#they simply communicate verbally in a way that is understood by anyone regardless of language
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hey!! Can you tell a little more about El Ganso??
So something he's known for throughout the story is that he's a frequent hired gun. Well, sometimes hired. Sometimes he ends up being so moved by a friend's misfortune that he takes it upon himself to hunt down their problems personally. And one of the most important things to El Ganso are his close friends. Close enough friends of his he considers family to heart, and because the physical world they live in now can be so dangerous, he will do anything to make keep said friends safe. He's extremely faithful to his family, and is willing to risk his life for them.
He's also easily motivated by emotion. Rather empathetic by nature, sometimes seeing even neutral acquaintances in distress can push him to exact revenge upon their enemies. He doesn't lust for death or brutality, but he hates the idea of innocent people suffering and will go to lengths to help.
Neither a protagonist or antagonist, he's on many different sides of the story depending on the circumstances at hand. He aids in TyV's revenge after he had lost an eye, against Leon. He defends Maggie no matter the cause because he feels like the world is always against her. He personally seeks out the thieves that steal Hannah's van, simply because her and her team's panicked state moved him enough to do so.
It's also just kind of easy to provoke him. For better or for worse. He's generally a calm and collected guy, but when challenged or aggressed, he fights back hard. He's got quick hands, barreled fingers with shots ready to fire at a moment's notice. He's not afraid to throw a punch either, and he's rather agile too. And once he's in a fight, it's hard to get him to stop. He'll only back down once hes won, if he feels truly beaten, or if his foe's emotional state is too much for him to bear.
When he's not being a brawling little hitman-goose though, he really likes traveling, dabbles in arts such as writing (he likes writing about his experiences a lot), painting (from reference most often), and trying out the fascinating musical instruments this world has to offer. Specifically he really likes hand drums. He's also rather social, though he likes to put up a front like he isn't, and loves exchanging stories with others.
A lot of the time when I draw him, you really only see his serious side when he's working/busy being a broody hitman. But he's kinda just an empathetic sweetheart deep down. Cares a lot and stuff.
When it comes to his friends, Maggie, TyV and Uppsulka are probably his closest ones, with other mimes like Caela, Ching, Chickenstab and Rede being some of his more casual friends. He also befriends some of the friendliest of the living like Tim and Rachel, and even Samantha to a degree-- a person most mimes absolutely despise by default. Her being upset and confused by her inherited problems of the future was easily enough to convince El Ganso that she doesn't deserve the flack she gets from all the other mimes.
He is often strongly opposed to the more needlessly hostile people in the story. He doesn't work well with Jarna or Holly, and while he still considers Rede a friend, it is a rocky relationship due to Rede's complete carelessness for other's suffering. El Ganso also greatly dislikes Debbie, Gary, and April and their problem causing attitudes.
A few other small, unrelated things about him... He's kind of an easy blusher. He's got bad volume control, either always a little too quiet or a little too loud, no real in between. He can spin his spurs like a saw, much like Caela and her skirt (and Caela's way into it!). In puppet, he can chew through extremely tough materials like wet paper. He is one of the few mimes who actually enjoys & indulges in sleeping. He likes giving gifts, is ecstatic when he learns what celebration cards are. Much like Holly & french, El Ganso will speak specifically spanish from time to time, despite the fact that all mimes can speak universally without a language barrier.
He is my silly goose.
#im fallin asleep writing this so late. sorry for any grammatical issues#i hope I touched on enough to satiate your need for el ganso knowledge#to touch a little extra on that last bit about universal speech just in case that's confusing at all--#mimes essentially do not speak a specific language#they simply communicate verbally in a way that is understood by anyone regardless of language#it is just written as English bc thats just my primary language SBDBFBF#like if a mime were speaking to two people at once- of two different tongues- their speech would be understood by both regardless#but mimes like holly and el ganso will just choose to speak specifically french or spanish#and unless you know the language you are not gonna be understanding it#anyway.#brambleramble#hes still a character thats being figured out bc hes so new#but i like where he's at :3
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I’m have a question about Gem language, if you don’t mind answering. So Gems communicate non-verbally with each other, that I understand, but what I can’t seem to wrap my head around is how human characters can understand them and communicate with them as if they were speaking the same language. Like, how was Blue Diamond able to have a conversation with Greg, or how was Aquamarine able to ask people if they were “My Dad”? I mean, realistically speaking there would be some sort of language barrier, correct?
Great question!
Sure, there absolutely would be a language barrier, but there are automatic translation algorithms at the gems' disposal. How does anyone on Star Trek speak with aliens? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Universal Translators!
Gems are SUPER advanced in terms of tech - they've conquered light speed travel! (Maybe easier when you're literally made of light, but regardless) They have teleportation devices! Building what is essentially a universal translator would not be difficult.
Humans, as a civilization that has barely peeked out of the crib of our own star system, already have automatic translations available to us en masse. I can go to Google translate, speak a phrase in English, and, within seconds, receive a relatively passable translation into literally hundreds of earth languages.
Now, don't get me wrong - machine translation is in it's infancy, and it's still inaccurate and human translation will be necessary for any amount of nuance, but still! That's a whole lotta advancement and convenience for a colony of organisms that barely understood computers a century ago.
For gems, I imagine building a universal translator - or a blueprint translation algorithm which would be able to take a sample of a language and create a GoogleTranslate equivalent - is child's play.
And to update this database, all one would need is, upon their approach to earth, grab some signals from the satellites hanging in our orbit (literally the amount of language data in, say, Wikipedia would be more than sufficient), analyze them for input, and then create a file for "Earth's languages".
I'm personally one of the people who REALLY like the "gems are AI" hypothesis. I imagine this sort of thing is child's play for them, similar to how we can hop in a plane and, on our way to the airport, go "hey, let me just go on the World Wide Web on my tiny computer inside my smartphone and download some local maps and a language app for this country I'm visiting." The process would be inconceivable to anyone living 50 years ago, for whom it would have taken literal days if not weeks to amass the same amount of information we can have at our fingertips by simply unlocking our home screen. By comparison, gem tech is literal millennia ahead of us.
Blue Diamond, Rubies and Aquamarine were all going to earth with goals, and those goals involved the possibility of needing to communicate with locals. I think they would have spared a second to unlock their home screen and tap the 'download Earth language patch' auto-alert before landing.
Thanks for asking and I hope that made sense!
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FEEDBACK LOOP #6: Cargo Cults’ “Rammellzee”
Since these symbols and all symbols are drawn, infinity’s separation from all symbols must be shown through drawing. The only proof of such a separation of the infinity would be the understanding by the majority of the planetary peers. There is no other way.
—from IONIC TREATISE GOTHIC FUTURISM ASSASSIN KNOWLEDGES OF THE REMANIPULATED SQUARE POINT’S ONE TO 720° TO 1440° THE RAMM-ΣLL-ZΣΣ (1979, 2003)
The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found herself falling down a very deep well.
—from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland
Riding among an exhausted busful of Negroes going on to graveyard shifts all over the city, she saw scratched on the back of a seat, shining for her in the brilliant smoky interior, the post horn with the legend DEATH. But unlike WASTE, somebody had troubled to write in, in pencil: DON’T EVER ANTAGONIZE THE HORN.
—from Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49
1. I walk down the street and people look at me and say, “Who the hell are you?”
Cargo Cults (Alaska and Zilla Rocca) begin their track “Rammellzee” with the voice of the some-16 billion-years-old being himself. The song is an ode, an invocation. The organ sample provides a bizarre ride: a carousel of colors. We immediately plummet—into a well, a subway tunnel, a cosmos of linguistics. Not a nonchalant That’s deep, but a depth of knowledge where “cipher” means code, means Supreme Mathematics, means gathering with your rapfolk outside the Nuyorican Poets Cafe or in Washington Square Park: a deep connection. Mimicking Rammellzee, Alaska presents the listener with “swirling pages / forming mazes of [his] formulations” and subsequently “break[s] them down into a form that’s shapeless.”
2. Hip-hop is ageist….In blues, you ain’t official until you fifty. (Ka, Red Bull Music Academy interview with Jeff Mao, 2016)
The phrase …of a certain age has, historically, been used euphemistically to describe someone (typically a woman) who has existed for a “shameful” tally of years. Society is still undoing the stigma, but rappers have made strides.
In Adult Rappers, a 2015 documentary directed by Paul Iannacchino (Hangar 18’s DJ paWL), Alaska is [accidentally?] presented twice in the closing credits—like a double, a separate persona—which calls to mind the multiple personalities of Rammellzee: Crux the Monk, Chaser the Eraser, Gash/Olear, et cetera. Age allows for maturation, for building, for bettering. In Rammellzee’s case—and I’d argue Alaska’s—it allows for complexity to emerge organically through wisdom. It allows for reinvention, for many versions of one’s self. Age and development is how an aerosol can with a fat cap can graduate to customized deodorant roll-ons and shoe polish canisters.
It begins with jerry-rigging a nozzle and ends in diagramming a “harpoonic whip launcher/pulsating extendor” to illustrate the deconstruction of letter-formations in the English alphabet. The spirit of experience pervades the Nihilist Millennial album. As anyone who has ever sat on the couch knows, communication can also improve with age.
3.
Artists and rappers like Rammellzee and Alaska rely on wild-styles, a self-made world that warps quantum physics and disregards notions of dimensionality. It’s dream-vision. It’s liberation. It simultaneously celebrates and critiques communication: like the image of a muted horn.
“Communication is the key,” cried Nefastis. “The Demon passes his data on to the sensitive, and the sensitive must reply in kind. There are untold billions of molecules in that box. The Demon collects data on each and every one. At some deep psychic level he must get through…”
“Help,” said Oedipa, “you’re not reaching me.”
“Entropy is a figure of speech, then,” sighed Nefastis, “a metaphor. It connects the world of thermodynamics to the world of information flow. The Machine uses both. The Demon makes the metaphor not only verbally graceful, but also objectively true.”
[…]
Nefastis smiled; impenetrable, calm, a believer.
The wordplay seems just that: play—that is, until you find the thread. Alaska cobbles together words like rubbish, W.A.S.T.E. Words appear daisy-chained together—flowery, ornate, and strung together by their stems: “fatalism, Fela Kuti, razor thin” / “smash the superstitions with acid tabs and some Sufi visions” / “deep dive Sonny Liston” / “Walt Whitman.”
The track reads like a codex. Something crafted in a scriptorium. His words are warfare—double-tracked/double-barreled—and he slips into braggadocio to prove it. It’s an authoritative posture of experience. Having started atomically small—from Breaking Atoms bedroom listening, to Atoms Family—Alaska’s flow presents nuclear now: maximum damage.
There’s a refinement to what this duo is doing: “Me and Zilla well-established with a lavish vision. / Both hands crusty with Ikonklastic Panzerism.” The boasts rely on royal diction: Camelot, palace doors, Prince Paul. Each man a king, a God, and each one should teach one. Mentor texts for the masses.
4.
Rammellzee is an equation,
And simply stated it’s the way of life I’m chasing.
That’s why I praise the future-Gothic future-prophet.
Gotta rock it, don’t stop it,
Gotta rock it, don’t stop.
You find diversions on the song, exits into familiar chambers. GZA quotations (“I was the thrilla in the Ali-Frazier Manila”) and allusions to Main Source. Large Professor rapped “Dead is my antonym,” and if that’s to be proven true, money needs to be removed from the equation. The refrain of “Gotta rock it” not only calls to mind “Beat Bop,” Herbie Hancock, and Grand Mixer DS.T (or his later incarnation, DXT), but rockets—Afrofuturist angles, future shocks (Bill Laswell [Material], friend to Rammellzee, had a hand in all this). It’s not so much a “future-prophet” as a “future profit.” “Freedom in the process” means creativity without expectation, without the constraints of market value.
Alaska gives it to us straight: “I don’t care if you don’t like it, and I don’t care if you don’t buy it / ’Cause I find freedom in the process.” Despite becoming increasingly complex in his visual approach—like a heap of garbage that loses the definition of its component parts over the ages—Rammellzee understood time equals clarity of vision. A wasted world becomes a meaningful one. Of course, we got to pay rent, so money connects, but ownership of one’s art is about empowerment. “Selling out” is the opposite—an evisceration of one’s self and spirit. “We lost control from the second we sold the art,” Alaska raps. “We sold our future….We should be seeking enlightenment.”
The moment arrives, epiphanically: “I find freedom in the process so I’m grateful, / And that’s my main source: it’s my friendly game of baseball.” For Alaska and Zilla Rocca, it’s not a job—it’s a passion, a pastime.
5. Nascent imagination deep inside a battle station.
Post-9/11 meant luxury apartments displaced Rammellzee’s Battle Station loft, his living museum. But the art has been excavated and exists posthumously. His Gothic Futurism and Ikonoklast Panzerism seem at home archived on the internet—a network that appears more like a chaos cloud. Rammellzee deconstructed and transcended language—junk monk scripts and calligraphic cut-ups of consumerism. His art is the empowerment a recycling arrow-triangle could only hope to be. Recycle is also rebirth. Rammellzee’s career path is circuitous, deep-tunneled (subway-esque), eternal.
Similarly, Alaska’s multisyllabic patterns are an endless barrage, like weaponized letters tilted sideways, like bottle rockets angled into a bottle’s neck: “Armament / Now my names are built like a BattleBot / Locked inside an ad hoc Camelot, I rather not / Tangle with a rabid lot, hop inside a rabbit hole.”
Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, “and what is the use of a book,” thought Alice “without pictures or conversations?”
Boredom can make trouble, but boredom can also breed creativity. Alaska rather not spar with trolls under ISP bridges—though he’s equipped to. Instead, he channels his energies into material.
6. Our culture is done. We lived it.
Near the end, Alaska paraphrases Rammellzee: “I’m not the first or the last to don the mask. / I see it as a title, I’m monastic with these raps.”
Living a life of art—making it regardless of accolade or monetary payment—is the highest form of creativity. Live the art and die by it, like Stan Brakhage, poisoning himself at a slow pace as he applied toxic dyes to celluloid film. Like Rammellzee executing graffiti pieces maskless, huffing the carcinogenic fumes.
MF DOOM (née Zev Love X)—a Rammellzee descendant—taught us how to revel in anonymity, the importance of not spotlighting yourself, but instead seeking out the shade, secret passageways, and the trapdoor in the stage floor. Not all of us heed the advice, but some do, and they feel the throb of real success, not the sort that shows up in bank statements and 401(k) plans.
Images:
“Beat Bop” test pressing, Rammellzee and K-Rob, art by Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1983 (detail) | Rammellzee black-and-white portrait photograph (unknown) | Ikonoklast Panzerism diagram from IONIC TREATISE GOTHIC FUTURISM ASSASSIN KNOWLEDGES OF THE REMANIPULATED SQUARE POINT’S ONE TO 720° TO 1440° THE RAMM-ΣLL-ZΣΣ (1979, 2003) | Page 34 (muted post horn) in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, Bantam Books edition (1966) | “A scribe at work,” from an illuminated manuscript from the Estoire del Saint Graal, France (Royal MS 14 E III c. 1315-1325 AD) | Herbie Hancock, Future Shock cassette cover (1983) | Grand Mixer D.ST comic book image (unknown) | Stan Brahage at chalkboard (unknown) | Stan Brakhage, Mothlight celluloid (1963) | “Beat Bop” test pressing, Rammellzee and K-Rob, art by Jean-Michel Basquiat, 1983 (detail)
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Look Out for Your Own
Fandom: No. 6
Wordcount: 2470
Summary: Inukashi is autistic and starts to suspect Shion is as well, and starts helping him out in a mentor-like fashion.
Notes: Written for Autism Acceptance Month.
///
“What’s autism?”
Inukashi turned to look at Shion, incredulous. “What, they didn’t teach you that in your fancy classrooms?”
“Apparently not,” he replied. He’d stopped washing Fluffball, one of the few dogs who actually liked baths, and she looked at him with pleading eyes. Shion didn’t seem to notice, too busy looking at em with that stupid head-cock he did when he was curious.
“Huh.” Eir fingers drummed on eir legs, a smirk playing on eir lips. “Guess sometimes even us slum rats know more than No. 6’s precious genius children.”
“I suspect you guys probably know a lot more than we do,” Shion said dryly. “No. 6 controls the information we citizens receive with an iron fist; the more ignorant we are, the easier we are to control.”
Inukashi nodded. “Knowledge is power, and all that.” If there was anything ey understood, it was that. “Maybe I shouldn’t explain it to you after all.”
“What?” He sounded so shocked at that, as if he hadn’t set himself up for it, but damnit, Shion’s puppy eyes were at least as effective as Fluffball’s. Inukashi clacked eir tongue.
“Fine, whatever. Autism is a thing that makes your brain work differently from other people, and it makes it more difficult for you to communicate with others, among other things.” Ey shrugged. “Basically, I have trouble reading people’s body language, or understanding what they mean. Dogs are way easier to read.”
“So it’s a mental disorder?”
“Yup,” ey said, popping the ‘p’.
Now Fluffball was full-on nudging Shion, but he somehow still managed to remain oblivious, hands clapped together and rocking slightly back and forth. “That explains why I didn’t learn about it, then; No. 6 wants us to believe all disorders and disabilities have been erased from the city, although that would obviously be completely impossible, but regardless, they avoid talking about them whenever possible. I imagine those with a history or neurology specialization might’ve learned about it, although I have no doubt the information would be extremely biased -”
“Aaand I don’t care,” Inukashi cut him off. “Get on with the washing, nerd. Fluffball is about to start crying.”
Shion startled, immediately returning to rubbing soap, to a happy tail wag of Fluffball. “Fluffy I’m so sorry! I tend to get caught up in these things...”
He sure did. If it was about biology, Shion could ramble on for hours uninterrupted, a glint in his eyes and swinging on his toes, like -
Oh. Kinda like ey did, back when ey were younger and less aware of the fact that such blatant displays of emotions could get you scammed or, if you were particularly unlucky, killed.
Huh.
Something to keep an eye on. Knowledge was power, after all.
///
The next time Shion brought it up was on cleaning day. Once a month, Inukashi did a deep clean of the main hall and the more expensive hotel rooms; of course, it wasn’t that people here cared much about cleanliness, but ey liked to make sure none of eir guests left with more infections than they came with, at least. And so, deep cleaning.
Inukashi had offered Shion a job helping em, because honestly, ey could use the help. The dogs were enthusiastic, but there was only so much they could do without opposable thumbs.
They were scrubbing the stairs when Shion asked: “Does the smell of cleaning supplies bother you?”
Inukashi blinked. “What’s it to you?”
Shion looked up at em, and oh no, those eyes were sparkling, he was about to go on a tangent. “I’ve been reading up on autism since you last mentioned it, and it’s quite fascinating, really! Most of the literature I’ve been able to find pertains to the more technical side of the disorder, talking about how exactly it affects the brain, but I’ve been able to get a hold of some personal accounts as well, and one of them mentioned having trouble with the smell of cleaning supplies. And I mean, I get that, I already have a lot of trouble with that and I’m not even autistic, so I was wondering what that was like for you.”
Good god, that boy really was a nerd, huh.
Well, regardless. This was a good opportunity to snoop.
Inukashi dropped eir rag back into the water. “I don’t have much of an issue with it, though honestly, that might just be because the soap here sucks balls.” After a short pause, ey offered. “But I do have a lot of issues with sounds. Everything here’s so goddamn loud all the time, it kills me.”
Shion’s leg began to bounce as he seemed to forget all about the cleaning he was supposed to do, and his fingers drummed against his leg. Hadn’t they done that last time, as well? “I suppose it’s really busy here, yeah, though honestly I like it better than the weird quiet in No. 6. And yeah, the soap here sucks. It doesn���t have much smell here, which is nice, because in No. 6...” he shuddered. “Well, sanitation used to be part of my job, and the smell got so strong that I needed to run outside more than once a day, just to escape from it. West Block’s much easier to deal with. Sure, it objectively smells worse, but it’s also less...” he paused. “Sharp? Less sharp is the only way I can describe it. It hurts less.”
Shion, the genius who said “I’m not autistic” and “the smell of bleach hurts so much I need to physically run away from it” in the same sentence. What an idiot.
“Well, if you have trouble with it again, try to focus on other sensations. Like, focus on how your shirt feels against your body. Or get a bunch of dogs to distract you and attack people who are making you feel bad. That works too.”
Wait. Why had ey said that? Shion hadn’t even asked for advice, and ey’d just given it to him, free of charge. What the hell.
Shion snorted. “I’ll try and see if I can train Nezumi’s rats to attack people, thanks.”
And before ey could stop emself, ey imagined one of the Cleaners getting taken out by a small rat, and ey laughed.
///
Shion was autistic. Like, really obviously autistic. Inukashi had no idea how the kid hadn’t picked up on it himself.
There were a thousand little clues strewn across him, from his drumming fingers and bouncing legs to the way he infodumped about anything at the slightest provocation, his savant-like intelligence and his simultaneous obliviousness to people, his staunch idealism and his gullible nature. Shion was autistic from top to toe and it didn’t even take a month of observation to figure it out.
Worse, though, was that Inukashi couldn’t seem to help emself from mentoring him.
Ey shared some of eir more subtle stims with him in the hopes that he would stop being such an open book (he didn’t, obviously, he was a hopeless case), ey tried to teach him some of eir cheats for interacting with people (Shion was very surprised to learn that ey never looked anyone in the eye, instead staring at their nose, but it turned out that he didn’t have much issue with that, so that was a bust), ey even tried to explain a bit more about autism of eir own volition (Shion hang to eir every word and then applied absolutely none of the information to himself). Ey didn’t know why ey bothered. There was just something about that kid that made em want to protect him.
Not that ey’d ever admit it, not even - alright, yeah, ey’d admit it under pain of death, but ey’d do just about anything under pain of death. Either way, ey finally felt like ey understood how Shion had managed to get under noted asshole Nezumi’s skin. Shion was just like that.
The turning point came on a sunny afternoon. It wasn’t anything special, they hadn’t even planned to meet; they’d simply run into each other at the market, and decided to walk home with each other.
Something was up with Shion.
He was shaking out his hands at his side and hadn’t stopped even after Inukashi had pointed it out (it attracted attention, and attention was never a good thing). His eyes flitted side to side, like a hunted rabbit, and if Inukashi didn’t know better, ey’d think he was being followed by someone. However, there was no reason for anyone to want revenge on Shion, so it must be something else. If there was no actual danger, why did he look so scared?
“Hey Shion, what’s wrong?”
Shion barely looked down, and when he opened his mouth, only a vague grunting nose came out. He tried again. “...Much...not,” was all he could say, and he clawed at his face, seemingly frustrated about something.
Oh. He was having a meltdown.
A few whistles and Inukashi’s dogs were on the move, carving out a path among the people to get em and Shion out of the crowd as fast as possible. Shion didn’t even seem to notice that something was off, but followed em, probably too dazed to do anything else. Within minutes, they were far away from the market, between abandoned houses where fewer people lived. It was quieter here, a little darker, a little cooler, and it was where Inukashi went whenever ey couldn’t keep it together anymore. Hopefully it’d help Shion too.
Not a moment too soon. Shion started clawing at his face with a ferver ey’d never seen before, and Inukashi quickly threw eir mantle over his head to prevent him from hurting himself. “Sit,” ey ordered. “Put your head between your knees.” Simple words, swift orders to provide structure. Things that had always helped em, although eir dogs didn’t talk; they just did. But dog hair was different from human skin, and Inukashi had never liked to be touched by humans when ey were like this, so ey didn’t touch Shion, and hoped he would just follow verbal orders.
He did, dropping against a wall and pressing his head between his knees, fisting Inukashi’s mantle so tight his knuckles paled, holding onto it like it was his only lifeline. He didn’t scream. That was kind of odd; Inukashi screamed a lot when ey were like this. Just a difference between them, ey supposed.
They sat there for a while, Shion rocking in a frantic, but eerily quiet manner, and Inukashi leaning to the wall next to him, keeping an eye out for any assholes who might take advantage of Shion’s weakened state.
Ey didn’t know how long it took Shion to calm down, but he did, eventually, sliding off eir mantle.
“...You,” he started, then shook his head, biting his hand in frustration.
“If you can’t talk, don’t,” Inukashi said. “And don’t hurt yourself. Bite on your sleeve if you need to.”
Shion switched to his sleeve, biting on it hard, and after a few seconds, nodded.
“I’m taking you home for now, we can talk about this tomorrow. Take a nap or something.”
Shion nodded again, too tired to protest.
It took them longer than it should to get to Nezumi and Shion’s little shelter, Shion sometimes stopping in the middle of the path just to stare in the distance. But, finally, they did make it, and thankfully, Nezumi was still home.
“What -” he started, but Inukashi pushed past him.
“Lie on the damn bed, idiot, and go take a nap,” ey ordered Shion, and he did so without questioning, falling asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?” Nezumi asked, arms crossed.
“Your boyfriend had a meltdown,” Inukashi said shortly. “If you dare bully him about it I’ll sic my dogs on you, got that?”
“Dully noted,” Nezumi said dryly, still leaning against the wall as if he couldn’t care less about anything in the world, but his eyes betrayed him as they flickered over to Shion.
“You can make him something warm when he wakes up,” Inukashi answered his unasked question. “And keep a notebook nearby. He seemed to have trouble talking.”
“Whatever,” he replied, making a truly pathetic effort to disguise his worry. “Get out of my house, dog.”
“With pleasure, asshole.”
Shion would be fine. Nezumi was an absolute softy when it came to that boy, and by now, Inukashi could hardly even blame him without being a big fat hypocrite.
///
“So,” Shion started. It had been three days since his meltdown, and Inukashi had decided to let him come to em instead of badgering him emself. It had taken longer than expected for him to confront em. But now, here he was, looking like himself again. “I have a feeling I might be autistic.”
Inukashi looked at him, and promptly burst out into laughter.
“It’s not funny!” Shion protested. “I’m not joking!”
“It’s not -” Inukashi gasped. “Obviously you’re not joking. It’s just that it was blatantly obvious, and it’s hilarious it took you this long to figure it out.”
Shion blinked. “It was obvious?”
“Oh yeah, believe me, you might as well have ‘autism’ written across your forehead. And even that would’ve probably been more subtle.”
Shion squinted. “If you knew, why didn’t you tell me?”
Inukashi shrugged. “Didn’t feel like it. I’m kind of an asshole, remember?”
Shion looked at em for a solid ten seconds, before a grin slowly spread across his face.
“You know,” he said nonchalantly, “I just realized you’ve been helping me quite a bit. Giving me tips, helping me deal with that meltdown, stuff like that.”
“I have not!” Inukashi protested, but Shion ignored em.
“So what I think,” Shion continued, “is that you didn’t know how to tell me, so you just let me figure it out myself. While also helping me in the meantime.”
“You’re reading into things that aren’t there,” Inukashi muttered, tapping eir feet rapidly. Shion laughed.
“Sure,” he giggled. “You’re a heartless information broker who cares only for emself, got it.”
“And don’t you forget it,” ey confirmed. Then paused for a second. “Also, the gal who sells meat, the one with the red hair, knows sign language. Just in case that’s something you’d wanna know.”
Shion nodded. “Of course, this has nothing to do with the fact that I have trouble communicating verbally at times.”
“Absolutely not,” Inukashi confirmed. “It’s just something I thought was interesting.”
“Well, thank you anyway,” Shion said, smile softened from a smirk to something friendlier, something you rarely saw here in the West Block.
That boy would be the death of em, one day. Still, it was kind of nice to have another autistic here.
Maybe Shion was onto something with that whole ‘helping people’ thing.
#no. 6#shion#inukashi#shion no. 6#inukashi no. 6#actuallyautistic#autistic headcanon#my posts#my writing#auti stuff#writing wise
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Anxiety is asleep, post Lust arc headcanons
Nylpho was the daughter of the leader of a decently sized “tribe” native to Asmodean. Her marriage to Ilotte was part of an effort to create closer ties between ethnic Asmodeans and the Beelzenian nobility.
At the time of their marriage, Nylpho was 18 and Ilotte was 29. Ilotte had chosen to put off marriage until he he became duke.
Nylpho was an incredibly sweet, affectionate person who also happened to be a bit flighty and overemotional. Ilotte was a textbook psychopath, with an external charm but inability to form meaningful relationships with people on an emotional level. Nylpho, due to her personality and eagerness to be a good wife, was the one exception in his life and, as a result, he put her up on a pedestal in his mind as the perfect woman.
Sati’s mom, Avelina, was a friend of Nylpho’s. She was prompted by her father and brother to become close with the Venomania’s as part of their plan to establish themselves among the Asmodean nobility, but her affection for Nylpho was genuine. Ilotte proposing to her relatively soon after Nylpho’s death was quite a shock, but she graciously accepted and enjoyed her time as duchess.
Witnis was married to Annlee and the couple had twins. Life was good for a few months until Irina passed through their village. She set a house on fire for fun and the fire soon spread to encompass the town. Witnis and Annlee got out, but the children were left inside. Annlee sent Witnis back in for them, but he hesitated at a crucial moment and part of the burning roof caved in on him, knocking him unconscious. The twins died in the fire and Annlee couldn’t forgive Witnis for failing to save her children, resulting in them eventually separating.
Ilotte hired Witnis as a guard on a whim while Nylpho was heavily pregnant. He was in a good mood and needed more security as Nylpho got closer to giving birth.
Nylpho went mad with guilt after Cherubim was born and was in somewhat of a daze leading up to her suicide. She visited the nursery to say goodbye and had a brief interaction with Witnis, who had been stationed to guard the room. Nylpho started to break down while she was talking to Cherubim, and Witnis, deciding to try and comfort her, ended up making what at the time seemed like a redundant promise to protect her son for her.
Ilotte flew into a rage after Nylpho’s body was returned to the mansion and it was determined there was nothing to be done. He tore off to the nursery and nearly stabbed Cherubim before he was blocked by Witnis, who, not wanting to watch another baby die, managed to convince him that Nylpho wouldn’t have wanted him to murder their child. The basement was Ilotte’s compromise; punish/utterly remove the child from his life while still not technically killing it (even if he half expected Cherubim to die from exposure regardless).
As a toddler, Cherubim had all the hallmarks of a feral child, and it was only because Witnis realized this and decided to disobey Ilotte’s orders to simply stand guard and not pay him any mind that this outcome was avoided. Cherubim was still delayed and stunted when it came to speech/emotional/etc. development, but he did at least grow to be somewhat functional.
Cherubim hated most things about himself, but as a teenager/young adult he became particularly insecure about his stunted physical development. He was very small and skinny and a result of chronic malnutrition and most people, assuming he was much younger than he actually was, treated him as if he were a child. This resentment was aggravated by the fact that Cherubim did not fully understand concepts like masculinity and sexuality and therefore couldn’t articulate, even to himself, why he felt so insecure about such things to begin with.
It cannot be overstated how dramatically Cherubim’s upbringing affected his personal development. He only had a rudimentary understanding of many basic concepts and never reached a level of emotional maturity higher than that of a child. Even as Duke Venomania, many people were shocked by how little he understood many things, although by that point he had reached a level of confidence where people could write off his ignorance as a personality quirk rather than assuming he was “affected” as had frequently happened in his previous life.
Cherubim was incredibly clingy, both physically and emotionally; a trait that persisted even after the contract. While he was unaccustomed to positive physical contact, he desperately craved it. In the sin swap AU, when given license by Gumina, he basically never let stopped touching her and Sati, always wanting to be close to them and panicking when they had to separate, much to Sati’s discomfort. (basically, if he wasn’t afraid you were going to hit him, personal space didn’t exist for Cherubim)
The Venomania boys were basically the only people Gumina felt safe to let her walls down around. To everyone else she was cold and haughty, but with the brothers she was bright and fun loving. Sati’s betrayal and the eventual realization that Cherubim was Duke Venomania caused her to retreat progressively further into herself until she eventually reached a breaking point.
Although he never fully acknowledged it, Sati was rather traumatized by finding out about Cherubim’s existence. Up until that point he had thought of his father as this perfect, rational force in his life, and discovering that he had the capacity to treat one of his own children so horrifically shook him to his core. From that point onward, there was always a small, private fear in his mind that, if he crossed his father one to many times, he would punish him in just as terrible a way as he punished Cherubim. Of course, this never came to pass, but it did inform Sati’s lack of conviction when it came to helping Cherubim in any substantial way after getting him released from the basement.
Cherubim and Sateriasis did not look as though they were siblings, although if you took the time to look closely, you could notice some striking similarities. Cherubim was small and starved-looking, while Sateriasis was tall and athletically built; Cherubim inherited his mother’s curly hair, which he wore short, while Sati’s was long and pin-straight; Sati’s skin was a few shades lighter than Cheri’s, and Cheri had his mother’s abnormal luminous green eyes while Sati’s were a normal, handsome shade of brown (purple and blue in the main verse). However, they both inherited the same hooked nose and front tooth gap from their father, although Sati eventually got his gap fixed on a visit to Beelzenia (this was rather heartbreaking for Cherubim since it was one of the few traits they actually had in common).
Cherubim would not have been nearly as unnerving upon first glance were it not for the physical abuse he endured. The chronic malnutrition left him bony and hollow-looking; as a child, he had sustained an infection in his eye that left it milky white and blind; the facial deformity was not merely cosmetic and actually grew/worsened, resulting in the surrounding skin becoming purple-ish and veiny; and the various physical injuries he sustained from the other servants, local bullies, etc. left him constantly cut and bruised, with some wounds turning into lasting, jagged scars.
Gumina’s mother died when she was very young. On this level, she could somewhat relate to Cherubim, both having never known their mothers.
Cherubim was very taken with the flowers in the mansion’s garden, although he didn’t often get a chance to work with them.
AU where Cherubim never acquires language. Witnis, Sateriasis, and Gumina construct an informal sign language system with him, but hardly any of the other servants care to learn it. As the majority of them are also illiterate, Cherubim feels even more trapped as he literally cannot get anyone to pay any mind to what he has to say. During the big breakdown day, Sateriasis and Gumina both refused to pay attention to what he was trying to sign at them, and, after the stab, the reason Venomania couldn’t call out to Gumina is that he has once again lost the ability to communicate verbally.
Although he never told him, Witnis really did love Cherubim as a son and was constantly eaten at by guilt both before and after their separation in regards to him not doing more to take care of Cherubim or not being brave enough to take him and flee the mansion.
Ilotte was the first person to die in the Venomania massacre. After the engagement party concluded, Ilotte, having seen Cherubim and Gumina’s confrontation, went off to find Cherubim, who had run off after Gumina’s rejection and hadn’t been seen since. He found him curled up in the corner of a corridor and proceeded to tell him how disgusted he was by his audacity to speak to Gumina in public and his ungratefulness to both he and Sateriasis for their generosity to him, even indicating that he was going to lock him back in the basement as punishment. At that moment, Cherubim pulled a knife that he had taken from the kitchens earlier that day and, in a fit of rage, grief, and desperation, stabbed his father directly in the heart. Cherubim was in such a dissociative state afterwards that the killing might have stopped there had another servant not come in to investigate the noise.
Sateriasis was the last person to die in the massacre. He slept through the majority of it before being awoken by a scream and discovering that dozens of servants had been murdered. He shrieked and ran for help before running into Cherubim, who he did not immediately recognize as the murderer. However, that realization came fast and soon a chase began. Sateriasis made it all the way to the foyer before Cherubim, incensed by the idea of Sateriasis of all people getting away, lunged at him, tackling him down the staircase. On the way down, Sati cracked his head against one of the stairs and died only a few moments after reaching the bottom. Cherubim, seeing his brother rapidly slipping away, seized his knife and stabbed him, although he was just too late. Livid that the opportunity to exact revenge on Sateriasis had been taken from him, Cherubim began stabbing and mutilating the body in an absolute frenzy before gradually coming to his senses, realizing just what exactly he had done.
Avelina was very conflicted in regards to what should be done about Cherubim when she discovered he existed. Thanks to Sati’s insistence that he was, in fact, his brother, coupled with the distinctive green eyes Cherubim had inherited for Nylpho, Avelina very quickly put together that he was Nylpho’s lost son. She was absolutely horrified and demanded that Ilotte free him from his confinement. However, after Sateriasis and Cherubim were sent out of the room, Ilotte managed to convince her that, if Cherubim’s true identity was discovered, it would endanger Sateriasis’ claim to the dukedom and therefore he could not be allowed to go free. Avelina still could not allow Nylpho’s son to be sent back to the dungeons though, so the two of them eventually came to the agreement that Cherubim would work in the mansion as a servant. Sati was incensed by this plan as the whole reason he had revealed his knowledge about Cherubim was in hopes of getting him recognized as his brother, but Ilotte would not relent on the matter, and Cherubim, not fully comprehending the difference between the two options, did not try to fight it. Avelina always endeavored to treat Cherubim with kindness/understanding, but could never quite get past just how unnerving his mere existence was to her.
Cheri had an ingrained habit of staying quiet/silent even when in extreme pain/distress. There was such an emphasis put on staying quiet during his childhood that, even long after he was released from the basement, he would reflectively cover his mouth or bite his tongue when when he was unable to keep from crying out.
Cherubim’s name was derived from an Asmodean fairytale about a vain man who is transformed into a hideous monster by the gods as punishment for his hubris.
Gumina is “finish half a game of chess in one move” smart. Sati knows all the mechanics of chess and is good enough at it, but gets so caught up in the little details that he fails to notice the danger signs. Cherubim doesn’t know what chess is.
Asmodean/Lasaland was either just not being governed in EC 136 or Gumina was running things out of the basement, because Venomania didn’t have a clue or care in the world about how running a duchy actually worked.
Sateriasis is named after a great-grandfather of his from his mother’s side of the family.
The Venomania mansion housed about 50 people pre-massacre.
Sati is tol. Cherubim and Gumina are smol.
*concept* Cherubim: I want a father who‘s proud of me and a mother who looks after me Gilles and Irina: lol gross but okay i guess
#redlady speaks#evillious chronicles#lust arc#wrote these a couple days ago#been waiting to see if any more inspiration would strike me but it seems this is it for the moment
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International hand language
So earlier today I was sitting in a geothermally heated pool with about 15 strangers – all local Reykjavikians except for my three friends. Following an extended session of not-too-old-to-use-the-waterslide, I noticed something two Thirty-something guys gesticulating to each other in sign language.
I couldn’t help but wonder…ARE THEY SIGNING IN ICELANDIC?
This question might make me appear rather daft. Anyone who has a basic knowledge of sign language will know that sign languages are independent to spoken ones… Still, I was curious. I began to #ponderance.
For those who haven’t had the opportunity to spend time with an Icelander, the language here is nothing short of Klingon to a native Australian-English speaker. Some Icelandic nuance even occurs on the inhale breath, resembling an asthma attack with a delicious Werther’s Original in your mouth. So there I was, in my swim-shorts, very seriously considering asking these two gentlemen about their communication.
Thankfully, I was with three impossibly intelligent friends, one of whom is conveniently a linguistics major… So I put the question to her:
IS SIGN LANGUAGE MORE DIFFICULT IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES?
As an Australian, I can confidently propose that my people have torched the English language like a neglected chipolata. Shortening perfectly good words to within an inch of their life and putting ‘o’ or ‘y’ on the end of them is just the beginning (click here for example). Regardless of slang and sloppy synonyms, in English, there are no throat dwelling vibrations or tricky tongue rolling like there is in Icelandic. Icelandic is quite frankly what bridge is to a perfectly good game of GO FISH! (Although we know they win at both – check this out).
After proper poaching in the hot pools, we baptised ourselves in the customary 5-degree celsius pond (a very misleading hot tub with the heat turned off) and I scuttled home to research my ponderance of the day.
I found some great sources regarding the development of sign languages around the world and in particular American Sign Language (ASL). Including this amazing article from hopes & fears which introduced me to the deaf subculture and the constant evolution of sign languages.
LEARNING FROM DAY 1
According to a quick google books search, sign language in deaf infants is learnt the same way as spoken language. Taught by peers and parents bit-by-bit until the child starts using language against its parents somewhere near puberty (that’s in there for my sister who is a single mum and all-around legend). The infant begins gesturing for food and love, then a few words, then phrases and then sentences and so on. With this in mind, it is incontestable that all humans on the planet learn an informal sign language as their first language when communicating as infants. The horribly designed and pop-up infested website parents.com explains this here.
In verbal families, there are more than enough words for a child to hear and repeat (even the rude ones I teach my nephew). On the flip side, in a home with limited sign-language-stimuli, infants will have to work harder to build up their communication skills. In a world where sign languages are niche, there are simply fewer resources for deaf children to learn from. I would argue that this could have some benefits, where the child is not exposed to a plethora of negative influences that the other little turds at school will teach them.
As part of my research, I had a chat with a dear and talented friend of mine, Mr Daniel Bourne of Ginger & the Ghost and the Sydney creative co-working space THE NEST -
Me: When and why did you learn sign language? Was it difficult to pick up?
Dan: My daughter was born deaf, no, not difficult.
Me: Have you ever signed to a person from a non-English speaking country? If so, was it difficult?
Dan: Yes! Japan, it was cool because sign generally is visually correct.
Me: So was the sentence structure in Japanese really weird? Or was it more or less the same?
Dan: No, communication is key! The first thing on you and any deaf person’s mind is “I want to be understood” sentence structure doesn’t exist.
Me: So would you describe signing as an extension to your English, or like an entirely separate language?
Dan: Signed English is, of course, an extension of English. But Auslan (Australian sign language) is a separate language based on English. It’s more visual… Signed English would mean using separate signs for every English word… Auslan and many other sign languages are based on visual correctness.
Me: With that in mind, how much do you think people rely on a base language when teaching someone to sign?
Dan: Not much really.
Me: Would you say it would be more difficult for a deaf child to learn sign language from non-deaf parents?
Dan: Haha… No, because they can’t hear them anyway
Dan was born with full hearing and apart from industrial deafness from his musical career, he still hears well. When his equally humble and lovely daughter Tallula was born he was introduced to the deaf world. And he didn’t see it as a challenge, he was excited about the chance to learn and grow in a new way.
Me: So I gather that sign language is more or less independent of spoken language, what about lip reading? Is it vital?
Dan: Yep! Tallula is so good at lip reading she didn’t realise when her hearing was getting worse!
Dan went on to explain that on the announcement of Tallula being deaf her family mostly went into a type of denial, perhaps hopeful that she may just have deafness as an infant or that it would heal. It appeared as though her family weren’t motivated to learn Auslan for this reason. Dan had a deaf girlfriend for about a year at uni and learnt some sign language then, as well as getting a glimpse into deaf community culture. Perhaps this is why he was excited about the opportunity to adapt to raising a deaf child. Dan’s attitude towards his daughter’s deafness didn’t surprise me at all, he is one of the most practical and optimistic people I have ever met… But what about the people who aren’t born with a fierce can-do complex?
BACK TO THE PUBLIC HOT TUB…
After researching and writing this article, I learnt that the men at the pool would more than likely have been signing in Icelandic sign language which is derived from Danish sign language. They would have learned it at home and school growing up.
I really want to find the point when language created a difficulty for deaf people before sign language was a juggernaut of communication of its own accord.
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