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reanimatedcourier · 4 years ago

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How to Write Indigenous Characters Without Looking like a Jackass:

Update as of December 26th, 2020: I have added a couple new sections about naming and legal terms, as well as a bit of reading on the Cherokee Princess phenomenon.

Boozhoo (hello) Fallout fandom! I'm a card-carrying Anishinaabe delivering this rough guide about writing Indigenous characters because wow, do I see a lot of shit.

Let's get something out of the way first: Fallout's portrayal of Indigenous people is racist. From a vague definition of "tribal" to the claims of them being "savage" and "uncivilized" mirror real-world stereotypes used to dehumanize us. Fallout New Vegas' narrated intro has Ron Perlman saying Mr. House "rehabilitated" tribals to create New Vegas' Three Families. You know. Rehabilitate. As if we are animals. Top it off with an erasure of Indigenous people in the American Southwest and no real tribe names, and you've got some pretty shitty representation. The absence of Native American as a race option in the GECK isn't too great, given that two Native characters are marked "Caucasian" despite being brown. Butch Deloria is a pretty well-known example of this effect. (Addendum: Indigenous people can have any mix of dominant and recessive traits, as well as present different phenotypes. What bothers me is it doesn't accommodate us or mixed people, which is another post entirely.)

As a precautionary warning: this post and the sources linked will discuss racism and genocide. There will also be discussion of multiple kinds of abuse.

Now, your best approach will be to pick a nation or tribe and research them. However, what follows will be general references.

Terms that may come up in your research include Aboriginal/Native Canadian, American Indian/Native American, Inuit, Métis, and Mestizo. The latter two refer to cultural groups created after the discovery of the so-called New World. (Addendum made September 5th, 2020: Mestizo has negative connotations and originally meant "half breed" so stick with referring to your mixed Latine and Indigenous characters as mixed Indigenous or simply by the name of their people [Maya, Nahua].)

As a note, not every mixed person is Métis or Mestizo. If you are, say, Serbian and Anishinaabe, you would be mixed, but not Métis (the big M is important here, as it refers to a specific culture). Even the most liberal definition caps off at French and British ancestry alongside Indigenous (some say Scottish and English). Mestizo works the same, since it refers to descendants of Spanish conquistadors/settlers and Indigenous people.

Trouble figuring out whose land is where? No problem, check out this map.

Drawing

Don't draw us with red skin. It's offensive and stereotypical.

Tutorial for Native Skintones

Tutorial for Mixed Native Skintones

Why Many Natives Have Long Hair (this would technically fit better under another category, but give your Native men long hair!)

If You're Including Traditional Wear, Research! It's Out There

Languages

Remember, there are a variety of languages spoken by Indigenous people today. No two tribes will speak the same language, though there are some that are close and may have loan words from each other (Cree and Anishinaabemowin come to mind). Make sure your Diné (you may know them as Navajo) character doesn't start dropping Cree words.

Here's a Site With a Map and Voice Clips

Here's an Extensive List of Amerindian Languages

Keep in mind there are some sounds that have no direct English equivalents. But while we're at it, remember a lot of us speak English, French, Spanish, or Portuguese. The languages of the countries that colonized us.

Words in Amerindian languages tend to be longer than English ones and are in the format of prefix + verb + suffix to get concepts across. Gaawiin miskwaasinoon is a complete sentence in Anishinaabemowin, for example (it is not red).

Names

Surprisingly, we don't have names like Passing Dawn or Two-Bears-High-Fiving in real life. A lot of us have, for lack of better phrasing, white people names. We may have family traditions of passing a name down from generation to generation (I am the fourth person in my maternal line to have my middle name), but not everyone is going to do that. If you do opt for a name from a specific tribe, make sure you haven't chosen a last name from another tribe.

Baby name sites aren't reliable, because most of the names on there will be made up by people who aren't Indigenous. That site does list some notable exceptions and debunks misconceptions.

Here's a list of last names from the American census.

Indian Names

You may also hear "spirit names" because that's what they are for. You know the sort of mystical nature-related name getting slapped on an Indigenous character? Let's dive into that for a moment.

The concept of a spirit name seems to have gotten mistranslated at some point in time. It is the name Creator calls you throughout all your time both here and in the spirit world. These names are given (note the word usage) to you in a ceremony performed by an elder. This is not done lightly.

A lot of imitations of this end up sounding strange because they don't follow traditional guidelines. (I realize this has spread out of the original circle, but Fallout fans may recall other characters in Honest Hearts and mods that do this. They have really weird and racist results.)

If you're not Indigenous: don't try this. You will be wrong.

Legal Terms

Now, sometimes the legal term (or terms) for a tribe may not be what they refer to themselves as. A really great example of this would be the Oceti Sakowin and "Sioux". How did that happen, you might be wondering. Smoky Mountain News has an article about this word and others, including the history of these terms.

For the most accurate information, you are best off having your character refer to themselves by the name their nation uses outside of legislation. A band name would be pretty good for this (Oglala Lakota, for example). I personally refer to myself by my band.

Cowboys

And something the Fallout New Vegas fans might be interested in, cowboys! Here's a link to a post with several books about Black and Indigenous cowboys in the Wild West.

Representation: Stereotypes and Critical Thought

Now, you'll need to think critically about why you want to write your Indigenous character a certain way. Here is a comprehensive post about stereotypes versus nuance.

Familiarize yourself with tropes. The Magical Indian is a pretty prominent one, with lots of shaman-type characters in movies and television shows. This post touches on its sister tropes (The Magical Asian and The Magical Negro), but is primarily about the latter.

Say you want to write an Indigenous woman. Awesome! Characters I love to see. Just make sure you're aware of the stereotypes surrounding her and other Women of Color.

Word to the wise: do not make your Indigenous character an alcoholic. "What, so they can't even drink?" You might be asking. That is not what I'm saying. There is a pervasive stereotype about Drunk Indians, painting a reaction to trauma as an inherent genetic failing, as stated in this piece about Indigenous social worker Jessica Elm's research. The same goes for drugs. Ellen Deloria is an example of this stereotype.

Familiarize yourself with and avoid the Noble Savage trope. This was used to dehumanize us and paint us as "childlike" for the sake of a plot device. It unfortunately persists today.

Casinos are one of the few ways for tribes to make money so they can build homes and maintain roads. However, some are planning on diversifying into other business ventures.

There's a stereotype where we all live off government handouts. Buddy, some of these long-term boil water advisories have been in place for over twenty years. The funding allocated to us as a percentage is 0.39%: less than half a percent to fight the coronavirus. They don't give us money.

"But what about people claiming to be descended from a Cherokee princess?" Cherokee don't and never had anything resembling princesses. White southerners made that up prior to the Civil War. As the article mentions, they fancied themselves "defending their lands as the Indians did".

Also, don't make your Indigenous character a cannibal. Cannibalism is a serious taboo in a lot of our cultures, particularly northern ones.

Our lands are not cursed. We don't have a litany of curses to cast on white people in found footage films. Seriously. We have better things to be doing. Why on earth would our ancestors be haunting you when they could be with their families? Very egotistical assumption.

Indigenous Ties and Blood Quantum

Blood quantum is a colonial system that was initially designed to "breed out the Indian" in people. To dilute our bloodlines until we assimilated properly into white society. NPR has an article on it here.

However, this isn't how a vast majority of us define our identities. What makes us Indigenous is our connections (or reconnection) to our families, tribes, bands, clans, and communities.

Blood quantum has also historically been used to exclude Black Natives from tribal enrollment, given that it was first based on appearance. So, if you looked Black and not the image of "Indian" the white census taker had in his brain, you were excluded and so were your descendants.

Here are two tumblrs that talk about Black Indigenous issues and their perspectives. They also talk about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia.

However, if you aren't Indigenous, don't bring up blood quantum. Don't. This is an issue you should not be speaking about.

Cherokee Princess Myth

"Princess" was not a real position in any tribe. The European idea of monarchy did not suddenly manifest somewhere else. The closest probable approximation may have been the daughter of a chief or other politically prominent person. But princess? No.

Here is an article talking about possible origins of this myth. Several things are of note here: women from other tribes may have bee shoved under this label and the idea of a "Cherokee Princess" had been brought up to explain the sudden appearance of a brown-skinned (read: half Black) family member.

For a somewhat more in depth discussion of why, specifically, this myth gets touted around so often, Timeline has this piece.

Religion

Our religions are closed. We are not going to tell you how we worship. Mostly because every little bit we choose to share gets appropriated. Smudging is the most recent example. If you aren't Indigenous, that's smoke cleansing. Smudging is done in a specific way with ceremonies and prayers.

Now, a lot of us were forcibly converted. Every residential school was run by Christians. So plenty of us are Catholic, Baptist, Anglican, Lutheran, etc. Catholicism in Latin America also has influence from the Indigenous religions in that region.

Having your Indigenous character pray or carry rosaries wouldn't be a bad thing, if that religion was important to them. Even if they are atheist, if they lived outside of a reserve or other Indigenous communities, they might have Christian influences due to its domination of the Western world.

Settler Colonialism and the White Savior Trope

Now we've come to our most painful section yet. Fallout unintentionally has an excellent agent of settler-colonialism, in particular the Western Christian European variety, in Caesar's Legion and Joshua Graham.

(Addendum: Honest Hearts is extremely offensive in its portrayal of Indigenous people, and egregiously shows a white man needing to "civilize" tribals and having to teach them basic skills. These skills include cooking, finding safe water, and defending themselves from other tribes.)

Before we dive in, here is a post explaining the concept of cultural Christianity, if you are unfamiliar with it.

We also need to familiarize ourselves with The White Man's Burden. While the poem was written regarding the American-Philippine war, it still captures the attitudes toward Indigenous folks all over the world at the time.

As this article in Teen Vogue points out, white people like to believe they need to save People of Color. You don't need to. People of Color can save themselves.

Now, cultural Christianity isn't alone on this side of the pond. Writer Teju Cole authored a piece on the White Savior Industrial Complex to describe mission trips undertaken by white missionaries to Africa to feed their egos.

Colonialism has always been about the acquisition of wealth. To share a quote from this paper about the ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples: "Negatively, [settler colonialism] strives for the dissolution of native societies. Positively, it erects a new colonial society on the expropriated land base—as I put it, settler colonizers come to stay: invasion is a structure not an event. In its positive aspect, elimination is an organizing principal of settler-colonial society rather than a one-off (and superseded) occurrence. The positive outcomes of the logic of elimination can include officially encouraged miscegenation, the breaking-down of native title into alienable individual freeholds, native citizenship, child abduction, religious conversion, resocialization in total institutions such as missions or boarding schools, and a whole range of cognate biocultural assimilations. All these strategies, including frontier homicide, are characteristic of settler colonialism. Some of them are more controversial in genocide studies than others." (Positive, here, is referring to "benefits" for the colonizers. Indigenous people don't consider colonization beneficial.)

An example of a non-benefit, the Church Rock disaster had Diné children playing in radioactive water so the company involved could avoid bad publicity.

Moving on, don't sterilize your Indigenous people. Sterilization, particularly when it is done without consent, has long been used as a tool by the white system to prevent "undesirables" (read, People of Color and disabled people) from having children. Somehow, as of 2018, it wasn't officially considered a crime.

The goal of colonization was to eliminate us entirely. Millions died because of exposure to European diseases. Settlers used to and still do separate our children from us for reasons so small as having a dirty dish in the sink. You read that right, a single dirty dish in your kitchen sink was enough to get your children taken and adopted out to white families. This information was told to me by an Indigenous social work student whose name I will keep anonymous.

It wasn't until recently they made amendments to the Indian Act that wouldn't automatically render Indigenous women non-status if they married someone not Indigenous. It also took much too long for Indigenous families to take priority in child placement over white ones. Canada used to adopt Indigenous out to white American families. The source for that statement is further down, but adoption has been used as a tool to destroy cultures.

I am also begging you to cast aside whatever colonialist systems have told you about us. We are alive. People with a past, not people of the past, which was wonderfully said here by Frank Waln.

Topics to Avoid if You Aren't Indigenous

Child Separation. Just don't. We deserve to remain with our families and our communities. Let us stay together and be happy that way.

Assimilation schools. Do not bring up a tool for cultural genocide that has left lasting trauma in our communities.

W/ndigos. I don't care that they're in Fallout 76. They shouldn't be. Besides, you never get them right anyway.

Sk/nwalkers. Absolutely do not. Diné stories are not your playthings either.

I've already talked about drugs and alcohol. Do your research with compassion and empathy in mind. Indigenous people have a lot of pain and generational trauma. You will need to be extremely careful having your Indigenous characters use drugs and alcohol. If your character can be reduced to their (possible) substance abuse issues, you need to step back and rework it. As mentioned in Jessica Elm's research, remember that it isn't inherent to us.

For our final note: remember that we're complex, autonomous human beings. Don't use our deaths to further the stories of your white characters. Don't reduce us to some childlike thing that needs to be raised and civilized by white characters. We interact with society a little differently than you do, but we interact nonetheless.

Meegwetch (thank you) for reading! Remember to do your research and portray us well, but also back off when you are told by an Indigenous person.

This may be updated in the future, it depends on what information I come across or, if other Indigenous people are so inclined, what is added to this post.

#fallout 3 #fallout 4 #fallout 76 #fallout new vegas #fallout 1 #fallout 2 #fallout: new vegas #ozhibii'ige

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spanishskulduggery · 3 years ago

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Hi! I'm very curious about something regarding the Spanish language. I'm currently studying A2 Spanish but I had this question and my teacher did not seem too willing to discuss it. Here it goes:

I know that Spanish has, something my Spanish teacher says, linguistic gender. I was wondering how do the people who don't align themselves with the gender binary (masculine and feminine) speak/write in it? I have read this article about Spanish speaking people from US adding "x" Or "@" and people from Argentina using "e" to make the words gender neutral.

Thank you so much for responding, whenever you get to it. Also love your blog. ❤

Short answer, in general speaking terms people are tending towards the -e now because the other two are very hard to actually speak, and because Spanish-speakers feel the -e is more authentic

What you're most likely to see in Spanish is masculine plural as the default, or in written things you might see todos y todas or like un/una alumno/a "a student", or like se busca empleado/a "employees wanted" / "looking for an employee"

If it's something official or academic you typically include both [todas y todas] or you go masculine plural [todos] unless it's specifically feminine plural

Related, linguistic gender applies to all things, not just people. Why is la mesa "table" feminine, but el libro "book" masculine? Just linguistic gender. I can tell you that most loanwords (that aren't people) in Spanish are masculine, and that there are certain words that come from Greek are masculine, and that -ista words are unisex most of the time... And I can tell you there are some words like testigo or modelo that are unisex and don't change for gender. Aside from that, speaking about nouns and grammatical gender... those particular things are harder to parse for regular people, but if you go into the field of linguistics you can explore that more deeply. Some of it is source language (i.e. "it came from Latin this way") or things like that. And in general when talking about nouns it's unimportant and not considered sexist, that's just how it is.

There is such a thing where it gets a little too far the other way and people will say "history? what about herstory" which is a nice thought but the etymology has nothing to do with gender there

When it comes to people - and when it comes to gendered attitudes - that's where it gets more confusing and more complicated.

I believe there was an experiment where people had French and Spanish speakers [I believe it was Spanish] try to identify how a "fork" would sound. French people gave it a more feminine voice because "fork" is feminine in French, while Spanish speakers gave it a more masculine voice because it's masculine in Spanish.

Whether we like it or not, certain gendered things do influence our thoughts and feelings and reactions. A similar thing in English exists where the old joke was something like "There was a car accident; a boy is rushed to the ER and the surgeon but the father was killed. When they got to the ER the doctor said 'I can't operate on him, he's my son!'" and it's like "well who could the doctor be?" ...and the doctor is his mother. We associate "doctor" as masculine and "nurse" as feminine.

There's a gender bias in our language thought patterns, even though the language changes. And that does exist in Spanish too, to different extents.

There are certain cultural and gendered stereotypes or connotations attached to certain words, many tend to be more despective or pejorative when it's women.

For example - and I know this has changed in many places or it isn't as prevalent - el jinete "horseman/rider", while the female form is la amazona "horsewoman/rider". Because la jinete or la jineta was sometimes "promiscuous woman".

There were also debates about things like la presidente vs. la presidenta or what the female version of juez should be, whether it should be la juez or la jueza

Most languages with gendered language have varying degrees of this, and all languages I'm aware of have gendered stereotypes related to professions or cultural attitudes in some way, and not just for women, and not all in the same way with some of them being very culturally based

The longer answer involves a bit of history, and I'll be honest, some of it is contested or considered a little controversial in Spanish-speaking countries particularly in the conservative parts (which honestly should come as no surprise)

The first symbol that I know of that came about was the X

First piece of contested history: As far as I know, it was the trans/queer and drag communities in Latin America who started the trend of X. When there were signs or bulletins that had the gendered endings - specifically masculine plural as the default plural - people would write a big X through the O. This was a way of being inclusive and also a very smash the patriarchy move.

Some people attribute this to women's rights activists which may also be true, but a good portion of the things I read from people say it was the trans/queer/drag communities in Latin America doing this.

I've also read it originated in Brazil with Portuguese; still Latin America, but not a Spanish-speaking country.

Where it's most contested is that some people will say that this trend started in the Hispanic communities of the United States. And - not without reason - people are upset that this is perceived as a very gringo movement.

That's why Latinx is considered a very American-Hispanic experience

The arroba (@) is relatively new. I remember seeing it in the 2000s. I don't know if it existed earlier for gender inclusivity.

People used it because it looks like a combination of O and A, so it was meant to be cut down on saying things like todos y todas or niños y niñas in informal written speech

I remember quite a few (informal) emails starting like hola tod@s or muy buenas a tod@s or things like that

I think of it more as convenience especially in the information age where you never knew who you were talking to and it's easier than including both words, especially when masculine plural might be clumsy or insensitive

Still, it's practically impossible to use the @ in spoken Spanish, so it's better for writing casually. You also likely won't be allowed to use the @ in anything academic, but in chatrooms, blogs, or forums it's an option

I love the E ending. And the gender neutral form in singular is elle... so it's él "he", ella "she", and elle "they (singular)"

The -e ending is I think became more common within the past 10 years though it might have existed longer than that. These sorts of changes tend to come from the queer or trans communities and tend to be more insular before becoming more of an outside thing that then the general population finds out about

It came about because there are some adjectives in Spanish that end in -e that are unisex. It's not an A, it's not an O, but it's something grammatically neutral for Spanish

It's not as awkward as X, and E exists very firmly in Spanish so it's not perceived as some outside (typically gringo) influence

The good news is, it's pretty widespread on the internet. Not so much in person (yet), but especially in Spain and Argentina at least from what I've seen, particularly in the queer communities and online culture.

The only issues with it are that for non-native speakers, you have to get used to any spelling changes. Like amigo and amiga, but to use the E ending you have to add a U... so it's amigue.

That's because there are certain words where you have to do spelling changes to preserve the sound; gue has a hard G sound like -go does [like guerra]... but ge has the equivalent of an English H sound [gelatina for example]. Another one is cómico/a "funny" which would go to cómique. Again, because co has a hard C/K sound, while ce is a soft sound more like an S or in some contexts TH/Z sound; like centro is a soft sound, while cola is a hard sound

Unless you make it to the preterite forms where you come across like pagué, alcancé, practiqué with those types of endings... or subjunctive forms, pague, alcance, practique ... Basically you'd have to be exposed to those spelling rules or you'd be really confused if you were a total beginner.

It all makes sense when you speak it, but spelling might be harder before you learn those rules

The other drawback is that the E endings are sometimes not applicable. Like in damas y caballeros "ladies and gentlemen" there's not really a gender neutral variation on that, it's all binary there. And while la caballero "female knight" does exist, you'd never see a male variation on dama; the closest I've ever seen is calling a guy a damisela en apuros "damsel in distress" in some contexts where the man needs rescuing, and it's feminine una/la damisela, and it's very tongue-in-cheek

There are also some contexts like jefe vs jefa where I guess you would say jefe for "boss" if you were going the neutral route, but it's a bit weird because it's also the masculine option.

I can't speak for how people might feel about those if they're non-binary or agender because every so often you kind of get forced into the binary whether you like it or not

I totally support the E, I just recognize there are some limitations there and it's quirks of the Spanish language itself

Important Note: Just to reiterate, E endings are the ones most Spanish-speakers prefer because it's easiest to speak and doesn't have the American connotation that X does in some circles

Where it gets very "Facebook comment section" is that you'll see many Latin Americans traditionalists and conservatives claim that "this is just the gringos colonizing our language" and "grammatical gender doesn't matter in Spanish". They'll say that the "gender movement" is an American feminist movement and that it's a gringo thing and doesn't reflect actual Latin Americans or Spanish-speakers

Which on the one hand, yes, English does have a lot of undue influence on other languages because of colonization, and American influence and meddling in Latin American politics is a big important issue

But as far as I'm aware of the X (and especially the E) were created by Latin Americans

The other issue I personally have is that any time this conversation comes up, someone will say something like somos latinOs and claim that masculine plural is gender neutral

To that I say, first of all, "masculine plural" is inherently gendered. Additionally, there is a gender neutral in Spanish but it's lo or ello and it's only used with "it" so it sounds very unfriendly to use on an actual person... and in plural it looks like masculine plural and everything applies like masculine plural

Second, the reason masculine plural is default is because of machismo. It's more important that we don't possibly misgender a man, so it has to be masculine plural. It's changed in some places, but growing up when I was learning Spanish, if it was 99 women and 1 man you still had to put masculine plural

I'm not opposed to there being a default, and I understand why it's easier to use masculine plural, but some people get very upset at the idea of inclusive language

...

In general, my biggest issues with these comments come when people act like non-binary/queer/trans people don't exist in Spanish-speaking countries, like English invented them somehow. So it's nice to see linguistic self-determination and seeing native speakers using the E endings.

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gustingirl · 2 years ago

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I posted 48,993 times in 2022

That's 11,351 more posts than 2021!

5,137 posts created (10%)

43,856 posts reblogged (90%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@wilson-md

@vampzsunoo

@lunaindigoraven

@zurdoabsurdo

I tagged 12,995 of my posts in 2022

#greta van fleet - 3,048 posts

#gvf - 3,043 posts

#josh kiszka - 3,023 posts

#sam kiszka - 2,974 posts

#jake kiszka - 2,969 posts

#danny wagner - 2,964 posts

#incorrect greta van fleet quotes - 2,762 posts

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#incorrect greta van fleet texts - 2,758 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#happens when i hear another latino speak and they all sound so nice and then argentinians have this italian speech mode mixed with spanish a

My Top Posts in 2022:

Some House MD facts i read on imdb that i can’t stop thinking about:

Although other characters occasionally insinuate that Dr. Robert Chase (Jesse Spencer) was a bit dim, he came up with more correct diagnoses than any other supporting character throughout the series.

Dr. House is a polyglot. He knows English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, French, Hindi (a little), and Mandarin.

It is common throughout the series for House and his team to suggest a diagnosis for a patient that was the previous episode's correct diagnosis.

Dr. Eric Foreman (Omar Epps) never wears the same outfit twice. (slay)

In season two, episode twenty-four, "No Reason," when Dr. House was shot and hospitalized, his hospital wristband reveals his date of birth as June 11, 1959, which is the same birth date as Hugh Laurie.

House is based on Sherlock Holmes, but Holmes, in turn, was based on a doctor Arthur Conan Doyle knew while studying medicine, a Dr. Bell, whose specialty was diagnosis.

Hugh Laurie did not actually like the title "House."

The standard way to use a cane is to hold it on the opposite side of the injured leg. Dr. House, of course, knows this but, consistent with his contrary nature, insists on keeping his cane on the same side as his injured leg.

Three out of six original cast members are left-handed: Lisa Edelstein (Dr. Lisa Cuddy), Omar Epps (Dr. Eric Foreman), and Robert Sean Leonard (Dr. James Wilson).

The team performs an "LP" or Lumbar Puncture in nearly every episode.

House's apartment set is also Amber's apartment and Wilson's early apartment. Although every time the apartments are dressed in different ways for the other characters, but always maintain the same layout. This is usually done to save money on production costs.

It's not a coincidence his name is Gregory House. The word "gregarious" means sociable, which House is the complete opposite of with strangers, but he's very social with his small inner circle.

House wears the watch that Kutner gifted him for Secret Santa right up until the show's final episode, a small sign of House's humanity.

A favorite line of Dr. Chase, namely when courting Dr. Cameron, is "see you next Tuesday," and after being fired uses the line "see you next Thursday." If we convert "see" to the letter C, and "you" to the letter U, together the acronym for either line spells a word that cannot be said on American television. This is all the more fitting to Dr. Chase's character since he is from Australia where the word is generally nowhere near as egregious as it is in the States, and consequently more commonly used there.

And my favorite one:

After a student in the audience of Hugh Laurie's edition of Inside the Actors Studio (1994) asked Laurie if he thought Dr. House should be romantically involved with Dr. Allison Cameron, Dr. Lisa Cuddy, or Dr. James Wilson; Laurie said, "I suspect that if the show runs long enough, he's going to run through all of them. What order that unfolds in is not for me to say. I think any of those relationships is, of course, believable. Two people can always find some comfort or attraction, so I think all are possible. I think Robert (Sean Leonard, who plays Dr. Wilson) might have something to say about it. I don't know how Robert would take that. But you know, I'm game."

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he’s just my little dude

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house md in a nutshell

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My #1 post of 2022

u know it

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Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review #false

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rein-ette · 3 years ago

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Are you still working on your Commonwealth study? Do you have any thoughts on Arthur's relationships with his colonies apart from Canzuk + US?

Not properly, unfortunately with exams and then work I haven’t had mental/emotional capacity to do real research (and probably won’t for a while 😔). But I have continued to think about and develop certain relationships, and I think I also have old hcs I’ve never shared, so I’ll put those down!

Born into the Empire

Australia

@oumaheroes has already done such great hcs on him idk what I can add, but basically he was a little bit of a rowdy child, always breaking windows and shattering fancy pots, never able to sit still. I think rainbow once mentioned that Ken (short for Kenneth, my name for Aus) was a lot like England as a child in his curiosity and energy, and I wholeheartedly agree. But I think Arthur’s intensity was more inwardly directed, pushing him to pursue and master new talents and learn whatever he could, while Australia is a little more carefree in his love for the outdoors, exploring, jumping around and off things, little wild animals. Unfortunately for him, he was born in a period of the empire when Arthur was very serious about his kids education, and therefore often praised those who studied hard and learned fast, which really just wasn’t Australia’s cup of tea. Australia took this kinda hard and thought he was the “dumb” one in the family that Arthur was always scolding, but in reality Arthur knew and appreciated that Australias interests lay elsewhere — he was just a frustrated, tired, parent who really wanted to give his kids the best while also holding his empire together, two goals that were never going to fit well in the end and would completely exhaust him.

As Australia’s grown older he’s realized a bit of this (not entirely, though) and also that 1) he really did break a lot expensive things and cause general mayhem 2) scolding us Arthur’s way of showing he cares, if he didn’t he wouldn’t have payed attention to him at all 3) despite being a penal colony, he was still one of Arthur’s more “legitimate” children (being white and a boy) and was therefore still incredibly privileged — never having to question, for example, why it was that Arthur was his dad, if it should be this way, or if he had a seat at the family table at all (more on this later).

New Zealand

Zee, from birth, was a clear favourite. Obedient, calm, quietly intelligent, he would also later develop a blistering sense of humour which combined with his appearance made it overwhelmingly clear who’s child he was. If Ken questioned his place in the family because of his poor academic record and others did because of their appearance/race/other complications, Kaelan never had such problems; his siblings called him the “prince.” Zee, however, also had a charm that, like Matthew, endeared him to his siblings and mostly protected him from jealousy, though he certainly still had issues with being called a try hard, daddy’s boy, bossy, arrogant. Certainly as a child Zee was a little prideful and, under that unperturbed demeanour, willful, but he grew out of it by the 20th century and became one of those most trusted by Arthur, second only to Matthew. He’s also always been inseparable from his brother Australia despite their differences, and today they both have one of the healthiest and most amicable relationships with Arthur of any nation, let alone former colonies (family road trips, every summer).

Bermuda

I absolute fell in love with this girl after reading about here, once, in this fic by @shachaai, and after that my mind just ran away with me. For me, her human name given to her by Arthur just has to be Ariel — for the little mermaid reference, yes, symbolizing her connection to the sea and stunning good looks, but also because:

1. Ariel is a biblical name, meaning lion of God. This makes sense to me, because Bermuda began as a Portuguese trade post, so Arthur definitely consulted our resident bad catholic Port before naming her.

2. Ariel used to be boys name. This also makes sense, because I hc Bermuda was and still is a tomboy. Bitch is fierce, takes no prisoners, and has zero filter. Her letters to Arthur, which all the colonies sent so Arthur could keep an eye on things, were full of shit like “I swear to god if the Spanish don’t get out of my waters I might eat one of them,” and “father, I asked you for destroyers two months ago, and yet you sent them to Hong Kong — could you explain this most unusual occurrence, surely it’s not that you forgot”, and “thank you for the harpoon on my birthday, I caught a small shark a couple days ago and have sent you some of its teeth for your collection.” Arthur tolerates this attitude because he’s weak when it comes to girls; he absolutely spoils his daughters (and flushes like a 16 year old when a woman so much as bats her eyelashes at him). Yes, p*ssywhipped Arthur is a hill I will die on.

3. It also suits her because? Ariel? Shakespeare? The Tempest? Bermuda Triangle? Shipwrecks? Daughter-like figure of powerful and vengeful sorcerer? Yeah. And this girl is a fire spirit — she is so lively, snarky, clever. As she’s grown older she’s mellowed out a little, but still: a no shit taken, no fucks given type of gal.

4. Speaking of growing up, she’s also become quite the beauty. Shacha, if I’m remembering correctly, described her as dark skinned, wavy-haired, and green eyed and that image has been burned onto the back of my eyelids ever since. Those Iberian genetics really be pulling through for her, that’s for sure. Engport love child if I’ve ever seen one. Definitely one of the prettiest in her family.

Singapore

I’ve already mentioned this to needcake, but I’m not too big a fan of canon Singapore, so this is my oc version. Singapore is fascinating to me because it had only a very small local population before it became a colony (The original settlement had actually been destroyed by the Portuguese about two centuries before the British started building a port there.) So nation-tans like Singapore and Bermuda really are Arthur’s children in the most direct sense of the word. And yet, Singapore is mostly ethnically Chinese, with Malays being the second largest group. Growing up Asian in a white, Victorian era family surely cannot have been easy and more than once Singapore probably wondered if there hadn’t been some mistake. To make up for the constant fear that he wasn’t “really” British, Singapore studied ferociously and had a truly terrifying work ethic. I’m not sure if this is common knowledge outside Asian circles, so I’ll mention that this hc comes from the fact Singapore is well known for having truly exceptional students and some of the most prestigious schools. Singaporeans score highly in literally everything and they have an advantage with good English learning environments, a highly desirable trait in Asia, but these results come from brutally long hours — and its really saying something that they’re known for working hard, considering the studying ethic of students in Korea, Japan, and China aint nothing to sneeze at, either. To me this actually fits really well with Singapore’s upbringing in Arthur’s household, because Arthur himself prizes intelligence and hard work above all else, being a workaholic himself.

As for their relationship, it was probably the best when Singapore was young and peaked in the 1930s with the massive naval base the British built at Singapore, at the time the largest dry dock in the world. Singapore was a well-behaved child, not necessarily introverted but not rowdy either, and all the way into his teenage years he truly admired Arthur and was proud to be a part of the British Empire, despite his lingering unease and insecurities. The British defeat in World War II, however, was a massive turning point. He had worked his ass off to be a good son, a good brother, to contribute to the only family and system he had ever known, and he had thought by the 30s he was finally on his way to becoming a fine adult. And suddenly, the British surrender brings his entire world crashing down. He had followed the rules faithfully thinking it was his destiny, but suddenly it was clear that all rules were made up. Of course, his insecurities exploded. If the empire was a ruse, what the hell was he? A part of the illusion? He couldn’t have a truly Asian identity, because many of the old East Asian nations shunned him for his Western upbringing, and he could not entirely understand their values either. So he was a kid who kinda had to figure out late and very very suddenly who the fuck he was and wanted to be.

And, well, he’s done pretty well for himself, hasn’t he. After having a total crisis and questioning everything, I think Singapore slowly started to realize that just because the British Empire as a political entity didn’t last forever, that didn’t mean that his entire childhood and identity weren’t real. The love he gave to his siblings and the love he got back, the hard work he put in, his bond with Arthur and the safe, happy childhood he had — those memories and feelings didnt have to be diminished by what came after. Essentially, he learned the lesson all nations have to learn, which is that one needs to be able to discern between duties as a nation and feelings as a human being, and to some extent keep them separate to protect both.

Whoooooo ok I’ll stop there because this turned into a dissertation, sorry. Let me know if there are any specifics u want me to elaborate on or anything I missed, but I’ll leave this here for today :)

#hws england #hws Australia #hws new zealand #oc: hws Bermuda #not gonna tag anymore I’m lazy #fun times with the commonwealth #I probably won’t write so much for all of them I just put it there to remind myself #needcake #ask #my hcs

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randomnumbers751650 · 4 years ago

Text

Long, unedited text in which I rant about comparative mythology, Joseph Campbell and his monomyth,

Back in 2012 I wanted to improve my fiction writing (and writing in general, because in spite of nuances, themes and audience, writing a fiction and a nonfiction piece shouldn’t be that different) and thus I picked a few writing manuals. Many of them cited the Hero’s Journey, and how important it became for writers – after all Star Wars used and it worked. I believe most of the people reading this like Star Wars, or at least has neutral feelings about it, but one thing that cannot be denied is that became a juggernaut of popular culture.

So I bought a copy of the Portuguese translation of The Hero of a Thousand Faces and I fell in love with the style. Campbell had a great way with words and the translation was top notch. For those unaware, The Hero of a Thousand Faces proposes that there is a universal pattern in humanity’s mythologies that involves a person (usually a man) that went out into a journey far away from his home, faced many obstacles, both external and internal, and returned triumphant with a prize, the Grail or the Elixir of Life, back to his home. Campbell’s strength is that he managed to systematize so many different sources into a single cohesive narrative.

At the time I was impressed and decided to study more and write in an interdisciplinary research with economics – by writing an article on how the entrepreneur replaces the mythical hero in today’s capitalism. I had to stop the project in order to focus on more urgent matters (my thesis), but now that I finished I can finally return to this pet project of mine.

If you might have seen previous posts, I ended up having a dismal view of economics. It’s a morally and spiritually failed “science” (I have in my drafts a post on arts and I’m going to rant another day about it). Reading all these books on comparative mythology is so fun because it allows me for a moment to forget I have a degree in economics.

Until I started to realize there was something wrong.

My research had indicated that Campbell and others (such as Mircea Eliade and Carl Gust Jung, who had been on of Campbell’s main influences) weren’t very well respected in academia. At first I thought “fine”, because I’m used to interact with economists who can be considered “heterodox” and I have academic literature that I could use to make my point, besides the fact my colleagues were interested in what I was doing.

The problem is that this massive narrative of the Hero’s Journey/monomyth is an attempt to generalize pretty wide categories, like mythology, into one single model of explanation, it worked because it became a prescription, giving the writer a tool to create a story in a factory-like pace. It has checkboxes that can be filled, professional writers have made it widely available.

But I started to realize his entire understanding of mythology is problematic. First the basics: Campbell ignores when myths don’t fit his scheme. This is fruit of his Jungian influences, who claim that humanity has a collective unconsciousness, that manifest through masks and archetypes. This is the essence of the Persona games (and to a smaller extent of the Fate games) – “I am the Shadow the true self”. So any deviation from the monomyth can be justified by being a faulty translation of the collective unconsciousness.

This is the kind of thing that Karl Popper warned about, when he proposed the “falseability” hypothesis, to demarcate scientific knowledge. The collective unconsciousness isn’t a scientific proposition because it can be falsified. It cannot be observed and it cannot be refuted, because someone who subscribe to this doctrine will always have an explanation to explain why it wasn’t observed. In spite of falseability isn’t favored by philosophers of science anymore, it remains an important piece of the history of philosophy and he aimed his attack on psychoanalysis of Freud and Jung – and, while they helped psychology in the beginning, they’re like what Pythagoras is to math. They were both surpassed by modern science and they are studied more as pieces of history than serious theorists.

But this isn’t the worst. All the three main authors on myths were quite conservatives in the sense of almost being fascists – sometimes dropping the ‘almost’. Some members of the alt-right even look up to them as some sort of “academic’ justification. Not to mention anti-Semitic. Jung had disagreement with Freud and Freud noticed his anti-Semitism. Eliade was a proud supporter of the Iron Guard, a Romanian fascist organization that organized pogroms and wanted to topple the Romanian government. Later Eliade became an ambassador at Salazar’s Fascist Portugal, writing it was a government guided by the love of God. Campbell, with his hero worship, was dangerously close to the ur-fascism described by Umberto Eco (please read here, you won’t regret https://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf).

“If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled as New Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine who, as far as I know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehenge – that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism.”

Campbell did that a lot. He considered the Bible gospels and Gnostic gospels to be on the same level. Any serious student, that is not operating under New Age beliefs and other frivolous theories like the one that says Jesus went to India, will know there��s a difference between them (even Eliade was sure to stress the difference).

But Campbell cared nothing for it. He disliked the “semitic” religions for corrupting the mythic imagination (which is the source of his anti-Semitism), especially Judaism. When I showed him describing the Japanese tea ceremony to a friend who’s minoring in Japanese studies, she wrote “I’m impressed, he’s somehow managed to out-purple prose the original Japanese”. So, it’s also full of orientalism, treating the East as the mystical Other, something for “daring” Westerners to discover and distillate.

What disturbed…no, “disturbed” isn’t the word that I need in the moment, but what made me feel uncomfortable is that, in spite of all his talk of spirituality, the impression I had of Power of Myth is that I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone more materialist than him. Not even Karl Marx, founder of the Historical Materialism, was as materialist as Campbell.

At one point in the book, he was asked if he believed in anything and he gave a dismissive reply and said “I want to get experiences.” A man who studied all the myths of the world available, apparently didn’t believe in anything. Is that what spiritual maturity is? A continuous flux of experiences? Being taken by some sort of shamanistic wind like a floating plastic bag?

In nowhere in the interview he talked about virtues. In rebellion with his Catholic childhood, he said that we should go to the confessionary and say “God, I’ve been such a good boy”. Any cursory reading of the Gospel would say otherwise. Wasn’t this exactly Pharisee’s prayer in Luke 18:9-14? While the wasn’t the publican, who went with humility and asked for forgiveness, the one who walked out with an experience? And not only in Christianity, since in Tibetan Buddhism, a tulpa is something you have to kill, not foster like an imaginary friend like in some internet circles, contamined with this obsession with experiences.

The way I came to see Joseph Campbell as a man who was so stuck in his own world that nothing could move him out of it. All he wanted to do was this big experience, but in the end it’s as wide as the ocean, but shallow as a puddle. Even when Campbell speaks about having a “cosmic consciousness”, all that New Age jargon, claiming it’s about people discovering they’re not the center of the universe, it’s still so…self-servicing. It addresses a crowd so obsessed with experiences, but wants nothing to do with anything that requires compromise. He quotes the Hindu concept of maya, that life is an illusion, but I wonder how right he is about it.

I want to share this critique, by a researcher in comic studies: “We do not remember The Night Gwen Stacy Died because Gwen’s death reminds us of our own mortality, ‘the destiny of Everyman’, but because the story exposes the fragility of Spider-Man reader’s fantasies. Even icons can die.”

The exposition of the fragility of myths, especially the Hero’s Journey, never happens in Campbell’s work. It never talks about the potential of myths hindering entire societies, causing strife and causing people who can’t fit to become outcasts. Not even the cruel ones, like the Aztec death cult is treated as sublime, ignoring the fact that the Aztec neighbors helped to Spanish because they had enough of the Aztec myth.

I have changed my article. While I will still write on the hero entrepreneur, I’ll take a more critical view. The focus of the entrepreneur as an individual has many issues, because it ignores the role of public investment (necessary for high risk enterprises, like going to the moon or creating touch screens) and it treats with contempt the worked wage. Cambpell also treated with contempt the “masses”, who cannot be “heroes”. The theory on the entrepreneur is the same, treating the entrepreneur as a hero and the waged workers as lowlifes who have nothing to do, but to work, obey and be paid – to the point it feels like some economists treat strikes as crimes worse than murder. Not only that, but they can exploit the worker (see a book named “Do what you love and other lies about success and happiness”, it could be replaced with “Follow your bliss…”).

Campbell wrote in a time that there was no Wikipedia. So his book was the introduction of myths to a lot of people. It helped it was well-written. He considering his approach apolitical, but it’s clear that’s it’s not exactly like that (though this is a reason why Jordan Peterson failed to become the next Campbell, since he’s also a Jungian scholar, but he tried to become a conservative guru and this was his downfall). And, nowadays, Campbell is still inevitable in the circles that his themes matter, unlike Freud and Jung. Read it, but be aware of its problems, because it has already influenced what you consume.

#my rants #this is just a rant #so don't take it as a final word #sources can be provided on request

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sepulcrorum · 5 years ago

Text

JUDE LAW, FIFTY, ARCHBISHOP DE MEDICI. ❝ ⤚⟶ EUROPE, 1458. thanks is given by the DUCHY OF FLORENCE, ARCHBISHOP GIANCARLO DI GIAN GASTONE DE’ MEDICI, from FLORENCE. they are at best CHARMING, and at their worst IMPIOUS. whilst abroad, their ambition is to REAP EVER MORE GREATER LUXURIES FOR HIMSELF. HE seems to remind everyone of JUDE LAW & DESIRES BOTH HERETICAL AND UNHOLY : THE SONG OF SOLOMON SPILLING FORTH FROM ONE’S LIPS WHILST IN THE THROES OF PASSION ; INTELLECTUALISM SOUGHT FOR HEDONISM’S SAKE : ANTIQUATED TEXTS SMUGGLED FROM THE CRUMBLING REMNANTS OF ANCIENT ROMAN VILLAS AND DISPLAYED TO EXPECTED LOOKS OF AWE ; & HOLINESS FOUND, HOLINESS LOST, HOLINESS REVERED : A CERTAIN SLANT OF LIGHT SHINING THROUGH HIGH-VAULTED ARCHES. ❞

introduction

Provide a blurb introducing your character generally. This should include an overview of strengths, weaknesses, aspirations, and set backs.

It has been once said by the Lord: be ye like children, for ye to enter the Kingdom of God. Capricious, selfish, absorbed only by thoughts of himself, petty, and whimsical, the Archbishop de’ Medici does not assume the dignity of his station as a member of the Church but he does assume all the qualities of a child in him, and that makes him saved by default.

His theology is quaint, bordering on unorthodox, and it’s almost tempting to call him out for heresies but he knows too much about Scripture and can run circles around any fellow servant of Christ, much more the ordinary layman. He’s either mystical or absolutely canonical: at a certain point in theology, everything becomes one and the same. Give him time, and he can justify anything—the cruellest of acts as well as the most compassionate acts of goodwill and charity—with verses pulled from the Holy Book and the most seraphic smile on his face, almost as if his lips are intoning a blessing. He’s a Devil’s advocate in perhaps more ways than one, the destruction of Rome entire as one itinerant preacher once called him, and yet he luxuriates on wealth on top of the social pyramid, secure in his position and backed by the splendorous wealth made available by his family’s support.

Yet despite all this, despite possessing all the qualities of a man who could be—intelligent, charming, sociable, and ambitious—Giancarlo ended up being the man who isn’t, by some strange (perhaps cruel) twist of fate. With his dubious origins erasing any hope for a cardinalate, much less a chance for the Throne of St. Peter, he languishes in his role as a mere archbishop. As the years pass, he has turned bitter, cruel, recalcitrant—for what does a child do when they are given what they want?

They throw a tantrum.

What are some potential plotlines you are interested in pursuing?

I’ve inserted the little nuggets of the plotlines I plan to pursue on the blurb but to expand on it:

First is I am definitely very interested in making him a Cardinal and that is very much a thing he also wants for himself, even as much as he denies it and says he never wanted it anyway. It’s a way for him to rationalise the fact that, strictly speaking, his life didn’t go the way he wanted it to go, and so he subsists on the lie that his life (as it is right now) was what he always wanted—but ultimately, I do think that he’s still on the lookout for any opportunity to finally have the red robes of a cardinal.

Second is the state of Florence and of Italy as a whole. The blemish of the riots on the Florentines’ reputation is something that must be rectified—not even because someone died (after all, very many people die everyday) but because it sends the message that they are unable to control their own people. The Church as an institution that does much works of charity can be used to pacify the rebellious masses and perhaps turn them into the better angels that they haven’t been before. Meanwhile, Italy as a whole concerns him because they are still, ultimately, disparate nation-states with differing goals and ambitions. In a world filled with empires and hegemons, Giancarlo realises that the Italian peoples must unite—far better that it be headed, of course, by the Church or by Florence, but unity itself is non-negotiable. If the Italians do not want to be swallowed up by their neighbours, they must pool together their resources and make a stand for their existence.

Thirdly is the option of interfaith dialogue. Giancarlo is by no means perfect, but I do imagine he’s a touch more tolerant than most holy men are. He’s less a crusader and more of a diplomat, far too disillusioned to really believe in any cause of holy war. Entrenched in cynicism—usually a character flaw—he’s cognisant enough of the fact that humans are going to be shitty one way or another, and religion has almost no bearing on whether one is a good person or not. As such, I do think he has a lot of plotting potential for those characters following a different faith, and it’s fun to see how that might all play out.

three bullet-points.

Giancarlo di Gian Gastone de’ Medici is born a stain of shame. Birthed by a servant-girl and the man from whom his name marks out as his progenitor, he is kept by his father as a spare heir—only to be tossed away when a legitimate one finally comes. In this act, his father has taught him the harsh realities of life: one minute, you can have everything in front of you; the next, it all comes crashing down with nothing to show for it. He is left with no security save that which his father carved out for him: mastery of an abbey at twelve years of age and, from there, the religious life. There was nothing else for him. There is nothing else to him.

Giancarlo takes to the intellectual and monastic life quite quickly. His learning under humanist tutors in the household of his father has enabled him to take quickly to reading dense texts that speak of grand contexts. It helps that he is good with languages, and that he is friendly to everyone he meets. How bright his career would be, some would say, before adding: if only he wasn’t illegitimate. And so that stain of shame that adorned the Medici family history now mars his own future: he was always going to be a mistake, and the world will never let him forget it.

He is, by all accounts, a very disenchanted man who works himself through a façade of mustered charm gathered from who-knows-where with his mind an utter repository of Scripture and theological concepts. He can quote from Papal Bulls enacted centuries ago as easily as if they had been dictated to him just that moment; yet he always says it so drily that you’d think he’s mocking the words he’s citing. He’s in the habit of mentioning what kind of sins one is doing but always concludes it with a small note of how God is a forgiving God. He delights in the company of the wicked and the infamous; truly good people disgust him. He thinks God is present more in ugliness than any kind of beauty exemplified in art and song, and that He is dirt-covered, bloody and bruised, made with mulch and rot and diseased flesh. His God is filthy; it is only natural. We all fashion God into the form that would accept us the most.

character sheet.

FULL NAME : giancarlo di gian gastone de’ medici TITLES :

commander of badia fiorentina ( from 1420 - 1428 )

commander and rector of badia fiorentina ( from 1428 onwards )

metropolitan archbishop of florence ( from 1446 onwards )

master of the sacred apostolic palace ( from 1450 onwards )

BIRTHPLACE : florence, italian peninsula

AGE : fifty, b. 10 november 1407

LANGUAGES : fluent — italian ( tuscan ), french, ancient greek, latin, arabic, spanish, german, bavarian ; conversational — english, portuguese ; learning — ottoman turkish, farsi / persian

DYNASTY / HOUSE: house de’ medici

MOTHER & FATHER : unnamed servant girl & gian gastone de’ medici

SPOUSE : none

ISSUE : none

SIBLINGS : giovanni, lucrezia, and girolamo ( half-siblings )

OTHER : lorenzo de’ medici ( tbd )

ZODIAC : scorpio sun / sagittarius moon / scorpio rising

RELIGIOUS AFFILIATION : roman catholicism

ORIENTATION : bisexual biromantic ( with a medium to high preference for his own gender )

PERSONALITY TYPE : estj-a / choleric-sanguine / enneagram tbd / slytherin

VICES : everything

VIRTUES : knowledge can be and is a virtue but not with giancarlo, babyyyyy

FACECLAIM : jude law

HEIGHT : 6′1″ or 1.85m

RECOGNISABLE FEATURES : kindly-seeming blue eyes that speaks to unfathomable depths — look too closely, and you just might find yourself falling in them; an ever-present smile that can turn earnest or mocking depending on the conversation; a smug demeanour that you can’t help but feel that he thinks he knows better than you

REPUTATION IN PORTUGAL : a famed master theologian but also a widely known libertine, giancarlo both attracts and repulses the whole of christendom with his easy smiles, his kindly-looking blue eyes, and the power of the storied lineage that has produced him. for all those who’ve had the chance to coalesce in rome—or perhaps even the italian peninsula—his name will revoke memories of scandalised whispers erupting from people huddled in corners as soon as they see him make entry into a room. portugal as of yet is a new frontier, not for reasons of lack of opportunity but due to lack of interest. after all, why stray from that eternal city whose glory is sung in ancient ballads and whose place in the world is the envy of millions? now that he is here, however, he is more than eager to make his mark.

WANTED CONNECTIONS :

i sought whom my soul loves — were giancarlo any other man, they could have been together, a couple enjoined in the warm embrace of love and unity; yet, alas, the Church has bound giancarlo to herself, and he is a weak and foolish man who cannot find himself able to stand up to anybody. ever since then, their meetings have been few and far between—but no less precious to giancarlo, no less treasured, no less sought for. ::: ( open to anyone, preferably female but any gender can technically work ! )

a young deer on the mountains of Bether — arcadian idyll had been the theme of their shared years, wild and wandering, when responsibility had been a far off concept that seemed as foreign as greying hair and the yoke of adulthood. they frolicked in sun-kissed green-topped hills and ran as carefree as the wind. now they are old, both with their respective offices, and there is nothing else to them save nostalgia over lost innocence—if they had innocence at all. ::: ( open to anyone of the same age range as giancarlo ! )

beautiful as the moon, clear as the sun — a look at them and they’re like fourteen again, dumbstruck and awed, ashamed of his own lowly station and the stain of his origins—yet now they are old, and they have significantly more resources available to them now than they had before. giancarlo has always loved what he has thought is lacking within himself; he has always sought the true, the good, and the beautiful. he deludes himself into thinking he’s found it in god, but he is about to discover he’s wrong. ::: ( open to anyone ! )

with my royal people’s chariots — people have the propensity to think that giancarlo’s last name and relative wealth and status makes him the gatekeeper to the pope’s favour. he does not think himself as holding the keys to anything, but he lets other people do—mainly because it affords him the simulation of power the likes of which he only imagined as a child. of course, there is no real backing to the promises he says he’ll fulfil for them, but it is a merry show nonetheless and a piece of theatre that giancarlo’s keen to continue in lisboa. ::: ( open to anyone who’s looking to curry favour with the pope ! )

you who dwell in the gardens — there are many blooms in the garden of God’s creation and it is not a stretch to say giancarlo is absolutely besotted with the idea of experiencing all of them. this meet in lisbon might prove to be a more fortuitous moot than the one in florence, and he is always keen to start dialogue with any and all those who would like to exchange knowledge for knowledge’s sake, even those that the rest of christendom would not welcome. ::: ( open to non-christian characters ! )

the shadows flee away — giancarlo isn’t known for moderation and temperance; he has always been one driven to excess, and he has never toned down his appetites for the sake of any cause or person. he is a flit of a thing, a butterfly eager to sap the nectar out of any willing flower before moving to the next, willing to spill honey-laced words out of cherubic lips if that is what it took to mark one as his next conquest. in this, he has doubtless transgressed against many, and there are some whose memories run long and whose desire for correction would cover even those who are consecrated to God. ::: ( open to anyone ! )

#crhs.intro #* ( 𝔤𝔦𝔞𝔫𝔠𝔞𝔯𝔩𝔬 ) ╱ per speculum in ænigmate : info !

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wandering-----wonderings · 5 years ago

Photo

A glimpse inside everyones favorite hyperpolyglot, Sydney Bristow. (Yes, I childishly cut Danny out of the picture because I prefer Sydney with Noah, but I like this picture, so there you go.)

Let's start this off with a quick quote from Recruited: I speak five languages (six if you count pig latin. From Shadowed, we also know this: for SD-6 agents, mastering five or six languages was the bare minimum. So right out of the gate, before she even starts working at SD-6, she's already met the 'bare minimum' requirement. Sort of; I'm not sure if SD-6 would count English - or pig latin for that matter.

My current wondering is: what five languages (six including pig latin) did she know before starting SD-6? English would be 1, obviously, and Pig Latin would make two. I'm assuming she's counting her Spanish and Mandarin college electives when she said that (unless she already spoke those languages and just took them as electives to get more of a background on them), so that would be 3 and 4. So what were 5 and 6?

Truthfully, I have no idea. Wikipedia has a list of her speaking 30 languages: English, Russian, German, Greek, Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Norwegian, Swedish, Romanian, Hungarian, Hebrew, Uzbek, Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Indonesian, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Vietnamese, Polish, Serbian, Czech, Ukrainian, and Bulgarian.

Now this is completely a supposition, but the Wikipedia list doesn't mention Latin - it doesn't mention pig latin, either - but I would think that one of the languages she knew before coming into SD-6 would be Latin; it just ... sorta seems like it would be the first language she would learn with her being as studious as she is since, while being considered a dead language, it's still quite present in today's world, especially in the sciences. So my guess for language-number-5 would be Latin.

The sixth language is more of a long-shot. Seriously. In the pilot episode, in the SD-6 briefing room, we hear this:

Sydney: ''What is that? Hieratic?'' Sloane: ''Good try. That's what I thought. Actually, it's demotic. Taking notes in ancient languages was just one of Muller's quirks.''

A quick Google search showed this:

Now, she obviously doesn't know Hieratic or Demotic, otherwise she would've been able to translate right off. However, she was able to recognize it. So my theory is that she either learned the 'parent language' or one of the other 'child languages'. None of them are on the Wikipedia list. Most kids are interested in hieroglyphics but usually not enough to actually learn them (at least, such was the case with me), but I think we can all agree that when it comes to languages Sydney is a bit different - in a good way. So my long-shot-of-a-guess is that her 6th language is 'Egyptian'. Granted, she'd been at the agency for about seven years when we see her in the pilot episode so she could have learned it within that time.

Now that we've done that, let's review her language history in the books (at least, all of the one that I can remember off the top of my head). (I don't think she spoke in anything but English in Sister Spy, Father Figure or Skin Deep, but I may be wrong.)

Recruited: she's taking Spanish and Mandarin as electives, and she also says that she can speak a total of six languages (prior to being recruited)(see above). Spanish is also used later in the book. A Secret Life: she's was trying to teach herself Russian. French was used in this book, but she couldn't understand it. Disappeared: she had to learn Romanian (which she was distracted and didn't do too well at, but I assume she went back and learned it properly later). She also states that after the events in A Secret Life, she came back to L.A. and learned French as if her life depended on it. Free Fall: had her brushing up on one of her ''better languages'' - French. She was also able to translate an one-sided phone conversation she was eavesdropping on, from Russian. Infiltration: her Russian is described as amazing (and at times she'd been ahead of her SD-6 tutor), she says the Romance languages had been easy to learn (I haven't got a clear answer as to how many there are), Japanese took an impossible amount of concentration, and says it was difficult to keep the Oriental languages straight when she threw Cantonese and Mandarin into the mix (which, she should have already knew a fair bit of Mandarin since, as stated above, it was one of her electives). Vanishing Act: speaks in 'flawless' Dutch. (Also, she asks a woman working in a bookstore if she has any first additions of Chekhov, and when the woman ask if she wants it in English [the book], Sydney says she wants it in Lithuanian. This doesn't necessarily mean she speaks Lithuanian since it was a code phrase and it's not listed in her Wikipedia languages, but maybe she learned at some point.) Shadowed: she had recently brushed up on her Greek, and had learned German at some point.

Think about that for a minute. Did you catch what I did? She was recruited in the fall of her freshman year (a few weeks into the school year) and Free Fall says this happened in September. Shadowed itself happens in October of her sophomore year. Which means, Sydney learned 11+ languages in a year. So, aside from learning stuff for school, learning bank stuff (so she would be able to lie more efficiently to anyone who asked what she did on a daily basis for Credit Dauphine), and learning cool spy stuff and going on missions, she managed to cram in 11+ languages amidst carving out time for a social life with Francie (and a few dates with Noah) in one year's time. At the age of 19 and 20 years old. If you didn't think she was superwoman before, you should now.

Not to mention, that that's just the languages she speaks. While Sydney's trading card lists her languages as ''numerous'', she obviously knows a various amount of codes and ciphers as well; which, to me, counts as a language. We know she knows Morse code (2x18) from her mother's earrings, the Substitution cipher from when her dad encrypted her crossword puzzles (4x12), and Skip Sequencing Cypher Text (2x19) from when she was trying to get a message to Vaughn and an ever-helpful Weiss. That's just the ones I can remember right off, I'm sure she knows quite a few more.

As a side note, on Noah Hicks' trading card, it claims he only speaks three: English, French, and Russian. Oddly enough, the Russian was episode based while the French happened in the books - it's odd because I like to find what's different between the show and novels, but that's something that lines up. I'm sure he knows more languages - as it's said, five or six was the minimum - but it's not stated in the novels, the show, his Wiki page, or his trading card.

((Update: Ok, so two things. One, one the back of her season 3 trading card, it has one of Sydney’s languages as Taiwanese, so I guess that bumps her (known) total to 31 languages. Secondly, I did forget about a language from Vanishing Act; ''... a circle filled with words in what Sydney immediately recognized as Latin.'' Now again, it said she recognized it and not knew it (though, that’s probably the same thing for her), but I feel it’s further evidence supporting my theory.))

#Alias #Sydney Bristow

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obibail · 5 years ago

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my main squeezes: Vince, Sam, and Vespa! + your Skyrim OC 👀👀👀👀👀👀🔍

fghjdfskj the boys!!!!!!

Vince

The only person to ever call Vince Vincent is his mother. And Rush that one time.

Speaks English, Spanish, French, Haitian Creole, Portuguese, and Arabic.

Was attending NYU for cinema studies. Loved loved loved cinematography studies and film theory. Wanted to be a director! Had actually written & directed two short films already and had been shooting two more that he hoped to premiere at a few local film festivals. Had to drop out of the program after the accident that cost him his left arm because of the medical expenses and the long hospital stays. To say he was crushed is,,,, an understatement.

Was in California having an experimental prosthetic arm fitted & attached when the bombs dropped. He’s told that he followed everyone else to the bunkers but he has no memory of it. The doctors assume it’s either shock or the anesthesia that was in his system when it all happened, but regardless he comes to in immense nerve pain and in a crowded hospital bunker underneath Los Angeles with no clue with the fuck is going on.

Actually knows Ghost, ran with the same group Ghost did in Baja California for two years. Ghost had a big hand in how constantly battered Vince was during those years, liked to goad Vince into worse and worse shit because Ghost wanted to see how far someone like Vince - who was one of the few people in their group with morals - could be pushed before he broke. Ghost got their answer, too, when Vince turns around and - in a nearly blind rage - kills two of their group just before a planned attack on a community of mostly non-combatants.

Lost his right leg in 2030, an infected bullet wound that they (in the middle of a medicine shortage after a brutal winter) didn’t have the means to treat. His eventual leg prosthetic was built based on close study of his arm. Connecting it alone puts him out of commission for almost two months.

Does actually,,,, steal rings off corpses sometimes. A habit he picked up while with Ghost’s crew, a kind of trophy-hunting activity that turned into an unconscious action because he did it so much. He’s got,,, a pretty substantial ring collection. He pretends he feels worse about it than he actually does because what use did a dead person have for jewelry anyway?

Rush is the one who teaches him to shoot, a year or two after Vince joins his group. It comes to the group’s attention that Vince had never even held a gun prior to Rush - acting on a hunch - putting one in his hands one stupid hot California day and told him to go hog on some static targets. Vince missed pretty much every single one. Thankfully, his aim has gotten much better since then.

Vince feels conflicted about a number of things that he has done over the years but killing Ghost’s sociopath ass when they cross paths again in Hope County ain’t one of them.

Sam

Sam, good old midwestern boy that he is, legally cannot cuss.

He’s tall as hell but also thin as hell. He’s 6′6 at least but he’s also probably 145lbs soaking wet. A toothpick.

Nick calls him Sammy. (One time Nick slipped up and referred to the Judge as Sammy and everyone had a bad day about it.)

Sheriff Whitehorse is actually Sam’s godfather! Whitehorse and Sam’s dad (a retired sheriff from South Dakota) were really good friends & still kept in touch pretty regularly before the cult business started up bad in Hope Country. It’s Whitehorse that pulls the strings to get his anxious pothead veteran godson a position as a deputy. (Sam calls him uncle).

Sam is bisexual but how do you say very very repressed about it. Lots of religious-guilt-tinged self-hate because of growing up Catholic in the midwest and then in the south. Definitely had an “in love with my same gender best friend and very ashamed of it” phase.

Sam and John Seed actually ran in the same circles growing up, just at different times. John’s a few years older but they went to the same high school & John’s adopted parents and Sam’s mom were actually well-acquainted. As a teenager, Sam used to be invited to John’s parties & would go with friends and get a little too drunk (which John would them use as fun leverage against Sam’s fairly powerful mother).

On that subject, John was 100% Sam’s bougie weed man all through high school and later when he got out of the Air Force & was self medicating his PTSD.

Sam, realizing he played right into Joseph’s hands: You played me like a fiddle!Joseph: Oh no, Deputy. Fiddles are actually difficult to play. I played you like to cheap kazoo you are.

& some Judge stuff bc 💔💔: Sometimes he’ll disappear for hours on end and most of New Eden is just *solemnly* “he must be doing something very important” except instead of doing that he’s sleeping in the most secret, softest place he could find.

Has an adopted daughter, a little girl named Abigail who attached herself to him at the hip - because she was born mute and he is also mute and she thinks that’s neat, she’d never met anyone like herself before. She and the Judge make up their own version of sign language - that actually ends up being shared between a lot of the residents of New Eden, especially the scouts that the Judge trains.

Vespa

Card-carrying member of the billionaire boys club.

Corporate CEO mom who raised him in a very hands-off way because she was always too busy. Homeschooled, raised by nannies. A lot of his education came through the net, which he learned to navigate at a terribly young age while ignoring his tutors because they bored him.

Has a “rival” in Dare Aranya, his mother’s former protege and the person who (“allegedly”, but definitely) orchestrated her assassination and the woman who is currently CEO of Sasaki Industries and is the executor of Vespa’s mom’s will.

Even though his mother is assassinated when he is 16, he stays in Night City for a year after and blows through whatever bits of his inheritance he can get his hands on, on parties and drugs and vehicles and whatever else a traumatized teenager who saw his mom’s murder can spend money on. A spoiled disaster of a teenage party prince of the highest caliber. Ends up leaving Night City when his money suddenly dries up, syphoned off by Dare.

Bounces between countries and netspaces for years, never spending more than a few months in once place (aside from significant stays in Mumbai, Moscow, and Tokyo). Only returns to Night City after a botch job in Tokyo.

Is actually an Arasaka on his dad’s side, is the great grandnephew of Saburo Arasaka. He ends up staying with a branch of the Arasaka family in Tokyo until he fucks up a job for them while high and gets thrown out on his ass.

Has constant splitting headaches because of his bionic eyes - which are half the reason he self-medicates so heavily. Had to have them replaced and maintained constantly as a child because of natural human growth, which was always a terrifying experience for him, not helped at all by the sterile white rooms he would be taken to or the cool detachment of his doctors who did not work with children and were not paid for their bedside manner. It culminated in a scalding dislike for doctors and a refusal to go to them unless he is literally dying. Ripperdocs are equally, if not more, off limits.

Is notorious for turning off his hearing aids when he wants to focus better or when he is getting too sensory overloaded to function, frustrating everyone he has ever worked with.

He’s adamant his nickname is from the Italian word for “wasp” (as a riff off Dare’s last name, a phonetic spelling of araña, Spanish for spider. one time - while he was in Milan like the rich idiot he is - he heard about these wasps that kill spiders and he has a Justified Grudge against Dare so. wasp) and not from the scooter but he’s scooter boy forever now.

Jackie Welles, hefting Vespa “idiot bastard who spent all his money on drugs and passed out in the back room of a bar again” Sasaki over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes: god damn I wish you’d take care of yourself

I didn’t know if you meant Katja or Sylon but I’m gonna go with Sylon because I love him & bc he’s the more developed of the two rn 😬😬

Is some mix of Breton and Bosmer but no one really knows for sure because no one knows who his actual parents are. The ‘parents’ he was taken from were skooma addicts who had been hounding Khajiit merchants for weeks and were irresponsible to the point that a whole caravan of Khajiit, stressing out while watching this couple neglect their tiny child, collectively lost their minds and just went “listen here’s the stuff you want, don’t even pay us just give us the baby. give us the baby, please.” The caravan finds that couple again not two days later, dead in the desert, and no one is even surprised.

Amazing singing voice but doesn’t actually think he can sing at all. Will hum or sing absent-mindedly sometimes and get real surprised when he looks up to find people have come over to hear him better.

Doesn’t have time for destiny, just wants to steal.

Becomes a thieves’ guild merchant in Riften & moves his business into the Ragged Flagon when their reputation starts getting better. Is also a thief in the guild itself but legitimizes himself as a merchant in Riften by actually running legitimate goods (which helps Khajiit caravans a lot because they can’t trade in the cities but he can and he’s always happy to help the caravans he crosses paths with).

Being raised by Khajiit, Sylon had been taught from a young age not to rely on people and to only rely on his own talents and abilities & to be out for himself and only himself & he believes in this doctrine fully. That is, he believed in it up until the second he meets Karliah and Brynjolf and then he just *lays face down on the ground* “hmm maybe caring about others and wanting to have people that care about me is okay actually.”

Is definitely in love with Brynjolf but no one will ever get him to admit it, least of all Brynjolf.

Meets Katja after she catches him stealing a box of jewelry from her home in Dawnstar. Gets roped into a quest to kill giants with her as a form of recompense because she knows he’s the dragonborn and she’s pissed he isn’t living up to expectations. They end up becoming incredibly close friends whose favorite pastime is jointly roasting Kali, the stupidly naive exiled Redguard noble that Sylon saved from being assassinated one time and who Katja is now housing and feeding (and terrorizing).

Would adopt every orphan in Skyrim if given the option. Despite being fairly aloof and coming across as self-serving, he is shockingly doting and attentive to kids. Makes a name for himself in the cities as a friend of children and someone who will provide without asking for anything in return. Is the unofficial patron god of orphans and strays. And although he doesn’t ask it of them, they make a great information network for him & are happy to tell him everything they overhear in the cities that might be of interest to their thief dad.

#oc: vince mann #oc: sam kettering #oc: vespa #oc: sylon #thank you for indulging me i'm cryin' 💜💜💜#chuckhansen

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whenthisstoryendsarchive · 6 years ago

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Meta #7: Elizabeth’s Siren Song

In this meta on magic in the movie, I briefly mentioned Elizabeth’s power related to the siren song in the following quotes:

potentially a bit of siren singing {when Cam overhears her singing ‘When This Story Ends’}

In the third site, we see: Other times the songs are sung to call those within mankind to love a Mermaid, or are sung by those of the Mer-world seeking a mate from among mankind instead of one of their own. This would seem to indicate that Elizabeth’s song in her tent was a siren song, despite her not knowing Cam was there, and his initial alert being her music box. It’s her voice itself that makes him stay.

Her siren song is clear, and I think it helped to entice Cam to her more than he already was captivated by her.

And I’ll admit, it took an embarrassingly long time for me to realize Elizabeth’s song was a siren song. I don’t think it clicked until I was doing the research for that meta and found that quote from Witchvox.

As such, today I’ll look into what a siren song is- mythologically, the powers it is said to have over humans, how it works with Elizabeth and Cam, and finally, break down the lyrics of Elizabeth’s song.

Mythologically speaking, most of us probably relate sirens and their song to Homer and The Odyssey. Odysseus is warned of sailing near the island of the sirens by Circe, and tells his men to plug their ears with beeswax. He is then tied to the mast of the ship so he can safely listen to their song.

Now, these sirens that Odysseus encountered are very different from what we consider a siren to be today. The Sirens of ancient Greece were closer to Harpies, as they were part bird and part human. Descriptions of them varied, with some saying that they were birds with the faces of young women, or young women with the wings, legs, and tails of birds. When we think of sirens today, we may see something closer to a mermaid; a young woman with a fish’s tail and long flowing hair.

According to Mythology.net, this merger of mermaids and sirens may have taken place as far back as the days of Shakespeare, taking the beauty of mermaids and giving them the voices of sirens. Though the Greeks also had mermaids in their mythology as well, where mermaids were the daughters of Triton and the granddaughters of Poseidon. It is also speculated that the two were merged together because the powers attributed to mermaids were contradictory. Then, of course, as Grecian belief spread to Europe, myths of sirens increased as well; especially in the Roman Empire, Spain, France, Italy, Poland, and England. In these countries, sirens became fully water dwelling, dangerous, chaotic, and hostile.

Mythology.net also says that this link tightened so much that the image of sirens and mermaids are nearly inseparable. This all despite the fact that mermaids and sirens are different species with the powers of hypnotic song.

The ties between sirens and mermaids are even more cemented in modern times because of languages such as Spanish, French, Italian, Polish, Romanian, and Portuguese- where the words Sirena (which applies to 3 languages), Sirene, Syrena, and Sereia are all words for mermaid. And, of course, within the animal kingdom, the link exists as well. The family Sirenia includes fully aquatic herbivores like dugongs and manatees.

Now, of course, we imagine a siren song being used to lure sailors and their ships to a watery grave, but there is much more to the siren song than just death and destruction. For example, the beauty and voice of a siren or mermaid may be used to draw a specific individual to them, according to Witchvox. The site also describes the song as leading to visions and mystery.

Mythology.net also gives us some descriptions of the siren song’s powers. A quote from Nonnus portrays the song as thus: “When a sailor hears the siren’s perfidious song, and bewitched by the melody, he is dragged to a self-chosen fate too soon... Falling into the net of melodious fate, he forgets to steer, quite happy”. This would, of course, indicate the more sinister nature of the song. But another interesting aside is mentioned, saying that the song the siren sings may reach so deep because it is prophetic.

The 2018 Freeform show Siren also delves into the powers of the song. According to their Wikia page, it is described as a “potent ability”, one of almost supernatural levels, that stems from the special voice box of the siren; which is a hybrid of a larynx and syrinx at the base of the trachea. The song lures anyone who hears it with its melody, and makes the hearer feel an addicting level of calm, relaxation, and loss of stress. Furthermore, the song leaves the listener wanting to hear more and more because it imprints on their brain, and it is even said to be calming and addictive to the Siren that sings. Other powers include effectiveness regardless of distance or obstacle, even working through glass, and having more strength and effects on those who hear it more than once.

A quote on the page additionally says that “My Ancestors always said it had different meanings: Great love to some, but to others, it could be dangerous”.

I found this quote to be interesting, especially in relation to a section of quotes on Witchvox that I felt applied greatly to Elizabeth and When This Story Ends. “Mystical Meramid represents the power of unconscious desires”, “Reminds us that unless we follow the truth of our inner selves, our lives are as momentary as sea foam with nothing left behind”, “Gives power to seek beneath the waves of our emotions and imaginings for the pearls beneath”.

These quotes, I felt, linked back perfectly to the section in the meta mentioned above that the siren song can be used to make a human fall in love with a mermaid, and my own belief that the song reflects the wishes of both the singer and the listener.

No matter what train of thought a person believes, the siren song is an appealing temptation that without a doubt is hard to resist, potential consequences notwithstanding.

In the film, we see Elizabeth able to draw Cam to her tent from across the fairground, though his initial draw is her music box. Even then, he backs away and comes back to listen again. It even appears at times that he has tears in his eyes as he listens to Elizabeth.

And if we consider the characters of both Cam and Elizabeth, we can see that the song describes them both in a way. It is, of course, Elizabeth’s song, and her monologue to her inner emotions. We hear her pain during that song more than perhaps any other time in the film. But if we consider that Cam and Elle’s family are gone, and all they have are each other, we can see how it would describe his emotions as well.

Cam has had to leave England and move to America to care for his sick niece after the death of her parents. He has already lost a sibling and potentially his own parents. And he may lose Elle as well if he doesn’t find a cure for her. Cam is just as lonely and far from home and all he knows as Elizabeth is. He may not be trapped by magic, but he is trapped by fear.

Elizabeth sings to comfort herself and renew her belief that she will someday be free to return to the sea and her family. She sings to give herself hope that she might find the true love she thought the prince would be able to give her.

Cam, if we consider that he felt comfort and saw a reflection of his own wishes in the song, not only wants to save Elizabeth and take her home, he not only feels drawn to her, but he also feels that he isn’t alone. He wants to have someone there for him too, just as much as he wants to be there for her.

Now, we’ll look at the lyrics of the song, and how they reflect Elizabeth’s wishes.

It's so enchanting I'm trapped and drowning Here for everyone to see They don't notice How far away I am From everyone and everything Silly to have gambled with my heart out on the line I guess that's just the way it goes But I'm holding on I know a day will come when I can be myself again And I hope someone will love me When this story ends Round in circles, pointless wandering And the crowd lines up again "Give a smile, girl! You make them happy " "Bring your parents, bring a friend " Silly that main attraction would long so much for love I guess that's just the way it goes But I'm holding on I know a day will come when I can be myself again And I hope someone will love me When this story ends If someone could, someone right for me Finds a way to take me home again I believe it One day I'll be home Still I'm searching Round in circles While the crowd lines up again

Breaking it down by verses, we see that in the first verse, Elizabeth is reflecting on her life in the circus, and her past mistake by trusting Locke.

The 2nd and 3rd lines here are particularly interesting, because we see that Elizabeth feels that she’s suffocating, and everyone is watching her, and think it’s just a part of the charming show. No one sees how she feels, and no one cares. Additionally, because of how small the tank is, how it doesn’t allow for the movement of the water, or her body, she literally is drowning every time she gets into it. And everyone just stands and watches.

She admits that she was wrong and foolish to trust Locke to help her. She was naive to believe that love would have given her the acceptance that she felt she was lacking at home. But she admits that there was nothing she could do to change it. Still, she clings to the hope that things will work out in the end.

Round in circles, pointless wandering And the crowd lines up again "Give a smile, girl! You make them happy " "Bring your parents, bring a friend " Silly that main attraction would long so much for love I guess that's just the way it goes But I'm holding on I know a day will come when I can be myself again And I hope someone will love me When this story ends

This verse is even more about her life in the circus, and how every day runs into the next. There’s no change. There’s no stimulation or anything to sustain her. Then, of course, we have lines that were likely told to her by Locke to gaslight her. He tells her to smile for the sake of the crowd, to ignore her own pain and misery for them. Because the crowds matter more than she does.

She then says that it’s ironic and rather ridiculous that she should be so desperate for love when everyone comes to see her. But she can’t do anything about that either. All she can do is to continue to be hopeful that someone will see and love her the way that no one else does.

If someone could, someone right for me Finds a way to take me home again I believe it One day I'll be home Still I'm searching Round in circles While the crowd lines up again

This verse is the one that focuses on her real wish. Yes, Elizabeth wants and needs love. But more than that, she wants freedom. She wants to go home. And she has to believe that she’ll be able to go home because it’s all she has. Because in the end, the crowds will not stop coming. People won’t stop using her, and her hope is the only thing that keeps her going.

Now in a way, Cam too is trapped because he has so much stacked against him. He’s terrified that he’ll lose Elle too, and he’s also given the task of raising a child on his own when he’s so young himself, in a country that he has no familiarity with. But he has to do what’s right for Elle. He has to put his own misgivings and worries aside for her.

Perhaps he even realizes that he’s one of those people Elizabeth sings of; coming to use her for her ability to heal while ignoring her pain. And if this is the case, I’d like to believe that this is when Cam turns his leaf. He knows after this that something at the circus isn’t right, even if he has yet to believe in magic.

And in the last verse, it shows that he also wants some companionship, someone to help him and for him to turn to when he’s scared or unsure. It cements his desire to save Elizabeth and set her free.

Sources:

https://www.gonext.com/2018/11/08/sorrento-sirens-the-truth-about-mermaids/

https://www.crystalinks.com/sirens.html

http://www.realmermaids.net/mermaid-history/siren-history/

https://siren.fandom.com/wiki/Siren_Song

http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=usfl&c=words&id=8519

https://mythology.net/greek/greek-creatures/siren/

https://whenthisstoryends.tumblr.com/post/181177903367/meta-4-magic-in-the-little-mermaid

#Outofsouls (Ooc)#He Took A Part Of Me (Headcanons)#Meta #Sources in links #And below

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its-me-waffles · 7 years ago

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The +1 (I)

Summary: You find yourself inviting your colleague to a wedding, and honestly? It’s all your friends’ fault.

(I) (II)

“If there is no stated start date, you always choose “lease start” as your base date, ok? And don’t forget to set type as “rolling” – it means that they can exercise the option at any given time.” You are pretty sure you’ve said that before. Like a million times. But of course not to these people. This particular group heard that maybe ten thousand times.

The temp whose question prompted your answer nods dutifully and focuses on her screen to correct her errors. You can see the rest of the group frantically scrolling to make sure that they filled the extract correctly.

Glass doors to the conference room open with a quiet whoosh and familiar head appears in the crack. Not that you wouldn’t be able to see him without that since there are no walls in this office. Only glass, glass, and some more glass.

“Psst.” He calls and you don’t know if you should laugh or be annoyed – but you know he is doing it for laughs. But he is distracting your temps, who are curiously looking at him from over their screens. “Got a minute?”

“Go back to work.” You say to your group, and you turn around to face Jongdae. “Why?”

“How is your Portuguese?” He asks in turn and takes a step back. You follow him out and together you walk down the corridor. The office is loud, but that’s to be expected in an open space.

“Good enough.” You say, but you make sure to add a little bit of uncertainty to your voice. “But weren’t you the head of Plaza’s Asian project?”

“That’s the problem.” Jongdae laughs, and since you’ve reached his office he opens doors for you and lets you in. You immediately walk over to his desk and you sit down in his chair, not waiting for him to pull up the site – you can do that yourself. “We’ve got some contracts from Macau and some are written in Portuguese – which, as you can guess, is a little bit annoying.”

You laugh, because, yes, you can understand that. You log onto Jongdae’s managing account (you’ve started back in the same year and you both still use the generic password that was given that year).

“What’s the ID of the contract?”

“1853 dash M.O dash 6788910 to 678814.”

“You remember that?” You glance at him quite impressed, and Jongdae waves a memo at your face. Right.

You pull up the first contract while Jongdae sits down on one of his couches, putting his legs up on his coffee table. Thankfully they are at most 7 pages long so you can do that in an hour.

“Why didn’t you as Angela though? She is back from her vacation.”

“Yeaaah…” He stretches the word long enough for you to look up from the contract. Jongdae shrugs. “I find her kinda creepy and I didn’t want to talk to her.”

“You can’t be serious. I am in charge of teaching new guys for the Spanish team, I can’t be doing side jobs when the person responsible for Portuguese is back at work.” You say that, but you are already filling extracts. You are efficient.

“I know,” he whines, but you only shake your head. “I will do your sorting for ACC Group in turn?”

You look up surprised, but you immediately school yourself. Sorting is a pain in the ass and no one ever wants to do that. No one. So you are not going to say no to such a deal.

“Well, I think we can work something out.”

… I know we were supposed to do it together and I swear it wasn’t planned, but it just happened? And I hope you’ll understand me! I am really sorry, but at the same time I just can’t not do it, you know?

There is a knock on your doors and you look up to see Louise in front of your office. You minimize your mail and wave her inside.

“Hi,” she greets you absentmindedly and checks something on her phone. “Are Francesco Hidalgo and Amelia… Rias in your training group?”

“I am sure Amelia is, but Francesco… Gimme a moment.” You quickly search for your list and sure enough, they are both in your group. “You need them for Piaza?”

“Yeah, they dumped on us 60 more leases and they want it done by Monday.” You smiled slightly as a way to show your compassion. “I desperately need everyone that speaks French.”

“Sure, I will send them to you. Francesco is good, but keep an eye on Amelia. She is eager, but she forgets everything I tell her as soon as she is done with a task.” Louise sighs and shrugs. Her phone vibrates and she checks it. You reflexively check your own, and you see a reminder of your wax appointment.

Which immediately reminds you of the mail you were reading when Louise came.

“Well, we had worse,” says Louise absentmindedly. “Anyway, please send them to me as soon as possible.”

“You got it.”

Louise walks out of your office leaving door half open, and you feel a pang of annoyance at that, but you focus on your computer. You open slack and message both aforementioned trainees. Then you look up, over your screen to see what’s happening in the conference room where they are sitting. You can see Francesco call Amelia to check her message, and a second later they both look up. They see you staring and Francesco mouths now? at you. You nod and point at French’s team room.

You stare at them for a second longer, making sure that they will take their laptops with them, and then you open your mail one more time.

… but I think he’s the one…

For fuck's sake.

Social room is filled with the pleasant smell of fresh coffee. You hum contentedly as soon as you walk in, waving to two members of the Italian team sitting at the table under the window.

“We’ve just made coffee,” laughs Theo. “I knew you’d smell if from afar.”

“Of course, I would,” you laugh, opening the cabinet to grab your cup. It looks like an old boring black cup, but it has a quirky message hidden on the bottom (namely if you tip it to drink people around you can see a middle finger).

You grab an apple and pour yourself the coffee, and immediately you take a satisfying sip. The coffee is good, office not sparing expenses on shared goods.

“I smell coffee, I see Spanish PM – everything is in order.” Ok, your obsession with coffee is not that strong. But you laugh nonetheless moving so Jongdae can also pour himself a cup. Together you join Theo and Norbert – they immediately start talking about football. In this office, every world championship is a serious deal – with so many nationalities mingling together.

“We’ll be playing the game after hours. We have a projector and everything – boss already give his thumbs up.”

“Really?” You have to say you are impressed.

“Yeah! Are you staying? We are ordering pizzas.” Jongdae is wiggling his eyebrows and you just have to laugh.

“Damn, that’s tempting, but I have a previous engagement.” Even saying that makes you feel as if something was weighing you down. It’s not your friend’s fault. You can understand her, but also – you feel betrayed.

Jongdae whines and you shake your head. You stand up patting his arm, you grab your coffee and your apple, and you salute the table going back to work. Your mood is… not good.

So your good friend is getting married. You are slowly entering this age group when people around you start to get married, it’s nothing surprising. It’s also nothing bad that there are people marrying and having children, and also people that can’t find their other half (like you). It’s not a big deal. Months ago when you got an invitation you were panicked. Going to a wedding alone is not a fun thing to do. And it’s frowned upon in your social circle.

But out of your friends, there were two other girls that didn’t have their plus-ones. Together you decided you don’t have to since you’ll have yourselves to have fun with.

The first girl dropped out two months ago. Betty found a partner/boyfriend, but you didn’t worry. There was still the other one. At least you thought so. Until today, when you got a mail saying that she found a partner and that she is leaving you alone to deal with this shit.

Bride already mailed you the updates on your lodgings and stuff, and she was cute enough to include a sublime message that there is still a place for your +1 if you happen to find someone.

Sure. With four days until the wedding.

…we will be going there around 2 PM, and we have still two seats left…

You want to rub your eyes, but you know you’ll smudge your makeup. All your yesterday correspondence was about the wedding. Which wasn’t surprising and was to be expected, but everyone was trying to convey to you that yes, you can still invite someone. It’s so annoying because you know that they are worried about you, but at the same time, you can feel that they are pitying you.

At least you are as smooth as a dolphin.

KoreanPM (1-800-call-me-maybe): Did the coffee machine broke again?

SpanishPM (there are stupid questions): No. Why? Wait, did it?

KoreanPM (1-800-call-me-maybe): Dunno, you look down.

You look up, and you see Jongdae in his office. He starts laughing, and:

KoreanPM (1-800-call-me-maybe): Well, now you are looking up. That was easy.

KoreanPM (1-800-call-me-maybe): What’s wrong?

SpanishPM (there are stupid questions): Friends’ stuff. Nothing big.

KoreanPM (1-800-call-me-maybe): Remember the training – if something is wrong, send a ticket to the support.

On the screen appears a pop-out reminding you about training. You gather your things and wave to Jongdae – you can already see your training group sitting in the conference room. All except for French speakers.

On your way to the conference room your phone chimes.

I asked Marie to change your room to double, but with single beds! You can invite a platonic friend!

That is peer pressure.

FrenchPM (quand même): She can’t remember a single instruction. Honestly, that is kind of amazing.

SpanishPM (there are stupid questions): Told you.

… if you want I can ask him for you?

They’ve started setting you up, which, you are pretty sure, is the most horrible thing they could do. You are so stressed that you can feel the bile in the back of your throat all the time.

Theo_Agosti (laugh, live, lay down): Coffee :coffee:

SpanishPM (there are stupid questions): :kissing_ smiling_eyes:

Theo_Agosti (laugh, live, lay down): :poop:

You stretch and push back in your swivel chair, just as you notice Jongdae in front of your door. He is holding your cup in one hand, and his own in the other. He places both of the cups in one hand and opens the door.

“I love you,” you whisper, outstretching your arms for your cup.

“Yeah, I know, I already called my parents to let them know you want to meet them before we elope.”

It is a joke, but it dampens your mood immediately. You take offered coffee and sigh.

Theo_Agosti (laugh, live, lay down): Better than uber eats :poop:

Jongdae sits down in front of your desk.

“Talk to me,” he says taking a sip. You follow his suit, and yeah, coffee is hot and rich. You cluck.

“It’s nothing big – it’s just…”

Your phone chimes and you see a message that covers you in cold sweat.

Gonna ask him.

“What?” Jongdae sounds lost, but you can just stare at your phone in horror. “What happened?”

Don’t. You. Dare. – You send back, knowing that you’ve reached the bottom.

“Jongdae?” You ask, feeling how your pulse pounds in your ears.

“Yeah?”

“Are you doing anything this weekend?” You can believe what you are doing. Jongdae is a colleague. For all, you know he could have a long time girlfriend. Or a boyfriend. He could be engaged. Hell, he could already be married!

“Nothing special as far I know, why?”

“Would you like to go with me to my friend’s wedding?” You ask, not believing that you are actually doing it. You can want to explain why, and you want to tell him that there will be an open bar and free food, and that you are not a serial murder, and that your situation is desperate – but you can’t find words.

“Oh…” You can’t even look him in the face. He has a girlfriend. He obviously has a girlfriend. And you are only a colleague anyway. Please let it be a girlfriend, not a boyfriend. Or maybe boyfriend would be better. You are losing your mind. “Yeah, ok. That could be fun!”

Wait, what?

#jongdae scenario #jongdae imagine #chen scenario #chen imagine #exo scenario #exo imagine

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rhaellatully · 6 years ago

Text

Strings’n’Drums Chapter 5 (fanfiction)

Fanfiction.net: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12814422/5/Strings-n-Drums

AO3:https://archiveofourown.org/works/13991202/chapters/36607086

Summury: AU. In 1969, Lucy runs from home and becomes a journalist for the magazin Strings'n'Drums, this will lead the young shy girl in the world of rock music, to meet the colorfull caracters that populates it. In between running from her father and living new experience Lucy will make friends, gorw into an adult and maybe have some romance. Will include Nalu and mentions of other parings

Beta: Reliena Artemis Rockfeller

Chapter 1:https://rhaellatully.tumblr.com/post/170156396003/stringsndrums-fanficition

Chapter 4:https://rhaellatully.tumblr.com/post/176550445438/stringsndrums-chapter-4-fanfiction

Lucy was climbing the stairs toward Natsu Dragneel’s apartment. He lived on the seventh floor, and the more steps she took, the more she regretted to have worn her high heels. To be honest, the closer she got to his apartment, the more she regretted her entire choice of attire. Levy had told her that Natsu Dragneel didn’t like people who were too serious and she had to dress down. She was wearing a zaffre circle skirt that ended much above her knees with a white short-sleeved notched collar shirt. As much as she wanted Mr. Dragneel to see her as someone he could trust, she had a hard time believing he’d take her seriously with a skirt this short. She had told Levy about this worry of hers, and her friend had answered on a dismissive tone, “Natsu doesn’t take anyone seriously.” This hadn’t made Lucy feel better. Her mind was filled with the different remark that could be made about the skirt. Mini skirts were the trend, almost every girl wore them in London, but back at home, they had always been forbidden and shamed. She was raised in a conservative home, after all.

Her legs hurt with every step she took, as she looked up for the hundredth time to see if she was getting closer. She cursed the architect who made the steps so wide. And it was also just her luck that the lift was under maintenance today. It was hot inside the building, but not as much as it was outside. Lucy, who had grown up more at the north, was not used to this heat and it showed. She wiped some sweat from her brow and tried to look under her armpit, where she could feel dampness. She could only hope it didn’t spread too widely or what would she look like?

When she finally reached the right floor, she took a moment to catch her breath. She shouldn’t be this affected by just a few stairs, but she was truly out of shape and the heat was just agonizing. Lucy took out her powder compact from her bag and used its mirror to look at herself. Her hair was a bit messy and she tried her best to put the stray strands back in place, but without a comb, this was an impossible task. She looked inside her bag and found a blue foulard, that she tied around her head, tying it under her left ear in a big noose that she hoped would keep the attention away from her hair. She retouched her make up the best she could, then took a deep breath and walked to where Natsu Dragneel’s apartment should be.

With her still sweaty finger, she rang the bell. She heard the sound echo through the building, and the moment it stopped, the door opened. On the other side, stood a man who she recognised to be Natsu Dragneel, his messy hair as well as his signature unbuttoned black leather waistcoat were the giveaway. He didn’t wear anything underneath it, apart of course, from his white pants. Lucy was made quite uncomfortable by the sight of his bare chest. She gulped as unnoticeably as she could, and immediately looked away.

“Hello.” He said with a nice voice.

“Hi.” Said Lucy, as she looked at him in the eyes, trying to look professional, “I’m Lucy Heartfillia, the Strings’n’Drums journalist, I’m here for the interview.”

“Oh yeah, right! Do come in!” He said with a smile and there was excitement in his voice.

Lucy entered the apartment and was met with a wave of heat, which would have surprised her if she hadn’t immediately spotted the large window that allowed an incredible amount of light in, the white walls reflecting it. As she glanced around, she noticed the tremendous mess that was this flat. While the furniture were correctly placed, the couch across from a television; a small wooden table in between them; several chairs were also in place to accommodate guests; underneath the expanse of this area was a large carpet; and against the wall, was a console shelf full of vinyl records, and sitting atop of it was a state-of-the-art record player. There were also uncountable amounts of small objects scattered around the room, and mostly at places where they didn’t belong—such as guitar strings on the television, a mug on the carpet, what seems like a recently-used toothbrush on the couch, an opened bottle of alcohol on a chair, a pile of clean clothes folded on the floor, and many more other things.

Mr. Dragneel went to sit on the couch, across from the toothbrush, and smiled kindly at her. Lucy made her way to one of the chairs and sat. As she did, she noticed a bunch of papers folded into the seat’s crevice. She took them and discovered that they were music sheets. She spared a quiet glance in Natsu Dragneel’s direction and saw that his expression had not changed, as if he was perfectly unbothered by what she had just done. She put the sheets back where she had found them, and took out her notepad before putting her bag on the floor next to her chair. She turned her attention towards the musician she was supposed to interview. Now that she looked at him more carefully, she noticed that he seemed a bit tanned. She guessed this was due to the tour he just got back from; the last concert having been in Spain and Portugal. She also noticed the white scarf that was wrapped around his neck. The sight of the man’s chiselled chest had made her unable to pay attention to the article of clothing earlier. This scarf had black lines on it that reminded Lucy of scales, which she thought fits well with his nickname: Salamander. His eyes, his expression, his entire body language, were perfectly relaxed. Lucy supposed it came from the numerous interviews he had already given. This led her to think it would make him judge her more harshly. Levy had told her that he was very laid back and didn’t care about much, but Lucy convinced herself that someone with his influence in the musical world would see that what was part of it as someone religiously important.

“So are you ready to dive in?” she asked, forcing a smile.

“Sure!” He answered with what seemed to be the excitement of a child. Lucy almost laughed at his behaviour.

“Alright,” she said, “you just came back from your European tour, right? How was it?”

“Oh it was cool, y'know the usual,” he said nonchalantly, making small gestures as he spoke.

“Did you get to play the tourist in some of the towns you visited?” Out of habit, she started to outstretch her arm toward him, but remembering her sweaty armpit, she quickly retracted it.

“Not all of them, cause, y'know, the schedule. But there were a few I got to visit and hang around in. Like, it was super cool in Stockholm,” and he went on to explain everything he had found interesting about this town. As he spoke, he grew more excited and his movements grew wider. By the end of his speech, he was almost jumping on his seat. Lucy was very amused by his behaviour. “Have you ever been to a town like that?” He finished by asking.

“No,” she said, the ghost of a chuckle in her voice, she was about to tell him about one of her travels when she remembered that she was supposed to do an interview. “Did you find anything interesting or inspiring, musically speaking?”

This time he jumped on his seat, “Yes!” he said loudly pointing at her with his finger, “It was in Portugal, in Lisbon, I went to a bar one night to see a concert of local fado artists—have you ever listened to fado?” She shook her head no, “...well, it’s that sort of Portuguese blues, I mean I call it blues because it’s really melancholic and played with string instruments but it’s not melancholic melancholy, y’know? The melody somehow has a hint of hope in it,” there was a glimmer in his eyes as he spoke, “...and there’s that sound, it’s very unique. The sound made by Portuguese guitars. The one I went to see, they had a guitarra,” Lucy had no idea what that was and it must have showed because he immediately said, “it’s a guitar that looks kind of like a cross between a mandolin and a violao, which is another Portuguese guitar. The guitarra has that sound that really fits the melancholy of the music. And there was this singer, the way she sang, it was amazing! It really touches your soul, y'know.”

“Do you plan on including a bit of that in your next album?”

“Definitely. Though I haven’t figured out how yet, but I’ve bought myself a guitarra and a dozen of fado albums before leaving Lisbon. I’ve been listening to them on repeat. I’m going to fit that in somehow.” He said with delight.

Lucy was curious on how he was going to do that, and on how his next songs might sound. She made a note to herself to purchase some fado albums to help her write the article. In her head, she imagined it sounding similar to flamenco, but she could guess this was wrong. Flamenco was Spanish, and fado was Portuguese; the two countries did share a border, but that didn’t make them the same. Plus, with what Natsu had described, it didn’t sound like flamenco because fado sounded melancholic, not upbeat.

This train of thought reminded her of information she had acquired about the musician, so she asked him, “Did you get to spend some time in Spanish cities?”

“Yeah, I got to visit Madrid a bit, but not Barcelona, and that’s a bit sad.”

“You have Spanish roots, don’t you? Did going there feel different from other countries you’ve visited?”

“Oh yeah, well, my dad’s Spanish, I… I don’t know, it was weird,” suddenly he wasn’t making any movement anymore, “...cause I know like three words of Spanish and here I was, visiting the homeland of my ancestors, but I was a foreigner. It was cool to discover all cultures, y'know, the music, the colours, the food. The food! Man, the food was great! But it just showed that I’m not Spanish, y'know?” He finished, scratching the back of his head.

Lucy didn’t know. Her parents must have moved only three kilometres away from where they were born, where their parents were born, where their grandparents were born. By moving to London, she must have accomplished the greatest migration anyone in her family had ever made. She didn’t feel much towards her ‘homeland’, probably because to her, it had always been a prison. But she had always thought that those who had another home, one older, one carried by the stories of their grandparents, must have had a connection to that place, something that drew them there.

She couldn’t help but ask, “So, you didn’t feel any connection with Spain?”

She saw him hesitate before answering, “It’s a great place and I do like it there but… all my friends are in Great Britain, and that’s where my heart is. This is where my home is.”

A smile made its way to Lucy’s face. This was a beautiful thought, and she hoped that one day, she would share it. But for it to become a reality, she needed to make her place here, and this started by being a good journalist. “Should we expect a song about this?”

His eyes widened and he pointed at her again, “That’s a great idea!” he exclaimed, “But I can’t use fado on that one, I’ll have to go towards Spanish music. I know some Spanish musicians, I’ll have to call them.” His hands were floating in the air again. “Maybe, I can put some Spanish words in the lyrics, what do you think?”

“I’m sure you’ll be able to figure it out. So your next album is going to be inspired by what you’ve discovered in your tour?”

“Well yeah, you sing what, y’know, what happens to you. I can’t discover those kinds of things and then not include them in my songs.”

“You’ve had tours all around the world before, why didn’t you do this sooner?”

“In the past tour, I never had the time to do anything other than my concerts, attend rehearsals, and appear on shows where I’m a guest. It was really exhausting. Honestly, at that time, I’d rather hit the bed than hit the town.” He let his body fall on the side of the couch to emphasize his words.

Lucy let a chuckle escape her lips. The musician smiled at her and got his body back into a sitting position. Lucy looked back at her notes to figure out what question she was supposed to ask, “What about the public, the crowd—is it really different from one country to the next?”

“Not really, y'know, music it’s… it can bring people together like nothing else. No matter where you’re from, you feel it the same, y'know what I mean?” She could tell from the look on his face that he truly was worried about his wording, but Lucy understood him completely and she nodded. Lucy might not be a musician, but she had felt music every time she listens to it. Music didn’t need to have the same cultural base, or the same language...sometimes, it didn’t even need lyrics. Music could universally be comprehended.

“Yeah, music just get to people, it doesn’t matter where you are. Everyone understands music.” He continued, “So yeah, crowd’s the same. I mean there’s America, y’know, I was in the US before and like, over there my crowd is mostly made of girls, so I guess it’s not exactly the same, I guess.”

“How do you feel about this difference?”

“Oh, I don’t think much about it, but y’know, sometimes…it kind of gives me the impression that they’re more here for my appearance than my music.” His eyes widened, “Oh, so that’s how it feels.”

Lucy laughed and out of reflex brought her hands in front of her mouth. Meanwhile, Natsu smiled at her. When she went back to her original stance, she felt a coolness at the place where her arms connected with her sides. This reminded her that her armpits were stained with sweat, something that Natsu Dragneel must have seen while she was laughing. Yet, he was looking at her with a childlike smile, as if he hadn’t noticed anything.

Lucy didn’t know what to make of that. Any other day, she would have immediately thought that he was pretending to have seen nothing to be polite, but with the behaviour he had shown up until now, she thought that it was possible, that he might simply not care. However, she couldn’t be sure, and even if she had been, it wouldn’t have stop shame from making its way to her mind. She could hear her preceptor’s stern voice in her head going, ‘A true lady is never seen covered with filth of any kind.’ As much as she could shut the voice down, she couldn’t stop emotions from invading her. All she could hope to do was not to let it show. So, she gave her best smile and thought of a new question.

“Are you concerned with the place of women in the industry?” Her voice had been strong and didn’t show any hint of how she felt inside. She was proud of herself, but that didn’t last long. The moment she looked at Natsu Dragneel, she saw him looking at her oddly.

“Yeah, kind of,” he said, still looking weirdly at her. Lucy started thinking that maybe her question was the problem. “I have lots of friends who aren’t treated like me, y'know. It’s like Erza, I mean—Erza!” There was an hint of anger in his voice, “She’s so much more talented than me! I would kill to be at her level but they don’t let her do her thing!” The hint of anger was gone, and only real frustration remained.

“You mean Erza Scarlet?” asked Lucy, perplexed at the idea that he could be speaking about an artist as popular as her in such ways.

“Yeah!” he said, still visibly pissed.

Lucy took a moment to think about how to phrase her question. She didn’t want to sound like she was disagreeing with him. She was genuinely curious, but seeing how enraged he was, he might take her words the wrong way. Carefully, she tried, “Could you explain to me, how…in what ways Erza Scarlet is mistreated by the industry?”

“They make her like that,” he paused a moment, then spurred out words like they were poison, “...nice little doll, that only has a pretty voice!”

Lucy would never have described Erza Scarlet’s voice as pretty; not that it sounded bad, but that word didn’t reflect the power there was in that woman’s voice. She didn’t know what to think of the words ‘nice little doll’;Erza Scarlet had always seemed like a full grown woman to Lucy. But the person in front of her knew Erza Scarlet personally, so if to him, what she perceives as a normal woman with a powerful voice was a ‘nice little doll that only has a pretty voice’, what kind of person could Erza Scarlet really be?

“She’s not that?” the words escaped Lucy’s mouth without her accord.

“She’s so much more than that,” answered Natsu Dragneel, looking out the window. It took Lucy a moment to recognise the emotion in his voice, it was admiration. Not the kind of admiration one feels for someone they’re smitten with, but the kind you have for a mentor, the kind a child has for their hero. “Erza is the most talented musician I’ve ever met. Hands down.” He paused, “What you hear is nothing compared to what she can do—what she can really do.” He let out a frustrated sigh, “All that because stupid producers won’t let her do her thing.” The drama of what he was saying was cut off by his face, which wore a big childish pout.

“You admire her a lot, don’t you?” asked Lucy, genuinely curious. Now that she thought about it, Levy had mentioned that, among the children she had grown up with, there was Natsu Dragneel and Erza Scarlet.

“Of course!” he exclaimed throwing his arms in the air, “She’s the best!”

“Did you always think of her that way? I mean, since you were children?”

Natsu stopped and stared at her, his face was full of confusion, than realisation dawned on him. “Levy,” he said under his breath, he then regained his composure and said, “Not straight away, I thought she was bossy at first,” he paused, “...and she kind of was, like every time I tried to sneak into the kitchen at night, she was there to drag me back to my room.” He whined. He sighed angrily before continuing, “But then I heard her play and I realised how talented she was, and y'know after that, I couldn’t not admire her. And y'know, I was trying to become as good as her, but she was improving at the same time, so I was always behind. I’m still behind!”

“You’re still very talented,” Lucy automatically reassured him.

He shrugged it of and said, “The only person I’ve ever met who was close to her level was Gildarts.”

“You mean Gildarts Clive, the bluesman?” Once again, she had Levy to thank for the intel.

“Yeah!” said Natsu, with clear excitement in his voice. “That guy is awesome!”

“You’ve also met him back in the orphanage. I heard he sometimes gave music lessons to the children. Is that how you learnt music?”

“No, that’s how I got better.” He tilted his head to the side, “That and playing with the others.” he admitted.

This gave Lucy the opportunity to ask something that had been puzzling her for a long time. She knew from Levy that Natsu Dragneel, Erza Scarlet, John Fool, Cana Alberona, The Strauss, and many others had all grown up in the same place, yet, they had all made their careers separately. This didn’t make sense to Lucy. She had asked Levy about it but the other girl had not been able to give her an answer. Lucy didn’t live inside their heads, she didn’t know what they thought. So she asked Natsu about it.

“We didn’t want to work together.” he said simply.

“But why?” pushed Lucy, the only reason that, to her, made sense for not wanting to work with someone you’ve known so long, would be that you don’t get along. But she knew they had chosen to live together in a tiny flat when they got to London, so they must have been more than comfortable with each other.

Natsu shook his head sideways, looking for his words, “You can’t know who’s the best, if you’re all in the same band, y'know?” Lucy didn’t understand what he meant, and it must have shown because he then said, “We had… some kind of rivalry going on, we wanted to see who was the best, y'know.”

Now Lucy got it. She couldn’t help but wonder if this was what having siblings was like. Of course she knew of many bands made of siblings or other family members, but in every novel she reads, siblings seem to have some kind of rivalry, or a need to show which of them was the best. Being an only child, the mechanics of siblinghood fascinated her. She remembered asking for siblings when she was young, and her mother would only always laugh nicely at her request. She didn’t remember her father’s reaction, either he had never been there (which could sum up most of her childhood) or she had repressed the memory on purpose.

She kept asking Natsu question about his work, mostly what he was planning to do from now on. He kept answering with much enthusiasm, causing the fall of many objects scattered on the couch or around it. Until finally, Lucy ran out of questions. She told him she was done with the interview and started gathering her things.

“Y'know, this interview was more fun than most of the ones I’ve had.” he told her.

This brought warmth to Lucy’s heart. She, who was always worried about her own capabilities. The smile on his face showed that he was sincere.

“You’re one of the nicest persons I’ve had to interview, too.” She said to repay the compliment.

“Really? Who did you get before?” he asked, genuinely curious.

Lucy stopped, his question insinuated that the interviewees she had were people excessively mean, and that wasn’t true. She had had people who clearly didn’t want to be here, but she never had anyone actually take it out on her. Still, thinking about this, she decided to say with a defeated sigh, “Rust made me uncomfortable.” Which was true. This band had remained a bad memory, probably the most uneasy interview of her admittedly short career. Nevertheless, she regretted saying those words the instant they came out of her mouth. For one, it was a very unprofessional thing to say, and secondly, with her background, she didn’t feel like she was allowed to judge them.

But before she could apologize for that sentence Natsu left out, “Oh yeah, Gajeel’s such an ass!”

“I don’t know if I would say that.” Lucy didn’t really know much about Mr. Redfox and she felt very uncomfortable insulting him behind his back.

“Every time I see him, he’s being an ass to someone! Plus he punched Droy in the face for no reason!” Natsu whined.

Lucy knew who Droy was; he was the friend of Levy that had indeed been punched in the face by Gajeel Redfox. Natsu knew that and had apparently met with Gajeel a significant amount of time. But she hadn’t. “I’ve only met him once and I doubt it’s enough to make an opinion.”

“I’ve met him lots of times and I think he’s an ass.” he said confidently.

Lucy just smiled and said, “If you say so.”

Natsu smiled back. Lucy was about to leave when she felt something warm and hairy rubbing against her leg. Shocked, she immediately jumped on the chair, turning her eyes toward what had touched her. She was relieved to see a cat. She let out a sigh of relief, but at the same time, Natsu burst in laughter. His laugh quickly became uncontrollable. He ended up on the couch clutching his stomach. Lucy was mortified, she felt ridiculed and wanted nothing more than run out of here, but she found herself paralysed. The cat looked confused by the scene. Somewhere in between his laughing fits, Natsu managed to let out, “You’re afraid of the cat.”

This sentence should have sounded mean, but there was no malice in his voice, just friendly teasing. As if they had known each other much longer than they actually did. Able to move again, Lucy climbed down the chair. She glanced at Natsu who was slowly regaining control of himself, then turned to the cat who was staring at her. She picked him up. He had soft fur, and Lucy enjoyed giving him nice stroke on the back. The cat started purring.

“Your human is an idiot, you know.” She told him.

Natsu came back to his senses, still lying on the sofa when he told her, “You’re weird, but in a good way.”

Lucy had no idea what that meant, or in what way he could have possibly found her weird. She spent a good amount of time trying to figure that out, on her way home. She didn’t. But when the time came to start writing her article, and she asked herself how she would describe Natsu Dragneel in a few words, the first thing that came to her mind was: weird, but in a good way.

#ft fanfiction #nalu fanfiction #fairy tail #lucy heartfilia #nastu dragneel #ft

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red-wardens · 6 years ago

Text

Red-Warden’s OC Page

Because this is all on my OC Page (that I have a link to on my sidebar), but is therefore inaccessible to those who using tumblr app or tumblr from their non-computer devices, I am copy and pasting my OC Page onto a post for anyone interested :) My Warden Squad + Hawkes + Inquisitors

Under the cut because pictures + descriptions = long post.

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Picture Credits: Isseya Mahariel (@Vasirah), Kieran Tabris (@noquiethere), Ronan Aeducan (@blue-spectre), Nora Brosca (@chillyrose), Cassian Cousland (@varrric)

Ages: Start of Origins (Dragon 9:30), Start of Inquisition (Dragon 9:41)

Blue Surana: the Leader (my “canon” Warden Commander) and Most Powerful Warden on Squad

5'4, silence and duty and eccentricity; elf mage, Fire mage (Specialization: Arcane Warrior/Spirit Healer/Battle Mage), royal blue eyes, expressionless face, seldom talks but when she does her voice is very toneless; strong sensitivity to loud sounds/bright lights; generally has a physical touch aversion; True Neutral, Virgo

During Blight: age 18, bobbed white hair tied back and straight-across bangs; has difficulty processing emotions and understanding feelings/actions of others; generally keeps to herself, somewhat scary/spooky aura;

During Inquisition: age 29, waist-length white hair and straight-across bangs; sclera of eyes is darker and some of her veins are black/blackening due to the taint (affects her more than most Wardens)

LI/sexuality: mutual pining for Sten; Asexual/Grey-romantic

Creator Notes: Though there’s no official word for it in Thedas, in Modern AU Blue is diagnosed as a child with high-functioning Autistic Spectrum Disorder. She is also half-Middle Eastern, half-Indian coded.

Hero of World State 1 (survives Archdemon)

Blue’s Aesthetic Tag

Isseya Mahariel: the Second in Command and the Arlessa of Amaranthine

*also Becomes Warden Commander when Surana steps down to look for Cure for The Calling

5'7, sternness and skill and pride; Dalish Archer, Rogue (Specialization: Ranger), dark green eyes, beautiful but often looks annoyed/disapproving, alcoholic tendencies; low key really likes halla; Lawful Neutral, Capricorn

During Blight: age 19, thick black hair in long thin braids, impatient but not impulsive, prone to yelling, very prideful and sure of herself, generally unsentimental

During Inquisition: age 30, the Grey Wardens are her life (married to job trope, but also married to Zev), scars from archdemon fight, firm but fair; wants kids but the Warden taint makes it hard; lost faith in Elven gods but still respects Dalish culture

LI/sexuality: Zevran Arainai; Heterosexual

Creator Notes: In Thedas her Mahariel parents are from Rivain; in Modern AU she is Kenyan-Japanese mix coded with predominantly Kenyan culture (understands Swahili).

Hero of World State 2 (survives Archdemon)

Isseya’s Aesthetic Tag

Alyss Amell: the Healer/medic of Squad; generally non-combatant beyond setting glyphs and in-fight healing

5'2, sweetness and hope and tears; human mage, Creation Mage (Specialization: Spirit Healer/Blood Mage/Rift Mage [by Inquisition time]), pale blue eyes, half-Orlesian and fluent in the language, loves reading/studying, shy and gentle, blushes easily; Chaotic Good, Cancer

During Blight: age 21, light brown hair slightly past shoulders and tied back with a pink ribbon; kind but timid, no self-confidence and no “fight-or-flight” instinct only “freeze and cry"; huge affinity for sweets and breads

During Inquisition: age 32, still kind-hearted but braver and more sure of herself, still shy but can speak up in front of others now, hairstyle now the “bisexual bob”, new hair ribbon is a pale blue

LI/sexuality: Leliana; Demisexual/Biromantic

Creator Notes: In Thedas her father is Orlesian so her mom Revka Amell decides to keep her maiden name to make it easier on her children; in Modern AU she is French-American coded and was diagnosed with Severe Depression and Generalized Anxiety Disorder at age 14.

Hero of World State 3 (dies slaying Archdemon)

Alyss’ Aesthetic Tag

Kieran Tabris: the Vanguard, always first to charge into battle

5'9, candidness and loyalty and a fiery temper; City elf, Two-Handed Sword Warrior (Specialization: Templar/Reaver), motivated by spite and aesthetic (also attention), talks about his mom a lot; Chaotic Neutral, Aries

During Blight: age 20, pretty but petty with a loud foul mouth, has never had a single chill in his life; raging hatred towards humans (except is neutral to human mages), idiotic tendencies, a pain in the ass to Mahariel

During Inquisition: age 31, has obtained some chill but not much

LI/sexuality: has a son with Morrigan (one night stand, never sees her again, doesn’t want to), was in an on-and-off relationship for a couple years with Velanna but they eventually broke up for good; Bisexual/Grey-romantic (strong aversion to humans).

Creator Notes: In Thedas he and his mom came to Ferelden from an island to the East of the Amaranthine Sea. His mom married Cyrion after Adaia and City Elf Warden (the real Tabris Warden) both died. Kyung-jae is his real name and “Kieran” was the name he adopted in Ferelden while learning Trade language. He is not blood related to Sorris or Shianni; in Modern AU he is Korean coded and diagnosed with ADHD and ODD when he was 9. In any AU he has poor eyesight.

Not a ‘Hero of Ferelden’, exists only in Multi-Warden AU

Kieran’s Aesthetic Tag

Ronan Aeducan: the Battle Strategist of Squad; the Lazy Genius™

5'0, naps and brilliance and easy-going neutrality, dwarf noble, Two handed Battle Hammer Warrior (Specialization: Berserker/ Spirit Warrior), great at sketching and painting; good at remaining impartial towards things; Neutral Good, Aquarius

During Blight: age 27, man-bun and many earrings, avoids responsibilities but is chill to talk to; huge guilt complex and overthinks things but keeps anxiety and intrusive thoughts to himself

During Inquisition: age 38, generally the same but slightly less lazy; has reconciled with his past and mostly found peace

LI/sexuality: n/a; Asexual/Aromantic

Creator Notes: In Thedas, while his brothers look like their father, Ronan looks like his mother. Modern AU he is Indian coded and can speak Hindi and English.

Not a ‘Hero of Ferelden’, exists only in Multi-Warden AU

Ronan’s Aesthetic Tag

Nora Brosca: the Wildcard of Squad; great in battle, not so great at taking orders

4'8, laughter and blades and boldness, dwarf commoner, Dual-Wielding Axe Rogue (Specialization: Assassin/Legionare Scout); Chaotic Neutral, Leo

During Blight: age 22, medium-length wild red hair and freckles, jokes and puns; solves problems with murder, kleptomaniac tendencies and habitual liar; brave but not loyal (self-preserving)

During Inquisition: age 33, shorter red hair and more freckles, even more jokes and puns; has had casteless tattoos removed; nugs are now friends not food; now deeply loyal to friends/wardens

LI/sexuality: Sigrun, Lesbian

Creator Notes: In Modern AU she is German coded born and raised in Brazil, speaks fluent Portuguese.

Not a ‘Hero of Ferelden’, exists only in Multi-Warden AU

Nora’s Aesthetic Tag

Cassian Cousland: the Tank of Squad; the “Stay Behind Me” Hero

5'11 (slouching) 6'1 (prosper posture), kindness and justice and passion; human noble, Sword and Shield Warrior (Specialization: Champion/Guardian), moves his hands a lot while talking, laughs easily, passionate romantic, will always do The Right Thing™ but often struggles deciding what the “right thing” is; Lawful Good, Libra

During Blight: age 24, scruffy hair, adopts all the dogs, long scar from top to bottom left of face from Rendon Howe; likes to journal everything and write stories,

During Inquisition: age 35, slightly longer scruffy hair, adopts more dogs and orphans of Mage-Templar War, has published some of his books

LI/sexuality: Nathaniel Howe; Gay

Creator Notes: In Thedas his mother’s parents are from Antiva and he can speak Antivan, moderate PTSD from his experiences during the Blight; in Modern AU he is Mexican coded and speaks fluent Spanish and English.

Not a ‘Hero of Ferelden’, exists only in Multi-Warden AU

Cassian’s Aesthetic Tag

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Aesthetic Boards: Click here to see their pretty aesthetics!

My OC’s Summarized in 5 GIFs: Click here!

What they each think of The Taint/The Calling: Click for Mild Angst

If they each had 1 Pokemon: Click to see their partner!

My OC’s Zodiac/Astrology Sign Explanations: Click if Curious

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Claira Hawke: the “Champion” of Kirkwall; the Hot/Cold Mess

5'5, conversation and anxiety and adaptability; Blue-Red Hawke, human, Dual Sword Rogue (Specialization: Shadow), Alyss Amell’s cousin; dynamic but fickle, brave but get panic attacks, literally runs away from problems, changes demeanor depending on who she is with; Neutral Good, Gemini

Fled to Kirkwall: age 25, good intentions but has no clue what she’s doing, fumbles around and gets by on more luck than skill (sometimes wit), weary around strangers but won’t shut up around friends, her mabari’s name is Bear.

During Inquisition: age 36, takes Anders (and their 3-year old son Silas) to the Wardens to hide them there with her cousin and her friends while she goes help the Inquisition

LI/sexuality: Anders; disaster Bi

Creator Notes: In Modern AU she is English coded and has had Panic Disorder and several eating disorders since she was 13. Loves cats but is allergic to them (and to many other things).

Champion for World State World State 3 and the Multi-Warden AU

Important Headcanon: In the Multi-Warden AU, both twins live (Varric lies to Cassandra that Carver died to keep his whereabouts hidden) - Carver becomes a Warden and Bethany a Circle Mage; but in her canon World State 3, both of the twins die (Carver is killed by the ogre, Bethany dies during the Deep Roads Expedition)

Click for 5 Facts

Click for Faceclaim

Claira’s Aesthetic Tag

Henley Hawke, The Champion of Kirkwall; the Insomniac Goth

5'10, tired eyes and sharp edges and blunt apathy; Red Hawke, human, Spirit/Primal focused Mage (Specialization: Blood Mage), tattoos to hide dark-eye bags, rude and anti-social attitude mostly because she’s so exhausted all the time from her insomnia; Neutral Evil, Taurus

Fled to Kirkwall: age 25, cool, capable yet completely uninterested in anything but making gold and keeping her rivaled brother Carver and her mabari “Better Carver” (“BC”) alive. Very “I’m not here to help anyone or make friends,” (Varric is literally her only friend)

LI/sexuality: Sebastian Vael (Rivalmanced); pan-romantic/asexual

Creator Notes: In Modern AU she is Irish coded and still has chronic mediation-treated insomnia. Also she’s very goth punk and dyes her hair often. In Thedas she uses magic to make it that color of burgandy.

Champion for World State 2

Described in 5 Gifs

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#my ocs #red warden squad #plus #claira hawke #my wardens #my hawke #oc page #blue surana #isseya mahariel #alyss amell #kieran tabris #ronan aeducan #nora brosca #cassian cousland #new oc!#my inquisitor #helios adaar

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