#but tagging u seemed weirdly aggressive

[lazulisong]

wait what do you mean if u want to write het just write het? sorry that confused me

(i regret to say that i am still very hot and cross today and i would probably murder someone for ice cream money but i'll try not to be like super growly -- also the seller of my fan got back to me but god knows when i'm going to get a replacement and the type of dumbasses who set off fireworks until one am were out in full force last night.)

genshin fandom follows a long line of very heteronormative tropes in fic, which is -- well not fine, but expected and lord knows i, an infamous omegaverse enjoyer, have zero room to complain about that -- but one thing i haven't really seen before is when you have the very clearly defined top and bottom roles and then it goes further and the bottom has female plumbing.

so what's the difference between that and making the slash couple into a het couple? not much.

again this would be fine, if only PEOPLE WOULD TAG THEIR FUCKING FIC so people who do not really enjoy being surprised by PIV sex could FUCKING FILTER FOR IT like i attempt to do like an ADULT who is aware that their taste is also pretty terrible.

but no!

in genshin fandom you just gotta read the whole goddamn thing and pray you don't suddenly get slapped with something you aggressively are attempting to politely avoid because PEOPLE ARENT TAGGING THEIR FUCKING FIC PROPERLY

the genshin fic i've read so far is SO weirdly heteronormative and doesn't seem to bother to question why it is or why they're frankly obsessed with boys with pussies. i do not want boys with pussies, personally. i want characters to be not shoved into spaces they don't fit into and have the bits that stick out not be shaved off to fit like Cinderella's stepsisters' feet for the sake of conforming to fandom norms

also im mad about all the diluc / kaeya, speaking of heteronormativity and also what the FUCK is with kaeya either being a madame butterfly or a mata hari?

(i really wanted to read tighnari/cyno fic but i took one look and backed out of the tag so fast i left skid marks)

i will end here because i am very very hot and cross d/t being stuck in the broil box at work for twenty more minutes and apparently having the emotional regulation of a three year old this week. please send watermelon. thank u.

[queerspacepunk]

the line ‘I’m still comparing your past to my future It might be your wound, but they’re my sutures‘ (immortals - fall out boy), fenders. discuss.

[reginaofdoctorwho]

weird shit that would probably have something to do with me in a horror movie

no one wanted this but i’m bored and found a bottle so you’re all getting it. yes these are all true. check the tags, if u think i’ve missed something please let me know!

there was a murder (technically, i don’t really count it as a murder) next door when i was four years old on christmas morning

the weird antique glass bottle i found half-buried in the woods in the woods yesterday with living bugs in it that made no attempt to leave it once i uncovered it

there is a local cult in the next town over. this is not the same as the local cult that was in the other town over where my mom grew up

random completed animal skeletons in the woods behind our house, i’m talking prey and predator, both laid out like in a goddamn scientific diagram. for a while there’d be ones in the middle of our yard, always the same type of animal, always just the bones and nothing else, laid out like it was posed. this has been happening for over half a decade and we have no fucking clue how, why, or who is doing it

the screaming from the woods that i’m going to assume is a fox

my sister almost dated a murderer. his niece or something is in my class

there is a house that is now part of a “local ghost tour” that belonged to my great+ grand parents during the civil war where my great+ aunt died allegedly murdered by her husband who is actually blood related to me. family history says she died of childbirth, which given that it was the 1800s... probably is true

there was an actual murderer in our family a few generations back but he married in and killed his wife and her sister. they didn’t find out about it until they read his journals after he died where it apparently told everything he did and they decided. “well, that wouldn’t look good for the family, and they’re already dead anyway” and just kept it hidden??

the fact we have my great great grandmother’s dress from probably 1890s or 1900s. even more so the fact that i fit in it. if this was fantasy horror (vampires, some immortal thing or ghost) i’d be fucking dead or cursed

fairly certain i was possessed by the ghost of a puritan as a kid

my family seems to have a curse with babies and nurses? my great uncle died when he was born because long story short, hospitals were the new hot thing, he was perfectly healthy, then a nurse dropped him and he died instantly. my sister died when she was a toddler and the hospital actively tried to delete her hospital records to cover it up and ended up getting fined by the state for it. the nurses responsible were not arrested or punished in any way.

my family all has fucked up connective tissue, in my brother it was bad enough he had to get a steel bar in his chest so it wouldn’t cave in.

the many times i have almost drowned, sometimes due to intentional actions by humans (my dad, it was my dad)

this in addition to the other fucked up shit he did before the divorce when he still lived here, including but not limited to: killing my mom’s favorite pet goat, hanging its skull in a tree, and leaving the body in the woods. not letting his kids learn how to cook. anytime someone asked him to cook he’d put as much pepper/hot sauce in as he could (even for like, scrambled eggs) and give it to the youngest person, usually a toddler. this was me at times. taking his kids out to the woods and threatening murder. taking his kids out to the woods and threatening burning. purposely locked the basement from the inside so we couldn’t get the gaping hole in the stairs leading to one of three kids rooms fixed. tearing up pictures of the kids whenever my mom did something he didn’t like. i had more here but i tried to cut it down a litttle

people have threatened to murder me before. one time a girl didn’t threaten, and actually acted like she was starting to like me, but her cousin read her diary or something and found out she was planning to commit a lot of murder, and told her parents and she got sent to a psychiatric ward for a couple weeks

my mom lived down the street from a family that got axe-murdered by one of their two sons when she was a kid. the murderer did get out on an insanity plea and is still in the area. also their neighbor’s mom “lost her mind” (how the story was told) when she had to protect their kids while her husband went over to try to protect the non murderer son when he got home from school and ran over screaming about his brother trying to kill him and had killed their parents

also she knew a girl who almost got kidnapped by this really fucked up traveling serial killer that has his own wikipedia page that is,,, lengthy. the girl had [alleged] mafia ties, and the guy ended up dying shot by police despite them being told to bring him in, which sounds kinda suspicious

long story short i’d probably be the sequel where one comes back

apparently i go to the “bad” school, which i found out in a coffee shop when i overheard two girls talking about how one’s dad went there and how horrible and dangerous it is

school fights are weird. either they don’t happen or they come freakishly close to murder. people slam heads into lockers, stomp on bones, drag people by hair along the ground. one time in my brother’s class a 4′9″ girl sent a 6′2″ football player to the hospital. there was video of a fight a couple years ago that’s still around. it was brutal, but also one of the girls fighting was taking one for the team in it and got the other kicked out

we don’t have a ceiling in all of the third floor, and the cafeteria has 2. this is not relevant in any way, but it’s important to me that you know this

also the guys kept ripping the heating vents/radiators/whatever off the walls in their bathrooms and got almost all the bathrooms locked. including the girls’ ones.

also everyone kept punching holes in the walls so on some of them it’s just,,, metal sheeting down the whole hallway

there are so many fucking shootings in the next town over. literally five years ago it was this nice place where kids would go on history tours, i did when my sister worked for that group. now there is pretty much one business that has not been held up at gunpoint, and if u look up to the serial killer bullet point, it is for v similar ties. it’s a pizza place and if u ever stop by u gotta try it

women in my family have weirdly good intuition but every couple generations we get doubtful. my great grandma didn’t want a hospital birth but decided “hey it’s the hot new thing for a reason”, my mom switched churches based on nothing but intuition and it turned out someone was a pedophile there (found out years later), i instantly could tell my friend’s boyfriend was a pos and wasn’t surprised later when he told her he’d murder and dismember me in front of her, and upon meeting him told him he was a fucking coward and couldn’t do it. he broke up with her a month later.

i was really good friends for a while with two guys that burned a building down. yes they were arrested. i was friends before and after the fire. they’re pretty nice, but this girl they used to date (at different times, they were brothers, yes it was fucking weird and uncomfortable for everyone involved except her but that’s it’s own thing) said some fucked up shit and it was the closest i ever got to starting a fight. anyway i’m still friends with both on facebook. one of them shares a lot of king of the hill memes

speaking of that fight, i 100% would’ve tried to kill her in that moment. u know that john mulaney quote like “i didn’t understand how a person could want to kill another person. then i got cheated on, and i was like ‘oh, okay.’”? that was me, but replace “cheated on” with she told me it was good my five year old sister was dead because she was a waste, and told me she hoped i’d die of covid”. it was mainly the sister thing. i couldn’t move because if i did i’d start a fight with the [way] above mentioned shit.

my family has a literal feud with a local farming family. i mean, we keep farm animals (sheep, goats, chickens), these people have that, pigs, and crops too. the feud was because their great uncle (or great grand uncle, i’m a little fuzzy on the details) published an autobiography (despite not being anyone famous/important) and in it talked about when he was friends with my grandfather and how creepy my great grandfather was (this was the one with the dead firstborn son) because he kept newspaper clippings of the Lindbergh baby’s kidnapping and murder pinned to a board on the wall of his office/basement. also because he was a child of german immigrants who wanted to fight against nazis in WW2 (how suspicious [sarcasm]). members of their family are in my grade. they charged my sister for almost half an extra pound of goods, too, which just revitalized it.

i live by corn fields. i am surrounded by cornfields. (joke one)

i was friends for a while with this girl whose baby teeth,,, didn’t really fall out completely? she was 17 the last time i saw her in person, she’s probably 19 now and judging by her facebook pictures they’re still Like That. she had a very symmetrical mouth/teeth, which made it weirder. just to clarify, she had some of her baby teeth pushed forward and up, so they kind pointed out a little? and all her adult teeth. she was literally so pretty.

a teacher who is v sexual with his female students came into my english class (he is a science teacher) to demand why i wasn’t signed up for his class. we then both became increasingly passive aggressive and he told the whole class where i live with specific directions and landmarks. the guy sitting next to me had to try to tone things down despite being obviously confused as to why it was even happening (me too buddy). he lives down the road from my sister. when my niece had her birthday party at our house i was outside setting things up and he slowed his car down and honked at me. fuckin creep

[tibby]

hey i've never been an active tumblr user and i was just wondering how do u get started on it? like how do u find mutuals and grow ur account? it seems like the chillest social media app for sure and ppl r so funny in here.

create content: i think tumblr (moreso than most social media sites) allows just about any kind of content creator to share their content. whether it’s gifs or videos or fics or just jokes, it kind of gives everyone an opportunity to post their own stuff. unfortunately the actual audience for the content isn’t very big because this site is hardly thriving, but i’ve always found it much better in this sense than say, twitter. also using the specific tags for certain things (like i tag my riverdale gifs with #riverdaleedit) means that more people will see it, like it, and share it.

be nice: i am not going to claim that i am the sweetest person on this site because i really am not, but just...try to be kind to people. don’t be weirdly aggressive to anons who are just asking a simple question, and don’t make weird inappropriate jokes to strangers. just...basic human decency, really.

find your own community: i think it is very easy on tumblr (and other websites) to see an already established friend group with inside jokes and shared content and want in on it. i’ve been on the outside looking in, i’ve had people wanting to join my circle of friends, and i know how intriguing everything seems. but friendships exist outside of what people share publicly on their blogs, and it’s the stuff behind the scenes that make them close. why try to force yourself into that? find people with similar interests to you who are also looking for friends, and just...reach out to them. get to know them. build your own little group. it’s far more rewarding and enjoyable that way.

don’t take this website so seriously: the reason i have stuck with tumblr for over a decade now (jesus i’m old) is because it’s kind of just hit a point where everything is...relaxed. yeah there’s still drama and bad takes, but most people are here for a laff, and the idea of being tumblr famous is laughable. nobody has clout here, nobody has anything to promote, nobody has anything to gain. don’t get caught up in followers or notes or whatever, because that takes the fun out of it. just post what you want and do what you want, not what you think will get you attention. it’s tumblr. post fast, die young.

[jennifersylvesters]

not so subtle ( bullet point - work in progress )

currently an idea i’m drumming up inspired by this - please do not steal my concept / fanfic it into your own. ( if you wanna make a fanfic based off of crazy rich asians, go for it fam / send that my way. ) i am literally going to write it, but i like to bullet point because it’s fun / helps me get the ideas better rounded. also i think it’s fun. i know i wrote that twice but this is me tryin’ to get my point across.

pairing: harrison osterfield x female!reader 

okay so your best friend is dating tom holland

like kewl. he’s nice enough. he’s chill af. ya get along. and he’s so good to your best friend

she always goes on about him when he’s gone and ur like “aaight but i’m not getting laid so enuf plz. like i love u but no bb girl”

anyways gahdamn u so lucky cuz she lets you tag along with her

at this point you’re her honorary plus one - like wowowow how did you hit the friend jackpot

at this point in your life you kinda always ready to hit up the red carpet with her bc u get to see cELebRItiEs!!11!!

but the one thing that you find kinda a downside is tom’s best friend

which sounds a bit ridiculous - you know - but it’s become annoying

at first you thought he was chill but he’s always teasing you about being starstruck

and ur like “bITCh!!! it’s chris evans!!! one of the chris’!!!!11!!!”

he just seems so smug about not losing his shit in front of cool people

and he just seems to lowkey pick on you??? and you’re like “??? why?” ( aka this vine )

he’s literally so annoying that you don’t do the whole “harrison” or “harry” or “haz” dealio the way everyone else does - it’s either “osterfield” or “lil shit” 

and he seems to literally take PRIDE in being called lil shit by you despite your best friend telling you that it’s rude

at this point you just avoid him but jfc you suck at it so bad

and he always catches you at your worst moments

and laughs about it

which makes you think that you were right in nicknaming him lil shit

the day he finds out you have outfits stored in your car is a day you never wanted to happen

but it’s only cuz your bestie always surprises shit on you like “OMG I GET TO GO TO A SWANKY PARTY WITH YOU?!?!?!?! YAAAYYY~~ OH FRICK FRACK PADDY WACK I DON’T HAVE SUITABLE CLOTHES”

and you think it’s sweet but sweatin while tryin to figure out outfits last minute ain’t cute hunny

so you’ve just happened to store some of your cuter dresses in your car

“You have a cocktail dress in your trunk?” he asked bewildered. A smirk crosses his face as you pull the garment bag towards your chest. Of course he’d give you grief about this. Still, you have your pride along with a fabulous outfit. “I’m not an animal, Osterfield” you announce defiantly as you hmph past him.

anyways y’all are invited to a party and you tryin to play it cool but you also know like, nobody besides your friend, tom, and harrison

and you get lost from all of them and some celebrity that you’ve literally had a crush on for FIVE-EVER approaches you and flirts with you

wowowowowow okay okay you gotta breathe you gotta mcfrickin BREATHE

and when he compliments your dress you’re like “HAHA SUCK IT, OSTERFIELD”

except your celeb crush is starting to get more, uh, aggressive than you prefer. and you’re realizing this is not as cute as you wanted this moment to go

and honestly you h8 this feeling but you feel trapped and a bit scared and just wanna get out

the last thing you expect is harrison to show up and stick up for you and get your former celeb crush to gtfo 

and you’re a little jittery after the whole ordeal like “shakey shakey it feels earthquakey” HSHSHSHS YOU FUCKING SAY THAT TO HIM AND HE’S LIKE WAT AND UR LIKE SDFKANLSF NOTHING

anyways he’s literally helping you to calm down like “breathe. take a deep breath. you got this, love.” 

and you stop breathing when he calls you “love” because he never calls you that. 

like you get that it’s probs just a british thing but he still never uses that with you

cuz he’s gotten fond of just calling you by your name or “lil skunk” ( you fuckin accidentally fall into a garbage once and you earn the worst nickname in all the land )

and when you stop breathing, he’s like “whoa whoa whoa. c’mon, y/n. keep breathing for me.” 

so you start breathing again. and when you finally feel a better, you glance at him and you can’t help but feel weirdly shy

you thank him all soft and nervous and he’s smiling so tender at you that for a second you feel your heart skip a beat

and then some girl wraps her arm around him and he gives that goddamn player smirk to her and wow that feeling just left so mcfrickin quick

and you’re like “bye lil shit” “bye lil skunk” “i hate you” “hahaha whatever you say, lil skunk” “fuck off”

and you start your search for your best friend not realizing that tom watched that all go down and is just smiling all excitedly cuz he knows what’s going on. and he’s about to be the dumbest and try to be y’alls cupid. and it’s gonna be a mcfrickin shit show fam.

anyways i wanna make this into a series bc i’m a mcfrickin idiot hahahaha yaaaaaah buddy

if you wanna give feedback, i greatly appreciate it!

part one

[sparxwrites]

I've noticed recently that I've become accustomed to capitalising words for Emphasis, both in the absence of italics and in tandem with them. As a language nerd, what does this suggest of language mutation going forward?

this isn’t language mutation! at least, not in the way i suspect you mean it. it’s more of a linguistic adaptation to the inherent limitations of text-based communication - which is a bit of a mouthful, and a lot to unpack, so, let’s start with the basics:

in spoken english, we have words and grammar and sentences, the same as we have with internet english. however, we also have facial expressions, and body language, and hand gestures - and most relevantly here something called prosidy, which internet english is lacking (at least in the traditional sense). prosidy is the changes in pitch and volume of your voice when speaking. this gives rise to stress and intonation in speech, which serves several purposes - one is distinguishing between words (ie. record the object, and record the action), another is conveying emotion, and another is providing emphasis.

the last one is the primary purpose of both italics and initial capitalisation in internet english. since we can’t have prosidy over the internet via pitch and volume, we’ve adopted other methods. 

words with the same spelling are usually disambiguated by context, so they’re not hugely relevant here, but there’s some interesting things going on with emotion and emphasis.

emotion is usually done with memes, emoticons, gifs, or other “verbal tags” - stuff like “/s” for sarcasm or “uwu” (which, interestingly, started off as a genuine expression of “i’m not mad at you!” and is now sarcastic and passive aggressive, so that’s a- lexical? possibly-lexical mutation there), or even acronyms like “tbh” and “lol” and “lmfao” which are now more often used to indicate the mood of a particular statement. for example: when was the last time you saw someone using lmfao to Actually Literally Mean “laughing my ass off”? now consider when the last time you saw someone using lmfao to mean “the previous statement is intended to be mildly humorous in a bleak and self-depreciating kind of way” was. think of the number of posts about “adults need to learn to text!” where people think their parents are angry because they ended a text in a full stop. think of all the wonderful variations on ellipses we have!! the way people use question marks as rhetorical devices, to indicate uncertainty in their statement, or to point out how obvious something is!! i love it. emotion tag-words are my favourite.

emphasis / stress is usually (or at least traditionally) done with italics in written english - it isn’t particularly a internet english thing, it’s been done by writers and comic book artists since well before the internet. this is part of what’s called prosodic stress in spoken english, and it’s used in a couple of different ways. aside from general the most relevant one here is to point out new information in a sentence (called focus in linguistics):

“However, it’s not enough to assume that turtles merely like the taste of pineapples. We must consider the possibility that turtles are deeply, sexually attracted to fruit.”

there’s also contrastive focus (a sub-type of focus, where the person you’re speaking to makes an assumption, and you’re contradicting / correcting them). wikipedia has some nice examples of how it’s often used both online and out loud:

I didn't take the test yesterday. (Somebody else did.)I didn't take the test yesterday. (I did not take it.)I didn't take the test yesterday. (I did something else with it.)I didn't take the test yesterday. (I took a different one.)I didn't take the test yesterday. (I took something else.)I didn't take the test yesterday. (I took it some other day.)

other things italics can do include indicating sarcasm (“Oh, of course, no one else has ever thought of this, because you’re so clever.”), and highlighting important/argument-relevant (“As I mentioned earlier: fish can feel love. This is just one reason amongst many, however, that fish-human marriage is undeniably ethically sound.”). i’m 90% sure that that latter one is probably also focus-related, but i don’t know enough about information structure generally to commit entirely to calling it focus - tbh, given how many different theories of focus there are, it may be focus under some theories, but not others (see also: that one theory on the wiki page where anything not given is focused, so if you’re specifically bringing up or reminding people of a relevant piece of information it’s probably not given and therefore focused). if the important / argument-relevant use is not focus-related, though, then it’s at least somehow related to information structure; perhaps italics are more generally useable to indicate something about information structure, without it specifically needing to be focus.

stress done with initial capitalisation, however, seems to be a little different - or at least, seems to occur in broader contexts than the one above. i suspect you could do an entire postgrad thesis on the similarities and differences between the two (and i also suspect that i don’t remember enough about syntax and phonology and information structure etc. to offer the best insight possible here), but let’s see if we can’t at least pick the differences apart a bit.

so! initial capitalisation can certainly be used in the same contexts as italics, for focusing new / relevant information and for contrastive focus. this evidenced by: (a) “omg, have u considered that turtles are Sexually Attracted To Fruit??” and “pls remember that Fish Can Feel Love” are both perfectly a-okay in internet english, and (b) by an edited version of the wikipedia examples:

I didn't take the test yesterday. (Somebody else did.)i Didn't take the test yesterday. (I did not take it.)i didn't Take the test yesterday. (I did something else with it.)i didn't take The test yesterday. (I took a different one.)i didn't take the Test yesterday. (I took something else.)i didn't take the test Yesterday. (I took it some other day.)

(initial capitalisation with “I” is always a little tricky (is it emphasis, or is it just normal capitalisation?), and in my expereince people tend to default to italics with it wherever possible for this reason. i’m also… unsure about how happy i am with the grammaticality (how “okay” a particular sentence is within a given language / dialect) of examples 4 & 5 (“The” and “Test”), but that might be because those two are a little unusual even with italics - “i didn’t take The Test today” looks much better, i think, and can mean both “i took a different one” and “i took something else”.)

however, it’s clear that initial capitalisation can occur in places where italicisation is either outright incorrect, or at least looks kind of weird:

[cute picture of a cat lying on its back, pulling a face, having knocked a plant pot off the table]

commenter A: “Why Do Cats Do These Things”

commenter B: “why do cats do these things”

commenter A’s statement is perfectly correct internet english; commenter B’s statement is just about interpretable, but quite clearly clumsy / not really acceptable in the opinion of most “native internet english speakers”. but why?? well, we’re clearly not focusing “do these things” (because it’s not really providing any information, it’s just sort of… pointing out that the cat in the picture is being weird and then asserting that this is prototypical cat behaviour. it’s trying to tap into a shared knowledge of “what cats do / are like” between “speaker” and reader), and though it’s somewhat humorous it’s not actually sarcastic, so italics are a no-go.

what commenter A is trying to do, however, is to indicate a specific usage / meaning of “do these things” via a specific “tone of voice”. commenter A is not just asking why cats behave specifically in this manner re: knocking pots off and pulling faces, they’re trying to indicate that they consider cats in general to act weirdly and look goofy; typing “why do cats do these things” would be mostly fine if you are indicating frustration / anger with a sudden plague of cats-knocking-off-plant-pots, but that’s not what commenter A is trying to communicate.

additionally, when i say “Why Do Cats Do These Things” out loud, there’s a specific tone of voice i use for it, that i suspect others do to - this kind of flat monotone, with a heavy weight on each word that’s not so much emphasis but a very careful over-pronunciation. it’s not quite emphasis, and definitely not focus-emphasis; it’s almost a comedy thing, or a joke; it’s drawing attention to a specific interpretation of this sentence that’s both humorous and typical within internet spaces; it’s indicating a kind of emotion (exasperation / affection / despair) more than anything.

some other examples of this, where capitalisation is a-okay but italics are somewhere between weird and entirely unacceptable:

“nah it’ll be fine, i’m Basically Immortal lol”

“getting run over would be Suboptimal”

“if word crashes and deletes this essay then, i swear to god, I’m Gonna Die”

“you’re a Terrible Human Being and i love it”

(if anyone can think of any examples where italics and capitalisation is okay, but are in the same style as the above, then let me know! or if people disagree with my analysis of what initial capitalisation sounds like out-loud. this sort of thing relies on native speaker judgements, usually, and although i am as close to a native internet english speaker as you’re gonna get, i’m only one person. other people may have other judgements.)

i suspect, from all of this, that the function of initial capitalisation is to indicate any kind of change in prosidy in the speaker’s voice (though primarily weird monotone), usually with an emphasis on a specific interpretation of the particular phrase that’s initially-capitalised. this is why it can be used for focus, and for sarcasm, and for more general emphasis the same way - but why it can also be used to represent a monotone (“I Would Prefer Not To”) in a way italics can’t, or to indicate that specific “you know what i’m talking about / i am referring to a concept we both share but that cannot be put into words” tone (“Why Are You Like This”), or that looping-up-and-down voice people use when they’re winding someone up (“I Am A Joy And A Delight, idk what you’re talking about :3ccc”).

italics can kind of be used for some of these, but only really as an extension of its function as an indicator of sarcasm - which means that italics are intelligible in that context, but just look weird, and like the person using them isn’t very fluent in internet english. that’s because initial caps don’t quite indicate sarcasm, though it occupies a similar teasing-dramatic tonal area; in some / most instances, initial caps seems to function similar to adding “lmfao” or “lol” onto the end, which suggests it’s also indicating a self-depreciating or bleak humour / drama to the sentence. initial caps seem to function, then, as a focus / emphasis device, but also as an emotion indicator, which is a sort of fascinating crossover of function - but very similarly to the way we see voice and prosidy being used for both focus / emphasis, and for conveying emotion.

so, you probably use italics + capitalisation in conjunction because you’re trying to convey two different things. for a sentence like “drinking three cups of coffee in a row is a terrible, awful, no good idea and oh my god Why Would You Do That”, the italics are conveying where you’re putting stress / emphasis in the sentence (on “oh my god why would you do that”). the initial capitalisation, however, is indicating that on top of emphasis, you’re saying “why would you do that” in a specifically unusual kind of prosidy, probably quite a flat and monotone one, and that it’s designed to be teasing / humorous.

i also suspect that italics + capitalisation can be used as a kind of “double emphasis”, or marking out an emphasised section within an already emphasised talking point. kind of the way bolding sometimes works?? (except the internet tends not to use bolding fsr, or only uses it for headings / as a way to highlight the most important sentences in a wall of information. it’s a structural-level organisational device, essentially.) so you can re-parse “it’s so important we feed cats and dogs different food, because cats are not dogs and have different dietary requirements!!!” as “[...], precisely because Cats Are Not Dogs and have different dietary requirements!!!”. in this instance, you’re emphasising that the reason for different treatment is that cats are not dogs and therefore have different dietary requirements, but also emphasising the fact in and of itself that cats are not dogs.

i also also suspect that, when we just need one form of emphasis and are choosing whether to use italics or initial capitalisation, we consider the context of our writing. in this “essay”, i’ve mostly used italics - they’re a little more “formal” as far as internet language goes (so, not very formal at all, but still more standard than initial caps), they’re more semantically accessible (i.e. if non-tumblr people find this essay, whereas they might be able to proactively work out what initial caps are intended to convey from context, they’ll probably intuitively understand the use of italics here), and they’re more visually accessible / they disrupt the visual flow of the text less. when i’m talking with friends (especially on platforms like skype and discord and tumblr messenger which, if they support italics at all, do so in a “non-intuitive” way, i.e. not using ctrl+i like word processing software does), in shorter / less formal settings, where the visual flow of the sentence is part of the meaning / emotion of the sentence in and of itself (how long are the sentences? do you use full stops? do you capitalise the beginnings of sentences? do you send each sentence as a new message? on a new line? how many dots do you use for ellipses? keysmashes? ?!??!??!?!?!?!!!! ?), i tend to use initial caps.

so tl;dr: italics seem to be primarily used to indicate focus - you’re pointing out a new or specifically relevant piece of information, or you’re correcting / denying a piece of information that your conversational partner has provided (or perhaps being sarcastic). initial capitalisation can Also/also be used for this purpose, but is additionally used to represent Any/any kind of change in prosidy that would occur if you spoke the sentence aloud (since we also mess about with intonation for other reasons beside focus). ...i sincerely hope someone has done / is doing / will do a thesis on this bc honestly this probably has some fascinating implications for information structure or prosidy or Something/something tbh.

regarding the “mutations” comment: these sorts of internet english quirks are not language mutations, per se, because we already have features for distinguishing this kind of thing in spoken english - and also because a lot of this stuff is what we call paralinguistic phenomena, which means that sarcasm and emphasis etc. communicate something, but it’s not actually strictly part of the language itself. it just adds an extra layer of meaning on top of the stuff being conveyed by the actual words.

instead, they’re adaptations of our orthographic (writing) system to cope with the increasing demands of written/internet english to convey these sorts of things. online, we don’t have people’s prosidy and their body language / expressions to read, so we need altered orthography or other visual indicators to ensure that people correctly understand the intent and mood behind your communication, not just the raw word-content of it. that’s why internet english has developed these quirks. essentially: our communication has always had these paralinguistic phenomena, these ways to convey emotion and emphasis; we’re just finding different ways of expressing them in response to environmental restrictions, i.e. the fact we’re all increasingly communicating via text on a regular, intensive basis. historically, we’ve primarily communicated verbally, so it’s not developed due to lack of need - but the internet has has created a heavily-used, text-primary environment, so now we do need it, and we’re collaboratively creating it as a result because humans (especially young humans) are excellent language innovators. it’s pretty neat!!

(as an interesting aside, i suspect that there’s also an element of in-grouping going on here. people want to mark out the community belong to, the people they’ve chosen as their “tribe” - irl, we do this via slang, and accents, and sometimes through certain types of wordplay or forms of prosidy / gesture etc. obviously, online, we can have slang (think about how often you’ve seen someone on tumblr say “top kek”, versus how ubiquitous that phrase is on reddit), but accents are a little harder. so we instead develop different ways of typing, different ways we use italics or capitalisation or emotes. some of this depends on platform constraints - if your community’s site doesn’t allow bold/italics, or automatically converts emotes into weird yellow smileys, you’re gonna have to develop workarounds for that - but some of it is us going “these are my people, and i can tell because we talk differently, and we’re Not Like You People”. this is why it can sometimes be linguistically disorienting going onto a different platform; i often find posters’ “tone” on reddit hard to read, because they seem to signal emotion differently to on tumblr!!

this may, perhaps, also be a reason why we’ve ended up with both capitalisation and italics - if one social group developed italics as emphasis, and a second social group (perhaps on a platform without capacity for italics) developed capitalisation as emphasis, and then the two groups merged or interacted, you’re gonna get this linguistic transference where the groups adopt one another’s styles without dropping their own original style. and then- voila! both italics and capitalisation for emphasis. but because language often tends towards getting rid of redundancy, the two styles specified out into having slightly different connotations / occuring in slightly different pragmatic environments. or, perhaps, the capitalisation style was always broader than italics, and there’s not been any change yet to reduce redundancy, but there will be in the future. who knows!)

(as a second interesting aside, all of this is probably partly why autistic people often report online friendships being easier / report preferring textual communication to face-to-face. whereas expressions and prosidy can be exceptionally difficult to learn to read if they’re not instinctual - think of the infinite variations of muscle contraction and relaxation in the face! the number of different pitches and volumes and patterns we can make with our voice! they’re very difficult to categorise because they overlap a lot and tend to gradient into one another - these kinds of “emotional tags” are usually quite easy and clear-cut. “/s” indicates sarcasm every time it is used, entirely unambiguously. stuff like “lol” or “tbh” are a little more ambiguous, but even then, they have a more limited set of emotional contexts that they’re used in than, say, the corners of your lips moving upwards. gifs and memes are even better; if they don’t outright say what they mean on the gif or in the meme, there’s entire websites dedicated to cataloguing and explaining memes should you be unclear of the usage.

additionally, internet environments can be a little more forgiving wrt people not picking up on tone, or using an incorrect / weird tone, when conversing; it’s hard to display tone online, and even allistic people (especially internet newbies or older people) struggle with it, so tonal faux pas or misunderstandings are a little more expected (and therefore forgiven) than irl.)

[sugardaddycentral]

born to die pt. 2

Connor Murphy x Reader

Born To Die

Part 2

Summary:  Connor and (Y/N)'s relationship start to take a different turn as they get to know the real version of each other.

Song Inspiration: Born To Die / Lana Del Rey

Warnings: | language | drug use | mentions of suicide | mentions of self-harm | first person writing | mental illness | teenage angst |

Word Count:

Connor was in absolutely no shape to drive. After we got food, I let him have one of the joints I stashed in the glove compartment. And then after that, it went against my conscience to let him drive himself home.

Connor lived in a huge ass house at the end of a cul de sac. The sheer size of it left me in awe. I swear, I could fit my bedroom in their closets. "Holy shit," I muttered under my breath. A short haired, redheaded woman who I assumed was Connor's mom was out on the front lawn doing pilates. At the same time, a silver Mercedes was pulling into the driveway. Mrs. Murphy dropped everything she was doing and jogged over to my car. I rolled down the passenger seat window.

"Hi Mrs. Murphy, I'm (Y/N). Just dropping Connor off," I introduced myself.

"Oh, thank you! I'm Cynthia." She grinned painfully widely. She extended her hand through the window to shake mine. "Connor, what happened to your car?" she asked.

"He's high," a masculine voice stated. The man who I assumed was Connor's dad emerged from the Mercedes. He set down his brief case and went to shake my hand as well. "Thank you for bringing Connor back. I'm sorry if he was any trouble," said Mr. Murphy, his face painted with disgust at the sight of his son. Connor rolled his eyes and hid his anger behind a passive-aggressive smile. He slammed the car door open, not giving a shit that his dad was standing directly in front. He muttered a goodbye under his breath and stormed into the house.

"He can be like that," Cynthia nervously chuckled. "How do you know Connor, (Y/N)?"

I couldn't help but focus on Connor slamming his house door. His mom seemed sweet. His dad on the other hand was a piece of work. Judging by Mr. Murphy's formal attire and brief case, and not to mention the large house, this man made some good money.

"Oh uh, we met in support group."

"Oh!" Cynthia started, her face portraying a million emotions at once. She went from shock to excitement and then confusion, which she tried to hide with a cheesy and toothy grin. "That's wonderful! I didn't know Connor goes to support group. Did you know, Larry?" she asked turning to her husband. The same disgusted look washed over Larry Murphy’s face again, but with a hint of confusion as well.

“No, I didn’t."

"Oh, well I'm so happy that Connor is making friends! How about you join us for dinner tonight, (Y/N)? I'd love to hear more about how you and Connor became friends," suggested Cynthia.

I knew that dinner with the Murphy's would be a whole new level of discomfort. But like an idiot, I said yes anyways. I reached over to my night stand and grabbed my phone to text Connor.

To: Connor M.

just a heads up, your parents invited me over for dinner tonight

Butterflies fluttered in my stomach as I awaited a response.

From: Connor M.

y the fuck would u say yes?

To: Connor M.

because i'm an idiot

His response took a lot longer than usual. I double checked my phone.

From: Connor M.

...

u said it, not me

I grinned widely, then glanced up to check the time.

To: Connor M.

see u in a bit, loser

From: Connor M.

wear something nice

I pulled up to the Murphy house at around 7. Not a single light was out in the entire house. I parked the car by the curb.

My hands trembled as I went to ring the doorbell. The whole idea of sitting down with the Murphy's for dinner made my skin crawl. I decided to heed Connor's advice and wear something somewhat nice. The only thing that wasn't lying on my bedroom floor or in the hamper was a black cocktail dress that still had the tag on. I didn't expect that I would need it until now. To accompany my look, I did a natural makeup look and put on a pair of faux diamond earrings. Fake it till you make it, right?

My hand froze as I reached out to ring the bell. Just ring the fucking doorbell, I told myself. Each time my finger inched closer, I felt my heart being dragged down to the pit of my stomach. What if I just told Connor that I was feeling sick and just left. Or what if I say that my car wouldn't start? Or what if-

Before I knew it, my finger was on the button and the doorbell sound echoed in my mind. Muffled voices shouted at each other back and forth and a pair of rushing footsteps reached the door. A young girl, probably a year younger than me, opened the door. She was really pretty, I admit. She sported a vibrant floral sundress, a polar opposite from what I wore. She wore her long hair pulled back in a braid, which gave her an innocent presence.

"Hi, uh, I'm (Y/N). I'm Connor's friend," I awkwardly introduced myself and extended my hand. The girl showed the same courtesy.

"Connor doesn't have any friends," she quipped. "Zoe. Come on in. Mom's just finishing up the lasagna and Dad's in the living room."

The inside of the Murphy home was slightly different than I expected. Judging by the extravagant exterior and the white picket fence, you wouldn't have any doubts about how this family was kept together. As Zoe led me through the long hallways to the family room, I examined all of the framed pictures on the walls. There were countless pictures of 8 year old Connor in a Little League uniform. There were also a few of little Connor and little Zoe together in one of those professionally photographed scenes, the ones only people with good money could afford. The family portraits made the family look like royalty. The pictures came to a sudden halt. There weren't any more pictures that passed Connor's fourth grade year, and Zoe's third.

The shift in atmosphere pulled me out of the rabbit hole of theories in my mind.

"She's here," Zoe said to her mother. Cynthia Murphy directed her attention from her cooking to me. Her royal blue dress and beige shawl made her stand out from the monochromatic color scheme of the kitchen.

"You look wonderful, (Y/N)!" Cynthia exclaimed as she pulled me in for a hug. "Connor's just upstairs. Why don't you go see him?" she suggested, which made my cheeks heat up and flush. She pointed over to the main staircase that led to Connor's room.

I dragged my hand against the railing as I made my way up. There were three doors at the top of the staircase. One was a plain white door that had colorful foam stickers that spelled out "Zoe." The colors looked aged and faded. The other was a pair of double oak doors, which had to the Larry and Cynthia's room. The last was a black door with a gilded handle. That had to be Connor's room. Coming from behind the door was "Yesterday" by The Beatles playing on a speaker.

The door had been left open wide enough for me to shimmy my body through. I wanted to knock, but that was before I noticed that Connor wasn't wearing a shirt and his hair was tied up in a messy bun. His topless torso caught me by surprise. My eyes maintained focused on his toned chest. But more importantly, my eyes drifted over to his exposed arms. Scars, both faded and recent, littered up the inner parts of his arms. My jaw slacked and I let out a silent gasp.

I tapped my knuckles gently against the door and backed away from the opening before Connor could look over. I heard him quickly reach for a dress shirt to at least cover up his arms. The door swung backwards as he opened it.

"Hey," he said, weirdly sounding out of breath. His eyes raked over my entire outfit.

"Hey." My cheeks were embarrassingly red and hot as I couldn't get the image of him topless out of my head. I gave him a quick spin to show off my outfit. "Nice enough for you?" He let out a breathy chuckle.

“Yeah, good enough I guess,” he smirked.

PT 1

MASTERLIST