so imagine you're just minding your own business, living your normal life in your community, judging your neighbors and their churches, etc, when these random fuck-off people who just won the war with the US come to your house and tell you, that because you are "Scottish" (you have lived in appalachia your whole life, sure you have family who moved out here in like, the 1800s but what the fuck are they talking about), you do not ethnically belong HERE, and instead you are going to be moved to the region of SCOTSMERICALAND with all of the other "Scottish" people in your "homeland" of the region normally known as Pennsylvania, and when you get there you find you're next door neighbors with Evangelical Southerners on one side and the most obnoxious rich New Yorker you've ever met on your other side, and also all your shit was taken against your will and you got separated from your in-laws because they got moved to ENGLAMERICALAND and IRELAMERICALAND (and we're all worried about what happened to Granpa Joe who speaks Cherokee and has family on the rez) —
then you can start understanding what the soviets did to the peoples of central asia.
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As much as I adore conlangs, I really like how the Imperial Radch books handle language. The book is entirely in English but you're constantly aware that you're reading a "translation," both of the Radchaai language Breq speaks as default, and also the various other languages she encounters. We don't hear the words but we hear her fretting about terms of address (the beloathed gendering on Nilt) and concepts that do or don't translate (Awn switching out of Radchaai when she needs a language where "citizen," "civilized," and "Radchaai person" aren't all the same word) and noting people's registers and accents. The snatches of lyrics we hear don't scan or rhyme--even, and this is what sells it to me, the real-world songs with English lyrics, which get the same "literal translation" style as everything else--because we aren't hearing the actual words, we're hearing Breq's understanding of what they mean. I think it's a cool way to acknowledge linguistic complexity and some of the difficulties of multilingual/multicultural communication, which of course becomes a larger theme when we get to the plot with the Presgar Translators.
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Shoutout to the writing of and inclusion of the line "Yeah, for Mom's work" that just so clearly makes sure to clarify: this is not characters who don't like each other. This is siblings fighting.
Will sees Joyce as El's mom and El as his sister and that is not revokable when he's mad, it is a universal truth to him now. He's upset with her but he is upset with his sister and they wanted to make sure you knew that that's what this is to him. This isn't season 3, he isn't tense with his crush's girlfriend. He's just having a squabble with his sister, which she is first now.
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in my humble opinion as someone with multiple cluster b disorders including bpd, the aim shouldn't be to "cure" it at all, because trauma cannot be cured and this is not an attainable goal, which sets an unfair precedent for us ourselves as victims of the disorder. the aim should instead be to heal and rehabilitate to a point where you can cope with the behaviors you've developed that are connected to the trauma. healing will happen, but the desire to "cure" all "sick" people is not a helpful stance to have and is way more damaging than it is helpful. hurt people don't need to be "cured" so much as just understood and helped. "curing" us is very much a medicalized idea that bases a person's worth on their ability to function. you and your struggles will always be valid, whether you heal or not, whether you're "cured" or not <3
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im not the biggest alhaitham/kaveh shipper (because im a rare pair ho) but it seems to me that in alhaitham/kaveh getting-together fics tend to be... unequal.
the beautiful thing about alhaitham and kaveh is that they're both equally right and equally wrong and equally dicks about it. but the writers for alhaitham/kaveh much more frequently seem to give alhaitham the burden change (the burden of the character flaw) instead of kaveh.
in any good character arc, the main character has a fatal flaw or misconception, and by the end of that arc they have addressed that flaw in some definitive way. scrooge was a scrooge and learned that being that way was detrimental; merlin from finding nemo was overprotective to a fault and had to learn that he couldn't (and shouldn't) control everything and to let go; the wolf from little red riding hood learns that you should stop while you're ahead.
stories centering around romance tend to lean heavily on character arcs, which makes sense. and since romance generally requires two individuals to be vulnerable and open and emotional with each other, it makes double sense that alhaitham/kaveh authors zoom straight into alhaitham's lack of emotional vulnerability.
this bothers me.
in society, individuals are expected to experience and present emotions in a specific way. if someone dies, you cry. if someone smiles at you, you smile back. if you're at a party, you're supposed to be having fun. if you don't do these things, you're seen as impolite at best and a inhuman freak at worst. when these behaviors are frequent it's often viewed as emotional immaturity, or a lack of ability to feel at all. the inability or lack of willingness to conform to societies emotional expectations of you is seen as a flaw and a reason for exclusion.
alhaitham is canonically disliked and avoided for being the way he is. he prefers it this way, but that doesn't mean the people perpetuating this avoidance are in the right. they are the societal pressure to conform that alhaitham blows off. alhaitham could be the way he is for a lot of reasons: avoidant attachment style, trauma, following someone else's example (eg. his grandmother), or just his base personality. it doesn't MATTER. he is the way he is. kaveh having to accept that should be part of the story.
putting the burden of the fatal flaw on alhaitham, making the way alhaitham treats kaveh and the people around him the problem, feels invalidating. it implies heavily that alhaitham's way of interfacing with the world, alhaitham's very SELF, is incorrect. my suggestion is to flip a larger portion of that burden onto kaveh. kaveh 👏 character 👏 arcs 👏
some examples/recommendations:
- make kaveh project his insecurities onto other people but especially onto alhaitham; he's overly reliant on other people for his own self worth, and he perceives alhaitham's lack of positive feedback as a direct reflection of how alhaitham feels about him. but learns along the way that alhaitham doesn't hate him, kaveh's actual struggle is with hating himself and being unable to his own self as worthy of love. maybe throw in how you are responsible for your own recovery, other people can help but you can't rely on them to carry you through self actualization.
- or, kaveh tries to make alhaitham behave more like a "normal" person, to be more pleasant and emotive and forthcoming, and then realizes he's in the wrong for trying to make alhaitham into something he's not, possibly for all the wrong reasons (not because he likes alhaitham better like that, but bc society says that's healthier and a better/more conforming way to be)
- or you could go ahead make alhaitham's issues the main problem but they're too complicated to overcome in a short period of time, so kaveh has to accept alhaitham is doing his best in his own way and not push for unrealistic and unhealthy changes. he could alter his own behavior to give alhaitham space and time and a safe place to land.
that got sappy so it's past time for me to dip out. go forth and ship things; but maybe consider letting alhaitham be a rude stone-faced bastard if he wants to be.
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Don't make fun of any accents, ever, for any reason.
The person on the receiving end will most likely fall in at least one of three categories:
Second language
Regional accent
Speech impediment
1. Second language
This person is probably speaking in this language to you because either you don't speak their mother tongue or you speak it worse than they speak the language you are speaking. They are making an effort for you. An accent doesn't make you dumb.
Making fun of someone for attempting to communicate in another language is the height of assholery.
2. Regional accent
Half the time you make fun of regional accents, you make fun of historically disenfranchised accents.
Southern accents? Congrats you're making fun of the way rural, usually poor, people speak. Their speech was highly influenced by black people.
Don't even get me started on making fun of AAE.
Again, an accent doesn't make you any less intelligent.
3. Speech impediment
They know they have a speech impediment. They are probably trying very hard not to sound like that. It is literally not their fault. They have had to deal with people making fun of it their whole life.
A speech impediment doesn't make you less intelligent either.
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