#Just focus on fixing the actual accents and the pronunciations

[fi3stazo]

The top one is a request from insta that was cute enough for me to digitalize, on the bottom it’s just. Juan n José

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Do NOT repost, edit, trace, or use my art in any way. Thanks.

[prettyboyreid]

can you write one where the reader is learning French and goes to spencer all the time for help since they both like each other. One day he snaps at the reader for how annoying it is, so the reader starts asking help from Emily and he regrets being mean to her. Fluffy ending pls!!!

parle moi

Reader overhears a conversation between Spencer and Morgan, which leads to her ignoring him for a few days.

Spencer x Reader

Word Count: 2,869

“Hey Spence?” you asked almost timidly as you approached his desk.  He looked up from a large book, which you probably assumed was some technical book on quantum physics.  He marked the page before turning his full attention to you, giving you a soft smile. 

“Hey, Y/N, do you need something?” he asked, sitting up slightly in his chair so his back was pressed against the soft cushioning.  I felt so much more anxious now that I was actually face-to-face with him, like he would laugh in my face and think I was an idiot for what I was about to ask of him. 

“I, uh,” you started, fidgeting with your hands behind you nervously as you tried to figure out a better way to say what you wanted.  “I wanted to know if you could help me out with some of these pronunciations?  It’s kind of hard for me to understand what I’m supposed to say based on a book, you know?”

You had been trying to learn French for a few months now.  You were going to a family friend’s wedding in Paris in a little over a month, and you wanted to be able to get around a bit without having to look at Google Translate every five minutes.  Spencer, thankfully, was fluent in it.  You had been asking him to help out every now and then, and he’d been more than happy to help.  But lately, he seems to get annoyed every time I ask him. 

He let out a heavy sigh but nodded reluctantly, running a hand back through his hair as he stood up and followed you to your desk.  You had an old workbook Emily had found when she went to school in France, and she had loaned it to you so you could learn a few basic phrases that should get you through your trip.

“What are you stuck on?” he asked, looking over the problems in the workbook as he waited for your response. 

“Um, number six?  The one about which one you want?  I feel like I can’t get it right…” you said, sitting down at your chair as your eyes raked over the sentence once again.  “Set celui que je vuks,” you tried pronouncing it to him, chewing on the inside of your cheek as you watched him shake his head.

“C'est celui que je veux,” he corrected you, folding his arms across his chest as he looked down at the book.  “You’re using English pronunciations on the words.  French modulation is much smoother, they don’t accent on words as harshly as we do,” he explained, his voice slightly hinted with annoyance.  You gave him a soft nod, thanking him quietly as he turned and made his way back to his desk.

Since it was an office day with no case and just some paperwork to catch up on whenever it did come across your desk, you just kept penciling in your answers in between files.  Around lunchtime, you got up to go fix yourself another cup of coffee over in the little kitchenette area.  As you placed your mug under the spout of the Keurig, you couldn’t help but overhear Morgan and Spencer talking by the entrance to the BAU.

“So, pretty boy, how do you like playing professor with your favorite student?” Morgan taunted him, undoubtedly with his infamous grin as he did so.

“It’s… alright,” Spencer answered almost numbly, like he had rehearsed what he was supposed to say. 

“You don’t sound all that excited, considering you’ve been begging Emily to pair you two up on cases so you can get alone with her,” Morgan replied.  You picked up your mug and added some sugar to it, trying your best not to listen to them (though you couldn’t really help yourself.)

“I know, but… I don’t know.  It’s just… annoying, I guess is the best way to put it.”

You felt your heart sink at the words and your face contorted into a frown, picking up your mug before making your way around the desks and back to your own, out of their line of sight.

You hadn’t meant to be a burden on him, you just figured it would help you learn easier.  Plus, you had an excuse to talk to him.  You didn’t often get that.   Next time, you’d just make sure to ask Emily.

-

Spencer’s POV

“So, pretty boy, how do you like playing professor with your favorite student?” Morgan asked as we came back into the bullpen from visiting Penelope.  I rolled my eyes at the question, but just shrugged as we stopped towards the front so no one else would hear.

“It’s… alright,” I told him.  I wasn’t necessarily lying, I just wasn’t being entirely honest with him.  He raised an eyebrow at my answer.

“You don’t sound all that excited, considering you’ve been begging Emily to pair you two up on cases so you can get alone with her,” he said with a teasing tone, grinning at me as he sipped on his coffee.

“I know, but… I don’t know.  It’s just… annoying, I guess is the best way to put it,” I tried to explain, but when I noticed both of his eyebrows raised, I knew I had picked the wrong choice of words.  “Not-not like that… I just mean… I hate that it’s all I really talk to her about anymore,” I said, folding my arms across my chest.  I blew air out through my nose in a huff as he still looked confused, racking my brain as I tried to figure out a better way to express what I was thinking.  I never was good at that.

“We used to talk about everything, you know?  She always would come to my desk when she had free time just to talk to me about anything… Now every time she talks to me it's only to give her a quick language lesson,” I tried to explain to him, my hands moving with my words as an extent of my expressions.

Morgan just hummed and took a sip of his coffee, shaking his head at me with a grin.  “You could start up your own conversations with her, you know,” he told me, which only earned him a scoff as I sipped from my own hot mug of coffee.  “I’m serious, kid - You can’t complain about not being able to talk to her when you’re not making any of the first moves,” he reminded me.  I huffed softly, folding my free arm across my chest as I begrudgingly listened to him.  

He clapped his hand over my shoulder before bringing me closer to him with a grin and chuckle, leading the two of us back to my desk.  “At least think about it.  You’ll never know if you don’t try,” he reminded me. 

-

Reader’s POV

It had been a few days since you’d overheard Spencer and Derek’s conversation, and you had done your best to avoid him almost completely.  You didn’t have a case this week, which was rare but also a bit of a blessing right now.  Every time you had a question, you went over to Emily’s desk and asked her.  She was always so eager and happy to help, even giving you more common phrases that people were more likely to use.

Spencer, of course, had noticed.  Every time he saw you get up from your seat after a while, he got excited for a moment before he watched you go in the opposite direction.  He would sink back into his chair and just continue to do his work, ignoring everything else around him to try and focus on the task at hand. 

Morgan, as expected, was the first to notice this.  He picked up on you isolating yourself from him (and really everyone besides Emily), as well as Spencer becoming more and more easily aggravated.  He all but bit Derek’s head off when he moved his chicken tandoori lunch to a different spot in the fridge.  

He figured he needed to intervene before it got any worse; he knew how explosive Reid could be. 

You were finishing up one of your files before you opened up your workbook yet again, tapping the eraser end of the number two pencil you held before a call came through on your desk’s phone.  You picked it up, answering in your usual cheery voice. 

“Hey, pretty girl,” you heard Morgan on the other line, smiling a bit as you leaned back in your seat.  “Any chance you can spare me a minute down in my office?”  he asked you.  You checked the time on your watch before nodding, setting your pencil down in the book to mark your page before standing up.  

“Always.  I’ll be down in a sec,” you told him, hanging up the phone before taking the last sip of your coffee.  You headed out of the bullpen and down towards Morgan’s office that Penelope had set up for him a while back.  Given the time of day, the hall was mostly empty, so the only sound was the echoing click of your heels until you opened the door to the office.  You saw him sitting at his desk, going through an old file.  You assumed he just needed help with it. 

“Hey, Der,” you said, closing the door behind you before making your way further into the office.  “What do you need?” you asked, sticking your hands into the pockets of your slacks as you spoke, looking around the almost barren office before your eyes landed back on the tall man.

He looked up with a smile the second his door opened, setting down what he was doing before leaning back slightly in his seat before gesturing to the seat in front of his large wooden desk.  “Have a seat, I just wanted to talk to you real quick,” he said, the pads of his fingers tapping against the arms of the leather chair.  

You sat down as instructed, crossing one leg over the other and rested your hands clasped together in your lap.  “Is everything alright?” you asked almost nervously.  He wasn’t technically a superior to you, but he did hold some power over you.  

He shook his head quickly and chuckled, pulling his chair closer to his desk as he spoke.  “Nah, nothing like that,” he assured you, folding his arms over each other as they rested on his desk.  “I just wanted to know what’s up with you and the kid.”  

You instinctively flinched at the thought, almost forgetting about the entire situation with Spencer until he had brought it up.  “Oh, it’s nothing,” you lied through your teeth, your hands mindlessly tightening around each other.  Morgan frowned.

“Come on, I know I’m no boy genius but I can tell when something’s off with two of my closest friends,” he reminded you, raising his eyebrows as he waited for you to elaborate.  You sighed, chewing on the inside of your cheek as you leaned back into the cushioned seat.

“I heard him say he was annoyed with me the other day,” you confessed to him.  As you saw his raised eyebrow, you let out a breath of air through your nostrils before you explained everything to him. “You two were talking and he said me asking him for help was getting annoying, so I just started going to Emily instead.”

“And ignoring him in the process?”  Derek asked, his arms folded across his chest.  He didn’t mean it to be intimidating, but it still came off that way.  You nodded softly, and he did the same. 

“Maybe you should talk to him about it.  I know for a fact that wasn’t what he meant at all, and I think the both of you need to just sit and catch up before he bites someone’s head off and before you have to go another day without talking to your favorite profiler,” he said with a grin, nodding his head up towards the door as he let his hands fall into his lap.  You gave him a soft smile before getting up, thanking him before making your way out of his office. 

Thankfully, you didn’t have to venture far before you saw the doctor you were looking for, especially since he practically knocked you over as you turned the corner to head back to the bullpen.  His amber eyes went wide for a moment, and his mouth opened and closed a few times like a fish out of water as he tried to think of what to say.  You figured it’d be easier if you said something first.

“Can we talk?” 

He nodded quickly in response, looking around for a moment before he led me back to one of the empty offices.  You assumed he thought you didn’t want to talk in the public eye of your unit, and you were grateful for that.  He opened the door and let you inside, leaving the lights off so people wouldn’t see them as they passed before closing the door behind them.  

You looked around at the room littered with cardboard boxes, a few seats, and a desk, opting for one of the seats identical to the ones in Morgan’s office before crossing one legs over the other.  You watched as Spencer looked around the room quickly and anxiously before leaning against the wooden desk in front of you, waiting for you to say something first.  He almost always hated starting a conversation with you, because he wanted to make sure you said what you needed to before him.

“I’m sorry I’ve been avoiding you,” you began, clasping your hands together in your lap as you looked down at them, almost ashamed of your actions as you thought them over.  

“I just… I heard you saying that I annoyed you and I got upset and figured I just shouldn’t bother you anymore.  I went to Emily instead because I hate to think I annoy you because I don’t want you to end up hating me or something, so I just avoided you entirely so you could have a breather from me,” you rambled off.  You noticed that you started doing it a lot more after you had met Spencer, but you everyone assumed that you had always done it and the two of you were just very alike.

He paused for a moment, to make sure you were finished and to figure out the best way to articulate his response, not wanting to say something to push you away even more.  “I’m not annoyed with you,” he started.  He needed to let you know that first and foremost.  “I was more annoyed with myself, I suppose.  All we were talking about was just… a stupid language and we used to talk about everything.  I missed that and I was frustrated that I wouldn’t even try to talk to you about anything else but God it was so much better than not talking to you at all.”

You watched the way he talked with his hands, the way he avoided your eyes so he could stay focused on what he was trying to say - like he’d forget how to speak if he even looked at you.  His eyes finally met yours as he finished, his hands fishing to the bottom of his pockets as he chewed on the inside of his cheek.  

You stood to meet him, folding your arms across your chest as you gave him a soft smile.  “I’ll make you a deal:  You can help me learn some more French, and then you can come with me to the wedding and we can talk about anything you want for a week,” you propose with a smile, which only grows as you watch his face perk up at your offer.

“Are you sure?” he asks you, standing up a bit more from his position, his hands pressed into the hard wood of the desk.  “I don’t want to be a burden or anything.”

You shook your head quickly in response, shifting all of your weight to one foot as you looked up at him slightly.  “I’m positive.  I needed a date for it anyway; I’d rather it be you than anyone else.”

He raised his eyebrows for a moment before they furrowed together, watching as his eyes darted across your face, making sure he had heard you correctly.  “You-your… your date?” he asked, his cheeks flushing a deep pink at the thought.  

You let out a quiet laugh before nodding softly.  “Yes, Spence, my date.  Unless you don’t-”

“No, no, no, I want to,” he cut you off quickly.  “I just- I didn’t want to impose or anything if you were uncomfortable.”  Ever the gentleman, you couldn’t help but grin as he always seemed to think of others before himself. 

“I’ll send you the flight information,” you told him, leaning up on the tips of your toes before pressing a soft kiss to his cheek.  You turned on your heels before letting yourself out of the office, doing your best to hide your small smile and your faint blush you felt that heated your cheeks. 

[von-posts-stuff]

Hyacinth

Dedicated to @dead-bones

Synopsis

When Wilbur sends Technoblade his plea for help, he sends it much too late for it to be of any use. Two months later, Technoblade arrives in the Dream SMP after an error with his communicator and comes upon a bloody revolution being fought with no resources and little chance of success. It gets worse from there.

(Takes place in an alternate universe, where Minecraft is its own reality with its own rules - demigods and their vassals, servers with supernatural sponsors that act as small pocket dimension, and a more fantasy take on Minecraft game elements - and there is a lot more going on in the dream smp than just a Hamilton a/b/o fanfiction nock off. This chapter (one) is 11k ish words!)

• Chapter One •

The encroaching heat he felt permeating his skin was a comfort in a way only he would understand. Constantly, he felt this stirring in his chest, a feeling which drew him closer to the sweltering heat of summer and the feeling of molten rock just meters from his grasp. Feelings which spoke of warm, dry nights curled into crevices to hide from the fan ends of the outside world, or sweltering trips to foreign villages where local residents would gaze at him and see either prey meant for the hunt or an abomination meant for the pit. These feelings, memories and instincts all neatly wrapped together, were stronger when he gazed upon the few surface lava pools which littered the fields around the home of his — Father? Brother? — friend, or noticed how the clear, blue skies of above held a source of burning which many overlander’s viewed as a burden. He actually quite liked that light source, so much like the glowing stones of his homeland, and yet so different. It reminded him of home, even if he rarely truly missed the harsh weather and unfriendly company of the Underlands.

Instead, it was a feeling of instinctual longing, perpetuated by the cacophony of voices echoing through his head like an audience yelling from the seats of an amphitheater. A feeling he couldn’t quite explain in either his tongue, or his dear friend's tongue. There was no descriptor for it. It just... was.

A lot of things about Technoblade just were.

His arms swung in a rhythmic motion, striking up and down with trained precision. The open field he occupied was blistering, the sun beating down against his bare skin — he still didn’t quite understand the concept of layered clothing — in a way that was both uncomfortable and deeply satisfying. Rarely was it this sunny in the mountain wilderness of the land his friend occupied; land he now occupied.

That was also a strange concept to him, land in which he belonged. Land which belonged to a person. The lands only belonged to the higher beings, ownership couldn’t be given away without permission and it would never truly belong to a single individual. He had lived in his homeland, a world scattered with fire and brutal tribes, and yet no single race owned any land. It all belonged to their patron.

He wondered idly when this concept of ownership came about, and what granted these overland dwellers such arrogance to think they weren’t subjected to these laws.

The gold blade in his hands made another swing down, stopping just below his waist. He had been out here for hours, practicing with the aid of his voices. Listening to instruction, adjusting his grip, imagining his enemies being cut down by the sword which had been with him for as long as he remembered. This practice was cathartic, something he did to maintain the illusion of routine in this new world. His friend always told him how he should sit down and relax, not understanding that it was something he needed to do.

(Swing your sword properly, don’t get distracted Technoblade, you need to focus, keep your shoulders back, that was awful form, Blood for the Blood god-)

He needed to focus, needed to fix whatever was wrong with him, square his shoulders, and somehow, someway, ignore that comforting heat against his skin and the dark desire to slice and kill-

“Techno!” A voice cut through the symphony of noise screaming at him from all directions, in a way which separated it from the sounds in his head. It made him pause mid-swing, causing his entire body to tense in reaction to the shout. The voice was bright, extremely young, and a couple pitches lower than his own. The name, his name, on the almost-stranger's lips was poorly pronounced as well, sounding like a warped version of his native tongue — like a child mimicking an adult with no real understanding behind that repetition. The pronunciation was irritating; too sharp, with no accent. It made the voices wail with injustice, frustrated and angry at the disrespect which was being given to him, their vessel. Technoblade didn’t care much. After all, he didn’t quite grasp the common words those overworlders spoke yet.

The little Wilbur Soot, his friend's son he learned. He had been there for only a few days, and yet he could only recall three things about the boy. One, he was extremely attached to Technoblades friend and his even younger second son; two, he was irritatingly chipper and endlessly excited about artistic hobbies; Three, he was quick to get attached to Technoblade and now spent his days wishing to pester the underworld native.

It was a weakness, to become and stay this attached to people. Something that Techno was constantly reminded of when the echoing voices called for the blood of the feeble child. It would be so, so easy to snap his neck, or to bring his golden blade down on the small beings neck, rendering him incapable of babbling endlessly at him-

(Kill, kill the disrespectful one, he doesn’t deserve to live after giving you such cheek, no don’t, the blond one will be sad, hes irritating, destroy him, don’t Technoblade-)

Technoblade was a child as well, but it never really felt like that. He felt so much older than his age, aided in his education by hundreds or even thousands of warriors and fighters. Techno could never enjoy the music which was strummed out of a guitar, or how the wild flowers littering the hills made beautiful flower crowns. He would never understand that simplistic beauty that could only truly be seen through the lense of an innocent child. He’d seen too much of this cruel world, and how sentient beings abuse each other.

Wilbur, the bright child with dark coloring and a love for the artistic, ran up with such vigor to Technoblade. He looked excited, willful and joyful. It was clear the small human with mildly pointed ears - maybe his fathers hybrid blood peaking through? - was on a mission, and Techno took a guess that the mission was him. More than a few voices called for him to take the gold sword which was now dropped to his side, clung in his right hand, and drive it through the child’s jugular. Techno had learned it was best to ignore the voices in this new, colder world when they wanted him to kill and maim.

“Techno, Techno! Dad wants you to come back in for dinner!” The child ran up the hill, stopping just before the pink haired warriors formed, panting heavily. He took a minute to catch his breath, before standing up straight and giving Techno a light smile before continuing with what was clearly on his mind. “We are having pork, freshly caught from a pair of wild boars-“

There was a pause, where Wilbur’s face fell. Technoblade felt his ear twitch, passively raising an eyebrow at Wilbur’s sudden hesitation. He idly wondered if Wilbur had stopped. Was having pork of any kind some sort of taboo in the overworld? Technoblade didn’t quite know what pork was, but he did know that wild boar was a species of hog. He was sure it tasted fine.

“That, uh”, Wilbur wring his hands in front of him, a sign of nervousness about a topic (weakness, it’s a weakness, exploit it Techno, use it-), “that isn’t, like, cannibalism or anything for you right?”

The eyebrow which was raised went even higher, the look on Techno’s face transferring into a deadpan which he was sure caused Wilbur’s heckles to rise. He had no way to express himself with his broken common, but he was positive his expression delivered his utter disappointment in the question. How would it be cannibalism? He wasn’t a wild hog, or a boar. He was a piglin, a hybrid. He wasn’t anything like Wilburs pathetic, weak overworld livestock. He was sure that these tusked pigs were more like the violent hoglins than anything like the piglins Technoblade was barely similar to.

“Hey! Don’t look at me like that, how would I know? You are part piglin, which is like… a species of boar or pig right? At least that’s what Dad told me.” Wilbur took a moment to pause, staring at Technoblade with dismay and stubbornness. “So it only makes sense right? I’m not crazy.” Wilbur crossed his arms, a defensive stance in his small posture. The hybrid noticed how his lip jutted out and he tried to square his shoulders to appear taller. It wasn’t working as intended. The child was still tiny.

(Small, small, so small, easy prey, easy to kill, so easy to destroy, consume him Techno-)

Technoblade shook his head, unsure whether it was to inaudibly tell the voices off, or in response to Wilbur. It communicated his message effectively either way, as the kid before him brightened at the action, grinning wide at the hybrid-who-didn’t-quite-feel-like-a-child. His easy acceptance of Techno’s nonverbal answer mildly surprised the piglin hybrid. The warrior had thought for sure that the child would become angry or frustrated at being wrong. But he only brightened in response, uncrossing his arms and reaching out towards Technoblade with excitement.

Rushing forward and grabbing Technoblade by his free hand, Techno almost dropping his golden blade in the process, Wilbur yanked on the piglin hybrid with all the vigor of a distracted toddler. It was like Wilbur was a pet, whining and touching for attention, beckoning Technoblade to come with him. It caused Techno to tighten his grip on his sword, irrationally afraid it would be ripped from him, leaving him alone and defenseless in a world that was so much colder, with monsters just as dangerous as his homelands native species, and left afraid and without anything to defend himself, left weak-

(Never defenseless, always here, we are here, Techno is never alone, you will never be defenseless, the blood god is with you, we are with you, you are strong, strong, strong, powerful, you will be-).

His fears were only slightly abated with Wilbur’s large grin and wide innocent eyes. He looked so happy to just hold onto the hybrid warrior, dragging him from his practice with extreme vigor. Wilbur wouldn’t take his sword — he wouldn’t be able to, he just couldn’t. Technoblade was too strong for him, too powerful. He could take him apart with a wave of his hand, there was no need to panic.

Staring at his hand held in Wilbur’s grasp, Technoblade felt himself warm in a different way. The heat which came from inside of his chest instead of from the blazing sun. It was a strange sensation, one which he didn’t quite want to explain. It was as if the moment he came to the realization that Wilbur wasn’t going to harm him in any way, he had relaxed in the child's hold.

(Strange, this shouldn’t happen, destroy the child, it's comforting, let him take you home, don’t go with it, this is nice-)

“Come on!” Wilburs tug became even more insistent, “Dad and Tommy are waiting, and you know how much Tommy hates waiting! He’ll probably bother us, asking about training, or what we did today, or asking questions about-“ Wilbur continued to go on and on, pulling harshly on Technoblades hand as he led him south to the home his friend and Wilbur’s father stayed at. This time, Wilbur succeeded in moving him out of the wide flower fields and into the direction of the homely cottage with little to no effort. The child didn’t need to exert force with Technoblade so willing and compliant.

After all - for some odd reason - the voices quieted while Wilbur rambled on and on, and that desire for the heat of his homeland and the feel of boiling blood against his skin slowly drifted away as it was replaced with a new heat in his chest.

Warmed spread through him, and his grip instinctively tightened on his blade, grasping it for dear life. He wasn’t used to this need, this feeling of being...wanted for small and insignificant things such as commentary. Maybe this is what his friend (Phil, Dad, Father, Brother, Phil is friend) meant when he told Techno about the meaning of a home, and the meaning of family. Maybe this was what it was like to have a place to belong.

The voices let Technoblade have a moment of silence as Wilbur continued to ramble on. The silence in his head brought Technoblade nothing but comfort.

———————————————————————

The blistering heat of the uncovered sun irritated his skin and made him long for winter nights and dark shade. It was sweltering, irritating in a way that he had grown to know. He instead wished for those shaded days and winter nights where he and his closest allies made the world their own. The sun, as it was on this balmy day, high in the sky indicating noon time, caused him immense annoyance.

Once upon a time, he would have found the light beating down against his skin, causing him to sweat extensively, a comforting feeling, reminding him of his homeland and his patron.

Now it only served to frustrate him as he plowed and tilled his vast fields of potatoes, his shirt soaked against the front of his chest and back. He had even had to hide his tail, the sensitive skin becoming blistered in the blazing heat. With barely any plant variations for natural herbal protections on Hypixel’s large sky island fields he had claimed as his own, there wasn’t much he could do to protect himself from his greatest annoyance.

His native lands had long since ceased being home to him, and his patron god was a fickle master whom Technoblade viewed with more negative skepticism than any other. Unlike other demigods, such as the grand Hypixel and the flashy Beast, the Blood God never graced the mortal world with his presence. Instead, much like the God of Destruction and the missing End God, the supreme being sat on his metaphorical throne, watching the runes of his lands suffer under exploitation and limited innovation. Now, unlike when he was younger, Technoblade was more bitter than he liked to admit.

Bitter enough to grow a resentment for the heat, despite how the cold bites at his skin, and to avoid battles and blood sports after the downfall of his own state by hiding away in self-imposed isolation, only pulling himself from his loneliness to briefly placate the ghosts which lived inside him.

Technoblade had been in Hypixel for over a year now, specifically the Hypixel sky islands generated for personal use for much more wealthy and adventurous clients, and he had still not gotten used to the scheduled weather controls which served as part of the territory's famed functions. It wasn’t scheduled to rain, or to even overcast, for another few days if the ruling he had read in town a few weeks back was to be remembered. That didn’t change his current situation though. Technoblade was still blistering in the heat.

(Heat, heat, warmth, we like the warmth. Home, when are we going home, It's boring, why don’t we fight, lets go, battles to be won, wars to fight, kill, kill, maim, destroy-)

Technoblade ran a clawed hand over his sweaty brow, narrowing his eyes in concentration as he tried to determine if there was any relevant or important information being spewed at him. Turns out, like usual, there was nothing. “Chat”, Technoblade called out, talking at the blank space of air in front of him as he swung his farming hoe and let it casually rest on his shoulder, “shut up. You aren’t contributing anything useful”.

Like usual, the reprimand only served to irritate the cacophony of voices in the piglin hybrids head, causing them to screech even louder, rattling his brain with their bombardment of noise. With a groan, he took the same hand he used to wipe his brow and pressed it tiredly against his face. First the damned heat, reminding him so callously of the nether, now Chat was acting up and shouting opinions left and right. He still had another whole field to till before the night hit and he would have to defend his crops from wayward spiders and baby zombies, he didn’t have time to get distracted by the voices in his head.

Technoblade has been in this section of Hypixel for over a year now. He had first come to this land, this new territory of the Hypixel demigods' personal server, as an escape. The demigod’s vassale, Simon, had even hooked him up with all he needed to maintain a boring and nonviolent (for him) livestyle. Sure, there were small skirmishes which broke up the monotony - he still couldn’t understand how he had come about battling Squid Kid of all people in potato farming - but he had mostly kept to himself these past months, cutting contact with the outside world and staying away from tournaments, competitions, events, and anything in-between. He did not want to be involved with any state authority anymore, to be used and then discarded like a blunt weapon when his opinions and beliefs no longer align with the majority. He had no desire to spend time underneath the thumb of an oppressive regime, whether it be someone else's or his own.

He needed to be as far away from the Antarctic Empire and its bloody history as possible, and with all communicators and cameras turned off, he found himself desiring more and more of the peace brought about by the simplistic lifestyle of a farm on a private island. So, he obtained a prime piece of land, used his funds to get himself started, and then grinded dungeons in the territory's inner city to make ends meet - all while hiding himself from the public eye. He had dropped out so suddenly from the campaign event within Earth that it was inevitable that he would have to hide as the whole thing blew over. After all, his popularity had skyrocketed during that campaign, and the empire he and… his friends had built gained a completely absurd amount of notoriety.

Hiding was inevitable, and this quiet life was something Technoblade found himself desiring.

(Lies, utter lies, you miss it, we miss the carnage, we miss the grand battles, we miss Phil, battles and honor, glory, blood spilt in honor of the patron, blood for the blood god, blood for the blood god, blood for the blood god-)

This amphitheater of voices moved to a crescendo, echoing around him, shouting from all sides. The chant echoed and repeated throughout his mind, invading each and every one of his thoughts as it became louder and louder. Technoblade began to tremble, the hybrid's hands shaking before dropping the farming hoe. It wasn’t because of any fear or nervousness, but rather the voices channeling their feelings and desires through Technoblade, forcing him to feel the need for bloodshed and the need to destroy. He grabbed his shakiest hand, the one which dropped his farming hoe, with his decidingly steadier one. Clutching at it, he took three deep breaths, inhaling and exhaling slowly as he tried to calm his body's reaction to what was being echoed around him.

It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened during his long vacation, if he could even call it that. They, Chat, had been getting more and more agitated and angry with him in recent months. He had stopped visiting the dungeons to take out monsters and mobs three months ago, had stopped interacting with other community members four months ago after he had won the potato harvest against Squid Kid. Techno had taken his routine seriously, falling into it easily. Get up at dawn, eat the harvested crops for a meal, go out to till and sow the fields, maintain his crops until noon, eat his harvested vegetables, go back out to remove any dead crops and replant more, head in at sunset, consume more harvested foods, go to sleep. It was a routine he had stuck to for almost three long months. No visits to the outside, only the occasional spiders or zombies invading his expanded floating island, barely any signal for his communicator to give him updates, just the same old steps repeated day in and day out.

So, Chat was upset with him. But they were always upset with him, when he ran from his responsibilities with the determination to hang his sword and axe up for good. They wanted him to go out and provide exhilarating fights, battling for honor and fortune. They wanted him to slay his enemies, or anyone else who got in the way, and consume the world as if it was his to devour. They wanted the world in the palm of his hand, so that they could see how it felt to hold it. Technoblade supposed that was just in their nature, being shades and ghosts of people who had long since passed, who had forgotten what it meant to be people as they were trapped within the vassal of the Blood god.

That would be him, far in the future. A cursed existence set to live out his afterlife trapped within the next poor soul who would be chosen upon birth to represent the patron.

Shaking his head, Techno looked out at his field pulling himself back together. “Chat, I need to work. I don’t have time for this.” His words incited another loud round of chattering, but at least they weren't chanting or channeling their wills through him, undermining his own personal freedom of choice. Reaching down, Technoblade picked up the farming hoe from the ground, swinging it a few times as he rolled his shoulders and looked out to his fields. He had almost finished the west field, its crops - potatoes and melons - almost ready to be completely harvested. Looking to the sky, Technoblade made note of the time as he put a hand up to shade his eyes. The sun was still relentless and glaring,but he noted how it seemed to be just past its highest point. He supposed he could take a break now, after all, he'd been in the field for hours at this point.

With a pointed sigh, Technoblade turned away from his farm lands, ignoring the cheering of his Chat in the background, and headed towards his small house over the hills. He had built it out of wood and stone, acquired through both natural and material means. It wasn’t home, per say, but it was a house he was comfortable with. The piglin hybrid wasn’t sure if he would ever have another home again.

Climbing up over the hills, using his beaten dirt paths and carved markers to tell which way he was going despite the fact he knew this land like the back of his own hand, Techno saw his house in all its glory. Heading in its direction from the west field, the trek was only ten or so minutes before he was standing in front of the structure he had seen at a distance. At closer inspection of his temporary home, he noticed the worn cracks along the cobblestone and the rot that was beginning to set into the wood. He needed to start maintaining renovations for the place, it was turning into a disaster. It might just fall apart on him while he slept.

Entering his home, Technoblade felt the rush of cool shaded air hit his overheated body, instantly chilling him. It was nice to be away from the heat. Not only was the cool shade pleasant on his body, but it also calmed his nerves and his agitation. No longer was his mind being subconsciously brought back to the nether of all places. The cold air and the cool colors of his small farming house dragged his thoughts away from bright reds and burning flame. This wasn’t his homeland, and it never would be. He was in the overworld, only his own personal choice could force him back into the fires of the underworld.

Moving through the house and winding in-between furniture, Technoblade headed for his kitchen, determined to get something to eat. He had long since given up maintaining or taking care of livestock after one too many incidents with kept bovines, but he had an abundant supply of pumpkins, melons, potatoes, and other various fruits and vegetables. It wasn’t as good as a steak or even some golden carrots, but it was nourishment enough for him to keep his physique and continue his work.

Roaming from one side of the kitchen to the other, the hybrid began rummaging through his cabinets, looking for any kind of stock base to use to make himself some sort of soup, when he saw it out of the corner of his eye.

A lit up communicator, sitting square in the middle of his crafted table.

The communicator had been dark for almost a year, the occasional message from Phil checking up on his notwithstanding - he never replied to those, eventually seeing their decline and cancelation. A lit up communicator meant an emergency then, either with the server he was occupying or with his… family.

Was his family in danger?

Moving quickly from his spot, Technoblade dashed forward to the communicator, grabbing it with a clawed hand and ignoring how his tail twitched in nervousness and worry. He hadn’t spoken to his family in years, besides Phil, and even those communications had been cut off and discarded with his lingering resentment towards the crow hybrid. He hadn’t even seen Tommy or Wilbur since the fateful day he and his dear friend (father, Phil, dadza, Phil is dad, Phil is your father, Techno-) had left to enter the campaign. That was nearly three years ago, Tommy would be almost seventeen now.

(Small Tommy, sweet Tommy, very rambunctious, Wilbur too, we miss them, why not go visit, they could be injured, maybe even worse, anyone who hurts our brothers must perish, we shall destroy anyone who harms them, did they get caught up in a scheme, where were they-)

Were they hurt? Did something, anything, happen to them?

Reaching forward, grasping at the old modeled communicator, Technoblade looked at the screen, desperately searching for the name of the sender. His eyes wandered from letter to letter, seeing but not completely understanding or grasping the situation.

Wilbur.

It was from Wilbur.

Why would Wilbur contact him now? They hadn’t seen each other, hadn’t been on the best terms even before he had left in pursuit of greater things. There was nothing for them to talk about, no acknowledgement needed between them. Wilbur wouldn’t contact him, not unless he truly and desperately needed him.

Opening his communicator up, he read the message out, noting how it sounded on his lips as he mumbled the letters and scanned the page.

“Techno”, he began to read the words, starting with the address sent by Wilbur, “ We haven’t been close in a while. We haven’t even spoken in… years.” Techno didn't know why that declaration stirred something inside him, igniting his soul with an ache he could only describe as longing. Had his absence in Wilbur’s life these past years affected him so much? Why did he contact him now then?

“Tommy and I found a place for ourselves, on a server created by a minor demigod and his vassal.” Subconsciously, Technoblade ran through the list of demigods and demigoddesses he knew of with territory. Hypixel, The Beast, The Hermit, and of course all the minor demigods and admins working for the Mojang Corporation, partnered with the God of Creation - Notch. There shouldn’t be any unregistered celestials, especially not young and minor ones, going around and creating servers with unregistered vassals. Already, the situation was beginning to worsen in Technoblades mind. Even he was registered as the Blood Gods vassal.

Technoblade continued on, ignoring the voices screaming out names and locations and threats of violence as he did so. “We created our own place, a community for ourselves. Just like you and Phil did, years ago when you left.” That gave him pause, before he continued on. “Our place has been taken from us now.”

What did Wilbur mean by ‘a community’ for themselves? Like what he and Phil did? What they had done, years ago, was enter a campaign organized by the major companies, a competition where communicators would broadcast the creations and the empires built from nothing on a server created to mimic the original Earth. It was a glorified television spectacle, with real world empires and bloody battles and death which could be permanent. His and Phil’s ‘place’ was an empire they had built from nothing and used to take over the entire campaign, securing their victory over a two-year long event. It wasn’t a home, certainly not after how Technoblade was betrayed. Certainly not now. He hoped to the gods that Wilbur and Tommy - little Tommy who was still a child by his calculation - were out there creating countries and starting wars. What kind of brother would he be if it was true, and he had abandoned them for years while they went around recklessly without his protection? Had running from his responsibilities really backfired this much?

He ignored the unanimous “yes” being echoed throughout his head.

Techno paused as he read the next part. “A tyrant has come to rule it, exiling us from our own home. We-” Techno took a steadying breath, before continuing, his chest alighting with injustice.

“We need you, Techno. We need help.” Techno stared at the paper in front of him, reading out the very last note before Wilbur had signed it.

“Please. For your brothers.”

How did it come to this? Where Wilbur would send such a desperate note, pleading for Technoblades help instead of just asking him. Techno did not need his brother to beg for his help. He didn’t need an emotional note filled with explanations and traced with sorrow and repressed anger. The hybrid would have come, even without all of that, if Wilbur really needed his help.

… He would’ve, right?

The piglin hybrid thought back on what he had been doing for the past year, hiding away and participating in harvesting competitions of all things. No, no he probably wouldn’t have left, would he? He was too content, too scared of facing Phil after up and leaving their empire to the dust, too desperate to get away from blood and death and fighting. Now, his brothers were fighting against the corruption of a failed empire - something which hit far too close to home fr comfort - and they needed him.

He needed to leave.

Putting his communicator up to his pointed ears, Technoblade was desperate to hear Wilbur’s voice. He didn’t know when this message was sent, he didn’t know if it had come through late or if it was an alert that came through today. He needed confirmation with Wilbur, needed to tell him he was on his way - he just needed to know where to go.

The communicator rang. And rang. And rang.

No answer.

Technoblade tried again and again, nearing twenty times before Chat started insisting it was useless and to stop wasting his time. Wilbur was not picking up, either indicating he couldn’t get through because of the distance between them, this server Wilbur talked about and it's whitelist settings, or there was damage on either of their ends. That worried the hybrid immensely. He needed to get into contact with someone who knew what was going on, who had an idea on where to start to get information about Wilbur and Tommy and what they were doing. Without getting the facts from the original source, Technoblade could only think of one person who may have the answers the piglin hybrid was seeking.

He needed to see Phil.

A feeling of dread and frustration filled his being as Chat began to scream Phil’s name around him. He didn’t want to speak to the other hybrid, he had been avoiding him for so long that he wasn’t even sure if their relationship would survive. Six months or more since the last message, a year since the last phone call and it had ended in a screaming match where Techno had accused Phil of betraying their friendship. He didn’t want to face that again.

He had no choice though, if he wanted to figure out what was going on with Wilbur and Tommy.

His palms were sweating as he narrowed his eyes at his communicator. The heat had begun to creep its way through the farming house yet again, causing him to grow warm in a way he hated. It was too warm, too balmy. It was overwhelming in a way only he could truly feel, in a way he couldn’t put to words. It just was.

Too many things about Technoblade just were, and he hated it. Pushing his communicator to his ear, he heard it ring twice before a click was audible and Techno knew he had reached who he was looking for.

“Phil, we need to talk”.

———————————————————————

Leaving Hypixel was easier than he thought it would be.

All he had to do was pack up a travel bag, grab all the important things littering the house and place them in an ender chest, and head out immediately to the ruined portal. Fixing the portal itself - which would take him to the hub town for the floating islands territory - took only an hour at most, and then he was in the small town center heading to the bustling city of Hypixel’s main territory. Another portal jump, and he was there, looking out at the vast tournament arenas, the large number of tourists and competitors which littered the expensive shops and restaurants, and the few residential areas usually kept for the more famous warriors and influencers. Technoblade used to have an apartment in that area, having been one of the largest earners all throughout his teenage years before his anarchist beliefs and bad experiences sucked all the joy out of corporate and nation sponsored tournaments.

Occasionally, on his way to the main server hub, he would witness crazed fans cosplaying competitors and fighters whom they enjoyed, and Technoblade even saw a costume depicting his own signature crown and cloak. It gave him a mild start, at first. He hadn’t known he was still relevant, not with his year long break from the public eye and his status as a hybrid. Usually, there was only begrudging respect given to those of mixed races on the sponsored public servers. A prejudice - especially against aggressive mob hybrids - which Technoblade remembered all too well with a shiver.

From the sector which took rich tourists and residents from the sky islands territory, it was easy to hide his more distinct features. Covering his sharp, downturned ears with a cloak hood, and his protruding tusks and piglin-like eyes with a plain bone mask. His tail was tucked into his trousers, and he made a point of keeping his hands - more specifically his sharp claws - out of obvious sight as he moved through the busy roads and occasional back alleys. He reached the Hypixel server hub soon, making sure to stay out of sight and not cause trouble. The only individuals who would know he left the server would be Simon and his admins, since Technoblade needed to enter his residents key to leave and enter Hypixel. He trusted Simon to keep his departure out of the public eye.

(Leaving, leaving, we are leaving, finally, are we going on a road trip, now the interstate is paved- be quiet-)

Shaking his head, Technoblade let out a sigh as he looked for an unassigned portal, where he could enter a personalized whitelist code. He needed a portal without a locked teleportation key to get to Phil’s small residential server. Noticing an unlit, unattended, unlabeled portal near the back of the Hypixel server hub, Technblade entered his residence key and headed to the back, ignoring the wide-eyed look that the admin on duty gave him.

From there, he entered the whitelist code for his- for Phil’s home into a transportation portal, and watched as it was lit, admiring the deep purple shade of energy and particles. Portal technology always baffled him, ever since he had entered his first one as a young child, searching for any way out of his homeland. They functioned off of the energy created by the servers, connecting them in a web of essence and almost-magic. A supernatural device which admins, vassals, and demigods have perfected the creation of, though Technoblade himself didn’t know any inner workings behind portal creation. Then again, he didn’t have his patron god present to guide him like many vassals did. His patron was too elusive and never present. A cruel, toxic master in some ways, leaving his blessing upon his vassals at birth and leaving them to figure out their purpose and allegiances alone, with only the previously dead vassals for help. And they were all decidingly unhelpful shades of their past selves.

Still, the portal was lit.

It was all too easy to enter the bright veil of spatial energy, feeling himself warp and bend and tear apart as he was deconstructed and reconstructed at the designated spawn point. Landing smoothly, Technoblade heard a small ping on his communicator, letting him know his arrival had been sent out in an alert in the small servers public channel.

It was too easy to come here, to enter the portal and arrive at the center of the small world which Phil had claimed his own. There was no grand entrance, no feast or welcome waiting for him. There was nothing to stop his pursuit either, the entire process of portal jumping entirely painless and normal. In the back of his mind he knew it would be like this, knew how easy it would be to get to this point, but the hybrid had expected it to be at least a little harder. It didn’t feel right to Technoblade, with how vehemently he was avoiding this place and its single occupant. He was expecting more.

It made him feel foolish for ever avoiding Phil in the first place.

Taking a look around the center of the server, Technoblade noticed how the once barren field had been cleaned up, decorated with wood and stone. A nice, clean path had been installed, heading in the direction of the home he remembered from his youth. In the distance, Technoblade could see the flower fields he used to train on, back when he had first arrived in Phil’s small world and came under his care, back when he wouldn’t let go of his golden sword and his language skills left much to be desired and he longed for the intense heat of his homeland. Oh, how far he had come since then.

Beginning his trek down to the cottage, Technoblade chose to listen to the ramblings and ravings of Chat as he tried to take note of every difference and change, trying to decide if he was happier with them, or distraught that everything didn’t look exactly like he remembered. He moved from the open clearing of the small plains biome to the spruce forest, following the path set forth by who he assumed would be Phil. Even the forest had grown, in its own way. What did that say about Technoblade, so caught up with the past to move forward?

Technoblkade shook his head at those thoughts, not wishing to get caught up with his own grievances when he was here for someone other than himself. He needed to know what was going on with Wilbur and Tommy, and Phil is the only one whom he could speak to about it.

He trekked along for another ten or so minutes, before the trees began to slowly decline in their frequency, indicating he was close to his… to Phil’s home. He saw it then, coming up to the tree line. A medium sized cabin, beautifully built and maintained, surrounded by gardens and small farms, and looking exactly like Technoblade remembered it. Everything else in this place had experienced some sort of change, from the trees to the land, but not this cottage. It looked exactly like it did when Technblade was first brought here, huddled sick in Phil’s arms, only knowing him as a friend instead of a father. It looked exactly the same as when Technoblade left - the second time - only to not return until all these years after that fateful day. The piglin hybrid didn’t know how to feel about the fact that it remained untouched by time, not carrying on to depict any of the bad memories he had gathered after he had left. With a sigh, Technoblade walked up to the oak door and banged on it twice.

“Phil! It’s me.”

He heard a muffled bang, as if someone had crashed into a piece of furniture, as the sound of footsteps hurried to the door. Anxiety began to push its way into Technoblades chest, bubbling up from the pit of his stomach as he began to worry. Was it a mistake, coming here? Would Phil turn him away, now that he stood at his doorstep? Would Phil even speak to him, would Phil even miss him if he turned around now and went straight for the portal at the center of this server, or would he watch with cold eyes and whisper good riddance while watching his back? Did Phil even want him here? On the communicator, during their call, he had only told Phil he needed to speak to him in person and all Phil had said was a simple and pleasant “okay, mate”. This was a mistake, this was a mistake and before Phil (Dad, Phill, Dadza, Crow Father, where’s dadza, we miss him, we want him, you want to see him too Techno-) answered the door, before he messed up, before his anger took over and he ruined his already damaged and strained relationship with his truest friend, his father-

The door was yanked open with such force, that Technoblade found himself flinching at the action. In the doorway was a heavily breathing Phil, looking up at Technoblade with wide eyes, standing in the doorway looking like he bolted for the door the minute Techno knocked. It made Technoblade gulp nervously, raising a single hand in a half-hearted wave and opening his mouth to greet the crow hybrid with a pathetic greeting. “Hey, Phil-”

Technoblade flet the embrace before it completely registered. Philza reached up, grabbing Technoblades tall form and bringing him down to him with the deceptive strength Phil hid from most of the world. The piglin hybrid didn’t register the action at first, eyes wide as he froze mid sentence, unsure what he was supposed to do. Instead, he waited for Phil to make any sort of additional reaction, holding him close in an embrace which provided so much more comfort than Technoblade would ever be willing to admit.

“Techno”, Phil spoke softly, barely above a whisper as his arms tightened around Technoblade, “welcome home.”

The hybrid tensed, before he instinctually relaxed into Phil’s arms. He was home, wasn’t he? Why had he refused to come back, why had he avoided his problems? His arms cautiously moved up, gently holding Phil back being careful to avoid the large wings protruding from his back. He didn’t want to ruin whatever this was, not yet. He needed it, needed the comfort and feeling of easy acceptance Philza was giving him. The slow burning anger in his chest that he remembered holding onto like it was his lifeline, the feeling of betrayal and angst, the denial and avoidance he dished out to the winged hybrid… it was all entirely pointless, wasn’t it?

His anger wasn’t with Phil, it never really was. Pete was the one who had instigated the decline in the Antarctic Empire, had started consuming their resources to start pointless wars and used their advantages to destroy their competition with extreme prejudice, and who used Technoblade as a weapon to point at the territories they would then take over. Pete was the instigator; Phil just did nothing at all to stand in the way as it happened. Too consumed with his own wanderlust, filled with too much desire to begin moving once again to catch or care about what Technoblade was going through.

Technoblade never told him either, did he? He had never communicated with Philza - about how much his actions hurt Technoblade, how the fact that the piglin hybrid was constantly being sent out to reclaim and take territory, to expand the empire they started together, and how it made him feel less like a person and more like a ticking time bomb. He had never talked to Philza, only taking his anger out on him when it was convenient and running away when it mattered most. It wasn’t Phil’s fault, not really. The Antarctic Empire was doomed to fail from the start, its power set to corrupt anyone at its head from the very beginning.

And as Techno stood there in the doorway, holding Phil and letting the winged hybrid to hold him in turn, he realized he didn’t want to be angry with Phil anymore. He just wanted to be able to come home, to spend time with the person who had taken him in and raised him when he was broken and warped beyond measure. Technoblade just wanted his family back, all together.

The realization snapped him back to reality, letting him pull away from the other hybrid's warmth as he looked down at him. For a few seconds, there was a stretch of silence as Technoblade fought to find the words for this situation. Phil, for his part, was giving Techno a soft smile, looking at him with joy in his features. It made the fuzzy feeling in his chest even worse as the voices cooed and chattered in the background.

“... hey Phil”, Technoblade hesitated, before steeling himself and continuing, “I’m home”.

———————————————————————

“So”, Phil started, handing Technoblade a cup of herbal tea of some variety, “Wilbur contacted you?”

The piglin hybrid took the tea cup, lifting the drink to his nose and taking a smell of the fragrant concoction. It smelled of Lemon and Honey, a flavor he favored. Taking a sip, Technoblade hummed to Phil’s question, nodding as he closed his eyes to savor the taste. “Yeah, and I now can't get a hold of him. No calls are getting through, no messages. It’s weird, I don’t even know how long ago this message was sent.”

Phil let out his own hum, looking off to the side as he set his own tea cup down on the coffee table, not bothering to take a sip as he folded his hands in his lap. His gaze was off, looking at the fireplace with a strange intensity that Technoblade recognized as remembrance. It was never good when Philza drifted off like he was now. It usually meant melancholy reminiscence, or bad memories. Technoblade could never tell when either was happening.

Setting his own cup down, Techno turned more fully in Philza’s direction, clearing his throat to get his attention. The action caused Phil to flinch slightly, as if startled by the noise, to which Technoblade raised an eyebrow. In response, Phil sent a warm smile in his direction, still that sad recollection in his eyes. “I’m alright, Techno. Just a lot on my mind.” Technoblade couldn’t help the tilt of his head as he gave Philza a more discerning look.

“What kind of things are on your mind?”

There was hesitance in Philza’s stance as the piglin hybrid raised an eyebrow at him, silently insisting he continue. Technoblade needed everything that Phil knew, especially with Wilbur being awol and Tommy without a communicator number that he knew or had saved. He needed information, and their touching moment early notwithstanding, Phil had that information and Technoblade would do anything he could to obtain it. The hybrid had let go of his long standing grudge, but that did not mean all was forgiven. Though he figured that was the case on both of their sides. The Angel of Death was notorious for holding a grudge.

“I am only thinking.” Technoblade could tell he wasn't telling the whole truth, instead choosing to continue giving Phil a narrowing look until he caved. The silence stretched between them for a few seconds longer before Phil let out a long sigh as he picked up his ceramic tea cup and took a long gulp, nearly finishing the drink in one go. With a satisfied breath, Phil closed his eyes and took a breath, finally electing to look at Technoblade. “Fine, you win. I may have left out some information-”

“-Great! So, you just tell me and I-”

“But”, Phil continued, putting an emphasis on the but, “It's personal.”

Technoblade let out an irritated sigh, his impatience getting the best of him. Usually, he was the epitome of collecting, taking the principles of Sun Tzu as seriously as he took his potato farming. But, with Phil, his more childish side always seemed to come out, and this was one instance where his irritation was mostly justified. He needed to get to Wilbur and Tommy, and this delay was not helping him, or the loud chorus of voices in his head, achieve their goals. Quite the opposite, actually. He had yet to get any useful information about Wilbur and Tommy’s wearabouts and what server he needed to get whitelisted on to go and find them. For all Technoblade knew, they could be dead. And that was a thought which scared him.

“Phil, just tell me.” Technoblade practically growled the demand. Even Chat was beginning to get frustrated, and when the voices were collective about something there was usually very little Techno could do about it and how it affected him and his emotions.

(Tell us, we need to know, Wilbur and Tommy could be in danger, we need to kill, we need to go, patience is a virtue, enough patience has already been exerted, just tell us Philza-)

Philza gave Technoblade a hard look, his eyes narrowing before he exhaled his breath sharply and stood from his seat on the cushioned couch. Watching him closely, Technoblade noted how he headed straight for the fireplace, picking up a small box which sat on the mantle. He hadn’t even noticed the wooden container, its form blending seamlessly with the burgundy background. What could possibly be in it? Why would Phil get that specific box in response to Technoblades question?

Sitting back down on the couch with a sort of grace only he could achieve, Philza’s wings shuffled as the box was placed in his lap. Looking up from his locked gaze, Philza’s eyes met the piglin hybrids, giving him a serious look. Whatever Phil was about to show Technoblade was of serious importance to the crow hybrid.

“Wilbur”, Philza began, stopping only briefly to steel himself, “he had been sending me letters.” Technoblades own eyes widened at the statement, his eyes immediately darting to the box with a hungry look. That was the key to getting more information about this situation, to get more of an explanation than a brief plea for help. This was the key; he needed to see what was in the box.

Philza continued, pointedly ignoring the glint in Technoblades eyes. “He had said to me, in his first letters, that communicators were known to act up where he went. Cases of people not being able to contact the outside too effectively. So,” Phil gestured to the box, “he began sending me letters.”

Technoblade felt his hand reach out in the direction of the box, only for Phil’s grip on the container to tighten. Giving the bird hybrid a curious look, Technoblade tilted his head. “I need to see those letters, Phil. I have no information on where Wilbur and Tommy are, how to get there and who to talk to. I need this, in order to help them.” Technoblade paused for significance, giving Phil a serious look. “They could be injured, Phil. Or dead. If what you told me is true, then we have no way to ascertain when the message I got was sent.”

With a pained look in his eye, Philza tightened his grip once again, before loosening it with a sigh and the sagging of his shoulders. “I just… mate, I promised Wilbur I wouldn’t share them. And you know how I feel about promises.”

Technoblade did know. Philza Minecraft, in all his years as an adventurer and a survivalist, an entertainer and even a father, had broken many promises. He had promised his late wife he would take care of his sons, and he had broken that promise. He had promised his boys, all of them, that he would be there for them, and yet that promise was abandoned when he abandoned him years ago. He had promised Technoblade he would never betray him, and yet their entire relationship was strained by Philza’s presumed betrayal. Promises, when made by Philza Minecraft, the Angel of Death, were always inevitably broken. And Technoblade knew just how much those broken promises ate at Phil, keeping him away from sleep late at night and causing him to chase after adrenaline and adventure as a means of avoiding that pain. Though, during the late nights when Techno would meet Phil out in the cold, gazing up at the stars above the stronghold base of a young Antarctic Empire, Phil had confided in him how much he regretted the need to travel and the need for the rush of excitement. How he had always wanted to be a better father, how he felt he had failed his wife by choosing personal gain over familial commitment, and while in a way this was for Wilbur and Tommy, it still ate him up inside to leave the two boys. At the time, Technoblade had no answers for Phil, instead just lending him a hand which rested on his shoulder in comfort, sharing his worries in silence. It was an eye opening moment for the younger Technoblade, who had put Philza on a pedestal, not quite realizing how flawed he really was.

Now, Technoblade knows better. Now, he understood the worth of a promise to Philza, after so many times getting it wrong. And so, it pained him even more to ask Philza to share the letters.

But Wilbur and Tommy’s safety was more important. And Phil seemed to think so as well, because when Technoblade began to let out a resigned sigh, Philza closed his eyes and ran a hand over his own face, before loosening his grip completely on the letter container.

“You need this information, for Wilbur and Tommy. Just… let me tell you what I know. Don’t read them yourself. I want to keep at least that much of my promise.”

It was a vow Technoblade was more than happy to agree to. With a vigorous nod, Technoblade felt himself give Phil a smile. “Thanks, Phil.”

Philza for his part nodded seriously at Techno’s thanks, the bird hybrid still all business. “Sure, mate. For Tommy and Wilbur.” Technoblade nodded along, his own face growing serious. The voices had even quieted enough for Technoblade to expertly ignore them, their white noise fading into the background as he focused completely on the conversation in front of him.

“What can you tell me?”

Phil looked to the box, and with a single combination, it was open. Taking out a few of the worn letters - written on parchment of all things - Philza quickly gave them a brief glance over, most likely refreshing his memory of Wilbur’s writings and ramblings. “Wilbur and Tommy had ended up in a server owned by a man called Dream, apparently the server was supposed to be used for a campaign event but it was scrapped and opened as a regular community server.” Shuffling through a few papers, Philza read out more information. “Wilbur, Tommy, and even Fundy - Will’s own son, all grown up now - had gotten into the business of creating nations.” At this time, Philza paused briefly, eyes locking with the worn old letters.

Technoblade took the moment to wait, before speaking. “What does it say, Phil?”

“Oh,” Phil seemed to snap out of whatever was bothering him, shuffling the papers before continuing after clearing his throat, “he- uh, Will, I mean, said he created his… L’manburg as a way of proving his worth.” Phil seemed to stare off into space for a second, his next words seemingly breaking through without his consent, “he never needed to prove himself, not to me...”

Technoblades own features softened at Phil’s words, ignoring the screaming Chat telling him to get up and embrace the avian hybrid. “Wilbur wanted to go with us to the campaign event, remember? He even followed us halfway there, Tommy sneaking along right beside him, together like they always are.” Techno felt himself look away for a moment. “I think I called them kids, and told them they’d never make it in the real world. Pretty ironic, at the time, coming from the guy who was a year younger than Will. He may have taken it as a personal challenge.” Turning and locking his gaze with Philza, Technoblade gave him a meaningful look. “You aren't at fault, Phil. Wilbur isn’t the same kid we left behind when we went to Earth. He’s a grown man, with a kid of his own, a grown kid. His decisions are his own, but he's also still… family.”

Phil nodded, eyes still gazing periodically at the letter he had set aside, steeling himself as he picked up another piece of parchment to continue. “Sorry, mate. Got lost in the head there for a moment.” Phil let out a cough, as if clearing his throat. “Well, Will also mentioned an election. He wrote that he won, but he and Tommy moved away and were now creating a new home, almost like a side project… no, that can’t be right. He told you he was in danger, right? Exiled from his own community? There was a serious look of concern in Philza’s eyes, as he locked his gaze with Technoblade.

If Wilbur’s letters were to be trusted, then Wilbur and Tommy wouldn't need Technoblade help. The voices in Technoblades head began screaming at him, calling out for Wilbur, calling him a liar, and yet Technoblade needed to confirm for himself. Taking out his communicator, he scrolled through his messages with Wilbur, rereading it to varify its contents. No, it was right.

The letters message, and Technoblades recieved plea for help, were completely different both in tone and story.

Technoblade looked up from his communicator, and stared into Philza’s eyes. “No, the communicator message is right. Its a cry for help, which means…” Technoblade trailed off as his eyes fell to the letter, along with Phil’s. Wilbur had lied in his letters to Phil, and for a purpose Technoblade had no knowledge of. The piglin hybrid was sure it wasn’t for innocent reasons.

“Maybe there was a mistake, mate. Will wouldn’t lie,” Phil continued to look at the letter like it was completely foreign to him, “not like this.”

Technoblade looked at Phil, and in a steady voice, spoke evenly. “We don’t know what Wilbur was thinking, but that still doesn’t change the fact that the message I received speaks to something a lot more sinister going on than you thought.”

Phil absently nodded, gripping the parchment piece tightly before setting it to the side. With a deeply conflicted look, he picked up another letter and continued on from where he left off, an unsure look crossing his features. “Wilbur talks about the server in this letter. Dream needs to whitelist everyone who enters, there isn’t much Will seems to know about the patron god who sponsors the land, and it seems Dream is a rather elusive figure.” Phil paused then, looking to Technobalde. “Does that name ring any bells, mate? Dream.”

A sigh escaped the piglin hybrid, his thoughts racing through the long lists of fighters and influencers he knew from his Hypixel hay-days. Dream didn’t ring any proper bells, though. Unless…

“Does Wilbur mention a mask at all when he talks about this Dream guy?”

Philza shuffled through the letters, bringing a couple more parchments out and scanning each of them carefully. His brow knit in concentration and Techno saw his lip curl as he read through the words. His eyebrows then lifted, a look of astonishment on his face as he turned back to Technoblade. “Yeah, right here, mate. Dream wears some sort of strange smiley face mask according to what Will says.” Technoblade couldn’t help the curse which escaped his lips at that confirmation. It just had to be that Dream, didn’t it? It couldn’t have been any other Dream someone he didn’t have a previous acquaintance with. “Techno, do you know this guy?”

Sighing, Technoblade let the agitation bleed into his voice, “yeah, I do. He’s an old competitor of mine, we've got a casual rivalry. He’s, uh… a bit much. But I know where to find him and how to get a hold of him.” At that declaration, Phil’s face lit up, a bright smile crossing his features.

“That's fantastic!” There was a moment which passed between them, where Phil’s bright smile dulled into a sardonic grin. “Though, I don’t know how much help that’ll be. From Wilbur’s letters, he seems to be a bit of a problem. You sure you know how to handle him?”

Technoblade nodded, humming softly. He knew exactly how to deal with Dream, especially after their duel almost two years ago. The hybrid had bested that mask wearing weirdo before, he could do it again if need be. No matter how strong he had gotten over the last few years. Technoblade knew how to take care of his type, the type who always schemed and who always seemed to yearn for control. Keeping him in check would be easy. It was finding him which was the hard part.

Looking at the cold tea, still sitting on the coffee table, Technoblade felt his voices yelling excitedly in his head. Last they had seen of Dream, it was just after the battle in The Beasts sponsored arena. It was a grand tournament, where Technoblade and the green clad mask wearing fighter had fought in a ten round competition for fame and fortune. The fight had ended then, in Technoblades favor, but it was a hard battle. Six to four is nothing to brag home about, even if Tommy had been singing his praises after that win. Even then, Technoblade had sensed something about Dream which unsettled and intrigued him. He had the same aura that Technoblade got from Simon and Mister Beast, the aura of a vassal.

And that made Dream incredibly dangerous.

Even if he found him, and somehow convinced the mask-wearing warrior to let him into his territory, Technoblade would still have to worry about how much Dream is a threat to his family. And if he could be turned into an ally, or a business associate.

(Dream, Dream, will we fight Dream again, can Dream be our friend, we should destroy him before he destroys us, hes unsettling Technoblade, don't trust him, that smile is the work of the chaos god for sure-)

Still, that could wait, if only a few more hours. With Phil here, and so much to talk about between them, Technoblade didn’t want to leave even with the urgency of the message he received. The piglin hybrid needed to talk to Philza, needed to explain and to clear the air between them, to reassure him that he still thought of him as his family, that wherever Phil was would be home. Because Techno had missed him, this past year. And it wasn’t until he had seen Philza, who had embraced him for the first time since the Antarctic Empire, that he realized how much he was missing by holding onto his anger.

Dream could wait, just a few more hours. Technoblade needed to take care of his father.

[awed-frog]

Does having an accent is wrong ? I’m studying English at uni though I don’t plan to be a teacher / translator / interpreter and some of my teachers said that having an audible accent is bad and that we should stick to GA or RP , which is a problem for me since prononciation is what I struggle the most with though I still manage to get myself understood .

This is a bit of a pet peeve for me. So many people think having an accent is the ultimate sin, and I’m always like...native speakers have an accent. In most languages, you travel twenty miles and people will speak differently. So why are learners so worried about ‘not sounding native’? Natives don’t sound native.

To me, the goal is being understood, so:

Sometimes, yes, a learner’s accent is so thick they can’t be easily understood. This is a problem, but you can fix it by listening and repeating. It’s boring, but it works. Ask your teachers which sounds you’re struggling with, and focus on that. Depending on your native language, it’s likely you’ll be having problems with something really specific, so if possible find resources aimed at your native language. If you’re studying at uni, there are probably books or software you can use freely.

The other problem with English is that I found a lot of English speakers are not that flexible, phonetically speaking. Badly pronounced Italian is still very clear. Badly pronounced English, a lot less so. I don’t know if it’s something to do with the language or the fact its speakers are so used to everyone speaking English, but I’ve been in situations where a badly pronounced word isn’t understood at all. So while you shouldn’t obsess about sounding ‘perfect’, you should aim for clarity, especially when two words look similar and can be mixed up (sheep and ship, that kind of stuff).

That said, there is a lot of snobbishness among English teachers, either because of ingrained prejudice or because they know about other people’s ingrained prejudice. I don’t know the situation in the US, but in the UK a lot of people won’t take you seriously if your pronunciation is ‘off’, so your teachers may be worried about that. I wouldn’t take it too seriously unless you’re planning to move there - and even then, we should all push back against this bs. Again, do your best but don’t obsess.

Ultimately, the best test here would be chatting with natives and see if the conversation flows easily or not. Asking people directly if you’re being clear will likely result in a shower of compliments, so don’t do that. Just try to spend time with English-speaking people and watch their reaction to what you’re saying. Are they asking you to repeat stuff? Are they picking up on your actual meaning? Commenting on the direct points you’re making? Or are they nodding and smiling a lot and giving vague answers like ‘Yeah, that’s right’ - a sign of someone who’s not sure of what’s going on but doesn’t want to be rude? Bit if everything goes well, then your pronunciation is not that bad.

[secret-engima]

Nox verse. Nox's perspective of Nyx leading him away from the Hall of Arts during a Quiet Day and/or when she tries (and sometimes manages) to tug him away from the edge of a Quiet Day?

Hmmmm sure! Ficlet ramble time! Let’s say this takes place after they’re Galahdian Married but pre-Lucian fancy official wedding (and pre-Regis knowing about the whole oops-a-galahdian-just-married-your-son-without-telling-you).

...

“Oh, Nox.”

It’s the first thing to break through the haze, a soft voice he knows (has seen die has lived through the eyes of has known for years and loves-loves-loves), and he tilts his head toward it even though he can’t quiet get his eyes to focus (can’t look away from the tapestry before him and the lies-lies-lies-heartbreak-lies woven into the threads. A calloused hand gently takes his own, fingers twining with his own unresponsive ones, and he distantly thinks that he wants to grip her hand back, but he doesn’t have the energy and its already taking enough effort to remember which “her” this is (it’s not Somnus’s little Spitfire, it’s not Wanderer’s Twilight with her violet eyes and black and green tattoos winding up her cheek, it’s not Conquerer’s Flower or Wise’s patient Dawn or Mors light-love-heart Vita, it’s his, his love, his heart, and if he clings to that maybe he can finally wade out from the memories weighing down his bones).

She tugs on his hand, a practiced step and pull that finally forces him to turn away from the tapestry (not force, guide, because he wanted to stop, but stopping was too hard on his own, without someone to anchor him outside his head).

She’s beautiful, he thinks distantly. Not in the same ways Odessa-Vesper-Flora-Aurora-Vita-Aulea-so-many-others-names-faces were. She was beautiful in a rougher, wilder way. None of the past kings had ever wed a soldier, and it showed in her bearing. In the set of her shoulders and the callouses of the hand holding his.

It made her feel real. Somewhere past the fog.

“Come on,” she says, though he more reads her lips than makes out the individual sounds of her voice, “it’s late.”

Late.

Is it?

Oh. There’s moonlight on the floor. It is late.

Someone must have woken her up to come get him.

Sorry, he tries to say, but doesn’t manage more than an apologetic grunt. There are too many languages-phrases-pronunciations cluttered on his tongue to do more. If he says it, he isn’t sure which language it will come out in, or what era his accent will be from or-.

Better to just not try.

Her smile turns sad and he regrets. Today is ... bad. Very bad. But he can’t fix it.

It would be better if she just left him and went back to bed, but he isn’t sure how to tell her that, so she stays and moves to lean against his side, her arm looped between his and his side, her fingers still twined with his. The magic under her skin that is hers-but-not brushing against his without fear of drowning as she leads him slowly down the Hall. She talks as they go, little things. Meaningless things. Things that matter to Noctis-Nox-Noctis-Nox and not the unfeeling tide of ancient-kings-queens-lives trying to pull him down. He clings to the sound of her voice. To the little meaningless things she’s telling him (Libertus made banana bread today, Crowe almost set Captain’s eyebrows on fire with her new spell and had to scrub down his office as punishment, someone glued all of council room furniture to the ceiling and while no one has proof, Ardyn is looking awfully smug, tomorrow Sonitus is going to try talking to that girl he’s had his eye on for so long and we’re all going to come cheer him on- or tease him, depends on who it is).

A statue catches his gaze and he stops and stares. It’s Fierce, posing with that mace of his-mine-his that my-his-his Shield always teased him for because it was so big and fancy and silly, and Nox can feel it in his hands, feel the way it hummed and sang for the Tonitrus-him-Tonitrus like no other weapon in his training had-.

Fingers squeeze his hand, “Nox,” says the voice in his ear, soft and coaxing and familiar-loved-adored, “come on, babe. We’re almost out.”

Who is Nox? He’s Tonitrus.

No wait that isn’t right he’s Somnus-

No he’s-

He-

Noctis. He’s Noctis isn’t he? Or-

He used to be.

“Nox,” the voice (Nyx, his Nyx, his Night his Glaive his Love his Heart) says again, more firmly this time, and the combined tug-shove of her arm around his drags him past the statue of the man he isn’t-but-remembers-being. He manages to turn his head and drop his gaze to the floor, and some part of him is infinitely grateful that they never carried through on those renovations Mors wanted to make the floor one big mural of the history of Lucis because if they had done that he might actually drown-.

They clear the doors to the Hall of Arts, and it’s a bit like coming up for air after being underwater too long. He breathes and the air in his lungs trembles from relief. He’s still in water (still in a fog of memories that aren’t his and don’t belong) but he’s out, his head is above water. The world firms, reality becomes easier to touch, and he becomes aware of how late it is, aware that Nyx is wearing her Kingsglaive coat but underneath that her feet are in slip ons and her pajama pants have little malboros on them. He blinks a few times at her feet, then looks up slowly and meets her eyes.

She smiles at him, thin and sympathetic (she knows what it’s like to get lost in bad memories, even if hers aren’t nearly as deep as his, she knows what its like to drag other glaives out of the fog that weighs down their bones), “Hey,” she murmurs softly, “you back?”

He tests the words on his tongue before speaking them, and they taste like modern language, so he risks a hoarse, “Think ... think so.”

She tugs him closer and they start walking down the corridors back toward his suite together (genuinely together, not with her pulling and him shuffling along without conscious will of his own), “Good. Wanna talk about it?”

She asks that every time, just like she does for the other glaives, and every time he gives the same answer. “No.”

She lets it go, and the two glaives on duty outside his suite (there were two Crownsguard out there earlier he thinks, but they’ve been shooed away by a worried Libertus and a tired-eyed Tredd) let them through without comment. Nox blinks and isn’t sure when he went from the doorway of the suite to standing next to his bed, but he’s here now and Nyx has shrugged off her Kingsglaive coat and is gently tugging him down onto the mattress.

He lies down on his side and a moment later Nyx curls around his back, the big spoon to his little spoon, her arms anchored around his waist, ensuring he won’t get up and accidentally wander into the Hall of Arts again tonight.

She kisses the back of his neck as she whispers for him to sleep, and he carefully wraps his hands around hers, squeezing them in thanks. Tomorrow he’ll be better, more responsive. Tomorrow he’ll make up for the fact that she had to walk up from Little Galahd to the Citadel in her pajamas and coat to anchor him in place for the night. Tomorrow he’ll be ... Nox. Just Nox. And he’ll do something nice for her, like cook breakfast, or just take her out to the gardens and sing for her as they slow dance together. But for now... for now he’s tired, and the fog is dragging down his bones, and he’s not quite Nox enough to do any of those things.

So he relaxes into her hold and lets himself drift.

Nyx won’t let him drown in old memories tonight.

[enkelimagnus]

Literature

Bucky Barnes Gen, 1756 words, rated T for Hydra shit

Jewish Bucky Barnes, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: Episode 3 Power Broker

Sam falls asleep on the plane over to Madripoor and leaves Bucky and Zemo alone. They actually talk to each other. I would say it's nice.

TW: brief allusion to past rape, internalized homophobia, brief mention of the holocaust

Read on AO3

Part 20 of Making a Home - the Jewish Bucky series

--------------

It’s an eleven hour flight from Berlin to Madripoor, even with Zemo’s private jet. Once drinks have been served, food has been eaten and threats have been made, they all find themselves settling.

Sam has dozed off on a seat, seemingly exhausted. After all, they’ve already travelled the eight hours from the states, and the day has been stressful at best. At least, Sam trusts him enough to fall asleep while Bucky watches Zemo. He wasn’t expecting that. Or perhaps his human physiology is betraying him.

Bucky needs less sleep than a normal human on regular days, and he also can survive much longer sleep deprived. He’s well aware of the limitations of his body. Hydra tested them thoroughly and multiple times. Zemo would know as well, that Bucky might look tired but it doesn’t diminish his abilities as much as it seems.

The man in question is at his seat with his book, though he’s regularly looking up through the windows of the plane or around the cabin. There’s something quiet and wistful about the way he stares at a spot where the carpeting is not perfectly set against the wall to the bathroom.

The silence is good, especially after earlier, where Sam and Zemo somehow managed to gang up on him about Marvin Gaye of all people.

It’s not that Bucky doesn’t like Marvin Gaye. He just doesn’t like much music. He’s sort of lost the taste for it. His brain is usually unable to perceive it as anything but unnecessary noise that keeps him from being completely aware of his surroundings. And at least 40s music doesn’t have death and rape associated to it.

And he doesn’t need to know what Steve thought of it, whether Steve loved it or not. He’s not Steve. Steve journeyed light into the 21st century. Everything was something new to learn and experience, it was exciting and bright. Bucky is travelling with baggage. And he has memories attached to songs and tastes and sensations and events.

Bucky simply can’t use the notebook the way Steve did.

Sometimes, he wonders if Sam forgets Bucky wasn’t simply on ice for 80 years. The issue with him is that he lived through most of it, and it was all torture.

Or maybe not all . He woke up craving Karpov’s kasha the other week, and it makes no sense. He only tasted it during one specific time of his life, when Karpov and him got stuck in a safehouse in the snow, with no way to reach the outside world, for two weeks. The Soldier’s rations and formulas ran out long before they were able to leave. Karpov was too smart to let him starve, and perhaps that time alone with the Soldier, away from the world, with no way to freeze him or unplug him had made him see he was still a man. The kasha was warm, and thick, and sweet and sometimes, Bucky remembers that feeling and craves it.

The danger with people like him, America’s Super Soldiers, is that we put them on pedestals.

Zemo’s right.

In all honesty, Bucky believes he’s forgotten who Steve really was.

Memories become blurry when they age and no matter how desperate Bucky is to crystalize them, to remember them, to be sure of what he lived, all he manages to do is to frame faded photographs and fill in the blanks himself.

Steve and him didn’t have time. He found him after two years of searching, only for Bucky to be back on ice within two weeks. After that, Steve visited a few times during his recovery, when he introduced him to the goats he’d named after the sisters he finally remembered. And then, there was the War, and the Snap and once Bucky was back to life, Steve was shattered. And two weeks later, he was gone.

They didn’t have time to learn each other again. Bucky doesn’t know who Steve is anymore, half of his memories feel tainted by Smithsonian explanations, and he hates it so fucking much.

He hates that he can’t remember right, he hates that Steve’s slipping away from him every second of every day, that all that is left is the fucking shield and Captain America. That Steve’s legacy doesn’t seem to run deeper than that, else Bucky would have less of a single-minded focus on that fucking piece of useless fucking metal.

It’s only been three months. Why does Steve feel like he’s been gone for a lifetime?

Bucky breathes out a shuddering breath.

When his eyes focus again, Zemo is staring at him.

The book is open on his lap. Bucky can read the title. Same Sex Fantasies in Heterosexuals. Fucking hell. He doesn’t need that right now. At all.

“You’re a different man than the one I remember,” Zemo says quietly after a moment. His voice is soft, just slightly above a whisper. He knows Bucky has sharp ears. He knows he doesn’t need to wake Sam up.

Bucky dignifies that with a huff and looks away for a moment. Zemo’s eyes don’t leave him. He can feel them on him, on his face, on his throat, on his hands, on his body. They make him itch. They make him want to punch him for looking at him like that.

Like what?

You know exactly like what.

When Bucky looks back, Zemo’s indeed still watching him.

“You’re old now,” Bucky says eventually, in a vague answer to what Zemo said earlier.

“Eight years have passed, James. You cannot blame a normal man for something he has no control over.”

Eight years. So Bucky was right. Zemo wasn’t dusted. He stayed in that solitary confinement cell for eight years as the world moved on around him, as the world fought and lost half of its people.

Had he wished to be one of the ones that were snapped out of existence? Probably. After all, every second Zemo breathes and exists is a second more he wasn’t supposed to have. He tried to kill himself in Siberia, once his mission was over.

“Do you ever read normal stuff?” Bucky asks, a bite in his words.

Zemo raises an eyebrow, head tilting slightly to the side. His eyes are still glued to Bucky’s face. He still wants to punch him.

“I would need you to define ‘normal stuff’ to answer this question.” There is a hint of mirth in those brown eyes though. He knows exactly what Bucky means.

Bucky huffs and rolls his eyes. “Machiavelli, fucking… whatever this shit is,” he makes a motion of his chin towards the book. It’s in German, something about boundaries in relationships. Hilarious, really. It’s not like Zemo has anyone to set boundaries with. Unless those eight years of solitary have somehow driven a rift between Zemo and his own dick. “That’s not normal stuff. Novels, popular stuff…”

“I wonder,” Zemo starts. “Have you any recommendations for titles of ‘popular stuff’ for me?”

Everything Bucky can think of is old. He’d told himself he’d look into acquiring books but… he hadn’t had the time or the energy.

“I see your taste in literature has elected to stay with your taste in music, then.”

Fucking ass. Bucky closes his eyes and sighs so heavily he’s pretty sure Sam’s going to wake up.

“To answer your question, James,” Zemo starts, conversationally, as if they aren’t enemies, as if they are just old friends, so old they have become strangers. “I do read normal stuff.” The phrasing is foreign in his mouth, in that accented voice of his. “I’ve read all the classics, and children’s literature. Eight years are long. I practiced my Russian with translations of Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings at first.”

Bucky hums, looking up at him for a moment. “I noticed your pronunciation had changed,” he says quietly. “Did you read it to yourself out loud? Pretended someone was telling you a story?”

It’s cheap. They’re both aware of how lonely the past eight years must have been. It’s cheap, and it’s low-hanging and Bucky almost feels guilty.

Zemo’s small smile doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Have you read Jules Verne?” Bucky asks, trying to erase his taunt with some more literary conversation. “Was obsessed with his work as a kid. Kinda like Tolkien, but even better because it was… full of invention, not of magic.”

There’s a floating moment, a few seconds of Zemo just watching him with that slight sadness in his eyes before it is washed away and replaced by a hum.

“I’ve read those books, yes. In the original French,” Zemo points out and Bucky is almost grateful for the boasting. “You should seek a new translation, if you’re not adept at the original language. The one I assume you read was a descendant of 1870 translations, riddled with errors and political censorship. They fixed that in the 60s. You’ll like the new ones better.”

Bucky raises an eyebrow. “I’ll take that under consideration, I guess.” He’s so sure he’ll like it.

“And if you find yourself in the north of France one of these days, you should stop by this little city called Amiens,” Zemo continues. “A fine place, old and new, in the way only Europe can be. Jules Verne died there. The city’s positively themed after the man and his work. You can even visit his house.”

Visiting a dead man’s last residence? “That’s kinda morbid,” he mutters and Zemo has a small chuckle.

“People visit Anne Frank’s house as if the walls aren’t hollowed with fear,” he points out. “Dying makes one the public’s intimate friend. You know that better than anyone else.” He gives Bucky a sidelong glance. They both know he’s talking about Steve, and the documentaries and exhibits and think-pieces.

Bucky nods quietly and looks back through the window. The sun is painted indigo and pink. It’s beautiful. He’s forgotten the sunset could be this beautiful.

When he looks at Zemo again, he notices the exhaustion written all over his face, in the small wrinkles and under eye bags and the way his eyes won’t settle on anything for too long, desperate to stay awake.

“I’m not gonna kill you,” Bucky says after a moment. “We need you.”

Zemo chuckles tiredly, a soft and muted sound. “If that is the one thing that is keeping me alive… I believe I shall keep myself useful, then.” It’s almost sarcastic. A man living on borrowed time, wishing desperately he could be executed.

“You do that.”

[ashintheairlikesnow]

He Could Scream: Kauri

CW: Electric shock treatment, lab whump dehumanization, pet whump, referenced past dubcon/noncon, referenced drugging, abusive relationship (from abused person’s POV)

Immediately follows The Surgery

Tagging: @maybeawhumpblog, @pepperonyscience, @haro-whumps, @burtlederp, @18-toe-beans, @finder-of-rings, @whump-chains, @giggly-evil-puppy, @whimpers-and-whumpers @whump-it, @lumpofwhump, @pumpkinthefangirl​

“Okay, little man,” Tyler says, a bright, pleased smile on his face. He isn’t wearing his long white coat, today, just a simple button-up shirt with a starched collar and nice dress pants. There’s a little ID card hanging on a metal clip off his shirt pocket, a tiny little rectangular photo of Tyler smiling bright and cheerful against a plain blue background.

The smile is always the same.

Kauri spent four days in the recovery room - he could track days in there, the nurse named Bobbie checked on him five times every day every few hours, and Kauri had grasped onto that much control and information and held tight - and then it was back to the same place, white walls and 162 white tiles. Irregular feedings, 

Except in moments like this one, when they bring him out to test the product.

“Hey.” Fingers snap just under his nose and Kauri jumps, blinking rapidly, pulled from his thoughts. “Hey, bud, you need to pay attention.”

Kauri stares at him with red-rimmed eyes, feeling emptied out, like a cup full of water that they had poured and poured - and still they searched for one more drop. After a second, he slowly nods. “I’m, I’m paying attention, sir,” He says softly, sitting on the examination table feeling the little paper crackle underneath him as he shifts around.

“Hey, I’m not a handler, man. You can just call me Tyler.” 

“Um…” 

Tyler smiles at him expectantly, and Kauri still fights the urge to smile back automatically. Tyler is always smiling - sometimes bright and cheerful and proud like now, sometimes nervous and like he’s hiding fear, sometimes a smile that is blank and empty when the Director comes to see how the tests are going.

When the Director comes, she puts on those blue gloves and touches the red, irritated healing skin around the new things they’ve put into him. Sometimes she pushes hard into the stitches and nearly breaks them, and he sees Del wincing just behind her, but no one says a word to the Director.

When he cries out, she presses harder. If Kauri takes all her pressing and prodding without a flinch, she pulls back and praises him. 

He is starting to hate the words good boy. 

“Try it for me,” Tyler encourages him, soothingly. He puts a hand on either side of Kauri’s face and shakes his head a little, back and forth. “Come on, kiddo.”

“... Okay,” Kauri says, finally, wanting to cringe back and away but he can’t. “Um. Tyler.” 

“Good, great. I know this part’s not much fun, ‘898, I get it, but you’ve done so well up until now.” Tyler ruffles his hair and Kauri’s eyes flutter closed involuntarily - it feels good, he can’t help it. He doesn’t want the touch to feel good, but it does.

Because of them. It’s because of people like Tyler - because people like Tyler used other people like me, a long time ago, to find out how to make us different people than we used to be. They took all those things they learned and put them into me, to make me like this.

Tyler’s wide bright smile, flashing teeth, his long hair pulled back in its usual bun against the nape of his neck, the way he’s rubbing his hands together - it’s all a blur of things Kauri can’t quite focus on. His shoulders keep jumping, jerking him forwards without his consent. Fingers twitch and when they try to have him hold a pen it just drops, again and again and again.

When he was trained the first time, they trained him to be scared of holding pens - his hands shook when he tried, he couldn’t get a good grip.

It’s worse now. 

Kauri wonders if the shaking will ever fully stop.

 “We’re going to take things nice and slow today. This is all going on record for the Director, so you really need to work hard for me. Got it?” Tyler tilts his chin up and Kauri blinks at him, nodding slowly, his eyes skimming to the camera fixed in the corner near the ceiling, the big black circle that hangs down from the ceiling tiles. Staring, staring, staring.

They will tape his screaming. People like Tyler will study it. And then they’ll do it to someone else, too - some other Box Boy - over and over and over again-

Stop thinking. Get through this and go home. Once they’re done with tests, Owen will take you home, you’ll go home. 

Thinking of Owen brings new pain, different pain - a twist inside him because going home isn’t any better, is it? If he goes home, Owen will have the little button they push to hurt him. Owen, who put his hands on his neck and pushed him onto his stomach on the floor next to the couch… he’ll have a new way to hurt him when he’s angry, and he had promised to never, ever hurt him like this.

Kauri swallows back the noise he wants to make, low and broken. 

“Okay.” Tyler turns back to look up at the camera, holding up one hand to count down from five. Kauri watches, feeling dull and far away from himself. 

Five… four… three… two… one…

“Disciplinary implant with electrical output,” Tyler says to the camera, his voice dropping from its usual good cheer to serious, and Kauri stares at the neatly twisted bun of hair on the back of his neck. “This is subject eight to receive the implants and the first to show success afterward. Subject is number Six-Four-Five-Eight-Nine-Eight, known by owner as Kauri, spelled K-A-U-R-I.” Tyler glances back at him. “Remind me to tell your owner sometime that ‘kauri’ is actually a whole word with a pronunciation, and what he calls you ain’t it.”

Kauri doesn’t say anything - just drops his eyes down to the ground - and after a beat, Tyler shrugs and turns back to the camera. 

“Guess the owner’s never spent time ‘Down Undah’,” Tyler says with a cheerful, absolutely awful accent that Kauri doesn’t recognize and can’t place. Then he pauses. “Wait. Is New Zealand still Down Under? Shit. Aren’t those two places close to each other? I feel like… Australia’s probably pretty close… oh shit, I have no fucking clue what distance is like over there. Huh. I probably should have paid more attention in, like, geography or whatever. I’m guessing watching that show with the hot mermaids doesn’t count as studying New Zealand…” His voice trails off. Then snaps back up at the camera. “Well, shit, that’s a bad take. Okay. One more time.” Tyler sighs, holds up five fingers to the camera, starts counting again.

Kauri wonders exactly how Tyler became a scientist - or if he’s really something else entirely, and they put a white coat on him and called him a scientist to hide what he really is, what he really does, in his work on Kauri and the others like him.

Five… four… three… two… one…

“Disciplinary implant with electrical output,” Tyler repeats, in the same serious, professional voice, and Kauri doesn’t move - doesn’t even swing his legs - he just stares down at the floor and waits for his little speech to finish, for the pain to start again. 

“We’ve been working with this subject during post-op and currently to set the parameters of the implant as per the owner’s instructions,” Tyler says, moving back to stand right next to where Kauri sits on the examination table even as he pitches his voice for the camera in the ceiling, giving it the occasional glance with his head slightly tilted. Angled, Kauri thinks - he wants to look good on the camera.

“Main parameter is successfully set. Example #1 is prepared. 645898, please give your attention to the board on the wall.”

Kauri tenses, blue eyes flaring just a little.

He hates this test.

“Come on, little man,” Tyler says softly, encouragingly, and puts a hand on Kauri’s back, rubbing soothing circles that make his skin crawl and wish for more all at once. “You can do this for us, okay? Just be really good for me. I really need this promotion.”

I really need you to have not torn my skin open and made me watch you do it, but here we are.

The wall is crumbling inside Kauri’s mind, and he doesn’t even try to put the pieces back in any longer. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if he remembers things, if he gets angry inside, if Owen notices. He’s controlled, now. Owen will make sure he can’t read, or send a message, ever… ever again. 

They don’t even care enough to erase it all any longer, because they don’t have to. He can be angry all he wants - he’ll still be helpless.

Tyler’s hand slides up to the back of his neck, lays heavy there and clammy. His thumb presses into the side of Kauri’s neck and Kauri shudders and raises his eyes.

“Good boy, ‘898,” Tyler murmurs, and Kauri bites down on his lower lip until it hurts.

There’s a large white dry-erase board with black letters written on it hung on the wall opposite from the exam table Kauri is sitting on. When they’d brought him in here, Tyler and Delevigne had talked about how the computer had chosen randomized words based on Kauri’s life before. 

What was my life before? Why does a computer get to know and I don’t?

Kauri’s eyes land on the whiteboard, try briefly to focus on METAPHOR in Tyler’s thick scrawl. As soon as the black marks coalesced into a word, the fire lit his nerves again.

Kauri jerked forwards, crying out helplessly - it never mattered how many times they practiced, he always cried out - and Tyler’s hand tightened on the back of his neck, pulling him back.

Kauri went rigid, tears in his eyes. “Pl-please,” He breathes, in the stammer, the shock-speech the handlers call it and laugh at him. “Please, m-make it, make it st-stop, Tyler, please-”

“Look away from the word, buddy,” Tyler says, unperturbed, watching Kauri’s face. “That’s all you have to do, is drop your eyes.”

Kauri tries but he can’t, every muscle is locked against the electricity. His whimpers become choked-off sobs as tears flood his eyes, until finally the words blur enough to be unrecognizable.

The pain stops, and Kauri can finally lower his eyes. He tries to breathe through the aftershocks, curling his hands into fists to keep them from twitching and shaking too much. Tyler’s hand never leaves his neck, presses against it like a weight.

“Subject is exposed to shock as soon as focus on words is registered,” Tyler says to the camera, and the smile is hinting at the corners of his mouth again. “Subject shows marked reluctance to engage with text even when given a direct order, as the subject is aware of the consequences if he does so. We’ll do one more, 645898.”

Kauri jerks in a breath and nods quickly, feeling his curls starting to stick to the cold sweat that’s broken out across his body, the way his thin white trainee T-shirt sticks to the sweat on his back. The recirculated air washes across his arms, his bare legs and feet, and he starts to shiver. He can hardly tell the difference between the shivers from cold and the muscle shakes from the electric shock.

The little circles - the shock implants - feel hot, like when he would sit on Owen’s balcony in the sunlight too long and the warmth of the sun turned to an uncomfortable, prickling burn. When he looks down, he can just see them, glowing slightly at the bottom of his vision. Can see the stitches, the skin around them red and irritated, that travel in a perfect line from his right shoulder to the center of his chest.

Tyler steps away from him and walks across the room. Kauri keeps his head down and watches from under his dark eyelashes as the word Tyler had written is erased with the little black eraser. Tyler checks a card he pulls from his pocket and writes something new. Kauri drops his eyes so he won’t look at the word a single second longer than he has to - aware, with a twist of disgusted fear inside of him, that that’s the response he’s supposed to have.

The headaches come and go, as memories break free or sink back under the fog in his head, but they don’t care about the memories anymore. 

They don’t care what he knows.

Because they know that Kauri is controlled.

“Shit, she’s gonna be so happy,” Tyler murmurs as he goes back to Kauri’s side. “She wanted us to make sure her poor sad sack kid can do this without a memory wipe, and we’re gonna give her a fucking work of art, little man. Okay. Look up.”

They put the implants under his skin.

They record the pain he feels.

They record when he screams.

They will use it to hurt someone after him.

And Tyler will be rewarded for it.

Kauri swallows hard. Tyler slides an arm around his shoulder, leans in close, and takes him by the chin. His sweaty fingers tilt Kauri’s chin up and up and up.

“I said look up, bud,” Tyler says, more forcefully this time.

Kauri’s eyes land on HERO’S JOURNEY but don’t take in that the individual letters even form words before the burn lights him up again and he starts to shake. 

His eyes locked with the pain like every other part of him, and when he sees the words all Kauri can do is wail, half-choked as his muscles are forced into rigidity, a pressure that seems like it might snap bones. He can’t stop looking, he can’t stop, and it won’t stop hurting until he stops looking.

Finally Tyler grabs him by the hair and pushes down, forces his gaze back down to the floor to break his eye contact with the letters. Kauri sobs, tears sliding down his cheeks as he shakes and shakes in Tyler’s arms. His hands won’t close, the fingers keep moving, twitching, jerking little nonsense movements he can’t control. 

“Success,” Tyler says loudly, happily, for the camera. Then he pets through Kauri’s hair, holding him close. Kauri leans against him automatically, eyes blank and unfocused, sobbing hoarsely through a throat that aches from screaming. “End recording. There we go, buddy, there we go. All done for now. All done, little man, all done… there we go, just let it out, there you go… God, I am so grateful for you. You're so lucky, man, we're going to be written into those fucking brochures now, you and me… you’ve done so well and the Director is gonna give me one fuck of a bonus for this, you’ve been so, so good for me, little man, so good…”

Tyler’s fingers card through black curls, scratch just a little into his scalp, run down his neck and then back up again, and Kauri shudders against something new - not the simple I-want-this he has to every touch, but the old disgust he used to feel, used to be able to access. He doesn’t want Tyler to touch him, he doesn’t want to be his very good boy and help him design something terrible to do to someone else, he doesn’t want he doesn’t want he doesn’t want.

He keeps crying, but the tears begin to change. He can feel the sick lurch in his stomach, the way his mouth wanted to pull his lips back into a snarl. He can feel the fight he’d had, a long time ago, before it was all gone. The version of him that had said you can’t take my name from me - but they did… they took his name and they took the fight, too.

They didn’t care if he remembered, any longer. Owen didn’t care what he felt - that he might feel hurt Owen broke his promise, that he might be angry about it. Owen didn’t care.

All Owen cared about was that Kauri could be controlled. 

Punished. Disciplined, for thinking for himself. For having a thought Owen wasn’t in charge of. For doing one single thing just for himself.

Why didn’t you just tie me to the bed? 

Kauri sniffled, and Tyler misunderstood the reason, tightening his arms around him, shushing him in a low soft sincere voice. He thought Kauri was sad - and he was - but the tears weren’t from sadness.

The tears were from anger.

“Take your time,” Tyler whispers into his ear, petting him gently. “Take your time, ‘898. Just breathe, little guy, you’re doing great. We’re going to bring in the computer next, okay?”

Kauri shivers, clenching his eyes shut, feeling a ghost of electricity just thinking about looking at the keyboard again. And they’ll make him - make him look, make him try to type, try to read, and they’ll hurt him every time he does. 

Because he can’t be allowed to read or write, or think for himself, or think at all. Because he has to be locked up, closed up in Owen’s condo, kept like the cat the neighbors owned next door. Because he has to be empty, and pretty. 

Because Owen is jealous of every thought Kauri has that isn’t about him.

“I know it sucks, little dude, I totally get it,” Tyler says, and Kauri wants to spit no you don’t, you don’t understand anything about me, but all he does is miserably nod, allow himself to be held, try to ignore the way his body wants to react even now, even to this, the way it was trained to. “I know. But look - once the Director is happy with the recordings, we’ll get you back home, and your owner will be so happy to see you, right? Because you’ll be totally perfect for him, exactly how he wants you now.”

Why don’t I get to choose how I want me to be? What did I do to deserve having that choice taken away? Why won’t you let me be a person anymore? 

Why can’t Owen just love me back?

Kauri cries in the arms of a scientist who will not stop hurting him and he’s so hurt, and scared, and sad, and mostly he’s so angry he could scream.

[rigelmejo]

Found this tool for “how long to learn a language” and I think its fairly useful? 

https://autolingual.com/study-time-calculator/#hmotivation

Below is just me contemplating how long things took me, will take etc. Feel free to ignore lol.

I just tested it by putting in “absolute beginner” to low intermediate, and how long that would take for mandarin at 2 hours study per day, it gave me 1 year 10 months. That isn’t too far off of how long its taken. I’d say I’m around low intermediate - maybe upper beginner. Certainly what I consider possible at low intermediate for me personally (what I could do in french in reading, when i stopped studying it) is close to where I am now with chinese. So like: convos about basic topics, maybe a little word lookup, reading general gist of everything (and dictionary for specifics if needed), general show watching without subs (miss some details), some audio listening (for me french never got any listening or show stuff so that parts much better in chinese - though my french reading is a bit easier since i can generally get away with no dictionary even if there’s a lot of unknown words just because of word similarity to stuff i can figure out). So anyway the calculator’s estimate of 1 year 10 months is pretty close! It’s been 1 year 8 months since I started studying. It will probably be a few more months when I feel I’m happy with my ‘basic’ reading ability. 

When I put in “very high motivation” it put me at 1 year 7 months to go from absolute beginner to lower intermediate - which is super close to about how fast I progressed. I’d say I’m probably somewhere on this calculator’s estimate between “very high motivation” and “high motivation.” 

For absolute beginner to upper beginner, it put me at 10 months for how long it would take if I had “high motivation.” That also lands pretty close to how long it took me - it took me about 8-12 months to do ‘upper beginner’ stuff as I consider it (texting people in chinese for general convos, browsing weibo, reading stuff i wanted with a dictionary, reading manhua, starting to watch shows without subs and just get the bare minimum gist and look up words for more details). The calculator guessed I would take 9 months from absolute beginner to upper beginner if I had “very high motivation,” which again I suppose is close to where I was at lol. 

This calculator thinks from absolute beginner, to upper intermediate (B2) will take me 2 years 6 months if I have very high motivation, and 3 years if I have high motivation. That makes sense to me. Moderate motivation would be 3 years, 9 months. Low motivation would be 4 years 6 months. This was all at 2 hours a day of study overall. I figured it would take me 4 years roughly to get to where I wanted to be when I started  - although I figured 4 years would be “where I am right now skill wise” so lol. What will upper intermediate even look like? 

5 years, 6 months, if I have very high motivation but only 1 hour study time a day.

I also tried out if I put “have learned a language to fluency” and that lined up better with how long it actually took me to hit each milestone as I felt it? (8 months upper beginner, 1 year 4 months to hit lower intermediate?). And if this is the option I put in, then upper intermediate would be achieved around 2 years 2 months into studying (aka for me that would mean around this coming winter). Also - this would not include listening/speaking skills, for me, because I already know hands down those skills lag for me (they probably would not be whatever level my reading is, instead a bit under it). And writing would depend on how much I worked on it. So I’m mainly aiming for the reading goals timeline. 

What is interesting to me is based on this I probably have been studying roughly 2 hours a day overall? I am fairly sure I study at least 1/2 to 1 hour a day (I read almost every day in chinese if nothing else). Then some days I know I’ll watch some eps of a show (thats 2-4 hours probably), some days I’ll read a lot (2 hours?). So like I figure my days I do a lot add up? And apparently they must, since my progress seems like I’m doing about 2 hours a day according to this caclulator. Or else my study sessions are ‘really’ effective for me and 1 hour i can make as useful as 2, but i doubt it... although it could be likely, its more like ‘since i’m mainly focused on reading THAT is improving at this speed, but if i looked at ‘overall’ then i’d still be an upper beginner who studied maybe 1 hour a day (as in, taking in all skills i’d be upper beginner, but taking in only reading i’m higher). Which could definitely be the case, as i don’t think my listening is past upper beginner, and my writing/speaking is definitely upper beginner At Best (could easily also be worse lol). 

Anyway a point for myself: looks like if i vary study from 1-2 hours a day, its going to take between 9 months to 2 years to hit upper intermediate. Which is the goal - i think after that my reading will be plenty good for what I want to do without a dictionary. So 3-4 years total study time, which is about what i expected... except i expected year 4 was going to feel like what i can do now ToT so anyway. Follow your dreams! Passions! Goals! you know what i mean! ToT I did not think reading with a dictionary could be possible so quickly in chinese! Certainly not within a year, but it did happen by a year! And I’m starting to venture into reading real stuff without a dictionary more, so that’s also doable much earlier than the 4 years I expected!

---

For fun I put the other languages I ‘studied’ a bit of in the calculator. 

The suggested french timeline matched up pretty well to my own progress when I put in: very high motivation (i guess i must have that lol?), some knowledge of different languages, study 1 hour a day. I hit A2 around 6 months in, B1 around 1 year 2 months is what the calculator says (I remember it being around 1 year into studying), B2 around 1 year 10 months the calculator gives.. I think personally around B1 in french I got less motivated, and i know i stopped studying as often... and i think somewhere mid B1-B2 I quit studying and just coasted on what i knew, since it was enough to read what i wanted. So I personally remember, about 2 years into studying french, that’s when I gave up using a dictionary or formally studying at all for the most part (years 1-2 i read a grammar site in french, which helped, and was still occasionally looking up words in french and reading french weekly). So I think at 2 years i didn’t actually hit B2, just a personal point where somewhere mid B1-B2 I felt i no longer had a need of a dictionary, or grammar explanations, for what i wanted to do. I know at some point after year 2 I picked up french again and just worked on listening/pronunciation (to try and drag them up closer to my reading skill) for a couple months. Idk how much it helped, but i know it noticeably improved my accent (which went from Really Bad to Somewhat Bearable, and my listening skills went from ‘can’t understand anything’ to ‘basic words i know i can now recognize fairly easily in listening, and i can now HEAR the real bad spots in my own accent and fix them at least’). So like... I’d personally put my french as somewhere in B1 mostly comfortable, with a lot of room for improvement. With writing at A2 maybe (with grammar mistakes), speaking also around there, listening if I’m lucky also around there. I do like that if i DID want to improve my french skills to all B2, it says 8 months to 1 year (depending on if i’m starting from A2 like my speaking or B1 like my reading), studying 1 hour a day on average. That’s about what I expected - that it would take a while but not too long to push them all up to more useful. 

With japanese, putting it into the calculator? Looks like maybe I only studied 30 minutes a day on average? The calculator estimates upper beginner to take 2 years 3 months, if that’s how much per day I studied. That or 45 minutes a day - 1 year and 10 months. I know in reality, It took me about 2+ years in japanese to get to reading basic manga for main gist, playing games for very basic main gist understanding which I did sometime between 2 years and 2.5 years. I did not get past upper beginner, at BEST, because I know I was still a beginner. So maybe that’s something that held me back? Just how little time I was dedicating to japanese? I know I was splitting time between french, japanese, and sometimes russian. So that could definitely have been it (also abandoning japanese sometimes for weeks at a time - which I did with french too, but french was already like B1 reading which was close to my goals with it so i didn’t need to focus on it as much).  I also wonder how much the last study from year 2-2.5 helped speed things along - its when I noticed the most progress, and I was doing flashcards and immersing a LOT more. So its possible then I was studying closer to 2 hours a day. 

Mmm. From this calculator, I’d guess: my chinese is on track to be able to do what I want by 3-4 years (much better than I expected lol). With a chance of me being able to do it by the end of this year (that would be amazing but lets not get too hopeful). As for speaking/writing, I do expect that to still take 3-4 years (and slower if I stop studying as much). 

my french I can probably drag up the other skills, and maybe even drag reading up to B2, in about a year of work if I wanted. So the other skills I could probably drag up into B1 in several months. Aka around half a year if I wanted to just get them all similar, and probably a year if I wanted french GOOD as good as I’d probably want it for general use without issues (since i still have listening and production issues).

my japanese? i’m going to go ahead and guess 1 year for lower intermediate, 2 years for upper intermediate, IF my chinese gets good at the faster rate. aka if at the end of this year my chinese reading is where i want it, and i can switch from 30-45 minutes a day on japanese to 2 hours because chinese will no longer need to improve as fast. Since currently i’m spending an average of like 2 hours on chinese a day, and i do NOT plan to lower that until my reading and listening are where i’d like them and i can read/listen generally without a dictionary (like french, i’ll probably end up wanting to improve production randomly on an as desired basis so i don’t think that will be as big a priority unless for some reason it becomes one). So japanese will probably at most be getting 1 hour a day while i’m still focused on chinese (and realistically less like 30 minutes on average). But i might be able to give it more after this winter. although also it really depends on wtf i feel like doing? as always. if i do japanese ‘as desired’ who knows how many hours that will end up being. i do think though doing it as i want now will help make that time take less in the long run overall timeline of things. the calculator gives “2 years” to lower intermediate if i only study 45 minutes a day, and 4 years for upper intermediate in japanese if i only study 45 minutes on average a day. Which really isn’t so bad (that’d be like 4-6 years total of time i’ve spent studying it, to get where i’d like in japanese ultimately - 2 more years after the 2 i’ve already done on an optimistic timeline, and 4 more years if i go very slow and keep not being able to prioritize it... and somewhere in between there if i don’t prioritize it but at least find a sweet spot i can do what i want in it like french). 6 years to learn japanese is not surprising... especially considering it took me 2+ years to push into upper beginner “can do a little basic stuff” in the language. So 2 more ish years for each milestone step makes sense unless i get better at studying lol or dedicate more hours into it. 

---

What’s curious to me is how chinese has been taking me about 6 months to hit each milestone (for reading)? 6 to get to beginner, 12ish to get to upper beginner, 18 ish months to lower intermediate (which is april, me rn), so possibly 22 months to upper intermediate - 1 year 10 months maybe? 8 more months of study, potentially. (Again this is for reading skills only). 

I just... when I started I definitely did not thing progress could be made at this speed for chinese? But to be very fair... i spent less time on french, and i think that’s a big reason it took longer to hit milesones than it could have - and why ultimately french and chinese are much closer in terms of ‘how long it took me to make progress’ than japanese to either. Because french simply takes less study time, and chinese i just studied so much MORE per day than i did with japanese. I definitely think if nothing else that ADVICE to immerse often helped me so much. While its not as quality study time as when I go through tone drills, memorized 2000 words, read grammar, listening to my audio ‘flashcard’ files, or practice shadowing - it really MAKES me ‘study’ chinese regularly in a way i did not with french or japanese. Even though there’s less active study being done, i’m engaging with chinese every day because of it. Practicing every day, and practicing often. With french i practiced daily for maybe 1/2 hour to an hour, then for that long per week, and my active study i either did for a month or didn’t do at all - so less study time in general. In japanee i REALLY did less study time per day, since i didn’t even try to read/watch/listen to japanese - it was active study or nothing. Simply the advice to immerse... while yes it helps you with skills, like learning to comprehend what you’ve studied, more than that it simply keeps me ‘trying to learn’ on a more frequent basis.

Part of the reason I think year 2-2.5 of japanese i made the most progress i saw the fastest? I was trying to read manga every week, trying to play a game every couple weeks, listening to audio in the background every few days (audio flashcards), trying to do srs flashcards every few days. The last 2 activities were active study increases (though only 30-45 minutes a day overall so no more than usual). but the manga days - that would be a full extra 1-2 hours a day! The video game days, 2-4 extra hours that day! and those added up i think! and resulted in me seeing much faster progress than in the whole 0-2 first years combined. if only i’d been trying to do those things sooner, it could’ve been adding up sooner.

whenever i look back on my french, the period that helped most was month 3 to the year 1 mark - i was reading every few days. Yes, I also studied common words, took a beginner class and did my homework. But the reading regularly was time spent using french ADDING UP. It added up to a lot of extra time IN french, and i think that’s why about a year in i felt pretty comfy texting on basic topics, reading things i wanted to with a dictionary with ease. Then the year after, i did more intensive study, but with months in between where i did NOTHING in french - so i think i got to B1 with reading, or somewhere a bit past it, because i read french every few months for bursts (whenever i felt like it but not regularly). And instead of progress every few months, it took about another year to go ‘ok no more dictionary needed.’ If i’d still been engaging with french more days a week, i think it would’ve added up faster.

And when i started chinese, the big reason i TRIED ‘do a little something’ weekly in chinese is because i remembered in french i used to try, and that helped me so much at the beginning. and it DID help me so much at the beginning with chinese! it was a solid idea!

and, as much as i have some issues with aspects of massive immersion approach (now Refold), mainly just that i don’t do it all the same lol. i DO think i am SO happy i found it if ONLY for the advice it gave “immerse as much as possible, as little as you comprehend, start NOW.” That was good fucking advice. And it helped me not be such a chicken - i know i was scared, back when learning japanese, TO immerse at all because i thought i needed the basics understood before i even tried. With chinese - although i was trying reading (and it was honestly helping), i only tried once a month. And i was way too scared to try shows without english subs, or AUDIO. 

Reading the mia advice, i went fuck it, and tried. it helped SO much. Literally, watching shows in chinese first to build up the endurance to SIT through a whole episode, then to watch multiple episodes in months 4-8, helped SO much. and i was way too scared to try until i’d read someone else tried and it helped. also people who did mia suggested audiobooks and dramas - again i was way too cowardly, thinking i’d know too little to manage it. And YET, once i started doing it more i noticed a lot of improvement! I know right now, i can watch shows and be comfortable because i made myself try it back then and keep trying. i know i was able to push into reading with a dictionary at month 6-8 because from month 3 i was trying and kept trying. i know i can listen to some audio dramas FOR FUN and even pick up some stuff, because i tried to listen to audiobooks of chapters i’d read in english and practiced parsing sound. (also Listening Reading helped a ton i can’t say that enough - it helps so much with listening skills). Trying to watch shows without ANY subs including chinese, also helped. And it really was the advice “try doing it all, and doing it often, it will help” that helped me improve. I cannot get myself to do formal study every day - and if i can, some days i can only do 15 minutes to 1 hour (and occasionally longer). but i CAN make myself do SOMETHING in chinese every day. And me being so lazy? It is in fact EASY for me to make myself do something in chinese if it doesn’t have to be study - reading a book? I’ll try. If i have it open in pleco, i’ll try and click words i don’t know. If its audio - yeah i’ll try listening while i walk or work. if its a show i wanna watch, yeah i’ll try watching even though there’s no english subs. if i see a manhua i like, yeah i’ll try to read it. if im on weibo, yeah i’ll browse. it is such a compatible way for me to DO more stuff in chinese, which helps me improve even if its not always as effective as study-time sessions. its always better than doing nothing, and wow does it make a difference how often i ‘study chinese’ if these moments of immersion count. 

and i’ve been noticing already, how it helps in japanese too, now that i’m freaking applying the concept of “don’t be a chicken” lol. I’ve watched lets plays the past few months in japanese (yeah only 20 minutes at a time, but it will add up as i’ve learned from french and chinese). I tried playing games for 2 hours (brutal, but manageable, and who knows how much i learned in that time!). I watched a 2 hour play with no subtitles of any kind (again who knows how much i learned trying that!). I even tried reading a bit of japanese - a few 15 minute sessions probably. Again, this is all not a lot, but its like french - its MORE than just my dedicated japanese study time where i do flashcards or read my grammar books. its extra time spent, and i know it adds up. i am Already seeing it add up to making games even bearable to do (which took 2+ years last time!), to making WATCHING something with only japanese audio bearable to do (extremely hard, but bearable if i know the plot, which is a fucking FEAT i did not imagine i’d be able to do). it is adding up to making trying reading bearable to do with a dictionary. It is all these things that took 2 years to become bearable last time, made doable much sooner (if only to tolerate for now, but eventually to improve). the hours spent just trying to do things in the language DO add up. 

so anyway advice for my future self is just: DO it. do stuff in the language now. i know you want to be prepared, but just start trying now and with anything you’re interested in even if you think its ‘too hard.’ it WILL add up and help you. 

[idolizerp]

LOADING INFORMATION ON INDIGO’S MAIN DANCE, LEAD VOCAL BAEK SUNWOO...

IDOL DETAILS

STAGENAME: N/A CURRENT AGE: 20 DEBUT AGE: 16 TRAINEE SINCE AGE: 14 COMPANY: MSG SECONDARY SKILL: Choreography

IDOL PROFILE

NICKNAME(S): simon - his english name, the fans use it but he actually dislikes it INSPIRATION: loved to perform and wanted to pursue dance as a career, thought he’d have a better chance at making it in south korea than in canada SPECIAL TALENTS:

speaks fluent french and english

freestyle dance

abacus calculation/mental math

NOTABLE FACTS:

flexible - can hold his hands behind his back and step over them

has a brother back in canada

can make his eyebrows dance

is ambidextrous

used to play goalie on his school soccer team

IDOL GOALS

SHORT-TERM GOALS:

sunwoo needs a creative outlet, one that indigo’s current musical direction won’t stifle. choreography is a good one, but he’s still on the lookout for one - starting with acting. he’s terrified that if he doesn’t find something he’s going to hit another slump, making this an urgent, short-term goal.

LONG-TERM GOALS:

further down the line, sunwoo wants to establish himself as a performer and a choreographer. indigo is popular now, but as they grow older as a group at some point they’ll have fewer comebacks and will need other activities to fill their time. sunwoo wants to get recognized by msg entertainment as someone who can choreograph other group’s songs. if and when he leaves the company, he’d like to open a dance studio, but he’ll have to have a strong enough reputation as a dancer and network in the industry to ensure its success.

IDOL IMAGE

with his doe eyes, sweet smile, and young age at debut, msg quickly assigned sunwoo an endearing, boy-next-door image. this stands in contrast with his onstage charisma as a main dancer and particularly with indigo’s original, rougher concept. the contrasting “onstage” and “offstage (but still on camera)” personas meant that from early on sunwoo was noted for his versatility. he also retained a slight french canadian accent in his korean, which made him unique and strange enough that he still gets equally teased and fawned over for it.

since the end of re᛫group, msg has focused on emphasizing the things that the public had noticed about him during the show: his work ethic, his optimism, his generosity, his choreography. that’s all fine and well, except that it’s exhausting. since he was so young at debut, he wasn’t expected to use any of his energy on anyone else in the group - as long as he kept up and did his part, that was enough. this new image meant he had to juggle taking care of himself and others, at least in front of the public. it was a natural part of his personality that came out on the show, but not to this extreme. it may be exhausting to have to keep this facade up but it worked to get him through more of re᛫group than he would have otherwise, and it’s successfully kept the new fans on board with him even after he got off the show.

his biggest issue as a performer is that his condition is too easily affected by public reception. when he and indigo are being praised and loved, he’s filled with a unique buzz and energy, achieving a kind of onstage charisma in his performance that can’t be replicated. when he and indigo receive criticism or, worst of all, during their slump, he hits a block. this is the case for pretty much anyone, but sunwoo’s two poles are too extreme. he’s certainly come out of the crash he had during indigo’s rougher years, though, and as indigo maintains a spot near the top he’s been able to stay motivated and keep his quality up. but since the slump he’s been overly sensitive to any fluctuations in indigo’s success, which has made the fluctuations between his good days and his bad ones more dramatic.

IDOL HISTORY

baek sunwoo was born in montreal, canada on an early march morning, rain drizzling outside turning the top layer of the snow still on the ground into slush. he and his brother were raised in a modest two-storey house by their accountant parents who continued to emphasize their korean heritage by speaking korean at home, eating korean food, and attending korean language school on saturday mornings. he took on the canada-friendly name of simon outside the home, but never considered it as a replacement for his korean name - just a way to protect his given name from being regularly butchered.

as a young boy he stood with his feet turned inward, a minor issue which his paediatrician assured his parents could be fixed with leg exercises, suggesting dance as an option. four year old simon was signed up for ballet and took to it like a fish to water, falling in love with the endorphins of exercise and the rush of performing. as he grew older he started taking different dance classes - hip hop, jazz, and modern dance were added to his repertoire. at ten he joined a local dance crew and performed at local festivals and competitions. soon he spent five nights a week at the dance studio. at first his parents objected to him putting so much focus on dance rather than school, but as it became clear that he was taking it seriously as a career path they became dedicated to helping him see his goals through.

he always wanted to be a dancer, always wanted to perform. most importantly, he wanted to be famous. he knew he was a good dancer and had potential. but would it be easy to make it as the son of south korean immigrants in the canadian entertainment industry? he tried, for a time. simon auditioned for les grands ballets canadiens and for the national ballet and was rejected from both; he continued to perform with his dance crew, but they never seemed to win any of their competitions. at the end of one of these competitions, though, simon was approached by a man in a suit with a business card, who told him he was “talented” and had “lots of potential” and “just the right look”, and that he should go to toronto to attend international auditions for a company called msg entertainment. simon had never paid close attention to kpop - he’d heard some songs, but couldn’t name members of any group or anything - but after getting rejected from the canadian dance scene, he figured this was the perfect opportunity. he’d surely have a better shot at fame being korean in korea than being korean in canada. after getting his parents to double- and triple-check that this wasn’t a scam, he booked a train ticket to toronto. after a few rounds, he got a contract, ditched the name “simon” altogether, and packed his bags to move in with his cousins in seoul.

adjusting to trainee life meant coming face-to-face with the shortcomings he hadn’t realized he had. he wasn’t used to hearing korean spoken at a quick pace or with regional dialects, so he often frustrated others with requests for them to repeat themselves. he also spoke korean with a weird french canadian accent, which made it difficult for others to understand him in turn, so sunwoo was put into language classes to fix his messy pronunciation. he attended cheongdam high school and suddenly had to adjust to an entirely different school system and learn subjects in a language he previously mostly used around the house. he didn’t have much experience with singing, either, and there was a steep learning curve to catch up with the other trainees. worst of all, after about a year of training, he started to feel burnt out by the experience. as he focused on his progress and his dancing and vocal skills improved, he found himself stuck in a hole - not listening to other music except kpop, distancing himself from the styles he used to enjoy. he identified less and less with what he was putting out as it earned him more and more praise.

when he was placed in the predebut group that became indigo, sunwoo was revived with new energy. msg wanted a flagship boy group out of them, and that meant flashy choreographies, intricate music videos, catchy music. he liked the direction they were going in enough to bring him out of his slump. he was at his peak when they debuted to huge and sudden popularity. he became quickly known for having a young, sweet personality that contrasted with the onstage charisma their songs required.

after face, though, they hit a slippery slope downwards. their first comeback didn’t generate the interest their debut had, and no matter what efforts the members tried to put in to boost their popularity again, indigo was written off as a failure. sunwoo slumped along with the group, struggling to find a way to prove himself to the public and burn off his creative energy. he turned to choreography, initially just pitching ideas to the msg choreographers and eventually working his way up to getting his name noted in the credits. with promotions few and far between, though, there weren’t as many opportunities to show off. msg gave him something else to do by getting him to return to after school club every once in a while following a successful indigo appearance there. it was a chance to show off his english, keep indigo in the minds of the public, and maybe even gather an international audience for the group, if korea wasn’t going to be welcoming. sunwoo wasn’t a natural at variety, but he felt more comfortable being able to entertain in english, and even if he didn’t boost indigo’s popularity during any of his visits, he certainly didn’t do them any harm.

he’d never admit this, but when msg told indigo that they’d be competing on re᛫group, sunwoo was humiliated. the word “disbandment” wasn’t said, but it felt like a last-ditch effort to save their group. without success on the show, their future seemed highly jeopardized. the pressure made sunwoo hit another slump. knowing that the public held his future in his hands made his feet stumble more often, his voice crack more, his stress more difficult to manage. what he had going for him, though, was his image. he was still only eighteen years old, young and fresh faced and armed with the sweet personality msg had instructed him to take on years ago. he was open on the show about his struggles and talked about them in confessionals while keeping an everlasting hopeful tone, leading to a surge of sympathy from viewers. even as he struggled, he was a strong dancer, and was shown helping others learn the choreography, often staying in the dance studio until late going over details one-on-one with those who needed it. he was praised on his choreography for many of his stages, resulting in public acknowledgment of his skill. though he was certainly not at his peak, sunwoo became known for his generosity, his optimism, and his work ethic. it wasn’t enough to save him - he barely made it into the top 20 - but it was enough to help boost indigo back into the public eye and solidify their reputation for their perseverance.

indigo was more popular after re᛫group than they were even when they had had their explosive debut. msg immediately had plans to put together a comeback, and soon enough indigo was back onstage, earning their first music show win and basking in attention they had been starving for. with the pressure of keeping the group together off his back, sunwoo got out of his slump, with fans noting how much his stage presence and charisma had improved since the show. the song they had promoted was softer than what they used to do, not quite what sunwoo would have chosen, but who cares? they were saved. then msg decided to have them release another song, similarly emotional and slow. then another, then another. as a main dancer who had just bounced back from a decline in his skills and self-confidence, sunwoo wanted to do what he loved: to dance. all of indigo’s newer releases were soft and pretty ballads, with choreographies that required little more than a few mic stands, some swaying, and a twirl here and there. his body ached for the pulsating beat it used to dance to. while the group only rose higher and higher with their new sound and aesthetic, he became restless. he was bored.

on his own time, sunwoo has continued to focus on choreography as a means for him to express himself, even if indigo itself has limited opportunities for it. he’s hopeful that they’ll still have a chance to release a dance track again and have some success with it thanks to their new popularity. he’s also started to look to other avenues, dipping his toe into acting by getting himself a role in the idol-focused drama dream high. he’d always wanted to be famous - now he finally, truly is. but that alone isn’t enough if he can’t dance the way he wants to.

[stereksecretsanta]

Merry Christmas, @aflailureandamasterpiece!

I know you like lots of Angst, except I'm uh...very bad at that; so here's a compromise with some Light Angst. I hope you like it!

Read on AO3

*****

So we stay in this mess, this beautiful mess tonight

Stiles’ grandfather - deeply religious, incredibly annoying - had told him God had given him a soulmark, but then realized he didn’t deserve it and took it away. Stiles’ dad comforted him, saying Grandpa had lost his marbles. Stiles doesn’t blame him. They all went crazy after the accident happened. Grandpa lost his daughter, and gave up on filtering his words. Dad lost his wife, and drowned himself in whiskey. Stiles lost his mom, and with her, the desire to speak.

His dad stopped taking him to his grandpa, choosing to leave Stiles home and visiting by himself, something Stiles was completely fine with. He felt guilty enough about the accident all by himself without Grandpa putting the blame on him, or inviting God into the equation.

The fact that he would never see his soulmark didn’t even occur to Stiles until much later. The scars scattered over his arms serve as a constant reminder of the night the car turned upside down, and somewhere underneath them are the first words his soulmate will speak to him.

After a while, it stopped bothering him. It was a flawed system anyway. Not everybody has a soulmate, people with soulmarks don’t always find their soulmates, and even if you do, there’s a chance a drunk driver crashes into you and you only get to spend twelve years together.

---

Stiles stumbles down the stairs with a yawn and accepts the coffee Dad hands him when he walks into the kitchen.

“Sleep well?” Dad asks, and Stiles nods and smiles. He signs, ‘Thank you’, before grabbing some bread.

They’ve had plenty of fights in the past, of course. Dad got frustrated that Stiles refused to talk, took him to a multitude of doctors and therapists to find an explanation but they all told him the same thing. Selective mutism caused by trauma, and it was completely up to Stiles when or if he would ever talk again. They eventually agreed to both learn sign language so they could communicate when needed. Still, Stiles didn’t like to use it often, preferring to listen to his dad talk while nothing was expected of him.

He fixes up a healthy sandwich for his dad, then puts it in his lunchbox; quickly writes ‘Enjoy! ;)’ on a post-it note and throws it in there as well before he hands it over. Dad lifts an eyebrow impressively high, but he knows he has nothing on Stiles’ eyebrow powers. He admits his loss, gives Stiles a hug and leaves for the day.

As soon as Stiles has got his own breakfast and lunch prepared, he heads out towards the bookstore.

---

Derek Hale hates his fucking soulmark. Don’t get him wrong, he likes the concept of soulmates, and knowing there’s someone out there for him who he could spend his whole life with, but did it need to be this? Could he not have gotten anything more romantic? A soulmate whose first words were something along the lines of ‘Shitdamn, I think I’m in love with you’, not his own fucking name .

The swirly ‘Derek’ on his arm has been the bane of his existence for over ten years. It’s also his family’s favourite thing to bring up whenever they can. His sisters will walk into a room calling his name, then follow it up with ‘Oh no, it’s just me!’ and break into laughter. His mom will tell them off after she schools her face into a more serious expression, but Derek knows the truth. He always makes sure to throw her a suspicious glare.

The reason it’s such a big joke in the Hale house is because it has gone wrong so often for him in the past. It all started when Derek was featured in the Beacon Hills Gazette after their High School Basketball team had won big. There was a picture of the team in their uniforms, and Derek’s soulmark was perfectly visible on his forearm.

Everybody in Beacon Hills knows what his soulmark says, and Kate Argent was the first person to take advantage of that fact. Lucky for Derek, Kate wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box and had forgotten Derek had met her once before. After the third time she emphasised his name and showed off her cleavage, Derek had run home and told his mom about her. Kate left town the next day.

The second was Jennifer Blake. In her case, Derek wasn’t even sure about the first words she spoke to him, since she approached him as if they had met before. (In retrospect, Derek should have known something was up.) They dated for a few months until Derek found out her real name was Julia Baccari, and when he confronted her about it, she slapped him and ran out the door. However, since Derek, as a Deputy, had found out about her real name because there was a warrant out for her arrest, she was quickly intercepted.

It only left Derek a tiny bit heartbroken - mostly because his love life felt doomed - and so his family decided to distract him with humor. If he awarded the concept of soulmates with less importance, if he could try to ignore it and just let it happen to him, he would be much better off.

Today is Derek’s day off, and since the holidays are coming up, he’s on the look-out for gifts. After picking up a mountain of socks for Laura (per her request), he decides to check out the new bookstore in town. Well, it’s not so much new as Derek has been too lazy to check it out and now it’s six months later. Oh well.

The store is very clearly split up into different genres, and Derek decides to check out the art corner, since Cora has been getting into painting lately. The family group chat and its several sub-units during any type of gift-giving season have informed him that Laura would be buying art supplies, Mom and Dad are giving her a trip to New York to visit the Guggenheim (show-offs) and Cora is buying herself a tablet so Derek is left with art books.

He picks out three books and adds a tote bag that says ‘Wake Me Up Before You Gogh Gogh’. He walks over to the register to hand over his items, and he smiles at the young man. Derek’s never been one for small talk, and since the man doesn’t seem to be either, Derek decides to take advantage of the silence while he’s being rung up and takes his time to appreciate the other man’s features. He’s tall, but not lanky, and his skin is speckled with moles. When he turns around and faces him, Derek is struck by his piercing amber eyes that catch the light just right. He’s downright gorgeous . Derek looks down and blushes, ignores the twitch in his pants, and decides to focus on the man’s name card. ‘Mieczysław’, it says, and Derek feels zero shame as he notes it down on his phone.

Derek looks up as the man in question clears his throat, and he blushes again when Mieczysław points at the display on the register telling him how much he owes. He hands over the cash quickly, and as soon as Mieczysław hands him his bag, Derek makes a run for it.

---

‘Leather Jacket Man’, as Stiles has started calling him in his head, returns twice more that same week. Once to buy a book about knitting, which earned him a playful eyebrow quirk from Stiles, and a second time Stiles is pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to notice. L.J.M. had come in, looked at the register and ran out again, blushing like a maniac. Stiles thinks he’s adorable, but also, hot as balls , and he hopes he’ll come back soon to introduce himself.

As luck would have it, Stiles is restocking the shelves in the Young Adult section when he hears the little bell on the door ring. He turns to give the new customer a wave, and is granted the glorious sight of L.J.M. instead. Except he’s not wearing a leather jacket. He’s wearing a big chunky knitted sweater, and Stiles has a strong suspicion he made it himself.

“Mieczysław,” Chunky Knitted Sweater Man says, and Stiles’ mouth drops open. It was with an obvious accent, and the pronunciation was just slightly off, but that was his name. Someone actually tried to pronounce his name. Stiles has gotten so used to people laughing when they saw his name tag, or people saying they felt sorry for him, or the worst one ‘How could your parents do that to you?’, and no one has ever attempted to say it out loud. There are butterflies in his stomach and a grin breaking free on his face, even if he’s scolding himself at the same time because for God’s sake, it’s just a name .

C.K.S.M. is staring at him nervously, and Stiles realizes he hasn’t even reacted besides a maniacal smile.

“Was that right? Did I say it right? I googled it, and I had the little computer voice show me how to say it, but you never know with that stuff, and you’re laughing at me, oh God, I’m so sorry, I butchered it, didn’t I-”

Stiles interrupts him by showing him his hand, and quickly takes out his phone to type out a message. He presses the play button and listens as the app says, “ Call me Stiles, please .”

He watches C.K.S.M.’s face closely for his reaction, and he’s rewarded with a gorgeous grin as C.K.S.M. mutters “Stiles”. He types out another message.

“ Thank you for saying my name, though. No one ever tries. You were almost right. ”

C.K.S.M. sends him a smirk. “Then I’ll need to practise more.”

Stiles points at him with a tilted head as he blushes and C.K.S.M. startles. “Oh! Sorry! I’m Derek.”

Stiles reaches out and shakes his hand with a smile, and starts typing again.

“ Anything I can help you with? ”

“Oh, no, I’m just looking.”

When Derek’s eyes don’t move away from Stiles’ face, Stiles grins and bites his lip. He types out “ Well, enjoy ,” and turns back to restocking. He makes sure to lean down towards the bottom shelf, and is grateful he decided to wear tight jeans today. He can’t hold in a snicker when he hears the choked off “Fuck” behind him.

If Stiles is completely honest, Derek has the kind of face he’d love to sit on, and stubble that he knows would be super annoying yet oddly pleasing as the man wreaked havoc on his ass. Stiles is now painfully aware of how hard he is in the middle of his workplace and tries to will his erection into submission.

He rises and adjusts himself in his pants while Derek mutters “Oh my guhh- I gotta go.” He clears his throat. “See you later, Stiles.”

Stiles winks and laughs when Derek walks out with a slightly wider step than necessary.

---

Derek’s innocent crush on Stiles quickly turns into an obsession with him. A healthy one, of course. It just means that every day, after work (barring the night shifts), he stops at the bookstore and hangs out with him. Sometimes that means restocking, even though he does a terrible job of it, and sometimes he joins Stiles at the register. If it’s busy, he’ll read whatever’s closest to him, and if it’s not, he and Stiles can just talk.

The first day Derek had gotten up the nerve to talk to Stiles, and butchered his name, he went home, jerked off in his bathroom because he couldn’t not . After dinner he asked Laura and Cora if they knew anything about him. Laura got way too excited but didn’t actually have any information so Derek quickly tuned her out. Cora, however, had gone to school with him.

She said she had never heard him speak even once in high school, and most teachers - with the exception of Mr. Harris - had never even mentioned it. Stiles did his tests and his homework, and always paid attention during class. When there was an oral presentation, most teachers gave him a replacement assignment, so the other students couldn’t complain either. “There’s always the occasional jackass,” Cora said, “But Stiles’ friends made quick work of them.”

The mystery surrounding Stiles’ lack of voice was still in the back of his mind, but Derek discovered it didn’t matter much to him. Sure, conversations would happen a lot quicker if Stiles didn’t need to type what he wanted to say into his phone, but Derek now uses those moments to stare at Stiles unabashedly. Then, when the phone relays his message, Derek can track the emotions behind it on Stiles’ face. Basically, Derek is doing a whole lot of Stiles-watching. And later when he’s alone in his room, he can do a whole lot of Stiles-remembering as he fucks his own fist.

They both know they’re attracted to each other, that much is clear. Derek has spent enough time staring at Stiles’ ass to show his intentions, and Stiles never hesitates to trail his fingers over Derek’s stomach through his shirt as he needs to pass by. Derek has been wearing thinner and thinner shirts, even though it’s fucking December.

In the past few weeks, his shifts at the Station have been crazy, and the few times Derek had off, Stiles was busy in the store, especially during the holidays. They haven’t been able to find time for a date, let alone plan what they would do and where they’d do it. (Eventually in a bed, Derek hopes.) They haven’t even kissed yet. Don’t get him wrong, there have been plenty of opportunities, but Stiles refuses to get up to any shenanigans in the store. He has gotten into the habit of biting his lip a lot around Derek, which Derek has now discovered is his ultimate weakness.

Derek is helping Stiles out in the store, or at least he was, until Stiles pushed him into one of the armchairs after Derek had yawned for the umpteenth time. He had a late shift the night before and then didn’t sleep well, but he wasn’t gonna abandon Stiles in the store. They had developed a routine by now, and Derek didn’t want to be the first to stray from it.

He yawns again and stretches until he almost slides out of the comfy chair. There’s an odd sound coming from the register when Derek pulls his shirt back down but when he looks over, Stiles is just typing on his laptop. Must have been the radio or something. He decides to test his theory by standing up and stretching his arms up towards the ceiling. Derek watches as Stiles nearly chokes on his tea.

Five minutes later, when he’s reading some magazine, he notices that Stiles has disappeared. There’s a sign on the counter that says ‘Back in 10 minutes. Please don’t steal anything.’, and Derek is looking around for Stiles when his phone chimes. ‘That was a sign for you to follow me to the back, you idiot,’ the text reads, and Derek trips over his own feet before he runs into the backroom. The door slams behind him and before he knows it he’s pushed up against the wall.

Stiles grabs Derek’s head as he kisses him, nips at his lip and licks inside. He jumps up to wrap his legs around Derek’s waist, and Derek doesn’t hesitate to push him against the opposite wall for more leverage. The taste of Stiles’ lips is addictive, as are the tiny moans that leave Stiles’ mouth every so often. Stiles pulls at Derek’s hair until he moves back a little so he can catch his breath. They stare at each other with heavy breaths for a few seconds before Derek can’t hold himself back any longer and starts kissing Stiles’ neck, his jaw, right behind his ear, anything that can get more of those filthy sounds out of Stiles.

Eventually, Stiles pushes him back and leans his forehead against Derek’s. He nips at Derek’s bottom lip one final time before he unwraps his legs and stands by himself. Stiles clears his throat and walks towards the store. His hand is on the doorknob when he turns around and runs to kiss Derek firmly on the lips, once, twice, like he can’t seem to help himself. Derek kisses him back and then pushes him away with a last slap on his ass. Stiles’ laugh echoes through the hallway after he leaves and Derek is so, so fucked.

---

It’s a Saturday, and miraculously, Stiles doesn’t have to work today. He sent a text to Derek this morning to see when his shift ended, because they could finally spend some time together without anybody else around, for hours . Now they’re lying on the couch downstairs, letting a movie play in the background as they make out lazily.

Derek is sweet, kind, and Stiles is dangerously close to admitting to himself that he has feelings for the man. It’s not like Stiles is waiting for the one - he has hooked up with enough people in the past and never felt bad about it - but he still knows there is a soulmate out there for him. Tiny specks of black ink amidst all the scars tell him he does, even if that’s all he’ll ever know. So to be here with Derek now, and to be feeling like this, just leaves him confused.

“Hey,” Derek interrupts his thoughts. “You okay?”

Stiles nods quickly and pecks him on the cheek.

“So… I know you might not like this,” he starts. “But I wanna ask you some stuff. Is that okay? If you don’t wanna answer anything, that’s fine of course, but I’m just...curious, I guess.”

Stiles had been expecting this, of course. Derek has never once asked him to talk, or to explain why he didn’t talk, or if he ever would. And even though Stiles appreciates it so much, he also knew he’d have to explain eventually. Not everything, but some things. He owes him that.

He grabs his phone to open the app, and nods at Derek with a smile.

“I’m just gonna be blunt, so if anything bothers you, just say so and I’ll move on, okay?” At Stiles’ encouraging nod, he continues, “Can you talk?”

“ Yes. ”

“But you don’t want to?”

It’s surprisingly close to the truth, and Stiles is so glad Derek didn’t ask, ‘Then why don’t you?’

“ Sort of. ” He changes his mind and types again. “ Yes. ”

Derek doesn’t wait long to process his answers. “Do you think you ever will?”

“ Honestly, I don’t know. Doctors don’t know, science doesn’t know. If it happens, it happens, I guess? ” Stiles takes his time to type out his answer. “ I’m not doing this on purpose. This isn’t my choice. I’ve never felt the urge to speak, so I’ve never forced my voice to work or to convey anything because there was always another way for me to communicate. There’s some sort of block between my brain and my voice, as if they got a divorce when I was ten and stopped talking to each other. I don’t know if that makes sense. None of this makes sense. That’s the point. But this is where we’re at. And I’ve found a solution for it. Maybe one day I’ll say something and you won’t get me to shut up. Who knows? ”

Derek snickers at the last part. “I’m sure you’re an annoying little shit with or without your voice.”

Stiles gives him the finger but laughs.

“I like the sound of your laughter.” Derek doesn’t look like that was supposed to come out of his mouth, not with the way he’s suddenly blushing and hiding his face in Stiles’ armpit.

“ Wow. You’re a fucking sap. ”

“Shut up,” his armpit mumbles.

---

Stiles doesn’t like to drive. The only reason he even got in the car today was because Dad had left his lunch on the counter and Stiles wanted to make sure he had it in time. Dad was very likely to just grab a burger instead of heading home for it, so Stiles drove. And then he stopped. Suddenly and violently. Because a car had driven into the side of his jeep in the middle of a crossroad.

This wasn’t even a busy crossroad. Stiles can’t remember driving on this road and seeing other cars. He stares out of his windshield at the empty road in front of him and doesn’t realize he hasn’t taken a breath in a while.

Suddenly his door is yanked open and a hand grabs him, pulling him outside and throwing him against his car.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing, asshole?” A loud voice screams in his face. “Did you not see my bright fucking yellow car?”

Stiles breathes in and takes in his surroundings. A twenty-something guy in a tracksuit is standing in front of him, his hand on Stiles’ shirt.

“Did you fucking smash your head when you cut me off? Or are you just an idiot? Do you even fucking hear me?”

The man shakes him and Stiles takes the opportunity to sink to his knees on the gravel. It’s like he’s in slow-motion while the rest of the world speeds ahead.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

When Stiles looks up, the man grows angrier.

“So you can fucking hear me. Do you think I’m an idiot or something?”

Stiles isn’t crazy enough to nod, but the man seems to recognize it on his face anyway.

“Say something, you fucking turd!”

When Stiles remains quiet, the angry man suddenly looks triumphant. “Wait a minute, you’re the Stilinski freak, aren’t you? My dad’s told me all about you, you fucking piece of shit. Told me you’re just a weirdo.”

It isn’t the first time Stiles has heard these words, of course. High School is full of asshole teenagers, but this time, there’s no Lydia to snap back, no Danny to laugh it off, no Scott to threaten to kick them in the nuts. He’s alone, and in danger. He’s scared.

There are sounds in the background, but Stiles hears nothing but the angry shouts in his face about how he’s worthless , he’s pretending , he’s a freak .

The voice turns quieter, and suddenly there’s a different, more familiar face in front of him.

“Derek?”

The sound of his own voice surprises both him and Derek, and after a second that seems to last forever, Derek takes him in his arms and hugs him tightly.

“Yeah, Stiles, I’m here.” He sits back and looks at his arm, and Stiles doesn’t get it, doesn’t understand, until he does.

He reaches out and drags the fabric of Derek’s sweater up, and there it is. The only word Stiles has spoken since he was ten years old, written in black ink on Derek’s skin.

“How-” His voice croaks. How are you here , he wants to ask.

“Me and my partner have been following this asshole since he ran a light a couple streets away. We would have been here faster if he hadn’t watched one too many fast and furious movies and tried to ditch us.”

Only then does Stiles notice the uniform, and he could slap himself. How did he not know Derek was a Deputy?

“I-” he tries, but Derek shushes him.

“Are you okay? Did he touch you? I swear, I’ll kick his ass if he touched you, I don’t give a fuck about the uniform.”

Stiles panics until he has his phone in hand and can type.

“ I’m okay. Sort of. But I’m okay. I’m not hurt. Just in shock. ”

Derek nods. “Okay. Good. We’re still taking this asshole in, but I’m glad you’re not hurt.”

Stiles doesn’t know what to say, so he just nods too. He breathes in, heavy and wet, and grabs Derek’s waist so he can hide his face and cry a little bit.

---

Derek takes Stiles home after he promises Haines he’ll take care of the paperwork later. He watches as Haines drives the Harris kid to the station, then gets in the car. Right now, Stiles needs to rest, and Derek needs to take care of him, comfort him, needs to not freak out about the fact that he found his soulmate , at least until said soulmate is awake to freak out with him .

A few hours later, when Stiles has taken a nap (which Derek accidentally joined him for), he sits up with a jolt. He reaches over to raise Derek’s sleeve, and Derek can’t stop the smile forming.

“Hey,” he says, and kisses Stiles’ unresponsive lips.

Stiles clears his throat. “Hi. Fuck.”

Derek is so shocked by the unexpected swear, he laughs out loud. “Jesus, I’m glad that wasn’t the first word you said to me.”

For the first time, Stiles cracks a smile. “I didn’t know, by the way. That you were mine.” He points at his own arm helpfully. “My...soulmate.”

Derek caresses the scars and kisses them before he pulls Stiles back down onto the bed.

“Stiles,” he says. “Do you want to talk, or do you want your phone?”

Stiles shrugs. “Dunno. It’s weird.”

“Okay.” Derek smiles. “Just tell me if it gets too weird, alright?”

He nods and chuckles.

“What?”

“I just remembered your first word to me. It’s kinda fucking poetic.”

“I guess the universe is a fucking sap too.”

“Yeah, it fucking is.”

“Stop swearing,” Derek says, but he’s laughing too.

“Fuck no,” Stiles grins. “My dad once installed parental control on my speech app so I wouldn’t swear, and I came up with so many new swear words he uninstalled it himself three days later.”

“Oh my God,” Derek chuckles. “Why does that not surprise me?”

“Well, it should. I‘m a fucking enigma. A mystery. No one knows what’s going in my head at any given time.”

“You want me to kiss you until you can’t breathe.”

Stiles pulls Derek on top of him and bites at his lip. “Lucky guess.”

Derek straddles Stiles and leans his elbows by his head before leaning down and slowly, torturously slowly nipping and licking and kissing inside until Stiles’ whiney moans are making him move his hips and grind into him.

He’s fully hard in his borrowed sweatpants, and Stiles’ thin pants don’t leave much to the imagination either. Soon they’re thrusting up against each other with whispered fuck ’s and there ’s.

When Derek pulls off Stiles’ shirt there’s a careless swipe of his thumbs against Stiles’ nipples, something he then does again when he hears Stiles moan. He chucks his own clothes along with Stiles’ pants over the edge of the bed and Stiles seems to choke.

“Fuck you.” He trails his fingertips over Derek’s abdomen. “No wait, fuck me. Wait. Yes. Fuck me. I’ll do you next time.”

“ Jesus ,” Derek grunts and when Stiles starts to grin, he rushes to intervene.

“Please, call me-”

“Don’t you dare.”

Stiles pulls him down and kisses him deeply before whispering. “Derek, don’t get me wrong, tomorrow I want your tongue in my ass for at least 30 minutes, but if you don’t get your fingers inside of me soon, I’ll have to take things into my own hands. And I’m a little tired of my own hands.”

“Get the lube.”

Derek slicks his fingers before reaching down and massaging Stiles’ rim. He’s stuck between wanting to take his time to watch Stiles fall apart or rushing ahead so he can sink his cock into him as fast as possible, but the sounds Stiles is producing make the decision for him. He pushes a finger inside, waits for Stiles to adapt, and starts moving it to loosen Stiles up. A few gentle thrusts later and Stiles is begging for another finger, another .

Somehow Stiles has managed to contort himself enough to grab a condom out of his drawer and throws it at Derek. “Some time today would be nice.”

He rolls on the condom, slicks himself up and nudges at Stiles’ entrance. “Good things come to those who wait.”

“You’re ridicul-oh shit!” Stiles says as Derek slips inside. He moans when Derek starts thrusting at a steady pace, and pulls his head down to kiss him stupid.

Derek takes his time to discover Stiles’ body and grins when he hears the startled groan, knowing he’s found the right spot. He starts aiming at Stiles’ prostate relentlessly until Stiles pushes him away with a whispered ‘ stop, stop, too much ’. He switches back to slow thrusts and wraps his palm around Stiles’ hard cock that’s lying between their stomachs. Stiles’ hands reach up over his shoulders and sink into his hair as he refuses to let go of Derek’s lips and Derek can’t help the fast and hard way he’s pushing inside now. He can feel it tingling in his legs, his ass, his balls, he’s close and from the way Stiles is shuddering under him, he’s close too.

“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me,” he’s whispering against Derek’s mouth. One final hard thrust inside and he’s coming, releasing a groan and jerking Stiles’ cock until he grunts and comes between their skin. Derek is slowly pushing inside still as he comes down from the rush and Stiles pushes his sweaty hair off of his forehead.

“Fuck,” he says, eloquently, and they both laugh before doing a terrible job of cleaning up before falling asleep.

---

The next morning, Stiles drags a sleepy Derek out of bed.

“Stiles, please. I forgot to tell you I’m allergic to sunlight. Deathly allergic. Please ,” he whines from under the blanket.

Stiles pulls the blanket off the bed and whispers in Derek’s ear. “There’s coffee downstairs.”

Derek’s head lifts off the pillow. “Alright. Guess I’ll die.”

They walk down the stairs and into the kitchen where Stiles’ dad is already cooking up what better be turkey bacon.

“Morning, Dad.” 

Dad almost drops his mug with how fast he turns around, and a giant smile forms on his face. Derek stiffens behind him.

“Morning, son.” Stiles’ dad looks towards Derek. “Deputy.”

Derek makes a choking sound. “Sheriff,” he squeaks.

After Dad leaves for work and Stiles is done laughing his ass off, Derek grabs him by the shoulders. “You could’ve told me your dad was my boss .”

Okay, so it appears Stiles wasn’t done laughing. It’s a good thing Derek likes the sound of his laughter.

[coffintanz]

Review Tanz der Vampire Hamburg 26-10-2017

Some miscellaneous notes:

There was nothing wrong with the orchestra, the sound was very good and loud, and although there are only 10 people in the orchestra, you can’t hear that there are only 10 of them. Of course I would like a full orchestra, but I was perfectly fine with this. The loudness of the music was great, in Stuttgart I immediately noticed that the music could have been louder, so that was fixed somehow.

I was in seat 7 of row 27, so I was almost all the way in the back, I had two rows behind me, but the stage still felt very close to me, which is obviously a good thing. Everything could be seen very clearly.

I was seated in the second price category, and you can look it up, but I’ll save you the effort, so I’ll just tell you, I paid €89 to see it yesterday. I could immediately tell where the “cheap” rows ended and the “expensive” rows began. One row before me was the slightly more expensive price category, and many of those seats were still empty once the show began. I think it’s perfectly clear why they were empty, this show is very expensive. I don’t know about other German musicals, because I’ve only been to Tanz, and it’s probably something that Stage Entertainment does for all the musicals they have, but this is not a budget friendly musical. The cheapest tickets are €50, which is still really expensive considering I am going to see Tanz in Vienna twice, and those two tickets together are less expensive than the “cheap” €50 ticket in Germany. Of course I’m not here to complain about the price, especially because I think this experience was definitely worth my money, but in other cities abroad like Prague, Vienna and Budapest, the cheapest tickets are really cheap, so I was just wondering why Germany decided to ask more money for the same show.

But to get to the real deal: here is my review (more or less notes) of Tanz der Vampire on the 26th of October 2017.

 Cast:

Graf von Krolock: Jan Ammann

Sarah: Maureen Mac Gillavry

Alfred: Tom van der Ven

Professor Abronsius: Victor Petersen

Chagal: Michael Anzalone

Magda: Sara Jane Checchi

Herbert: Christian Funk

Rebecca: Yvonne Köstler

Koukol: Paolo Bianca

Tip: always try to get a seat as close to the right hand path as you can, because whenever a character chooses a path to go to the stage they always choose the right path. (It’s the right hand path when facing the stage.) I don’t know if this is also the case for the show in Vienna and such, maybe someone who has seen it in Vienna could answer that question, but whenever you see it in Germany, sit on that side in the theatre. I’ve even counted the amount of times the characters walk by.

Graf von Krolock 1 time (Gott is tot, however in Stuttgart he came from the left path.)

Koukol 3 times (Alles ist hell & Draussen ist Freiheit- to and from the stage)

Chagal 1 time (After Sarah runs away)

Alfred & Sarah together 1 time (Draussen ist Freiheit Reprise)

Sarah 1 time (after Das Gebet)

Graveyard vampires 2 times (Ewigkeit & Der tanz der vampire)

 Act 1

Not much to say about He Ho Professor & Knoblauch, I still think there is too much going on during Knoblauch, and I still didn’t know what to focus on. I could see Knoblauch 100 times and still discover something new.

Everything was very audible, you could hear chagall’s nails falling, shoes creaking, which was nice.

Chagall falls off the stairs during Ein Mädchen das so Lächeln kann, which I somehow never notice! I have seen some bootlegs a thousand times, but I never see Chagal falling. Of course that’s where the sound comes from when Abronsius hears something.

Wahrheit was great! I don’t know who I saw last time performing professor Abronsius, but Victor was never out of breath and did his high note really well, which I couldn’t say last time seeing Tanz.

You can’t see that Krolock is already standing in the bathroom in the dark during the beginning of Einladung zum Ball, the same thing goes for Sie irren, Professor. I tried to look really carefully but to the audience to whom this is all a new experience, they definitely can’t tell Krolock is standing in the dark.

Alfred is not very afraid during Vor dem Schloss, I like it if Alfred is very afraid, but Tom just does not play a very afraid Alfred and I’ve accepted it.

Jan looks at his hand in a very disgusted way after he pats Koukol on the head, and afterwards wipes his hand on his trousers after first contemplating what he should do with a dirty hand. Some Krolocks don’t show disgust at all, and I don’t have a preference, but it’s fun to see what each Krolock does.

There is very little cape action going on from Krolock, Jan could have done much more with his cape during Gott is Tot and Einladung zum Ball but he didn’t.

Krolock wraps his cape around Alfred during Vor dem Schloss which is awesome! I love it when Krolock seduces Alfred by coming very close, for example, Ivan Ozhogin does that really well, and Jan did it very good too!

Some observations after the first act:

People behind me were talking about which actors were German and who were not. One girl was saying to the other: “But we do have a German graf, right?” I think that they noticed that both Maureen and Tom are not German. I cannot say anything about their accents because I am Dutch, just like Tom and Maureen are, and so I can’t judge it very well because I can’t listen to their accents like a native German person would. I also cannot speak German at all so I don’t know where mistakes would be made in pronunciation which are common for Dutch people speaking German. I do know that Tom says some words a bit strange like “Mädchen” and “Spät.” But I don’t really mind because I know every single word by heart, but it will be off-putting for everyone else.

 Maureen sings her long notes quite like a sheep. This may sound very harsh, but you will hear it soon enough when I will post the recording I’ve made of the whole show. But that being said, she sings better than Veronica. Veronica was very nasal, which was okay, but I just don’t like to imagine Sarah being a nasal singer.

 Act 2

Krolock was already on Sarah’s neck during Totale Finsternis when he says: Nein, es wehr verkehrt den kopf zu verliern. (sorry if I spelled that wrong) some counts are not even close trying to bite.

I’m heavily disappointed in the black vampire. When he jumps to Sarah from the left side of the stage to the right when she’s on the ground, he took the smallest jump ever. His appearance coming from the bed to bite Sarah didn’t go smoothly, he came out before he was supposed to and sat on the bed for like a second, probably to regain his balance.

In the bathtub after Bücher, Bücher: “Oh du bist es…”  was said in a very uninterested way, like Sarah really didn’t care that Alfred was there, she just wanted to bathe, or see the graf.

“the booty grab” during Wenn Liebe in dir ist was okay, but Christian Funk didn’t take it very far, which was sad. The hitting with the umbrella was as fun as always. People actually laughed at “Hat er dir profoziert?”(Again, sorry if I spelled it wrong.) Because last time nobody really noticed that happening.

Sie Irren Professor is one of my favourite parts of the whole show, and to see the audiences’ faces turning when the sound comes from different sides is still so very great.

Krolock’s “Boo!” during Vor dem Schloss and Tanzsaal were okay, but I still love the Drew Sarich way the most in which he raises his hands and goes “aaaaaah” and mocks them.

During Die Unstillbare Gier, Krolock does not fall down/kneel down after he runs off the graves when they go up again, which I like.

The spotlight on the grave of “der junge page von Napoleon” was something I’ve never noticed before! And it was not to put the spotlight on Krolock, because the light went out after he was done singing about him.

If you watch it, you can clearly see Sarah walk down the first steps of the staircase during Tanzsaal, however the audience only begins to notice that she is standing there when the spotlight shines on her.

I mainly watched Herbert during Tanzsaal which was great, he’s got these small gestures he does which are fun to see. He also stands next to his dad after he just walked down the staircase and pretends to talk to him. The same thing happens when Krolock sings his last note before he bites Sarah, so after he says “verdammt” he and Herbert stand next to each other and almost seem like they are talking things over. At the point where Herbert notices that their guests have reflections, the dad and son thing becomes really clear, because Herbert points it out, and Krolock gestures like: “as if I didn’t know!” which was fun.

Maureen plays a weakened Sarah after the bite, which I like, Veronica didn’t do that and I think is better to play weak because the contrast between Tanzsaal and Draussen ist Freiheit Reprise will be much bigger.

Maureen wiggled her butt all over the place when she bit Alfred, which I hate, that makes it look very comedic, while I think that that is one of the most awesome moments in the musical so that kind of ruined it for me.

I was not prepared for the vampires walking through the audience during Der Tanz der Vampire, so when I suddenly heard people singing the song along, I first thought that there were members of the audience singing, but then I saw these two vampires walking down and it made a lot more sense.

Maybe a bit random: this audience immediately gave a standing ovation after the last song ended, which was not the case when I saw it in Stuttgart, when it took the audience until the second time in which actors to came on stage to stand up.

 A review of some people in the cast:

Jan Ammann: great! I was apprehensive when I saw that he was going to be “my graf” but I was blown away by his performance. Of course I’ve only seen one other Krolock who was played by Mathias Edenborn, but Jan in my opinion is a better Krolock than Mathias. I know I have been comparing a lot of actors, and I know each actor has something that they are good at, but for me it’s easier to give an opinion if I’ve got something to compare it to. Jan is definitely not my favourite Krolock, that title still belongs to Drew Sarich, but Jan has definitely impressed me.

Paolo Bianca: so freaking hilarious! I also saw Paolo in Stuttgart and he is such a good Koukol. He mumbles a lot and I’ve got such pity for him that he has to do all the not so great things, because Paolo makes Koukol feel like he has joy in doing the little things, like when he is putting the candles on the stage for the ball, he looked very satisfied afterwards. I think the only reason he doesn’t treat people nicely is when they don’t treat him nicely either, for example, Chagal doesn’t like koukol, so Koukol also doesn’t like Chagal.

This is where I will end my review because it is already waaaaaaayyy too long. And now comes the tedious process of waiting until I am going to see Tanz in Vienna in February/March. To wrap up this review, it was simply amazing to be able to see it again. I might even say that the second time seeing it was better than the first time seeing it. (If you by any chance still have anything that you would like to know, just drop a comment in this post.) I hope I am able to upload my audio recording of the show soon.

[its-a-superpower]

damneddixon‌:

One wouldn’t think that working in a car garage in nearly the middle of nowhere would keep a mechanic too busy, but surprisingly the place got quite a lot of business. They were the only garage in the tricounty area, so people came from near and far to have their car’s repaired, tuned up, or inspected. Daryl handled most of the work, despite the actual shop itself belonging to Dale. Still, typically it was Daryl who was working on the cars day in and day out, and he didn’t mind it one bit - he was able to keep to himself and get his work done on his own terms, while still not having to deal with the headaches that would come with owning a place like this. It was the perfect balance, and every evening when he retreated home covered in grease and oil he could rest easy knowing that he had put all of his effort into working hard that day. 

Whenever he heard the sound of a large tow truck pulling up, Daryl knew that there must have been some kind of breakdown on the road, though he waited for his name to be called to appear from underneath the car he was currently working on. First he saw Jim, a face that he saw on at least a weekly basis, and then he saw the girl that was with him. He staggered for a moment, the only word filling his head for the second being pretty.

He caught himself and snapped out of it, quickly looking over the car that was attached to the tow truck and nodding. He grabbed a ragged and wiped down his hands before he was waltzing over to the two people now in the shop. “Hey,” he said to the girl with a head nod. “S’your’s?” He questioned, though didn’t wait for a response because of course it was her’s. Or at least, it was in her possession for now. It was a pointless question to ask, his mind still recovering from his initial thought of her. After a moment of silence with his mind considering his workload and current list of cars waiting to be worked on before he responded with “I could have it done by tomorrow afternoon. Alright?” 

When the man got out from under the vehicle he was working on, Connie stared- not in the same way she stared at people when she was trying to read their lips; her stare this time was not as intense, it also wasn't focused on the man's lips, but on his whole face. Then her focus instinctively went down to his hands when he grabbed a rag to get the grease off them, and Connie had to bite the inside of her cheek in embarrassment as she snapped her eyes back to the man's face.

Okay, so the handsome mechanic thing that she always saw in novelas wasn't just a trope. Good to know.

Connie snapped back to reality when the man greeted her, smiling and nodding her head back at him. When he asked if the car was hers, Connie both nodded and shook her head, telling herself mentally to get a grip and stop making communication harder than it had to be.

"It's rented," she said out loud.

The tow driver chuckled behind her. He'd found her deaf accent hilarious a few times during the drive -always trying to play it off as a cough-, so Connie had picked up on it and spoken very little, despite it being a half an hour drive, for the sake of her mood and her patience.

She turned her attention back to the mechanic, wishing that Jim had not yelled his name so she could have actually picked out the pronunciation. But the tow driver seemed to be quite loud.

"You need a ride to town, miss?" the man had offered, but Connie politely declined. She would just call an uber, or a taxi, or whatever transport was willing to drive to that garage and then to town.

Turning back to Daryl, she smiled and nodded. "That's quick!" she said, surprised that it would only take him a day to fix the car. Pulling her notepad out of her pocket, Connie wrote down her name and number, handing it to Daryl, because one never knew when your mechanic might need to contact you.

[hearingaidsandtea]

You, Me, and Ableism 1/2

I love the evolution of language. Not because I’m passionate about writing (although that’s certainly a contributing factor), but because over time, words are created to cover situations that have been happening for time out of mind.

Which is the case with the word ableism.

Ableism: noun; discrimination in favor of able-bodied people.

This word didn’t show up until the 1980′s. Even now a days it’s a rather uncommon word outside of social justice circles. But it is a word, and I really do think that those of us with disabilities need to talk about it. If our friends and families want to support us, we have to be able to talk about ableism. There’s two kinds. Internalized ableism, and ableism (which comes from other people). Today I’m going to focus on the second kind. In a later post, I’ll be talking about my struggle with internalized abelism.

I’m going to talk about what you can do to help recognize ablest thoughts and how to replace it with the complement or comment you mean. I’ve taken common phrases and addressed each one of them, why they’re harmful and how to fix them (so long post ahead!).

As always, this is my take on the issue, and what I say is a starting point. Listen to what the other person is saying and go from there.

+ It doesn’t matter what you mean. It’s the implication.

Those deadly complements:

“Wow! You talk really well for someone who’s HoH/Deaf!”

“You don’t have that accent that a lot of them do”

“It’s so brave of you to do that because you’re hearing impaired!”

These are all “complements” that are actually insults. The translation to these complements is the same “You’re Deaf/HoH and you aren’t supposed to be able to function so well.” Obviously this is not what you mean when you say these things!

Let’s talk about each of these individually:

“Wow! You talk really well for someone who’s HoH/Deaf!” Ok this one, I personally don’t mind as much. It really comes down to the tone of voice and how the person reacts. If an audiologist tells me this, I love it. I am so, so self-conscious about my pronunciation of words. In school (and outside of it) I had speech therapy when I was young. I worked and still work my tail off to articulate and not slur my words together.  But more often than not, when people find out I’m deaf, they say this with awe and give me an expression as if I suddenly turned into a unicorn. The expression and tone makes me feel weird. Why is it surprising that I work hard to communicate? “You don’t have that accent that a lot of them do” or any variation. Don’t say this. To anyone. Ever!! When you say this, what you’re really saying is “you don’t fit my concept/expectation of how a Deaf/HoH person is supposed to be, so there must be something wrong with you.” That’s not what you want to mean, but that’s what we translate it as because that’s the implication. Some of us have a Deaf accent, some of us don’t. I personally don’t because for many years I was HoH. I heard enough voices to be able to match tones and pitches. Someone having or not having this accent doesn’t make them any more or less Deaf. It just means they have a different story. “It’s so brave of you to do that because you’re hearing impaired!” Ok, one, don’t call us hearing impaired ok? Secondly, do you know how damaging it is for a young child to hear this from teachers? As a child when I heard this I thought “Oh no, am I not supposed to do this?” The implication is that normal people get to do what I’m doing, but I’m not normal, so it’s unusual (aka “brave”) that I’m doing this. It also implies that I’m only driven by my lack of hearing. This invalidates my accomplishments. I have varied interests and abilities and am driven by many things. I’m not brave for living life to the fullest. The pity card:

“I’m so sorry.”

I think this one gets me the most. I understand where it’s coming from, but why are you sorry? No matter how you answer this it will never sound good. To say you’re sorry is insulting and degrading.

While what is trying to be said is “I’m sorry for your struggles” it actually comes out as “I’m sorry you’re disabled. I’m sorry you aren’t normal like you’re supposed to be.” Why would you ever say that to a person? I cannot describe how much it hurts when someone says that. There are no words for it. This post by @vivahate1988 does a wonderful job of explaining why this mentality is so harmful. In short, there’s two mindsets when it comes to disabilities: medical and the social model. Many of us who are Deaf and HoH fall into the social model. We don’t want or need to be cured, we just want the world to accept us as we are. Please take the time to read it. It’s good stuff. When you apologize for our lack of hearing it not only implies that we need to be cured, it invalidates our struggles and it invalidates our accomplishments. Hearing doesn’t stop people from becoming inventors, composers, musicians, writers, and a whole plethora of other things. We are powerful, and our lack of hearing doesn’t make us any less so. + “But Anna! I’ve said these things in the past!” That’s ok. You aren’t a bad person for messing up in the past. Going forward you know not to say these things and why they’re harmful. You will mess up in the future, but keep going forward! It’ll help if you know how to make those ablest thoughts into positive ones. Let’s take each phrase and look at how to fix them: 1. “Wow! You talk really well for someone who’s HoH/Deaf!” People only say this when they first find out I’m deaf. So change it to “Oh! I wouldn’t have known that unless you had told me.” Which is what you mean anyway and it ties into the original complement of “you have good articulation etc.” You don’t need to elaborate on it either. We know what you mean. You can thank the person for telling you, but honestly in my mind it’s a bit silly. We didn’t tell you for your convenience. We told you so that you will face us and so that we can communicate with you better. 2. “I’m so sorry” and “You don’t have that accent that a lot of them do”  These both boil down to the same thing. A misconception of what Deafness and HoH looks and should be like. The best way to change the mindset is to get to know the person. Notice how they interact with their environment. You’ll realize that it’s not far off from how you interact with your world.  

3. “It’s so brave of you to do that because you’re hearing impaired!” This comes down to the assumption that we let our disability drive us. We don’t. Yes, it’s a part of who we are and how we interact with the world, but we define it, it doesn’t define us. What you’re really trying to say is “Oh hey, you have a lot of drive, that’s cool you’re doing that.” The fix? Ask us about the thing we are doing. If you’re that impressed by us, talk to us about it. We aren’t three headed fish. Just talk to us like a normal person, take an interest in what we do. If it deals with our hearing, we’ll bring tie that into the conversation on our own. + “I’m nervous about asking questions/talking about this subject now cause I might mess up!”

Ok one, we know you are going to mess up. And honestly? We deal with this every day. You aren’t special for messing up. It’s how you react to it that we’re looking at and will set you apart. Do you throw a fit or roll your eyes when we say we’re hurt? Or do you apologize, ask what you did wrong, how to fix it in the future, and make a good effort to not do the hurtful thing again? Secondly? We’d so, so much rather you ask and mess up than hold on to your misconceptions.

If you’re curious, tell us! Show an interest in us! Say “I’m curious about [insert topic of choice here], would you mind talking with me about it?” This does a few things. It shows us that you realize our story is personal and you’re giving us the chance to say no. You also acknowledge that our time and energy is valuable. Don’t let the fear of messing up stop you from learning. People talk over us so often that it’s refreshing when people want to hear our side of things. Many of us don’t mind sharing our stories and experiences, but we need people who are willing to listen and learn from us. That was a super long post and I congratulate you for reading the whole thing! Go help yourself to a nice cup of tea (or your favorite beverage) cause you totally deserve it. If you have questions feel free to ask them! I know I covered a lot and no doubt you probably have a question or two.

[jonathanryder-blog]

↳  Character Development

“None of us can make it through this life without suffering some kind of pain. Having lived through my fair share I can tell you the most difficult to endure is loneliness. He was right. Life is a game, and one that we must play. No matter how careful we are there is simply no way to go through this life unscathed, but fortunately for us, it’s a game we don’t have to play alone.”

BASIC INFORMATION

Full Name: Jonathan Elliot Ryder

Nickname(s): Jon, Jonah, Ryder (mostly by work colleagues), Miracle Worker

Pronunciation:  J-oh-n-ah-th-ah-n  Eh-l-ee-uh-t  Rye-d-uh-r

Titles: Doctor, Surgeon

Age: 36

Date of Birth: February 20th 1983

Hometown: Goldwater

Current Location: Goldwater

Ethnicity: American

Nationality: Anglo-American

Gender: Male

Pronouns: Him/He/His

Orientation: Bisexual/Biromantic

Occupation: ER Doctor/Trauma Surgeon/Field Surgeon/First Aider

Living Arrangements: Can be found here

Financial Status: Upper-Middle Class

Accent: A hybrid between a neutral American and English accent, the latter hints very strongly from influences his father gave him growing up so his voice ends up making him sound more foreign than he actually is. He’s adopted a neutral tone mostly for work related reasons -- so people can understand him better.

Religion: Agnostic

Occupation: ER Doctor & Trauma Surgeon

MUTATION

Physiology: Human

Species: Homo Sapiens Superior / Mutant

Strength: Average

Stamina: Above Average

Speed: Average

Dexterity: Fine-tuned motor control particularly of his hands, able to perform unique movements without his hands shaking making him an incredibly good surgeon when wielding a scalpel.

Reflexes: Relatively quick but still average.

Power: Biokinesis / Healing / Restoration { More on this here }

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

Face Claim: Tom Hiddleston

Hair Colour: Dark blonde

Eye Colour: Gunmetal / Silvery blue

Height: 6 ft 2 / 188cm

Weight: 79 kg / 174 lbs.

Build: Slender but athletic & toned.

Somatype: Between ectomorphic and mesomorphic

Posture: Straight unless tired, then tends to slouch when sat.

Tattoos: N/A

Piercings: N/A

Dominant Side: Right

Blood Type: O - universal donor.

Distinguishing Marks: Several smaller scars littered across his hands from injuries prior to gaining his abilities, faint scar lines dotted across his torso from large injuries he tried to heal on others and ended up marking his own body instead. The most prominent is on the side of his neck typically covered by shirt collars and one on his temple from where he slipped and fell out of a tree he was climbing when he was a child.

Clothing Style: Really depends on the day sometimes this, or this but it’s nearly always some kind of combo of a jacket/blazer + top/shirt + jeans/trousers. Often he can be seen wearing glasses although these simply have plain glass in the lenses as he doesn’t actually specifically need them anymore now that his ability has developed. { More on this here }

Accessories: Always wears a wrist watch given to him as a gift by Ophelia.

Facial Hair: Typically is clean shaven but when he does have a beard tends to look along the lines of this.

Usual Expression: Occasionally distant, sometimes appears to be lost in thought but mostly just friendly.

Distinguishing Characteristics:  Several smaller scars littered across his hands from injuries prior to gaining his abilities, faint scar lines dotted across his torso from large injuries he tried to heal on others and ended up marking his own body instead. The most prominent ones are one on the side of his neck typically covered by shirt collars, one on his temple from where he slipped and fell out of a tree he was climbing and another one on the lower angle of his jaw from where he slipped on the docks and fell hitting his chin on the wooden planks when he was a child.

PSYCHOLOGY

IQ: 122

Languages: English, French, Italian and can speak bits of the following: Afrikaans, Zulu, Setswana, Arabic. 

Vocabulary: Articulate & thoughtful.

Memory: Rather good but nothing exceptional.

Temperament: Calm, level-headed.

Learning Style: Kinesthetic & Visual

Emotional Stability: Relatively stable, he doesn’t exactly give himself the time to talk about how he feels preferring to focus on other people because he deems their needs as far more important in comparison to his own. He uses his work to cope with things and will throw himself into work to the point of overworking himself to try and forget about things that are bothering him. Overall he’s pretty stable but if someone hits a nerve then they might just get to see he’s not quite as stable as he likes to appear on the outside.

Sociability: Jonathan is somewhere in the middle of this spectrum, he enjoys people’s company but he also needs some time to himself just to relax.

HEALTH

Physical Ailments: Growing up Jonathan suffered from short-sightedness, this was fixed by glasses and contacts and continud into his adult life. When his abilities manifested however, this restored his vision to near perfect levels but due to having spent his entire life wearing glasses he couldn’t simply stop. So now to avoid suspicion from people who knew him as a child he wears a pair of glasses with plain glass lenses and no curvature.

Neurological Conditions: Headaches often triggered stress or fatigue.

Allergies: N/A

Sleeping Habits: Generally his sleep schedule is a mess, especially when he gets night shifts ‘til the early hours of the morning. On those days he comes back and will sleep during the morning-afternoon and be up mid-late afternoon before trying to go to sleep correctly at 11/12pm that night.

Eating Habits: He’s a big fan of a medium cooked steak, seafood is one of his favourites and he has always loved crab, lobster, prawns and fish. Besides this he loves baked goods - a thing that has been the case ever since he was small.

Exercise Habits: He isn’t a total exercise freak but he enjoys going on long walks with Jas listening to music depending on his mood, otherwise he’s big on going for runs. Wherever his feet take him he’ll go, and depending on the day will depend how much he pushes himself. He tries to go out for at least an hour a day if he can.

Body Temperature: Warm but not too hot.

Addictions: Work.

Drug Use: None.

Alcohol Use: Mostly for pleasure, or social occasions. He enjoys the taste and company he tends to keep but other times he just enjoys it as a stress reliever but very rarely drinks enough to get drunk (difficult anyway due to his fast metabolism). 

PERSONALITY

Label: The Helper

Positive Traits: Dependable, intelligent, level-headed, knowledgeable, charming, polite, steadfast, affectionate, sensitive, dutiful, sympathetic.

Negative Traits: Perfectionist, solitary, stubborn, reserved, self-depreciating, excessively humble, unwilling to take the spotlight.

Fears: People learning about what he can do, being persecuted for it, others being hurt for what he is.

Hobbies: Reading, sodoku, cooking, walking (Jas), running, listening to music, fishing, sleeping, playing chess, crosswords, watching TV, watching movies.

FAVOURITES

Weather: Snow, but not snowing. He likes days where the snow has settled and the sun is out causing it to glisten in the light. Besides this he loves rain, storms with thunder and lightning.

Colour: Blue, greys, white, blacks

Music: Jazz, Soul, Classical, Ballroom, Blues along with the odd bit of Indie thrown in

Movies: Hannibal, The Godfather, The Shawshank Redemption

Sport: Running, Tennis Skiing

Beverage: Single malt Speyburn Scotch

Food: Medium/Rare steak with a béarnaise sauce

Animal: Dogs

FAMILY

Andrew Kenneth Ryder → 68 Years Old → Jeremy Irons → Alive

Michelle René Ryder → 63 Years Old → Rene Russo → Alive

Children: N/A

Pet(s): Can be found here.

Family’s Financial Status: Upperclass

RELATIONSHIPS

Orientation: Bisexual, biromantic.

Relationship Status: Single

Current Love Interests: TBD

Former/Ongoing Love Interests: Ophelia Thorne

EXTRA

Zodiac Sign: Pisces.

MBTI: ISFJ-A

Enneagram: The Perfectionist - Type 1

Temperament: Phlegmatic

Hogwarts House: Ravenclaw

Moral Alignment: Neutral good

Primary Vice: Wrath potentially?

Primary Virtue: Diligence or Humility

Element: Water

Likes: Roaming & travelling the world. Old architecture. Cathedrals. Long dinners by candlelight. Quiet. Chestnuts. Sunset. Stars. Night. Water of any kind but particularly the ocean. Fishing. Exploring. Long walks. A good log fire and the smell and sound of burning wood. Coffee, tea, hot chocolate, whiskey. The warmth of sunlight. The sound of rain. Piano soundtracks. France, Italy, London -- most European cities. Humour. Nature. Dislikes: Open shoes, Headaches. Loneliness. Dirty fingernails. Mould. Noise. Bullying. Racism. Bigoted individuals. Animal cruelty. Inequality. Spicy foods. Horror films. Liars. Politics. Slackers. Heavy traffic. Air pollution. Crowds. Feeling embarassed. Pushiness. Smoking. Overcooked food. Gawdy colours. 

Tropes: A God Am I/God Complex, Actual Pacifist, Adorkable, Apologises a Lot, Beware the Nice Ones, Big Secret, Bi The Way, Break the Cutie, Broken Ace, Character Tics, Cultured Badass, Doesn't Like Guns, Everyone Has Standards, Geek Physique, Gentleman and a Scholar, Good Is Not Soft, Good Thing You Can Heal, Hates Small Talk, Heroic Neutral, Heroic Sacrifice, Hot Scientist, Loss of Identity, Nice to the Waiter, Omnidisciplinary Scientist, Papa Wolf, Sharp-Dressed Man, Stepford Smiler, Tranquil Fury

[lostinkoreantranslations]

So...?

Will I use romanization in my notes/vocab?

For the most part, nope. There’s no single universal standard for romanization; so how I might romanize something might be completely different from how someone else might do it (especially since I speak irl with a slight southern accent).

On top of that, using romanization actually hinders learning. If you look at pictures of Korean signs or watch Korean variety shows, you’ll see there’s no romanization at all. There’s only 한글. So what’s the point of learning a language if you’re not going to use its alphabet system? SPOILER ALERT: There is none really. Plus, when you read romanization, you’re reading it in your native accent (so for me, my pronunciation would have a bit of a drawl to it) and that prevents you from developing a Korean accent which will make you easier to be understood by native speakers.

So as long as you’re on this journey with me, you’re just gonna have to get used to reading 한글 as is. But don’t worry, I’ll make sure to link you to pronunciation guides as often as I can.

How do I take notes?

Okay so there’s a general two part system I use:

Graph paper for vocab

Using the graph paper for vocabulary lists helps me see the words syllable by syllable AND it helps me practice fitting my characters into little boxes so I get used to writing the script. MY vocab lists are likely gonna have little mistakes on them since that’s where I practice my handwriting, but I’ll always make sure that my mistakes are still legible enough or I’ll type out what I flubbed up in my explanation. And if you still can’t understand what I wrote, just shoot me an ask and I’ll let you know!

Lined paper for notes

Lined paper provides a cleaner space for me to write and to be able to quickly understand what I wrote. It also gives me a chance to see how I write 한글 without little boxes breaking up my words.

For note taking, I like to use a modified essay outline. So I write the main topic next to the Roman numeral and then work my way down into specifics. I find it’s easy for me to really learn something that way since I’m grouping similar things together. It’s also just a really simple system to use. (I use it in school for ALL my classes.)

I color code/switch colors A LOT since having contrasting colors makes things pop out not to mention it makes my notes look pretty and I like looking at pretty things *stares at biases*. Plus switching colors actually means I have to spend time writing things out so I don’t confuse myself later on when I read over my notes; and spending more time on my notes means I’m spending more time working with the material and learning it. Now of course you don’t have to use colors as much as I do, but I do highly recommend it.

Will my posts be queued?

For the most part, yes. However, I’ll often be on my blog when the posts are set to be queued just in case something goes wrong so I can fix it quickly. So if you see a queue tag, don’t assume I’m not here and therefore you can’t ask me a question or comment on something. You can shoot me a message/ask any time of the day & I’ll respond to it pretty quickly (unless it requires a lotta thought & research, then you just gotta be patient with me)!

Will my notes be pretty/aesthetically pleasing?

To put it simply, nope. I am not a super artistic person (aka, I can't draw for 💩) so I don't even know where to begin to make my notes super Aesthetic™. Also, I'm such a perfectionist that I know it would take me more time to perfectly decorate my notes than it would to actually take them and learn them. Additionally, and this is my own personal opinion, I find it kind of disheartening to look at some of these really Aesthetic™ notes that circulate around Tumblr because I know I could never really be able to accomplish that. Yes, I know there's tutorials and whatnot on how to make your notes ~*pretty*~, but I started this blog to be a reinforcing way to help me stay on track with my learning and be an accessible source for anyone else who wanted to learn. And part of that accessibility is having really standard and easy to read notes where you all can see the material and not get distracted by extra stuff like doodles and pastel calligraphy (because honestly, that would distract me so much and I would never get anything done). The most I do is switch ink colors, but that's to help me learn new concepts/words and focus on key points of the lesson.

That being said, I am totally not against aesthetically pleasing/~*pretty*~ notes; so if making your notes look fresh outta studyblr heaven is how you learn/what you like, then by all means please do it! Additionally, like most other studyblr owners, I am addicted to really pretty stationery so if you know any good supplies, please lemme know so I can ogle over them and fail to convince myself I don't need any more journals pens.

[180abroad]

Day 183: Operation Market Garden (and a not-so-brief primer on Early Modern Dutch history)

For today, we had booked an all-day tour of the sites of Operation Market Garden, an impossibly bold operation that ended in failure and has been immortalized in movies like A Bridge Too Far and featured in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers. Being WWII history buffs, we were already familiar with the broad strokes of the operation, but today we'd get to learn some of the blow-by-blow details while standing in the actual locations where they happened.

Market Garden was far too large and complex an operation for us to see everything in the one day we'd allotted, so we opted to focus on the parts of the operation handled by the American paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division. It seemed appropriate, given our previous crossovers with the 101st in Normandy and Berchtesgaden.

And at the risk of continuing to say this so often that it loses what little meaning it might still possess, this day was truly one of the highlights of the trip.

We met our guide Murk outside the train station, where we discovered two cool things about him. First, he was a former history teacher with an extensive knowledge and passion for teaching European history. Second, it was actually a private tour, so we had him all to ourselves.

There was a third cool thing, too. Murk was a massive Rolling Stones fan. He even wrote his masters thesis on the socio-historical significance of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards' early songwriting.

Operation Market Garden took place in the eastern part of the Netherlands, so we had a little bit of time to kill on the drive over. Luckily, Murk was a fountain of knowledge and more than happy to answer all the random questions we could think of.

We learned that he loved being a teacher, but he finally quit after years of frustration with the increasingly restrictive lesson plans he was being saddled with. Making sure that every student gets an equivalent education is an admirable goal, but when the scope of a WWII history class becomes so rigidly defined that the teacher isn't even allowed to discuss the importance of WWI for context, something has clearly gone wrong.

As a private tour guide, he can now teach history as holistically as he wants, and only to people who are interested enough in history to hire him for essentially a full-day private field trip. (Appropriately enough, his business is called History Trips.)

We also enjoyed an interesting lesson on Dutch names. It started with a seemingly simple question---Nic asked what the proper pronunciation of the surname Van der Veen (the last name of some of his close friends). Murk laughed goodheartedly at our American pronunciation, then gave us the correct pronunciation, which I would describe as roughly like "Fahn dur Fen."

He explained that it was a place name, meaning "From the…"---he trailed off as he searched for the right English word. "Like, when plants die and turn into a bog."

"Peat?" I suggested after a moment's hesitation. After all the talk of peat in Ireland and Scotland, there was no way such a niche topic could come up as fortuitously as this. But it did. "Yes! Peat!" (Which is a delightful exclamation to hear in a Dutch accent, by the way.)

Van der Veen means "from the peat bog." And as I thought about it, it makes sense. If you pronounce "veen" as "fen," you get an English word that means basically the same thing. And the more I looked after that, the more I noticed that a lot of Dutch words actually sound a lot like equivalent English words once you know the right way to say them.

Speaking of surnames, we went on to learn that most Dutch people didn't have last names until the early 1800s. And they would have kept on not having them were it not for Napoleon. After the Netherlands were absorbed into Napoleon's empire, he ordered a census to determine how many able-bodied men he could conscript into his armies. And to complete their forms, the French census-takers needed a last name---even if it meant having to make one up on the spot.

Some people went with occupational names---like the equivalent of Smith or Miller---while some used their father’s given name, and others named themselves after the place they were from. Van der Veen was a common choice among people from the northern peat bogs, and one of the most common of all was “Van Dyke,” meaning (obviously) from the dyke.

And that dovetailed into a neat little linguistic history lesson. Modern Dutch uses the letters “IJ” more-or-less in place of the English letter “Y," and they're basically treated as a single compound letter. At the beginning of a proper noun, both letters are capitalized together, and the main river that runs through Amsterdam is simply called the IJ---a "single" letter with both characters capitalized. The Dutch even pronounce the name of this letter the same way that Americans pronounce the name of the letter “Y." The Dutch refer to the letter “Y” as the Greek Y, since it resembles the Greek letter Upsilon. The bottom line of all this is that if you see a Dutch word with the letter “Y” instead of “IJ,” that means it is an older word---most likely a name---that was cemented before modern Dutch spelling was standardized.

Finally, we reached our first stop in the village of Overloon, the site of a major battle between British and German forces just after the end of Operation Market Garden. The Allies had managed to secure a spaghetti-thin strand of road all the way through the Netherlands to the doorstep of Germany, and the German army threw everything they had in an attempt to cut the strand while it was still thin.

Today, the village is home to a British war cemetery, as well as one of the most impressive war museums that we'd never heard of. The Overloon War Museum was listed on Murk's website as a highly recommended add-on to the standard tour, but I think even that is seriously underselling just how incredible this place is.

Opened in 1946, Overloon was one of the very first WWII museums in Europe. It is set in a patch of woods where a massive tank and infantry battle between the Allied and German forces during Operation Market Garden. The disabled tanks other vehicles from the battle were left in the woods and converted into an open air museum. Since then, the museum has amassed a stunning collection of tanks, trucks, and other military vehicles.

A few vehicles and art installations are still outdoors, but the bulk of the collection is now kept safely indoors. As we walked through the forest, Murk commented that he liked the movie Fury because it showed how it took a clever use of multiple American Sherman tanks to take out a single German Tiger.

As we moved inside the museum, we got a quick refresher on the backstory of Operation Market Garden. Inspired by the successful use of paratroopers on D-Day, British Field Marshal Montgomery drew up an even larger, more complicated operation. Essentially, the Allies would try to capture a two-lane highway cutting 60 miles deep into German-occupied territory

(Source: Wikimedia)

The ultimate target of the push was the town of Arnhem, which sat astride the furthest branch of the Rhine just after it splits up into a delta that spiders across the Netherlands. If the Allies could capture Arnhem and fortify their supply lines, they would have cut the German forces in half and given themselves an open path eastward into the heart of Germany.

It was a bold plan, to say the least. And according to Murk, pretty much everyone outside of Monty's inner circle knew it was crazy from the start. It was audaciously complex, requiring clockwork cooperation between tens of thousands of soldiers among multiple divisions, and the slightest misfortune or miscalculation could bring the whole thing toppling down.

General Eisenhower---recently promoted to the role Allied Supreme Commander---had a different plan for Monty’s troops. The Allies had already surrounded the Belgian port city of Antwerp and secured the south bank of its estuary to the Atlantic. A good push with the help of British paratroopers support could have driven the German forces out of the city and off of the north bank of the estuary. That would have allowed the Allies to begin shipping war supplies directly to the front line in Antwerp instead of using the existing, painfully stretched supply lines running hundreds of miles back to Cherbourg in Normandy. It also would have allowed them to then pivot toward Germany and advance eastward without fear of counterattacks from behind.

Eisenhower was shrewd enough to appreciate how much Montgomery resented being made to serve under an American general, and how eager he was to find a way back into the limelight. Eisenhower told Montgomery that he could do his operation, but only with British troops. Eisenhower wasn't about to sacrifice any Americans for Monty’s suicide mission.

Then everything changed when Germany started barraging London with their deadly new V-2 rockets. Churchill and the rest of the British government was intent on cutting off the V-2 launch sites in Holland at any cost, and Montgomery convinced them that his plan would be the fastest way to get it done. Eisenhower was compelled to support Operation Market Garden to the hilt---committing the entire strength of 101st and 82nd Airborne divisions to the job.

It was a mess from the start. Speed and surprise were key, yet it ended up taking three days just to drop all of the men and equipment because there were so many of them and not enough planes. Many troopers landed only to find their equipment---dropped hours or even days earlier---had been long since stolen or blown up by the Germans.

There were around a dozen bridges that needed to be captured, and there were no provisions made for repairing or replacing a single one if it was sabotaged by the Germans. So when multiple bridges where inevitably ruined, it took days to fix the problem. And all the while, German artillery rained down on the jammed convoy and the paratroopers stuck far behind enemy lines. The British paratroopers that were dropped on the city of Arnhem---the operation’s ultimate objective with its bridge across the Rhine---were sent in with only 48 hours' worth of supplies. They managed to hold out for nine days without reinforcement before finally running out of ammo and being forced to surrender.

Inside, the museum holds a stunning collection of military tanks, trucks, and other vehicles from WWII and beyond. It started with some life-size dioramas telling the story of the Allied invasion of Europe from D-Day leading up through Market Garden.

We saw firsthand the massive superiority in size, armor, and weaponry that the German tanks had over the American tanks. Germany had designed its tanks to take on the Soviet Union, which at the time had the most formidable tank corps in the world. By comparison, British tanks had fallen woefully behind the cutting edge, and American tanks were still in their infancy.

The most memorable tank on display was one that actually fought in the battle of Overloon and was disabled by a landmine. Enshrined on the front of the tank is a grisly letter written by the tank's driver after he learned that the museum had put it on display. The letter recounts in grisly detail the moment of the explosion and the driver's efforts to save his crew members, several of whom died from their horrific wounds shortly after being pulled from the wreckage.

There were a number of planes in the collection, too, including a Spitfire, a B-25 Mitchell, and a C-47 transport in the middle of being restored.

The museum includes a small collection of more modern tanks as well, including a Dutch tank that served in UN peacekeeping missions.

In addition to tanks, the museum has a stunning variety of other vehicles, including jeeps, motorcycles, gigantic logistical trucks, and even a snowmobile.

It was amazing to see just how much variety and specialization there was.

One corner of the museum highlights how black American soldiers were mainly used for logistical operations and unskilled labor, with only a relative few assigned to black combat units. (The US military remained strictly segregated by race until 1948, three years after the end of the war.) Despite being disproportionately relegated to the more ignoble roles during the war, many black soldiers came to enjoy a level of pride and respect for their service that they had never gotten back home. When they returned from the war, however, it was like nothing had changed at all. They were once again treated as mere "boys," socially inferior even to the former German POWs who had opted to become naturalized US citizens after the war.

There were other fun curiosities, too, like a sign used on the "Red Ball Express"---the complex convoy system that carried essential supplies from Cherbourg at the tip of Normandy all the way up to the front lines.

There was also a pretty impressive display of just about every type of explosive and ammunition used during the war.

And we probably shouldn't have been surprised to find some LEGO dioramas there, too.

We could have easily spent an entire day in the museum, but it was really just the appetizer to the main event. Like I said before, we were already having to pick and choose what we would get to see today, focusing on the American half of the operation. Getting to see the entire breadth of the operation would have required a two or even three day trip, which in retrospect would have been incredibly cool, though perhaps not the best use of our time when we only had a week in the country.

We started in the village of Son, just north of the city of Eindhoven in the southeastern Netherlands. Between Son and Eindhoven runs a major waterway called the Wilhelmina Canal. The bridge crossing the canal was one of the many bridges that needed to be successfully captured as part of Market Garden. And it was at this very river crossing where Murk told us the story.

As the convoy of British ground forces (”Garden”) pushed up through Eindhoven to secure the bridge from the south, the 506th Regiment of the 101st Airborne (including Easy Company), was dropped near Son to secure the bridge from the north and stop the Germans from blowing up the bridge as soon as the British troops reached it. The American paratroopers were held up by an unexpected German gun battery, however, and the Germans destroyed the bridge. This set the operation back until the following morning as the British engineers scrambled to bring in a replacement Bailey bridge.

Leaving the modern bridge behind, Murk took us around the village of Son, showing us where the German guns that held up the 506th had been entrenched. Comparing the photos to the town today, we could actually see where some of the original buildings still stand.

Meanwhile, the 502nd Regiment of the 101st was locked in a brutal fight just a mile west, in the woods between Son and the neighboring village of Best. Best had its own bridge across the canal, and the 502nd had been tasked with capturing that bridge as a backup. The village was heavily defended by German forces, however, and the 502nd couldn't break through. Furthermore, the Germans began to counterattack into the woods in an attempt to recapture the fields where the 502nd and 506th had landed, cutting them off from their supplies.

Those woods were our next stop. Murk had wanted to take us on a shortcut that ran along a series of dirt roads, but they were too muddy and treacherous after the recent rainstorms, so we backtracked and took the paved country roads instead. (Which would prove to be a bit of foreshadowing.)

Stopping at an intersection on the western edge of the woods, we learned the stories of two particular men of the 502nd---one a lowly enlisted man and the other a high-ranking officer.

Private First Class Joe Mann was a Toccoa man, having gone through the original batch parachute infantry training with the 506th Division at Camp Toccoa before being transferred to the 502nd. (Anyone who’s seen Band of Brothers will recall the grueling training that the troopers of the 506th went through at Toccoa and the significance of being a “Toccoa man” later on in the war, as more and more veterans were wounded and replaced with fresh-faced recruits with no experience and little sense.)

During the attack on Best, Mann's unit had been dispersed by enemy fire. Taking a rocket launcher and his M1 rifle, Mann crept up to a fortified German 88 mm gun and took out the entire crew by himself. He sustained four wounds in the process, but he refused to be evacuated. The next morning, the Germans assaulted his unit's position. A German grenade landed within a few feet of Mann. His arms having been bandaged tightly to his sides, Mann threw himself onto the grenade and sacrificed himself to protect his fellow soldiers.

Lieutenant Colonel Robert Cole was already a legend, having lead his battalion of paratroopers in a bayonet charge into the hedgerows of Normandy on D-Day. That was the kind of leader Cole was---always at the front, always taking the riskiest position himself. While commanding his battalion in the woods outside Best, Cole radioed in for air support. But his troops were very close to the German lines, and the woods were obstructing the pilot's view. To avoid friendly fire, Cole needed to set out some bright orange markers to show the pilot where his men were positioned. Cole chose to deploy the markers personally, and he was killed almost instantly by a German sniper after breaking cover.

Both PFC Mann and Lt. Col. Cole were posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Moving north, we saw the fields used as drop zones for 502nd and 506th, as well as a farmhouse that was used as a supply headquarters. The current owner of the farm is an older gentleman who was there on the day of the drop as a young boy. He keeps a nice little monument to the 101st Airborne near his driveway. It's private property, but the owner is friendly and allows Murk to visit with his tour groups. At least, that's what Murk says.

We learned that in addition to the C-47 transports, gliders were also used to bring in supplies and support staff that weren't parachute trained. The gliders eventually had to go back where they came from, it was painfully time-consuming for a C-47 to land, attach a glider, and take off again. Instead they developed a clever skyhook system where the transport planes could snatch the gliders off the ground without having to land at all.

Our goal was to keep cutting northwards along country roads, following the path of the paths of the 101st Airborne and the British ground forces. But at almost every turn, we ran into closures caused by road resurfacing projects. It was almost as if the resurfacing projects had been strategically placed to prevent us from moving more than a kilometer or so in any direction from the Paulushoef farm. Murk had never seen anything like it, and his knowledge of the Dutch east-country back roads was tested to the limit, but he pulled through for us in the end.

Our next stop was the town of Sint-Oedenrode, just north of Son. It was here that General Maxwell Taylor---commander of the entire 101st Airborne---established his divisional headquarters during Market Garden. He originally set up shop in a nice building near the center of town, but he soon relocated to an old fortified manor house on the outskirts of town. Complete with a moat, gatehouse, and tall crenelated towers, it seemed to Taylor a much more fitting residence for someone of his station. (And honestly, who wouldn't take the opportunity to set up shop in a castle if they could?)

On our way out of Sint-Oedenrode, we stopped to visit another monument. In a touching reversal of the usual story, this monument was built by the 101st Airborne in honor of the Dutch citizens who aided them during the campaign.

The next village north of Sint-Oedenrode was Veghel, and it had another essential bridge that the Allies needed to capture. Fortunately, the elements of the 101st that landed near Veghel were able to capture the town on day one with relative ease. Unfortunately, the two towns were separated by about three and a half miles of exposed two-lane highway running through open floodplains and farmland. It was stretches like this that helped to earn this route the nickname "Hell's Highway."

The land to either side was soft and marshy---impossible for the Allied vehicles to drive on. If a vehicle broke down or was damaged by enemy fire, the rest of the convoy couldn't just go around them. Everyone behind the disabled vehicle came to a dead stop until it could be pushed off the side of the road. And all the while, the rest of the convoy were sitting ducks for the German artillery and 88mm anti-tank guns.

A full week into the operation that was only supposed to last two or three, the Germans launched a major counter-offensive to cut off the highway between Sint-Oedenrode and Veghel. Since there was no alternative path for the Allied supply convoy to take, the Germans knew that if they could capture just a tiny sliver of the highway and hold it for even a few hours, that might be enough to put the final nail in the coffin of the already floundering Allied operation.

And that's exactly what they did. The American 501st Regiment of the 101st Airborne was able to repel the German attacks against Veghel itself, but the Germans succeeded in capturing a small stretch of the highway south of Veghel and held it for a full day before finally retreating. The Allies retook the highway only to find it covered in mines and booby traps that took hours to clear, by which point the operation had already ended in the failure to take the final bridge across the Rhine at Arnhem.

A wide, modern highway now runs along the route of Hell's Highway, but sections of the old two-lane highway still run alongside it. And we were able to stand at the side of the road where all this happened as Murk recounted the story.

Our next stop was a windmill in the small community of Eerde on the western fringe of Veghel. It was here that the 501st Regiment fended off a fierce counterattack from the German 6th paratrooper regiment, a unit that the 101st Airborne had previously faced off against during the invasion of Normandy. With the help of some British tanks, the Allies were able to hold off the German assault, but at great cost.

The windmill was badly damaged during the fighting, but it has since been rebuilt by donations and volunteers. There's a small shop nearby with murals inside that tell the story of the battle.

Our last stop was the town of Veghel itself. We saw the Klondike Manor, which served as the headquarters of the 501st and still bears the Screaming Eagle crest of the 101st Airborne. We also saw a monument to the 101st Airborne that included an inscribed boulder, a bronze kangaroo, and a buried urn containing soil from all 50 US states. The kangaroo was a bit perplexing until we learned that "Kangaroo" was the call sign for the 101st Airborne Division during Operation Market Garden. That's also where the name of Klondike Manor comes from. All of the units in the 101st had call signs starting with the letter K, and the 501st's call sign was Klondike.

Translated into English, the inscription on the monument reads:

In honor of the heroes of the 101st Airborne Division of the American Army under the command of General Maxwell D. Taylor, Operation Market Garden, 17 Sept. - 28 Nov. 1944, North Brabant, Gelderland.

In everlasting gratitude, the government and people of the Netherlands

As we drove back toward Amsterdam, we had more time to ask Murk our random questions about Dutch history and culture.

Nic asked about why so many people call the Netherlands “Holland” when Holland is just one part of the country. We learned that at one point in its history, the Netherlands were a confederation of independent states---a bit like the United States before the constitution was signed. Hence the plural name “the Netherlands.” Holland was the richest and most politically powerful state in the Netherlands. Amsterdam, The Hague, and Rotterdam are all in Holland. If someone from another country did business with a Dutchman, odds were good he was from Holland. So Holland became synonymous with the Netherlands as a whole. And to be fair, while plenty of people are more than happy to correct those who mistakenly refer to the entire country as Holland, the Dutch have heavily bought into name's brand recognition. "Holland" is emblazoned on almost all of the tourist trinkets we saw, and even the country's national soccer team goes by the name Holland.

Next, I asked Murk for some clarification on the history of the Netherlands as a nation. During the Golden Age of the 17th century, the Netherlands was a republic. But today, it is a kingdom. And before it was an independent country, they belonged to the duchy of Burgundy at one point and the kingdom of Spain at another point.

He explained that the Netherlands–including Belgium and Luxembourg–became a territory of the dukes of Burgundy during the Middle Ages. Through marriage, the Burgundian house of Valois intertwined with the Austrian Habsburgs and the royal family of Spain. Thus, it came to be that a boy named Charles was born in the Netherlands in the year 1500 and grew up to become Duke of Burgundy, Master of the Netherlands, Emperor of Austria, Holy Roman Emperor, and King of Spain and all its overseas territories.

Charles was a Catholic, but he let the Dutch continue practicing their Protestantism. Charles’s son Philip, however, was not so accommodating. He cracked down on the Dutch Protestants, which lead to the Eighty Years’ War and the independence of the Dutch Republic. According to Murk, though, the religious persecution was merely an excuse for the Dutch, who realized they could make a lot more money if they didn’t have to pay taxes to Philip.

The Netherlands stayed a republic for the next hundred and fifty years or so, until Napoleon swept across Europe. After Napoleon’s defeat, the rest of Europe’s leaders decided that they wanted a strong kingdom---not a wishy-washy republic---guarding the northern border of France. They elevated the most powerful Dutch nobleman, Prince William VI of Orange-Nassau, making him King William I of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (whose royal barge we'd seen the previous day at the National Maritime Museum). The house of Orange-Nassau has served as the figurehead royal family ever since, hence the reason why orange is the national color of the Netherlands.

And if you're wondering, yes---the "Orange" in Orange-Nassau refers to that old Roman city in the south of France that we'd visited months earlier with Jessica's mom Donna. How does a Dutch royal family get its name from an ancient city in southern France? The story is as complicated as the story of Western Europe itself.

To start with, we have to go back over a thousand years to Charlemagne, who managed to unite all the lands of modern Germany, Austria, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and northern Italy into a single empire. After Charlemagne's death, the Empire was divided between his three grandsons into the kingdoms of West Francia (France), Middle Francia (the Netherlands, Burgundy, Provence, Switzerland, and Northern Italy), and East Francia (Germany and Austria).

Middle Francia was nominally the most prestigious of the three Kingdoms. It contained both the imperial capital of Aachen and the holy city of Rome. But it lacked the overarching cultural and geographic ties that unified the other two kingdoms. Almost immediately, it began to crumble and splinter into smaller and smaller kingdoms, duchies, and principalities, which then fell into political orbit around either France to the west or the Holy Roman Empire to the east. The lines became messy, loyalties became divided, and conflict inevitably arose.

At the risk of grossly oversimplifying the story, this is the reason why the borderlands between France and Germany have always been so fiercely contested---a thousand-year squabble between two siblings over how to divvy up their older brother's toys.

But back to the House of Orange-Nassau. For complicated political reasons, the city of Orange was elevated to a principality within the territory of Burgundy. Even though Orange was geographically tiny and economically insignificant, it was still highly desirable because whoever owned it got to call himself a prince. Through a series of strategic marriages, the title "Prince of Orange" was eventually inherited by the House of Nassau, a noble family whose original territory was centered around the German town of Nassau (sort of near Koblenz) but who had managed to marry their way into ownership of various valuable territories, including much of the Netherlands.

The family also made marital connections to the British royal dynasty, and Prince William III of Orange-Nassau eventually became King of England and Scotland after the ousting of James II (a move which would in turn lead to the Jacobite rebellions whose ultimate failure at the Battle of Culloden resulted in the near annihilation of Scottish Highland culture).

William III was a staunch enemy of Louis XIV of France, and it was during Louis' consolidation of French territory that the city of Orange was taken by force and made part of the Kingdom of France.

William III died without any direct heirs, so his titles and territories were divided among their closest respective claimants. The title "Prince of Orange-Nassau"---now having basically no connection to the actual territories of either Orange or Nassau---was inherited along with several Dutch lordships by William's closest male-line relative, a man named John William Friso. Friso died at just 23 years old, but his son became Prince William IV of Orange-Nassau, and Friso's great-grandson Prince William VI became King William I of the Netherlands after the end of the end of the Napoleonic Wars.

Friso’s progeny thrived across the rest of Europe as well. So well, in fact, that all ten hereditary monarchs currently ruling in Europe can find Friso in their family trees.

European history is unimaginably complicated, and all the threads are intertwined. One of the coolest things about the way Jessica and I did this trip is how it let us appreciate this connectedness. Trying to understand it all is like trying to understand the books of a massive multinational conglomerate with a thousand years of mergers, acquisitions, and spin-offs.

Anyway, I think that's enough history for one day. To sum up, the Operation Market Garden tour was amazing, Murk was amazing, and we would heartily recommend them both to anyone planning a trip in the Netherlands who has at least a moderate interest in history. You can find Murk at www.historytrips.eu.