For the Laicion nation (aka, me and three other people)
I had this illustration commissioned (a big thank you to @lunehowls) for my werewolf AU Laicion fic (still a WIP).
The general pitch is as follows :
AU in which Laios never got to meet his sister again, putting his life on a whole other path, a more desperate one. A military deserter with barely a coin to his name, Laios hitches a ride on a boat to one of the elven continents, where he learns about magical tattoos that binds one’s soul to a wolf’s, effectively making them artificial werewolves. Illegal magic be damned, this feels like the answer to… everything.
In the process, he learns about the existence of an illegal fighting ring in one of the elven cities, where beastmen gladiators gather. Freshly tattooed and without anywhere else to go to, Laios decides to head there, where he meets Lycion, an elf and artificial werewolf gladiator. If they first bond over a simple shared meal, by spending time together (sharing the same room in the barracks, maybe the same bed? gasp) they find that they have a lot in common, notably a shared distaste for the body they were born in, a dysphoria partially remedied by becoming a werewolf.
They bond :)
NB: I commissioned another piece, go take a look :D
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warnings: long!, all the angst!!, tyler beat up a guy once :/, infidelity if you squint
when tyler returned to arkansas, you were the last person he expected to see.
in the baking aisle of the piggly wiggly in his hometown was where he found you again after nearly a decade, reading the label on a box of cocoa powder in the same sundress you've had since the two of you dated in high school. thank heavens you notice him and speak first, that way he gets to pretend like he wasn't already contemplating what to say or if you'd even recognize him as soon as he stepped around the corner.
"tyler owens. you got a lotta nerve decidin' to show your face around here." you tease to mask your surprise, pulling your overflowing basket closer to yourself, and holy cow, he thinks you might be prettier now than on the day you met. "oh, really? why's that?" he asks, lifting his hat to greet you. "last i heard, you got famous and moved to new york. the locals don't like it when people make it outta here. must be real jealous." you tell him, and he just nods and strokes his stubble.
"y'know, you're a local. does that mean you're jealous too?" tyler inquires with a smirk, and you're all too quick to reply, "no, sir. knew you were gonna be somethin' the moment i laid eyes on you. only somethin' i've ever wanted to be was a housewife." you smile, but it doesn't reach your eyes. you clear your throat and ask him why he's back in town. "my aunt's getting sick, so i thought i'd see her while i still can. my storm chasin' team's been in the pits without me, too. not a lot of work for me in the northeast, if you can imagine." he confesses, and any trace of happiness on your face disappears.
"oh, ty, i'm so sorry." you apologize, and your gaze lands on the items in your shopping basket. "i was fixin' to go home and whip up some coca-cola cake. dunno if it's still your favorite but, maybe you could come with? take some to your aunt for me?" you offer. he's nodding faster than you can blink, half of the items on his grocery list long forgotten after you've checked out and he follows you to your car.
it's not long before the two of you are sat at your kitchen counter, ribs aching from laughter as you reminisce about your teenage escapades. the sweet smell of warm chocolate emanates from the oven and lingers in the air. tyler asks if you've seen his livestreams. you use every excuse as to why you haven't; that you're too busy, that you don't get good internet in rural arkansas, anything but the truth. seeing him that happy without you is just too painful.
"if there's no work in new york, why'd you move there?" you question, taking a sip of coke. he shifts uncomfortably in his seat. "for a girl. a girl from sapulpa." you almost choke on the liquid, causing a little to dribble down your chin. "a girl from sapulpa? what?-" you pause to wipe your mouth with the back of your hand, and he continues, "a storm chaser from sapulpa. her name's kate. she quit chasin' and got a job with the national oceanic and atmospheric administration. in new york."
your first thought is that she must be sharp as a tack, getting a job at a fancy place like that. but then a hundred more thoughts swarm your brain; when they might have met, if she's pretty, if she's kind, if he loves her, if he wants to marry her.
but you couldn't possibly ask him all that. you're a lady.
tyler breaks the silence. "you been talkin' to any fellas around here?" he's not sure if he even wants to know. you're not sure if you even want to tell him. you don't look him in the eyes when you say, "yeah, i uh- i've been with bobby for about 3 years now. you remember bobby? from school?" and sure, of course he remembers bobby. he spent all of senior year just trying to keep that meathead away from you.
"you know i hated him, right?" tyler spits, running a hand through his hair as he leans over the counter, getting closer to you, "i almost killed him when he tried asking you to prom in front of me. in front of everybody. it was embarrassing." your lip quivers as the distance closes between you. "well, he's different now." you retort, trying to convince him, trying to convince yourself. "that's a load of horse shit." he scoffs, "why are you going out with him, really?"
"maybe because he didn't abandon me, tyler!" you exclaim, and you shudder when you feel his warm breath against your skin. he cups your cheeks in his hands. "hey, hey. peach, look at me. i would've taken you to oklahoma with me in a heartbeat. why didn't you tell me?" he asks, searching your teary eyes. but how do you explain that leaving wasn't your dream? that you would have been happy growing old with him right here? that staying with him would have just held him back? that you had to let him go?
he kisses you. and fuck, you haven't been kissed in so long. but he's not yours anymore.
you force yourself to push him away. "tyler, no. we can't. we can't." you tell him, the words thick as molasses as they fall from your tongue. he reaches for your wrist as you rise from your seat, but you're pulling back before he gets ahold of it. "leave. get out of my house." you speak over him as he begs for the two of you to talk it out. "i mean it, tyler owens. go home." and that's enough to send him on his way, slamming your front door behind him.
by some coincidence, the timer on the oven goes off, letting you know the coca-cola cake you had just forgotten about was done baking. you think maybe you'll eat it all yourself. maybe you'll throw it out. maybe you'll share it with bobby. maybe you'll break up with him.
maybe in another life, you could've been enough for tyler.
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Another Käärijä Research Project
aka: käärijä style-shifting project
as a preface, here are my (non) qualifications for this project and the circumstances under which it happened:
I am a linguistics student, and this past semester I took a course on sociolinguistics. the goal of this project was to become familiar with the concept of and analyze style-shifting (it's more commonly known as code-switching online but theres a difference and this is style-shifting), specifically by analyzing the speech of one person. We had the option to study oprah or to have someone else approved by my prof, so you know I had to ask my prof if I could study jere. This project is solely my intellectual property; even though I had a tutor help me a lot, everything written in this paper and on this post was my work alone.
now, on to the actual findings! the full paper and transcripts will be linked at the end :D
the actual variables (words or sounds) that I studied were the pronunciation of r, and use of the word "the".
to make things a lot easier from the get-go, i'm going to introduce you all to one of my favorite websites, ipachart.com (the international phonetic alphabet [ipa] chart is a big chart with an entry for every sound that exists in a language. this handy dandy website has an audio recording for each one of those sounds).
go to this website, and then scroll down to the table. go to the column labeled "post alveolar" and then click on ɾ and ɹ. those are the sounds i studied in this paper! ɾ is the finnish r and ɹ is the american r :)
so basically what i did to find instances of my variable was i just looked up a bunch of esc interviews and listened out for use of the different r sounds. i also transcribed the entire dinner date live because i love torture apparently :) the specific interviews and lives/stories are in the bibliography of the paper :p
after i transcribed all the interviews and lives/stories i went through and highlighted every instance of the r sound. then i calculated the ratios of ɾ to ɹ based on the context they were spoken in. the two contexts i looked for were formal contexts (sit-down interviews) and informal contexts (literally anything else).
i found that jere uses ɹ WAY more often in formal contexts than he does in informal contexts, and the same in reverse with ɾ.
i then went back to the transcripts and looked for all instances of the word "the". i also looked for instances where i thought it should be present, but was omitted. i calculated the ratio of present vs omitted "the"s in formal vs informal contexts and made some charts.
the graph with the smaller black section is "use of 'the' in formal settings" and the one with the smaller green section is "use of 'the' in informal settings" (the images are transparent, sorry)
i found that jere uses "the" WAY more often when in formal settings! there were also some instances where he added a "the" where it was unnecessary, which is studied at length in this wonderful paper by @alien-girl-21
something i also noticed that i elected not to study because this paper took enough energy on its own was that in formal contexts, whenever the "or" sound came in the middle or at the end of a word, jere wouldn't pronounce the r. it stuck out to me mostly because i heard words like "performance" turning into "perfomance", which i thought was an interesting quirk.
unfortunately i was somewhat limited by both my brainpower and capacity to do more work on this paper in the relatively short timeframe i was given (2 weeks) and the fact that i was given a 5 page MAX for this paper (not including a bibliography). i had a lot of fun doing this though and am definitely planning on studying jere for for academic credit again in the future if given the chance!
also i would like it to be known that i spent an hour searching for that 5 second clip of the urheilucast where jere said that he used to sell kitchens and understands english better than he can speak it.
link to a google drive folder with the actual paper i wrote and the transcripts of the interviews with notation:
please feel free to send me asks and dms with questions or comments about this paper! i absolutely love rambling about linguistics :3!!
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