#They’re still reading Macbeth

[beloved-child-of-the-house]

I had this idea for my 8th year fic (that I have mostly dropped bc I felt like this storyline was making the fic too complicated) about the muggle studies class doing a play and Ron and Draco are playing the leads bc they’re the best actors in the group but the leads happen to be a married couple so they have to (petition to of their own volition bc it’s not in the fucking script) kiss onstage.

[leighsartworks216]

I Come With Knives Pt5

Astarion x gn!Tav/Reader

Am I happy with this chapter? I think so??? I think I was trying to get it to go somewhere it didn't want to go before but I'm happy with how it ends now. I don't know if the words I'm saying make sense I'm so tired lmao

This chapter was inspired by A Lover's Folly (the chapter Fear of Losing It, specifically) by @tripleyeeet! Please go give it a read it's so fucking good

Warnings: angst, blood, murder, canon-typical violence, swearing, hints to a panic attack, Macbeth reference

Word Count: 2,103

Main Masterlist

First Baldur's Gate 3 Masterlist - Second Baldur's Gate 3 Masterlist

I Come With Knives Masterlist

AO3

Tag List Form

“A mystical and dangerous people, we travel the land, never settling in one place. We steal your chickens, curse your crops, seduce your daughters - your friend here has heard it all, I’m sure.” You look at Astarion from the corner of your eye. Despite his cool, confident demeanor, you can see how tense he is. He’s staring at the man before you like a steak on a silver platter. “I wish I had half the power settled folk think my people possess. Alas, I am a simple wanderer. A simple wanderer and monster hunter. But I’m no witchdoctor or cut-throat.”

“So what monster are you hunting?”

Astarion pipes in, a devious smirk playing on his lips. You’re shocked the self-proclaimed monster hunter does not take notice of his fangs or the punctures on his neck. Though, Astarion’s are far less prominent than yours - you feel fortunate to have a high collar. “Something terrifying, no doubt. Dragon? Cyclops?” He paused, a teasing lilt in his voice as he adds, “Kobold?”

Gandrel chuckles. “Nothing so dramatic. Actually, this quarry is a bit unusual. My people got word of a missing person, stolen in the night by a vampire. It’s unlikely they’re still alive, but with any luck we’ll find the kidnapper.”

You swallow, but the hunter doesn’t seem to notice. Astarion can hear the spike in your heart rate. “That’s not much to go on.”

“You’re right about that. We do know the victim’s name, though there’s not much work can be done with that save wander around shouting for them.” He tells you the name, and your heart drops. You make a good effort not to show it. Your face is still neutral as before, your body stiffly in position, but with a glance Astarion can see the way your eyes are distant. They flicker over Gandrel’s face, assessing the threat he possesses. You’re trying to work up a plan, an escape route, anything - but fear clouds your thoughts. Astarion can smell the anxiety wafting off you, even through the hunter’s stench.

This shouldn’t be as big of a problem as your mind makes it to be. You could lie, tell him you weren’t stolen, tell him you ran away. Perhaps he would take money for his silence. But what if he chose to take you back anyway? What if she is providing a much higher reward than anything you can offer? You can’t go back. You can’t.

Astarion clears his throat and steps forward. “And if you find them? Where will you be taking them, exactly?”

“With any luck? I’d be taking them back to Berdusk.”

Berdusk. Being able to place a name to the city of your tormentor somehow made it worse. You knew where she resided now - you could simply take a detour from Baldur’s Gate and kill her. But, that would mean going back. Walking within reach of her clutches. You could almost feel her hot breath against your neck. Her nails digging into your skin. You can’t go back to that.

“Are you alright?” Your mind is forced back into your body when the Gur directs his question at you. You search your mind for an excuse, but fall hopelessly short.

Astarion steps in where you falter. “Ah, yes, you remember then, darling?” He speaks, then, to the Gur. “I believe we heard that name along our travels. A mere whisper on the wind.”

The hunter lights up. “Really? Any information you have would be invaluable to my mission.”

He taps his chin, frowning in fake thought. “It’s a bit foggy - we must have crossed paths weeks ago by now. If only I could remember…” He looks at the Gur from the corner of his eye, smirking. “Perhaps I can be enticed to recall just where they went.”

The man sighs. He reaches for his coin purse. Your heart leaps into your throat. He’s reaching for a weapon. He knows who you are. He’s going to kill you. He knows what Astarion is. He’s going to kill you both.

When your mind catches up, the man is on the ground. You kneel over him. Two hands hold your dagger within his eye, hilt-deep. The other stares blankly up at you, mouth gaped around a silent scream. Droplets of blood marr your face, mere specks of warmth and wet.

“Shit.”

Astarion grabs your shoulder, but your mind is still consumed by fear and paranoia. You whirl around, bloody blade bared at the vampire. Your grip is all wrong - you’re terrified. He steps back, hands raised. Your eyes flicker across his face over and over again, but you don’t see him. In his place is a stranger. Someone ready to steal you, haul you back to Berdusk, back to your master.

“As much as I love the offer, now isn’t the time,” he quips. He kneels down slowly, getting to eye-level. His whole face is dark. The reference to sex is completely masked by his seriousness. “You’re safe. You’re not going back - not if I can help it.”

Your hands shake. Drops of blood fall off the knife, landing in the dirt without a sound. His blood. This man’s blood.

Gods, what have you done?

You drop the knife like it burns you to hold it. It clatters to the ground with a dull thud. You didn’t notice before the blood staining your fingers, but you do now. It’s all you can notice. Well, that, and the body beside you.

“I-I killed him,” you stammer out, barely a whisper. Astarion says nothing. He realizes the irony in your guilt just as much as you. “I didn’t even think- I didn’t… Gods.”

Your thoughts are consumed by the red stains. You have to get them off. You have to rid yourself of this ever-growing weight in your stomach. But you don’t have much to wipe it off on. Your clothes? Then you’d have to wash the blood out. (Though, little flecks stick to your collar and sleeves already.) The ground? Rub dirt all over until somehow it removes the red? You couldn’t even entertain the thought. But you needed to get it off.

You frantically wipe the blood away with your hands, only serving to spread it further into your skin. But it’s all you can think to do. You have to get it off. You must. If you don’t… If… Would something bad happen? You’re not sure. It feels like yes, something terrible would occur the longer it sat on your flesh. But what? Why won’t it fucking come off?

You don’t even realize you’re speaking. Half-formed desperate, choked pleas to get rid of the blood. Prayers to higher powers to forgive you - even when you’d never prayed for such a thing before. Insults spewed toward yourself, damning you for being so fucking weak.

So you killed a man, so what? You’d killed hundreds to get you where you kneel. What made him any different?

I killed him in self-defense.

You’ve killed loads of men and creatures alike for the same reason.

He didn’t recognize me.

You don’t know that, do you?

All he had was a name. Not even a description of who he searched for. He wouldn’t recognize me.

And why dwell on that? If he’d recognized you, surely he’d drag you back? Tie you up, gag you, drop you on her doorstep. She’d recognize you.

And she’d punish me. Punish them. And then she’d see my scars. What then?

Then she’d gut you. Slowly. Keeping you alive for as long as possible so she can moan to your screams, so she can lick her fingers clean of your adrenaline-rich blood. She’d even do it in front of her spawn. And they’d love it.

I hurt them.

You fucked up and they paid for it. They’d laugh as you beg for mercy. They’d even join in if they could.

But he didn’t need to die. Astarion, he- He could have led him away. I would have been safe.

And when he realized Astarion sent him on a wild goose chase? He’d turn right back around. And by that point his suspicions would fall to you - the leader. He’d know.

He’d know you’re the monster he hunts.

Hands roughly grab your own, snapping you out of your restless trance. Your skin is not only red from blood, but from how much you rubbed and scratched. Small lines beaded with your own blood where your nails broke the skin. It stung. And finally feeling that pain grounded you further.

“Calm down, for gods’ sakes,” Astarion cursed. He hurriedly pressed a white handkerchief into your hand. It was soft and cool to the touch. Gold embroidery danced around the edges, quickly becoming stained and ruined. “You’re going to rip your skin off.”

You felt everything so vividly. You almost wished you were numb to it again. “I’m sorry,” you croaked. “I don’t know what happened, I just… I thought of her. Of what she’d do to me, and I couldn’t think of another way out.”

He sighed, annoyed but all too understanding. “I was going to send him off North. By the time he realized he’s been had, we would already be in Baldur’s Gate.”

“I’m sorry.”

He smirked wickedly, mischief twinkling in his eye, despite the tinge of concern underlying it all. “You’ve simply provided a more permanent solution to our problem.” He glanced over, but you closed your eyes. You didn’t want to look again. “No point worrying about it now.”

“He could have helped,” you chastise. The intensity was only directed toward yourself. “If we paid him or explained or- or something, he could have gone back and said I was dead. Then- then she might have stopped looking for me.”

“And if he didn’t?”

You couldn’t let yourself spiral through that argument again. You just shook your head, opening your eyes to watch as he wiped away the blood. Most of it stayed, requiring water to wash it off - a realization that frightened you. What if the blood never came off?

“I know it may seem hard to believe,” he began. His voice was strained, like he was forcing himself to believe in it too, “but you’re not alone in this fight. If she finds you - Do you hear me? If. - we can protect you. And if she takes you away, we know where to find you now.”

“Berdusk.” He hummed, pleased you understood his meaning.

“Karlach would go on a rampage before she ever lays a finger on you.”

You chuckled weakly at the thought. You could almost picture your companion barging down the front door of the manor, everybody else behind her, as she tears through the place to find you. It’s… comforting.

A shiver runs through your body as the adrenaline finally fades from your system. You sighed. And just when most of your guilt has left, another weight finds itself in your throat - a heavy lump of fear. “I’m afraid to go to Baldur’s Gate,” you admit quietly. He pauses to look up at you, red eyes scanning your face. “Berdusk is so close by.”

“If it’s any consolation, Cazador is in Baldur’s Gate.” You hum; he’s told you this before.

“And you’re walking back into arms reach.” You look up from your hands. “Doesn’t that terrify you?”

He huffs a humorless laugh. “Do I hide my fear that well?” he teased. “Of course I’m terrified. I have no idea how well these tadpoles block his influence. For all I know, the moment I step foot in the Gate, he’ll have full control over me again.

“But if there’s even the slightest chance I could kill him, I’m going to take it. I can’t go back to that life. Not after this.”

Not after experiencing freedom for the first time in too long.

Astarion curls your fingers around the handkerchief so you’ll hold it. He picks up your bloody dagger and cleans the blade on the dead Gur’s clothes. You can’t watch, but you can see the sneer on his face as he does so. He reaches forward and tucks it away in your sheath. It feels heavier at your hip somehow.

He holds you by your arms as you stand, continuing to hold your hands in front of you. It feels wrong to let them hand so casually by your side, and just the thought of using them makes you feel worse. He turns you away from the body, directing you back toward camp.

You can still feel the Gur’s blood in your skin, even after you spend two whole hours washing your hands.

---

Tag List:

@hypopxia @flsalazar @beverlybeav @angelofthorr @emiemiemiii @marina-and-the-memes @lynnlovesloki @aurasyn @furblrwurblr @cappsikle @mjmygd @thegirlsadventuresinwonderland @kindadolly @bloopthebat @pandimoostuff @chesb0red @black-star1472 @sessils @olitheghostboy-blog @puppyg1rl666 @maruichio @cyber-dump-171 @katharynmarie

[sapphirecobalt-1]

Would You Still Love Me The Same? || S.R.

Would You Still Love Me The Same? - Chapter 1 - sapphirecobalt - Criminal Minds (US TV) [Archive of Our Own]

characters (so far): Reader, Spencer Reid, Luke Alvez, Emily Prentiss, OCs

relationships (so far): Spencer Reid x Reader

tags (so far): angst, established relationship, minor Cat Adams/Spencer Reid/Reader, Canon Divergent, AU - Mafia, angst with a happy ending, first person pov

chapters: 2/?

summary:

Shortly after her execution was scheduled, Cat Adams came up with one last plan to ruin my husband's life. As much as I hate to admit it, it was a brilliant plan, not to mention well executed.

There's just one itsy bitsy little detail she forgot to account for:

Me.

snippet:

I took a shuddering breath and it hit me that I haven’t used the bathroom in ages.

And so I finally did. And when I wiped myself clean, I could (almost) pretend the blood on my hands was period blood.

But when I went to wash my hands, I couldn’t pretend anymore. There was no more denying that the blood on my hands wasn’t from my period. It wasn’t my blood at all. The soap that smelled like it belonged in a hospital turned a sick pink color as I scrubbed, trying not to have a Lady Macbeth moment in the middle of BAU’s bathroom. But fuck, for a few seconds, I could have sworn the blood on my hands wouldn’t come off, no matter how hard I scrubbed. But it did. And I know it did because the hot water ran red, then pink, and finally clear. But I still kept scrubbing. As if the soap and hot water could wash away the feeling of her hands on mine, of her skin on mine, of the memories we made. It couldn’t, but nevertheless, I tried. Only when the scalding water nearly burned me did I stop, exclaiming as I yanked my hand from under the sink.

“Are you alright in there?”

“I’m okay!” I responded to the agent posted outside the door. I turn the knobs to make the water run on the cooler side of room temperature and all but waterboard my hands under the stream.

Sufficiently washed and cooled off, I wash my face, with water only, as quickly as possible, mindful of how sensitive my hands feel. I dry myself off with some paper towels and turn to the clothes waiting for me.

As I remove my soiled clothes and slip on the spare ones Emily brought me, the observation I made when Emily first gave me these clothes gets catapulted to the forefront of my mind. It’s like my brain won’t let me ignore it now that I’m face to face with the clothes. With Spencer’s clothes. A plain black t-shirt that reads ‘FBI’ across the chest in big bold letters and — yeah, okay, I don’t think this one is actually his. But the sweatpants definitely are. They fucking smell like him. Book pages and lavender and something that’s distinctly Spencer. The sweats are really long, not surprising given how freakishly tall he is, but still. I have to roll them up a bunch of times so they actually fit, which isn’t easy given how they’re cinched at the bottom. The hoodie Emily brought me is also definitely Spencer’s. It smells like him, yeah, but it’s also got the ‘Caltech’ logo emblazoned on the front and Spence’s the only person I know who went there.

[lingthusiasm]

Transcript Episode 97: OooOooh~~ our possession episode oOooOOoohh 👻

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm episode ‘OooOooh~~ our possession episode oOooOOoohh 👻'. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the episode show notes page.

[Music]

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

Gretchen: I’m Gretchen McCulloch. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about possession – using things like “have” and “of” and “apostrophe S” and how different languages do possession differently. But first, next month is our 8th anniversary! We’ve been making Lingthusiasm for eight years with you, and we’re still excited to keep making it.

Lauren: As part of the anniversary celebrations, we’re running the final listener survey in our trilogy of surveys. We have a new set of linguistics experiments for you to do, and we use these surveys to shape topics and ideas for the show.

Gretchen: As one example, we had a really good response to our linguistics advice bonus episode that we did last year, so you can also use this year’s survey to ask us your pressing linguistics advice questions for a potential future advice episode. You can suggest linguistically interesting books for us to read and maybe comment on. We have further refinements on the bouba-kiki experiment, and more!

Lauren: You can hear about the results of the last two years of surveys in bonus episodes that we’ll link to in the show notes. We’ll be sharing the results of the next experiments next year.

Gretchen: We have had ethics board approval from La Trobe University, which is Lauren’s university, for this survey, so we can use the results in linguistics research papers as well. But the ethics board is only for three years, so this is your last chance to be a part of the Lingthusiasm listener survey.

Lauren: If you did the survey in a previous year, first of all, thank you! And secondly, yes, you are still allowed to take it again if you want. There’re new questions.

Gretchen: To do the survey or to read more details about it, go to bit.ly/lingthusiasmsurvey24 – that’s all one word, no spaces, no capitals or anything.

Lauren: Or you can follow the links from our website and social media.

Gretchen: Our most recent bonus episode was all about communicating with aliens. We discussed how alien languages might work, how we might try and make sense of them based on how existing human and animal communication systems work, and how we would plan to pack enough batteries for xenolinguistic fieldwork.

Lauren: Go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm to get access to the xenolinguistics episode – and way more bonus episodes – and to help keep the show running ad-free.

[Music]

Lauren: On today’s episode, we’ll be discussing –

Gretchen: Ooh, can I say it in my witch voice?

Lauren: Yes, you can say this in your witch voice.

Gretchen: [Witch voice] “Eye of newt and toe of frog, / Wool of bat and tongue of dog, / Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting, / Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing, / For a charm of powerful trouble, / Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.”

Lauren: [Laughs] Those lines come from Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, particularly the witches who feature in Macbeth. And not only is it scene-settingly spooky, but it is doing something important grammatically for this episode.

Gretchen: So, “eye of newt and lizard’s leg” are both – one of these constructions has an “of” in it, “eye OF newt,” and the other one has the “apostrophe S,” “LIZARD’S leg.” These are two constructions that are both doing a similar thing grammatically. They’re indicating this relationship between these two things – the newt and the eye, and the lizard and the leg.

Lauren: We can have different constructions doing the same thing. This thing is about a relationship between two entities. “Eye of newt” or “lizard’s leg” is a part-whole relationship where the eye is part of the newt.

Gretchen: But then there’s also “charm of powerful trouble,” which is not the same relationship as the eye of the newt. It’s not that the trouble has a charm. In this case, it’s using the same “of” to be part of the description.

Lauren: There’re a whole host of other possible relationships that can be expressed by “of” or “apostrophe S.”

Gretchen: We could talk about the “witch’s spellbook.”

Lauren: Is that the spellbook that the witch owns or is she the author of the spellbook?

Gretchen: This is one of the things about something like a book – is this my book that I wrote or my book that I just happen to be reading right now?

Lauren: One is a purchase or ownership relationship, and one is one of the ownership of the ideas rather than physical possession.

Gretchen: You can also have interpersonal relationships – the “wizard’s apprentice,” “my apprentice,” “my mentor.”

Lauren: I like that with these sometimes the interpersonal relationships are equal. If you’re my friend, then I’m your friend. And some of them have asymmetrical relationships. The mentor has an apprentice.

Gretchen: Or something like “the witch’s cat,” “the witch’s familiar,” or maybe “the cat’s witch,” depending on whether you’re taking the point of view of the cat.

Lauren: I guess when it comes to – I mean, with cats in particular it’s quite difficult, but when it comes to, say, pets, there’s a reciprocal relationship, but there is an assumption of ownership on behalf of the pet owner.

Gretchen: But sometimes, you know, people refer to themselves as being their cat’s “parents” or their cat’s “humans” and stuff as well.

Lauren: Yeah, I’m sure there’re plenty of cats that don’t feel like they are owned by anyone.

Gretchen: Particularly cats. Something like “the school of magic” – the magic isn’t even aware of owning the school. It’s just an association of a school with magic.

Lauren: Or “the colour of the toadstool” – it’s about the characteristic.

Gretchen: Or something like, “the cauldron of silver” – the cauldron is made out of silver – “a vial of poison” – the poison is contained in the vial.

Lauren: The vial is not made of poison. “The cauldron of silver” and “the vial of poison” have different relationships there.

Gretchen: One that I really like is constructions like, “tomorrow’s weather,” because it’s really clear that that’s just weather that has an association with tomorrow. It’s not that tomorrow somehow possesses the weather because these are both abstract concepts, and what would that even mean.

Lauren: Yeah, or just a kind of general relationship of proximity. Like, “the demon of the night” is not owned by the night. You can’t really say, “the night’s demon,” or “Zelda’s legend.”

Gretchen: Do you mean Legend of Zelda, like the video game?

Lauren: Yeah, I do.

Gretchen: I think “demon of the knight” works in this ownership relationship if it’s “K-N-I-G-H-T.”

Lauren: Oh, yes.

Gretchen: And they’re, like, best buds or, you know, enemies to lovers 20,000 words.

Lauren: Whole different genre.

Gretchen: A whole different genre than the “demon of the K-N-I-G-H-T,” which is a demon that goes [ghost noise] on the knight.

Lauren: Something like “the philosopher’s stone” or “Dracula’s castle” where it’s sometimes about ownership or just attribution. I mean, Dracula definitely didn’t build the castle. Maybe Dracula did build the castle himself. Maybe he’s a multi-skilled vampire.

Gretchen: I think with “the philosopher’s stone,” there’s this idea that the philosopher or the alchemist was the one who created the stone, but then people have been trying to find the philosopher’s stone and take it for themselves as well.

Lauren: And Frankenstein definitely created “Frankenstein’s monster.” That’s the whole premise of the book.

Gretchen: That’s very true, yes. And then you have these very abstract relationships – something like “the haunting of the house” or “the house’s haunting,” again, this is a relationship between these two nouns, but it’s not clear that the haunting belongs to the house, or the house belongs to the haunting – whichever way you put it.

Lauren: I also like that sometimes the thing that is being possessed can just be left in context. If you had a witch named “Griselda” who opened up a café, you could just call it “Griselda’s.”

Gretchen: And even if you did call it something more fanciful, people who know you and know that it’s your café might still call it “Griselda’s” – “Griselda’s café,” “Griselda’s house,” “Oh, I’m going over to Griselda’s this evening” – and in context you know what that means.

Lauren: Sometimes, it’s about location, so “Count von Count of Sesame Street.” He is not possessed by Sesame Street; it’s just his location.

Gretchen: “The ghost of Christmas Past” is associated with Christmas Past. I dunno really if “possessed by” or “located in” quite works.

Lauren: “Wicked Witch of the West” – another one of those.

Gretchen: Yeah. I think “located in the west.”

Lauren: We have all of these different relationships that are marked using the same grammatical form, but the relationships can be quite different. It’s not necessarily about ownership or power necessarily.

Gretchen: Yeah, in fact, there was one statistical investigation of this type of relationship to see how many times is it used to represent like, “I own something. This is my cup,” and how many times is it used to represent other types of relationships or associations between words. In this study from 1940, by someone named Fries, found that it was only about 40% that were actually something like “my cup,” where I could be argued to own the cup. Sixty percent of these uses were something like, “tomorrow’s weather,” or “the haunting of the house,” where there really isn’t straightforwardly a possessive or ownership relationship. Yet, that being said, grammatically speaking, people often still use the word “possessive” or sometimes the term “genitive” to refer to this whole category of relationships even though the majority of them don’t necessarily express possession.

Lauren: We’re talking about grammatical possession not spiritual possession, but I’m determined to see how many haunted and spooky examples we can fit into this episode.

Gretchen: They do have a common origin – the idea that maybe an evil spirit might be in possession of your body. They’re almost as old – they’re both from around the 1500s, both uses of the word.

Lauren: Huh. Fascinating. I didn’t realise that they both went back to the same point.

Gretchen: Possession is such a cool grammatical relationship. It’s such a spoooooky grammatical relationship that because this general concept of a range of meanings around the association between two or more nouns is found in a whole bunch of languages, but there’s lots of different, subtle ways that languages do this general category of relationships in different ways.

Lauren: Some languages just straight up have things that can’t be in a possession relationship. Generally, you get things like rivers or stars can’t be in one of these possession constructions, or you have things that have to be possessed. In a language, you might typically see obligatory possession on domestic animals, but you can’t use it for wild animals.

Gretchen: I mean, I think, like, I’d be pretty surprised to see someone talking about “my sun” or “my moon” – in maybe a sufficiently sci-fi context where you have people living on different planets and different solar systems to be like, “Well, our moon is like this, and your guys’s moon over there on your planet (or your three moons) are like that,” or something like that. But I think this is pragmatically a bit odd in English even if grammatically you could say it. It’s just like, what would you mean by that? One example of this which is a more formal constraint and less about the particular meaning is that in Guaraní, which is an Indigenous language of Paraguay, there are certain types of nouns including animal names where you can’t just say something like, “my chicken,” the way you can say, “my mother.” You have to add an additional word. In this case, for a word like “chicken,” it’s a word that means, basically, “pet.” Instead of saying, “my chicken,” you have something like, “my pet chicken,” to indicate that this animal now belongs to the category of things that could be possessed. It’s not so much about, like, you know, people can’t possess animals because they’re fine to say, “my pet chicken,” you just need this additional word added in to do that. People find it confusing, or it sounds strange, if you don’t put that word in.

Lauren: The flip side is that there’re languages where you will have a word that can’t be used without the possessive construction. In Seko Pedang, which is an Austronesian language spoken on the island of Sulawesi, which is part of Indonesia, there’s a really great noun that means “basketful.” It’s quite a handy noun. But it can only be used in possessive constructions. You can’t just have the noun “basketful.” It has to be something like, “my basketful,” or “his basketful.”

Gretchen: Because the idea is if the basket is full of stuff, it’s because someone put it there intentionally, and they wanna keep using it.

Lauren: It’s clearly going to be someone’s basketful. The other example they give for a noun where it’s totally fine to not have it marked – it’s not like all nouns have to do this – is a shirt because you can buy a shirt or loan someone a shirt, the ownership relationship isn’t as important to the meaning.

Gretchen: This is an example of how I could make the same argument for “shirt” that someone has clearly made this shirt – shirts don’t just grow on the bushes and come into appearance – but in this language, it’s like, “Yeah, no, a shirt doesn’t have to belong to someone, but a basketful does have to belong to someone,” which is this very language-specific aspect of that.

Lauren: Yeah, and where you draw the line between what is required to be possessed – or in a language where it’s not grammatically possible to use a possession construction – that’s something you have to figure out for the particular language.

Gretchen: Are there any other languages you know that have these things that are obligatorily possessed or not possessed?

Lauren: I remember when I was learning Nepali, there is a particular set of small things that you tend to just have with you where you can’t use a possession construction. It’s considered weird and a bit unnecessary. Instead of saying, “my pen,” or “my change,” or “my cash,” I would say, “the pen with me,” or “the cash with me,” or “the bag with me.”

Gretchen: Is this like the difference between a disposable plastic shopping bag versus a nice tote bag or a purse or a knapsack that you’ve probably put money into and invested – you’d be attached to, and you’d be sad if you lost? Whereas if I lose a plastic shopping bag, I’m like, “Oh, well, I’ll just get another one. It’s fine.”

Lauren: I think if you had a beautiful fountain pen, it would be, “my pen,” but if you just have a Biro on you, you would say, “It’s with me.” I remember one time using the “Oh, that’s my bag” for a plastic shopping bag, and people thought it was very funny that I would feel the need to exert ownership over this transient thing.

Gretchen: It’s interesting that you can have both things that are too big and important, like the moon, for one person to assert ownership over them and also things like, I dunno, a safety pin, a cheap pen, a plastic bag.

Lauren: I mean, we kind of have this in English as well. I could say, “Do you have a pen on you?” or “Have you got any money on you?”

Gretchen: Oh, and you’re trying to separate me from the concept of the pen of like, “Maybe I’ll borrow your pen, and it’s just a cheap pen, and I might not give it back.”

Lauren: I mean, I’m definitely tying to separate you from the money, that’s why I’m trying to make you feel like it’s not yours, it’s just with you.

Gretchen: Whereas to say, like, “Oh, do you have a car on you, by any chance, that I could borrow?”

Lauren: I think the important thing with these distinctions is you can come up with a meaning-based rationalisation. I definitely had to do that with Nepali to get my head around the construction. But at the end of the day, it’s about what’s grammatical and not grammatical in a language and the lengths you have to go to to try and make it feel like a grammatical thing in your head.

Gretchen: One type of grammatical distinction that a lot of languages have some version of is this idea that there are some elements that’re intrinsically always possessable or in relationship to another entity, and there are some that have this optional relationship. But this happens really differently depending on which language which things go in this category or not.

Lauren: So, something like, “your arm,” is very much attached to you. That relationship cannot be ended easily, I would like to say.

Gretchen: Body parts are a really good example. Even if some terrible circumstance or some horrific horror-movie type circumstance happens, and it does get detached from your body, you’re still feeling very attached to it in an emotional way even if it’s not physically connected to you right now.

Lauren: Physical connection isn’t the only thing because family relationships are another kind of not-ending relationship that you have.

Gretchen: Family relationships are like, you’re not just a grandmother, you’re a grandmother to someone or several someones. There’s no being a grandmother in abstraction that exists without grandchildren to be a grandparent of. In a language like Ojibwe, for example, which is an Algonquian language spoken in Canada, “ninik” is “my arm,” but there’s no context in which a person just says, “*nik,” to mean “arm” in abstract the way you can in English. Or “nookmis” is “my grandmother,” but there’s no context in which you’d just say like, “*ookmis,” that’s not a word. No one goes around saying that to just mean “a grandmother” in abstract.

Lauren: They’ve got the little ungrammatical notations there [asterisks in the written example being drawn from].

Gretchen: But sometimes languages actually do let you make this fine-grained distinction between two different types of ways of possessing a noun. We have this example from Hawaiian, where they actually use two different ways to mark possession depending on whether it is this intrinsic association or it’s this external, separable association. If you say, “nā iwi o Pua,” this means, “Pua’s bones (in Pua’s body).” “Pua” is a person’s name.

Lauren: Right. Definitely intrinsically attached. Hard to end that relationship with your bones.

Gretchen: Very much so. But “Pua” could also be eating a nice chicken dinner, and then you might have, “nā iwi a Pua,” instead of “o Pua,” and this could mean, “Pua’s bones (as in the chicken bones that Pua is eating).” It’s like, “Pua, are you done with those bones yet, or are you gonna save them to make chicken stock with?” They no longer belong to the chicken because the chicken is no more. They belong to Pua but in a separable way where Pua could be like, “Actually, I’m not hungry for all of these. Would you like to have some?”

Lauren: What a neat little pair to show that distinction.

Gretchen: Yeah, it’s this very subtle distinction between what it means to own something in two different ways.

Lauren: I think it’s fair to say English doesn’t have this as a core feature. Because if you say something like, “She has her father’s eyes,” usually we mean that as, “Ah, she has the same coloured eyes as her father.” We could also imagine a fairly horrific context in which she has acquired her father’s eyes physically in her hand.

Gretchen: Because if you were to say, “She has her father’s book,” that doesn’t necessarily mean that her book resembles her father’s book. It probably means she borrowed this book from her father. But in the context of a thing like eyes, it’s really context and our knowledge of how eyes work that enable this to happen.

Lauren: There’s nothing grammatically distinct happening between those two there.

Gretchen: I’m thinking of the children’s book series Amelia Bedelia where sometimes Amelia Bedelia takes on these very literal interpretations of what someone said. I can picture Amelia Bedelia being like, “Oh, you want me to have my father’s eyes? Okay.” [Plucking noise] Plucks the eyeballs out, and you’re like, “Amelia Bedelia, no, don’t do it!”

Lauren: Okay, yeah, we’ll save that for the Amelia Bedelia horror fanfic community. Free idea right there.

Gretchen: Body parts and kinship terms are the most common types of meanings that are expressed by this grammatically different type of possession, but other things that sometimes have a special possession marking are social relationships like a trading partner or a neighbour or a friend. You can’t just be a friend in isolation. You have to be a friend “of” someone, or you have to be a neighbour “of” someone.

Lauren: That makes sense.

Gretchen: Also, part-whole relationships, like “the tabletop” is part of the table. The top doesn’t exist without the table also existing – “the side of the table” – things that originate from someone, like your sweat or your voice, again, hard to imagine them existing without a body to put them into existence. Mental states and processes like fear or surprise, which only exist because someone gives rise to them. And also, sometimes attributes like a name or an age, which you can sometimes conceive of as “What does an age mean unless it’s an age of someone? Otherwise, it’s just a number.”

Lauren: And someone’s name is always attached to a someone, so that also makes sense.

Gretchen: I mean, sometimes you can say like, “How many people do you know named ‘John’?” or something like that, which could separate it out, but languages don’t necessarily include all of these categories. These are just some that, depending on the language, they’re gonna either group with this intrinsically possessed group or say, “No, we can conceive of these as being potentially separate.”

Lauren: I think it’s very satisfying for the theme of this episode that the technical term for this is about whether something is “inseparable” and, therefore, “inalienable,” or if something is “separate” or can be terminated in a relationship and, therefore, is “alienable.”

Gretchen: Because you could also dress up as a spooky alien!

Lauren: Yeah, that’s entirely why. Alienable possession is a great spooky linguistics costume.

Gretchen: You can imagine the spooky aliens being able to detach their heads from their bodies and move at a distance or something like this – some headless horseman or dressed up as Marie Antoinette and carry your own head around on a platter type of the costume.

Lauren: Oh, I like that. And then most of the most non-linguists will think you’re Marie Antoinette, and most of the linguists will think you are alienable possession. Very good.

Gretchen: Definitely we can save this for our linguist costume party where we dress up as our favourite linguistic examples.

Lauren: Because there’re all kinds of relationships, and they need to be navigated, languages that have this alienable / inalienable distinction can come up with really interesting ways of dealing with both of those relationships. In Navajo, you have a word like “milk” that is intrinsically related to an individual. If you were to say, “bibe',” which is “her milk,” you can also have a form that is “'abe',” which is “something’s milk.” It’s handy if you don’t need to know which particular cow or soybeans your milk came from. Then if she goes to the store and buys some milk, it’s “be'abe'.”

Gretchen: This is like, “her something’s milk.”

Lauren: Yes.

Gretchen: It’s got both this unspecified aspect of like, “Well, the milk come from some entity,” but then also, she’s brought home the carton from the store.

Lauren: If you’re in a house with feeding parents, you really wanna be clear when someone says, “Oh, that’s her milk in the fridge.” Navajo conveniently makes that distinction. If it’s her milk that she’s bought – hands off. That’s for her cup of tea. Or if it’s milk for the baby.

Gretchen: But it’s got this interesting double possession. When we were doing research for this episode and coming up with lots of fairly typical examples of possession, and I was very unsurprised to see these examples like Ojibwe and Navajo and Guaraní because this distinction between alienable and inalienable possession is very characteristic of languages of the Americas – North and South America. A lot of them have this particular distinction. Even ones that linguists don’t typically consider “related” in a historic sense, there is, I guess, enough language contact and various things that, like, lots of languages of this area have them. Then I read that French has this distinction, and I was like, “Hang on, I speak French.”

Lauren: Hang on, you speak French.

Gretchen: How have I never noticed that French has this distinction? I’m familiar with the distinction, and I’m quite familiar with French.

Lauren: This was a surprise to you.

Gretchen: It had never occurred to me that French actually has this distinction, but it’s there. I've produced it.

Lauren: Amazing. How does it work in French?

Gretchen: In French this is only with body parts. This is a really good example of languages will sometimes pick up one area of the stuff that can be intrinsically possessed. French doesn’t even do it with kinship terms, which is another area that’s super common. It’s only body parts for French. You can say something like, “Je me lave les mains,” which literally means, “I wash myself the hands,” but is the idiomatic way of saying, “I wash my hands.” But you can only do this for body parts. I can say, “Je me lave les cheveux,” “I wash myself the hair,” and other parts of the body.

Lauren: So, there’s no specific “apostrophe S” equivalent possession thing in there; it’s just because it’s a body part, and it’s myself.

Gretchen: And it’s reflexive, yeah. It’s “I wash myself the hands.” It’s not just “I wash the hands.” It’s like, “I wash myself the hands.” But if you wanna say like, “I wash the horse” – or “I wash my horse” – you would say, “Je lave mon cheval.” If you go around saying, “Je me lave le cheval” –

Lauren: “I washed myself the horse.”

Gretchen: – it really starts to imply that the horse is part of me.

Lauren: Are you a centaur?

Gretchen: Maybe I’m a centaur in this situation, and I refer to my lower half as “the horse.”

Lauren: Whereas in English, “I washed my hands” and “I washed my horse,” you’re just using the “my” construction. It doesn’t matter if it’s a body part.

Gretchen: I’m using the same construction, yeah, exactly. I can’t do this – like, if I have to give a child a bath, I can say, “Je lave l’enfant,” or “Je lave mon enfant,” if it’s my kid, but if I say, “Je me lave l’enfant” –

Lauren: “I washed myself the child.”

Gretchen: I think that – “Je me lave le bébé” – maybe if I was pregnant, and the baby was in my belly, and I was joking about washing my belly as if it was washing the kid or something.

Lauren: You’re getting into very specific contexts to make sense.

Gretchen: Very specific scenarios. I was texting some other friends who speak French because I was like, “Is this just me because I know that I sometimes have intuitions about French, and sometimes I don’t,” but I was really getting – especially with “Je me lave l’auto,” “I wash myself the car,” which really implies that I’m in some sort of transformers mech suit situation where I am the car. There’s no other meaning of that.

Lauren: Right. What about something that’s really close to being a body part but not quite, like if you had to wash your shadow?

Gretchen: Well, okay, pragmatically, I don’t think I can wash my shadow, but I can see my shadow, and that’s reflexive, too.

Lauren: Okay, yeah. I’ll be very kind and give you an example sentence that’s almost sensical, sure.

Gretchen: I think I still have to say, “Je vois mon ombre,” I can’t say, “Je me vois l’ombre,��� where “I see myself the shadow,” in the way I can say, “Je me vois le visage,” “I see myself the face.” I think I can say that. I did text a few people to check this, and I also did a Google search, and there’s lots of Google results for “Je vois mon ombre,” but there are literally zero Google hits for “Je me vois l’ombre,” which is like, “I see myself the shadow” – the one that’s for body parts. There’re literally zero Google hits, although I guess there’ll be one once this episode is published because we have transcripts. But yeah, it turns out that there are actually a bunch of European languages that do something similar with specifically body part possession. German does something similar, “I wash myself the hands.” Italian does something similar, “I wash myself the hands.” It’s specifically very body part-y, which raises the question of why English doesn’t do it. To be honest, I don’t know.

Lauren: We’re missing out, English.

Gretchen: This is something that is also going on in other language families in this slightly different way where you don’t have kindship terms involved.

Lauren: English doesn’t have this, but we do have the benefit of having three completely different ways of marking possession. We have that “plural S,” we have “of,” and we have “have.”

Gretchen: “We have ‘have’.” English possesses three strategies.

Lauren: Let’s start with “apostrophe S.”

Gretchen: I like “apostrophe S” because it’s really, really old as a possessive strategy when using it in English. Old English had lots of suffixes on the ends of nouns that indicated their role in the sentence. The surviving one – the one that’s still kicking around – is this Modern English “apostrophe S.”

Lauren: It’s a relic.

Gretchen: It’s a zombie!

Lauren: Definitely the zombies are – this is part of why pronouns – so it’s possessive “mine,” “yours,” “theirs.” That’s why they also have those. “Mine” is slightly different because there used to be a whole bunch of different endings.

Gretchen: This changing in the endings of the nouns to show what their relationship is to the rest of the sentence is a phenomenon known as “case,” which we’re not gonna get into in detail. It is marking things in relationship to other things.

Lauren: Which you is a thing you can see is really handy because there’re all kinds of relationships we’re navigating all the time of, especially, family relationships. We all grow up in contexts where there are, maybe, kids or siblings or grandparents, and this all needs to be figured out in terms of like, “This is my sister,” and “That’s my mom’s daughter.”

Gretchen: I love this thing that you get with kids around age 3 or so where they’re beginning to realise that the person they might call “Mom” is not a person everyone else also calls “Mom” because other people might have their own mom or might not have a mom. Not everyone’s mom is that one person.

Lauren: Also, who everyone is to everyone else. Like, “my sister” is going to be “their aunt.”

Gretchen: Right. There’s this very fun example that I came across on Twitter where this guy says, “This kid pointed at my dog and said to his mom, ‘Nice doggie,’ and then pointed at me and went, ‘That’s his dad’.” But the guy is like, “Technically, though, as my dog used to stay with my grannie and granda, and they refer to themselves as his ‘ma’ and ‘da,’ the dog is actually my uncle.”

Lauren: Amazing. I’m glad he’s taking this relationship very seriously and triangulating it within the family space.

Gretchen: What’s interesting about this ending situation is that the Old English ending was “-es” for the possessive for a lot of the nouns, but some of the other nouns had other endings as well. By the 16th Century, this “-es” ending got generalised to all of the nouns. Then gradually the spelling “-es” remained, but in many words, the letter E was no longer being pronounced.

Lauren: Oh, so by the 16th Century, it was the way it’s pronounced now.

Gretchen: Basically, yeah. Instead of having “cat / cat-ES,” for “the cat’s tail,” you would just have “cat / cats,” much like we have now. Although, there are still some words in English – words ending in S or in another sibilant sound – that still have that “-es” ending, like “the fox’s tail.” Printers started copying the French practice of substituting this apostrophe for this letter E that wasn’t pronounced anymore.

Lauren: Ah, so that apostrophe is actually a ghost – keeping with our haunted episode theme.

Gretchen: It is a ghost of an E that once was there.

Lauren: Hmm, spooky~~~

Gretchen: Spooky. But it’s pronounced, at this point, the same way as the plural, like, “the cat’s tail” versus “I saw two cats” is pronounced the same. This apostrophe – if you get confused about apostrophe usage – you can blame these Early-Modern English printers because, honestly, this situation was not necessary, and we actually would’ve been fine with no apostrophe at all because this works fine in the spoken language.

Lauren: It even created a bit more confusion because there was some point a century after the apostrophe, and people started assuming that the S was “his” as like, the other possessive form that finished in an S. So, you found people saying things like, “Saint James-his Park” rather than “Saint James’s Park.”

Gretchen: Exactly. It’s just been the source of so much unnecessary confusion. Modern English speakers sure don’t think of it as like, “Oh, it’s just this short form of this thing that existed” because like, we don’t remember that this used to be an “-es.” That was hundreds of years ago. But once you’ve learned these very annoying rules, it does help us identify it – at least to talk about it in the possessive form – which brings us to “of.”

Lauren: Which is our second possessive construction and in Old English meant “away” or “away from.”

Gretchen: Wait, is “of” related to “off”? Because that also feels like what “off” means.

Lauren: Apparently, yeah. “Off” was an emphatic form of “of of,” and then they diverged into their own little lanes.

Gretchen: Oh, neat.

Lauren: But that “from” gives you an idea of how this locational sense of the construction works.

Gretchen: I feel like “of” gets used to translate “de” from Old French or “de” from Latin, so that often the English constructions that have an “of” in them feel maybe a little bit more Latin-y or French-y, a bit more formal maybe.

Lauren: Yeah, I can see that. Like, “The Leaning Tower of Pisa” definitely sounds fancier than “Pisa’s Leaning Tower.”

Gretchen: [Laughs] Oh, you mean we could’ve been saying “Liberty’s Statue” instead of the “Statue of Liberty” this whole time?

Lauren: Oh, that does not work for me. I think it’s partly because it’s a set phrase, but also partly because that “apostrophe S” does just sound a little bit more informal.

Gretchen: Maybe because the “of” has a little bit more of a tendency to be locational in the “from” sense, which is there etymologically rather than just associated with. But I do find it fun to just think about examples of set phrases that either have “of” or “apostrophe S” in and see how they feel when you swap them. Like, “China’s Great Wall” or “Giza’s Great Pyramid.”

Lauren: “Paradox of Zeno.”

Gretchen: “The Law of Murphy.” As we were preparing this episode, I just spent several days going around my life noticing these and flipping them in my mind, so I hope that I have now infected everybody with that.

Lauren: The distinction between “apostrophe S” and “of” constructions can also give you – as an English speaker – a little bit of an alienable / inalienable distinction sense. For these kinds of constructions, you can say something like, “the brother of Mary.”

Gretchen: Which is just as good as “Mary’s brother.” They sound the same to me.

Lauren: Which is just as good as “Mary’s brother.” But if you had something that is more alienable and less of an intrinsic relationship – something like, “the bat of Mary.”

Gretchen: Versus “Mary’s bat.” Mary could have a pet bat. But “the bat of Mary,” I’m just getting a little bit confused in the way that I wasn’t with “the brother of Mary.”

Lauren: It’s been argued that this is because kinship relationships are more intrinsic and inalienable and closer than a general possession relationship, and that’s why it sounds less natural. Our final possessive structure in English is the use of “have” as a verb.

Gretchen: In English, we can say something like, “I have some candy.” This is fine. But some languages don’t have a specific verb that indicates possession. They, instead, use a different strategy to say a full sentence that’s a possessive. The one that I’m most familiar with – and this one happens in Scottish Gaelic and also Hindi, which are two Indo-European languages spoken very far from each other, which translates as something more like, “at me is some candy.”

Lauren: That’s kind of what that Nepali “with me is a pen” construction is doing. Nepali and Hindi are very closely related languages, so that makes sense.

Gretchen: There’s other constructions like “Mine is some candy” or “Some candy is mine.” I think this is similar to what Finnish does, where you have a possessive but not in the verb. There’s an example from Tondano, which is an Austronesian language spoken in northern Sulawesi. The broad translation that you might use in English is “The man has two houses,” but it’s something more like, “As far as the man is concerned, there are two houses.”

Lauren: Right. It’s kind of like “the man,” and then you’re drawing attention to the man as the one doing the possessing, and then the thing that’s being possessed is just there.

Gretchen: “The man” is the topic of the sentence, and then “There are two houses,” and so you infer this relationship between them. You can paraphrase it in various long English ways like –

Lauren: “As far as the man is concerned.”

Gretchen: “Speaking about the man,” “with regard to the man.” I like to think of it also in e-mail style as like, “Re: me, various candy.”

Lauren: I like that. I think that’s getting much more at the grammatical structure of that.

Gretchen: Well, because these topicalising words tend to be really short because they’re used a lot in languages that have them. I just think that saying like, “as far as X is concerned,” makes it sounds really clunky, whereas if you’re just like, “Re: the man, candy,” it gets forward how concise this can also be.

Lauren: We know that candy doesn’t own the man. We know it’s the man that has the candy.

Gretchen: Well, and if you wanted to convey the inverse, you’d have to say, “Re: the candy, the man.”

Lauren: It’s another horror movie premise.

Gretchen: Exactly. Like, “Woo, spooky candy possessing people.” [Lauren laughs] You can also do things like, “I am with some candy,” “me and a candy,” “me – candy, too,” with sorts of “with” styles of possessive. And even just putting the two nouns next to each other and, again, inferring this type of relationship – maybe the ordering has some sort of effect like, “the child, candy,” and you can infer a sort of adjective-y relationship with them.

Lauren: It’s also worth noting for languages that do have a verb like English “have,” it’s usually from some kind of verb that indicates physical control or handling. In English, “have” has become our verb, but in other languages, it can be a verb that’s more like “take” or “grasp” or “hold” or “carry.” You can kind of see how all of those indicate some kind of possessing relationship that then goes on to be a general possession verb.

Gretchen: And “have” itself comes from a Proto-Indo-European root that means, “to grasp” – “*kap-” meaning “to grasp.”

Lauren: All of this is just a really nice reminder that you can start with this general idea of a relationship between two things, but languages are gonna use a whole bunch of different strategies for putting that into the grammar.

Gretchen: And “possession” is the most common word used to describe this in English even though it has this connotation of being very possessive about something or this, maybe, capitalistic possession and ownership – or being haunted. Another word that’s used to describe this in a formal grammar sense is “genitive,” which comes from a root meaning “to generate” or “progeny,” like “give birth to.”

Lauren: Okay, one of those relationships that we’ve seen a lot of – interpersonal relationships.

Gretchen: Exactly. This category of relationship is often named for one of its prototypical relationships, and then there’s a whole bunch of other things that get subsumed into that category because the same grammatical construction – you pick one of its prototypical uses, and then you extend it to a whole bunch of other types of meaning-based relationships even though the grammar-based one is the same across the whole category.

Lauren: I think it’s always good to remember that there are all of these different kinds of relationships that get caught up within this one grammatical category, and if I say, “They’re my student,” or “They’re my child,” it doesn’t mean they are my possession in a capitalistic, “ownership of” way. It’s just a way of indicating this relationship between us.

Gretchen: In fact, if someone is your student or your child, they also have a possessive relationship with you. You’re their advisor or their mentor or their professor or their parent. So, in many cases, these possessive relationships have a really important element of reciprocity that we’re each other’s friends or neighbours, or that parent-child or mentor-mentee have an element where the possession goes both ways because it situates us in some of the ways we relate to each other. Languages have lots of different ways of expressing these types of relationships between beings and elements of the world, but it’s very, very common cross-linguistically to have some way of doing this category of relationships, which suggests that it’s something that’s really important to all of us and part of our shared humanity.

[Music]

Lauren: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on all the podcast platforms or lingthusiasm.com. You can get transcripts of every episode on lingthusiasm.com/transcripts. You can follow @lingthusiasm on all the social media sites. You can get scarves with lots of linguistics patterns on them including Gavagai, IPA, branching tree diagrams, bouba and kiki, and our favourite esoteric Unicode symbols, plus other Lingthusiasm merch – like our new “Ask Me About Linguistics” stickers and “More People Have Read the Text on This Shirt Than I Have” t-shirts – at lingthusiasm.com/merch. My social media and blog is Superlinguo.

Gretchen: Links to my social media can be found at gretchenmcculloch.com. My blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com. My book about internet language is called Because Internet. Lingthusiasm is able to keep existing thanks to the support of our patrons. If you wanna get an extra Lingthusiasm episode to listen to every month, our entire archive of bonus episodes to listen to right now, or if you just wanna help us keep the show running ad-free, go to patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website. Patrons can also get access to our Discord chatroom to talk with other linguistics fans and be the first to find out about new merch and other announcements. Recent bonus episodes include alien languages and whether we could figure them out, a behind-the-scenes on Tom Scott’s Language Files (which we collaborated on), and why the word “do” in English is so weird. Can’t afford to pledge? That’s okay, too. We also really appreciate it if you can recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone in your life who’s curious about language.

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

Gretchen: Stay lingthusiastic!

[Music]

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

[wanderinghedgehog]

I finally finished that poem I started awhile back.

The Productions of the Gurstein-Mills Theater

I nearly killed him for the role of Romeo back in ‘07.

He got it anyway.

I couldn’t think of a way to stab him discreetly.

We did a table read

And I kept mindlessly aiming the sharp end of my pencil at the veins in his wrist.

Onstage,

I thought too much about the sword strapped against my hip

And almost fucked up my lines four times.

I actually threatened him over the role of Orestes in ‘09.

The company said there’d be no legal action

If I stayed out of that year’s season.

It was a damn shame.

I really liked the Greek plays.

I was Edgar the next year.

He was Edmund.

For once, I was the legitimate one.

My cousin saw that production and asked who played the bastard.

During the last show,

I managed to land a hit on his forehead with the hilt of my sword.

He missed his next cue.

He left the theater in 2015.

Said he had to spend time with his mom in Oregon.

This was just fine by me.

Fantasizing about killing him had gotten a little repetitive.

I’d stopped trying to get at him

And just started staring menacingly

And hoping he got the gist of it.

I was never any less angry,

Just tired.

During the winter of 2017,

We pulled together a production of Macbeth.

I still couldn’t land a leading role.

They gave me Banquo.

The reviews were shit.

I looked out into the audience one night.

There were the two usual critics in their blazers and chunky necklaces,

The little kids who were probably too young for this play,

And him.

Back from Oregon, I guess.

He rejoined the company for the 2018 season.

Before the cast list was revealed,

He emailed me something that looked heartfelt and wordy.

I read the first and last paragraphs.

It was something about growing as a person and moving forward.

This was the sort of bullshit I missed.

He’d still be Hamlet,

I’d be Claudius or something,

And he’d talk like we’re on the exact same page.

I was Richard III in 2019.

I asked him if he wished he’d gotten this role.

He said Richard suits me and that he wouldn’t stand in my way.

I poked and prodded him for awhile.

I asked all the worst questions.

“What do you think of your role?”

“Isn’t there one you’d rather have?”

“Didn’t you audition with a Richard III monologue a while ago?”

He got bored, gave me a pat on the back, and walked away.

I started to wonder if I’d read the cast list wrong.

We had Twelfth Night lined up for 2020.

We didn’t even know our parts when the theater temporarily shut down.

Obviously, I’d been eyeing the Duke Orsino’s lines,

But that was more out of obligation

Than a love for the character.

Maybe I’d have gotten lucky just this time.

Honestly, there wasn’t much else I wanted from that play,

Just a main role.

I suppose I was satisfied for awhile with no one getting a main role.

In 2022, we brought everyone back for Coriolanus.

I was Aufidius, of course.

Who the titular character went to was a surprise to fucking nobody.

At that point, there wasn’t anything else to say.

Rehearsals started.

I nearly dozed off backstage a few times.

Nobody was ever really happy with Act 4 scene 5.

I couldn’t help but wonder what he thought of me

Standing stage right of him,

Rambling about how I dreamed of meeting him in battle

And how I “waked half dead with nothing.”

To me, it felt like ‘07

And- god!- I didn’t want to be 24 again.

Romeo and Juliet is back for round two in 2023.

He isn’t Romeo.

Neither am I.

They’re trying out some new kid this year.

We both agree they could’ve chosen better.

[thedarkmaidenn]

The artwork of Brian Froud that tugged on the heart strings I didn’t know I had.

(Not every image is from the Faeries Oracle, but all images are that of Brian Froud and his brilliance)

“In the heart of the forest stands an old oak tree Existing through centuries, rooted in history Only if you believe will it let you see The magic that lives beneath it’s bark and within it’s leaves There at the center of its massive trunk Will be a wooden door, unlike any other one If brave enough to enter, you will see That another world exists, just beyond the trees”

-Marissa Orton (followherglow OR maiden_to_motherpoetry)

The kind of Masculine energy I need 💙

Brian Froud is my favorite artist. I’ll never forget the summer of 2020. I spent it on the river getting to know The Faeries Oracle Deck, written by Jessica MacBeth and illustrated by Brian Froud. When I bought the deck, I had no idea that it would unlock an innocence within me that i thought to be dead and gone. There is magic in these images. So much magic, wonder, brilliance and beauty. Brian Froud gives us a face to attach to the Fae, nature spirits and elementals. It’s as if he’s giving us a peak into a realm that absolutely exists around us, but cannot be seen with the naked eye. Maybe it’s not important that we see the Faeries, maybe feeling them with our heart is what really matters. The Faeries Oracle Deck gave me permission to let myself believe in faeries/nature spirits/elementals etc. I spent an entire summer on the shores of the river, exploring the deck and talking to the Faeries around me. At first, I felt silly and stupid for talking to the air. I think we’re conditioned to believe that it’s seen as silly and mentally unstable to believe in such things as an adult. But it didn’t take long before I began to feel something different and unusual, in the best way. The empty air began to feel more full and alive. By talking to the Faeries, I was inviting their presence. I felt them all around me and began to see them with my minds eye. I regained my childlike innocence and sparks of creative inspiration were popping off left and right. I connected to a source that I would not have connected to if not for Brian Froud and Jessica MacBeth. And for that, i am forever gratful, beyond belief or words.

There came a time when life resumed after the pandemic. I didn’t get to go to the river as often as usual. One day I went back after being away for a while. I was kind of devastated to discover that what was once a magical place full of invisible life now felt empty and vacant. I couldn’t feel the Faeries anymore and i chalked it up to it all being in my mind to begin with. It discouraged me for a little while until I decided to put effort in trying to connect to them again. Maybe it is all in my mind, or maybe.. just maybe, the Faeries were pissed at me for leaving them for so long. Turns out that they’re a lot like us, according to the Oracle deck, the Faeries take things personally, and you should never break the promises you make to them. I broke a few promises to the Faeries, and I had to work for their forgivness so that they may grace me with their presence again. Eventually they did, and I haven’t lost them since.

This could all just be the ramblings of a 29 year old chick who so desperately wants Faeries to be real. I could be delusional, mentally ill or silly. Or maybe Faeries exist when you allow yourself to believe that they do, and interact with them like you would an old friend. Maybe allowing yourself to believe in magic is what makes it real in the first place. One thing I do know, is that i want my life to be full of magic and possibility, because that makes life worth living to me.

And if you’ve read everything, thanks for listening. ♥️ 🧚 Now go get your copy of the Faeries Oracle so that you may feel what I felt 4 years ago at the River, and still to this day.

[daffelreign]

Macbeth commentary. Becuase I’m bored. And judgmental. (Pt. 6)(Finale)

(Act Z: ) (Final Thoughts)

I was absolutely not excited about reading this play after finding very little enjoyment when we read The Tragedy of Julius Caesar my sophomore year. Plus, the most I heard about the story itself was how complicated and disliked it was. So my hopes were not very high.

However, after reading through the whole thing, I can safely say it is one of my favorite stories I’ve read in an English class. Why is it a tragedy is one of my favorites despite the fact that I hate tragic stories? The conclusion I’ve come to is that there is more focus on understanding what is being said (Shakespearean English is not easy) than there is on the weight behind what those words mean. So it doesn’t always give the kind of impact that the story probably did to the audience of its time. But even without it, I enjoyed picking the characters apart as the story progressed.

Speaking of characters, let’s talk about them for a second. The character dynamics in this play are fascinating, especially to me (someone who likes to write and has experience creating character dynamics). Watching how the relationships start out pure and strong, and then slowly falter as Macbeth begins to change is so interesting. For him and his wife, the power dynamic between them shifts as Macbeth’s ambition takes over--- and for his friends, his relationship with them becomes strained as he starts, well, murdering them. It’s easy to forget that they all used to be friends towards the beginning when you look at the very end--- with Macduff holding Macbeth’s decapitated head as a trophy of war and a symbol of revenge.

Macbeth himself is also another fascinating subject--- from his personality change to his role in the plot. Macbeth is our protagonist, our “hero” of the story. But the heroic qualities he shows are snuffed out by the end of the very first act, and our hero becomes something of a villain. It isn’t an instant change--- he may have killed Duncan, but he deeply regrets what he’s done afterwards. But as soon as he realizes that killing people gets rid of his problems, his remorse begins to dwindle. And that change--- from a loyal soldier to a cold tyrant--- is something you rarely get to see in a protagonist.

Placing him as the protagonist also means anyone who opposes him counts as the antagonist, even if their motives appeal more to the audience. It plays with the notion of what we’ve been taught is right and wrong, and which side they belong on. Not only that, but making Macbeth the single protagonist opened the floodgates for there being any number of antonagists--- anyone who stands against him. I couldn’t tell you who is the main antagonist, as many people play important roles in their opposition to macbeth. And that lack of focus is also not something you see all that often--- at least, I haven’t.

I could probably write a whole essay on Lady Macbeth alone, but I’ll keep this short: Lady Macbeth is the best kind of character. I can’t call her a hero or a villain, because I don’t know which side she belongs to. She doesn’t oppose Macbeth, but she does manipulate him. Does that make her an antagonist? Or is she a protagonist along with Macbeth, since they’re technically working together? She seems to be a gray area--- one we never quite get elaboration on. She’s conniving, but sympathetic--- spiteful, yet full of remorse. Lady Macbeth picks out her husband’s weak point in two seconds flat, but does everything she can to console him after the deed is done. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth really do have a complicated relationship, and it’s sad that he wasn’t even there to witness her end. She deserved a better send off, at least--- or we can pretend that she faked her death and she’s still alive and kicking, plotting to take down Malcolm in revenge for her husband. I’d pay to watch that, honestly.

Finally (probably not finally), Fleance. There was no point in letting him get away if there was no explanation as to how he would connect Banquo’s descendants to the king. He’s just there to fulfill that end of the prophecy--- a part that wasn’t even necessary from a plot hole standpoint. It was used as motivation for Macbeth-- to get him to kill Banquo and fall further down the rabbit hole. But other than that, Banquo’s part of the prophecy isn’t elaborated on. I’m mildly bitter that this play made me care about Fleance after I thought he was insignificant, and then said ‘lol wait nevermind’. Like. Tie up the loose ends--- give an epilogue of Fleance getting adopted by Malcom or something. I demand answers.

You know what? Murder board update:

Duncan, Banquo, Lady Macbeth, Macbeth, Malcom

Malcolm is dead because I killed Malcolm. Fleance can be king now. The world is set right again. (I’m only a little petty)

And for the actual finally, I think I could dissect Macbeth for hours. The amount of story conveyed through dialogue alone (at least for our purposes, since we can’t watch the play and have yet to watch the movie) is thoroughly impressive. I marvel at stories that are displayed in such a simple fashion, yet hold a more complex storyline than you could ever imagine. From the repeated lines, to the callbacks, to every poetic death and mournful soliloquy--- Macbeth is a masterpiece. For once, I can finally agree that this story is (and should remain) a classic that students should experience at least once in their life. Even if the words aren’t always the easiest to understand, the story is captivating, well written, and even a little silly. It’s a good play, a great story, and a wonderful experience.

[aimfor-theheart]

i’ve been reading godmaker for the first time and i’m not super far into it (i’m on the third chapter) but it’s reminding me a lot of sharing beds like little kids insofar as the readers have similar abilities and the tragedy hovers in the atmosphere similarly. i’m not sure how to articulate it but it’s that foreboding feeling that all of this has been decided already and we’re all hurtling toward inevitable heartbreak. and i think that’s u grappling with the existing tragedies present in the source material of the manga/anime but i wanted to let u know that it’s a really great atmosphere for the fic. it hurts a lot to know that the hope within these fics is very small and proportional to how powerful and how deeply constrained the main characters are by their situations in life. whether it’s hawks with being a hero or dabi becoming a villain or gojo becoming a god i think it’s really interesting that u grapple with these themes. it’s really interesting to draw a through line across these two fics. it also makes me think about coin toss a bit and how you’ve talked about how that’s like The Story u wanted to tell about tomura. it’s really resonated with me since u published it bc it really encapsulates the tragedy of tomura and hero society. and i just wanna say thank u that u approach these topics in ur fics bc they’re not easy but they’re really rewarding as a reader trying to engage in the source material in a way that isn’t really done by the creators of the mangas themselves

woah….anon i’m not gonna lie to you….this is maybe the most seen i’ve ever felt about my writing?? lmao?? does that even make sense?? but ig i think you just captured entirely, exactly what i set out to accomplish with those fics and it is very insane and incredible and i’m just?? a little lost for words

i just really really appreciate you—not just taking the time to read my fics but then come to my inbox and articulate your thoughts and dissect my writing and—literally Get It like spot on!!!

there are several things to know about me: i love tragedies. i love stories dealing with time. i think there is a great deal of room for tragedy within plots centering time. and like you said, i just really wanted to tease out those elements of tragedy that i saw within the original works.

in general with heroes (or gods)—there’s this fate tied to them. you know? when we deal with such titan figures, there is a myth and fate tied to them. gojo especially to me is like…so macbeth-ian (perhaps getou is moreso but. they both are) in the sense that….was he always going to be a god? or did he make himself that way because that what was expected and told to him? does it matter—if he by his own violation or not would still become one?

and i like inserting a reader that further emphasizes or complicates that. i also just like my very powerful, all-knowing, cassandra readers.

anyways. i just can’t get over this ask. thank you SO much. thank you from the bottom of my heart. it was rewarding to write it!! even more rewarding to hear that it was captured well and something that you enjoyed and sunk your teeth into!

thank you thank you thank you 💗💗

[the-al-chemist]

The Beginning of a Symphony - Chapter 42

A/N: Jim had the first proper chapter, and he will have the last, too. We’re ending on a hopeful note.

Warnings: breaking of the most important rule of theatre. Sorry for any bad luck.

OCs mentioned: Selene Fraser and family @lifeofkaze

August 1897

It had been a relatively quiet summer, by all accounts, and the peaceful atmosphere at the Hexley family’s cottage only grew once Ethel left home to visit Selene and her grandparents in the Scottish highlands. Despite his twin sister having become marginally less tiresome in the previous few months, Jim could not say in truth that he was impatient to have her back. He was rather enjoying his serene summer without her.

Still, he was as glad as anyone to see her handwriting on the envelope of a letter delivered over breakfast one morning in the first half of August. His mother was the one to open the envelope, and she read through the several sheets of parchment it contained with a wide smile on her face.

“It sounds like the girls are having a splendid time,” she informed her son and husband, the latter of whom hummed behind his newspaper in response. “Ethel says that they saw a kelpie in one of the lochs, and Selene’s uncle has taught them the basics of whiskey-making.”

“Just what every young lady needs to know,” murmured Jim’s father. “Anything else?”

“Yes, they’re preparing a two-woman production of Macbeth to perform for the family before she leaves.”

“Dear Jove. Have Selene’s relatives not suffered enough already?”

“Apparently not,” Mrs Hexley sighed. “Perhaps we had ought to send up another gift to thank them for their hospitality.”

“I have some spare sets of earmuffs in my greenhouse,” her husband suggested. “They work against my Mandrakes, they might even be good enough to work against our daughter.”

Jim laughed into his cup of tea, and though his mother shook her head, her own lips were twitching.

“I’ll write to her grandmother later, or maybe her uncle. I understand he and his husband live with the grandparents.”

Frowning, Jim raised his head. “His husband?”

“Oh, yes. Not by law, of course, but in all other respects that’s how I would describe them,” said his mother. She looked at home an laughed. “Really, Jimmy. You should see the look on your face.”

“Well, I… I was not aware that a man might have a husband, by law or not. I did not know that men could love one another, not in that way.”

“A great many people can love one another in many different ways with no power over how they do it. That is the beauty of love. The heart knows what it wants, and all one has to do is have the strength to follow it.”

“I suppose that you are right, Mamma.”

“Your mother is always right, Jim,” said Mr Hexley, and his wife kissed the top of his head before leaving the room. He watched her do so, and once she was gone, added under his breath, “Or so she keeps telling me.” He lowered his newspaper and fixed Jim with a peculiar look. “On the subject of love, did you manage to pluck up the courage to ask that young lady if she would be interested in courting you?”

“Er, in a way… Yes, I suppose I did.”

“And? Will you be courting her any time soon?”

Jim lowered his eyes to the table as he pictured the look on Héloïse’s face when he had told her that she was beautiful, the feeling of her lips on his own when they had kissed on the staircase and the movement of her dressrobes as they had danced together in the Great Hall afterwards. How she had been bathed in moonlight with her hair as black as the night sky, her eyes filled with hope and her voice honey-sweet when they had sat at the top of the astronomy tower and each said three words that had been so simple and yet so very meaningful, all at once.

“Father,” he said eventually, not even trying to keep the smile from his face, “I think that I will marry her one day soon.”

His father nodded slowly.

“In that case, I shall have to up my prices,” he said, and with that, he returned to his newspaper.

Jim continued smiling as he looked out of the window. Outside, the sun was shining, and the wildflowers were in bloom. It was beautiful. Later, he would draw them - perhaps he would even use colour, the way Brady had taught him - and send the picture to Héloïse. For now, however, he was content just to look, to keep the sketchbook she had given him tucked away in his breastpocket, and feel his heart beat against it through the fabric of his clothes. No one else knew that it was there, but he did. He knew what lay close to his heart, he knew what his heart wanted, and he knew that he had the strength to follow it. He had already begun to follow it, and he would continue to do so soon.

Soon.

One day, soon.

[youngerfrankenstein]

🥰🤭🧸😊 Also, favorite Gargoyles character, storyarc, and what you'd have liked to see in the show if it had continued (I haven't read any of the recent comics).

Awww you are genuinely too sweet. (I’m kind of glad I give off soft vibes to at least one person, I worry I tend to be prickly 😅)

Favourite character I do think is Demona. She- hold on, I’m gonna ramble for a moment.

I really do love how they made her a tragic monster yet a monster nonetheless. She’s so miserable and lonely and most of her problems are her own fault but she CANNOT face up to that, how can she really face up to the immensity of what she’s done. So she runs, and she hides, and she blames everyone she can for the things she’s brought upon herself. What else can she do really? Her spite and hatred are the only things keeping her going and they keep her going for a thousand years. She won’t give it up for the man she loved and may still love, she won’t give it up for her daughter, she won’t give it up for her kind despite claiming to do it all for them. She lost herself in the mad dash away from her atrocities. She throws away any chance at happiness at the slightest possibility it may go poorly because she’d rather do so than risk it. Queen of cutting off your nose to spite your face. She was given a name, something gargoyles generally don’t have, by a human she grew to hate yet never gave the name up. I have her action figure.

(Also it is WILD to me that the writers found a loophole that allowed her to go on a killing spree of actual humans in a Disney cartoon)

Shout outs to Goliath, Elisa, Hudson, Angela and my BOY Bronx though. They’re also some of the favourites and honestly this is a show where just about every character I at least like.

As for story arc, hmm. Macbeth and Demona’s weird little dance comes to mind, and the City of Stone episodes were a big part of that. As well as that King Arthur just… shows up a couple of times. I’m also kinda partial to the first season which was largely just “will our heroes literally ever get a leg up on Xanatos?”

(The comics are pretty fun! If a bit rushed.) Hmm, I think I do want to know a bit more about the Illuminati and how they work in this universe. I’d like to see more of Alex’s growth and his dynamic with Lex. Oh! Also I kind of wish we got a bit more focus on Elisa and Broadway’s friendship. Same with Hudson and Robins. Also I would like to see more Sevarius popping up and somehow surviving whatever mess gets caused.

Thank you for the chance to ramble a bit about the show!!!

[prideflagcontest]

ok as previously established i have now read act one of “if we were villains” by m.l.rio and it was so good? so here you have my theories on how the story continues 

first of all someone dies. that was in the prologue (which is so very like the secret history)

it could be oliver that would be great, but as he is still alive ten years later also very unlikely (but narrating-vise it would be fun) oliver has the same role for now as the narrator dude in the secret history whose name i cannot remember rn

james could die but i don’t want him to (he would be a good killer tho bc he was a great villain in macbeth but has always been the nice guy). james is henry winter in my opinion rn. or francis bc the gay and put together 

that james and oliver are best friends is interesting of course 

killing meredith would be like femme fatale is dead. but like why. i mean pretty corpse and stuff but they all fancy her ecxept for james. (she would also make a good killer tho bc nobody would think she could be) meredith is camilla 

alexander is random and i can’t really place him anywhere in my brain. but he did always play the villain so idk. i also can’t coin him as anyone in the secret history as of now. maybe charles but also not bc alexander doesn’t have a sister to abuse 

who else

oh yeah filippa (spelling is unimportant) idk about her. the cross dressing thing comes off as random to me but she is a great shapeshifter apparently (also don’t know about the secret history with her)

gren? gwen? fren? idk? the rude guy’s cousin. she is quiet right? i don’t know why i can’t remember anything about her 

which brings us to the best part: the rude guy whose name is unimportant. meredith’s bf. you know who i mean. it would be the classic move to kill him. bc he’s the leader. he took things way to far on halloween. meredith could cry which was already specified never happened. oliver could get revenge for james. or idk. mr. rude guy is bunny though. the it’s just a game i want to play was so creepy. it bugs me that i can’t remember his name. anyway 

what about colin. killing that one rando third year would be a plot twist at least 

so in conclusion i don’t know anything 

but i like to imagine that this book and the secret history play at the same university at the same time with different groups and fields of study. the art people are just chilling mixing blood 

the blood was weird. why did it smell bad if it was fake. did the art people give them a bucket of actual blood? what

yeh bye

i looked up mr. rude guys name and he’s richard. also wren. joy. 

the way richard almost drowned james was so ew. dude stop. the scariest thing in this world is a man who doesn’t know when to stop and gets loud and angry even when it isn’t physical violence yet. but to me (girl, no method of defending myself) even guys raising their voices are scary even if they’re exited and not angry. so yes richard is scary there for a long sec. 

also the way he got upset when he didn’t get the lead role like mf stop not everything is about you 

but killing him would be fun bc everyone hates him and everyone would have a reason to 

but why does oliver end up in jail anyway. did someone frame him or did he do it. also the police officer is so random 

anyway richard is the tyrant and killing him would be the very obvious route to go. but idk isn’t that to simple? especially with them playing julius caesar?

idk i’m going to start reading act two now bye

act two scene six update:

richard is scary fr now

james has definitely faced physical abuse before from someone 

alexander is gay

oliver being protective suits him

meredith standing up for herself 

i’m scared that meredith will get killed by richard for that tho. it wouldn’t be the first time (battles have been fought over less / women have been killed for less)

from the prologue of this act, felippa, meredith, alexander and oliver make it out alive 

scared for wren and james now

idc about richard the asshole 

ok i’ll keep reading now

act 3 scene 2 update 

ok what the fuck

first of all richard died of course but that was kind of obvious 

they didn’t help him but watched him die instead bc they choose the trauma ig

richard was an asshole even more

why did meredith and oliver have to fuck pls how unnecessary 

oliver if i eat an olive that’s cannibalism marks. 

i can sense the oliver/james fanfics after whatever that was

why did oliver have to go in the water with a corpse 

like hello

just call the police��

the secret history comparison:

they watched richard die without helping in iwwv and killed bunny in tsh so yeah

dark academia doing it’s thing 

idk what to say

i’m only half way through the book so i’ll keep going byee

alexander kept on with his villain stuff tho 

act 3 scene 5 

ok they’ve declared it an accident 

but why the hell was oliver in prison for ten years then

does someone else die

i need a break from reading now but what

helllp who did he kill

finished it two weeks ago and forgot about this update

i forgot what happened 

james and oliver

joliver olives pls make it olives 

his body was never found so they’re gay together forever 

was it exeunt siempre? idk that ending was a slay

100/10 experience 

idk what else

richard died what a surprise 

[maximumwobblerbanditdonut]

RICHARD RANKIN

Antonia Kuenzel 15th May 2024

From starring in The Tragedy of Macbeth alongside Saoirse Ronan to numerous BBC One dramas, as well as the hugely popular Amazon Prime series Outlander, Scottish actor Richard Rankin already has a huge film and series catalogue under his belt. Now, he can be seen in the titular role of John Rebus in the new BBC crime drama REBUS, which is a modernised adaptation of Ian Rankin’s best-selling novel. Set in Edinburgh, the six-part series showcases John as a younger character than he is in the books, and soon, he gets himself into quite a lot of criminal conflict.

In an interview with Principle, Rankin talks to us about all things REBUS, both the challenges and joys that came with it, how the series differs from the book, and much more.

Let’s talk about REBUS, in which you play the character Rebus as a younger sergeant. First of all, can you tell us more about your character and what initially drew you to the role?

Oh, that’s not an easy question. He’s a longstanding Scottish literary character. He’s quite iconic in Scotland. He’s been appearing in the books for years now. I think there are over 30 books written very beautifully by Ian Rankin and he still has a huge fan base. And there are still quite a lot of fans of the previous iteration of the show, starring Ken Stott, but this is more of a reimagining of the same sort of story, same protagonist but displaced into a modern world and made younger as he said. What attracted me to it is he is a character who is very much at odds with himself. He has a real duality to him. There are very much two sides to [John] Rebus. You see him in his work life, you see him in his personal life, and he can be quite destructive in both. His primary job is to uphold the law. But he doesn’t necessarily get there by conventional means. I think he’s very much of the opinion that if the means meet the end sort of thing, then he will find the best route to that. So I think that there’s something almost of an anti-hero quality to him at times. The dark, gritty side to him, which I think appeals to me as an actor because it’s just something quite inviting, quite exciting about playing a character that’s quite unconventional, kind of off the rails, quite an unpredictable personality. And I quite like that in a character.

Everyone loves a bit of an anti-hero though, right?

I think so! This series completely stands on its own. You don’t need any context. You don’t have to have read any of the books. In fact, we’re in a slightly different world from the books. But I remember filming, not to give any spoilers away, but you know he has some questionable relationships on the show, which made me think as we were playing it, and I kept raising this question, I thought, ‘Aren’t people gonna hate him at points?’ ‘Aren’t people gonna hate Rebus?’ And they constantly assured me, ‘No, they’re gonna be with you, they’re gonna be on your side, they’re gonna understand kind of where he’s coming from, hopefully.’ In terms of that, he’s got this self-destructive nature, you know? He gets it one way. He could take much easier routes but he deliberately makes things harder for himself. He has this very Presbyterian Edinburgh approach to his life. He even mentions that in one of the episodes, he says to Siobhan, ‘You’re in the city of John Knox, Siobhan, life’s supposed to be difficult.’ And I think he kind of believes that. It’s almost like he has this sort of self-loathing, you know? And he needs to jab at it. I feel that with the character, I feel that all the time playing the character and I feel it in the writing – there’s just this antagonistic friction with his own self. Going back to what you’re saying about people loving an anti-hero, I wasn’t sure. I really wasn’t sure when we were filming it. I was like, ‘I think people might hate him. I think people might think he’s an utter twat.’ But, that still might be the case. But you know, it’s exciting to be treading that fine line between a likable character and people absolutely detest but time will tell.

I think overall, they might support the character. There will probably be some scenes where they’ll be like “I bloody hate this guy.” But I guess we’ll find out. So as established, the series is based on the novels. Have you read these at all for your prep or did you read them throughout?

I read some a few years ago, and I read a few in preparation. I think it was Knots and Crosses, which was the first one. I went back and had a bit of a read of that. And then there was Even Dogs in the Wild. So I went through that. And a bit of Heart Full of Headstones. But yeah, so the source material was quite important to me to have an understanding of that and to go back and look at sort of Ian’s original version of the character. But Greg’s written a very different version of the character, kind of, it’s not so much that he’s a different character, it’s just that he’s displaced. So we’re in a contemporary setting in 2023 and the character is younger. So I thought I wanted to go back to the books and have an understanding of Ian’s version of Rebus, but then kind of knit that together with Greg’s version and make them younger which I didn’t think was gonna make that much of a difference, but it does, it brings us a very different character. I think there’s a bit more energy to it. I think there’s more scope, there’s more potential. There’s just feels like there’s more of a danger, more of a threat about him. I think it does a lot of things for the story, modernising it and making him that bit younger. I think that gives us a real frenetic energy. I think that we felt off the top of the first episode and I think that remains there through the whole season.

That sounds amazing. I can totally imagine it gives the character a completely new edge. Though I guess sometimes it can be tricky to find a fine line between making the character your own, when it’s based on books, versus trying to be similar to the novel character. How did you find that?

Yeah, absolutely. 100 percent. It was very important to me to do the character justice. It was very important to me that I had an idea of both of these versions of the character. And I did draw upon a lot of Ian’s writing for my version of Rebus. But the thing is, you can’t force yourself into a character, right? You can look at it and you can see what you can take from it and what you can take ownership of, but I don’t want to force the character because then it’ll just be false and it will lose its sensuality and it won’t have any sort of honesty or integrity. So I only took the parts that would bring a sense of the character for myself. A lot of that was his military background. He’s got a bit of SAS history and background. We’re also bringing him more into his youthful days. So what does it look like if you adjust that? You might have a 50-year-old Rebus where we want to be looking at more like a 30-year-old Rebus, right? So you’re shifting, you’re shifting at sort of a point in his life. So things in the earlier days become more relevant and more pertinent to the story. So I brought a bit more of his sort of military background into it in terms of his demeanor, his physicality, the way he conducts himself, kind of a bit of a psychology. I’m also aware that there is a huge fan base for the books. So I’m aware that there will be expectations from fans who already have an idea of what the character should be. But even when people are reading the book, even though you’ve got 10 million people reading the same book, I guarantee you that all of those people have a different idea of the character. So every one of them will have a different picture in their head, they will read it differently, and they’ll interpret it differently. So there’s no one way to go about it. And it’s not the first time I’ve brought a literary character to the screen. So I’m aware of what comes with that. It’s important to me that I do the character justice and that I’ve got as honest a portrayal as I can.

That’s very true, and you literally can’t please everyone. So with the series being about Rebus being drawn into all sorts of criminal conflict, what was it like shooting the more intense scenes and overall what scenes did you enjoy the most and which scenes did you find the most challenging?

That’s a good question. The thing that I was most aware of was the support of my other castmates. They were so incredibly talented. They brought their A-game every single day and the ownership, the passion and the integrity by which they went about their work was incredible. And that really pushed me. It really, really pushed me. There were times I was on set thinking, I really need to up my game here because these guys are absolutely smashing. And some of the performances were so nuanced, so beautiful. They just brought themselves to it. And some of the more intense scenes brought with them such spontaneous off-the-page moments. I won’t go into them in too much detail because actually some of those moments for me were maybe ironically from episode four onwards and I know you’ve only seen the first three. Just really touching, beautiful, spontaneous moments. And they were always looking for ways to play off the page. They weren’t always necessarily playing prescriptively or what was written for them. They would find all of the subtext and then layer it with their own sort of interpretation of the scene and character in a way that I didn’t even see coming. So that was one of the big driving forces for me was getting to work with such a talented and dedicated cast.

Nothing stands out as being more challenging than the rest. I think because of the way that we set the character up, and early, early, early on in the first episode, we already have an idea of how he functions, how he behaves, and you get an idea of that sort of short fuse that Rebus has, and how violent he can be quite quickly. So later on I don’t have to telegraph that too much. It does me a great service from an acting point of view where I can play everything in a really subtle way and you still get the impression that he might just snap at any given moment without any notice.

A supportive and inspiring team is worth so much, isn’t it? When you wrap up a project, do you actually like to watch it back or do you not want to see yourself? I heard some actors don’t like to watch themselves in a project that they’ve starred in.

I have to be dragged, kicking, and screaming to the Rebus screening. I was trying to get over it actually, but they made me go. Someone made a very good point of it being not so much going to watch yourself, but going to watch all of your castmates. And then when I thought about that, I thought, yeah, that’s true. I absolutely have to go to watch their work. And the only downside to that is I have to watch quite a lot of my own face to do that. But it took me maybe half an hour, an episode, to warm into it, but actually, I really, really enjoyed the whole second episode, and by the time it finished, I wanted to watch more. But I didn’t hah. I just don’t get a lot from watching myself. I just over-analyse what I could have done better. I start to look at things that I might do physically or with my face and I don’t think that serves me any great purpose.

I would be exactly like that. I could never! So now that you’ve wrapped up REBUS, are you working on any other projects like TV, film, or theatre-wise that you can already share?

I’m filming season eight of Outlander at the moment. I can talk about that for days. It’s been running for about 10 years. So this is our last season. The second half of season seven is gonna be out later on this year and then season eight will follow at some point after that. It’s fun to be back on board. We just started about a month ago, so we’ve still got about four or five months to go left of that. And then we’ll wrap that up and then who knows what’s after that. I wouldn’t mind going back and doing a bit of theatre, maybe some new writing or so. There’s a director who’s really killing it in the UK at the moment actually. He’s on Broadway as well, at the West End. Jamie Lloyd is his name. I actually got to know him earlier on in both of our careers and almost did Macbeth with him and James McAvoy. So I would like to have the opportunity to work with him. He’s a huge director now though, he’s much, much bigger than he was at that point. I’ve seen a few of his pieces now and they’ve been excellent. So he seems to have a real knack for bringing back some really well-known plays with some really great actors and giving it his own touch. But other than that, I’d like to maybe do some Shakespeare. I just finished Fall Out. I kinda want to be in that, actually. It’s well worth watching.

Well, let’s speak it into existence. Sounds like you are busy for the foreseeable! Thank you so much for your time. It was great speaking to you.

Rebus will launch on Friday 17 May. All episodes will be available on BBC iPlayer from 6am, with episode one airing on BBC Scotland on Friday 17 May and on BBC One on Saturday 18 May.

Posted 15th May 2024

[ollieofthebeholder]

to find promise of peace (and the solace of rest): a TMA fanfic

&lt;< Beginning < Prev || AO3 || My website

Chapter 82: June 2017

Gerry can’t sleep. Or maybe more accurately won’t sleep. The flashbacks don’t happen when he’s actually, truly sleeping, but they tend to come on just before he falls asleep—at least he’s never stayed awake after one—and he doesn’t want to risk one, not now. Partly it’s that he doesn’t want to see which memory, his own or someone else’s, Terminus will dredge up for him today. Partly it’s that he doesn’t want to be in the middle of one if—when—someone calls.

He doesn’t know what it’s like from the outside when he goes into one, but the look on Tim’s face when he woke him up that morning tells him it’s probably not a picnic for his boyfriend (bedmate, partner, boytoy, whatever) to witness any more than it is for him to experience them. And this last one was a real whopper, one that left him sick and shaking and feeling like Lady Macbeth—Out, damned spot, out! He doesn’t really want to sleep after that anyway, and Tim not being there makes it worse. He and Melanie—and Sasha, which Gerry can’t decide if that makes it better or worse—are up in Great Yarmouth again, staking out the place they’re sure will be the site of the Unknowing. They haven’t been able to confirm it one way or another, but they’re still trying. Gerry is nervous and anxious about them; it’s not that he doesn’t trust them, although Martin is ninety percent of Melanie’s impulse control, it’s just that he knows the Stranger can be insidious and he worries that it will sneak in where they’re least expecting.

He’s also worried about Martin. Nobody’s heard from him in three days, since he called to ask about Gertrude’s arrest records—and that was news to Gerry, that she’d been caught adding him to the Book—and he would have expected him to at least text and tell Jon what his plans are. Strung out, nervous, and more than a little worried that the Hunters who had the Book last might have heard Martin mention his name and decided to take steps, he finally tried calling shortly after Tim let him know they’d reached Great Yarmouth, only for the phone to ring a few times and then abruptly drop the call. He tried again a few minutes ago and only got the automated intercept message, and texts are going through as undeliverable. Either the international plan provided by the Institute has reached its limit…or something has happened.

Gerry isn’t betting on the plan not being an unlimited one.

So here it is, inching ever closer towards the wee small hours, and he is running out of ways to keep himself awake. He’s tried reading, but the point he’s at in Dracula isn’t helping; he’s tried drawing, but what appears on his canvas is scaring him almost as bad as the flashbacks, and the music he usually listens to makes things worse. About the only things he’s been able to do are smoke and fret, and he’s down to his last cigarette.

He’s starting to get shaky. It’s been a while since he’s…fed, for lack of a better word, and without Tim, Martin, or Melanie there to redirect his attention or hold him accountable, the temptation to go prowl the streets and find something more substantial than the stopgap measures he’s been using is almost too strong. Woodbines are a poor substitute for a human soul—and Gerry is not sure at what point in time that became a normal fucking thing for him to think, but here he is—and he’s already asking himself if Martin would really condemn him if he knew, which is not a good sign for either of them. God, it’s a good thing Melanie isn’t becoming a full-blown avatar of something, because the three of them would be an absolute disaster, regardless of what Fear she found herself bound to.

He paces, and smokes, and frets, and tries calling Martin again, only to get the fucking automatic intercept message. It’s not that late over there, Martin should be able to answer, but he isn’t, which means something is wrong, but there’s nothing he can really do. He still hasn’t got a new passport because he keeps getting the runaround about whether he needs to renew or reapply and it’s honestly not that high on his list of priorities right now, so he can’t exactly go over to America to help. And it’s a big fucking country; even knowing the last place Martin was, there are so many places he could have gone since and so many places he could be. It’s the main reason he’s reluctant to express his worries to anyone else, particularly Jon. He doesn’t doubt for a minute that Jon will go over there and tear the entire country apart with his bare hands if he thinks Martin is in trouble, but Martin will kick Gerry’s ass if he lets him get hurt.

Damn Gertrude. Did she have to be so bloody mysterious all the time? Why couldn’t she have left them a clear, concise folder with all of her plans and provisions laid out in color-coded bullet points, rather than traipsing around the world with her cards so close to her chest they’re practically down her bra and her trust no one attitude that obviously hadn’t served her well at all? Or even left it in a file—or several files—on her laptop? But the team had already scoured her office…

Gerry freezes mid-puff. The Archivist’s office. A conversation he had with Gertrude once pops into his head. He stares off into the distance for a moment, running through his thoughts, then picks up his phone and dials a number.

“I’m breaking into your office,” he says without preamble as soon as the call is picked up.

“Wh…Gerry?” Jon sounds confused and fogged with sleep.

“Yeah.” Gerry backtracks and tries to remember the appropriate social script for calling someone in the middle of the night to get permission to do something that would otherwise be illegal. “Sorry. Hi. It’s Gerry. Didn’t mean to wake you up. I’m going to break into your office.”

There’s a long pause, and a bit of rustling from the other end. “Okay? N-no, wait…there’s security. I think. You—I’ll let you in.”

Gerry decides it’s not worth the argument. “Fine. I’ll meet you there.”

The Underground runs late now, so he’s able to get to the Institute fairly quickly. He doesn’t know if he’s going to beat Jon there or not—he’s still a bit hazy on where exactly he and Martin live these days, so he doesn’t know which train he has to take—but he’s not prepared for Jon to pull into a parking spot right as he walks up.

“I didn’t know you drove,” he says, gesturing at the car.

Jon shrugs. He still doesn’t look like he’s completely awake, but he’s at least functioning. “It’s Tim’s. He didn’t want to be up there in something that could be traced back to him and loaned it to me while they were gone in exchange for—” He stifled a yawn. “—taking them to the train station.”

Which makes sense, at least. Gerry sighs. “Fine. So how do we get in without alerting security?”

Jon leads him around to the side door, unlocks it, and lets him in. The Archives are pitch black and—quite frankly—spooky this late at night, but before Gerry even has time to really get nervous or start wondering if the Dark itself somehow got in, Jon clicks on a torch with a familiarity that tells Gerry he’s done this more than once.

“Come here often, then?” he asks dryly, and then instantly regrets it. Even if Jon wasn’t asexual, he’s dating Martin—although dating is a bit of a mild term to put on the level of commitment, depth of feeling, and amount of pining that goes on between the two of them.

Jon, however, doesn’t seem to notice. “We didn’t always want Elias to know how often we’d been in the tunnels,” he says, a bit distractedly. “It’s this way.”

Gerry trails after Jon to his office, then takes the torch so he can unlock the door. He’s about to start scanning when Jon flips a switch and lights up the room.

It’s…unsettlingly familiar, and yet odd at the same time. Gerry hasn’t been here since coming back to life—he never made it down to the Archives during the attack and hasn’t been back to the Institute since, to keep Elias from knowing he’s alive—and he hasn’t adequately prepared for seeing it. Gertrude was never one for the personal touch, but he remembers the very specific tea mug, the fountain pens, the smart jacket that always hung on the coat rack even though he never saw her wear it, the calendar she claimed she left up despite it being a quarter century out of date because the cat in the picture looked like hers. Now the coat rack is gone, replaced with a flimsy set of shelves bristling with files and a cardigan Gerry recognizes as one Martin made to use up his scrap yarn and gave Melanie as a gag gift tossed casually over some of them. There are no pens or tea mugs to be seen; Jon is seemingly obsessive about keeping his desktop clear. The calendar has been replaced with a more up-to-date one, the dates methodically and precisely crossed off, although the picture is still one of cats. Even the desk is different, a heavy dark walnut that could easily be used as a barricade in a siege.

For a moment, Gerry stares at the office in dismay. Then he shakes it off and turns to Jon. “Since you’re here, I can look through your office, right?”

Jon gestures vaguely at the room. “Knock yourself out.”

Gerry begins going through the desk, even though it’s new; he presumes whatever was in the previous desk would be transferred over, so it’s a chance. In the top drawer he finds the pens—not fountain pens, but not cheap biros either—plus a stamp pad, a bottle of ink, and a pack of what look like statement forms. The next one contains several blank tapes and a jar filled with what appears to be dirt, or possibly ashes. The bottom drawer contains nothing but a spare set of clothing. With a regretful sigh, he shuts the drawer and starts looking through the shelves.

Jon watches him for several minutes, then finally asks, “What are you looking for?”

“Oh.” Gerry sighs, half buried in a stack of files. “I finally remembered…not long before I ended up in the hospital, Gertrude told me that if something got her first…there’s a storage unit on an industrial estate up near Hainault. It’s where she was storing what she had that she reckoned might disrupt the Unknowing, once she pinpointed where it was. She said she rented it under the name Jan Kelly, and hid a key for it somewhere in the Archives.”

Jon blinks. “Oh. Why didn’t you say so? I found that already.”

Gerry straightens too fast and bangs his head on the underside of the shelf. He lets out a string of Italian profanity he learned from Tim and carefully extracts himself, then turns to face Jon. “You what?”

Jon shakes his head and looks embarrassed. “I’m—I’m sorry, I should have asked you sooner, but…”

Gerry takes a deep breath and tries to calm down. “Sorry, my fault, I did kind of wake you up and throw questions at you. Uh, thanks for just helping me without demanding to know what I was doing, though.” That elicits a tiny laugh out of Jon. “You found the storage unit?”

“N-no, no, I found the key,” Jon replies. His eyes go vacant for a second. “It was—early December sometime? Martin and I listened to one of Gertrude’s tapes together…it, your mother was on it, she was telling Gertrude about…the Book.”

Gerry shivers. “I can’t imagine Martin took that well.”

“He didn’t. But at the end of it…your mother gave Gertrude a page out of the Book. She didn’t say who was in it, just that it was in English. And I heard Gertrude…open a floorboard after.” Jon crosses over to a corner of his office, kneels down, and levers up a board; it does in fact give a rather distinctive creak. “This is where her laptop was. And…I also found this.” He holds up a plain, ordinary-looking key.

“That’s it.” Gerry moves closer and takes the key from him, examining it.

Jon puts the board back and gets to his feet. “Near Hainault, you said?”

“Yeah, an industrial site. Not sure which one.”

“Well, there can’t be but so many up there. Come on, then.” Jon turns for the door.

Gerry blinks at him. “What, now?”

Jon turns and looks back at him. “Now that I know it’s there, I don’t think my curiosity will let me wait much longer. And…I’m not sure I can go back to sleep.”

Gerry feels a bit guilty. “I shouldn’t have woken you.”

“Well, regardless, you did. Anyway, if we go now, Elias is less likely to know where we’ve gone. Personally, I’d like to keep him in the dark as much as possible.”

“Fair point,” Gerry admits. “All right. Let’s go.”

Jon gives him his phone to look up storage units in the area while he drives them up to Hainault. Gerry finds two and calls both, without any particularly high hopes. One goes to a voicemail that informs him the office hours are nine AM to five PM, but that access to the units is available year round, which is not helpful. The other, surprisingly, gets an actual human being who seems delighted to have something to disrupt their boring night and happily assures “Mr. Kelly” that his unit is still fully paid up, although only through the end of the month. The kid on the other end even “confirms” the unit number and gives him the access code to the gate, as apparently they’re not actually on site, which is a boon Gerry hasn’t been expecting.

When they reach the unit, Gerry has Jon key in the number—65317—and the gate slowly swings open. Jon finds an unobtrusive spot to park the car, and they begin wandering the rather eerie rows of units. Finally, Gerry stops. “This is it. 1034.”

Jon hands Gerry the key. He fumbles with the lock for a moment, then pops it open and rolls up the metal door. The light from the outside doesn’t provide a lot of illumination, but it enables him to spy a cord dangling from the ceiling, which he pulls. A light clicks on overhead.

Jon almost drops the torch. “Good Lord.”

It’s…cluttered isn’t the word. Everything is neatly stacked and, if not organized, at least put in relatively orderly rows. But it’s crowded, and Gerry is suddenly thankful they didn’t bring Martin, who would likely be feeling more than a little claustrophobic, especially after Gerry shepherds Jon in and rolls the door down behind them—not, however, before pocketing the lock, just in case.

“That’s Gertrude.” Gerry sighs. “If something’s worth doing, it’s worth…searching through a couple dozen unmarked cardboard boxes for.”

“Did she give you any hint of what it might be we’re looking for?” Jon asks. “Other than ‘something to disrupt the Unknowing’?”

Gerry shakes his head. “She said she’d show me when we got back to London. Mind you, she had this weird look in her eyes, like it was some kind of joke.”

“Was it?”

“Probably not. She didn’t make jokes.”

Jon goes quiet for a moment, looking around the storage unit. Gerry figures he’s trying to figure out where to start until he asks, very softly, “Do you think she knew? That, that you weren’t likely to make it back to London alive?”

Gerry…honestly hasn’t considered that question before. “I-I mean…not exactly? She couldn’t have Known. Not like that. The future, it’s—anyone who tells you they can see the future, for certain anyway, is lying. There are…probabilities, sure, but everything we’ve ever found that has to do with fortune-telling or, or predictions or whatever, it’s been Web-aligned. Someone once said the only two things the Eye can’t See are what might have been and what might be.”

“Who told you that?”

“Genuinely, can’t remember. I was a little kid and they weren’t talking to me.” Gerry doesn’t even remember who the person was talking to, either, but he’s not going to say that. “Anyway, Gertrude might’ve known I was sick. I kept having headaches, real bad ones, but she always said I’d be fine. I just…assumed she Knew it wasn’t all that bad, but looking back on it, she probably didn’t want to waste energy on something like that, not when she was focused on clowns and skin-stealing monsters and saving the world. She was never one to treat one life as more important than that.”

Jon exhales heavily. “She sounds like a delightful person.”

Gerry shrugs. “She had her moments. Most of the time, though, yeah, she frustrated me. Anyway, let’s…see what’s here.”

They begin searching through the stacks and boxes. Jon finds a few paintings with the eyes cut out; Gerry finds a box full of dolls that have also had their eyes removed. Something about that tickles at the back of his mind, but he—perhaps unwisely—ignores it and keeps searching. There are a number of shredded newspapers, too, but Gerry can’t tell if they are—or were—important, or if they’re just there for packing.

An exclamation from Jon draws his attention, and he whips around. “What? You found something?”

“I—I don’t know. It’s…” Jon gestures helplessly. “I found a book.”

Instantly, Gerry is at Jon’s side, staring down at it. It’s a notebook, or appears to be one from the outside, which…isn’t necessarily comforting. One of the nastiest books he’s ever picked up for his mother was ostensibly a mimeographed recipe book bound with a plastic comb, the kind put together and sold by Ladies’ Auxiliaries to raise money for a new sanctuary roof or something. He pokes at it gently, but the book, thankfully, doesn’t respond.

“I…Gertrude wouldn’t have kept it here if it was dangerous,” he says, a little uncertainly.

“Unless she thought it would stop the Unknowing,” Jon points out.

“Tell you what.” Gerry hands Jon his lighter. “Stand back. And be ready with that if I start screaming.”

He waits until Jon backs away, then gingerly lifts the book out of the box, where it’s nestled between several empty glass frames and a moth-eaten scarf. Holding his breath, he slowly opens the cover, then sighs in relief when he sees what’s inside. “It’s okay. It’s Gertrude’s handwriting.”

Jon relaxes and comes closer again. “What does she have to say?”

“Absobloodylutely nothing useful,” Gerry grumbles, angling the notebook so Jon can see as he flicks through the pages. Names, locations, dates, none of them with any meaning as far as he can see. “We can take it with us, but I doubt it’s going to give us anything helpful.”

“You never know. I-it might have something.” Jon takes the book from Gerry and sets it somewhere obvious they won’t lose it, hopefully. “There were dates. Maybe we can match them with statements.”

“That’s a thought,” Gerry admits. “But it’s likely not what she meant.”

“No,” Jon agrees. “We should keep looking.”

Gerry resumes his search. Frankly, it looks like an old woman’s storage unit, filled with things she doesn’t want or need anymore. He’s frowning down at a box of what appears to be dusty old lace, about to reach into it and pull something out, when Jon asks in a voice that sounds very much like he doesn’t want to ask it, “Have you…heard from Martin?”

Gerry straightens and turns to look at Jon, who is studiously avoiding him, but also not really looking all that hard—more scuffling through the boxes pretending to look busy. He doesn’t want to answer him, but does, reluctantly. “No. Not since you said he’d called. I—I tried to call him earlier, and it didn’t go through.”

“So did I. I was hoping…” Jon shakes his head. “He’s, he’ll be fine. He promised.”

Gerry doesn’t point out that he made a promise, too, and that it took a deal with the devil to even partially fulfill it. “Martin’s tough. I’m sure he’ll be all right. Probably he’s just in a dead zone or something.”

Jon’s head comes up in alarm, and then he suddenly relaxes. “Oh, you mean…l-like a cell phone dead zone.”

“Yeah. Martin’s alive. I’d know if he wasn’t.” Gerry taps his left temple. Jon probably can’t see the streak of white there—Gerry’s careful to arrange his hair to keep it hidden—but he can never seem to cover it up with dye, no matter how he tries.

“That’s…oddly comforting.” Jon sighs and goes back to furricking through the boxes, but at least this time he seems less upset.

Gerry turns to look in another box and frowns. “Now why in the hell would she have a box of…mangy fur scraps?”

Instantly, Jon is at his side, snatching the scrap from beneath his fingers. He turns it over, a look of mingled disgust and upset on his face. “It’s a gorilla skin.”

“Are those even legal?”

“It was from the fourth century.” Jon stares at the scrap of skin, then lets it fall back into the pile. “Orsinov was looking for it. She…she wanted to ‘wear it to dance the world new.’”

A chill runs down Gerry’s spine. “Fuck. It was her costume for the Unknowing.”

Jon gives a single nod. “And in its absence…she needs something powerful.”

“Like the skin of an Archivist. Well, that does it, you’re not allowed to spend a minute alone until Martin gets back.” Gerry scowls at the box, then folds the top closed. “Maybe not even then, but that’s up to him.”

“What if they try for him again?” Jon holds up his hands, backs towards Gerry, showing him the raised scars and chapped edges. “I’m…not in good condition, but…”

“I can’t do anything for him,” Gerry says. “Except protect you.”

Jon slumps and turns away. Something seems to catch his eye, and he moves towards it. Curious, Gerry follows him over to a hard case, dull black with brushed nickel clasps. It could be something simple, like a typewriter or a record player, something left over from Gertrude’s childhood…but he doesn’t say anything, just watches as Jon undoes the buckles and lifts the lid slowly. Both of them stare at the contents for a long time, then look up at each other.

Gerry’s the one to finally break the silence in the end. “Yep. That’ll do it.”

[ineffably-smote]

Matilda the Musical at Cambridge Theatre, West End

(Completely off topic from this blog but I thought it was too cute not to share a review)

An absolute lovely production ! Matilda was a Roahl Dahl story I really connected with after watching the 1996 version of the movie, even though I had read the book a long time ago. I had quite enjoyed the Netflix musical, and since I had an extra night in London and they had 20£ tickets available decided to go give it a shot! (Plus I was vaguely roaming around the Donmar area thinking I might give Macbeth another shot but the queue was already so long and it was freezing so decided against it for tonight). Unsurprisingly the room was filled with families and children and I felt a bit out of place squeezing between two groups in my sky high seat in the upper circle, but of course that did not matter one bit once the show started.

Set and Staging

The set was crazy?? Granted, I have not been to the theatre a lot so I don’t really have a scale for how impressive they can be, but there were so many backgrounds, so many props, entire classrooms and bedrooms rising out of the floors, libraries swinging in and out I genuinely did not expect that level of tech and was happily surprised.

Favourite Bits

My absolute favourite song was “My House” by Miss Honey. The actress delivered it with so much power and emotion. I teared up a little bit. I knew I liked the song, and I knew it was coming but it is such a welcome and beautiful part of the musical. The Miss Honey character means a lot to me, and seeing her sing this song, then argue with Matilda about what to do with their suspicions of Ms Trunchbull, and then seeing her stand up to Trunchbull at the end? Beautiful, wonderful, cathartic. I was excited to hear “Pathetic” because I knew it had been cut from the Netflix musical, and even though I generally like listening to it as part of the show’s soundtrack on Spotify it did not move me quite as much as “My House” did.

Other thoughts

“Naughty” by Matilda is also very nice, the actress was really good and fun to watch. Ms Trunchbull was a delight to watch, terrifying but also funny because of the caricatural aspect of her character. And the kids were so impressive, the phys-ed scene and the bows were with all of them there and they were so well choreographed. I was just sitting there thinking wow, they really really know what they’re doing. Which yeah, obviously, but it was still wonderful to watch.

It was overall a very nostalgic experience, I kind of wish I had access to something like this when I was a kid, and I am so glad I ended up going to see it.

[denimbex1986]

'It's all happening for Florence Pugh.

The brilliant actress can be seen in Christopher Nolan's latest box-office hit, Oppenheimer, as the psychiatrist Jean Tatlock. She has starred in films as diverse as Outlaw King, Greta ('Barbie') Gerwig's Little Women (for which she received an Oscar nomination), the Marvel hit, Black Widow, and Don't Worry Darling, opposite Harry Styles. On TV, she has been Cordelia to Anthony Hopkins’s King Lear, and was the lead in BBC One’s hit adaptation of John le Carré's The Little Drummer Girl.

She presented two categories at the 2023 Oscars (her striking Valentino dress prompted Vogue magazine to hail her 'punk princess' look), and she has appeared on the cover of Time magazine, billed as one of its 'Next Generation Leaders'. Her social media series, 'Cooking with Flo', has been a huge hit.

Little wonder that a London-based newspaper can say of her: "In the last couple of years, the actress has become a plain-speaking role model for Gen Zers and is fast becoming the celebrity young women most identify with".

Back in April 2017 the Sunday Herald ran an interview with her, as her then-latest film, Lady Macbeth, was released in the UK. Here it is again.

“SHE was just so different to anything I’d ever read before,” Florence Pugh is saying. “She was just so exciting, and so manipulative, and delicious. I’ve never had a character allow us to love her whilst she does awful things”.

Awful things is an understatement when it comes to Katherine, the anti-heroine whom she plays in a new film, Lady Macbeth. The film has just gone on UK general release, trailing the sort of advance reviews that most film-makers would kill for. Pugh herself has drawn praise from critics who know what they’re talking about.

The film, the debut feature by theatre director William Oldroyd, is based on a 19th century novella, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District, by Nikolai Leskov (and despite the title, it’s not about the Shakespeare character).

On screen, the action has been transported to rural Northumberland in 1865. Katherine, 17, having been sold by her father, together with a small piece of land, finds herself in a large, austere country house and, worse, in an arranged marriage to a curt and distant older man, who resolutely declines to make any physical advances to her, even on their wedding night. And her new father-in-law is as harsh as he is unsympathetic. Her future looks bleak, but Katherine is not without resources.

In time, she falls headlong for a groomsman, Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis), with whom she begins a torrid affair. Gradually, however, she, and the film, take a violent turn as it becomes evident that she will stop at nothing to get what she wants. It says much for the script (by Alice Birch) and for Pugh’s remarkably self-assured performance that, even at the end of the film, having witnessed a fair degree of mayhem, we still can’t bring ourselves to dislike Katherine.

Pugh herself has won acclaim for the role. Declaring that she had announced herself as a major talent, the US entertainment bible Variety praised her for folding Katherine’s contradictions “into one composed, consistent characterisation” and that she “impresses with precocious poise, sensuality and venom”. Given that this is really her first major role, and that she is still only 21, it’s hard to disagree with Variety’s judgement.

Pugh was born and raised in Oxfordshire. At school, in Oxford, she was, by her own admission, no good at chemistry or maths, being much more inclined in the direction of drama and music. She took part in a city arts centre’s productions of such plays as Romeo & Juliet and Blood Wedding, and she was already thinking of a career as an actor when fate intervened in the shape of The Falling, a 2015 film directed by Carol Morley and set in an all-girls' school.

“I nearly didn’t do it,” Pugh says of that film. “I wasn’t going to do it. My brother’s in the industry, and I had been watching him for a couple of years before I had done that audition. I knew how mean the industry was, I knew how cut-throat it was. I knew that you just don’t get auditions like that.

“So obviously, when I saw that ad – to hand in a tape – I didn’t do it, because there was no point, because I wasn’t going to get the part. And then my mum said, well, this is what you want to do at some point. You’re not going to get the role, but we can always just give it a go because you need to start knowing how to do tapes.

“So, on the day of the deadline, I rushed over and we quickly filmed myself talking about my hobbies, who I was, and what it was that I did, and I got a callback the next day, saying the director wanted to meet me at some point. So it was all pretty much fluke, and being in the right place at the right time.”

She subsequently did an audition in person for Morley. After she left the room, Morley thought, oh wow. The casting personnel fell quiet as they weighed up what they had just seen. “Do you not think she’s amazing?” Morley asked. Someone else said it was like a young Kate Winslet walking into the room.

Pugh has a small but central role in The Falling, and if she appeared daunted by working with Maisie (Game of Thrones) Williams, with Maxine Peake and Greta Scacchi, she did not show it. That said, her first day in front of the camera was, she acknowledges, “absolutely terrifying, and I remember feeling sick on the way to work, because I’d done a whole summer’s worth of auditions, and I’d worked so hard to get this role," she says.

“I remember [on that first day], getting in the car and thinking, oh God what if I’m crap? What if all of this is a lie, and I’ve managed to wean myself into this role and I completely muck it up? The first line I had on camera is where me and Maisie are under the tree and I say one line. It’s a very simple line. There was a big crew there … and the camera’s on, and they say ‘action’, and I’m looking up at the tree, and I just completely forget my line. Gone. I remember thinking, you really can't muck this up. Wake up!”

She needn’t have worried. After The Falling, she filmed a pilot, Studio City, for Fox. Most recently, she was seen in ITV’s Marcella, alongside Anna Friel and Laura Carmichael. And last October she was one of 20 talented newcomers to win a BAFTA Breakthrough Brit award.

Casting director Shaheen Baig had cast The Falling and she recommended Pugh to Oldroyd when the search was on for someone to play Katherine. It had to be someone capable of playing an innocent young woman who becomes considerably more cold-hearted. Oldroyd himself had seen The Falling and thought Pugh had been “open and honest”. And straightaway, they knew they’d found their Katherine. Florence, Oldroyd says, “gives an incredibly strong and confident performance”.

And now, after numerous screenings at film festivals, comes the widespread release of Lady Macbeth. “It’s very rare,” Pugh says, “that a script like this lands in my inbox – especially, you know, being given the opportunity to … at the time, I was a still-unknown 19-year-old actress, and that just really doesn’t happen.” It was “such an exciting prospect to try and get under the skin of” someone as manipulative and delicious as Katherine, she adds.

“The most fascinating thing about her is that we still love her until the end. Even if you don’t love her at the end, she still managed to allow you to support her. For a character to try and play, that’s fascinating."

The film also makes you think of the repressive way in which many women were treated back then. “One reason why I believe this character is so brilliant is that she is a modern woman in 1865. This wasn’t the norm, back then: it was totally expected that the woman was bought by her husband, and she was his property, and she would do exactly as he said.

“And of course Katherine – she’s 17 and she has been forced into this marriage – and she says no, which is rare. All of us that know period dramas were not expecting that. We don’t expect to see a modern force in an 1865-period film.”

Lady Macbeth sees Pugh wearing some authentic, striking gowns, but the tightly-laced corsets that Katherine is tied into by her maid Anna (Naomi Ackie) were a key way to understanding her.

Let’s get ready to giggle

“We went up about two weeks before we started shooting, and we had rehearsal time. We would be doing all of these physical scenes, me and Cosmo, and of course the moment I got in a corset, it all changed, because I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t move.

“That was so eye-opening in terms of Katherine and the character, because it meant that she was just as serious about these things as I was, and essentially her happiest times were when she was in a nightie or she was naked or she was in a dressing-gown, because that’s when I was at my happiest.

“There are so many ties that I could pull between me and Katherine because of that corset. It also made me realise how imprisoned these women were in 1865. They were trapped in their own clothes.” The corset, she adds, squashes your internal organs. "It’s designed to do exactly what it does, and that’s to keep a woman quiet.”

Pugh has gone on to shoot three upcoming films. The Commuter is an action thriller with Liam Neeson and Vera Farmiga; in Hush, a Sigma Films and Thruline Entertainment production, filmed in Glasgow and Ayrshire, she and Ben Lloyd-Hughes play two siblings who run a profitable ghostbusting racket. “Florence is a very unique talent, a special British talent on the rise,” says Brian Coffey, co-producer of Hush, “She has a deeply intuitive ability to create characters that draw an audience in. We were thrilled to be able to cast her in Hush.”

The third film is Stephen Merchant’s Fighting With My Family, in which Pugh plays a real-life WWE wrestler called Paige. The cast also includes the substantial presence of The Rock, Dwayne Johnson.

One scene in the film recreates Paige’s wrestling championship victory in a Monday Night RAW event in Los Angeles. Before Pugh stepped out into the ring, she had a brief rehearsal with The Rock. Speaking on Women’s Hour this week she said: “He’s teaching me how to throw a punch and I was stood there, and I remember looking at him, and just this space behind, all the empty seats, and thinking, oh my God, Dwayne 'The Rock’ Johnson just taught me how to punch!”

All in all, it was a marvellous experience, as evidence by Pugh’s Instagram post: “One of the best, most terrifying, most knackering and unbelievably exhilarating shoots I've ever done. #fightingwithmyfamily has wrapped and my god has it been a good run.”

She tells the Sunday Herald that she’s excited about both Hush and The Commuter. "Fighting With My Family was an emotionally and physically draining film, because it was so much fun but also because we were playing those wrestlers," she says. "Jack Lowden played my brother and it was really wonderful. We learned how to wrestle together and we had a lot of fun.”

There’s nothing else in the pipeline at the moment, though. For the time being she is focusing her energies on helping to promote Lady Macbeth – she’s excited to see what people think of it. Afterwards? “I’m going to have a little bit of time off, because I’m knackered. And then I can see what happens to Lady Macbeth, see where it goes.”

I ask her about her favourite films. “I love Leon,” she says, “I love Eternal Sunshine [Of The Spotless Mind]. I tell you what: I bloody love all of Natalie Portman’s stuff." She asks if I’ve seen the film, Chicken. “Oh, you should watch that,” she enthuses. “It’s by a new director called Joe Stephenson and there’s a great actor in it called Scott Chambers, who I worked with on Hush. It’s just absolutely beautiful.”

It’s only once the interview is over that I remember that Florence Pugh has yet another string to her bow. On her Twitter bio she describes herself not just as an actor but also as a singer-songwriter - she plays acoustic guitar, and sings, in a tantalisingly brief scene in The Falling. If for some reason she doesn’t make it as an actor she could, you imagine, always turn to writing and singing songs. But her performance as the manipulative, quietly riveting Katherine in Lady Macbeth suggests that her acting career is already on the firmest of footings.'

THE issue of so-called "posh" actors dominating the profession at the expense of those from less privileged backgrounds crops up frequently. Two weeks ago, Eton-educated Damian Lewis rejected the idea that they dominated acting, but called for greater diversity in the arts.

“I can certainly say that I didn’t have a difficult childhood. I had a really wonderful upbringing,” says Florence Pugh. “Obviously, [the alleged dominance] must be an issue, because it’s coming up, and people are obviously very opinionated about it.

“I haven’t been doing this for very long but of course I’ve been called this and that. And because of the speed with which my career has gone up, people have questioned whether it’s because of where I’ve come from, or where I went to school, or whatever. And I think my main comment towards it is: obviously, it must be frustrating to see people of privilege to go so high, but at the end of the day it’s the same game to get into this industry.

“It is just as hard, and everyone’s stories, left or right, have their own challenges in it. It is not easy to win over the public, to win over the critics. And yes, essentially, you could get in the news a lot if you’re privileged, if you have money, but it’s what you do with that afterwards. If people continue to watch your work, then surely that’s down to your talent.

“If they don’t, then you can call them out on it. But because this industry is so difficult, to stay in and to get there, I don’t think anybody should be accused of how they got there – unless they haven’t proved their point.”'

[talenlee]

Dread Month 2024

There’s this quote from Shakespeare, I think the Scottish play, which has lived rent-free in my mind since I learned it as a child, from its doleful, dreadful delivery in a voice so well equipped to dip into threat.

As the good things of day began to droop and drowse, Night’s black agents to their preys did rouse

And that there, that’s some classic ‘I read a book’ ass poetry to drop mid-sentence, an indicator and signifier that no really, I am one of the smart ones because I know something from a source that you probably don’t quite remember. Except I didn’t learn it from reading Shakespeare or even attending plays or associating with cool sexy bohemians at coffee shops where all the good drugs are being swapped.

I learned it from a 1950s radio program called The Goon Show, hosted by Harry Secombe, Spike Milligan and Peter Sellers, who are all names that should loom large over modern media but can’t, because they all died as late as 2001. In the heart of all things, they were the kinds of people who would now make what you’d call an amazing comedy podcast, and I have no doubt whatsoever that Sellers would do numbers on Twitter, until he deleted it, and came back a few months later to call a reporter an anti-white slur.

The line comes from a sequence where the villains of a story are preparing to steal a Jet-Propelled guided Naafi, a kind of tea shop that could be launched and flown from location to location in a hot moment. The response is:

“Ah, Macbeth!”

“You ignorant swine, that was Shakespeare.”

These are the words that lurk in my mind deep and dark when I think about dread month.

This is what I do. I pull together the pieces of my mismade and mismanaged memory, including the way I was raised as a preacher’s son to learn to deploy the rhetorical structure of a convincer, and put those tools to task in telling you a story that’s just a matter of rolling my life around in all those broken bits. I am old enough now that all the music I’m used to and like is just ‘old person stuff,’ rather than what it was when I was a child which is that I had the musical taste of an old man. Specifically, the old man was my father, who, himself, was never a Cool Guy with Cool Tastes. I mean they’re cool now, because he has a vinyl collection that dates back to his adolescence and early adulthood, but at the time, it wasn’t Cool Music.

My childhood featured reading classic horror novels and the deep abiding terror of Biblical literalism, the apocalypticism of a faith that believed in human sacrifice just as long as you word it differently, and the kinds of strange glimpses of 1980s and 1990s culture you got when you were afraid of hearing any rock music, all while in the slowly creeping end of the world that was no doubt, showing up any day now, probably sometime around 2000.

There’s an irony in that my dad never bought into the actual apocalypticism of our church, so while people in lesser positions of authority would huff that ‘I mean, Y2K is coming,’ dad would roll his eyes and make plans for 2001. Joke’s on them, I guess, but then, I’ve looked into what they’re up to and they still suck shit.

Anyway.

The point is that much of what I offer on this blog is a set of writing and videos that express the mind of a mediocre man with some good presentation skills, filtered through a jackdaw’s willingness to pick up anything shiny and a rattled brain that still is capable of spooking itself with late night reading of ghost stories.

Here in Dread Month, I seek to draw on that thread. It is a place for stories of unpleasant things, stories which may have a dour ending, pieces of classic fiction that I can share directly, and elements of the media I love and games I like that build on the themes of dread and horror. It is a time for the mood of a turning season, for when people are watching scary movies, when horror narratives get to take the fore, but also, the ideas of gore and schlock and violence are treated a little differently.

Throughout the month I will be serving articles about horror topics, yes, about ways to make, build and instil horror in narratives you’re working, in games that touch on the horrible and the dark, all that stuff, but there’s also going to be a special different feature for the blog. Each week, I present a Dread Reading, in which I take a short story that’s publically available, and read it to you. You can hear me talk about the story, and how I present its ideas, or you can read the original text and jump to the end of the audio to hear what I have to say about it.

The origin of this was reading some of my favourite Lovecraft stories onto the blog, and then commenting on them directly; it seemed to me for a public domain story, there was a strange silliness to try and present articles about the work without some kind of way of presenting the text directly. You know, if this story is public domain, why not just show you it, then comment on it? I think the first work I really wanted to do this with was the story from Lovecraft about the guy who discovered he was related to an actual ape, but don’t worry: good old Howard Poward Loward based that story on the discovery that his grandmother was actually Welsh.

Blood quanta is bloody preposterous, let me tell you.

I mean my grandmother is Welsh and it hasn’t given me any special insights into the horror of the world around me. Anyway, come with me this month, and pay attention to the content warnings.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!