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darkficsyouneveraskedfor · 3 years

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Portrait of a Dangerous Man🎨3

Warnings: (series) non-consent sex and rape; slow creep; cucking; (this chapter) sleep paralysis, stress.

This is dark!mob!Clark Kent x reader and explicit. 18+ only. Your media consumption is your own responsibility. Warnings have been given. DO NOT PROCEED if these matters upset you.

Synopsis: Your dream of having your work hung in an art show comes true but your first buyer is not all he seems to be.

Note: I’m so happy people are liking this story. Thanks so much to everyone reading and sorry if I’m a bit inactive lately, I’ve been exhausted and yesterday didn’t end, I swear.

Thanks to everyone for reading and thanks in advance for all your feedback. :)

I really hope you enjoy. 💋

<3 As usual, I’d appreciate if you let me know what you think with a like or reblog or reply or an ask! Love ya!

On Monday, you yawned over your keyboard as your fingers moved on instinct alone. Your eyes ran along the text but the words were just letters to you. You had a lot to think about, a lot to do.

You decided you would skip lunch and get through your work day an hour early so you could head to Clark’s right away. He was hard to deny when he asked if you could make it back so soon. You told him you worked everyday from home and you had hours beside that at the gallery three times a week at least. He accepted it with a nod but his silence was telling so you caved and said you could make it but not until the evening.

You texted Marcus as you waited for your Uber. He had a few hours to go still and you left him everything he needed to make supper with instructions; the veggies were cut, the meat thawed, and the pans already arranged on the stove. You had faith he could manage on his own.

The mansion was just as intimidating as the first time you visited. You walked up the drive and to the front steps. It was human nature to be envious of the sprawling yards and lavish estate and yet, it didn’t feel as if someone could truly live here. It would be like staying in a hotel as you were always overly aware of your every move, afraid to break something or make a mess.

You hammered the large knocker when your soft tapping brought no answer. You heard someone on the other side and wiggled your foot nervously. The door opened and square-faced woman greeted you in another language. You couldn’t tell if it was Swedish, German, or some other dialect. You were never a skilled linguist.

“Um, hi, I’m…”

“Ah, you are the lady painter,” she said, “I remember. I am Nina, Mr. Kent’s housekeeper.”

She turned and beckoned you to follow her. You closed the tall door and trailed her across the spacious foyer and behind the stairs into the kitchen. She turned through another room and led you out through the glass doors that opened onto the pool.

“Miss, would you like a drink? Tea? Coffee?” she asked.

“No, thank you,” you said as the water moved and your eyes were drawn to the figure moving beneath the surface.

“Miss,” Nina nodded and left you.

You stood, awkward and listless, and glanced around at the loungers and the umbrella over the round table. You weren’t entirely sure what to do. Had he forgotten about you?

“Hey,” your gaze was drawn back to the pool. Clark waded to the edge, his broad shoulders and chiseled chest visible as he made his way to the shallow end, “sorry. Lost track of time.”

He grabbed the metal railing and climbed up the stairs. The water slaked off his tight trunks and down his thick thighs. He appeared even larger with less clothes. You looked away before your thoughts lingered too long.

“It’s fine, I should have texted I was on my way,” you said, “I can go wait for you--”

“No worries,” he took his towel and rubbed dry his dark hair. The scruff along his chin was thicker than before, almost a full blown beard, “you’re not in a hurry, are you?”

“No, not really, can’t really rush… painting,” you shrugged, “I just… I didn’t mean to catch you off-guard.”

“Pfft, I’m ready for anything,” he grinned, “but I should also listen to the artist. I’ll go get changed and you can get settled in the studio.” He directed you ahead of him as he approached the sliding doors, “you just finished work? You should take a few minutes to unwind.”

“Uh, yeah, but it’s just, um, typing, not exactly hard labour,” you said as he followed you inside.

“Work is work,” he said, “I will never fault anyone who works hard, regardless of what they do.”

“Yeah, I suppose,” you stifled a yawn behind your hand.

He let out a breath as you came out into the foyer, “I’m sorry, you could’ve… you’re tired. We could have rescheduled. I’m sorry if I came across… pushy yesterday. I don’t mean to take advantage of you.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” you assured him, “I’m fine.”

“Alright,” he said doubtfully, “but you let me know if you need a break.”

“Will do,” you murmured as you neared the stairs.

🎨

You weren’t even close to done just the background of the portrait. Clark really didn’t even need to be there as you shadowed the folds of the curtains around his figure and the marble bust. Your arm hurt from reaching across and up the gigantic canvas and your eyes burned from squinting at your work.

You backed off the ladder carefully with your paintbrush and palette balanced in one hand. The paint was drying and you needed to mix more. You set down your armful and wiped your hands on the rag. He was watching you, he was always watching you. Well, no, he was just looking in your direction; it was all for the portrait.

You hit the button on the side of your phone and gasped. It was midnight. You had several messages from Marcus and you blanched as you unlocked the cell and quickly texted back. You rubbed your eye as you hit send and turned to Clark.

“I didn’t realise it was so late,” you said, “I gotta go.”

“What time is it?” he asked and looked at his watch, “oh.”

He pushed himself to his feet with a grunt and stretched out his arms as he neared. You took your brush and rinsed it in the tinted water in the jar.

“I’ll just clean up as I wait for an Uber,” you said as you let the brush rest in the jar and lifted your phone again.

“I’ll drive you,” he said as he grabbed a rag, “it’s a long way. I’ll hire a driver for you from here on out. It’ll be easier and cheaper.”

“You don’t have to--”

You flinched as he wiped your cheek with the rag. He smiled and showed you the paint on the white cloth.

“I wouldn’t offer it if it was too much trouble,” he tossed the rag down, “and I did have something to talk to you about. The drive will be more than enough to get it sorted.”

“Oh, okay,” you eked nervously. Had you done something wrong? Were you not painting fast enough?

“I’ll meet you downstairs,” he touched your arm gently.

He left you and you finished scraping off the palette and cleaning your brushes. You dumped the jar in the sink just inside the nearest bathroom and rinsed the porcelain back to white. You left everything arranged neatly on the table and descended to the first floor.

Clark stood by the door in a different jacket, his tie gone and the top button undone. He held the door for you and showed you to the garage. There were at least a half-dozen cars inside and he took you to the same silver one he drove the night of the show. You settled in and groaned as the tension left your shoulders.

He started the car as the doors rose behind him and he backed out smoothly. He turned down the long drive and onto the desolate roads of the wealthy countryside. He kept one hand on the wheel and dropped his other to his thigh casually.

“So, your job, you like it?”

“It’s work,” you said, “I get paid to sit at home and type. Half the time, I’m just waiting for an assignment.”

“I asked if you liked it,” he said more pointedly.

“Oh, well, not… really?” you answered, unsure.

He could be so pleasant and then so blunt. He made you nervous and the more you thought of it, the more you realised you knew almost nothing about this man besides his name. You didn’t know how he made his money or what exactly he did outside of his extravagant mansion.

“If I doubled your fee, would you quit?” he asked without hesitation.

“Quit? This… the painting won’t take forever,” you said, “I can’t really just drop everything--”

“This is an opportunity,” he said, “you could spend your days doing what you love. And who’s to say it’s just one painting? I already have something in mind for the dining room and I have friends asking about you.”

“Friends? Who--”

“One thing at a time,” he said curtly, “I’ll introduce you to them in time. Is it a deal?”

“I… it’s all very sudden, can I think about it?”

He looked at you in the rearview and you caught his eye. For a moment, you were afraid. There was something in his expression that left you breathless. He lifted his hand and stretched his arm between the seats, his fingers gripped the leather just above your shoulder.

“Sure, I’ll give you a couple days,” he said at last.

“I--I’m sorry…” you didn’t know why you were apologizing but it felt appropriate, “I just, I’m tired.”

“It’s fine, sweetheart,” he assured and the epithet hung in the air.

“I have to go to the gallery tomorrow, I’ll get back to you on Wednesday,” you said as you rubbed your chin nervously. Your lips was quivering. He was smiling but you felt his impatience in the small space of the car, “if I… if I say yes, I have to talk to my boss and that might get messy.”

“No problem,” his voice softened, “you take some time and figure it out.” His thumb rubbed the leather seat and he pulled his arm away to grasp the steering wheel, “why don’t you close your eyes. We got some time left.”

You peeked over at him and nodded.

“Okay,” you murmured and hugged your bag against you as you tried to relax against the leather. You turned your head and looked out the window up at the starry sky. You closed your eyes as the fatigue settled over you but you could only fake dozing as your nerves stormed inside of you.

He was right, it was a great opportunity, but you just couldn’t believe it would last. Was it your own doubt getting to you? Or should you be weary of this fairytale buyer? It was late and you couldn’t think. All those worries could wait until tomorrow.

🎨

You crept into the dark apartment. It was after one and you foresaw a long day ahead of you. You’d get maybe four hours in before it all started again. You put your purse down and went into the bedroom, undressing in the shadows and crawling into bed next to Marcus as the colours of the tv moved around him. The playlist he was casting kept on even as he slept.

He grunted as you laid on your back and he turned to graze your arm with his fingertips.

“You’re home,” he grumbled and kissed your cheek, “I was worried.”

“I’m sorry,” you whispered, “I… it’s so far out there and it’s a lot of work. The canvas is like nine feet-- I’m sorry, I’ll let you sleep.”

“No, no, it’s okay,” his voice was gristly as he propped himself up on his elbow, “you’re gonna finish the job right?”

“I don’t know,” you said, “I don’t know if I can.”

“Of course you can,” Marcus insisted, “I mean, at that price, you can do anything.”

“It’s not about the money, Marcus,” you huffed, “I don’t know if it’s worth all this. Going back and forth…” you ran your hands over your face, “he wants me to quit my job and just paint for him.”

“You should,” Marcus said blithely, “why not? He’s paying you well enough.”

“And what about when I’m done,” you whined.

“You’ll find more work. Vanessa even offered to take on more of your work in her shows, so what’s the problem? Isn’t this what you want?”

“Y-yeah, it is but… I don’t know, it just seems too good to be true.”

“You do this and we might even have enough for a down payment,” he said, “something had to give after all these years. Why can’t it be this?”

You looked at him and tried to smile, “you’re only saying that because he has a pool.”

“Maybe,” he kidded, “but I also want it for you. You spend all your free time painting anyhow so why not get paid for it?”

“Mhmm,” you mumbled, “yeah, I just don’t know why I feel so… I don’t know. It just all seems off.”

“Sleep on it, you’ll feel better,” he leaned over and kissed your lips that time, “love you.”

“Love you,” you echoed as he grabbed the remote and shut off the tv.

You closed your eyes as the darkness shrouded you and despite your anxiety, you fell into a deep sleep. You didn’t even roll onto your side before you sank into your REM but found yourself caught in limbo. The abstract and intense sensation of paralysis overtook your body and your eyelids flicked open.

It was an awful feeling you knew too well. You knew you were dreaming, you knew it was all in your mind, but your body was filled with sand and your subconscious conjured visions of doom. The tall man stood by the door as he always did and just stared. He got closer, just a little at a time, and you fought to move just a finger and free yourself from the trance.

You felt like you were drowning as your body remained heavy and unmoving. He was getting closer and closer. As he did, his figure changed and his shoulders got wider as his features came clear in the slat of the streetlight that leaked between the curtains. It was Clark staring down at you, his blue eyes sinister and sparkling.

He reached for you and you woke with a start as your name rose from his lips. You inhaled sharply and looked over at Marcus as he snored. It was only the two of you. You reached for your phone, it was just after three. You turned onto your side but your heart still raced. It always happened when you were stressed, the dreams felt so real that you never really came back down after.

You stared at the wall and curled up under the blanket. You didn’t expect to get much sleep anyway, not with the question on your mind. Should you quit and live your dream or should you kill all hope before life did it for you?

#clark kent #dark clark kent #dark!clark kent #clark kent x reader #superman #series #portrait of a dangerous man #fic #dark fic #dark!fic #au #mob au #mob!au #dc #dcu

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skywardsoul · 3 years

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Stories From the Sidelines: Chapter 2

Yeah believe it or not, I actually uploaded a second chapter to my Little Witch Academia fic that focuses on the background characters. Sure it’s almost been two years since chapter 1, better late than never right! Chapter 2 stars Sarah’s teammate Chloé and her one sided rivalry with Diana.

Read it on AO3: Here

Read it on FF.Net: Here

Unknown to most of its student body, there was a war raging in the halls of Luna Nova. A war being fought for honor, integrity, and the truth. The young witches that blissfully walked the campus may have been unaware of its importance, but for Chloé LeBlanc, it was her reality. The day would come when she would conquer this fight, when she would finally show her peers the truth! The day when she would prove to everyone, student and teacher alike, that she was a better witch than Diana Cavendish.

For the life of her Chloé could never understand just what everyone saw in Diana. She swore that she couldn’t go ten minutes without one of her brainwashed peers throwing out a “Wow Diana!,” or a “You’re so talented Diana!” So what she was good at a couple of spells? It’s not like she could pull off anything their teachers couldn’t! So what she was from a fancy noble family! As far as Chloé could tell there were several girls in her year with noble blood. Hell Chloé herself was from a long and historic magical lineage. The difference was she didn’t feel the need to flaunt it around like Diana did.

Every other word outta that snobbish brit’s mouth was about her dumb family. “The Cavendish family honor,” this and “My duty as a Cavendish,” that. And yet no one but her seemed to care. All the other girls, especially Barbra Parker and Hannah England, ate up that crap like it was a freaking ice cream sundae. They just loved to hear all about Diana’s dumb family history and her dumb realtives, and her dumb ancestorial connection to one of the olde nine witches. And Woodward knows that Diana was all too eager to tell them about it.

The LeBlanc family was just as storied and important as the Cavendish lineage, yet no one seemed to be chomping at the bit to ask Chloé about her history. For generations, witches of the LeBlanc name were crucial parts of the magical community. Her great great grandmother Belle was one of the founding members of the great mages library. Her great uncle Auguste revolutionized the magical culinary arts with his cooking. Even as recently as 16 years ago, her cousin Jean-Pierre helped to stop a dangerous drug trading coven. There was no shortage of excellent LeBlanc witches! Okay, yeah sure, her older sister Sherry might have gotten a bit too obsessed with that crazy motorcycle card game of hers, but that's hardly enough to erase the decades of impressive LeBlanc achievement. Didn’t seem to matter though, as these noble deeds meant nothing to the masses compared to Diana’s rambling.

The only other people who seemed to be immune to Diana’s annoying drivel was her teammate Sarah Bernhardt, and Sucy Manbavaran and Akko Kagari of the red team. Sarah was too much of a realist to get caught up in pointless hero worship, Chloé was pretty sure Sucy didn’t really care about anything, and Akko, poor, sweet, troublesome Akko, had convinced herself that Diana was her destined rival. A rivalry that the Japanese witch stood absolutely no chance in, but one that Chloé admired. Sure, She and Akko didn’t talk much, but Chloé saw her as a companion of sorts. The only other girl who was dying to see Diana get knocked down a peg.

And finally, after all this time, Chloé had found a way to make just that happen. A full proof plan that would once and for all prove herself to be a witch of equal, no, greater calibur than Diana Cavendish. Chloé grinned wickedly at the envelope she clutched to her chest. With her master piece in mind and her secret weapon in hand, Chloé proudly strode towards the peach team dorm. The last classes had just let out for the day, and the French girl was certain that both her teammates would already be back in their dorm. Not that she was eager to brag about her master plan or anything, Chloé just felt like talking to her friends was all. As she approached the door, Chloé’s suspicions were confirmed as she heard Sarah and Elfriede’s voices from within the room. With a confident smile on her face, Chloé threw open the door, just knowing her fellow peach team witches would be eager to listen to her magnum opus.

“I’m telling you El, that’s absolute nonsense,” Sarah said as she lay on her bed, looking up at the ceiling.

An annoyed grumble came from Elfriede who was sitting across the room on the bottom bunk of the bed she shared with Chloé.

“Oh what would you know about true love? Always looking at matters of the heart in black and white,” Elfriede retorted. The German witch had a book open on her lap. While Chloé couldn’t see the title from where she stood, she was certain it was probably another one of Elfriede’s trashy monster romance novels.

It was a sight that Chloé had gotten rather used to in her time at Luna Nova, as her teammates seemed to argue constantly like this. Elfriede would dream up some cheesy idealistic scene of love and confession and drama in her head, only to adamantly defend it when Sarah would ruthlessly point out how absurd it was. The arguments would never get mean spirited and they hardly ended in the two peach team members being genuinely upset with one another, but they did more often than not go on for a long time. Neither Elfriede nor Sarah was the backing down type, and as a result were more willing to waste an afternoon then admit they were being silly.

The fact that the two were in the midst of one such argument did not bode well for Chloé as neither had noticed her come in the door, and even worse, neither would be willing to hear about her awesome plan.

“All I’m saying is that true love is an unproven concept,” Sarah said, turning on her side to face Elfriede. “But you know what is a proven one?”

“What’s that?”

“Hunger. As soon as that lamia gets hungry, it doesn’t matter how ‘perfect for each other,’ they are. Goodbye lover boy or girl, you’re fucking dinner!” Sarah said, throwing up her hands for emphasis.

“Sarah!” Elfriede said with a huff. “You’re so morbid!”

“What? It’s the truth!”

“Ehem,” Chloé said with a cough, figuring now was as good a time as any to make her presence known.

Sarah and Elfriede both fell silent as they turned to look at Chloé.

“Oh hey Chloé,” Sarah said. “Didn’t see you come in. How long have you been standing there?”

Chloé walked forward and sat down at the desk the three shared.

“Long enough to know that you should cease this pointless argument before it becomes a whole ‘thing’,” She said with an air of authority. “And long enough to know that a certain team leader owe’s a coin to the swear jar.”

Sarah rolled her eyes and with a groan flopped onto her back.

“Seriously? I Didn’t even mean to! It just kinda slipped out.”

“Yes seriously,” Chloé said, grabbing the jar from its place on the desk and thrusting it towards Sarah.

The redhead grumbled under her breath as she sat up and dug for a coin in her pocket. Once the necessary penance was paid, Chloé put the jar down and turned to her roommates with a smile. It was time. Time for them to hear her plan.

“Girls, there’s something I would like to discuss with you.”

Chloé had only just said her first sentence when Sarah already let out another groan.

“What?” Chloé asked, somewhat put off.

“I know that face is what. It’s the ‘I’m gonna destroy Diana’ face.” Sarah said.

“I don’t have a ‘I’m gonna destroy Diana’ face!” Chloé retorted.

“Then what you have to tell us has nothing to do with Cavendish?”

“Well...not exactly…”

“See? I knew it,” Sarah said victoriously.

“You don’t understand Sarah!” Chloé said, excitedly shooting up from her chair. “This time it’s going to work! This time I’m going to show Diana what for!”

“That’s what you said about the swimsuit incident and we both know how that went,” Sarah said with a sigh.

Chloé’s response died in her throat as she felt her face heat up in embarrassment. Ah yes, the swimsuit incident. Not the LeBlanc family’s finest hour.

“This is different!” Chloé managed to say, blocking the embarrassing memory from her mind.

From behind her Elfriede joined Sarah in letting out a tired sigh.

“Do you really have to do all these schemes Chloé? Can’t you just try and get along with Diana?” the German girl questioned.

“Spoken like a true Cavendish apologist,” Chloé said with a ‘hmph’, crossing her arms.

“I’m not a ’Cavendish apologist,’ Chloé. That’s not even a thing. All I did was ask her for some help on the linguistics homework.”

“And that’s just how she lures you in!” Chloe said. “If you are truly loyal to the peach team and are not a Diana brain slave in the making, you’ll at least hear what I have to say.”

“Fine,” Elfriede said, resignation heavy in her voice. “Go ahead.”

“Sarah?” Chloé asked, whipping around to face her redheaded teammate.

Sarah gave her a frown, but relented all the same.

“Yeah go ahead. Regale us with your oh so clever plan.”

Chloé felt her heart race with excitement as her teammates gave her the all clear. They were clearly apprehensive at the moment but they’d surely change their tune once they heard her brilliance. Clearing her throat with a good cough, Chloé began her speech.

“Now, as you both know Diana Cavendish has garnered a rather annoying reputation as our grade’s, and perhaps the whole school’s, top witch. But do you know why that is?”

“Because she has an encyclopedic knowledge of all things magic?” Sarah said.

“No,” Chloé responded flatly.

“Is it because she’s dependable and is always there when her peers need her?” Elfriede asked innocently.

“No, wrong again,” Chloé said with a grumble.

“Oh, I know! It’s because she-”

“It’s because she supposedly gets top marks in all her classes!” Chloé said, cutting the German girl off.

“Well yeah,” Sarah said dryly. “She does get top marks in all her classes.”

Chloé couldn’t help but chuckle darkly at that. Oh how naive her team leader was.

“That’s where you’re wrong, my dear Sarah,” Chloé said with an evil grin. “For that is but an illusion, a lie that Diana has led the entire student body into believing. I, however, have seen the truth.”

“Which is…?” Elfriede asked tentatively.

“That Diana Cavendish has not, in fact received the best possible grades in all her classes, but has merely received them in most of her classes!” Chloé exclaimed.

A silent pause fell over the room. Sarah and Elfriede shared a look across the room before letting out a joint “huh?”

“Allow me to explain,” Chloé eagerly said, ignoring a groan from Sarah. “You see, last tuesday in potions class, while I was packing up our cauldron I noticed a certain British snob looking over the tests Professor Lukić had handed back to us.”

Chloé began to pace across the dorm room as she continued her story.

“Usually when Diana gets a test back, she simply nods her head before putting it away in her bag. Yet this time, this time was different,” Chloé said, ignoring Sarah’s interruption asking her how she knew exactly what Diana did with her tests.

“For whatever reason, Diana did not nod in confirmation when viewing this test, no she practically scoured at it. For on the top of that paper sat not the expected A+, no. The grade she had received was in fact...a B!” Chloé shouted.

Chloé whipped around to see her roommates' reaction. Neither had moved. They must have been reeling in shock at her revelation.

“A...B? That’s it?” Sarah asked

“Nay! It goes deeper!” Chloé responded. “You see I had to make sure I wasn’t mistaken, that I hadn’t been seeing things. Surely the oh so incredible Diana Cavendish hadn’t scored a grade not one, but three whole steps below an A+? But she had! And I have the proof!”

Chloé strode back to the desk and picked up the envelope she had been carrying earlier. It was time to deploy her secret weapon.

“Behold!” She said, opening the envelope and pulling out the paper within. “The record of Diana’s potions grades!”

“How on earth did you get that? Sarah asked somewhat worridley.

“I have my sources,” Chloé responded smugly.

“That sounds like an invasion of privacy Chloé,” Elfriede said.

“And kinda illegal,” Sarah added.

“Don’t get caught up in the details,” Chloé said, waving off her friend’s concerns. “Pay attention instead, to the truth!”

Chloé turned the grade sheet so that Sarah and Elfriede could see. Despite their misgivings, both girls leaned forward to read it.

“This page, this mere piece of paper is the key to toppling Diana! For it proves that not only did she indeed get a B on our last test, but that her class average is only a B+!! That’s right, not an A+, not a basic A, not even an A-, a humble B+.”

Chloé laughed wickedly as she threw the paper up in triumph. There! She had exposed the truth! Now both of her roommates were enlightened!

“Is...that it?” Sarah questioned.

Chloé stopped mid evil laugh to whip her attention back towards Sarah. This lukewarm reception was not the response she had been expecting.

“What do you mean is that it!? How is your mind not blown right now??” Chloé questioned angrily.

“Well, It’s just that, I don’t see how that’s a big deal?” Sarah said. Elfriede nodded in agreement.

“This seems pretty...normal?”

Impossible! Chloé could understand how a grounded person like Sarah could fail to see the bigger picture here but not Elfriede too!

“It’s not! Diana is supposed to be perfect! But here she is clearly achieving below perfect scores!”

“Everyone has something they aren’t good at Chloé,” Elfriede said. “It makes sense Diana would have a subject she struggles in too.”

“If you can even call a B+ average struggling,” Sarah added.

Chloé took a step back, wind knocked out of her sails. Clearly her teammates just couldn’t appreciate the gravity of her discovery.

“Hpmh. The two of you may not understand the opportunity at hand here, but that doesn’t mean I don’t.”

“And that opportunity is what exactly? Are you gonna go around the school screaming that Diana has a B in one subject?” Sarah asked.

“No! I’m not,” Chloé said. “If you must know, I will simply out perform her in potions class! When the school hears about how I, Chloé LeBlanc received a higher grade than Diana, they’ll realize that she’s just another witch. Just another girl in school, susceptible to normal grades just like the rest of us!”

Chloé crossed her arms and closed her eyes, a smug, satisfied smile on her face. A silence once again fell over the room until a nervous sound from Elfriede broke it.

“Uh, Chloé? Isn’t there something...wrong with your plan?” the German girl asked.

Chloé’s eyes flew open, and she turned to face Elfriede with a frown.

“Like what?” She asked.

“Like the fact that your shit at potions? Almost as shit as me?” Sarah said deadpan.

“Language!” Chloé retorted angrily, shoving the swear jar back in Sarah’s face.

Sarah starred her down with a frown as she dropped another coin into the jar.

“I am aware of my...lack of skills, when it comes to brewing potions. I know that I can’t beat Diana with luck alone,” Chloé explained. “But I have that covered! You see, I’m going to get a tutor, and under their tutelage, am going to work nonstop until I’m confident that I will achieve the A+ that Diana cannot!”

“That’s your big plan? To study?” Sarah asked incredulously. “That’s what you should be doing anyway for a class you suck at!!”

“You’re failing to see the bigger picture Sarah.”

“Oh yeah? Who are you gonna get to tutor you anyway? It’ll take a godd- er, gosh-darn genius to polish your skills.”

Chloé chuckled to herself smugly. “Oh don’t you worry about that Sarah. I’ve got my eyes on the best potion master in our grade!”

“Sucy Manbavaran?”

“The best approachable potion master in our grade!”

“Barsa McVinegar?” Elfriede asked.

“The very same!” Chloé responded.

“How exactly are you gonna get her to agree to tutor you?” Sarah asked drly.

“Oh please, Sarah, that’ll be easy. You may not know it, but me and Barsa are great friends. She loves me.”

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Um, I don’t think that’s a good idea Chloé. I’m pretty busy after class these days, and I kinda...don’t like you?” Barsa said to a rather flabbergasted Chloé.

The day after having revealed her master plan to her teammates, Chloé had gone to talk to Barsa as soon as she could. She often frequented the potions lab after school and that was exactly where Chloé found her. The French witch wasted no time in asking Barsa for her help in being her potion tutor...only to be immediately shot down. Okay, so it was a possibility that she had exaggerated how close she and Barsa were to Sarah and Elfriede. In reality, they had barely interacted before Chloé had started this whole scheme of hers. Still, she couldn’t take no for an answer, not now! Not after coming so far! A LeBlanc wouldn’t give up so easily!

“Please Barsa! You have no idea what this means to me!” Chloé said, throwing herself down onto her knees. “I’m begging you! Just a few lessons after class. At least until our next test!”

Barsa shifted uncomfortably at Chloé’s sudden begging. Chloé took this as a sign that her pleading was starting to work. She had no qualms about keeping this up until Barsa cracked.

“I-I don’t know Chloé,” Barsa said, shifting her gaze to look anywhere besides the fairly pathetic witch in front of her. “I already made a mistake in helping you get that grade sheet outta Professor Lukić’s office. If she found out it was missing, I’d lose my job as her TA for sure! Hell, I could have gotten expelled.”

“Yes, I understand that was a big risk for you. Which is why I brought it back, as promised, unscathed!,” Chloé said, jumping back to her feet and handing the envelope containing said document back to Barsa eagerly.

Barsa hesitantly took the envelope, giving Chloé a sideways glance before checking the contents inside. Determining that the grade sheet was in fact unmarred and in one piece, Barsa let out a relieved sigh.

“See? Good as new!” Chloé said confidently. “Now you can slip it back in place of the decoy and no one will ever know it was missing. You see, I gave my word and a LeBlanc never breaks a deal.”

“Deal!? What ‘Deal,’? You blackmailed me into stealing it for you,” Barsa said angrily.

“Well blackmail is a bit of a harsh word, isn’t it?” Chloé said with a nervous laugh.

“You threatened to release pictures of me dressing up as Professor Lukić to the school paper. I’d say blackmail describes that perfectly.”

“Okay so I might have used some underhanded tactics, and for that I’m sorry. Truly I am,” Chloé said clasping her hands together. But that was then, and this was now. Surely you can overlook the past just this once? Isn’t our friendship strong enough for that?” Chloé said hopefully.

“Not really,” Barsa deadpanned in response. “and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to be your friend.”

Chloé gasped, somewhat scandalized. How could a girl with such a cute sounding voice speak such harsh words!?

Seeing Chloé’s shock as a chance to escape, Barsa quickly gathered her things, picked up her cauldron, and made for the door.

“Anyway, Bye Chloé. Good luck with...whatever it is you were doing, I guess.”

Chloé shook herself out of her surprise at these words. Barsa was trying to leave! Leave without agreeing to tutor her! Her window was closing, her plan was practically falling apart before her eyes. It was now or never! Gathering her courage, Chloé leapt at the fleeing form of the other girl, successfully clasping onto her leg. Barsa yelped at the sudden contact, and went totally red in face as she took in the scene Chloé had caused.

“Please Barsa! You’ve got to be my potions tutor!” The French girl begged.

“Just, a-ask another student!” Barsa said through her embarrassment as she continued to try and walk to the door, dragging Chloé with her.

“I can’t! My potion skills are dirt! If I try and learn from anyone but the best, my grade won’t improve enough,” Chloé retorted.

“If you want the best, then go ask Sucy. She’s even better at potion brewing than I am!”

“Ask Sucy Manbavaran for a favor? Do I look suicidal to you!?”

“Alright fine!” Barasa finally relented. “I’ll be your stupid tutor, just let go of me already! And stand up please! It’s embarrassing to see you clinging to me so pathetically like that!”

Completely missing the insult she had just received, Chloé could only hear an angelic choir as Barsa agreed to teach her. It worked! Diana’s destruction was one step closer! Oh she could see it now, the Diana Cavendish and all her brain dead worshipers standing dumbfounded as she, Chloé LeBlanc towered over her stupid ‘B’ with a perfect score!

Releasing Barsa from her grip, Chloé once again rose to her feet, composing herself with a polite cough.

“Thank you for agreeing to assist me Barsa, it’s much appreciated.”

“Yeah, yeah, sure whatever,” Barsa said flatly.

“Then I’ll meet you here after class, for let’s say, two hours or so? Starting tomorrow?” Chloé said, holding out her hand for Barsa to take.

“Ah ah ah, not so fast,” Barsa said, crossing her arms. “If I tutor you, what’s in it for me?”

What? In it for her? Chloé hadn’t expected for Barsa to ask for recompense. She hadn’t prepared a reward. In hindsight, that was probably a pretty big oversight on her part. Something was telling her that Barsa wouldn’t exactly take “the satisfaction of seeing Diana being beaten down,” as a fitting payment.

“Um, I’ll...do anything you ask?” Chloé offered with uncertainty.

“Anything, I ask?”

“Well, within a certain reason-”

“Okay bye Chloé,” Barsa said, turning for the door.

“Wait! Fine! Don’t go!” Chloé said, grabbing Barsa’s arm. “I promise, I’ll do anything that the might of the LeBlanc family name and fortune can achieve!”

For the first time since they started this conversation, Barsa seemed somewhat pleased.

“Okay Chloé, you’ve got yourself a deal,” Barsa said, turning back around to shake Chloé’s hand proper. “Meet me here everyday starting tomorrow as soon as class lets out, and don’t be late. I don’t want to spend more time doing this than I have to.

“Not to worry, Mrs. McVinegar! A LeBlanc is nothing if not punctual!”

“I’m not gonna be an easy teacher either. I can get a bit crazy when it comes to potions. You sure you still want me to teach you?”

Chloé felt her enthusiasm falter a bit at that. Well, it’s not like she expected this to be easy, right? Getting her potion skills up to snuff was always gonna be a bit of an ordeal. Besides, the harder fought the battle, the sweeter her inevitable victory over Diana would be, right? And no matter how ‘crazy,’ Barsa was about potions, she couldn’t be worse than trying to learn from someone like Sucy, right? There was no turning back now! She’d come too far.

“Yes, i’m sure!” Chloé answered confidently. “I’ll be the best student you’ll ever have!

“Sure, great,” Barsa said tiredly, finally leaving the potions lab.

Chloé watched her leave with a satisfied smirk on her face. Phase two of her master plan was complete, and she only had to beg a little! Diana’s demise was practically at hand and Chloé couldn’t be in higher spirits. Sure, Barsa had said that their tutoring sessions would be hard, but honestly, compared to the pain of living in Diana’s shadow, how bad could they be?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Turns out, lessons with Barsa could be hell. No, actually Chloé was pretty sure Satan himself would want nothing to do with the punishment that Chloé had been enduring everyday after class for the last week and a half. Barsa had not been kidding when she said that she got crazy when it came to potions. It was like the normally passive girl morphed into a completely different person, one fueled solely by rage, and insulting others. Barsa had little to no patience for Chloé’s lack of skills, so rather than starting by reinforcing the basics of brewing, like Chloé had suggested, Barsa had decided to go with a more trial by fire kind of approach. This of course meant that she made a lot of mistakes, mistakes that Barsa didn’t take kindly to. It was like the orange haired girl took each and every fumble as some kind of personal affront to the art of potion brewing.

“And what exactly is that supposed to be?” Barsa had asked harshly, looking at Chloé’s attempt at making a panacea.

“Um, it’s a pa-”

“Because I know that you aren’t stupid enough to try and tell me that that pathetic excuse for sludge sitting in your cauldron is supposed to be a panacea,” Barsa said, slamming her hands on the table and leaning towards Chloé. “You aren’t stupid enough to do that, are you Chloé?”

Chloé could practically feel the venom dripping off of Barsa’s words.

“No! I’m not, Mrs. Barsa, uh sir!”

“Good. Then throw that trash down the drain and start again. From scratch.”

Seeing Chloé’s hesitance, Barsa slammed her hands down once again. “Well, what are you waiting for? An invitation!? Get brewing!”

“Yes ma’am!” Chloé said snapping to action.

And that was basically how all of Chloé’s tutoring sessions went, with her scared out of her skull as demon mode Barsa berated her. Still, as much as she didn’t want to admit it Barsa’s tutoring certainly seemed to produce results. It wasn’t long before potion mixtures and techniques were coming easier to Chloé. Now all that was left to do was see if the training paid off, which is exactly what Chloé currently found herself doing. As she sat there in potions class Friday afternoon Chloé found herself fighting to stay awake for what was probably the fifth time today. She may have been just a tad bit excited about destroying Diana’s perfect girl image and had been unable to fall asleep the night before. Nevertheless, she had pressed on throughout the day as any good LeBlanc would. She would not falter here! Not when she was so close to tasting victory!

After sitting through a class period that felt like it had lasted ages, Professor Lukić finally finished her lecture.

“That’s all we have time for today girls,” the old witch cronned. “I will see you next week.”

There was a general commotion as the witches in the room all began to stand and gather their things, clearly eager to leave the potions room and start their weekend. Chloé was not one of them, as she was starting to feel something that was probably akin to panic, just magnified times a hundred. What about the tests? They were supposed to get back their tests! Did Professor Lukić forget to grade them? Or worse, were they destroyed in some horrible unforeseen accident? Was all her hard work doomed to-

A hand shot up out of the corner of Chloé’s eye. She didn’t need to turn and look to know it was Diana’s. Chloé had long since memorized where her rival sat. Which was a totally normal thing to do, regardless of what Sarah thought. Professor Lukić took notice of Diana’s raised hand.

“Yes, miss Cavendish. What is it dear?”

Diana stood up from her seat.

“Forgive me Professor, but I believe you have forgotten to hand us back our previous test scores.”

A flash of recognition went across the old witches face before she turned back to her desk.

“Ah, right you are Diana. I know I have them here somewhere…”

A collective groan spread across the room as Diana sat back down in her seat. Obviously most of the class was not looking forward to getting their results. It was an open secret that potions was far from the most popular subject. A subpar grade in it being handed back to you was hardly the way any witch at Luna Nova wanted to start their weekend. Chloé couldn’t help but scoff. It was just like Diana to bring something like that up. Chloé bet she was the kind of kid in grade school that reminded the teacher to give homework. It baffled her to no end how Diana maintained all her fans when she pulled stunts like this. Of course, Chloé herself had also been eagerly awaiting her test results but that was neither here nor there.

Having seemingly found the graded tests, Professor Lukić turned back to the class. With a wave of her wand, the papers all began to float towards the seat of the respective students that owned them.

“Overall, you all did quite well. Even I have to admit that I’m impressed with some of the improvement I’ve seen since the last test.” Professor Lukić said. “With scores like these we might finally be able to get into some more dangerous and difficult brews.”

The professor cackled darkly as another wave of groans swept across the classroom. All of it however, was mere background noise to Chloé. The world around her practically fell away as she stared at the test in front of her...and the large A+ written on top in red ink. She’d done it! Actually really done it! She had sacrificed her pride and crawled through the trenches of potion brewing hell to get here, but she had reached her goal! The coveted A+ that even Diana Cavendish struggled to achieve! She had won! For the first time in the history in the halls of Luna Nova The LeBlanc name had reigned sup-

“Woah Diana! You did it!”

Suddenly Chloé felt herself being dragged harshly back to reality. With a speed that almost certainly wasn’t healthy for her neck Chloé turned to face Diana. The British girl had a small smile on her face, her test held in her hands, a large, red A+ adorned atop it. Chloé felt her jaw go slack. She blinked slowly in disbelief. How? How could Diana have gotten an A+ too? How!? Wasn’t this supposed to be her weak subject!? Chloé knew that the proud Cavendish could have never asked for help in her studies!

“See? I knew you’d get that A+”

Chloé hadn’t realized it before, but it was Akko who had spoken earlier, and who was now praising Diana. Wait a minute, since when in the hell was Akko friends with Diana!? It couldn’t be! Not only did she lose her chance at Diana’s destruction but had she also lost a (self-proclaimed) comrade in the battle against the Cavendish tyranny!? The Japanese girl was sitting awfully close to Diana, hell they were practically shoulder to shoulder. When Diana turned to address Akko, the smile on her face grew.

“Yes well Akko, It would appear you were right. Perhaps I was selling myself a little short,” Diana said. “Still, I couldn’t have done it without you.”

Wait a second that didn’t make sense. Akko was awful at potions. How could she have helped Diana-

“Thank you Sucy. Without your lessons my grade never would have gone up.”

The witch in question scoffed in response as she stood up from her seat and walked to the door. “Yeah yeah, whatever. Akko was never gonna stop bugging me if I didn’t help you. Not like you were a difficult person to teach anyways...”

“Don’t mind her Diana,” Akko said through a laugh as her fellow red teammate left the classroom. “I bet she’s just embarrassed with how sincere you were.”

“Oh, my bad. I didn’t mean to embarrass her. Should I not have thanked her so publicly?”

“Nah don’t worry about it. It’ll take more than that to rattle Sucy. Like one time, she…”

The sounds of Diana and Akko’s conversation faded as they too left the room. Chloé remained glued to her seat, her mouth still very much hanging open and her mind still very much blown. She didn’t know what to think anymore. Diana Cavendish and Atsuko Kagari, were friends. Not only that but the notoriously stubborn and prideful Diana had actually asked someone else to help her study. A someone that just so happened to be Sucy Manbavaran. The most unapproachable witch in the entirety of the school. Slowly, Chloé closed her mouth, and turned back to face forward in her seat. She glanced down at the A+ that sat on her paper. What had filled her with near elation only minutes ago now seemed like nothing more than a cheap consolation prize.

With all the force of the disappointment that now weighed on her shoulders, Chloé slammed her head onto her desk. What she had once thought as truths, were broken and what had once been hope, was now despair. She had no idea how this day could get any worse.

“Hey Chloé.” Barsa said as she walked up to the sulking witch.

Chloé didn’t give a response, but more of an acknowledging groan.

“I see you got the grade you wanted. Good for you, I guess.”

Chloé let out another groan. “Good for me? Yeah right. This is nothing now. Nothing but the promise of what could have been.”

Unfortunately Chloé’s words were muffled by the fact that her face was currently flat up against her desk. Barsa considered asking the French witch to repeat what she had said, but just shrugged in indifference instead.

“Yeah cool so you remember our deal right? I help you, you do whatever I ask.”

Chloé raised her head to look at the ginger witch.

“And what would that be?”

“There's gonna be a potion’s expo in town this weekend, but I can’t make it because I’m visiting my family,” Barsa explained. “I was planning on stocking up on some rare ingredients, ones that I won’t get another chance to get my hands on for a while. So you’re gonna go in my place.”

“Okay. So uh when is it?” Chloé asked tentatively.

Sure, Chloé wasn’t looking forward to this at all, but hey with the leadway she gave Barsa, the ginger witch could have asked for a lot worse. What’s one day out of her weekend?

“It starts tomorrow at 9 a.m and goes until Sunday night at 11:30 p.m. The lines can get pretty long, especially for the stuff I’m after, so you’re gonna have to get there early. Six in the morning should do it,” Barsa said.

She turned to take an envelope out of her pocket and handed it to a bewildered Chloé.

“Here. That’s your ticket. Be sure not to lose it. I’ve also got a list of the stuff I need written down in there too. Make sure you get them all, especially the petrified dragon vomit. That’s really important.”

Barsa patted Chloé on the shoulder and made her way towards the door.

“Okay have fun!”

And with that, she was gone. And so was Chloé’s weekend. Finally Chloé managed to find her way to her feet. She slowly gathered up her things and made to walk for the door. As she was contemplating whether throwing herself off of the new moon tower or drowning out by the cafeteria vestibule would be a more fitting end, Professor Lukić emerged from the ingredients store room at the front of the class.

“Oh, miss LeBlanc. You’re still here. Was there something you needed child?”

“No Professor. I was just leaving,” Chloé said dejectedly.

Professor Lukić raised an eyebrow at her student’s clearly downtrodden mood.

“What’s gotten into you girl? Why are you so mopey?” The professor asked.

Chloé cringed at the question. She didn’t exactly feel like explaining her entire ordeal to the old witch.

“It’s nothing professor, really. I’m fine,” she said, hoping her professor wouldn’t press further.

Lukić let out a huff. “If you say so. Still, try and smile a bit child. You did very well on your test. You’ve far exceeded what I thought you were capable of. I’m almost proud of you.”

Chloé blinked in surprise at that. It was practically as close as possible as one could get to receiving a compliment from the old potion master. Despite everything that had gone wrong today, Chloé couldn’t help but smile.

“Thank you professor. I’ll be sure to keep trying my best.”

And with that Chloé finally made her way out of the potions room. It might not have brought Diana to her knees, but suddenly her A+ didn’t feel so worthless.

#little witch academia #sarah bernhardt #Chloé #Elfriede #lwa #alec writes #hope you enjoy!#Bonus points to anyone who can figure out where I got Chloé's last name from

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selfcareparker · 3 years

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LMAOO I WAS GONNA BRING UP FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLIDER BUT I WASNT SURE IF YOU WERE WATCHING IT HSKAJ (are you liking it? i know it’s only the first episode but ya know, another one tomorrow night- well tomorrow night for me, and did you like wandavision?? i loved it!!)

oh my goodness i’m watching lion king while writing this and i haven’t seen it in a while and i am..... emotional. but anyway, i love that streaming services think that imma pay for them while they charge $50 a month. like yes of course i have that kind of money and i am going to give it to you to watch tv 🙄 that $50 is budgeted to sims thank you. (ALSO SIMS!!! i’ll get to that in a minute) now see if i don’t google levidia right this minute LMAOO, not that i’m gonna use it.. just for the research...

AND HDKSHS SEND THAT CHAOS WALKING LINK LMAO i saw it for the third time with a different one of my friends and she wasn’t the best one to see it with? she literally was on her fucking phone and i was like ok whatever her loss not mine, and idk if you’ve read the books or if you’ve seen it by now, but by the end of the whole movie, after they’ve confirmed THE THING throughout the whole movie she asked the dumbest question and i’m like diD YOU NOT WATCH THE MOVIE, and i guess she didn’t. so. this sounds so vague but i don’t wanna spoil the movie for you just in case lol.

THE STORY LMAOO, so A DIFFERENT FRIEND LOL, like my oldest bff, we had a day together and we wanted to go see chaos walking. and i honest to God thought that no one would be seeing this movie. like NO ONE. every day, i checked the theater seating and no one was there right? plus i really wanted us to have the theater to ourselves. so we sit in the wrong seats, the row in front of us, STILL THINKING WE’RE ALONE. and then these 3 older people came in AND IM ABOUT TO SCREAM FHSJSH AND IM LIKE “are we in your seats?” and they we were like uh yeah, AND IT WAS SO BAD LMAOO , we’re moving and everything would’ve been FINE but my friend’s reclined seat was going down so slow and as it’s going shes LITERALLY SAYING ALOUD “awkward awkward awkward” so she thinks forget it, lemme just get up. HER BAG GETS CAUGHT ON HER CHAIR AND HER FRIES AND THEY SPILL ALONG WITH HER HONEY MUSTARD 😭😭 ALL OVER THE FLOOR! so i’m trying not to laugh lmao but those aren’t even our seats and we just made a mess, so naturally, i get on the floor and start cleaning it up with my napkins (this is going for too long) AND MY FRIEND IS STILL SAYING “awkward awkward awkward awkward” and i’m really abt to crack up bECAUSE LIKE SHUT UP HAHAHA and we’re cleaning it and shit and the oldest lady is gonna say “yeah you’re not gonna make an old lady get on the floor, are you?” AND I WANTED TO LAUGH AND SCREAM AT THE SAME TIME BC DID WE ASK YOU TO, NO, so then i had to get the manager and she helped us clean it, we got new fries and everything was fine, it’s just a crazy story bc LITERALLY WE COULDVE AVOIDED IT AND EVERYTHING BUT THESE ELDERLY PEOPLE HAD TO COME AND SEE THIS MOVIE😭😭 at least the gentlemen was nice.. he helped us clean. but then his wife was like “i aM nOt siTTiNg tHeRe” and at first i thought she was a teenager bc of her stink attitude but her husband was nice. and it’s not like we weren’t cleaning it up, we were!!! like i was so apologetic- anyway.

about sims! do you play console or pc? wait,, you already told me you play pc bc your computer was broken, i’m glad you can play now though :’)) litetally when i read in the tags that you’re playing sims !!!! and are you hyped for bunk beds? i have cc so i’ve had them for a bit, but they were glitchy... but i’m so excited we have them now! i should really play sims today...

GURL IM SO PROUD OF YOU 🥺🥲 i know you aren’t fluent in everything and you aren’t a linguistic genius LMAO but it’s still soooo amazing :’) here i am reading the captions while ur just going hahah, yea i tried duolingo but.... i didn’t stick to it HDJSH talking to you though makes me so interested because you know all these languages, not even studying them like that, but you have this foundation and ahh it’s just super cool. LOL YOU DONT SOUND LAME HAJA IM TELLING YOU ITS SO SO COOL, i’m loving this lesson btw oh my goodness- HSKAJS YOU THOUGHT I WOULD ALREADY KNOW THAT??? HDYSJHS MY ONLY ENGLISH SPEAKING ASS??? HAHAHAHHAH i find that word (Rindfleischetikettie- i’m not gonna write the whole thing i’m sorry) very interesting... like... wow. did you have to google that or did you just know lmao

OKAH THE WATER THING HDKDJDKS UR GONNA TERRIFY ME HAHAH OH MY LORD- first of all CROATIA 😍😍 but thinking about it like that, I WOULD FREAK OUT TOO HAHSGSG i never go that deep into the water, or if i do i have my dad with me lol and i kind of hold onto him bc ive seen/heard too many things about people being dragged into the sea. but i loveee the water (i wanted to be a mermaid soooo bad ohmigosh)

I DONT UNDERSTAND HOW ONE CANNOT LIKE MUSIC ITS AWFUL !! lmao yeah i haven’t even listened to harry’s his first album, everyone says they love it more. I WAS GONNA SAY IMMA LISTEN TO ONLY ANGEL BUT THE WAY YOU DESCRIBE IT HUHAHAH also i have never listened to anything by mgk (i actually had to google who he was IM SORRY😔) i’m tempted to listen tho lol PLEASE JUSTIN BIEBER- I PROMISE IM NOT LAUGHING AT U IVE JUSY NEVER HAD SOMEONE SAY THAT B4!! like i don’t know many people who’ve liked him bUT NOW IM GONNA LISTEN & the cardboard cutout- okay. 😭😭😭

oh my goodness to see the vamps live 🤧 TO SEE ANYONE LIVE PLEASE JJDGSHAHGD and little mix is so good oh my goodness- i actually haven’t been to that many concerts.. i was at my first one, elsie fest (it’s like a broadway thing really) in uhhh october of 2019, yea i took my mom for her birthday bc she loves darren criss and i’m obsessed with glee lmao OH MY GOODNESS YOUVE BEEN TO SO MANY!!! and those are such great artists 😩😩

LMAO UR FINE, hamilton is a musical that lin manuel miranda wrote and i think generally made? i’m obsessed, but basically it was on broadway and then recorded and put on disney+ ... idk i guess it counts a film bc it’s like a movie really cuz it was recorded but in what 2018 or 2016? i don’t remembers the date that is on disney+ but it’s strange how i got into it, a lot of my friends were obsessed and i was like uhh why? and while researching it and watching it, trying to figure out why people love it... i fell in love with it LMAO but the music is FANTASTIC and lin is incredible😭 but yes yes yes i loveeeee high school musical!! my dad actually took my cousins to see it on ice or something (i absolutely forget lmao) but i don’t know how people don’t know hsm. it upsets me.

OKAY IM DOWN TO THE BOTTOM HAHAHA (it takes me so long to respond, now i’m on lion king 2 WHICH IS SO GOOD PLEASE FHHSSHHSHSH) i could respond in chunks but i kind of enjoy responding like this? it feels a bit like a letter but if this whole thing is overwhelming i’ll cut it up lol

+ yes that was me about your fic and sleep and everything lol but it was so good😭 i don’t understand how you write peter so well like you have this ability to capture his.. everything? i’m crine. all the time. over your fics. & i cannot describe my happiness for youuuu :’) i’m so happy you’re writing again 🥺🥰 the thing about how you only want to write the long peter fic but you don’t know how to continue... i feel that so so so hard, i don’t think i told you but ughh i was so blah bc of that feeling of having pent up inspiration for only one fucking thing and not being able to write it. it’s so frustrating 😭

not to add more to this but i need to vent a bit? the situation is definitely different bc with your major it obviously requires for you to ya know, know english lol, but uhm bc i’m homeschooled ive been cheating on all my work SHSHDHSJ like i google the answers but i’m still learning! it’s just..... i find it so unnecessary, like going for an audition no one is gonna say to me “i want you to chanel the knowledge within yourself of the centripetal force of the circle that is the table on this stage” like tf??? there’s literally no point. i’m gonna be getting into voice lessons again soon and i’m already doing dance, AND i’ll be doing this summer camp program (more hamilton lol) and thinking about school is only making me stress more, like i haven’t been able to rehearse dance at all this week bc of it...... so

hahaha reading your tags, lonely anon would still be accurate HAHAHHAHA // another add: yea i love ur current theme, i’ve gotten used to “seeing you” like this, but anything will look super pretty :)) ALSO HOW IS IT STILL SNOWING THERE, i swear it’s getting warmer and warmer by the day here 😭🤧

these long ass posts, my gosh🥲 lonely lovely anon <3

Omg yes it does feel like a letter sldkdj and then the few days of waiting also make more sense okay i love this ❣️💕❤️💓❤️💞🧡💜💘(wtf)sksjhz

Dear lovely anon,

ALSKSJVKD yes i‘m liking falcon and winter soldier dlkdh i haven‘t watched the second episode yet but i‘ll watch it tomorrow! but i didn‘t watch wandavision........ eidislskks i was going to but idk i wasn‘t that interested in it and watching series is already too much of a commitment (what can i say i‘m a Sagittarius—🤧 (no i’m joking i actually know NOTHING about starsigns)) didjj that i couldn‘t force myself to watch it, ALSO i hate (idk if this is an unpopular opinion) when every episode is like a whole hour. i‘m rewatching an old series today (it‘s german so i won‘t even get into it) and the episodes are 25 mins each and i‘ve already watched 8 episodes today ridlndjdjd,,, and i feel like if the episodes were an hour each i wouldn‘t have gotten past episode 2 today like idk.... even if series had the same length in total, i prefer when the individual episodes are shorter idk why tho tbh (so yeah i already wasn‘t 100% convinced about watching wandavision so i just couldn’t make myself watch a bunch of 1hour episodes— i‘ve heard that it‘s good tho- but i‘m not much of a series person so. Dldkk (have we talked about this already??? sorry i don‘t remember what i said lol and i couldn‘t find my own post anymore so dkdjsh) (WAIT I JUST CHECKED THE WANDAVISION EPIOSRDES ARENT EVEN THAT LONG??? Okay wait i might watch it now - did you like it? let me know if i should watch it— why did i think they were 60minutes???)

okay another confession i‘ve never watched the lion king????? i mean i watched it when i was a child but i was too young to actually pay attention to any kind of plot i just liked the songs lol sldkdj i‘ve been meaning to watch it for years tho 🦁 (idk it just felt appropriate to put a lion emoji lmoaoo)

OH MY GOD THE CHAIS WALKING/CINEMA STORY AHSJSKKS😭😭😭😭 NOOOOO (very fitting that there was so much chaos when you were watching a film that has chaos in the title loool) and the “awkward awkward awkward“ SAME SKSKSLSKDJ, that‘s literally me 24/7 ahajshshhshshsh. Like i was so skdjdjdkdllsldksnsnsnsb while i read what you sent me djslslsjdjdbdn why are old ladies always so grumpy btw 🥲🥲🥲 at least the man was nice tho! and wait did i read that right... you have fries (which, to me, are called chips dusuusldk) at your cinemas?? (Movie theatres sorry sksjsh) we just have popcorn and nachos and drinks i want chips too when i‘m watching a film what😭😭🥺🥺🥺🥺

Also i still haven’t watched it so thanks for not spoiling it!!! (idk when i’ll watch it i’m so bad with films and even worse with series💀💀💀- same with cherry. i literally forgot all about cherry, i was SO hyped when the trailer came out like i’ve never been so excited about a movie... and then it came out... and i still haven‘t watch it like what‘s wrong with me???? Dkdjdjdjdklsl i feel like i‘m not gonna watch it anytime soon tbh, but i wanna watch chaos walking i just have to find the time

Okay and @ your other friend who wasn‘t paying attention like why are you even watching the film then???? but ok (omg this sounds so mean i‘m sure she‘s very nice but in this situation just like❔❔❔)

SIMS ahhh, BUNK BEDS, ahhhh sdljdjdjdkdkdldksj i actually haven‘t played it since the update 🤧🤧 i made both of my sims (enisa (bestselling author already, thank you) and michael (aspiring doctor)) go to university and bro it takes so long 😭😭 and you can‘t do anything else if you want them to do well so literally the last three times i played sims i was just constantly clicking their homework and computerd to write their assignments (i play it in german so idk what its called on the sims) and do their presentations and do them all over again so that they get better or whatever for HOURS, but imma play again soon

also i‘m living my fanfiction life loool, so i made my two sims neighbours (on the same plot tho but i made two small separate houses lol, i still wanted to control both of them at the same time but i made sure they didn‘t interact before i wanted them to skdjdjdk). and first they both experimented and got some experience in the love department you know (all genders, cause i have to live my sexuality even in a pc game slskdjh— wait, i‘ve never lived my sexuality irl like i‘ve done NOTHING nothing with guys nothing with girls (🥲) but maybe that’s why i want to do it even more in the sims) and then they met at uni and realised like hey we‘re neighbours and now they‘re together (but michael accidentally had an alien baby with another woman (who was an alien which i was not aware of) cause i wasn‘t paying attention like i said woohoo not try for baby like michael why is your pull out game so weak tf LSHDDHDJDJSKKDKSKDKS okay but making out and flirting and doing all the fun stuff in the sims turns me on way more than it should PFAHAHHAHSH) so idk why i told you this but I’m creating that neighbour!au in the sims lmaoooo

i did not have to google Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsübertragungsaufgabengesetz (just did it again😌 sisjshhs) but i might have mixed up the words überwachung und übertragung or i might have even forgotten a word skskks but in the end it doesn‘t matter (by linkin park- ok i‘m so sorry it‘s 2 am and i have a headache from having waveformers in my hair all day but i still wanted to reply to this now so sorry if i‘m not making any sense right nowbahahshah)

i wanted to be a mermaid too dldjdksksj like h2O and all those series convinced me i could be one like. i remember i‘d always go in the deep pool and attempt to swim like them in all the series with that wave motion i must have looked so crazy with my goggles as well dkdjsksöksj (i was like twelve but still)

so mgk has two sides one is hip hop/rap which is like ~~~~ idk he has good and bad songs, but his latest album is like punk pop snd I LOVE IT SO SO SO SO SO MUCH, so if you like punk pop I’d recommend his album tickets to my downfall (i don‘t blame yoj if you don‘t like it tho like about a year ago i would have HATED that type of music dkdkdkkd)🥴

Okay talking about music, there‘s this german rapper and he is... not a good person. he‘s literally a criminal and extremely sexist but to me he‘s still hot???????? he‘s even cute at times even tho he has tattoos everywhere and is like 6‘5 and is super aggressive but i see him and i‘m like 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰 my heart beats only for you💘💘💘💘and he released a new song today and i watched the video and i‘m wondering wtf is wrong with me 😃 (he did look particularly cute cause he was high so idk he wasn’t really aggressive in this one) 😭 so i thought i‘d share that LMAO IDK

(not saying tattoos aren‘t cute btw i LOVE tattoos imma get some soon, but you know he looks like someone your grandma would be afraid of (and in his case rightfully so💀)

okay wait i‘m getting so tired it‘s 2 am i think i‘ll have to do the rest tomorrow but i wanted to do it now😭🥺🥺 see you tomorrow

it is now 3:42 am and i couldn‘t sleep so here we go again

girl you can laugh at me for liking justin tho skskks i wanna laugh at myself idk, like i said i really really really liked him a few years go, basically my life was at least 50% justin and then he went on a break for a while and released an album last year which i hated 🥴 but this album is wow. (Still weird to me because it‘s literally the definition of pop and i don‘t ever listen to pop?) and it‘s so weird because i used to know so much about justin and had so many friends who loved him as well and now it‘s like I’m listening to someone new? Don‘t get me wrong i never KNEW justin and i never will and i‘m aware of that shahsh but yeah i used to be soooo used to him and it‘s like reconnecting with an old friend and you realise you don‘t know that friend anymore- like you don‘t know them anymore at all. I mean justin is weird nowadays 😂😂😂 so pls laugh at me tbh dskksjsjsh

awww it‘s so wholesome that you gave your mom tickets to the concert 🥺🥺🥺🥺 i gave my mum tickets for pink like 2 years ago and she loved it so much and i was like 🥰🥰🥰 (i went with her) AND OMG GLEE ok so unfortunately i barely remember glee, but i used to watch it too!!!! And it‘s actually on my list of series i wanna watch (again) so youre making me want to watch it even more (but like i said i‘m bad with series so 😩😩😩 who knows when i‘ll rewatch it)

When all this pandemic shit is over (let‘s be hopeful <3333) then you need to go to as many concerts as possible!!!!! i‘ve been to SO MANY and it‘s literally one of the things in my life i‘m the most grateful for, concerts are some of the best experiences i‘ve ever had in my life especially the ones that are in smaller concert halls where you can feeeel the vibe and everyone‘s energy (and that sounds awful thinking about it mid-pandemic 😐) anyway—

Okay omg you‘re absolutely making me want to watch hamilton right now like omg i WANT TO WATCH IT NOW but it‘s 4 am sodndkdldl

what you said about my peter fics🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺like omg i love these emojis they literally just describe how i felt when reading what you said so, yes, 🥰🥺 + thank you :) it really means a lot <3

and no omg i totally get the studying thing. like last year before i graduated .. was that last year? yes wtf omg okaykdjdj, so the last three months before i had my final exams we were just in a lockdown and we didn‘t even have online classes. We had nothing except one teacher who left our group chat (😭) because she was mad at us (?) and one maths teacher who did an online ““lesson““ once a week. he‘d ask: so does anyone have questions. us: . Him: okay, bye then. So. Yeah dndldldj. But we had one online test and it was in german and like i read the book wee were supposed to read? but the questions on the test were all unanswerable (is that a word?) and i had to google everything (got an A tho 🤪 but only because i googled everything so i was so scared that i wouldn‘t be able to get a good result on the final exam because what if i‘d gotten used to just googling everything and i couldn‘t do it by myself anymore? anyway it was all fine in the end but yeah at times i couldn‘t even study because i had so much anxiety about studying and yeah- like this whole annoying cycle. but you said you‘re still studying———- okay wait 👁👄👁 i forgot what i was going to say??????????????????????????????????????????????????? Like wtf. Is wrong with me? And i‘m reading what you wrote again and i just don‘t know what i was going to say? Like i get what you‘re saying obviously but i‘m like? Idk 4am brain ayeee, please vent more if you need to and elaborate further because right now i‘m???? Too dumb to respond to this right now wtf. I‘m so sorry lmao ddlkdjdjd what is even going on like i‘m sitting here open mouthed just like ? But btw the fact that you have Voice and dance lessons is like SO FUCKING COOL like oh my god that is sosososos cool wtf, i was thinking that when you first talked about it too

And “i want you to chanel the knowledge within yourself of the centripetal force of the circle that is the table on this stage” ODHDKSLDBDJDOFIDKDNDLDK

Yes i know about the weather dkdkdkjd but it‘s getting (a lot) warmer here too and where i live we kind of get a weird type of wind called föhn (which literally means hair dryer but idk if that‘d the reason why it‘s called that, i‘m too tired to think of whether it makes sense rn) and it gives me headachesssssss and the changing weather is also giving me headaches 😭😭😭😭 so this season right now is just headache season and i hate summer so i wish it would just snow again lmao (okay it‘s getting so late that it‘s early already snd i can hear this bird chirping so fucking loud wtf i‘m also getting a headache 🤧🤧🤧) but at least i can do my new theme soon (i hope it‘ll look good🥺 and omg thank you for what you said about my current theme- i always feel like i‘m so bad with aesthetics, i obviously like my theme but i feel like every single person on tumblr has a theme that is prettier than mine so it was very nice to hear you say that you love it👉🏼👈🏼 (i‘m so used to it by now that i actually hate it lmao so it‘s getting yeeted soon and i‘m making megan thee stallion my pfp 🤪 (if the graphics and shit works out skdjdjdj)

#lovely anon #<333 #okay its so late now i dont wanna post it now in case i‘m too tired to notice losds of mistakes #but i also wanna post it now so.#*loads #i‘m posting it #and i absolutely do not mind if you answer like this!!!! but if you ever do feel like it‘s too much or you uust want to respond to one thing #in particular sooner then pls go ahead! <3

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underaswift-sunrise · 3 years

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HAPPY CHRISTMAS EVE!! 🎉🎉 I am writing this a second time because I accidentally clicked on a link on my phone while swiping between the tumblr app and safari app, almost at the end of the message. 😢 I hope I don’t miss out on anything.

Awww that’s nice!! It shows that you’ve had some physical improvement even while being stuck at home! How?? Please teach me your ways. I used to exercise every other day even while on lockdown, but after my surgery in Oct I took some time to recover, and now it’s hard to find the motivation to get back into exercising again. And I really want to build up my stamina first, before I try to go for dance lessons again in the new year. ☺️ Oh god yes! Secret Love Song II is the ultimate tear jerker! 😢 So the Tamil music industry works slightly differently. There are a few independent artists, but it’s usually music soundtracks that are mainstream and popular. So the music directors get more recognition and fanbase than the singers. Even though there are popular singing artists, it’s not like the English music industry where they have fandoms and stuff. My fave music directors are A R Rahman, Anirudh, G V Prakash and singers are Sid Sriram (he has such a unique tone to his voice 😍), SPB (sadly he passed away this year due to Covid, but he is AMAZING! And he has sung over 40,000 songs in 14 languages), Chitra, Shreya Goshal. Hmm my current song obsessions are Chellama (Doctor), Ellu Vaya Pookalaye (Asuran), Ennadi Mayavi (Vada Chennai) and Kaathodu Kaathanen (Jail). Let me know what you think if you have a listen to it. ☺️ Oohh I just listened to them! Thunder Road seems like such a “feel good” song. Like it’s a good choice if you need a pick me up.

Aww that’s smart!! I hope that you can achieve all your resolutions for next year! The first one will definitely happen!! Wow! You sound like such a linguist. How many languages do you speak/know? Nooo, it doesn’t sound stupid. I can see what you mean. I sincerely hope that you have enough money to not just live comfortably and travel for auditions next year, but also have money to travel for leisure and have a surplus in savings!! All the best!! 👍🏽👍🏽 Okay, I am totally guilty of point 4 as well. I feel you on that. But I can honestly say that I enjoy talking to you and look forward to your responses. I’m pretty sure that the people in your life do not think that of you. I hope that you can work pass this anxious thoughts and appreciate yourself for the beautiful and wonderful person that you are!! And I am so proud of you for coming this far and recognizing that you have made improvement! YOU GO GLORIA! 💪🏽💪🏽 Also the paradox that being under someone’s gaze makes us uncomfortable, but we love to be on stage dancing! Reading is fun! But I have been getting way too much into fanfics, which is not a bad thing, but I want try reading some non-fiction. Which is hard to start when I have a long list of fanfics saved. 🙈 hope you do get to read more in 2021!! Hmm my goals are to exercise more, get back into dancing, and hopefully to start a PhD. And also general stuff like being more present in the moment, and drinking more water. Haha

Thank you for your wishes! I hope you have an amazing week ahead! Merry Christmas!! Wishing you a fabulous day filled with lots of love, joy, gifts and good food! Have fun but also stay safe!! 🎉🥰❤️ -M :)x

M!!! 💕 So sorry for the late reply!! I'm a terrible person when it comes to replying sometimes ahahah xD As usual, all my ramblings under the cut :D

Ohhhh wow so many music recommendations, thank you SO MUCH!!! I'll save everything to my Spotify! :D Oh I knew absolutely nothing about music directors, thank you for explaining that to me! 😱 It really sounds like a very different system!!

Ah I can feel you about the motivation to exercise!! I'm also very lazy when it comes to cross training, which I need to do to prevent injuries: let's say I'm constant but I get bored very quickly and always look for new exercises, new music to use, exercises that look like games, you name it 😂 Like, to train balance, my favorite exercise is balancing on one leg with eyes closed, and doing variations of that, because it's never boring! 😆 Or I have to listen to podcasts/music in the meantime, otherwise I just go crazy! But I think that to get some motivation back it's better to start from something that's kind of fun and doing only 10 minutes the first day and building up from there!! I honestly made some progress only because I had a lot of time and spent hours dissecting ballet steps I'm struggling with ahah! Just, starting from the simplest "part" of that movement and seeing what I was doing wrong, taking videos of myself and then study said videos (horrible thing to do but very useful 😆)...

Ahhh I'm not a linguist, really!! I just went to a linguistic high school and studied English, French and German! But honestly I feel comfortable speaking only English and French, but the second is definitely a bit rusty as for now 😂 I also took Portuguese for one year at uni and I'd like to go back to it someday! :)

Your goals sound amazing, too!!! I really hope you'll go back to dancing and recover completely from the surgery you mentioned earlier! 🙏 And PhD, WOW!! That's awesome!!! I'm sure you'll accomplish a lot in the new year, you sound like a hardworking and passionate person, I'm rooting for you! :D I hope you spent some nice days during these holidays, rested and ate good food! 💕 Hope you're well and staying safe ☺️🙏 Until the next ask!!! 🎄✨🐇

#mdzsnetcc #ask #💕#submission

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vocalfriespod · 4 years

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Cheaper than Therapy Transcript

[Music]

Carrie Gillon: Hi, and welcome to the Vocal Fries podcast, the podcast about linguistic discrimination!

Megan Figueroa: I’m Megan Figueroa.

Carrie Gillon: I’m Carrie Gillon.

Megan Figueroa: Oh, Carrie, I was so weirded out when I was about to say my name because we just recorded a future episode about names.

Carrie Gillon: And you’re like, “What is my own name? Ahh!”

Megan Figueroa: It’s true because sometimes I say /mɛgən/ and sometimes I say /mɛɪgən/ because I’m the weirdest Megan.

Carrie Gillon: Oh, I’ve never noticed that. But for me, I basically can’t tell the difference before a G because I think I just collapse it to one of them. So, it’s not distinctive for me.

Megan Figueroa: Yeah. It is for me because it’s my name and I’ve heard it so many which ways, but when I say it, I feel like I’m collapsing them on purpose to give people the out of you can say it either way because I hear it either way all the time. Just letting people know, it’s okay if you say /mɛgən/ or /mɛɪgən/.

Carrie Gillon: That is good to say that.

Megan Figueroa: Yeah.

Carrie Gillon: Whereas, I’m like, “No. Has to be /kɛɹi/.”

Megan Figueroa: Well, my mother says /mɛgən/. If for some reason I really wanna articulate my name carefully, I think I definitely say /mɛɪgən/. I don’t actually know how my dad says it because he always says, “Mi hija.” I’m like, “I’m gonna notice next time.” Either way, ya’ll, is fine.

But speaking of language – just kidding. [Laughter] I’m so bad at these transitions. We’re always talking about language. It was a big weekend last week for Parasite at the Oscars.

Carrie Gillon: I was watching the Oscars and I actually voted for it to win all the categories that it won because I just love the movie so much. I was shocked that it won for all of the things that I said it would win for.

Megan Figueroa: You’re shocked not because it didn’t deserve it but because you just didn’t expect the academy to do it.

Carrie Gillon: Because I love it, so clearly, I think it deserves it. I just was shocked, especially after it won Best Non-English – whatever they call it now. I was like, “Ugh, it’s for sure not gonna win Best Picture,” but I chose for both for some reason and it did.

Megan Figueroa: Well, chills because it kind of – okay. This is the way the Oscars has set itself up that I have, and I think a lot of people had, the expectation that there’s no way the picture that won in Best Non-English would also win the Best Picture because it’s literally never happened.

Carrie Gillon: Right. I couldn’t remember if a movie like that had ever been nominated for both categories before. We were trying to remember – couldn’t remember.

Megan Figueroa: But not won. Certainly not won.

Carrie Gillon: Certainly not won, but possibly never even been nominated. It was definitely unprecedented in either direction. I was so happy because last year’s winner was a bit problematic.

Megan Figueroa: Was that Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood? I don’t even remember – no, no. Sorry. La La Land? What was last year?

Carrie Gillon: La La Land didn’t win. It was Moonlight, remember?

Megan Figueroa: Oh, that was the best! The chaos.

Carrie Gillon: No. Last year was The Green Book.

Megan Figueroa: Oh, yeah.

Carrie Gillon: Anyway.

Megan Figueroa: Was that like a mea culpa thing? The – Parasite – god.

Carrie Gillon: I just think – obviously, I can’t read their minds. I don’t know what happened but, honestly, I think this movie is just that good that it kinda blew the competition out of the water. I thought maybe Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood would win because it’s about Hollywood and LA loves to give itself plaudits – kind of why I thought originally La La Land had won, even though it didn’t. But, no, they went with the actually, genuinely best film.

Megan Figueroa: I haven’t seen it. I’m one of the two people –

Carrie Gillon: Get thee to a theater!

Megan Figueroa: I know. I know. So, no spoilers here. Just the fact that – I mean, again, I am glad that we’re moving a little bit forward that we can break this precedent where no non-English film has won Best Picture because of course non-English films can be best picture. C’mon.

Carrie Gillon: Well, right. Last year, Roma was nominated.

Megan Figueroa: Oh, that’s right.

Carrie Gillon: Roma probably should’ve won. It’s certainly better than Green Book.

Megan Figueroa: Did it win Best Foreign Film? Because it was called “Best Foreign Film” last year I think, wasn’t it?

Carrie Gillon: I think you’re right, and I don’t remember.

Megan Figueroa: Well, anyway.

Carrie Gillon: I don’t remember if it was nominated for both.

Megan Figueroa: I think he won for Best Director though – the Roma director – because it was like Mexico, Mexico, Mexico, that same director.

Carrie Gillon: I think that’s correct. Anyway, speaking of Parasite, John Miller – @MillerStream on Twitter – tweeted this lovely tweet, “A man named Bong Joon Ho wins #Oscar for Best Original Screenplay over Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood and 1917. Acceptance speech was, ‘Great honor. Thank you.’ The he proceeds to give the rest of his speech in Korean. These people are the destruction of America.”

Megan Figueroa: There’s – okay. [Laughter] It’s so layered, Carrie. Racism is the stinkiest onion of all. I hate that – I think, just given his tweet, he’s making a point of the quote-unquote “broken English,” right? I’m imagining him pulling it out and writing it exactly word for word what he said because what did he say?

Carrie Gillon: He claimed that Bong said, “Great honor. Thank you.” And, honestly, I don’t remember –

Megan Figueroa: If that’s what he actually said?

Carrie Gillon: Yeah. He said something along those lines, but I dunno if he’s quoting directly or not.

Megan Figueroa: I don’t have any – Alberto Rios called it “generosity of spirit.” I don’t have any generosity of spirit. I think that he’s probably mocking his English too in that little bit.

Carrie Gillon: Right. I mean, why would you give him any benefit of the doubt? He’s saying these people are the destruction of America.

Megan Figueroa: Okay. He starts out mocking his English and then being upset that how dare any other language be spoken on the Oscar stage and then othering – okay. That’s the ultimate othering. And then you’re just gonna directly other by saying, “these people.”

Carrie Gillon: I mean, it’s worse than othering. This is straight up xenophobia.

Megan Figueroa: I mean, I’m surprised he didn’t pull out some of the cockroach imagery or – you know.

Carrie Gillon: Right. I mean, the next step is that, for sure. Then, he claims in the next tweet that he’s not talking about Koreans. He says, quote, “These people,” unquote, “are obviously not Koreans, but those in Hollywood awarding a film that stokes flames of class warfare over two films I thought were more deserving simply to show how woke they are. That should be clear from the rest of what I tweeted about tonight’s production.” No. It’s not clear. And also, I think you’re lying.

Megan Figueroa: So lying. Well, because it probably went viral, he got ratioed I’m sure, hopefully.

Carrie Gillon: I can’t tell, but I’m pretty sure. It did get 32,000 likes.

Megan Figueroa: Well, there’s a lot of racists on Twitter. It’s a cesspool.

Carrie Gillon: I mean, there’re a lot of racists in general, period. And, in this case, super racists because a lot of people are racist. But anyway.

Megan Figueroa: Oh, yeah. Yes. This outwardly “I don’t want your language or you people in my Oscars or in my grocery store or anywhere in my space – in my white public space.”

Carrie Gillon: And also, no. I am sorry. Neither of those movies are more deserving. Okay. We have an email from Kelly. “Hi Megan and Carrie, I just listened to your February 3rd episode and wanted to echo something that Daniel mentioned re: one of your perspective guests he suggested to you” – the Scottish Gaelic consultant for Outlander. I’m not saying his name because I forgot to look up the pronunciation beforehand, and I don’t wanna mess it up.

“If you’re already Outlander fans, you may already know this, but if not, you might enjoy checking out the series.” I still have not seen it. I know so many people love it.

Megan Figueroa: I know. I need to watch it.

Carrie Gillon: I just have so many shows that I love that it’s hard to slot in a new one, but I do really kinda wanna hear some Scottish Gaelic.

Megan Figueroa: I know. Well, how am I supposed to fit it in when I keep watching Schitt’s Creek over and over again? [Laughter]

Carrie Gillon: At least I’m not doing that.

Megan Figueroa: Anyway, back to the email.

Carrie Gillon: One of my favorite shows is about to start again so, anyway. “He’s been a guest on a couple episodes of the Outlander podcast where he’s talked about his approach to consulting on the Scottish Gaelic used in the production. The showrunner, Ron Moore” – who’s also the show runner for Battlestar Galactica, just FYI – “also talks about the use of Scottish Gaelic in a couple of episodes of THE OFFICIAL OUTLANDER PODCAST” – all capital letters, so I think that’s actually its name – “and how they opted not to use subtitles for it to keep the audience tightly in the protagonist, Claire’s, point of view. Since she doesn’t understand the Gaelic, we don’t get subtitles for it. In other parts of the series, they’re in France and, since Claire has French, we get subtitles so that we understand the same content that she does.” That’s an interesting choice.

Megan Figueroa: That’s really interesting, yeah.

Carrie Gillon: “I just thought that was a cool and unusual way for a TV production to approach incorporating an additional language. Also, Outlander does a pretty good job overall of portraying languages and multilingualism in a positive light. One of the main characters, Jaime, is a polyglot. In the books, he’s described as having a talent for languages and he knows at least English, Scotts – Scottish Gaelic – French, German, Latin, and I think Classical Greek. Claire speaks French and English. More recent seasons also include Spanish, Mohawk and, if I remember correctly, a character who speaks Dutch. Anyhow, they build a world that includes the basic assumption that people will and should speak different languages, which is refreshing.” I agree.

Megan Figueroa: Yeah!

Carrie Gillon: “There’re still some arseholes. One scene stands out in which a bunch of British soldiers make fun of a Scotsman’s phonology, but it’s a really enjoyable series with a lot of details that language nerds can enjoy. Hope you get a chance to check it out.” Thank you, Kelly.

Megan Figueroa: Well, now I have to watch it because a listener suggested it.

Carrie Gillon: Yes. And also the language stuff does pique my interest quite a bit.

Megan Figueroa: Is it on Netflix? Do we know?

Carrie Gillon: I do not know. I’m sure listeners will let us know.

Megan Figueroa: Yes. Also, this is not an advertisement for Netflix.

Carrie Gillon: Unless they would like to. [Laughter] Yeah, Netflix, you wanna send some of those billions of dollars you’re spending on content. Doesn’t even have to be in the millions.

Megan Figueroa: No. No. We’re very humble people over here.

Carrie Gillon: Very humbled all the time by things. [Laughter] All right. Well, this week’s episode is all about storytelling. We talk with Anna Marie Trester – not Anna Maria, which I briefly mis-call her.

Megan Figueroa: Me too. What a good sport.

Carrie Gillon: Yes.

[Music]

Carrie Gillon: Today, we have Dr. Anna Marie Trester who is the founder of Career Linguist. She’s an educator, researcher, and consultant who is passionate about bringing linguistics to work. She helps linguists figure out better ways of articulating how our expertise is useful and helps a world of work use linguists to solve the kinds of puzzles we are uniquely equipped to solve. She’s also interested in storytelling as the author of Bringing Linguistics to Work: A Story Listening, Story Finding and Story Telling Approach to Your Career. Welcome, Anna Maria – Anna Marie? Anna Maria. [Laughter]

Anna Marie Trester: Oh, yeah. That has been my whole life. I answer to both. I’ve had business cards that say “Anna Maria” and I, yeah, I understand and celebrate this.

Carrie Gillon: Well, it also makes me think of Anna Maria Tremonti – a Canadian journalist – and I think that’s where I always wanna go because your name is so close.

Megan Figueroa: And you’re from southern Arizona so, like, or at least spend a lot of time.

Anna Marie Trester: I’ve lived a significant portion of my life in Tucson – high school, college. And, yeah, I still light up – I was at a book reading the other night and the author hinted that she was from Arizona. And it’s like, “Where are you from?” And she goes, “Tucson.” And ahh! [Laughter]

Megan Figueroa: I love that. Surely, you’re not the only Anna Maria in Tucson.

Carrie Gillon: Anna Marie.

Megan Figueroa: I mean – I know. That’s what I’m saying, you know?

Anna Marie Trester: Also, there’re Tresters in Tucson. My last name is quite uncommon, but when I say “Trester” in Tucson, I’m often asked, “Are you related to the So-and-So Tresters?” I am not, that I know of.

Megan Figueroa: Well, you’re so close – Rebecca Traister.

Carrie Gillon: Oh, yeah! [Laughter]

Megan Figueroa: I’m sorry. What we’re really saying is, your name is very, very perfect and interesting.

Anna Marie Trester: I love it. I teach storytelling to people, and one of the first ice breakers that I like to do is tell a story about your name. There are endless – or I do this at networking events too. We just go around and, you know, the linguists always have interesting stories to tell about their names. It’s a great way to start.

Megan Figueroa: So, you say you spend a lot of time in Tucson, but I am hearing a little bit of Minnesota.

Anna Marie Trester: I’m Canadian and mid-western. I moved around a lot when I was growing up and I blame that on why I became a linguist because every time I moved, I would have an accent, and then try to not have an accent, and then have more of an accent, and what I have now is a big mix.

Megan Figueroa: Well, I think every linguist has some sort of story or a moment where they realize that their language was X or someone else’s and they want to know the answer, and then all of a sudden, they’re down this rabbit hole of what is linguistics.

Anna Marie Trester: 30 years later.

Megan Figueroa: Yeah. Sure.

Carrie Gillon: Let’s begin with Career Linguist. Why did you start that?

Anna Marie Trester: Well, it’s a funny story actually. I was teaching at Georgetown University. I was the director of a program that was focused on professional applications of linguistics – the MLC shout out, the MLC program, Masters in Language and Communication at Georgetown. I taught them a course that was called “The Professionalization Seminar.” In the course, one of the things that we did was your picked an organization and your did an ethnography – I called it a mini ethnography – where you spent some time and, if you could, get in the doors of that organization. Be an ethnographer. Talk to people who work there, spend any time that you can learning about it in any way that you can.

Anyways, we were doing this project and my students were like, “Why aren’t you doing an ethnography of an organization of interest?” It’s like, “Oh, okay. I accept that challenge.” So, they had a portfolio that was an online portfolio. I had been kinda blogging and doing some stuff but, you know, put it all together into Career Linguist. That started in, like, 20 – I mean, that was probably 20 – oh, yeah. In the aughts we said 2006.

Megan Figueroa: Yep. We sure did.

Anna Marie Trester: I mean, I first was dabbling when I was a graduate student then I guess it became – I think it became a thing in like 2012/2014 that I was Career Linguist. I even forget. Anyways, that’s how it started. Then, over the years blogging, sort of found my voice – what is this gonna be? Why am I trying to say? Who am I trying to talk to? Defining – so now I would say, yeah, it’s a resource center and it’s a blog where I share ideas about career. I think, write, and speak about career – so musings and job ads. Today I posted some job ads up there.

Megan Figueroa: What does a job ad look like that you might wanna share with people?

Anna Marie Trester: I share things that I come across that sound interesting. The ones I posted this morning were job ads for an organization called “Appen,” who’ve actually hired me recently to talk about – they wanna think about making recruiting be more human.

Megan Figueroa: Instead of algorithms and stuff?

Anna Marie Trester: Yeah. I’m actually organizing networking events in different cities where people who work at the organization come – and I’m hoping to do one in Tucson soon, or Phoenix. We’ll see. This organization hires tons of linguists. No matter where you go in the states or in Australia – they’re actually housed in Australia, this organization. I dunno if they’re gonna send me to Australia but – hey! If anyone’s listening, who wants to? That’d be great.

But just get people to talk about “You work here. What’s it like to work here? I’m thinking about working here,” just bringing it to an interpersonal interaction. Then, I posted another job. I have been really interested in Nextdoor. I dunno if you know this app. It’s big out here and – I live in Silicon Valley area. They seem to be very thoughtful about what that app can do. It builds community. They’re always asking, and they listed: sociologist, psychologist, anthropologist.

And I’m like, “Hello! You’re looking for a linguist.” They want people who are thoughtful about community and are theorizing about community and the role of social media in organizing community. They cite Bowling Alone, extensively – you never see this in a job ad where they’re doing a lit review and citing research, so I need to meet whoever this is that’s writing these job ads.

It’s an app where people can get to know their neighbors, ask things like –

Carrie Gillon: This one, yes!

Anna Marie Trester: You’ll ask like, “Is there a power outage?” This kind of thing. “Did somebody just hear a noise? What was that?”

Megan Figueroa: I joined that and then, as someone who likes true crime as – like, I’m one of those women that listen to true crime for my anxiety – I thought that it was really scary because people were like, “Why are the cops” – so I was informed of every situation in which the cops were involved.

Anna Marie Trester: This is why they need a social – they know that they need people to be thoughtful –

Megan Figueroa: Yeah. That’s good.

Anna Marie Trester: Yeah! They’re aware.

Megan Figueroa: Right. And it was a little bit racist.

Carrie Gillon: Oh, there’re a lot of people on there who’re racist, yeah.

Megan Figueroa: I was like, “Why are you informing me that a sketchy-looking person was walking through the neighborhood?” Let people walk through fucking neighborhoods, you know?

Anna Marie Trester: Well, if that conversation happens there, it’s a tool, it’s a platform, so people have these conversations. Exactly this conversation happens weekly, daily.

Megan Figueroa: This kind of job would be to see what people – you kinda wanna be behind the scenes and see how that can be facilitated or prevented or what is that, do you think?

Anna Marie Trester: I have so many different jobs, but the one that I posted was about – so they call it the “product.” This is how Silicon Valley talks about the community as a product. So, these people are thinking about how the technology, I guess, could be structured. I’m not a tech person, but I like to think about how tech needs us because they do.

So, I mean, kudos to them. They’re realizing they need someone who’s aware of social science and human theory to think about how they’re developing this technology so that, if there is that – if that is making certain conversations really easy to have – maybe we can shape that.

Megan Figueroa: Absolutely. Then, you need – this is great – you need linguists because – or people that think about these questions – because then you’re like, “Okay. At what point is it hate speech, and when can we flag that, and when are encroaching on the first amendment?” and all of that.

Carrie Gillon: Well, it doesn’t encroach on first amendment because it’s not the government.

Megan Figueroa: Ah. Good point. Yes. But that’s not – so I did a, how do you say it, a consultation with a tech company and they were asking me these questions about their avatars and if people can talk to each other about these things, when will people feel like their first amendment rights are being encroached upon?

It’s not just that maybe they know, perhaps, that they can do whatever they want, but they don’t want people to feel like their rights are being encroached upon because then people get pissy.

Carrie Gillon: Yes. They do. Because they don’t understand what the law actually is.

Megan Figueroa: As I just showed. [Laughter] I’m just in the presence of Anna Marie and I’m thinking about all these ways linguists can help people in other sorts of jobs.

Anna Marie Trester: Absolutely.

Megan Figueroa: I mean, who thinks – we don’t think about it enough.

Anna Marie Trester: We have something to say in every – we are thoughtful about language and communication and how it means, like, how language does things everywhere. No matter where you are, if you’re working, you’re using language, so you could use a linguist. You need a linguist. I’ll say it.

Carrie Gillon: Everyone needs a linguist. They just don’t know that they need one.

Anna Marie Trester: They just don’t know it.

Megan Figueroa: Just put that linguist in your pocket. You need one. Just carry it around.

Anna Marie Trester: I think a lot about job ads, right? I actually was writing – I’m putting an activity in my new book where I’m calling it, “Put yourself into conversation with a job ad.” This is an activity that I like to do. There was a job that I saw recently at Earthjustice, this is a law firm that focuses on climate change. Their tagline, I love it, is “Because the earth needs a good lawyer.”

Megan Figueroa: Aw, that’s awesome!

Anna Marie Trester: That’s their organizational catchphrase. But then they’ve realized that they need people to be helping them communicate internally, like within the organization, and the way that they wrote this job ad, it’s just – I’m putting it in my book. I’m using it as an example of when you see a job ad like this, it almost is – they’re not asking for a linguist, but they are saying what they need is someone who can help them be thoughtful about how they are talking to each other in ways that can be excluding or –

You know, when people think about diversity, they’re like, “Oh, yeah. We need to hire more. Yeah. It’s great. Hire more diverse teams.” Then, the work really begins when we start talking about thinking about how does the way that interact, talk inclusivity into being. It’s gonna happen all day every day, a thousand times a day, that there’s gonna be a million interactions that we can all be more thoughtful about.

Megan Figueroa I’m actually impressed that they got to that point because a lot of places will check the box of being quote-unquote “diverse” because they hired someone that doesn’t look like everyone else or whatever. Then, it stops there.

Anna Marie Trester: It starts there.

Megan Figueroa: Exactly, right? Yeah!

Carrie Gillon: Well, I think it’s actually certain kinds of organizations are more thoughtful about this than others. Universities are possibly – I might as well say the worst – but they’re way behind some kind of organizations because they’re just – they’re like, “Well, we’re good. We have all these students from all over the place.”

Anna Marie Trester: Carrie, I love that you say that because – so a lot of people reach out to me with questions about applying for jobs. They’ll see a job ad or have an interaction with somebody where they’re like, “This person isn’t very thoughtful about – they’re telling me I need to get more training in Python.” And you’re gonna encounter plenty of people who don’t get it, but we have to be okay – better than okay – we have to welcome this opportunity to talk about who we are, or what we do, what we can bring.

A lot of people aren’t gonna get it, and that doesn’t mean that we need to stop. That’s why we need to keep talking about why we care about what we care about and what we can offer because we have – I say, the world needs us. The world needs more of us.

Megan Figueroa: I was thinking recently about what happened because I’m on a campus and there was an ad for an accent modification workshop, and I was just thinking, it’s like, “Someone probably asked for that or require” – I don’t know who on the uppers wanted it. But why can’t there be someone that’s like, “If we’re gonna do that, we need to do accent accommodation workshops too” or something like that? If this is something that we’re really gonna keep doing – because I see it all the time, and I don’t see it dying.

Anna Marie Trester: Well, so my dissertation research was on improv, so I take a “Yes, and…” approach always to life. It’s how I think. When I was at Georgetown, the business school approached me. Somebody went to a conference and learned about ethnography, and then they came back and looked at the course calendar – who’s teaching ethnography – and it was me. They brought me over for a meeting and they were like, “We wanna have some resources for our international students.” And I was like, “Yes, and what I see here is an opportunity to talk to everybody about what we all can learn about” –

To their credit, they took me up on it and that turned into a five-year project that we called “Talking Business” where we all learned – and we have so much that we can learn from the experience of an international student who can tell us so much about what they’re learning and observing about how we communicate.

Megan Figueroa: Perhaps here how when they’re in class, how hard it is for them when they’re listening to an American accent. I mean, just these things that would make others more empathetic toward others.

Anna Marie Trester: Well, at the end of the day, we just have to realize that our ways of speaking are always unique. We decide that there is a way that we talk to one another, but that is always contextually situated and negotiated and constructed.

Megan Figueroa: “Talking Business” – I love that. I’m happy to hear to there are some places that are running with this idea of we’re all in this together, basically, as cheesy as it sounds.

Anna Marie Trester: It is so much fun. They really opened their doors to us. What we did was they let us record all of their interactions. Then, when somebody in that group wanted to know – we just would offer it to them. Like, “If you would like to have a conversational style consult, let us know.” If they said yes to us – and I’m gonna be reaching out to these folks because it’s now been 10 years, so how has this – has this helped? I hope that it has.

We would be able to pull up – we had video. And I had, at that time, a team of seven research assistants, so we could cue up the video and we could find an example of them, like, “This is how you have an argument with a classmate,” “This is how you make a persuasive presentation,” “This is how you” – and we could help them be thoughtful and reflective on, “This is how you are using language. Here’s some ways that could be interpreted, misinterpreted. There’s ways that this makes a lot of sense in this context, how could this” –

I had one student, he was about to become a Dean, and he realized that he had to totally recalibrate – moving from being a student to being a Dean – he had to totally recalibrate how you do humility, for example. When invested with a lot of institutional power, it’s totally different how you be folksy.

Megan Figueroa: That’s something I didn’t even think about because I just don’t have a lot of power, Anna Marie, so I don’t have to think about how I talk when it comes – how am I gonna sound more down to earth? Well, I couldn’t be further down here.

Carrie Gillon: There’s always lower you could be.

Megan Figueroa: I know. I’m sure. [Laughter]

Anna Marie Trester: With Career Linguist, I find I’m often experimenting with trying on a little bit more power. There’s ways that, especially women – and we live in a world where what gets heard as “confident,” and I’m using air quotes. People love to tell women, “You need to change the way that you talk You need to sound more confident. And you need to” – you know?

Megan Figueroa: Right. Plus vocal fry.

Anna Marie Trester: Aye yae yae. Okay. Let’s think about what gets heard as confident. I’m working on this new book that is – right now, I’m calling it, “Employing Linguistics,” we’ll see how that – I want there to be that ambiguity because it’s about work, but it’s not just about work. It’s how you use linguistics.

I’m starting off with a story from a woman who’s just starting off her professional life. She just graduated. She’s got a masters in linguistics, and she’s launching her own business. And I do workshops. I travel and do workshops at linguistics departments around the country and world, now. I went to Finland last –

Megan Figueroa: Ooo!

Anna Marie Trester: It was so great. Yeah. In Finland, they were saying, “Maybe it’s just here, but we have a hard time projecting power.” Like, “Yeah, no, it’s not just here.” But I was playing them this interview from this woman because they were saying, “She doesn’t sound confident.” And I’m like, “And yet, I’m telling you, this woman is launching her own business. She knows what the hell she’s doing. She’s doing it.” Okay. We need to really question what we are saying when we say, “That person sounds” –

Megan Figueroa: Going back to job ads, some of the language they use in job ads is so off-putting.

Carrie Gillon: It makes it sound really boring, a.), and then b.), yeah, it’s like, “Oh, I don’t think they want someone like me.”

Megan Figueroa: Or I’m like, “Is there some tinge of sexism or something here?” And I’m like, “Do I wanna work for them?”

Carrie Gillon: Yeah. That’s kinda what I meant.

Anna Marie Trester: This is where I mean we have to – I like to say that we linguists, we lean in when we hear miscommunication, misunderstanding – yeah. There are problems, and they need us. I mentioned that collaboration. I’m finding this organization, Appen, they’re open to me talking with them about even it starts with the job ad. When you’re talking about who you’re looking for, there’s gonna be – we all have a way that we can become more aware of how we’re using language and embedding our own perspective. This is a process that we all need to be working.

Megan Figueroa: Someone emailed me and asked me for some perspective on a job that they were sending out. My first thought was, “Can you explicitly put that ‘You may read these job qualifications and think that you’re not qualified. Try anyway’?”

Anna Marie Trester: Nice.

Megan Figueroa: Because I’m like – this is something that I run into where I’m like – and I have to be like, “All right. Put on your cap and think about all the people that are just like” – you know, more confidently.

Anna Marie Trester: “I have one of those things.”

Megan Figueroa: Yeah. Just be more like that because you never know. I wanted them to put that specifically because it’s women or other minoritized people that are going to read that and say, “I’ll pass on even applying.”

Anna Marie Trester: Absolutely. A thousand times, yes.

Megan Figueroa: I was happy just to know that someone was reaching out, that people are being more thoughtful about this.

Anna Marie Trester: People are. They need help. And we’re gonna make mistakes. We’re gonna make a couple of mistakes. We need to get better at – this is where my improv, I think, is such a boon to me because it really taught me how to make mistakes and to be a little bit easier about “I messed that up and we need to try again.”

Megan Figueroa: What? Are you telling me that improv is basically therapy? Is that what you’re saying? Because it’s like, that’s where I learned that!

Anna Marie Trester: What if I told you my improv troupe was called “Cheaper Than Therapy”? [Laughter]

Megan Figueroa: Oh, perfect. Well, I mean, it’s funny because you said you’re always “Yes, and…” because my therapist taught me that.

Carrie Gillon: So, your therapist is probably from improv because –

Megan Figueroa: I think that’s what they’re teaching now to people that go this route – all these new techniques. But it’s like, sure –

Carrie Gillon: Someone from improv started that.

Megan Figueroa: The facilitator of what workshop or whatever.

Anna Marie Trester: I taught improv for about 10 years in Washington, DC. I got so many people, they would tell me, that they came into improv because their therapist told them to come to improv. I started having relationships with therapists who were recommending their clients come to work with me because they knew that I was thoughtful and welcoming, particularly embracing of this kind of work.

Megan Figueroa: I mean, it applies to anything, right? Just thinking of getting to the jobs ads, maybe you’re looking at these qualifications and you might say to yourself, “Ah, I don’t have the two years of experience. Yes, and I have so much experience in X.” It’s just a way to remind yourself that – I dunno. It’s a way to be kind to yourself. That’s what I’ve learned, for sure.

Anna Marie Trester: I call job ads a wish list. That’s some committee’s wish list. That’s great. They can ask for their purple unicorn. That’s fine. This is the real world, and you’re gonna get somebody who’s gonna have 10%, 20%, 30% of what you’re asking for.

Megan Figueroa: I just helped a friend. I was like, “No. You need to apply for this. I don’t care that you think that you’re not – you really want it. Try.”

Anna Marie Trester: Absolutely. There’s often – I dunno if you’ve read the book, there’s a book written by Stanford Design School professors called Designing Your Life. They are kind of down on job applications. They say don’t even look at them. But I say do look at them because that’s enough to look at and see if there is a spark. If there is any interest, then go for it and use that to start a conversation, use that to launch in.

But the truth is, so few jobs actually – when you look at the hiring process – or [pɹoʊsɛs] – there’s such a misalignment. There’s so few job ads that actually correspond to the thing that gets hired. I look at their book to talk about the numbers. I’m not the most quantitatively oriented person. But it’s a lot. Know that if you find a slight interest, a slight alignment, apply, and it could well be that there’s another job or a different job or a new job that they see when they see your materials. They think, “Oh, we didn’t even know that we were looking for this person. Let’s create a job for them.”

Megan Figueroa: You have clients. Are your clients the companies that are looking for linguists?

Anna Marie Trester: Sometimes. It’s a new thing started last year where I have this organization that’s trying to – I would like for it to be both. But it has been, for many years, that I’ve been working with universities to help their students or individual jobseekers to help make their materials –

Megan Figueroa: So, someone could send you their materials and you’d be pointing out, “Why aren’t you talking about how great you are at this? Obviously, you have this skill.”

Anna Marie Trester: Yeah. I feel like I give – I hope I give – a different – I’m not your typical resume helper person. I’ll look at a cover letter and I’ll notice things like you are not shifting your dietic center the way that you should be. This is a classic thing. In cover letters, people write about why this will be a great job for me – this will be a wonderful opportunity for me. It’s understandable, right? You’re in your head and you’re thinking about “Wow, I speak French. This will be a great opportunity to practice my French.”

What you have to do in job materials or at large, but especially in a cover letter, you need to say, “You need someone who speaks French because think about how that’s gonna help you with this initiative that I see you talking about in the press.” That signals a lot of things. That signals that you’ve been reading about them, you’ve been thinking about them, and that you’re thinking about how your skills help them.

Megan Figueroa: Because they are their center, right? They’re thinking about them, so make sure you appeal to them.

Anna Marie Trester: Yeah.

Megan Figueroa You do work with the Linguistics Society of America?

Anna Marie Trester: For four years, and now I stepped down. Anastasia Nylund and I were the co-organizers of a special interest group for “Linguistics Beyond Academia.”

Megan Figueroa: Okay. That was you.

Anna Marie Trester: We restarted it. It had been started a long time ago. We sort of breathed new life into it in 2014. We carried the torch for four years. Now, we’ve passed it off to a team that has a ton of energy and they are just kicking butt. We just had the meeting – were you there?

Megan Figueroa: I wasn’t there, no. It was my first time. I haven’t been in a while. I had a little bit of fomo but – yeah.

Anna Marie Trester: I was telling Carrie, one of the top tweets for a long time about the conference at the #LSA2020, one of the top tweets from a presentation that one of our SIG members made to a department chair meeting where it was a list of dos and don’ts for when your students get a non-academic job. The big don’t was – and somebody took a picture of this. It was Lauren Collister, and her tweet blew up. It was, “Don’t say ‘We’ll miss you.’ Say, ‘How wonderful! You got a job that I hope you’ll come back and tell us about. Keep us connected to you. Keep coming back and telling our students.’” That’s an act of erasure that is probably not intended. How othering is that? That is so common.

Carrie Gillon: It happened to me after I decided, “You know what? Fuck this shit.” One of my Facebook friends, who I’d known since I was an undergrad, he was like, “Oh, we’ll miss you.” And I was like, a.) I still have stuff coming out. Still. I still do. And b.) what? We’re still connected on Facebook. We’re still gonna be –

Megan Figueroa: You’re not not a linguist anymore.

Carrie Gillon: Right. I’m still a linguist. I’m still doing stuff with language. I dunno. I was mad.

Megan Figueroa: As you should be, yeah. When I graduated, someone told me, “It’s a shame because you’re such a good researcher.” And I was like –

Carrie Gillon: Like you can’t do research anywhere else?

Megan Figueroa: I still am. I don’t have a tenure track job or I’m not a postdoc, but I’m still doing research. It was like, “Ugh. I know you mean so well.” I can tell that you think that’s a very – you’re speaking highly of me, and I get it, but it hurts. I’m glad that you brought that up because I just want to say to all of the undergrads and grad students listening that you don’t have to go into academia. If someone shames you for it, that’s some of their stuff going on.

Carrie Gillon: It’s part of the cult of academia, right?

Megan Figueroa: It is. Absolutely. I hope you have an advisor that is comfortable enough with whatever. I know the numbers look good when you have, “Oh, look. My student went to tenure track.” I know that’s what’s underpinning all of this, but it’s like, academia doesn’t look like it did 30 years ago. Not everyone wants to be a professor. All these things. It has to be okay.

Anna Marie Trester: I have to say it again, the world needs us. On this panel that we had at the LSA, we had an asylum officer talking about how his linguistics – of course, his linguistics skills come into play a thousand times a day as an asylum officer. The world has some wicked problems.

Carrie Gillon: I think lawyers should hire linguists on retainer because we can help you a lot.

Anna Marie Trester: Sometimes, I show up at a school and people are like, “I’m gonna get an academia job!” And I’m like, “Okay. Wonderful.” I’m not trying to take that away from anybody. I was scared too when I – so I started this job, I was one of those PhD students who was gonna get an academic job and I just knew it. I had magical thinking it was just gonna work out. When I was graduating, there was this program that was starting at Georgetown, and my advisor, Deborah Schiffrin – well, she was one of my committee members. She was not my advisor. Sorry, Natalie. Natalie was my advisor. Deborah Schiffrin was on my committee.

She advised me in that moment to apply for this job. She said, “This is why you’d be good at it.” Again, talking about how we don’t think about our own expertise. Before grad school, I had worked in an investment bank. I had some industry experience and I came to linguistics from that. Anyways, I was good at that job, but the whole time I was still applying for academic jobs, and I was gonna get an academic job, and I was convinced that was the path that I was on and, gradually, started to realize that –

Oh, now I remember what I was gonna say. The point I was gonna make was that Debbie Schiffrin, when she was getting me started with this job, she was like, “Okay. The first thing you’re gonna do is have 50 informational interviews.” And I was like, “What’s an informational interview? Huh?” I didn’t know. One of the reasons I wouldn’t have thought to apply for that job is I dunno how to help grad students figure out non-academic careers.

So, I just started – well, “Yes, and…” – having these informational interviews where I went and talked to alum and said, “What do you do? How does your linguistics come here?” One of the first ones I went to was an alum who worked at the Census Bureau. She’s like, “I have the best job, right? Of all the people that you’ve talked to, I have the best one, right?” And I was like, “You’re the first one. I don’t know! Maybe? You seem really happy.”

She was so happy with her job, and so in touch with how her work was really having real world – she had done research in Chinese – well, she was, herself, a speaker of Mandarin, I believe, and she was helping the Census Bureau think about, as they were bringing surveys to Chinese-speaking communities, there was a way that they were gonna need to restructure the letters so a, quote-unquote, “American style” – like a white, non-thinking-about-it style would be to say, “Please complete this survey because blah, blah, blah.”

But in the discourse style of Chinese-speaking communities, you needed to structure the request such that it said, “Background, background, background, background, background, build up to the request.” The survey, when it was restructured that way, was getting a much higher – people were actually responding and getting the data that the data that the Census Bureau needed.

Megan Figueroa: And she did that. She helped with that.

Anna Marie Trester: She did that.

Megan Figueroa: Awesome. Especially since it’s so fucking important – the census.

Anna Marie Trester: Yeah.

Megan Figueroa: That’s awesome.

Carrie Gillon: I’m looking forward to it coming. I like filling those things out.

Megan Figueroa: I know! I do too. I remember being 10 years old or, like, 13, and being like, “Can I fill it out, Dad? Can I be the one? Can I do it?” Such a nerd.

Anna Marie Trester: They have a bunch of linguists working there.

Megan Figueroa: That’s good. That’s awesome. Doesn’t every state have their own little census bureau too? I mean, I’m just thinking about all of – there’s so many places for linguists. It’s not just like there’s one centralized census bureau. Every state has something that’s working on these things and all of that. So many jobs.

You collect stories for your books?

Anna Marie Trester: It’s one of the things that I do, yeah.

Megan Figueroa: That’s the kind of stories that you’re collecting?

Anna Marie Trester: As a community, we need to hear more stories. I think through stories we learn about the different kinds of things that people can do with their skills and training in linguistics. That’s why I’m writing this book now, again, another one, because I felt like the last book I wrote didn’t have enough stories. It had, like, five, but now I wanna have 50 because I wanna tell a story of career diversity.

That’s one of the ways that – I have this approach where I think about story telling, story listening, and story finding. The story telling part of that work is just getting lots of stories out there. Then, I advocate for an approach that is more ongoing. It’s sort of like what I was talking about when I’m talking about that job at Earthjustice that I see having such potential. We could learn a lot from paying attention to the stories, listening to the stories that are being told in a job application, at the workplace. Adopting a story listening approach could be really informative about anything.

I always think about Charlotte Linde’s work when I think about story listening. She was hired for many years by NASA to – well, I always say she was chasing astronauts around, but I think that’s not exactly what she did all day. She could capture the stories of missions when they were being retired. It was one of the things that she did. They had her having her job responsibility, they called it “Knowledge Management.” But, as a linguist, she has expertise in what is the knowledge – the expert knowledge – that is contained in these stories that will not – they will not be codified when these people retire, or leave, or this mission gets retired.

Having someone who’s listening for a story and being very thoughtful about the knowledge and wisdom and institutional best practices that are contained in – so, again, everybody needs one of those linguists story listening at their organization.

Carrie Gillon: That’s amazing.

Megan Figueroa: Yeah. I wanna work for NASA!

Anna Marie Trester: I visited her one day and I was like, “Charlotte, you are doing nothing to dissuade me from saying you have the coolest job in the world” because she took me to the Mars model and we were chasing around –

Carrie Gillon: Oh, man! [Laughter] Dream job.

Megan Figueroa: I was gonna say, isn’t every little nerdy kid’s dream job NASA? You don’t even know what part of NASA. You’re just like – NASA!

Carrie Gillon: Well, when I first went to university, I went into engineering because I was like, “Star Trek. Yeah. I’m gonna build shuttles.” Then, I was like, “Nope. Hate this.” But if linguistics could’ve gotten me there – oh, man!

Megan Figueroa: Yeah! You’d want her job the whole time.

Anna Marie Trester: Linguistics got Charlotte Linde to NASA twice. Twice! You’ll have to read her story in my book to learn how. In the book, I’m telling stories about how people use their linguistics as a Mom, or how people use their linguistics in bystander activism. It’s not just at work. But, for many of us, work is gonna be the way that we bring – I grew up in a family that doesn’t have a ton of money, so my job was gonna be how I travelled. It was gonna be how I got to try on different worlds and explore. Career has been a major way that I have expressed my sense of contributing to the world.

For many of us, it is that too. It is not just our livelihood – but it is also our livelihood – but if you’re trying to use your career to express meaning and purpose and find that broader “What do I wanna give to the world?” it’s gonna be more bottom up, I think. It’s both. It’s top down and bottom up.

Carrie Gillon: That, I think, is particularly for people who went into academia. That’s really important for us is that we wanna be doing meaningful work.

Anna Marie Trester: One of my favorite networking groups – I participate in this group here in the Bay Area called “Ethnobreakfast.” A lot of them are –

Megan Figueroa: That’s just nerdy.

Anna Marie Trester: It’s so nerdy. All right. Professors who are listening, do this. This was a professor of anthropology. She has kept such a tight, close community of her grads that, every month, one of them invites a group of nerds into their workplace. We all trudge out to Facebook or to Workday, and we sit for an hour. We read – well, whatever the host gets to decide what we’re gonna read. We all read something. Then, we talk about some theoretical thing or.

They get to invite their colleagues who get to learn a little bit more about “I always knew that you had this anthropology or ethnography or linguistic interest, but I didn’t know how you used it or how it came” – they get to learn about us. We get to learn about them. I think this should be happening everywhere.

Carrie Gillon: That sounds amazing.

Anna Marie Trester: It’s breakfast, so it is early in the morning. But it doesn’t cut into anybody’s workday. We have it from 8:30 to 9:30 on a Friday which, let’s be honest, who can start to work at 9:00 a.m. on a Friday anyway? We all bring – it’s a potlatch. It doesn’t cost anyone anything. Those are the conversations that we need to be – okay. So, story finding. Talk about a little cue that I left for a long time. That’s what I think of when I think of story finding. Let’s look for places where conversations could be happening but aren’t and let’s build spaces for them.

Megan Figueroa: I would totally go to that breakfast.

Carrie Gillon: Me too.

Anna Marie Trester: It’s the best. Make one! So many alum from U of A are doing so many interesting things. For the record, I think that that’s what your podcast is also – a story finding thing. You’re out there making space for conversations that should be happening, but they haven’t been.

Carrie Gillon: I agree. It’s also story telling by letting the rest of the world who are not linguists know that, hey, these are things to think about. We should think about that more carefully than we have, but absolutely.

Anna Marie Trester: It seems like what we’re talking about are these tiny little interactions. I was inspired – I was telling Carrie – by Anne Charity Hudley’s amazing plenary at the LSA. She was sharing this model, and this is a social activism model, where it’s tiny little changes, when they are amplified a hundred-fold and consistently reinforced, that’s a movement. I think we’re engaged in a movement. It’s gonna be tiny little things, but they are happening all over the place. When you hear those little moments, or those little moments where you caught yourself being an asshole or –

Carrie Gillon: Which we all do.

Anna Marie Trester: Try to adopt that mindset of like, “Here’s a moment. Here’s a tiny moment.” We can be easy about it, and we can admit that we make mistakes and learn – after Anne’s plenary, I went up and tried to say this, so I’ll say what I sort of said that we all have to adopt a learning mindset. It's so powerful.

We’re bringing these messages to people with power so, especially people with power out there, remember, when you have power, it is especially important that you adopt this learning mindset and remember that it feels – I think sometimes people with power, it feels very dangerous to let go of any of that power or to admit that you could make a mistake.

Megan Figueroa: That’s why I was afraid of this podcast. I mean, this is my little bit of power, right, too, where I was like, “What if I say something wrong?”

Carrie Gillon: A.) we can edit.

Megan Figueroa: It was very scary.

Carrie Gillon: B.) we can learn!

Megan Figueroa: Yes. The learning part has been very – I thought it would be scary, but it’s actually very freeing.

Anna Marie Trester: It’s like this for me. It’s human.

Megan Figueroa: It is, yeah. Absolutely.

Anna Marie Trester: I remember K-Cat – Kathryn Campbell-Kibler – at a session at LSA a couple years ago where she invited us to come practice in the lobby. They had a panel on ethics. Then, she was like, “Meet me in the lobby.” And I was like, “Oh my god! I’ll be there.” I was there early. “Let’s practice having these conversations.” It was just – let’s practice having these conversations where we just say, “Huh. That wasn’t great” or “We can do better,” however we learn how to say these things.

Megan Figueroa: Absolutely. I think that all boils down to, don’t be an asshole, right?

Anna Marie Trester: It is absolutely how you do, don’t be an asshole. That’s how we all make sure that happens. We’re all responsible for it. Yeah!

Carrie Gillon: Acknowledging that you made a mistake is Step 1, and it’s good to acknowledge.

Anna Marie Trester: What a life-affirming conversation.

Carrie Gillon: I know! This has been great.

Anna Marie Trester: Go be awesome.

Megan Figueroa: I’m gonna cancel therapy on Tuesday.

Anna Marie Trester: Go share your power with the world.

Megan Figueroa: Yes. Go be empowered, for sure. Thank you so much for being our guest today.

Anna Marie Trester: Thank you guys.

Carrie Gillon: It was so great.

Megan Figueroa: It’s been so lovely.

Carrie Gillon: Yeah. Don’t be an asshole.

Megan Figueroa: Don’t be an Asshole.

Anna Marie Trester: Yes, and…

[Music]

Carrie Gillon: The Vocal Fries podcast is produced by me, Carrie Gillon, for Halftone Audio, theme music by Nick Granum. You can find us on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @vocalfriespod. You can email us at [email protected] and our website is vocalfriespod.com.

#transcript #linguistics #linguist #careers #career linguist

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lingthusiasm · 5 years

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Transcript Episode 28: How languages influence each other - Interview with Hannah Gibson on Swahili, Rangi, and Bantu languages

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 28: How languages influence each other - Interview with Hannah Gibson on Swahili, Rangi, and Bantu languages. 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 28 show notes page.

Lauren: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Lauren Gawne, and today I’m talking to Hannah Gibson about Swahili, Bantu languages, and nouns!

[Music]

Lauren: Hannah, welcome to Lingthusiasm! We’re very happy to have another fellow enthusiastic linguist on the show today. I was wondering if you could introduce yourself and what your current role is.

Hannah: Yeah, my name’s Hannah Gibson. And I’m currently a lecturer at the University of Essex in the UK.

Lauren: Excellent. How did you get into linguistics?

Hannah: Ah. Reluctantly, perhaps. I’ve always loved languages, loved learning languages. I had friends who spoke different languages at school, and I loved learning the odd word here or there, or phrases and things. At school I learned a bit of German and a bit of Spanish. Then I went to university. I went to SOAS, School of Oriental and African Studies, in London. I got there, and I was supposed to be studying law.

Lauren: Okay.

Hannah: I got there, and I found out that you could study – I think the list was, like, 43 different languages from around the world.

Lauren: Yeah.

Hannah: I was amazed. And I thought, “I can’t be here and not study one of these languages.” So I changed my studies a little bit to study Swahili and law. I had this list of languages and thought, “Oh, which language do I want to study?” And so I studied Swahili and law really thinking, “Oh, I’m interested in languages, learning languages, but I’m not interested in linguistics,” because I didn’t really know, perhaps, what linguistics was.

Lauren: It is one of the biggest problems that people don’t actually know what linguistics is.

Hannah: I thought, “Oh, I like learning languages and I like talking to people, but this linguistics thing, not so sure about that.” Anyway, the more I studied Swahili in that case and the more I learnt about languages, I did an Introduction to Linguistics course, and I thought, “Oh, okay, this is absolutely fantastic.” Then I moved to linguistics –

Lauren: Yay!

Hannah: – and I’ve never looked back.

Lauren: We’re very happy to have you. I’m not going to ask you any questions about law.

Hannah: Thank you.

Lauren: But for those who aren’t familiar with the Swahili language, can you tell us a bit about where it’s generally spoken and other fun Swahili facts?

Hannah: Oh, absolutely. Swahili is a language spoken across east Africa. The homeland or traditional area where Swahili was spoken was along the coast of present-day Tanzania and Kenya and also onto some of the islands. You might have heard of places like Zanzibar. That’s, again, off the Tanzanian coast. But Swahili is also now, and has been for a long time, used as a lingua franca throughout east Africa. You’ll find it spoken in, like, Uganda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, parts of northern Mozambique, and southern Somalia, Burundi. So it’s got a huge geographic coverage, but that east Africa area…

Lauren: Cool. We’ll make sure we link at least to the Wikipedia article and a good map.

Hannah: Absolutely.

Lauren: And the domain of it.

Hannah: And across the global diaspora as well. But that’s sort of its heart.

Lauren: So you studied that all the way through your undergraduate career?

Hannah: Yes, and I spent a year in east Africa studying at a university in Zanzibar, in that case, in Tanzania. So one semester in Kenya and one semester in Tanzania just focusing on Swahili. That was where I really – my eyes were opened to language and linguistics. And I just thought, “Yeah, I want to do this for as long as I possibly can.”

Lauren: Awesome.

Hannah: I just then took more and more linguistics classes after that.

Lauren: So you took more linguistics after that. And then you ended up going into a masters?

Hannah: A Masters in Linguistics at SOAS as well.

Lauren: Okay. And then a PhD?

Hannah: In linguistics. Also at SOAS.

Lauren: I mean, if you’re on to a good thing.

Hannah: Absolutely. I think for me I’m interested in languages from east Africa, African languages. SOAS was a great place to do that. Expertise was all around me. And I think, because I’d studied law as an undergraduate, it actually felt like quite a change because it was completely different teachers. It was a different department. It wasn’t like, “Oh, I’m still here.” By the time I got to a PhD, it was a little bit like that. But, yes, it was a great place to do that.

Lauren: I don’t think it’s as common in North America, but I did my undergrad and postgraduate studies at the same university.

Hannah: There you go. If you want to study Swahili and law, actually SOAS is the only place I know in the UK that you can do it. So beyond that.

Lauren: Yeah, there’s not a lot of places. So there’s obviously a bit of a transition there from learning about – I think you obviously got into linguistics because you were interested in Swahili. What was the difference between learning Swahili as a language learner and studying – like, is your work focused on Swahili, or do you look at other languages?

Hannah: Yeah, it’s a really good question. I suppose it was quite a transition. The last few years, most of my work – my PhD was on a different language, not on Swahili. It was on a language called Rangi, or Langi, spoken in Tanzania. We can talk more about that. But that was when I first sort of came with more of a linguistic approach because, rather than – although I did learn a bit of the language, I was thinking of it as a, “How do I learn about this, and do research, and things?” I think it’s about, perhaps, building short cuts. If you’re learning a language, you’re just thinking of it in isolation. What are these words and how do I make a sentence?

Lauren: Yeah.

Hannah: And then with linguistics you’re looking for short cuts and common patterns because you’re like, “Oh, well, I know what grammatical gender is.” Like, “Oh, I can now work that across whatever language you put in front of me.” It’s making those connections, some of which are language-specific. And that’s really interesting. But I’m also interested in then – obviously, as linguists we’re interested in what is common across languages. What you can do. What you can’t do. Maybe bigger questions.

Lauren: I always think of it as the difference between learning to play football and learning to be a good football coach. The difference between you being able to kick the ball really well – and, like, I’m a terrible sports player, so I feel like this analogy works for me because –

Hannah: You don’t know what it involves?

Lauren: It works as an analogy for me because I’m very unrealistic about it. You can invest a lot of effort in learning, yourself, how to play the game really well, but you can only ever really learn a couple of codes of football, right? But, if you learn how to read a group of people and how they move and what the rules are, there’s more chance that you could potentially become really observant about how rugby works. And, again, this is a terrible analogy because I’m not interested in rugby or football but…

Hannah: I feel like you’ve thought this analogy through.

Lauren: This is my go-to analogy. So, moving from being a player of Swahili to figuring out the rules of the Bantu language family, Swahili is part of the Bantu family?

Hannah: Yeah, exactly. The Bantu languages are a group of something like 350 to 600 languages, depending on how you define a language or where you draw a boundary.

Lauren: That’s a pretty good-sized family of languages. About the size of Indo-European, I guess, which is the family English is in. It’s about 400 or 500.

Hannah: There you go. It’s a massive language family. That group of languages are spoken – I generally just say in sub-Saharan Africa – but, basically, from Cameroon eastwards and southwards with pockets of other languages that aren’t Bantu languages in those regions as well. But in lots of sub-Saharan Africa you’ll find Bantu languages.

Lauren: Just to zoom out a little bit for people who aren’t familiar with the incredible linguistic diversity of Africa, because I think – you know, in Australia we have between 150 and 300 languages, depending on how you count. But they’re all either part of one big Pama-Nyungan family, or not. And so we don’t often – and, you know, all of Europe is pretty much Indo-European, except for a few languages. It’s hard to comprehend just how much diversity there is in the African continent.

Hannah: Absolutely. I think estimates put the number of languages in Africa somewhere around 2000.

Lauren: Okay.

Hannah: I don’t know what your numbers for the number of languages in the world are, but I think –

Lauren: What do you say?

Hannah: I’ve heard 7000.

Lauren: Yeah.

Hannah: So, if you take 2000 of those being in Africa, that’s a massive proportion. It’s not quite a quarter, but it’s a lot. Say you have something like 2000 or more languages in Africa. Those are then broken down into four language families, broadly. That’s been the tradition anyway. You have four language families. And then the Bantu languages are part of one of those families, the Niger-Congo group. But, even if you put the higher end of the numbers of Bantu languages at 600, as you can see, of those 2000, you’ve still got lots of other languages. So, yeah, really high levels of linguistic diversity. Quite high levels of bilingualism and multilingualism across the African continent as well. In Tanzania, where I do much of my research, that’s one country and it has 120 languages recognised, you know, identified languages. So, yeah, it’s, like, a lot of linguistic diversity.

Lauren: And Rangi is also part of the Bantu language family?

Hannah: Absolutely. Rangi is a Bantu language spoken in central Tanzania. I started working on Rangi because I’m interested in, amongst other things, language contact.

Lauren: Right.

Hannah: So Rangi is a Bantu language. It’s spoken in this area of central Tanzania, basically the bottom of the Rift Valley, if people have some kind of idea of the Rift Valley.

Lauren: That sounds very – what is the Rift Valley?

Hannah: Oh, gosh. It is a valley that goes from, I suppose, that part of Tanzania northwards. That’s how I think of it. It’s, like, physically a rift. I suppose to do with tectonic plates and things. But I’m definitely out of my depth if I’m talking about those kinds of things.

Lauren: We’re not a podcast that’s enthusiastic about geology. That’s fine.

Hannah: There you go. But Rangi’s interesting because – for lots of reasons – but it is completely surrounded by speakers of non-Bantu languages.

Lauren: Okay.

Hannah: I was interested in whether some of the grammar of Rangi, the features that you’d find in Rangi, would be the result of contact with non-Bantu languages.

Lauren: Right.

Hannah: We can talk more about that. But one of the things is whether languages that are similar to each other have different influences when they’re in contact than languages that are very different. In the case of Rangi, it’s like, I don’t know, Spanish being in contact with Japanese or something like that. It’s really unrelated, completely different language families in one geographic area. And what happens then?

Lauren: One thing I’m really interested in with language contact is sometimes it makes languages move more similar because they’re all hanging out as like, “Well, I do this in this language and it’s handy, so I’m going to do it in the other language too.” And then sometimes they pull apart because it’s like, “Well, I want to be different.”

Hannah: Absolutely. I mean, one of the nice things about working on – just to step back – the Bantu languages is that you have a large language family with some really quite big, broad similarities, typological similarities. There are common things in lots of them, but then really small microvariations. You could say, “Oh, well, this is the general word order, but look at this tiny change between the languages.”

Lauren: These guys over here have to be different.

Hannah: They do. They do it different. One of the things that’s interesting about the area of central Tanzania where I work is you have the four language families that I mentioned in the beginning that are found in Africa – Tanzania is the only place where you find all four. It’s almost like the meeting point of those really different languages.

Lauren: Yeah.

Hannah: The question there is, if you’re a Rangi speaker and you’re surrounded by different types of languages, whether the language has changed to reflect that. And then the sociolinguistic stuff. When you talk about the nature of the contact, there are families where the people speak different languages. Their parents speak two different languages. Their children perhaps speak one of them or two of them. There’s a long, sustained history of what we would call “language contact,” people moving around, trading with each other, living next door in the same village, or whatever. Quite often, there are slightly imbalanced power relations. They tend to learn one of the languages, but those people don’t also learn the other one. You have some people who speak several of those languages, but not – you know, if you speak the dominant language you don’t learn the other ones as well.

Lauren: I guess it’s worth stressing that the situation is incredibly interesting and there’s such diversity in Tanzania, but sustained contact between very diverse languages and long-term, small-community multilingualism is kind of – globally, we see it again and again, and it’s totally sustainable.

Hannah: Absolutely.

Lauren: I think sometimes, especially if you’re an English speaker who grew up in the UK or Australia, you’re so used to this stable monolingualism with a few people speaking their own languages at home. It’s really worth stressing that we’re the weird ones.

Hannah: Absolutely. And, you know, we’re talking about linguistic diversity of Africa but, I mean, around the world people speak different languages. They shift to other languages when they move, if they need work. There’s all sorts of, really, just practical considerations. You move to a new area, you need to talk to people, and feed yourself, and those kinds of things.

Lauren: Do you work across all the grammar, or are you interested in particular grammatical phenomena?

Hannah: Oh, that’s an excellent question. For the research that I did on Rangi for my PhD, there were a couple of descriptions before that other people had done. Well, one woman had done a PhD – two people had done PhDs before, but I essentially also did a description, which meant that I had to know a little bit about everything because I went in not knowing anything. But I was looking at a particular feature, which is what led me to think it had something to do with language contact, which is a particular word order which is unusual in Rangi. There is a construction in which you find the verb before the auxiliary.

Lauren: Okay.

Hannah: It is a language which has the same kind of word order as English: the subject, the verb, and the object. The Bantu languages in general, you would expect to say, you know, “I eat apples.”

Lauren: “Eat” is my go-to transitive verb.

Hannah: There you go. I prefer it to “hit,” which is the one that linguists tend to use.

Lauren: I think I’m just hungrier and less violent.

Hannah: There you go. Exactly. So, you know, “I eat apples,” or, for example, “I will eat apples.” And essentially, in Rangi, if you’re ever talking about things in the future, so the future tense, you say, “to eat, I will.” That is cross-linguistically very unusual because the prediction is that, if you have a language with subject-verb-object order, “I eat apples,” or, “I will eat apples,” or something like that, you would always expect that “will” to come before “eat.” In English, but also cross-linguistically, it’s a very strong generalisation based on a pattern based on the prediction that you will find that order. In Rangi, it’s the other way around, but only in the future tense.

Lauren: Right.

Hannah: So that was my starting point. And, because it was in contact with languages with different word orders, really different structures, I thought, “Oh, well, this is obviously something to do with language contact. How interesting!” I had to do lots of descriptive work and documentation work to start with, but that was what I started looking at. I think in the PhD I didn’t really end up talking about language contact because I really got very excited about this auxiliary verb order and the context in which you could have it and couldn’t have it.

Lauren: That shows that, once you eventually got to linguistics, you were definitely not reluctant anymore.

Hannah: No.

Lauren: When you say, “I spent four years getting really excited about auxiliary order,” that’s when you’re like –

Hannah: And several years later I’m still excited about auxiliaries, can’t you tell?

Lauren: Excellent.

Hannah: So that was my focus. And then, actually, I found – we thought Rangi was one of the very few Bantu languages that had this order, and then I found another language that’s spoken about 60 kilometres away – so to talk about high levels of linguistic diversity in a small area – that also has that order. I’ve since found four languages, which are spoken up near Lake Victoria. That’s now much, much further away. But, if you say there are – even if you put the estimate at the low end, say 350 Bantu languages, there seem to be six that allow verb-auxiliary order.

Lauren: Okay.

Hannah: I’m still interested in why. Why those languages and what’s different about them? It still may be that this contact angle plays a role in that. If you speak two languages and they have different word orders, allow different word orders, then that doesn’t seem so strange to you to say, “to eat, I will,” right? Because perhaps your first language or the other languages you speak allow that, and then it becomes a natural part of the standard way of speaking.

Lauren: Nepali, which I use for day-to-day in Nepal, and the Tibetan languages that I work with, those languages have subject-object-verb, so, “I apples eat.” And now when I learn a new language, even if it’s subject-verb-object like English – and I know that’s weird, my brain is comfortable with a word order that I really struggled with to begin with.

Hannah: Verb-final is now your, you know…

Lauren: Verb-final is great. It’s the best.

Hannah: Absolutely. You know, imagine that over generations or your whole community also speaking Yolmo as well as English and any other languages you learned along the way.

Lauren: Yeah, awesome. Like, the only thing I know about Bantu languages, and it’s from the fact – so we worked at SOAS at the same time. That’s how we know each other. One thing that I know about Bantu languages is that they do cool stuff with nouns.

Hannah: Yes, they do.

Lauren: And I love nouns.

Hannah: Ah!

Lauren: So can we talk about nouns?

Hannah: Yes, please! They do lots of cool things with nouns. But the most striking thing, I suppose, and the thing that I always give as an example when people say, like, “Oh, what’s unusual” or “What’s the striking thing about the Bantu languages, about Swahili,” is that they have a system of what have traditionally, in linguistics, been called noun classes. They are like grammatical gender, if you’re familiar with French with masculine/feminine, or German masculine/feminine/neuter, you have two genders, three genders. Swahili, for example, has 16.

Lauren: Okay, that is – like, I’m not good at math – but slightly more than three.

Hannah: Yes, yeah. Actually, the gender system doesn’t make any sex-based distinctions. There’s no, you know, man and woman, or boy and girl, like, grammatically. The nouns are categorised in other ways.

Lauren: Okay.

Hannah: One of the really prominent features across the grammar of Bantu languages, actually, is the distinction between things that are alive and that are not alive, so animate and inanimate, or sometimes, more specifically, human and not human, let me just use the terminology, like noun classes. And then they tend to be numbered because you can’t get away with masculine/feminine once you get up to – and, in fact, Luganda, a Bantu language spoken in Uganda, has, I think, 21 noun classes. When you get up to that, you’re just like, “Well, let’s just number them because we can’t” – you know, masculine/feminine/neuter, you’ve sort of run out. You would find, for example, Class 1 would be humans, but singular.

Lauren: That’s a very humanist approach.

Hannah: Exactly. We think that the most important are, like, humans, or “person,” the word for person, the word “teacher,” the word for “child.” And then what’s conventionally numbered Class 2 is the plural of that.

Lauren: Okay.

Hannah: So “teacher” and then “teachers.” “Child – children.” “Farmer – farmers.” You can almost, to start with, think that, “Well, actually, I can cut those in half because most things in the lower numbers have singular and plural counterparts.” That’s probably true up until about class ten because after that you end up with things that don’t make a singular/plural distinction. But, to start with, for example, on the basis of Swahili, you have humans. Class 3 and 4 are things like, I don’t know, “mountain,” “river,” “moon,” maybe natural phenomena.

Lauren: Okay.

Hannah: “Tree,” “plant.”

Lauren: Yeah.

Hannah: Things like that. If you’re learning this language, these are the things you learn sort of like, “Oh, okay, well, those are broad categories.” And then, of course, you find something that doesn’t seem, to you at least, to make any sense to be in that category.

Lauren: But, I mean, people often talk about this with the French/German gender-based stuff. They’re like, “Well, why are these inanimate objects arbitrarily gendered? And why is” – like, the “uterus” is masculine in French.

Hannah: Oh, interesting.

Lauren: I don’t speak French.

Hannah: Yeah, me neither.

Lauren: It’s just my random fact.

Hannah: It’s a good go-to example.

Lauren: You know, these things are mostly semantically coherent, but actually language is a fun system and does all kinds of wacky hacks.

Hannah: Those are quite systematic, so you could think “Oh, a natural phenomenon” or whatever. And then the next ones are things that often go in pairs or part-whole relations like fruits, and trees, and things like that. But then you get to things that are, what we would say, “phonologically determined.” They have a particular sound. One class is things that begin with “ki-”, and then its plural is “vi-”.

Lauren: We’re really scrambling for sense here.

Hannah: It’s like, “Okay, so, ki-things and vi-things.” But, again, those things are most commonly inanimate because your human and animal things are going to be in a different class. Things that begin with “ki-” and “vi-”, nouns that begin with nasals, /n/, and /ɲ/, and /ŋ/ go in another class as well. And then you end up with a class which doesn’t have singular/plural distinction for abstract nouns, so, “happiness,” “love,” “freedom,” things like that.

And then another, I think, really nice feature of Bantu languages is that many of them have different noun classes for locations. You have a general location, often a specific location, and an internal location. Those are also different noun classes, like different grammatical genders if you want to look at it like that. That’s the nouns. But then, if you think about how a language works, that then spreads across everything. “My book,” you know, the word for “my” is going to be affected by which class “book” is in.

Lauren: Right.

Hannah: In this case, “book” is one of the “ki-” examples.

Lauren: Excellent. My favourite category.

Hannah: It’s “kitabu.” And then you say “changu,” so, “kitabu changu,” “book my” literally, “my book.” Whereas, if you’re talking about your teacher, “teacher” is human/animate so it’s “mwalimu,” and then it’s “mwangu,” not just the noun changes, has a different prefix, but then the thing that agrees, the possessive, the “my,” also changes. It would be the same for numbers, so for counting, any adjectives “big/small,” possession, “of,” and on verbs too.

Lauren: A lot for a new learner to get their head around.

Hannah: Absolutely.

Lauren: But the kids do it completely fine, I’m sure.

Hannah: Absolutely. You can also use it in fun and sort of – you know, there’s layers. You can put things in different noun classes for pejorative meanings, or to change meanings, and things. I think you’d like this example. The word for “bird” is “ndege.” If you think a bird is alive, you would make the appropriate agreement for Class 1, let’s say, because it’s something that’s alive. But an aeroplane is also the same word, “ndege,” but it’s not alive, right? So its agreement would be in Class 9 because it’s not alive. It’s the same word. You can sort of move things around.

Lauren: And so I guess this is how you can create new words. Like, when aeroplanes were invented, instead of doing what we did and cobbling together some existing English and French and whatever, you can take an existing word and put it in another noun class?

Hannah: Absolutely. You can shift things into different classes. They can then mean different things or have subtle different social meanings. You can cobble together two words and make a new word for something, like “telescope” or something because it’s something that “sees far away,” or things like “telescope.” But, yeah, absolutely. You have a different set of things at your disposal.

Lauren: Fabulous. You were talking about the noun classes for Swahili?

Hannah: Yes.

Lauren: Are they similar across all the languages? “All the languages.” You’ve looked at all 600. Right. Yeah. Obviously.

Hannah: That’s a really interesting question. People have made a distinction between Bantu languages which have what would be described as a “canonical” noun class system, which means that they usually have six noun classes or upwards. Swahili, let’s say, has 16 and Luganda, at the higher level, has 21. You tend to find similar patterns, animate things, sometimes a specific class for humans, tools, objects, long things, you know, trees, things that are not human but are natural phenomena, or alive, or whatever.

But then at the other end of spectrum, you end up with languages, often in the northwest of the Bantu area, sort of around Cameroon, Gabon, with a really, what we would think of as a “reduced” system of noun classes, many less than six, maybe, you know, a handful. The reason that people would describe those as “reduced” is that the idea that, historically, the Bantu languages – like, the predecessor of Bantu languages or what they all came from – did have this high number of noun classes. That was one of the unifying features of the Bantu languages. The ones that are in Cameroon or that area, which is where the Bantu languages are supposed to have originated, then, those systems have sort of eroded over time and fallen away. We would describe that as a “reduced” system, not in any sense that it’s, you know…

Lauren: We’re not picking on those.

Hannah: Yeah, but that the suggestion is that at some point they had more, and they’ve lost them. You can see why you may lose them. But, interestingly, even languages that have lost them, that animate and inanimate distinction is often one of the ones that remains.

Lauren: Okay. It’s really strong.

Hannah: It’s really important whether something’s human or if it’s a chair.

Lauren: Languages do this with all kinds – we see this all the time with different parts of the grammar that languages will have something in this very elaborate system, and then it will fall away. Like, English used to have this gendered case marking the way that German does. And we don’t have it anymore because the language changed. We moved away from that. This cycle of things reducing, or growing, or whatever, is a completely normal part of language.

Hannah: Absolutely. Yeah.

Lauren: It makes it fun to see how languages change in different contexts.

Hannah: Yeah, one of the things that’s nice about working on the Bantu language family is that lots of – there are written descriptions of some of these languages from, I don’t know, over a hundred years ago or things, but there’s often not long written records. You don’t find examples of writing, with the exception, actually, of Swahili and then maybe Kikongo and a few other languages. But we can basically trace a lot of the history of movements of those people in these parts of Africa through looking at the languages. You can see what languages are similar in terms of similar vocabulary and words, and then reconstruct where these people may have moved from, and what time they moved, and things like that. Language really can help us piece together parts of history that we may otherwise – yeah, they can be a part of the story, basically.

Lauren: Yeah. So Rangi is a smaller language, but Swahili is one of the largest languages in Africa?

Hannah: Yeah, I think in terms of – people say it’s one of the most widely-spoken languages because of it having this massive geographic coverage across eastern Africa. I think speaker numbers, really, the estimates vary. I’ve heard up to 120 million, which sounds massive – 60 million.

Lauren: But is that in the way that I, like, speak, you know, I speak Italian in that I can navigate an Italian menu. Is that the kind of – because it’s a lingua franca, the quality, not to put a label on it, but the…

Hannah: I mean, I think probably – I don’t really know. But let’s say, like, 60 or 90 million or something. I think actually lots of those people are really very competent speakers who use it regularly for important purposes in their life. Tanzania, interestingly, was the only country in Africa that declared an African language its official language at independence, rather than a former colonial language. Tanzania’s primary education is in Swahili. Parliament speaks in Swahili. Radio stations speak in Swahili. But then, when you get to those other countries, the official status of Swahili perhaps would be slightly different or is different. But I think that there are languages across the African continent which have higher numbers of speakers because, for example, Nigeria, for example, is so popular, and those west African areas, so that you have higher numbers of speakers. People usually say that Swahili’s the most widespread, but you can have a widespread spoken language that’s the sort of – you know, because it’s lingua franca status.

Lauren: That’s their positive spin.

Hannah: Exactly. They want something.

Lauren: So there’re people being educated in Swahili and using it for business. Are there many Swahili-speaking linguists in Tanzania or other countries?

Hannah: Yeah, absolutely. There’s a sort of, not a divide, but there are people studying Swahili as a subject, and linguists working on Swahili and other, let’s say, the main colleagues I have are in east Africa, so other east African languages. I’ve done lots of work with people at the University of Dar es Salaam. They have a department of linguistics, foreign languages and linguistics. And then also in Zanzibar, and also in Kenya. There are universities where people are doing research on Swahili, and there’s linguistic journals written in Swahili, published in Swahili. And then the other big cohort of people would be people in America or Europe who are learning Swahili. In America quite a lot of them are also of African origin. They’re from Africa and may have grown up speaking Swahili and then have gone to American universities to teach Swahili or do research and things like that.

But, as a whole, there is an ongoing range of challenges that people are facing. Lots of colleagues in African universities or east Africa have real shortages of funding, access to funding, for external conferences, to travel, to do research. There are really high numbers of students, so, you know, again, universities – which it’s great to see so many students interested in these topics and wanting to look at languages and stuff. But, obviously, you know, with limited resources.

And then the other thing you find is that in many cases people are, rather than studying Swahili, perhaps, or Bantu languages from a linguistic perspective, people are interested more in the practical applications. Like, if you’re in Tanzania, and there are 120 languages and, yes, primary education is in Swahili, most of those children, when they arrive at school, don’t speak Swahili. So what can we do about that? What are the practical implications of that? How can we make transitions more smooth? How can we ensure that people who have or have not been to school have access to services, and information, and things like that? More, perhaps, linguistics and language relating to education, relating to access to resources, and stuff like that.

Whereas, I think some of the more theoretical linguistics and looking at that for its own sake is – people are doing that as well, but there’s this constant tension between, “Well, you know, we also have these issues that are right in front of our face and the government wants us to solve them.” And they say, “Well, you’re a linguist at the University of Dar e Salaam. You can solve this or do this.” That’s something that you see quite a lot as well in departments that I know.

Lauren: Yeah, being super interested in noun classes is great, but it’s such a privilege. And, yeah, there’s much more pressing – I imagine people feel that there’s much more pressing things that need to be done.

Hannah: Absolutely. I suppose there are – it’s great. And there’s more and more students who are also thinking that, “Oh, well, I speak a language that is not written down, that there’s no descriptive grammar on, that no one’s written an article on. I can contribute to that.” So there are increasingly younger linguists coming through and doing that and seeing that that is really important as well. And that’s important for identity, and self-determination, and things like that. But, at the same time, yeah, as, actually, all of us deal with, you know, “Well, if you want to get a job, how are you going to navigate your interest in that into employment, or stability, or the kind of opportunities that face you?” I’ve been really lucky to be able to work with fantastic colleagues. Most of my research is in Tanzania so those are the ones I have the strongest links with, but going to conferences is always a great opportunity to meet with people from across the continent, or based at universities in other countries, and things like that.

Lauren: Awesome. If you could leave people knowing one thing about linguistics, what would it be?

Hannah: It’s awesome. Don’t be like me and think that languages are the only thing that’s interesting. Also linguistics is interesting! That’s also something that you can study. Ah, yes, being monolingual is not the norm in the world.

Lauren: Right. It’s true.

Hannah: Yeah, yeah, I don’t know how much that’s about linguistics. But I think we can, as you were saying earlier on, think that it’s normal just to speak a language and actually, globally, it’s not.

Lauren: Yeah, and I think there are linguistics departments and there’s linguistics training that leaves you with that lesson a lot stronger than other departments.

Hannah: True.

Lauren: I feel privileged to have been at a university that made that very clear to me.

Hannah: Me too.

Lauren: It seems like we had the same experience at SOAS.

Hannah: Absolutely.

Lauren: Fabulous.

[Music]

Lauren: For more Lingthusiasm, and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Google Play Music, Google Podcasts, SoundCloud, or wherever else you get your podcasts. And you can follow @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr.

You can get your IPA scarves and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I tweet and blog as Superlinguo. And Gretchen can be found at @GretchenAMcC on Twitter and her blog is AllThingsLingusitic.com.

To listen to bonus episodes, ask us your linguistics questions, and help keep the show ad-free, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. If you can’t afford to pledge, that’s okay too. We also really appreciate it if you could rate us on iTunes or recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life.

Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne, our audio producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producers are Emily Gref and A. E. Prevost, and our production assistants are Fabianne Anderberg and Celine Yoon, our music is by The Triangles. We’ll leave you with Hannah.

Hannah: Stay lingthusiastic!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

#linguistics #language #transcripts #episode 28 #interview #bantu #bantu languages #hannah gibson #interviews #swahili #kiswahili #rangi #nouns #words #word order #language change #language contact

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lizziethereader · 5 years

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11 questions tag (x3 - so 33 questions tag, I guess?)

I’ve been super busy but I still appreciate having been tagged by @bibliophilecats, @books-are-portals, and @thelivebookproject, thank you!

I’ll answer all your questions in one post because I doubt I’d be able to come up with new questions for all three of the tags, haha But since this will be super long, you’ll find it under the cut!

First up, @bibliophilecats‘ questions:

1. What is your favourite movie and/or TV show based on a book? I’m not sure I have one, there’s nothing that immediately comes to mind at least. So I’ll just tell you about the first one I ever saw (when I was a kiddo still): Emil und die Dedektive! (based on the novel by Erich Kästner) 2. When you just can’t get into a book, do you quit or do you finish every book you start, no matter what? As embarrassing as it is to admit, I’m part of the latter category. 3. Which is your favourite bookstore? I absolutely love Daunt books in London because not only is it pretty, it also offers a very wide selection of books. 4. Do you keep all the books you read? Do you keep none? I keep all of them. One day I want to have one of those homes that are just full of books and plants! 4. What is the rarest color on your bookshelf? Difficult to say, but maybe gray? 5. Is there a book that permanently changed you (opinions, style, fandom) when you read it? Lots of nonfiction does that! One example is Caitlin Doughty’s Smoke gets in your eyes but also psychology-related books like Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow. 6. How do you unwind after a stressful day at work/school? Step one is my commute home, during which I read. And then it’s usually tumblr and youtube (or catching up with series). 7. Which fictional friendship/relationship is your goal? I haven’t figured that out yet but anything that’s supportive is always lovely to see. 8. What is the one skill you wish you could master? Better social skills, for sure! 9. You’re famous somehow and a University awards you one of those giveaway PhDs as a publicity stunt. What would you be a Doctor of? no idea, but I’d love the chance to get an actual PhD in linguistics or philosophy! 10. If nobody else is around and it’s cranked up loud, which song will you always dance to? Ooooh, there’s many! Tonight, Tonight by Hot Chelle Rae for example

Okay, now @books-are-portals‘ questions:

What book would you have liked better had you read it when you were younger? A wrinkle in time, probably.

Do you listen to podcasts? Any recs? I rarely find the time but when I do I love the Green brothers’ Dear Hank and John and, what is almost a classic of podcasts, Welcome to Night Vale

Favourite edition of your favourite book? ‘favourite’ is a big word and I don’t think I can answer to that but I do love my signed special edition of The Name of the Wind that has a goat scribble in it

Favourite book (fiction or non-fiction) you had to read during your studies (uni or otherwise)? That’s so difficult to choose! Let me give you a top 3: Hamlet, Code Name Verity and Tess of the D’Urbervilles (oh but I do have so many more favorites! what a tough question!)

What movie would make a great book? cool question! Frankly, I’d probably read most of the Marvel movies as books. The comic world is too intimidating for me but if the movies were books I think I’d really enjoy all the banter and stuff...

Tea or coffee? Coffee - I like the idea of tea but I can’t get into it.

A random fact you’re proud to know? I’m hardly ever proud of anything so that’s a tough question.... I can’t really think of anything, so I’ll pass

Favourite tree? Weeping willows!

Dream house/flat? I’d love to actually own a small house. Ideally with lots of light, plants, and bookshelves. + a garden!

Least favourite comic (series)? Why? I’m not invested enough to have one.

You have an unlimited budget to buy one (1) book. What book would you buy? I’d probably have something bound gorgeously just for me - maybe a collection of my favorite books or fanfics or something. There’d be gorgeous lettering, a leather cover and lots of lovely hand-crafted details.

And last but not least, @thelivebookproject‘s questions!

How many books have you read this year so far? currently reading my 50th!

Do you have a Goodreads account? (Mine is this) yes, over here!

How many languages do you speak? Well, I speak English and German. I learned a bit of French in school but I can’t really speak it. I’ve been learning Norwegian on Duolingo for more than two years now but I've never actually had a conversation in Norwegian, so...

How do you choose your books? I just read whatever looks interesting at the time.

Have you ever travelled abroad? Yeah, too many times to count (because I’m too lazy to count now). But with the exception of one trip to the states it’s always been within Europe.

Tell me something about yourself. I have a tough time deciding who I am.

Recommend a book? This is going to hurt by Adam Kay.

What are you currently reading? I’m currently reading Dear Evan Hansen because I love the musical!

Why did you create your blog? Just to see and share book stuff, really.

What do you like most about bookblr? That (despite people saying otherwise) it’s always there and from my personal experience seems so much more positive than other communities.

Blank gap -tell me anything you want: books you love, how do you feel about my blog, anything at all! So this is gonna be a question for the audience (I need advice). I have this book stamp (”from the library of....”) that I stamp all my books with after I read them and before I put them on their new spot on my shelves. Now I’ve just finished reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame and it’s an old book that I got secondhand (it even has an inscription!). I feel sort of strange about stamping it, I’m not sure if I should do it (Almost all of my other books are new books so I had no trouble stamping them). Thoughts?

Right, you didn’t think we’d get there, but we did! It’s time for my questions! Not all of them are bookish because it’s really tough coming up with new stuff after thinking of weekly bookish questions for years [also I might self-plagiarize and use some of those as wbqs in the future]....

I’m tagging @nevertobecaught, @maddie-mux, @lettersfromthelighthouse, and @trinareadsbooks to answer these questions:

1. What’s the best combination, a book + ..... (can be food, a drink, a place, a feeling, etc.) 2. What’s your stance on classics? 3. If you could add one feature to tumblr or booklr specifically, what would it be? 4. What was the loveliest reading experience you had lately? 5. Do you enjoy musicals? If so, what are some of your favorites? 6. When it comes to vacations, do you prefer city trips or lots of beach time? (or neither/something else?) 7. Are you a candle person? 8. What’s something you admire other people for? 9. Have you discovered any new songs you love lately? 10. If you’re currently reading something, which page are you on? And are you enjoying it so far? 11. Which birthday gift would absolutely delight you?

#11 questions tag #tag thingy #a long one I'm sorry #but it's easier to pack them all into one post :D

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theloreyouknow · 6 years

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Happy Easter from the ancient Germanic goddess Eostre, and her adorable bird-turned-hare companion, who has laid colorful eggs as a symbol of fertility during a springtime festival held in the deity’s honor!

I mean, they seem lovely, I’m sure they would wish you a Happy Easter, even though there’s no substantive evidence that they were ever part of any folklore... yeah. Oof. So bite the ears off that chocolate bunny, yank off that Easter bonnet, and let’s go-a myth-busting.

To begin, I should mention three things:

First, I am a skeptic at heart, and though I was raised in a Christian household, I've been a one-foot-over-the-line-into-atheism brand of agnostic for quite some time (20-ish years), and I tell you that to tell you this: I couldn't care less about the "IT'S PAGAN!" - "NO IT'S JUDEO-CHRISTIAN!" thing. I'm just reporting the facts.

Second, what I'm not going to get into here (minus passing mentions) are where modern Easter practices have come from, nor traditions involving hares in general/beyond Easter that have been passed down through largely unconfirmed folklore.

Third, this is a very conversational write-up because my love of academia aside, good night nurse, can their articles be snoozefests. Plus, some on the religious end of the spectrum can bend preachy, then at the atheist end they can bend snotty. This strives to be neither, just aims to be a fun, informative read.

Feedback is fuel, so - as always - be it for this or anything else coming from here, let me know what you think.

- THE NON-EXISTENT GODDESS & BEDE THE B.S.’ER -

May as well kick off with the hard drop:

There is but one reference to a pagan goddess named Eostre, and its source leaves much to be desired.

An English monk called Bede wrote a book called "De temporum ratione" (“The Reckoning of Time”), in 725, and it was about this ongoing nattering amongst various Christian groups - we get to that in a sec - about when exactly Easter was, and by that I mean to say they were fussing over When did Jesus do his die-and-rise. So Bede's jam was working out a calculation for his fellow monks so this could be settled. And in doing all this, he goes to town on calendars in general.

He talked about the the traditional Old English names of the months, breaking down the etymology, and proposed that some seem to stem from agriculture cycles, such as Weodmonath ("weed month) = August, or Thrimilcemonath ("three milkings") = May. Okay. I don’t quite track with ya, Bedes, but I’m also not of 8th century stock.

Then he postulated on some he thought referred to Pagan tradition. There’s Halgemonath ("holy month) = September, for instance, Bede saying it was "a month of sacred rites” that had to do with harvest. Then he asserts two were named after goddesses: Hrethmonath = March, after Hretha, and Eostremonath = April, after Eostre. The hitch in Bede's get-a-long?

There's no references to a goddess called Eostre, like, anywhere. So what the what, Bede?!? The "what", according to some scholars, is that Bede didn't have the first damn clue as to where "Eostremonath" came from, so he made up the goddess to tie a nice little bow on his etymology fact droppage.

But fine, fine, fine - let's give the Bede-man an out, cotton to his assertion and say there was a goddess Eostre whom people honored via springtime get-togethers. Let's say her name was co-opted into English for a month of the year (wondering why Charlemagne - you know - the German dude who ended up Holy Roman emperor- would up and go with “Aprilis” when he modified the ol’ Julian calendar notwithstanding, because we’re going with Bede, here), and since it was "her" month, later got co-opted onto said month's big holiday. Great.

Revised hitch: zero evidence of anything to do with this - symbols, rituals, ceremonies, take your pick - being associated with some Eostre in Anglo-Saxon England Pagan circles. So if Eostre was super popular, enough for Christians to do the co-opting, then there should be some evidence of the source.

Christians had been doing the Easter thing since, at minimum, the second century, before they would've met these Eostre devotees in order to snitch ideas from them. Point is, Easter as a Christian celebration has been happening for about 1300 years. There's records of all of it. This Eostre chick would've come up. And the old-school historians weren't hiding some big secret about theft of concepts from pagans, and how do we know that? Because they pony up when they have. Here's an example - you've heard of the Anglo-Saxon deities Woden and Thor, yeah? Wednesday and Thursday, meet your namesakes.

And on the subject of other deities, Thor and Woden are paralleled in Germanic and proto-Christian traditions, and plenty more in other cultures (think Greek-Roman gods, how Aphrodite and Venus are essentially the same thing) with overlap like this, yet there's none for Bede's gals Eostre or Hretha.

Oh, did I not mention that? Bede probably invented the goddess Hretha, too.

Dang it, Bede!

Further down - because it's more in line with the bunny talk - I mention a dude who claimed he could kinda see a parallel with a Celt goddess, and it is such the shaky connection. Because it's based on the bizarre thing that is touted about Eostre and this bird that she turned into a rabbit. Yes, you read correctly - that’s covered below, too.

This Celt goddess Abnoba - based upon my admittedly cursory dive - is touted by numerous blogs and wikis and whatnot as a "goddess of the hunt" and, of course, being female, you know what's coming next. Throw a rock at any female deity in any culture, and any that you hit will have this on their CV: either they'll be primarily functioning as a goddess of fertility (and love and sexuality), or some/all of that'll be listed as a sub-function. What the hunting thing would have to do with Eostre/Ostara's shtick is beyond me, and the other factors, like I said, are evergreen lady godfigure traits.

Lookit, Bede wasn't exactly the best go-to for origin stories, he whiffed on other things. In his book, he says a winter shindig called Modranecht (Mōdraniht or Modranicht - Old English "Night of the Mothers" or "Mothers' Night") was called that because of "ceremonies they enacted [that] night". Well. Yeah.

Oh, Beeeeeede.

So what about Ostara? The alt version of Eostre's name? Well, a certain linguist, folklorist, and author named Jacob Grimm (yup, of those Grimms), seemed to want to believe that sneaky Bede, and he tried to find an explanation, saying in his 1835 book "Deutsche Mythologie" that maybe Eostre was some sort of local version - local to Bede, that is - of a "widespread" Germanic goddess. One whom Grimm named Ostara.

Make sure you caught that: not "who was named Ostara" or "who was called Ostara". Grimm named this mystery goddess himself. And historians can't find evidence of her, that she ever existed anywhere but in (heh) Grimm's fairy tale.

Dang it, Grimm! Stick to frightening children with mermaids, man.

To sum up: Ostara is purportedly in Germanic folklore, except she's not, at least, not anywhere but in Grimm's imagination, evidence-wise. Eostre was supposedly an Anglo-Saxon goddess, except she's not, because there's no evidence in Pagan sources, and the only Christian source she pops up in was ya boy Bede's book.

- PAGAN V. JUDEO-CHRISTIAN: TRADITIONS & MYTHS -

We touched on tradition/deity overlap a little above, but let's dig deeper. A common sentiment is that Easter was "changed" to being a Christian thing from a Pagan thing when Constantine "Christianized" the Roman Empire.

Nah.

Seems Constantine converted to Christianity in 312 and, interestingly, the next year he actually decreed there should be toleration of all religions, the point being to end the continued, albeit down to periodic, persecutions of Christians. But he didn't demand that the citizens under his rule convert - smart dude, he'd have alienated all the Pagans. Turns out, a healthy amount of the higher class folks were Pagan, and he needed their support/involvement. Granted, there were later edicts that shut down official state sponsorship of pagan cults (temples, meeting places, etc.) and public pagan ceremonies, but hey - you claim neutrality, it's gotta apply to all religious practices across the board. Well. Assuming he did the same regarding Christianity. But that's another topic.

Bottom line, the Roman Empire was not formally declared a Christian state til Theodosius, who proclaimed it as the official religion in 380. Constantine had died about 43 years prior. Still, I can possibly see where the rumor started, as Constantine seemed to be the first big-deal-figure who was open about his Christianity. And it might have also piggy-backed off of the work of the First Council of Nicea, which went down in 325. Y'know, not after he kicked the ol’ Roman situla.

Basically, the Council aimed to settle disputes happening amongst the Christian churches, and while they were at it, they ruled on when celebrations of Easter should go down (see above, RE: Bede the Balla still dealing with it in his time), as this was, it seems, A Very Big Deal.

A dude named Eusebius - historian, later bishop, straight outta Caesarea - said there had been fussing happening all the way back to 190. The bonnets were bee-heavy because they (who is "they"? "They" are always such a PITA) couldn't decide whether to make Easter a whole week, a la the Jewish Passover, or just on a Sunday, since they were convinced Jesus died on a springtime Friday, meaning the rise happened on Sunday. The west side of the Empire was doing it up on just the one day, and the east was kickin' it all week. The Council ended up going with Sundays, and said this new jam would start on the first Sunday that followed the first full moon after March 21st.

Now, a mention in one of the cited sources below notes that some attest Passover itself has roots in a pre-historic Semitic spring festival, but I'm not going down that rabbit hole (heh), knock yourselves out. Point is, Easter is related to the aforementioned vernal equinox - that full moon thing - because it coincides with Passover. It's a Judeo-Christian thing, not a rip-off of a Pagan festival thing, best historians know via the evidence.

- HARES & BUNNIES & EGGS, OH MY! -

There's no eggs or animals of the rabbit persuasion in Biblical gospel narratives, so the assumption was it must have stemmed from a Pagan tradition. You’ll see things pop up in social media feeds, images touting (some) Christians’ claims that eggs symbolize Christ's rebirth (but.... what? And why? And.... whatever). There's evidence of medieval Christians decorating eggs and then eating them at Easter, and that actually might have a logical reason, at least, beyond folks of Ukrainian descent carrying on a tradition past generations might’ve carried over when migrating (more on that below).

Many religions across the board have guidelines - for some, heavy rules - surrounding fasting for lots of reasons (look it up yourself), and some of those are part of festivals and such throughout the liturgical calendar (a.k.a. - designated times for public community celebrations). In the evidence pile for Easter, there's a "festal letter" from this guy Athanasius in 330 who talks about a 40-day fast that ended on Easter Sunday. I'd like to point out here that this happened post-Nicean council decree, keep that in mind.

Why this is possibly of import is it turns out, Constantine had exiled Athanasius for being mouthy about grain or something, and he booked it back to Alexandria after Connie bit the dust.... only to be exiled again the next year when Connie, Jr. - Constanius - found out. But Athanasius was apparently a charmer, and knew how to take advantage of a situation, so he ends up in Rome under the protection of Connie's other son, Constans - ah, so I guess Connie, Jr.: The Sequel - who was emperor in the west. You know, the west, the crew who liked making Easter a one day throw-down vs. drawing it out. I would be delighted to learn that Athanasius was trying to get everybody on board with a long celebration just to shoot a post-mortem bird at Constantine. Atty-boy ended up being made a saint, so aside from that grain kerfuffle, appears he was a popular guy, had a "flock" as it were, which is how historians have all the Festal Letters, including ones talking about the date(s) of Easter parties and this fast.

And, again, "fast" can mean a variety of things - total abstaining, sure, but even Jesus would give you side-eye over 40 days of nothing, you ain't rising from anything after that - but lots of times it was just cutting out certain things, food or otherwise (hello, Lent). And many of those are specifically about food from animals, so there's meat, to be sure, but in addition to that, the products of animals, meaning milk, cheese, butter, and - say it with me, now - eggs.

No refrigerators means lots of wasted food, so the people had to eat up what they had and - duh - not slaughter for meat, don't milk the cows/goats, and don't make any butter or cheese. Easy. But chickens don't give a rat's ass about calendars and religion, they're gonna keep cranking out the goods and, again, not eating them in real time means a 40 day sulfur cloud looming over the area. Reason dictates they boiled them, problem solved. I mean, I wouldn’t crack open a month-old boiled egg, but folks of the before-years-had-four-integers variety had bellies that could handle a lot of things that would have us hugging porcelain thrones for weeks. That’s another discussion, one I cannot promise we’ll ever have.

It took a bazillion years to make cheese, and butter was no quick work, and neither was curing meat (look it up) - those wouldn't be ready for Sunday. And sure, you could pop out and milk something, lay waste to some cow for fresh steaks, but hell - to cover everybody, you'd have to knock off more than one. Way more than one, probably to the detriment of the sustainability of a mini-herd on a given family farm. Realistically, most of the feast would be any nasty, salted-out jerky somebody had leftover from pre-fast, more veg and fish and bread, which would all suck - but wait. WAIT. Eggs.

Cock-a-darn-diggly-doodle-doo.

So, in the week before Easter, they'd have been boiling like crazy, one would think, as part of the prep for the major gullet-stuffing coming up that Sunday. There's references to the eggs getting glammed up to be extra festive at least as early as the 13th century, and I suppose it's not a stretch to say they were beyond happy to have at least one of their food options back on deck and wanted to make things extra special - you can’t really glitter up fish and potatoes, after all. In any event, the fast-related thing is the most logical regarding Easter-egg association, and as I mentioned, maybe a touch of family tradition, which brings me to the next part:

Wabbit season.

There's another book called "Deutsche Mythologie", from 1874, and the author, Adolf Holtzmann, talked about the German Easter hare - which, historians are certain of, is where the Easter bunny comes from - and speculated on its possible source. What he suggested is reportedly the first documented instance of a certain somebody, perhaps you've heard of her, spoiler alert: it's Ostara.

"The Easter Hare is inexplicable to to me, but probably the hare was the sacred animal of Ostara; just as there is a hare on the statue of [the Celtic goddess] Abnoba.”

We covered that random Abnoba comment above, but.... Adolf....what? So how did rabbits get hooked up to Ostara? And what’s up with the hare laying eggs?

By the way, the hare must once have been a bird, because it lays eggs....

Well, sure, of course.

The essence of the current party line is that Ostara transformed a bird into a hare, and because it was once a bird, it retained its ability to lay eggs and to thank Osara for what she’d done - no clue why she did it, but if hare’s cool, I’m cool - it laid a bunch of colored eggs to spruce up her festival.

Fine. Moving forward. In 1883, a book by one K. A. Oberle hit the shelves - and if you speak 19th century German, wanna check out the original, godspeed - and he got super specific:

Some time ago the question was raised how it came that, according to South German still prevailing folk-lore, the Hare is believed by children to lay the Easter-eggs. I venture now to offer a probable answer to it. Originally the hare seems to have been a bird which the ancient Teutonic goddess Ostara (the Anglo-Saxon Eàstre or Eostre, as Bede calls her) transformed into a quadruped. For this reason the Hare, in grateful recollection of its former quality as bird and swift messenger of the Spring-Goddess, is able to lay eggs on her festival at Easter-time

As specific as that was? No specific sourcing. Minor shout-out to Bede, though. And there was a mention of a general source.... Holtzmann.

Great.

Shifting gears - but stay with me - to way-back-when in the Ukraine. They had a folk tale about the origins of pysanka, a.k.a. "painted eggs", but that definition is actually incorrect. Pysanka are not painted, they're "written on" via a beeswax-dyeing technique. They are absolutely stunning - the side of my family with Eastern European roots blessed us of the newer gen by passing down Christmas ornaments fashioned in this style, and they are my favorites. Here's a random google image of some of these works of art:

The wikipedia article on the history of pysanka has some decent citations, so I’m comfortable using it as a source. The Reader’s Digest version for their existence - based on passed-down folktales and analyzation done of symbols on what archaeological samples have been found - back in the pre-Christian era was warding off evil to keep the world going, keep nature growing, the ongoing “rebirth” of plants and animals, make the sun deity happy.

Because of that sun deity element - if it’s correct, because, again, brittle eggshells and faded symbols call for educated guesses vs. hard truths - of the pysanka thing, an argument could be made that it should be filed under Pagan. Then because the Eostre thing is touted as Pagan, and because nature springs back to life from winter in, well, spring, and (I’m assuming) because rabbits mate like their tails are on fire, the whole shebang was rolled into this big, fantastic ball of nature-goddess-bunny-rabbit-spring-equinox-pretty-eggs untruth.

Christians have melded stuff and mutated folktales and cultural traditions to suit their religion, no doubt, and I could write multiple articles on things Christians claim as fact that have no evidentiary basis; it just seems like here, as time rolled on, this is something that Pagans got duped by when legends - and some outright lies - got pushed as indisputable fact.

And as far as untruths go, this seems minor. It’s fun to guess at things, make up our own headcanon, but if we’ve got facts? If those facts disprove something we may have our hearts set on believing? Well, accepting them is part of being a grown-up. Which sucks. But here we are.

Besides, who cares, truly? Is this Easter customs thing really important? Isn’t the time spent with family and friends and people in your community what’s most important? Hell, be like Bede & Co.: make your own traditions. And anyway, SO MUCH CANDY is gonna be on sale tomorrow. #hail Eostre #goddess of chocolate bunnies #whose delicious ears #I shall happily chomp

We'll close with my favorite quote from my research:

"Some still claim Eostre's name is the root of the word oestrogen, ignoring that human eggs are microscopic and that the real etymology of oestrogen in fact relates to the gadfly."

Bet you didn't think this Easter tale would conclude with estrogen and gadflies, and yet, I can think of no stranger point upon which to end this convoluted tale.

Happy Hippity-Hops to you all!

------ SOURCES -------

Eleanor Parker - “Some Anglo-Saxon Easter Customs”

Tim O'Neill - “Easter, Ishtar, Eostre and Eggs”

Adrian Bott - “The Modern Myth of the Easter Bunny”

Steven Winick -

“Ostara and the Hare: Not Ancient, but Not As Modern As Some Skeptics Think”

“On the Bunny Trail: In Search of the Easter Bunny”

“Here Comes Peter Cottontail: Some Cultural History”

H/T Tom Holland

Images:

Silas Toball (left) & Sophie Gardiner (right)

Note:

All of these sources are robust and wonderful, however most of them are what I'd label "dense". The exception is the brief article by Mr. Bott, should you want an even more concise round-up than what I've presented here. Yes, compared to what’s linked, hand-to-Cadbury, my article was concise.

Should you want an A/V roundup, in 2016, Mr. Winick was featured in a segment on the (US show) CBS Sunday Morning, called "The Real Story of the Easter Bunny", and Eostre is discussed as well. [You can stop around the 2:50 mark, as from there they go on to discuss rabbits in general]

There are also additional sources referenced and/or linked in every citation above, should you want more clarification on their assertions.

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fanficwriter013 · 6 years

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A Supernaturally Stucky Halloween - Part 3

Pairing: Stucky X Reader (Eventual)

Summary: Hunters, their lives are never easy. What happens when you literally stumble into the world of the supernatural?

Word Count: 1401

Warnings: Switching POV’s, protective Bucky. Some mild angsty themes.

Parts: One / two / three / four / five /

Bucky drove, Steve sat in the passenger seat trying to see if he could find out anything more about who could be doing the haunting or what kind of demon was mucking about. You were in the backseat, just being generally annoying. Or so you were told.

“This car is normally much quieter, you know?” Bucky asks in a teasing tone. With subtle hints that he doesn't actually want you to stop talking.

“Shut up, you know you love the sound of my voice. You've been starved of it for, what's it been, 6 years?” You tease, and Bucky chuckles.

“Well, you don't need to make up for all 6 years in the remaining hour of this drive.” Bucky teases, and you smack his shoulder.

The rest of the car ride is relatively quiet. You help Steve try and find information on your ghost or demon and Bucky does all the driving. Soon enough you arrive at the local sheriff's station, where Steve splits from you and Bucky to go dig into the local archives. Figuring that your knowledge of linguistics would help questioning along.

As it just so happened to play out. It was helpful. Some of the words being used were indicative of early Christian themes, and that pointed the three of you in the direction of a demon. Add that to the stealing the possessed people were doing, and odd sightings of crows and you were pretty sure you were dealing with Raum. A demon that just had to be a Great Earl of Hell. You weren't playing with the usual lesser demons here.

Steve had been able to find some lore that gave insight into how you could deal with this Earl. An exorcism just wasn't going to cut it.

“I've got some contacts, some pull. Let me go see who I can call and what weapons I can turn up. Give me three hours.” You tell the boys because you could see Bucky start to protest you going off on your own. Steve reluctantly nods, and you head out.

“I don't like it, Steve. This is a big wig demon here, not just some shoe salesman.” Bucky complains, as soon as the door closes. Steve gives him a look.

“What's the matter with you? You're not like this with Nat in the field. Or Wanda even for that matter.” Steve says. “And we both decided that (Y/N) was ready for the Avengers. So don't try lying to me, punk.” He continues, eyeing Bucky.

“We just got (Y/N) back, the only person that wouldn't fall for my charm. I just, this world is dangerous.” Bucky hastily admits. This makes Steve laugh.

“You know that (Y/N) got the blood and brimstone entrance into this life the same as we did, right? It'll be alright.” Steve says, but that doesn't stop Bucky from pacing.

You'd been dug pretty deep into the archives. You remembered something from school about a supposed weapon that could be used against the Greater Demons. But without being able to remember what the book title was, finding it was harder than you expected.

It was about ten minutes before your three hours were up when you finally found something. A reference to an old oak, and a different kind of exorcism ritual.

“Please tell me that Steve's heard of a German exorcism called a Graf?” You ask once Bucky picks up the phone. You hear the boys talking off the phone.

“He says he has to practice his German, but yes. Anything else?” Bucky asks, and you turn back to the book.

“Yeah, we need the bark of a Goethe tree.” And again you hear the boys talking in the background.

“Steve will have to send one of the others to go retrieve some of that. Nothing we can do without it. Get back to base.” Bucky informs you, and you close the book.

“Alright, boss. You got it.” You joke as you hang up the phone. You take the book back through the stacks to where you found it. On your way to the front of the building, you pass by a window with a crow sitting on it.

“Steve, (Y/N) should have been back an hour ago.” Bucky half whines half growls. “Something's wrong.” He says, standing up to make for the door. Steve places a hand on Bucky's chest.

“Calm down, you know how we get with books. Give it another hour, and then we'll get worried, alright?” Steve asks, and Bucky shakes his head.

“I don't like it. But you're the boss.” Bucky says as he goes back to his pacing. An hour had never felt longer in Bucky's life. By the time Steve relented to there actually being something wrong, the car was already started and ready to pull out of the parking lot.

They'd agreed to start with the archives and detail the area surrounding it afterward. Steve took one look at the entry to the archives, sent Bucky one way and he went another. That they would work their way into the middle.

Row after row, was more of the same, quietness and books. Not a single soul was looking for anything in this section of the building. The air was still, too still. Bucky was starting to think the building was empty until he caught movement out of the corner of his eye.

“(Y/N)?” Bucky asks, looking at you. You turn slowly to face him. “Oh thank god, we thought something had happened to you. Steve.” Bucky calls.

“I think you're going to want to guess again.” It's not you speaking, it sounds like you but Bucky knows it isn't you. “There you go. (Y/N) isn't here anymore.” The demon continues, just as Steve comes skidding over beside Bucky.

“Raum.” Steve practically growls at your figure. An evil smile breaks over your face.

“Oh goodie, you know my name. Shame that won't help.” The demon teases, tapping your fingers against a shelf.

“We know plenty, and we know how to kill you too,” Bucky says, and the grin falters for a minute.

“You think tree bark is going to stop me? So sorry to spoil your moment, but that's what I wanted you to think. Try again.” Bucky realizes that your voice has taken on a husky undertone that must be the demon.

“It's alright, (Y/N). We're going to get you back, again. You're not getting away from us this time.” Steve says, and the demon twists your face into ugly joy.

“(Y/N), always had the biggest crush on you, Steve. Now you.” Raum pauses, turning to Bucky. “I can see the love you harbor. Shame. (Y/N) always thought you were too cocky.” The words hurt, even though Bucky is pretty sure the words are being tossed at him out of context.

The air suddenly changes, it feels thick suffocating and reeks of rotten eggs. You double over while dark red smoke begins to pool at your feet.

“Never said you could have my body, asshole.” You cough, glaring at the crow that is now sitting equidistant from the three of you. The bird cocks its head at you before it flaps away.

You aren't sure how it happens but you're aware of Bucky catching you before you hit the floor. Another set of arms envelops you.

“We got you now. You're alright.” You're really not sure who's saying what and when. You're just trying to even your breathing.

“Alright, stop crowding me. We have some research we need to be doing.” You say, trying to get out from under the mountain of muscle.

“Slow down. Don't hurt yourself.” Steve says at the same time that Bucky asks. “Do you remember what happened?” It's said softly, and you move to study his face.

“I hung up with you guys, put my books back. Past that window, saw a crow and then I woke up coughing up demon with that cloud of sulfuric smelling stuff not helping the breathing situation.” You tell the boys, even though you remember everything. You knew what Bucky was getting at, and you just aren't ready to deal with this right now.

“Okay, well we need to regroup. Figure out if this claim Raum made about the lore being planted has any truth behind it.” Steve says, helping you back to your feet.

Part 4

#rrhalloween #marvel #avengers #stucky x reader #stucky #supernatural crossover #A supernaturally stucky halloween

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scribeoffate · 6 years

Text

Question meme attack

Tagged in the question meme again- and in order to prevent @mygeekcorner and I from being in a perpetual question cycle (and I considered not preventing it tbh) I'm not gonna do more questions or tag anyone else. I am going to answer other people's questions- because cool! Lots of people participated and it was fun!!

@possibleplatypus used my questions:

1. Are you a single fandom or multi-fandom person?

Technically multi-fandom- but really I intensely do one at a time.

2. What fandom(s) are you in right now?

Yuri on Ice

(peripherally, Harry Potter, Marvel, Supernatural (ish))

3. What book or series of books (or author) from your childhood has had the greatest impact on your life?

Mercedes Lackey's Herlads of Valdemar stuff. I was that fourteen year old girl who had no idea that being attracted to a partner of the same sex was even an option. (And then I discovered you could be attracted to partners of ALL the sexes. Whatt? Mind blown.) I also developed a love of fantasy here that I've certainly never grown out of.

4. How long have you been reading or writing fic?

Technically speaking I was writing fic in my head for Star Wars at age eleven, twelve maybe? And even more technically speaking I turned a childhood story into fic for childhood games. But online fic- I was sixteen. (Uhm, so twenty years. Oh god, twenty years.)

5. What is your favorite fic trope?

slavefic

6. If you could be doing anything at all at this moment what would it be and why aren’t you doing it?

It'd be answering these tumblr questions. I'm that person. :p

7. What animal were you in a past life?

Queen Ant.

8. What is your favorite food?

Spaghetti and Reese's cups war for top spot.

9. Are you missing anyone right now?

I am.

10. Is there a circumstance where you would find it okay to take a person’s life?

Yes.

11. What is something you appreciate?

Being tagged in things too. :p Answering things, getting to know people. Sleeping past 4:30 am. ;___;

@katyaton‘s questions

1. Do you deal with anger internally or let it be known to all and sundry?

I really don't get angry a lot. But if I'm angry, everyone knows.

2. What was your least favorite subject in school? Your favorite?

Physics. I struggled to care about physics, but now I'd kind of like to revisit the science? I don't know I might like it more now. My favorite was definitely languages- I loved learning any languages and my linguistics classes.

3. If you could have one superpower, what would it be?

The ability to read in any language I wished.

4. If you could push a button and get a million dollars, but one random person out of the 7 billion + people would die if you push it, would you do it?

No.

5. If you found a genie’s lamp, what would your 3 wishes be?

I'd put that shit right back where I found it. It's a trap.

6. What is something about your physical appearance that you love?

I'm curvy in that hourglass way that a lot of people like.

7. What’s the worst injury you’ve had?

I've had a couple of concussions. Mainly,despite being so clumsy, I've not had that many injuries.

8. If you could live in the universe of any fandom, which one would you live in?

My inner fourteen year definitely wants to live in Valdemar. And my inner twenty-two year old may have killed to live in the Harry Potter world. Now though- I can see the merit to the YOI world. A universe where love is accepted in all forms?? Yes, please.

9. If you could meet yourself from any alternate universe (without knowing anything about the society they come from) would you do it?

Hell yeah.

10. What is your personal DnD character alignment (ie. lawful good, chaotic neutral, etc.)?

chaotic good, for sure.

11. If you didn’t have the biological need for sleep, what would you do with the extra hours in your day?

So much- that's like 8 extra hours a day. I would play more games, write more fic, read more fic, maybe become fluent in another language. These are all lies. I love sleep so much. I'd probably still just sleep.

@mygeekcorner's questions

My questions

1. What sort of baked goods do you prefer? Buns, pies, cakes, cookies, etc?

All of them. Bread, cookies, pies, doughnuts, cakes. Please to be putting in my mouth for enjoyment.

2. Who is a character that you wish you were like, and why?

I'd like to be as confident as Victor. But I'd like to be as hard-working as Yuri (K) too. And as unique as Luna Lovegood.

3. Who/what is your favourite mythological character/creature? (Both?)

Unicorns!

4. Favourite holiday and why? Yes, your birthday totally counts.

Halloween. It is an excuse to dress up, drink and eat lots of candy. (My clothes seriously come in pajamas, work clothes, extremely casual and costumes.)

5. Favourite natural phenomenon? Have you ever seen it in person?

The Grand Canyon. Yes. My sister can call it a hole in the ground all she wants- it's freaking PHENOMENAL. The painted desert and petrified forest were pretty awesome as well.

6. What languages do you speak? What languages do you wish you knew?

Fluently: English Pseudo fluently: Spanish Studied: German, Japanese, Mandarin Can count to ten in: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Mandarin, Japanese (It is a life goal to be able to count to ten in ten languages. I thought I was up to 8, but I can't remember the other one. So probably I don't remember the words. :p)

7. If you could change something about your personality what would you change?

The self-deprecating, self-doubting part. (otoh, is that my personality, or my depression? are they different? idk)

8. What countries have you visited? Where would you like to go next?

Canada and Mexico. Literally anywhere off this continent. :D (If I could afford it, Japan for the YOI movie would be amazing. I cannot afford it.)

9. What’s the last thing you googled?

"why does the word bananas mean crazy" (this can be blamed on a coworker. the answer has to do with apes.)

10. What were your dreams as a child, are they still the same?

I wanted to be an astronaut. And then an author. And then a movie star. And then a singer. And then translator. ...etc. And no, my dreams didn't even stay the same when I was a child.

11. Who would you cast to play you in a movie?

Me. Since I wanted to be a movie star once upon a time.

@tehhufflepuffinquisitor‘s questions

1. What was your first fandom?

Online and with other people: Animorphs.

2. Have you ever draw fanart? Did you ever show anyone?

Not a lot and only @artisticentropy has ever been subjected to that horror.

3. If you could have any imaginary animal as a pet, what would you want?

Unicorn!! :D

4. What’s something you did this year that your proud of?

We passed a thing called a "gold standard audit" on the first try at work.

5. What was your favorite game as a kid?

Viola :p (This is a made up game that my sister and I played. It's a very long story.)

6. It’s 3 am and you’re starving. What do you get from the kitchen?

What is there? Mostly a tortilla with chicken and cheese. Or I go back to sleep because I'll be eating at work in two hours.

7. Favorite holiday tradition?

On Thanksgiving morning, I typically have a few minutes to myself when I put in the turkey and get things started. I have a cup of coffee and reflect on what I'm thankful for before everyone else gets involved.

8. What is your most played game on your phone?

It's called Niki UP2U and it's a dress up game and I've only had it like a month and I am addicted to this madness.

9. What color we’re the last socks you wore? Do you actually like them?

Black. And I LOATHE socks. I am a sock-less, shoe-less person whenever possible.

10. How do you feel about adult style baby clothes? Baby style adult clothes?

I have no real feelings on the matter. Wear clothes you like, put your babies in whatever you can afford that they are comfortable in.

11. What’s your favorite chapstick scent?

No love for chapstick either, but cherry's okay.

#ask thing #question meme #hopefully i didn't miss anyones questions #if you want to answer any of these feel free #i'd enjoy reading the answers

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bubblegum-switch · 7 years

Text

Kitziwch – Human Things

Anonymous asked: i've got a request! I honestly just want something with lance getting reCt tbh, so uh. They're in the castle and so, allura and coran are like "lmao whats ticklign" and they want someone to demonstrate it, so they chose keith and lance to do it, first lance is all like scared n, stuff but then keef breaks the awkwardness and just pouncess on lance and coran is there just taking notes with allura And when they're done pidge says something like lmao good blackmail material and they're both SHOOK

Ask and you shall receive, friend :) I hope I did it justice

Title: Kitziwch – Human Things (b/c I can’t title for shit)

Word count: app. 3.6k (Side note: holy shit that’s longer than I anticipated)

Rating: it gets a b i t suggestive at one point but nothing more than like PG-13

Time: Before the end of season 2 I guess maybe, Shiro doesn’t have his Bayard so…

Characters: The main 7 (Keith, Hunk, Lance, Pidge, Shiro, Allura, Coran)

Pairing: pre-Klance

Genre: so fluffy it gave me cavities

Themes: Ticklish!Lance, Pining!Keith, ticklish!Keith, brief ticklish!Shiro to kick off the plot, this scenario is such an oldie but a goodie and I feel honored to write it, f u c k I’m so weak for Lance getting reKt you have no idea, I don’t know what “““correct form””” is but I needed a good opportunity so I could be very wrong but fuck that I don’t really care, it takes like over 1k words to get to the meat of the story I’m so sorry but I needed enough exposition for this prompt, I love using personal experience for help with writing haha…, am I minorly projecting my synesthesia onto fictional characters now is that what is happening, I’m writing this whole thing while over-tired over the course of several late-nights at like 11pm-4am and I think it shows, Ernest Hemingway Mr. Write-Drunk-Edit-Sober would be proud but then again what is editing, my tired ass decided to just fuckin give Lance a special kind of love for it which is why it gets suggestive *winks with both eyes*, fuck I need sleep, I did a surprising amount of research for the title, don’t ask me why Keith is so skilled he just is, Lance is literally a ball of ticklishness help him it’s adorable, I had so many options for endings I hope I did this one right, there will likely be a part 2 b/c of another prompt I got that this can lead into so…

A/N: Ok so “Kitziwch” [kind of pronounced kitzee-ucx I think] is a word I created to be the Altean word for “tickle” out of the German word “kitzeln” and the Welsh word “Ticiwch” because of reasons you’ll find out at the end of this

---

At the training deck, Allura was trying to get a better feel for each of the paladin’s combat strengths and weaknesses. She was going to have each one go up and complete a relay of sorts – which was made of an opaque maze (unlike the electrified invisible one), fighting several types of drone-bots, and testing the accuracy of their Bayard. Coran was watching as well, taking notes on each round.

Pidge was up first, and she made it through the maze quickly, but lost time at the flying drones and accuracy due to the short range of her Bayard.

Then it was Lance’s turn. He didn’t get through the maze as fast as Pidge, but more than made up for it with accuracy.

Hunk was about in the middle so far for the maze time-wise, but was able to quickly obliterate the drones. However, his Bayard was not as precise as Pidge’s or Lance’s due to its comparably wide damage-field.

Keith practically danced through the maze, even though he got hung up a few times. He slashed through the drones and had a near-perfect score on accuracy.

Shiro was last to go, and after getting through the maze and the drones he was getting ready for testing the accuracy of his arm.

“Hold it!” Allura rushed to him. “I can’t ignore you Earthlings’ improper form any longer. I have held my tongue but I’ve had enough.”

“Aw, why didn’t you tell us? I would’ve fixed it,” Lance said from the sidelines.

Allura smiled apologetically. “You were all on a roll. I didn’t want to interrupt you, but I just can’t let this finish uncorrected.”

Shiro relaxed his stance. “Sure, Princess how do I stand?”

“Alright Shiro, hold your back in a straight line – don’t hunch over,” she said casually, circling him as he followed her directions. “Hm, good. Now, keep some bounce in your knees – you look too stiff, and if you can’t move freely you can’t evade.”

“Okay,” he replied, trying his best to follow suit. “Am I doing it right?”

She paused behind him. “Here, let me help you angle yourself a bit better.”

She reached forward and put her hands on his sides to adjust him. He jumped a little, but Allura credited it as surprise and shrugged it off. She tilted him to the left a little bit to balance himself, pressing her fingers into his ribs accidentally, and he involuntarily snorted out a surprised laugh.

This time, she quickly retracted her hands. “Everything alright, Shiro? Are you hurt?”

He rolled his eyes good-naturedly and smiled at her. “I’m fine, don’t worry, it didn’t hurt.”

She looked at him quizzically and tilted her head. “Then why did you make that noise? That was a laugh, right?”

“I guess I’m a little ticklish, that’s all,” he chuckled, shaking his head. “That shouldn’t get in your way again, I just didn’t expect it… Allura?”

She looked like she was deep in thought, trying to remember something that was forgotten a while ago. She looked to Coran, who looked back at her, just as confused. “Do you know what he’s talking about, Coran?”

“No, I’ve never heard of that before either. I don’t know what he means.” He turned to the other four paladins. “Can any of you translate? Altean often overlaps with your language, but there’s no word for that.”

“I can try to explain,” Pidge volunteered. “Basically, someone is ticklish, you can tickle someone, and that someone gets tickled. Linguistics aside,” she adjusted her glasses, “basically it’s when someone is touched in a way that makes them laugh. Some people like being tickled, some people hate it, and there are people that are more ticklish than others.” Pidge smirked, “for example, I’m not that ticklish. Shiro, on the other hand… well you’ve seen that he is.”

“Thank you, Pidge,” Allura said, still confused. “I think that helped, but I still don’t really understand it. How can touching someone make them laugh? And can everyone do this?”

“I agree, I’m still confused as well,” Coran piped up. “Can we have a demonstration? I think that might clear it up.”

“Oh yes, I think that would be great, Coran!” Allura agreed. “But how do we get someone to demonstrate it?”

“Well, if you want two people to show you what it is, I recommend some people who you want to see laughing, or to get revenge on. Tickling can be a great form of revenge, sometimes. It can also be a good bonding experience.”

“Alright, Pidge, then I think it should be…” she thought for a moment.

Lance’s eyes were wide, and he was trying to act like he wasn’t affected by this when every iteration of the word made him want to crawl out of his skin. He noticed Keith hiding his face behind his hair a little more than normal. Hunk, however, was completely fine through the whole conversation so far – not even blushing (like Shiro was, oh boy his face was pink).

“Lance and Keith.”

“What?” Lance shrieked, and then cringed at how terrified he sounded. Keith turned his head away so no one could see the grin that was beginning to invade his face, as well as the blush that sat upon his skin.

“Well, I think you two have some differences you need to work out, and Pidge said that tickling can be used as a bonding experience. Plus, Keith never laughs, and maybe I’m considering this revenge for you constantly flirting with me, Lance,” she said brightly, laughing at the end and showing she wasn’t actually upset.

“Yes, I think they would make a good match-up for this ‘tickling’ thing,” Coran agreed. “I can take notes on this to better understand it.”

Allura walked over to where the red and blue paladins were inching away towards the door. “Come on you two,” she chirped, grabbing their wrists and pulling them into the center of the room. She stood them face to face – or as good as she could get them since neither one would meet the other’s eyes – and she retreated back to where she previously stood next to Coran. “Alright… now start… tickling each other?” She glanced at Pidge to see if she had used the word correctly, and was given a thumbs-up in return. She smiled satisfactorily, and waited.

Lance shifted uncomfortably where he stood. Neither paladin moved or looked at the others.

“Why aren’t they doing anything, Number Five?” Coran whispered to Pidge, pen poised above his notepad.

“They must be shy about this, but don’t worry. Maybe they need incentive to get started.” She smirked, before shouting “if neither one of you starts tickling then someone else will tickle both of you!”

She grinned broader when she saw their faces turn redder and Lance nearly squeaked at the threat as Keith huffed through his nose.

Allura whispered to Pidge that she had an idea. “Keith, Lance was complaining about your mullet again yesterday!” she yelled to them in a sing-song.

Keith’s eyes snapped to Lance’s in an instant, biting back a grin. Thank you, Allura, for giving me an opening. “Again with the mullet?” He started inching towards the blue paladin. “When are you gonna let it go?”

Lance began protesting as he inched backwards, hands raised in defense. “No no no she’s lying Keith, I didn’t insult your mullet yesterday… to her anyway!”

“Oh, so you did?” he cracked his knuckles, and Lance squeaked.

“W-well,” Lance’s voice was unnaturally high. He gulped and steeled himself, stopping in place. “It is pretty terrible…”

That was the final straw. Keith yelled “enough with my hair!” and pounced onto Lance, knocking him to the ground.

Keith lay on top of Lance for a moment, blinking down at him and realizing Lance could’ve gotten hurt from that.

“Did that hurt you?” he asked quietly.

Lance fought back a smile, “no.”

Keith’s face finally split into that large grin – one of the first Lance had ever seen on him. “Good, because then this definitely won’t.”

The blue paladin’s eyes grew wide and his face grew pinker as Keith’s words fell from his lips. He didn’t have time to dwell on it much, however, as soon all thoughts were abandoned as he felt hands on his hips and two thumbs brushing over the skin. His breath hitched in his throat as he bit his lip and began to smile.

The pressure from the two digits increased, and he began squirming and laughing in little breathy huffs. “K-Keith come hahahon buhuddy…”

“So you remember me being your ‘buddy’ but not our bonding moment?” he teased, changing to squeezing Lance’s hips causing sharp, shrill laughs and him to buck up and down.

Lance felt what seemed like electricity shoot through his body, and his mind went blank. “NOHOHO KEIHEEHEETH,” he pleaded through laughter.

“If you say so, I’ll stop with your hips…” the red paladin near-growled (which made the boy underneath him blush even harder), and, in keeping with his word, shot his hands to Lance’s stomach. In desperation as his laughter reached a fever pitch, he reached to grab Keith’s hands. Keith was having none of it, grabbed them, and pinned them above his head. Keith held them with just one of his own hands, putting enough weight on them both to not hurt them but keep them in place. He tsked down at Lance before returning one hand to his stomach and scrabbling his fingers wildly, causing the blue paladin to dissolve into hysterics.

Lance couldn’t even protest anymore, for a few reasons (one of which he’d explain to Keith later, much to both of their delights), but mostly because he couldn’t physically form words with Keith’s hands there. However, it became even worse(?) for Lance when the red paladin decided to take it up a notch and stick his hand underneath his shirt to tickle Lance’s bare skin.

Lance’s vision erupted into brightness as his laughter turned silent from the fast, firm fingers digging gently into his stomach.

Keith’s face dusted pinker as he marveled at how soft Lance’s skin was, before realizing that Lance probably needed more air than he was currently getting. He let him laugh silently for a few more moments before letting up.

Lance panted, catching his breath and smiling largely. His relief was short-lived, however, as Keith’s hand crawled up his side, on top of his shirt once again. Lance was back to squirming as he felt his fingers walk slowly up his waist, and ribs, and then finding their target in his left underarm. Lance shrieked as Keith’s fingers danced in the hollow, and skated around the edge.

“KEIHIHTH COHOHOME OHOHON YOU’RE MEHEHEAN”

The red paladin laughed. “You think that’s mean, I’ll show you mean.” Keith let go of Lance’s hands, which instantly shot to grab him again. Keith stopped tickling for a moment to take one wrist in each hand. He maneuvered them under Lance’s back so his own weight was holding them down, allowing Keith to use both hands. He pressed his knees on either side of the blue paladin to keep him in place, and sat on his hips. Keith reached behind him and squeezed Lance’s knees, extracting deep belly laughter and causing his legs to flail around to their maximum allowance.

Keith inched his hands up to Lance’s thighs, and alternated randomly between squeezing and fully tickling and lightly tracing them. Lance dissolved into uncontrollable giggles at the latter two techniques, and let out yelps interspersed with short, barking laughs when he dug his fingers in. The layer of denim was no match for Keith’s teasing touches.

Keith’s fingers drifted from the top of Lance’s thighs to his inner thighs, but due to the quick change in his laughter Keith moved back to save him any embarrassment. Well, any more embarrassment. Keith didn’t fail to notice the… *ahem* lengthening of the individual laughs and how they seemed to become more throaty and less… less like laughs and more like something that under other circumstances he would be thrilled to hear.

Lance didn’t notice.

Keith hoped none of the others did, and he filed it away in his mind for later. He figured it was probably best to move his hands somewhere else.

He brought his hands to Lance’s sides, spidering from his waist to the middle of his ribs as best he could. Lance’s belly laughter returned, but he wouldn’t look at Keith – he kept turning his face away to try to hide – which the red paladin thought was adorable.

“MEHEHEAN”

Keith laughed along with him. “Alright, I think I can live with that,” he smiled down at him. He wanted to kiss Lance’s blushing cheeks, and he almost did before remembering the other 5 in the room.

He felt Lance’s ribs under his fingertips, and he dug into them a little more, making sure to press in-between the bones. He used both hands to play Lance like a twin piano with keys to the left and right. The blue paladin’s laughter became shrill at his upper ribs, and Keith was a little resentful that he couldn’t really get at Lance’s underarms while he was in this position.

Although, there was a place Keith wanted to try. He moved his hands slowly to Lance’s neck, dragging his fingertips gently the whole way. He began wiggling his digits against the soft skin there, causing Lance to scrunch up and start giggling. He tickled the right side of his neck, and watched Lance try to trap his hand between his head and shoulder. He tickled the left, and Lance did the same. When he tickled both sides of his neck, however, Lance tried to pull his head into his body like a turtle and wrenched his eyes shut.

Keith laughed again. He didn’t think Lance would’ve been able to be taken down by a few light touches on his neck (or his thighs, but that was another matter).

He didn’t want to keep at his neck too long, since that was a dangerous place to linger for a few reasons, but he didn’t want to be done quite yet. He decided to give his neck a break, and figured that it was a gamble for the next spot. Either it wouldn’t be ticklish and he’d have to move fast, or Lance would be even more adorable just by default.

Keith brought his hands to Lance’s ears and lightly brushed his fingers on their undersides on the thin skin and around the outside ridge of each one.

He played his cards right.

Lance’s giggles became effervescent as he scrunched up his face and turned his head from side to side as Keith’s heart melted.

“Nope, you can’t escape it now,” Keith teased quietly.

“Kehehehihith cohohome ohohohon…” Lance whined, but not for him to stop. He just… he couldn’t handle being teased.

Keith stayed tickling his ears for a few moments, before deciding that there wasn’t enough of a canvas to work with. He withdrew his hands, trying to figure out where to strike next. Hm.

“Do you think he’s done?” Keith heard Coran whisper to Hunk.

“He shouldn’t be, he’s forgetting a couple key spots,” he said back.

Keith grinned. Right. He slid off of Lance, who didn’t move right away.

All he did was ask, “are you done?” But not even in a tone conveying annoyance, just simply a question posed as if asking the time.

“Not yet, turn over,” Keith told him, and Lance froze, blush returning to his face.

“Come on, Lance!” Hunk encouraged.

“Yeah, it’s for science!” Pidge supported.

“And inter-cultural studies!” Allura chimed in.

“I’m writing as fast as I can!” Coran yelled in a hurry, apparently marking down everything that occurred.

“Come on, Lance, do it!” even Shiro was getting in on it.

Keith smiled down at him. “Come on, either you turn over or I go back to your stomach…” he raised a claw-shaped hand over him.

Lance groaned and flipped himself over, but Keith caught the smile on his face too. Lance was even biting his lip to keep from grinning more.

Keith sat on Lance’s thighs, facing his feet. He grabbed one of Lance’s legs and pulled his foot back towards him, eventually grabbing onto his left ankle. He pulled off Lance’s sneaker, and held it tighter before descending five wiggling fingers onto his upturned sole.

Lance erupted into laughter the instant Keith made contact.

“AHAHAHA KEHEHEHIHIHITH WHAHAHA—COHOHOME OHOHON”

The red paladin shook his head, chuckling and smiling fondly. He spidered his fingers along Lance’s arch, sliding farther down his legs so he could put more weight on Lance’s calves so he wouldn’t need to hold onto his ankle.

Lance felt fingers dancing as close to the base of his toes as they could get with how tightly they were curled. He shrieked with laughter as he tried to kick his foot out of Keith’s grasp, but it was held tight.

Keith smiled, and laid his leg over Lance’s spare one, holding it down with his weight. He leaned forward, and with the hand that was tickling his foot Keith pulled his toes back and held it in place. He was practically sitting on the back of his knees as he took his now free hand and tickled his stretched-out sole.

Lance continued his high-pitched laughter as he began clawing at the cool tile of the floor. Keith scratched along his cotton-covered arches, and Lance went limp with loud giggles bubbling out of his mouth as if he was a popped bottle of champagne.

Keith could’ve tickled him there forever, if only just to hear him laugh like that until the end of time.

He moved his nimble fingers to his heels and brushed around the edge, and Lance’s laughter became fuller again as he shot up, propped up on his elbows, eyes wrenched shut and face flushed.

Keith snickered at the instant reaction, and he was amazed that Lance hadn’t even said the word “stop” at any point. Keith knew that they were about equal in strength, but Lance never made a move to push him off…

Keith’s thoughts were interrupted as he felt clumsy fingers at his sides. He fought back his own laughter as Lance tried to retaliate. He had managed to bring himself up far enough so he could reach Keith, but he could barely do so.

However, it was enough for Keith’s incredibly sensitive sides. He started losing focus from the light touches, and as he arched his back and removed his hands from Lance’s feet, beginning to laugh himself, the tables were turned. Lance was able to roll out from under him and tackled him, situating himself on top this time.

“Write that down, write that down!” Allura was lightly smacking Coran’s arm out of excitement.

“Is that legal?” Coran asked Pidge and Hunk.

Pidge smiled, “all is fair in love and tickling.”

Coran nodded seriously, and continued jotting it down in his notepad.

Lance smirked down at Keith, who was sprawled out on his back with Lance pinning down his legs with his own. He was panting heavily and his face was deeply colored red, but his eyes were bright and happy.

“You know…” the blue paladin began quietly, and Keith had the impression that the words were not meant for the others to hear. “I could get my revenge right here, right now.”

Keith would’ve been worried, if not for the fact that everything other than Lance’s voice was conveying pure joy.

“Or… we could run back to my room and I could tell you things that would probably be good for both of us.”

Keith nodded quickly. “Yes. Let’s go do that.”

The two jumped up and began running out of the room before they heard—

“Think that’s good blackmail Shiro?”

Lance and Keith froze, and looked back at Pidge with wide eyes.

“I wonder what I can use this for…” she pondered aloud with mock-innocence.

“You were recording that?” both paladins asked simultaneously in embarrassment.

She smirked. “Remember that the next time I ask for the cookie jar,” she laughed. “Because who knows… it might just get broadcast to an entire planet, then they’ll know that the great Blue Paladin of Voltron is incredibly ticklish.”

Lance began walking towards her. “You wouldn’t…”

“Oh, I think we both know I would, and that I’ve had enough of your discrimination against people under 66 inches tall,” she teased in a sing-song voice.

Lance cracked his knuckles, walking closer to her, who didn’t back down. “Keith? Wanna help me here?”

Keith grinned evilly, “it would be my pleasure.”

“Oh my gosh!” Allura cried out, smiling largely and stopping the two in their tracks. “I just remembered something, Coran!”

Her advisor looked at her as well. “Kitziwch, right?”

“Yes!” she smiled, and the paladins could see right through her act. “We do have a word in Altean for that, it’s ‘Kitziwch’.”

Lance and Keith blinked at each other.

“You know, Keith, I think she knew all along. I think she tricked us into this!” The blue paladin said with mock-surprise.

Keith fake-gasped in return. “I think you’re right! But what do we do about Pidge and her blackmail, and Allura?”

“I do not know, there’s only two of us…”

“But there’s also two of them…”

“Fair point, buddy, so what ever shall we do?”

Keith grinned. “I think we have one clear option.”

“Shall we attack to defend our honor?” Lance readied his stance.

Keith followed suit, “absolutely.”

#voltron tickling #klance #tickling #tickle fic #ticklish!lance #ticklish!keith #filled #lance mcclain #keith kogane #vld tickling #mine #jeezus there's so much tickling in this #a good thing abt not being able to say the word and not always being able to type it:#is that i have to get creative with my descriptions lmao

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arrow-guy · 7 years

Text

Language

Original request from the lovely @lady-thor-foster : Okay thank you!! Could a request a Clint or Thor fluff piece where the reader is notoriously clumsy but she’s a damn good linguist (She knows more languages than Natasha honestly) so every time she trips she shouts in a different language? Clint or Thor find it hilarious but a little concerning so they start following her around to make sure she doesn’t injure herself? Just super cute and fluffy (female pronouns please!!) Thank you so much!

A/N: Alright, so this is my first Thor fic and I’m really excited about it, so I hope I’ve done him justice and that you enjoy what I did with the prompt!! (I’ll put translations for the curses at the end!)

Paring: ThorxReader

Word Count: 3744

Warnings: None

“This is (Y/N), she’s going to be working with us as our new linguistics specialist for a while.” Steve says as I walk it into the room.

“He says a while, but it could be permanent.” I add, plopping down in an empty seat around the conference table.

“Why do we need another linguist?” Natasha asks. “We’ve got me, haven’t we?

“We certainly do have you, but we need you in the field.” Steve explains.

“I’m more of a stay at home kind of girl anyway.” I shift in my seat and lean forward, resting my elbows on the table, “I’m not replacing you, Romanoff, I’m simply freeing you up to take on missions that are more your style. I’ll be staying here, deciphering important texts, while you’re off doing your incredibly impressive spy thing.”

“Alright,” Natasha nods, satisfied.

“Good,” Steve nods to Natasha before turning back to the group. “As I said, (Y/N) is going to be working with us here in the tower for the foreseeable future. She’ll be living here while she’s with us as well. ”

“Finally,” Wanda says, a smile stretching across her face. “Another girl in the tower.”

I flash her a smile. “Hopefully I won’t be too much of a disappointment.”

Wanda perks up, her posture straightening, a smirk settling on her features. “Something tells me you won’t be.”

A head with long blond hair pokes into the conference room. “Sorry to interrupt, but I have returned.”

Steve waves the man through the door. “You’re just in time, Thor.” He says.

Thor looks at Steve, confused. “I am?”

“We’ve got a new teammate joining us.” Steve explains.

Thor’s eyes travel over the table before resting on me. I shoot him a small smile and he grins back. “Hello, who might you be?”

“I’m (Y/N), the new linguist.”

“It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, (Y/N).”

I offer a small nod. “Same to you, Thor.”

–

“Son of a bitch!” I yell, just barely managing to catch myself before falling flat on my face after catching my foot on the leg of a chair.

“(Y/N)?” Thor calls, poking his head around the corner. “Is everything alright?”

“Peachy keen!” I answer. “I just need to watch where I’m going is all.”

His brow furrows. “Are you sure?”

“Of course. Nothing to worry about!”

“Please be more careful, (Y/N), I would hate to see you harm yourself.”

“I’ll do my best, blondie.” I grin at him and pat him on the shoulder before backing away down the hallway. “The team is still on for pizza tonight, right?”

“Of course. Stark complains when pizza night is skipped. We have made an arrangement with the pizzeria to bring us pizzas each friday.”

I feel my eyes go wide. “Wow,”

“Indeed,” He grins widely.

“Alright, well I’ll see you later then!”

“Yes,” He nods to me. “I will see you later.”

I turn on my heel and cover my mouth with my hand to muffle my giggling. Straightening out my features as quickly as possible, I head down the hall to the elevator so I can meet Tony in the lab.

–

A loud thud echoes through the hallway followed by someone shouting, “Merde!”

Thor quickly gets up from his seat in the most comfortable chair in his room to investigate. No sooner has he left his room does he find the new linguist sitting on the floor in the middle of the hallway, cradling her foot in her hands.

“Are you alright, (Y/N)?” He asks.

She looks up at the blond towering over her and grins at him.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I just managed to stub my toe going around the corner there.” She points to the corner of the wall a little ways away. “Nothing to worry about.”

“Are you sure?” He offers her a hand up and pulls her to her feet when she takes it.

She nods in affirmation. “Entirely.” She tugs at the hem of her shirt and backs away a few paces. “I should probably head back to my room. There are a few files waiting there for me to translate them and I have to grab them before I can find the texts I need to start the translation.”

“Alright,” He nods. “Do be careful, (Y/N), I would hate to see you hurt.”

“Thanks for your concern, big guy.” She says, standing on tiptoe and placing a kiss on his cheek before shoving her hands in her pockets and backing away from him. “If you need anything, I’ll be in the library like always.”

Thor flashes her a brilliant smile and nods, scratching the back of his neck. “I’ll be sure to find you if anything comes up.”

(Y/N) laughs lightheartedly before turning on her heel and sauntering off down the hallway towards the library.

–

“Himmeldonnerwetter,” I hiss, sticking my right index finger in my mouth. I was a little too hasty in opening this file and slid the pad of my finger down the edge of the beigey-yellow cardstock of the folder effectively getting the worst paper cut imaginable.

“Did you just curse in German?” Thor asks.

I look up, surprised to see him sitting across the table from me. I didn’t notice him come him.

“I, uh… yeah?” He lifts his eyebrows, surprised by my answer. “What?”

He shakes his head and looks away from me. “It’s nothing. I just wasn’t expecting to hear such a colorful array of expletives from a mortal.”

“I’m a linguist, Thor. ” I laugh softly. “I know a lot of curse words.”

“I apologize, it was not my intention to misjudge you.” He reaches out and takes my hand in his, studying the papercut. “Is your hand alright?”

“I think so, yeah. Just need to go wash it off and put some neosporin on. The cut’ll practically be gone by morning.”

“Human medicine is strange sometimes,” He says softly, turning my hand over in his.

“In all honesty, the same could be said of Asgardian medicine.”

His eyebrows shoot up to his hairline and his posture straightens. “You know of Asgardian medicine?”

I nod once, resting my chin in my free hand. “I do.”

“How could you possibly have first hand knowledge of Asgard? Humans have not yet mastered interdimensional travel.”

“I may or may not have convinced an Asgardian man masquerading as a professor at my first university to take me with him when he went home one spring break one year. I’m sure your gatekeeper would remember it quite well.”

He smiles softly, amusement sparkling in his eyes. “Strange, Heimdall neglected to tell my father that a mortal had visited Asgard.”

“Mmm,” I hum. “Funny, I asked him to keep it quiet. Seems like he’s a bit of a rebel.”

He laughs and laces his fingers with my own. “You are different than I thought you were when I met you, (Y/N). You are so much more full of life than I expected you to be.” I lift my eyebrows in mock offence. “It’s wonderful, really. It seems that there isn’t much that surprises me on this world, but you do.”

I grin widely. “Oh yeah?”

“I truly mean it.”

“Well thank you, happy to be of service.”

He chuckles softly and brings my hand to his mouth, pressing a soft kiss to my knuckles. “Do be careful, (Y/N), I’d hate to see you hurt.”

“I’ll do my best. Can’t make any real promises, but I’ll try.”

He smiles widely, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “That is all I ask.”

–

“Barton!” Thor’s voice booms through the hallway, stopping Clint in his tracks.

He turns around slowly, eyes wide, shoulders raised almost like hackles. “Yeah?”

“Have you noticed that (Y/N) gets hurt a lot?” Clint’s shoulders relax and he raises his eyebrows, crossing his arms over his chest, almost like he’s inviting Thor to continue. “She curses in a different language each time she injures herself.”

“So she’s a clumsy linguist.” Clint shrugs. “Is there anything else that’s so incredibly groundbreaking that you had to almost blow out my hearing aids to talk to me about it?”

“It was not my intention to further damage your hearing, my friend.”

Clint shakes his head. “It’s fine.”

“As I was saying, I thought her clumsiness amusing and endearing to begin with, but I find myself quite taken with her now. I worry for her safety.”

“So you’re worried that your maybe girlfriend is too clumsy for her own good?” Thor nods and Clint barks out a laugh. “I hate to break it to you, but that is the opposite of a problem.”

“How do you mean?”

“You have an excuse to hang out around her and make sure that she doesn’t hurt herself.”

Thor frowns for a moment, mulling it over. “Perhaps you are right.”

“Of course I’m right. When have I ever had a bad idea?” Thor lifts his eyebrows questioningly. “Don’t answer that.”

Thor chuckles and claps Clint on the shoulder, pitching the shorter man forward. Clint barely manages to catch himself on wall before falling flat on his face and quickly spins around to face Thor again.

“Many thanks for your advice, Barton. I will let you know if I have any success.”

“Yeah sure, okay. You do that, big guy.”

–

“(Y/N)!”

I jump, startled by Thor’s loud voice, nearly dropping my bowl of cereal. I set the bowl on the counter and scrub a hand over my face.

“Good night nurse. You scared me half to death!” Laughing I smile widely at him. “You must be in a good mood today.”

“I am,” Thor nods and leans back on the counter. “I spoke with Barton earlier, and I believe he has helped me solve an ongoing problem of mine?”

“Oh? Care to share?”

“Not presently, but maybe in the future.” He casts his eyes to the floor, smiling to himself. “Would you mind if I spent the day with you?”

“You don’t have an assignment today?” I tilt my head to the side, folding my arms across my chest. “I thought Steve had everyone on a strict training schedule. Are you saying you’re going to skip out on Avenger practice, just to spend time with little ole me?”

“Of course. Specifically if it means spending time with you.” He smiles widely, eyes sparkling.

I bite my lip, trying to hold back a grin. “Alright, God of Thunder. What’d you have in mind?”

“I was hoping that you would accompany me in a brief visit to Asgard.”

“Wait,” I stretch a hand out to him, trying to get a handle on what it is he’s offering me. “You’re seriously offering to take me back? Even though I’m human?” He nods, taking my outstretched hand in his. “I thought my kind had no place on Asgard.”

“I think it could be argued that that is one rule that is meant to be bent.”

“I think you’re just throwing your hammer through that particular rule.”

“So you won’t come with me?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far.” I squeeze his hand firmly. “Just let me finish my cereal and change and then we can leave.”

He laughs and lets go of my hand. “Very well. I will wait for you in my quarters.”

“Great! I’ll be there in half an hour.”

–

A soft knock sounds on the door frame. Thor looks up only to have his breath catch in his throat. (Y/N) stands waiting, just outside his room, in traditional Asgardian clothing. He can’t bring himself to say anything, only a few croaks that were meant to be words escaping his lips.

“Hey,” She lifts her eyebrows and waves a hand in front of his face. “You ready to go?”

He shakes his head, blinking rapidly. “I-yes, of course.” He clears his throat. “You look stunning.”

“Oh,” A slow blush creeps across her cheeks. “Thank you. In all honesty, I didn’t know if they would still fit.”

“When did you acquire Asgardian clothing?”

“Remember when I told you I talked a professor into taking me when he went back?” Thor nods. “Well, he had to help me blend in somehow, and he convinced his sister to lend me an outfit. I use the word “lend” loosely because she’s never getting this back.”

“I should hope not,” He says softly, still taking in her appearance.

“What?”

“Nothing,” He says hastily, wiping his hands on the duvet and pushing himself to his feet. “Shall we go?”

–

“It’s nice to see you again, (Y/N),” Heimdall greets Thor and I with a nod. “Though I did not expect to have the pleasure for a great while longer.”

“I can’t say I was expecting to come back anytime soon either, but it’s nice to see you again, too. We’ll be keeping this little jaunt a secret as well, right?”

He smirks. “Of course. Though I cannot promise that there is not another who will not make your presence known.”

“He wouldn’t dare.” Thor growls.

“What?”

“My meddlesome brother appears to have returned.”

“Well, we’ll just have to avoid him, now won’t we?” Thor looks at me, brow furrowed, expression worried. “I can talk myself out of almost any situation if we get caught you know.”

“She can,” Heimdall says, not bothering to look at us. “I’ve seen it.”

“Fine, but we leave if he so much as glances at you.”

“Of course, safety first. Now,” I gently take his hand in mine. “Can we please explore that big ass golden city? It’s been almost six years and, from what I’m gathering, I’ve got about three hours till someone finds us out.”

“Alright, but never let go of my hand.”

“Fair enough,”

He leads me out onto the bridge and pulls me close to his chest, a strong arm firmly wrapped around my waist.

“Are we flying there?” A low hum rumbles in his chest and he nods in affirmation. “Real covert.”

He laughs loudly. “Just hold onto me. I’d hate to drop you.”

“Would be a real shame.” He hums in agreement.

In an instant, we’re in the air, hurtling towards the shining castle in the middle of the city. He lands on a balcony facing away from the prying eyes of Asgardian citizens. Thor carefully places me on the ground, holding onto one of my hands to allow me to regain my balance before letting me stand on my own.

“Are you alright?”

“I’m great,” I answer, shooting him a smile. He grins back before leading me through the doors and into the castle proper.

The doors close behind us, seemingly of their own accord. I get about three steps away before I can’t go any further. Looking back, I find the skirts of my dress caught between the closed doors.

“Zajebiste.” I curse. “Um, Thor?”

“Yes?” He looks back at me tugging at my dress, trying to free myself, and rushes back to me, carefully opening the doors to make sure that the fabric doesn’t tear. “I’m sorry. I should have warned you. The doors tend to close rather abruptly.”

I smile at him. “I should be the one apologizing, don’t worry.”

He takes my hand in his, gently lacing our fingers together. “I will make sure nothing else happens to you.”

I nod and he leads us onwards. He points out little parts of the architecture that he thinks I’ll like and allows me to peek into different rooms, explaining what everyone is doing, and then running off, giggling like children, when someone notices us and tries to engage us in conversation.

“Thor!” Someone calls after us and Thor immediately whips around, hiding me behind his back.

“Fandral,” Thor greets the man with a nod.

“We weren’t expecting you back so soon, my friend.” The man Thor called Fandral stops not too far away from us. “Who’s that you’ve got hidden behind you?”

Thor sighs softly and guides me out from behind him. I look the man over, finding him handsome, but more ordinary than Thor.

“This is (Y/N). She’s a friend.”

“Where did you find her?” Fandral asks, sly smile firmly in place. “She’s quite pretty.”

I roll my eyes. “Gay kocken offen yom.”

“I beg your pardon?” Fandral’s eyes widen.

“I know exactly who you are.” Thor looks at me, eyebrows raised. “What? I read books on Norse mythology when I took a theology class in college. I know all about your little band of merry men, and I know exactly who thinks himself a ladies man.”

Thor snorts to cover up a laugh, amusement sparkling in his eyes.

“Another mortal?” Fandral asks.

“Yes,”

“You know how your father feels about her kind, Thor.”

“I know, which is why we are avoiding him,”

“And his brother,” I add. “We’d like to avoid him at all costs.”

“Of course, that’s a given.” Fandral looks to Thor again. “Do you plan on introducing her to your mother?”

“Not this time, though I’m certain she’ll find us regardless.”

Fandral nods. “Well, best of luck to you! It was a pleasure meeting you, (Y/N).” He takes my hand and presses a kiss to my knuckles, chuckling when I scowl at him and pull my hand away. “I do hope that we’ll be seeing more of you.”

“Depends on how this visit goes, I guess.”

“Indeed,” Thor smiles at me and takes my hand again. “How would you like to see the archives?”

“Are you kidding? That would be incredible!” I squeeze his hand excitedly. “Meeting gods is nice and all, but getting to nerd out in an alien library? That’s a linguist’s dream.”

“She’s a special one, Thor.”

“She is,” Thor grins. “Come, it’s this way.”

We bid Fandral farewell and Thor leads me down the hallway. He makes several quick turns and stops in the middle of the corridor occasionally to recenter himself. We walk quickly and I manage to get my feet tangled in the skirts of my dress several times. I would have fallen over every single time had Thor not been there to catch me each time.

Thor brings us to a stop in front of two ornate double doors. When he pulls one open, the hinges groan in protest, like they haven’t been moved in years, and Thor cringes at the sound. He pokes his head through the door and glances around before carefully guiding me through and closing the door behind us.

The smell of old paper and ink washes over me and I instantly relax. I close my eyes and breathe deeply, feeling an intense sense home among the rows of ancient texts. I can’t help the smile that overtakes my face and I turn to Thor, wrapping my arms around his middle and hugging him.

“I can’t thank you enough for this, it’s incredible.”

“Would you like to look around?”

“Well yeah, that’s what libraries are for, right?”

He chuckles softly and leads me down one row. As we walk, he points out different texts, explaining where they came from, occasionally pulling a book down and letting me flip through it. The texts are incredibly well preserved and the colors and illumination are gorgeous in each book I get to look at.

“You should have told me you were coming.”

“It wasn’t a planned visit, mother. If it were, I would have let you know.”

“Holy shit.” I breathe, my eyes going wide. “The All Mother. Holy shit.”

“Who’s this you’ve brought with you?” I can hear the smile in her voice and I slowly turn my head to look at her.

“This is (Y/N),” Thor places the book in his hand back on the shelf and steps aside so his mother can look at me. “She is a colleague of mine.”

“Another human, Thor?” She chuckles softly. “You certainly have an affinity for her kind, my son.”

“Her kind, yes, but she’s different from the rest.” When he looks at me, he smiles softly, an emotion I’ve never seen from him shining in his eyes.

His mother smiles knowingly and takes a few long strides towards us. She gently cups my face in her hands and looks into my eyes. “You possess a great knowledge within you.”

“I’m a linguist,” I say, mentally kicking myself for sounding so stupid. “It’s why Thor brought me here. He thought I’d be interested in the texts you’ve collected.”

She laughs softly and releases my face. “That is not exactly what I meant. You will come to understand with time.” She turns to her son. “You have chosen well.”

Thor nods to her and pulls her into a gentle hug. “Thank you.”

“Take care of her.” She says, her tone gentle but stern. “Be sure that your brother does not spot her.”

“Of course.” Thor nods once in understanding.

She smiles at us once more before slipping past us and out of the library.

“She’s amazing.” I whisper.

“She certainly is that.” He gently takes my hands in his. “I must tell you why I brought you here today.”

I shake my head. “Don’t worry, I already know.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, I heard you talking to Clint the other day. You weren’t exactly quiet.”

“Oh,” His shoulders fall and I place a hand on his cheek, making him meet my eyes.

“I think it’s sweet, Thor, I really do. I know I’m clumsy. The fact that you brought me here as an excuse to keep an eye on me and make sure I don’t hurt myself is hilarious, but no one’s done that for me before.”

“So you aren’t upset with me?”

“Of course not,” I see a shock of black hair stalking through the stacks and tug on Thor’s hands. “But I think we should get the hell out of here before your brother catches us.”

He barks out a laugh and gathers me up in his arms before running for the door. As soon as we’re out on a balcony he sets me down and wraps an arm around my waist before pressing a soft kiss to my lips.

“We’ll get permission to come back next time.”

“Of course. But first, we have to get out of here.”

“Oh, of course.” He grins widely at me. He lifts us into the air and angles us towards the rainbow bridge.

As we soar over the city, the sun is setting, and everything is perfect.

As promised, the swear word translations:

Merde (French): Shit

Himmeldonnerwetter (German): Heaven thunder weather

Zajebiste (Polish): Basically a casual way of saying “fucking awesome“

Gay kocken offen yom (Yiddish): Go shit in the ocean

I found all of these here!

Thank you guys so much for reading! If you liked the piece please reply to the post or shoot me an ask! Feedback would be greatly appreciated!!!

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selfcareparker · 3 years

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(lovely anon) ok so this may sound so dramatic but; let me paint you a picture: i’m responding to your latest message, sitting on the edge of the sofa. i type in “lovely anon” into the search and see this longgg post come up and i’m like uhhh... i scroll down and see the people you tagged and literally. when i saw @ lovely anon. i . cried . like full on tears. my brother goes “what are you doing” “she tagged meeeee” and he continued what he was doing and didn’t care LMAOO but i was so emotional? i love and appreciate you too and aAH IM CRYING!! you’re just really sweet and i didn’t expect it at all and it was really lovely to be a part of something :’)

the kermit pic sent meee but yes yes yes!! when you start uni let me know, lol i’m so excited for you!! let me know how it goes cuz i’m literally hype hahah & yes we will be in our sad corners of the world, missing england but you’re right it’ll be sooooo worth it in the end!!! and oH i’m glad you talk to them lol i truly thought you like haven’t seen them/haven’t spoken to them this whole time😭 that would’ve been awful!

also i totallyyy get what your saying about the english speaking thing. and idk why you’re insecure (well i *knowww* bc it’s not your first language and you’re studying it in college so yuh) but your english is great :)))

lol yeah that makes sense.. my mom took french in college and she remembers NOTHING HDJSHSJ (the fact that you wanna learn MORE languages i- ahh i so admire you.. you literally know so many languages🥺) yea i mean you know a bunch of languages bc you know the base of words lol, but i wonder if because you know latin it’ll be easier for you to learn french? oh- oh wait you said it’ll be easier HAHHAHA

THERES SO MUCH EXCITING STUFF TO TALK ABOUT HDGSJSJSL it’s so wild to me that you can’t watch chaos walking :( i’m a professional hacker tho so i’ll try and find a way for you LMAO (by professional hacker i mean i literally have gotten multiple free trials and i’m pretty sure the hulu police are after me bUT ITS THEIR FAULT BC WHY IS IT SO EXPENSIVE???) i mean the movie was good? and cute? and funny? but yea don’t think it’s gonna be the most fantastic thing haha AND THE DOGGO AWWW (i saw it again today- or my today lol, saturday, aND THESE OLD PEOPLE CAME AND SAT IN FRONT OF ME AND MY FRIEND LIKE ITS A LONG STORY LMK IF YOU WANNA HEAR IT)

SHARK FILMS?!?!! PLEASE READING THIS I HAD NO IDEA YOU WOULD LIKE SHARK MOVIES TOO FHSKSHSHDJDJGAJAYSJS ok so i haven’t seen any of the classics (i’m working on it) but i would probably watch jaws to laugh at it? not like that lmao but like comparing it. OKAY BUT HONESTLY I BARELY KNOW ANYONE WHO LIKES SHARK FILMS AHHH OKAY im adding “the shallows” to my watchlist bc it sounds super good AND SAME AHSJD ANY BODY OF WATER IN A MOVIE I JUST KNOW ITS COMING LMAO watch me not go in the water anymore after seeing that picture HHDJSJ

WHEN I READ THIS I JUST GOT DONE TALKING TO MY MOM ABOUT THE MEG AND THAT SCENE WHERE THE SHARKKK JUMPEDDDD AND ATE THE OTHER ONEEEE AND THEN JONAS HAD TO DO- bro i cannot (i think that one is my favorite because i love me a bit of romance and the subtle romance hAD ME) 47 meters down PHEW could you imagine?? i try not to think too hard about it i’m like “don’t be dumb catherine, don’t put yourself in a dumb situation” (not autocorrect having “dumb bitch” ready i am not lying) and i literally understand... there is no other way to explain 47 meters down

i CANNOT watch horror movies, can’t can’t can’t, i literally hate them i cannot do it!!! the thrill is tempting and it’s cool in the moment but i cant lmao. i don’t have nightmares about scary things (for the majority of the time) but going to sleep i’m like oooohhhhhh shit 🥲 literally what you explained

music !!!! music !!!! music !!!! (u ever write a word and now it looks weird lmao) MY BROTHER DOESNT LIKE MUSIC AND ITS SHIT IM LIKE WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU- anyway, my music taste is all over the place i mean......... it’s crazy. earlier today i was listening to meghan trainor’s album “title” oUT OF NOWHERE, but just a few minutes ago i was listening to fall in love with me by earth wind and fire soooo lol .. megan is *chefs kiss*, i’m not familiar with stormzy🙈, harry styles.... IM SORRY IM THAT PERSON but i don’t listen to his solo music EEK i only listen to adore you... and not that frequently... the music video freaked me out... i like niall’s solo music a lot more, which i listen to a lot more. now. one direction. favorite. please & thank you. i have a playlist called “boy bands” and it consists of one direction and the vamps (obsessed with cherry blossom btw) but as you can see my taste is all over the place!! fr fr if i sent you what apple music has as my “favorites” it went from ariana grande to carrie underwood to glee (OBSESSED DONT LET ME TALK ABOUT IT) i mean please if you let me i will nonstop (hamilton HDJSH) talk about music all day😩 & NOOO UR MUSIC IS GREAT HAHSK IM NOT A BIG RAP PERSON BUT DOJA CAT IS MY FAVORITE!!

okay good, i’m glad :) i was just nervous that you did feel that way <3 and GOT IT HAHAJ healthy pressure is always good :’) my friend got me these pens cuz i love stationary and school supplies lol and was like “now you have to write something” soooo yea i feel that! and i saw you posted the ficcccccc literally so proud of you 🥺🥺 i’m trying to decide if i read it tomorrow or tonight..... sleep or a literal beautiful creation made by the sweetest person and is v v nice smut and college!peter and 4.7k...... sleep aint really calling no more.

GIRL ALL OF MY SENTENCES ARE TOO LONG HAHAHAH IN FACT THIS IS TOO LONG SOOO (also why am i 3 days late..😑) anywho it’s 1 in the morning so <33 lovely anon

🥰

oh my god the fact that you cried nearly made me cry too😭😭🥺🥺 (also, your brother LMAO), i wasn‘t even sure if you‘d see it but i immediately thought of you so of COURSE i included you <333

the hulu police lsjsjaiaik, girl i was ready to get a hulu membership when i wanted to watch big time adolescence and i couldn‘t find it anywhereee, and when i got to the payment it said i need a bank account that‘s based in the US or whatever. like bro i was about to pay you!! but i was forced to find it somewhere (and i did, on levidia,— not that i‘ve ever used it because it‘s illegal 😤 i would never!!! i‘d rather support billion dollar companies and spend my money on watching films that i can find for free 🥰🥰🥰 not

i‘ve found chaos walking online so i‘ll watch it som time this week!! also YES TELL ME THE STORY

okay so idk if you watched/are planning on watching falcon and winter soldier but i watched the first episode the other day and they were speaking french (just a few seconds) and I UNDERSTOOD SOME WORDS DLDJDJ and i was so proud of myself. i‘ve only ever learned french with duolingo lol (i only do like 5 mins a day and that‘s why i was so surprised that i understood some of it!!). and yeah apart from latin i feel like italian, german, french and english are all similar in a sense.. i mean obviously they‘re completely different languages but for example there are some grammatical constructions in french that i think i wouldn‘t understand if i only spoke english? so when i translate those things into english you can‘t directly translate them bc you say things differently, but when i translate them into german then it makes more sense to me. idk that‘s something i noticed so i feel like if you already know multiple languages it‘s easier to learn another language compared to if you only know one language and are trying to learn a second one. even if the languages aren‘t similar then i think you get the hang of it easier.

ikd slsjsjs also i don‘t want you to think that i‘m a linguistic genius or anything lmfao, like i‘m only fluent in english and german and i‘m just a wannabe (ew that word) polyglot sksj (yes i had to google polyglot— i do think learning ancient greek would be super cool tho? like imagine studying latin AND ancient greek, whew). and honestly i don‘t think i‘ll ever be fluent in another language bc i don‘t plan on living anywhere other than germany or possibly england and i‘m not dedicated enough to properly learn any other languages esp if i don‘t have anyone to speak the language with. but i still try my best and i just love language/languages as a whole so yeah i‘m happy & just learning as much as i can dkdjh🥰

(I guess language/linguistics are/is my passion (which sounds sooo lame lmaoooo) and the word passion comes from the latin word pati (i think💀) which means to suffer, and in german passion is called Leidenschaft which basically means suffering too, idk why i‘m telling you this maybe you know it already. but ok dumb fun fact, in german you can make compound words with as many words as you like, and the longest official german word is Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz which is a law for the monitoring of labels on beef... this is such a dumb fact but i think about that word like once a day idk why dodjsjsj so... 👁👄👁)

but i‘ll stop boring you with my linguistics talk because truly i don‘t know much about languages but i am interested omg i‘m gonna shut up now.

now water + sharks. (so in non-covid times i always go to croatia with my dad during the summer, and even before ever watching a shark film i was always kind of scared in water.. but after watching so many shark films wldjdj HELP Like you know when you go deeper into the ocean and you can‘t see or feel the ground/floor? anymore.. then i just start imagining sharks. like i can‘t help it i just imagine a shark sneaking up on me or feeling something graze my foot ABD I JUST START FREAKING OUT SSKJSHSJ. idk. anyway kdkdh i do love the ocean/swimming though but the older i get the more i realise how fucking scary the ocean is ( even if we’re gonna disregard sharks)

your brother... what‘s wrong with him? HOw CAN YOU NOT LIKE MUSIC LIKE WHAT THE FAWK

OKAY BUT SAME ABOUT THE ADORE YOU MUSIC VIDEO DLDKDJSJSKSLSLKSKSJSHSH and yeah i have to say harry’s style (styles lol) as a solo artist isn‘t reaaally my cup of tea, and i only like the popular songs from his second album and the first album is only good when i‘m in the right mood (haven‘t actually listened to it in a while though, but kiwi is one of my all time favourites along with only angel but i hate the start, like it takes 40 seconds to actually begin properly). i like mgk and because of him i watched the dirt which is a film about motley crue, and now one of my favourite songs ever is same ol situation and i‘m into rock now lol. +++ justin bieber. I had a justin bieber cardboard cutout thingy😭 i was the biggest Belieber on earth when i was 13-16, but i didn‘t like his last album and tbh he‘s become a bit weird lately, BUT OH MY GOD. i Listened to his new album yesterday and i‘m in LOVE with the song hold on

i really like niall‘s music toooo!!!! And doja cat 😌😌😌😌 And THE VAMPS OG MY GOD. i got to see them live bc they were the opening/support act for little mix and ajdsjskslslsjsjsj. (Also i love concerts, some of the best memories of my life are concerts, i‘ve seen nicki minaj live 🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 and justin twice and my heart fills every time i think about how excited i was, it was my first concert ever (16th of September 2016 😌) and i was the happiest person alive seeing justin drew fucking bieber (even if i‘m not tooo sure about justin nowadays)

i have a confession? Idk what hamilton is. I mean I‘ve heard about it and i keep googling it but i‘ve never watched it (is it even a film???? or like a proper musical? also pls tell me you grew up with high school musical. i have a few friends who didn‘t and it makes me so sad 😭😭😭 hsm is the best thing to happen to my childhood , the sooooongs— i still listen to some of them every week or month lool they make me so happy)

(Okay wait i was about to recommend some stormzy songs but you said you‘re not that into rap so i won‘t dksksjl)

What you said about my fic AHSLSLSJB (i wasn‘t sure if you sent an ask about it earlier? idk that might have been someone else, so if it was (and you‘ve read it already) i hope you liked it sksjsj i was...... unsure about it. and i have this reeaaallly long peter fic that i started writing in december and that‘s the only peter thing i currently want to write but also i can‘t because idk how to continue kddjj.) but I’m definitely getting back into writing i have a few blurbs that i want to write so 🥰🥰🥰

Oh and pls as soon as you read this let me know: violet or yellow? (it‘s just a tiny thing for my new theme slsksj)

#lovely anon #BY THE WAY: do not feel bad or apologise for not answering straight away #you can take your time i know it can be exhausting (not bc its anything bad but just because its so much and so long) to answer to my shit #all at once*#so really i don‘t mind if you take a few days or a week or whatever to respond #or if you want to you can respond bit by bit/topic by topic whenever you feel like it #so you don‘t have to concentrate on an ask and my post for like AN HOUR DLSKJ but rather do it in smaller chunks #if you want <3 #btw i‘m always so scared that i‘ll type lonely anon instead of lovely dldjdjsksk so if i ever do that i‘m just being #(cue your autocorrect dldkdj) a dumb bitch #its 1 am now sorry if there are any mistakes (i‘ll stop apologing from now now lol but i still am sorry you have to read my word vomit lmao)#*apologis #*from now on #omg

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undertheaethier · 6 years

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GoV Ch. 6: Core Exercises

Yana apparently knew where she was going, because she led me out of the courthouse and to the Office of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice like she owned the block.

“Hey, Yana--are they even going to let us in there? I’m on a very tight leash, and you’re--”

“A convicted criminal, yeah,” Yana said, grinning unabashedly. “Don’t worry, we’ll just tell them Veryn sent us. And if they don’t buy that, we’ll find Tarrow.” She said the last part only grudgingly.

“Um, do you guys have a problem with Tarrow, or something?” I asked. I remembered how Kovit had seemed disgusted at the idea of Yana working with Tarrow, and Veryn’s refusal to enlist his help.

“Pfft. He’s just a jerk,” said Yana. “No real problem with him besides his entire personality.”

“He seems pretty nice to me,” I said, trying not to sound defensive.

Yana shrugged. “He’s pretty. I don’t know about nice.”

Upon entrance to the building, we were stopped by guards, but as Yana had predicted, simply telling them that Veryn had sent us to use the training rooms was enough for them, as soon as we’d shown them ID. Yana showed them a card that I’m pretty sure had been issued to her in prison, and I apologetically showed them my driver’s license. Luckily, they’d laughed instead of accusing me of anything, and we gained entrance without any further ado.

I looked around the office spaces and hallways as Yana led me through the building, looking idly for orange hair or dawn-colored wings, but saw no sign of Tarrow. Finally, we came to a door with a sign next to it in letters that I now sort of recognized. Oinaret. I wasn’t sure what the word meant though. I asked Yana and she looked at me in surprise.

“Wait, you weren’t kidding about learning Elvish?” she asked.

“No. Veryn found me some books last night and I started teaching myself.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Last night? Are you a quick learner, or what?”

I couldn’t help but feel a little proud. “Well, language is kind of my thing. It’s what I studied, in school back on Earth.”

Yana leaned against the wall, looking at me curiously. “You were a scholar?”

I laughed. I’d certainly never thought of myself as one. “I guess. I was a student. I study language, and I can speak eight human languages.”

Yana laughed. “Wow. That’s pretty incredible, I only speak two. Elvish and Dryidic. What did you plan to do, knowing so many languages?”

“Oh, well--” I stopped. Good question. My stomach sank. I’d thought about it before, of course, my career options, but I’d never really settled on anything. What would I do with all of my languages? Would I teach, or work for the state department? I could work for almost any branch of the government or law enforcement, as a translator or a linguist. I could study history from a linguistic perspective, or study ancient languages, trying to put millennia-old puzzle pieces together? Maybe I could try to help out with that Voynich Manuscript thing.

But what was I thinking? Of course I wouldn’t do those things now. Now, in a realm where none of my languages were spoken or used at all… I felt suddenly very heavy. Years of work were worth very little now.

Mom and Dad had made sure I learned German while I learned English. In daycare, I learned Spanish from my teachers and classmates. I’d gone to a private institution for elementary school, where they taught French. In middle school, I’d taken Latin as an elective. In high school, I studied Greek and Arabic. In college, I’d studied Korean and Russian, and I’d started learning Mandarin and Japanese just last year. I’d had plans to continue learning after graduation, to make myself more hirable, and had thought about learning Portuguese, Hindi, and Dutch. Now, what was that worth? I couldn’t practice any of those things here, and there was no point in continuing my learning of human languages. There was probably no way to even do so--how many scholars here studied Dutch? But hey--I’d had no plan to begin with, right? What was I even really giving up?

Maybe everything?

“Hey. You okay?” asked Yana.

I bit my lip. “Yeah, I just...I just realized how arbitrary it all is now,” I admitted. “My passion, all the work I put in...it doesn’t mean anything here.”

Yana looked concerned for me. “Well...maybe it does. Studying language will probably help you learn Elvish, right? And there are some scholars here who study human languages.”

“Really?” I asked, hopeful.

“Sure! Really hard stuff,” said Yana. “Three of them are studied in almost every university, even if they’re only used for anthropological stuff. I think it’s English, Russian, and...Mandarin? I don’t remember. I never learned any of them myself. It’s considered pretty niche here.”

Well. Maybe I could get some help with Mandarin after all. And in fact, if there were people here who studied English and Russian, I could still potentially teach. Maybe I wasn’t hopeless after all. And if those didn’t work out, I could keep learning other languages. Once I knew Elvish, I could expand to other languages. Who knew how many there were here, considering how many races there were?

Much more hopeful, I smiled at Yana. “Thank you,” I told her. “That actually helps to hear.”

She smiled back. “No problem. You ready?” She gestured toward the door. “Oh. It means ‘exercise room,’ by the way.”

“‘Oina’ means ‘exercise’ and ‘ret’ means ‘room’?” I asked.

“Oina is actually just an abbreviation for oinavar, but yes. Exactly.”

I nodded, feeling empowered. I could do this. No problem. “Yeah, let’s get to it.”

Firstly, Yana wanted to establish that I had muscles at all, it seemed. I confessed that I wasn’t much of an exercise nut. I usually ran a couple of times a week, and I did yoga more often, when I was feeling stressed or as a way to fall asleep. She said they had something similar to yoga, called Kof-gua, that had come about in Serura, and seemed content with what I could do.

She prescribed some weight-lifting and more running, but otherwise wasn’t disappointed with me, which increased my confidence exponentially. I’d been sure Yana had been going to immediately dismiss me, but I found that whether she was pleased or not by my state, she was a pretty good teacher. She was legitimately encouraging, though at times a little brash, switching between methods of being gentle and reassuring and being demanding and degrading to try to get me to do what she wanted me to. Whatever it meant about me, or her, it seemed to work.

Once she had mapped out a basic regimen, she said we were done for the day, and that we could work on skills like speed and quiet when she could verify where we were allowed to go--like a park, or a forest, or a shopping center, for instance. The exercises she had planned to develop those skills sounded kind of fun. She wanted me to be able to pickpocket, sneak up on someone who would be watching for me, creep through a forested area without making noise, and find escape routes in all kinds of environments. She said we would work with the daggers later.

By the time we were leaving the gym, I was sweaty and tired, and though I had plans to meet with Yana for dinner later, I was very much looking forward to a bath and a skim through a grammar book first.

We were walking back through the main office of the building when we ran into Tarrow. Kovit and Yana’s professed dislike for him had settled into the back of my brain like an itch, but it seemed to dim when I again saw his charming face, especially since he seemed excited to see me. They must not have known him as the kind faerie I had met yesterday, in the context of the law officer who’d been so gentle and welcoming throughout my arrival here.

“Emrys!” he greeted. “Oh--oh, damn, I don’t have a mouthpiece--”

“It’s okay, I can understand you just fine,” I replied. “Veryn gave me a language potion.”

“Oh. And--you took it?” he asked, seeming almost horrified, an escalation of the reaction I was becoming used to.

“Yes. I thought it was easiest.”

“And you’ve been busy, I see,” he said, looking me up and down. Remembering how sweaty I was, I internally flinched, but Tarrow didn’t seem offended by my appearance.

Tarrow’s eyes flicked to Yana, and he seemed even more put-off. “Well, well. Yana Sirinal. I didn’t know you were out of the basement. And you’ve already run into Emrys.”

Yana gave him a tight smile. “I can tell you’re overflowing with joy at the good news of my release. Yes, Emrys and I know each other. Veryn has tasked me with training her.”

Dark amusement spun in Tarrow’s eyes. I could tell he was trying not to smirk as he replied, “Has he? Really. Well, he has always extraordinarily admired your skills as a thief. When considering the need for stealth and deception, I’m sure he thought of you immediately. I hope Emrys learns what she needs to from you.” He put a hand on my shoulder in an almost protective manner. “While maintaining a healthy respect for the law, of course,” he said jokingly, giving me a wink.

My face was warm. I tried not to smile, and failed.

“Of course,” said Yana. “The whole team is committed to lawfulness. Working for the Council is serious business, after all.” There was a fakeness, a shallowness, to her tone that was equal parts nauseating and amusing.

“The whole team.” Tarrow raised his delicate eyebrows. “Oh, don’t tell me Veryn’s gotten the band back together. How...interesting.” Now, he didn’t stop himself from smiling. He seemed to take great enjoyment from whatever idea he had.

He turned his full attention back to me again. “Well, Emrys, I hate to tear you away from your new friends, of course, but is there any chance of you being free tonight? I’d love to help you continue to transition to the culture and atmosphere here.”

I felt a tug in my gut. I’d always been bad at this--turning down one plan for another, especially when I really liked the sound of the new plan. But my instincts told me to stick with Yana, no matter how disappointed I was at the idea of not spending the night with Tarrow, and getting to know Eben.

“I’m really sorry, but I actually have plans with Yana,” I said with a grimace. “I hope you understand. But I really would love to get together another time.” I tried to sound earnest. “Let me know anytime you’re free!”

Tarrow’s smile grew strained again, but he laughed. “Of course. As I said, I don’t want to hinder you from getting to know your new...colleagues. I’m here most days, so you can come find me whenever Veryn’s not working you to death. Let me know if you want anything.” His hazel eyes were glued to mine.

“I will, thank you,” I replied.

“I hope I get to see you again soon, Emrys, I’m so glad we ran into each other.” He dragged his hand away from my shoulder in a sort of caress, his face actually a little red, and I found myself flattered. Maybe my interest wasn’t one-sided.

“See you soon, Emrys,” he told me with a more genuine smile. He looked back to Yana and nodded. “Yana,” he said curtly.

“Tarrow,” she mimicked.

Tarrow gave a little wave and walked around us, heading toward the staircase at the back of the floor. I watched him go, appreciating his wings, among other things, then turned back to Yana. She was giving me a look I was surprised to be on the receiving end of. Usually, I was the one giving Daphne, or one of my other acquaintances the incredulous look of bemused disapproval that said Do not go to that frat party instead of studying for your midterm, or If you sleep with that guy, you are going to regret it. I thought her look was probably meant to convey something more akin to the latter. I felt my face grow redder.

“Don’t give me that look,” I said, turning my face away.

Yana shrugged, smirking a little. “I’ll look at you whatever way I want, pay it as little mind as you care to.”

We parted a few minutes later in the foyer of the Courthouse, with a promise to meet in the same place in three hours. To be able to keep track of the time, I asked Yana how the electrical system worked, so I could charge my phone. I showed it to her, and she laughed.

“Oh, we haven’t had anything like that in ages. Check the desk drawer in your room, or ask one of the servants for batteries.”

“Batteries?”

Yana held out her wrist to me and showed me what looked like a watch or an exercise tracker. She took it off and showed me the underside. There was something like a patch on the back of the band, bright blue with a symbol on it, possibly a logo.

“These are disposable batteries,” she explained. “They should work for a few months before they run out of stored energy.”

“That’s incredible--how do they work?” I asked, unsure I’d be able to fully comprehend the answer.

Yana snorted. “No idea. I’m a thief, not a scientist.”

With that, she waved to me, and I found my way back up to my room on the sixth floor, even more excited for cleanliness.

Yana had been correct about the desk drawer--I hadn’t even thought to look in there, but I was still struggling with the idea that this was my room. Despite the fact that it appeared the room was available for my use indefinitely, it had a hotel-like feeling that kept me feeling distant from it, and slightly uncomfortable. I hadn’t been about to rummage through drawers that didn’t feel like mine. But inside, I found pens, paper, a whole package of maybe thirty of those little battery patches, and a device like the one I’d seen the guard at the prison using.

I attached a battery to the back of my phone, and immediately, the phone began charging. Impressed, I turned to the other device. I put it on the desk and stared at it. It was a flat board of a material that was neither plastic nor metal, but was metallic black. I curiously double-tapped it with my pointer finger, seeing no buttons, and a lighted screen like a hologram appeared on the surface. There was no lock, and it just allowed me onto a menu screen. Everything was in Elvish, and I was a little too overwhelmed by the sheer amount of options and words I wasn’t familiar with to try to investigate further. I double tapped the margins of the menu screen, and the lighted screen disappeared back into the plain black surface.

I stood and was heading toward the bathroom when I noticed that the top drawer of my dresser was just barely open, and I didn’t remember leaving it that way. Not suspicious so much as curious, I opened it, and found several sets of underclothes. Surprised, I opened the second drawer, and found clothing that appeared to be pajamas, light and soft gowns, long shirts, and silky pants. The third drawer was full of shirts, tunics and tank tops and other soft, loose types, and the fourth drawer had more pants like mine, thick leggings and ones that reminded me of athletic wear, slicker material in brighter shades. Beside the dresser, where I hadn’t been able to see from the door, there were three more pairs of shoes: black, thick-soled plain slip-ons, a sleek brown and green shoe that reminded me of a tennis shoe in how it laced up and appeared to provide arch support, and a pair of plain, buckled black boots. I was glad someone had thought to give me more clothes; I had been about to go take a bath without a care in the world, not thinking about the fact I only owned one set of clothes and I’d already used them.

When I was clean, I painstakingly combed through my hair and changed into an outfit like the one I’d just shed, this time black pants with a red shirt and I decided to try out the boots. They looked cool, but if they were the kind of shoes I’d be expected to wear when the action got real, they were definitely the type that would need some breaking-in.

I spent some time looking through one of the grammar books, but found my mind wandering.

Tarrow seemed like such a bright and pleasant person. How could the others have such a low opinion of him?

Veryn appeared to have a sense of justice, in how he pitied enslaved humans, yet he’d chosen to use only criminals for a very important mission specifically to spite the Council, and he’d manipulated someone he called a friend so that from the outside it would appear she couldn’t refuse to work for him, even when he’d made a decision that would hurt her. How could I actually trust him?

Tirin and Kovit appeared much more laid back than the rest, but honestly, their flirtation had made me uncomfortable, and while I was interested in getting to know them, I was put off by some of their behavior. Would I be able to get along with them?

And then Yana. I liked her. There was something about her that I found inexplicably relatable, or at least understandable, and I found myself wanting to know more about her--especially when it came to all this business with hers and the others’ criminal status. She didn’t exactly seem to be keeping it a secret, but she hadn’t told me anything willingly to help me to know the story. But while Tarrow made me happily nervous, Veryn put me on edge and challenged me, and the other two objectified me, Yana seemed to just want to talk. To do her job, and get to know me. She seemed open and honest and genuine. I decided that if I could trust anyone, it was her, thief or no.

#grove of vengeance #story #fantasy #fiction #writing

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vocalfriespod · 6 years

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Foul-Mouthed Women Transcript

MEGAN: Welcome to the Vocal Fries Podcast, the podcast about linguistic discrimination.

CARRIE: I’m Carrie Gillon.

MEGAN: And I’m Megan Figueroa. Today we’re going to be talking about swearing. One of our favorite topics, right?

CARRIE: Yes and today obviously - we’re always not-safe-for-work - but today is particularly not-safe-for-work. Just be forewarned.

MEGAN: Yeah, put your headphones in. Don’t play this around children - unless you want them to be exposed to this. It might be good for them.

CARRIE: Depending on their age, yes. There’s probably an age that’s too young, but I’m not gonna say what that is, because that’s none of my business.

MEGAN: Yeah, exactly.

CARRIE: We wanted to talk about swearing for many reasons, but partially it was just because we swear a lot, and women get judged for swearing more than men do. We wanted to explore what’s actually going on. And also, there have been a bunch of weird studies about swearing and my favorite one is the association between swearing and honesty. Supposedly there’s a correlation between those people who swear and those people who are honest, so I thought that was really fascinating. If that’s true, that would be super fun.

MEGAN: Which means that Abraham Lincoln probably swore a fuck ton.

CARRIE: I think it goes in the other direction. I think it’s only if you swear, you’re honest, not if you’re honest then you swear. I could be wrong about that. I didn’t really read this study that carefully because that’s not my area of expertise.

MEGAN: All right. Don’t believe me on that.

CARRIE: I like it though! Let’s pretend it’s true.

MEGAN: What would swears have looked or sounded like back then? I was looking at the OED and looking at some dates and there would have been some “fucking”, back then, a little bit.

CARRIE: Oh yeah, “fuck”’s been a swear word for centuries. Many, many centuries.

MEGAN: Yeah.

CARRIE: Probably more religious-oriented swearing than now.

MEGAN: Yes

CARRIE: But I think some of the ones that we have now are still the same.

MEGAN: Yeah like the excrement stuff, like “shit” must have been.

CARRIE: Yes, I’m pretty sure yeah that’s an old one too. I mean “shit” and “fuck” are both very Germanic so that means they’re old.

REGGIE WATTS: [sings] You take some fuck, then some shit, then some fuck, then some shit, you got a fuck shit stack, a fuck shit stack, take some fuck, then some shit…

MEGAN: We can tell they’re Germanic. It’s a short word. A lot of words that we still have from Germanic are very short: home.

CARRIE: Wife.

MEGAN: Wife yes, lord.

CARRIE: Lord.

MEGAN: That was our Old English lesson for the podcast.

CARRIE: We wanted to make a note that sometimes swearing is very abusive. It’s not that we think that swearing is always good; it’s just that it’s not always bad. We will talk a little bit more about abusive swearing in a bit.

MEGAN: This might be a content warning for anyone that needs that.

CARRIE: And also, you can still be an abuser and say all the right things. Just because someone swears, does not mean they’re a bad person. We also talk about different kinds of swearing, so the ones that maybe are better versus worse. And also time and place. I always try to make this argument. Sometimes you shouldn’t say something, because it’s the wrong time or place. For example, maybe you don’t want to be swearing in your house of worship. But you probably already know that. That’s just the background to why we’re talking about swearing.

MEGAN: I am a scientist so I can’t say “always” or “everyone” but almost everyone swears.

CARRIE: One of the things - okay I didn’t double check to make sure that this number was correct but -according to the BBC, 90% of Brits swear on an average of 14 swears per day.

MEGAN: Wow.

CARRIE: I have no idea what the numbers would be for the United States or any other country, but my guess is, at least in English-speaking countries, people swear a fair amount.

MEGAN: So the average is 14 and I am extraordinary. If I were British, I would be extraordinary.

CARRIE: I have to assume that the Australians swear the most. They might be even higher than that.

MEGAN: Right and their swears look different, right? I mean is “bloody” actually quite swear-ish in England, say?

CARRIE: I think it’s more sweary there than it is here. Here it sounds really silly, but I still don’t think it’s a super-strong swear. It’s not like “fuck”.

MEGAN: Oh, it’s not? Okay, when I was reading Harry Potter or watching the Harry Potter movies, when they say “bloody”, I always thought they were saying “fuck”. It was cute, because we were an American audience. I didn’t know. I guess it couldn’t be PG.

CARRIE: No, she wouldn’t use really harsh swears, I don’t think. For example, one of the swears that Brits used way more than North Americans do is “cunt” and they use it like really freely. And there it’s not nearly as strong as it is here right. What we’re sort of tiptoeing towards is the fact that swearing really tells you something about a culture. It tells you what’s taboo. Magnus Ljung wrote a whole book on swearing called “Swearing: a crosscultural linguistic study”. He noticed that - and this part is not new - swearing involves taboo words. That’s obvious. But there’s also something to be said about the literal meaning being not there. So if you say something like “the shit hit the fan”, you’re not saying anything about literal feces.

MEGAN: Wait, but what if you’re a monkey. That was my cute little joke that I thought was hilarious, because shit really does hit things when you’re a monkey.

CARRIE: That is true. I don’t know how often they throw shit at fans, but if they do, then yes. Then that would be literal. All idiomatic expressions, there are literal versions of them. So: “he kicked the bucket”; I guess you could be talking about a human male kicking a bucket. But normally it means “die”.

MEGAN: Yes, but the point is these are very idiomatic. Swears are very idiomatic, which means that they’re hard for second language learners too, or if you’re in another country.

CARRIE: Speaking of being in another country: there are some countries that will arrest you for swearing. So, don’t swear in all locations.

MEGAN: That’s what goes back to the time and context thing.

CARRIE: Ljung also pointed out that swearing is a type of formulaic language - and that is really true. Think about “he’s hungry as fuck”. That’s become this little formula that we add to the end of sentences now.

MEGAN: And “for fuck’s sake”. I was looking at the OED and “for fuck’s sake”, the first known occurrence was in 1943, which was earlier than I would have guessed. And apparently “fuck a duck”.

DONALD DUCK: Oh yeah, fuck you.

MEGAN: Another idiomatic expression, first in 1931, and the sentence was “tell her to go fuck a duck”.

CARRIE: Well that one’s so old I don’t even really think about that one. But that first one, “for fuck’s sake”, I don’t know why I wasn’t as surprised that it was that old.

MEGAN: Really.

CARRIE: “Flying fuck” is kind of old too. I can’t remember what the dates are. I want to say 19th century. And originally it meant “fuck on a horse”.

MEGAN: Oh!

HORSE: [neighs]

MEGAN: I didn’t know that. Like literally?

CARRIE: Supposedly.

MEGAN: Okay.

CARRIE: It just seems so difficult, so I can’t.

MEGAN: This one also surprised me. Maybe I’m just surprised by how profane our ancestors were, but “not to give a fuck”, the first occurrence was in 1879. And I really love the sentence: “for all your threats I don’t care a fuck/I’ll never leave my princely darling duck”. I don’t know if it was a poem.

CARRIE: Sounds like a poem. It sounds actually familiar to me but I can’t place it.

MEGAN: It says that it’s from Harlequin Prince Cherrytop? I don’t know.

CARRIE: Oh, okay.

MEGAN: Line 19. Anyway, they talked a lot about ducks back then

DUCKS: [quack]

MEGAN: So yes. “Fuck” has been around for a long time, and idiomatic ways to use it have been around for a long time too.

CARRIE: Although not nearly as long as the word “fuck” itself. That’s from at least the 14th century. “Fuck” is.

MEGAN: And it was a verb first.

CARRIE: Yeah. Originally it meant “to hit” or “to strike”. That’s interesting because now we use “I want to hit that” to mean “I want to have sex with that person”.

KEVIN HART: I hit that. Yes.

MAN: You hit that.

CARRIE: So we’re coming back full circle. Another thing that Ljung pointed out is that swearing really reveals the speaker’s attitudes and feelings. I think that’s really important. Especially if you’re talking about slurs, which we’re talking about a little bit in a minute, but it tells you more about the speaker than the person that you’re speaking to. I think that’s a good thing to remember about slurs. So: slurs. They are a type of swearing, but we’re not gonna focus too much on them. Obviously, some of them will come up, and we will talk about them, but we’re not gonna talk about all of them, and we’re not gonna talk about them in that much detail. Partially because even mentioning them in some cases is so painful to the targets - the people that are targeted by them - that I just don’t even want to go there. Also they’re very complicated, even more complicated than other swearing I think. If we were gonna talk about them, we would probably do a whole show on them. Again, slurs really do say more about the person uttering them than the person that they’re targetted it at, but that doesn’t mean that you’re not gonna be hurt by it, so we’re just gonna set them aside. I try to stay away from most of them, personally.

MEGAN: Me too. There’s four different ways in which swears come about. According to Benjamin Bergen, a cognitive scientist, there are four major contributors for swear words: 1. sacred concepts like

CARRIE: “damnation”

MEGAN: Right. “Jesus Christ”, that’s blasphemous for some people to say. Growing up for me I got a side eye if I ever said “Jesus”. Maybe that’s why I like to say so much now. Especially combined with “fuck”. “Jesus fuckin Christ.” 2. Sex and sexual organs is another contributor for swear words. So, “cunt” and “dick” and all that. 3. Things that come out of your body: “mierda”, “shit”. What else comes out of your body?

CARRIE: “Piss”, I guess, some people call that.

MEGAN: Yeah, I guess, but that seems so weak right at this point.

CARRIE: Yeah, that’s not a swear word to me, but to some people I think it is.

MEGAN: Finally, 4. derogatory words for social groups. That’s gonna be where slurs come in. We have all those ways to create swears, and then we have this subgroup of slurs that we’re not gonna really talk about.

CARRIE: What I found really interesting about that list is that all those categories you can slot in English, but it used to be that English in the Middle Ages, body parts and excretions were not taboo. You could talk about these things very freely and in fact both “cunt” and fuck were used in place names. I’m gonna totally mangle this pronunciation but there was a place name called Bele Wydecunthe. Something like that. Like “wide cunt”. Literally the name of a city or a town or whatever. That was in 1328. There were also names with “fuck” in them. Like people’s names too. It was not a big deal. But now they’ve obviously become more of a big deal. In the past, it was more about religion, because fear of God, and people were more devout than they are now.

MEGAN: I feel like in Britain right now they are more comfortable with sexual organs and excretion - and all those words - than we are in the US, as I’ve seen from BBC shows. I think it’s this whole family values/religious thing in the United States that has made it kind of even more taboo to say certain words.

CARRIE: Well, it’s the puritanical thing. The Puritans left the UK and came here. I wanted to point out that - and I’m not the first person to point this out, many people have pointed this out before me - that really we should reclaim “cunt”. Because etymologically it’s way more feminist than “vagina”, because “vagina” is dependent on the penis for its definition. It literally means “sword sheath”. I think we should try to reclaim “cunt”. I know it’s hard, because in North America it can be used so viciously. I get it, but I’m gonna plant my flag here and say “let’s do it”.

MEGAN: I love the thought that “cunt” is etymologically feminist. That would make a really good bumper sticker. “Cunt” is one of those words where people are really taken aback when they hear it. That’s why it’s so hard. Because you’re kind of putting yourself out there when you use it.

CARRIE: People even have a hard time saying “vagina”, so…

MEGAN: What is it that Oprah used to say? “Vajayjay”? That was a thing.

OPRAH: My vajayjay is paining!

MEGAN: What Oprah says, goes. I remember thinking “vajayjay” was how to say “vagina” for a very long time. I was a big Oprah fan in my childhood. So yes. Let’s reclaim “cunt”.

CARRIE: Also it’s very culturally dependent, as we’ve already said. Even within English, what counts as a swear word in the UK is a little bit different than in North America. Same thing with French. In Quebecois French, but not European French, many of the swear words are derived from words for Catholicism, like “tabarnak”, which it’s just “tabernacle” or “Criss”, which is “Christ”. It’s very fun to hear Quebecois French being spoken.

MEGAN: That is so funny to me that those are swears. Catholics in the US aren’t offended by that right? You could say “tabernacle” and they’re not like, “oh my god”.

CARRIE: When would you ever say “tabernacle”, though.

MEGAN: I don’t know what kind of conversations Catholics are having. So that’s not fair for me to say. But okay fine.

CARRIE: It would be weird for an English speaker to be like “tabernacle!”, trying to swear. No one would understand it.

MEGAN: Do other Canadians know that this is offensive to the Quebecois?

CARRIE: As far as I know. Well, I’m a linguist so I don’t know. I think so. I think Canadians know, but yeah.

MEGAN: It’s another thing where again, like we’re saying, some swear words like could get you arrested in other places. But you can go to other places and not know that a word is a swear word to them.

CARRIE: Well, you’re unlikely in this instance to use that word out of the blue. If you were to use it you would be using it as like a description. I don’t even know what a tabernacle is, to be honest. I just know it’s part of a Catholic thing.

MEGAN: I don’t know what it is either, but I feel like you’re daring me to add this to my lexicon.

CARRIE: Find the Spanish version of it and try and turn that into a swear.

MEGAN: It might be already. I don’t know. A lot of them are Catholic.

CARRIE: Yes, I know.

MEGAN: I’ll have to look into that.

CARRIE: I was obsessed with swear words back when I was getting much younger. It’s fascinating, because it tells you something about another culture. So I asked one of my friends who’s Diné, which is the proper name for Navajo, how to swear in Diné Bizaad, which is Navajo, and she told me that bears are considered to be so powerful that if you invoke the name of the bear twice, then that is kind of like swearing. It’s not exactly the same, but it’s a taboo animal. So powerful. Women, I think we’re so taboo, that words referring to us become swear words, or at least just bad very easily.

MEGAN: I like the Spanish example of how “que madre” is a swear. Literally, that’s “what mother”, but “que padre”, “what father” is “how cool”. That’s like a really good one to look at side-by-side.

CARRIE: Or the difference between “cunt” and “dick”. Come on! “Dick” is so so- uh, soft.

MEGAN: So soft! [laughs]

CARRIE: “Dick” is so gentle in comparison.

MEGAN: That’s still funny. You know it really is, it’s kind of playful.

CARRIE: Yeah, it’s much more playful. You call someone a “dick”. Maybe you’re saying that they’re a bad person, but it still just doesn’t have the same harshness to it.

MEGAN: Like when we use the word “cunt” or “bitch”, if people were referring to men, or people that identify as men, it’s usually to insult them in some way, because women are seen as lesser.

CARRIE: Weak.

MEGAN: There is also - the word “bitch”, I feel, is really complicated. So, when we use it for women, it’s often used for women that are actually quite competent, good at their jobs, etc. I feel like it’s a way to put them in their place kind of thing. We’re uncomfortable with women being so competent or getting the job done or whatever these things, these kind of characteristics that are normally reserved for men, that we see them as bitches.

CARRIE: I think there’s something about - well it’s definitely misogyny, but I think the misogyny comes from this place of men being afraid of women. Menstruation scares the shit out of them for example. So it’s very common for words of referring to women or women’s body parts to become negative in a way that usually men or men’s body parts don’t, or at least not as much. Even “hussy”, which is not really a swear word, it’s too gentle to be at least for me, I don’t consider it to be a swear word, it just meant “housewife”. How do you go from “housewife” to whatever “hussy” means.

MEGAN: It probably says a lot about what we think about women in the home, or just woman in general.

CARRIE: Just women in general, because you don’t think of a hussy as being in the home. Hussy is the side piece.

MEGAN: That’s true. It transforms somehow though through our history, from “housewife” to “hussy”. I was reading a book called “How emotions are made”. I thought that the 2016 election recently was a particularly high time for “bitch”, because it was used a lot to refer to Hillary Clinton. In this book it says, “whenever I see a savvy male politician play the angry “bitch” card against the female opponent I take it as an ironic sign that she must be really competent and powerful. I have yet to meet a successful woman who hasn’t paid her dues as a “bitch” before she was accepted as a leader”. That kind of sums up how I feel about people calling Hillary “bitch”, or saying that she was flawed as well, even though that’s not a swear, all these adjectives that were describing her ultimately come back to how uncomfortable we are with women.

CARRIE: I actually kind of half like the word “bitch” and half hate it. It’s fun in some instances. I like to call a group of people “bitches”. It’s fun!

RU PAUL All right girls!

DRAG RACERS: Good morning, bitches!

MEGAN: Yeah, it is. There’s some reclaiming happening.

CARRIE: But it’s only partial, and it still gets wielded it as a weapon.

MEGAN: It’s true. There are definitely a lot of women that are still uncomfortable with “bitch”. It’s one of those things where I want to like it, but I also don’t want to make people uncomfortable.

CARRIE: I do think women using the word can be better, although there are definitely women who used it in a very sexist way, because just like with our last episode, women are part of the problem too.

MEGAN: Ooh, some new words that are becoming swears in English.

CARRIE: My favorite new one - even though it’s horrible - is “cuck”. Every time I see it - because they almost never hear it, you almost only just see it written - every time I see it written, I just laugh, because I’m like, “why does this person think this is really an effective slur?”

MEGAN: We’re seeing it in the neo-nazi community.

CARRIE: The neo-nazi, the so-called alt-right, the dirtbag right.

MEGAN: They also love the word “snowflake”, which is hilarious to me.

CARRIE: Because anyone who seems to use that word themselves seems to be very sensitive.

MEGAN: There’s some projection going on, for sure.

CARRIE: I think that’s also what’s going on with “cuck”. The only reason why you’re gonna call someone that is because a) you know that there’s this section of porn that involves cuckolding, which I mean why do you know this or why do you care, it’s just somebody’s fetish, why is that even a thing that crosses your mind that you’re like, “haha!”

MEGAN: I know. I didn’t think about it that way, but you leave people’s fetishes alone! Just leave that alone.

CARRIE: I think there’s also a racial component to cuck that they are trying to key into, but again it says more about you, if you’re using it. You’ve got some weird obsession.

MEGAN: And then “SJW”. I don’t spend a lot of time engaging with any sort of neo-nazi web presences.

CARRIE: You don’t have to! They’re everywhere.

MEGAN: Yeah, but I didn’t know - I had to google “SJW” when I first saw it. Thankfully urban dictionary is a thing, and it’s very helpful. “SJW” is social justice warrior. “SJW” is something that - you let yourself be known that you’re kind of an asshole when you use “SJW”, in my eyes.

CARRIE: Yeah, it means that you think social justice is not worthwhile, so therefore why do I care what your opinion is?

MEGAN: Right, exactly.

CARRIE: Okay, so why do we swear? Why is it fun?

MEGAN: I feel like we swear because it is fun. So that’s one of the reasons. This isn’t science for me, but it’s fun because people some people just really don’t like it when you do it.

CARRIE: That’s true! So pissing off certain groups of people. One reason that people swear is to signal in-group status. Around like-minded people, or within a group, you’re more likely to swear, because you’re all pals.

MEGAN: Time and context, as well. I swear much more when I’m with my friends. My parents don’t love it. I try not to swear in front of them, because I am a conscientious daughter. But some people use it to be abusive.

CARRIE: Yes.

MEGAN: Especially with slurs, but it can be some of the words that we think are more fun, like “fuck” can also be used abusively.

CARRIE: Yeah, if you’re yelling at somebody, that’s obviously gonna be more abusive. It also can show that you’re really good friends with somebody, like, “hey, you old bastard!! How are you doing?” Not that I would say that particular…

MEGAN: Have you ever done that?

CARRIE: No, not that. But I know people have.

MEGAN: This is where I imagine Abraham Lincoln, like this is what he would say.

CARRIE: Maybe.

MEGAN: Right?

CARRIE: I literally cannot imagine being in that time, so I don’t know. It also can help us let off steam. If you’re really angry, sometimes it’s good to not swear AT anybody, but just swear. Or if you stub your toe, supposedly, it relieves the pain.

MEGAN: There was a 2009 study that people cite when they talk about this. It took the world by storm. Because there are some scientific studies that are really sexy, and this was one of them. I read it, because I always like to read sexy science. One of the findings was that people that swear more daily didn’t get the effect as much. The authors tied this to gender. They said that men seem to swear more daily, so they didn’t have as much of an effect as women did. I think, of course, this goes back to sexism, because, again, we seem to be more okay with men swearing. The study also tied swearing to aggression, which I don’t think is completely fair. Especially since aggression is culturally defined, but a lot of times psychologists think of it as more universal, even though it’s not. Aggression looks different in different cultures. Their study was linking aggression with swearing, and people associate both swearing and aggression with men, but it being okay with men. For women to be aggressive is not okay. There might be something there, where we don’t like when women swear, because we think of it more as aggressive, possibly.

CARRIE: I do think that there is such a thing as aggressive swearing.

MEGAN: Right of course.

CARRIE: And it may be the case that maybe men swear that way more than women do? I don’t know. Again, like you say, that’s probably culturally specific. It’s absolutely true that women -it’s less good for us to swear than it is for men to swear, because culturally.

MEGAN: It’s important to note that this is so much worse for black women and women of color.

CARRIE: Yeah, of course.

MEGAN: They’re viewed so much worse if they’re seen as aggressive.

CARRIE: Black women are often accused of being aggressive way more often than say white women are, that’s absolutely true.

MEGAN: Right

CARRIE: So, it’s harder for them to get away with swearing. Again, we should push back on that. It should be - everybody should be allowed to swear, at least time and place. It should be the same no matter who you are.

MEGAN: When we see and when we think about things like this we see the anti-blackness of it, or the anti-person of color of it. You see how ridiculous it is to judge people for their swearing, and you can see how culturally defined it is.

CARRIE: We also use swearing just to emphasize, like, “oh that’s fucking stupid” is more emphatic than just, “that’s stupid”, or whatever.

MEGAN: Or “that’s fucking awesome”.

CARRIE: That’s right.

MEGAN: It doesn’t always have to be negative, when you’re emphasizing something.

CARRIE: The other thing that swearing might be correlated with is honesty. We talked about this before, but there’s one study that shows - and you should always take any one study with a grain of salt, so if it gets replicated, then okay - but the study says that if you swear, then you’re more honest. David Stillwell says, “swearing is often inappropriate but it can also be evidence that someone is telling you their honest opinion”. What he’s basically saying is if you’re not filtering your language, then maybe you’re also not filtering your views. So you’re getting a better snapshot of that person’s internal mind. And even if this is not ends up not being true, that feels true. It just feels like, “oh yeah, that makes sense”. You should always be skeptical of anything that’s like, “oh that makes sense”.

MEGAN: Some articles say that it might be correlated with intelligence. This also speaks to what swearing doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean you have a shitty vocabulary.

CARRIE: No, not at all.

MEGAN: There’s a study that found that swearing was positively correlated with measures of verbal fluency. So again, take everything with a grain of salt, but in this study people that swore more, they had a very nuanced speech. They’re very fluent in their speech. There was no poverty of vocabulary. Folks were fine.

CARRIE: I do wonder if it means that - like how you use the swears. Because if you’re just saying “fuck shit”, like that’s it, that’s your entire utterance, that doesn’t seem like any evidence one way or the other of anything. But if you’re using these more elaborate swearing techniques, that means you have to have a very good vocabulary.

MEGAN: Ooh, elaborate swearing. Does that mean that I am really fluent, because I like to compound my swears - so “motherfuckin Jesus Christ”. I like to combine everything, so I’m sure that speaks to my intelligence. So, it might be correlated with intelligence. It definitely for a fact does not mean that you have a shitty vocabulary.

CARRIE: Right. And it might - again time and place - might be good for your career, because if you swear in front of the right person at the right time, they might be like, “oh, you’re not that snob that I thought you were”. Or, “you’re not uptight”. Now again, certain people, certain places, you’re not gonna be able to get away with it. And so I’m not saying, “swear and you’ll get a better job!” No. But if you can tell that you would do better in the job if you swore, then by all means pull it out.

MEGAN: It also might show that you’re passionate about something. So maybe something good at work happens or whatever.

CARRIE: That’s true. It can either be a, “hey, we’re all in the shitty experience together” or a, “oh wow, we’re in this awesome experience together”. So yeah, you’re right.

MEGAN: Yeah exactly. You come out of a bad meeting and then you turn to your boss and say, “well that was shit”. There’s something. I don’t know. Maybe that that’s what it is. But I would still be careful as a woman or as any sort of marginalized group, because these things don’t work as well for us always.

CARRIE: Yes, so be careful.

MEGAN: Also swearing can be used to reclaim language. We talked a little bit about “bitch”; some people are reclaiming that. “Cunt”: Carrie says we should reclaim that. I like that. What else? “Slut.” I think “slut” is being reclaimed or has been reclaimed by a lot of people.

CARRIE: Some people have tried to reclaim it; some people really strongly reject reclaiming it. I’m kind of on the fence about that one, because I just kind of think it shouldn’t even come up. I don’t care who you’re having sex with or how many people you are having sex with. I just don’t care. Oh yeah, Yankee used to be a slur against Americans. “Yankee Doodle” is not a good song. You’re being mocked, Americans.

MEGAN: Yankee Doodle Dandy, isn’t “dandy” -

CARRIE: Like a fancy - like a man who dresses fancily. Something to do with macaroni style - you know, I’d have to look it up. The Brits were mocking Americans for the way they were dressing.

MEGAN: Another thing that we should just lay off. Let people dress they way they want to dress.

CARRIE: Yes, if someone wants to wear a bikini, let them wear it. just go on with your life.

MEGAN: And anyone can wear a dress that wants to wear a dress. Like, come on. Those are some of the reasons why we do swear or why we use swearing. But what swearing doesn’t necessarily mean is that you have X trait. I was reading a study that said that wearing is negatively correlated with ranking high on agreeableness and conscientiousness, which is part of the Big Five inventory of quote unquote universal traits that humans have. I am agreeable as fuck, but I cuss all the time. I just want to put out that this goes back to time and place, because I am i- n conscientiousness as well - I am aware of my surroundings and when I should cuss and when I shouldn’t. I think that these kind of studies are - the blanket claims that you might be more kind or aware of your surroundings if you don’t cuss is too much of a blanket claim.

CARRIE: I’d have to look at it, but my guess is that it’s a very small effect. So even if it’s true, it’s probably a very small effect. Of course you’re gonna have counterexamples, regardless. You as a data point doesn’t take this down.

MEGAN: Oh, it doesn’t.

CARRIE: However, I agree with you in general that it’s probably not that great. Even if it’s true, it’s a tiny amount. So just because you swear, doesn’t mean that you’re not agreeable or not conscientious.

MEGAN: I’d be careful with those kind - it also said that swearing is positively correlated with extraversion.

CARRIE: That seems yet completely wrong.

MEGAN: I know.

CARRIE: But I don’t know.

MEGAN: I think the point here is be careful with anyone or any study that claims that you’re a certain type of person or have a certain type of personality if you swear.

CARRIE: Or anything. Those personality studies are a little suspect.

MEGAN: They are. Again, it’s usually by Western scientists who define these things.

CARRIE: And they’re only studying WEIRD people. Western, educated. What’s the I?

MEGAN: And they do the studies on college students. There are so many people that are left out of higher education for so many reasons, and the ones that get there could be there for certain reason. It’s just not a random sampling.

CARRIE: No, it’s not.

MEGAN: That is not random sample.

CARRIE: It’s usudally just on college students, which - college students are not even fully grown.

MEGAN: They’re not fully actualized human beings yet.

CARRIE: Our brains don’t finish growing until around 25. We definitely should not be basing all of psychology on that - I’m not saying all of psychology is based on 20 year olds, but a lot of it is.

MEGAN: Psychologists, the comment section is below.

CARRIE: Psychology is going through a shift, so. So now let’s just talk about her favourite swearword. Mine is “fuck”, because it is so versatile. You can say it in any which way. A noun, a verb, an adjective - can you say it as an adjective? Yes

MEGAN: Yeah! Of course you can!

CARRIE: An adverb. You can say it in so many different ways, so I just really love it. In fact, there’s this whole scene in “The Wire” where McNulty and Moreland only utter some version of “fuck”. “Fuck”, “motherfuck”, “motherfucking”, “fucking a” and “fuck me”. Maybe I missed one. We’ll put this up on the tumblr, because I think it’s an interesting video to watch. That’s all they say for 4 and a half minutes. It’s amazing. It’s glorious.

MEGAN: Listening to you say that, I can imagine how much is expressed through that, even though they’re just using the word “fuck”.

CARRIE: They’re exploring a crime scene and they’re trying to figure out how this woman was murdered. They’re trying to figure out where the bullet casing was. They’re exploring this scene and they’re just saying “fuck”. It’s amazing. Anyway. I love it.

MEGAN: My favorite swear word is also “fuck”. It’s because it’s just so recursive. I can just keep going with it.

CARRIE: It’s true.

MEGAN: I like to compound it with everything, like I said. There’s maybe some semantic bleaching for me or something, because it doesn’t feel like a swear word as much anymore, depending on who I’m around.

CARRIE: It definitely feels like gentler than it did when I was a kid. I don’t know if their has been some bleaching going on, or if we just hear it more now. My guess is yes, we do hear it a lot more. We use “as fuck” all the time on the internet. Maybe it has become less of a swearword.

MEGAN: Yeah.

CARRIE: I just want to say: if you’re gonna swear, just swear. Don’t use asterisks. It really bugs me, because you’re putting it into our mind anyway. We can see that you’re swearing, but putting those little asterisks doesn’t change anything.

MEGAN: No, it’s not gonna help children. Children that can read are gonna see it and know exactly what you mean.

CARRIE: Yeah, so if you don’t wanna swear, just don’t swear. That’s a valid life choice to make. But this intermediate thing - I don’t know why it bugs me so much. Okay well, unless you have anything else you want to add.

MEGAN: No, I’m just “fucking a”, man.

CARRIE: So, “asshole”, it turns out, is not gentle enough to make it on to the iTunes directory.

MEGAN: Wait, didn’t we use asterisks.

CARRIE: No, we didn’t, but even if we had, it would have probably gotten rejected - apparently. So, we had to change “asshole” to “jerk”. You’ll see in our description that we use “jerk”, but that’s not what was originally intended. We were originally calling people “assholes” who were discriminating on the basis of language.

MEGAN: And then iTunes discriminated against us. “These fuckers don’t deserve to have their own podcast channel.”

CARRIE: It’s my fault for not making sure that that was okay. Again: time and place. I get it. Maybe you shouldn’t have it in the description, so mea culpa.

MEGAN: Which means that you might have to resubscribe.

CARRIE: Yes, if you subscribed from the first episode, you may have to resubscribe.

MEGAN: Hopefully you’re hearing this. You might not even be doing this. Hopefully we will find you again. One of our many mistakes that we will surely make.

CARRIE: We will make more for sure. I hope you enjoyed this episode. What is our next episode gonna be on, Megan?

MEGAN: Our next episode is going to be on Southern English, which was a request, but also very, very important. A lot of things to say about that. I don’t know how we’re gonna do in 30 minutes.

CARRIE: We’ll figure something out.

MEGAN: Much love to southern English and we’ll be talking about that.

CARRIE: Thanks again and don’t be an asshole.

MEGAN: Don’t be a fuckin’ asshole.

CARRIE: The Vocal Fries Podcast is produced by Chris Ayers for Halftone Audio. Theme music by Nick Granum. You can find us on tumblr, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @vocalfriespod. You can email us at [email protected].

#transcript #swearing #cussing #sexism #linguistic discrimination

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