#but then it’s like ‘spell complicated words you are learning in another language’ and i feel like smashing my head on the carpet

[always-a-slut-4-ghouls]

Adhd will be like “you’re not dyslexic, you just don’t read the whole word. Good luck with math you dumb fuck”

[olderthannetfic]

Now I'm wondering how countries like Japan and China teach literacy.

Since kanji / hanzi don't really have that much in the way of phonetic elements, they kinda have to teach them by memorization and I don't think they have many reading comprehension problems over there.

(Although both countries do have supplementary phonetic writing systems in the form of bopomofo and pinyin for China, and the kanas for Japan)

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It's a little closer to teaching vocabulary than spelling, but the same kinds of principles apply: You teach the building blocks, like the traditional radicals, which aren't so different from teaching Latin and Greek roots in an English class for English speakers.

And, as a matter of fact, lots of those radicals do predict pronunciation, just not in every single case. They can also be clues to meaning, but again, not absolutely consistently. Many characters have a sound-cueing radical on one side and a meaning-cueing radical on the other. It's just that only some are still useful in the modern day, while others are more like the English word 'plumbing' where knowledge of Roman lead pipes explains why this word comes from the one for lead, but the root probably wouldn't help a kid learn the word in the first place.

One similarity to teaching phonics would be teaching students to tell very complicated and similar characters apart: you want to help a student spot all the little building blocks of the character and then spot the ones that are different, not just glance at the whole character and get a general overall vibe. If you do a whole look-based approach, too many characters are too easy to mistake for one another.

Remembering a bajillion Chinese characters is hard if you're trying to memorize them in a year and not all of elementary school, but I think people who don't read them underestimate how many component parts there are and how approachable they can be if you start by learning fundamentals, not just memorizing a few individual characters as though they have no relation to anything else.

They're actually pretty systematic, just in the way that English spelling is with its overlapping systems and historical artifacts, not in the way that highly regular Spanish spelling is.

Having taken a lot of Japanese classes, I will say that Japanese as a foreign language textbooks often do a piss poor job of this and totally do teach kanji in a sight words-y way... But my Mandarin class started with important foundational concepts that served me well in Japanese later even if I bombed out of Chinese class at the time.

Can you tell how irritated I am by all the foreign language learners who think characters are sooooo hard when, really, it's just their crappy textbook? Haha.

They're moderately hard in the way that learning a full adult spectrum of vocabulary is hard, but people do that for foreign languages all the time. The countries that use characters do tend to make sets that are smaller for certain kinds of applications, same as we have things like simple English wikipedia, but a literate adult will always know lots more, whether it's from their career in engineering or their predilection for historical romance novels.

Uh... anyway, the answer is "Bit by bit in elementary school, just like in any other country".

[knockyasocksoff2022]

Deaf or Mute Dazai Headcannons

Deaf Dazai:

Absolute little shit (as per usual)

If he doesn't want to 'listen' to what someone is saying he just closes his eyes so he can't see them signing. Or turns his back if he wants to be extra obnoxious.

Tricks Kunikida into sighing naughty things by telling him they mean something else.

Or he tells Kunikida he just mistakenly signed something dirty and Kunikida gets all embarrassed until Dazai does his "I'm just messing with you" thing and Kunikida loses his shit.

Signs random words while smirking as a joke so people think he's saying something dirty but he's really just spouting gibberish.

Blasts music through his headphones so loud others can hear it and Kunikida always gets so mad because "You can't even hear god dammit!"

Sings his sucide songs which sounds even more obnoxious because he can’t hear himself and is way off key. He also uses sign to sing the “verses” and has made up dance moves to go that incorporate the signs. It’s a whole production at this point and poor Kunikida just wants a break.

This has caused the ADA to wonder multiple times if Dazai is actually deaf or just really dedicated to his act.

Chuuya makes a big show of not wanting to learn sign language . . .

but he spends countless hours making sure he's fluent enough that he can understand Dazai and have his back in a fight. they can sign so fast at this point that it may as well be their own secret language.

Dazai has a habit of pointing to Chuuya or spelling out Chuuya's name when he wants to say something/someone is short.

Uses Chuuya as a comparison. "It was two Chuuya's long" or "Half a Chuuya"

He and Chuuya have made up some of their own signs, kind of like tactical hand signs used in the military.

Most of the signs they made are just insults though.

Both of them know the sign for stupid/idiot in almost every sign language and use them frequently. Dazai also knows short.

Can use body language to 'talk' to each other without anybody else noticing.

Still have codewords, just in sign language instead.

Dazai can lip read accurately but loves giving false readings just to be funny.

Chuuya: *says something*

Dazai: *signing/writing back with a confused look on his face* Pink elephants do what?

Chuuya: I know you understood me you fishy bastard!

Dazai: *sighing/writing* You want me to stitch faster?

*They end up fighting*

Chuuya can read lips as well, another way they can subtlety communicate.

Mute Dazai:

Most of the Port Mafia & all of the ADA know sign language.

Has an LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) Writing Tablet that he uses to 'talk' in meetings because it's easier to erase than a whiteboard.

Knows cursive, his handwriting is beautiful and has a calligraphy-like style to it because he has to write so much.

Chuuya used to find it annoying and hard to read but now it's like a code between them because it's so complicated that people who don't have experience with them can't read it.

Tried and failed to teach Chuuya calligraphy. (Chuuya is one of those people who writes using all capital letters and has neat blocky handwriting)

Actually knows how to mime

When he first partnered with Chuuya he used to annoy him by only miming and refusing to write/use sign language.

Now Soukoku is banned from charades at PM game night because they always win.

Will confuses enemies/random people by starting to mime out of nowhere.

He loves doing silent screams.

He and Chuuya sometimes prank people by doing a sort of ventriloquist act (Not really but that’s the only thing I can compare it to). (Sorry if I spelt that wrong). Chuuya will hide and Dazai will go up and start “speaking” to someone. Dazai will mouth the words as if he’s talking while Chuuya is actually talking and it freaks the crap out of everyone who knows them because they can’t see Chuuya and they’re looking for him (he’s just chillin’ floating high above or something like that. Maybe even directly over the head of the person they’re pranking, but too high for them to notice.) Meanwhile Dazai/Chuuya is just talking about a totally normal subject. They’ve gotten so good at this that they can often fool enemies who haven't met Chuuya into thinking Dazai can talk.

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Sorry for the welsh question but I’m trying to learn Welsh from Duolingo (I’m so bad at languages and have a hard time staying motivated so it’s not going great unfortunately), but I’m confused about bêl vs pêl for ball? For one sentence, it was bêl but in another it was pêl and when it was just a picture of a ball, it needed the answer to be pêl and not bêl. I guess I’m just curious about how to know the proper spelling and when to use each?

Ah, the dreaded mutations have struck you, unfortunately. Welsh is a relatively easy language, as it's hyper logical and also phonetic, but then mutations come along and bam, it's no longer all that easy. (In oral Welsh, of course, it's usually fine if you miss a mutation. Incorrect, like, but humans know what you mean for the most part. But the robot owl does not know that.)

Here is a Wiki page on Welsh mutations. The one you are asking about is the soft mutation specifically, which is the complicated one - the other two are fairly straightforward. The most likely answer to your question is that pêl is a feminine word, so it mutates after the definite article - "a ball" is pêl, but "the ball" is bêl. You would also mutate it if it's the subject of the verb.

Apologies if this has not helped at all

[everkait]

regulus arcturus black headcanons heavily featuring sirius black (obviously)

this is kinda a lot and also all over the place but i really had to get it out, so here we go. feel free to disagree and all that but please keep it polite. edit from after i finished it all: this is kinda more like a summary of what i imagine his entire life to have been like than a few headcanons but who cares. have fun reading. also, english is not my native language so i’m sorry for any grammar and spelling mistakes you may find.

when they were kids, sirius and regulus were really close. like, stupidly close. reg idolized sirius and sirius wanted to protect his little brother at all costs. they were each other’s favourite person and were always together. they had an age gap of roughly one and a half years, with sirius being born early november ’59 and regulus being born in late may ’61. while they were close as children, it was also obvious that they were completely different people. sirius was extroverted, loud, rebellious, self-confident, loved attention and would always speak up if something wasn’t to his liking, he didn’t mince his words. regulus on the other hand was more the quiet, reserved type; he was introverted, almost but not quite shy, unwilling to step out of his comfort zone, had a fear of disappointing other people and shied away from confrontations. he wasn’t self-conscious but he also wasn’t as self-confident as sirius was. both of them however, could be quite vicious and cruel with their words if they wanted to be. that was something they learned from both their mother and their cousin bellatrix.

regarding their relationships with their family, while i do think that walburga and orion black were abusive, i’m not entirely certain how severe that abuse actually was. definitely not as abusive as some people make it out to be, like regularly using the cruciatus curse on the kids or something like this, but some kind of abuse was there. i also think that the black parents definitely preferred sirius to regulus. sirius was the older one, the clever and self-confident child, the perfect heir to the black family. regulus knew of this but it didn’t really matter to him because he wasn’t interested in being heir in the first place. oftentimes people make narcissa regulus’ favourite cousin but i think in the early days it was bellatrix, who he liked most. he didn’t really get along that well with narcissa and andromeda because they both kinda saw him as a little kid who wasn’t worth their attention. bella on the other hand never treated him as anything lesser because of his age which is why he liked her best. but another crucial point and reason why reg adored bella was the simple fact that she was a lot like sirius. and seeing as sirius was always regulus’ favourite, he felt most comfortable with bellatrix because she was so much like sirius.

and then came hogwarts. when sirius went to hogwarts he would write a lot of letters to reg but they gradually became less and less over the course of the year. one name that was very frequent in all of the letters reg received from his brother was james potter. sirius talked a lot about james potter. so much so that regulus started to get annoyed by it. this only got worse by the time sirius came back for the holidays because the only thing he would talk about was his best friend james, james this and james that. regulus loathed james potter before he had ever met him.

the sorting however, is kinda complicated. let’s talk about sirius first. while walburga and orion were obviously outraged at his sorting i think, behind closed doors and never ever to his face, walburga was actually sorta proud of sirius for doing something no one in their family had ever done before. she saw it as him, a black, quote-unquote ‘conquering’ the gryffindor house. but she was still very much against it because it wasn’t slytherin and so those two sides were constantly warring with each other. she, however, made it very clear to regulus that there was no way he was going to be sorted anywhere but slytherin, she would let one non-slytherin kid slide, but there was hell to pay for him if he wasn’t sorted according to her wishes. i think with sirius, gryffindor was definitely his true house but i read a fic once where his true house was actually slytherin but he made the hat sort him into gryffindor as an act of rebellion. i immensely enjoy this idea but in the end i decided against incorporating it in my own headcanon because i think sirius fits better with gryffindor than slytherin. i still think he could’ve made slytherin work if he wanted to, but gryffindor was where he belonged. now, regulus’ sorting. his sorting is less complicated i think. for him there was never really a question to begin with. he always knew he was going to go to slytherin. simply because that was the way to go to not disappoint his parents and disappointing his parents wasn’t something he could take. i like the idea of a ravenclaw regulus so i think the hat would’ve wanted him there but regulus was enough of a slytherin so that the hat sent him there without needing much convincing.

the sorting is also what kinda caused their relationship to rapidly deteriorate. cracks had already started to form during the one year sirius spent alone at hogwarts but after regulus got sorted is when it really fell apart. i think regulus himself didn’t have that much of a problem with sirius being sorted into gryffindor. he may not have liked it, but it didn’t make sirius any less of a pure-blood, less of a black. so when sirius was so incredibly disappointed with regulus’ own sorting he didn’t understand it and felt betrayed by his brother. it didn’t help that james was always around and regulus refused to have anything to do with him at all so their relationship slowly got worse until they eventually just stopped talking. of course, it wasn’t just the sorting and all that, it was also regulus’ views on muggle-born’s and the dark lord, which were more aligned with their parents’ views than sirius’ own. which is something sirius couldn’t accept but since regulus was unwilling to change his mind, their interactions became less and less. this is also when he got close to narcissa. cissy is born in ’55 which makes her six years older than reg. which means, depending on when she was born, she was either in sixth or seventh year when regulus started hogwarts. since she was his only cousin still at hogwarts and since sirius was a gryffindor, she took him under her wing and the two sort of became friends. she was a lot like him, also being quiet and reserved and not liking conflict, so he liked spending time with her. i don’t think he had a lot of friends, i think of him more as a loner. there are barty crouch jr. and evan rosier who people often hc as his friends and while i certainly think that’s possible, i still think he didn’t really hang out with a lot of people. he spent most of his time in the library because he really enjoyed magic and all the things there were to learn about it.

snape is also something i’d like to talk about real quick. i’ve seen different opinions on his relationship with reg everywhere on the internet but i personally think their relationship was one of mutual disinterest, bordering on dislike on snape’s side. i think there is no way for snape to actually somewhat like reg. look at how much he loathed harry for being james’ son. he’d hate reg on principle for being sirius’ brother. so no, they weren’t friends. the lupin thing comes next. i’ve read a fic once where everyone in slytherin knew remus was a werewolf which i thought was a bit farfetched. i like the idea of reg knowing about it and i think a case can be made for it. even though reg liked to pretend otherwise, he did care about sirius so he would oftentimes scrutinise the things the marauders did and so he would eventually find out about remus being a werewolf. it didn’t really endear remus to him, but nothing could trump his dislike of james. the pranks the marauders pulled also didn’t help with his opinion on them. and even though he hated their behaviour he could never quite manage to completely hate sirius because sirius was still his brother. so he started to blame james instead and held him accountable for everything that, in regulus’ opinion, went wrong with sirius, because it was a lot easier to hate james than to hate his brother.

regulus’ grades were never bad, but they were also never as good as sirius’. everything came easy to sirius, while regulus had to work hard to get good grades. and as much as he might try, he was never as good as sirius, which greatly frustrated him. he started to feel inferior to sirius somewhere around his third or fourth year because it felt like it all just didn’t matter in his parents eyes, he could never be as good as sirius. even though sirius was a gryffindor and rude and rebellious and not the heir his parents wanted. and because he and sirius weren’t close anymore, his parents and their opinion was the only thing he had left. one of the only things that he had and where he genuinely felt it was his own, was quidditch. a lot of people make sirius into a quidditch player as well, mostly a beater, but i think he didn’t play. quidditch was always regulus’ thing and he started to play as a seeker for the slytherin team somewhere between his third and fourth year.

now sirius’ fifth year and regulus’ forth year, the school year of 1975-1976 begins. a lot of stuff happened in that year for sirius, but regulus was less affected. first comes the prank. and while i really want regulus to know about it, purely for the angst and disappointment, i just don’t see a way for him to actually know. (to explain why i want him to know, while reg doesn’t like sirius’ friends it is obvious that sirius cares about them, and since reg hasn’t completely managed to get rid of his idolization of his brother from their childhood, even though he usually ignores it until it goes away, it would devastate him to find out that sirius would betray his friend like that.) as i said, i just don’t think it’s feasible for him to know. like, i want him to. but how? it’s not like snape is gonna tell him. and i don’t think sirius, remus or james are so keen on telling him about it either. so how would he know? there is no way for him to know and as much as i want otherwise, this is how it’s gotta be. he doesn’t know and he never finds out about it. the next major thing that happens is snape’s worst memory at the end of the school year. and for that, regulus simply wasn’t present. he was at the library and heard about it later and since he isn’t close with snape i don’t see him having such a big problem about it.

during the summer between regulus’ fourth and fifth year is when it gets juicy. this is the summer when sirius runs away to the potters. i’ve thought a lot about this and how i wanted to do it. i like the dramatic route where regulus basically makes sirius go without him because he knows that sirius is absolutely miserable here at home. but i just don’t really think that fits. i went with what i think could be the most realistic route according to what we know from canon, sprinkled in is of course some self-indulgence because i couldn’t help myself. sue me, i don’t care. so, it’s summer, everything is as it always is. sirius has some kind of argument with walburga and it gets very heated. when he leaves and goes upstairs he vents about his mum and how horrible everything is. he happens upon regulus who’s currently on the way back to his room and overhears him vent. regulus, who in this moment really cannot stand his brother, maybe they also had an argument beforehand, maybe something else happened or maybe it was just suddenly too much for him, kinda explodes. he gets really angry at sirius and tells him something along the lines of ‘if it’s really this awful, why don’t you just fucking leave?’, and sirius stands there, dumbstruck, while regulus goes back to his room. and sirius thinks, why don’t i? and he just can’t seem to get rid of the idea to leave and he doesn’t feel like there is anything left for him there, so eventually he packs his bags and leaves. and just like that, he is gone.

this is obviously not what regulus intended when he said that to him and now he doesn’t know how to feel. part of him thinks good riddance, another, smaller part, the one that knows that sirius despised their home, hopes that his brother is happier now and is glad that he is gone, but the largest part of him feels betrayed. he feels betrayed because sirius just left, because even though they haven’t been getting along these past few years, that doesn’t change the fact that they are brothers and that has to mean something, right? right? he also feels betrayed, because sirius didn’t even talk to him, he didn’t say goodbye and he didn’t ask regulus if he wanted to come with him. regulus knows he probably wouldn’t have wanted to come but he would’ve appreciated it if his brother had at least given him a choice. because he doesn’t want to deal with these thoughts and feelings he mostly represses them and refuses to think about them. (okay, so in case you hadn’t noticed, the self-indulgent part is when i make reg be the one to give sirius the idea to run away because just imagine him having to realise that sirius ran away because he basically told him to. imagine the pain and guilt and betrayal that it’s going to make him feel. such joy. am i evil? no, i just love to hurt my favourite characters a little. hurt/no comfort at its finest. and really, canon sirius & regulus are a fucking gold mine for hurt/no comfort. i just really have a thing for complex sibling dynamics full of hurt, angst, betrayal and love. i’m not really into romantic ships all that much anymore and sirius & regulus are just like catnip to me. ah, i love them. but, i digress, back to the text.) then there is of course walburga and orion to talk about, because i don’t think they would’ve just let sirius go without a fight. they are a witch and wizard and sirius’ parents, there surely is a way for them to get him back, by force if necessary. so regulus goes and convinces them that it’s better to let sirius go. he would never agree with them and fight them every step of the way and regulus knows he isn’t their first choice but isn’t it better than trying and failing with sirius? eventually, they reluctantly agree but walburga threatens him to never ever step out of line. the whole sirius debacle has severely damaged their reputation with the other pure-blood families already and they cannot afford for it to get any worse than it already is.

then regulus’ fifth and sirius’ sixth school year starts. and sirius had somewhat of a change of heart during the rest of the summer and feels a bit guilty for not talking to regulus before he left. so now he wants to speak with him. but regulus doesn’t want to speak to sirius. he still feels betrayed but he also feels like sirius should be thankful to him because he convinced their parents to let sirius go and an even smaller part hopes that sirius is happy. but regulus bottles all that up and ignores it and when they eventually do speak to each other he is an ass. they have a big argument and nearly start cursing each other and at the end of the argument sirius says something along the lines of, ‘james is a better brother to me than you ever were’, and that deeply hurts regulus and sirius kinda immediately regrets it but he can’t take it back now that it’s out there and regulus leaves him standing there and from then on doesn’t allow them to ever talk again. a few days later james corners him because he thinks regulus said or did something since sirius has been really sad for a few days and reg basically tells him to, ‘fuck off, you already stole my brother from me, what more do you want?’, and that’s really the end of it. this is the only time james and regulus ever talk to each other and afterwards regulus hates james even more.

something else, that regulus is kinda proud of because his brother never managed it, is the fact that he makes prefect. there is only really one reason i made him a prefect though and that’s because i wanted him to have some kind of relationship, connection or whatever with lily. i wanted regulus black and lily evans to know each other and the most likely way for that to happen is for reg to be a prefect. lily is a prefect as well and they get assigned some patrols together. and at first he’s really against it because she’s like a muggle-born and all that and i know, i’ve mostly been avoiding all that until now but it really wasn’t relevant. because he simply never really interacted with other people a lot. he spends most of his time in the library and while he certainly has some blood supremacy views he’s kept them mostly to himself since he doesn’t really interact with other people outside of slytherin all that much. lily evans is kinda the first time he’s really been confronted with a muggle-born and while he doesn’t like her because of it he is also perfectly courteous towards her because he doesn’t see a point in being rude. he isn’t stupid and he knows she is a brilliant witch who’d probably be able to kick his ass, so he doesn’t really want to be on her bad side. over time however, he starts to get used to it and begins to actually somewhat enjoy their conversations because she’s witty and clever and he finds himself liking her to his utter horror. he develops a similar attitude towards her that snape had during most of their friendship (minus the crush), in that he still retains his blood supremacist views but starts to think that lily might be the exemption to the rule. other muggle-born magicals might be bad but she isn’t. he of course would never talk to her with other slytherins present but alone, just the two of them, they can have a nice polite conversation. and even though he doesn’t notice it really, talking to lily actually starts changing his perception of muggle-born’s a little bit. it’s not enough however, because at the same time talks about the dark lord become more frequent and he gets more and more fascinated.

regulus is now sixteen and summer holidays come around. he learns more about the dark lord and starts hanging up paper clippings in his bedroom. he’s really into the whole thing. when school starts again, he still occasionally goes on patrol with lily, but she and james are now together, which kinda sours his opinion of her since he still despises james. and then christmas holiday rolls around, and that is when he finally gets to join the dark lord and his cause. his once favourite cousin bella somehow caught wind of his admiration of the dark lord’s cause and pulled some strings which allow reg to join earlier than is common. he is still only sixteen which means the trace is applied to his wand, meaning he can’t really do much for the dark lord’s cause. he’s also still at school so he’s severely hampered in what he can do for the dark lord. regulus feels like he should be doing more but it’s not like he can change his age and make himself grow up faster. he eventually accepts his place and becomes responsible for spying at hogwarts to the best of his abilities and also starts researching things like obscure spells and rituals for the dark lord, who notices his passion for all things magic. he goes back to school and ends his non-friendship with lily, both in an effort to protect himself from the dark lord’s wrath and to protect her as well although he refuses to admit that to himself.

regulus may have joined the death eaters now, but he still hasn’t entirely grasped the reality of what it means to be one himself. that, however, changes, when he turns seventeen and, during the summer holidays, joins a raid. he witnesses his fellow death eaters kill, maim and torture with pleasure and it makes him sick. he manages to avoid most of the raids during the summer holidays by claiming to want to study to get the best grades possible to be of as much use to the dark lord as possible. the dark lord also prefers to have him research things for him, mostly in the extensive black library, which regulus has navigated since he was a child and which is protected from interference through people not of the black family. but regulus cannot avoid all raids and during one of them he accidentally kills a man when he burns his house down, thinking nobody was in the house any longer. this deeply traumatizes him and when he goes back to hogwarts for his seventh year he becomes very reclusive. he is still knee deep in denial though and tells himself he should get stronger and to learn to stomach all of the things that are happening. he buries himself in prefect duties and studying and all in all has a pretty miserable time. and like, this is it. he’s in his seventh year now. it’s 1978 and he’s gonna die in 1979. and i have this idea, which i really like, which is, that he dies on the day that lily and james tell sirius that they are expecting a child. like, nobody would ever know that that was the day he died but it’s really tragic in my opinion. so, yeah. but we’re not there just yet.

and then the christmas holidays happen. and that’s it, the beginning of the end. for regulus. i feel like there definitely would be a lot of research involved for reg to find out about the horcrux because i don’t think voldy would have told kreacher everything about it. and i haven’t talked about kreacher at all yet, i know, so here we are. after sirius left, aside from his parents, kreacher was the only one reg had left so i feel he got even more attached to him. when they were kids, walburga would usually take care of sirius because he was the heir, while she left reg in kreacher’s care, which is why they became so close. but still, their relationship was never an equal one, and as much as they may have loved each other, kreacher was still a servant to the black family who, above all, had to listen to walburga black. so, back to voldy and his horcruxes. when the dark lord asked for a house elf reg volunteered kreacher, because he didn’t really think anything would happen to him. yes, the dark lord was cruel to muggles and muggle-born’s but they deserved it, it wasn’t like kreacher had ever done anything except serve. but then, when kreacher, on regulus’ orders, finally returned, regulus had to realise that the dark lord didn’t care at all. it was this, an attack on his beloved elf, what finally opened regulus’ eyes. he had told himself that it was alright and that it was okay and that it was right, but he could no longer believe in it. regulus had witnessed the dark lord torture some of his own followers and had told himself they were just rightfully being punished but after seeing what had happened to kreacher he couldn’t deceive himself any longer. he thought about brilliant and kind lily evans and that it was all wrong. he thought about his brother who had been right all along. and he thought about kreacher who had never done anything wrong in his life. he, however, decided to give the dark lord one last chance to kinda quote-unquote ‘redeem’ himself, at least in regulus’ eyes. regulus’ last hope is, that whatever the dark lord did that left kreacher so injured, was important enough to make it right, although in his heart he knows that this is not the case.

so, after acquiring all possible information from kreacher, he spends the rest of the school year researching. he’s immensely overworked because at the same time he also has to study for his exams but somehow he manages it all. i don’t see him figuring the horcruxes out at hogwarts with only the hogwarts library at hand but i’m toying with the idea of having him find out the dark lord’s real identity. i kind of like that. once he’s back home after the exams he finally has a break through and figures out that what riddle hid was a horcrux. and i’m of the opinion, that the word horcrux isn’t entirely new to him. like, he’s part of the black family. they are as dark as they come. i’m sure he’s already heard about horcruxes before. and not even the blacks are mad enough to mess with soul magic. so yeah, regulus is not impressed with the dark lord. like, not at all. the idea of one horcrux is already ludicrous enough so i don’t know if he should be thinking that there could be more of them. but on the other hand, maybe he suspected there could potentially be more but since he had no idea where to even start looking for them and only knew the definite location of the one and didn’t see another way for this to go down and him surviving since there was no way in hell he would let kreacher die. and he also couldn’t ask anyone else because he wasn’t sure sirius would actually trust him since it had been like three years since they’d last talked and he also didn’t want to get his brother in danger.

anyway, after finally figuring out the horcrux during the summer, this leaves reggie shocked. he doesn’t know what to do. he kinda by now low-key wants the light side to win but he now realises that they can never win, because the dark lord made a freaking horcrux. he can’t be defeated. and regulus really wants to talk to sirius now because sirius is his big brother but there is no way this is happening. he just can’t. he’s scared that sirius doesn’t believe him but he is also scared that he does and he just doesn’t know what to do. the only thing regulus knows is that the horcrux needs to be destroyed. he thinks about running away. he’d kinda really like to run away. but then he has to think about sirius and about lily evans who are both fighting this war on the right side and he feels guilty. and he thinks about kreacher who was hurt by the dark lord’s actions. and so he makes a decision. he decides to retrieve the horcrux. he doesn’t really care about a lot of people but he feels guilty about the things he has done and so the decision to steal the horcrux is made because he wants to do something right and good for once, but he also does it for kreacher, for sirius and for lily evans. he wants revenge for kreacher and he wants sirius, and to a lesser degree lily, to live in a world free of the dark lord. and for that to happen the horcrux needs to be destroyed. so he makes his plan.

harry was born at the end of july ’80, meaning he was conceived late september ’79. i don’t really know when people tell their close friends that they are expecting a child? but since the war was going on and there were maybe missions i think it’s fair to say they might not have been able to tell him immediately. so they told their friends they were expecting a child in between late-november and early-december in my opinion. and the day they finally told sirius was also, coincidentally, the day regulus chose to go to the cave and willingly walked to his own death.

so, that’s it. okay, not quite. something else i wanted to say, i once read a really interesting tumblr post that proposed the idea that regulus didn’t actually die in that cave because voldy wouldn’t want to immediately kill whoever tried to steal his horcrux. he’d want to incapacitate them and eventually interrogate them and then kill them himself. so… reg might still be alive in something like a stasis charm down on the bottom of the lake, sleeping, waiting to be found. okay, now i’ve made myself sad.

something that didn’t really fit anywhere chronologically but is still a headcanon of mine and i wanted to mention it since it involves sirius and regulus. so, when lily married james her name changed from lily evans to lily potter. i like to think, that occasionally, sirius would still call her evans and it was his nickname for her. he also called her lily and lils more often than not but occasionally he’d call her evans. and if regulus were to ever accidentally meet her after she had gotten married, he’d also call her evans. he doesn’t even know his brother does it. regulus would just do it automatically because he’d refuse to call her potter since he kinda loathes james but he also somewhat likes lily but he also wouldn’t call her by her first name, so evans it is. and this would remind lily of sirius of course and she’d think it’s cute that they have this similarity. and also, when she gets together with james and starts to learn a bit more about sirius she’d notice a lot of similarities between him and reg. she kinda was somewhat non-friends with reg for a year after all. and it would make her sad.

okay, this is it. more than 5k words about regulus black. didn’t think i had it in me.

[cartoonscientist]

oh mannn so after I typed up that alternate timelines post I hammered this out in like a day because I was just POSSESSED

it's also on ao3 here if you prefer that

And They Lived Happily Ever After -or- Weird, Pretty, Pretty Weird

ships: Magic Woman/Ice King, Betty Grof/Simon Petrikov

summary: The Ice King reflects on how everything changed when a special lady mysteriously showed up in his life. Or, one love story recorded over another on an old VHS tape.

notes: contains colorful ableist language and references to sex and violence. and manga.

  Ice King didn’t really know where the weird pretty lady had come from. She just flew into his window one day and asked to go on a date, like an angel or a beautiful seagull. It reminded him of a comic he was pretty sure he’d read, about a sad lonely guy who wakes up to find a girl who, get this, is already his girlfriend in his apartment. He’d always thought that sounded like a pretty good deal, just a nice lady who would love you and be friends with you without you having to put in any of that pesky flirting legwork. What busy, high-powered wizard had time for things like that anyway?

  It wasn’t all perfect to begin with. She actually kind of stressed him out at first, always acting like she had important things to do that he couldn’t understand. She would startle and run off and start talking to herself when he just wanted her to stay and hang out. Worse, she even tried to get him to do boring complicated things that sucked and made him feel bad. The pretty weird lady was kind of a scary pretty weird lady sometimes, come to think of it.

  But it seemed like maybe she just needed to spend more time getting to know him to really relax and get out of her shell. There was a time he thought she wasn’t going to see him again. They had a fight, or at least they did according to her, and she said she needed time to process things. She was talking really fast, saying a lot of words that would get you a lot of points in Scrabble. It didn’t really register with him because he was too disappointed that he’d somehow managed to make her upset again . Women and their mysteries, right?

  Apparently she processed them really well! He wasn’t sure how much time had passed before she came back (it was hard to maintain a calendar when the pages would just end up scribbled on and scattered across the castle), but she was the happiest he’d ever seen her. She was darting and dancing around the way she did when she got excited, and as soon as she saw him she ran up to him and gave him a hug, bouncing with enthusiasm even as she held him.

  “Simon!” She squealed, nuzzling into the side of his beard. It didn’t really make sense because it wasn’t his name, but it was her special pet name for him and he thought it was kind of cute. Weird ladies with their weird nicknames.

  “Hey, you! You’re doin’ a lot better now!” He sniffed her hair, a privilege he got to enjoy as her Boyfriend. She pulled away and looked up at his face, still smiling.

  “What was I doing before?”

  “Oh, you know. You were all down in the dumps. It’s not real important. But now you’re good!”

  “I am so good, you wouldn’t believe.” She did a little spin and as she did, tossed a bolt of pink energy at a nearby boulder that left behind the smoldering engraving of two bees kissing, with the appropriate floating love hearts.

  He learned more about her on their dates, which were pretty crazy awesome to tell you the truth. It seemed like she knew all the best spots in Ooo to collect spell ingredients, or just have a seapolyp fight or snuggle under a crying willow. He was embarrassed to admit he didn’t travel much, mostly to places like the laundromat and the Magic General, but she just said he was adorable, which made him like her even more.

  He learned that she was a wizard too, but didn’t go to meetups, and she called herself Magic Woman.

  “Look!” She said, excited, holding aloft a section of warped branch. “I found this when I was stalking the forest for shrooms. It really looks like, like, a prehistoric fish? And I did some magic stuff to it too. To enhance the effect. I get immense vibes from it.”

  “Woah.” He traced the lines with a claw. “This is like, a super advanced artifact.” Magic Woman was so cool and good at being a wizard that it almost made him jealous sometimes, but then he would remember that she was his girlfriend and it would change to pride. Something about taking something from her and holding it, examining it, something important, that they found… Deja vu could be so weird.

  “So, um, I thought, if you like it, you can have it. As a romantic gift.”

  “Wow, that’s probably one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me!” He planted a messy kiss on the lens of her glasses and she giggled. “I’m gonna put it right on top of my microwave so I can look at it whenever I go in the kitchen. That’s a spot for special stuff!”

  This pleased her greatly, and she almost threw him off balance tackling him with a hug. “ Yes! That’s exactly what I wanted to happen! I’m a freakin’ genius!” She devolved into a bout of contagious laughter and they ended up cackling together on the icy floor.

 After they had regained their breath, Ice King thought of something that he was pretty sure he’d thought of before but forgotten before he could ask it. “You’re such an awesome, nice, pretty magic lady, and I was hecka lonely for like, ever before you showed up. Where did you even come from?”

  She stopped to think for a moment. “You know, I don’t know! Mars, maybe? Mars feels like the right answer.”

  “Heh! I don’t know where I’m from either! Crazy how we have so much in common, huh?” His left hand found a discarded fleece blanket that was only slightly dirty, and he clumsily started wrapping it around them before Magic Woman helpfully straightened it out. “But if you are from Mars, that’s cool! My girlfriend is from Mars.” He couldn’t help but beam saying it. His girlfriend. His. Girlfriend. Who slept over at his house all the time and really, really loved him.

  “My boyfriend is an ice wizard with a karaoke machine that has two microphone jacks!” She grinned and hugged him again. That was one of the great things about her, she was so energetic and full of affection. It seemed like her magic was electric and vibrating, and so she was too, unlike his cold, harsh elemental magic. Then her mood seemed to shift a little, to something more serious. “Look. You wanna talk realness, Simon? You wanna go into some serious, uncut Wiz Biz to get your fix, scratch your eldritch knowledge itch?” Her hair had begun to blow lightly in some unseen breeze, which meant she was feeling some intense stuff. Maybe ready to unleash all kinds of powers.

  “Yeah! I’m open to all the weird stuff!”

  “Okay. So like, inside my brain, I see the cosmos. That shit is always rotating, it’s gyrating, pulsating, complicating, undulating, aggregating, contemplating… It makes me crazy good at magic because I can see all the little guys holding hands that our reality is made of.” She waved her hands broadly for effect. “I think it pointed me to you, because all I can remember about coming here is wanting to see you. And now that we’re together I feel like… I found someone I was missing. Does that sound weird? I feel like I missed you for a long time even though I don’t think I ever knew you before. But it feels like I knew you, and we were friends. More.”

  “Honey, you’re gonna need to print me up a TV Guide if you want me to follow all that.” He paused. “But… you know what, I think I get it. I kinda feel like I know you too, but I didn’t wanna tell you because the ladies don’t always take that stuff so good.”

  “Then we’re cosmically fated to be soulmates!”

  “You really think so?”

  “Yeah! I really really think so.”

—

  “Boys! Your cool big brother has good news!”

  Finn looked up from his attempt to whittle a toy sword, which was admittedly turning out more like a bent popsicle stick. Ice King and Betty were walking- no, they were skipping? Something like skipping but less coordinated? Towards him, hand in hand. He jumped up straight into a standing position from his cross-legged pose on the grass and almost tossed his project aside before reconsidering and setting it gently on a nearby stump. Jake didn’t feel up to moving yet, so he simply rotated his head 360 degrees. “Hey, Simon! It looks like you and Betty worked things out, huh? That’s great!”

  Betty cocked her head to the side, amused. “Who’s Betty? Is that one of your little pengies, Simon?”

  “Nah, that one’s not in the rotation yet. It’s a cool name, though! Really pretty.” An idea came to him suddenly. “Hey, you know how you call me Simon as our special couple thing? Your girlfriend codename can be Betty if you want.” She seemed to like this idea.

  Finn looked out of the corner of his eye at Jake, who pulled his mouth tight and gave a tiny shrug. He felt kind of sick and cold, the way he did if he realized a monster had been stalking him for miles without his knowledge.

  “That’s actually what we came here to tell you about!” Betty crowed, sounding unusually melodic. “We’re going steady now and we’re gonna get officially soulbound in Wizard City this winter.” She looped her arms around Ice King’s shoulders and dropped into a dead weight, almost toppling him. “Two moonrises sealed inside a crystal coffin with fragrant herbs, our blood circulating into one another’s veins through the palms of our hands… It’s going to be so romantic!” A squeal that would have been girlish were it not so discordant.

  “And you’re invited!” Ice King added, handing Finn a crumpled napkin with some markings scrawled on it in ballpoint pen.

  “Don’t worry! I’ll make fancier invitations later and they’ll explode into birds and butterflies and stuff when you open them.” She wiggled her fingers. “They’ll be super cool, you’ll see!”

  “That’s awesome, dude.” Jake gave the couple a thumbs up. “I’m really happy you two found each other, you seem really good together. Happy.”

  “Jake, can I take you aside for a sec to talk about… chimichangas? Like the logistics of chimichangas?” Finn asked, somewhat nervously.

  “No problem, you know I’m up for an emergency fried burrito discussion any time of the day.” Jake replied. “Hey, can you lovebirds give us a second?”

  They walked some distance away, and Jake casually shaped himself into a small dome tent so they could have some privacy. Finn was wringing his hands, something he didn’t normally do. “I’m not alone in thinking this whole thing is super messed up, right? I was worried Betty would get all messed up from Magic Man’s nasty-ass body moisture, and she totally did! And now neither of them remember who they are and it’s so frikkin creepy! That’s worse, right? That’s twice the crazy wizards now.”

  “Finn. Finnland. Little Finn bro.” Jake stretched an arm down from the ceiling and gently patted the human’s shoulder. “Sure, stuff happens that isn’t ideal. People get messed up all kinds of ways as they walk the highway of life, man. I mean, now at least they’re both equally donked, right? Betty doesn’t miss her old boyfriend and now Simon has a mashed potato brain lady friend to keep him company.”

  “I guess.” He sighed. “It just seems wrong. She wanted to help Simon so bad and now she’s just… fine with everything.”

  “Maybe it was stressing her out, trying to help him. They both seem like they’re doing much better, right? Sometimes you try to build a go-cart and you end up just having a good time playin’ around with the fruit crates. I get that they’re weird and kinda scary, but they’re having a good time.”

  “Maybe.” Finn bedgrudged. “It just makes me really sad that Betty time traveled here and everything, and she just ended up turning into another magic person with Problems.”

  “It is sad.” Jake said. “But it’s less sad than if like, she fell into a volcano or got eaten by a giant bear or whatever. At least now they can be together.”

  “Yeah…”

  “Now let’s get back out there and ask those two nuts where they registered for freaky blood magic sex coffin gifts.”

  “...Sure, bro. Probably at the weird cursed stuff store, right?” He still couldn't really get on board with the whole thing, but if it was true that they were happy... He didn't feel comfortable even holding any of that information in his brain yet. But he would probably only make things worse if he got upset. Simon could be really sensitive, and Betty was already acting emotionally weird the last time he saw her...

  “Haha, probably! Wizards, man.”

  “Yeah. Wizards.”

[hiswordsarekisses]

This is so good and so true:

DO WE NEED MULTIPLE BIBLE TRANSLATIONS? WHAT TRANSLATIONS SHOULD WE USE? By Lynette Hughes:

I am writing this in response to several Facebook friends who have questioned my reasons for using various Bible translations rather than exclusively using the King James Bible. If you are convinced that the King James Version is the only legitimate English Bible and that all other translations are false then please don’t waste your time reading this article because nothing I can say will convince you otherwise. If you love and enjoy your KJV, then by all means, you should continue to use and enjoy it. For myself, I believe multiple versions of the Bible can actually be an aid in understanding the message of the Bible, although, I personally like to go back to my primary study Bible [NIV], to compare scriptures.

Since the King James version was translated in 1611 many Bible transcripts have been discovered that are older and more accurate. When Bible scholars research through these older manuscripts they have discovered that some words, phrases, and sentences were added to the Bible either intentionally or accidentally. The verses that you see missing are simply not found in the oldest and most reliable manuscripts and the translators have removed these verses and placed them in footnotes or in the margin because they do not believe they were part of the original manuscripts of the Bible. Bible translators do not compare a translation against another translation, but against the manuscripts that were used.

It is nothing but myth that the King James Version is perfect. A 1611 King James version is virtually unreadable by the average person today, and there have been over thousands of corrections in the KJV from 1611 through 1769 edition, which is the version we use. And, although I believe that the KJV remains an excellent translation, yet today this 400-year-old version remains difficult to comprehend in all too many passages. Everything from the spelling, to syntax, to grammar, to phraseology is very different from what we speak today.

To complicate things, the KJV uses many archaic and obsolete words which have changed in meaning over time and do not convey what the original translators intended to express.. If you were brought up on the King James Version or you have been reading it for years, you might not quite realize how totally foreign sounding the King James Version is to modern readers. Estimates are that the King James Version uses 827 words and phrases that have since changed their meaning or are not used at all. When the Bible is translated, it should be translated into how a people/language group speaks. We understand the written Word of God best when we can read it in our own language – in the vernacular of the day – not how it was spoken hundreds of years ago.

I do realize many people have gotten used to a particular Bible version and resist any attempts to update or revise it, but fierce loyalty to a particular version of the Bible is illogical and for some advocates idolatrous. No doctrine essential for salvation is affected by translations, modern or ancient—unless done by a particular cult to promote its liberal agenda or belief system. There is no perfect translation of the English Bible, as the Scriptures were originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, not English. Each translation has its own strengths and weaknesses, and I am not arguing for any specific version.

Hand a KJV to a young person, or even an older person, and ask them to read 1 Thess. 4:5 and then explain to you what "concupiscence" means. Here is another one: "Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may WITHOUT the word be won by the CONVERSATION of the wives;"1 Peter 3:1. That sounds like a total contradiction until one learns that CONVERSATION in that verse does not mean speech, but behavior. The meaning of the word in English is no longer the same. A prime example of words taking on a different meaning because of culture is the Christmas song "Don we now our gay apparel, Fa la la, la la, la la la, la." That would have a totally different connotation today.

I certainly concede that the KJV is virtually unsurpassed in poetic beauty and literary elegance. But literary beauty and elegance are not substitutes for clarity. We read the Bible in an effort to know what it’s saying. Reading several translations based on different manuscripts can unlock different shades of meaning that you may have previously missed. It can clarify passages of Scripture, and help you see a verse in a different way.

For those trying to choose a Bible, I would encourage each of you to pick a word-for-word, literal translation [such as, NASB, HCSB, KJV, NKJV, MEV, ESV, or the less literal Bible translations, such as the NIV and NLT (a combination of word for word and thought for thought'), as your primary study Bible, then use other paraphrased versions that may be easier to read to help you wrestle through difficult passages and compare them with your primary Bible translation. If there are distinct differences between versions, you may find it helpful from time to time to utilize the Greek and Hebrew lexicon to verify biblical definitions.

Some Bible versions translate less literally, and should not be used as a Christian’s primary Bible. Bibles, such as The Living Bible, GNT, TLB, NEB, the Amplified Bible and God’s Word are paraphrased to reflect what the author thinks the Bible says, not necessarily what the Bible actually says. A paraphrase of the Bible should be used more as a commentary, a way to get another perspective, but should not be viewed as accurate as it is an author’s idea of what the Bible says. A paraphrased Bible allows the greatest degree of liberty in translation and leaves too much room for personal interpretation [2 Peter 1:20].

Some Bibles, such as The New World Translation [used by Jehovah’s Witnesses], the Message, the Passion Bible, as well as feminist and homosexual versions, are doctrinally corrupt mistranslations that have the specific purpose of altering Scripture to agree with their beliefs; they have an agenda all their own.

The Message Bible promotes the mystical New Age message with a boldness that's never been seen in a mainstream Bible. “Lord” occurs 7,970 times in the King James Bible and the Message contains the Lord only 71 times. I could go on and on but let me clarify one thing.... The amputation of these words, of which there are many more, are no accident. It is not an issue in translation or Greek manuscripts. It's also not a matter of updating archaic words or making it easier to understand. It was a deliberate and intentional doctrinal decision to remove the "Lord" and the use of the "Lord Jesus".

Above all, when we are choosing a Bible and/or comparing scriptures, we must ask God for wisdom and discernment. The Spirit of God will enlighten us to hear and understand the truth of God’s written Word and apply it to our lives. It is every Christians privilege to ask and expect the teaching and guidance of the Holy Spirit. We are not left to be absolutely dependent on any interpretation of man. 1 Corinthians 2:5 KJV says “That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men. But in the power of God.”

[nabataprophet]

without hurting or being hurt

Whenever you lose track of your father, you always find him in the same place. You round the corner of the library and find him, as always, tucked into the back with a thick tome in hand.

You tug at his robes to get his attention. Whenever he's reading, no matter how much you try to raise your voice, you can never draw his attention unless you do this.

"Sophia?!" He yelps, nearly dropping the heavy tome. He catches it at the last moment, breathing a sigh of relief to not have beaned his young daughter right on the head. "Sorry, were you calling me?"

"...Is it... fun...?"

Your voice is shot from playing with Fae all afternoon, but your father knows you well enough to interpret your vague statement and the pointing of your finger.

Your father's face lights up. "Dark magic? Oh, there's so much to learn! I could study just the knowledge gathered in Arcadia alone and not make it through even half—no, not even a fourth—of it in my lifetime! Isn't that incredible? I consider myself pretty learned in the ancient language, too, so just imagine how much faster I could read if I were completely fluent! To be honest, I was also thinking about asking the village elder to help me translate a few sections."

Excitement colors his voice as he launches into an impassioned explanation. Recently, you've noticed him moving slower than usual, but seeing him so passionate soothes your anxieties somewhat.

"Can I... learn, too?"

The bright smile on your father's face fades, replaced by a more complicated expression. He takes the tome in his hand and returns it to its home on the shelf, far above where your tiny hands can reach.

"Honestly, you're my daughter, so you may have a talent in dark magic, but I hope there never comes a day you have to use it, Sophia."

"...Why?"

"Hmmm... let me put it this way. The people who live outside of this village aren't very nice people. They like to hurt other people, especially if they have dragon blood like you do. You're a very kindhearted girl, Sophia, so I hope you never have to hurt another person. Do you understand?"

You nod quietly. You don't want to hurt anyone, either. Sometimes when you close your eyes, you see flashes of visions of people attacking each other with weapons. It's all incomprehensible to a little girl who has only known the safety and peace of a true Utopia. You don't understand why a person would willingly hurt another person.

Your father scoops you up in his arms, holding you close.

"You really do resemble your mother more and more by the day." He strokes your head, affection in his eyes and regret in his voice. "...But I can't help but wish you resembled me as well. Ha ha, forgive your selfish father, Sophia."

It's many years later when you finally understand what he had meant when he told you those words on that day. He is long gone now, his lifespan mere days in comparison to yours. Sometimes you wonder if he had already known at that point that he was never going to be able to see you grow older.

It's not until after the war that you return to the library of your youth. You're tall enough now to pluck that tome off the shelf without even needing to stand on tiptoes. The well-loved pages of the book open easily under your fingers. When you were younger, you had wondered what kind of secrets the book your father had kept hidden from you had contained. By all means, it's just a normal dark tome just like the ones sold in the village's shop.

It's the particulars of the spell that stand out more than anything else. The tome details the usage of a spell that restores life force at the expense of another; the second level of dark magic. It's not particularly complicated magic and indeed, you've handled far more complex magic while traveling with Lord Roy's army.

Your father had been right, though. You still wish that you would never have to hurt another person, but you had no longer been afforded a choice in the matter. There's no way that your father could have known that in the future, your perfect untouchable paradise would be under threat of being invaded or that you would end up being taken prisoner.

He was only human, so how could he have known?

I hope you never have to hurt another person, your father had said. He had hoped you would stay nestled safely within paradise for your whole life.

But a life without hurting or being hurt is impossible, after all.

Class Mastered: Dark Bishop

[elle-thereafter]

Chapter 19 of Gate Building is up, and today marks a year since I posted the first five chapters. It is wild to me that I've been working on this for over a year. It is by far the longest thing I've ever written.

Now for the traditional snippet:

Percy recalls how heavily Perran leaned against the work table after recasting the true seeing spell on Vex a few hours ago. "Is it wise to keep up this pace of casting?" Percy asks carefully. "You have an archfey to distract this evening." At the insinuation of Nim and the role he needs to play tonight, the remaining mirth trickles away. "What's spent is spent," Perran broods, half to himself. "I'm reserving what I can." "That didn't look like reserve." Perran waves off the critique. "Cantrips and rituals are hro'ava li'pella, hardly taxing. Much like your teacups, their casting doesn't cost me anything but time." Percy frowns, rolling the Elvish around his mind. "'Beyond the body'?" "You're Elvish is good," Perran says, smiling. "The Sylvan grammar usually confuses those who learned Elvish as a second language." Percy ignores the compliment, thinking instead about watching Perran cast lightning burst after lightning burst through the hammer. And then he remembers his own nights spent inspecting illusions of teacups, dozens and dozens of times over. What is the difference? How does one kind of magic leave a man drained and empty, while another barely scratches the surface? Across the table Perran is eating bread and cheese, watching him a little too casually. Waiting. It's a purposefully placed breadcrumb, one set in front of Percy to test him, to see if he'll bite or turn away. You'll understand nothing as long as you cling to ignorance. It echoes in Percy's mind, the words stuck into him farther than he would ever admit to out loud. "Why is it different?" Percy asks finally. He tries not to notice how satisfied Perran looks at being asked the question. "What does it mean for a spell to be 'beyond the body'?"

[wearesorcerer]

Re: Best 3rd-Level "Smart Guy" (Divination/Rune) Spell

These were originally separate categories (divinations and runes), but I wanted to conserve time and space. 97 votes came in; the winner was speak with dead at 37.1% (36 votes), followed by tongues at 19.6% (19 votes). I probably could have separated this list out a bit better had I taken the time. I'll analyze the spells anyway.

Arcane sight is just detect magic without the waiting, which IMHO is how detect spells should work (but that's a tangent). Ofc, I think all casters should be able to use detect magic at-will as a baseline ability, so what do I know?

Clairvoyance irks me: in power, it's roughly equivalent to detect thoughts, yet it pushes arcane eye a level higher, forcing that to compete with the superior scrying. All this and it can't even be used to make a ring of x-ray vision, even though that's what it does.

I don't blame people for not voting for discern lies: it's too specific for the level it's at, you're usually better off with zone of truth and detect thoughts anyway, and it's poorly worded.

Explosive runes/glyph of warding is fun. Not the most fun, but fun. By which I mean "I have never used the spell, but I appreciate Order of the Stick."

Illusory script is annoyingly powerful for a 3rd-level spell. I mean, it takes true seeing AND another spell to decipher it? The 5e version fixes these complications, I think, so whatever.

I don't get linked glyphs. It's just glyph of warding with a special trigger? Can't you do that with glyph of warding?

Secret page got no votes, which is great. It doesn't hide a page, it just...is another version of illusory script. You know what else could be done to hide writing? A variation of 1st-level spells that operate identically. I mean, it's about as powerful as disguise self or Nystul's magic aura.

Sepia snake sigil is stupidly overpowered. It's a spell glyph version of glyph of warding but applies temporal stasis to the target -- an 8th-level spell effect accomplished with a 3rd-level spell. On top of that, it specifically has brown light. You can't have brown light: brown is orange plus gray, i.e. it's a shade and thus requires some absence of light.

So, all the chaff out of the way, let's get to the meat: spells that let you communicate with creatures you couldn't otherwise and therefore gain information.

Speak with dead won because of the movie. The only thing it has over both tongues and speak with plants is that you're almost certain to be using it on a creature you know will have relevant information -- but that's because you did the research first, not a feature of the spell.

Speak with plants has great potential use, given that plants are everywhere and (for the purposes of the spell) they're temporarily sapient in a qualitatively and quantitatively way similar to humanoids. 5e instituted a downside on memory, but this is stupid and isn't present either in Critical Role's use or in 3.5's. You're not limited to so many questions, either, which is great. The downside is that you're unlikely to get any in-depth information from Henry Crabgrass. (Seriously, look up animatics on YouTube, they're wonderful.)

Tongues is the most likely to provide you with relevant information, but that's only if you can succeed at relevant social checks. You might need to do so with speak with plants, but you will almost assuredly have to do so with tongues: first, you have to figure out who it is you need to talk to, then you have to cast tongues, then you have to convince that person to talk to you, then you have to do the actual questioning. However, the spell gives you all the time you need to do that, so you're probably good. The only downside of tongues in many editions is that it is theoretically possible to learn every language in a setting (especially once 3rd edition condensed most of the species-specific monster languages) and so not need the spell, whereas you have to rely on magic to converse with plants or the dead.

[schizosupport]

Hi Glitch!

So I’m schizoaffective, and one of the traits I really struggle with is memory recall. It makes learning in any formal/tradition sense extremely difficult because everything’s based on quizzing, and when I get something wrong I can’t physically remember/keep track of what the correct/wrong thing is. To demonstrate, if I spell a word wrong and get corrected, I’ll remember both spellings-the right and the wrong but I won’t be able to recall which is which. The more I try over and over the less I’m able to grasp the correct one.

What does work for me is correct repetition. So if I want to learn to spell something writing the correct spelling using a reference over and over-if I never give myself the chance to get it wrong there’s only one thing to remember and it’ll be correct. This has worked really well for me for self directed learning.

Anyways, I’m trying to learn a cultural language I don’t speak natively (it’s extremely important to me). Im extremely low income so I’m doing it with free sources, not formally with classes. But all the free sources involve quizzes and it’s hard bc when it’s simple shit (for example one word translations like “what’s the word for dog?”) it’s easy for me to look it up so I never get it wrong, but when it’s more complicated shit online translators are often wrong. This goes double bc the language I’m working with uses characters so a lot of language learning things don’t have anything in my target language in the first place.

Which is why I’m writing you! I was wondering if you or any of your followers have found any additional hacks for this? I know a lot of us have these memory recall issues and I don’t think I’m the only one attempting to be multilingual. The hack of “look up the right answer” has gotten me really far, but it seems I’m reaching the limitations. And “just talk to people”/“hire a tutor” or “don’t learn a language” don’t really work for my situation.

Thank you so much in advance!

Hey there! So as I understand it, you need a lot of correct repetition to commit something to memory and are looking for resources or tips on how to accomplish that, or a different approach.

So for language learning, I don't know if this is helpful, but something I've used in the past to help me memorize things is a program called Anki. It's essentially a nifty little flashcard program. You may be able to find community made flashcard collections for the language you're learning, but if not, you can also make your own sets.

It basically works in a way where you choose how many cards you want to review per day, and then you basically see the card and then you think of the answer yourself. And then you get the answer. And then you click if it was easy, hard, in-between etc. And then the program makes sure you'll see it more times during the session until you are confident in that one, and then they all come on a roster so you'll get new ones over time, while still reviewing older ones automatically.

It was really helpful to me for when I was having the neurological psychology course because there was a lot of memorization involved, which is not my strong suit either.

Aside from that, the best I can suggest is trying to see if you can find communities online or offline of other learners, where you can encourage each other and have little interactions in the language. If it's possible.

Another thing that has really helped me in the past for learning foreign languages, is to try to get creative with it. So whenever I learned a new term or sentence structure or whatever, I used it to write little simple dialogues that were more iconic/easier to remember and gave me the option to use it for myself.

I hope some of this might be helpful, though it's more general advice.

Best of luck with it!

[everydayclutter]

keep bleeding, keep bleeding love

Summary: Bukayo just wants to heal Gabi.

Pairing: Bukayo Saka/Gabriel Martinelli, Fabio Vieira/Gabriel Martinelli

Set sometime at the start of this season.

As usual, set within my supernatural/superpower au.

I'm blaming @sophpisticated for giving me the idea about what Fabio should be in this au XD jk you know I love you bestie.

-

There's a reason why healing magic is one of the most complicated branches of magic, as Mikel and Hector always say. You don't just wave your hand and recite a spell and poof, your wounds gone. You need to have at least basic knowledge of the human body, know the extent of the injuries, and understand exactly what you're doing there, lest you'd botch it and the person you're supposed to fix ends up with a reversed knee or something. But despite all the warnings, there's also another reason why Bukayo insists on mastering it anyway.

And the reason happens to be a Brazilian, three months older and two centimeters taller than him, who plays on the opposite wing of him and goes by the name of Gabriel Martinelli.

Gabi is a nice kid, a talented footballer, and a great friend. But he was born with a rather sinister superpower – the ability to control and manipulate blood. Only his own, though, not others'. And to utilize it, he has to get the blood out of his system – in other words, he has to cut himself.

Thankfully, Gabi's power allows him to force his blood to clot, so he wouldn't bleed to death while using it, but it doesn't alleviate the pain, and more often than not, leaves him with ugly scars. Usually Mikel or Gary O'Driscoll, their club doctor, helps to heal the wounds, but Bukayo wants to be able to do that too. He wishes to be the one Gabi can rely on to heal him whenever and wherever, the one Gabi can trust to keep himself safe, the one who can protect Gabi when things get ugly.

So Bukayo does his best, asking Dr. Gary for private lessons, squeezing every knowledge out of any spellbooks he could find, even rooting for some old papyrus that Mo secretly keeps in his possession, and he thinks he's starting to make good progress at it. (The fact that he has angel blood in him might help, though).

But then the 2021/22 season ends and summer break rolls along, and with it comes Fabio.

Fabio is small and slender, with slightly droopy dark eyes and goatee, and an unfortunate destiny of sharing the same last name with a certain Arsenal legend. He's a bit shy, but also kind and funny, and after spending some time with him Bukayo decides he likes him. And he also happens to be a centaur.

Now, Bukayo has nothing against centaurs. He's never met one before, but he knows they're amazing creatures, powerful and noble, and Arsenal are lucky to have one in the team. Centaurs also happen to be very talented in divination and healing, and Bukayo's already excited imagining all the healing tricks he'd be able to learn from the new guy.

He doesn't realize that Fabio could just easily take over all the healing job himself.

Now Bukayo looks on as Fabio kneels beside Gabi after one particularly horrifying battle, muttering ancient spells while Gabi's exposed wounds stitch themselves close under his command. And he sees the expression on Gabi's face – gentle, adoring, infatuated.

And it strikes Bukayo like an arrow stabbed right into his heart.

Gabi is in love.

He's in love with Fabio.

And judging from the small, lovesick smile on Fabio's lips, he feels the same.

Well, come to think of it, why shouldn't they? They've been almost literally attached on the hips since the day Fabio came, they speak in more or less the same language, Fabio can give Gabi the one thing he needs the most… Bukayo can see why Gabi's falling hard for the Portuguese.

Taking a deep breath, Bukayo turns around and starts to walk away.

He resolves not to disturb the happy couple, no matter what. He might be in love with Gabi, but he definitely can't help whom Gabi's fancies lie on, and he'll do anything for the Brazilian's happiness. Even if that means killing his own feelings. Even if that means seeing Gabi smiling together with Fabio for the rest of his life.

Bukayo's so deep in his thoughts that he doesn't hear the sound of footsteps behind him, nor does a familiar voice yelling his name. He's only snapped out of his reverie when someone tugs on his arm, followed by Gabi's soft voice, speaking to him.

"Bukayo, can we talk?"

fin

[emojiglyphics]

Should English throw out our alphabet and use Emojiglyphics instead?

It’s a bit of a silly question to begin with because it’s not going to happen. When English spelling is eventually reformed, it will be with a new system using the existing Latin alphabet. But since I’ve been spending so much of my time on this lately, I thought I’d explore the question inside the realm of fantasy.

First, we have to talk about the advantages and disadvantages of some types of writing systems, and their viability for English. These explanations will be SIMPLIFIED but for all you language heads who know what I’m skipping, know that I love you and I’m pulling for you.

Phonetic Alphabets

Phonetic Alphabets are the kind used in English, Greek, and Ukrainian. They have separate characters representing vowels and consonants. The major advantages are that the character set tends to be pretty small (20-30) which makes them quick to memorize. After memorizing a small character set and learning some rules, you are (hopefully) equipped to handle the entire dictionary of words. One small disadvantage is that since most languages have more sounds than letters, spelling rules can get complicated. But the major disadvantage is that as the spoken language undergoes natural and inevitable change, it diverges further and further from the written language until the two bear almost no resemblance. In some languages, there isn’t much to worry about. You can be accurately reading German or French after a week. But you can study English for a lifetime and not know all of its trap doors. And phonetic alphabets leave you on your own if two words are spelled or pronounced the same (or both).

Logographic Writing Systems

The most famous Logographic writing system is Han Chinese. (It’s technically a semanto-phonetic system, but that’s like... very technically.) In Logographic writing systems, you learn a new character for each word. The big disadvantage is obvious; you learn a lot of characters. They’re complex and often abstract, and there are thousands of them. But there are serious advantages. For instance, two people who speak different languages can actually read the same text and understand it. They are immune to pronunciation changes in the spoken language, which means that text remains comprehensible for a lot longer. What’s more, they could theoretically be much easier to learn than they are. Han characters didn’t start out as abstract as they are, they were once much more recognizable representations of the objects they stood for. The transformation into the characters we know today took millennia. But if you were to start a logographic system today, you could very well decide to make the word for “cat” a literal drawing of a cat.

Syllabic Alphabets

Syllabic alphabets encode an entire syllable in a single character. Typically, you start with a character that stands for a given consonant, and then tweak it indicate what vowel should follow. These are systems like Tibetan and Katakana. These have the same disadvantages and advantages as similar phonetic systems, but they have the added constraint that they assume certain qualities about the spoken language. Syllabic alphabets work well for Japanese because Japanese tends not to allow so-called “consonant clusters”, you usually find at least one vowel between all consonants in a word.

Abjads

Abjads are another system based on phonetics, except that they lack vowels and only use consonants. As you can imagine, this can lead to ambiguity, which I will wager is why they are associated with languages with a limited vowel inventory. It works great for languages like Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian. But they would not work well for, say, Danish which has 20 distinct vowels.

Egyptian Hieroglyphs

Egyptian Hieroglyphs could be described as a combination of an Abjad and a Logographic system. Egyptian had a limited vowel inventory, so it wasn’t too impractical to leave them out. But because of the way it mixes phonetic symbols with a logographic determinative, it doesn’t need to have as large an inventory as Han Chinese. Moreover, these characters are often pretty easy to figure out because for thousands of years, they remained fairly literal. A drawing of a man pointing to his mouth-- oh, this must be a word about the mouth. Learning unfamiliar glyphs is often a matter of learning more about the ancient world, far easier than memorizing a thatch of brush strokes, beautiful though they are.

What this means is that while Hieroglyphs certainly take a lot of work to learn, they’re pretty readable, especially for such ancient texts. In a way, hieroglyphs combine the strengths of both phonetic and logographic systems. The large number of phonetic symbols makes it easier to approach unfamiliar words. The character set is certainly not small, but it’s very much doable, and you can get surprisingly far from a limited set. The determinative clears up ambiguity between homonyms, and the literalness of the designs makes them easier to learn.

Unfortunately, it also combines some of their disadvantages. The phonetic components of the words will still eventually fall out of sync with the spoken language. Within the lifetime of Egyptian, the word “hand” when from sounding like “ka-raht” to “to-ra”, but the spelling stayed the same. And while the determinatives do look like the objects and concepts they represent much of the time, it often does it with objects that no longer exist or which we have little contact with in the modern world. And there’s still... many of them to learn.

So would Hieroglyphics be good for writing English? Kind of. I mean, we’d muddle through, right? It would be tough because English cries out for vowel representation. We just have so many of them. You don’t know how tempting it has been for me to incorporate a vowel system into Emojiglyphics. But I’ve been continually surprised at how readable it is, once the determinative is added.

Emojiglyphics

Emojiglyphics is basically hieroglyphics for English using a subset of currently available Emojis as its character set. The advantage, for me at least, is that they’ve already been created and there are tons of devices out there capable of stringing them together quickly. The other big advantage is that they represent things that people recognize. By necessity they are relevant to our current lives. They are also designed not just to be a collection of clip art, but to aid in communication. They are filled with hand gestures and facial expressions.

What this adds up to is that Constructing Emojiglyphics has been surprisingly easy to do. At least when it comes to the design part of it. Much tougher is actually using and documenting it. Which leads to the first disadvantage: 

Emojis were not meant to be used this way. The web browser or text file can’t tell you’re making a word. The spacing is terrible. Emojiglyphics has been a joy to create but not to use. Also disadvantageous is that it’s been hard for people to understand which characters are phonetic and which are determinatives. All emojis seem to have equal status. Egyptian phonetic characters tend to actually look simpler, which helps set them apart. They’re also the first ones you learn, you spend a lot of time with them. By the time you’re dealing with determinatives in your study, you’re pretty confident you’ll never mix them up. One way I’ve tried to combat this is to use as many animals for phonetics as possible. But it may not be enough.

So should English be written this way?

Maybe by some people. If they feel like it. I don’t think it should replace the Latin alphabet mostly because of our incredibly deep vowel inventory, the number of people who learn it as a second language and already know the Latin alphabet, and the fact that it’s much easier to write by hand than Emojiglyphics would be. We’d have to make some kind of Emojimotic, making all the characters abstractions of the emojis and stripping them of their recognizability. Which is what tends to happen, I suppose. 

But I find it very satisfying, and I think that if it ever got realized enough to be practical, it could be a fun way for people to communicate. If it ever got adopted  by any significant number of people (and I’m not holding my breath) it would be bittersweet for me. It would mean that I had invented something people played with. But it would also be the beginning of the end for me. It would no longer be my project, it would be a living written language with a will of its own. People would invent new rules, new spellings. Things I never expected. Some would be delightful to me, others irritating. And my job at that point would be to shut the hell up about it because no one person can tame a language. .

[i-did-not-mean-to]

Okay, okay…so I saw this once. Thought it was really sweet and I know how much you write random pairings so for the roommates AU:

Ori/Bifur

(If not, hit me up and I can rec another.) 😂

Dear @sunnyrosewritesstuff...This was a peculiar one, but I am always up for a challenge.

So, here is your ficlet:

A compelling tale

Words: 625

Characters: Ori &(/?) Bifur

Ori was but mildly surprised to learn that he had been put into a room with another person; it made sense that Dori would try to keep an eye on Nori and, anyway, their youngest brother rarely minded being sent to bunk with someone else.

It would only be for a few days while they rested before the final stretch of their journey and Ori deemed himself to be – by nature and habit – such a discreet fellow that he did not foresee any complications or conflicts to arise from this arrangement.

The hunched-over figure by the fireplace was familiar and even a welcome sight; Bifur was not a dwarf of many words and – as Ori was notoriously shy – he was relieved to have the taciturn elderly warrior rather than his more ebullient kinsmen for a roommate.

As soon as he noticed that he was no longer alone in the room, Bifur waved Ori forward and leaned back in the chair that was too big and too broad even for his impressive frame.

“You’re a story-teller, are you not?” he asked in his gruff voice, using their secret language openly in the privacy of the closed room; Ori knew that he was suffering from his inability to speak any other language, especially because Khuzdul did not allow for many conversations with people outside of his own race.

Nodding slowly, the younger dwarf climbed onto the second chair and stared into the flames for a moment; after all his people had gone through, pretty tales about daring heroism and epic victories were not on the forefront of his fellows’ minds. He understood that.

“Tell me one!” Bifur demanded, lowering his piercing eyes and forgetting about the trials and tribulations that lay ahead of them for a moment.

Of course, he was too old to be on this quest and the lasting wounds he had sustained in previous battles left him ill-equipped for trekking through the different realms, but there was strength in him yet, and he hoped that he would be able to put it to good use in the name of his king and people.

Indulgent tenderness warmed his eyes now as he gazed upon that young dwarrow – bookish, shy, and incredibly brave – fiddling with his sleeves and sucking on his lower lip as he tried to come up with a story that might amuse and delight his senior.

They had once been like that, Bifur reminisced, wide-eyed and eager in their resolution to contribute to the glory of the Khazad as much as they could.

As Ori peeled out of his thick, woollen coat with a bright smile, Bifur reached over and gave his hand an encouraging squeeze.

Weariness weighed him down inexorably and he was yearning for a distraction from the bleak future that awaited them.

As Ori haltingly started narrating a story that had sprung from his own thoughts, Bifur decided then and there that he would ferociously defend and protect that invaluable, generous mind with all the might left in that failing body and aching heart of his.

Indeed, for the first time in long years, words seemed sweet and enchanting to Bifur again as he listened patiently to the mellow voice of the future scribe as he described an intrepid princess confronting a terrible dragon to save the spell-bound hero of the story.

It was only when he ended his marvellous tale in a truly fortunate wedding that Ori realised that he was still holding the gnarled, skilled hand of one who had once made toys for him cradled in his own.

He was happy beyond what any words might have been able to return the favour and the gift of solace and pleasure once bestowed upon him before the end.

So, @fellowshipofthefics here's the second prompt I've gotten for the Weekend WIPs game :)

Lots of love from me

[thenerdysimp]

“We have”

Pairing: Leo Tekiel x reader

Words: 2,3K

Summery: Leo got asked to perform a duet with a girl in Idol just the year after he competed himself. The girl just happens to be his girlfriend that no one knew about (except for the other competitors during his year), until now!

Warnings: None, just fluff. Not proofread, so potentially spelling errors and I might have mixed up past and present tense. (It’s complicated okay, my brain can’t comprehend it)

Names featured:

Pär - program host

Katia, Peg, Ash, Anders - jury

A/n: This plays out in Swedish Idol next year (2025). I literally remember exactly when this idea popped into my head, it was in the shower on Sunday the 24th of November at 18:23😅 Also, this is definitely not my best writing ever but I’m still learning so spare me please🙏🏼😅

You’re here, in Idol year 2025, the 21 seasons of the program. You were here last year as well, but that was in the audience to support your boyfriend Leo. This time you’re one of the people on stage.

You and Leo met when you started studying at the same university. You quickly became best friends and after about 6 months he asked you out, and now you're here. You and him both loved singing and had great talent for it so when he applied and got in last year you spent a lot of your time singing together, especially duets.

This week was exactly that, duets, but instead of some of the biggest names within the Swedish artistic elite it’s with people who had competed previous years. You just happened to get your boyfriend, but nobody knows that.

You and the other idols left are sitting on the sofa in the so called green room at the side of the stage as Pär starts the program of. “Hello everyone and welcome back to Idol! This week we have some duets happening! Already last week we announced 3 of them and this is what that looked like!”

Last week

“This was the result of today, but for next week it’s duets! And for those of you that don’t know, when it was duets last year the idols got a well known person within the Swedish artistic elite. But this year it’s going to be previous competitors, so idols from previous years!” Pär said, everyone started applauding excitedly. “And we will name some of them right here, right now.” He added. He named 2 names before he got to you, “And Y/n, your duet partner is actually just from last year! It is…” he trailed off as he turned to the stage screen where a picture of your boyfriend appeared. “Leo Tekiel!” You were completely shocked but very excited, nobody here knew that you and Leo were dating so to them your reaction might as well be just as a fan.

“We have an exciting evening in front of us and I want to hear the jury’s thoughts.” Pär said, turning to them, “Katia, what’s your thoughts?” She shifted in her and spoke, “Yeah I completely agree with you, this is gonna be exciting. We have quite high hopes for this, we are of course only going to judge our idols this year but we are looking at the whole performance. Their singing, their stage language and the chemistry they have with their duet partner, these are the most important things they need. We want to see them work together, not overpower each other.” She said, the camera panned from the jury back to Pär, “Well, let’s get this evening started then!” He said

The first duo was introduced, they performed well. So did the second, after them there was a commercial break. Then it was the third and fourth, you were fifth. After the fourth was done and back in green room Pär spoke, “It’s time for another break and when we come back it’s time for our fifth duet with Y/n and Leo! See you then!” When the break was over the camera focused on Pär standing in the middle of the stage, “Welcome back everyone, the time has come to kick off our fifth duet of the night and we do that with Y/n!” Then the intro video with your reaction of getting your partner and when you met up to talk about it started playing on the screen.

Intro video

“…Leo Tekiel!”

“No I was in complete shock, that was honestly very unexpected. Like it could have been anyone but it was him, I’m not mad about it though.” You said sitting in the filming studio.

Leo was standing in the lobby waiting for you, as you walked out and he saw you his face lit up immediately. You walked over to him and gave him a big hug, but trying not to make it completely obvious that this was in fact your boyfriend.

“It was very fun seeing him there, I was in the audience a few times last year so I remember seeing him on stage.”

You and him sat down together in the studio to film, he started talking and praising your performances trying to make it look and sound like you didn’t know each other on the level you actually did. You just tried not to laugh, he was doing a good job but you could barely keep it together, but for the watchers it could be played off as some type of fan girl excitement. “I think this is gonna be really fun, no wait. I know it’s gonna be fun.” You said standing in front of the camera with Leo beside you, “It’s gonna be awesome.” He said looking at you and then back to the camera.

The video ended and the camera turned to you, Leo and Pär standing around a high table. “Y/n and Leo Tekiel, welcome both of you to the duets tonight, and with a very big song as well that probably everyone in this room has heard. How has this week gone, what would you say Leo?” Pär asked. Leo lifted his mig to answer, “It has been amazing, we’ve had a lot of fun. But also being back here so soon, it was just a year ago I stood here myself and I never thought I’d be back like this.” He said looking around the whole room and at the crowd. “Do you agree Y/n?” Pär asked looking at you, “Absolutely, it’s been magical. I never thought I’d be standing on stage with this guy like this so it’s been very fun.” He laughed a little before speaking again, “And how did you come up with this song, how did you guys connect over the music?” You took a breath as you looked at Leo beside you for a second before turning back, “I think we both have very mixed music taste, so really we could have ended up choosing almost anything. I was here in the audience a lot last year actually so I’ve seen him on this stage before and I’ve heard his voice so for me it was quite an obvious choice. It’s a song with a lot of range but it’s a range we both have so it worked out.” You explained. You turned to Leo letting him know that he could add something if he wanted, “Yeah totally. But also I’ve seen how good she is and I have a lot of respect for her. She knows exactly what she’s doing and i'm honored to be doing this with her tonight.” He said, wrapping an arm around your shoulders as the crowd applauded. “Are you ready to step up then?” Pär asked. “Of course!” You said excitedly. “Y/n and Leo take your place on the stage! Leo Tekiel, a guy who did this himself just a year ago and became known as the falsetto king. He captured the hearts of everyone watching, especially the jury. Now it’s time for him to come back on the same stage, hold on tight everyone because now it’s time for Leo together with Y/n, I don’t wanna live forever!” Pär announced as you walked onto the stage.

The music started playing and Leo started off with his solo, then it just went smoothly. You and him worked great together, you could feel the heat between you as you got close. You were trying so hard not to blush when he put a hand at your waist and looked you deep in the eyes as you sang together. When the song ended you lowered your microphones and wrapped each other in a tight hug with wide smiles on both of your faces. He lifted you up, spinning you around once before putting you down again, turning to the jury. In the audience you could see all of the previous years idols, so everyone who was together with Leo, they were standing up, cheering and applauding, and so was the jury. The jury sat down again and when the applause died down Pär started talking. “That was amazing! How does it feel?” He asked, you were basically jumping on the spot and Leo was just smiling at you adoringly. “It was amazing, I'm so happy!” You said grinning. “I actually noticed something, and that is everyone who competed last year is in the audience!” Pär said as he pointed to them still standing up and waving at you. “How do you feel Leo?” Pär asked. He took a breath before speaking, “I feel great, this was amazing. I really enjoyed it and this was definitely the best out of the times we’ve practiced this song.” He said happily. Pär put a hand on his shoulder and spoke again “Sounds good, let’s listen to what the jury has to say!”

Katia started immediately, “This was beautiful, this may have been the best duet I’ve seen in the history of this entire program. I’m floored, Y/n this might be the best song you could have chosen for you two. And Leo, it's great to see you back here.” She said leaning back in her chair. Peg was sitting completely stunned, she snapped out of her thoughts when Katia became quiet, “I don’t have words, I was in heaven. This was heaven, okay? Like I don’t think anything will ever top this, I would never have thought anything like this was possible.” She said, then Ash spoke, “I agree with both of them. And the chemistry, you two work perfectly together. I don’t have anything to say really, it was amazing. I want a duet with you two on Spotify.” He said pointing at you both. You were just standing on stage taking it all in with the wide grin still on your face. Then Anders spoke, “And I agree with all of them. The song, the chemistry, everything, it was just perfect. It got really hot in here, did anyone else feel that?” He asked with a laugh and the other three members of the jury agreed. Anders continued speaking, “You did this so good, It felt like you have done this before, and then I don’t mean yesterday at the rehearsals.” He said as the speakers played, meaning that the jury's time was up. Pär turned to both of you, “Interesting, but then I just gotta ask. Have you done this before?” He asked. After he asked that you and Leo looked at each other quickly communicating if you should tell them.

He gave you a small nod and you looked back to Pär and brought the mic up to your lips, “We have.” You said simply. Katia and Peg shoot up in their seats at that, “You have? When? Do you know each other from before?” Pär continued. “Do we know each other from before?” You said teasingly looking at Leo, “You tell me.” He teased back wrapping an arm around your waist. You again looked back to Pär before speaking again, “We’re together.” You said smiling, “WHAT?!” Peg screamed out from the jury table and Katia covered her mouth with her hand with a shocked expression. Ash let out a laugh before speaking, “Then the chemistry makes so much sense.” You nodded at him with a smile, then Katia spoke as she collected herself, “Did you guys date last year as well? Is that why the whole gang from last year is here? Because you know them personally and it’s not just for Leo?” She asked. You nodded, “Yeah, we’ve been together for, what is it, almost 2 years now? That’s why I was in the audience last year. I was here every Saturday.” You stated. Then Leo spoke, “They know her very well, they were the only ones we told except for our families. We’ve all gone out together multiple times too.” He said, “And this song, it’s one of our favorite songs to practice together, we did that last year as well when we were spending time together outside of Idol. That’s why it was such an obvious choice. It’s a song we know well but also knew we could do better, and we did.” You added.

Pär laughed, “That you did. You are welcome to walk back to green room now guys, but give us a kiss first would you?” He said jokingly. Leo shrugged his shoulders before bringing you in for a kiss, the audience and the jury cheering and applauding. When you broke apart he turned to the jury, saluted and then turned back to you, picked you up and threw you over his shoulder walking back over to the sofa. Pär and the jury started laughing as you looked into the camera and lifted your hands up slightly in defeat. He didn’t carry you for long, as soon as you reached the sofa he put you down again and just sat down next to each other.

The rest of the night you were sitting together, your head leaning on his shoulder. And when it got time for the result and you were announced through to next week you immediately ran to him and he again picked you up and spun you around. The group from last year could be heard cheering the loudest. As he slowly put you down he placed his lips on yours softly, “To think that this was all a big coincidence.” He whispered as he pulled away. “The best one ever!” You said holding on to him tightly with a big smile.

[serenemy]

panopticon as fuck

as a witch she was supposed to be outside the globe looking in. through a series of events best phrased contemporaneously as “playing herself” it had turned out otherwise

but like whyy tho??

why would anyone read a Book that doesn’t spark their magic? why would anyone pay this much attention to a character they actively dislike and engage in complicated ruses to have removed from the stories?

it pains me to acknowledge this could be some form of magic. new corrupt spells from the bad wizard? [any gender can be a witch whether good or bad. but not this person. wizard is synonymous in every way except it isn’t derived from the native tongue of the vvitche, an honor, she had pettily decided, too painful to bestow] lingering remnants of his old ones? or was there another bad wizard in the midst? or some weird wild juju of indeterminate origin and moral appropriateness?

idk

i just know it makes me uncomfortable. i’ve felt its hostile presence everywhere for like two human years. its existence made no logical sense and i used my thusly discredited sense of it to undermine me on other things in dangerous ways. the magic’s been wrong across realms for awhile

magic works both ways with a Book of Shadows. theoretically a powerful enough interaction between pages and a hostile reader could leave even a completed works altered, perhaps irreparably so, and i’m not sure i should go on

perhaps the Board has a point

here is where she is a liar because while she might not have been the only source of dangerous magic—there was at least one corrupt wizard in the region, she had mistaken to great effect for a mundane—in her secret heart of hearts she had known for a long time, maybe all along

she started it

at a minimum, she opened the door

she tried to eat and have two cakes

every propagandist in human history knows you can tell a story and manifest a thing that didn’t previously exist. in a Book of Shadows a story can weave a spell. and she was not solely a witch. she was many other things and one of them was storyteller

of course the risk would be there, in her Book, even if she told herself you’re only writing down the honorable parts and keeping the rest inside in your soul

it is the soul from whence all springs, little mouse

here is the other part where she is a liar

she knew she wasn’t really going to maybe quit either. it was different than expected, less morally pristine, more reckless. but there was still beauty and powerful good in the pages

not all the secret watchers had stained it with malevolence. some touched the works with beneficial magic so lovely it alone justified continued existence in the present form

and the muse was the right one. one she’d learned in bittersweetly painful ways to trust

and the songs still felt true and right and beautiful

as the “writer,” if she existed, it wasn’t so much surprising—

she could argue there should have been warning. the content wasn’t ready. you still as of now haven’t seen the [*BENIGN and] creative place this is going [she was like grrm. but the content was still alive. there was time]

*yinze know i use content warnings. some people love a tragic story. some feel bait and switched when they get their hearts broken by a story they loved. i write both but i don’t trick people. to me that’s a shitty click baity and unnecessary way to get readers

we don’t do jump scares here. one of my central theses as an author is that compelling, exciting fiction, with high stakes, can in any genre including smut be created around moral characters who treat each other in morally sensitive ways and via moral stories that treat their audiences morally. these stories exist, they’re gorgeous, and since i didn’t find as many as i wanted, i started making my own

i’ve broken so may “i swear i’ll nevers” along the way

i’ll swear i’ll never write anything with sex shaming language [guy character calls his sister a whore, a word i promised myself i’d never replicate in any form]

i swear i’ll never write a rape scene. it’s not the worst thing that can befall a woman. for most women, if they really thought about it, it wouldn’t be as close to the top as they expected

so can we get some other storylines?? a lot of survivors have been encountering that one their entire lives and the scenes are really really unpleasant. plus while a lot of the fiction comes from women, the idea that this is the worst thing that can befall a woman is a cultural construct originating entirely with men

the other thing is they almost always treat the event itself as the trauma. i’m not familiar with a single example pre Unbelievable that understood sometimes the worse trauma is the reaction of others. [wrote a rape scene in a romance novel. i think ‘wind river’ is powerful art the existence of which improves the world. because it showed something impossible to tell. mattress girl’s “porno” does the same and should exist for the same reasons]

i swear i’ll never write a revenge story. i just couldn’t conceive being interested. still haven’t watched old boy eg. if morality is your guiding star, it answers every question about how to respond when someone wrongs you. to the extent the genre intends to differ from a “justice” story any “revenge” story i could love would definitionally have to be the former [might have written one. turns out i have a more complicated relationship with those themes than i thought. sometimes the hero’s cause is just but the nature of the remedy demanded by the context of the storylines opens the door for hatred and anger to influence proportionality in morally culpable ways

in my novel i weighed that. the villain received notice. my hero went no further than remedy demanded. if it seemed otherwise the flaw was in the author’s storytelling, not the character’s choices]

it’d be intellectually dishonest to deny i could fail more i swear i’ll nevers in the future. what i can say is two things:

1. i have no such works in progress, in mind, or alive in my head at this time and can’t foresee that changing anytime in the foreseeable future

2. if you haven’t encountered multiple content warnings (as my villain did) you’re not going to get ambushed with content

—as it is unexpected

i’m not sure it’s a good place for an author to be mental health wise to court a cult following of hate readers for a project so experimental they can see the words *of a Book of Shadows no less* being written—and deleted—in real time

can potentially alter its course with their attention

the presence of the observer changes things—in science and in fiction

[there was a reason she’d been telling the truth when she told that prelator she only sought or wanted a few acolytes who were perfect fits for the material. she really didn’t like to lie, even to someone who wouldn’t remember. wait. wrong “character.” nvm, all fiction lies]

but i don’t know. there might be something here

something lovely and worth telling. something sufficiently moral to justify its existence

[sometimes so do all truths]