressed how well you fought and held your ground until this point. You even managed to get a few hits in too: something not everyone could say. With a grunt you hit the ground hard, and the bounty hunter kicked your weapons away from you.

As you collided with the ground, your head hit the hard floor and your goggles shattered. You strained to push yourself up to a sitting position, and with a sigh you pulled your goggles off of your face. Your head throbbed, but you got lucky that your mask hit the ground and not your head directly.

Mando watched as you took a few deep breaths before you raised your hands up in surrender. He took a pair of cuffs out and locked your arms behind your back before he dragged you to your feet. The child watched with a soft coo as the fight ended, although he didn’t seem worried about you as a threat for some reason.

“Wait,” your voice sounded normal, the voice modulator in your mask must have broken when you hit the ground. You cursed to yourself; that would make things harder when he got you back to the palace.

“I’m taking you in,” he said simply.

“Just wait,” you said breathlessly, tired from your spar. This made him stop in his tracks. “Just do me one favor. Please,” you begged, left with no options than to plead with your captor.

The Mandalorian just stared at you, unsure of what to say. It was definitely bold of his target to ask anything of him. It wouldn’t be the first time, but Mando had no interest in what you had to say; you were just like any other bounty he captured before.

“Please,” you started, “This is important. Just take my bag to the temple Lux ruins on the outside of the city,” desperation lined your voice, “I promise it’s not a trap.”

He looked into your eyes and saw the genuine concern in them. He also heard the pain in your voice, which wasn’t the voice he was expecting to hear. Suddenly, you seemed different than the other faceless targets before. Suddenly, Mando was more interested in your story. His grip on your arm loosened slightly as something in his head told him to trust you.

“I can pay you,” you added in a last effort to get the bounty hunter to comply with your request, “You have a kid there right? Then you understand…”

That snapped him out of his thoughts as he glanced over at the child.

“In my pocket here,” you nodded your head to your right. Mando stared at you for a moment, and as if you read his thoughts you added, “I know when I’ve been defeated. I’m not going to try anything. These cuffs are pretty tight anyway,” you added with a dry laugh.

The bounty hunter tightened his grip on your arm as he reached for your pocket. Right at the top, he felt the credits you mentioned. He looked into your eyes again as he pulled them out before he led you back to the palace with the child’s pram following loyally behind.

Neither of you spoke again after that.

The large doors of the grand hall opened to let in the Mandalorian and his catch. Your arms were still bound behind you and a strong hand held you tightly. You held yourself tall and wore a fierce look in your eyes, the only part of your face visible.

King Vero sat on his throne and watched the two of you walk in alone; the pram that held the child was noticeably absent. A dark smile graced his face when he saw what the bounty hunter had brought him, “Excellent work, Mandalorian,” he spoke as he walked towards the center of the room to meet you.

Mando simply bowed his head slightly as he released his grip on you. Uninterested in what the king had to say, he turned to a steward behind him for his payment. Ignoring the Mandalorian behind you, you stared at the king with a fierce look, as if you tried to stab him with your gaze alone.

“Did the vigilante say anything, Mandalorian?” Vero’s voice called his attention.

He turned slightly back towards the voice, “Didn’t say a word.”

Under your mask, a smile flashed across your face, but you were careful not to let it know in your eyes. Though left with no other options, you were grateful that your gamble to trust the Mandalorian paid off… at least for now. In your eyes, all you let show was hate and rage directed at the king that now stood directly in front of you.

“Where have you taken her, scum?” King Vero’s voice was but a growl as he grabbed you by your collar.

With your voice modulator broken, you knew your voice would give your identity away. Instead, you chose to answer with action and headbutted the king, hitting him directly on the nose. His body flew back as he lost his footing and his guards shouted and aimed their blasters at you. Mando didn’t move, however, and under his helmet he smirked to himself. There was definitely something about the king he did not trust, even if he couldn’t figure out exactly why. He took the distraction as an opportunity to slip out of the room with his payment unnoticed.

King Vero raised his arms up, “Lower your weapons,” he ordered as he touched his hand to his face, now coated in blood that dripped from his nose. The guards obediently did as they were told. He sauntered up to you and took your masked chin in his hands. He studied your eyes for a moment before he spoke, “No one looks at me with that much open rage,” his voice was low so that only you could hear him, “Maybe some time in the dungeon will make you more amenable to conversation.”

You understood the threat in his voice, and knew exactly what his words meant. You sighed as the guards hauled you out of the grand room. The only hope you had was that the Mandalorian was a man of his word and would go where you asked him to. What lay there was more important to you than your life anyway. As long as that was safe, then you were at peace with your situation.

When the Mandalorian got back to his ship, the child was there waiting for him. He greeted his caregiver at the door with a wide smile. Mando put his bags down and scooped the child up into his arms.

“Sorry I was longer than I thought,” he told the child in a soft tone, “But I brought you something to eat.” Mando had a bad feeling about King Vero, and opted to leave the child on the Razor Crest before he took you back. There was something about the way he leered at the child that set him on edge, and he decided the kid would be safer here until he got back.

The child cooed as he grabbed a hold of the Mandalorian’s arm, happy to see him again. Mando carried the baby across the ship and set him down at a little table. He sat a small bowl in front of his foundling before he sat down opposite him.

As he watched the baby gleefully eat, his eyes drifted to the pile behind him. On top of that pile lay the embroidered bag he took from you after your fight. Mando was so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t notice the child stopped eating and just looked up at him. He felt the gaze of those big, wide eyes and it shook him out of his trance. The two stared at each other for a few minutes, and seemed to have a conversation without any words.

After several moments, the Mandalorian sighed, “Come on,” he said as he reached for the child and headed for the door. He also picked up the duffel bag on the way out.

Under the cover of night, the bounty hunter went on foot to the edge of the vast city with your bag slung over his shoulder, and the child nestled secretly in his pram. The further away he got from the center of the city, the quieter the area became. The warm air of the desert faded into a crisp evening in the sand. He kept his stance tense, ready for anything that may jump out of the shadows.

As he stood on a small cliff on the city’s border, Mando focused a scanner to look for life in the ruins that you spoke of. It appeared to be an old temple, maybe jedi. Lux, he remembered, was what you called it. He still wasn’t sure why he was out here in the first place; maybe it was the look in your eyes, a look that whatever was here was more important than your life.

And he knew that feeling all too well.

He gave a quick glance down at the child before he went back to scanning the terrain. To the naked eye, there was nothing there. However, Mando could see about a dozen heat signatures hidden within the ruins. They were all small, and none appeared to carry any weapons.

“Strange,” he thought out loud before he moved to enter the ruins. The child followed close behind, in his pram, and Mando had his blaster ready in case of danger. However he was confident that whatever was here did not pose any threat. Something in the back of his mind made him very sure of that.

Out of the peripherals of his vision, Mando noticed movement; someone was watching him. Careful not to startle, he kept still, and watched as the figure slowly crept out of the shadows. It caught the bounty hunter off guard when he realized it was a child, no older than 11 he guessed.

“A kid…?” he breathed.

What had the Mandalorian stumbled upon this time?

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roboneco · 28 days

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Who sent the email to Sam?

It was "from Jon" as Sam said, or at the very least it seemed like that. It is only a name. Could be "him". Could be fake. But why the name Jon, specifically?

First, all we know about the email is that it was sent with a name, an address, and from an internal email. The name and address being of Gerry specifically, and not of Gertrude because she's not who Sam asked for. That's it.

Here's where I got confused. Why exactly did Sam ask Gerry about the magnus institute?? From this alone, this shouldn't occur to him. Maybe he researched the name and ,as he claimed then, found a list of the kids who were there.

But...well... while Sam is competent & of course he was always obsessed with the institute after what happened to him....if he had a way to find the list himself, do you think he would have waited until someone sent him an email to go look for answers??

Of course not! He'd have already checked every single name on the list! Or at least looked for better leads than just begging people to trauma dump on him. I think someone else gave him the list. Or really the idea to ask about the list.

(I for some reason can't upload pictures so I'll settle for copy pasting the parts I want).

SAM: Right. Of course. I was wondering if you knew anything about the Magnus Institute?

SAM: I was on one of their gifted kids programs and – um – I got hold of a list of a few of the other kids, and thought it might be nice if we could get in contact, swap stories and that…

GERTRUDE: I see. Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t think Gerry can help you –

GERRY: (casually) Yeah, I barely remember any of it.

SAM: Oh, so you were a candidate?

To me it sounds like Sam was winging it. He hesitated before mentioning the list as if he wasn't sure it existed. he then seems almost surprised when Gerry confirms he was in the institute.

My guess is he never saw the list! My guess is whoever sent Sam the email had heard about his connection to the institute, and sent him a lead vague enough not to cause suspicion to who may have sent it & THEN personally planted in his head the idea that the lead & institute were connected.

Now, who do we know that: knows of the name Jon, interested in the magnus institute, and Sam trusts enough to listen to their advice about something he already wanted to do?

Bingo. It is Celia. Celia is the one who sent the Jon email & I have more proof.

1- this exchange right after leaving Gerry's house:

SAM: …Thanks for coming with me, Celia. I know we’ve only been working together a few weeks.

CELIA: Hey, it was my idea, remember?

hm? Your idea you say. good to know, bestie!

2- it makes sense for her to use any name really. I don't think it matters. But we should remember that when she listened to her first case (by Chester) right after that Sam got his email. Literally in the same episode.

3- she was in a podcast with Georgie in this world (as far as Sam & google know at least) so it makes sense for her to be able to search & find the list!!

4- this is weak but well.... She works in the OIAR... She has an internal email and could make another one (or hack her way through or something).

I am sure there are other things that I just can't remember right now but anyway that leaves some questions

Why did she take the painting?

Why Gerry? I understand how she could find the list but why choose him? I doubt either Melanie or Georgie mentioned him before. Was it random? Plot reasons? Or maybe her target wasn't Gerry, but Gertrude.

She could know about Gertrude. She was the last archivist after all. But she wants a reason to go without someone suspecting her personally. So after some research (stalking) figures out she has a roommate. And hey would you look at that. The guy's name is in the list of kids experimented on by the magnus institute. And oh? Who is also on the list? Her new coworker. Now isn't that a funny coincidence! It would be a shame if someone were to.... Maybe.... Use this opportunity for totally, definitely ethical reasons.....such as sending Sam a little email & connecting him with an old friend!

I think of this because Celia is the one who asked Gerry if he lives alone. She directed the conversation to ask about Gigi.

Anyways I had maaaannny more thoughts about this. Alas, I am tired & going to bed.

Have I mentioned that Celia lives I'm my head rent free. Sorry, wanted to say it, in case it wasn't obvious.

#the magnus protocol #tmagp #tmagp theory #celia ripley #samama khalid #sam khalid #This should have been posted along time ago #But I needed to articulate my thoughts #Into something semi comprehendable #The Magnus protocol theory

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lingthusiasm · 2 months

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Transcript Episode 90: What visualizing our vowels tells us about who we are

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm episode ‘What visualizing our vowels tells us about who we are'. 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 show notes page.

[Music]

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

Lauren: I’m Lauren Gawne. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about plotting vowels. But first, we have a fun, new activity that lets you discover what episode of Lingthusiasm you are. Our new quiz will recommend an episode for you based on a series of questions.

Gretchen: This is like a personality quiz. If you’ve always wondered which episode of Lingthusiasm matches your personality the most, or if you are wondering where to start with the back catalogue and aren’t sure which episode to start with, if you’re trying to share Lingthusiasm with a friend or decide which episode to re-listen to, the quiz can help you with this.

Lauren: This quiz is definitely more whimsical than scientific and, unlike our listener survey, is absolutely not intended to be used for research purposes.

Gretchen: Not intended to be used for research purposes. Definitely intended to be used for amusement purposes. Available as a link in the show notes. Please tell us what results you get! We’re very curious to see if there’re some episodes that turn out to be super popular because of this.

Lauren: Our most recent bonus episode was a chat with Dr. Bethany Gardner, who built the vowel plots that we discuss in this episode.

Gretchen: This is a behind-the-scenes episode where we talked with Bethany about how they made the vowel charts that we’ve discussed, how you could make them yourself if you’re interested in it, or if you just wanna follow along in a making-of-process style, you can listen to us talk with them.

Lauren: For that, you can go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm.

Gretchen: As well as so many more bonus episodes that let us help keep making the show for you.

[Music]

Gretchen: Lauren, we’ve talked about vowels before on Lingthusiasm. At the time, we said that your vocal tract is basically like a giant meat clarinet.

Lauren: Yeah, because the reeds are like the vibration of your vocal cords – and then you can manipulate that sound in that clarinets can play different notes and voices can make many different speech sounds. They’re both long and tubular.

Gretchen: We had some people write in that said, “We appreciate the meat clarinet – the cursed meat clarinet – but we think the vocal tract is a little bit more like a meat oboe or a meat bassoon because both of these instruments have two reeds, and we have two vocal cords. So, you want to use something that has a double vocal cord.”

Lauren: I admit I maybe got the oboe and the bassoon confused. I thought that the oboe was a giant instrument. Turns out, the oboe is about the size of a clarinet. Turns out, I don’t know a lot about woodwind instruments.

Gretchen: I think that one of the reasons we did pick a clarinet at the time is because we thought, even if it’s not exactly the same, probably more people have encountered a clarinet and have a vague sense of what it looks like than an oboe, which you didn’t really know what it was. I had to look up how a bassoon works. We thought this metaphor might be a little bit clearer.

Lauren: Yes.

Gretchen: However.

Lauren: Okay, there’s an update.

Gretchen: I have now been doing some further research on both the vocal tract and musical instruments, and I’m very pleased to report that we, in fact, have an update. Your vocal tract is not just a meat clarinet, not just a meat bassoon, it is, in fact, most similar to a meat bagpipe.

Lauren: Oh, Gretchen, you found something more disgusting. Thank you?

Gretchen: I’m sorry. It’s even worse.

Lauren: Right. I guess the big bag – a bagpipe is made of a bag and pipes – the bag acts like your lungs. The lungs send air up through your vocal folds as they vibrate to make the sound. You do have a bag of air, just like in the human speech apparatus.

Gretchen: That’s a good start. What I didn’t know until I was doing some research about bagpipes – because the lengths that I will go to for this podcast have no bound – is that a bagpipe actually has reeds inside several of the pipes that extrude from the bag.

Lauren: Because there’s multiple sticking out in different spots.

Gretchen: There’s the one that you blow into, which doesn’t have a reed, but then the other ones, there’s the one with the little holes on it that you twiddle your fingers on and make the different notes, and then there’s also some other pipes up at the top. They also have reeds in them. Those reeds are just tuned from the length to a specific level. You know when you hear someone start playing the bagpipes and there’s this drone? [Imitates bagpipe sound] The sort of single note? That’s because of the note those reeds are tuned to in the other pipes that don’t have the holes in them.

Lauren: Ah, they’re not just decorative.

Gretchen: Right. They have this function of giving this harmony to the melody that’s being played on the little pipe with the holes in it, which is technically known as the “chanter,” but this is not a bagpipe podcast despite appearances to the contrary. We will link to some people on YouTube telling you more than you ever wanted to know about how bagpipes work if you want to go down that rabbit hole. But if you had an extra pair of hands or two, or a couple people helping you sort of reaching around your shoulders – this metaphor’s getting weirder by the minute – and you cut a bunch of little holes in the other sticking-up-the-top pipes –

Lauren: You would have less droning, and you could play multiple melodies or multiple notes at the same time. Hm.

Gretchen: At the same time. With this, you could make a bagpipe play something very close to vowels.

Lauren: Ah, cool!

Gretchen: This is so cursed.

Lauren: I mean, yes. Before we even talk about making it out of meat – it’s deeply, deeply cursed – it kind of reminds me of this instrument from the early 20th Century called the “voder.”

Gretchen: Would I pronounce that “vo-DUH” or “vo-DER”?

Lauren: With the R at the end.

Gretchen: Okay, “voder.”

Lauren: Thank you, convenient rhotic speaker here.

Gretchen: I’m glad to be of service.

Lauren: It kind of looked like something between a little stenographer’s keyboard and a piano, and with a whole bunch of finger keys and foot pedals you could manipulate it to make something that sounds like human speech.

Gretchen: Ah, wow. And this is pretty old?

Lauren: It’s from like the 1930s. There’s a little, short video snippet in one of the links in the show notes.

Gretchen: You could play these chords, and also have some consonants somehow, and end up with something that sounds like a synthetic human voice.

Lauren: Yeah. A lot of the early computer speech synthesis, as well, was actually quite good at making things that sounded like vowels. It turns out a lot of the consonant things are a little bit harder to do, but the very basic sound of vowels, as you say, you could play it with just a few bagpipes very carefully re-engineered.

Gretchen: I guess if you’re looking at instruments that can play multiple notes at the same time, we could also say that the human is like a meat piano.

Lauren: Right.

Gretchen: Or at least you could make vowels on a piano by doing a sufficiently complicated sequence of weird chords, like notes at the same time.

Lauren: I mean, we also have an instrument that’s known as the human voice. Humans are very good at singing. We possibly don’t have to engineer all these cursed things to get to that.

Gretchen: Okay. Let’s talk about the human voice as itself. We start with the vocal cords or folds. The tenseness or looseness of the vocal folds is what produces pitch. Then they go through the throat, which we can think of as one tube. Then they go through the mouth cavity, which we can think of as a second tube. Each of these tubes bounces around the sound in different ways to add two additional notes – one from the throat, one from the mouth – onto the sound that’s coming out, which is what makes it sound like a vowel to us.

Lauren: You can map the physics of air moving through the throat space and the mouth space as it comes out to pay attention to the differences between different sounds.

Gretchen: If you’re taking a physics diagram or a diagram of the acoustic signal and saying, “Which pitches are coming out of the mouth, which frequencies are coming out of the mouth that are being produced by these two chambers?” then you can see what those are, and you can do stuff with those diagrams once you’ve made them.

Lauren: The seeing bit is spectrograms, which we looked at in an earlier episode and played around with making different sounds and how they look in this way of visualising it where you have all these bands of strength and information that you can see vary depending on the different sounds that you made. That’s because of those different ways that we manipulate and play around with the air as its coming out of our mouth.

Gretchen: The first band that comes out is just the pitch of the voice itself. The lowest one is what we hear as the pitch of the sound, but I can make /aaaa/ and I can make /iiii/. Those are the same set of pitches but on different vowels.

Lauren: There’s something more than pitch happening there.

Gretchen: There’s something more than pitch happening. There’s two more notes – sounds – that come out at the same time. If the throat chamber is large because the tongue is fairly high and far forward, then this sound that’s the next one after the pitch, which was call “F1,” is low. Then if the mouth is quite open, and the lips are spread, the mouth chamber is quite small, so that sound is quite high, so the next sound, “F2,” is high pitched. If you put your tongue far forward, and your lips spread, you get /i/. The first of these dark bands is low; the second of them is high. That produces the sound that we hear as /i/. Whereas, by comparison, if we make the sound /u/, the throat chamber is still large because the tongue is quite high, but now, the mouth chamber is big because we have the lips rounding that make it big – /u/. Now, F1 is low, and F2 is also low, and we’re hearing the sound /u/.

Lauren: We have a very clear way of telling from those signals in the spectrogram, if we look at it, the difference between an /i/ and an /u/, even if we can’t hear it, we can see it on the spectrogram. This is where you begin to read spectrograms.

Gretchen: Or if we want to start measuring spectrograms very precisely, we can start doing this. We can also start seeing, okay, is /i/ when I make it the same as the /i/ when you make it?

Lauren: They’re similar enough that we recognise it as the same sound. If we both say, “fleece.”

Gretchen: “Fleece.”

Lauren: You say, /flis/. I say, /flis/.

Gretchen: /pətɛɪtoʊ pətatoʊ/. I think they sound pretty similar.

Lauren: Mine is maybe a little bit higher. I really pushed my tongue forward and up. It’s a very Australian thing to do.

Gretchen: We can actually record some people making all of the vowels and compare their measurements for these two different bands of frequency and see how similar two people’s vowels are to each other.

Lauren: Depending on the quality of your recording, you can see a lot more happening there as well. There’re all the properties that mean that we can tell your voice from my voice, or my voice from someone who has exactly the same accent because we have all these other features. It’s very different to if you record, say, a whistle or one of those tuning forks that people use to tune instruments because they are giving a clean single note.

Gretchen: A pure tone that’s just one frequency, one pitch, not several pitches all at the same time that we then have to smoosh together and interpret as a vowel sound.

Lauren: That’s what gives the human voice its richness. If a human voice sings the same note as a clarinet and an oboe, which are definitely two completely different woodwind instruments, there’s all these extra bits and things in the spectrogram that you can pick up the difference in the quality or just use your ears – also another possibility.

Gretchen: Yeah. If you wanna do detailed acoustic analysis on it – which is kind of fun and can tell us more precise things about the differences between how different people speak, which is neat – then you have this very precise way of measuring it by converting it into a visual graph/chart thing or a vowel plot rather than just listening to someone and being like, “Uh, these sound pretty similar. I dunno. I guess they’re a bit different. How are they different? Hmm.” Sometimes, being able to do it with numbers is easier.

Lauren: In the era before we had computers to create spectrograms and take these measurements, people did use their ear. The best phoneticians had this amazing ability to tell the difference between really, really subtly-similar-but-slightly-different sounds.

Gretchen: And they’re so well trained in being able to hear the difference between “Oh, you’re saying this, and your tongue is a little bit further forward than this other person who’s saying this with their tongue a little bit further back,” but if you’re not very good at hearing tongue position out of sounds, you can also produce some stuff and make the machines tell you some numbers about it, which can be easier with a different type of training.

Lauren: When we talk about the position of the tongue and how open the mouth is, we can use a plot to map where in the mouth these things are happening. That’s called the “vowel space.” We made a lot of silly sounds when we talked about that many episodes ago.

Gretchen: The vowel space goes from /i-ɛ-a/ on one side.

Lauren: That’s all up the front of your mouth, and it’s just going from being more close to more open.

Gretchen: /i/ to /ɛ/ to /a/, but you can through all these subtle gradations between them, and through /u-ɔ-ɑ/ at the back.

Lauren: That’s from all the way up the top at the back to open at the back.

Gretchen: You can draw a diagram of this which is shaped like square that’s been a bit skewed. It’s wider at the top than at the bottom. It’s known as the “vowel trapezoid” because the mouth is not perfectly shaped like a square. The jaw can hinge open.

Lauren: Only so far.

Gretchen: Only so far.

Lauren: Because this represents how you say or articulate these sounds, this is known as “articulatory phonetics.”

Gretchen: But then because you’re articulating a thing that goes into a sound that we can also analyse as the sound itself, these ways that you can articulate things map onto things that show up in the sound itself. Analysing that is called “acoustic phonetics.”

Lauren: Because you’re paying attention to the acoustic properties – the sound properties.

Gretchen: The really nifty thing is that this vowel chart that we’ve made from over 100 years ago, linguists, before they had computers, were like, “Here’s what I think the articulatory properties of the vowels are based on my mouth and my ear and some other people’s mouths and ears.” You can actually map very precisely this acoustic thing. Once we had computers, you can make them correspond to each other in this way that – you hope it works because, obviously, people do understand the vowels, but it actually does work when you start measuring things as well.

Lauren: I had always wondered whether it was just a coincidence that the articulation – where you put your mouth – and the acoustic information about the F1 and F2 with the spectrogram, but explaining it in terms of F1 and F2 are the way you change the shape of your throat and your mouth that leads to these changes in the acoustic signal, you can see how the articulation and the acoustics come together, and you get a similar type of information across both of them.

Gretchen: Absolutely. I think it’s really neat that there’s this relatively straightforward correspondence. There’s also, you know, an F3 that also does other stuff because there’s other more squishy bits of your mouth, and we’re not getting into them.

Lauren: There’s also a bunch of flip-flopping of X- and Y-axes that you need to do that Bethany kindly walked us through in the bonus episode.

Gretchen: Because these diagrams were created in an era before they were doing the computer acoustics. Sometimes, I think about the alternate version of what phonetics would look like if we’d started doing it with computers right away, and how there’s all this analogue stuff that’s residual based on human impressions, and how our vowel charts might be completely rotated if we had just started doing it with computers the whole time.

Lauren: But then we’d have to imagine ourselves standing on our heads to say anything, so I’m glad they are the way they are.

Gretchen: That’s true. When you’re talking about vowels, it’s an interesting challenge with English because there’s lots of different dialects of English, varieties of English, ways of speaking English, and, generally speaking, we’re pretty good at understanding other accents. One of the big factors that accents vary on, though, is the vowels.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: If you’re getting people to record a word list to do some vowel analysis on, what you might wanna do is have them record a bunch of words that all begin and end with the same consonant insofar as possible.

Lauren: Because vowels are very sweet and easily influenced. They’re very easily influenced by the consonants that are next to them. You have to make sure that they’re all kept in line and not influenced by what’s happening around them by giving them all the same context.

Gretchen: They’re very susceptible to peer pressure. You can have people say something like, “beat,” “bet,” “bit,” “bought,” “boot,” all of this stuff between B and T.

Lauren: I learnt to record between H and D: “hid,” “had,” “hoo’d,” “hawed.” Some of those words are less, uh, common – frequent – than others, but again, a really consistent environment.

Gretchen: But this also, obviously, causes problems for when you want to talk about the particular vowels in a given accent or in a given variety because if you go around saying, “Oh, well, the /hoɪd/ vowel” or something like this, how do you know if that’s a Cockney person saying, “hide,” or it’s me saying “hoyed,” or something else because all your consonants are the exact same, and there’s nothing to let you figure out what the original word is.

Lauren: Someone did come up with a solution for this. That person’s name is John Wells.

Gretchen: John Wells is this British phonetician who I’ve never actually met in person, but I feel like I know him because I used to read his blog back when he posted more actively.

Lauren: He used to write his blog in the International Phonetic Alphabet, which means that if you read the IPA, you would be reading it in John Wells’s voice.

Gretchen: You absolutely would be. This was a challenge that I used to set to myself. Sometimes, he also wrote in Standard English orthography, to be fair, but sometimes he would just write a whole blog post in IPA, and you’d be like, “Cool, I guess I’m reading this out loud to myself and hearing John Wells’s accent and speaking it like him,” which was really neat. In the 1980s, John Wells was like, “Hey, it’d be really useful if we had a way to refer to sound changes that happen in different English varieties,” which often happen to – like, all of the times you say the /ɪ/ vowel are a little bit more like this or like that, depending on the accent.

Lauren: I think it was very personally motivated because he was writing a book called “Accents in English.” It gets very difficult in a book, especially, but even in an audio recording, to be like, “the /ɪ/ vowel,” “the /u/ vowel.”

Gretchen: Right. You could use the International Phonetic Alphabet to refer to the specific vowel that people are making. But if you want to say, “People in this area realise this vowel as that, and people in this other area realise the same vowel as something else,” how do you refer to that thing that’s the macro-category of vowel that people would consider themselves to be saying the same word, but the specific way they’re realising it is different? He came up with what he called “the standard lexical sets,” which are now also called, “Wells Lexical Sets,” possibly John Wells’s greatest legacy, which is a bunch of words that are, crucially, easy to distinguish from each other based on the surrounding consonants that you can say when you’re giving a talk – like you can say, “the ‘kit’ vowel,” or “the ‘goose’ vowel,” or “the ‘fleece’ vowel,” and people know that the “kit” vowel refers to the specific sound because there’s no other “keet” word in English that it could be confused with.

Lauren: John Wells was somewhat self-deprecating when he was talking about this, and he was like, “I just kind of came up with it in a week where I had to write this bit of the book, and it’s weird to think that they’re still in use now,” but it was based on years of insight into the different ways different varieties of English realise different vowels and the balance he was trying to strike.

Gretchen: He has this charming blog post from 2010 where he’s like, “Anybody’s welcome to use them. I don’t claim any copyright. Maybe this is my legacy now, I guess.” He does actually put quite a bit of thought into the sets because they’re words that can’t be easily confused for each other. Sometimes, that means the words are a little bit rare. You have “fleece.” You might think, “Well, why not use ‘sheep’ because surely that’s more common. People say that.”

Lauren: But “ship” and “sheep” are very hard to distinguish in some varieties of English.

Gretchen: Right. If you had “sheep,” it could be confused with “ship,” whereas if you have “fleece” and “kit,” there’s no “flice” or “keet” for them to be confused with.

Lauren: Good nonce words to add to your collection.

Gretchen: Thank you. Similarly, for people like me where I make the vowels in “caught,” as in the past tense of “catch,” and “cot,” as in a small bed, the same. If I talk about /cɑt/ and /cɑt/, people are like, “I dunno which one you’re talking about because you say them both the same.” And I’m like, “Great, neither do I.”

Lauren: You mean when you’re talking about /cɑt/ and /cɔt/.

Gretchen: Hmm. Yes, see, you don’t have that “caught/cot merger.”

Lauren: Very easy for me, but it’s much easier to be able to say /θɔt/ and /lɑt/ – much more distinct for me to perceive with you because they don’t have merged equivalents.

Gretchen: “Thought” and “lot” are much more distinct because the consonants are different. You don’t need to be relying only on the vowels. Some of these words are just super fun. Can we read the whole Wells Lexical Sets? There’re not very many of them.

Lauren: Sure. Let’s take turns in going through each of the words.

Gretchen: All right.

Lauren: So, you can hear the differences in the way we pronounce each of these vowels.

Gretchen: /kit/.

Lauren: /kit/.

Gretchen: / dɹɛs/.

Lauren: / dɹɛs/.

Gretchen: / tɹæp/.

Lauren: /tɹæp/.

Gretchen: /lɑt/.

Lauren: /lɑt/.

Gretchen: /stɹʌt/.

Lauren: /stɹʌt/.

Gretchen: /fʊt/.

Lauren: /fʊt/.

Gretchen: /bæθ/.

Lauren: /bɑθ/.

Gretchen: Ooo, very different.

Lauren: We’ll come back to that one.

Gretchen: /klɑθ/.

Lauren: /klɑθ/.

Gretchen: /nɛɹs/.

Lauren: My Australian English speaker in me is already immediately prepared for /nɛːs/.

Gretchen: So, non-rhotic. Very good.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: /flis/.

Lauren: /flis/.

Gretchen: /fɛɪs/.

Lauren: /fɛɪs/.

Gretchen: /pɑm/.

Lauren: /pæm/.

Gretchen: Ooo, very different. /θɑt/.

Lauren: /θɔt/.

Gretchen: Also, very different. We’ll come back to this. /goʊt/.

Lauren: /gəut/.

Gretchen: Bit different. /gus/.

Lauren: /gus/.

Gretchen: /pɹəɪs/.

Lauren: /pɹæɪs/.

Gretchen: Bit different. I have Canadian raising there. We’ll get back to that. /t͡ʃoɪs/.

Lauren: /t͡ʃoɪs/.

Gretchen: /moʊθ/.

Lauren: /mæʊθ/.

Gretchen: Also, we’ll get back to that. /niɹ/.

Lauren: /nɪɑ/.

Gretchen: /skwɛɹ/.

Lauren: /skwɛɑ/.

Gretchen: /stɑɹt/.

Lauren: /stɑːt/.

Gretchen: /nɔɹθ/.

Lauren: /nɔːθ/.

Gretchen: /fɔɹs/.

Lauren: /fɔːs/.

Gretchen: /kjʊɹ/.

Lauren: /kjʊɑ/. I’m only slightly hamming up my Australian English diphthongs there.

Gretchen: That whole set with the Rs where I’m like, “These are just the same sounds, but now there’s an R,” you’re like, “No, these are really different diphthongs.”

Lauren: /kjʊɑ/.

Gretchen: /kjʊɑ/. /kjʊɹ/.

Lauren: Taking you on a journey of my whole mouth.

Gretchen: One thing you could do if you’re trying to compare mine and Lauren’s vowels is you could listen to us saying them and being like, “Yeah, those sound kind of different in some places.” But another thing we could do, is we could draw some diagrams.

Lauren: That’s what we did.

Gretchen: Yes!

Lauren: We were very grateful that Dr. Bethany Gardner – who is a recent PhD in psychology and language processing at Vanderbilt University in Nashville in the USA – took the time to work with us to take recordings of us saying words and plotting the vowels onto a vowel plot.

Gretchen: Now, we can look at our vowel plots and compare our vowels to each other. We have a whole bonus episode with Bethany about how we made these graphs with them. For the moment, let’s just look at them and compare them with each other and say some things about the results.

Lauren: We sent Bethany recordings of us reading the Wells Lexical Sets, much the way we did just then.

Gretchen: Less giggling though.

Lauren: We did record them a little bit more professionally, but they also used some processes to scrape data of equivalent word recordings from episodes of Lingthusiasm using our transcripts – turns out, another use of our transcripts!

Gretchen: Get people to analyse your vowels for you. It’s so cool!

Lauren: You can see the difference between clearly spoken vowels where we’re really focusing on them and then that really compelling influence that other sounds have on vowels that drag them all over the space.

Gretchen: Yeah. I’m looking at the first set of graphs for each of us, which are the Wells Lexical Sets, and my vowels are a lot more consistent in them. When I make /i/ and /ɪ/ and /u/, all the points are quite clustered in one spot – because we said everything several times – but I seem to be hitting quite a consistent target there. Whereas when I look at Bethany’s vowel plot of me from the Lingthusiasm episodes, there’s way more stuff there, and I’m way more spread out. My vowels are less consistent with each other because I’m producing them in several words. They tested several different words. I’m just producing them in running speech where things merge into each other a lot more rather than this very clear word list style.

Lauren: And human ears and brains are so good at disambiguating things that might be very close to each other in the plot, but in a running sentence, we can hear them quite clearly for the words that they are.

Gretchen: Right. My “goose” vowel and my “foot” vowel – /gus/ and /fʊt/ – are almost totally distinct from each other when I’m reading a word list. There’s very little overlap in terms of how I’m saying them. But when I’m saying them in running speech, apparently there’s a lot of overlap because I’m probably saying something like, “Oh, go get the goose,” /gʊs/, rather than /gus/ with that really clear /u/.

Lauren: There’s no other word I’m gonna confuse “goose” with, or even if I did, in context, I’d know what thing you’re expecting me to go get.

Gretchen: Right. Even if I’m saying something like, “dude,” you’re not gonna confuse that for “dud.” I’d be saying them in different contexts.

Lauren: The nice thing is you can see, especially from our clearly spoken word lists, that we are speaking a language where the vowels are in a similar place, but there are some slight differences. You can actually start to get the hang of the differences in the way different varieties of English tend to use the vowel space from this information.

Gretchen: One of the things I noticed about your vowel plot, Lauren – and this is a feature of Australian English – is that your “kit” vowel and your “fleece” vowel are very close to each other, especially in episode speech rather than word list speech.

Lauren: Yeah, “kit” and “fleece,” for me, are both really far forward. You’re using other features like length or tenseness to really disambiguate them. People struggle to do it.

Gretchen: Or just in context. I noticed when I was visiting Australia that people would say things like /bɪːg/, and I’d be like, “Oh, okay, I would say that as /bɪg/.”

Lauren: It’s a pretty classic feature of Australian English. It does remind me of one of the most embarrassing times someone misheard me when I was living in the UK. I was talking about how I used to be on a team with my friends for social netball. This person was not listening that well, and it was a noisy environment, and they thought that I had said, “nipple.”

Gretchen: Oh, no!

Lauren: /nɪpl̩/ and /nɛtbɑl/.

Gretchen: /nɛtbɑl/, /nɛtbɑl/, whereas I think my /ɪ/ and /ɛ/ vowels, my “kit” and “dress” vowels, are pretty distinct from each other. They don’t really overlap.

Lauren: Whereas all of Australian English is really far forward. It tends to be quite high. The British English speaker – I don’t know what sport they thought we play in Australia, but there was a moment of deep confusion.

Gretchen: These are the types of things that you can find out when you get your vowels done the way sometimes people – I think there’s a trend on Instagram right now to get your colours done, you know, find out whether you’re a “winter” or a “soft spring” or something like this.

Lauren: I’m an Australian English “kit”-fronting.

Gretchen: Yeah. What are your vowels? What does this say about where you’re from? Is there anything you noticed about mine?

Lauren: I think, for you, definitely what becomes clear is that “caught/cot merger,” or, as I like to think about it, the “Gawne/gone merger.”

Gretchen: Ah, the “Gawne/gone merger.”

Lauren: I can tell if people have it if my name and the word “gone” sound the same.

Gretchen: The past participle of “go.”

Lauren: It’s very salient for me. The cot/caught merger is so famous, people don’t use the Wells Set terms for it. They just refer to it as “caught/cot.”

Gretchen: But you could also call it the “thought/lot merger” or the “lot/thought merger.” I never know which one goes first because I literally just think of these as being said the same.

Lauren: You can see evidence. We’re not imagining that you’re merging them. You are physically merging them in the vowel space.

Gretchen: I’m literally saying them as the same thing. I was always confused about the “thought” vowel when I was learning the International Phonetic Alphabet because I was like, “I can’t figure out how to make a sound that is somewhere in between this sound in ‘lot’ and ‘thought’ but doesn’t go all the way up to the /oʊ/ in ‘goat’.” It doesn’t feel like there’s anything between them for me. That’s true. The vast majority of Canadians have “thought” and “lot” merged. But unlike at least some Americans, we don’t have them merged low; we have them merged high. I have “thought” and “caught,” and in order to produce the other vowel, I had to actually produce something lower in my throat – like /θɑt/ /cat/ which sounds very American to me – I had to produce this lower sound because there was no space between “thought” and “goat.” They’re very close to each other. In fact, the thing that I wasn’t producing was /ɑ/, the really low one, that sort of dentist sound.

Lauren: Yeah. Movements and mergers can happen in all kinds of different directions. The merging of “cot” and “caught” also explains why it took me a very long time to understand that “podcast” is a pun because it’s meant to be a pun with “broadcast,” and /pɑd/ and /bɹɔːd/.

Gretchen: /pɑdkæst/ and /bɹɑdkæst/. It’s the same vowel for me.

Lauren: Whereas it works as a pun for you. That was very satisfying to learn that’s why that’s meant to be a pun.

Gretchen: The pun that I didn’t get based on my accent – and this is to do with the “price” and “mouth” vowels – I didn’t realise that “I scream for ice cream” was supposed to be a pun.

Lauren: Oh, because the raising that you have in Canada means that it doesn’t work that way, whereas /ɑɪ skɹim fə ɑɪ skɹim/.

Gretchen: Right, you have the same vowel in those – or the same diphthong – but for me, “I scream for ice cream,” those are very different. In “choice” and “price,” I have different vowels than I would have in “choys” and “prize” – if “choys” was a word.

Lauren: “Bok choys” – multiple.

Gretchen: “Bok choys” – yeah, several of them. And “prize.”

Lauren: Returning to “podcast” but moving to the other end of the word, /kɑst // kæst/ as a distinction is so famous in mapping varieties of British English that people talk about /bɑθ // tɹæp/ distinctions all the time.

Gretchen: I hear of it as called the “bath/trap split,” but as you can hear, the “/bæθ // tɹæp/ split,” I just say them both the same.

Lauren: Whereas in Australia, Victorians traditionally would say /kæsl̩/ like “trap,” and people further north and in the rest of the country could say, /kɑsl̩/ –

Gretchen: Like “bath.”

Lauren: So, whether you’re a /kɑsl̩/ or a /kæsl̩/ shows this “bath/trap split” as well, to the point where, in New South Wales, you get the city of “New /kɑsl̩/,” but in Victoria, you have the town of “/kæsl̩/ Main.”

Gretchen: Ooo, this “castle” distinction from the “trap/bath split” – I think sometimes when I’m trying to do a fake British accent, I will just make all of my “traps” and “baths” into /tɹɑps/ and /bɑθs/.

Lauren: Right, okay. You know there’s something happening there, and you haven’t quite landed – because it does vary.

Gretchen: Well, then they’re not different categories for me because it’s all one category, and I push them all forward rather than moving half of them because I don’t know which half to move.

Lauren: I find it very satisfying listening to “No Such Thing as a Fish,” because they talk about the /pɑdkɑst/ or the /pɑdkæst/, and their guests do, depending on whether they’re from Southern England or more in the midlands and north where they tend to say /kæst/ instead of /kɑst/.

Gretchen: I have literally never noticed this distinction. I’ve also listened to many episodes of “No Such Thing as a Fish” because you made me start listening to them back in the day, and I’ve never noticed that they say anything different because it’s just not something I pay attention to.

Lauren: It’s so salient for me as a Victorian English speaker, but I notice it all the time. There would be a really fun mapping variation activity to do listening through to Fish – turns out I just listen to it and don’t get distracted by that too much.

Gretchen: Well, if you want to commission Bethany to make graphs of their vowels, I’m sure that’s an option.

Lauren: I love how Wells’ lexical set has just entered – in many ways, the “bath/trap split,” it means you get all these other terms like “goose fronting,” which is just great as a term.

Gretchen: I love how vivid these words are. Things like “fleece” and “goose” and “goat,” they’re very common animal nouns that are quite vivid.

Lauren: And there’re definitely linguists who have dressed up as Wells Lexical Set items for Halloween. It makes a great group Halloween costume.

Gretchen: Oh my gosh, my favourite one of these was from North Carolina State University. They got the whole department, and they each dressed up as one member of the Wells Lexical Set. Someone was a “kit.” They dressed like a cat. Someone dressed like a goose, and someone dressed like a cloth or a fleece. Then they stood in the positions to create the vowel diagram. They posted a photo on the internet. You can see it. We will link to it. It’s really great.

Lauren: Magic. You and I also once had a project where we plotted the Wells Lexical Set using emoji.

Gretchen: That was your project.

Lauren: I did the making the joke. You did the graphic design. It was a good team project.

Gretchen: Okay, that’s fair. That’s fair. I feel like I remember you being the instigator of this.

Lauren: Shenanigans were shenaniganed.

Gretchen: You can get a goose emoji and a goat emoji, and you can map the vowels in there as well.

Lauren: And “Goose fronting” – because we’re talking about moving the tongue further forward or back or up and down in the vowel space – I have quite fronted vowels as an Australian English speaker for my front vowels. So, “goose” – I’ve already got it quite far forward compared to you. You can see that in the diagrams.

Gretchen: I think my “goose” – my goose is also cooked – my “goose” is also fronted. Because I think Canadian English is also undergoing goose fronting. There’s a lot of different regions that are all simultaneously fronting their geese – no, not their “geese,” fronting their “gooses.”

Lauren: Fronting their “gooses.” I feel like the really stereotypical example is from California, particularly in the lexical item “dude.”

Gretchen: “Dude” – sort of like a surfer pronunciation of “duuude.”

Lauren: “/du̟d/ you’re a fronted /gu̟s/.”

Gretchen: If you compare that with like /dud/, which would be less fronted, /dud/ sounds like you’re more of a fuddy duddy, and /du̟d/ sounds like you’re “so /ku̟l/.”

Lauren: Yeah, I mean, there’re other things happening there as well because I found a paper while researching this where someone looked at 70 years of Received Pronunciation, which is that incredibly stuffy, British, old-fashioned newsreader voice. Apparently, goose fronting is happening in that variety as well.

Gretchen: Oh, so if the Queen was still alive, she’d be fronting her “goose” as well?

Lauren: Quite possibly. Gooses are being fronted all over the place.

Gretchen: All over the English-speaking world. One of the things that can happen if you’re getting your vowel tea leaves read is you can say things about region. Another thing that looking at a vowel plot can do – because vowels just contribute so much to our sense of accent – is it can say things about gender. One of the cool studies that I came across about this is there’re studies of kids. People often assess someone’s gender based on their voice. If someone’s on the phone, you may have an idea about their gender. You may also have an idea of their age. Part of this is based on vocal tract size. Kids’ voices are high pitched because kids’ heads and throats and larynxes are smaller than adults.

Lauren: The cool thing is there’s no gender difference in that until puberty. People who go through a testosterone-heavy puberty tend to grow larger vocal tracts and tend to have deeper pitches. I mean, not in the scheme of things where they’re so completely different. There’s so much overlap. But we’re really tuned into these subtle differences. But before that age, anything that kids are doing different, it’s nothing to do with what’s happening with the meat pipe and everything to do with what’s happening with the social performance of gender, which is to do with your culture.

Gretchen: Even at age 4, when there’s really no physiological difference, age 8 when there’s really no physiological difference, you can see that kids are producing their vowels somewhat differently in a difference that increases with age based on their gender because they’re culturally acquiring “This is what it means to feel like a boy,” “This is what it means to feel like a girl,” and they’re doing gender with their voices even when they don’t have the vocal tract changes reinforcing that yet.

Lauren: Cool.

Gretchen: Yeah. You can see that there are differences at age 4 that increase with age and increase up to age 8 and 12 and 16 and get more distinct from each other. The other thing is, once people get a bit older in teenage-hood and in adulthood, there are gender differences in vocal tract. The general finding with gender differences in vowel plot size – so we’ve been talking about having some vowels be more front or some vowels be more similar to each other, but the overall finding when it comes to gender is roughly that, at least in English-speaking environments, men tend to have all of their vowels more similar to each other, more towards the centre of the space/ Specifically, cis straight men tend to have vowels that are all more towards the centre of the vowel space. Everybody else – so cis, straight women, gay men, lesbians, trans people of all genders, nonbinary people – use way more of the vowel space.

Lauren: Straight men, you’re missing out.

Gretchen: Like, cis straight men are doing this one very specific thing with buying into hegemonic masculinity of vowels where they’re not wearing interesting colours, and they’re not doing interesting vowels.

Lauren: Hmm.

Gretchen: There was one quote from one of the studies that I read where they had one cis straight man who was an anomaly in the list of not doing this very centralised vowel thing, and he was like, “Yeah, sometimes people hear me, and they think I’m gay, which I’m not. I’m just a nerd. I don’t really do that macho stuff.”

Lauren: Aww, it’s nice they asked him.

Gretchen: Yeah. “People just perceive my vowels as whatever. I don’t really care. I’m not trying to do that thing with my vowels.”

Lauren: Fascinating that the social discourse was enough that he had been made aware of it.

Gretchen: Yeah, and that doing anything out of that little man box of the very small set of vowels was enough to get him thinking, “Oh, yeah, well, it’s because I don’t buy into this particularly narrow view of masculinity.”

Lauren: Fascinating. I should say, you flagged English there, but that’s because we have more of this work in English. We need more of this work across the world’s languages. There’s so much to be done about the social dimensions of vowels.

Gretchen: Right. A lot of the early work in, especially, gender and vowels has this very essentialist framework of like, “We found the male vocal tract; we found the female vocal tract.” There’s a recent study by Santiago Barreda and Michael Stuart which I got to see at the Linguistic Society of America last year where they were looking at “What are the vowel differences between genders, and can we actually characterise these more precisely?” They found that the biggest thing that affected vowel spaces was actually related to height. Taller people have more space in their vowels – deeper voices.

Lauren: Makes sense. They’ve got more space for their bigger meat pipe. That’s more of a bassoon than an oboe, Gretchen.

Gretchen: Taller people have a bigger meat pipe. In fact, the relationship between height of your whole body and size of your meat pipe is very linear and doesn’t have a categorical distinction for gender. Of course, if you collapse this into two different buckets labelled “men” and “women,” you’ll find, on average, that men are taller than women on average, but of course, there’re lots of individual people who are exceptions to that, and it’s much more of a variant thing. Similarly, with some of the research on sexuality, some of the early stuff is like, “Oh, do gay men or do lesbians have different-shaped vowel tracts from a physiological perspective?” The answer is “No, this is cultural.”

Lauren: Right, yeah.

Gretchen: But the finding keeps being reported in terms of like, “Oh, well, gay men have more extreme vowels in various places,” especially with “trap” being produced further away from the centre of the mouth. Lesbian women tend to have further-back sounds for “palm” and for “goose,” or sometimes they’re intermediate between male and female targets. But again, this seems to very much be cultural. The bi women – some studies found they patterned with the lesbian women. Some studies found they pattern with the straight women. No one knows what to do with us. The one study I found on bi men found they patterned with the gay men, but again, maybe other studies would find something different. There’s a paper by Lal Zimman about trans men’s voices being perceived as quote-unquote “gay” after they go on testosterone. He finds that it’s not quite the exact same as the cis gay men, but it’s also because it seems to not be in that narrow man box. People are just parsing it as gay.

Lauren: So many cultural attitudes coming to bear on vowel spaces.

Gretchen: Studies on trans women’s vowel spaces is often fairly dominated by the speech pathology literature, which is about, specifically, vocal training and trans women really trying to make their voices sound different, but it still finds that they’re not doing exactly the same thing as either cis women or cis men.

Lauren: Right. Again, lots of cultural practice at play there. Anything about our nonbinary pals?

Gretchen: There is a recent dissertation by Jacq Jones, and they find that basically nonbinary people do whatever the heck they like.

Lauren: I love it.

Gretchen: Which is, again, not exactly the same as anybody else and not necessarily the same as each other either. They could just keep doing whatever they want. But yeah, there’s a lot of stuff on gender and sexuality, especially in terms of dispersion of the vowel space and regional stuff in terms of specific things being closer or further from each other.

Lauren: There’s so much happening in vowels in terms of plotting them all in this space in the mouth, but also so much happening in terms of plotting them in the social space. This is what makes vowels so rich and so interesting.

Gretchen: I feel like when we’re talking about vowel plotting, there’s this aspect of “Mwahaha, I am putting my fingers together and plotting,” which is maybe the fact that vowels do convey so much social information about who you are or where you’re from that you can make plots about people when you know what their vowels are. If we were going to make a meat clarinet or a meat bassoon or even a meat bagpipe –

Lauren: Oh, dear.

Gretchen: I’m so sorry. We would not only want it to be able to convey the basic vowel chart. One of the reasons why I think these synthetic versions of the human voice often sound so weird is that they don’t have all of this additional demographic information, regional information, gender and sexuality information that’s also so important to our experience of vowels.

[Music]

Gretchen: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode – including visualisations of our very own vowel plots – go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on all the podcast platforms or lingthusiasm.com. You can get transcripts of every episode on lingthusiasm.com/transcripts. You can follow @lingthusiasm on all the social media sites. You can get scarves with lots of linguistics patterns on them including the IPA, branching tree diagrams, bouba and kiki, and our favourite esoteric Unicode symbols, plus other Lingthusiasm merch – like “Etymology isn’t Destiny” t-shirts and aesthetic IPA posters – at lingthusiasm.com/merch. Links to my social media can be found at gretchenmcculloch.com. My blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com. My book about internet language is called Because Internet.

Lauren: My social media and blog is Superlinguo. Lingthusiasm is able to keep existing thanks to the support of our patrons. If you want to get an extra Lingthusiasm episode to listen to every month, our entire archive of bonus episodes to listen to right now, or if you just wanna help keep the show running ad-free, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Patrons can also get access to our Discord chatroom to talk with other linguistics fans and be the first to find out about new merch and other announcements. Our most recent bonus topic was a chat with Dr. Bethany Gardner, who built the vowel plots we discussed in this episode. We talked to Bethany about how to do vowel charts and how you can plot your own vowels, or you can just learn about how they did it for us. Think of it like a little behind-the-scenes episode on the making of this episode. If you can’t afford to pledge, that’s okay, too. We really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone in your life who’s curious about language.

Gretchen: Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our Senior Producer is Claire Gawne, our Editorial Producer is Sarah Dopierala, our Production Assistant is Martha Tsutsui-Billins, and our Editorial Assistant is Jon Kruk. Our music is “Ancient City” by The Triangles.

Lauren: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

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