#(at least in my local dialect)

[afaroffsong]

Oíche mhaith, beloveds.

[misskamelie]

Not coming from a family of immigrants but also not coming from a family of not immigrants

[halcyone-of-the-sea]

You're my favorite writer, and König is my favorite aussie man, so OF COURSE im making you write for him, hal, BEAR W ME !

Alright, what do you think about König with the “You’re here late.” prompt? The reader is part of KorTac and always worked alongside König, since they both entered about the same time, because of the readers personality, they are always fighting, one of these fights are specifically bad, leading the reader to go on a mission with another KorTac member, to help out somewhere else and take their mind off things, when the reader face a problem on the mission and ends up arriving late, König is furious.

Moths Hit the Window

PAIRING: König x F!Reader

SYNOPSIS: Fights with König were always loud, but this time his comments went a bit too far.

WORD COUNT: 5.9k

WARNINGS: Verbal fighting, angst, high tension, blood & stitches, wounds, canon typical violence, guns/weapons, death, suggestive near the end, fluff, hurt/comfort, etc.

A/N: Huge thanks to @idocarealot for the German translations!! Also, König's wearing the arachnid skin in this because I love it sm - enjoy, Anon!

*I do not give others permission to translate and/or re-publish my works on this or any other platform*

You seethe. If eyes could turn red yous would be a beautiful shade of crimson—bloody knives ripping out of the cornea to strike whoever happened to get too close. It was as if the very air boiled with the force of a raging tsunami as you stomped down the local military base’s hallways, covered in blood and guts. Never had you reconsidered working for KorTac more than at this very moment. 

Maybe I should just become a mercenary, you rip at the torn-apart gloves over your hands and jerk your arm out. Passerbyers quickly avert their eyes as you shove them into a garbage can and continue on with a growl. No shitty rules, no regulations—no fucking partners.

If people happened to slide past without noticing the steam coming out of your ears, they would have immediately locked eyes on the pure elephant of a man trailing fast behind. König’s eyes were goring into the back of your neck, gray and tan garb swaying as the packs and flash grenades on his combat vest bounced with every step. Accents of red do nothing in comparison to his visible flesh—the section of his eyes uncovered by his mask and head rig alight around his obsidian gaze. 

 König was muttering to himself far under his breath, curses and harsh comments all in German that he wouldn’t say to your face. At least not right now in view of others. 

“I can hear you, you dimwit,” you hiss over your shoulder, grinding your teeth as you both make your way to the armory, “curse me out quieter!” 

“You are making a scene!” The beast grunts, that heavily accented English striking your eardrums with its harsh dialect. 

“Oh, jeez!” You raise your voice even higher, turning back forward and clenching your hands into fists as blood and guts drip off your gear—none of it yours. “I’m just so damn embarrassed, König! I’m making such a large and obnoxious display. Whatever will I do?!” Sarcasm like a valuable drug is injected into the waves of your voice. People from open doorways look out with shock, brows pulled up. 

Everyone quickly darts back away when you snap your head in their direction and send them a scathing glare.

No one was surprised to find you and the Austrian going at it again but knew well enough to stay out of the crossfire. Lest someone get roped into it.

“Fuck off!” You spit the last curse into the burning air and shove past a soldier ahead of you.

König’s dark eyes flash dangerously, lips under his mask twisting into a sneer. The man’s shoulders seem to dig in even farther, spine curling over as if a brooding child. 

This had all started the second you’d joined up with KorTac. Fresh out of the military and eager to get back into the game after a good vacation the PMC group had been at the top of your list. But if you’d known you’d be paired up with this damn mountain every chance there was just because he’d got into the game at nearly the same time as you, you’d have put in your luck with SpecGru. 

“I do not see how this is appropriate behavior,” König follows as you place your palms on the black metal of the armory door, pressing with your shoulders. “I did what I was tasked to do—”

The masked man is cut off as you whirl on your heels, the door slamming shut as his body is shoved into it with strong arms. Dark eyes go wide in surprise, feeling the dig of your nails on his abdomen as your form presses into him and the chill of the door on his spine. You feel his skin bunch under his thick shirt and even if you want to stare him down that’s just not an option. Your warm figures shuffle together with panting breaths and dangerous glints in your eyes. 

“Bull,” you drag out the word, growling it right up into his neck; sniper hood caressing your chin. König’s breath hitches with shakes of swirling emotions. “Shit.”

Shoving once more so he gets the point, you push off of him and stalk away like a feral wolf, already unclipping grenades and medical packs from your vest. 

“You’re the damn reason the target got away!” Gear is thrown haphazardly to the long table in the center of the room. The Austrian watches with predatory eyes, hands clenched so hard that they quiver. He stays still, watching, as you send scathing glances. “The reason we’re going to be here for ten times longer than we’re supposed to be!” 

“It is not my fault you failed to properly check the perimeter before you rushed in like a fool.” Volatile couldn’t be used to describe this…this was nothing short of volcanic. It was as if there were two sides of a scale filled with bullets and gunpowder—fire in the middle that was equally heating both piles as they raised and lowered erratically. König’s voice grates over the air, “I did what I could to fix your scheiße plan!”

“Don’t you shit on my plan!” You point, voice bouncing off the weapon racks as you rip the rifle strap from over your chest, chucking it away. 

“I will shit on it—it was…it was…!”  König’s voice cuts out and he can’t find the words. The Austrian descends into visceral German ramblings. “Es war so ziemlich der schlechteste Plan, den ich je gehört hab. Welcher halbwegs vernünftige Mensch geht in eine heiße Zone ohne vorher alle Zielobjekte richtig zu markieren?! Ich kann dich und deine Rücksichtslosigkeit nicht mehr leiden — du bringst mich um meinen Verstand! Hast du überhaupt ein Gehirn in deinem Schädel?”

You shake your head to yourself, heart pounding. “You’re still the one that was supposed to focus on the HVT. I rushed so he would flush out, but, no,” taking out the magazine of the rifle you hold it in your hands like an accusatory ruler that a teacher would hold. König shoves off the door and stands to his full height; arms tensed and straining before they coil around his chest in a soothing gesture. 

He hated the fighting—the constant strain between the two of you. But when you were together it could never amount to anything else. The room felt like it was a million degrees.

Your eyes stab at him, “No! You had to go and focus on me! I hate to break this to you,  König,” feet come forward and you once again find yourself close to him—breathing the same air and taking in the scent of gunpowder and blood. You point the tip of the magazine into his chest. His unseen lips pull; jaw clenching with held-back fire. “But I am not your damn mutt to keep on a leash. I had it under control.”

It’s as if you don’t realize the Austrian could snap you in half with a single kick of his leg, as if the sheer size of König had slipped your mind as a whole. His hands could snap your neck in an instant, but that was only if he got ahold of you. 

But that was a line the both of you were never planning to cross. Words were one thing in this profession, actions another. If you ever got into a physical fight, you’d both kill each other, no doubt. 

You’d like to think you’re a bit above that, but perhaps not.

König’s chest rises and falls deeply, taking in calming breaths as he tries to get his temper under control. “You didn’t,” he jeers out, “I saved your life, you Heißluftgebläse. And if you wanted to be treated less than a dog,” he grunts to you, head pulling down close to your face, harshly whispering out, “You could have simply asked me, yes?”

You both snarl at each other's throats like rabid animals, the world disappearing all around the obsidian eyes that match with yours; for a moment you get lost in the shining bits of silver in his iris that seem to burn with chilled iron. What little skin you can see is flushed and tight—hawk nose nearly poking out your eye as you’re leaned over like a giraffe near a bush.

Body vibrating, you sharply breathe, “I’m not even going to ask what that fucking means, you tool.”

“Good.” The words are bitten and fast, “because I am not telling you.”

“Great!”

“Perfekt!” You both were arguing like children. Hot faces and unwilling to let the other have the last word. If you got along it might have been funny. 

“I’m going to dump all of your Einspänner out on the tarmac.” Your sure voice echoes with a definitive promise to the tone. 

Pale lids widen in horror at the threat to the Austrian's favorite beverage, comfortably sitting in the Base’s fridge. 

“You would not,” König’s tone is deathly serious and you smirk, eyes dancing. “You…” a guttural growl meets the air, mind translating words and giving meanings, “beast of a woman!”

“Oh, is that the best you can fucking do?!” You yell, splaying your hands out widely and moving away from him. “Now that’s really a show stopper, König, I’m shaking in my damn boots.” 

“Ich komm mit dir nicht mehr klar.” König yells, moving back and placing both of his hands atop his head, knuckles white. “You’re rude—you do not even try to get along. You are loud and disrespectful; how do you live like this?!”

Your eyes slightly widen, watching the Austrian.

“Don’t try?” You echo, scoffing loudly. “What do you mean don’t try? I was the one to try and smooth things out between us in the beginning.”

“When?!” König spreads his hands out, knees slightly bent. “Because I have no recollection of such events.”

“Well of course you wouldn’t!” The heat was meeting a breaking point—words were getting more personal, sharper. Like a blade being honed for the kill slowly; being sharpened by rocks and whetstones of conviction. 

König points a finger at you, voice going low and thin, “I’ve had enough of you, yes?” His sniper hood moves rapidly with his fast ricochets of breath. “Just about enough. Would you have wanted me to let you die?”

“I had it,” your lips spit, nose scrunched, and forehead tight. The man’s chest vibrates with a mute growl. 

In all actuality, you’d never seen him this worked up before. König wasn’t above giving your quips back even if he obviously disliked it—most of that was due to the strange familiarity between the two of you. In large crowds, the man preferred to stay silent. This only added to his almost deadly aura with others, though you knew the muteness was because of social anxiety and not some built silence. He wasn’t shy per se, just afraid he’d say something wrong; mess up the conversation. You did most of the talking in meetings and you never minded it. Added him in when the topic was something he knew a lot about.

Your mind had addled it up to thinking it was cute, actually. How his feet would shuffle; his half-lidded gaze and his intense eye contact to let them know he was still listening. When he’d have to remind himself to look away with a pinch to his thigh because it was starting to seem threatening. It was endearing, even.

But around people König knew, well, he was going to speak his mind. No matter how long it takes his brain to catch up with his lips.

The only thing the two of you were good at was being moths—hitting the metaphorical window over and over on the same topics and tension points. Slamming heads and flapping wings. You were at the end of your rope just as he was.

“I should have never taken you as a partner!” He calls, feet splayed. “Should have gotten out of this the second you were assigned with me. Gott, ich hab wirklich versucht, dich zu verstehen — Ich hätte gleich aufgeben sollen.” Your lips thin, lungs stalling as all the air vacates the room. You stand still and listen to what he really thinks, fingers shaking.

König’s large form towers over all, great sparks of electricity flying out. His gear shakes as he moves, thigh straps pushing fabric to shift and conform to his body. Your blood pumps with brewing hesitance. 

Maybe this had gone too far. I’ve never seen him like this.

“I can’t stand you any longer! Pathetic squabbles that mean nothing, absolutely ludicrous plans that make little headway.” Your head bursts with aggression and what little warning signs you have are squashed. “I can’t keep saving you because you can’t do your job correctly!”

“You don’t have to save me at all!” You scream. “You can’t keep your damn eyes off of me for five seconds, König.” Feet move away quickly from the armory door as if someone had come to put away their stuff but thought better of it. The next words burst from you before you can think of the contents. “It’s like you fucking love me or something!”

König doesn’t miss a beat, but for months afterward, he wishes he had.

“Oh, do not make me laugh—” he scoffs ferally, adrenaline making him talk, “as if anyone could ever love a woman like you in the first place.” 

Twin eyes widen and both parties immediately fall silent. A sharp inhale.

Too far.

Under the hood, König’s face goes an embarrassing shade of red all the way down to his chest. Fingers freeze. Jaw slackens.

You feel like your heart was just grasped in his grip and ripped out of your ribs with one violent motion—one sentence out of all the others enough to knock down the rebuttal that had formed on the tip of your tongue. Your throat closes up as you blink in shock.

“I-I…” König stutters, mind blanking as he struggles for words. But anger was easier than pain.

Numb fingers rip off the last of your weapons and belongings as you let them hit the floor with defining thuds as warm shame floods your cheeks. Shaky puffs of breath like a panting dog. Dark eyes watch with regretful panic, heart jumping and eyes flinching. The adrenaline it…it made him forget himself on occasion—how to properly act when not on the battlefield. It was like that with everyone but…but he hadn’t meant that.

Shame that it’s already too late.

Your fisted hand slams into his chest, brutal and unforgiving. König lets off a grunt but does nothing as you slither past, hissing into his ear, “Find yourself a new punching bag.”

His hand snaps to his breast where you had slammed your KorTac patch right into his heart, catching it. It’s many moments before he can think enough through the alarm; form words.

“I…I didn’t…oh, du blöde Kuh!” 

By the time the man composed himself, panicked tears burning in his eyes, the door had already slammed shut. His feet squeaked over the tile to an empty audience. 

—

Private Military Companies don’t have ranks. There are no Sergeants, Lieutenants, Generals or Colonels. Just people. Beyond the orders you’d been hired on, there was nothing keeping you in line with König on this mission. And those orders were loose at best.

Adhere to policy and listen to the Base’s COs. Shut up and get the job done. 

The Austrian and you weren’t due out for another week because of rotations. Since you’d failed to capture or kill the HVT that you were assigned, another group had picked up the tracks in the meantime. Like an oiled machine, the gears of this operation kept whirling. 

Evolve, or die. 

“Lieutenant!” You call to the geared-up man on the tarmac—the one heading that very same group. It had been only a few hours since the incident in the armory. You needed a distraction; blood was still running high and brain pounding for release. There were only so many times you could bruise your fists and legs on a punching bag before people started giving you nervous looks. “Need an extra hand?”

Your voice sounds strained, even to you. The man looks you over once and narrows his eyes. Nods not moments later. 

“Get tired of your big friend? Okay, how fast can you be ready for me?” You feel your shoulders loosen, a relieved sigh exiting your lips.

“Three minutes.”

“...get to it then. We move in five.” 

So that was how you found yourself backed into a corner five hours into the op from hell—bloody knife held tightly in your grip and mouth open in ragged pants. 

“Fuck,” your vest is torn and riddled with bullets; your entire chest must be bruised by now because it surely aches like it is. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

You really are reckless, just like König had said you were. Maybe you’d just never realized it because he always seemed to watch your six. This…this was really bad. The comms were awash with screaming orders and panic, ringing out across the abandoned mining factory that exploded with light from gunfire and the sounds that accompanied it. You knew for a fact three soldiers were down; two KIA. 

The Lieutenant is one of them. 

Your hand snaps to the radio strapped to your chest, one eye squinted in pain at the ragged slice across your left brow line. At your feet, two heavily armed men lay dead. 

“Pull back! They knew we were coming!” But your word didn’t carry weight here. Your face twists between pain and rage. König’s comment still rings in your ears as the onset of tinnitus does, as if anyone could ever love a woman like you in the first place. It wasn’t ideal to be thinking about this now—it was detrimental that you didn’t. 

But König and the things he did often stained your brain. No matter how much you tried to distance yourself from that fact. 

Snapping the knife in your grasp down in an arch to dispel the blood from the blade, you take a steel-laced inhale and shove off the wall. Limping, but moving. Sprained ankle. Nothing you hadn’t dealt with before.

The concrete under you is splattered with crimson viscera and you stumble over spasming bodies riddled with bullets. With a subdued shink you slip your knife into its thigh sheath, grabbing the FTac Recon strapped around your chest after slamming a fresh mag into it. With a numb calm overcoming you, you slip your forefinger into the trigger guard, poised over the easy press of the trigger itself. 

The long shadows spread over you; your head illuminated by the dull sheen of the moon as you pass under a stretch of open sky to slink into the building across the empty street. Feral yells still bounce off the air and you go to them readily, purpose settling in your veins. 

Pain flies to the back of your mind, displaced by adrenaline and the rabid puffs of breath that fall like grinding thunder from your lips.  

You wonder what König’s thinking right now—he’d without a doubt noticed that you were gone. He’d even probably gone to your barracks room to try and apologize and found it empty. That was just how he was. 

Would he be happy? You wondered. Relieved to see you out of his life? You’d both done nothing but fight, but there were moments of peace. Understanding. 

Shared meals and comfortable, yet sarcastic, comments; soft glances when the other wasn’t looking. Heat in your face and obviously shown on his when shy hands brushed. 

Your hold tightens on your gun, brows dripping with sweat as it dribbles down along with the blood. Gunfire flashes. 

Closer now.

Shadows scream on top of a raised walkway attached to an in-mountain compound, targets with trigger fingers firing on your fellows who take cover behind crumbling walls. Pinned down. You watch, unseen, from a broken window as dust and moths collide. 

Your eyes lock on the closest hostile and you raise your weapon slowly, barrel resting on the frame between shattered glass. You clock the distance and adjust accordingly; breaths falling steady. 

The small insect that keeps hitting the window plays in your mind over and over—drowning out the yells; the fire. 

Just a moth readily willing to smash into that barrier until it dies. You hum under your breath and rest the gun into the crook of your shoulder, cheek to stock. 

Your finger slams into the trigger. 

—

You stumble out of the loud infirmary with a bloody rag pressed deeply into your forehead, medical pouch under one arm. You hear rushing feet and barked orders from nurses and doctors just before the door closes, cutting off as you stake out on your own.

Limping, you reason there were others with more severe wounds than your own; as blood drips from your flooded rag, your feet take you deep into the base one broken step at a time. You’d figure it out yourself. 

Plus, the silence would give you time to think. Think about König. 

You just gritted your teeth and decided that was better than taking up space in the infirmary. 

In times like these, the Austrian would fix your wounds for you, just as you did his. While you had your disagreements and heated fights, he’d never made it as personal as he had hours beforehand. Never made it hurt. 

“Jesus,” you mutter, rubbing your other crusty hand over the mud along your chin. Everything ached and you don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing. 

Flinching along like a downed bird, you shove through into the last door into the barracks; thoughts now stuck on finding a chair to sit down on before your legs gave out. The darkness of the common area was deep—staining your eyelids as you grunt, bumping into the back of the couch. 

It’s almost funny the way the lamp flicked on mere moments later. 

You hiss, eyes snapping shut as the rays attack your sight, rendering you blind for a moment. The shaking hand on your dripping rag tightens before the spark of pain makes you lighten the pressure. 

There’s a dark grunt just as you open your eyes back up.

“You are late.” König. 

He sits in one of the chairs—sniper hood still over his head yet only clothed in a large compression shirt and casual camo pants. Like a disappointed parent, the Austrian’s arms were crossed over his chest; feet resting out and crossed at the ankles. With such a big stature the look could strike fear into anyone. 

Anyone but you, that is. 

König’s dark eyes rove over you, stopping immediately on the fabric you keep to your forehead. The previous, furious, tone stops and the flash of very real concern takes precedence. His hands tighten on his biceps, thighs tensing over the cushion; spine just a little bit straighter. 

You watch and say nothing—dead-faced. 

Your heart suddenly skips beats, stuck into the framework of the man’s eyes. König’s brows peel back and a timid stutter stays in your breast.

“...Vögelchen?” Lids blink rapidly, and before you can register anything because of your blood loss and fatigue, you’re being dragged to the couch and forced to sit down. 

Strong hands encompass your shoulders and small breaths flutter in front of your face as König peels back to kneel in front of you; spying the medical pouch in your under-arm. 

“What is this?” He mutters to you, vision flinching along your body but always dragging back to the bloody rag on your face. “What did you do to yourself?” 

Scarred hands raise before pausing, obsidian eyes staring deeply into yours as if in frantic question. Your own gaze keeps him close, spying on his veiled fear at the sight of your blood and your disappearance. He’d heard about the mission, then, that much was upfront because of his earlier comment. 

The humvee had been late arriving back. Half an hour. 

“Fuck off,” you utter, shoving off the couch before you’re captured in an unyielding press again, shoved down. Your anger spikes along with your unease, “König! I don’t have the patience—”

“I’m sorry.” The fight leaves you. 

Fingers squeeze your biceps, hold lightly shaking with nerves. “I did not mean it.” Obsidian pierces you, “Please, Vögelchen, I am sorry. Utterly. I speak so fast I misplace words—get far more,” words fail as you stare so intently at him, a strange feeling swirling in your gut. König’s face was going crimson again, though not from anger. His tone was deep and honest, accent becoming more whole with emotion. The hands on your skin stay. “Rude than I intend. It is not an excuse, but…”

In the horizontal oval of his hood, you spy the dots of tiny freckles; the whispers of auburn hair. That hawk nose still points violently from behind the fabric. König never finishes his sentence, just takes a large breath and looks to the side after a moment of silence. 

Then he steals the medical pack from your grip and opens the zipper with firm fingers, taking out gloves and gauze. Needle and sutures. It’s all placed on the side table as the bear of an Austrian stays on his knees for you—bending and shifting as the bottom of his shirt rides up. 

It’s a tense affair of touching skin; warmth and hissed curses. Gentle shushing. But you say nothing through it. Until he’s up in your face trying off stitches with forceps and a needle holder, breath making his hood lightly caress your bloodless face. His fingers are large and firm, never second-guessing or stuttering over the course of directing tools that dig a needling and thread into your flesh. 

He’s warm and every motion elicits shivers. You see his form from the side of your eye; his face’s outline as the lamp light illuminates the hood’s fabric. Shadowy silhouette of König’s strong jaw that shifts with every other breath from his wide chest. 

“You’re an asshole for saying that to me, y’know.” you slip your gaze away just as he snaps over. “Adrenaline or not.” 

The needle pauses and a swift nod is given. 

“I…I know it was. No amount of apologizing can explain how very horrible I feel. It was like I was so…so…” An annoyed grunt was leveled at himself.

“Pissed off?” You offer quietly. 

“Yes! Pissed off.” Amused glances were shared, the air slowly smoothing out between the two of you. Dark eyes quickly look away from yours and König clears his throat terse-like. But softer, steadier, “I…could not bear it if I were to see you in harm and be unable to assist you. That…is why I was watching. Why I do watch you.”

Inside of you, it was like there was a pot of water on the stove, steadily boiling under the heat. Your eyes are delicately wide when the man’s hands leave your face; kneeling body still tall enough to stare into you.

“You are…” König pauses, but not to find the words. To ready himself. He takes a long breath. “You are special to me, my Vögelchen. I can not see you hurt,” a gesture to your forehead and creased eyes. As if your pain was his own. “Not like this.”

“What are you saying, König?” You whisper, face twisted with hurt and confusion. Apprehension. “You’re giving me mixed signals. We always fight with each other. I’m not saying I’m blameless, but…c’mon, now. Look at us.” 

“Not…always.” He grumbled like a child, tools placed away and hands dripping blood before he slips the gloves off. They meet the side table with a tiny toss. The Austrian leans back onto his ankles, butt to heel. He begins to look at your forehead and you can practically hear his heart break. “I do not like arguing with you, you know that, yes?” 

“Me neither,” you whisper, fingers fiddling as a sheen of anxiousness sets in. “You just,” you pause, “confuse me.”

 König blinks in surprise, head tilting and large eyes shimmering. Your mind flashes to a curious cat and you try to explain with a burning face and fast lips.

“You say we’re partners but you never act like it,” he stares and listens. When had you both had a conversation like this before? “You make it seem like you can’t trust me to do the simplest task. I’m not,” your voice betrays you, cracking, “I’m not that useless, am I?” 

He freezes, muscles going taunt. 

“U-Useless? Nutzlos? No, no,” A hand comes to capture your chin and you let him move you where he wishes. Creased eyes lock on yours. “That is not right. You’re not useless to me—how could you be?” Pained brows move in, “did I make you think like this? Like I did not appreciate your skills?” 

Your eyes burn, and the aches from your wounds mix with the pure fatigue in your flesh to leave your emotions running between sanity and sadness. A moment later you’re turning your head away. 

König recaptures it, hands finding both sides of your cheeks. He looks shaky; desperate. 

“No, please, Vögelchen, please. I need you to look at me.”

“König, I don’t—” You close your mouth before you let out the beginnings of a sob. “I can’t keep fighting with you.”

“I know, oh, I know,” his hands are so grounding it’s like you’re the inner pages of a book, and his grip the thick leather cover—leather laced with shared scars and the same that had stitched you up countless times. This push and pull had to end. “I cannot fight with you either—it tears me apart. Oh, du weißt gar nicht, wie sehr es mich schmerzt, dein wunderschönes Gesicht anzuschreien. Mit dir zu streiten bedeutet, meinen Verstand und mein Herz gleichzeitig zu brechen.” König’s thumbs run up and down your skin, still bloody with dried flakes falling to the ground. He seems not to care a bit. 

“What can I do to fix this? Anything. Anything to get us to stop doing this to each other.” You stare into his eyes, both creased and glazed over. 

There’s a brief moment where you wonder if anyone truly even knew you as well as König did—there was no one else that you shared such a deep connection with. Years upon years of being stuck at his side. 

And someone else’s hands had never felt as good as his. They were hard and callused over but cupped your face as gently as one would cup water from a rippling stream. His eyes were stars; visible skin like porcelain, his breath raised a large and wide chest with a fast-paced heart. You could sense his throat trapping air. 

König kneeled to you and bared himself. 

Anything, he had said, to fix what he had said. To stop this. 

There was one way you could think to stop this—it might not have been smart, certainly not, but…hmm…You gradually raised your hand raised from your lap and slipped it under the front of König’s hood. 

Slowly, with all the delicateness of a glass dragonfly, your fingers strayed to the side of his neck to press into tight flesh. A rapid pulse.

The man goes to stone. It’s like you’ve stolen his nervous system. Dark eyes stay locked onto yours as you gaze back, hand dragging nails up with a light pressure near to the speed of a slug. 

König whispers your name into the empty space and the oxygen seems to dry up. Warm light from the lamp cast phantoms on walls and over skin in a small moment of foreign discoveries. The Austrian swallows saliva and you feel his neck flex. You don’t answer him, just watch and feel his own hands tighten on your cheeks in warning. 

But you never listen, do you? Reckless you were called. And König had been right.

You were reckless.

Your hand had now explored like a map the indents of hidden facial scars; long and short over jaw and lips. The hand that was doing this had hiked the sniper’s hood up around your wrist so that the man’s lashes were twitching as the fabric got too close to his eyes. And you watched. And so did he. 

A twin pair of moths hitting a glass window, staring from opposite sides at one another until they realized the break in the frame. 

“Anything?” You ask in a loose tone, barely heard above the flood in both of your ears. 

König was breathing heavily but didn’t pull away. Pupils wide and body heavy to your touch. His spine briefly straightened, until he realized he had moved back slightly and immediately hunched again if only to keep your hands on him. 

“I…” he grunts, “A…anything.” Fingers touch his nose, they spread under the hood to trace the bumps and marks he keeps hidden like buried treasure. Your vision takes in the otherworldly hue on his visible skin; the glaze of rapture in his eyes yet still that ingrained heat. 

Your body shivers at the gravel in his accented English. 

Fingers stall over his lips, hood showing you the pale being of König’s strong chin and jaw. You shift your touch to the side and find chapped lips revealed to you, a small palate scar that had healed to nothing more than a line up to his nostril. 

You spare it nothing more than a glance before you look back into obsidian. Dark ether and dead galaxies devoid of stars. Swallowed in a sea of pasts and futures. You look for hesitation; for disgust. 

You find none. 

“You said that no one could ever love someone like me,” your head leans in, and your breath mingles together with an intimacy that had never been shared between this type of partners. König, as if broken from a spell, takes down a swift inhale of air into his stiff lungs. He stares with far back lids. Flashes of unidentified emotions. “Why did you say that?”

A moment of silence and of rabid hearts. The man’s lips twitch over yours as he answers slowly, not breaking eye contact for a moment. As if he did he’d be turned to rock. As if he’d miss something amazing from happening. 

He speaks with a whispered confession.

“Because if they did—I would have to kill them. Because no other than I would be able to love you more.” Your world slows and your ears strain with the breathy words. 

Face burning your lips part with shock and awe. Violent to any other, but to you this was a confession from a man that could meet you blow for blow—calm you and infuriate you all in one. Challenge you, but knew when he’d gone too far and how to properly apologize. 

He’d waited in that chair for you all night, you’d realized. 

For you to come back to him. His partner. 

You press your lips to his and hear his pitiful sounds of gasped reassurance. Slipping your tongue into his mouth, you let saliva drip off of your chins to splatter onto bent knees and shaking thighs.

König’s arms cage you; capture your waist and draw you closer, lips breaking apart before you both share a wide-eyed look of momentary pause. There was no room to breathe; to think. Chests hit together and fingers tighten to a tendon-visible hold.

The man's growing smile is wide from where you still hold his hood up by his nose, and with a lick of his red and wet lips, he reconnects your awaiting mouths. 

This time, you’re the one to gasp.

“Lass mich zeigen, wie leid es mir tut, Vögelchen.”

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[yourcubitoyourculture]

Your Cubito, Your Culture: an Event Overview

Do you enjoy creating? Do you like exploring or sharing your own culture through an artistic* lens? (* inclusive of literary arts, visual arts, etc.) Here's an event for you!

Your Cubito, Your Culture is an experimental MCYT community event, first launching in 2024. The goal is simple: incorporate an aspect of your local, regional, national, ethnic, etc. culture into your work, such that it becomes a significant part of your work!

We all know that creating works involving a culture that you don't know much about requires a lot of research, so let's start with something that each of us are likely more familiar with, shall we?

Rules, timelines, Q&A, and other relevant links under the cut.

Rules:

As per Tumblr (and AO3 for writers) TOS, you must be at least 13 years old to participate.

Characters, not content creators; please avoid overt RPF in your works.

Please keep your works relatively safe for work; wiggle room is allowed in case anyone wants to explore some darker topics in more depth. For reference, if you're a writer posting on AO3, your work should be no higher than an M rating, though a G-rated or T-rated work would be preferable.

Please tag all content warnings and shipping appropriately.

No AI-generated content.

Please @ this blog and tag #your cubito your culture 2024 when you post your work on Tumblr for us to reblog your post. If you are planning to post on AO3, a collection has been set up for you to submit your work.

Timeline:

2024/08/11–18 UTC 09:00: Interest check!

2024/08/18 UTC 09:30: Prompt idea release time!

2024/09/01–2024/09/30: Posting period (tentative)!

Prompt Ideas (Optional):

Prompt Suggestions (submissions)

Hyperspecific Prompt Suggestions (submissions)

Q&A

Q1: Is there a limitation or restriction for what quality or quantity work I can make for this event?

A1: Not really. No word limits for writers, no art quality restrictions for artists, and create however many works you want; this is an experimental event (at least for now) and it's all meant to be in good fun. That said, a certain degree of quality control is expected, so please make sure that you can consider your own work to be completed or satisfactory before you submit it.

Q2: Am I restricted to creating works about characters whose content creator counterparts are from my own culture?

A2: Nope! On a more personal note, if that were to be the case, I, as the event host/mod, would be having a hard time writing about the cubitos that I'm interested in, and I'm not about to do that.

Q3: What if there's an aspect of my culture that I cannot directly translate into my work?

A3: Feel free to adapt it to the setting as you wish! It's your culture, after all.

Q4: Am I allowed to create works in which non-English languages play a significant role (e.g. fanfics written in a non-English language, code-mixing between two or more dialects/languages)?

A4: Yes, and that ties into one of the reasons this event was created for: international cultural appreciation! It's up to you if you want to provide a translated summary/version/etc. We trust that all works (and translations, if any) are created in good faith.

Credits:

Mod/Event host: Aqua @minecraftrelatedrandomness

Prompts: Anonymous users

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for going off on a tattoo artist for giving me the wrong mandarin letters?

Context matters a lot here. I (23ftm) recently lost my partner to cancer. They were the love of my life and I dropped everything for them- I moved states away from my family so that they could be more comfortable in a dryer climate, I made sure to be there for them through thick and thin- the works. My family, though sad, were okay with it since I had never been so passionate about anything before I met them. Losing them has been nothing short of miserable.

They were Chinese and had a very strong connection to their language and culture, so I wanted to get a tattoo that translated to "My angel, my love" with "my angel" being on the top and "my love" being on the bottom onto my arm. I wasn't able to learn any dialects from them while they were alive since things had been so busy, but I thought maybe at least I could start with this.

So, I went to a local tattoo parlor that had a Chinese tattoo artist (I hope it isn't racist to assume, I've heard him speaking in Mandarin on the phone) and asked to get the translation tattooed. He seemed genuine and we got to work with choosing a font, the right location, and scheduling an appointment. It was very professional and I was really glad that it had gone smoothly since if it hadn't, I'd probably just give up entirely.

A week passes and I get my tattoo. A bit after as we're talking about it, I mention that I got it to commemorate my late partner, whom like I said I consider to be the light of my life. When I mentioned that, he sort of paused and had this look on his face, like when you realize you forgot something really important. He shook it off though and we got back to talking, but things seemed obviously more awkward now.

When I went home I sent a picture of it to my partner's family, and immediately they picked up that something was wrong. They didn't tell me what it had actually translated to, but it was apparently very inappropriate and disrespectful.

Needless to say I was breaking down. My partner had died, I was struggling with depression and fatigue from handling a lot of the funeral procedures, and overall that had been the straw that broke the camel's back. This is where I may be the asshole. I drove back to the parlor shop and found my tattoo artist, and I didn't get physical, but I had definitely wanted to. I was yelling at him, screaming about how he was a horrible shitty person, the works. He argued back that I should have at least given him a reason for the tattoo, since he gets white people coming in all the time asking for dumb stuff, but I shot back that he could have at least told me what he had done when I did reveal why I got the tattoo.

Again, I didn't get physical, but they did threaten to call the cops on me if I didn't leave since I wss making a scene, so I left and later emailed that I had at the very least wanted a refund, since they didn't even give me the tattoo I wanted. I still haven't gotten a response yet.

My family (both biological and in-laws) are very conflicted over this. Some of them think that I could have dealt with it a lot better, while others think I should have threatened them with a lawsuit (obviously there's inbetween opinions but those are the main two extremes). I can't afford a lawsuit considering I'm already dealing with the funeral funds like I said, but I don't know. I don't even know if yelling at the guy made me feel better or worse- it was an in-the-moment response to be sure.

So, with more context, AITA for yelling at the tattoo artist who gave me an inappropriate tattoo instead of the one I really wanted?

What are these acronyms?

[pyrrhocorax]

Re: Sweden, Norway, and Denmark's Japanese dialects in Hetalia (and potential implications to their characterization) (with briefer notes about Fin and Ice)

Thanks to @nordickies for being the spark that lit the fire to write this post. This information also personally has informed some of my personal takes on the Nordic 5 for over a decade now, so I hope it is useful. A lot of this was more common knowledge back in the livejournal days of the fandom.

Disclaimer: my Japanese is limited and by no means do I claim to fully understand all of the cultural complexities surrounding this topic. I will try, where I can, to back up my claims with at least somewhat credible sources especially since I am someone who is not Japanese in origin either ethnically or culturally, however I DO know more than the average person would because I have lived in Japan, was exposed from my practical birth to the culture and language waaay more than is typical due to me living overseas, and I have studied the language on an elementary level in several academic settings. I am by no means an expert (I am a wildlife biologist by trade), but all of this is done in good faith, and if you do know more than me (especially since I am limited in my ability to get access to academic texts right now — nor am I going far out of my way to find those, as this is a meta post about Hetalia of all things and I am not going to do a whole giant thesis about this for one post), feel free to correct me and/or send me further resources, as I want to convey as accurate of information I can as possible. Part of my motivation for making this post was to spur conversation and hopefully have others who know more than me contribute to the ongoing conversation, to which, I encourage those who read this post to check the notes for any further updates. Another note that I also do not originate from a Nordic country, so there may also be additional layers people from those countries may be able to add. Thanks! Let's begin.

*********************************************************** Like several characters in Hetalia, the Viking Trio speak in unique Japanese dialects that further make them distinct and characterize them in Japanese. Sweden speaks in a Touhoku dialect, Norway in the Tsugaru dialect (which is a specific type of Touhoku dialect), and Denmark speaks in Ibaraki dialect. The Ibaraki dialect is sometimes seen as belonging to the Touhoku dialect group or the Kantou dialect group, and the classification is debated. Generally, Touhoku accents are characterized by slow speech, the slurring of words together, and the muttering of words — as well as being associated with rural country folk (Kumagi 2011, direct PDF download). This dialect is often translated into English as a redneck/hick accent and drawling speech — and as those who speak it are often characterized or stereotyped as unintelligent folks from out in the sticks. Kumagi cites Inoue (1977) as saying that Touhoku dialects are "degraded at the bottom in the Japanese language" scoring low on "intelligence and emotion-related associations." One American English rough equivalent (not localized, but in terms of reputation in U.S. culture) by my best estimations would likely be Appalachian dialects, which are also stereotypically characterized as being a hillbilly, unintelligent, and rural accent also featuring drawled speech and often truncated speech (source). Like many Touhoku dialect speakers in Japan, Appalachian dialect speakers often hide, mask, or reduce their accent, especially if they relocate someplace outside Appalachia, in order to seem more credible to others, as it is generally seen as an “inferior” dialect of American English in the wider culture (personal/family lived experience, but also a good radio piece on it here). The other way Touhoku dialects are translated in media are as Upper Midwest or Northern Plains dialects of American English (not the most credible source, but a lot that is on here that I can confirm to be correct). This characterization is likely a more accurate candidate for the Nordics (and may be why Hima chose this dialect group for them), as many immigrants from Nordic countries settled in the Upper Midwest/Northern Plains (source, personal experience living in this region for a lot of my life). Touhoku dialects are also a more northern dialect group, which geographically coincides with the Nordics being, well, northerners!

(Map of Touhoku dialects regionally) I have not been able to find any information re: if Sweden speaks any particular type of Touhoku dialect (or if it is more broad), but I will talk a bit about how his speech was transliterated in early scanlations before moving on to the other two. Because of how slurred/more truncated/less intelligible Touhoku accents generally are (and remember, Den/Nor/Ice did not make their appearance until well after Swe/Fin did!), likely early translators decided to chop off letters/make Sweden's speech seem less intelligible in order to convey that to readers. Unlike Norway and Denmark, Sweden also often speaks in shorter sentences/phrases in Japanese, and given that Finland canonically says "it's just hard to communicate with him" (see Running Away with Mr. Sve) that is also likely why early Hetalia scanlators before official translations of the comics were available (note: god this is making me feel old as hell) made the decision to give him the speech patterns that they did, and that ended up spreading through the fandom. When the other Nordics with their regional dialects dropped, given how Sweden’s vocal trait got translated into English and then fandom ran with it to varying degrees of intelligibility, I think the decision was made to not translate Norway the same way to cause less trouble in fanworks, while the Ibaraki dialect did influence how Denmark was translated (more on that below.

Norway speaks in a very particular Touhoku-family dialect within the series that is generally not well-reflected outside of the source material at all. The Tsugaru dialect is spoken in the northwest part of the country, specifically in the western part of Aomori Prefecture — Tsugaru dialect is a particularly unusual dialect, even by Japanese dialect standards, by being one of the most difficult dialects in Japan to understand (source). Even within Japan itself, people speaking this dialect often have to be subtitled on television for other Japanese audiences to understand, and there have been occasions where the dialect has been displayed on television to marvel at how strange and unintelligible it sounds to other Japanese speakers. Sometimes speakers of this dialect have been characterized (or mischaracterized for comedic effect) as French in Japanese because the odd sound and unintelligability of the dialect (source). Kumagi (2011) also states that "[...] within the Tohoku [alternate transliteration of Touhoku] dialects, Aomori [prefecture in which Tsugaru is spoken] dialect is at the bottom [of the hierarchy]," meaning that even among the already disrespected Touhoku dialects, Tsugaru belongs to the worst of the bunch in terms of reputability and respectability in Japanese perceptions. The Tsugaru dialect is a source of fascination, comedy, and disrepute/low standing all at the same time. While we don’t know why Hima selected Norway to have this dialect, I have a few proposals. First, this gives him a similar flavor to the other members of the Viking Trio while keeping him distinct — while Ibaraki is a more southern dialect geographically (for the region), Tsugaru is spoken both more north and more west than it. So if you map their dialects out on a map, their geographical location to each other also somewhat resembles their actual locations as nations to each other in the Nordics! Which is neat!

Second, Hima characterizes Norway has being slightly otherworldly and unusual largely due to his fairy-friends and such. But I also think that he likely chose Tsugaru for him not only because that makes him seem like he’s out of this world, but also because Japan is kind of fascinated by that dialect in particular despite not holding it in high regards by it too — sure, it is a hick accent, but it is an interesting hick accent. I think the fact that Japanese speakers sometimes liken the dialect to French is interesting specifically because of how Japanese people often view the French — French culture something that is often romanticized and idealized, and given how Tsugaru dialect can sound French-ish to Japanese speakers, that may be why Norway is kind of designed as the “pretty boy” of the trio by the fandom? In the same way that “Paris Syndrome” is a thing, where Japanese who go to France are often shocked at how their idealized version of France does not live up to the realities of the country (trust me it's real there is a wikipedia page lol), I think you can argue that in-universe Norway can be seen in a lot of different ways depending on the preconceived notions of how you view the dialect. If you view it as French-like and think it sounds interesting, you may find it alluring/beautiful. If you think it is crass, you'll look at it with disdain and disgust. If you think it just sounds silly and stupid, it is. If you think it is nostalgic (as Kumagi states that this is the only positive association this dialect has) and has a close association with nature/pastoral life because of that, it is. I think Norway in canon is characterized on all four of those axioms at the same time (if you really wanna pull canon receipts I will at another time) which makes this make a lot of sense to me as to why that dialect was chosen for him. Third, I think that given Norway was largely the worst off of the three kingdoms for most of history, it makes sense to give him the worst accent in terms of reputation/status out of all of them, too. Note: specifically, re: how Norway uses "brother" in Japanese is also interesting when referring to Denmark. What he is saying is "anko" (あんこ), which literally means "young man/eldest son" directly translated and is specifically only used to mean that in northern Japanese dialects. A good way to put it is it is like people in the U.S. use "bro" as a catch-all term for a similar-aged guy you are trying to get the attention of kind of informally, in the same way you can say "nii-san" to both mean "older brother" and also "guy who seems older than me I am addressing informally" I guess?? Funnily enough, which I didn't know until researching shit, it apparently also means bottom (homosexual) in prison slang??? Which may or may not be intentional I guess on Hima's part, and could also influence your characterization of Norway as a result. Finally we move on to Denmark. The Ibaraki dialect is characterized by number of things, but for our purposes I think that the two most important traits are the general lack of polite speech and the slightly faster rate of speech (unfortunately, my only written sources I can point to are wikipedia and TV tropes again, but I have heard this orally from someone a long time ago - I looked for more credible sources but couldn't find any easily). Because of it being debated as to whether or not is a true Touhoku dialect or if it is actually a Kantou (more southern/eastern) dialect, I think you can also argue that makes sense given Denmark is kind of the "gateway" into the heart of Europe geographically. People have generally translated this as him being excitable and more casual in the way he communicates to other people. I have been able to find less resources on this particular dialect and how it is perceived culturally, so I will sadly have to leave it at that, but from my understanding he is generally translated appropriately in the manga from what I have seen, with the -in' instead of -ing and ya instead of you to have it seem more relaxed/familiar/casual.

Final notes on Finland and Iceland: I cannot confirm this personally, but from what I can hear from Finland, it sounds like he speaks pretty standard Japanese to me, but take that with a grain of salt since I am not the expert here. Which, dialect-wise, places him as the odd person out (which fits with Finnish being the linguistic outgroup of the five) and also puts him as the relatable “stand in” for Japanese people learning about the Nordics — reminder he is the one who introduces them all in that one comic (see The Nordic 5+a) and even earlier comics (see Running Away with Mr. Sve), and we’re viewing the Nordics from largely his perspective). Since Finland in this series is largely characterized (and often deemed a poor stereotype by Finns) because of the Japanese perspective on Finland/Finns, it makes a lot of sense Hima used him kind of as a self-insert for Japanese readers/viewers to understand the Nordics from, as of the Nordic nations, Japanese folks are likely going to have the strongest familiarity/connection to Finland because of the Moomins. Please take the following information about Iceland with heaping grains of salt, but from a memory, I believe he also speaks the Tsugaru dialect, at least some of the time???? This makes sense he shares the Tsugaru dialect with Norway, as he’s Norway’s in-canon sibling, but I have a vague memory of a meta post I cannot 100% confirm or deny exists re: him only speaking the dialect/the dialect coming out more when he’s alone?? This following is speculation since I cannot confirm/deny that right now with my current abilities, but if it is true, would also be an interesting level to his character and make sense — it puts further distance between him and Norway if he purpsefully doesn’t speak the same way as his brother when his brother is present, and it also is reminiscent of my own experience living with people with discriminated accents who then mask their “less desirable” dialects in their teens/20s so they don’t get discriminated against as they move up in the world. Kumagi (2011) states that "Therefore, young female native speakers of Tohoku [alternate transliteration] dialects feel ashamed of their dialects and hesitate to speak them in big cities such as Tokyo. They are made to feel inferiority complex about their dialects, which are stigmatized as unfeminine". Since Iceland is very much characterized as a teen in canon, I think that this makes sense to do in the broader context of Hima’s choices. The specific reason as to why I state that I believe he speaks Tsugaru some of the time but not always is because there are some panels he speaks without it and some where he does seem to have an accent (HWS Chapter 112, relevant screencap below, this is the only time he speaks like this from what I can find in scanlations/translations, but it has to be a deliberate choice). Would love more info on this from someone who knows more about Japanese than I can do.

Again, please check the original post and/or notes for any future additions that I will add/edit accordingly (with notes as to where/when that happened) if any other relevant information surfaces, but I hope that was at least a little informative and interesting to read. I consulted a bunch of other resources too (read a bunch of papers I could find online), but a lot of those I read several months ago and no longer can find :x otherwise I would list them here.

Let me know if there are any typos/things are unclear, b/c holy shit this took a lot more effort and time for me to write up than I thought it was going to, and I am too tired to proofread it after spending several days on it. X_X

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

I am in the process of engaging with Marxist and Leninist theory, and it keeps me awake, and it is currently 4AM, my shift begins at 8AM, so I am sorry if this might be a bit rambly.

The one reason why I kept my distance from seriously considering myself a communist for quite a while is that historical materialism in its conceptualization of especially the early forms of human societiex seems quite... monolithic and racist? Like one of the members of the local communist party I spoke to sent me several texts from marxists dot org, and I had to put several down before ending them. I can fully agree on the notion that a social structure is more likely to propagate itself across generations and especially in conflict with other social structures if it maintains a tighter and more stratified hold over the means of production. But these texts speak of "mankinds ability to dominate over nature and build civilization" and... isn't the dichotomy of civilization versus wilderness one of the foundational building blocks of the superstructure that supports and maintains the process of accumulation that is the genocide and displacement of Indigenous peoples? Several of the texts go on to cite the existence of real, contemporarily still existing Indigenous groups as an example of hunter-gatherer societies "as the earliest and least developed stage of human civilization". I just don't know. I have for a long time considered myself a Fanonist first and foremost, and I find much use in applying materialist analysis to the foundational processes of Western modernity (settler colonialism and extractivist imperialism as forms of accumulation, for example). But I have a really hard time with the eurocentrism that seems to underlie quite a number of assumptions Engels and Marx make about history. I am by no means Anti-Civ, I just consider "civilization" and "societal development" as a discourse as deeply entwined with settler-colonialism.

You don't have to engage with this, I don't want to annoy you. My analysis is probably not complete, and you are under no obligation to educate me. I ask this all in good faith because the absence of consideration for the material situation of Indigenous peoples in a lot of the Marxists I have spoken to has been the principal thing keeping me away from Marxism. You are one of the first Marxists I followed on tumblr and I appreciate a lot of what I have learned by reading your posts. Keep up the good work.

The language used in many foundational Marxist and Leninist texts is undeniably chauvinistic and colonialist because - like everything else - they were written by people who were a product of their time and place, which in this case was for the most part Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It is certainly objectionable from our contemporary position after decades of Marxist anti-imperialist and anti-colonial theory has been produced by Indigenous and colonized peoples applying a dialectical materialist analysis to their conditions. However, this language does not and should not negate the validity of these same theories which have been used as the basis for the most successful movements towards decolonization in the past and present centuries.

[thescarlettbitch]

Worshipping Inanna / Ishtar

This is an informative post about how Inanna was worshipped, or believed to be worship, back in her time, and at the end I'll share how I worship her.

Ritual sex - her high priestess would have ritual sex (whether it was true sex or symbolic is unknown) with the new king to ensure his fortune.

Gender non-conformity - her cult was primarily composed of those outside the binary, and shows men and women adopting the opposing dialect and engaging in sex with each other.

Music and art - most of her myths are in the form of Hymns, and most of her followers were artists, musicians, or dancers. Specifically, war dances would be done in her temple.

Libations - a libation is the ritualistic act of pouring a liquid offering straight from a container onto the earth. In depictions, the person doing the offering was naked.

Unfortunately, due to the passage of time, many specific rituals have been lost. I've scoured and this is really all I can find about her ancient original worship, and a lot of it is disputed because no one knows what was a metaphorical ritual or an actual ritual.

That being said, here is how I worship her in the modern day.

Self-confidence - Inanna was not one to be meek, it is said by many experts and proven in her myths that she was headstrong and didn't care how she was perceived. To honor her, I wear whatever I want. I have a very alternative style and I used to fear people looking at me. She has helped silence my worry and in turn, helped me gain confidence.

Non-conformity - I'm nonbinary, and although my femininity is a major part of my identity, so is masculinity, and so is androgyny. Learning that she had a queer cult following was so liberating, as before learning that I felt like it was wrong of me to work with her. So every little thing I do that isn't in the social construct of the gender binary is for her.

Libations - lucky for me, this is one area of her ancient worship that can be done in a modern setting. I don't have a "proper" container, I just use a normal glass. I've done it with water, coffee, tea, lemonade, and even kool-aid.

Honey/Butter cakes - in, I believe, Inanna and The God Of Wisdom, Enki welcomes her with honey/butter cakes and alcohol. I have only made a honey cake once before and it was shit, but I plan on trying again soon to combine both into a honey bourbon cake. I know they didn't have bourbon back then, but it's a local good I can find and adds a personal touch.

Self love - my fiancé lives across an ocean, so some things we can't do together (both living with family and thin walls), so to honor and worship her, self love is a great way for those in similar situations and she enjoys it from what I've seen.

Offerings - usually dates, sometimes cherries, often lemonade or tea, and more recently honey whiskey. These offerings might not be "traditional" in style, but they work for me and her. I have a small glass from an old Costco tiramisu and an iridescent bowl I got half off at our local grocery, both have an 8pointed star on them. Usually I sit them out for days at a time, or at least over night, and then either ingest them or just toss it in the trash (any other alternative isn't doable in my current situation)

Music - I listen to a variety of music with her, songs about sex, love, anger, fighting, injustice. She loves it, and if you want more detail on this I have a post about the songs on her playlist here.

Driving with the windows down - I love driving, and I feel like doing so with the windows down is an easy multitasking way to cleanse myself and invite good vibes in. Usually I do this while playing her playlist.

Making posts - it may seem a little silly, but a way I honor her is keeping her and her family alive. They are old deities, their civilizations and worshippers lived about 6,000 years ago, and some of her family have had their names lost to time. Making posts about them helps get word out, and keep them "alive".

Digital temples - I play the sims 4 and I saw someone talk about how they wanted to make a temple to their goddess in the game, so... I'm making my own. And will probably have my sims "worship" her via a club. Some people don't see this as an act of worship, but I do. As @thrashkink-coven said in this post, the gods are as modern as they are ancient. I know she enjoys it.

I will go through and make a full post detailing specific UPGs (personal practice things not backed in historical fact) with her, for anyone interested.

[thebad-lydrawn-sanses]

May... may we get info on the super au? 👉👈

"Monsters", in local dialect, can refer to any being that wields magic and/or is made of magic

SOULs are a culmination of magic, not self

tw/cw (trigger warnings/content warnings)

long post

medical system neglect/trauma

eating disorder (kind of)

food difficulties

knives

violence/murder/death (all implied/mentioned)

body horror, sort of

Killer

first to join the gang

hand arthritis because you're not allowed to enjoy your remaining arm (but you get an arthritis glove so)

mask

transhumeral (above elbow)

knee disarticulation

only character who gets a prosthetic

weird soul shape is the power

very stable

very unstable

Cross

second to join the gang

hood

mask

hasn't lost any limbs (yet)

knife summoning

"scarf"

saw Dream ACCIDENTALLY crush a metal beam with one hand and now screams at the top of his lungs anytime Dream gets close to grabbing him

Dust

third to join the gang

motorcycle-esc helmet

and they were roommates

literally

the economy is in shambles

Doctor: well actually we can't give you prosthetics unless we do a procedure to ensure you're actually missing your arms

Dust: ...but i was born without arms

Doctor: the procedure costs over a thousand dollars and i don't have the authority to diagnose you if you don't do the procedure

Dust: what

Doctor: im sorry

when the medical system is useless you have to improvise

bad for teeth probably

adjustable length grabber tool

whoopee cushion probably

villain outfit

scarf

ankle length

got blue to cut off the arms of a morphsuit and sew the holes up

GASTER BLASTER

Random Civilian: WTF

glowy eye

has a lot of magic to burn

Horror

fourth to join the gang

villain outfit fits him when he grows to a specific height

hasn't lost any limbs

motorcycle-esc helmet

least scared of Dream (because he can run away fast enough)

sharp teefers

Dream

was originally meant to be a manipulative government-working hero who's fake personality reflected canon Dream's while the real personality reflected canon Nightmare's

psychologically broken from spending 500 years in a statue

the constant hunger pains don't help

huge lidless eyes and permasmile tend to disconcert people (uncanny valley)

head is always slightly tilted to alleviate neck pain (making it worse in the long run)

little-no fine motor control

anything in his hands will be held with every ounce of strength he has (which is a lot)

Swap

was sweet and relatively innocent when he started working as a hero (and was a bit squeamish about even hitting villains a bit too hard)

naturally black hair, dyes it constantly to match outfit

prone to trembling violently when angry

blurred for violence

Karen: <- interrupting Blue while he's trying to do his job

originally tried to replace screams with laughter to trick his brain into not panicking during high-stress moments and now ends up laughing hysterically when startled/scared

Villain 42: boo

Past Blue: hahaa! you missed!

Villain 42: boo

Current Blue: AHAHAHA

Villain 42: hey man wtf

Current Blue: i don't know why i did that

Villain 42: it's ok

sledgehammer

mental stability is stretched thin from constantly supervising a murderous human-eating being with the psychological state of a severely traumatised child and a paint-eating psychopath with severe memory issues

Ink

travels the aus where he's human and technically doesn't actually belong to the super au

dislikes water (makes him start dissolving)

likes this au because he doesn't have to hide his supernatural abilities

Ink: wh.. where are my vials

keeps mixing up the definitions of hero and vigilante because it's different from au to au

supposed to have a tragic backstory but he's always forgetting it

legally diagnosed with traumatic brain injury and ASPD despite never taking the tests

[carionto]

Humans and Boredom VI

Music is everywhere in the Galaxy.

All it takes is the simplest sense of rhythm, and a feeling. What that feeling is can be anything, from a total lack of feeling - true idleness, to the most profound and personal emotional states that no other will ever truly understand;

the rush from being on the prowl, amping yourself and your compatriots up by the sheer act of marching forward, to a mother's quiet tapping of a finger on the table, waiting for an answer, hoping it doesn't come, knowing what it will be when it inevitably does.

Repetition brings comfort, at least in the sense you what will come next. Whether it is something of a reassurance during troubling times, or excitement for joining along with everyone else during celebration, having some certainty of what comes next is incredibly powerful and essential for life.

What we could not predict is what we saw when we arrived at one of our moons Humanity offered to clean up after a small skirmish between some locals and pirates. An OCC ship had been tagging along this military escort. We know of the Orbital Cleaner Crews, their reputation, while only recent in Galactic circles, is unparalleled, so we gladly accepted their offer.

Now, this moon has an atmosphere. It's highly toxic and the surface is almost nothing but dust, so it has been deemed uninhabitable. It's only function, really, is the light tidal effect it produces for it's host planet, which is more or less just a farm and resort and retirement hotspot (with some secret military bases, but don't tell anyone).

Not long after leaving the OCC to do it's thing, we got a call from planetside about strange lights appearing on the moon at night. What the OCC were doing, or more specifically, the active cleaner currently on their 8 hour shift, flinging bits of space pirate ship debris at the moon. What the hell?

"It's fine, you said nothing lives down there, right? And we don't get a lot of atmosphere jobs, so I'm making the most of it. The air isn't bad enough to melt the drones I sent down there, and I've been, let's say, working on my magnum opus. Here, have a listen to yesterdays sample."

What she played was music. I think Humans call it jazz, with a mixture of symphony, and... heavy metal? A fascinating combination, and some of the notes were intense and booming. It did not sound like any instrument we had heard Humans use before, though it did remind us of a few Groh'rani bands, but that's just how their mouths learn to work in the upper lowland dialect.

"You're looking at it."

What?

"The moon and debris! Most people wouldn't think it, but based on the material composition, speed, angle and point of contact, orbital debris makes a lot of different sounds.

That sample specifically used: a triple impact of cockpit chairs; two laser batteries colliding a few meters above the surface; a hallway hitting the ground with its flat bottom first; another hallway whistling by as it shoots down open hatch first, the drone inside picked up some wicked air noises, didn't survive the direct crash though, would've loved to get the inside boom; and a barrage of twenty four diced up hull plates striking at quarter second intervals."

Hmm, well, that's certainly... creative use of available resources. And not breaking any laws or regulations either, huh.

"If you don't mind, I've still got some work to do. I'm in no rush with the piece though, the release is years away. I still need more low notes from carrier and larger ship impacts, plus it takes a lot of time to get authorization to get a planetcracker for a private job. I have to know what sound matter of all kind makes when those massive gravity hooks slowly squeeze and expand them. Man, I can't even imagine. So excited for when that paperwork goes through!"

Right, we'll leave you to it then.

Bye.

[biglittleluobo]

萝卜's Beginner Guide to Sichuanese!

大家好！

Welcome to the first in an unofficial series of posts where I will share the (very large) amount of new vocab, cultural experiences, and topics that I was introduced to while spending ~5 weeks in China!

Today’s topic is: Sichuanese! 🌶️🌶️🌶️

I won’t pretend to be an expert in Sichuanese (yet, please chime in / add here if you are!), but I spent >50% of my time in the province while abroad which gave me lots of exposure. It certainly took me by surprise at the beginning! After about two weeks I started to get a better feel for it. Here’s some tips and vocab for getting started:

1. Get ready to hear 得 (“dei” pronunciation) just about everywhere, this is an essential character thrown around constantly. Most common are these three words:

要得 (yǎodei) – yes, good

没得 (módei) – no

晓得 (xiǎodei) – understand, aka 明白

Sometimes it also just randomly appears, for example 得行 (deixíng) has the exact same meaning as 行 (fine, okay)! You just gotta expect it.

2. The majority of Sichuanese people do not pronounce the “h” in sounds like “ch”, “sh”, “zh”. This makes it very tricky for a student (like me!) who still internally looks up lots of words, so any “s-” word could be a word that starts with “sh-” OR a word that just starts with “s-”. Some examples:

橙汁 (chéngzhī) as "cengzi"

这儿 (zhè’er) as “zer”

什么时候 (shénme shíhou) as “sazisihou”

是不是 (shìbùshì) as “sib’si” (with the u sound in “bu” typically omitted)

3. The “an” sound is pronounced as in the English word “can” (as opposed to the usual pronunciation which is a bit more like the “awn” sound in “yawn”). Combined with (2), this has the very cute effect of turning 吃饭 (chīfàn) into something more like “cifaan”, and is something you should expect to hear a lot in a province like Sichuan! Just be aware that this applies to every “an”-suffixed word and can sometimes totally change how you hear it. In many ways I feel like this feature makes it sound a bit reminiscent of American southern dialects.

4. There are a few other Sichuanese alternative pronunciations to be aware of:

“Hu” is often pronounced as “fu”, leading 护照 (hùzhào) to sound like “fuzao”, or 西湖 (Xīhú) as “xifu”

“R” sounds can sometimes be pronounced with a “y”, e.g. 容 (róng) as “yong”

Most tricky is that the flat 1st tone is very rare, and many characters simply have different tones than “Standard” Mandarin. As far as I can tell (and have read online), there isn’t really a systematic adjustment for this, it’s just how it is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

5. Surprisingly, though Sichuan is a southern province, there are tons of erhua around! At least here, it seems like the 儿 ends up quite merged with the original word. Some examples I heard:

米粉 (mǐfěn) as “mifer” (extremely delicious breakfast option!)

老板 (lǎobǎn) as “laober”

没得 (módei) as “moder” (apparently extremely rarely heard though)

豆花 (dòuhuā) as “douhua’er” (quite common in northern Mandarin as well)

熊猫 (xióngmāo) as “xiongmer”

And finally, a few more Sichuanese specialties!

好(多)钱 - how much does it cost, aka 多少钱 (the 多 is sometimes omitted in quick speech)

啥子 (sázi) – what, based on the casual substitute word 啥 for 什么 (also often pronounced as sáza)

闹热 (nàorè) – lively, as opposed to the usual 热闹

可以 (kěyǐ), pronounced as as “kǒyǐ”

冒菜 (màocài) – a local variant of malatang (麻辣烫）

抄手 (chāoshǒu) – (v) to fold arms up the sleeves; (四川) wonton, dumpling

稀饭 (xīfàn) – congee, 粥, literally "thin rice"

干饭 (gānfàn) – regular rice, 米饭, "dry rice" to distinguish from 稀饭

嘛 (ma) - often heard at the end of sentences, just a local sound! Not (as I understand it) generally associated with some of its other meanings (like impatience, stating the obvious, etc)

See you next time. 下次见！

[honestmagpie]

SOME MORE RAZ THOUGHTS. (Based on my headcanons so don't @ me about things not being confirmed in canon, this is partially about him as an adult anyway so nyeh)

Raz is a perpetual immigrant.

Like, this boy never had a passport, he probably never even had a birth certificate. He's a kid born to a family of "Circus freaks" (a phrase thrown at them that they've adopted with pride, if only to keep the kids from letting it get them down).

Raz's Campster profile set his origin as Lithuania, which was likely just 'where he was born', probably not terribly far from what's left of Grulovia. (I headcanon that Grulovia is little more than a puddle now, but what remained of the land was absorbed by neighboring countries).

Grulovian immigrants scattered after Vallermo, and no-one really wanted to talk about it. It's 'the old country' and 'the dead country'.

After Psychonauts 2, Raz ESPECIALLY doesn't want to talk about it. Not only was his family refugees from Grulovia-- his Nona was the cause of it. (And sure, she's his great-aunt, not actually his grandmother, but that won't make him stop calling her his Nona. Nothing has changed, except that thinking about the home country hurts a little, now. For different reasons.)

Raz was always a wanderer. It comes with the circus background. He travels light, carries just the essentials. A house isn't a home, but it is a place to put stuff for storage, he supposes.

He's spoken English most of his life. Nobody notices the accent unless he's talking about his Nona winning at Gruloky, or how she makes a true Grulovian Herring Bread better than anyone he's ever seen. (nobody he talks to has heard of that, but he swears it's traditional.)

But every now and then, when he goes on missions, his partners hear interesting things.

A language that Lithuanians think is Latvian, Lavtians think is Lithuanian. Raz always claims to be from one or the other when identified as non-American. Otherwise, as far as they're concerned, Raz is just a local from a little hamlet they haven't heard of.

He speaks German in the office with Sasha and Otto. On one memorable occasion he spoke fluent Russian for a mission, and shrugged it off saying it was 'safest that way'. He claimed to be second-generation Russian with family from a nearby country, because he could tell they saw 'foreigner' but wanted to make sure he wasn't seen as 'too foreign'.

He knows a smattering of a bunch of other slavic languages, using several at a time for one sentence, simply because he learned the words but didn't stay in any one place long enough for a whole language to stick, so they got jumbled together.

"How did your Dialect get so strange?"

He spins tall tales that have nothing to do with the truth, of a parent who had a dozen mistresses or a funny anecdote about a language guidebook that had multiple languages without saying which translations went to which language. Anything but the truth.

It's not that he's ashamed of his family, far from it! He loves them, he's proud of them.

But there's nothing quite like admitting to someone that your Nona is a war criminal, or that you come from a family of 'circus freaks' and traveled a lot. He's seen how people treat immigrants. As far as they're concerned, he's a tourist. He's a local. He's from the neighboring region visiting family. he's second-generation.

But when he's at home, in the circus or in Psychonauts HQ, he's Raz. He doesn't have to figure out what accent to put on, or what he has to say to stay safe. He's just a kid (A twenty-something, but a kid nonetheless).

At least the Psychonauts gave him a passport.

[esutonia]

a short tutorial on writing majima-speak

So ya wanna learn how to write Majima-speak, eh? Well, I gotta say, you’ve come to the right place. Or maybe the only place? Dunno how many tutorials’re out there fer this shit. Anyway, sit yer ass down and I’ll give ya the scoop on how to write yer favorite fun guy from Kansai.

DISCLAIMER: I am NOT a fluent Japanese speaker. These are all the opinions/observations of an American whose only exposure to the Japanese culture and language has been through anime and video games. I have done my best to research all of these observations before just shoving them into this document, but I probably will make mistakes. Any actual Japanese speakers, please correct me. This isn’t supposed to be an educational guide on the nuances of Kansai-ben. This is only a general tutorial on how to portray the Kansai dialect in English writing.

What is Kansai-ben?

Kansai-ben (or Kansai dialect) is a Japanese dialect primarily spoken in the Kansai region of Japan. Pretty straightforward. Our good friend Majima Goro speaks a version of Kansai-ben that I lovingly refer to as Majima-speak. This is because he doesn’t speak true Kansai dialect—it’s a wobbly mix of Kansai and Tokyo (“standard”) that incorporates elements of both. Ugaki Hidenari, Majima’s voice actor, is from Tokyo himself, and doesn’t speak Kansai-ben natively. However, Majima has a lot of quirky Kansai-isms in his speech that make him stand out from other characters.

Therefore, the focus on writing Majima’s dialogue doesn’t have to be accuracy. We aren’t shooting for a 1:1 translation of Kansai to English, because: 1) that doesn’t exist, and 2) he doesn’t speak perfect Kansai anyway. The point is, we’ve got flexibility.

What makes Majima-speak different from regular Japanese?

There are a lot of cultural and historical nuances that I won’t get into, but in modern Japan, the Kansai dialect is perceived as more comedic or casual than standard Japanese. This is reflected in Sega’s localization of Majima’s voice lines: his are rougher, more crass, and generally funnier than other characters’ lines. If you end up taking nothing else from this guide, at least think rough, crass, and funny when writing Majima. It’s a good place to start.

So how do I write Majima-speak?

There are three tips that I keep in mind while I’m writing dialogue for Majima:

Make sure his lines show more emotion than other characters’ lines.

Use shortcuts wherever possible.

Don’t be afraid to get silly with it.

Let’s elaborate on these tips, shall we?

Make sure Majima’s lines show more emotion than other characters’ lines.

I’d like to use Kiryu as an example here, because he’s by far one of the stiffest-speaking characters in the series. For lack of a better term, Kiryu’s lines are prosaic—they sound more like they were written in a book than spoken by a person. Here’s an excerpt from Kiryu and Majima’s first scene together in Yakuza 2, edited for brevity. Pretend you don’t know what this scene looks like and focus on just the text.

Kiryu: It’s Kiryu. Anybody home? I know you’re here…Show yourself. Majima: It’s been too long…Kiryu-chan! You got any idea how lonely I’ve been since ya got outta the game last year? Oh, but I knew my Kiryu-chan would come home sooner or later! Kiryu: It’s been awhile, Majima-no-niisan. Majima: So, what brings ya here? Kiryu: The Tojo Clan…needs you. Majima: For fuck’s sake…What’s this BS now?! You’re a shitty comedian, Kiryu-chan. Kiryu: I’m serious. The Tojo Clan has never needed you more than now. Please.  Majima: No fuckin’ way. Kiryu: Please. Majima: You’re killin’ me, Kiryu-chan! I can’t stand seein’ ya like this! Kiryu: Please, Majima-no-niisan…the Tojo Clan is as good as dead without the Majima Family. Please!

Notice how Majima’s lines are much longer than Kiryu’s and noticeably sound like an actual person said them because they’re more casual. Kiryu basically repeats “please” three times, but each time Majima’s response is different. You’re able to tell that Majima’s incredulous, then annoyed, then upset at Kiryu’s request by the way he adds extra dialogue every time he says “no.” By contrast, you’re not really able to tell how desperate Kiryu is until he starts begging. The main disadvantage with writing is that you’re not able to convey images as clearly through text, so it requires more work to make a character’s emotions show through their dialogue. Majima’s lines are all about emotion, whether it’s real or exaggerated, so make sure the reader is able to tell how he’s feeling without seeing his face.

Use shortcuts whenever possible.

While conveying a character’s emotions through their speech often requires writing longer lines, this does not mean you should waste space or over-explain. The way you can balance this need for emotion with the need for casual dialogue is by using slang and condensing phrases.

English-speakers do this all the time in common conversation. We use contractions (I am = I’m), smash together words (What are you doing? = What’cha doin’?”), and add slang/idioms (“The hour grows late; I shall soon retire” = “It’s getting late, I’m gonna hit the hay”). The key to writing Majima-speak is to use every shortcut possible and then some.

If it’s hard to come up with dialogue on the spot, try thinking about how a guy like Kiryu would say a particular line. Let’s use the example of: “You always were the one guy I couldn’t read.” Then, think about what shortcuts you could potentially make to this sentence. It’s not much, but this sentence could be cut down to: “Y’always were the one guy I couldn’t read.” Doesn’t that already sound more like Majima said it?

Then, add some more emotion to this sentence: “Y’always were the one fucker I could never getta read on.” It sounds affectionate or aggressive, depending on how you spin it. And there you go! We just Majima-modified (Majimodified?) a Kiryu line. With the power of slang and shortcuts, you too can turn regular dialogue into Majima classics.

Don’t be afraid to get silly with it.

Majima’s a silly guy, so of course he’s gonna have his silly moments. The RGG localization team knows this and takes creative liberties to give Majima’s dialogue more life. My favorite example of silliness in translating Majima’s lines to English is this specific line from Yakuza 2:

Majima says: “Doya, Kiryu-chan? Kakko ee yaro?” Which literally translates to something like: “How’s that, Kiryu-chan? I look cool, right?” This line is dripping with Kansai-ben.

But the localization team chose to translate it as “Whaddya think, Kiryu-chan? Ain’t I red-hot?” Which I love. It conveys so much more about Majima’s character in the same amount of words and even adds some more context from the scene itself. They make a pun on “red-hot,” and while “cool” would’ve worked too, this would have made less sense. The point is, don’t be afraid to get wild with it. If it sounds cooler, is probably is. 

Finally, here’s a few miscellaneous quirks of Majima-speak and pointers that can help you get that much closer to imitating Majima’s style of speech.

Majima rarely uses “you” pronouns, instead preferring to use nicknames and titles like Kiryu-chan, nee-chan, oyaji, etc. This can be substituted for girlie, kiddo, buddy, idiot, etc. 

Don’t replace all the “you”s and “your"s in a sentence with “ya”s and “yer”s. It gets difficult to read if you abuse them.

Majima loves to swear. But again, don’t use them too liberally or you’ll sound like a 12-year-old who just learned what “fuck” means.

Goromi’s speech is a bit more cutesy than Goro’s, but she flips between masculine and feminine pronouns. For the purposes of writing Goromi that’s not terribly important, but keep in mind that she’ll frequently switch between masculine and feminine speaking patterns.

Don’t try to imitate Southern American English (if you aren't familiar with that dialect). I also wouldn't try it in general, but if it helps, it helps.

Edited to add: it's ultimately up to you to decide when/if Majima drops his accent. Personally I reserve it for when he's so emotionally vulnerable he can't keep it up, or when he's being so serious about something he just won't use it.

As a bonus, here is a brief glossary of Kansai-isms that I’ve noticed Majima using, with some examples of their use in context and some suggested translations. Most of these examples are pulled from Yakuza Kiwami 1 and 2, since that’s when he has the most speaking lines and has fully settled into his Mad Dog persona.

Ahō (idiot) = dumbass, bonehead

“Nishida, ya dumbass!”

Beppin (pretty) = stunner, knockout

“Well ain’t ya a rare dish?”

Honma (really) = damn, for real

“For real?! Who are you and what have you done with Kiryu-chan?”

-han (-san)

“Well, now it’s your turn, Legendary Info Dealer-han.”

Akan (not good/must) = gotta be, better not

“That’s why he’s gotta be strong.”

Uchi* (I) = ol’ Goromi, li’l ol’ me

“Just don’t fall too hard for me, okay?”

Ee (good/cool) = badass

“Ain’t I red-hot?”

Ikude (let’s go) = let’s do this shit

“Let’s do this, Kiryu-chan!”

Suman (sorry) = my bad

“This is my bad, Kiryu-chan.”

Anta (you, polite) = ya

“Y’know, up close…you’re pretty damn hot.”

Haw (not really a Kansai-ism but he does like it a lot)

“Haw?”

Nanyatte (what) = what the fuck

“Say what?”

Chau (wrong) = bullshit

“That ain’t what I’m saying.”

Dondon (also not Kansai-ben but he likes this one too. Basically “loud noise”) = clobber, beat the shit outta ya, crack some skulls

“It’s way better if ya fight it out.”

*Uchi is a stereotypical feminine pronoun used in Kansai-ben. Only Goromi uses this one. She also tends to waffle between watashi/ore pronouns.

[saelterlude]

started making this list early (11/02) even though there's no new performance until 16/02 bcs i accidentally found somethings (also bcs I was doing that cursed height ranking).

so here is link click musical clip list pt.3! (pt.1, pt.2, pt.4, pt.5, pt.6, pt.7 here)

37. 15/11/2024, this! the OG hug with Shu Rongbo and Wu Yihan! Back when Shu Rongbo still (attempts to) have canon accurate split bangs and ponytail (unlike now when he has, adorable, messy bangs and a hard-to-spot ponytail), and his jacket still fits lol.

38. 17/02/2024, Cai Qi being a menace at rock paper scissors, Cai Lu being a menace on the sofa (+dog hat), and Wu Yihan being a menace to Hong Guo and they struggle to hold hands?? during curtain call. Also I don't understand why does Wu Yihan look so tiny next to Cai Qi, like? I never thought he was smol before this??

39. 06/01/2024, maybe it's because I was very tired when I found this but Du Guangyi tossing the cushion away like that is exactly my type of humor.

40. 16/02/2024, Let me give you the loudest QL slap you'll ever heard courtesy of Wu Hanglu and Wang Yifei's shoulders. Also, behavior wise Du Guangyi maybe the least LG-like LG actor but god do I like his humor (pls he jumped up the table like a pocong lol, and the way he jump kicked Wang Yifei? He's a Gem.).

(Honestly, I think I can make a whole other list just full of the shit Du Guangyi pulls. He's very mischievous but also giving grandpa. But I won't because @shimmeringweeds is working on a gifset of it <3 Goodluck!!)

41. 21/02/2024, Cai Qi being extra heart hands <3 and Wang Minhui being extra aggressive.

42. 24/02/2024 day, I have nothing to say other than Guo Hongxu is really pretty. No, I cannot explain why i pick this particular clip. Look up stage door pictures from this day too, I swear he's just really pretty on that day.

43. 25/02/2024 day, a second Guo Hongxu clip. Look at him being embarrassed and becoming a loaf.

Counting down to the 100th link click musical performance! These are the official special encore recordings from the musical's weibo acc. So they're modified versions of the actual performance.

Since we're getting into songs outside the usual encore, I'll reference you to this post by @sgdlr-asdfghjkl with lyrics and brief explanation to each song, it's an unofficial transcript but it's the best we currently have.

These first two are "Words Can't Convey My Love" (M07)

44. 20/02/2024, Wang Minhui bets he can confess better than Bai Zhuoming better, sings the confession song and fails miserably. And poor Wu Hanglu accidentally got kicked by Bai Zhuoming.

45. 22/02/2024, You have to watch this one. You have Du Guangyi being the comedic genius that he is, cocky speech, dramatic pause, Lu Guang rizz, pathetic crying, failed confetti. You get the best Wang Yifei outfit, also he's skipping around the stage. And Qian Anqi can't help but laugh too!

46. 23/01/2024, We got "Faith of Friendship" (M05). Teng Chunpeng and Du Guangyi gotta do pushups if they fail to land a shot, and the ending is hilarious, do give it a watch.

*note: You can see how M07 and M05 are actually supposed to go in the bottom of the pt.2 list.

Next two are also of the same song, the extended ver. of the sofa song "Forget About It" (M03). TW: hanging/noose. They take CXS's "I'll hang myself here" joke and put it in the song.

47. 24/02/2024 night, actor/role swap stage! Wu Yihan played CXS, Deng Xianling played LG, and Ding Xingchen played QL. Wu Yihan was definitely having fun howling here. Also, disastrous cast introduction by Ding Xingchen lol.

48. 25/02/2024 day, the actors are the right way around this time with Guo Hongxu, Ji Xiaokun, and Cai Lu. But they're all using different local dialect! You can even see Cai Lu cheats and read from her phone.

49. 25/02/2024 night, "As The Saying Goes" (M08), where mother and son have a quarrel. Cai Qi as CX gets scolded x4 by the rest of the cast as CX's mama. Yes, that includes Wang Minhui putting him in timeout. But there's more!

50. 25/02/2024 night, a very important fancam on the performance above. It's shaky but pls pay close attention to Zhang Jiahao, should be easy, the fancam is focused on him. the wig, the very real fried chicken (i thought it was a fake, it wasn't), he was munching the entire time, and the chair, thank you very much sir. You can even see him offering a bite and getting scolded by Deng Xianling.

(very good, very funny, a very special one fitting for the 50th clip.)

That's all for this list.

Last time I added a bonus clip of Wu Yihan in Love Musical. This time you can have these two bonus clips of Shu Rongbo absolutely slaying it in Hey!Arizona Musical. IDK what it's about but the set and costumes are so damn cool.

[nientedenada]

The Peasant Princess Rewritten (by an Actual Peasant)

Developed from asks originally on @norieleanduril into a post for r/teslore. I rewrite one of my least favourite ESO stories.

Preface by Alys Thierry, Scholar of Breton folklore.

Some years ago, before the War, I enjoyed the rare privilege of making a journey into Valenwood as an interpreter of Aldmeri languages for the Imperial envoy, Falco Attius. As a student of folklore, I was excited to speak with the locals about their regional tales and customs. Sadly, very few Dominion citizens felt comfortable enough to speak to an Imperial stranger. I should have expected that. There were few times that we were not accompanied by a pleasant but uninformative justiciar.

I had some rare successes with a handful of mer who were either daring enough to brave our justiciar's glares or so unobservant they did not notice them. Most memorable among the latter group was an Altmer footsoldier stationed in Falinesti who not only answered my inquiries but a few days later slipped me a letter to further elaborate on his answers.

This curious document was written in the common dialect of the Isles, consistent with the author's peasant-class background, but is peppered with more formal words and expressions. It would seem the author is imitating more erudite authors, with questionable success. I do hope the author was not punished for his association with me. He was very helpful in expanding my understanding of Altmer culture outside the hallowed halls of academia or court.

_____________________________________ Most Honoured Nebarra Lady,

You asked me if the mer of Summerset actually enjoy stories like The Peasant Princess and I was sorry to say I had never heard of it. But after we spoke, I went looking in an old library and found it. It's a very old play and indubitably one of the worst stories I've ever perused. It begins with a beautiful young servant girl whose mistress dresses her up as a princess to go to a ball. There, she meets a Kinlord who falls for her, and then when she tells him she's not actually a princess, he rants at her for tricking him. Then she realizes she should just be a servant, because her family are servants. The End. No wonder I never heard of this story before.

Sure, this is how it might happen in real life. But that doesn't make it a good story! I suppose this play was commissioned by some smug official to try to show the public a good moral exemplar. Town-reeves always put on the worst public entertainment.

The tales the common people actually enjoy back home are stories about clever farmers or labourers who run circles around their landlords and priests.

So, I have decided it would be meritorious to rewrite this play’s ending so that it may educate the reader in full about our traditional Altmer culture.

I'm keeping this part:

Narrator: So great was Virenire's beauty, she caught the eye of the young prince. Forgetting all decorum, he went over to her and asked for a dance. And so the prince and the servant girl danced for a good portion of the night.

Prince: I've never seen such a beautiful mer. Tell me, who are your parents?

Virenire: Oh, dear prince, I feel I must be honest. My parents are poor peasants, and I but a serving girl to a wealthy mistress.

Narrator: Gazing upon the beautiful eyes of such an entrancing mer, the good Prince came to a startling realization.

Prince: Why, I've been tricked! Here I thought you were a noble mer of good standing, who I might court and one day wed. But you are a mere servant girl.

Now, this prince isn't going to marry a servant girl, of course, that would never happen. And he isn't a nice person, anyway, claiming she tricked him when she told him the truth the moment he asked. We need a better ending here. Virenire needs to use her brains and get what she deserves. It's time for her to turn in her Mistress.

See, the reason Virenire is at the Ball dressed up as a princess is that her Mistress wanted to show her how abject and low-class she was, even if she wore a beautiful dress. She was set up to fail by a woman who didn't care about her or the Prince’s feelings. But the main character of a fairy tale should be quick-witted, so here's my new edition of her response.

Virenire: Oh dear prince, I would never have dared trick you. I am only here at my Mistress' command. If she designed a slight against you, forgive me my ignorance. I am just a simple serving girl who knows her place and does as her lady tells her.

The prince then takes out his anger on that viper Lady Teryldil, who is called away to the capital to face the displeasure of the Prince’s Kinship. Virenire keeps all the jewels and the dress, which she later uses as a dowry to marry a decent young man she'd already had her eye on.

The story is now greatly improved, and think I will petition the village puppeteer to do a performance next time I'm home in Auridon.

You also wanted to know if there was a Valenwood version of this story. I asked my Spinner friend Galethor, since he is a master of all Valenwood lore. He says he has never heard such a story but if it was set in Valenwood, the serving girl would reveal to the prince that she is a long-lost offshoot of the Camoran family, the prince would marry her to secure his claim, and together they’d start a new Civil War for the throne at Elden Root.

He may have been joking, but doesn't that sound a lot like the chapters on Valenwood history in the official Dominion textbooks?

Your Honoured Informant,

[Name Redacted to protect the author's identity.] _____________ Notes:

The Peasant Princess, A Play in One Act is subtitled A demoralizing tale surrounding the Altmer's adherence to tradition. And boy is it demoralizing! It's a lesson taught to the people to keep in their place.

But I wondered if this is really the sort of story that the peasants themselves would tell. Enter Norieleanduril, Noriel for short, who previously has been my voice for the common Summerset folk. With Noriel I try to avoid the usual character tropes (mine too) of Altmer scholars, aristocrats and justiciars, and instead present a more down-to-earth perspective of life for the regular person in Summerset, who has some of the prejudices and beliefs taught by the priests and upper classes, but with their own perspective. (Though he's probably 100 percent sillier than most regular Altmer.)

[teine-mallaichte]

You know what irritates me in dragon age? Ok a few things but going to focus on one thing here, the languages... so we have all these diverse places, each with heir own fashions, customes, accents, etc but everyone speaks common (or trade which although in some codexes is said to be different seems to be basically treated interchangeably in the games).

Only a few places are said to be bi-lingual, implying that their own language is still used.

Also the inherent cultural differences between places are shown or mentioned and then totally forgotten about... In every game we get a diverse group of people with differing back grounds and yet there is almost never any language barrier of cultural misunderstandings, and even when they are they seem to be glossed over. Sten is about the only one I can think of where the cultural differences are even vaguely explored.

I want to see situations where characters are totally confused by what’s happening, where they don’t understand (or misunderstand) local phrases or dialects, where they fear making social forpars due to the inherent differences in their native societies – or simply in their upbringings.

Alamarri died out in Ferelden and now everyone speaks trade and/or common, fine, ok. But in the real world when this sort of thing happens people often try to reclaim the language later, so there should be places where the language is still used, even if only for certain phrases like the elves use elvish. Or maybe there are scholars who still speak it? I used to live in Scotland, believe me although Gealic is a “dead” language people still use it in certain places and situations, same in Ireland, and in Wales there are signposts, TV channels, and radio shows in Welsh… It feels like Alamarri should definitely still exist and have some sort of presence. Ok as you may be able to tell from my user name I may be biased when it coems to this example...

But the same goes for Ander. I think Anders should have been able to speak it at the very least, and the fact that many of the Darkspawns name come from Ander should be seen as more of a thing. In a way it would make some sense for the Grey Wardens to be taught at least some Ander during training due to their history.

And Alsahiria, given the politics and history of Seheron it makes some sense for this language to be slowly dying out, but I feel it would still be spoken in remote areas and likely by members of the Fog Warriors. Some may even see the continuation of the language  as a form of rebellion and carefully hold onto it. I wouldn’t be all that surprised in a fair number of slaves in Tevinter could speak it, using it as a way to communicate in secret.

Antivan… well to be honest Antiva is just fascinating in general, but their language is under used. It considered one of the most poetic and beautiful of Thedas, and yet it mainly only spoken in the rural and poorer areas. That seems like a shame… I mean yes the Codeses do imply that the higher members of society can and do speak it, but they also imply that in the cities common is almost exclusively spoken.

Did we even hear Zevren speak Antivan? I don’t remember him doing so, but I could be wrong.

I’m going to skip Avvar for now because there is a LOT to unpack there… same for Chasind and Ciriane.

The Drawves are said to have several languages, including Trade, and the language spoken specifically in Orzammar (often incorrectly referred to as Drawven), but to be honest I don’t think we know much about any of the Drawven languages… which is a shame.

Elvish is another complex one as it makes sense why that one is essentially lost beyond a few key terms and a few phrases known by the Dalish. However, I feel like it’s one that has potentially to be, at least partly, reconstructed… there are ancient elvish ruins and artifacts, though of course as with all reconstructed languages it would never be what it once was.

Qunlat, finally an actual language that although not used much is definitely a distinct language with significance and logical usage. We even get to hear it used a few times, though only for the odd word or line it at least makes sense.

Orlesian, again a language that is referenced and appears to be in regular use. It’s said that most Orlesians are bilingual. So it makes sense that they tend to use common around the player, but it feels like the language could be utilised more.

Rivaini… You know what we know far less about Riniani than I realised when I started this mild rant… They essentially have thie rown religion, and the only peaceful Qunari settlement that I can think of, but there’s language… very little seems to be mentioned. It would make sense that it is still spoken those given their general culture and identity, it is likely that they are bi-lingual in a similar way to Olaris.

Tevene… ok this one is my main bug bear… So it’s said in the codexes that Tevene is essentially a dead language, certain phrases still exist (many swear words) and it’s used by the elite as a show of status  but everyone mainly speaks Trade – which once again is meant to be slightly different to common. But just look at Tevinter society, the idea that they don’t retain their language, or a modern variant, at least for things like ceremonies, ritual, and events seems unlikely. The most we really hear of Tevene in Fenris swearing. Which is another thing... The guy literally only has memories of being a slave and then been on the run (with a short period with the fog warriors in between) there really should be some serious cultural/social/linguistic barriers there.

This… this got away from me a little and escalated lol, but ye… this irritates me probably more than it should… and I haven;'t even ccovered ALL the lagunages. Anyway, i this I think is why I keep trying to crowbar language and cultural differences into AUs.