#I do wish there was more linguistic stuff in that book

[prehistoric-chesterfield-sofa]

the way andy weir writes rocky's dialogue is so precious to me because I know he's probably just doing it to emphasize the fact that they speak different languages but the fact is that when rocky says something and Grace translates it as "thank" or "amaze" it is either because rocky both taught Grace the difference and is purposefully using baby talk and Grace likes it, or Grace is so psyched to be talking with an alien that his brain is just editing in different styles of grammar. love.

[thingsidrawgohere]

Alright. I'm calling it done before it kills me. This is Second Head. It's an Art Book containing instances of the phrase "second head" in fanfics found on AO3. I'll explain much, MUCH more in the cut.

So when I say 'art book', I mean this is an intrinsic piece. I have no motivations aside from personal amusement and interest in outcome. A lot of money was lost/transmuted into free frustration in this project and I have no claims, obviously. I will prolly be the only person alive to read this.

THAT SAID. I have noticed in my years reading fanfic, there's a few linguistic shibboleths that arise in authors who also have experience in the mines. I think there's not a soul alive who hadn't wandered across a 'ministrations' when reading Narutos oral sexing. There's- Hold on. Here's some pix.

There's an impulse, I think, to in-group even when performing a creative act. A feeling that there are certain ways one Should go about the act, by virtue of seeing it performed that way. Especially so when 'training' at the act is often just Doing. Double Dog Especially when the act is exclusively for oneself with very little oversight. Which is to say, we make what we see and we make what we think we should make. At least, at first.

Now, I've been noticing 'grew a second head' (to insinuate surprise) in fanfic for some time. I've never seen it used Outside of fanfic. (Edit to add: I am not making the argument the phrase is from fanfic. Nor do I Believe it is from fanfic. Jesus Hopping Christ, people. That's not what this project is about.) That may speak to my own bad habits but it got me curious. So a friend and myself downloaded a mirror of AO3 from July of 2024. He did some code- Stuff to scan the mirror for "second head" and of the ~13 million works, ~70k (English) results were returned. That's a rounding error, honestly, but Far FAR more than I expected.

This book is 401 such examples that I personally selected for a variety of reasons. The number itself was arbitrarily chosen. Each page is separate fic, the roughly 300 words around our key phrase.

I don't think repetition or mirroring is a negative thing. I think it's quite charming. Nor do I think it's a sign of a 'bad' artist or 'bad' art. I think it's a signifier of personhood, of belonging, of enthusiasm. Of culture shared and wishing to share. I think it's real sweet. I always smile when I catch a 'grown a second head' in a work.

And it's really fucking funny when it's John Sherlock getting a sloppy toppy. Bless.

Edit: Fixed a very VERY funny error.

Edit: I am not making the argument that the phrase is exclusive to fanfic or, fucking forbid, FROM fanfic. I'm stating this Again because we skim here. Also- If you would like slamdunk my ass by stating the phrase predates the Internet or your GenX parents use it, please use 'sailboat' in your comment so I know you're specifically trying to kill me.

Edit Edit: You know what? Fine. I DO think this phrase came from fandom. I think ENGLISH came from fandom. I think YOU came from fandom. I think EVERYTHING came from fandom. The Sun, the Moon, the Seas- Fandom. Specifically Sonic Mpreg. The second head was Shadow the Hedgehog crowning. Congrats!

[tigirl-and-co]

Specks of Dust in Hallowed Halls

Part 2; Linguistics

Part 1, the introductory chapter, is here!

Now we get into the shippy stuff! And bonus points for anybody who recognizes the book I've chosen here

"Howlsong, who had fallen asleep at the outer edge of the canyon while he waited, led them silently back through the forest. Fritti, full of vague resentment and doom, had no conversation to offer, either. After a long stretch of unspeaking travel, Pouncequick finally broke the stillness.

"Just think, Tailchaser," he said, "we've actually been to see the Queen of Cats!""

You were curled up in a nook that you had unofficially claimed as your own somewhere in the human residence. Made more comfortable by a few blankets and pillows, you had chosen it for its out-of-the-way location and because Metroplex could both see the spot with a camera and use a nearby speaker to talk with you.

In your lap was your phone, currently accessing his personal communication line, which let him hear your voice.

Metroplex loved your voice. It was his favourite sound, the most wonderful melody he'd heard in all his unfathomable eons of existence. Every syllable, every stutter and stumble was permanently caught in his memory circuits, and he wouldn't have it any other way.

And when he learned you had a collection of books back on earth, he had practically begged you to import some to read to him. Not only was he desperate to hear your voice, Metroplex was also curious about you. What you liked to read, what the human culture you hailed from was like, what you thought about things...

So, you found yourself contacting a friend on earth to bring a few books to the supply ship every so often, and spending a bit of extra cash to get them shipped here and back. You didn't mind. It felt nice to be heard. To have your interests acknowledged and considered important.

And, quite honestly, you simply enjoyed hearing him speak. The deep rumble was both soothing and impossible to ignore, and his contemplative nature gave every statement the gravitas of some ancient philosopher comprehending the universe.

"So, Metty, what'd you think of that chapter?" you asked, keeping your own opinions out of it. You were just as interested in his thoughts as he was in yours.

A few moments of pause. "Hm... are human noble courts typically like that?"

You chuckled. Of course that's what he picked out- he'd borne witness to much more sophisticated councils time and time again. In fact, some other part of his processor was probably preoccupied with one now.

"Honestly? Never been. But if I walked in to one and it went like that, I wouldn't be surprised in the least. Fancy people looooooove making overly complex routines and rules and then not actually doing anything to help." You looked up into his camera and beamed at him. "But I get the feeling that sort of behaviour isn't unique to my species."

You felt as much as heard his merriment at that one. "No, it truly is not. Although I've found Cybertronians prefer bureaucracy to bloodlines."

You snuggled back into your nook, still making eye contact with the camera as you got ready for what was certain to be the nerdiest bout of flirting any human had ever partaken in outside of a lab. "Ah, humans most definitely get up to red tape and government nonsense too, but I'm afraid that compared to millions of years of rule-writing, ours would pale in comparison."

You smirked. "Although I'd like to see what would happen if somebody addressed Prime as 'Your Regal Softness.'"

Metroplex desperately wished he had finer control over his internal mechanisms so that he could embrace you right now. But he would have to settle for watching you curl up against his walls. "Knowing that mech, he would assume it was an actual title and wear it with pride."

You burst out laughing at the image, and how it didn't seem all that far-fetched. You both respected Optimus, but that didn't mean you couldn't be irreverent about him in private.

And as you chatted with the titan, book now just conversational fuel, you were struck by how easy it all was. The meandering levity, the way you each made both space and time for each other...

And how easy he was to love.

[devotion-disorder]

happy new year devo, wishing you the best and for another wonderful year. any resolutions you'd be willing to share? i do hope to see more of your art because you never miss 🫶 anyway, much love!!

Happy new year to you too anon!!!!!!!!! i haven't thought all too hard about new years resolutions so i had to give it a proper thunk but anyways here is a list that is sorta arranged from most to least urgent:

Fix my sleeping schedule - i sleep at 5-6am so ig im practically strangling all my neurons to death or something please send help

Read more books - tbh for a myriad of reasons im just ashamed that this is even on here

Get better at art - specifically anatomy, fluidity/readability in figures, values and colors......on a brighter note i want to (try to) do more "finished" illustrations or just at least properly rendered stuff. i also might want to do more fanart :think:

maybe get a new hobby

maybe get good at japanese (grammar) - i think i have everything except grammar down to at least N3 level, which evens out so i have the linguistic capacity of like, a grade schooler

be less of an edgelord and just be sincere for once - idk im honestly thinking about opening a twitter account or an alt where maybe i'll be less obsessed with being ~ironic~ but idk if anyone cares to see what i have to say LOL

thank you for the very sweet ask anon, im glad you like my stuff TqT wishing u all the best this year as well!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!!!!!!!!!!!!1 <333

[strangelittlestories]

Let me tell you about the Truthspeaker.

It is well known that most fae are tricksters. They are creatures who do not lie per se, but who make truth light as chaos or heavy as a contract.

They distract you with the truth and while you are looking at it, they steal the ground from beneath your feet, the name from the craw of your soul, and the

They are like shitty close-up magicians, but the coin they produce from behind your ear is everything you ever valued. And the rabbit they vanish into their hat is reality itself.

They leave you untethered, unmoored, floating free in the summerlands while the path home unravels like a knot of handkerchiefs.

It is well known that fae do this. However, you should realise that 'it is well known' is also a clever illusion.

For while you *should* fear the fair folk, they are multi-faceted and manifold. There are some among them that you may still wish to seek out - for while they will *wreck you* quite thoroughly, sometimes a person must shipwreck themselves to reach their destination.

So let me tell you about the Truthspeaker.

I first heard rumours of them when on my quest year. It's become something of a tradition among aspiring urban esotericists to take a year out to gain practical magical experience. Druids venture into the fragmented urban wilds beneath their city. Mages seek out spells and traditions in rare local dialects and folklores. Seers get very high and follow whatever visions they may have to their inevitable horrible conclusions.

Meanwhile, I started out seeking a simple remedy for mild dimensional bifurcation. One of the alchemists I spoke to mentioned they sometimes sourced ingredients from the fae - in particular, they had a connect for ice cold truths that they thought may help me.

Sadly, I was hot on the trail of the Reality-phage by that point. And that whole situation … escalated.

When I emerged from that densely-woven five-year headfuck with a master's degree in Divine Linguistics and a fully fractured sense of self, I went panning for gold through my memories … and I recalled the Truthspeaker.

The path to faerie is an easy one to find, but a hard one to walk. Especially if you want anything that resembles yourself to emerge on the other side.

I had little enough of my self left, so I took precautions.

I conjured a worm out of earth and lichen. I took one of my memories - one I could not afford to lose - and I fed it to the imaginary creature. It was fat and wriggling, as if ready to burst with dreams.

I wrote my own personal rune on the worm's skin in white marker. The worm wrote *its* rune on me in slime.

I took it to a dried up canal behind a main road. I walked onto the footbridge that crossed it. I speared the worm on a hook, tried it to a silver thread and I dangled it from a fishing pole.

From the canal bed beneath, hungry mouths began to warp out of the concrete. I snagged the biggest and reeled it in. Arms aching with the effort, finally it breached the guardrail with a squeal of metal. Its grey teeth gnashed towards me.

I dived in.

After a small unknowable bubble of time, in which the concrete hydra and I argued over semantics, we finally reached an accord.

I rode in its mouth into the Summerlands.

Apologies, I was supposed to be telling you about the Truthspeaker.

Reaching them was complex, even with my fearsome new ride. (Honestly, riding in that thing's maw made me feel I was in that book about the sandworms, but a bit more 'Vore.)

I won't repeat the trials I had to go through, the spirits I had to beg, bribe or bludgeon ... if you ever seek them yourself, you will need to pay your own way.

But eventually I reached their grove.

It was a strange place. It had a mushroom arch, like many fae groves, but if you looked close you could see spots of rust growing on the caps of them. I peered closer and saw: there was an iron frame beneath the fungi.

I've heard it said that fungus make death into the stuff of life. Even given some faeries' affinity for mushrooms, I think it takes a very special fae to take that which is inimical to you and make of it your sustenance. (And to be quite so cottagecore about it.)

I passed beneath the arch and felt my magical protections torn away by long intangible fingers clawed in ferrous decay.

Inside, the grove sat beneath ... what is the opposite of a 'verdant' canopy? A dying canopy? A putrefying canopy?

No, it was canopy of tomorrows. A vast and dense web of mycelial strands that ate dank darkness and shunned the sun. The interlaced fungal strings shone with strands of copper and arced with electricity.

At the centre of this dwelling with something akin to a cottage, but vast and ballooning with bulbous growths. Cosy and grand. Homely but haunting.

From within its cavernous doorway emerged the Truthspeaker.

My eyes were drawn first to the crown that burst from beneath the skin of their head. Filigreed wires wove in and out of their temples, burning where they met flesh. From that burning emerged green shoots and flowering fungus in all the colours of autumn killings.

They were dressed in stars and pale cotton. Their eyes were caverns. Their lips were lined with morning frost, which crunched softly as they spoke.

"You have travelled a long road." their sweet, soft voice was echoed deeply by the creatures that squirmed in the earth around their feet.

"I have, honoured one." My voice shook.

"There is no honour here, child."

"Nonetheless, I come to honour you."

"You come to ask of me."

Inside myself, I felt my heart shrivel and rot away and a new heart build itself again from the mess.

"From where I stand, to ask favour is to show my throat. This is honour."

"You are a sophist." they snorted and a cloud of spores filled the air, glittering.

"That is the source of my power, honoured one." The spores settled on my robe and began to form a sparkling crystal city.

"You bear the blessing of the Once God."

"I, uh..." I found myself reaching for my phone to take a scrying selfie and resisted. "I had honestly forgotten it was there."

"As had the blessing. Such is the way of things with the God That Was But Was Not."

"There is much I have lost."

"You are not special in this regard."

"Are there ... any ways in which I *am* special?"

"I don't especially care to name them if there are."

"I..." I licked my lips and they tasted of earthy spices. "I would ask you to tell me one true thing, Truthspeaker."

"I have already told you several."

"I can offer fair exchange. I can serve you. I had knowledge and skill once, I am sure I can find them again."

"No. You never shall."

I blanched.

"Never?"

"They are mulch. New talents will grow. Or you will die. Such is the way of things." they looked me up and down with their hollow, everything eyes, "Tell me what truth you would have. I will find something to do with you after."

My mouth was dry. My lungs filled with thick honey-like dreck. My skin shone translucent. The crystal city on my robe spread and grew, went through two cataclysms, rebuilt itself, then began to spread across my back.

I forget the truth I had planned to ask for.

Instead I said:

"Do you like me?"

"I do not know yet." The Truthspeaker said. "But I am willing to find out."

That is how I met the Truthspeaker. Our first meeting, but not our last. But that is all the detail I will give you for now. If you want more then you will have to seek me out and ask me or win it from me or remind me of it.

But what was it that I wanted to tell you about the Truthspeaker? What did I learn? What might you learn from them?

Surely, I have already told you that?

No, I will say one thing more:

Sometimes the truth does not set you free. Sometimes it anchors you.

Because sometimes you don't need a trickster fae to untie you from reality. Sometimes you are already doing a perfectly adequate job of that yourself.

And when that happens, a truth you can rely on is like cold iron for the soul.

---

Enjoy my stories? Consider supporting me on Ko-Fi with a one-off or recurring donation https://ko-fi.com/strangelittlestories

[holdy-caulfield]

My review on Star Trek book:

Doctor’s Orders by Diana Duane.

Genre: hard sci fi

Pages: 291

Key words: worldbuilding, alien culture, time, strategies, psychology, Hippocratic Oath, linguistics, first time in command, stressful situations

Highlights: McCoy is in character, Kirk mostly, battle, crew work, humor, worldbuilding

Downsides: reason why McCoy is in command (unrealistic, OOC for Kirk), Spock & McCoy interactions (too friendly for them), lack of tension.

Vibe/tone: nerdy, light-hearted

With spoilers!

I really enjoy sci-fi as a whole genre, and the worldbuilding aspect is what has drawn me into Star Trek in the first place (second place was a video of Kirk and Spock). When it comes to fiction based on the franchise & fanfiction for me personally the most important aspects are canonical characters and accurate representation of their relationship.

I’ve heard a lot of positives about Diana Duane, so I was exited to get my hands on her books. Since McCoy is my favourite character, I decided to start with the book where he’s in a primal focus.

The premise seemed great. I was very curious how McCoy would behave as a commander of the ship, and I was particularly interested how he would handle Spock, as there were a few instances in the show where Spock and McCoy have been left without Kirk. The book cover showed Spock standing firmly next to our favourite doctor in the captain’s chair.

The idea itself is intriguing enough — what will be the difference in the decision making between a trained soldier and a doctor? The book excitingly starts with a Hippocratic Oath.

This book does feel like an episode. It’s relatively short, the whole action takes place in a span of a few days, it has an idealistic nature, and a perfectly good ending.

The dialogue and humor are good, manner of speech is convincing for each character, there’s a lot of strategic decisions during battle and I love watching/reading the whole crew working together as the whole.

The fact that McCoy is new to commanding helps the reader to understand what’s going on better and his decision making, it is easier to imagine how you’d feel in his shoes. The whole McCoy commanding aspect in my opinion was very in character.

The book has a lot of focus on the planetary species, human characters getting to know them better, studying them and discussing them from a scientific perspective (so, the book puts science into science fiction). It was a curious read, but I think it is not exactly for those who came for an action adventure. A bunch of scientists discussing species and linguistics is the bigger part of the book. I love this stuff as I said earlier, I personally could read all these discussions about interesting species and their culture forever, but I can imagine it can be boring for some (although IMO if you’re a ST fan you should expect this).

I quickly understood what’s going with them personally but there were some aspects which I didn’t quite understand or that were not explained enough. Why Ornae were building stuff? Maybe I’m forgetting something, but I don’t remember if they gave a clear answer. I also didn’t get why ;At would say yes in the end. It felt for me rather logical that they would say no. I didn’t feel that either Federation either the species would benefit in anything else then knowledge. Well, they could protect the planet, but… I thought ;At are a bit too powerful to really need extra protection.

There are also Klingons. I thought it was a very nice touch that doctor managed to find a common ground using psychology. It was funny, but also believable.

Klingons do not feel as a threat, well, not dangerous enough. Klingons’ motivation to be on the planet for me personally seemed not really satisfactory for a reader. It made them even less threatening (while they of course shouldn’t be exactly threatening, I just wished for more… spice).

I really did like the unexpected friendliness simply because McCoy is a professional medic and knows psychology, it’s very in character and canonical. I enjoyed the bits when he uses his profession to command and even as a moral compass.

My biggest issue was there was not enough tension. And it is primarily because of Spock.

It might be my own vision, but what I can judge from the show is that Spock and McCoy have a complicated relationship in the span of the series. Their philosophies opposite each other, while both characters are not so different as either McCoy or Spock would think (they both are very emphatic for example) so it creates this unique dynamic of a lot things being unsaid and truths ignored.

Most of the time when McCoy and Spock are left alone with each other, they start an argument and can say actually hurtful things to each other. It is quite obvious to me that Spock likes McCoy, while McCoy’s reaction to him is not exactly unambiguous. There should be tension. It what makes their relationship interesting.

In the book McCoy and Spock are as friendly as could be.

Of course there are a few funny moments, but for me there should be a lot more bickering, a lot more emotions involved around Kirk’s disappearance, and there could be just done more (for example, a danger which would force them to leave the orbit, but McCoy wants to stay to find Jim, and Spock is there to try to make him understand the logics and the fact that he feels that Jim is alright… ).

Kirk is there to balance Spock and McCoy out. The idea of McCoy being forced to rely on Spock with whom he disagrees mostly, or Spock relying on emotional McCoy is such an interesting concept, so it’s a pity for me I didn’t get this explored in the book.

Kirk isn’t in a real danger, which also makes it lack tension. But it’s probably my own issue, I like “damsel in distress” trope when it comes to strong characters like the Enterprise crew and the trio in particular.

Overall, it was an enjoyable read. Despite the lack of tension, there is some good dialogue, realistic approach to the idea of a medical doctor being in command, the battle is great & the worldbuilding is creative.

[elliepassmore]

Turning Darkness Into Light review

5/5 stars Recommended if you like: dragons, linguistics, light/dark academia, multimedia narrative

A Natural History of Dragons review

Tropic of Serpents review

Voyage of the Basilisk review

In the Labyrinth of Drakes review

Within the Sanctuary of Wings review

This book stands as a companion/sequel to the rest of the Lady Trent memoirs. It takes place while Isabella is publishing her memoirs and focuses on her granddaughter, Audrey, who is a linguist specializing in Draconean. While I do think you could read this book without having read the rest of the series (stuff is explained as it comes up and for the most part the two focus on separate things), it does 100% spoil Within the Sanctuary of Wings and the series' 'big reveal,' so bear that in mind. I will also note that there are no dragons in this book, it's all focused on the Draconean stuff.

I was super excited to see a book focusing on linguistics since it played such a big role in the later Lady Trent books. Suhail makes a lot of really big discoveries alongside Isabella and so we got to read about those, but it only whet my appetite for more Draconean linguistics. That being said, I wish we got more of the nitty gritty aspects of linguistics and translating ancient languages. I know getting too into it would probably make it boring for readers not interested in that field, but as a linguist I so desperately wanted all the 'boring' details. I did find it interesting and fun that Brennan decided to model ancient Draconean orthography more on Akkadian and Sumerian than Egyptian, despite the rest of the ancient Draconean culture + the Cataract Stone being modeled on the latter. Akkadian/Sumerian is notoriously difficult to read and translate, especially if you're not an expert, and it doesn't really change anything else, so it makes sense to use that as the basis for Audrey and Kudshayn's work here.

At this point in time, Draconeans were discovered ~40 years prior, giving people enough time to form opinions and biases about them. The desire for ancient Draconean artifacts hasn't died down, and with the upcoming Falchester Conference to determine the fate of the Sanctuary of Wings and Draconeans as a whole, there's a new boom for them. Despite that, there are some people who are neutral, some who support the Draconeans, and some who dislike them. The latter group can be split into different fields of thought: Calderites who think Draconeans are lesser than humans and should stay in the Sanctuary, and Hadamists who think Draconeans mean the end of human civilization and want them dead. Both Draconean supporters and haters are out in full force with the upcoming conference, and some are eager to see what the translated tablets have to say, if only to use them against the other side.

The book is told in a multimedia style, with snippets from Audrey, Kudshayn, and Cora's diaries; newspaper articles; translated tablets; and letters. I really liked this method of telling the story since it allows us to get a much fuller look at everything going on during the course of the story. It's also interesting because it provides us with a number of different narrative styles, and I enjoyed how this storytelling technique nods to the topic of the book. I also liked that Brennan included the translations as Audrey and Kudshayn made them since we got to see the story unfold alongside them and we got to see some of their notes about the translation, some of which come back later on as plot points.

Audrey is clearly very passionate about linguistics and Draconean rights (obviously), and it's clear she's got the Trent/Camherst passion in her. At the same time, she has to juggle with the knowledge that she's being compared against her other illustrious family members -- from Isabella and Suhail to her father and mother -- and wants to achieve her own greatness. She doesn't always make the best decisions, but neither did Isabell, and I enjoyed seeing the dynamic of her trying to pursue her passions, live up to her family name, and 'do what grandmama would do.'

Kudshayn is a Draconean whose mother purposefully laid her clutch in a different environment in order to experiment with Draconean developmental lability with the hopes of ensuring Draconeans can live among humans and not just in the Sanctuary of Wings. Kudshayn, being a male Draconean, is a scholar and a priest, thus the translation is important to him as well as to Audrey. Kudshayn has a lot to grapple with in the book, from the upcoming vote about whether the Sanctuary should be recognized as independent and Draconeans free to roam, to the new religious insights found in the tablet, to the rocky history of human-Draconean relations. He's fairly quiet and sensible, but he also understands a lot about people and is forgiving when something is a genuine mistake vs. malicious intent.

Cora is Lord Gleinheigh's niece, tasked with being Audrey's assistant and with spying on her. Cora is autistic coded, though considering the time period, no one comes out and says it. Poor Cora is stuck between somewhat of a rock and a hard place -- she feels indebted to her uncle and so she spies on Audrey + Kudshayn, but at the same time she becomes friends with them and doesn't necessarily want to do it. Cora is quite clever and while she can't translate Draconean as well as the other two, she actually makes some decent headway and is able to pick some of it up quickly. I did enjoy her frustration with the more confusing or intricate aspect of ancient Draconean orthography. Cora comes into herself in this book and becomes quite the little advocate for herself. I really liked seeing her friendship with the other two (and a little hint in The Long Fall of how the three are still connected.)

Overall I enjoyed this book and think it's a great companion to the Lady Trent memoirs. I liked Audrey as a character and enjoyed following her journey in this book. I also really loved the linguistic aspect of things and am glad that we got a book focused on Draconean translations and linguistics.

[ome-magical-ramblings]

An Updated index to my blog

(updated 24-10-2023) (updated 27-05-2024) I figured out people might have wanted a more of a "guide" or "index" to my blog that might be more preferable than just letting someone dig through my blog, I will be updating this blog overtime. I also offer tarot reading and magical spell/ritual service depending on consultation, divination, and figuring out your country's currencies and adjusting my rates and the task at hand, throwing that out of the way if you are thinking about that. I do magical service and readings for pay, you can contact me and ask me about it if you're wondering. Book Review: Greatness of Saturn, A Therapeutic Myth My free publications: Sandalphon: Archangel of Malkuth Sandalphon's spirit portrait by @desdemonasarchives Business and Money Psalms Magic for Traveling Long distance Kefizat Haderech/Tay Al Ard Virtue of Quranic VersesFour Wheels of The Enchiridion

Akshaya Tritiya and A Collecting of folklore Quranic benefits,

Prayers, rituals: Prayer for knowledge/studying(Occult/Mundane Knowledge) Dream Oracle Adam's Prayer Liber Resh PGM-based Qi Ball and Helios Rite Invocation of Light Hagith's Home Sweetening Ophiel's Mercury Retrograde Mitigation Ritual Stick Pad's Divination Affordable 7 days candle where you can't buy it Visualization Advice from Ophiel New Memory Improvement Spell from Grimoire of Pope Leo Prayer of Crowns Arabic Translation The Ladder and Spring for Scrying elemental Kingdoms Kerubic Prayers for 4 stations of the sun. Virtue and Spells to the see the Prophet(Mohammed) Setting Light into the Past, for Spells, Ancestors and Beyond. Magical usage of Prayer of Crowns Incense Series ( Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 ) More new stuff Offering and Salutations to the Teachers practice, outline, and technique. Contacting Ophiel with Pen and Paper.

Praying with Flowers and St Justina

Wish fulfilling power of Verse of Throne

Log and record of practice:

Signs of Witchcraft ( Part 1 , Part 2 )

Spirit Stealing Offerings

Radionics Magical experiments

Elelogap's Purification work

7 Weeks of Arbatel/Olypmic spirits work

Geometric Entities and 3d polygons-like nature spirits.

Daimon of Sodom's Apple ( Part 1 , Part 2 coming soon )

Hagith's Flower

Grimoire of Sixfold star's Series: The Method Elnafi( Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 , finale ) Rimori( Part 1 ) halting 44 days of Psalm 119

Scrying The Elemental Kingdoms Method ( Air , Earth , More Air , More Earth , Water! , FIRE ) Meeting Angalaparameshwari! Thoughts and contemplations:

In Praise of Mistakes and Mishaps

craft on oil/consecrated oil

Magical results and time scale.

Variance in magical languages and Pronunciation Circumambulation Magical Rings Closed Practices, Initiation, and gate-keeping practices. "the most powerfull exercise you did", Stacking prayers, and praying with spirits and entities. Concept of Werd/Daily Recitation or prayers.

ABLANATHANALBA's formula breakdown and experiment ( Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 ) At a Crossroad The power of the Cross The Crossing of Magical Currents Purification Practice Sincerity and Severity and advice for spirit communication. Being Hard on oneself and other. Sadness, Disappointment, and 3 of Swords God does not burden any soul beyond its capacity. The Golden Chain, lineages, egregores...and the open secret to initiation Linguistic Breakdown of Prayer of Crowns In Memory of Dr Leon Wright. By Letters, Words, and Names. Prophets, Mounts, and Open Secrets/ initiation To Be Silent and Pearl Clutching. Good Deeds, Virtues don't sell. Lineage of Spirits(A rope from spirits and a rope from people) Enjoy your Practice. Wisdom, Torah, Tear, Tarot. Shem Angels, Guardian angels, and Natal spirits.

Restitutionism: Praying For and with the Spirits.

Love Elemental-astrological Talismans

Chaldean Oracle 147, Gate of Man and Immortals, Cancer/Capricorn and Daniel in the bible. Retrospective: Practice from a length and at a length.

Previously public services: ( I might make more in the future, stay tuned ) St Expedite Work Ganesha's Working ( Part 1 , Part 2 ) St Cyprian and Aratron

[hughiecampbelle]

first and foremost, i wish you a speedy recovery! congrats with 10k <3

preferences: the boys series, any character you want. i usually gravitate towards men and morally questionable characters, but everything is up to you :)

1. physical: im 21, 5'5, slim, no tattoos, black short hair, i have glasses and i usually wear casual dark clothes, like really not flashy at all. really like going around with a backpack full of stuff for every occasion

2. personality: im agender asexual. basically im trying to logically analyze everything around me, so i end up being 'i told you so' person with negative eq. but really, im told im pretty kind to the people around me. i like interacting with my friends but i get tired quickly from it, so i self isolate a lot. i have a negative worldview. i'm prone to anger and control it poorly. i dont have grand goals in life, no ambitious, i dont strive for more because i dont care, im really only attached to life through the people whom i idolize and if anyone opposes me, my ideals and especially people special to me, i defend them relentlessly, im really only stubborn about them. and well, since my main interest is russian politics, i am really passionate towards russian opposition, so the hate towards the government, violence, dictatorship, censorship, apolitical people who dont care etc etc applies.

3. hobbies: consuming/analyzing new information on anything that interests me at the given moment; linguistics, computer games, drawing, writing, cooking, birdwatching, joking.

4. favorites: book – solaris by stanislaw lem; movie – tenet (2020); game – deus ex mankind divided; song – vertigo by edwin rosen. i like sci fi a lot

thanks in advance ☃️

You're the only person in Butcher's life who can tell him "I told you so". Coming from anyone else, it would set him off. He'd come back at them with quips and jokes and even some harsh words, but when you're the one saying it, all he can say is "I know, love". You're the one who keeps him (mostly) level headed

Despite the both of you being stubborn, you agree on a lot of things, especially when it comes to Vought/Homelander. The both of you would do anything to stop them. Anything. Your Russian opposition bleeds into an opposition towards Vought and Supes in general. It might not always be the best thing for everyone, but if it's the right way to take them down, you're willing to do it

Butcher loves that you like analyzing new information. You're the best on the team for catching things no one else did, seeing the smallest obscurities and inconsistencies in Vought's story. You're always finding something they could have missed. Your attention to detail is what's gotten them out of trouble on more than a few occasions

He appreciates your commitment to the people you love. He's been fighting this fight, first for Becca, then Ryan, now you. You're linked together through love and appreciation and understanding that you're committed to one another no matter what. Though he doesn't always feel deserving of it, you make sure he knows you'd never leave him. You'd never turn on him

Butcher was never really good with words, so he's pretty amazed by your writing. When he does try to talk things through, it all comes out wrong. It's jumbled and cynical and taken the wrong way. The fact that you can make your words malleable and work right and also sound pretty blows him away. Even his compliments come out wonky, but you've been together long enough to know what he's trying to say, what means

I hope you like it my love!!!! Xoxoxo💜💜💜💜💜

Want to request a ship?

[x0401x]

hey! i really want to work as a japanese translator, do you have any tips on starting out? also if you have any books, online courses or youtube channels related to this to recommend i'd be very thankful! thanks in advance, love your work!

Thank you! Okay, here’s my advice based on personal experience.

1. Translate as much as you can. You’ll only get good if you do it a lot. Translating doesn’t only depend on knowledge about the languages you will use. There’s countless sets of other skills that you’ll need to acquire, and you’ll only realize what they are if you translate a lot of different stuff.

2. Put your work out there. Your social media is your portfolio. Just make sure not to get copyright strikes. Go for the more obscure fandoms or things that have already been published online for everyone to see but haven’t been translated.

3. Do commissions if you’re up to it (but again, only post what’s safe to post).

I wish I had books or courses or channels to recommend, but honestly, I don’t. Then again, every translator has their own style, and I think the best thing to do is to find your own.

Also, I don’t know what language you want to translate Japanese into, but here’s some advice that I’ve received from people in the industry: English is saturated in that market. If you speak other languages, you have a better change at getting yourself a job. You have an even better chance of getting a stable position if you aim for editor instead. Still linguistics-based and needs translation skills, but you’ll probably be a full-time hired worker instead of a freelancer. This one is an advice that I got from one of my professors, who worked as an editor for Kodansha for 30 years. But if you feel that translation is your calling, and if you’re able to, the academic world is also an option.

There’s a lot to choose from, so don’t ever be discouraged! I wish you the best of luck, Anon!

[the-himawari]

A3! Usui Masumi - Translation [SR] Zero Gravity Linguist (1/2)

*Please read disclaimer on blog; default name set as Izumi

---

Izumi: The casting for your next performance has been decided! Have you already thought about what you’re going to do to prepare for your role, Masumi-kun?

Masumi: The character I play gets scouted to join the crew of a spaceship, so I'm going to do some research on stuff like space, the moon, and the stars. They should have books like that at the library. I’m planning to head there now.

Izumi: I see. I hope you find some nice books that help with your studies.

Masumi: Yeah. Thanks.

Izumi: Speaking of books about space, that reminds me of the sci-fi novel I borrowed from Chikage-san way back.

Masumi: A sci-fi novel?

Izumi: Don’t you remember? That book called “The End of the Universe” that Chikage-san bought during one of his business trips.*

Masumi: Right… the one that you borrowed from Chikage and lost sleep over reading.

Izumi: Ahaha. Yep, that’s the one. I wish you’d forget about that part though. The protagonist in that story is a researcher who’s shooting for the stars. It might have some slight similarities with your upcoming play.

Masumi: Will reading it help with my role study?

Izumi: I guess so. The mood might be helpful.

Masumi: I’ll give it a read if you say so.

Izumi: It’s a western book, but I doubt you’ll take as long as I did to get through it.

Masumi: …I’ll try my best to finish it as soon as I can so I can discuss my thoughts with you.

Izumi: Sure, good luck. By the way, will it be alright if you don’t head to the library soon? The library closes when it gets late.

Masumi: It’s this late already? *Sigh*. Time flies when I’m with you… I’ll leave now.

Izumi: Alright, see you. Take care!

-pause-

Masumi: …I’m home.

Tsuzuru: Welcome back. Where did you go?

Masumi: The library. I borrowed some books about space and the moon.

Tsuzur: Ah, I see. That explains that. Oh, this book… I got the same one and read it while I was writing the script. I recommend it since it’s quite organized and easy to follow.

Masumi: Okay, I’ll read it second.

Tsuzuru: Wait, why! The usual reply would be that you’re going to read it first.

Masumi: I already know what I’m going to read first.

Tsuzuru: …Oh, really? Which book is it?

Masumi: I don’t have it yet, so I’m going to go borrow it.

*leaves*

Tsuzuru: Borrow? From who…?

-pause-

*knock, knock*

Chikage: Come in.

-pause-

Masumi: Chikage. Do you have the novel “The End of the Universe”?

Chikage: I do. Why do you ask all of a sudden?

Masumi: Lend it to me if you have it.

Chikage: Sure. Ahh, could this be for your role study?

Masumi: Yeah. Director recommended it to me.

Chikage: I get it now. …Hold on a second. Oh, right. I have different books on space and the moon apart from this one. Should I fetch those too?

Masumi: If you’ll let me have them…

Chikage: No problem at all. In that case, I have two more… here you go. I’ve read them already, so you can return them any time.

Masumi: Got it. I’ll give them back together after I get through them all.

Chikage: …Good luck.

Masumi: …?

-pause-

Masumi: He got me…

Tsuzuru: What’s wrong?

Masumi: All the books I got from Chikage were western books…

Tsuzuru: Ahh, that guy really…

Masumi: He’s so mean. …I’m going to read them all on my own, mark my words.

---

*References Chikage’s SSR His Welcoming Territory story

| next

[spectralgecko]

Here's an interesting tidbit of wisdom for you:

Memorizing poetry is good for your imagination.

It... makes sense, really - memorizing poetry, and making sure it stays memorized, files it into your brain as a fuel. Creative fuel that sits in there and marinates. It gives your brain another resource to pull from.

We talk about how reading lots of stuff is good for your creativity and writing, and if just reading it is good, how much more so memorizing it?

And it wouldn't have to apply to just poetry, either. Even just... passages of writing that you enjoy. A funny paragraph, or a well-said sentence, or a monologue you enjoy.

Memorization used to be a lot more prevalent in schools and colleges, as was memorizing much more extensive texts. I think that's part of why many older writers wrote so well and why we love their work. They were exposed to and had memorized writing from those before them, creatives before them, poets and writers and all sorts of stories. If you go back far enough, many were also exposed to and possibly fluent in Latin - acquainted with the vocabulary and, more importantly, the linguistic structure. That did a lot to make their writing beautiful - it gave them a wealth of words and ways of speaking to draw from, even subconsciously.

As a writer, I know that much or most of what I write takes inspiration from what I've read, but it also occurs to me that I don't memorize things much anymore. And that's a little sad. Maybe part of why my brain doesn't come up with what I want it to when I want it to is because I'm not feeding it as much anymore.

I'm taking a poetry elective at the moment, and for it, we've memorized some poems. I think I want to do that more often. And make sure they stay memorized, too. Because I love how some poets write. Their word choices, their style, the richness of the work. I don't think I can ever expect myself to produce that sort of writing if I don't absolutely soak my brain in it, and memorizing does exactly that.

Long story short, if you're a writer and wish your brain would produce words better and more often, maybe memorizing poetry and writing would open something up. Can't expect your brain to put out what you don't put in, after all.

Side note, highly recommend authors like Poe, Tennyson, Keats, Donne, Shakespeare, Carrol, Coleridge, Shelly.... Byron... who else... Wordsworth and Blake, Herbert, Ralegh...

The book we're currently using is "Top 500 Poems" - great resource. But if you don't feel like getting a book, Poetry Foundation has tons of stuff, and the Gutenberg Project has a bunch more.

[lingthusiasm]

Transcript Episode 87: If I were an irrealis episode

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm episode ‘If I were an irrealis episode’. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the episode show notes page.

[Music]

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

Gretchen: I’m Gretchen McCulloch. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about how languages express unreality. But first, thank you to everyone who celebrated our anniversary month with us.

Lauren: We always enjoy seeing what you recommend to people and thanking you for doing that. If you did that not on social media, in your own private media channels, thank you very much. You can share Lingthusiasm with anyone who needs more linguistics in their life throughout the year.

Gretchen: Our most recent bonus episode is a conversation about swearing in science fiction and fantasy with Ada Palmer and Jo Walton.

Lauren: I was so excited to hear you talk to two of our favourite authors. We’ve talked about Ada Palmer’s Too Like the Lightning and the Terra Ignota series before. We’ve talked about Jo Walton’s Thessaly books. Getting to hear you talk to them about swearing in fantasy and in science fiction was a whole lot of fun.

Gretchen: This was so much fun. We also have several other bonus episodes about swearing more generally as well as a massive archive of bonus episodes if you’re looking for something to do, and you wish there were more Lingthusiasm episodes, or you just wanna help us keep making the show. Those are there. You can go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm to get access to our full archive of bonus episodes for yourself, or they make a great last-minute gift idea.

[Music]

Lauren: Gretchen, what is real?

Gretchen: That’s a big philosophical question, Lauren, “What does it mean for something to be real?”

Lauren: Mm-hmm. But we could also answer it linguistically.

Gretchen: We could, indeed. Languages have lots of ways of talking about things that aren’t real. Sometimes, this itself can get tricky. If you want to start a fun discussion among your friends at the dinner table, try asking them things like, “Is a toy sword a real sword?”

Lauren: Hmm, I can totally see a context where you’re playing with toy swords – or maybe those big foam swords that people use in live-action role playing. In that context, it’s a real sword. You’re like, “Please don’t hit me with your sword,” or “I’m gonna practice my sword work.”

Gretchen: It is more of a real sword than a mimed sword or an entirely imaginary sword. It is real as in you can touch it, but it is not real as in it could cut people. One of my friends has a cheese plate that comes with these delightful small swords and daggers and axes that you can use to cut cheese with.

Lauren: Cute.

Gretchen: Which is great. This is, by some definitions, a “real” sword because you can cut things with it even if those things are cheese.

Lauren: Probably taken away from you as a weapon if you try to take it on an aeroplane.

Gretchen: Are we letting the airplane security people decide what a real sword is? The solution to all of our philosophical questions is just answered by airline security people.

Lauren: I’m taking a really weird range of stuff to the airport next time I travel just to check what is real. But then there are things that exist but not in this reality. So, Excalibur is a famous sword. But is it a real sword?

Gretchen: Right. Probably there’s a museum somewhere that has something that claims that it’s Excalibur. It certainly is a sword that has a bunch of cultural connotations with it – that has a level of reality that’s different than a magical sword that someone just makes up as a fantasy novel writer for their own novel but doesn’t have a broader cultural existence.

Lauren: I feel in some ways it’s more real than a foam sword or a cheese plate sword because it is more prototypically sword-like in my head. Could you imagine if Arthur went around with a cheese plate-sized sword or a foam sword? That’s the version of King Arthur I’m gonna rewrite.

Gretchen: I recently saw a production of Macbeth in which – so Macbeth has this famous speech which starts, “Is this a dagger that I see before me?”, and he’s not sure if he’s hallucinating or not. He’s about to kill the king, and he’s feeling guilty about it.

Lauren: He’s not sure if it’s just a cheese board.

Gretchen: Is it just a cheese dagger? In this production – which was also interesting because all of the characters were dressed up as goblins, but that’s a whole other thing.

Lauren: Uh, okay.

Gretchen: We’ll get to that in a sec.

Lauren: Sure.

Gretchen: The staging represented the dagger, at first, as a beam of light – like a tightly focused spotlight – in front of Macbeth, and everything else on the stage was all in red. There was this beam of white light. You’re saying, “Is this a dagger that I see before me?”, and you’re seeing this beam of light. In that context, the audience is supposed to be believing that Macbeth is hallucinating. Then the actor pulls out a prop dagger that I’m sure was probably not very sharp to subsequently be the murder weapon that he’s gonna go kill the king with. So, “Is this a real dagger? Is this an unreal dagger?” Different productions approach this question of “Is Macbeth seeing something real or not?” in different ways.

Lauren: The prop dagger is more of a real dagger than the beam of light dagger. And in the play, it stands in as a real dagger, but it’s less of a real dagger than a sharp one that might stab someone.

Gretchen: Right.

Lauren: I’m keeping track.

Gretchen: Exactly.

Lauren: Just to be clear – were they real goblins?

Gretchen: Well, [laughs] I certainly felt like I had just seen some goblins perform Macbeth. I had to keep reminding myself, like, no, they’ve just got costumes on because, man, those costumes were really great. The actors came out into the lobby and interacted with the audience before and after the show, so they felt –

Lauren: As goblins? In character?

Gretchen: As goblins in character.

Lauren: Okay.

Gretchen: Sort of improvising. They felt like they were real goblins. Then I’ve had to explain this show to other people, and they’ve been like, “So, wait, were they humans in the play?” And I was like, “No, it’s complicated. It all made sense at the time, though, I promise.”

Lauren: Amazing. I do have a moment of caution because goblins aren’t real in our world, but also, goblins have been used by a bunch of 20th Century fantasy writers to stand in for, for example, Jewish people in not always the most sensitive or appropriate way. Is that something that was happening here? I say with caution.

Gretchen: No, thank goodness.

Lauren: Okay.

Gretchen: One of the things you can do with something that has a cultural reality is the characters are very careful to say, “These other writers – you may have heard other things about goblins – they were all wrong. We’re the real goblins, and we’re gonna tell you the real story of goblins, which is not at all antisemitic” in the context of the actors wanting to do this play.

Lauren: Okay, so they were more real fake goblins than the fake fake goblins of fantasy.

Gretchen: Exactly. They were laying claim to being the real goblins and being like, “No, these other authors have said nasty things about this, but that’s not who we are.”

Lauren: Hilarious.

Gretchen: Which is something that you can do with something that has a cultural level of reality. “If I had a dog” is a hypothetical statement, but dogs are real.

Lauren: You could have a pet dog if you wanted to.

Gretchen: “If I had a dragon” is also a hypothetical statement, but it has a different level of hypothetical reality.

Lauren: You could put a little costume on a lizard, but yeah, you’re not getting a pet dragon of fire-breathing, winged fantasy fame.

Gretchen: Well, but maybe I have a dragon plush toy, which is a real dragon that I could have.

Lauren: True. Much easier to feed than a real dog or lizard.

Gretchen: My house insurance is a much bigger fan of me having a stuffed dragon. Those have a different level of reality compared to if I say, “If I have a frenumblinger” –

Lauren: If you have a what what?

Gretchen: Well, a “frenumblinger,” clearly, which is the creature that makes it not rain when you bring an umbrella.

Lauren: Ah. I absolutely always take an umbrella everywhere with me, but I didn’t realise I was appeasing this particular deity.

Gretchen: Well, if only you’d realised you were appeasing the frenumblinger – which is a creature that we made up that doesn’t have a cultural reality beyond this podcast.

Lauren: Dragons are more real than frenumblingers, even though both of them are not real.

Gretchen: Yeah. Reality itself is a continuum and depends on the context that you’re talking about.

Lauren: It’s so great that language lets us talk about things that aren’t here and aren’t real.

Gretchen: And that may or may not be real in the future.

Lauren: A lot of the time, we do this with words – like something being “not real” or “There might be dragons.”

Gretchen: Or “fake” or “toy” or things like that – “imaginary.”

Lauren: But languages can also use grammatical marking as part of a way of showing whether something’s real or not in the way that we do our grammar.

Gretchen: This is referred to with a delightful name, which is the “irrealis.” There are various kinds of irrealis markers that happen at a grammatical level in addition to all of the ways you can use words to talk about things that are imaginary or pretend or fake or constructed.

Lauren: There’s lots of different ways that we talk about the “slipperiness” of reality in language. We’re gonna talk about the grammatical structures of irrealis for the rest of this episode.

Gretchen: We’ve talked about stories and deliberately imaginary or fantastical contexts, but there’s also lots of places in everyday language where we wanna talk about things that haven’t happened and may never happen but might happen. We wanna talk about them.

Lauren: For example, “If it rains, I bring an umbrella,” regardless of whether I believe in frenumblinger.

Gretchen: That’s a relatively here and now if-then statement. We can also say, “If it rains, I will cancel the picnic,” which is something that’s even more hypothetical.

Lauren: Disappointing, but fair enough if we have to do that.

Gretchen: You can have more hypothetical conditional statements like “If all the raindrops were lemon drops and gum drops, oh, what a rain that would be!”

Lauren: That sounds horrifying.

Gretchen: Wait, do you not know this children’s song?

Lauren: I do not know this children’s song. It sounds like the start of an apocalypse.

Gretchen: “If it had rained lemon drops and gum drops, the plants would’ve been crushed under the weight.”

Lauren: Not to mention us. I don’t think my umbrella’s gonna be much help here.

Gretchen: Not to mention the effects on the water table.

Lauren: Oh, gosh. This is an absolute ecological apocalypse here. How terrifying.

Gretchen: Conditionals can be used to talk about both relatively realistic hypothetical events – and also very fantastical ones.

Lauren: I’m gonna go listen to this song after this, but I am already scared of it.

Gretchen: You’ll be even more excited to learn that the second verse goes, “If all the snowflakes were candy bars and milkshakes.”

Lauren: How are we even gonna produce that many candy bars and that much milkshake?

Gretchen: “Oh, what a snow that would be!”

Lauren: Indeed.

Gretchen: My favourite type of conditionals are not candy bars and milkshakes, they are, in fact, biscuit conditionals.

Lauren: Delightful.

Gretchen: Going from one food to the next. So, this is a famous example from J. L. Austin, who has the statement, “There are biscuits on the sideboard if you want them.”

Lauren: Oh, thanks, but where are biscuits if I don’t want them?

Gretchen: [Laughs] This is the thing because in these examples of “If it rains, I bring an umbrella,” if it doesn’t rain, maybe I don’t bring an umbrella, or maybe I bring one just in case to appease frenumblinger – compared to “There are biscuits on the sideboard if you want them, and if you don’t want them, well, where are they?”

Lauren: There are lots of different relationships between the first half and the second half of a conditional. I do like that biscuit conditionals set you up for a really great mom joke there.

Gretchen: There’s a related xkcd comic which goes, “I’ll be in your city tomorrow if you want to hang out.”

Lauren: “But where will you be if I don’t want to hang out?” I do actually wanna hang out.

Gretchen: I wanna hang out, too. But yeah, this sort of “What happens with the other half of the ‘if’?” This is one of the tricky things about talking about hypothetical events that there are lots of different ways of getting into that hypothetical.

Lauren: Which is why the caption on the xkcd comic is “Why I try not to be pedantic about conditionals.”

Gretchen: Very important.

Lauren: A good motto to live by. A lot of conditionals are slippery when the hypothetical part is in the future, and that’s because the future is quite difficult. It is unknowable by its very nature because we have a linear progression of time. That means that the future and irrealis bump up against each other in really interesting ways.

Gretchen: Right. If you make a statement – a relatively unremarkable future-y statement – like, “I’m probably gonna go to the store tomorrow,” or “I want to bake a cake tonight,” these are fine. These express a future or a desired future, but if you make the past equivalent – so instead of “I’m probably going to the store tomorrow,” “I probably went to the store yesterday.”

Lauren: Are you okay?

Gretchen: Like, was I sleepwalking? Was I consuming a substance that made me forget things?

Lauren: Do you have amnesia?

Gretchen: That’s suddenly a much weirder statement. “I want to bake a cake tonight,” fine. “I wanted to bake a cake last night” is fine, but it implies that it didn’t actually happen. Like, “I wanted to bake the cake last night. In fact, I did bake one.” Okay. Well, why didn’t you just say, “I baked a cake last night?”

Lauren: For sure. In fact, this is where English “will” for future came from. Something like, “I will bake a cake” originally meant something much more like, “I want to bake a cake.”

Gretchen: You still get, I think, sometimes these older, tiny things like, “I know it’s gonna happen. I will it.” That’s the same “will” in origin. The wanting intensely is that future “will” – it became that future “will.”

Lauren: The way that “will” is turning into something much more grammatical in the English future is a nice example of how different languages will sometimes use words and sometimes use grammar for these less-real irrealis contexts.

Gretchen: English still has grammatical past – “I baked a cake last night” – which is different from “I bake a cake right now.” But in some languages, instead of having a past/non-past like we have in English, what you actually have is a realis/irrealis where you have one form of a verb to talk about things that have happened or that are currently happening – any version of it that’s real – and then you have another form that’s talking about any version of it that’s unreal, whether that’s future or hypothetical or that whole class of things. It also makes sense as a way of splitting the conceptual timeframe into things that I have evidence for actually happening and things that I don’t yet have evidence for.

Lauren: For example, Manam, which is an Austronesian language in Papua New Guinea, doesn’t have a tense distinction like past and present and future; it has a realis and an irrealis form. They’re all prefixes on the verb.

Gretchen: There’s one set of prefixes for realis, whether it’s like, “I’m doing this,” “You’re doing that,” “We’re doing this,” “They’re doing this,” and so on. And there’s one for irrealis, which is like, “I might,” or “I will,” or “We might,” or “They might,” or all of these groups of forms. Another example of a language that uses realis versus irrealis as a really important distinction is Terêna, which is a southern Arawak language spoken in southwestern Mato Grosso, Brazil. They have two different forms for every verb, which is “actual” and “potential” – basically realis and irrealis – that have different suffixes. You have things that are realis, which can be translated as stuff like, “He went,” or “when he went,” or “He will go,” which in this case is grouped with the realis.

Lauren: So, it’s definitely gonna happen.

Gretchen: The idea is it’s definitely gonna happen. Then, in the irrealis category you have things more like, “Let him go,” or “when he goes,” which is more hypothetical.

Lauren: What people segment up as realis and irrealis differs depending on the grammar of a language.

Gretchen: Exactly. In many cases, English uses just extra words like “will” or “want” or “let” or “if” to indicate that something is irrealis, but we do have a few verb forms that are also used for hypothetical events.

Lauren: One of my favourites involves both mid-20th-Century musicals and Gwen Stefani.

Gretchen: Great.

Lauren: In English, we have two different structures. We have “if I were a rich man.” That is a slightly different structure to “if I was a rich girl.”

Gretchen: Ah, so these are two relatively famous songs. “If I Were a Rich Man” comes from Fiddler on the Roof, which is a 1964 musical.

Lauren: And “If I Were a Rich Girl” is a Gwen Stefani song from 2004.

Gretchen: This immediately gives us these great dates for when these two forms were more popular – “if I were,” “if I was” – and then these two songs that are influenced by each other.

Lauren: This form that has “were,” instead of just the normal past tense “was,” is something known as the “subjunctive.”

Gretchen: Ah, the elusive subjunctive in English.

Lauren: It is elusive because it is changing into this regular past tense form as we see with Gwen Stefani’s “If I Was a Rich Girl.”

Gretchen: Right. Not everybody says the subjunctive in that context. It’s still optionally there. You have to do it in “if I were” or “if he were” because in all the other forms, “if you were,” “if they were,” “if we were,” it’s just the same as the past tense form. You have to use it with “I” or “he” or “she” – one of the forms that would use “was” in another context – to be able to see it show up, which is probably why it’s kind of fragile and disappearing.

Lauren: Yeah, I think so.

Gretchen: Can we try to do a little bit of antedating? Fiddler on the Roof comes out in 1964, but the title of the song “If I Were a Rich Man,” having now looked into it, was inspired by a monologue from 1902 by Sholem Aleichem, which was in Yiddish, and the title of that was, “Ven Ikh Bin Rothschild,” or literally, “If I Were a Rothschild.”

Lauren: So, I don’t have to speak Yiddish to know that they’re talking about the very rich American Rothschild family.

Gretchen: Yes. Something that I think is interesting grammatically about the title of this monologue, which is a great monologue because it all goes on about how he’s gonna build schools for all the poor children and stuff – it’s a great monologue – but is “ikh bin,” which is the same as the German form “Ich bin,” like “I am,” whereas the German subjunctive form in this context is “Ich wäre,” which is more like “I were.”

Lauren: Yiddish and German are related, but they’re already doing different things.

Gretchen: They’re already doing different things specifically with subjunctive. Yiddish is already following this trajectory that English is following where it’s getting closer to the more usual form for “I am.”

Lauren: And you’re just meant to know that it’s hypothetical because he’s not a Rothschild, and he’s not building schools.

Gretchen: Well, and you have this word “if,” yeah.

Lauren: I also did some antedating on Gwen Stefani’s version of “If I Was a Rich Girl,” which was on her debut solo album Love. Angel. Music. Baby. It turns out that it’s actually a cover of a 1993 song by Louchie Lou & Michie One, where they also sing “if I was a rich girl.” Already by the early ’90s in younger people’s speech you see the subjunctive slipping.

Gretchen: Who are Louchie Lou & Michie One?

Lauren: They’re a British female ragga/soul duo from London in the early ’90s and were linked to the film clip for this track because they’re clearly having a lot of fun with it.

Gretchen: They may have had their finger on the pulse of language change a bit sooner than Gwen Stefani in 2004.

Lauren: Yeah.

Gretchen: When I think about the connection between “If I Were a Rich Man” and “If I Was a Rich Girl,” I think of an a cappella mashup from the mid-2010s, which combines these two songs in a very fun music video from some very posh-looking British a cappella singers, which we can also link to because it reinforces – and I hadn’t really realised that “If I Was a Rich Girl” was actually playing on “If I Were a Rich Man,” and they’re using some of the same beats in the background of the song. I hadn’t realised there was a connection between those. I should say, when Gwen Stefani came out with that song, she’d already released some music, and she was already pretty wealthy. At the time, you got some newspaper commenters and so on who were saying like, “Isn’t it a bit disingenuous for you to be saying, ‘if I was a rich girl’? Because you are, in fact, a rich girl.”

Lauren: Yeah, but the lyric “if I were not the rich girl that I am so I can be an avatar for my unwealthy audience” doesn’t really have the same ring to it.

Gretchen: Gwen Stefani at the time explained that as she was talking about the time before she had found commercial success when she used to be broke – which, maybe, you know, okay.

Lauren: A different level of hypothetical there.

Gretchen: Two levels of hypotheticality.

Lauren: We’re seeing this really interesting development over the last century or so in English where the subjunctive is changing in English.

Gretchen: Sometimes people say that this is “losing the subjunctive,” but interestingly, in both cases, it’s a past form. “If I was” and “if I were” are both using the form that is associated with the past – “was” or “were” – to refer to an event that is very much not the past. In fact, it hasn’t happened.

Lauren: Ugh, this is why it’s so hard to learn it as a second language speaker.

Gretchen: The subjunctive is something that often comes up when people are learning languages like French, Spanish, Italian – in German, it’s called the “conjunctive,” but it’s the same thing, the conjunctive and the conditional – because these languages have more fully-fledged forms for the subjunctive that they use to express a range of meanings that English speakers know how to express but aren’t used to thinking as all of the same kind of thing. Sometimes, I think it must actually be really hard if someone speaks one of those languages first and is coming in and trying to learn English, and they’re like, “What do you mean I just have this one easy form that I use for all this stuff, and I have to learn, like, seven different ways of expressing it now?”

Lauren: [Laughs] For sure.

Gretchen: I think this must actually also be hard because English doesn’t have one unified subjunctive. We have a whole range of extra stuff. You can just use the subjunctive for all of them? That’s so easy!

Lauren: Yeah. I mean, you could be like me and whenever anyone talks about the subjunctive, in my head I just hear, “if I was-slash-were a rich man-slash-girl.”

Gretchen: I’m glad that you’re covering the full range of possible forms there with “was” and “were.” I remember feeling confused about this form in the classroom and trying to use the subjunctive where, a lot of the times, the context that you’re talking about things are very remote and seem kind of artificial. The thing that really made me feel more comfortable using the subjunctive and recognising it was just encountering it in the wild in a bunch of contexts where it was like, “Oh, yeah, this is what this has to mean.” There’s a particularly useful song for the French subjunctive, if you like, which is on a classic Celine Dion album from the 1990s.

Lauren: Excellent.

Gretchen: The song is called, “Pour Que Tu M’aimes Encore,” which is the title which translates sort of like, “So That You Love Me Again.” The “you love” is subjunctive. It’s hypothetical. It’s not the case, otherwise you wouldn’t have a song to write, but it’s saying all the things that the speaker would do so that the other person loves them again.

Lauren: Really looking forward to the Celine Dion/Gwen Stefani mashup that really helps people learn the French and English subjunctive forms.

Gretchen: Sounds great.

Lauren: The subjunctive is one of a set of different ways that we can talk about whether things are real or not. They’re also a subset of irrealis categories that are about trying to make the reality that you want to happen. There’s a great list on Wikipedia to check out. I feel like this was written by a linguist who is like me and remembers that there are different types of irrealis categories but never remembers their formal names.

Gretchen: This is definitely one of those cases when it’s like, if you know Latin, you just name everything with Latin roots, and then it sounds fancier than “the wish subjunctive” and the “want-to-make-people-do-things subjunctive.”

Lauren: Yes. We are gonna use the fancy names here, but like me, you’re absolutely not obliged to remember them. You can just click on the Wikipedia link whenever you wanna think about –

Gretchen: Every single time.

Lauren: Yeah. Let’s both pick our favourite two of these categories.

Gretchen: But, Lauren, we’re both gonna pick the “hortative” because it’s so cool!

Lauren: It is, and I just used it with “let’s.”

Gretchen: You just used it. “Let’s” both pick our favourite two subjunctive forms. The hortative is something that exhorts – it urges. It’s often found with “let” in English. Something like “Let us love each other,” “Let it snow,” “Let there be light” – imploring, insisting, or encouraging by the speaker. Sometimes, a language will have a specific form potentially used for the hortative, or this will be one of the categories that something like a subjunctive or another irrealis form can be used for. What’s one of your favourites if you can’t have the hortative?

Lauren: Well, if I can’t have the hortative, I will go for the category where an event is hoped for, expected, or awaited, which is the “optative.”

Gretchen: The “optative.” I want to opt into this coming event. Do you have an example of the optative?

Lauren: Something like, “May I be loved” or “May they get what they deserve,” which sounds threatening or hopeful depending on the context.

Gretchen: Can you use something like a “if only”?

Lauren: In Russian, to do something like the optative it would be literally translated as something like, “if only” – “If only she came back” – to do that expected or hoped for thing.

Gretchen: We have a “may something happen,” “if only something happened,” maybe “I wish something had happened.”

Lauren: I love Abkhaz – which is the language that Sarah Dopierala works on; we interviewed her for a bonus – I love that it has two different optative forms, and they both do slightly different things. In Abkhaz, you have Optative 1, which is to curse and to bless, and then Optative 2 is to express a wish, a dream, or a desire. The first one would be something like – the form of greetings is literally “May you see something good,” which is a blessing.

Gretchen: That’s a lovely greeting, yes.

Lauren: It’s a lovely greeting. I quite like. Optative 2 would be something like, “I wish she’d drink the water.” You get these two different forms that give you an idea of different ways you can do an optative.

Gretchen: I mean, I guess technically – we did a whole episode about the imperative, so that’s things like, “Drink the water,” and “See something good,” “Come back” – that is technically a type of irrealis because if you’re commanding someone to do something, it hasn’t happened yet.

Lauren: Ooo, yeah, so now you can go back and look into the whole imperative episode as an irrealis episode.

Gretchen: In principle, we could’ve done an entire hortative episode and an entire optative episode, but we decided to think about the macro category for a while first.

Lauren: My final category is one for when you’re not necessarily sure about the thing that you’re talking about, so you can’t be entirely certain if it’s real or not. This feature shows up in Yolmo. I wrote about it for my thesis. I wrote about it for a whole year before saying it. It turns out that I hate to say the word “dubitative” – /d͡ʒubɪtɛɪtɪv/?

Gretchen: /dubɪdəˈtɪv/.

Lauren: /dubətɪv/. /dubɪdətɪv/.

Gretchen: “Indubitatatative.”

Lauren: I’m very happy to write it for a year, and then I gave a presentation, and I was just like, “Oh, this is a problem.” But it is a grammatical category in Yolmo, and I do have to talk about it because it’s one that crops up in a whole bunch of languages. In English, we use a word like, “might,” you know, “I might make a cake,” “He maybe made a cake.” We use lots of different words for showing a lack of certainty. In other languages, it’s part of the grammar. In Ojibwe, which is an Algonquian language in North America, there is a specific suffix. The difference between saying something like, “aakozi,” meaning, “He’s sick,” or “aakozidog,” which is something like, “He must be sick; I guess he’s sick; Maybe he’s sick.” Like, “I can’t see inside this person’s head. I’m not a doctor. I can’t say for certain whether they’re sick, but they look pretty miserable.” I find having a grammatical form for whether you’re certain about something is so handy.

Gretchen: Technically, if you’d like, I did look up how to say this word. Oxford says /dubɪtɛɪtɪv/, but you know, language is pluricentric. You can say it however you’d like.

Lauren: I’ve definitely heard all of those different pronunciations from different people over time. I guess I will just continue to be uncertain about the way it’s pronounced.

Gretchen: Would you say you have “doubt”? Would you say you’re /dubɪtɛɪtɪv/ or /dubɪdətɪv/ about how to say “dubitative”?

Lauren: I would definitely use a dubitative grammatical form about my certainty about pronouncing it if we had one in English.

Gretchen: Excellent. I think my final form that I’m excited about – because I’m not counting imperative because we did a whole episode about that – I want to talk about a form that you can use to express a desire or a wish of the participant. If you wanna say something like, “I wish she loved me” – you have desire – you can use a /dəzɪdɹ̩ətɪv/ – I think that’s the only way it’s said. There are languages from Japanese and Mongolian to Sanskrit and Proto-Indo-European that all have desiderative forms of some sort.

Lauren: Aww. I like when a nice form crops up across a bunch of languages.

Gretchen: I think that that desire to try to impose order or predict what people are gonna say or what’s gonna be reality is part of what makes irrealis forms, like the subjunctive, complicated and confusing for people to learn is that they’re trying to talk about this whole class of events that haven’t happened yet and may or may not ever happen, which itself is confusing and chaotic to try to predict the future. It’s not the grammar’s fault that we’re using it to speculate about the unknowable.

Lauren: For sure.

Gretchen: One thing that we do know is that there is a fun etymology related to trying to impose order and predict the future of what people are gonna be like.

Lauren: I love a fun etymology story.

Gretchen: Have you ever wondered why the Greek Zodiac and the Chinese Zodiac are both called “zodiacs” even though one is months and the other one is years?

Lauren: I have never thought about this before. Is it something to do with the fact that – I mean, they both have cycles of 12 animals, so they definitely have a lot in common even though they don’t work on the same 12 rotation cycle.

Gretchen: Well, interestingly, it has nothing to do with 12, but etymologically, they come from the Greek “zodiakos kyklos,” or “zodiac circle,” which is literally a circle of little animals.

Lauren: Oh, “zo” as in “zoo.”

Gretchen: Yeah!

Lauren: But “diak” just is the diminutive “little”? Oh, that that is very cute.

Gretchen: Yeah, it’s “little animals.”

Lauren: How adorable.

Gretchen: There’re lots of tools that people use to make sense of the uncertainty or unknowability of reality in the future. Some of those tools are grammatical tools. Some of those tools are –

Lauren: Cute little animals.

Gretchen: Circles of little animals. Sometimes, that tool is etymology because people also use the origins of words to try to make sense of uncertainty even though etymology is also not destiny.

Lauren: We believe that so strongly that we made it into a sticker.

Gretchen: When you’re thinking about what’s real and what’s not real, when you’re wondering what’s knowable or unknowable, what’s certain or uncertain, the irrealis is a form that connects you through time and space to generations of other people who have also wondered what’s real.

[Music]

Lauren: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on all of the podcast platforms or go to lingthusiasm.com. You can get transcripts of every episode on lingthusiasm.com/transcripts. You can follow @lingthusiasm on all the social media sites. You can get scarves with lots of linguistics patterns on them, including IPA, branching tree diagrams, bouba and kiki, and our favourite esoteric Unicode symbols, plus other Lingthusiasm merch like our new “Etymology isn’t Destiny” t-shirts and stickers at lingthusiasm.com/merch. My social media and blog is Superlinguo.

Gretchen: I can be found as @gretchenmcc on Bluesky, my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com, and my book about internet language is called Because Internet. Lingthusiasm is able to keep existing thanks to the support of our patrons. If you wanna get an extra Lingthusiasm episode to listen to every month, our entire archive of bonus episodes to listen to right now, or if you just wanna help keep the show running ad-free, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Patrons can also get access to our Discord chatroom to talk to other linguistics fans and be the first to find out about new merch and other announcements. Recent bonus episodes include my excursion to linguistics summer camp, a.k.a. the LSA Linguistics Institute, a linguistics advice Q&A episode, and swearing in science fiction and fantasy. Can’t afford to pledge? That’s okay, too. We also really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone in your life who’s curious about language.

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

Gretchen: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

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

[chronically-enthusiastic]

oh yeah i finished Babel!!!!!!

it was very good & i really liked it and all the Themes and all the linguistics stuff was sooooo interestingggggsnhasgnasasn words i love words!! i was wondering how she was going to end it because, you know they're running a revolution, and from a plot perspective they should win because robin is the protagonist, but it was all so well researched and otherwise Very Historically Accurate so was she going to change the entire opium wars part of this history??? and then the ending was like. wow. wow ok that happened. and i thought it was really interesting how So Much of society relied on silver to the point where it literally crumbled when it stopped working?? ough fascinating.

and i LOVED when the match-pairs were explained like YESSSSS tell me about those wordsssss hnnnrnrg i wish i spoke more than englishhhhh. and how it only worked when the person saying the words was someone who *really* understood what they meant, and how less common languages were more powerful because the words were more different, and the connections between english's borrowed words & colonialism oughh the THEMES. also when [redacted for spoilers reasons] dies and they all immediately go 'how do we hide the body?' instead of 'what happened????!?!?'

sjansjnask i really really liked ittttttttt thank you for reminding me it existed lol <3

ALSKDJFNLASDKJFNAKSDJF F;AJSDGQSL'KJG BABBBEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLL

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

*composes themself*

Oh yes, that book that I thought was mediocre /SARC

The linguistic stuff was INCREDIBLE I LOVED IT ASLKDJF!!!!!! I get what you mean about the plot!!! I normally know where it is going to go, but with Babel there were endless possibilities!!!!

I didnt realise that that actually happened in history?!?!?! Can I say I hate Britain (because of wanting to start a war - im assuming that that happened too?) ? We have such an awful history and aggh why did/do people think its okay to kill people for stupid reasons its awful......

IKR!!!! I feel like it has a lot of parallels with AI in today's society? And other mechanical/technological advancements.

THE LINGUISTICS OMG ALKSJDFHASDLKJFHAS;DJFLKJFHASLDKHFBADSLKHBFLADKHF

HNNGGGGGG

YES!!!! I love their dynamic and how they trust each other so much (Well...... mostly), and I love the 'how do we hide the body' trope! When I read the part where [REDACTED] dies I felt *emotions*. He was an awful person but [REDACTED] didnt deserve the emotional trauma of that........ And RAMY MY DARLING HNNGGGGGGGGGGG SO ANGRY ABOUT THAT DKLFSJSSSSSSSSSSSSS

I really wish there was a sequel though - I WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO THE WORLD!?!!! DID IT WORK?!?! HOW DID THEY REBUILD THE WORLD WITHOUT SILVER ETC??!?!?!?!??!?!

I'm so so so so glad you liked it - thank you for existing to share the joys and pain of this book with me <3

[jaimehwatson]

15 Questions

Stolen from @piratecaptainscaptainpirates because I love these!

ARE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE?

I named myself Jaime just because I liked the name and it felt right, but I later also realized it comes from the same linguistic root as my grandfather's name, Jacobus, so I like to think I'm sorta named after him too

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED?

This is kind of embarrassing but yesterday I was really looking forward to taking a nice warm shower on my lunch break (working from home) and then the hot water was off in the building with no warning and it was the last straw

DO YOU HAVE KIDS?

No and no plans to although I am looking forward to being a cool uncle to friends' kids in the future

WHAT SPORTS DO YOU PLAY/HAVE YOU PLAYED?

I'm learning karate! And I would love to get back into roller derby one day

DO YOU USE SARCASM?

Sometimes for comedic effect, despite the best efforts of my mother who would never let me watch any cartoons in which she thought the characters were too sarcastic when I was a kid

WHAT'S YOUR EYE COLOUR?

Brown!

SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS?

I like scary stuff and weird ambiguous endings!

ANY TALENTS?

I think I'm pretty good at writing and music

WHERE WERE YOU BORN?

Ontario, Canada

WHAT ARE YOUR HOBBIES?

Writing, reading, music, video games, embroidery and other crafting stuff

DO YOU HAVE ANY PETS?

Not in my current apartment, but my childhood cat is still doing okay for his advanced age and living with my mom! Cat tax:

HOW TALL ARE YOU?

Around 5'10" I think

FAVOURITE SUBJECT IN SCHOOL?

When I was in school I loved English so much that I eventually did a PhD in it!

DREAM JOB?

I fantasize a lot about running a bookstore/café but I don't actually realistically want to deal with the financial side of running a small business. And I wish I could just be a writer full-time but that's also not happening any time in the near future. On a practical level I'm going to start taking college classes in the fall to learn to be a library technician so that's the more achievable dream at the moment!

Tagging @sybilius @trenko-heart @the-girl-with-the-algebra-book @scyllas-revenge if you feel like it!

[stellarcobweb]

things tht ive been feeling pulled to do/learn fr the spiral (this started with the intent of former sentence but then Things Happened and idk where that train of thought went. ended up rambling)

read house of leaves

learn the most complicated shorthand ever

make a cipher and use it religiously. make needlessly complicated

remake playlists

buy kaleidoscope

linguistics for some reason (language is bullshit. im learning toki pona and asl. i wish i

on the topic of toki pona ve been staring at different writing systems and im feelin particularly drawn to the . sitelen kule. that sounds so fun and so annoying /pos

retroactively associating my sudoku and nonogram obsession w spiral

i really like symbolism. edvard munch is my fav artist bc i feel like i can sink my teeth real hard into his art. also abstract art

............i think ihave dyscalculia and also general sleep cycle and time issues. i literally had an appointment in the middle of writing this that told me i spend like 35 mins under 90% oxygen and def have sleep apnea. wild. also time is bullshit. ALSO i have such insane issues differentiating right and left

sometimes my ability to speak english is just Fucked. hell language

i wish i could use the lunisolar calendar by default tbh. alternative calendar systems are my ideal. my memory is so fucked my brain decides on like. "it happen when i was 8 - when The Mental Illness started, when i was 13/14 - when i first started dating my ex, when i was 16 - when my dad died, or after i turned 21 - breakup w ex and also i can drink alcohol now". i wanna bust out new calendars and have new and exciting ways to figure time out. legit. i wanna b inherently confusing to everyone around me its The Ideal

astrology probably but tbh i also associate that w various others if going off of Smirke's labelling of fears

occasional urge to get into pottery and buy some really nice clay to play with. i wanna make mugs and bowls that i can use tbh. playing w Good Clay in art class literal years ago rewired my brain

want to stare at fractals (i misspelled that as frals for a sec n tbh. real)

my memory is hell. zero object/emotional permanence, real bad memory issues, sleeping is complicated and my sleep cycle relies on the stars aligning and fucks itself up super easy. also chronic delusions. most of this isnt that much of a bother tho tbh . the delusions upset me the most but thats moreso bc i hate being wrong and falling Out of delusions moreso than the delusions themselves. yes i am an angel no i cant explain why. yes sometimes i dont think im one however i am Wrong

bookbinding ....... making a leitner sounds fun. also i want to make an ARG - i CAN MAKE AN UNFICTION/IMMERSIVE FICTION/ARG BOOK. house of leaves style. i feel like itd end up being web/spiral/eye and possibly also /lonely or others tbh. just based on what i like writing about. poss /hunt as well. millioms.

web stuff i want/like doing (theres more here but the Spiral yoinked me into focusing on it instead so. shrug. unfinished)

want to learn to code. no idea what language yet

dolls. just realized i could combine this and spiral clay and make spiralweb dolls. (also techinically stranger too but tbh i dont see stranger and spiral as . all that separate . same w slaughter and hunt not being all that separate. based entirely on how i myself perceive them obvi. i should work on my conpantheon ...)

yarn. crochet, knitting

lace, crossstitch, embroidery. thread

sewing tbh. i get urge to grab various fabrics just as bad as i get w yarn and tbh its sometimes worse bc making plushies is my hobby