#but my usual 'competency' foreign language is french

[mademoisellesarcasme]

I speak basically no Spanish, despite having (allegedly) studied it K-8 and dating a half-Cuban guy for three years, but I definitely still tell Loaf, "Mira!" when trying to get her attention.

[dilf-din]

Then I have a request if you don’t mind! Joel x fem. Reader is italian and is in the US on holiday when the outbreak happens. She meets Joel in Jackson, she’s in her 20s and helps the community by teaching kids/teens (also Ellie) foreign languages like Spanish and French.

Joel becomes interested in her even though their age difference. You decide the rest, whatever resonates!! Could you add a bit of fluff like a bathtub scene together after Joel had a stressful day and she’s the only thing to calm him down?

change whatever you think should be changed and would make the story better and if you have any triggers about my requests please tell me!

I hope you have a great day!

Here it is!! I hope you like what I did with her character!! I did make her just a little older just for language competency’s sake.

Bonus: tons of Joel and Ellie banter

WC: 2400

Warnings: none, Joel being a flustered old man

“Vecchio uomo.”

Joel’s eyebrows drew together in confusion as ellie cackled manically. “What in the hell are you sayin’?”

“Vecchio uomo,” she repeated more slowly, “It means old man in Italian,” she finished, bursting into another fit of giggles.

Joel rolled his eyes and placed his hands on his hips, “And where are you learnin’ Italian?”

“We have a new teacher! She grew up in Italy, she knows like so many languages,” she gushed slinging her backpack from her shoulder and onto the kitchen table. She fished a dog eared copy of the Catcher in the Rye out of the front pocket and grabbed an apple off the counter taking a crisp bite out of it. “Have you ever read this? That Holden guy’s real messed up,” she continued, mouth full. “I like him,” she finished with a smile going to flop across the couch and get lost in her novel.

A new teacher? Joel hadn’t heard of anyone new coming in lately. He’d have to ask Tommy at dinner tonight. They were supposed to join them tonight for Jonah’s second birthday. He continued putting the finishing touches on the wooden elephant he had carved for the occasion, adding two dots for eyes and curling a small smile at the base of the trunk. He sanded it down one more time then set it on the table satisfied.

Ellie was chasing Jonah around the living room while he cackled like only a kid can. Joel smiled over at her. He and Tommy sitting side by side on the couch drinking small glasses of bourbon.

“Hey,” Joel started, “Ellie said something about a new teacher today, did we get someone new in that I missed?”

Tommy’s boyish grin spread wide across his face, “Why are you askin’ me? Did she tell you she’s pretty?”

“What? No, I just didn’t know if it was someone new or someone else that volunteered,” he said, clearly annoyed at the implication.

“She showed up last week while you and I were out on patrol. Spent a while settlin’ in, I guess today was her first day at the school. She’s a real pretty thing,” he said with a cock of his head, finishing off the rest of his glass.

“I don’t care how pretty she is, I care that she’s teaching my kid how to make fun of me in another language,” Joel retorted.

Tommy tried to stifle a laugh but couldn’t.

Joel looked defeated and finished off the rest of his bourbon.

“Why don’t you go down there and give her a talkin’ to, big brother?” he teased.

Joel rolled his eyes once again and reverted his attention back to Ellie and Jonah. They were playing with the set of wooden animals Joel had made him. Ellie going over the sounds they made in an exaggerated voice drawing giggles from the little boy. His tight curls bouncing wildly when he threw his head back. His heart warmed at the sight of them, safe in the walls of Jackson, untouched by the horrors of the world.

Ellie burst through the door with the same vigor that she usually did. Dragging her muddied shoes across the carpet and drawing a sigh from Joel. “Shoes off by the door Ellie,” he reminded her.

“Oh shit, sorry,” she said backtracking to kick them off but doubling down on the set of muddy prints she had already left.

“What’d you learn at school today?” he asked as he diced some potatoes for supper. “Any new insults for your old man?”

“Nah not today, our language teacher started some French lessons with us, but it’s too frilly for me, doesn’t sound right when I say it. Are we going anywhere tonight? I wanna wash this rain out of my hair, but I’ll wait if we have to go out again.”

“Not tonight kiddo, you’re good to go,” he smiled as she rushed upstairs.

Italian and French? Joel had taken Spanish in high school, but that was a long time ago. He couldn’t imagine having that many languages rolling around in his head. That new teacher must be smart as a whip.

They had stopped by the store to pick up a few items they needed around the house. Their washcloths were threadbare and they needed some more shampoo bars. Joel was piling the items into his arms listening to Ellie rattle on about the Catcher in the Rye when she suddenly interjected, “That’s her!”

“Who, what now?” Joel said trying to follow her gaze.

“That’s our new teacher. C’mon I’ll introduce you,” she said grabbing his arm and leading him across the store.

Joel’s heart jumped into his throat at the sight of you. Dark wavy hair framing a face with the prettiest features he might’ve ever seen. Dark, attentive eyes under thick lashes, skin that looked like it drank in the sun’s rays as a hobby, and a radiant smile. You looked to be in your thirties, but he couldn’t quite place it. You were smiling at Ellie as she must’ve been introducing you, your eyes locking with his.

“Pleasure to meet you,” you smiled extending a hand.

Joel shuffled the items he was holding around to free up his own hand and meet yours, it was as soft as sin. Tommy wasn’t kidding when he said you were pretty. “I’m Joel,” he said with a soft smile, “How’d you end up here?”

He listened to you talk hanging on every word. The lilt of your voice was intoxicating and he wanted to get drunk on every word falling from your tongue.

“My family was on vacation here the weekend of the outbreak. We lost my parents several years ago trying to journey between two QZs, it’s just me and my brother, Gio, now,” you explained, a hint of sadness in your voice.

“I’m sorry about your parents,” Joel said, reaching out to squeeze your hand. Your breath caught in your chest a little at the kind gesture. “We’re just up this road on the corner if you ever need anything, I’m real handy around the house,” he offered a small smile.

“Joel can fix ANYTHING,” Ellie rattled on, singing his praises.

“Well, we won’t keep ya here, let her finish her shoppin’ Ellie,” he said nudging her with the toe of his boot.

“See you on Monday!” Ellie chirped with a wave goodbye.

You smiled softly at Joel and mouthed “bye” as he retreated.

You watched the pair walked away and thanked the Lord that you had made it here safely into the company of so many kind people. Your hand still felt warm from his touch and you tried to shake the feeling. You had only been here a week, you didn’t need to be getting all these romantic ideas in your head.

Jackson had been a godsend to you and your brother. You had never settled in one place for longer than a few years. You learned at a very early age the nature of people, how they would feign loyalty then turn on you when someone or something they desired was as stake. You hadn’t made many allies over the past 25 years. So to be in a place where everyone was genuinely caring, they all worked together for the good of the whole, no one went without, you felt like you could finally breathe. When you offered to teach language at the school, you felt like it wasn’t much, but the parents and students alike were ecstatic. It was something new, something novel. You had taken a liking to the kids you worked with. Teaching the younger ones basic things like colors, numbers, and family members’ names.

You had also joined the group of women who made the weekly batches of soaps and shampoos for the townsfolk. As a child in Italy, you had spent many afternoons pouring candles and filling soap molds with your nonna. You were the youngest of the group, but they all welcomed you with open arms. They gossiped about the residents, but not in a mean way. More things like, “Tommy said they found an abandoned settlement on their last patrol, they’re going back to look for supplies later this week,” or, “Janet said the kids are going to put on a play in spring,” or, “I think Helen is pregnant.”

You were doing your best to piece together the people who lived there without seeming too nosy. You didn’t speak much as you worked except for to share different herbs and flowers you remembered your grandmother showing you and the remedies they provided. They drank in the knowledge and asked you an abundance of questions that you didn’t always have the answers to.

Your days stayed pretty busy as you tried to find your place in those wooden walls. It wasn’t until several weeks in that you started to notice all the things wrong with the little home you shared with your brother. The bannister was coming loose, the kitchen faucet had a slow leak, and the screen door was coming off its hinges. You had entertained the idea of borrowing some tools from your neighbor and doing it yourself, but this was one of your first days off, you had laundry to catch up on, and you were just tired. Tired from years of running. Tired from sleepless nights. So you decided to ask for help.

Joel was just coming down the stairs from a shower when he heard a small knock at the door. He had spent the morning at the stables getting the horses ready for patrol and had just gotten done cleaning up. His hair still slicked back, beard freshly trimmed. He was buckling his belt when he pulled the door open to see you there.

“Well hi,” he said shyly, “What are you doing in my neck of the woods?”

“I need some help,” you said with a mix of a smile and a grimace. “But if you’d rather do it another day, it’s nothing urgent!” you quickly explained.

“I’ve got time,” he smiled genuinely. “Let me just grab my tools,” he opened the door wider for you to step in.

“I’ll just be a second,” he said heading into what you assumed to be the kitchen.

You took a moment to look around. The frames that once held pictures of the family who lived there now filled with Polaroids of him and Ellie. The bottom shelf of the bookshelf was filled with board games. A sketchbook with a pencil tucked inside sat on the coffee table. Small pictures of their life together.

Joel re-emerged with a red tool case in hand. He sat at a kitchen chair to pull his boots on his feet, grimacing a little as he leaned forwards to tighten the laces.

“I brought a little bit of everything,” he explained, “But I can run back up here if we need anything more specific.”

“None of it should be too complicated,” you replied cheerily.

You didn’t share many words on the short walk down the dusty road. Just remarks about the weather and the produce that was coming in season. They were about to pick the last squash crop of the year, setting a good bit aside to freeze and add to soups later in the winter.

The first stop was the screen door on your porch. He actually kept a spare pair of hinges in with his tools that he was more than happy to give you. Taking the old rusted ones and swapping them for the new ones. He then made quick work of fixing the bannister, adding some new screws to anchor it back into the wall.

“Last stop is this leaky faucet,” you explained, leading him into the kitchen.

“I’ll have to get down and look underneath,” he explained stiffly lowering himself to the floor with another groan.

“You know,” he said from inside the old cabinet, “You taught my kid how to make fun of me.”

“What?” you asked in confusion.

“Ellie came home calling me an old man in Italian,” he chuckled.

You pressed your face into your hands with a groan, “That’s why she asked me how to say that, I’m sorry Joel,” you started.

He liked the way his name fell from your tongue.

“S’alright, it’s harmless,” he assured peeking out to send you a smile. “There, that should do it,” he said tossing his wrench on the floor and slowly easing himself up, the pain on his face evident.

You offered him a hand and he gladly took it. His fingers holding yours just a few moments longer than necessary.

“Back pain?” you asked.

“Just getting old,” he shrugged, “All the time I spend on those dang horses doesn’t help.”

“Hold on,” you said disappearing down the hall.

You came back holding a few bars of soap. “If you run these under the water and soak in the tub, it should help your sore muscles,” you explained, “Dried lavender and mint so you’ll smell nice too. Not that you smell bad,” you quickly tried to cover up.

Joel chuckled, “I know what you meant. Thank you darlin’, this is very kind of you.”

“Well it was kind of you to let me bother you on your day off.”

“You could never bother me, mean it,” his rough hands cradling yours. You felt your heart quicken at the touch, already longing for more when he pulled away with the soap in his grasp.

“Well, I should get goin’, I’ll think of you when I’m soaking,” he said, cheeks instantly flushing, “Well, not like that, I mean-“

“Please think of me,” you almost whispered, placing a hand on his bicep. You allowed your fingers to trace the contour of it under his flannel.

This time it was his breath that hitched.

You pressed a gentle kiss to his cheek and felt his mouth pull into a grin.

“Please don’t hesitate to come get me if you need anything else, I might’ve unscrewed your kitchen lightbulb just a bit so I have an excuse to come see ya again,” he said with a boyish grin.

“Joel Miller, you are cruel,” you said in mock outrage.

“Ciao, bello,” he waved in the best Italian accent he could muster. “Asked Ellie to teach me,” he winked.

You crossed your arms over your chest watching him from your doorway. A smile so big you couldn’t hide it if you tried.

This place got better every day.

[inthewaytoamultilinguallife]

Hello! Hope you’re doing good! :)

Have question to you. How do you choose which language to learn next? Struggling with that for months and not knowing which one to learn :/

oh - i sort of didn’t choose my languages really?

English is The language™️ everyone has to learn in my country, since it’s regarded as the “international” language as well as the “language of knowledge”. In public education we get 8 or 9 years of mandatory English classes. And since there is a very clear culture of academic bilingualism regarding English, we are put into private classes anywhere between 4-7yo, taking exam after exam year after year until we reach a B1 or B2 level, although some of us keep going until you reach at least the C1 level

So English wasn’t really up to debate really

And since most jobs require English, and most people competing for the job also have it as a second language, most young people restore to having another language to add to it. My country has a program that teaches portuguese, french, italian, uruguayan sign language and german to students of public high schools for free, which is how i studied portuguese and french. This, also, was not up to debate in my family, I had to do it or do it. My town only offered french Portuguese and Italian, and I wanted to do french and italian first, but my mom insisted on Portuguese since we live around somewhere 6 or 7 hours aways from brazil, and therefore Portuguese would look better in a job application. And so i took up portuguese.

Thankfully, I loved it, as well as the program. I never got to do italian, however, since there was a conflict on the time of the classes. I don’t know why i took up French really. In my country, it is regarded as a language of culture, of wisdom and academics, and that might have influenced it. I was also barely 15 and French was the only option I had for a free language class at hand at the moment 🤷

I don’t regret learning any of these languages, since i get to use them daily: i speak to local and foreign and immigrant people whose mother tongue is either of them with fair frequency, and at my university we don’t work with translated papers or books -you use the text straight up in french or English or whatever language it comes in (English, portuguese and french being the most common ones) They are, also, some of the most spoken languages around the entire continent i live on -America- which, having in mind that spanish is my mother tongue, is very helpful

Uruguayan sign language (LSU) was the only language i took that you can argue was made out of a conscious choice, but also not that much. I’m hoh and wanted to immerse myself in my country's Deaf community, as well as have a non-oral way of communicating, and LSU was their -our- language, so there was not exactly a choice as to what language i could choose there, although I certainly took the choice to learn it.

I don’t think i could be very much of help here, except for telling you the usual, sorry :(

(The usual being:

take a language that you will use at least over twice a month. Whether it is via reading, talking or whatever. The easiest way to do this is to take a language that is predominantly spoken in your region/country/continent but you can also think about what media do you consume a lot and what language it is predominately made in originally. Do you read a lot of manga? Do you like k-pop? Do you watch a lot of french films? Why not learn the language they were originally made in and then just watch/read/listen to them in that original language?

There is also nothing bad in starting to learn a language because you think their writing system looks beautiful or its pronunciation interest you/ sounds pretty to you, as far as you commit to learning it as any other language. You can pick a language just because you like it, and then build from there!

On that same note, you can learn a language because it is very different from the language or languages you already speak, and would like the challenge, or see how different other languages and cultures can be

At the end of the day, my only recommendation centres around choosing a language that will be helpful to you -either in job applications, or talking to other local people/immigrants/ tourists, or in giving you easier asses to education, books, movies etc, or because it teaches you about other cultures and ways of seeing the world, or even just ("just") because it makes you happy and excited to learn something new!

However, unless you want to struggle and be frustrated and depressed over it, or to drop the language less than a year in, never NEVER EVER learn a language just and only just because you want to add one more language to your list. Just, don’t please

really, please, don’t, it will not make you happy)

[switchbrainedholylime]

O, Canada

A small gift of Renga fic to @emmettspeakz

Reki laid on the floor awoken by the sun’s rays. He and Langa had just ended up having an impounti sleepover at his workshop since he stayed up until 3 in the morning fixing up their boards. The redhead looked over at Langa who muttered to himself in his sleep. 

“Oui, j'aimerais le pain au chocolat (Yes, I’d like the chocolate croissant). Oui, l'école va bien (Yes, school’s fine)...Papa, quand nous reverrons-nous? (Father, when will we meet again?)...Adieu,” Langa opened his eyes only to see a very confused Reki. “What’s wrong?” 

“You were just sayin’ some weird stuff in yer sleep.” Reki answered.  

“Oh, was I talking in French again? Sorry, I grew up in a resort town between Quebec City and Montreal, where there’s a lot of French-speakers. I speak French, English, and Japanese.” Langa yawned, “Sometimes I speak another language in my sleep.” 

“Really? That’s so cool.” Reki’s eyes glistened.   

“My adopted dad Oliver-”

“Wait, wait, hold on. You’re adopted? Since when?” Reki’s glistening eyes turned to confusion.  

“Yeah, haven’t you ever wondered why I don’t look like my parents?” Langa pointed to himself. “My biological dad gave me up to his two friends Oliver and my mom when I was...4? Yeah, that sounds right. He was really busy with work; he’s a UN representative for Canada and he felt it’d look bad on his part to have a bastard kid so he swept it under the rug. Though it might come out if I go through with Miya on competing in the Olympics in a few years.” 

“That sucks, I had no idea...,” Reki sighed, “Who am I kiddin’? I’m practically in the same boat. My dad works at a black company. The old man gets maybe four hours of sleep a week if he’s lucky. I never want to end up like him, just tied to an office chair.”

“What do you want to do?” Langa asked. 

“I don’t know. Skate, I guess.” Reki yawned.  

“Yeah, but even skilled skaters like Cherry and Joe have day jobs. Hell, even Adam does and he runs the circuit.” Langa brought up. 

“Man, don’t bring up that bastard’s name this early in the morning.” Reki groaned. “Besides, I got that job at the shop.”  

“We both know that’s not gonna pay the bills,” Langa pointed out. 

“True.” Reki sat up, “Our English teacher said the career survey’s due on Monday. Ugh, I still haven’t got a clue.”

“You’re pretty good with your hands and handling tools. You don’t want an office job, and I can’t blame you. Maybe technical school?” Langa suggested. 

“Joe mentioned that last week. He said he’d be glad to write a letter of recommendation for the trade school he went to, but I don’t know if I’d like to work in a kitchen.” Reki looked over at his tools. “Maybe a handyman? I’d probably like fixin’ things up a whole lot more than I would be at my dad’s place. Just thinking about being a boring salaryman makes me wanna puke. Dad always looks so miserable, like someone just yanked his soul out of his chest.” 

“So sort of what you looked like after skating with Adam?” Langa asked. “Except all of the time?”  

“Please don’t say that bastard’s name. It’s too early in the morning.” Reki moaned and rubbed his eyes. “Or ever say it,” 

Langa laughed lightly as Reki pouted. “Hey, I wasn’t joking!”

“I know.” Langa smiled and then planted a small kiss on Reki’s cheek. “My biological father and I meet up to have dinner once every six months. I only recently mentioned that I was dating you in a text and he told me he wants to meet you.” 

“I’ll need to brush up on my English then.” Reki sighed. 

“I’m sure Boyer-sensei will help.” 

-------------    

Their English teacher was a brunette American woman they called “Boyer-sensei”. She had a larger frame and was pale. She walked around collecting the career survey forms from her students. As usual, Reki was looking at his phone, texting with Langa about a new skate trick they saw on Instagram. 

“Reki Kyan. Langa Hasegawa.” Boyer-sensei looked down at the redhead and blue-haired skaters. “Do you have the forms I passed out last week? The student council wants them to be collected by tomorrow afternoon.” 

“Yeah,” The couple handed them to their English teacher. 

Boyer-sensei was genuinely shocked. “You never have your homework done.” 

“Are your standards really that low for us?” Langa appeared distraught. 

“Yes, they are.” Boyer stated firmly as she read Reki’s list. “A repairman...construction worker...hold on, are you really Reki Kyan? You’re not an Auton, are you?”

“What’s an Auton?” Reki asked. 

“It’s a monster from Dr. Who.” Langa explained. “They create replicas of humans. Do you not have Dr. Who available in Japan?”  

Reki was quiet for an awkward moment. He wasn’t sure. “Well, I figured it was a weird nerd reference.” 

“Anyway, Boyer-sensei, most skaters have day jobs. I’m NOT giving up skating anytime soon.” Reki grinned and winked over at Langa who smiled back. 

“I guess that makes sense. I-I just never thought the day would come where you have a single brain cell or atom of responsibility in your veins.” Boyer-sensei was floored. “The world really is ending.” 

------

A few weeks later, the day finally arrived where Reki would have to get into a decent pair of dress clothing for the first time since...ever. Cherry and Joe helped Reki pick out a traditional red yukata that didn’t feel trashy as his regular look but not so stuffy it made him visibly uncomfortable.

[SNOW (LANGA): Just got in his rental from the airport. I gave his coiffeur your address. We’re on our way.] 

[REKI: Cool. Waiting outside.]  

Reki stood at the edge of his driveway tapping his skateboard nervously. He tried to imagine what a fancy-ass version of Langa would look like in a suit with the UN logo.  

A vintage red BMW pulled up. He instantly recognized Langa who was in a iron pressed dress shirt and khakis. The coiffeur was a local man he recognized as a regular at S and the shop, but he was silent the entire time. 

Next to him was a man with Langa’s exact same hair, face, and height. The only difference the eye and hair color along with the fact that he wore glasses. He had blond hair and purple eyes. His dad didn’t look that old. He looked like he was in his early twenties. He was even more well-dressed than Langa and Reki combined. A satin beige suit, Italians handmade shoes, slightly wavy hair that smelled like fresh-brewed coffee.  

Shadow looks older than this guy. Reki blinked, his face full of confusion. Did he say father or brother? Reki was almost positive Langa said father, but how young was he when he had him? Two? 

Reki shook his head. Just don’t blow it, don’t sound like the moron you are in front of this fancy-dancy foreign guy. 

“Hey, Langa! Got a fancier ride than usual?” Reki greeted them with a smile. 

Langa blinked at his and the other man. “Yeah, you wanna get in.” 

The moment Reki got in there was an awkward silence. Reki sat in the middle of the two Canadians. The redhead had a million questions but the air in the backseat was so thick. 

 “So you smell like coffee.” Renga stated as Langa shake his head. “That’s a good thing. I usually smell like sweat and Mountain Dew. I actually took a shower today and brushed my teeth.” Reki smiled brightly. 

“Good, glad to know.” The diplomat smiled nervously. “My name’s Matthew Williams, PhD, Canadian UN diplomat.” 

“I’m Reki Kyan...I like to skate. I work part-time at this skate shop with Langa. We’ve been dating for...I think four months.” The redhead explained. 

“I’ve heard from Langa’s mother. Thanks for teaching Langa and being with him. So is there skate hotels you like to frequent?” Matthew asked. 

“Does the hospital count?” Reki asked. 

“I wouldn’t exactly give it five stars. Langa, has Japan been treating you well so far?” Matthew asked.  

“Yeah, most people are pretty nice. There’s no Tim Hortons, but I’ve gotten addicted to Ramen. Still would love a donut every now and then.” 

“That’s the place where they sell donuts instead of fries, right?” Reki looked over at his boyfriend. 

“Yeah,” Langa replied.

“Man that sounds delicious!” Reki smiled.

“So Langa, your mother told me that you and Reki had a falling out a month ago because of this shady person called Adam.” 

“Yeah, it was pretty bad.” 

“You know I’ve made people...disappear before for ignoring me, causing me trouble, just being an obnoxious brat of a twin brother who tormented me since 1867 until I couldn’t take it anymore.” Matthew stated with a mixture of innocence and sinstery. “I could make this ‘Adam’ person disappear, too. I’ve made good friends with Russia since we used to share a border back when Alaska was part of the Soviet Union.” 

“What do you mean ‘disappear’?” Reki’s eyes widened. “Wait, how old are you? You were around during the Cold War...that’s um, Langa?”

“Alaska was annexed by the US in the 1950s.” Langa stated. 

“Right, I knew that.” Reki nodded. “Uh, so wouldn’t that make you seventy or something? Like my grandpa’s seventy-three and he’s got really bad teeth.”

“Reki, why don’t you tell him about your career survey?” Langa smiled. 

“Oh, I’m planning on going to technical school.” 

“That’s nice.” 

There was an awkward silence between the trio. 

“So...are you going to charge me anything for making Adam ‘disappear’? You’re not going to get in trouble for that, are you?” Reki asked. 

“I have diplomatic immunity.” Matthew replied, “Laws don’t apply to me.” 

“Well, I won’t lie it is tempting.” Reki bit his lip. 

----------

1 week later 

Reki, Langa, Miya, Shadow, and Cherry relaxed at Joe’s Italian restaurant as the TV played the noontime news. 

“Politician Ainosuke Shindo has been found in his mansion dead since yesterday morning. It’s suspected that the killer used radioactive poison to taint his food. If you have any information, please contact the police.” The newswoman stood outside of Adam’s mansion that was taped off.

Everyone looked over at Reki and Langa. 

“What?” They stared around at their fellow skaters. 

[thexfridax]

Translated interview with Adèle Haenel on ‘The Bloom of Yesterday’ (2016)

Interviewer [I] Adèle Haenel [AH] Translator [T]

I: You won the César twice as Best Actress [T: Best actress in a Supporting Role for ‘Suzanne’ in 2014, Best Actress for ‘Love at First Fight’ in 2015] in France, and were invited multiple times to compete in Cannes. Why did you want to take part in a German film?

AH: I liked the screenplay. I really don’t care about the market mechanism. I acted on instinct for all my films, and here I was interested in the story, and the extreme [T: nature of the] character of course. I was also familiar with Lars Eidinger’s work [T: who played Totila/Toto Blumen]. He is famous in France, and contemporary German theatre is also recognised. I’ve just done a play in Paris by Marius von Mayenburg, who is the author-in-residence for the Schaubühne [T: a theatre] in Berlin, and all roles had the names of the real actors, Lars Eidinger was one of them of course.

I: And how was it working with Lars Eidinger on set?

AH: Lars made a lot of suggestions, that’s always refreshing. When he unexpectedly changes the rhythm while acting, when the scene’s tone shifts a little – I really liked this about him. And that he can be so funny. This helped me to feel at ease abroad [T: she uses ‘in der Fremde’ here, which is actually more poetic than abroad but is hard to translate]. I didn’t feel as free and confident of course as I would when shooting in French, especially for improvisations. And we often improvised when we felt that the scenes became too static. Lars was sort of the driving force, so that I could react without words and create something new. And I always felt that he never just acted for himself. The most interesting thing about acting is not to always reproduce your own life, with your own private feeling – but what’s happening if you meet someone special, a partner in crime, and through them [T: she uses the male pronoun him here] something unexpected happens, something new altogether. This is what I think is the most interesting part of our job, and Lars is doing this quite well.

I: How was it for you to work in a foreign language?

AH: It was important to me that I didn’t have to hide the difficulties in speaking. That doesn’t make any sense, it has no soul. To prep I watched a couple of films with French actors, who acted in German, and this was the biggest problem in my opinion, it had no soul. It was too neat, like German lessons. But it’s a way to protect yourself as actor. Chris Kraus [T: the director] understood that I didn’t want it that way, I needed uncertainty for the character. We went along with this uncertainty for the character. He wasn’t too fussed about certain words that were too difficult for me. That worked quite well.

I: How did you learn German so quickly for the film?

AH: I had a German teacher in France first, with whom I worked for a couple of months. Afterwards I went to Dresden, and spent two weeks there and passed the [T: language] test at Goethe-Institute. I went to Berlin for rehearsals and had to speak German all the time. I didn’t want a French assistant, or a dialogue coach, I really wanted to immerse myself in this country. That’s why I made a lot of progress. Voilá …

I: What’s the difference between working in Germany and in France?

AH: It was quite new for me here. I had never worked like this. Chris Kraus cleared the set at the beginning of each scene, and we rehearsed the whole scene like in theatre. Some scenes were quite long, i.e. we shot these scenes in bits and pieces over three days – and we rehearsed the full scene on the first day to figure out the rhythm and outline the characters’ psychology. That’s great. It’s great to just spend time on the acting. But of course, it is also quite a privilege.

Bonus

Lars Eidinger [LE] on working with Adèle Haenel

I: Your character experiences an extraordinary love story of great intensity against this background [T: of facing his family’s fascist past]. How was it to work with Adèle Haenel?

LE: With Adèle I always had the feeling that I found my female counterpart. We have similar ideas about acting. Adèle is not the person who plays against another colleague, or who is self-absorbed, on the contrary. Everything she does in the film works through me as partner, and vice versa, everything she takes, she takes out of me. That is absolutely satisfying. It doesn’t mean that it’s absolutely harmonious. There are of course difficulties and moments, where it takes long to find each other. But there was always the same ambition. And that’s why it was possible for us to go into emotionality together, you usually don’t experience it like this at work.

[…]

On the other hand, I must say: I thought that the screenplay was really funny. It was quite a good Litmus-Test, when the driver picked us up at the hotel in the morning, and Adèle and I rehearsed our scenes, and he then cracked up. You actually get a good idea how much comical potential those scenes have.

Jan Josef Liefers [JJL] on Zazie Lindeau and Adèle Haenel

I: How do you see your character of Balthasar Thomas?

JJL: First and foremost, Balthasar loves a madwoman. That speaks in his favour. […] Balthasar loves Zazie, he is also a bit obsessed with her, he is even separating from his wife, but he really has no clue – and that’s his limitation – what’s behind the things that she reveals of herself. She gives him her affection, and her body, and also two, three thoughts – but this is not what this woman is really about. And what this woman is about, what makes her complicated, what makes her so vulnerable, and also hurt, this is something that Balthasar never sees. All of this is only for Toto to see.

I: How was it working with Adèle Haenel?

JJL: Adèle is the kind of person, she just comes along – as Adèle and not as a film star that she is in France – and then goes on to Saxony, to stay with friends for a while and study German. She was really that unpretentious. And incredibly disciplined. Adèle spoke German so well during rehearsals that Chris even asked, it would be nice, if you could maybe say again: [T: Isn’t it? but with a French accent] – because she could almost say Isn’t it? without an accent. Adèle is the kind of person, who likes to laugh and approaches people, who as an actress is very much connected with her counterpart, and only retreats if something is not quite right for her. It’s a special kind of blend of intellect, talent and instinct.

Chris Kraus [CK] about Zazie (and Toto) and Adèle Haenel

I: You just mentioned the aspect of reconciliation in the film. Toto seems quite unforgiving.

CK: Yes, exactly, that’s why it’s so hard for him and the film’s overall goal [T: to attain reconciliation]. Toto doesn’t forgive himself at all. And to punish himself, he also doesn’t forgive other people anything. Punishment is always linked to morals. Of course, morals which failed.

I: What about the character of Zazie, who Toto falls in love with?

CK: Zazie was for me always as traumatised as Toto by her family’s past, but psychologically this manifested differently due to her temper. The destruction in both characters is comparable. That’s what brings them together. Their deficits and trauma. It unites them.

I: Why did you choose Adèle Haenel, who has become such a big star in France?

CK: This was originally the idea of the Casting Director Nina Haun, with whom I did almost all my films together. I met Adèle three years ago, when she was an up-and-coming young actress, not the French super star of today. We were really lucky that she wanted to be part of a German film for personal reasons, to explore her German-Austrian roots.

I: How is it that Adèle Haenel is almost fluent in German?

CK: It’s quite a miracle. Adèle hardly spoke any German apart from two, three words, when I first met her. But her character really had to speak this language quite well. We planned to give her a language coach, as we did with Tambet Tuisk in ‘Poll’. But Adèle adamantly refused [T: assistance], found it inauthentic and chased the guy off. She told me: ‘Give me three months, and I will speak like Goethe.’ And that’s how it was. She lived in Dresden for a couple of weeks, took a private tutor in Paris, and when she finally arrived in Berlin for the shoot, she was quite chatty and could also swear like the taxi drivers in Berlin. That was quite impressive.

—

Note: CK, LE and JJL also spoke about quite profound topics / themes that the film dealt with (like the Holocaust or the perpetrator-victim dynamic). However, I focused on translating the bits about working with AH here. If you can, please watch the film and let me know if you have further queries about the film / their interviews. I’m not a historian, but I do hope that history (and maybe this film) can teach a lesson or two about the persistent threat of fascism, and the difficulties of reconciliation in the face of past and present atrocities. And yes, this film is also funny, which is quite a feat in this context.

[sflow-er]

Wow, that’s a really interesting addition! This is turning into a very long sidebar, but I can’t resist replying; not only am I a language and culture nerd, I was also a language major at uni... :D I’m Finnish myself but I’ll answer based on my understanding of the Swedish system; if any Swedes wish to jump in with corrections, please feel free!

I’ll put a cut here so people can skip if they’re not interested.

So there’s two different things here: language studies at school up to the gymnasium (high school/secondary school) level, and then there’s university.

In Sweden, the first obligatory foreign language is English, which usually starts in year 3 of primary school but can also start earlier depending on the school. Students who speak another native language have the right to study it from year 1. In this case, it’s usually an extra class outside the regular course framework.

If they want to study it within the regular course framework, they can take it as a foreign language. Those courses yield more “merit points” for applying to high school than the extra native language courses, so it would have actually benefited Simon more to take Spanish as a foreign language.

In Sweden, all students choose another foreign language, usually ahead of year 6. They are called “modern languages” to distinguish from the classical Greek or Latin. Some schools offer more options than just the usual German, French and Spanish, but by law, they have to offer at least two of those three.

Students who don’t want to or don’t have the adequate skills to learn another foreign language can select to take more English and/or Swedish or their native language instead (although very few schools actually have native language teaching available within this regular framework). Apparently, the number of students who choose English and/or Swedish has been increasing in recent years, and students may also drop out. But in general, the majority of Swedes still at least start one other language in school besides English.

[Sidebar: In Finland, both English and Swedish are obligatory, as Swedish is our other official language. You can also choose to study other languages, German and French being the most common. So imagine my surprise when I read that foreign languages weren't taught in school in your country! Truly fascinating stuff.]

Back on topic. Swedish high schools offer different programs, some of which are more vocationally-oriented and some are meant to prepare students for higher-level studies. In many of the latter types of programs, at least one foreign language in addition to English is obligatory (economics, natural sciences, humanities and social sciences). The programs on offer at Hillerska are probably economics, natural sciences and social sciences (this is the case at the real boarding schools, Lundsberg and Sigtuna).

So students who didn’t take a foreign language earlier in school often still have to pick one in high school. Students who did can advance to a higher level, or switch to another language, or even study both if they can handle the course load. 

High school students also have the right to study their native language, regardless of whether they studied it before. But just like before, they actually get more “merit points” for applying to university if they take it as a foreign language. As Simon is quite studious, I think it’s actually more likely for him to be doing that with Spanish. (He could even do both if there are four others at Hillerska who want to take native Spanish, but I doubt he would.)

In general, the right to study one’s native language only covers seven years of studies. This restriction doesn’t apply it’s one of the official minority languages or another Nordic language, if the student has a special need for instruction in their native language, or if the student is taking it as an elective at the high school level.

Moving on to university.

I must confess I’m not 100% up to date on the intricacies of language competence & study at Swedish unis, but as far as I’m aware, the system is similar to the Finnish. The main difference is that in Finland you usually (but not always) have to take an entrance exam to a specific program, whereas in Sweden you usually just apply with your grades/merit points from high school. Sweden has also introduced a voluntary aptitude test you can take to improve your chances, but it’s not specific to any particular program.

The rest of what I write should apply in both Sweden and Finland, and quite likely the other Nordic countries as well. But if anyone reading this spots any inaccuracies, please correct me!

If you go to uni specifically as a language major or even as a language minor, and it’s a language that was commonly taught in school, you are normally expected to know it already. They check your grades when you apply to make sure you meet their criteria, but they don’t specifically test you for the language. If you manage to get in but don’t have the necessary competence, you’re probably in for a hard time. You have to take courses in that language as part of your study program, and the content tends to be at least intermediate difficulty from the start. If it’s a language that wasn’t commonly taught in school (e.g. Chinese), all students start by learning the basics anyway. There are differences between programs but this is the general idea.

[Sidebar: I have an MA degree in translation from a Finnish university, with a major in English and minors in German and Swedish. The undergrad courses were not separated by major/minor until the BA thesis seminar came around. The German majors in the same first-year course as me ranged from someone who lucked out on the entrance exam but couldn’t keep up, to someone who grew up bilingual and had also taken German as a foreign language in school. Both could’ve just as well have got in as German minors, there weren't any restrictions.]

In addition, universities offer language courses that are open to students from any program - like the courses in your screenshot, if I understood correctly. These are elective courses, separate from major/minor studies, and they are tiered by skill level. So Simon probably couldn’t take e.g. Spanish for beginners at uni, but I assume he might be able to take more advanced classes. In practice, I don’t think he would bother, as these elective courses are usually geared towards people learning the language.

Phew, that got pretty long! I hope it wasn’t too inaccurate. I will humbly implement any corrections by Swedes who know better!

YR fanfic pet peeves (and corrections): latin america edition

so. i was originally going to post this in january as a kind of "new year, new opportunity to learn about simon's hispanic heritage" kind of a thing, but life got busy, and then my computer died and i lost my original list, so i've had to reconstruct this from memory as best as i could. there may be some stuff missing, so perhaps i'll just keep adding to this post as missing/new points come to mind.

disclaimer 1: if you've included any of the points made here on any fanfic of yours, please don't take this as a call-out. this isn't intended to shame anyone, but rather as an educational opportunity. it's very rare that a latin american nationality that is not mexican or colombian or puerto rican is showcased in an international show, especially outside of the US, and it's given me such joy to have all of you lovely folks make the effort to be open to and research and understand the idiosyncrasies of simon's (and omar's) heritage because the rest of latin america tends to go overlooked in most other fandoms. so i don't intend to scold anyone with this. we can't all know everything about every other culture-- lord knows i don't know everything about sweden, but i want to be respectful to the country and its people and that is why i heavily research anything i don't know and ask people who do know when my research doesn't quite cover it and am open to corrections when even that falls short. i expect most of you come to write about simon's family background in good faith and also want to be respectful to his family's culture, and so i thought i might make things a bit easier for you all by putting the most common errors/misunderstandings i've seen in one handy post. but once again, it's not a call-out, i don't get offended by these things, and i'm in no way implying, if you've done any of these things in fic or in life, that you are a bad person. i understand people make mistakes when they don't know things.

disclaimer 2: i am not venezuelan myself. i was born and raised in the same general region of latin america, though, and i have venezuelan friends and have worked with venezuelan people and have visited venezuela. generally speaking, i feel their culture is very similar to mine (though our spanish is much closer to spanglish than theirs is, haha xD) and feel a deep kinship with them. but of course, i'm no native, and if you're venezuelan and catch anything here that you feel is incorrect, feel free to point it out and i'll add a correction in your name.

warning: this is very long. christ almighty. DX if you can't make it to the end, tl;dr-- feel free to ask if you have any questions or if anything isn't clear. my ask box/messages are always open.

1- "mijo." this is the only one that legit has caused me to click out of several fics/chapters, at least in the beginning, but i've learned to grin and bear it by now. it's not so much that it's wrong, per se, but rather it's more of a location issue. "mijo" is, to my ears, very much a mexican (or, if you stretch it, northern triangle) slang. it IS used sparingly in other countries, but rarely used unironically. instead, if you hear the term used in the caribbean region of latin america (which my country is part of, as is a large part of venezuela), it's almost always used… let's say sarcastically. for example, if your grown-ass adult friend is being a dumbass and doing something reckless, you might call out "oiga, mijo, se va a romper el cuello" ("hey, mijo, you're going to break your neck"). basically, it's a way of calling someone immature like a child. it doesn't have to be ENTIRELY unaffectionate (kinda like the way someone might call their significant other "idiot" or "dummy" but mean it endearingly. in fact, in colombia it's way more common for spouses to call each other "mijo/a" than it is for them to call their children that), but you can also use it with complete strangers-- like if someone cuts sharply into your lane while you're driving, you might yell at them "oiga, mijo, a donde le enseñaron a manejar, en un potrero?!" ("hey, mijo, where did you learn how to drive, in a horse paddock?!"). but even in these sarcastic/neggy cases, it's rare. and EVEN RARER to hear a mother call her children "mijo" or "mija" in this region. it's just not a thing. so when i read it in fanfic, it immediately takes me out of the story because it's so weird to me that linda would sound mexican-- it's a very distinctive accent, which carmen gloria 1000000% does not have. (plus, "mijo" in spanish is a type of birdseed. so it gave me a chuckle the first few times i read it in a fic because i always have that brief second of confusion where i go "why is linda calling simon birdseed?" before it clicks. xD i'm a dork.) it's much more likely that linda would just say "hijo" or "mi hijo," instead.

1b- the way you decide on whether to use "hijo" or "mi hijo" is important because "mi hijo" can sound overly formal in the modern context especially, much like it would in english. in fact, you can use the english version of it, "son" vs "my son" to guide you on which of the two to use. like for example, if linda were to say directly to simon "i love you, my son," she would sound oddly old-timey and anachronistic, so you would just use "son" ("hijo") in that case. whereas if she's talking about simon with someone else, for example saying "i told my son to be here on time," you'd be perfectly okay to use "mi hijo" in that sentence in spanish. it's very transferable in that case.

2- speaking of non-transferable, though, you can't use "cariño" in all instances you would use "sweetheart" or "sweetie." it really depends on the grammatical construction, and it can be tricky to get it right, but it depends on whether you're using it as a direct address or as an object. for example, if you're using it in place of someone's name-- say, a mother telling her child "te quiero, cariño" ("i love you, sweetheart/sweetie") is perfectly fine, because in that case, she could also say "te quiero, hijo" ("i love you, son") or "te quiero, simon" ("i love you, simon"). but if, say, simon says to wille "you're my sweetheart," you would not use "cariño" there; you'd go instead with some syrupy way to say "boyfriend," like "eres mi novio" or "eres mi enamorado" or even "eres mi amor," and if sara tells felice "you're a sweetheart," that would also not involve "cariño" at all. in addition, "cariño" is also very rarely used in plural; if linda is using a term of endearment for both her kids, or for a group of teens her kids' age, she would use a different term of endearment altogether: "hola, mis amores" ("hi, my loves"), "hola, bebés" ("hi, babies") or "hola, mis tesoros" ("hi, my treasures") among some examples. one exception is when you say "cariños míos" ("my sweethearts"), but very rarely the plural by itself. in fact, "cariño" is often slang for gift or present, especially in the diminutive-- for example, if you go to someone's celebratory party for some occassion (birthdays, graduations, baby showers, heck even christmas), you might hand them a small gift and go "te traje un cariñito" ("i brought you a small present"), and if it's more than one gift, or you're bringing gifts for several people, then you'd say "unos cariños" or "unos cariñitos" in the plural.

3- simon's skin is tan, not tanned. this… doesn't personally bug me as much because it's more of an english grammar issue, but i know people who might actually feel very offended if you get this one wrong with respect to them. "tan" is a color; a light shade of brown. "tanned" implies the original color of your skin has darkened with the sun. now, i'm sure simon can tan (lucky goat, says she whose skin burns even while indoors), but about 95% of the time "tanned" is used in YR fanfiction, it's used as a descriptor of the color of simon's skin as we see it on the show. that would imply his skin used to be lighter at some indeterminate before-time and has been darkened by the sun. this is incorrect; that is the natural color of simon's skin. so stick to "tan skin" instead (not tan PERSON, mind you. his SKIN is tan, he is not). and i would gently suggest that if you take away any single thing from this post, make it ESPECIALLY this point, as someone more sensitive than me might interpret this error as some kind of retroactive whitewashing. and i don't want anyone here to get in trouble for simply not knowing.

4- pabellón criollo is one dish, yes, but it's four different FOODS. it's not something a newbie would be able to make off of a recipe (i don't know how to make it and i've been eating it all my life), and it's not something that's likely to be taught in just one day. also, if you're bringing it to a dinner or a potluck, you're bringing four separate food containers, not just one.

4b- also, venezuelan food, for the most part, is not particularly spicy. you CAN make it spicy if you want, but traditionally, it is not. it's flavorful, maybe even saucy depending on the dish, but rarely spicy. i know the joke of white people being unable to handle spice is funny, but there's also plenty of us hispanic people who are equally terrible at it, because there's different levels of spice in the food from different regions of latin america. besides, as a friend of mine perfectly put: we are living in the 21st century now. if you can eat mild mexican food, you should be able to handle traditional venezuelan food just fine. and i'm pretty sure there's mexican food in sweden. plus, wille would probably be more used to international food-- not only does he have the means, but having traditional meals in foreign countries is kind of part of the job.

5- while i'm at it: simon is definitely half venezuelan. this is canon as of S2. there is no other place in the world where that dish is called pabellón. please keep that in mind when you're writing and researching.

5b- this, along with several of the points above, is important because it's a bit of diaspora trauma that whenever we venture outside of latin america and people learn we're latino, they immediately assume we're mexican, or that our culture and traditions are the same as those of mexican people. it happens often, and it's incredibly annoying. not that there's anything wrong with mexico or mexican people-- they're lovely, and their traditions and culture and food are fantastic-- but we are not them, and treating us like we are is reductive. the rest of latin america can be very different and incredibly diverse, and it can be dispiriting when people treat us like we're all the same. so that is why it is important when writing about simon, his family or his venezuelan roots, that you take care to actually research things as they are in venezuela, and not just pick the low-hanging fruit of latino facts you might've learned through pop cultural osmosis, which eight times out of ten will be mexican-only because most hispanic people in the US are mexican and the US exports its media all over the world. i've learned to just roll my eyes at it by now, but some people might actually feel offended or hurt, and i'm sure nobody here intends for that to happen.

6- although simon speaks spanish, neither he nor sara nor his mother nor any aspect of his mother's culture is spanish. "spanish" is what people from spain call themselves. people from spanish-speaking latin american countries are not spanish; we are hispanic, or latino/a/e. "latinx" is… let's call it controversial, at least outside of the US. most people born and raised in latin america don't like it; i personally don't get offended if people use it, but i don't use the term myself. also, you can say "latin food" or "latin music," but we usually don't refer to PEOPLE as latin, but rather latino/a/e. if in doubt, just use latin american or hispanic. they're also conveniently gender neutral.

6b- never use "the latino/a" on its own to refer to people. "latino/a/e" is an adjective, not a noun, so you would say "the latino boy" or "the latino man" but never just "the latino." kinda like it would be weird to point out the one japanese man in a room as "the japanese." there are some nationality/ethnic terms that just don't work as nouns in english.

7- spanish is not simon's one native language-- or at least not any more than swedish is. he grew up in a mixed-race household, speaking two different languages. it's pointless to call spanish his native language when comparing it to swedish. both are his native languages. also, while we're at this, wille is probably at least bilingual (i'm assuming he can speak at least english), although he only has one native language. it's hardly a competition between the two boys as to who's more of a polyglot.

7b- simon wouldn't take classes on the spanish language-- like to learn how to SPEAK the language-- since spanish is one of his native languages. he wouldn't take them at hillerska, nor in university, nor elsewhere. he wouldn't be allowed. you're literally not allowed to take classes on your native language, nor get credit for said classes. trust me, those would've been an easy extra 24 credits for me in college if that was a thing.

8- dear god please don't use google translate for your spanish translations. listen, i'm not judging-- i do it with other languages, too, when i'm in a pinch. but google translate is literally The Worst (tm) so i always try to either check with someone, or stick to the stuff i already know is correct. seriously, you don't want to know the kinds of crazy stuff GT can spit out that people actually put out in the real world; some of them are quite hilarious. if you're unsure, my ask box/messages are always open and i looooove helping people with this kind of thing, hispanic language and cultural stuff. i know it seems like i'm hardly around, but i do check my messages. don't be shy, even if it's something really small.

PS: while i'm talking pet peeves, malin is wille's bodyguard, not his butler. she's nice enough to attend to him at hillerska because there's no other palace staff around and she's literally stationed outside his door, but she wouldn't do that in the actual palace. there's other staff for that. she wouldn't even guard him at the palace, i don't think, because the royal palaces in sweden are guarded by the royal guard, not SÄPO. if anything, malin might spend the time while wille is in the palace grounds at a gatehouse (like in YR 2x03 and onwards) or at some kind of security office in the palace, and then get called whenever wille needs to go anywhere. she wouldn't be giving wille messages from the queen or walking guests to wille's room or anything like that. that's not her job. (sorry, i had to get that off my chest, lol.)

[slapshot-to-the-heart]

Flatbush & Atlantic: part v

Here we have part v! Took me a little longer than usual, but I’m really happy with how it turned out - it’s All Star Weekend with our favorite couple, folks! I haven’t been getting as much engagement as usual with the posts, so please feel free to reblog it and pop into my inbox!

part i part ii part iii part iv

part v

January 28

Cass sat on a metal bench at JFK, legs propped up on her carry-on, eyes flitting between the departures screen and her phone. Mat walked through the sliding doors to her left, catching her eye with a quick wave and smile. If he wanted to travel incognito in Long Island, though, the suit bag and “these-are-more-expensive-than-they-look” sunglasses weren’t helping his cause. “You’ve got the tickets?” She asked. After much convincing, Cass finally agreed to let Mat buy the tickets; he said it would be easier to make sure they were seated together, and had told her to think of it as a belated Christmas present if she’d like. 

Mat nodded, gesturing towards the check-in counters. “Shall we?”

Cat grabbed his hand in her own as they walked to the counter. It hadn’t even crossed her mind that they’d be travelling anything but economy — she never had, after all — so she was more than a little surprised when he steered her and their bags towards American’s first-class check-in. He looked down at her. “What? You think I’d let you go to the All-Star Game in anything but the best? Nah, we’re travelling in style, babe.” Cass flushed, handing over her bags to be weighed and taking the boarding pass from the flight attendant with a harried thanks. 

“Qu-est-ce que c’est, chère?” Mat asked, brushing a kiss over the top of her head as they headed up the escalator. French had been her foreign language in high school and college; it had gotten rusty, but Mat and Tito had been more than happy to practice with her, though Beau’s Québécois accent sometimes proved a little difficult to understand. 

“I’m just really excited for this weekend. I know how much it means to you to be on the team and competing in the skills competition again, and I’m lucky to be able to see you do what you love.” 

After a less-than-ideal forty minutes in the security line, Cass handed her license and Mat’s passport over to the TSA agent, who gave them a cursory once-over before marking their boarding passes and letting them through the scanner. 

They boarded the Delta flight some 40 minutes later, after a much-needed pit-stop at the Starbucks. The flight attendants took their coats and showed them to their seats, and before Cass knew it she was seated in a very large, very comfortable chair that had more legroom than she thought humanly possible, a glass of champagne perched on her tray table. “Is this how you live? All the time?” She whispered to Mat, stunned. 

“Sometimes,” he admitted. “The team charters a plane for games and I usually don’t do first class to go back home, but this is a special occasion. It deserves it, you deserve it.” He pressed a kiss to her cheek, pulling out his Airpods. “We’ve got just enough time to get through Pirates of the Carribean before we land. What do you say?” 

Their plane landed a few hours later, the two catching an Uber to the hotel about twenty minutes away. Apparently there had been “a car” coming for them, but Cass balked at the idea, insisting that the Toyota Corolla coming to pick them up was more than enough for her. 

“Hi, checking in for Barzal,” Mat said, smiling at the receptionist. 

“One moment,” she replied, tapping on the computer and turning around to grab two key cards. “You two will be in room 307, third floor. Elevators are that way. Enjoy your stay!” Mat took the cards, handing one to Cass as they turned towards the row of elevators. As excited as she was, Cass was also just the tiniest bit apprehensive about sharing a room with Mat for a whole weekend. She had spent the night once or twice since the Christmas party, and had officially been granted “a drawer” in his dresser, but it was still the longest (relatively) uninterrupted time she’d spend with him. 

There were a few hours before the festivities kicked off with some sort of red carpet-type thing, so Cass pulled out her laptop and got to work while Mat went off to exercise in the hotel gym. None of her professors this semester recorded lectures, so she was relying on good friends and a strong Wifi connection to get the notes from the one class she was missing. Cass wasn’t one to skip out on responsibilities and she did feel bad about not being there, but she had earned a break. 

Mat came back a little while later, and Cass took that as her cue to start getting ready. After he got out of the shower, she took over the bathroom, spreading her makeup, brushes, and precisely-3.4-ounce bottle of hairspray over the counter. This was the first big event she was going to as a WAG, and nerves were flying. Cass was already well aware that she didn’t fit into the typical mold, and hated the fact that she felt like she had to justify herself everywhere she went. And it didn’t help that Mat wasn’t just one of the best young players in the NHL in recent memory, but also a total smokeshow of a man who had hundreds of women falling at his feet. 

But galas, parties, extravagant events were nothing new to her. She had been the president of her sorority at UConn, organizing and attending more than her fair share of her own formals and semiformals or accompanying a friend or boyfriend to theirs. And law school called for dressing up more than occasionally. She was no stranger to impressing people. The dress was light blue to coordinate with Mat’s suit, heavily beaded, and absolutely gorgeous. This was the one part of the trip that she had absolutely refused to let Mat pay for, even though he offered. The league covered the room and he had gotten the flights, and her ego needed to pick up at least a marginal part of the expenses. 

She twisted her hair up into a bun, bobby pins stuck in her mouth as she pulled out a few strands of hair. Setting spray? Check. Lipstick? A deep rose shade that she’d had since her first year of law school, so, check. “You almost ready to go, chou?” She asked, leaning down to her suitcase and grabbing the strappy heels she’d picked out for the night.

“Uh, yeah,” Mat said, buttoning his suit jacket. He usually had pretty good taste even before they started dating, but the navy blue velvet suit he was wearing was really something else. “Wow, you look amazing, Cass.”

She smiled, stepping towards him. “The lipstick’s kiss-proof, you know.”

He raised one eyebrow. “You wanna try that out?”

---

It was a fifteen minute drive to the venue, the car the league had sent packed with players and their partners, or whoever else had managed to wrangle a spot. She thinks there were some cousins involved? Mat got out before her, holding the door open while he leaned down. “The reporters are usually fine, they get that most of you guys aren’t used to this,” he murmured, “but you don’t have to answer anything you don’t want to, I’ll say something if I see it getting out of line.” 

She squeezed his hand in appreciation, taking a breath to steady her nerves before following him onto the red carpet. After posing for a few photos, they moved onto the reporters, Mat getting steered towards someone who Cass was pretty sure was from SportsCenter, but she couldn’t be positive in the crowd of hundreds. Cass briefly introduced herself, stepping slightly to the side as the conversation’s topics veered towards strategy and expectations, how best to manage playing with only three players and how he was feeling about his chances for fastest skater. 

“And you’ve brought your lovely girlfriend Cassidy along, how did you two meet?” Cass heard her name mentioned, quickly snapping out of the daydream she had been lost in. Fluff pieces were nothing new and she knew it would come up, everyone loved getting to know the players outside of a strictly hockey context. 

“Yeah, so I’m in law school, and I got an internship with the counsel’s office for the Islanders,” Cas started, “and I helped Mat with some visa stuff. He kept trying to drop hints that he was into me, but—”

“They weren’t hints. I was being as obvious as possible,” Mat deadpanned. Cass giggled. 

“Well, yeah, in retrospect I was just being incredibly oblivious, but came to one day, and the rest is history.” Mat leaned down, brushing a kiss over her cheek, and Cass could see camera flashes go off in her peripherals. She’d have to track that picture down later.

The interviewer nodded, asking a few follow-ups on her exposure to hockey growing up, her dress, and one more. “So, you hardly live the typical life of a hockey girlfriend. What do you think about that?”

Cass was confused. “Pardon?”

“Law school, being a lawyer. That’s not something that you typically see WAGs pursue, especially considering the salaries NHLers make. It’s not like they have to do much.” Cass was floored. How could someone be so disrespectful, not only to her, but to every other woman in her position? She was struggling to come up with a response. As it would happen, she didn’t need to. 

“Excuse me?” Mat’s response was dripping venom. “Why would you ask something like that?”

The interviewer tried to backtrack, but ended up digging himself into an ever deeper hole. “Well, I just meant that you don’t see it often, which is true—”

“Maybe you don’t, but that shouldn’t matter,” Mat said. “Being a stay-at-home mom or running charity events is awesome if that’s something that they want to do, but it’s not for everyone. And don’t you dare ever suggest that Cass hasn’t worked hard as hell to get to where she is. She’s graduating in five months from an Ivy League law school, and she’s the smartest person I’ve ever met. Don’t ever talk about her that way. Don’t ever talk about any woman that way.” He turned away, his hand on Cass’ upper back. “Don’t ever let anyone undersell you. You’ve worked too damn hard and come too damn far.”

 Jan. 29 (fri)

 Cass smoothed out her dress, taking a last-minute look in the mirror to make sure nothing was stuck in her teeth. “How do I look?” She asked, turning to Mat. 

“You look great, babe. Stop stressing.” She had picked a floral dress and denim jacket for breakfast with Mat’s family, but couldn’t stop wringing her hands in worry. Mat crossed the room in three steps, holding her hands still and looking at her more intensely than she had ever seen. “Remember when I was losing my shit meeting your parents?” Cass gave a tearful nod. “And it all turned out okay and now I text your brother probably more than you do?” 

She laughed. “Noah worships you, and my dad loves you. Thinks you’re ‘good for me,’ whatever he means by that.”

“I think,” Mat said, tapping her temple with one finger, “that sometimes you get a little stuck up here. You’re so smart, and it’s incredible, but you overthink things sometimes, pretty girl.”

She ducked her head. “That’s probably true.” 

“But what I meant to say is that it turned out I had nothing to worry about. And neither do you, my parents will love you and Liana’ll just be excited to have another girl around to complain about me to. It’s going to go great,” he added with finality. 

“You promise?” Cass asked.

Mat kissed her, soft and sweet and slow, the kind of kiss that wasn’t born of passion and lust but of just genuine deep trust and affection. The kind of kiss that brings your feet back to the ground when your head’s stuck off in the clouds. “I promise.”

Cass flashed a small smile, squeezing Mat’s hand in hers and heading towards the door. “Then I guess we’d better get going.” She had been up late the night before, searching on Yelp for the perfect restaurant, despite Mat’s continual claims that they’d “love wherever, they just want food.” Though, she’s not sure what she expected when asking a 20-something man what he wanted to eat. There was a cute place a ten minute drive away, with four-point-seven stars and reviews that said their quiches were the “best thing on this godforsaken planet,” according to IridescentGymRat44. Cass loved quiches. 

It was a quick Uber over, Mat’s mom having texted him that they had already arrived and snagged a table in the back for privacy. It may have been a family event, but it was still All-Star Weekend and Mat was still, well, Mat. It wasn’t likely he could fly under the radar for too long. He rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand reassuringly as they turned the corner, and his face split into a wide grin at the sight of his family. Hugging each of them quickly, he stepped back to introduce Cass, one hand lightly resting on the small of her back. “This is Cass, my girlfriend.”

“Yeah, we figured,” Liana said pointedly, causing Cass to poorly cover up a snort of amusement, which in turn just caused everyone to laugh even more at their efforts trying not to laugh so hard. 

As it would turn out, Mat was right. She really had nothing to worry about; his parents embraced her (literally and metaphorically) as soon as she set down and his sister immediately whipped out her phone to show his worst baby pictures. “Hey,” she said, as Mat glared at her, “you deserve to know what you’re getting yourself into.” They were interested in her work and school, and Mat gladly took the liberty of explaining how they met, earning a slap on the back of his head from his mom when he got to the part with the visa slipup. They said their goodbyes sometime around eleven; Cass would have liked to stay longer, but everyone needed to get back to their hotels and ready for the skills competitions in the afternoon. 

“Excited to defend the title?” Cass said, bumping her shoulder against Mat as they walked down the hallway to their room. 

“Yeah, I guess,” Mat said, shrugging slightly. “Obviously it would be great to win, but there’s still McDavid and Eichel and a ton of other guys that have just as good of a chance to run away with this thing.” After his win last year, it was no shock that Mat had been picked for the fastest skater competition again, but the hordes of fans and reporters who were expecting him to go back-to-back weren’t helping his nerves. They reached the door, Mat shoving his hand into his pocket to dig out the key card. 

“Look at me,” Cass said softly, once they had gotten their shoes off and were propped up next to each other in bed. Mat’s head turned, his hand still absentmindedly tangled in her curls. “You’re going to do great. Win or lose. I believe it, your family believes it, the other guys on the team believe it. Now all we need is for you to believe it yourself.”

---

Cass was walking through the tunnels of the BB&T Center, phone pressed to her cheek as she tried to listen to her dad on the other end of the line. A few players and their families were milling about, some getting ready to compete in their skills competitions, others catching up with old friends. “Oh, and you booked the tickets to Hermosillo, yeah?” It was a family tradition for them to spend a few weeks every summer back in Mexico with her grandparents; they had split their time between San Antonio and their hometown ever since retirement. Cass always tried to make it, but the past summer she wasn’t able to wrangle the two weeks off from her job that she’d need for the trip, and it had crushed her. They weren’t getting any younger, and her abuelo had suffered a nasty stroke the year prior that made her all the more anxious to visit. 

“Yep, layover in Mexico City like usual, I’ll send you the ticket when the trip gets closer,” Patrick responded.

“And you’ve got everyone’s passport info?”

She could imagine her dad rolling his eyes. “Yes, Cassidy. Everything’s booked, everything’s fine. Have fun in Florida, tell Mat good luck from us.”

“Okay, I will. Love you, dad.” Cass said, running a hand through her hair. 

A voice that she didn’t quite recognize called her name, and as she turned around she was more than a little surprised to see Auston Matthews waving at her. “It is Cassidy, right?”

She nodded her head. “Cassidy, Cass, I’ll answer to both.”

The confusion on her face must have still been evident, because he followed up. “I follow Barzy on Instagram, he brags about you all the time.”

“Yeah, sounds like him,” she said, tapping her fingers on her thigh. 

“Are you going to introduce me?” His mom asked from beside him. 

“Oh, yeah, ‘course,” Auston said, stumbling over his words. “Mom, this is Cassidy, obviously. Cassidy — Cass?” He questioned, looking over at her. She nodded. “Cass, this is my mom Ema.” She greeted her with a warm hug, and Cass just about melted. Moms really do give the best hugs. 

Ema spoke up. “Do you have family in Hermosillo? I heard you mention it on the phone.”

“Mhm!” Cass’s head almost bounced from how fast she was nodding. “My grandparents split time between there and San Antonio, we try to visit for a few weeks every summer.”

“That’s where I grew up,” she responded, beaming. “It’s wonderful, but the summers get so hot, don’t they?” Cass and Auston both nodded. 

“I think it got up to 110º when I was there once? Maybe 115º? I want to lock myself in a freezer sometimes, I swear.” The whole group collapses into laughs, and spent a few minutes talking before Cass had to tear herself away and find her seats with Mat’s family for the fastest skater competition. Ema had left her with no fewer than three restaurant recommendations, making her swear to try them all. “Best tacos I’ve ever had,” she had said about one. 

Cass greeted Mat’s family with a wave as they settled into their seats, one row up from the ice on the right side. The players had just come out, and it only took a few seconds to make eye contact with Mat. She was wearing his — her — jersey, and had long since abandoned trying to roll up and cuff the sleeves. It wasn’t going to happen, and she kind of liked the feeling of being buried in it. She blew him a kiss as the announcers voices echoed through the stadium, and the heat was on. 

Mat was slated to go last, which was either the best or worst thing depending on how you thought about it. Cass was always someone to sign up for the first slot for speeches and presentations, and hated having late games in tournaments during her lacrosse days. She liked being able to get it over with. Mat was the opposite. He was competitive and stubborn to a fault, needing to size up the competition and get ahead of the game. Needed to know what to expect. There first few she didn’t recognize, a few first-time faces to the All-Star competition, a rookie from Winnipeg who was a favorite for the Calder. Everyone was doing well, really well — all the times but one were under 14 seconds, but nobody had broken Mat’s time yet. 

Eichel got close, McDavid got closer, and then Mat was up to defend his championship. She blew a kiss to him as he stepped up to the line, murmured a prayer, and the whistle blew. Clean straightaways, tight turns, gaining speed on the curves, and in the blink of an eye it was over. Cass knew he had won, the roar of the crowd told her as much, but she didn’t realize his time. She didn’t realize until the announcer reported that with a time of 13.080 seconds, Mathew Barzal had just set the record. His face was stunned for a moment, looking up at the screen and then down at the ice and then back up at the screen again, while being hugged and congratulated from all sides, as if trying to process what had just happened. 

It was the last one of the night, so Cass said her goodbyes to Mat’s family, with a promise to meet up before the game the next day, and hurried down to meet Mat. There wasn’t anything formal scheduled for the rest of the night, so he came out of the locker room in just a pair of athletic shorts and an Islanders t-shirt. Cass ran up, jumping into his arms as he dropped his bag to catch her. “Woah, babe,” he said, steadying his hands on the back of her thighs, “coulda given me a warning there.”

Cass kissed him. “Wouldn’t have been nearly as fun that way, though, huh?”

“You’re right.” Mat shrugged good-naturedly, setting Cass down and grabbing his bag and her hand. 

“How does it feel having beaten the record?” Cass asked. 

Mat ran his free hand through his hair, still shower-damp. “So surreal. I wasn’t even sure I’d win, not with how stacked the lineup was, let alone get anywhere near breaking the record. It’s ridiculous, but it’s amazing.”

“You’re amazing.”

 Jan. 30 (sat)

 Mat was busy doing media and catching up with some of the guys before the game later that day, and Cass had elected to stay in the room. Mat had offered for her to come along, “you might think it’s interesting?” he had noted, but she’d be damned if she let herself fall behind in her last semester, she was just too close. It had already been a bit of a stretch for her to take a day off and come for the whole weekend, so her afternoon was instead filled with some utterly thrilling reading on advanced contract theory and a thick-as-all-hell review book for the New York state bar. She leaned back in her chair, taking the last remaining sip of the mediocre Lipton tea she had snagged from the basket by the room’s coffee maker. She could finish it later.

Cass picked up her phone, pressing play on a voicemail from Fiona that had been left earlier in the afternoon. 

Uh, hey, it’s me. Cass, I don’t know if this is what you want to hear, but I don’t think I’d be a very good friend if I didn’t say it. Uh-oh. Conversations that started like that never ended well. I’m happy about you and Mat, I know you like him a lot, but I’m worried that he’s distracting you. I know you told us you’d be gone, but we missed you at the study group, and I know you skipped your law review meeting today. The rest of the message was more of the same, but one sentence stuck out to her. Think about where your priorities are. Think about where you want them to be. 

Fiona Chan had a one-track mind. And Cass loved her for it — she was one of the most dedicated people she knew and an incredible friend. But she sometimes found it hard to understand when people had priorities that extended beyond the bounds of law school, when their sole focus wasn’t on their Contracts final or clinic or clerkship they were doing for some top-tier appellate judge. 

She flopped back on the bed. Think about where your priorities are. She had been spending a lot of time with Mat lately, but no more than anyone would spend with their significant other — right? And it wasn’t a sin for her to have a life outside of law school. She was still more than competent at her job, got most of the reading done, was prepared when professors would cold-call on her. She still showed up to meetings. 

But even she would admit that her head wasn’t in the game all the time, if she could hazard another High School Musical reference. She’d sneak texts, meet him for lunch instead of going to office hours, and now, take weekends off to be with him. But that wasn’t a bad thing. Or was it? Her grades weren’t really suffering, and nobody else had mentioned anything. Friends notice things, though, Cass thought. And Fiona was one of the most perceptive people she knew. She groaned. Why wasn’t there ever an easy way to figure these things out? She really liked Mat — she might even love him — but Cass couldn’t help but feel like she was gambling on something that wasn’t a sure thing. And her future wasn’t something to play games with. 

[jbeverywhere]

Myths about Poland and Poles

It’s time. Let me explain you some things. I hope this post will be a nice Polish culture lesson.

I asked some foreign friends what they think about Poland and Polish people, what had they thought before going there, how it was different at the end, etc. And also I added what I usually hear and drives me crazy 🤦‍

1. Temperature

Polish person: “It’s cold” ; Foreigner: “but you’re from Poland..”

And what? I’m Polish and I don’t feel cold? Aha. I think this is the most annoying answer which I hear a loooooot of times.

People have really bad image of Polish climate especially when they haven’t stayed there for longer time. So we have 4 seasons (+ 2 transitional ones).

early spring - March and April when the weather is going crazy. One day is snowing and -10⁰C, another day sunny and +15⁰C. You never know :D So if you go to Poland that time - be prepared for that, take different kind of clothes.

spring - May - first storms, during Juwenalia always rains, but the first week last years was really sunny and warm - perfect for Polish barbecue opening season :D

summer - may be hot as f.ck or colder and rainy. Many storms especially in August. Nights are much colder than days. But - surprise- temperature around 30⁰C is normal. And because the nights are colder you can sleep well - you won’t melt in your bed.

autumn - colder nights, leafs are brown, it may be really beautiful. More rainy days but still can be sunny.

early winter - October/November - crazy like early spring - may snow, may rain, may be sunny. You feel the winter in the air.

winter - yes it’s cold, but outside. Inside the buildings - it’s warm - surprise. For example I don’t have special pyjamas for winter nights because in my room is around 20⁰C. You go outside you put winter jacket and boots on. May be even -20⁰C (omg wow omg) but then you enter the house and t-shirt is enough. For example in Spain - I’m dying. Winter in Barcelona and in the flat for 3 months 12⁰C - IN THE FLAT. I opened the windows to put some warm air. In Valencia maybe not that drastic (probably it depends on the flat as well) but still I slept with 1 duvet, 2 blankets and the warmest pyjama ever xDDD So please, don’t tell that I’m from Poland and 12⁰C in the room should be perfect. Please.

So in Poland it’s like from minus extreme to plus extreme - variety! I think I like it, I just don’t like that the weather changes immediately. But the most important - inside the buildings - nooooo extreme. It’s pleasantly. So please don’t say to Poles that we should be used to the cold temperature. It’s personal not national thing, I love when is warm and I’m “more ok” with the summer in Valencia than Valencianos (they should be used to that hot no? XD exactly).

2. Music

“Omg la polaca knows reggaeton songs”

“OMG there is Polish reggaeton” 

Ok. Music is a difficult topic. But yyy yes, in Poland they use to play reggaeton (fortunately or unfortunately). For example - in Warsaw and Krakow there are clubs: Teatro Cubano - where there is only reggaeton and some latino rhythms. So if you love to dance to this kind of music, don’t worry, you will find a perfect club for you. 

I really like Polish music, especially now I think it’s really good one. But I like others as well, I have Spanish, English, French, Portuguese, even one German song in my playlists because - why not - variety! And reggaeton I like for the energy and dancing rhythms. Also I like it as a “culture”, for me it’s interesting and fascinating - I can talk about it hours! :D

3. The look

“Polish people are blond with blue eyes” XDDDD hehehehehehhehehehehehhehe

I’M NOT BLOND - first thing to note. The sun in Spain makes my hair lighter but still is not blond. In Poland there are different types of hair and skin. We are not so white. And blue eyes are not thaaaat common. Brown, green, blue, grey - but also not that brown like Spanish ;) AAAAAND - surprise - we can be tan! Wow! xD There are people who have really white skin and the sun changes it to red, but mostly Poles are tan in summer and even I would say that we love to be morenitos ;) What is funny for me (here we have the Spanish myth) that I’m more tan than many Spaniards. So let’s repair the myths: Poles may be tan in summer Spaniards are not tan at all (the Latinos yes - but also not always!).

4. Location

OK. It’s geographic lesson time.

What I heard once: “For me everything what is on the right from Germany is RUSSIA” omg. Where is my patience. omg. Please, think before saying shits like that. It hurts.

We are not that small in Europe. We have 7 neighbors, OWN language which is not Russian (it’s juuuust a liiiiittle bit similar, like some words). I can understand somehow Slovaks and Czechs but Russians - few words. AND IMPORTANT - we have Latin alphabet! Not Cyrillic like Russia. We are Slavic countries, our language is from Slavic family, Slavs love each other (in their way of love ;* ) but each of us is different and we exist, we are not Russia - note that in your head.

5. Religiousness

This is difficult topic. Yes, we are mostly Catholics and we don’t hide it. But not everybody. Many people are very religious - and I respect that. It’s kind of beauty, traditions and everything. It builds the culture. The problem appears when someone forces others to own rights. When religious is an argument in the politic world. And this I agree - in Poland we have a problem with that. But when you visit Poland don’t show your aversion to the religion. Respect it and be curious - then you can discover many nice things, interesting traditions and some kind of passion. I love to talk about our traditions and you can see it in my posts about Christmas and Easter.

6. Safety

This is more region problem than country problem. I mean, everywhere you go - you can meet bad people. In Kraków there were “bad times” but it was long time ago. When I was living there I felt really safe. Many times I came back alone and I’ve never had a strange/dangerous situation. And I always passed so many police during the night. So I think in big cities the government cares about the security. 

Just don’t enter any places where you can meet pseudo-fans of football and don’t scream any football team name. This I see still as a problem in Poland. But I don’s say that going to the matches is a bad idea.

7. Food

This I’m writing thanks to the opinions of those who visited Poland and tried Polish cuisine. So what I heard, that some Erasmus were afraid about the food, that it may be a bad quality and not tasty, but theeeen - surprise! - Where are you from? - from Poland - oooo soplica!!!! (ok, this is not food) - żurek! - pancakes - placki ziemniaczane! - PIEROOOOOGI <3 

So if you haven’t visited Poland yet, you haven't tried Polish cuisine - be prepared 😋😋😋

And you have me to ask before!

8. Language

Hehe Ok, it’s not the easiest language in the world. But it’s not an impossible one! So if you are planning to spend in Poland even only few days it’s nice to use: - dzień dobry - good morning - dziękuję - thank you - przepraszam - I’m sorry/excuse me - proszę - please/you’re welcome - do widzenia - goodbye - dobranoc - good night

Poles will appreciate a lot! We love when someone is trying to say something, and we know that it’s not easy. 

And! I know some people who stayed to live in Poland and their Polish is - wow! So as you see, NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE ;)

9. Character

Hmmm I heard that some of you were afraid that Poles won’t be friendly but then again surprise. Well, I think we are nice people xD We are for sure hospitable. There is always a bottle of vodka and some cookies for a casual visit.

English is not our native language, more and more people can speak it but still not all (well like in other countries). But we won’t leave you without helping you when you ask. Gesticulating, speaking slower and louder (because this changes everything xD) - there is always a way to communicate and express yourself. 

So smile and don’t be afraid of us, especially me, I don’t bite! :D

Meme to sum up

10. Famous Poles

I think you may know many but even you don’t realize that. So let me remind you or introduce you Poles who have changed the world.

- Robert Lewandowski - football player in Bayern Monachium

- Jakub Błaszczykowski - was a football player in Borussia Dortmund

- Nicolaus Copernicus (Mikołaj Kopernik) - Heliocentrism, stopped the sun, moved the Earth ;)

- Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin - composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic era

- Marie Skłodowska Curie - (note: her first surname is Polish. And in many places they skip it -.-) - physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and the only woman to win the Nobel prize twice, and the only person to win the Nobel Prize in two different scientific fields

- Tadeusz Kościuszko - military engineer, statesman, and military leader who became a national hero in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and the United States.

- Pope John Paul II - Karol Wojtyła - the first non-Italian pope since the 16th-century, the second longest-serving pope in modern history, one of the most travelled world leaders in history, visiting 129 countries during his pontificate. Etc, etc. We are really proud of him and you can see that - everywhere there is his name, a looot of monuments etc.

- Lech Wałęsa - statesman, dissident, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who served as the first democratically-elected President of Poland.

- Andrzej Wajda - film and theater director. Recipient of an Honorary Oscar, the Palme d'Or, as well as Honorary Golden Lion and Honorary Golden Bear Awards.

- Roman Polański - film director, producer, writer, and actor. There was a quite big scandal with him - no comment.

- Robert Kubica - he became the first and only Polish driver to compete in Formula One.

- Anja Rubik - supermodel, activist, philanthropist, and businesswoman.

- Adam Małysz - former ski jumper and rally driver, one of the most successful athletes in the history of the sport.

- Wisława Szymborska - poet, essayist, translator and recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature.

- Robert Korzeniowski - the best walker in the world, he won 4 gold medals at the Olympics (Atlanta, Sydney and Athens).

- Izabella Scorupco - actress, singer, and model. She is perhaps best known for having played Bond girl Natalya Simonova in the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye. 

- Justyna (Justi, JB) Biel - Polish butterfly with Latin blood, author of this (and the other) blog. Known by you, one day by others as well.   

and much much more!

11. Alcohol

Yes, I know, I shouldn’t forget about the most important - vodka. Yes we drink it, yes, on the parties, birthdays, etc. Yes, shots. We drink shot of vodka and then one/two/many sips of juice/coke/water/etc.

But come on, I don’t get why it horrifies you. Like vodka is 40%, rum, whisky, gin - all which you drink is also 40% and for me has even worse taste (especially gin, uff please don’t offer me that, never). Or tequila! Madre mía.

We don’t drink vodka with the dinner, like many people do with wine. Wine is also kind of alcohol I would like to remind.

And yes, we love beer a lot. And normal glass of beer is 0.5l - we don’t have smaller ones.

So, I hope... since now when I ask you to drink vodka on the before party - please, don’t be afraid and drink it with me, I’ll appreciate it! 

Ok. I think that’s all. I hope that since now your image of Poles and Poland is much better - the correct one. Here you have everything in one picture xDD

[arcticdementor]

“Bourgeois Values,” “Anti-capitalism,” and Restoration.

(Time for another exercise in wasted effort in writing a long post nobody’s going to bother to read.)

Now, I don't exactly like using the term "bourgeois," what with the Marxist baggage and polysemy leading to ambiguity. But, lacking a better term for "bourgeois values" — as used by the likes of Amy Wax — I find myself using the term in this essay.

Now, per the polysemy mentioned above, the values of the "bourgeoisie" have been characterized in a number of ways by different folks from differing perspectives. "Materialism" — particularly in the sense of prioritizing material concerns over spiritual or other non-material concerns — is common, as are "philistinism" and conspicuous consumption. Or, there's also there’s more positive formulations, like that of Deirdre McCloskey, or the description from Wax and Alexander:

Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime.

I'd definitely rate this sort of thing as better than the kind of alternative one sees in places like the "hillbilly" communities suffering in the opioid crisis, the "rust belt," dysfunctional inner cities, etc. Now, the criticism of this I see is almost entirely from the left, and mostly consists of posing these values as some matter of "-ist." For example, Elie Mystal attacking Robert L. Woodson's defense of Wax, Alexander, and bourgeois values, as Uncle Tom groveling:

If a white guy said this, the only people defending him would be Nazis, but because a black guy wrote it, it falls to me to point out that this right here has ALWAYS BEEN the argument deployed by House Negroes to justify their position. I PROMISE YOU that if you went back to 1830 and asked the chuckling HNIC how he can live with himself, he’d say: “Look at my back. It ain’t got no scars because I reject undisciplined and irresponsible behavior. Without me, this whole damn plantation would fall apart. Now please excuse me, it’s time for Master to take a dump and I need to be there to wipe his ass.”

I point out that Woodson’s argument is steeped in the long history of coonery not to denigrate Woodson — his own words have done that far better than I could — I point it out to show that large swaths of Black America have adopted “bourgeois values” from the very beginning. Post emancipation, the bourgeois blacks actually won out. Now, most all of us African-Americans have totally adopted the white man’s cultural norms and are just trying to get our share of the rewards.

(I'm not unsympathetic to the argument that it's a foreign imposition of "white man’s cultural norms," and that resistance in favor of defending one's indigenous culture and values against such foreign impositions is valid; I just wish it were applied more consistently and broadly for all rival cultures to "universal culture,” as well as recognizing the tension between rejection of an alien culture's values and yet expecting said culture to provide you with all the benefits of those values all the same.)

But I'd like to push back from the right.

First, there's how the American right has deeply internalized these norms, and how this affects the issue of political organization and activism — or lack thereof — on the right versus the left. Especially the sort of thing David Z. Hines talks about. When you ask you're average Republican voter why we don't do this sort of thing, the usual answers are some variety of "nobody's got time for that; we've got jobs to go to and bills to pay—" (as if the left were composed entirely of college students, welfare layabouts, and paid astroturf) "—and besides, that's Not Who We Are." (As Hines put it: "THAT’S NOT HOW THE RIGHT DOES THINGS, they bellow, by which I assume they mean unpleasant stuff like “winning.”")

I'd like, some other time, to explore this in further depth, but in short, these replies all reduce to the same thing — the tactics are rejected because of incompatibility with the above "bourgeois values."

But our choices aren't only "bourgeois values" — with concommittant dedication to being dignified losers who will somehow win through our willingness to let the enemy destroy us — or Detroit/Middletown. Because, consider, what would Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, think of those sort of "I've got a mortgage to pay" excuses? Or Otto, Fürst von Bismarck, Herzog zu Lauenburg? Charles the Hammer? Godfrey of Bouillon? George Monck, 1st Duke of Albemarle? What would the sort of man who rated non-material things like *honor* highly enough to risk their lives over them think of this sort of "think of the bottom line" mentality? What about aristocratic values?

I'm also somewhat hesitant about using the term "capitalism" unqualified, for the same Marxist-baggage-and-polysemy reasons as "bourgeois." On the one hand, I've seen people both on the far left and the far right use "capitalism" to mean pretty much anything short of outright Communism, and on the other, there's the "real capitalism has never been tried!" libertarians for whom the existence of a single business regulation renders a system "non-capitalist." Add in that I accept the arguments, by Jim Donald and others, that the Marxist model of "Capital" as entity/class is fundamentally inaccurate, and that "capitalists" are never actually the people in charge.

That said, this is where I have some overlap with what is often characterized as "anti-capitalism." Because I'm against the system which promotes and selects for the above "bourgeois values." Not in the sense of wanting to replace them with some sort of "socialist values," or with the antithesis of Wax and Alexander's list, but in the cause of restoring aristocratic values. As I once said a couple years back at Slate Star Codex:

But competent at what is key. Here, it’s “the aristocratic being overwhelmed by the competent” at making money. After all, there was a previous period where being competent at making money didn’t let you “overwhelm” the aristocrats. And, of course, there’s the issue of how the aristocrat lineages became such in the first place, which was, basically, as warlords. They were competent at being and leading a warrior elite. So there was a time when being capable at breaking faces on horseback was more important than being capable at making money, so the leaders-of-face-breakers and their descendants ruled.

Of course, I now dispute the idea that it was the money-making "bourgeoisie" who actually "overwhelmed" the aristocrats, or that it happened at the time the conventional narrative places it. For example, Wikipedia has it as "the late-16th and early 17th centuries" when the developing urban business class "had become the financial – thus political – forces that deposed the feudal order."

A better model, I'd say, is that changes in military technologies — particularly, the decline of castles — led to a trend of centralization of power away from the distributed feudal hierarchy (with weak, "first among equals" monarchs) towards "absolute monarchy" and the rise of modern states, and that the "bourgeoisie" were an effect, not a driving cause, a useful foil for centralizing monarchs to leverage against an aristocracy based in control of agricultural lands. Aristocracy and "military power in the realm of politics" looks to have still been pretty powerful, at least in most of Europe, through the English Restoration, and through the Napoleonic wars. From the very same Wikipedia page:

The English Civil War (1642–51), the American War of Independence (1775–83), and French Revolution (1789–99) were partly motivated by the desire of the bourgeoisie to rid themselves of the feudal and royal encroachments on their personal liberty, commercial prospects, and the ownership of property. In the 19th century, the bourgeoisie propounded liberalism, and gained political rights, religious rights, and civil liberties for themselves and the lower social classes; thus the bourgeoisie was a progressive philosophic and political force in Western societies.

[Emphasis added.]

Nor is the rise of science as big a factor as some portray; after all, "father of chemistry" and pioneer of the scientific method Robert Boyle was the son of Richard Boyle, 1st Earl of Cork, and it was the restored monarchy of Charles II that chartered The Royal Society out of Boyle's "invisible college." The scientific progress of the likes of Newton thrived under the Restoration aristocratic system. So, I reject the idea that aristocratic virtues are achievable only by reversion to "ignorant superstition" and 1400s technology.

That is, it looks like 1848, and the surrounding decades, were more of a turning point with regards to aristocratic values than any time in "the late-16th and early 17th centuries." The Crimean War, with Jim's favored example of the smearing of Lord Cardigan and elevation of Florence Nightengale, is another mid-19th century case. And, also [https://blog.jim.com/politics/defining-restoration-and-reaction/]per Jim[/l], this looks driven less by "capitalists" as by "priests." Wikipedia, again, has the "capitalists" having ascended to "the upper class" only by the end of the 19th century. And there, it looks to me like the elites at the forefronts of the various social reform movements, most with roots in one or another (mostly Protestant) religious "awakening," were clearly more powerful than "capitalists," whose influence is frequently overstated. That is, in line with Jim's recurring thesis, "warrior rule" was slowly replaced not by "merchant rule," but by the "priestly rule" of the post-Puritan religion, still headquartered in Harvard and Yale, with continuity of organization, personnel, and institutions all the way back to the Roundheads.

I see no reason why "bourgeous values" must inevitably displace "aristocratic values," nor that the latter is, as some claim, fundamentally incompatible with scientific progress. So, how do we of the “Red Tribe” go about prying ourselves away from our stubborn, self-defeating adherence to bourgeous values and shifting the system toward selecting for aristocratic ones again?

[zulmaucv91894-blog]

Quickie: Foreign Language Ebooks

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[cbk1000]

So You Want To Read Literature In a Foreign Language

I’ve had a few language asks here and there and thought I would do a write-up specifically on reading in a second language, as that is A. My specialty and B. Most language courses are going to focus on speaking and listening comprehension. Which certainly isn’t a bad thing, but the vocabulary necessary to carry on a competent conversation in a second tongue is much smaller than what you’ll need to read even popular fiction, let alone books of more serious literary aspirations. I’ve arranged this list in order of approximate difficulty, but of course it will always depend upon the exact book/article/comic you’re reading and whether or not its vocabulary coincides with your own.

I’ll put this under a cut, as it will be quite long.

A few tips, however, before I get on with the list: the more you read, the faster you’ll improve, as with anything. If you have the time and drive to read an hour or more a day in your target language, you’ll be knocking out books in no time. In my first year of Russian I was reading for 2+ hours a day, and by the end of that year I was reading fluently with no help from English translations (as I used in my earlier months) and I could pick up just about any genre I liked. My Russian vocabulary, of course, was still not as advanced as my English, but I was able to read fairly complex literature and to understand the majority of the text.

If a piece is too hard, put it down. I can’t emphasize this enough. Trying to read something massively beyond your reading level is frustrating and will only put you off. There were books I had to set aside in my first year and even beyond just because, stylistically speaking, they were over my head. I could follow the main story, but I was missing enough details/subtleties in the author’s style that I knew I needed to set it aside and try again later when I could fully appreciate it. There is absolutely no shame in this; get a few more books under your belt, and try again in a few months. I have now gone back and read several books I had to set aside; you’ll get there eventually. Some pieces are very difficult; I didn’t attempt Solzhenitsyn’s ‘Red Wheel’ series (which was the series that prompted me to learn Russian in the first place, since later volumes hadn’t been translated) until I had been reading prolifically for over two years. My dude is dense, and also wants to go over every minutiae of the fucking Duma’s every meeting with you. It was also around this time that I started reading poetry; it was just too difficult for me prior to that.

Most of all: have fun! Reading not only improves your vocabulary, it expands your understanding of a culture tremendously, and allows you an access to it that you can’t get through translation. Think of all the history you can read!! The primary sources!!

Anyway, away with this rambling introduction, and onward to the actual useful part of this post.

Adapted Classics: I found a series of these in Russian very early on in my studies, and you’d do well to see whether or not you can find something similar in your target language, especially if you’re a beginner. These are essentially long-winded summaries of well-known classics with simplified grammar, so that you can expand your vocabulary without breaking your head over more complex sentence structure that you can’t yet comprehend. I read a simplified version of ‘Anna Karenina’, ‘Jane Eyre’, one of the Sherlock stories, ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’, and ‘20,000 Leagues Under the Sea’ this way. They were extremely useful in growing my vocabulary while not overwhelming me with long, meandering sentences that would utterly lose me in the beginning of my studies (Tolstoy, I love you, but this is aimed directly at you. I REMEMBER THE CITIZENS FLEEING MOSCOW. 200+ WORDS BEFORE YOU THOUGHT TO PUT IN A FUCKING PERIOD). 

Comics: Comics are great. I read some Star Wars graphic novels in Russian, a few manga, part of ‘The Walking Dead’ series, and also some Archie comics, which I used to read all the time as a kid. Not only do you have pictures to help with context, but you don’t usually have challenging descriptive passages to contend with. It turns out that Russians pirate just about everything, so I was able to find lots of sites with huge selections of comics available to read free online. Do a bit of googling and see if you can find something similar in your own target language.

Fanfiction: If you’ve followed this blog long enough, then you know that actually I got my start reading gay Captain American porn in Russian, and it was brilliant, thank you very much, and I bet you I was just about the only beginner Russian student on this planet who could barely introduce themselves but definitely could have had gay phone sex. Fanfiction is not generally written in a highly literary style, so it’s easier to follow. Moreover, you’re dealing with characters, tropes, and plotlines you’re already familiar with, and that familiarity helps enormously. While English is of course the most widely-used language on AO3, you have many language options to choose from, and in a large fandom like Marvel or Harry Potter, you’re bound to find something in your target language. You might check as well to see if any massively popular fics in a fandom you follow have been translated into your target language; I’ve noticed that quite a lot with Russian.

News Articles: News articles are generally written in a simplified language designed to be accessible by the average reader, who’s actually not very good at reading at all. I’m sure this varies somewhat by country and language, but here in the States most clock in at something like a 7th or 8th grade reading level, as that, depressingly, appears to be the average reading level of the majority of the reading public. They’re short and will introduce some new words into your vocabulary in an easily digestible way. Also: most big magazine publications such as Cosmopolitan and People have several  different versions of their websites. The Russian version, for instance, is cosmo.ru instead of cosmo.com. The French edition is cosmopolitan.fr. Figure out what designation your target language uses in place of .com and you’re in business (unless you accidentally get a porn site). Do I like Cosmopolitan magazine? Not particularly. Did it teach me new sex terms in Russian? Absolutely. And that’s what we’re all looking for, right? 

Dual Language: At around 4-5 months into my studies, I started reading dual language texts. I did this first with short stories, and later with full novels. This is not for everyone as it requires you to constantly switch back and forth between your native and target language, and especially if you’re farther on in your studies, this might muddle you more than help you. I found at about 8 months or so I had to take off the training wheels, as my vocabulary and grasp of grammar was good enough that looking over at the English text was actually confusing me, because I had gone from laboriously, awkwardly translating everything in my head to just reading it naturally. But in the beginning, it was a much faster way to check vocabulary, and it also helped me to sort out grammar by comparing it to my native language. All languages are trying to accomplish the same thing, which is to communicate; they just do it in different ways. But you can find a common ground even between languages that are vastly different, as English and Russian are. You can find some dual language texts, or you can do what I did, which is to put the English translation on an e-reader, and get hold of a hard copy of the Russian. I would always read the Russian first, and only if I was confused/missing a lot of words would I look over at the English text. Make sure you compare a couple of translations and pick the one that is most literally faithful, even if it’s not a great translation in and of itself. I used some English translations that I actually didn’t care for as a translation, but they were very literal and therefore very helpful in sussing the original text.  

Books You’ve Already Read In Your Native Language: It doesn’t have to be a book you have practically memorised (though that will certainly help). Anything you’ve read at least once in your life will do. You’d be surprised how much will come back to you, and how much context will help you figure out any unfamiliar words. I picked up the Russian translation of Ken Follett’s giant-ass ‘Winter of the World’ about a year into my studies. His style is neither particularly difficult nor...impressive, but as it’s the second in a trilogy that follows three generations of multiple families from WWI all the way into the Cold War, it has a lot of military and political terminology that you don’t encounter in everyday speech. It’s also over 1,000 pages, so it’s rather daunting in a second language regardless. I had read it once before in English, probably some five years before I read the translation, and going into it I really didn’t remember that much. However, while reading, I found that certain plotlines would start coming back to me, and helped a lot in piecing together unfamiliar terminology, in addition to the words I already knew. Don’t focus overly much on every single word and trying to remember what it is in your native language; trust me, you will absorb a lot from context. Just let go and let it wash over you.

Translations: Translations are almost always going to be easier than a book originally written in your target language, if the texts are of comparable difficulty. For instance: ‘Les Miserables’ is easier for me in Russian than Solzhenitsyn’s ‘The Gulag Archipelago’. Both are massive, rambling texts with long asides on history and politics, and in English I’d say they’re pretty equally difficult reads. Certainly neither is what I would classify as light reading. So why is ‘Les Miserables’ easier? Because in a translation I’m not dealing with uniquely Russian slang and turns of phrase. Yes, some of it has to be Russified in order for the target audience to better comprehend it in their native tongue, but generally speaking it doesn’t feel Russian, if that makes sense. I can tell pretty much as soon as I pick up a book if it’s a translation. Now, French isn’t my native language, but I’ve used it as an example because I’ve read quite a bit of French literature in Russian translation, and fairly difficult authors/texts at that: Hugo, Stendahl, Zola, etc. etc. None of these authors are light beach reads, but they’re also not difficult for me to follow in Russian. And anything translated from English is even more accessible; most texts translated from English into Russian I can follow very nearly as well as I can read the original English. When you’re dealing with a heavy-hitter that’s writing in your target language, they can get up to all kinds of shenanigans and word play; a translation, generally speaking, is not going to be nearly so experimental. 

Dumas: Why does Dumas get his own section? Because you should read him, dammit. HISTORY. SWASHBUCKLING. REVENGE. Dumas is fucking fun. He also has a huge oeuvre to choose from. Additionally, while he does have a lot of plotlines to follow (and this is the difficulty of Dumas when reading him in a second language) and you definitely need to get your historical vocabulary up to snuff, he is not an overly philosophical author. His novels are fun, action-oriented, and someone’s always eavesdropping on a Secret Political Conversation of the Utmost Importance. I’ve read quite a lot of Dumas in Russian (actually more than I’ve read in English) and they are easy, entertaining reads. You might get a little lost in the politics of the era, but unless you’re already familiar with them, you’d probably be a little lost in your native language as well. Don’t worry; people will start dramatically challenging one another to duels again very soon. Also: READ ‘THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO’ SERIOUSLY FOR FUCK’S SAKE DO IT.

[facemypast]

MUNDAY FACT SHEET.

NAME: Brittany. NICKNAME: Britt, B  SEX/GENDER: cis woman PRONOUNS: she / her. EYES/HAIR: blue and (dirty) blonde. HEIGHT/WEIGHT: 5′2″ and like idk around 135? BUILD: athletic (read: thunder thighs and big ass shoulders :P) TATTOOS: none yet. SCARS: cat scratches across my right chest and shoulder blade. Burn scar from work on my right forearm. Scar from my track spikes on my left knee.  PIERCINGS: two in each earlobe and an industrial in my left ear.

MYERS-BRIGGS: ISTJ-T, the logistician

The Logistician personality type is thought to be the most abundant, making up around 13% of the population. Their defining characteristics of integrity, practical logic and tireless dedication to duty make Logisticians a vital core to many families, as well as organizations that uphold traditions, rules and standards, such as law offices, regulatory bodies and military. People with the Logistician personality type enjoy taking responsibility for their actions, and take pride in the work they do – when working towards a goal, Logisticians hold back none of their time and energy completing each relevant task with accuracy and patience.

Logisticians don’t make many assumptions, preferring instead to analyze their surroundings, check their facts and arrive at practical courses of action. Logistician personalities are no-nonsense, and when they’ve made a decision, they will relay the facts necessary to achieve their goal, expecting others to grasp the situation immediately and take action. Logisticians have little tolerance for indecisiveness, but lose patience even more quickly if their chosen course is challenged with impractical theories, especially if they ignore key details – if challenges becomes time-consuming debates, Logisticians can become noticeably angry as deadlines tick nearer. 

When Logisticians say they are going to get something done, they do it, meeting their obligations no matter the personal cost, and they are baffled by people who don’t hold their own word in the same respect. Combining laziness and dishonesty is the quickest way to get on Logisticians’ bad side. Consequently, people with the Logistician personality type often prefer to work alone, or at least have their authority clearly established by hierarchy, where they can set and achieve their goals without debate or worry over other’s reliability. Logisticians have sharp, fact-based minds, and prefer autonomy and self-sufficiency to reliance on someone or something. Dependency on others is often seen by Logisticians as a weakness, and their passion for duty, dependability and impeccable personal integrity forbid falling into such a trap.

ENNEAGRAM: type 3- the achiever 

People of this personality type need to be validated in order to feel worthy; they pursue success and want to be admired. They are frequently hard working, competitive and are highly focused in the pursuit of their goals, whether their goal is to be the most successful salesman in the company or the "sexiest" woman in their social circle. They are often "self-made" and usually find some area in which they can excel and thus find the external approbation which they so desperately need. Threes are socially competent, often extroverted, and sometimes charismatic. They know how to present themselves, are self-confident, practical, and driven. Threes have a lot of energy and often seem to embody a kind of zest for life that others find contagious. They are good networkers who know how to rise through the ranks. But, while Threes do tend to succeed in whatever realm they focus their energies, they are often secretly afraid of being or becoming "losers.”

Threes can sometimes find intimacy difficult. Their need to be validated for their image often hides a deep sense of shame about who they really are, a shame they unconsciously fear will be unmasked if another gets too close. Threes are often generous and likable, but are difficult to really know. When unhealthy, their narcissism takes an ugly turn and they can become cold blooded and ruthless in the pursuit of their goals.

ALIGNMENT: true neutral

A neutral character does what seems to be a good idea. She doesn't feel strongly one way or the other when it comes to good vs. evil or law vs. chaos. Most neutral characters exhibit a lack of conviction or bias rather than a commitment to neutrality. Such a character thinks of good as better than evil-after all, she would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. Still, she's not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way.

TEMPERAMENT: choleric.    

The choleric temperament is fundamentally ambitious and leader-like. They have a lot of aggression, energy, and/or passion, and try to instill it in others. They can dominate people of other temperaments, especially phlegmatic types. Many great charismatic military and political figures were choleric. They like to be in charge of everything. However, cholerics also tend to be either highly disorganized or highly organized. They do not have in-between setups, only one extreme to another. As well as being leader-like and assertive, cholerics also fall into deep and sudden depression. Essentially, they are very much prone to mood swings.

KINSEY SCALE:   X- no sexual attraction ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: panromantic SEXUAL ORIENTATION: asexual IQ: 135 OCCUPATION: student, research coordinator, research assistant . RELIGION: ??? agnostic at best. PETS: my fam has 7 cats and a dog SCHOOL: pre-med LANGUAGES: english, french, italian, german MEDICAL: my heart is wonky and gives me extra heartbeats NEUROLOGICAL: none ETHNICITY/RACE: white, mostly german and italian HOBBIES: writing, Netflix, working out INTERESTS: fitness/nutrition, travel, foreign languages, marvel, lord of the rings, music, movies BLOGS: this one is most active, but i also have @fxngride​, @moonlithunt​, and @theoneandonlykili​

SOCIAL MEDIA: discord for mutuals, snapchat/insta/twitter for close mutuals, and facebook if I’ve met you in person lol

TAGGED BY: stolen from @warwearysoldier​ TAGGING: anyone!  

[texanpeanut]

Why Am I Here?

I think a lot. Probably too much by some standards, which is one of the reasons I wanted to join the Peace Corps. Once upon a time I believed if I made it to this position I would be forced to think less and do more. However, over the past six months I’ve experienced the opposite. Without mind-numbing mental distractions like Instagram and Facebook readily available while I’m in my rural site, and with the heat-forced downtime that occurs between noon and five p.m., I find myself thinking all the time. Not just in a hazy, half-aware state, but actively considering a handful of topics over and over again trying to find some satisfying conclusion that may or may not exist. So I’m not sure if the amount I think has changed since coming here, but perhaps the way I do has. Maybe now it’s more focused, more linear, less wiggly and sporadic. Maybe it’s more dense and easier to hold in my hand, like pudding versus water. Maybe it hasn’t changed at all and I’m just making it all up. 

One topic currently seems to have a more substantial presence in my mind than the others, though. Sometimes it burns like a roaring campfire and I’m completely captivated and sometimes it nags silently like a mango string caught in my teeth that I run my tongue over again and again without actually making an effort to remove. When I sit on the floor of my hut at 6:30 am drinking Nescafe, when I fill my water bucket at the forage in the silent woods, when I escape the afternoon sun by doing crosswords in bed, when I sit with my family in the evening as we wait for dinner to finish cooking, I always come back to the same thought - why the fuck am I here? 

For anyone reading this who doesn’t know, Senegal is a small West African country that happens to be the furthest western point on the African continent. I honestly don’t know that much about Senegalese history because all the empire formations and and dissolvements make my head spin, but I do know that it is certainly a very rich and diverse history, which has led to a very rich and diverse culture today. Although French is the national language, apparently 36 different languages are spoken in Senegal today, and each language corresponds to a different ethnic group with it’s own stories and traditions and beliefs. In my own region of Kedougou, I can travel between Bassari, Pular, and Jaxanke villages in just a few hours, and then if I travel up to any of the northern regions I find myself surrounded by Wolof or Pulaar du Nord or Serer. 

So, take a trip in a time machine back to maybe the 7th century and you’ll find all these groups of people living their lives, forming empires and kingdoms, disbanding, migrating, adopting Islam, you know, whatever, the usual, until the advent of globalization at the end of the 15th century. At that point, Europeans began competing for trade and conquest in Senegal (like they did in almost all other non-white countries, as y’all know. I have a few other colorful ways to describe this but since I have family reading and I already dropped a fuck once (twice now, sorry) I’ll keep it tame.)* until 1677 when France won by gaining control of Goree Island, which is known for being a purchasing base in the Atlantic Slave Trade. 

Travel forward in the time machine to 1961 and Senegal becomes independent from France. After centuries upon centuries of existing as a region under various kingdoms, then 300 years under French rule, Senegal becomes a country with a border, a tax system, a school system, elected officials, all that stuff. Now travel forward in the time machine to today, 2018, 57 years later. 

SO MUCH BACKDROP. Was all that even necessary for what I’m about to talk about? We’ll see, I guess. 

Living here, I see a lot of European and North American presence. Asian presence too, actually - a lot of the roads being built are Chinese construction projects, and the Renaissance Monument in Dakar was given as a gift from North Korea. There are other development organizations like UNESCO and World Vision, some religious missionaries, some adventurous tourists traveling on their own, some old French women sunbathing on the beaches of Mbour, and of course the obnoxious buses crammed full of European tourists coming to see a waterfall and stop by the surrounding towns to take photos of ~village life~ as if strolling through a zoo. 

As a white person here I’m perceived differently based on which of these groups of white people Senegalese people have interacted with more. When I travel anywhere outside my village I hear the children sing-song chant “toubako okkan cadeau!” which means “westerner, share a gift with me!”. Sometimes the adults engage me too when I go to a boutique or wait for a car at the garage. They like to ask me if I’ll take their baby with me back to America, if I’ll give them my earbuds, my cell phone, or my dress, or if I’ll marry their old crusty-ass uncle I don’t even know. When I travel up to Thies I don’t get chanted at quite as much and am almost ignored, which is nice. The few times I’ve been to Mbour I’m almost ignored except for the occasional beach-walking knick-knack seller begging me to be their first customer of the day. 

Even though they are just children, I get so incredibly annoyed sometimes by the chanting. I usually ignore it and go about my day but sometimes I just want to scream “my name is not Toubako, it’s Binta, and I don’t have a fucking gift, leave me alone and let me walk or bike or buy a piece of bread or whatever the fucking I’m doing at the moment.” The adults can be just as irksome, too. I don’t usually get into it and play these comments off as jokes but they make me so uncomfortable. I want to tell them “stop asking me for things. Every time you see me you only ask me for things. I came here to teach, to work, to plant at least like one fucking tree, not to take your baby or marry your god-damn uncle.” 

I think I’m up to four fucks now, sorry. God, that’s five. 

But I don’t respond because in some ways I feel like I deserve it. Even though I wasn’t here between 1677 and 1961 selling humans from Goree Island, even though I’m not one of these oggling, bus-going, camera-toting tourists, because I’m white I’m still part of that story. And in some ways isn’t “international development” another form of colonialism, of imperialism? Western groups coming in with resources and knowledge trying to fix what they perceive as problems? If the people of Senegal continuously rely on foreign aid organizations to supply resources and technical expertise, how sustainable is that for development in the long run? 

So this is where my thoughts lead me every day. What’s my role as a volunteer here? How can I act as a white person without perpetuating colonialism? How can I work and learn here while being the least imposing as possible? In Peace Corps we’re told the role of a volunteer is to be a mentor, a teacher, a co-facilitator, a co-planner, etc. There’s a huge focus on “people-centered” work. Don’t do anything your village doesn’t want. Don’t force your own projects because when you leave no one will continue it. I think I feel comfortable with this part. So far I’ve really been trying to feel out my village for what they want, what they need, and what they’re willing to work toward. If no one wants to make a compost pile or build a tree nursery, I’m not going to force it. I try to see myself as a supplier of information, not an iron-fisted environmental ruler. 

But even if I am trying to work with my village, even if I am truly trying to be this mentor/teacher/facilitator figure, and not a tyrant or giver of gifts like some other development organizations can be, why is that my responsibility as an American? All my technical training in Thies was done by Senegalese people. Wouldn’t this whole program be way more effective if Senegalese people trained other Senegalese people? People who live here and truly understand their land and their culture? People who don’t have to spend a year just trying to learn a language and fit in? People who aren’t going to go home to America or Canada or Japan after 2 years? 

Well then I think maybe it’s not just about the work. The work is so fun, it’s a blast, it’s been my favorite part in village. Helping someone build a tree nursery, doing a small training, getting my hands dirty planting seeds or amending a garden bed - it’s fantastic and I say that without a single drop of sarcasm. But there’s three goals in Peace Corps - the first is about the work, the second is about sharing American culture with the host country, and the third is sharing host country culture with Americans. And I think many volunteers have a fourth, personal goal of learning about themselves or some kind of self improvement. That’s my other favorite part so far. The opportunity to challenge myself, to learn, to think in a focused way and not just bounce all over the place. But did I have to come all the way to Senegal to do that? Are there experiences I could have had in America that would have been this formative? If I’m here just to learn, is that another form of exploitation? Am I just using my village’s daily life and culture as a means to only better myself? Maybe I should really focus my efforts on this whole cultural exchange part? 

I don’t know! I don’t know anything!

I’m not sure what my goal is in writing this post, but there was something inside me nagging me to put it down in type and send it into cyberspace. I do really appreciate my service in Senegal so far. I don’t want to leave, I don’t want to go home. But I think this topic is something I will continue to come back to again and again over the next year and a half. Maybe other volunteers will see this and relate or offer some insight? Maybe some history nerds will call me out on all the mistakes I made in the earlier paragraphs? Maybe people will tell me to shut up and get back to the cool tree stuff or post more pictures of my dog? 

Like I said, I don’t know. 

If you got this far, thanks for reading. That’s all for now. 

-Maggie 

*Way earlier in this post I put a little asterisk, if you remember. I have a book recommendation. If you’re interested in globalization, colonialism, and/or potatoes I highly recommend 1493 by Charles C Mann. It’s the story about how the face of the Earth completely changed with the first Europeans coming over to North America. It tells a very, very interesting story and I encourage anyone interested in learning even a little bit to read it. 

[arcticdementor]

The ongoing argument of how and whether conservatives should stand up for their beliefs in a hostile environment includes some recent interesting flareups, including here in The Federalist. The most interesting, to me, is the exchange between National Review’s David French and the Paradox Project’s pseudonymous Matt Shapiro (full disclosure: he’s written for The Federalist).

French worked as an attorney doing important civil rights work with the Alliance Defending Freedom, and Shapiro was in graduate school at a university that was one party in a case where French served as lead counsel. They experienced different parts of the same elephant.

…

The strongest point in Shapiro’s essay comes when he notes that he has, in fact, made a commitment that there is a line violating his religious beliefs, a line he will not cross: “But you’re ridiculous if you think I’m telling you what that line is. The moment an activist discovers my line, they will use that information to go to my employer and demand that they find a way to force me to cross that line. And I won’t cross it. And I’ll lose my job.”

And courage can’t prevent that. French certainly can’t prevent that: after all, he went to bat for Kevin Williamson’s job at the Atlantic. How’d courage work out for Williamson?

…

French described Shapiro’s statement as “a response worth reading,” but didn’t agree with the conclusion, maintaining, “It’s not either/or. It’s both/and. And the battle won’t be won without both/and. Two decades of litigation have blazed a trail, but sometimes folks have to just walk down that trail. If you don’t want to, I understand. It’s hard. But it’s still a failure if you don’t.”

In other words, “There may be a hockey-masked slasher down that trail, but you need to go down it by yourself anyway.” But as anybody who has ever seen a horror movie knows, fewer camp counselors would meet grisly deaths if they just figured out how to walk down trails together.

…

Crichton observed that journalists were absolutely terrible at covering his profession, yet when he turned the page in the newspaper he still assumed for some reason they would be competent at covering foreign affairs. Similarly, French knows perfectly well that organizing is hard, that putting people together is a skill, and that not everybody has the skills they need in a given situation. When the matter at hand isn’t a civil rights lawsuit, he forgets how hard organizing is.

But nothing happens invisibly or without cost. And telling people they’re cowards isn’t the way to get them to pay that cost. In his excellent book “Hegemony How-To,” the lefty organizer Jonathan Smucker points out that people who are reluctant to do something don’t just need to be told it’s morally important. They need to be convinced the thing you’re asking them to do will work. That it will matter. If they don’t buy that, they won’t do it.

The reason conservatives in hostile settings are reluctant to stand up is that they don’t know how to do it in a way that will produce effect. What’s noteworthy is that French doesn’t even consider that maybe people need some help figuring out how to effectively stand up. Giving them the idea that they should do so, he thinks, should be sufficient.

…

Lefties who wanted unions didn’t just secure the legal right to form a union, and then stop. They taught people who want unions how to make unions. Conservatives don’t do that for our own people, to our shame. We tend to think if people don’t do something for themselves, they must be either cowards or lazy.

Well, sometimes people are cowards, and sometimes people are lazy, but sometimes it’s just that they don’t know what to do. Lefties are better at providing onramps to this stuff. Conservatives blithely say things like French’s line that “there are platoons of lawyers willing and eager to take a swing at your antagonists,” and assume you know who they are, how to reach them, and under what circumstances you can call on them. Lefties planning a protest give you a workshop on your rights, provide free legal observers from a multitude of organizations, then read off a legal defense phone number and tell you to write on your arm.

…

Conservatives don’t do mobilizing, and we certainly don’t do organizing. We basically have three modes: evangelism (telling people what they should believe), electioneering (convincing them to pull the lever), and advocacy. None of these really empower people to fight for themselves. Advocates can swoop in heroically, like knights in armor, but they can’t do everything, they can’t be everywhere at once, and when they depart the field they still leave behind their protectees as an untrained rabble.

…

It’s important to have conservative organizations that fight for people’s legal rights. But that’s not enough. When the legal fight is won, you have to make sure the public knows what the rights they’ve secured are, and what to do if they’re infringed upon. The ACLU, for example, provides illegal immigrants information in multiple languages about what their rights are, how to interact with law enforcement, and where to turn for help. The same Web page provides a 108-page PDF toolkit for responding to ICE workplace raids.

The Alliance for Defending Freedom provides information on your rights, too. But they don’t just give it to you. They make you fill out a form first. (You can freely download their PDF brochure.) The barrier to entry is small, but means many people can’t find their advice.

And while my lefty friends are constantly recommending ACLU guides to people worried about their rights, I’ve never seen a single conservative — even David French! — say “Okay, first thing is you need to get the guidelines of the Alliance for Defending Freedom.” Or of any other conservative advocacy group, for that matter.

…

Their strength is in informing people what their rights are; their weakness is in providing guidance for when those rights are violated. In comparison to the ACLU’s 108-page toolkit, they’re lacking: they don’t tell people how to stand up effectively with anything other than ineffective griping or suing with ADF’s help. The real heart of the publications is guiding you to lay groundwork that will make it easier for the ADF to defend your faith-based organization when they represent you in a lawsuit. Which, again, doesn’t help people stand up for themselves.

…

Write the administration. Submit an op-ed. Hold an event. Because conservatives on campus have had so much luck with those.

This is our real problem. Normal people building normal groups to support the normal desires of normal people is essential to community, let alone political organizing, and righties kind of suck at it because we assume it’ll naturally emerge. Well, no. The kind of communities that naturally emerge are usually pretty crappy communities.

No magical elves are going to build your community for you. If people are afraid, don’t tell them that they’re cowards. Teach them how to stand up.

What does helping people stand up for themselves look like? I keep telling people: you have to read the lefties. Conservatives like French tell people they’re cowards if they don’t stand up for their unpopular beliefs as isolated individuals in a hostile environment, but radical leftists like McAlevey teach people how to make friends. Guess who wins?