#Fuzzy blobs of colour at best

[emeraldhazeidentity]

Is background aphantasia a thing, or do I just not have enough practice at drawing backgrounds to be able to visualise them/ draw them without references?

[bob-frank451]

Hey guys, I recently wrote a short story set in my humans are wierd universe. Enjoy

Freedom

    Archivists note to the reader: It seems you are viewing this item in the human language English. For this reason names have been transliterated, units have been converted, and the content has been ontologically translated. Apologies for any inconsistencies.

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    Proles is perfect. Like all terraformed worlds, it is the ideal host for life, carbon based life, in this case. As one descends from orbit there is of course the usual white-orange of re-entry , and then an expanse of vivid and colourful plant life. If one's arrival happens at night one can observe a vast network of twinkling lights. Proles’ space ports were built into the planet, a fact one might hear during the remote-operated landing sequence as trained professionals guide your craft in.

     As one descends through the opening in the lush canopy the first glimpses of civilization appear.

    Ziet is a volatus. In the larger stage of the GA, volati are common. In fact, they are one of the founding species, and are held in favour. On Proles, however, they are far fewer. 

    Ziet works as a logistics-technician for Space Port #3.It is dull work for most. There are not many people in the logistics wing, and the few there are do not tend to be very social. Even the word “logistics” is boring, not as boring as “math”, but far less interesting than “Repair Expert”, ”Biologist”, “Guard” , “Direction”, “Analyst”, ”Translator”, or "Thaumaturgist". She likes her job, however.

    Volati are voracious learners. Their brains absorb knowledge like a sponge, and they retain knowledge like the Gome horde shiny trinkets. While volatus love learning, what they love far above everything else is flying.

    All flight works through the action-reaction principle. A bird's wing beats the air, pushing the bird up, and the air down. In fact, of all flight in the universe, almost all of it functions this way, pushing against a “reaction medium”.

    Not volati, however. The entire universe is permeated with a thaumaturgic field, it is this field that a volati’s wings beat against

    Perhaps the word wing is a misnomer. Volati don’t have wings. If you were to meet a volatus, possibly in the street, or in a dwelling, your first impression would be of several dozen fuzzy tendrils. What a stranger would never guess is that it is these tendrils that link together to form their wings for flight.

    Ziet was flying. She loved flying. Flying was freedom. Earlier that evening she had arrived on site and received permission for a diagnostic fly-over. Now, with the air flowing across her face, and the full night ahead of her, the paperwork and bureaucracy felt worth her effort.

    She hung in the air, watching, milk-white eyes carefully analysing each path and system. She retrieved a lens, and peered through it. Below the canopy, blobs of heat moved back and forth. She turned her gaze towards the launch mechanism. System 30-06 was a little too warm. The fact easily slid into her photographic memory.  The system would need a checkup before the launch in a quarter cycle.

    She slipped the lens back into its holder and relaxed. Planetary launch systems were old tech. They had been perfected millenia before this planet was even conceived as a homeworld. It had failed only once since she was born, and that failure would have almost certainly been trivial to avoid. Her diagnostic flight was a safety net among a cloud of safety nets.

    The sun touched the horizon, and for a beautiful minute the world glowed. Sunset in the sky is the very best way to start the day, Ziet decided, sunset, and an early evening flight. Night shifts paid well in this part of Proles, too few nocturnal races.

There would be more volati, but the Administrators didn’t like new volati. They were always reminding Prolesian about the war, and new volati could disturb the narrative.

    Ziet grimmaced. There was a time when she was a firm supporter of the Administrators, and their choices. Her family fled Cyclum when she was barely able to speak, and at the time the Administrators had taken them in.

    As time progressed, she became less and less confident with their choices, and now there was this attack on an infant race, to keep them from joining the enemy, in the name of the greater good…

She shut her eyes, feeling the thousands of people stretching hundreds of kilometres all around her, life thrumming… Ziet forced her eyes open, and let the anger trickle away. A warm night, a deep red sunset, a clear night.

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    Ziet slowly drifted down toward the canopy. Of the imported vegetation on-world, nearly 500 species were chosen from the Volati homeworld, including their national favourite, the domus, known for its amorphous canopy, and tufted stalks.

    Once she was less than a foot above the canopy, she allowed herself to drop into a tuft, latching onto the branched stalk inside, and settling down to watch the launch. Something inside her cloak vibrated. She shut her eyes, and located the glowing dot, before selecting accept. The voice she heard is largely reported as hard to describe or remember. Tonight it was cheery.

     “Hello Ziet”

     “Hello… hello… oh. Hello Duister, very funny. My race doesn’t do humour, you know that.”

    “I know, just thought I would try. You know we have a launch in a moment, right?”

    “I am aware, in fact, I am watching it right now.”

    Her communicator vibrated, and an image appeared. In it the whole launch site was visible, brilliantly lit up by a ring of floodlights. Above their angle the entire canopy of the surrounding vegetation was shrouded in shadow, merging with the sky in darkness. Something caught Ziet’s attention. In the image one of the domus stalks was drooping, and just above the tuft there was a pair of glowing white eyes.

    Ziet squeaked and ducked.

    “Rude! Delete it!”

    “Already did, you reaction was hilarious”

    “Why did you even choose to call me in the first place?”

    “I knew you were flying for diagnostics, and wanted to double check before I pressed the button.”

    “It is not a button, it is an icon, on a display”

    “It’s a button”

    “Then press it then.”

    “Is it a button?”

    “PRESS IT!”

    “Ok, ok, I pressed it.”

    There was a dull groan, and a slight rumble, and then four deafening siren squawks, before the entire launch site became very quiet.” 

    It started gradually at first, a barely perceptible whine. The whine grew louder and louder, and higher and higher, climbing through the octaves, climbing out of the hearing ranges of the races on site, leaving them behind, one by one.

    Ziet perched and listened, following the climbing pitch. Deep below the earth an RPM sensor watched a massive flywheel. It passed its threshold, engaging a kinetic-thaumaturgic converter, and pumping tens of millions of enriched volts into a thaumaturgic laser.

    The entire site lit up as a brilliant pillar of light pierced into the sky. Suspended in the beam a tiny speck of steel and titanium was whisked up into the night. Any air that strayed too close to the pillar was carried up with it, creating a deafening whistle.

Moments after it appeared, the beam disappeared. Far above the atmosphere a little dot left the plume of gas it was shrouded in, and sped off into the night. 

    The entire site was suddenly quiet. Aside from a faint hiss of coolant, and the even fainter hum of machinery, it was as if there had never been any spacecraft.

    The system was winding down, that was wrong, were there not several spacecraft landing today? 

    “Duister, why is the machinery not winding up to receive the drop pods?”

    “Haven’t you heard. It’s delayed by nearly fourteen cycles.”

    “‘Haven’t you heard’ is a question, Duister, not a statement.”

    “If you say so. Anyways, they managed to capture two people from the attack, dragged them up into our ship, and had them secured onboard in a supply room, cause of course they didn’t have any proper rooms for prisoners.”

    “That does not sound plausible. If they were not prepared for prisoners, why did they capture them and bring them up?”

    “How am I supposed to know, they must know what they are doing”

    “That is also a question”

    “A rhetorical question, which is basically a statement. Anyways, they can’t use the OK drives with prisoners on board, so they will have to take the slow way back and they especially can’t use the drives with these particular prisoners, because the planet they just attacked is populated by deathworlders, AND the crazy thing is that these deathworlders aren’t even the same species, in fact they didn’t even find another one of the unique deathworlder on the planet, SO they think they may have swiped the ambassador for the only other recent deathworlder race within several trillion lightyears.”

    “Nice grammar”

    “Whatever. This entire situation is so cool.”

    “Wait, you said they captured deathworlders?”

    “Yep”

    “You also said they are bringing them here?”

    “Yep”

    “That is good to know. I need to start my post-launch check, goodbye.”

    “Bye”

    Ziet terminated the call, and catapulted herself from the domus stalk, soaring high into the air. Far below her a fog welled up from the launch site as nearly twenty tons of water started to condense. Above her the beautiful blue moon had just left its hiding below the horizon, and was making its way across the sky.

    Deathworlders! What were they thinking, bringing deathworlders to Proles? They were violent, they were dangerous. They couldn’t be reasoned with or talked to. Common knowledge said that deathworlders would kill you as soon as look at you. Why would anybody bring such dangerous monsters here?

    Why?

Note:

So this story is actually a chapter introducing a character in my book, so if you want to follow the growing story, or just want some context, you can find it here on ao3:

Ao3 Discord

[jadedandconfusedao3]

Until You Choke

Alecto awoke to the smell of ash. It was always the first thing she noticed these days, ever-present in this broken husk of a world. There was always something burning somewhere. She suspected the only reason there was anything left of Britain at all was that it rained most of the time.

Her eyes hurt, raw beneath gummed-up eyelids. When she finally peeled them open, they stuck slightly, sharp crusts poking into her skin. She couldn’t see very well, the world a mask of fuzzy shapes and blended colours. A dark blur was moving and darting around. She could hear clinking and the soft sound of her own ragged breath.

She tried to sit up, but the shadow instantly turned and pushed her back down.

“It’s too soon for you to be moving around.”

The stranger’s voice was high and lilting, like a bird. She didn’t recognise the voice, which wasn’t all that surprising. The last thing she remembered was the fire. She could be anywhere by now, depending on where the others had dragged her. She was surprised they had bothered.

“Here, have some water.”

The glass was cool against her lips s she tilted her head to drink, a balm over her aching throat. A temporary relief at best.

“Oh god.” Alecto choked out the words.

The girl – woman? – hummed in sympathy.

“Wait here.”

Alecto heard the stranger leave the room. Now that she was alone, she could hear the sounds of other people breathing. She turned her head and made out a bed next to hers, filled with a lumpy distorted shape on top. In the other direction seemed to be a blank brown wall. No windows or glimpse of the sky at all.

She really shouldn’t have been surprised.

The vague shape of the stranger returned and pressed a vial to her lips. “Here. This should help with the pain.”

The thick syrupy liquid tasted mildly like oranges and was nicer than any potion she had ever had before. She greedily sucked down the remnants, trying to get every last drop. The stranger chuckled, again in the high, lilting pitch. A girl. It must be.

“Who are you?” Alecto croaked out the question, the words sandpaper against her throat.

The girl hesitated.

“My name is Elizabeth.”

Alecto licked her lips. “Thank you. Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth didn’t get a chance to respond when the door opened behind her, and two more dark shapes entered. The shadow of the girl spun around to face them.

“Mrs Malfoy,” Alecto heard Elizabeth say.

“I heard talking,” Narcissa’s voice was low and hopeful, “Is…”

“No,” Elizabeth replied softly, “Your son is still unconscious.”

Alecto heard Narcissa make a pained sound and then there were only two shadows left in the room.

“Don’t take it personally.”

This time it was a man’s voice. It was deep but had a pleasant timbre that was soothing on the ears. Unlike Narcissa, she didn’t recognise it. He must be one of the people who lived here, wherever here was.

She struggled to sit up again but this time both of them came to push her back down.

“What part of it’s too soon to be moving around did you not understand?” Elizabeth scolded.

The man chuckled.

“Where am I?” Alecto asked as she struggled against Elizabeth's hands.

The man walked around the bed and helped Elizabeth push her back down. “Careful now or I’ll have to bind you to the bed.” Alecto made out a muddy red blob as he leaned in. “You’re in a bunker. It’s deep enough underground to be safe.”

Alecto barked out a laugh that made her head throb. “Nowhere is safe.”

She felt cool hands on her forehead pressing the sweat-soaked hair out of her eyes.

“Please relax,” Elizabeth pleaded, and the man’s voice joined her.

“She’s put an awful lot of effort into pulling you back from the brink, Alecto. Don’t let it go to waste.”

Alecto felt her eyes burn with the sting of tears. “What’s the point?” she choked out, “Why save me?”

Neither of them spoke for a long time.

“We’re an endangered species,” The man said gravely, “We’ve got to save everyone we can.”

[vinceaddams]

Top 5 WORST fabrics

1. that fuckign. synthetic knit that some of the sport coats at work are made of. I don't know what it's called but I hate it. It's polyester with barely any stretch and is. so. DENSE. Worst thing to alter. Damn near impossible to get a pin or a hand sewing needle through, and sometimes it makes the machine skip stitches. A lot of the sport coats are half lined, and if you bring me one of those ones with the side seams pinned to take in, I will just take in the centre back seam instead because I DO NOT want to hand sew the lining back down to both entire side seams on that horrible impenetrable bullshit fabric. Sometimes it has a woven looking pattern printed on it, as if to mock me.

Some of the shirts at work are made of a slightly softer version of the same stuff, and I once tried to mend a small hole in one of them using a zigzag stitch and it shredded the fabric and ruined the shirt. They had to go find the customer an identical replacement shirt, because the stupid fabric couldn't hold up to a few tightly spaced zig zags. Bullshit, bullshit garbage fabric. I hate it, I hate it I hate it I hate it. Everyone should stop manufacturing it immediately. Stop making it and destroy the formulas so nobody can ever make it again. It's not even a particularly bad texture to touch, relatively speaking, it's just a nightmare to sew.

2. Faux fur. To be fair, there is some decently nice faux fur out there, but most of it is just such an icky plastic-y texture and it sheds so much. So so much, and then you're worried about breathing in floating fuzzies of plastic. And it can also be really hard to get a pin or needle through the base fabric, depending on what kind it is. I remember I had some scraps of white faux fur that I used for craft projects as a small child, and it was like that, and there was some kind of finishing (presumably to help glue the hairs in place) that made the back of the fabric all crusty. It's the kind of thing that's awful to touch if your hand is even the slightest bit sweaty. I dislike polyester fleece for the same reason. No fleece sheets or pyjamas for me, ick!

3. Really loosely woven boucle. Who would invent a fabric that frays so gotdamn much? Look at this. (image source) Awful. Falls apart if you sneeze at it. Unpleasant texture, and not even nice to look at. (Yes I chose an ugly picture on purpose, but it's not a look I like even if it is in nice colours.)

Where's your structural integrity?? You can have weird lumpy fabric and still weave it decently tight! Especially if it's wool and you felt it a little bit. I shortened a skirt for a co-worker and it was made of similar stuff, and I was worried I'd damage it because it was so loose and shifty. What happens if you walk by a tree or something and snag a thread? Whole thread comes out and deforms a big patch of fabric? Well that's what you get for making all your threads just acquaintances instead of best friends. (I hate poly chiffon for similar reasons.)

4. Poly/cotton blends, because they feel like a betrayal. You could have been 100% cotton but you aren't :( Could have been a nice comfy shirt or nightgown that could eventually be used for firestarters once it's too worn out, but no, can't use blends for kindling because the polyester part melts into nasty little black plastic blobs. Not like 100% cotton or linen, which burns nicely and leaves basically no ash. And I hate pilling, horrible hell texture, and synthetics tend to pill way more.

5. Anything with glitter on it, because it's contagious. Small sequins are also bad (see blog post linked in poly chiffon line) but at least they're sewn on and only come off where you cut them. I think we as a species have moved past the need to glue glitter onto fabric, because it does not stay glued. We have foil print, and metallic ink, and beading and rhinestones and metallic thread and all kinds of other ways to do the sparklyshiny. No more sticking glitter on things that might go in the wash.

Generally speaking I dislike synthetics and Bad textures, though everyone's opinion of bad textures is different. I'm also not fond of stretch knit, but it has its uses.

[3dpe]

 Long time no blog! I come bearing one nice gif, and 4 scenes of awful software gore.

As per the What’s Next post, I’ve been doing a lot of tidying up. The engine is now running nicely in Python 3, and the Core app is ready as soon as I finish some server work - so stay tuned for beta testing opportunities :)

I decided to spend some time in the Battle2.5D plugin - now renamed StageFight - since I overhauled a lot of UI and scripting code recently. The top gif shows the current status - still some bugs to fix - and the other 4 were stops along the journey. My favourite is the 4 ton Fishka.

Longtime listeners may remember this post, where I was trying to work out the in and outs of Pokémon Black/White’s battle staging. Well, I finally got to the bottom of it - story under the cut.

So, in the 5 years since that post, I’ve learned a lot of useless information, and some of that is how to track footage in 3D, using Blender.

Since I never had any luck getting the battle scene geometry out, and I really wanted to know some more intimate details like the camera’s field of view and positioning, I thought I’d try some reverse-engineering. As usual with my grand ideas, the line between genius and lunacy is fuzzy.

I started to track some normal old emulator footage, but sub-pixel fuzz was making accuracy impossible. You need 8 perfectly tracked points for blender to calculate the camera angle, and I barely managed 4 wobbly ones.

I soon lost patience and decided to look into uprezzing DesMuMe. I did some research and found an old, Japanese, windows-only 2014 build that someone had hacked to increase the resolution for models. Perfect!

I tried to record some more footage in OBS... but it was compressed to hell, and the big blobs of colour that endeared me to this generation were not getting me any sort of precision to track anyway. Another bust.

I realised my best chance at accurate tracking was going to be to make it render in wireframe. This is a pretty easy switch for OpenGL - you can just add a single line of code. Maybe I could get the source code and recompile it?

After a lot of searching, I did find the source code - but it was relying on libraries compiled in 2012, and would not compile at all. I also got very upset with Windows and Visual Studio, and had to steam off for a few days before trying anything else lol.

Of course... when I came back, I discovered the Mac version of DesMuMe has a setting called “GPU Scaling Factor”...

I felt very stupid.

DesMuMe is actually very easy to download and compile on Mac. After a bit of fiddling, I got my 4x scale precision wireframes! Some tracking in blender, and bam! Accurate camera positions, angles, and FOV.

Then I spent three days getting very upset, until a passing stranger explained to me the difference between left-handed and right-handed coordinates, and the final piece of the puzzle fell into place.

At some point in the future, as part of the engine’s Help docs, I’ll post the .blend file publicly so that anyone can model custom battle backgrounds and plinths.

It’s very satisfying to solve a 5-year mystery like this. And also to know I never have to open Visual Studio again.

[lulaypp]

Alternate Ending to Chains

A/N: Originally, this was supposed to be the ending but I accidentally hurt Jason a little too much in one of my editing rounds and I be like...... hmmmm..... this might not go. But I adore this ending so here you go.

(Warnings for implied/referenced torture, mentions of injuries and hypothermia.)

-

Breathing was almost impossible as he felt a deeper darkness start to consume his mind. He probably should fight it but he was too tired and cold and... scared. Everything was numb and hurting. And dark. All encompassing darkness.

There was a sudden lace of agony firing down his back and shoulders as he let out a ragged, breathless scream. He was forcibly pressed upright against something as he struggled to curl in against the pain and cold, a moan falling past his lips. A soft warmth was wrapped around him as he vaguely felt a soft rumble by his head. It was... comfortable. And he found himself burrowing further into it with a soft whimpered whine. It was an escape from the presistent pain and cold. And he felt so tired that he could fall asleep. Something told him that he was safe now. That the danger was gone, whatever it was. He couldn't remember. Didn't really care.

Something touched his cheek and he flinched, causing his body to protest. His mind was dragged out of the sinking darkness as sounds registered in his head. Voices. Words. He wasn't sure if they were directed to him; he recalled people talking about him a lot, and not always tohim, discussions on how to best hurt him. An intimidation tactic, he's aware, but it had been unnerving.

It was when the thing he was leaning on rumbled again, did he noticed that it was a person. Panic seeped in again as he realised that an arm was holding him tight and secured. But he was stuck alone somewhere wasn't he? A coffin? No, it was a cold, dark box, freezing and blinding him. But it wasn't cold anymore, soothing warmth flowing from his right.

He opened his eyes to blurry shapes everywhere, a hazed fog obstructing his sight. He attempted to push away from whoever it was holding him, but was held tight and he whimpered when his struggles shifted his broken bones. He was suddenly aware of the pain coming from everywhere, dousing him in a fire of agony. He gasped as he tried to-

"-on! Hood!" His hand was snatched and he wanted to pull away but there were soft strokes across his aching fingers. "You're okay. Listen to me! You're going to hurt yourself. Please calm down. It's alright."

He shifted to drag himself away but a ragged scream tore through him as his back grated against something, lighting up thousands of fires, breaths coming up in hitched gasps and half-sobs. Fear started to mix with his panicked desperation and he was hurt and confused and scared and-

Something soft was pressed into his hair, followed by gentle strokes. There was the rumble from his right again, "Hood, you're safe. We found you, you're safe, alright? Shh... You're okay."

The fingers rubbing his knuckles stopped before tucking his arm into his chest and traling up to his throbbing jaw, softly touching. "You're alright, Little Wing. But you need to stop moving before you hurt yourself any further." It was followed by a whispered, "Can he- Can he hear us, B? I'm not sure if he sees us."

"Lad?"

Lad... Jaylad... Little Wing... His breath caught. They're- They're here? "Bru-" he coughed, trembling, a whine slipping out his throat as agony raged through him.

"Shh... You're hurt-"

Uncontrolable relief washed through him. "...Bruce? ...Dick?" He tried to look for them but sight was still hazed and he couldn't see them. Was he hallucinating? Dreaming? He moaned as hacks of coughs shook him again.

"Don't talk, Lad."

"You're hurt and you're going to aggravate your injuries."

He was hallucinating. Or was he not? Was this real? He frantically threw his gaze around, trying to find anything. The only things he could see were blurry blobs of colours. He couldn't even tell where he was. But there was light and that had to mean he was no longer trapped, right?

"I'm here, okay. We're here." A moving fuzzy blackness. Pointed ears. Batman.

"We've got you, Little Wing." He tried to follow the voice and saw blue against black. Nightwing.

His breath hitched as another sob bubbled up. Panic and desperation dissipated as the coursing agony crashed back into him in full force. He curled into Bruce's chest, shivering. Something was wrapped tighter around him.

"Hey hey. It's alright." The fingers resting against his jaw rubbed gently underneath his eye.

"...C-cold..." he moaned. "...Hurts..."

"I'm sorry." Another warm kiss was pressed onto his forehead and he leaned into it. "We're going to bring you back to the Cave but I will need to move you first, alright? It may hurt."

Jason whimpered but nodded tiredly. His vision went white as he was lifted, a choked scream leaving him. He screwed his eyes shut and held back the urge to scramble away. A wave of nausea brought bile up his throat but he forced it down. He tried to keep his ragged, wheezing breaths even and stayed as still as he could against the fiery agony, knowing that every movement would make it worse. It wasn't long before everything fell back into a throbbing lulled haze. Ingrained memory helped him find the crook of Bruce's neck and he buried his forehead into it, finding warmth.

"Hood? Jay?"

Jason blinked away the fog over his mind, making a sound of acknowledgement.

"I'm going to lower you into the car." This might hurt.

He bit his lip and nodded. He took a deep agonising breath through the jolting pain slicing up his leg, rattling his chest. By the time his mind cleared, he was leaning against something- someone, who was letting out a whispered string of curses. His brows furrowed as he tried to blink his vision back to clarity and attempted to turn to see who it was but was stopped by fingers brushing his forehead.

"Try to not move, Jay." Dick. It was Dick who gingerly had an arm around him and a hand sweeping bangs and radiating warmth. Wonderful soft warmth. His brother let out a small laugh. "As much as I would love a cuddle, I'm afraid you shouldn't. There are... too many injuries."

Jason did not want a cuddle, he hatedcuddling, what more with Dick. He wanted warmth and the stroking fingers in his hair to come back and the pain to go away and... maybe... a hug. He tried to voice it but could only manage a tired moan.

Dick pressed a kiss into his hair and some small part of him cheered when a hand carded through as well. He leaned into the touch, feeling his eyes sliding close.

"Jason, stay awake, alright?" A hand took his, softly rubbing the broken knuckles.

He groaned, turning his head to bury into Dick's shoulder. It wasn't really comfortable- why was Dick so short?- but it was nice nevertheless.

"Hypothermia," Dick told. "I can talk if you want. Will that keep you up?"

Jason attempted a shrug but apparently he didn't have the energy to do so. His throat felt too dry and sore. "Water..."

"Hold on." There was some scuffling before something was press to his lips and his head was gently eased back. "Carefully and slowly."

The little water that trickled in was warm and probably the best thing he had ever tasted in his entire two lives, almost leaving him lightheaded. Dick only allowed two small sips before pulling away, and Jason couldn't help the whine that left him.

"Shh... It's okay, Jay." He knew that. He just wanted water. "We cannot be sure of your condition until we get back and shouldn't risk it."

He huffed, before coughing with a wince.

He was about to drift off again when Dick suddenly started to talk, fingers still stroking his hand and hair. "Do you know that Dami is trying to convince Bruce to allow him to have a bird?"

He gave a minute shake of his head. He wouldn't be surprise if Bruce gives in. Not that Bruce had ever given in when Jason asked if they could have a pet. The old man even allowed Damian to keep a cow! In the Batcave!

"He haven't decided what kind of bird he wants to have but he was considering either chickens or ducks."

He was hit with the sad realisation that he had never seen a living chicken in all his life! Or, well lives, but point still stays. "Get 'im... chicken. Wanna see one..."

Dick chuckled. "Hear that, B? Jay also votes for giving Damian chickens."

Confusion flickered across Jason's mind? Bruce was with them? Where was he in the first place? Why was it so cold and hard to breathe? Why was he in so much pain? He groaned, trying to shift into a more comfortable and less painful position.

He hissed as his back flared up when the arms around him tightened. "Jay. Jay, stop moving."

"It- It hurts," he moaned, trying to move. There was a sudden agonising grating in his leg and a whine clawed out his throat.

"I know it does. But you need to keep still or you'll hurt yourself further." He felt Dick shifting before a hand guided his head to rest in the crook of a neck and he burrowed with a whimper, struggling to breathe properly. "Shh... Shh... It's okay. We're almost home."

Jason kept his eyes closed, tucking his aching arms closer to his chest, shivering. Why in the world was he so cold and hurting? What happened to him? He felt like he just threw himself into Gotham Harbour during winter, which happened once before when an unconscious Tim had tumbled into the water and Jason had to dive in to save his brother. It wasn't a pleasant experience and they both ended up with a worse-than-horrible pnemonia; Tim due to his lack of spleen, and Jason because he decided that he was fine and ended up nearly dying mid-patrol. "This... kinda stupid," he started, sucking in a breath, "but what... happened?" He remembered that he was chained in a room and there were some- four people torturing him. But Dick was here with him now and he recognised the rumble of the Batmobile which did not add up.

"You were caught, remember? Bruce and I got you out." Dick sounded concerned. "I'm sorry we didn't get there sooner."

"Oh." Jason screwed his eyes shut, wincing as a spasm jolted from his chest. "'s fine..."

"No, it isn't. We should have noticed that you were missing earlier. We- I kinda thought that you were just resting your arm and didn't want anyone to bother you."

And Jason honestly appreciated that because he would prefer it if his family would stop randomly popping up at his safehouses without his approval, or worse, without warning.

"But then you missed Sunday dinner and we grew worried because no one had seen you."

"Sorry for missing it," he mumbled.

"You shouldn't be sorry. Although you should have called for help. Why didn't you?"

He tried to remember how did he get caught in the first place. "Dunno. 'n't r'member." Was it an ambush? A trap? Pure luck?

There was a sigh. "It's okay. You're safe now."

A sardonic part of his mind scoffed. Safe could be really relative. Sure he was saved from his tormentors, but judging by the aches and agony inside and all over him, he doubted that he was out of danger. But he didn't voice it. "Thanks," he said instead, moving his head slightly and pressing what hoped was passable for a kiss to Dick's chin.

He could feel his brother glowing and vibrating at the gesture. And the overjoy was not fully concealed in the response, "Anytime, Little Wing."

[wensvol]

hi 🖤 wanted to send you this and this

I know depression is hard to deal with and sometimes we become hopeless because of it but that's a little parasyte in your brain and the things it tells you aren't true. "you're not strong enough" or "you'll never be happy again" ... all of those are lies. if you weren't strong you wouldn't have endured all of the years that have passed but you did every single day. if you think of life as a whole it's a pretty big deal and can become overwhelming but life doesn't have to be a blob. it can be a day. one at a time. we never truly know when the last day of our lives will be. not being here someday is granted. you don't want to not be here, you don't want to be in pain. but not being in pain isn't disappearing. there are still so many things you haven't lived that maybe will be the reasons that make you appreciate being alive again. there's so many people worth meeting and so many songs that you will have the chance of listening for the first time, or listen in repeat 15 times in a row, so many songs to dance to, so many books to cry to, so many movies to feel on the edge of your seat to, so many once in a lifetime happenings like every sunset and every sunrise because the colours will never be the same again, so many new foods to try or so many times where your favourite food will be the comfort your heart needs, so many ocean breezes and sweet scents to smell and so many cheek pains to feel from laughing so hard with people that make you feel warm and fuzzy inside, so many good naps to take and so many moments of pride in yourself for finishing something you have been working hard on... I really could go on. and I know everything I say doesn't really matter because I too feel like sometimes these things are hard to believe but I hope you know how cherished you are and how happy you make us for being here. I am so happy and grateful that you are alive and I know from the bottom of my heart you have what it takes to kick depression in the ass. If things get a little too much, take a break and focus on yourself. If you need a routine try to do something small everyday like taking a shower or going for a walk. it doesn't need to be much but consistency is the key. if you have a specific problem or are having trouble doing something try to write it down and deconstruct it, turn it into little steps and do one at a time. reach out to people close to you. sometimes we feel like a nuisance but those who love us are more than happy to hear us and comfort us when we're not feeling our best, truly. if you feel stuck, always remember that some steps take longer than others and that's ok. it doesn't mean you're in the same place. nothing's permanent and everything (and I mean everything) is subject to change. and whatever troubles you will pass. you will change too. and yes there will be bad days, there will be terrible days but never once doubt that something better isn't waiting for you because it is. never once doubt the impact you have on other people and how much you are cared for. never doubt how important you are and your strength. I don't know if you are being followed by a therapist but please talk to a professional so they can help you find yourself again. please don't give up. i am sending you a virtual hot chocolate with marshmallows an extremely cute squishmallow and a really big hug right now. and if you ever need to vent we are here for you ♡ I'm sorry you have to go through this pain, please let me know if there's anything i can do to help. you aren't alone!

anon i don’t know if you know but this is the sweetest thing a stranger has ever done for me. thank you so so much for taking time out of your day to send me something this sweet and supportive. i’m doing a lot better now, it’s just that in my current situation i tend to lose track of why i should keep going really fast. so i’ll definitely reread this daily. thank you so much. <33

[nautiscarader]

Smutember 15 - naked photoshoot

Anonymous30 May

gloria/marnie/victor 15

Smutember 15 - naked photoshoot,

Gloria/Marnie/Victor (Pokemon), E, 2.3k

(Ao3)

If you liked my story, here’s a Ko-fi link if you’d be so kind ❤️.    

=============

Gloria and Marnie giggled when with a loud "pop", another bottle of excellent Bluk berry wine was opened, and Victor poured his ladies another glassfuls. They figured that as their stay at the Dojo at the Isle of Armor was coming to a close, they might as well end it with a bit of a bang, and their room was filled with music celebrating the trio's holidays mixed with another successful series of challenges.

As more sweetness entered their bodies, the atmosphere felt hotter and hotter, despite the cool, night breeze from the ocean, and neither Victor, nor Gloria batted an eye when Marnie was the first to drop her jacket. She wasn't surprised either when by the time she undid all the buttons, she found Gloria in Vitor's laps, sloppily making out, watching as his hands dash underneath her skirt

But as her clothes joined hers, Marnie got an idea. She grabbed Gloria and quickly pulled her from Victor's needy hug, much to both of them protesting. But when Marnie whispered her plan into her ear, the disappointment from lack of caresses turned into a sly smile and another fit of giggles.

- You stay there - Marnie commanded Victor, who was about to stand up as his girlfriends walked away from the sofa, grabbed their discarded clothes and disappeared in the bathroom.

The two didn't let Victor wait too long, as they were equally eager to test Marnie's idea. And when a girl in black, punk clothes appeared in the doorway and began walking towards Victor, he thought he might have drank a bit too much. Gloria's hairstyle clashed horribly with Marnie's clothes, but neither of them minded, as Gloria swayed her hips on the way back to Victor's laps.

But she had a competition in form of Marnie herself, who tried her best to hide her pigtails underneath the green cap of Gloria, but with no success. The long, plaid socks as a sight Victor didn't expect to see, and when the two girls surrounded him, his mind got fuzzy once more as their pinkish dresses mixed into one blob of colour, especially when they pressed their chests against Victor's face.

With twice as much to love, his hands automatically dashed to their waists, and they were about to kiss, but he was depraved once more of experiencing his girlfriends, when Marnie promptly realised what else can they do.

- Hey, let's make some cards! - Good idea. - Gloria added - You know, we have paid for the bloody Rotomi terminal, we might as well use it...

This time, at least the two didn't leave Victor's side, as they called the Rotom-possessed camera to take their pictures. A short moment later, a whirring noise filled the room and two league cards fell from the terminal, with Marnie and Gloria's updated pics. But as Victor stared at Gloria's he couldn't help but notice one element missing...

And when his fingers slid across Gloria's slit, lost balance and was toppled to her back, she realised their jig was up, as her fall exposed her lack of panties.

- Shame, I hoped to see how Marnie's lingerie looks on you... - Victor murmured and dived his head between her legs.  

- You can see how I am rocking hers, though.

Marnie quickly lifted her - or rather Gloria's dress - exposing red plaid panties she was proudly wearing, though without the matching bra, as evident by two small bumps that were becoming more and more visible on her dress as her nipples hardened. Another bright flash of light temporarily blinded Marnie, and when she regained her sight, she was given one more card of hers, with her unashamedly lifting her dress up.

- Oh, you cheeky...

She pushed Victor once more between Gloria's legs, against her waiting, dripping sex, and as her thighs closed behind his neck, trapping him in the love lock, he knew what will come next. Marnie straddled Gloria, just so she could get a good angle and took a photo of Victor's face against Gloria's crotch, making her brown bush look like a very old moustache of his.

Gloria wasn't idle either. As soon as familiar panties came into her view, she dragged them down Marnie's legs, leaving both girls' snatches exposed and, when Marnie sat on her face, properly loved. Both Gloria and Victor didn't waste time, lapping at their girlfriends' pussies, which left Marnie the only one with nothing to do, at least not until she decided to lean forward and help Victor, when he had to take a breathe of fresh air.  

Marnie's head nearly collided with Victor's, Bouffalant-style, when Marnie decided to repay Gloria for her oral skills, and as the two ladies engaged in a sixty-nine, it was up to Victor to take a few new cards, with an updated number, of course.

But Marnie soon had a choice of what to caress, when Victor finally jumped out of his shorts, and was about to press his cock against the same entrance that Marnie was so lovingly making wet for him. The brunette salivated at the prospect of caressing both of her lovers, but just like Victor before, they were promptly depraved of that experience, when Victor got an idea of his own.

- Be right back, my loves.

Gloria had to wriggle out from between Marnie's thighs, interrupting their intimate connection, as they both stared at the bathroom's doors, and when Victor emerged they both laughed, just as he wanted to. It was a bit of a problem for male Poké-athlets competing in the championships, and Victor exemplified this problem perfectly. Through the league-sanctioned white shorts girls could plainly see his erection, hidden in one of his legs, desperately trying to get out.

Marnie quickly grabbed the Rotomi camera and snatched an innocent-looking picture that might actually had a chance of becoming an official one, if one was just looking at his face.

The young man quickly returned to his position, gotten rid of his shorts and shirt, and once more taunted Gloria with the feeling of his cock's head spreading her lower lips, rivalling Marnie's tongue and fingers. The feisty gym leader allowed him inside her girlfriend, feeling as Gloria shakes underneath her. And thus, the three began rocking their bodies in sync: Victor with his hips, Gloria still lapping at Marnie's sex, and Marnie herslef, kissing not one, but two of her lovers at the same time.

Marnie thought that with Gloria being loved by not one, but two people at once, she'd be the first to reach her peak, but it wasn't the case. There was something deeply erotic in watching Victor's cock ploughing into Gloria, especially as she could feel him underneath the skin of Gloria's underbelly, as Marnie concentrated on her clit. The brunette sneaked her hand underneath Victor's sack, giving him a quick massage that earned her a moan or two above her head. With each push of Victor's cock and lap of her tongue around Gloria's clit, the girl underneath her was trembling, moaning something, in her aggressive accent against her pussy, which only deepened the vibrations she was sending through her body.

And with Gloria tightening her grip on Marnie's tights, and Victor's rapid thrusts right next to her love's face, Marnie was the first to reach her climax, not as powerful as she might have wished, but strong enough to make her voice ring in their partner's ears...

Her eyes were filled with a flash of slight, and she instantly realised it wasn't just her pleasure overwhelming her. She saw a sly smile on Victor's face, and when she turned around and reached for the card, she saw herself, with her eyes closed and mouth agape, in a moment Kalosians call a blissful agony.

- Do I- Do i really look like it?

She showed the league card to Gloria, and she simply nodded, sticking her tongue in a cocky smile, still licking juices Marnie had flooded her with.

Marnie decided to step up her game and with her wobbly legs, she left the duo for another change of costume. When she left the bathroom a minute later, she found that her space ahs been taken, as Gloria's legs found their way to Victor's shoulders, as he was now furiously mate-pressing her. Marnie couldn't let that opportunity pass, and she made a quick photo of their heated scene, decorating it with a background of a Daycare Center, hoping it wouldn't be too prophetic, given his record of virility...

A moment later, Victor roared Gloria's name and filled her with his seed, dragging Gloria with him, as her pussy milked him of his essence and their lips and tongues mingled, sharing the juices Marnie has left on her. And only when the two came from their orgasmic high, they noticed their girlfriend sporting a new attire: the official dojo jacket... and just that, leaving her lower body utterly naked.

Both Gloria and Victor stared at her alluring, provocative outfit, before Marnie decided she wants the same piece of cake Gloria got. Straddling Victor, she pressed her pussy against his cock, feeling as it became harder and harder with each slide of her wet folds. His hands tried to undo the belt around her waist, but she promptly stopped. She wanted to make love in it... She allowed him to bury his face in the v-shaped cut , just so he could kiss her breasts, hidden behind the yellow martial arts jacket, while his cock was slowly coming back to full power. And just when Marnie felt it, she stood up, and turned around, knowing Gloria was ready too.

Marnie sat back in Victor's laps, sliding onto his cock, giving Gloria perfect opportunity to take a picture of half-naked Marnie bouncing up and down on Victor's cock. But Gloria wasn't just gonna sit idly; once the card was printed and joined the collection, she stormed against their mashed sexes and added her tongue to the mix, just like Marnie before, lapping at her clit and occasionally kissing Victor's shaft.

To make her job easier, Victor leaned back, tilting Marnie too, and that allowed Gloria to fully cover their joined bodies with kisses, knowing it will drive them both crazy and speed their way to heir shared climax. And she wasn't wrong; with Marnie bouncing for the second time atop one of her lovers, and Victor's cock being caressed by two girls again, the two reached their climaxes swiftly, though this time Gloria got to watch as Victor's cum drips down from Marnie's overflowed pussy... and she documented it, with another "click", of course.

The three joined in for a shared kiss and reached for their drinks, realising that in between each sessions they have drank it all. Victor looked at the small stash that Honey has given them as a parting gift that was supposed to enrich their life back in Galar, and asked a rhetorical question

- Another one?

========================

When the morning arrived, Victor woke up not with a hangover, but in a state of blissful light-headedness that only Marnie and Gloria could have provided. Their whole room, which they were supposed to clean by now - was filled with many clothes they have collected during their travels, showing how much fun did they have last night.

But try as he might, he could only remember some of it, but fortunately, the technology has managed to restore his memories after they have succumbed to the drunken pleasures. He looked through the cards, and with each one, the memories of their night were coming back:

In one of the cards, Gloria sitting on a chair as a throne, with both Victor and Marnie tending to her breasts; next was a vertical one, showing the sofa, with Victor in the middle and both girls spread on each of his side, so their lips could meet around his cock. Another series pictured him taking Gloria from behind, leaving Marnie to lick him and catch any cum that spilled from her girlfriend's pussy; a second variant swapped the girls around. Fifth card looked perfectly innocent, if not for the fact that Marnie was sitting on Victor's face, hiding his hair underneath her dress she put back on.

And of course, the collection was completed with cards in which each of the girls smiled at the camera, proudly wearing Victor's thick cum splattered all over their faces, just before they were about to kiss and clean each other's loads with a series of delicate kisses on the third one. Now that's what Victor would call an "ultra-rare".

And the very last one depicted the three naked lovers, washed off all their energy after a night of sexual marathon, sleeping together amidst the pandemonium they've made of their wardrobes. They all wore tired, but content smiles, as they clung to each other, in tight, loving embrace.

But something was wrong with the picture, and with his mind hazed, it took Victor a moment to understand what. And then he asked himself a very important question: if they were all asleep, then who took the picture?

With trembling hands, he flipped the card around and his eyes widened at the hand-written note.

"You can stay a few more days if you want, and use my wardrobe. I wouldn't mind joining you either...

XOXO, Honey".

[skaliciascribbles]

Disruptions Have Consequences

Moon Blossom week - A welcomed guest Moon Blossom au belongs to @somebodyalreadytookthis2

“What do you think of our new teacher? I think she’s kind of neat,” Dream leaned over the edge of the couch he was lounging on to stare at his brother.

Nightmare looked up from the book he was trying to read. “I dunno, she gives off this strange aura.”

“It’s probably that foreign magic she knows! I’m excited for her lessons. I can’t believe somebody in the court managed to get some highly regarded foreign mage to come teach us about other lands and magic.” As he spoke, Dream’s eye lights turned to stars that got a bit fuzzy around the edges as he spaced out trying to imagine just what they were going to be taught.

Nightmare huffed a small laugh at his brother’s behaviour and shook his head. His brother always was more willing to look at the positives in something. He, on the other hand, couldn’t shake that something was wrong. Despite this, he knew how to play along and be cordial and polite. All those years of strict discipline in manners weren’t for nothing, and he shuddered at the thought of breaking them now.

In light of this, he gave a small wistful smile to the book he knew he was about to be pulled away from. “If you’re so excited about their presence, then why aren’t you getting ready for the banquet that’s to be held in their honour this evening?”

A loud gasp filled the area in which the brothers were seated. “I totally forgot that was tonight!!! Nighty, why are we still sitting here?! We don’t have a moment to lose!!” The golden prince was to his feet in an instant and was quick to urge his brother to do the same. A vague sigh left Nightmare as he marked the page he was on and placed the book down for a servant to clean up later. With how much energy his brother was radiated, he felt it probably best to not try and remind him that they’d had lunch not long ago, and instead just went with what made him happy. The genuine smile on Dream’s face was worth the hours of fussing his brother and the servants in charge of their clothes were going to be doing.

It’d been a few weeks, and Nightmare knew he was a bit early for the lesson with the newest teacher he and Dream had. However, with Dream off probably watching the guards train and fantasizing about some heroic adventure, he was on his own and had nothing better to do than try and get an early peek at what they were going to be doing. The strange woman always had something interesting to share with the boys at least.

“Magistrate?” He asked as he knocked on the door. Apparently that was the word for teacher in her language.

He could hear things moving on the other side of the door before his the beaked wyvern appeared, staring down at him. “Ah, princeps Nightmare, you’re early.” Her head slid out into the hall to look around. “Where is your gold self?”

“Dream’s busy at the moment, but since I was free I was hoping it wouldn’t be much of a bother if I were to come to investigate what the plans for our next lesson were,” Nightmare responded, having gotten somewhat used to the strange quirks of his teacher’s way of speaking mixed with the accent she carried.

Wandering eyes returned their focus onto him, and his teacher’s head tilted back and forth faintly as she thought about something. After a moment her eyes flickered as she nodded. “I was hoping to do this with both brothers, but if I must do both princeps separately, I certainly must try.” Her head receded into the room, which Nightmare was only now was realizing was dimly lit. His brows furrowed faintly, but he kept himself from appearing too judgemental. Offending his teacher could mark the reputation of not only himself, but of his family and kingdom as well. “Come in, come in,” she ushered. One winged arm wrapping around him as he entered, and Nightmare couldn’t quite shake the thought of it being as though to hide him from view, or perhaps the room instead.

Inside the room was a strange sight, unlike anything the young prince had ever seen before. Candles that had obviously been burning for quite some time were placed on odd surfaces, and the furniture had been pushed about haphazardly to make way for strange lines and runes to be drawn in every direction. The bizarre markings even climbing up the furniture and walls, some even reaching onto the ceiling. It all seemed to lead back towards a central part of the room, like veins unfurled to spread nutrients or roots growing erratically to seek them out.

Something made a hissing noise, and his teacher pushed the door closed with a kick as she rushed off to tend to whatever it was. Not sure what else to do, Nightmare stepped carefully over lines and around the runes that looked oddly familiar, though he couldn’t for the life of him remember where from. In fact, all of this gave him a feeling as though he should recognize it, and he knew he must have read about something similar in one of his books.

“Drink.” A glass of a teal glowing liquid with large black spots floating about inside was pushed into his hands. Seeing as he’d had magic enhancing and boosting potions in the past to help test him, he figured it was just another one of those and took a sip to get a taste. “All,” his teacher’s voice was firm as she fussed with the placement of items around the room. He complied, tipping back the glass to drink as much as possible. A collection of something sweet and soft gathered in his mouth, not rushing down with the rest of the liquid.

If not for the strange pang that came from what he recognized as his magic reserves, he would have stopped to question it more. Instead, his mind was turning inward to try and investigate the strange feeling. That feeling wasn’t right. Unlike the expanding feeling that enhancing and boosting potions might offer, it was like his magic reserves were suddenly starved. Shrinking and being eaten by whatever he just drank. Panic settled into his bones as nothing came when he tried pulling at it for even a simple light to gather in his palm. His knees shook when he tried to move his legs, not cooperating with him in his want to react to this. Nightmare blinked heavily as his vision swam, making it take longer than he should have to notice the way the lines around the room were lighting up the same colour as the potion he’d drank with the colour crawling in towards him. Muffled noise filled his skull and the sweet taste in his mouth was growing.

Unable to keep himself up, the prince fell to his hands and knees, noticing after a moment of staring at it that he was above the place where all the markings met. Fear made his chest tight, and he couldn’t tell if the cold tingling across his bones was also part of that, or just another side affect. His bones also felt strangely sticky, and he could feel something sliding out of his sockets. A weak shudder shaking his unsteady attempt to keep off the floor.

A loud bang had Nightmare’s hands slipping from under him, causing him to, unfortunately, tip over. Everything became vague blobs of colour for a moment, and he squinted at the bright light from the now open door. The blue colour from around the room began to fade as voices screamed, though he couldn’t make out the words. It felt like somebody had shoved cotton into his skull through his right eye, making it even harder to see out of that one than his left.

With the last dredges of his strength, he managed to push himself up enough to lean away from where he was laying to cough. The sweetness in his mouth vanished. His shoulders shook as he registered a feeling of choking for a moment, but then it was gone. His chin felt went, but he didn’t have the awareness left to care. He let himself fall back to the floor, away from where he’d coughed though he couldn’t think of why that might be important.

He felt something warm touch him, only now realizing he felt cold. A vague moaning noise passed through his teeth as he attempted to curl into himself. His body ragdolled as somebody shook him, and a comfortingly familiar voice sounded nearby. If he wasn’t alone, then maybe it was okay to just take a short nap. His eyes felt so heavy.

When Nightmare eventually woke up again after being unconscious for a few days, he was met with a tired-looking Dream who leapt at him and began to sob. Both brothers were happy to be with each other and glad the other was okay, and Nightmare’s relief for his brother’s safety only grew when he was informed that the teacher who’d done this to him had been banished from the kingdom, as they’d been using a forbidden type of magic. He was never told what it was, but he had been fine with it since he’d thought that was the end of it. Sure, he’d been put through something scary, but he was fine now and at least him being there alone meant Dream was safe, even if Dream had been the one to find him under the influence of whatever had happened.

Things just couldn’t be that easy though. It didn’t take long for him and others to begin to notice something was strange with him. He could be fine for weeks before suddenly he’d feel as though in just a blink he’d go from one place to another with no memory of the time in between that was missing. It could range anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, but at some point, he even lost days to his strange affliction, and apparently nobody had been able to find him during that time.

The greatest healers from across the land were gathered to try and figure out what was wrong. They were meant to treat it. However, none of them could find anything wrong with the prince. He seemed perfectly healthy, which made the strange blackouts even odder.

One late night, he was sneaking about the castle just to try and work off some of the anxiety housed within him so he could sleep. By accident, he stumbled across some private court meeting that was made up of just his parents and a few select members who he knew had been informed about what his teacher had done to him. They spoke in hushed voices, as if scared that they’d be heard despite the fact that this meeting was so well hidden. Urgency and fear were thick in the air as he watched them, but there was also this resigned look about the room, as if they all knew something they didn’t want to admit. He’d been curious, but was willing to leave it at just something strange until he managed to catch his name in the quiet din. That made him pause and strain harder to listen. He didn’t catch much more before he had to scurry off before he was noticed, but it was enough to know that they’d been talking about him and his condition. The adults knew something, and they were hiding him from him. Surely they’d tell him if it was important though, right?

Late at night, a demon wandered a moonlight forest. Locals were scared of the supposedly enchanted woods, and he wanted to know why. It was to his pleased surprise that he came across moon blossoms dotting along a trail through the trees. Too curious about the strange discovery, he followed it.

A smile stretched across his face as his single eye flashed for a moment in delight. A twisted old castle lay abandoned in a hauntingly beautiful scene. Moon blossoms grew plentiful here, even climbing some of the more ruinous walls of the building. This place would be his. He would rule as a proper king over his lawless brethren. It was only fitting that a prince, quietly shunned and attacked by the world would take up the mantle of the demon king.

His laughter could be heard from beyond the forest, where the people tucked themselves further into their homes for the safety they hoped to find there. Little did they know that nowhere was safe from the demon king should he have a desire to go there.

[kurtty-drabbles]

Tail au (part 14)

N/A: Time of breaking the couple maturely.

@djinmer4 @dannybagpipesarecalling @bamfoftheundead @everykurt

Remy LeBeau is not a man, well, young man to be exact here, who one would ever associate having a normal relationship and while, yes, his relationship with Rogue has some ups and downs, in the end, Remy still can say that´s the healthiest relationship is with a woman he can´t touch...yet.

"Just because ah touch your check and you should try to kiss me right away...Ah can still hurt you" Rogue crosses her arms and Remy could say it was worthy. And to him it is, but, instead, the Cajun makes a question that was lingering in his mind.

"Cheri, you think a couple can only be a couple if they have sex?" and for once his question held no innuendo. And this is a question Rogue still tries to answer honestly.

"It isn´t?" Rogue asked back and remembers her mother, Irene Adler, and how she often kisses and hugs Mystique and Rogue associates love is this and is supported by how Scott and Jean often kisses and hugs each other.

Ororo and Dr MCcoy are often holding hands and call each other pet-names. There´s a maturity in their love that still impress Rogue-how they can talk about past lovers without envy or worry and Rogue can always hope to be like them if her relationship with Remy falls to the test of time- and she has yet to know how those two became an item.

"Ah remember my mother kissing .........Mystique with love so. Jean and Scott kiss each other all the time and Ororo and Dr.MCcoy are touching hilding hands...so yes, it is important to touch in a relationship!" Rogue concluded and Remy nods sagely seeing her point. How many relationships he had where he did touch the ladies (and some men) in the past?

"Yes, touching is cool, but, love is more than just kisses and touches. You can be happy without it. We can have a relationship without it" Remy states and Rogue does not seem to believe.

"Easy for you to say. I would like to be touched. I would like to be kissed" Rogue stops as Remy takes her in his arms and kisses her lips-her black lipstick is smearing his own mouth and he knows and does not care- and yes her powers activated.

"Remy?" she asked as the Cajun is breathing hard - taking a moment to put his hands on his knee as his energy are recharging- and looks at Rogue with his trademark smile. "Now you got a kiss and I´m still here. See?"

"You´re a dumbass!"

"Your dumbass, never forget that"

________________________________________________________________________________________

it has been a week since that encounter between Lance and Kitty and things are a bit strange-Lance is acting as if nothing happened, but, his friends seem to dislike her and she is not taking this well- as the boy puts his arms over Kitty´s shoulder a lot and she´s not comfortable with this gesture. She feels as if he wanted to mark her.

"Lance, what´s your favourite colour?" she asked out of blue recalling how Rogue asked this to Kitty and she realizes how she really does not know.  Lance chuckles at this question-still putting his arm on her shoulder not minding she´s not truly liking this gesture- and now replies.

"I hate blue. I prefer green..." he states as if is nothing matters and Kitty waits to see if he would add something more once nothing comes out. She made another question.

"Favourite movie? What you do when you´re not in Brotherhood?" she asked no longer being subtle anymore and now Lance´s arm is away from her shoulder as he looks not impressed.

"Stuff. Who cares?"

"Me? Why are we dating then? I know nothing about you and I bet you know nothing about me"

"Not true"

"Ok, what´s my favourite colour?"

"Pink?"

"...blue" she states calmly looking at his eyes now. "Why are you dating me if you never asked about me nor I asked anything about you?" and Lance is quick to respond.

"You´re pretty and a mutant!" and in his mind, that should be reason enough. The Brotherhood has rules and ideologies about mutants and humans, so, why risk with a human if a mutant is a far secure option?

Kitty bites her lips. Her tail is moving anxiously as her ears are too alert. Her eyes narrow at his eyes for a moment as she rose from the chair. "So it could be another mutant?"

Lance opens and closes his words. He mentions something, but, even him does not fully comprehend what he said and Kitty is not angry(in the movies, the lady would be angry, slap the man or give a passionate kiss) and then asks something who Lance was not expecting.

"Why Brotherhood exist?" and this angers Lance to the point his powers are about to make a notable presence. "I just wanted to understand what they offer. I want to understand why there´s a fight mutant against mutant" she explains herself and Lance is still not impressed.

"I´d not know. Ask your great Prof X why he didn´t help Todd or Blob"

"Will do, now, ask yourself why Magneto is leaving you all with Mystique that rarely is present and always lies," she says and leaves Lance alone as now his friends show up.

"What happened?" Pietro asked as Kitty is no longer there and does not seems to care at all. "a fight among lovers?"

"I don´t know" Lance replies and he wonders if his answer is to respond his question or to answer Kitty´s reply, yet, Lance is never one to introspection. "Let´s go!"

____________________________________________________________________________________________

Amanda caught a word-thanks to Info-chan and her amazing skills- that Lance and Kitty have a fight and the paradise seems to be over and now Amanda is thinking how to restore this, sure, she can´t go and whisper in Kitty´s ear how Lance is an eye-catch (nor she can grab her tail as much she would love it. One, it would make Kitty distance her and from her plans even more and two, fewer people tried and Kitty proved to have a meanie punch)

What I can do to stop them to break apart? Thought Amanda and she sees Lance alone and decides to atack- metaphorically speaking, of course-and runs to him.

"Lance, can we talk? I heard you and Kitty ..."

"It may not have more Kitty and I, Amanda, and I not sure why you care..."

"Do you want help to prevent this?"

"Why you want to help me?"

"I think you two look cute together"

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Kurt is not exactly displeased that Kitty and Lance have another fight, but, is not happy to see Kitty in such state-Scott mentioned that whatever happens in the future Kurt should try to be Kitty´s friend and support her decisions at the best he can-and while some movies he still loves to watch show a different picture...Kurt prefers to not be the jerk in any scenario if possible.

"Katzchen? Are you ok?"

"I...have you ever dated before?" and Kurt shurgs saying that he did go out with some girls and that he indeed was friends with benefices with Tabitha. "Why?"

"Lance is sorted, my first boyfriend. Well, was my first boyfriend...I´m not sure, we know nothing about each other and we make no attempt to know each other...we just make out-and, yeah, kisses are cool, but after that, we´re just two strangers" Kitty confessed looking at the ceiling and Kurt feels his heart tighten in his ribcage at this confession.

"Not sure if I´m the best to talk about love, yes, chicks dig fuzzies" and Kitty chuckles at that "but...love is still something new for me too. Do you want to make things work with Lance?"

"Not really, but, I want to understand...I want to understand why things are like this. Why we must fight with other mutants" Kitty confessed and shakes her head at herself. Her first relationship was not great and ended up pretty quickly and Kitty is philosophising about the morality of the X-men and Brotherhood.

Kurt blinks at this and lets his tail play with her own. "There´s a time that I would say how the Brotherhood is evil and we must stop them. I would say we´re the good guys and they´re the bad guys" Kurt affirms. "Now...I´m not sure"

Her blue eyes meet his golden eyes. "Elf, what´s your favourite colour?" and Kurt laughs now saying is blue and how he´s lucky to be born blue and Kitty offers a smile as she speaks again. "I like blue too. Is my favourite colour too"

Their tails stayed intertwined as their hand are so close of each other-ghostly touching without moving an inch- as they continue to watch the ceiling in peace at least.

[internutter]

Baby!Angus’s first Candlenights? Either present opening, Candlenights dinner, or watching Taako stress over Candlenights dinner

“Any particular reason why your spawn is in a highchair, babe?”

“Several,” said Apa, who was doing several things at once only moreso,  with extra anxiety on the side. Angus could tell. Apa always whisked or mixed faster when he was stressed about something. “One, he likes to be tall. Two, poor baby’s got a little of the separation anxiety and he’s happier when he can see what Apa’s doing. Three, we’re learning some words.”

“Any interesting ones?” teased Aunty Lup.

“Chop,” said Angus, who thought it was interesting to watch the knives turn things into chunks. “Chop, chop, chop... ‘lice! Chop, ‘lice, dice.”

“Aaaw, that’s too adorable. You’re sure I can’t steal him?”

“Go fuck’n make your own.”

“Duckie,” echoed Angus.

“Almost, sweetling. We got us a goose. Gooooose...” Which was a big pink blob somewhere beyond Angus’ range of focus. “Which counts as a dire duck, I think...”

“Only on that one world with the mega-versions of everything. Can Aunty Lulu help Ango make Maple Thumbprint Cookies?”

Angus jiggled in his chair and giggled in excitement. Cooking with Aunty Lup was the best! He got to be all kinds of messy and could play with the dough and it was always super tasty afterwards. “Map’l Lulu!”

“I think that’s a ‘yes’.”

“You’re still not stealin’ my baby, sis.”

“Oh, just make the stuffing, we’ll be making a mess. Won’t we, Ango?” Aunty Lup picked him up out of the high chair and gave him a cuddle as they danced around and she sang. “It’s a mes-sy bab-y Can-dle-nights, that’s how you know it’s fuuunnnnn... If the baby’s mess’d from top to toe, then the fun has just be-guuunnnn...”

Angus wriggled in her arms and laughed and said, “Map’l, map’l, map’l!”

Angus got to add ingredients to the bowl, and turn the handle of the sifter, and help Aunty Lup stir everything together. He got to squish the dough and leave handprints in it. He had to sit and watch as Aunty Lup added special sweet jelly to the handprints, and was yawning in his seat when they went into the oven.

“Aaawww... someone’s ready for Santa’s visit...”

“Merle better not give him a godsdamned potplant. Augh! My seasoning!”

“I’ve got ‘im, Dove. You worry about the food.” Papa had Angus in his arms and there was bath time and PJ’s and tucking in to his cradle cote with the most patient of the cats as a teddy bear.

There were delicious smells when he woke, and the cat who was with him oozed out into the bigger, greater expanse of the house tree. Angus crawled out to the opening of the larger cote to see a whole lot more grownups than usual. He could spot Apa and Aunty Lup in the kitchen, and the big shape with the blue legs had to be Uncle Barry.

“Heeeyyy, it’s the pipsqueak.” The big fuzzy shape resolved itself into Uncle Magnus. “Hello, Master Angus. Shall I be your transportation, this morning?”

“Up! Up!”

Uncle Magnus had a lot of Up to spare. Angus laughed to be yeeted briefly above everyone else’s heads.

“Oi! Careful with him...” said Papa.

“I’m careful, chill out.”

There were colourful things under the mountainous Candlenights tree. Angus could only see blobs, but they sure got his attention. They twinkled along with the fairy lights and had NOT been there the night before. One of the cats emerged from the depths over them, stretching as it went.

“Aaaah!” Angus pointed. “Colours!”

“Lots of colourful presents, yeah,” cooed Uncle Magnus. “The star of the show’s noticed the presents, and good old Santa has been here.”

“You guys owe me a new lumbar support,” grumbled Grampa Merle from under a host of cats. He was stationary, squishy, and warm. Three things the cats adored. There may or may not have been a bonus fourth with the things that were always in his beard. Angus couldn’t tell from this far away.

Apa dusted himself off. “Okay, the goose is getting cooked, we can hand out presents, now.”

“Pwesents,” echoed Angus.

“That’s the Candlenights spirit,” cooed Aunty Lup. “Gimmie love, gimmie lots, gimmie Candlenights trove.”

“That hardly rhymes, Lulu.”

“Grinch!”

Uncle Magnus put Angus down near Papa, who had distribution duty. “Oh, this one says it’s for a special little boy.”

“Must mean me,” joked Grampa Davenport.

“It’s from Santa,” rumbled Apa. “That means it’s for the baby.”

The present fit neatly into Angus’ lap, and the colourful paper was fun to play with. So much fun that he almost didn’t notice when some of it tore.

“Well, the wrapping paper’s a hit...”

“He’s not quite a year old, Luce. Let him discover.”

Oh! There were things inside the bright colourful outsides! This one was a bouncy ball! Angus tossed it up and watched it swirl with colours and sparkles as it bounced to a stop and, of course, got attacked by a couple of cats. He crawled after it, laughing. Trailing ribbons and paper that the cats pounced upon, much to the hilarity of all.

Hours passed by like that, with ripping paper and ribbons and so many fun things and cats pouncing and laughter and... and then, there was the feast. An entire table full to the brim with delicious food and a golden-brown roast goose and thumbprint cookies and things wrapped in other things and so much colourful stuff. Angus wanted to try it all.

He said, “YAH!” to everything, even the dreaded vegetables, because Apa and Aunty Lup made it all look and smell so attractive.

This just had to be the best day in the whole world!

[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 2]

[Be sure to visit internutter (dot) org for details on how to support this artist]

[the-squinkle]

Egg?

Big Deal often tried his best, but emotions would always be her favourite food. Fear, confusion, anxiety, shame. Delicious, delicious shame. She could smell anyone’s mood. A long time ago, she’d been able to use that to her advantage, but ever since Twelve got her grubby little fingers all over the Island, all she’d been able to taste was joy, excitement and the nauseatingly sweet love. It was absolutely repulsive, but at least in her home, she could block out all those tastes.

So imagine her excitement when she woke up to taste fear and shame on her tongue. Red claws raked underneath her fleece blankets, searching for the slightly sweaty lump that she allowed to crawl under her sheets the previous night. She opened her eyes, finding nothing but a cold imprint of her spherical minion at her side. She sat up, her nose high in the air as she traced the source of the smell, her red iris growing wider. She crawled forward on her hands and knees, chuckling under her breath.

“My, my. Big Deal, this may be your best work yet.” She paused, looking up to the gold cage hanging from the ceiling. A shivering, fuzzy purple blob rattled the chain that held it above the ground, partnered with familiar, pathetic whimpers. Her claw seized two bars of the cage, pulling it closer to herself to peer inside.

Big Deal sat with his back to the bed, his short body hunched forward. He flinched as she crept forward, his thick arms reaching forward to shield his lap and the other half of the cage. “I’m so sorry, Ma'am!” He whined, his eyes squeezed tightly shut.

Four red talons pinched the skin at the back of his neck, her other hand holding the cage steady. She threw the irritating little blob over her shoulder, humming to herself as she heard him hit the bed with a yelp, then tumble to the floor. Big Deal groaned weakly as he picked himself up, peering over the edge of the bed. His body jerked in absolute panic as the witch plucked a single, pale violet egg from his nest of newspapers.

“One, two, three…” She piled the eggs in the crook of one arm, pulling back and settling down on her bed, laying the clutch on her soft blankets. “Five eggs. I had no idea you could do this, Big Deal. Ha! Looks like you don’t have to go out to find my breakfast anymore!” She laughed, relishing the fear that clouded Big Deal like a delicious puff of cotton candy.

“Please don’t, Ma'am.” He grunted as he pulled himself onto the bed, reaching for the clutch. He yelped when his hand was smacked away, falling back to his butt with another whine. “I promise, it won’t happen again. I just got so excited last night.” His peach coloured cheeks flushed, and he lowered his gaze to his lap.

“What was so special about last night?” The witch picked up another egg, her eyes falling closed as she took a whiff. It reeked with shame, enough to make her mouth water. And yet… “Bleugh!” Her nose crinkled, throwing the egg in a quick, panicked motion. “Disgusting! Horrible! What is that?!”

Big Deal gasped, jumping up from the bed and snatching the egg from the air. He smiled nervously, bringing it down to rub his cheek against the smooth shell. “Y-You let me sleep in the bed.” He murmured through his blush.

“They’re all tainted! Covered in that sweet, revolting slime!” She shuddered, wrapping her arms around herself, scowling down to the clutch. “You’ve ruined my breakfast, Big Deal. They’re absolutely covered in love.”

“Th-They’re not for breakfast, Ma'am. They’re just a mistake, I’ll take them away.” Big Deal stammered, reaching forward for the clutch again.

“How did this even happen?” The witch smacked his hand again, pointing to the remaining eggs to make her point. “Why were you hiding these, making such a delicious fuss?”

“I can only l-lay them when I get excited, Ma'am. And when I was under the covers last night, you put your arm over me…” Big Deal blushed again, cradling his only safe in both hands.

“You made these all because you got to sleep next to me?” The witch blinked, sitting back on her heels. She glanced down to the clutch, reaching up to toy with a piece of her hair. “Gah, do whatever you want with them. I don’t care.” She closed her eyes, waving her hand dismissively.

“Thank you, Ma'am!” He gasped, then started scooping up his eggs. “I-It’ll only be for a few days, they don’t keep very long!”

“Won’t they hatch?” The witch frowned, watching him struggle to fly up to his cage and put them back in their nest with only one arm.

“No, Ma'am. They’re empty.” He called, assembling them in a proper, beautiful pile. He sighed, smiling down on his nest in pride.

“If you’re so protective of dead eggs, I wonder how you’ll react to real ones.” The witch tapped a finger to her chin, her lips spreading into a wide, manic grin. She stood up, laying her claws gently on the little gremlin’s shoulders. “I guess that’s an experiment for another day, hm?” Her talons dug into his skin, her cheek brushing against his as she smirked down to the nest. She laughed as he squirmed, drinking in the new, wonderful scent of shame and excitement. It was almost worth the tinge of love that infested everything he touched.

[lingthusiasm]

Transcript Lingthusiasm Episode 25: Every word is a real word

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 25: Every word is a real word. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 25 show notes page.

[Music]

Lauren: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics. I'm Lauren Gawne.

Gretchen: And I'm Gretchen McCulloch, and today we're getting enthusiastic about how every word is a real word. But first, it's almost our second anniversary! Whoa!

Lauren: Yay! Next month is our anniversary month. We like celebrating in November. It will be episode number 26. We can do maths, don't worry. It's not episode 24 because we launched with several episodes at once, but we are very excited about our anniversary month.

Gretchen: Yes! And on our first anniversary, we celebrated by asking you to help more people find the show, and you definitely came through. We ended up thanking almost 100 people in our anniversary post for all your recommendations on social media. And we saw a big bump in listeners, which kept going afterwards and even until now. And so, this year we want to see if we can thank 200 of you for recommending Lingthusiasm to people in your lives.

Lauren: That means we need your help. So if you know anyone who could use a little bit more language nerdery in their lives, this is the month to share the show on social media. Email people, text them, send it to your group chat, or just leave a well-placed sticky note for the person in the office. Writing a review or even just leaving a rating on whatever podcast app you use really helps us so much. It helps other people find the show, and it helps encourage other people to click Play if they happen to come across us.

Gretchen: And it helps your friends who need more interesting things to listen to, who want more fun linguistics in their lives. It helps them find something that they're going to enjoy. If you send us your reviews or tag us in your post on social media, we would love to see them, and we'll be thanking everybody that we know about in our anniversary blog post on lingthusiasm.com. We'll pick a couple reviews to feature there.

Lauren: If you would prefer to recommend us privately, please send us an email with the story of how you recommended us so that we can add you to the thank you post.

Gretchen: Or feel free to just recommend us and not tell us about it. You can still get the warm, fuzzy feeling. Plus you'll get to feel a warm, fuzzy glow of satisfaction both when you recommend us and when we thank you all together at the end. Even if you don't tell us about it, you can still feel that warm fuzzy feeling.

Lauren: Lingthusiasm is an independent show, but we are lucky to have a massive marketing department, which is all of you.

Gretchen: Aww!

Lauren: And we really appreciate when you take the opportunity to share Lingthusiasm with other people.

Gretchen: If everybody introduced the show to just one new listener, our audience would double.

Lauren: So this month, take the chance to recommend us or review us.

Gretchen: We really appreciate it, and so do the people who are about to discover the show because of you. 

We also have another way to discover the show, which is two live shows! In addition to the Melbourne live show, which is going to be on the 16th of November, we also added a show in Sydney on the 12th of November, so you can go to either of those shows. Just go to Lingthusiasm.com, look for the link that says Live Show to get tickets.

Lauren: We're really excited to be joined by Tiger Webb in Sydney, who is the ABC’s language researcher. Super excited to also be joined by Alice Gaby for our Melbourne show, who's a researcher at Monash. And we're also thrilled that we will have both shows fully Auslan-interpreted as well.

Gretchen: Yeah, so the topic of those shows is how the internet is making English better. We’re going to be talking about a few bits that are coming out from my book and from other things on the internet, and through texting, and emoji, and everything. There's no knowledge of linguistics or of previous Lingthusiasm episodes assumed, so feel free to bring your friends even if they have never listened to an episode, because then they'll have this whole back catalogue to discover. We're really looking forward to seeing you there and meeting people in real life after the show!

Lauren: Other quick exciting news, we have new merchandise, including adorable space babies, t-shirts that say, “I want to be the English schwa. It's never stressed.” We also have baby clothes that say, “Not judging your grammar, just acquiring it,” as well as new IPA scarf colours and now, IPA ties.

Gretchen: So you can get the International Phonetic Alphabet on various items as well as the clever baby riff on “not judging a grammar, just analysing it.” The baby is just acquiring it; I love this one so much. The space babies are so cute. Everything's coming up babies in the merch these days –

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: – including this month's bonus topic, which is about multilingual babies and raising kids speaking multiple languages. For this and 19 other bonus episodes – there are so many bonus episodes now! It's like twice as much Lingthusiasm. You can go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm and support the show and listen to all the bonus episodes.

Lauren: And while everything's coming up babies, probably about time I let everyone know I'm going to be having a baby in January.

Gretchen: What? What a coincidence! It actually really is a coincidence.

Lauren: That’s actually quite the coincidence that – it’s just baby month here at Lingthusiasm. We are definitely going to keep running all the way through December, January, February, and beyond, so no worries about that. We'll still have our main episode every month as well as your Patreon bonus episode.

Gretchen: Yeah, so we'll be recording episodes, and events, and interviews, and so on in advance to make sure that we give Lauren some mat leave from the show and make sure that everyone here still gets to listen to it. And I'm very excited to hear the results of your new, long-term longitudinal language acquisition project!

[Music]

Gretchen: Have you ever heard, Lauren, someone say, "That's not a real word"?

Lauren: Oh my gosh, like, so often.

Gretchen: All the time.

Lauren: It's just a go-to phrase that people throw around a lot. But when we started talking about this idea of what is a real word and what is not, it seems like such a simple throwaway line. But there's so many things that are happening when people say this.

Gretchen: Yeah, there's a whole bunch of different things that someone can mean when they say, "Oh, well, such-and-such, that's not a real word," and it seems like breaking those down individually can help us understand what's really going on here and why – Spoiler Alert – all words are real words. We're going to come back to that. We’ll keep coming back to that.

Lauren: We'll keep coming back to this very important point.

Gretchen: I don't like to do the fake Myth Bust-y thing where it's like, "It's an open question: Are there some words that aren't real?" Like, no.

Lauren: Absolutely not, spoiler alert.

Gretchen: I'm going to start with the answer and then we get to break it down and not leave you hanging.

Lauren: Yeah, so there's not going to be any "Surprise, everything is a real word" at the end of this. We're very happy to state that as a starting point.

Gretchen: "Are some words unreal?" I think it's one of those questions that's like – that’s like saying, "Are some animals not animals?" Well, you're already calling them animals, like, what are you doing with yourself?

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: Are some words not words? No!

Lauren: The thing I find really interesting about the different subcategories of "It's not a word" is it shows how we conceptualise words and how our brain processes different things in different ways. And how language is both this thing that happens in our brains but also in our particular social contexts and interactions. That's why in this episode, we're going to look at all the different things that people really mean when they say, "That's not a real word". Shall we take a tour, Gretchen?

Gretchen: Okay, let's take a tour.

Lauren: We've given them very serious scientific category names because everything sounds so much better when you give them a very official name.

Gretchen: Yeah, the first kind of thing people mean sometimes is the "blobfish."

Lauren: The Blobfish Reaction.

Gretchen: The Blobfish Reaction. So if I'm like, "Oh, yes, here's a blobfish..."

Lauren: What the heck is a blob – "blobfish" isn't a real word, Gretchen. You just made that up. You're not even sounding science-y by saying this is a blobfish. You're just looking at something that looks hideous and calling it a blobfish. That's not a real word.

Gretchen: It’s a cartoon thing. Blobfish are apparently real animals. I googled "strange animals" to try to come up with the best example of a strange animal, and the blobfish one – hands down, it is really weird and blob-y looking. You should definitely look it up. But more to the point, apparently blobfish exist. Apparently the scientific community probably also has a Latin name for them but definitely also calls them blobfish. This is something that, if you hadn't heard of it, like me half an hour ago, or like Lauren until two minutes ago, you're like, "That sounds fake."

Lauren: I just looked it up on Wikipedia, and they are apparently a fish from Australia. So now I'm feeling very – like I've failed as an Australian.

Gretchen: Oh no. But they don't have a name like "blubbo" or something?

Lauren: No, we haven't called them "blobbies" yet.

Gretchen: Ah, I think that's just a failure of imagination. But yeah, so sometimes your reaction is that's not a real word because: I don't think that's a real thing; I don't even know if that's a thing; or I haven't heard this word before.

Lauren: I felt really embarrassed because I was probably about 26 or 27 the first time I heard the word "isthmus."

Gretchen: Oh, okay.

Lauren: And I just did not have it – it turns out, we just don't have isthmuses in Australia. It's like a peninsula- type thing.

Gretchen: Yeah, it's kind of – I don't know what the difference is between isthmus and a peninsula now that I'm thinking about it. I'm sure someone does but off the top of my head –

Lauren: The difference is that I had heard of the word "peninsula" before I was 27.

Gretchen: I mean, I grew up on a peninsula, but I don't know – and there are, definitely, also some places called isthmuses – isthmae? Isthmapodes? What is the plural of an isthmus? I can't even say this word anymore. It's too difficult.

Lauren: Yeah, trying to have the first reaction of it – instead of being "That's not a word," trying to have the first reaction of, "That is not a word I have encountered yet."

Gretchen: Yes, I haven't heard of that. And how sad the world would be if I knew all the words already. Can you imagine not learning any new words? You'd never have that like, "Whoa, what is that" or "I learned a new thing now." Imagine a world where you've learned all the words. That's a terrible world!

Lauren: Imagine a world where the vocabulary was so finite that you'd run out of new words and experiences to have.

Gretchen: Oh, what a horrible word – world. You know, I'm trying to think of examples of this, because I have definitely heard of words far too late and been like, "Whoa, that's a real thing? Okay!"

Lauren: But also think of how quickly your brain managed to absorb them and accept them. I now very happily accept that "isthmus" is a real word and the isthmus of Oaxaca is a real place because my brain is capable of accepting new words.

Gretchen: And that blobfish are real animals apparently. I saw a graph once that said the average adult between the age of like, I don't know, 18 and 55 or something, learns one new word on average every day. We're still learning new words all the way through adulthood even though we think of learning new words as something you do when you're a kid, or when you're in school, or when you're acquiring a specific technical area, and yet we're picking up new words all the time.

Lauren: We're perfectly capable of it. So the important lesson here is that we don't know all the words.

Gretchen: Erin McKean has a really nice quote about this from her TED talk about redefining the dictionary. She says when people think about a place and they don't find that place on a map, they think there's a problem with the map. But when they find a word that's not in the dictionary, they think this must be a bad word. But it's more likely to be a bad dictionary. And I think that really sums it up. Okay, maybe a word is or isn't in a dictionary, but you've still found it in the dictionary, that is something that's just made by people, and they still have to acquire all the words themselves.

Lauren: That's funny how we go, "I don't believe you that ‘blobfish’ is a real word," but it's not like I'm going to sit here and go, "I don't believe you that Carlton is a real place."

Gretchen: Yeah, exactly!

Lauren: And I'm going to take you to Carlton when you're here because there's great ice cream.

Gretchen: Okay, good. Yeah, like, "Oh, Lauren, I haven't been to Carlton. I didn't know there was –" actually, there's a Carlton in Canada as well, because the Brits and colonies and stuff. It's the name of a University in Ottawa. So I've been to that Carlton. I'm like, "That's a real place." But my Carlton is not the same as your Carlton.

Lauren: Well, that is probably true in this case.

Gretchen: I think there's kind of a subset of this category which is using an existing word in a different sort of way. One of the things that I did for my very scientific research of this episode was I looked for the quote "isn't a real word" and "not a real word" to see what kinds of words people were saying were to be a word. So this is how we came up with these different categories as we took what people were saying about something not being real words and we kind of broke them down into the different types of things people do. And a couple that we came across people saying weren't real words were things like "learnings," which is, I guess, used in teacher jargon to mean: the learnings; the learning outcomes; or the learnings that the students will derive from this lesson are blah blah blah. I haven't heard "learnings" being used in that particular context, but I definitely believe that people could do it. And the annoyance that I was seeing with someone calling that "not a real word" was more about being annoyed with jargon, or being annoyed at using an existing word in a different sort of way that the other person wanted to be like, "No, that's not legitimate. I don't want to acknowledge that one."

Lauren: And again, it's this "I have never come across this before so it must be wrong" not "I just haven't had my brain expanded for this new category."

Gretchen: Maybe there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than have been dreamt of in your philosophy, or your learnings as it will.

Lauren: It's also very likely – you could almost reliably put money on this, but especially the ones that people keep coming back to, like "impact" as a noun is one that people complain about a lot. And, like, there’s over years of records of people using that word in that way. Generally, these ones become recurrent cycles of outrage when there's no good evidence that other people haven't been happily using it this way for a very long time.

Gretchen: Yeah, either it's been used that way for a long time or it hasn't been, but we could start doing it now. It's fine. People seem to pass along their annoyance with corporations, or with their boss, or with stuff of being kind of new to you and therefore opaque or difficult to understand, with the annoyance of the words themselves, when they're just – you know, the words are innocent here. They're just channelling your feelings towards the boss or the – you know, there's a lot of corporate jargon going on, or something like that. Saying "learnings" – if people are using it as a word; It's a word now. And "impact" has been a useful verb and noun for many hundreds of years.

Lauren: The next type of "that's not a word" reaction you find is an extension of that form that we just talked about, which is what we're calling the Funner Reaction.

Gretchen: When I came across this one, I specifically saw a lot of people using words like "funner" and "funnest" and self-consciously saying of themselves like, "This game is funner than the other one. I know that's not a word." So rather than using it as a criticism of someone else, like I noticed with the other kind of examples, people were using it as kind of a pre-emptive self-criticism, like, "Yeah, I know this isn't a word. Don't make fun of me for this, but it's something that I want to use right now." And I think that's slightly different.

Lauren: It's something you want to use, and it makes complete sense. So it's something like "impact" as a noun is completely codified in English. There's lots of examples. Things like "funner" or "necessariness" or "squishable" are all words that might not be in a dictionary, but we know what each of the individual parts of that are. We have English morphology that's sufficiently consistent and transparent that we understand what all of those bits are doing when we combine them, even if they're not codified normally to go that way.

Gretchen: Yeah, you can add "-able" to a whole bunch of words. You can say "squishable," or "huggable..."

Lauren: "Doughnutable."

Gretchen: "Laughable," "doughnutable." I think a lot more things should be "doughnutable" or "ice-cream-able."

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: Are the same types of things doughnutable that are ice-cream-able? Like, this is great! It's really cool that language can do this, and it's a shame to see people limiting themselves from this. Well, kind of not limiting themselves, but then adding this pre-emptive fig leaf because we're so used to limiting ourselves by not doing this type of linguistic play. It's there to be played with. Let's play with it.

Lauren: Especially if you are – it's interesting that people feel they have to police themselves on social media, which is a more playful and informal – maybe don't start using non-standard combinations of bits of words in, like, a job application or your Nobel Prize speech. Maybe stick with some more standard forms there. But if you can't play around with language on social media, it's a bit sad.

Gretchen: Yeah, well, and I think the question is not so much where is making up words or where is playing around with words appropriate, but where is play appropriate. You know, certain types of environments like a formal dinner or something aren't necessarily appropriate for playing with your food or playing with your words, but that doesn't mean that other environments aren’t appropriate for this. You know, there is a space for play.

Lauren: Look! I’ve made my soup doughnutable!

Gretchen: Maybe don't do this if you're having dinner with the Queen. Maybe don't. But that's a feature of a particular social situation, a broader social context, and I think we have the sense that language should be more rigid than even other areas where – you know, an experimental chef is admirable. Or if you're good at experimenting in the kitchen, that's a good thing you can do. And yet, people feel the need to apologise for experimenting with their vocabulary. Don't apologise! This is great. This is a feature, it's not a bug.

Lauren: I feel like there are some really expensive restaurants where you pay a lot of money to have ice-cream-ised to soup.

Gretchen: Oh no. It's worth experimenting with this. Some of them are almost so well used that they've taken on status of their own. A lot of people will observe, you know, you can be "overwhelmed," you can be "underwhelmed," but can you be just "whelmed"? Or why can't you be just "whelmed"? Some of these have been around for a while.

Lauren: Poor whelmed. It got abandoned by its cool, more morphologically complex children.

Gretchen: Yeah, its children abandoned it. But yeah, let's play with these things.

Lauren: So "whelmed" was a word. It was a completely normal word, and we added "under-" and "over-" and then we forgot about "whelmed." And now people say "whelmed" isn't a real word. Poor whelmed.

Gretchen: It was real for a while. Why can't it come back? But I think it's a matter of perception. If people start using "whelmed" again, people will figure out what it means.

Lauren: Like a horse getting into a unicorn costume and it no longer exists.

Gretchen: I think another reaction that I see from "Okay, is this a word?" or "Can this be a word?" is what I'd like to call the Schadenfreude Reaction, which is like, "Well, the Germans have a word for this."

Gretchen: We English speakers, we can't possibly, but the Germans must have a word for it. This one always – it’s a very particular kind of reaction because it's a sense of, "It'd be great if we could create a word. It would be nice if this type of thing existed, but I can't possibly do that as an English speaker. We need to go to another language and let them do it," which is a lot of what the history of English-speaking science and philosophy have done, is just go to Greek or Latin and make them create a word, and then borrow it into English, because somehow that seems more legitimate. These days, it's German. But it's the same sort of thing. And I think it's that we create words in English all the time and yet we have this sense of like, "Oh, maybe someone shouldn't do that," or those kinds of things. In particular, German is very good at creating words by compounding them.

Lauren: English is also good at creating words by compounding them.

Gretchen: Yeah!

Lauren: It’s just that we still leave a space there.

Gretchen: Yeah, I found someone saying that for some reason they thought "apple lovers" wasn't a real word. And I was very confused about this because surely all English speakers recognise "apple" and surely all English speakers recognise "lovers." So I guess they're asserting that "apple lovers" together isn't a real word. But you just made it. Congratulations! Now it's real.

Lauren: But it's got a space there, Gretchen, and I'm very anxious about the fact that a word is a thing that has a space on either side of it.

Gretchen: Well, maybe this is the point of the podcast where we have to say: For all that we're saying all words are real, there's another linguistic sense in which a word isn't even a linguistically meaningful unit because where you put your spaces is a certain kind of arbitrary.

Lauren: It's as much a product of the history of our writing system as it is anything else.

Gretchen: Yeah, and the same thing that gives German a word like "schadenfreude," which is literally just "schaden," which means harm or damage, and "freude," which means like happiness or joy, and they're like, "Oh, harm-joy." English could do this too. English does the same sort of thing by smushing together multiple words. There's just – we're more likely to leave a space there and less likely to shove them together. If you wanted to say "apple lover" in German, you could definitely do that. It’d probably be something like "Apfellieber." But you just wouldn't put a space there.

Lauren: Oh, that's right! We should use that in English.

Gretchen: But we could just say "apple lover"!

Lauren: So we could accept that having a space in the middle of something doesn't prevent it from being a word.

Gretchen: Yeah, and there's lots of – you know, dictionaries are really good at adding compound words even if they have a space in between them. It's just they seem like two words for the purposes of – if you're doing word count on your Word document, to be like, "How many words is in here," it will count them separately because they have spaces. But a lot of things like "greenhouse," or "chalkboard..."

Lauren: Smartphone...

Gretchen: Smartphone... You know, those started out with a space in between them and then we gradually got rid of the space. German just goes a little bit faster than us in getting rid of the space.

Lauren: There's also one that I'm sure you have an example from when you were, perhaps, growing up or when you move to a different dialect area, where someone essentially tries to shame you for using a form that isn't part of standard English or is less-used in standard English. We've called this the Ain't Reaction.

Gretchen: I think "ain’t" is the quintessential example of this, because it's so present in so many varieties of English, and it's so shamed in all of them where it’s present, and yet it's still there, and it's still alive and kicking in English. People write letters to the editor about finding it in dictionaries like, "Aaaargh, this shouldn't be there and it's because it's not real," and there's so much animus towards "ain't."

Lauren: How many decades and centuries of people telling other people "This isn't a real word" has it been and "ain't" is still going strong? It just makes me so happy.

Gretchen: Yeah, good job "ain’t," you're a fighter. Well, it starts out as a contraction of "amn’t," like "am not." "Is" goes to "isn't," but what does "am" go to?

Lauren: Amn't!

Gretchen: "It isn't," but "I amn’t." That eventually turns into "ain't." That's why there's no "amn’t" now. Except I think there is in a couple dialects, but not in most dialects. So "ain’t" takes on that function, but then once it stops sounding directly like "amn’t," it's like, "Well, I could just expand and work for all of the different pronouns!" It's very versatile. It's super useful. And yet it's highly, highly stigmatised. The way that that stigmatisation is expressed is, specifically, in this "not a real word."

Lauren: I think it speaks to the fact that "not a real word" gets used as this really broad, un-reflexive, unconsidered response to this thing that clearly is a word people use all the time and that the only reaction you have is "That's not a real word" instead of "That is a word that is considered informal and is probably best not used on this tombstone."

Gretchen: I’m sure someone’s used it on a tombstone. Yeah, I think there's a lot of nuance in that. And this is one of the examples where "That's not a real word" gets used to shut down discussion and shut down argumentation, especially like, "Oh, that's not a real word." "Well, I looked it up. It's in the dictionary." And then you're like, "Well, that's a bad dictionary now because it had this not-real-word in it." It's one of those things, like, you can't have an argument with somebody who won't at least acknowledge what would have to exist in order for them to be proven wrong.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: You know, if you say, "Well, would you accept that dictionary as a source"? And then you show them the word in Merriam-Webster or Oxford – all the dictionaries have "ain't" – and then you show them there, and they're like, "Well, I don't accept this as a source either." You're like, "Well, you just changed the goalposts now." Who do you accept as the ultimate arbiter for what is or isn't a word? Or is anyone who makes the assertion something isn't a word automatically the correct one?

Lauren: I just feel like if someone says to you, "That's not a word," it's really unfair that the burden of proof falls on you.

Gretchen: But I'm like, "Here's a store that's there." And you're like, "Nope. Not a real store because it's not in the yellow pages yet." I'm like, "But you can walk into it. It's a store that will sell you things." They're like, "Nope." No one's ever asked, "Oh, not a real word? Well, define a real word. What is a real word?"

Lauren: I guess the challenge here is – the easy response is to say, "Well, here's evidence that it is." But often when people are saying this, there is something here that's about language policing, and it's often cover for some kind of classism, or racism, or it's particularly picking on the language of a particular subgroup, or it’s covert sexism. So there is something here that's unpleasant, and I wish people would stop doing.

Gretchen: But even when I agree with them, it's also still an argument made in bad faith.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: You know, it's not – if someone says, "Well, you know, this isn't a word," even if I agree that this was probably a typo that someone made, or this is something that maybe wasn't appropriate to a particular context, legitimising the argument that "not a real word" is a reasonable response to anything is still a problem, even if the core thing that they're getting at might have some utility in the context because it's so undefined, and it's such an easy way of covering for classism and racism and all sorts of these kinds of discriminations that people smuggle into language.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: The problem is the incorrect ideas about how language works, not the particular words being used. Another type of word that people have the reaction "It's not a word" to is a word like "smush" or "smoosh" or "aaaargh."

Lauren: So things that are more representative of sounds, or reactions, or feelings that are often informal, or onomatopoeia.

Gretchen: Yeah, and I think this begins to get into like, "Oh, it's not a word because my computer gave me a red underline when I tried to type it." There are lots of different ways to try to spell "aaaargh," and I definitely don't think computers, generally, have all of them. That doesn't mean that a particular one isn't going to be the exact one you want right now but, thinking about those areas, we're trying to represent certain moods, or certain feelings, or certain onomatopoeias, or certain other kinds of sounds that exist in nature or in the depths of our soul, like "aaaah." These are hard to write adequately.

Lauren: And a lot of onomatopoeia in English is a bit not-standardised, and people kind of play with it a lot. In other languages, it can be more codified into the language. If you think about onomatopoeia in terms of the sounds that animals make, we have lots of codified ways of doing that. You know, pigs "oink" and ducks "quack," and that's very codified. You'll find "quack" in the dictionary. And you'll probably find "oink" in the dictionary. But, essentially, language is very messy at the boundaries in the way that what is a word and isn't a word – and you can't just be like, "Well, it's got a space." That gets a bit fuzzy at the boundaries. The same with this. So like "smush" might be more of a word than "aaaah," which is perhaps all that easy to say. And, you know, "haha" is more of a word than [laughing noise] in terms of laughter.

Gretchen: Yeah, but there's a certain kind of intentionality to them too, which I think distinguishes even something like "aaaargh," which can be spelled in a whole bunch of different ways, from something just kind of randomly mashing on your keyboard, or having your cat walk across your keyboard –

Lauren: Or actually screaming, which we won't do for the sake of your ears.

Gretchen: Yeah, no screaming on this podcast. If you'd like to scream, please provide your own scream here. But there's a certain conventionalised way of representing those, and they have a certain recognisability to them and language-specific way of doing them, even if there's also this flexibility around them as well.

Lauren: At the opposite end, moving back to things that do fit within our expectation that they only have spaces on either side, they usually have relatively regularised spelling conventions, but people get very upset about them, is when brands make forays into word creation.

Gretchen: Oh dear.

Lauren: And because – I think one thing that upsets people about this a lot is – when it doesn't feel forced, we don't think about it. And we accept a squillion brand names into our lives, and they just get absorbed, and we’re completely fine with it. And then there are times where it just feels very forced, and so...

Gretchen: It crashes.

Lauren: I have named this the Tronc Reaction when people say "That's not a word." So "Tronc" was the Tribune Publishing Company. Quite a few years ago they rebranded themselves to Tronc: T-R-O-N-C.

Gretchen: Yeah, which was just – they got kind of widely made fun of for it on social media as just like, "Why have you picked this name? It's so ugly. It's plunky. It's tronc-y. It's not a good name."

Lauren: And there is something about – you know, it doesn't have a particularly standardised English spelling – it's T-R-O-N-C – but it definitely fits. It's not like it's against the kind of sounds that you can put together in English.

Gretchen: Yeah, and it definitely sounds a bit, I don't know, like, plunky. It's a bit clumsy-sounding. But we've incorporated so many weird words into English, things like Xerox or Kleenex, which have a lot more X’s than a normal English word does, or something like Google or Twitter, which sounded very frivolous when they were first introduced, and now we're just like, "Oh, yeah, of course, I'm going to google it." And it doesn't seem weird to us because we're so used to them.

Lauren: And I think it's partly that we're very happy to accommodate new words when we need them. So Google sounded pretty silly when it started, and now we talk about googling things to the point where, if I'm trying to find something in a document, I'll sometimes be like, "Oh, I just have to google for that word." It's like, I'm not even in the proprietary search engine. It's just become the handy word. So if the language needs that word – whereas I don't talk about "Bing-ing" anything.

Gretchen: But, yeah, like, "I’m going to go Yahoo it."

Lauren: I don't have any particularly strong feelings about either of these search engines.

Gretchen: But one of them is definitely a lot more verb-y.

Lauren: One of them has definitely verbed into English a lot more happily.

Gretchen: I even use "Skype" to indicate for general video calls even if I'm not actually using Skype’s platform.

Lauren: Oh yeah, it doesn't matter what platform I'm using, it’s still – that's become generic.

Gretchen: It's like, "Hey, Lauren, do you want to Skype?" And then of course it's gonna be on Google Hangouts or something. It's not gonna be on Skype.

Lauren: Which is problematic for companies. You know, when their brand gets used generically, it means that they lose some of the brand copyright power. But I think it shows that language can be quite accommodating. I mean, English does love adding new words all the time. Whether they come from a top-down company or not seems to be a bit arbitrary. But it's the thing about when we need them.

Gretchen: Yeah.

Lauren: You know, Skype came around as the first video platform that I use.

Gretchen: It's when we need them or when – it's something that people decide for themselves kind of bottom-up and not, I think, something forced down. Another one that I had a lot of fun with seeing people do on this was – so somebody replied to the Pope's Twitter account, where the Pope was talking about the Beatitudes, which is – it's a thing in the Bible, I don’t know. Being like, "'Beatitudes' isn't a real word." It's like, "Look, guys. This is the Pope."

Lauren: I probably can't tell you what a beatitude is off the top of my head but, frankly, if the Pope is talking about them, he probably thinks they're real a word.

Gretchen: Yeah, yeah. Like, "Is this really the hill you want to die on right now?" Like tweeting at the Pope being like, "This obscure bit of theological terminology, which you have spent your entire life studying, is not a real word." I also found somebody saying that "gubernatorial" is not a real word? And I agree this word looks weird.

Lauren: I kind of almost feel compelled to agree. There is some story here where "governor" and "gubernatorial" came into English through slightly different – There's always the French-from-Latin paths.

Gretchen: Okay.

Lauren: And like, one of them came in via Latin via French, and one of them snuck in straight via French or something. And that's why "gubernatorial" is – it should just be "governatorial" if we're going to have a regularised system. But English, like any language, can handle quite a bit of irregularity in the vocabulary.

Gretchen: Yeah, and you get the impression people who are using arguments like this – you know, they're not really saying to the Pope like, "I don't trust your command of the English language," especially the Pope’s social media officer, who probably isn't even the actual Pope. What they're saying is, "This is an argument that I can make that" – like, we're talking about the beginning. You can use this as an argument even if you don't believe it, because it immediately shifts the burden of proof to the other person to say, "No, this is a word and here's why," and not to you for being like, "Well, why don't you think so?"

Lauren: It kind of reminds me of a subset of this, which I like to think of as the Mansplain Reaction, which is where you say something's not a real word because it conflicts with your worldview, essentially.

Gretchen: I really like an example of this that I found, which was somebody saying that "conspiracy theory" is not a real word.

Lauren: Oh, okay.

Gretchen: I know!

Lauren: Why is "conspiracy theory" not a real word? Is it because it has a space in it? Gretchen, we've been through this one.

Gretchen: No, somebody said it's a made-up mind-control word that causes one to dismiss the facts of any investigation. I was like, "Oh, okay."

Lauren: This is a pretty prototypical example of a Mansplain Reaction.

Gretchen: Yeah, so it's like, "I don't like the concept expressed by this word, so I'm going to attack the word not the concept," or say like, "It was unnecessary to name this concept because I don't think the concept is important or I don't think the concept exists."

Lauren: There's no such thing as "mansplaining." We’re just having a conversation in which I am aggressively disagreeing at you.

Gretchen: Right. I think the big problem that I have with the "not a real word" argument is it implies that there are some sorts of words that aren't real. But by the time something exists for you to say, "It's a kind of word," that's all it takes to be a real word.

Lauren: And words are words by consensus. No word is a real word. Every word has to start off by a group of people agreeing that this string of sounds has this particular meaning. And some people in some contexts have more authority in naming these things. You know, I will probably trust a doctor in telling me whether a word means a particular thing in terms of medical usage. I will definitely trust someone to tell me what their name is rather than trusting myself.

Gretchen: Yeah, I think there are certain kinds of authorities. A person is the ultimate authority on what their own name is, and, by that logic, linguists should be the ultimate authorities on whether words are real or not. And what we're telling you is all the words are real.

[Music]

Gretchen: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on Apple Podcasts, iTunes, Google Podcasts or Google Play Music, SoundCloud, or wherever else you get your podcasts. And you can follow @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. You can get IPA scarves, IPA ties, and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter. My blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com.

Lauren: I tweet and blog as Superlinguo. To listen to bonus episodes, ask us your linguistics questions, and help keep the show ad-free, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm, or follow the links from our website. Recent bonus topics include: hyperforeignisms, multilingual babies, homonyms, and an inside view of the gesture and emoji conferences. And you can help us pick the next topic by becoming a patron. If you can't afford to pledge, that's okay too. We also really appreciate it if you can rate us on iTunes or recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life.

Gretchen: Especially this month when we're doing our special anniversary round of recommending to help the show grow! Lingthusiasm is created and produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our audio producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producers are Emily Gref and AE Prévost, our production assistants are Celine Yoon and Fabianne Anderberg, and our music is by The Triangles.

Lauren: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

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

[astrogeoguy]

An Evening Moon, it’s the Week to Peek at Comet Wirtanen, Mercury at Maximum Visibility, and Geminid Meteors Peak, too!

(Above: To record the splendor of the Geminids Meteor Shower, Yin Hao captured this composite of 37 frames spanning 8.5 hours on December 12-13, 2017 at a location in Inner Mongolia. The pair of bright stars centred within the meteors are Castor and Pollux in Gemini. Orion is to their lower right, with the Milky Way rising through centre-frame. NASA APOD for December 15, 2017.)

Hello, Stargazers!

Here are your Astronomy Skylights for the week of December 9th, 2018 by Chris Vaughan. Feel free to pass this along to your friends and send me your comments, questions, and suggested topics. I repost these emails with photos at http://astrogeoguy.tumblr.com/ where all the old editions are archived. You can also follow me on Twitter as @astrogeoguy! Unless otherwise noted, all times are Eastern Time. Please click this MailChimp link to subscribe to these emails. If you are a teacher or group leader interested joining me on a guided field trip to York University’s Allan I. Carswell Observatory or the David Dunlap Observatory, visit www.astrogeo.ca.

I can bring my Digital Starlab inflatable planetarium to your school or other daytime or evening event, visit DiscoveryPlanitarium.com and request me. We’ll tour the Universe together! 

Public Astro-Events

Taking advantage of the moon, Mars, and other bright objects in the sky this week, the RASC Toronto Centre astronomers will hold their free monthly public City Sky Star Party in Bayview Village Park (steps from the Bayview subway station), starting around 7 pm on the first clear weeknight this week (Mon, Tue, or Thu only). You don’t need to be an RASC member, or own any equipment, to join them – looks are free! Check here for details, and check the banner on their website home page or Facebook page for the GO or NO-GO decision around 5 pm each day. 

Every Monday evening, York University’s Allan I. Carswell Observatory runs an online star party - broadcasting views from four telescopes/cameras, answering viewer questions, and taking requests! Details are here. On Wednesday nights they offer free public viewing through their rooftop telescopes. If it’s cloudy, the astronomers give tours and presentations. Details are here. 

At 7:30 pm on Wednesday, December 12, the RASC Toronto Centre will hold their free monthly Recreational Astronomy Night Meeting at the Ontario Science Centre, and the public are welcome. Talks include The Sky This Month (presented by me) and a short talk about building your own powerful telescope. Check here for details. Parking is free. 

If the skies are clear, from 7 to 10 pm on Friday, December 14, at the Iroquois Sports Centre in Whitby, astronomers from RASC will set up telescopes to view Comet 46P/Wirtanen (more about the comet below), and the public are welcome to join them. Details are here. 

On Friday, December 14 at 7:30 pm in The Hamilton Spector Building, Hamilton Astronomers will present a free public presentation by François van Heerden entitled Mallincams: For Outreach and Observing in Light-Polluted Areas. More details are here. 

On Friday, December 14, starting at 7 pm, U of T’s AstroTour will present their free planetarium show entitled Grand Tour of the Cosmos. Details are here. 

Bright Comet Update

For the past few weeks, I’ve been updating you about an evening comet that anyone can see worldwide. I gave some basic information on the comet here. Here’s an update on how to see Comet 46P/Wirtanen this week and what to expect.

(Above: Damian Peach of Australia captured this image of Comet 46P/Wirtanen on December 7, 2018. Note the distinctive green halo and the the very faint tail extending to the lower right. This image is inverted from a binocular view. His galleries are accessed at http://www.damianpeach.com/) 

Comet 46P/Wirtanen is predicted to brighten until December 16, when its orbit will carry it closest to both Earth and the sun. It’s now bright enough to see without binoculars if you are under a dark sky away from artificial lights. It’s quite easy in binoculars, if you know where to look. Don’t try searching for the comet with a telescope – the patch of sky seen in the eyepiece is so small that you’ll likely miss the comet.  But once you know where it is, use the telescope to look closely at it! For the early part of this week, the moon will not affect the night sky, but the moon will become quite bright as we head toward the comet’s peak time this weekend. So you should try to see the comet on the first clear night this week. 

Look for a faint, green, fuzzy blob surrounding a bright point of light. Reports are that the halo around the comet is as wide as a full moon – that’s half a finger’s width held at arm’s length. If Comet 46P/Wirtanen grows a tail, the tail will extend east (to the left), away from the sun. You can begin to look for the comet as soon as the sky is dark. The comet will then climb to its highest point, halfway up the southern sky, at around 10:15 pm local time. Then it will set in the west at about 4:20 am local time.

(Above: The path of Comert 46P/Wirtanen this week, from lower right on December 9 to upper left on December 16, when the comet is expected to peak in brightness. The southern sky is shown for 6 pm local time. Each yellow dot represents 6 hours.)  

The orbit of this comet is carrying it up through the plane of the solar system from below. This week, the comet will continue to drift north, moving it higher in the sky for observers in mid-northern latitudes. Tonight (Sunday) Comet Wirtanen will be located in eastern Cetus (the Whale) and just less than a palm’s width (or 5°) below that constellation’s brightest star Menkar. Because the comet is rapidly moving to the left and upwards, on Monday and Tuesday night it will pass a palm’s width to the lower left, and then directly to the left, of Menkar, respectively. 

(Above: The path of Comert 46P/Wirtanen this week. Each yellow dot represents 6 hours. The Pleiades cluster at top left is a bright naked-wyw object.)

On Wednesday evening, the comet will pass two finger widths to the left of a medium-bright star named Omicron Tauri, which represents the Taurus the bull’s foot. On Thursday the comet will move to the upper left of that star. On Saturday night, the comet will land four finger widths (or 4.5°) below the very easy-to-identify Pleiades star cluster. That’s the bright little cluster of bluish stars above the very bright orange star Aldebaran in Taurus. On Sunday, the night when comet 46P/Wirtanen should be at peak brightness, the comet will shift to the lower left of the Pleiades. 

The Geminids Meteor Shower Peaks

The Geminids meteor shower, one of the most spectacular of the year, runs from December 4 to 16 annually. In 2018, it will peak before dawn on Thursday, December 14, when up to 120 meteors per hour might be seen under dark sky conditions. Geminids meteors are often bright, intensely coloured, and slower moving than average because they are produced by particles dropped by an asteroid designated 3200 Phaethon.  

(Above: The radiant location for the Geminids meteor shower. For best results, wait until the radiant is overhead around 2 am local time. But don’t watch the radiant - the meteors will be shortest there.)

The best time to watch for Geminids will be from full darkness on Wednesday until dawn on Thursday morning. At about 2 am local time, the sky directly overhead, which will be positioned near the bright star Castor in Gemini (the Twins), will be plowing into the densest part of the debris field. True Geminids will travel away from that part of the sky, but don’t just watch that location – the meteors will be shortest there, and they can appear anywhere in the sky. The early-setting crescent moon on the peak night will provide a dark sky for meteor-watchers. 

To see the most meteors, find a wide-open dark location, preferably away from light polluted skies, and just look up with your unaided eyes. Binoculars and telescopes are not useful for meteors – their field of view are too narrow. Try not to look at your phone’s bright screen – it’ll ruin your night vision. And keep your eyes heavenward, even while you are chatting with companions. If the peak night is cloudy, a night or two on either side of that date will be almost as good. Happy hunting! 

The Moon and Planets

This is the best week of the moon’s monthly circuit around Earth to look at our nearest celestial companion. Tonight (Sunday), a thin crescent moon will shine prettily over the southwestern horizon after sunset. The planet Saturn will be situated a generous palm’s width to the moon’s lower right. Saturn, which is embedded in the western twilight, will set at about 6 pm local time all week long, even as the moon shifts eastward away from it.

(Above: The young crescent moon will appear near Saturn over the southwestern horizon on Sunday, December 9, 2018, as shown here at 5 pm local time.)  

During the remaining weekdays, the moon will wax fuller and shift eastward across the southern evening sky, first moving through the dim stars of Capricornus (the Sea-Goat) and then traversing Aquarius (the Water-Bearer) on Thursday and Friday. On Thursday evening, the nearly half-illuminated moon will occupy a spot 4 finger widths below Mars. 

The moon will officially reach its First quarter phase on Saturday morning, so it will be slightly more than half-illuminated by the time we see it on Saturday evening. (Lunar phases are only controlled by the angle between the sun, Earth, and moon, not the time of day or night on Earth.) On the evenings around first quarter, sunlight strikes the moon at a shallow angle - arriving from near the moon’s eastern horizon. This light casts dramatic and spectacular shadows from even slightly elevated terrain on the moon’s surface, allowing the fine details of the moon’s geography to be seen in binoculars and small telescopes. 

The inner planets are both in the eastern pre-dawn sky this week. Mercury is currently making an excellent appearance for anyone living in the Northern Hemisphere. It will be low, in a fairly dark southeastern sky, at around 6:30 am local time, and remain in view until about 7:15 am local time while it is carried higher. When viewed in a telescope, Mercury will exhibit a crescent phase. On Saturday, Mercury will reach its widest separation (21°) from the sun and also will become its brightest for the current appearance. From Sunday onward, Mercury will descend towards the sun again.

(Above: Jupiter will join the inner planets Mercury and Venus in the eastern pre-dawn sky this week. Mercury will achieve peak visibility on December 15, as shown here at 7 am local time.)  

Venus is much higher in the eastern sky than Mercury, because it is now rising hours earlier - at about 4 am local time. Viewed through a telescope, Venus will also show a crescent phase. It’s much brighter than Mercury, too. Venus recently reached its maximum brightness for the year – a stunning magnitude of -4.87! 

Jupiter recently passed solar conjunction (when it was in the same part of the sky as the sun) and is returning to visibility in the eastern pre-dawn sky this week. It will be a while before it climbs high enough to catch your eye, but you might glimpse Jupiter low over the southeastern horizon after it rises at 6:30 am local time – just as the sky is beginning to get lighter. Jupiter will return to the evening sky from May onward. 

Mars continues to dominate the southern evening sky, even as it is slowly shrinking in size and brightness. This week, the reddish planet will shine in the lower part of the southern evening sky among the stars of Aquarius (the Water-Bearer). Mars will set in the west just before midnight local time.

(Above: The nearly first quarter moon will land below Mars in the southern evening sky on Friday, December 14, as shown here at 6 pm local time.)  

Blue-green Uranus (“YOU-ran-us”) is in the southeastern evening sky. It’s still close to its peak brightness (magnitude 5.7) and size for this year. You can see Uranus without optical aid under very dark skies, but binoculars and telescopes work better. Look for Uranus about 1.5 finger widths to the upper left (east) of the modestly bright star Torcular (or Omega Piscium). That star sits a generous palm’s width above the “V” where the two starry cords of Pisces (the Fishes) meet. This week, Uranus will be at its highest point, over the southern horizon, at about 9 pm local time – the best position to to see it clearly. 

Neptune met Mars last week, but the red planet will now be rapidly drawing away from the distant blue planet. Tonight (Sunday) Mars will be located 1.5 finger widths to the upper left (east) of Neptune. Next Sunday night, Mars will be a palms’ width away Neptune. This week, Neptune will become visible in strong binoculars or a telescope once the sky becomes fully dark. The planet will set at about 11 pm local time. With Mars now unavailable to help us find Neptune, look for the magnitude 7.9 planet sitting about two finger widths to the upper left of the modestly bright star Hydor (Lambda Aquarii), where it’s been for quite some time.  

Treats in Taurus

Every year in early December, the distinctive constellation of Taurus (the Bull) returns to our evening skies, rising as darkness falls and crossing the sky through the night. If you missed last week’s information about some of Taurus’ best sights, I posted a sky chart and some images of the best objects here.

Keep looking up, and enjoy the sky when you do. I love questions and requests - so, send me some!

[quintential]

A poem about hating yourself.

I had a dream so I wrote about it.

Darkness. Everything is dark and quiet, and there is nothing. I open my eyes. I blink a few times before the world comes into focus. I’m in a car, in the passenger seat, in the back seat? The world is fuzzy and I keep jumping, my hazy form not grounded. My ears open up suddenly. Oh. I’m in a tunnel, in a car a red car? Might be, I don’t know. Car sounds, gentle hum of the engine, soft out of focus music plays from the radio. What station is on? It doesn’t matter. My eyes shift around. It’s hard to keep them open. But there, I focus in on the wheel. There are hands connected, lean and olive toned and I follow them up to the body. The face. I turn and see their face it’s someone I know. The clear blue eyes and speckled red face too round nose, the face of my childhood best friend the one that I tormented and they tormented me too. We don’t talk much anymore. Their eyes are focused in front of them. Their mouth is moving. Are we talking? The world is so muffled I can’t tell. Sharpness. The world sharpens all of a sudden everything is in focus all at once. I’m in the backseat, I know it for sure. Everything is still. 

Garbled noises. 

“What?” I say. I strain to hear.

Their eyes narrow they stare at me from the rearview mirror. Eyes clear and blank and they are so blue and remind me of a snake. 

“You know nobody likes you, right?”

My heart is clenched I can feel my stomach hollow out I say again

“What?” A pause, it’s hard to breathe, the air has been punched out of me.

“Everyone?” My voice can barely be heard above the roaring of my ears. Is that the first thing I really ask?

Their eyes are back on the road. Hands clench on the steering wheel. Still they speak in an even tone. Soft. Lovely, even, though they are delivering poison to my heart. 

“You really didn’t know?” 

“Even my friends?” My voice small. God, I feel so so small. I look down at my lap it’s hard to keep myself from falling, falling down falling out of this world.

“Yes. everyone.” They reply cooly, like they are explaining a simple thing to a child.

 “There is nobody alive who likes you.” 

I feel sick now. I lift my head up, the light is changing.

They speak again. “Oh. The tunnel is almost over.”

My eyes turn up and yes the lights on the walls are not as blinding red and yellow now there is light at the end. It fills the front windshield. It is so bright. So very bright. And suddenly I’m falling. The car and tunnel disappear. I’m alone again, in a dark place. But my eyes are open this time. There is no light at all here, no light at all. I strain my eyes to see and my ears to hear but the world is a blanket of dark. I’ve never seen anywhere so dark it’s darker than night itself.

“Oh. Look who it is.” I hear suddenly, voices far away yet close at the same time, daggers of words that I cannot tell the intention behind. There are people after all. Yes, there is light now, blobs of colours, dancing silhouettes at the edge of my vision. I follow the light. But the people are dancing, fading away and I chase faster sprinting I must catch up to them

“Wait”, I cry “Wait no, please don’t leave me alone let me talk to you!” I gasp in between breaths my lungs cannot be filled and my legs are jelly. They turn, oh it’s my friends my friends from class, the darkness ebbs into a scene and it is school. The chairs that we sit in before class, outside on concrete and brick with dirt and dying plants in view. Some are sitting some are standing but they are my classmates. They are no longer running, they come into focus and it’s like they were never being chased in the first place, perfectly at ease talking amongst themselves and I cannot help myself I must ask.

“You guys. Wait.”

They do not notice me. Talking relaxed cans of redbull and monster and iced coffee in hand. Fake nails and black bangs and doc martens and hoodies. 

“Hey guys”, I try again, I secretly plead please hear me. And this time they do. They turn. All at once, all together their eyes turn and land on me. Their eyes look so different the shapes and colors but the gazes are the same cool as ice and sharp as daggers.

“What.” One finally speaks. Her voice is as flat and cold as her eyes.

“Hey, uh.” I falter a little bit. I’ve never been that good at talking. “Um”. I start again. “ please tell me,” I pause again. God this is so hard why am I doing this but I’m watching from inside my own head and cannot stop this cascade of events. 

“Do you guys like me?” I really can’t help myself can I, I hear myself my voice sounds like a whiny pleading loser and

One of the girls just relaxes her shoulders and smiles, just a little bit. Her eyes warm. It’s unnerving. Her mouth begins to move and all I can focus on is that hum in the background from the car oh god it’s the same isn’t it. I see the words before I hear them.

“No actually,” she says. “Actually, you’re really annoying.”

Oh. God. What do I do now my heart is beating fast, the pit in my stomach grows bigger and bigger-

“Do any of you-” My voice is faltering I can hear it and it grows small and insecure-”Do any of you guys like me?” I say

My eyes pleading and wide follow everyone as I see them shake their head no, or roll their eyes looking away or just say it plainly loud and clear

A shake of the head. A classmate.

“No.” An old friend.

This girl looks away. I don’t really know her.

“Not really.” An acquaintance.

“No.” A boy I like.

“You just talk a lot without saying anything.” My friends friend who I wanted to impress.

“Yeah, I fucking hate you.” My friend.

“Yeah.” A chorus of voices now, They all overlap and my ears are drowning

I can’t even look up now my eyes focused on the ground on the grey concrete and dirt and my shoes a dirty white falling apart wow have I ever really looked at my shoes before like this?

That girl the first girl, she talks again.

“You just follow us around. None of us actually want you here. You think you’re special? No. You’re not”, She says.

“Oh god.” I hear myself softly saying and I fall. Straight through the ground through the rough concrete and dirt and I’m falling through nothingness and it’s quiet and dark again. I fall for quite some time except this time I don’t mind much the dark because it’s a familiar dark comforting to be falling when you know you deserve it-

And I fall straight through a ceiling onto a couch. It’s leather and it’s the kind that sticks to your skins and hurts when you get up. Soft guitar music is playing. A mournful passionate voice adds in through the speaker. It’s a dim noise but it’s so noticeable because it is so quiet otherwise.

My friend steps into my line of vision, are they my friend? I don’t know because we don’t talk. They look the same as they did in the car, why were they in the car why are they here now, why am I here now in their house in that depressing garage turned bedroom that is so empty- But I don’t think of any of that in the foreground. They step forward, with a glass bottle and pour me a glass of something is it wine or water I can’t tell and hand it to me, it’s cold and it’s glass and are my hands shaking.

 They are standing in front of me and I feel gripped by my voice again I have to ask them

A child. It’s a child’s voice now, my voice from when I was in elementary school I am a child again and I am so small

“Do you like me?”

“No.” Is the reply I get only after hearing it so much the sting has worn off a little bit it’s only a dull pain now but it still hurts all the same.

“No”, the voice continues. “I only like you when we’re here in my house alone. But you see, I wasn’t lying.”

They stand smiling at me but the smile doesn’t reach their eyes. All I can focus on is the pits of red on their face acne bright and red and ugly. And I am suddenly aware that I feel ugly too like my skin doesn’t fit quite right. And they are so ugly I can’t stand it only I am ugly too. the world is so ugly and now I know that that

 I am ugly because I am hated and the world is ugly for hating me. I know now that I will never leave this room even though it smells dark and damp and the curtains look like they’re stained with blood and the heaviness hangs in the air and I think I see a glint of a steel sharpness reflecting in the dark, because here I am wanted and I am liked. They smile again at me. This time they smile wide showing their teeth and wow do they have a lot of teeth. I smile back. I know I will never leave, I know for sure. And when they come closer and raise the knife- oh it was a knife- I lean back into the sofa again and I feel a little relieved because 

now I know 

I will never leave. 

[writing-away-in-ingo]

Second Draft

Alterations made to ending in order to make it flow more naturally and be more satisfying for the reader, grammar and spelling checked and adjusted when necessary. 

To work on for next draft:

- Ensure timing throughout the story is accurate and even (maybe delete some of opening section to allow for a longer ending)

- Continue work on ending - still doesn’t fit right

- Add more references to the selkie mythology throughout 

- Add more dialogue between the sisters to show their relationship more clearly 

My alarm goes off at five fifteen.

The house is always freezing in the morning because we can’t seem to get the stupid timed heater to work, so I normally end up pulling on about five layers before I eventually get up the courage to stagger out of bed. Our My bedroom is up in the attic, so I also have to climb down a ladder before I’ve gained any sort of co-ordination in the morning, which has led to me falling on my face more times than I’d like to remember. It isn’t a problem though; I’ve yet to break a bone. I wouldn’t trade sleeping in that attic room for every bruise I’ve got falling down the ladder. It feels like a little secret nest, hidden above the rest of the house, and you can climb out of the front window and onto the flat stretch of roof at the front. The sea looks beautiful from up there.

When I finally manage to make it downstairs, I make coffee (black, I’m not American, I don’t need fifteen sugars) and let Minnie out of the kitchen. She’s so old and so loyal that I’m certain we don’t need to keep her cooped up like that at night, but dad insists that we do. He double checks the back door for foxes every night, triple locks the front. We’ve never had a dog run away before now, I don’t see why it would be the ancient precious collie that finally made a break for it. Minnie loves us all in that wonderful unconditional dog way, but its more than that. She’s a part of the family and she’s very aware of it.

Its possible dad may have some remaining trust issues from you-know-who. I do my best not to think about it.

Minnie and I tend to eat breakfast together, because dad won’t be up for a little while, and its nice to have companionship. I don’t really like eating breakfast, especially this early, but it’s a necessary evil if I’m going to have any sort of luck at surfing when I finally get down to the beach. I’ve tried surfing on an empty stomach and you just end up feeling defeated, which is not the sort of thing I need before a day of manning the shop and café. When it reaches six fifteen, I scoop Minnie into my arms, give her a quick kiss on the top of her forehead and send her in to wake dad. He’s always delighted to see her, no matter what kind of shitty night he’s had, and he yells a greeting through the door for me.

Next, I grab my board and my bag, tossing the dishes from breakfast into the sink as I go, then make my way out of the door. The world is so quiet at this time, especially in the winter months when there are no groups of tourists. It feels like I’m the only person here, like

There’s this huge painting of a selkie woman on one of the crumbling down walls near the cove. The colours are faded and chipped away, but she’s still recognisable, rising from the sea like some sort of ancient spirit. It’s definitely one of the more well-intentioned ones; she has nice brown eyes and a sort of melancholy expression, and there’s no innocently falling-down sealskin to make her seem “sexy” for some reason. Everyone always seems to draw selkies with their tits out somehow, as if you can sexualise a seal. They’re just big round blobs of cute. I never turn into a half seal, half stereotypically attractive woman with one boob peeking out around the skin. It’s unrealistic and sexist. Frankly, it’s a little disturbing.

I probably should have mentioned the selkie thing before now.

It’s a weird sort of thing to put into words. It’s always been a part of my life, but not a part that I’m allowed to share, so I don’t have any practise in putting it into words. When I was a kid, I assumed that everyone had clandestine sealskins that they weren’t allowed to show anybody, and that we were all just really good at keeping secrets. I only learned the truth when I was eleven, and I slipped up and made a joke to Brannok. She didn’t laugh, just looked at me curiously, her big brown eyes all serious. I never talked about it again, and Brannok never mentioned it, but I can still remember how it felt, to feel like I wasn’t alone and then to be reminded so suddenly and completely that that wasn’t the case.

Day Tremayne is the only other person outside my family who knows about my sealskin. I don’t trust a lot of people with a secret like that, but Day is different. He’s lying on the edge of the surf when I jog down – he’s so bold with it at this time of morning. Not many people know about this cove, but I do worry that someone will wander down in the early morning or stay overnight and get a sudden glimpse of Day and his tail. He doesn’t have the luxury of hiding it sometimes like me, but I don’t think he’d like being able to shed it. He’s much happier than most people I meet in this village, able to swim off at a moment’s notice, spending his days chasing the tide or hunting for pearls. He doesn’t like the term “Merman” because he thinks it’s too gendered. We eventually settled on “Mer” as a sort of compromise, but he still doesn’t love it. Day’s one of those people who doesn’t place a lot of stock in language or words, and he has no patience for those who do. I like to joke that it’s a fish thing.

“Caja!”

I wave my arms over my head as I run towards him, the wind tugging at my hair.

“You’re out early! What if someone had seen you?”

He grins up at me, water dripping from his hair.

“You’ve got to learn to live a little, Angove. We wouldn’t be given gifts like these if they weren’t meant to be enjoyed.”

He gives my bag a pointed look.

“Will you be joining me, or will my company be more… aquatic?”

I take a quick scan of the beach. The sand is clear, I can see all the way across to the town, and there’s no sign of anyone coming down the path.

The sea is so wide and inviting. I haven’t had a proper swim in months. Being human means you just dabble along the surface.

Day’s already smiling when I turn back to him. He knows. I scoop up a handful of seawater and throw it at him.

“Stop being smug!”

He laughs as I unzip my bag, rummaging in the bottom to find the hidden compartment that I hide my sealskin in. It’s like warm velvet against my fingertips.

I wrap myself in sealskin, and the world shifts and grows and shrinks until I’m-

The ocean swallows me and I am whole. Water. Shifting around me; push and pull. Swoop down and brush the seabed. Flip up and taste the air. Let yourself fly, let yourself weave in and out of the weeds and the fish and the sunlight.

Crest the wave.

Breathe.

I surface out of the sea in a mass of limbs that are suddenly too long for my body, in a body that doesn’t quite feel like my own, the sealskin gently unspooling from me. Quickly I gather it in my hand, pulling it out of the waves and away from the sand. Day appears next to me in a burst of seawater, flicking his hair out of his eyes.

“That was great! I feel like we haven’t done this in ages.”

It’s a beautiful feeling; I’m not tired per se, but my body has the distant ache of a good morning of exercise, and the buzz of adrenaline that comes from open swimming in deep water. My watch says its been about an hour and a half since I changed, but this morning already feels like its drifting away, growing a little fuzzy around the edges. Whenever I wear the sealskin it makes me feel like nothing else matters, like the time I spend as a seal is all-consuming compared to the dull hours I put in at work. Human eyes don’t see the same kind of beauty that seal eyes do.

My phone buzzes, and I look over at it without thinking, without remembering.

abt an hour out! c u soon! Exx

Elowen’s back today. How could I have forgotten that? It’s not like I have anything more important to be doing today. Every day’s the same in the village; I wake up, I meet Day for surfing, I work at the bookshop in the morning and the café in the afternoon. It’s not like I don’t want to remember her coming back. It isn’t like I haven’t missed her. I suppose I didn’t really believe that she would. When people leave my life they tend to stay gone.

“Having a twin is the best. It’s like having a best friend already built in.”

Elowen and I were so close when we were kids. I used to feel like she was my other half, like she was filling in the gaps of the person that I was and making me better

“I don’t understand why you have to go so far. It isn’t like there aren’t science jobs out here.”

She was always cleverer than me, at least in an academic sense. People like to talk about the different types of intelligence like being attuned to people’s emotions is an actual skill you’ll be able to use in the world beyond making people like you. Sure, I’m emotionally intelligent. It isn’t going to give me a job beyond working at my father’s old bookshop. I didn’t stick around for much of school. It didn’t seem to have much of a point beyond making me miserable for a piece of paper which would only confirm how unsuited I am to the corporate world of work. Elowen loved school though. She was great at it, so of course she wanted to keep going. And there isn’t a lot of scientific research work available in a small place like Zennor.  

“She didn’t have to leave us though, did she?”

“She didn’t have a choice!”

I don’t really remember my mother. She only stuck around long enough to push out two babies and leave my father with a crippled sense of self and emotional issues and the burden of being a single father with a self-owned business.

“You’re leaving dad just like she did!”

Sometimes I think my mouth is too big for me. I say things like that and there’s no taking them back. I don’t really think was Elowen did is comparable to what our mum did. She didn’t want to leave us, she just felt like it was what she needed to do to keep fitting in. Elowen’s had a plan for her life ever since she realised that we weren’t normal, and anything that deviates from the plan is something she isn’t allowed to follow.

I just stand there stupidly as they hug, and then Elowen turns to face me, beaming. Her hair is shorter, neatly trimmed so it hangs just below her shoulders, and she’s wearing eyeliner. I never could figure out how to do the wings, even though she offered to teach me. Elowen always looks freakishly normal, ever since she was small, she’s managed to hit the perfect note between stylish and boring. I remember watching her plan her outfits. Working from pictures of her classmates, different styles cherrypicked from the kids that no one bothered, no one questioned. She tends to take a more serious approach to fitting in than I do.

“Caja, I missed you so much!”

I can’t seem to move my feet.

“I didn’t think you were coming back.”

The words are wooden from my mouth, shrouding months of the pain and worry and grief I felt at being separate from her. I never expected her to leave, but once she did, I pretty much gave up hope on her ever coming back. I risk a look up at her, and I’m startled to see there are tears in her eyes. She reaches forward to take my hand.

“Of course I came back.”

Then she notices the wet sealskin hanging out of the side of my bag where I stuffed it, and I see her eyes go hard. Her grip tightens on my hand.

“I thought we agreed it wasn’t safe to be out anymore.”

I pull my hand away from her and step back.

“I’m not having this conversation again. Welcome home.”

She doesn’t follow me.

When I get up in the morning, for the first time in a long time I’m not alone. Elowen’s dark hair is spread out over the pillow; she doesn’t seem to have been disturbed by the alarm, so I creep down the ladder, trying not to make too much noise. I feel a little strange, like the house is listening in on my footsteps, and if I move too quickly or too loudly, the whole thing will collapse. The squeak of my chair is so loud it makes me jump, and I almost forget to leave the gate open for Minnie, who gives me a confused tilt of her head.

I shouldn’t feel like this, it shouldn’t feel wrong to have my sister in my house. I can remember nights of staring at her empty bed with tears pooling in my eyes, days of trying to shake the feeling that I was suddenly operating without the use of half of my limbs, half of my mind. I knew it was going to be difficult living alone without her, even with dad. He’s lovely, of course he is, but even he can’t replace a twin bond, no matter how hard he tries. I spent so long trying to get used to living without her that it feels like I’ve done it too well and now I don’t know how to function with her back in my life.

We spend a few days in silence, working around each other, trying not to notice the gaping void that’s opened between us. And then the storm comes, and all of that is left behind.

 The rain is still pouring, splashes echoing down the streets as the raindrops fall into the churning seawater, it’s up to my thigh now. Walking is difficult, and my mind keeps straying back to the sealskin in my backpack. It would be so easy to get it out and start swimming. I could make it to dad’s and back with barely any effort. But if someone saw me things could go very bad very fast. Next to me, Elowen’s face is ashen. She doesn’t deal well with situations like this where the possibilities for something to go wrong are so myriad.

Once I would have known exactly what I needed to say to comfort her, but now I’m not sure if I can find the words. I hate this alien feeling between us. It feels so wrong.  

There are still waves pushing their way up the beach, sending billowing swells of water speeding across the town, narrowing down through the streets and growing in power. A wave knocks into me and half sweeps me off my feet; I scrabble out for purchase and Elowen grabs my hand, but I fall anyway, my purchase lost, legs paddling uselessly against the surge of water. For a second I am underwater, but it’s never felt so wrong; this water is flecked with dirt and dust from the road and it bites at my eyes, at my throat. And then I’m on my feet, Elowen still at my side, breathing the air again, my clothes drenched.

“We need to shift. Dad could be hurt and it’s too dangerous out here.”

Not expecting that. I pull the sealskin from my bag and give Elowen a thoughtful look. She grabs her own out of her handbag, seeming unsure. Gently, I reach out and drape it around her shoulders, tucking it under her hair. She looks up at me, and then suddenly bursts out:

“I’m sorry! I know I shouldn’t have left. I hated it. I can’t stand not being close to the sea, but you know how important it is that no-one finds out, and I missed you so much, but I couldn’t just come home and now I feel like I’ve spoiled everything!”

“You haven’t spoiled anything. We’re just different now. I just… I felt like you were leaving me, I feel like everyone-”

She takes my hand again, and there are tears in her eyes.

We make the shift together for the first time in years, and I feel a glow of something satisfied, whole.

Elowen insists that we shift back before we get close to the house, hiding in an alleyway as we shrug off the sealskins. We struggle down the rest of the street, one foot after the other, forcing our way through the water. Our progress is too slow, its maddening. By the time we reach the door, the moon is fully overhead, reflecting on the water.

Together, we make our way up into the attic, climbing the ladder. Dad grabs my hand as we come over the lip of the trapdoor, helping to pull me to safety. I register a little late that he’s safe, and when I regain my footing, I fling myself into his arms.